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On the Story

Correspondents Discuss Stories Behind the Stories with a Live Audience.

Aired December 03, 2005 - 19:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CAROL LIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Carol Lin in Atlanta. ON THE STORY is straight ahead, but first a look at what's happening right now in the news. Iraq's largest Sunni Muslim party calls for release of four Christian peace activists taken hostage last week. Al Jazeera broadcast a new video that appears to show the hostages.
And the bodies of two children murdered by their father in 2003 and buried by an Ohio highway have finally been identified. Officials announced this hour, Sarah and Philip Gehring died from multiple gunshot wounds.

Brad Pitt files papers to become the adoptive father of Angelina Jolie's two children. The kids are to go by the last name of Jolie Pitt. The acting duo met on the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith last year.

Next, ON THE STORY, CNN reporters give you an inside look at the big week of events, including a congressman's startling decision to resign and his admission that he took bribes from defense contractors. And later, CNN presents winning the war on terrorism, spies, soldiers and cops across Europe share the mistakes they made against terrorists and how the U.S. can learn from them. That's coming up at 8:00 Eastern. That's what's happening right now in the news. I'm Carol Lin. CNN's ON THE STORY starts right now.

ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is CNN and we are ON THE STORY. From the campus of the George Washington University in the heart of the nation's capital, our correspondents bring you the story behind the story they're covering.

Elaine Quijano is on the story of the president's victory plan for Iraq and immigration reform at home.

Ed Henry looks at the $2 million bribery scandal that brought down Congressman Duke Cunningham.

Bob Franken was in court this week for the latest arguments and protests over abortion.

Delia Gallagher talks about the new Vatican rules on homosexuality.

And Internet reporter Jacki Scheckner has her eye on the story online. For Grateful Dead fans, what's fair and legal about downloading music?

Welcome. I'm Ali Velshi. I'm on the story this week of how world AIDS day was a fresh reminder of how some people here in the United States are still at risk. With me here in the studio, Elaine Quijano, Bob Franken and Ed Henry. All of our correspondents will be taking questions from our studio audience that is drawn from visitors, college students and people across Washington.

Well, protesters were back outside the United States Supreme Court this week. Inside, the justices heard their first abortion case in five years. National correspondent Bob Franken was on the story and here's his reporter's notebook.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Covering the Supreme Court is sometimes the most challenging assignment there is, because there's the very complex law, often times, often issues by their very nature complex. It is the job of a television journalist to try and take those issues and make sure that they are adequately, properly covered while at the same time speaking in plain English so the person who is watching can understand it.

Abortion has become an issue that almost defines the Supreme Court. You have a different Supreme Court coming on, so the future of Roe versus Wade is an unknown. The passions are very high over that. And that is in stark contrast to what's going to be going on inside the Supreme Court building where of course on purpose, the passions are very, very restrained, the intensity very, very formal. The contrast is always so remarkable. People who feel passion for an issue will be demonstrating, but inside on purpose, it is the strict enforcement of protocol. The passion is not supposed to be there. This is the competition of ideas in the legal arena and although the battles can be quite intense, they are so polite that oftentimes the intensity is camouflaged.

VELSHI: Bob Franken and I am not going to pretend that we are all interchangeable. We're absolutely not. Not of us are interchangeable with Bob Franken who's been covering tough stories in this town since the Grateful Dead were a big hit. Bob, that is - that's a tough beat because you kind of have to know the stories. You have to know where to get the information from and there hasn't been a case on abortion around for a while.

FRANKEN: No, but the issue is there and of course it is constantly under discussion, particularly now when you're going to see a significant change in the Supreme Court we already have with the new chief justice and then there's the debate whether Samuel Alito is going to be there. But abortion is one of those issues that has its legal components and as I was mentioning a couple of minutes ago, they can be complex. They can be based on very arcane law, but the truth of the matter is, this is an issue that is fundamental. It is passionate. We're talking after all about the meaning of life and death. So this is it's just quite remarkable to see the contrast between something so, so angry, so intense and then the very academic discussion that goes on in the court.

ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What about the dance outside the court or the courthouse, the Supreme Court there, where you're trying to do these live shots. You've got protesters on both sides behind you waving signs, shouting. How do you keep your concentration? What's that like?

FRANKEN: Well, that's not hard, because I've heard just about everything that (INAUDIBLE) What is so funny, what is so interesting to me is that you see the same people wherever you are. I was in Florida. I covered Terri Schiavo, which was an issue in this general paradigm and the very same people who were outside the court had taken the road show, if I can say that, to Florida and then came back again.

HENRY: Professional protesters.

