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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Four Marines Dead in Baghdad; Pentagon to Declassify Interrogation Techniques Memos; Was al Qaeda Helped by Saudi Authorities?

Aired June 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.


JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
In the words of Michael Melvill, that's his name, "you get a hell of a view from 62 miles up. Astronaut Michael Melvill, who this morning became the first private citizen to steer a privately-funded ship into space. In so doing, he got a glimpse, if only for a minute or two, of something very few people ever have the privilege to encounter.

From 62 miles up, you can see the shape of the planet beneath you and the possibilities above. You're close enough to sense the vastness of humanity and yet distant enough to feel how fragile life can be.

In short, we are told by those who have been there space travel is both an utterly liberated and profoundly humbling experience, given all that goes on down here perhaps even a vital one.

Well, our whip begins, however, here on earth in Baghdad and a rough day all around. Christiane Amanpour, our Chief International Correspondent, starts us off with a headline -- Christiane.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Judy, there was more violence, as there has been for so many days. Four U.S. Marines were found dead and, at the same time as the prisoner abuse court martial proceedings, defense lawyers and the judge took it up the chain of command.

WOODRUFF: Thanks, Christiane.

Next to the Pentagon and questions of who approved what when it came to interrogating prisoners, CNN's Jamie McIntyre with that, Jamie, a headline from you.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Judy, the Pentagon is about to declassify and release memos that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld signed approving aggressive interrogation procedures at Guantanamo Bay, including something called water boarding but the Pentagon is saying tonight that, although that was authorized, he never gave the final approval. But once all those documents are out, people will be able to judge for themselves -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: All right, Jamie, thank you. And finally CNN's Nic Robertson reports from Saudi Arabia. In the wake of the kidnapping and murder of Paul Johnson, tonight a chilling question, did al Qaeda get help from Saudi authorities? We'll hear from Nic in just a moment.

Also on the program tonight, David Ensor reports on the vice president's relentless pursuit of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

The biggest publishing event in years, perhaps ever, Bill Clinton's memoir comes out tomorrow. We're going to get a preview tonight.

And, a rocket fueled by laughing gas and private money makes it to space and back, one giant step for the little guy, all that and more in the hour ahead.

But we begin tonight in Iraq. The country is nine days from the handover and still far from safe for anyone, even Iraqis. Five American servicemen died there today, four of them under mysterious circumstances. And, we want to warn you the pictures are tough to look at and they are not the only ones tonight.

Two report, first CNN's Anderson Cooper who's in Baghdad.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): A disturbing image, four dead American Marines and one that begs for an explanation tonight. The Marines were found lying on the ground, their flack jackets missing but other details, if they are known, have not yet been released by the U.S. military, which has only confirmed that they were killed in action during an operation in Ramadi.

A fifth U.S. soldier was killed today in a mortar attack in Baghdad. The 24-hour deadline is due to expire tonight on the South Korean hostage being held in Fallujah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please get out. Please. Please. Please. I don't want to die. I don't want to die.

COOPER: The dramatic plea by 33-year-old Kim Sun-il was made over the weekend. His kidnappers are demanding that South Korean troops pull out of Iraq. If that demand is not met, they say the civilian contractor will be beheaded. The South Korean government says it will not withdraw its troops.

Elsewhere in the country, it was another day of violent attacks. Five Iraqi citizens dead from a roadside bomb south of Mosul, two more injured. In a separate incident, the coalition said another roadside bomb in Baghdad killed two Iraqi civil defense soldiers. Fourteen other people were wounded.

There is some positive news to report tonight, however. Iraqi oil is flowing again after a pipeline damaged by insurgents last week was repaired today. Iraq could be up to full export capacity by mid week.

Anderson Cooper CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: The Korean prisoner so disturbing.

On now to the prison at Abu Ghraib, today in Baghdad an American military judge ordered it preserved as a crime scene. He also ruled that lawyers representing two of the soldiers accused in the scandal may question the top generals involved.

Again, here's CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR (voice-over): They are the pictures that shocked the world, sallied America's reputation and severely damaged its standing amongst Iraqis. The defense lawyer for Specialist Charles Graner, seen leering and giving the thumbs-up, says he wants to question Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

GUY WOMACK, SPC CHARLES GRANER'S ATTORNEY: The secretary of defense in waging a war on terrorism correctly loosened the reins somewhat on interrogators. The junior officers and senior enlisted men in the military intelligence command felt that had pretty free rein to do a lot of things.

AMANPOUR: Charles Graner is considered the ringleader, has the most charges filed against him and, if convicted of all of them, faces the harshest sentence, 24 and a half years in prison but his lawyer contends he committed no crime.

WOMACK: The individuals who were interrogated and photographed at (unintelligible) Abu Ghraib are not protected by international or American law and therefore you can't be guilty of maltreatment.

AMANPOUR: The judge quickly shot down that argument but the defense lawyers persisted arguing that their clients were just following orders. Defense lawyers contend that this conduct was widespread and happened on an almost daily basis. They say these were not isolated incidents committed by a few bad apples, as the U.S. government insists.

The judge did agree to a request by lawyers to interview General John Abizaid, commander of all U.S. forces in the region and General Ricardo Sanchez, head of U.S.-led forces in Iraq at the time, as well as other senior officers. Graner's attorney says he strongly believes that Sanchez knew of the abuse as early as November not, as he claims, in January.

(on camera): The court martial proceedings that have been going on inside this room are partly designed to staunch the flow of bad blood towards the United States. A new poll that was commissioned by the U.S.-led authorities here finds that 54 percent of Iraqis believe that all Americans behave as badly as the accused. (voice-over): The trial is open to Iraqi and international press, though it's not broadcast. Only sketches of the proceedings are permitted. And outside Abu Ghraib, prisoners' relatives are still dissatisfied.

"This court is not right" said Ali Jasim (ph), the father of one prisoner "because the soldiers are being tried by Americans. We want the court to be held by the U.N. and neutral countries.

The judge denied a defense request to move the court martial out of the combat zone, saying he might reconsider if witnesses refuse to come to Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Now, the lawyers that we spoke to say that they have to under the rules get all their evidence and all their interviews done by July 31. Then they said they would need several months to prepare for trial, so the lawyers say they probably wouldn't be prepared to go to actual court martial until October.

And, of course, we're talking about three of the accused that appeared in court yesterday here. There are in total seven that have been accused. One of them pleaded guilty in a special court martial here last month -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: Christiane, how much interest is there in Iraq, in Baghdad on the part of ordinary people? Are people stopping? Are they trying to find out what's going on? I mean how much, how much awareness is there of this there right now?

AMANPOUR: Well, the awareness is very high of the scandal and also, as I said, press are covering this trial. As you remember, the U.S. said that it really wants to get this out into the open so people can see that these people who have committed crimes that they've been charged with are brought to justice.

So, that is the intent. However, it is not being broadcast. That's the decision of the military judge, so it's not as if it's live on the television or on the radio. So, the actual trial I think is getting much less attention than what happened, you know, the actual abuse.

WOODRUFF: All right, CNN's Christiane Amanpour who reports from Baghdad where it is now early Tuesday morning. Christiane, thank you very much.

And one quick update now on Private First Class Lynndie England. She's the face in some of the most disturbing photos from Abu Ghraib. A preliminary hearing in North Carolina that was scheduled for today has been pushed back in part because a member of her defense team has left the case.

The hearing, we are told, is now set for the week of July the 12th. PFC England, you might recall, is facing 13 counts of wrongdoing, including three of assaulting detainees and one of indecent acts. If tried and convicted, she could face a dishonorable discharge and more than 15 years in the stockade.

Allegations of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Cuba are also under investigation. A central question is how far up the chain of command the blame goes. Since the scandal broke, a stream of memos has emerged.

One of the latest to surface was signed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It concerned an especially valuable detainee, a man held at Guantanamo Bay, reporting that piece of the story for us CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): It was October of 2002 and at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility, U.S. interrogators desperately wanted information from an al Qaeda detainee believed to know about an upcoming attack. The Pentagon signed off on a get tough approach.

Sources say the memos will show Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a series of more aggressive interrogation techniques for use against one prisoner, Mohammed Al-Qahtani, a Saudi, the so-called 20th hijacker who was supposed to be on one of the September 11th planes, among the techniques, water boarding in which the subject is strapped down and dunked in water or otherwise made to feel he's going to drown.

