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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Kerry Attacks Bush; Mea Culpa From CBS; American Beheaded in Iraq

Aired September 20, 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 is not an honest reporter in the country today, not an honest news organization that hasn't in the last few days when looking at the story of how the now CBS discredited documents on the president's National Guard service said there but for the grace of God go I, excepting that some partisans will see it otherwise, will see willful deception on the part of CBS.

Smarter and more reasoned heads know better. Sources can and do sometimes mislead. Sometimes they do it deliberately, sometimes inadvertently but it does happen and it happened to CBS big time.

It happened on a story involving the president which raises the stakes. It happened to the most controversial of the big three anchors. It happened in the heat of a presidential campaign. It happened.

It happened, I suspect, in part because reporters want very much a good story to be true and sometimes see more clearly the things that make it true and ignore the things that don't.

It happens in the best news organizations and the worst. The good ones admit it, apologize, figure out how it happened and get back to work. The worst pretend it didn't happen at all. That is one way to distinguish the difference. We'll have more on that tonight.

But first the whip begins on the campaign trail with a sharp turn in the debate over Iraq, CNN's Candy Crowley in New York to start us off with a headline tonight -- Candy.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, John Kerry says that U.S. policy in Iraq has been marked by arrogance, incompetence, misjudgments and misleading statements and he was just getting started -- Aaron.

BROWN: Candy, thank you. We'll get to you pretty quickly tonight.

Today's mea culpa from CBS fell on welcome ears at the White House for sure. CNN's Jeanne Meserve is in Washington with a headline on a much talked about story today -- Jeanne.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, after 12 days of saying they got it right, CBS admits it did not. The network now says it did not adequately scrutinize the documents in question and cannot say they are authentic. The man who gave them to CBS still maintains they're real but he's a Democrat and the White House continues to raise questions about motivation and timing -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jeanne, thank you.

What does it mean for everyone else in the news business, among other things, that CBS got the document part of the story wrong, one of many questions our Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield will weigh in on tonight, Jeff, a headline.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: Aaron, the questions revolve around everything from the future of Dan Rather and high-ranking CBS producers to what it might mean for the campaign. But perhaps the real story here is what it tells us about just how dramatically journalism has changed in just a few years -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jeff, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest in a moment.

Also on the program tonight, one American is beheaded in Iraq. A fellow American could meet the same fate. We hope not. His family pleads for his safe return and we'll talk live with his wife in a moment.

Also, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, one family finds comfort in a small treasure.

And, at the end of the hour, where tomorrow begins, so do morning papers, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin in Iraq, not with the battles in Sadr City or the Sunni Triangle, not with talk of strategy or politics, with an act of barbarism and a name we suspect will be sadly to be sure forgotten far too quickly, except by those who loved him.

Eugene Armstrong, an American, a civil engineer, kidnapped last week in Baghdad was murdered, beheaded by his captors. He was one of three westerners taken. The fate of the others is, of course, tonight uncertain.

We begin in Baghdad and CNN's Walter Rodgers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALTER RODGERS, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The militant Islamist group calling itself Unification and Jihad released this video showing Eugene Armstrong on his knees, blindfolded, helpless, his hands bound moments before the execution.

Five hooded Muslim militants stand behind him. One reads a statement promising two other hostages will be killed. The killings will resume again in 24 hours they said unless their demands are met, release all Iraqi women prisoners or the next American Jack Hensley will be beheaded, followed by the British subject Kenneth Bigley. The hooded man reads a statement saying he is carrying out God's law. Then he saws off Armstrong's head with a knife as the dying man screams in pain.

The three civilians lived in this house in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood until last Thursday when they were kidnapped early in the morning. Their Iraqi overnight guard disappeared, did not come to work, leaving them for the kidnappers.

(on camera): Armstrong's body was later recovered by Iraqi police. That leaves seven other hostages still in the hands of the Iraqi kidnappers, the one remaining American, the one British subject, then there were two Italian aid workers, both women, and there were two French journalists and, finally, an Iraqi-American businessman.

Walter Rodgers, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Well all of this, as you can imagine, is horrifying for the families, all of them. We're joined from Atlanta tonight by the wife of one of the two remaining western hostages, Patty Hensley. As you heard her husband Jack, along with a British citizen Kenneth Bigley work for an oil services company.

Ms. Hensley we're pleased to see you and we regret the circumstances. Why don't we just begin this simply? What do you want to say?

PATTY HENSLEY, WIFE OF AMERICAN HOSTAGE JACK HENSLEY: I'm making another attempt at pleading with these captors to please open communications with us again so that we can perhaps come to some agreement on what it is exactly they want and perhaps how those needs can be met.

And to again remind them that Jack Hensley is a loving and caring man and the father of a 13-year-old girl who doesn't understand exactly what's happening, as well as his fellow coworker Ken Bigley, who again is a family man and these gentlemen were there to help the Iraqi people.

They were not part of any security or military type operation. They truly enjoyed their work with the Iraqi people and the daily strides that they were making and the people were so happy to have them.

BROWN: Have you -- has the government, the U.S. government been talking to you since your husband was taken?

HENSLEY: I have been surrounded by probably every agency there is. Everybody is working diligently and very quickly as much as they can but the biggest obstacle has been being able to carry on two-way communications with the captors about what can be done about these demands.

BROWN: Has there been, to your knowledge, any communication, either between the Iraqi government and the captors or the American government or the American military with the people who are holding your husband?

HENSLEY: Nothing -- excuse me, sir, nothing that I am privy to. I know there is far more superior intelligence behind this both here in the states and in Baghdad that know things that I don't know and, to be honest, I don't need to know them.

I just need them to follow through and do what they can to save these two gentlemen. And I'm devastated that we've lost Jack Armstrong. He was one of my husband's best friends and best coworkers and I know his family is terribly devastated at this point.

BROWN: Today must have been an impossibly difficult day.

HENSLEY: It's been pretty difficult since last Thursday.

BROWN: Yes. When did you last talk with your husband?

HENSLEY: It was our common practice that in the evening, as I was finishing up whatever, I would log into the Internet and that would be about the time that he was getting up and preparing for work.

And, on Wednesday evening, prior to the capture, Wednesday evening our time, which would have been about 5:30 in the morning their time, we did our usual chat as to how's everybody doing.

Not only do we have our 13-year-old daughter but I take care of his 88-year-old mother, who has Alzheimer's as well, so it was daily check-ins on what's going on. And he had sent me a message to please be safe because Ivan looked as if it was coming this way.

And I sent him the messages I always did that everybody loved him and to please be safe. And we logged off chatting about 9:30 and putting time frames together, it had to be within the next half hour to 45 minutes that they were abducted.

BROWN: If it's OK to ask a couple more questions did he ever express to you concerns about his safety?

HENSLEY: My husband and I both had worked overseas positions before and we knew being Americans in foreign countries could be hazardous in itself. Iraq, of course, presented a more severe warning in that regard.

There had been concerns in the weeks leading up to this captive that the guards that were provided for them around the clock by their company all of a sudden were not showing up or, if they came in, they had to leave for some family excuse.

And there is at one point a guard who actually warned them that he had been stopped on the way to work and told not to work for the Americans anymore. It was shortly after that the abduction happened.

BROWN: How long was your husband planning to stay in Iraq?

HENSLEY: My husband had signed a one-year contract with GSES (ph) the company they were working for. He was six and a half months through that contract and he would have been coming home in February. Jack Armstrong, who we lost today, was due to complete his contract next month.

BROWN: Well, Ms. Hensley there's nothing I can say that can make your day feel any better but I am certain that all of us here and everyone watching has you in their prayers tonight and we hope for the best imaginable outcome and soon.

HENSLEY: Well, I hope so too. Again, if I could just say to the captors we are more than willing to work on this together. We don't know how to get in touch or how to even begin to open the lines of communications other than through what, thank you, you and the media have provided for us.

But, these gentlemen are truly three wonderful men who were there simply to help the Iraqi people overcome the terrible damage that had been done to them during all of this war, if you would call it that.

And, their intent was to provide them with a lifestyle that they deserve and they were very loved by their Iraqi neighbors. They sent gifts home to my daughter and I all the time and they were always welcome in the Iraqi homes.

These were three gentlemen who had absolutely no agenda, other than to enrich the lives of the people they were there to help and to take their lives would serve no real purpose.

BROWN: Our thoughts and prayers are with you, best of luck.

