Violence in Iraq Continues Despite Shaky Cease-Fire; Pentagon Extends Combat Tours; FBI, CIA Heads Testify Before 9/11 Panel
Aired April 14, 2004 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again, everyone. We wade somewhat uncomfortably tonight into that inner section of private lives of public people. We say uncomfortably not because we don't think there are times when the private lives of public people are news. Clearly there are such times. It's just that it isn't very pleasant stuff.The sexual orientation of the vice president's daughter is news because gay rights are an important social issue facing the country and her father helps make policy.In tonight's case when the children of Randall Terry, the anti- abortion activist, the anti-gay rights activist, the anti-divorce activist, when those children say not all was as it seemed in their famous father's house, that too becomes news, not the war in Iraq sort of news, big news, but news still and uncomfortably so. So, we'll deal with that tonight.But first we'll deal with the other, larger matters. The whip begins in Iraq where the violence continues despite a shaky cease- fire. CNN's Jim Clancy with the watch, a headline Jim.
JIM CLANCY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Evidence tonight, Aaron, that at least some of the insurgents battling U.S. Marines and battering the cease-fire in Fallujah do not want a negotiated settlement. Two assassination attempts take aim at the man sent to mediate.
BROWN: Jim, thank you.On to the Pentagon and a decision to extend the combat tours in Iraq, Jamie McIntyre there again tonight, Jamie a headline.
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, the last time the Pentagon extended combat tours for troops in Iraq it promised it would limit the time in the war zone to one year. Today, they admit that the way things are going in Iraq that's a promise they can't keep.
BROWN: Thank you. We'll get to you in a moment.Washington next, the 9/11 hearings, the FBI and the CIA in the hot seat for the second straight day, compelling stuff, Kelli Arena covered, Kelli the headline.
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the head of both the FBI and CIA told the 9/11 commission that changes do need to be made but, Aaron, both were adamant that creating a new domestic intelligence agency is not the answer.
BROWN: We'll deal with that tonight too. Kelli, thank you, back to you and the rest shortly.Also coming up on the program tonight butting heads on live TV. The American military at war with Arab media covering Iraq. They are lying, say the Americans. They are killing civilians, say the Arab reporters.And a twist on our love affair with the storytelling power of the still photo. This time we focus on art for art's sake and the pictures are just as cool.And later, like it or not, the rooster pops by and so do your morning papers, all that and more in the hour ahead.We begin tonight again in Iraq where U.S. troops are still coming under attack, where one of four Italian hostages has been executed. The men were shown yesterday at a videotape broadcast on the Arab cable network Al-Jazeera. Today, Italy's ambassador to Qatar confirmed the death of one of the men after viewing a videotape of the execution. That tape, too, was sent to Al-Jazeera, which said it was too gruesome to broadcast.The network said along with the tape came a statement from a group calling itself the Mujahedeen Brigade. In it, the group said, the other three hostages will be killed one at a time until Italy meets its demands, including pulling 3,000 Italian troops out of Iraq.Besides the Italians, six other hostages remain captives tonight, 13 others are missing this as U.S. troops continue to come under attack. At least one American soldier died in combat today. In Fallujah, a truce is holding, at least technically speaking for now at least.Here again, CNN's Jim Clancy.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CLANCY (voice-over): As the fragile on again off again cease- fire in Fallujah was extended 48 hours, the Iraqi Governing Council revealed its negotiator had come under attack.
HAMID ALKIFAEY, SPOKESMAN, IRAQI GOVERNING COUNCIL: There was an assassination attempt or two assassination attempts on his life by the terrorists of course. The aim is to, you know, kill him and kill any hopes of ending this crisis.
CLANCY: The assassination attempts by gunmen inside the city occurred earlier this week. The key sticking point in the talks getting those now controlling Fallujah to lay down their arms and leave.
ADNAN PACHACHI, MEMBER OF
GOVERNING COUNCIL: They are afraid if they left Fallujah they would be arrested right away and of course they would not leave without their weapons.
CLANCY: Wednesday in Fallujah, Marines sandbagged their lines and replenished supplies but it is unclear how long they will hold these positions and wait for stalled talks to produce a peaceful solution. Iraqis watching the security situation told CNN there are increasing suspicions Fallujah has been used as a base of operations for foreign terrorists.Despite widespread fears, suicide attacks that killed our wounded hundreds of Iraqis two months ago were not repeated in Shia Muslim commemorations last weekend, the difference, U.S. Marines had surrounded Fallujah and the foreign fighters and former regime sympathizers were trapped.Also trapped radical Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr whose armed militia overran police stations and government buildings from Baghdad to Basra last week. A spokesman for al-Sadr admitted Wednesday that the leader of the al- Mehdi Army had dropped demands for U.S. troops to pull back from around the city of Najaf and put his case instead in the hands of religious leaders in hopes of preventing his capture or death.
CLANCY (on camera): There are some Iraqis who want the coalition to keep up the pressure on al-Sadr and on Fallujah. There's a sense that both have been longstanding sources of insecurity in Iraq that, if not addressed now, will only come back to create more problems in the future.Jim Clancy, CNN, Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Although there's no single answer for what ails the mission in Iraq in concrete terms, it amounts to manpower and money to a great extent. In regard to the second, a highly respected military analyst said today the price tag is growing. Tony Cordesman predicts the president will have to ask the Congress for an additional $70 billion this year. "We have to face this reality," said Cordesman, referring to the president's news conference "and we did not face it last night," which leaves the manpower part of the equation. Last night the president alluded to it. Tomorrow the secretary of defense is expected to make it official.Again from the Pentagon tonight, CNN's Jamie McIntyre.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE (voice-over): The last time the Pentagon extended combat tours in Iraq back in November it promised to limit service in the war zone to one year.
LT. GEN. NORTON SCHWARTZ, JOINT STAFF OPERATIONS DIRECTOR: The principle that we are working to here is alert early to provide predictability and make sure that families, employers and others have a sense of ground truth.
MCINTYRE: But with counterinsurgency operations raging in Fallujah and perhaps soon in Najaf, the Pentagon can't afford to keep its promise. Some 20,000 U.S. troops, including the 1st Armored Division based in Germany and the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment based in Fort Polk, Louisiana will have to stay three more months.That will keep 135,000 American troops in Iraq instead of drawing down to 115,000 as the Pentagon planned. It's tough on the troops, tougher on their families.
LAVONDA WOODRING, WIFE OF KENNETH WOODRING: He called and said, Lavonda I didn't want to call you yesterday because I knew it was Easter and I wanted to wait until today but they've told us we have been extended.
MCINTYRE: Lavonda Woodring's husband is a military policeman, a National Guard volunteer. When another soldier from the same North Carolina unit, Staff Sergeant Steve Lillard gave his wife the news she started a petition drive to get them home.
VOICE OF LEE LILLARD, WIFE OF STAFF SGT. STEVE LILLARD: This came as quite a blow because my husband has been gone from home since March of 2003 and he is National Guard and I consider that, as everyone else does, our weekend warriors, our part-time soldiers.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE: Asked about last year's promise to limit time in the combat zone to one year, a senior Pentagon official said today we meant it when we said it. Another official quickly added, after all this is war -- Aaron.
BROWN: Do they express confidence that the numbers they are sending in now are the high end numbers they will need?
MCINTYRE: Well, they seem to feel that. They say all along that whatever General Abizaid says he needs he will get and they're already making plans in case they have to replace these 20,000 extra troops three months from now when they come home. They're looking around to identify other units that have not yet been alerted to have them ready to go in case commanders insist they still need the extra troops this summer.
BROWN: Jamie, just a quick one. Are there certain specialties they need right now?
MCINTYRE: Well, it's mostly infantry troops, combat infantry troops.
BROWN: OK.
MCINTYRE: Military police, that sort of thing.BROWN: Got it Jamie, Jamie McIntyre our Senior Pentagon Correspondent.We're joined again tonight by Rod Nordland who is "Newsweek's" Baghdad Bureau Chief, a friend of the program we like to think. We're always pleased to see him safe and sound and we see him both today. Just generally things a little calmer over the last day or so?
ROD NORDLAND, "NEWSWEEK" BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: Yes, things have been a lot calmer the last couple of days and I think it's directly a result of the lack of combat operations or offensive operations in Fallujah and also the standoff in Najaf looks like it may be heading to some kind of political conclusion.
BROWN: Rod, is there unspoken or perhaps spoken and we haven't heard it, an acknowledgement that force has not gotten it done that force is not the answer here?
