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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

U.S. Navy Rushes to Assist Trapped Russian Submariners; Shuttle Cleared for Return

Aired August 05, 2005 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

HEIDI COLLINS, HOST: Hello again everybody. From New York, I'm Heidi Collins, sitting in for Aaron Brown tonight.
Before we get started, take a deep breath. Now let it out. And consider this: for seven young sailors tonight each lungful of air could be their last. They are stranded at the bottom of the ocean, stuck in a Russian minisub normally used in rescue missions, with American sailors racing to help.

From the Pentagon tonight, here's Barbara Starr.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In San Diego, Navy and Air Force personnel scrambled to load this cargo jet with rescue gear within hours of the Russian Navy asking for help in saving seven of its sailors trapped 600 feet under the Pacific Ocean. The Russian minisub, like this one, apparently became tangled on nets and cables.

DMITRY BURMISTOV, RUSSIAN NAVY SPOKESMAN (through translator): The AS-28 submersible's propeller caught a fragment of fishing net and it's wrapped around the vessel's propeller. As the crew tried to break free from the net, a metal cord was caught on the propeller, which then trapped the vessel in deep water.

STARR: The U.S. Navy will try to cut it loose before the Russian crew runs out of air.

COMMANDER KENT VAN HORN, U.S. NAVY: Our only avenue here is to get a vehicle down there that can cut the cable away, and they should be able to get to the surface then.

STARR: The huge C-5 transport aircraft was loaded with two Super Scorpio robotic underwater vehicles, 40 U.S. Navy personnel making the 10-hour flight to Russia, prepared to take their equipment by Russian ships out to the site.

The U.S. Navy is also sending two deep sea diving suits so divers can look directly at the Russian sub and help clear debris away, as well as a third robotic vehicle like this one.

This time, Moscow's immediate call for help is far different than five years ago when the submarine Kursk sank off northern Russia, killing 118 sailors. Russians strongly criticized President Vladimir Putin for not quickly seeking international rescue assistance. The Russians have not said what this submarine was doing when it ran into trouble, but in the past, submersibles like this have been used in rescue efforts, including the rescue efforts following the sinking of the Kursk.

It was just two months ago that Russian submariners joined half a dozen other nations in the largest submarine escape and rescue exercise ever. Submarines from Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Turkey were deliberately grounded off Italy with their crews and then rescued.

(on camera) The Russians have tried to rescue the sub themselves but now the British Royal Navy and the Japanese Navy are joining in the international rescue effort.

Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: This is a story with a back story. With us now, Ramsey Flynn, investigative reporter and the author of "Cry from the Deep: The Sub Disaster that Riveted the World and Put the New Russia to the Ultimate Test."

Ramsey, thanks for being here.

Lots of conflicting reports out there about the amount of oxygen and how much the submarine crew has left. But in any event the sub was designed for three people. It's holding seven. That has got to make their situation more dire.

RAMSEY FLYNN, AUTHOR, "CRY FROM THE DEEP": That's a big part of the complication with the guessing game of exactly how much oxygen is left, but everybody needs to keep in mind it is a small vessel. It doesn't have much backup oxygen capacity in its original design, and these guys are -- they're basically doubled up in what the capacity of the submarine is actually supposed to be. And all they've got to back it up when they run out of the ambient oxygen is their own individual gas masks.

COLLINS: Can you give us a sense of exactly what will happen on this rescue mission then? It certainly doesn't sound like it's going to be an easy operation.

FLYNN: As I understand the complications right now, the key issue is to get them completely untangled. There's no indication that they've got much actual power left. It is a battery operated submersible. It doesn't have meaningful propulsion beyond that, and the batteries on these particular models of Russian submarine rescue vessels are extremely weak and fragile.

So they're asked to conserve what they've got, and there are still issues as to exactly where they are tangled. If they are tangled, then it may be a simple operation of us sending down these Super Scorpios and getting them untangled, getting them cut away from the nets or the cables and simply allowing them to dump ballast and float to the surface.

COLLINS: Is there any comparison to be made to the situation, of course, five years ago that we all remember so well with the Kursk? And you have certainly studied it intensely. A lot more people, larger vessel. But is there a comparison?

FLYNN: Well, I think one of the key issues is it demonstrates that the Russians do have this issue of being able to, not being able to rescue their own vessels. This is a case where the rescuers need rescuing. They're -- they're not equipped to rescue themselves.

And the unfortunate irony is that they actually have another submersible of their own on the surface on one of the surface vessels, and it is too ill equipped to even come to the aid of its sister vessel that is at the bottom of the sea now.

