The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

GWEN IFILL: Good evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Jim Lehrer is off this week. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; then, the Senate hears from the general who investigated the abuse at Abu Ghraib Prison; a look at what causes people to commit such acts; the filmmaker whose work helped reopen the Emmett Till murder case; and a Clarence Page essay about a landmark Supreme Court decision on civil rights.

NEWS SUMMARY

GWEN IFILL: An army general today blamed the abuse of Iraqi prisoners on failures of discipline, training and leadership. Major General Antonio Taguba reported last march on the abuse at the Abu Ghraib Prison. Today, he outlined findings of what he called "egregious" violence by U.S. troops and civilians. But he said he believes they acted on their own and that there was no evidence anyone higher up ordered the mistreatment. The general and a top Pentagon official disagreed over who was really in charge at the prison. We'll have extended excerpts from today's hearing after this News Summary. Senate leaders wrestled today with how to handle additional photos and videos of prisoner abuse. They discussed letting senators view the materials in a secure room in the Capitol. Chairman of the Armed Services Committee Republican Senator John Warner said there was no decision yet on public release.

SEN. JOHN WARNER: In privacy they could all be in my opinion shown to senators, but as to the public disclosure of these pieces of really distressing bits of evidence, I think that's best left up to the executive branch to make that decision.

GWEN IFILL: Warner also said some of the Iraqis were told the humiliating photos would be shown to their families unless they talked. Late today Vice President Cheney said he wasn't sure additional photos should be made public. He told Fox News, quote, it's not just a matter of sort of whetting people's appetites to see sensational stuff. Militants linked to al-Qaida put out a video today that showed them beheading an American contractor in Iraq. They said it was "revenge" for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. The victim identified himself as Nick Berg of Philadelphia. He'd been missing since April 9. In the video, five men in headscarves and masks stood over Berg and read a statement before killing him. His body was found on Saturday. The video title said the killing was the work of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate of Osama bin Laden. Amnesty International charged today British troops have killed several dozen civilians in Iraq for no apparent reason. The human rights group said many of the deaths were never investigated and that the victims included an eight-year- old girl. It called for a civilian-led investigation. The government said it is already looking into the allegations. In Iraq, a senior aide to radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr reported an agreement with other Shiite factions in Najaf. He said al-Sadr's militia will leave the city if the coalition postpones murder charges against al-Sadr. The deal also calls for U.S. forces to pull back and let a new Iraqi force take over. In Baghdad, the commander of U.S. forces around Najaf was asked about that.

MAJ. GEN. MARTIN DEMPSEY: If at some point someone of the tribal sheiks that I deal with or someone of the political parties came forward and said, "look, we can help solve this by taking a hundred or so of these young and checking their credentials for you and then giving them to you to train so that they become part of the legitimate future," then I think that I would probably favorably consider that.

GWEN IFILL: Talk of an agreement came after days of clashes between U.S. forces and al- Sadr's militia. Five more Iraqis were killed last night. In Kuwait today, the head of Iraq's war crimes tribunal told reporters the U.S. has agreed to hand over Saddam Hussein to Iraqi authorities by June 30. That's when the political transfer of power is scheduled to occur. But a Pentagon spokeswoman said no date has been set for turning over Saddam and that no decision has been made about when and where he will go on trial. Sudan announced today a presidential committee will investigate allegations of human rights abuses. The focus is on the western Darfur region. Government troops and an Arab militia are accused of forcing more than one million black Sudanese to flee their homes there. The government denies the allegations. Six Israeli soldiers died as new violence erupted in Gaza City today. At least eight Palestinians were also killed and more than 120 were wounded. We have a report narrated by Louise Bates of Associated Press Television News. (Gunfire)

LOUISE BATES: Gaza became a battlefield on Monday as masked gunmen fought Israeli snipers. The fighting began after Israel launched raids on weapons factories. Just after midnight, troops, backed by helicopter gunships, entered the Zeitoun neighborhood. Scores of Palestinian injured poured into Gaza's hospitals as the city was rocked by explosions and gunfire. Outside one hospital, a mother mourns her son. At 6:30 in the morning, the six Israeli soldiers were killed when they drove over a roadside bomb. Hamas gunmen displayed wreckage and body parts they'd said they collected at the scene of the blast. Israeli helicopter gunships were already firing at the city, and more retaliatory measures will no doubt follow.

