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Paula Zahn Now

John Kerry's Vietnam Experience Under Fire; Huge Week in War on Terror?

Aired August 06, 2004 - 20:00   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.


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: (voice-over): Truth, the first casualty of war and of politics?

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS (D-NC), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They saw up close when their lives were at risk that this man was a leader.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

ADRIAN LONSDALE, VIETNAM VETERAN: He lacks the capacity to lead.

COLLINS: Is he or isn't he a Vietnam hero?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

NARRATOR: Combat veteran who earned three Purple Hearts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

LOUIS LETSON, VIETNAM VETERAN: I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NARRATOR: Risking his life to save others.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

LARRY THURLOW, VIETNAM VETERAN: When the chips were down, you could not count on John Kerry.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

COLLINS: Tonight, the attack on John Kerry's war record, who is behind it? What is the truth?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Good evening, everybody. Thanks for joining us. I'm Heidi Collins. Paula is off tonight.

It's the battle over John Kerry's battle record. Kerry has made his military service in Vietnam a key selling point in his campaign for president. Standing behind him as he delivered his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention were the men known as his band of brothers, all Vietnam vets, all having served with Kerry aboard swift boats.

Now a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans For Truth has produced a television commercial. Three of the veterans in the ad accuse Kerry of lying about his military service. Two others claim they served with Kerry. But the Kerry campaign says that's not true; no one in the ad served with the candidate. So who is telling the truth?

Here is CNN's Ed Henry.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty.

ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Swift Boat Veterans For Truth accuse John Kerry of lying about the circumstances surrounding some of his medals in Vietnam.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

JACK CHENOWETH, VIETNAM VETERAN: His account of what happened and what actually happened are the difference between night and day.

ROY HOFFMAN, VIETNAM VETERAN: John Kerry has not been honest.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: But key parts of their story do not add up and the Kerry camp says it's the self-proclaimed truth-tellers bankrolled in part by a Texas Republican who have a credibility problem.

JOHN HURLEY, KERRY CAMPAIGN: These guys who are now criticizing John Kerry, these swift boat veterans for Bush, were not with John Kerry on any boat John Kerry commanded. And it is obviously a Republican-inspired exercise to try to damage John Kerry.

HENRY: The vets themselves are now under fire, like George Elliott.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

GEORGE ELLIOTT, VIETNAM VETERAN: John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: Elliott recently signed an affidavit claiming Kerry should not have gotten a Silver Star, but that contradicts what Elliott himself said, standing by Kerry's side in 1996.

ELLIOTT: The fact that he chased an armed enemy down is something not to be looked down upon, but it was an act of courage.

HENRY: And in Friday's "Boston Globe," Elliott says he made a terrible mistake by signing the affidavit. Elliott would not comment to CNN. But the swift boat vets say Elliott was misquoted by "The Globe" and stands by his affidavit.

As Kerry's commanding officer in 1969, Elliott signed a fitness report lauding the swift boat commander.

HURLEY: George Elliott was either lying in 1969 or lying now.

HENRY: The vets are taking direct aim at Kerry's selling point.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as president.

HENRY: Central to this case, Kerry's Bronze Star. A wounded Kerry turned his swift boat around to save the life of Jim Rassmann, who had been blown off a boat in March 1969.

JIM RASSMANN, VIETNAM VETERAN: And all these rounds kept coming in. And John ran up and dropped down on his hands and knees and pulled me over. Had he not come out on that bow like that, I would be dead.

HENRY: Heartwarming story or an exaggeration?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

VAN O'DELL, VIETNAM VETERAN: John Kerry lied about his Bronze Star. I know. I was there. I saw what happened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: These vets charge, Kerry originally fled the scene and the men were not shot at, but Rassmann remembers otherwise, an account backed up by Kerry's swift boat driver.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw the bullets skimming across the water.

HENRY: And the citation Kerry received from the Pentagon clearly states -- quote -- "All units began receiving small-arms fire and automatic weapons fire from both banks."

RASSMANN: To bring it up now, I think, is very disingenuous.

HENRY: Members of the group say they're coming forward now because Kerry is running for president.

THURLOW: And I would hate to have him be the commander in chief over my grandchildren.

HENRY: The swift boat vets admit they're still curious about Kerry's dramatic 1971 Senate testimony. They believe Kerry dishonored all of his comrades by alleging some soldiers had raped and tortured innocents.

BOB ELDER, VIETNAM VETERAN: He betrayed all of us when he came home and went in front of the Congress of the United States and accused all of us of war crimes. That is not what a war hero is made of.

HENRY: These vets have also revived old allegations about one of Kerry's three Purple Hearts, saying the wound did not come from enemy fire and a doctor who says he treated Kerry claims the wound was superficial.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

LETSON: I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: CNN's Ed Henry tonight.

Let's hear now from veterans on both sides of this issue.

And joining us tonight in Montgomery, Alabama, is Skip Barker. He was a swift boat commander and a friend of John Kerry. In Houston is another former swift boat commander, Andy Horne. He is a member of Swift Boat Veterans For Truth.

Gentlemen, thanks so much for the both of you for being here tonight.

I want to begin, first, by looking at the whole ad in its entirety. Stand by and we'll get your comments on the backside of this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

EDWARDS: If you have any question about what John Kerry's made of. Just spend three minutes with the men who served with him.

AL FRENCH, ENSIGN, 2 BRONZE STARS: I served with John Kerry

ELDER: I served with John Kerry.

GEORGE ELLIOTT, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER, 2 BRONZE STARS: John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.

FRENCH: He is lying about his record.

LETSON: I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury.

O'DELL: John Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star. I know. I was there. I saw what happened.

CHENOWETH: His account of what happened and what actually happened are the difference between night and day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: To be fair, Mr. Horne, I'd like to begin with you. You were not there on this incident in 1968, were you?

ANDY HORNE, VIETNAM VETERAN: No, I was not.

COLLINS: All right, thank you.

And, Mr. Barker, were you there?

SKIP BARKER, FRIEND OF JOHN KERRY: Are you talking about the incident that gave rise to the Bronze Star, Heidi?

COLLINS: I'm talking about the incident in 1968 for the first purple star.

BARKER: First Purple Heart? No, I was not, Heidi.

COLLINS: All right. I just want to ask both of you -- and, again, Mr. Horne, we'll begin with you -- how will we ever really know what happened here?

HORNE: Well, Heidi, I think Skip and I both are not referring to the same thing. You're talking about something in 1968 and I believe that ad is directed to a later action.

Am I correct on that, Mr. Barker?

BARKER: That is my confusion.

And Andy Horne, to identify you, I'm sorry, I don't recall your name. I had a commodore named Horne. Are you him?

(CROSSTALK)

HORNE: No, no relation. That's another day we'll talk about that.

BARKER: All right, sir. OK.

COLLINS: All right, now that we all know who each other are tonight, let me ask you, Mr. Horne, once again, do you think that this ad will have any sort of reflection on the Republican Party?

HORNE: Is that question to me, ma'am?

COLLINS: Yes.

HORNE: Oh, we're not here to talk about the Republican Party. We're here to talk to the American public. And they do what they should do what they should do in November. COLLINS: OK. But, to be clear, there are words in that ad that say things like betrayed, lied, dishonored. Is this not a campaign ad?

HORNE: Well, let me tell you, it's an ad to tell the truth about Swift Boat Veterans For Truth's position about Senator Kerry's service and his words and actions following his leaving Vietnam.

COLLINS: Sir, is it not produced and made to influence the presidential election in November?

HORNE: Yes, of course.

COLLINS: Is it not a campaign ad, then?

HORNE: Well, I'm not going to quibble with you on that. We're an organization that has produced an ad to inform the American public, just as several ads have been produced to do so.

COLLINS: All right, Mr. Barker, let me get to you for a moment.

BARKER: Yes, ma'am.

COLLINS: As you know, John Kerry came home from Vietnam and was very outspoken about the war. He testified also that horrendous war crimes took place while he was there. Can you understand why some of these veterans would feel betrayed?

BARKER: In a sense, Heidi, I can, if they do not carefully consider and understand his words and the context within which he was saying them.

John Kerry volunteered to go to Vietnam. John Kerry risked his life in the service of our nation. John Kerry, according to George Elliott, served admirably. And in the March 1969 fitness report, George Elliott said that his leadership was unsurpassed, that John Kerry emerged as the acknowledged leader of his entire peer group, which was all of the swift boat officers in the division, including me.

Now, as to his testimony in April of 1971, John Kerry went, he saw, he conquered any doubts he had about the wrongness of that war and he came back and he did a courageous thing. He exercised his First Amendment right to peaceably petition his government for redress of grievances.

(CROSSTALK)

BARKER: And he did it so as to get them to stop the war.

COLLINS: Pardon me, sir.

Mr. Horne, was there a courageous thing that John Kerry did?

HORNE: Look, exercise of free speech is not necessarily always courageous. But when you tell the truth, that's one thing. When you distort the truth, that's quite another. And we believe he grossly distorted the truth for his own personal political future and had no concern for those men who were under fire, none. And so we dispute this.

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: Pardon me, one moment, sir.

I'm sure you're fully aware, Mr. Horne, that Senator John McCain came out and was very much against the way that this ad had been produced.

HORNE: Well, we respect John McCain, but we have an equal right to speak the truth. I'm sure the campaigns both would like to see this ad not out there. And they'd like to control their own version of how the campaign should be run, but we have a different interest.

