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U.S. Navy Prepares for War With Iraq; Reporters Undergo Military Training

Aired February 15, 2003 - 14:00   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.


ANNOUNCER: Today on NEXT@CNN, from the most sophisticated gear to basic animal instinct, two extremes as the U.S. Navy gets ready for a possible war with Iraq.
How reporters would bring that war home to your living room. We'll show you the training they're going through and the gadgets they'd use.

And we'll show you some of the strange things that happen when critters go a-courting.

All of that and more on NEXT.

RENAY SAN MIGUEL, HOST: Hello, everyone. And welcome to NEXT@CNN for this Saturday, February 15. I am Renay San Miguel.

As worldwide antiwar protests continue today, the U.S. keeps positioning its forces throughout the Persian Gulf. And perhaps the military's most conspicuous presence is from the navy.

Becky Diamond joins us now by videophone from Bahrain to tell us about some impressive naval technology and some unusual sea-going recruits.

But first of all, I understand, Becky, we have some late-breaking news involving some arrests in Bahrain?

BECKY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we do. Today in Bahrain, government officials arrested five people belonging to a terrorist cell.

Now, we do not what terrorist cell that is. What we do know is these five people are Bahraini nationals, they were found with explosives, and according to the government, were planning some sort of attack here in Bahrain.

The government is investigating. And we will bring you news as soon as we know it.

SAN MIGUEL: OK, in the meantime, if war does come to Iraq, the Aegis Destroyer Milius would likely be part of the U.S.'s first strike against Iraq, right?

DIAMOND: Absolutely correct. The Milius is a formidable force. It's a billion-dollar Aegis destroyer currently deployed in the Northern Arabian Gulf. It's pretty close to the shores of Iraq.

And if there is a war against Iraq, the ship is very likely to participate in the first strike. And that's because it has Tomahawk missiles and also because of this Aegis weapons system.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And exponential increase of firepower from ships that we've seen in the past. We carry 90 different kinds of missile, including Tomahawk missiles with a range in excess of 700 miles and accuracy to fly through a window.

(END VIDEO CLIP

DIAMOND: Now, what makes this weapons system so unique is that it's fully automated and integrated. So the ships can fire multiple missiles at once in the air. It can launch them and track them.

Now, that's a lot of firepower. And the heart of this is this 51D radar array. Now there are four of these arrays on the ship. And they can track objects that are flying hundreds of miles off the coast, hundreds of miles off the ship, at once.

SAN MIGUEL: Now, Becky, in contrast to all of that advanced technology that you just talked about on the Milius, the navy is also getting some help from some of the oldest practitioners of sonar on the planet.

DIAMOND: Exactly. There's a very special force right now in the Persian Gulf protecting U.S. navy assets. California sea lions are here.

I met with Jacques (ph) and Alex earlier this week. Jacques (ph) is 19, weighs about 350 pounds. And he is one of a group of sea lions that have been deployed here.

They arrived in the beginning of February. They trained for about 18 months. And that's a similar time of training for U.S. navy sailors who get deployed. And the U.S. navy's using them because of their very natural qualities.

They have excellent sonars, terrific eyesight. They can dive up to about a thousand feet, and swim at about 40 kilometers per hour. So the navy's using them to patrol the harbors and ensure the safety of U.S. warships.

Now, what they're trained to do is to locate, detect, and mark possible underwater threats. Now, these threats can be stationary, or they can be moving, such as swimmers.

And what the sea lions are trained to do is to swim down to the threat with a restraining device, and this is like a clamp. And they attach the restraining device to the object with the buoy up top and that marks it for human divers to come and assess the threat.

SAN MIGUEL: A fascinating mix of high and low-tech there in Bahrain. Becky Diamond, thank you very much for the report.

Well, as the U.S. military presence steeps up in the region, so is the media. Preparing to enter a potential war zone is something many journalists are not taking lightly as CNN's Thomas Nybo discovered this week in training camp.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How's that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. We have trained into three hours.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now you're right. Your left. OK, stop there. Stop!

THOMAS NYBO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Today is the big day. The marines warn us there's a good chance at least one of us will vomit. Something involving helicopters and machine guns.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Going to get right behind it, and basically, you just get some. (gunfire)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You might feel some tingling on your body, but don't freak out. It's fine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, man.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SAN MIGUEL: Like France and World War II there.

Joining me now, Thomas Nybo, who is heading to the zone next week.

This equipment that -- I understand all of that was shot on this camera right here.

NYBO: That's right. I mean, the tools of the new reporter, I mean, it's all about mobility. I mean, you can jump out of airplanes with this camera, you can cross rivers, and base more importantly, I think, once you get this stuff, you can transmit it, you can go live, you know, within a matter of minutes.

You've got -- you've got a satellite phone to transmit the signal.

SAN MIGUEL: Yes.

NYBO: You've got a laptop. You can edit all of the video.

SAN MIGUEL: And that's the biggest difference between the first Gulf War and this one, is the equipment is basically getting smaller and easier to use? NYBO: Basically, technology and mobility have reached a point where -- the big thing in the first Gulf War was, we had the four- wire, CNN did, and everyone was, you know, tuned in and it was just audio.

And now we've got basically these mobile teams where it's possible to have live footage of U.S. combat troops in action.

SAN MIGUEL: And how quickly could get that live signal up?

NYBO: Under the best of circumstances, within a minute or two. Of course, the military could jam the satellite signals. You could run out of batteries. It could be a very cloudy day. So a lot that can go wrong.

SAN MIGUEL: But you would be seeing a videophone-type signal, you know, that we've seen before. Kind of the herky-jerky type of...?

NYBO: For the live footage. But you can actually transmit perfect video but it takes a long time. For instance, that piece that we just saw. If I had to transmit that under the worst of conditions, it could take a couple of hours.

NYBO: Wow. I know you're ready to do your job, but are you ready for the dangers of war, heading over there?

NYBO: I don't know. It's a little scary, you know. In addition to all the technology, you know, CNN has outfitted me with a gas mask and a full chemical and biological weapons suit.

I've had about three weeks of training. And when you're going through with the marines and you're seeing pictures of what some of these agents can do to you, yes, it is very daunting, so -- But it's part of the job.

SAN MIGUEL: We wish you luck heading over there.

NYBO: Thank you, sir, very much.

SAN MIGUEL: Thomas Nybo with CNN. Thanks a lot.

Scientists have always had questions about how the universe began. Coming up, a new picture appears to answer a lot those questions.

And then later, how do you lean when it comes to kissing? Some insight into that later in the show, so don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAN MIGUEL: Making technology news this week, Smith & Wesson is bringing out its big guns, literally.

The company introduced a 50-caliber magnum handgun this week. The magnified magnum weighs about four and a half pounds and has an 8.5-inch barrel. The company says this handgun is primarily for hunting and has enough firepower to stop a charging bear in its tracks.

The panel investigating the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster is taking a hard look at a theory that a tear in the shuttle's hull allowed super hot gases to destroy it.

But investigators stressed they're not ruling anything out, even sabotage. Today the board visits the Louisiana plant, where shuttle external tanks are manufactured.

NASA scientists this week showed us the best baby picture yet of our universe, from data gathered by a satellite a million miles away.

Now, this is the only image we had from a 1992 satellite. Now, compare it to this cosmic portrait, showing in much more detail what the universe looked like less than a million years after the Big Bang.

Lyman Page, a member of the satellite team that developed this image, joins us now from our New York bureau.

Mr. Page, thanks for being with us today.

LYMAN PAGE, NASA: Thank you. Good to be here.

SAN MIGUEL: So what exactly are we looking at there with that 2003, with the latest picture that we showed? We had the 1992 comparison. A lot more detail, but what exactly are we looking at there?

PAGE: OK. What you see are these little hot and cold spots in that picture. And from the hottest spot to the coldest spot is something like a difference in temperature of about 400 millionths of a degree.

And you can see that -- so you see the little red spots there?

SAN MIGUEL: Yes.

PAGE: Blue spots there. Those correspond to areas in the early universe that were slightly hotter and slightly colder than the average.

