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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Search for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; Identity Theft
Aired May 26, 2005 - 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. And consider this, consider what would happen if American troops were to be in Iraq, not for six more months, or ever six more years, but for a decade, a decade and-a-half.
Today, an expert on the region predicted just that. And even those who disagree with him, also concede that Iraq seems tougher now than it was before the elections, And deadlier now than it's been in a long time.
Northeast of Baghdad today, insurgents shot down an American helicopter. The Pentagon has now confirmed that both crew members died. In the last seven days, 25 American troops have died. Sectarian violence in Iraq has taken close to 600 lives. And today as major combat goes on in the Sunni Triangle, soldiers also launched a nationwide sweep for insurgents in major cities.
In a moment, the implications. First, the search for a single insurgent, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, and what it might mean. Or given the larger picture, whether it means much at all.
We begin tonight with CNN's Ryan Chilcote.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Young Abu al Haraf receives a final farewell from his comrades before getting in the truck.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "One push on this button, and I'll be with God in heaven."
CHILCOTE: Moments later, his truck is barreling along, towards the narrator tells us, a group of U.S. soldiers. Then there's an explosion. It's all part of a propaganda video for the terrorist organization Unity of God and Jihad, known since late last year as al Qaeda in Iraq, run by Abu Musab al Zarqawi. But if Zarqawi is severely wounded or even dead, would the insurgency change?
MAJ. GEN. JAMES A. MARKS, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: We will see no change. If Zarqawi is completely out of the picture, if he's dead, if he's been removed from country and he can't be brought back in because of concern for his life, then somebody else is going to step up.
CHILCOTE: Besides, these analysts say, he has already rendered himself nearly irrelevant. Maybe making major decisions, but mostly delegating to a terror network that has seen explosive growth.
And Zarqawi's network is not the only independent minded part of the insurgency, almost all the analysts agree, there's a sizable portion of terror mercenaries out there, professional bandits ready to carry out any act of violence in exchange for money.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We're here at your place. We killed two of them, and they went away. We're going to stop them.
CHILCOTE: And there is a so-called home grown indigenous Iraqi resistance, made up primarily of Baathist supporters of the former regime and against the U.S.'s presence.
The Baathists are a powerful force in the insurgency. Experts say they're well funded with stolen millions from the former regime. They have good organizational skills as former soldiers under Saddam. And they are mostly secular, but not letting ideological differences get in the way of a common cause, willing to work with other terror groups.
BOBBY GHOSH, TIME: They sometimes work together, but they like to keep each other at a certain arm's length. They see each other as the enemy's enemy, but not quite as a friend.
CHILCOTE: U.S. military commanders thought the big turnout in Iraq's first Democratic election in half a century would take the steam out of the insurgency, but not for long. Now the insurgents are said to be setting their sights on spoiling Democratic milestones to come.
So how to stop them? The consensus seems to be the U.S. will have to just wait it out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The best thing the U.S. ministry can do is to make it clear that they are going to stay the course for as long as it takes. It's a marathon, you know, whoever runs out of breath first loses.
CHILCOTE: A loss to the insurgents would allow Zarqawi's network and all the terror insurgents to see their dream of Iraq realized.
Ryan Chilcote, CNN, Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: On now to an especially inflammatory facet of the war on terror. Today the general in charge of the prison at Guantanamo Bay said investigators have found no credible evidence that a Koran had been flushed down the toilet to make inmates talk. Other incidents, yes, but not that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRIG. GEN. JAY HOOD, COMMANDING GENERAL: We did identified 13 incidents of alleged mishandling of the Koran by joint task force personnel. 10 of those were by a guard and 3 by interrogators.
We found that in only 5 of those 13 incidents, 4 by guards and 1 by an interrogator, there was what could be broadly defined as mishandling of a Koran. None of these five incidents was a result of a failure to follow standard operating procedures in place at the time the incident occurred.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: That was as much detail as was offered. This comes a day after the ACLU released a batch of government documents, including an FBI memorandum dated August of 2002. That memo described one inmate's complaint that a Koran had been flushed down the toilet. An allegation the inmate was asked about at a later interview and declined to repeat.
You could almost open any page of any paper this morning and read about the difficulty of recruiting in wartime. And the question of women in combat. A recruiter was wooing Mike Doonesbury's daughter in the comic strip. On the front page, a Defense budget bill passes after language further limiting the role of women in the service is removed.
The Congress already prohibits women from infantry combat jobs, but that hasn't, of course, meant women are kept away from war.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): In truth, most of us do react differently when a woman dies in combat. But pulling them off the front lines would have created a whole new range of problems.
LAWRENCE KORB, FORMER ASST. SECY OF DEFENSE: Without opening up opportunities for women, you simply would not have been able to get enough qualified men. People have argued that the American people somehow value their daughters' lives more than their sons', and that's simply not true.
BROWN: You could argue the best known soldiers of the war in Iraq have been women. P.O.W. Shoshana Johnson, the captured and rescued Jessica Lynch. But when a powerful Congressman claimed the military didn't really want women in harm's way, a new debate emerged. He proposed that women be banned from combat support jobs, such as gunners on armored vehicles used to protect convoys.
REP. DUNCAN HUNTER, (R) CALIFORNIA: There may be people here in Washington D.C. who want to send young women into direct ground combat, but the vast majority of those in the military don't want to do that.
REP. IKE SKELTON, (D) MISSOURI: The women are putting their heart, their soul, their professionalism, their careers on the line every time they put the uniform on every day. And I think it's wrong to have come up and challenged these women and what they do for our country in this fashion. BROWN: Women comprise nearly 10 percent of the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. And to date, 35 have died in Iraq in action, 6 in Afghanistan.
It is in Iraq where those combat support jobs are among the most dangerous. Driving a convoy, for example or serving as a military policeman, puts a woman on the front line. Even if women are not allowed in infantry units yet.
KORB: What's going to happen is eventually we're going to drop the last restriction on women. In the wars we're liable to fight now, you're in more danger in what we call a combat support thing -- driving a truck in Iraq or serving in military police. Many times than you are in an infantry unit. And when these support units come under fire, the women have performed heroically.
BROWN: So for now, this is not likely to change. Our sons and daughters will go off to war. And if we're lucky, will come home intact, like Shelly Johns of Paris, Illinois, one of many who risked to serve.
TAMMY JOHNS, SHELLY JOHNS MOTHER: I told her we'll have a party for every single holiday she missed, even St. Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day, the whole thing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: The importance of the Zarqawi network and Guantanamo is just part of the war on terror and only a part of the war in Iraq as well. We're joined tonight by Rick Barton from the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington and Dan Goure, who teaches at the National Defense University and is vice president of the Lexington Institute.
First on Zarqawi, Dan. Does it really matter if he's dead or alive?
DAN GOURE, NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY: Oh, it absolutely matters. Look, he is still a symbol. He was the prince of al Qaeda in Iraq. You get the prince, that scores big points.
Secondly, he really did the most, grandly so, to create the al Qaeda network in Iraq and to run lots of operations. And therefore getting him has that value.
There was even a letter out, we captured from one of his couriers a couple of months ago, complaining -- it was a complaint to him, really, from subordinates, that they hadn't seen him. They didn't know what was going on. They couldn't trust the people that allegedly were coming to them in his name.
So I don't think that the characterization from your earlier piece that said it wouldn't matter, because they're decentralized and all. I don't think that's true. I think leadership in these organizations matters tremendously, particularly in combat situations, particularly in Iraq. BROWN: Let me -- let me draw Rick into this. Rick, I think, as I read you, you feel that Zarqawi is less important than Dan does. But wouldn't -- if he is in fact dead, or can't lead, wouldn't at least the in fighting to replace -- and that sort of thing occurs all the time -- wouldn't it at least that be helpful to the coalition in Iraq?
RICK BARTON, CTR. STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: I think it will be helpful to the coalition, but whether it will be important beyond that, is, I think, overstating the case.
There's no question that leadership matters, as Dan just suggested, but he was an almost-nobody. He became somebody. Now, the market opportunity for somebody like him is even greater, and so it's -- there's likely to be a successor, and there's likely to be that part of the insurgency.
BROWN: I want to talk -- let me move off Zarqawi for a second, because what we see in this last month is this terrible rash of violence and killing over there. We're a ways into this now. Why -- Dan, I guess start with you. Why is it -- does it at least appear to be getting worse?