HENSLEY: I thank you so much.

BROWN: Well, thank you. Thank you very much.

HENSLEY: Thank you.

BROWN: On we go.

With no end to the bloodshed in sight, tragically, and coming off a very difficult week in Iraq which included the kidnapping of Mrs. Hensley's husband and the others, the issues today seemed to take on a new edge in the campaign.

Six weeks now until Election Day. Senator John Kerry trying again to stake out new ground, his words clearly tougher, the focus seemingly tighter, and the president, of course, hit back as well.

So we have two reports from the campaign, both centered around Iraq, CNN's Candy Crowley and John King, Candy first.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CROWLEY (voice-over): The new prime minister of Iraq arrives in the U.S. President Bush prepares to address a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. And, John Kerry levels his most brutal, most expansive critique yet of the war in Iraq. SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, by an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence.

CROWLEY: With early September polls showing Bush with huge leads over Kerry on the issues of terrorism and Iraq, Kerry strategists figure to center the fall campaign around mostly domestic issues, familiar territory for Democrats but to talk education policy when the headlines are elsewhere made the campaign seem weirdly out of synch, so small change in plans, Iraq as a matter of policy and character.

KERRY: They were colossal failures of judgment and judgment is what we look for in a president.

CROWLEY: Said one Democratic strategist, the situation is deteriorating in Iraq and Bush keeps saying we're making progress. "He has a blind spot," the source added. "We're going to hit it."

KERRY: Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight.

CROWLEY: Kerry's course corrections include a summit with world leaders to encourage involvement in Iraq, expanded training of Iraqi troops, reconstruction with tangible benefits, a guarantee of elections next year.

With the exception of an imminent summit, the Bush campaign says it's already doing all the things Kerry talked about and therein lies the peril for the Democratic nominee whose own positions on Iraq have been seen as convoluted, if not contradictory and his plans for the future have been criticized as either too vague or too similar to the president's.

Candy Crowley, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The president, once again, sought to deflect sharp criticism of his Iraq policy by suggesting his Democratic opponent can't settle on a policy of his own.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today, my opponent continued his pattern of twisting in the wind with new contradictions of his old positions on Iraq.

KING: Campaigning in New Hampshire, Mr. Bush took issue with Senator Kerry's statement that the Iraq War did not make the United States safer and that toppling Saddam Hussein was not worth the chaos in Iraq today. Last December, Mr. Bush said these were Kerry's words.

BUSH: "Those who believe we are not safer with his capture don't have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president." I could not have said it better.

KING: Mr. Bush has a political edge on the Iraq issue, despite a rising death toll for U.S. troops, an intensifying insurgency and skepticism about the country's political transition but criticism of his Iraq policy is hardly confined to Democrats.

Four Republican Senators this weekend faulted the White House for what they called poor military planning and even incompetence in Iraq. And Democrats, who concede Senator Kerry dug himself a hole with his own words, sense a shift.

SEN. JAY ROCKEFELLER (D), WEST VIRGINIA: I think John Kerry has gained the momentum at precisely the right time, will put Bush on the defensive just at the time that the American people are coming to realize that things, in fact, are not going well in Iraq at all.

KING: Bush allies say the flip-flop label will be all but impossible to shake.

WHIT AYRES, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER: It's just exceedingly difficult for him now, based on the box he's created for himself, to say anything that the American people would deem to be credible about Iraq.

KING: As the candidates again debated Iraq policy from a distance their campaigns reached agreement on face-to-face encounters, three presidential debates, September 30th in Miami, October 8th in St. Louis and October 13th in Tempe, Arizona. The vice presidential candidates will debate once on October 5th in Cleveland.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Iraq and the broader war on terror is certain to dominate that first debate, which is dedicated to foreign policy and, Aaron, certain to be in the forefront here in New York, the president here, of course, at the United Nations General Assembly.

BROWN: Both Candy and John are here. John, does the campaign, the Bush campaign, feel that the more the Senator talks about Iraq the more they're playing into the president's wheel house?

KING: Yes and no. They do believe that the Senator has dug a hole and the president keeps saying, "Have a debate with yourself, Senator Kerry, before you have a debate with me."

Some Republicans, including those within the campaign though, a little worried that this debate has been -- this has been going on too long and that eventually the voters will say, "OK, Senator Kerry's conflicted on this but what about the president's policy? He is the incumbent after all. This is his war."

BROWN: Now, if I were running the campaign, and clearly I'm not capable of -- I can barely run the program, I take just what was said by Republican Senators over the weekend on Iraq policy and turn it into a Kerry campaign ad. CROWLEY: Well, you know, the problem is that then the Republicans object. I mean we already saw Senator Lugar came out with a statement via the Bush-Cheney campaign to sort of soften a little bit or try to make the point that they've been trying to advise President Bush all along and where was John Kerry? So, but that is not to say that this didn't come up today because it did. Chuck Hagel's words in particular were quoted by the Senator.

BROWN: Is this the next six weeks of the campaign? Is the Senator going to go Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, or does he need to broaden the campaign?

CROWLEY: Well, he's going to broaden. Tomorrow is Medicare. But, you know, really you did get this dizziness on the campaign trail because all these things were going on and you'd be sitting there in a, you know, with a lot of senior citizens talking about something and the Senator doesn't have news conferences and he doesn't, you know, there's not much interplay, so you had this kind of bubble effect that's even beyond the normal bubble effect.

BROWN: Just, John, a last question. You guys have been out far more than I but I was out this weekend out west talking to voters and I was amazed at while people say they're interested in health care, while they say they're interested in education, while they say they're interested in this and that, the only thing they wanted to talk about was Iraq and the war on terror and that really was it.

KING: Well, people tend to reflect what they're hearing from the campaigns, number one, and I think people are genuinely a little more scared after you see the terrorism in Russia and they talk about terrorism here in the United States.

So, I think it is the issue and I think Senator Kerry is conceding that point by trying to come back again and get back on track, if you will, on Iraq. And the White House says "bring it on." We'll talk about this every single day.

But, again, there are some Republicans who say eventually if people start thinking about what is it like on the ground in Iraq now that that could hurt the president but they continue to have a double digit edge when it comes to Iraq policy, an even bigger edge when it comes to the war on terrorism. The Republicans don't think Senator Kerry can win the election unless he changes those numbers.

BROWN: Good to see you both. We should do this more often.

CROWLEY: We'll be back.

BROWN: Although we seem to do it one way or another every night. Thank you both very much.

Still ahead an apology from CBS in the controversy over the documents. That's coming up.

And later tonight, in a Florida neighborhood where Ivan spared almost nothing, searching for something. From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: CBS News acknowledged today what most people had concluded days ago. It could not now say for certain that documents used in its report on the president's National Guard service were real.

CBS says a key source to the documents misled them, said the documents should not have been used, promised an independent investigation and apologized. End of story? No, more like the beginning.

Here's CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE (voice-over): A "60 Minutes" 180 from CBS. The network says it made a mistake and cannot authenticate documents it had presented as genuine 12 days ago.

The man who CBS says gave it the documents, Bill Burkett, says he did not forge them and he believes they're real. In his first on-air interview with CBS, Burkett argued forcefully that he had misled the network in order to protect his source.

BILL BURKETT: Well, I didn't totally mislead you. I did mislead you on the one individual. You know, your staff pressured me to a point to reveal that source.

DAN RATHER, CBS NEWS: Well, we were trying to get the chain of possession.

BURKETT: I understand that.

RATHER: And you said you had received them from someone.

BURKETT: I understand that.

RATHER: And we did press you to say, well you received them from someone and that someone was who?

BURKETT: Yes.

RATHER: And it's true, we pressured you because it was a very important point for us.

BURKETT: Yes, and I simply through out a name that was basically -- it was I guess to get a little pressure off for a moment.

MESERVE: But CBS failed to nail down the source or the authenticity of the documents, something Burkett says he told the network to do.

RATHER: The failure of CBS News to do just that to properly fully scrutinize the documents and their source, led to our airing the documents when we should not have done so. It was a mistake. CBS News deeply regrets it. Also, I want to say personally and directly I'm sorry.

MESERVE: Bill Burkett has in the past sued the Texas National Guard over medical benefits and alleged that President Bush's military records were sanitized, a charge that former Bush aides have called hogwash. The White House pounced on the revelation that Burkett, a Democrat, was CBS' source.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: What contacts did Mr. Burkett have with Democrats? There are reports that he had senior level contacts with members of the Kerry campaign.

