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How Many Insurgents?; Intelligence Questions

Aired February 17, 2005 - 13:32   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: Fifteen different agencies make for one big intelligence umbrella. And President Bush thinks that John Negroponte is the man to hold it. He's nominated that career diplomat to take the brand-new post, director of national intelligence. Negroponte, currently serving as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, must be confirmed by the Senate.
Former astronaut and three-time space shuttle veteran Fred Gregory will be named NASA's acting chief. He'll become the first African-American to head the space agency. Gregory will replace NASA chief Sean O'Keefe, whose last day on the job is Friday. Gregory's been deputy administrator since 2002. It's still not clear if he'll become O'Keefe's permanent successor.

Scratch the palace off those royal remarriage invitations. There's been a change in venue for the April 8th civil ceremony to wed Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles. Today, the prince's officials announced that the couple will make its official ceremony at London's townhall instead of Windsor Castle as previously announced. That event will be followed by a blessing at St. George's Chapel, which is inside the castle's walls.

It's not often you mention these two men in the same breadth, the pope, and Bono, the lead singer of U2, but the pontiff and the rock star and among this year's nominees for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. In all, 166 names on that list, including individuals such as groups, and groups such as Save the Children are on that list, and the winner will be announced in October.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: So how do you effectively fight an army when you have no idea how big it actually is? That's one of the big questions facing U.S. and Iraqi troops in Iraq as they try to squelch that insurgency that is constantly changing.

CNN's Jamie McIntyre says that even top Pentagon officials admit they have no reliable estimate of just how many fighters are out there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The U.S. military claims as many as 15,000 insurgents have been killed in Iraq, even as the number of attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces continued to climb. That's prompting members of Congress to question if the Pentagon truly knows what it's up against.

REP. IKE SKELTON (D-MO), ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: If we'd have lost 15,000 of our own troops in a comparable period, we would see diminished combat capability. And yet our enemy seems to be adapting and increasing his attacks.

MCINTYRE: While Pentagon officials dismiss one Iraqi general's estimate of 40,000 hard-core insurgents and 200,000 part-time fighters, they admit they don't really know how big the insurgency is.

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: What I said is that I have in my hot little hand differing views from DIA and CIA. I see these reports. Frankly, I don't have a lot of confidence in any of them.

MCINTYRE: A senior military official tells CNN the best guess is that there are roughly 15,000 insurgents, of which maybe half are truly committed. But despite the uncertainty over the numbers, the Pentagon insists the U.S. and its Iraqi allies are winning.

GEN. RICHARD MYERS, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: We do know about these insurgents, is that overall they're not very effective. They can spike in capabilities we saw before elections, but it goes back down to a steady state. We know that they're losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

MCINTYRE (on camera): Myers and Rumsfeld argued it's not the number of insurgents, but their will to fight that matters, and that victory hinders as much as building support for the new Iraqi government as it does for building up the new Iraqi army.

Based on that, General Myers predicted the future of the insurgency is, quote, "absolutely bleak."

Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: For Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld to say he doesn't have a lot of confidence in the intelligence reports on Iraq's insurgency, isn't sitting well with at least one former intelligence officer. Retired Army General Spider Marks was a senior intel officer for coalition land forces during combat operations in Iraq. He's now a CNN military analyst.

General Marks, good to have you back with us.

GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Hi, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Appreciate it.

Let's listen to a little bit more of what Secretary Rumsfeld had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECY. OF DEFENSE: What I said was that I have in my hot little hand differing views from DIA and CIA. He cited an Iraqi view that was totally inconsistent with it. My job in the government is not to be the principal intelligence officer and try to rationalize differences between Iraqis, the CIA and the DIA. I see these reports, and frankly, I don't have a lot of confidence in any of them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: All right, that last comment -- we should tell viewers DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency. Of course everybody knows what the CIA is. How does that sit within the intelligence community?

MARKS: It's very difficult to take when the senior Defense official is getting, frankly, and he admitted later, that he's getting tremendous input from his defense agencies, in particular, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and he knows that intelligence analysts are toiling away, trying to do the best they can.

But in public, to dismiss their efforts is difficult to take when you look at the guys in the trenches who are routinely trying to put the very best product forward they can. And to have it dismissed in front of a congressional body is tough.

