Why how nice of poor little Erica to compliment me on her enjoyment of "Morning Papers." It was of course a concept inspired by me due to my notes of review of the news seeking proof of Human Induced Global Warming. Both you and Aaron are completely welcome to enjoying the segment. It is, however, unfortunate that you, Erica, do not see the level of bigotry leveled at the people of the viewership of this program in it's preference to Christian Newsprint.
The Washington Times
The Christian Science Monitor
The Washington Examiner
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The Chattanooga Times
The New York Daily News
The Detroit News
Chicago Sun Times
You do realize, Erica, that this preference is a personal pain to me. Perhaps as a sheltered Neocon woman you don't realize the other possiblities. There are Buddist publications and in my particular case Hebrew publications.
The Jerusalem Post.
http://www.jpost.com/
There is Haaretz.
http://www.haaretz.com/
Perhaps I am just wasting my time here and you are just as much a bigot as Sharon von Zwieten, also a known racist, but don't you ever question yourself why Israel is chronically left out of the discussions of this program when there is history being made there everyday due to all the movement regarding the formation of a Palestinian State.
You know, Erica, if there was more exposure of Middle East and not Iraq in the news there would be far more chance of advancement of peace than if it all happens in a vacuum.
Perhaps you don't agree. Perhaps, hate is a directive of yours as well.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
The Religious Bigotry of CNN's NewsNight
Tonight on "Morning Papers" the embellished expose regarding the only newsprint mentioned, namely:
The Christian Science Monitor.
At 10:20 PM during the program what should have been a fairly benign segment regarding rape was turned into a 'helplessness' segment starring the Terror Princess of CNN, Kelli Arena.
I was surprised she conducted this segment UNTIL she worked into the segment as a 'Mile Marker' of twelve years following the rape, the attacks of 9/11.
The 9/11 attacks proved to add no purpose to the segment except to bring it back to the forefront of a segment to 'deal' terror of a rapist out of reach due to statute of limitations and the fool-heartiness of the woman victim to testify before a parole' board when the convict was never convicted of the crime of rape at all. By supplanting herself again in the rapists life she is exposing herself as a potential victim again should he receive parole' regardless of her pleadings. She will have victimized herself, rather than secured her rapist who was never convicted into prison for the crime commited on her. This desperation for justice of the victim was also highlighted by her desire for suicide having only 'her faith' to keep her from the final act and of course not the judical system.
The segment had no redeeming social value only to provide a vehicle for terror and instilling helplessness in woman. It was not empowering, quite the contrary. Why would a woman expose herself at all to a system that limits it's conviction when evidence dictates otherwise. It served to discourage a woman's participation in reporting rape.
The Christian Science Monitor.
At 10:20 PM during the program what should have been a fairly benign segment regarding rape was turned into a 'helplessness' segment starring the Terror Princess of CNN, Kelli Arena.
I was surprised she conducted this segment UNTIL she worked into the segment as a 'Mile Marker' of twelve years following the rape, the attacks of 9/11.
The 9/11 attacks proved to add no purpose to the segment except to bring it back to the forefront of a segment to 'deal' terror of a rapist out of reach due to statute of limitations and the fool-heartiness of the woman victim to testify before a parole' board when the convict was never convicted of the crime of rape at all. By supplanting herself again in the rapists life she is exposing herself as a potential victim again should he receive parole' regardless of her pleadings. She will have victimized herself, rather than secured her rapist who was never convicted into prison for the crime commited on her. This desperation for justice of the victim was also highlighted by her desire for suicide having only 'her faith' to keep her from the final act and of course not the judical system.
The segment had no redeeming social value only to provide a vehicle for terror and instilling helplessness in woman. It was not empowering, quite the contrary. Why would a woman expose herself at all to a system that limits it's conviction when evidence dictates otherwise. It served to discourage a woman's participation in reporting rape.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Monday, May 16, 2005
The Absence of Aaron Brown
On Friday, May 13, 2005, NewsNight continued with '...an at the movies' evening. A very odd profile for a one hour news program. It was an old content documentary, "Infidelity" played for the hour with an occassion appearence by Aaron Brown to let everyone know he was still alive. The commercial content and "The Then and Now" segment was the only aspect of the program that fell under the Executive Producer's control. The "Then and Now" segment featured a teenage surfer girl that lost an arm to a shark bite.
On Monday, May 16, 2005, Aaron Brown was nowhere to be found but only another '...at the movies' program about 'forensic science' that has played over every other possible hour in the programming except perhaps Paula Zahn. She was replaced tonight by Anderson Cooper.
CNN is abandoning the concept of delivering the news except for their second station "Headline News.' Checked out briefly Nancy Grace tonight. I don't know the complete hour content but the last segment of the show was a missing girl. The screen presence of the material, the hostess and guests is very busy with dual screen display. I suppose it is interesting on a large screen plasma television.
I suppose everyone is allowed some vacation.
One other thing.
CNN is getting 'into' uniforms for it's anchors. The color of the day today was ORANGE. All the women looked like popcycles. They've been doing this for some time now, with form fitting design, leather apparel, Y necklaces and dipping necklines. I am surprised the women haven't declared 'a hostile work enviroment' yet, but perhaps they are waiting for the e-mail that requires them to wear 'cat suits.' I don't know who is generating this 'directive' but it is intended to amuse men both at the studios and in the audience as if in control of a woman's sexual appearance. This 'chronic tone' is of a dominatrix who is 'in control' for sexual excitment of men. The Dominatrix is a perferred sexuality for Christians on the 'rhythm' method. Maybe Dr. Phil who states he would like to interview Jesus Christ (It is unclear the purpose, perhaps for a session.) or Robby Ludlow came up with this together.
There is a great deal of the subliminal message that is dominated by Christian Heirarchical values that Ms. Bigot von Zwieten believes no one notices. Dominatrix sexuality, Christian Rock and Roll for Muslims as it was intended not to lure them into the faith.
CNN has always been very fluid and cutting edge in it's conceptual content and that is a strength but in this political environment it is proving to be their undoing. Nancy Grace's program is probably interesting on a big screen plasma television but for the average viewer with a 19 inch screen it is a very 'busy' television screen with smaller than average images. The content of the show keeps moving and provides a continual visual image with the dialogue but provides smaller than usual pictures of both.
I don't know where all these programming 'pauses' are taking the average viewer but it doesn't seem to me into a cohesive environment whereby all faiths and lack thereof can operate under one roof in harmony. There still plays through an under current of 'faith preference' and I just wish it would all be normal like it was before the bigoted evangelical Sharon von Zwieten arrived as an authority. She questionably has a healthy focus to the expression of focus of the programming which is AIMED at women and the fear that can be instilled there creating a 'helplessness' that has been witnessed in 'the real world' by America's Runaway Bride.
When is NewsNight coming back to be NewsNight? Where did Aaron go?
On Monday, May 16, 2005, Aaron Brown was nowhere to be found but only another '...at the movies' program about 'forensic science' that has played over every other possible hour in the programming except perhaps Paula Zahn. She was replaced tonight by Anderson Cooper.
CNN is abandoning the concept of delivering the news except for their second station "Headline News.' Checked out briefly Nancy Grace tonight. I don't know the complete hour content but the last segment of the show was a missing girl. The screen presence of the material, the hostess and guests is very busy with dual screen display. I suppose it is interesting on a large screen plasma television.
I suppose everyone is allowed some vacation.
One other thing.
CNN is getting 'into' uniforms for it's anchors. The color of the day today was ORANGE. All the women looked like popcycles. They've been doing this for some time now, with form fitting design, leather apparel, Y necklaces and dipping necklines. I am surprised the women haven't declared 'a hostile work enviroment' yet, but perhaps they are waiting for the e-mail that requires them to wear 'cat suits.' I don't know who is generating this 'directive' but it is intended to amuse men both at the studios and in the audience as if in control of a woman's sexual appearance. This 'chronic tone' is of a dominatrix who is 'in control' for sexual excitment of men. The Dominatrix is a perferred sexuality for Christians on the 'rhythm' method. Maybe Dr. Phil who states he would like to interview Jesus Christ (It is unclear the purpose, perhaps for a session.) or Robby Ludlow came up with this together.
There is a great deal of the subliminal message that is dominated by Christian Heirarchical values that Ms. Bigot von Zwieten believes no one notices. Dominatrix sexuality, Christian Rock and Roll for Muslims as it was intended not to lure them into the faith.
CNN has always been very fluid and cutting edge in it's conceptual content and that is a strength but in this political environment it is proving to be their undoing. Nancy Grace's program is probably interesting on a big screen plasma television but for the average viewer with a 19 inch screen it is a very 'busy' television screen with smaller than average images. The content of the show keeps moving and provides a continual visual image with the dialogue but provides smaller than usual pictures of both.
I don't know where all these programming 'pauses' are taking the average viewer but it doesn't seem to me into a cohesive environment whereby all faiths and lack thereof can operate under one roof in harmony. There still plays through an under current of 'faith preference' and I just wish it would all be normal like it was before the bigoted evangelical Sharon von Zwieten arrived as an authority. She questionably has a healthy focus to the expression of focus of the programming which is AIMED at women and the fear that can be instilled there creating a 'helplessness' that has been witnessed in 'the real world' by America's Runaway Bride.
When is NewsNight coming back to be NewsNight? Where did Aaron go?
Friday, May 13, 2005
The Religious Bigotry of CNN's NewsNight "Morning Papers"
Christian Science Monitor
The Washington Times
Newsday
Boston Herald
The Oregonian
Stars and Stripes
The Chicago Sun Times
The Washington Times
Newsday
Boston Herald
The Oregonian
Stars and Stripes
The Chicago Sun Times
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Wondering who the bad guys are?
It's the government with the cooperation of Anti-Semites like Ms. CNN Bigot.
Tonight was another 'NewsNight Special Edition' to keep the tone of their bigotry to a minimum ignoring once again a vital day of recognition VE Day.
Instead of celebrating the defeat of the Nazis, CNN ran a 'programmed dialogue' regarding the Human Brain. Most notable was the over use and exposure of humans by the military in experiments to measure stress and capacity as if that wasn't already known. This is very much akin to the use of humans by Nazi Germany as time went on. Also noted a discussion about dementia and Alzheimer's EXCLUDING any and all discussion of genetic research.
CNN hour long Flagship program NewsNight has been and continues to be the 'indoctrination' hour that provides the viewership no matter where they are including overseas to the 'content' allowed in social discussion of an issue. If this programming was viewed in South Korea it would be laughed off the aire. I am not so sure it wasn't laughed off the aire anyway.
Tonight Aaron Brown, the programmable Jew, was prevented from discussing VE Day and the end of the Nazi Holocaust.
Tonight was another 'NewsNight Special Edition' to keep the tone of their bigotry to a minimum ignoring once again a vital day of recognition VE Day.
Instead of celebrating the defeat of the Nazis, CNN ran a 'programmed dialogue' regarding the Human Brain. Most notable was the over use and exposure of humans by the military in experiments to measure stress and capacity as if that wasn't already known. This is very much akin to the use of humans by Nazi Germany as time went on. Also noted a discussion about dementia and Alzheimer's EXCLUDING any and all discussion of genetic research.
CNN hour long Flagship program NewsNight has been and continues to be the 'indoctrination' hour that provides the viewership no matter where they are including overseas to the 'content' allowed in social discussion of an issue. If this programming was viewed in South Korea it would be laughed off the aire. I am not so sure it wasn't laughed off the aire anyway.
Tonight Aaron Brown, the programmable Jew, was prevented from discussing VE Day and the end of the Nazi Holocaust.
Monday, May 9, 2005
The Part Aaron wasn't ALLOWED to Cover.
Putin honours those who died defeating Nazism
By Neil Buckley and Caroline Daniel in Moscow
Published: May 9 2005 15:46
Last updated: May 9 2005 15:46
President Vladimir Putin pledged to build relations with the outside world ”forged by the lessons of the past” as he hosted US president George Bush and 50 other world leaders for celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Mr Putin sat next to Mr Bush for much of the event, heavy with symbols of Russia’s Soviet past, on Moscow’s Red Square. The two leaders appeared relaxed despite trading jibes before Mr Bush’s arrival on Sunday over Russia’s commitment to democracy and its complex post-war legacy, and US support for democracy movements in Russia’s near neighbours.
The Russian president paid tribute to the courage of “all Europeans who resisted Nazism.” But he said the war’s most “ruthless and decisive” events had unfolded within the Soviet Union, whose sacrifice of 27m citizens had underpinned the Allied victory.
By Neil Buckley and Caroline Daniel in Moscow
Published: May 9 2005 15:46
Last updated: May 9 2005 15:46
President Vladimir Putin pledged to build relations with the outside world ”forged by the lessons of the past” as he hosted US president George Bush and 50 other world leaders for celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Mr Putin sat next to Mr Bush for much of the event, heavy with symbols of Russia’s Soviet past, on Moscow’s Red Square. The two leaders appeared relaxed despite trading jibes before Mr Bush’s arrival on Sunday over Russia’s commitment to democracy and its complex post-war legacy, and US support for democracy movements in Russia’s near neighbours.
The Russian president paid tribute to the courage of “all Europeans who resisted Nazism.” But he said the war’s most “ruthless and decisive” events had unfolded within the Soviet Union, whose sacrifice of 27m citizens had underpinned the Allied victory.
Friday, May 6, 2005
Prime Minister Sharon at Auschwitz. That is a showcase of bones of dead Jews. It is such a 'horror' to look at that picture. I can't imagine being in the same room with those people with only their bones left behind. Their names are known to us now and are on display in the Holocaust Museum. It's a strong reality. When the Holocaust Museum presents the dead it is not the stark reality of this moment. I have trouble getting beyond that picture when I look at it. It's profound. Even sixty years later, those dead right their in that picture did nothing wrong except be a Jew. I never get used to that thought and when confronted with that thought due to the crass 'preferences' of the media here it is also profound. It's real. The feeling is just as real as when I look at that picture which 'takes me aback.' We all live with this 'image' of guaratees to life as long as one lives their lives right. We all live with this image of acceptance. We all live with this precious life taken for granted. UNTIL. One is faced with hatred of 'self' by 'another.' The reality changes. What prevents anyone from being bones in a showcase? It changes you. For me it's not about just Jews. It's anyone. That is probably very nieve and too generous. I don't think about it that way, I just try to live my life right and include all those in the preservation of life.
War Stories
Aired May 6, 2005 - 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.
War changes us. It pulls us together. It tears us apart. It rearranges the world. This is why we fight wars and why we seek to avoid them. It is also why we tell war stories.
So, tonight, with the country at war and 60 years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, war stories and why they still have a hold on us.
President Bush landed today in Latvia in the Balkans -- in the Baltics, rather -- to mark the anniversary where history resonates deeply. The stories there are of occupation and oppression and deal- making and what it's like to be a small player on a large and dangerous stage.
But we begin tonight with the stories told by men and women who had reason, if only for a moment, to celebrate a job well done, defeating the Nazis, even as they braced for the hard work of defeating Japan. That was 60 years ago this Sunday, V.E. Day. The storytellers now are fading. Their stories, though, are not. We begin with CNN's Candy Crowley.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This was a story about a young man from Hawaii and another from Kansas who both dreamt of becoming doctors and then went to war.
BOB DOLE (R), FORMER U.S. SENATOR: He was wounded a hill apart and a week apart, a week later, on a hill that I could see it from where I was.
CROWLEY: It was the spring of 1945 in Italy's Powell Valley, weeks before V.E. Day, when something exploded Bob Dole's shoulder, shattering his spinal cord. He lay on the battlefield paralyzed near death.
SANDERS: All I knew was that something hurt up here in my right area, shoulder. And just I could see my little dog, my little white dog. I remembered the girl I first had a date with. All these things just sort of -- you remember your mother and your father and freezing ice cream, hand-cranking ice cream.
CROWLEY: Daniel Inouye had enlisted in the 442nd, the Go For Broke regiment. Assaulting a heavily defended hill, he was shot in the leg, the stomach and a third shot blew off his arm. Inouye won the nation's highest military award for valor for what came next.
SEN. DANIEL INOUYE (D), HAWAII: I don't remember charging up to a machine gun, this, with blood splattering all over and tossing grenades just like from here to you, and then picking up my gun and, like Rambo himself, you know, with -- it looked ridiculous. I can't picture myself doing that. But they all swear that's the way it happened.
CROWLEY: Inouye's arm could not be saved. He spent three months in and out of surgery and headed for rehab. INOUYE: We were given a choice. They would say, there are four orthopedic hospitals, one in Utah, one in California, one in Michigan and one in the South somewhere. I said, let me go to Michigan. And that's where I met Bob Dole.
CROWLEY: The next battle had begun.
DOLE: If you're pretty badly hurt, then you've got a long, long period of hospitalization and rehabilitation. And, you know, it's like anything else. The cameras are gone, the lights are off and there you are.
CROWLEY: War is about enemies, death and destruction. War's aftermath is about friends, healing and choices.
DOLE: I used to watch him play bridge. He was the best bridge player in the hospital. You know, we sat around and talked about, what are we going to do the rest of our life?
CROWLEY: Their injuries meant neither could ever be a doctor.
INOUYE: I said, Bob, what are you going to be doing? And one thing about Bob Dole, he had his life mapped out, really mapped out. He says, well, when I get back, I'll be a county attorney. Then I'll be in the legislature. The first opening in the Congress, that's where I'll go. I said, gee, that's a good idea.
CROWLEY: It was not the path either had originally chosen, but sometimes you pick the journey and sometimes life does.
DOLE: Three more weeks, the war was over. We could have been there for the victory party. Instead, we were both flat on our bed, our backs in a hospital somewhere. And -- but, as it turned out, I guess we did all right for a couple of guys. So...
CROWLEY: Two men, two worlds and quite a journey.
INOUYE: I went to law school. I became an assistant prosecutor,got into territorial legislature. Hawaii became a state. I'm here. When I got here, I sent a note to Bob. "Bob, I'm here. Where are you?"
(LAUGHTER)
CROWLEY: Bob arrived in Washington two years later. Republican Senator Robert Dole and Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye served together in the United States Congress for 36 years. They have been friends for almost 60. Candy Crowley, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: The war that ended 60 years ago had many victims, the soldiers who died, those concentration camps who were murdered. This is a story of another group of victims, victims you may not have heard about. They were born to be the future of the regime that saw in them something they didn't even see in themselves precisely, purity. Reporting their story for us tonight, CNN's Nic Robertson.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You learned how to ride a bicycle down here?
