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More Coalition Air Strikes in Fallujah; Bush Stumps in Pennsylvania

Aired June 23, 2004 - 13:58   ET

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

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


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: A terror threat. Iraq's most wanted man says he's going after the man soon to be in charge of Iraq.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: And if you fly on a commercial airline, the government knows more about you than you may think. Is it too much information?

PHILLIPS: A development in the Scott Peterson murder trial involving the juror at the center of a controversy. We've got the details.

WHITFIELD: And she's idolized by thousands of young girls, Mary- Kate Olsen goes under treatment for an eating disorder. What parent's need to know about the problem.

From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Fredricka Whitfield.

PHILLIPS: And I'm Kyra Phillips. Miles is on assignment. This hour of CNN's LIVE FROM... starts right now.

With one week left until the handover there's another menacing threat in Iraq, from the militant mastermind of bombings, beheadings and other acts of terror: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. And for its part, the U.S. military, for the second time in five days, has bombed a suspected Zarqawi hideout near Fallujah. To bring us up to date from Baghdad, CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Early this morning that audio was seen on an Islamic Web site -- heard, rather. And it did say that they plan to continue to fight both U.S. troops and attack the interim prime minister, according to the voice, until Islamic rule returns to Iraq.

The specific threat was made apparently by Zarqawi against Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister of Iraq. We then called the office of the prime minister, and his spokesman said that he had printed that threat off the Internet, had shown it to the prime minister, who apparently smiled and responded that Zarqawi is not just the enemy of Iyad Allawi, referring to himself, Zarqawi is the enemy of all Iraqis. And he went on to say that they would not allow this to derail either the handover or the beginnings of an attempt to put Iraq on the path to democracy.

Now the U.S. also, slightly after midnight, conducted its second air strikes on a target in Fallujah, the second in about five days. This, we're told, was on safe houses allegedly belonging to Zarqawi and his network. We were told by the senior military spokesman here that they think they might have killed 20 foreign fighters. And they say they believe they blew up stores of ammunition and other weaponry.

That's the latest from here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Well the world is hearing from former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the form of a letter and by way of an attorney. One of Saddam's lawyers is in the U.S. this week claiming the American troops are abusing the deposed leader.

But in a letter to his family Saddam writes that his spirit and morale are high. A Red Cross report indicates Saddam was in good health and slightly wounded one month after he was captured. His attorney is asking why would the deposed leader be slightly wounded if he wasn't being abused?

Well, taking on a new duty for the U.S. in Baghdad, John Negroponte was sworn in today as the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq. He is scheduled to go to Baghdad after the planned handover is complete. Negroponte is not oblivious to the dangers of his new post, but he says he feels it is his duty to go.

WHITFIELD: The rulers of Saudi Arabia sent a strong signal today to the militants bent on crushing the Saudi monarchy. In a statement read on Saudi state television, Crown Prince Abdullah said al Qaeda supporters have one final chance to surrender under an amnesty or face what he called the unflinching power of the Saudi regime. The militants have a month.

The decree follows the killing of American Paul Johnson at the hands of al Qaeda and the subsequent death of Saudi Arabia's top al Qaeda leader in a shoot-out with Saudi security forces.

President Bush stumping for votes today in the Northeast. Is talking money for AIDS. Others are still talking about that White House memo concerning the treatment of prisoners post-9/11. CNN's Elaine Quijano is traveling with the president and has more on what the president deemed acceptable interrogation tactics -- Elaine.

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Fredricka. The White House is vigorously trying to challenge the notion that it in any way at all condoned the torture of detainees. And as part of that vigorous effort the White House yesterday released a stack of documents.

Now those documents revealed some of the internal discussions that took place, the debate that was going on about how the U.S. should treat detainees. And one of those documents was a memo written in February of 2002 by President Bush in which he says, quote: "Our values as a nation, values that we share with many nations in the world, call for us to treat detainees humanely, including those who are not legally entitled to such treatment." Now Democrats say that these memos are just a fraction of what they have been seeking from the administration. Of course, the White House has been under some harsh criticism ever since the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal broke. But senior administration official are trying to characterize these memos as, quote, "academic musing" or "opinion memos."