And what happens is, when matter starts to come together to eventually form clusters of galaxies and galaxies and all the things that we see in the night sky...

SAN MIGUEL: Yes.

PAGE: When they do that early on, it makes it -- it increases the temperature of the background, and that's what we measure. And so we measure these hot and cold spots over the whole sky.

What's unique about this measurement is that we've measured it now more precisely than has been done over -- since the last satellite, since the 1992 release of the other map. SAN MIGUEL: And I know that -- I am sorry. Let me interrupt you, because we're running out of time. But I want say, it's not just the quality of the information that you have to be ecstatic here.

The fact you're getting this information from a satellite that is a million miles away, that it's working.

PAGE: It's amazing! Yes, no, it was -- I mean, there was a whole group of people, obviously, behind this, from, you know, from the national radio astronomy observatory to NASA to the launch team. It all worked where we are delighted with it.

And it will continue to work for another three years. It'll keep sending back these images. They'll get better and better.

SAN MIGUEL: And then, you know, you have to be excited about that.

But here's what interests me, the fact most of the universe, from what you've determined here, is made up of so-called dark matter and then there's also something called dark energy here.

Explain that without getting too much into, you know, physics -- you know, deep-end physics here.

PAGE: Physics jargon. OK. So what we -- we're made of atoms. And when we look out at the sky at those hot and cold spots, from the patterns in those hot and cold spots, we can tell what fraction of the universe is made up of atoms.

And as you can see on the chart there, it's about four. Between 4 and 5 percent. So that's the stuff we know about, the stars are made of, galaxies are made of.

These other -- this other chunk, 23 percent, is made up of something called dark matter. It attracts gravitationally, we can see evidence of it, but we can't observe it.

It's a completely new form of matter. It's been growing evidence of it for many years, though, both from other microid background experiments from observations of galaxies. And so we know it's there, but we can't put our hands on it. We don't have a good theory for what it is.

There's a mad race to actually measure something -- you know, get some in our hands.

SAN MIGUEL: Yes. I'm sure. But I know that you will be busy. You will stay busy for the next three years.

PAGE: Oh, yes.

SAN MIGUEL: As that information comes in. We've got to run, but I do thank you for joining us, Lyman Page, and good luck with the experiments.

PAGE: OK. Thank you.

SAN MIGUEL: Still to come on NEXT, how can you starve to death on $200 million? Apparently, it's not difficult in some circles. We'll talk about the demise of what was once the fastest growing magazine in history. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you kiss, which way do you tilt your head?

Politics aside, former presidential candidate Al Gore, leans to the right. President Bush appears to favor the left. Hmm!

A study in the journal "Nature" finds twice as many people tilt right than left.

Researchers theorize we may be a lot like birds. Our preference may be determined early on in the womb and how our heads were tilted. Facing this way exposes the right side of the body to more light, stimulation and growth, possibly creating a righty.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm left-handed.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And you still tilt your head to the right?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, because he's right-handed.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nothing's exact here, since it takes two to kiss.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He leans and I just follow.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And whether one tilt is better, check out the famous on the silver screen.

Some, like Reese Witherspoon and Josh Lucas in "Sweet Home Alabama," tilt left. While most others, like "Moonstruck's" Cher and Nicolas Cage, lean right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm just happy to get a kiss. I'll go whichever direction she does.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SAN MIGUEL: OK. Picture this: a magazine a little more than a year-old rakes in prestigious awards and a mountain of ad dollars while becoming the Bible of the tech industry.

A year later, the "Industry Standard" was toast, just like many of the companies it reported on.

Author James Ledbetter joins us from London to tell a tale that is too strange for fiction. He knows too well; he was an editor for the "Industry Standard." His book is "Starving to Death on $200 Million."

James, you say in the book that you became the story, the magazine became the story that you were reporting on. So why didn't anybody at the magazine recognize that?

JAMES LEDBETTER, AUTHOR, "STARVING TO DEATH ON $200 MILLION:" That's the question the book tries to answer.

Sometimes we thought that maybe the executives who were running the company were so busy raking in all of the ad dollars that they didn't have time to read the stories in the magazine, that were talking about the dot-com companies that were falling apart.

I think that one of the points I try to make in "Starving to Death" is that in a period of tremendous growth, it's very difficult for companies to even get a sense of sort of where the technology market is, much less where it's taking them six months down the road.

And so a lot of the experience that the dot-coms had in watching their stocks go up and their products suddenly hugely popular all over the world, the same problems that the magazine had. And in the end, we were defeated by little old things like taxes and real estate.

SAN MIGUEL: Those little things like that.

Well, I mean...

LEDBETTER: Old world values.

SAN MIGUEL: Old world values. That kind of leads into my question and it deals with the chapter called "The Fat Year." What in the world was in the "Industry Standard," which was a little more than a year-old doing, raking in ad revenues that, you know, "Forbes" and "Business Week" would have killed to have had?

LEDBETTER: What happened was that you had a huge spurt in companies that were creating new technologies, usually related to the Internet -- Boo.com and Cosmo.com -- and many of them wanted to take their stock public before Wall Street and then eventually the broader investment market.

In order to do that they felt that they had to grow very, very quickly. Very, very big, which was the lesson that people learned from Amazon.

If you couldn't grow big, you had to at least pretend like you did. And the way that everybody did that was to advertise.

We were out there every week, we were being read by the investment banks. We were being read by the CEOs of the dot-com companies. Everybody wanted to advertise. They were literally stuffing our magazine. We were coming out every week with 250, 300- page magazines.

We literally got so fat that the printer that we used couldn't publish our issues. We had to move to a different printer. It was a similar thing with our conference businesses. People were killing to sponsor cocktail parties surrounding our conferences and to get to our rooftop parties in San Francisco. It was one fat year.

SAN MIGUEL: It sounds like. I mean, and it's obvious from the book that you had the passion for the journalism.

But I have to ask you, if you felt like the magazine focused more on main street technology instead of Wall Street technology, that, you know, kind of like what "Wired" does, that you would still be around, you know, to give "Wired" some competition?

SAN MIGUEL: Well, that's a good question. I think that there were a lot of problems that happened with the magazine. Part of it was that the financial management was, let's say, less than perfect.

Part of it was that we never spent enough time building a circulation that was as large as "Wired."

And part of it was that there was a lot of friction between the magazine's management and its investors.

I think in the end, it was sort of a, you know, live by the technology boom, die by the technology boom problem. I don't know that -- if we really had the resources as a weekly magazine to compete against "Wired's" more mainstream approach. Because "Wired" is a monthly and can take a little time to step back.

We had to be out there with the news every week.

SAN MIGUEL: Exactly. Well, you know what? I, in a former life, I covered technology stocks during the boom years from '97 to 2000, and "Industry Standard" was a must-read for me.

LEDBETTER: And we're still out there.

SAN MIGUEL: It was a must-read for me. And it was a bookmarked on my computer, as well. So I wish you all the success in the world.

The book is called "Starving to Death on $200 Million." James Ledbetter, thanks for joining us.

LEDBETTER: My pleasure.

SAN MIGUEL: Coming up, high-tech protective gear could help determine when the U.S. launches an attack on Iraq. We will explain.

And on this Valentine's Day weekend, we'll show you that love, and the problems love can cause, are not just for people. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAN MIGUEL: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. A U.S.-led war with Iraq is looking increasingly inevitable. CNN meteorologist Jacqui Jeras joins us now to tells us how the weather might loom large in a desert war.

Give us some idea of the range of temperatures we're talking about here.

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Very extreme and primarily into the summer months. This is a country where some of the hottest temperatures happen on earth throughout the summer.

It's basically a land-locked country. And we'll go ahead and give you a good look at Iraq. And there you can see the Persian Gulf on the south side of the country, along with the city of Basra.

Most of the rainfall happens in the southwestern parts of Iraq. It's very low elevation. Based in type of condition, very desert and plain. The Euphrates and Tigris rivers run right through the middle of it. And there you can see Baghdad on the banks.

