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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Nurse Shares Stories From Iraq; Armor For Vehicles in Iraq Still Months Away; Criticism of Bush Administration Could Be Posturing for 2008
Aired December 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: Another reminder today of the power of one question asked just a week ago of the secretary of defense. The question, of course, was about the lack of armor on many vehicles in Iraq but then Secretary Rumsfeld answered in part "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want." That quote may become the quote of the post war.
Since the answer has become clear that not just many vehicles are without armor, we knew that, but that production that might have increased the number of vehicles with armor was not increased. Would soldiers be alive today if it had been? We don't know that. Would the Army and the secretary have been spared embarrassment, you bet.
We begin tonight with CNN's Barbara Starr.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): By shifting funds around an accelerating some production lines, the Army hopes it now has a handle on the armor crisis but officials are warning it will still take months to have a completed armored fleet of trucks and Humvees operating inside Iraq.
BRIG. GEN. JEFFREY SORENSON, U.S. ARMY: This is not Wal-Mart, as we've gone through. This is a very detailed process in terms of trying to get this capability.
STARR: The current plan to spend $4.1 billion over the next six to eight months to finish armoring 32,000 vehicles needed in the theater. Officials insist they are working as fast as they can. For example, even if they manufactured armored bolt-on plates faster, workers can only install them so fast.
SORENSON: If we can get some of these vehicles sooner there to theater, whether it's a day, a week or two weeks, any additional more capability that we can get there will save more lives.
STARR: The Army says they are getting all the money they need.
SORENSON: Money has not been an object. Anytime we've asked for money from either, the Department of Defense, the Army or the Hill, it has not been an issue.
STARR: But almost two years after the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon now says just 60 percent of the vehicles in the country are armored and an acknowledgement from a senior officer again that it is tough to counter the changing tactics of the insurgents' roadside bombs.
LT. GEN. LANCE SMITH, CENTCOM DEPUTY CMDR.: They may use doorbells today to blow these things up. They may use remote controls from toys tomorrow and, as we adapt, they adapt, and we have been hoping that our technology would be more effective than it has been.
STARR (on camera): The hope now 98 percent of the Humvees will be armored by March. The truck fleet will be protected by early summer. But military officials are strongly emphasizing that there is no silver bullet against the changing tactics of the insurgency.
Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Tactics are one thing, tone another, accountability something else again.
Today in "The Washington Post," Bill Kristol, the hawk's hawk, began his column by quoting Secretary Rumsfeld's now famous answer to that reservist in Kuwait. The column ended simply enough. "The soldiers," he writes "deserves a better secretary of defense than the one we have."
Over the weekend, Senator John McCain stopped short of calling Rumsfeld a liability to the administration; however, when asked whether he had confidence in the secretary, Senator McCain said "My answer is still no, no confidence." On troop levels in Iraq, he went on to say, "There are very strong differences of opinion between myself and Secretary Rumsfeld on that issue."
Clearly, the secretary is taking incoming from all sides and, just as clearly, he has the president's support. So what's going on here?
We're joined tonight by David Frum, former speech writer for President Bush. David, it's nice to see you.
DAVID FRUM, FMR. WHITE HOUSE SPEECH WRITER: Thank you, Aaron.
BROWN: You expect the attacks or some attacks, I suppose, from Democrats. That's part of the game in Washington. But the harshest incoming is coming really from the secretary's side in all of this. What's going on?
Well, I think there's an even harsher incoming on the other side. Look, we've got a lot of problems in Iraq and there are a lot of people who are going to offer ideas as to how to solve them.
I think one of the things that happens is that these debates, as your excellent report, ought to be debates about techniques and tactics for winning a war tend then to become part of a Washington struggle. With the election of 2004 over, the election of 2008 begins and many of these people... BROWN: Is that really what this is that McCain and Bill Kristol, who you used to work for if I remember correctly, are playing a political game here?
FRUM: What we are seeing emerging in the Republican Party are factions that support the president and factions that are more critical of the president and that is a normal part of American politics. And with, by the way all the power in the capital in Republican hands it's maybe even a desirable feature because otherwise you'd have too much, too monolithic a voice.
But you are -- Donald Rumsfeld does have the president's confidence. The president is the ultimate decision maker and when people criticize Donald Rumsfeld they really are criticizing the president behind him and that is the beginning of people deciding in 2008 are they going to run as supporters and continuers of President Bush's achievements or are they going to run as critics of the president?
BROWN: So, you're setting up McCain on one side, as someone who will run four years from now and, on the other side, you're setting up whom?
FRUM: Well, I think the names will emerge in due course and we can make some guesses. Rudy Giuliani just had a bad week but I think one of the things...
BROWN: I think that's an understatement.
FRUM: One of the things that I think is the most useful thing we can all do is as we look at these problems say, look, what are -- I mean Donald Rumsfeld is not the superman. He is someone who runs a large organization. There are many people who have made many mistakes in this war as in all wars.
I don't know that it's a really useful exercise to say, well let's start going through the roster people when we still need to get jobs done and to say this general made this mistake and this colonel is to blame in this way and this procurement officer and this code. If these are preludes to fixing these problems, terrific but if they're just opportunities for recrimination, not so terrific.
BROWN: Let me ask it this way. Do you think that the criticism would be less harsh, would occur less often if the administration over time had stepped up and said, look, we made a series of mistakes from disbanding the Iraqi Army to the armor situation that we've been talking about now for about a week to troop levels in the post war, which I think almost everyone but the secretary agrees have been too low and just cop to it, if you will?
FRUM: But, you know, the problem with doing that is they would then be chasing newspapers in a way that I think isn't useful and isn't true. I am not sure that all of those decisions that you cite are going to look like mistakes in the long run. I mean it does matter. The loyalty of the Iraqi Army matters a lot. That's one of the things that we have seen that has been a real problem in the past couple of years. The Army, the Iraqi Army, yes, it doesn't always have the training and equipment but above all there are problems of loyalty.
If Saddam's officers had been kept, would the problem of loyalty have been better or worse? I'm inclined to think it would have been worse. I think when we look back on that one, I'm not so sure.
The same way with the argument over troop levels, the argument over what were the troop levels that ought to have been in place in the immediate post war is a very different discussion from the argument over what should be the troop levels now.
And I think there's a powerful case, and the secretary will make it, that right now the troops are in some ways a provocation and having too high a troop level at this point could be a big problem. I don't think administrations need to go around pointing to people who are involved in this decision making and flogging them and...
BROWN: David, let me try and get one more question in quickly if I can. Do you think if Iraq, four years from now if Iraq is perceived as having gone badly, forget whether it's seen as a mistake, having gone badly that the party will take the hit?
FRUM: I think if Iraq is perceived as having gone badly, the party will first turn on itself and there will be anger between -- against those people who are seen as heavily associated with the decision, including the president himself, if Iraq is seen as a success, the opposite.
I think in general politics in 2008, if Iraq is seen as a success, I mean it will tend to bulk up the Republican Party's national security credentials, if not, not.
So, yes, it's going to be a big issue and that's, I think, one of the reasons why the Bush administration rightly thinks let us not tear ourselves apart now over things that happened a year ago and there will be lots and lots of time later to decide who was right and who was wrong.
BROWN: David, good to see you. Thank you.
FRUM: Thank you.
BROWN: David Frum in Washington tonight.
Iraq itself now is always the headlines and always in the headlines there seems to be a mix of the hopeful and the horrible. A car bomb killed seven people today outside the holy Shiite mosque in Karbala, the apparent target an aide to the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The aide a cleric himself survived but was injured in the blast.
And, from Baghdad today came word that the man known as Chemical Ali will be among a dozen of Saddam's henchmen to make court appearances starting next week. Formal charges could be issued next month just ahead of national elections.
Back home, new science hinting at better ways to treat anthrax should there be another attack. For now it may also provide a medical solution to what has become a logistical, bureaucratic and frankly a public policy nightmare, the story from Washington and CNN's Bob Franken.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): No one has to convince postal worker Leroy Richmond that antibiotics can work against anthrax. He's living proof.
LEROY RICHMOND, ANTHRAX SURVIVOR: Immediately they put me on Cipro and then they put me on Docycyclin, two powerful antibiotics.
FRANKEN (on camera): Richmond survived the anthrax that contaminated this building. Five died in a series of attacks.