But the Pentagon says the water boarding tactic was never used and that in January, Rumsfeld rescinded his approval in the face of objections from some of his own lawyers. Instead, Qahtani was subjected to 20-hour interrogation sessions, given only MREs to eat, and forcibly shaved. Just last week, Rumsfeld insisted no techniques he approved constituted torture.

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: That word gets used by some people in a way that is fair from their standpoint but doesn't fit a dictionary definition.

MCINTYRE: Human rights advocates disagree, particularly with regards to water boarding.

ELISA MASSIMINO, HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST: Water boarding fits the international and domestic definition of torture and, if the administration claims it's necessary to use it, then they ought to go to Congress and ask Congress to change the law.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: And the Pentagon is expected to release those memos tomorrow. Some of Rumsfeld's aides are arguing tonight that even though these memos authorize the use of water boarding, it required additional approval from Rumsfeld which was never sought or given.

They're arguing technically he never authorized the procedure even though it was something that could be used until January when he rescinded the authority. Again, once those memos are released, people can read them for themselves and make their own judgment about whether Rumsfeld is being a straight shooter -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: Jamie, a slightly different angle on this, a news report today that at Guantanamo the prisoners perhaps not as special, not as valuable as Americans had been led to believe. What are you hearing about that?

MCINTYRE: Well, the Pentagon is vigorously denying any suggestion that they're either exaggerating the worth of the prisoners, the value of the prisoners or the information that they're getting from them.

But they do concede that there are many prisoners there that they don't really know much about who are still not providing much information that only a small number have provided valuable information and that sometimes they really don't have a good idea.

And the evidence of that is that they've released a couple of prisoners who they've then encountered again on the battlefield in Afghanistan. One of them was killed. Another one was recaptured.

But they admit they don't have a clear idea sometimes of exactly who they've got and what information they have but they dispute the idea that they've been over blowing the significance.

WOODRUFF: All right, Jamie McIntyre reporting for us tonight from the Pentagon, Jamie thank you.

And tomorrow on NEWSNIGHT we're going to take a look, a closer look at the prisoner abuse scandal and its many threads from the investigations, what they found and where they stand, to the many legal issues, a lot of ground to cover and, Aaron and company are going to try to make sense of it all.

On now to Saudi Arabia where the search for Paul Johnson's body continues and so does the hunt for those responsible for his beheading. Whether they may have had help from Saudi police is a point of debate tonight.

Here's CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Heavily armed and ready for action, Saudi police on their latest operation to catch al Qaeda militants. The early evening raid Sunday in the center of Riyadh reinforcing just how deeply buried in the community the terror group has become.

No details of arrests or killings as the Saudi authorities step up their campaign against al Qaeda following the brutal murder of U.S. engineer Paul Johnson.

ADEL AL-JUBEIR, SAUDI FOREIGN POLICY ADVISER: We are determined to go after the terrorists. We believe the security situation is manageable and we will continue to do everything we can to ensure the safety of our citizens and our residents. ROBERTSON: Security, though, brought into question by claims on this Web site where the al Qaeda group responsible for Paul Johnson's killing boasts that sympathizers in the police aided his abduction. That claim swiftly denied by Saudi officials.

AL-JUBEIR: People seem to be giving credence to what the terrorists are saying on Web sites. That reminds me of Saddam Hussein's information minister. What if people had believed what he said when he was saying it when it was total nonsense?

ROBERTSON: Perceptions in the capital, if judged by the number of cars on the streets, seem to indicate that most think it's safe enough to do business more or less as usual and for many here the killing Friday of Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin, the most wanted man in Saudi Arabia and the leader of the group behind Paul Johnson's killing, a sign that the security forces are making gains.

(on camera): But so far Paul Johnson's body hasn't been found and already al Qaeda has moved to replace al-Muqrin with former police prison guard Saleh al-Oufi, number five on Saudi Arabia's most wanted list. For many western workers the question remains just how safe are they?

Nic Robertson CNN, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Historically, the United States and Saudi Arabia have had a close, if complicated, relationship. How the murder of Paul Johnson factors into the equation is one question on the table tonight.

Craig Unger is the author of "House of Bush, House of Saud" and he joins us now in New York. Craig Unger, first of all, this allegation that the Saudi police may have provided uniforms and cars to these terrorists, does that ring possible to you or what?

CRAIG UNGER, AUTHOR, "HOUSE OF BUSH, HOUSE OF SAUD": Well, I have no way of knowing if it's actually true but I think it is possible and there's no question that al Qaeda has infiltrated at various levels with the Saudi National Guard.

There's actually a cottage industry of making uniforms for the Saudi National Guard that are dispersed. There are often phony police barricades put up by al Qaeda, so they have infiltrated to a fair extent within Saudi Arabia.

WOODRUFF: Well, that couldn't have happened without the acknowledgement or the blessing of higher-ups in the Saudi government, right?

UNGER: Well, I think that's quite possible. Every time you see -- the Saudis are moving in two directions at once. On the one hand, they are trying to institute reforms. On the other hand, they will be jailing reformers. So, you see them being torn apart really almost a low level civil war. WOODRUFF: When you say torn apart, I mean and you've written about this, about the split inside the House of Saud, who's on which side generally?

UNGER: Well, one problem is you have someone like Prince Naif, the minister of the interior, who has been very, very accommodating to the militant clerics and there's a real question as to eventually whether he will succeed to power.

We have a succession crisis coming on in Saudi Arabia. King Fahd, of course, has been debilitated for quite some time. Crown Prince Abdullah is about 80 years old, so there is a question of who will succeed him and unfortunately it looks like whoever will succeed is likely to be far more anti-American than the current regime.

WOODRUFF: How do you know that?

UNGER: Well, you don't know for sure but there's -- remember, Saudi Arabia is a Wahhabi state. There is no separation between church and state, so what we hear --

WOODRUFF: And redefine Wahhabi quickly if you can for us.

UNGER: It's an extremely puritanical, fundamentalist form of Islam and in its most extreme form you end up with Osama bin Laden, so they control the state. There's no separation between church and state.

What that means is the police are militant, sometimes militant Islamist fundamentalists. The school system and madrassas, of course, are notorious for producing the kind of hatred that led to this terrorism.

WOODRUFF: So, given all that, Craig Unger, has the U.S. government been too trusting of Saudi Arabia until now?

UNGER: I think for many years we turned a blind eye to it until much too late and you have, one, this historic relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States. We're very much an oil dependent country. The question is now, is that relationship starting to go into the end game phase?

In addition, you've had a very special relationship that the Bush's have had. I traced $1.4 billion in contracts and investments going from the Royal House of Saud to companies in which in the Bush's and their allies have prominent positions, so...

WOODRUFF: The first President Bush and President Bush.

UNGER: That's correct and companies such as Halliburton, where Dick Cheney was CEO, Harkin Energy where George W. Bush made his fortune and the Carlisle Group, and the question is did they turn a blind eye as this fundamentalism was brewing throughout the '90s and into 9/11?

WOODRUFF: Craig Unger is the author of "House of Bush, House of Saud." Thank you very much.

UNGER: Thanks for having me.

WOODRUFF: Some grim prospects.

UNGER: I'm afraid so.

WOODRUFF: Thank you very much.

And ahead on NEWSNIGHT, speaking of the vice president, he continues to insist that there was an al Qaeda connection to Baghdad. We're going to take a look at the evidence.

And later a look at a new school and new hope in the center of Washington, D.C.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: In addition to headlines on the fighting in Iraq, there are dispatches from another nasty skirmish, the war of words between Vice President Cheney and the 9/11 Commission.

So far the commission has come up with no solid evidence of cooperation between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda. The vice president says he believes otherwise. So, to borrow a phrase from a departing CIA director, does either side have a slam dunk case?

CNN's David Ensor takes a hard look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He had long established ties with al Qaeda.

ENSOR (voice-over): Vice President Cheney points to meetings between Iraqi intelligence officers and al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden, in the early '90s but last week the 9/11 Commission said meetings yes, cooperation no.

DOUG MACEACHIN, 9/11 COMMISSION STAFF: There have been reports of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda that also occurred after bin Laden returned to Afghanistan but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you know things that the commission does not know?

CHENEY: Probably.

ENSOR: That probably from the vice president last week has commissioners saying whatever he knows he ought to tell them. Cheney aides point to a recent book that says that an Iraqi security lieutenant colonel may have attended the key meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2000 where al Qaeda planned the 9/11 attacks. The author is Stephen Hayes.