But, you know, the real issue is intelligence will always have conflicting inputs. You'll have estimates from one organization and estimates from another. And it is the requirement of the senior officer on the ground, in this case, in that testimony, I would argue the secretary of defense, to step up and say, it is my job to try and make the best out of both of these conflicting reports and I, the sec. dep., owe you an answer, since these are my agencies and my organizations trying to put this forward.

O'BRIEN: OK, so some of this is the nature of intelligence. Some of this may hearken back to the faulty intelligence, which led the administration down the path toward the invasion of Iraq, specifically under weapons of mass destruction. Is it still a cheap shot, given all of that?

MARKS: I don't know it was a cheap shot. I wouldn't characterize it in such a way. What it really characterizes, frankly, is a frustration in terms of trying to do a good, solid assessment of what those enemy fighters are motivated by, what draws them into the country and how many are -- the coalition forces are confronted with. When you conduct military operations, Miles, you conduct what's called effect-based operations. Now that's not arcane, but what that means is, you try to achieve a certain effect in a certain area or across a certain functional area for example. And then you have to measure whether you've achieved that effect. So whether there are 15,000 or 40,000 or whatever the range might be, frankly, is not germane. What is, is how effective are the operations against the insurgents?

O'BRIEN: All right but the numbers are still a good question to ask. It just gives people a sense of what the U.S. military is up against.

It's interesting that this should come on the day that the new intelligence czar is announced. First of all, it seems to me that putting somebody at the top is not going to address this problem. John Negroponte is not going to be able to give any better sense to Rumsfeld on the numbers in the insurgency, is he?

MARKS: No, he won't. And the ambassador works directly for the president in this case, so he will provide input to the Secretary of Defense. But what it -- what the ambassador provides is the great confidence of the president and access to the president. The ambassador will have the opportunity to knock on the president's door, and then will be welcomed in with his input, and that's critical in the intelligence business.

But frankly, at the very lowest levels, where this scud work is going on, where great analysts are trying to put it together, that will not change. The trenches will remain the same. And tomorrow, all these great intelligence analysts will wake up and go back to work, and they'll still be, essentially, working on the same tasks. So at the very lowest levels, some of the inputs will have to be adjusted.

O'BRIEN: So at the lowest levels, things don't change, the work goes on. At the highest levels, there's demonstrated lack of trust in the output. Inject John Negroponte in there, into a system that apparently the administration doesn't trust. What can he do to change that?

MARKS: Well, it's the responsibility of the ambassador to reach down into those organizations and ensure that he can make the appropriate fixes. The decisions would not have been made to put Ambassador Negroponte in that position, were that outcome not expected.

O'BRIEN: All right, would you take that job?

MARKS: Would I take that job?

O'BRIEN: Yes.

MARKS: Number one, that's truly hypothetical. I don't think I'd be offered that job.

O'BRIEN: That's a hard job, I think.

MARKS: That's an extremely tough job. But he does have General Mike Hayden as his deputy, who has been running the National Security Agency for the last six years, who has been doing a magnificent job, and has one of the largest budgetary lines in the intelligence business. So that truly is an informed recommendation.

O'BRIEN: General "Spider" Marks, our military analyst. Thanks for your time, as always. Appreciate it.

MARKS: Thank you, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Will they survive and come home or die while serving their country overseas? It's a constant worry that many American families have for a parent or child, brother or sister, deployed to Iraq. The 3rd Infantry's 1st Brigade has already lost three members since returning to that country.

And just before a member of the brigade left for Iraq, he and his family shared their feelings with CNN's Mike Shoulder.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHAEL SCHULDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's 4:00 a.m. near Fort Stewart, Georgia and Sergeant Major Bob Gallagher is making his wife coffee and warming her car. She has a long drive ahead of her to a fire station, where she's the only woman firefighter in the county.

BOB GALLAGHER: I'll see you later on tonight. I love you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love you too.

B. GALLAGHER: Be safe, all right.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

B. GALLAGHER: It's really foggy out.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'll be fine.

SCHULDER: Only a few more days left until Bob Gallagher heads back to the war in Iraq. The Gallagher's 14-year-old daughter Casey (ph) has already witnessed the toll a long deployment takes on her mother.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's weird because the last time he went over there mom spent like half the time he was over there sitting in bed watching the news. It was just creepy because she wouldn't get up from the bed. She was really sad and all.