GOURE: It appears so because it is so. Why is that? Because, in fact, we allowed an insurgency, or several different branches of an insurgency, to take hold in a major way. I mean, this was a failure that goes back to early 2003, to the end -- or beginning -- of 2004.
Once you allow that to happen, you short of devolve the situation in a year. It's going to take you five or 10 to get it back. Eliminating the Iraqi army, allowing Falluja to be a pest hole of terrorists -- there's a whole -- not securing the Syrian border, still not done. All of those things virtually guaranteed that you would create an insurgency of massive proportions, really, in Iraq, and that's simply continuing to this day.
BROWN: Rick, one call (ph) wrote today, 10 to 15 years. Does that seem an outlandish number or a realistic number to you?
BARTON: I think it's a possible number but unlikely because the patience of the Iraqi government and their own political viability as the system becomes more democratic, as it gets more open, will depend on their being able to say to the Americans and the West basically that the time for our being there has run out.
BROWN: So, it may not be that the Americans grow weary of being in Iraq, more -- it's that the Iraqis will grow weary of our being there?
BARTON: I think that's the case. I would say that probably the two most unifying political themes in Iraq today, one, make our streets safe, two, when will the foreigners leave? What should be the role of the foreigners? What are they doing here since they're not delivering the public safety that they seem to be here in numbers to do. BROWN: Dan, let me give you the last word. Would it be your guess that the year ahead is going to be more difficult for the Americans and the Iraqis than the year that's passed?
GOURE: It's going to be, I think, more difficult, but it is going to be, I think, also more difficult in a positive direction. U.S. forces have got the bit in their teeth and are better able to conduct operations, know how to better, and the Iraqis, I believe, will come up on the net in a much better fashion and be able to take more of their security. That also means, as you're conducting these operations, more casualties on both sides this next year.
BROWN: Gentlemen, good to have you with us. We'll talk again soon, I hope. Thank you.
BARTON: Thank you.
GOURE: Thank you.
BROWN: Every year, millions of Americans contract dangerous infections, thousands die. They pick it up in the most unlikely of places. We'll tell you that story in a moment.
But, first, approaching a quarter past the hour, Erica Hill joins us in Atlanta tonight with the headlines. Nice to see you.
ERICA HILL, HEADLINE NEWS: And you as well, Aaron. Welcome back.
We start off in Washington. A Senate vote on John Bolton's nomination as U.N. ambassador derailed again tonight. Democrats succeeded in blocking a vote until the Bush administration turns over additional classified information. Republican leaders failed to muster enough support to end the debate and proceed with a vote. Bolton's nomination has now been stalled for months. Opponents claim he is a polarizing figure, while supporters say he is the right man for the U.N. post. That vote should happen in June.
President Bush is giving the Palestinian Authority $50 million in direct aid to improve the quality of life for Palestinians. He made the announcement after meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House. Mr. Bush repeated his support for an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The Marine Corps today cleared Lieutenant Ilario Pantano on charges that he murdered two Iraqis last year, riddling their bodies with bullets. Officials say an investigation supports Pantano's story that he fired on the Iraqis in self-defense after they made menacing moves toward him.
In Tennessee today, four state lawmakers, indicted on charges they took bribes. They were arrested as part of an FBI investigation into allegations of public corruption. Agents called the sting operation "Tennessee waltz." They set up a phony company and sought to influence legislation by handing out bribe money. And tonight, a man wanted for murder is keeping police at bay. He remains perched atop a giant crane in Atlanta. You're looking at live pictures now. He is 18 stories high there above a construction site. He's been there since 4:00 Wednesday afternoon. The man is wanted in Florida in connection with the beating death of an ex- girlfriend.
And that's the latest from "Headline News" at this hour. Aaron, back over to you.
BROWN: Erica, thank you. That is the strangest story down there.
HILL: Very odd.
BROWN: Thank you.
Much more ahead in the hour, starting with the place that increasingly can kill you -- the hospital.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): He went in with a broken elbow. He came out with something worse.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He looked up at us with some terror in his eyes and said, am I going to die from this?
BROWN: This is a drug-resistant infection. It could have killed him, and it also might have been prevented.
Think it's tough for crooks to steal your identity? Just go online and ask one.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is just a guy posting that he's hacked into a checking account with a $2,100 balance.
BROWN: It's a virtual world where thieves talk shop, and they don't seem to mind that the law is listening.
And peek as well at the brave new world a lot of people seem to like, a world without wipple.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. Wipple, please don't squeeze the Charmin. Naughty, naughty.
BROWN: A world with TiVo. And, please, don't change the channel. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: We go to the hospital when we have to get well, but hospitals, it turns out, can be dangerous places. The Centers for Disease Control list infections caught in hospitals as the sixth leading cause of death, right after accidental injuries like car crashes. One precaution, our moms told us to do this, and at the hospital, they should tell everyone to do it, including your doctor: wash your hands. It does help, though it hardly solves the problem of infection.
Here's medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Christmas Day, 2002. The Wagner family celebrated with extra joy, because their son Raymond's elbow was healing. He'd broken it the night before in a sledding accident and had to have surgery in the hospital.
RAYMOND WAGNER JR., FATHER: We thought he was on the mend and we thought the worst was behind us.
COHEN: But the worst was yet to come.
RAYMOND WAGNER, JR.: Within a couple of days, he developed a fever, which persisted. And did not go away.
COHEN: The Wagners said at first doctors told them not to worry, but when the fever wouldn't go away, they put Raymond in the hospital, where they discovered an infection in his elbow.
RAYMOND WAGNER, JR.: It became very clear to us that this was a very serious bacteria germ that was in his arm, and we were quite concerned that, in fact, he might die, might lose his arm. We were standing over his hospital bed with a team of infectious disease doctors, and then a doctor looked over to him and said, Raymond, do you have any questions? And he looked up at us with some terror in his eyes and said, am I going to die from this?
COHEN: Over the next year, Raymond had six surgeries to try to get rid of the bug.
RAYMOND WAGNER III, SON: The pain was excruciating. I just remember sitting there, screaming, that this needle's being shoved into my bone, and that I could feel it.
COHEN: He was let out of the hospital only to have to go back in again.
RAYMOND WAGNER, JR.: I received a call from the doctor on a Saturday morning to tell me that the infection was not gone, that the latest test had revealed that it was still raging within his arm.
COHEN: CNN contacted a pediatrician, who helped care for Raymond. She said his infection almost certainly came from the hospital, because the fever broke so quickly, and the bacteria was found in his bone, where doctors had done the surgery.
Dr. Barry Farr is an expert in infections that patients get in hospitals.
DR. BARRY FARR, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Health care workers frequently move from room to room to room, and they pick up microbes as they go. Most studies show that they fail to wash their hands more than half the time. And even if they do wash their hands, they may not have disinfected their ink pen, their stethoscope, their otoscope, and all those other pieces of equipment that they carry from room to room.
LISA MCGIFFERT, CONSUMERS UNION: Hospital acquired infections affect 2 million people every year; 90,000 of them die. That's more than homicides and car accidents combined.
COHEN: Scary stuff, but, of course, if you need to go to the hospital, you need to go. And most people who do go to the hospital do not get an infection there. The American Hospital Association says, while patients do get infected in the hospital, not all infections start there.
DR. BENJAMIN CHU, AMERICAN HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION: This whole notion of hospital acquired infection, it's not at all -- it's not always clear, you know, that the infection is actually acquired in the hospital.
COHEN: Dr. Farr says there is something hospitals can do. His hospital is one of the few that tests high-risk patients for infections before they're admitted. If they come out positive, they're isolated, and staff members have to take special precautions, like wearing a robe and disposing of it immediately after seeing the patient.
Hospitals in northern Europe do this, and studies show it keeps infection rates way down.
But the Centers for Disease Control and the American Hospital Association want to see more studies.
CHU: I'm not absolutely certain of the data that -- the database that actually substantiates that kind of approach.
COHEN: After Raymond's ordeal, instead of suing the hospital, his parents decided to make a difference for other people. They lobbied for a bill in their home state of Missouri to make hospitals report their infection rates. Today, Raymond is 16, and hoping to play football at West Point.
