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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Peter Jennings Remembered

Aired August 08, 2005 - 22:00   ET

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

AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Much of the program tonight is about Peter, something he would no doubt hate. On just a normal day, he would find me a bit mawkish. I can't even imagine what he'd say about me today.
He would want us, I think, to note his passing and then quickly move on. He would be appalled that the personal was mixed so easily with the professional.

Lead with your head, not with your heart, he would say to me, almost every day for the eight years I worked with him.

Tomorrow, Peter, not tonight. Tonight, my friend, both.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN (voice-over): There are facts and there are truths. And the truth is that Peter Charles Jennings was the single most curious man I've ever known. I suspect he was born that way. He had the genes for it.

His father was the radio voice of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation back when Peter was born in 1938. Peter would break in at the competitor, not surprisingly, CTV.

PETER JENNINGS, FORMER HOST, "ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT": The FLQ has been heard from again, or has it?

BROWN: His curiosity is what made him a wonderful reporter and, to my mind, the best anchorman ever born.

JENNINGS: ... two more Americans, one Marine and one CB, have been wounded in Beirut.

BROWN: Whether it was the young Peter in the Deep South in the early days of civil rights...

JENNINGS: It started with a single man, and it ended with a crowd of more than 14,000.

BROWN: Or in the rice paddies of Vietnam.

JENNINGS: ... just what kind of a war this is.

BROWN: Whether it was the time he spent overseas in the Middle East, the world leaders he interviewed, Peter would always try to get it, to understand it, not judge it. JENNINGS: And what makes Sarajevans so angry at this...

BROWN: He tried to understand the world his subjects and sources saw. He was curious.

With dashing good looks, has anyone ever looked better in a trench coat? ABC made Peter the anchor long before he was ready. It was 1965. He was 26. "I was the youngest one around who had all his adult teeth," he would joke.

JENNINGS: Last night, I took a ride on a Manhattan subway.

BROWN: It didn't last, and it shouldn't have. And Peter went out to learn his craft, went to all the places news was made for two generations. In a career as long as Peter's, there isn't one breakthrough moment. There are many.

But I'll always remember Munich. He was young. Terrorism was young. Israeli athletes were taken hostage. And Peter, with the calm and carefulness that would mark his career, reported.

JENNINGS: ... what I would suspect are marksmen or sharp shooters from some German security agency have taken up position on a roof adjacent to the Israeli building.

And just one final note, which signifies something of a change...

BROWN: When he formally took the chair in 1983, he was an established anchor and reporter. And in the strange world of TV news, he was already a star.

And I will tell you that he loved being the anchorman, even when he sometimes whined about its constraints. It is frankly something we all do. When things went wrong in the world, unexpectedly wrong...

JENNINGS: The Space Shuttle Challenger is destroyed.

BROWN: Peter's calm and presence was remarkable. And for the 10 years I was there next to him, I'd watch it and try and learn from it, admire it, and envy it. There was no one better in these moments.

JENNINGS: ... awe at what is behind us...

BROWN: On the millennium broadcast, Peter worked 25 straight hours. Those of us who knew him never imagined he wouldn't, not out of greed at sharing the stage, this was a professional challenge.

He could laugh. He could laugh at the absurdity of his celebrity and position. This was not lost on him.

JON STEWART, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW": Is it possible George W. Bush is acting crazy for a reason? By acting crazy, by saying, we're going in. I don't care what you do...

BROWN: We could go on here. I could tell you more of the stories he covered and the rest. But in truth, you already know them. You watched so many of them with him.

So a few things maybe you didn't know. He loved kids. Loved them. He was a wonderful dad to Lizzie and Christopher. He loved watching them grow up. He loved he could show them the world. He was proud of who they were and what they were becoming.

But it was more than that. Wherever he was, he seemed to seek out children, talk to children. Around adults, he had to be the anchorman. Around kids, he could be something else, part reporter, part protector, more relaxed, more human, more Peter.

When last we saw him on the air, it was clear to me, at least, that this was going to be the last time.

JENNINGS: I will continue to do the broadcast on good days. My voice will not always be like this. Certainly, it's been a long time. And I hope it goes without saying that a journalist who doesn't value deeply the audience's loyalty should be in another line of work.

