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Special Event

CNN 20: Remembering 20 Years of CNN Covering the World

Aired June 1, 2000 - 9:00 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANNOUNCER: Bringing you the world for 20 years, this is CNN.

LARRY KING, HOST: Welcome to the 20th anniversary of CNN. I'm Larry King.

Here in Atlanta, exactly 20 years ago tonight, CNN jumped head first into the news business and never looked back. For the next two nights, we'll relive some of the most memorable stories through the eyes of the folks who covered them, and we'll talk live to some of the people who made those stories so unforgettable. And first up, who else, the man who invented the idea of a 24-hour news channel and somehow got it on the air: Ted Turner.

How did the idea -- remember when it first came to you?

TED TURNER, CHAIRMAN OF CNN: No.

KING: You don't remember playing it -- it was four years before it started.

TURNER: Oh yes, it was three or four years before it started.

KING: Did you test-market it?

TURNER: No.

KING: You didn't merchandise anywhere? You didn't call in heads and say, how do you think this would do?

TURNER: Well, for a number of years, I asked my friends and -- you know, the people I went out to dinner with, and I said, what do you think of the idea of a 24-hour news channel, and you know, I had already thought it through pretty well, and they all thought it was a good idea.

KING: They did?

TURNER: I didn't run into anybody that didn't think it was a good idea.

KING: Is that because you said it, or do you didn't think they were giving you sincere answers?

TURNER: I think they were giving me sincere answers. It was a great idea.

KING: Did you expect to become what it became, truth?

TURNER: I thought it was going to be a big success, but I didn't know that it would be this successful. And besides, 25 years ago, when I first started thinking about it, I just thought, well, I want to get it to break even, make some money, I didn't think, you know, 25 -- I was only thinking 10 years ahead, not 25 years ahead.

KING: But you said we'll go off the air when the world comes to an end.

TURNER: Yes.

KING: So you expect it certainly would be lasting?

TURNER: Yes.

KING: Did you ever think it would be the worldwide identity it is?

TURNER: News of record.

KING: Yes. Did you ever think that?

TURNER: Oh, I certainly thought it, you know, sometime after we started. I can see we were going to be a big winner.

KING: Those days when people were making fun of it, kidding it, CBS wanted to buy you out.

TURNER: All my life, people kidded about me. When I sailed, started sailing, you know, I said I was going to be a champion and people laughed at me then. And people laughed when my father died and I took over the billboard. I'm used to people laughing. People laughing at me just makes me dig in and work a little harder. It's a good incentive.

KING: So when CNN started it, and the press was kidding you and making fun and the tendency was to put it down, that didn't bother you at all?

TURNER: Not at all. I consider it a compliment.

KING: And when those early days were rough, did you keep the faith? Did you always think...

TURNER: Never questioned it. I knew it was going to be a hit before it went on the air.

KING: We'll be back with more from Ted Turner. And coming up, CNN: day one.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Twenty years ago most, of us got our TV news courtesy of one of the big three networks crammed into a nice, neat 30-minute package, and if you didn't get home in time to see it, you were out of luck. Ted Turner thought things could be done differently.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, 1980)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TURNER: I dedicate the news channel for America: the Cable News Network.

(APPLAUSE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Standby. Ready, three. Take three at my cue. Three, start to slow zoom in a little bit. Roll tape -- take three.

DAVID WALKER, FORMER CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, I'm David Walker.

LOIS HARP, FORMER CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Lois Harp. Now here's the news.

UNIDENTIFIED CNN CORRESPONDENT: Welcome to our bureau in downtown Dallas.

UNIDENTIFIED CNN CORRESPONDENT: Welcome to California.

MARK WALTON, FORMER CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Mark Walton.

BOB BERKOWITZ, FORMER CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is Bob Berkowitz.

KIRSTEN LINDQUIST (ph), FORMER CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Kirsten Lindquist.

MARY ELLIS WILLIAMS, FORMER CNN NEW YORK BUREAU CHIEF: I'm Mary Ellis Williams, New York bureau chief for the Cable News Network.

