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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Rice to Replace Powell as Secretary of State; Interview With Tom Wolfe

Aired November 15, 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.
It isn't news to tell you that war is a brutal business but there's something about our entire first section of the program tonight that seems designed to reinforce that reality.

From what's left of the streets of the city of Falluja to the young American bodies mangled by the battle to the mayhem the insurgents are still able to create, even with the losses they suffered, to the story of one Marine, one moment, one piece of video that for all the answers it does not provide, reminds us that war, good or bad, necessary or not, changes those who fight it.

It is a very tough way to start the week, another week with the country at war. The whip begins with our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre, Jamie, a headline from you.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron caught on videotape a U.S. Marine killing an unarmed Iraqi insurgent. Is it a war crime or part of the fog of war, an investigation, we'll try to find out.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you.

On to Germany, the first way station on the long road home for those troops wounded in Iraq and there are plenty of them tonight, CNN's Walter Rodgers with the story and the headline.

WALTER RODGERS, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, here at a military hospital in Germany, the American casualties from Falluja, once just faceless statistics, are now telling deeply personal war stories about the fighting -- Aaron.

BROWN: Walter.

Finally, the White House and today's cabinet shakeup, Dana Bash with the duty tonight, so, Dana, a headline from you.

DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, Secretary of State Colin Powell is the headline among four cabinet resignations here at the White House today. Once again the president is moving swiftly to announce a replacement. Once again it's one of his closest confidantes and loyalists -- Aaron.

BROWN: Dana, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest shortly. Also, on the program tonight turmoil at the CIA and hints of a larger storm on the horizon.

We'll run our recent interview with reporter and novelist Tom Wolfe, who at age 70-something went back to college and left with about 700 pages of material.

And, as always, the rooster has a word or two, morning papers cap off a Monday night, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight in Falluja, a very different city from a week ago when American and Iraqi forces began moving in. The insurgents who once had free reign no longer do. That much is clear.

So are some simple facts. Thirty-eight Americans and six Iraqi soldiers have been killed, along with as many as 2,000 insurgents. Everything else gets complicated fast and in unexpected ways.

We have several reports tonight, first CNN's Jane Arraf in Falluja.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): Shortly after dawn in Falluja, as we drive through these streets with the U.S. Army, some of the few remaining snipers make themselves known.

This 1st Infantry Division task force took control of southeast Falluja days ago. After overnight air strikes and artillery, they're now going house-to-house to see what's left.

What they find are weapons and dead bodies. They prepared for this battle barricading themselves in bunkers and tunnels, surrounding themselves with weapons.

LT. ERIC GREGORY, U.S. ARMY: Inside the house we've got homemade rocket launchers for the .57mm rockets, same over here for the smaller RPGs. We got IED making materials as far as blasting caps, 9-volt battery, the tubes for the .57mm rockets, artillery shells.

It looks like there's a couple artillery shells are empty like they took all the contents out of the shells to use as material for other things, as well as land mines -- or antitank mines in the front room.

ARRAF: There were wires leading to improvised bombs, homemade rocket launchers and rockets found on rooftops pointed south but they were no match for the bombs, artillery and American tanks moving in from the north, a direction they didn't anticipate. The civilians on this eastern side of the city left long ago, a mixed blessing in this battle.

LT. COLONEL PETE NEWELL, U.S. ARMY: Obviously, you can't go into a place with the heavy weapons that we do with civilians in the area but, at the same time, I came in here without the human intelligence that a civilian population will provide. So, a civilian population gives me much better targeting so that I don't have to go in and literally demolish building after building. Here every building has either mines around it, IEDs around it, rockets around it, (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Hundreds of buildings here and we'll be here for days trying to get rid of the IEDs and the mines.

ARRAF: And the fortified bunkers on almost every block. The Army launched a Javelin missile into this one. After a week of bombarding the city, the Army has declared the insurgency here defeated. It's now trying to make sure that those who escaped have no haven to come back to.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF: And it could be weeks before civilians feel safe enough to come back and months before they can start reconstructing their homes. In fact, military officials here on the ground say there's no way that civilians can start coming back now with the city in the shape it's in -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, the Army or the Pentagon at least reports 2,000, up to 2,000 insurgents dead. Can you generally confirm, I suppose, that many, many insurgents did, in fact, die in this?

ARRAF: Well, the unit we're with believes that it, itself, and it has a part of the city that includes one of the insurgent strongholds, it believes it's killed several hundred. Now, it can't confirm that it kills them until it sees the bodies but it believes it's killed or seriously wounded them. That's what that means.

Ones that are wounded and know they're still alive, they pick up and detain. Judging from the bodies we saw, Aaron, the place is littered with bodies, foreign fighters and Iraqi fighters. They died where they fell in the houses, around the houses. The streets are filled with their bodies. That number would seem credible -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, thank you, Jane Arraf, who has been to it all in Falluja.

There's a lot you can say about what warfare does to people on both ends of the rifle and, equally so, what some people do in warfare, horrible things, sometimes inexcusable things. Darkness can overtake the best of us we image.

Where this incident falls in the larger scheme of things we do not yet know. A U.S. Marine is under investigation tonight for shooting a wounded insurgent at point blank range. It happened on Saturday in a mosque in Falluja.

The Marine's unit came upon the mosque and the insurgents, who had been wounded in a firefight the day before. It's unclear whether the Marine knew the wounded insurgent had been disarmed. What happened next was captured by an American news crew. This is very rough stuff to watch whatever else it is or is not in the end.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Marines in there?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, they're on the far, far right, the far right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Coming around the back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, who's in here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Coming around.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What the (expletive) you doing in here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Expletive) you almost got shot by tanks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Huh, what?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. You guys almost got shot up by tanks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They told us all to come in here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The tanks did?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're telling us people (UNINTELLIGIBLE) told us to come in here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, we had two in there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You shoot them?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, man.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They have any weapons on them?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Same guys from yesterday?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These are the ones from yesterday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These are the wounded they never picked up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's (expletive) faking he's dead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, he's breathing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's faking (expletive) dead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dead now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: At the request of the judge advocate in the Marines we pixilated, covered up the names, and obviously in the interest of taste we did not show the actual shooting.

We're joined now by Jamie McIntyre, our Senior Pentagon Correspondent. Jamie, what's the legal situation as best you can tell it?

MCINTYRE: Well, the big question is that Marine, who you saw shooting what appeared to be a wounded Iraqi, did he know that that Iraqi essentially had been captured the day before and disarmed and left in that mosque the day before by another group of Marines or did he have some reasonable expectation to think that this person still posed a threat to him?

If he wasn't a threat and he was out of combat, as the legal term is, then his shooting would not have been justified and the Marines say they will investigate that very point.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They would have to be using force in self defense, yes. Enemy wounded, in this case insurgents, who don't pose a threat would not be considered hostile generally. I think that's a fair statement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCINTYRE: What you saw in the video was some confusion. There's two groups of Marines. One of them said, "What are you doing here? You almost got shot by these tanks." The other one says, "We were told to come in here. People were in this building."

And so, there's a legitimate question there about whether there was some confusion about whether when the Marines came in they thought these were freshly wounded insurgents and didn't know that they were the ones from yesterday. You heard someone say these are the same ones from yesterday. That seems to be the television reporter who was with them, who had been with the unit the day before.

And don't forget, Aaron, this was a situation where the Marines were subject to a lot of tricks on the battlefield, places where they found booby trapped bodies that looked like a dead body and it turned out to be a bomb that killed a Marine and injured five others. It happened right nearby. So, it's very difficult to put yourself in that situation and understand precisely what's going through that Marine's mind.

BROWN: Yes, it is but by the same token the picture that you see, you see these two men down, huddled against the wall, at least to our eye not posing any particular threat and that's the problem that the military needs to sort out.

MCINTYRE: Well, those two men you saw on the wall they apparently died. Those were two who had been captured the day before and had only been lightly wounded, so it appeared that they had been shot again. And, again, it could have been the result of confusion or it could have been the result of revenge.