GWEN IFILL: The deaths of the six Israelis renewed debate over proposals to withdraw from Gaza. Prime Minister Sharon's political party rejected his pullout plan earlier this month. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued new rules today to cut diesel pollution. The rules target soot and other emissions from tractors, trains, earth movers and tugboats. Refiners will have to eliminate 99 percent of sulfur from diesel fuels for those vehicles by 2010. The cleaner fuel and new engine standards are supposed to cut harmful emissions by more than 90 percent. Colorado University football players will not face charges in nine alleged cases of sexual assault. The state attorney general announced that today. He cited concerns about evidence and the alleged victims' reluctance to pursue the case. Other investigations continue into abuse and recruiting tactics at the school. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 29 points to close at 10,019. The NASDAQ rose 35 points to close at 1931. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: The prison abuse investigation; the heart of darkness; the Emmett Till murder story; and a Clarence Page essay.

FOCUS - ABUSE INVESTIGATION

GWEN IFILL: Now to today's Senate hearings on the prisoner abuse scandal. Kwame Holman reports.

KWAME HOLMAN: When allegations surfaced in January of abuse of detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib's Prison it was Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba who was ordered to investigate. He did, assembling a team that conducted 50 interviews and turned around a nine-volume 6,000-page report in a month. Taguba's findings subsequently supported by the unauthorized release of photographs depicting the abuses was summarized in this statement: "Between October and December, 2003, at the Abu Ghraib confinement facility, numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees. This systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force." General Taguba had not spoken publicly about his report until today when he was called to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Virginia Republican John Warner is committee chairman.

SEN. JOHN WARNER: In simple words, your own soldiers' language, how did this happen?

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: Failure in leadership, from the brigade commander on down. Lack of discipline. No training whatsoever. And no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant. Those are my comments.

KWAME HOLMAN: That also was the view of Steven Cambone undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

STEVEN CAMBONE: And I think what we did have here was a problem of leadership with respect to the 372nd Battalion. That was the group that was the MP unit.

SEN. JOHN WARNER: Failure of leadership starting at what level?

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: That is decidedly more difficult to say, sir. Again, in simple terms you asked. There was clear direction moving down the chain from the secretary to General Abizaid to General Sanchez to those people who were in charge of the military police. That in this case is General Karpinski.

KWAME HOLMAN: Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, a reservist, was commander of military police battalions at several Iraqi prisons including Abu Ghraib and since has been relieved of her command.

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: She is, as best as I understand it, was not frequently present at Abu Ghraib. The place was being mortared and attacked frequently. The local commander was unable to bring order to that place. For that reason, I would argue, General Sanchez looked to Colonel Pappas, the head of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade and gave him the responsibility then for taking care of Abu Ghraib as an installation.

KWAME HOLMAN: As commander of military intelligence Colonel Thomas Pappas in effect supervised detainee interrogations at Abu Ghraib. Several Senators, Democrat Carl Levin included, had trouble determining who was in charge at Abu Ghraib, Pappas or Karpinski, at the time the abuses occurred.

SEN. CARL LEVIN: Secretary Cambone told us earlier a few minutes ago that the shift in command at the prison did not mean that the military intelligence commander had command authority over the MPs, but your report says the opposite, that the decision to transfer that command to the military intelligence commander did effectively put that commander in charge of the military police. Do you stick by your statement?

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: Is that to me, sir?

SEN. CARL LEVIN: Yes.

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: Sir, I did not question the order that was given to Colonel Pappas on the fragmentary order that he received on the 19th of November. That was not under my purview. I did ask him to elaborate on what his responsibilities were.

SEN. CARL LEVIN: Your report states that that change in command, quote, effectively made a military intelligence officer rather than an MP officer responsible for the mp units conducting detainee operations at that facility. Is that your conclusion?

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: Yes, sir, because the order gave him tactical control of all units that were residing at Abu Ghraib.

SEN. CARL LEVIN: Secretary Cambone do you agree with that?

STEPHEN CAMBONE: Tactical control is....

SEN. CARL LEVIN: Do you disagree with what the general just said?

STEPHEN CAMBONE: Yes, sir.

SEN. CARL LEVIN: Pardon?

STEPHEN CAMBONE: I do. I do not believe that the order placing Colonel Pappas in charge gave him the authority to direct the mps' activities in direct op com condition.

KWAME HOLMAN: Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson followed up.

SEN. BEN NELSON: General Karpinski says that her command was severed by the infusion of military intelligence dealing with certain detainees. Is that accurate or an approximation of her statement?

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: Sir, I don't understand where her command authority, her command was severed from Abu Ghraib.

SEN. BEN NELSON: Because others were put in and she was given the instruction Colonel Pappas appeared on the scene and military intelligence, not under her command, were there as well. If her command wasn't severed, was it at least interfered with in your judgment?

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: Sir, truthfully, she challenged that.

SEN. BEN NELSON: In what way?

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: Challenged the authority that was given to Colonel Pappas.

