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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Bush Will Address Nation Monday; 'Washington Post' Publishes New Abu Ghraib Photos; Brandon Mayfield Released

Aired May 21, 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.
On a day when new photos of prisoner abuse surface and new detailed accounts that make the pictures seem tame by comparison were published, the White House said the president will address the nation and a worldwide audience on Iraq on Monday night.

In the last six weeks, the president has seen domestic support for the war and the post-war occupation slide dramatically. His own approval ratings are at their lowest.

He must convince a global audience that the planned turnover of sovereignty actually means something that it isn't just occupation light. He must, we suspect convince the domestic audience that this plan will somehow lead to fewer deaths of American soldiers.

The speech will come a year and three weeks from the president's victory speech aboard the USS Lincoln. "Mission Accomplished" the sign behind him read that night. Mission barely begun seemed closer to reality.

Our reality begins with the whip, more prison photos out today, CNN's Jamie McIntyre looking through them all, Jamie the headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, on a day when "The Washington Post" released new videos, photographs and also victim statements about what happened at the Abu Ghraib Prison, the Pentagon today acknowledged new details about the investigation into soldiers who may have murdered prisoners under their control -- Aaron.

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

On to the war itself and a delicate battle in Najaf, the fighting somewhat less than delicate as it always is, CNN's Jane Arraf with us tonight on the videophone, so Jane a headline.

JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: Aaron, another flare-up in fighting here in Najaf where six weeks before the U.S. is due to hand over sovereignty the militia loyal to a radical Shia cleric still hold the cities of Najaf and Kufa.

BROWN: Jane, thank you.

Finally, the convoluted case of Brandon Mayfield who's out of jail but not, it seems, exactly out of the woods. CNN's Kelli Arena has been covering this for us, so Kelli a headline tonight.

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Brandon Mayfield is out of custody but he may not be out of the woods with law enforcement officials investigating the Madrid train bombings -- Aaron.

BROWN: Kelli, thank you, back to you and the rest shortly.

Also coming up on the program tonight, Israeli troops pull out of refugee camps in Gaza with little to show but sorrow on both sides.

In a month of bad news in Iraq, the generosity of Americans transposed against the evil of a fallen regime.

And, of course, morning papers and this being Friday we throw in a tabloid or two, a couple of dandies at that, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight with yet more pictures and words to match. They show in the most graphic details seen publicly so far what took place on Tier 1-A of Abu Ghraib Prison late last year. The words are drawn from statements made by 13 of the prisoners. "The Washington Post" got a hold of it all.

CNN's Jamie McIntyre takes it from there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): A short, silent digital video posted by "The Washington Post" on its Web site shows what appears to be a detainee punched in the face. Then naked and hooded prisoners are dragged into the human pyramid seen in previous photographs.

Still pictures obtained and published by "The Post" show more violent abuse. Here Specialist Charles Graner, one of the accused ringleaders, seems poised to strike a hooded and bound detainee, a photograph his lawyers insist was posed.

In other photographs, detainees are seen shackled to railings, standing on boxes in what appears to be an uncomfortable position and seemingly threatened with military dogs but it's the statements obtained by the newspaper, translated interviews of the detainees conducted by U.S. military investigators in January that contain the most chilling allegations of mistreatment.

"They forced me to eat pork and put liquor in my mouth" one detainee said. "They ordered me to curse Islam and because they started to hit my broken leg I cursed my religion." He also claimed to be tortured, saying he was hung from a door "for more than eight hours. I was screaming in pain the whole night."

Another prisoner said, "They forced us to walk like dogs on our hands and knees and we had to bark like a dog and if we didn't do that, they started hitting us hard on our face and chest with no mercy."

Another said Specialist Graner used to "throw the food into the toilet" and would tell prisoners to "go take it and eat it."

Like some previous photographs, the new video and pictures seem to show more than just the seven soldiers who have been charged. Sources say an investigation into what role military intelligence and civilian interrogators played in the abuse is nearing completion.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: And today, Aaron, the Pentagon revealed that there are 33 cases, investigations of possible inappropriate deaths of prisoners at the hands of U.S. troops. Eight of those cases are still active, including at least four in Iraq and three in Afghanistan.

And we got a hold tonight of some of the death reports in some of these cases and let me just read you some of the causes of death. This one is of an Iraqi general. He was killed, according to this report, asphyxiated due to smothering and chest compression.

Another one of these reports says multiple gunshot wounds with complications, blunt force injuries to lower extremities, and this one simply says strangulation.

These are all cases that the Pentagon is investigating as possible cases where prisoners were, in effect, murdered by U.S. troops who had them in their custody -- Aaron.

BROWN: Do we know if these investigations were underway prior to the revelations of the abuse scandal at the prison?

MCINTYRE: Yes, they were. In fact, a lot of the statements that we talked about they were taken in January and these death reports that we've obtained tonight from the Pentagon also date back to a time before these revelations were made public, so we do know these investigations were underway. What's not clear is what they were planning to make public about what they found out.

BROWN: And at this point do we know how far along any of these investigations are, whether anyone's been charged?

MCINTYRE: Well, the key investigation, the one done by General Fay into the role of military intelligence is nearing completion. In fact, we learned today that there's been a referral to the Justice Department for a criminal prosecution possibly of a civilian contractor.

We're expecting in a week or so to hear the results of that Fay investigation. That will tell us whether anyone higher up in the chain of command, particularly in the military intelligence chain, will be charged with criminal offenses.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you, Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon tonight.

South of Baghdad the war goes on, side-by-side with a political struggle that's just as important, maybe more so but somewhat harder to track. On one side are the supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr. On the other side the Shiite establishment that wants him gone just as long as it isn't seen as helping the Americans. And, as that plays out, so does the fighting, the dying and the talking.

Here again CNN's Jane Arraf.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF (voice-over): Watching for Muqtada al-Sadr, U.S. helicopters circled over the scene of a gun battle with the Mehdi militia. Military officials say a black sedan speeding out of Kufa opened fire at a U.S. Army patrol.

Some thought it might be the radical Shia leader himself returning to Najaf after Friday prayers. It wasn't. U.S. troops killed the driver and captured two other Mehdi Army members in the vehicle.

In what has become a pattern 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment patrols and checkpoints as well as the U.S. base came under attack by the Mehdi militia. Faced with rocket-propelled grenades and guns, the U.S. fired back with tanks. More than two dozen militia members were believed killed Friday. The number of civilians caught in the crossfire was unknown.

(on camera): The U.S. military is still staying well away from the holy sites but they've been patrolling deeper into Najaf than they had been and they're certainly fighting back when attacked but they have been laying off offensive operations in the hope, some U.S. officials say, that political pressure on Muqtada al-Sadr to disband his militia will work.

(voice-over): U.S. appointed Governor Adnan al-Zurufi is a link between U.S. officials and local tribal and religious leaders who have promised to try to get Sadr to disband his militia estimated at several hundred fighters in Najaf, a task that's turning out harder than it may seem.

"You talk and talk and talk and we still haven't seen anything" the governor lectures this meeting of Shiites. "With you or without you we'll resolve this" he says walking out.

At a nighttime checkpoint some residents tell U.S. soldiers of their despair in a city where business has stopped. This man didn't want to give his name. He's a taxi driver afraid to drive. His wife is pregnant. His daughter is sick and he has hardly any work.

"I don't have a gun. What do you want me to do, hit them with my Quran" he says of the Mehdi Army.

His friend tells the Americans everyone in the area wants you to go in and save them. They say with the militia fighting U.S. forces in the city, civilians are getting hurt in the crossfire but Sadr still holds support among men like these. To them the more he stands up to the overwhelming U.S. forces the greater a hero he becomes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF: The fear among many U.S. officials and among many Iraqis as well is not just that Muqtada al-Sadr will remain a young Shia leader with a handful of strong and fervent support from young men. It's that if he is allowed to stay, allowed to retain control of these holy cities he will become much more and much more powerful as time goes on -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, thank you, Jane Arraf who's on the videophone. We won't press out luck with that tonight.

As we said at the top, the president gives a speech 8:00 p.m. Eastern time Monday night. The speech will come from the Army War College not far from the battlefield in Gettysburg.

According to a spokesman, the president has not yet asked for air time on the broadcast networks. CNN, however, will bring you the speech in any event. Not much is known yet about what the president will say specifically except that the subject is the future of Iraq. At one point, one person in that future, a guy named Ahmed Chalabi, seemed to be a very important player but that's all changed and changed pretty quickly.

