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Campbell Brown
Did Military Expose Group of Marines to Toxic Chemicals?; Terror Plot Details Revealed
Aired September 24, 2009 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CAMPBELL BROWN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Tonight, here are the questions we want answered.
Why did a group of male Marines get breast cancer? Did the military expose them to toxic chemicals that made them sick?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Marine Corps did this to me. How could they do this to me after I have served the country faithfully, honorably discharged? How could they do this to my fellow Marines?
BROWN: Our special investigation, "Poisoned Patriots," begins tonight.
Also, breaking news -- another American accused of being a terrorist.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He tried to detonate the bomb with a cell phone.
BROWN: Feds say he wanted to blow up a courthouse.
Plus, we have new details about the arrests in Denver and New York allegedly involving weapons of mass destruction.
Also, is this sex tape for real? Or are Russian spies up to their old tricks again, trying to discredit an American diplomat?
And should Wal-Mart really be to blame for these parents losing their kids?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here we were, forced to sit and watch, helplessly, as they ripped crying, screaming, terrified children away from us.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They can pull any one of your children out of your home right now.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: This is your only source for news. CNN prime time begins now. Here's Campbell Brown.
BROWN: Hi, everybody. Those are our big questions tonight. But we start, as always, with the "Mash-Up," or look at all the stories making an impact right now, the moments you may have missed. We are watching it all, so you don't have to.
And we starting with some breaking news tonight out of Washington. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been discharged, we understand, after being briefly hospitalized after falling ill in her chambers. Ginsburg, of course, is 76 years old. She's a cancer survivor. She has been on the Supreme Court since 1993, when she was appointed by President Clinton. We are still getting more details.
Apparently, she fell ill around 4:50 according to a statement this afternoon, shortly after an iron sucrose infusion to treat an iron deficiency anemia that was administered at the office of the attending physician.
This is a statement we received a short time ago. Again, she was taken to the hospital, we understand it, as a precaution and she has been discharged. If there is any more to report on this, we will update you throughout the evening.
In addition, there is some other breaking news to tell you about, not one, but two alleged terrorist plots foiled by the FBI tonight.
First, word just in of an arrest in Dallas. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LOU DOBBS, HOST, "LOU DOBBS TONIGHT": In Dallas, the FBI has arrested a Jordanian national for trying to bomb a skyscraper there. The 60-story skyscraper is in downtown Dallas.
The 19-year-old suspect had been under surveillance for a number of months. He discussed his plans with an undercover FBI agent and then the suspect tried to plant what he thought was a bomb. The FBI said the device contained non-explosive material. And the suspect will be appearing in federal court tomorrow.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: But, wait. There is more. In Illinois today, another suspected terrorist in custody, allegedly caught in the act of trying to execute a deadly scheme of his own.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, the suspect in this case, Wolf, is a 29-year-old man from Decatur, Illinois, called Michael Finton.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: According to authorities, the 29-year-old Finton, a part-time cook, intended to blow up this building with a van packed with what he believed was nearly one ton of explosives.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Finton, also known as Talib Islam, drove a van that he believed was carried nearly a ton of explosives and parked it in front of the courthouse. Then, the FBI says, Finton got out of the van, jumped into another car, and dialed a cell phone to remotely detonate the bomb.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But the bomb never went off. It was fake, his co-conspirator actually an FBI agent working undercover. Finton was immediately arrested as part of an 18-month sting operation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Finton seen here on MySpace converted to Islam while serving time in prison.
MESERVE: Authorities say he was very much an admirer of John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban who was picked up fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan. And, according to authorities, Finton wanted to become a jihadist.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Meanwhile, an indictment tonight against Najibullah Zazi. This is the Afghan native nabbed in that terror sweep that stretched from New York to Colorado, a federal grand jury charging Zazi with conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction. We're going to have a lot more on these stories coming up later tonight.
President Obama, meanwhile, is in Pittsburgh tonight. He's hosting the G20 summit, a gathering of leaders of some of the world's biggest economic powers.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The summit in Pittsburgh certainly another huge test for President Obama right now on the world stage, and it comes fresh from his appearance over at the United Nations.
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The historic resolution we just adopted enshrines our shared commitment to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The vote was 15-0, the first time a U.S. president ever presided over a Security Council summit. Even Russia and China signed on to a resolution that calls for slashing the arsenals of nations that have nuclear weapons and stopping the spread to those who don't.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In a week of high-stakes summitry, the president taking a break from the domestic policy fight that dominated the summer is carving out a sweeping new foreign policy vision.
JAKE TAPPER, ABC NEWS: Here in Pittsburgh, President and first lady Obama arrived to have dinner with other world leaders. The focus of this G20 summit is avoiding an altogether different kind of catastrophe, economic. They will be talking about coordinating global financial regulations.
(END VIDEO CLIP) BROWN: The G20 summit has long been ground zero for demonstrations, anti-globalization protesters, free Tibet supporters, anarchists -- police out in force, too, wielding sound cannons and tear gas.
