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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Pentagon Releases Details of Alleged Prisoner Abuse in Guantanamo Bay; CIA Issues Bleak Report on Future of Iraq

Aired December 07, 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.
There's always been something odd about the notion of rules of war just as there's always been something very necessary about them. So, while you hear the latest allegations that prisoners at the U.S. base at Guantanamo are being mistreated, allegations that are some of the most extensive and detailed yet, it's good to keep in mind not just that they are suspected terrorists or warriors for the Taliban and al Qaeda but, like so much of life, what goes around can come around in war as well and what U.S. interrogators are accused of doing could and perhaps someday will be used as the justification for doing the same thing to Americans held captive or hostage.

That said we begin tonight with our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The fresh details of alleged prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are contained in hundreds of pages of documents released by the Pentagon only after the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in federal court, allegations the Pentagon insists have been or are currently under investigation.

One letter sent in July from the FBI to the Army's Criminal Investigation Command outlines potential abuse witnessed by FBI agents at Guantanamo in late 2002 about the same time prisoners were being mistreated at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, among the allegations of abuse in Guantanamo bending a detainee's thumbs backward and grabbing his genitals, covering a detainee's head in duct tape to stop him from reciting the Koran, inflicting extreme psychological trauma by the use of dogs and extended isolation.

AMRIT SINGH, ACLU ATTORNEY: In fact what we see from these documents was that the abuse was systemic, it happened not just in Iraq, it happened in Afghanistan, it happened in Guantanamo and that not just a few low-ranking officials were involved.

MCINTYRE: In fact the documents posted on the ACLU's Web site also suggest members of an elite Special Operations task force, code named 626, tried to silence Defense Intelligence Agency personnel who witnessed questionable treatment in Iraq.

A June 25, 2004 memo from the head of the DIA, Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, says after his interrogators saw and photographed prisoners with burns and bruises and complaining of kidney pain, they had their pictures confiscated, were threatened, told not to talk to anyone in the United States, and confined to the compound.

SINGH: It shows not just that Special Operations were committing violations of domestic and international law but then were trying to cover up those violations and trying to threaten and intimidate people who were trying to do the right thing.

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon is not responding to the details in the documents but in a statement said, "We do not tolerate any mistreatment of detainees. We investigate thoroughly any credible allegations and take appropriate action if they are substantiated. The same process applies to these allegations."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon insists that any mistreatment of prisoners was not a result of official U.S. policy but the ACLU, as you might expect, has a different interpretation on the documents. It says they show that senior officials either approved the abuse or were deliberately indifferent -- Aaron.

BROWN: Just help a little on time frame. Last week we -- I believe it was last week we talked about what the International Red Cross reported seeing. Are we talking about the same time frame in these documents?

MCINTYRE: Many of these documents cover some of the same areas that have already been investigated, in fact, in some cases where people have already been prosecuted for abuses but they also -- the documents are recent but they cover time back in 2002 and 2003.

They also, though, reveal some of the accusations of mistreatment at Guantanamo that cover the same time as the Red Cross report and even though they may talk about a time that's already been discussed they reveal new details about exactly how they were doing it plus the fact that they were witnessed and objected to by some members of the U.S. government, including the FBI and some people from the Defense Intelligence Agency.

BROWN: And just on that latter point you've got a vice admiral. We're not -- I don't -- we're not talking about the International Red Cross here. I mean we're talking about a soldier, a sailor, a vice admiral, somebody with a lot of scrambled eggs on their hat here. Has he been available to comment? Do we know what his thinking is?

MCINTYRE: Well, no. That memo from Vice Admiral Jacoby who, of course, is the head of the DIA, he's sort of the equivalent of the CIA head at the Pentagon, so he's the top guy. That was an information memo. He wasn't requesting any action.

He was just informing the civilian leadership at the Pentagon that this was going on and, again, the Pentagon insists that these abuses are being investigated and if they find wrongdoing they'll prosecute it and they insist that it's not part of any policy. BROWN: Thank you Jamie, Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon tonight.

A different story, though similar vibe, details from a report issued by the Pentagon Inspector General on sexual assaults and intimidation of female cadets at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, the full report not yet available just the executive summary.

"We conclude," a portion of it reads, "that the overall root cause was the failure of successive chains of command over the past ten years." The report goes on to blame officials for creating a culture hostile to women and hostile to the complaints of abuse. The academy says that the reforms are well underway now and a Pentagon spokesman said a service wide policy on such matters is also in the works.

On to Iraq now where as of tonight 1,007 Americans have been killed in combat, in combat alone, 898 since the president declared an end to major combat more than a year and a half ago. The latest to die was a soldier shot and killed while on patrol in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, in Mosul, insurgents targeted a pair of churches today. In one they forced their way inside, hustled parishioners outside and set off explosives back inside. Nobody was hurt but you can imagine how much worse it might have been.

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, Iraq's president floated a trial balloon that seemed to acknowledge both the hotspots in Iraq and the shortage of troops to control them. He spoke today of spreading the election over a two or three-week period, province by province, to allow security forces more time to make arrangements for a safe vote.

Another difficult day to be sure but ever since the first presidential debate the administration hasn't much tried to sugarcoat the daily headlines out of Iraq.

The message instead is that things may get worse before they get better but what if for the foreseeable future they only get worse, familiar stuff to those of us who still remember lights and tunnels and oncoming trains of another war in another time.

Here's CNN's David Ensor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The classified cable from the outgoing CIA station chief in Baghdad warns that the situation is deteriorating and is likely to continue to do so. It warns of more violence, say U.S. officials, and sectarian fighting among Iraq's Sunnis, Shia and Kurds unless there are clear improvements soon in the control of the Iraqi government and in the economy, bad news for the Bush administration.

FLYNT LEVERETT, SABAN CENTER, BROOKINGS: They are literally between a rock and a hard place right now and I think that's an accurate reading of the situation and I think the CIA is doing its job to paint that picture as accurately and as vividly as it can for policymakers.

ENSOR: U.S. officials say the CIA cable's assessment is mixed in that it calls the Iraqi people resilient and says political progress towards elections is being made. But the station chief's bleak tone overall is in marked contrast with some of the administration's public statements on Iraq.

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: The schools are open. The hospitals are open. The clinics are open. The stock market is open. The currency is stable; an awful lot is going well.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The terrorists will be defeated. Iraq will be free and the world will be more secure.

ENSOR: Bush administration officials could hardly be pleased by the leak of an unvarnished CIA assessment. U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, U.S. officials say, added a dissenting note saying he thinks the cable does not give enough credit to coalition efforts against Iraqi insurgents. The cable was widely distributed in the government though, so the leak could have come from a number of places.

LEVERETT: People leak in this town for a lot of different reasons. My experience is actually that the CIA leaks a lot less than most of the policy agencies in town do.

ENSOR (on camera): Despite the uproar recently about intelligence chief Porter Goss' memo to staff saying they should "support the Bush administration," officials note that Goss approved distributing the CIA station chief's warnings around the government. There was, after all, another line in that Goss memo. It said to CIA officials that their job is to tell truth to power and let the facts speak for themselves.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Meantime, and finally, legislation to change the way intelligence is gathered and managed seems on its way to passage. It puts one person in charge of 15 intelligence agencies, military and civilians. It tightens border security, allows more wiretapping at home and much more. It's a big bill.

The Senate votes on it tomorrow. The House approved it this evening, 336 to 75. Of the 75 nays, 67 came from Republicans who went against a Republican president who at the end, at least, wanted this bill very badly and had to lobby hard to get it.

From the White House tonight, CNN's Dana Bash.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): An emotional President Bush at Camp Pendleton to thank Marines hard hit by the Iraqi War. No mention of it here but this is also a commander- in-chief upbeat at word he avoided a political embarrassment back in Washington. Intelligence agency reforms he backed are finally on the way to his desk.

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R), CHMN., SENATE GOVT. AFFAIRS CMTE.: The president's personal involvement clearly makes a difference. In this case, it determined the fate of this very important legislation.

BASH: Privately, many involved in the intelligence debate complained the president engaged too late. It's a problematic first term pattern say some, who hope he learned a lesson for tougher challenges awaiting him.