SEN. BEN NELSON: What was the result of the challenge?

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: Sir, it created a confusion and friction between those two commanders.

SEN. BEN NELSON: So what we have now is confusion, a lack of clarity of command. We've got a handful at least of spontaneous abusers as it relates to detainees.

KWAME HOLMAN: And New York Democrat Hillary Clinton continued the line of questioning.

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: Now we know that General Karpinski has been rightly singled out for appropriate concern about her behavior and her failure of command. But I just want to read to you a comment she made in an interview which I find extraordinary. And I quote, but when I looked at those pictures and when I continued to see those pictures, I don't think that there was anything that was improperly done because this wasn't something that was a violation of a procedure. This was something they were instructed to do as a completely new procedure. I'm not sure that those MP's had ever been confronted with any instructions like this before.

General Taguba, can you explain for us the disparity between holding this brigade commander completely accountable and the comments that I just read to you in light of the fact that certainly the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade was given tactical control over that prison; can you explain Karpinski's comment?

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: Yes, ma'am. During the course of our investigation, there was clear evidence based on my interview of General Karpinski and Colonel Pappas that there was friction between those two commanders in the operation of Abu Ghraib. The distinction was that who was in charge of when and at what time. They could not explain. So that's the context of the ambiguity of the order that was given to Colonel Pappas. It was clear that he was directed to the forward operating base commander there for the security of detainees and for its protection. However, General Karpinski challenged that. She noted that in her recorded testimony. Point one. I held her accountable and responsible not exclusively and solely for the abuse cases there at Abu Ghraib but the context of her leadership, the lack of leadership on her part overall in terms of her training, the standards, supervise other omission, the command climate in her brigade. Those were all in totality why I held her accountable and responsible, ma'am.

KWAME HOLMAN: It was South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham who got back to the details of the abuses contained in General Taguba's report.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: General Taguba, it comes down to this for me. You have one prison that was run differently than other prisons. The photo we see of the detainee on the stool wired up, was that just six or seven people having a good time in a perverted way at that person's expense? Or was there something deeper going on there and do you know?

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: Sir, based on the evidence, it was six or seven people that created that type of a scenario or situation.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: To the dog scenario where he see the detainee with two dogs, was that a couple of guards with dogs in a perverted way having a good time or was there something else going on?

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: No, sir. The dogs were invited in there according to written statements and collaborated by interviews by the two mp guards.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: The way these people were stacked up in sexual positions in the sexual activity, was that just individual guards or was that part of something else going on?

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: Sir, those actual acts based again on interviews and statements and collaborated by the detainees' statements as well.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: Part of the defense that we're going to be hearing about in these court-martials is that the people that were charge... is that the people that we're charging are going to say this system that we see photographic evidence of was at least encouraged if not directed by others. Do you think that's an accurate statement?

MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: Sir, I would say that they were probably influenced by others but not necessarily directed specifically by others.

KWAME HOLMAN: Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe used his turn in the question rotation to issue a statement concerning the furor that has erupted over the Iraqi detainee abuses.

SEN. JAMES INHOFE: I have to say and I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more out raged by the out rage than we are about the treatment. The idea that these prisoners, you know, they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cell block 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. Here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals. I hasten to say, yeah, there are seven bad guys and gals that didn't do what they should have done. They were misguided, I think maybe even perverted in the things that they did and they have to be punished. They're being punished. They're being tried right now. That's all taking place. But I'm also outraged by the press and the politicians and the political agendas that are being served by this. I say political agendas because that's actually what is happening.

KWAME HOLMAN: By the time senators returned this afternoon to hear from more witnesses they had learned of the release of video appearing to show an American civilian being beheaded by al-Qaida linked militants reportedly in retaliation for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. Chairman John Warner.

SEN. JOHN WARNER: I just left the floor, as all of us did, in connection with voting. Senators on the floor in a virtual state of shock about this report about this alleged beheading because it is clear in this report that armed servicemen and women serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world are now... could well be subjected to this type of threat.

KWAME HOLMAN: Major General Ronald Burgess.

MAJ. GEN. RONALD BURGESS: There has been an increase, if you will, in some of the threat reportings. We have followed that. We've also been following the foreign press as we followed that. And this incident this last weekend that you're reading about which occurred on Saturday is one that we are taking a look at to see if we can make a direct correlation to but at this time have not been able to.

KWAME HOLMAN: This afternoon's panel of army generals told the committee a more detailed report on the abuses at Abu Ghraib Prison should be completed within 30 days.

GWEN IFILL: And still to come on the NewsHour tonight: The tipping point between interrogation and abuse, reopening the Emmett Till murder case, and a Clarence Page essay.