NORDLAND: Well, there are two things going on. They realize they need more U.S. troops mainly in the south I think because it was clear that coalition partners weren't able to do the job when a very small number of militants were able to take over several cities briefly and so they needed more troops there.But the other thing and they aren't acknowledging it publicly is that they realize that further attacks on Fallujah, especially perhaps on Muqtada al-Sadr in the south, will just inflame public opinion here even more and we saw it especially last weekend. The results of that were almost on the verge of a kind of general uprising and I think they want to avoid that.
BROWN: And is that because, and we're going to deal with this a little later in the program too, is that because of the way the story is being reported by, principally by Arab media or is simply the fact that these are very full, angry attacks going on by the Americans?
NORDLAND: It's a bit of both. I think even without the Arab media there would have been a reaction but the Arab media has been incendiary. They've been publishing accounts of hundreds of civilian deaths and Iraqis are asking, you know, are four American lives worth hundreds of innocent Iraqi lives?And they see pictures all the time of babies and children and women injured and killed in Fallujah. We have no way of verifying the kind of numbers coming out of Fallujah. None of the western press can get in there, so how accurate these reports are it's hard to say but Iraqis fervently believe them.
BROWN: That's part of the problem I think generally for all of us involved in trying to report the story and certainly the number of Iraqi casualties is part of the story and there are lots of numbers thrown out there and it is almost literally impossible to verify any of them isn't it?
NORDLAND: It is really hard and we've had people working for us who go to the hospitals in Fallujah and so on but the information there is suspect. Partly the problem is a lot of Iraqis when they're killed don't take -- they don't take their loved ones to hospitals and so one. They bury them right way, so getting a real fix on how many injured civilians there are is hard to say.Certainly there are some but certainly it's also true that the insurgents are using civilians as shields. They have been fighting from mosques and from other places where they're likely to -- any kind of return fire is going to cause civilian casualties. Whether or not there are hundreds of them we just have no way of knowing.
BROWN: I saw one report today there's an Iranian delegation in the country that's gotten involved in the negotiations somehow. Are they welcomed? How did this happen?
NORDLAND: It's extraordinary. Apparently, they were invited by the Americans and certainly they had to have at least American acquiescence to even come. I think it's a good sign. It's a sign that they're willing to find ways to negotiate their way out of further trouble in Najaf.And I think it's generally recognized now that attacking Muqtada al-Sadr directly on, even if there's an arrest warrant they have to execute, attacking him is just going to further make him much more popular and make his cause that much more popular.
BROWN: Rod, it's good to see you safe. We'll talk again soon. Thank you.
NORDLAND: Pleasure.
BROWN: Rod Nordland, the Baghdad Bureau Chief for "Newsweek" magazine. He's done some terrific work over there.Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, five years to make changes, five years to make the country truly safe, a frightening time table that came from the head of the CIA today.Plus, changing minds in the Middle East, beginning with the Israeli prime minister.From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: For the second straight day, the 9/11 Commission grilled key members of the U.S. intelligence community at a public hearing, the tenth so far. The commissioners also released another report on the state of the nation's intelligence gathering, its conclusions harsh. The report ends with the line: "A question remains, who is in charge of intelligence?" The questioning in the hearing room today focused on change, changes made since 9/11 and changes still to come.Here's CNN's Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ARENA (voice-over): FBI Director Robert Mueller did his best to convince commissioners that the creation of a new domestic intelligence agency is not the way to go.
ROBERT MUELLER, FBI DIRECTOR: I do believe that creating a separate agency to collect intelligence in the United States would be a grave mistake. Splitting the law enforcement and the intelligence functions would leave both agencies fighting the war on terrorism with one hand tied behind their backs.ARENA: While applauding some of the FBI's reforms, the commission says problems persist, among them shortages of linguists and personnel to surveil terrorists, inadequate training for recruiting and handling sources, and no national strategy for sharing information.
THOMAS KEAN (R), 9/11 COMMISSION CHAIRMAN: What I've learned has not reassured me. It's frightened me a bit frankly.
ARENA: The director did his best to reassure. The FBI trotted out a new report touting its post-9/11 reforms and the popular director of its new Office of Intelligence Maureen Baginski. Mueller has been courting the commission and clearly has won the confidence of its members. So, too, has CIA Director George Tenet but still the panel warned him of changes to come.
JOHN E. LEHMAN (R), 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: There is a train coming down the track. There are going to be very real changes made.
ARENA: With the overall goal of preventing another major attack by al Qaeda, some commissioners were not thrilled to hear this assessment.
GEORGE TENET, CIA DIRECTOR: It will take us another five years to have the kind of clandestine service our country needs.
KEAN: I wonder whether we have five years and that's what -- when you say five years to rebuild the agency that worries me a little bit.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ARENA: Several commissioners privately said that they haven't settled on what recommendations to embrace but all say that the intelligence community is still not working the way that it should. Now their final report is due by the end of July and it is expected to recommend some major structural change -- Aaron.
BROWN: I will talk about that with one of the commissioners in a moment. Where are the hearings going? Is the public part done now?
ARENA: There are some more hearings in May and then, as I said, you'll have the final report in July but we do expect that there will be some more private closed discussions, especially with those two men, George Tenet and Robert Mueller, lots of unfinished business today, a lot of -- we heard a lot of I'll get back to you. Let's talk about this in private if you'd like.
BROWN: Thank you, Kelli. I always want to be in those private meetings.ARENA: Yes, so would I.
BROWN: Kelli Arena in Washington tonight.George Tenet's five year estimate for getting the CIA where it should be wasn't the only statement that raised some eyebrows today. Mr. Tenet also testified that he never told President Bush in August of 2001 that a suspected Islamic extremist had been detected taking flight lessons in the United States. Mr. Bush was vacationing at his Texas ranch at the time. Mr. Tenet said he did not bring the information to the attention of other senior administration officials either.One of the commissioners asking questions today was Jim Thompson, the former Republican Governor of Illinois and we are pleased that he joins us tonight from Chicago. Governor, good evening to you.
JAMES THOMPSON, 9/11 COMMISSIONER: Good evening, Aaron.BROWN: I saw you sitting next to Commissioner Lehman when he said some very real changes are coming down the track. Can you give us a sense of at least your own view of how extensive those changes have to be and I suppose the money question here is do we need, in your mind at least, do we need a domestic intelligence gathering agency?
THOMPSON: Well, here's the dilemma and it's a real one for all of us on the commission and I think a real one for the president and his administration, for the Congress and for the American people.In my view and I suspect some of my fellow commissioners share this view, George Tenet at the CIA and Robert Mueller at the FBI are two of the best people that have happened to the federal government in a long, long time, and if we could be assured that they would be in charge of those agencies forever no changes because both men are instituting real reforms at their institutions.But they won't be there forever and we don't know who the next director of the CIA will be or the next director of the FBI will be and so we have to look at structural changes. But if we do that and if, for example, we recommended the creation of a new domestic intelligence agency that would probably take five years to get up and running and where would the people come from who would be employed?From the FBI probably, from the CIA, and so we'd start all over again with the same people in a different bureaucracy with a different committee of Congress overseeing it and with a track record yet to be established, so this is far from an easy question and I don't think we're through considering the issue yet.
BROWN: But it obviously has to be considered.
THOMPSON: It has to be considered because there's no question there were failures at the FBI and failures at the CIA before 9/11. Now that doesn't mean that we could have prevented 9/11 had there been no failures. We'll never know, I suspect, the answer to the question of whether 9/11 could be prevented and we need to avoid the blame game. We need to at least focus on what lessons we can learn from the death of these 3,000 people or they will have died in vain.
BROWN: And I wanted to ask you about the blame game stuff and whether we're past that in these hearings, not so much today but certainly yesterday. For those of us who really want this commission to do it great, it was an uncomfortable day I thought of finger pointing and it's their fault, no it's theirs, no I didn't say that, yes, he did.First of all how do you square some of that and, secondly, are we past that point?
THOMPSON: Well, you know, I think as much blame came from the witnesses pointing at each other as came from the commission.
BROWN: Yes, absolutely.
THOMPSON: That's the first answer and, secondly, I think sometimes when you tune into the hearings you're probably mistaking the personality and the witness questioning techniques or the cross- examination techniques, if you like, of various members of the commission, some of whom are lawyers, some of whom are former prosecutors or defense lawyers.It doesn't necessarily indicate what we're thinking or where we're going to end up with our conclusions. My guess is, my best hope is that when this is all over the commission will have a unanimous report, five Democrats, five Republicans agreeing unanimously on what happened on September 11 and where we go from here, what the future holds for the intelligence services of this nation and how we can lessen the odds of having 9/11 happen again. And, if we have a unanimous report, it won't be a partisan one.