FRANKEN: Professional protesters in this particular arena.

VELSHI: Let's see if we've got a question in the audience. Go ahead. What's your name and where are you from?

QUESTION: Hi. My name's Ashley Kaiser and I'm a student at George Washington University. I was wondering if Alito is nominated, if his nomination is accepted, what kind of implications will that have for future abortion cases like the one heard this week?

FRANKEN: Well, that's up for debate. The people who support the right to an abortion believe that Samuel Alito, because of what he's written before, can be expected ultimately to vote to overturn Roe versus Wade. Those on the other side are saying that that may not necessarily be the case, that he is somebody who believes in the legal precedent. They call that stare decisis (ph). Quite frankly I think a lot of people are convinced that he will at least try and inhibit the right to abortion.

VELSHI: We got another question there. Go ahead. What's your name and where are you from?

QUESTION: Hi. I'm Stephanie from (INAUDIBLE) Pennsylvania. How has the coverage differed from the three most recent Supreme Court nominees?

VELSHI: That's a good question.

FRANKEN: The coverage of course in the first case was on the man, of a man, John Roberts, who clearly was on top of his game. There are very few people who number one, know the law as well as he does and number two, was so articulate about that, a man who was unquestionably qualified and quite frankly had an easy run through. In the case of the second nomination, the president's former lawyer, she was pretty much presented to be out of her element and very quickly was pulled back quite frankly to the embarrassment of both her and the president. Now you have Samuel Alito. He too is considered academically qualified. But there's going to be a very clear cut debate over Roe versus Wade.

HENRY: It was interesting. Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter this week was comparing what happened with Harriet Miers and called it a black mark in the Senate that she never got an up or down vote, that she was run out on a rail as he put it and he said he's starting to fear that maybe Samuel Alito is facing that. He said he doesn't think the nomination is in trouble, but I think it was maybe a little bit of a warning sign to the White House that this abortion issue is blowing up in the Alito nomination and it's something they've got to deal with.

FRANKEN: Let us not forget the significance of all this. These are lifetime appointments and it should be very, very hard to accomplish getting confirmed.

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I was going ask, now the issue of abortion obviously is so divisive. It's been around for a long time now. Is there a shift? Is there sort of a change in the dynamics about the way these two sides are presenting their arguments now. You talk about the sort of professional protesters are on this issue, the right to life issue. But is there are you sensing any kind of change in the way that they're trying to go about making their argument?

FRANKEN: You know, I don't, but there should be. Because what I hear are the same bumper sticker slogans, the same sound bytes that we've been hearing since the Roe versus Wade decision. However, the realities, the technological realities, the advances in medicine, a lot of people believe will make Roe absolute no matter if it's overturned.

HENRY: This was really one of our first glimpses at Chief Justice Roberts new on the bench. Did we get any insights at all, I'm curious?

FRANKEN: Well, he certainly is confident. He's certainly in the particular case was asking questions on both sides of the issue, trying to present himself as even handed. He is a justice of the Supreme Court of course. He has a vote, but he's also the chief justice and he has to keep everybody else in line and that sometimes considered like herding cats.

VELSHI: We're going to stay on the court beat. One Republican congressman this week ended months of denials by admitting that yes in fact, he did take bribes. Ed Henry's on that story and he'll be back with his reporter's notebook after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: CNN is on the story here at the George Washington University. A senior congressman stepped up to the microphones this week and began to weep as he admitted that he was a crook, that he had taken millions of dollars in bribes. Congressional correspondent Ed Henry has been following the case of Congressman Randy Duke Cunningham, Republican of California. Check out Ed Henry's reporter notebook.

HENRY: Sometimes you have to be a little more aggressive. Sometimes you've got to go the extra mile to get the story. Back in the summer when a lot of this first surfaced, I chased him down in the basement of the Capitol and was trying to get answers from him and I remember at one point, repeatedly asking him does this (INAUDIBLE) Do you think it passes the smell test, sir? Are you thinking about stepping down? Are you going to step down?

He got onto an elevator and laughed at me. Fast forward a couple of months, breakdown, choking back tears, resign after pleading guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes. What a dramatic development. It's something you struggle with. Is this gotcha journalism? You're chasing down a congressman in the basement of the Capitol. But after a lot of contemplation, we decided to do it because it's just hard to be (ph) journalism. The public has every right to know the answer to those questions and we as journalists damn well better ask those questions.

VELSHI: A lot of lessons to learn out of this one from Ed Henry. One of them is don't laugh at Ed Henry. We have a question from the audience. Your name and where you're from.