FOCUS - THE HEART OF DARKNESS

GWEN IFILL: Now, how and why do apparently ordinary soldiers go bad? Margaret Warner has that.

MARGARET WARNER: Americans have been shocked by photographs of Iraqi prisoners being abused by U.S. military guards. The degrading treatment of the detainees is horrifying. So, too, has been the apparent attitude of the guards. In one photo, a female soldier grins as she points to several naked, hooded men. In another, two smiling guards give the thumbs-up sign as they pose with a pile of naked prisoners. Political leaders from President Bush on down expressed disgust and a conviction that the behavior shown was a gross aberration for U.S. soldiers and for all Americans.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: What took place in that prison does not represent America that I know. The America I know is a compassionate country that believes in freedom. I keep repeating, but it's true: It doesn't reflect how we think. This is not America. America's a country of justice and law and freedom and treating people with respect.

MARGARET WARNER: But the hometown paper for the military police company involved-- the Cumberland, Maryland "Times- News"-- had a different take in an editorial Sunday. "Visiting journalists search in vain," the paper said, "for some dark local element that gave birth to the monstrous actions in Abu Ghraib. We are America, for better and worse."

MARGARET WARNER: And for more on the psychology behind abusive behavior like this, we turn to: Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School who's studied Nazi doctors and Vietnam veterans. His latest book on violence is called "Superpower Syndrome." Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, a retired psychology professor at West Point. His new book is "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill." Jay Winik, a professor and war historian, and author of "April 1865: The Month That Saved America." And Philip Zimbardo, a psychology professor at Stanford University. In 1971, he conducted a landmark study in which two dozen college students were directed to play the roles of prisoners and guards in a simulated jail, with disturbing results. Welcome to you all.

And Professor Lifton, let me begin with you. Why do apparently ordinary people commit brutal acts like this?

DR. ROBERT JAY LIFTON: I would understand it as what I call an atrocity- producing situation. In studying Vietnam and what happened there and interviewing Vietnam veterans I found that the situation they were in was so structured psychologically and militarily that ordinary people, no better or worse than you or me, could walk into it and commit atrocities. And I think as different as Iraq is, we have a parallel situation of a counterinsurgency war with great confusion as to who the enemy is and difficulty in tracking him down or identifying him, enormous fear and frustration and hostility from the population, and this creates a group process rather than any kind of individual aberration, a group process of atrocity. It works from many levels because as we've heard there are sometimes instructions given from those in charge of interrogation, people from military intelligence, or sometimes there's just a kind of indirect suggestion that softening up processes can be tough and abusive. And then there's still a higher level of high-ranking officers and war planners who demand information from interrogations and apply pressure on those military intelligence officers. So here you have a three-tier dynamic and the foot soldiers, the MPs and the civilian contractors are caught in this atrocity-producing situation. They adapt to the group and they join in.

MARGARET WARNER: And, of course we don't know the actual situation in this case because that will remain for further hearings and the court martials but let me ask Professor Zimbardo, your own studies, your own research, do you agree that there's the potential for if not atrocity certainly brutality in just about anyone and if so what triggers it?

PHILIP G. ZIMBARDO: Well I agree with everything my colleague, Robert Jay Lifton, said. Human nature has the potential to be good or evil. It depends entirely on the situation around us. These young men and women who are being scapegoated, being rushed to trial, rushed to judgment, were embedded in an evil barrel. What happened is, in my study, we took good young then... men, but the them in an evil barrel of a simulated prison and out came corrupted young man who did sadistic acts very similar to what you see in Abu Ghraib, chaining them, making them naked, putting bags over their heads, making them clean out toilet bowls with their hands and at the end simulating sodomy, having the prisoners simulate sodomy. And these were college students to other college students.

MARGARET WARNER: What drove that? I mean did you ask them?

PHILIP G. ZIMBARDO: No, no. Just the opposite. I was a superintendent of the prison who said no physical violence but they waited until I went to sleep because for a variety reasons. First of all, prison situations are one of enormous power differentials. Guards have total power over prisoners who have no power. Unless there's strict leadership, unless there's clear leadership that prevents the abuse of power, that power will seep out. That power... that sadistic impulse will dominate. That's what we saw in our prison. That's what you see in Abu Ghraib. My sense is that these young men and women are certainly not... certainly didn't go in as bad apples -- just as in our prison they went in as good American soldiers. They've come out shamed. Their future is destroyed. What happens is what the system is doing is taking the blame away from those who created the barrel. All of those who should have been in command, all of those who should have been in charge, the military intelligence that clearly, clearly influence, suggested, push, enhanced the use of these terrible tactics. But all of... the system wants to be preserved. That's why we're rushing to judgment to these young men and women.

