Return to Transcripts main page
Live From...
Interrogators in Training; Story of a Lifetime
Aired June 13, 2005 - 13:33 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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Checking stories now in the news, a second meeting for the 9/11 public discourse project. Discussion today focusing on the challenges that face John Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence. Over the next four months, the 9/11 public discourse project will hold eight public panels before a report card to assess the progress of U.S. intelligence reforms.
In Newport, Tennessee, 144 people arrested on misdemeanor charges at an illegal cockfight. It may have been one of the biggest such gatherings in the country. State and federal agents swooped in to make the arrests and seize more than $40,000. Each person charged faces the possibility of jailtime and a $2,500 fine if convicted.
And the Centers for Disease Control reports today that more than a million Americans are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Although it's a testament no better treatment, the number represents also a critical failure. CDC officials had pledged to break the back of AIDS in the U.S. by cutting infection rates, but that number, 40,000 new cases a year, has remained fairly constant.
A "Time" magazine article that takes a look inside the secret realm of interrogations at the U.S. military lockup in Cuba is fueling controversy over the range of techniques used to get information from detainees.
To give people a better understanding of how interrogators are trained, CNN's Ed Lavandera was given an all-access look into the Army's interrogation training camp.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is site uniform, our field training exercise.
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In the dusty hills of southeastern Arizona, the newest Army intelligence interrogators are completing their final training exercise. The Army wants the world to know that when these soldiers leave here, they're not equipped with techniques of torture and humiliation.
MAJ. GEN. JAMES MARKS, U.S. ARMY: We train soldiers to do what's right. Our Army is values based. So if a soldier feels like he or she is moving down a path that they are uncomfortable with, we also have a thing called the chain of command, when you go up through the chain of command and get support from them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All I'm asking to find out is your chain of command here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do I know I can trust an American?
LAVANDERA: Inside Fort Watuka (ph), soldiers are taught to fine points of interrogation. Role playing teaches each soldiers how to approach different personalities.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we doused the garbage cans with gasoline and lit a match.
LAVANDERA: The 16-week training course teaches soldiers to get into a prisoner's mind.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're not going to let him finish whatever they're asking. Eventually the person is going to want to be heard.
LAVANDERA (on camera): Army officials say up to 90 percent of the useful intelligence comes from interrogation, but to get that information, from a hardened terrorist or a militant fighter can require a tough approach.
MARKS: We don't strip anybody of their dignity, but I want them tired. I want them to be afraid of me. I want them when they breathe, I want them to think that the interrogator gave them the right to expand their lungs.
LAVANDERA: Officials say it's under strict guidelines: no touching, no humiliation. Chief Warrant Officer Lon Castleton just returned from Iraq. He found a kinder, gentler approach is the most effective way of dealing with Iraqi prisoners.
CWO LON CASTLETON, U.S. ARMY: The things I saw with this these people, they expected to be beaten, and that's the way Saddam Hussein used to treat them. In fact, they figured they'd never be seen again. So when you treat them with kindness, they're a lot more open. In fact, in a lot of cases, they are surprised.
LAVANDERA: The need for interrogators is so great that more than 500 soldiers will be put through this course this year.
SPEC. JASON HICKMAN, INTERROGATION TRAINEE: I have a foundation for what it's going to take to do my job in the real world, but until I actually do it in the real world, I'm not going to know what it's going to be like.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Ahead on LIVE FROM, I'll ask retired Air Force Major General Don Shepherd whether he think the interrogation techniques used at Gitmo go too far. And a little bit later, we'll debate the pros and cons of shutting down the controversial prison.
An interesting juxtaposition of civil rights news today. The U.S. Senate issues a formal apology. Senate resolution 39 officially expresses remorse for the Senate's failure to pass a law to stop lynchings. It's estimated more than 4,700 people, most of them black, died in lynchings between 1882 and 1968. Among those slated to be on hand for today's floor vote, Doria D. Johnson (ph). She is the great- great granddaughter of a black South Carolina farmer who killed by a white mob nearly 100 years ago now.
And now more on the slaying of those civil rights workers, 41 years ago in Mississippi. CNN's Candy Crowley met a man whose life was forever changed by that story. He still can't let it go.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Now is this the road where they drove out of town?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. It's the state highway 19.