Here's CNN's David Ensor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The man who maneuvered himself into the picture behind the First Lady at this year's State of the Union speech had his home and offices raided by Iraqi Police only after the president's national security team had been forewarned, according to a senior administration official and had offered no objection. Cut off from Pentagon funds just days ago, Ahmed Chalabi's fall from grace in Washington could hardly be more steep.

REP. JIM COOPER (D) ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: One of the most highly paid and trusted advisers may have deliberately misled our nation for months and years.

REUEL GERECHT, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: I suspect we may come to rue the day that we broke down the doors in his office in Baghdad.

ENSOR: Reuel Gerecht, a former CIA officer, now a neo- conservative writer, says there is no way that the charge that Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress gave intelligence to Iran that might have endangered American lives, no way that that could be true.

GERECHT: Neither he nor the INC have ever had access to that type of information nor would they ever be given access to that type of information. That is simply just -- just silly.

ENSOR: But at the State Department and the CIA, officials say Chalabi is a corrupt egomaniac with little support in Iraq who sent defectors to lie about mobile weapons labs and other WMD to convince Washington to go to war.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It turns out that his intelligence wasn't so good and he didn't have anybody in Iraq behind him.

ENSOR: Senior Pentagon officials insist not all Chalabi's intelligence was bad.

GEN. RICHARD MYERS, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: The organization that he is associated with has provided intelligence to our intelligence unit there in Baghdad that has saved soldiers' lives.

ENSOR: Chalabi's admirers say the raid may actually help him that his new anti-American position could garner votes next year and they warn against counting out a politician whose organization was quick to seize thousands of files from Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency as the regime was collapsing.

KEN POLLACK, SABAN CENTER AT BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: There are any number of reports coming from other Iraqis that Chalabi and his people were using those intelligence documents to blackmail other Iraqis, to bribe them, to pressure them.

ENSOR: U.S. intelligence officials insist that Chalabi gave intelligence secrets to Iran so closely held in the U.S. government that only a handful of senior officials know them.

They also say there is evidence Chalabi met with a senior Iranian intelligence official described as a nefarious figure who has played a direct role in activities against the United States.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In other news tonight, two legal stories are giving us strange vibes to say the least. We'll have the Martha Stewart mess a little bit later.

First, though, the case of Brandon Mayfield, the Muslim attorney from Portland, Oregon who was held in connection with the railway bombings in Madrid, he was called a material witness until he was freed because the partial fingerprint on a bag of detonators did not match his or did it? And, in any case, a print is a print isn't it? Tonight it all adds up to this. Mr. Mayfield may have been freed. He may not yet be in the clear.

Here's CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA (voice-over): Brandon Mayfield spent the day at home in Portland avoiding the glare of the public but he's still under the glare of suspicion. Law enforcement sources insist it was Mayfield's fingerprint on a bag full of detonators found in Madrid. Mayfield insists he's innocent.

BRANDON MAYFIELD: All I can reiterate is I didn't have anything to do with this Madrid, Spain bombing and I'll continue to reiterate that. ARENA: Spanish officials say the print belongs to an Algerian man, Ouhnane Daoud but legal experts doubt this was a factor in Mayfield's court-ordered release. Government sources say the FBI doesn't have anything else on Mayfield besides the disputed print to warrant detaining him further and suggest the judge ordered his release for lack of further evidence.

KEN PIERNICK, FORMER FBI COUNTERTERRORISM DIRECTOR: I cannot imagine very many prosecutors that would go to court without more evidence than a partial fingerprint, so they need to develop more in the case and I'm sure if there is a case to be developed they will do so.

ARENA: The U.S. District Court in Oregon says Mayfield is still classified a material witness and grand jury secrecy rules still apply. Legal experts say it's likely Mayfield was released with conditions, including the confiscation of his passport.

KENT MAYFIELD, BRANDON'S BROTHER: I would hope that the American people do not judge my brother because of this -- this association. They should know that he is innocent. He would never condone violence. He has never supported terrorism.

ARENA (on camera): Law enforcement sources say the investigation continues into how a print they believe is Mayfield's got on the bag in Madrid and they say Mayfield will remain under surveillance.

Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And Kelli will have more on how this unfolds tomorrow morning on the program called "On the Story," Kelli part of that, 10:00 a.m. Eastern time here on CNN, where else?

Beyond the investigation, the bombing in Madrid set off a grim chronology that all major terrorist attacks share, rescue and recovery. Nearly 200 people were killed. More than 1,400 injured. Grieving of course, a state funeral was held and then the getting on, which is, of course, simple to say and tough to do. Tomorrow, Spain will try to get on when it celebrates a royal wedding, a nod to the future in the wake of grave loss.

Here's CNN's Al Goodman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AL GOODMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The celebration when Spain's Crown Prince Felipe marries a divorced commoner journalist Letizia Ortiz on Saturday will be tempered by the March 11th Madrid train bombings still on everyone's minds including the royal family's.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Like when March 11 happened they were very close to us, so I think we like that a lot. We like that the royal family has been with us. GOODMAN: The wedding will be in the same cathedral where the royal family mourned at the state funeral for the bombing victims just two months ago. Last week, the wedding couple went to the Atocha station hard hit in the commuter train attacks.

(on camera): The wedding couple has canceled the bachelor party and the bridal shower out of respect for the bombing victims and they've asked Madrid to forget the street dance and instead give the money to a victims' charity.

(voice-over): But it will still be a royal wedding, a long, red carpet and more than 1,000 guests, a million flowers planted in town and state television ready to broadcast it live to the world. Some say the hoopla could actually help this capital.

JOSEPH GARCIA ABAD (through translator): The only thing that can justify this is to give the people a moment to party and a way to defy the fear of terrorism, in other words we'll have life in all its splendor.

GOODMAN: But with tighter security than initially planned due to the terrorist attacks a royal gala on guard.

Al Goodman, CNN, Madrid.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT a little bit later, part two of CNN's investigation into a drug that may be in some cases doing more harm than good.

And later still the faces of women winning and losing and playing around, a photo celebration of women in sports coming up later.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Gaza now, in recent weeks and months the prime minister of Israel has been working, he says, to set the stage for a pullout from Gaza. Part of the strategy involves looking tough for voters back home and making sure the other side doesn't confuse the strategic pullback with a (unintelligible). That's the theory.

Lately that's meant a string of military operations in Gaza, at least a dozen Israeli fatalities, many, many more on the Palestinian side.

If this is the end game it's a rough one, from Gaza tonight CNN's Matthew Chance.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Another funeral, another outpouring of grief and fury. There will be many more here. The people of Rafa are burying their dead in anger. Palestinian officials say at least 40 have been killed and that civilians and children are among them. At this makeshift morgue we found 17 bodies still to be buried. It's a grim backlog in a city that's been under siege.

Under international pressure, Israel's bulldozers and tanks are finally moving back. Israel says this was an operation to smash tunnels used by Palestinian militants to smuggle in weapons but military officials admit none of the tunnels have so far been found. They must come back, they say.

(on camera): Israel says this isn't a pullout just the redeployment of its forces that its operations in the Rafa refugee camp are far from over but the tight military curfew that's been imposed here has been lifted in some areas and many residents of Rafa are taking the opportunity to leave.

(voice-over): Like their neighbors, the Eliad (ph) family have been here since 1948. Now they're refugees once more. The bulldozers will be back, Ibrahim tells me, so we must leave now while we can.

Some in Israel are calling for all these houses to go. Israeli soldiers patrolling the Egyptian border and killed here in the past will be much safer they say but many here believe this will bring nothing but despair, not security for Israel nor its troops.

Matthew Chance, CNN, in the Rafa refugee camp, Gaza.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Coming up we go back to the prison abuse story and the pictures. Have we shown them too much or could they be the way we are remembered around the world? Those questions and two able guests as NEWSNIGHT continues from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The Frenchman who said "you are what you eat" wasn't just talking about brie and Chablis and flesh and blood but he did leave out much of what makes us who we are. We are what we say. We are what we see.

With the stories we tell and the pictures we take in and lately we've been swamped with the inspiring and lately the sickening, so what to make of it or some would say what else is new?

Richard Stolley perfected the art of telling stories with photographs, first at "Life" magazine, then at "People."