SCHULDER: His last time in Iraq, Sergeant Major Gallagher's leadership was tested here beneath the overpasses of Highway 8 at the edge of Baghdad. He and his men are outnumbered by enemy forces. Gallagher is hit by shrapnel in his left calf. A fellow officer works to stop the bleeding while Gallagher limps into position and continues fighting. Gallagher and his men prevail.

As a boy, Bob Gallagher did not seem destined to become a leader.

GALLAGHER: Good morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good morning sergeant major.

GALLAGHER: I was a juvenile delinquent. My mother passed away when I was young, six, seven years old, left my father to raise myself and my two brothers. I did not finish high school. I just decided on my own either I'm going to stay in this town and probably wind up in jail or I'm going to get up and go and I got up and went.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How did you do on your time?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I did just a little bit over three miles in 24 and a half minutes.

SCHULDER: He joined the Army, got his high school equivalency diploma and has risen to become the highest ranking non-commissioned officer of the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Combat Brigade.

GALLAGHER: No problems last night?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, sergeant major.

GALLAGHER: OK, thanks. What's up with you? Need a break? Still got that girlfriend?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

GALLAGHER: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I remember her name too.

SCHULDER: After this day's rigorous physical training Sergeant Major Gallagher will have what some would call a come to Jesus meeting, a final opportunity to impress upon the several hundred who answer to him what will be required to accomplish the mission and survive. The deployment will be long, 12 to 18 months they're told.

GALLAGHER: I'm telling you it is a marathon.

SCHULDER: Twelve to 18 months of vigilance.

GALLAGHER: Supervising and maintenance on your vehicles, you'll pay attention to it more when your happy ass is one of these trucks and it breaks down, you know, three miles down the road.

SCHULDER: Twelve to 18 months protecting each other.

GALLAGHER: Take this to the bank, no one moves alone at any given time, buddy teams at a minimum.

SCHULDER: Twelve to 18 months of staying alive.

GALLAGHER: Helmet, groin protector, hearing protection will be worn, gloves, ballistic eye protection. Of the 42 soldiers that have lost their eyesight, I believe that all 42 were not wearing protective lenses. It's non-negotiable platoon sergeants. Make sure your squad leaders know and understand that. With that uniform I can guarantee that the effects from direct fire or indirect fires will be reduced.

This is the helmet I was wearing in Mogadishu. That's shrapnel from an RPG blast.

SCHULDER: Twenty-three years of front line experience including the deadly battle in Somalia, known as Black Hawk Down, are some of the reasons Gallagher's men and women trust him.

GALLAGHER: That one right there probably would have put a whopping on me.

SCHULDER: Reasons for his wife to lose sleep.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You can't take it one day at a time. It just gets too much. You know, you take it one week at a time and end of the month you check it off, you know, and just wait and just wait for him to come back.

SCHULDER: One last thing about Bob Gallagher we learned while looking at what he calls his ten square feet of wall space where photos of his past military battles hang.

When this is all over if you want one more picture on that wall what kind of picture do you envision? What would you like to see?

GALLAGHER: Being at a retirement ceremony upright, walking with a smile on my face, with my wife on my arm.

SCHULDER: Michael Schulder, CNN, outside Fort Stewart, Georgia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: His diplomatic skills will come in handy. Some insight into the man who could be our first national intelligence director and his deputy, who has a long history in the spy game. That's coming up.

And dangerous games. A fiery problem with a popular video game machine. Stick around for the recall news. More LIVE FROM after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

PHILLIPS: Experience in diplomacy may not be a bad thing in a post designed to make 15 far-flung, sometimes overlapping agencies work together. And President Bush acknowledges that that was part of the reason that he tapped John Negroponte for the brand new position of national intelligence director. Joining us now, senior Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, California Congresswoman Jane Harman.

Good to see you, Congresswoman.

REP. JANE HARMAN (D-CA), SELECT INTELLIGENCE CMTE.: Good to be back on this show.

PHILLIPS: Well, first reaction to the announcement.

HARMAN: I think it's a good choice. And what's better is the combination of John Negroponte and Mike Hayden. Mike Hayden heads one of our 15 security agencies, the National Security Agency, and has done an excellent job. So it's both the diplomatic skills, the broad portfolio, the confidence of the president, and the technical skills. I'm calling them the dynamic duo. PHILLIPS: Well, obviously, the general has background in intelligence, but what do you think about Negroponte? This is someone who's been a career diplomat. Are diplomatic skills enough for this position?