SISS OUSTAD, BORN DURING HITLER'S REGIME: Yes.
ROBERTSON: Yes?(voice-over): Siss Oustad is living the legacy of Adolf Hitler's plan to create a master race. She takes me down her painful memory lane.
OUSTAD: This was also a guy, an elderly guy. And he stopped to ask for direction.
ROBERTSON: It's 1954 and she's 12 years old.
OUSTAD: And then he grabbed me and took me into a courtyard.
ROBERTSON: He's not the first man who has tried to rape her.
OUSTAD: The first guy, he did it because he knew my background.
ROBERTSON (on camera): He knew you were a German child?
OUSTAD: Yes.
ROBERTSON (voice-over): Knew nobody would care if such an outcast were raped, because she was a Lebensborn, which translates into fountain of life, a wartime product of Hitler's ambitions to expand the Aryan race.
In April 1940, the Nazis invaded Norway. By June, the king was in exile, the government gone. Norway was occupied by more than 400,000 German troops, its three million citizens forced to live under Nazi rule. It was then that Hitler, driven by his desire to create a pure Aryan race, saw opportunity among the blond and blue-eyed Scandinavian women.
German soldiers were told to treat Norwegian women well. And the women were encouraged to return the favor. Any child born out of these liaisons was to be cared for in a special Nazi-run Lebensborn home. By 1945 and the end of Nazi occupation, 10,000 to 12,000 babies had been born to Norwegian mothers and German fathers.
OUSTAD: There was a rumor that every one of us were going to be shipped to Germany. And my grandfather had never seen me.
ROBERTSON (on camera): He hadn't come to see you because he didn't want anything to do with you?
OUSTAD: He was persuaded to come then. And he looked at me and I charmed him. And he said, oh, no, she's not going to Germany.
ROBERTSON (voice-over): Siss was 3. She was lucky. Some were dumped in insane asylums. (on camera): To your knowledge, were you the only German child at this school?
OUSTAD: No. ROBERTSON: There were others?
OUSTAD: Yes. ROBERTSON: But you obviously didn't know it at the time.
OUSTAD: I had a suspicion.
ROBERTSON: Really?
OUSTAD: Yes.
ROBERTSON: You had a suspicion about others, but you didn't know about yourself?
OUSTAD: No. ROBERTSON: As I'm finding out, though, growing up with her grandparents, Siss was told very little. OUSTAD: I saw this one first. And I thought, hmm. But the letters were so difficult to read because I was young. But I saw my name and I saw, well, my sister's name.
ROBERTSON: And you knew it was a birth certificate.
OUSTAD: Yes. (INAUDIBLE) ROBERTSON: Well, it has your mother's name here and your father.
OUSTAD: Yes, my father's.
ROBERTSON: It says...
OUSTAD: Yes.
ROBERTSON: It says -- what, does it say German soldier?
OUSTAD: Yes. So, I took those and went to my grandmother, or my mother, as I said, and said, what is this? And she goes furious.
ROBERTSON: She got really angry?
OUSTAD: Yes.
ROBERTSON: You must have known something was going to -- was important then.
OUSTAD: Yes, I knew that, uh-oh, this, I shouldn't have seen.
ROBERTSON (voice-over): Siss was just 8, too young to understand the grown woman she called sister was actually her mother, that her loving grandparents had adopted her. As she got older, she craved answers. Then, when she was 16, sitting with her real mother:
OUSTAD: I called her by her name. And I said, actually, you are almost 20 years older than me and you are my sister, I said, but actually you could be my mother. Are you or aren't you? I am, she said. And who told you?
ROBERTSON: Since then, Siss Oustad has married, divorced, raised her own family, watched her grandchildren grow, learned that her father is dead and figured out she wasn't alone. Wanting to move on, she joined a campaign to help Lebensborn like herself, who were denied basic rights, denied the opportunity to seek child support from fathers in Germany, many even denied Norwegian citizenship.
OUSTAD: We had an incident when we went to court, one guy who rose from this chair, furious and said, you German kids, keep your mouth shut and be quiet.
ROBERTSON (on camera): This -- we're talking about a few years ago here?
OUSTAD: Yes, just a few years ago.
ROBERTSON (voice-over): Siss has convinced me, though, she was born out of love, for her, bittersweet.
OUSTAD: I hope, in the name of whatever, that no one ever, ever will suffer like this again, ever.
ROBERTSON: Nic Robertson, CNN, Oslo, Norway.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: If Norway was intended to be the nursery for the Third Reich, the beaches of Normandy became the boneyard, a turning point not only in the war, but also in the career of a young photographer named Robert Capa. Capa would go on to establish the photo agency Magnum. And he used to say, if your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough. That day, D-Day, Robert Capa got close enough, his story told by his biographer, Richard Whelan.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) RICHARD WHELAN, AUTHOR, "ROBERT CAPA": If one had to choose a day that was the climax of Capa's career, D-Day was it.
Capa set the standard of bravery, certainly. He took his camera closer to the front-line action than anyone had ever dared to do before. He chose to go in with the first wave of American troops. And the soldiers thought this was the most extraordinary folly they'd ever heard of, that someone would go in without being ordered to do so. Capa photographed them studying this model, planning their strategic moves.
He photographed men putting their equipment together and getting on to the ships, as they were putting the final preparations on the sail, and while they were actually sailing to the French coast. When he got out of the landing craft into waist-deep water and waded with the men into the beach, he began shooting and he had two cameras loaded with film.
He wanted to photograph the faces of the soldiers.
He wasn't content to walk behind and photograph the soldiers' backs. He wanted the faces, as he always did. And when he went to change the film, hi hands were shaking so badly he could not change his film again. There were so much pressure in the London office of "LIFE" that a darkroom assistant turned the heat in the drying cabinet up too high. And the films that Capa had exposed at such extraordinary risk to his life, going in with his back to the Germans, armed only with a camera, no gun, the films he had made began to melt. Of all the photographs he had made on the beach, only 11 were at all savable, usable.
When Capa left Omaha Beach, the only landing craft to which he could manage to swim was a medical craft that was evacuating some of the first of the wounded. He often focused on doctors, medics, treating not only Americans, but Germans as well. What interested him was how the living cope with the horrors of war. He really understood what a horrendous social crisis, a catastrophe war is. The German army had sustained extremely heavy losses. And these very, very young men, these boys really, were thrown into combat with almost no training, very little equipment.
He photographed them as bewildered, terrified, victims of war in their own way. Capa was very aware of the political complexities of the situation. And he brought that to his work. He covered wars that in some ways really touched his life very directly and wars in which he was willing to risk his life, just as the combatants were risking theirs for the outcome. Capa's work is a benchmark to measure work against, as most photojournalists do still regard Capa in that sense. They depend upon his work. They go back to his work to get their bearings, to get a sense of what it really is about.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: In a few moments, the sinking of a ship that helped change the course of history. This story is not about the titanic. But now, at a quarter past the hour, Erica -- Erica Hill has the headlines.
ERICA HILL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Aaron. Good to see you. U.S. intelligence is closely monitoring North Korea, which could be preparing to test a nuclear weapon. Officials tell CNN analysts have picked up signs of activity on the ground. But they stress it's unclear if North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is truly getting ready to test a device or if he's conducting an elaborate plan to deceive American spy satellites.
A powerful explosion in Lebanon today in a Christian stronghold just north of Beirut. Reports say at least one person was killed, two dozen injured. Lebanon's president said the violence may be linked to the return from exile tomorrow of a Christian politician who is a fierce opponent of Syrian influence in Lebanon.
And more violence in Iraq today. Two suicide bombings north and south of Baghdad kill at least 23 and wound dozens others. One bomber hit a crowded market. The other hit a bus carrying Iraqi police officers. And militants in Iraq say they will murder an Australian man they're holding hostage if Australia does not withdraw its troops from Iraq in 72 hours.
Video of 63-year-old Douglas Wood was broadcast on Al-Jazeera. Australia says it will not negotiate with terrorists. And, for the first time ever, the Pentagon has released a list of sexual abuse cases in which military personnel were either victims or alleged assailants. In 2004, there were 1,700 such cases.
Last year, there were 880 cases of alleged assault by at least one military person against another, 425 alleged assaults by military members against nonmembers; 296 cases involved an unidentified assailant against a member of the military. And that's the latest from Headline News at this hour -- Aaron, back to you.
BROWN: Erica, thank you. We'll see you in a half-an-hour. Coming up on the program tonight, a day 90 years ago that changed the world forever, a disaster that seemed impossible at the time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nobody believed that she could actually be caught by a submarine.
BROWN (voice-over): She was the pride of the British commercial fleet, with nearly 2,000 people aboard. Few would survive after the torpedo struck.
DIANA PRESTON, AUTHOR, "LUSITANIA: AN EPIC TRAGEDY": It really signaled the beginning of a no-holds-barred warfare.
BROWN: She was just 9 years old when her father died in Vietnam.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Your dad is gone. He's gone for the rest of your life. He's not there when you drive your first car. He's not there when you take your first date. He's not there when you get married. BROWN: Now she helps others who share a similar pain.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When the boys ask, why? Why did God take him? Why is he gone? Why can't he be here? It's hard to hear. But it's the only answer I have, which is, he's needed more up there right now. BROWN: He went to war 60 years ago and lived to write about it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wrote a long letter on V.E. Day, and I took a lot of pictures on V.E. Day, because I knew it was historic.
BROWN: An American soldier recalls what victory in Europe felt like. And his recollections might surprise you. From New York and around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: For as often as politicians boast and news anchors report, very little happens day to day or even decade to decade that truly changes the larger course of human events, the birth of Christ, the shot fired at Lexington, Hiroshima. Some day, we may see 9/11 that way.
Ninety years ago, an oceanliner set sail, not the Titanic, the Lusitania. Ninety years ago tomorrow, she was sunk, and the world has never been the same.
Here is NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The morning of May 1, 1915. New York's Pier 54 was a melee of porters, steamer trunks, boarding passengers.
PRESTON: She was carrying over 1,200 passengers in a crew of 700. That was her biggest eastbound complement since the first World War had started.
NISSEN: Many boarding the Lusitania that day were nervous. A stark notice from the German Embassy had appeared in morning newspapers. "Travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk." Everyone knew what that meant. The Germans had recently stepped up their use of submarines, U-boats. Passengers were hastily reassured. The Lusitania was too large, too fast for a submarine to track, sink. Besides, it was unthinkable that a civilian passenger liner would be attacked, even one like the Lusitania with war material in her cargo.
PRESTON: She had in her hold Remington rifle cartridges. She had shrapnel shells and fuses. This was legal. What was in the Lusitania's hold was on her manifest.
NISSEN: And there were 200 American passengers on board.
PRESTON: This was hugely significant fact, because American citizens at the time were citizens of a neutral country.
NISSEN: The Lusitania set off and sailed across the Atlantic to within sight of the Irish coast. Her captain, William Turner, knew German submarines were in those waters, but he took no evasive action. He did not know that, in the six days since the Lusitania left New York, 23 merchant vessels had been torpedoed by U-boats in area, boats that included the U-20, which surfaced on the morning of May 7 to find the Lusitania dead ahead.
PRESTON: The U-20 fired a single torpedo that went singing through the water with a hiss.
NISSEN: Seconds later, the torpedo hit. Passenger Oliver Bernard, an artist, later sketched the shattering explosion.
PRESTON: The side of the ship was breached. You had cold water pouring in, setting up these additional explosions.
NISSEN: Some survivors thought those explosions were the munitions in the cargo hold. But researchers say they were caused when cold sea water hit the Lusitania's red hot boilers. Within minutes, the great ship was tilting sharply.
PRESTON: People couldn't even stand upright. You had people careering around the deck. And the ship was progressively tipped and tipped and tipped.
NISSEN: For the nearly 2,000 souls on board, time was cruelly short.
PRESTON: That 30,000-ton ship, as a result of that one torpedo striking it, sank in just 18 minutes.
NISSEN: The water was a'churn with what artist Oliver Bernard described as hundreds of frantic, screaming, shouting humans, struggling to stay afloat in the frigid water.
PRESTON: The suffering that those people must have undergone, the suffering and the uncertainty in that cold, cold water, waiting two to three hours before any rescue came.
NISSEN: No nearby ships responded to the Lusitania's SOS. Fishing boats had to row the 10 miles from shore. Steamboats at port had to fire their boilers before they could travel out.
PRESTON: They didn't arrive until twilight. And all they found, nobody left alive, but just the sea covered with dead bodies.
NISSEN: Small clusters of survivors who had managed to get into the few swamped lifeboats or float on debris began arriving in the village of Queenstown on the Irish coast. So did a flotilla of bodies, hundreds of them, brought in by the tide for days. It was weeks before lists of the dead or missing were complete. Of the 1,960 people on board the Lusitania, 1,200, almost two-thirds, had perished, including 94 of the 129 children on board. Of the 200 Americans on board, 128 died.
PRESTON: This caused a huge uproar in the United States. And it was a reason why, in 1917, the United States of America did eventually go to war with Germany.
NISSEN: The sinking of the Lusitania not only changed the course of World War I. It changed war itself.
PRESTON: The sinking of the Lusitania belongs to a step change in the nature of warfare, where you could use any technology that was available to you and anybody could be your victim, whether they were a civilian, whether they were a child, whether they were a baby. It really signaled the beginning of a no-holds-barred warfare.
NISSEN: In the bombing of cities in World War II, from London to Dresden to Hiroshima, the napalming of villages in Vietnam, suicide bombings of neighborhoods in Baghdad, the line between soldier and civilian blurred.
PRESTON: The world on the 8th of May 1915, the day after the Lusitania was attacked, was a much less innocent place than it had been the day before. The world had changed forever.
NISSEN: Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, she lost her father to war decades ago, how her mother became her hero.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: The simple truth is that you can't know what war is like until you've been there. In the same way, you can't really know what it's like to lose a loved one to war without feeling that sorrow firsthand. Every war claims many victims who never set foot on the battlefield, many of them too young to understand why their father and now their mother isn't coming home.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): This is the story of two very different women from two very different times.
JACKIE LIVAUDAIS, HUSBAND KILLED IN IRAQ: Who's this?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Daddy?
BROWN: Jackie Livaudais, a mother of three, was one of the first widows of the war in Iraq.
LIVAUDAIS: Destre, he misses everything about him. He loved daddy in every day. He misses working with him. He misses cuddling with him. I know he really misses daddy telling him that he's proud of him. But we all try to do that for him. When the boys ask why did God take him, it's hard, hard to hear. But it's the only answer I have, which is he's needed more up there right now. And, of course, it's hard for kids to understand why.
BROWN: Karen Spears Zacharias, was the child of another war, searching for a father who left for Vietnam when she was 9 and never came back.
KAREN SPEARS ZACHARIAS: Why in the world did life continue? Didn't the world understand my father was dead? And how could they go on and just act like nothing had happened? Because everything had happened different for me from that point in time. And I was angry at my mother over that. I was angry at my dad. I was angry at God.
BROWN: Zacharias, that anger haunted her for years. The book that grew from that anger "Hero Mama," is her story and the story of her mother.
ZACHARIAS: I almost can't stand the way that this is being replayed in people's lives every day because of the war in Iraq. I look at Jackie Livaudais. She was 22 when he died. She was 5 months pregnant. She had two little boys. I look at Jackie Livaudais and I see my mother. I hear my mom's story.
LIVAUDAIS: We've become good friends, because we have that loss in common. But there's so much more than just the loss. When somebody can understand it and actually articulate and relate to the boys, they love it. Karen's been a great friend, but she's also been the view from the child's eyes that I need.
ZACHARIAS: When you're in that child, it just doesn't matter. Your dad's gone. He's gone for the rest of your life. He's not there when you drive your first car. He's not there when you take your first date. He's not there when you get married.
BROWN: What you have, all you have, are memories.
ZACHARIAS: You tell me a story about daddy.
DESTRE LIVAUDAIS, SON OF JACKIE: He was a great man. And he had strong muscles. I remember he was a good guy. He took care of us good. I keep those pictures in my room because, I love him. But it doesn't help any.
LIVAUDAIS: Every kid has a picture of their dad in their room. They'll sleep with the picture when they're having a rough night because they know that bad thing are scared of dad because dad's pretty tough and strong. All the widows, all the kids, they all have -- the kids all have their tear-stained pillows, I believe. I think they all do. They're always going to have that pain. It's their shadow now.
BROWN: Karen Zacharias, the adult, is never far from Karen, the child. Someone who knows too much about loss and a lot about possibility.
ZACHARIAS: I'm just there because I would have given anything as a young girl to have that person there for me or to have someone come along and befriend my mom. What I hope it brings to them is a sense of hope that when Jackie Livaudais looks at me, what Jackie Livaudais sees is that her kids are going to be OK. That she's going to mess up, but as long as she loves those boys with all of her heart, mind and soul, the way my mom loved me, they will know that she was a terrific mother. She is a terrific mother.
BROWN: Another hero mama in a long line.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: With more women serving in the military, it's not just fathers, of course, who are missed when parents go off to war.
In Georgia this week a high school student got a call from his mom who was serving in Iraq. She called him on his cell phone during his lunch period. His teacher told him to hang up, you can't take cell phone calls in school even from moms in Iraq it seems. He refused and was suspended.
The principal of the school says the teen used profanity when he was taken to the office and could have been arrested. Instead, because his mom was in Iraq, he was just suspended for 10 days.
Still to come on the program tonight, he went to war and watched history unfold around him. How one World War II veteran remembers V-E Day 60 years later.
Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: In putting the program together, it struck us that wars even world wars, are still fought one soldier at a time. Their experienced one air raid at a time, one refugee, one meal to the next. And even in retrospect, when there's time to appreciate the stakes and ask what might have been, wars are remembered one moment at a time, or one letter home. Herman Obermayer is a veteran of the second World War and the author of "Soldiers for Freedom: A G.I.'s Account of World War II." We -- we spoke with Mr. Obermayer earlier this evening.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Do you remember the day itself, V-E day?
HERMAN OBERMAYER, AUTHOR, "SOLDIERING FOR FREEDOM": As you know, I wrote a book based on letters. I wrote long letter on V-E day. Which -- and I took a lot of pictures on V-E day, because I knew it was historic. So yes, I was able to refresh my own memory, because I wrote a long letter that describes events. And with that as a jog, I can remember quite clearly.
BROWN: I want to talk a little bit about -- you wrote a lot of letters about a lot of things. We'll talk about letter writing in a moment. But one of the things about is we read through your thoughts on V-E Day is that it meant different things to the Americans than it did to the Europeans or the French, which is where you were.