Today's U.N. speeches somewhat less dramatic than yesterday's. Hard to top Gadhafi, but there were some standouts, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brandishing the Nazi blueprints for the Auschwitz death camp, where more than a million Jews were murdered. This was a direct flap at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a notorious Holocaust denier, who unleashed this torrent of hate against Israel in his speech yesterday.
Many diplomats -- diplomats, rather, walked out on Ahmadinejad. To those who didn't, Netanyahu today asked, have you no shame? Have you no decency?
On a less somber note, a bravura performance from Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, who still seems a little obsessed with George W. Bush. You may recall his rant in 2006, the one where he called Bush the devil. Well, today he gloated that a United Nations without Bush smells pretty sweet, but that was only the beginning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HUGO CHAVEZ, VENEZUELAN PRESIDENT (through translator): It doesn't smell of sulfur here anymore. It doesn't smell of sulfur. It's gone. No, it smells of something else. It smells of hope.
There was no socialism in the Soviet Union. It is this century, the 21st century, that will be the century of socialism.
Obama, come over to the socialist side. Come join the axis of evil here.
Please don't throw me a shoe. If you're going to throw me a shoe, throw me one of those rubber shoes.
And I hope God will protect Obama from the bullets that killed Kennedy.
Let's be a tiny bit better and a tiny bit less selfish. Thank you. Goodbye.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: With musical accompaniment there.
Chavez, we should tell you, is a guest on "LARRY KING LIVE." That is, of course, tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time.
From Russia with love tonight, a strange tale of sex and spying, Russian security services suspected of using a fake sex tape to blackmail an American diplomat.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Shadows of the bad old days, when Cold War era diplomats from both sides were lured into sexually compromising positions -- a videotape allegedly showing an American diplomat having sex with a prostitute in a hotel room.
IAN KELLY, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON: This kind of campaign is disgusting and -- and deplorable.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A U.S. diplomat based in Moscow, 34-year-old Brendan Kyle Hatcher, allegedly having sex with a prostitute in a hotel room here is merely a smear campaign. The tape has been very heavily edited.
DOUGHERTY: The tape, U.S. officials claim, is doctored, a montage of different clips, some of them, it says, clearly fabricated, like this lights-out scene in the hotel room.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: A State Department spokesman calls the whole thing a setup designed to implicate someone working as a liaison with religious and human rights groups in Russia. Is this a setback to U.S.-Russian relations? We are going to have much more on this fascinating story coming up a little later tonight as well.
In Thailand tonight, a potential breakthrough in the fight against AIDS. Researchers behind a major clinical trial say they have developed a vaccine that reduces the chances of catching the HIV virus.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the first time that they have shown that the vaccine is actually effective in stopping some cases. The Thai health minister said this was a scientific breakthrough.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The vaccine cut the risk of getting infected with HIV by more than 31 percent. And the finding is a result of the world's largest AIDS vaccine trial. Top U.S. health officials say they are now cautiously optimistic about developing an effective vaccine.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This vaccine has no live HIV virus or particles, so it's safe. What they did was, they took two vaccines that had been tested before that didn't work and found that when they combined them as one-two punch, they reduced HIV infection.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Now, researchers caution a lot more testing still needs to be done.
In the battle against the H1N1 virus, new questions tonight about whether hand-washing is really an effective means of prevention. So many people watching their manners as swine flu fear spreads not so eager to get up close and personal these days, except, of course, for the ladies on "The View."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WHOOPI GOLDBERG, CO-HOST, "THE VIEW": The swine flu lurking in our faces. And you know, we're here and we're sitting with you all and people come out and they kiss us and they hug us. And, you know, Sanjay Gupta got the swine flu.
(LAUGHTER)
GOLDBERG: If Sanjay Gupta gets the swine flu...
JOY BEHAR, CO-HOST, "THE VIEW": The most safe is this, this one and the elbows. Then there's the handshaking. It's not as bad as you think. And then there's -- the body hug is not good, just so you know.
(CROSSTALK)
BARBARA WALTERS, CO-HOST, "THE VIEW": That's we get. But that's what we're all getting.
(CROSSTALK)
BEHAR: But the worst is this or this.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's what I like.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: OK. That's one tight-knit group of ladies.
Meanwhile, in the parallel world of reality television, the Hammer survives to dance another day. Former Congressman Tom DeLay has made the first cut in "Dancing With the Stars." But that didn't spare him a browbeating from comedian Adam Carolla. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ADAM CAROLLA, COMEDIAN: Tom DeLay, I know what you're thinking. You don't have to practice as hard as everyone else. You don't have to work as hard as everyone else, because you're a white middle-aged Republican, and dancing comes naturally to you people.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Delay gets another chance to show off his moves on Monday. And if that wasn't funny enough for you, let's turn to the "Punchline." This is courtesy of Conan O'Brien, his take on Moammar Gadhafi's giant U.N. non sequitur. Check it out.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CONAN O'BRIEN, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH CONAN O'BRIEN": Now, Gadhafi's speech -- this is crazy -- it went on for 90 minutes. I think he was supposed to speak for 15 minutes. He went on for 90 minutes. And as usual, he was all over the place. Take a look at this.