And they're going to investigation, including talking to the one surviving insurgent, Iraqi insurgent, who was there who did speak to the TV reporter. They'll speak to all the Marines involved. Meanwhile, that Marine has been removed from duty while the investigation goes forward.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you, our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre.

There's a corner of this war we visit from time to time, perhaps not as often as we ought to. Strictly speaking it is not a pleasant journey, yet somehow it is profoundly inspiring all the same.

There we find the men and the women, some young, some older, who have been wounded in combat. It is a reminder and one of how fragile life is and how resilient lives are, reporting from Germany tonight, CNN's Walter Rodgers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS (voice-over): Day and night, the American wounded from Falluja arrive in Germany at the Landstuhl military hospital. The numbers of incoming combat casualties have doubled in the past week, often more than 70 a day. They arrive with bullet wounds, burns and blast injuries, their young bodies ripped by shrapnel from rocket- propelled grenades and mortars. Marine Lance Corporal Jeffrey Owens admitted he was scared.

LANCE CPL. JEFFREY OWENS, U.S. MARINES: You can always hear the rocket when it comes. It makes a real distinct whistle, so I knew it was coming. I just didn't know where it was from. When I first heard the blast, I felt it go through my leg.

RODGERS: Some of the wounded from Falluja are still in the Medivac pipeline en route. Several Marines suggested the Arab fighters were hardly worthy adversaries.

LANCE CPL. TRAVIS SCHAFER, U.S MARINES: Some of them are 13, 14 years old, trying to fight us and it's sad to see some of them try to fight us.

RODGERS: Army sniper Kris Clinkscales took shrapnel in Falluja too.

SPCL. KRIS CLINKSCALES, U.S. ARMY SNIPER: I saw no civilians, a lot of insurgents, though, as far as what you say dead bodies, casualties on their side there. There were a lot in the streets.

RODGERS: Marine Lance Corporal Ryan Chapman may have been the luckiest man about. An Arab sniper's bullet cracked his skull but it bounced off.

LANCE CPL. RYAN CHAPMAN, U.S. MARINES: It felt like Babe Ruth took a swing at my forehead. It took me totally by surprise.

COL. RHONDA CORNUM, CMDR. U.S. MILITARY HOSPITAL: They're strong and they're highly motivated and you're just proud to be one of them and you just want to do the best you can for them.

RODGERS (on camera): There are other American soldiers and Marines who arrived here this past week, many very seriously wounded. Close to 40 are still in intensive care units. We cannot show you their physical disfigurement, the trauma, nor the scars they will bear the rest of their lives.

Walter Rodgers, CNN at the Landstuhl military hospital in Germany.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: If Falluja is, as we said at the top, a very different city from what it was a week ago, other parts of Iraq look much the same. The insurgency has always been much like a balloon, squeeze it on one end and it simply bulges elsewhere.

While U.S. and Iraqi forces have been making their way through Falluja the balloon, if you will, has been bulging, reporting tonight CNN's Karl Penhaul.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Flames engulf Iraqi police trucks as insurgent gunmen go on the prowl blasting away at routed Iraqi security forces. Rebels attacked here in (UNINTELLIGIBLE), a town of 40,000, just 25 miles north of Baghdad as U.S. commanders declared they've liberated the much larger city of Falluja, 40 miles away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We're telling Bush and Blair and their lackeys in Iraq that we're coming to claim victory and raise our banner in the name of God.

PENHAUL: Witnesses said several hundred fighters from the Pro-Saddam 1920s Brigade, the Fundamentalist Islamic National Resistance Army, and the al-Zarqawi network were heading the fight. It's impossible to tell whether any of these had fled Falluja before the Marine offensive. Some civilians in (UNINTELLIGIBLE) clearly approved.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): God willing, America will be defeated and God will give victory to the mujahaddin.

PENHAUL: The statement from U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad said only a police station in the town had come under fire.

A few miles away in Baquba, insurgents sniped at U.S. forces from a mosque and clashes erupted across the city. The U.S. military said four U.S. soldiers were wounded and U.S. jets bombed rebel positions.

Further north in Mosul, unrest continued. The Iraqi government minister said insurgents still controlled three or four police stations Monday, though U.S. forces describe the situation as stable.

In attacks over the last four days, gunmen looted weapons and flack jackets as some Iraqi police, believed to be insurgent sympathizers, gave up without a fight.

FALAH AL-NAQIB, IRAQI INTERIOR MINISTER: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) actually in many areas but very limited. It's very limited actually but that's what happens. In certain areas we had to counsel and to fire many of these which we think that they are somehow cooperating with insurgents.

PENHAUL: U.S. officials have said they don't believe insurgents elsewhere in Iraq can sustain their backlash against the Falluja offensive but insurgent commanders in (UNINTELLIGIBLE) seem (UNINTELLIGIBLE), proclaiming solidarity for their comrades in Falluja, vowing to fight to the death.

Karl Penhaul, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT tonight, the State Department shuffle. Secretary of State Powell out, is Condoleezza on track to replace him?

Also ahead, a shakeup at the CIA, two surprise resignations and lots of questions.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It began as a trickle last week with Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of Commerce Don Evans announcing they would step aside. Today, the trickle became a flood, the White House making public the resignations of four more members of the Bush cabinet, including Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The name of his likely replacement has emerged as well today, so we have two reports on these changes, beginning at the White House and CNN's Dana Bash.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The first member of the president's national security team to bow out says it was an honor to serve but it's time to go.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: It has always been my intention that I would serve one term.

BASH: Though careful to note he did not ask to stay, some administration officials say Powell wanted to stick around for a few months, especially with a new post-Arafat opening in the Mid East.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm proud of my secretary of state. He's done a heck of a good job.

BASH: But Bush aides say the president was eager to move on his new team. Administration sources say Tuesday Mr. Bush will nominate National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, one of his most trusted aides, to replace Powell. Filling key posts with loyal confidantes appears to be a Bush strategy aimed at fending off problems that historically plague second term presidents.

Rice, a former Stanford Provost, had told associates she considered returning to academia but Mr. Bush convinced her to stay on as the second female secretary of state, if confirmed by the Senate. A senior official says Stephen Hadley, now Rice's deputy, will replace her as national security adviser.

Powell, who officially resigned Friday, was among the first tasked four years ago. For a president coming into office with no foreign policy experience, the retired four-star general offered credibility on the world stage and he put it on the line.

POWELL: Saddam Hussein has not verifiable accounted for even one teaspoon full of this deadly material.

BASH: Most notably to sell the Iraq war to the U.N. with information later discredited. The secretary of state was one of four cabinet resignations announced Monday, the others Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Education Secretary Rod Paige and Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: And more Bush loyalists are in line to fill those jobs prompting some Republicans to warn all this premium on loyalty may actually hurt the president because it will make him too insulated and, Aaron, that is exactly why former Republican Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said on CNN tonight he thinks Condoleezza Rice is the wrong choice to succeed Colin Powell because he said, "Everyone is going to be speaking the same language" -- Aaron.

BROWN: And it's hard enough obviously, I believe, to give the president of the United States advice he may not want to hear. If you're all buddies and been around the circle of the White House, the new attorney general for one, it just gets more complicated.

BASH: And that's exactly the point that Secretary Eagleburger was trying to make. The Republican Senator Chuck Hagel from Nebraska made it earlier on CNN today essentially saying that you need tension and that sometimes even you need some public tension which is something that this president does not like at all but that that certainly helps with the internal debate and the policy debate and that if the president isn't hearing some heated debate and dialogue that that could hurt him in his policies.

BROWN: Dana, thank you, Dana Bash at the White House.

Four years ago, Secretary Powell succeeded the country's first female secretary of state and broke another barrier becoming the first African American to hold the job. He brought to the State Department impeccable military credentials and was widely perceived to be many things to many people who preferred his way of conducting foreign policy to their perception of the president's but in the end, administrations have but one foreign policy.

Here's our Senior White House Correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He is the warrior turned diplomat among friends in the Bush war council, yet for all his star power often perceived as the odd man out.

JOE HAGIN, WHITE HOUSE DEP. CHIEF OF STAFF: Rumsfeld doesn't agree with Powell or vice versa but the great thing in the end is that everybody falls in line and pulls in the same direction and I think that's unique to this administration, at least in modern times.