BERNARD SHAW, CNN ANCHOR: This is Bernard Shaw in our Cable News Washington bureau.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SHAW: To me, the idea 24-hour-a-day, all-news television network was the consummate challenge, the ultimate challenge. When I decided to leave ABC News, they said, where are you going? I'm going to work for CNN. People were laughing at me. Why would you go to CNN? After all the dues paying you've done, after what you've accomplished.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LOU WATERS, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, we continue on the News Channel. I'm Lou Waters.

RENEL LEMUNE (ph), FORMER CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Renel Lemune.

(END VIDEO CLIP) WATERS: How would you like to come to Atlanta and work for a news network that had very little money, extremely long hours, with no guarantee of success? And I said perfect, that's for me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DON MILLER, CNN ANCHOR: This is the first day for the Cable News Network, and we thought you might like to see where we live and some of our facilities, so here's a tour of CNN.

UNIDENTIFIED CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's here in master control that the signals from all of those dishes become...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REESE SCHONFELD, FORMER CNN PRESIDENT: The news room is going to be wide open, totally open. We wanted everything to hang out. We wanted to Show every person doing every job. We wanted to show every mistake, everything raw. We wanted the people to live in our news room.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CNN CORRESPONDENT: There is something behind me very new and unique to us, right?

FLIP SPICELAND, CNN METEOROLOGIST It is new. As a matter of fact, this is one of the only ones in the country that will operate this way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SPICELAND: Everything was going to be off the computer. Everything we had was first-time stuff, had never tested in any of the markets.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a control, where all of our directors and our producers sit to make our newscasts, our taped reports.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DANIEL SCHORR, FORMER CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: It was exciting, it was very exciting, doing something that had never been done before, and for a long, long time not sure we would be able to do it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CNN CORRESPONDENT: The man in charge here is Ted Kavanau. Ted, I'm sorry, excuse me. How do you put it together here?

TED KAVANAU, FORMER CNN SENIOR PRODUCER: We have a pool of producers here. Each one does two-hour shows. (END VIDEO CLIP)

KAVANAU: They budgeted for too few people, so I said, hey, let's do this, let's go to the colleges and grab kids who were in TV classes there, and we'll teach them how to use this equipment and everything else.

REBECKA MENDELLHALL, FORMER CNN VIDEO JOURNALIST: Put us through something called "CNN College," which was in a hotel room nearby, and they talked to us about the philosophy, and they talked to us about news stories.

ANDRE GROGAN, FORMER CNN VIDEO JOURNALIST: People were from all over geographically. Some were Ivy League, some were from the South.

DAVID BERNKNOPF, FORMER CNN VIDEO JOURNALIST: I saw a full-page ad in "Time" magazine, and it just looked like a dream come true for someone who wanted to be in television news.

SCOTT LEON, FORMER CNN WRITER/PRODUCER: What I was drawn to and many of us drawn to CNN was by the prospect of being able to do many things and being allowed the opportunity to pursue what it is that you wanted to do in broadcasting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ready, camera, one.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Three 2, 1.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cue them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MENDELLHALL: We learned all the equipment as it was put in. As soon as something was up and running, we were on it, learning it.

JON MOOR, FORMER CNN SOUND TECHNICIAN: I had no experience in TV. I had no experience running technical equipment, field equipment for sound. They gave me the manual, they said, read it tonight, if you have questions, ask them tomorrow before you get on the plane.

LEON: My first job at CNN was lay computer cable under the false floor that we had built at CNN. And we were crawling around on our hands and knees with coat hangers pulling this blue computer cable through the false floors, and I thought, is this what I went to journalism school to do? I don't think so.

RICHARD ROTH, FORMER CNN NEW YORK BUREAU CHIEF: In the beginning I was doing 25 thing. I think that escalated to 40 things. Everybody at the beginning of CNN was beyond being a jack-of-all-trades -- you had to be a jack, queen, king.

MIKE BOETTCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hardly a week went by when you didn't work 60 or 70 hours. What was scary was the fact that 1050 Techwood, where the original studios were being built, no one knew if it would be ready by June 1. Ted believed and the top guys believed that we'd kind of go in and peek around, and boy, it was getting close.