We want the American public to be aware of these disputes and for them to judge us for what we are.

COLLINS: Gentlemen, unfortunately, that is all the time we have tonight. I certainly do appreciate you being with us.

Skip Barker in Montgomery, Alabama, and Andy Horne in Houston, Texas, tonight, again, thanks to both of you.

HORNE: Thank you.

COLLINS: Next, another campaign speed bump, the latest job figures.

Then, a bit later, the president and the challenge of unity -- when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Now to the campaign and jobs.

Today, the Labor Department reports American employers added 32,000 jobs last month. That's seven times less than economists were expecting. On the campaign trail, the president tried to make the best of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our economy has been through a lot. Today's employment report shows our economy is continuing to move forward. And it reminds us that we're in a changing economy and we've got more to do. I'm not going to be satisfied until everybody who wants to work can find a job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: And the report was obvious ammunition for Democrat John Kerry.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KERRY: We can do better than having Americans see a declining number of jobs per month. It was 67,000 the month before. It was 200 and some thousand for one month before that. But, basically, over the last four years, we've had a net negative loss of jobs in the United States of America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: One bit of good news for the president, the Labor Department also reports today that unemployment in July nudged down slightly to 5.5 percent from June's rate of 5.6 percent.

Now, the numbers can be so confusing, so we're going to turn to CNN contributor and "Fortune" magazine editor at large Andy Serwer to sort them all out.

Make this make sense for us. Was this drop unexpected?

ANDY SERWER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: The only way to call this, Heidi, is that it was a huge shock. Wall Street was completely disappointed. Economists were disappointed; 180,000 jobs less than anticipated, I mean, that's just a huge gap.

COLLINS: What about the job figures overall for this year, though?

SERWER: Well, overall, the picture is looking pretty good and I think the president is going to be focusing on that. We've created hundreds of thousands of jobs, going back earlier to March, 300,000, 350,000 jobs. So if you look at the year, it's a big picture. It's the going forward and it's the trend that doesn't look very good right now.

COLLINS: So then, you say trend, but could this month Just be an aberration or not?

SERWER: Well, the problem is, is that, in March, we created 350,000 jobs. And then since then, the chart looks like we've been falling down the stairs. Every month since then has been less and less. And it's been anticipated we would create a lot more jobs each month. Each month, we've come in less than trend.

COLLINS: Now, what about the campaign? You already mentioned President Bush.

SERWER: Right.

COLLINS: Is either the Kerry campaign or the Bush campaign going to really be able to latch on to these numbers and make anything of them?

SERWER: Well, I think that both campaigns are going to have a real tough time with this -- obviously, the Bush campaign, not a great thing, because the jobs aren't coming in as anticipated. But, still, jobs are being created, hundreds of thousands of jobs. The economy is still recovering. And I think John Kerry is going to have a tough time saying the economy is not growing as fast as he thought. It's kind of a nuanced point.

COLLINS: OK, so what about in terms of economic recovery, then? Obviously, a lot of people very concerned in this country about the economy when they're looking at voting for a president.

SERWER: Right.

I mean, we thought we were recovering. We've been creating jobs since last September. So that's the good news. And it really looked like we were picking up steam heading into the spring. We were getting these big job numbers. Now it looks like we're slowing down. And the question is the soft patch as economists are calling it, are we going back? Is it a U-turn, I think as John Kerry's campaign said today, or is it just a slowing of the recovery?

That is the big question and we really don't know the answer right yet.

COLLINS: Markets closed down about 150 points today. What about that?

SERWER: Well, I think that shows the market was shrugging off the other numbers that the Bush campaign was pointing to, showing that the overall employment rate dropped from 5.6 percent to 5.5 percent. The key number is today that less jobs were created than anticipated. That's what the stock market focused in on and it basically said that number stinks. The market sold off pretty strongly.

COLLINS: So, bottom line, if you're looking at these numbers today, you say to yourself what?

SERWER: You say to yourself the economy is not growing as fast as we had hoped and it's disappointing. Economists are befuddled. They thought the economy was growing faster and it is not.

COLLINS: Andy Serwer, thanks so much tonight.

SERWER: OK.

COLLINS: What about the political repercussions from the lackluster job growth?

Let's ask the campaigns.

Joining us from Kerry headquarters in Washington, Gene Sperling, a senior fellow at the Center For American Progress. Mr. Sperling served as chief economic adviser to President Clinton. And from Bush lawyers headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, Kevin Hassett, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Gentlemen, thanks so much for being with us tonight.

Kevin, I want to begin with you. If the current rate of job growth continues, President Bush will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to actually experience a decline in the number of jobs during his presidency. How is he going to defend that?

KEVIN HASSETT, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: Well, you have to remember that President Bush inherited a recession from President Clinton and then enacted fiscal policies that turned the economy around.

The fact is that, already this year, we've created a million new jobs this year and all the signs are that the economy is continuing to point upwards. And so it's not really a good time I think to change policies and to try something else because there are plenty of signs that the policies we've tried are working.

COLLINS: Gene, any policies that need some changing here?

GENE SPERLING, FORMER CLINTON ECONOMIC ADVISER: Well, first of all, even if you don't hold President Bush responsible for anything that happened in the recession, since the recession ended, we've had the weakest job recovery in our country since the 1930s. You know that our economy over the last 32 months has averaged only 6,000 new jobs. We have never had such weak job performance.

COLLINS: Let me just ask you this. These numbers do represent -- that we're talking about tonight do represent just one month. Overall employment numbers are actually up for the year. Are Democrats making too much of this?

SPERLING: No, I'm actually very happy to discuss it. Actually, there have only been three decent job months in the last 42 months. And if you look at just the last year alone, which is what the Bush administration likes to brag about most, for that period of the recovery, it's the worst job recovery we've had over in 50 years, since '49.

In fact, the last 12 months is a weaker job performance than the worst month, than the worst year of President Clinton's terms.

COLLINS: Kevin, what do you have to say about that?

HASSETT: No, I completely disagree with Gene on that.

In fact, I did a little historical research today and found that if you go back to May of 1996, there was a job report where the numbers only went up 2,000 jobs. And Gene, then working in the White House for President Clinton, said that it was a net plus report for President Clinton. There is a lot of political conversation around these numbers. The fact is that we've created a million of jobs this year. We're going to continue to create more the rest of the year.

And given the very tough hand that was dealt President Bush in 2000, I think it's a very good track record of success.

SPERLING: Kevin, I was very gracious to President Bush and said I would just focus on the recovery.

And even focusing on this recovery, we've seen weekly wages down, health care costs spiraling, and the worst job performance in 30 years. Is all of that his fault? Probably not. But have these policies been effective? No.

HASSETT: The fact is that even if you thought the economy was doing poor -- and I really don't think that the data point to that -- we made 630,000 jobs according to the household survey today. The job numbers are very positive on net for the year. And if you thought they were bad, you wouldn't want to hike taxes, the way Senator Kerry is saying that we should.

SPERLING: President -- Senator Kerry as President Kerry would be doing a new jobs tax credit for new jobs created over the next two years. He would be cutting the corporate rate for 99 percent of companies. He would be extending the middle class tax cut. All he would be doing is rolling back the tax cut for the top 2 percent, so we can deal with these rising health care costs and our education needs.

(CROSSTALK)

HASSETT: The fact is that the job numbers have been very positive this year. They fluctuate a lot from month-to-month. And you shouldn't make too much of one swing, especially when there is conflicting signals, like there were today. And I think that the Democrats are just playing politics with the number today. The fact is that numbers are looking pretty good.

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: Gentlemen, that's where we're going to have to leave it. My apologies. We're running out of time. We certainly appreciate your time, though, tonight.

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: Kevin Hassett at Bush campaign headquarters, and Gene Sperling at Kerry campaign headquarters, again, thanks to the both of you.

SPERLING: Thank you.

COLLINS: When we come back, a worrisome week in the war on terror. So what's it all mean?

We'll sort it out after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: If you even glanced at the paper or the TV this week, you probably know terror dominated the news. From warnings that got wrapped in politics to arrests that may or may not make us safer, the headlines changed daily, if not hourly.

CNN's Tom Foreman has a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In what appears to be a very big week in the war on terror, suspects have been snatched up around the globe. In Pakistan and Britain, more than a dozen men identified as al Qaeda operatives were grabbed, including one described as the head of operations in the U.K. And authorities reveal that they have found phone numbers, e-mail addresses and hundreds of leads to other suspected terrorists.

BUSH: The threats we're dealing with are real. And, therefore, we must do everything we can to ferret out the truth and follow leads.

FOREMAN: The week started awkwardly, with new warnings about possible attacks on U.S. financial institutions, triggering additional security measures and fears.

TOM RIDGE, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: This afternoon, we do have new and unusually specific information about where al Qaeda would like to attack.

FOREMAN: When word got out that some of the information was three years old, the president was accused of political fear mongering.

HOWARD DEAN (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The president himself has said that he ought to be reelected because of the terrible terrorist danger. I don't see what is the big deal about this. I mean, it's obvious that politics has something to do with this.

FOREMAN (on camera): The administration flatly denies that accusation and says terrorists have been updating their information on potential U.S. targets this year. In addition, information was released about possible terrorist surveillance of an American warship.