TIMOTHY ROEMER, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: The president said in the days after the election that he was willing to use political capital on Social Security reform and tax reform. If he would have lost this, however, it really would erode some of that capital.

BASH: White House sources concede this early legislative victory was crucial for a president trying to use the post election period to build support to help push his ambitious second term agenda in a divided America.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I think this does help set the stage for the second term because it shows what we can get done when we work together in a bipartisan way.

BASH: But the president's fight with fellow Republicans, not Democrats, on intelligence reform exposes a harsh reality. A bigger GOP Congress does not mean a rubber stamp.

REP. MIKE PENCE (R), INDIANA: This Congress, which saw its majority grow and received a mandate from the American people for fiscal discipline, limited government and traditional moral values and we will work toward that vision with the president, occasionally disagree with the president on how that vision is worked out.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: And the intelligence bill, of course, has their unanimous support among Democrats. That's not a luxury the president is going to have when he wants to tackle and will try to tackle monumental changes in issues where Republicans have major differences still, issues like tax reform and Social Security reform -- Aaron.

BROWN: Dana, thank you, good to see you, Dana Bash at the White House tonight.

With us now to talk about the politics of the bill, though more about the mechanics of it, how it touches our lives, Senator Bob Graham, the outgoing Democrat from the state of Florida. Also with us David Kaplan, who is the chief investigative correspondent for "U.S. News and World Report," and both these men have done important work in understanding intelligence in this country and we're pleased to see them both.

Senator Graham, let me start with you, sir. In the end, is this more show than substance or is there plenty of substance here?

SEN. BOB GRAHAM (R), FLORIDA: There's plenty of substance here. Aaron, first, I believe that this is a bill which will tend to mitigate the chances of another 9/11 or Iraq weapons of mass destruction.

Second, I think it's very important that the president took such a leadership role. This indicates to me that he is seriously committed now to the implementation of this legislation, much of which is going to be on his plate.

And, third, this is a good example of what Congress can do when it puts partisanship aside and works towards a common goal that's important to the American people and I hope that we'll see that same spirit carry over into issues like tax reform and Social Security, Medicare and energy and other policies that are going to be important during this next Congress.

BROWN: Well, we'll just try and solve this one tonight, Senator.

David, do you agree that this would -- I suppose nothing could guarantee that we could prevent a 9/11 or prevent the WMD fiasco with Iraq. Does this, in fact do you believe, as the Senator said, mitigate those possibilities and, if so, how so?

DAVID KAPLAN, "U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT": I think it's a start, Aaron. I'm a little more negative than perhaps some of the folks. I think a lot of reformers who have tried to get something going since 9/11 are somewhat disappointed because if you want to really change this hydra-headed monster that we've created in the intelligence community, $40 billion, 100,000 people, 15 agencies, you've got to have a director of national intelligence, which we finally have, but one that has the ability to control budget, the ability to control personnel. It's not at all clear that this legislation creates that. This is a first step.

BROWN: Senator, do you agree that the national intelligence czar has less power than perhaps the 9/11 Commission and even the congressional 9/11 investigators envisioned?

GRAHAM: No. I think it comes very close to giving to this central authority the capabilities to manage the 15 agencies. It also gives him an additional capability and that is to begin the process of rational decentralization of the intelligence agencies. Today we have 15 agencies, each of which has a very specific function. One listens to telephone calls. One takes pictures. One conducts spy operations.

This creates the capability of setting up intelligence centers, which will have all of those resources brought together to focus on a specific threat, whether it's terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or other threats that may be identified.

BROWN: Let me ask each of you, Senator since you're up there I'll ask you first, if there's one thing missing in the bill that you would have liked to have seen in it, what is it? GRAHAM: Aaron, I think the one thing that I would like to see is a greater emphasis on human intelligence. While there is some linguistic emphasis given in this bill, we have to basically rebuild our human capabilities. I think you could make the case that both the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq were precipitated by failures in our human intelligence.

Our human intelligence was allowed to wither during the Cold War and what we had left was very Russian centric. They spoke Russian. They knew Russian history and culture and knew almost nothing about the Middle East and Central Asia where most of our threats are emanating.

BROWN: David, the same question, if you could write one line in and you've done an awful lot of reporting on this, an awful lot of thinking on this, one line that you think is missing that would help the process along because in many respects this is the perfect moment to get it done, the combination of the tragedy of 9/11 and the failures of Iraq.

KAPLAN: Well, I hate to disagree with Senator Graham. He knows a lot more about this stuff than I do. I spent much of today reading this bill. It's 243 pages long and the key problem here is that the director doesn't have the kind of budget authority to make people in these sprawling bureaucracies do what he wants them to do.

This is going to be the big challenge. It's going to depend on personalities. It's going to depend on the White House. It's going to depend on congressional oversight.

BROWN: Gentlemen, good to have you both with us, good holiday season.

GRAHAM: Thank you.

BROWN: Senator, nice to see you. Thank you.

Ahead on the program tonight before SARS, before AIDS, we travel back in time to 1918 when flu, flu was the greatest health threat to mankind. Nissen looks at what we've learned and what we have not.

And while on the subject of health, we'll also cover things that could be bad for you if you use them the wrong way, like athletes and steroids. We'll do all that but we'll take a break first.

Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Well, you can call it help from Old Europe. Tommy Thompson, the departing Secretary of Health and Human Services, today announced the latest deal to get more flu vaccine, 1.2 million doses from Germany to be followed by another 2.8 million as the flu season goes along. It still leaves the country about 35 million doses short of what health officials planned to have on hand this year. Mostly when we talk about flu we think of it, I suspect, as just something a bit worse than a cold, unpleasant to be sure but not much more. In fact, it's a killer. Thirty-six thousand Americans died from the flu last year. Mostly they were old and quite ill when they were hit by the flu.

Now imagine a different set of patients for a few moments and a different kind of flu. The victims young and healthy and the virus, don't think of influenza as you know it, think of Ebola or the plague, not your father's influenza, in this case your grandfather's.

Here's NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It started in the first months of 1918, maybe in rural Kansas, maybe in China, maybe France, an influenza virus mutated into deadly form.

By autumn it had spread in handshakes and through the air through the Americas, Africa, Europe and the battlefields of World War I infecting eventually one-fifth of the world's population. Millions could not fight the virus or secondary infections like pneumonia and died horrible deaths.

JOHN BARRY, AUTHOR: Some of the really terrifying symptoms were that people would bleed not only from their -- from their nose or their mouth but actually from their eyes and from their ears.

NISSEN: John Barry is the author of "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague in History."

BARRY: People could die in 24 hours. They literally could wake up feeling OK and be dead by nightfall.

NISSEN: The lethal flu spread most quickly wherever people were concentrated in close quarters, soldiers' barracks, troop ships, city tenements in Europe and the U.S.

BARRY: In almost every city in the country they ran out of coffins and, in Philadelphia, they actually came to a situation where priests were driving horse-drawn carriages down the street calling upon people to bring out their dead.

NISSEN: Influenza was no medieval mystery in 1918.

BARRY: People knew it was a contagious disease and the way to avoid getting it was to avoid other people.

NISSEN: But in the U.S. and elsewhere government officials kept secret how deadly the new flu strain was fearful the news would hurt the war effort.

BARRY: The Wilson administration only cared about one thing winning World War I. They told lies to protect morale, in their words. Initially, they were telling everyone this is just ordinary influenza. It's nothing to be afraid of. People, who otherwise would have protected themselves, would have stayed home, they were not protected and they were exposed and they died.

NISSEN: Most of the dead were young adults, ages 20 to 40.

BARRY: The best number for the United States is 675,000 deaths. The overwhelming majority died between mid-September and mid-November.

NISSEN: Worldwide the cost was literally incalculable.

BARRY: Probably at least 40 million people died. There's a Nobel Prize winner who thinks at least 50 million and possibly as many as 100 million deaths.

NISSEN: More people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century. Could it happen again?

BARRY: Another pandemic unfortunately is not only possible it is inevitable.

NISSEN: Inevitable that another influenza virus will someday, somewhere mutate to lethal form, spread among humans.