QUESTION: My name is Nepa (ph). I'm from Bangkok, Thailand. The question is, how did you find out or how did you get information about the bribes?

HENRY: The story first broke in California at some newspapers and I think Copley News Service was on it and it started spreading around the country. We were one of the first television networks to really pursue it, the first ones I believe to get Congressman Cunningham or one of the first to get him on camera like that and to pursue it. And it really built out of a grand jury investigation in California and it's really a tragic story because this is somebody who was a Vietnam War hero. He's somebody who shot down MIGs and came back to San Diego and ran the flight school there and his book became and his life became the basis of the movie "Top Gun" with Tom Cruise. And then to see him crying outside the courthouse after being laid low like that and admitting he had disgraced his office, had lied to his family. It's almost a Shakespearian tragedy.

VELSHI: Your name and where you're from.

QUESTION: (INAUDIBLE) and I'm interested to know whether other congressmen are actually nervous about similar corruption cases emerging against them.

HENRY: Oh, yeah, in fact, in the Cunningham case alone, there's a lot of speculation that he's now cooperating with prosecutors. He plead guilty this week to two felonies. He could turn on some of his colleagues, number one and number two, there's also this investigation of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff (ph). Several members of Congress, Republicans have been drawn in, but also some Democrats are facing some scrutiny and I think that democrats are pushing to basically go through and say that there's a culture of corruption in the Republican Congress and the Democrats are trying to use that heading into the midterm elections in '06 to say, throw the bums out. But sometimes we see in the polling data that when Congress is under the microscope with all of these scandals, whether it's the House bank scandal or whatever, people end up getting upset with both parties, not just the party in power. But Republicans are a little more nervous because they are the ones in power. They're the ones with more to lose. I can tell you, between the corruption scandals, Iraq, maybe gas prices which are coming down now, maybe they're not as nervous. There is some concern on the Republican side about this being combustible and some of these issues coming together to maybe throw them out.

FRANKEN: We all to do this. We all have to sort of stick our faces where people don't want and certainly that was a case in point. Do you as I do, each time, get a little bit apprehensive about it?

HENRY: Absolutely and I was saying earlier to a colleague, sometimes you watch a tape a couple months later and you kind of wince, like, boy, maybe I went a little far there. This is one case where I felt like I wasn't trying to showboat. I was really trying - we had tried the back story (ph) so we had been trying to get Congressman Cunningham with a sit down interview for a long time and he was not doing interviews. And when that story was bubbling out there a few months ago, it's time for him to answer the questions. And I think, it was nothing gotcha about it. But there are other cases where clearly you wrestle with it. But in this case, it was something clearly in the end. He took $2.4 million in bribes, so I think it stood the test of time.

VELSHI: But that's half the story is that the story was right. The other half of the story and I think you all deal with this and I deal with it as a business reporter, do you worry that the next time you need an interview with someone else, they're going to remember that you got Duke Cunningham.

HENRY: No question that people see that tape, if they didn't see it the first time, they're seeing it now. They're saying oh, what's he up to.

VELSHI: Here comes Ed.

HENRY: Who are nervous and I don't mean about me, but just in general, there are congressmen in both parties I want to stress as I said before, not just Republicans. They're in power, but there are Democrats who are nervous about this investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff and they look at that, maybe they think, you know, they've got to be a little more careful with me. But I think as long as you're professional and fair about it, asking tough questions is what we do.

VELSHI: Here's a tough question from the audience. Sir, your name and where you're from.

QUESTION: I'm Will from New Hampshire. I'm wondering, what do you think the odds are of a Senate filibuster by the Democrats over Judge Alito?

HENRY: An educated guess is that the Democrats are going to do a lot of saber rattling on this, but they're going to walk right up to the edge, the precipice in the filibuster and not go through with it. I think it would hand the president a very strong weapon, to have the Democrats filibustering his Supreme Court nominee. I'm not sure there would be a lot of public sentiment for that. I could be wrong and they may end up doing a filibuster. But I think that right now, the president is in a politically perilous situation. And when you read a lot of the data, people think -- the polling data people think it's the president's choice. He won the election. As long as the person is qualified, they don't necessarily believe in filibuster on ideological grounds. So the Democrats, even they acknowledge that even ones that are potentially opposed to Alito, that he's very well qualified. This is not a Harriet Miers situation. I think that's going to make it that much harder for them to launch a filibuster. So nobody knows for sure. They don't even know for sure, but my best guess is, they're going to walk up to the edge of a filibuster and not do it.