COLLINS: Really. Hmmm, how about the politics behind all of this? Obviously, part of that story five years ago was President Vladimir Putin didn't want any help from anybody else. This time, he's asking for the help.

FLYNN: Well, it's been my contention in the book and with a lot of reporting that the first disaster actually formed an awful lot of who Vladimir Putin is and how he handles a crisis and how Russia views itself in relation to the rest of the world.

That doesn't say -- that doesn't put aside the fact that these things do still get politically sensitive, and -- but a lot of the things that were the kinds of things that created obstacles for the Kursk do not exist in this case. It is not a super secret military submarine, and there's very little actual national pride at stake for the Russians, as there would have been before. The national pride that is at stake has to do with their ability to rescue their own men.

COLLINS: And of course, families of seven people down there very, very worried about the situation to say the least. Ramsey Flynn we appreciate your time tonight. Thank you.

FLYNN: Thank you guys very much. Thank you.

COLLINS: On now to another delicate situation. Space Shuttle Discovery, undocking tomorrow from the International Space Station, landing early on Monday. If all goes well, a safe ending to perhaps the most carefully watched mission in shuttle history.

Here's CNN's Miles O'Brien.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT/ANCHOR (voice-over): After days of pouring over pictures, pulling on protuberances and testing tattered blankets, shutting engineers have cleared Discovery to land. Never have they given such an informed green light to a shuttle crew in orbit.

PAUL HILL, LEAD FLIGHT DIRECTOR: Deorbit is not perfectly risk free but the vehicle is in -- is in pristine condition.

O'BRIEN: They can say that with some certainty. The amount of imagery available to shuttle engineers before versus after the Columbia accident is literally like night and day.

RANDY AVERA, FORMER SHUTTLE ENGINEER: When you think back to the first flight of the space shuttle, where in the crew module we had a 16 millimeter camera that filmed from inside, that's a far cry from the quantity and variety of video and other types of instruments that we prefer.

O'BRIEN: Before Columbia, no one would have known about the big chunk of foam that fell harmlessly two minutes after launch or the much smaller piece that appears to have struck the wing. Nor would they have seen the pair of protruding gap fillers plucked from the shuttle's belly by a space walker.

About the only thing they would likely have seen was this, a tattered blanket near the cockpit window, not considered a big risk.

HILL: Having the tools to absolutely know the condition of the outside of the vehicle definitely gives you a lot more confidence. If we'd gone into this entry without having the additional tools and knowing we still had the risk we would be more nervous than we already were about entries. The fact that we have these tools definitely makes us feel better about it.

O'BRIEN: And yet the more they feel better the more they are reminded how dicey flying their vehicle really is. How many close calls did they never know about?

AVERA: The space shuttle is full of close calls. This mission in orbit right now, STS-114, has had close calls and the next mission, and the ones thereafter will have close calls.

O'BRIEN: Former astronaut Norm Thagard came home from space on shuttles five times and, like most many space farers past and present, is stunned by all that we have seen this week.

NORM THAGARD, RETIRED ASTRONAUT: The thought went through my mind, I'm glad that I couldn't see that view from the orbiter when I was actually on board on launch.

O'BRIEN: But if ignorance was ever bliss for the space shuttle program, that ended two and a half years ago when Columbia did not make it home. And for Commander Eileen Collins' husband, Pat Youngs, seeing is believing in a happy landing.

PAT YOUNGS, HUSBAND OF SHUTTLE COMMANDER: I think the new cameras and photography that came along with this STS-114 worked exceptionally well, and you know, I think that was a great aid in solving the different issues that have popped up.

O'BRIEN (on camera): After all of these years, NASA is finally getting the pictures, and they are not pretty. Once Discovery lands, the fleet will not fly again until the fixes are in. Whenever there's a launch again, it seems very likely something will be staring the engineers right in the face, demanding their attention.

Miles O'Brien, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: So you add up the risk factors that were known and glossed over and the risk factors that were never known but always there, and it raises all kinds of questions.

We are joined now by retired shuttle astronaut Kathy Sullivan, in fact, the first American woman to walk in space. Pleasure having you, Kathy.

KATHY SULLIVAN, RETIRED SHUTTLE ASTRONAUT: Great to be with you, Heidi.

COLLINS: I have to tell you, we all remember that day in February of 2003. I, for one, was live on the air with Miles O'Brien when Shuttle Columbia disintegrated. When we look ahead to Monday, do the astronauts have anything to worry about on the way home?