In terms of temperatures, what can we expect over the next couple of months? Well, it increases dramatically by about ten degrees per month, with a maximum 61 degrees on average for your high in March, up to 91 degrees in June.

July is the hottest month, on average, with 95 degrees, and you will see plenty of days with triple-digits and beyond.

We do see the maximum precipitation into the winter months from November through April. And then we drop off to about nothing throughout the summer. In fact, the climate books say for June, July, and August, zero for average precipitation. You only get about an inch in March.

It's very, very dry. You get a little bit more precipitation when the elevation goes up, when you head into northeastern parts of the country. Those are the Zagros Mountains. And the elevations go up 10,000 feet.

So it's about 10 degrees cooler up there. However, very dry conditions. Very little cloud cover. And we get a lot of storm systems move through in the spring, but you don't see a lot of rain with them. The winds will kick up and then dust storms are a big problem.

SAN MIGUEL: Kind of a classic situation: as the rainfall comes down, the temperatures go on up.

Jacqui Jeras, thanks so much for that.

JERAS: OK.

SAN MIGUEL: Well, military planners have no doubt had similar briefings from their own meteorologists as they work up their invasion plan.

Here to give us some insight into war and weather is CNN military analyst General David Grange.

General, thanks for joining us today.

BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: My pleasure.

SAN MIGUEL: So, you know, you've heard the forecast. Let's talk a little bit about, would there ever be a point where the heat would be too much for the military in the Gulf?

GRANGE: Well, the military can attack -- the United States military can attack any time of the year. Some times, as you just talked about on the weather situation in Iraq, some times are more advantageous than others.

And what happens, of course, is the hotter it gets, the more difficult it is inside, for instance, a tank, an Abrams tank. It's difficult for helicopters flying in higher altitudes at times and higher heat.

So those things all affect operations.

SAN MIGUEL: Well, you know, much has been made of the chemical, biological warfare suits that the troops will have to wear in case of that situation.

What's the reality as to how that would be affected by the heat and how all of that would affect military performance?

GRANGE: Well, this mission-oriented protective posture, MOPP, it's different levels, does affect the efficiencies of soldiers or marines or anybody operating.

And so, with the -- if you have most of the equipment on, a MOPP level four, an example, where you have the mask, the hood, the rubber boots and gloves and the suit, it's extremely hot, of course.

It's hard to talk on a radio. You cannot eat. It's hard to drink. There's just a lot of factors that affect your movement and your fighting capabilities.

So the MOPP posture, the posture of chemical protection, does affect your operation.

SAN MIGUEL: But there isn't a part there where, you know, certain levels of MOPP posture. Maybe you could wear most of the suit but not have to wear the hood, that kind of thing?

GRANGE: Yes, a great point. And what you do is MOPP level zero, the lowest level, is what you'll be at most of time, and that's just where you wear the suit just like you'd wear your combat uniform.

And so -- and then you would just -- as indicators, intelligence indicators or indicators from chemical/biological detection teams, tell you that you're in a chemical -- maybe in a chemical area. You're downwind of a chemical explosion, as an example. Then you would increase before you get there, you would increase that posture level. So you're not degraded all the time.

And that is something that is evaluated constantly by the commanders and the chemical warfare experts as you're operating in, in this case, a desert environment.

SAN MIGUEL: And what concerns do you have about the rainy versus dry seasons? You heard Jacqui talking about the sand situation and what that might do to helicopters and weapons?

GRANGE: Sure. Two things: She talked about the dust storms, and of course, the visibility is an issue when you're operating to engage targets with your optics.

The other is flying in that type of situation. Sand tears down equipment very quickly.

The other is the soil composition, what soil may make it where it's a no-go. Or a slow-go, as they call it slow-go movement with tractor-wheel vehicles across the desert floor.

And so all of those are taken into consideration -- the terrain and the weather -- as you're planning and conducting military operations on a constant basis.

SAN MIGUEL: I am sure. CNN military analyst David Grange, thank you for your insight. We appreciate it.

Still to come on NEXT, the electronics transactions we all make every day, should the government be allowed to sift through these records for terrorists? Two viewpoints coming up next. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAN MIGUEL: Total Information Awareness is a Pentagon program that aims to track international terrorists by following their electronic footprints.

To some, it's an important step to appreciate terrorist attacks. To others, it's a potential invasion of privacy on a global scale.

Here to help us understand what the fuss is all about is Heather McDonald. She's an author and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

And Mark Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Thanks to you both for joining us.

HEATHER McDONALD, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE: Thanks, Renay.

SAN MIGUEL: And Ms. McDonald, let me start with you.

The fuss, as it were, started with the William Safire column back in "The New York Times" in November. And he said that the government would work up dossiers on quote, "every public and private act of every American." Now if Safire was overreacting, as you have written in two "Weekly Standard" columns, how is it that 100 senators voted this week to hold up funding on TIA?

McDONALD: Because the misrepresentation that began with Safire only continued over the ensuing months.

Nobody bothered to find out what the actual truth of Total Information Awareness is.

It's, in fact, a program to allow government to protect Americans from terrorists. Not to spy on Americans by searching, above all, government crime and intelligence databases more effectively.

What the Luddites who stop this program are saying is that the government should be mired in inefficient technology as al Qaeda exploits our technology against us.

There's a second component of TIA, which is experimenting with dummy commercial data. It's not -- the Pentagon has no access to American's private data. But it's seeing whether the commercial data that already is available -- You can -- CNN right now can go out and buy phone books -- would increase the ability of the government to predict terrorist attacks.

There's no effort to compile dossiers on Americans, that's not what this is about. It's about using -- linking databases, above all intelligence databases, and connecting the dots, which is what we were so appalled at after 9/11, that the government was unable to use its own information effectively to prevent terrorism.

SAN MIGUEL: Let me bring Mr. Rotenberg in here, who by the way, congratulations, Mark. You've just been called a Luddite.

What we're talking about here is taking the credit card, you know, ATM receipts and phone patterns of known terror suspects and trying to follow a pattern to the unknown suspects, the ones that we don't know about, just using software and computing power.

What's wrong with that? Police do that kind of thing all the time on a lower tech scale, don't they?

MARK ROTENBERG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, EPIC: Well, Renay, I think if that was all that was going on here, no one would object.

But that's not what Total Information Awareness is about.

In fact, there's a reason the program is called Total Information Awareness and that's because the Department of Defense thought that it should get direct access to credit records, medical records, telephone records on American citizens.

And Congress this week said we need to draw some lines and I think drew an appropriate line.

I'm not quite sure what Ms. McDonald is referring to. The details surrounding this program have been widely available on the Docu (ph) site. They're available on our own site, EPIC.org.

And the criticisms that have been raised about the program, I think, are very well-based.

McDONALD: Well, as your own colleague, Mr. Sobul (ph), told me, you know quite well that the dummy data that is being experimented with represents commercially available databases.

This is nothing that the government does not already have access to. It could buy it on the market right now. This is no new invasion of privacy. It's what's already available that would simply be searched more efficiently.

ROTENBERG: Ms. McDonald I read your article...

McDONALD: ... the program is do the benefits outweigh the costs? And Americans make that judgment all the time when they pay with credit cards, when they use the Internet.

We have to look at the benefits of this program, which are to prevent terrorist attacks, versus the potential costs. We have privacy protections in place that would shield people's names from government analysis. And I think the judgment has to be made that clearly we can guard our privacy and have terrorist protection at the same time.

SAN MIGUEL: Mr. Rotenberg, the idea here that some of that information is commercially available. There are companies that are in the business of acquiring that and that's how you get spam and things like that.

ROTENBERG: Well, of course. But a lot of the information that John Poindexter wants to get access to would otherwise require a subpoena or a warrant.

And I think Ms. McDonald really has very little understanding of what this program is about.

What it anticipates is the ability to move large databases to large databases and to access large databases in the private sector and to make them available, in the words of Mr. Poindexter, as a virtual grand database.

Now that's directly opposed to the Fourth Amendment. The requirement of the Fourth Amendment is that the government has to have probable cause before it conducts a search. You can't gather up all the data from the private sector, sort through it and then decide how to apply the Fourth Amendment.

