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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Presidential Politics on the Road; In Beslan, Russia, Details Emerging Each Day About Bloodbath

Aired September 09, 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. There's something dreary about today and it isn't simply the New York weather. Everywhere we look today something didn't look or feel right. In Iraq, it was more of the same I guess. The sounds bites from General John Abizaid from last night's program kept bouncing around my brain. There are places in Iraq he said that are more dangerous, more hostile to Americans today than when we liberated the country. How can that be? How much work is there left to do? How many more times will we note on this program the deaths of good young men and women?
The campaign seemed dreary too today. It seemed to have settled into the "so's your old man" phase. Each candidate going through practiced lines saying little new and the side show of the Vietnam stuff taking up time and space that could be better spent by us and you.

In Russia, they continue to bury the dead. In Indonesia, a terror attack. From the mountains of Pakistan or Afghanistan, new words from a murderous tyrant passing himself off as some sort of savior. It is the sort of day that makes you want to pull the blankets up over your head. But you can't.

We begin with the campaign. CNN's senior White House correspondent John King traveling with the president today. So, John, start us with a headline.

JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, the president today by design kept his focus on the issues he thinks will matter most come Election Day in November, but aides blame the Kerry campaign for this new questioning about the president's National Guard status back in Vietnam. Democrats say, new documents prove the president's lying. Aaron.

BROWN: John, thank you. Next to Baghdad, another day of war and peace and just about everything in between. CNN's Walter Rodgers with the watch again this morning there. So Walt, give us a headline.

WALTER RODGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Aaron. For the first time since July, U.S. forces have reentered the town of Samara at the tip of the so-called Sunni triangle. They didn't stay long but they weren't shot at. Don't expect that to happen in Fallujah anytime soon. Aaron?

BROWN: Walter, thank you. Finally, to the al Qaeda tape. What it says and what it means. CNN's Nic Robertson on watch tonight. So Nic, a headline. NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, a new tape from al Qaeda boasting that the United States is on the verge of losing in Afghanistan and Iraq, also an attack that perhaps linked indirectly to al Qaeda and Indonesia and in Pakistan, close to the border with Afghanistan, Pakistani fighters dropping bombs on what they call is an al Qaeda terrorist training site. So close to the anniversary of September the 11th, it appears to have been somewhat of a flag-waving day for al Qaeda. Aaron?

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

Also on the program tonight, an extraordinary tale of survival from a young boy who became a symbol of Russia's nightmare.

Also, relics of 9/11, pieces of the World Trade Center and the personal stories they tell. And as always, on NEWSNIGHT, morning papers at the end of the hour. All of that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight with presidential politics on the road and perhaps at a crossroads. We're getting to that point where the undecided voters start deciding and everyone else gets tougher to budge. The less easily persuaded by headlines and scandals and nagging doubts and each side knows that. It then becomes a question of playing the hand that's dealt. So are we there yet? We'll only know for sure in retrospect, but there were signs of it today in both campaigns. Two reports tonight. First, CNN's John King with the president.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): In campaign speak, you call this message discipline.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our economy's been growing at rates as fast as any in nearly 20 years.

KING: Not a mention of new questions about his National Guard service and newly discovered memos from then Lieutenant Bush's commanding officer, Democrats say contradict the president's long- standing assertion that he met all requirements and received no special treatment.

SEN. TOM HARKIN (D) IOWA: This is about George W. Bush not doing his duty in the National Guard and then lying to the American people about it.

KING: Bush aides call it recycled partisan garbage and say at least for now, the president has no intention of addressing the issue. Instead, his focus was on jobs and taxes and for good reason. Pennsylvania is a dead heat and a new CNN poll shows the state's voters give Democratic John Kerry an 8-point edge on handling the economy. So with the optimistic talk, things are getting better, comes a warning they could get worse.

BUSH: You drive a car, Senator Kerry's voted for higher taxes on you. If you have a job, he's voted for higher taxes on you.

KING: It is a case the Bush campaign believes has appeal across the Republic spectrum, first in the moderate Philadelphia suburbs and then in the most conservative western Pennsylvania. Stop for lunch at the Coney Island in gritty Johnstown and there is talk of personal bankruptcy, nostalgia for the glory days of big steel and dismay at a campaign that to many has too much bite and too little beef.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's too much back-stabbing between both of them. And it's turning me away from both of them. It's exactly what it's doing.

KING: Little appetite the owner says, for more talk of what the candidates did or didn't do 30 plus years ago.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're not really concerned with that. They're more concerned about the security of their country and the economy.

KING: Johnstown's unemployment rate is just shy of 7 percent. Bernadette Brinso (ph) lost her job last month and is losing patience with all this talk of Vietnam.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's just nothing here anymore because the steel mills and the mines shut down. People down here don't have a chance.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: The voters may not like all this talk of Vietnam, all this finger-pointing and the other attacks in the campaign, but don't look for the tone to change anytime soon. The Bush and the Kerry campaigns don't agree on much, but they do agree on this, negative campaigning works. Aaron?

BROWN: Yes, they do, and yes, it does. I want one of those hot dogs and now to the question.

KING: Not bad.

BROWN: When people -- when you're talking to voters in Pennsylvania and elsewhere I suppose, how often did they bring up the economy as opposed to terror or did they bring up terror, the war, and the rest first?

KING: It was interesting in this diner today. Most bring up the economy first. And in this community, it's easy to see why if you drive by. A lot of closed store fronts, a lot of people who say the manufacturing jobs, the mill jobs are all gone. But it's very interesting. Several voters brought up the terrorist attacks in Russia last week and said that that has raised their concerns about terrorism here in the United States again as well. So as we approach the September 11th anniversary, it could be events overseas that are reminding, at least some voters in this community that there's still a risk. BROWN: John, thank you, senior White House correspondent John King on the road again tonight. On to the campaign of John Kerry now in Iowa though in some respects it could be the president's campaign or any politician's campaign two months before Election Day. One challenge out of many is to control what is written and said about you, since you can't literally control the press, you do what you can. Say only what you want reported and avoid at all costs that which might get in the way. Or to put in a sentence, like the president, John Kerry isn't talking to the national press these days. Here's CNN's Candy Crowley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Bush has repeatedly insisted that he did his duty. We now know this isn't true.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we really wanted to be a fighter pilot, he would have gone where all the fighter pilots were, which was Vietnam.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As Washington Democrats exploded over the issue of George Bush's service record, John Kerry was in Iowa talking health care to a 91-year-old veteran.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: She remembers her service number. That's something you never forget, your service number. It's ingrained in you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: George did.

KERRY: No matter what.

CROWLEY: It was an opening and the senator looked sorely tempted.

KERRY: Well, moving on!

CROWLEY: It is the beauty of being top dog. You can talk when you want --

KERRY: You ask me a question, I will tell you exactly where I stand on everything, except the outcome of the Cyclones Hawkeye game. That's -- that's off limits.

CROWLEY: And you can not talk when you want.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator, have you put the Swift boat (INAUDIBLE) behind you now at this point?

CROWLEY: Except for the occasional presentation of a birthday cake and the hard to ignore question on whether the war on terror is winnable, there is little contact between Kerry and the traveling press corps, a strategic decision based on how the election will be won, state by state, media market by media market. At nearly every stop Kerry grants one-on-one interviews to local media. The dynamic is less contentious than a news conference. The questions are more likely to give him a chance to localize the message, kind of like niche campaigning. KERRY: Win the peace. We're spending $200 billion and counting that now doesn't go into Minnesota health care.

CROWLEY: The candidate who promises monthly news conferences as president held his last full-blown news conference August 2nd. Asked about the nearly 40-day dry spell and aides said, we don't want to step on our message. So the beat goes on. Candy Crowley, CNN, New Orleans.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Campaign today. Next to Iraq, American forces moving into Samara, until today, one those so-called no-go zones. They went in, accompanied by Iraqi police, the National Guardsmen. They convened the old American-backed city council which chose the mayor. Then the forces left, the way they went in, shaky progress, but progress, a commodity in painfully short supply just down the road. So reporting for us tonight again, CNN's Walter Rodgers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: This is what happens when Islamist fighters in Fallujah take human shields as protection against American air strikes. This is what happens to children in Fallujah when various intelligence sources tell the American military they know where Islamist fighters link to Abu Musab Zarqawi are hiding. The U.S. military says it regrets the civilian casualties from its precision bombing, but says the interim Iraqi government believes it had identified an Islamist command and control center that had been targeting Americans. The only body shown to the cameras at the hospital were Iraqi civilians. It's impossible to determine if the targeted Islamist insurgents were also killed.

