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Paula Zahn Now

U.S. Army Notifies Families of Killed Soldiers; Giving Troops Second Chance at Life; Attack Survivor Becomes Police Sketch Artist; Bible Trivia Big Draw for Georgia Deli

Aired December 22, 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.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: And good evening. Good to be back tonight and welcome, everyone.
We begin this evening now with new fears for the safety of U.S. forces in Iraq. You know the numbers by now, 22 dead, including 13 U.S. troops, 69 others wounded after yesterday's suicide bombing at a U.S. military base in Mosul. The troops stationed there came from the Stryker Infantry Brigade out of Fort Lewis, Washington, but also National Guard units from the states of Virginia and Maine.

And in Maine today, Alina Cho spent the day with what the military called a notification unit. Few had a tougher job than this group today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A father is about to get the worst news imaginable.

LT. COL. JACK MOSHER, U.S. ARMY: He'll be home in about 15 minutes.

CHO: And these two men will deliver the message. Colonel Jack Mosher and Chaplain Andy Gibson begin by rehearsing what they'll say.

MOSHER: We have some difficult news for you this evening. May we come in?

MAJ. ANDREW GIBSON, U.S. ARMY CHAPLAIN: Yes, you may.

CHO: Next, they day a prayer.

GIBSON: Dear father in heaven, we have to go on a very difficult mission, perform a very difficult duty.

CHO: Then the silent drive to the home where a military family will soon hear their loved one has died in Iraq. This is what Mosher will say.

MOSHER: It is my solemn duty to report to you the death of, stating the person's name, who died early this morning in combat in a forward operating base just outside of Mosul, Iraq.

The message that you deliver has to be an assertive message, because people will hold out in their hearts for some hope that perhaps there's been a mistake made, a mistaken identity.

CHO: Once the family understands there's no mistake:

GIBSON: We've had people right fall on the floor when we've told them. Every once in a while, you have somebody who gets extremely angry. You also have some people who just get very blank with very little affect. And those are the tough ones, because you don't know what's coming next.

CHO: Last night, the Dostie family in Somerville, Maine, got a knock on the door. Their 20-year-old son Tommy was killed in the bombing in Mosul. Ron Cyr, who himself has two sons in Iraq, was with Tommy's mother when she got the news.

RON CYR, FAMILY FRIEND: She saw the uniforms and she immediately started crying.

CHO (on camera): She knew?

CYR: Oh, sure. Sure she knew. For the past year, that's what we've all been dreading, two uniformed officers coming up to your house. Nobody wants to see that.

CHO (voice-over): Mosher and Gibson are told not to touch the family during notification. This time, they broke the rules.

MOSHER: I think it's the first one that we've done where we actually hugged the mother. And she clung to us for a long time. That was difficult.

CHO: These two men in uniform are best friends. They call their work a solemn duty, a job they hope to do until they retire.

GIBSON: The bad thing has already happened. We didn't do the bad thing. What we're doing by doing the notification correctly, by doing it with honor, we are actually starting the family's healing process.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HEMMER: Alina Cho reporting tonight in Maine.

With us now from Knoxville, Tennessee, is Marsha Stanford. Marsha was with us last night by telephone waiting for word from her husband Kenny.

Marsha, good evening.

MARSHA STANFORD, WIFE OF U.S. SOLDIER: Good evening.

HEMMER: What a difference 24 hours can make, huh? The phone rang earlier today. Give us a sense, if you can. Relay us the feeling you had when that telephone rang.

M. STANFORD: When the phone rang, I basically had an idea that Kenny was OK. And to talk to him was relief. It wasn't happiness, because I felt for the other families. But it was relief.

HEMMER: That phone rang about 2:00 this afternoon, is that right, if I have my numbers correct?

M. STANFORD: Yes, it did.

HEMMER: So you're dealing with about 20 more hours after we talked of just waiting.

M. STANFORD: Waiting.

HEMMER: And having that anticipation. Give us a sense of what your mind was reeling there.

M. STANFORD: Well, as I talked to you and to the people the night before, I felt like he was OK. In my heart, I knew that Kenny was OK and he would be home. It was just waiting to hear to know that he wasn't hurt.

HEMMER: You've given us the privilege to eavesdrop, in a sense, to that conversation. Listen to part of it now.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

M. STANFORD: I've really been worried about you since I didn't hear from you. Are you sure you're not hurt?

SPC. KENNY RAY STANFORD, U.S. ARMY: No, no. I'm fine.

M. STANFORD: Were you still on the base when it happened?

K. STANFORD: Yes. Yes. I can't go into a lot of details, though, OK?

M. STANFORD: OK. I know you can't talk. How about the rest of our people from here? Are they OK?

K. STANFORD: Yes, as far as I know. Everybody's doing good. I'm ready to come home.

M. STANFORD: I know you are. I'm ready for you to come home. I love you. Please be careful.

K. STANFORD: I will. I love you with all my heart.

M. STANFORD: I love you, honey.

K. STANFORD: I love you.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

HEMMER: Marsha, there is a better phone call than that?

M. STANFORD: I think that's the best one I've ever had.

HEMMER: What goes through your mind when you hear your own voice now and hear the voice of Kenny, too?

M. STANFORD: Well, I'm still relieved to hear from him. I didn't realize I was scared. I'd like to try to be positive and make him feel like I'm OK and things at home are OK. But, at times like this, I don't think it would be possible to be that way.

HEMMER: Well, you say and you admit that you felt scared. Is that right?

M. STANFORD: I was very scared.

HEMMER: I could hear it in your voice last evening, the concern that you brought to our broadcast and the emotion really that came through the telephone. I want to wish you the best of luck going forward, OK, Marsha?

M. STANFORD: Thank you.

HEMMER: And thanks for coming back and sharing with us tonight.

Marsha Stanford, my guest tonight in Tennessee.

Much more in a moment, including the extraordinary work of those who cheat death on the battlefield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HEMMER (voice-over): Soldiers seriously injured in combat. In an earlier war, this might have been the final journey. But now modern battlefield medicine ensures a second chance at life. Tonight, we'll follow the wounded warriors.

And a cheating spouse, a willing computer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Internet is a sexual smorgasbord. You can find anything.

HEMMER: How can you tell if the biggest threat to your marriage is right inside your home?

Also, the PZN meter question tonight: Have you ever snooped on a loved one's computer use? The results and much more tonight on PAULA ZAHN NOW.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: Welcome back.

There is an FBI team in Mosul now to help investigate that deadly explosion that killed 22. A radical Islamic Web site claims the attacker had been working undetected at the base about for a period of two months. That, though, has not been verified.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) HEMMER (voice-over): Official word that a suicide bomber is suspected came at the Pentagon.

GEN. RICHARD MYERS, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: Investigators are about to conclude their look into the exact cause of the blast. At this point, it looks like it was an improvised explosive device worn by an attacker.

HEMMER: Casualties arrived in Germany this afternoon. Slowly, carefully, in the gloom and blowing snow, they were carried off the cargo jet, then loaded into ambulances for treatment at the nearby U.S. medical center at Landstuhl. The center is now scrambling to care for this unexpected holiday influx of 40 to 50 wounded.

Eight are in extremely critical condition. Cameras were not allowed to show another arrival in Kuwait, 13 body bags. The likelihood of a suicide bombing raises disturbing questions tonight about base security.

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: It is an enormous challenge to provide force protection, something that our forces worry about, work on constantly.

HEMMER: A CNN photographer who's been to the base says it's protected by barriers and barbed wire. Only military and official traffic gets through. A series of road barriers keeps potential suicide car bombers from getting to the checkpoints. Iraqi workers and most on foot go through an I.D. check and pat-down search, although there are no bomb-sniffing dogs or metal detectors.

Once through the checkpoint, Iraqi workers are relatively free to roam about the base with no systematic rechecking or searching. Everyone eats at the mess tent, soldiers and civilians. It's surrounded by tall concrete blast barriers. But there are several entrances there. Joining the chow line by the kitchen would be no problem for a hungry Iraqi worker or a suicide bomber.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HEMMER: A U.S. construction company called Contract International says it's giving up a $325 million deal in Iraq. It says the cost of keeping its employees safe is getting too high now. And Halliburton reports that four of its employees were killed, 16 others seriously wounded in the attack of yesterday.

Michael Karem knows all about the dangers of working in Iraq. He was a senior adviser to the former U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Paul Bremer. He is my guest tonight.

We welcome you. Thanks for your time.

How in the world do you do a background check in Iraq today?

MICHAEL KAREM, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER TO AMBASSADOR PAUL BREMER: It's almost impossible. They don't have the sophistication of an FBI or a database where they can turn in a name and go back to your date of birth and find every job, every place that you've been.

So, for this, is it possible? Absolutely it's going to be possible. It's going to be possible for several more months and years to come.

(CROSSTALK)

HEMMER: If it is possible, then how does the vetting process work, then? Can you give us a sense of that?

KAREM: Yes.