BROWN: This sentence told me Peter would not come back to the chair. This was his good-bye, his thank you, and it went by too fast, and it was so sad and painfully strained that it runs the risk of being the way we remembered him.

And we shouldn't. We should remember him this way, in these places, with this look, this man.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I'll tell you that he was tough. He was a tough boss. I once said to him on one of those days when we fought, "You just hate good writers." And he said, "Not as much as I hate bad ones, maybe."

We fought a lot, not nasty fights, but we did fight. He wanted me to be better and, fool that I was, I wasn't afraid of him. In truth, I think he liked a good fight. It reminded him of the time when he wasn't the anchor. Maybe I was wrong.

But he was also an incredible professional role model. I never once saw him look at a story, treat a story with anything other than complete fairness and demand the same from us. The silly little Web sites on the left and the right will spend days saying otherwise, but they are wrong.

He believed in journalism, believed in reporting, believed that, by the measure of our good, and fair, and honest work, we could contribute to a better world. And to my mind, he did.

About this piece he would say, you left out too much fact and left in too many feelings. And perhaps he would be right.

For a thousand reasons, his death came too soon. He should have been given the victory lap, the dinners, the articles, the awards, the accolades that mark a job well-done, a life well-lived. He deserved that. And though he would have said otherwise, I think he would have liked it. And we should have had more time to watch him work, to tell the stories that have yet to unfold.

But he would also say that he lived a charmed life. That he'd been to places, and told the stories, and had the experiences that a young boy imagined and dreamed about, and he did. And we should be grateful, all of us who watched him and those of us who were privileged to work with him, that we were part of the ride.

For the next little bit here, people who knew Peter, and worked with him, and learned from him, and occasionally battled with him, the whole deal, "20/20" correspondent Lynn Sherr is here and David Gelber, who made documentaries with Peter -- that was hard -- made documentaries with Peter for a long time, and Jeff Greenfield, who, before he came here, was at ABC.

And it's nice to see you all. Well, this is a bad day -- Lynn?

LYNN SHERR, CORRESPONDENT, ABC NEWS: It's a sad day, that, as you said, came way too soon. I mean, four months, start to finish? We just didn't get -- we didn't get a chance to say our proper good-byes.

BROWN: What should people -- people know the Peter who was on television. What should people know -- not the sort of pain, sick stuff -- but what should people know about the Peter that wasn't on television?

SHERR: Well, that he was on-camera, an urbane, elegant, sophisticated man. In real life, there was some of that. In fact, though, he was funny, he was witty, he had a great sense of humor, and he was one of the most vulnerable people I know.

He was always worried, did I do this right? Is that the right thing?

And he was so kind and so generous to his friends. If you had Peter for your friend, he was your friend for life.

He was loyal. I'm going to begin to sound like a Scout master here, but that's the way he was.

BROWN: Yes, he was.

SHERR: He was a pal. I mean, when my husband died, Peter was the first person on the phone to call up and say, what can I do? Can I come over? I'll do anything you want.

BROWN: David, as an anchor, Peter had a power in ways that, whoever the next anchor is, may get 20 years from now. And he used that power in an interesting way, because there were things he cared a lot about and he made them happen. You produced some of those.

DAVID GELBER, WORKED WITH PETER JENNINGS: You know, Aaron, the part of Peter that I got to see was the passionate part, as well. He really cared about the stories that he did.

And in my case, I worked with him from '93 to '96. Before I got there, he had done some reporting on Bosnia. And, in fact, some Serbs had threatened to kill him. So there was a death threat on his head. But Peter was determined. Peter was so passionate about that story. I mean, he looked at a situation where tens of thousands of people in Europe were being slaughtered not for what they had done, but for who they were -- in this case, Muslims. And he wanted to do the story.

And he went to see -- and I was present in a meeting with Peter and Roone Arledge, the boss, you remember well. And Roone was thinking, my God, my multimillion-dollar anchorman, the star of my news division, the one indispensable man is going to go to a place where there are people who want to kill him, who want to see him dead.

And Roone said, no, you're not going.

And, Peter -- I think they had kind of a father-son thing going -- Peter said, absolutely, I am going.

And we negotiated it down to the point where Roone said, OK, you can go for 24 hours.

It was February 1994. Peter, of course, then started to figure out how to extend the 24 into maybe 36 or whatever.

BROWN: But he got it done.