MARGARET WARNER: Let's broaden it out even further from the United States. What does history tell us about what triggers atrocities.

JAY WINIK: Right. What history tells us is that there's just a terrible logic of war where ordinary or even extraordinary people can just do terrible things. Hanar Rent, the philosopher, once call it the banality of evil. If we look at two powerful examples, for example, in France in the 1790s they were the epicenter of the world, the most cultured and cultivated society. Their books were read everywhere. Their philosophers were widely renowned and yet when their revolution started, they thought nothing of beheading each other and gave terror that swamped all the continent. To take another example throughout history of a very different sort, if we look at Cambodia in the 1970s, here was a gentle, kind sweet people. They got new leadership, highly educated leadership, and they gave us one of the worst nightmares that history has ever seen akin to the Holocaust calling the killing fields. This is the logic of war. It's the logic of psychic numbing. It's the logic of which absent corrective mechanisms in institutions and societies, this sort of thing happens.

MARGARET WARNER: So Col. Grossman, you've taught at West Point. How conscious is U.S. Military leadership in general of this potential and what do you... what do they do to try to train and teach young soldiers to be to resist this sort of sick culture that can develop?

LT. COL. DAVE GROSSMAN (Ret.): Ever since Milai, every single soldier is required by law to be repeatedly trained on a yearly basis about what is an illegal act, what is an illegal action and not just how to identify illegal actions but how to go about reporting them and how to disobey orders. This is the first time in human history that an army has been taught to disobey certain orders. The potential for atrocity, all of my fellow speakers tremendously imminent individuals, keep speaking of war as a situation which by definition has these problems. But the reality is that it has the potential for these problems. The goal has to be a consistent systemic process at every level. The individual must be held accountable. The leaders who were immediately responsible must be held accountable. The individuals who were responsible for establishing the framework must be held accountable. The overall dynamic is that American reputation-- I talk in my book on killing about an individual sending a letter. He was interviewing German soldiers in World War II. He said soldier after soldier said they were told by their uncles, their grandfathers, people who had experience in World War I, be brave, get in the front lines and surrender to the first American you see. The American reputation for decency in World War I saved untold thousands of lives in World War II. That's what we must struggle to maintain in a systematic process of making sure that at the individual level, the leadership level that there will not be breakdowns like this. The reality is they're extraordinarily rare and they must be made even more rare.

VOICE OF UNIDENTIFIED GUEST: May I ask a question?

MARGARET WARNER: Let me ask Jay Winik one point and then I'll get back to you. The president, I want to bring up is this American? Is there something special about Americans that makes it more likely that we will resist at least these impulses? You heard the president say it. Senator Lieberman said today we're not like the terrorists who would behead someone and send out a video. Is there something different about Americans?

JAY WINIK: Well, we certainly think of it as un-American because we don't see it as part of our nature, as part of our history. When these kinds of atrocities happen we quickly try to correct them. That's not to say in America we haven't committed things we see as barbaric or atrocities. For example, Harry Truman, when he dropped the A-Bomb he never lost a night's sleep over it. And he said when you deal with a beast, you must treat them like a beast. In the Civil War we had a full- scale guerilla war which took place in Missouri which in terms of its scope and savagery of death and destruction was every bit as we see in Iraq today -- terrorists ride around wearing scalps with human ears and pieces of flesh as signs of their latest conquest. In the union troops - in the southern -- terrorists became literally indistinguishable from each other. And at the time one of the generals watching what was happening, he said there was something in the hearts of good men that literally exploded. Even Abraham Lincoln watching all this said every foul reptile comes alive in this guerilla warand nothing we do can stop it.

MARGARET WARNER: Professor, I want to ask you about something you've written about and ask you whether you think it might apply. And again we don't want to pre-judge these cases but I think part of it was what is so chilling about these photographs are these big smiles on these young people's faces. You have written... how do you explain that and does your theory -- you've written about something called Doubling or the Second Self. Does that play into this here?

DR. ROBERT JAY LIFTON: You know, sadism is potential in all of us. It isn't the sadism that produces the atrocities. It's the process of the atrocity that releases the sadism. And the sadism is what we see on that... on those pictures. I would like to emphasize that, yes, we have atrocities even in civilian prisons and in all wars. There's no doubt about it. But you're more likely to have atrocities in this kind of war, in this kind of counterinsurgency war and in this case when it turns into an occupation, the atrocity potential is sustained. In terms of doubling, I have described this in relation first to Nazi doctors. They could be loving husbands and fathers when they go on leave for weekends and spend their time in Auschwitz from 9 to 5, five or six days a week killing people. It's as if they form a second self or take Tony Soprano, a very fine likable fellow most of the time except his business is killing people. That kind of doubling occurs in relation to atrocity. We can say that with these people in the prison, these foot soldiers, they formed temporarily a kind of abusive self, which functioned and which was the only way to adapt to that environment. And that's what is so dangerous about creating environments like this because, Gwen, the atrocities come to reflect the war that we're fighting.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me first get Professor Zimbardo. I'm Margaret by the way not Gwen. Professor Zimbardo talk to us a little bit about your reaction when you saw the photos and the fact that these men and women also didn't seem... there was nothing fur tiff. They were posing proudly. There was no sense that later they'd be... might get called to account that they were doing something wrong. Yet you hear their friends and neighbors talk about them as very decent young people. Explain the psychology of that.