David Perlmutter teaches history at LSU, Louisiana State University, and is the author of several books on photos and public policy and we're pleased to have them both with us on a Friday.

Professor, let me start with you. We'll talk a bit about media here. Out there in Louisiana do they think that we are overplaying the prison pictures? DAVID PERLMUTTER, LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY: Well, I think that you could feel that the saturation point was probably past it this week where at first there was a prurient interest, like wow, you know, this is very unusual. Let's take a look at this. But now I get the sense that people are saying, OK, enough is enough. I don't want to see one more image of this kind of thing.

BROWN: Dick, is there a disconnect here between what we think is important and what the consumers of news think is important?

PERLMUTTER: Yes. And, you know, there's a balance, as you know, in news that do you show the public what they should see or what they want to see, you know.

BROWN: Yes.

PERLMUTTER: What is the real front page of a newspaper? I've had editors tell me that the sports page is for most people the real front page. That's what they read first.

BROWN: Let me interrupt you here. We'll come back to that. Dick, let me get your thought on that first. Are we -- is there this disconnect? Do we see the story in a way that is different from the way the people who consume the product see it?

RICHARD STOLLEY, TIME, INC.: It's very possible that we do see it differently and that ought to be a spur for us to pursue this story even more vigorously than we do now.

BROWN: Because?

STOLLEY: Because this is -- this is a true just devastating scandal to America. I mean we are seeing -- we are used to seeing our soldiers, our military people in heroic poses. Through American military history we have been consuming and have been cheered by, impressed and by pictures of U.S. military people doing heroic things even in death.

And now we are seeing U.S. military people doing just such devastatingly brutal things that we, America has got to get used to this idea that this really happened and it's continuing presumably to happen. It's going to get worse before it gets better and the American press I think has got to pursue this right to the end.

BROWN: And, professor, going back to your point I think you would then say there will be a backlash to all of this, is that right?

PERLMUTTER: Yes. I think it's already happening.

You know, what I find interesting about these pictures, not only is what's happening in them appalling, but you could call this the lowest form of reality television. The prison guard, the M.P.s, the persons pictured doing the abuse, they know that there are cameras there and they're actually playing up to the camera.

BROWN: Yes. PERLMUTTER: We used to say that people wouldn't do bad things if cameras were watching them. But now it almost seems that they're doing bad things because cameras are watching them.

BROWN: We almost need a psychiatrist here.

Dick, weigh in on that point.

STOLLEY: Well, he's absolutely right.

You wonder. People are standing there with cameras trained on these people. What in the name of God were these torturers, these brutalizers thinking when this was going on? Now, were they drunk? Maybe they were, and maybe there was other stuff going on. But the idea -- at "LIFE" magazine, we used to say, if you bring a camera into a situation, everybody freezes up.

And what we're getting here is precisely the opposite phenomena. It is unprecedented for me as a photojournalist what we're seeing in these photographs. Even in My Lai, for instance, as bad as that was in Vietnam, the pictures we saw were of Vietnamese women and children being shot. We did not see American soldiers doing the shooting.

BROWN: It seems to me that this is a conversation that we just started, because there are all sorts of questions about whether these will in fact become the iconic pictures of the war and all of that. So we will just have to make you wander back over from your place and join us again another time.

Professor, you as well.

Thank you both for joining us tonight. Thank you.

From the start, many said the war in Iraq would come down to a battle of hearts and minds. And we've been talking about that. Images are powerful ammunition. And we've been talking about that. The losses have been enormous in recent weeks. And we've been showing you that.

So, one question to put out there tonight. Can any good news, any number of kind actions mitigate the damage? Can stories like the one you're about to see pierce the fog of outrage?

Here's CNN's Ed Lavandera.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When seven Iraqi men first landed in Houston, it was hard to tell they were hiding scars left by Saddam Hussein.

DAVID BATY, DYNAMIC ORTHOTICS & PROSTHETICS: When you first meet them, all their right hands are in their pockets, because that's the way they walked around for nine years, with the end of their limb stuffed in their pockets. LAVANDERA: It was a subtle, yet poignant behavior that prosthetic specialist David Baty noticed. Muslim traditional views the left hand as dirty disrespectful, the right hand was virtuous.

BATY: The social stigma that was associated with not having a right hand affected not only these guys, but their family, their children.

LAVANDERA: Nine years ago, these men were accused of illegally using U.S. dollars in Iraq. Saddam Hussein ordered their right hands be cut off and that the men be sent back to their neighborhood as an example of what would happen if you defied the region.

(on camera): What these men have been through has become a well- documented saga. Saddam Hussein's men videotaped their hands being cut off. And now a filmmaker is turning their story of loss and redemption into a documentary.

(voice-over): The filmmaker found the men in Baghdad and started enlisting the help of reporters, doctors, prosthetics specialists, rehabilitation experts and anyone else who could help them. All the work paid off just a few days ago, when each man put on a new hand for the first time.

TIM DIBELLO, DYNAMIC ORTHOTICS & PROSTHETICS: When they first got their new hands, they all cried.

The uniqueness of the situation and the barbaric nature of the act that was performed against these men galvanized the individuals involved to do something.

LAVANDERA: In less than six weeks, they've learned what takes most people months to master. What may seem simple like rolling a ball actually requires difficult muscle coordination.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He has got to combine all the motions of his arm and then tell this muscle to open at the right moment to let go of the ball. It's extremely complicated. And not all of them can do it, actually.

LAVANDERA: Each hand is a $25,000 gift. But to those that made this happen, each hand symbolizes much more. One man said it's about family.

BATY: Once he got his hand, he said: You know what I'm really looking forward to is going home holding my son in my left hand and my daughter in my right hand and walking down the street.

LAVANDERA: One of the men joked that when they look at their left hand, they will say, made in Iraq, and when they will look at their right hand, they will think, made in America. And look now. These men aren't hiding their hands in their pockets anymore.

Ed Lavandera, CNN, Houston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Well, with all the other pictures out there, people ought to remember, we think, those as well.

Still come tonight, a surprise twist in the Martha Stewart case, to say the least.

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The Martha Stewart case has never been short on drama, so call this drama to spare. Today, one of the government's main witnesses in the trial, an ink expert, was charged with giving false testimony. What this means for the conviction is unclear tonight. But it's fair to say it's the first possible break to come Ms. Stewart's way in quite a while.

Here's CNN's Chris Huntington.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARTHA STEWART, DEFENDANT: I'm a true believer in the due process of law. And that we have discovered several kind of corrupt problems within the system makes me kind of depressed. So we'll see what happens. But I'm a believer in American justice.

CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It may be the best news Martha Stewart has heard all year. The same U.S. attorney who convicted her and her former broker, Peter Bacanovic, of obstructing justice today charged one of the government's key witnesses with two counts of perjury for lying on the stand.

DAVID KELLEY, U.S. ATTORNEY: A trusted and accomplished lab examiner and public servant violated the public trust.

HUNTINGTON: Larry Stewart who runs the U.S. Secret Service Crime Lab and is no relation to Martha allegedly lied when he told the jury that he personally analyzed the blue ink from Bacanovic's worksheet with the famous notation at 60. That's the price at which Martha Stewart claimed she always intended to sell her stake in ImClone Systems.

Attorneys for the convicted style maven said the new perjury charges -- quote -- "clearly demonstrate that the trial of Martha Stewart was fatally flawed and unfair. If anyone believes that Martha Stewart was not prejudiced, they are extremely naive."

Bacanovic's lawyer said the development -- quote -- "will require a new trial." But U.S. Attorney David Kelley was quick to downplay the impact of the charges against Larry Stewart.

KELLEY: We are quite confident that the false testimony will have no impact on the convictions of Martha Stewart and Peter Bacanovic.

HUNTINGTON (on camera): Martha Stewart's attorneys have already been denied one request for a mistrial regarding a juror who lied about his criminal record. But legal analysts that old claim, bundled together with the new perjury charges, could give the defense some traction.

Christ Huntington, CNN Financial News, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A couple more money items tonight; 100,000 union workers went out on strike at SBC, the company's second largest company. The country has customers in 13 states from California to Connecticut. The company says 99.9 percent of those customers should experience no difference in service at all. We'll see. Union and management divided on health care premiums, job security and outsourcing. Those are the issues of the day.

Oil prices eased a bit today, the price of a barrel of crude dipping below $40 a barrel after the Saudis proposed a production increase. That in turn greased a few palms on Wall Street. Investors ended the week on an up note.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT tonight, we take another look at a drug where the side effects may be lethal.