STEPHEN HAYES, AUTHOR, "THE CONNECTION": Ahmed Hiqma Shakir (ph) was an Iraqi who got a job through a contact at the Iraqi Embassy in late -- early 1999. He then hosted one of the September 11 hijackers or escorted him through the Kuala Lumpur airport where he was ostensibly employed.

ENSOR (on camera): But U.S. intelligence officials tell CNN it's a case of mistaken identity due to similar and common names. In fact, the officials say, there are at least two men named Ahmed Hiqma Shakir, one an al Qaeda man, the other a lieutenant colonel in Saddam's security forces who had nothing to do with al Qaeda.

(voice-over): Vice President Cheney also continues to point to evidence of a once widely reported meeting in Prague April 9, 2001 between Mohamed Atta, the hijacker, and an Iraqi intelligence officer.

CHENEY: I can't refute the check claim. I can't prove the check claim.

ENSOR: Wrong again, according to the 9/11 Commission staff. They say Atta was seen days earlier at a bank and his cell phone records show he was frequently on the phone from Florida.

DAN BENJAMIN, FORMER CLINTON NSC OFFICIAL: The FBI doesn't believe this happened. The CIA doesn't believe this happened. The Czech government apparently doesn't believe this happened. The 9/11 Commission doesn't believe it happened.

ENSOR: Then there is the notorious Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist believed to be organizing suicide bombings in Iraq and to have beheaded American Nicholas Berg.

CHENEY: Mr. Zarqawi, who is in Baghdad today, is an al Qaeda associate who took refuge in Baghdad, found sanctuary and safe harbor there before we ever launched into Iraq.

ENSOR: But did Saddam knowingly harbor Zarqawi in Iraq? Not clear say some U.S. officials. And, is Zarqawi really a bin Laden associate? Even Defense Secretary Rumsfeld now says he could even be a rival.

RUMSFELD: Maybe because he disagrees with him on something, maybe because he wants to be the man himself and maybe for a reason that's not known to me.

BENJAMIN: I have to say that the administration's absolute refusal to give any ground on this is very, very strange and it suggests a communication strategy that aims at simply repeating things in the hope that people will believe them because this just doesn't make any sense.

ENSOR (on camera): The vice president's aides say such comments are nothing more than partisan attacks in an election year designed to attack the credibility of a key Bush administration argument for the war in Iraq. David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: He laid it out more clearly than we've seen it anywhere else.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, just across Central Park tonight, the publishing party of the year is in full swing. We'll talk about Bill Clinton's new book when we come back.

And a soldier fights to save his name. Was it cowardice or the side effects of a drug that was supposed to keep him safe?

From around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Say what you will about the 42nd president of the United States -- and there's very little that hasn't been said already -- the man can still make a splash.

Tonight, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art here in Manhattan, former President Clinton and about 1,000 luminaries celebrated tomorrow's publication of his autobiography, all 957 pages of it. Even tonight, before a single copy is shipped, "My Life" is the No. 1 seller on Amazon.com.

Well, Michael Duffy of "TIME" magazine has read it all. He and his companion -- or colleague -- Joe Klein also spoke with the former president a few days ago. The interview runs in this week's edition. And we're so pleased Michael Duffy could join us tonight.

All right, how long did it take you to read it?

MICHAEL DUFFY, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "TIME": Well, it probably took three days. But I pretty much read it nonstop. And my kids were getting pretty annoyed. I said, yes, I got to read it. I got to read it. So leave me alone. But I did get it done.

(CROSSTALK)

WOODRUFF: You skipped meals and sleeping and all that?

DUFFY: Parts of it are that good. It is a lot like the Clinton presidency. It's got great highs and heart-stopping lows. But if you power on through it, at the end, you are kind of exhausted.

WOODRUFF: So are you saying it doesn't quite rise to the level of riveting?

DUFFY: Well, parts are really interesting.

When he goes back to Arkansas and talks about his youth and his family and you realize just how zany that was and how he calls his life -- his presidency improbable from the beginning. And when you really go back and start at the beginning, you realize, boy, it really was. But by the time he gets to be president, you know, he is so -- he is talking about where he wants to go and what he wants to do.

And he immediately starts having problems, and so that when -- the time we got around to talking to him last week, he was really trying to explain to us why mistakes happened, why he didn't do things right, why he would do things differently if he could do it all over again. He's really trying to rationalize the whole thing. And there are moments when I thought, boy, he really wants to just have one more crack to do it all over again.

WOODRUFF: Does the thing have a defensive tone to it, Michael?

DUFFY: In places, it is incredibly defensive.

It's defensive about Osama bin Laden and why they weren't able to stop him. He's defensive whenever he's criticized by Republicans or even people in his own party for his tactics or strategies he shouldn't have had. He's very self-conscious, as autobiographers are, about everything he does. And that can be annoying. But the sweep and the breadth and the things he's trying to capture all in one volume are just so numerous.

(CROSSTALK)

WOODRUFF: Having said that, though, were there things that you wanted to know or wanted to understand that you didn't come away with?

DUFFY: Yes.

You know, by the time he gets around to talking about his affair with Lewinsky, he's writing in the book about, you know, old demons. And I'm thinking, wait a minute, we've just been through 700 pages. I haven't heard anything about these old demons until now. That's a good example. He says that Ken Starr and the independent counsel, you know, hadn't found a thing and they were wasting money and wasting taxpayer -- and Clinton wanted to get it all out there.

Well, if you had reported on it during the time, that was the last thing the Clinton people wanted to do. They were making all kinds of efforts very difficult and kind of encouraging people to get on the trail. So it's selective in a lot of places about how he remembers things. And I would have liked more about domestic policy. There's a lot more in this book about foreign policy than domestic policy. And that really surprised me.

WOODRUFF: That's very interesting. And more here for his enemies to pick on or more for his friends to say, hey, this is great? What do you think?

DUFFY: It's the world's biggest buffet. There is something for everyone.

If you like it, you'll find it there, no matter what your perspective, because he tries to be so sweeping. I think what's going to upset people the most is the fact that he blames Starr for a lot of the failings of his presidency and says that it was basically a right- wing coup attempt. That will just upset the conservatives for weeks.

On the other hand, I think he also says -- he gave short shrift to some of his own accomplishments and he could have been actually a little more critical of his own party. And he was careful about that. He really was trying to establish a different way of being president and that was only partially successful.

WOODRUFF: A lot more personal book, I gather, than we're used to hearing or seeing from a president?

DUFFY: That's right. Obviously, there's a fair amount in this about what went wrong and how he, you know, personally failed and not just as a president, but as a husband.

He talks a lot about his family in ways that have no particular bearing on -- and there's one point where he talks -- he goes on a long jag about the church and Pentecostals and even gets into a conversation about voodoo, because he said later, he told us he wanted us to understand how different people in the world look at things differently and their realities are different.

And I'm thinking, yes, well, if you covered the Clinton administration, you know that.

(LAUGHTER)

WOODRUFF: All right, Michael Duffy, "TIME" magazine. That was Michael Duffy's take on the book.

You can also hear it from the man himself. Bill Clinton is Larry King's guest Thursday night, this Thursday, 9:00 Eastern time, the former president's first live prime-time appearance.

And now some other stories making news around the country. Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader named Peter Camejo, a longtime Green Party activist, as his running mate today. At a meeting tomorrow, the Congressional Black Caucus is expected to ask Mr. Nader to drop out of the race. He says he won't.

And, in Connecticut, Governor John Rowland has resigned, effective July 1. The three-term Republican, once a rising star in his party, was facing possible impeachment stemming from a string of corruption allegations.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, the side effects of an anti-malarial drug, did they ruin a soldier's career?

And later, only 400 feet over the line, just far enough to make it into outer space, in the record books.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: It is famously true that you can't get courage from a bottle, but what about the opposite? Can you get cowardice from a pill? Well, an American soldier is arguing not only that it can happen, but that it did happen to him. And he's choosing to face a military tribunal to prove it. This is a strange and complicated story.

It is reported by CNN's Drew Griffin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Staff Sergeant Georg-Andreas Pogany spends a lot of time with his lawyer preparing for a court-martial so Pogany can prove he's not a coward. His attorney, former military prosecutor Rich Travis, says Pogany's military service record speaks for itself.