BARRY: The question is how prepared we are for it. Right now we are not even close to ready for it.

NISSEN: Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In the world of public health pandemics, like the one in 1918, are as bad as it gets. The spike in flu cases that we typically see each winter are known as outbreaks. We expect them, try and guard against them, but some seasons are worse than normal. They qualify as epidemics with more than the usual number of people falling sick.

And periodically, as in 1918, epidemics spread out of control across the world resulting in a pandemic. Epidemiologists say that many U.S. hospitals today are better prepared for a bioterrorism attack than a flu epidemic, let alone a pandemic. They see this year's flu vaccine shortage as proof of weak prevention programs and they also worry about the politics of disease.

China, for example, lied about SARS for several months, which allowed the virus to spread. If that had been a new flu virus, as deadly as the one in 1918, containing it, some experts say today, would have been impossible.

Still ahead on the program tonight, steroid use in baseball, fair ball or foul play, we'll talk with someone who lives and breathes baseball and writes pretty well about it too.

And you have to be older than 63 to remember the bombing of Pearl Harbor unless you're watching NEWSNIGHT. Morning Papers looks back. We'll take a break first.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A couple of developments today in the steroid scandal, though we'll talk about that word tonight, that's rocking the world of sports. The International Olympic Committee opened an investigation into doping allegations against Olympic track star Marion Jones.

The decision follows a report broadcast Friday on ABC's "20/20" in which the head of the California-based lab accused of illegally distributing steroids told the program that he gave Ms. Jones performance enhancing drugs before and after the 2000 Olympic Games. He also said he watched her inject herself with human growth hormones.

Ms. Jones, who could eventually be stripped of her five medals she won in Sydney, has repeatedly denied ever using banned drugs and, in fact, has never tested positive for them.

On now to Major League Baseball which is reeling from revelations in the "San Francisco Chronicle" that Jason Giambi admitted in grand jury testimony to taking steroids and that Barry Bonds took substances linked to the Balco scandal as well.

Today, the Players Association says it's begun talks with Major League owners to devise a framework for a tougher anti-doping policy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD FEHR, EXEC. DIR., MLB PLAYERS ASSOC.: In terms of coming to grips with this, we think in 2002 that we did make a good faith start that we did make a good faith effort.

Having said that, that doesn't mean it can't be done better. That doesn't mean improvements can't be made. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try and go further if, after further consideration, that that makes the most sense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Major League Baseball clearly trying to find a solution to the problem before the federal government steps in. Players could be asked to vote on tougher anti-doping rules as early as the first of the year in time for spring training in February; 2004, it seems clear, will be remembered as the year the story on steroids broke.

We're joined by Buster Olney, the senior writer for "ESPN The Magazine" and one of the great baseball writers in the country.

And it's good to see you.

You said what I thought was an interesting thing today. You said, this is not so much scandal as controversy. It feels like scandal to me when the game's preeminent player, basically -- he says he didn't know -- and we can wink and nod at that -- but basically cops to it.

BUSTER OLNEY, SENIOR WRITER, "ESPN THE MAGAZINE": Yes, I think it's different than the White Sox scandal in 1919, in that, I think people -- the fans were concerned about the overall integrity of the game.

And what's interesting about this scandal, I think people have suspected for a long time, from '98 -- I know, when I was covering minor league baseball in the late '80s, there was talk of steroids. I think fans have known there are probably taking steroids. And even though we have had this issue last week, I don't think that fans were turned off by it, necessarily, to the point that they're not going to buy tickets.

BROWN: I want to get to that. Who was the guy a couple years ago, a player in Houston who said, or former player at the time...

OLNEY: Ken Caminiti.

BROWN: Ken Caminiti, who said, they were all using them. Or -- he didn't say they were all using them, but you get the point, which leads to what I find a kind of troubling question in all of this, which is, as long as baseballs are flying out of the park -- baseball comes out of the strike season, the lost World Series, all of sudden, baseballs are flying out of the park faster than you can keep track of them. And that draws people to the ballpark. And to what extent, do you think, did baseball kind of wink and nod at all of this?

OLNEY: There's no question.

As I say, there was so much talk within the baseball community about this growing steroid problem in the early '90s, in the mid '90s, in '98, when we had an incredible home run chase, people in the game were looking at each other going, well, what is really going on here? And, as you say, because people were coming to the park, they were attracted by home runs, no one really talked about it.

And I think that Caminiti's admission to "Sports Illustrated" really put this issue on the front burner for Major League Baseball. They were very slow in reacting. There's no question.

BROWN: If baseball, as much as any sport, is dependent on its history, and that is part of the integrity of the game, how can you make the argument that this doesn't attack the integrity of the game?

OLNEY: I would agree with you. But in terms of how its impact with the fans and in terms of people buying tickets...

BROWN: OK. So it's OK -- the fans would get upset if it's just blatant cheating, if you throw the game.

OLNEY: Right.

BROWN: If you throw a gopher ball and the guy hits it out of the park and wins the World Series and you make money on a bet, that gets fans upset.

OLNEY: Right.

BROWN: But if a guy is using some chemical to give himself biceps the size of Guatemala, that's OK? OLNEY: Well, it's funny.

An example of what you're talking about is, think about this. Last week, Giambi admitted that he used steroids. Gary Sheffield also has been implicated with steroids. The Yankees are moving to void Giambi's $82 million contract. He had a terrible year last year.

BROWN: Right.

OLNEY: And Gary Sheffield had a great year. No one is talking about getting rid of Sheffield's contract.

BROWN: So, in the end, it's how you perform?

OLNEY: It's how you perform.

BROWN: There's a lot of problems in the country. I'm not sure this is necessarily one Congress needs to get involved in. I'll leave that to them. But it seems pretty clear that the players get it that they better do something.

OLNEY: The players, I think the rank and file have gotten it for a long time.

The people who haven't gotten it and who have really stonewalled this whole issue have been the leaders of the Players Association. We've seen signs. During the 2002 season, 79 percent of the players said in a poll in "USA Today," we want testing. But I think that, basically, the union leadership has not worked to hear what their players have to say.

BROWN: And players, understandably, it seems to me, if you're clean, it's got to annoy you a bit that some guy who is not clean is making eight gazillion dollars and you're not.

OLNEY: Exactly.

BROWN: And he's shooting up.

Will it matter? Will we see the game change? Will the ball stop flying out of the park as often as it has been? Will...

OLNEY: It was interesting because, last year, when you talked to scouts -- and there's an assumption that hitters are the only ones who benefit from this. Actually, pitchers probably benefit more. And scouts saw a big difference last year in the velocity in the first year in which there was actually penalties.

BROWN: Is that right?

OLNEY: Yes. The pitchers' velocity across the boards were down, because the pitchers were not as big as they used to be. They weren't throwing as hard as they used to.

And I think we have seen a major change in bodies from 2002 through the 2004 season, as we've gone in the penalty phase of the testing.

BROWN: How many days until pitchers and catchers report?

OLNEY: What, 60?

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: It's nice to see you. It's been a while.

OLNEY: Good to see you, too, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you, Buster Olney.

We'll take a break. When we come back, the move from steroids to alcohol and marijuana, buying wine, using pot, and why the high court of the land is getting involved.

And when in Rome, you can see many magnificent relics. What we're about to show you isn't on public display. And we'll tell you why they may never be.

We'll take a break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

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BROWN: The cool thing about political labels is how simple they make everything. Conservatives favor small government, government that stays out of our lives, government that leaves decision-making to the lowest level, city or state. Liberals, according to the label, favor big government, government that makes sure we do the right thing. Simple. Easy.

And as a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court this fall will tell you, not even close to true.

Here's our senior analyst, Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): A bottle of wine from across the country, homegrown marijuana, smoked to ease the pain of illness, a terminally-ill patient seeking help in ending his or her life, what unites them? They're all at the center of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. And all of them involve what may be one of the great legal debates of the coming years. What are the limits of the federal government's power to tell the 50 states what they can and cannot do?