(voice-over): And government sources say the intelligence taken from the suspected terrorists includes pictures of five financial institutions in the U.S. The arrests in Pakistan were key to all of this information, but it is not clear how much further this latest intelligence may lead.

TOM SANDERSON, CSIS: This could be blowing the cover of one small cell that happened to have a unit in Pakistan and a unit in London. Or it could be a network of 15 cells and, at this point, we've taken down two of the 15. It remains to be seen.

FOREMAN: And then there were the wild cards. In Albany, New York, two men were arrested at a local mosque as part of an FBI sting, implicated in a plot to sell a shoulder-fired missile. In Chicago, an alleged plan to blow up a federal building was revealed. And, in Britain, a man appeared in court on charges of using the Internet to finance terrorism.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: That was Tom Foreman.

We have two guests with us tonight now to talk about the week's developments, from Washington, "Newsweek" investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff. Michael, hello to you.

And Ben Venzke, the CEO of IntelCenter, which tracks terrorist threats and provides anti-terror strategies to police, the military and the intelligence community.

Hello to you as well, Ben.

Thanks so much to the both of you for being here.

Ben, we've just been reminded by Tom Foreman's piece there about all of the different developments that have happened this week alone. In your eyes, what is the most important, best information that we got from these arrests and different detentions?

BEN VENZKE, FOUNDER & CEO, INTELCENTER: Well, I don't know if I would characterize any one as the most significant.

I think, clearly, the planning for the financial targets that we heard about last week regarding Citibank and others was very significant. But the others in their own way do carry some important developments. The arrest of al-Hindi in the U.K. is significant, the Albany sting that took place in New York perhaps a little less slow, and some of the others significant in terms of the overall effort, but possibly not in terms of actually stopping an attack.

COLLINS: All right, Michael, how did the events play out after we have these arrests in Pakistan then?

MICHAEL ISIKOFF, "NEWSWEEK": Well, there was a series of arrests, one chain, sort of one leading to another.

Back in June, there was the arrest of this guy in Pakistan, Arochi, who was a nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. His arrest leads investigators, Pakistanis, to the guy Mohammad Khan, who was a key figure and had many of these computer files that had all this information about detailed surveillance. And that in turn leads to the arrest of al-Hindi in Britain, who was the guy who was actually conducting the surveillance in the United States.

COLLINS: After all the reporting that you've done, Michael, is this big? Was this a big week?

ISIKOFF: Well, you never know until you see how it plays out. I mean, clearly, we nabbed some al Qaeda suspects and some operatives, every reason to believe they intended to do harm in the United States.

But how far along the plot was, whether this is the plot that authorities have been getting information about, which had led them to think there was going to be an attack this fall prior to the election is still unclear.

There is some reason to think this may be it. This may be what they were most worried about. But all intelligence in this area is so fragmentary...

COLLINS: OK.

ISIKOFF: ... and elusive, it's hard to say at this point.

COLLINS: All right. Well, Ben, we were getting some interesting information today from our justice correspondent, Kelli Arena, who told us that the officials are starting to learn that the chatter that they had been learning so much from is actually dropping off a little bit.

Does that say anything?

VENZKE: Well, it could say a number of things. I mean, another difficulty here is that word "chatter" gets thrown around quite commonly these days, and it's hard to know exactly what kind of chatter they're talking about.

But one thing that might happen is that when you have reports leaking out to the media about the fact that we know that there were communications between an individual in Pakistan and someone in the United States, you're going to have those operatives and others typically cease to use those communications, because they're going to believe that they might be compromised. And you might have a lot of transitions in that.

So it might not be that the communications have stopped. It just might be that they're changing up in ways that we don't know, or it could be, like before 9/11 or other things, that you're getting that variation in the communications because there's an attack coming up, or something else going on in the organization.

COLLINS: All right. How about a little bit more, Ben, on the intelligence that we're getting now? We've both been hearing quite a bit about the Pakistani arrests and the computers disks, the files that the officials are now looking at.

Is information like that better or more specific now than information we used to get?

VENZKE: Well, I wouldn't say it's -- in this case, it's specific. And it's not necessarily a factor of we're getting better, or other things. It's just simply that in this case, we were able to seize it.

There have been other things in the past that we've gotten that were more specific or that dealt with target surveillance and other things. You're always striving to get that kind of material. It's very difficult to get a hold of. In this case, we got lucky, and we were good at it.

COLLINS: Michael, back to you now. All in one week, there have been developments in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, London and also, of course, here in the United States. Are we gaining momentum in the war on terror?

ISIKOFF: Oh, God, you know, you can't make a preliminary statement like that because they're so -- look, before this week or before the last couple of weeks, the idea that this surveillance had been conducted in the United States was completely unknown to the FBI.

They had sort of general reports that somebody may have been doing something like this, but the kind of sophisticated, highly detailed casing of these buildings, that was not -- that was not known to them.

So to imagine at this point that we've achieved the state of perfect knowledge where we can say how much progress has been made is -- I mean, is impossible to say.

COLLINS: All right.

ISIKOFF: When we thought over a year ago, we got Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, that was the big catch.

COLLINS: It was big.

ISIKOFF: That was going to shut down operations and it has not happened.

COLLINS: Thanks very much to the both of you tonight. Michael Isikoff and Ben Venzke. We do appreciate your time.

When we come back now, a diverse audience, a warm welcome and a shot fired across the president's bough.

Then...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (singing): They call him Flipper, Flipper...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Oh, baby. The wacky world of political satire. It lives on the Web. That's coming up, just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: If the national media gathered for a class photo, one thing would stand out immediately. America's journalists are overwhelmingly white.

That said, the country's press corps is more diverse now than ever before and with increased numbers, journalists of color are finding strength and arguably, more importantly, access.

Both President Bush and John Kerry addressed this week's unity conference, a gathering of minority journalists.

Among those on hand, Maria Hinojosa, a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists for 15 years and a CNN correspondent. Here's her report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MARIA HINOJOSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's the largest gathering of American journalists in history, but they're not the same reporters and editors much of the American public or the presidential candidates usually get to see.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you think tribal sovereignty means in the 21st century?

HINOJOSA: Nearly 8,000 Asian, Native American, black and Latino journalists are at the Unity Convention in Washington, searching for ways to diversify the national media.

And for a week, they've gotten to show the presidential candidates what more press diversity could mean for them.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Tribal sovereignty means that; it's sovereign. You're a -- you're a -- you've been given sovereignty and you're viewed as a sovereign entity.

HINOJOSA: President Bush addressed the crowd Friday morning. He faced unusual and oftentimes aggressive questioning from reporters of color, who are rarely seen in the White House pool.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you going to order Attorney General John Ashcroft to send federal election monitors to Florida and other Southern states?

HINOJOSA: On Thursday, it was Democratic candidate John Kerry facing these journalists. They asked him to compare his actions as a president to George Bush.

One asked, what would Senator Kerry have done if he were reading to children the day the September 11 attacks took place?

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to.

HINOJOSA: Everything about these exchanges was different. This crowd of predominantly racial minorities, journalists, but also people in human resources, public relations and corporate media recruiters, clapped for both candidates.

There was clearly more cheering for the Democrat.

KERRY: (speaking in Spanish)

HINOJOSA: Unity's mission is to push media companies, including CNN and Time Warner, those big and small, conservative or liberal, to become more racially diverse.

(on camera): Thousands and thousands of professional journalists of color all in one place, and, yet, a new study has dismal numbers to report. Out of 574 journalists covering Washington, D.C. for major newspapers, only 60 of them are non-white. A mere 10 percent.

Suzanne, if there were more journalists of color in the White House, what would change?

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think there would be a broader line of questioning. I think you'd have more things about civil rights, civil liberties, urban affairs.

HINOJOSA (voice-over): These journalists saw this convention as a chance to ask those questions.

(on camera): Do you know if there are any Native American journalists in the White House press corps?

MARK TRAHANT, "SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER": I don't believe there is one in the White House press corps.

HINOJOSA: And so to be able to ask a question to the president for you?

TRAHANT: The idea that there are so many questions that aren't part of our discourse because they're not asked. A narrow band of questions are asked by the same people over and over.

BUSH: I support colleges affirmatively taking action to get more minorities in their school.

HINOJOSA: These reporters put both candidates in the hot seat on questions of race.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: For more on presidential politics at the Unity Conference, Maria Hinojosa joins us live now from Washington, along with Roland Martin, a syndicated columnist and editorial consultant for "The Chicago Defender."

Welcome to both of you tonight. Thanks for being here.

ROLAND MARTIN, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST, "THE CHICAGO DEFENDER": Glad to be here.

COLLINS: Maria, I want to begin with you, if I could. It looks like from what we saw on TV and what I watched this morning, the president was addressing a very unfriendly crowd.

HINOJOSA: Oh, I don't know if you would say that it was entirely unfriendly. I think it's -- it's a critical group of journalists here who have a lot of questions to ask.

When he walked in, he got the applause and a standing ovation. Senator Kerry, when he walked in, got applause and a standing ovation that was probably much warmer than what we saw for the president.

And I think that what the president did when he was giving his speech, it was interesting, because there were times when you would see he was kind of pausing to wait for applause from the crowd like he might be giving this speech as a campaign speech. That didn't happen. When the applause came, it was kind of tepid for President George W. Bush.

There was more applause for Senator Kerry, though, clearly and it was interesting to see what issues that they were pointing out.

But both of them were asked difficult questions, tough questions. I would say a little more argumentative, certainly, for President Bush today.