RICHARD TRAVIS, ATTORNEY FOR POGANY: Unquestionable loyalty, integrity and dedication to mission, displays exemplary moral courage in all situations.

GRIFFIN: But the situation of Pogany's first night in Iraq changed that. Following a tense convoy ride into central Iraq, his special forces unit faced a horrific image of war, a mangled body of a dead Iraqi.

STAFF SERGEANT GEORG-ANDREAS POGANY, U.S. ARMY: Seeing a dead guy in a half unzipped body bag. And that was really all there is to it. It's not as sensationalistic as it has been portrayed.

GRIFFIN: His reaction surprised him. He felt panicked, out of control. He even says hallucinating.

POGANY: And seeing the worst and hallucinating and buildings caving in. And we're under fire, and just the weirdest things. And I couldn't -- I didn't know what was going on, why I was so freaked out.

GRIFFIN: His reaction may have had little to do with war, his attorney says, and more to do with this drug. Pogany was taking Lariam, a drug also known as mefloquine that the Army gave him to prevent malaria.

But Lariam carries as risk of side effects which the Pentagon outlines in this pamphlet, some of the very symptoms Pogany says he experienced. The drug's manufacturer says extreme side effects are rare. It is not clear if Pogany's commanders in Iraq knew anything about Lariam's effects. Their diagnosis of this Army staff sergeant was that he was a coward.

POGANY: I'm pretty much convinced, too, that while I was in Iraq, people there didn't know. And that's probably what led to this big mess that we're in right now.

GRIFFIN: The Army later backed off its charge of cowardice and instead offered Pogany an administrative hearing on a lesser charge. Fighting to clear his name, Pogany and his attorney opted for a court- martial.

TRAVIS: You have a due process protection of court-martial, cross-examination, calling witnesses, producing documents, having a judge determine the admissibility of evidence. GRIFFIN: And Pogany says he has the evidence, diagnoses from two military doctors, from the Air Force and the Navy, that Lariam is the likely cause of his symptoms, symptoms he still is suffering.

But since he turned down the hearing nearly six months ago, he's heard nothing from the military. In a statement to CNN, U.S. Army special forces command said: "Pogany's case remains under consideration by the U.S. Army. His command is considering all information available, to include information pertaining to staff sergeant Pogany's health and medical status."

(on camera): It turns out Pogany's is one of 10 cases of Lariam toxicity the Navy has diagnosed among service members. And now the Navy, along with the Centers for Disease Control, are studying the phenomenon, already identifying several hundred service members dating back to 2002 whose medical cases merit review.

POGANY: There's a lot of guilt and shame that goes with that, too. being charged with cowardice in a time of war.

GRIFFIN: Pogany remains in legal limbo, still awaiting a chance to prove he's not a coward.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hang in there. This, too, shall pass.

GRIFFIN: Drew Griffin, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Fascinating story.

And before we go to a break, a quick look at money matters, starting with HMOs. In a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court today ruled that patients cannot sue their HMOs in state court for damages from denial of coverage. State juries traditionally side more often with plaintiffs and often award punitive damages when they do.

The markets, meantime, took a beating.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: In many large cities across the country, public education is in serious trouble. This is especially true in the nation's capital, where the difficulties play out every day in the local news media.

But Washington, for all the problems, also is home to what some see as a way out, a public school set up by a private organization, the SEED Foundation, which stands for Schools for Educational Evolution and Development. It is a charter school. And the charter is a simple one -- get kids off the street and into college.

The story from CNN's Sean Callebs.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Six years of learning, working, struggling with the books, and now a diploma, and what graduating senior Deon Milton calls the chance of a lifetime.

DEON MILTON, STUDENT: I really didn't want to come here the first year. So I was just thinking that I'd come here for one year and leave. But I got hooked.

CALLEBS: Deon is a member of the first class to graduate from the nation's only urban public boarding school.

MILTON: I wouldn't say I was necessarily a good student. I was more of a "do enough just to get by" student. But like now it is more of, I do more than was expected of me.

CALLEBS: On the other side of the summer, Deon will head off to Hiram College in Ohio. In fact, all his classmates are going to four- year colleges, every single one. Even founders are amazed.

ERIC ADLER, CO-FOUNDER, THE SEED SCHOOL: The odds seemed to be so stacked against them. And that's not how life is turning out for them. They're getting what every kid deserves, which is a shot at being whatever they want to be in life.

CALLEBS: Eric Adler and Raj Vinnakota have MBAs from the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton, two top Ivy League schools. They used to be well paid consultants, but they each gave it up because they had an idea, simply to give back.

RAJIV VINNAKOTA, CO-FOUNDER, THE SEED SCHOOL: To be able to now, six years down the road, say thank you probably in the best way that we can, by giving them a diploma and sending them off to college, it's really a testament to all of the work that everyone has done here.

CALLEBS: The pastoral $26 million dollar campus, built with a mixture of public and private money, is a beacon in a blighted neighborhood in the southeast section of Washington, D.C.

DR. RICHARD JUNG, HEAD OF SEED SCHOOL: Kids can be kids here. Outside the fence, that goes away.

CALLEBS: Ushered in in the seventh grade, qualified students are chosen by lottery. In its first year, the school was housed in the Capital Children's museum. Students lived in the attic.

MILTON: At first, it was in the children's museum. We lived at Trinity College and took classes on 16th Street in an office building. And now it's here. So it's kind of like a journey.

CALLEBS: Lesley Poole is administrations director and has been here from the beginning.

LESLEY POOLE, ADMISSIONS DIRECTOR, THE SEED SCHOOL: We said, if you spend six years with us, if you let us push you harder than you ever imagined, if you take on challenges that your neighbors and your peers outside of the school are not taking on, we guarantee you that you will have success.

CALLEBS: Deon is all smiles now. But his childhood hardly provided a fertile foundation for educational success, no father figure. His mother was unable to raise him. His aunt took on the role. He now lovingly calls her mom.

JOAN LYLE, AUNT OF DEON: The neighborhood schools here, I would not wish them on anyone.

CALLEBS: Rife with peer pressure, violence, drugs, the streets can be unforgiving, but, in this case, a fork in the road that led 21 bright kids to the campus.

POOLE: SEED has become my family. The kids have told me, the ones that are graduating, that I can have a life when they graduate. But they've been my life. Yes, they've been it.

CALLEBS: Sean Callebs, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: That's one of those good stories you like to hear about, and all with a lottery.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, finally, an astronaut with a difference. This flight was not paid for by your tax dollars.

From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: A White House commission last week recommended that private companies become more involved in space exploration. So today, one company took the lead, when a California man traveled to space and back in under two hours.

Here's CNN's Miles O'Brien.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was a high-flying triumph for the little guy. Airplane and now spaceship designer Burt Rutan and his small company, Scaled Composites, sent SpaceShipOne on a sub-orbital flight for little more than $20 million.

MIKE MELVILL, PILOT: You really do get the feeling that you've touched the face of God when you do something like this, believe me.

O'BRIEN: The history making flight was not trouble free. Shortly after Melvill lit the rocket motor fueled by a mixture of rubber and nitrous oxide -- laughing gas -- there was a no-laughing- matter problem with the critical flight controls. The small craft veered off its vertical course.

BURT RUTAN, FOUNDER, SCALED COMPOSITES: We have just a five-mile box to reenter in. The spaceship actually reentered in 22 miles away from that box. It could have gone twice that far and still glided back to Mojave, though.

O'BRIEN: The problem lowered SpaceShipOne's apogee, but the craft squeaked into the record books, reaching 328,491 feet -- 400 feet beyond the official boundary of space, just enough for Melvill to earn his astronaut wings awarded by the FAA. The effort was bankrolled by billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who hopes this is the beginning of a new space race for the rest of us.

(on camera): Rutan and his team will troubleshoot that control problem and then may very well announce an attempt at the $10 million X prize, a private purse awarded to the first civilian team to fly to space in a three-person vehicle twice in as many weeks. There are at least a half-dozen other teams vying for that prize, but clearly SpaceShipOne is the horse to beat.

Miles O'Brien, CNN, Mojave, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: We'll cover that when it happens.

And we'll be back with a final word in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Before we go, a quick look ahead.

Tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING," the day Bill Clinton's fans and his enemies have been waiting for, the former president's autobiography on sale and in stores Tuesday and the P.R. offensive going full-throttle to sell books and redefine his presidency. Will it work? How will it affect presidential campaign? That's CNN tomorrow, 7:00 a.m.