GELBER: Well, he got it done. And, in fact, we had printed up an itinerary of what we were going to do in the 24 hours that Peter was there, which included a trip to the marketplace, the open-air marketplace, the central marketplace in Sarajevo. And we actually went there, several hours before we were supposed to be there. When we were supposed to be there, we were about five minutes away. And suddenly, we saw a car going by with bodies in it. People were running, terribly frightened people. And it was the marketplace massacre.

BROWN: It was a Saturday morning.

GELBER: It was that morning. And it was the time that we were supposed to have been there. So I think Roone always believed that the bomb was really intended for Peter.

BROWN: Jeff, I don't know, what are you thinking about today? I mean, you know, all of us went through, you know, good times, and crazy times, and sad times with Peter. Where are you today?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm in a couple of places, I think. First, the point that Lynn made about Peter's vulnerability, which certainly isn't the impression you got on the air, because of that urbanity and, you know, dressed to the nines and incredibly handsome.

I was remembering about 15 years ago, during one of these Election Days, where we journalists in New York would sort of gather for a lot of cholesterol and gas-baggery. And I had suggested to Peter the day before, why don't you come with us? You know, join us.

And, you know, here's a guy who is invited to every conceivable AA-list party in the history of the world. And he seemed genuinely to be touched. And, well, yes, thanks -- like, oh, I get to go to this lunch. And it was the absolute reaction I least expected from somebody who is as -- was as glittering as Peter.

The other thing that I'm thinking about is that the loss goes way beyond people who knew him and way beyond his colleagues, and friends, and family at ABC News. And it goes to the viewers of news, because the point that David made about his determination to cover that kind of story -- I think it's one of the reasons why the United States ultimately stepped in and saved countless hundreds of thousands of people.

He was determined to put stuff on the air even if the focus groups and image consultants said people don't really care about that. And he had the clout to do it, and he did it.

BROWN: We've got just about a minute before I need to break. Lynn, you were about to say?

SHERR: Well, yes, Jeff was talking about the fact that, you know -- we both talked about it, he's got this one image, he's something else. What Peter was, really, was a guy who cared what individual human beings had to say. And he wanted to communicate to individual human beings. He didn't care about the headline-makers. He didn't care about the fancy parties. He wanted people to understand what the news was about, the context, the background, what it meant to them.

That's why he talked to children. That's why he talked to cab drivers all the time, bus drivers. These are the people he connected with. And that's what was so extraordinary about him.

GELBER: I think that Peter also really wanted to tell people what was happening in the world. And I think that we, in the television news business, are a lot poorer today because we've lost the leading advocate for international news coverage.

SHERR: And by the way, Aaron, you hope that he knew that he had a good life. He knew that he had a good life. I had conversations with him. He knew exactly how wonderful his life was. And his children knew what an extraordinary dad he was.

BROWN: Well, he was that. It's good to see you two.

Jeff, stay around. We need to take care of some other business. We have more on Peter coming up.

Erica Hill is with us in Atlanta tonight with some of the other news of the day -- Erica?

ERICA HILL, CNNHN ANCHOR: Hi, Aaron.

We start off tonight in Saudi Arabia, where the American Embassy and a number of consulates are closed for tonight and tomorrow, this after what the State Department called credible and specific evidence of bomb attacks in the making.

Meantime in London, four of the men allegedly behind the failed bombing attempt on subways and a bus had a day in court, a judge ordering them held on charges of attempted murder and conspiracy, among others. Their next court date is schedule for November.

On now to New Mexico, where President Bush signed today a massive energy bill into law. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 calls for tax credits for alternative sources of energy, nuclear power, and billions of dollars to oil companies. The president calls it a good bill. Critics call it loaded with pork.

And one of the country's boldest entrepreneurs has died. John Johnson built a publishing empire on the proposition that African- Americans, like any American, had money to spend and liked to read. Along the way, in the pages of "Jet" and "Ebony," Mr. Johnson gave black America a face and a story. As people used to say, if it wasn't in "Jet," it didn't happen. John Johnson was 87.

And, Aaron, with that, we turn it back to you in New York.

BROWN: Thank you. We'll see you again in a half-hour or so.