PHILIP G. ZIMBARDO: Before I answer, can I ask the colonel whether army reservists get that same training that regular soldiers do?

LT. COL. DAVE GROSSMAN (Ret.): Yes they do. In basic training. This is a really important point because one of the variables in this equation is that these National Guard and reserve units are less trained and they're less disciplined. One of the safeguards in the system, any army that went forth and killed and then came home and used its skills on its own nation would be participating in the destruction of its own nation. This is a problem that's been resolved for millennia. The solution is discipline. In these national guard and reserve units there is a tendency to have less discipline. You put your finger on one of the key variables in the equation.

MARGARET WARNER: Professor Zimbardo, back to you about the glee on these faces.

PHILIP G. ZIMBARDO: The glee on those faces-- I don't think anybody has said this. I think they were trapped in what is considered an expanded present time zone where they were cut off from their past and then their past is, your history, your personality, your obligations, your religion. And they're cut off from the future which is the consequences of your action. They were in a kind of hedonistic revelry, trapped in that moment but like you get in drug addiction, like you get in ecstasy, like you get in riots, it was a special kind of mentality where they were living in the moment. Therefore, not only did they do these terrible things, they were able to take what's called trophy pictures, exactly like Americans used to do in lynchings because they had no sense that these could be used against them, that they would be culpable, they would be found guilty because they had these pictures. So I think they were involved in the ugliness of the hedonistic moment and therefore they were not thinking they were doing anything wrong. They were just living for that pleasure and the pain.

MARGARET WARNER: So, Colonel Grossman, finally to you. Go back to your training of young military. You've spoken I think in the past about trying to create the bullet-proof mind. How does that work?

LT. COL. DAVE GROSSMAN (Ret.): One of the most important ingredients of all when I train my cops, my military, atrocity will entrap you. It is temporarily empowering. It is extremely desirable in its short-term gains but the long-term destruction on the individual, on the culture, on the society is enormous. One of the things that are put in place is a concept of what I call justice not vengeance. We must dedicate ourselves ahead of time. It is the gift that keeps on giving. It destroys not just you but your spouse and your kids in the years to come. And all of the research shows that one of the surest paths to psychological self-destruction is to commit an atrocity, to break the law, to do something other than the code. Quite frankly to answer your key question, is this un-American? A free society with an open press makes this far less likely to happen. What we're participating in right now is an extraordinarily powerful process that makes damned sure that this is far less likely to happen again. That's a good thing.

MARGARET WARNER: You had a brief final thought.

JAY WINIK: A quick point I would make is I would agree with that. That even as a collective sociopath reins in one hand is what we've seen -- the fact that we're going through this discussion that there's a collective sense of shame throughout the nation that's the corrective mechanism -- that's ultimately what will be the good news in this whole terrible saga.

MARGARET WARNER: Thank you all four very much. Very interesting.

FOCUS - QUEST FOR JUSTICE

GWEN IFILL: Now, a brutal killing revisited. Emmett Till was 14 years old when he was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after he supposedly whistled at a white woman. Two white men, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, were arrested and tried for the murder. They were acquitted by an all- white jury. Yesterday the Justice Department announced it is reopening the case in part because of a recent documentary that alleged the investigation was flawed and key witnesses never testified. That documentary, "The Murder of Emmett Till," aired last year on the PBS program "American Experience." Here: An excerpt with three of the possible new witnesses. It begins with the voice of Warren Hampton, who in 1955 was a young boy living in the area. He describes what he saw the night that Emmett Till disappeared.

WARREN HAMPTON: I was playing beside the road, and I saw Mr. Milam in the truck coming by, and it had A... had a cover over the door, we called a tarpaulin. And I heard somebody hollered on the truck.

WILLIE REED: I could hear all of this beating, and I could hear this beating and I could here this crying and crying and beating. And I'm saying to myself, "they beating somebody up there." I heard that beating even before I got to... even before I got to the barn. I passed; they still was beating, they still was beating. I could hear it. Milam came out. So when he said, "Did you hear anything?," I saw him. He had a khaki pants on, he had a green nylon shirt, and a .45 on his side. So I said, "No." I said, "I didn't heard anything," I said, "anything."