Let's take a particular company, Titan provides some secretarial services within the Green Zone. I'm familiar, because that's where I worked and lived. And they -- a person may have a national I.D. card that was issued by Saddam. They may have an old passport, OK? And they have a list of some of the people that were in the Baathist Party. They go through that process. And then that information, once they determine that that vetting process has gone through, they turn it over within the Green Zone to our military people, force protection.

And they do a little bit further checking. An then an I.D. is issued. But when you go into these places in the Green Zone, in the palace, all the servers, they're Iraqis. The people that clean the streets are Iraqis.

HEMMER: Sure.

KAREM: And they have the freedom of coming and going.

HEMMER: Yes. But it is far from perfect, correct?

KAREM: It is not perfect. And that's the problem we're going to have.

They're trying to build -- when I was there some months ago, they were trying to build a national database. And once an individual -- whether you visit or whether you're employed, every time anybody comes into the Green Zone, they're put into a database. But they did not have anything to work with when we first got there.

HEMMER: Well, here is what I'm trying to understand and give our audience a better perspective on this. At a typical U.S. military base, say the one in Mosul, how many Iraqis are working in that base? Is it hundreds or could it be thousands?

KAREM: It could be -- I don't know about Mosul. But it could be hundreds.

But I know that, in Baghdad, there were thousands not only that worked, but lived, actually lived inside of the compound, because there were apartments that they lived in.

HEMMER: So, then, if that's the case and if you're just trying to get this database up and running now in 2004, heading into the new year, can you keep it safe? Or is that an impossibility at this point?

KAREM: I think right now that, when this happened, I wasn't surprised that it happened.

HEMMER: Not at all?

KAREM: No, not at all, because we knew six months ago, seven months ago, that, up until the elections, these types of attacks are going to -- were going to occur.

We have to be right 100 percent of the time.

HEMMER: Sure.

KAREM: They only have to be right 1 percent of the time. So if there's any lapse or any failure, we pay the consequences.

HEMMER: And the consequences were dear, indeed, yesterday.

One other issue here I think is worth raising. Part of the U.S. military's mission is to get closer to the Iraqi people.

KAREM: Correct.

HEMMER: Events like these just make that wedge greater, does it not?

KAREM: Well, I think it does because -- on both sides, because then you have the mistrust.

One of the things that we tried to do when we were over there, through -- was to employ Iraqis to work with us, so that they would start understanding us, because the best advertising you can have is by word of mouth. And so it makes it tough, because our military men and women, every time they look at an Iraqi, maybe not all of them, but just human nature, are going to be suspect.

The Iraqis will look at our soldiers and think, well, what do they think of me? So it's a catch-22. And there's no easy solution to it. And there's not going to be for some time to come.

HEMMER: You have helped bring out a number of great points tonight. And we thank you for your insight. Michael Karem, thank you for your time.

KAREM: Thank you.

HEMMER: In a moment here, a war story you rarely see, an up- close look at the race to save those wounded in battle.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I actually got shot in my pistol. Then I got shot through my leg.

ALEX QUADE, CNN PRODUCER: So where's your pistol at this point? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's probably in my armory. It was recovered, but it was destroyed.

QUADE: But you got probably...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hurt.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: In a moment, the incredible work and dedication that is giving U.S. soldiers a second chance at life.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: The U.S. military did not allow close-up pictures of those wounded soldiers arriving today for medical treatment in Germany. We were not allowed to talk with them either.

Recently, however, our producer Alex Quade was given extraordinary access to the U.S. military's medical operations ongoing in Iraq. She saw firsthand the dedication of the caregivers and the gratitude of the wounded. Now, some of what you're about to see tonight is graphic. But we hope this brief look this evening will give you a bit of a better sense of the tremendous effort being made to save those wounded warriors.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALEX QUADE, CNN PRODUCER (voice-over): The journey of the wounded warrior usually begins like this. Amid the chaos, the pain, Army medics or Naval Corpsmen take life-saving action while lethal combat continues around them.

They bandage them up, carry them out. If it's too hot for a medevac helicopter to land, it's into vehicles near the battle site and on to the next level of care, a fallback position outside the kill zone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One, two, three, lift.

QUADE: This is triage. Navy shock and trauma platoon members collect and clear the wounded.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One, two, three, go.

QUADE: Stabilize and back to battle or on to the next level of care.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Urgent. Urgent. Urgent.

QUADE: Urgent means medical evacuation. Get them to a combat field hospital within one hour of being wounded, what's called the golden hour, odds are, they'll survive.

It's time for the medicine man.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roger. Currently (INAUDIBLE)

QUADE: Medicine man, that's the call sign of the U.S. Army medevac unit.

C.W. 2 HARLEY MAST, MEDEVAC PILOT: Guys in the field would get injured during their battles. And their EMTs or their medics on the scene can only treat them to a certain extent. And our job is to grab them and pick them up and bring them to a hospital or wherever further care is needed for the patient.

QUADE: They pick up the freshly wounded, care for them in flight, bring them to the CSH, combat support hospital, or to a forward surgical team. It's a handover to the surgeons.

There are four combat hospitals in Iraq in Tikrit, Mosul, Balad, and here in Baghdad, the former private hospital for Saddam Hussein and his family, now run by the U.S. Army. The medical work here is raw, dirty, emotionally wrenching.

CPT. SUDIP BOSE, U.S. ARMY: A lot of blood and guts. You're kind of trained for that as a doctor and you're ready for it. But what's different here is, there's another level of detachment to your patients, which are the soldiers, because they're like all of us. They left the states. They're hoping to go back. And some of them in the process aren't expecting it and they get badly injured or, god forbid, even killed. And that's what makes it different. There's a level of attachment here to the patients.

QUADE: After the patients have been stabilized, it's on to the next level, to Balad Air Base. A series of tents make up an Air Force theater hospital, E.R., O.R. and an ICU. Here, too, the medical staff work in conditions just as dangerous as Mosul. In fact, this is the most frequently attacked base in Iraq. A loudspeaker announces alarm red when it's happening.

LT. COL. DON JENKINS, U.S. AIR FORCE: When you're in the operating room, there's really nothing more that we can do than keep operating. We've built up as best we can around those operating theaters with concrete barriers and sandbags and that sort of thing. So -- still an alarm there.

Those folks that aren't scrubbed in sterile gear do have the opportunity, if they can get to their gear safely, put on their helmet or flak vest. We don't stop what we're doing just because this attack is going on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lower. Lower.

QUADE: When the patients are stabilized, it's on to what's called the CASF, contingency aeromedical staging facility.

TECH. SGT. GEORGE DENBY, U.S. AIR FORCE: It's more like a medical air terminal.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody ready?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ready.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On my command, prepare to lift. Lift.

DENBY: Our patients when they come here, they're pretty much knowing, this is my last step before I go back to the states or before I go to Germany and then go back to the states.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right, one, two, three.

DENBY: We get them here. We get them medicated and get them comfortable.

QUADE: And then time to load the patients on to a C-141, converted from cargo plane to flying hospital. Patients are racked onto hanging litters inside the plane. Then the plane goes dark for tactical takeoff. This is light discipline, only low red light until we clear Iraqi airspace.

The flight medics go to work. Using chemical glow sticks for tiny lights, they squeeze between patients in litters.

CAPT. ASSY YACOUB, PHYSICIAN: Whatever care they were getting, we continue that care. We continue mechanical ventilation on them to keep their respiratory status in check. We continue drips, etcetera. Like they need to be sedated. They need something for pain.

QUADE: After clearing Iraqi airspace, lights on. Six hours later, the plane lands at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Prepare to move. Move.

QUADE: The patients are off-loaded.

SR. MASTER SGT. TERRY KENNEDY, U.S. AIR FORCE: But I'll never forget any of their faces. And you just want to hug every one of them for what they do.

QUADE: Then on to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. There, usually, it's more surgery. From battlefield to this hospital in Germany, it's precision, speed, and care every step of the way, which is saving lives.

MAJ. TIM WOODS, U.S. AIR FORCE: Our airvac system right now is unbelievable. We hear what happens on the news pretty much. And within 24 to 48 hours, these guys are hitting getting into our hospital. And we're having to take care of them. And, usually, within a couple of days after that, we're trying to get them back to the states, so they can be closer to their family.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you have any pain right now? Yes?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HEMMER: That is some wonderful insight, Alex. The point you consistently make in that story is the importance of speed and getting it done fast to save lives.

QUADE: Bill, I think really what is very important for family members of U.S. troops who are serving in Iraq right now is to know that, if something bad does happen, all branches of the military are going to work so hard and work together to try to beat that golden hour, to try to get their loved one from the battlefield and onto the next level of care as quick as possible.

HEMMER: You mention the golden hour. That's the first 60 minutes upon being wounded that medical doctors consider so vital to saving lives. The reason they're able to do this, though, is in large part because of medical technology. And they're taking that technology to the battlefield. How then can they take this to possibly even another level after what you're seeing today in Iraq?