In fact, yesterday, White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez said that the documents address abstract legal theories. That the discussions were exploratory in nature and they never made it to the level of soldiers in the field or to the president.

In the meantime, President Bush turning his attention to the campaign trail here in Pennsylvania after making a speech today at a Baptist church in Philadelphia here on his AIDS initiative. The president wrapping up the day in Pennsylvania here with a private fund raiser expected to raise some $1.4 million.

The president visiting this state for the 29th time. This, of course, a key battleground state for the president, which he lost in 2000 by just a narrow margin -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: And Elaine, back to the papers. Is there an explanation on the timing of the release of the papers, both White House and Pentagon, on the same day and just a few hours apart?

QUIJANO: Well, no explanation given for that. But obviously this is a concerted effort as the criticism has intensified over what the administration may or may not have authorized. Certainly officials are very concerned.

The poll numbers that are out may have had something to do with that. Of course, this administration will not acknowledge that out and out. But certainly the White House is very cognizant of the public's perception as this investigation continues to unfold.

Some of the fall-out still continuing around the world but also here domestically, people's perceptions of the president's rationale for going to war and the treatment of those prisoners certainly coming under some harsh scrutiny, certain (UNINTELLIGIBLE) of factors. But no official explanation as to why the White House and the Pentagon coming out, releasing those documents -- Fredricka.

Elaine Quijano, traveling with the president. Thanks very much -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Now the story of a man who is living his dreams definitely. After Jose Contreras escaped from Cuba he landed a spot as a pitcher for the New York Yankees. But something was missing: his family. Well, last night he was reunited with his wife and daughters in Miami. National correspondent Susan Candiotti is in Miami Beach with all the details.

How did it go, Susan?

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, very well. You can imagine how happy the family is. It's a reunion that has been long hoped for by the Yankees pitcher Jose Contreras for about two years. And you might say, been hoped for by Yankees fans as well. More on that in a moment.

But first some pictures of a very happy family. Contreras reunited with his wife and two daughters after not seeing them for two years after he defected from Cuba to the United States via Mexico.

They are now staying at a swanky Miami Beach hotel where they were reunited about one-and-a-half days after the family left Cuba. His wife and two daughters and about 18 others were apparently smuggled onto a speedboat off Cuba's coast about midnight early Monday morning, and made it close to the South Florida shores in the Florida Keys when they were chased for about two hours by the U.S. Coast Guard and ICE, that's customs enforcement.

Eventually the boat got away and beached itself on the Florida Keys. All of the migrants made it to shore, were taken into custody and were eventually entered legally into the country as Cuban migrants.

Now obviously the family is happy to be together again, for more reasons than one, just talked to Yankees manager Joe Torre about why he thinks this might help his Yankees pitcher.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE TORRE, MANAGER, NEW YORK YANKEES: You know, we all need so much support in this game and a lot of it comes from the people outside the park. And he had really -- goes home to four walls. It's really tough to go home and not think about bad things that have happened or good things that may turn bad.

So I think the fact that he has been going home to that empty room or empty apartment is probably one of the toughest things that someone has to deal with, especially the fact that you know he's limited on how many people he can talk to because of the communication problems.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CANDIOTTI: So clearly the hope is the reunion will help Contreras improve his play. He has had trouble over the past couple of years being separated from his family.

Meantime the circumstances surrounding all this, Kyra, remain under investigation. According to U.S. government sources, no one is in custody right now, being suspected or has been charged with smuggling so far. Back to you.

PHILLIPS: Well, Susan, I'm curious, did his wife just decide, that's it, I'm taking the kids, I'm going to leave everything behind, we're going to go for it? And now are they house hunting in New York?

CANDIOTTI: Well, I wouldn't be surprised if that's going to happen fairly soon. But in terms of the circumstances, that's what is stymieing investigators right now. They are getting different stories about exactly what happened and they are trying to nail that down.