KING: Colin Powell is a complicated man and the secretary of state in complicated times, to some once and always a loyal soldier.

POWELL: And I'll always treasure the four years that I've spent with President Bush and with the wonderful men and women of the Department of State.

KING: It is an impressive resume to say the least, national security adviser, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Iraq war. Back then it was the Powell doctrine. If there is to be war, send overwhelming force.

This time around, Powell was secretary of state and it was the Rumsfeld doctrine, smaller and faster is better. Secretary Powell was known to have doubts but didn't air them in public. Some Bush insiders read books like this, however, and see disloyalty absent fingerprints.

Early on he talked of direct negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear program. He lost that one. Later, he would argue forcefully the president needed to seek United Nations support for war in Iraq. He won.

POWELL: Some of the president's advisers didn't think that the U.N. would be able to do it.

KING: Victory brought responsibility. Powell told the U.N. Security Council there was no doubt Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, no weapons but no apology.

POWELL: I'm disappointed but, you know, disappointment you get over.

KING: Questions about strategy but not about the big goals. Secretary Powell says toppling Saddam Hussein was right and that Iraq will find the path from insurgency to democracy. POWELL: Why should we be disappointed, ashamed or worried about these consequences? These are the consequences that we wanted to see happen.

KING: These snapshots from June, 2003 would prove telling. The president sent National Security Adviser Rice to the Middle East amid complaints in some quarters that talking to Secretary Powell wasn't necessarily the same as talking to the Bush White House.

(on camera): There will be no such doubts now that Rice is in line to be the next secretary of state. As for Powell, friends say private life will mean more time in the garage with his (UNINTELLIGIBLE), maybe another book but not a reversal of his vow to never seek elective office.

John King, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Coming up after the break, the Powell doctrine aside, how history will look at the secretary of state, two views coming up.

Also ahead, if you're a 74-year-old man channeling an 18-year-old woman where do you begin, author Tom Wolfe talks about his new book and shares some secrets from his writing life, a break first.

Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: More now on outgoing Secretary of State Powell. We're joined from Washington by Walter Isaacson, the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, former president of CNN as well, the author of three books, "The Wise Men," "Kissinger," and "Benjamin Franklin." Also with us in New York, Philip Gourevitch, Political Correspondent for "New Yorker" magazine and writes pretty good stuff too, nice to see you Phil and Walter.

PHILIP GOUREVITCH, "NEW YORKER": Good to see you.

BROWN: Walter, was the secretary too good a soldier in the end? He certainly was a good soldier.

WALTER ISAACSON, THE ASPEN INSTITUTE: He was a very good soldier, in a way, a very good secretary. He lost a lot of the battles, but stayed loyal throughout it all.

But I think the important thing to remember and what history will finally remember when we get out of this period of who won, who lost, is that he turned out to be right. He had a lot of the battles with the Pentagon. But, in each one of them, he lost the battle, but he was the one that turned out to be the wise person.

BROWN: Phil, is that good enough to be the wise person in the eyes of history?

GOUREVITCH: Well, I think not necessarily.

In the case of Colin Powell, I think what you're going to see -- or what we've seen is somebody who came into office with this tremendous asset being an air of great, great credibility. And I think he leaves office having that credibility in many ways diminished by the way he was used by the administration without great victories to show for it.

I think that he was, from the beginning, cut off at the knees by ideological members of the administration who didn't want him there and who prevailed in these battles.

BROWN: Well, I think the question to both of you, Walter, the question of whether they wanted him there or not. A cynic might argue -- and you know we pretty well and I can be pretty cynical -- a cynic might argue that he was perfect for the job because he was the most credible member of the administration.

ISAACSON: He was certainly credible. And he had served very well both the elder President Bush and this one. But he was treated in some ways like an assistant, a worker, when he was, in fact, a man of great stature. And I don't think Bush ever related to him as being what he was when he came into office, which may have been the most respected man in America.

BROWN: Philip, what should he have done? He ran into policy difference after policy -- should he have pulled a Cyrus Vance?

GOUREVITCH: Well, we're constantly told that Colin Powell was unhappy with things about the administration's policies, was not speaking was not sort of having his point of view prevail. But we were always being told that in a kind of whispered way.

It felt to me that he never took a stand that was clearly at odds. Now, that's being a good soldier. And it's tough to do that in a situation like this. But if conscience is what he's going to be remembered for, and having been right, as Walter Isaacson says, even in battles he lost, it would have been better if he had been on the record saying that more strongly.

And I think, one of the things we didn't see, as a secretary of state in an administration that thrust itself more vigorously into the world than many in a long, long time, I think he traveled less than most. One didn't see him when the Madrid bombing happened rushing to Madrid. One didn't see him when Arab coalition members were needed for the coalition in Iraq rushing off to the Arab countries. One didn't see him in some sense engaged with the world as the face of the administration.

One had the sense that he was stuck in Washington. Almost the way some Third World leaders won't leave their countries for fear of a coup, he had to stay home and mind the infighting. And that's terribly debilitating.

ISAACSON: Phil, Aaron, let me make a point about why he didn't fall on his sword or throw himself in front of the train, because that's the big question about him.

He told a story every now and then about General Marshall, George C. Marshall, who had been just like Powell, sort of an Army chief of staff and then secretary of state under Truman. And Powell worships General Marshall. He uses a desk that General Marshall used. And General Marshall's portrait is there right on the wall.

And he tells a story of when Marshall told Harry Truman, advised him that he should not recognize the state of Israel that day in 1948, when Israel declared itself a new nation. And when Truman went ahead and recognized Israel, Powell would say, all his aides gathered around this desk, this desk right here, and told him he had to resign.

And Powell tells the story that Marshall said, who made me the president? He's the president.

BROWN: Yes.

ISAACSON: He's the one who gets to make the decision. I just get to offer the advice.

And when Powell told that story, you realize, well, he wasn't just talking about General Marshall. He was talking about General Powell.

BROWN: To both of you, just in the last minute we have, in the end, this extraordinary man who has had an extraordinary career, is he going to be remembered for one day at the U.N. or will history, Phil, be kinder?

GOUREVITCH: I think he'll be remembered for many things. I mean, Marshall was wrong.

BROWN: Yes.

GOUREVITCH: Powell, as Walter Isaacson said, may have been right in some of these things.

He'll be remembered for that day at the U.N. He'll be remembered looking back for the Powell doctrine of overwhelming force. He'll be remembered for saying that America shouldn't get involved in Bosnia. And he'll be remembered as somebody who really was the voice of advocating diplomacy as the central tool of foreign policy in an administration that rejected diplomacy as the central tool.

BROWN: Walter, you always got the last word. Take the last word here. Will history be kind?

ISAACSON: History will be kind. Phil is right.

But what will be that shame is that, someday, when the obituaries are written, there will be that picture with him in front of the Security Council with George Tenet sitting in the back and him describing the intelligence and it being wrong. I think he was an honorable man. I don't think that he was doing anything other than what he thought was right. But it's a shame that that will diminish him.

BROWN: Walter, it's nice to see you.

Phil, it's always good to see you.

GOUREVITCH: Good to see you.

BROWN: Thank you both for joining.

Still to come tonight, the shakeup at the CIA, what's behind it? What's ahead for the agency that has seen a fair amount of turmoil? That would be the understatement of the day. And, later, Tom Wolfe goes back to school and graduates with a fair-sized novel. I would say so, about three pounds worth. He joins us, too.

A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A bit more on Iraq now. On audiotape has surfaced on a Web site frequently used by insurgents. On it, a voice purported to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi urges fighters to continue their efforts against the American and the Iraqi troops. CNN has been unable to authenticate the recording. The intelligence community giving it a listen now.

Finding the Zarqawis and the bin Ladens of the world has been a puzzlement to the intelligence community. The CIA, in particular, has attracted blame for a range of intelligence failures, gotten itself embroiled in a dust-up first with the White House and now, it seems, with itself.

