Who Is Carla Martin?; Price Of War
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: But who exactly is Carla Martin? What's her background? Our Senior National Correspondent John Roberts investigates.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So why did you do it, ma'am?</s>JOHN ROBERTS, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): She is ultimately described as articulate and smart, opinionated and overbearing. So who is Carla Martin? And why did she violate a judge's order to not give witnesses prior testimony? The attorney general was baffled.</s>ALBERTO GONZALES, ATTORNEY GENERAL: You'll have to ask Carla Martin what motivated her.</s>ROBERTS: Here's what we know. Martin joined the Transportation Security Administrations legal department in April of 2002 following 14 years at the FAA. It was a second career. She'd been a flight attendant for World Airways before getting her law degree in 1989 from American University. The bulk of her work was litigation, representing the FAA in several lawsuits, including the Pan Am 103 case. James Kreindler, an attorney for the Pan Am plaintiffs, remembers Martin as "easy to deal with - not a bad person or a monster." Others paint a less flattering picture. A.P. Pishevar went up against Martin in a security discrimination case.</s>A.P. PISHEVAR, ATTORNEY: Aggressive. Perhaps overzealous.</s>ROBERTS: Was he surprised about her conduct in the Moussaoui case?</s>PISHEVAR: I would have to say that I was not surprised because of my background with her.</s>ROBERTS: A former colleague, who requested anonymity, recalls Martin had "good attorney skills," but "her short coming was that she was very opinionated -- very passionate -- with a strong personality." People weren't sad to see her leave." And Claudio Manno, one of the FAA witnesses now barred from testifying told the court, Martin "had a tendency to go off on tangents that really were not that relevant and taking up a lot of time." According to her mother, Martin is "totally distraught" over what happened, "as if it were the end of the world." Gene Martin Lay (ph) says her daughter "would never disobey the court's order," though Carla Martin could not explain to her how she misjudged Brinkema's explicit rules on witnesses. Some people who know Martin speculate it might have been her lack of experience in criminal law that was to blame for all of this. It appears that Martin may try to convince Judge Brinkema that she meant no harm, she simply didn't know about the order. But lawyers I talk to said, rules about coaching witnesses are basic law school 101. John Roberts, CNN, Washington.</s>KAGAN: And just to bring you up-to-date on where we are with the Moussaoui case. Government attorneys are asking the judge to reverse her ruling that the witnesses and the related evidence be banned from the trial. Meanwhile, that trial is due to resume on Monday. It is three years after the Iraq invasion and three months after elections there. Iraq's new parliament was finally sworn in this morning. The long awaited session (ph) lasted only about 30 minutes. That's because Iraq's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds are bitterly divided over who will lead a national unity government. Acting Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's candidacy for a second term is at the center of that log jam. Many of the political parties criticize his handling of the government over the last year. The body count just keeps rising in Baghdad. Office say 31 more bodies were found throughout the city yesterday and all had been shot and stripped of their identification. That brings the total number of people found dead this week to more than 166. The innocent are too often the victims in the war in Iraq. Take a U.S.-led mission targeting a suspected insurgent. Iraq police say four women and five children were killed in yesterday's action. CNN's Arwa Damon has that story. A warning for you, before we go to the tape, you might find some of these images disturbing.</s>ARWA DAMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): These are the hardest images to see. Children caught in the middle of the daily complexities of war in Iraq. It started out as a straight forward mission, to rout out foreign fighters. But military success came at a terrible human price. U.S. forces acting on intelligence raided a farmhouse north of Balad (ph) looking for a suspected insurgent linked to al Qaeda in Iraq. After coming under fire, they captured their intend target. But in a battlefield with no clear front lines, it's the unintended consequences that are the most devastating. Innocents paid the price this day, crushed under the rubble of the full force of this military operation. Iraqi police say four women and five children, one a 6-month-old baby, were killed. Families forever changed in an instant. Troops left haunted by the images of their mission on a day for them that began as any other. The cost of war, not always paid by combatants. In Iraq, as so often is the case, civilians pay the ultimate price of this war. The casualties in Balad will now be added to an ever growing list of civilians killed here. The events in a remote farmhouse northeast of the capital are a vivid reminder of the realities faced by all. And as anarchy and confusion continue, the line between combatant and civilian becomes even more unclear. Arwa Damon, CNN, Baghdad.</s>KAGAN: We should let you know that U.S. military officials had a different casualty count from police. One insurgent, two women and one child killed in that incident. A woman and her boyfriend charged in a deadly hit and run accident are giving conflicting accounts of how that happened. It goes to southern California where a witness give as first-hand account of the aftermath.</s>TENNYSON COLLINS, WITNESS: I heard the sound of screeching tires and an impact sound. I turned and I saw a car up on the sidewalk and literally plowing through bodies flying in the air. The car was -- kind of spun around and came to a stop facing the opposite direction that it was traveling. And there were literally bodies laying all around.</s>KAGAN: A teacher was killed and eight students were injured when the car plowed into them on a sidewalk in Culver City in southern California. It happened yesterday. The woman who was driving the car told police her boyfriend grabbed the steering wheel during an argument. He denies that. Both are in custody, charged with vehicular manslaughter and hit and run involving a fatality. Police are also trying to figure out whether a homeless man who opened fire at a Denny's restaurant was mentally ill. They say Lawrence Woods entered the restaurant in Pismo Beach, California, during lunchtime with, police say, guns blazing. Police say he killed two people and wounded a couple before turning the gun on himself. Among the dead, a 65-year-old man who was gunned down in front of his wife and great grand daughter. Denny's says the shooting appears to be a random act of violence. New alarm this morning over inhalant abuse among young people. A survey released last hour shows nearly 2 million middle and high schoolers took up sniffing over the past three years. Researched by a government health agency also shows about a third of these new users are 12 and 13-year-olds. Teens use common household products like shoe polish, paint, lighter fluid to get high. How do you know if your teen is sniffing? Well, a few indicators for you to look for. If your kid has a chemical odor, he or she may have unexplained paint stains on their body or clothes, speech could be slurred and you might notice frequent nausea. Finally, are household products mysteriously disappearing? We're going to focus on inhalant abuse in depth nest hour. My guest will include a parent whose child died from sniffing. There's a new push in Congress today to restrict Internet porn. Just last hours, a pair of senators called for a .xxx domain for all porn sites. Porn peddlers would have to abandon their .com designation and move into what amounts to an Internet red light district.</s>SEN. MARK PRYOR, (D) ARKANSAS: Children are exposed to pornography on the Internet. In fact, there's a study done by the Kaiser Foundation that says 90 percent of kids age eight to 16 have viewed pornography online. And most of that, the study says, is due to them doing their homework online.</s>KAGAN: The world body that assigns Internet domain would have to sign on to that .xxx plan if the bill passes. One free speech group opposes .xxx. It says the move would amount to what it calls the ghettoization (ph) of a constitutionally protected product. Well, it is spring break 2006 New Orleans style. Instead of getting hammered, college kids are swinging hammers as they help the crescent city clean up. We'll have that story, talk to a couple of students who chose this for spring break just ahead.