Peter's passing ends a remarkable era in my business, in our business, the business of television news. The main anchors, the three of them, have now all left the stage under very different circumstances. We'll take a look at the future of the business, talk more with Jeff and others, on a sad and not unimportant day in television journalism.

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It's remarkable, when you think about it, how quickly this business has changed. Someone wrote a while back that the role of anchor has become irrelevant. Accepting my bias here, I beg to differ.

When it matters who the anchor is, it matters a lot. Maybe it didn't matter that much on September 10, but it did on September 11. That said, there's no denying the business is changing. And Peter's passing is another step down that road.

Here's CNN's Deborah Feyerick.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is "World News Tonight with Peter"...

CHARLES GIBSON, HOST, "GOOD MORNING AMERICA": Peter Jennings once began this broadcast, his broadcast, by saying, "We have seen the news, and it is us." Tonight, the news is Peter.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the decades before cable and the Internet changed the information landscape, Peter Jennings was one of those who defined broadcast news.

PETER JENNINGS, FORMER ANCHOR, "ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT": But there are 50 villages here, and there are more than 50,000 people homeless.

TOM BROKAW, FORMER ANCHOR, "NBC NIGHTLY NEWS": We bumped into each other all over the world during one of the most tumultuous news times in any journalist's history. And we enjoyed every moment of it.

FEYERICK: Like rival anchors, Tom Brokaw at NBC and Dan Rather at CBS, Peter Jennings knew what it was to be on the front lines.

JENNINGS: This will count as one of the worst attacks since this war began.

BOB SCHIEFFER, ANCHOR, "CBS EVENING NEWS": They didn't get there because of their looks or because of the way they read a script in the studio. And I'm not sure we'll see three guys like that again.

JENNINGS: And like so much of Saudi Arabia, underneath all the sand, there is oil.

FEYERICK: He made his early mark reporting overseas. And even though changing tastes and economics forced the closing of many foreign news bureaus, world news would remain his calling.

DAN RATHER, FORMER ANCHOR, "CBS EVENING NEWS": Peter felt, among other things, it was part of his mission to keep the flag of international coverage, what we used to call foreign coverage, flying and flying high, because he felt it was so important.

ANNOUNCER: This is "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings."

JENNINGS: Good evening...

FEYERICK: At its peak in the early '90s, "World News Tonight" averaged 14 million viewers. That number has been cut nearly in half, a trend seen also at CBS and NBC. Still, experts say, there's a place for the network evening news anchor.

HOWARD KURTZ, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Even though they probably are going to be somewhat diminished, compared to the days of Walter Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley, they're still very, very important.

JENNINGS: Someone actually reached up and handed me a small piece of the wall that they had chipped away.

FEYERICK: And Peter, at least, was open to change. At the Democratic Convention last year, Jennings anchored his first digital broadcast. You could see it on the Internet, even on your cell phone.

KURTZ: He didn't know whether 20 or 200 people were watching, but he had great enthusiasm for it. And he thought it was rather cool that the show was opening with a Jimi Hendrix song.

FEYERICK: A newsman willing to change in a business all about change.

BARBARA WALTERS, ABC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: He was a stickler for detail. He pushed himself. He pushed us. He made us better. FEYERICK: Deborah Feyerick, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Jeff Greenfield is back with us. We're also joined by Michele Norris, the host of "All Things Considered" at NPR and a former colleague at ABC News.

Michele, you're probably expecting one of those big journalism questions. And I want to talk to you about being pregnant, and maintaining a family, and stuff like that, because you were, as a correspondent -- and Peter was, as I remember, incredibly supportive of trying to live a complicated life.

MICHELE NORRIS, HOST, "ALL THINGS CONSIDERED": It's one of the things that many people perhaps don't understand about Peter. We've all read in all of the obituaries that he was married four times. But he knew, perhaps more than most, the toll that journalism can take on a family.

And there's a generation of journalists who benefited from his sage advice. And he encouraged us to nurture our own families. And I remember him saying, take time with your kids. Get that right. Because if you don't get that right, they'll never forgive you.

And there was a conversation that was relayed to me. I wasn't in the room. But, Aaron, you know I had back-to-back pregnancies. My children are now 5 and 6. They're 14 months apart.

And there was a lot of worry when I was pregnant the second time. Would she be able to handle the load? And apparently, Peter in the room said, you know, let's give her the benefit of the doubt. Let's let her do this work. She's been more prolific since she's come back from that first pregnancy. Let's see what she can do.