This outraged Iraqi told our free-lance Iraqi cameraman that four women were killed, blown out of this house, he says. A dead baby was also dangling from the power line outside, he added. Iraq's health ministry says four children were killed and six adults. One anti-war Web site estimates 11,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in this war, although estimates vary widely. The Pentagon says it does not tally civilian casualties. Another Iraqi says, this is the false democracy Bush promised. In his words, he is the enemy of Islam.

In Talafar (ph) about 35 miles west of Mosul, the fighting has spread creating more refugees. One Iraqi doctor claims at least 17 people have been killed there and scores wounded. U.S. forces are trying to battle Islamic insurgents there, many of whom the Iraqi government believes came from Syria. The battle in Talafar is to retake the city from the Islamist fighters there.

Elsewhere, a previously unknown group linked to al Qaeda claims it has two 29-year-old Italian aide workers, punishment they say, for Italy standing with the United States in Iraq. This Italian journalist knows the women.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, they were targeted first of all because they were an easy target. And I would say today nobody's safe. (END VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: That feeling of not being safe is well known to anyone in Iraq today, the children in Fallujah, aide workers and journalists in Baghdad, U.S. army soldiers and of course Iraqi civilians. And there's no relief in sight. Aaron?

BROWN: Does this move into Samara today signify, do we believe, a change in tactics or a new phase, if you will?

RODGERS: Yes and no. I think this importance of the re-entry into Samara is this, that the United States is trying to regain a toe hold everywhere in the Sunni triangle except Fallujah. They've written Fallujah off. That's not going to happen. What they're trying to do is regain a toe hold so that when there are elections in Iraq either in December or January that perhaps the people in those towns, in the Sunni triangle will see it in their interest to get out and vote. Most important thing to remember about Samara though is that hours after the U.S. and Iraqi forces pulled out, the insurgents were back again patrolling the streets. Aaron?

BROWN: Sorry, just quickly if you can, is there any evidence that there is a campaign on in Iraq?

RODGERS: Not yet. U.S. officials are hoping that this will catch fire. There is preliminary jockeying at the political level. Caucuses, people are drawing up consensus lists. It hasn't caught fire in the public imagination yet, but the U.S. officials who are helping with this election say they really think that they can generate a buzz, and that buzz in the Iraqi public may give the move towards democracy or at least self-government, a shot in the arm. Aaron?

BROWN: Hope they get there. Thank you, Walter, Walter Rodgers in Baghdad. In the war on terrorism, two headlines from two date lines. First Indonesia. A bombing today in the capital of Jakarta. It happened at the Australian embassy. A car bomb so powerful the mushroom cloud could be seen for miles. At least nine people died. More than 180 people were injured, more than a dozen of them critically so. Australia's government believes a local group with connections to al Qaeda was to blame.

The second dateline is unknown. Al Qaeda's second in command appearing on videotape, on that tape, Ayman al Zawahiri claims that the United States is on the run in both Afghanistan and Iraq and with that, we turn to CNN's Nic Robertson, who joins us tonight from Atlanta. Nic, as many of you know, most of you know by now, has spent most of the last three years covering al Qaeda, Afghanistan and the rest.

So we make of this tape, a kind of predictable - it's almost the anniversary of.

ROBERTSON: I think so Aaron. I mean look, it's coming out around September 11th. They try and have a videotaped message like this every September 11th. This is the first time, however, that it's actually been an on-camera message, rather than a videotape with an audio transcript to go with it. In between in the year, there are releases on the Internet. There are audiotapes but they really try and make a special out of the anniversary of September 11th, and that appears to be exactly what they've done this year.

Twice in just the first 15 minutes tonight, we've used the phrase "linked to al Qaeda" to talk about groups involved in one bad action or another. What does that mean when they say they're "linked to al Qaeda"?

ROBERTSON: Well, perhaps it is one way that al Qaeda has been successful in its own terms or Osama bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri have been successful is the spread of this ideology, this sort of global jihad against the United States, against the western world, against some of the Christian world, if you will. So this -- it's that type of ideology that I think people are talking about. When say related, these groups have a common ideology. That's what we're seeing in action.

BROWN: So it is not that they are linked by -- it's not that bin Laden is necessarily approving of or financing, or it is simply they believe the same things and use the same methods?

ROBERTSON: Use the same points of reference. They've interpreted the Koran in a very extreme way and they see what's happening to Muslims around the world where the United States, perhaps where Israel is involved. Certainly this is what I was being told when I was in Saudi Arabia recently, that they interpret those things in a very negative light.

BROWN: And finally, I am sorry, is that a post-Afghanistan phenomena or did that exist prior to 9/11, prior to the war with Afghanistan, prior to the war with Iraq for that matter?

ROBERTSON: There's more anger out there in the Middle East, Aaron, post-Afghanistan, post-September 11th, and indeed, post-the occupation in Iraq than there was before. That's been my experience recently.

BROWN: Nic, it's good to see you; it's been a while. Thank you Nic Robertson in Atlanta tonight.

Ahead on the program, preserving the relics of the World Trade Center and the stories behind them. We take a break first in New York. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Small anti-war demonstration in New York, Columbus Circle, just outside our building. There's a small police presence there as well. That looks to me like no harm, no foul, everyone behaving as they should.

Regular viewers of this program know that we do not believe that every segment needs to be a debate, that the test of fairness here is applied over days, not minutes. We point that out now because we are well aware the interview you are about to hear is a full-throated attack on the Bush administration's foreign policy. The balance will come and it will another night soon. That said we talked to Democratic Senator Joe Biden this afternoon. The senator wrote a long and thoughtful explanation of his party's foreign policy differences with the administration in today's "Wall Street Journal."

The senator supported the war in Iraq, and has been a strong critic of the execution. It is fair to say he delivered his views with considerable passion.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: There are couple, perhaps three or four pillars that make up your description of Democratic foreign policy. You say, we are more alone now than in any time in our recent history. I believe the administration would quarrel well that.

SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN (D) DELAWARE: I don't know anyone in the world who thinks this United States of America's judgment is sound right now. The problem here is most of the rest of the world thinks President Bush's judgment about how to deal with the common concerns and common threats is not sound.

BROWN: One of the arguments you make is that this approach has made us, all of us, less safe, that we are less safe in the war on terror than we would be if we were less unilateralist, how?

BIDEN: The president of the United States has tried to get people to come in and help us in Iraq, help us train the Iraqis, because our exit strategy is for them to have an army, for them to have a police force so they can sustain a free government. He's had no luck in doing that. The reason he's had no luck is people don't want to play with him. It's clearly in our interest if we had other people willing to help us. It's clearly within our interest if we were going to have a better bit of cooperation on how to deal with the one existential threat to us and it's not terrorism that's a tactic. It's this notion that we are, as a people, threatened by a radical fundamentalism that is metastasizing and when we're unable to make our case to the rest of the world particularly to the Muslim world, what happens? We end up finding, they get sympathy and they get sheltered. You know, these guys are beyond the reach of reason. But the sea in which they swim, those people are not beyond the reach of reason.

BROWN: But isn't it fair to say that whether it works out this way or not, that administration's view of Iraq is that if we can create a democratic Iraq, and if we can encourage somehow democracies in other Middle East countries that you're right, the absolute crazies are going to be absolute crazies, but the sea in which they swim will be far more calmer?

BIDEN: The fundamental distinction is a judgment one. The neocons and Mr. Cheneys of the world believe we could impose democracy in Iraq.

BROWN: Just take for a second that everybody on the planet agrees with you, the problem is that die is cast. We are there.