Remember these people are saying they were on the shore and just happened to be ashore at about midnight when a fast boat just happened to come by. So that's why authorities are taking their time to investigate this to see whether anyone will be charged.

It's not an unusual story here. But a lot of people don't make it. More than 600 Cubans who tried to make it to the United States but were intercepted at sea have been repatriated so far this year.

PHILLIPS: And we have covered those stories too. Susan Candiotti, thanks so much -- Fred.

WHITFIELD: The impact of terror. Will recent beheading of foreign nationals in the Middle East have political implications. We'll talk about that straight ahead.

And American health care and the race for the White House. John Kerry expected to lay out his prescription live this hour. We'll have that and a response from the Bush campaign straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: The politics of terror. Yesterday's beheading of a South Korean hostage in Iraq, last week's beheading of American Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia, and the beheading of Nicholas Berg in May: all potent, graphic images, images our Brian Todd reports militants hope to exploit so Westerners will flee the Arab world.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The images even those sanitary enough to show on television are horrific. The very word beheading shocks news consumers. And that, experts say, is the whole point.

KEN ROBINSON, CNN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: It's a very effective, graphic image that goes to the core of Western Judeo- Christian beliefs as being very abhorrent.

TODD: The decapitation of South Korean hostage Kim Sun-Il, although not shown so far in the media, shows a clear pattern, most recently with Paul Johnson and Nick Berg, but going back to Daniel Pearl and well beyond, and what some experts believe could be a developing strategy on the part of the terrorists and militants.

PETER BERGEN, CNN TERRORISM ANALYSIS: These beheadings are a pretty effective propaganda tool because they are so horrifying. Would you want to stay in these countries if you felt this was a reasonably strong possibility?

TODD: Beheading as a form of punishment is part of Islamic law and goes back many centuries. But Muslim scholars say it is only supposed to be used as a consequence of a criminal act and must be approved by the judge and the government of the Islamic nation in question. As an instrument of terror, experts say it has no official sanction but several benefits. It signifies the ultimate act of killing, one expert says, something very final, abrupt. And terrorism analyst we spoke to say in this day and age, these types of killings lend themselves to exploitation by the media.

GABRIEL WEINMANN, U.S. INSTITUTE OF PEACE: I think they see that it pays off. That it's really useful. It gets media attention. It gets the coverage, the exposure they want. It messages of threat.

TODD: Messages apparently intended for multiple audiences.

ROBINSON: They are trying to communicate to the West, to those who are contributing to infrastructure rebuilding, not to participate. They are trying to scare American public who send their sons, daughters, husbands away, to try to convince them not to participate.

TODD (on camera): The open question now is will this method work and drive foreign troops and civilians out of Iraq or Saudi Arabia? Of course, there are many foreigners working in both countries right now.

But one terrorism expert says he has spoken to two former special operations soldiers who have been recruited for contract work in Iraq. Both are combat veterans. Both say you couldn't pay them enough to go.

Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: I want to bring in terrorism expert Jim Walsh from Harvard on this.

And Jim, with the beheadings getting so much attention, are the militants carrying them out to make a political statement, win their demands, or quite simply, is it for the shock value?

JIM WALSH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Well, I think they probably have several objectives, Fredricka. Partly, it is obviously to shock. Remember, terrorism is about creating fear, about creating terror. And these public acts of violence create tremendous upset and anxiety obviously in South Korea and here in the United States as well.

They are also trying to send a message to keep others out of the conflict. One of the facts we learned today is that once all of South Korea's troops are in the region, they will rank third, South Korea will be the third leading supplier of troops to Iraq, and that with only 3000 troops.

So there aren't a lot of countries that are signing up for this task. And each one of these events makes it less likely that new countries are going to want to put their troops in harm's way.

WHITFIELD: And with South Korea then putting their troops, making them third in terms of troop involvement in Iraq, then certainly this act of intimidation has not been effective for South Korea. So that only adds fuel to the fire then, doesn't it, for these terrorist groups, making them perhaps more angry?

WALSH: Well, I think that's a good point. And I didn't think it was in the cards that the South Korean prime minister would have such a -- president would have a public turnabout and suddenly withdraw those troops. He was committed to do that. And that was going to happen.