(voice-over): To contain future anthrax bioterrorism, the government wants to vaccinate 25 million Americans but a study suggests that might not be the best plan. A new generation inoculation might be much more effective after contamination along with antibiotics.
RONALD BROOKMEYER, JOHNS HOPKINS SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Our research shows that if we could get antibiotics to people within six days of exposure to the anthrax, we could prevent 70 percent of cases.
FRANKEN: Many leading health officials are critical that the response to the next anthrax attack remains still in the talking stage.
JEROME HAUER, RESPONSE TO EMERGENCIES AND DISASTER MGMT.: How are we going to explain to the American people that three, four or five years after September 11th we have done very little to better prepare our nation when it comes to countermeasures for threat agents?
FRANKEN: But government officials insist they're doing all they can.
LANCE BROOKS, DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY: Our strategy currently is gear toward early detection of such events and, as quickly and rapidly as possible, mobilize the national stockpile.
FRANKEN: The key experts say is a quick diagnosis.
DR. JAMES CAMPBELL, UNIV. OF MARYLAND MEDICAL SCHOOL: In most cases when people become ill with anthrax, inhalational anthrax, you don't recognize it as anthrax right away.
RICHMOND: There has to be a definitive test. When you go in and say you have a cold they can test to make sure it's only a cold and nothing other than the fact that you're feeling bad. FRANKEN: Leroy Richmond can only hope the country learns from his experience but never has to share it.
Bob Franken, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: In Michigan, new charges today against a pair of men who have been there before. The men were charged this time with scheming to defraud an insurance company in Troy, Michigan, nothing related to terrorism, unlike their earlier brush with the criminal justice system.
You might recall the two men were accused of being part of a terror cell. They were tried and convicted on various charges last year, the convictions overthrown because of misconduct by the prosecution.
Charging suspects in terror cases is one thing, getting the charges to stick, as the Michigan case ultimately proved is something else again. Since 9/11, local police agencies have been under heavy pressure from the federal government to find the terrorists.
Sting operations have become a successful dragnet. The line between sting and entrapment, however, can be blurry, reporting tonight CNN's Deborah Feyerick.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The indictments read like a thriller. In one case, a self-described arms dealer, Hemal Lakhani, smuggles a missile launcher into the United States, the target American planes, the buyer an FBI informant posing as an Somali terrorist.
In another case, a pizza shop owner, Mohammed Hossain (ph), is given $50,000. He's told it's the proceeds from the sale of a missile launcher, his job launder the money by writing checks from his business. The imam from his mosque allegedly witnesses the deal. Says his lawyer...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody I talked to knows that this case smells like a rat.
FEYERICK: Two plots, two stings, both orchestrated by the government using confidential informants. It's part of a growing pattern with experts predicting many more stings in the future.
Andy McCarthy, a former prosecutor, used a sting which helped convict terror Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman in the 1995 plot to blow up New York bridges and tunnels. McCarthy says used right stings are important law enforcement tools.
ANDY MCCARTHY, FORMER PROSECUTOR: Anybody who says that they'll take money in order to facilitate these attacks is a dangerous person, you know, whether he's Osama bin Laden incarnate or he's a low level person.
FEYERICK: In the case of the alleged missile smuggler, Hemat Lakhani, New Jersey's U.S. attorney called him a significant international arms dealer, the sting praised at the highest levels.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And the fact that we were able to sting this guy it's a pretty good example of what we're doing in order to protect the American people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president has mandated us now to catch them before they commit the crime in the area of terrorism, so it's a whole new way of thinking and doing business.
FEYERICK (on camera): As for defense arguments, lawyers for each of the parties say the stings are nothing more than entrapment. All parties have pleaded not guilty and critics say the government is using these stings to go after easy marks.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It doesn't make us safer. If the government is using this dragnet approach and not following tried and true law enforcement methods, they're spending less time following up on people who are actually terrorists.
FEYERICK (voice-over): A study by Syracuse University found of 184 terrorism prosecutions the majority of defendants, 171, received a year or less in prison.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The government is interested in ramping up the number of terrorism prosecutions it engaqes in without adequately figuring out whether these are legitimate terrorism prosecutions.
FEYERICK: A jury is now being seated to hear the case against the alleged missile smuggler. As for the pizza shop owner and the imam who allegedly laundered money their trials expected late next year. In the meantime, they're out on bail.
Deborah Feyerick, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT tonight, as we said to Larry, a story that is both heartbreaking and heartwarming and as compelling a story as we've seen out of Iraq, a clinical psychologist and her list of good things and bad things as she saw them and reads them to us.
And later, missed it by that much and then some, again, billions of dollars later why the Pentagon's missile defense program is still not working, take a break first.
From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Reporting on wars breaks your heart. In short moments each night, as names pass by too quickly, seeing lives pass by too quickly, hearts break. But here tonight amid the broken hearts of war, we find ourselves with something else, something that reminds us of courage in a controversial cause of decency amid the horror.
It comes from a woman who served, who tried to see all that was good in so much that was bad and found sometimes that both were indelibly connected. This is a special story about special people told by NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was a tough deployment for Alpha Surgical Company starting in February near Falluja. Trauma surgeons worked in 24-hour ORs stabilizing Marines with blast wounds. Navy Lieutenant Commander Heidi Craft, a clinical psychologist, worked in the combat stress platoon on trauma of another kind.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Normal people in this abnormal situation of combat can experience very significant symptoms of shock and sometimes even shutting down psychologically.
NISSEN: Seeing so many, so young, so shattered over seven months was hard on the healers too. Alone in her barracks room, Dr. Craft started a list of things that were good and things that were not good about her time in Iraq.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was partially a self therapy. I was struggling towards the end of the deployment with how to process everything that we had been through and done and survived together.
NISSEN: The not good list came easily.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Things that were not good: terrifying camel spiders, poisonous scorpions, 132 degrees, sweating in places I didn't know I could sweat, like wrists and ears, the roar of helicopters overhead, the popping of gunfire, the cracking sound of giant artillery rounds splitting open against rock and dirt, the shattering of the windows, hiding away from the broken windows.
Waiting to be told we can come to the hospital to treat the ones who were not so lucky. Watching the black helicopter with the big red cross on the side landing at our pad, telling a room full of stunned Marines in blood-soaked uniforms that their comrade that they had just tried to save had died of his wounds.
Washing blood off the boots of one of our young nurses while she told me about the one who bled out in the trauma bay.
NISSEN: She struggled at first to find the positive but slowly that list formed.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Things that were good: sunset over the desert, almost always orange, sunrise over the desert almost always red, the childlike excitement of having fresh fruit at dinner after going weeks without it. My comrades, some of the things witnesses will traumatize them forever but they still provided outstanding care to these Marines. But, most of all, the United States Marines, our patients, having them tell us one after another through blinding pain or morphine- induced euphoria "When can I get out of here, I just want to get back to my unit?"
NISSEN: There was the young sergeant who lost one eye but asked for help sitting up so he could check on the members of his fire team being treated for minor shrapnel wounds.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He smiles, lay back down and said, "I only have one good eye doc but I can see that my Marines are OK."
NISSEN: And there was the young corporal known to the whole company as Heidi's Marine.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The one who threw himself on a grenade to save the men at his side, who will likely be the first Medal of Honor recipient in over 11 years.
NISSEN: That was Corporal Jason Dunham (ph), age 22. He arrived in the trauma bay on April 14th with a severe head wound. Craft took his hand, talked to him, comforted him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I told him we were proud of him and that the Marines were proud of him and that he was brave.
NISSEN: Dunham could not speak, could only squeeze her hand in response.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I stayed with him as long as I could and I held his hand all the way to the point where we got to the helicopter. It was the most wonderful moment of my life and the most horrible moment of my life at the same time.
NISSEN: She wept when she learned that Corporal Dunham had died at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland eight days later, wept again when Dunham's mother wrote to thank her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Her biggest fear was that her son had been alone and that no one had been with him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For me basically the whole deployment, all of it, all of it wrapped up at that moment.
NISSEN: The sorrow for the wounded and damaged, the grief for the lost, gratitude for being able to ease another's pain, pride in the U.S. troops for their courage and sacrifice. For Dr. Craft it was all that was good and not good about Iraq. The ending of both lists is the same.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And finally, above all else, holding the hand of that dying Marine.