RANDALL HARBER, FORMER CNN COPY EDITOR: People would be on the set, and there would be hammers and things going on in the background, and there were pieces of the set falling here and there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our "Day Watch" experts on teenagers are, appropriately enough, appropriately enough, we think teenagers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SHAW: We were rehearsing constantly, how are we going to make this transition and the switches from the anchors in Washington to the anchors in Atlanta and what have you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We could not get one show to follow another. Shows were crashing, Shows weren't getting done.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, Flip, you're on.

SPICELAND: Works better when we wear this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EARL MAPLE, FORMER CNN VIDEO JOURNALIST: Nobody thought it was going to work. I thought it was going to be a part-time job until I could get on with ABC Sports.

WATERS: We were getting the "New York Times," "Wall Street Journal" telling us ever day we worked, can't work, not viable.

SHAW: Ted Turner in the early days would just walk through the Washington bureau, not wanting to get in the way, but just to rally the troops and cheer them up.

WATERS: He was roaming the halls going, "This is great, we're going to save the world," and I said, hey, this is fun.

JANE MAXWELL, FORMER CNN DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR: We all moved to Atlanta, where the majority of us knew no one. So we became each other's best friends as well as people we worked with.

RICK BROWN, FORMER CNN DIRECTOR Of SATELLITES: We had a lot of parties in the beginning. We'd all go rafting on the Chattahoochee River or we'd get together and all go to dinner somewhere.

LEON: In lieu of pay, you got to meet people who you might want to date. I met my wife here. Who else could you find to date working such strange hours? I mean, who else would go out for dinner at 3:00 in the morning? ED TURNER, FORMER CNN MANAGING EDITOR: That's what gave all of us sort of this inspiration, was each other. We were the underdog, we were the fledgling, and people would make fun of us.

WATERS: You know we were known as the "chicken noodle" network for quite a spell, and that probably had to do with many of our glitches.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Goodbye, Lou?

WATERS: Hello?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

E. TURNER: You'd always have tapes not making a slot.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: Well, it does not appear to be the right tape. We will be seen -- are we going to be trying to find it, Maurice?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

E. TURNER: And anchors reading into the wrong camera.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: ... continental balloon flight in history.

You lied. See, you said it was going to be over at 3:00.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TURNER: And audio messups.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: Now we'll turn to CNN's Washington correspondent Bernard Shaw from the latest news from our nation's capital -- Bernie.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TURNER: It was like being in a college television station for the first six months, it really was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CNN METEOROLOGIST: And we're going get you a picture of the national weather scene in just a moment. Here it comes. It looks as -- this is my first day. I suppose I'm lucky I'm still alive.

(LAUGHTER)

But we made it through the broadcast, I think. The weather is going to be nice. And, Dave, help.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: I know what you mean, those things, they've gobble up more good weather people in the past few months.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TURNER: I remember distinctly working on the weekends, on a Saturday, trying to produce a television show, but above us, that Techwood was TBS, and every Saturday morning they'd have wrestling. So you'd be trying to do your news show, and there would be your anchor trying to read the news, and up above, were the wrestlers, they'd be sitting there going "14 died in a plane crash," -- boom -- the ceiling would rumble, and the anchor would just look up and keep reading.

WATERS: I do remember one time when the tape didn't show up. I knew it. And I was just ad-libbing all over the place. I felt like Fred Astaire doing a dance number, and the director got into my ear and said, ad-lib.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WATERS: I am stretching, this is how I do it. I guess Herb Tangier (ph) isn't ready yet, but...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATERS: And I acknowledged that I had just been told to ad-lib until they got the tape. Let the audience in on what's going on.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WATERS: Are we ready? We don't even have it?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATERS: I found out later that the audience loved it. They loved seeing us in trouble.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WATERS: Good night, I'm Lou Waters.

KATHLEEN SULLIVAN, FORMER CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Kathleen Sullivan. Thank you for joining us, and we'll get better by the end of the week.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SHAW: Within a month of going onto the air, June 1, 1980, here this network was in Detroit covering a Republican National Convention, and then the following month, the Democratic National Convention, and so we were under horrific strains, all kinds of pressures, and we managed to get through.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHAW: You can depend on us being here all the time. And please, pass the word.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: We're back.

