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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Questions Raised About Bush's Guard Service Documents Released by CBS; Jamaica Slammed by Hurricane Ivan; Hunt for bin Laden Continues

Aired September 10, 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.
I'm stuck tonight by what we've lost since 9/11 three years ago, not what we lost that day, the horrific loss of life, the sense of invulnerability, innocence some say but what we've lost since.

Conceding that memory isn't always exactly right, it seems we've lost our sense of that which binds us. We saw each other differently in those days. We were kinder to each other, a little more thoughtful.

We loved more, hugged harder, valued life more because we all lost so much. We understood we had common dreams and common enemies and our enemies were not each other. That I think has evaporated.

I read it in the notes I see each day. I hear it on the radio and on the campaign trail. I see it all the time. There's nothing about 9/11 I miss but in those horrible days after, days of loss and grief and fear, there was something wonderful as well and I miss that a lot.

We'll talk a lot about 9/11 tonight on this night before the third anniversary but the whip begins in the here and now with yet another twist in the story that's been the headline story of the week. CNN's Jeanne Meserve has that headline in Washington -- Jeanne.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, CBS News launched a spirited defense tonight about the authenticity of documents which appear to make the case that President Bush received preferential treatment in the National Guard in the early 1970s but a number of experts are raising questions bearing on whether the documents are genuine or fakes -- Aaron.

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

The Caribbean next where Hurricane Ivan is bearing down on the island of Jamaica, CNN's Karl Penhaul comes to us from Kingston on the video phone with a headline -- Karl.

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In the last few minutes, Hurricane Ivan has begun lashing ashore and begun lashing the city of Kingston and, as it does, Jamaican gangs go on looting rampages around the capital -- Aaron.

BROWN: Karl, thank you.

And three years after 9/11 Osama bin Laden is still at large. None of our correspondents has followed this story as closely as Nic Robertson, who is stateside tonight, Nic, a headline from you.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, when you begin to analyze closely why hasn't Osama bin Laden been caught, you come up with a lot more questions than you do answers -- Aaron.

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

Much of the program centers tonight around the anniversary of 9/11, as you would imagine, the politics of 9/11, how that day three years ago is central to almost everything we do politically.

And we revisit some old friends tonight, the human faces of this terrible tragedy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHEILA BOWDEN, MOTHER OF THOMAS BOWDEN: Nothing in this lifetime can prepare you for the loss of a child. We expect to live to be an old age and our children are going to bury us, you know. We're not going for that role.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Their lives three years later, all that and more in the hour ahead.

But we begin with a question of what is real and what is not. Are the documents CBS news obtained raising new questions about President Bush's time in the National Guard real or are they forgeries? And, on that question, there is no easy answer.

CBS aired a spirited defense of the documents and the process it used to authenticate them tonight. Other experts disagree and so at the end of the day only two things are certain. The dispute remains unresolved and the focus is no longer on what the documents say but who actually wrote them.

Here's CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE (voice-over): Are the CBS documents, purported written by Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian in the early '70s the real thing or forgeries? CBS says the documents were vetted by independent experts and is standing by its story.

DAN RATHER, CBS NEWS: I believe the witnesses and the documents are authentic. We wouldn't have gone to air if they had not been.

MESERVE: Forensic document experts contacted by CNN said they would need to see the original documents to reach a definitive conclusion but one said they were very probably computer generated. In fact, using Microsoft Word, CNN was able to manufacture a near perfect match for one.

GERALD KAPLAN, TYPEWRITER EXPERT: And then continue typing.

MESERVE: Gerald Kaplan, an expert on IBM's Selectric composer models, says there was a matching font style in the early '70s but he finds it unlikely that a lieutenant colonel would have gone through the laborious process of centering lines the way they are in the documents.

KAPLAN: It's not easy. In fact, you know, based on the user's guide it's about six steps in order to do it.

MESERVE: Superscripting "TH" as in 187th in Alabama is also a difficult multi-step process.

KAPLAN: It just seems unreasonable that he would have one of these machines sitting at his desk.

MESERVE: There are instances of superscripting in verified Bush National Guard records but it is unclear if those documents were generated on the same typewriter.

Also, most '70s typewriters gave each letter the same amount of space but the CBS documents appear to use proportional spacing which gives a "W" let's say more space than an "L." Other experts say this signature on the CBS document is not consistent with other authentic signatures of Jerry Killian's.

GIDEON EPSTEIN, FORENSIC EXPERT: They all have loops, very good loops in them and they're fairly large in the Killian that we see. On that particular document we don't see that kind of handwriting characteristics at all.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: Friday evening CBS aired an interview with an expert who believes the signatures do match. All the experts agree it is impossible to do a conclusive analysis when documents have been photocopied and faxed and downloaded and CBS acknowledges it is working from copies too, though not as many generations removed from the original -- Aaron.

BROWN: Go back to the guy, for a second, who analyzed the handwriting. Does he say flat out that it's not the same signature?

MESERVE: No, he does not say that. He says he can see various things in the formation of the letters and in the layout of the signature which raise questions in his mind but he and all the other experts say what they have to see is the original document to come to a conclusive conclusion.

BROWN: So, given that nobody that we know, and apparently that includes CBS, has the original document or documents are we left with what will be ultimately an undecided? MESERVE: Apparently so. All of the experts we saw said they needed to see the real thing. That's the only way that they could do a determination. They said if you looked at the real thing you could tell whether or not it was done by a typewriter. You'd see strike marks.

You also would be able to do an analysis of the ink and of the watermark that might be able to date the document and you'd be able to get a better look at that signature. All those things would be helpful. All of those things are just not possible when you're looking at some sort of copy.

BROWN: Jeanne, thank you.

MESERVE: You bet.

BROWN: What a story this.

On we go tonight to Ivan, Ivan the Terrible. The National Hurricane Center is calling the storm, fast approaching Jamaica, an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane.

The eye of the storm is just south of Kingston and Ivan's winds, now reaching 150 miles an hour, are already pounding the island where a state of emergency has been declared. We're a couple of days away from it making landfall in the United States, Jamaica the focus now.

CNN's Karl Penhaul joins us again on the video phone from Kingston -- Karl.

PENHAUL: Hi there, Aaron.

We spent much of the day down by Kingston Harbor waiting for Hurricane Ivan to blow ashore. It was a long wait but that wait is most definitely over now. Just as you were going on air, Hurricane Ivan, the hurricane force winds started to lash Kingston.

They brought a lot of rain with them, torrential rain, and those winds now we're seeing them build up. They're really beginning to blow. As we drove in darkness from the harbor back to the area where we are now, a little inland, we saw trees down.

Power lines were already coming down in this winds and if those were (UNINTELLIGIBLE) still relatively light winds it only begs the question what really is going to happen now, now that the hurricane force winds have really picked up?

Also, government officials are telling us that more than 5,000 people are now in shelters in Kingston. They've moved from low-lying areas to try and flee the risk of flood.

Another thing that we noted as we were moving back to our fallback position, Jamaican gangs already on the street. They're looting. They're looting gas stations. They're looting commercial areas. As we passed a gas station, a police unit there had been called out and only minutes before had been engaged in a gunfight with that Jamaican gang taking advantage of the damage being caused now by Hurricane Ivan -- Aaron.

BROWN: Karl, we'll let you go seek shelter and see what the next 12 hours or so brings. Thank you, Karl Penhaul in Kingston, Jamaica.

From the terrifying to the pure terror now and the hunt for the world's most wanted man. Three years ago Osama bin Laden was a terrorist at large, a name most Americans did not know, though there were plenty of reasons to know it.

September 11, 2001 changed all that, of course, except for the part of him being a terrorist at large, which he remains today even as many of his cohorts have been captured or killed, even as his organization has changed. To most of us justice for 9/11 will never really be served until Osama bin Laden is caught or killed but when?

Here's CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Could Osama bin Laden's friend, Khalid al-Harbi (ph), who turned himself in two months ago, help net the al Qaeda leader? Or, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, bin Laden's military planner, arrested in early 2003? Or, even these suspected terrorists picked up in Pakistan in the last few months? Results so far would seem to indicate none of the above. The world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, is still at large.