BIDEN: Precisely.

BROWN: It is broken.

BIDEN: Absolutely. Must be fixed.

BROWN: Ultimately it has to be fixed.

BIDEN: We've been saying we should put a much greater effort into a real training program for Iraqi police, a real training program for the United States army. A year ago, a year and a half ago I pointed out that an eight week training program for a police force in Iraq was a joke. What did they do immediately after? Saddam's statue came down and the French and the Germans said they'd help us train forces. They said, no, no, no, we don't need you. We don't need you.

What did they do in terms of the investment of dollars in Iraq? What did they do in terms of the number of troops in Iraq? When I was and John McCain saying you need more troops in Iraq a year ago. The guy who was the controller general for the Pentagon, the secretary of defense sent to Iraq and reported this time last summer, he said the window of opportunity is closing. We must act quickly along the following ways. They did everything wrong. They're not bad guys. They're ideologues and what are they doing now?

I got back six, eight weeks ago now from Baghdad. I went with a very smart hard-core conservative Republican from South Carolina and with Tom Daschle. We went and visited the training program for the Iraqi police, critical to our exit strategy in Jordan. Midway through it, I looked at our briefers including an American, tell us the truth, this program ain't worth a damn is it! They said, you're right, it's not worth a damn. What have they done? Have you listened to one piece of advice from anyone other than Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Wolfowitz?

BROWN: It's a very provocative piece in today's "Wall Street Journal." People who are interested in your view and how the Democrats view all of this, might want to take a look at it. It's always good to see you, sir.

BIDEN: We can still win. We can still win the peace.

BROWN: Thank you, senator. I hope you are right. Thank you, sir.

BIDEN: We have to be.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Senator Joe Biden, Democrat from Delaware. We talked with him this afternoon and as we said, we'll do a follow-up on the other side in the days ahead.

Still ahead, questions about the president's military service all of those years ago and answers that appear to produce even more questions. (INAUDIBLE) And the Russian nightmare told through the eyes of a young child. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Last night we said this is the story that some people can't get enough of and others wish would just go away. It didn't today. The "Weekly Standard," the conservative opinion magazine posted a provocative piece today saying that experts, if contacted, believe it is now more likely than not that new memos fueling the latest round of stories over President Bush's National Guard service are fake. CBS, which obtained the documents stands by them. Some fun this now. While all of that is being sorted out, Judy Woodruff tonight on the latest.

JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: One fact that no one disputes is, 21-year-old George W. Bush enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard in May 1968 and was honorably discharged in October 1973.

He trained to fly F-102 fighter jets. And military records released only this week show that Bush ranked in the middle of his training class. But in the summer of 1972, then-Lieutenant Bush was suspended from flying. Newly unearthed documents from the personnel file of commanding officer Jerry Killian reveal why. Bush not only missed a required physical exam, but he -- quote -- "made no attempt to meet his training certification." Another Killian memo says Bush had discussed how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November.

It was during those months that Bush went to Alabama, working on the U.S. Senate campaign of a family friend and transferring to a Guard unit in Montgomery. But witnesses to his attendance are almost nonexistent. And official records show a five-month gap in his pay for drills. That continues to fuel the Democrats' accusation that Bush was a no-show for duty.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. TOM HARKIN (D), IOWA: Americans deserve to know the truth. And we won't know the whole truth until the president himself meets these facts head on.

WOODRUFF: The White House says the president met his obligations.

DAN BARTLETT, WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: People are calling themselves the experts who actually have partisan differences who are supporting the President Bush's opponent who are throwing these be allegations.

WOODRUFF (on camera): When Bush was discharged to go to Harvard Business School, he was obligated to serve another year in the Air Force Reserves, but there's no record that he signed up with a selective Reserve unit in Boston. Instead, the White House said that Bush registered as an inactive reservist with a unit in Denver. (voice-over): Which leaves the question, how did Bush get into the Guard in the first place? A Texas politician is talking publicly for the first time about how he pulled strings for Bush.

Former Texas House Speaker and Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes, a Democrat supporting John Kerry, told CBS' "60 Minutes" he called the head of the Guard in 1968 at the request of a Bush family friend. Bush's father then represented Houston in Congress.

BEN BARNES, FMR. TEXAS LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: And I readily willing to call and get those young men into the National Guard that were friends of mine and supporters of mine, and I did it.

WOODRUFF: A professor who taught Bush at Harvard Business School in the early '70s adds his student confided he got special treatment.

PROF. YOSHI TSURUMI, BARUCH COLLEGE; He admitted to me that to avoid the Vietnam draft, he had his dad, he said dad's friends skip him through the long waiting list to get into the Texas National Guard.

WOODRUFF: President Bush and his campaign maintain that neither he nor his father ever asked for any special treatment to get into the Guard.

Judy Woodruff, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We'll see what tomorrow's chapter brings.

It used to be the single most dreaded sentenced any public servant could expect to hear was, Mike Wallace is waiting to see you. To that, we might now add, Kitty Kelley wants to write a book about you. She has about the president and the Bush family, not an authorized biography, not hardly. Does it speak the truth and nothing but the truth? That's for historians and maybe even the courts. Who knows. But does it arrive with just a little hype? That part's easy.

Here's CNN's Howard Kurtz.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HOWARD KURTZ, "RELIABLE SOURCES" (voice-over): When Kitty Kelley writes a book, it's usually big news, when it's about Jackie Kennedy, Nancy Reagan or Princess Diana and the British royals.

KITTY KELLEY, AUTHOR: This is a controversial family and it's a controversial book.

KURTZ: That was Kelley talking about Britain's preeminent family seven years ago, but now the celebrity biographer is taking on an American royal family of sorts, including the president of the United States at the height of his reelection campaign. The result? Well, the fireworks have started even before the book is released on Monday. It's called "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty" and contains lots of unflattering gossip and allegations about George W. Bush based in part on unnamed sources. Most explosive are Kelley's charges about alleged past drug use by Bush, a subject the president has declined to address in the past by saying simply that he was once young and irresponsible.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There's a game in Washington. It's called gotcha. It's a game where we float a rumor and make the candidate prove a negative. And I'm not playing the game.

KURTZ: One of Kelley's named sources is Sharon Bush, the former wife of presidential brother Neil Bush. But Sharon Bush denies ever having said what the book attributes to her, that George W. Bush used cocaine at Camp David while her father was president. That's a falsehood, she says. But Kelley supported by Sharon Bush's former public relations man, Lou Colasuonno, who was at lunch with the two women last year when the subject came up.

Now the counterattack is under way. White House communications chief Dan Bartlett calls the book garbage. And Republicans are circulating examples of what they say as past shoddy reporting by Kelley, her assertions that Ronald Reagan was a date rapist who once paid for a girlfriend's abortion and that Nancy Reagan once had an affair with Frank Sinatra, which drew an annoyed response from the 40th president.

RONALD REAGAN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't think a church would be a proper place for me to use the words I'd have to use in discussing that.

KURTZ: Like most intimate matter, these kind of charges, who slept with whom, are hard to prove or disprove.

So how are the media handling Kelley's controversial book? NBC's Matt Lauer will interview her for three straight mornings on "The Today Show." And Kelley is tentatively booked on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News as well. But "Newsweek," which got an advanced look at the manuscript, passed on doing a story, editor Mark Whitaker saying he wasn't comfortable with Kelley's reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KURTZ: Should journalists be serving as publicity agents for this sort of doggedly researched gossip? Can you really fact-check a book in a five- or 10-minute interview? We'll all have to reserve judgment until we see the book. But the bubbling media controversy, including the fact that I'm talking about it here, will undoubtedly propel Kitty Kelley toward another best-seller -- Aaron.

BROWN: Part of the problem for us, I mean, literally us here, is that they come to you and they say -- and we were aware certainly there was tremendous hype about the book and a tremendous first press run on the book, highly unusual -- they say, do you want the interview? We say, yes. But you haven't seen the book. In some respects, until you see the book, you really don't know.

KURTZ: That's exactly the box that all of us get into. Television, as we know, a highly competitive business. Everyone wants to get the hot book, the hot author. Kitty Kelley certainly has a reputation for making headlines with some of her past books.