I don't think that you'd hear that from a lot of editors, and anchors, and publishers in American newsrooms. And there are a lot of us who benefited from that.

BROWN: Just one more thing, before I go to Jeff. When you came to ABC News, you came out of newspapers. And one of the things about Peter is Peter would -- and you're a great example of this -- if he saw something, he would nurture it.

NORRIS: Yes, he would. He would. I think it was the thing that helped me get over the hump when I first moved into television, is that he saw that I was a writer. And, you know, I think all three of us have felt Peter's foot in our neck from time to time, as you go through that editing process.

But Peter would call, and he'd say, so, young lady, you fancy yourself a writer? And you knew that he had that brown calligraphy pen. And you were about to be in for it as he went through your copy. But we've also felt the flourish of pride in knowing that Peter could massage your copy and make it better. He believed in muscular writing. He did that himself. He demanded that of us. And I think that's why his broadcasts really stood out.

BROWN: Jeff, big picture here, or bigger picture, would this day be different -- would we see the day differently if it weren't for the fact that Tom has left the stage, that Dan left the stage, and now Peter passes away?

GREENFIELD: No, I think that gives this story a kind of a structure that's almost unavoidable, that these three really significant people all came to the anchor chair roughly in the same time, in the early '80s, all stayed for 20 years-plus, all leaving under different circumstances.

It imposes, almost inevitably, the question, passing of an era, end of an era. It's where the cliches, you know, come rising almost spontaneously.

However, the fact that the news business in itself has changed so dramatically makes Peter's passing significant, even if it wasn't accompanied by those other two departures, because Peter represents not just what's been talked about, the commitment to do the kind of news that is increasingly out of favor in the corporate suites.

It's expensive. It's complicated. The surveys say -- it's a little different after 9/11 -- that people don't care. And the question, I think, that arises is, I think anchors are going to still be with us. Twenty-eight million people watch the three network newscasts combined. You can add everything that cable does and you don't come close.

But will they have the kind of clout to say to the suits, we're going to cover this story because it matters. You know, Peter had that kind of clout. I don't know the answer to that.

So when you take these three people leaving those chairs so close to each other and the changing dynamic of news, this is a significant moment that raises questions beyond the passing of one really significant journalist.

BROWN: Jeff, thank you.

And Michele, it's great to see you.

NORRIS: You too, Aaron, thanks.

BROWN: It's been a while. Thank you very much.

Much more ahead on the program tonight, starting with a moment that a little girl's mother will relive for the rest of her life.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Her baby was in the arms of her husband. Her husband was firing at police.

LORENA LOPEZ, MOTHER OF SUSIE LOPEZ (through translator): I heard gunshots. I started to scream, "My baby, my baby, my baby!" BROWN: From chaos and tragedy, two stories emerge.

CHIEF WILLIAM BRATTON, LOS ANGELES POLICE: He has a history with the police department. I won't go into detail with that. He's not a hero. He is not a fine, upstanding citizen. He is a cold-blooded killer. And it's that simple.

BROWN: Also tonight, on the security watch, planning for the worst.

MICHAEL CHERTOFF, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: And obviously, the Department of Defense has certain capabilities.

BROWN: So how bad does it have to get before the military takes over?

ANTHONY WELLER, SON OF GEORGE WELLER: Finally, near the end of it, I found a wooden crate. And I opened a mildewed file folder. And there was -- you know, the opening was "Nagasaki, 06 September, send immediately, Chicago Daily News."

BROWN: And how one reporter got the story of his lifetime about a moment that changed history and how it was buried for 60 years, until today. A different war, a different time. But as always, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There's nothing simple about this story, but this much seems fair to say: No one should die the way Susie Marie Lopez died. No one, but especially not a toddler. Her life had barely begun when it ended in a hail of gunfire -- 130 bullets fired between a police SWAT team and the man holding Susie hostage, her father.

Whether the standoff had to end the way it did will be for an independent review board to decide. Through a mother's eyes and grief, though, the answer seems clear.

Here's CNN's Thelma Gutierrez.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Lorena Lopez is in pain. A pain so profound, she says it physically hurts every time she looks at her baby's pictures, every time she touches her baby's toys, every time she hears Susie Marie's recorded voice.