BROWN: Just one more quick one here.
THOMPSON: Sure.
BROWN: And, actually it was the witnesses and not the commissioners that made me uncomfortable yesterday. Up the road in Wisconsin, Congressman Sensenbrenner today strongly suggested that one of the commission members resign over a conflict of interest. Do you have a feeling on the appropriateness of that?
THOMPSON: Yes, you know, I like Congressman Sensenbrenner but I think he's wrong on this one. Jamie Gorelick recused herself from having anything to do with this issue of the wall that's created between prosecutors and intelligence services.In point of fact, that wall grew up 20 years ago in the Reagan administration. It continued under the first Bush administration. It continued under the Clinton administration and it continued into this Bush administration where it was finally torn down by the Patriot Act, which President Bush and John Ashcroft pushed.So, she's not taking part in these things that are at issue, just like a number of us are not taking part in matters where we have a conflict. My law firm represents American Airlines, so I recused myself a year ago on the issue of airline security. I won't take part in that part of the report.And so, I think Commission Gorelick who is a person of great integrity and has been a valuable member of this commission should stay on the commission and participate in our final report.
BROWN: Governor, we know you've had a long day. It included some travel. We appreciate you time as always. Thank you, sir.
THOMPSON: Thank you.
BROWN: Thank you, former Governor Jim Thompson of Illinois.Up next on NEWSNIGHT, the American general takes on the Arab anchorman, just another day on Arab TV, just another day in Iraq.Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Michelle Witmer is one of, you may have read this story or seen the story on television, one of three sisters from the Milwaukee area who were serving in Iraq and the memorial service for young Michelle was held today.The first casualty of war is truth is a famous sentence attributed to any number of famous people. We're sticking with Samuel Johnson. A more accurate description might be that what is true, what has actually happened is a very slippery subject on the best of days and, in a way, it becomes almost impossible sometimes to ascertain.In the past few days the conflict between the U.S. military's version of the truth and that presented by the Arab media in particular has come to a boil.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): What you see and what you report inevitably depends on where you are and who you can talk to. The reports from Americans covering the U.S. Marines come from outside Fallujah.
CLANCY (?): U.S. Marines fighting with the coalition insist they are only responding when they come under fire themselves.
BROWN: They are very different from those sent in by Arab reporters on Arab networks inside the city.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Our correspondent in Fallujah has learned that five people were killed and eight more were wounded by U.S. bombings.
BROWN: During the violence of the last several weeks, the Arab news channels Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya have been concentrating on Iraqi civilian casualties and the accusation made by many Iraqis that the insurgent fighters are not the only targets. And here, too, the American generals fire back.
GEN. JOHN ABIZAID, CMDR., U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND: The Arab press , in particular Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, are portraying their actions as purposefully targeting civilians. And we absolutely do not do that.
BROWN: Reaching out somehow to the Arab world is vital to the U.S. mission. And so in one of those odd moments that never could have happened in earlier, less connected times, the American military took its case to the very media it was criticizing.
BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. DEPUTY CHIEF OF OPERATIONS: I don't think that the American troops have violated the cease-fire. The Marines are very rigid. They are observing a unilateral suspension of offensive operations.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Our correspondent in Fallujah just confirmed to us that the cease-fire was violated.
KIMMITT: I know that your reporter may have confirmed it, but if it is typical of your correspondents, it is just yet another of the lies he has been telling for the last few days.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I can indulge in a conversation with you which might turn ugly because the pictures confirm what our correspondents are reporting out of Iraq.
KIMMITT: There is an old expression in Hollywood that says, cameras often lie.
BROWN: Al-Jazeera released a statement saying they rejected the accusations and -- quote -- "considers them a threat to the right and the mission of the media outlets to cover the reality of what is happening in Iraq."Professor Edmund Ghareeb says the new Arab media is reflecting the interests and the biases of its audience, just as American media does.
EDMUND GHAREEB, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: The truth is somewhere in between the two versions of what we're hearing from U.S. spokesman, U.S. officials and what we're seeing through the pictures that are being transmitted from the correspondents of Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabiya on the ground.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: This is not a war, this media war, that is likely to end soon in Iraq. Still to come on the program tonight, a shift and a major one in American policy concerning Israel and Palestinians. A break first. On CNN, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: For almost as there have been Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in Gaza, the U.S. government has regarded them as an obstacle to the peace process. Today, however, with Israel's prime minister in Washington to push for a major change in the process, the president altered the country's position. Here is CNN's senior White House correspondent John King.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The president gave the Israeli prime minister what he came for: a strong endorsement that significantly reshapes the U.S. approach toward Israeli-Palestinian peace.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These are historic and courageous action.
KING: Prime Minister Sharon plans to remove Israeli settlements and military outposts from Gaza, and some settlements and military installations in the West Bank. But Mr. Sharon vows to keep several major settlements the Palestinians say must be abandoned.
ARIEL SHARON, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: My plan will create a new and better reality for the state of Israel. KING: The president insisted his endorsement is not meant to prejudice any future Israeli-Palestinian peace talk. But Palestinians reacted angrily.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like meeting with the Prime Minister of Great Britain and deciding to give Crawford, Texas to China.
KING: And Bush is now on record taking Israel's side on 2 major issues. In this letter to Prime Minister Sharon, Mr. Bush wrote that new realities on the ground make it unrealistic to expect the final outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the 1949 borders, a key Palestinian negotiating point. And the delicate right of return issue for Palestinian refugees, Mr. Bush wrote, the only just, fair and realistic answer is to create a new Palestinian state and agree on the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel. The White House also backed away from blanket criticism of Israel's new security barrier and now says the fence just must be temporary. It was a day the embattled Israeli prime minister desperately needed. Many members of his own Likud party oppose the plan, and selling it back home without a strong Bush endorsement would have been difficult, if not impossible. The Bush team said it is significant such a hard-line Israeli prime minister is willing to unilaterally yield land to the Palestinians. Mr. Bush credited his friend with trying to revive a peace process now in shambles. But, in the short term, there is little hope for peace talks. (on camera): Little hope for talks. And given the angry Palestinian reaction, at least in the short term, more image problems for the administration in the Arab world, where already it is under fire for the war in Iraq and now accused of abandoning its traditional role in the Middle East of playing honest broker to take sides with Israel. John King, CNN, the White House.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Ahead on the program tonight, Randall Terry has lived a life preaching family values. He's been on the front line of many movements. But there is trouble in the Terry household. That story next on NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Leo Tolstoy wrote, "All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."And happy or not, most families don't have to worry about their family business being a matter of public life. For others who choose to make their family a professional mission, the boundaries blur. Randall Terry, the founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, falls into this group. He made a name for himself preaching family values and his own family was supposed to reflect those same values. And for years, it did, at least publicly. Now his children are grown and they tell a different story. Reporting it, CNN's Maria Hinojosa.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MARIA HINOJOSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He became famous being dragged from the doorways of abortion clinics. Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue.
RANDALL TERRY, OPERATION RESCUE: This is what choice is all about.
HINOJOSA: He was in prison for sending Bill Clinton an aborted fetus. Then Randall Terry found other causes, preaching against infidelity, birth control, divorce. His moral enemies, gays and unwed mothers. The homosexual agenda is to normalize what is a tragic lifestyle of bondage.
HINOJOSA: But today it's his own children who are speaking out, saying that the very people his father condemns are just like them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, there it is.
HINOJOSA: Jamiel, the adopted son who once accompanied his father to Vermont to fight gay marriage now says he is gay in an essay in May's Out Magazine.
JAMIEL TERRY, SON OF RANDALL TERRY: In my family it was you start having sex outside of marriage, you get AIDS, you're a whore, you're a slut. Those are exact words. Yesterday he said to me, I'm going to be at your funeral. You're going to die at 42.
HINOJOSA: Tila, just 18, says the father who adopted her away from a woman trying to abort her no longer welcomes her in his own home.
TILA TERRY, DAUGHTER OF RANDALL TERRY: I had sex outside of marriage. I got pregnant and I miscarried after about three or four months. I hadn't been speaking with my dad. We haven't been as close as, you know, we were since I left his house.
HINOJOSA: His oldest daughter Ebony, who also had two children out of wedlock and now calls herself a Muslim, is moved to tears by the conflicts in her own family.
EBONY WHETSTONE, DAUGHTER OF RANDALL TERRY: The whole makeup of our family is not traditional by far. So it is not going to be, you know, picture-perfect.
HINOJOSA: But this was the family Randall Terry featured in his campaign ads, three biracial children adopted from a drug addict into a perfect Christian marriage.