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution forbids states like New York from banning importation of out-of-state wine. Two lower federal courts have split on the issue. Late last month, the court heard arguments about whether to strike down California's medical marijuana law, adopted by the voters in 1998. The law allows patients to cultivate and use small amounts of marijuana, provided it's not sold to anyone else. Also last month, outgoing Attorney General Ashcroft asked the Supreme Court to block Oregon's assisted suicide law that voters approved in 1998. It's been used by more than 179 people, most of them cancer victims, to end their lives. Suicide, the federal authorities argue, is not a legitimate medical purpose.

(on camera): This whole question of states' rights is clouded by its past association with the issue of racial justice. But, in the last decade or so, it's reappeared in different form, as an idea championed by some economic conservatives and now drawing the attention of some social liberals.

(voice-over): For decades, states' rights was the slogan of Southern segregationists, who opposed all federal efforts to desegregate schools or ensure the voting rights of blacks. The civil rights and voting rights laws of the mid 1960s eventually ended that debate.

But quite apart from race, there were huge arguments over federal economic power during FDR's new deal. That controversy apparently ended when the Supreme Court began to rule that the Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce gave the federal government power over just about any economic activity, even a farmer who grew wheat just to feed his livestock.

But, in 1995, the court in a 5-4 vote said the commerce clause did not give Congress the power to declare every school in America a gun-free zone. The constitution's 10th Amendment, the court said, left such matters to the states. And in 2000, the Supreme Court said Congress could not open federal courts to claims of gender-based violence. These rulings have encouraged conservatives, who have long worked to rein in federal power.

But now there's a twist. On some social issues, like gay marriage or assisted suicide or drug laws in general, it's liberals who argue that the states should be left to their own choices, while conservatives, in general, seek nationwide rules in these areas. On abortion, of course, those positions are flipped.

(on camera): When a new Supreme Court justice is nominated, the debate will likely center around a hot-button issue like abortion. But it's the decision a reshaped court will make about the limits of federal power that may well have a lot more to do with the way we live and even die.

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on the program, what's a country to do when it's sitting on some of the most significant historic material and it can't afford to show it off? No one else has seen in Rome what we're about to show you.

And it being the 7th of December and all, you know what we'll do, a NEWSNIGHT nod to the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the day that has lived in infamy.

But we'll take a break first. From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It seems almost every story in the program tonight has deep, historical roots if you look far enough. The divisions in Iraq date back centuries, disease, a threat to human life, from our earliest days on the planet. Even ancient sports had issues with performance-enhancing drugs. The drugs of choice were different back then, of course.

All of this by way of saying history is never far from the surface. Sometimes, it's closer than you might imagine.

Reporting from Rome tonight for us, CNN's Alessio Vinci.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN ROME BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): In the heart of Rome, a stone's throw away from the Coliseum, lies the Trajan Forum, once the epicenter of ancient Roman life. Even on a rainy day like this one, it is a must-see for thousands of tourists. Yet, it is what sightseers can't see that remains perhaps the biggest treasure here, locked behind these steel gates.

GIANNI PONTI, ARCHAEOLOGIST: This is always closed to the public.

VINCI: Archaeologist Gianni Ponti, took me where he says no tourist has ever been before.

PONTI: The area is huge. It's about, I would say, 500 square meters large. It's all underground.

VINCI: The area is home to thousands of ancient pieces once part of the Trajan Forum, most of them dating back to the 1st and 2nd century A.D. Even the floor we're walking on is authentic.

PONTI: You can sort of tell how well it's preserved and how colorful all of the marble, all the different marble types were.

VINCI: Most of the objects, which range from small fragments of facades and statues to large chunks of columns, have been cleaned, studied, measured, photographed and cataloged. And experts say they're now ready to be put on public display, so that tourists visiting the Forum get a better idea of what the site looked like almost 2,000 years ago.

PONTI: This is a colossal fragment of a finger, of an index finger.

(CROSSTALK)

PONTI: This part over here, this part over here from the knuckle to the beginning of the hand. The statue must have been about 12 meters tall.

VINCI: The project to make this area accessible to tourists already exists. But the city of Rome doesn't have the millions of dollars necessary to make it happen, beginning with the ceiling, in desperate need of repair.

PONTI: See, this is the problem, is you come to a site like this and you get to see the floors, the foundations, the fragments that are dispersed. The difficult thing is to put them back together in your mind.

VINCI (on camera): It's like a giant puzzle.

PONTI: It's a giant puzzle. But the end result of the puzzle is a three-dimensional reconstruction of what the buildings were like.

VINCI (voice-over): That's the project and a dream, perhaps, while these treasures, for now, remain in the custody of public oblivion.

Alessio Vinci, CNN, Rome.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Well, history even infuses -- infuses -- morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers around the country, around the world, past and present. We'll start with the present.

And in no particular order, not that there's ever been a particular order, "The Boston Herald," which decided -- it's the tab in Boston -- has decided to take on the governor. This is the second day in a row the governor has made the front page, which is not a good place to be in "The Herald," by the way. "Stop This Scam. Mitt's Computer Guys Use Loophole to Skirt Bid Laws." Exclusive, OK?

"Miami Herald." Speaking of scandal, "Former Charity Director Jailed in Scandal" is their lead. "Dale Simpson, the former head of one of South Florida's largest charities, was jailed for allegedly using homeless labor and charity money for personal gain." Oh, I hope that's not true. Yikes.

"The Oregonian" tries graphically to explain the intelligence reform bill. I think David Kaplan said it was 256 pages. We could spend the rest of our lives trying to understand it. "House Passes Reform of U.S. Intelligence." Also, "Lottery Slot Option Freshens Rate Debate." That's a good headline. Slot machines seem to be a big deal.

"Cincinnati Enquirer." I like this story because I like the issue a lot. "Murderer Pleads, Wants Death. Chapman: 'My Life Has Never Been Worth Much." "Marco Chapman raises his hand to be sworn during a hearing where he pleaded guilty to murder."

And then, the story we led with tonight. Did we lead with it tonight? Yes. "Some Who Saw Abuse Threatened, U.S. Memos, Tension Between Interrogators." Awfully good story, that.

OK, here are the headlines. Man, I'm having a voice thing today, aren't I? This was "Newsday" on December 8. It's 63 years ago, I guess, now, "War" -- straight ahead -- "3,000 Casualties" -- Pearl Harbor Day "Casualties in Hawaii, 1,500 Dead," which puts some scale, by the way, on the attack of 9/11.

Some of these papers, the language is going to be a bit jarring. I'm warning you now. "U.S. and Japan at War." "The News-Gazette" of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, the home of the University of Illinois. Five cents, cost the paper in those days. Don't know what it costs now.

"Providence Sunday Journal." "Japanese Bombing Honolulu, 350 Dead" when they went to press. "U.S. Warship Afire. Attack on Manila Not Confirmed."

"The Honolulu Star--Bulletin," which still publishes. "War. Oahu Bombed By Japanese Planes." Pretty straight-ahead lead.

Now, this gets a little dicey, OK? Remember when this all took place and remember what was going on. "San Diego Union. "Japs Bomb Honolulu. Manila, Ships Battle."

An extra by "The San Francisco Examiner." "U.S.-Jap War. Hawaii, Manila Bombed. Two U.S. Warships Sunk."

"The New York Times" led "Japan War On U.S. and Britain, Makes Sudden Attack on Hawaii. Heavy Fighting at Sea Reported."

The weather tomorrow in Chicago is "jaunty" -- the headlines anything but.

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We should have mentioned this earlier during morning papers.

In case you missed it, Hamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan's new president today, about 150 guests, including the vice president and the secretary of defense. You just saw them. There's President Karzai. Think about how far that country has come since the days of 9/11. Got a long way to go, but it was an important day for Afghanistan.

An important program note for us, a difficult and important story. This will just break your heart, the hidden world of child labor, not just overseas, but here as well. For some 246 million children -- think about that, a quarter of a billion kids -- worldwide, life is nothing but work, in some cases, kidnapped, enslaved, their childhood stolen, forced to work grueling hours in horrible conditions. An extraordinary and disturbing new film documents the lives of these children. We will have exclusive excerpts from the film, talk to the filmmakers.

This is a terrific piece of work tomorrow on the program, 10:00 Eastern time.

"AMERICAN MORNING" 7:00 a.m. Eastern time. Join those guys.

