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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

U.S. Military Begins Major Operation in Iraq; Downing Street Memo

Aired June 17, 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, HOST: Good evening again. Four suicide attacks, 11 people killed, 100 insurgents reportedly captured in a dusty border town. That in a nutshell is the sum of what happened in Iraq today, and we have much on Iraq tonight, both over there and here.
The U.S. military is carrying out another major operation to root out Iraqi rebels in a region believed to be the entry point for foreign suicide bombers. Here's Jane Arraf with an exclusive CNN report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: (voice-over): On this latest offensive, near the Syrian border, Marines are running a gauntlet of mines, roadside bombs and car bombs to kill insurgents and foreign fighters.

CORPORAL JAMES ROAS: Basically, what we're doing right now is insurgent strongholds, and we got intel that tells us, so what we're pretty much doing is just bombing it.

ARRAF: There are no officials here to negotiate with, even if these Marines wanted to talk. There's no police, just a border town taken over by fighters who crossed over through Syria, the Marines say.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Engaged a suicide vehicle there. Again, a vehicle, black disk underneath the road, wires.

ARRAF: Marines rolling into the city found car bombs waiting to be detonated. Explosive devices waiting in houses. In this home, there were mortars turned into roadside bombs, a gas mask and medical supplies.

(on camera): As sunset falls, there's a lull in the fighting, but there are still large areas of the city the Marines haven't cleared yet, areas where they think insurgents and foreign fighters may be lying in wait.

(voice-over): The explosions continue as this Marine commander tells us it's a complicated fight.

LT. COL. TIM MUNDY, U.S. MARINE CORPS: It's very difficult, with the mix of the civilian population and the foreign fighters, to really -- to really isolate the area. ARRAF: The Marines say they killed at least 30 insurgents here in the first day of fighting. They said they didn't know whether this body was that of an insurgent or civilian. But among the first known casualties were four members of an Iraqi family, including two women, being medivaced by the U.S. military. They were wounded when the Marines targeting insurgents believed to be there fired a tank round into their house.

Most civilians have left the city. But in the silent streets of the neighborhood we're in, it slowly becomes apparent that some have stayed. Khandi Khassim's (ph) family is holding a white flag so the Americans will know they're not insurgents. They want to leave to stay with relatives, but they're afraid.

Khassim (ph) says the Americans won't let them go out, not even to get water or anything. "It's completely forbidden to move," he says. He says, "The explosions are unbearable, and the Americans shouldn't search their houses."

Colonel Mundy goes to talk to them.

MUNDY: It's OK if they want to leave. Make sure they know that after a few days, getting rid of the weapons, getting rid of the foreign fighters, then we will leave.

ARRAF: The colonel acknowledges civilians here are in a difficult position, caught between the insurgents taking over their neighborhoods and American forces trying to hunt them down.

Jane Arraf, CNN, Karobala (ph), Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Lest you forget there's a war going on. A day not like many others before it. It's fair to say that similar days, difficult and confusing days, will likely follow.

Among Americans, support for the war seems to be ebbing more so in the wake of a once-secret British government memo that was recently leaked and seems to have had a delayed reaction. Here's CNN's John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The new energy in the anti-war protests comes from a three-year-old British government memo with language right out of a James Bond movie.

"Secret and strictly personal, U.K. eyes only," is the headline on the once classified and now very public document.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And now, we have the smoking gun, and the smoking gun is the Downing Street memo.

KING: It is dated July 23, 2002, summarizing a session British Prime Minister Tony Blair held with his national security team to discuss new talks with the Bush White House about Iraq policy.

"Military action was now seen as inevitable" was how the memo characterized White House thinking. Then, in the line war critics have seized on most, the memo said, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

To a war critic like Democratic Congressman John Conyers, "fixed" means doctored, and this letter, signed by more than 100 members of the House, demands the White House answer questions about the Downing Street memo. Did Mr. Bush deliberately alter U.S. intelligence is one question. And did he settle on war months before telling the American people and seeking congressional approval is another.

REP. JOHN CONYERS (D), MICHIGAN: Did he deceive us into a war? Were we tricked into a war?

KING: Mr. Bush says he did no such thing, and the White House notes the war did not start until eight months after the memo was written, but it will not answer the letter from Conyers and his colleagues.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This is an individual who voted against the war in the first place, and is simply trying to rehash old debates that have already been addressed.

KING: The continuing insurgency in Iraq has war critics seizing on another point in the memo. "There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath of military action."

Some see the debate over the Downing Street memo more as proof of a weakened president than any dramatic new revelation.

RICHARD GEPHARDT, FORMER HOUSE DEMOCRATIC LEADER: It's fine to revisit it again, but there's not a lot new here. Again, we need to figure out, given that history, where we go from here.

KING: Public uncertainty about the military mission is clearly taking a toll on the president. A new "New York Times"-CBC News poll found just 37 percent of Americans approve of how Mr. Bush is handling Iraq.

KEN DUBERSTEIN, FORMER REAGAN CHIEF OF STAFF: I think it is tough inside the Beltway, but I'm not sure it is anywhere near reached Des Moines or Omaha. It may have reached the left coast, but not, you know, the heartland of America.

KING (on camera): But White House officials acknowledge the rising anxiety, and say the president will spend more time explaining and defending his policy, beginning with two big speeches on Iraq next week.

John King, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In that same "New York Times"/CBS News poll that John reported on, 51 percent of those asked said they thought, looking back, the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. Clearly, the country is getting restless. Many Democrats in Congress are, but what might make the White House and the war supporters the most nervous are the stirrings of a few voices, a few, on the Republican side. They're not big names, not House or Senate leaders, they're back benchers, but sometimes that's where rebellion starts.

Here's CNN's Ed Henry.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two years ago, Congressman Walter Jones was gung-ho about the war in Iraq, and so angry at France for opposing it, he changed the name of french fries in the House cafeteria to freedom fries.

But with American casualties mounting, Jones has had a change of heart, and become the first congressional Republican urging President Bush to craft a timetable to bring the troops home.

REP. WALTER JONES (R), NORTH CAROLINA: I would say, Mr. President, I think, and I hope you would agree that it's time we take a fresh look at Iraq, and what our goals are.

HENRY: The turning point came just a month after the freedom fries press conference, at the funeral of a Marine who left behind a wife and three kids, including twins he never saw. This devout Catholic was moved by the widow reading the final letter from her husband.

JONES: This was an event in my life that it actually had spiritual ramifications, because I became part of the family. I was emotional, and I think from that day, my feelings have evolved. I mean, we have to defeat terrorism. I just think that we have achieved the goals in Iraq, and maybe it's now to consider what we need to be doing down the road.

HENRY: So he now signs condolence letters to the families of dead servicemen and women, 1,300 letters and counting, and he's filled the hallway outside his office with photos of those killed in Iraq. And this conservative from North Carolina has joined forces with Dennis Kucinich, the anti-war Democrat who ran for president. They're pushing a resolution calling for U.S. troops to start leaving Iraq in October of 2006.

The move has infuriated conservatives, because it has handed a weapon to Democrats, already agitating over the Downing Street memo.

CONYERS: We know that we were told one thing in America, but in London, they were planning a war all of the time.

HENRY: Senior Republicans privately say they do not doubt the sincerity of Jones, a former Democrat who came to Congress as part of Newt Gingrich's revolution. Only one other Republican, libertarian Ron Paul of Texas, has joined the cause, but some GOP leaders are nervous about others jumping ship. (on camera): Are there more Republicans privately who agree with you, have the same concerns, but are afraid to say it?

JONES: I don't use the word -- I don't want to agree to the word "afraid," but are there other Republicans that are concerned? Yes.

HENRY (voice-over): At the White House, with poll showing the president's approval ratings on Iraq sliding, officials are closing ranks against Jones' resolution.