NISSEN: Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE) (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: There's nothing simple about the Pentagon's anti-missile missile system now being deployed in Alaska and in bits and pieces all around the world, nothing cheap either. The only simple thing really is the mission, using a missile to hit another missile destroying it before it can reach this country. And simple doesn't mean easy and yesterday the system failed another test.
Here's CNN's David Ensor.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Though not all past tests have hit their target, at least the rockets got off the ground, not this time. The first test in nearly two years of the multibillion dollar missile defense system failed because the interceptor missile on the Marshall Islands shut down due, officials say, to an unknown anomaly in its system.
PHILLIIP COYLE, CENTER FOR DEFENSE INFORMATION: It took them two years to prepare for this test and to have it fail the way it did where the interceptor didn't even get off the ground is a big setback.
BAKER SPRING, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Well, I wouldn't consider it a failure. I consider it sort of a non-test.
ENSOR: The setback came 16 minutes after a mock warhead was successfully launched from Kodiak, Alaska as the target for the interceptor that never flew. The Pentagon spent about $3.3 billion this year alone on ground-based national missile defense. Critics call it a waste of taxpayer dollars. They say even if the latest test had been successful, it would not have proven the system can work because the conditions were not realistic.
COYLE: You have information, the defender has information that no enemy would ever give us, including on the reentry vehicle, the target reentry vehicle a beacon that is saying "Here I am. Here I am."
ENSOR: But proponents argue with North Korea developing nuclear weapons and missiles the best course is to deploy a system and then work out the kinks.
SPRING: I believe that something is better than nothing.
ENSOR (on camera): President Bush once declared that he intended to have a limited system operational by the end of this year. There are interceptor missiles in Alaska and California but this latest test suggests they may not be ready for prime time.
David Ensor, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE) BROWN: A couple of other items that made news around the world today starting in Athens. Two armed hijackers in custody tonight. They freed their hostages, gave themselves up after an 18-hour siege aboard a bus. The pair, Albanians living in Greece, demanded a million Euros and a flight to Russia or they would blow up the bus. It turns out they had no explosives. They may have simply wanted a trip back to Albania, not to Russia, certainly not to jail.
And word today that Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yuschenko wasn't just poisoned with dioxin, the levels in his body are the second highest ever measured in anyone, 6,000 times normal. How it got into his system remains a mystery.
Still to come tonight on NEWSNIGHT, a story New Yorkers can't get enough of, Washington can't get away from, and the nation should be asking questions about. How did Bernard Kerik get as far along in the nomination process to be the secretary of homeland security and who if anyone will take the heat?
And then there are other stories in the papers as well. But, as you know, you'll have to wait for those.
A break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: There are perks that come with being presidents and there are perils that come with the perks. Getting the staff to move quickly on Cabinet nominees is a perk. Doing it all in haste, therein lies the peril. In the case of Bernard Kerik, the president's choice to run homeland security, peril wound up chasing perk from one end of the front page to the next. And it isn't over yet.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): The late night jokes are stinging, but they will soon disappear.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN")
DAVID LETTERMAN, HOST: It was so cold today in New York City that Bernard Kerik was happy to be getting the heat from his wife.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: The political fallout from the botched nomination of former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, however, appears to be growing, fallout that rains not just on the White House, but on one of its favorite politicians.
MARSHALL WITTMAN, DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL: In this instance, it might have been a very clear case of political patronage. It appears that Mayor Giuliani went to the president, cashed in a political chit, and the administration didn't scrutinize this nomination as they might for others. BROWN: Kerik's rapid and messy fall from grace came despite what "The New York Times" called hours of confrontational interviews with him conducted by the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, himself now nominated to be attorney general. And, tonight, the White House sought to minimize the damage.
DAN BARTLETT, WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: In this case, the process is working. We didn't even get to the point in which there is a hearing, in which the information was brought to our attention. And Mr. Kerik withdrew his name. So it's unfortunate. We're disappointed by it.
BROWN: But the White House, it seems, never checked Mr. Kerik out very thoroughly. Aides telling "The Washington Post" that kind of checking might have unearthed rumors about Kerik's finances, as well as other problems. An apartment in this New York City high-rise, for instance, was said by "The New York Times" to have been used by Kerik after it was originally donated for the use by police and rescue workers at ground zero.
BERNARD KERIK, FORMER NEW YORK CITY POLICE COMMISSIONER: My withdrawal was my fault. What happened between me and the White House is my fault. It's nobody else's, and I'll deal with it.
BROWN: And, of course, so will the White House.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Just keep in mind what Dan Bartlett said. The process worked here.
Michael Daly writes for "The New York Daily News." And we're joined from Washington by Mike Allen who writes for "The Washington Post." And we're glad to have you both.
Michael in New York, none of this -- some of the detail, I think, is a little shocking. But, on balance, Mr. Kerik was always seen as, I think, and a gentle word here would be colorful.
MICHAEL DALY, "THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS": Well, yes. And I think everybody in the city knew his life had certain complications.
And I think that one thing that kind of saved him from really detailed scrutiny was that he became police commissioner right at the end of Rudy Giuliani administration. And Rudy was kind of trailing off. And the parade had passed by. And then all of sudden, the world changed on that September morning.
BROWN: Yes. And in some respects, then, was -- is Mr. Kerik more story than he is reality the sort of heroic police commissioner on 9/11?
DALY: Well, to me, having been down there that day, the big story was that the people led themselves.
BROWN: Yes. DALY: And that there were just -- there were more acts of bravery and goodness in the midst of all that horror than you could imagine. And it wasn't because anybody was telling anybody to go this way or that way. It's because that's what the people are. That's who they are.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: Yes.
Mike, how does something that basically could be uncovered with a little more effort than a simple Google search have gotten by the White House?
MIKE ALLEN, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, Aaron, what White House officials are telling me is that this shows some of the vulnerabilities in the vetting system, some which are unique to this White House and some of which aren't. This process is done very quickly.
It's done in secrecy. And it relies a lot on the honesty of the person who is being put up. We're told that these interviews, that they rely pretty much on what the people tell them. And I talked to a number of people who have been through the process with this White House. And I said, what's it like? And they said they say, tell us everything. And the problem here was what the definition of everything was.
They said that, when you're relying on the person to answer you honestly, it can go off the rails in a number of ways. Either they can understate the truth or they can think they don't have a problem when they do or they can just misunderstand the question. Someone in the White House told a colleague of mine, Jim VandeHei, that they even say, if you're wrong about this, you're going to humiliate your family and the president.
They go at this, especially the nanny question. They go at it early. They go at it aggressively. But the checking sort of stops there. A lot of what's come out has been available in the Nexis database. And news organizations found it in just a couple days.
(CROSSTALK)
ALLEN: Why didn't the White House?
BROWN: Mike, did they know about the mistresses? And did they think they could finesse this stuff?
ALLEN: A lot of it they thought that they could finesse.
And a question they're never asked is -- they say that a lot of these problems were manageable, which, by the way, is what they say about the deficit. And they say that, one by one, they could have gotten these people confirmed. They haven't said why you would want to confirm someone with this many complications. Now, what they're saying now is, well, we're not going to inventory what we knew and what we didn't know. Clearly, they didn't know about the mistresses, the connections to organized crime. These are things that they clearly didn't know about. But they knew plenty to know that they would have a problem. They were already making preparations both in New York and Washington to have a war room to fight back what they knew was going to be the No. 1 target for Democrats.
BROWN: Michael, Rudy damaged in this?
DALY: Oh, I would say sure. But in time, I think people will kind of forget it.
BROWN: Short damage, a little -- a bruise.
DALY: I think personally, he's probably really hurt.
BROWN: You think personally he is upset at how -- is that what you mean?
DALY: He must -- he elevated this guy. This guy was a foot cop and then he made him the correction commissioner. And then he made him police commissioner.
And, I mean, he went from walking a foot post in 1988 in Times Square to being the police commissioner. And it was because of Rudy Giuliani. And Giuliani has got to figure that the guy would at least tell me if there were these kind of problems.
BROWN: So you would believe that the former mayor had no idea the depth of the problems?
DALY: Probably not the depth.
I'm sure he knew about some of them, because you stop your basic guy on the street, they would know.
BROWN: Yes.