CROWLEY (on camera): Even now in broad daylight, 41-years later, the trek from Philadelphia, Mississippi to neighboring Meridien is an uneasy ride.
Have you ever made this trip without thinking about it?
STANLEY DEARMAN, THE NESHOBA DEMOCRAT: No, no. Never have. And I made this trip at least once or twice a week to Meridien.
CROWLEY: Stanley Dearman was a 31-year old reporter when he was assigned the story of his life. Dateline Philadelphia, June 1964, three civil rights workers were tailed by the KKK down this two lane stretch of Mississippi.
DEARMAN: Right here, this -- at this store, there was a car. Yes, another one down here. I think maybe there were like three cars full of Klansmen.
CROWLEY (on camera): And how high did they get up?
DEARMAN: Over 100 miles an hour.
CROWLEY: Oh, man.
(voice-over): Sometimes reporters grab stories. And sometimes stories grab reporters. This is one of those. It is about three young men, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner of New York, James Cheney of Meridien, who were to spend the summer in Mississippi, registering blacks to vote. And it is about the local newsman who covered their disappearance.
DEARMAN: This case, it worked on me a long time. I really don't believe that there's been a single day in 40 years that I haven't thought about this case.
CROWLEY: It cannot be history until you stop living it. And this story still moves inside Stanley Dearman, still breathes in Philadelphia, Mississippi. It is alive in a boarded up old building, the old jail. This is where the three civil rights workers were taken after Philadelphia deputy sheriff Cecil Price picked them up for allegedly speeding. It was the afternoon of June 21st. They were held until late that night, long enough for the Klan to get into position.
DEARMAN: And this is where they had their last meal, this jail. They were released. And Cecil Price, the deputy, told them to get out and Showa (ph) County.
CROWLEY (on camera): And they took off?
DEARMAN: Took off.
CROWLEY (voice-over): A KKK informant and an FBI investigation would put the story together. Just outside town, the three were chased off the road, forced into Klan cars, driven up this hill.
DEARMAN: Can you imagine the terror they felt? This is it. This is -- at this fork in the road.
CROWLEY: This is where they died. The bodies were found 44 days later buried on private property, miles away. But they were shot dead here at a dusty turnaround in the middle of nowhere.
(on camera): And why did they bring them here, because it was out of the...
DEARMAN: Killen lived a mile and a half down this road. He knew this place. Killen chose the venue.
CROWLEY (voice-over): Edgar Ray Killen has always said he wasn't involved. At the time, the state of Mississippi couldn't, wouldn't, didn't file charges against anyone. With no statute to cover the murders, the federal government charged Killen in 1967 with conspiring to violate the rights of another. He was found not guilty. Of seven men convicted on conspiracy, no one served more than six years.
DEARMAN: And after the federal trial, then people used that to say well, in essence, that's -- we've had justice.
CROWLEY (on camera): But you don't think that?
DEARMAN: No, no. There's a difference between conspiracy and murder.
CROWLEY (voice-over): Dearman moved on from a reporter to editor and publisher of "The Neshoba Democrat". In 1989, he interviewed Caroline Goodman, mother of Andrew, hoping to bring new life to a story a town wanted to forget.
In May of 2000, he wrote an editorial calling for justice.
DEARMAN: Come hell or high water, there needs to be an accounting. It's time.
CROWLEY: January 6 of this year, the state indicted Edgar Ray Killen on three counts of murder.
DEARMAN: I don't know how to describe, but it was a great feeling like a weight being lifted or a cloud moving on.
CROWLEY: Dearman cannot count the number of people he has brought here to the spot where three men, ages 20, 21, and 24 were killed for trying to register black voters. He does remember one person in particular.
DEARMAN: And he looked around. And he said, "But there's nothing here to say what happened." And that's true. And it should -- something should be done about it.
CROWLEY (on camera): You want to put a memorial...
DEARMAN: Yes. Or some kind of (INAUDIBLE) they probably dynamited or do something to it, but...
CROWLEY: Still?
DEARMAN: There are those who would do it.
CROWLEY: So maybe it hasn't changed so much?
DEARMAN: Well, some people haven't changed. And they'll just have to be time when I have to take care of them. But there are a lot of people who have changed. And if it hadn't been for that, for a lot of people, having strong feelings about this, and pushing for an indictment or indictments for justice, it would never take place. And I said this came from within.