MESERVE: Terry McAuliffe, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, says don't point fingers at his party.

TERRY MCAULIFFE, DNC SPOKESMAN: And no Democrats, none of the Democratic National Committee or the John Kerry for president had anything to do with the preparations of these documents.

MESERVE: But Republicans said McAuliffe left unanswered whether Democrats had anything to do with the dissemination of the documents.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: When it was first broadcast, Democrats hoped the "60 Minutes" report might hurt the Bush campaign but some ruefully acknowledge that the only group that has been clearly hurt at this juncture is CBS News -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jeanne, thank you, long day for you, Jeanne Meserve tonight.

Getting a negative story about an incumbent president wrong six weeks before an election is no small matter of consequence. There are many questions tonight about how the story came together and why reasons for caution that seem clear in hindsight were apparently ignored.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): The days before the original "60 Minutes" report on the president's service in the Texas Air National Guard were fraught with last minute interviews and last minute warnings.

HOWARD KURTZ, CNN'S RELIABLE SOURCES: They had all kinds of red flags. Their own document analysts, people they hired, had warned them that it could not be proven. It could not be authenticated that these memos were typed on a government typewriter from 1972. They ignored those warnings. They pressed ahead too quickly, they now acknowledge.

BROWN: One of those experts contacted by CBS News, Linda James, says she told network producers to be extremely cautious before airing the documents. LINDA JAMES, DOCUMENT EXPERT: I just let it go thinking that they were going to listen to my caution to them but the next day, you know, of course we found out that they did not.

BROWN: And it seems that only hours before the segment aired, CBS News producers felt that had indirect confirmation from the White House itself, something that in retrospect they clearly did not.

KURTZ: The key turning point was nine hours before the broadcast when CBS did an interview with White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett. When Bartlett didn't try to knock down the authenticity of these memos, the CBS crew somehow took that as a green light, as confirmation that it must have been OK. Bartlett told me, "Look, they only gave me the documents three hours before. How am I supposed to verify something from a dead man?"

BROWN: The CBS News team involved has years of experience in broadcast journalism. The president of the news division, Andrew Hayward, gave his approval for the segment to air. But now, of course, the questions why couldn't they have waited, checked a little more, waited another week perhaps?

KURTZ: They thought they had a hot one involving the president of the United States. We've all been there but you have to be awfully careful if you're going to risk the reputation of your star anchor, of your gold-plated news magazine show, indeed of your network itself before putting on something that's not bulletproof and this clearly had a lot of holes in it.

RATHER: It was a mistake.

BROWN: The apology from Dan Rather tonight was delivered, as Mr. Rather would, straight into the camera. He apologized on behalf of the network news division and said pointedly "I'm sorry."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: So, what does it all mean? What does it mean for CBS, for the mainstream media, as the bloggers like to call it, for all of us, for the political process? A panel when we come back.

This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The CBS document story, the story of the story, if you will, raises all sorts of questions ranging from damage done, to the political impact, to the power of the bloggers, who first started raising questions. And we'll spend some time tonight on all of them.

We're joined in New York by our senior analyst, Jeff Greenfield as well as Michael Wolff, who writes about media for "Vanity Fair" magazine these days. Alex Jones joins us, too, former reporter for "The New York Times," now director for the Shorenstein Center for the Press and Public Policy at Harvard. He comes to us from Boston. And Mickey Kaus, a blogger and a columnist for Slate.com, is in our D.C. bureau.

And we're pleased to have you all.

Alex, how much damage done to CBS on this?

ALEX JONES, DIRECTOR, SHORENSTEIN CENTER: Well, plenty of damage. I think plenty of damage without question, but I don't think it is fatal damage, provided they come clean about how this got on the air, and I mean really go into the process and explain not only how it happened, but how it will not happen again, I mean, what they're going to put in place that apparently wasn't in place when they considered this.

But I think they've also got to figure out who these documents came from. I think CBS owes us that as well.

BROWN: But do they have to -- do heads have to roll there?

JONES: Well, my guess is that there's going to be some head- rolling, but I don't think it will be Dan Rather's. But I don't really know. I think that depends on what their explanation shows was the problem. I mean, was it someone who showed such staggeringly bad judgment that you couldn't trust them to be in a position of authority again? If that should happen, then that person probably will go.

BROWN: Mike, you've been talking to the CBS people today. What's the mood over there?

MICHAEL WOLFF, "VANITY FAIR": Panicky.

BROWN: Panicky?

WOLFF: I would say, yes, panicky. They don't know what to do. They don't know how this happened. They think that they've made all the wrong moves. I mean, it is just that moment in which you find an organization...

BROWN: There was no sense of relief today that all this that had built up over the last...

WOLFF: No, you don't feel relief at this point in time. You feel, actually, like heads are going to roll and it is quite possibly your head that's going to roll.

And what you don't have is a clear sense of how to handle this, of how to move forward. That may come. I certainly put in my two cents today. Would you like to know what my two cents was?

BROWN: That's why we're paying you what we're paying you.

(LAUGHTER)

WOLFF: Literally, I said, if you believe in the story, which I think that they all still do...

BROWN: The underlying story, that the president (CROSSTALK)

WOLFF: The underlying story, the real story, that the president's service was facilitated and abbreviated, let us say. If you believe in that, I said, I would just apologize for what you got wrong and keep following the story, say, that's what we're committed to.

BROWN: All right.

I want to get to the blogger question in a second, but, Jeff, you and I were talking about this actually this afternoon in the hallway. Does this take at some level the whole president -- and maybe it should be off the table -- I'm not sure how relevant it is to anything anyway -- does it take it off the table?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: To a substantial extent.

This is like what an old teacher of mine used to call the 13th stroke of the clock, which casts doubt not only on itself, but all that has gone before, fairly or not. Look, just today, "The New York Times" did a front page story on Bush and the Guard without any of these documents. And the other papers have done it.

But the problem is, it's like a prosecutor who gets an obviously guilty guy, but then uses tainted evidence. And what often happens is, the whole case gets thrown out. And I think, to some extent in the minds of people who are in a mood to distrust sources more than they are to judge impartially whether a story is true or not, yes, I'd be -- I doubt that the Democratic National Committee is going to want to pursue the fortunate son story very long, even if there's a lot of truth to it, which I think there probably is.

BROWN: Mickey, I want to talk about bloggers, but let me get to you weigh in on this question, too. Does this forever kill the idea that there is a politically effective story in the president's National Guard years?

MICKEY KAUS, KAUSFILES.COM: I think it does. And I think it is good for Kerry. He finally came out with a statement on Iraq today. And now he wants to focus on that, not on the Vietnam era. And I think it is actually a good thing for him to get the fortunate son story out of the way.

BROWN: Why? Why would it be good in the White House -- if this story was still out there, the White House would have to play defense on the story. They couldn't talk about what they wanted to talk about.

KAUS: Well, but I think most people seem to feel the campaign shouldn't be about what happened 30 years ago. And they don't know what Kerry stands for. Any time you're talking about that, even if it's anti-Bush, you're not talking about what Kerry stands for. He wants the rest of the campaign to be a debate about Iraq, apparently. And I think that's a good thing for him. And why have another competing news story getting in the way? BROWN: All right.

Let's go to one of the other questions I guess that's sort of come up in all of this, and that is the role of the bloggers.

And, Mickey, A, you are one. And, B, you feel sort of strongly that this was their moment.

KAUS: Well, it's a huge victory for the bloggers.

Rather ridiculed the bloggers. A CBS executive said they were just people in their pajamas in their living rooms going on the Internet and writing what they think, which is essentially true. But, in this case, they were right. And CBS, this vaunted network that supposedly had myriad checks and balances so no mistake could ever be made, turned out to be a complete nothing. It was the emperor had no clothes. There were no checks and balances.

So it was -- Dan Rather blew it up into more of a victory for the bloggers than it had to be. And the problem isn't so much getting the story wrong in the first place as the week of cover-up that followed, during which they said, we have complete confidence in the chain of custody, we have complete confidence in the documents. All of it turned out not to be true. Why did they put out those press releases?

BROWN: Alex, does this in your mind signal some sort of watershed moment for the traditional mainstream press and everyone and everything else out there?

JONES: Well, certainly, the bloggers are watching. There's no question about that. And that's probably a good thing.