PETER BERGEN, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: People use the phrase, you know, his personal signature trail has gone cold. We've sort of hit a brick wall.

ROBERTSON: A new video message by his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, seems to indicate both men feel confident and safe wherever they are. The last good fix on bin Laden was Tora Bora in Afghanistan from where he is suspected of slipping into western Pakistan. That was three years ago. Many intelligence analysts suspect he may still be in Pakistan, a suggestion Pakistan's military resents.

MAJ. GEN. SHARUKAT SULTAN, PAKISTAN ARMY SPOKESMAN: I don't think that anyone has specific information. Not any specific intelligence has been passed to us about it.

ROBERTSON: Al Qaeda operatives have been hiding in Pakistan's teeming cities or at least that's where they've been arrested. Another possible refuge is with the Islamic rebels in Kashmir, the mountainous region bordering India on the other side of Pakistan.

BERGEN: It's clear that bin Laden and the Kashmiri militant groups have been closely intertwined for many years and bin Laden may well take advantage of that.

ROBERTSON: Whatever the calculation, U.S. troops are still knocking on doors on the Afghan side of the Pakistan border. Their formal commander perhaps has the best assessment of catching bin Laden.

GEN. TOMMY FRANKS, FORMER CENTCOM COMMANDER: There are millions of homes in the region where bin Laden is thought of as a hero and he'll be protected. He's a hard target.

ROBERTSON: Undermining morale of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan is the lack of help they perceive on Pakistan's side of the border. That's now how the Pakistani Army sees it.

SULTAN: In Afghanistan, I would say that it certainly needs much more effort than what is going on in Afghanistan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON: Finger pointing aside, the hunt seems to be bogging down in so many questions and just not a whole lot of answers -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, it's just -- it's remarkable I suppose all the attention on one man and that it's just gone dead cold. The first time you and I talked was three years ago tomorrow. You were in Kabul. There was tracer fire in the air. We all wondered what it was. When you think back on what's gone on in the last three years how the world has changed, yours and ours, what do you think?

ROBERTSON: Incredibly, it's changed phenomenally. Our jobs have become, I would say, much harder. Journalists find themselves more caught up in the -- in the crossfire than they ever did before but I think the world that we travel in as journalists, particularly in the Middle East, is a much more divided place than it used to be. The extremists seem to become much more extreme. It's changed significantly -- Aaron.

BROWN: When you say the extremists have become more extreme, I mean in due respect it's hard to be more extreme than 9/11. Is it that there are more of them that the last three years we have seen an increase in the number of young men, mostly young men, who are willing to do this?

ROBERTSON: That seems to be the case. It's hard to sort of get empirical facts for it. The ideology of Osama bin Laden does seem to have spread but, at the same time, I think intelligence agencies have become much more capable and aware of the threat that exists.

They've been able to arrest people in London who appear to be perhaps on the verge of making attacks there quite recently through tip offs and people caught in Pakistan. So, it does seem that we're able to thwart some of these people who might be out to perpetrate attacks.

On the other hand, you know, there's still this spreading ideology. We still hear about al Qaeda and its affiliated groups making attacks in Indonesia maybe recently. BROWN: And, Pakistan in all of this is the most complicated of places because you have a government that does seem to be trying to do the right thing here, if you will, and a population 65 percent the last time I was there that had a favorable view of bin Laden.

ROBERTSON: And they still do. A lot of people still support bin Laden. I think perhaps sometimes when you analyze it they support the rhetoric but oftentimes they don't support the actions. They don't support al Qaeda's actions where innocent people get killed, so they don't support perhaps the methodology, more just the ideas.

But it is difficult for President Musharraf in the tribal region close to the border with Afghanistan. He has to tread very carefully. The army is going in there.

It's incrementally very, very slow to watch but the analysis is, if Musharraf pushes too hard the sort of conservative religious clerics there rise up with the tribes against them. The army has some support for those clerics. They rise up against Musharraf, so he does have a difficult path to tread here -- Aaron.

BROWN: He does indeed, Nic, good to see you, Nic Robertson, who joins us from Atlanta tonight.

The attack of 9/11, as you know, is the backdrop for every campaign stop because three years later the attack is the defining event our lifetime still. John Kerry was in Allentown, Pennsylvania today trying to drive home a message that even al Qaeda could arm itself with assault weapons if the ban on those weapons in the United States is not extended and it will not be come Monday.

The president was back at home after a rally in Georgia with Senator Zell Miller, his favorite Democrat. CNN's White House Correspondent John King spent part of the day with the president and part of the day with voters in Ohio where, like most places, terror and war define the election.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): This is the picture of middle America and a place where people say please and thank you and make a point of remembering even when the memory is hurt, maybe especially when the memory is hurt.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: September the 11th, when New York was so viciously attacked by the terrorists, it gave America a wakeup call.

KING: Three years later that defining day is a defining issue in the first presidential campaign since the terrorists struck.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This election will also determine how America responds to the continuing danger of terrorism.

KING: But waitress Margaret Redenbau (ph) is evidence of the September 11th effect on presidential politics. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a very strong Democrat but I don't feel that Kerry is a strong enough candidate when it comes to international issues.

KING: But it's no sure thing here for Mr. Bush and a visit to the VFW post brings proof the politics of 9/11 often work in Mr. Bush's favor but not always. Bill Eblen (ph) thinks back to 9/11 and also to last week's terrorist massacre in Russia.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This would be untimely to change our politics, our commander-in-chief, because they have their finger on the button. They know what's going on in the world and they know how to deal with it.

KING: Hal Blosser (ph), though, is leaning Democrat Kerry's way.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because he was in the military and since he was in the military I feel a little stronger toward him as a future president of the United States.

KING: For Mr. Bush, Iraq is a controversial subplot to the politics of terror. Senator Kerry calls it a war of choice, not necessity. Mr. Bush begs to differ.

BUSH: If he had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power and would still be a threat to the security of America and the world.

KING: Travis LaGuard (ph) is first hearing his Army unit would deploy in the first wave to Iraq.

I told my mom, I'm like, I hate president -- I hate Bush for this, man, because I don't want to go to war.

KING: Home now and often trembling from post combat stress disorder, LaGuard has a very different view.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, I'm a strong supporter of Bush. I'm a strong supporter in what happened over there. I'm a strong supporter in his decision and I'm glad he's sticking to his guns and he ain't pulled us out yet, even though we're suffering a lot of casualties.

KING: Three years later everyday routine still shaped by an unforgettable September morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not always going to be necessarily the simple wastebasket fire. It may be something along the lines of a political or a terrorist event, so it's not that it is at the forefront but it's still in the background and we're still thinking about it.

KING: Still thinking about it seven weeks to election Day, even in a small Ohio town where the college building is the old courthouse.

John King, CNN, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), Ohio.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ritual helps us get through difficult times and tomorrow ritual. The names of all 2,749 victims of the World Trade Center bombing will be read again by family members at Ground Zero.

Up next, the relatives of those lost reflect on life, life without a mother or a father, a husband or a wife.

This is a special edition of NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN (voice-over): From the 9/11 Commission report:

As United 93 left Newark, the flight's crew members were unaware of the hijacking from American Flight 11. Around 9:00, the FAA, American, and United were facing the staggering realization of apparent multiple hijackings.

At 9:03, they would see another aircraft strike the World Trade Center. At the same time, Boston Center realized that a message transmitted just before 8:25 by the hijacker pilot of American Flight 11 included the phrase, "We have some planes."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Tonight on the eve of 9/11, 2004, we look back and take measure. You might recall that two days after the World Trade Center collapsed we started our "Remembering" series focusing on those who were lot.

Many we met for the first time in handmade posters that sprang up throughout Manhattan and beyond hours after the attacks. Husbands and wives, sisters, brothers, mothers and fathers, nearly all of them grinning in the photographs from happier days, "Has anyone seen them" the posters pleaded?