SULLIVAN: Well, every crew knows to worry about re-entry in a number of ways. It's still a very complicated sequence of events. The amount of energy that you see being injected into a rocket vehicle to take off and get it into orbit is exactly the same amount of energy that has to be extracted to bring it home, whether it splashes down or lands on a runway.

So it demands everybody's attention but certainly the first flight after an accident, we're -- we've been brought up short and reminded to focus even harder on those elements, will have even more somber attention devoted to it.

COLLINS: Given the difficulties this time, though, do astronauts in the future on future missions have one repair mission after the other to look forward to?

SULLIVAN: Well, probably not, I would say, as the analysis base and the care gets stronger and stronger with repetition, analyzing the photographs, doing these surveys, you come to more understanding of what elements really do need repair, and what elements don't. So I think you'll see that continue to adjust as the learning horizon progresses.

This is the first time we've had 107 cameras watching the shuttle stack take off. It's the first time we've had really precisely detailed photography of the underbelly and of all the surfaces from close up. It's the first time we've had all of that downlinked real time, essentially, to the ground that so other squads of engineers can give it the exacting comb-through that we've seen here.

You should expect them to pop up every little "not quite what I thought" item that they see. You should expect them to dig into each one of those and come to an understanding of it, just as we've seen here.

So I take some heart with the rigor and care with which that appears to have been conducted on this flight.

COLLINS: But Kathy, there seem to be this sort of, what we don't know won't hurt us frame of mind. We heard a little about it in Miles O'Brien's piece coming into this. Lots of missions where things could have gone wrong. But since the new cameras and photography that you're talking about weren't in place, no one really knew about them. Is that good enough?

SULLIVAN: Well, it's equally true there weren't actually all that many that went by unnoticed. I mean, the reality is how many were or were not on earlier flights is an unknown. So if you want to be a pessimist you can speculate and say, "Oh, my God, there must have been many. How unconscionable."

There might not have been as many. It's an unknown. That will no longer be an unknown until the engineering world of NASA will have to now look explicitly at each of them and come to an understanding of it. That's the reality going forward.

COLLINS: So what are some of the lessons looking now at what the crew of Discovery went through in all of this that NASA can take and move forward?

SULLIVAN: Well, there's some immediate ones, having to do with how well the engineering fixes and the organizational fixes mandated by the Columbia accident, how well did they actually perform. We've got a good pass through all of them.

You can make an argument it's a kind of a good thing there were some anomalous items to deal with on this flight, because we got to see all those new mechanisms in action. We should now look at them and say did they perform as well as they want them to do and critique them and improve them.

There's another sort of longer term set of potential benefits to come out of the entire post-Columbia down time, and that is you have a station that's on orbit that was intended to be supplied by a nice regular cargo vessel coming up every couple of months, with new tools, replacement parts, fresh food and an exchange of people.

Out of the blue, you found yourself in a two and a half year period where, you know, the return parts didn't come up the next time. So the station folks and by implication, all of NASA, have, I think, gotten some lessons out of that they didn't sign up for or intend.

But they look at them carefully, think they'll find some good lessons helping inform how do you actually send a crew far, far, far away, off to the moon to live for awhile, or off to Mars to live for awhile, when you can't bring the hardware store replacement parts up to them for years at a time? So hopefully, we'll harvest some of those lessons for longer term and further distant exploration, as well.

PHILLIPS: All right. Kathy Sullivan. And we'll all be watching and praying on Monday. That's for sure. Thanks again.

SULLIVAN: Pleasure.

PHILLIPS: In a moment, what a former president has to say about a chubby little boy named Bill Clinton. First at about quarter past the hour, thought, time for other headlines from Erica Hill in Atlanta -- Erica.

ERICA HILL, HEADLINE NEWS: Hi again, Heidi.

We actually begin with a scare in the air. A note discovered on board a flight from Dallas to Corpus Christi today claiming there was a bomb on board. The airliner was diverted to Houston, where authorities gave it a clean bill of health.

Marines have launched a new operation, aimed at routing out the insurgency. Operation Quick Strike began on Wednesday along a stretch of the Euphrates River valley where already 22 Marines have died this week.

And in Ohio, where many of those Marines were from, a vigil today, a vigil and more, support for the families, help for the survivors and at times, just a strong shoulder to cry on. A tough day there, that can be sure, Heidi.

COLLINS: You bet. All right, Erica. We'll see you again in a little bit.