COLLINS: All right. Well, for me, here's -- here's where the disconnect comes. I'm looking at a group of journalists, right? And I have the presidential candidates from both sides, the incumbent, obviously, and also Democratic presidential candidate who was there just a few days ago.

And I'm hearing applause, and I'm hearing booing. I thought we were all supposed to be unbiased. Why was this happening?

HINOJOSA: Well, there wasn't any booing. Let's just be clear about that. There was no booing at any time for any of the candidates.

MARTIN: Correct.

HINOJOSA: I can tell you that for me, when Senator Kerry walked into the room yesterday, just as he walked in, to see, I don't know, probably half of the room stand up and applaud, for me as a journalist, was uncomfortable. And the people who I was sitting with, none of us stood up, because as journalists, you're not going to do that. You don't applaud for politicians.

COLLINS: OK. Roland, I see you're shaking your head...

HINOJOSA: It wasn't comfortable for me.

COLLINS: Pardon me, Maria.

MARTIN: I think, Heidi, I think you skipped a very important point that Maria made in her package, and that is you didn't have only journalists who were in that audience. There were individuals who own P.R. companies, who own other media entities, who are associate members. You had student members, as well.

COLLINS: But Roland, you saw other journalists clapping or applauding, didn't you?

MARTIN: No, no, I understand. And I have said that if I'm in the audience, I am not clapping on those applause lines. But what I'm saying is it will be incorrect to assume that everybody in the room were journalists. What Maria just said was at some points half of the room was clapping and the other half weren't. You had a mix of people in there.

And so at the same time, Heidi, I've attended ASNE Convention, American Society of Newspaper Editors, RTBA, NAB, and I have seen similar applause even from those journalists, and they are not ethnic minority journalists. COLLINS: It doesn't make it right, though, right?

MARTIN: So I've seen that both places.

COLLINS: I mean, it doesn't make it right. There are clearly journalists there who are reporting for their papers or television stations about this event?

MARTIN: No, actually -- no, actually a lot of the folks there were not reporting on the event. They were attending the conference. Again, it's a difference.

COLLINS: Correct.

HINOJOSA: That's important...

COLLINS: Go ahead, Maria.

HINOJOSA: I think that's important to point out. You know, most of the time when you come to these conventions, you are networking. You're mentoring young journalists. You're participating in training programs. You're going to panels. You're not working.

So you're not going to say that these were working journalists who were watching this and then going and filing. There was a part of the room that was set off for the working journalists, and -- and those clearly were not applauding.

COLLINS: But to be fair, we're doing it right now. So anyway, moving on. Let's talk about this. Roland, let me ask you. Were you surprised at all by the president's answers to some of these questions? I mean, he did take two rounds of questioning.

MARTIN: Well, right. I mean, first of all, he's from Texas and I'm from Texas. And I specifically asked him as a courtesy to a fellow Texan if he would take two rounds of questions.

So I wasn't surprised. He was very comfortable. When he began to lean on the podium and he began to make some jokes, I knew he was fairly comfortable with the opportunity.

And again, I thought he simply wanted opportunity to answer these questions, and so we obliged him with some questions that frankly, he is not going to hear from the White House press corps, nor will he hear on the campaign trail.

COLLINS: And quickly from the both of you, do you have a better sense of where he stands on different issues now?

MARTIN: Well, I clearly pressed him on the issue of legacy. He has not made a public comment ever on the issue of legacy, and, today, after my question, he said, "I do not believe legacy should be used in college admissions."

And so, hey, that was breaking some new ground. We didn't expect that, but he certainly put it out there. COLLINS: And Maria, how about you?

HINOJOSA: You know, I think it was really extraordinary that both of these candidates came and addressed what is the largest gathering of American journalists in history.

So I think that, yes, we were all informed. We were all listening, and we have a better understanding of who these two men are. And I think as journalists, we're going to be all the better for it.

COLLINS: All right. Very good. Roland Martin and Maria Hinojosa, thanks so much, guys, being with us tonight.

MARTIN: Thank you.

HINOJOSA: My pleasure.

COLLINS: A program note now. Next week, join Larry King for an exclusive interview with President and Mrs. Bush. That will be coming your way Thursday, 9 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN.

Meanwhile, coming up next, Lynndie England and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse case moving toward a resolution when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: We've been following the case of Private First Class Lynndie England this week, the 21-year-old private soldier whose image has become synonymous with the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.

The hearing to determine whether she'll face court-martial was expected to wrap up today, but an unexpected development is now pushing it into next week.

Adding to the drama, testimony today from the man who thrust the scandal into the spotlight by going to investigators with the pictures.

National correspondent Susan Candiotti was inside the military courtroom at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Both the Army and PFC Lynndie England came under siege as the pregnant private faced her fourth day in military court.

Testimony indicated abuses began at Abu Ghraib prison almost as soon as her military police unit arrived there last fall.

The Army specialist who first reported the abuse told the court he was shown a photo back in October, possibly this one, with a hooded detainee handcuffed to the prison bars.

He quoted guard Charles Graner as saying, "The Christian in me knows it was wrong, but the corrections officer in me can't help but to love to make a grown man urinate on himself."

At that time, Specialist Joseph Darby said he shrugged it off. But two months later, after Graner gave him a CD disk with more photos, Darby said he was shocked at what he saw: abuse and sexual degradation.

Darby told the court he waited a month to tell investigators, because it was a hard call to turn in his friends. The whistle-blower said he did so to stop the mistreatment.

Darby testified, "It violated everything I personally believed in and everything I had been taught about war."

Lynndie England and her boyfriend, Charles Graner, are among the seven reservists charged in the scandal.

An Army investigator, James Stewart, testified England identified herself in a number of the now notorious photos. He said she called this dog leash an intimidation device to try to lead a prisoner called Gus to another cell.

This humid pyramid, she said, was part of humiliation tactics. On another occasion, Stewart testified, England admitted stepping on some of these prisoners.

It was a trying week for the young Army clerk.

RICHARD HERNANDEZ, ATTORNEY FOR LYNNDIE ENGLAND: She's holding up as anybody could in her situation, a 21-year-old young lady in a situation like this with all the cameras. It's a high stress situation but she's holding up as well as she can.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: National correspondent Susan Candiotti joins us now live from Ft. Bragg.

And Susan, I understand some military intelligence officers were actually implicated this week by one of their own colleagues. Why haven't they been charged yet?

CANDIOTTI: Well, it's unclear why they haven't been charged yet, because the Army won't say, other than to explain that the investigation isn't over yet. This was the first time that there was public testimony from an intelligence agent. According to him, the two other intelligence agents joined in on the abuse along with some M.P.s.

COLLINS: All right. Well, also, one of the prosecution's key witnesses actually turned out to be a no show. What happened there?

CANDIOTTI: That's Specialist Jeremy Sivits, and you might recall, he's one of the seven charged in the scandal...

COLLINS: Right. CANDIOTTI: ... who's already pleaded guilty. And what happened was is he was being transported to the United States from Germany. They expected him to be here today by a telephone hookup, but when they put him on the phone, he wasn't there. So they hope that he will be testifying possibly as early as tomorrow.

COLLINS: All right. Susan Candiotti from Ft. Bragg, thanks so much for that tonight.

When we come back, we'll turn back to the presidential campaign and its more offbeat side.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILL FERRELL, COMEDIAN: Ever since I took office, well, things have been really, really bad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: And the political satire you won't see on TV. That's coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: If you want to see the low-down dirty reality of the presidential race, the place to look this year may well be the Internet. And that's where our Jeanne Moos has been poking around.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the story of how a subservient chicken begat a subservient president, but there's nothing subservient about the candidate bashing that goes on on the web.

John Kerry is portrayed as Frankenstein. His face morphs out of a cicada.

President Bush is portrayed as a bumpkin.

FERRELL: Oh, my God.

MOOS: Will Ferrell donated his time to an anti-Bush group.

FERRELL: Ever since I took office, well, things have been really, really bad.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cut!

FERRELL: It seemed like a good one. I'm getting my groove on.

MOOS: You think the president looks bad...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (singing): They call him Flipper, Flipper

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How are people doing dancing baby jokes? It's 2004. That should be illegal.

MOOS: Maybe it should be illegal to use John Kerry's head to shoot down incoming flip-flops.

(on camera) The one thing that's interesting about it they can be so much meaner on the Web.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is true.

MOOS: You couldn't get away with this in a TV spot: the two Johns getting it on.

Many of these are just an individual's attempt at humor and persuasion. Take the Subservient President. It's a parody of Burger King's Subservient Chicken, but instead of typing in orders like "touch your toes," you tell the subservient president to, say, "invade North Korea," and a guy in a Bush mask presses the nuclear button.

Write "foreign policy," he plays the cowboy. Ask for a magic trick, and he turns Osama into Saddam.

If you type "club the director," you'll glimpse Steve Anderson, the interactive media professor who dreamed up the web site.

Though some campaign videos may be lowbrow...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): I'll be the triple Purple Heart president.

MOOS: ... they make TV ads seem subservient. This president is no chicken. Mention Michael Moore and he flips the bird. This is take no prisoners politicking.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: You got to love it. Jeanne Moos reporting.

We'll be back right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Thanks so much, everybody, for watching tonight. Paula is back on Monday with a story of a U.S. soldier who died for his country whose father has now been deported. She'll tell you all about that.