DALY: So you would think Rudy would probably know as much as the guy you would run into on the subway.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: ... workers outside know most of this stuff.
DALY: Right. Right.
But I think that 9/11 made Rudy and Kerik all of a sudden these heroes.
BROWN: Yes.
DALY: And then -- but if you say, all right, what exactly was done that was so heroic, well, they were heroes. And I think that a lot of people who died that day were kind of -- everybody was kind of granted this kind of grace. If you read those portraits of grief in "The Times," no one beat their kids.
BROWN: Of course.
DALY: Or whatever. It was all the best in everybody. And I think that spilled over to people who were alive there.
BROWN: Mike, let me give you the last word here.
Is there a lesson here for the administration beyond the nominating process about overreaching and the rest?
ALLEN: Well, interestingly, this administration had been criticized for picking everybody in the family. So now they can say look what happens when we go outside.
But what administration officials are saying is that they need to check even when they think -- even when someone's been vouched for, as this person was by Mayor Giuliani, even when they think that they have a compelling story. The biography was very important to the president in these Cabinet choices. They liked the 9/11 symbolism. They thought that, if there was another terrorist event, that Mr. Kerik would be good on television.
So, the lesson here is not to fall in love with the attributes of somebody and almost to go at it prosecutorially. What could go wrong here? What are the problems? If I'm a Democrat, if I'm a journalist, what am I going to seize on?
BROWN: Mike and Michael, thanks for coming in.
BROWN: Have good holidays. We appreciate it.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: Thank you.
DALY: Happy holidays, Aaron.
BROWN: Thank you.
BROWN: Ahead on the program, from track suit to lawsuit. We'll explain why Marion Jones is sprinting to save her records and her reputation, which is considerable.
And the sound of a flight attendant asking you to turn your cell phone off is about to go away. You can imagine what Jeff Greenfield has to say.
A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: We start the national roundup with a potentially -- that would be potentially, Aaron -- costly turn in the steroid scandal out West. Marion Jones, the Olympic track star, today filed a defamation suit against Victor Conte. She' asking for $25 million. Mr. Conte, you will recall, is the owner of the Bay area drug lab who says he supplied her with steroids, watched her shoot up. Ms. Jones, we remind you, has never failed a test for performance-enhancing drugs.
And a truly local story to us. Time Warner, our parent company, has reached a settlement with the Justice Department in a fraud investigation at its AOL division, $210 million. Also today, a proposed settlement with the FCC, another $300 million to do with a buyout in Europe. In return, the government will delay criminal charges against AOL executives and dismiss the charge in two years if they continue cooperating with investigators. And they will.
Getting through airport security can be a journey in and of itself. Then there are the delays. You get on the plane. The seats are too small. The aisle is too narrow, the food long gone. Air travel ain't what it used to be, as they say. But the one thing you could count on, save for the crying baby, was a few hours in a cell- free phone zone. That's about to change.
Here's Jeff Greenfield.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hello. Yes, hey, Eric, listen, roll me over to Dave.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So where did you decide to move?
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): It is one of the supreme joys of modern life, the ability to combat loneliness, whether you want to or not, by listening to the lives of countless strangers around you as they share every detail of those lives.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I made mechanic of the month this month.
GREENFIELD: On the street.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, seriously, where are you?
GREENFIELD: In the supermarket, in restaurants, on the bus, with their cell phones.
And now the Federal Communications Commission seems to be smashing through the last barren wasteland, where the know-thy- neighbor-life is forbidden, the airplane, where now, when the door closes, cell phone use is banned. After a successful test last July, if that's what you want to call it, the FCC has decided that there's no safety risk to cell phone use, except, of course, to the mental health of those sitting next to the passenger with a long-life battery a longer-life set of lungs.
It may take a year or two, but, like the flu, it's coming. As a completely, dispassionate, thoughtful journalist, allow me a small piece of analysis. This will mark the end of civilization as we know it. Why? To understand the peril of airborne cell phones, as well as a potential solution, you need to look not up here, but down here to the passenger train, which has long been open to cell phone users.
(on camera): What Amtrak learned, of course, is that the problem isn't with the phones themselves, but rather with the people who use them or abuse them. These are highly sophisticated 21st century devices, fully capable of transmitting carefully modulated, low-volume conversations against continents and oceans, if only the people who owned the darn things knew that.
(voice-over): But they don't.
(on camera): Instead, they carry on their conversations the way my grandparents did on a long distance call. The further away you are, the louder I should speak.
(voice-over): Passengers trapped in an enclosed car often get to hear every detail of a seat mate's lunch or business conversation or, in one recent example related to me by an Amtrak conductor, a remarkably detailed conversation between a gynecologist and a patient.
So, Amtrak acted. Following up in the suggestions of passengers, it established a quiet car on all of its Boston-to-Washington Acela runs. In the quiet car, there is no loud music, no loud conversations, and no cell phones.
(on camera): Of course, for the airlines, there is no way to put a quiet car on an airplane, so the question is, where could cell phone users be placed so they can talk at the top of their lungs without bothering the rest of us? Is there such a place on an airplane? Why, yes. And we found it.
(voice-over): Call it a modest suggestion. Put the loudmouths here. Put it a laboratory, a few snacks and, bingo, peace and quiet above, while the cellular junkies chatter away about the football game, the TV show they saw last night, their digestive dilemmas or anything else on their minds, either that or start issuing parachutes along with the pillows and blankets.
Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Morning papers after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(ROOSTER CROWING)
BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world.
I don't think we've done "The International Herald Tribune" in a while, at least since yesterday. I don't think we did it yesterday, did we? You take notes on this? No. Anyway, they lead with -- this will make you feel good, I think, over here. "Iraqi Shiite With Ties to Iran Gaining Top Billing." The No. 1 person on the ballot for the Iraqi election is basically the best friend of the government in Tehran. I feel better already.
"The Washington Times" leads sports. "MLB" -- that would be Major League Baseball -- "Calls Plan Unacceptable, Tells D.C. to Fix It or Else." This is all about a stadium plan and whether the district will actually pay for one, because cities should pay for these private enterprises, don't you think? "Don't Meddle in Iraq, Bush Tells Neighbors, Calls on Iran, Syria to Help Enforce Security on the Borders." And I'm sure they will.
This came out at the economic summit today the White House is holding. "Bush Hits Frivolous Lawsuits." We're all opposed to frivolous lawsuits. But what about the good ones?
"Stars and Stripes." "Army Shifts Focus to Armor Trucks in Iraq. With Humvees Being Taken Care Of," more or less, "Other Vehicles Getting Attention."
"The Des Moines Register." I love this story, two stories really on the front page. "Iowans' Gifts of Giving." In one town in Iowa, a guy is paying everybody's electric bill this month. That's his Christian gift, about 30 grand. Nicely done. "And Possible Life- Saving Surgery Covered For Teen." So good for Iowans. I'm not surprised, because Iowans are terrific.
"The Chattanooga Times Free Press" leads military. They have loved this story from the get-go, because they planted the question: "$4.1 Billion For Armor. Pentagon Expects to Provide Protection For 98 Percent of Humvees by March '05."
How are we doing on time? Forty-seven seconds? My goodness.
"The Miami Herald." "State: Teele Took Kickbacks. Suspended Miami Commissioner Charged With Accepting $135,000 From Contractors Doing Business With Community Development Agency He Led." That's not good, OK? We agree with that. But it's not as bad as stealing from your grandmother.
Well, maybe it is. "Times Herald-Record." "Grandkid Named in Grand Larceny. Police Say Grandma Was Robbed of $130,000." He stole from his grandmother.
What's the weather in Chicago tomorrow?
(CHIMES)
BROWN: Thank you. It's "exhilarating."
We'll wrap it up in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Before we go, a quick look ahead at tomorrow's "AMERICAN MORNING." Here's Soledad O'Brien.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Aaron.
Tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING," twin sisters living in absolute, perfect synch. Now their kids will be living in synch, too, each sister giving birth to another set of twins, their deliveries just one hour apart. Four baby boys, one birthday, two sisters, a crazy set of coincidences. We'll tell you their story and meet them, CNN tomorrow, 7:00 a.m. Eastern -- Aaron.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: And Soledad knows something about twins, too.
Good to have you with us tonight. For most of you, "LOU DOBBS TONIGHT" is coming up next.