Much more ahead on NEWSNIGHT, starting with a deadly rite of passage, the power hour.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Drink it, drink it.

COLLINS (voice-over): Twenty-one years old and finally legal, but will they survive the celebration?

What makes bombers bombers? He should know. He used to be one.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: If you wanted to be a terrorist you know exactly where to get this information already.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The flash that I didn't hear that boom.

ROBERTSON: Sixty years ago he watched his city disappear and the atomic age begin.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To tell you the truth, I didn't know if I felt I was dead or alive at that particular moment.

COLLINS: Steroids, baseball, and paying the price.

AARON BROWN, HOST: What's worse, what Pete Rose did or what Jose Canseco did or what Rafael Palmeiro apparently do?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... what Jose Canseco do. I think they're equal. COLLINS: A NEWSNIGHT conversation with sportswriter Howard Bryant. From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: A year ago, President Clinton had quadruple bypass surgery. One year later, he sat down with CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta and talked about living and eating, then and now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I ate a lot of stuff that was high in fat, and I ate a lot of it, and you know, I just didn't think about it, and I didn't have regular exercise.

But what happened to me is now systematically happening to a younger generation of people.

If they just cut a few calories a day off what these kids are ingesting they can make a difference. An 8-year-old who consumes 45 fewer calories a day, a couple of bites of candy, less than half a Coke, 45 calories fewer a day, when he or she graduates from high school will weigh 20 pounds less.

So we're not talking about a radical change in eating habits to get a radical change in results.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: This spring Mr. Clinton teamed up with the American Heart Association as part of an initiative to fight juvenile obesity. Hear more Saturday and Sunday night at 8:30 Eastern.

A brush with death doesn't always inspire a change in lifestyle, especially when you're young and feeling immortal. Turning 21 has long been a time to head for a bar and order a drink for the last time -- well for the first time that is, pardon me. Legally ordering a drink is a big deal when you're that age.

One drink, though, often becomes two, and two can become 21. Twenty-one shots of alcohol in an hour. It's called the power hour. The math is simple, and easily deadly.

Here's CNN's Keith Oppenheim.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my God.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Drink it, drink it, drink it!

KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This home video was distributed by the Fargo, North Dakota, police department to discourage the practice you're about to see. In a bar, just after midnight, the young man at the table has just turned 21. While his girlfriend videotapes, and his friends turn up the pressure...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (expletive deleted)

OPPENHEIM: ... he will try to down 21 drinks before the bar closes at 1 a.m. This is his power hour.

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

OPPENHEIM: This young man lived but about 14 months after this video was shot, someone else, as a result of another power hour, was dead. His name was Jason Reinhardt. He was taking a year off from college at Minnesota State University Morehead, just over the state line from Fargo.

On the eve of his 21st birthday, March 15, 2004, Jason was ready to celebrate, but his mother, Anne Buchanan, was afraid.

ANNE BUCHANAN, MOTHER: And I said, "Jason please, don't do your power hour. You don't have to do it."

And he said, "Mom, I'm going to be fine. My fraternity brothers are going to watch out for me. You don't have to worry. We've had four other power hours at the fraternity house. Nothing has happened to them. Everything will be fine."

And I said, "Well, I love you." I gave him a big hug and a kiss, and that was the last time I saw him.

OPPENHEIM: That night, Jason Reinhardt went to a local bar just around midnight.

(on camera) According to friends and police reports, Jason Reinhardt drank less than 21 shots that night, maybe 16. An autopsy would later show his blood alcohol level was 0.36, more than four times the legal limit.

Still, Jason's friends told us, though he was obviously drunk, he seemed to be having a good time. He was the life of the party, and he walked out of the bar by himself. Bottom line: they didn't think he was in any kind of serious trouble.

BRAD SCHWARTZ, JASON REINHARDT'S FRIEND: He went to bed and I went and I put a jug of water next to him and I put a garbage can next to him and told him, you know, drink some water, you know, whatever. And he turned on his radio and laid there and passed out, or went to sleep, whatever, you know.

OPPENHEIM (voice-over): About 10 hours after Jason fell asleep, one of his house mates tried to wake him. He was dead from alcohol poisoning and sadly, not unique.

According to a Harvard study, Jason Reinhardt was one of 1,400 college students in the U.S. who die each year because of binge drinking and alcohol related injuries, mostly car accidents.

After Jason's death, his mom, Anne Buchanan, testified before a legislative panel, calling for change.

JOEL HEITKAMP, NORTH DAKOTA STATE SENATOR: We are live at the main avenue here in Fargo...