Who knew, huh?

When you look at that, don't you think where did my faith come from after seeing all those kind of funny things that were going on?

TURNER: You know, when you start something, you're going to have little technical problems, but the concept was good, and it was great, and I knew it was going to succeed.

KING: OK, you had competition for a while, ABC, and Westinghouse?

TURNER: Well, they came in about a year, year and a half after we started.

KING: Were you worried about that?

TURNER: Sure.

KING: What happened to that?

TURNER: We launched Headline News Service, which is now Headline News, and got it on the air before they did, and split the audience for Headline News Service and stopped them from invading further into our turf, and we beat them, and they folded their tents.

KING: Are you surprised that now years later there are other all-news networks?

TURNER: No, it's not nine years later. It's 19 years later.

KING: I said -- I meant many years later.

TURNER: No. I knew 24-hour competition would come at some point. In fact, we've had local news channels, 24-hour news channels in a number of markets for much longer than the other two competitors that we have, or three or four. We've got ABC. We've got a lot of competitors.

KING: There was never a time, was there, I mean, in the '80s, where you thought I might merge where the company that might be the number one entertainment giant in the world?

TURNER: No, I gave it some thought.

KING: You really thought that there were...

TURNER: No, I thought about merging then to get stronger, but I didn't do it.

KING: Because?

TURNER: Well, a number of different reasons. Nothing quite worked out.

KING: Until Time Warner?

TURNER: Right.

KING: And why did that...

TURNER: Well, we tried to merge with CBS, acquire CBS, you know, in an unfriendly takeover, and I tried a couple of other times. I had network deals made, but I couldn't get it through my board of directors of cable operators.

KING: So you've had ups and downs. You're at MGM and all the things...

TURNER: Sure.

KING: What now, Ted? You are 61?

TURNER: I'm going to go get a sandwich.

KING: I don't mean immediately now.

TURNER: Well, I mean immediately. I'm going to -- the merger hasn't consummated yet. But I've got a lot of ideas how we make a lot of money.

KING: I'm sure you do.

TURNER: That's right. Thanks, Larry. Good to see you, and you know, it's always a pleasure.

KING: Mine, too.

When we come back, CNN's Bernard Shaw and ABC's Sam Donaldson, plus Walter Cronkite, the man who was the undisputed king of TV news when CNN started.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Welcome back, I'm Larry King.

Joining me now, anchor Bernard Shaw. He's been with CNN from the very first day, in Los Angeles, Sam Donaldson longtime correspondent at ABC. Twenty years ago, he watched as Ted Turner lured people like Bernie away. And in New York, the dean, Walter Cronkite, former anchor and managing editor of the "CBS Evening News."

Why did you leave a major network to come to CNN, Bernie?

SHAW: Because I felt it was the last frontier in network television news, and it was a challenge; it was a walk of the plank.

KING: You had the faith that Ted had.

SHAW: Yes.

KING: You thought it would make it?

SHAW: Yes.

KING: Even in the early days?

SHAW: Yes, I did.

KING: Sam, were you one of the naysayers?

SAM DONALDSON, ABC: Well, Larry, I watched you the first night it went on the cable, and I thought it was interesting, but after all, we're the big dogs. I mean, these tse-tse flies that are crawling up our hide, what are they about?

But I did notice that they taking some of our best people: Bernie, Don Farmer -- I looked at your class picture -- Bill Zimmerman, and do you know, Larry, they even stole a young lady named Wendy Walker, now Wendy Walker Whitworth. Whatever happened to her?

KING: She's made out okay.

DONALDSON: She's your executive producer.

KING: She's our senior executive producer, right?

Walter, what did you think when CNN started? You were there at the CBS anchor desk, the master of them all. What did you think?

WALTER CRONKITE, FORMER "CBS EVENING NEWS" ANCHOR & MANAGING EDITOR: I thought it was a valiant effort that would go nowhere. I couldn't believe that any entrepreneur would put up with the vast expenses of organizing a 24-hour news service and stay with it long enough to make it go. I think Ted Turner deserves a great deal of credit for what he did with this thing, and particularly, because I hear, Larry, from you guys, that in all these 20 years, he's never stuck his nose into the news business. He thinks the ideas is a good one, sticks with it, but he doesn't interfere.