CROWLEY (voice-over): The trial of Edgar Ray Killen is scheduled to begin almost 41 years to the date they disappeared. He is the first to be charged with the murders of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Cheney. But there are others out there.
DEARMAN: There are a number of people in Meridien that in that plan, voted to have Schwerner eliminated. They should be held accountable.
CROWLEY: Stanley Dearman is retired now, but this is his story and it will not let go.
Candy Crowley, CNN, Philadelphia, Mississippi.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Well, we have all heard the horror stories of mistakes at hospitals. In the first of a two-part series on dangerous hospitals, CNN's CNN's Randi Kaye examines the case of one woman who went in for surgery, just days later died an agonizing death.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Last November, Mary McClinton checked into Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle for a procedure to correct a brain aneurysm. She never checked out.
GERALD MCCLINTON, PATIENT'S SON: Nineteen days of terror for my mother.
KAYE: The aneurysm procedure was successful and Mary McClinton, in good health otherwise according to her family, was expected to recover and live for years. But right after the surgery, a fatal error.
G. MCCLINTON: One simple procedure of marking what you're about to inject into a person would have prevented this whole thing. 30 seconds or less to write down what's toxic, what is not.
KAYE: A technician was supposed to inject a harmless marker dye for x-rays into Mary's leg, but instead of injecting dye, the technician inadvertently injected antiseptic skin cleanser, chlorhexidine, toxic when injected into the body.
(on camera): Did you speak to her after the surgery?
WILLIAM MCCLINTON, PATIENT'S SON: Basically, she could talk and I talked to her for all of 30 seconds because of the pain she was in. It was -- I mean, I heard a lot of screaming, to the point where she actually dropped the phone and the nurse picked it up and told me that I have to call her back.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: You can see Randi Kaye's full report on dangerous hospitals tonight on "PAULA ZAHN NOW." That's at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, 5:00 Pacific, only here on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(STOCK MARKET REPORT)
Coming up in the second hour of LIVE FROM, get out your telescopes. Well, actually, it's a little beyond the range of your need. A new planet well beyond our little celestial hood. It's the smallest, most Earth-like planet found outside our solar system. Not seen there, by the way.
LIVE FROM's hour of power gives you the world and so much more, and it begins after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired June 13, 2005 - 13:33 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Checking stories now in the news, a second meeting for the 9/11 public discourse project. Discussion today focusing on the challenges that face John Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence. Over the next four months, the 9/11 public discourse project will hold eight public panels before a report card to assess the progress of U.S. intelligence reforms.
In Newport, Tennessee, 144 people arrested on misdemeanor charges at an illegal cockfight. It may have been one of the biggest such gatherings in the country. State and federal agents swooped in to make the arrests and seize more than $40,000. Each person charged faces the possibility of jailtime and a $2,500 fine if convicted.
And the Centers for Disease Control reports today that more than a million Americans are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Although it's a testament no better treatment, the number represents also a critical failure. CDC officials had pledged to break the back of AIDS in the U.S. by cutting infection rates, but that number, 40,000 new cases a year, has remained fairly constant.
A "Time" magazine article that takes a look inside the secret realm of interrogations at the U.S. military lockup in Cuba is fueling controversy over the range of techniques used to get information from detainees.
To give people a better understanding of how interrogators are trained, CNN's Ed Lavandera was given an all-access look into the Army's interrogation training camp.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is site uniform, our field training exercise.
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In the dusty hills of southeastern Arizona, the newest Army intelligence interrogators are completing their final training exercise. The Army wants the world to know that when these soldiers leave here, they're not equipped with techniques of torture and humiliation.
MAJ. GEN. JAMES MARKS, U.S. ARMY: We train soldiers to do what's right. Our Army is values based. So if a soldier feels like he or she is moving down a path that they are uncomfortable with, we also have a thing called the chain of command, when you go up through the chain of command and get support from them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All I'm asking to find out is your chain of command here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do I know I can trust an American?
LAVANDERA: Inside Fort Watuka (ph), soldiers are taught to fine points of interrogation. Role playing teaches each soldiers how to approach different personalities.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we doused the garbage cans with gasoline and lit a match.
LAVANDERA: The 16-week training course teaches soldiers to get into a prisoner's mind.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're not going to let him finish whatever they're asking. Eventually the person is going to want to be heard.