We're all back here tomorrow. We hope you join us as well.
Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired December 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: Another reminder today of the power of one question asked just a week ago of the secretary of defense. The question, of course, was about the lack of armor on many vehicles in Iraq but then Secretary Rumsfeld answered in part "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want." That quote may become the quote of the post war.
Since the answer has become clear that not just many vehicles are without armor, we knew that, but that production that might have increased the number of vehicles with armor was not increased. Would soldiers be alive today if it had been? We don't know that. Would the Army and the secretary have been spared embarrassment, you bet.
We begin tonight with CNN's Barbara Starr.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): By shifting funds around an accelerating some production lines, the Army hopes it now has a handle on the armor crisis but officials are warning it will still take months to have a completed armored fleet of trucks and Humvees operating inside Iraq.
BRIG. GEN. JEFFREY SORENSON, U.S. ARMY: This is not Wal-Mart, as we've gone through. This is a very detailed process in terms of trying to get this capability.
STARR: The current plan to spend $4.1 billion over the next six to eight months to finish armoring 32,000 vehicles needed in the theater. Officials insist they are working as fast as they can. For example, even if they manufactured armored bolt-on plates faster, workers can only install them so fast.
SORENSON: If we can get some of these vehicles sooner there to theater, whether it's a day, a week or two weeks, any additional more capability that we can get there will save more lives.
STARR: The Army says they are getting all the money they need.
SORENSON: Money has not been an object. Anytime we've asked for money from either, the Department of Defense, the Army or the Hill, it has not been an issue.
STARR: But almost two years after the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon now says just 60 percent of the vehicles in the country are armored and an acknowledgement from a senior officer again that it is tough to counter the changing tactics of the insurgents' roadside bombs.
LT. GEN. LANCE SMITH, CENTCOM DEPUTY CMDR.: They may use doorbells today to blow these things up. They may use remote controls from toys tomorrow and, as we adapt, they adapt, and we have been hoping that our technology would be more effective than it has been.
STARR (on camera): The hope now 98 percent of the Humvees will be armored by March. The truck fleet will be protected by early summer. But military officials are strongly emphasizing that there is no silver bullet against the changing tactics of the insurgency.
Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Tactics are one thing, tone another, accountability something else again.
Today in "The Washington Post," Bill Kristol, the hawk's hawk, began his column by quoting Secretary Rumsfeld's now famous answer to that reservist in Kuwait. The column ended simply enough. "The soldiers," he writes "deserves a better secretary of defense than the one we have."
Over the weekend, Senator John McCain stopped short of calling Rumsfeld a liability to the administration; however, when asked whether he had confidence in the secretary, Senator McCain said "My answer is still no, no confidence." On troop levels in Iraq, he went on to say, "There are very strong differences of opinion between myself and Secretary Rumsfeld on that issue."
Clearly, the secretary is taking incoming from all sides and, just as clearly, he has the president's support. So what's going on here?
We're joined tonight by David Frum, former speech writer for President Bush. David, it's nice to see you.
DAVID FRUM, FMR. WHITE HOUSE SPEECH WRITER: Thank you, Aaron.
BROWN: You expect the attacks or some attacks, I suppose, from Democrats. That's part of the game in Washington. But the harshest incoming is coming really from the secretary's side in all of this. What's going on?
Well, I think there's an even harsher incoming on the other side. Look, we've got a lot of problems in Iraq and there are a lot of people who are going to offer ideas as to how to solve them.
I think one of the things that happens is that these debates, as your excellent report, ought to be debates about techniques and tactics for winning a war tend then to become part of a Washington struggle. With the election of 2004 over, the election of 2008 begins and many of these people... BROWN: Is that really what this is that McCain and Bill Kristol, who you used to work for if I remember correctly, are playing a political game here?
FRUM: What we are seeing emerging in the Republican Party are factions that support the president and factions that are more critical of the president and that is a normal part of American politics. And with, by the way all the power in the capital in Republican hands it's maybe even a desirable feature because otherwise you'd have too much, too monolithic a voice.
But you are -- Donald Rumsfeld does have the president's confidence. The president is the ultimate decision maker and when people criticize Donald Rumsfeld they really are criticizing the president behind him and that is the beginning of people deciding in 2008 are they going to run as supporters and continuers of President Bush's achievements or are they going to run as critics of the president?
BROWN: So, you're setting up McCain on one side, as someone who will run four years from now and, on the other side, you're setting up whom?
FRUM: Well, I think the names will emerge in due course and we can make some guesses. Rudy Giuliani just had a bad week but I think one of the things...
BROWN: I think that's an understatement.
FRUM: One of the things that I think is the most useful thing we can all do is as we look at these problems say, look, what are -- I mean Donald Rumsfeld is not the superman. He is someone who runs a large organization. There are many people who have made many mistakes in this war as in all wars.
I don't know that it's a really useful exercise to say, well let's start going through the roster people when we still need to get jobs done and to say this general made this mistake and this colonel is to blame in this way and this procurement officer and this code. If these are preludes to fixing these problems, terrific but if they're just opportunities for recrimination, not so terrific.
BROWN: Let me ask it this way. Do you think that the criticism would be less harsh, would occur less often if the administration over time had stepped up and said, look, we made a series of mistakes from disbanding the Iraqi Army to the armor situation that we've been talking about now for about a week to troop levels in the post war, which I think almost everyone but the secretary agrees have been too low and just cop to it, if you will?
FRUM: But, you know, the problem with doing that is they would then be chasing newspapers in a way that I think isn't useful and isn't true. I am not sure that all of those decisions that you cite are going to look like mistakes in the long run. I mean it does matter. The loyalty of the Iraqi Army matters a lot. That's one of the things that we have seen that has been a real problem in the past couple of years. The Army, the Iraqi Army, yes, it doesn't always have the training and equipment but above all there are problems of loyalty.
If Saddam's officers had been kept, would the problem of loyalty have been better or worse? I'm inclined to think it would have been worse. I think when we look back on that one, I'm not so sure.
The same way with the argument over troop levels, the argument over what were the troop levels that ought to have been in place in the immediate post war is a very different discussion from the argument over what should be the troop levels now.
And I think there's a powerful case, and the secretary will make it, that right now the troops are in some ways a provocation and having too high a troop level at this point could be a big problem. I don't think administrations need to go around pointing to people who are involved in this decision making and flogging them and...
BROWN: David, let me try and get one more question in quickly if I can. Do you think if Iraq, four years from now if Iraq is perceived as having gone badly, forget whether it's seen as a mistake, having gone badly that the party will take the hit?
FRUM: I think if Iraq is perceived as having gone badly, the party will first turn on itself and there will be anger between -- against those people who are seen as heavily associated with the decision, including the president himself, if Iraq is seen as a success, the opposite.
I think in general politics in 2008, if Iraq is seen as a success, I mean it will tend to bulk up the Republican Party's national security credentials, if not, not.
So, yes, it's going to be a big issue and that's, I think, one of the reasons why the Bush administration rightly thinks let us not tear ourselves apart now over things that happened a year ago and there will be lots and lots of time later to decide who was right and who was wrong.
BROWN: David, good to see you. Thank you.
FRUM: Thank you.
BROWN: David Frum in Washington tonight.
Iraq itself now is always the headlines and always in the headlines there seems to be a mix of the hopeful and the horrible. A car bomb killed seven people today outside the holy Shiite mosque in Karbala, the apparent target an aide to the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The aide a cleric himself survived but was injured in the blast.
And, from Baghdad today came word that the man known as Chemical Ali will be among a dozen of Saddam's henchmen to make court appearances starting next week. Formal charges could be issued next month just ahead of national elections.
Back home, new science hinting at better ways to treat anthrax should there be another attack. For now it may also provide a medical solution to what has become a logistical, bureaucratic and frankly a public policy nightmare, the story from Washington and CNN's Bob Franken.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): No one has to convince postal worker Leroy Richmond that antibiotics can work against anthrax. He's living proof.
LEROY RICHMOND, ANTHRAX SURVIVOR: Immediately they put me on Cipro and then they put me on Docycyclin, two powerful antibiotics.
FRANKEN (on camera): Richmond survived the anthrax that contaminated this building. Five died in a series of attacks.