A break first. From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Last night, we told you about a medication that one senior Navy Reserve officer blames for terrible physical and psychological effects that have changed his life. The drug is called Lariam. It used to prevent malaria, and it's given to thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq. In rare cases, Lariam can cause serious side effects, which some soldiers say they were never warned about. For some military families who have lost loved ones to suicide, the drug has become a target.

In collaboration with UPI investigative reporter Mark Benjamin, CNN's Jonathan Mann has been working the story for us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN MANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Monument, Colorado, March 14, a chilling 911 call.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

OPERATOR: El Paso County 911. What's the address of your emergency.

LAURA HOWELL, WIFE OF BILL HOWELL: Park Trail Drive.

OPERATOR: OK. What's the problem? Tell me exactly what happened.

HOWELL: My husband just hit me and he's gone downstairs to get his gun.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MANN: Bill Howell got his gun and used it. Minutes after the call, he shot himself in his front yard. Howell was a special forces officer who had returned home to his wife and children from duty in Iraq just three weeks later.

HOWELL: Bill's patriotism and devotion to his country and fellow special forces soldiers is beyond what most Americans are capable of comprehending. I would like Bill to be remembered for his 36 years of accomplishment and not final moments of impulsivity.

MANN: Laura Howell doesn't know why her husband did it. He had been drinking heavily. But Howell was also taking Lariam, an anti- malaria drug given to thousands of military personnel who took part in the war in Iraq. The company that makes Lariam, Roche Pharmaceuticals, says it's been used safely by more than 20 million people to prevent malaria, a potentially fatal disease.

But Roche is repaired by the FDA to warn users that, in some cases, Lariam can cause sever anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts. In North Carolina, families around Fort Bragg wonder whether the drug had anything to do with a sudden surge in killing and suicides among the soldiers there in the summer of 2002. Among the cases, Master Sergeant William Wright, who confessed to killing his wife and later killed himself in jail while awaiting trial. He had taken Lariam during a deployment in Afghanistan.

The Army investigated the cluster of killings. It found that not all the soldiers involved in the killings were taking the drug and concluded that Lariam, known generically as mefloquine, was not the likely cause for the deaths.

Sue Rose is an activist who is trying to raise consumer awareness about Lariam.

SUE ROSE, PUBLIC HEALTH SPECIALIST: The military is drawing the wrong conclusion from those deaths. The true cluster, the true group you want to look at are those men who took Lariam. And of the men who took Lariam, who all served in Afghanistan, all three of them killed their wives and subsequently committed suicide.

MANN: The mounting concerns have now led the Pentagon to begin a wide-ranging study of the drug.

WILLIAM WINKENWERDER, ASST. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR HEALTH AFFAIRS: With respect to Lariam, we don't have any evidence that suggests that there is a tie-in between suicides and the use of the medication. We want to understand, if there is, the absence of evidence does not prove that there's no relationship. But we want to understand if there is, and that's why we're doing a study to try to determine that.

MANN (on camera): The military has scaled back on the use of Lariam because it says, temporarily at least, it's not facing the same threat of malaria. But for the months or even years that the safety study takes, it says it will continue to regard the drug as being as safe as ever and it will continue to distribute it to men and women in uniform wherever it feels it is necessary.

Jonathan Mann, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead on the program tonight, our love affair with the still photo continues, tonight, with the faces of tough, competitive women.

From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We talked a fair amount tonight about how images shape who we are collectively. This is about images delayed. When Title IX was passed in 1972, only one in 27 school-aged girls played sports. Today, one in three does. But even as girls and women have hit the courts and fields and diamonds in waves, images of them in action have been relatively scarce.

It's something sports journalist Jane Gottesman noticed and set out to change. The result is an exhibition touring the country and currently here in New York. It's called "Game Face."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JANE GOTTESMAN, CO-CREATOR, "GAME FACE": "Game Face" is about women discovering their strength, perhaps in sports, and then exerting it or flexing their muscles outside of sports.

I was a reporter out in San Francisco at "The San Francisco Chronicle." And I noticed, after a year or so in the sports department, that women were sorely underrepresented in the sports pages. And I thought that girls and women were hungry for a reflection of their own athleticism that was accurate and true.

GEOFFREY BIDDLE, CO-CREATOR, "GAME FACE": We looked at over 200,000 images in the course of putting this project together. We wanted to include a broad range of not only sports,but types of physical expression. So we have the football player and we have the girl tossing a ball at the side of her house. We wanted to show all different age ranges, all different races, all different levels of ability.

GOTTESMAN: The "Getting Ready" section to me is one of the ones I can really relate to the most. I remember that feeling of butterflies in my stomach before competition. And whether you're a 12-and-under swimmer or whether you're an Olympic champion, you have to sort of get yourself psyched up and get yourself prepared to accept a challenge and put yourself out there without your coach, without your mother.

And you have to be able to step up to the line. "Start" is a moment in time that is meant to describe that instantaneous moment, when all of this preparation and all of this talent and all of this training begins to happen, just explodes. So you see runners who are just about to take off from the starting block. You see a pitcher who's just about to release the ball.

"Action" is the longest section of the "Game Face" project. We wanted to show all these different ways women are active, involved, totally un-self-conscious in their moment of being an athlete. We have a picture of the highest level of field hockey being played by one of the strongest players in American history and then we have a photograph of girls double-Dutch jump-roping up in Spanish Harlem.

Women and girls aren't necessarily given a football on their fourth birthday. They may be given a hula-hoop or they may be given a pair of roller-skates or they may be given a baton to twirl. And so those are the implements that they used and maybe spent hours and hours learning how to master.

People coming to the moment of conclusion after all the exertion that they put themselves through to do their best. We wanted to show that culmination, that moment of truth, really, where they reached the finish line in one way or another, symbolically or actually.

In sports, as in the rest of your life, you finish a task, you finish a challenge, and almost instantly, you're getting ready for the next one. Maybe you have a few minutes or a few days to enjoy the victory, enjoy the accomplishment, or mull over the mistake that you made.

The photograph in the exhibition of a woman 100 years ago standing beside her bicycle looking out into the horizon, she's got one of the greatest game faces on in the entire exhibition. I think women have always shown determination, grit. I think women have had to put their game face on to take sports to the level that it is now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That is the work of NEWSNIGHT associate producer Mary Ann Fox (ph), who is clearly bucking for a raise. Nicely done.

Still ahead on the program, morning papers still ahead with a tabloid or two.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers...

CREW: Okeydokey!

BROWN: ... from around the country and around the world.

Every day, I work with these people.

"The Washington Times" starts us off. "Saudis Pledge to Bring Down Oil Costs. Nation Urges OPEC to Raise Output"; $2.33 for regular, I paid today. Man, that's tough. What else? Oh, they also put somewhere on the front page, "Bush to" -- you got it right in front of you, Aaron -- "Bush to Update Iraq Strategy in Major Speeches, First One Set For Monday." That will be on a lot of front pages tomorrow morning.

"The Cincinnati Enquirer." I like this story. It's a good story idea. "New Ordinations Hold Out Hope That Priest Shortage May Reverse, a Fresh Call to the Collar" is how they headline a story in Cincinnati. Cincinnati has a good-sized Catholic community. And so that will be a good story for many people to wake up to on Saturday.

"The Detroit News and Free Press," they are combined: "200,000 in the Dark as Storms Cross State," big weather story making news out there in Detroit, Michigan, where they'll be playing some basketball over the weekend, too, in the NBA.

OK, here are your tabloids for the week, and some pretty fair ones. These come from "The Weekly World News." I'll show you the front page in a second. "Dead Ventriloquist's Dummy Still Talks." You wouldn't think that was possible, but Herman the Knucklehead refused to be buried with his partner died, so he's going solo, a rare thing for a ventriloquist's dummy to do. "Hillary's Alien Boyfriend Is So Jealous" -- and they have the picture to prove it -- "Over Senator's Marriage Proposals From Admiring Men."

How we doing on time? Got it.

OK, "Boy Raised by Wild Dogs Sent to Obedience School. 'I Suppose the Next Thing Is to Have Him Neutered,' Blasts Outraged Human Rights Activist."

And the cover story this week in "The Weekly World News," "Osama Hits Atlantic City Two Years After He Lost $5 Million in Vegas."