MCCLELLAN: It would be absolutely the wrong message to send to set some sort of artificial timetable. It would be the wrong message to send to the terrorists.

HENRY: But Jones isn't backing down, and insists he's resolved to win the war on terror.

JONES: I think that we have a better chance of defeating the terrorists or insurgencies when the Iraqi people can defend their own country.

HENRY: He says he draws strength from the condolence letters. Jones says he's at peace with his call to start bringing the troops back home.

Ed Henry, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island is part what have used to be called the moderate wing of the Republican Party. He may now be the entire moderate ring of the Republican Party. He, too, senses the country's restlessness the polls reflect and has some ideas on how the administration might quell it. We talked with him earlier.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Senator, what exactly do you want, in a sense, from the administration, that you don't think you've gotten so far on Iraq?

SEN. LINCOLN CHAFEE, (R) RHODE ISLAND: Well, I think the main thing now, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, to redefine why we're there. Really, crystal clear, message to the American people: what are we doing in Iraq. And if it's about remaking the Middle East, well, let's have that discussion and how are we doing on remaking the Middle East, spreading democracy in the region. And why is it good for America. And what are our chances of success at it?

BROWN: Perhaps, if someone in the administration were being absolutely honest, they would say look, whatever the reasons we went, and they didn't turn out to be exactly right, the place is really broken now and if we left, the risk of that chaos spreading in Iraq and beyond Iraq is much too much to take.

CHAFEE: Well, they might say that, but let's have that discussion. Certainly, with lives being lost every day, and also the high, high cost, I think it's over $1 billion a month -- $1 billion a week, sorry -- $1 billion a week we're spending there, beyond our normal military budget, we should have that discussion. How long is it going to be, if we just cannot leave now. It's broken, we can't leave. Let's ask have that discussion as American people. And I think that's what the resolution that Senator Feingold is putting forward, and some members of the House are putting forward to get that discussion going.

BROWN: What is the risk, do you think, of not having that national conversation of things going on sort of as they are. The numbers go up every week, the costs go up every week. And in some respects, Iraq has less attention these days than it did a year ago, what is the risk of that?

CHAFEE: I think the big risk is that all of the sudden the American people are going to just turn against the war and elect politicians that are going to say, let's get out, right away. And if we don't have that discussion, then that's a fair scenario and a risk, as you described earlier. It could be damaging to a long-term interest to just all of a sudden get out.

BROWN: Somebody -- I believe Tom Friedman, but I may be wrong about that -- but someone the other day wrote that the problem here is that we still, to this day, do not have enough Americans there. Do you think, within the Congress, there is any will to increase the number of American soldiers in the country?

CHAFEE: I think if we saw progress, yes. We in Congress would do whatever it takes to have success there. If we saw progress in the region that the elections are turning to our favor in Lebanon or Iran, and things are moving in our favor, the Palestinian-Israeli issue moving forward, if we saw some glimmer of hope, we in Congress would do whatever it takes in Iraq, including increasing troops.

BROWN: And do you think the country is still open to the idea that more might be needed?

CHAFEE: The time is slipping away, I'll say that, as we seem to be sinking into just a morass, a quagmire, if you will. To American people, wherever they might be, they just don't see any progress. And why are we there? There just seems to be -- occasionally we see positive things, the elections, the capture of Saddam.

These are momentary positive signs. But day by day it seems we see continued violence and lack of progress, whether it's how you judge it, increase of electricity production, increase of oil production, more schools being built, winning the Iraqis over to our side, we don't see that at present.

BROWN: Do you think, finally, sir, sort of the elephant in the room question, but do you think the administration has been in the post-Saddam period, or the period since it became clear that there were no WMD in Iraq, do you think the administration's been honest with the American people?

CHAFEE: That's a good question. It certainly the time now to be brutally and frankly honest. It's upon us. I mean, this expensive war in both human life and in the veterans coming back with all the problems associated with warfare, the problems with our prisons. We need to be brutally honest now in how we're doing. And I think that's what the resolution that some members of Congress are pushing at that time is calling for.

BROWN: Senator, it's good to see you. Thank you for your time today.

CHAFEE: Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: On this Friday, a look at Iraq and where we are right now.

In a few moments, a Friday conversation, Jane Pauley tonight. But first, at exactly a quarter past the hour -- we take great pride this on the money around here -- Erica Hill joins from us Atlanta with the headlines.

ERICA HILL, CNN HEADLINE NEWS: Talk about ending the week on a high note. There you go.

Well, Aaron, for the second time in a week a helicopter crashed into the East River in New York City. Eight people were on board, all of them rescued. One man is listed in serious condition, but no word yet on what caused that crash.

e, a jury in New York convicting the former chief executive of Tyco, Dennis Kozlowski of looting $150 million from the company. Also convicted, Tyco's former chief financial officer, Mark Swartz. Prosecutors say the men used Tyco as their personal piggy bank. They face up to 30 years in prison.

And it's happened again, this time to a large number of people. MasterCard and Visa reporting a major security breach that may affect some 40 million credit cards. They say a computer hacker gained access to the data base to an Arizona company that processes transactions.

MasterCard and Visa are alerting affiliated financial institutions about the breach, the FBI has also launched an investigation.

That, by the way, not really much of a high note to end on, Aaron. Sorry about that.

BROWN: Well, that's the way the news, is isn't it? It's rarely filled with a lot of yucks, Erica.

HILL: Unfortunately.

BROWN: Thank you. We'll check with you in the next half hour. Much more to come in the hour ahead, we starting with a story that gives new meaning to the phrase, insult to injury.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: She was gang raped on orders from the village elders. Now after fighting for justice, she's fighting simply to be heard. Luckily, she's not alone.

Also tonight, the Michael Jackson saga. From talent to the tabloids, the journey in photographs.

And later, a conversation about success and what comes with it.

JANE PAULEY, TV PERSONALITY: I was at home. I wasn't home enough. You know, so there was always some reason to feel anxious. I was doing homework, I should have been with the kids. We all were stressed in one way or another.

BROWN: She's Jane Pauley, of course. And this is NEWSNIGHT

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It's said that rape victimizes women two times over. It ought to be said, and said often, that there are corners of the world where being victimized twice would, sadly, be an improvement.

Places where rape is ordered, where rape is committed under color of local custom and where victims are re-victimized every step of the way. Three years ago, in a troubled part of Pakistan, an important alley in the war on terror, a woman was gang-raped. Today her supporters say she has been silenced as well.

Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Zain Verjee.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAIN VERJEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Like many women in rural Pakistan, Mukhtaran Mai could have killed herself or kept her mouth shut. Instead, this gutsy Pakistani village woman spoke out and told of how she was savagely gang-raped, then forced to walk home naked in front of a jeering crowd.

A tribal council ordered the gang-rape, saying it was the only way to restore her family honor after allegations her brother had a relationship with a woman from a more powerful clan. Mai demanded justice. She testified in court against her alleged attackers. Several were convicted, but most were later released after appeals.

MUKHTARAN MAI, RAPE VICTIM (through translator): It was the wrong decision and I'm very upset. We will go to the Supreme Court to lodge an appeal and my hope is that, God willing, I will have your support. VERJEE: Mai continues to demand justice for hundreds of other women in Pakistan who are gang-raped every year. This week, things turned ugly. Mai was preparing to travel to the United States at the invitation of a Pakistani American group to talk about the plight of women in her country. But the Pakistani government barred her from leaving. It's widely reported she was put under house arrest, and had her phone cut off.

T. HUMAR, ADVOCACY DIR. FOR ASIA AND PACIFIC: They were nervous that her speech or her meetings in the U.S. is going to hurt Pakistan's interest.

VERJEE: Women's rights activists were livid.