That's it for tonight. Aaron is back tomorrow. Thanks for watching.

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 June 21, 2004 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
In the words of Michael Melvill, that's his name, "you get a hell of a view from 62 miles up. Astronaut Michael Melvill, who this morning became the first private citizen to steer a privately-funded ship into space. In so doing, he got a glimpse, if only for a minute or two, of something very few people ever have the privilege to encounter.

From 62 miles up, you can see the shape of the planet beneath you and the possibilities above. You're close enough to sense the vastness of humanity and yet distant enough to feel how fragile life can be.

In short, we are told by those who have been there space travel is both an utterly liberated and profoundly humbling experience, given all that goes on down here perhaps even a vital one.

Well, our whip begins, however, here on earth in Baghdad and a rough day all around. Christiane Amanpour, our Chief International Correspondent, starts us off with a headline -- Christiane.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Judy, there was more violence, as there has been for so many days. Four U.S. Marines were found dead and, at the same time as the prisoner abuse court martial proceedings, defense lawyers and the judge took it up the chain of command.

WOODRUFF: Thanks, Christiane.

Next to the Pentagon and questions of who approved what when it came to interrogating prisoners, CNN's Jamie McIntyre with that, Jamie, a headline from you.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Judy, the Pentagon is about to declassify and release memos that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld signed approving aggressive interrogation procedures at Guantanamo Bay, including something called water boarding but the Pentagon is saying tonight that, although that was authorized, he never gave the final approval. But once all those documents are out, people will be able to judge for themselves -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: All right, Jamie, thank you. And finally CNN's Nic Robertson reports from Saudi Arabia. In the wake of the kidnapping and murder of Paul Johnson, tonight a chilling question, did al Qaeda get help from Saudi authorities? We'll hear from Nic in just a moment.

Also on the program tonight, David Ensor reports on the vice president's relentless pursuit of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

The biggest publishing event in years, perhaps ever, Bill Clinton's memoir comes out tomorrow. We're going to get a preview tonight.

And, a rocket fueled by laughing gas and private money makes it to space and back, one giant step for the little guy, all that and more in the hour ahead.

But we begin tonight in Iraq. The country is nine days from the handover and still far from safe for anyone, even Iraqis. Five American servicemen died there today, four of them under mysterious circumstances. And, we want to warn you the pictures are tough to look at and they are not the only ones tonight.

Two report, first CNN's Anderson Cooper who's in Baghdad.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): A disturbing image, four dead American Marines and one that begs for an explanation tonight. The Marines were found lying on the ground, their flack jackets missing but other details, if they are known, have not yet been released by the U.S. military, which has only confirmed that they were killed in action during an operation in Ramadi.

A fifth U.S. soldier was killed today in a mortar attack in Baghdad. The 24-hour deadline is due to expire tonight on the South Korean hostage being held in Fallujah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please get out. Please. Please. Please. I don't want to die. I don't want to die.

COOPER: The dramatic plea by 33-year-old Kim Sun-il was made over the weekend. His kidnappers are demanding that South Korean troops pull out of Iraq. If that demand is not met, they say the civilian contractor will be beheaded. The South Korean government says it will not withdraw its troops.

Elsewhere in the country, it was another day of violent attacks. Five Iraqi citizens dead from a roadside bomb south of Mosul, two more injured. In a separate incident, the coalition said another roadside bomb in Baghdad killed two Iraqi civil defense soldiers. Fourteen other people were wounded.

There is some positive news to report tonight, however. Iraqi oil is flowing again after a pipeline damaged by insurgents last week was repaired today. Iraq could be up to full export capacity by mid week.

Anderson Cooper CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: The Korean prisoner so disturbing.

On now to the prison at Abu Ghraib, today in Baghdad an American military judge ordered it preserved as a crime scene. He also ruled that lawyers representing two of the soldiers accused in the scandal may question the top generals involved.

Again, here's CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR (voice-over): They are the pictures that shocked the world, sallied America's reputation and severely damaged its standing amongst Iraqis. The defense lawyer for Specialist Charles Graner, seen leering and giving the thumbs-up, says he wants to question Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

GUY WOMACK, SPC CHARLES GRANER'S ATTORNEY: The secretary of defense in waging a war on terrorism correctly loosened the reins somewhat on interrogators. The junior officers and senior enlisted men in the military intelligence command felt that had pretty free rein to do a lot of things.

AMANPOUR: Charles Graner is considered the ringleader, has the most charges filed against him and, if convicted of all of them, faces the harshest sentence, 24 and a half years in prison but his lawyer contends he committed no crime.

WOMACK: The individuals who were interrogated and photographed at (unintelligible) Abu Ghraib are not protected by international or American law and therefore you can't be guilty of maltreatment.

AMANPOUR: The judge quickly shot down that argument but the defense lawyers persisted arguing that their clients were just following orders. Defense lawyers contend that this conduct was widespread and happened on an almost daily basis. They say these were not isolated incidents committed by a few bad apples, as the U.S. government insists.

The judge did agree to a request by lawyers to interview General John Abizaid, commander of all U.S. forces in the region and General Ricardo Sanchez, head of U.S.-led forces in Iraq at the time, as well as other senior officers. Graner's attorney says he strongly believes that Sanchez knew of the abuse as early as November not, as he claims, in January.

(on camera): The court martial proceedings that have been going on inside this room are partly designed to staunch the flow of bad blood towards the United States. A new poll that was commissioned by the U.S.-led authorities here finds that 54 percent of Iraqis believe that all Americans behave as badly as the accused. (voice-over): The trial is open to Iraqi and international press, though it's not broadcast. Only sketches of the proceedings are permitted. And outside Abu Ghraib, prisoners' relatives are still dissatisfied.

"This court is not right" said Ali Jasim (ph), the father of one prisoner "because the soldiers are being tried by Americans. We want the court to be held by the U.N. and neutral countries.

The judge denied a defense request to move the court martial out of the combat zone, saying he might reconsider if witnesses refuse to come to Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Now, the lawyers that we spoke to say that they have to under the rules get all their evidence and all their interviews done by July 31. Then they said they would need several months to prepare for trial, so the lawyers say they probably wouldn't be prepared to go to actual court martial until October.

And, of course, we're talking about three of the accused that appeared in court yesterday here. There are in total seven that have been accused. One of them pleaded guilty in a special court martial here last month -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: Christiane, how much interest is there in Iraq, in Baghdad on the part of ordinary people? Are people stopping? Are they trying to find out what's going on? I mean how much, how much awareness is there of this there right now?

AMANPOUR: Well, the awareness is very high of the scandal and also, as I said, press are covering this trial. As you remember, the U.S. said that it really wants to get this out into the open so people can see that these people who have committed crimes that they've been charged with are brought to justice.

So, that is the intent. However, it is not being broadcast. That's the decision of the military judge, so it's not as if it's live on the television or on the radio. So, the actual trial I think is getting much less attention than what happened, you know, the actual abuse.

WOODRUFF: All right, CNN's Christiane Amanpour who reports from Baghdad where it is now early Tuesday morning. Christiane, thank you very much.

And one quick update now on Private First Class Lynndie England. She's the face in some of the most disturbing photos from Abu Ghraib. A preliminary hearing in North Carolina that was scheduled for today has been pushed back in part because a member of her defense team has left the case.

The hearing, we are told, is now set for the week of July the 12th. PFC England, you might recall, is facing 13 counts of wrongdoing, including three of assaulting detainees and one of indecent acts. If tried and convicted, she could face a dishonorable discharge and more than 15 years in the stockade.

Allegations of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Cuba are also under investigation. A central question is how far up the chain of command the blame goes. Since the scandal broke, a stream of memos has emerged.

One of the latest to surface was signed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It concerned an especially valuable detainee, a man held at Guantanamo Bay, reporting that piece of the story for us CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): It was October of 2002 and at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility, U.S. interrogators desperately wanted information from an al Qaeda detainee believed to know about an upcoming attack. The Pentagon signed off on a get tough approach.

Sources say the memos will show Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a series of more aggressive interrogation techniques for use against one prisoner, Mohammed Al-Qahtani, a Saudi, the so-called 20th hijacker who was supposed to be on one of the September 11th planes, among the techniques, water boarding in which the subject is strapped down and dunked in water or otherwise made to feel he's going to drown.