MOAMMAR GADHAFI, LIBYAN LEADER (through translator): We need to work toward peace by understanding each other. For example, this Chinese restaurant menu says free egg roll with order. But when my food arrived, there was no egg roll.
(LAUGHTER)
GADHAFI (through translator): What the hell? If anyone likes bad Chinese food, help yourself.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Conan O'Brien, everybody. That is the "Mash-Up."
And when we come back, our breaking news: an American busted for allegedly trying to blow up a federal building in Illinois, another man arrested down in Dallas for allegedly trying to bomb a skyscraper there. We are all over this story. We are going to have the latest for you.
Plus, tonight, our special investigation. How did a group of male Marine who is served on the same base end up with breast cancer?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE PARTAIN, SON OF MARINE: We come from all walks of life. Some of us have college, some of us blue-collar jobs. We're all over the country. We're not -- what is our commonality? Our commonality is that we all, at some point in our lives, drank the water at Camp Lejeune.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: An update now to our breaking news about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Earlier, we told you that she was briefly hospitalized and then released after falling ill in her chambers. That was the word we had received from the Supreme Court press office.
We have since learned that Justice Ginsburg apparently is still in the hospital being evaluated at this hour. As we told you, she is, of course, 76 years old. She is a cancer survivor. We are going to give you more details on this story as we get them. But, again, she was hospitalized after falling ill at her office in her chambers and still being evaluated at the hospital at this hour.
Some other breaking news we want to turn to now. We are just learning of a man, a Jordanian national, who was arrested and accused of trying to blow up a 60-story glass skyscraper in Dallas, Texas. The Justice Department says that the suspect, who is in the U.S. illegally, has repeatedly expressed his desire to commit violent jihad.
And this comes just after word of a similar unrelated case in Springfield, Illinois, or seemingly unrelated, where authorities say a U.S. citizen actually tried to throw the switch on a van that he thought was full of explosives right in front of a federal courthouse, he, too, in custody tonight.
Our homeland security correspondent, Jeanne Meserve, joins me now with breaking details on all of this.
Jeanne, what's going on? First, give us the latest I guess on what's happening there in Springfield.
MESERVE: Well, this involves a 19-year-old man from Decatur, Illinois, named Michael Finton. He was a convert to Islam, also went by the name Talib Islam.
According to federal officials, he decided that he was going to target the federal building and courthouse in downtown Springfield, Illinois. He drives up what he thinks is a truck bomb, hops into another car, drives away, a few blocks away, pulls out a cell phone, tries to detonate the bomb, but it doesn't go off.
Little does he know that the guy next to him in the car is an undercover FBI agent and that the FBI has put an inert substance in the truck bomb. They have been on to him for some time. They foiled this plot. He, right now, is under arrest and facing charges -- Campbell.
BROWN: And, then, Jeanne, this skyscraper case down in Dallas sounds very similar to the sting in Springfield. What happened there? What can you tell us?
MESERVE: There, it involves a 19-year-old Jordanian national in this country illegally. You're right. There are some similarities.
In this case, this man committed to violent jihad, according to federal officials, allegedly parked a van in front of the Fountain Tower in downtown Dallas, but again the FBI had been working undercover. They had been on to him. That didn't explode either.
Now, you might think these two cases are frighteningly similar. Well, they are unrelated, officials say. A federal law enforcement source says these two were not working together. They were both lone operators. They had both been self-radicalized. But these were both FBI stings and they were coordinated, according to this law enforcement official, because they were afraid if they executed one too much in advance, the suspect in the second case would get wise to what was going on and he would be tipped off -- Campbell.
BROWN: All right, Jeanne Meserve with a lot of new details for us tonight. Jeanne, thanks.
And I want to bring in R.P. Eddy right now, who is a former director of the White House National Security Council. And he is joining us here in the studio.
R.P., good to see you.
R.P. EDDY, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL DIRECTOR OF COUNTERTERRORISM: Nice to see you, Campbell.
BROWN: So, these two cases apparently lone wolves, from what we see, from what law enforcement is telling us. How difficult is it for them to track these people?
EDDY: Right.
Well, the homegrown terrorists, people that are already inside our borders and already here, are much harder to find, because there's a series of trip wires that the external terrorists would set off that these guys don't have to set off. They don't have to blend in. They already are in.
BROWN: Right.
EDDY: They don't need fake I.D.s. They don't need to learn the language. They don't need a find a way to live or to make money. Presumably, they would have that around them. So, it's much more difficult for us to find these homegrown self-radicalized terrorists.