QUADE: I think what we've seen is a very, very good first step. We're seeing these things happen that all of these points of care along the way that they have not developed as much in previous wars. We're seeing advances all along the way.

This golden hour, they're trying to get the service member from the battlefield and on to a medevac through forward surgical resuscitative teams, through other care and whatever they can do to get them on and get them as fast forward to a combat hospital, to get them on to Germany. And they're doing these in such quick amounts of time.

HEMMER: When the war broke out, at first, Navy corpsmen so quick to brag and boast about the new techniques they were using. And now, as you point out tonight, it is much more established than even it was about a year and a half ago.

So, good stuff. We should mention, David Allbritton, by the way, is the photographer on your piece. He's also your husband.

QUADE: That he is.

(LAUGHTER)

HEMMER: Give him our best, OK?

QUADE: Thank you very much.

HEMMER: Good luck to you, Alex. Good stuff tonight.

QUADE: Thanks.

HEMMER: CNN producer Alex Quade.

And coming up in January, after the new year, much more from that full report after the new year.

By the way, those remarkable pictures we turned out by your husband, David Allbritton. Want to mention that yet again. My colleague Aaron Brown tonight joins me now with a look at what's coming up later on "NEWSNIGHT."

Aaron, good evening to you. How are you?

AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening to you.

Sadly, the physicians at Landstuhl and the medics in Iraq are very busy after yesterday's attack in Mosul tending the wounded. And back home, the visits are being made to families, the notification. We'll look at the Mosul story, its impact on American troops, on the insurgency itself, and what it tells us about the insurgency. We'll also look at public opinion after yesterday's attack, the worst single incident in the Iraq war. Mosul dominates the prom tonight. That's "NEWSNIGHT" this evening.

HEMMER: All right, Aaron, see you in about 90 minutes from now.

In a moment here, we will shift gears, getting away from Iraq tonight. Don't miss this, though, the newest threat to marriage, cheating online. Who's doing it and why?

Back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: Welcome back. There are roughly 2 million marriages every year in the U.S. and roughly 1 million divorces. We cannot say how many of those divorces are due to cheating spouses. But the Internet has certainly increased the temptation to stray. As "CNN PRESENTS" reported this year, cyber-infidelity may well be the latest threat to marriage. For us tonight, here's Kathy Slobogin on this story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHY SLOBOGIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's late. Your spouse is sleeping and you want to play. You can meet anyone, be anyone and go anywhere. All without ever leaving home.

DR. DAVID GREENFIELD, ADDICTION SPECIALISTS: I call it an "electronic bedroom." The Internet is a sexual smorgasbord. I mean you can find anything. And if you have a particular fantasy or desire, or fetish, something that you've never even considered talking about with your spouse, you can find somebody that's into it online.

SLOBOGIN: Dr. David Greenfield specializes in addiction. And lately, he's spending a lot of time treating a new and addictive brand of adultery what he calls, "crossing the line online."

GREENFIELD: This is the perfect affair for a married person. Think about it. You know, they don't have to go anywhere. They don't have to try to find a hotel room. They can suck you in. And you can end up in places, doing things and saying things you might not ordinarily do. And you're playing with fire.

SLOBOGIN (on camera): Cyber cheating is the latest threat to marriage. In a survey, two-thirds of divorce attorneys said the Internet played a significant role in the divorces they handled. Take a look at any online dating service. They're supposed to be for singles. But the people who tracked these sites say half the visitors are actually married.

CHRISTINE: He was opening a Pandora's box. And by opening it, he got the taste and he got a flavor. And he liked that taste.

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): Christine, who asked that we not to use her last name, says her marriage was destroyed by a computer, a marriage to a man she thought was perfect.

(on camera): What did you see in him?

CHRISTINE: Blue eyes. He had the prettiest blue eyes. He was six foot. He was thin. And he could dance. I was forty-three years old. I'd never been married. I waited because I wanted the perfect man. And I thought I had him.

There, we're smearing cake all over each other.

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): Her husband sold real estate and installed a computer at home. At first, the hours online were reasonable. Then she says it changed.

CHRISTINE: It was getting worse and worse. He'd just spend longer times there. His personality would change. And I kept asking him, because I'd see the e-mail addresses, and I said, you know, what's in here? And he'd change the subject. He didn't want me to even think about it because it was no big deal.

SLOBOGIN: She believed him, until the day she said she stumbled onto his other life.

CHRISTINE: My sister had sent me a picture of her on vacation. And so, I downloaded the picture. And then I couldn't find it. And I said OK. I've downloaded somewhere? Where is it? So, I started looking in the history. And I found pictures. And it wasn't of my sister.

There were pictures that he had downloaded of women, housewives. And they were so lewd and disgusting. They would make "Hustler" magazine look like Disney.

SLOBOGIN: She says her husband played down the pornography, denied he was cheating. But her suspicions grew. Finally, she decided to beat him at his own game, in cyberspace.

(on camera): The Internet is not only inspiring adulterers, it's providing a way to catch them. Software like Spector Pro, is a kind of electronic detective. You can actually spy on your spouse's e- mails; capture their conversations keystroke by keystroke. And that's exactly what Christine did.

CHRISTINE: I started tracking and opening up his e-mails, and seeing what was in there. And that's when I discovered what he was doing. He was going into adult personal ads. He was asking for local, loose women.

"What do you look like? I'd really like to know."

SLOBOGIN: Armed with her e-mails, Christine filed for divorce two years ago. Her husband wouldn't talk to us.

(on camera): The cheating, the interest in pornography; how much of that do you attribute to the computer?

CHRISTINE: All of it. All of it. It totally changed his personality. It allowed him to do things that he wouldn't have to have anybody see him do. He could go into sites quietly, secretly. He could look at things. And he'd never have to tell anybody he did it.

SLOBOGIN: For Christine, there's a final chapter, and one with a happy ending. She's met someone new. Where did she meet him? You guessed it: an online dating site.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HEMMER: Reporting tonight, Kathleen Slobogin there. From Houston now, Jeff Moore, chief of investigations at Blue Moon Investigations. Jeff makes his living tracking down cyber cheaters. Welcome to our show tonight. If you suspect a partner cheating, what do you do?

JEFF MOORE, BLUE MOON INVESTIGATIONS: I mean, first, I think the person's going to try to deny, not think it's happening. But I think the suspicion, like anything, is going to start growing. As it grows, then they're just going to have to want to get some closure on it. Then that's usually when they come to us.

HEMMER: Before we get to that point, is there anything they can do if they suspect their partner and conduct their own investigation?

MOORE: They can certainly keep their eyes open. Look for anything that they -- you know, I'm sure going through jacket pockets, looking in cars, glove boxes, wallets, purses. Things like that. Typically that's where they're at when they come to us. They've already found some clues by that time.

HEMMER: They have some clues and a bit of evidence too. So then they come to you, Jeff. Fill in the pieces from there. What do you do that is legal in your own investigation?

MOORE: We're licensed by the state. So anything we do, as long as -- in the way of surveillance or conducting an investigation is legal. They can't, however, do it because in the state of Texas, it would be a class A stalking charge. So what we do is we try to find out, you know, as much information from them as we can. So we can decide what will be the best approach. But typically, it's going to be to look at phone records, cell phone records, it's going to be to look at computers. Their hard drives, things of that nature. Then certainly it's going to be to do some surveillance. That's pretty much the core of it.

HEMMER: Surveillance near the end once you put the pieces together. The thing to remember, technology, there are fingerprints left at just about every turn. Is that right?

MOORE: Yes. I mean, what we do at Blue Moon is we do DNA testing. We do fingerprinting. We do the whole nine yards. It's regular CSI stuff.

HEMMER: I'd imagine, through your time and experience, you've got some pretty good stories. Care to share one tonight?

MOORE: Well, you know, we've had a lot of different types of cases over the years. But I think one of the craziest ones was where a lady thought her husband was cheating. And we went down and followed him and sure enough, at their beach house in Galveston, we were set up and we did see the lady in there. In fact, we saw her the entire night. But we never saw him. And so the next time morning rolled around and we saw him come out and leave, we never saw the lady. However, he did go to the garbage can and throw some evidence, we thought, away. When we went to the garbage can, lo and behold we found a bunch of wigs and women's lingerie and stuff large enough to fit him. So we found out he was cheating. Unfortunately, it was with himself.

HEMMER: Wow. At that point busted?

MOORE: The client didn't want to believe it either. We had to physically show her the evidence. They find that very hard to believe. But we see all kinds of different cases. We see situations where you know they're cheating with their husband's brother, or their wife's sister. I mean, it's just crazy.

HEMMER: How often do you find these online affairs turn into real world matters?

MOORE: A lot of times that's where it's starting now. It's just gotten so convenient. A person does not have to actually leave their home. They can do it right there at their home or at a hotel room with their laptop. And it's just gotten way too incredibly convenient. And I think that has really spawned this larger amount of cyber type affairs.

HEMMER: I don't want to give you a point to brag tonight. But business is good for you now isn't it? And only getting better, I'd imagine, with technology.