KING: True, Bernie?

SHAW: Very true.

KING: So you've never heard Ted say to you, don't cover this, or cover that?

SHAW: Absolutely not. You know why? Because Ted new intuitively that if he ever walked into our news room and said don't do this or don't do that, all of the professional men and women at the network would virtually rise in unison and say, "Sayonara, Ted."

KING: Sam, they took people from ABC. Is it true that you told them go, but come back, you'll be back?

DONALDSON: Well, I told some of them, if you need a job, when it folds, if it folds. But you know, Ted deserves a lot of credit, but he was also very lucky. He told you just briefly about how he had competition from ABC, cable network. The fact is we had the cable operators. Leonard Goldenson, our founder, had started the Satellite News Service, and with another partner, and we had the operators, and Ted Turner, if you're still around, you do remember you told me just a few years into your operation, that if ABC hadn't folded its Satellite News Service, six months later, you would have been bankrupt and gone out of business, true?

KING: He's gone, but they did fold it.

DONALDSON: We folded it because Leonard Goldenson wanted to get the bottom line in set to sell the network. Ted is a very great guy, but he was very lucky, too.

KING: Walter, didn't CBS contemplate as well an all-news channel?

CRONKITE: I don't know that we contemplated -- well, we probably it, but everybody contemplated it, Larry. I don't think we were seriously considering it. I was on the board at that time, and that never really was discussed. We had a cable channel, one of the earliest cable channels of them all, which was basically an interview channel, an intellectual book discussion channel. Bill Paily (ph) who founded CBS, the late Bill Paily, loved that idea, held as long as it could, but it never made a dime, and finally he dropped it. He gave up a channel that he probably should have hung on to for a while.

KING: Bernie -- I'm sorry, Bernie.

SHAW: I was just going to say to Sam, on the one hand, Ted Turner was lucky, Sam, but he also was and remains a superb tactician. CNN was very lean, very mean, it could make decisions virtually on the spot without committees.

DONALDSON: No question about it.

SHAW: That was a strategic factor.

KING: Good point.

DONALDSON: No question about it, Bernie. I think Ted, as I said, deserves all the credit for it. It's been a great success. He had a great idea. But all of us need some luck. You've had some luck. Now don't tell me it was just a steady rise to the top. SHAW: Absolutely not.

CRONKITE: Sam, you know that luck plays a big part, but you got to have the talent to make use of it when you get it.

KING: Luck is the residue of design, as Branch Rickey once said.

When did you know it had turned the corner, Bernie?

SHAW: It came in increments. It came September, the same year that we had launched, when a Titan II missile exploded in an air force silo out near Damascus, Arkansas, and the Air Force was saying no problem, even though one person was killed, don't worry folks, there was no nuclear warhead on the missile. Well, I made a call to an totally unimpeachable source at Pentagon, and while a U.S. Air Force officer was standing out there at ground zero telling the American people and the world, there is no nuclear warhead aboard this missile, atop this missile, my source at the Pentagon said, not only was there a warhead, but guess what? They are looking for it. And we had pictures of skirmish lines out there, and they found the warhead a couple days later.

KING: We have less than a couple minute.

Sam, how did it change the news business?

DONALDSON: Well, totally, because you're 24 hours, and we don't compete against that. And for me, it was far different. When I was at the White House the first time around, I got a beat at 2:00 in the afternoon, I'd still have it at 6:30. When I went back with Bill Clinton just recently, if I caught some beat at 2:00, by 2:30, Wolf would have it, John King would have it, by 6:30, it would just be old news.

KING: Walter, if you were starting today, would you came to work here?

CRONKITE: I think I would, yes. I think the excitement of the 24-hour service -- just walking through your news room down there, gives me a little thrill up and down the back of my spine. It's obviously a dynamic working area that I think any young journalist would like to be in. And as a young journalist, I'd come along.

KING: Thank you all very much.

Bernie, it's a big night for you I know.

Sam, thanks for joining us, and Walter as well.