Have a wonderful weekend. If that doesn't get you started, there's nothing we can do that will. We'll see you all on Monday.

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 21, 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.
On a day when new photos of prisoner abuse surface and new detailed accounts that make the pictures seem tame by comparison were published, the White House said the president will address the nation and a worldwide audience on Iraq on Monday night.

In the last six weeks, the president has seen domestic support for the war and the post-war occupation slide dramatically. His own approval ratings are at their lowest.

He must convince a global audience that the planned turnover of sovereignty actually means something that it isn't just occupation light. He must, we suspect convince the domestic audience that this plan will somehow lead to fewer deaths of American soldiers.

The speech will come a year and three weeks from the president's victory speech aboard the USS Lincoln. "Mission Accomplished" the sign behind him read that night. Mission barely begun seemed closer to reality.

Our reality begins with the whip, more prison photos out today, CNN's Jamie McIntyre looking through them all, Jamie the headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, on a day when "The Washington Post" released new videos, photographs and also victim statements about what happened at the Abu Ghraib Prison, the Pentagon today acknowledged new details about the investigation into soldiers who may have murdered prisoners under their control -- Aaron.

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

On to the war itself and a delicate battle in Najaf, the fighting somewhat less than delicate as it always is, CNN's Jane Arraf with us tonight on the videophone, so Jane a headline.

JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: Aaron, another flare-up in fighting here in Najaf where six weeks before the U.S. is due to hand over sovereignty the militia loyal to a radical Shia cleric still hold the cities of Najaf and Kufa.

BROWN: Jane, thank you.

Finally, the convoluted case of Brandon Mayfield who's out of jail but not, it seems, exactly out of the woods. CNN's Kelli Arena has been covering this for us, so Kelli a headline tonight.

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Brandon Mayfield is out of custody but he may not be out of the woods with law enforcement officials investigating the Madrid train bombings -- Aaron.

BROWN: Kelli, thank you, back to you and the rest shortly.

Also coming up on the program tonight, Israeli troops pull out of refugee camps in Gaza with little to show but sorrow on both sides.

In a month of bad news in Iraq, the generosity of Americans transposed against the evil of a fallen regime.

And, of course, morning papers and this being Friday we throw in a tabloid or two, a couple of dandies at that, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight with yet more pictures and words to match. They show in the most graphic details seen publicly so far what took place on Tier 1-A of Abu Ghraib Prison late last year. The words are drawn from statements made by 13 of the prisoners. "The Washington Post" got a hold of it all.

CNN's Jamie McIntyre takes it from there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): A short, silent digital video posted by "The Washington Post" on its Web site shows what appears to be a detainee punched in the face. Then naked and hooded prisoners are dragged into the human pyramid seen in previous photographs.

Still pictures obtained and published by "The Post" show more violent abuse. Here Specialist Charles Graner, one of the accused ringleaders, seems poised to strike a hooded and bound detainee, a photograph his lawyers insist was posed.

In other photographs, detainees are seen shackled to railings, standing on boxes in what appears to be an uncomfortable position and seemingly threatened with military dogs but it's the statements obtained by the newspaper, translated interviews of the detainees conducted by U.S. military investigators in January that contain the most chilling allegations of mistreatment.

"They forced me to eat pork and put liquor in my mouth" one detainee said. "They ordered me to curse Islam and because they started to hit my broken leg I cursed my religion." He also claimed to be tortured, saying he was hung from a door "for more than eight hours. I was screaming in pain the whole night."

Another prisoner said, "They forced us to walk like dogs on our hands and knees and we had to bark like a dog and if we didn't do that, they started hitting us hard on our face and chest with no mercy."

Another said Specialist Graner used to "throw the food into the toilet" and would tell prisoners to "go take it and eat it."

Like some previous photographs, the new video and pictures seem to show more than just the seven soldiers who have been charged. Sources say an investigation into what role military intelligence and civilian interrogators played in the abuse is nearing completion.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: And today, Aaron, the Pentagon revealed that there are 33 cases, investigations of possible inappropriate deaths of prisoners at the hands of U.S. troops. Eight of those cases are still active, including at least four in Iraq and three in Afghanistan.

And we got a hold tonight of some of the death reports in some of these cases and let me just read you some of the causes of death. This one is of an Iraqi general. He was killed, according to this report, asphyxiated due to smothering and chest compression.

Another one of these reports says multiple gunshot wounds with complications, blunt force injuries to lower extremities, and this one simply says strangulation.

These are all cases that the Pentagon is investigating as possible cases where prisoners were, in effect, murdered by U.S. troops who had them in their custody -- Aaron.

BROWN: Do we know if these investigations were underway prior to the revelations of the abuse scandal at the prison?

MCINTYRE: Yes, they were. In fact, a lot of the statements that we talked about they were taken in January and these death reports that we've obtained tonight from the Pentagon also date back to a time before these revelations were made public, so we do know these investigations were underway. What's not clear is what they were planning to make public about what they found out.

BROWN: And at this point do we know how far along any of these investigations are, whether anyone's been charged?

MCINTYRE: Well, the key investigation, the one done by General Fay into the role of military intelligence is nearing completion. In fact, we learned today that there's been a referral to the Justice Department for a criminal prosecution possibly of a civilian contractor.

We're expecting in a week or so to hear the results of that Fay investigation. That will tell us whether anyone higher up in the chain of command, particularly in the military intelligence chain, will be charged with criminal offenses.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you, Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon tonight.

South of Baghdad the war goes on, side-by-side with a political struggle that's just as important, maybe more so but somewhat harder to track. On one side are the supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr. On the other side the Shiite establishment that wants him gone just as long as it isn't seen as helping the Americans. And, as that plays out, so does the fighting, the dying and the talking.

Here again CNN's Jane Arraf.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF (voice-over): Watching for Muqtada al-Sadr, U.S. helicopters circled over the scene of a gun battle with the Mehdi militia. Military officials say a black sedan speeding out of Kufa opened fire at a U.S. Army patrol.

Some thought it might be the radical Shia leader himself returning to Najaf after Friday prayers. It wasn't. U.S. troops killed the driver and captured two other Mehdi Army members in the vehicle.

In what has become a pattern 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment patrols and checkpoints as well as the U.S. base came under attack by the Mehdi militia. Faced with rocket-propelled grenades and guns, the U.S. fired back with tanks. More than two dozen militia members were believed killed Friday. The number of civilians caught in the crossfire was unknown.

(on camera): The U.S. military is still staying well away from the holy sites but they've been patrolling deeper into Najaf than they had been and they're certainly fighting back when attacked but they have been laying off offensive operations in the hope, some U.S. officials say, that political pressure on Muqtada al-Sadr to disband his militia will work.

(voice-over): U.S. appointed Governor Adnan al-Zurufi is a link between U.S. officials and local tribal and religious leaders who have promised to try to get Sadr to disband his militia estimated at several hundred fighters in Najaf, a task that's turning out harder than it may seem.

"You talk and talk and talk and we still haven't seen anything" the governor lectures this meeting of Shiites. "With you or without you we'll resolve this" he says walking out.

At a nighttime checkpoint some residents tell U.S. soldiers of their despair in a city where business has stopped. This man didn't want to give his name. He's a taxi driver afraid to drive. His wife is pregnant. His daughter is sick and he has hardly any work.

"I don't have a gun. What do you want me to do, hit them with my Quran" he says of the Mehdi Army.

His friend tells the Americans everyone in the area wants you to go in and save them. They say with the militia fighting U.S. forces in the city, civilians are getting hurt in the crossfire but Sadr still holds support among men like these. To them the more he stands up to the overwhelming U.S. forces the greater a hero he becomes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF: The fear among many U.S. officials and among many Iraqis as well is not just that Muqtada al-Sadr will remain a young Shia leader with a handful of strong and fervent support from young men. It's that if he is allowed to stay, allowed to retain control of these holy cities he will become much more and much more powerful as time goes on -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, thank you, Jane Arraf who's on the videophone. We won't press out luck with that tonight.

As we said at the top, the president gives a speech 8:00 p.m. Eastern time Monday night. The speech will come from the Army War College not far from the battlefield in Gettysburg.

According to a spokesman, the president has not yet asked for air time on the broadcast networks. CNN, however, will bring you the speech in any event. Not much is known yet about what the president will say specifically except that the subject is the future of Iraq. At one point, one person in that future, a guy named Ahmed Chalabi, seemed to be a very important player but that's all changed and changed pretty quickly.