MOORE: Well, I have to admit, it is true. And the investigators today are having to be higher trained and know technology more so, because it's become a lot more demanding. The old gumshoe days are over with.

But yes, technology is really, really making our jobs a lot more technical and a lot more advanced.

HEMMER: Jeff Moore is my guest tonight. Thanks for your time tonight, Jeff.

Once again, let us know if you have kept a secret tab on your mate's computer use. Click onto our "PZN Meter": CNN.com/Paula. Results at the end of our show, coming up in a few moments here.

Also in a moment here, hundreds of criminals are spending long stretches in jail because of one forensic expert. We'll meet a woman with a very unique skill for putting them behind bars.

Back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: You're about to meet one of the most successful crime fighters anywhere. She has helped catch hundreds of criminals with a pencil and a sketchpad.

Lois Gibson's her name. A personal mission for her, payback to a man who almost killed her. Tonight, Paula has her remarkable story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LOIS GIBSON, POLICE SKETCH ARTIST: Someone tried to kill me for fun when I was about 21 years old. It was a torture/rape. He strangled me. He made me black out four times during the attack.

I thought I was going to die. And then I would come to again. And he probably didn't care if I did die. And after that, I was destroyed.

PAULA ZAHN, HOST (voice-over): Scared. Embarrassed, even ashamed. 21-year-old low Lois Gibson never reported her attack.

GIBSON: I thought, well, they'll think I deserved it or I asked for it. I couldn't have hacked that.

ZAHN: The trauma didn't stop Lois. She finished her college degree and started a sidewalk stand in San Antonio, painting portraits of passers-by.

GIBSON: You get fast and you get good at picking up on those unique features. And by the time I moved to Houston, I was a major portrait artist.

ZAHN: Yet, Lois was still haunted. But then one day, that changed. She was watching a news report about a criminal on the loose.

GIBSON: All they were saying was, 5'10", brown hair, brown eyes, over and over. And I thought, "Wow. I could draw a picture and show that unusual nose. What about the hairstyle? What about the facial structure? The lips, the chin?"

This is going to be real easy. Just relax.

I realized I wanted to catch people because I wanted to get back at the guy that hurt me and tried to kill me.

How tall do you think he was?

ZAHN: Surprisingly, she says, police departments didn't want someone who had never been a cop helping on major criminal investigations. They saw her as just a mother, a housewife and an artist.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: His nose, I was talking about that scar.

GIBSON: I had to force myself on them. And it was not -- it was oil and water. But all that's water under the bridge. Suffice it to say, it took me seven and a half years before they gave me a full-time job, even though one out of every three sketches I would do would solve the case.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think he's looking at me right there.

GIBSON: OK.

ZAHN: Since then, more than 3,000 sketches and more than 700 convictions.

Look at the sketches and compare them to the mug shots of the person arrested and ultimately convicted of the crime. You don't have to be an expert to see how strikingly accurate they are.

LT. THOMAS JENNINGS, HOUSTON POLICE DEPARTMENT: She's able to relate and show compassion to people and she has the ability to build a trust quickly with people. I think that allows people to be relaxed and comfortable with her and recall facts of their experience.

GIBSON: My attack gives me an edge, because every time a witness comes in my room and I close the door, almost the first thing I tell them is, "Well, somebody tried to kill me for fun." And they immediately relax.

ZAHN: Pam Minx (ph) was one of those witnesses. In 1996 she was brutally beaten by a stranger outside her drugstore one spring night. Fortunately, Pam saw her attacker. With no eyewitnesses, only Pam's memory and Lois' talent stood between the attacker and justice.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's difficult to talk about this to begin with. At that point, it was so fresh and raw that it was very difficult. And she was very empathetic without being condescending.

ZAHN: It took Lois a little over two hours to transform Pam's memories into a composite.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When she actually showed me the finished sketch, I couldn't believe it. It gave me a goosebumps. It was so frighteningly real. So frighteningly him.

GIBSON: Do you see how...

ZAHN: For over a year Pam carried the sketch around with her, showing it to strangers, and one day, a friend of a friend recognized it. The man was tried and convicted.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a relief. An enormous relief to have him off the streets.

GIBSON: And that's why I go through this work. Because I want the people that I'm with to feel what it feels like to get justice. Because I know what it feels like to want it so bad.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was so close to him. It was scary. Without that sketch, we wouldn't have caught him. And I just can't thank you enough for your gift, because you gave me my gift. You put him behind bars.

GIBSON: That's all I wanted for you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HEMMER: Lois Gibson is one of only 19 full-time forensic artists in the country, her total number of convictions now going over the mark of 1,000.

Our Bruce Burkhardt has made a career of covering stories that are different. When we come back, tonight, another gem.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: For a nation that's roughly 80 percent Christian, Christmas time often turns into a mad rush to buy gifts and get it all done, with little thought to the holiday's biblical roots. But in one town in the state of Georgia, they have found a way to keep the gospels alive year round.

Tonight with that story, here's Bruce Burkhardt.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID THORNTON, BAPTIST PREACHER: Listen up right carefully.

BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the beginning there were trivia nights.

THORNTON: We got 12 teams tonight.

BURKHARDT: But then, the folks at Schroeder's Deli in Armuchee, Georgia, said, let there be a new kind of trivia. And so it was.

THORNTON: First question, from which son of Noah was Abraham descended?

BURKHARDT: It just made sense: Gospel trivia night.

Wednesday night used to be a slow night here. But manager Jason Watson figured out how to tap into the Wednesday night church crowd.

JASON WATSON, MANAGER, SCHROEDER'S DELI: It's nice to have the place full. So we thought why not try to do something to kind of bring them in on a regular basis?

BURKHARDT: Getting back to that first question.

(on camera) Do you know the answer?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir.

BURKHARDT: What is it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The answer is Shem.

BURKHARDT: Who?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shem.

BURKHARDT: Shem?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir.

BURKHARDT: I didn't even know there was a Shem.

(voice-over) Most of the competitors are teenagers who come here for some post-church fun. They play on teams with names like Jesus Freaks and...

THORNTON: The 100 Percent Angels, Preachers' Kids Plus Two, Pants, Sunnyside Slayers.

BURKHARDT: And the questions? Well, you better know your Bible. I mean, really know it.

THORNTON: What did Jacob name the place where he dreamed about the ladder reaching from the earth to heaven?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I really don't want to divulge my answer, because that guy back there is going to steal it from me.

BURKHARDT (on camera): You have some cheating Christians in here?

(voice-over) If the honor system doesn't work here, for goodness sakes, where can it work?

(on camera) How come you guys are so good?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jesus.

BURKHARDT (voice-over): The man who comes up with the questions is David Thornton, a Baptist preacher, a kind of evangelical Alex Trebek. He doesn't have a problem with the fact that beer is served here, though not to this crowd. THORNTON: I personally don't agree with beer and stuff like that. But the way I look at it is, Jesus, he didn't go hang out in the church houses. He went out where everybody was at.

BURKHARDT: And on Wednesday night, everybody is at Schroeder's Deli, fighting it out for the grand prize, a $30 food gift certificate. On this night, it was won by the Roper (ph) family, thanks to Laura Ann, who broke a tie by reciting all 39 books of the Old Testament.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs.

Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BURKHARDT: Amen there. Thank you, Bruce Burkhardt, reporting tonight in the state of Georgia.

In a moment, some late heat night laughs when we close out our show, right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: And by now, you've probably heard of that huge storm system hitting the middle part of the country. Only late night politics could be mixed with the comics and get a few laughs. Here's a listen now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAY LENO, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW": Back east, freezing. Your folks, right? Freezing in Philadelphia. Oh, snow everywhere. In fact New York City, it was 5 below Hillary. That's how bad it was. Oh, that's cold.

It was so cold in New York, Bernard Kerik got into bed with his own wife. That's how cold.

Actually, San Francisco also. It was so cold in San Francisco, Barry Bonds got in a snowball fight, killed three people.

DAVID LETTERMAN, HOST, "LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN": On the International Space Station they are running low on food. On the International Space Station. Isn't that amazing?

And they asked Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld about this. And he said, "Well, you go with the food you got, not with the food you want."

There's more trouble for this Donald Rumsfeld. His autopen malfunctioned and began signing the name Lemony Snicket. (END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: Dave and Jay closing out our show again tonight.

All right. Tonight, the results of our "PZN Meter." We asked you earlier tonight the following question: have you ever snooped on a loved one's computer use? Twenty-eight percent admit to it; 72 percent say no.

Results are not scientific, just a flash poll that we're conducting online.

A quick update now before we go. Contract International now denying reports that it's stopping work in Iraq because of dangerous conditions there. The company says it's ending one project due to expenses but it's keeping personnel on the ground there.

Tomorrow, two stories of two soldiers. That's tomorrow evening here on PAULA ZAHN NOW. I'm Bill Hemmer. Thanks for watching tonight. See you again tomorrow morning on "AMERICAN MORNING," 7 a.m. Eastern Time.