Still ahead, Magic Johnson, Peter Jennings and more extraordinary stories from the 1980s.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, 1983)

DAN YOUNG, FORMER CNN CAMERAMAN: I was just like a kid. I mean, I was only, what, 23 years old. We did a lot of traveling all over the world because we didn't have the bureaus. And one of those places was Beirut.

It's basically the first war zone I've ever been to,. Back then it was such a -- what a scary place, just a horrific place, so many different factions fighting each other. This is back in the Reagan era, where he was sending the Marines in. But they had built a four or five story headquarters for them near the airport. October 23, 1983, I basically got rattled out of my bed with a massive explosion, and I knew something was really wrong.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CNN CORRESPONDENT: The blast came shortly after 6:15 in the morning. Col. Timothy Garrity (ph) described how it happened.

COL. TIMOTHY GARRITY, USMC: A truck loaded with high explosives crashed through two barricades in front of the battalion handing team headquarters and ended up in the lobby of the main complex.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: There was this four to five-story building housing all these Marines, and there was absolutely nothing -- it was just rubble. There were areas areas where you could see people buried in the rubble and people trying to get them out. It was really, really bad.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rescue crews tore through tons of concrete and steel throughout the day Sunday in efforts to reach an undisclosed number of U.S. Marines and sailors.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: It was absolutely nothing like it, I've ever seen. That was a really eye-opening, traumatic experience for me, because it was really the first time I had seen -- I had seen death.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Welcome back.

Now, to the last Tuesday in January, 1986. Americans were expecting to hear their president, Ronald Reagan, that night. He was due to deliver his sixth State of the Union address. But by midday, that would change.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, JANUARY 28, 1986)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're going to join Tom Mintier, once again.

Just getting down to about three minutes and they think they can do it.

TOM MINTIER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They are counting, the ice is cleared away, and Challenger should be going away very soon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: I think I had covered every shuttle mission since the fourth or the fifth. This one was different, because it was colder in Florida than any other time they had attempted to launch a shuttle. It was a concern that morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: But the highlight on this mission is the including in the flight of Christa McAuliffe, the 37-year-old high-school social studies teacher from Concord, New Hampshire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: I think the biggest difference with Challenger was that they were taking a teacher on board.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: America's first teacher in space has become one of the most talked-about missions in the shuttle program.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZARRELLA: There was no question that this launch had taken on a whole different aura. This was a true civilian going into space, and it was Christa McAuliffe, and she was full of energy and life. She was perfect. Just couldn't have picked anybody better.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Coming up on the one-minute point in our countdown.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZARRELLA: Steve Sonnenblick, my cameraman, and the sound tech were up on a mound, which was kind of a photo mound, and he was shooting the launch off of that.

STEVE SONNENBLICK, CNN CAMERAMAN, 1986: At the time that I looked up there was nobody even watching. All of the networks were represented, but none of them were doing their jobs. It was sort of like, "Well, we're here." It had become that commonplace, launches, one right after another, that nobody really paid a whole lot of attention. And our job was to photographer it and we photographed it.