I think that the other aspect of this that probably does not apply in this case, but certainly lends itself to suggestion is, if you can get something phony into a newscast, you can discredit it in a dramatic way. And, as Jeff said, it's like the old plot to the movie "Witness For the Prosecution" when the killer is let loose because the wife discredits herself.

I think that the point is that the bloggers are watching, that -- to safeguard. They're watchdogs. I don't think that Mickey's been entirely fair to CBS. I do fault them. I think they could have done what they did today a week ago, certainly. But I don't think it was entirely because it was a smokescreen. I think they were really still in the thrall of this man Burkett. And I think that they somehow for reasons that are yet still unexplained, believed him past, far past when anyone reasonable would think that they should, even though they put the secretary on the air who discredited the documents herself.

I think that there was a schizophrenia almost going on there and a denial perhaps, but also a real struggle within the institution to find out what the facts were, because they did have a kind of faith in these documents that went beyond reason, to an outsider anyway. And I think that still has to be explained.

(CROSSTALK) BROWN: Mickey, hang on. We'll come back to you on that point and get Jeff and Michael too.

We need to take a quick break first. We'll continue this conversation in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Continuing now with our panel, Alex Jones, Mickey Kaus, Jeff Greenfield and Michael Wolff.

On the bloggers' point.

GREENFIELD: Yes.

Look, as somebody who works in traditional media, I happen to think that bloggers are by and large a neat thing. I like the fact that people are looking over my shoulder, the army of the overinformed, people who have spent all their lives worrying about something so small, but that they know more about it than anybody else and they're going to hold you to account.

Here's the other part, though. These are not free -- these folks are not free of an agenda. They did not go after CBS because they had a great dedication to truth. They thought their guy, George Bush, was going to be damaged, just like the swift boat veterans wanted to hurt Kerry. Now, I believe in that whole notion that out of all this fray comes some truth.

But I think that what happens is more and more the quaint idea that there are some organizations that just try to figure out what's going on, that's been kind of seen as old-fashioned. And now that CBS, the network of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, has been seen to be faulty, I think a whole lot of people are looking at this not as an accident or not as a bad journalistic decision, but as a political decision.

BROWN: Yes.

GREENFIELD: They wanted to take down George W. Bush.

And then the question is, is there any room to survive for people who say, I really just am trying to do reporting?

BROWN: I've got 90 seconds left. I'd like to get you all in one more time.

Michael, you want to pick up on that?

WOLFF: You know, my concern and my worry and my suspicion is that this is a formal takedown.

BROWN: Which means?

WOLFF: That means that certain people, a certain ideology looked at this story and said, we're screwed on this story. We have to discredit it anyway. How do you go about doing that? If the story is real, but you want to discredit it, then you pick up from the...

BROWN: But let me -- can I just suggest that I'm not sure that, had "The Washington Post" and other mainstream newspapers, news networks gotten involved in this story that it would have gone anywhere anyway.

WOLFF: What do you mean? It did go somewhere. What do you mean? You mean the CBS story or the question of the National Guard story?

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: The authenticity of the documents was moved as much by the mainstream press. Clearly, it was started by the bloggers. I'm not arguing that. But it was "The Washington Post," Howard Kurtz and others who worked the story very hard and I think that gave it credibility.

(CROSSTALK)

WOLFF: Obviously. But that's how it works. That's how the takedown works. You -- it originated from outside. It goes to the -- the question becomes a very literal question instead of, in this instance, the real question. Did George Bush avoid service? Did he get to be in the National Guard because -- you know, because he bought it?

BROWN: Right.

Mickey, last word. Twenty seconds.

KAUS: Even more reason to have checks and balances. In this case, the blogs turned out to have higher standards than CBS. It is sort of unfair to tar the rest of the press with CBS' behavior. I know conventional journalists who work for big papers who are appalled by what CBS did. So, in some sense, it is CBS' fault, only, as CBS.

BROWN: Mickey and Alex, Michael and Jeff, good to see you all. Thank you.

KAUS: Thanks.

BROWN: We'll take a break. We'll continue in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Tropical Storm Jeanne has killed at least 500 people in Haiti so far, survivors spending the night in trees, on top of cars and rooftops.

Then there's Hurricane Karl, bringing the season's total to seven. And that's before we even get to Tropical Storm Lisa. And then there is Ivan, hurricane past. It will be months, years before life returns to normal for many.

Here's CNN's Chris Lawrence. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hurricane Ivan did such damage to this Pensacola neighborhood, it's taken four days for families to even be allowed back in.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Every little thing that I find is a treasure.

LAWRENCE: Like this bracelet from her husband's time in Vietnam. But the big things are gone. And so is the home John (ph) and Nancy McCamey (ph) shared.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The first thing I said when we came out, I said, well, you know, as bad as it is, it is better than being a POW and better than being a POW'S wife.

LAWRENCE: And they would know. John's fighter jet was shot down over Vietnam in 1965. He was held captive for the next seven years. And his wife didn't know if he was dead or alive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was nothing compared to that.

LAWRENCE: But parts of the Florida Panhandle look like they've been through a battle.

GARY COLE, PENSACOLA RESIDENT: My house is trashed.

LAWRENCE: On Pensacola Beach, entire homes have been ripped in half with no hope of repair.

(on camera): It is almost as if the hurricane picked up the beach and dumped it into this neighborhood. This is someone's living room, where you should see carpeting and tile, not sand piled halfway to the top of the door.

(voice-over): People like Gary Cole are years away from having a home to come back to.

COLE: Wait until they get water, electric, all that. Then they'll have to tear the house down, and then go through the permitting system and get a new house. It's a heartbreaker.

LAWRENCE: But one that hasn't broken the spirit of the families who survived it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One thing you learn as a POW, it can always get worse.

LAWRENCE: Chris Lawrence, CNN, Pensacola Beach.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world. A number of kind of interesting things, OK? Of course, would I tell you if there weren't? No. Of course I would.

"International Herald Tribune," published by "The New York Times." A lot of Iraq on the front page. The picture is Senator Kerry. "Kerry Sees Crisis of Historic Dimension. He Says Iraq Missteps By Bush Could Lead to War Without End." Well, I don't know about that, but it sure isn't going very well these days. "As Iraq War Escalates, So Does Anxiety Over Iran," a sidebar story by Steven R. Weisman, an analysis piece. And down here, a very good story idea. "Iraqi Police: Hunters and Hunted." Not the most secure job on the planet these days. That's "The International Herald Tribune."

There's an intriguing story in "The Financial Times" down at the bottom here. "Bush Described as al Qaeda's Best Recruiting Sergeant by U.K. Ambassador." The British ambassador to Italy made no friends, I suspect, either in London or certainly in Washington with that comment.

"The Washington Times," not every paper -- most papers played the CBS story on the front page. "CBS Admits Memo Mistakes. Rather Offers Viewers Apology." He was pretty straight ahead about that. Also put John Kerry on the front page. "Kerry Calls Iraq War Profound Diversion."

This is the way the Charleston, West Virginia, "Gazette" headlined the Kerry speech today. "Kerry Says He Wouldn't Have Gone Into Iraq. Bush Accuses Senator of Flip-Flopping Again." How many times can you flip-flop before you're back at the beginning? I'm not sure.

"The Detroit News" leads local. "Roadwork Fixes Clogged Downtown Detroit." I've never seen it clogged in downtown Detroit.

"Philadelphia Inquirer." "Bush Gains in Crucial States," political story on the front page. And "Rather Apologizes, Says Papers May Not Be Real."

I'll bet we're just about out of time, aren't we? "Dan Rather Sorry" is "The Chicago Sun-Times." The weather tomorrow in Chicago "a gift."

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: If you don't know what to do with yourself at 7:00 tomorrow morning, here's Bill Hemmer with some ideas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Aaron, thanks. Tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING," the president calls John Kerry a flip-flopper on Iraq, with a new position every day. Kerry calls the president a sugarcoater who won't admit to what's really needed to win the war. Tomorrow, our series "Promises, Promises" will continue cutting through the rhetoric, looking at what each candidate would really do, they say, to finish the job in Iraq. How are the two plans different? The answer, CNN tomorrow, 7:00 Eastern time. Hope to see you then -- Aaron.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: That's a good idea for a series on "AMERICAN MORNING."

Good to have you with us tonight. It's been kind of an emotional roller-coaster around here tonight, but we're glad you're with us. We'll see you tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern time.