"LARRY KING LIVE" is next. Have a good night.

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 December 22, 2004 - 20:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: And good evening. Good to be back tonight and welcome, everyone.
We begin this evening now with new fears for the safety of U.S. forces in Iraq. You know the numbers by now, 22 dead, including 13 U.S. troops, 69 others wounded after yesterday's suicide bombing at a U.S. military base in Mosul. The troops stationed there came from the Stryker Infantry Brigade out of Fort Lewis, Washington, but also National Guard units from the states of Virginia and Maine.

And in Maine today, Alina Cho spent the day with what the military called a notification unit. Few had a tougher job than this group today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A father is about to get the worst news imaginable.

LT. COL. JACK MOSHER, U.S. ARMY: He'll be home in about 15 minutes.

CHO: And these two men will deliver the message. Colonel Jack Mosher and Chaplain Andy Gibson begin by rehearsing what they'll say.

MOSHER: We have some difficult news for you this evening. May we come in?

MAJ. ANDREW GIBSON, U.S. ARMY CHAPLAIN: Yes, you may.

CHO: Next, they day a prayer.

GIBSON: Dear father in heaven, we have to go on a very difficult mission, perform a very difficult duty.

CHO: Then the silent drive to the home where a military family will soon hear their loved one has died in Iraq. This is what Mosher will say.

MOSHER: It is my solemn duty to report to you the death of, stating the person's name, who died early this morning in combat in a forward operating base just outside of Mosul, Iraq.

The message that you deliver has to be an assertive message, because people will hold out in their hearts for some hope that perhaps there's been a mistake made, a mistaken identity.

CHO: Once the family understands there's no mistake:

GIBSON: We've had people right fall on the floor when we've told them. Every once in a while, you have somebody who gets extremely angry. You also have some people who just get very blank with very little affect. And those are the tough ones, because you don't know what's coming next.

CHO: Last night, the Dostie family in Somerville, Maine, got a knock on the door. Their 20-year-old son Tommy was killed in the bombing in Mosul. Ron Cyr, who himself has two sons in Iraq, was with Tommy's mother when she got the news.

RON CYR, FAMILY FRIEND: She saw the uniforms and she immediately started crying.

CHO (on camera): She knew?

CYR: Oh, sure. Sure she knew. For the past year, that's what we've all been dreading, two uniformed officers coming up to your house. Nobody wants to see that.

CHO (voice-over): Mosher and Gibson are told not to touch the family during notification. This time, they broke the rules.

MOSHER: I think it's the first one that we've done where we actually hugged the mother. And she clung to us for a long time. That was difficult.

CHO: These two men in uniform are best friends. They call their work a solemn duty, a job they hope to do until they retire.

GIBSON: The bad thing has already happened. We didn't do the bad thing. What we're doing by doing the notification correctly, by doing it with honor, we are actually starting the family's healing process.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HEMMER: Alina Cho reporting tonight in Maine.

With us now from Knoxville, Tennessee, is Marsha Stanford. Marsha was with us last night by telephone waiting for word from her husband Kenny.

Marsha, good evening.

MARSHA STANFORD, WIFE OF U.S. SOLDIER: Good evening.

HEMMER: What a difference 24 hours can make, huh? The phone rang earlier today. Give us a sense, if you can. Relay us the feeling you had when that telephone rang.

M. STANFORD: When the phone rang, I basically had an idea that Kenny was OK. And to talk to him was relief. It wasn't happiness, because I felt for the other families. But it was relief.

HEMMER: That phone rang about 2:00 this afternoon, is that right, if I have my numbers correct?

M. STANFORD: Yes, it did.

HEMMER: So you're dealing with about 20 more hours after we talked of just waiting.

M. STANFORD: Waiting.

HEMMER: And having that anticipation. Give us a sense of what your mind was reeling there.

M. STANFORD: Well, as I talked to you and to the people the night before, I felt like he was OK. In my heart, I knew that Kenny was OK and he would be home. It was just waiting to hear to know that he wasn't hurt.

HEMMER: You've given us the privilege to eavesdrop, in a sense, to that conversation. Listen to part of it now.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

M. STANFORD: I've really been worried about you since I didn't hear from you. Are you sure you're not hurt?

SPC. KENNY RAY STANFORD, U.S. ARMY: No, no. I'm fine.

M. STANFORD: Were you still on the base when it happened?

K. STANFORD: Yes. Yes. I can't go into a lot of details, though, OK?

M. STANFORD: OK. I know you can't talk. How about the rest of our people from here? Are they OK?

K. STANFORD: Yes, as far as I know. Everybody's doing good. I'm ready to come home.

M. STANFORD: I know you are. I'm ready for you to come home. I love you. Please be careful.

K. STANFORD: I will. I love you with all my heart.

M. STANFORD: I love you, honey.

K. STANFORD: I love you.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

HEMMER: Marsha, there is a better phone call than that?

M. STANFORD: I think that's the best one I've ever had.

HEMMER: What goes through your mind when you hear your own voice now and hear the voice of Kenny, too?

M. STANFORD: Well, I'm still relieved to hear from him. I didn't realize I was scared. I'd like to try to be positive and make him feel like I'm OK and things at home are OK. But, at times like this, I don't think it would be possible to be that way.

HEMMER: Well, you say and you admit that you felt scared. Is that right?

M. STANFORD: I was very scared.

HEMMER: I could hear it in your voice last evening, the concern that you brought to our broadcast and the emotion really that came through the telephone. I want to wish you the best of luck going forward, OK, Marsha?

M. STANFORD: Thank you.

HEMMER: And thanks for coming back and sharing with us tonight.

Marsha Stanford, my guest tonight in Tennessee.

Much more in a moment, including the extraordinary work of those who cheat death on the battlefield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HEMMER (voice-over): Soldiers seriously injured in combat. In an earlier war, this might have been the final journey. But now modern battlefield medicine ensures a second chance at life. Tonight, we'll follow the wounded warriors.

And a cheating spouse, a willing computer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Internet is a sexual smorgasbord. You can find anything.

HEMMER: How can you tell if the biggest threat to your marriage is right inside your home?

Also, the PZN meter question tonight: Have you ever snooped on a loved one's computer use? The results and much more tonight on PAULA ZAHN NOW.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: Welcome back.

There is an FBI team in Mosul now to help investigate that deadly explosion that killed 22. A radical Islamic Web site claims the attacker had been working undetected at the base about for a period of two months. That, though, has not been verified.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) HEMMER (voice-over): Official word that a suicide bomber is suspected came at the Pentagon.

GEN. RICHARD MYERS, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: Investigators are about to conclude their look into the exact cause of the blast. At this point, it looks like it was an improvised explosive device worn by an attacker.

HEMMER: Casualties arrived in Germany this afternoon. Slowly, carefully, in the gloom and blowing snow, they were carried off the cargo jet, then loaded into ambulances for treatment at the nearby U.S. medical center at Landstuhl. The center is now scrambling to care for this unexpected holiday influx of 40 to 50 wounded.

Eight are in extremely critical condition. Cameras were not allowed to show another arrival in Kuwait, 13 body bags. The likelihood of a suicide bombing raises disturbing questions tonight about base security.

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: It is an enormous challenge to provide force protection, something that our forces worry about, work on constantly.

HEMMER: A CNN photographer who's been to the base says it's protected by barriers and barbed wire. Only military and official traffic gets through. A series of road barriers keeps potential suicide car bombers from getting to the checkpoints. Iraqi workers and most on foot go through an I.D. check and pat-down search, although there are no bomb-sniffing dogs or metal detectors.

Once through the checkpoint, Iraqi workers are relatively free to roam about the base with no systematic rechecking or searching. Everyone eats at the mess tent, soldiers and civilians. It's surrounded by tall concrete blast barriers. But there are several entrances there. Joining the chow line by the kitchen would be no problem for a hungry Iraqi worker or a suicide bomber.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HEMMER: A U.S. construction company called Contract International says it's giving up a $325 million deal in Iraq. It says the cost of keeping its employees safe is getting too high now. And Halliburton reports that four of its employees were killed, 16 others seriously wounded in the attack of yesterday.

Michael Karem knows all about the dangers of working in Iraq. He was a senior adviser to the former U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Paul Bremer. He is my guest tonight.

We welcome you. Thanks for your time.

How in the world do you do a background check in Iraq today?

MICHAEL KAREM, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER TO AMBASSADOR PAUL BREMER: It's almost impossible. They don't have the sophistication of an FBI or a database where they can turn in a name and go back to your date of birth and find every job, every place that you've been.

So, for this, is it possible? Absolutely it's going to be possible. It's going to be possible for several more months and years to come.

(CROSSTALK)

HEMMER: If it is possible, then how does the vetting process work, then? Can you give us a sense of that?

KAREM: Yes.