But the Pentagon says the water boarding tactic was never used and that in January, Rumsfeld rescinded his approval in the face of objections from some of his own lawyers. Instead, Qahtani was subjected to 20-hour interrogation sessions, given only MREs to eat, and forcibly shaved. Just last week, Rumsfeld insisted no techniques he approved constituted torture.

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: That word gets used by some people in a way that is fair from their standpoint but doesn't fit a dictionary definition.

MCINTYRE: Human rights advocates disagree, particularly with regards to water boarding.

ELISA MASSIMINO, HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST: Water boarding fits the international and domestic definition of torture and, if the administration claims it's necessary to use it, then they ought to go to Congress and ask Congress to change the law.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: And the Pentagon is expected to release those memos tomorrow. Some of Rumsfeld's aides are arguing tonight that even though these memos authorize the use of water boarding, it required additional approval from Rumsfeld which was never sought or given.

They're arguing technically he never authorized the procedure even though it was something that could be used until January when he rescinded the authority. Again, once those memos are released, people can read them for themselves and make their own judgment about whether Rumsfeld is being a straight shooter -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: Jamie, a slightly different angle on this, a news report today that at Guantanamo the prisoners perhaps not as special, not as valuable as Americans had been led to believe. What are you hearing about that?

MCINTYRE: Well, the Pentagon is vigorously denying any suggestion that they're either exaggerating the worth of the prisoners, the value of the prisoners or the information that they're getting from them.

But they do concede that there are many prisoners there that they don't really know much about who are still not providing much information that only a small number have provided valuable information and that sometimes they really don't have a good idea.

And the evidence of that is that they've released a couple of prisoners who they've then encountered again on the battlefield in Afghanistan. One of them was killed. Another one was recaptured.

But they admit they don't have a clear idea sometimes of exactly who they've got and what information they have but they dispute the idea that they've been over blowing the significance.

WOODRUFF: All right, Jamie McIntyre reporting for us tonight from the Pentagon, Jamie thank you.

And tomorrow on NEWSNIGHT we're going to take a look, a closer look at the prisoner abuse scandal and its many threads from the investigations, what they found and where they stand, to the many legal issues, a lot of ground to cover and, Aaron and company are going to try to make sense of it all.

On now to Saudi Arabia where the search for Paul Johnson's body continues and so does the hunt for those responsible for his beheading. Whether they may have had help from Saudi police is a point of debate tonight.

Here's CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Heavily armed and ready for action, Saudi police on their latest operation to catch al Qaeda militants. The early evening raid Sunday in the center of Riyadh reinforcing just how deeply buried in the community the terror group has become.

No details of arrests or killings as the Saudi authorities step up their campaign against al Qaeda following the brutal murder of U.S. engineer Paul Johnson.

ADEL AL-JUBEIR, SAUDI FOREIGN POLICY ADVISER: We are determined to go after the terrorists. We believe the security situation is manageable and we will continue to do everything we can to ensure the safety of our citizens and our residents. ROBERTSON: Security, though, brought into question by claims on this Web site where the al Qaeda group responsible for Paul Johnson's killing boasts that sympathizers in the police aided his abduction. That claim swiftly denied by Saudi officials.

AL-JUBEIR: People seem to be giving credence to what the terrorists are saying on Web sites. That reminds me of Saddam Hussein's information minister. What if people had believed what he said when he was saying it when it was total nonsense?

ROBERTSON: Perceptions in the capital, if judged by the number of cars on the streets, seem to indicate that most think it's safe enough to do business more or less as usual and for many here the killing Friday of Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin, the most wanted man in Saudi Arabia and the leader of the group behind Paul Johnson's killing, a sign that the security forces are making gains.

(on camera): But so far Paul Johnson's body hasn't been found and already al Qaeda has moved to replace al-Muqrin with former police prison guard Saleh al-Oufi, number five on Saudi Arabia's most wanted list. For many western workers the question remains just how safe are they?

Nic Robertson CNN, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Historically, the United States and Saudi Arabia have had a close, if complicated, relationship. How the murder of Paul Johnson factors into the equation is one question on the table tonight.

Craig Unger is the author of "House of Bush, House of Saud" and he joins us now in New York. Craig Unger, first of all, this allegation that the Saudi police may have provided uniforms and cars to these terrorists, does that ring possible to you or what?

CRAIG UNGER, AUTHOR, "HOUSE OF BUSH, HOUSE OF SAUD": Well, I have no way of knowing if it's actually true but I think it is possible and there's no question that al Qaeda has infiltrated at various levels with the Saudi National Guard.

There's actually a cottage industry of making uniforms for the Saudi National Guard that are dispersed. There are often phony police barricades put up by al Qaeda, so they have infiltrated to a fair extent within Saudi Arabia.

WOODRUFF: Well, that couldn't have happened without the acknowledgement or the blessing of higher-ups in the Saudi government, right?

UNGER: Well, I think that's quite possible. Every time you see -- the Saudis are moving in two directions at once. On the one hand, they are trying to institute reforms. On the other hand, they will be jailing reformers. So, you see them being torn apart really almost a low level civil war. WOODRUFF: When you say torn apart, I mean and you've written about this, about the split inside the House of Saud, who's on which side generally?

UNGER: Well, one problem is you have someone like Prince Naif, the minister of the interior, who has been very, very accommodating to the militant clerics and there's a real question as to eventually whether he will succeed to power.

We have a succession crisis coming on in Saudi Arabia. King Fahd, of course, has been debilitated for quite some time. Crown Prince Abdullah is about 80 years old, so there is a question of who will succeed him and unfortunately it looks like whoever will succeed is likely to be far more anti-American than the current regime.

WOODRUFF: How do you know that?

UNGER: Well, you don't know for sure but there's -- remember, Saudi Arabia is a Wahhabi state. There is no separation between church and state, so what we hear --

WOODRUFF: And redefine Wahhabi quickly if you can for us.

UNGER: It's an extremely puritanical, fundamentalist form of Islam and in its most extreme form you end up with Osama bin Laden, so they control the state. There's no separation between church and state.

What that means is the police are militant, sometimes militant Islamist fundamentalists. The school system and madrassas, of course, are notorious for producing the kind of hatred that led to this terrorism.

WOODRUFF: So, given all that, Craig Unger, has the U.S. government been too trusting of Saudi Arabia until now?

UNGER: I think for many years we turned a blind eye to it until much too late and you have, one, this historic relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States. We're very much an oil dependent country. The question is now, is that relationship starting to go into the end game phase?

In addition, you've had a very special relationship that the Bush's have had. I traced $1.4 billion in contracts and investments going from the Royal House of Saud to companies in which in the Bush's and their allies have prominent positions, so...

WOODRUFF: The first President Bush and President Bush.

UNGER: That's correct and companies such as Halliburton, where Dick Cheney was CEO, Harkin Energy where George W. Bush made his fortune and the Carlisle Group, and the question is did they turn a blind eye as this fundamentalism was brewing throughout the '90s and into 9/11?

WOODRUFF: Craig Unger is the author of "House of Bush, House of Saud." Thank you very much.

UNGER: Thanks for having me.

WOODRUFF: Some grim prospects.

UNGER: I'm afraid so.

WOODRUFF: Thank you very much.

And ahead on NEWSNIGHT, speaking of the vice president, he continues to insist that there was an al Qaeda connection to Baghdad. We're going to take a look at the evidence.

And later a look at a new school and new hope in the center of Washington, D.C.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: In addition to headlines on the fighting in Iraq, there are dispatches from another nasty skirmish, the war of words between Vice President Cheney and the 9/11 Commission.

So far the commission has come up with no solid evidence of cooperation between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda. The vice president says he believes otherwise. So, to borrow a phrase from a departing CIA director, does either side have a slam dunk case?

CNN's David Ensor takes a hard look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He had long established ties with al Qaeda.

ENSOR (voice-over): Vice President Cheney points to meetings between Iraqi intelligence officers and al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden, in the early '90s but last week the 9/11 Commission said meetings yes, cooperation no.

DOUG MACEACHIN, 9/11 COMMISSION STAFF: There have been reports of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda that also occurred after bin Laden returned to Afghanistan but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you know things that the commission does not know?

CHENEY: Probably.

ENSOR: That probably from the vice president last week has commissioners saying whatever he knows he ought to tell them. Cheney aides point to a recent book that says that an Iraqi security lieutenant colonel may have attended the key meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2000 where al Qaeda planned the 9/11 attacks. The author is Stephen Hayes.