For now, though, have a great night, everybody.

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 August 6, 2004 - 20:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: (voice-over): Truth, the first casualty of war and of politics?

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS (D-NC), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They saw up close when their lives were at risk that this man was a leader.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

ADRIAN LONSDALE, VIETNAM VETERAN: He lacks the capacity to lead.

COLLINS: Is he or isn't he a Vietnam hero?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

NARRATOR: Combat veteran who earned three Purple Hearts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

LOUIS LETSON, VIETNAM VETERAN: I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NARRATOR: Risking his life to save others.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

LARRY THURLOW, VIETNAM VETERAN: When the chips were down, you could not count on John Kerry.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

COLLINS: Tonight, the attack on John Kerry's war record, who is behind it? What is the truth?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Good evening, everybody. Thanks for joining us. I'm Heidi Collins. Paula is off tonight.

It's the battle over John Kerry's battle record. Kerry has made his military service in Vietnam a key selling point in his campaign for president. Standing behind him as he delivered his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention were the men known as his band of brothers, all Vietnam vets, all having served with Kerry aboard swift boats.

Now a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans For Truth has produced a television commercial. Three of the veterans in the ad accuse Kerry of lying about his military service. Two others claim they served with Kerry. But the Kerry campaign says that's not true; no one in the ad served with the candidate. So who is telling the truth?

Here is CNN's Ed Henry.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty.

ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Swift Boat Veterans For Truth accuse John Kerry of lying about the circumstances surrounding some of his medals in Vietnam.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

JACK CHENOWETH, VIETNAM VETERAN: His account of what happened and what actually happened are the difference between night and day.

ROY HOFFMAN, VIETNAM VETERAN: John Kerry has not been honest.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: But key parts of their story do not add up and the Kerry camp says it's the self-proclaimed truth-tellers bankrolled in part by a Texas Republican who have a credibility problem.

JOHN HURLEY, KERRY CAMPAIGN: These guys who are now criticizing John Kerry, these swift boat veterans for Bush, were not with John Kerry on any boat John Kerry commanded. And it is obviously a Republican-inspired exercise to try to damage John Kerry.

HENRY: The vets themselves are now under fire, like George Elliott.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

GEORGE ELLIOTT, VIETNAM VETERAN: John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: Elliott recently signed an affidavit claiming Kerry should not have gotten a Silver Star, but that contradicts what Elliott himself said, standing by Kerry's side in 1996.

ELLIOTT: The fact that he chased an armed enemy down is something not to be looked down upon, but it was an act of courage.

HENRY: And in Friday's "Boston Globe," Elliott says he made a terrible mistake by signing the affidavit. Elliott would not comment to CNN. But the swift boat vets say Elliott was misquoted by "The Globe" and stands by his affidavit.

As Kerry's commanding officer in 1969, Elliott signed a fitness report lauding the swift boat commander.

HURLEY: George Elliott was either lying in 1969 or lying now.

HENRY: The vets are taking direct aim at Kerry's selling point.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as president.

HENRY: Central to this case, Kerry's Bronze Star. A wounded Kerry turned his swift boat around to save the life of Jim Rassmann, who had been blown off a boat in March 1969.

JIM RASSMANN, VIETNAM VETERAN: And all these rounds kept coming in. And John ran up and dropped down on his hands and knees and pulled me over. Had he not come out on that bow like that, I would be dead.

HENRY: Heartwarming story or an exaggeration?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

VAN O'DELL, VIETNAM VETERAN: John Kerry lied about his Bronze Star. I know. I was there. I saw what happened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: These vets charge, Kerry originally fled the scene and the men were not shot at, but Rassmann remembers otherwise, an account backed up by Kerry's swift boat driver.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw the bullets skimming across the water.

HENRY: And the citation Kerry received from the Pentagon clearly states -- quote -- "All units began receiving small-arms fire and automatic weapons fire from both banks."

RASSMANN: To bring it up now, I think, is very disingenuous.

HENRY: Members of the group say they're coming forward now because Kerry is running for president.

THURLOW: And I would hate to have him be the commander in chief over my grandchildren.

HENRY: The swift boat vets admit they're still curious about Kerry's dramatic 1971 Senate testimony. They believe Kerry dishonored all of his comrades by alleging some soldiers had raped and tortured innocents.

BOB ELDER, VIETNAM VETERAN: He betrayed all of us when he came home and went in front of the Congress of the United States and accused all of us of war crimes. That is not what a war hero is made of.

HENRY: These vets have also revived old allegations about one of Kerry's three Purple Hearts, saying the wound did not come from enemy fire and a doctor who says he treated Kerry claims the wound was superficial.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

LETSON: I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: CNN's Ed Henry tonight.

Let's hear now from veterans on both sides of this issue.

And joining us tonight in Montgomery, Alabama, is Skip Barker. He was a swift boat commander and a friend of John Kerry. In Houston is another former swift boat commander, Andy Horne. He is a member of Swift Boat Veterans For Truth.

Gentlemen, thanks so much for the both of you for being here tonight.

I want to begin, first, by looking at the whole ad in its entirety. Stand by and we'll get your comments on the backside of this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

EDWARDS: If you have any question about what John Kerry's made of. Just spend three minutes with the men who served with him.

AL FRENCH, ENSIGN, 2 BRONZE STARS: I served with John Kerry

ELDER: I served with John Kerry.

GEORGE ELLIOTT, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER, 2 BRONZE STARS: John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.

FRENCH: He is lying about his record.

LETSON: I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury.

O'DELL: John Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star. I know. I was there. I saw what happened.

CHENOWETH: His account of what happened and what actually happened are the difference between night and day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: To be fair, Mr. Horne, I'd like to begin with you. You were not there on this incident in 1968, were you?

ANDY HORNE, VIETNAM VETERAN: No, I was not.

COLLINS: All right, thank you.

And, Mr. Barker, were you there?

SKIP BARKER, FRIEND OF JOHN KERRY: Are you talking about the incident that gave rise to the Bronze Star, Heidi?

COLLINS: I'm talking about the incident in 1968 for the first purple star.

BARKER: First Purple Heart? No, I was not, Heidi.

COLLINS: All right. I just want to ask both of you -- and, again, Mr. Horne, we'll begin with you -- how will we ever really know what happened here?

HORNE: Well, Heidi, I think Skip and I both are not referring to the same thing. You're talking about something in 1968 and I believe that ad is directed to a later action.

Am I correct on that, Mr. Barker?

BARKER: That is my confusion.

And Andy Horne, to identify you, I'm sorry, I don't recall your name. I had a commodore named Horne. Are you him?

(CROSSTALK)

HORNE: No, no relation. That's another day we'll talk about that.

BARKER: All right, sir. OK.

COLLINS: All right, now that we all know who each other are tonight, let me ask you, Mr. Horne, once again, do you think that this ad will have any sort of reflection on the Republican Party?

HORNE: Is that question to me, ma'am?

COLLINS: Yes.

HORNE: Oh, we're not here to talk about the Republican Party. We're here to talk to the American public. And they do what they should do what they should do in November. COLLINS: OK. But, to be clear, there are words in that ad that say things like betrayed, lied, dishonored. Is this not a campaign ad?

HORNE: Well, let me tell you, it's an ad to tell the truth about Swift Boat Veterans For Truth's position about Senator Kerry's service and his words and actions following his leaving Vietnam.

COLLINS: Sir, is it not produced and made to influence the presidential election in November?

HORNE: Yes, of course.

COLLINS: Is it not a campaign ad, then?

HORNE: Well, I'm not going to quibble with you on that. We're an organization that has produced an ad to inform the American public, just as several ads have been produced to do so.

COLLINS: All right, Mr. Barker, let me get to you for a moment.

BARKER: Yes, ma'am.

COLLINS: As you know, John Kerry came home from Vietnam and was very outspoken about the war. He testified also that horrendous war crimes took place while he was there. Can you understand why some of these veterans would feel betrayed?

BARKER: In a sense, Heidi, I can, if they do not carefully consider and understand his words and the context within which he was saying them.

John Kerry volunteered to go to Vietnam. John Kerry risked his life in the service of our nation. John Kerry, according to George Elliott, served admirably. And in the March 1969 fitness report, George Elliott said that his leadership was unsurpassed, that John Kerry emerged as the acknowledged leader of his entire peer group, which was all of the swift boat officers in the division, including me.

Now, as to his testimony in April of 1971, John Kerry went, he saw, he conquered any doubts he had about the wrongness of that war and he came back and he did a courageous thing. He exercised his First Amendment right to peaceably petition his government for redress of grievances.

(CROSSTALK)

BARKER: And he did it so as to get them to stop the war.

COLLINS: Pardon me, sir.

Mr. Horne, was there a courageous thing that John Kerry did?

HORNE: Look, exercise of free speech is not necessarily always courageous. But when you tell the truth, that's one thing. When you distort the truth, that's quite another. And we believe he grossly distorted the truth for his own personal political future and had no concern for those men who were under fire, none. And so we dispute this.

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: Pardon me, one moment, sir.

I'm sure you're fully aware, Mr. Horne, that Senator John McCain came out and was very much against the way that this ad had been produced.

HORNE: Well, we respect John McCain, but we have an equal right to speak the truth. I'm sure the campaigns both would like to see this ad not out there. And they'd like to control their own version of how the campaign should be run, but we have a different interest.