But it may mean the time line for putting those troops into Iraq is stretched out further. Or maybe there are fewer troops than are originally projected that will eventually go in. Or it may discourage other countries from putting their troops in. So it can have an impact even if it didn't have a particular impact on this decision by the South Korean president.

WHITFIELD: And certainly a primary focus, a primary target is to offer some intimidation, to perhaps come between, drive a wedge between the alliances with the U.S. in Iraq and anywhere else in the Arab peninsula.

WALSH: Fredricka, you are absolutely right. There is definitely that audience, the audience of those who are part of this coalition of the willing, which really turned out to be a coalition of the nervous, I think. And it says to them, don't cross this line or you are going to get into trouble, too. And it causes differences.

The Americans and the South Koreans have their own problems, Iraq aside. There's the whole issue about what to do about North Korea, and I think South Korea and the U.S. differ somewhat there.

And then there are other issues in the relationship. What happens to all those U.S. troops in South Korea? The Americans have recently announced that they plan to withdraw some of them -- most of them, and put some of them in Iraq. And that's an issue of contention. So it does cause problems in our relations with our allies.

WHITFIELD: All right. Jim Walsh of Harvard, thanks very much -- Kyra.

WALSH: Thank you.

PHILLIPS: Well, how far can a lawyer go to defend a terrorist? The case of an accused attorney is raising some tricky issues later on LIVE FROM...

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Former President Clinton says Special Counsel Kenneth Starr was out to drive him from office whether he had committed a crime or not. Starr probed the Whitewater business deal and the sex affair that led to Clinton's impeachment. Clinton is giving interviews to promote his memoir.

He blasted Starr on NBC's "Today Show" and the news media in a BBC interview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL CLINTON, 42ND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: One of the reasons he got away with it is because people like you only ask people like me the questions. You gave him a complete free ride, any abuse they wanted to do. They indicted all these little people from Arkansas. What did you care about them? They are not famous. Who cares if their lives are trampled? Who cares if their children are humiliated? Who cares if Starr sends FBI agents to their school and rip them out of their school to humiliate them and try to force their parents to lie about me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Well, Bill Clinton's memoir is already going into a second printing after its publication yesterday. CNN's senior political analyst Bill Schneider has been looking beyond the content about the Monica Lewinsky affair.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYSIS (voice-over): "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested," Sir Francis Bacon wrote 400 years ago. Many people who purchased Bill Clinton's new book look forward to gorging on juicy tidbits about the former president's personal life.

But there's a lot of nourishment in the book as well, shrewd political insights and canny observations. On the 2000 election, Clinton notes that when candidate George W. Bush campaigned in South Carolina, he declined to take a stand on the Confederate flag controversy, saying it was a state matter.

But when a Texas school insisted on raising the Confederate flag every morning, Texas Governor Bush called it a local issue not a state issue. "And they called me slick," Clinton writes.

He writes about Al Gore:

CLINTON: All vice presidents who run for president have two problems. Most people don't know what they have done and don't give them credit for the accomplishments of the administration and they tend to get typecast as No. 2 men.

SCHNEIDER: Clinton writes that he had problem with Gore's campaign slogan: "The People Versus the Powerful." "It didn't give Al the full benefit of our record of economic and social progress," Clinton writes. "Also the populist edge sounded to some swing voters as if Al too might change the economic direction of the country."

And on the Supreme Court decision that decided the election, Clinton writes:

CLINTON: If Gore had been ahead in the vote count and Bush behind, there's not a doubt in my mind that the same Supreme Court would have voted 9-0 to count the votes.

SCHNEIDER: Bush won the election by promising to be a uniter, not a divider. Clinton calls that campaign theme disingenuous.

"I had done everything I knew to reach out to the Republicans in Washington. They had tried to demonize me from day one. Now they were saying, we'll stop misbehaving if you give us the White House back."

(on camera): There's some highly nutritious political analysis in Clinton's book, but at 957 pages, the book also has a lot of calories.