And yet you've committed to talk to her and you haven't been able to make a judgment because Doubleday hasn't put out the book out, which adds to the pre-publication drama. You haven't been able to make a judgment about its journalistic value.

BROWN: Right. And so like commitments I make the guests I suppose all the time, I feel perfectly comfortable backing out if I'm not comfortable with the subject matter. But that's the trap. And that's sort of where we find ourselves.

And if we were to back out, for example, as "Newsweek" did, that then becomes another piece that propels the hype of the book.

KURTZ: And, similarly, when I call the White House for comment on a book that the White House officials haven't seen, that I haven't been able to obtain, and they say it's garbage and fiction, well, you know, they're obviously trying to discredit the book in advance.

But we can't get into the specifics, because no one has seen the specifics. And yet there's this sort of media echo chamber effect. So you get headlines, "White House Denies Past Bush Drug Use," when, again, I don't know what evidence is. The book may be very good, but I can't say that right now.

BROWN: Nor can I. Howard, thank you.

KURTZ: Thank you.

BROWN: Howard Kurtz of "The Washington Post" and host of CNN's "RELIABLE SOURCES." He's got a long title.

Still to come on the program, bits and pieces that were once part of the World Trade Center soon to be preserved for all to see, as we approach the third anniversary. And, as always, we wrap things up with your morning papers.

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In Beslan, Russia, details are emerging each day now about the bloodbath that destroyed so many lives last week. Today, security officials say they have identified 10 of the terrorists who laid sieged to the school where more than 300 hostages died, most of them children.

Officials say six of the killers were from Chechnya. None so far has been identified as Arab, despite early claims to the contrary. Details are emerging as well of the terror that went on inside of the school, what those children endured, what those who survived saw. Reporting the story for us tonight, Bill Neely of Britain's ITN.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL NEELY, ITV REPORTER (voice-over): Farniyev knows he's lucky to be alive, one of the very few who escaped the carnage in his school gym, a horror to which his mind often returns. This is Georgy a week ago, sitting at the feet of a terrorist, bombs directly above him, the trigger a bomb in front of him, the masked gunmen showing what might kill him as Georgy cowers in terror.

"The gunmen were scary," he told me. "I kept very quiet and kept my hands up like this or this." He told me he saw adults being killed on the first day. Terrorists threatened to kill him. Then the gym exploded.

"Some people were torn to pieces. I was OK, but then a grenade blew up and I was hit in the leg." From here, he limped away and hid in a bookcase. "I still don't understand," he says, "how I'm alive."

His mother doesn't either. Convinced he was dead, she searched the body bags in the morgue. "Horrible isn't the word for it," she says. Remarkably, Georgy's 7-year-old cousin lived through the massacre, too. And today, they were flown out of Beslan for more treatment with 20 other young survivors.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: I'm 12.

NEELY (on camera): You're 12. And how are you?

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: I'm fine.

NEELY: Fine.

(voice-over): Allah (ph) is punctured with shrapnel. Ten-year- old Sara (ph) was burned in the gym. She's having terrible nightmares. Shedar (ph) is 4 and won't go anywhere now without the toy gown on his pillow.

Some were able to walk on the plane, just. Most others, looking very vulnerable, were stretchered on.

(on camera): The hospitals around Beslan simply can't cope with the numbers of injured and the treatment they need. So these children are going on a plane for the first time in their lives, a journey they'd gladly swap for life as it was eight days ago.

(voice-over): They've been hostages, then targets. Now, once again, they were just frightened, the survivors of a mass murder, Georgy happy to be leaving Beslan behind.

But what of the others in the terrorist video who sat with Georgy in the gym? Sema Alicova (ph) stares at the camera. Beside her, 12- year-old Vera Grieva (ph) clasps her hands. Sema was one of the first to be buried alongside her daughter. Vera died with her 14-year-old brother. All the women and girls in this image are dead, too, which makes Georgy Farniyev's survival all the more remarkable.

Bill Neely, ITV News, Beslan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It's a profoundly human impulse to chronicle what befalls us, the good and the horrible alike. Making sure we forget neither is one of the ways we keep our humanity alive. When it's completed, the World Trade Center Memorial will commemorate all that was lost three years ago on that gloriously sunny day.

Curators have been carefully preserving the relics for the museum planned for the site, roughly 900 objects so far, all bearing witness, all with stories to tell.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARTHOLOMEW VOORSANGER, WORLD TRADE CENTER CURATOR: Every time I walk in here, it all comes back. This is all that is left of the World Trade Center. What you see here, this is it. We wanted to save the steel to explain how this project had been built.

After the second day, there was that, a fragment of tower one that was six stories high. And then these pieces are a piece of the shard. This weighs tons and tons and tons. This was the 110-story tower collapsing. This is a column that was actually torqued. There's no equipment on Earth that could curve this.

STEVEN WEINTRAUB, WORLD TRADE CENTER CONSERVATOR: I'm a born and raised New Yorker. I saw the Twin Towers being built to last forever. It was one of the foundation columns that held the entire tower up.

It's 36 feet long. It's about four feet wide. And it's about two feet deep. And it's roughly about 60 tons. What's important about this is not so much the steel. It's actually the surface. And it's all of the applied graffiti that was put on by the rescue workers during the time after 9/11. And that's really the story of the last column.

What you see is the injection of resin underneath the paint layer to adhere it back down. This is very much a technique that we use in museums.

VOORSANGER: These objects are vehicles that were just totally destroyed with the towers, one of the towers falling on them. The fire engines, the ambulances, all of them tell different stories because you knew in some cases people were inside.

WEINTRAUB: Here you have a section of concrete. Here you have a section of concrete. So this is a floor. This is a floor. And this is what the entire floor collapsed to in between.

VOORSANGER: It was one of the major transportation hubs, over 100,000 people coming in there daily. And this, of course, is some of the signage that characterized coming off the subway.

I don't know eventually what a memorial will become. But I just want your grandchildren to go there and become emotionally connected to this event.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That's the work of CNN New York Bureau producer Phil Hirschkorn.

Lots of 9/11-related items on the program tomorrow. We'll take a look at morning papers next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, time to check morning papers around the country and around the world, throw in a few weeklies, small-town weeklies today, because I like them. And I get to do that sometimes.

"Christian Science Monitor" starts us off. "Normal, But Not the Same." That's a good headline, isn't it? "Three Years After 9/11, Foreign Affairs and Safety Loom Larger." I guess.

"Washington Times" leads with -- well, they leave with "Ivan the Terrible," the hurricane I guess, and this provocative headline, "Rounding Up All Illegals Not Realistic." But up at the top, "Bush's Guard Service Recycled at Election Time." Kind of an edgy headline, that. "White House Accuses Kerry of Coordinating Guard Attacks." Not sure what evidence is, because I haven't had a chance to read the article. And "New Documents Part of Old Democratic Strategy," the two stories related. So that's the take of "The Washington Times."

"The Houston Express News." "House Hits Overtime Rewrite." The House has a rare victory for labor these days. Got enough Republicans to join with Democrats to stop -- I'm not sure it actually will -- the change in the overtime laws that have been so disputed.

"The Philadelphia Inquirer." Campaign was there, the president today. "Election Rhetoric Turning Rougher. Sharp Words Fly." If it gets any rougher, they'll be shooting at each other. Not really. I hope not really.

"The Lovely County Citizen." That's Lovely County, Arkansas, I believe. "Suspicious Parcel Mail to President at E.S. Post Office. Telephone Tip Leads to Envelope From the Prophet." They've got a kind of terrorism story related there. But I like this one down here. The citizen of the week is Alexis Anderson (ph), who put up a lemonade stand and gave all the money, 85 bucks, to the local humane society.

All right, let's go on to the "Chicago Sun-Times." The weather, by the way, in Chicago -- do I ever mention that?

(CHIMES)

BROWN: Thank you. "Sterling" tomorrow on Friday September 10, 80 degrees in the windy city.

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Tomorrow on the program, we revisit a number of the people we met in days after 9/11, check up on how they're doing. We hope you'll join us for that and much more.

Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired September 09, 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. There's something dreary about today and it isn't simply the New York weather. Everywhere we look today something didn't look or feel right. In Iraq, it was more of the same I guess. The sounds bites from General John Abizaid from last night's program kept bouncing around my brain. There are places in Iraq he said that are more dangerous, more hostile to Americans today than when we liberated the country. How can that be? How much work is there left to do? How many more times will we note on this program the deaths of good young men and women?
The campaign seemed dreary too today. It seemed to have settled into the "so's your old man" phase. Each candidate going through practiced lines saying little new and the side show of the Vietnam stuff taking up time and space that could be better spent by us and you.

In Russia, they continue to bury the dead. In Indonesia, a terror attack. From the mountains of Pakistan or Afghanistan, new words from a murderous tyrant passing himself off as some sort of savior. It is the sort of day that makes you want to pull the blankets up over your head. But you can't.

We begin with the campaign. CNN's senior White House correspondent John King traveling with the president today. So, John, start us with a headline.

JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, the president today by design kept his focus on the issues he thinks will matter most come Election Day in November, but aides blame the Kerry campaign for this new questioning about the president's National Guard status back in Vietnam. Democrats say, new documents prove the president's lying. Aaron.

BROWN: John, thank you. Next to Baghdad, another day of war and peace and just about everything in between. CNN's Walter Rodgers with the watch again this morning there. So Walt, give us a headline.

WALTER RODGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Aaron. For the first time since July, U.S. forces have reentered the town of Samara at the tip of the so-called Sunni triangle. They didn't stay long but they weren't shot at. Don't expect that to happen in Fallujah anytime soon. Aaron?

BROWN: Walter, thank you. Finally, to the al Qaeda tape. What it says and what it means. CNN's Nic Robertson on watch tonight. So Nic, a headline. NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, a new tape from al Qaeda boasting that the United States is on the verge of losing in Afghanistan and Iraq, also an attack that perhaps linked indirectly to al Qaeda and Indonesia and in Pakistan, close to the border with Afghanistan, Pakistani fighters dropping bombs on what they call is an al Qaeda terrorist training site. So close to the anniversary of September the 11th, it appears to have been somewhat of a flag-waving day for al Qaeda. Aaron?

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

Also on the program tonight, an extraordinary tale of survival from a young boy who became a symbol of Russia's nightmare.

Also, relics of 9/11, pieces of the World Trade Center and the personal stories they tell. And as always, on NEWSNIGHT, morning papers at the end of the hour. All of that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight with presidential politics on the road and perhaps at a crossroads. We're getting to that point where the undecided voters start deciding and everyone else gets tougher to budge. The less easily persuaded by headlines and scandals and nagging doubts and each side knows that. It then becomes a question of playing the hand that's dealt. So are we there yet? We'll only know for sure in retrospect, but there were signs of it today in both campaigns. Two reports tonight. First, CNN's John King with the president.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): In campaign speak, you call this message discipline.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our economy's been growing at rates as fast as any in nearly 20 years.

KING: Not a mention of new questions about his National Guard service and newly discovered memos from then Lieutenant Bush's commanding officer, Democrats say contradict the president's long- standing assertion that he met all requirements and received no special treatment.

SEN. TOM HARKIN (D) IOWA: This is about George W. Bush not doing his duty in the National Guard and then lying to the American people about it.

KING: Bush aides call it recycled partisan garbage and say at least for now, the president has no intention of addressing the issue. Instead, his focus was on jobs and taxes and for good reason. Pennsylvania is a dead heat and a new CNN poll shows the state's voters give Democratic John Kerry an 8-point edge on handling the economy. So with the optimistic talk, things are getting better, comes a warning they could get worse.

BUSH: You drive a car, Senator Kerry's voted for higher taxes on you. If you have a job, he's voted for higher taxes on you.

KING: It is a case the Bush campaign believes has appeal across the Republic spectrum, first in the moderate Philadelphia suburbs and then in the most conservative western Pennsylvania. Stop for lunch at the Coney Island in gritty Johnstown and there is talk of personal bankruptcy, nostalgia for the glory days of big steel and dismay at a campaign that to many has too much bite and too little beef.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's too much back-stabbing between both of them. And it's turning me away from both of them. It's exactly what it's doing.

KING: Little appetite the owner says, for more talk of what the candidates did or didn't do 30 plus years ago.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're not really concerned with that. They're more concerned about the security of their country and the economy.

KING: Johnstown's unemployment rate is just shy of 7 percent. Bernadette Brinso (ph) lost her job last month and is losing patience with all this talk of Vietnam.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's just nothing here anymore because the steel mills and the mines shut down. People down here don't have a chance.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: The voters may not like all this talk of Vietnam, all this finger-pointing and the other attacks in the campaign, but don't look for the tone to change anytime soon. The Bush and the Kerry campaigns don't agree on much, but they do agree on this, negative campaigning works. Aaron?

BROWN: Yes, they do, and yes, it does. I want one of those hot dogs and now to the question.

KING: Not bad.

BROWN: When people -- when you're talking to voters in Pennsylvania and elsewhere I suppose, how often did they bring up the economy as opposed to terror or did they bring up terror, the war, and the rest first?

KING: It was interesting in this diner today. Most bring up the economy first. And in this community, it's easy to see why if you drive by. A lot of closed store fronts, a lot of people who say the manufacturing jobs, the mill jobs are all gone. But it's very interesting. Several voters brought up the terrorist attacks in Russia last week and said that that has raised their concerns about terrorism here in the United States again as well. So as we approach the September 11th anniversary, it could be events overseas that are reminding, at least some voters in this community that there's still a risk. BROWN: John, thank you, senior White House correspondent John King on the road again tonight. On to the campaign of John Kerry now in Iowa though in some respects it could be the president's campaign or any politician's campaign two months before Election Day. One challenge out of many is to control what is written and said about you, since you can't literally control the press, you do what you can. Say only what you want reported and avoid at all costs that which might get in the way. Or to put in a sentence, like the president, John Kerry isn't talking to the national press these days. Here's CNN's Candy Crowley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Bush has repeatedly insisted that he did his duty. We now know this isn't true.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we really wanted to be a fighter pilot, he would have gone where all the fighter pilots were, which was Vietnam.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As Washington Democrats exploded over the issue of George Bush's service record, John Kerry was in Iowa talking health care to a 91-year-old veteran.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: She remembers her service number. That's something you never forget, your service number. It's ingrained in you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: George did.

KERRY: No matter what.

CROWLEY: It was an opening and the senator looked sorely tempted.

KERRY: Well, moving on!

CROWLEY: It is the beauty of being top dog. You can talk when you want --

KERRY: You ask me a question, I will tell you exactly where I stand on everything, except the outcome of the Cyclones Hawkeye game. That's -- that's off limits.

CROWLEY: And you can not talk when you want.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator, have you put the Swift boat (INAUDIBLE) behind you now at this point?

CROWLEY: Except for the occasional presentation of a birthday cake and the hard to ignore question on whether the war on terror is winnable, there is little contact between Kerry and the traveling press corps, a strategic decision based on how the election will be won, state by state, media market by media market. At nearly every stop Kerry grants one-on-one interviews to local media. The dynamic is less contentious than a news conference. The questions are more likely to give him a chance to localize the message, kind of like niche campaigning. KERRY: Win the peace. We're spending $200 billion and counting that now doesn't go into Minnesota health care.

CROWLEY: The candidate who promises monthly news conferences as president held his last full-blown news conference August 2nd. Asked about the nearly 40-day dry spell and aides said, we don't want to step on our message. So the beat goes on. Candy Crowley, CNN, New Orleans.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Campaign today. Next to Iraq, American forces moving into Samara, until today, one those so-called no-go zones. They went in, accompanied by Iraqi police, the National Guardsmen. They convened the old American-backed city council which chose the mayor. Then the forces left, the way they went in, shaky progress, but progress, a commodity in painfully short supply just down the road. So reporting for us tonight again, CNN's Walter Rodgers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: This is what happens when Islamist fighters in Fallujah take human shields as protection against American air strikes. This is what happens to children in Fallujah when various intelligence sources tell the American military they know where Islamist fighters link to Abu Musab Zarqawi are hiding. The U.S. military says it regrets the civilian casualties from its precision bombing, but says the interim Iraqi government believes it had identified an Islamist command and control center that had been targeting Americans. The only body shown to the cameras at the hospital were Iraqi civilians. It's impossible to determine if the targeted Islamist insurgents were also killed.