Most of them, of course, never came home. We talked to their loved ones in those early days when hope at least to some still seemed possible. Those were hard conversations and three years later they still are.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REMEMBERING MICHAEL F. STABILE

MICHELE STABILE, DAUGHTER OF MICHAEL F. STABILE: My father is Michael F. Stabile. He's 50 years old from Staten Island, New York. You couldn't ask for a better father. I can't even describe it how good he is to us.

When I went away to college my first year, he wrote a letter to me saying how much he was going to miss me and that it took (UNINTELLIGIBLE) had me so I came along and my brother and my sister was just the greatest thing in the world for him. My mother always says, you know, he's just so proud of you, so proud of all of you.

Sometimes I forget that it really happened. It was like a dream almost but now it's -- and other times I think, you know, wow, three years ago it happened. I can't believe this happened to me.

It made us close definitely because we have to rely on each other now. There's only four of us and sometimes I think, God forbid, something happens to one of the three of them what am I going to do? So, I cling to my family more.

We moved out of the old house because there are too many memories there. We're trying to move on but I mean there's constant reminders. Every September 11th there's going to be a constant reminder.

Eventually I hope to think about it and not cry as often as I do sometimes. I mean there's always weddings to consider and my father will never walk me down the aisle. He'll never hold his grandchildren. So, it's hard when you think about things like that, so until those obstacles are met, it's hard to heal completely.

ANDREW BASS, HUSBAND OF FELICIA BASS: She was a great mom. She really devoted a lot of attention to Sebastian. Sebastian really started becoming her world. I'm going to miss, you know, having her there as we grow up, as he grows up and I miss my friend. I used to come home and talk about everything, even sometimes not talking just having her there just that's what I'm going to miss a lot.

It's hard not to think about Felicia because of the fact I see Sebastian every day and he's a mirrored image of Felicia. The fact that I have a son and myself being a young person there was just too many things crying out to me that, you know, if I stop living, if I just stay in this one point that's not only a disgrace to Felicia's memory but most importantly I no longer allow my own child to live and that I just couldn't do.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did you want one?

BASS: I was fortunate enough to get remarried. Karen and Sebastian have just bonded. I really feel that Felicia has sort of given her blessing on Karen and I's relationship. For Sebastian, I think it's extremely important that he sees daddy continue living and understands that things may happen but you should not cave in to your fears or your grief that life continues on.

REMEMBERING THOMAS BOWDEN

BOWDEN: He's going to be missed just for his presence. He was absolutely thrilled when he found out he was going to be a father for the first time. It was his little girl Sarah (ph) and then they had their new baby Allison (ph). I want them to know what a wonderful person he was, how loyal he was, how much he loved them and how much he looked forward to their being a part of his life. Nothing in this lifetime can prepare you for the loss of a child. It still surprises me how intense it feels how much it hurts even three years later. There have been a number of things that have sustained my husband and I. We do have a very strong faith and our church was there for us. We spend a lot of time with Tommy's daughters. They both have so much of him in them. There's a constant reminder of who he was.

I find it incredible that that much time has passed since that eventful day. You know we're approaching another milestone. It's another time to pause and reflect and I'm sure so many, many people are going through this same experience, you know, the remembering, and reflecting and sometimes getting past the thoughts of what life might have been and realizing what life is now and cherishing every moment of it. It goes too quickly.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Here in New York, a low-flying airplane still brings high anxiety. Even three years later, the reminders of September 11 are everywhere in this city.

We wondered if that was true outside the boroughs or outside the beltway. Do you out there in Twisp, Washington, or Connellsville, Pennsylvania, or Ely, Minnesota, see it the same way we do. And if not, how do you see it?

So from small-town, Texas, tonight, which could be small-town anywhere, here is CNN's Ed Lavandera.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The second weekend in September means it is time to shut down Main Street and let Grape Fest begin in Grapevine, Texas, just outside of Dallas. This annual festival is now forever intertwined with the September 11 anniversary.

CYNDI GOLDEN, TEXAS RESIDENT: You want people to regain their life and still travel and still do things, because otherwise the terrorists win. But you hope that they're doing so with the reverence, where they still can acknowledge and have a place in their heart for the victims.

DEAN THOMPSON, WWW.911FLIGHTCREWMEMORIAL.ORG: They're in that bag there.

LAVANDERA: Dean Thompson, whose wife works as a flight attendant, is making sure people don't forget the horror of that day. He's raising money to create five flight crew memorials around the country.

THOMPSON: We were there just as much as the New Yorkers. We just didn't have the dust and the noise and the heat that was transmitting out of that place.

LAVANDERA: As Thompson spoke, an airplane flew overhead. He didn't flinch and neither did anyone else here, just a few miles from Dallas' main airport. In New York, many residents will tell you they still stare at airplanes.

SUMMER ALBERS, FORMER NEW YORK CITY RESIDENT: is definitely the most frightening thing I've ever lived through.

LAVANDERA: Summer Albers watched the World Trade Center attacks from her home in Brooklyn and because of that moved back home to Texas.

ALBERS: I don't think IT is not the same as the people who live there and suffered with the firemen and their families. And to see all the postings on the window of missing loved ones everywhere, throughout the boroughs, is very different.

LAVANDERA: In Grapevine, most say they don't live in fear.

RAUL RODRIGUEZ, RESIDENT OF OKLAHOMA CITY: Oh, I definitely think we feel safer now because of that. And I think a lot of precautions have been taken. We are always on alert, like I said. And I just feel like the country is safer.

LAVANDERA: When you talk about 9/11 around Grape Fest, you'll find that people want to remember, but they also want to forget just how helpless they felt that day. And these families find the best cure for that feeling is by making a point of enjoying life on September 11.

Ed Lavandera, CNN, Grapevine, Texas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: You see it in Grapevine, Texas, and everywhere else in the country. September 11 changed us in ways big and small. And in the case of our politics, changed us very nearly completely.

Here is our senior analyst, Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): It was there at almost every moment at both conventions, from the solemn tributes to the fallen...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My husband Tom was a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93.

GREENFIELD: To the rhetoric of the candidates.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We will be able to tell the terrorists, you will lose and we will win.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Here, buildings fell. Here, a nation rose.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

GREENFIELD (on camera): But these words do not begin to measure how thoroughly the events of three years ago have come to dominate this campaign. The idea that September 11 changed everything may not be true universally, but it is almost certainly true about our politics.

(voice-over): That brief moment of bipartisan unity, of course, could not last, not in a nation that held elections in the midst of five major wars, and maybe it was inevitable that the worst attack on American soil ever would dominate our campaigns.

The images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein helped defeat Georgia Senator Max Cleland in 2002, and that helped put the Senate into Republican hands. The return of national security and defense to the center of the presidential campaign helped make John Kerry's Vietnam and Senate experience a powerful asset and blunted the outsider appeal of Howard Dean and John Edwards. And without the 9/11 war on terrorism concerns, would the Democratic Convention really have subordinated economic issues to the Vietnam hero pageantry?

KERRY: I defended this country as a young man, and I will defend it as president.

GREENFIELD: As for the Republicans, their entire convention focused on one overwhelming theme. In the post-9/11 world, any desire for change is simply too big a risk to take. Senator John McCain, who has opposed the president on everything from tax cuts to stem cell research, explicitly said those kinds of differences don't matter now.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Defense is always our first responsibility. All other responsibilities come second.

GREENFIELD: And as he has for almost two years, the president cited the 9/11 attacks as a reason why the preemptive war in Iraq was justified.

BUSH: And we know that September the 11th requires our country to think differently. We must and we will confront threats to America before it is too late.

GREENFIELD (on camera): Look at it this way. If September 11, 2001, had been just another day, it is entirely possible that the Democrats would now hold the Senate, that there would have been far less support for a war to remove Saddam Hussein, that the Democrats would have chosen a different presidential nominee, and that the entire terrain of this campaign would have an entirely different shape.

In political terms, the impact of September 11 is something like the impact of a very large meteor striking the Earth.