And I think that's the reason, in fact, that there was such widespread opposition to this program. It was extraordinary to see the response not only from the public but also from Congress. Lawmakers were unanimously opposed to this proposal.

SAN MIGUEL: And it was...

ROTENBERG: I think it was a good thing. For safeguarding our freedoms in this country by safeguarding the Fourth Amendment.

SAN MIGUEL: Let me step in here. He does have a point.

McDONALD: Our basic freedom is not to got nuked. I'm sorry. But, you know, again, the government...

ROTENBERG: But that kind of argument...

McDONALD: It's commercially available.

ROTENBERG: ... is nothing here.

McDONALD: Mr. Rotenberg, your colleague, David Sobul (ph)...

ROTENBERG: We have to reevaluate these programs.

McDONALD: ... has acknowledged that this is not subpoenable information. It's available commercially already.

ROTENBERG: Telephone records require a subpoena; Internet e-mail requires subpoenas.

McDONALD: And even if it -- even if it were to use subpoenaed data, that is already available to the government.

ROTENBERG: Bank records require subpoenas and medical records require subpoenas.

SAN MIGUEL: Let me stop you both for a second. We only have about 30 seconds left here.

McDONALD: This is already available to the government.

SAN MIGUEL: I want to get to the last question to Ms. McDonald, but I do want to point this out, isn't the big part of the problem here the fact that there is somebody of Iran-Contra fame, John Poindexter, involved here with managing TIA?

If you're looking to deflect criticism, why would you pick Poindexter?

McDONALD: That's a huge problem. I totally agree. But let's be adult enough to separate the person who is merely directing the research. The program will be turned over to the FBI to use. Poindexter will have nothing to do with it.

Let's separate the ad hominum aspects of it with the substance of the research.

And I think anybody that looks at this honestly will have to conclude that it is about using government intelligence and possibly commercially available intelligence more efficiently. Our greatest technological advantage our information technology. For heaven's sakes, let's use it against al Qaeda.

SAN MIGUEL: We have got to leave it there. Heather McDonald, Mark Rotenberg, thank you very much for a spirited discussion. We appreciate your time. Thank you.

McDONALD: Thank you.

ROTENBERG: Thank you, Renay.

SAN MIGUEL: Just ahead, saying good-bye to Dolly. The world's first cloned mammal dies at an early age. We'll be right back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID KIRKPATRICK, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: In 2003, one of interesting things that's going to happen is that the companies that buy technology or that use technology are going to really, I think, start seeing some significant productivity improvements. Because there is a lot of really good software that they already have, that they're finally figuring out how to use.

A major change that we'll start to see, finally, in 2003 is an upturn in the replacement cycle for PCs. That's a very good thing for the technology industry. Whether it's a big enough deal to really pull the whole industry out of its funk, I frankly doubt.

But most companies did a lot of purchasing of PCs to prepare for the Y2K transition. And most of those machines that they bought then are now increasingly outmoded.

Wireless networking is a huge, huge change. It's a big change in the way we're all going to be using technology. Over time, all networking will be wireless. That's not going to happen in 2003. But it will certainly start happening, and be more evident.

I think the technology industry's going to have a decent but not a great year in 2003. Maybe slightly better than 2002.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAN MIGUEL: In the news this week, Dolly is dead.

The world's first cloned to mammal was put to sleep yesterday. She was suffering from progressive lung disease. She lived only six years, and that's middle age for the average sheep.

Some critics have said cloned mammals are more susceptible to the disease. But the scientists in charge of creating Dolly said her death was not linked to cloning.

Since Dolly, many more sheep, pigs, cattle, and humans, if you believe the Raelians, have been cloned.

An oil barge in Long Island Sound yesterday scraped bottom and leaked about 25 gallons of home heating oil. The accident happened just south of Norwalk, Conn. Much of the oil has dissipated, but officials think any remaining oil would probably end up on the north shore of Long Island in New York. And automation hits the dog washing business. The laundry mat owner in Toyoka, Japan, has opened a special facility for pets. Fido is placed in the bright red machine, as you see. And he gets a doggy wash, rinse and blow dry. The price, the equivalent of $16-32 U.S., depending on the size of the dog.

The dog owners say they love it. The pets seem to have more mixed feelings.

You might not think the animal kingdom, humans excepted of course, need advice on sex. But think again, up next, we'll introduce you to the Dr. Ruth of the animal world. Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAN MIGUEL: So, how does one go about attracting the perfect mate? Why not wiggle your rear end at them or perhaps a savory bug wrapped in silk?

It may sound ridiculous, but hey, it works in the animal kingdom. And here now to comment on the silly, the kinky, the sometimes shocking habits of the animal world, we are joined by the author of "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation," Olivia Judson.

Olivia, thanks for being with us today.

OLIVIA JUDSON, AUTHOR, "DR. TATIANA'S SEX ADVICE TO ALL CREATION:" Thank you.

SAN MIGUEL: So we just spent this past weekend, you know, lots of flowers and chocolates and other gifts presented by members of the opposite sex to woo the opposite sexes in the human world. Does the same thing go on in the animal kingdom?

JUDSON: Absolutely. Giving presents is very popular. A lot of moths will give their mate something that will protect them from being eaten by spiders. That sort of thing.

Often it's food. You know, take them out to dinner. Give them a fancy meal.

These gifts can be extremely expensive. Sometimes, some butterflies are producing as much as 25 percent of their body weight in the gift that they give. So it's very expensive and very difficult to do again. And in such species, I'm afraid females actually prefer to mate with virgins.

SAN MIGUEL: Well -- OK. I'm going to leave that one alone for right now.

But the stereotypical roles that go on, you know, between males and females, is some reversal of that going on in the animal world?

JUDSON: Well, I think there's enormous variations.

And so, for example, in sea horses, it's the male who does all of the looking after the children. He becomes pregnant, in fact, and then he looks after the kids.

And there are quite a few fish where the male does all of the work looking after the children.

So there's quite a lot of difference between different groups.

SAN MIGUEL: And not to mention some cannibalism of the male that goes on, amongst certain animals, right? Insects especially.

JUDSON: Yes, if you've been very wicked, in your next life, you will be a male Redback Spider or even worse, a male Praying Mantis.

SAN MIGUEL: Yes.

JUDSON: Yes, these females are rapacious and often execute the male as he makes his approach. In the Praying Mantis, the male is actually able to copulate even once he's lost his head. He has a reflex that he sort of goes into wild sexual spasms after he's been executed.

SAN MIGUEL: You know, there is an image there, but kind of giving your all for propagation of the species, I guess.

What is -- You did --- You've obviously done a lot of research on this. What is the oddest mating ritual that you've run into the animal kingdom?

JUDSON: I think the most peculiar that I've come across is in papanautilus (ph) This is a relationship of the octopus.

And the female lives in a white shell that she secrets. And the male has -- his penis is a modified tentacle, which he files off. And the tentacle takes up an independent life inside the female and the male just kind of goes back to, you know, whatever he was doing before.

SAN MIGUEL: Oh. You know what? There are a million punch lines going through my head right now, but I have to remember the time frame that we are on here, even though it is cable.

Last question, we've got about 20 seconds left. Monogamy, the exception or the rule among animals?

JUDSON: The most deviant behavior in biology.

SAN MIGUEL: Really?

JUDSON: Absolutely. Extremely rare.

SAN MIGUEL: All right, we're going to have to leave it there. Olivia Judson, author of "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice for All Creation." Thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate your time.

JUDSON: Thank you.

SAN MIGUEL: And that is all the time we have for today. But tomorrow at 4 p.m. eastern, Sharon Collins will host another hour of NEXT LIVE.

Among her stories, just how much will duct tape really do in the face of a terror attack? We'll wrap up this sticky situation for you.

That and more, coming up tomorrow. We hope you'll be watching and we thank you for joining us today.

A quick note, though, starting next week, NEXT@CNN will air at 3 p.m. eastern time, noon Pacific.

Up next on CNN, "IN THE MONEY," followed by "CNN SATURDAY" and "PINNACLE. But first, a check of the latest headlines.