OUDIE BROWN: I was coming through there that morning. Too-tight was out there washing the truck out, out washing J.W. Milam's truck out. I said, "where all that blood's come from?" He laughed. The boy laughed, that's what he did. He said, "there's a shoe here. There's one of his shoes here." I said "whose?" That's the way I said it. I say "whose?" "Emmett Till's shoe."

GWEN IFILL: Joining us now is producer and director Stanley Nelson. Next Monday night, he will receive a Peabody Award for "the Murder of Emmett Till." Stanley, welcome.

STANLEY NELSON: Thank you.

GWEN IFILL: Tell us your reaction to news that the Justice Department decided yesterday to reopen this case.

STANLEY NELSON: Well, you know, I was in shock. I guess I'm still in shock. You know, it's been almost 50 years, and then suddenly the ball starts rolling faster and faster and faster. And then yesterday they announced that the case is going to be reopened, so it's... it's a great thing.

GWEN IFILL: When you went down to do this documentary, did it seem to you that this case had ever been fully investigated in the first place?

STANLEY NELSON: No, I think that's one of the things that we quickly saw when we went down to Mississippi. You know, people just started coming forward very, very quickly. And we really weren't... we really weren't looking for new evidence. We were doing a historical documentary. But all of a sudden, people just started talking, and we realized that the case was never investigated at all, really.

GWEN IFILL: What's the difference between a historical documentary and an investigative documentary?

STANLEY NELSON: Well, I think an historical documentary, you know, we're looking at history. We're trying to shed new... shed some new light on it, shine some new light on history, but we're not really... we're not trying to dig up new evidence. We're not really investigating. You know, we want to let people look at this story that I think had been largely forgotten.

GWEN IFILL: So you say that there were people down there who never testified. Were they never called? Were they just too scared to testify? How is it that these recollections only came to light so much later?

STANLEY NELSON: Well, I think it's a bit of both. I mean, I think some people were scared to testify clearly. People said they were scared. Oudie Brown said he was scared and he actually drove to the courthouse and he got to the courthouse and he said, you know, he saw white men standing there with guns around the courthouse, and he said, you know, "I'm not going in there," so he never testified. I think you had other people like Willie Reed who did testify but nobody really ever listened. He always said that he saw three or four men take Emmett Till into that barn, but nobody was really listening.

GWEN IFILL: Well, how did you find these people if investigators weren't able to?

STANLEY NELSON: Well, I think that the key to it is that the investigators really weren't looking. You know, the sheriff down there, Strider, at the time, you know, clearly said, you know, that he wasn't going to investigate the case. There is evidence that he actually hid witnesses away in jail so they wouldn't testify.

GWEN IFILL: So what should investigators be looking at now that this is back on the front burner?

STANLEY NELSON: Well, I think, you know, that there are some people in our documentary that are fairly easy to talk to. I think that to my understanding, Caroline Bryant, the woman that was whistled at, is alive and may have been there that night. And I think they should also just talk to anybody they can. I think that there's a lot of people there who are not only able to talk, but are really willing to talk. I mean, I think that this is a burden that they've carried because they did not testify 50 years ago.

GWEN IFILL: I read today that this is the 22nd civil rights-era killing that has been reopened for reexamination since 1989. What does this tell us in general about the way these cases were treated then and the way they're being treated now?

STANLEY NELSON: Well, I think in general the cases weren't investigated at all back then. You know, I mean, this was something... you know, to kill a black man back in the Deep South back then, you know, it wasn't investigated. It was just kind of swept under the rug. I mean, the amazing thing about the Emmett Till case was that there was a trial at all, even though the trial was really a joke, but that there was a trial and that there was a trial and that they did put these men on the stand. But I think now these cases are being re-looked at, and I think that's a good thing. You know, I think that there's no statute of limitations on murder for a reason. And, you know, even after 50 years, it's a great thing that the case is opened up.

GWEN IFILL: You knew and worked with Mamie Till Mobley on-- Emmett Till's mother-- on this documentary. She passed away in January of last year, shortly before your documentary aired. Is this what she wanted? Is this the vindication she was looking for?

STANLEY NELSON: I think... yeah, I think she would have been happy that the case was reopened. But I think, you know, we have to understand that Mamie till's focus really was to make sure that this never happened again. I mean, I think that was really her focus. Her focus wasn't on revenge. You know, her focus was on justice. Her focus was on making sure that nobody else was ever murdered in this brutal way.