RAYMOND WAGNER, JR.: After six surgeries, after countless days of lines going through his arms and through his chest cavity, into his heart, but in the end, he's back.
COHEN: Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, Atlanta.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Coming up on the program tonight, a little chat with cyber crooks trying to steal your identity. They're online. They're still out there.
And later, what happens to television now that you can zap the commercials away? It might only look like paradise.
In the meantime, we're begging you, don't zap this. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Don't know what the traffic is like in your town at 10:30 at night? That's what it's like in Central Park south. We're doing traffic and weather together. It's a nice fall day here in New York. Unfortunately, it's May.
The Internet has become the modern-day version of the open market in the town square. We can shop, trade, barter, place bids on items up for auction, Ebay. Yet for all the convenience, all the good, there's a serious downside to the Net, a dark one. Thieves lurking in the open market to steal and profit from your personal information, and they are good at it, and they don't mind saying so. Here's our technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAN CLEMENTS, CARDCOPS.COM: Here's a thief that says he has a Citibank credit card or checking account, and he wants to be paid via WU, which is Western Union, to make a deal. And if you want to make a deal with him, message him.
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Dan Clements of CardCops doesn't carry a badge or a gun, but he's on patrol in cyber space, in virtual black markets where thieves buy, sell, and barter personal information in underground chat rooms. The format is called IRC, or Internet relay chat, a low frequency hum in the World Wide Web. Think of it as the Internet equivalent of CB radio.
CLEMENTS: This is just a guy posting that he's hacked into a checking account with a $2,100 balance, and he's X'd out the numbers. He's proving he has access to it, and he wants to trade for some type of tool or ware, and he wants to split the money on this account.
SIEBERG (on camera): So this is somebody's checking account just waiting to be robbed?
CLEMENTS: Yes. And he's looking for help. He's looking for an accomplice.
SIEBERG (voice-over): It's a live look at identity theft, chitchat among con artists, happening in real time. If you've heard about personal data being stolen, a lot of it ends up here.
CLEMENTS: This is what they call a gold profile. This is all the information on this lady. We have her e-mail address, Ebay account, Paypal account, we have her first name, last name, we have her address, phone. We even have her Social Security number. We have her MMN, which is mother's maiden name. If the thief has this information, he can absolutely rip this lady's identity off in seconds. SIEBERG (on camera): Dan, help me understand this ID thief community or black market, if you will. Each of those names down the righthand side there, they're actual people in this sort of virtual world, trading all of this very real data in real time.
CLEMENTS: That is correct. These people in the chatroom, they're usually in Europe, and they're trading credit card and identities. They're swapping out different types of wares and tools so that they can commit crimes, but they're real. They're doing this right now.
SIEBERG: Clements doesn't have the means to track down the criminals, but he earns his living by spreading the word. His team alerts law enforcement, credit card associations, and merchants, many of whom pay for his information, and he even notifies consumers, whenever they spot a crime in the making.
CLEMENTS: Hello, Nestor. My name is Dan Clements with CardCops, and I'm investigating some fraud on your Mastercard ending in 1992.
SIEBERG: A man named Nestor's entire personal profile is posted. We have no trouble calling him since, well, we have his home number.
How do you feel knowing that all of this personal information of yours is in this chat room where anybody could come across it and buy and sell it? How does that make you feel?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my gosh. It's in a chat room?
SIEBERG: Yes.
CLEMENTS: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, no wonder because at this moment, I'm still getting charges, even from Spain, Italy.
SIEBERG: Does it scare you that this is happening?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it does, yes.
SIEBERG: Is it too late for Nestor now that this information is out there, Dan?
CLEMENTS: Well, it's too late in one regard, but, Nestor, you can put a fraud alert on your credit file.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I did that.
CLEMENTS: Oh, you did that? That's good.
SIEBERG: A little later, Clements gets a private communication.
So, Dan, somebody's messaging you right now?
CLEMENTS: Right. They're sending me an instant message and let's see what they're -- what they have to say. SIEBERG: What do they often want?
CLEMENTS: This particular gentleman is offering credit cards with CVV2, full info and PayPal. So he has those available and he wants to either sell them to me or trade them to me.
SIEBERG: A whole new meaning to the phrase "online shopping," price tags on your priceless information, bought and sold in a marketplace right under our noses.
Daniel Sieberg, CNN, Calabas, California.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: That is amazing. Makes you use cash, if places took cash.
Still to come tonight, the battle between people with TiVo and the TV executives and ad agencies trying to cope.
Also, inside the word -- the world rather of guns and Bloods and Crips and crime. A unique documentary, and you'll see a piece of it here, first, because, around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Beyond splitting the atom, there is, of course, the invention of TiVo. Before TiVo, B.T., as historians will some day call it, you had to schedule your life around television. After TiVo, A.T., you can now watch whatever, whenever and skip the commercials, too. Or as a very smart boss of ours once suggested, steal TV, because TV isn't free. It depends not just on ads, but on you watching the ads. But, in the A.T. world, you don't, or you don't watch as much as advertisers would like, which means trouble for us and work for Jeff Greenfield.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And now, let me tell you about McTavish's skinless weenies.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): Your grandparents listened to them on the radio. Your parents watched them on tiny black-and-whites. Today, they fill those wide, flat high-definition plasma screens.
Ever since the birth of commercial radio some 75 years ago, advertising has been the economic foundation of the broadcast industry. But, increasingly, at gatherings like this National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, the talk is of a series of technological devices that could well pose a clear and present threat to that foundation.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, I remember this one.
GREENFIELD: In fact, one of them is on display just a few miles from the Vegas strip in the living room of Jamie and Adam DiOrio.
ADAM DIORIO, DVR OWNER: You hit the fast-forward button, and it's like regular fast-forward on a VCR or something.
GREENFIELD: He's talking about a digital video recorder, the TiVo in this case, that records and stores TV programs. It's a giant step up in simplicity from the familiar VCR. It requires no tape and no skill beyond the ability to point and click. No flashing 12:00, 12:00 with the DVR.
And now, cable companies across America are offering these recorders, these DVRs, built right into the set top box for a relatively small extra fee. Cox cable's Gina Juhas.
GINA JUHAS, COX CABLE: We have had an overwhelming response to the DVR, and our customers are growing every day. They can't imagine their life before DVRs.
GREENFIELD: Some 7 million American homes now have DVRs. Within three or four years, more than a third of households will likely have them. So what's the bad news for the TV industry?
JAMIE DIORIO, DVR OWNER: As soon as the commercials hit, we usually go right through them, and it's nice because it consolidates the show, so we're able to watch the hour long show in 40 minutes. For the most part, we just go right through them.
GREENFIELD: And if tens of millions of viewers will soon be able to fast forward through TV shows, why would advertisers spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for a commercial?
Do they ever watch them?
J. DIORIO: No.
A. DIORIO: Not really.
GREENFIELD: This question hits right at the big broadcast networks. Unlike cable networks that get money from the cable systems that carry them, broadcast networks make just about all of their money from ads, and they know they have a problem.
Peter Chernin oversees the Fox networks.
PETER CHERNIN, FOX NETWORKS: DVR's going to have some impact on our ad business. Is it 5 percent? Is it 20 percent? I don't know the answer, but it will have an impact.
GREENFIELD: One possible impact -- the end of the sort of repetitive ads at that made icons out of characters like the Maytag repairman or Mr. Wipple.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. Wipple, please don't squeeze the Charmin. Naughty, naughty.
GREENFIELD: "Ad Week" writer Barbara Lippert. BARBARA LIPPERT, AD WEEK: A lot of people could argue that it's a very good thing that we will never again see the likes of a Mr. Wipple, because the kind of advertising he did was very, very annoying and repetitive. Now, advertisers now try and be much cooler.
GREENFIELD: Other notions include product placement, putting your product right smack in the middle of a program, the way it's done on reality shows like "Survivor" and "The Apprentice."
And there's even the prospect of moving away from ads. Producers are already making lots of money from sales and rentals of DVDs. Indeed, there's even the heretical notion of having viewers pay for programming, the way they do with HBO and other pay cable networks.
But whatever the future holds, viewers like the DiOrios knows that technology has given them far more control over what they watch and when they watch and what they don't watch than they've ever had before, and they're not about to give it back.