Bill Schneider, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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Aired June 23, 2004 - 13:58   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: A terror threat. Iraq's most wanted man says he's going after the man soon to be in charge of Iraq.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: And if you fly on a commercial airline, the government knows more about you than you may think. Is it too much information?

PHILLIPS: A development in the Scott Peterson murder trial involving the juror at the center of a controversy. We've got the details.

WHITFIELD: And she's idolized by thousands of young girls, Mary- Kate Olsen goes under treatment for an eating disorder. What parent's need to know about the problem.

From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Fredricka Whitfield.

PHILLIPS: And I'm Kyra Phillips. Miles is on assignment. This hour of CNN's LIVE FROM... starts right now.

With one week left until the handover there's another menacing threat in Iraq, from the militant mastermind of bombings, beheadings and other acts of terror: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. And for its part, the U.S. military, for the second time in five days, has bombed a suspected Zarqawi hideout near Fallujah. To bring us up to date from Baghdad, CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Early this morning that audio was seen on an Islamic Web site -- heard, rather. And it did say that they plan to continue to fight both U.S. troops and attack the interim prime minister, according to the voice, until Islamic rule returns to Iraq.

The specific threat was made apparently by Zarqawi against Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister of Iraq. We then called the office of the prime minister, and his spokesman said that he had printed that threat off the Internet, had shown it to the prime minister, who apparently smiled and responded that Zarqawi is not just the enemy of Iyad Allawi, referring to himself, Zarqawi is the enemy of all Iraqis. And he went on to say that they would not allow this to derail either the handover or the beginnings of an attempt to put Iraq on the path to democracy.

Now the U.S. also, slightly after midnight, conducted its second air strikes on a target in Fallujah, the second in about five days. This, we're told, was on safe houses allegedly belonging to Zarqawi and his network. We were told by the senior military spokesman here that they think they might have killed 20 foreign fighters. And they say they believe they blew up stores of ammunition and other weaponry.

That's the latest from here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Well the world is hearing from former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the form of a letter and by way of an attorney. One of Saddam's lawyers is in the U.S. this week claiming the American troops are abusing the deposed leader.

But in a letter to his family Saddam writes that his spirit and morale are high. A Red Cross report indicates Saddam was in good health and slightly wounded one month after he was captured. His attorney is asking why would the deposed leader be slightly wounded if he wasn't being abused?

Well, taking on a new duty for the U.S. in Baghdad, John Negroponte was sworn in today as the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq. He is scheduled to go to Baghdad after the planned handover is complete. Negroponte is not oblivious to the dangers of his new post, but he says he feels it is his duty to go.

WHITFIELD: The rulers of Saudi Arabia sent a strong signal today to the militants bent on crushing the Saudi monarchy. In a statement read on Saudi state television, Crown Prince Abdullah said al Qaeda supporters have one final chance to surrender under an amnesty or face what he called the unflinching power of the Saudi regime. The militants have a month.

The decree follows the killing of American Paul Johnson at the hands of al Qaeda and the subsequent death of Saudi Arabia's top al Qaeda leader in a shoot-out with Saudi security forces.

President Bush stumping for votes today in the Northeast. Is talking money for AIDS. Others are still talking about that White House memo concerning the treatment of prisoners post-9/11. CNN's Elaine Quijano is traveling with the president and has more on what the president deemed acceptable interrogation tactics -- Elaine.

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Fredricka. The White House is vigorously trying to challenge the notion that it in any way at all condoned the torture of detainees. And as part of that vigorous effort the White House yesterday released a stack of documents.

Now those documents revealed some of the internal discussions that took place, the debate that was going on about how the U.S. should treat detainees. And one of those documents was a memo written in February of 2002 by President Bush in which he says, quote: "Our values as a nation, values that we share with many nations in the world, call for us to treat detainees humanely, including those who are not legally entitled to such treatment." Now Democrats say that these memos are just a fraction of what they have been seeking from the administration. Of course, the White House has been under some harsh criticism ever since the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal broke. But senior administration official are trying to characterize these memos as, quote, "academic musing" or "opinion memos."