BROWN: I mean, based on just what you heard, the details that Jeanne provided for us, how dangerous are these guys? They sound like -- I mean, how competent are they? On one hand, they sound sort of incompetent. The FBI seems to have had their arms around the situation, but, wow, two new cases that we're just hearing about?
EDDY: Well, there's often this discussion of how competent terrorists are. People say, oh, their hair is disheveled. They don't have military training. They probably can't cause that much damage.
And I completely dismiss that. You don't need to have a lot of experience, a lot of money to cause a lot of damage. In the examples of these two guys, Finton and Smadi, they looked like they were going to cause an immense amount of damage if they were left to their own devices, if the FBI hasn't fooled them.
So, we should not underestimate the danger of these guys. The perfect example, although he had military training, is Tim McVeigh, a homegrown terrorist who caused an immense amount of damage and heartbreak.
BROWN: Right.
EDDY: There's no reason to think that can't happen again by homegrown terrorists.
BROWN: Now, these cases, though, do look a little bit different from the big one that we're tracking and getting information about between Denver and New York...
EDDY: That's right.
BROWN: ... of these guys who were indicted today for weapons of mass destruction, or allegedly...
EDDY: Yes. Zazi, yes.
BROWN: ... trying to use weapons of mass destruction.
EDDY: Well, it's not clear that when they say WMD in this instance that they mean chemical or biological. It could mean large explosives.
And in fact that what it seems like it means. There's an explosive called TATP. It's the one that was used in the London bombings. It's made out of hydrogen peroxide, highly dangerous. And I think that's what they're referring to.
But you're right. These are different types of attacks. So, these three -- or attempted attacks -- these three terrorists illustrate for us very perfectly the spectrum that we face as a country. And hopefully, today, we will finally realize we have to pay attention to every part of the spectrum.
And, briefly, what I mean is homegrown terrorists on one side like Finton, an American who is coming after. On the other end, you have Smadi or Zazi, who are from overseas and potentially directed from overseas.
BROWN: Right.
EDDY: Zazi looks like he is. It looks like they are, and that they are going to come get us internally, different threats, different solutions needed.
BROWN: So do we have the resources? I mean, is law enforcement getting lucky here, or is this like great work on -- all around?
EDDY: It's certainly good work all around, and there's always an element of luck.
And these cases are likely going to show cooperation, particularly the Denver-New York case, between the CIA, FBI, and locals. And that's very important.
But, no, simple answer, we don't have the resources, because the state and local police are the only ones who can really have the situational awareness to find the homegrown terrorists in the towns and stop these attacks, or at least alert the FBI. And the local police are too busy, they're overburdened and underfunded.
So, that's why we have started this organization to try and train them called MCAP (ph) to train local police across six major cities to be counterterrorism professionals and what we call first-preventers of terrorism, and not just first-responders.
BROWN: One interesting point, though, is that you do see a greater level of coordination, it seems like, in the post-9/11 era than we certainly saw before between the various law enforcement branches.
EDDY: Yes, absolutely.
BROWN: It's great to have you here, R.P. Eddy. Appreciate your expertise on this.
EDDY: Nice to see you. Thanks.
BROWN: The other breaking news story, again, we will have more on this, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hospitalized. We're watching that story.
Plus, when we come back, a CNN special investigation. This is a cluster of male Marines with breast cancer. Find out why they are blaming the military for their illness.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABBIE BOUDREAU, CNN SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT: How many of you believe that your breast cancer may be tied to the water at Camp Lejeune? All of you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Coming up in just a few moments, our special investigation into why a group of male Marines who all served on the same base developed breast cancer.
(NEWS BREAK)
BROWN: They served up to sign their country and they ended up getting sick, but not on the battlefield. They are male U.S. Marines with breast cancer -- our special investigation coming up next.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How could they do this to me after I have served the country faithfully, honorably discharged? How could they do this to my fellow Marines?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Tonight, we're bringing you an important investigation. An extraordinary group of men, some of whom defended this country, have developed a very rare disease. And all the men have a common link in their past. And they fear it may be something in their common history that caused their illness.
And Abbie Boudreau of our Special Investigations Unit sat down with them.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BOUDREAU (voice-over): These men are all victims of a terrible disease, a disease especially rare among males. They have breast cancer.
JIM FONTELLA, FORMER U.S. MARINE: I never, at that time, knew that men had -- could even have breast cancer, until I was told by the doctor. And I was like -- that's when I was shocked, like, you have got to be kidding me.
BOUDREAU: But beyond their rare illness, these men share another link. They're all retired U.S. Marines or children of Marines. And, years ago, they lived on the same Marine base.
PARTAIN: We come from all walks of life. Some of us have college, some of us blue-collar jobs. We're all over the country. We're not -- what is our commonality? Our commonality is that we all, at some point in our lives, drank the water at Camp Lejeune.