Here's CNN's David Ensor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After angry exchanges with aides to the new director of Central Intelligence, Porter Goss, the top two men in the CIA's clandestine service resigned. They are Deputy Director for Operations Stephen Kappes and his number two, Michael J. Sulick. Kappes is said to be the man who convinced Libya's leader Mohamar Kadafi to give up his weapons of mass destruction.

REP. PETER HOEKSTRA (R), MICHIGAN: If these individuals didn't feel comfortable with the direction that Porter is going, they did the right thing, and they left the agency.

ENSOR: Intelligence insiders say the Bush White House has ordered Goss to purge the agency of officials who may have been behind leaks of damaging information during the presidential campaign about Iraq policy and the war on terrorism.

But Kappes and Sulick are not accused of leaking and are highly respected. REP. JANE HARMAN (D), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: The direction set by this highly partisan, inexperienced management team, which Porter Goss brought over with him to the CIA, may cause the wrong people to resign in protest, and may hurt our efforts to win the war on terror.

ENSOR: The resignations come after CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin Friday announced his departure soon, though he has said it's not over disagreement with Goss.

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, CIA DEPUTY DIRECTOR: My attitude towards the intelligence community, and I guess my alma mater, the CIA, is one of tough love.

ENSOR: All agree former Congressman Goss, himself a CIA veteran, has a mandate to make changes at the agency in the wake of criticism over intelligence shortcomings before the 9/11 attacks and before the Iraq War. But some officials say Goss's closest aides want to micromanage decisions such as who should be CIA station chiefs around the world.

MICHAEL SCHEUER, FORMER CIA ANALYST: I think just from my own career experience, it's a bad thing. The deputy director of operations is in charge and ought to have the people working for him who are -- who have his confidence.

ENSOR (on camera): In a statement, Director Goss said he's selected a new spy master, a new deputy director for operations, but that the man cannot be publicly named for now because he will be leaving an undercover job.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: One more quick item before we head to break. A group of visiting Cuban entertainers tonight have reason to say, viva Las Vegas. They defected, 43 of them. Seven others did so in Berlin. Seems to be a pattern.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, they say the suit doesn't make the man. But author Tom Wolfe admits he has gotten a lot of mileage out of his -- that and other secrets from a writer's life. Also ahead, morning papers.

From across the country, this must be NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: If one test of a great fiction writer is the ability to slip inside a character who has absolutely nothing in common with the writer's own life, then it's fair is a say Tom Wolfe passes, fair also to say Mr. Wolfe's long career as a reporter is always evident in his fiction. His keen eye for details has informed each of his major novels. As so it does his latest.

"I Am Charlotte Simmons" runs almost 700 pages, the setting, an imaginary Ivy League University, the story told through the voice of an 18-year-old freshman, female. Much of the book is about sex. The book began as usual for Mr. Wolfe, with a good amount of research.

We talked with him last week about that and more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM WOLFE, AUTHOR, "I AM CHARLOTTE SIMMONS": So, when I reached these colleges, I found that the young women, as well as the young men, were perfectly willing to talk about the most intimate parts of their lives.

It was a novel. I wasn't going to use their names. I wasn't going to do anything that would identify them personally. And I think they themselves feel that there's really something odd going on here. And I'd kind of like to talk to somebody about it.

BROWN: And, yet, is there an absence of shame?

WOLFE: Not entirely. But certainly the sexual mores would indicate an absence of shame, since they approach sex as if there is really no moral value attached to it.

BROWN: It's just something to do on Saturday night?

WOLFE: It's a little more complicated. Well, it looks like that.

There is a pressure that is built up. It's so easy. It's so available. It's so much on everybody's mind that, even if you are not participating -- and lots do not want to participate. One of the characters in my book is a male senior who is a virgin, desperately is trying to hide this fact, well, as men always did.

What's changed is that women do not want to be known as virgins. It's the last thing you want to be called.

BROWN: Let me ask you about a few other things about this. It may be that some people listening to you or some people when they read the book will say, oh, that old Tom Wolfe, almost mid-70s now, he's just turned into a crotchety old man who doesn't get it. Or is it that you get it better than the rest of us?

WOLFE: I think it's probably that get it better than anybody else.

In fact, I am really in awe of what my characters do, awe in the literal sense of, what? And it's not a judgmental...

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: You don't think it's judgmental?

WOLFE: No.

I mean, well, I had the same experience with "The Bonfire of the Vanities" about Wall Street.

BROWN: Yes.

WOLFE: All that. People said to me, what a bleak picture of New York. I never thought it was bleak. I thought, my God, look at what these trades, these bond traders, do. Look at the way they live.

BROWN: But there was a shallowness to them and a callowness to them. And you wrote them. You created it. The shallowness was a product of your pen or your typewriter, in the same way the promiscuity here and the amorality here is a product of your typewriter. And you don't think that is being judgmental at all?

WOLFE: No, because I don't -- I'm just -- I really am just reporting.

You know, Balzac -- and I hesitate to even put him in the same paragraph with myself, but Balzac called himself the social secretary of French society. And that's what I'm doing. I have a humble role in all this.

BROWN: Do you sort of accept that you have become a great American character, from the books you write, to the clothes you wear, that you're a character, that you're one of those people that, when we talk about the writers of the last couple of generations, really, that you're in there? Are you comfortable with that?

WOLFE: I shouldn't admit this, but it's all the suits. It's all the white suits.

(LAUGHTER)

WOLFE: I found earlier the great dividend -- and I started wearing them by accident -- but was that I would be interviewed about something I had written and I didn't say very much. I didn't know what to say to these interviewers. But they would go away saying, what an interesting man. He wears these white suits.

So they have been great. These white suits have just been great for me.

BROWN: It's nice to see you.

WOLFE: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Tom Wolfe, he will be wearing a white suit tomorrow. The book is called "I Am Charlotte Simmons."

And we'll check morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers around the country, around the world. We will go around the world today.

But we'll start with "The Stars and Stripes." "Powell, Three Others Resign From Cabinet." How would you like to be the three others? You don't even get a mention there. "Secretary of State to Stay Until Successor Named." Could come tomorrow. But the pictures, and, really, the story that most soldiers will read first, "Wounded Recount Falluja Battle, Vow to Return to Iraq." Brave young men, them -- they. Brave young men -- well, anyway, they're brave.

"The Guardian." "Powell" -- this is a British paper -- a couple British papers here. "Powell, Moderate Voice of U.S., Quits." "The Times" in London, this is a big-time headline, right? "Backing Bush Has Won You Nothing, Chirac Tells Britain." So a couple headlines from British papers today.

"Christian Science Monitor." Moderate seems to be the word that they like to use with Secretary Powell, right? "A Symbol of Moderation Exits. Powell Heads List of Cabinet Resignations." At least the others got pictures. They didn't get that in "The Stars and Stripes." I mean, they got nothing. "As Smoke Clears, Next Battles Are Political. As Military Stabilizes Falluja, Fresh Violence Erupts in Other Sunni-Dominated Areas," as we reported earlier.

OK, a minute left to do a number of things here.

"The Washington Times" over here, OK? "Pentagon to Warn Bases on Scouts." Man, this is like a full Rush Limbaugh show in this one story tomorrow. "ACLU Lawsuit Triggers Action. Pentagon Has Agreed to Warn Military Bases Worldwide They Should Not Sponsor Boy Scout Troops Because the Boy Scouts Require Members to Believe in God." Don't know if that -- well, it's true. It's in the paper.

"The Oregonian" out in Portland. "FBI Blamed in Print Error." This is the Brandon Mayfield, young lawyer who was arrested in the Madrid bombings. It turned out the fingerprint was bogus.

"The Philadelphia Inquirer." "Specter Decision Could Come Today." That's Arlen Specter, in line to be the chairman of the Judiciary until he said some unfortunate things, in the eyes of some of his fellow Republicans. So he's probably in trouble.

How much time? Wrap?

Weather tomorrow in Chicago...

(CHIMES)

BROWN: Thank you. "Warm bath."

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: At 11:00 a.m. tomorrow, join the gang at "AMERICAN MORNING." They do a terrific job. So give them a check-out.

"LOU DOBBS TONIGHT" next for most -- give them a check-out?