Here's CNN's David Ensor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The man who maneuvered himself into the picture behind the First Lady at this year's State of the Union speech had his home and offices raided by Iraqi Police only after the president's national security team had been forewarned, according to a senior administration official and had offered no objection. Cut off from Pentagon funds just days ago, Ahmed Chalabi's fall from grace in Washington could hardly be more steep.

REP. JIM COOPER (D) ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: One of the most highly paid and trusted advisers may have deliberately misled our nation for months and years.

REUEL GERECHT, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: I suspect we may come to rue the day that we broke down the doors in his office in Baghdad.

ENSOR: Reuel Gerecht, a former CIA officer, now a neo- conservative writer, says there is no way that the charge that Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress gave intelligence to Iran that might have endangered American lives, no way that that could be true.

GERECHT: Neither he nor the INC have ever had access to that type of information nor would they ever be given access to that type of information. That is simply just -- just silly.

ENSOR: But at the State Department and the CIA, officials say Chalabi is a corrupt egomaniac with little support in Iraq who sent defectors to lie about mobile weapons labs and other WMD to convince Washington to go to war.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It turns out that his intelligence wasn't so good and he didn't have anybody in Iraq behind him.

ENSOR: Senior Pentagon officials insist not all Chalabi's intelligence was bad.

GEN. RICHARD MYERS, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: The organization that he is associated with has provided intelligence to our intelligence unit there in Baghdad that has saved soldiers' lives.

ENSOR: Chalabi's admirers say the raid may actually help him that his new anti-American position could garner votes next year and they warn against counting out a politician whose organization was quick to seize thousands of files from Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency as the regime was collapsing.

KEN POLLACK, SABAN CENTER AT BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: There are any number of reports coming from other Iraqis that Chalabi and his people were using those intelligence documents to blackmail other Iraqis, to bribe them, to pressure them.

ENSOR: U.S. intelligence officials insist that Chalabi gave intelligence secrets to Iran so closely held in the U.S. government that only a handful of senior officials know them.

They also say there is evidence Chalabi met with a senior Iranian intelligence official described as a nefarious figure who has played a direct role in activities against the United States.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In other news tonight, two legal stories are giving us strange vibes to say the least. We'll have the Martha Stewart mess a little bit later.

First, though, the case of Brandon Mayfield, the Muslim attorney from Portland, Oregon who was held in connection with the railway bombings in Madrid, he was called a material witness until he was freed because the partial fingerprint on a bag of detonators did not match his or did it? And, in any case, a print is a print isn't it? Tonight it all adds up to this. Mr. Mayfield may have been freed. He may not yet be in the clear.

Here's CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA (voice-over): Brandon Mayfield spent the day at home in Portland avoiding the glare of the public but he's still under the glare of suspicion. Law enforcement sources insist it was Mayfield's fingerprint on a bag full of detonators found in Madrid. Mayfield insists he's innocent.

BRANDON MAYFIELD: All I can reiterate is I didn't have anything to do with this Madrid, Spain bombing and I'll continue to reiterate that. ARENA: Spanish officials say the print belongs to an Algerian man, Ouhnane Daoud but legal experts doubt this was a factor in Mayfield's court-ordered release. Government sources say the FBI doesn't have anything else on Mayfield besides the disputed print to warrant detaining him further and suggest the judge ordered his release for lack of further evidence.

KEN PIERNICK, FORMER FBI COUNTERTERRORISM DIRECTOR: I cannot imagine very many prosecutors that would go to court without more evidence than a partial fingerprint, so they need to develop more in the case and I'm sure if there is a case to be developed they will do so.

ARENA: The U.S. District Court in Oregon says Mayfield is still classified a material witness and grand jury secrecy rules still apply. Legal experts say it's likely Mayfield was released with conditions, including the confiscation of his passport.

KENT MAYFIELD, BRANDON'S BROTHER: I would hope that the American people do not judge my brother because of this -- this association. They should know that he is innocent. He would never condone violence. He has never supported terrorism.

ARENA (on camera): Law enforcement sources say the investigation continues into how a print they believe is Mayfield's got on the bag in Madrid and they say Mayfield will remain under surveillance.

Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And Kelli will have more on how this unfolds tomorrow morning on the program called "On the Story," Kelli part of that, 10:00 a.m. Eastern time here on CNN, where else?

Beyond the investigation, the bombing in Madrid set off a grim chronology that all major terrorist attacks share, rescue and recovery. Nearly 200 people were killed. More than 1,400 injured. Grieving of course, a state funeral was held and then the getting on, which is, of course, simple to say and tough to do. Tomorrow, Spain will try to get on when it celebrates a royal wedding, a nod to the future in the wake of grave loss.

Here's CNN's Al Goodman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AL GOODMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The celebration when Spain's Crown Prince Felipe marries a divorced commoner journalist Letizia Ortiz on Saturday will be tempered by the March 11th Madrid train bombings still on everyone's minds including the royal family's.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Like when March 11 happened they were very close to us, so I think we like that a lot. We like that the royal family has been with us. GOODMAN: The wedding will be in the same cathedral where the royal family mourned at the state funeral for the bombing victims just two months ago. Last week, the wedding couple went to the Atocha station hard hit in the commuter train attacks.

(on camera): The wedding couple has canceled the bachelor party and the bridal shower out of respect for the bombing victims and they've asked Madrid to forget the street dance and instead give the money to a victims' charity.

(voice-over): But it will still be a royal wedding, a long, red carpet and more than 1,000 guests, a million flowers planted in town and state television ready to broadcast it live to the world. Some say the hoopla could actually help this capital.

JOSEPH GARCIA ABAD (through translator): The only thing that can justify this is to give the people a moment to party and a way to defy the fear of terrorism, in other words we'll have life in all its splendor.

GOODMAN: But with tighter security than initially planned due to the terrorist attacks a royal gala on guard.

Al Goodman, CNN, Madrid.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT a little bit later, part two of CNN's investigation into a drug that may be in some cases doing more harm than good.

And later still the faces of women winning and losing and playing around, a photo celebration of women in sports coming up later.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Gaza now, in recent weeks and months the prime minister of Israel has been working, he says, to set the stage for a pullout from Gaza. Part of the strategy involves looking tough for voters back home and making sure the other side doesn't confuse the strategic pullback with a (unintelligible). That's the theory.

Lately that's meant a string of military operations in Gaza, at least a dozen Israeli fatalities, many, many more on the Palestinian side.

If this is the end game it's a rough one, from Gaza tonight CNN's Matthew Chance.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Another funeral, another outpouring of grief and fury. There will be many more here. The people of Rafa are burying their dead in anger. Palestinian officials say at least 40 have been killed and that civilians and children are among them. At this makeshift morgue we found 17 bodies still to be buried. It's a grim backlog in a city that's been under siege.

Under international pressure, Israel's bulldozers and tanks are finally moving back. Israel says this was an operation to smash tunnels used by Palestinian militants to smuggle in weapons but military officials admit none of the tunnels have so far been found. They must come back, they say.

(on camera): Israel says this isn't a pullout just the redeployment of its forces that its operations in the Rafa refugee camp are far from over but the tight military curfew that's been imposed here has been lifted in some areas and many residents of Rafa are taking the opportunity to leave.

(voice-over): Like their neighbors, the Eliad (ph) family have been here since 1948. Now they're refugees once more. The bulldozers will be back, Ibrahim tells me, so we must leave now while we can.

Some in Israel are calling for all these houses to go. Israeli soldiers patrolling the Egyptian border and killed here in the past will be much safer they say but many here believe this will bring nothing but despair, not security for Israel nor its troops.

Matthew Chance, CNN, in the Rafa refugee camp, Gaza.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Coming up we go back to the prison abuse story and the pictures. Have we shown them too much or could they be the way we are remembered around the world? Those questions and two able guests as NEWSNIGHT continues from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The Frenchman who said "you are what you eat" wasn't just talking about brie and Chablis and flesh and blood but he did leave out much of what makes us who we are. We are what we say. We are what we see.

With the stories we tell and the pictures we take in and lately we've been swamped with the inspiring and lately the sickening, so what to make of it or some would say what else is new?

Richard Stolley perfected the art of telling stories with photographs, first at "Life" magazine, then at "People."

David Perlmutter teaches history at LSU, Louisiana State University, and is the author of several books on photos and public policy and we're pleased to have them both with us on a Friday.