HARMAN: No, they're not enough but they're important in this position. Management skills are important. Political skills are important. This is a work in progress. Some are saying our legislation was too vague. I think, frankly, it is the opportunity of a lifetime. It's a great job. And I just talked to John Negroponte about half an hour ago. I was kidding with him. I told him he traded the Green Zone for the hot zone. And he sure did. And he's going to have his hands full.

But a big key here is what the president said when he announced the appointment. What the president said -- and I listened very carefully, was that this position will have full authority to execute the budget across the intelligence agencies. Money is power in government and he's going to have the money.

PHILLIPS: Well, I'm curious, when you talked to him on the phone did you give him any advice, did you give him any warnings?

HARMAN: Oh yes.

PHILLIPS: What did you say to him?

HARMAN: Well, aside from kidding around, I said I was eager to help him succeed. He is going back to Iraq for a few weeks and when he returns, he wanted to get together. He's a man I've known for some time. I think he's been very successful in the jobs he's held in this administration. And it is a good thing to have someone who is a skilled operative, close to the president in this position. It's a critically important position.

PHILLIPS: What do you think his biggest challenge will be, though?

HARMAN: Getting on top of the material. He has not been immersed in the intelligence community. There's no doubt that in his travels in eight countries, as the president said, over the years, he knows a lot of our intelligence operatives overseas. No doubt he knows all of them in Iraq very well. And so he sees those challenges up close and personal.

But the technical material, you need to know about these agencies and how they might be coordinated and integrated, is a lot. And he's reaching for help and that's a good thing. Someone who comes in and says, I don't know everything, but I'm eager to learn it, is the kind of person I want in a job like that.

PHILLIPS: Well, you make a tremendous point, he's going to need that respect from overseas, especially foreign agents. Congresswoman Jane Harman, thanks for your time today.

HARMAN: Thank you. PHILLIPS: Hear more on Negroponte from the chairman of the House Intelligent Committee. That's coming up in the next hour of LIVE FROM which starts just right after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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Aired February 17, 2005 - 13:32   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Fifteen different agencies make for one big intelligence umbrella. And President Bush thinks that John Negroponte is the man to hold it. He's nominated that career diplomat to take the brand-new post, director of national intelligence. Negroponte, currently serving as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, must be confirmed by the Senate.
Former astronaut and three-time space shuttle veteran Fred Gregory will be named NASA's acting chief. He'll become the first African-American to head the space agency. Gregory will replace NASA chief Sean O'Keefe, whose last day on the job is Friday. Gregory's been deputy administrator since 2002. It's still not clear if he'll become O'Keefe's permanent successor.

Scratch the palace off those royal remarriage invitations. There's been a change in venue for the April 8th civil ceremony to wed Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles. Today, the prince's officials announced that the couple will make its official ceremony at London's townhall instead of Windsor Castle as previously announced. That event will be followed by a blessing at St. George's Chapel, which is inside the castle's walls.

It's not often you mention these two men in the same breadth, the pope, and Bono, the lead singer of U2, but the pontiff and the rock star and among this year's nominees for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. In all, 166 names on that list, including individuals such as groups, and groups such as Save the Children are on that list, and the winner will be announced in October.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: So how do you effectively fight an army when you have no idea how big it actually is? That's one of the big questions facing U.S. and Iraqi troops in Iraq as they try to squelch that insurgency that is constantly changing.

CNN's Jamie McIntyre says that even top Pentagon officials admit they have no reliable estimate of just how many fighters are out there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The U.S. military claims as many as 15,000 insurgents have been killed in Iraq, even as the number of attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces continued to climb. That's prompting members of Congress to question if the Pentagon truly knows what it's up against.

REP. IKE SKELTON (D-MO), ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: If we'd have lost 15,000 of our own troops in a comparable period, we would see diminished combat capability. And yet our enemy seems to be adapting and increasing his attacks.

MCINTYRE: While Pentagon officials dismiss one Iraqi general's estimate of 40,000 hard-core insurgents and 200,000 part-time fighters, they admit they don't really know how big the insurgency is.