BILL COSBY, "THE COSBY SHOW": They can watch whatever they want.
Jeff Greenfield, CNN, Las Vegas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, a documentary that captures life inside the Blood, the violent L.A.-based street gang, and waiting for a verdict in a court in Indonesia -- why a young woman could be looking at a life behind bars, or perhaps, death. We'll take a break first. A particularly fine set of commercials coming up, because this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: In a moment, a look at life and death in an L.A. gang.
And later still, tomorrow's papers tonight. But only if you watch all the commercials.
Now at quarter till the hour, time for the other news of the day. Erica Hill in Atlanta. Erica watches all the commercials twice.
HILL: I love the commercials, because they pay my bills.
Aaron, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger added his muscle to the controversy over funding drugs like Viagra for sex offenders. Schwarzenegger called the idea a dangerous threat to innocent people and has ordered all California state agencies to cut all funding for these drugs for sex offenders now and pass the legislation to stop it later. No one knows for sure yet whether California has actually paid for performance enhancing drugs for sex offenders.
The Michael Jackson trial may go back to the videotape one last time. The judge ruled jurors can see a replay of the first police interview with Michael Jackson's accuser. Defense lawyers say they'll call the boy back to the witness stand if prosecutors show the tape. That would put Michael Jackson and his accuser face to face before the jury one more time.
A Florida grand jury has indicted a 17-year-old boy on charges of attempted murder, kidnapping and rape. Milagro Cunningham is accused of kidnapping an 8-year-old girl, then leaving her to die crammed in a recycle bin covered with rocks in abandoned landfill. Cunningham told -- could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted on all counts.
And trouble in paradise in another courtroom, this time in Bali, Indonesia, where prosecutors are demanding life in prison for a 27- year-old Australian woman. She is accused of smuggling nine pounds of marijuana into Bali. Now, she says the drugs were packed in her unlocked body board bag. The trial has outraged many Australians. Police have clamped tight security around the court where a verdict is expected within hours. And something the whole world will be watching, Aaron.
BROWN: Erica, thank you very much. Erica Hill in Atlanta.
In 1993, two documentary filmmakers came up with an idea to capture a violent world on film. They wanted to answer this question -- what's it like to live, to survive, to be a member of the Bloods, the notorious L.A. street gang? Their project would last a decade, a journey into darkness, one of the men would call it. But also a life experience. The film is called "Slippin': Ten Years With the Bloods."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's about revenge. It's about pain. It's about suffering. And it's about you take one of mine, and I'm going take one of yours.
TOMMY SOWARDS, DIRECTOR: "Slippin'" is a documentary about the Rolling '20s blood gang group. It's about five friends who we meet back in '93, and we follow them for a period of ten years. We wanted to show the reality of what life would be for them and kind of an ethnographic cinema verite style.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every day is stressful in L.A. being a gang member. And ain't no gang member can even sit here and say it's not a day that go by that they don't think about getting killed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We belong to the Rolling '20s Gang way back in '93. There I am, Low Down. KK, which stands for "Krazy Killer," was the newest of our bunch. CK, which stands for "Crip Killer" he was 16, and he was the youngest. And Dig Dug, he actually got his name from a video game. Bloods fly red. Crips fly blue. Our enemies were the Crips.
SOWARDS: Jumbo was the guy that introduced me to Low Down and introduced me to the others, yet he wasn't a Blood. Jumbo wasn't a Crip. Jumbo was basically a hustler, a drug dealer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tastes just like candy.
SOWARDS: Within the gang structure, it seems like the young ones have to do the most dirt. The young ones have to do the most crimes to prove themselves, you know, to get in the gang or to be accepted by everybody else.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: CK, also known as little mike shows us where he was shot by some Harlem Crip.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: About four shots were fired. Then I ran up to that step right there, and I got hit.
SOWARDS: Little mike was at that stage in his life, and I think maybe that after Little Mike died, they were all feeling that maybe we showed him the wrong example.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Little Mike, you know, he was just like -- I always told him to slow down, though. I always told him he was slippin', always told him to watch your back. I always told -- got on him just like he was my little brother, because he was young. He was like the baby of the bunch. But treacherous at the same time. And a lot of people was jealous of him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Little Mike was honest, truthful. He didn't lie. He didn't need to lie.
SOWARDS: Low down, he's a sweet character. He's got a really big heart. I think he's caught between his big heart and the rough edges and lifestyle that he was brought up in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're losing period, because we're losing the honor. We're losing who we are. We're losing the dignity of who we are. And we're losing the respect of who we are.
SOWARDS: That was Low Down in '93. I'm doing an interview. And here comes out this big gun is pulled out. It was like a toy to him. It's like a little boy, you know with his truck, or a teenager with his car. I mean, his gun belonged to him at that time.
And we see guns, I think, throughout the entire piece. He's moved to Hollywood, which to him is a huge step.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After Little Mike's death, the area wasn't secure, so I felt we had to move. At last we got our own place.
I didn't think I was going to move over here this far. I thought probably going to move somewhere in the hood, just waiting around to get blasted on. But I got to use my head. If I want to live, I got to use my head.
SOWARDS: Little Mike's young death really, really affected these characters, it affected all of them. None of them really achieved the idea of the word bling bling, to make lots of money, like you see in the music videos. It's a part of the idea of this documentary is to take the glamour out of being a gangster. It's just a way to survive.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: A very good piece, that.
The headline in the paper says "he is a grand father." We'll tell you what the story is after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Just doing a last-minute sorting out here.
Time to look at morning papers from around the country and around the world.
"Washington Times" starts us off. "Democrats block vote on Bolton day after judicial deal. Senate's unity dries up." But hey, it lasted 24 hours, so it's a start. It's got to start somewhere.
I found this headline kind of odd, in the sense that it does seem to be pushing a point of view. "Sex-ed opponents part of movement to reclaim schools." Reclaim schools from whom?
Anyway, that's "The Washington Times" today.
"Dallas Morning News," speaking of politics. "DeLay's PAC loses first court ruling." That's Tom DeLay -- you knew that, didn't you? "Treasurer plans to appeal, ordered to pay $197,000 to the Democrats." It's kind of a complicated political story.
I mentioned this going to break. "The San Antonio Express News." "He is a grand father." He is that. "Man steps up when his daughter's little girl needs a kidney." So he donated one. He is a grand father.
"The Guardian" -- there was nothing on the front page of "The Guardian" I really wanted to mention, except this. Down in the corner here, "be a successful freelance journalist." If you're wondering how to end up with a job not unlike this one, go to this school and be a successful freelance -- it's how Jeff Greenfield got his start in the business.
Either that, or he went to Yale. I confuse the two.
"The Daily News" here in New York. "Playing with fire. Commish: Fire unions risk lives, telling trucks to slow down." This kind of thing happens all the time in New York, I swear.
Well, how much time we got, Will? Really? One minute?
Let me slow down and go into some detail about "The Examiner" here in Washington. I've never mistimed this segment, I don't think.
"High school counselor waited week to report sexual assault." Teens who allegedly attacked 16-year-old student -- think about this -- remained in class with her for several days after the incident took place.
There are certain times with certain stories where you want to get to the subject of the story and go, now, what exactly were you thinking?
"The Chicago Sun-Times," "The Longest Yard 2" is opening this weekend and got more stars than "Madagascar." And while we're speaking of Chicago, the weather tomorrow in the Windy City is "erratic."
We'll wrap it up in a moment, won't we? Yes, we shall. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): This week in history, the Golden Gate Bridge opened to pedestrians on May 27th, 1937. Cars started crossing the next day. Four years earlier, against public scrutiny and environmental dangers, builder Joseph Strauss began its construction. It remains an engineering marvel to this day.
And on May 25th, 1979, it was a dark day when American Airlines flight 191 crashed, killing all 270 on board and two people on the ground, destined for L.A. from Chicago's O'Hare International. Engine problems caused the aircraft to nose-dive. It is the most deadly airline crash in U.S. history.
And that is "This Week in History."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: So we covered today and yesterday. Good to have you with us. Tonight, we're all back here tomorrow. Tomorrow, among the things we have is Dana (ph) -- right? -- Dana Kapatrick (ph), the racecar driver will be with us. That and more tomorrow on NEWSNIGHT, 10:00 Eastern time. Until then, good night for all of us.