OBERMAYER: Yes.
BROWN: How so?
OBERMAYER: Well, chiefly, I guess for us we had won the first half of the game. I quote in the letter that when the Americans built their first pontoon bridge across the Rhine, the soldiers built a sign on the eastern end of the bridge the shortest route to CBI, meaning China, Burma, India theater. We had a war to fight. And in May 1945, we were in Okinawa, and I have since done the research. And that was effectively a 90-day battle in which we lost 40,000 men were injured and 13,000 men were killed in a 90-day engagement. And that was going on. We weren't winning that war, at least it wasn't apparent that we were winning it. And all of us knew that we were -- I worked on a pipeline. And while I was -- by the end of June, they had closed the pipeline, pumped all the gasoline out of it and were moving it to Marseilles to go to the Pacific.
BROWN: You mentioned -- the book is rich, literally rich with letters that you wrote. First of all, just really quickly, did you know the letters still existed or at what point did you know the letters existed?
OBERMAYER: I probably always knew that some of them existed.
BROWN: These were letters to your folks.
OBERMAYER: Letters only to my parents. And I knew that many of them existed. I was -- my mother, when she broke up housekeeping in a large house sent them over to me in 1962. And until the mid-'90s, I didn't examine them. And then I started to organize them. And all of the overseas ones were numbered. So I knew I had everything there, but two numbers which were probably thrown away by the censor.
BROWN: Do you think that today those of us of a certain age and younger appreciate not what the greatest generation did -- I mean, I think people get that -- but the importance of it? Why it mattered so much at the time?
OBERMAYER: It's hard -- you know, I don't know whether I have any more understanding than you do. I think I understood, or understand now maybe more that if America hadn't entered the war, Hitler would have crossed the Atlantic. Hitler's -- from 1940 on Hitler stood on the edge of the Atlantic, and we -- our -- without the strength and determination of America, Hitler would have crossed the Atlantic.
BROWN: You weren't at the front. This is -- there's no great heroics portrayed here by you. When you look back on it, do you ever wish that your role in the war had been different?
OBERMAYER: Probably not. I'm here.
BROWN: Yes.
OBERMAYER: I survived. And, as I say in the next to the last paragraph when I go to the cemetery at Omaha Beach, the decision to go from the infantry to the airborne to the engineers to the medics, I didn't make any of these decisions. I didn't understand how anybody else made them. Some guy blew a whistle in the morning and said fall out and he read a list. And I went where I was sent to. And I could have gone to someplace that I died and I didn't. And I guess I look back and just say I was blessed. I was there and I lost my freedom to make any other decision.
BROWN: And the rest of us, in fact, are blessed to be able to read it. You've had a really interesting career. And if this -- this is a fascinating chapter of it. The letters -- in some respects just because letter writing strikes me as such a lost art in and of themselves are worth taking a look at. It's nice to meet you. Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Herman Obermayer. As our special coverage of V-E Day -- the anniversary, thereof -- continues. We'll check some of the other news of the day. And then morning papers from 60 years ago. A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: In a moment, our anniversary series looks at the man who helped bring freedom to South Africa. But first, at about a quarter to the hour, Erica Hill with headlines in Atlanta -- Erica.
ERICA HILL, HEADLINE NEWS: Thanks, Aaron.
And CNN's "Security Watch" tonight, President Bush today nominated Edmund Hawley to run the troubled Transportation Security Administration. Hawley helped create the agency, and will be the fourth person to run it in as many years. TSA has been criticized for its spending and hiring practices.
And a change in leadership at the Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Laboratory. Peter Nanos will step down as director next week. His two years at the lab in New Mexico were marked by turmoil. He instituted strict policies to stop the mental abuses and security lapses and was met with a lot of resistance.
At the courthouse in Santa Maria, California today, the mothers of two boys who repeatedly slept with Jackson in the same bed testified he never acted inappropriately toward the boys. And they said that Jackson was like one of the family.
The Elian Gonzalez case is back in the news. A federal judge in Miami has ruled against awarding millions of dollars in damages to 13 people who claim they were injured when federal agents seized the boy five years ago. The plaintiffs claimed that the lingering effects of tear gas were responsible for their injuries. And that is a look at the headlines at this hour.
Aaron, back to you. Have a great weekend.
BROWN: Thank you. You too.
Tonight, as we continue our anniversary series "Then & Now" we profile a man who dedicated his life to defeating apartheid in South Africa and eventually became the beloved leader of that country.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Both the symbol and a source of power for the fight against apartheid in South Africa, Nelson Mandela never gave up. He was imprisoned in 1962 for his leadership of the outlawed African National Congress in the battle to win equal rights for blacks. Mandela was released more than 27 years later. He received a Nobel Peace Prize and became the first black president of South Africa.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mandela viva. Viva.
CROWD: Viva.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Married for the third time on his 80th birthday in 1998, he retired from the presidency one year later. Mandela is now 86-years-old. After a battle with prostate cancer and other health problems, he retired from public life last year.
MANDELA: Don't call me, I'll call you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Only to re-emerge to spearhead a new cause. Mandela leads a fund-raising group for AIDS victims called 46664, after his prison number. The fight once again is personal for Mandela, his son died of AIDS in January.
MANDELA: Let us give publicity to HIV/AIDS and not to hide it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: All year long as CNN celebrates 25 years of reporting the news. We'll look back at the newsmakers and the stories that have shaped the extraordinary era in which we live. Morning papers, then and now, when we return.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: OK. Time to check morning papers from around the country, around the world, and we'll begin 60 years ago. I don't think we've ever done A German headline, but we shall tonight "The War Is Out."
"The war is over," says the headline. Pictures of Stalin, Truman and Churchill, Hitler and Mussolini. It's over."Daily News." this one, "500,000 in Times Square." To me, the picture -- I assume this is the "New York Daily News" -- doesn't quite match the headline. I wish I could see the cut line, but hey, these are 60-year-old papers. You can't always get it.
"The Daily Mirror," "This is V-E." The sub had "Japs To Fight On War Leaders Say." A sign of the times. "
The Los Angeles Examiner," then it became "The Herald Examiner." I ain't know if it's still in business. "V-E Day Official Today." "Truman, Churchill, Stalin, de Gaulle will broadcast victory manifestos. Nazi's to sign final pact."
This morning "The Los Angeles times" a little more succinct. "Full Victory in Europe. Allies to make formal announcement today." But lots of war stories on the front page.
This is the "Daily News" again. "Philadelphia Daily News," "New York Daily News", can't tell, costs two cents, though. "It's Over in Europe." But that looks like the half a million people in Times Square, doesn't it?
OK, how are we doing in time there, Barkley?
OH, plenty.
OK, I'll slow down.
This is of wars today.
The "Marine Corps Times." I'd like to see this headline, by the way. "Body Armor Recall. The Corps is pulling back 5277 vests, but ballistics experts say -- rejected 14,000 more." And then one of those news you can use stories "Is your vest safe?"
"The Dallas Morning News" also of wars present. Middle of the -- middle of the page "It Does Their Hearts Good. Soldiers rave about Dallas, Fort Worth rousing welcome crew at the airport. The volunteers of greeters say they get more than they give." That's a nice story on that.
And that's wars present.
Maybe this is, unfortunately, wars future. "North Korea Plays Coy With Nuke Test Setup."
That's a headline in the "Chicago Sun-Times." Also "Paula Abdul Goes on the Offensive." For all of you who have been following that particular caper. The weather by the way, in Chicago tomorrow, mixed message.
We'll wrap up the week in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Have a terrific weekend. We'll see you on Monday. Until then, good night for all of us.
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 May 6, 2005 - 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.
War changes us. It pulls us together. It tears us apart. It rearranges the world. This is why we fight wars and why we seek to avoid them. It is also why we tell war stories.
So, tonight, with the country at war and 60 years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, war stories and why they still have a hold on us.
President Bush landed today in Latvia in the Balkans -- in the Baltics, rather -- to mark the anniversary where history resonates deeply. The stories there are of occupation and oppression and deal- making and what it's like to be a small player on a large and dangerous stage.
But we begin tonight with the stories told by men and women who had reason, if only for a moment, to celebrate a job well done, defeating the Nazis, even as they braced for the hard work of defeating Japan. That was 60 years ago this Sunday, V.E. Day. The storytellers now are fading. Their stories, though, are not. We begin with CNN's Candy Crowley.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This was a story about a young man from Hawaii and another from Kansas who both dreamt of becoming doctors and then went to war.
BOB DOLE (R), FORMER U.S. SENATOR: He was wounded a hill apart and a week apart, a week later, on a hill that I could see it from where I was.
CROWLEY: It was the spring of 1945 in Italy's Powell Valley, weeks before V.E. Day, when something exploded Bob Dole's shoulder, shattering his spinal cord. He lay on the battlefield paralyzed near death.
SANDERS: All I knew was that something hurt up here in my right area, shoulder. And just I could see my little dog, my little white dog. I remembered the girl I first had a date with. All these things just sort of -- you remember your mother and your father and freezing ice cream, hand-cranking ice cream.
CROWLEY: Daniel Inouye had enlisted in the 442nd, the Go For Broke regiment. Assaulting a heavily defended hill, he was shot in the leg, the stomach and a third shot blew off his arm. Inouye won the nation's highest military award for valor for what came next.
SEN. DANIEL INOUYE (D), HAWAII: I don't remember charging up to a machine gun, this, with blood splattering all over and tossing grenades just like from here to you, and then picking up my gun and, like Rambo himself, you know, with -- it looked ridiculous. I can't picture myself doing that. But they all swear that's the way it happened.
CROWLEY: Inouye's arm could not be saved. He spent three months in and out of surgery and headed for rehab. INOUYE: We were given a choice. They would say, there are four orthopedic hospitals, one in Utah, one in California, one in Michigan and one in the South somewhere. I said, let me go to Michigan. And that's where I met Bob Dole.
CROWLEY: The next battle had begun.
DOLE: If you're pretty badly hurt, then you've got a long, long period of hospitalization and rehabilitation. And, you know, it's like anything else. The cameras are gone, the lights are off and there you are.
CROWLEY: War is about enemies, death and destruction. War's aftermath is about friends, healing and choices.
DOLE: I used to watch him play bridge. He was the best bridge player in the hospital. You know, we sat around and talked about, what are we going to do the rest of our life?
CROWLEY: Their injuries meant neither could ever be a doctor.
INOUYE: I said, Bob, what are you going to be doing? And one thing about Bob Dole, he had his life mapped out, really mapped out. He says, well, when I get back, I'll be a county attorney. Then I'll be in the legislature. The first opening in the Congress, that's where I'll go. I said, gee, that's a good idea.
CROWLEY: It was not the path either had originally chosen, but sometimes you pick the journey and sometimes life does.
DOLE: Three more weeks, the war was over. We could have been there for the victory party. Instead, we were both flat on our bed, our backs in a hospital somewhere. And -- but, as it turned out, I guess we did all right for a couple of guys. So...
CROWLEY: Two men, two worlds and quite a journey.
INOUYE: I went to law school. I became an assistant prosecutor,got into territorial legislature. Hawaii became a state. I'm here. When I got here, I sent a note to Bob. "Bob, I'm here. Where are you?"
(LAUGHTER)
CROWLEY: Bob arrived in Washington two years later. Republican Senator Robert Dole and Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye served together in the United States Congress for 36 years. They have been friends for almost 60. Candy Crowley, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: The war that ended 60 years ago had many victims, the soldiers who died, those concentration camps who were murdered. This is a story of another group of victims, victims you may not have heard about. They were born to be the future of the regime that saw in them something they didn't even see in themselves precisely, purity. Reporting their story for us tonight, CNN's Nic Robertson.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You learned how to ride a bicycle down here?
SISS OUSTAD, BORN DURING HITLER'S REGIME: Yes.
ROBERTSON: Yes?(voice-over): Siss Oustad is living the legacy of Adolf Hitler's plan to create a master race. She takes me down her painful memory lane.
OUSTAD: This was also a guy, an elderly guy. And he stopped to ask for direction.
ROBERTSON: It's 1954 and she's 12 years old.
OUSTAD: And then he grabbed me and took me into a courtyard.
ROBERTSON: He's not the first man who has tried to rape her.
OUSTAD: The first guy, he did it because he knew my background.
ROBERTSON (on camera): He knew you were a German child?
OUSTAD: Yes.
ROBERTSON (voice-over): Knew nobody would care if such an outcast were raped, because she was a Lebensborn, which translates into fountain of life, a wartime product of Hitler's ambitions to expand the Aryan race.
In April 1940, the Nazis invaded Norway. By June, the king was in exile, the government gone. Norway was occupied by more than 400,000 German troops, its three million citizens forced to live under Nazi rule. It was then that Hitler, driven by his desire to create a pure Aryan race, saw opportunity among the blond and blue-eyed Scandinavian women.
German soldiers were told to treat Norwegian women well. And the women were encouraged to return the favor. Any child born out of these liaisons was to be cared for in a special Nazi-run Lebensborn home. By 1945 and the end of Nazi occupation, 10,000 to 12,000 babies had been born to Norwegian mothers and German fathers.
OUSTAD: There was a rumor that every one of us were going to be shipped to Germany. And my grandfather had never seen me.
ROBERTSON (on camera): He hadn't come to see you because he didn't want anything to do with you?
OUSTAD: He was persuaded to come then. And he looked at me and I charmed him. And he said, oh, no, she's not going to Germany.
ROBERTSON (voice-over): Siss was 3. She was lucky. Some were dumped in insane asylums. (on camera): To your knowledge, were you the only German child at this school?
OUSTAD: No. ROBERTSON: There were others?
OUSTAD: Yes. ROBERTSON: But you obviously didn't know it at the time.
OUSTAD: I had a suspicion.
ROBERTSON: Really?
OUSTAD: Yes.
ROBERTSON: You had a suspicion about others, but you didn't know about yourself?
OUSTAD: No. ROBERTSON: As I'm finding out, though, growing up with her grandparents, Siss was told very little. OUSTAD: I saw this one first. And I thought, hmm. But the letters were so difficult to read because I was young. But I saw my name and I saw, well, my sister's name.
ROBERTSON: And you knew it was a birth certificate.
OUSTAD: Yes. (INAUDIBLE) ROBERTSON: Well, it has your mother's name here and your father.
OUSTAD: Yes, my father's.
ROBERTSON: It says...
OUSTAD: Yes.
ROBERTSON: It says -- what, does it say German soldier?
OUSTAD: Yes. So, I took those and went to my grandmother, or my mother, as I said, and said, what is this? And she goes furious.
ROBERTSON: She got really angry?
OUSTAD: Yes.
ROBERTSON: You must have known something was going to -- was important then.
OUSTAD: Yes, I knew that, uh-oh, this, I shouldn't have seen.
ROBERTSON (voice-over): Siss was just 8, too young to understand the grown woman she called sister was actually her mother, that her loving grandparents had adopted her. As she got older, she craved answers. Then, when she was 16, sitting with her real mother:
OUSTAD: I called her by her name. And I said, actually, you are almost 20 years older than me and you are my sister, I said, but actually you could be my mother. Are you or aren't you? I am, she said. And who told you?
ROBERTSON: Since then, Siss Oustad has married, divorced, raised her own family, watched her grandchildren grow, learned that her father is dead and figured out she wasn't alone. Wanting to move on, she joined a campaign to help Lebensborn like herself, who were denied basic rights, denied the opportunity to seek child support from fathers in Germany, many even denied Norwegian citizenship.
OUSTAD: We had an incident when we went to court, one guy who rose from this chair, furious and said, you German kids, keep your mouth shut and be quiet.
ROBERTSON (on camera): This -- we're talking about a few years ago here?
OUSTAD: Yes, just a few years ago.
ROBERTSON (voice-over): Siss has convinced me, though, she was born out of love, for her, bittersweet.
OUSTAD: I hope, in the name of whatever, that no one ever, ever will suffer like this again, ever.
ROBERTSON: Nic Robertson, CNN, Oslo, Norway.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: If Norway was intended to be the nursery for the Third Reich, the beaches of Normandy became the boneyard, a turning point not only in the war, but also in the career of a young photographer named Robert Capa. Capa would go on to establish the photo agency Magnum. And he used to say, if your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough. That day, D-Day, Robert Capa got close enough, his story told by his biographer, Richard Whelan.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) RICHARD WHELAN, AUTHOR, "ROBERT CAPA": If one had to choose a day that was the climax of Capa's career, D-Day was it.
Capa set the standard of bravery, certainly. He took his camera closer to the front-line action than anyone had ever dared to do before. He chose to go in with the first wave of American troops. And the soldiers thought this was the most extraordinary folly they'd ever heard of, that someone would go in without being ordered to do so. Capa photographed them studying this model, planning their strategic moves.
He photographed men putting their equipment together and getting on to the ships, as they were putting the final preparations on the sail, and while they were actually sailing to the French coast. When he got out of the landing craft into waist-deep water and waded with the men into the beach, he began shooting and he had two cameras loaded with film.
He wanted to photograph the faces of the soldiers.
He wasn't content to walk behind and photograph the soldiers' backs. He wanted the faces, as he always did. And when he went to change the film, hi hands were shaking so badly he could not change his film again. There were so much pressure in the London office of "LIFE" that a darkroom assistant turned the heat in the drying cabinet up too high. And the films that Capa had exposed at such extraordinary risk to his life, going in with his back to the Germans, armed only with a camera, no gun, the films he had made began to melt. Of all the photographs he had made on the beach, only 11 were at all savable, usable.
When Capa left Omaha Beach, the only landing craft to which he could manage to swim was a medical craft that was evacuating some of the first of the wounded. He often focused on doctors, medics, treating not only Americans, but Germans as well. What interested him was how the living cope with the horrors of war. He really understood what a horrendous social crisis, a catastrophe war is. The German army had sustained extremely heavy losses. And these very, very young men, these boys really, were thrown into combat with almost no training, very little equipment.
He photographed them as bewildered, terrified, victims of war in their own way. Capa was very aware of the political complexities of the situation. And he brought that to his work. He covered wars that in some ways really touched his life very directly and wars in which he was willing to risk his life, just as the combatants were risking theirs for the outcome. Capa's work is a benchmark to measure work against, as most photojournalists do still regard Capa in that sense. They depend upon his work. They go back to his work to get their bearings, to get a sense of what it really is about.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: In a few moments, the sinking of a ship that helped change the course of history. This story is not about the titanic. But now, at a quarter past the hour, Erica -- Erica Hill has the headlines.