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: What I said is that I have in my hot little hand differing views from DIA and CIA. I see these reports. Frankly, I don't have a lot of confidence in any of them.

MCINTYRE: A senior military official tells CNN the best guess is that there are roughly 15,000 insurgents, of which maybe half are truly committed. But despite the uncertainty over the numbers, the Pentagon insists the U.S. and its Iraqi allies are winning.

GEN. RICHARD MYERS, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: We do know about these insurgents, is that overall they're not very effective. They can spike in capabilities we saw before elections, but it goes back down to a steady state. We know that they're losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

MCINTYRE (on camera): Myers and Rumsfeld argued it's not the number of insurgents, but their will to fight that matters, and that victory hinders as much as building support for the new Iraqi government as it does for building up the new Iraqi army.

Based on that, General Myers predicted the future of the insurgency is, quote, "absolutely bleak."

Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: For Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld to say he doesn't have a lot of confidence in the intelligence reports on Iraq's insurgency, isn't sitting well with at least one former intelligence officer. Retired Army General Spider Marks was a senior intel officer for coalition land forces during combat operations in Iraq. He's now a CNN military analyst.

General Marks, good to have you back with us.

GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Hi, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Appreciate it.

Let's listen to a little bit more of what Secretary Rumsfeld had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECY. OF DEFENSE: What I said was that I have in my hot little hand differing views from DIA and CIA. He cited an Iraqi view that was totally inconsistent with it. My job in the government is not to be the principal intelligence officer and try to rationalize differences between Iraqis, the CIA and the DIA. I see these reports, and frankly, I don't have a lot of confidence in any of them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: All right, that last comment -- we should tell viewers DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency. Of course everybody knows what the CIA is. How does that sit within the intelligence community?

MARKS: It's very difficult to take when the senior Defense official is getting, frankly, and he admitted later, that he's getting tremendous input from his defense agencies, in particular, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and he knows that intelligence analysts are toiling away, trying to do the best they can.

But in public, to dismiss their efforts is difficult to take when you look at the guys in the trenches who are routinely trying to put the very best product forward they can. And to have it dismissed in front of a congressional body is tough.

But, you know, the real issue is intelligence will always have conflicting inputs. You'll have estimates from one organization and estimates from another. And it is the requirement of the senior officer on the ground, in this case, in that testimony, I would argue the secretary of defense, to step up and say, it is my job to try and make the best out of both of these conflicting reports and I, the sec. dep., owe you an answer, since these are my agencies and my organizations trying to put this forward.

O'BRIEN: OK, so some of this is the nature of intelligence. Some of this may hearken back to the faulty intelligence, which led the administration down the path toward the invasion of Iraq, specifically under weapons of mass destruction. Is it still a cheap shot, given all of that?

MARKS: I don't know it was a cheap shot. I wouldn't characterize it in such a way. What it really characterizes, frankly, is a frustration in terms of trying to do a good, solid assessment of what those enemy fighters are motivated by, what draws them into the country and how many are -- the coalition forces are confronted with. When you conduct military operations, Miles, you conduct what's called effect-based operations. Now that's not arcane, but what that means is, you try to achieve a certain effect in a certain area or across a certain functional area for example. And then you have to measure whether you've achieved that effect. So whether there are 15,000 or 40,000 or whatever the range might be, frankly, is not germane. What is, is how effective are the operations against the insurgents?

O'BRIEN: All right but the numbers are still a good question to ask. It just gives people a sense of what the U.S. military is up against.

It's interesting that this should come on the day that the new intelligence czar is announced. First of all, it seems to me that putting somebody at the top is not going to address this problem. John Negroponte is not going to be able to give any better sense to Rumsfeld on the numbers in the insurgency, is he?

MARKS: No, he won't. And the ambassador works directly for the president in this case, so he will provide input to the Secretary of Defense. But what it -- what the ambassador provides is the great confidence of the president and access to the president. The ambassador will have the opportunity to knock on the president's door, and then will be welcomed in with his input, and that's critical in the intelligence business.

But frankly, at the very lowest levels, where this scud work is going on, where great analysts are trying to put it together, that will not change. The trenches will remain the same. And tomorrow, all these great intelligence analysts will wake up and go back to work, and they'll still be, essentially, working on the same tasks. So at the very lowest levels, some of the inputs will have to be adjusted.