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A taste of good news on a difficult day. Just four days after quadruple bypass surgery, former President Bill Clinton has gone home to recuperate, four days. However, the former president will have to take it easy at a time when he would have liked to be out campaigning for Democratic hopeful John Kerry. A couple of months of rest.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, after the World Trade Center towers fell, a mountain of dust and debris remained. Thousands and thousands of people who helped clean up ground zero got sick. And three years later, many still are.

And later, the almost unbearable sorrow of those left behind in Beslan, Russia.

Around the world, this is a special edition of NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: That's ground zero today. How much it has changed over time, from that smoldering mass, to a barren sight, to the beginning of its future, under construction these days.

When the Trade Centers collapsed, they left behind a mountain of potentially toxic dust and debris. It took 10 months to clear away the mess. Officials estimate that 40,000 people may have helped in the cleanup at ground zero. And thousands of people who did got sick. Almost three years later, many still suffer.

Here is CNN's Elizabeth Cohen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ground zero began taking its toll on rescue workers almost immediately.

STEPHEN LEVIN, MOUNT SINAI MEDICAL CENTER: We began seeing patients from the 9/11 exposure setting within two weeks of 9/11.

COHEN: Dr. Stephen Levin runs a screening program at Mount Sinai Medical Center that is tracking the health of nearly 12,000 ground zero works and volunteers. Hundreds have developed respiratory problems that persist today.

LEVIN: Chest tightness, cough, wheezing, shortness of breath. There are people now who never had asthma before in their lives who now have asthma.

GENE FLOOD, IRONWORKER: It looked like a blizzard, like a whiteout. For the first 10 to 14 hours, it was like tough to see 15 feet in front of you.

COHEN: Ironworker Gene Flood rushed to ground zero after the towers fell and worked for two straight days before resting. For months, he returned to the pile at least once a week. He began to feel sick.

FLOOD: Coughing, a lot of just chronic coughing. I coughed all night, and shortness of breath. COHEN: Flood was diagnosed with asthma, even though he'd never had breathing problems before. He still uses an inhaler several times a week.

Ground zero was a toxic mix of debris, fire, chemicals and dust. Dr. Levin says the pulverized concrete many workers inhaled made some sick.

LEVIN: It is highly corrosive, highly irritating. And we know that cement workers who are exposed to this kind of material can have skin burns if it stays on their wet skin long enough.

COHEN: Levin says the dust produced chemical burns inside the body as well, damaging airwaves and irritating tissues. Exactly what caused ground zero workers to get sick is a matter of debate. What the government said about health risks at ground zero and what it did not remains a source of bitter controversy and litigation as well.

Workers were advised to wear masks, but many did not. In the first days, the focus was on finding survivors. Later, the masks made working harder for some.

FLOOD: We tried to wear masks, but we needed to communicate. Some guys could wear them, but it was hard to talk back and forth to each other.

DAVID PREZANT, FDNY DEPUTY CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER: I need it again, because now I'm at the fire department.

COHEN: Dr. David Prezant is tracking the health of more than 11,000 New York City firefighters. He says most have recovered from the problems they developed after 9/11, but between 15 and 25 percent have not. And many are still struggling psychologically.

PREZANT: We have had record numbers of firefighters who need counseling.

COHEN: At Mount Sinai, Dr. Levin is seeing high rates of psychological distress as well, along with the physical problems.

LEVIN: I have many patients who are working ill, experience these symptoms, but because they can't afford to stop work, have no way to sustain themselves economically without such work, continue to work and get sicker. I do have patients who are simply unable to work at all.

COHEN: The uncertainties that ground zero workers face add to the stress. Thousands were exposed to substances known to cause cancer whose affects may not be known for decades.

Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Current federal screening -- funding for the screening at Mount Sinai and New York Fire Department will run out in five years. There are no comparable screening programs for the residents of Lower Manhattan and others who were near ground zero on 9/11, many of whom returned to their offices and apartments within weeks. And for those who are still sick, there is no federal funding for treatment either.

Ahead on the program tonight, another country, another tragedy, language different. The emotions need no translation. And later, the news we read on that morning when our world changed forever.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: As singular as it seemed at the time, 9/11 has remained solely ours in name only.

In three years since, in fact, there have been many 9/11s, many days that the world was changed forever. There was a 9/11 in a nightclub in Bali. There was one just this week in Jakarta, Madrid a year ago, and now Beslan, Russia. The calendar dates that were given new and terrible connotations are different in each place. But the horror and the heartache are the same.

Reporting again for us tonight, Bill Neely of Britain's ITV.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL NEELY, ITV REPORTER (voice-over): The skies are gray now. Beslan's summer is over. There is a chill in the air.

"Where is my Iliana (ph)," she says. "Maybe this is a dream." Her daughter's body has never been found.

Middle School No. 1 is almost empty now, except for the bereaved -- this man lost his two children -- and the ghosts of happier days and the clothing of the terrorists who turned this into a slaughterhouse. A week ago today, the world watched in horror as Beslan's school exploded and the militants inside began the mass murder of children they had so carefully planned.

Near naked children ran for their lives. But for every one that did, another died inside. Beslan's world stopped last Friday at eight minutes past 1:00, and it will never return.

(on camera): These corridors are empty and eerie now, the blood on the walls and the ceiling imprints of the moment people died here. This will all be pulled down soon, but for those who survived, these corridors, the gym over there, will be fixed on their minds until they die.

(voice-over): There were three Bugayova (ph) sisters, but 12- year-old Medina (ph) is still missing one week on. Her 7-year-old sister, hit by shrapnel, is just home, their mother still in hospital with bullet wounds. Their aunt searches the morgue every day, horrified at the sight of dead children.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They in terrible position, position of fear. It is a very terrible case, what I saw.

NEELY: What so many have suffered here is hard to believe. This man lost his family, his wife and two daughters.

What September the 11th was to America, September the 3rd is to Russia, the day everything changed. Beslan is a small, featureless town at the end of Russia's railway line, where nothing much ever happened. It will never be that town again. Its world has been turned upside down. Children dig the graves of their classmates. Grandmothers bury their grandchildren. And the strong break down.

It has a future, of course, but its past is forever sullied and its presence is one unending sorrow.

Bill Neely, ITV news, Beslan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world, only these are papers from three years ago.

On the morning of September 11 2001, the big story in "The New York Times" was a mayoral election. That's what that picture is, but I had forgotten about this. OK, I remember driving in thinking about -- there was a big story on the front page of "The Times" or in the corner of "The Times" about the cable battle and how much money cable news organizations were paying their anchors. How stupid does that seem now? My God.

The next day, "The New York Times" headlined starkly, "U.S. Attacked. Hijacked Jets Destroy the Twin Towers, Hit the Pentagon in Day of Terror. President Vows to Exact Punishment for Evil."

A year later, "The New York Times" headline, "In '02, U.S. Steps Up Alert As Solemn Day Arrives." And last year on September 11, '03, "president Urging Wider U.S. Powers in Terrorism Law. He Says Unreasonable Obstacles Hinder Pursuit of Suspects."

"The Washington Post" put out an extra edition on September 11 '01. "Terror Hits Pentagon, World Trade Center." The next morning, "The Post" headlined: "Terrorists Hijack Four Airlines. Two Destroy World Trade Center. One Hits Pentagon. Four Crashes." And

it crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, as you know. And here was the headline in "The daily American" in Somerset County in Shanksville. "America Under Siege. Terror Touches Somerset County."

"The New York Post," a very stark, straight-ahead. "Act of War" was the headline in "The Post."

"The Saint Louis Post Dispatch." "None of Us Will Ever Forget This Day,. Terrorists Turn Passenger Jets Into Missiles."

It is all -- "The Des Moines Register." "Bush Vows to Strike Back," the headline, the picture of New Yorkers fleeing as the Trade Centers collapsed.

We'll wrap up the day in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It was good to be with you all tonight.

Catherine Mitchell produced the remembering pieces, as she's done so many other good pieces that we have aired over the last three years we've been together.