We'll see you tomorrow. Good night for all of us.

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


Aired November 15, 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.
It isn't news to tell you that war is a brutal business but there's something about our entire first section of the program tonight that seems designed to reinforce that reality.

From what's left of the streets of the city of Falluja to the young American bodies mangled by the battle to the mayhem the insurgents are still able to create, even with the losses they suffered, to the story of one Marine, one moment, one piece of video that for all the answers it does not provide, reminds us that war, good or bad, necessary or not, changes those who fight it.

It is a very tough way to start the week, another week with the country at war. The whip begins with our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre, Jamie, a headline from you.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron caught on videotape a U.S. Marine killing an unarmed Iraqi insurgent. Is it a war crime or part of the fog of war, an investigation, we'll try to find out.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you.

On to Germany, the first way station on the long road home for those troops wounded in Iraq and there are plenty of them tonight, CNN's Walter Rodgers with the story and the headline.

WALTER RODGERS, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, here at a military hospital in Germany, the American casualties from Falluja, once just faceless statistics, are now telling deeply personal war stories about the fighting -- Aaron.

BROWN: Walter.

Finally, the White House and today's cabinet shakeup, Dana Bash with the duty tonight, so, Dana, a headline from you.

DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, Secretary of State Colin Powell is the headline among four cabinet resignations here at the White House today. Once again the president is moving swiftly to announce a replacement. Once again it's one of his closest confidantes and loyalists -- Aaron.

BROWN: Dana, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest shortly. Also, on the program tonight turmoil at the CIA and hints of a larger storm on the horizon.

We'll run our recent interview with reporter and novelist Tom Wolfe, who at age 70-something went back to college and left with about 700 pages of material.

And, as always, the rooster has a word or two, morning papers cap off a Monday night, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight in Falluja, a very different city from a week ago when American and Iraqi forces began moving in. The insurgents who once had free reign no longer do. That much is clear.

So are some simple facts. Thirty-eight Americans and six Iraqi soldiers have been killed, along with as many as 2,000 insurgents. Everything else gets complicated fast and in unexpected ways.

We have several reports tonight, first CNN's Jane Arraf in Falluja.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): Shortly after dawn in Falluja, as we drive through these streets with the U.S. Army, some of the few remaining snipers make themselves known.

This 1st Infantry Division task force took control of southeast Falluja days ago. After overnight air strikes and artillery, they're now going house-to-house to see what's left.

What they find are weapons and dead bodies. They prepared for this battle barricading themselves in bunkers and tunnels, surrounding themselves with weapons.

LT. ERIC GREGORY, U.S. ARMY: Inside the house we've got homemade rocket launchers for the .57mm rockets, same over here for the smaller RPGs. We got IED making materials as far as blasting caps, 9-volt battery, the tubes for the .57mm rockets, artillery shells.

It looks like there's a couple artillery shells are empty like they took all the contents out of the shells to use as material for other things, as well as land mines -- or antitank mines in the front room.

ARRAF: There were wires leading to improvised bombs, homemade rocket launchers and rockets found on rooftops pointed south but they were no match for the bombs, artillery and American tanks moving in from the north, a direction they didn't anticipate. The civilians on this eastern side of the city left long ago, a mixed blessing in this battle.

LT. COLONEL PETE NEWELL, U.S. ARMY: Obviously, you can't go into a place with the heavy weapons that we do with civilians in the area but, at the same time, I came in here without the human intelligence that a civilian population will provide. So, a civilian population gives me much better targeting so that I don't have to go in and literally demolish building after building. Here every building has either mines around it, IEDs around it, rockets around it, (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Hundreds of buildings here and we'll be here for days trying to get rid of the IEDs and the mines.

ARRAF: And the fortified bunkers on almost every block. The Army launched a Javelin missile into this one. After a week of bombarding the city, the Army has declared the insurgency here defeated. It's now trying to make sure that those who escaped have no haven to come back to.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF: And it could be weeks before civilians feel safe enough to come back and months before they can start reconstructing their homes. In fact, military officials here on the ground say there's no way that civilians can start coming back now with the city in the shape it's in -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, the Army or the Pentagon at least reports 2,000, up to 2,000 insurgents dead. Can you generally confirm, I suppose, that many, many insurgents did, in fact, die in this?

ARRAF: Well, the unit we're with believes that it, itself, and it has a part of the city that includes one of the insurgent strongholds, it believes it's killed several hundred. Now, it can't confirm that it kills them until it sees the bodies but it believes it's killed or seriously wounded them. That's what that means.

Ones that are wounded and know they're still alive, they pick up and detain. Judging from the bodies we saw, Aaron, the place is littered with bodies, foreign fighters and Iraqi fighters. They died where they fell in the houses, around the houses. The streets are filled with their bodies. That number would seem credible -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, thank you, Jane Arraf, who has been to it all in Falluja.

There's a lot you can say about what warfare does to people on both ends of the rifle and, equally so, what some people do in warfare, horrible things, sometimes inexcusable things. Darkness can overtake the best of us we image.

Where this incident falls in the larger scheme of things we do not yet know. A U.S. Marine is under investigation tonight for shooting a wounded insurgent at point blank range. It happened on Saturday in a mosque in Falluja.

The Marine's unit came upon the mosque and the insurgents, who had been wounded in a firefight the day before. It's unclear whether the Marine knew the wounded insurgent had been disarmed. What happened next was captured by an American news crew. This is very rough stuff to watch whatever else it is or is not in the end.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Marines in there?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, they're on the far, far right, the far right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Coming around the back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, who's in here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Coming around.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What the (expletive) you doing in here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Expletive) you almost got shot by tanks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Huh, what?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. You guys almost got shot up by tanks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They told us all to come in here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The tanks did?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're telling us people (UNINTELLIGIBLE) told us to come in here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, we had two in there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You shoot them?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, man.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They have any weapons on them?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Same guys from yesterday?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These are the ones from yesterday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These are the wounded they never picked up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's (expletive) faking he's dead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, he's breathing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's faking (expletive) dead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dead now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: At the request of the judge advocate in the Marines we pixilated, covered up the names, and obviously in the interest of taste we did not show the actual shooting.

We're joined now by Jamie McIntyre, our Senior Pentagon Correspondent. Jamie, what's the legal situation as best you can tell it?

MCINTYRE: Well, the big question is that Marine, who you saw shooting what appeared to be a wounded Iraqi, did he know that that Iraqi essentially had been captured the day before and disarmed and left in that mosque the day before by another group of Marines or did he have some reasonable expectation to think that this person still posed a threat to him?

If he wasn't a threat and he was out of combat, as the legal term is, then his shooting would not have been justified and the Marines say they will investigate that very point.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They would have to be using force in self defense, yes. Enemy wounded, in this case insurgents, who don't pose a threat would not be considered hostile generally. I think that's a fair statement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCINTYRE: What you saw in the video was some confusion. There's two groups of Marines. One of them said, "What are you doing here? You almost got shot by these tanks." The other one says, "We were told to come in here. People were in this building."

And so, there's a legitimate question there about whether there was some confusion about whether when the Marines came in they thought these were freshly wounded insurgents and didn't know that they were the ones from yesterday. You heard someone say these are the same ones from yesterday. That seems to be the television reporter who was with them, who had been with the unit the day before.

And don't forget, Aaron, this was a situation where the Marines were subject to a lot of tricks on the battlefield, places where they found booby trapped bodies that looked like a dead body and it turned out to be a bomb that killed a Marine and injured five others. It happened right nearby. So, it's very difficult to put yourself in that situation and understand precisely what's going through that Marine's mind.

BROWN: Yes, it is but by the same token the picture that you see, you see these two men down, huddled against the wall, at least to our eye not posing any particular threat and that's the problem that the military needs to sort out.

MCINTYRE: Well, those two men you saw on the wall they apparently died. Those were two who had been captured the day before and had only been lightly wounded, so it appeared that they had been shot again. And, again, it could have been the result of confusion or it could have been the result of revenge.

And they're going to investigation, including talking to the one surviving insurgent, Iraqi insurgent, who was there who did speak to the TV reporter. They'll speak to all the Marines involved. Meanwhile, that Marine has been removed from duty while the investigation goes forward.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you, our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre.