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 20, 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 is not an honest reporter in the country today, not an honest news organization that hasn't in the last few days when looking at the story of how the now CBS discredited documents on the president's National Guard service said there but for the grace of God go I, excepting that some partisans will see it otherwise, will see willful deception on the part of CBS.

Smarter and more reasoned heads know better. Sources can and do sometimes mislead. Sometimes they do it deliberately, sometimes inadvertently but it does happen and it happened to CBS big time.

It happened on a story involving the president which raises the stakes. It happened to the most controversial of the big three anchors. It happened in the heat of a presidential campaign. It happened.

It happened, I suspect, in part because reporters want very much a good story to be true and sometimes see more clearly the things that make it true and ignore the things that don't.

It happens in the best news organizations and the worst. The good ones admit it, apologize, figure out how it happened and get back to work. The worst pretend it didn't happen at all. That is one way to distinguish the difference. We'll have more on that tonight.

But first the whip begins on the campaign trail with a sharp turn in the debate over Iraq, CNN's Candy Crowley in New York to start us off with a headline tonight -- Candy.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, John Kerry says that U.S. policy in Iraq has been marked by arrogance, incompetence, misjudgments and misleading statements and he was just getting started -- Aaron.

BROWN: Candy, thank you. We'll get to you pretty quickly tonight.

Today's mea culpa from CBS fell on welcome ears at the White House for sure. CNN's Jeanne Meserve is in Washington with a headline on a much talked about story today -- Jeanne.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, after 12 days of saying they got it right, CBS admits it did not. The network now says it did not adequately scrutinize the documents in question and cannot say they are authentic. The man who gave them to CBS still maintains they're real but he's a Democrat and the White House continues to raise questions about motivation and timing -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jeanne, thank you.

What does it mean for everyone else in the news business, among other things, that CBS got the document part of the story wrong, one of many questions our Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield will weigh in on tonight, Jeff, a headline.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: Aaron, the questions revolve around everything from the future of Dan Rather and high-ranking CBS producers to what it might mean for the campaign. But perhaps the real story here is what it tells us about just how dramatically journalism has changed in just a few years -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jeff, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest in a moment.

Also on the program tonight, one American is beheaded in Iraq. A fellow American could meet the same fate. We hope not. His family pleads for his safe return and we'll talk live with his wife in a moment.

Also, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, one family finds comfort in a small treasure.

And, at the end of the hour, where tomorrow begins, so do morning papers, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin in Iraq, not with the battles in Sadr City or the Sunni Triangle, not with talk of strategy or politics, with an act of barbarism and a name we suspect will be sadly to be sure forgotten far too quickly, except by those who loved him.

Eugene Armstrong, an American, a civil engineer, kidnapped last week in Baghdad was murdered, beheaded by his captors. He was one of three westerners taken. The fate of the others is, of course, tonight uncertain.

We begin in Baghdad and CNN's Walter Rodgers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALTER RODGERS, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The militant Islamist group calling itself Unification and Jihad released this video showing Eugene Armstrong on his knees, blindfolded, helpless, his hands bound moments before the execution.

Five hooded Muslim militants stand behind him. One reads a statement promising two other hostages will be killed. The killings will resume again in 24 hours they said unless their demands are met, release all Iraqi women prisoners or the next American Jack Hensley will be beheaded, followed by the British subject Kenneth Bigley. The hooded man reads a statement saying he is carrying out God's law. Then he saws off Armstrong's head with a knife as the dying man screams in pain.

The three civilians lived in this house in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood until last Thursday when they were kidnapped early in the morning. Their Iraqi overnight guard disappeared, did not come to work, leaving them for the kidnappers.

(on camera): Armstrong's body was later recovered by Iraqi police. That leaves seven other hostages still in the hands of the Iraqi kidnappers, the one remaining American, the one British subject, then there were two Italian aid workers, both women, and there were two French journalists and, finally, an Iraqi-American businessman.

Walter Rodgers, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Well all of this, as you can imagine, is horrifying for the families, all of them. We're joined from Atlanta tonight by the wife of one of the two remaining western hostages, Patty Hensley. As you heard her husband Jack, along with a British citizen Kenneth Bigley work for an oil services company.

Ms. Hensley we're pleased to see you and we regret the circumstances. Why don't we just begin this simply? What do you want to say?

PATTY HENSLEY, WIFE OF AMERICAN HOSTAGE JACK HENSLEY: I'm making another attempt at pleading with these captors to please open communications with us again so that we can perhaps come to some agreement on what it is exactly they want and perhaps how those needs can be met.

And to again remind them that Jack Hensley is a loving and caring man and the father of a 13-year-old girl who doesn't understand exactly what's happening, as well as his fellow coworker Ken Bigley, who again is a family man and these gentlemen were there to help the Iraqi people.

They were not part of any security or military type operation. They truly enjoyed their work with the Iraqi people and the daily strides that they were making and the people were so happy to have them.

BROWN: Have you -- has the government, the U.S. government been talking to you since your husband was taken?

HENSLEY: I have been surrounded by probably every agency there is. Everybody is working diligently and very quickly as much as they can but the biggest obstacle has been being able to carry on two-way communications with the captors about what can be done about these demands.

BROWN: Has there been, to your knowledge, any communication, either between the Iraqi government and the captors or the American government or the American military with the people who are holding your husband?

HENSLEY: Nothing -- excuse me, sir, nothing that I am privy to. I know there is far more superior intelligence behind this both here in the states and in Baghdad that know things that I don't know and, to be honest, I don't need to know them.

I just need them to follow through and do what they can to save these two gentlemen. And I'm devastated that we've lost Jack Armstrong. He was one of my husband's best friends and best coworkers and I know his family is terribly devastated at this point.

BROWN: Today must have been an impossibly difficult day.

HENSLEY: It's been pretty difficult since last Thursday.

BROWN: Yes. When did you last talk with your husband?

HENSLEY: It was our common practice that in the evening, as I was finishing up whatever, I would log into the Internet and that would be about the time that he was getting up and preparing for work.

And, on Wednesday evening, prior to the capture, Wednesday evening our time, which would have been about 5:30 in the morning their time, we did our usual chat as to how's everybody doing.

Not only do we have our 13-year-old daughter but I take care of his 88-year-old mother, who has Alzheimer's as well, so it was daily check-ins on what's going on. And he had sent me a message to please be safe because Ivan looked as if it was coming this way.

And I sent him the messages I always did that everybody loved him and to please be safe. And we logged off chatting about 9:30 and putting time frames together, it had to be within the next half hour to 45 minutes that they were abducted.

BROWN: If it's OK to ask a couple more questions did he ever express to you concerns about his safety?

HENSLEY: My husband and I both had worked overseas positions before and we knew being Americans in foreign countries could be hazardous in itself. Iraq, of course, presented a more severe warning in that regard.

There had been concerns in the weeks leading up to this captive that the guards that were provided for them around the clock by their company all of a sudden were not showing up or, if they came in, they had to leave for some family excuse.

And there is at one point a guard who actually warned them that he had been stopped on the way to work and told not to work for the Americans anymore. It was shortly after that the abduction happened.

BROWN: How long was your husband planning to stay in Iraq?

HENSLEY: My husband had signed a one-year contract with GSES (ph) the company they were working for. He was six and a half months through that contract and he would have been coming home in February. Jack Armstrong, who we lost today, was due to complete his contract next month.

BROWN: Well, Ms. Hensley there's nothing I can say that can make your day feel any better but I am certain that all of us here and everyone watching has you in their prayers tonight and we hope for the best imaginable outcome and soon.

HENSLEY: Well, I hope so too. Again, if I could just say to the captors we are more than willing to work on this together. We don't know how to get in touch or how to even begin to open the lines of communications other than through what, thank you, you and the media have provided for us.

But, these gentlemen are truly three wonderful men who were there simply to help the Iraqi people overcome the terrible damage that had been done to them during all of this war, if you would call it that.

And, their intent was to provide them with a lifestyle that they deserve and they were very loved by their Iraqi neighbors. They sent gifts home to my daughter and I all the time and they were always welcome in the Iraqi homes.

These were three gentlemen who had absolutely no agenda, other than to enrich the lives of the people they were there to help and to take their lives would serve no real purpose.

BROWN: Our thoughts and prayers are with you, best of luck.

HENSLEY: I thank you so much.