Have a good weekend. At some point tomorrow, I hope you'll take a moment to think about what has happened to us all. It started down there three years ago.

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 10, 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.
I'm stuck tonight by what we've lost since 9/11 three years ago, not what we lost that day, the horrific loss of life, the sense of invulnerability, innocence some say but what we've lost since.

Conceding that memory isn't always exactly right, it seems we've lost our sense of that which binds us. We saw each other differently in those days. We were kinder to each other, a little more thoughtful.

We loved more, hugged harder, valued life more because we all lost so much. We understood we had common dreams and common enemies and our enemies were not each other. That I think has evaporated.

I read it in the notes I see each day. I hear it on the radio and on the campaign trail. I see it all the time. There's nothing about 9/11 I miss but in those horrible days after, days of loss and grief and fear, there was something wonderful as well and I miss that a lot.

We'll talk a lot about 9/11 tonight on this night before the third anniversary but the whip begins in the here and now with yet another twist in the story that's been the headline story of the week. CNN's Jeanne Meserve has that headline in Washington -- Jeanne.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, CBS News launched a spirited defense tonight about the authenticity of documents which appear to make the case that President Bush received preferential treatment in the National Guard in the early 1970s but a number of experts are raising questions bearing on whether the documents are genuine or fakes -- Aaron.

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

The Caribbean next where Hurricane Ivan is bearing down on the island of Jamaica, CNN's Karl Penhaul comes to us from Kingston on the video phone with a headline -- Karl.

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In the last few minutes, Hurricane Ivan has begun lashing ashore and begun lashing the city of Kingston and, as it does, Jamaican gangs go on looting rampages around the capital -- Aaron.

BROWN: Karl, thank you.

And three years after 9/11 Osama bin Laden is still at large. None of our correspondents has followed this story as closely as Nic Robertson, who is stateside tonight, Nic, a headline from you.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, when you begin to analyze closely why hasn't Osama bin Laden been caught, you come up with a lot more questions than you do answers -- Aaron.

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

Much of the program centers tonight around the anniversary of 9/11, as you would imagine, the politics of 9/11, how that day three years ago is central to almost everything we do politically.

And we revisit some old friends tonight, the human faces of this terrible tragedy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHEILA BOWDEN, MOTHER OF THOMAS BOWDEN: Nothing in this lifetime can prepare you for the loss of a child. We expect to live to be an old age and our children are going to bury us, you know. We're not going for that role.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Their lives three years later, all that and more in the hour ahead.

But we begin with a question of what is real and what is not. Are the documents CBS news obtained raising new questions about President Bush's time in the National Guard real or are they forgeries? And, on that question, there is no easy answer.

CBS aired a spirited defense of the documents and the process it used to authenticate them tonight. Other experts disagree and so at the end of the day only two things are certain. The dispute remains unresolved and the focus is no longer on what the documents say but who actually wrote them.

Here's CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE (voice-over): Are the CBS documents, purported written by Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian in the early '70s the real thing or forgeries? CBS says the documents were vetted by independent experts and is standing by its story.

DAN RATHER, CBS NEWS: I believe the witnesses and the documents are authentic. We wouldn't have gone to air if they had not been.

MESERVE: Forensic document experts contacted by CNN said they would need to see the original documents to reach a definitive conclusion but one said they were very probably computer generated. In fact, using Microsoft Word, CNN was able to manufacture a near perfect match for one.

GERALD KAPLAN, TYPEWRITER EXPERT: And then continue typing.

MESERVE: Gerald Kaplan, an expert on IBM's Selectric composer models, says there was a matching font style in the early '70s but he finds it unlikely that a lieutenant colonel would have gone through the laborious process of centering lines the way they are in the documents.

KAPLAN: It's not easy. In fact, you know, based on the user's guide it's about six steps in order to do it.

MESERVE: Superscripting "TH" as in 187th in Alabama is also a difficult multi-step process.

KAPLAN: It just seems unreasonable that he would have one of these machines sitting at his desk.

MESERVE: There are instances of superscripting in verified Bush National Guard records but it is unclear if those documents were generated on the same typewriter.

Also, most '70s typewriters gave each letter the same amount of space but the CBS documents appear to use proportional spacing which gives a "W" let's say more space than an "L." Other experts say this signature on the CBS document is not consistent with other authentic signatures of Jerry Killian's.

GIDEON EPSTEIN, FORENSIC EXPERT: They all have loops, very good loops in them and they're fairly large in the Killian that we see. On that particular document we don't see that kind of handwriting characteristics at all.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: Friday evening CBS aired an interview with an expert who believes the signatures do match. All the experts agree it is impossible to do a conclusive analysis when documents have been photocopied and faxed and downloaded and CBS acknowledges it is working from copies too, though not as many generations removed from the original -- Aaron.

BROWN: Go back to the guy, for a second, who analyzed the handwriting. Does he say flat out that it's not the same signature?

MESERVE: No, he does not say that. He says he can see various things in the formation of the letters and in the layout of the signature which raise questions in his mind but he and all the other experts say what they have to see is the original document to come to a conclusive conclusion.

BROWN: So, given that nobody that we know, and apparently that includes CBS, has the original document or documents are we left with what will be ultimately an undecided? MESERVE: Apparently so. All of the experts we saw said they needed to see the real thing. That's the only way that they could do a determination. They said if you looked at the real thing you could tell whether or not it was done by a typewriter. You'd see strike marks.

You also would be able to do an analysis of the ink and of the watermark that might be able to date the document and you'd be able to get a better look at that signature. All those things would be helpful. All of those things are just not possible when you're looking at some sort of copy.

BROWN: Jeanne, thank you.

MESERVE: You bet.

BROWN: What a story this.

On we go tonight to Ivan, Ivan the Terrible. The National Hurricane Center is calling the storm, fast approaching Jamaica, an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane.

The eye of the storm is just south of Kingston and Ivan's winds, now reaching 150 miles an hour, are already pounding the island where a state of emergency has been declared. We're a couple of days away from it making landfall in the United States, Jamaica the focus now.

CNN's Karl Penhaul joins us again on the video phone from Kingston -- Karl.

PENHAUL: Hi there, Aaron.

We spent much of the day down by Kingston Harbor waiting for Hurricane Ivan to blow ashore. It was a long wait but that wait is most definitely over now. Just as you were going on air, Hurricane Ivan, the hurricane force winds started to lash Kingston.

They brought a lot of rain with them, torrential rain, and those winds now we're seeing them build up. They're really beginning to blow. As we drove in darkness from the harbor back to the area where we are now, a little inland, we saw trees down.

Power lines were already coming down in this winds and if those were (UNINTELLIGIBLE) still relatively light winds it only begs the question what really is going to happen now, now that the hurricane force winds have really picked up?

Also, government officials are telling us that more than 5,000 people are now in shelters in Kingston. They've moved from low-lying areas to try and flee the risk of flood.

Another thing that we noted as we were moving back to our fallback position, Jamaican gangs already on the street. They're looting. They're looting gas stations. They're looting commercial areas. As we passed a gas station, a police unit there had been called out and only minutes before had been engaged in a gunfight with that Jamaican gang taking advantage of the damage being caused now by Hurricane Ivan -- Aaron.

BROWN: Karl, we'll let you go seek shelter and see what the next 12 hours or so brings. Thank you, Karl Penhaul in Kingston, Jamaica.

From the terrifying to the pure terror now and the hunt for the world's most wanted man. Three years ago Osama bin Laden was a terrorist at large, a name most Americans did not know, though there were plenty of reasons to know it.

September 11, 2001 changed all that, of course, except for the part of him being a terrorist at large, which he remains today even as many of his cohorts have been captured or killed, even as his organization has changed. To most of us justice for 9/11 will never really be served until Osama bin Laden is caught or killed but when?

Here's CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Could Osama bin Laden's friend, Khalid al-Harbi (ph), who turned himself in two months ago, help net the al Qaeda leader? Or, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, bin Laden's military planner, arrested in early 2003? Or, even these suspected terrorists picked up in Pakistan in the last few months? Results so far would seem to indicate none of the above. The world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, is still at large.