This outraged Iraqi told our free-lance Iraqi cameraman that four women were killed, blown out of this house, he says. A dead baby was also dangling from the power line outside, he added. Iraq's health ministry says four children were killed and six adults. One anti-war Web site estimates 11,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in this war, although estimates vary widely. The Pentagon says it does not tally civilian casualties. Another Iraqi says, this is the false democracy Bush promised. In his words, he is the enemy of Islam.

In Talafar (ph) about 35 miles west of Mosul, the fighting has spread creating more refugees. One Iraqi doctor claims at least 17 people have been killed there and scores wounded. U.S. forces are trying to battle Islamic insurgents there, many of whom the Iraqi government believes came from Syria. The battle in Talafar is to retake the city from the Islamist fighters there.

Elsewhere, a previously unknown group linked to al Qaeda claims it has two 29-year-old Italian aide workers, punishment they say, for Italy standing with the United States in Iraq. This Italian journalist knows the women.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, they were targeted first of all because they were an easy target. And I would say today nobody's safe. (END VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: That feeling of not being safe is well known to anyone in Iraq today, the children in Fallujah, aide workers and journalists in Baghdad, U.S. army soldiers and of course Iraqi civilians. And there's no relief in sight. Aaron?

BROWN: Does this move into Samara today signify, do we believe, a change in tactics or a new phase, if you will?

RODGERS: Yes and no. I think this importance of the re-entry into Samara is this, that the United States is trying to regain a toe hold everywhere in the Sunni triangle except Fallujah. They've written Fallujah off. That's not going to happen. What they're trying to do is regain a toe hold so that when there are elections in Iraq either in December or January that perhaps the people in those towns, in the Sunni triangle will see it in their interest to get out and vote. Most important thing to remember about Samara though is that hours after the U.S. and Iraqi forces pulled out, the insurgents were back again patrolling the streets. Aaron?

BROWN: Sorry, just quickly if you can, is there any evidence that there is a campaign on in Iraq?

RODGERS: Not yet. U.S. officials are hoping that this will catch fire. There is preliminary jockeying at the political level. Caucuses, people are drawing up consensus lists. It hasn't caught fire in the public imagination yet, but the U.S. officials who are helping with this election say they really think that they can generate a buzz, and that buzz in the Iraqi public may give the move towards democracy or at least self-government, a shot in the arm. Aaron?

BROWN: Hope they get there. Thank you, Walter, Walter Rodgers in Baghdad. In the war on terrorism, two headlines from two date lines. First Indonesia. A bombing today in the capital of Jakarta. It happened at the Australian embassy. A car bomb so powerful the mushroom cloud could be seen for miles. At least nine people died. More than 180 people were injured, more than a dozen of them critically so. Australia's government believes a local group with connections to al Qaeda was to blame.

The second dateline is unknown. Al Qaeda's second in command appearing on videotape, on that tape, Ayman al Zawahiri claims that the United States is on the run in both Afghanistan and Iraq and with that, we turn to CNN's Nic Robertson, who joins us tonight from Atlanta. Nic, as many of you know, most of you know by now, has spent most of the last three years covering al Qaeda, Afghanistan and the rest.

So we make of this tape, a kind of predictable - it's almost the anniversary of.

ROBERTSON: I think so Aaron. I mean look, it's coming out around September 11th. They try and have a videotaped message like this every September 11th. This is the first time, however, that it's actually been an on-camera message, rather than a videotape with an audio transcript to go with it. In between in the year, there are releases on the Internet. There are audiotapes but they really try and make a special out of the anniversary of September 11th, and that appears to be exactly what they've done this year.

Twice in just the first 15 minutes tonight, we've used the phrase "linked to al Qaeda" to talk about groups involved in one bad action or another. What does that mean when they say they're "linked to al Qaeda"?

ROBERTSON: Well, perhaps it is one way that al Qaeda has been successful in its own terms or Osama bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri have been successful is the spread of this ideology, this sort of global jihad against the United States, against the western world, against some of the Christian world, if you will. So this -- it's that type of ideology that I think people are talking about. When say related, these groups have a common ideology. That's what we're seeing in action.

BROWN: So it is not that they are linked by -- it's not that bin Laden is necessarily approving of or financing, or it is simply they believe the same things and use the same methods?

ROBERTSON: Use the same points of reference. They've interpreted the Koran in a very extreme way and they see what's happening to Muslims around the world where the United States, perhaps where Israel is involved. Certainly this is what I was being told when I was in Saudi Arabia recently, that they interpret those things in a very negative light.

BROWN: And finally, I am sorry, is that a post-Afghanistan phenomena or did that exist prior to 9/11, prior to the war with Afghanistan, prior to the war with Iraq for that matter?

ROBERTSON: There's more anger out there in the Middle East, Aaron, post-Afghanistan, post-September 11th, and indeed, post-the occupation in Iraq than there was before. That's been my experience recently.

BROWN: Nic, it's good to see you; it's been a while. Thank you Nic Robertson in Atlanta tonight.

Ahead on the program, preserving the relics of the World Trade Center and the stories behind them. We take a break first in New York. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Small anti-war demonstration in New York, Columbus Circle, just outside our building. There's a small police presence there as well. That looks to me like no harm, no foul, everyone behaving as they should.

Regular viewers of this program know that we do not believe that every segment needs to be a debate, that the test of fairness here is applied over days, not minutes. We point that out now because we are well aware the interview you are about to hear is a full-throated attack on the Bush administration's foreign policy. The balance will come and it will another night soon. That said we talked to Democratic Senator Joe Biden this afternoon. The senator wrote a long and thoughtful explanation of his party's foreign policy differences with the administration in today's "Wall Street Journal."

The senator supported the war in Iraq, and has been a strong critic of the execution. It is fair to say he delivered his views with considerable passion.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: There are couple, perhaps three or four pillars that make up your description of Democratic foreign policy. You say, we are more alone now than in any time in our recent history. I believe the administration would quarrel well that.

SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN (D) DELAWARE: I don't know anyone in the world who thinks this United States of America's judgment is sound right now. The problem here is most of the rest of the world thinks President Bush's judgment about how to deal with the common concerns and common threats is not sound.

BROWN: One of the arguments you make is that this approach has made us, all of us, less safe, that we are less safe in the war on terror than we would be if we were less unilateralist, how?

BIDEN: The president of the United States has tried to get people to come in and help us in Iraq, help us train the Iraqis, because our exit strategy is for them to have an army, for them to have a police force so they can sustain a free government. He's had no luck in doing that. The reason he's had no luck is people don't want to play with him. It's clearly in our interest if we had other people willing to help us. It's clearly within our interest if we were going to have a better bit of cooperation on how to deal with the one existential threat to us and it's not terrorism that's a tactic. It's this notion that we are, as a people, threatened by a radical fundamentalism that is metastasizing and when we're unable to make our case to the rest of the world particularly to the Muslim world, what happens? We end up finding, they get sympathy and they get sheltered. You know, these guys are beyond the reach of reason. But the sea in which they swim, those people are not beyond the reach of reason.

BROWN: But isn't it fair to say that whether it works out this way or not, that administration's view of Iraq is that if we can create a democratic Iraq, and if we can encourage somehow democracies in other Middle East countries that you're right, the absolute crazies are going to be absolute crazies, but the sea in which they swim will be far more calmer?

BIDEN: The fundamental distinction is a judgment one. The neocons and Mr. Cheneys of the world believe we could impose democracy in Iraq.

BROWN: Just take for a second that everybody on the planet agrees with you, the problem is that die is cast. We are there.

BIDEN: Precisely.

BROWN: It is broken.