LAVANDERA (on camera): Army officials say up to 90 percent of the useful intelligence comes from interrogation, but to get that information, from a hardened terrorist or a militant fighter can require a tough approach.
MARKS: We don't strip anybody of their dignity, but I want them tired. I want them to be afraid of me. I want them when they breathe, I want them to think that the interrogator gave them the right to expand their lungs.
LAVANDERA: Officials say it's under strict guidelines: no touching, no humiliation. Chief Warrant Officer Lon Castleton just returned from Iraq. He found a kinder, gentler approach is the most effective way of dealing with Iraqi prisoners.
CWO LON CASTLETON, U.S. ARMY: The things I saw with this these people, they expected to be beaten, and that's the way Saddam Hussein used to treat them. In fact, they figured they'd never be seen again. So when you treat them with kindness, they're a lot more open. In fact, in a lot of cases, they are surprised.
LAVANDERA: The need for interrogators is so great that more than 500 soldiers will be put through this course this year.
SPEC. JASON HICKMAN, INTERROGATION TRAINEE: I have a foundation for what it's going to take to do my job in the real world, but until I actually do it in the real world, I'm not going to know what it's going to be like.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Ahead on LIVE FROM, I'll ask retired Air Force Major General Don Shepherd whether he think the interrogation techniques used at Gitmo go too far. And a little bit later, we'll debate the pros and cons of shutting down the controversial prison.
An interesting juxtaposition of civil rights news today. The U.S. Senate issues a formal apology. Senate resolution 39 officially expresses remorse for the Senate's failure to pass a law to stop lynchings. It's estimated more than 4,700 people, most of them black, died in lynchings between 1882 and 1968. Among those slated to be on hand for today's floor vote, Doria D. Johnson (ph). She is the great- great granddaughter of a black South Carolina farmer who killed by a white mob nearly 100 years ago now.
And now more on the slaying of those civil rights workers, 41 years ago in Mississippi. CNN's Candy Crowley met a man whose life was forever changed by that story. He still can't let it go.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Now is this the road where they drove out of town?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. It's the state highway 19.
CROWLEY (on camera): Even now in broad daylight, 41-years later, the trek from Philadelphia, Mississippi to neighboring Meridien is an uneasy ride.
Have you ever made this trip without thinking about it?
STANLEY DEARMAN, THE NESHOBA DEMOCRAT: No, no. Never have. And I made this trip at least once or twice a week to Meridien.
CROWLEY: Stanley Dearman was a 31-year old reporter when he was assigned the story of his life. Dateline Philadelphia, June 1964, three civil rights workers were tailed by the KKK down this two lane stretch of Mississippi.
DEARMAN: Right here, this -- at this store, there was a car. Yes, another one down here. I think maybe there were like three cars full of Klansmen.
CROWLEY (on camera): And how high did they get up?
DEARMAN: Over 100 miles an hour.
CROWLEY: Oh, man.
(voice-over): Sometimes reporters grab stories. And sometimes stories grab reporters. This is one of those. It is about three young men, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner of New York, James Cheney of Meridien, who were to spend the summer in Mississippi, registering blacks to vote. And it is about the local newsman who covered their disappearance.
DEARMAN: This case, it worked on me a long time. I really don't believe that there's been a single day in 40 years that I haven't thought about this case.
CROWLEY: It cannot be history until you stop living it. And this story still moves inside Stanley Dearman, still breathes in Philadelphia, Mississippi. It is alive in a boarded up old building, the old jail. This is where the three civil rights workers were taken after Philadelphia deputy sheriff Cecil Price picked them up for allegedly speeding. It was the afternoon of June 21st. They were held until late that night, long enough for the Klan to get into position.
DEARMAN: And this is where they had their last meal, this jail. They were released. And Cecil Price, the deputy, told them to get out and Showa (ph) County.
CROWLEY (on camera): And they took off?
DEARMAN: Took off.
CROWLEY (voice-over): A KKK informant and an FBI investigation would put the story together. Just outside town, the three were chased off the road, forced into Klan cars, driven up this hill.
DEARMAN: Can you imagine the terror they felt? This is it. This is -- at this fork in the road.
CROWLEY: This is where they died. The bodies were found 44 days later buried on private property, miles away. But they were shot dead here at a dusty turnaround in the middle of nowhere.
(on camera): And why did they bring them here, because it was out of the...