There's a corner of this war we visit from time to time, perhaps not as often as we ought to. Strictly speaking it is not a pleasant journey, yet somehow it is profoundly inspiring all the same.

There we find the men and the women, some young, some older, who have been wounded in combat. It is a reminder and one of how fragile life is and how resilient lives are, reporting from Germany tonight, CNN's Walter Rodgers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS (voice-over): Day and night, the American wounded from Falluja arrive in Germany at the Landstuhl military hospital. The numbers of incoming combat casualties have doubled in the past week, often more than 70 a day. They arrive with bullet wounds, burns and blast injuries, their young bodies ripped by shrapnel from rocket- propelled grenades and mortars. Marine Lance Corporal Jeffrey Owens admitted he was scared.

LANCE CPL. JEFFREY OWENS, U.S. MARINES: You can always hear the rocket when it comes. It makes a real distinct whistle, so I knew it was coming. I just didn't know where it was from. When I first heard the blast, I felt it go through my leg.

RODGERS: Some of the wounded from Falluja are still in the Medivac pipeline en route. Several Marines suggested the Arab fighters were hardly worthy adversaries.

LANCE CPL. TRAVIS SCHAFER, U.S MARINES: Some of them are 13, 14 years old, trying to fight us and it's sad to see some of them try to fight us.

RODGERS: Army sniper Kris Clinkscales took shrapnel in Falluja too.

SPCL. KRIS CLINKSCALES, U.S. ARMY SNIPER: I saw no civilians, a lot of insurgents, though, as far as what you say dead bodies, casualties on their side there. There were a lot in the streets.

RODGERS: Marine Lance Corporal Ryan Chapman may have been the luckiest man about. An Arab sniper's bullet cracked his skull but it bounced off.

LANCE CPL. RYAN CHAPMAN, U.S. MARINES: It felt like Babe Ruth took a swing at my forehead. It took me totally by surprise.

COL. RHONDA CORNUM, CMDR. U.S. MILITARY HOSPITAL: They're strong and they're highly motivated and you're just proud to be one of them and you just want to do the best you can for them.

RODGERS (on camera): There are other American soldiers and Marines who arrived here this past week, many very seriously wounded. Close to 40 are still in intensive care units. We cannot show you their physical disfigurement, the trauma, nor the scars they will bear the rest of their lives.

Walter Rodgers, CNN at the Landstuhl military hospital in Germany.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: If Falluja is, as we said at the top, a very different city from what it was a week ago, other parts of Iraq look much the same. The insurgency has always been much like a balloon, squeeze it on one end and it simply bulges elsewhere.

While U.S. and Iraqi forces have been making their way through Falluja the balloon, if you will, has been bulging, reporting tonight CNN's Karl Penhaul.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Flames engulf Iraqi police trucks as insurgent gunmen go on the prowl blasting away at routed Iraqi security forces. Rebels attacked here in (UNINTELLIGIBLE), a town of 40,000, just 25 miles north of Baghdad as U.S. commanders declared they've liberated the much larger city of Falluja, 40 miles away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We're telling Bush and Blair and their lackeys in Iraq that we're coming to claim victory and raise our banner in the name of God.

PENHAUL: Witnesses said several hundred fighters from the Pro-Saddam 1920s Brigade, the Fundamentalist Islamic National Resistance Army, and the al-Zarqawi network were heading the fight. It's impossible to tell whether any of these had fled Falluja before the Marine offensive. Some civilians in (UNINTELLIGIBLE) clearly approved.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): God willing, America will be defeated and God will give victory to the mujahaddin.

PENHAUL: The statement from U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad said only a police station in the town had come under fire.

A few miles away in Baquba, insurgents sniped at U.S. forces from a mosque and clashes erupted across the city. The U.S. military said four U.S. soldiers were wounded and U.S. jets bombed rebel positions.

Further north in Mosul, unrest continued. The Iraqi government minister said insurgents still controlled three or four police stations Monday, though U.S. forces describe the situation as stable.

In attacks over the last four days, gunmen looted weapons and flack jackets as some Iraqi police, believed to be insurgent sympathizers, gave up without a fight.

FALAH AL-NAQIB, IRAQI INTERIOR MINISTER: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) actually in many areas but very limited. It's very limited actually but that's what happens. In certain areas we had to counsel and to fire many of these which we think that they are somehow cooperating with insurgents.

PENHAUL: U.S. officials have said they don't believe insurgents elsewhere in Iraq can sustain their backlash against the Falluja offensive but insurgent commanders in (UNINTELLIGIBLE) seem (UNINTELLIGIBLE), proclaiming solidarity for their comrades in Falluja, vowing to fight to the death.

Karl Penhaul, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT tonight, the State Department shuffle. Secretary of State Powell out, is Condoleezza on track to replace him?

Also ahead, a shakeup at the CIA, two surprise resignations and lots of questions.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It began as a trickle last week with Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of Commerce Don Evans announcing they would step aside. Today, the trickle became a flood, the White House making public the resignations of four more members of the Bush cabinet, including Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The name of his likely replacement has emerged as well today, so we have two reports on these changes, beginning at the White House and CNN's Dana Bash.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The first member of the president's national security team to bow out says it was an honor to serve but it's time to go.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: It has always been my intention that I would serve one term.

BASH: Though careful to note he did not ask to stay, some administration officials say Powell wanted to stick around for a few months, especially with a new post-Arafat opening in the Mid East.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm proud of my secretary of state. He's done a heck of a good job.

BASH: But Bush aides say the president was eager to move on his new team. Administration sources say Tuesday Mr. Bush will nominate National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, one of his most trusted aides, to replace Powell. Filling key posts with loyal confidantes appears to be a Bush strategy aimed at fending off problems that historically plague second term presidents.

Rice, a former Stanford Provost, had told associates she considered returning to academia but Mr. Bush convinced her to stay on as the second female secretary of state, if confirmed by the Senate. A senior official says Stephen Hadley, now Rice's deputy, will replace her as national security adviser.

Powell, who officially resigned Friday, was among the first tasked four years ago. For a president coming into office with no foreign policy experience, the retired four-star general offered credibility on the world stage and he put it on the line.

POWELL: Saddam Hussein has not verifiable accounted for even one teaspoon full of this deadly material.

BASH: Most notably to sell the Iraq war to the U.N. with information later discredited. The secretary of state was one of four cabinet resignations announced Monday, the others Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Education Secretary Rod Paige and Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: And more Bush loyalists are in line to fill those jobs prompting some Republicans to warn all this premium on loyalty may actually hurt the president because it will make him too insulated and, Aaron, that is exactly why former Republican Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said on CNN tonight he thinks Condoleezza Rice is the wrong choice to succeed Colin Powell because he said, "Everyone is going to be speaking the same language" -- Aaron.

BROWN: And it's hard enough obviously, I believe, to give the president of the United States advice he may not want to hear. If you're all buddies and been around the circle of the White House, the new attorney general for one, it just gets more complicated.

BASH: And that's exactly the point that Secretary Eagleburger was trying to make. The Republican Senator Chuck Hagel from Nebraska made it earlier on CNN today essentially saying that you need tension and that sometimes even you need some public tension which is something that this president does not like at all but that that certainly helps with the internal debate and the policy debate and that if the president isn't hearing some heated debate and dialogue that that could hurt him in his policies.

BROWN: Dana, thank you, Dana Bash at the White House.

Four years ago, Secretary Powell succeeded the country's first female secretary of state and broke another barrier becoming the first African American to hold the job. He brought to the State Department impeccable military credentials and was widely perceived to be many things to many people who preferred his way of conducting foreign policy to their perception of the president's but in the end, administrations have but one foreign policy.

Here's our Senior White House Correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He is the warrior turned diplomat among friends in the Bush war council, yet for all his star power often perceived as the odd man out.

JOE HAGIN, WHITE HOUSE DEP. CHIEF OF STAFF: Rumsfeld doesn't agree with Powell or vice versa but the great thing in the end is that everybody falls in line and pulls in the same direction and I think that's unique to this administration, at least in modern times.