ERICA HILL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Aaron. Good to see you. U.S. intelligence is closely monitoring North Korea, which could be preparing to test a nuclear weapon. Officials tell CNN analysts have picked up signs of activity on the ground. But they stress it's unclear if North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is truly getting ready to test a device or if he's conducting an elaborate plan to deceive American spy satellites.
A powerful explosion in Lebanon today in a Christian stronghold just north of Beirut. Reports say at least one person was killed, two dozen injured. Lebanon's president said the violence may be linked to the return from exile tomorrow of a Christian politician who is a fierce opponent of Syrian influence in Lebanon.
And more violence in Iraq today. Two suicide bombings north and south of Baghdad kill at least 23 and wound dozens others. One bomber hit a crowded market. The other hit a bus carrying Iraqi police officers. And militants in Iraq say they will murder an Australian man they're holding hostage if Australia does not withdraw its troops from Iraq in 72 hours.
Video of 63-year-old Douglas Wood was broadcast on Al-Jazeera. Australia says it will not negotiate with terrorists. And, for the first time ever, the Pentagon has released a list of sexual abuse cases in which military personnel were either victims or alleged assailants. In 2004, there were 1,700 such cases.
Last year, there were 880 cases of alleged assault by at least one military person against another, 425 alleged assaults by military members against nonmembers; 296 cases involved an unidentified assailant against a member of the military. And that's the latest from Headline News at this hour -- Aaron, back to you.
BROWN: Erica, thank you. We'll see you in a half-an-hour. Coming up on the program tonight, a day 90 years ago that changed the world forever, a disaster that seemed impossible at the time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nobody believed that she could actually be caught by a submarine.
BROWN (voice-over): She was the pride of the British commercial fleet, with nearly 2,000 people aboard. Few would survive after the torpedo struck.
DIANA PRESTON, AUTHOR, "LUSITANIA: AN EPIC TRAGEDY": It really signaled the beginning of a no-holds-barred warfare.
BROWN: She was just 9 years old when her father died in Vietnam.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Your dad is gone. He's gone for the rest of your life. He's not there when you drive your first car. He's not there when you take your first date. He's not there when you get married. BROWN: Now she helps others who share a similar pain.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When the boys ask, why? Why did God take him? Why is he gone? Why can't he be here? It's hard to hear. But it's the only answer I have, which is, he's needed more up there right now. BROWN: He went to war 60 years ago and lived to write about it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wrote a long letter on V.E. Day, and I took a lot of pictures on V.E. Day, because I knew it was historic.
BROWN: An American soldier recalls what victory in Europe felt like. And his recollections might surprise you. From New York and around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: For as often as politicians boast and news anchors report, very little happens day to day or even decade to decade that truly changes the larger course of human events, the birth of Christ, the shot fired at Lexington, Hiroshima. Some day, we may see 9/11 that way.
Ninety years ago, an oceanliner set sail, not the Titanic, the Lusitania. Ninety years ago tomorrow, she was sunk, and the world has never been the same.
Here is NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The morning of May 1, 1915. New York's Pier 54 was a melee of porters, steamer trunks, boarding passengers.
PRESTON: She was carrying over 1,200 passengers in a crew of 700. That was her biggest eastbound complement since the first World War had started.
NISSEN: Many boarding the Lusitania that day were nervous. A stark notice from the German Embassy had appeared in morning newspapers. "Travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk." Everyone knew what that meant. The Germans had recently stepped up their use of submarines, U-boats. Passengers were hastily reassured. The Lusitania was too large, too fast for a submarine to track, sink. Besides, it was unthinkable that a civilian passenger liner would be attacked, even one like the Lusitania with war material in her cargo.
PRESTON: She had in her hold Remington rifle cartridges. She had shrapnel shells and fuses. This was legal. What was in the Lusitania's hold was on her manifest.
NISSEN: And there were 200 American passengers on board.
PRESTON: This was hugely significant fact, because American citizens at the time were citizens of a neutral country.
NISSEN: The Lusitania set off and sailed across the Atlantic to within sight of the Irish coast. Her captain, William Turner, knew German submarines were in those waters, but he took no evasive action. He did not know that, in the six days since the Lusitania left New York, 23 merchant vessels had been torpedoed by U-boats in area, boats that included the U-20, which surfaced on the morning of May 7 to find the Lusitania dead ahead.
PRESTON: The U-20 fired a single torpedo that went singing through the water with a hiss.
NISSEN: Seconds later, the torpedo hit. Passenger Oliver Bernard, an artist, later sketched the shattering explosion.
PRESTON: The side of the ship was breached. You had cold water pouring in, setting up these additional explosions.
NISSEN: Some survivors thought those explosions were the munitions in the cargo hold. But researchers say they were caused when cold sea water hit the Lusitania's red hot boilers. Within minutes, the great ship was tilting sharply.
PRESTON: People couldn't even stand upright. You had people careering around the deck. And the ship was progressively tipped and tipped and tipped.
NISSEN: For the nearly 2,000 souls on board, time was cruelly short.
PRESTON: That 30,000-ton ship, as a result of that one torpedo striking it, sank in just 18 minutes.
NISSEN: The water was a'churn with what artist Oliver Bernard described as hundreds of frantic, screaming, shouting humans, struggling to stay afloat in the frigid water.
PRESTON: The suffering that those people must have undergone, the suffering and the uncertainty in that cold, cold water, waiting two to three hours before any rescue came.
NISSEN: No nearby ships responded to the Lusitania's SOS. Fishing boats had to row the 10 miles from shore. Steamboats at port had to fire their boilers before they could travel out.
PRESTON: They didn't arrive until twilight. And all they found, nobody left alive, but just the sea covered with dead bodies.
NISSEN: Small clusters of survivors who had managed to get into the few swamped lifeboats or float on debris began arriving in the village of Queenstown on the Irish coast. So did a flotilla of bodies, hundreds of them, brought in by the tide for days. It was weeks before lists of the dead or missing were complete. Of the 1,960 people on board the Lusitania, 1,200, almost two-thirds, had perished, including 94 of the 129 children on board. Of the 200 Americans on board, 128 died.
PRESTON: This caused a huge uproar in the United States. And it was a reason why, in 1917, the United States of America did eventually go to war with Germany.
NISSEN: The sinking of the Lusitania not only changed the course of World War I. It changed war itself.
PRESTON: The sinking of the Lusitania belongs to a step change in the nature of warfare, where you could use any technology that was available to you and anybody could be your victim, whether they were a civilian, whether they were a child, whether they were a baby. It really signaled the beginning of a no-holds-barred warfare.
NISSEN: In the bombing of cities in World War II, from London to Dresden to Hiroshima, the napalming of villages in Vietnam, suicide bombings of neighborhoods in Baghdad, the line between soldier and civilian blurred.
PRESTON: The world on the 8th of May 1915, the day after the Lusitania was attacked, was a much less innocent place than it had been the day before. The world had changed forever.
NISSEN: Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, she lost her father to war decades ago, how her mother became her hero.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: The simple truth is that you can't know what war is like until you've been there. In the same way, you can't really know what it's like to lose a loved one to war without feeling that sorrow firsthand. Every war claims many victims who never set foot on the battlefield, many of them too young to understand why their father and now their mother isn't coming home.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): This is the story of two very different women from two very different times.
JACKIE LIVAUDAIS, HUSBAND KILLED IN IRAQ: Who's this?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Daddy?
BROWN: Jackie Livaudais, a mother of three, was one of the first widows of the war in Iraq.
LIVAUDAIS: Destre, he misses everything about him. He loved daddy in every day. He misses working with him. He misses cuddling with him. I know he really misses daddy telling him that he's proud of him. But we all try to do that for him. When the boys ask why did God take him, it's hard, hard to hear. But it's the only answer I have, which is he's needed more up there right now. And, of course, it's hard for kids to understand why.
BROWN: Karen Spears Zacharias, was the child of another war, searching for a father who left for Vietnam when she was 9 and never came back.
KAREN SPEARS ZACHARIAS: Why in the world did life continue? Didn't the world understand my father was dead? And how could they go on and just act like nothing had happened? Because everything had happened different for me from that point in time. And I was angry at my mother over that. I was angry at my dad. I was angry at God.
BROWN: Zacharias, that anger haunted her for years. The book that grew from that anger "Hero Mama," is her story and the story of her mother.
ZACHARIAS: I almost can't stand the way that this is being replayed in people's lives every day because of the war in Iraq. I look at Jackie Livaudais. She was 22 when he died. She was 5 months pregnant. She had two little boys. I look at Jackie Livaudais and I see my mother. I hear my mom's story.
LIVAUDAIS: We've become good friends, because we have that loss in common. But there's so much more than just the loss. When somebody can understand it and actually articulate and relate to the boys, they love it. Karen's been a great friend, but she's also been the view from the child's eyes that I need.
ZACHARIAS: When you're in that child, it just doesn't matter. Your dad's gone. He's gone for the rest of your life. He's not there when you drive your first car. He's not there when you take your first date. He's not there when you get married.
BROWN: What you have, all you have, are memories.
ZACHARIAS: You tell me a story about daddy.
DESTRE LIVAUDAIS, SON OF JACKIE: He was a great man. And he had strong muscles. I remember he was a good guy. He took care of us good. I keep those pictures in my room because, I love him. But it doesn't help any.
LIVAUDAIS: Every kid has a picture of their dad in their room. They'll sleep with the picture when they're having a rough night because they know that bad thing are scared of dad because dad's pretty tough and strong. All the widows, all the kids, they all have -- the kids all have their tear-stained pillows, I believe. I think they all do. They're always going to have that pain. It's their shadow now.
BROWN: Karen Zacharias, the adult, is never far from Karen, the child. Someone who knows too much about loss and a lot about possibility.
ZACHARIAS: I'm just there because I would have given anything as a young girl to have that person there for me or to have someone come along and befriend my mom. What I hope it brings to them is a sense of hope that when Jackie Livaudais looks at me, what Jackie Livaudais sees is that her kids are going to be OK. That she's going to mess up, but as long as she loves those boys with all of her heart, mind and soul, the way my mom loved me, they will know that she was a terrific mother. She is a terrific mother.
BROWN: Another hero mama in a long line.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: With more women serving in the military, it's not just fathers, of course, who are missed when parents go off to war.
In Georgia this week a high school student got a call from his mom who was serving in Iraq. She called him on his cell phone during his lunch period. His teacher told him to hang up, you can't take cell phone calls in school even from moms in Iraq it seems. He refused and was suspended.
The principal of the school says the teen used profanity when he was taken to the office and could have been arrested. Instead, because his mom was in Iraq, he was just suspended for 10 days.
Still to come on the program tonight, he went to war and watched history unfold around him. How one World War II veteran remembers V-E Day 60 years later.
Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: In putting the program together, it struck us that wars even world wars, are still fought one soldier at a time. Their experienced one air raid at a time, one refugee, one meal to the next. And even in retrospect, when there's time to appreciate the stakes and ask what might have been, wars are remembered one moment at a time, or one letter home. Herman Obermayer is a veteran of the second World War and the author of "Soldiers for Freedom: A G.I.'s Account of World War II." We -- we spoke with Mr. Obermayer earlier this evening.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Do you remember the day itself, V-E day?
HERMAN OBERMAYER, AUTHOR, "SOLDIERING FOR FREEDOM": As you know, I wrote a book based on letters. I wrote long letter on V-E day. Which -- and I took a lot of pictures on V-E day, because I knew it was historic. So yes, I was able to refresh my own memory, because I wrote a long letter that describes events. And with that as a jog, I can remember quite clearly.
BROWN: I want to talk a little bit about -- you wrote a lot of letters about a lot of things. We'll talk about letter writing in a moment. But one of the things about is we read through your thoughts on V-E Day is that it meant different things to the Americans than it did to the Europeans or the French, which is where you were.
OBERMAYER: Yes.
BROWN: How so?
OBERMAYER: Well, chiefly, I guess for us we had won the first half of the game. I quote in the letter that when the Americans built their first pontoon bridge across the Rhine, the soldiers built a sign on the eastern end of the bridge the shortest route to CBI, meaning China, Burma, India theater. We had a war to fight. And in May 1945, we were in Okinawa, and I have since done the research. And that was effectively a 90-day battle in which we lost 40,000 men were injured and 13,000 men were killed in a 90-day engagement. And that was going on. We weren't winning that war, at least it wasn't apparent that we were winning it. And all of us knew that we were -- I worked on a pipeline. And while I was -- by the end of June, they had closed the pipeline, pumped all the gasoline out of it and were moving it to Marseilles to go to the Pacific.
BROWN: You mentioned -- the book is rich, literally rich with letters that you wrote. First of all, just really quickly, did you know the letters still existed or at what point did you know the letters existed?
OBERMAYER: I probably always knew that some of them existed.
BROWN: These were letters to your folks.
OBERMAYER: Letters only to my parents. And I knew that many of them existed. I was -- my mother, when she broke up housekeeping in a large house sent them over to me in 1962. And until the mid-'90s, I didn't examine them. And then I started to organize them. And all of the overseas ones were numbered. So I knew I had everything there, but two numbers which were probably thrown away by the censor.
BROWN: Do you think that today those of us of a certain age and younger appreciate not what the greatest generation did -- I mean, I think people get that -- but the importance of it? Why it mattered so much at the time?
OBERMAYER: It's hard -- you know, I don't know whether I have any more understanding than you do. I think I understood, or understand now maybe more that if America hadn't entered the war, Hitler would have crossed the Atlantic. Hitler's -- from 1940 on Hitler stood on the edge of the Atlantic, and we -- our -- without the strength and determination of America, Hitler would have crossed the Atlantic.
BROWN: You weren't at the front. This is -- there's no great heroics portrayed here by you. When you look back on it, do you ever wish that your role in the war had been different?
OBERMAYER: Probably not. I'm here.
BROWN: Yes.
OBERMAYER: I survived. And, as I say in the next to the last paragraph when I go to the cemetery at Omaha Beach, the decision to go from the infantry to the airborne to the engineers to the medics, I didn't make any of these decisions. I didn't understand how anybody else made them. Some guy blew a whistle in the morning and said fall out and he read a list. And I went where I was sent to. And I could have gone to someplace that I died and I didn't. And I guess I look back and just say I was blessed. I was there and I lost my freedom to make any other decision.
BROWN: And the rest of us, in fact, are blessed to be able to read it. You've had a really interesting career. And if this -- this is a fascinating chapter of it. The letters -- in some respects just because letter writing strikes me as such a lost art in and of themselves are worth taking a look at. It's nice to meet you. Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Herman Obermayer. As our special coverage of V-E Day -- the anniversary, thereof -- continues. We'll check some of the other news of the day. And then morning papers from 60 years ago. A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: In a moment, our anniversary series looks at the man who helped bring freedom to South Africa. But first, at about a quarter to the hour, Erica Hill with headlines in Atlanta -- Erica.
ERICA HILL, HEADLINE NEWS: Thanks, Aaron.
And CNN's "Security Watch" tonight, President Bush today nominated Edmund Hawley to run the troubled Transportation Security Administration. Hawley helped create the agency, and will be the fourth person to run it in as many years. TSA has been criticized for its spending and hiring practices.
And a change in leadership at the Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Laboratory. Peter Nanos will step down as director next week. His two years at the lab in New Mexico were marked by turmoil. He instituted strict policies to stop the mental abuses and security lapses and was met with a lot of resistance.
At the courthouse in Santa Maria, California today, the mothers of two boys who repeatedly slept with Jackson in the same bed testified he never acted inappropriately toward the boys. And they said that Jackson was like one of the family.
The Elian Gonzalez case is back in the news. A federal judge in Miami has ruled against awarding millions of dollars in damages to 13 people who claim they were injured when federal agents seized the boy five years ago. The plaintiffs claimed that the lingering effects of tear gas were responsible for their injuries. And that is a look at the headlines at this hour.
Aaron, back to you. Have a great weekend.
BROWN: Thank you. You too.
Tonight, as we continue our anniversary series "Then & Now" we profile a man who dedicated his life to defeating apartheid in South Africa and eventually became the beloved leader of that country.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Both the symbol and a source of power for the fight against apartheid in South Africa, Nelson Mandela never gave up. He was imprisoned in 1962 for his leadership of the outlawed African National Congress in the battle to win equal rights for blacks. Mandela was released more than 27 years later. He received a Nobel Peace Prize and became the first black president of South Africa.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mandela viva. Viva.
CROWD: Viva.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Married for the third time on his 80th birthday in 1998, he retired from the presidency one year later. Mandela is now 86-years-old. After a battle with prostate cancer and other health problems, he retired from public life last year.
MANDELA: Don't call me, I'll call you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Only to re-emerge to spearhead a new cause. Mandela leads a fund-raising group for AIDS victims called 46664, after his prison number. The fight once again is personal for Mandela, his son died of AIDS in January.
MANDELA: Let us give publicity to HIV/AIDS and not to hide it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: All year long as CNN celebrates 25 years of reporting the news. We'll look back at the newsmakers and the stories that have shaped the extraordinary era in which we live. Morning papers, then and now, when we return.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: OK. Time to check morning papers from around the country, around the world, and we'll begin 60 years ago. I don't think we've ever done A German headline, but we shall tonight "The War Is Out."
"The war is over," says the headline. Pictures of Stalin, Truman and Churchill, Hitler and Mussolini. It's over."Daily News." this one, "500,000 in Times Square." To me, the picture -- I assume this is the "New York Daily News" -- doesn't quite match the headline. I wish I could see the cut line, but hey, these are 60-year-old papers. You can't always get it.
"The Daily Mirror," "This is V-E." The sub had "Japs To Fight On War Leaders Say." A sign of the times. "
The Los Angeles Examiner," then it became "The Herald Examiner." I ain't know if it's still in business. "V-E Day Official Today." "Truman, Churchill, Stalin, de Gaulle will broadcast victory manifestos. Nazi's to sign final pact."
This morning "The Los Angeles times" a little more succinct. "Full Victory in Europe. Allies to make formal announcement today." But lots of war stories on the front page.
This is the "Daily News" again. "Philadelphia Daily News," "New York Daily News", can't tell, costs two cents, though. "It's Over in Europe." But that looks like the half a million people in Times Square, doesn't it?
OK, how are we doing in time there, Barkley?
OH, plenty.
OK, I'll slow down.
This is of wars today.
The "Marine Corps Times." I'd like to see this headline, by the way. "Body Armor Recall. The Corps is pulling back 5277 vests, but ballistics experts say -- rejected 14,000 more." And then one of those news you can use stories "Is your vest safe?"