BROWN: Well, thank you. Thank you very much.

HENSLEY: Thank you.

BROWN: On we go.

With no end to the bloodshed in sight, tragically, and coming off a very difficult week in Iraq which included the kidnapping of Mrs. Hensley's husband and the others, the issues today seemed to take on a new edge in the campaign.

Six weeks now until Election Day. Senator John Kerry trying again to stake out new ground, his words clearly tougher, the focus seemingly tighter, and the president, of course, hit back as well.

So we have two reports from the campaign, both centered around Iraq, CNN's Candy Crowley and John King, Candy first.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CROWLEY (voice-over): The new prime minister of Iraq arrives in the U.S. President Bush prepares to address a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. And, John Kerry levels his most brutal, most expansive critique yet of the war in Iraq. SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, by an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence.

CROWLEY: With early September polls showing Bush with huge leads over Kerry on the issues of terrorism and Iraq, Kerry strategists figure to center the fall campaign around mostly domestic issues, familiar territory for Democrats but to talk education policy when the headlines are elsewhere made the campaign seem weirdly out of synch, so small change in plans, Iraq as a matter of policy and character.

KERRY: They were colossal failures of judgment and judgment is what we look for in a president.

CROWLEY: Said one Democratic strategist, the situation is deteriorating in Iraq and Bush keeps saying we're making progress. "He has a blind spot," the source added. "We're going to hit it."

KERRY: Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight.

CROWLEY: Kerry's course corrections include a summit with world leaders to encourage involvement in Iraq, expanded training of Iraqi troops, reconstruction with tangible benefits, a guarantee of elections next year.

With the exception of an imminent summit, the Bush campaign says it's already doing all the things Kerry talked about and therein lies the peril for the Democratic nominee whose own positions on Iraq have been seen as convoluted, if not contradictory and his plans for the future have been criticized as either too vague or too similar to the president's.

Candy Crowley, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The president, once again, sought to deflect sharp criticism of his Iraq policy by suggesting his Democratic opponent can't settle on a policy of his own.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today, my opponent continued his pattern of twisting in the wind with new contradictions of his old positions on Iraq.

KING: Campaigning in New Hampshire, Mr. Bush took issue with Senator Kerry's statement that the Iraq War did not make the United States safer and that toppling Saddam Hussein was not worth the chaos in Iraq today. Last December, Mr. Bush said these were Kerry's words.

BUSH: "Those who believe we are not safer with his capture don't have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president." I could not have said it better.

KING: Mr. Bush has a political edge on the Iraq issue, despite a rising death toll for U.S. troops, an intensifying insurgency and skepticism about the country's political transition but criticism of his Iraq policy is hardly confined to Democrats.

Four Republican Senators this weekend faulted the White House for what they called poor military planning and even incompetence in Iraq. And Democrats, who concede Senator Kerry dug himself a hole with his own words, sense a shift.

SEN. JAY ROCKEFELLER (D), WEST VIRGINIA: I think John Kerry has gained the momentum at precisely the right time, will put Bush on the defensive just at the time that the American people are coming to realize that things, in fact, are not going well in Iraq at all.

KING: Bush allies say the flip-flop label will be all but impossible to shake.

WHIT AYRES, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER: It's just exceedingly difficult for him now, based on the box he's created for himself, to say anything that the American people would deem to be credible about Iraq.

KING: As the candidates again debated Iraq policy from a distance their campaigns reached agreement on face-to-face encounters, three presidential debates, September 30th in Miami, October 8th in St. Louis and October 13th in Tempe, Arizona. The vice presidential candidates will debate once on October 5th in Cleveland.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Iraq and the broader war on terror is certain to dominate that first debate, which is dedicated to foreign policy and, Aaron, certain to be in the forefront here in New York, the president here, of course, at the United Nations General Assembly.

BROWN: Both Candy and John are here. John, does the campaign, the Bush campaign, feel that the more the Senator talks about Iraq the more they're playing into the president's wheel house?

KING: Yes and no. They do believe that the Senator has dug a hole and the president keeps saying, "Have a debate with yourself, Senator Kerry, before you have a debate with me."

Some Republicans, including those within the campaign though, a little worried that this debate has been -- this has been going on too long and that eventually the voters will say, "OK, Senator Kerry's conflicted on this but what about the president's policy? He is the incumbent after all. This is his war."

BROWN: Now, if I were running the campaign, and clearly I'm not capable of -- I can barely run the program, I take just what was said by Republican Senators over the weekend on Iraq policy and turn it into a Kerry campaign ad. CROWLEY: Well, you know, the problem is that then the Republicans object. I mean we already saw Senator Lugar came out with a statement via the Bush-Cheney campaign to sort of soften a little bit or try to make the point that they've been trying to advise President Bush all along and where was John Kerry? So, but that is not to say that this didn't come up today because it did. Chuck Hagel's words in particular were quoted by the Senator.

BROWN: Is this the next six weeks of the campaign? Is the Senator going to go Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, or does he need to broaden the campaign?

CROWLEY: Well, he's going to broaden. Tomorrow is Medicare. But, you know, really you did get this dizziness on the campaign trail because all these things were going on and you'd be sitting there in a, you know, with a lot of senior citizens talking about something and the Senator doesn't have news conferences and he doesn't, you know, there's not much interplay, so you had this kind of bubble effect that's even beyond the normal bubble effect.

BROWN: Just, John, a last question. You guys have been out far more than I but I was out this weekend out west talking to voters and I was amazed at while people say they're interested in health care, while they say they're interested in education, while they say they're interested in this and that, the only thing they wanted to talk about was Iraq and the war on terror and that really was it.

KING: Well, people tend to reflect what they're hearing from the campaigns, number one, and I think people are genuinely a little more scared after you see the terrorism in Russia and they talk about terrorism here in the United States.

So, I think it is the issue and I think Senator Kerry is conceding that point by trying to come back again and get back on track, if you will, on Iraq. And the White House says "bring it on." We'll talk about this every single day.

But, again, there are some Republicans who say eventually if people start thinking about what is it like on the ground in Iraq now that that could hurt the president but they continue to have a double digit edge when it comes to Iraq policy, an even bigger edge when it comes to the war on terrorism. The Republicans don't think Senator Kerry can win the election unless he changes those numbers.

BROWN: Good to see you both. We should do this more often.

CROWLEY: We'll be back.

BROWN: Although we seem to do it one way or another every night. Thank you both very much.

Still ahead an apology from CBS in the controversy over the documents. That's coming up.

And later tonight, in a Florida neighborhood where Ivan spared almost nothing, searching for something. From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: CBS News acknowledged today what most people had concluded days ago. It could not now say for certain that documents used in its report on the president's National Guard service were real.

CBS says a key source to the documents misled them, said the documents should not have been used, promised an independent investigation and apologized. End of story? No, more like the beginning.

Here's CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE (voice-over): A "60 Minutes" 180 from CBS. The network says it made a mistake and cannot authenticate documents it had presented as genuine 12 days ago.

The man who CBS says gave it the documents, Bill Burkett, says he did not forge them and he believes they're real. In his first on-air interview with CBS, Burkett argued forcefully that he had misled the network in order to protect his source.

BILL BURKETT: Well, I didn't totally mislead you. I did mislead you on the one individual. You know, your staff pressured me to a point to reveal that source.

DAN RATHER, CBS NEWS: Well, we were trying to get the chain of possession.

BURKETT: I understand that.

RATHER: And you said you had received them from someone.

BURKETT: I understand that.

RATHER: And we did press you to say, well you received them from someone and that someone was who?

BURKETT: Yes.

RATHER: And it's true, we pressured you because it was a very important point for us.

BURKETT: Yes, and I simply through out a name that was basically -- it was I guess to get a little pressure off for a moment.

MESERVE: But CBS failed to nail down the source or the authenticity of the documents, something Burkett says he told the network to do.

RATHER: The failure of CBS News to do just that to properly fully scrutinize the documents and their source, led to our airing the documents when we should not have done so. It was a mistake. CBS News deeply regrets it. Also, I want to say personally and directly I'm sorry.

MESERVE: Bill Burkett has in the past sued the Texas National Guard over medical benefits and alleged that President Bush's military records were sanitized, a charge that former Bush aides have called hogwash. The White House pounced on the revelation that Burkett, a Democrat, was CBS' source.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: What contacts did Mr. Burkett have with Democrats? There are reports that he had senior level contacts with members of the Kerry campaign.

