White House May Compromise Over Money to Reconstruct Iraq; New Twist in Gitmo Spy Scandal
MILES O'BRIEN, GUEST HOST: The last Friday in September, Rosh Hashana, the start of the new year for Jews all around the world. It's still technically summer but it feels like a seasonal change very much in the air. This is the last weekend of the regular season for the major leagues and what seems like the beginning of the real push in the race for the White House as Democratic candidate number ten takes his first trip to New Hampshire. We'll deal with both of those stories tonight and a lot more. Now, Aaron may be off tonight but he left his whip behind and I would face 40 lashes if I didn't use it myself, so let's get cracking. To John King first and a possible new White House strategy in selling that $87 billion Iraq plan. John, a headline please.</s>JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Miles, because of a firestorm of criticism in Congress from both Democrats and Republicans the administration concedes it will be forced to compromise. The president won't be able to give all $20 billion of that reconstruction money in grants. The Iraqi government is going to have to eventually pay some of it back -- Miles.</s>O'BRIEN: John King at the White House. The Pentagon next, CNN's Jamie McIntyre with some new twists in the case of the airman accused of spying at Guantanamo Bay, Jamie the headline.</s>JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well court records, Miles, shows that that Air Force translator was under investigation even before he was sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba where he is accused of espionage and aiding the enemy -- Miles.</s>O'BRIEN: Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon thank you. On to Arkansas and a first for the military since the Vietnam War, CNN's David Mattingly with the story tonight and a headline from there.</s>DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, he misses NASCAR, his girlfriend and his family not necessarily in that order but tonight a young GI comes home on a vacation from war -- Miles.</s>O'BRIEN: David Mattingly in Arkansas, thank you. Finally to New Hampshire, D-Day plus one, that's D for debate for Wesley Clark. CNN's Dan Lothian was there as the former general showed he isn't taking that state for granted. Dan, a headline from you please.</s>DAN LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, roughly 17 weeks until the New Hampshire primary, Wesley Clark was here at a town hall meeting, meeting with supporters. He was also meeting on the streets trying to not only introduce himself but win over voters -- Miles.</s>O'BRIEN: Thanks very much, Dan Lothian, back with all of you shortly. Also coming up on the program tonight, the state of play in California, more endorsements for Arnold Schwarzenegger from key Republicans with an eye toward persuading the number two Republican to bow out of the race. He isn't budging. A closer look at how the military chooses Muslim chaplains and whether the organization it turns to for help doing it has ties to terrorism. And we'll close out the week with a look at my hapless hometown team, Motor City's Tigers in the tank. They're trying hard to do what they've had a hard time doing all year and that's winning a ballgame or two and staying out of the record books as the losing-est ball club in modern history, all that to come in the hour ahead. Off tonight with the cost of rebuilding Iraq and who in the end will pay for it. After a week or so of taking it on the chin for the big number at the bottom line, the White House is finding even more resistance for its Iraq shopping list. Do Americans want to foot the bill for everything from garbage trucks to zip codes? Well, if not how about a little creative financing. Here again, CNN's Senior White House Correspondent John King.</s>KING (voice-over): Off to Camp David at the close of a contentious week knowing he likely will have no choice but to compromise on his $20 billion request to help rebuild Iraq.</s>SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECY.: We're continuing to fight for the package as we outlined it and as we presented it to Congress but obviously we recognize this is a process where we work together on it.</s>KING: Even some Republican White House allies say the reconstruction money should be a loan not a grant and the fine print is stirring up the president's critics, $9 million to develop a zip code postal system, $4 million to bring telephone area codes to Iraq, 40 garbage trucks at a cost of $50,000 each.</s>SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Mr. President, this document is an insult to the American people. It's an insult to our troops who are paying for their lives.</s>KING: The $20 billion in reconstruction money is part of the president's $87 billion war budget request and opening the door to reconstruction loans instead of grants is a clear sign of White House worry. Rounding up international help in Iraq is another worry and the focus of the president's hand-on diplomacy this weekend. The warm Camp David welcome is for good reason. President Putin says he is eager to reach agreement with the United States and is not ruling out offering Russian troops in Iraq down the road.</s>KING: And, senior administration officials tonight concede that at least a modest portion of that $20 billion in reconstruction money will have to be in the form of loans, not grants. Some think the percentage might even be a bit higher than modest this uproar in Congress a sudden blow to a president. Even long time allies are now questioning his Iraq policy and not only the policy overseas but its impact on domestic politics here at home -- Miles.</s>O'BRIEN: John, I could have sworn I heard Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator in Iraq this past week say it's very important that this money not be loans that they be grants because Iraq has such a debt already.</s>KING: Such a fragile economy, Paul Bremer makes the case and an international debt that it inherits from Saddam Hussein. Dick Cheney told Republicans in a private meeting don't make this loans because then you could feed the perception this war was fought for oil because that is where the money to repay the loans would come from. But, as members of Congress go home, their lawmakers were saying -- I mean their constituents are saying why not a bridge for us, why not a courthouse for us, and what about the debt here in the United States, a record federal budget deficit. The heat on the president comes because when these members of Congress are going home, Miles, at a time of a difficult economy here they are getting heat from their own constituents.</s>O'BRIEN: Thank you very much, CNN's John King at the White House. We learned more today about the young man who sits tonight in a brig at Vandenberg Air Force base in California charged with spying. CNN has obtained some court documents that show he was under investigation even before he showed up for duty as an Arabic translator at Guantanamo Bay perhaps the most sensitive and secret place in the U.S. military. Here again, CNN's Jamie McIntyre.