(voice-over): To contain future anthrax bioterrorism, the government wants to vaccinate 25 million Americans but a study suggests that might not be the best plan. A new generation inoculation might be much more effective after contamination along with antibiotics.
RONALD BROOKMEYER, JOHNS HOPKINS SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Our research shows that if we could get antibiotics to people within six days of exposure to the anthrax, we could prevent 70 percent of cases.
FRANKEN: Many leading health officials are critical that the response to the next anthrax attack remains still in the talking stage.
JEROME HAUER, RESPONSE TO EMERGENCIES AND DISASTER MGMT.: How are we going to explain to the American people that three, four or five years after September 11th we have done very little to better prepare our nation when it comes to countermeasures for threat agents?
FRANKEN: But government officials insist they're doing all they can.
LANCE BROOKS, DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY: Our strategy currently is gear toward early detection of such events and, as quickly and rapidly as possible, mobilize the national stockpile.
FRANKEN: The key experts say is a quick diagnosis.
DR. JAMES CAMPBELL, UNIV. OF MARYLAND MEDICAL SCHOOL: In most cases when people become ill with anthrax, inhalational anthrax, you don't recognize it as anthrax right away.
RICHMOND: There has to be a definitive test. When you go in and say you have a cold they can test to make sure it's only a cold and nothing other than the fact that you're feeling bad. FRANKEN: Leroy Richmond can only hope the country learns from his experience but never has to share it.
Bob Franken, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: In Michigan, new charges today against a pair of men who have been there before. The men were charged this time with scheming to defraud an insurance company in Troy, Michigan, nothing related to terrorism, unlike their earlier brush with the criminal justice system.
You might recall the two men were accused of being part of a terror cell. They were tried and convicted on various charges last year, the convictions overthrown because of misconduct by the prosecution.
Charging suspects in terror cases is one thing, getting the charges to stick, as the Michigan case ultimately proved is something else again. Since 9/11, local police agencies have been under heavy pressure from the federal government to find the terrorists.
Sting operations have become a successful dragnet. The line between sting and entrapment, however, can be blurry, reporting tonight CNN's Deborah Feyerick.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The indictments read like a thriller. In one case, a self-described arms dealer, Hemal Lakhani, smuggles a missile launcher into the United States, the target American planes, the buyer an FBI informant posing as an Somali terrorist.
In another case, a pizza shop owner, Mohammed Hossain (ph), is given $50,000. He's told it's the proceeds from the sale of a missile launcher, his job launder the money by writing checks from his business. The imam from his mosque allegedly witnesses the deal. Says his lawyer...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody I talked to knows that this case smells like a rat.
FEYERICK: Two plots, two stings, both orchestrated by the government using confidential informants. It's part of a growing pattern with experts predicting many more stings in the future.
Andy McCarthy, a former prosecutor, used a sting which helped convict terror Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman in the 1995 plot to blow up New York bridges and tunnels. McCarthy says used right stings are important law enforcement tools.
ANDY MCCARTHY, FORMER PROSECUTOR: Anybody who says that they'll take money in order to facilitate these attacks is a dangerous person, you know, whether he's Osama bin Laden incarnate or he's a low level person.
FEYERICK: In the case of the alleged missile smuggler, Hemat Lakhani, New Jersey's U.S. attorney called him a significant international arms dealer, the sting praised at the highest levels.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And the fact that we were able to sting this guy it's a pretty good example of what we're doing in order to protect the American people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president has mandated us now to catch them before they commit the crime in the area of terrorism, so it's a whole new way of thinking and doing business.
FEYERICK (on camera): As for defense arguments, lawyers for each of the parties say the stings are nothing more than entrapment. All parties have pleaded not guilty and critics say the government is using these stings to go after easy marks.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It doesn't make us safer. If the government is using this dragnet approach and not following tried and true law enforcement methods, they're spending less time following up on people who are actually terrorists.
FEYERICK (voice-over): A study by Syracuse University found of 184 terrorism prosecutions the majority of defendants, 171, received a year or less in prison.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The government is interested in ramping up the number of terrorism prosecutions it engaqes in without adequately figuring out whether these are legitimate terrorism prosecutions.
FEYERICK: A jury is now being seated to hear the case against the alleged missile smuggler. As for the pizza shop owner and the imam who allegedly laundered money their trials expected late next year. In the meantime, they're out on bail.
Deborah Feyerick, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT tonight, as we said to Larry, a story that is both heartbreaking and heartwarming and as compelling a story as we've seen out of Iraq, a clinical psychologist and her list of good things and bad things as she saw them and reads them to us.
And later, missed it by that much and then some, again, billions of dollars later why the Pentagon's missile defense program is still not working, take a break first.
From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Reporting on wars breaks your heart. In short moments each night, as names pass by too quickly, seeing lives pass by too quickly, hearts break. But here tonight amid the broken hearts of war, we find ourselves with something else, something that reminds us of courage in a controversial cause of decency amid the horror.
It comes from a woman who served, who tried to see all that was good in so much that was bad and found sometimes that both were indelibly connected. This is a special story about special people told by NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was a tough deployment for Alpha Surgical Company starting in February near Falluja. Trauma surgeons worked in 24-hour ORs stabilizing Marines with blast wounds. Navy Lieutenant Commander Heidi Craft, a clinical psychologist, worked in the combat stress platoon on trauma of another kind.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Normal people in this abnormal situation of combat can experience very significant symptoms of shock and sometimes even shutting down psychologically.
NISSEN: Seeing so many, so young, so shattered over seven months was hard on the healers too. Alone in her barracks room, Dr. Craft started a list of things that were good and things that were not good about her time in Iraq.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was partially a self therapy. I was struggling towards the end of the deployment with how to process everything that we had been through and done and survived together.
NISSEN: The not good list came easily.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Things that were not good: terrifying camel spiders, poisonous scorpions, 132 degrees, sweating in places I didn't know I could sweat, like wrists and ears, the roar of helicopters overhead, the popping of gunfire, the cracking sound of giant artillery rounds splitting open against rock and dirt, the shattering of the windows, hiding away from the broken windows.
Waiting to be told we can come to the hospital to treat the ones who were not so lucky. Watching the black helicopter with the big red cross on the side landing at our pad, telling a room full of stunned Marines in blood-soaked uniforms that their comrade that they had just tried to save had died of his wounds.
Washing blood off the boots of one of our young nurses while she told me about the one who bled out in the trauma bay.
NISSEN: She struggled at first to find the positive but slowly that list formed.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Things that were good: sunset over the desert, almost always orange, sunrise over the desert almost always red, the childlike excitement of having fresh fruit at dinner after going weeks without it. My comrades, some of the things witnesses will traumatize them forever but they still provided outstanding care to these Marines. But, most of all, the United States Marines, our patients, having them tell us one after another through blinding pain or morphine- induced euphoria "When can I get out of here, I just want to get back to my unit?"
NISSEN: There was the young sergeant who lost one eye but asked for help sitting up so he could check on the members of his fire team being treated for minor shrapnel wounds.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He smiles, lay back down and said, "I only have one good eye doc but I can see that my Marines are OK."
NISSEN: And there was the young corporal known to the whole company as Heidi's Marine.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The one who threw himself on a grenade to save the men at his side, who will likely be the first Medal of Honor recipient in over 11 years.
NISSEN: That was Corporal Jason Dunham (ph), age 22. He arrived in the trauma bay on April 14th with a severe head wound. Craft took his hand, talked to him, comforted him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I told him we were proud of him and that the Marines were proud of him and that he was brave.
NISSEN: Dunham could not speak, could only squeeze her hand in response.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I stayed with him as long as I could and I held his hand all the way to the point where we got to the helicopter. It was the most wonderful moment of my life and the most horrible moment of my life at the same time.
NISSEN: She wept when she learned that Corporal Dunham had died at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland eight days later, wept again when Dunham's mother wrote to thank her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Her biggest fear was that her son had been alone and that no one had been with him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For me basically the whole deployment, all of it, all of it wrapped up at that moment.
NISSEN: The sorrow for the wounded and damaged, the grief for the lost, gratitude for being able to ease another's pain, pride in the U.S. troops for their courage and sacrifice. For Dr. Craft it was all that was good and not good about Iraq. The ending of both lists is the same.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And finally, above all else, holding the hand of that dying Marine.