MESERVE: Terry McAuliffe, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, says don't point fingers at his party.

TERRY MCAULIFFE, DNC SPOKESMAN: And no Democrats, none of the Democratic National Committee or the John Kerry for president had anything to do with the preparations of these documents.

MESERVE: But Republicans said McAuliffe left unanswered whether Democrats had anything to do with the dissemination of the documents.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: When it was first broadcast, Democrats hoped the "60 Minutes" report might hurt the Bush campaign but some ruefully acknowledge that the only group that has been clearly hurt at this juncture is CBS News -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jeanne, thank you, long day for you, Jeanne Meserve tonight.

Getting a negative story about an incumbent president wrong six weeks before an election is no small matter of consequence. There are many questions tonight about how the story came together and why reasons for caution that seem clear in hindsight were apparently ignored.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): The days before the original "60 Minutes" report on the president's service in the Texas Air National Guard were fraught with last minute interviews and last minute warnings.

HOWARD KURTZ, CNN'S RELIABLE SOURCES: They had all kinds of red flags. Their own document analysts, people they hired, had warned them that it could not be proven. It could not be authenticated that these memos were typed on a government typewriter from 1972. They ignored those warnings. They pressed ahead too quickly, they now acknowledge.

BROWN: One of those experts contacted by CBS News, Linda James, says she told network producers to be extremely cautious before airing the documents. LINDA JAMES, DOCUMENT EXPERT: I just let it go thinking that they were going to listen to my caution to them but the next day, you know, of course we found out that they did not.

BROWN: And it seems that only hours before the segment aired, CBS News producers felt that had indirect confirmation from the White House itself, something that in retrospect they clearly did not.

KURTZ: The key turning point was nine hours before the broadcast when CBS did an interview with White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett. When Bartlett didn't try to knock down the authenticity of these memos, the CBS crew somehow took that as a green light, as confirmation that it must have been OK. Bartlett told me, "Look, they only gave me the documents three hours before. How am I supposed to verify something from a dead man?"

BROWN: The CBS News team involved has years of experience in broadcast journalism. The president of the news division, Andrew Hayward, gave his approval for the segment to air. But now, of course, the questions why couldn't they have waited, checked a little more, waited another week perhaps?

KURTZ: They thought they had a hot one involving the president of the United States. We've all been there but you have to be awfully careful if you're going to risk the reputation of your star anchor, of your gold-plated news magazine show, indeed of your network itself before putting on something that's not bulletproof and this clearly had a lot of holes in it.

RATHER: It was a mistake.

BROWN: The apology from Dan Rather tonight was delivered, as Mr. Rather would, straight into the camera. He apologized on behalf of the network news division and said pointedly "I'm sorry."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: So, what does it all mean? What does it mean for CBS, for the mainstream media, as the bloggers like to call it, for all of us, for the political process? A panel when we come back.

This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The CBS document story, the story of the story, if you will, raises all sorts of questions ranging from damage done, to the political impact, to the power of the bloggers, who first started raising questions. And we'll spend some time tonight on all of them.

We're joined in New York by our senior analyst, Jeff Greenfield as well as Michael Wolff, who writes about media for "Vanity Fair" magazine these days. Alex Jones joins us, too, former reporter for "The New York Times," now director for the Shorenstein Center for the Press and Public Policy at Harvard. He comes to us from Boston. And Mickey Kaus, a blogger and a columnist for Slate.com, is in our D.C. bureau.

And we're pleased to have you all.

Alex, how much damage done to CBS on this?

ALEX JONES, DIRECTOR, SHORENSTEIN CENTER: Well, plenty of damage. I think plenty of damage without question, but I don't think it is fatal damage, provided they come clean about how this got on the air, and I mean really go into the process and explain not only how it happened, but how it will not happen again, I mean, what they're going to put in place that apparently wasn't in place when they considered this.

But I think they've also got to figure out who these documents came from. I think CBS owes us that as well.

BROWN: But do they have to -- do heads have to roll there?

JONES: Well, my guess is that there's going to be some head- rolling, but I don't think it will be Dan Rather's. But I don't really know. I think that depends on what their explanation shows was the problem. I mean, was it someone who showed such staggeringly bad judgment that you couldn't trust them to be in a position of authority again? If that should happen, then that person probably will go.

BROWN: Mike, you've been talking to the CBS people today. What's the mood over there?

MICHAEL WOLFF, "VANITY FAIR": Panicky.

BROWN: Panicky?

WOLFF: I would say, yes, panicky. They don't know what to do. They don't know how this happened. They think that they've made all the wrong moves. I mean, it is just that moment in which you find an organization...

BROWN: There was no sense of relief today that all this that had built up over the last...

WOLFF: No, you don't feel relief at this point in time. You feel, actually, like heads are going to roll and it is quite possibly your head that's going to roll.

And what you don't have is a clear sense of how to handle this, of how to move forward. That may come. I certainly put in my two cents today. Would you like to know what my two cents was?

BROWN: That's why we're paying you what we're paying you.

(LAUGHTER)

WOLFF: Literally, I said, if you believe in the story, which I think that they all still do...

BROWN: The underlying story, that the president (CROSSTALK)

WOLFF: The underlying story, the real story, that the president's service was facilitated and abbreviated, let us say. If you believe in that, I said, I would just apologize for what you got wrong and keep following the story, say, that's what we're committed to.

BROWN: All right.

I want to get to the blogger question in a second, but, Jeff, you and I were talking about this actually this afternoon in the hallway. Does this take at some level the whole president -- and maybe it should be off the table -- I'm not sure how relevant it is to anything anyway -- does it take it off the table?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: To a substantial extent.

This is like what an old teacher of mine used to call the 13th stroke of the clock, which casts doubt not only on itself, but all that has gone before, fairly or not. Look, just today, "The New York Times" did a front page story on Bush and the Guard without any of these documents. And the other papers have done it.

But the problem is, it's like a prosecutor who gets an obviously guilty guy, but then uses tainted evidence. And what often happens is, the whole case gets thrown out. And I think, to some extent in the minds of people who are in a mood to distrust sources more than they are to judge impartially whether a story is true or not, yes, I'd be -- I doubt that the Democratic National Committee is going to want to pursue the fortunate son story very long, even if there's a lot of truth to it, which I think there probably is.

BROWN: Mickey, I want to talk about bloggers, but let me get to you weigh in on this question, too. Does this forever kill the idea that there is a politically effective story in the president's National Guard years?

MICKEY KAUS, KAUSFILES.COM: I think it does. And I think it is good for Kerry. He finally came out with a statement on Iraq today. And now he wants to focus on that, not on the Vietnam era. And I think it is actually a good thing for him to get the fortunate son story out of the way.

BROWN: Why? Why would it be good in the White House -- if this story was still out there, the White House would have to play defense on the story. They couldn't talk about what they wanted to talk about.

KAUS: Well, but I think most people seem to feel the campaign shouldn't be about what happened 30 years ago. And they don't know what Kerry stands for. Any time you're talking about that, even if it's anti-Bush, you're not talking about what Kerry stands for. He wants the rest of the campaign to be a debate about Iraq, apparently. And I think that's a good thing for him. And why have another competing news story getting in the way? BROWN: All right.

Let's go to one of the other questions I guess that's sort of come up in all of this, and that is the role of the bloggers.

And, Mickey, A, you are one. And, B, you feel sort of strongly that this was their moment.

KAUS: Well, it's a huge victory for the bloggers.

Rather ridiculed the bloggers. A CBS executive said they were just people in their pajamas in their living rooms going on the Internet and writing what they think, which is essentially true. But, in this case, they were right. And CBS, this vaunted network that supposedly had myriad checks and balances so no mistake could ever be made, turned out to be a complete nothing. It was the emperor had no clothes. There were no checks and balances.

So it was -- Dan Rather blew it up into more of a victory for the bloggers than it had to be. And the problem isn't so much getting the story wrong in the first place as the week of cover-up that followed, during which they said, we have complete confidence in the chain of custody, we have complete confidence in the documents. All of it turned out not to be true. Why did they put out those press releases?

BROWN: Alex, does this in your mind signal some sort of watershed moment for the traditional mainstream press and everyone and everything else out there?

JONES: Well, certainly, the bloggers are watching. There's no question about that. And that's probably a good thing.