IRSHAD MANJI, WOMEN'S ACTIVIST: ... That I am rather shocked by the depth of the lack of compassion in all of this. It seems to me that this is a woman who would underscore the power of courage in a country whose own president, President Musharraf, has said, "That we, as Muslims, need to stop being so unenlightened and so unhealthy." It seems to me that his government's actions have contradicted his own words.

VERJEE: A U.S. State Department official said Washington was dismayed. Pakistan was quick to respond with damage control. A Pakistani official announced a $200,000 crisis center would be built for women in her village.

Mai was at the news conference but said little. Her government's adviser said Mai was not leaving the country because her mother was ill. The Pakistani embassy in Washington said: Ms. Mukhtaran is not under detention and has no bar on her travelling abroad. But the head of Pakistan's Human Rights Commission, tells CNN the government is playing games.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Government restriction have been restricted, but I believe that her passport has been taken away by the government and she's not allowed to talk about it.

VERJEE: Without a passport, lifting the travel ban is meaningless. The invitation to speak in the U.S. still stands, but with her attackers free, Mai's biggest concern now is her personal safety. The government says it's committed to protecting her, but some are wondering whether it's more interested in protecting Pakistan's international image.

Zain Verjee, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Straight ahead on the program, Michael Jackson: The weird part, the talent part and all stops in between.

And later, a clothing company that can't tell its left from its right -- foot that is.

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Celebrity, the writer John Updike once said, is a mask that eats into the face. For Mr. Updike, it was only a figure of speech. For Michael Jackson, who lives way beyond the reach of metaphor, it was and is a fact of life.

This week he got back his life, mask and all. Tonight: How the life and the mask came to eclipse what began simply enough, as talent.

Here's NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHAEL JACKSON, SINGER: Oh, baby, give me one more chance

JACKSON 5, MUSIC GROUP: Show you that I love you

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Michael Jackson was just a fifth grader when the Jackson Five had their first U.S. number one hits in 1969, the year of Nixon's inauguration as president, the year of anti-war protests, the year humans first walked on the moon, although not the kind of moon walk Michael would later make famous.

By the time he turned 13, Michael Jackson started his solo career, had his first solo hit: "Ben." A love song for a rat, written for a movie of the same name.

Michael would get into the movies himself just a few years later, playing Scarecrow in the musical, "The Wiz." "The Wiz" failed to make Michael a movie star, but did have a hand in making the gloved one a pop music mega-star.

During filming Jackson met music producer, Quincy Jones, who shaped Michael's glory years.

JACKSON (singing): All night.

NISSEN: His first solo album "Off the Wall," and then..

JACKSON (singing): You know it's thriller

BROWN: "Thriller," which sold 51 million copies worldwide; more than any other album in recorded history.

JACKSON (SINGING): Beat it, beat it, beat it

NISSEN: Seven of the nine songs on "Thriller" would make the top ten including: "Beat It" and "Billy Jean."

JACKSON (SINGING): People always told me, be careful what you do. Don't...

NISSEN: No other performer had Michael's energy, Michael's moves. His concerts were actually reviewed by dance critics from "The New York Times," no less, the physics-defying moonwalk, the prima ballerina moves without benefit of toe shoes.

It was somewhere in the mid-'80s, right about the time Michael and Lionel Richie co-wrote the song "We Are the World," for the Live Aid famine relief effort, that some headline writer called him Wacko Jacko for the first time. Stories started to circulate about Michael and his pet chimpanzee Bubbles, immortalized in this lifesize sculpture by artist Jeff Koons, or Michael sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

And then there was his changing appearance. After suffering burns when his hair caught fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial, he'd had surgery. His nose, cheek, chin were visibly altered, although in this 1986 photo his skin color was more or less the same as the aforementioned Lionel Richie's.

Over the next few years, that would change. Jackson said it was due to a skin condition called vitiligo. Others would insist he lightened, bleached his skin.

Whatever. By the time he went on his 1992 "Dangerous" world tour, backed up by guitarist Slash from Guns' n'Roses, a lot of people couldn't help but wonder every time he sang his hit, "Black or White," what the answer was in Jackson's case.

It turned from strange to ugly in 1993, when Jackson was accused of abusing a young boy at his Neverland ranch, his private fantasyland in Santa Ynez, California.

That case was settled out of court.

And in what may have been just the kind of coincidence that happens with celebrities, Michael Jackson promptly got married.

MICHAEL JACKSON, SINGER: And just think, nobody thought this would last.

NISSEN: The King of Pop wed the King's daughter, Elvis' daughter, Lisa Marie Presley.

They divorced 19 months later.

Jackson started appearing in public wearing surgical masks, appearing in concert wearing a wardrobe of what looked like alien flight suits. He was paler, more waxen looking than ever. Just so you know, the wax model of Jackson is the one on the left -- no, no, the one on the right.

And how to describe the face of the man in his mirror? By the time he was 40, he looked nothing like he did at 4. Some thought he was looking more and more like his friend, Elizabeth Taylor.

He still had millions of fans, but Michael was all about the children. He loved children. He said it over and over, wore an armband to symbolize the suffering of children worldwide. He had children of his own, whom he usually kept masked in public. He'd married, then divorced, Debbie Rowe, a nurse in his dermatologist's office. She'd born him a son and daughter, and then he somehow had a third son. That was the one he'd unwisely dangled from a fourth floor window of a Berlin hotel.

In a documentary that aired on British and American television, Jackson couldn't understand the fuss about the dangling the baby thing. He said he played with children, slept with them in his bed sometimes, but would never hurt them.

JACKSON: I would never do that to my children or any child.

NISSEN: Last November, Jackson was arrested on charges that he had molested a child, who had appeared with him in that documentary. As the trial dragged on, those in the court of public opinion pondered the evidence, of what had happened to this man to make him this man. They watched his ever plastic, changeable face as he came and went, watched him court approval, wave wanly, grow weary, but ultimately come out free, and head to Neverland to close himself away again.

This is the story of the King of Pop, his profiles.

Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Coming up on the program, one of the country's most respected and best liked broadcasters. A Friday conversation with Jane Pauley. We'll take a break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Jane Pauley has made a name for herself by making it look easy, the toughest kind of easy there is, the kind you root for. It doesn't hurt that she is the real deal, but it's not surprising either there's more to Ms. Pauley and her story than simply that.

Easy is rarely that simple, a thread that comes up often in "Skywriting," her memoirs. There's a bout with bipolar disorder, there are office dramas, of course, and complications of enormous success very early in life. We talked with Jane the other day.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: You were famously successful very young. Do you ever think about, other than the fact that I resent it deeply, how your life might be different had you -- had it not happen so quickly, had you struggled more?

JANE PAULEY, AUTHOR, "SKYWRITING": Oh, I don't know if I could have handled struggle.

BROWN: Really?

PAULEY: The thing about my early success and lack of struggle, it's even worse than that, because I didn't set out to do it. I was not one of those young women with five-year plans, and then, you know, I'll be the next Barbara Walters, at all. I was a mixture, I think, of drive and ambition. I used to deny that I had any ambition at all.

BROWN: Yeah.

PAULEY: And it would be very difficult for me to have identified the drive part. So that when I became successful so young, it was without trying. Maybe that's what made me successful.

I have a theory about that. When I was writing my book, I came up with this theory. A lot of what I wrote got thrown away, so it's not in the book, I will tell you -- or it may be in the book. I can't remember.

I have a theory that in 1976, the country was coming off of Watergate and Vietnam and the civil rights struggle and assassinations going back to the early '60s. It was a hard, hard, you know, series of events. The country, at the end, was polarized. Both, you know, racial polarization. The war certainly. Watergate was a dividing line. And people were weary. Journalism had developed a generation or two of really tough journalists, the investigative reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, who created -- they set the mold that journalists wanted to aspire to.