O'BRIEN: So at the lowest levels, things don't change, the work goes on. At the highest levels, there's demonstrated lack of trust in the output. Inject John Negroponte in there, into a system that apparently the administration doesn't trust. What can he do to change that?

MARKS: Well, it's the responsibility of the ambassador to reach down into those organizations and ensure that he can make the appropriate fixes. The decisions would not have been made to put Ambassador Negroponte in that position, were that outcome not expected.

O'BRIEN: All right, would you take that job?

MARKS: Would I take that job?

O'BRIEN: Yes.

MARKS: Number one, that's truly hypothetical. I don't think I'd be offered that job.

O'BRIEN: That's a hard job, I think.

MARKS: That's an extremely tough job. But he does have General Mike Hayden as his deputy, who has been running the National Security Agency for the last six years, who has been doing a magnificent job, and has one of the largest budgetary lines in the intelligence business. So that truly is an informed recommendation.

O'BRIEN: General "Spider" Marks, our military analyst. Thanks for your time, as always. Appreciate it.

MARKS: Thank you, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Will they survive and come home or die while serving their country overseas? It's a constant worry that many American families have for a parent or child, brother or sister, deployed to Iraq. The 3rd Infantry's 1st Brigade has already lost three members since returning to that country.

And just before a member of the brigade left for Iraq, he and his family shared their feelings with CNN's Mike Shoulder.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHAEL SCHULDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's 4:00 a.m. near Fort Stewart, Georgia and Sergeant Major Bob Gallagher is making his wife coffee and warming her car. She has a long drive ahead of her to a fire station, where she's the only woman firefighter in the county.

BOB GALLAGHER: I'll see you later on tonight. I love you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love you too.

B. GALLAGHER: Be safe, all right.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

B. GALLAGHER: It's really foggy out.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'll be fine.

SCHULDER: Only a few more days left until Bob Gallagher heads back to the war in Iraq. The Gallagher's 14-year-old daughter Casey (ph) has already witnessed the toll a long deployment takes on her mother.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's weird because the last time he went over there mom spent like half the time he was over there sitting in bed watching the news. It was just creepy because she wouldn't get up from the bed. She was really sad and all.

SCHULDER: His last time in Iraq, Sergeant Major Gallagher's leadership was tested here beneath the overpasses of Highway 8 at the edge of Baghdad. He and his men are outnumbered by enemy forces. Gallagher is hit by shrapnel in his left calf. A fellow officer works to stop the bleeding while Gallagher limps into position and continues fighting. Gallagher and his men prevail.

As a boy, Bob Gallagher did not seem destined to become a leader.

GALLAGHER: Good morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good morning sergeant major.

GALLAGHER: I was a juvenile delinquent. My mother passed away when I was young, six, seven years old, left my father to raise myself and my two brothers. I did not finish high school. I just decided on my own either I'm going to stay in this town and probably wind up in jail or I'm going to get up and go and I got up and went.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How did you do on your time?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I did just a little bit over three miles in 24 and a half minutes.

SCHULDER: He joined the Army, got his high school equivalency diploma and has risen to become the highest ranking non-commissioned officer of the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Combat Brigade.

GALLAGHER: No problems last night?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, sergeant major.

GALLAGHER: OK, thanks. What's up with you? Need a break? Still got that girlfriend?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

GALLAGHER: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I remember her name too.

SCHULDER: After this day's rigorous physical training Sergeant Major Gallagher will have what some would call a come to Jesus meeting, a final opportunity to impress upon the several hundred who answer to him what will be required to accomplish the mission and survive. The deployment will be long, 12 to 18 months they're told.

GALLAGHER: I'm telling you it is a marathon.

SCHULDER: Twelve to 18 months of vigilance.

GALLAGHER: Supervising and maintenance on your vehicles, you'll pay attention to it more when your happy ass is one of these trucks and it breaks down, you know, three miles down the road.

SCHULDER: Twelve to 18 months protecting each other.

GALLAGHER: Take this to the bank, no one moves alone at any given time, buddy teams at a minimum.

SCHULDER: Twelve to 18 months of staying alive.

GALLAGHER: Helmet, groin protector, hearing protection will be worn, gloves, ballistic eye protection. Of the 42 soldiers that have lost their eyesight, I believe that all 42 were not wearing protective lenses. It's non-negotiable platoon sergeants. Make sure your squad leaders know and understand that. With that uniform I can guarantee that the effects from direct fire or indirect fires will be reduced.