VELSHI: Ed, thanks so much. Ed Henry was honored actually this week by the National Press Foundation with the Everett McKinley Dirksen award for distinguished coverage of Congress and we want to congratulate him for that.

Still on the political beat, did President Bush make his case for victory in Iraq? Elaine Quijano is back with that story right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: CNN is on the story. President Bush was grabbing headlines this week, trying to get back in front of the two bigger issues of his administration, Iraq and immigration. Elaine Quijano was traveling with Mr. Bush in Texas, in Arizona and in Colorado as he talked about immigration. Well, those rush, rush, wait, wait jet across the country presidential trips can be tough. Have a look at Elaine's reporter's notebook.

QUIJANO: We left Phoenix and were supposed to have been here by 10:00 a.m. We didn't get here until 10:30 Eastern and the president in another, let's see it's almost 11:00 now. He's supposed to start this tour in about 10 minutes or so, but we're supposed to board the bus in another 15.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's good to be back in El Paso.

QUIJANO: The logistical challenges can be daunting and most times what we like to do is to be in place before the president ever gets to an event and have ourselves situated so that we can watch him come in. We can watch the event and we can then file our report. We have people on the ground here who will report back onto the various networks, but at the same time, as the correspondent on the trip, it's amazing how much you feel like you're not really in the loop 100 percent of the time.

Earlier today, he was in El Paso, Texas as you mentioned, the second day of a push on the issue of immigration. We have a job to do and so it's important for us to be able to be in place when the president is traveling.

VELSHI: Elaine Quijano knows that I'm a big fan of what she does, but one of the things that's interesting is that you do this a lot. You are prepared to pull the curtain back and show people how you do your job. One of the tough things about what you do and what you have done and what you do is that you depend in many cases, particularly when you're on the plane with the president's entourage, you depend on information that comes from the administration. How do you get to those sources? How do you know they're real? How do you get to people you need to answer your questions?

QUIJANO: Well, it's interesting, because the people that you are in close contact with on a daily basis there at the White House are often the same people who are trapped on these planes with you. So you do get a little bit of a chance to get to know people somewhat outside of the beat itself. But you are limited. At the same time there's only a certain number of doors as we all know that you can knock on, particularly with this administration which is very sensitive in how it deals with the media. But at the same time, half the battle a lot of times as we saw from our notebook is just getting there, is still being able to physically be in place to watch the president. And a lot of times you're in these rooms and your only window to the outside are the monitors in front of you and you don't know if the president has just landed or if the president has just left in his motorcade unless you see it on these little monitors. And I think sometimes that's part of sort of the misperception out there. People think that we're right up next to the president physically and that's just not the case.

VELSHI: Let's go out to the audience and see what people in the audience have to ask. Sir, your name and where you're from.

QUESTION: I'm Matt from Harwich (ph), Massachusetts. I was wondering if you believe that Bush will start to reclaim some credibility with his speech on a national security strategy on Iraq or if this is just a case of a little too little too late.

QUIJANO: Well, certainly, he's going to try. I mean, that's in fact what he's doing. He's got four speeches leading up to the December 15th Iraq election and he's all about talking about progress, in specifics more so in the way of security forces we heard from this past week. Next week, he'll be talking about the economic front, reconstruction. Because from the White House's perspective, they just don't feel that the true message, the true big picture of Iraq has gotten out there. What they think instead, which is true to a large extent, is just grab the headlines or the casualties, these reports every day of U.S. casualties in Iraq, of Iraqi casualties and so this is going to be a concerted effort really, not just the president, but other officials out there, really trying to hit hard in the days and weeks to come.

VELSHI: Your name and where you're from.

QUESTION: Hi. My name's Karen. I'm from, originally from (INAUDIBLE) Pennsylvania. My question is, what is it like reporting on the White House during such trying times for the administration?

QUIJANO: Well, it's an interesting time to be there, there's no doubt about it, because this is a White House that, regardless of where you stand, this White House has been hit with a number of major challenges in just a short period of time. I remember being in Crawford back in August and Bob, you were there as well for a little while, when they had the big story for what seemed like days and even week on end, was the anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan and she was leading these huge demonstrations. Well, that quickly changed and essentially disappeared when hurricane Katrina hit. Everything that shift and so the White House has had to deal, not only with the growing perception that the public's falling support on the Iraq war, but also the idea that the response to hurricane Katrina was not good and also now the White House what we're seeing is trying to turn the conversation to the economy. The president this week sort of ended the week talking about good economic figures out there and on Monday, he's going to be making a speech about the economy as well.