J. TERRY: I wouldn't say that it was necessarily deceitful or anything like that for my father to present us as -- or present himself as a loving husband, a Christian husband and my mom and all of his kids, because that's what we were trying to be.
HINOJOSA: But the perfect marriage didn't exist. Randall Terry was censured by his church for having sinful relationships with other women. He divorced his wife and married his former church assistant.
T. TERRY: We had this image we had to live up to of being perfect and growing up with that is very hard.
HINOJOSA: The one belief that Terry children still share with their father is his opposition to abortion, perhaps one of the few issues on which this divided family can agree, as Randall Terry continues to publicly condemn the lives his own children are living. Maria Hinojosa, CNN, Charlotte, North Carolina.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Randall Terry serves these days as the president for the Society of Truth and Justice, a group that opposes abortion and same- sex marriage. And Mr. Terry joins us tonight from Jacksonville, Florida. Look, none of this can be very easy. Let me ask...R.
TERRY: You got that right.
(LAUGHTER)
BROWN: Let me ask the kind of baseline question here. Do you think, sir, that by virtue of the fact that you're a public person and you have spoken out on all of this whole range of morality issues that what goes on in your family, what your children do or do not do ought to be news?
R. TERRY: No.
BROWN: Not at all?
R. TERRY: Well, you know what? It is newsworthy, I guess. For me, there is two issues. One is my son's choice to be homosexual and his practices. And we can talk about that. And the other is showing family photos, talking about discussions that we have had in a presentation that CNN just did that is just frankly not accurate. So, for me, there is two painful issues. One is that my son is involved in a lifestyle that is self-destructive. It is a sexual addiction that might end up taking his life.And then the other is that he took thousands of dollars from "Out" magazine to do this.
BROWN: Well, let's talk about that question. According to the magazine, he contacts the magazine. I'm looking at the e-mail he sent them. And they pay him a standard -- well, I'm -- you can dispute this, but I'm telling you what they say.
R. TERRY: No, I believe it.
BROWN: And what he says. And they pay him the standard freelance fee. I'm not sure precisely what the issue is there. So help me understand that. What is the problem there?
R. TERRY: Well, the reality is, is that Jamiel exploited my name for money. I have been a very high-profile public figure in the fight against abortion and in the fight against homosexual marriage. Jamiel knew this. And "Out" magazine knew this. So Jamiel went to them and originally told me that they contact contacted him. Now I find out he went to them. And he used my name to get money for himself and to bring out stuff in our family and to present a picture of our family's history that is frankly inaccurate. So that part of it to me is just -- Aaron, it is just unbelievably painful. I still love my son. I still love Tila. And even the way the story presented it, my children, I love them both. I'm in contact with them both. And the reasons that each of them are not welcome in my home right now have nothing to do with their sexual behavior, exactly nothing. It has to do with other things that have happened between me and them that make them a danger in my home. And they know those things. I know those things. That is not what this program is about. But I want to state this for the record. Please let me.
BROWN: Sure.R.
TERRY: I love my children. I love them both. I love Jamiel. And the thing for Jamiel that I fear for is this. I have told Jamiel this and it is what I say publicly. Homosexual behavior is wrong. It is a self-destructive, self-abusive sexual addiction. And as a loving dad, I cannot say to him, Jamiel, hey, this is a great life choice, if this is what you want to do, no problem, any more than I can say to him, oh, you're a drug addict, oh, that's a great life choice. Go for it.
BROWN: Mr. Terry, can I -- let me try to get one more quick question in. R.
TERRY: Sure.
BROWN: Has any of this experience caused you not to change the fundamental beliefs that you have -- I'm not suggesting that at all -- but has it caused you to rethink the words you use, the tone you use, the way you express your views?
R. TERRY: Absolutely. This life is fraught with pain and things -- baggage that we carry for our whole lives. And I don't believe that the homosexuals choose their feelings. I really don't. I believe that we all choose our behavior. And so I know and Jamiel knows the things that happen to him as a little boy long before we got him. We didn't get him until he was 8. We both know the things that happened to him that are bearing in on him now that are involved in the cause-effect of his homosexual behavior. And I don't think he wants these feelings. But he still and every homosexual and all of us have choices to make about our behavior. And that's what this is about. We cannot look at homosexual behavior and say, oh, this is a great life choice, because it is not.
BROWN: Mr. Terry, let me go back to the first thing I said to you. None of this can be very comfortable. And so we especially appreciate your coming on and talking as directly as you have tonight. Thank you, sir, very much. R.
TERRY: Thanks for having me.
BROWN: Thank you, Randall Terry. These are not easy conversations for any father. I can't imagine.
BROWN: Still ahead on the program, blurring the lines. What before was photography now is art. The stills after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: An antidote now, at least we hope it is, for a pretty rough week so far. It is a familiar place, a place we visit when we can. The walls are hung with still photographs, photographs in this case curated by the wonderful Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, most recently on display at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Our love affair for the power of stills began with the work of the great news photographers in our world. But tonight, they step aside. The work here is the work of artists in a more traditional way. Well, perhaps, traditional isn't really the right word at all.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RUSSELL FERGUSON, UCLA HAMMER MUSEUM: There is still, I think, a lingering tendency to see photography as something that is essentially a separate form of art-making. It was in the early 1960s, I think, that artists began working in a different way with photography.
DOUGLAS FOGLE, WALKER ART CENTER: The Eve Klein piece is actually a fake newspaper that he made in 1960, which is the beginning date of the show. He made a photograph of himself jumping off of the second story of a Parisian apartment building. The fact is that this act of superhuman sort of launching himself into space was completely fabricated. It really plays with this very traditional notion of photography as a record of the world, the idea that the truth is in the picture. Sarah Charlesworth in this piece took this photograph and looked at the way in which it was reproduced all around the world in newspapers and the way in which the image was cropped, whether it was above the fold of the newspaper or below the fold, what context it was put in with other photographs on that front page. It is composed of 40 different images. Artists of my generation who are in their 30s or early 40s now had begun using photography as easily as they might pick up a paintbrush. It was just one more media for them to use amongst many, whether it was video, photography, painting, installation. There's artists who really are trying to redefine landscape. Jan Dibbets from Amsterdam takes photographs of the landscape, but in fact those photographs are slightly tilted on an angle in succession. And each of these is then made in a negative image of itself, tiled together and then made into the shape of a comet. This work by Gilbert & George called "Raining Gin" (ph) is made up of multiple photographs that have been first kind of montaged together. There's photographs of themselves, which are taken in a very blurry kind of way, purposefully, to represent kind of a drunken state. It is very indicative of a lot of the works in the show that push the boundaries between photography and sculpture. The L.A. Freeway flyer piece, it is ostensibly a sculpture. It is a series of walking sticks or canes that you would use to go on different hikes in Europe. Gervan Elkis' (ph) experience in L.A. was that the highways were the connective tissue of the culture and society. And what he did is, he did a series of photographs of all of the highways all over Los Angeles and then printed out these rolls of film and then wrapped those images of the L.A. freeway system around these canes, so that the work becomes this kind of weird commentary on the old world, the new world and brings them together in this kind of hybrid way. I would like people to see the way in which photography became one of the tools used by artists in those two decades to open up the practice of art-making outside of the traditional modern parameters.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Morning papers after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(ROOSTER CROWING)
BROWN: OK, a very quick check of morning papers. We don't have a lot of time tonight because I've been going on too long.
"The International Herald Tribune" published by "The New York Times" leads with the Middle East. "Bush Shifts Views on the West Bank. He Acquiesces on Israeli Settlements. Palestinians Denounce New Approach." I would say Mr. Sharon had a very successful visit. He got just about everything but the presidential lectern out of the deal today.
"Christian Science Monitor." "Siege of Fallujah Polarizing Iraqis. Even Moderate Shiite Leaders Say the Fighting in the Sunni Triangle City Has Moved Opinion Decisively Against Coalition." This is a good story over here, too, that we did last night, as a matter of fact. "For Kerry, a Balancing Act on the War. Both Bush and Kerry Make Public Gambits This Week to Reaffirm Their Stance on Iraq."
"The Press of Atlantic City," Atlantic City, New Jersey, leads with the Middle East. But that's the headline I like. "Oh, Blah." It is raining again. It has just been gray here in the Northeast. How are we doing on time? Twenty seconds. In that case, where am I going in that case? I don't know.