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Aired May 26, 2005 - 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. And consider this, consider what would happen if American troops were to be in Iraq, not for six more months, or ever six more years, but for a decade, a decade and-a-half.
Today, an expert on the region predicted just that. And even those who disagree with him, also concede that Iraq seems tougher now than it was before the elections, And deadlier now than it's been in a long time.
Northeast of Baghdad today, insurgents shot down an American helicopter. The Pentagon has now confirmed that both crew members died. In the last seven days, 25 American troops have died. Sectarian violence in Iraq has taken close to 600 lives. And today as major combat goes on in the Sunni Triangle, soldiers also launched a nationwide sweep for insurgents in major cities.
In a moment, the implications. First, the search for a single insurgent, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, and what it might mean. Or given the larger picture, whether it means much at all.
We begin tonight with CNN's Ryan Chilcote.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Young Abu al Haraf receives a final farewell from his comrades before getting in the truck.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "One push on this button, and I'll be with God in heaven."
CHILCOTE: Moments later, his truck is barreling along, towards the narrator tells us, a group of U.S. soldiers. Then there's an explosion. It's all part of a propaganda video for the terrorist organization Unity of God and Jihad, known since late last year as al Qaeda in Iraq, run by Abu Musab al Zarqawi. But if Zarqawi is severely wounded or even dead, would the insurgency change?
MAJ. GEN. JAMES A. MARKS, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: We will see no change. If Zarqawi is completely out of the picture, if he's dead, if he's been removed from country and he can't be brought back in because of concern for his life, then somebody else is going to step up.
CHILCOTE: Besides, these analysts say, he has already rendered himself nearly irrelevant. Maybe making major decisions, but mostly delegating to a terror network that has seen explosive growth.
And Zarqawi's network is not the only independent minded part of the insurgency, almost all the analysts agree, there's a sizable portion of terror mercenaries out there, professional bandits ready to carry out any act of violence in exchange for money.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We're here at your place. We killed two of them, and they went away. We're going to stop them.
CHILCOTE: And there is a so-called home grown indigenous Iraqi resistance, made up primarily of Baathist supporters of the former regime and against the U.S.'s presence.
The Baathists are a powerful force in the insurgency. Experts say they're well funded with stolen millions from the former regime. They have good organizational skills as former soldiers under Saddam. And they are mostly secular, but not letting ideological differences get in the way of a common cause, willing to work with other terror groups.
BOBBY GHOSH, TIME: They sometimes work together, but they like to keep each other at a certain arm's length. They see each other as the enemy's enemy, but not quite as a friend.
CHILCOTE: U.S. military commanders thought the big turnout in Iraq's first Democratic election in half a century would take the steam out of the insurgency, but not for long. Now the insurgents are said to be setting their sights on spoiling Democratic milestones to come.
So how to stop them? The consensus seems to be the U.S. will have to just wait it out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The best thing the U.S. ministry can do is to make it clear that they are going to stay the course for as long as it takes. It's a marathon, you know, whoever runs out of breath first loses.
CHILCOTE: A loss to the insurgents would allow Zarqawi's network and all the terror insurgents to see their dream of Iraq realized.
Ryan Chilcote, CNN, Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: On now to an especially inflammatory facet of the war on terror. Today the general in charge of the prison at Guantanamo Bay said investigators have found no credible evidence that a Koran had been flushed down the toilet to make inmates talk. Other incidents, yes, but not that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRIG. GEN. JAY HOOD, COMMANDING GENERAL: We did identified 13 incidents of alleged mishandling of the Koran by joint task force personnel. 10 of those were by a guard and 3 by interrogators.
We found that in only 5 of those 13 incidents, 4 by guards and 1 by an interrogator, there was what could be broadly defined as mishandling of a Koran. None of these five incidents was a result of a failure to follow standard operating procedures in place at the time the incident occurred.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: That was as much detail as was offered. This comes a day after the ACLU released a batch of government documents, including an FBI memorandum dated August of 2002. That memo described one inmate's complaint that a Koran had been flushed down the toilet. An allegation the inmate was asked about at a later interview and declined to repeat.
You could almost open any page of any paper this morning and read about the difficulty of recruiting in wartime. And the question of women in combat. A recruiter was wooing Mike Doonesbury's daughter in the comic strip. On the front page, a Defense budget bill passes after language further limiting the role of women in the service is removed.
The Congress already prohibits women from infantry combat jobs, but that hasn't, of course, meant women are kept away from war.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): In truth, most of us do react differently when a woman dies in combat. But pulling them off the front lines would have created a whole new range of problems.
LAWRENCE KORB, FORMER ASST. SECY OF DEFENSE: Without opening up opportunities for women, you simply would not have been able to get enough qualified men. People have argued that the American people somehow value their daughters' lives more than their sons', and that's simply not true.
BROWN: You could argue the best known soldiers of the war in Iraq have been women. P.O.W. Shoshana Johnson, the captured and rescued Jessica Lynch. But when a powerful Congressman claimed the military didn't really want women in harm's way, a new debate emerged. He proposed that women be banned from combat support jobs, such as gunners on armored vehicles used to protect convoys.
REP. DUNCAN HUNTER, (R) CALIFORNIA: There may be people here in Washington D.C. who want to send young women into direct ground combat, but the vast majority of those in the military don't want to do that.
REP. IKE SKELTON, (D) MISSOURI: The women are putting their heart, their soul, their professionalism, their careers on the line every time they put the uniform on every day. And I think it's wrong to have come up and challenged these women and what they do for our country in this fashion. BROWN: Women comprise nearly 10 percent of the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. And to date, 35 have died in Iraq in action, 6 in Afghanistan.
It is in Iraq where those combat support jobs are among the most dangerous. Driving a convoy, for example or serving as a military policeman, puts a woman on the front line. Even if women are not allowed in infantry units yet.
KORB: What's going to happen is eventually we're going to drop the last restriction on women. In the wars we're liable to fight now, you're in more danger in what we call a combat support thing -- driving a truck in Iraq or serving in military police. Many times than you are in an infantry unit. And when these support units come under fire, the women have performed heroically.
BROWN: So for now, this is not likely to change. Our sons and daughters will go off to war. And if we're lucky, will come home intact, like Shelly Johns of Paris, Illinois, one of many who risked to serve.
TAMMY JOHNS, SHELLY JOHNS MOTHER: I told her we'll have a party for every single holiday she missed, even St. Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day, the whole thing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: The importance of the Zarqawi network and Guantanamo is just part of the war on terror and only a part of the war in Iraq as well. We're joined tonight by Rick Barton from the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington and Dan Goure, who teaches at the National Defense University and is vice president of the Lexington Institute.
First on Zarqawi, Dan. Does it really matter if he's dead or alive?
DAN GOURE, NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY: Oh, it absolutely matters. Look, he is still a symbol. He was the prince of al Qaeda in Iraq. You get the prince, that scores big points.
Secondly, he really did the most, grandly so, to create the al Qaeda network in Iraq and to run lots of operations. And therefore getting him has that value.
There was even a letter out, we captured from one of his couriers a couple of months ago, complaining -- it was a complaint to him, really, from subordinates, that they hadn't seen him. They didn't know what was going on. They couldn't trust the people that allegedly were coming to them in his name.
So I don't think that the characterization from your earlier piece that said it wouldn't matter, because they're decentralized and all. I don't think that's true. I think leadership in these organizations matters tremendously, particularly in combat situations, particularly in Iraq. BROWN: Let me -- let me draw Rick into this. Rick, I think, as I read you, you feel that Zarqawi is less important than Dan does. But wouldn't -- if he is in fact dead, or can't lead, wouldn't at least the in fighting to replace -- and that sort of thing occurs all the time -- wouldn't it at least that be helpful to the coalition in Iraq?
RICK BARTON, CTR. STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: I think it will be helpful to the coalition, but whether it will be important beyond that, is, I think, overstating the case.
There's no question that leadership matters, as Dan just suggested, but he was an almost-nobody. He became somebody. Now, the market opportunity for somebody like him is even greater, and so it's -- there's likely to be a successor, and there's likely to be that part of the insurgency.
BROWN: I want to talk -- let me move off Zarqawi for a second, because what we see in this last month is this terrible rash of violence and killing over there. We're a ways into this now. Why -- Dan, I guess start with you. Why is it -- does it at least appear to be getting worse?