GWEN IFILL: And finally, Stanley, this murder happened a year after the "Brown Versus the Board of Education" case was decided by the Supreme Court, making education equal. Was there... is there any way, looking back on nearly the 50th year anniversary of Emmett Till's murder, any connection between those two events?

STANLEY NELSON: Sure. I think that one of the connections that we make in the film was that the "Brown Versus Board of Ed" decision had just been a year earlier, and that in some ways, you know, the world... the world that Emmett Till traveled through in the South was seething because of this decision. All of a sudden, the South was facing the fact that black kids and white kids were going to have to go to school together. Many people in the South looked at it as an end to their way of life, and they were really resistant, militantly resistant to the "Brown Versus Board of Ed" decision. So I think that there's a direct connection between the murder of Emmett Till and the "Brown Versus Board of Ed" decision.

GWEN IFILL: And we'll be looking forward to your take on the "Brown Versus Board of Ed" decision in tomorrow night's documentary on PBS stations, "Beyond Brown." Stanley Nelson, thank you very much for joining us.

STANLEY NELSON: Thank you so much.

ESSAY - WITH ALL DELIBERATE SPEED

GWEN IFILL: And finally tonight, speaking of Brown Versus the Board of Education decision essayist Clarence Page of the "Chicago Tribune" offers his take on it.

CLARENCE PAGE: I was just a kid when the "brown V. Board of education" decision came down. In May of 1954, the Supreme Court decided that states could no longer claim the right to sustain separate-but-equal schools and other public facilities. That meant black children like seven-year-old Linda Brown of Topeka, Kansas, would no longer be forced to travel past an all- white school every day to attend an all-black school. I recall a lot of happiness among the grown-ups when that decision came down-- but no dancing in the streets. That's because there was a catch: The Brown decision contained no mechanism for its own enforcement. A year went by and the states dragged their heels. Once again, our dream of freedom was deferred.

GEORGE WALLACE: I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever. (Cheers and applause)

CLARENCE PAGE: The high court took the case up again in 1955 and called for enforcement "with all deliberate speed." Another bitter irony: "Deliberate" means "slow." "Slow speed" is a curious phrase, an oxymoron, like a "deafening silence" or the "more perfect union" that the Constitution strives to achieve. "Deliberate speed" turned out to be very deliberate. Ten years after Brown, fewer than 1 percent of segregated schools had been desegregated. But brown did change the law in our nation of laws from a headwind to a tailwind for black progress, backing us up instead of getting in the way. The high court paved the way for an energized decade of civil rights protests, confrontations and, eventually, legislation. Enforcement of Brown also brought a backlash over school busing, sometimes violently, even in liberal cities of the north like Boston. School desegregation peaked in the late 1980'S. Courts began to decide that the goals of Brown had largely been achieved. In 1991, the Supreme Court, with little fanfare, allowed a return to neighborhood schools instead of busing, even if the result was more segregation. So how much progress have we made? A recent study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University says public schools nationwide are almost as segregated as they were when the Martin Luther King was killed in 1968. Most white students across the country still have little contact with black or Hispanic students, and vice versa. 50 years after Brown, desegregation is turning back into re-segregation. But school enrollment numbers don't tell the whole story. Today's America is more integrated overall, but mostly in the workplace. After work, most of us go home to largely segregated lives. When you buy your house, you buy your school. School patterns follow housing patterns, which follow income patterns, as well as race. Segregation by race has eroded. Segregation by class remains. The black middle class has tripled in size since the 1960's. But the divide between rich and poor among blacks alone is larger than the divide between blacks and whites. Thanks to Brown, we can have as much integration as we can afford, regardless of race, creed or color. A lot of families can't afford to have a choice. It is fashionable these days to say that our race problems are really a problem of economic class. And yet, race continues to make problems of class even more vexing. Sandra Day O'Connor, the Supreme Court's first woman Justice, said last year that it may take 25 more years before we don't need affirmative action anymore. Fifty years have passed since Brown, and we still need more time to form a more perfect union with all deliberate speed. I'm Clarence Page.

RECAP

GWEN IFILL: Again, the major developments of the day. An army general blamed the abuse of Iraqi prisoners on widespread failures of military discipline, training and leadership. Iraqi militants put out a video that showed them beheading an American contractor. They said it was revenge for the mistreatment of Iraqis. And fierce fighting in Gaza City killed six Israeli soldiers and eight Palestinians. More than 120 Palestinians were wounded.

GWEN IFILL: And again, to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq. We add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. Here, in silence, are 15 more.

GWEN IFILL: For the record, the last man, Army Specialist James Beckstrand was in a marine uniform because he served in the Marine Corps before joining the army.

We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Thank you and good night.