BIDEN: Absolutely. Must be fixed.

BROWN: Ultimately it has to be fixed.

BIDEN: We've been saying we should put a much greater effort into a real training program for Iraqi police, a real training program for the United States army. A year ago, a year and a half ago I pointed out that an eight week training program for a police force in Iraq was a joke. What did they do immediately after? Saddam's statue came down and the French and the Germans said they'd help us train forces. They said, no, no, no, we don't need you. We don't need you.

What did they do in terms of the investment of dollars in Iraq? What did they do in terms of the number of troops in Iraq? When I was and John McCain saying you need more troops in Iraq a year ago. The guy who was the controller general for the Pentagon, the secretary of defense sent to Iraq and reported this time last summer, he said the window of opportunity is closing. We must act quickly along the following ways. They did everything wrong. They're not bad guys. They're ideologues and what are they doing now?

I got back six, eight weeks ago now from Baghdad. I went with a very smart hard-core conservative Republican from South Carolina and with Tom Daschle. We went and visited the training program for the Iraqi police, critical to our exit strategy in Jordan. Midway through it, I looked at our briefers including an American, tell us the truth, this program ain't worth a damn is it! They said, you're right, it's not worth a damn. What have they done? Have you listened to one piece of advice from anyone other than Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Wolfowitz?

BROWN: It's a very provocative piece in today's "Wall Street Journal." People who are interested in your view and how the Democrats view all of this, might want to take a look at it. It's always good to see you, sir.

BIDEN: We can still win. We can still win the peace.

BROWN: Thank you, senator. I hope you are right. Thank you, sir.

BIDEN: We have to be.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Senator Joe Biden, Democrat from Delaware. We talked with him this afternoon and as we said, we'll do a follow-up on the other side in the days ahead.

Still ahead, questions about the president's military service all of those years ago and answers that appear to produce even more questions. (INAUDIBLE) And the Russian nightmare told through the eyes of a young child. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Last night we said this is the story that some people can't get enough of and others wish would just go away. It didn't today. The "Weekly Standard," the conservative opinion magazine posted a provocative piece today saying that experts, if contacted, believe it is now more likely than not that new memos fueling the latest round of stories over President Bush's National Guard service are fake. CBS, which obtained the documents stands by them. Some fun this now. While all of that is being sorted out, Judy Woodruff tonight on the latest.

JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: One fact that no one disputes is, 21-year-old George W. Bush enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard in May 1968 and was honorably discharged in October 1973.

He trained to fly F-102 fighter jets. And military records released only this week show that Bush ranked in the middle of his training class. But in the summer of 1972, then-Lieutenant Bush was suspended from flying. Newly unearthed documents from the personnel file of commanding officer Jerry Killian reveal why. Bush not only missed a required physical exam, but he -- quote -- "made no attempt to meet his training certification." Another Killian memo says Bush had discussed how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November.

It was during those months that Bush went to Alabama, working on the U.S. Senate campaign of a family friend and transferring to a Guard unit in Montgomery. But witnesses to his attendance are almost nonexistent. And official records show a five-month gap in his pay for drills. That continues to fuel the Democrats' accusation that Bush was a no-show for duty.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. TOM HARKIN (D), IOWA: Americans deserve to know the truth. And we won't know the whole truth until the president himself meets these facts head on.

WOODRUFF: The White House says the president met his obligations.

DAN BARTLETT, WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: People are calling themselves the experts who actually have partisan differences who are supporting the President Bush's opponent who are throwing these be allegations.

WOODRUFF (on camera): When Bush was discharged to go to Harvard Business School, he was obligated to serve another year in the Air Force Reserves, but there's no record that he signed up with a selective Reserve unit in Boston. Instead, the White House said that Bush registered as an inactive reservist with a unit in Denver. (voice-over): Which leaves the question, how did Bush get into the Guard in the first place? A Texas politician is talking publicly for the first time about how he pulled strings for Bush.

Former Texas House Speaker and Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes, a Democrat supporting John Kerry, told CBS' "60 Minutes" he called the head of the Guard in 1968 at the request of a Bush family friend. Bush's father then represented Houston in Congress.

BEN BARNES, FMR. TEXAS LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: And I readily willing to call and get those young men into the National Guard that were friends of mine and supporters of mine, and I did it.

WOODRUFF: A professor who taught Bush at Harvard Business School in the early '70s adds his student confided he got special treatment.

PROF. YOSHI TSURUMI, BARUCH COLLEGE; He admitted to me that to avoid the Vietnam draft, he had his dad, he said dad's friends skip him through the long waiting list to get into the Texas National Guard.

WOODRUFF: President Bush and his campaign maintain that neither he nor his father ever asked for any special treatment to get into the Guard.

Judy Woodruff, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We'll see what tomorrow's chapter brings.

It used to be the single most dreaded sentenced any public servant could expect to hear was, Mike Wallace is waiting to see you. To that, we might now add, Kitty Kelley wants to write a book about you. She has about the president and the Bush family, not an authorized biography, not hardly. Does it speak the truth and nothing but the truth? That's for historians and maybe even the courts. Who knows. But does it arrive with just a little hype? That part's easy.

Here's CNN's Howard Kurtz.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HOWARD KURTZ, "RELIABLE SOURCES" (voice-over): When Kitty Kelley writes a book, it's usually big news, when it's about Jackie Kennedy, Nancy Reagan or Princess Diana and the British royals.

KITTY KELLEY, AUTHOR: This is a controversial family and it's a controversial book.

KURTZ: That was Kelley talking about Britain's preeminent family seven years ago, but now the celebrity biographer is taking on an American royal family of sorts, including the president of the United States at the height of his reelection campaign. The result? Well, the fireworks have started even before the book is released on Monday. It's called "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty" and contains lots of unflattering gossip and allegations about George W. Bush based in part on unnamed sources. Most explosive are Kelley's charges about alleged past drug use by Bush, a subject the president has declined to address in the past by saying simply that he was once young and irresponsible.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There's a game in Washington. It's called gotcha. It's a game where we float a rumor and make the candidate prove a negative. And I'm not playing the game.

KURTZ: One of Kelley's named sources is Sharon Bush, the former wife of presidential brother Neil Bush. But Sharon Bush denies ever having said what the book attributes to her, that George W. Bush used cocaine at Camp David while her father was president. That's a falsehood, she says. But Kelley supported by Sharon Bush's former public relations man, Lou Colasuonno, who was at lunch with the two women last year when the subject came up.

Now the counterattack is under way. White House communications chief Dan Bartlett calls the book garbage. And Republicans are circulating examples of what they say as past shoddy reporting by Kelley, her assertions that Ronald Reagan was a date rapist who once paid for a girlfriend's abortion and that Nancy Reagan once had an affair with Frank Sinatra, which drew an annoyed response from the 40th president.

RONALD REAGAN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't think a church would be a proper place for me to use the words I'd have to use in discussing that.

KURTZ: Like most intimate matter, these kind of charges, who slept with whom, are hard to prove or disprove.

So how are the media handling Kelley's controversial book? NBC's Matt Lauer will interview her for three straight mornings on "The Today Show." And Kelley is tentatively booked on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News as well. But "Newsweek," which got an advanced look at the manuscript, passed on doing a story, editor Mark Whitaker saying he wasn't comfortable with Kelley's reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KURTZ: Should journalists be serving as publicity agents for this sort of doggedly researched gossip? Can you really fact-check a book in a five- or 10-minute interview? We'll all have to reserve judgment until we see the book. But the bubbling media controversy, including the fact that I'm talking about it here, will undoubtedly propel Kitty Kelley toward another best-seller -- Aaron.

BROWN: Part of the problem for us, I mean, literally us here, is that they come to you and they say -- and we were aware certainly there was tremendous hype about the book and a tremendous first press run on the book, highly unusual -- they say, do you want the interview? We say, yes. But you haven't seen the book. In some respects, until you see the book, you really don't know.

KURTZ: That's exactly the box that all of us get into. Television, as we know, a highly competitive business. Everyone wants to get the hot book, the hot author. Kitty Kelley certainly has a reputation for making headlines with some of her past books.