And we'll see you tomorrow. Until then, 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 December 7, 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.
There's always been something odd about the notion of rules of war just as there's always been something very necessary about them. So, while you hear the latest allegations that prisoners at the U.S. base at Guantanamo are being mistreated, allegations that are some of the most extensive and detailed yet, it's good to keep in mind not just that they are suspected terrorists or warriors for the Taliban and al Qaeda but, like so much of life, what goes around can come around in war as well and what U.S. interrogators are accused of doing could and perhaps someday will be used as the justification for doing the same thing to Americans held captive or hostage.

That said we begin tonight with our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The fresh details of alleged prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are contained in hundreds of pages of documents released by the Pentagon only after the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in federal court, allegations the Pentagon insists have been or are currently under investigation.

One letter sent in July from the FBI to the Army's Criminal Investigation Command outlines potential abuse witnessed by FBI agents at Guantanamo in late 2002 about the same time prisoners were being mistreated at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, among the allegations of abuse in Guantanamo bending a detainee's thumbs backward and grabbing his genitals, covering a detainee's head in duct tape to stop him from reciting the Koran, inflicting extreme psychological trauma by the use of dogs and extended isolation.

AMRIT SINGH, ACLU ATTORNEY: In fact what we see from these documents was that the abuse was systemic, it happened not just in Iraq, it happened in Afghanistan, it happened in Guantanamo and that not just a few low-ranking officials were involved.

MCINTYRE: In fact the documents posted on the ACLU's Web site also suggest members of an elite Special Operations task force, code named 626, tried to silence Defense Intelligence Agency personnel who witnessed questionable treatment in Iraq.

A June 25, 2004 memo from the head of the DIA, Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, says after his interrogators saw and photographed prisoners with burns and bruises and complaining of kidney pain, they had their pictures confiscated, were threatened, told not to talk to anyone in the United States, and confined to the compound.

SINGH: It shows not just that Special Operations were committing violations of domestic and international law but then were trying to cover up those violations and trying to threaten and intimidate people who were trying to do the right thing.

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon is not responding to the details in the documents but in a statement said, "We do not tolerate any mistreatment of detainees. We investigate thoroughly any credible allegations and take appropriate action if they are substantiated. The same process applies to these allegations."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon insists that any mistreatment of prisoners was not a result of official U.S. policy but the ACLU, as you might expect, has a different interpretation on the documents. It says they show that senior officials either approved the abuse or were deliberately indifferent -- Aaron.

BROWN: Just help a little on time frame. Last week we -- I believe it was last week we talked about what the International Red Cross reported seeing. Are we talking about the same time frame in these documents?

MCINTYRE: Many of these documents cover some of the same areas that have already been investigated, in fact, in some cases where people have already been prosecuted for abuses but they also -- the documents are recent but they cover time back in 2002 and 2003.

They also, though, reveal some of the accusations of mistreatment at Guantanamo that cover the same time as the Red Cross report and even though they may talk about a time that's already been discussed they reveal new details about exactly how they were doing it plus the fact that they were witnessed and objected to by some members of the U.S. government, including the FBI and some people from the Defense Intelligence Agency.

BROWN: And just on that latter point you've got a vice admiral. We're not -- I don't -- we're not talking about the International Red Cross here. I mean we're talking about a soldier, a sailor, a vice admiral, somebody with a lot of scrambled eggs on their hat here. Has he been available to comment? Do we know what his thinking is?

MCINTYRE: Well, no. That memo from Vice Admiral Jacoby who, of course, is the head of the DIA, he's sort of the equivalent of the CIA head at the Pentagon, so he's the top guy. That was an information memo. He wasn't requesting any action.

He was just informing the civilian leadership at the Pentagon that this was going on and, again, the Pentagon insists that these abuses are being investigated and if they find wrongdoing they'll prosecute it and they insist that it's not part of any policy. BROWN: Thank you Jamie, Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon tonight.

A different story, though similar vibe, details from a report issued by the Pentagon Inspector General on sexual assaults and intimidation of female cadets at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, the full report not yet available just the executive summary.

"We conclude," a portion of it reads, "that the overall root cause was the failure of successive chains of command over the past ten years." The report goes on to blame officials for creating a culture hostile to women and hostile to the complaints of abuse. The academy says that the reforms are well underway now and a Pentagon spokesman said a service wide policy on such matters is also in the works.

On to Iraq now where as of tonight 1,007 Americans have been killed in combat, in combat alone, 898 since the president declared an end to major combat more than a year and a half ago. The latest to die was a soldier shot and killed while on patrol in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, in Mosul, insurgents targeted a pair of churches today. In one they forced their way inside, hustled parishioners outside and set off explosives back inside. Nobody was hurt but you can imagine how much worse it might have been.

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, Iraq's president floated a trial balloon that seemed to acknowledge both the hotspots in Iraq and the shortage of troops to control them. He spoke today of spreading the election over a two or three-week period, province by province, to allow security forces more time to make arrangements for a safe vote.

Another difficult day to be sure but ever since the first presidential debate the administration hasn't much tried to sugarcoat the daily headlines out of Iraq.

The message instead is that things may get worse before they get better but what if for the foreseeable future they only get worse, familiar stuff to those of us who still remember lights and tunnels and oncoming trains of another war in another time.

Here's CNN's David Ensor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The classified cable from the outgoing CIA station chief in Baghdad warns that the situation is deteriorating and is likely to continue to do so. It warns of more violence, say U.S. officials, and sectarian fighting among Iraq's Sunnis, Shia and Kurds unless there are clear improvements soon in the control of the Iraqi government and in the economy, bad news for the Bush administration.

FLYNT LEVERETT, SABAN CENTER, BROOKINGS: They are literally between a rock and a hard place right now and I think that's an accurate reading of the situation and I think the CIA is doing its job to paint that picture as accurately and as vividly as it can for policymakers.

ENSOR: U.S. officials say the CIA cable's assessment is mixed in that it calls the Iraqi people resilient and says political progress towards elections is being made. But the station chief's bleak tone overall is in marked contrast with some of the administration's public statements on Iraq.

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: The schools are open. The hospitals are open. The clinics are open. The stock market is open. The currency is stable; an awful lot is going well.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The terrorists will be defeated. Iraq will be free and the world will be more secure.

ENSOR: Bush administration officials could hardly be pleased by the leak of an unvarnished CIA assessment. U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, U.S. officials say, added a dissenting note saying he thinks the cable does not give enough credit to coalition efforts against Iraqi insurgents. The cable was widely distributed in the government though, so the leak could have come from a number of places.

LEVERETT: People leak in this town for a lot of different reasons. My experience is actually that the CIA leaks a lot less than most of the policy agencies in town do.

ENSOR (on camera): Despite the uproar recently about intelligence chief Porter Goss' memo to staff saying they should "support the Bush administration," officials note that Goss approved distributing the CIA station chief's warnings around the government. There was, after all, another line in that Goss memo. It said to CIA officials that their job is to tell truth to power and let the facts speak for themselves.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Meantime, and finally, legislation to change the way intelligence is gathered and managed seems on its way to passage. It puts one person in charge of 15 intelligence agencies, military and civilians. It tightens border security, allows more wiretapping at home and much more. It's a big bill.

The Senate votes on it tomorrow. The House approved it this evening, 336 to 75. Of the 75 nays, 67 came from Republicans who went against a Republican president who at the end, at least, wanted this bill very badly and had to lobby hard to get it.

From the White House tonight, CNN's Dana Bash.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): An emotional President Bush at Camp Pendleton to thank Marines hard hit by the Iraqi War. No mention of it here but this is also a commander- in-chief upbeat at word he avoided a political embarrassment back in Washington. Intelligence agency reforms he backed are finally on the way to his desk.

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R), CHMN., SENATE GOVT. AFFAIRS CMTE.: The president's personal involvement clearly makes a difference. In this case, it determined the fate of this very important legislation.

BASH: Privately, many involved in the intelligence debate complained the president engaged too late. It's a problematic first term pattern say some, who hope he learned a lesson for tougher challenges awaiting him.