The wounds are too fresh. Lorena tells us she will be forever haunted by the events of a day she relives constantly -- July 11, the Watts community in Los Angeles. Nineteen-month-old Susie Marie Lopez is taken to work by her father, car dealer Raul Pena. But on this particular Sunday, things go terribly wrong.

LOPEZ (through translator): I saw police cars and I thought something is going on.

GUTIERREZ: Los Angeles Police get a 9-1-1 call from Raul Pena's car dealership. The caller is Lorena's 16-year-old daughter, who tells police her stepfather is armed and under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

Police swarm Pena's business. Nearby, residents are evacuated. The area is sealed off and Lorena's teenage daughter escapes unharmed. About the same time, Lorena dashes out of her home and races across the street, frantically trying to reach Susie.

LOPEZ (through translator): I heard gunshots. I started to scream, "My baby, my baby, my baby."

GUTIERREZ: She says police told her to get away. Lorena then runs back home. Out of desperation, she says, she grabs a crucifix and runs back to the officers.

LOPEZ (through translator): I said, "I beg you in the name of God, I beg you," And I lifted the cross and I got down on my knees and said, "Don't shoot. My baby's inside."

GUTIERREZ: But the situation escalates. Pena's own security camera shows him shooting at police with one hand while holding 19- month-old Susie in the other. Police fire back. The toddler is caught in a hail of bullets. One officer is wounded by Pena. After a two-and- a-half hour standoff, it ends here, Pena barricaded in his office with his daughter.

ASST. CHIEF GEORGE GASCON, LOS ANGELES POLICE: The SWAT officer who went through that door, was willing to give his life to save Susie Lopez.

GUTIERREZ: But Susie and her father were killed. She was found in his arms. Autopsy reports show the baby was shot twice -- once in the leg and once in the head. Both times, by LAPD.

LOPEZ (through translator): I said, "No, that can't be. I was sure they would rescue my daughter."

GUTIERREZ: Lorena says she can't imagine her baby's last hours alive. Her fear or her pain.

LOPEZ (through translator): She was a baby who couldn't say it hurts or let me go or I want to leave.

GUTIERREZ: Luis Carrillo, the family's attorney, says LAPD should have acted with more restraint.

LUIS CARRILLO, LOPEZ ATTORNEY: It was highly reckless, totally negligent to fire into a structure knowing that there's a baby there.

GUTIERREZ: Police deny they fired indiscriminately into the office, but Carrillo says a preliminary ballistics test that he commissioned shows otherwise; that LAPD fired many times through the walls. CARRILLO: The suspect is the one that prompted what occurred here.

BRATTON: He is not a fine upstanding citizen. He is a cold- blooded killer.

GUTIERREZ: LAPD Chief William Bratton says police were trying to save Susie and defend themselves; that Pena used the toddler as a human shield. Lorena says it's not true.

LAPD says it found cocaine powder and an open bottle of tequila on Pena's desk after the shooting. A toxicology report shows the toddler had trace amounts of cocaine in her system. It's unknown how it got there. Lorena vehemently denies ever using cocaine.

Lorena, who cleans homes for a living, says now all her joy is gone.

LOPEZ (through translator): They handed me a plastic bag with my daughter's hair in it. That says so much. What did they do to my daughter?

GUTIERREZ: She says she cannot even bear to be in her daughter's room.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mommy, tell them how she loved the jet-ski.

GUTIERREZ: Susie's brothers and sister choose to remember happier times. Memories like this.

Thelma Gutierrez, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still to come tonight, imagine being the first eyewitness to history, then being told you can't report what you saw. The story, the bombing that ended the Second World War, not told until now.

And why isn't the space shuttle home yet? Enough questions already. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Only a few people around our office knew it, but NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen had a pen pal long after she left "ABC News" which had been about six or seven years ago. She kept up the correspondence and a deep friendship with Peter. It explains a lot, including her own description of the piece she files for us tonight.

"I was grateful," she wrote in a memo, "to have work to throw myself into today, grateful for a story that has a peg: The eve of the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. And I was especially grateful the story was what it was, the tale of another intrepid, resourceful and determined journalist and war correspondent George Weller, of the 'Chicago Daily News,' the first American journalist to get into Nagasaki after the bomb." (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The U.S. military filmed the detonation of the atomic bomb at Nagasaki, but it would be weeks before the American public would see pictures or read descriptions of what the bomb had done.