And yet you've committed to talk to her and you haven't been able to make a judgment because Doubleday hasn't put out the book out, which adds to the pre-publication drama. You haven't been able to make a judgment about its journalistic value.

BROWN: Right. And so like commitments I make the guests I suppose all the time, I feel perfectly comfortable backing out if I'm not comfortable with the subject matter. But that's the trap. And that's sort of where we find ourselves.

And if we were to back out, for example, as "Newsweek" did, that then becomes another piece that propels the hype of the book.

KURTZ: And, similarly, when I call the White House for comment on a book that the White House officials haven't seen, that I haven't been able to obtain, and they say it's garbage and fiction, well, you know, they're obviously trying to discredit the book in advance.

But we can't get into the specifics, because no one has seen the specifics. And yet there's this sort of media echo chamber effect. So you get headlines, "White House Denies Past Bush Drug Use," when, again, I don't know what evidence is. The book may be very good, but I can't say that right now.

BROWN: Nor can I. Howard, thank you.

KURTZ: Thank you.

BROWN: Howard Kurtz of "The Washington Post" and host of CNN's "RELIABLE SOURCES." He's got a long title.

Still to come on the program, bits and pieces that were once part of the World Trade Center soon to be preserved for all to see, as we approach the third anniversary. And, as always, we wrap things up with your morning papers.

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In Beslan, Russia, details are emerging each day now about the bloodbath that destroyed so many lives last week. Today, security officials say they have identified 10 of the terrorists who laid sieged to the school where more than 300 hostages died, most of them children.

Officials say six of the killers were from Chechnya. None so far has been identified as Arab, despite early claims to the contrary. Details are emerging as well of the terror that went on inside of the school, what those children endured, what those who survived saw. Reporting the story for us tonight, Bill Neely of Britain's ITN.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL NEELY, ITV REPORTER (voice-over): Farniyev knows he's lucky to be alive, one of the very few who escaped the carnage in his school gym, a horror to which his mind often returns. This is Georgy a week ago, sitting at the feet of a terrorist, bombs directly above him, the trigger a bomb in front of him, the masked gunmen showing what might kill him as Georgy cowers in terror.

"The gunmen were scary," he told me. "I kept very quiet and kept my hands up like this or this." He told me he saw adults being killed on the first day. Terrorists threatened to kill him. Then the gym exploded.

"Some people were torn to pieces. I was OK, but then a grenade blew up and I was hit in the leg." From here, he limped away and hid in a bookcase. "I still don't understand," he says, "how I'm alive."

His mother doesn't either. Convinced he was dead, she searched the body bags in the morgue. "Horrible isn't the word for it," she says. Remarkably, Georgy's 7-year-old cousin lived through the massacre, too. And today, they were flown out of Beslan for more treatment with 20 other young survivors.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: I'm 12.

NEELY (on camera): You're 12. And how are you?

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: I'm fine.

NEELY: Fine.

(voice-over): Allah (ph) is punctured with shrapnel. Ten-year- old Sara (ph) was burned in the gym. She's having terrible nightmares. Shedar (ph) is 4 and won't go anywhere now without the toy gown on his pillow.

Some were able to walk on the plane, just. Most others, looking very vulnerable, were stretchered on.

(on camera): The hospitals around Beslan simply can't cope with the numbers of injured and the treatment they need. So these children are going on a plane for the first time in their lives, a journey they'd gladly swap for life as it was eight days ago.

(voice-over): They've been hostages, then targets. Now, once again, they were just frightened, the survivors of a mass murder, Georgy happy to be leaving Beslan behind.

But what of the others in the terrorist video who sat with Georgy in the gym? Sema Alicova (ph) stares at the camera. Beside her, 12- year-old Vera Grieva (ph) clasps her hands. Sema was one of the first to be buried alongside her daughter. Vera died with her 14-year-old brother. All the women and girls in this image are dead, too, which makes Georgy Farniyev's survival all the more remarkable.

Bill Neely, ITV News, Beslan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It's a profoundly human impulse to chronicle what befalls us, the good and the horrible alike. Making sure we forget neither is one of the ways we keep our humanity alive. When it's completed, the World Trade Center Memorial will commemorate all that was lost three years ago on that gloriously sunny day.

Curators have been carefully preserving the relics for the museum planned for the site, roughly 900 objects so far, all bearing witness, all with stories to tell.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARTHOLOMEW VOORSANGER, WORLD TRADE CENTER CURATOR: Every time I walk in here, it all comes back. This is all that is left of the World Trade Center. What you see here, this is it. We wanted to save the steel to explain how this project had been built.

After the second day, there was that, a fragment of tower one that was six stories high. And then these pieces are a piece of the shard. This weighs tons and tons and tons. This was the 110-story tower collapsing. This is a column that was actually torqued. There's no equipment on Earth that could curve this.

STEVEN WEINTRAUB, WORLD TRADE CENTER CONSERVATOR: I'm a born and raised New Yorker. I saw the Twin Towers being built to last forever. It was one of the foundation columns that held the entire tower up.

It's 36 feet long. It's about four feet wide. And it's about two feet deep. And it's roughly about 60 tons. What's important about this is not so much the steel. It's actually the surface. And it's all of the applied graffiti that was put on by the rescue workers during the time after 9/11. And that's really the story of the last column.

What you see is the injection of resin underneath the paint layer to adhere it back down. This is very much a technique that we use in museums.

VOORSANGER: These objects are vehicles that were just totally destroyed with the towers, one of the towers falling on them. The fire engines, the ambulances, all of them tell different stories because you knew in some cases people were inside.

WEINTRAUB: Here you have a section of concrete. Here you have a section of concrete. So this is a floor. This is a floor. And this is what the entire floor collapsed to in between.

VOORSANGER: It was one of the major transportation hubs, over 100,000 people coming in there daily. And this, of course, is some of the signage that characterized coming off the subway.

I don't know eventually what a memorial will become. But I just want your grandchildren to go there and become emotionally connected to this event.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That's the work of CNN New York Bureau producer Phil Hirschkorn.

Lots of 9/11-related items on the program tomorrow. We'll take a look at morning papers next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, time to check morning papers around the country and around the world, throw in a few weeklies, small-town weeklies today, because I like them. And I get to do that sometimes.

"Christian Science Monitor" starts us off. "Normal, But Not the Same." That's a good headline, isn't it? "Three Years After 9/11, Foreign Affairs and Safety Loom Larger." I guess.

"Washington Times" leads with -- well, they leave with "Ivan the Terrible," the hurricane I guess, and this provocative headline, "Rounding Up All Illegals Not Realistic." But up at the top, "Bush's Guard Service Recycled at Election Time." Kind of an edgy headline, that. "White House Accuses Kerry of Coordinating Guard Attacks." Not sure what evidence is, because I haven't had a chance to read the article. And "New Documents Part of Old Democratic Strategy," the two stories related. So that's the take of "The Washington Times."

"The Houston Express News." "House Hits Overtime Rewrite." The House has a rare victory for labor these days. Got enough Republicans to join with Democrats to stop -- I'm not sure it actually will -- the change in the overtime laws that have been so disputed.

"The Philadelphia Inquirer." Campaign was there, the president today. "Election Rhetoric Turning Rougher. Sharp Words Fly." If it gets any rougher, they'll be shooting at each other. Not really. I hope not really.

"The Lovely County Citizen." That's Lovely County, Arkansas, I believe. "Suspicious Parcel Mail to President at E.S. Post Office. Telephone Tip Leads to Envelope From the Prophet." They've got a kind of terrorism story related there. But I like this one down here. The citizen of the week is Alexis Anderson (ph), who put up a lemonade stand and gave all the money, 85 bucks, to the local humane society.

All right, let's go on to the "Chicago Sun-Times." The weather, by the way, in Chicago -- do I ever mention that?

(CHIMES)

BROWN: Thank you. "Sterling" tomorrow on Friday September 10, 80 degrees in the windy city.

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Tomorrow on the program, we revisit a number of the people we met in days after 9/11, check up on how they're doing. We hope you'll join us for that and much more.

Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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