STEPHEN HAYES, AUTHOR, "THE CONNECTION": Ahmed Hiqma Shakir (ph) was an Iraqi who got a job through a contact at the Iraqi Embassy in late -- early 1999. He then hosted one of the September 11 hijackers or escorted him through the Kuala Lumpur airport where he was ostensibly employed.

ENSOR (on camera): But U.S. intelligence officials tell CNN it's a case of mistaken identity due to similar and common names. In fact, the officials say, there are at least two men named Ahmed Hiqma Shakir, one an al Qaeda man, the other a lieutenant colonel in Saddam's security forces who had nothing to do with al Qaeda.

(voice-over): Vice President Cheney also continues to point to evidence of a once widely reported meeting in Prague April 9, 2001 between Mohamed Atta, the hijacker, and an Iraqi intelligence officer.

CHENEY: I can't refute the check claim. I can't prove the check claim.

ENSOR: Wrong again, according to the 9/11 Commission staff. They say Atta was seen days earlier at a bank and his cell phone records show he was frequently on the phone from Florida.

DAN BENJAMIN, FORMER CLINTON NSC OFFICIAL: The FBI doesn't believe this happened. The CIA doesn't believe this happened. The Czech government apparently doesn't believe this happened. The 9/11 Commission doesn't believe it happened.

ENSOR: Then there is the notorious Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist believed to be organizing suicide bombings in Iraq and to have beheaded American Nicholas Berg.

CHENEY: Mr. Zarqawi, who is in Baghdad today, is an al Qaeda associate who took refuge in Baghdad, found sanctuary and safe harbor there before we ever launched into Iraq.

ENSOR: But did Saddam knowingly harbor Zarqawi in Iraq? Not clear say some U.S. officials. And, is Zarqawi really a bin Laden associate? Even Defense Secretary Rumsfeld now says he could even be a rival.

RUMSFELD: Maybe because he disagrees with him on something, maybe because he wants to be the man himself and maybe for a reason that's not known to me.

BENJAMIN: I have to say that the administration's absolute refusal to give any ground on this is very, very strange and it suggests a communication strategy that aims at simply repeating things in the hope that people will believe them because this just doesn't make any sense.

ENSOR (on camera): The vice president's aides say such comments are nothing more than partisan attacks in an election year designed to attack the credibility of a key Bush administration argument for the war in Iraq. David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: He laid it out more clearly than we've seen it anywhere else.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, just across Central Park tonight, the publishing party of the year is in full swing. We'll talk about Bill Clinton's new book when we come back.

And a soldier fights to save his name. Was it cowardice or the side effects of a drug that was supposed to keep him safe?

From around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Say what you will about the 42nd president of the United States -- and there's very little that hasn't been said already -- the man can still make a splash.

Tonight, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art here in Manhattan, former President Clinton and about 1,000 luminaries celebrated tomorrow's publication of his autobiography, all 957 pages of it. Even tonight, before a single copy is shipped, "My Life" is the No. 1 seller on Amazon.com.

Well, Michael Duffy of "TIME" magazine has read it all. He and his companion -- or colleague -- Joe Klein also spoke with the former president a few days ago. The interview runs in this week's edition. And we're so pleased Michael Duffy could join us tonight.

All right, how long did it take you to read it?

MICHAEL DUFFY, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "TIME": Well, it probably took three days. But I pretty much read it nonstop. And my kids were getting pretty annoyed. I said, yes, I got to read it. I got to read it. So leave me alone. But I did get it done.

(CROSSTALK)

WOODRUFF: You skipped meals and sleeping and all that?

DUFFY: Parts of it are that good. It is a lot like the Clinton presidency. It's got great highs and heart-stopping lows. But if you power on through it, at the end, you are kind of exhausted.

WOODRUFF: So are you saying it doesn't quite rise to the level of riveting?

DUFFY: Well, parts are really interesting.

When he goes back to Arkansas and talks about his youth and his family and you realize just how zany that was and how he calls his life -- his presidency improbable from the beginning. And when you really go back and start at the beginning, you realize, boy, it really was. But by the time he gets to be president, you know, he is so -- he is talking about where he wants to go and what he wants to do.

And he immediately starts having problems, and so that when -- the time we got around to talking to him last week, he was really trying to explain to us why mistakes happened, why he didn't do things right, why he would do things differently if he could do it all over again. He's really trying to rationalize the whole thing. And there are moments when I thought, boy, he really wants to just have one more crack to do it all over again.

WOODRUFF: Does the thing have a defensive tone to it, Michael?

DUFFY: In places, it is incredibly defensive.

It's defensive about Osama bin Laden and why they weren't able to stop him. He's defensive whenever he's criticized by Republicans or even people in his own party for his tactics or strategies he shouldn't have had. He's very self-conscious, as autobiographers are, about everything he does. And that can be annoying. But the sweep and the breadth and the things he's trying to capture all in one volume are just so numerous.

(CROSSTALK)

WOODRUFF: Having said that, though, were there things that you wanted to know or wanted to understand that you didn't come away with?

DUFFY: Yes.

You know, by the time he gets around to talking about his affair with Lewinsky, he's writing in the book about, you know, old demons. And I'm thinking, wait a minute, we've just been through 700 pages. I haven't heard anything about these old demons until now. That's a good example. He says that Ken Starr and the independent counsel, you know, hadn't found a thing and they were wasting money and wasting taxpayer -- and Clinton wanted to get it all out there.

Well, if you had reported on it during the time, that was the last thing the Clinton people wanted to do. They were making all kinds of efforts very difficult and kind of encouraging people to get on the trail. So it's selective in a lot of places about how he remembers things. And I would have liked more about domestic policy. There's a lot more in this book about foreign policy than domestic policy. And that really surprised me.

WOODRUFF: That's very interesting. And more here for his enemies to pick on or more for his friends to say, hey, this is great? What do you think?

DUFFY: It's the world's biggest buffet. There is something for everyone.

If you like it, you'll find it there, no matter what your perspective, because he tries to be so sweeping. I think what's going to upset people the most is the fact that he blames Starr for a lot of the failings of his presidency and says that it was basically a right- wing coup attempt. That will just upset the conservatives for weeks.

On the other hand, I think he also says -- he gave short shrift to some of his own accomplishments and he could have been actually a little more critical of his own party. And he was careful about that. He really was trying to establish a different way of being president and that was only partially successful.

WOODRUFF: A lot more personal book, I gather, than we're used to hearing or seeing from a president?

DUFFY: That's right. Obviously, there's a fair amount in this about what went wrong and how he, you know, personally failed and not just as a president, but as a husband.

He talks a lot about his family in ways that have no particular bearing on -- and there's one point where he talks -- he goes on a long jag about the church and Pentecostals and even gets into a conversation about voodoo, because he said later, he told us he wanted us to understand how different people in the world look at things differently and their realities are different.

And I'm thinking, yes, well, if you covered the Clinton administration, you know that.

(LAUGHTER)

WOODRUFF: All right, Michael Duffy, "TIME" magazine. That was Michael Duffy's take on the book.

You can also hear it from the man himself. Bill Clinton is Larry King's guest Thursday night, this Thursday, 9:00 Eastern time, the former president's first live prime-time appearance.

And now some other stories making news around the country. Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader named Peter Camejo, a longtime Green Party activist, as his running mate today. At a meeting tomorrow, the Congressional Black Caucus is expected to ask Mr. Nader to drop out of the race. He says he won't.

And, in Connecticut, Governor John Rowland has resigned, effective July 1. The three-term Republican, once a rising star in his party, was facing possible impeachment stemming from a string of corruption allegations.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, the side effects of an anti-malarial drug, did they ruin a soldier's career?

And later, only 400 feet over the line, just far enough to make it into outer space, in the record books.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: It is famously true that you can't get courage from a bottle, but what about the opposite? Can you get cowardice from a pill? Well, an American soldier is arguing not only that it can happen, but that it did happen to him. And he's choosing to face a military tribunal to prove it. This is a strange and complicated story.

It is reported by CNN's Drew Griffin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Staff Sergeant Georg-Andreas Pogany spends a lot of time with his lawyer preparing for a court-martial so Pogany can prove he's not a coward. His attorney, former military prosecutor Rich Travis, says Pogany's military service record speaks for itself.

RICHARD TRAVIS, ATTORNEY FOR POGANY: Unquestionable loyalty, integrity and dedication to mission, displays exemplary moral courage in all situations.