GOURE: It appears so because it is so. Why is that? Because, in fact, we allowed an insurgency, or several different branches of an insurgency, to take hold in a major way. I mean, this was a failure that goes back to early 2003, to the end -- or beginning -- of 2004.
Once you allow that to happen, you short of devolve the situation in a year. It's going to take you five or 10 to get it back. Eliminating the Iraqi army, allowing Falluja to be a pest hole of terrorists -- there's a whole -- not securing the Syrian border, still not done. All of those things virtually guaranteed that you would create an insurgency of massive proportions, really, in Iraq, and that's simply continuing to this day.
BROWN: Rick, one call (ph) wrote today, 10 to 15 years. Does that seem an outlandish number or a realistic number to you?
BARTON: I think it's a possible number but unlikely because the patience of the Iraqi government and their own political viability as the system becomes more democratic, as it gets more open, will depend on their being able to say to the Americans and the West basically that the time for our being there has run out.
BROWN: So, it may not be that the Americans grow weary of being in Iraq, more -- it's that the Iraqis will grow weary of our being there?
BARTON: I think that's the case. I would say that probably the two most unifying political themes in Iraq today, one, make our streets safe, two, when will the foreigners leave? What should be the role of the foreigners? What are they doing here since they're not delivering the public safety that they seem to be here in numbers to do. BROWN: Dan, let me give you the last word. Would it be your guess that the year ahead is going to be more difficult for the Americans and the Iraqis than the year that's passed?
GOURE: It's going to be, I think, more difficult, but it is going to be, I think, also more difficult in a positive direction. U.S. forces have got the bit in their teeth and are better able to conduct operations, know how to better, and the Iraqis, I believe, will come up on the net in a much better fashion and be able to take more of their security. That also means, as you're conducting these operations, more casualties on both sides this next year.
BROWN: Gentlemen, good to have you with us. We'll talk again soon, I hope. Thank you.
BARTON: Thank you.
GOURE: Thank you.
BROWN: Every year, millions of Americans contract dangerous infections, thousands die. They pick it up in the most unlikely of places. We'll tell you that story in a moment.
But, first, approaching a quarter past the hour, Erica Hill joins us in Atlanta tonight with the headlines. Nice to see you.
ERICA HILL, HEADLINE NEWS: And you as well, Aaron. Welcome back.
We start off in Washington. A Senate vote on John Bolton's nomination as U.N. ambassador derailed again tonight. Democrats succeeded in blocking a vote until the Bush administration turns over additional classified information. Republican leaders failed to muster enough support to end the debate and proceed with a vote. Bolton's nomination has now been stalled for months. Opponents claim he is a polarizing figure, while supporters say he is the right man for the U.N. post. That vote should happen in June.
President Bush is giving the Palestinian Authority $50 million in direct aid to improve the quality of life for Palestinians. He made the announcement after meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House. Mr. Bush repeated his support for an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The Marine Corps today cleared Lieutenant Ilario Pantano on charges that he murdered two Iraqis last year, riddling their bodies with bullets. Officials say an investigation supports Pantano's story that he fired on the Iraqis in self-defense after they made menacing moves toward him.
In Tennessee today, four state lawmakers, indicted on charges they took bribes. They were arrested as part of an FBI investigation into allegations of public corruption. Agents called the sting operation "Tennessee waltz." They set up a phony company and sought to influence legislation by handing out bribe money. And tonight, a man wanted for murder is keeping police at bay. He remains perched atop a giant crane in Atlanta. You're looking at live pictures now. He is 18 stories high there above a construction site. He's been there since 4:00 Wednesday afternoon. The man is wanted in Florida in connection with the beating death of an ex- girlfriend.
And that's the latest from "Headline News" at this hour. Aaron, back over to you.
BROWN: Erica, thank you. That is the strangest story down there.
HILL: Very odd.
BROWN: Thank you.
Much more ahead in the hour, starting with the place that increasingly can kill you -- the hospital.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): He went in with a broken elbow. He came out with something worse.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He looked up at us with some terror in his eyes and said, am I going to die from this?
BROWN: This is a drug-resistant infection. It could have killed him, and it also might have been prevented.
Think it's tough for crooks to steal your identity? Just go online and ask one.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is just a guy posting that he's hacked into a checking account with a $2,100 balance.
BROWN: It's a virtual world where thieves talk shop, and they don't seem to mind that the law is listening.
And peek as well at the brave new world a lot of people seem to like, a world without wipple.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. Wipple, please don't squeeze the Charmin. Naughty, naughty.
BROWN: A world with TiVo. And, please, don't change the channel. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: We go to the hospital when we have to get well, but hospitals, it turns out, can be dangerous places. The Centers for Disease Control list infections caught in hospitals as the sixth leading cause of death, right after accidental injuries like car crashes. One precaution, our moms told us to do this, and at the hospital, they should tell everyone to do it, including your doctor: wash your hands. It does help, though it hardly solves the problem of infection.
Here's medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Christmas Day, 2002. The Wagner family celebrated with extra joy, because their son Raymond's elbow was healing. He'd broken it the night before in a sledding accident and had to have surgery in the hospital.
RAYMOND WAGNER JR., FATHER: We thought he was on the mend and we thought the worst was behind us.
COHEN: But the worst was yet to come.
RAYMOND WAGNER, JR.: Within a couple of days, he developed a fever, which persisted. And did not go away.
COHEN: The Wagners said at first doctors told them not to worry, but when the fever wouldn't go away, they put Raymond in the hospital, where they discovered an infection in his elbow.
RAYMOND WAGNER, JR.: It became very clear to us that this was a very serious bacteria germ that was in his arm, and we were quite concerned that, in fact, he might die, might lose his arm. We were standing over his hospital bed with a team of infectious disease doctors, and then a doctor looked over to him and said, Raymond, do you have any questions? And he looked up at us with some terror in his eyes and said, am I going to die from this?
COHEN: Over the next year, Raymond had six surgeries to try to get rid of the bug.
RAYMOND WAGNER III, SON: The pain was excruciating. I just remember sitting there, screaming, that this needle's being shoved into my bone, and that I could feel it.
COHEN: He was let out of the hospital only to have to go back in again.
RAYMOND WAGNER, JR.: I received a call from the doctor on a Saturday morning to tell me that the infection was not gone, that the latest test had revealed that it was still raging within his arm.
COHEN: CNN contacted a pediatrician, who helped care for Raymond. She said his infection almost certainly came from the hospital, because the fever broke so quickly, and the bacteria was found in his bone, where doctors had done the surgery.
Dr. Barry Farr is an expert in infections that patients get in hospitals.
DR. BARRY FARR, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Health care workers frequently move from room to room to room, and they pick up microbes as they go. Most studies show that they fail to wash their hands more than half the time. And even if they do wash their hands, they may not have disinfected their ink pen, their stethoscope, their otoscope, and all those other pieces of equipment that they carry from room to room.
LISA MCGIFFERT, CONSUMERS UNION: Hospital acquired infections affect 2 million people every year; 90,000 of them die. That's more than homicides and car accidents combined.
COHEN: Scary stuff, but, of course, if you need to go to the hospital, you need to go. And most people who do go to the hospital do not get an infection there. The American Hospital Association says, while patients do get infected in the hospital, not all infections start there.
DR. BENJAMIN CHU, AMERICAN HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION: This whole notion of hospital acquired infection, it's not at all -- it's not always clear, you know, that the infection is actually acquired in the hospital.
COHEN: Dr. Farr says there is something hospitals can do. His hospital is one of the few that tests high-risk patients for infections before they're admitted. If they come out positive, they're isolated, and staff members have to take special precautions, like wearing a robe and disposing of it immediately after seeing the patient.
Hospitals in northern Europe do this, and studies show it keeps infection rates way down.
But the Centers for Disease Control and the American Hospital Association want to see more studies.
CHU: I'm not absolutely certain of the data that -- the database that actually substantiates that kind of approach.
COHEN: After Raymond's ordeal, instead of suing the hospital, his parents decided to make a difference for other people. They lobbied for a bill in their home state of Missouri to make hospitals report their infection rates. Today, Raymond is 16, and hoping to play football at West Point.