TIMOTHY ROEMER, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: The president said in the days after the election that he was willing to use political capital on Social Security reform and tax reform. If he would have lost this, however, it really would erode some of that capital.

BASH: White House sources concede this early legislative victory was crucial for a president trying to use the post election period to build support to help push his ambitious second term agenda in a divided America.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I think this does help set the stage for the second term because it shows what we can get done when we work together in a bipartisan way.

BASH: But the president's fight with fellow Republicans, not Democrats, on intelligence reform exposes a harsh reality. A bigger GOP Congress does not mean a rubber stamp.

REP. MIKE PENCE (R), INDIANA: This Congress, which saw its majority grow and received a mandate from the American people for fiscal discipline, limited government and traditional moral values and we will work toward that vision with the president, occasionally disagree with the president on how that vision is worked out.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: And the intelligence bill, of course, has their unanimous support among Democrats. That's not a luxury the president is going to have when he wants to tackle and will try to tackle monumental changes in issues where Republicans have major differences still, issues like tax reform and Social Security reform -- Aaron.

BROWN: Dana, thank you, good to see you, Dana Bash at the White House tonight.

With us now to talk about the politics of the bill, though more about the mechanics of it, how it touches our lives, Senator Bob Graham, the outgoing Democrat from the state of Florida. Also with us David Kaplan, who is the chief investigative correspondent for "U.S. News and World Report," and both these men have done important work in understanding intelligence in this country and we're pleased to see them both.

Senator Graham, let me start with you, sir. In the end, is this more show than substance or is there plenty of substance here?

SEN. BOB GRAHAM (R), FLORIDA: There's plenty of substance here. Aaron, first, I believe that this is a bill which will tend to mitigate the chances of another 9/11 or Iraq weapons of mass destruction.

Second, I think it's very important that the president took such a leadership role. This indicates to me that he is seriously committed now to the implementation of this legislation, much of which is going to be on his plate.

And, third, this is a good example of what Congress can do when it puts partisanship aside and works towards a common goal that's important to the American people and I hope that we'll see that same spirit carry over into issues like tax reform and Social Security, Medicare and energy and other policies that are going to be important during this next Congress.

BROWN: Well, we'll just try and solve this one tonight, Senator.

David, do you agree that this would -- I suppose nothing could guarantee that we could prevent a 9/11 or prevent the WMD fiasco with Iraq. Does this, in fact do you believe, as the Senator said, mitigate those possibilities and, if so, how so?

DAVID KAPLAN, "U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT": I think it's a start, Aaron. I'm a little more negative than perhaps some of the folks. I think a lot of reformers who have tried to get something going since 9/11 are somewhat disappointed because if you want to really change this hydra-headed monster that we've created in the intelligence community, $40 billion, 100,000 people, 15 agencies, you've got to have a director of national intelligence, which we finally have, but one that has the ability to control budget, the ability to control personnel. It's not at all clear that this legislation creates that. This is a first step.

BROWN: Senator, do you agree that the national intelligence czar has less power than perhaps the 9/11 Commission and even the congressional 9/11 investigators envisioned?

GRAHAM: No. I think it comes very close to giving to this central authority the capabilities to manage the 15 agencies. It also gives him an additional capability and that is to begin the process of rational decentralization of the intelligence agencies. Today we have 15 agencies, each of which has a very specific function. One listens to telephone calls. One takes pictures. One conducts spy operations.

This creates the capability of setting up intelligence centers, which will have all of those resources brought together to focus on a specific threat, whether it's terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or other threats that may be identified.

BROWN: Let me ask each of you, Senator since you're up there I'll ask you first, if there's one thing missing in the bill that you would have liked to have seen in it, what is it? GRAHAM: Aaron, I think the one thing that I would like to see is a greater emphasis on human intelligence. While there is some linguistic emphasis given in this bill, we have to basically rebuild our human capabilities. I think you could make the case that both the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq were precipitated by failures in our human intelligence.

Our human intelligence was allowed to wither during the Cold War and what we had left was very Russian centric. They spoke Russian. They knew Russian history and culture and knew almost nothing about the Middle East and Central Asia where most of our threats are emanating.

BROWN: David, the same question, if you could write one line in and you've done an awful lot of reporting on this, an awful lot of thinking on this, one line that you think is missing that would help the process along because in many respects this is the perfect moment to get it done, the combination of the tragedy of 9/11 and the failures of Iraq.

KAPLAN: Well, I hate to disagree with Senator Graham. He knows a lot more about this stuff than I do. I spent much of today reading this bill. It's 243 pages long and the key problem here is that the director doesn't have the kind of budget authority to make people in these sprawling bureaucracies do what he wants them to do.

This is going to be the big challenge. It's going to depend on personalities. It's going to depend on the White House. It's going to depend on congressional oversight.

BROWN: Gentlemen, good to have you both with us, good holiday season.

GRAHAM: Thank you.

BROWN: Senator, nice to see you. Thank you.

Ahead on the program tonight before SARS, before AIDS, we travel back in time to 1918 when flu, flu was the greatest health threat to mankind. Nissen looks at what we've learned and what we have not.

And while on the subject of health, we'll also cover things that could be bad for you if you use them the wrong way, like athletes and steroids. We'll do all that but we'll take a break first.

Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Well, you can call it help from Old Europe. Tommy Thompson, the departing Secretary of Health and Human Services, today announced the latest deal to get more flu vaccine, 1.2 million doses from Germany to be followed by another 2.8 million as the flu season goes along. It still leaves the country about 35 million doses short of what health officials planned to have on hand this year. Mostly when we talk about flu we think of it, I suspect, as just something a bit worse than a cold, unpleasant to be sure but not much more. In fact, it's a killer. Thirty-six thousand Americans died from the flu last year. Mostly they were old and quite ill when they were hit by the flu.

Now imagine a different set of patients for a few moments and a different kind of flu. The victims young and healthy and the virus, don't think of influenza as you know it, think of Ebola or the plague, not your father's influenza, in this case your grandfather's.

Here's NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It started in the first months of 1918, maybe in rural Kansas, maybe in China, maybe France, an influenza virus mutated into deadly form.

By autumn it had spread in handshakes and through the air through the Americas, Africa, Europe and the battlefields of World War I infecting eventually one-fifth of the world's population. Millions could not fight the virus or secondary infections like pneumonia and died horrible deaths.

JOHN BARRY, AUTHOR: Some of the really terrifying symptoms were that people would bleed not only from their -- from their nose or their mouth but actually from their eyes and from their ears.

NISSEN: John Barry is the author of "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague in History."

BARRY: People could die in 24 hours. They literally could wake up feeling OK and be dead by nightfall.

NISSEN: The lethal flu spread most quickly wherever people were concentrated in close quarters, soldiers' barracks, troop ships, city tenements in Europe and the U.S.

BARRY: In almost every city in the country they ran out of coffins and, in Philadelphia, they actually came to a situation where priests were driving horse-drawn carriages down the street calling upon people to bring out their dead.

NISSEN: Influenza was no medieval mystery in 1918.

BARRY: People knew it was a contagious disease and the way to avoid getting it was to avoid other people.

NISSEN: But in the U.S. and elsewhere government officials kept secret how deadly the new flu strain was fearful the news would hurt the war effort.

BARRY: The Wilson administration only cared about one thing winning World War I. They told lies to protect morale, in their words. Initially, they were telling everyone this is just ordinary influenza. It's nothing to be afraid of. People, who otherwise would have protected themselves, would have stayed home, they were not protected and they were exposed and they died.

NISSEN: Most of the dead were young adults, ages 20 to 40.

BARRY: The best number for the United States is 675,000 deaths. The overwhelming majority died between mid-September and mid-November.

NISSEN: Worldwide the cost was literally incalculable.

BARRY: Probably at least 40 million people died. There's a Nobel Prize winner who thinks at least 50 million and possibly as many as 100 million deaths.

NISSEN: More people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century. Could it happen again?

BARRY: Another pandemic unfortunately is not only possible it is inevitable.

NISSEN: Inevitable that another influenza virus will someday, somewhere mutate to lethal form, spread among humans.

BARRY: The question is how prepared we are for it. Right now we are not even close to ready for it.