BOUDREAU: Camp Lejeune is the main U.S. Marine Corps training base in North Carolina.
(on camera): How many of you believe that your breast cancer may be tied to the water at Camp Lejeune? All of you.
(voice-over): They have each had part of their chest removed by surgery. All suffered through brutal chemotherapy or radiation, or both.
Some were told their cancer was terminal. These are just seven of at least 20 former Marines or sons of Marines with breast cancer who lived at Camp Lejeune.
PETER DEVEREAUX, FORMER MARINE: Mine traveled to my mine, my ribs, and my hip.
BOUDREAU: Peter Devereaux is 47 years old. He was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. He was at Camp Lejeune in 1981 and '82.
DEVEREAUX: The difference with metastatic breast cancer, it means now there's no cure. So the average life expectancy is two to three years.
So, you know, I have a daughter at home, 11 years old. You know, and you're in this thing and, you know -- you know, and it like pisses you off, right? Being a man, you know, I try to take care of my wife and my daughter and now that I'm considered disabled because I can no longer work, I can't use my arms. You know, you're having challenges, you know.
BOUDREAU: Jim Fontella from Detroit fought in Vietnam and lived at Lejeune in 1966 and 1967. He was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1998. After surgery, it reoccurred spreading to his spine and back.
JIM FONTELLA, FORMER MARINE: I kind of manned up to it after a while and just expected to die, because once you have metastasis, bone mets (ph), basically it's just a matter of time before you die. You know, luckily, I've already passed my due date, my five years. I've outlived that death sentence that I got.
BOUDREAU: Mark Partain, the son and grandson of Marines, was born on Camp Lejeune 40 years ago.
MARK PARTAIN, SON OF MARINE: Am I going to see my daughters graduate? I'm sorry, I'm just -- when they told me I had breast cancer and that it was serious, I mean, the first thing in my mind was, am I going to see my kids graduate from high school? Am I going to see my daughters married?
BOUDREAU: Partain has helped find and organize these men. Like most of them, Partain has no family history of breast cancer. He even got himself tested for the breast cancer gene.
PARTAIN: And they were negative.
BOUDREAU: Breast cancer in men is far more rare than in women, with only 1,900 men expected to be diagnosed in the U.S. this year, as compared with about 200,000 women. Dr. John Kiluk is a breast cancer surgeon at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. He's startled by the common thread.
(on camera): Do you think that this raises any red flags?
DR. JOHN KILUK, BREAST CANCER SURGEON: Absolutely. When you have -- the average breast cancer patient for males is about 70 years old. So when you have general men that are in their 30s stepping forward without a family history of breast cancer, that is alarming. And the question is, is why? Why is this happening to them?
BOUDREAU (voice-over): Frank Bovee with the federal agency for toxic substances and disease registry has been working to answer that question. He says the levels of contamination at Camp Lejeune were alarmingly high.
FRANK BOVEE, AGENCY FOR TOXIC SUBSTANCES & DISEASE REGISTRY: The levels of trichloroethylene were the highest I've ever seen in a public water system in this country.
BOUDREAU: Government records show from the 1950s through the mid-1980s, Camp Lejeune's drinking water was contaminated with high levels of chemicals and solvents. Some came from a nearby dry cleaner, others were chemicals used on the base. The contaminants included trichloroethylene or TCE, perchloroethylene or PCE, and benzene, all believed to cause cancer.
BOVEE: Now whether the exposures were long enough and high enough at Camp Lejeune to cause disease, that's the question.
BOUDREAU: The Marine Corps declined to be interviewed for this story, but said in a statement that it addressed the contamination as quickly as it was discovered and that it has collaborated with the toxic disease registry from the beginning of its study, to determine the extent of the contamination and whether adverse health effects may have resulted from it. This collaboration continues to the present day.
For these men, collaboration isn't enough. They want answers, and they say they want help.
FONTELLA: To have 20 men come from the same place, walking on the same dirt, drinking the same water, I mean, there has to be a link there somehow.
BOUDREAU: But so far, no link has been proven and the Veterans Administration says without that link, it cannot pay for treatment. For these men, it's a bitter disappointment that leaves them angry.
(on camera): Why anger?
RICK KELLY, FORMER MARINE: Well, anger because the Marine Corps did this to me. How could they do this to me, you know, after I've served the country faithfully, honorably discharged? How could they do this to my fellow Marines?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: And Abbie Boudreau is here with me now. Abbie, why is it so difficult for scientists to find a link here?
BOUDREAU: Well, first of all, you have to realize that this base is huge. It's 150,000 acres. And then you have to go back 20 or 30 years to try to piece this puzzle together. I mean, where exactly did these men live? You know, what kind of water were they drinking? Was the water contaminated?
These are all the kinds of questions that scientists are going to ask and have to ask in order to find out the truth here. And that's what needs to happen in this case and it needs to happen soon.
BROWN: How seriously is it being taken, really?