We want the American public to be aware of these disputes and for them to judge us for what we are.

COLLINS: Gentlemen, unfortunately, that is all the time we have tonight. I certainly do appreciate you being with us.

Skip Barker in Montgomery, Alabama, and Andy Horne in Houston, Texas, tonight, again, thanks to both of you.

HORNE: Thank you.

COLLINS: Next, another campaign speed bump, the latest job figures.

Then, a bit later, the president and the challenge of unity -- when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Now to the campaign and jobs.

Today, the Labor Department reports American employers added 32,000 jobs last month. That's seven times less than economists were expecting. On the campaign trail, the president tried to make the best of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our economy has been through a lot. Today's employment report shows our economy is continuing to move forward. And it reminds us that we're in a changing economy and we've got more to do. I'm not going to be satisfied until everybody who wants to work can find a job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: And the report was obvious ammunition for Democrat John Kerry.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KERRY: We can do better than having Americans see a declining number of jobs per month. It was 67,000 the month before. It was 200 and some thousand for one month before that. But, basically, over the last four years, we've had a net negative loss of jobs in the United States of America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: One bit of good news for the president, the Labor Department also reports today that unemployment in July nudged down slightly to 5.5 percent from June's rate of 5.6 percent.

Now, the numbers can be so confusing, so we're going to turn to CNN contributor and "Fortune" magazine editor at large Andy Serwer to sort them all out.

Make this make sense for us. Was this drop unexpected?

ANDY SERWER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: The only way to call this, Heidi, is that it was a huge shock. Wall Street was completely disappointed. Economists were disappointed; 180,000 jobs less than anticipated, I mean, that's just a huge gap.

COLLINS: What about the job figures overall for this year, though?

SERWER: Well, overall, the picture is looking pretty good and I think the president is going to be focusing on that. We've created hundreds of thousands of jobs, going back earlier to March, 300,000, 350,000 jobs. So if you look at the year, it's a big picture. It's the going forward and it's the trend that doesn't look very good right now.

COLLINS: So then, you say trend, but could this month Just be an aberration or not?

SERWER: Well, the problem is, is that, in March, we created 350,000 jobs. And then since then, the chart looks like we've been falling down the stairs. Every month since then has been less and less. And it's been anticipated we would create a lot more jobs each month. Each month, we've come in less than trend.

COLLINS: Now, what about the campaign? You already mentioned President Bush.

SERWER: Right.

COLLINS: Is either the Kerry campaign or the Bush campaign going to really be able to latch on to these numbers and make anything of them?

SERWER: Well, I think that both campaigns are going to have a real tough time with this -- obviously, the Bush campaign, not a great thing, because the jobs aren't coming in as anticipated. But, still, jobs are being created, hundreds of thousands of jobs. The economy is still recovering. And I think John Kerry is going to have a tough time saying the economy is not growing as fast as he thought. It's kind of a nuanced point.

COLLINS: OK, so what about in terms of economic recovery, then? Obviously, a lot of people very concerned in this country about the economy when they're looking at voting for a president.

SERWER: Right.

I mean, we thought we were recovering. We've been creating jobs since last September. So that's the good news. And it really looked like we were picking up steam heading into the spring. We were getting these big job numbers. Now it looks like we're slowing down. And the question is the soft patch as economists are calling it, are we going back? Is it a U-turn, I think as John Kerry's campaign said today, or is it just a slowing of the recovery?

That is the big question and we really don't know the answer right yet.

COLLINS: Markets closed down about 150 points today. What about that?

SERWER: Well, I think that shows the market was shrugging off the other numbers that the Bush campaign was pointing to, showing that the overall employment rate dropped from 5.6 percent to 5.5 percent. The key number is today that less jobs were created than anticipated. That's what the stock market focused in on and it basically said that number stinks. The market sold off pretty strongly.

COLLINS: So, bottom line, if you're looking at these numbers today, you say to yourself what?

SERWER: You say to yourself the economy is not growing as fast as we had hoped and it's disappointing. Economists are befuddled. They thought the economy was growing faster and it is not.

COLLINS: Andy Serwer, thanks so much tonight.

SERWER: OK.

COLLINS: What about the political repercussions from the lackluster job growth?

Let's ask the campaigns.

Joining us from Kerry headquarters in Washington, Gene Sperling, a senior fellow at the Center For American Progress. Mr. Sperling served as chief economic adviser to President Clinton. And from Bush lawyers headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, Kevin Hassett, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Gentlemen, thanks so much for being with us tonight.

Kevin, I want to begin with you. If the current rate of job growth continues, President Bush will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to actually experience a decline in the number of jobs during his presidency. How is he going to defend that?

KEVIN HASSETT, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: Well, you have to remember that President Bush inherited a recession from President Clinton and then enacted fiscal policies that turned the economy around.

The fact is that, already this year, we've created a million new jobs this year and all the signs are that the economy is continuing to point upwards. And so it's not really a good time I think to change policies and to try something else because there are plenty of signs that the policies we've tried are working.

COLLINS: Gene, any policies that need some changing here?

GENE SPERLING, FORMER CLINTON ECONOMIC ADVISER: Well, first of all, even if you don't hold President Bush responsible for anything that happened in the recession, since the recession ended, we've had the weakest job recovery in our country since the 1930s. You know that our economy over the last 32 months has averaged only 6,000 new jobs. We have never had such weak job performance.

COLLINS: Let me just ask you this. These numbers do represent -- that we're talking about tonight do represent just one month. Overall employment numbers are actually up for the year. Are Democrats making too much of this?

SPERLING: No, I'm actually very happy to discuss it. Actually, there have only been three decent job months in the last 42 months. And if you look at just the last year alone, which is what the Bush administration likes to brag about most, for that period of the recovery, it's the worst job recovery we've had over in 50 years, since '49.

In fact, the last 12 months is a weaker job performance than the worst month, than the worst year of President Clinton's terms.

COLLINS: Kevin, what do you have to say about that?

HASSETT: No, I completely disagree with Gene on that.

In fact, I did a little historical research today and found that if you go back to May of 1996, there was a job report where the numbers only went up 2,000 jobs. And Gene, then working in the White House for President Clinton, said that it was a net plus report for President Clinton. There is a lot of political conversation around these numbers. The fact is that we've created a million of jobs this year. We're going to continue to create more the rest of the year.

And given the very tough hand that was dealt President Bush in 2000, I think it's a very good track record of success.

SPERLING: Kevin, I was very gracious to President Bush and said I would just focus on the recovery.

And even focusing on this recovery, we've seen weekly wages down, health care costs spiraling, and the worst job performance in 30 years. Is all of that his fault? Probably not. But have these policies been effective? No.

HASSETT: The fact is that even if you thought the economy was doing poor -- and I really don't think that the data point to that -- we made 630,000 jobs according to the household survey today. The job numbers are very positive on net for the year. And if you thought they were bad, you wouldn't want to hike taxes, the way Senator Kerry is saying that we should.

SPERLING: President -- Senator Kerry as President Kerry would be doing a new jobs tax credit for new jobs created over the next two years. He would be cutting the corporate rate for 99 percent of companies. He would be extending the middle class tax cut. All he would be doing is rolling back the tax cut for the top 2 percent, so we can deal with these rising health care costs and our education needs.

(CROSSTALK)

HASSETT: The fact is that the job numbers have been very positive this year. They fluctuate a lot from month-to-month. And you shouldn't make too much of one swing, especially when there is conflicting signals, like there were today. And I think that the Democrats are just playing politics with the number today. The fact is that numbers are looking pretty good.

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: Gentlemen, that's where we're going to have to leave it. My apologies. We're running out of time. We certainly appreciate your time, though, tonight.

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: Kevin Hassett at Bush campaign headquarters, and Gene Sperling at Kerry campaign headquarters, again, thanks to the both of you.

SPERLING: Thank you.

COLLINS: When we come back, a worrisome week in the war on terror. So what's it all mean?

We'll sort it out after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: If you even glanced at the paper or the TV this week, you probably know terror dominated the news. From warnings that got wrapped in politics to arrests that may or may not make us safer, the headlines changed daily, if not hourly.

CNN's Tom Foreman has a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In what appears to be a very big week in the war on terror, suspects have been snatched up around the globe. In Pakistan and Britain, more than a dozen men identified as al Qaeda operatives were grabbed, including one described as the head of operations in the U.K. And authorities reveal that they have found phone numbers, e-mail addresses and hundreds of leads to other suspected terrorists.

BUSH: The threats we're dealing with are real. And, therefore, we must do everything we can to ferret out the truth and follow leads.

FOREMAN: The week started awkwardly, with new warnings about possible attacks on U.S. financial institutions, triggering additional security measures and fears.

TOM RIDGE, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: This afternoon, we do have new and unusually specific information about where al Qaeda would like to attack.

FOREMAN: When word got out that some of the information was three years old, the president was accused of political fear mongering.

HOWARD DEAN (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The president himself has said that he ought to be reelected because of the terrible terrorist danger. I don't see what is the big deal about this. I mean, it's obvious that politics has something to do with this.

FOREMAN (on camera): The administration flatly denies that accusation and says terrorists have been updating their information on potential U.S. targets this year. In addition, information was released about possible terrorist surveillance of an American warship.

(voice-over): And government sources say the intelligence taken from the suspected terrorists includes pictures of five financial institutions in the U.S. The arrests in Pakistan were key to all of this information, but it is not clear how much further this latest intelligence may lead.