VELSHI: Elaine, thank you for that. Elaine Quijano. As we check off our list of war and peace and other issues, we're going to move to homosexuality, the Catholic priesthood and new rules from the Vatican. Our faith and values correspondent Delia Gallagher is back on that story in a moment. She's in New York. We're in Washington and CNN is elsewhere around the globe. Take a look.

JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Eight agencies say nearly five million people in Malawi will need donated food to fend off malnutrition until the next harvest in April. In the midst of chronic drought and a failed maize crop, this family is reduced to feeding off the land, eating bamboo shoots and termites.

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: (INAUDIBLE) lengthened the time suspected terrorists can be held in custody without a charge and double possible jail sentences for most terrorism-related crimes. The new anti-terror measures sailed through the parliament. Few politicians of any persuasion wanted to be opposing them. But civil rights advocates are not so supportive.

STAN GRANT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: China's mines are the deadliest in the world, nearly 3,000 miners killed in the first half of this year alone. Now another explosion, trapping workers below. The death toll spiraling and it's happened in the same northeastern province already struggling with a toxic spill coursing through its water supply.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Ohio officials have identified the bodies of two children murdered by their father in 2003. Sarah and Philip Gehring were shot to death and buried by a highway.

And Iraq's largest Sunni Muslim party calls for release of four Christian peace activists taken hostage last week. Al Jazeera broadcast new video that appears to show the hostages.

More of ON THE STORY in just a moment.

But first, a look, also, at more news.

Pakistan confirms a top Al Qaeda leader has died in an explosion near the Afghanistan border. But Pakistani officials deny reports an American missile killed Abu Hamza Rabia.

Now, coming up later, a special edition of "CNN PRESENTS," "Winning The War On Terrorism." Spies, soldiers and cops across Europe share the mistakes they made against terrorists and how the U.S. can learn from them. That's at 8:00 Eastern.

That's what's happening in the news right now.

I'm Carol Lin.

Now back to ON THE STORY.

ALI VELSHI, HOST: We are ON THE STORY here at the George Washington University in the heart of the nation's capital.

Well, the Vatican formally released its new document on homosexuality and men studying to be priests.

Our faith and values correspondent and long time observer of the Vatican is ON THE STORY.

Here's Delia's reporter's notebook.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

DELIA GALLAGHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a document which a lot of people were waiting for. People knew it was coming. And so there was already a kind of heightened sense of anticipation about what would be in it.

And I was literally in the office with the rector of the seminary when this document on homosexuality and the seminary came out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a nuanced document.

GALLAGHER: What had started out as just an interview at a seminary sort of exploded into a whole breaking news story.

It was supposed to be released on Tuesday and instead it was released a week earlier, leaked, maybe with the help of somebody at the Vatican, to an Italian news agency.

What there is here is a kind of a reiteration of the Vatican's stance against homosexuality in the seminaries. Surely it is partially due to the whole sex abuse scandal.

You have these hugely opposing viewpoints on this and it's just not an argument that's going to go away.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

VELSHI: Delia Gallagher is in next year.

Delia, those documents looked like they were in Italian.

GALLAGHER: Yes, they were. That's the problem with leaked documents, because the Vatican didn't have time to give us any official translation. So it was leaked a week early and we only have the Italian version. So I'm sort of sitting in the rector's office there in Maryland that you saw, at Mount Saint Mary's Seminary, and this document, we see it on the Internet, it was leaked by an Italian news agency.

And he said well my Italian is a little rusty and, you know, fortunately mine is still pretty fresh. So between the two of us, we were able to translate it and kind of madly. Vatican documents are very difficult to translate. Italian is difficult at the best of times, but the Vatican lingo is even tougher. So we had to do this whole translation first. We had to get that over to CNN, as well.

So there was quite a lot of flurry of activity about this document that was totally unexpected. I mean the last thing you want is a leaked document when you're trying to prepare something that's as delicate an issue as this.

VELSHI: Well, we're going to kick it up a little bit then.

We've got a question from the audience.

Your name, where you're from and any language you want to ask the question in.

TIFFANY: My name is Tiffany.

I'm from Springfield, Virginia.

And I've got a question. What have you found has been the American Catholic Church's response to the Vatican's stand, especially in light of the recent sex abuse scandals?

GALLAGHER: Well, it's interesting, in fact, because the president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops came out just this week, because everybody is giving their reaction now to the document and sort of how are they going to interpret this, because this is a document which is going to depend very much on the interpretation. And it's interesting that the president of that Conference came out and said well, we can interpret this in different ways. It's important to see how the priest lives his life, what he intends to teach.