BOUDREAU: It is being taken very seriously. Every single scientist and research that we talked to was alarmed. They said this is startling. They haven't seen something like this. You know, you have 20-some men who all have male breast cancer, who all lived at Camp Lejeune, who were young when they were diagnosed, most of them don't have family histories.
So this is a big deal. And these men just want to know, was it because I lived there, was it because I drank this water? And it might take a very, very long time to find that out.
BROWN: This is really terrifying. Abbie, thanks very much, but we should mention there's a lot more to come here.
Tomorrow, Abbie is going to bring us part two of our investigation. Do documents indicate the Marine Corps knew about the contamination in the drinking water years before it shut down the wells?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were being exposed when we went bowling. We were being exposed when we went to the commissary. We were being exposed when we went to the PX. And then when we went home, we were being exposed over there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: That part of the story tomorrow night, 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time right here on CNN.
It sounds like the plot of a James Bond movie. Tonight, the State Department is blasting Russia for what it says was a plot to blackmail a married U.S. diplomat through a sex video. We have the tape that has Washington hot under the collar when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: Are Russian spies trying to blackmail an American diplomat? You might think that kind of thing sort of went out with the Cold War, but it looks like spy versus spy is alive and well. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: State Department here in Washington now says a videotape allegedly showing an employee at the U.S. embassy in Moscow having sex with a prostitute is a "smear campaign."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This undercover video of Hatcher was posted on a Russian Internet site, complete with background music. First, Hatcher is seen in surveillance video on a Moscow street, talking on a cell phone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It then cuts to a hotel room with the lights on with somebody, again, resembling Hatcher, lying on the bed in his underwear. It then cuts again to what appears to be the same room, but this time with the lights switched off. And there you can see in the darkness, a man and a woman having sex.
VOICE OF JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: The tape, U.S. officials claim, is doctored. A montage of different clips, some of them, it says, clearly fabricated. Officials say Hatcher was approached by Russians who tried to blackmail him. He reported it to the embassy. The tape then appeared on a Web site which diplomatic sources who declined to be named claim has a history of ties to Russia's security services. The Russian government isn't commenting.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: And here now with more on this is CNN foreign affairs correspondent, you heard there, Jill Dougherty, and Peter Earnest, executive director of the International Spy Museum down in Washington, also a retired CIA official. Welcome to you both.
PETER EARNEST, INTERNATIONAL SPY MUSEUM: Thank you.
BROWN: Jill, the State Department says this is an all-out fake. This is a smear against one of their diplomats. What do you make of this?
JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: You know, I think you have to look at what he was doing. The person in this film, and there actually are real parts of this film, that's what makes it, you know, complicated, but he was working with religious groups, human rights issues, and that's very sensitive in Russia. So if somebody wanted to set him up, discredit him in the eyes of religious people, what better thing than to do a sex tape.
BROWN: To make it -- I mean, that would be reason enough that he would be a target?
DOUGHERTY: Yes. That's conjecture, but --
BROWN: And it looks like from the tape, I mean, as you say, certain parts of it are real, but that they've spliced together, you know, some real footage with maybe some, you know, fake footage or whatever.
DOUGHERTY: Yes.
BROWN: I mean, it's impossible to tell.
DOUGHERTY: That's the way it looks. Because, actually, he can actually put his finger on when that, he believes, it was done when he was actually in a hotel room, but by himself. And you can see in that video, he was there, you know, walking around in his hotel room. Then there is a splice, then the dark part starts and that is what they allege is really fake.
BROWN: Right. And he even says that this was when he was there as a tourist. He wasn't even working for the state Department.
DOUGHERTY: In Siberia, I think it was.
BROWN: Let me turn to you, Peter. I know you've got a long history of the stuff. Does this have all the hallmarks of a Russian spy operation here?
EARNEST: It has all the hallmarks of a Russian spy operation, although I must say, the video doesn't quite reach the giggle factor. You couldn't put that on late-night cable, for heaven's sake. It's wretchedly done, and you have to ask yourself, here the Russians are making nice at the U.N. and this ridiculous smear campaign against an American diplomat is done by the intelligence service. You have to ask yourself, what were they thinking?
BROWN: Well, you know, Hatcher says, I mean, to Jill's point a moment ago, the Russians were trying to blackmail, to get him to become a double agent. I think most of us think that all of this stuff came to an end, you know, with the Cold War. How much, Peter, is this spy versus spy thing still going on between Russia and the U.S.?
EARNEST: Well, look, you still have people trying to steal each other's secrets. That's not going to go away. That didn't end with the Cold War. And so, you can expect this sort of thing, but that is such a heavy-handed kind of blackmail device you would like to think that went out, but obviously, it didn't. And of course, you still have people in the KGB, now the FSB, who were there during the Cold War and they're still there and they haven't learned anything new.