"Bush Backs Israeli Plan to Exit Gaza" is "The Miami Herald." The weather in Chicago tomorrow is "blooming," which sounds pretty good to me.That's our report for tonight. We hope you'll all back here tomorrow 10:00 Eastern time."LOU DOBBS" for most of you is up next.Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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 April 14, 2004 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again, everyone. We wade somewhat uncomfortably tonight into that inner section of private lives of public people. We say uncomfortably not because we don't think there are times when the private lives of public people are news. Clearly there are such times. It's just that it isn't very pleasant stuff.The sexual orientation of the vice president's daughter is news because gay rights are an important social issue facing the country and her father helps make policy.In tonight's case when the children of Randall Terry, the anti- abortion activist, the anti-gay rights activist, the anti-divorce activist, when those children say not all was as it seemed in their famous father's house, that too becomes news, not the war in Iraq sort of news, big news, but news still and uncomfortably so. So, we'll deal with that tonight.But first we'll deal with the other, larger matters. The whip begins in Iraq where the violence continues despite a shaky cease- fire. CNN's Jim Clancy with the watch, a headline Jim.
JIM CLANCY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Evidence tonight, Aaron, that at least some of the insurgents battling U.S. Marines and battering the cease-fire in Fallujah do not want a negotiated settlement. Two assassination attempts take aim at the man sent to mediate.
BROWN: Jim, thank you.On to the Pentagon and a decision to extend the combat tours in Iraq, Jamie McIntyre there again tonight, Jamie a headline.
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, the last time the Pentagon extended combat tours for troops in Iraq it promised it would limit the time in the war zone to one year. Today, they admit that the way things are going in Iraq that's a promise they can't keep.
BROWN: Thank you. We'll get to you in a moment.Washington next, the 9/11 hearings, the FBI and the CIA in the hot seat for the second straight day, compelling stuff, Kelli Arena covered, Kelli the headline.
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the head of both the FBI and CIA told the 9/11 commission that changes do need to be made but, Aaron, both were adamant that creating a new domestic intelligence agency is not the answer.
BROWN: We'll deal with that tonight too. Kelli, thank you, back to you and the rest shortly.Also coming up on the program tonight butting heads on live TV. The American military at war with Arab media covering Iraq. They are lying, say the Americans. They are killing civilians, say the Arab reporters.And a twist on our love affair with the storytelling power of the still photo. This time we focus on art for art's sake and the pictures are just as cool.And later, like it or not, the rooster pops by and so do your morning papers, all that and more in the hour ahead.We begin tonight again in Iraq where U.S. troops are still coming under attack, where one of four Italian hostages has been executed. The men were shown yesterday at a videotape broadcast on the Arab cable network Al-Jazeera. Today, Italy's ambassador to Qatar confirmed the death of one of the men after viewing a videotape of the execution. That tape, too, was sent to Al-Jazeera, which said it was too gruesome to broadcast.The network said along with the tape came a statement from a group calling itself the Mujahedeen Brigade. In it, the group said, the other three hostages will be killed one at a time until Italy meets its demands, including pulling 3,000 Italian troops out of Iraq.Besides the Italians, six other hostages remain captives tonight, 13 others are missing this as U.S. troops continue to come under attack. At least one American soldier died in combat today. In Fallujah, a truce is holding, at least technically speaking for now at least.Here again, CNN's Jim Clancy.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CLANCY (voice-over): As the fragile on again off again cease- fire in Fallujah was extended 48 hours, the Iraqi Governing Council revealed its negotiator had come under attack.
HAMID ALKIFAEY, SPOKESMAN, IRAQI GOVERNING COUNCIL: There was an assassination attempt or two assassination attempts on his life by the terrorists of course. The aim is to, you know, kill him and kill any hopes of ending this crisis.
CLANCY: The assassination attempts by gunmen inside the city occurred earlier this week. The key sticking point in the talks getting those now controlling Fallujah to lay down their arms and leave.
ADNAN PACHACHI, MEMBER OF
GOVERNING COUNCIL: They are afraid if they left Fallujah they would be arrested right away and of course they would not leave without their weapons.
CLANCY: Wednesday in Fallujah, Marines sandbagged their lines and replenished supplies but it is unclear how long they will hold these positions and wait for stalled talks to produce a peaceful solution. Iraqis watching the security situation told CNN there are increasing suspicions Fallujah has been used as a base of operations for foreign terrorists.Despite widespread fears, suicide attacks that killed our wounded hundreds of Iraqis two months ago were not repeated in Shia Muslim commemorations last weekend, the difference, U.S. Marines had surrounded Fallujah and the foreign fighters and former regime sympathizers were trapped.Also trapped radical Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr whose armed militia overran police stations and government buildings from Baghdad to Basra last week. A spokesman for al-Sadr admitted Wednesday that the leader of the al- Mehdi Army had dropped demands for U.S. troops to pull back from around the city of Najaf and put his case instead in the hands of religious leaders in hopes of preventing his capture or death.
CLANCY (on camera): There are some Iraqis who want the coalition to keep up the pressure on al-Sadr and on Fallujah. There's a sense that both have been longstanding sources of insecurity in Iraq that, if not addressed now, will only come back to create more problems in the future.Jim Clancy, CNN, Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Although there's no single answer for what ails the mission in Iraq in concrete terms, it amounts to manpower and money to a great extent. In regard to the second, a highly respected military analyst said today the price tag is growing. Tony Cordesman predicts the president will have to ask the Congress for an additional $70 billion this year. "We have to face this reality," said Cordesman, referring to the president's news conference "and we did not face it last night," which leaves the manpower part of the equation. Last night the president alluded to it. Tomorrow the secretary of defense is expected to make it official.Again from the Pentagon tonight, CNN's Jamie McIntyre.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE (voice-over): The last time the Pentagon extended combat tours in Iraq back in November it promised to limit service in the war zone to one year.
LT. GEN. NORTON SCHWARTZ, JOINT STAFF OPERATIONS DIRECTOR: The principle that we are working to here is alert early to provide predictability and make sure that families, employers and others have a sense of ground truth.
MCINTYRE: But with counterinsurgency operations raging in Fallujah and perhaps soon in Najaf, the Pentagon can't afford to keep its promise. Some 20,000 U.S. troops, including the 1st Armored Division based in Germany and the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment based in Fort Polk, Louisiana will have to stay three more months.That will keep 135,000 American troops in Iraq instead of drawing down to 115,000 as the Pentagon planned. It's tough on the troops, tougher on their families.
LAVONDA WOODRING, WIFE OF KENNETH WOODRING: He called and said, Lavonda I didn't want to call you yesterday because I knew it was Easter and I wanted to wait until today but they've told us we have been extended.
MCINTYRE: Lavonda Woodring's husband is a military policeman, a National Guard volunteer. When another soldier from the same North Carolina unit, Staff Sergeant Steve Lillard gave his wife the news she started a petition drive to get them home.
VOICE OF LEE LILLARD, WIFE OF STAFF SGT. STEVE LILLARD: This came as quite a blow because my husband has been gone from home since March of 2003 and he is National Guard and I consider that, as everyone else does, our weekend warriors, our part-time soldiers.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE: Asked about last year's promise to limit time in the combat zone to one year, a senior Pentagon official said today we meant it when we said it. Another official quickly added, after all this is war -- Aaron.
BROWN: Do they express confidence that the numbers they are sending in now are the high end numbers they will need?
MCINTYRE: Well, they seem to feel that. They say all along that whatever General Abizaid says he needs he will get and they're already making plans in case they have to replace these 20,000 extra troops three months from now when they come home. They're looking around to identify other units that have not yet been alerted to have them ready to go in case commanders insist they still need the extra troops this summer.
BROWN: Jamie, just a quick one. Are there certain specialties they need right now?
MCINTYRE: Well, it's mostly infantry troops, combat infantry troops.
BROWN: OK.
MCINTYRE: Military police, that sort of thing.BROWN: Got it Jamie, Jamie McIntyre our Senior Pentagon Correspondent.We're joined again tonight by Rod Nordland who is "Newsweek's" Baghdad Bureau Chief, a friend of the program we like to think. We're always pleased to see him safe and sound and we see him both today. Just generally things a little calmer over the last day or so?
ROD NORDLAND, "NEWSWEEK" BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: Yes, things have been a lot calmer the last couple of days and I think it's directly a result of the lack of combat operations or offensive operations in Fallujah and also the standoff in Najaf looks like it may be heading to some kind of political conclusion.
BROWN: Rod, is there unspoken or perhaps spoken and we haven't heard it, an acknowledgement that force has not gotten it done that force is not the answer here?