"The Dallas Morning News" also of wars present. Middle of the -- middle of the page "It Does Their Hearts Good. Soldiers rave about Dallas, Fort Worth rousing welcome crew at the airport. The volunteers of greeters say they get more than they give." That's a nice story on that.
And that's wars present.
Maybe this is, unfortunately, wars future. "North Korea Plays Coy With Nuke Test Setup."
That's a headline in the "Chicago Sun-Times." Also "Paula Abdul Goes on the Offensive." For all of you who have been following that particular caper. The weather by the way, in Chicago tomorrow, mixed message.
We'll wrap up the week in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Have a terrific weekend. We'll see you on Monday. Until then, good night for all of us.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
A Double Helping of Hatred
I knew there was something strongly familiar about last night. On March 15, 2005 as noted on this diary that noted the outrageous injustice of NewsNight in complete disregard and disrespect to the Jewish Faith and Race that day as if in premonition, Prime Minister Sharon warned of Anti-Semitism.
Yesterday, there was still another rememberance for the good Prime Minister to attend at Auschwitz.
A sabra at Auschwitz
...The charitable, however, will see in that image the Jewish people's 60-year journey from helplessness and impotence to sovereignty and power.
Israel's leaders have carried the Holocaust legacy in different ways. For some, most notably, Menachem Begin, it was very personal.
Begin lost both parents and a brother in the Holocaust, and himself spent time in a Siberian prison camp. It was the defining event of his life – not in an abstract, national sense, but in a very personal way. He carried the Holocaust scars with him daily, and spoke of the Holocaust regularly. It was a part of his person.
Not so with Sharon. His parents left Russia for Palestine in 1922, and he suffered no first-degree loss to his family at the hands of the Nazis.
Sharon was of the self-reliant Palmah generation, that tanned and sandal-wearing generation that wanted to build a nation of heroes and had real difficulties understanding or reconciling themselves to the helplessness of Europe's Jews.
Sharon came from the generation that wondered how 6 million could have gone like "sheep to the slaughter."
I will post a picture some time later as time permits. But, not to be ignored at the dawning of a new day and as May 9th grows closer; the same level of hatred was again displayed in nearly the same manner as before. At least the hatred of this Executive Producer is consistent.
It must be difficult, Aaron. Or maybe it's not for all that work for CNN as they are encouraged to explore the Christian movement to bring enlightenment to Jews as Jesus was actually their savior. The only realization that needs to be conceded is seeing that to become a Christian is really not so different really as the sales pitch goes: the anticipation of a Savior is still yours to own if every Jew would just disavow the Hebrew in them and embrace the second coming as the first.
Not a bad deal if the pressure of professional aspirations is dangled like a carrot long enough. What the heck, what can it hurt, right, Aaron?
Only the disillusion of millions.
Ms. Bigot strikes again.
You shouldn't go unrecognized in your hatred. As much as you desire to hurt you can now be rewarded that a Jew noticed. Congratulations on being the most consistently overt Anti-Semite in the country. I am sure your president is proud of you.
Also to be noted tonight will be the fourth evening consitently where American Soliders who have died in Iraq are not recognized. It is my estimation this is due to falling recruitment levels.
Yesterday, there was still another rememberance for the good Prime Minister to attend at Auschwitz.
A sabra at Auschwitz
...The charitable, however, will see in that image the Jewish people's 60-year journey from helplessness and impotence to sovereignty and power.
Israel's leaders have carried the Holocaust legacy in different ways. For some, most notably, Menachem Begin, it was very personal.
Begin lost both parents and a brother in the Holocaust, and himself spent time in a Siberian prison camp. It was the defining event of his life – not in an abstract, national sense, but in a very personal way. He carried the Holocaust scars with him daily, and spoke of the Holocaust regularly. It was a part of his person.
Not so with Sharon. His parents left Russia for Palestine in 1922, and he suffered no first-degree loss to his family at the hands of the Nazis.
Sharon was of the self-reliant Palmah generation, that tanned and sandal-wearing generation that wanted to build a nation of heroes and had real difficulties understanding or reconciling themselves to the helplessness of Europe's Jews.
Sharon came from the generation that wondered how 6 million could have gone like "sheep to the slaughter."
I will post a picture some time later as time permits. But, not to be ignored at the dawning of a new day and as May 9th grows closer; the same level of hatred was again displayed in nearly the same manner as before. At least the hatred of this Executive Producer is consistent.
It must be difficult, Aaron. Or maybe it's not for all that work for CNN as they are encouraged to explore the Christian movement to bring enlightenment to Jews as Jesus was actually their savior. The only realization that needs to be conceded is seeing that to become a Christian is really not so different really as the sales pitch goes: the anticipation of a Savior is still yours to own if every Jew would just disavow the Hebrew in them and embrace the second coming as the first.
Not a bad deal if the pressure of professional aspirations is dangled like a carrot long enough. What the heck, what can it hurt, right, Aaron?
Only the disillusion of millions.
Ms. Bigot strikes again.
You shouldn't go unrecognized in your hatred. As much as you desire to hurt you can now be rewarded that a Jew noticed. Congratulations on being the most consistently overt Anti-Semite in the country. I am sure your president is proud of you.
Also to be noted tonight will be the fourth evening consitently where American Soliders who have died in Iraq are not recognized. It is my estimation this is due to falling recruitment levels.
What would be the definition of a successful anchor?
Certainly ratings play a part in that. I can't imagine CNN evening program is getting very good ratings when one considers the context is nothing but reruns of film loops of at least one day old news.
There are ways of 'handling' Jews and then there is the way CNN handles them.
Christian Science Monitor
The Daily News
International Herald Tribune
The Times Herald Record
The Chicago Sun Times
Or there is 'the truth' as it leaks out on Larry King Live.
From the Transcript on a Quintessential Evening hosted by Jiminy Glick.
S(hawn). KING: Larry is extremely generous.
GLICK: He is?S. KING:
Yes, he is.
GLICK: What's the greatest gift he's ever given you?
S. KING: On Valentine's Day, he took me to the window beneath our bedroom, and down below he had had the gardener put in a heart shape of flowers that were, you know, surrounded
(INAUDIBLE).
GLICK: Oh my goodness.
S. KING: And I thought that was great.
GLICK: That is so -- for him to take that kind of time to say, Jorge, flowers! I mean, that is really -- that is really an unbelievably -- that's a mensch, as those people say.
S. KING: That's a more romantic scene.(
CROSSTALK)
L. KING: What do you mean by "those people"? I take offense at that.
GLICK: Well, I'm talking about the Zeigers and people like that. I mean...
L. KING: You mean the Jewish people!
GLICK: I didn't say that.
L. KING: That's what you meant! I hear it enough at home!
GLICK: Listen, first of all, I love -- it's -- the Jewish people are responsible for more wonderful things in this world.
L. KING: You're right.
GLICK: Absolutely. But the second, you know, a WASP says, I don't like your name, they change it, right, according to you.
GLICK: Absolutely.
But the second,
you know,
a WASP says,
I don't like your name,
they change it,
right,
according to you.
THAT'S a joke?
Well. I think there is an underlying truth someone was just DYING to 'get out there.'
Not anymore.
Names don't get changed anymore, as my Great-Grandfather did.
There are ways of 'handling' Jews and then there is the way CNN handles them.
Christian Science Monitor
The Daily News
International Herald Tribune
The Times Herald Record
The Chicago Sun Times
Or there is 'the truth' as it leaks out on Larry King Live.
From the Transcript on a Quintessential Evening hosted by Jiminy Glick.
S(hawn). KING: Larry is extremely generous.
GLICK: He is?S. KING:
Yes, he is.
GLICK: What's the greatest gift he's ever given you?
S. KING: On Valentine's Day, he took me to the window beneath our bedroom, and down below he had had the gardener put in a heart shape of flowers that were, you know, surrounded
(INAUDIBLE).
GLICK: Oh my goodness.
S. KING: And I thought that was great.
GLICK: That is so -- for him to take that kind of time to say, Jorge, flowers! I mean, that is really -- that is really an unbelievably -- that's a mensch, as those people say.
S. KING: That's a more romantic scene.(
CROSSTALK)
L. KING: What do you mean by "those people"? I take offense at that.
GLICK: Well, I'm talking about the Zeigers and people like that. I mean...
L. KING: You mean the Jewish people!
GLICK: I didn't say that.
L. KING: That's what you meant! I hear it enough at home!
GLICK: Listen, first of all, I love -- it's -- the Jewish people are responsible for more wonderful things in this world.
L. KING: You're right.
GLICK: Absolutely. But the second, you know, a WASP says, I don't like your name, they change it, right, according to you.
GLICK: Absolutely.
But the second,
you know,
a WASP says,
I don't like your name,
they change it,
right,
according to you.
THAT'S a joke?
Well. I think there is an underlying truth someone was just DYING to 'get out there.'
Not anymore.
Names don't get changed anymore, as my Great-Grandfather did.
Wednesday, May 4, 2005
A look at life of BTK killer; A look at New Face of al Qaeda Movment
Aired May 4, 2005 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, HOST: I found myself on an airplane today and I was reading a junk paperback about a serial killer on the loose. It was one of those guys that was smarter than everybody, somebody making the FBI look bad.
And the story we begin with tonight is similar. It has a serial killer, at least an accused one. It has victims who may have been alive but for -- the "but for" is the story. How police, with the help of a flaw in the FBI's fingerprint system, let an accused killer go free again and again to, it is alleged, kill again and again.
We begin tonight with Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLI ARENA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He was in custody in Georgia for a minor crime, public indecency. He told investigators his name was John Paul Chapman. To make sure he wasn't wanted for anything worse, the sheriff's office ran his fingerprints through the FBI's computer system, and it was then the saga began. The computer missed something very important. This wasn't Chapman, but Jeremy Jones, and he was wanted, in Oklahoma, for sexual assault. It's rare, but the FBI computer sometimes fails to match new fingerprints with those already in the system, and this was one of those times.
STAN COPELAND, DOUGLAS COUNTY CHIEF SHERIFF'S DEPUTY: I know for a fact that this system works, much, much more than it fails. So, you know, when you have humans, humans design these computers, you know, things are going to happen.
ARENA: A new computer file was created and, from then on, Jeremy Jones was officially John Paul Chapman, fingerprints and all. Georgia officials released him, but he didn't avoid run-ins with the law and was arrested twice after that, once for criminal trespassing, and again for drug possession, his fake alias and computer file allowing him to bail out and get released each time.
COPELAND: Nothing seemed amiss. He gave the information that we needed -- Social Security number, date of birth, things like that. He was fingerprinted promptly. Those were submitted. They came back clear. So there was no reason -- we book, in and out, approximately 12,000 people a year, so he was just one of the many that came through here for charges similar to that.
ARENA: The FBI and local officials say it was a technical, not human, error, but prosecutors say the glitch allowed Jones to go on a murder spree. Less than a month after he was released for the second time, police in New Orleans discovered the body of Katherine Collins (ph). She had been raped and brutally beaten. A month later, 16- year-old Amanda Greenwell (ph) disappeared, only to turn up dead in the woods not far from his home. Jones has been charged with both murders, and he told investigators that he killed a third person, Patrice Endres (ph). Her body is still missing. Her husband says he doesn't buy the FBI's explanation.
ROB ENDRES, VICTIM'S HUSBAND: I don't believe it is technological. It is human as well or protocol or SOP's, however they want to term them, they didn't do their job appropriately. To me, it's as simple as that.
ARENA: In a statement, the FBI says it regrets the "incident" and is conducting "regular audits to avoid a repeat." Officials realize nothing they say can change what happen, but want the public to know that it's computer successfully I.D.s thousands of fugitives each month. Endres says it would have been nice if he'd heard that in person.
ENDRES: Once they realized that they have this problem in the system that ultimately caused the death of four women, why wouldn't they have contacted the husbands and the parents and the daughters of the people involved?
ARENA: Jones' true identity was not discovered until September of 2004 after being taken into custody in Alabama in connection to the rape and murder of Lisa Nichols.
(on camera)
: After his arrest, Alabama authorities issued a national bulletin asking for more information about John Paul Chapman -- Jones was still using the alias at the time -- and found out that the real Chapman was sitting in a Missouri jail cell, an apparent victim of identity theft. As for Jeremy Jones, police say their investigation continues, and that he could be charged in even more killings. Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Seem to have a lot of crime stories tonight. Most criminals, when they're caught, say they didn't do it. We offer that as a caveat to our next story, a story full of drama, stemming from an alleged crime and its possible punishment, which is severe -- life in prison. At the center of the drama, a young Australian woman and her family. On the periphery, a Hollywood star. Here's CNN's Atika Shubert.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Schapelle Corby wanted a holiday, so the 27-year-old Australian beauty school student packed a surf bag and, with her brother and two friends, headed to the island of Bali in Indonesia. Her mother snapped this happy photo just before she boarded the flight. Corby got as far as Bali's airport. That's where her nightmare began. Police arrested her after finding roughly nine pounds of marijuana in her surf bag. Indonesia has stiff penalties for drug smuggling, death penalty or life imprisonment.
SCHAPELLE CORBY, DEFENDANT: I swear, by God as my witness, I did not know the marijuana was in my bag.
SHUBERT: Corby says she experimented with drugs as a kid, but does not now use drugs. She insists the drugs were planted in Australia without her knowledge. Corby says, by a smuggling net network. Proving it is another matter.
Under Bali law, the drugs are considered hers unless Corby proves somebody else put them there. Corby's lawyers say it is an open secret that Australian drug rings hide contraband in the unlocked bags of travelers.
The defense's star witness is an Australian facing sexual assault charges at home. He testified to overhearing whispered conversations about a smuggling plot while in an Australian prison. Indonesia has no jury system and the final decision rests with these three judges. They seemed less-than-impressed with the defense witness, nor are they happy with her repeated fainting spells in court. An Indonesian doctor said she was under extreme stress, but the judges warned Corby not to fake illness, provoking an angry response from family members.
The trial has become a media circus, cameras and microphones posted around the court. Indonesian anti-drug campaigners loudly demand her execution one day, while Australian supporters staunchly insist upon her innocence the next.
Corby's case struck a sympathetic chord in Australia. Websites have sprung up in her defense, selling "Free Schapelle" t-shirts. Even actor Russell Crowe called into a local radio show demanding government intervention.
RUSSELL CROWE, ACTOR: When there is such doubt, how we can as a country, stand by and let a young lady, as an Australian, rot away in a foreign prison? That is ridiculous.
SHUBERT: But Corby must prove her innocence to Indonesia's courts, a burden that has taken its toll.
CORBY: I believe seven months which I've already been imprisoned, is severe enough punishment for not putting locks on my bag. And my heart and my family has been painfully burdened by all these accusations and rumors about me. I don't know how long I can survive in here.
SHUBERT: Prosecutors asked for life imprisonment, sparing Corby the death penalty. Her family says a life in a Bali prison is no life at all, something she may contemplate awaiting a verdict. Atika Shubert, CNN.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: In a moment, you'll hear a California highway patrolman say, this happens all the time. He's not talking about speeding. People have been getting shot on the freeways of southern California and people have been dying -- at least four since March. Whether that's normal in a place where millions of drivers and millions of handguns share the same territory, or whether it's something else, we don't yet know. We can tell you that police are taking it seriously, and people are seriously scared. Reporting from Los Angeles tonight, CNN's Kareen Wynter.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KAREEN WYNTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is just after 5:00 a.m. and this mother of two is already behind schedule. A quick goodbye for her six-month-old daughter, then into the next room and a kiss for her 2-year-old son. Then she's off. Until recently, the most grueling part of her day was dodging traffic on the 40-mile drive to work along southern California's famously congested freeways. Now Nichelle Riggs has a new concern, dodging bullets.
NICHELLE RIGGS, COMMUTER: I don't feel safe knowing that there's someone out there that could just pull up on the side of me at any given moment and change my life.
WYNTER: Since March 12th, when a man was shot and killed driving in Orange County, a rash of unsolved shootings has rattled much of southern California. That, even though police insist the number of freeway shootings isn't on the rise.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've had some tragedies, but compared to last year we're actually on pace to have fewer incidents this year.
WYNTER: But public fears have forced the creation of a special task force to stop the shootings. We were allowed to ride along on one of the first undercover patrols.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we just had shots fired.
WYNTER: The undercover investigator begins chasing a report of what sounds like another freeway shooting.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The victim is actually at the New Law (ph) office. They advise that they were shot at -- at the exact same, or near the same 10-20 as the shooting from yesterday. WYNTER: We were asked not to reveal the identity of the officer, but this call and the next one he recieves...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Party that said that their windshield was shot...
WYNTER: ...turn out to be false alarms.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was a good day, because there was no shootings, and maybe a bad day for leads, but tomorrow's another day. We'll get 'em.
WYNTER: But, who are they going to get?(on camera): There are no leads so far in these cases. You have you no suspect's description. So what are you looking for?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm looking for cars or drivers that are exceptionally aggressive. Highway violence incidents. Things that usually an officer in a black and white wouldn't usually see.
WYNTER (voice-over): The problem is, victims and witnesses haven't provided any solid leads. Even sophisticated network of video cameras on every freeway fail to offer police a clue. Law enforcement suggests shootings could be anything from gang activity to road rage. They have no idea if it's a single shooter or isolated incidents. With so many law enforcement agencies involved, no one has kept a precise count on how many shootings have occurred. Police do agree that since March there have been at least eight freeway shootings. Four of them fatal. LAPD Chief William Bratton called in to a radio talk show to calm nerves.
CHIEF WILLIAM BRATTON, LAPD: The chances, statistically, of being a victim of one of these shootings, you're much more likely to be injured or killed by a drunk driver or debris flying into your car. That's the reality.
WYNTER: Perhaps only in Los Angeles could that be seen as a reassuring statement. But even here, the perception is that the freeways have become more dangerous.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Another freeway shooting is creating fear.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A driver escaped unhurt this time when he came under fire.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fear on the freeways tonight after yet another shooting.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In a wave of shootings...
WYNTER: KTLA's Desiree Horton has spent 15 years flying over the streets of Los Angeles. She says the only thing that's gotten worse is the traffic.
DESIREE HORTON, KTLA TRAFFIC REPORTER: Some people say that a lot of people are scared, maybe they won't be taking the freeways as much. But I haven't noticed less volume.
WYNTER: Most people like Michelle Riggs don't have any choice. At the end of the day, she still has an hour long drive back home.
MICHELLE RIGGS, COMMUTER: Each time I get in the car, I have to pray that I'll make it to my destination and make it back home safely to my family.