NISSEN: Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE) (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: There's nothing simple about the Pentagon's anti-missile missile system now being deployed in Alaska and in bits and pieces all around the world, nothing cheap either. The only simple thing really is the mission, using a missile to hit another missile destroying it before it can reach this country. And simple doesn't mean easy and yesterday the system failed another test.
Here's CNN's David Ensor.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Though not all past tests have hit their target, at least the rockets got off the ground, not this time. The first test in nearly two years of the multibillion dollar missile defense system failed because the interceptor missile on the Marshall Islands shut down due, officials say, to an unknown anomaly in its system.
PHILLIIP COYLE, CENTER FOR DEFENSE INFORMATION: It took them two years to prepare for this test and to have it fail the way it did where the interceptor didn't even get off the ground is a big setback.
BAKER SPRING, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Well, I wouldn't consider it a failure. I consider it sort of a non-test.
ENSOR: The setback came 16 minutes after a mock warhead was successfully launched from Kodiak, Alaska as the target for the interceptor that never flew. The Pentagon spent about $3.3 billion this year alone on ground-based national missile defense. Critics call it a waste of taxpayer dollars. They say even if the latest test had been successful, it would not have proven the system can work because the conditions were not realistic.
COYLE: You have information, the defender has information that no enemy would ever give us, including on the reentry vehicle, the target reentry vehicle a beacon that is saying "Here I am. Here I am."
ENSOR: But proponents argue with North Korea developing nuclear weapons and missiles the best course is to deploy a system and then work out the kinks.
SPRING: I believe that something is better than nothing.
ENSOR (on camera): President Bush once declared that he intended to have a limited system operational by the end of this year. There are interceptor missiles in Alaska and California but this latest test suggests they may not be ready for prime time.
David Ensor, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE) BROWN: A couple of other items that made news around the world today starting in Athens. Two armed hijackers in custody tonight. They freed their hostages, gave themselves up after an 18-hour siege aboard a bus. The pair, Albanians living in Greece, demanded a million Euros and a flight to Russia or they would blow up the bus. It turns out they had no explosives. They may have simply wanted a trip back to Albania, not to Russia, certainly not to jail.
And word today that Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yuschenko wasn't just poisoned with dioxin, the levels in his body are the second highest ever measured in anyone, 6,000 times normal. How it got into his system remains a mystery.
Still to come tonight on NEWSNIGHT, a story New Yorkers can't get enough of, Washington can't get away from, and the nation should be asking questions about. How did Bernard Kerik get as far along in the nomination process to be the secretary of homeland security and who if anyone will take the heat?
And then there are other stories in the papers as well. But, as you know, you'll have to wait for those.
A break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: There are perks that come with being presidents and there are perils that come with the perks. Getting the staff to move quickly on Cabinet nominees is a perk. Doing it all in haste, therein lies the peril. In the case of Bernard Kerik, the president's choice to run homeland security, peril wound up chasing perk from one end of the front page to the next. And it isn't over yet.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): The late night jokes are stinging, but they will soon disappear.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN")
DAVID LETTERMAN, HOST: It was so cold today in New York City that Bernard Kerik was happy to be getting the heat from his wife.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: The political fallout from the botched nomination of former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, however, appears to be growing, fallout that rains not just on the White House, but on one of its favorite politicians.
MARSHALL WITTMAN, DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL: In this instance, it might have been a very clear case of political patronage. It appears that Mayor Giuliani went to the president, cashed in a political chit, and the administration didn't scrutinize this nomination as they might for others. BROWN: Kerik's rapid and messy fall from grace came despite what "The New York Times" called hours of confrontational interviews with him conducted by the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, himself now nominated to be attorney general. And, tonight, the White House sought to minimize the damage.
DAN BARTLETT, WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: In this case, the process is working. We didn't even get to the point in which there is a hearing, in which the information was brought to our attention. And Mr. Kerik withdrew his name. So it's unfortunate. We're disappointed by it.
BROWN: But the White House, it seems, never checked Mr. Kerik out very thoroughly. Aides telling "The Washington Post" that kind of checking might have unearthed rumors about Kerik's finances, as well as other problems. An apartment in this New York City high-rise, for instance, was said by "The New York Times" to have been used by Kerik after it was originally donated for the use by police and rescue workers at ground zero.
BERNARD KERIK, FORMER NEW YORK CITY POLICE COMMISSIONER: My withdrawal was my fault. What happened between me and the White House is my fault. It's nobody else's, and I'll deal with it.
BROWN: And, of course, so will the White House.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Just keep in mind what Dan Bartlett said. The process worked here.
Michael Daly writes for "The New York Daily News." And we're joined from Washington by Mike Allen who writes for "The Washington Post." And we're glad to have you both.
Michael in New York, none of this -- some of the detail, I think, is a little shocking. But, on balance, Mr. Kerik was always seen as, I think, and a gentle word here would be colorful.
MICHAEL DALY, "THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS": Well, yes. And I think everybody in the city knew his life had certain complications.
And I think that one thing that kind of saved him from really detailed scrutiny was that he became police commissioner right at the end of Rudy Giuliani administration. And Rudy was kind of trailing off. And the parade had passed by. And then all of sudden, the world changed on that September morning.
BROWN: Yes. And in some respects, then, was -- is Mr. Kerik more story than he is reality the sort of heroic police commissioner on 9/11?
DALY: Well, to me, having been down there that day, the big story was that the people led themselves.
BROWN: Yes. DALY: And that there were just -- there were more acts of bravery and goodness in the midst of all that horror than you could imagine. And it wasn't because anybody was telling anybody to go this way or that way. It's because that's what the people are. That's who they are.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: Yes.
Mike, how does something that basically could be uncovered with a little more effort than a simple Google search have gotten by the White House?
MIKE ALLEN, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, Aaron, what White House officials are telling me is that this shows some of the vulnerabilities in the vetting system, some which are unique to this White House and some of which aren't. This process is done very quickly.
It's done in secrecy. And it relies a lot on the honesty of the person who is being put up. We're told that these interviews, that they rely pretty much on what the people tell them. And I talked to a number of people who have been through the process with this White House. And I said, what's it like? And they said they say, tell us everything. And the problem here was what the definition of everything was.
They said that, when you're relying on the person to answer you honestly, it can go off the rails in a number of ways. Either they can understate the truth or they can think they don't have a problem when they do or they can just misunderstand the question. Someone in the White House told a colleague of mine, Jim VandeHei, that they even say, if you're wrong about this, you're going to humiliate your family and the president.
They go at this, especially the nanny question. They go at it early. They go at it aggressively. But the checking sort of stops there. A lot of what's come out has been available in the Nexis database. And news organizations found it in just a couple days.
(CROSSTALK)
ALLEN: Why didn't the White House?
BROWN: Mike, did they know about the mistresses? And did they think they could finesse this stuff?
ALLEN: A lot of it they thought that they could finesse.
And a question they're never asked is -- they say that a lot of these problems were manageable, which, by the way, is what they say about the deficit. And they say that, one by one, they could have gotten these people confirmed. They haven't said why you would want to confirm someone with this many complications. Now, what they're saying now is, well, we're not going to inventory what we knew and what we didn't know. Clearly, they didn't know about the mistresses, the connections to organized crime. These are things that they clearly didn't know about. But they knew plenty to know that they would have a problem. They were already making preparations both in New York and Washington to have a war room to fight back what they knew was going to be the No. 1 target for Democrats.
BROWN: Michael, Rudy damaged in this?
DALY: Oh, I would say sure. But in time, I think people will kind of forget it.
BROWN: Short damage, a little -- a bruise.
DALY: I think personally, he's probably really hurt.
BROWN: You think personally he is upset at how -- is that what you mean?
DALY: He must -- he elevated this guy. This guy was a foot cop and then he made him the correction commissioner. And then he made him police commissioner.
And, I mean, he went from walking a foot post in 1988 in Times Square to being the police commissioner. And it was because of Rudy Giuliani. And Giuliani has got to figure that the guy would at least tell me if there were these kind of problems.
BROWN: So you would believe that the former mayor had no idea the depth of the problems?
DALY: Probably not the depth.
I'm sure he knew about some of them, because you stop your basic guy on the street, they would know.
BROWN: Yes.
DALY: So you would think Rudy would probably know as much as the guy you would run into on the subway.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: ... workers outside know most of this stuff.