NORDLAND: Well, there are two things going on. They realize they need more U.S. troops mainly in the south I think because it was clear that coalition partners weren't able to do the job when a very small number of militants were able to take over several cities briefly and so they needed more troops there.But the other thing and they aren't acknowledging it publicly is that they realize that further attacks on Fallujah, especially perhaps on Muqtada al-Sadr in the south, will just inflame public opinion here even more and we saw it especially last weekend. The results of that were almost on the verge of a kind of general uprising and I think they want to avoid that.
BROWN: And is that because, and we're going to deal with this a little later in the program too, is that because of the way the story is being reported by, principally by Arab media or is simply the fact that these are very full, angry attacks going on by the Americans?
NORDLAND: It's a bit of both. I think even without the Arab media there would have been a reaction but the Arab media has been incendiary. They've been publishing accounts of hundreds of civilian deaths and Iraqis are asking, you know, are four American lives worth hundreds of innocent Iraqi lives?And they see pictures all the time of babies and children and women injured and killed in Fallujah. We have no way of verifying the kind of numbers coming out of Fallujah. None of the western press can get in there, so how accurate these reports are it's hard to say but Iraqis fervently believe them.
BROWN: That's part of the problem I think generally for all of us involved in trying to report the story and certainly the number of Iraqi casualties is part of the story and there are lots of numbers thrown out there and it is almost literally impossible to verify any of them isn't it?
NORDLAND: It is really hard and we've had people working for us who go to the hospitals in Fallujah and so on but the information there is suspect. Partly the problem is a lot of Iraqis when they're killed don't take -- they don't take their loved ones to hospitals and so one. They bury them right way, so getting a real fix on how many injured civilians there are is hard to say.Certainly there are some but certainly it's also true that the insurgents are using civilians as shields. They have been fighting from mosques and from other places where they're likely to -- any kind of return fire is going to cause civilian casualties. Whether or not there are hundreds of them we just have no way of knowing.
BROWN: I saw one report today there's an Iranian delegation in the country that's gotten involved in the negotiations somehow. Are they welcomed? How did this happen?
NORDLAND: It's extraordinary. Apparently, they were invited by the Americans and certainly they had to have at least American acquiescence to even come. I think it's a good sign. It's a sign that they're willing to find ways to negotiate their way out of further trouble in Najaf.And I think it's generally recognized now that attacking Muqtada al-Sadr directly on, even if there's an arrest warrant they have to execute, attacking him is just going to further make him much more popular and make his cause that much more popular.
BROWN: Rod, it's good to see you safe. We'll talk again soon. Thank you.
NORDLAND: Pleasure.
BROWN: Rod Nordland, the Baghdad Bureau Chief for "Newsweek" magazine. He's done some terrific work over there.Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, five years to make changes, five years to make the country truly safe, a frightening time table that came from the head of the CIA today.Plus, changing minds in the Middle East, beginning with the Israeli prime minister.From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: For the second straight day, the 9/11 Commission grilled key members of the U.S. intelligence community at a public hearing, the tenth so far. The commissioners also released another report on the state of the nation's intelligence gathering, its conclusions harsh. The report ends with the line: "A question remains, who is in charge of intelligence?" The questioning in the hearing room today focused on change, changes made since 9/11 and changes still to come.Here's CNN's Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ARENA (voice-over): FBI Director Robert Mueller did his best to convince commissioners that the creation of a new domestic intelligence agency is not the way to go.
ROBERT MUELLER, FBI DIRECTOR: I do believe that creating a separate agency to collect intelligence in the United States would be a grave mistake. Splitting the law enforcement and the intelligence functions would leave both agencies fighting the war on terrorism with one hand tied behind their backs.ARENA: While applauding some of the FBI's reforms, the commission says problems persist, among them shortages of linguists and personnel to surveil terrorists, inadequate training for recruiting and handling sources, and no national strategy for sharing information.
THOMAS KEAN (R), 9/11 COMMISSION CHAIRMAN: What I've learned has not reassured me. It's frightened me a bit frankly.
ARENA: The director did his best to reassure. The FBI trotted out a new report touting its post-9/11 reforms and the popular director of its new Office of Intelligence Maureen Baginski. Mueller has been courting the commission and clearly has won the confidence of its members. So, too, has CIA Director George Tenet but still the panel warned him of changes to come.
JOHN E. LEHMAN (R), 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: There is a train coming down the track. There are going to be very real changes made.
ARENA: With the overall goal of preventing another major attack by al Qaeda, some commissioners were not thrilled to hear this assessment.
GEORGE TENET, CIA DIRECTOR: It will take us another five years to have the kind of clandestine service our country needs.
KEAN: I wonder whether we have five years and that's what -- when you say five years to rebuild the agency that worries me a little bit.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ARENA: Several commissioners privately said that they haven't settled on what recommendations to embrace but all say that the intelligence community is still not working the way that it should. Now their final report is due by the end of July and it is expected to recommend some major structural change -- Aaron.
BROWN: I will talk about that with one of the commissioners in a moment. Where are the hearings going? Is the public part done now?
ARENA: There are some more hearings in May and then, as I said, you'll have the final report in July but we do expect that there will be some more private closed discussions, especially with those two men, George Tenet and Robert Mueller, lots of unfinished business today, a lot of -- we heard a lot of I'll get back to you. Let's talk about this in private if you'd like.
BROWN: Thank you, Kelli. I always want to be in those private meetings.ARENA: Yes, so would I.
BROWN: Kelli Arena in Washington tonight.George Tenet's five year estimate for getting the CIA where it should be wasn't the only statement that raised some eyebrows today. Mr. Tenet also testified that he never told President Bush in August of 2001 that a suspected Islamic extremist had been detected taking flight lessons in the United States. Mr. Bush was vacationing at his Texas ranch at the time. Mr. Tenet said he did not bring the information to the attention of other senior administration officials either.One of the commissioners asking questions today was Jim Thompson, the former Republican Governor of Illinois and we are pleased that he joins us tonight from Chicago. Governor, good evening to you.
JAMES THOMPSON, 9/11 COMMISSIONER: Good evening, Aaron.BROWN: I saw you sitting next to Commissioner Lehman when he said some very real changes are coming down the track. Can you give us a sense of at least your own view of how extensive those changes have to be and I suppose the money question here is do we need, in your mind at least, do we need a domestic intelligence gathering agency?
THOMPSON: Well, here's the dilemma and it's a real one for all of us on the commission and I think a real one for the president and his administration, for the Congress and for the American people.In my view and I suspect some of my fellow commissioners share this view, George Tenet at the CIA and Robert Mueller at the FBI are two of the best people that have happened to the federal government in a long, long time, and if we could be assured that they would be in charge of those agencies forever no changes because both men are instituting real reforms at their institutions.But they won't be there forever and we don't know who the next director of the CIA will be or the next director of the FBI will be and so we have to look at structural changes. But if we do that and if, for example, we recommended the creation of a new domestic intelligence agency that would probably take five years to get up and running and where would the people come from who would be employed?From the FBI probably, from the CIA, and so we'd start all over again with the same people in a different bureaucracy with a different committee of Congress overseeing it and with a track record yet to be established, so this is far from an easy question and I don't think we're through considering the issue yet.
BROWN: But it obviously has to be considered.
THOMPSON: It has to be considered because there's no question there were failures at the FBI and failures at the CIA before 9/11. Now that doesn't mean that we could have prevented 9/11 had there been no failures. We'll never know, I suspect, the answer to the question of whether 9/11 could be prevented and we need to avoid the blame game. We need to at least focus on what lessons we can learn from the death of these 3,000 people or they will have died in vain.
BROWN: And I wanted to ask you about the blame game stuff and whether we're past that in these hearings, not so much today but certainly yesterday. For those of us who really want this commission to do it great, it was an uncomfortable day I thought of finger pointing and it's their fault, no it's theirs, no I didn't say that, yes, he did.First of all how do you square some of that and, secondly, are we past that point?
THOMPSON: Well, you know, I think as much blame came from the witnesses pointing at each other as came from the commission.
BROWN: Yes, absolutely.
THOMPSON: That's the first answer and, secondly, I think sometimes when you tune into the hearings you're probably mistaking the personality and the witness questioning techniques or the cross- examination techniques, if you like, of various members of the commission, some of whom are lawyers, some of whom are former prosecutors or defense lawyers.It doesn't necessarily indicate what we're thinking or where we're going to end up with our conclusions. My guess is, my best hope is that when this is all over the commission will have a unanimous report, five Democrats, five Republicans agreeing unanimously on what happened on September 11 and where we go from here, what the future holds for the intelligence services of this nation and how we can lessen the odds of having 9/11 happen again. And, if we have a unanimous report, it won't be a partisan one.
BROWN: Just one more quick one here.