This is the helmet I was wearing in Mogadishu. That's shrapnel from an RPG blast.

SCHULDER: Twenty-three years of front line experience including the deadly battle in Somalia, known as Black Hawk Down, are some of the reasons Gallagher's men and women trust him.

GALLAGHER: That one right there probably would have put a whopping on me.

SCHULDER: Reasons for his wife to lose sleep.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You can't take it one day at a time. It just gets too much. You know, you take it one week at a time and end of the month you check it off, you know, and just wait and just wait for him to come back.

SCHULDER: One last thing about Bob Gallagher we learned while looking at what he calls his ten square feet of wall space where photos of his past military battles hang.

When this is all over if you want one more picture on that wall what kind of picture do you envision? What would you like to see?

GALLAGHER: Being at a retirement ceremony upright, walking with a smile on my face, with my wife on my arm.

SCHULDER: Michael Schulder, CNN, outside Fort Stewart, Georgia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: His diplomatic skills will come in handy. Some insight into the man who could be our first national intelligence director and his deputy, who has a long history in the spy game. That's coming up.

And dangerous games. A fiery problem with a popular video game machine. Stick around for the recall news. More LIVE FROM after a quick break.

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PHILLIPS: Experience in diplomacy may not be a bad thing in a post designed to make 15 far-flung, sometimes overlapping agencies work together. And President Bush acknowledges that that was part of the reason that he tapped John Negroponte for the brand new position of national intelligence director. Joining us now, senior Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, California Congresswoman Jane Harman.

Good to see you, Congresswoman.

REP. JANE HARMAN (D-CA), SELECT INTELLIGENCE CMTE.: Good to be back on this show.

PHILLIPS: Well, first reaction to the announcement.

HARMAN: I think it's a good choice. And what's better is the combination of John Negroponte and Mike Hayden. Mike Hayden heads one of our 15 security agencies, the National Security Agency, and has done an excellent job. So it's both the diplomatic skills, the broad portfolio, the confidence of the president, and the technical skills. I'm calling them the dynamic duo. PHILLIPS: Well, obviously, the general has background in intelligence, but what do you think about Negroponte? This is someone who's been a career diplomat. Are diplomatic skills enough for this position?

HARMAN: No, they're not enough but they're important in this position. Management skills are important. Political skills are important. This is a work in progress. Some are saying our legislation was too vague. I think, frankly, it is the opportunity of a lifetime. It's a great job. And I just talked to John Negroponte about half an hour ago. I was kidding with him. I told him he traded the Green Zone for the hot zone. And he sure did. And he's going to have his hands full.

But a big key here is what the president said when he announced the appointment. What the president said -- and I listened very carefully, was that this position will have full authority to execute the budget across the intelligence agencies. Money is power in government and he's going to have the money.

PHILLIPS: Well, I'm curious, when you talked to him on the phone did you give him any advice, did you give him any warnings?

HARMAN: Oh yes.

PHILLIPS: What did you say to him?

HARMAN: Well, aside from kidding around, I said I was eager to help him succeed. He is going back to Iraq for a few weeks and when he returns, he wanted to get together. He's a man I've known for some time. I think he's been very successful in the jobs he's held in this administration. And it is a good thing to have someone who is a skilled operative, close to the president in this position. It's a critically important position.

PHILLIPS: What do you think his biggest challenge will be, though?

HARMAN: Getting on top of the material. He has not been immersed in the intelligence community. There's no doubt that in his travels in eight countries, as the president said, over the years, he knows a lot of our intelligence operatives overseas. No doubt he knows all of them in Iraq very well. And so he sees those challenges up close and personal.

But the technical material, you need to know about these agencies and how they might be coordinated and integrated, is a lot. And he's reaching for help and that's a good thing. Someone who comes in and says, I don't know everything, but I'm eager to learn it, is the kind of person I want in a job like that.

PHILLIPS: Well, you make a tremendous point, he's going to need that respect from overseas, especially foreign agents. Congresswoman Jane Harman, thanks for your time today.

HARMAN: Thank you. PHILLIPS: Hear more on Negroponte from the chairman of the House Intelligent Committee. That's coming up in the next hour of LIVE FROM which starts just right after a break.

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