In fact, yesterday, White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez said that the documents address abstract legal theories. That the discussions were exploratory in nature and they never made it to the level of soldiers in the field or to the president.

In the meantime, President Bush turning his attention to the campaign trail here in Pennsylvania after making a speech today at a Baptist church in Philadelphia here on his AIDS initiative. The president wrapping up the day in Pennsylvania here with a private fund raiser expected to raise some $1.4 million.

The president visiting this state for the 29th time. This, of course, a key battleground state for the president, which he lost in 2000 by just a narrow margin -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: And Elaine, back to the papers. Is there an explanation on the timing of the release of the papers, both White House and Pentagon, on the same day and just a few hours apart?

QUIJANO: Well, no explanation given for that. But obviously this is a concerted effort as the criticism has intensified over what the administration may or may not have authorized. Certainly officials are very concerned.

The poll numbers that are out may have had something to do with that. Of course, this administration will not acknowledge that out and out. But certainly the White House is very cognizant of the public's perception as this investigation continues to unfold.

Some of the fall-out still continuing around the world but also here domestically, people's perceptions of the president's rationale for going to war and the treatment of those prisoners certainly coming under some harsh scrutiny, certain (UNINTELLIGIBLE) of factors. But no official explanation as to why the White House and the Pentagon coming out, releasing those documents -- Fredricka.

Elaine Quijano, traveling with the president. Thanks very much -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Now the story of a man who is living his dreams definitely. After Jose Contreras escaped from Cuba he landed a spot as a pitcher for the New York Yankees. But something was missing: his family. Well, last night he was reunited with his wife and daughters in Miami. National correspondent Susan Candiotti is in Miami Beach with all the details.

How did it go, Susan?

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, very well. You can imagine how happy the family is. It's a reunion that has been long hoped for by the Yankees pitcher Jose Contreras for about two years. And you might say, been hoped for by Yankees fans as well. More on that in a moment.

But first some pictures of a very happy family. Contreras reunited with his wife and two daughters after not seeing them for two years after he defected from Cuba to the United States via Mexico.

They are now staying at a swanky Miami Beach hotel where they were reunited about one-and-a-half days after the family left Cuba. His wife and two daughters and about 18 others were apparently smuggled onto a speedboat off Cuba's coast about midnight early Monday morning, and made it close to the South Florida shores in the Florida Keys when they were chased for about two hours by the U.S. Coast Guard and ICE, that's customs enforcement.

Eventually the boat got away and beached itself on the Florida Keys. All of the migrants made it to shore, were taken into custody and were eventually entered legally into the country as Cuban migrants.

Now obviously the family is happy to be together again, for more reasons than one, just talked to Yankees manager Joe Torre about why he thinks this might help his Yankees pitcher.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE TORRE, MANAGER, NEW YORK YANKEES: You know, we all need so much support in this game and a lot of it comes from the people outside the park. And he had really -- goes home to four walls. It's really tough to go home and not think about bad things that have happened or good things that may turn bad.

So I think the fact that he has been going home to that empty room or empty apartment is probably one of the toughest things that someone has to deal with, especially the fact that you know he's limited on how many people he can talk to because of the communication problems.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CANDIOTTI: So clearly the hope is the reunion will help Contreras improve his play. He has had trouble over the past couple of years being separated from his family.

Meantime the circumstances surrounding all this, Kyra, remain under investigation. According to U.S. government sources, no one is in custody right now, being suspected or has been charged with smuggling so far. Back to you.

PHILLIPS: Well, Susan, I'm curious, did his wife just decide, that's it, I'm taking the kids, I'm going to leave everything behind, we're going to go for it? And now are they house hunting in New York?

CANDIOTTI: Well, I wouldn't be surprised if that's going to happen fairly soon. But in terms of the circumstances, that's what is stymieing investigators right now. They are getting different stories about exactly what happened and they are trying to nail that down.

Remember these people are saying they were on the shore and just happened to be ashore at about midnight when a fast boat just happened to come by. So that's why authorities are taking their time to investigate this to see whether anyone will be charged.