BROWN: As Jill also said, Peter, a number of parts of this video are real. I mean, Hatcher has said, yes, that was me. And he pointed out that some of it was before he was even working for the State Department. Is it plausible that he was being tracked back then and, I guess, does any American traveling to Russia need to think about the idea that they could be under surveillance?
EARNEST: You are absolutely right. The Russians have always been suspicious of foreigners, particularly in his case. He's in touch with people they would consider dissidents, but what they've done now is they've put on notice every tourist, every journalist, every traveler who goes to Moscow that they may well be tracked, they may well be photographed. And a couple three years later, that may be patched together with this, as I said, ridiculous video in an attempt to blackmail them.
BROWN: And, Jill, you have been CNN's bureau chief in Moscow for a long time, and you say that that -- I mean, forget about the blackmail part of this, spy versus spy thing, but sex scandals have become sort of like, you know, common everyday occurrence there among diplomats especially, right?
DOUGHERTY: But it is -- I mean, it's an ancient tradition, Campbell. I mean, you know, if you want to, again, compromise somebody, turn them to you, the easiest way is to get some type of sex scandal going. And many people who have traveled, when I traveled there years ago, I was told do not go out by yourself, go out with somebody else, watch out for people who want to get you, you know, into a hotel room. It's just the way the game is played.
BROWN: They're setting people up.
DOUGHERTY: Yes.
BROWN: They're looking for opportunities here. DOUGHERTY: Sure, sure.
BROWN: It's fascinating stuff. We'll see how this plays out. Jill Dougherty with us tonight. It's good to have you here in New York, for once, by the way. And also Peter Earnest, down in Washington. Peter, thanks as always.
EARNEST: Sure. Good to be here.
BROWN: When we come back, tonight's "newsmakers." A mom and a dad whose young children were taken away from them because of photos like these. I'll ask them why Walmart called this child pornography. We'll explain.
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BROWN: An Arizona couple saw their family and their lives torn apart, literally, all because of the pictures they took of their little girls. In four of the photos that the family released, you see the girls partially nude after taking a bath.
Now, a photo lab worker who was processing the images at a local Walmart got a little worried when they saw the photos and they called police. Authorities investigated the parents for child pornography. They took the children away for a month. The parents were listed on a sex offender registry and the mother was suspended from her job at a school.
But then a judge rules these pictures are harmless. These are kids in a bathtub. And now, the couple is suing Walmart, the city of Peoria, and the state of Arizona.
The parents A.J. and Lisa Demaree are joining me tonight from Phoenix along with their lawyer, Dick Treon, who is with us as well.
Welcome to you all. Appreciate your time tonight.
A.J. DEMAREE, PARENT SUING WALMART: Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.
BROWN: Lisa, let me just start with you. Wow, you have been through a lot over the last year. How are you doing? How's your family doing?
LISA DEMAREE, PARENT SUING WALMART: You know, we have a really close-knit family and a lot of extended family and friends. So we've had a lot of support. If we didn't have that support, I don't know how we would have ever made it through that.
And the girls are -- they're doing OK. They have some times where they mention their time away from us and they've drawn pictures and, you know, we just try to be there as much as we can for them. But all the surge of media has obviously brought about and opened up a lot of our wounds. So it's been difficult, lately. BROWN: A.J., just let me explain the story to people a little more from your perspective. Start at the beginning. The police came to your home on the night of August 30th. Your girls were taken away from you. They were put in foster care. Walk us through what happened.
A. DEMAREE: The Peoria Police Department came to our house on the morning of August 30th, interviewed both Lisa and I, then ripped the girls away from us. They were screaming, crying. They were taken to a facility and they were given a forensic interview and a sexual examination.
At that point, they found nothing wrong, so they brought the children back to us, but we were at a friend's house while the police were searching our house, brought the girls back to us. We had them for about four hours, came back to the house when the police said they were done and that's when CPS ripped the kids away from us again, a second time that same day.
BROWN: And --
A. DEMAREE: Go ahead, I'm sorry.
BROWN: Well, I know after what you guys have been through, that you are suing Walmart, you're suing the city, the state. I just want to read, this is a statement we got from Walmart. And it says, "By Arizona law, we believe our associates acted appropriately in notifying the authorities who then made a decision to investigate."
As a parent, you know, I understand your anger with the police and the city. They made a decision to take your children away here. But I got to say, wouldn't you want like the photo clerk sort of flagging police if they see something suspicious? I mean, why blame the kid or person at Walmart who flagged police to this?
L. DEMAREE: You know, we don't blame the kid or the person at Walmart. We actually find fault with the company, and they should ask on the behalf of children and make sure that they're safe.
However, they have a responsibility to their customers to notify them that they're going to be -- they're going to be censoring photographs and turning them over to the police. And there was none of that. There was nothing for us to view. There was no notification that that would happen.
BROWN: A.J., the city is also standing behind what they call appropriate actions of their officers and part of the reason is you've released these four photos, which we've shown to our audience. But there are a lot of other photos and photos they describe as provocative.