OPPENHEIM: Joel Heitkamp a radio host and state senator, introduced a bill that became law in North Dakota, delaying the time 21 years olds can legally drink by eight hours. Heitkamp believes by taking away that symbolic first hour, states can send a message, especially to those friends who encourage binge drinking.

HEITKAMP: These individuals were encouraging that person and others to kill themselves and that's what...

OPPENHEIM (on camera): They're not thinking of it that way.

HEITKAMP: But it's time they did. This law that we passed put that mind-set out there, said it's unacceptable, and you know what, as a friend, you shouldn't be doing this, and we're not going to take it anymore.

OPPENHEIM (voice-over): But here in Fargo, a number of young people told us they believe the new law will have little effect. It may change the time of power hour, but won't get rid of it.

SCHWARTZ: You can say what you want to say and, you know, we're all kids. We don't listen to our parents. We're not going to listen to one of our peers. You know? It's -- you're going to do what you're going to do.

OPPENHEIM: Anne Buchanan doesn't dispute that. Across the country power hours are still happening. But the law to delay drinking in North Dakota, she believes, is one small step in the right direction.

(on camera) What do you want to be the one maybe good thing that can come out of Jason Reinhardt's death?

BUCHANAN: One good thing, just saving another life, saving another family from the misery and the pain.

OPPENHEIM: By talking about the danger?

BUCHANAN: By talking about the danger.

OPPENHEIM (voice-over): In fact, Buchanan says she is now speaking at high schools, trying to reach young people before they turn 21.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes!

OPPENHEIM: And before they run the risk of taking part in a tradition that killed her son.

Keith Oppenheim, CNN, Fargo, North Dakota.

(END VIDEOTAPE) COLLINS: Still to come tonight, what do terrorists bombers think about? We'll ask a man who used to be one.

And what would happen if baseball suddenly decided steroids are OK? From New York and around the diamond, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: In London and beyond, British police continue their search for clues and for anyone who may have helped the bombers. Today they charged three men with failing to disclose information about the whereabouts of a suspect in the failed July 21 bomb attacks.

In the last month, police have learned a great deal about some of the suspects. To learn more, they're trying to get inside the minds of the bombers.

CNN's Nic Robertson tried that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): This is a bomb timer, and I am about to learn how easy it is to make one. I've asked a former IRA bomb maker to give me an insight into London's new wave of terror attacks. He wants to be anonymous. We've agreed to hide his face and disguise his voice.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We'll make a very basic timing device that anyone can do as a basic timer.

ROBERTSON: He wants me to understand everything he shows me is already available to the public.

(on camera) If you were one of these terrorists you'd know exactly where to get the information.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Listen, terrorists would know. All of this is on the Internet. Everyday we're looking at this stuff.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): He wants to give his insight, because he thinks it could save lives.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There you go. Your bomb went off.

ROBERTSON (on-screen): Just like that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just like that, that would basically be all the detonation you'd need.

ROBERTSON: So simple and effective.

(voice-over): For more than 15 years, he was actually a British government spy inside the IRA. He now fears for his life if exposed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Remember, as an agent, I joined a terrorist organization. I'm bound by their rules which says, because I dealt with the enemy, and gave information, and secrets to the enemy they now have a right to execute me, so they will do that.

ROBERTSON: He's sure the new terror cells will get more deadly, correcting the failed bombings from July 21st.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no doubt bombers will learn. You will learn the next team will not make that same mistake. And you can guarantee they will check their circuits, they will check their mix, they will check everything.

ROBERTSON: When it comes to thinking like a terrorist, few have his credentials.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think they're at the very early stages. These are very basic.

ROBERTSON: I've asked him to look at video of the bombs left by the July 7th bombers.

(on-screen): How different a mind-set does it appear these bombers have compared to the IRA?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it's frightening when you look at these bombs. These were suicide bombs. These guys went out knowing -- presumably knew that they were not going to come back.

I use the Tube and everything else. I feel the fear. I know how terrorists -- well, I know how some terrorists operated. I mean, I watched -- I mean, other terrorists are doing the exact same thing.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): What scares him is what other cells could be planning next.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They want to cause the most damage. I mean, they want their package, their baby, to do what it set out to do is to kill, maim.

ROBERTSON: To get a look at what he means, we head to the Tube. His backpack is big enough to carry a bomb, although he did not have one. We go right past the police into the Tube.