TOM SANDERSON, CSIS: This could be blowing the cover of one small cell that happened to have a unit in Pakistan and a unit in London. Or it could be a network of 15 cells and, at this point, we've taken down two of the 15. It remains to be seen.

FOREMAN: And then there were the wild cards. In Albany, New York, two men were arrested at a local mosque as part of an FBI sting, implicated in a plot to sell a shoulder-fired missile. In Chicago, an alleged plan to blow up a federal building was revealed. And, in Britain, a man appeared in court on charges of using the Internet to finance terrorism.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: That was Tom Foreman.

We have two guests with us tonight now to talk about the week's developments, from Washington, "Newsweek" investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff. Michael, hello to you.

And Ben Venzke, the CEO of IntelCenter, which tracks terrorist threats and provides anti-terror strategies to police, the military and the intelligence community.

Hello to you as well, Ben.

Thanks so much to the both of you for being here.

Ben, we've just been reminded by Tom Foreman's piece there about all of the different developments that have happened this week alone. In your eyes, what is the most important, best information that we got from these arrests and different detentions?

BEN VENZKE, FOUNDER & CEO, INTELCENTER: Well, I don't know if I would characterize any one as the most significant.

I think, clearly, the planning for the financial targets that we heard about last week regarding Citibank and others was very significant. But the others in their own way do carry some important developments. The arrest of al-Hindi in the U.K. is significant, the Albany sting that took place in New York perhaps a little less slow, and some of the others significant in terms of the overall effort, but possibly not in terms of actually stopping an attack.

COLLINS: All right, Michael, how did the events play out after we have these arrests in Pakistan then?

MICHAEL ISIKOFF, "NEWSWEEK": Well, there was a series of arrests, one chain, sort of one leading to another.

Back in June, there was the arrest of this guy in Pakistan, Arochi, who was a nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. His arrest leads investigators, Pakistanis, to the guy Mohammad Khan, who was a key figure and had many of these computer files that had all this information about detailed surveillance. And that in turn leads to the arrest of al-Hindi in Britain, who was the guy who was actually conducting the surveillance in the United States.

COLLINS: After all the reporting that you've done, Michael, is this big? Was this a big week?

ISIKOFF: Well, you never know until you see how it plays out. I mean, clearly, we nabbed some al Qaeda suspects and some operatives, every reason to believe they intended to do harm in the United States.

But how far along the plot was, whether this is the plot that authorities have been getting information about, which had led them to think there was going to be an attack this fall prior to the election is still unclear.

There is some reason to think this may be it. This may be what they were most worried about. But all intelligence in this area is so fragmentary...

COLLINS: OK.

ISIKOFF: ... and elusive, it's hard to say at this point.

COLLINS: All right. Well, Ben, we were getting some interesting information today from our justice correspondent, Kelli Arena, who told us that the officials are starting to learn that the chatter that they had been learning so much from is actually dropping off a little bit.

Does that say anything?

VENZKE: Well, it could say a number of things. I mean, another difficulty here is that word "chatter" gets thrown around quite commonly these days, and it's hard to know exactly what kind of chatter they're talking about.

But one thing that might happen is that when you have reports leaking out to the media about the fact that we know that there were communications between an individual in Pakistan and someone in the United States, you're going to have those operatives and others typically cease to use those communications, because they're going to believe that they might be compromised. And you might have a lot of transitions in that.

So it might not be that the communications have stopped. It just might be that they're changing up in ways that we don't know, or it could be, like before 9/11 or other things, that you're getting that variation in the communications because there's an attack coming up, or something else going on in the organization.

COLLINS: All right. How about a little bit more, Ben, on the intelligence that we're getting now? We've both been hearing quite a bit about the Pakistani arrests and the computers disks, the files that the officials are now looking at.

Is information like that better or more specific now than information we used to get?

VENZKE: Well, I wouldn't say it's -- in this case, it's specific. And it's not necessarily a factor of we're getting better, or other things. It's just simply that in this case, we were able to seize it.

There have been other things in the past that we've gotten that were more specific or that dealt with target surveillance and other things. You're always striving to get that kind of material. It's very difficult to get a hold of. In this case, we got lucky, and we were good at it.

COLLINS: Michael, back to you now. All in one week, there have been developments in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, London and also, of course, here in the United States. Are we gaining momentum in the war on terror?

ISIKOFF: Oh, God, you know, you can't make a preliminary statement like that because they're so -- look, before this week or before the last couple of weeks, the idea that this surveillance had been conducted in the United States was completely unknown to the FBI.

They had sort of general reports that somebody may have been doing something like this, but the kind of sophisticated, highly detailed casing of these buildings, that was not -- that was not known to them.

So to imagine at this point that we've achieved the state of perfect knowledge where we can say how much progress has been made is -- I mean, is impossible to say.

COLLINS: All right.

ISIKOFF: When we thought over a year ago, we got Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, that was the big catch.

COLLINS: It was big.

ISIKOFF: That was going to shut down operations and it has not happened.

COLLINS: Thanks very much to the both of you tonight. Michael Isikoff and Ben Venzke. We do appreciate your time.

When we come back now, a diverse audience, a warm welcome and a shot fired across the president's bough.

Then...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (singing): They call him Flipper, Flipper...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Oh, baby. The wacky world of political satire. It lives on the Web. That's coming up, just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: If the national media gathered for a class photo, one thing would stand out immediately. America's journalists are overwhelmingly white.

That said, the country's press corps is more diverse now than ever before and with increased numbers, journalists of color are finding strength and arguably, more importantly, access.

Both President Bush and John Kerry addressed this week's unity conference, a gathering of minority journalists.

Among those on hand, Maria Hinojosa, a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists for 15 years and a CNN correspondent. Here's her report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MARIA HINOJOSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's the largest gathering of American journalists in history, but they're not the same reporters and editors much of the American public or the presidential candidates usually get to see.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you think tribal sovereignty means in the 21st century?

HINOJOSA: Nearly 8,000 Asian, Native American, black and Latino journalists are at the Unity Convention in Washington, searching for ways to diversify the national media.

And for a week, they've gotten to show the presidential candidates what more press diversity could mean for them.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Tribal sovereignty means that; it's sovereign. You're a -- you're a -- you've been given sovereignty and you're viewed as a sovereign entity.

HINOJOSA: President Bush addressed the crowd Friday morning. He faced unusual and oftentimes aggressive questioning from reporters of color, who are rarely seen in the White House pool.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you going to order Attorney General John Ashcroft to send federal election monitors to Florida and other Southern states?

HINOJOSA: On Thursday, it was Democratic candidate John Kerry facing these journalists. They asked him to compare his actions as a president to George Bush.

One asked, what would Senator Kerry have done if he were reading to children the day the September 11 attacks took place?

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to.

HINOJOSA: Everything about these exchanges was different. This crowd of predominantly racial minorities, journalists, but also people in human resources, public relations and corporate media recruiters, clapped for both candidates.

There was clearly more cheering for the Democrat.

KERRY: (speaking in Spanish)

HINOJOSA: Unity's mission is to push media companies, including CNN and Time Warner, those big and small, conservative or liberal, to become more racially diverse.

(on camera): Thousands and thousands of professional journalists of color all in one place, and, yet, a new study has dismal numbers to report. Out of 574 journalists covering Washington, D.C. for major newspapers, only 60 of them are non-white. A mere 10 percent.

Suzanne, if there were more journalists of color in the White House, what would change?

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think there would be a broader line of questioning. I think you'd have more things about civil rights, civil liberties, urban affairs.

HINOJOSA (voice-over): These journalists saw this convention as a chance to ask those questions.

(on camera): Do you know if there are any Native American journalists in the White House press corps?

MARK TRAHANT, "SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER": I don't believe there is one in the White House press corps.

HINOJOSA: And so to be able to ask a question to the president for you?

TRAHANT: The idea that there are so many questions that aren't part of our discourse because they're not asked. A narrow band of questions are asked by the same people over and over.

BUSH: I support colleges affirmatively taking action to get more minorities in their school.

HINOJOSA: These reporters put both candidates in the hot seat on questions of race.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: For more on presidential politics at the Unity Conference, Maria Hinojosa joins us live now from Washington, along with Roland Martin, a syndicated columnist and editorial consultant for "The Chicago Defender."

Welcome to both of you tonight. Thanks for being here.

ROLAND MARTIN, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST, "THE CHICAGO DEFENDER": Glad to be here.

COLLINS: Maria, I want to begin with you, if I could. It looks like from what we saw on TV and what I watched this morning, the president was addressing a very unfriendly crowd.

HINOJOSA: Oh, I don't know if you would say that it was entirely unfriendly. I think it's -- it's a critical group of journalists here who have a lot of questions to ask.

When he walked in, he got the applause and a standing ovation. Senator Kerry, when he walked in, got applause and a standing ovation that was probably much warmer than what we saw for the president.

And I think that what the president did when he was giving his speech, it was interesting, because there were times when you would see he was kind of pausing to wait for applause from the crowd like he might be giving this speech as a campaign speech. That didn't happen. When the applause came, it was kind of tepid for President George W. Bush.

There was more applause for Senator Kerry, though, clearly and it was interesting to see what issues that they were pointing out.

But both of them were asked difficult questions, tough questions. I would say a little more argumentative, certainly, for President Bush today.