KING: Colin Powell is a complicated man and the secretary of state in complicated times, to some once and always a loyal soldier.

POWELL: And I'll always treasure the four years that I've spent with President Bush and with the wonderful men and women of the Department of State.

KING: It is an impressive resume to say the least, national security adviser, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Iraq war. Back then it was the Powell doctrine. If there is to be war, send overwhelming force.

This time around, Powell was secretary of state and it was the Rumsfeld doctrine, smaller and faster is better. Secretary Powell was known to have doubts but didn't air them in public. Some Bush insiders read books like this, however, and see disloyalty absent fingerprints.

Early on he talked of direct negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear program. He lost that one. Later, he would argue forcefully the president needed to seek United Nations support for war in Iraq. He won.

POWELL: Some of the president's advisers didn't think that the U.N. would be able to do it.

KING: Victory brought responsibility. Powell told the U.N. Security Council there was no doubt Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, no weapons but no apology.

POWELL: I'm disappointed but, you know, disappointment you get over.

KING: Questions about strategy but not about the big goals. Secretary Powell says toppling Saddam Hussein was right and that Iraq will find the path from insurgency to democracy. POWELL: Why should we be disappointed, ashamed or worried about these consequences? These are the consequences that we wanted to see happen.

KING: These snapshots from June, 2003 would prove telling. The president sent National Security Adviser Rice to the Middle East amid complaints in some quarters that talking to Secretary Powell wasn't necessarily the same as talking to the Bush White House.

(on camera): There will be no such doubts now that Rice is in line to be the next secretary of state. As for Powell, friends say private life will mean more time in the garage with his (UNINTELLIGIBLE), maybe another book but not a reversal of his vow to never seek elective office.

John King, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Coming up after the break, the Powell doctrine aside, how history will look at the secretary of state, two views coming up.

Also ahead, if you're a 74-year-old man channeling an 18-year-old woman where do you begin, author Tom Wolfe talks about his new book and shares some secrets from his writing life, a break first.

Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: More now on outgoing Secretary of State Powell. We're joined from Washington by Walter Isaacson, the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, former president of CNN as well, the author of three books, "The Wise Men," "Kissinger," and "Benjamin Franklin." Also with us in New York, Philip Gourevitch, Political Correspondent for "New Yorker" magazine and writes pretty good stuff too, nice to see you Phil and Walter.

PHILIP GOUREVITCH, "NEW YORKER": Good to see you.

BROWN: Walter, was the secretary too good a soldier in the end? He certainly was a good soldier.

WALTER ISAACSON, THE ASPEN INSTITUTE: He was a very good soldier, in a way, a very good secretary. He lost a lot of the battles, but stayed loyal throughout it all.

But I think the important thing to remember and what history will finally remember when we get out of this period of who won, who lost, is that he turned out to be right. He had a lot of the battles with the Pentagon. But, in each one of them, he lost the battle, but he was the one that turned out to be the wise person.

BROWN: Phil, is that good enough to be the wise person in the eyes of history?

GOUREVITCH: Well, I think not necessarily.

In the case of Colin Powell, I think what you're going to see -- or what we've seen is somebody who came into office with this tremendous asset being an air of great, great credibility. And I think he leaves office having that credibility in many ways diminished by the way he was used by the administration without great victories to show for it.

I think that he was, from the beginning, cut off at the knees by ideological members of the administration who didn't want him there and who prevailed in these battles.

BROWN: Well, I think the question to both of you, Walter, the question of whether they wanted him there or not. A cynic might argue -- and you know we pretty well and I can be pretty cynical -- a cynic might argue that he was perfect for the job because he was the most credible member of the administration.

ISAACSON: He was certainly credible. And he had served very well both the elder President Bush and this one. But he was treated in some ways like an assistant, a worker, when he was, in fact, a man of great stature. And I don't think Bush ever related to him as being what he was when he came into office, which may have been the most respected man in America.

BROWN: Philip, what should he have done? He ran into policy difference after policy -- should he have pulled a Cyrus Vance?

GOUREVITCH: Well, we're constantly told that Colin Powell was unhappy with things about the administration's policies, was not speaking was not sort of having his point of view prevail. But we were always being told that in a kind of whispered way.

It felt to me that he never took a stand that was clearly at odds. Now, that's being a good soldier. And it's tough to do that in a situation like this. But if conscience is what he's going to be remembered for, and having been right, as Walter Isaacson says, even in battles he lost, it would have been better if he had been on the record saying that more strongly.

And I think, one of the things we didn't see, as a secretary of state in an administration that thrust itself more vigorously into the world than many in a long, long time, I think he traveled less than most. One didn't see him when the Madrid bombing happened rushing to Madrid. One didn't see him when Arab coalition members were needed for the coalition in Iraq rushing off to the Arab countries. One didn't see him in some sense engaged with the world as the face of the administration.

One had the sense that he was stuck in Washington. Almost the way some Third World leaders won't leave their countries for fear of a coup, he had to stay home and mind the infighting. And that's terribly debilitating.

ISAACSON: Phil, Aaron, let me make a point about why he didn't fall on his sword or throw himself in front of the train, because that's the big question about him.

He told a story every now and then about General Marshall, George C. Marshall, who had been just like Powell, sort of an Army chief of staff and then secretary of state under Truman. And Powell worships General Marshall. He uses a desk that General Marshall used. And General Marshall's portrait is there right on the wall.

And he tells a story of when Marshall told Harry Truman, advised him that he should not recognize the state of Israel that day in 1948, when Israel declared itself a new nation. And when Truman went ahead and recognized Israel, Powell would say, all his aides gathered around this desk, this desk right here, and told him he had to resign.

And Powell tells the story that Marshall said, who made me the president? He's the president.

BROWN: Yes.

ISAACSON: He's the one who gets to make the decision. I just get to offer the advice.

And when Powell told that story, you realize, well, he wasn't just talking about General Marshall. He was talking about General Powell.

BROWN: To both of you, just in the last minute we have, in the end, this extraordinary man who has had an extraordinary career, is he going to be remembered for one day at the U.N. or will history, Phil, be kinder?

GOUREVITCH: I think he'll be remembered for many things. I mean, Marshall was wrong.

BROWN: Yes.

GOUREVITCH: Powell, as Walter Isaacson said, may have been right in some of these things.

He'll be remembered for that day at the U.N. He'll be remembered looking back for the Powell doctrine of overwhelming force. He'll be remembered for saying that America shouldn't get involved in Bosnia. And he'll be remembered as somebody who really was the voice of advocating diplomacy as the central tool of foreign policy in an administration that rejected diplomacy as the central tool.

BROWN: Walter, you always got the last word. Take the last word here. Will history be kind?

ISAACSON: History will be kind. Phil is right.

But what will be that shame is that, someday, when the obituaries are written, there will be that picture with him in front of the Security Council with George Tenet sitting in the back and him describing the intelligence and it being wrong. I think he was an honorable man. I don't think that he was doing anything other than what he thought was right. But it's a shame that that will diminish him.

BROWN: Walter, it's nice to see you.

Phil, it's always good to see you.

GOUREVITCH: Good to see you.

BROWN: Thank you both for joining.

Still to come tonight, the shakeup at the CIA, what's behind it? What's ahead for the agency that has seen a fair amount of turmoil? That would be the understatement of the day. And, later, Tom Wolfe goes back to school and graduates with a fair-sized novel. I would say so, about three pounds worth. He joins us, too.

A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A bit more on Iraq now. On audiotape has surfaced on a Web site frequently used by insurgents. On it, a voice purported to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi urges fighters to continue their efforts against the American and the Iraqi troops. CNN has been unable to authenticate the recording. The intelligence community giving it a listen now.

Finding the Zarqawis and the bin Ladens of the world has been a puzzlement to the intelligence community. The CIA, in particular, has attracted blame for a range of intelligence failures, gotten itself embroiled in a dust-up first with the White House and now, it seems, with itself.