(on-screen): Putting yourself in the mind-set of a terrorist, what are they looking at? What are the weak links?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, straight away what we have here, the first obvious thing is the seating. Here we have its keyhole. These are all on lockdown. What you use is a square allen key, open the seat, lift it up, physically put your package in underneath, put it down, if you want to lock it again.

ROBERTSON: In the 1980s, the IRA tried to create terror on the London Underground with firebombs. They hid them under seats and in cupboards. At that time, transport police sealed all the locks. But so far, not this time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's the gap. There's where you could your bomb. That's it. ROBERTSON: He's so concerned, he took these camera phone videos, and sent them to the transport chief of police.

IAN JOHNSTON, CHIEF CONSTABLE, BRITISH TRANSPORT POLICE: If you're trying to deal with a campaign where people bring rucksacks on to underground transport, carry them around, and set them off, there's not a lot that locking up the seats is going to help to deal with that.

ROBERTSON: On reflection, the chief of police did add that seat locks could be a concern. The former IRA bomber is not reassured. He travels on the Tube every day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Their next operation they're going to make sure everything is proper and everything will work, and I think they will take a lot of people with them. I mean, we're really scared now at the moment. We're all on edge.

ROBERTSON: Knowing what he knows, that hardly seems surprising.

Nic Robertson, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Still to come tonight, peanuts, hotdogs and steroids. Should performance-enhancing drugs be a legal part of baseball?

And later, a country singer, a fan, and a fan's fanny. The picture of the day. You write the lyric, because this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: The sun came up on Hiroshima today, and Hiroshima fell silent, except for this: A remembrance of the moment 60 years ago when an American B-29 dropped the first of two atomic bombs to be used in war time. They helped end a war; they ushered in a new age.

But most of us don't think too much about it anymore. Most of us weren't there. Here's CNN's Ted Rowlands.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JUNJI SARASHINA, HIROSHIMA SURVIVOR: The flash was so bright, so strong.

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Junji Sarashina was 16 on August 6, 1945. Born in Hawaii to Japanese parents, he had returned to Hiroshima to study Japanese.

SARASHINA: I didn't hear the explosion itself, maybe because I was so close to the flash center that I didn't hear that boom, the explosion.

ROWLANDS: Junji says he was just over a mile from Ground Zero when the bomb was dropped.

SARASHINA: To tell you the truth, I didn't know if I was dead or alive at that particular moment.

ROWLANDS: Now 76, Junji says he remembers that morning like it was yesterday.

SARASHINA: Bridges were blocked with wounded burn victims. There's no way you can cross. Some of the people were in the river, because they were all burned. And they tried to escape from the heat, and they went in the water.

Some of them are dead. Some of them are barely surviving. I must have seen about 500, 600 of them right around the bridges.

ROWLANDS: Junji says those, like himself, that could walk didn't know where to go or what to do.

SARASHINA: Most of the people were burned, so you can't tell if it's a male or female. It is a scene of hell, where you're still alive.

ROWLANDS: Of all of the images seared in Junji's mind, one stands out.

SARASHINA: Infant clinging onto mother. Mother is either dead or wounded, but the baby was still alive and it was just hanging onto the mother. You know, that type of thing you will never forget.

ROWLANDS: Over 100,000 people died in Hiroshima. Another 40,000 in Nagasaki, where a second bomb was dropped. Many victims died after unknowingly exposing themselves to radiation.

SARASHINA: We all came into the city of Hiroshima not knowing that there was radiation effect on the human being. And they roamed around that area for a few days or so, just trying to find their sisters, or brothers, or mother, or somebody.

ROWLANDS: Junji, who says he's in good health, receives a medical check-up every other year, as part of a special program that tracks the health of a-bomb survivors. After the war, Junji returned home and ended up fighting for the U.S. in Korea.

He says he has no ill will against his homeland for dropping the bomb, but, with the horror of that day still clear in his mind, Junji says he is convinced that it should never be used again.

SARASHINA: I wish there were some other way that we could have resolved this type of conflict. But when you see innocent babies getting killed, it is tough to swallow.

After 60 years, I can remember all the detail, you know. When they say, "What did you have for dinner last night?" I got to think twice, and yet, what happened 60 years ago, I could write every little thing. I could see every little thing.

ROWLANDS: Ted Rowlands, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE) COLLINS: In a moment, a check on the headlines.

A new twist in the case of the mayor who refuses to step down, no matter how hot the scandal gets. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

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COLLINS: In a moment, he'll soon have a say in deciding who gets into the hall of fame. So where do steroids factor into all of that? A NEWSNIGHT conversation with sports writer Howard Bryant.