PETER BERGEN, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: People use the phrase, you know, his personal signature trail has gone cold. We've sort of hit a brick wall.

ROBERTSON: A new video message by his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, seems to indicate both men feel confident and safe wherever they are. The last good fix on bin Laden was Tora Bora in Afghanistan from where he is suspected of slipping into western Pakistan. That was three years ago. Many intelligence analysts suspect he may still be in Pakistan, a suggestion Pakistan's military resents.

MAJ. GEN. SHARUKAT SULTAN, PAKISTAN ARMY SPOKESMAN: I don't think that anyone has specific information. Not any specific intelligence has been passed to us about it.

ROBERTSON: Al Qaeda operatives have been hiding in Pakistan's teeming cities or at least that's where they've been arrested. Another possible refuge is with the Islamic rebels in Kashmir, the mountainous region bordering India on the other side of Pakistan.

BERGEN: It's clear that bin Laden and the Kashmiri militant groups have been closely intertwined for many years and bin Laden may well take advantage of that.

ROBERTSON: Whatever the calculation, U.S. troops are still knocking on doors on the Afghan side of the Pakistan border. Their formal commander perhaps has the best assessment of catching bin Laden.

GEN. TOMMY FRANKS, FORMER CENTCOM COMMANDER: There are millions of homes in the region where bin Laden is thought of as a hero and he'll be protected. He's a hard target.

ROBERTSON: Undermining morale of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan is the lack of help they perceive on Pakistan's side of the border. That's now how the Pakistani Army sees it.

SULTAN: In Afghanistan, I would say that it certainly needs much more effort than what is going on in Afghanistan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON: Finger pointing aside, the hunt seems to be bogging down in so many questions and just not a whole lot of answers -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, it's just -- it's remarkable I suppose all the attention on one man and that it's just gone dead cold. The first time you and I talked was three years ago tomorrow. You were in Kabul. There was tracer fire in the air. We all wondered what it was. When you think back on what's gone on in the last three years how the world has changed, yours and ours, what do you think?

ROBERTSON: Incredibly, it's changed phenomenally. Our jobs have become, I would say, much harder. Journalists find themselves more caught up in the -- in the crossfire than they ever did before but I think the world that we travel in as journalists, particularly in the Middle East, is a much more divided place than it used to be. The extremists seem to become much more extreme. It's changed significantly -- Aaron.

BROWN: When you say the extremists have become more extreme, I mean in due respect it's hard to be more extreme than 9/11. Is it that there are more of them that the last three years we have seen an increase in the number of young men, mostly young men, who are willing to do this?

ROBERTSON: That seems to be the case. It's hard to sort of get empirical facts for it. The ideology of Osama bin Laden does seem to have spread but, at the same time, I think intelligence agencies have become much more capable and aware of the threat that exists.

They've been able to arrest people in London who appear to be perhaps on the verge of making attacks there quite recently through tip offs and people caught in Pakistan. So, it does seem that we're able to thwart some of these people who might be out to perpetrate attacks.

On the other hand, you know, there's still this spreading ideology. We still hear about al Qaeda and its affiliated groups making attacks in Indonesia maybe recently. BROWN: And, Pakistan in all of this is the most complicated of places because you have a government that does seem to be trying to do the right thing here, if you will, and a population 65 percent the last time I was there that had a favorable view of bin Laden.

ROBERTSON: And they still do. A lot of people still support bin Laden. I think perhaps sometimes when you analyze it they support the rhetoric but oftentimes they don't support the actions. They don't support al Qaeda's actions where innocent people get killed, so they don't support perhaps the methodology, more just the ideas.

But it is difficult for President Musharraf in the tribal region close to the border with Afghanistan. He has to tread very carefully. The army is going in there.

It's incrementally very, very slow to watch but the analysis is, if Musharraf pushes too hard the sort of conservative religious clerics there rise up with the tribes against them. The army has some support for those clerics. They rise up against Musharraf, so he does have a difficult path to tread here -- Aaron.

BROWN: He does indeed, Nic, good to see you, Nic Robertson, who joins us from Atlanta tonight.

The attack of 9/11, as you know, is the backdrop for every campaign stop because three years later the attack is the defining event our lifetime still. John Kerry was in Allentown, Pennsylvania today trying to drive home a message that even al Qaeda could arm itself with assault weapons if the ban on those weapons in the United States is not extended and it will not be come Monday.

The president was back at home after a rally in Georgia with Senator Zell Miller, his favorite Democrat. CNN's White House Correspondent John King spent part of the day with the president and part of the day with voters in Ohio where, like most places, terror and war define the election.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): This is the picture of middle America and a place where people say please and thank you and make a point of remembering even when the memory is hurt, maybe especially when the memory is hurt.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: September the 11th, when New York was so viciously attacked by the terrorists, it gave America a wakeup call.

KING: Three years later that defining day is a defining issue in the first presidential campaign since the terrorists struck.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This election will also determine how America responds to the continuing danger of terrorism.

KING: But waitress Margaret Redenbau (ph) is evidence of the September 11th effect on presidential politics. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a very strong Democrat but I don't feel that Kerry is a strong enough candidate when it comes to international issues.

KING: But it's no sure thing here for Mr. Bush and a visit to the VFW post brings proof the politics of 9/11 often work in Mr. Bush's favor but not always. Bill Eblen (ph) thinks back to 9/11 and also to last week's terrorist massacre in Russia.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This would be untimely to change our politics, our commander-in-chief, because they have their finger on the button. They know what's going on in the world and they know how to deal with it.

KING: Hal Blosser (ph), though, is leaning Democrat Kerry's way.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because he was in the military and since he was in the military I feel a little stronger toward him as a future president of the United States.

KING: For Mr. Bush, Iraq is a controversial subplot to the politics of terror. Senator Kerry calls it a war of choice, not necessity. Mr. Bush begs to differ.

BUSH: If he had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power and would still be a threat to the security of America and the world.

KING: Travis LaGuard (ph) is first hearing his Army unit would deploy in the first wave to Iraq.

I told my mom, I'm like, I hate president -- I hate Bush for this, man, because I don't want to go to war.

KING: Home now and often trembling from post combat stress disorder, LaGuard has a very different view.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, I'm a strong supporter of Bush. I'm a strong supporter in what happened over there. I'm a strong supporter in his decision and I'm glad he's sticking to his guns and he ain't pulled us out yet, even though we're suffering a lot of casualties.

KING: Three years later everyday routine still shaped by an unforgettable September morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not always going to be necessarily the simple wastebasket fire. It may be something along the lines of a political or a terrorist event, so it's not that it is at the forefront but it's still in the background and we're still thinking about it.

KING: Still thinking about it seven weeks to election Day, even in a small Ohio town where the college building is the old courthouse.

John King, CNN, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), Ohio.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ritual helps us get through difficult times and tomorrow ritual. The names of all 2,749 victims of the World Trade Center bombing will be read again by family members at Ground Zero.

Up next, the relatives of those lost reflect on life, life without a mother or a father, a husband or a wife.

This is a special edition of NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN (voice-over): From the 9/11 Commission report:

As United 93 left Newark, the flight's crew members were unaware of the hijacking from American Flight 11. Around 9:00, the FAA, American, and United were facing the staggering realization of apparent multiple hijackings.

At 9:03, they would see another aircraft strike the World Trade Center. At the same time, Boston Center realized that a message transmitted just before 8:25 by the hijacker pilot of American Flight 11 included the phrase, "We have some planes."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Tonight on the eve of 9/11, 2004, we look back and take measure. You might recall that two days after the World Trade Center collapsed we started our "Remembering" series focusing on those who were lot.

Many we met for the first time in handmade posters that sprang up throughout Manhattan and beyond hours after the attacks. Husbands and wives, sisters, brothers, mothers and fathers, nearly all of them grinning in the photographs from happier days, "Has anyone seen them" the posters pleaded?