I think that the other aspect of this that probably does not apply in this case, but certainly lends itself to suggestion is, if you can get something phony into a newscast, you can discredit it in a dramatic way. And, as Jeff said, it's like the old plot to the movie "Witness For the Prosecution" when the killer is let loose because the wife discredits herself.

I think that the point is that the bloggers are watching, that -- to safeguard. They're watchdogs. I don't think that Mickey's been entirely fair to CBS. I do fault them. I think they could have done what they did today a week ago, certainly. But I don't think it was entirely because it was a smokescreen. I think they were really still in the thrall of this man Burkett. And I think that they somehow for reasons that are yet still unexplained, believed him past, far past when anyone reasonable would think that they should, even though they put the secretary on the air who discredited the documents herself.

I think that there was a schizophrenia almost going on there and a denial perhaps, but also a real struggle within the institution to find out what the facts were, because they did have a kind of faith in these documents that went beyond reason, to an outsider anyway. And I think that still has to be explained.

(CROSSTALK) BROWN: Mickey, hang on. We'll come back to you on that point and get Jeff and Michael too.

We need to take a quick break first. We'll continue this conversation in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Continuing now with our panel, Alex Jones, Mickey Kaus, Jeff Greenfield and Michael Wolff.

On the bloggers' point.

GREENFIELD: Yes.

Look, as somebody who works in traditional media, I happen to think that bloggers are by and large a neat thing. I like the fact that people are looking over my shoulder, the army of the overinformed, people who have spent all their lives worrying about something so small, but that they know more about it than anybody else and they're going to hold you to account.

Here's the other part, though. These are not free -- these folks are not free of an agenda. They did not go after CBS because they had a great dedication to truth. They thought their guy, George Bush, was going to be damaged, just like the swift boat veterans wanted to hurt Kerry. Now, I believe in that whole notion that out of all this fray comes some truth.

But I think that what happens is more and more the quaint idea that there are some organizations that just try to figure out what's going on, that's been kind of seen as old-fashioned. And now that CBS, the network of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, has been seen to be faulty, I think a whole lot of people are looking at this not as an accident or not as a bad journalistic decision, but as a political decision.

BROWN: Yes.

GREENFIELD: They wanted to take down George W. Bush.

And then the question is, is there any room to survive for people who say, I really just am trying to do reporting?

BROWN: I've got 90 seconds left. I'd like to get you all in one more time.

Michael, you want to pick up on that?

WOLFF: You know, my concern and my worry and my suspicion is that this is a formal takedown.

BROWN: Which means?

WOLFF: That means that certain people, a certain ideology looked at this story and said, we're screwed on this story. We have to discredit it anyway. How do you go about doing that? If the story is real, but you want to discredit it, then you pick up from the...

BROWN: But let me -- can I just suggest that I'm not sure that, had "The Washington Post" and other mainstream newspapers, news networks gotten involved in this story that it would have gone anywhere anyway.

WOLFF: What do you mean? It did go somewhere. What do you mean? You mean the CBS story or the question of the National Guard story?

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: The authenticity of the documents was moved as much by the mainstream press. Clearly, it was started by the bloggers. I'm not arguing that. But it was "The Washington Post," Howard Kurtz and others who worked the story very hard and I think that gave it credibility.

(CROSSTALK)

WOLFF: Obviously. But that's how it works. That's how the takedown works. You -- it originated from outside. It goes to the -- the question becomes a very literal question instead of, in this instance, the real question. Did George Bush avoid service? Did he get to be in the National Guard because -- you know, because he bought it?

BROWN: Right.

Mickey, last word. Twenty seconds.

KAUS: Even more reason to have checks and balances. In this case, the blogs turned out to have higher standards than CBS. It is sort of unfair to tar the rest of the press with CBS' behavior. I know conventional journalists who work for big papers who are appalled by what CBS did. So, in some sense, it is CBS' fault, only, as CBS.

BROWN: Mickey and Alex, Michael and Jeff, good to see you all. Thank you.

KAUS: Thanks.

BROWN: We'll take a break. We'll continue in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Tropical Storm Jeanne has killed at least 500 people in Haiti so far, survivors spending the night in trees, on top of cars and rooftops.

Then there's Hurricane Karl, bringing the season's total to seven. And that's before we even get to Tropical Storm Lisa. And then there is Ivan, hurricane past. It will be months, years before life returns to normal for many.

Here's CNN's Chris Lawrence. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hurricane Ivan did such damage to this Pensacola neighborhood, it's taken four days for families to even be allowed back in.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Every little thing that I find is a treasure.

LAWRENCE: Like this bracelet from her husband's time in Vietnam. But the big things are gone. And so is the home John (ph) and Nancy McCamey (ph) shared.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The first thing I said when we came out, I said, well, you know, as bad as it is, it is better than being a POW and better than being a POW'S wife.

LAWRENCE: And they would know. John's fighter jet was shot down over Vietnam in 1965. He was held captive for the next seven years. And his wife didn't know if he was dead or alive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was nothing compared to that.

LAWRENCE: But parts of the Florida Panhandle look like they've been through a battle.

GARY COLE, PENSACOLA RESIDENT: My house is trashed.

LAWRENCE: On Pensacola Beach, entire homes have been ripped in half with no hope of repair.

(on camera): It is almost as if the hurricane picked up the beach and dumped it into this neighborhood. This is someone's living room, where you should see carpeting and tile, not sand piled halfway to the top of the door.

(voice-over): People like Gary Cole are years away from having a home to come back to.

COLE: Wait until they get water, electric, all that. Then they'll have to tear the house down, and then go through the permitting system and get a new house. It's a heartbreaker.

LAWRENCE: But one that hasn't broken the spirit of the families who survived it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One thing you learn as a POW, it can always get worse.

LAWRENCE: Chris Lawrence, CNN, Pensacola Beach.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world. A number of kind of interesting things, OK? Of course, would I tell you if there weren't? No. Of course I would.

"International Herald Tribune," published by "The New York Times." A lot of Iraq on the front page. The picture is Senator Kerry. "Kerry Sees Crisis of Historic Dimension. He Says Iraq Missteps By Bush Could Lead to War Without End." Well, I don't know about that, but it sure isn't going very well these days. "As Iraq War Escalates, So Does Anxiety Over Iran," a sidebar story by Steven R. Weisman, an analysis piece. And down here, a very good story idea. "Iraqi Police: Hunters and Hunted." Not the most secure job on the planet these days. That's "The International Herald Tribune."

There's an intriguing story in "The Financial Times" down at the bottom here. "Bush Described as al Qaeda's Best Recruiting Sergeant by U.K. Ambassador." The British ambassador to Italy made no friends, I suspect, either in London or certainly in Washington with that comment.

"The Washington Times," not every paper -- most papers played the CBS story on the front page. "CBS Admits Memo Mistakes. Rather Offers Viewers Apology." He was pretty straight ahead about that. Also put John Kerry on the front page. "Kerry Calls Iraq War Profound Diversion."

This is the way the Charleston, West Virginia, "Gazette" headlined the Kerry speech today. "Kerry Says He Wouldn't Have Gone Into Iraq. Bush Accuses Senator of Flip-Flopping Again." How many times can you flip-flop before you're back at the beginning? I'm not sure.

"The Detroit News" leads local. "Roadwork Fixes Clogged Downtown Detroit." I've never seen it clogged in downtown Detroit.

"Philadelphia Inquirer." "Bush Gains in Crucial States," political story on the front page. And "Rather Apologizes, Says Papers May Not Be Real."

I'll bet we're just about out of time, aren't we? "Dan Rather Sorry" is "The Chicago Sun-Times." The weather tomorrow in Chicago "a gift."

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: If you don't know what to do with yourself at 7:00 tomorrow morning, here's Bill Hemmer with some ideas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Aaron, thanks. Tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING," the president calls John Kerry a flip-flopper on Iraq, with a new position every day. Kerry calls the president a sugarcoater who won't admit to what's really needed to win the war. Tomorrow, our series "Promises, Promises" will continue cutting through the rhetoric, looking at what each candidate would really do, they say, to finish the job in Iraq. How are the two plans different? The answer, CNN tomorrow, 7:00 Eastern time. Hope to see you then -- Aaron.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: That's a good idea for a series on "AMERICAN MORNING."

Good to have you with us tonight. It's been kind of an emotional roller-coaster around here tonight, but we're glad you're with us. We'll see you tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern time.

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

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