Suddenly, I come out of nowhere. It was about the same time that the phrase "happy talk," which I loathed, had had arrived. And I realized, I probably was part of the same phenomenon, that journalism had -- was making people weary, and they wanted something fresh. And even though I aspired to be -- the people I most admired were those tough journalists, who I never, you know, I couldn't carry their clothes -- clothes? What do I mean by that?

(CROSSTALK)

PAULEY: But you see, the point I'm making is that times change, and societies breathe in and then they breathe out, and I think the reason I was there, in spite of having not struggled for it, was because I represented someone who didn't look like she was that driven and that ambitious.

BROWN: It seems to me that if the worst thing anyone ever said about either of us, frankly, but about you in this case, is that she tried to live a well-rounded life while successfully pursuing her work, that's hardly something to make...

PAULEY: Yeah, it did account for anxiety I would feel. I was at home, I wasn't home enough. You know, so there was always some reason to feel anxious. I was doing homework, I should have been with the kids. You know, we all were stressed in one way or another, but I've resolved that issue of hard work. I discovered something in the last, well, two years, when -- first when I wrote the book, I could write hours a day. It may not be any good, but my ability to sit down and work was surprising to me. And then I did the show. That's the hardest thing I've ever done.

BROWN: Why? PAULEY: It's unrelenting.

BROWN: This is the most -- the daytime talk show.

PAULEY: Daytime talk show. It is absolutely unrelenting. It had my name on it, so I couldn't just, you know, ease in and breeze in and say, what are we doing? I was very involved in everything that we were doing. Possibly too involved, but the hours -- I worked very long hours. I worked weekends. You had to, and I loved it.

BROWN: Are you happy these days?

PAULEY: Yes. I'm unsettled. I am unsettled. The happy part, I'm celebrating 25th wedding anniversary Saturday, 25 years. That's just fabulous.

BROWN: Yes, it is.

PAULEY: The family is doing well. The other part is kind of unsettled because I don't know really what I'm doing now. There was -- because the show -- and it's on the air still, and you know, I hope people continue to watch it. But it's -- and we're not making any more of them, so I have more time now to spend, wisely or not.

There was an article in the newspaper...

BROWN: If you ever want to just, like, fill in and do a cable anchor show, just come by, you can do this one. I'll take the night off.

PAULEY: That's pretty hard work, and I'm not sure I want to do it. But there was -- maybe you've seen this -- there was somebody important was retiring, and a newspaper reporting this. He was asked what he'd be doing, and he said he was looking forward to a period of drift. I am adrift in what I hope is a positive way.

BROWN: Well, you know what, I hope you have a ball. You've earned it. It's nice to see you.

PAULEY: Thank you.

BROWN: My regards to your husband as well.

PAULEY: Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The book is called "Skywriting." Jane Pauley.

Check of the day's headlines next. A lot of things made news today. "Morning Papers" are still coming up. Ways to go on this Friday. We'll take a break. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: A little past the quarter to the hour. Back to Atlanta. Erica Hill has the last look at the headlines for the week -- Erica.

HILL: Hi, Aaron. A fourth man has been arrested in Aruba now in connection with the disappearance of Natalee Holloway. He is identified as a 26-year-old deejay who works on a popular party boat. Holloway is the Alabama teenager who has been missing in Aruba since May 30th. Police say the latest suspect was detained based on information provided by one of the other men being held in the case.

Florida Governor Jeb Bush says a prosecutor will look into the circumstances of Terri Schiavo's collapse 15 years ago that left her severely brain-damaged. There are allegations of a gap between the time Michael Schiavo found his wife and when he called 911. Schiavo calls the move an outrage. He says he called for help as soon as his wife collapsed.

And the state of Oregon has resumed its medical marijuana program which allows sick patients to smoke pot -- now that's despite a Supreme Court ruling last week that people can be prosecuted under federal law for drug possession. Oregon has warned participants its program does not protect them against federal prosecution.

And that is the latest from HEADLINE NEWS. Aaron, have a great weekend, and a very happy Father's Day.

BROWN: Thank you. I think this year, my daughter's going to talk to me. So...

HILL: And it will be a great day.

BROWN: With a 16-year-old, it doesn't get better than that.

HILL: No.

BROWN: Thank you very much. Have a good weekend yourself.

HILL: Thanks.

BROWN: The problem of the lost sock is age-old. Most of us see it of course as a nuisance, most of us. But not Jonah Straw. Where others saw irritation, he saw a business opportunity, and now he's "On the Rise."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONAH STRAW, CO-FOUNDER, LITTLEMISSMATCHED: Can I offer you socks that don't match?

ARIELLE ECKSTUT, CO-FOUNDER, LITTLEMISSMATCHED: First, there was this real-world problem that people lose their socks all the time. You're always left with a single sock. It might be your favorite pair of socks. It's really depressing. You have to go throw that sock away.

One of our partners said, wouldn't it be great if there was a company that just may make that sock.

STRAW: They come in preassorted packages of three. Not four, not one. And the goal of the single sock is that it's sort of a chance to reinvent the socks drawer.

Every time that you typically do the wash now, you fold your socks over, and you create pairs, and that's this really annoying thing.

Well, imagine now, moms get to just dump the socks, or the kids, if the kids are doing the wash, they dump it in their drawer, and it becomes an act of discovery, and you get to mix and match all you want.

We've got about 600,000 socks out there, and they're in about 600 stores.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is mix and match?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah.

STRAW: What I'd like you guys to do is actually all pick out a pair.

ECKSTUT: We started with the young girls, because we thought that so many of the clothes that were being marketed to girls this age are really about oversexualizing, making them into small teenagers or young women when they're still really girls.

We thought we don't want to do that. We want to make a space for girls to be as playful and creative as they can be.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take a look. I am a sorta (ph) for today.

STRAW: You can be "kinda," "sorta" or "a lota" mismatch. And so what that means, you can be someone who is totally zany and cooky and has all kinds of flair in your dress, or you can be a little more conservative. And this can be something that you want to hide.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, then the question is how mismatched are you?

STRAW: We have 134 socks which means if you can believe it, 8,911 combinations so that's enough for 24 years of never matching.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Okey dokey. Very quick edition of "Morning Papers," because that's all the time we have, to be honest.

"Air Force Times" hey chief you're no Indian: New restrictions on American Indian symbols crimp Air Force tradition." Apparently they use them in a lot of their medals and battalions things -- or whatever they're called at the Air Force. Anyway, it's over now. "Times Herald Record," upstate New York, it's a very big story in upstate New York. It's a very good story. It's a very sad, too. "Accused Soldiers Suspicious History." This is a fragging case the Army alleges that took place in Iraq. More on that next week.

"Boston Herald" two stories to note. "Penthouse to the Big House." I knew they were going to write that lead. "Smug CEO, this Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco stole millions for parties, girls." OK. Here's my favorite part of this guy's story. He said he signed his income tax return and didn't realize it was $25 million short.

The weather tomorrow in Chicago, "Classic." Thank you.

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SALLY RIDE, ASTRONAUT: I'd like to be the first woman up.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As a young girl with a passion for science and technology, it was always a dream of Sally Ride's to travel in space. The California native realized her dream not once, but twice. In 1983, she became America's first female astronaut.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Liftoff, liftoff of SPF 7 (ph) and America's first woman astronaut.

O'BRIEN: As a member of the Shuttle Challenger's crew, she conducted experimentations in communications, medicine and Earth environment. Sally flew again on Challenger a year later. Her plans for a third trip were halted when the spacecraft exploded in 1986, killing all on board.

Today she is using our love of science to motivate others.

RIDE: Things like toy challenge and other activities like that can show kids, and especially girls, that you know, engineering is different than they thought.

O'BRIEN: Through her organization, Sally Ride science she gives students, especially girls, opportunities to participate in camps, science festivals and challenge events. This space legend hopes to make it just a little easier for today's girls to see their sky-high dreams like hers, become a reality.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Have a good weekend. We'll see you next week. Until then, good night for all of us.