RAYMOND WAGNER, JR.: After six surgeries, after countless days of lines going through his arms and through his chest cavity, into his heart, but in the end, he's back.
COHEN: Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, Atlanta.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Coming up on the program tonight, a little chat with cyber crooks trying to steal your identity. They're online. They're still out there.
And later, what happens to television now that you can zap the commercials away? It might only look like paradise.
In the meantime, we're begging you, don't zap this. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Don't know what the traffic is like in your town at 10:30 at night? That's what it's like in Central Park south. We're doing traffic and weather together. It's a nice fall day here in New York. Unfortunately, it's May.
The Internet has become the modern-day version of the open market in the town square. We can shop, trade, barter, place bids on items up for auction, Ebay. Yet for all the convenience, all the good, there's a serious downside to the Net, a dark one. Thieves lurking in the open market to steal and profit from your personal information, and they are good at it, and they don't mind saying so. Here's our technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAN CLEMENTS, CARDCOPS.COM: Here's a thief that says he has a Citibank credit card or checking account, and he wants to be paid via WU, which is Western Union, to make a deal. And if you want to make a deal with him, message him.
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Dan Clements of CardCops doesn't carry a badge or a gun, but he's on patrol in cyber space, in virtual black markets where thieves buy, sell, and barter personal information in underground chat rooms. The format is called IRC, or Internet relay chat, a low frequency hum in the World Wide Web. Think of it as the Internet equivalent of CB radio.
CLEMENTS: This is just a guy posting that he's hacked into a checking account with a $2,100 balance, and he's X'd out the numbers. He's proving he has access to it, and he wants to trade for some type of tool or ware, and he wants to split the money on this account.
SIEBERG (on camera): So this is somebody's checking account just waiting to be robbed?
CLEMENTS: Yes. And he's looking for help. He's looking for an accomplice.
SIEBERG (voice-over): It's a live look at identity theft, chitchat among con artists, happening in real time. If you've heard about personal data being stolen, a lot of it ends up here.
CLEMENTS: This is what they call a gold profile. This is all the information on this lady. We have her e-mail address, Ebay account, Paypal account, we have her first name, last name, we have her address, phone. We even have her Social Security number. We have her MMN, which is mother's maiden name. If the thief has this information, he can absolutely rip this lady's identity off in seconds. SIEBERG (on camera): Dan, help me understand this ID thief community or black market, if you will. Each of those names down the righthand side there, they're actual people in this sort of virtual world, trading all of this very real data in real time.
CLEMENTS: That is correct. These people in the chatroom, they're usually in Europe, and they're trading credit card and identities. They're swapping out different types of wares and tools so that they can commit crimes, but they're real. They're doing this right now.
SIEBERG: Clements doesn't have the means to track down the criminals, but he earns his living by spreading the word. His team alerts law enforcement, credit card associations, and merchants, many of whom pay for his information, and he even notifies consumers, whenever they spot a crime in the making.
CLEMENTS: Hello, Nestor. My name is Dan Clements with CardCops, and I'm investigating some fraud on your Mastercard ending in 1992.
SIEBERG: A man named Nestor's entire personal profile is posted. We have no trouble calling him since, well, we have his home number.
How do you feel knowing that all of this personal information of yours is in this chat room where anybody could come across it and buy and sell it? How does that make you feel?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my gosh. It's in a chat room?
SIEBERG: Yes.
CLEMENTS: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, no wonder because at this moment, I'm still getting charges, even from Spain, Italy.
SIEBERG: Does it scare you that this is happening?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it does, yes.
SIEBERG: Is it too late for Nestor now that this information is out there, Dan?
CLEMENTS: Well, it's too late in one regard, but, Nestor, you can put a fraud alert on your credit file.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I did that.
CLEMENTS: Oh, you did that? That's good.
SIEBERG: A little later, Clements gets a private communication.
So, Dan, somebody's messaging you right now?
CLEMENTS: Right. They're sending me an instant message and let's see what they're -- what they have to say. SIEBERG: What do they often want?
CLEMENTS: This particular gentleman is offering credit cards with CVV2, full info and PayPal. So he has those available and he wants to either sell them to me or trade them to me.
SIEBERG: A whole new meaning to the phrase "online shopping," price tags on your priceless information, bought and sold in a marketplace right under our noses.
Daniel Sieberg, CNN, Calabas, California.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: That is amazing. Makes you use cash, if places took cash.
Still to come tonight, the battle between people with TiVo and the TV executives and ad agencies trying to cope.
Also, inside the word -- the world rather of guns and Bloods and Crips and crime. A unique documentary, and you'll see a piece of it here, first, because, around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Beyond splitting the atom, there is, of course, the invention of TiVo. Before TiVo, B.T., as historians will some day call it, you had to schedule your life around television. After TiVo, A.T., you can now watch whatever, whenever and skip the commercials, too. Or as a very smart boss of ours once suggested, steal TV, because TV isn't free. It depends not just on ads, but on you watching the ads. But, in the A.T. world, you don't, or you don't watch as much as advertisers would like, which means trouble for us and work for Jeff Greenfield.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And now, let me tell you about McTavish's skinless weenies.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): Your grandparents listened to them on the radio. Your parents watched them on tiny black-and-whites. Today, they fill those wide, flat high-definition plasma screens.
Ever since the birth of commercial radio some 75 years ago, advertising has been the economic foundation of the broadcast industry. But, increasingly, at gatherings like this National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, the talk is of a series of technological devices that could well pose a clear and present threat to that foundation.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, I remember this one.
GREENFIELD: In fact, one of them is on display just a few miles from the Vegas strip in the living room of Jamie and Adam DiOrio.
ADAM DIORIO, DVR OWNER: You hit the fast-forward button, and it's like regular fast-forward on a VCR or something.
GREENFIELD: He's talking about a digital video recorder, the TiVo in this case, that records and stores TV programs. It's a giant step up in simplicity from the familiar VCR. It requires no tape and no skill beyond the ability to point and click. No flashing 12:00, 12:00 with the DVR.
And now, cable companies across America are offering these recorders, these DVRs, built right into the set top box for a relatively small extra fee. Cox cable's Gina Juhas.
GINA JUHAS, COX CABLE: We have had an overwhelming response to the DVR, and our customers are growing every day. They can't imagine their life before DVRs.
GREENFIELD: Some 7 million American homes now have DVRs. Within three or four years, more than a third of households will likely have them. So what's the bad news for the TV industry?
JAMIE DIORIO, DVR OWNER: As soon as the commercials hit, we usually go right through them, and it's nice because it consolidates the show, so we're able to watch the hour long show in 40 minutes. For the most part, we just go right through them.
GREENFIELD: And if tens of millions of viewers will soon be able to fast forward through TV shows, why would advertisers spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for a commercial?
Do they ever watch them?
J. DIORIO: No.
A. DIORIO: Not really.
GREENFIELD: This question hits right at the big broadcast networks. Unlike cable networks that get money from the cable systems that carry them, broadcast networks make just about all of their money from ads, and they know they have a problem.
Peter Chernin oversees the Fox networks.
PETER CHERNIN, FOX NETWORKS: DVR's going to have some impact on our ad business. Is it 5 percent? Is it 20 percent? I don't know the answer, but it will have an impact.
GREENFIELD: One possible impact -- the end of the sort of repetitive ads at that made icons out of characters like the Maytag repairman or Mr. Wipple.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. Wipple, please don't squeeze the Charmin. Naughty, naughty.
GREENFIELD: "Ad Week" writer Barbara Lippert. BARBARA LIPPERT, AD WEEK: A lot of people could argue that it's a very good thing that we will never again see the likes of a Mr. Wipple, because the kind of advertising he did was very, very annoying and repetitive. Now, advertisers now try and be much cooler.
GREENFIELD: Other notions include product placement, putting your product right smack in the middle of a program, the way it's done on reality shows like "Survivor" and "The Apprentice."
And there's even the prospect of moving away from ads. Producers are already making lots of money from sales and rentals of DVDs. Indeed, there's even the heretical notion of having viewers pay for programming, the way they do with HBO and other pay cable networks.
But whatever the future holds, viewers like the DiOrios knows that technology has given them far more control over what they watch and when they watch and what they don't watch than they've ever had before, and they're not about to give it back.