WYNTER: A long hour to worry. Kareen Wynter, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Still ahead tonight, we'll hear from a woman who says her boss was the worse kind of boss. That was years before he was charged with the BTK killings.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He would say mean, hateful things to people. He would send them to me. And sometimes I think he thought he was God.
BROWN (voice-over): She didn't know then that Dennis Rader may have been the BTK Killer. Looking back, were there clues at the office? Nearly a decade after a fire left him brain damaged and mute, a firefighter speaks.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As you can imagine for us, to speak to and to be recognized by my husband, their father, after 9 1/2 years, was completely overwhelming.
BROWN: Adding estrogen to a high testosterone sport.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think the difference between my team and a male team is we reek sex appeal and men just reek. BROWN: These women have the scars and the sponsors to prove they're in the fight. Safe on the sidelines and from New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: In just a moment a woman who worked for the man now accused of being the BTK Killer tells what he was like as a boss, not exactly a flattering portrayal. A little past a quarter after the hour, Erica Hill joins us with what has been a busy day in the world. Erica, good evening.
ERICA HILL, CNN HEADLINE NEWS: Busy indeed, Aaron.
We start off with word from the Pentagon, a conclusion here that a U.S. marine who shot an unarmed Iraqi inside a Fallujah mosque last fall acted in self-defense. And we are told will not be charged.
Meantime, yet another deadly attack in Iraq. At least 60 people killed when a bomber blew himself up at a police recruitment center in the city of Erbil (ph). A
military judge, meantime, at Ft. Hood in Texas, today, threw out Lynndie England's plea that she's guilty of abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib and declared a mistrial. Now all this happened after new testimony revealed England may have not realized that what she was doing was illegal. Military prosecutors must now decide whether to refile the charges against her.
A Pentagon analyst accused of being a spy. Larry Franklin is charged with providing classified information about possible attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq. The Justice Department says he gave the information to members of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.
And Michael Jackson's defense team is expected to begin calling witnesses tomorrow. The prosecution rested its case today, wrapping up two months of testimony with a witness who told jurors that Jackson's associates made up stories to convince the family of his accuser that they were in danger. That supports earlier testimony by the boy's mother. And that is a look at the headlines at this hour.
Aaron, back to you.
BROWN: Erica, thank you. We'll see you in a half our or so. Thank you.
Prosecutors in Wichita, Kansas, say there will be no deal, no plea bargain the case against Dennis Rader, the man accused of being the serial killer known as BTK. He's charged with ten counts of murder that date back to the '70s. What makes this case so extraordinary and different for from most serial killer cases is that Mr. Rader, if he is in fact guilty, was such a part of the community he terrorized. He worked for the city. He organized the scouts. Led the church. Was a friend and neighbor. And for our purposes tonight, a boss.
From Wichita, here's CNN's David Mattingly.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As Wichita residents hear the accusations against Dennis Rader and shudder to think that the serial killer BTK may have lived among them, few are as personally involved in following the case as Mary Capps who for six years had Dennis Rader as her boss.
MARY CAPPS, CO-WORKER OF DENNIS RADER: I sensed and had seen a very evil side to Dennis. And he was a very hateful person. He would say mean, hateful things to people. He would send them -- he has said them to me. And sometimes I think he thought he was God.
MATTINGLY: A Park City, Kansas compliance officer, Capps can be seen in this video with her supervisor Rader. She says they clashed frequently on the job. And describes him as moody, often angry and volatile. (on camera): Were you worried the he might get physically violent in the work place?
CAPPS: I cannot answer that at this time.
MATTINGLY: But you were afraid of him?
CAPPS: Yes, I was. It was at a point where I would come into the office, say good morning to him, if he didn't answer, I hurried up, got my ride log together, I got my check-on list together. And would pick up my coat. And it's like a nylon coat. Pick it out and carry it out in front of me so as to not make any noise, so he couldn't hear me getting out of the office.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Capps confirms previously reported descriptions of Rader as a stickler for detail. But she goes further to say he enjoyed the power he had as a compliance officer, enforcing local property regulations and controlling stray animals.
CAPPS: Oh, absolutely huge ego. Sometimes, I wonder how he got it through the door. So...
MATTINGLY (on camera): Give me an example.
CAPPS: He never makes mistakes. I got that told to me on a regular basis. And if I did find one...
MATTINGLY: He told you this.
CAPPS: Yes, that he never makes mistakes. And if I found a mistake and pointed it out to him, maybe it was something he was jumping me about, and I pointed out that he made the same mistake, I better be heading for the door, because the rest of the day is going to be miserable.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Capps says she filed two grievances with Park City about Rader's behavior. City officials confirm Capps was a compliance officer and Rader was her supervisor. They declined to comment further and will not confirm Capps' allegations.She says she recalls vividly the day of Rader's arrest and, in spite of her problems with him, the initial surprise of his alleged connection to BTK murders.
CAPPS: First, I thought maybe something happened to Dennis. Maybe a citizen had done something to him. And then...
MATTINGLY (on camera): Why would you think that?
CAPPS: Why would I think that? Because of his attitude towards them as well. I figured, one of these days, one of them is just going to haul off and just lay him out.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): But the arrest was due to something far more serious. And as investigators collected evidence at Rader's Park City home, Capps began to reexamine Rader's recent behavior.
CAPPS: He changed a lot. The only word I could put in it is, he became very dark and kind of evil. And he was just a whole lot different.
MATTINGLY (on camera): Capps describes a personality completely different from the loving and doting husband and the devout church leader that so many in Wichita claimed to know. In 2004, after BTK reemerged, she also says that Rader became enthralled with news coverage of the case.
CAPPS: I remember one time when I was looking at the Internet and I seen where Larry King was going to talk about BTK.
LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, after 25 years of silence, a notorious serial killer resurfaces.
CAPPS: And I kind of mentioned it in passing to him. This was just a couple weeks before his arrest. And Dennis ran from his office to my desk, and he goes, you got to be kidding. It was on a Friday. And he goes, well, I'm going to have to watch that tonight. I'm thinking, dang, if anything can make that guy happy, he must be really into this BTK story stuff.
WILLIAMS: BTK is arrested.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
MATTINGLY (voice-over): It wasn't until after the extraordinary announcement by police that Capps says the realization hit home that she had been working for and frequently arguing with the man accused of murdering 10 people.
CAPPS: I believe I really am very lucky.
MATTINGLY: So, as Rader's arraignment began, Capps watched closely, hoping to hear the word guilty and was almost immediately disappointed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The court will enter a plea of not guilty. I will set this matter for a jury trial on June.
CAPPS: I can't believe it. His ego really is that big.
MATTINGLY: It was a moment leaving her more anxious than ever to see this case ended.
CAPPS: I definitely need to move on. And I need a lot of questions answered for me, too.
MATTINGLY: Answers, that may now have to wait for a court date in June.David Mattingly, CNN, Wichita, Kansas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Tonight, a big catch in the war on terror. But does jailing one of top men in al Qaeda mean that much anymore or has the threat evolved into something a lot tougher to stop? And later healthy aggression -- paintball for women on the rise. Take a break first, this is "NEWSNIGHT."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: With all the talk of a culture of life, in a large part of the world there is instead a culture of death.
Tonight one of the leaders in that cause, a third ranking member of al Qaeda is in custody arrested in that nearly lawless land at the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. Abu Faraj al-Libbi was picked up some days ago.
It appears on Monday, though Pakistanis aren't saying. He's believed to have been in charge of operations for al Qaeda. But does a culture of death once it gets going really need to have someone in charge? Have we entered an entirely new chapter in the war on terrorism? It's one of the things we talked about earlier today with Terry McDermott, terrific reporter for "The Los Angeles Times" and now author of a book "Perfect Soldiers," a detailed look inside the attacks of 9/11. Not so much what happened, but how it happened and who made it happen. But we begin our conversation with the news of the day.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: We should probably start by talking about the news of the day and the relevance or importance of the news of the day. The government announces they have captured the number three al Qaeda guy. Big deal, certainly not a bad deal. But is it a big deal?
TERRY MCDERMOTT, AUTHOR, "PERFECT SOLDIER": Yes, certainly not a bad deal. But I don't think there are any big deals left in terms of capturing people. I mean, I don't even think if you capture bin Laden at this point it's a huge deal. I think the sad part of it is that al Qaeda has metastasized. It is this big ugly thing that's everywhere now in a way that it never was. It's still very diffuse network of network kind of thing. But cutting off one portion of it doesn't seem to matter.
BROWN: Is it -- I want to talk about the characters that created 9/11. But is al Qaeda capable today in your view -- you spent three and half years reporting on all this -- of pulling off the big attack, a big moment or can they only do small moments?
MCDERMOTT: I think they can still do big things. I think it would be -- they weren't ever able to do really big ones until 9/11. I mean, they did a few -- but the other ones were truck bombs, which have big effects, but it's basically a guy in a pickup truck or a step van. That could happen tonight. And it wouldn't necessarily have to be al Qaeda. I mean, Madrid wasn't al Qaeda.
BROWN: All right.
MCDERMOTT: Casablanca wasn't al Qaeda. This thing is broadened its reach. And the breath of it is what I find most frightening. BROWN: Let me ask you a couple other things. There's a couple piece of video that you have that was -- we talked about. The Ayman.
MCDERMOTT: Ayman al Zawahiri is the mans name and he was a Moroccan from Tangiers (ph), who was an established preacher there. Who visited -- there was a regular circuit of these preachers throughout Europe in the '90s. And the -- one of the striking aspects of Islam the degree to which each preacher does whatever he wants, there's no hierarchy. When you start a church, you do what you want. You start a mosque, and the more fierce you are, the more apt you are to be successful in some -- among some groups.
And these really radical preachers compete with one another for congregants. And they're like circuit riders in Europe, they went around. And Pizzazi (ph) preached often in Hamburg, and preached often and preached especially harshly. I mean, the video, in it, it's actually taken (INAUDIBLE). It's one of his sermons, and some of it is from after the sermon when he would gather the other, the younger men, who were most interested, around and answer their questions. And in it, he's saying things like, you know, it is our duty to kill all the infidels, anyone who is doing anything we don't agree with, man, woman or child.
BROWN: Didn't matter.
MCDERMOTT: Didn't matter. They are all soldiers. It was being willing to get rid of those ideas and seeing that this thing succeeded largely through our haplessness, not through their brilliance. I mean, we did almost nothing to stop them. There were times it seemed like they were willing to deliver themselves to capture. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was indicted in the United States in 1998 for attempting to blow up a dozen 747s over the Pacific Ocean full of Americans. He's under indictment. Up until the summer of 2001, he was not on the FAA's no-fly list. Who was? I mean, why have one if this guy -- he's under indictment! Could there be a bigger threat to American aviation?
BROWN: There is, I think, in some of us, an almost insatiable desire to understand every detail about what happened that day, what led up to the day and the book -- and congratulations for it...
MCDERMOTT: Yes.
BROWN: ...is a nice chunk of detail in that regard. It is good to see you. We've known each other a long time.
Nice to see you.
Congratulations.
MCDERMOTT: Thanks a lot.
BROWN: Thank you.
MCDERMOTT: Appreciate it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Terry McDermott. Now, Donald Herbert, the injured fireman who hadn't spoken for nearly a decade, and his gift, if only a temporary one, of speech. And a little bit later, we're joined by Montel Williams and his crusade to get medicine he and many others feel they need. The medicine is pot. And this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Imagine waking up from what was essentially a coma that lasted nearly a decade to find that your toddler is now a teenager. This is pretty much what happened to Don Herbert, a father of four. Nine-and-a-half years ago, a burning roof fell on Mr. Herbert, then a firefighter up in Buffalo, New York. The accident damaged his brain, left him mute, until four days ago when he astounded the staff at his nursing home by asking for his wife, and for the next 14 hours or so, he didn't stop talking, talking to his wife, his kids, other family members and friends.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LINDA HERBERT, WIFE: Don has made advances but there is still a long way to go. As you can imagine, for us, to speak to and to be recognized by my husband, their father, after nine-and-a-half years, was completely overwhelming. We are still trying to cope with this incredible experience. When Don spoke, he was under the impression he was only away for three months. He was very surprised to find out it was nine-and-a- half years.
My son Nicholas, who had just turned four at the time of the accident, is just thrilled to have his father call him by name, hug him, and speak with him. As you were told previously, my husband did not believe that it was Nicholas at first, because he thought nick was still three years old. Since Saturday, when Don stopped speaking, he has had several infrequent moments of lucidity, which has given us much hope for further recovery.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: It's an incredible story. If you think about it, it has all sorts of implications. One of Mr. Herbert's doctors said today that he was put on a new medication three months ago, a combination of medicines used to treat Parkinson's, attention deficit disorder and depression. That said, doctors can't explain what exactly caused Mr. Herbert to finally speak again, and it's not clear how much progress he'll make, but he has made this much. And it's something.
Congress is once again taking up the issue of medical marijuana, whether it is a drug that should be available to patients whose doctors say they could be helped by it. Today Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank re-introduced a bill that has some bipartisan support that would prevent federal prosecution of people using pot with the approval of state authorities. The administration, as we've reported, has gone to the U.S. Supreme Court to try and overrule those state laws. Among those speaking on the issue outside of the Congress today, television personality Montel Williams, who has multiple sclerosis.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MONTEL WILLIAMS, TALK SHOW HOST: There's over 195 different pain medications out there. Why? Because doctors understand that they don't all work for everyone. Some of us have receptors that are more capable of picking up barbiturates, amphetamines -- some of us don't. And in some cases -- I'll tell you something -- we might pick 1,000 people and probably only 250 of them will get any benefit from medicinal marijuana. But why doesn't that -- why's that not put in the arsenal -- the doctor, to make the choice? If I have a doctor that's smart enough to put me on morphine and that same doctor says, Montell, I'm telling you, you need to you smoke this instead, why can't we believe that that man is capable of making that decision?
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BROWN: Mr. Williams was diagnosed, as many of you know, with M.S. back in 1989, and he joins us from Washington tonight. It's nice to see you. What is -- you know, you get a lot of this -- some conflict here about what the science says on this. To your knowledge, what is the science on medical marijuana, whether it actually works or whether it is a placebo effect?
WILLIAMS: Aaron, that's really the core of the issue right here, and why it's so egregiously wrong and so ignorant that we're having this conversation.
Let me explain something to you.
I stood on the steps today of Congress and told them the fact that I bet a lot of your viewers don't know. For the last 25 years in this country, the United States government has been dispensing marijuana to -- it started off as 13 patients, it's now down to seven patients. Those seven patients receive a canister of marijuana from the United States government every single month.
The last was sent out on April 17th.
One of those patients was on the Capitol steps today with me. The United States government has already determined that marijuana works because, for 25 years, through a program at the University of Mississippi, they've been dispensing it. So, what's so ridiculous is that they'll turn around and say that it doesn't work or there's a question -- they've been providing it under USDA stamp of approval for the last 25 years and studying it.
So, obviously our government believes it works or it would not be putting it in patients and American citizens. And all I'm asking for is that same government that says that one patient is ill enough to be able to use this, why can't I?
BROWN: Let's try a couple things that they also say. One of the things they say is that the smoking of marijuana itself is, is dangerous. I mean, I don't -- I'm not talking about -- I think you know exactly what I'm talking about. They're talking about all the junk that you get in your lungs when you smoke it that makes it dangerous.
WILLIAMS: And I understand that, Aaron. But we have a policy when it comes to drugs that we utilize drugs that can be the most efficas (ph) against illness. Look, chemotherapy we know and radiation destroys non-ill cells, but at the same time we still put in it people to save their lives. There are 150, 160 pain medications out there. Not all of them work for individuals. But even with that said, what you just questioned why is our government dispensing something that they claim is wrong? Hear me, Aaron. There's a program that the United States government has had for 25 years.
BROWN: I know this. I really do.
WILLIAMS: Last month they just distributed marijuana. So if you don't think it's right why is our government saying that the patient that they are giving it to, his pain is worse than mine?
BROWN: Well, without taking the government's position here -- I don't take anybody's position here, they're just arguing this part of the testing process. Let me just ask one more thing that the government argues here. And I'm not sure -- it's interesting to me that...
WILLIAMS: I got to laugh on that one, though. The testing process is 25 years.
BROWN: Where this stuff is voted on -- people may be smarter than the government here in some respects, because where this stuff is voted on, I think Montana just passed it 60-some percent. People have sort of figured this out in their own way. But one of the arguments the government makes is that Marinol, the kind of -- the active -- in their view, the active ingredient, the THC extracted in artificial THC, whatever it is -- that Marinol does the job, so why not just take Marinol?
WILLIAMS: So false a claim. And they know it. All the studies have been done with Marinol have proven that its effects are so varied that you can't even come up with a consensus.
And number two, if that were the case, I get you. If our government believed that, then our government would be dispensing Marinol, but it's not. It is dispensing marijuana in the form of 50 marijuana cigarettes a month to seven patients.
In addition to that, right now, the UK and Canada have already approved a brand new drug that is made from marijuana. Is it a Mucosal spray. It can be sprayed if the mouth, subliminally taken and it is made from the real product. Our biggest ally in the war against terrorism has approved it for their country and it's going to be approved in Canada.
So, all we're is that if in fact, a doctor is smart enough to be able to prescribe for me or anybody else morphine or any other one of the drugs and that same doctor says to me, Montel, I think this will work, why do we not think that that doctor's smart enough to be able to prescribe it? And let's just make it for prescription use only. Easy, schedule one and schedule two, you take care of the problem.
BROWN: We -- actually, we'll watch this one pretty carefully. This is -- there are lots of good issues here that are medical issues, that are state's rights issues, there are individual rights issues. Lots of stuff and a reason for people to be interested in this. Good to meet you, if only electronically. We've watched you for a long time. It's nice to see you.
WILLIAMS: Thanks so much, Aaron.And let me just say -- the last thing -- it is also about compassion. There are a lot of people in this country who are ill, and are hurting. And this is an opportunity for a doctor-prescribed medication to relieve some of our pain. I don't understand where the question is.
BROWN: Good to meet you, sir. Thanks a lot.
WILLIAMS: Thank you.
BROWN: And ahead on the program tonight, was there a third man in the Oklahoma City bombing? And a check of the headlines. Also, a look at a he man who once called -- who was once called Washington's mayor for life. What's Marion Berry up to? And he's had more lives than a cat here. We'll take a break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Still ahead on the program tonight, an all-female paintball team, very much on the rise. But as we led towards a quarter to the hour, Erica Hill is in Atlanta with another look at the day's headlines. Hey, Erica.