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

Aired June 17, 2005 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, HOST: Good evening again. Four suicide attacks, 11 people killed, 100 insurgents reportedly captured in a dusty border town. That in a nutshell is the sum of what happened in Iraq today, and we have much on Iraq tonight, both over there and here.
The U.S. military is carrying out another major operation to root out Iraqi rebels in a region believed to be the entry point for foreign suicide bombers. Here's Jane Arraf with an exclusive CNN report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: (voice-over): On this latest offensive, near the Syrian border, Marines are running a gauntlet of mines, roadside bombs and car bombs to kill insurgents and foreign fighters.

CORPORAL JAMES ROAS: Basically, what we're doing right now is insurgent strongholds, and we got intel that tells us, so what we're pretty much doing is just bombing it.

ARRAF: There are no officials here to negotiate with, even if these Marines wanted to talk. There's no police, just a border town taken over by fighters who crossed over through Syria, the Marines say.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Engaged a suicide vehicle there. Again, a vehicle, black disk underneath the road, wires.

ARRAF: Marines rolling into the city found car bombs waiting to be detonated. Explosive devices waiting in houses. In this home, there were mortars turned into roadside bombs, a gas mask and medical supplies.

(on camera): As sunset falls, there's a lull in the fighting, but there are still large areas of the city the Marines haven't cleared yet, areas where they think insurgents and foreign fighters may be lying in wait.

(voice-over): The explosions continue as this Marine commander tells us it's a complicated fight.

LT. COL. TIM MUNDY, U.S. MARINE CORPS: It's very difficult, with the mix of the civilian population and the foreign fighters, to really -- to really isolate the area. ARRAF: The Marines say they killed at least 30 insurgents here in the first day of fighting. They said they didn't know whether this body was that of an insurgent or civilian. But among the first known casualties were four members of an Iraqi family, including two women, being medivaced by the U.S. military. They were wounded when the Marines targeting insurgents believed to be there fired a tank round into their house.

Most civilians have left the city. But in the silent streets of the neighborhood we're in, it slowly becomes apparent that some have stayed. Khandi Khassim's (ph) family is holding a white flag so the Americans will know they're not insurgents. They want to leave to stay with relatives, but they're afraid.

Khassim (ph) says the Americans won't let them go out, not even to get water or anything. "It's completely forbidden to move," he says. He says, "The explosions are unbearable, and the Americans shouldn't search their houses."

Colonel Mundy goes to talk to them.

MUNDY: It's OK if they want to leave. Make sure they know that after a few days, getting rid of the weapons, getting rid of the foreign fighters, then we will leave.

ARRAF: The colonel acknowledges civilians here are in a difficult position, caught between the insurgents taking over their neighborhoods and American forces trying to hunt them down.

Jane Arraf, CNN, Karobala (ph), Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Lest you forget there's a war going on. A day not like many others before it. It's fair to say that similar days, difficult and confusing days, will likely follow.

Among Americans, support for the war seems to be ebbing more so in the wake of a once-secret British government memo that was recently leaked and seems to have had a delayed reaction. Here's CNN's John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The new energy in the anti-war protests comes from a three-year-old British government memo with language right out of a James Bond movie.

"Secret and strictly personal, U.K. eyes only," is the headline on the once classified and now very public document.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And now, we have the smoking gun, and the smoking gun is the Downing Street memo.

KING: It is dated July 23, 2002, summarizing a session British Prime Minister Tony Blair held with his national security team to discuss new talks with the Bush White House about Iraq policy.

"Military action was now seen as inevitable" was how the memo characterized White House thinking. Then, in the line war critics have seized on most, the memo said, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

To a war critic like Democratic Congressman John Conyers, "fixed" means doctored, and this letter, signed by more than 100 members of the House, demands the White House answer questions about the Downing Street memo. Did Mr. Bush deliberately alter U.S. intelligence is one question. And did he settle on war months before telling the American people and seeking congressional approval is another.

REP. JOHN CONYERS (D), MICHIGAN: Did he deceive us into a war? Were we tricked into a war?

KING: Mr. Bush says he did no such thing, and the White House notes the war did not start until eight months after the memo was written, but it will not answer the letter from Conyers and his colleagues.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This is an individual who voted against the war in the first place, and is simply trying to rehash old debates that have already been addressed.

KING: The continuing insurgency in Iraq has war critics seizing on another point in the memo. "There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath of military action."

Some see the debate over the Downing Street memo more as proof of a weakened president than any dramatic new revelation.

RICHARD GEPHARDT, FORMER HOUSE DEMOCRATIC LEADER: It's fine to revisit it again, but there's not a lot new here. Again, we need to figure out, given that history, where we go from here.

KING: Public uncertainty about the military mission is clearly taking a toll on the president. A new "New York Times"-CBC News poll found just 37 percent of Americans approve of how Mr. Bush is handling Iraq.

KEN DUBERSTEIN, FORMER REAGAN CHIEF OF STAFF: I think it is tough inside the Beltway, but I'm not sure it is anywhere near reached Des Moines or Omaha. It may have reached the left coast, but not, you know, the heartland of America.

KING (on camera): But White House officials acknowledge the rising anxiety, and say the president will spend more time explaining and defending his policy, beginning with two big speeches on Iraq next week.

John King, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In that same "New York Times"/CBS News poll that John reported on, 51 percent of those asked said they thought, looking back, the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. Clearly, the country is getting restless. Many Democrats in Congress are, but what might make the White House and the war supporters the most nervous are the stirrings of a few voices, a few, on the Republican side. They're not big names, not House or Senate leaders, they're back benchers, but sometimes that's where rebellion starts.

Here's CNN's Ed Henry.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two years ago, Congressman Walter Jones was gung-ho about the war in Iraq, and so angry at France for opposing it, he changed the name of french fries in the House cafeteria to freedom fries.

But with American casualties mounting, Jones has had a change of heart, and become the first congressional Republican urging President Bush to craft a timetable to bring the troops home.

REP. WALTER JONES (R), NORTH CAROLINA: I would say, Mr. President, I think, and I hope you would agree that it's time we take a fresh look at Iraq, and what our goals are.

HENRY: The turning point came just a month after the freedom fries press conference, at the funeral of a Marine who left behind a wife and three kids, including twins he never saw. This devout Catholic was moved by the widow reading the final letter from her husband.

JONES: This was an event in my life that it actually had spiritual ramifications, because I became part of the family. I was emotional, and I think from that day, my feelings have evolved. I mean, we have to defeat terrorism. I just think that we have achieved the goals in Iraq, and maybe it's now to consider what we need to be doing down the road.

HENRY: So he now signs condolence letters to the families of dead servicemen and women, 1,300 letters and counting, and he's filled the hallway outside his office with photos of those killed in Iraq. And this conservative from North Carolina has joined forces with Dennis Kucinich, the anti-war Democrat who ran for president. They're pushing a resolution calling for U.S. troops to start leaving Iraq in October of 2006.

The move has infuriated conservatives, because it has handed a weapon to Democrats, already agitating over the Downing Street memo.

CONYERS: We know that we were told one thing in America, but in London, they were planning a war all of the time.

HENRY: Senior Republicans privately say they do not doubt the sincerity of Jones, a former Democrat who came to Congress as part of Newt Gingrich's revolution. Only one other Republican, libertarian Ron Paul of Texas, has joined the cause, but some GOP leaders are nervous about others jumping ship. (on camera): Are there more Republicans privately who agree with you, have the same concerns, but are afraid to say it?

JONES: I don't use the word -- I don't want to agree to the word "afraid," but are there other Republicans that are concerned? Yes.

HENRY (voice-over): At the White House, with poll showing the president's approval ratings on Iraq sliding, officials are closing ranks against Jones' resolution.