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Military Training>


Aired February 15, 2003 - 14:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: Today on NEXT@CNN, from the most sophisticated gear to basic animal instinct, two extremes as the U.S. Navy gets ready for a possible war with Iraq.
How reporters would bring that war home to your living room. We'll show you the training they're going through and the gadgets they'd use.

And we'll show you some of the strange things that happen when critters go a-courting.

All of that and more on NEXT.

RENAY SAN MIGUEL, HOST: Hello, everyone. And welcome to NEXT@CNN for this Saturday, February 15. I am Renay San Miguel.

As worldwide antiwar protests continue today, the U.S. keeps positioning its forces throughout the Persian Gulf. And perhaps the military's most conspicuous presence is from the navy.

Becky Diamond joins us now by videophone from Bahrain to tell us about some impressive naval technology and some unusual sea-going recruits.

But first of all, I understand, Becky, we have some late-breaking news involving some arrests in Bahrain?

BECKY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we do. Today in Bahrain, government officials arrested five people belonging to a terrorist cell.

Now, we do not what terrorist cell that is. What we do know is these five people are Bahraini nationals, they were found with explosives, and according to the government, were planning some sort of attack here in Bahrain.

The government is investigating. And we will bring you news as soon as we know it.

SAN MIGUEL: OK, in the meantime, if war does come to Iraq, the Aegis Destroyer Milius would likely be part of the U.S.'s first strike against Iraq, right?

DIAMOND: Absolutely correct. The Milius is a formidable force. It's a billion-dollar Aegis destroyer currently deployed in the Northern Arabian Gulf. It's pretty close to the shores of Iraq.

And if there is a war against Iraq, the ship is very likely to participate in the first strike. And that's because it has Tomahawk missiles and also because of this Aegis weapons system.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And exponential increase of firepower from ships that we've seen in the past. We carry 90 different kinds of missile, including Tomahawk missiles with a range in excess of 700 miles and accuracy to fly through a window.

(END VIDEO CLIP

DIAMOND: Now, what makes this weapons system so unique is that it's fully automated and integrated. So the ships can fire multiple missiles at once in the air. It can launch them and track them.

Now, that's a lot of firepower. And the heart of this is this 51D radar array. Now there are four of these arrays on the ship. And they can track objects that are flying hundreds of miles off the coast, hundreds of miles off the ship, at once.

SAN MIGUEL: Now, Becky, in contrast to all of that advanced technology that you just talked about on the Milius, the navy is also getting some help from some of the oldest practitioners of sonar on the planet.

DIAMOND: Exactly. There's a very special force right now in the Persian Gulf protecting U.S. navy assets. California sea lions are here.

I met with Jacques (ph) and Alex earlier this week. Jacques (ph) is 19, weighs about 350 pounds. And he is one of a group of sea lions that have been deployed here.

They arrived in the beginning of February. They trained for about 18 months. And that's a similar time of training for U.S. navy sailors who get deployed. And the U.S. navy's using them because of their very natural qualities.

They have excellent sonars, terrific eyesight. They can dive up to about a thousand feet, and swim at about 40 kilometers per hour. So the navy's using them to patrol the harbors and ensure the safety of U.S. warships.

Now, what they're trained to do is to locate, detect, and mark possible underwater threats. Now, these threats can be stationary, or they can be moving, such as swimmers.

And what the sea lions are trained to do is to swim down to the threat with a restraining device, and this is like a clamp. And they attach the restraining device to the object with the buoy up top and that marks it for human divers to come and assess the threat.

SAN MIGUEL: A fascinating mix of high and low-tech there in Bahrain. Becky Diamond, thank you very much for the report.

Well, as the U.S. military presence steeps up in the region, so is the media. Preparing to enter a potential war zone is something many journalists are not taking lightly as CNN's Thomas Nybo discovered this week in training camp.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How's that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. We have trained into three hours.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now you're right. Your left. OK, stop there. Stop!

THOMAS NYBO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Today is the big day. The marines warn us there's a good chance at least one of us will vomit. Something involving helicopters and machine guns.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Going to get right behind it, and basically, you just get some. (gunfire)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You might feel some tingling on your body, but don't freak out. It's fine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, man.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SAN MIGUEL: Like France and World War II there.

Joining me now, Thomas Nybo, who is heading to the zone next week.

This equipment that -- I understand all of that was shot on this camera right here.

NYBO: That's right. I mean, the tools of the new reporter, I mean, it's all about mobility. I mean, you can jump out of airplanes with this camera, you can cross rivers, and base more importantly, I think, once you get this stuff, you can transmit it, you can go live, you know, within a matter of minutes.

You've got -- you've got a satellite phone to transmit the signal.

SAN MIGUEL: Yes.

NYBO: You've got a laptop. You can edit all of the video.

SAN MIGUEL: And that's the biggest difference between the first Gulf War and this one, is the equipment is basically getting smaller and easier to use? NYBO: Basically, technology and mobility have reached a point where -- the big thing in the first Gulf War was, we had the four- wire, CNN did, and everyone was, you know, tuned in and it was just audio.

And now we've got basically these mobile teams where it's possible to have live footage of U.S. combat troops in action.

SAN MIGUEL: And how quickly could get that live signal up?

NYBO: Under the best of circumstances, within a minute or two. Of course, the military could jam the satellite signals. You could run out of batteries. It could be a very cloudy day. So a lot that can go wrong.

SAN MIGUEL: But you would be seeing a videophone-type signal, you know, that we've seen before. Kind of the herky-jerky type of...?

NYBO: For the live footage. But you can actually transmit perfect video but it takes a long time. For instance, that piece that we just saw. If I had to transmit that under the worst of conditions, it could take a couple of hours.

NYBO: Wow. I know you're ready to do your job, but are you ready for the dangers of war, heading over there?

NYBO: I don't know. It's a little scary, you know. In addition to all the technology, you know, CNN has outfitted me with a gas mask and a full chemical and biological weapons suit.

I've had about three weeks of training. And when you're going through with the marines and you're seeing pictures of what some of these agents can do to you, yes, it is very daunting, so -- But it's part of the job.

SAN MIGUEL: We wish you luck heading over there.

NYBO: Thank you, sir, very much.

SAN MIGUEL: Thomas Nybo with CNN. Thanks a lot.

Scientists have always had questions about how the universe began. Coming up, a new picture appears to answer a lot those questions.

And then later, how do you lean when it comes to kissing? Some insight into that later in the show, so don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAN MIGUEL: Making technology news this week, Smith & Wesson is bringing out its big guns, literally.

The company introduced a 50-caliber magnum handgun this week. The magnified magnum weighs about four and a half pounds and has an 8.5-inch barrel. The company says this handgun is primarily for hunting and has enough firepower to stop a charging bear in its tracks.

The panel investigating the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster is taking a hard look at a theory that a tear in the shuttle's hull allowed super hot gases to destroy it.

But investigators stressed they're not ruling anything out, even sabotage. Today the board visits the Louisiana plant, where shuttle external tanks are manufactured.

NASA scientists this week showed us the best baby picture yet of our universe, from data gathered by a satellite a million miles away.

Now, this is the only image we had from a 1992 satellite. Now, compare it to this cosmic portrait, showing in much more detail what the universe looked like less than a million years after the Big Bang.

Lyman Page, a member of the satellite team that developed this image, joins us now from our New York bureau.

Mr. Page, thanks for being with us today.

LYMAN PAGE, NASA: Thank you. Good to be here.

SAN MIGUEL: So what exactly are we looking at there with that 2003, with the latest picture that we showed? We had the 1992 comparison. A lot more detail, but what exactly are we looking at there?

PAGE: OK. What you see are these little hot and cold spots in that picture. And from the hottest spot to the coldest spot is something like a difference in temperature of about 400 millionths of a degree.

And you can see that -- so you see the little red spots there?

SAN MIGUEL: Yes.

PAGE: Blue spots there. Those correspond to areas in the early universe that were slightly hotter and slightly colder than the average.