Here's CNN's David Ensor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After angry exchanges with aides to the new director of Central Intelligence, Porter Goss, the top two men in the CIA's clandestine service resigned. They are Deputy Director for Operations Stephen Kappes and his number two, Michael J. Sulick. Kappes is said to be the man who convinced Libya's leader Mohamar Kadafi to give up his weapons of mass destruction.

REP. PETER HOEKSTRA (R), MICHIGAN: If these individuals didn't feel comfortable with the direction that Porter is going, they did the right thing, and they left the agency.

ENSOR: Intelligence insiders say the Bush White House has ordered Goss to purge the agency of officials who may have been behind leaks of damaging information during the presidential campaign about Iraq policy and the war on terrorism.

But Kappes and Sulick are not accused of leaking and are highly respected. REP. JANE HARMAN (D), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: The direction set by this highly partisan, inexperienced management team, which Porter Goss brought over with him to the CIA, may cause the wrong people to resign in protest, and may hurt our efforts to win the war on terror.

ENSOR: The resignations come after CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin Friday announced his departure soon, though he has said it's not over disagreement with Goss.

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, CIA DEPUTY DIRECTOR: My attitude towards the intelligence community, and I guess my alma mater, the CIA, is one of tough love.

ENSOR: All agree former Congressman Goss, himself a CIA veteran, has a mandate to make changes at the agency in the wake of criticism over intelligence shortcomings before the 9/11 attacks and before the Iraq War. But some officials say Goss's closest aides want to micromanage decisions such as who should be CIA station chiefs around the world.

MICHAEL SCHEUER, FORMER CIA ANALYST: I think just from my own career experience, it's a bad thing. The deputy director of operations is in charge and ought to have the people working for him who are -- who have his confidence.

ENSOR (on camera): In a statement, Director Goss said he's selected a new spy master, a new deputy director for operations, but that the man cannot be publicly named for now because he will be leaving an undercover job.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: One more quick item before we head to break. A group of visiting Cuban entertainers tonight have reason to say, viva Las Vegas. They defected, 43 of them. Seven others did so in Berlin. Seems to be a pattern.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, they say the suit doesn't make the man. But author Tom Wolfe admits he has gotten a lot of mileage out of his -- that and other secrets from a writer's life. Also ahead, morning papers.

From across the country, this must be NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: If one test of a great fiction writer is the ability to slip inside a character who has absolutely nothing in common with the writer's own life, then it's fair is a say Tom Wolfe passes, fair also to say Mr. Wolfe's long career as a reporter is always evident in his fiction. His keen eye for details has informed each of his major novels. As so it does his latest.

"I Am Charlotte Simmons" runs almost 700 pages, the setting, an imaginary Ivy League University, the story told through the voice of an 18-year-old freshman, female. Much of the book is about sex. The book began as usual for Mr. Wolfe, with a good amount of research.

We talked with him last week about that and more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM WOLFE, AUTHOR, "I AM CHARLOTTE SIMMONS": So, when I reached these colleges, I found that the young women, as well as the young men, were perfectly willing to talk about the most intimate parts of their lives.

It was a novel. I wasn't going to use their names. I wasn't going to do anything that would identify them personally. And I think they themselves feel that there's really something odd going on here. And I'd kind of like to talk to somebody about it.

BROWN: And, yet, is there an absence of shame?

WOLFE: Not entirely. But certainly the sexual mores would indicate an absence of shame, since they approach sex as if there is really no moral value attached to it.

BROWN: It's just something to do on Saturday night?

WOLFE: It's a little more complicated. Well, it looks like that.

There is a pressure that is built up. It's so easy. It's so available. It's so much on everybody's mind that, even if you are not participating -- and lots do not want to participate. One of the characters in my book is a male senior who is a virgin, desperately is trying to hide this fact, well, as men always did.

What's changed is that women do not want to be known as virgins. It's the last thing you want to be called.

BROWN: Let me ask you about a few other things about this. It may be that some people listening to you or some people when they read the book will say, oh, that old Tom Wolfe, almost mid-70s now, he's just turned into a crotchety old man who doesn't get it. Or is it that you get it better than the rest of us?

WOLFE: I think it's probably that get it better than anybody else.

In fact, I am really in awe of what my characters do, awe in the literal sense of, what? And it's not a judgmental...

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: You don't think it's judgmental?

WOLFE: No.

I mean, well, I had the same experience with "The Bonfire of the Vanities" about Wall Street.

BROWN: Yes.

WOLFE: All that. People said to me, what a bleak picture of New York. I never thought it was bleak. I thought, my God, look at what these trades, these bond traders, do. Look at the way they live.

BROWN: But there was a shallowness to them and a callowness to them. And you wrote them. You created it. The shallowness was a product of your pen or your typewriter, in the same way the promiscuity here and the amorality here is a product of your typewriter. And you don't think that is being judgmental at all?

WOLFE: No, because I don't -- I'm just -- I really am just reporting.

You know, Balzac -- and I hesitate to even put him in the same paragraph with myself, but Balzac called himself the social secretary of French society. And that's what I'm doing. I have a humble role in all this.

BROWN: Do you sort of accept that you have become a great American character, from the books you write, to the clothes you wear, that you're a character, that you're one of those people that, when we talk about the writers of the last couple of generations, really, that you're in there? Are you comfortable with that?

WOLFE: I shouldn't admit this, but it's all the suits. It's all the white suits.

(LAUGHTER)

WOLFE: I found earlier the great dividend -- and I started wearing them by accident -- but was that I would be interviewed about something I had written and I didn't say very much. I didn't know what to say to these interviewers. But they would go away saying, what an interesting man. He wears these white suits.

So they have been great. These white suits have just been great for me.

BROWN: It's nice to see you.

WOLFE: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Tom Wolfe, he will be wearing a white suit tomorrow. The book is called "I Am Charlotte Simmons."

And we'll check morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers around the country, around the world. We will go around the world today.

But we'll start with "The Stars and Stripes." "Powell, Three Others Resign From Cabinet." How would you like to be the three others? You don't even get a mention there. "Secretary of State to Stay Until Successor Named." Could come tomorrow. But the pictures, and, really, the story that most soldiers will read first, "Wounded Recount Falluja Battle, Vow to Return to Iraq." Brave young men, them -- they. Brave young men -- well, anyway, they're brave.

"The Guardian." "Powell" -- this is a British paper -- a couple British papers here. "Powell, Moderate Voice of U.S., Quits." "The Times" in London, this is a big-time headline, right? "Backing Bush Has Won You Nothing, Chirac Tells Britain." So a couple headlines from British papers today.

"Christian Science Monitor." Moderate seems to be the word that they like to use with Secretary Powell, right? "A Symbol of Moderation Exits. Powell Heads List of Cabinet Resignations." At least the others got pictures. They didn't get that in "The Stars and Stripes." I mean, they got nothing. "As Smoke Clears, Next Battles Are Political. As Military Stabilizes Falluja, Fresh Violence Erupts in Other Sunni-Dominated Areas," as we reported earlier.

OK, a minute left to do a number of things here.

"The Washington Times" over here, OK? "Pentagon to Warn Bases on Scouts." Man, this is like a full Rush Limbaugh show in this one story tomorrow. "ACLU Lawsuit Triggers Action. Pentagon Has Agreed to Warn Military Bases Worldwide They Should Not Sponsor Boy Scout Troops Because the Boy Scouts Require Members to Believe in God." Don't know if that -- well, it's true. It's in the paper.

"The Oregonian" out in Portland. "FBI Blamed in Print Error." This is the Brandon Mayfield, young lawyer who was arrested in the Madrid bombings. It turned out the fingerprint was bogus.

"The Philadelphia Inquirer." "Specter Decision Could Come Today." That's Arlen Specter, in line to be the chairman of the Judiciary until he said some unfortunate things, in the eyes of some of his fellow Republicans. So he's probably in trouble.

How much time? Wrap?

Weather tomorrow in Chicago...

(CHIMES)

BROWN: Thank you. "Warm bath."

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: At 11:00 a.m. tomorrow, join the gang at "AMERICAN MORNING." They do a terrific job. So give them a check-out.

"LOU DOBBS TONIGHT" next for most -- give them a check-out?

We'll see you tomorrow. Good night for all of us.

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