DALY: Right. Right.
But I think that 9/11 made Rudy and Kerik all of a sudden these heroes.
BROWN: Yes.
DALY: And then -- but if you say, all right, what exactly was done that was so heroic, well, they were heroes. And I think that a lot of people who died that day were kind of -- everybody was kind of granted this kind of grace. If you read those portraits of grief in "The Times," no one beat their kids.
BROWN: Of course.
DALY: Or whatever. It was all the best in everybody. And I think that spilled over to people who were alive there.
BROWN: Mike, let me give you the last word here.
Is there a lesson here for the administration beyond the nominating process about overreaching and the rest?
ALLEN: Well, interestingly, this administration had been criticized for picking everybody in the family. So now they can say look what happens when we go outside.
But what administration officials are saying is that they need to check even when they think -- even when someone's been vouched for, as this person was by Mayor Giuliani, even when they think that they have a compelling story. The biography was very important to the president in these Cabinet choices. They liked the 9/11 symbolism. They thought that, if there was another terrorist event, that Mr. Kerik would be good on television.
So, the lesson here is not to fall in love with the attributes of somebody and almost to go at it prosecutorially. What could go wrong here? What are the problems? If I'm a Democrat, if I'm a journalist, what am I going to seize on?
BROWN: Mike and Michael, thanks for coming in.
BROWN: Have good holidays. We appreciate it.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: Thank you.
DALY: Happy holidays, Aaron.
BROWN: Thank you.
BROWN: Ahead on the program, from track suit to lawsuit. We'll explain why Marion Jones is sprinting to save her records and her reputation, which is considerable.
And the sound of a flight attendant asking you to turn your cell phone off is about to go away. You can imagine what Jeff Greenfield has to say.
A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: We start the national roundup with a potentially -- that would be potentially, Aaron -- costly turn in the steroid scandal out West. Marion Jones, the Olympic track star, today filed a defamation suit against Victor Conte. She' asking for $25 million. Mr. Conte, you will recall, is the owner of the Bay area drug lab who says he supplied her with steroids, watched her shoot up. Ms. Jones, we remind you, has never failed a test for performance-enhancing drugs.
And a truly local story to us. Time Warner, our parent company, has reached a settlement with the Justice Department in a fraud investigation at its AOL division, $210 million. Also today, a proposed settlement with the FCC, another $300 million to do with a buyout in Europe. In return, the government will delay criminal charges against AOL executives and dismiss the charge in two years if they continue cooperating with investigators. And they will.
Getting through airport security can be a journey in and of itself. Then there are the delays. You get on the plane. The seats are too small. The aisle is too narrow, the food long gone. Air travel ain't what it used to be, as they say. But the one thing you could count on, save for the crying baby, was a few hours in a cell- free phone zone. That's about to change.
Here's Jeff Greenfield.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hello. Yes, hey, Eric, listen, roll me over to Dave.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So where did you decide to move?
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): It is one of the supreme joys of modern life, the ability to combat loneliness, whether you want to or not, by listening to the lives of countless strangers around you as they share every detail of those lives.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I made mechanic of the month this month.
GREENFIELD: On the street.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, seriously, where are you?
GREENFIELD: In the supermarket, in restaurants, on the bus, with their cell phones.
And now the Federal Communications Commission seems to be smashing through the last barren wasteland, where the know-thy- neighbor-life is forbidden, the airplane, where now, when the door closes, cell phone use is banned. After a successful test last July, if that's what you want to call it, the FCC has decided that there's no safety risk to cell phone use, except, of course, to the mental health of those sitting next to the passenger with a long-life battery a longer-life set of lungs.
It may take a year or two, but, like the flu, it's coming. As a completely, dispassionate, thoughtful journalist, allow me a small piece of analysis. This will mark the end of civilization as we know it. Why? To understand the peril of airborne cell phones, as well as a potential solution, you need to look not up here, but down here to the passenger train, which has long been open to cell phone users.
(on camera): What Amtrak learned, of course, is that the problem isn't with the phones themselves, but rather with the people who use them or abuse them. These are highly sophisticated 21st century devices, fully capable of transmitting carefully modulated, low-volume conversations against continents and oceans, if only the people who owned the darn things knew that.
(voice-over): But they don't.
(on camera): Instead, they carry on their conversations the way my grandparents did on a long distance call. The further away you are, the louder I should speak.
(voice-over): Passengers trapped in an enclosed car often get to hear every detail of a seat mate's lunch or business conversation or, in one recent example related to me by an Amtrak conductor, a remarkably detailed conversation between a gynecologist and a patient.
So, Amtrak acted. Following up in the suggestions of passengers, it established a quiet car on all of its Boston-to-Washington Acela runs. In the quiet car, there is no loud music, no loud conversations, and no cell phones.
(on camera): Of course, for the airlines, there is no way to put a quiet car on an airplane, so the question is, where could cell phone users be placed so they can talk at the top of their lungs without bothering the rest of us? Is there such a place on an airplane? Why, yes. And we found it.
(voice-over): Call it a modest suggestion. Put the loudmouths here. Put it a laboratory, a few snacks and, bingo, peace and quiet above, while the cellular junkies chatter away about the football game, the TV show they saw last night, their digestive dilemmas or anything else on their minds, either that or start issuing parachutes along with the pillows and blankets.
Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Morning papers after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(ROOSTER CROWING)
BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world.
I don't think we've done "The International Herald Tribune" in a while, at least since yesterday. I don't think we did it yesterday, did we? You take notes on this? No. Anyway, they lead with -- this will make you feel good, I think, over here. "Iraqi Shiite With Ties to Iran Gaining Top Billing." The No. 1 person on the ballot for the Iraqi election is basically the best friend of the government in Tehran. I feel better already.
"The Washington Times" leads sports. "MLB" -- that would be Major League Baseball -- "Calls Plan Unacceptable, Tells D.C. to Fix It or Else." This is all about a stadium plan and whether the district will actually pay for one, because cities should pay for these private enterprises, don't you think? "Don't Meddle in Iraq, Bush Tells Neighbors, Calls on Iran, Syria to Help Enforce Security on the Borders." And I'm sure they will.
This came out at the economic summit today the White House is holding. "Bush Hits Frivolous Lawsuits." We're all opposed to frivolous lawsuits. But what about the good ones?
"Stars and Stripes." "Army Shifts Focus to Armor Trucks in Iraq. With Humvees Being Taken Care Of," more or less, "Other Vehicles Getting Attention."
"The Des Moines Register." I love this story, two stories really on the front page. "Iowans' Gifts of Giving." In one town in Iowa, a guy is paying everybody's electric bill this month. That's his Christian gift, about 30 grand. Nicely done. "And Possible Life- Saving Surgery Covered For Teen." So good for Iowans. I'm not surprised, because Iowans are terrific.
"The Chattanooga Times Free Press" leads military. They have loved this story from the get-go, because they planted the question: "$4.1 Billion For Armor. Pentagon Expects to Provide Protection For 98 Percent of Humvees by March '05."
How are we doing on time? Forty-seven seconds? My goodness.
"The Miami Herald." "State: Teele Took Kickbacks. Suspended Miami Commissioner Charged With Accepting $135,000 From Contractors Doing Business With Community Development Agency He Led." That's not good, OK? We agree with that. But it's not as bad as stealing from your grandmother.
Well, maybe it is. "Times Herald-Record." "Grandkid Named in Grand Larceny. Police Say Grandma Was Robbed of $130,000." He stole from his grandmother.
What's the weather in Chicago tomorrow?
(CHIMES)
BROWN: Thank you. It's "exhilarating."
We'll wrap it up in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Before we go, a quick look ahead at tomorrow's "AMERICAN MORNING." Here's Soledad O'Brien.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Aaron.
Tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING," twin sisters living in absolute, perfect synch. Now their kids will be living in synch, too, each sister giving birth to another set of twins, their deliveries just one hour apart. Four baby boys, one birthday, two sisters, a crazy set of coincidences. We'll tell you their story and meet them, CNN tomorrow, 7:00 a.m. Eastern -- Aaron.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: And Soledad knows something about twins, too.
Good to have you with us tonight. For most of you, "LOU DOBBS TONIGHT" is coming up next.
We're all back here tomorrow. We hope you join us as well.
Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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