But first, at about quarter until the hour, time for other headlines from Erica Hill at Headline News.

Hi, Erica.

HILL: Hi again, Heidi.

We start off with an investment committee from the Presbyterian Church which today accused five companies of contributing to the ongoing violence in the Middle East and pledged to use the church's multimillion-dollar stock holdings to pressure them to stop.

Now, it contends that all but one of the companies sells products, including night-vision equipment and helicopters, that the Israeli army uses against Palestinians. It says the other company funnels funds destined for Mideast terrorist groups.

Meantime, in New York, get ready for a little something extra in the air. For the next few weeks, researchers will be releasing inert gases in midtown Manhattan. Why, you ask? Well, they're trying to gauge the impact of a chemical or biological attack and plan how to evacuate the area if it happened.

Finally today, court papers filed on this day reveal the FBI has searched the home of Spokane mayor, Jim West, seizing his computers and related files. Now, the documents show the FBI was granted the search warrant after convincing a federal judge there was probable cause that a federal crime had been committed, namely a sex-for-city- job scheme carried out on the mayor's personal computer.

And, Heidi, that's going to do it for us on this Friday night at Headlines. We'll hand it back to you. Have a great weekend.

COLLINS: All right. Thanks so much, Erica, you, too.

Ryne Sandberg gave a speech at his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame the other day. He spoke of the game he loved and the right way to play it, about moving the runner over, not just swinging for the seats.

He was talking about another time and perhaps more finely than it deserves; memory seems to work that way sometimes. And even though he never directly mentioned it, he was also talking about today. So were Aaron and sports writer Howard Bryant, author of "Juicing the Game." Our NEWSNIGHT conversation. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Do you think that, some time back, when baseball kind of lost its center-stage presence in American sport that it made a deal with the devil?

HOWARD BRYANT, AUTHOR, "JUICING THE GAME": Well, I think that baseball knows, at some point, or knew at some point that it had to do something. Coming out of the 1994 strike, the sport was so fearful of losing the public a second time that you had this growing problem with anabolic steroids. And the sport really simply had no idea how to confront it.

And when you think about baseball as its place, and you think about its place in the American society, you think back to 1998, you think back to all of those wonderful things, with Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

And the sport had never seemed more alive. It had never seemed more vital, more immediate than it did at that time. And I think that was one of the reasons, as well, why the sport simply did not confront the problems that were waiting for it.

BROWN: I suppose, they would say, or one of the things that the commissioner's office would say is, "Hey, look, the union wouldn't let us test for steroids. There was nothing we could do." I gather you think it's a bit more complicated than that.

BRYANT: Well, I actually think that the commissioners argument -- and that's the baseball executive argument -- is actually a pretty good one. However, it's always been my feeling that you have two different missions here, and there is no doubting the power of the Players' Association.

However, I don't think that it's the responsibilities of a union to expose its players. I think it's a responsibility of a union to protect its players, right or wrong. I mean, that's why you're in the union.

It was the responsibility of the baseball leadership, of Bud Selig, of the owners, of the people who ran this game, to set the example and, if need be, to continue to push the players into a position where they needed to respond to this issue.

BROWN: Let me make what a friend of mine calls the modified Canseco argument, which begins, "So what? Everything about sport has changed, the way athletes, you know, they get laser surgery on their eyes if they get hurt, they get ultrasound, and this machine, and that machine. And everything has kind of -- so what's the difference if they take steroids?"

BRYANT: I think that the answer, Aaron, is that, when you start to mess with the balance of the game, it changes why you're watching the game. Are you watching the game because we believe this myth of baseball being important to the national interest and that we have these fair contests and all of this? And if that's the case, then, yes, it certainly does matter whether players are taking steroids or not.

However, if you're watching the game simply because you want to be entertained. And believe me, you go into a major league clubhouse, you have a lot of players -- Jason Giambi used to say to me all the time, "How come nobody makes a big deal that Tom Hanks makes $20 million a year?"

And if that's the reason why you're watching the game, simply to be entertained and that it's no different from watching "Friends," or "Mad About You," or going to the movies, then I think, yes, then that argument holds some water. But it does change fundamentally why people watch baseball.

BROWN: If it has become another TV show, if it has, whose fault is that?

BRYANT: Well, to me, I think, it's the fault of the people who run the game, because I don't think they recognized how important this asset is.

Maybe it's just progress. Maybe it's not their fault. Maybe this is simply where we're all going. One of the things that I wanted to do with this book was actually not to write about steroids as much. I wanted to find out where steroids fit in the larger picture.