Most of them, of course, never came home. We talked to their loved ones in those early days when hope at least to some still seemed possible. Those were hard conversations and three years later they still are.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REMEMBERING MICHAEL F. STABILE

MICHELE STABILE, DAUGHTER OF MICHAEL F. STABILE: My father is Michael F. Stabile. He's 50 years old from Staten Island, New York. You couldn't ask for a better father. I can't even describe it how good he is to us.

When I went away to college my first year, he wrote a letter to me saying how much he was going to miss me and that it took (UNINTELLIGIBLE) had me so I came along and my brother and my sister was just the greatest thing in the world for him. My mother always says, you know, he's just so proud of you, so proud of all of you.

Sometimes I forget that it really happened. It was like a dream almost but now it's -- and other times I think, you know, wow, three years ago it happened. I can't believe this happened to me.

It made us close definitely because we have to rely on each other now. There's only four of us and sometimes I think, God forbid, something happens to one of the three of them what am I going to do? So, I cling to my family more.

We moved out of the old house because there are too many memories there. We're trying to move on but I mean there's constant reminders. Every September 11th there's going to be a constant reminder.

Eventually I hope to think about it and not cry as often as I do sometimes. I mean there's always weddings to consider and my father will never walk me down the aisle. He'll never hold his grandchildren. So, it's hard when you think about things like that, so until those obstacles are met, it's hard to heal completely.

ANDREW BASS, HUSBAND OF FELICIA BASS: She was a great mom. She really devoted a lot of attention to Sebastian. Sebastian really started becoming her world. I'm going to miss, you know, having her there as we grow up, as he grows up and I miss my friend. I used to come home and talk about everything, even sometimes not talking just having her there just that's what I'm going to miss a lot.

It's hard not to think about Felicia because of the fact I see Sebastian every day and he's a mirrored image of Felicia. The fact that I have a son and myself being a young person there was just too many things crying out to me that, you know, if I stop living, if I just stay in this one point that's not only a disgrace to Felicia's memory but most importantly I no longer allow my own child to live and that I just couldn't do.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did you want one?

BASS: I was fortunate enough to get remarried. Karen and Sebastian have just bonded. I really feel that Felicia has sort of given her blessing on Karen and I's relationship. For Sebastian, I think it's extremely important that he sees daddy continue living and understands that things may happen but you should not cave in to your fears or your grief that life continues on.

REMEMBERING THOMAS BOWDEN

BOWDEN: He's going to be missed just for his presence. He was absolutely thrilled when he found out he was going to be a father for the first time. It was his little girl Sarah (ph) and then they had their new baby Allison (ph). I want them to know what a wonderful person he was, how loyal he was, how much he loved them and how much he looked forward to their being a part of his life. Nothing in this lifetime can prepare you for the loss of a child. It still surprises me how intense it feels how much it hurts even three years later. There have been a number of things that have sustained my husband and I. We do have a very strong faith and our church was there for us. We spend a lot of time with Tommy's daughters. They both have so much of him in them. There's a constant reminder of who he was.

I find it incredible that that much time has passed since that eventful day. You know we're approaching another milestone. It's another time to pause and reflect and I'm sure so many, many people are going through this same experience, you know, the remembering, and reflecting and sometimes getting past the thoughts of what life might have been and realizing what life is now and cherishing every moment of it. It goes too quickly.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Here in New York, a low-flying airplane still brings high anxiety. Even three years later, the reminders of September 11 are everywhere in this city.

We wondered if that was true outside the boroughs or outside the beltway. Do you out there in Twisp, Washington, or Connellsville, Pennsylvania, or Ely, Minnesota, see it the same way we do. And if not, how do you see it?

So from small-town, Texas, tonight, which could be small-town anywhere, here is CNN's Ed Lavandera.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The second weekend in September means it is time to shut down Main Street and let Grape Fest begin in Grapevine, Texas, just outside of Dallas. This annual festival is now forever intertwined with the September 11 anniversary.

CYNDI GOLDEN, TEXAS RESIDENT: You want people to regain their life and still travel and still do things, because otherwise the terrorists win. But you hope that they're doing so with the reverence, where they still can acknowledge and have a place in their heart for the victims.

DEAN THOMPSON, WWW.911FLIGHTCREWMEMORIAL.ORG: They're in that bag there.

LAVANDERA: Dean Thompson, whose wife works as a flight attendant, is making sure people don't forget the horror of that day. He's raising money to create five flight crew memorials around the country.

THOMPSON: We were there just as much as the New Yorkers. We just didn't have the dust and the noise and the heat that was transmitting out of that place.

LAVANDERA: As Thompson spoke, an airplane flew overhead. He didn't flinch and neither did anyone else here, just a few miles from Dallas' main airport. In New York, many residents will tell you they still stare at airplanes.

SUMMER ALBERS, FORMER NEW YORK CITY RESIDENT: is definitely the most frightening thing I've ever lived through.

LAVANDERA: Summer Albers watched the World Trade Center attacks from her home in Brooklyn and because of that moved back home to Texas.

ALBERS: I don't think IT is not the same as the people who live there and suffered with the firemen and their families. And to see all the postings on the window of missing loved ones everywhere, throughout the boroughs, is very different.

LAVANDERA: In Grapevine, most say they don't live in fear.

RAUL RODRIGUEZ, RESIDENT OF OKLAHOMA CITY: Oh, I definitely think we feel safer now because of that. And I think a lot of precautions have been taken. We are always on alert, like I said. And I just feel like the country is safer.

LAVANDERA: When you talk about 9/11 around Grape Fest, you'll find that people want to remember, but they also want to forget just how helpless they felt that day. And these families find the best cure for that feeling is by making a point of enjoying life on September 11.

Ed Lavandera, CNN, Grapevine, Texas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: You see it in Grapevine, Texas, and everywhere else in the country. September 11 changed us in ways big and small. And in the case of our politics, changed us very nearly completely.

Here is our senior analyst, Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): It was there at almost every moment at both conventions, from the solemn tributes to the fallen...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My husband Tom was a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93.

GREENFIELD: To the rhetoric of the candidates.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We will be able to tell the terrorists, you will lose and we will win.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Here, buildings fell. Here, a nation rose.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

GREENFIELD (on camera): But these words do not begin to measure how thoroughly the events of three years ago have come to dominate this campaign. The idea that September 11 changed everything may not be true universally, but it is almost certainly true about our politics.

(voice-over): That brief moment of bipartisan unity, of course, could not last, not in a nation that held elections in the midst of five major wars, and maybe it was inevitable that the worst attack on American soil ever would dominate our campaigns.

The images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein helped defeat Georgia Senator Max Cleland in 2002, and that helped put the Senate into Republican hands. The return of national security and defense to the center of the presidential campaign helped make John Kerry's Vietnam and Senate experience a powerful asset and blunted the outsider appeal of Howard Dean and John Edwards. And without the 9/11 war on terrorism concerns, would the Democratic Convention really have subordinated economic issues to the Vietnam hero pageantry?

KERRY: I defended this country as a young man, and I will defend it as president.

GREENFIELD: As for the Republicans, their entire convention focused on one overwhelming theme. In the post-9/11 world, any desire for change is simply too big a risk to take. Senator John McCain, who has opposed the president on everything from tax cuts to stem cell research, explicitly said those kinds of differences don't matter now.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Defense is always our first responsibility. All other responsibilities come second.

GREENFIELD: And as he has for almost two years, the president cited the 9/11 attacks as a reason why the preemptive war in Iraq was justified.

BUSH: And we know that September the 11th requires our country to think differently. We must and we will confront threats to America before it is too late.

GREENFIELD (on camera): Look at it this way. If September 11, 2001, had been just another day, it is entirely possible that the Democrats would now hold the Senate, that there would have been far less support for a war to remove Saddam Hussein, that the Democrats would have chosen a different presidential nominee, and that the entire terrain of this campaign would have an entirely different shape.

In political terms, the impact of September 11 is something like the impact of a very large meteor striking the Earth.