WELLER: No journalists were being allowed in, and no news was being allowed out.

NISSEN: Anthony Weller's father, George, was a war correspondent in Tokyo for the "Chicago Daily News." He expected General Douglas MacArthur to allow reporters into Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the Japanese surrender.

WELLER: Instead, they were told nothing in southern Japan was open to them.

NISSEN: George Weller went anyway, by an intrepid combination of renting a row boat and local trains. En route, he removed the brass war correspondent tabs from his military issue uniform.

When he got to Nagasaki, he told the Japanese authorities there he was a U.S. Army officer.

WELLER: My father presents himself as Colonel Weller, and says that he's been ordered here to make full reports on the situation in the city, which was still burning and smoldering.

NISSEN: "Flames flicker across flattened blocks," wrote Weller in his first dispatch, dated September 6. Nagasaki was, he wrote, "a wasteland of war."

WELLER: "Look at the face of the Catholic cathedral torn down like gingerbread, and you can tell that the liberated atom spares nothing in the way."

NISSEN: From the moment he arrived, George Weller could see, smell the dead. By some later estimates, 70,000 people died instantly in the hot white blast. On his second day in the city, George Weller saw more survivors.

WELLER: "In swaybacked or flattened skeletons of the Mitsubishi arms plant, it's revealed what the atomic bomb can do to steel and stone. But what the riven atom can do against human flesh and bone lies hidden in two hospitals of downtown Nagasaki."

He'd seen people who were terribly scorched, but he's seeing, over the next few days, people who survived the bomb suddenly dying.

"According to Japanese doctors, patients with these late- developing symptoms are dying now, a month after the bombs fell, at the rate of about 10 daily."

NISSEN: This first account of radiation fallout, which would kill thousands more Japanese in the next months and years, was typed up, and, like Weller's first dispatch, driven by courier to U.S. military sensors in Tokyo.

(on camera): What happens to those dispatches?

WELLER: They disappear.

NISSEN (voice-over): By some later accounts, General MacArthur was so furious at Weller for defying orders and impersonating an officer that he personally quashed Weller's reports. Weller had carbon copies of his dispatches, but his newspaper couldn't run them without military clearance.

WELLER: Thanks to MacArthur's censorship, one of the great stories of his life, if not greatest, had been totally silenced.

NISSEN: Weller stayed in Nagasaki for three weeks, then left Japan. He went on to cover other stories, other wars. Somehow, over the years, he lost track of his precious Nagasaki papers.

WELLER: I think these just ended up in apartments in the Middle East or in Italy or in Cyprus, and he just thought them lost.

NISSEN: George Weller died at the end of 2002, at the age of 95. It took days for his son to sift through the papers in the study of his father's home outside Rome.

WELLER: Finally, I opened a mildewed file folder. The opening was, "Nagasaki, 06 September, send immediately." And I felt an enormous sense of relief, that they weren't lost to history, and then also sadness, because they'd been in a box 25 feet from where he'd been sitting for the last couple of decades of his life, believing them lost.

NISSEN: To his surprise, he found something else. A stack of black and white photographs his father had taken in Nagasaki and never mentioned.

WELLER: They're pretty telling photographs. A gate to a temple, and all that's standing is the gate. Or a man covering his face with a handkerchief as he walks down the road.

It wasn't the destroyed city that stayed with him, but these people. It shook him. And shook him particularly because he wasn't allowed to get the story out.

NISSEN: Anthony Weller is assembling a book of his father's dispatches, notes and photographs from Nagasaki, 60 years later, 60 years late.

WELLER: Here was a situation in which a momentous thing had been done, by our leaders, in our name, and we deserve to know exactly what it was. And that was his role, was to get the story out.

NISSEN: At long last, it is.

Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In a moment, what might have sent Air Canada 358 off the runway and what almost certainly did not. Do we say Air Canada? We meant Air France. New evidence coming to light. A break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Morning papers coming up, the picture of the day coming up. First, at about a quarter to the hour, some of the other news of the day. Erica Hill in Atlanta. Ms. Hill, good evening.

HILL: And good evening to you, Mr. Brown.