DEARMAN: Killen lived a mile and a half down this road. He knew this place. Killen chose the venue.
CROWLEY (voice-over): Edgar Ray Killen has always said he wasn't involved. At the time, the state of Mississippi couldn't, wouldn't, didn't file charges against anyone. With no statute to cover the murders, the federal government charged Killen in 1967 with conspiring to violate the rights of another. He was found not guilty. Of seven men convicted on conspiracy, no one served more than six years.
DEARMAN: And after the federal trial, then people used that to say well, in essence, that's -- we've had justice.
CROWLEY (on camera): But you don't think that?
DEARMAN: No, no. There's a difference between conspiracy and murder.
CROWLEY (voice-over): Dearman moved on from a reporter to editor and publisher of "The Neshoba Democrat". In 1989, he interviewed Caroline Goodman, mother of Andrew, hoping to bring new life to a story a town wanted to forget.
In May of 2000, he wrote an editorial calling for justice.
DEARMAN: Come hell or high water, there needs to be an accounting. It's time.
CROWLEY: January 6 of this year, the state indicted Edgar Ray Killen on three counts of murder.
DEARMAN: I don't know how to describe, but it was a great feeling like a weight being lifted or a cloud moving on.
CROWLEY: Dearman cannot count the number of people he has brought here to the spot where three men, ages 20, 21, and 24 were killed for trying to register black voters. He does remember one person in particular.
DEARMAN: And he looked around. And he said, "But there's nothing here to say what happened." And that's true. And it should -- something should be done about it.
CROWLEY (on camera): You want to put a memorial...
DEARMAN: Yes. Or some kind of (INAUDIBLE) they probably dynamited or do something to it, but...
CROWLEY: Still?
DEARMAN: There are those who would do it.
CROWLEY: So maybe it hasn't changed so much?
DEARMAN: Well, some people haven't changed. And they'll just have to be time when I have to take care of them. But there are a lot of people who have changed. And if it hadn't been for that, for a lot of people, having strong feelings about this, and pushing for an indictment or indictments for justice, it would never take place. And I said this came from within.
CROWLEY (voice-over): The trial of Edgar Ray Killen is scheduled to begin almost 41 years to the date they disappeared. He is the first to be charged with the murders of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Cheney. But there are others out there.
DEARMAN: There are a number of people in Meridien that in that plan, voted to have Schwerner eliminated. They should be held accountable.
CROWLEY: Stanley Dearman is retired now, but this is his story and it will not let go.
Candy Crowley, CNN, Philadelphia, Mississippi.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Well, we have all heard the horror stories of mistakes at hospitals. In the first of a two-part series on dangerous hospitals, CNN's CNN's Randi Kaye examines the case of one woman who went in for surgery, just days later died an agonizing death.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Last November, Mary McClinton checked into Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle for a procedure to correct a brain aneurysm. She never checked out.
GERALD MCCLINTON, PATIENT'S SON: Nineteen days of terror for my mother.
KAYE: The aneurysm procedure was successful and Mary McClinton, in good health otherwise according to her family, was expected to recover and live for years. But right after the surgery, a fatal error.
G. MCCLINTON: One simple procedure of marking what you're about to inject into a person would have prevented this whole thing. 30 seconds or less to write down what's toxic, what is not.
KAYE: A technician was supposed to inject a harmless marker dye for x-rays into Mary's leg, but instead of injecting dye, the technician inadvertently injected antiseptic skin cleanser, chlorhexidine, toxic when injected into the body.
(on camera): Did you speak to her after the surgery?
WILLIAM MCCLINTON, PATIENT'S SON: Basically, she could talk and I talked to her for all of 30 seconds because of the pain she was in. It was -- I mean, I heard a lot of screaming, to the point where she actually dropped the phone and the nurse picked it up and told me that I have to call her back.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: You can see Randi Kaye's full report on dangerous hospitals tonight on "PAULA ZAHN NOW." That's at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, 5:00 Pacific, only here on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(STOCK MARKET REPORT)
Coming up in the second hour of LIVE FROM, get out your telescopes. Well, actually, it's a little beyond the range of your need. A new planet well beyond our little celestial hood. It's the smallest, most Earth-like planet found outside our solar system. Not seen there, by the way.
LIVE FROM's hour of power gives you the world and so much more, and it begins after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