MCCLELLAN: It would be absolutely the wrong message to send to set some sort of artificial timetable. It would be the wrong message to send to the terrorists.

HENRY: But Jones isn't backing down, and insists he's resolved to win the war on terror.

JONES: I think that we have a better chance of defeating the terrorists or insurgencies when the Iraqi people can defend their own country.

HENRY: He says he draws strength from the condolence letters. Jones says he's at peace with his call to start bringing the troops back home.

Ed Henry, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island is part what have used to be called the moderate wing of the Republican Party. He may now be the entire moderate ring of the Republican Party. He, too, senses the country's restlessness the polls reflect and has some ideas on how the administration might quell it. We talked with him earlier.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Senator, what exactly do you want, in a sense, from the administration, that you don't think you've gotten so far on Iraq?

SEN. LINCOLN CHAFEE, (R) RHODE ISLAND: Well, I think the main thing now, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, to redefine why we're there. Really, crystal clear, message to the American people: what are we doing in Iraq. And if it's about remaking the Middle East, well, let's have that discussion and how are we doing on remaking the Middle East, spreading democracy in the region. And why is it good for America. And what are our chances of success at it?

BROWN: Perhaps, if someone in the administration were being absolutely honest, they would say look, whatever the reasons we went, and they didn't turn out to be exactly right, the place is really broken now and if we left, the risk of that chaos spreading in Iraq and beyond Iraq is much too much to take.

CHAFEE: Well, they might say that, but let's have that discussion. Certainly, with lives being lost every day, and also the high, high cost, I think it's over $1 billion a month -- $1 billion a week, sorry -- $1 billion a week we're spending there, beyond our normal military budget, we should have that discussion. How long is it going to be, if we just cannot leave now. It's broken, we can't leave. Let's ask have that discussion as American people. And I think that's what the resolution that Senator Feingold is putting forward, and some members of the House are putting forward to get that discussion going.

BROWN: What is the risk, do you think, of not having that national conversation of things going on sort of as they are. The numbers go up every week, the costs go up every week. And in some respects, Iraq has less attention these days than it did a year ago, what is the risk of that?

CHAFEE: I think the big risk is that all of the sudden the American people are going to just turn against the war and elect politicians that are going to say, let's get out, right away. And if we don't have that discussion, then that's a fair scenario and a risk, as you described earlier. It could be damaging to a long-term interest to just all of a sudden get out.

BROWN: Somebody -- I believe Tom Friedman, but I may be wrong about that -- but someone the other day wrote that the problem here is that we still, to this day, do not have enough Americans there. Do you think, within the Congress, there is any will to increase the number of American soldiers in the country?

CHAFEE: I think if we saw progress, yes. We in Congress would do whatever it takes to have success there. If we saw progress in the region that the elections are turning to our favor in Lebanon or Iran, and things are moving in our favor, the Palestinian-Israeli issue moving forward, if we saw some glimmer of hope, we in Congress would do whatever it takes in Iraq, including increasing troops.

BROWN: And do you think the country is still open to the idea that more might be needed?

CHAFEE: The time is slipping away, I'll say that, as we seem to be sinking into just a morass, a quagmire, if you will. To American people, wherever they might be, they just don't see any progress. And why are we there? There just seems to be -- occasionally we see positive things, the elections, the capture of Saddam.

These are momentary positive signs. But day by day it seems we see continued violence and lack of progress, whether it's how you judge it, increase of electricity production, increase of oil production, more schools being built, winning the Iraqis over to our side, we don't see that at present.

BROWN: Do you think, finally, sir, sort of the elephant in the room question, but do you think the administration has been in the post-Saddam period, or the period since it became clear that there were no WMD in Iraq, do you think the administration's been honest with the American people?

CHAFEE: That's a good question. It certainly the time now to be brutally and frankly honest. It's upon us. I mean, this expensive war in both human life and in the veterans coming back with all the problems associated with warfare, the problems with our prisons. We need to be brutally honest now in how we're doing. And I think that's what the resolution that some members of Congress are pushing at that time is calling for.

BROWN: Senator, it's good to see you. Thank you for your time today.

CHAFEE: Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: On this Friday, a look at Iraq and where we are right now.

In a few moments, a Friday conversation, Jane Pauley tonight. But first, at exactly a quarter past the hour -- we take great pride this on the money around here -- Erica Hill joins from us Atlanta with the headlines.

ERICA HILL, CNN HEADLINE NEWS: Talk about ending the week on a high note. There you go.

Well, Aaron, for the second time in a week a helicopter crashed into the East River in New York City. Eight people were on board, all of them rescued. One man is listed in serious condition, but no word yet on what caused that crash.

e, a jury in New York convicting the former chief executive of Tyco, Dennis Kozlowski of looting $150 million from the company. Also convicted, Tyco's former chief financial officer, Mark Swartz. Prosecutors say the men used Tyco as their personal piggy bank. They face up to 30 years in prison.

And it's happened again, this time to a large number of people. MasterCard and Visa reporting a major security breach that may affect some 40 million credit cards. They say a computer hacker gained access to the data base to an Arizona company that processes transactions.

MasterCard and Visa are alerting affiliated financial institutions about the breach, the FBI has also launched an investigation.

That, by the way, not really much of a high note to end on, Aaron. Sorry about that.

BROWN: Well, that's the way the news, is isn't it? It's rarely filled with a lot of yucks, Erica.

HILL: Unfortunately.

BROWN: Thank you. We'll check with you in the next half hour. Much more to come in the hour ahead, we starting with a story that gives new meaning to the phrase, insult to injury.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: She was gang raped on orders from the village elders. Now after fighting for justice, she's fighting simply to be heard. Luckily, she's not alone.

Also tonight, the Michael Jackson saga. From talent to the tabloids, the journey in photographs.

And later, a conversation about success and what comes with it.

JANE PAULEY, TV PERSONALITY: I was at home. I wasn't home enough. You know, so there was always some reason to feel anxious. I was doing homework, I should have been with the kids. We all were stressed in one way or another.

BROWN: She's Jane Pauley, of course. And this is NEWSNIGHT

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It's said that rape victimizes women two times over. It ought to be said, and said often, that there are corners of the world where being victimized twice would, sadly, be an improvement.

Places where rape is ordered, where rape is committed under color of local custom and where victims are re-victimized every step of the way. Three years ago, in a troubled part of Pakistan, an important alley in the war on terror, a woman was gang-raped. Today her supporters say she has been silenced as well.

Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Zain Verjee.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAIN VERJEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Like many women in rural Pakistan, Mukhtaran Mai could have killed herself or kept her mouth shut. Instead, this gutsy Pakistani village woman spoke out and told of how she was savagely gang-raped, then forced to walk home naked in front of a jeering crowd.

A tribal council ordered the gang-rape, saying it was the only way to restore her family honor after allegations her brother had a relationship with a woman from a more powerful clan. Mai demanded justice. She testified in court against her alleged attackers. Several were convicted, but most were later released after appeals.

MUKHTARAN MAI, RAPE VICTIM (through translator): It was the wrong decision and I'm very upset. We will go to the Supreme Court to lodge an appeal and my hope is that, God willing, I will have your support. VERJEE: Mai continues to demand justice for hundreds of other women in Pakistan who are gang-raped every year. This week, things turned ugly. Mai was preparing to travel to the United States at the invitation of a Pakistani American group to talk about the plight of women in her country. But the Pakistani government barred her from leaving. It's widely reported she was put under house arrest, and had her phone cut off.

T. HUMAR, ADVOCACY DIR. FOR ASIA AND PACIFIC: They were nervous that her speech or her meetings in the U.S. is going to hurt Pakistan's interest.

VERJEE: Women's rights activists were livid.

IRSHAD MANJI, WOMEN'S ACTIVIST: ... That I am rather shocked by the depth of the lack of compassion in all of this. It seems to me that this is a woman who would underscore the power of courage in a country whose own president, President Musharraf, has said, "That we, as Muslims, need to stop being so unenlightened and so unhealthy." It seems to me that his government's actions have contradicted his own words.