We start out with more about the Space Shuttle Discovery. Astronauts aboard the shuttle spending an extra night in orbit. They were, of course, supposed to return to Earth today. Low clouds, though, prompted NASA to postpone that landing. So they're going to try again at 5:07 a.m. Eastern time tomorrow. But if it's still too cloudy in Florida, the shuttle does have the option of touching down in California or New Mexico.

Investigators into last week's crash of an Air France jet near Toronto have now ruled out engine malfunction as a possible cause. They say information from the flight data recorder shows all four engines, as well as the jet's brakes, were working properly.

A fight between white and Hispanic inmates at San Quentin State Prison turned into a riot that left dozens of prisoners injured. The fighting broke out during breakfast. Parts of the prison were already under lockdown because of fighting earlier this month.

And finally tonight, she was a physical therapist, who treated President Eisenhower after his heart attack, and then made history under another president from her home state of Arkansas. As part of our anniversary series now, we look back tonight at Joycelyn Elders, "Then & Now."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The daughter of an Arkansas sharecropper, Joycelyn Elders entered college at 15 with big dreams. Dreams that led her to serve in the Army, and eventually become a doctor.

In 1993, President Clinton nominated Elders to be the first African-American surgeon general. She was an advocate for universal health care and comprehensive health and sex education.

JOYCELYN ELDERS, FORMER U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: I would like every child born in America to be a planned, wanted child.

In regard to masturbation...

PHILLIPS: But her suggestion that public schools consider teaching young people about masturbation as a way to prevent sexual diseases enraged conservatives, and forced Elders to resign after just 15 months in office.

ELDERS: If I had it all to do over again, starting today, I would do it the same way.

PHILLIPS: She returned to the University of Arkansas, where she remains a semi-retired professor emeritus.

Elders is married, has two sons, and lives in Little Rock. Now 71, she travels frequently to speak on women's and other health issues. She remains an outspoken advocate of sex education.

ELDERS: If I can make any changes at all to the current health care system, you know, I would start with education. Education, education, education.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HILL: And Aaron, that's going to do it for us here in Atlanta. We'll send it back to you in New York so you can get ready for my favorite part of your show, morning papers.

BROWN: Thank you very much. We'll be more on our game tomorrow. We've been a little off our game tonight. Thank you.

It's going to get nasty. But what? We'll see in morning papers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK. Time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world.

"The Christian Science Monitor" starts us tonight. I don't think we've done this in a while. "Iraqis far apart over role of Islam. With a week left to finish Iraq's new constitution, Kurds and Shiites appear to be hardening positions." That's what happens in negotiations.

"Passing of an era and an urbane anchor in TV news." Peter on the front page of "The Christian Science Monitor." Peter -- I'd talk to him, and he'd say, I hate that morning papers thing you do. You're not funny.

He didn't get the joke sometimes. I love him anyway.

"The Washington Times," "Roberts deferential to other branches. Rulings tilt slightly conservative." He's conservative. That's what he is. We don't need to pretend otherwise.

"Daily News" in New York. I love this. "It's gonna get nasty!" Brash Westchester D.A. and occasional cable contributor, Jeanine Pirro, has decided to challenge Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. And so, somebody said today, she feels like if she can get -- Ms. Pirro -- 40 percent of the vote, she'll get her own cable program. I swear someone said that today.

"Cincinnati Enquirer." "Sharp shooters may cull 550 deer from city park." Yikes! May be the right thing to do, but in the park? Right in town?

"The Guardian." "Secret courts for terror cases. Security cleared judges would decide how long suspects could be held." Security is the story still in Britain.

I don't know why -- forget that one.

Let's go to "The Chicago Sun-Times." "Sex and Sorrow." This is a series they're running. "Teens sold on Chicago's streets." That's a nice thing to wake up to.

The weather tomorrow in Chicago, if you're passing through -- thank you -- "unyielding." Ninety-four degrees in Chicago tomorrow.

The picture of the day, which could be the picture of a different time, after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: And here is the picture of the day as picked by our team of judges. OK, there we go. This beautiful child in Nagasaki remembering the 60th anniversary.

And here's the one I picked. It's the anniversary -- show the other one -- of the resignation of Richard Nixon. I went on the radio the next day and said, "great, now what are we going to talk about?" We'll talk about something for 60 minutes tomorrow. Until then, good night.

END

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