And what I found was a leadership story, where you have a culture today where players believed they had to use the substances, where you had a culture inside of the game, where you had this conflict, exactly what we're talking about right now.

Is it the Reggie Jackson, Hank Aaron, Jim Bunning argument that this game has been damaged and we have lost something? Or is it the Bud Selig argument and the argument that we hear from a lot of fans out there who keep coming to the ballpark saying, "Well, yes, attendance is up, ratings are up, the game's exciting. We love coming to the game. So what's the problem?"

It's that conflict that I wanted to discuss. And I really think that the reader or the fan has to decide.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: And more of that conversation just ahead about scandals then and now. Is a Palmeiro worse than a Pete Rose?

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(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: What's worse, what Pete Rose did or what Jose Canseco did, or what Rafael Palmeiro...

BRYANT: I think they're equal. I think anything that you do to upset the balance of the game. BROWN: So if Pete Rose doesn't get in the Hall of Fame, then Rafael Palmeiro doesn't get into the Hall of Fame?

BRYANT: Not on my ballot. Neither does Mark McGwire, on my ballot. And neither does Pete Rose, on my ballot. Although I don't get a ballot for another year-and-a-half.

BROWN: But in a year-and-a-half, you get a ballot?

BRYANT: Yes.

BROWN: And they're not getting in on yours, none of them?

BRYANT: No, especially Mark McGwire, because I need to hear more from him. I mean, my argument on this has always been the same. If he was going to stand up on national television under oath in front of his government, in front of his country and not defend his career, how can I immortalize it? No chance.

BROWN: Well, you trap him. I mean, if he stands up and says, "I used them," then you say, "I'm not voting him in because he cheated." If he stands up and says, "I don't want to talk about it," which is basically what he did...

BRYANT: Well, I think if he comes clean and explains to us the steroid culture in baseball, and says, listen -- I mean, maybe it's a situation like Kevin Caminiti, the late San Diego Padres infielder, where he was trying to recover from injury. Maybe he was fearful for his career.

We need more information on this. And what we've been hearing is lies. And that's the problem that I'm having with this decade. Maybe there is some explanation here, over time, that would make more sense because we don't have the information.

But if you're going to look in the camera, and you're going to say, "I never used this stuff," and you did, then you have to pay for that, too.

BROWN: Let me give you an explanation. And I'll be the more cynical one in the room. These guys are protecting $5 million, $10 million careers a year to play ball. It's not a long career, and they're going to do what they have to do to protect it, because there is a ton of money on the table.

BRYANT: Well, if money's your barometer for everything, then I think you have to pay the price for that. Because the player's who came before it didn't need all of this.

In fact, when you listened to Jason Giambi, if you believed his testimony, when you talked to him, I don't think -- I think he said in "The San Francisco Chronicle" that it didn't really help that much. I want to know why would these players compromise themselves for something that they don't really believe helped them that much anyways. BROWN: Because I think, because you're a kid in Wichita, or Louisville, or somewhere, you're one step away from not just the show, you're one step away from $1 million, $2 million, $5 million, $10 million a year, and someone says to you...

BRYANT: What would do you?

BROWN: ... "This little bit will make a difference, this little bit." And none of us are so strong, apparently, or not least all of us are so strong...

BRYANT: True enough.

BROWN: ... that you say, "Hey, I'm not going to do that."

BRYANT: Well, is that really an answer, though? I mean, is that really a justification for this?

BROWN: No, it's not a justification.

BRYANT: I mean, this is exactly what we're going through.

BROWN: It's not a justification. It's an explanation.

BRYANT: It is an explanation, but it's not...

BROWN: Do I think it excuses it? No.

BRYANT: No. And therefore, you pay for your behavior. You got the money, so now you pay. I mean, you can't have both, can you?

Do you get to go to the hall and keep the money, because you decided that the money was more important than your integrity? Then so be it.

BROWN: It's a great way to end the conversation. Nice to meet you.

BRYANT: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Straight ahead, the moment you've been waiting for: What happens when you turn tail on a country singer with a felt-tipped pen? And we promise this is a clean one. The picture of the day, only on NEWSNIGHT.

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COLLINS: OK, so before we go, we had to show you this. It is the "Picture of the Day." You're looking at country music star Tracy Byrd as he autographs, yes, a baby's bottom, three-month-old Michelle Roddy (ph).

All right. Have a great weekend, everybody. I'm Heidi Collins, in for Aaron. Good night.

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