THOMPSON: Sure.
BROWN: And, actually it was the witnesses and not the commissioners that made me uncomfortable yesterday. Up the road in Wisconsin, Congressman Sensenbrenner today strongly suggested that one of the commission members resign over a conflict of interest. Do you have a feeling on the appropriateness of that?
THOMPSON: Yes, you know, I like Congressman Sensenbrenner but I think he's wrong on this one. Jamie Gorelick recused herself from having anything to do with this issue of the wall that's created between prosecutors and intelligence services.In point of fact, that wall grew up 20 years ago in the Reagan administration. It continued under the first Bush administration. It continued under the Clinton administration and it continued into this Bush administration where it was finally torn down by the Patriot Act, which President Bush and John Ashcroft pushed.So, she's not taking part in these things that are at issue, just like a number of us are not taking part in matters where we have a conflict. My law firm represents American Airlines, so I recused myself a year ago on the issue of airline security. I won't take part in that part of the report.And so, I think Commission Gorelick who is a person of great integrity and has been a valuable member of this commission should stay on the commission and participate in our final report.
BROWN: Governor, we know you've had a long day. It included some travel. We appreciate you time as always. Thank you, sir.
THOMPSON: Thank you.
BROWN: Thank you, former Governor Jim Thompson of Illinois.Up next on NEWSNIGHT, the American general takes on the Arab anchorman, just another day on Arab TV, just another day in Iraq.Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Michelle Witmer is one of, you may have read this story or seen the story on television, one of three sisters from the Milwaukee area who were serving in Iraq and the memorial service for young Michelle was held today.The first casualty of war is truth is a famous sentence attributed to any number of famous people. We're sticking with Samuel Johnson. A more accurate description might be that what is true, what has actually happened is a very slippery subject on the best of days and, in a way, it becomes almost impossible sometimes to ascertain.In the past few days the conflict between the U.S. military's version of the truth and that presented by the Arab media in particular has come to a boil.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): What you see and what you report inevitably depends on where you are and who you can talk to. The reports from Americans covering the U.S. Marines come from outside Fallujah.
CLANCY (?): U.S. Marines fighting with the coalition insist they are only responding when they come under fire themselves.
BROWN: They are very different from those sent in by Arab reporters on Arab networks inside the city.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Our correspondent in Fallujah has learned that five people were killed and eight more were wounded by U.S. bombings.
BROWN: During the violence of the last several weeks, the Arab news channels Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya have been concentrating on Iraqi civilian casualties and the accusation made by many Iraqis that the insurgent fighters are not the only targets. And here, too, the American generals fire back.
GEN. JOHN ABIZAID, CMDR., U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND: The Arab press , in particular Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, are portraying their actions as purposefully targeting civilians. And we absolutely do not do that.
BROWN: Reaching out somehow to the Arab world is vital to the U.S. mission. And so in one of those odd moments that never could have happened in earlier, less connected times, the American military took its case to the very media it was criticizing.
BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. DEPUTY CHIEF OF OPERATIONS: I don't think that the American troops have violated the cease-fire. The Marines are very rigid. They are observing a unilateral suspension of offensive operations.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Our correspondent in Fallujah just confirmed to us that the cease-fire was violated.
KIMMITT: I know that your reporter may have confirmed it, but if it is typical of your correspondents, it is just yet another of the lies he has been telling for the last few days.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I can indulge in a conversation with you which might turn ugly because the pictures confirm what our correspondents are reporting out of Iraq.
KIMMITT: There is an old expression in Hollywood that says, cameras often lie.
BROWN: Al-Jazeera released a statement saying they rejected the accusations and -- quote -- "considers them a threat to the right and the mission of the media outlets to cover the reality of what is happening in Iraq."Professor Edmund Ghareeb says the new Arab media is reflecting the interests and the biases of its audience, just as American media does.
EDMUND GHAREEB, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: The truth is somewhere in between the two versions of what we're hearing from U.S. spokesman, U.S. officials and what we're seeing through the pictures that are being transmitted from the correspondents of Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabiya on the ground.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: This is not a war, this media war, that is likely to end soon in Iraq. Still to come on the program tonight, a shift and a major one in American policy concerning Israel and Palestinians. A break first. On CNN, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: For almost as there have been Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in Gaza, the U.S. government has regarded them as an obstacle to the peace process. Today, however, with Israel's prime minister in Washington to push for a major change in the process, the president altered the country's position. Here is CNN's senior White House correspondent John King.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The president gave the Israeli prime minister what he came for: a strong endorsement that significantly reshapes the U.S. approach toward Israeli-Palestinian peace.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These are historic and courageous action.
KING: Prime Minister Sharon plans to remove Israeli settlements and military outposts from Gaza, and some settlements and military installations in the West Bank. But Mr. Sharon vows to keep several major settlements the Palestinians say must be abandoned.
ARIEL SHARON, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: My plan will create a new and better reality for the state of Israel. KING: The president insisted his endorsement is not meant to prejudice any future Israeli-Palestinian peace talk. But Palestinians reacted angrily.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like meeting with the Prime Minister of Great Britain and deciding to give Crawford, Texas to China.
KING: And Bush is now on record taking Israel's side on 2 major issues. In this letter to Prime Minister Sharon, Mr. Bush wrote that new realities on the ground make it unrealistic to expect the final outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the 1949 borders, a key Palestinian negotiating point. And the delicate right of return issue for Palestinian refugees, Mr. Bush wrote, the only just, fair and realistic answer is to create a new Palestinian state and agree on the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel. The White House also backed away from blanket criticism of Israel's new security barrier and now says the fence just must be temporary. It was a day the embattled Israeli prime minister desperately needed. Many members of his own Likud party oppose the plan, and selling it back home without a strong Bush endorsement would have been difficult, if not impossible. The Bush team said it is significant such a hard-line Israeli prime minister is willing to unilaterally yield land to the Palestinians. Mr. Bush credited his friend with trying to revive a peace process now in shambles. But, in the short term, there is little hope for peace talks. (on camera): Little hope for talks. And given the angry Palestinian reaction, at least in the short term, more image problems for the administration in the Arab world, where already it is under fire for the war in Iraq and now accused of abandoning its traditional role in the Middle East of playing honest broker to take sides with Israel. John King, CNN, the White House.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Ahead on the program tonight, Randall Terry has lived a life preaching family values. He's been on the front line of many movements. But there is trouble in the Terry household. That story next on NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Leo Tolstoy wrote, "All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."And happy or not, most families don't have to worry about their family business being a matter of public life. For others who choose to make their family a professional mission, the boundaries blur. Randall Terry, the founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, falls into this group. He made a name for himself preaching family values and his own family was supposed to reflect those same values. And for years, it did, at least publicly. Now his children are grown and they tell a different story. Reporting it, CNN's Maria Hinojosa.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MARIA HINOJOSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He became famous being dragged from the doorways of abortion clinics. Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue.
RANDALL TERRY, OPERATION RESCUE: This is what choice is all about.
HINOJOSA: He was in prison for sending Bill Clinton an aborted fetus. Then Randall Terry found other causes, preaching against infidelity, birth control, divorce. His moral enemies, gays and unwed mothers. The homosexual agenda is to normalize what is a tragic lifestyle of bondage.
HINOJOSA: But today it's his own children who are speaking out, saying that the very people his father condemns are just like them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, there it is.
HINOJOSA: Jamiel, the adopted son who once accompanied his father to Vermont to fight gay marriage now says he is gay in an essay in May's Out Magazine.
JAMIEL TERRY, SON OF RANDALL TERRY: In my family it was you start having sex outside of marriage, you get AIDS, you're a whore, you're a slut. Those are exact words. Yesterday he said to me, I'm going to be at your funeral. You're going to die at 42.
HINOJOSA: Tila, just 18, says the father who adopted her away from a woman trying to abort her no longer welcomes her in his own home.
TILA TERRY, DAUGHTER OF RANDALL TERRY: I had sex outside of marriage. I got pregnant and I miscarried after about three or four months. I hadn't been speaking with my dad. We haven't been as close as, you know, we were since I left his house.
HINOJOSA: His oldest daughter Ebony, who also had two children out of wedlock and now calls herself a Muslim, is moved to tears by the conflicts in her own family.
EBONY WHETSTONE, DAUGHTER OF RANDALL TERRY: The whole makeup of our family is not traditional by far. So it is not going to be, you know, picture-perfect.
HINOJOSA: But this was the family Randall Terry featured in his campaign ads, three biracial children adopted from a drug addict into a perfect Christian marriage.