COLLINS: All right. Well, for me, here's -- here's where the disconnect comes. I'm looking at a group of journalists, right? And I have the presidential candidates from both sides, the incumbent, obviously, and also Democratic presidential candidate who was there just a few days ago.

And I'm hearing applause, and I'm hearing booing. I thought we were all supposed to be unbiased. Why was this happening?

HINOJOSA: Well, there wasn't any booing. Let's just be clear about that. There was no booing at any time for any of the candidates.

MARTIN: Correct.

HINOJOSA: I can tell you that for me, when Senator Kerry walked into the room yesterday, just as he walked in, to see, I don't know, probably half of the room stand up and applaud, for me as a journalist, was uncomfortable. And the people who I was sitting with, none of us stood up, because as journalists, you're not going to do that. You don't applaud for politicians.

COLLINS: OK. Roland, I see you're shaking your head...

HINOJOSA: It wasn't comfortable for me.

COLLINS: Pardon me, Maria.

MARTIN: I think, Heidi, I think you skipped a very important point that Maria made in her package, and that is you didn't have only journalists who were in that audience. There were individuals who own P.R. companies, who own other media entities, who are associate members. You had student members, as well.

COLLINS: But Roland, you saw other journalists clapping or applauding, didn't you?

MARTIN: No, no, I understand. And I have said that if I'm in the audience, I am not clapping on those applause lines. But what I'm saying is it will be incorrect to assume that everybody in the room were journalists. What Maria just said was at some points half of the room was clapping and the other half weren't. You had a mix of people in there.

And so at the same time, Heidi, I've attended ASNE Convention, American Society of Newspaper Editors, RTBA, NAB, and I have seen similar applause even from those journalists, and they are not ethnic minority journalists. COLLINS: It doesn't make it right, though, right?

MARTIN: So I've seen that both places.

COLLINS: I mean, it doesn't make it right. There are clearly journalists there who are reporting for their papers or television stations about this event?

MARTIN: No, actually -- no, actually a lot of the folks there were not reporting on the event. They were attending the conference. Again, it's a difference.

COLLINS: Correct.

HINOJOSA: That's important...

COLLINS: Go ahead, Maria.

HINOJOSA: I think that's important to point out. You know, most of the time when you come to these conventions, you are networking. You're mentoring young journalists. You're participating in training programs. You're going to panels. You're not working.

So you're not going to say that these were working journalists who were watching this and then going and filing. There was a part of the room that was set off for the working journalists, and -- and those clearly were not applauding.

COLLINS: But to be fair, we're doing it right now. So anyway, moving on. Let's talk about this. Roland, let me ask you. Were you surprised at all by the president's answers to some of these questions? I mean, he did take two rounds of questioning.

MARTIN: Well, right. I mean, first of all, he's from Texas and I'm from Texas. And I specifically asked him as a courtesy to a fellow Texan if he would take two rounds of questions.

So I wasn't surprised. He was very comfortable. When he began to lean on the podium and he began to make some jokes, I knew he was fairly comfortable with the opportunity.

And again, I thought he simply wanted opportunity to answer these questions, and so we obliged him with some questions that frankly, he is not going to hear from the White House press corps, nor will he hear on the campaign trail.

COLLINS: And quickly from the both of you, do you have a better sense of where he stands on different issues now?

MARTIN: Well, I clearly pressed him on the issue of legacy. He has not made a public comment ever on the issue of legacy, and, today, after my question, he said, "I do not believe legacy should be used in college admissions."

And so, hey, that was breaking some new ground. We didn't expect that, but he certainly put it out there. COLLINS: And Maria, how about you?

HINOJOSA: You know, I think it was really extraordinary that both of these candidates came and addressed what is the largest gathering of American journalists in history.

So I think that, yes, we were all informed. We were all listening, and we have a better understanding of who these two men are. And I think as journalists, we're going to be all the better for it.

COLLINS: All right. Very good. Roland Martin and Maria Hinojosa, thanks so much, guys, being with us tonight.

MARTIN: Thank you.

HINOJOSA: My pleasure.

COLLINS: A program note now. Next week, join Larry King for an exclusive interview with President and Mrs. Bush. That will be coming your way Thursday, 9 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN.

Meanwhile, coming up next, Lynndie England and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse case moving toward a resolution when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: We've been following the case of Private First Class Lynndie England this week, the 21-year-old private soldier whose image has become synonymous with the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.

The hearing to determine whether she'll face court-martial was expected to wrap up today, but an unexpected development is now pushing it into next week.

Adding to the drama, testimony today from the man who thrust the scandal into the spotlight by going to investigators with the pictures.

National correspondent Susan Candiotti was inside the military courtroom at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Both the Army and PFC Lynndie England came under siege as the pregnant private faced her fourth day in military court.

Testimony indicated abuses began at Abu Ghraib prison almost as soon as her military police unit arrived there last fall.

The Army specialist who first reported the abuse told the court he was shown a photo back in October, possibly this one, with a hooded detainee handcuffed to the prison bars.

He quoted guard Charles Graner as saying, "The Christian in me knows it was wrong, but the corrections officer in me can't help but to love to make a grown man urinate on himself."

At that time, Specialist Joseph Darby said he shrugged it off. But two months later, after Graner gave him a CD disk with more photos, Darby said he was shocked at what he saw: abuse and sexual degradation.

Darby told the court he waited a month to tell investigators, because it was a hard call to turn in his friends. The whistle-blower said he did so to stop the mistreatment.

Darby testified, "It violated everything I personally believed in and everything I had been taught about war."

Lynndie England and her boyfriend, Charles Graner, are among the seven reservists charged in the scandal.

An Army investigator, James Stewart, testified England identified herself in a number of the now notorious photos. He said she called this dog leash an intimidation device to try to lead a prisoner called Gus to another cell.

This humid pyramid, she said, was part of humiliation tactics. On another occasion, Stewart testified, England admitted stepping on some of these prisoners.

It was a trying week for the young Army clerk.

RICHARD HERNANDEZ, ATTORNEY FOR LYNNDIE ENGLAND: She's holding up as anybody could in her situation, a 21-year-old young lady in a situation like this with all the cameras. It's a high stress situation but she's holding up as well as she can.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: National correspondent Susan Candiotti joins us now live from Ft. Bragg.

And Susan, I understand some military intelligence officers were actually implicated this week by one of their own colleagues. Why haven't they been charged yet?

CANDIOTTI: Well, it's unclear why they haven't been charged yet, because the Army won't say, other than to explain that the investigation isn't over yet. This was the first time that there was public testimony from an intelligence agent. According to him, the two other intelligence agents joined in on the abuse along with some M.P.s.

COLLINS: All right. Well, also, one of the prosecution's key witnesses actually turned out to be a no show. What happened there?

CANDIOTTI: That's Specialist Jeremy Sivits, and you might recall, he's one of the seven charged in the scandal...

COLLINS: Right. CANDIOTTI: ... who's already pleaded guilty. And what happened was is he was being transported to the United States from Germany. They expected him to be here today by a telephone hookup, but when they put him on the phone, he wasn't there. So they hope that he will be testifying possibly as early as tomorrow.

COLLINS: All right. Susan Candiotti from Ft. Bragg, thanks so much for that tonight.

When we come back, we'll turn back to the presidential campaign and its more offbeat side.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILL FERRELL, COMEDIAN: Ever since I took office, well, things have been really, really bad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: And the political satire you won't see on TV. That's coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: If you want to see the low-down dirty reality of the presidential race, the place to look this year may well be the Internet. And that's where our Jeanne Moos has been poking around.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the story of how a subservient chicken begat a subservient president, but there's nothing subservient about the candidate bashing that goes on on the web.

John Kerry is portrayed as Frankenstein. His face morphs out of a cicada.

President Bush is portrayed as a bumpkin.

FERRELL: Oh, my God.

MOOS: Will Ferrell donated his time to an anti-Bush group.

FERRELL: Ever since I took office, well, things have been really, really bad.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cut!

FERRELL: It seemed like a good one. I'm getting my groove on.

MOOS: You think the president looks bad...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (singing): They call him Flipper, Flipper

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How are people doing dancing baby jokes? It's 2004. That should be illegal.

MOOS: Maybe it should be illegal to use John Kerry's head to shoot down incoming flip-flops.

(on camera) The one thing that's interesting about it they can be so much meaner on the Web.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is true.

MOOS: You couldn't get away with this in a TV spot: the two Johns getting it on.

Many of these are just an individual's attempt at humor and persuasion. Take the Subservient President. It's a parody of Burger King's Subservient Chicken, but instead of typing in orders like "touch your toes," you tell the subservient president to, say, "invade North Korea," and a guy in a Bush mask presses the nuclear button.

Write "foreign policy," he plays the cowboy. Ask for a magic trick, and he turns Osama into Saddam.

If you type "club the director," you'll glimpse Steve Anderson, the interactive media professor who dreamed up the web site.

Though some campaign videos may be lowbrow...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): I'll be the triple Purple Heart president.

MOOS: ... they make TV ads seem subservient. This president is no chicken. Mention Michael Moore and he flips the bird. This is take no prisoners politicking.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: You got to love it. Jeanne Moos reporting.

We'll be back right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Thanks so much, everybody, for watching tonight. Paula is back on Monday with a story of a U.S. soldier who died for his country whose father has now been deported. She'll tell you all about that.

For now, though, have a great night, everybody.

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