And what happens is, when matter starts to come together to eventually form clusters of galaxies and galaxies and all the things that we see in the night sky...

SAN MIGUEL: Yes.

PAGE: When they do that early on, it makes it -- it increases the temperature of the background, and that's what we measure. And so we measure these hot and cold spots over the whole sky.

What's unique about this measurement is that we've measured it now more precisely than has been done over -- since the last satellite, since the 1992 release of the other map. SAN MIGUEL: And I know that -- I am sorry. Let me interrupt you, because we're running out of time. But I want say, it's not just the quality of the information that you have to be ecstatic here.

The fact you're getting this information from a satellite that is a million miles away, that it's working.

PAGE: It's amazing! Yes, no, it was -- I mean, there was a whole group of people, obviously, behind this, from, you know, from the national radio astronomy observatory to NASA to the launch team. It all worked where we are delighted with it.

And it will continue to work for another three years. It'll keep sending back these images. They'll get better and better.

SAN MIGUEL: And then, you know, you have to be excited about that.

But here's what interests me, the fact most of the universe, from what you've determined here, is made up of so-called dark matter and then there's also something called dark energy here.

Explain that without getting too much into, you know, physics -- you know, deep-end physics here.

PAGE: Physics jargon. OK. So what we -- we're made of atoms. And when we look out at the sky at those hot and cold spots, from the patterns in those hot and cold spots, we can tell what fraction of the universe is made up of atoms.

And as you can see on the chart there, it's about four. Between 4 and 5 percent. So that's the stuff we know about, the stars are made of, galaxies are made of.

These other -- this other chunk, 23 percent, is made up of something called dark matter. It attracts gravitationally, we can see evidence of it, but we can't observe it.

It's a completely new form of matter. It's been growing evidence of it for many years, though, both from other microid background experiments from observations of galaxies. And so we know it's there, but we can't put our hands on it. We don't have a good theory for what it is.

There's a mad race to actually measure something -- you know, get some in our hands.

SAN MIGUEL: Yes. I'm sure. But I know that you will be busy. You will stay busy for the next three years.

PAGE: Oh, yes.

SAN MIGUEL: As that information comes in. We've got to run, but I do thank you for joining us, Lyman Page, and good luck with the experiments.

PAGE: OK. Thank you.

SAN MIGUEL: Still to come on NEXT, how can you starve to death on $200 million? Apparently, it's not difficult in some circles. We'll talk about the demise of what was once the fastest growing magazine in history. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you kiss, which way do you tilt your head?

Politics aside, former presidential candidate Al Gore, leans to the right. President Bush appears to favor the left. Hmm!

A study in the journal "Nature" finds twice as many people tilt right than left.

Researchers theorize we may be a lot like birds. Our preference may be determined early on in the womb and how our heads were tilted. Facing this way exposes the right side of the body to more light, stimulation and growth, possibly creating a righty.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm left-handed.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And you still tilt your head to the right?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, because he's right-handed.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nothing's exact here, since it takes two to kiss.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He leans and I just follow.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And whether one tilt is better, check out the famous on the silver screen.

Some, like Reese Witherspoon and Josh Lucas in "Sweet Home Alabama," tilt left. While most others, like "Moonstruck's" Cher and Nicolas Cage, lean right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm just happy to get a kiss. I'll go whichever direction she does.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SAN MIGUEL: OK. Picture this: a magazine a little more than a year-old rakes in prestigious awards and a mountain of ad dollars while becoming the Bible of the tech industry.

A year later, the "Industry Standard" was toast, just like many of the companies it reported on.

Author James Ledbetter joins us from London to tell a tale that is too strange for fiction. He knows too well; he was an editor for the "Industry Standard." His book is "Starving to Death on $200 Million."

James, you say in the book that you became the story, the magazine became the story that you were reporting on. So why didn't anybody at the magazine recognize that?

JAMES LEDBETTER, AUTHOR, "STARVING TO DEATH ON $200 MILLION:" That's the question the book tries to answer.

Sometimes we thought that maybe the executives who were running the company were so busy raking in all of the ad dollars that they didn't have time to read the stories in the magazine, that were talking about the dot-com companies that were falling apart.

I think that one of the points I try to make in "Starving to Death" is that in a period of tremendous growth, it's very difficult for companies to even get a sense of sort of where the technology market is, much less where it's taking them six months down the road.

And so a lot of the experience that the dot-coms had in watching their stocks go up and their products suddenly hugely popular all over the world, the same problems that the magazine had. And in the end, we were defeated by little old things like taxes and real estate.

SAN MIGUEL: Those little things like that.

Well, I mean...

LEDBETTER: Old world values.

SAN MIGUEL: Old world values. That kind of leads into my question and it deals with the chapter called "The Fat Year." What in the world was in the "Industry Standard," which was a little more than a year-old doing, raking in ad revenues that, you know, "Forbes" and "Business Week" would have killed to have had?

LEDBETTER: What happened was that you had a huge spurt in companies that were creating new technologies, usually related to the Internet -- Boo.com and Cosmo.com -- and many of them wanted to take their stock public before Wall Street and then eventually the broader investment market.

In order to do that they felt that they had to grow very, very quickly. Very, very big, which was the lesson that people learned from Amazon.

If you couldn't grow big, you had to at least pretend like you did. And the way that everybody did that was to advertise.

We were out there every week, we were being read by the investment banks. We were being read by the CEOs of the dot-com companies. Everybody wanted to advertise. They were literally stuffing our magazine. We were coming out every week with 250, 300- page magazines.

We literally got so fat that the printer that we used couldn't publish our issues. We had to move to a different printer. It was a similar thing with our conference businesses. People were killing to sponsor cocktail parties surrounding our conferences and to get to our rooftop parties in San Francisco. It was one fat year.

SAN MIGUEL: It sounds like. I mean, and it's obvious from the book that you had the passion for the journalism.

But I have to ask you, if you felt like the magazine focused more on main street technology instead of Wall Street technology, that, you know, kind of like what "Wired" does, that you would still be around, you know, to give "Wired" some competition?

SAN MIGUEL: Well, that's a good question. I think that there were a lot of problems that happened with the magazine. Part of it was that the financial management was, let's say, less than perfect.

Part of it was that we never spent enough time building a circulation that was as large as "Wired."

And part of it was that there was a lot of friction between the magazine's management and its investors.

I think in the end, it was sort of a, you know, live by the technology boom, die by the technology boom problem. I don't know that -- if we really had the resources as a weekly magazine to compete against "Wired's" more mainstream approach. Because "Wired" is a monthly and can take a little time to step back.

We had to be out there with the news every week.

SAN MIGUEL: Exactly. Well, you know what? I, in a former life, I covered technology stocks during the boom years from '97 to 2000, and "Industry Standard" was a must-read for me.

LEDBETTER: And we're still out there.

SAN MIGUEL: It was a must-read for me. And it was a bookmarked on my computer, as well. So I wish you all the success in the world.

The book is called "Starving to Death on $200 Million." James Ledbetter, thanks for joining us.

LEDBETTER: My pleasure.

SAN MIGUEL: Coming up, high-tech protective gear could help determine when the U.S. launches an attack on Iraq. We will explain.

And on this Valentine's Day weekend, we'll show you that love, and the problems love can cause, are not just for people. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAN MIGUEL: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. A U.S.-led war with Iraq is looking increasingly inevitable. CNN meteorologist Jacqui Jeras joins us now to tells us how the weather might loom large in a desert war.

Give us some idea of the range of temperatures we're talking about here.

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Very extreme and primarily into the summer months. This is a country where some of the hottest temperatures happen on earth throughout the summer.

It's basically a land-locked country. And we'll go ahead and give you a good look at Iraq. And there you can see the Persian Gulf on the south side of the country, along with the city of Basra.

Most of the rainfall happens in the southwestern parts of Iraq. It's very low elevation. Based in type of condition, very desert and plain. The Euphrates and Tigris rivers run right through the middle of it. And there you can see Baghdad on the banks.

In terms of temperatures, what can we expect over the next couple of months? Well, it increases dramatically by about ten degrees per month, with a maximum 61 degrees on average for your high in March, up to 91 degrees in June.