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A taste of good news on a difficult day. Just four days after quadruple bypass surgery, former President Bill Clinton has gone home to recuperate, four days. However, the former president will have to take it easy at a time when he would have liked to be out campaigning for Democratic hopeful John Kerry. A couple of months of rest.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, after the World Trade Center towers fell, a mountain of dust and debris remained. Thousands and thousands of people who helped clean up ground zero got sick. And three years later, many still are.

And later, the almost unbearable sorrow of those left behind in Beslan, Russia.

Around the world, this is a special edition of NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: That's ground zero today. How much it has changed over time, from that smoldering mass, to a barren sight, to the beginning of its future, under construction these days.

When the Trade Centers collapsed, they left behind a mountain of potentially toxic dust and debris. It took 10 months to clear away the mess. Officials estimate that 40,000 people may have helped in the cleanup at ground zero. And thousands of people who did got sick. Almost three years later, many still suffer.

Here is CNN's Elizabeth Cohen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ground zero began taking its toll on rescue workers almost immediately.

STEPHEN LEVIN, MOUNT SINAI MEDICAL CENTER: We began seeing patients from the 9/11 exposure setting within two weeks of 9/11.

COHEN: Dr. Stephen Levin runs a screening program at Mount Sinai Medical Center that is tracking the health of nearly 12,000 ground zero works and volunteers. Hundreds have developed respiratory problems that persist today.

LEVIN: Chest tightness, cough, wheezing, shortness of breath. There are people now who never had asthma before in their lives who now have asthma.

GENE FLOOD, IRONWORKER: It looked like a blizzard, like a whiteout. For the first 10 to 14 hours, it was like tough to see 15 feet in front of you.

COHEN: Ironworker Gene Flood rushed to ground zero after the towers fell and worked for two straight days before resting. For months, he returned to the pile at least once a week. He began to feel sick.

FLOOD: Coughing, a lot of just chronic coughing. I coughed all night, and shortness of breath. COHEN: Flood was diagnosed with asthma, even though he'd never had breathing problems before. He still uses an inhaler several times a week.

Ground zero was a toxic mix of debris, fire, chemicals and dust. Dr. Levin says the pulverized concrete many workers inhaled made some sick.

LEVIN: It is highly corrosive, highly irritating. And we know that cement workers who are exposed to this kind of material can have skin burns if it stays on their wet skin long enough.

COHEN: Levin says the dust produced chemical burns inside the body as well, damaging airwaves and irritating tissues. Exactly what caused ground zero workers to get sick is a matter of debate. What the government said about health risks at ground zero and what it did not remains a source of bitter controversy and litigation as well.

Workers were advised to wear masks, but many did not. In the first days, the focus was on finding survivors. Later, the masks made working harder for some.

FLOOD: We tried to wear masks, but we needed to communicate. Some guys could wear them, but it was hard to talk back and forth to each other.

DAVID PREZANT, FDNY DEPUTY CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER: I need it again, because now I'm at the fire department.

COHEN: Dr. David Prezant is tracking the health of more than 11,000 New York City firefighters. He says most have recovered from the problems they developed after 9/11, but between 15 and 25 percent have not. And many are still struggling psychologically.

PREZANT: We have had record numbers of firefighters who need counseling.

COHEN: At Mount Sinai, Dr. Levin is seeing high rates of psychological distress as well, along with the physical problems.

LEVIN: I have many patients who are working ill, experience these symptoms, but because they can't afford to stop work, have no way to sustain themselves economically without such work, continue to work and get sicker. I do have patients who are simply unable to work at all.

COHEN: The uncertainties that ground zero workers face add to the stress. Thousands were exposed to substances known to cause cancer whose affects may not be known for decades.

Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Current federal screening -- funding for the screening at Mount Sinai and New York Fire Department will run out in five years. There are no comparable screening programs for the residents of Lower Manhattan and others who were near ground zero on 9/11, many of whom returned to their offices and apartments within weeks. And for those who are still sick, there is no federal funding for treatment either.

Ahead on the program tonight, another country, another tragedy, language different. The emotions need no translation. And later, the news we read on that morning when our world changed forever.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: As singular as it seemed at the time, 9/11 has remained solely ours in name only.

In three years since, in fact, there have been many 9/11s, many days that the world was changed forever. There was a 9/11 in a nightclub in Bali. There was one just this week in Jakarta, Madrid a year ago, and now Beslan, Russia. The calendar dates that were given new and terrible connotations are different in each place. But the horror and the heartache are the same.

Reporting again for us tonight, Bill Neely of Britain's ITV.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL NEELY, ITV REPORTER (voice-over): The skies are gray now. Beslan's summer is over. There is a chill in the air.

"Where is my Iliana (ph)," she says. "Maybe this is a dream." Her daughter's body has never been found.

Middle School No. 1 is almost empty now, except for the bereaved -- this man lost his two children -- and the ghosts of happier days and the clothing of the terrorists who turned this into a slaughterhouse. A week ago today, the world watched in horror as Beslan's school exploded and the militants inside began the mass murder of children they had so carefully planned.

Near naked children ran for their lives. But for every one that did, another died inside. Beslan's world stopped last Friday at eight minutes past 1:00, and it will never return.

(on camera): These corridors are empty and eerie now, the blood on the walls and the ceiling imprints of the moment people died here. This will all be pulled down soon, but for those who survived, these corridors, the gym over there, will be fixed on their minds until they die.

(voice-over): There were three Bugayova (ph) sisters, but 12- year-old Medina (ph) is still missing one week on. Her 7-year-old sister, hit by shrapnel, is just home, their mother still in hospital with bullet wounds. Their aunt searches the morgue every day, horrified at the sight of dead children.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They in terrible position, position of fear. It is a very terrible case, what I saw.

NEELY: What so many have suffered here is hard to believe. This man lost his family, his wife and two daughters.

What September the 11th was to America, September the 3rd is to Russia, the day everything changed. Beslan is a small, featureless town at the end of Russia's railway line, where nothing much ever happened. It will never be that town again. Its world has been turned upside down. Children dig the graves of their classmates. Grandmothers bury their grandchildren. And the strong break down.

It has a future, of course, but its past is forever sullied and its presence is one unending sorrow.

Bill Neely, ITV news, Beslan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world, only these are papers from three years ago.

On the morning of September 11 2001, the big story in "The New York Times" was a mayoral election. That's what that picture is, but I had forgotten about this. OK, I remember driving in thinking about -- there was a big story on the front page of "The Times" or in the corner of "The Times" about the cable battle and how much money cable news organizations were paying their anchors. How stupid does that seem now? My God.

The next day, "The New York Times" headlined starkly, "U.S. Attacked. Hijacked Jets Destroy the Twin Towers, Hit the Pentagon in Day of Terror. President Vows to Exact Punishment for Evil."

A year later, "The New York Times" headline, "In '02, U.S. Steps Up Alert As Solemn Day Arrives." And last year on September 11, '03, "president Urging Wider U.S. Powers in Terrorism Law. He Says Unreasonable Obstacles Hinder Pursuit of Suspects."

"The Washington Post" put out an extra edition on September 11 '01. "Terror Hits Pentagon, World Trade Center." The next morning, "The Post" headlined: "Terrorists Hijack Four Airlines. Two Destroy World Trade Center. One Hits Pentagon. Four Crashes." And

it crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, as you know. And here was the headline in "The daily American" in Somerset County in Shanksville. "America Under Siege. Terror Touches Somerset County."

"The New York Post," a very stark, straight-ahead. "Act of War" was the headline in "The Post."

"The Saint Louis Post Dispatch." "None of Us Will Ever Forget This Day,. Terrorists Turn Passenger Jets Into Missiles."

It is all -- "The Des Moines Register." "Bush Vows to Strike Back," the headline, the picture of New Yorkers fleeing as the Trade Centers collapsed.

We'll wrap up the day in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It was good to be with you all tonight.

Catherine Mitchell produced the remembering pieces, as she's done so many other good pieces that we have aired over the last three years we've been together.

Have a good weekend. At some point tomorrow, I hope you'll take a moment to think about what has happened to us all. It started down there three years ago.

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