Let's take a particular company, Titan provides some secretarial services within the Green Zone. I'm familiar, because that's where I worked and lived. And they -- a person may have a national I.D. card that was issued by Saddam. They may have an old passport, OK? And they have a list of some of the people that were in the Baathist Party. They go through that process. And then that information, once they determine that that vetting process has gone through, they turn it over within the Green Zone to our military people, force protection.

And they do a little bit further checking. An then an I.D. is issued. But when you go into these places in the Green Zone, in the palace, all the servers, they're Iraqis. The people that clean the streets are Iraqis.

HEMMER: Sure.

KAREM: And they have the freedom of coming and going.

HEMMER: Yes. But it is far from perfect, correct?

KAREM: It is not perfect. And that's the problem we're going to have.

They're trying to build -- when I was there some months ago, they were trying to build a national database. And once an individual -- whether you visit or whether you're employed, every time anybody comes into the Green Zone, they're put into a database. But they did not have anything to work with when we first got there.

HEMMER: Well, here is what I'm trying to understand and give our audience a better perspective on this. At a typical U.S. military base, say the one in Mosul, how many Iraqis are working in that base? Is it hundreds or could it be thousands?

KAREM: It could be -- I don't know about Mosul. But it could be hundreds.

But I know that, in Baghdad, there were thousands not only that worked, but lived, actually lived inside of the compound, because there were apartments that they lived in.

HEMMER: So, then, if that's the case and if you're just trying to get this database up and running now in 2004, heading into the new year, can you keep it safe? Or is that an impossibility at this point?

KAREM: I think right now that, when this happened, I wasn't surprised that it happened.

HEMMER: Not at all?

KAREM: No, not at all, because we knew six months ago, seven months ago, that, up until the elections, these types of attacks are going to -- were going to occur.

We have to be right 100 percent of the time.

HEMMER: Sure.

KAREM: They only have to be right 1 percent of the time. So if there's any lapse or any failure, we pay the consequences.

HEMMER: And the consequences were dear, indeed, yesterday.

One other issue here I think is worth raising. Part of the U.S. military's mission is to get closer to the Iraqi people.

KAREM: Correct.

HEMMER: Events like these just make that wedge greater, does it not?

KAREM: Well, I think it does because -- on both sides, because then you have the mistrust.

One of the things that we tried to do when we were over there, through -- was to employ Iraqis to work with us, so that they would start understanding us, because the best advertising you can have is by word of mouth. And so it makes it tough, because our military men and women, every time they look at an Iraqi, maybe not all of them, but just human nature, are going to be suspect.

The Iraqis will look at our soldiers and think, well, what do they think of me? So it's a catch-22. And there's no easy solution to it. And there's not going to be for some time to come.

HEMMER: You have helped bring out a number of great points tonight. And we thank you for your insight. Michael Karem, thank you for your time.

KAREM: Thank you.

HEMMER: In a moment here, a war story you rarely see, an up- close look at the race to save those wounded in battle.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I actually got shot in my pistol. Then I got shot through my leg.

ALEX QUADE, CNN PRODUCER: So where's your pistol at this point? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's probably in my armory. It was recovered, but it was destroyed.

QUADE: But you got probably...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hurt.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: In a moment, the incredible work and dedication that is giving U.S. soldiers a second chance at life.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: The U.S. military did not allow close-up pictures of those wounded soldiers arriving today for medical treatment in Germany. We were not allowed to talk with them either.

Recently, however, our producer Alex Quade was given extraordinary access to the U.S. military's medical operations ongoing in Iraq. She saw firsthand the dedication of the caregivers and the gratitude of the wounded. Now, some of what you're about to see tonight is graphic. But we hope this brief look this evening will give you a bit of a better sense of the tremendous effort being made to save those wounded warriors.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALEX QUADE, CNN PRODUCER (voice-over): The journey of the wounded warrior usually begins like this. Amid the chaos, the pain, Army medics or Naval Corpsmen take life-saving action while lethal combat continues around them.

They bandage them up, carry them out. If it's too hot for a medevac helicopter to land, it's into vehicles near the battle site and on to the next level of care, a fallback position outside the kill zone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One, two, three, lift.

QUADE: This is triage. Navy shock and trauma platoon members collect and clear the wounded.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One, two, three, go.

QUADE: Stabilize and back to battle or on to the next level of care.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Urgent. Urgent. Urgent.

QUADE: Urgent means medical evacuation. Get them to a combat field hospital within one hour of being wounded, what's called the golden hour, odds are, they'll survive.

It's time for the medicine man.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roger. Currently (INAUDIBLE)

QUADE: Medicine man, that's the call sign of the U.S. Army medevac unit.

C.W. 2 HARLEY MAST, MEDEVAC PILOT: Guys in the field would get injured during their battles. And their EMTs or their medics on the scene can only treat them to a certain extent. And our job is to grab them and pick them up and bring them to a hospital or wherever further care is needed for the patient.

QUADE: They pick up the freshly wounded, care for them in flight, bring them to the CSH, combat support hospital, or to a forward surgical team. It's a handover to the surgeons.

There are four combat hospitals in Iraq in Tikrit, Mosul, Balad, and here in Baghdad, the former private hospital for Saddam Hussein and his family, now run by the U.S. Army. The medical work here is raw, dirty, emotionally wrenching.

CPT. SUDIP BOSE, U.S. ARMY: A lot of blood and guts. You're kind of trained for that as a doctor and you're ready for it. But what's different here is, there's another level of detachment to your patients, which are the soldiers, because they're like all of us. They left the states. They're hoping to go back. And some of them in the process aren't expecting it and they get badly injured or, god forbid, even killed. And that's what makes it different. There's a level of attachment here to the patients.

QUADE: After the patients have been stabilized, it's on to the next level, to Balad Air Base. A series of tents make up an Air Force theater hospital, E.R., O.R. and an ICU. Here, too, the medical staff work in conditions just as dangerous as Mosul. In fact, this is the most frequently attacked base in Iraq. A loudspeaker announces alarm red when it's happening.

LT. COL. DON JENKINS, U.S. AIR FORCE: When you're in the operating room, there's really nothing more that we can do than keep operating. We've built up as best we can around those operating theaters with concrete barriers and sandbags and that sort of thing. So -- still an alarm there.

Those folks that aren't scrubbed in sterile gear do have the opportunity, if they can get to their gear safely, put on their helmet or flak vest. We don't stop what we're doing just because this attack is going on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lower. Lower.

QUADE: When the patients are stabilized, it's on to what's called the CASF, contingency aeromedical staging facility.

TECH. SGT. GEORGE DENBY, U.S. AIR FORCE: It's more like a medical air terminal.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody ready?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ready.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On my command, prepare to lift. Lift.

DENBY: Our patients when they come here, they're pretty much knowing, this is my last step before I go back to the states or before I go to Germany and then go back to the states.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right, one, two, three.

DENBY: We get them here. We get them medicated and get them comfortable.

QUADE: And then time to load the patients on to a C-141, converted from cargo plane to flying hospital. Patients are racked onto hanging litters inside the plane. Then the plane goes dark for tactical takeoff. This is light discipline, only low red light until we clear Iraqi airspace.

The flight medics go to work. Using chemical glow sticks for tiny lights, they squeeze between patients in litters.

CAPT. ASSY YACOUB, PHYSICIAN: Whatever care they were getting, we continue that care. We continue mechanical ventilation on them to keep their respiratory status in check. We continue drips, etcetera. Like they need to be sedated. They need something for pain.

QUADE: After clearing Iraqi airspace, lights on. Six hours later, the plane lands at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Prepare to move. Move.

QUADE: The patients are off-loaded.

SR. MASTER SGT. TERRY KENNEDY, U.S. AIR FORCE: But I'll never forget any of their faces. And you just want to hug every one of them for what they do.

QUADE: Then on to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. There, usually, it's more surgery. From battlefield to this hospital in Germany, it's precision, speed, and care every step of the way, which is saving lives.

MAJ. TIM WOODS, U.S. AIR FORCE: Our airvac system right now is unbelievable. We hear what happens on the news pretty much. And within 24 to 48 hours, these guys are hitting getting into our hospital. And we're having to take care of them. And, usually, within a couple of days after that, we're trying to get them back to the states, so they can be closer to their family.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you have any pain right now? Yes?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HEMMER: That is some wonderful insight, Alex. The point you consistently make in that story is the importance of speed and getting it done fast to save lives.

QUADE: Bill, I think really what is very important for family members of U.S. troops who are serving in Iraq right now is to know that, if something bad does happen, all branches of the military are going to work so hard and work together to try to beat that golden hour, to try to get their loved one from the battlefield and onto the next level of care as quick as possible.

HEMMER: You mention the golden hour. That's the first 60 minutes upon being wounded that medical doctors consider so vital to saving lives. The reason they're able to do this, though, is in large part because of medical technology. And they're taking that technology to the battlefield. How then can they take this to possibly even another level after what you're seeing today in Iraq?

QUADE: I think what we've seen is a very, very good first step. We're seeing these things happen that all of these points of care along the way that they have not developed as much in previous wars. We're seeing advances all along the way.