So they are definitely going for a more nuance interpretation of, you know, the phrases in the document that caused some problem where this idea of "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies." And the essence of the document is that men with "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies" should not be allowed into seminary. And so people are saying well, what exactly comprises "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies?"

Now, if you see the original "Observator Romano," which is the Vatican newspaper in which they printed this document, they provide a commentary for this written by a French priest, but obviously someone whom the Vatican trusted to sort of interpret their document. And they provide a much more narrow definition of what it means and essentially they are saying it's any -- any gay man, really, that wants to enter priesthood should not be allowed to do so.

So there are differing interpretations on this. ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) with the idea that there would be even a leak. You say this document was leaked and yet we are talking about the Vatican. I mean that doesn't happen at all, does it?

GALLAGHER: Yes, it seems strange and, again, it was leaked a week earlier and leaks aren't really something that happen quite often at the Vatican unless somebody wants them to happen. So, I don't know. I do not have any official information about who gave what to whom. But I do know that it -- Vatican documents don't leak all that easily and the Italian news agency that received it, you know, it's quite possible that, look, the Vatican had a lot of pressure on this document. Everybody was waiting for it to come out. Everybody knew the November 29th deadline.

There have been some leaks prior to this, just a couple of phrases, but not the whole document itself. I mean we got the entire document.

So it seems to suggest that perhaps somebody at the Vatican said let's just get it out there and then we'll do the official version a week later and let them have time to sort of settle down.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Delia, when we work in Washington, we complain a lot about the lack of access we get to the principals at the White House, at the Supreme Court, wherever. But I suspect that pales in comparison to the lack of access that you encounter when covering the Vatican.

GALLAGHER: Well, I don't know about that, Bob, actually, because the Vatican, in a funny way, is -- I was going to say informal. By that I mean that it doesn't have all of this sort of top dog security that maybe you're finding at the White House. You know, you can walk up to some of these offices where the priests work and the cardinals work. I mean I'm talking obviously not about access to the pope's apartments, but I'm talking about the offices where the cardinals work at the Vatican.

You can walk into those offices and talk to the -- talk to the secretaries and talk to the people. You can also stand outside in the square, in St. Peter's Square and they're always walking back and forth.

So, in fact, there's a kind of casual access that you can have. It's also a very small place, so you would meet them, you know, here and there.

And so I called a number of them on this document. The problem, of course, for a journalist is they will talk to you sort of off the record and let you know things, but they won't talk to you on the record and they won't go on camera. So it doesn't make it so easy to report on.

VELSHI: Hey, Delia, like Elaine Quijano and Bob Franken and Ed Henry. And, you know, Ed talked about a story where he had to confront someone. Everything you deal with, every story you deal with is political or has different sides to it.

How do you navigate that? How do you always -- how do you report the story that you know everybody is going to have an opinion on?

GALLAGHER: Well, with great caution. And sometimes afterward I'm thinking about it two and three times. Did I say exactly the right word?

On the other hand, what can you do? It's a delicate topic, and homosexuality, the Catholic Church and the two of them together, the kind of explosion. And we've found people with lots of different opinions on the issue. And we tried to present one side and the other side, as it were, although I think there are many sides to this.

But we tried to present, you know, just let people speak for themselves and let a gay Catholic priest say what he thinks the effect of this document is going to be and let a seminary rector say how he thanks it's going to play out.

So you just let them speak.

VELSHI: Delia Gallagher, our faith and values correspondent.

Always good to see you.

Thank you for being with us and we look forward to seeing you back at the ranch in next year.

And I'm back in just a moment about World AIDS Day and a reminder that the disease is still on the march here at home.

Stay with us ON THE STORY.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FRANKEN: We are ON THE STORY.

And Ali Velshi, in addition to his usual business news duties, filed a report Thursday, World AIDS Day. His focus, how poverty and other factors contribute to high rates of infection among African- American women.

Here's Ali's Reporter's Notebook.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

VELSHI: As somebody who primarily focuses on business stories, I'm not usually involved in getting people to tell very, very personal stories about their illnesses and tragedy in their lives. So that's always tough for me.

I worked with an excellent producer who really dug and dug and dug until we found someone who can put a human face on this story for us.

(voice-over): Ida Bither Smith (ph) remembers her shock the day she took a routine blood test and found out she had HIV.

IDA BITHER SMITH: You made a mistake on my name when I walked in here, so I know you've got the wrong person.

VELSHI: But it was true.

(on camera): The toughest part about telling this story is how we focused on a particular population.

The lack of good access to health care, domestic and sexual abuse and lack of adequate awareness about sexually transmitted diseases make the HIV threat worse among African-American women.