HILL: I got you here with the all-female news team, Aaron.
We'll get started with the news that tomorrow we're going to get Jennifer Wilbanks' side of the story. Something many people have been waiting for. The attorney for the runaway bride will release to the public what she calls a comprehensive statement with respect to Jennifer Wilbanks' circumstances during the past week.
And Terry Nichols who is serving a life sentence for the Oklahoma City bombing claims in a letter that an Arkansas gun collector provided some of the explosives used in the 1995 attack. The letter was sent to a woman who lost two grandchildren. The FBI said there is no indication the accusation is true.
Tonight, our anniversary series "Then & Now" profiles a man who has long been identified with local politics in Washington, D.C. Both the positive and the negative sides.
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MARION BARRY, FRM. D.C. MAYOR: Marion Barry is the best and brightest for Washington, D.C.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As Washington, D.C.'s self-proclaimed mayor for life, Marion Barry has known fame, fall from grace.
BARRY: While I wish I could trade this hour.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And political redemption. Born in Mississippi, Barry came to Washington in the '60s as a civil rights activist and never left. Barry was elected mayor of D.C. in 1978. And held that office for 12 years. But in 1990, Barry's reign ended with a cocaine arrest in an FBI sting operation. After searching six months in prison, he returned as a city council member, then reclaimed the mayor's office in 1994. But his fourth term was overshadowed with allegations of financial wrongdoing. But now, Marion Barry is back on the city council once again.
BARRY: I've been knocked down. Some say you fell down, put yourself down, but I got up.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE; He captured 96 percent of the vote in Washington's 8th ward, an area with the city's highest rates of poverty and unemployment.
BARRY: I ought to be tired by now after 40-some years of public service, 68 years of age. But I'm not. I just got my second wind.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As for his issues with drugs, Barry says it's all in the past and prefers not to talk about it. Married four times, he has one son, 24-year-old Marion Christopher Barry.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Paintball, we're told it is one of the fastest growing extreme sports, 10 million players, most of them men. Most but not all. You're about to meet a group of women who got tired of sitting on the sidelines. And now they're on the rise.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On the left! On the left!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're in (INAUDIBLE) Park in Ft. Myers, Florida, and we're having tryouts for our team.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Watch your backs. Watch your back.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Femme Fatal is an all female paintball team. Out of all the other women teams we're number one.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ready or not, here we come.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Pretty much every team that we play an all- male team. And they really don't like to get shot by a woman at all.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're going to do one more snap shooting drill.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think the difference between my team and a male team is we reek sex appeal, and men just reek. Paint is pretty much a (INAUDIBLE) that you played as a child. You need to eliminate all your players that are coming at your form the opposing team.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you this one shot, (INAUDIBLE), you don't get another chance.
Paintball's growing by leaps and bounds by the day.
In the past couple months we have gotten a lot of media attention. And it's good because women can see, hey, these chicks are doing it, they're moms, you know they're wives. You have to train. You have to get your body in shape. You can get very hurt in this sport. We've had people blow out their knees, bust their faces wide open.
You know when you run, you're diving into bunkers. You're sacrificing your limbs that god gave you.
I have a lot of battle wounds let me show you. And then you can see on the backside over on the arm. We play every three weeks in tournaments from February until November. And in that time is where we have to fit in our practices. There's the hard part, it's finding when to practice in between flying to and from tournaments. It's such an adrenaline rush that you can't get anywhere else. You go out there and your are allowed to shoot at people with markers and not go to jail for it, and not really hurt somebody.
That's fun.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Quick morning papers after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: OK. Time to check morning papers from around the country, around the world. Going to go really quickly tonight. "
The Guardian," British paper, "Poll says Labour," that's how they spell labor over there, "Will Win Historic Third Term. And Tony Blair will be prime minister again." A couple of scandals.
The "New Orleans Times Picayune," I had love that name. "Justice on Call: Judge Allen Green could be counted on to set bonds that would guarantee Bail Bonds Unlimited fat fees government wire taps show."
Ouch.
While on the other hand out west in Oregon, it wasn't a totally bad day for public officials. Former prosecutor receives verdict of his own -- not guilty. A jury acquits Randy Ray Richardson of bribery and jury tampering. So a 50-50 day for public officials in court.
"Newsday," "Try, Try Again." Pataki says architects will redesign Freedom Tower to fix security flaws.
My daughter will be anchoring the program by the time that is built.
The weather tomorrow in Chicago, quintessential. Figure out why.
We'll tell you tomorrow. Good night for all of us.
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 May 4, 2005 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, HOST: I found myself on an airplane today and I was reading a junk paperback about a serial killer on the loose. It was one of those guys that was smarter than everybody, somebody making the FBI look bad.
And the story we begin with tonight is similar. It has a serial killer, at least an accused one. It has victims who may have been alive but for -- the "but for" is the story. How police, with the help of a flaw in the FBI's fingerprint system, let an accused killer go free again and again to, it is alleged, kill again and again.
We begin tonight with Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLI ARENA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He was in custody in Georgia for a minor crime, public indecency. He told investigators his name was John Paul Chapman. To make sure he wasn't wanted for anything worse, the sheriff's office ran his fingerprints through the FBI's computer system, and it was then the saga began. The computer missed something very important. This wasn't Chapman, but Jeremy Jones, and he was wanted, in Oklahoma, for sexual assault. It's rare, but the FBI computer sometimes fails to match new fingerprints with those already in the system, and this was one of those times.
STAN COPELAND, DOUGLAS COUNTY CHIEF SHERIFF'S DEPUTY: I know for a fact that this system works, much, much more than it fails. So, you know, when you have humans, humans design these computers, you know, things are going to happen.
ARENA: A new computer file was created and, from then on, Jeremy Jones was officially John Paul Chapman, fingerprints and all. Georgia officials released him, but he didn't avoid run-ins with the law and was arrested twice after that, once for criminal trespassing, and again for drug possession, his fake alias and computer file allowing him to bail out and get released each time.
COPELAND: Nothing seemed amiss. He gave the information that we needed -- Social Security number, date of birth, things like that. He was fingerprinted promptly. Those were submitted. They came back clear. So there was no reason -- we book, in and out, approximately 12,000 people a year, so he was just one of the many that came through here for charges similar to that.
ARENA: The FBI and local officials say it was a technical, not human, error, but prosecutors say the glitch allowed Jones to go on a murder spree. Less than a month after he was released for the second time, police in New Orleans discovered the body of Katherine Collins (ph). She had been raped and brutally beaten. A month later, 16- year-old Amanda Greenwell (ph) disappeared, only to turn up dead in the woods not far from his home. Jones has been charged with both murders, and he told investigators that he killed a third person, Patrice Endres (ph). Her body is still missing. Her husband says he doesn't buy the FBI's explanation.
ROB ENDRES, VICTIM'S HUSBAND: I don't believe it is technological. It is human as well or protocol or SOP's, however they want to term them, they didn't do their job appropriately. To me, it's as simple as that.
ARENA: In a statement, the FBI says it regrets the "incident" and is conducting "regular audits to avoid a repeat." Officials realize nothing they say can change what happen, but want the public to know that it's computer successfully I.D.s thousands of fugitives each month. Endres says it would have been nice if he'd heard that in person.
ENDRES: Once they realized that they have this problem in the system that ultimately caused the death of four women, why wouldn't they have contacted the husbands and the parents and the daughters of the people involved?
ARENA: Jones' true identity was not discovered until September of 2004 after being taken into custody in Alabama in connection to the rape and murder of Lisa Nichols.
(on camera)
: After his arrest, Alabama authorities issued a national bulletin asking for more information about John Paul Chapman -- Jones was still using the alias at the time -- and found out that the real Chapman was sitting in a Missouri jail cell, an apparent victim of identity theft. As for Jeremy Jones, police say their investigation continues, and that he could be charged in even more killings. Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Seem to have a lot of crime stories tonight. Most criminals, when they're caught, say they didn't do it. We offer that as a caveat to our next story, a story full of drama, stemming from an alleged crime and its possible punishment, which is severe -- life in prison. At the center of the drama, a young Australian woman and her family. On the periphery, a Hollywood star. Here's CNN's Atika Shubert.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Schapelle Corby wanted a holiday, so the 27-year-old Australian beauty school student packed a surf bag and, with her brother and two friends, headed to the island of Bali in Indonesia. Her mother snapped this happy photo just before she boarded the flight. Corby got as far as Bali's airport. That's where her nightmare began. Police arrested her after finding roughly nine pounds of marijuana in her surf bag. Indonesia has stiff penalties for drug smuggling, death penalty or life imprisonment.
SCHAPELLE CORBY, DEFENDANT: I swear, by God as my witness, I did not know the marijuana was in my bag.
SHUBERT: Corby says she experimented with drugs as a kid, but does not now use drugs. She insists the drugs were planted in Australia without her knowledge. Corby says, by a smuggling net network. Proving it is another matter.
Under Bali law, the drugs are considered hers unless Corby proves somebody else put them there. Corby's lawyers say it is an open secret that Australian drug rings hide contraband in the unlocked bags of travelers.
The defense's star witness is an Australian facing sexual assault charges at home. He testified to overhearing whispered conversations about a smuggling plot while in an Australian prison. Indonesia has no jury system and the final decision rests with these three judges. They seemed less-than-impressed with the defense witness, nor are they happy with her repeated fainting spells in court. An Indonesian doctor said she was under extreme stress, but the judges warned Corby not to fake illness, provoking an angry response from family members.
The trial has become a media circus, cameras and microphones posted around the court. Indonesian anti-drug campaigners loudly demand her execution one day, while Australian supporters staunchly insist upon her innocence the next.
Corby's case struck a sympathetic chord in Australia. Websites have sprung up in her defense, selling "Free Schapelle" t-shirts. Even actor Russell Crowe called into a local radio show demanding government intervention.
RUSSELL CROWE, ACTOR: When there is such doubt, how we can as a country, stand by and let a young lady, as an Australian, rot away in a foreign prison? That is ridiculous.
SHUBERT: But Corby must prove her innocence to Indonesia's courts, a burden that has taken its toll.
CORBY: I believe seven months which I've already been imprisoned, is severe enough punishment for not putting locks on my bag. And my heart and my family has been painfully burdened by all these accusations and rumors about me. I don't know how long I can survive in here.
SHUBERT: Prosecutors asked for life imprisonment, sparing Corby the death penalty. Her family says a life in a Bali prison is no life at all, something she may contemplate awaiting a verdict. Atika Shubert, CNN.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: In a moment, you'll hear a California highway patrolman say, this happens all the time. He's not talking about speeding. People have been getting shot on the freeways of southern California and people have been dying -- at least four since March. Whether that's normal in a place where millions of drivers and millions of handguns share the same territory, or whether it's something else, we don't yet know. We can tell you that police are taking it seriously, and people are seriously scared. Reporting from Los Angeles tonight, CNN's Kareen Wynter.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KAREEN WYNTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is just after 5:00 a.m. and this mother of two is already behind schedule. A quick goodbye for her six-month-old daughter, then into the next room and a kiss for her 2-year-old son. Then she's off. Until recently, the most grueling part of her day was dodging traffic on the 40-mile drive to work along southern California's famously congested freeways. Now Nichelle Riggs has a new concern, dodging bullets.
NICHELLE RIGGS, COMMUTER: I don't feel safe knowing that there's someone out there that could just pull up on the side of me at any given moment and change my life.
WYNTER: Since March 12th, when a man was shot and killed driving in Orange County, a rash of unsolved shootings has rattled much of southern California. That, even though police insist the number of freeway shootings isn't on the rise.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've had some tragedies, but compared to last year we're actually on pace to have fewer incidents this year.
WYNTER: But public fears have forced the creation of a special task force to stop the shootings. We were allowed to ride along on one of the first undercover patrols.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we just had shots fired.
WYNTER: The undercover investigator begins chasing a report of what sounds like another freeway shooting.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The victim is actually at the New Law (ph) office. They advise that they were shot at -- at the exact same, or near the same 10-20 as the shooting from yesterday. WYNTER: We were asked not to reveal the identity of the officer, but this call and the next one he recieves...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Party that said that their windshield was shot...
WYNTER: ...turn out to be false alarms.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was a good day, because there was no shootings, and maybe a bad day for leads, but tomorrow's another day. We'll get 'em.
WYNTER: But, who are they going to get?(on camera): There are no leads so far in these cases. You have you no suspect's description. So what are you looking for?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm looking for cars or drivers that are exceptionally aggressive. Highway violence incidents. Things that usually an officer in a black and white wouldn't usually see.
WYNTER (voice-over): The problem is, victims and witnesses haven't provided any solid leads. Even sophisticated network of video cameras on every freeway fail to offer police a clue. Law enforcement suggests shootings could be anything from gang activity to road rage. They have no idea if it's a single shooter or isolated incidents. With so many law enforcement agencies involved, no one has kept a precise count on how many shootings have occurred. Police do agree that since March there have been at least eight freeway shootings. Four of them fatal. LAPD Chief William Bratton called in to a radio talk show to calm nerves.
CHIEF WILLIAM BRATTON, LAPD: The chances, statistically, of being a victim of one of these shootings, you're much more likely to be injured or killed by a drunk driver or debris flying into your car. That's the reality.
WYNTER: Perhaps only in Los Angeles could that be seen as a reassuring statement. But even here, the perception is that the freeways have become more dangerous.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Another freeway shooting is creating fear.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A driver escaped unhurt this time when he came under fire.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fear on the freeways tonight after yet another shooting.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In a wave of shootings...
WYNTER: KTLA's Desiree Horton has spent 15 years flying over the streets of Los Angeles. She says the only thing that's gotten worse is the traffic.
DESIREE HORTON, KTLA TRAFFIC REPORTER: Some people say that a lot of people are scared, maybe they won't be taking the freeways as much. But I haven't noticed less volume.
WYNTER: Most people like Michelle Riggs don't have any choice. At the end of the day, she still has an hour long drive back home.
MICHELLE RIGGS, COMMUTER: Each time I get in the car, I have to pray that I'll make it to my destination and make it back home safely to my family.
WYNTER: A long hour to worry. Kareen Wynter, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Still ahead tonight, we'll hear from a woman who says her boss was the worse kind of boss. That was years before he was charged with the BTK killings.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He would say mean, hateful things to people. He would send them to me. And sometimes I think he thought he was God.
BROWN (voice-over): She didn't know then that Dennis Rader may have been the BTK Killer. Looking back, were there clues at the office? Nearly a decade after a fire left him brain damaged and mute, a firefighter speaks.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As you can imagine for us, to speak to and to be recognized by my husband, their father, after 9 1/2 years, was completely overwhelming.
BROWN: Adding estrogen to a high testosterone sport.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think the difference between my team and a male team is we reek sex appeal and men just reek. BROWN: These women have the scars and the sponsors to prove they're in the fight. Safe on the sidelines and from New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: In just a moment a woman who worked for the man now accused of being the BTK Killer tells what he was like as a boss, not exactly a flattering portrayal. A little past a quarter after the hour, Erica Hill joins us with what has been a busy day in the world. Erica, good evening.
ERICA HILL, CNN HEADLINE NEWS: Busy indeed, Aaron.
We start off with word from the Pentagon, a conclusion here that a U.S. marine who shot an unarmed Iraqi inside a Fallujah mosque last fall acted in self-defense. And we are told will not be charged.
Meantime, yet another deadly attack in Iraq. At least 60 people killed when a bomber blew himself up at a police recruitment center in the city of Erbil (ph). A
military judge, meantime, at Ft. Hood in Texas, today, threw out Lynndie England's plea that she's guilty of abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib and declared a mistrial. Now all this happened after new testimony revealed England may have not realized that what she was doing was illegal. Military prosecutors must now decide whether to refile the charges against her.
A Pentagon analyst accused of being a spy. Larry Franklin is charged with providing classified information about possible attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq. The Justice Department says he gave the information to members of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.
And Michael Jackson's defense team is expected to begin calling witnesses tomorrow. The prosecution rested its case today, wrapping up two months of testimony with a witness who told jurors that Jackson's associates made up stories to convince the family of his accuser that they were in danger. That supports earlier testimony by the boy's mother. And that is a look at the headlines at this hour.
Aaron, back to you.
BROWN: Erica, thank you. We'll see you in a half our or so. Thank you.
Prosecutors in Wichita, Kansas, say there will be no deal, no plea bargain the case against Dennis Rader, the man accused of being the serial killer known as BTK. He's charged with ten counts of murder that date back to the '70s. What makes this case so extraordinary and different for from most serial killer cases is that Mr. Rader, if he is in fact guilty, was such a part of the community he terrorized. He worked for the city. He organized the scouts. Led the church. Was a friend and neighbor. And for our purposes tonight, a boss.
From Wichita, here's CNN's David Mattingly.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As Wichita residents hear the accusations against Dennis Rader and shudder to think that the serial killer BTK may have lived among them, few are as personally involved in following the case as Mary Capps who for six years had Dennis Rader as her boss.
MARY CAPPS, CO-WORKER OF DENNIS RADER: I sensed and had seen a very evil side to Dennis. And he was a very hateful person. He would say mean, hateful things to people. He would send them -- he has said them to me. And sometimes I think he thought he was God.
MATTINGLY: A Park City, Kansas compliance officer, Capps can be seen in this video with her supervisor Rader. She says they clashed frequently on the job. And describes him as moody, often angry and volatile. (on camera): Were you worried the he might get physically violent in the work place?
CAPPS: I cannot answer that at this time.
MATTINGLY: But you were afraid of him?
CAPPS: Yes, I was. It was at a point where I would come into the office, say good morning to him, if he didn't answer, I hurried up, got my ride log together, I got my check-on list together. And would pick up my coat. And it's like a nylon coat. Pick it out and carry it out in front of me so as to not make any noise, so he couldn't hear me getting out of the office.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Capps confirms previously reported descriptions of Rader as a stickler for detail. But she goes further to say he enjoyed the power he had as a compliance officer, enforcing local property regulations and controlling stray animals.
CAPPS: Oh, absolutely huge ego. Sometimes, I wonder how he got it through the door. So...
MATTINGLY (on camera): Give me an example.
CAPPS: He never makes mistakes. I got that told to me on a regular basis. And if I did find one...
MATTINGLY: He told you this.