July is the hottest month, on average, with 95 degrees, and you will see plenty of days with triple-digits and beyond.

We do see the maximum precipitation into the winter months from November through April. And then we drop off to about nothing throughout the summer. In fact, the climate books say for June, July, and August, zero for average precipitation. You only get about an inch in March.

It's very, very dry. You get a little bit more precipitation when the elevation goes up, when you head into northeastern parts of the country. Those are the Zagros Mountains. And the elevations go up 10,000 feet.

So it's about 10 degrees cooler up there. However, very dry conditions. Very little cloud cover. And we get a lot of storm systems move through in the spring, but you don't see a lot of rain with them. The winds will kick up and then dust storms are a big problem.

SAN MIGUEL: Kind of a classic situation: as the rainfall comes down, the temperatures go on up.

Jacqui Jeras, thanks so much for that.

JERAS: OK.

SAN MIGUEL: Well, military planners have no doubt had similar briefings from their own meteorologists as they work up their invasion plan.

Here to give us some insight into war and weather is CNN military analyst General David Grange.

General, thanks for joining us today.

BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: My pleasure.

SAN MIGUEL: So, you know, you've heard the forecast. Let's talk a little bit about, would there ever be a point where the heat would be too much for the military in the Gulf?

GRANGE: Well, the military can attack -- the United States military can attack any time of the year. Some times, as you just talked about on the weather situation in Iraq, some times are more advantageous than others.

And what happens, of course, is the hotter it gets, the more difficult it is inside, for instance, a tank, an Abrams tank. It's difficult for helicopters flying in higher altitudes at times and higher heat.

So those things all affect operations.

SAN MIGUEL: Well, you know, much has been made of the chemical, biological warfare suits that the troops will have to wear in case of that situation.

What's the reality as to how that would be affected by the heat and how all of that would affect military performance?

GRANGE: Well, this mission-oriented protective posture, MOPP, it's different levels, does affect the efficiencies of soldiers or marines or anybody operating.

And so, with the -- if you have most of the equipment on, a MOPP level four, an example, where you have the mask, the hood, the rubber boots and gloves and the suit, it's extremely hot, of course.

It's hard to talk on a radio. You cannot eat. It's hard to drink. There's just a lot of factors that affect your movement and your fighting capabilities.

So the MOPP posture, the posture of chemical protection, does affect your operation.

SAN MIGUEL: But there isn't a part there where, you know, certain levels of MOPP posture. Maybe you could wear most of the suit but not have to wear the hood, that kind of thing?

GRANGE: Yes, a great point. And what you do is MOPP level zero, the lowest level, is what you'll be at most of time, and that's just where you wear the suit just like you'd wear your combat uniform.

And so -- and then you would just -- as indicators, intelligence indicators or indicators from chemical/biological detection teams, tell you that you're in a chemical -- maybe in a chemical area. You're downwind of a chemical explosion, as an example. Then you would increase before you get there, you would increase that posture level. So you're not degraded all the time.

And that is something that is evaluated constantly by the commanders and the chemical warfare experts as you're operating in, in this case, a desert environment.

SAN MIGUEL: And what concerns do you have about the rainy versus dry seasons? You heard Jacqui talking about the sand situation and what that might do to helicopters and weapons?

GRANGE: Sure. Two things: She talked about the dust storms, and of course, the visibility is an issue when you're operating to engage targets with your optics.

The other is flying in that type of situation. Sand tears down equipment very quickly.

The other is the soil composition, what soil may make it where it's a no-go. Or a slow-go, as they call it slow-go movement with tractor-wheel vehicles across the desert floor.

And so all of those are taken into consideration -- the terrain and the weather -- as you're planning and conducting military operations on a constant basis.

SAN MIGUEL: I am sure. CNN military analyst David Grange, thank you for your insight. We appreciate it.

Still to come on NEXT, the electronics transactions we all make every day, should the government be allowed to sift through these records for terrorists? Two viewpoints coming up next. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAN MIGUEL: Total Information Awareness is a Pentagon program that aims to track international terrorists by following their electronic footprints.

To some, it's an important step to appreciate terrorist attacks. To others, it's a potential invasion of privacy on a global scale.

Here to help us understand what the fuss is all about is Heather McDonald. She's an author and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

And Mark Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Thanks to you both for joining us.

HEATHER McDONALD, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE: Thanks, Renay.

SAN MIGUEL: And Ms. McDonald, let me start with you.

The fuss, as it were, started with the William Safire column back in "The New York Times" in November. And he said that the government would work up dossiers on quote, "every public and private act of every American." Now if Safire was overreacting, as you have written in two "Weekly Standard" columns, how is it that 100 senators voted this week to hold up funding on TIA?

McDONALD: Because the misrepresentation that began with Safire only continued over the ensuing months.

Nobody bothered to find out what the actual truth of Total Information Awareness is.

It's, in fact, a program to allow government to protect Americans from terrorists. Not to spy on Americans by searching, above all, government crime and intelligence databases more effectively.

What the Luddites who stop this program are saying is that the government should be mired in inefficient technology as al Qaeda exploits our technology against us.

There's a second component of TIA, which is experimenting with dummy commercial data. It's not -- the Pentagon has no access to American's private data. But it's seeing whether the commercial data that already is available -- You can -- CNN right now can go out and buy phone books -- would increase the ability of the government to predict terrorist attacks.

There's no effort to compile dossiers on Americans, that's not what this is about. It's about using -- linking databases, above all intelligence databases, and connecting the dots, which is what we were so appalled at after 9/11, that the government was unable to use its own information effectively to prevent terrorism.

SAN MIGUEL: Let me bring Mr. Rotenberg in here, who by the way, congratulations, Mark. You've just been called a Luddite.

What we're talking about here is taking the credit card, you know, ATM receipts and phone patterns of known terror suspects and trying to follow a pattern to the unknown suspects, the ones that we don't know about, just using software and computing power.

What's wrong with that? Police do that kind of thing all the time on a lower tech scale, don't they?

MARK ROTENBERG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, EPIC: Well, Renay, I think if that was all that was going on here, no one would object.

But that's not what Total Information Awareness is about.

In fact, there's a reason the program is called Total Information Awareness and that's because the Department of Defense thought that it should get direct access to credit records, medical records, telephone records on American citizens.

And Congress this week said we need to draw some lines and I think drew an appropriate line.

I'm not quite sure what Ms. McDonald is referring to. The details surrounding this program have been widely available on the Docu (ph) site. They're available on our own site, EPIC.org.

And the criticisms that have been raised about the program, I think, are very well-based.

McDONALD: Well, as your own colleague, Mr. Sobul (ph), told me, you know quite well that the dummy data that is being experimented with represents commercially available databases.

This is nothing that the government does not already have access to. It could buy it on the market right now. This is no new invasion of privacy. It's what's already available that would simply be searched more efficiently.

ROTENBERG: Ms. McDonald I read your article...

McDONALD: ... the program is do the benefits outweigh the costs? And Americans make that judgment all the time when they pay with credit cards, when they use the Internet.

We have to look at the benefits of this program, which are to prevent terrorist attacks, versus the potential costs. We have privacy protections in place that would shield people's names from government analysis. And I think the judgment has to be made that clearly we can guard our privacy and have terrorist protection at the same time.

SAN MIGUEL: Mr. Rotenberg, the idea here that some of that information is commercially available. There are companies that are in the business of acquiring that and that's how you get spam and things like that.

ROTENBERG: Well, of course. But a lot of the information that John Poindexter wants to get access to would otherwise require a subpoena or a warrant.

And I think Ms. McDonald really has very little understanding of what this program is about.

What it anticipates is the ability to move large databases to large databases and to access large databases in the private sector and to make them available, in the words of Mr. Poindexter, as a virtual grand database.

Now that's directly opposed to the Fourth Amendment. The requirement of the Fourth Amendment is that the government has to have probable cause before it conducts a search. You can't gather up all the data from the private sector, sort through it and then decide how to apply the Fourth Amendment.