It's not an unusual story here. But a lot of people don't make it. More than 600 Cubans who tried to make it to the United States but were intercepted at sea have been repatriated so far this year.

PHILLIPS: And we have covered those stories too. Susan Candiotti, thanks so much -- Fred.

WHITFIELD: The impact of terror. Will recent beheading of foreign nationals in the Middle East have political implications. We'll talk about that straight ahead.

And American health care and the race for the White House. John Kerry expected to lay out his prescription live this hour. We'll have that and a response from the Bush campaign straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: The politics of terror. Yesterday's beheading of a South Korean hostage in Iraq, last week's beheading of American Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia, and the beheading of Nicholas Berg in May: all potent, graphic images, images our Brian Todd reports militants hope to exploit so Westerners will flee the Arab world.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The images even those sanitary enough to show on television are horrific. The very word beheading shocks news consumers. And that, experts say, is the whole point.

KEN ROBINSON, CNN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: It's a very effective, graphic image that goes to the core of Western Judeo- Christian beliefs as being very abhorrent.

TODD: The decapitation of South Korean hostage Kim Sun-Il, although not shown so far in the media, shows a clear pattern, most recently with Paul Johnson and Nick Berg, but going back to Daniel Pearl and well beyond, and what some experts believe could be a developing strategy on the part of the terrorists and militants.

PETER BERGEN, CNN TERRORISM ANALYSIS: These beheadings are a pretty effective propaganda tool because they are so horrifying. Would you want to stay in these countries if you felt this was a reasonably strong possibility?

TODD: Beheading as a form of punishment is part of Islamic law and goes back many centuries. But Muslim scholars say it is only supposed to be used as a consequence of a criminal act and must be approved by the judge and the government of the Islamic nation in question. As an instrument of terror, experts say it has no official sanction but several benefits. It signifies the ultimate act of killing, one expert says, something very final, abrupt. And terrorism analyst we spoke to say in this day and age, these types of killings lend themselves to exploitation by the media.

GABRIEL WEINMANN, U.S. INSTITUTE OF PEACE: I think they see that it pays off. That it's really useful. It gets media attention. It gets the coverage, the exposure they want. It messages of threat.

TODD: Messages apparently intended for multiple audiences.

ROBINSON: They are trying to communicate to the West, to those who are contributing to infrastructure rebuilding, not to participate. They are trying to scare American public who send their sons, daughters, husbands away, to try to convince them not to participate.

TODD (on camera): The open question now is will this method work and drive foreign troops and civilians out of Iraq or Saudi Arabia? Of course, there are many foreigners working in both countries right now.

But one terrorism expert says he has spoken to two former special operations soldiers who have been recruited for contract work in Iraq. Both are combat veterans. Both say you couldn't pay them enough to go.

Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

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WHITFIELD: I want to bring in terrorism expert Jim Walsh from Harvard on this.

And Jim, with the beheadings getting so much attention, are the militants carrying them out to make a political statement, win their demands, or quite simply, is it for the shock value?

JIM WALSH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Well, I think they probably have several objectives, Fredricka. Partly, it is obviously to shock. Remember, terrorism is about creating fear, about creating terror. And these public acts of violence create tremendous upset and anxiety obviously in South Korea and here in the United States as well.

They are also trying to send a message to keep others out of the conflict. One of the facts we learned today is that once all of South Korea's troops are in the region, they will rank third, South Korea will be the third leading supplier of troops to Iraq, and that with only 3000 troops.

So there aren't a lot of countries that are signing up for this task. And each one of these events makes it less likely that new countries are going to want to put their troops in harm's way.

WHITFIELD: And with South Korea then putting their troops, making them third in terms of troop involvement in Iraq, then certainly this act of intimidation has not been effective for South Korea. So that only adds fuel to the fire then, doesn't it, for these terrorist groups, making them perhaps more angry?

WALSH: Well, I think that's a good point. And I didn't think it was in the cards that the South Korean prime minister would have such a -- president would have a public turnabout and suddenly withdraw those troops. He was committed to do that. And that was going to happen.