BILL COSBY, "THE COSBY SHOW": They can watch whatever they want.
Jeff Greenfield, CNN, Las Vegas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, a documentary that captures life inside the Blood, the violent L.A.-based street gang, and waiting for a verdict in a court in Indonesia -- why a young woman could be looking at a life behind bars, or perhaps, death. We'll take a break first. A particularly fine set of commercials coming up, because this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: In a moment, a look at life and death in an L.A. gang.
And later still, tomorrow's papers tonight. But only if you watch all the commercials.
Now at quarter till the hour, time for the other news of the day. Erica Hill in Atlanta. Erica watches all the commercials twice.
HILL: I love the commercials, because they pay my bills.
Aaron, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger added his muscle to the controversy over funding drugs like Viagra for sex offenders. Schwarzenegger called the idea a dangerous threat to innocent people and has ordered all California state agencies to cut all funding for these drugs for sex offenders now and pass the legislation to stop it later. No one knows for sure yet whether California has actually paid for performance enhancing drugs for sex offenders.
The Michael Jackson trial may go back to the videotape one last time. The judge ruled jurors can see a replay of the first police interview with Michael Jackson's accuser. Defense lawyers say they'll call the boy back to the witness stand if prosecutors show the tape. That would put Michael Jackson and his accuser face to face before the jury one more time.
A Florida grand jury has indicted a 17-year-old boy on charges of attempted murder, kidnapping and rape. Milagro Cunningham is accused of kidnapping an 8-year-old girl, then leaving her to die crammed in a recycle bin covered with rocks in abandoned landfill. Cunningham told -- could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted on all counts.
And trouble in paradise in another courtroom, this time in Bali, Indonesia, where prosecutors are demanding life in prison for a 27- year-old Australian woman. She is accused of smuggling nine pounds of marijuana into Bali. Now, she says the drugs were packed in her unlocked body board bag. The trial has outraged many Australians. Police have clamped tight security around the court where a verdict is expected within hours. And something the whole world will be watching, Aaron.
BROWN: Erica, thank you very much. Erica Hill in Atlanta.
In 1993, two documentary filmmakers came up with an idea to capture a violent world on film. They wanted to answer this question -- what's it like to live, to survive, to be a member of the Bloods, the notorious L.A. street gang? Their project would last a decade, a journey into darkness, one of the men would call it. But also a life experience. The film is called "Slippin': Ten Years With the Bloods."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's about revenge. It's about pain. It's about suffering. And it's about you take one of mine, and I'm going take one of yours.
TOMMY SOWARDS, DIRECTOR: "Slippin'" is a documentary about the Rolling '20s blood gang group. It's about five friends who we meet back in '93, and we follow them for a period of ten years. We wanted to show the reality of what life would be for them and kind of an ethnographic cinema verite style.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every day is stressful in L.A. being a gang member. And ain't no gang member can even sit here and say it's not a day that go by that they don't think about getting killed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We belong to the Rolling '20s Gang way back in '93. There I am, Low Down. KK, which stands for "Krazy Killer," was the newest of our bunch. CK, which stands for "Crip Killer" he was 16, and he was the youngest. And Dig Dug, he actually got his name from a video game. Bloods fly red. Crips fly blue. Our enemies were the Crips.
SOWARDS: Jumbo was the guy that introduced me to Low Down and introduced me to the others, yet he wasn't a Blood. Jumbo wasn't a Crip. Jumbo was basically a hustler, a drug dealer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tastes just like candy.
SOWARDS: Within the gang structure, it seems like the young ones have to do the most dirt. The young ones have to do the most crimes to prove themselves, you know, to get in the gang or to be accepted by everybody else.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: CK, also known as little mike shows us where he was shot by some Harlem Crip.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: About four shots were fired. Then I ran up to that step right there, and I got hit.
SOWARDS: Little mike was at that stage in his life, and I think maybe that after Little Mike died, they were all feeling that maybe we showed him the wrong example.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Little Mike, you know, he was just like -- I always told him to slow down, though. I always told him he was slippin', always told him to watch your back. I always told -- got on him just like he was my little brother, because he was young. He was like the baby of the bunch. But treacherous at the same time. And a lot of people was jealous of him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Little Mike was honest, truthful. He didn't lie. He didn't need to lie.
SOWARDS: Low down, he's a sweet character. He's got a really big heart. I think he's caught between his big heart and the rough edges and lifestyle that he was brought up in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're losing period, because we're losing the honor. We're losing who we are. We're losing the dignity of who we are. And we're losing the respect of who we are.
SOWARDS: That was Low Down in '93. I'm doing an interview. And here comes out this big gun is pulled out. It was like a toy to him. It's like a little boy, you know with his truck, or a teenager with his car. I mean, his gun belonged to him at that time.
And we see guns, I think, throughout the entire piece. He's moved to Hollywood, which to him is a huge step.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After Little Mike's death, the area wasn't secure, so I felt we had to move. At last we got our own place.
I didn't think I was going to move over here this far. I thought probably going to move somewhere in the hood, just waiting around to get blasted on. But I got to use my head. If I want to live, I got to use my head.
SOWARDS: Little Mike's young death really, really affected these characters, it affected all of them. None of them really achieved the idea of the word bling bling, to make lots of money, like you see in the music videos. It's a part of the idea of this documentary is to take the glamour out of being a gangster. It's just a way to survive.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: A very good piece, that.
The headline in the paper says "he is a grand father." We'll tell you what the story is after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Just doing a last-minute sorting out here.
Time to look at morning papers from around the country and around the world.
"Washington Times" starts us off. "Democrats block vote on Bolton day after judicial deal. Senate's unity dries up." But hey, it lasted 24 hours, so it's a start. It's got to start somewhere.
I found this headline kind of odd, in the sense that it does seem to be pushing a point of view. "Sex-ed opponents part of movement to reclaim schools." Reclaim schools from whom?
Anyway, that's "The Washington Times" today.
"Dallas Morning News," speaking of politics. "DeLay's PAC loses first court ruling." That's Tom DeLay -- you knew that, didn't you? "Treasurer plans to appeal, ordered to pay $197,000 to the Democrats." It's kind of a complicated political story.
I mentioned this going to break. "The San Antonio Express News." "He is a grand father." He is that. "Man steps up when his daughter's little girl needs a kidney." So he donated one. He is a grand father.
"The Guardian" -- there was nothing on the front page of "The Guardian" I really wanted to mention, except this. Down in the corner here, "be a successful freelance journalist." If you're wondering how to end up with a job not unlike this one, go to this school and be a successful freelance -- it's how Jeff Greenfield got his start in the business.
Either that, or he went to Yale. I confuse the two.
"The Daily News" here in New York. "Playing with fire. Commish: Fire unions risk lives, telling trucks to slow down." This kind of thing happens all the time in New York, I swear.
Well, how much time we got, Will? Really? One minute?
Let me slow down and go into some detail about "The Examiner" here in Washington. I've never mistimed this segment, I don't think.
"High school counselor waited week to report sexual assault." Teens who allegedly attacked 16-year-old student -- think about this -- remained in class with her for several days after the incident took place.
There are certain times with certain stories where you want to get to the subject of the story and go, now, what exactly were you thinking?
"The Chicago Sun-Times," "The Longest Yard 2" is opening this weekend and got more stars than "Madagascar." And while we're speaking of Chicago, the weather tomorrow in the Windy City is "erratic."
We'll wrap it up in a moment, won't we? Yes, we shall. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): This week in history, the Golden Gate Bridge opened to pedestrians on May 27th, 1937. Cars started crossing the next day. Four years earlier, against public scrutiny and environmental dangers, builder Joseph Strauss began its construction. It remains an engineering marvel to this day.
And on May 25th, 1979, it was a dark day when American Airlines flight 191 crashed, killing all 270 on board and two people on the ground, destined for L.A. from Chicago's O'Hare International. Engine problems caused the aircraft to nose-dive. It is the most deadly airline crash in U.S. history.
And that is "This Week in History."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: So we covered today and yesterday. Good to have you with us. Tonight, we're all back here tomorrow. Tomorrow, among the things we have is Dana (ph) -- right? -- Dana Kapatrick (ph), the racecar driver will be with us. That and more tomorrow on NEWSNIGHT, 10:00 Eastern time. Until then, good night for all of us.
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