We could have told a thousand or 10,000 different stories and different angles about AIDS and each of them would have been as legitimate as the next.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

VELSHI: And this one was difficult, because it's not an area of my expertise. We all have our areas. I actually started off with the idea that it was going to be a story about AIDS and business and what contribution business was making to dealing with the AIDS epidemic in other countries of the world. And this is what the story became.

It was an interesting and challenging experience.

FRANKEN: And very different. You usually deal with corporations. You usually deal with numbers. You were dealing with a story about as personal as it can get.

VELSHI: Yes.

FRANKEN: It must have been almost a culture shock for you.

VELSHI: It was. It was difficult to understand it. That's a different way of doing things. It's a different way of looking at a story. And we don't -- a lot of reporters do make their daily lives out of telling stories about people. We have a different expertise and we tend to focus on situations and things that are developing and both sides of a story.

How do you take two sides to a story of a woman who's got AIDS? It's a tough and interesting story to have done.

I think we've got a question out here in the audience.

Where are you from?

GABRIEL ANDINO: Hi.

My name is Gabriel Andino (ph) and I am from El Salvador.

My question is it seems like nowadays there is a day for everything. And I always wonder how successful it is in actually reaching the people in Third World countries where they don't really have TVs.

How successful do you think the World AIDS Day was in reaching countries like Nicaragua, where, you know, AIDS is spreading, but in a very silent manner and people don't really have the financial means to see the news coverage, either from CNN or their own local newspapers?

VELSHI: Ironically, that's exactly the story -- that's a big part of the story that we originally set out to tell. Because while we think here that American corporations and multinational corporations and governments give money, in some cases, to subsidize the drugs that help treat AIDS and HIV in other countries, the fact is probably the biggest impediment to stopping the spread of AIDS in the world, as it was in America, is the lack of education about how it's spread, the lack of training, the lack of preventive measures.

That is a major, major, major problem. And the aid organizations we spoke to said yes, we need the money. Yet, we need cheaper drugs. But in the end, unless you have clinics and training and education in schools and the ability to tell these populations, often rural populations or even uneducated populations, how AIDS is spread, it's not going to stop.

QUIJANO: Ali, I wanted to ask about some of the challenges, maybe, in choosing to focus on one, not just one individual, but one sort of group of people, because that can often be tricky and you, you know, you kind of have to navigate some tricky territory there.

VELSHI: Yes.

QUIJANO: Did you find that to be especially difficult? And how did you and your producer sort of come together to make that piece come together?

VELSHI: We took, I think, extra caution in saying to ourselves what we don't want to do in telling the story of how HIV and AIDS is more prevalent in the African-American community, particularly amongst women, we didn't want to create or add to any prejudices or preconceptions that might already be out there. We wanted to try and tell the story honestly, using the people who were telling the story.

But, yes, that's absolutely tough. It weighs on you and you want to make sure. And I'm not sure we succeeded and I only hope we do. The only benefit to doing a story that you're not familiar with doing is you get better at making sure you do hit that -- you hit that mark all the time.

But it's no different, I think, then the struggles you have, or Bob, you have, or Delia has talking about the church and homosexuality. You've just always got to be balancing what you think is fair.

FRANKEN: Let me just -- let me just get really inside our process. You've mentioned your producer and one of the tightest relationships in this business is a collaboration between the correspondent and the producer, particularly on an undertaking like this. Let me ask you to describe that kind of relationship that you had.

VELSHI: I -- we have producers, we all do, who are behind the scenes, and yet as committed, more committed, and, in many cases, have more expertise and contacts and ability to research. I depended very, very heavily on my producer to actually make sure that our facts were right, we got the right people, we had other people. And she said look, this is the best way to tell this story. And you have to trust your producer in this business, and those relationships go a long way in making sure that the stuff we do to succeed when we are on TV actually works.

So it's a good point to bring up. Without the producers, we don't exist here.

Straight ahead, we are ON THE STORY online with our Internet reporter, Jacki Schechner. The Grateful Dead have left the stage, but they haven't left the Web.

Jacki is back in a moment on how a dispute about the band and downloading music has fans firing up their computers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(AUDIO CLIP FROM GRATEFUL DEAD SONG)

VELSHI: That's the Grateful Dead.

We are ON THE STORY online.

The Grateful Dead was around even before the Internet. Who knew what a big role that band would play in the Internet?

How many of you here download music? All right.

Let's take this over to our Internet reporter, Jacki Schechner, to tell us what the connection is between this old band and some new problems on the Internet -- Jacki.

JACKI SCHECHNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Those people all download legally, right, Ali?