But it may mean the time line for putting those troops into Iraq is stretched out further. Or maybe there are fewer troops than are originally projected that will eventually go in. Or it may discourage other countries from putting their troops in. So it can have an impact even if it didn't have a particular impact on this decision by the South Korean president.

WHITFIELD: And certainly a primary focus, a primary target is to offer some intimidation, to perhaps come between, drive a wedge between the alliances with the U.S. in Iraq and anywhere else in the Arab peninsula.

WALSH: Fredricka, you are absolutely right. There is definitely that audience, the audience of those who are part of this coalition of the willing, which really turned out to be a coalition of the nervous, I think. And it says to them, don't cross this line or you are going to get into trouble, too. And it causes differences.

The Americans and the South Koreans have their own problems, Iraq aside. There's the whole issue about what to do about North Korea, and I think South Korea and the U.S. differ somewhat there.

And then there are other issues in the relationship. What happens to all those U.S. troops in South Korea? The Americans have recently announced that they plan to withdraw some of them -- most of them, and put some of them in Iraq. And that's an issue of contention. So it does cause problems in our relations with our allies.

WHITFIELD: All right. Jim Walsh of Harvard, thanks very much -- Kyra.

WALSH: Thank you.

PHILLIPS: Well, how far can a lawyer go to defend a terrorist? The case of an accused attorney is raising some tricky issues later on LIVE FROM...

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PHILLIPS: Former President Clinton says Special Counsel Kenneth Starr was out to drive him from office whether he had committed a crime or not. Starr probed the Whitewater business deal and the sex affair that led to Clinton's impeachment. Clinton is giving interviews to promote his memoir.

He blasted Starr on NBC's "Today Show" and the news media in a BBC interview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL CLINTON, 42ND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: One of the reasons he got away with it is because people like you only ask people like me the questions. You gave him a complete free ride, any abuse they wanted to do. They indicted all these little people from Arkansas. What did you care about them? They are not famous. Who cares if their lives are trampled? Who cares if their children are humiliated? Who cares if Starr sends FBI agents to their school and rip them out of their school to humiliate them and try to force their parents to lie about me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Well, Bill Clinton's memoir is already going into a second printing after its publication yesterday. CNN's senior political analyst Bill Schneider has been looking beyond the content about the Monica Lewinsky affair.

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WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYSIS (voice-over): "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested," Sir Francis Bacon wrote 400 years ago. Many people who purchased Bill Clinton's new book look forward to gorging on juicy tidbits about the former president's personal life.

But there's a lot of nourishment in the book as well, shrewd political insights and canny observations. On the 2000 election, Clinton notes that when candidate George W. Bush campaigned in South Carolina, he declined to take a stand on the Confederate flag controversy, saying it was a state matter.

But when a Texas school insisted on raising the Confederate flag every morning, Texas Governor Bush called it a local issue not a state issue. "And they called me slick," Clinton writes.

He writes about Al Gore:

CLINTON: All vice presidents who run for president have two problems. Most people don't know what they have done and don't give them credit for the accomplishments of the administration and they tend to get typecast as No. 2 men.

SCHNEIDER: Clinton writes that he had problem with Gore's campaign slogan: "The People Versus the Powerful." "It didn't give Al the full benefit of our record of economic and social progress," Clinton writes. "Also the populist edge sounded to some swing voters as if Al too might change the economic direction of the country."

And on the Supreme Court decision that decided the election, Clinton writes:

CLINTON: If Gore had been ahead in the vote count and Bush behind, there's not a doubt in my mind that the same Supreme Court would have voted 9-0 to count the votes.

SCHNEIDER: Bush won the election by promising to be a uniter, not a divider. Clinton calls that campaign theme disingenuous.

"I had done everything I knew to reach out to the Republicans in Washington. They had tried to demonize me from day one. Now they were saying, we'll stop misbehaving if you give us the White House back."

(on camera): There's some highly nutritious political analysis in Clinton's book, but at 957 pages, the book also has a lot of calories.

Bill Schneider, CNN, Washington.

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