Professor, let me start with you. We'll talk a bit about media here. Out there in Louisiana do they think that we are overplaying the prison pictures? DAVID PERLMUTTER, LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY: Well, I think that you could feel that the saturation point was probably past it this week where at first there was a prurient interest, like wow, you know, this is very unusual. Let's take a look at this. But now I get the sense that people are saying, OK, enough is enough. I don't want to see one more image of this kind of thing.

BROWN: Dick, is there a disconnect here between what we think is important and what the consumers of news think is important?

PERLMUTTER: Yes. And, you know, there's a balance, as you know, in news that do you show the public what they should see or what they want to see, you know.

BROWN: Yes.

PERLMUTTER: What is the real front page of a newspaper? I've had editors tell me that the sports page is for most people the real front page. That's what they read first.

BROWN: Let me interrupt you here. We'll come back to that. Dick, let me get your thought on that first. Are we -- is there this disconnect? Do we see the story in a way that is different from the way the people who consume the product see it?

RICHARD STOLLEY, TIME, INC.: It's very possible that we do see it differently and that ought to be a spur for us to pursue this story even more vigorously than we do now.

BROWN: Because?

STOLLEY: Because this is -- this is a true just devastating scandal to America. I mean we are seeing -- we are used to seeing our soldiers, our military people in heroic poses. Through American military history we have been consuming and have been cheered by, impressed and by pictures of U.S. military people doing heroic things even in death.

And now we are seeing U.S. military people doing just such devastatingly brutal things that we, America has got to get used to this idea that this really happened and it's continuing presumably to happen. It's going to get worse before it gets better and the American press I think has got to pursue this right to the end.

BROWN: And, professor, going back to your point I think you would then say there will be a backlash to all of this, is that right?

PERLMUTTER: Yes. I think it's already happening.

You know, what I find interesting about these pictures, not only is what's happening in them appalling, but you could call this the lowest form of reality television. The prison guard, the M.P.s, the persons pictured doing the abuse, they know that there are cameras there and they're actually playing up to the camera.

BROWN: Yes. PERLMUTTER: We used to say that people wouldn't do bad things if cameras were watching them. But now it almost seems that they're doing bad things because cameras are watching them.

BROWN: We almost need a psychiatrist here.

Dick, weigh in on that point.

STOLLEY: Well, he's absolutely right.

You wonder. People are standing there with cameras trained on these people. What in the name of God were these torturers, these brutalizers thinking when this was going on? Now, were they drunk? Maybe they were, and maybe there was other stuff going on. But the idea -- at "LIFE" magazine, we used to say, if you bring a camera into a situation, everybody freezes up.

And what we're getting here is precisely the opposite phenomena. It is unprecedented for me as a photojournalist what we're seeing in these photographs. Even in My Lai, for instance, as bad as that was in Vietnam, the pictures we saw were of Vietnamese women and children being shot. We did not see American soldiers doing the shooting.

BROWN: It seems to me that this is a conversation that we just started, because there are all sorts of questions about whether these will in fact become the iconic pictures of the war and all of that. So we will just have to make you wander back over from your place and join us again another time.

Professor, you as well.

Thank you both for joining us tonight. Thank you.

From the start, many said the war in Iraq would come down to a battle of hearts and minds. And we've been talking about that. Images are powerful ammunition. And we've been talking about that. The losses have been enormous in recent weeks. And we've been showing you that.

So, one question to put out there tonight. Can any good news, any number of kind actions mitigate the damage? Can stories like the one you're about to see pierce the fog of outrage?

Here's CNN's Ed Lavandera.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When seven Iraqi men first landed in Houston, it was hard to tell they were hiding scars left by Saddam Hussein.

DAVID BATY, DYNAMIC ORTHOTICS & PROSTHETICS: When you first meet them, all their right hands are in their pockets, because that's the way they walked around for nine years, with the end of their limb stuffed in their pockets. LAVANDERA: It was a subtle, yet poignant behavior that prosthetic specialist David Baty noticed. Muslim traditional views the left hand as dirty disrespectful, the right hand was virtuous.

BATY: The social stigma that was associated with not having a right hand affected not only these guys, but their family, their children.

LAVANDERA: Nine years ago, these men were accused of illegally using U.S. dollars in Iraq. Saddam Hussein ordered their right hands be cut off and that the men be sent back to their neighborhood as an example of what would happen if you defied the region.

(on camera): What these men have been through has become a well- documented saga. Saddam Hussein's men videotaped their hands being cut off. And now a filmmaker is turning their story of loss and redemption into a documentary.

(voice-over): The filmmaker found the men in Baghdad and started enlisting the help of reporters, doctors, prosthetics specialists, rehabilitation experts and anyone else who could help them. All the work paid off just a few days ago, when each man put on a new hand for the first time.

TIM DIBELLO, DYNAMIC ORTHOTICS & PROSTHETICS: When they first got their new hands, they all cried.

The uniqueness of the situation and the barbaric nature of the act that was performed against these men galvanized the individuals involved to do something.

LAVANDERA: In less than six weeks, they've learned what takes most people months to master. What may seem simple like rolling a ball actually requires difficult muscle coordination.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He has got to combine all the motions of his arm and then tell this muscle to open at the right moment to let go of the ball. It's extremely complicated. And not all of them can do it, actually.

LAVANDERA: Each hand is a $25,000 gift. But to those that made this happen, each hand symbolizes much more. One man said it's about family.

BATY: Once he got his hand, he said: You know what I'm really looking forward to is going home holding my son in my left hand and my daughter in my right hand and walking down the street.

LAVANDERA: One of the men joked that when they look at their left hand, they will say, made in Iraq, and when they will look at their right hand, they will think, made in America. And look now. These men aren't hiding their hands in their pockets anymore.

Ed Lavandera, CNN, Houston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Well, with all the other pictures out there, people ought to remember, we think, those as well.

Still come tonight, a surprise twist in the Martha Stewart case, to say the least.

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The Martha Stewart case has never been short on drama, so call this drama to spare. Today, one of the government's main witnesses in the trial, an ink expert, was charged with giving false testimony. What this means for the conviction is unclear tonight. But it's fair to say it's the first possible break to come Ms. Stewart's way in quite a while.

Here's CNN's Chris Huntington.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARTHA STEWART, DEFENDANT: I'm a true believer in the due process of law. And that we have discovered several kind of corrupt problems within the system makes me kind of depressed. So we'll see what happens. But I'm a believer in American justice.

CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It may be the best news Martha Stewart has heard all year. The same U.S. attorney who convicted her and her former broker, Peter Bacanovic, of obstructing justice today charged one of the government's key witnesses with two counts of perjury for lying on the stand.

DAVID KELLEY, U.S. ATTORNEY: A trusted and accomplished lab examiner and public servant violated the public trust.

HUNTINGTON: Larry Stewart who runs the U.S. Secret Service Crime Lab and is no relation to Martha allegedly lied when he told the jury that he personally analyzed the blue ink from Bacanovic's worksheet with the famous notation at 60. That's the price at which Martha Stewart claimed she always intended to sell her stake in ImClone Systems.

Attorneys for the convicted style maven said the new perjury charges -- quote -- "clearly demonstrate that the trial of Martha Stewart was fatally flawed and unfair. If anyone believes that Martha Stewart was not prejudiced, they are extremely naive."

Bacanovic's lawyer said the development -- quote -- "will require a new trial." But U.S. Attorney David Kelley was quick to downplay the impact of the charges against Larry Stewart.

KELLEY: We are quite confident that the false testimony will have no impact on the convictions of Martha Stewart and Peter Bacanovic.

HUNTINGTON (on camera): Martha Stewart's attorneys have already been denied one request for a mistrial regarding a juror who lied about his criminal record. But legal analysts that old claim, bundled together with the new perjury charges, could give the defense some traction.

Christ Huntington, CNN Financial News, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A couple more money items tonight; 100,000 union workers went out on strike at SBC, the company's second largest company. The country has customers in 13 states from California to Connecticut. The company says 99.9 percent of those customers should experience no difference in service at all. We'll see. Union and management divided on health care premiums, job security and outsourcing. Those are the issues of the day.

Oil prices eased a bit today, the price of a barrel of crude dipping below $40 a barrel after the Saudis proposed a production increase. That in turn greased a few palms on Wall Street. Investors ended the week on an up note.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT tonight, we take another look at a drug where the side effects may be lethal.