NISSEN: Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In the world of public health pandemics, like the one in 1918, are as bad as it gets. The spike in flu cases that we typically see each winter are known as outbreaks. We expect them, try and guard against them, but some seasons are worse than normal. They qualify as epidemics with more than the usual number of people falling sick.

And periodically, as in 1918, epidemics spread out of control across the world resulting in a pandemic. Epidemiologists say that many U.S. hospitals today are better prepared for a bioterrorism attack than a flu epidemic, let alone a pandemic. They see this year's flu vaccine shortage as proof of weak prevention programs and they also worry about the politics of disease.

China, for example, lied about SARS for several months, which allowed the virus to spread. If that had been a new flu virus, as deadly as the one in 1918, containing it, some experts say today, would have been impossible.

Still ahead on the program tonight, steroid use in baseball, fair ball or foul play, we'll talk with someone who lives and breathes baseball and writes pretty well about it too.

And you have to be older than 63 to remember the bombing of Pearl Harbor unless you're watching NEWSNIGHT. Morning Papers looks back. We'll take a break first.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A couple of developments today in the steroid scandal, though we'll talk about that word tonight, that's rocking the world of sports. The International Olympic Committee opened an investigation into doping allegations against Olympic track star Marion Jones.

The decision follows a report broadcast Friday on ABC's "20/20" in which the head of the California-based lab accused of illegally distributing steroids told the program that he gave Ms. Jones performance enhancing drugs before and after the 2000 Olympic Games. He also said he watched her inject herself with human growth hormones.

Ms. Jones, who could eventually be stripped of her five medals she won in Sydney, has repeatedly denied ever using banned drugs and, in fact, has never tested positive for them.

On now to Major League Baseball which is reeling from revelations in the "San Francisco Chronicle" that Jason Giambi admitted in grand jury testimony to taking steroids and that Barry Bonds took substances linked to the Balco scandal as well.

Today, the Players Association says it's begun talks with Major League owners to devise a framework for a tougher anti-doping policy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD FEHR, EXEC. DIR., MLB PLAYERS ASSOC.: In terms of coming to grips with this, we think in 2002 that we did make a good faith start that we did make a good faith effort.

Having said that, that doesn't mean it can't be done better. That doesn't mean improvements can't be made. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try and go further if, after further consideration, that that makes the most sense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Major League Baseball clearly trying to find a solution to the problem before the federal government steps in. Players could be asked to vote on tougher anti-doping rules as early as the first of the year in time for spring training in February; 2004, it seems clear, will be remembered as the year the story on steroids broke.

We're joined by Buster Olney, the senior writer for "ESPN The Magazine" and one of the great baseball writers in the country.

And it's good to see you.

You said what I thought was an interesting thing today. You said, this is not so much scandal as controversy. It feels like scandal to me when the game's preeminent player, basically -- he says he didn't know -- and we can wink and nod at that -- but basically cops to it.

BUSTER OLNEY, SENIOR WRITER, "ESPN THE MAGAZINE": Yes, I think it's different than the White Sox scandal in 1919, in that, I think people -- the fans were concerned about the overall integrity of the game.

And what's interesting about this scandal, I think people have suspected for a long time, from '98 -- I know, when I was covering minor league baseball in the late '80s, there was talk of steroids. I think fans have known there are probably taking steroids. And even though we have had this issue last week, I don't think that fans were turned off by it, necessarily, to the point that they're not going to buy tickets.

BROWN: I want to get to that. Who was the guy a couple years ago, a player in Houston who said, or former player at the time...

OLNEY: Ken Caminiti.

BROWN: Ken Caminiti, who said, they were all using them. Or -- he didn't say they were all using them, but you get the point, which leads to what I find a kind of troubling question in all of this, which is, as long as baseballs are flying out of the park -- baseball comes out of the strike season, the lost World Series, all of sudden, baseballs are flying out of the park faster than you can keep track of them. And that draws people to the ballpark. And to what extent, do you think, did baseball kind of wink and nod at all of this?

OLNEY: There's no question.

As I say, there was so much talk within the baseball community about this growing steroid problem in the early '90s, in the mid '90s, in '98, when we had an incredible home run chase, people in the game were looking at each other going, well, what is really going on here? And, as you say, because people were coming to the park, they were attracted by home runs, no one really talked about it.

And I think that Caminiti's admission to "Sports Illustrated" really put this issue on the front burner for Major League Baseball. They were very slow in reacting. There's no question.

BROWN: If baseball, as much as any sport, is dependent on its history, and that is part of the integrity of the game, how can you make the argument that this doesn't attack the integrity of the game?

OLNEY: I would agree with you. But in terms of how its impact with the fans and in terms of people buying tickets...

BROWN: OK. So it's OK -- the fans would get upset if it's just blatant cheating, if you throw the game.

OLNEY: Right.

BROWN: If you throw a gopher ball and the guy hits it out of the park and wins the World Series and you make money on a bet, that gets fans upset.

OLNEY: Right.

BROWN: But if a guy is using some chemical to give himself biceps the size of Guatemala, that's OK? OLNEY: Well, it's funny.

An example of what you're talking about is, think about this. Last week, Giambi admitted that he used steroids. Gary Sheffield also has been implicated with steroids. The Yankees are moving to void Giambi's $82 million contract. He had a terrible year last year.

BROWN: Right.

OLNEY: And Gary Sheffield had a great year. No one is talking about getting rid of Sheffield's contract.

BROWN: So, in the end, it's how you perform?

OLNEY: It's how you perform.

BROWN: There's a lot of problems in the country. I'm not sure this is necessarily one Congress needs to get involved in. I'll leave that to them. But it seems pretty clear that the players get it that they better do something.

OLNEY: The players, I think the rank and file have gotten it for a long time.

The people who haven't gotten it and who have really stonewalled this whole issue have been the leaders of the Players Association. We've seen signs. During the 2002 season, 79 percent of the players said in a poll in "USA Today," we want testing. But I think that, basically, the union leadership has not worked to hear what their players have to say.

BROWN: And players, understandably, it seems to me, if you're clean, it's got to annoy you a bit that some guy who is not clean is making eight gazillion dollars and you're not.

OLNEY: Exactly.

BROWN: And he's shooting up.

Will it matter? Will we see the game change? Will the ball stop flying out of the park as often as it has been? Will...

OLNEY: It was interesting because, last year, when you talked to scouts -- and there's an assumption that hitters are the only ones who benefit from this. Actually, pitchers probably benefit more. And scouts saw a big difference last year in the velocity in the first year in which there was actually penalties.

BROWN: Is that right?

OLNEY: Yes. The pitchers' velocity across the boards were down, because the pitchers were not as big as they used to be. They weren't throwing as hard as they used to.

And I think we have seen a major change in bodies from 2002 through the 2004 season, as we've gone in the penalty phase of the testing.

BROWN: How many days until pitchers and catchers report?

OLNEY: What, 60?

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: It's nice to see you. It's been a while.

OLNEY: Good to see you, too, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you, Buster Olney.

We'll take a break. When we come back, the move from steroids to alcohol and marijuana, buying wine, using pot, and why the high court of the land is getting involved.

And when in Rome, you can see many magnificent relics. What we're about to show you isn't on public display. And we'll tell you why they may never be.

We'll take a break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The cool thing about political labels is how simple they make everything. Conservatives favor small government, government that stays out of our lives, government that leaves decision-making to the lowest level, city or state. Liberals, according to the label, favor big government, government that makes sure we do the right thing. Simple. Easy.

And as a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court this fall will tell you, not even close to true.

Here's our senior analyst, Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): A bottle of wine from across the country, homegrown marijuana, smoked to ease the pain of illness, a terminally-ill patient seeking help in ending his or her life, what unites them? They're all at the center of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. And all of them involve what may be one of the great legal debates of the coming years. What are the limits of the federal government's power to tell the 50 states what they can and cannot do?

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution forbids states like New York from banning importation of out-of-state wine. Two lower federal courts have split on the issue. Late last month, the court heard arguments about whether to strike down California's medical marijuana law, adopted by the voters in 1998. The law allows patients to cultivate and use small amounts of marijuana, provided it's not sold to anyone else. Also last month, outgoing Attorney General Ashcroft asked the Supreme Court to block Oregon's assisted suicide law that voters approved in 1998. It's been used by more than 179 people, most of them cancer victims, to end their lives. Suicide, the federal authorities argue, is not a legitimate medical purpose.