VELSHI: I'm hoping so.

SCHECHNER: Yes. See, there you go.

Well, here's what's happening.

Of course we know about music online and there's been a lot of controversy about who owns the rights to what.

Well, Grateful Dead fans, of all people, have been trading music online for quite some time. And this week, the music went away. Here's what happened. There is this Web site right here called Archive.org. And they have allowed Grateful Dead fans to put the music online and they've been trading it, downloading it, listening to it. It's been up for quite some time. There's a huge audience for it.

All of a sudden, without any explanation, the music went away. There was a note posted that people weren't going to be able to have access to it anymore.

Well, that had Grateful Dead fans, or Deadheads, outraged online, of all places. There were three separate petitions that circulated. They had some 6,000 signatures at last count. And it caused a little bit of a stir, a little bit of mainstream media attention. And all of a sudden Grateful Dead merchandising -- this is the business arm of the Grateful Dead -- seemed to have changed their mind.

And a couple of days later, the music came back up.

So what we want to talk about is music and the Internet and a classic band like the Grateful Dead and how all of this meshes together.

So what I'm going to do is bring in Christian Crumlish, who's a blogger.

As far as he and I can tell, he is the very first Grateful Dead blogger. And I want to talk to him.

He's joining us via Web cam from Oakland, California.

Christian, welcome.

Thank you for joining us.

What was your reaction to this when you first heard about it? And are you surprised what a huge story this became online?

CHRISTIAN CRUMLISH, UNCLE JOHN'S BLOG: Well, my reaction was disappointment. We had gotten used to the idea that Grateful Dead music was going to flow freely on the Internet. I was kind of surprised, though, that it became such a big story and it spread so quickly and got picked up by the major media in the course of just a couple of days.

SCHECHNER: Now, this was a problem that originated on the Internet and was solved on the Internet. It's really sort of unique.

Does that interest you at all?

Do you follow those sorts of trends?

CRUMLISH: Well, sure. I'm very interested in how online community happens and the effects that it can have on the real world.

VELSHI: Yes, Christian, you know what I want to know is Jacki has described this as a bloodless coup, as it were, this uprising that was solved on the Web.

Is this unique to the Internet? Did the Internet help this problem get solved? Could this repeat itself elsewhere?

CRUMLISH: Well, I do -- I'm not sure. You know, I think what happened was that it got solved very quickly because of the Internet reaction. And I think there was a sort of a public relations miscalculation that there were some people probably inside the Dead organization that were maybe not all that savvy to the Internet. And they made a decision that looked like probably a sound business decision, that they're going to be selling songs to download online and they should just sort of make sure that you can't also get that same stuff for free.

That -- almost any business would probably make that decision. But I think that they underestimated the expectations of the audience that had built up over the years of all this online trading and sharing. And they kind of, you know, suddenly people are comparing them to Metallica, who, famously, got upset about, you know, Napster distributing their music online.

SCHECHNER: Christian, thank you so much for taking the time.

And, Ali, now that I know that I can go listen to the music on the archive, I think that's what I'm going to do with my Friday night.

VELSHI: Jacki, this Internet thing is going to be huge.

SCHECHNER: It's going to pick up any day now, I can see it coming.

VELSHI: Our Internet reporter, Jacki Schechner, following the story online.

My colleagues and I are back here in a moment, but with what we're expecting next week ON THE STORY.

Here's some more Dead for you.

(AUDIO CLIP FROM GRATEFUL DEAD SONG)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: All right, let's take a look ahead ON THE STORY.

We'll see what my colleagues are working on next week.

I hope you're working on a contract that gets you paid per minute you're on air.

What's on the books?

QUIJANO: Well, President Bush will talk about the economy once again Monday. He'll head to North Carolina. But then on Wednesday, another big war on terror speech. The White House in doing so saying the president is going to look at the economic reconstruction, the progress going on on that front, they say, in Iraq.

VELSHI: You, Bob?

FRANKEN: And one never knows, does one?

But the one thing that I want to pay particular attention to next week is the possibility of developments in the CIA leak story. That's about to come to fruition once again, I think.

What about you?

VELSHI: And that would be headlines.

You know, the same thing. In business one never knows.

But the underlying theme right now is how is the economy doing, where are oil prices going and whether consumers are getting out and doing their shopping, which is what we're going to let you all in the audience do.

Thank you so much for being with us.

Thanks to my colleagues and our audience here at the George Washington University and you for joining us ON THE STORY.

We're back each week on Saturday night and on Sunday afternoon.

Straight ahead, a check on what's making news right now.

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