CAPPS: Yes, that he never makes mistakes. And if I found a mistake and pointed it out to him, maybe it was something he was jumping me about, and I pointed out that he made the same mistake, I better be heading for the door, because the rest of the day is going to be miserable.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Capps says she filed two grievances with Park City about Rader's behavior. City officials confirm Capps was a compliance officer and Rader was her supervisor. They declined to comment further and will not confirm Capps' allegations.She says she recalls vividly the day of Rader's arrest and, in spite of her problems with him, the initial surprise of his alleged connection to BTK murders.
CAPPS: First, I thought maybe something happened to Dennis. Maybe a citizen had done something to him. And then...
MATTINGLY (on camera): Why would you think that?
CAPPS: Why would I think that? Because of his attitude towards them as well. I figured, one of these days, one of them is just going to haul off and just lay him out.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): But the arrest was due to something far more serious. And as investigators collected evidence at Rader's Park City home, Capps began to reexamine Rader's recent behavior.
CAPPS: He changed a lot. The only word I could put in it is, he became very dark and kind of evil. And he was just a whole lot different.
MATTINGLY (on camera): Capps describes a personality completely different from the loving and doting husband and the devout church leader that so many in Wichita claimed to know. In 2004, after BTK reemerged, she also says that Rader became enthralled with news coverage of the case.
CAPPS: I remember one time when I was looking at the Internet and I seen where Larry King was going to talk about BTK.
LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, after 25 years of silence, a notorious serial killer resurfaces.
CAPPS: And I kind of mentioned it in passing to him. This was just a couple weeks before his arrest. And Dennis ran from his office to my desk, and he goes, you got to be kidding. It was on a Friday. And he goes, well, I'm going to have to watch that tonight. I'm thinking, dang, if anything can make that guy happy, he must be really into this BTK story stuff.
WILLIAMS: BTK is arrested.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
MATTINGLY (voice-over): It wasn't until after the extraordinary announcement by police that Capps says the realization hit home that she had been working for and frequently arguing with the man accused of murdering 10 people.
CAPPS: I believe I really am very lucky.
MATTINGLY: So, as Rader's arraignment began, Capps watched closely, hoping to hear the word guilty and was almost immediately disappointed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The court will enter a plea of not guilty. I will set this matter for a jury trial on June.
CAPPS: I can't believe it. His ego really is that big.
MATTINGLY: It was a moment leaving her more anxious than ever to see this case ended.
CAPPS: I definitely need to move on. And I need a lot of questions answered for me, too.
MATTINGLY: Answers, that may now have to wait for a court date in June.David Mattingly, CNN, Wichita, Kansas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Tonight, a big catch in the war on terror. But does jailing one of top men in al Qaeda mean that much anymore or has the threat evolved into something a lot tougher to stop? And later healthy aggression -- paintball for women on the rise. Take a break first, this is "NEWSNIGHT."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: With all the talk of a culture of life, in a large part of the world there is instead a culture of death.
Tonight one of the leaders in that cause, a third ranking member of al Qaeda is in custody arrested in that nearly lawless land at the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. Abu Faraj al-Libbi was picked up some days ago.
It appears on Monday, though Pakistanis aren't saying. He's believed to have been in charge of operations for al Qaeda. But does a culture of death once it gets going really need to have someone in charge? Have we entered an entirely new chapter in the war on terrorism? It's one of the things we talked about earlier today with Terry McDermott, terrific reporter for "The Los Angeles Times" and now author of a book "Perfect Soldiers," a detailed look inside the attacks of 9/11. Not so much what happened, but how it happened and who made it happen. But we begin our conversation with the news of the day.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: We should probably start by talking about the news of the day and the relevance or importance of the news of the day. The government announces they have captured the number three al Qaeda guy. Big deal, certainly not a bad deal. But is it a big deal?
TERRY MCDERMOTT, AUTHOR, "PERFECT SOLDIER": Yes, certainly not a bad deal. But I don't think there are any big deals left in terms of capturing people. I mean, I don't even think if you capture bin Laden at this point it's a huge deal. I think the sad part of it is that al Qaeda has metastasized. It is this big ugly thing that's everywhere now in a way that it never was. It's still very diffuse network of network kind of thing. But cutting off one portion of it doesn't seem to matter.
BROWN: Is it -- I want to talk about the characters that created 9/11. But is al Qaeda capable today in your view -- you spent three and half years reporting on all this -- of pulling off the big attack, a big moment or can they only do small moments?
MCDERMOTT: I think they can still do big things. I think it would be -- they weren't ever able to do really big ones until 9/11. I mean, they did a few -- but the other ones were truck bombs, which have big effects, but it's basically a guy in a pickup truck or a step van. That could happen tonight. And it wouldn't necessarily have to be al Qaeda. I mean, Madrid wasn't al Qaeda.
BROWN: All right.
MCDERMOTT: Casablanca wasn't al Qaeda. This thing is broadened its reach. And the breath of it is what I find most frightening. BROWN: Let me ask you a couple other things. There's a couple piece of video that you have that was -- we talked about. The Ayman.
MCDERMOTT: Ayman al Zawahiri is the mans name and he was a Moroccan from Tangiers (ph), who was an established preacher there. Who visited -- there was a regular circuit of these preachers throughout Europe in the '90s. And the -- one of the striking aspects of Islam the degree to which each preacher does whatever he wants, there's no hierarchy. When you start a church, you do what you want. You start a mosque, and the more fierce you are, the more apt you are to be successful in some -- among some groups.
And these really radical preachers compete with one another for congregants. And they're like circuit riders in Europe, they went around. And Pizzazi (ph) preached often in Hamburg, and preached often and preached especially harshly. I mean, the video, in it, it's actually taken (INAUDIBLE). It's one of his sermons, and some of it is from after the sermon when he would gather the other, the younger men, who were most interested, around and answer their questions. And in it, he's saying things like, you know, it is our duty to kill all the infidels, anyone who is doing anything we don't agree with, man, woman or child.
BROWN: Didn't matter.
MCDERMOTT: Didn't matter. They are all soldiers. It was being willing to get rid of those ideas and seeing that this thing succeeded largely through our haplessness, not through their brilliance. I mean, we did almost nothing to stop them. There were times it seemed like they were willing to deliver themselves to capture. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was indicted in the United States in 1998 for attempting to blow up a dozen 747s over the Pacific Ocean full of Americans. He's under indictment. Up until the summer of 2001, he was not on the FAA's no-fly list. Who was? I mean, why have one if this guy -- he's under indictment! Could there be a bigger threat to American aviation?
BROWN: There is, I think, in some of us, an almost insatiable desire to understand every detail about what happened that day, what led up to the day and the book -- and congratulations for it...
MCDERMOTT: Yes.
BROWN: ...is a nice chunk of detail in that regard. It is good to see you. We've known each other a long time.
Nice to see you.
Congratulations.
MCDERMOTT: Thanks a lot.
BROWN: Thank you.
MCDERMOTT: Appreciate it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Terry McDermott. Now, Donald Herbert, the injured fireman who hadn't spoken for nearly a decade, and his gift, if only a temporary one, of speech. And a little bit later, we're joined by Montel Williams and his crusade to get medicine he and many others feel they need. The medicine is pot. And this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Imagine waking up from what was essentially a coma that lasted nearly a decade to find that your toddler is now a teenager. This is pretty much what happened to Don Herbert, a father of four. Nine-and-a-half years ago, a burning roof fell on Mr. Herbert, then a firefighter up in Buffalo, New York. The accident damaged his brain, left him mute, until four days ago when he astounded the staff at his nursing home by asking for his wife, and for the next 14 hours or so, he didn't stop talking, talking to his wife, his kids, other family members and friends.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LINDA HERBERT, WIFE: Don has made advances but there is still a long way to go. As you can imagine, for us, to speak to and to be recognized by my husband, their father, after nine-and-a-half years, was completely overwhelming. We are still trying to cope with this incredible experience. When Don spoke, he was under the impression he was only away for three months. He was very surprised to find out it was nine-and-a- half years.
My son Nicholas, who had just turned four at the time of the accident, is just thrilled to have his father call him by name, hug him, and speak with him. As you were told previously, my husband did not believe that it was Nicholas at first, because he thought nick was still three years old. Since Saturday, when Don stopped speaking, he has had several infrequent moments of lucidity, which has given us much hope for further recovery.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: It's an incredible story. If you think about it, it has all sorts of implications. One of Mr. Herbert's doctors said today that he was put on a new medication three months ago, a combination of medicines used to treat Parkinson's, attention deficit disorder and depression. That said, doctors can't explain what exactly caused Mr. Herbert to finally speak again, and it's not clear how much progress he'll make, but he has made this much. And it's something.
Congress is once again taking up the issue of medical marijuana, whether it is a drug that should be available to patients whose doctors say they could be helped by it. Today Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank re-introduced a bill that has some bipartisan support that would prevent federal prosecution of people using pot with the approval of state authorities. The administration, as we've reported, has gone to the U.S. Supreme Court to try and overrule those state laws. Among those speaking on the issue outside of the Congress today, television personality Montel Williams, who has multiple sclerosis.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MONTEL WILLIAMS, TALK SHOW HOST: There's over 195 different pain medications out there. Why? Because doctors understand that they don't all work for everyone. Some of us have receptors that are more capable of picking up barbiturates, amphetamines -- some of us don't. And in some cases -- I'll tell you something -- we might pick 1,000 people and probably only 250 of them will get any benefit from medicinal marijuana. But why doesn't that -- why's that not put in the arsenal -- the doctor, to make the choice? If I have a doctor that's smart enough to put me on morphine and that same doctor says, Montell, I'm telling you, you need to you smoke this instead, why can't we believe that that man is capable of making that decision?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Mr. Williams was diagnosed, as many of you know, with M.S. back in 1989, and he joins us from Washington tonight. It's nice to see you. What is -- you know, you get a lot of this -- some conflict here about what the science says on this. To your knowledge, what is the science on medical marijuana, whether it actually works or whether it is a placebo effect?
WILLIAMS: Aaron, that's really the core of the issue right here, and why it's so egregiously wrong and so ignorant that we're having this conversation.
Let me explain something to you.
I stood on the steps today of Congress and told them the fact that I bet a lot of your viewers don't know. For the last 25 years in this country, the United States government has been dispensing marijuana to -- it started off as 13 patients, it's now down to seven patients. Those seven patients receive a canister of marijuana from the United States government every single month.
The last was sent out on April 17th.
One of those patients was on the Capitol steps today with me. The United States government has already determined that marijuana works because, for 25 years, through a program at the University of Mississippi, they've been dispensing it. So, what's so ridiculous is that they'll turn around and say that it doesn't work or there's a question -- they've been providing it under USDA stamp of approval for the last 25 years and studying it.
So, obviously our government believes it works or it would not be putting it in patients and American citizens. And all I'm asking for is that same government that says that one patient is ill enough to be able to use this, why can't I?
BROWN: Let's try a couple things that they also say. One of the things they say is that the smoking of marijuana itself is, is dangerous. I mean, I don't -- I'm not talking about -- I think you know exactly what I'm talking about. They're talking about all the junk that you get in your lungs when you smoke it that makes it dangerous.
WILLIAMS: And I understand that, Aaron. But we have a policy when it comes to drugs that we utilize drugs that can be the most efficas (ph) against illness. Look, chemotherapy we know and radiation destroys non-ill cells, but at the same time we still put in it people to save their lives. There are 150, 160 pain medications out there. Not all of them work for individuals. But even with that said, what you just questioned why is our government dispensing something that they claim is wrong? Hear me, Aaron. There's a program that the United States government has had for 25 years.
BROWN: I know this. I really do.
WILLIAMS: Last month they just distributed marijuana. So if you don't think it's right why is our government saying that the patient that they are giving it to, his pain is worse than mine?
BROWN: Well, without taking the government's position here -- I don't take anybody's position here, they're just arguing this part of the testing process. Let me just ask one more thing that the government argues here. And I'm not sure -- it's interesting to me that...
WILLIAMS: I got to laugh on that one, though. The testing process is 25 years.
BROWN: Where this stuff is voted on -- people may be smarter than the government here in some respects, because where this stuff is voted on, I think Montana just passed it 60-some percent. People have sort of figured this out in their own way. But one of the arguments the government makes is that Marinol, the kind of -- the active -- in their view, the active ingredient, the THC extracted in artificial THC, whatever it is -- that Marinol does the job, so why not just take Marinol?
WILLIAMS: So false a claim. And they know it. All the studies have been done with Marinol have proven that its effects are so varied that you can't even come up with a consensus.
And number two, if that were the case, I get you. If our government believed that, then our government would be dispensing Marinol, but it's not. It is dispensing marijuana in the form of 50 marijuana cigarettes a month to seven patients.
In addition to that, right now, the UK and Canada have already approved a brand new drug that is made from marijuana. Is it a Mucosal spray. It can be sprayed if the mouth, subliminally taken and it is made from the real product. Our biggest ally in the war against terrorism has approved it for their country and it's going to be approved in Canada.
So, all we're is that if in fact, a doctor is smart enough to be able to prescribe for me or anybody else morphine or any other one of the drugs and that same doctor says to me, Montel, I think this will work, why do we not think that that doctor's smart enough to be able to prescribe it? And let's just make it for prescription use only. Easy, schedule one and schedule two, you take care of the problem.
BROWN: We -- actually, we'll watch this one pretty carefully. This is -- there are lots of good issues here that are medical issues, that are state's rights issues, there are individual rights issues. Lots of stuff and a reason for people to be interested in this. Good to meet you, if only electronically. We've watched you for a long time. It's nice to see you.
WILLIAMS: Thanks so much, Aaron.And let me just say -- the last thing -- it is also about compassion. There are a lot of people in this country who are ill, and are hurting. And this is an opportunity for a doctor-prescribed medication to relieve some of our pain. I don't understand where the question is.
BROWN: Good to meet you, sir. Thanks a lot.
WILLIAMS: Thank you.
BROWN: And ahead on the program tonight, was there a third man in the Oklahoma City bombing? And a check of the headlines. Also, a look at a he man who once called -- who was once called Washington's mayor for life. What's Marion Berry up to? And he's had more lives than a cat here. We'll take a break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Still ahead on the program tonight, an all-female paintball team, very much on the rise. But as we led towards a quarter to the hour, Erica Hill is in Atlanta with another look at the day's headlines. Hey, Erica.
HILL: I got you here with the all-female news team, Aaron.
We'll get started with the news that tomorrow we're going to get Jennifer Wilbanks' side of the story. Something many people have been waiting for. The attorney for the runaway bride will release to the public what she calls a comprehensive statement with respect to Jennifer Wilbanks' circumstances during the past week.
And Terry Nichols who is serving a life sentence for the Oklahoma City bombing claims in a letter that an Arkansas gun collector provided some of the explosives used in the 1995 attack. The letter was sent to a woman who lost two grandchildren. The FBI said there is no indication the accusation is true.
Tonight, our anniversary series "Then & Now" profiles a man who has long been identified with local politics in Washington, D.C. Both the positive and the negative sides.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARION BARRY, FRM. D.C. MAYOR: Marion Barry is the best and brightest for Washington, D.C.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As Washington, D.C.'s self-proclaimed mayor for life, Marion Barry has known fame, fall from grace.
BARRY: While I wish I could trade this hour.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And political redemption. Born in Mississippi, Barry came to Washington in the '60s as a civil rights activist and never left. Barry was elected mayor of D.C. in 1978. And held that office for 12 years. But in 1990, Barry's reign ended with a cocaine arrest in an FBI sting operation. After searching six months in prison, he returned as a city council member, then reclaimed the mayor's office in 1994. But his fourth term was overshadowed with allegations of financial wrongdoing. But now, Marion Barry is back on the city council once again.
BARRY: I've been knocked down. Some say you fell down, put yourself down, but I got up.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE; He captured 96 percent of the vote in Washington's 8th ward, an area with the city's highest rates of poverty and unemployment.
BARRY: I ought to be tired by now after 40-some years of public service, 68 years of age. But I'm not. I just got my second wind.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As for his issues with drugs, Barry says it's all in the past and prefers not to talk about it. Married four times, he has one son, 24-year-old Marion Christopher Barry.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Paintball, we're told it is one of the fastest growing extreme sports, 10 million players, most of them men. Most but not all. You're about to meet a group of women who got tired of sitting on the sidelines. And now they're on the rise.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On the left! On the left!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're in (INAUDIBLE) Park in Ft. Myers, Florida, and we're having tryouts for our team.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Watch your backs. Watch your back.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Femme Fatal is an all female paintball team. Out of all the other women teams we're number one.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ready or not, here we come.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Pretty much every team that we play an all- male team. And they really don't like to get shot by a woman at all.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're going to do one more snap shooting drill.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think the difference between my team and a male team is we reek sex appeal, and men just reek. Paint is pretty much a (INAUDIBLE) that you played as a child. You need to eliminate all your players that are coming at your form the opposing team.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you this one shot, (INAUDIBLE), you don't get another chance.
Paintball's growing by leaps and bounds by the day.
In the past couple months we have gotten a lot of media attention. And it's good because women can see, hey, these chicks are doing it, they're moms, you know they're wives. You have to train. You have to get your body in shape. You can get very hurt in this sport. We've had people blow out their knees, bust their faces wide open.
You know when you run, you're diving into bunkers. You're sacrificing your limbs that god gave you.
I have a lot of battle wounds let me show you. And then you can see on the backside over on the arm. We play every three weeks in tournaments from February until November. And in that time is where we have to fit in our practices. There's the hard part, it's finding when to practice in between flying to and from tournaments. It's such an adrenaline rush that you can't get anywhere else. You go out there and your are allowed to shoot at people with markers and not go to jail for it, and not really hurt somebody.
That's fun.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Quick morning papers after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: OK. Time to check morning papers from around the country, around the world. Going to go really quickly tonight. "
The Guardian," British paper, "Poll says Labour," that's how they spell labor over there, "Will Win Historic Third Term. And Tony Blair will be prime minister again." A couple of scandals.
The "New Orleans Times Picayune," I had love that name. "Justice on Call: Judge Allen Green could be counted on to set bonds that would guarantee Bail Bonds Unlimited fat fees government wire taps show."
Ouch.
While on the other hand out west in Oregon, it wasn't a totally bad day for public officials. Former prosecutor receives verdict of his own -- not guilty. A jury acquits Randy Ray Richardson of bribery and jury tampering. So a 50-50 day for public officials in court.
"Newsday," "Try, Try Again." Pataki says architects will redesign Freedom Tower to fix security flaws.
My daughter will be anchoring the program by the time that is built.
The weather tomorrow in Chicago, quintessential. Figure out why.
We'll tell you tomorrow. Good night for all of us.
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