And I think that's the reason, in fact, that there was such widespread opposition to this program. It was extraordinary to see the response not only from the public but also from Congress. Lawmakers were unanimously opposed to this proposal.

SAN MIGUEL: And it was...

ROTENBERG: I think it was a good thing. For safeguarding our freedoms in this country by safeguarding the Fourth Amendment.

SAN MIGUEL: Let me step in here. He does have a point.

McDONALD: Our basic freedom is not to got nuked. I'm sorry. But, you know, again, the government...

ROTENBERG: But that kind of argument...

McDONALD: It's commercially available.

ROTENBERG: ... is nothing here.

McDONALD: Mr. Rotenberg, your colleague, David Sobul (ph)...

ROTENBERG: We have to reevaluate these programs.

McDONALD: ... has acknowledged that this is not subpoenable information. It's available commercially already.

ROTENBERG: Telephone records require a subpoena; Internet e-mail requires subpoenas.

McDONALD: And even if it -- even if it were to use subpoenaed data, that is already available to the government.

ROTENBERG: Bank records require subpoenas and medical records require subpoenas.

SAN MIGUEL: Let me stop you both for a second. We only have about 30 seconds left here.

McDONALD: This is already available to the government.

SAN MIGUEL: I want to get to the last question to Ms. McDonald, but I do want to point this out, isn't the big part of the problem here the fact that there is somebody of Iran-Contra fame, John Poindexter, involved here with managing TIA?

If you're looking to deflect criticism, why would you pick Poindexter?

McDONALD: That's a huge problem. I totally agree. But let's be adult enough to separate the person who is merely directing the research. The program will be turned over to the FBI to use. Poindexter will have nothing to do with it.

Let's separate the ad hominum aspects of it with the substance of the research.

And I think anybody that looks at this honestly will have to conclude that it is about using government intelligence and possibly commercially available intelligence more efficiently. Our greatest technological advantage our information technology. For heaven's sakes, let's use it against al Qaeda.

SAN MIGUEL: We have got to leave it there. Heather McDonald, Mark Rotenberg, thank you very much for a spirited discussion. We appreciate your time. Thank you.

McDONALD: Thank you.

ROTENBERG: Thank you, Renay.

SAN MIGUEL: Just ahead, saying good-bye to Dolly. The world's first cloned mammal dies at an early age. We'll be right back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID KIRKPATRICK, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: In 2003, one of interesting things that's going to happen is that the companies that buy technology or that use technology are going to really, I think, start seeing some significant productivity improvements. Because there is a lot of really good software that they already have, that they're finally figuring out how to use.

A major change that we'll start to see, finally, in 2003 is an upturn in the replacement cycle for PCs. That's a very good thing for the technology industry. Whether it's a big enough deal to really pull the whole industry out of its funk, I frankly doubt.

But most companies did a lot of purchasing of PCs to prepare for the Y2K transition. And most of those machines that they bought then are now increasingly outmoded.

Wireless networking is a huge, huge change. It's a big change in the way we're all going to be using technology. Over time, all networking will be wireless. That's not going to happen in 2003. But it will certainly start happening, and be more evident.

I think the technology industry's going to have a decent but not a great year in 2003. Maybe slightly better than 2002.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAN MIGUEL: In the news this week, Dolly is dead.

The world's first cloned to mammal was put to sleep yesterday. She was suffering from progressive lung disease. She lived only six years, and that's middle age for the average sheep.

Some critics have said cloned mammals are more susceptible to the disease. But the scientists in charge of creating Dolly said her death was not linked to cloning.

Since Dolly, many more sheep, pigs, cattle, and humans, if you believe the Raelians, have been cloned.

An oil barge in Long Island Sound yesterday scraped bottom and leaked about 25 gallons of home heating oil. The accident happened just south of Norwalk, Conn. Much of the oil has dissipated, but officials think any remaining oil would probably end up on the north shore of Long Island in New York. And automation hits the dog washing business. The laundry mat owner in Toyoka, Japan, has opened a special facility for pets. Fido is placed in the bright red machine, as you see. And he gets a doggy wash, rinse and blow dry. The price, the equivalent of $16-32 U.S., depending on the size of the dog.

The dog owners say they love it. The pets seem to have more mixed feelings.

You might not think the animal kingdom, humans excepted of course, need advice on sex. But think again, up next, we'll introduce you to the Dr. Ruth of the animal world. Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAN MIGUEL: So, how does one go about attracting the perfect mate? Why not wiggle your rear end at them or perhaps a savory bug wrapped in silk?

It may sound ridiculous, but hey, it works in the animal kingdom. And here now to comment on the silly, the kinky, the sometimes shocking habits of the animal world, we are joined by the author of "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation," Olivia Judson.

Olivia, thanks for being with us today.

OLIVIA JUDSON, AUTHOR, "DR. TATIANA'S SEX ADVICE TO ALL CREATION:" Thank you.

SAN MIGUEL: So we just spent this past weekend, you know, lots of flowers and chocolates and other gifts presented by members of the opposite sex to woo the opposite sexes in the human world. Does the same thing go on in the animal kingdom?

JUDSON: Absolutely. Giving presents is very popular. A lot of moths will give their mate something that will protect them from being eaten by spiders. That sort of thing.

Often it's food. You know, take them out to dinner. Give them a fancy meal.

These gifts can be extremely expensive. Sometimes, some butterflies are producing as much as 25 percent of their body weight in the gift that they give. So it's very expensive and very difficult to do again. And in such species, I'm afraid females actually prefer to mate with virgins.

SAN MIGUEL: Well -- OK. I'm going to leave that one alone for right now.

But the stereotypical roles that go on, you know, between males and females, is some reversal of that going on in the animal world?

JUDSON: Well, I think there's enormous variations.

And so, for example, in sea horses, it's the male who does all of the looking after the children. He becomes pregnant, in fact, and then he looks after the kids.

And there are quite a few fish where the male does all of the work looking after the children.

So there's quite a lot of difference between different groups.

SAN MIGUEL: And not to mention some cannibalism of the male that goes on, amongst certain animals, right? Insects especially.

JUDSON: Yes, if you've been very wicked, in your next life, you will be a male Redback Spider or even worse, a male Praying Mantis.

SAN MIGUEL: Yes.

JUDSON: Yes, these females are rapacious and often execute the male as he makes his approach. In the Praying Mantis, the male is actually able to copulate even once he's lost his head. He has a reflex that he sort of goes into wild sexual spasms after he's been executed.

SAN MIGUEL: You know, there is an image there, but kind of giving your all for propagation of the species, I guess.

What is -- You did --- You've obviously done a lot of research on this. What is the oddest mating ritual that you've run into the animal kingdom?

JUDSON: I think the most peculiar that I've come across is in papanautilus (ph) This is a relationship of the octopus.

And the female lives in a white shell that she secrets. And the male has -- his penis is a modified tentacle, which he files off. And the tentacle takes up an independent life inside the female and the male just kind of goes back to, you know, whatever he was doing before.

SAN MIGUEL: Oh. You know what? There are a million punch lines going through my head right now, but I have to remember the time frame that we are on here, even though it is cable.

Last question, we've got about 20 seconds left. Monogamy, the exception or the rule among animals?

JUDSON: The most deviant behavior in biology.

SAN MIGUEL: Really?

JUDSON: Absolutely. Extremely rare.

SAN MIGUEL: All right, we're going to have to leave it there. Olivia Judson, author of "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice for All Creation." Thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate your time.

JUDSON: Thank you.

SAN MIGUEL: And that is all the time we have for today. But tomorrow at 4 p.m. eastern, Sharon Collins will host another hour of NEXT LIVE.

Among her stories, just how much will duct tape really do in the face of a terror attack? We'll wrap up this sticky situation for you.

That and more, coming up tomorrow. We hope you'll be watching and we thank you for joining us today.

A quick note, though, starting next week, NEXT@CNN will air at 3 p.m. eastern time, noon Pacific.

Up next on CNN, "IN THE MONEY," followed by "CNN SATURDAY" and "PINNACLE. But first, a check of the latest headlines.

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