VERJEE: A U.S. State Department official said Washington was dismayed. Pakistan was quick to respond with damage control. A Pakistani official announced a $200,000 crisis center would be built for women in her village.

Mai was at the news conference but said little. Her government's adviser said Mai was not leaving the country because her mother was ill. The Pakistani embassy in Washington said: Ms. Mukhtaran is not under detention and has no bar on her travelling abroad. But the head of Pakistan's Human Rights Commission, tells CNN the government is playing games.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Government restriction have been restricted, but I believe that her passport has been taken away by the government and she's not allowed to talk about it.

VERJEE: Without a passport, lifting the travel ban is meaningless. The invitation to speak in the U.S. still stands, but with her attackers free, Mai's biggest concern now is her personal safety. The government says it's committed to protecting her, but some are wondering whether it's more interested in protecting Pakistan's international image.

Zain Verjee, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Straight ahead on the program, Michael Jackson: The weird part, the talent part and all stops in between.

And later, a clothing company that can't tell its left from its right -- foot that is.

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Celebrity, the writer John Updike once said, is a mask that eats into the face. For Mr. Updike, it was only a figure of speech. For Michael Jackson, who lives way beyond the reach of metaphor, it was and is a fact of life.

This week he got back his life, mask and all. Tonight: How the life and the mask came to eclipse what began simply enough, as talent.

Here's NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHAEL JACKSON, SINGER: Oh, baby, give me one more chance

JACKSON 5, MUSIC GROUP: Show you that I love you

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Michael Jackson was just a fifth grader when the Jackson Five had their first U.S. number one hits in 1969, the year of Nixon's inauguration as president, the year of anti-war protests, the year humans first walked on the moon, although not the kind of moon walk Michael would later make famous.

By the time he turned 13, Michael Jackson started his solo career, had his first solo hit: "Ben." A love song for a rat, written for a movie of the same name.

Michael would get into the movies himself just a few years later, playing Scarecrow in the musical, "The Wiz." "The Wiz" failed to make Michael a movie star, but did have a hand in making the gloved one a pop music mega-star.

During filming Jackson met music producer, Quincy Jones, who shaped Michael's glory years.

JACKSON (singing): All night.

NISSEN: His first solo album "Off the Wall," and then..

JACKSON (singing): You know it's thriller

BROWN: "Thriller," which sold 51 million copies worldwide; more than any other album in recorded history.

JACKSON (SINGING): Beat it, beat it, beat it

NISSEN: Seven of the nine songs on "Thriller" would make the top ten including: "Beat It" and "Billy Jean."

JACKSON (SINGING): People always told me, be careful what you do. Don't...

NISSEN: No other performer had Michael's energy, Michael's moves. His concerts were actually reviewed by dance critics from "The New York Times," no less, the physics-defying moonwalk, the prima ballerina moves without benefit of toe shoes.

It was somewhere in the mid-'80s, right about the time Michael and Lionel Richie co-wrote the song "We Are the World," for the Live Aid famine relief effort, that some headline writer called him Wacko Jacko for the first time. Stories started to circulate about Michael and his pet chimpanzee Bubbles, immortalized in this lifesize sculpture by artist Jeff Koons, or Michael sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

And then there was his changing appearance. After suffering burns when his hair caught fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial, he'd had surgery. His nose, cheek, chin were visibly altered, although in this 1986 photo his skin color was more or less the same as the aforementioned Lionel Richie's.

Over the next few years, that would change. Jackson said it was due to a skin condition called vitiligo. Others would insist he lightened, bleached his skin.

Whatever. By the time he went on his 1992 "Dangerous" world tour, backed up by guitarist Slash from Guns' n'Roses, a lot of people couldn't help but wonder every time he sang his hit, "Black or White," what the answer was in Jackson's case.

It turned from strange to ugly in 1993, when Jackson was accused of abusing a young boy at his Neverland ranch, his private fantasyland in Santa Ynez, California.

That case was settled out of court.

And in what may have been just the kind of coincidence that happens with celebrities, Michael Jackson promptly got married.

MICHAEL JACKSON, SINGER: And just think, nobody thought this would last.

NISSEN: The King of Pop wed the King's daughter, Elvis' daughter, Lisa Marie Presley.

They divorced 19 months later.

Jackson started appearing in public wearing surgical masks, appearing in concert wearing a wardrobe of what looked like alien flight suits. He was paler, more waxen looking than ever. Just so you know, the wax model of Jackson is the one on the left -- no, no, the one on the right.

And how to describe the face of the man in his mirror? By the time he was 40, he looked nothing like he did at 4. Some thought he was looking more and more like his friend, Elizabeth Taylor.

He still had millions of fans, but Michael was all about the children. He loved children. He said it over and over, wore an armband to symbolize the suffering of children worldwide. He had children of his own, whom he usually kept masked in public. He'd married, then divorced, Debbie Rowe, a nurse in his dermatologist's office. She'd born him a son and daughter, and then he somehow had a third son. That was the one he'd unwisely dangled from a fourth floor window of a Berlin hotel.

In a documentary that aired on British and American television, Jackson couldn't understand the fuss about the dangling the baby thing. He said he played with children, slept with them in his bed sometimes, but would never hurt them.

JACKSON: I would never do that to my children or any child.

NISSEN: Last November, Jackson was arrested on charges that he had molested a child, who had appeared with him in that documentary. As the trial dragged on, those in the court of public opinion pondered the evidence, of what had happened to this man to make him this man. They watched his ever plastic, changeable face as he came and went, watched him court approval, wave wanly, grow weary, but ultimately come out free, and head to Neverland to close himself away again.

This is the story of the King of Pop, his profiles.

Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Coming up on the program, one of the country's most respected and best liked broadcasters. A Friday conversation with Jane Pauley. We'll take a break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Jane Pauley has made a name for herself by making it look easy, the toughest kind of easy there is, the kind you root for. It doesn't hurt that she is the real deal, but it's not surprising either there's more to Ms. Pauley and her story than simply that.

Easy is rarely that simple, a thread that comes up often in "Skywriting," her memoirs. There's a bout with bipolar disorder, there are office dramas, of course, and complications of enormous success very early in life. We talked with Jane the other day.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: You were famously successful very young. Do you ever think about, other than the fact that I resent it deeply, how your life might be different had you -- had it not happen so quickly, had you struggled more?

JANE PAULEY, AUTHOR, "SKYWRITING": Oh, I don't know if I could have handled struggle.

BROWN: Really?

PAULEY: The thing about my early success and lack of struggle, it's even worse than that, because I didn't set out to do it. I was not one of those young women with five-year plans, and then, you know, I'll be the next Barbara Walters, at all. I was a mixture, I think, of drive and ambition. I used to deny that I had any ambition at all.

BROWN: Yeah.

PAULEY: And it would be very difficult for me to have identified the drive part. So that when I became successful so young, it was without trying. Maybe that's what made me successful.

I have a theory about that. When I was writing my book, I came up with this theory. A lot of what I wrote got thrown away, so it's not in the book, I will tell you -- or it may be in the book. I can't remember.

I have a theory that in 1976, the country was coming off of Watergate and Vietnam and the civil rights struggle and assassinations going back to the early '60s. It was a hard, hard, you know, series of events. The country, at the end, was polarized. Both, you know, racial polarization. The war certainly. Watergate was a dividing line. And people were weary. Journalism had developed a generation or two of really tough journalists, the investigative reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, who created -- they set the mold that journalists wanted to aspire to.

Suddenly, I come out of nowhere. It was about the same time that the phrase "happy talk," which I loathed, had had arrived. And I realized, I probably was part of the same phenomenon, that journalism had -- was making people weary, and they wanted something fresh. And even though I aspired to be -- the people I most admired were those tough journalists, who I never, you know, I couldn't carry their clothes -- clothes? What do I mean by that?