This golden hour, they're trying to get the service member from the battlefield and on to a medevac through forward surgical resuscitative teams, through other care and whatever they can do to get them on and get them as fast forward to a combat hospital, to get them on to Germany. And they're doing these in such quick amounts of time.

HEMMER: When the war broke out, at first, Navy corpsmen so quick to brag and boast about the new techniques they were using. And now, as you point out tonight, it is much more established than even it was about a year and a half ago.

So, good stuff. We should mention, David Allbritton, by the way, is the photographer on your piece. He's also your husband.

QUADE: That he is.

(LAUGHTER)

HEMMER: Give him our best, OK?

QUADE: Thank you very much.

HEMMER: Good luck to you, Alex. Good stuff tonight.

QUADE: Thanks.

HEMMER: CNN producer Alex Quade.

And coming up in January, after the new year, much more from that full report after the new year.

By the way, those remarkable pictures we turned out by your husband, David Allbritton. Want to mention that yet again. My colleague Aaron Brown tonight joins me now with a look at what's coming up later on "NEWSNIGHT."

Aaron, good evening to you. How are you?

AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening to you.

Sadly, the physicians at Landstuhl and the medics in Iraq are very busy after yesterday's attack in Mosul tending the wounded. And back home, the visits are being made to families, the notification. We'll look at the Mosul story, its impact on American troops, on the insurgency itself, and what it tells us about the insurgency. We'll also look at public opinion after yesterday's attack, the worst single incident in the Iraq war. Mosul dominates the prom tonight. That's "NEWSNIGHT" this evening.

HEMMER: All right, Aaron, see you in about 90 minutes from now.

In a moment here, we will shift gears, getting away from Iraq tonight. Don't miss this, though, the newest threat to marriage, cheating online. Who's doing it and why?

Back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: Welcome back. There are roughly 2 million marriages every year in the U.S. and roughly 1 million divorces. We cannot say how many of those divorces are due to cheating spouses. But the Internet has certainly increased the temptation to stray. As "CNN PRESENTS" reported this year, cyber-infidelity may well be the latest threat to marriage. For us tonight, here's Kathy Slobogin on this story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHY SLOBOGIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's late. Your spouse is sleeping and you want to play. You can meet anyone, be anyone and go anywhere. All without ever leaving home.

DR. DAVID GREENFIELD, ADDICTION SPECIALISTS: I call it an "electronic bedroom." The Internet is a sexual smorgasbord. I mean you can find anything. And if you have a particular fantasy or desire, or fetish, something that you've never even considered talking about with your spouse, you can find somebody that's into it online.

SLOBOGIN: Dr. David Greenfield specializes in addiction. And lately, he's spending a lot of time treating a new and addictive brand of adultery what he calls, "crossing the line online."

GREENFIELD: This is the perfect affair for a married person. Think about it. You know, they don't have to go anywhere. They don't have to try to find a hotel room. They can suck you in. And you can end up in places, doing things and saying things you might not ordinarily do. And you're playing with fire.

SLOBOGIN (on camera): Cyber cheating is the latest threat to marriage. In a survey, two-thirds of divorce attorneys said the Internet played a significant role in the divorces they handled. Take a look at any online dating service. They're supposed to be for singles. But the people who tracked these sites say half the visitors are actually married.

CHRISTINE: He was opening a Pandora's box. And by opening it, he got the taste and he got a flavor. And he liked that taste.

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): Christine, who asked that we not to use her last name, says her marriage was destroyed by a computer, a marriage to a man she thought was perfect.

(on camera): What did you see in him?

CHRISTINE: Blue eyes. He had the prettiest blue eyes. He was six foot. He was thin. And he could dance. I was forty-three years old. I'd never been married. I waited because I wanted the perfect man. And I thought I had him.

There, we're smearing cake all over each other.

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): Her husband sold real estate and installed a computer at home. At first, the hours online were reasonable. Then she says it changed.

CHRISTINE: It was getting worse and worse. He'd just spend longer times there. His personality would change. And I kept asking him, because I'd see the e-mail addresses, and I said, you know, what's in here? And he'd change the subject. He didn't want me to even think about it because it was no big deal.

SLOBOGIN: She believed him, until the day she said she stumbled onto his other life.

CHRISTINE: My sister had sent me a picture of her on vacation. And so, I downloaded the picture. And then I couldn't find it. And I said OK. I've downloaded somewhere? Where is it? So, I started looking in the history. And I found pictures. And it wasn't of my sister.

There were pictures that he had downloaded of women, housewives. And they were so lewd and disgusting. They would make "Hustler" magazine look like Disney.

SLOBOGIN: She says her husband played down the pornography, denied he was cheating. But her suspicions grew. Finally, she decided to beat him at his own game, in cyberspace.

(on camera): The Internet is not only inspiring adulterers, it's providing a way to catch them. Software like Spector Pro, is a kind of electronic detective. You can actually spy on your spouse's e- mails; capture their conversations keystroke by keystroke. And that's exactly what Christine did.

CHRISTINE: I started tracking and opening up his e-mails, and seeing what was in there. And that's when I discovered what he was doing. He was going into adult personal ads. He was asking for local, loose women.

"What do you look like? I'd really like to know."

SLOBOGIN: Armed with her e-mails, Christine filed for divorce two years ago. Her husband wouldn't talk to us.

(on camera): The cheating, the interest in pornography; how much of that do you attribute to the computer?

CHRISTINE: All of it. All of it. It totally changed his personality. It allowed him to do things that he wouldn't have to have anybody see him do. He could go into sites quietly, secretly. He could look at things. And he'd never have to tell anybody he did it.

SLOBOGIN: For Christine, there's a final chapter, and one with a happy ending. She's met someone new. Where did she meet him? You guessed it: an online dating site.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HEMMER: Reporting tonight, Kathleen Slobogin there. From Houston now, Jeff Moore, chief of investigations at Blue Moon Investigations. Jeff makes his living tracking down cyber cheaters. Welcome to our show tonight. If you suspect a partner cheating, what do you do?

JEFF MOORE, BLUE MOON INVESTIGATIONS: I mean, first, I think the person's going to try to deny, not think it's happening. But I think the suspicion, like anything, is going to start growing. As it grows, then they're just going to have to want to get some closure on it. Then that's usually when they come to us.

HEMMER: Before we get to that point, is there anything they can do if they suspect their partner and conduct their own investigation?

MOORE: They can certainly keep their eyes open. Look for anything that they -- you know, I'm sure going through jacket pockets, looking in cars, glove boxes, wallets, purses. Things like that. Typically that's where they're at when they come to us. They've already found some clues by that time.

HEMMER: They have some clues and a bit of evidence too. So then they come to you, Jeff. Fill in the pieces from there. What do you do that is legal in your own investigation?

MOORE: We're licensed by the state. So anything we do, as long as -- in the way of surveillance or conducting an investigation is legal. They can't, however, do it because in the state of Texas, it would be a class A stalking charge. So what we do is we try to find out, you know, as much information from them as we can. So we can decide what will be the best approach. But typically, it's going to be to look at phone records, cell phone records, it's going to be to look at computers. Their hard drives, things of that nature. Then certainly it's going to be to do some surveillance. That's pretty much the core of it.

HEMMER: Surveillance near the end once you put the pieces together. The thing to remember, technology, there are fingerprints left at just about every turn. Is that right?

MOORE: Yes. I mean, what we do at Blue Moon is we do DNA testing. We do fingerprinting. We do the whole nine yards. It's regular CSI stuff.

HEMMER: I'd imagine, through your time and experience, you've got some pretty good stories. Care to share one tonight?

MOORE: Well, you know, we've had a lot of different types of cases over the years. But I think one of the craziest ones was where a lady thought her husband was cheating. And we went down and followed him and sure enough, at their beach house in Galveston, we were set up and we did see the lady in there. In fact, we saw her the entire night. But we never saw him. And so the next time morning rolled around and we saw him come out and leave, we never saw the lady. However, he did go to the garbage can and throw some evidence, we thought, away. When we went to the garbage can, lo and behold we found a bunch of wigs and women's lingerie and stuff large enough to fit him. So we found out he was cheating. Unfortunately, it was with himself.

HEMMER: Wow. At that point busted?

MOORE: The client didn't want to believe it either. We had to physically show her the evidence. They find that very hard to believe. But we see all kinds of different cases. We see situations where you know they're cheating with their husband's brother, or their wife's sister. I mean, it's just crazy.

HEMMER: How often do you find these online affairs turn into real world matters?

MOORE: A lot of times that's where it's starting now. It's just gotten so convenient. A person does not have to actually leave their home. They can do it right there at their home or at a hotel room with their laptop. And it's just gotten way too incredibly convenient. And I think that has really spawned this larger amount of cyber type affairs.

HEMMER: I don't want to give you a point to brag tonight. But business is good for you now isn't it? And only getting better, I'd imagine, with technology.