</s>MCINTYRE (voice-over): Even before senior airman Ahmed al-Halabi arrived for duty in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he had fallen under suspicion of military investigators. Court documents say that in November of last year an "investigation was initiated based on reports of suspicious activity while he was stationed at Travis Air Force Base and also while deployed to Kuwait and Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba." Al-Halabi served as an Arabic language translator at Camp Delta, the prison for Taliban and al Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo from November until July when he was arrested just before he planned to fly to Syria to marry his Syrian fiancee. The court papers also allege: "Al-Halabi made statements criticizing United States policy with regard to the detainees and the Middle East and that he also expressed sympathy for and had unauthorized contact with the detainees." Al-Halabi is accused of providing unauthorized comfort items to Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners and attempting to smuggle out more than 180 of their messages.</s>MCINTYRE: Now his attorneys insist that al-Halabi is not a spy that he's in fact a star performer in the Air Force who was even named airman of the year in his squadron but his defense attorneys say with most of the evidence in the case classified they can't say much more on his behalf. However, they did put out a call today for experts in what they said was psycho sociology and Muslim culture that they're looking for to help with his defense -- Miles.</s>O'BRIEN: Jamie, any sense just yet as to how much damage might have been done by the release of all this information?</s>MCINTYRE: Well, you know at this point and it's very early in this investigation, it doesn't appear that there's a lot of damage to national security. What it looks like is that this person, assuming the charges are correct, was trying to give aid and comfort to the detainees that he perhaps sympathized with them and was trying to get messages from them out to sympathizers or their family. It's not a big damage to national security but it's a major violation of the security procedures at that base.</s>O'BRIEN: Well, and it's worth pointing out that the administration does not want to even release a list of those detainees. Just giving away their identity would be a violation of national security rules, right?</s>MCINTYRE: That's right and the information that was found on his laptop computer included the identities, the numbers, the numbers that have been assigned to those prisoners, and information that he had taken from handwritten notes and turned into electronic communication.</s>O'BRIEN: CNN's Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon, thank you very much. Of course Airman al-Halabi isn't the only one under suspicion tonight. James Yee, a chaplain at the base also finds himself in custody and the military finds itself under scrutiny over how it chooses its Muslim clerics. That part of the story coming up a little bit later in the program. Now on to some other things, you can almost smell the home cooked meals and hear the Barry White tunes playing tonight as 192 military families torn apart by the war in Iraq are made whole once again. The servicemen and women were in the vanguard of a two-week R&R; campaign to spell Iraqi-weary troops. Watching the smiles and tears as they put boots on U.S. soil for the first time in a long while, you can't help but wonder how hard it will be when it is time to go back only 15 days from now. Again, here's CNN's David Mattingly.</s>MATTINGLY (voice-over): By the time he heard the welcome home applause in the Little Rock airport, Private First Class Dustin Bohannan was less than 36 hours removed from driving a tank in Baghdad. His boots still covered with Iraqi dust, Bohannan is among the first wave of troops shuttling back home for brief R&R;, a vacation from the war. We followed him as he first set foot on U.S. soil in Baltimore, through the last legs of his journey home, a world away from the life he was leaving behind.</s>DUSTIN BOHANNAN, PRIVATE FIRST CLASS: I'd probably be on a patrol right now, you know. It's like 3:00 in the morning so that's patrol time.</s>MATTINGLY: His needs are simple, a hot shower, some civilian clothes and to lose himself in the embrace of family.</s>BOHANNAN: It's definitely tough on the people here. Like I said when you're over there you're not thinking about home. You're just thinking about, you know, what you have to do, what are you doing the next day. You all is too busy.</s>MATTINGLY: As a teenager, Bohannan would worry his parents racing his truck down the back roads in nearby Louisiana. Now, a full 20 years old, he conducts overnight patrols down the back streets of Baghdad looking for explosive devices.</s>LISA BOHANNAN, DUSTIN BOHANNAN'S STEPMOTHER: I'm not worried about anything right now. I mean it's wonderful except (unintelligible).</s>MATTINGLY: In his brief time reunited with the family he said goodbye to when he deployed back in April, Bohannan seems remarkably unaffected by his experience in Iraq, a little taller, a little older according to his family and a little harder to say goodbye to a second time.</s>DON BOHANNAN, DUSTIN BOHANNAN'S FATHER: But you hear things like today. Somebody was killed yesterday then you start wondering was it him? And it's scary. It's scary and I'm glad he's home.</s>MATTINGLY: But like so many of his fellow GIs, Private Bohannan knows that the clock is ticking. In just two weeks' time he has to go back to Iraq, back to that tank in the streets of Baghdad -- Miles.</s>O'BRIEN: Well, it's short but it certainly will be sweet. We can certainly say that. What have they told the likes of Dustin about how long their stint will be in Iraq? It's still kind of up in the air isn't it?</s>MATTINGLY: It is up in the air and he says he tries not to think about how long it's going to be. He says he's in the Army now for three more years and he has no idea how long he's going to be in Iraq. He's just making the most of the time that he has here like the other troops that came home today say they're going to be doing and he's not thinking about just how long his life may be in Iraq.</s>O'BRIEN: David, are these troops getting younger or am I just getting older?</s>MATTINGLY: I thought the same thing when I saw him.</s>O'BRIEN: Wow.</s>MATTINGLY: I tell you what he has an awful lot of poise for a young man of 20 years old, of course an incredible experience he's going through right now along with so many other soldiers in Iraq.</s>O'BRIEN: All right, we should all be proud of the likes of Dustin Bohannan. Thank you very much David Mattingly, Eldorado, Arkansas tonight. Ahead on NEWSNIGHT for a Friday, big name Republicans line up behind Arnold Schwarzenegger with one notable exception and he could be a spoiler. And later the bad news Tigers on the verge of becoming the losing-est team in modern baseball history. From Atlanta, this is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.