A break first. From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Last night, we told you about a medication that one senior Navy Reserve officer blames for terrible physical and psychological effects that have changed his life. The drug is called Lariam. It used to prevent malaria, and it's given to thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq. In rare cases, Lariam can cause serious side effects, which some soldiers say they were never warned about. For some military families who have lost loved ones to suicide, the drug has become a target.

In collaboration with UPI investigative reporter Mark Benjamin, CNN's Jonathan Mann has been working the story for us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN MANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Monument, Colorado, March 14, a chilling 911 call.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

OPERATOR: El Paso County 911. What's the address of your emergency.

LAURA HOWELL, WIFE OF BILL HOWELL: Park Trail Drive.

OPERATOR: OK. What's the problem? Tell me exactly what happened.

HOWELL: My husband just hit me and he's gone downstairs to get his gun.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MANN: Bill Howell got his gun and used it. Minutes after the call, he shot himself in his front yard. Howell was a special forces officer who had returned home to his wife and children from duty in Iraq just three weeks later.

HOWELL: Bill's patriotism and devotion to his country and fellow special forces soldiers is beyond what most Americans are capable of comprehending. I would like Bill to be remembered for his 36 years of accomplishment and not final moments of impulsivity.

MANN: Laura Howell doesn't know why her husband did it. He had been drinking heavily. But Howell was also taking Lariam, an anti- malaria drug given to thousands of military personnel who took part in the war in Iraq. The company that makes Lariam, Roche Pharmaceuticals, says it's been used safely by more than 20 million people to prevent malaria, a potentially fatal disease.

But Roche is repaired by the FDA to warn users that, in some cases, Lariam can cause sever anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts. In North Carolina, families around Fort Bragg wonder whether the drug had anything to do with a sudden surge in killing and suicides among the soldiers there in the summer of 2002. Among the cases, Master Sergeant William Wright, who confessed to killing his wife and later killed himself in jail while awaiting trial. He had taken Lariam during a deployment in Afghanistan.

The Army investigated the cluster of killings. It found that not all the soldiers involved in the killings were taking the drug and concluded that Lariam, known generically as mefloquine, was not the likely cause for the deaths.

Sue Rose is an activist who is trying to raise consumer awareness about Lariam.

SUE ROSE, PUBLIC HEALTH SPECIALIST: The military is drawing the wrong conclusion from those deaths. The true cluster, the true group you want to look at are those men who took Lariam. And of the men who took Lariam, who all served in Afghanistan, all three of them killed their wives and subsequently committed suicide.

MANN: The mounting concerns have now led the Pentagon to begin a wide-ranging study of the drug.

WILLIAM WINKENWERDER, ASST. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR HEALTH AFFAIRS: With respect to Lariam, we don't have any evidence that suggests that there is a tie-in between suicides and the use of the medication. We want to understand, if there is, the absence of evidence does not prove that there's no relationship. But we want to understand if there is, and that's why we're doing a study to try to determine that.

MANN (on camera): The military has scaled back on the use of Lariam because it says, temporarily at least, it's not facing the same threat of malaria. But for the months or even years that the safety study takes, it says it will continue to regard the drug as being as safe as ever and it will continue to distribute it to men and women in uniform wherever it feels it is necessary.

Jonathan Mann, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead on the program tonight, our love affair with the still photo continues, tonight, with the faces of tough, competitive women.

From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We talked a fair amount tonight about how images shape who we are collectively. This is about images delayed. When Title IX was passed in 1972, only one in 27 school-aged girls played sports. Today, one in three does. But even as girls and women have hit the courts and fields and diamonds in waves, images of them in action have been relatively scarce.

It's something sports journalist Jane Gottesman noticed and set out to change. The result is an exhibition touring the country and currently here in New York. It's called "Game Face."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JANE GOTTESMAN, CO-CREATOR, "GAME FACE": "Game Face" is about women discovering their strength, perhaps in sports, and then exerting it or flexing their muscles outside of sports.

I was a reporter out in San Francisco at "The San Francisco Chronicle." And I noticed, after a year or so in the sports department, that women were sorely underrepresented in the sports pages. And I thought that girls and women were hungry for a reflection of their own athleticism that was accurate and true.

GEOFFREY BIDDLE, CO-CREATOR, "GAME FACE": We looked at over 200,000 images in the course of putting this project together. We wanted to include a broad range of not only sports,but types of physical expression. So we have the football player and we have the girl tossing a ball at the side of her house. We wanted to show all different age ranges, all different races, all different levels of ability.

GOTTESMAN: The "Getting Ready" section to me is one of the ones I can really relate to the most. I remember that feeling of butterflies in my stomach before competition. And whether you're a 12-and-under swimmer or whether you're an Olympic champion, you have to sort of get yourself psyched up and get yourself prepared to accept a challenge and put yourself out there without your coach, without your mother.

And you have to be able to step up to the line. "Start" is a moment in time that is meant to describe that instantaneous moment, when all of this preparation and all of this talent and all of this training begins to happen, just explodes. So you see runners who are just about to take off from the starting block. You see a pitcher who's just about to release the ball.

"Action" is the longest section of the "Game Face" project. We wanted to show all these different ways women are active, involved, totally un-self-conscious in their moment of being an athlete. We have a picture of the highest level of field hockey being played by one of the strongest players in American history and then we have a photograph of girls double-Dutch jump-roping up in Spanish Harlem.

Women and girls aren't necessarily given a football on their fourth birthday. They may be given a hula-hoop or they may be given a pair of roller-skates or they may be given a baton to twirl. And so those are the implements that they used and maybe spent hours and hours learning how to master.

People coming to the moment of conclusion after all the exertion that they put themselves through to do their best. We wanted to show that culmination, that moment of truth, really, where they reached the finish line in one way or another, symbolically or actually.

In sports, as in the rest of your life, you finish a task, you finish a challenge, and almost instantly, you're getting ready for the next one. Maybe you have a few minutes or a few days to enjoy the victory, enjoy the accomplishment, or mull over the mistake that you made.

The photograph in the exhibition of a woman 100 years ago standing beside her bicycle looking out into the horizon, she's got one of the greatest game faces on in the entire exhibition. I think women have always shown determination, grit. I think women have had to put their game face on to take sports to the level that it is now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That is the work of NEWSNIGHT associate producer Mary Ann Fox (ph), who is clearly bucking for a raise. Nicely done.

Still ahead on the program, morning papers still ahead with a tabloid or two.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers...

CREW: Okeydokey!

BROWN: ... from around the country and around the world.

Every day, I work with these people.

"The Washington Times" starts us off. "Saudis Pledge to Bring Down Oil Costs. Nation Urges OPEC to Raise Output"; $2.33 for regular, I paid today. Man, that's tough. What else? Oh, they also put somewhere on the front page, "Bush to" -- you got it right in front of you, Aaron -- "Bush to Update Iraq Strategy in Major Speeches, First One Set For Monday." That will be on a lot of front pages tomorrow morning.

"The Cincinnati Enquirer." I like this story. It's a good story idea. "New Ordinations Hold Out Hope That Priest Shortage May Reverse, a Fresh Call to the Collar" is how they headline a story in Cincinnati. Cincinnati has a good-sized Catholic community. And so that will be a good story for many people to wake up to on Saturday.

"The Detroit News and Free Press," they are combined: "200,000 in the Dark as Storms Cross State," big weather story making news out there in Detroit, Michigan, where they'll be playing some basketball over the weekend, too, in the NBA.

OK, here are your tabloids for the week, and some pretty fair ones. These come from "The Weekly World News." I'll show you the front page in a second. "Dead Ventriloquist's Dummy Still Talks." You wouldn't think that was possible, but Herman the Knucklehead refused to be buried with his partner died, so he's going solo, a rare thing for a ventriloquist's dummy to do. "Hillary's Alien Boyfriend Is So Jealous" -- and they have the picture to prove it -- "Over Senator's Marriage Proposals From Admiring Men."

How we doing on time? Got it.

OK, "Boy Raised by Wild Dogs Sent to Obedience School. 'I Suppose the Next Thing Is to Have Him Neutered,' Blasts Outraged Human Rights Activist."

And the cover story this week in "The Weekly World News," "Osama Hits Atlantic City Two Years After He Lost $5 Million in Vegas."

Have a wonderful weekend. If that doesn't get you started, there's nothing we can do that will. We'll see you all on Monday.

Good night for all of us.

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