MOORE: Well, I have to admit, it is true. And the investigators today are having to be higher trained and know technology more so, because it's become a lot more demanding. The old gumshoe days are over with.

But yes, technology is really, really making our jobs a lot more technical and a lot more advanced.

HEMMER: Jeff Moore is my guest tonight. Thanks for your time tonight, Jeff.

Once again, let us know if you have kept a secret tab on your mate's computer use. Click onto our "PZN Meter": CNN.com/Paula. Results at the end of our show, coming up in a few moments here.

Also in a moment here, hundreds of criminals are spending long stretches in jail because of one forensic expert. We'll meet a woman with a very unique skill for putting them behind bars.

Back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: You're about to meet one of the most successful crime fighters anywhere. She has helped catch hundreds of criminals with a pencil and a sketchpad.

Lois Gibson's her name. A personal mission for her, payback to a man who almost killed her. Tonight, Paula has her remarkable story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LOIS GIBSON, POLICE SKETCH ARTIST: Someone tried to kill me for fun when I was about 21 years old. It was a torture/rape. He strangled me. He made me black out four times during the attack.

I thought I was going to die. And then I would come to again. And he probably didn't care if I did die. And after that, I was destroyed.

PAULA ZAHN, HOST (voice-over): Scared. Embarrassed, even ashamed. 21-year-old low Lois Gibson never reported her attack.

GIBSON: I thought, well, they'll think I deserved it or I asked for it. I couldn't have hacked that.

ZAHN: The trauma didn't stop Lois. She finished her college degree and started a sidewalk stand in San Antonio, painting portraits of passers-by.

GIBSON: You get fast and you get good at picking up on those unique features. And by the time I moved to Houston, I was a major portrait artist.

ZAHN: Yet, Lois was still haunted. But then one day, that changed. She was watching a news report about a criminal on the loose.

GIBSON: All they were saying was, 5'10", brown hair, brown eyes, over and over. And I thought, "Wow. I could draw a picture and show that unusual nose. What about the hairstyle? What about the facial structure? The lips, the chin?"

This is going to be real easy. Just relax.

I realized I wanted to catch people because I wanted to get back at the guy that hurt me and tried to kill me.

How tall do you think he was?

ZAHN: Surprisingly, she says, police departments didn't want someone who had never been a cop helping on major criminal investigations. They saw her as just a mother, a housewife and an artist.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: His nose, I was talking about that scar.

GIBSON: I had to force myself on them. And it was not -- it was oil and water. But all that's water under the bridge. Suffice it to say, it took me seven and a half years before they gave me a full-time job, even though one out of every three sketches I would do would solve the case.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think he's looking at me right there.

GIBSON: OK.

ZAHN: Since then, more than 3,000 sketches and more than 700 convictions.

Look at the sketches and compare them to the mug shots of the person arrested and ultimately convicted of the crime. You don't have to be an expert to see how strikingly accurate they are.

LT. THOMAS JENNINGS, HOUSTON POLICE DEPARTMENT: She's able to relate and show compassion to people and she has the ability to build a trust quickly with people. I think that allows people to be relaxed and comfortable with her and recall facts of their experience.

GIBSON: My attack gives me an edge, because every time a witness comes in my room and I close the door, almost the first thing I tell them is, "Well, somebody tried to kill me for fun." And they immediately relax.

ZAHN: Pam Minx (ph) was one of those witnesses. In 1996 she was brutally beaten by a stranger outside her drugstore one spring night. Fortunately, Pam saw her attacker. With no eyewitnesses, only Pam's memory and Lois' talent stood between the attacker and justice.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's difficult to talk about this to begin with. At that point, it was so fresh and raw that it was very difficult. And she was very empathetic without being condescending.

ZAHN: It took Lois a little over two hours to transform Pam's memories into a composite.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When she actually showed me the finished sketch, I couldn't believe it. It gave me a goosebumps. It was so frighteningly real. So frighteningly him.

GIBSON: Do you see how...

ZAHN: For over a year Pam carried the sketch around with her, showing it to strangers, and one day, a friend of a friend recognized it. The man was tried and convicted.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a relief. An enormous relief to have him off the streets.

GIBSON: And that's why I go through this work. Because I want the people that I'm with to feel what it feels like to get justice. Because I know what it feels like to want it so bad.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was so close to him. It was scary. Without that sketch, we wouldn't have caught him. And I just can't thank you enough for your gift, because you gave me my gift. You put him behind bars.

GIBSON: That's all I wanted for you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HEMMER: Lois Gibson is one of only 19 full-time forensic artists in the country, her total number of convictions now going over the mark of 1,000.

Our Bruce Burkhardt has made a career of covering stories that are different. When we come back, tonight, another gem.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: For a nation that's roughly 80 percent Christian, Christmas time often turns into a mad rush to buy gifts and get it all done, with little thought to the holiday's biblical roots. But in one town in the state of Georgia, they have found a way to keep the gospels alive year round.

Tonight with that story, here's Bruce Burkhardt.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID THORNTON, BAPTIST PREACHER: Listen up right carefully.

BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the beginning there were trivia nights.

THORNTON: We got 12 teams tonight.

BURKHARDT: But then, the folks at Schroeder's Deli in Armuchee, Georgia, said, let there be a new kind of trivia. And so it was.

THORNTON: First question, from which son of Noah was Abraham descended?

BURKHARDT: It just made sense: Gospel trivia night.

Wednesday night used to be a slow night here. But manager Jason Watson figured out how to tap into the Wednesday night church crowd.

JASON WATSON, MANAGER, SCHROEDER'S DELI: It's nice to have the place full. So we thought why not try to do something to kind of bring them in on a regular basis?

BURKHARDT: Getting back to that first question.

(on camera) Do you know the answer?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir.

BURKHARDT: What is it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The answer is Shem.

BURKHARDT: Who?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shem.

BURKHARDT: Shem?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir.

BURKHARDT: I didn't even know there was a Shem.

(voice-over) Most of the competitors are teenagers who come here for some post-church fun. They play on teams with names like Jesus Freaks and...

THORNTON: The 100 Percent Angels, Preachers' Kids Plus Two, Pants, Sunnyside Slayers.

BURKHARDT: And the questions? Well, you better know your Bible. I mean, really know it.

THORNTON: What did Jacob name the place where he dreamed about the ladder reaching from the earth to heaven?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I really don't want to divulge my answer, because that guy back there is going to steal it from me.

BURKHARDT (on camera): You have some cheating Christians in here?

(voice-over) If the honor system doesn't work here, for goodness sakes, where can it work?

(on camera) How come you guys are so good?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jesus.

BURKHARDT (voice-over): The man who comes up with the questions is David Thornton, a Baptist preacher, a kind of evangelical Alex Trebek. He doesn't have a problem with the fact that beer is served here, though not to this crowd. THORNTON: I personally don't agree with beer and stuff like that. But the way I look at it is, Jesus, he didn't go hang out in the church houses. He went out where everybody was at.

BURKHARDT: And on Wednesday night, everybody is at Schroeder's Deli, fighting it out for the grand prize, a $30 food gift certificate. On this night, it was won by the Roper (ph) family, thanks to Laura Ann, who broke a tie by reciting all 39 books of the Old Testament.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs.

Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BURKHARDT: Amen there. Thank you, Bruce Burkhardt, reporting tonight in the state of Georgia.

In a moment, some late heat night laughs when we close out our show, right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: And by now, you've probably heard of that huge storm system hitting the middle part of the country. Only late night politics could be mixed with the comics and get a few laughs. Here's a listen now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAY LENO, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW": Back east, freezing. Your folks, right? Freezing in Philadelphia. Oh, snow everywhere. In fact New York City, it was 5 below Hillary. That's how bad it was. Oh, that's cold.

It was so cold in New York, Bernard Kerik got into bed with his own wife. That's how cold.

Actually, San Francisco also. It was so cold in San Francisco, Barry Bonds got in a snowball fight, killed three people.

DAVID LETTERMAN, HOST, "LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN": On the International Space Station they are running low on food. On the International Space Station. Isn't that amazing?

And they asked Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld about this. And he said, "Well, you go with the food you got, not with the food you want."

There's more trouble for this Donald Rumsfeld. His autopen malfunctioned and began signing the name Lemony Snicket. (END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: Dave and Jay closing out our show again tonight.

All right. Tonight, the results of our "PZN Meter." We asked you earlier tonight the following question: have you ever snooped on a loved one's computer use? Twenty-eight percent admit to it; 72 percent say no.

Results are not scientific, just a flash poll that we're conducting online.

A quick update now before we go. Contract International now denying reports that it's stopping work in Iraq because of dangerous conditions there. The company says it's ending one project due to expenses but it's keeping personnel on the ground there.

Tomorrow, two stories of two soldiers. That's tomorrow evening here on PAULA ZAHN NOW. I'm Bill Hemmer. Thanks for watching tonight. See you again tomorrow morning on "AMERICAN MORNING," 7 a.m. Eastern Time.

"LARRY KING LIVE" is next. Have a good night.

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