(CROSSTALK)

PAULEY: But you see, the point I'm making is that times change, and societies breathe in and then they breathe out, and I think the reason I was there, in spite of having not struggled for it, was because I represented someone who didn't look like she was that driven and that ambitious.

BROWN: It seems to me that if the worst thing anyone ever said about either of us, frankly, but about you in this case, is that she tried to live a well-rounded life while successfully pursuing her work, that's hardly something to make...

PAULEY: Yeah, it did account for anxiety I would feel. I was at home, I wasn't home enough. You know, so there was always some reason to feel anxious. I was doing homework, I should have been with the kids. You know, we all were stressed in one way or another, but I've resolved that issue of hard work. I discovered something in the last, well, two years, when -- first when I wrote the book, I could write hours a day. It may not be any good, but my ability to sit down and work was surprising to me. And then I did the show. That's the hardest thing I've ever done.

BROWN: Why? PAULEY: It's unrelenting.

BROWN: This is the most -- the daytime talk show.

PAULEY: Daytime talk show. It is absolutely unrelenting. It had my name on it, so I couldn't just, you know, ease in and breeze in and say, what are we doing? I was very involved in everything that we were doing. Possibly too involved, but the hours -- I worked very long hours. I worked weekends. You had to, and I loved it.

BROWN: Are you happy these days?

PAULEY: Yes. I'm unsettled. I am unsettled. The happy part, I'm celebrating 25th wedding anniversary Saturday, 25 years. That's just fabulous.

BROWN: Yes, it is.

PAULEY: The family is doing well. The other part is kind of unsettled because I don't know really what I'm doing now. There was -- because the show -- and it's on the air still, and you know, I hope people continue to watch it. But it's -- and we're not making any more of them, so I have more time now to spend, wisely or not.

There was an article in the newspaper...

BROWN: If you ever want to just, like, fill in and do a cable anchor show, just come by, you can do this one. I'll take the night off.

PAULEY: That's pretty hard work, and I'm not sure I want to do it. But there was -- maybe you've seen this -- there was somebody important was retiring, and a newspaper reporting this. He was asked what he'd be doing, and he said he was looking forward to a period of drift. I am adrift in what I hope is a positive way.

BROWN: Well, you know what, I hope you have a ball. You've earned it. It's nice to see you.

PAULEY: Thank you.

BROWN: My regards to your husband as well.

PAULEY: Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The book is called "Skywriting." Jane Pauley.

Check of the day's headlines next. A lot of things made news today. "Morning Papers" are still coming up. Ways to go on this Friday. We'll take a break. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: A little past the quarter to the hour. Back to Atlanta. Erica Hill has the last look at the headlines for the week -- Erica.

HILL: Hi, Aaron. A fourth man has been arrested in Aruba now in connection with the disappearance of Natalee Holloway. He is identified as a 26-year-old deejay who works on a popular party boat. Holloway is the Alabama teenager who has been missing in Aruba since May 30th. Police say the latest suspect was detained based on information provided by one of the other men being held in the case.

Florida Governor Jeb Bush says a prosecutor will look into the circumstances of Terri Schiavo's collapse 15 years ago that left her severely brain-damaged. There are allegations of a gap between the time Michael Schiavo found his wife and when he called 911. Schiavo calls the move an outrage. He says he called for help as soon as his wife collapsed.

And the state of Oregon has resumed its medical marijuana program which allows sick patients to smoke pot -- now that's despite a Supreme Court ruling last week that people can be prosecuted under federal law for drug possession. Oregon has warned participants its program does not protect them against federal prosecution.

And that is the latest from HEADLINE NEWS. Aaron, have a great weekend, and a very happy Father's Day.

BROWN: Thank you. I think this year, my daughter's going to talk to me. So...

HILL: And it will be a great day.

BROWN: With a 16-year-old, it doesn't get better than that.

HILL: No.

BROWN: Thank you very much. Have a good weekend yourself.

HILL: Thanks.

BROWN: The problem of the lost sock is age-old. Most of us see it of course as a nuisance, most of us. But not Jonah Straw. Where others saw irritation, he saw a business opportunity, and now he's "On the Rise."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONAH STRAW, CO-FOUNDER, LITTLEMISSMATCHED: Can I offer you socks that don't match?

ARIELLE ECKSTUT, CO-FOUNDER, LITTLEMISSMATCHED: First, there was this real-world problem that people lose their socks all the time. You're always left with a single sock. It might be your favorite pair of socks. It's really depressing. You have to go throw that sock away.

One of our partners said, wouldn't it be great if there was a company that just may make that sock.

STRAW: They come in preassorted packages of three. Not four, not one. And the goal of the single sock is that it's sort of a chance to reinvent the socks drawer.

Every time that you typically do the wash now, you fold your socks over, and you create pairs, and that's this really annoying thing.

Well, imagine now, moms get to just dump the socks, or the kids, if the kids are doing the wash, they dump it in their drawer, and it becomes an act of discovery, and you get to mix and match all you want.

We've got about 600,000 socks out there, and they're in about 600 stores.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is mix and match?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah.

STRAW: What I'd like you guys to do is actually all pick out a pair.

ECKSTUT: We started with the young girls, because we thought that so many of the clothes that were being marketed to girls this age are really about oversexualizing, making them into small teenagers or young women when they're still really girls.

We thought we don't want to do that. We want to make a space for girls to be as playful and creative as they can be.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take a look. I am a sorta (ph) for today.

STRAW: You can be "kinda," "sorta" or "a lota" mismatch. And so what that means, you can be someone who is totally zany and cooky and has all kinds of flair in your dress, or you can be a little more conservative. And this can be something that you want to hide.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, then the question is how mismatched are you?

STRAW: We have 134 socks which means if you can believe it, 8,911 combinations so that's enough for 24 years of never matching.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Okey dokey. Very quick edition of "Morning Papers," because that's all the time we have, to be honest.

"Air Force Times" hey chief you're no Indian: New restrictions on American Indian symbols crimp Air Force tradition." Apparently they use them in a lot of their medals and battalions things -- or whatever they're called at the Air Force. Anyway, it's over now. "Times Herald Record," upstate New York, it's a very big story in upstate New York. It's a very good story. It's a very sad, too. "Accused Soldiers Suspicious History." This is a fragging case the Army alleges that took place in Iraq. More on that next week.

"Boston Herald" two stories to note. "Penthouse to the Big House." I knew they were going to write that lead. "Smug CEO, this Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco stole millions for parties, girls." OK. Here's my favorite part of this guy's story. He said he signed his income tax return and didn't realize it was $25 million short.

The weather tomorrow in Chicago, "Classic." Thank you.

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SALLY RIDE, ASTRONAUT: I'd like to be the first woman up.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As a young girl with a passion for science and technology, it was always a dream of Sally Ride's to travel in space. The California native realized her dream not once, but twice. In 1983, she became America's first female astronaut.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Liftoff, liftoff of SPF 7 (ph) and America's first woman astronaut.

O'BRIEN: As a member of the Shuttle Challenger's crew, she conducted experimentations in communications, medicine and Earth environment. Sally flew again on Challenger a year later. Her plans for a third trip were halted when the spacecraft exploded in 1986, killing all on board.

Today she is using our love of science to motivate others.

RIDE: Things like toy challenge and other activities like that can show kids, and especially girls, that you know, engineering is different than they thought.

O'BRIEN: Through her organization, Sally Ride science she gives students, especially girls, opportunities to participate in camps, science festivals and challenge events. This space legend hopes to make it just a little easier for today's girls to see their sky-high dreams like hers, become a reality.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Have a good weekend. We'll see you next week. Until then, good night for all of us.

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