A. DEMAREE: OK.
BROWN: Why not make all the photos public so that people can then say, OK, you know, these are bath-time photos.
A. DEMAREE: Right.
BROWN: And wouldn't that just sort of clear your name altogether?
A. DEMAREE: Well, it was actually, it was a very tough decision to release those four photos, because our intention all along was to shelter our children as much as possible from this whole ordeal. We felt after the Peoria Police Department released the police report, before they even released it to our attorneys, with the graphic detail of their descriptions of those photos, that we needed to counteract that and release these four photos attached with the detective's descriptions.
I mean, he described those photos that you showed as child pornography and child erotica. And so we just wanted to give everyone a reference point of where he was coming from, which, I think, most people would agree that those photos are not child erotica and they're not child pornography.
BROWN: Pretty much everybody's got pictures of their kid in the bathtub, I think.
A. DEMAREE: Right.
BROWN: Anyway, it does sound like a case of them really, really going overboard here. I appreciate you guys talking to us about this. A.J. and Lisa, I know it's been a tough year for you. Again, thank you for your time tonight.
L. DEMAREE: Thank you.
A. DEMAREE: We are going to be back in a moment with a lot more. Some states having been it a whole lot harder with job losses than others. But now, if you are unemployed, if you live in one of those places, help could be on the way. We're going to show you why. That's coming up in tonight's "Money and Main Street" when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: If you are out of work, Washington had a tiny bit of good news for you this week. Congress is close to extending unemployment benefits by up to 13 weeks for people in the hardest hit states. More than 14 million people officially unemployed. But in tonight's "Money and Main Street," chief business correspondent Ali Velshi explains why many more people are out of work.
ALI VELSHI, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Campbell, the unemployment rate in the United States is 9.7 percent. Let's see how that looks across the country.
You'll notice that on both coasts, as this fills up, these are states -- these are the hardest-hit states. They're states with an unemployment rate of more than 8.5 percent. And you can see, it's pretty much both coasts and the space in the middle, the Midwest states, the mountain states tend to be a little better off. Now, let's take a look at how bad it is in some of these places. California has an unemployment rate of 12.2 percent. That's the highest it's been since the 1940s. Oregon, 12.2 percent. Take a look at Nevada, 13.2 percent. That's on the west side.
Let's look at the east. Rhode Island, one of the worst in the country, 12.8 percent. And of course, Michigan has an unemployment rate of 15.2 percent.
So what's happening is the Congress is trying to figure out a way to extend unemployment benefits for those people who have been on unemployment for so long that they've run out of benefits. It's passed the House. A move to extend unemployment benefits for 13 weeks to people who live in these red, in this case, hardest hit states. These states with more than 8.5 percent unemployment versus the national average of 9.7.
Now, we talk about 9.7 percent unemployment, but the story according to many people is worse than that. Take a look at this.
First of all, we know, 9.7 percent is the national unemployment rate. This includes people who are receiving unemployment benefits and/or are actively looking for a job. But what if you've been looking for a job for so long that you know you're not getting one? You're now not actively looking for a job and you're unemployed?
Well, if you add those numbers to the unemployment number, you come out with 11 percent. Those are what you consider marginally attached workers plus the unemployed. Now, you add those people who have lost their jobs but need to work in order to get some kind of income, so they will be working part-time against their will. And without benefits, the unemployment number moves up to 16.8 percent. Some people call this underemployment.
But the bottom line is, when you count all those people who are unemployed and looking for a job, those who aren't looking for a job but are available and willing to work and those who are working in part-time jobs when they'd rather be working in full-time jobs with benefits, we're looking at close to one in six Americans who are looking for a job or a better job -- Campbell.
BROWN: Ali Velshi for us tonight.
And think your job search might take you to another city? Compare the cost of living between cities at CNN.com/moneyandmainstreet.
"LARRY KING LIVE" starts in just a few moments. And up next, tonight's "Guilty Pleasure. The video we just can't resist.
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BROWN: "LARRY KING LIVE" starts in just a few minutes. But first, Erica Hill is here with tonight's "Guilty Pleasure."
ERICA HILL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Don't fight it, right?
Six students from Texas A&M who call themselves "dude perfect" have pulled off what really seems to be impossible. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome to Aggieland. This is the world's longest basketball shot. Yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HILL: You've got to see another view of it here to give you a better idea of how this shot -- there you go, you see the ball right there coming in.
BROWN: Yes.
HILL: Now, they claim that this is 100 percent real. Back in April, a separate video that they did of some different wild basketball shots, they looked at it on GMA (ph) where they claimed that they had computer experts check it out, they couldn't find any edits. They say it's totally real.
BROWN: Just that lucky, huh?
HILL: From the third deck of a football stadium.
BROWN: All right, Erica Hill.
That's it for us. We're out of time. "LARRY KING LIVE" starts right now.