GRIFFIN: But the situation of Pogany's first night in Iraq changed that. Following a tense convoy ride into central Iraq, his special forces unit faced a horrific image of war, a mangled body of a dead Iraqi.

STAFF SERGEANT GEORG-ANDREAS POGANY, U.S. ARMY: Seeing a dead guy in a half unzipped body bag. And that was really all there is to it. It's not as sensationalistic as it has been portrayed.

GRIFFIN: His reaction surprised him. He felt panicked, out of control. He even says hallucinating.

POGANY: And seeing the worst and hallucinating and buildings caving in. And we're under fire, and just the weirdest things. And I couldn't -- I didn't know what was going on, why I was so freaked out.

GRIFFIN: His reaction may have had little to do with war, his attorney says, and more to do with this drug. Pogany was taking Lariam, a drug also known as mefloquine that the Army gave him to prevent malaria.

But Lariam carries as risk of side effects which the Pentagon outlines in this pamphlet, some of the very symptoms Pogany says he experienced. The drug's manufacturer says extreme side effects are rare. It is not clear if Pogany's commanders in Iraq knew anything about Lariam's effects. Their diagnosis of this Army staff sergeant was that he was a coward.

POGANY: I'm pretty much convinced, too, that while I was in Iraq, people there didn't know. And that's probably what led to this big mess that we're in right now.

GRIFFIN: The Army later backed off its charge of cowardice and instead offered Pogany an administrative hearing on a lesser charge. Fighting to clear his name, Pogany and his attorney opted for a court- martial.

TRAVIS: You have a due process protection of court-martial, cross-examination, calling witnesses, producing documents, having a judge determine the admissibility of evidence. GRIFFIN: And Pogany says he has the evidence, diagnoses from two military doctors, from the Air Force and the Navy, that Lariam is the likely cause of his symptoms, symptoms he still is suffering.

But since he turned down the hearing nearly six months ago, he's heard nothing from the military. In a statement to CNN, U.S. Army special forces command said: "Pogany's case remains under consideration by the U.S. Army. His command is considering all information available, to include information pertaining to staff sergeant Pogany's health and medical status."

(on camera): It turns out Pogany's is one of 10 cases of Lariam toxicity the Navy has diagnosed among service members. And now the Navy, along with the Centers for Disease Control, are studying the phenomenon, already identifying several hundred service members dating back to 2002 whose medical cases merit review.

POGANY: There's a lot of guilt and shame that goes with that, too. being charged with cowardice in a time of war.

GRIFFIN: Pogany remains in legal limbo, still awaiting a chance to prove he's not a coward.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hang in there. This, too, shall pass.

GRIFFIN: Drew Griffin, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Fascinating story.

And before we go to a break, a quick look at money matters, starting with HMOs. In a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court today ruled that patients cannot sue their HMOs in state court for damages from denial of coverage. State juries traditionally side more often with plaintiffs and often award punitive damages when they do.

The markets, meantime, took a beating.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: In many large cities across the country, public education is in serious trouble. This is especially true in the nation's capital, where the difficulties play out every day in the local news media.

But Washington, for all the problems, also is home to what some see as a way out, a public school set up by a private organization, the SEED Foundation, which stands for Schools for Educational Evolution and Development. It is a charter school. And the charter is a simple one -- get kids off the street and into college.

The story from CNN's Sean Callebs.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Six years of learning, working, struggling with the books, and now a diploma, and what graduating senior Deon Milton calls the chance of a lifetime.

DEON MILTON, STUDENT: I really didn't want to come here the first year. So I was just thinking that I'd come here for one year and leave. But I got hooked.

CALLEBS: Deon is a member of the first class to graduate from the nation's only urban public boarding school.

MILTON: I wouldn't say I was necessarily a good student. I was more of a "do enough just to get by" student. But like now it is more of, I do more than was expected of me.

CALLEBS: On the other side of the summer, Deon will head off to Hiram College in Ohio. In fact, all his classmates are going to four- year colleges, every single one. Even founders are amazed.

ERIC ADLER, CO-FOUNDER, THE SEED SCHOOL: The odds seemed to be so stacked against them. And that's not how life is turning out for them. They're getting what every kid deserves, which is a shot at being whatever they want to be in life.

CALLEBS: Eric Adler and Raj Vinnakota have MBAs from the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton, two top Ivy League schools. They used to be well paid consultants, but they each gave it up because they had an idea, simply to give back.

RAJIV VINNAKOTA, CO-FOUNDER, THE SEED SCHOOL: To be able to now, six years down the road, say thank you probably in the best way that we can, by giving them a diploma and sending them off to college, it's really a testament to all of the work that everyone has done here.

CALLEBS: The pastoral $26 million dollar campus, built with a mixture of public and private money, is a beacon in a blighted neighborhood in the southeast section of Washington, D.C.

DR. RICHARD JUNG, HEAD OF SEED SCHOOL: Kids can be kids here. Outside the fence, that goes away.

CALLEBS: Ushered in in the seventh grade, qualified students are chosen by lottery. In its first year, the school was housed in the Capital Children's museum. Students lived in the attic.

MILTON: At first, it was in the children's museum. We lived at Trinity College and took classes on 16th Street in an office building. And now it's here. So it's kind of like a journey.

CALLEBS: Lesley Poole is administrations director and has been here from the beginning.

LESLEY POOLE, ADMISSIONS DIRECTOR, THE SEED SCHOOL: We said, if you spend six years with us, if you let us push you harder than you ever imagined, if you take on challenges that your neighbors and your peers outside of the school are not taking on, we guarantee you that you will have success.

CALLEBS: Deon is all smiles now. But his childhood hardly provided a fertile foundation for educational success, no father figure. His mother was unable to raise him. His aunt took on the role. He now lovingly calls her mom.

JOAN LYLE, AUNT OF DEON: The neighborhood schools here, I would not wish them on anyone.

CALLEBS: Rife with peer pressure, violence, drugs, the streets can be unforgiving, but, in this case, a fork in the road that led 21 bright kids to the campus.

POOLE: SEED has become my family. The kids have told me, the ones that are graduating, that I can have a life when they graduate. But they've been my life. Yes, they've been it.

CALLEBS: Sean Callebs, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: That's one of those good stories you like to hear about, and all with a lottery.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, finally, an astronaut with a difference. This flight was not paid for by your tax dollars.

From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: A White House commission last week recommended that private companies become more involved in space exploration. So today, one company took the lead, when a California man traveled to space and back in under two hours.

Here's CNN's Miles O'Brien.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was a high-flying triumph for the little guy. Airplane and now spaceship designer Burt Rutan and his small company, Scaled Composites, sent SpaceShipOne on a sub-orbital flight for little more than $20 million.

MIKE MELVILL, PILOT: You really do get the feeling that you've touched the face of God when you do something like this, believe me.

O'BRIEN: The history making flight was not trouble free. Shortly after Melvill lit the rocket motor fueled by a mixture of rubber and nitrous oxide -- laughing gas -- there was a no-laughing- matter problem with the critical flight controls. The small craft veered off its vertical course.

BURT RUTAN, FOUNDER, SCALED COMPOSITES: We have just a five-mile box to reenter in. The spaceship actually reentered in 22 miles away from that box. It could have gone twice that far and still glided back to Mojave, though.

O'BRIEN: The problem lowered SpaceShipOne's apogee, but the craft squeaked into the record books, reaching 328,491 feet -- 400 feet beyond the official boundary of space, just enough for Melvill to earn his astronaut wings awarded by the FAA. The effort was bankrolled by billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who hopes this is the beginning of a new space race for the rest of us.

(on camera): Rutan and his team will troubleshoot that control problem and then may very well announce an attempt at the $10 million X prize, a private purse awarded to the first civilian team to fly to space in a three-person vehicle twice in as many weeks. There are at least a half-dozen other teams vying for that prize, but clearly SpaceShipOne is the horse to beat.

Miles O'Brien, CNN, Mojave, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: We'll cover that when it happens.

And we'll be back with a final word in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Before we go, a quick look ahead.

Tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING," the day Bill Clinton's fans and his enemies have been waiting for, the former president's autobiography on sale and in stores Tuesday and the P.R. offensive going full-throttle to sell books and redefine his presidency. Will it work? How will it affect presidential campaign? That's CNN tomorrow, 7:00 a.m.

That's it for tonight. Aaron is back tomorrow. Thanks for watching.

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