(on camera): This whole question of states' rights is clouded by its past association with the issue of racial justice. But, in the last decade or so, it's reappeared in different form, as an idea championed by some economic conservatives and now drawing the attention of some social liberals.

(voice-over): For decades, states' rights was the slogan of Southern segregationists, who opposed all federal efforts to desegregate schools or ensure the voting rights of blacks. The civil rights and voting rights laws of the mid 1960s eventually ended that debate.

But quite apart from race, there were huge arguments over federal economic power during FDR's new deal. That controversy apparently ended when the Supreme Court began to rule that the Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce gave the federal government power over just about any economic activity, even a farmer who grew wheat just to feed his livestock.

But, in 1995, the court in a 5-4 vote said the commerce clause did not give Congress the power to declare every school in America a gun-free zone. The constitution's 10th Amendment, the court said, left such matters to the states. And in 2000, the Supreme Court said Congress could not open federal courts to claims of gender-based violence. These rulings have encouraged conservatives, who have long worked to rein in federal power.

But now there's a twist. On some social issues, like gay marriage or assisted suicide or drug laws in general, it's liberals who argue that the states should be left to their own choices, while conservatives, in general, seek nationwide rules in these areas. On abortion, of course, those positions are flipped.

(on camera): When a new Supreme Court justice is nominated, the debate will likely center around a hot-button issue like abortion. But it's the decision a reshaped court will make about the limits of federal power that may well have a lot more to do with the way we live and even die.

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on the program, what's a country to do when it's sitting on some of the most significant historic material and it can't afford to show it off? No one else has seen in Rome what we're about to show you.

And it being the 7th of December and all, you know what we'll do, a NEWSNIGHT nod to the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the day that has lived in infamy.

But we'll take a break first. From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It seems almost every story in the program tonight has deep, historical roots if you look far enough. The divisions in Iraq date back centuries, disease, a threat to human life, from our earliest days on the planet. Even ancient sports had issues with performance-enhancing drugs. The drugs of choice were different back then, of course.

All of this by way of saying history is never far from the surface. Sometimes, it's closer than you might imagine.

Reporting from Rome tonight for us, CNN's Alessio Vinci.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN ROME BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): In the heart of Rome, a stone's throw away from the Coliseum, lies the Trajan Forum, once the epicenter of ancient Roman life. Even on a rainy day like this one, it is a must-see for thousands of tourists. Yet, it is what sightseers can't see that remains perhaps the biggest treasure here, locked behind these steel gates.

GIANNI PONTI, ARCHAEOLOGIST: This is always closed to the public.

VINCI: Archaeologist Gianni Ponti, took me where he says no tourist has ever been before.

PONTI: The area is huge. It's about, I would say, 500 square meters large. It's all underground.

VINCI: The area is home to thousands of ancient pieces once part of the Trajan Forum, most of them dating back to the 1st and 2nd century A.D. Even the floor we're walking on is authentic.

PONTI: You can sort of tell how well it's preserved and how colorful all of the marble, all the different marble types were.

VINCI: Most of the objects, which range from small fragments of facades and statues to large chunks of columns, have been cleaned, studied, measured, photographed and cataloged. And experts say they're now ready to be put on public display, so that tourists visiting the Forum get a better idea of what the site looked like almost 2,000 years ago.

PONTI: This is a colossal fragment of a finger, of an index finger.

(CROSSTALK)

PONTI: This part over here, this part over here from the knuckle to the beginning of the hand. The statue must have been about 12 meters tall.

VINCI: The project to make this area accessible to tourists already exists. But the city of Rome doesn't have the millions of dollars necessary to make it happen, beginning with the ceiling, in desperate need of repair.

PONTI: See, this is the problem, is you come to a site like this and you get to see the floors, the foundations, the fragments that are dispersed. The difficult thing is to put them back together in your mind.

VINCI (on camera): It's like a giant puzzle.

PONTI: It's a giant puzzle. But the end result of the puzzle is a three-dimensional reconstruction of what the buildings were like.

VINCI (voice-over): That's the project and a dream, perhaps, while these treasures, for now, remain in the custody of public oblivion.

Alessio Vinci, CNN, Rome.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Well, history even infuses -- infuses -- morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers around the country, around the world, past and present. We'll start with the present.

And in no particular order, not that there's ever been a particular order, "The Boston Herald," which decided -- it's the tab in Boston -- has decided to take on the governor. This is the second day in a row the governor has made the front page, which is not a good place to be in "The Herald," by the way. "Stop This Scam. Mitt's Computer Guys Use Loophole to Skirt Bid Laws." Exclusive, OK?

"Miami Herald." Speaking of scandal, "Former Charity Director Jailed in Scandal" is their lead. "Dale Simpson, the former head of one of South Florida's largest charities, was jailed for allegedly using homeless labor and charity money for personal gain." Oh, I hope that's not true. Yikes.

"The Oregonian" tries graphically to explain the intelligence reform bill. I think David Kaplan said it was 256 pages. We could spend the rest of our lives trying to understand it. "House Passes Reform of U.S. Intelligence." Also, "Lottery Slot Option Freshens Rate Debate." That's a good headline. Slot machines seem to be a big deal.

"Cincinnati Enquirer." I like this story because I like the issue a lot. "Murderer Pleads, Wants Death. Chapman: 'My Life Has Never Been Worth Much." "Marco Chapman raises his hand to be sworn during a hearing where he pleaded guilty to murder."

And then, the story we led with tonight. Did we lead with it tonight? Yes. "Some Who Saw Abuse Threatened, U.S. Memos, Tension Between Interrogators." Awfully good story, that.

OK, here are the headlines. Man, I'm having a voice thing today, aren't I? This was "Newsday" on December 8. It's 63 years ago, I guess, now, "War" -- straight ahead -- "3,000 Casualties" -- Pearl Harbor Day "Casualties in Hawaii, 1,500 Dead," which puts some scale, by the way, on the attack of 9/11.

Some of these papers, the language is going to be a bit jarring. I'm warning you now. "U.S. and Japan at War." "The News-Gazette" of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, the home of the University of Illinois. Five cents, cost the paper in those days. Don't know what it costs now.

"Providence Sunday Journal." "Japanese Bombing Honolulu, 350 Dead" when they went to press. "U.S. Warship Afire. Attack on Manila Not Confirmed."

"The Honolulu Star--Bulletin," which still publishes. "War. Oahu Bombed By Japanese Planes." Pretty straight-ahead lead.

Now, this gets a little dicey, OK? Remember when this all took place and remember what was going on. "San Diego Union. "Japs Bomb Honolulu. Manila, Ships Battle."

An extra by "The San Francisco Examiner." "U.S.-Jap War. Hawaii, Manila Bombed. Two U.S. Warships Sunk."

"The New York Times" led "Japan War On U.S. and Britain, Makes Sudden Attack on Hawaii. Heavy Fighting at Sea Reported."

The weather tomorrow in Chicago is "jaunty" -- the headlines anything but.

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We should have mentioned this earlier during morning papers.

In case you missed it, Hamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan's new president today, about 150 guests, including the vice president and the secretary of defense. You just saw them. There's President Karzai. Think about how far that country has come since the days of 9/11. Got a long way to go, but it was an important day for Afghanistan.

An important program note for us, a difficult and important story. This will just break your heart, the hidden world of child labor, not just overseas, but here as well. For some 246 million children -- think about that, a quarter of a billion kids -- worldwide, life is nothing but work, in some cases, kidnapped, enslaved, their childhood stolen, forced to work grueling hours in horrible conditions. An extraordinary and disturbing new film documents the lives of these children. We will have exclusive excerpts from the film, talk to the filmmakers.

This is a terrific piece of work tomorrow on the program, 10:00 Eastern time.

"AMERICAN MORNING" 7:00 a.m. Eastern time. Join those guys.

And we'll see you tomorrow. Until then, good night for all of us.

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