J. TERRY: I wouldn't say that it was necessarily deceitful or anything like that for my father to present us as -- or present himself as a loving husband, a Christian husband and my mom and all of his kids, because that's what we were trying to be.
HINOJOSA: But the perfect marriage didn't exist. Randall Terry was censured by his church for having sinful relationships with other women. He divorced his wife and married his former church assistant.
T. TERRY: We had this image we had to live up to of being perfect and growing up with that is very hard.
HINOJOSA: The one belief that Terry children still share with their father is his opposition to abortion, perhaps one of the few issues on which this divided family can agree, as Randall Terry continues to publicly condemn the lives his own children are living. Maria Hinojosa, CNN, Charlotte, North Carolina.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Randall Terry serves these days as the president for the Society of Truth and Justice, a group that opposes abortion and same- sex marriage. And Mr. Terry joins us tonight from Jacksonville, Florida. Look, none of this can be very easy. Let me ask...R.
TERRY: You got that right.
(LAUGHTER)
BROWN: Let me ask the kind of baseline question here. Do you think, sir, that by virtue of the fact that you're a public person and you have spoken out on all of this whole range of morality issues that what goes on in your family, what your children do or do not do ought to be news?
R. TERRY: No.
BROWN: Not at all?
R. TERRY: Well, you know what? It is newsworthy, I guess. For me, there is two issues. One is my son's choice to be homosexual and his practices. And we can talk about that. And the other is showing family photos, talking about discussions that we have had in a presentation that CNN just did that is just frankly not accurate. So, for me, there is two painful issues. One is that my son is involved in a lifestyle that is self-destructive. It is a sexual addiction that might end up taking his life.And then the other is that he took thousands of dollars from "Out" magazine to do this.
BROWN: Well, let's talk about that question. According to the magazine, he contacts the magazine. I'm looking at the e-mail he sent them. And they pay him a standard -- well, I'm -- you can dispute this, but I'm telling you what they say.
R. TERRY: No, I believe it.
BROWN: And what he says. And they pay him the standard freelance fee. I'm not sure precisely what the issue is there. So help me understand that. What is the problem there?
R. TERRY: Well, the reality is, is that Jamiel exploited my name for money. I have been a very high-profile public figure in the fight against abortion and in the fight against homosexual marriage. Jamiel knew this. And "Out" magazine knew this. So Jamiel went to them and originally told me that they contact contacted him. Now I find out he went to them. And he used my name to get money for himself and to bring out stuff in our family and to present a picture of our family's history that is frankly inaccurate. So that part of it to me is just -- Aaron, it is just unbelievably painful. I still love my son. I still love Tila. And even the way the story presented it, my children, I love them both. I'm in contact with them both. And the reasons that each of them are not welcome in my home right now have nothing to do with their sexual behavior, exactly nothing. It has to do with other things that have happened between me and them that make them a danger in my home. And they know those things. I know those things. That is not what this program is about. But I want to state this for the record. Please let me.
BROWN: Sure.R.
TERRY: I love my children. I love them both. I love Jamiel. And the thing for Jamiel that I fear for is this. I have told Jamiel this and it is what I say publicly. Homosexual behavior is wrong. It is a self-destructive, self-abusive sexual addiction. And as a loving dad, I cannot say to him, Jamiel, hey, this is a great life choice, if this is what you want to do, no problem, any more than I can say to him, oh, you're a drug addict, oh, that's a great life choice. Go for it.
BROWN: Mr. Terry, can I -- let me try to get one more quick question in. R.
TERRY: Sure.
BROWN: Has any of this experience caused you not to change the fundamental beliefs that you have -- I'm not suggesting that at all -- but has it caused you to rethink the words you use, the tone you use, the way you express your views?
R. TERRY: Absolutely. This life is fraught with pain and things -- baggage that we carry for our whole lives. And I don't believe that the homosexuals choose their feelings. I really don't. I believe that we all choose our behavior. And so I know and Jamiel knows the things that happen to him as a little boy long before we got him. We didn't get him until he was 8. We both know the things that happened to him that are bearing in on him now that are involved in the cause-effect of his homosexual behavior. And I don't think he wants these feelings. But he still and every homosexual and all of us have choices to make about our behavior. And that's what this is about. We cannot look at homosexual behavior and say, oh, this is a great life choice, because it is not.
BROWN: Mr. Terry, let me go back to the first thing I said to you. None of this can be very comfortable. And so we especially appreciate your coming on and talking as directly as you have tonight. Thank you, sir, very much. R.
TERRY: Thanks for having me.
BROWN: Thank you, Randall Terry. These are not easy conversations for any father. I can't imagine.
BROWN: Still ahead on the program, blurring the lines. What before was photography now is art. The stills after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: An antidote now, at least we hope it is, for a pretty rough week so far. It is a familiar place, a place we visit when we can. The walls are hung with still photographs, photographs in this case curated by the wonderful Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, most recently on display at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Our love affair for the power of stills began with the work of the great news photographers in our world. But tonight, they step aside. The work here is the work of artists in a more traditional way. Well, perhaps, traditional isn't really the right word at all.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RUSSELL FERGUSON, UCLA HAMMER MUSEUM: There is still, I think, a lingering tendency to see photography as something that is essentially a separate form of art-making. It was in the early 1960s, I think, that artists began working in a different way with photography.
DOUGLAS FOGLE, WALKER ART CENTER: The Eve Klein piece is actually a fake newspaper that he made in 1960, which is the beginning date of the show. He made a photograph of himself jumping off of the second story of a Parisian apartment building. The fact is that this act of superhuman sort of launching himself into space was completely fabricated. It really plays with this very traditional notion of photography as a record of the world, the idea that the truth is in the picture. Sarah Charlesworth in this piece took this photograph and looked at the way in which it was reproduced all around the world in newspapers and the way in which the image was cropped, whether it was above the fold of the newspaper or below the fold, what context it was put in with other photographs on that front page. It is composed of 40 different images. Artists of my generation who are in their 30s or early 40s now had begun using photography as easily as they might pick up a paintbrush. It was just one more media for them to use amongst many, whether it was video, photography, painting, installation. There's artists who really are trying to redefine landscape. Jan Dibbets from Amsterdam takes photographs of the landscape, but in fact those photographs are slightly tilted on an angle in succession. And each of these is then made in a negative image of itself, tiled together and then made into the shape of a comet. This work by Gilbert & George called "Raining Gin" (ph) is made up of multiple photographs that have been first kind of montaged together. There's photographs of themselves, which are taken in a very blurry kind of way, purposefully, to represent kind of a drunken state. It is very indicative of a lot of the works in the show that push the boundaries between photography and sculpture. The L.A. Freeway flyer piece, it is ostensibly a sculpture. It is a series of walking sticks or canes that you would use to go on different hikes in Europe. Gervan Elkis' (ph) experience in L.A. was that the highways were the connective tissue of the culture and society. And what he did is, he did a series of photographs of all of the highways all over Los Angeles and then printed out these rolls of film and then wrapped those images of the L.A. freeway system around these canes, so that the work becomes this kind of weird commentary on the old world, the new world and brings them together in this kind of hybrid way. I would like people to see the way in which photography became one of the tools used by artists in those two decades to open up the practice of art-making outside of the traditional modern parameters.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Morning papers after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(ROOSTER CROWING)
BROWN: OK, a very quick check of morning papers. We don't have a lot of time tonight because I've been going on too long.
"The International Herald Tribune" published by "The New York Times" leads with the Middle East. "Bush Shifts Views on the West Bank. He Acquiesces on Israeli Settlements. Palestinians Denounce New Approach." I would say Mr. Sharon had a very successful visit. He got just about everything but the presidential lectern out of the deal today.
"Christian Science Monitor." "Siege of Fallujah Polarizing Iraqis. Even Moderate Shiite Leaders Say the Fighting in the Sunni Triangle City Has Moved Opinion Decisively Against Coalition." This is a good story over here, too, that we did last night, as a matter of fact. "For Kerry, a Balancing Act on the War. Both Bush and Kerry Make Public Gambits This Week to Reaffirm Their Stance on Iraq."
"The Press of Atlantic City," Atlantic City, New Jersey, leads with the Middle East. But that's the headline I like. "Oh, Blah." It is raining again. It has just been gray here in the Northeast. How are we doing on time? Twenty seconds. In that case, where am I going in that case? I don't know.
"Bush Backs Israeli Plan to Exit Gaza" is "The Miami Herald." The weather in Chicago tomorrow is "blooming," which sounds pretty good to me.That's our report for tonight. We hope you'll all back here tomorrow 10:00 Eastern time."LOU DOBBS" for most of you is up next.Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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