ZARRELLA: All of a sudden, there was this big cloud that kind of engulfed the spaceship. People began to realize, well, something's wrong here, because the vehicle never came out from behind the cloud. And I said, Steve, I said, "What the hell happened?" And he looks, and he has his hand up to the eyepiece. He looks away from his eyepiece. He looks at me and says: The blanking thing blew up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: Looks like a couple of the solid rocket boosters blew away from the side of the shuttle in an explosion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: It was my worst nightmare come true. What I was suppressing in my mind was oh, my god, oh, my god.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: We're awaiting word. They're holding their breath, just I'm sure as everyone else is. You saw it just a few moments ago, about 45 seconds after liftoff, a huge fireball in the sky.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a report from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded. The flight director confirms that...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: To see that image as it was happening, the shuttle is gone. We watched it, falling into the ocean.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: Let's take another look now, just seconds into the launch.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOB FUMAD, VICE PRESIDENT/SENIOR EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, 1986: There was a film crew that we had gotten from WTBS to shoot a promo. They were shooting when the shuttle exploded. And so they then shifted their attention to what was going on in the news room.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) is first. (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JANE MAXWELL, DIRECTOR, SPECIAL EVENTS, 1986: All of a sudden it goes beyond day-to-day news coverage. People just converged to the news room and started working.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now, are there any satellite trucks in that area?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Zarrella's on the phone right there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZARRELLA: As soon as I called in, you could hear in the background this absolute chaos on CNN's end as well with people scrambling.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's leaving.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stand by to voice-over this picture.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shut up in here! Open their mic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: It occurred at 9 miles into the mission downrange.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Challenger, go with throttle up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FUMAD: We went on 6 1/2 hours without breaking for commercial or for local cable break. We were nonstop.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: You could see right before the explosion, at the external tank where it attaches to the shuttle, a flame appeared to break out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FUMAD: This is a tough one to do, because you've got a limited number of elements. And you've got the liftoff and the explosion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FUMAD: You plug continuing live coverage, the NASA news conference at 3:30 live.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LOU WATERS, CNN ANCHOR: Bob Fumad is an amazing producer, and it was his job to arrange how this was all going to fit together so it would come out through the television set in some comprehensible manner.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) FUMAD: We're going to do seven silent, six natural sound, and then the group (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATERS: You have to tell it in a comprehensible way, but you also have to tell it so that it's compelling.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: This is raw, unedited video sent via satellite.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FUMAD: Christa McAuliffe was the teacher on the shuttle, and her parents were at the cape watching the liftoff. And there was not a live camera but a tape camera shooting them. There was almost a hesitation on my part, and then when I saw it, I knew it was the right thing to do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: You see concern etched on their faces, the breath that they've been holding released, and then the realization sets in that something is wrong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: The images of the horror on their faces was so strong, and it really shocked me as I watched the images being transmitted to the rest of the world, the families reacting to losing their loved- ones.

It was an important picture. It's unfortunate that we had it, but we had it and we used it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: It now appears that there are no survivors from Space Shuttle Challenger, the 25th mission.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: As a journalist it was probably the saddest moment of my life, watching this happen before my eyes and having to tell the world.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RONALD REAGAN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Ladies and gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the State of the Union. But the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans.

Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core over the tragedy of the Shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.

The crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger honored us with the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye, and slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God.

Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Welcome back.

On June 1st, 1980, Jimmy Carter was in the White House. He was also the featured guest during CNN's first day on the air.

In fact, he was asked what he thought of the brand-new venture.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY CARTER, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There has long been a need, in my judgment, for a network which could cover the news in much more depth than has been the case with the very brief allotted time on the major networks that we've known so far.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We're honored to welcome Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, joining us from Plains, Georgia.

Mr. President, did you expect CNN at all to become what it became?

CARTER: Well, I knew Ted Turner fairly well, because I had been governor of Georgia before I was president, and I had a lot of confidence in his judgment and his innovative skills. But I never dreamed that CNN would be as dominant as it is, not particularly in the United States, Larry, but throughout the world.

I don't think anyone dreamed, maybe even Ted, about the degree of success that it has experienced.

KING: So, that day when you sort of christened it, in a sense, and welcomed it aboard as another fine aspect of Georgia business, you weren't highly confident that this would be around in 20 years?

CARTER: Well, you know, the thing that I believe has been most significant was that the 24-hour newscast made an impact in the United States, particularly with fast action news as it's breaking. But the most profound impact it's had is in the rest of the world, where the 6:30 or 7 o'clock newscast in the United States, it doesn't even reach people that are out of our time zones. So the Carter Center works in 65 different nations now, and when we go to Mali or Burkina Faso or other French-speaking countries, quite often the president either speaks English or has an interpreter there telling him what CNN is saying. Or when you go to a country, say like Ethiopia, which does speak English, the president, they have the television on full-time.

And that has meant that for the first time a global display of news, and now with CNN in 210 nations, I believe, and with the "WORLD REPORT" news comes in that way. It has totally transformed the capability of people around the world to know what's going on and to know each other.

KING: Is there any, in your opinion, Mr. President, downside to that, instant news coverage?

CARTER: I don't think so, Larry, that I can recall, except, you know, when obvious mistakes might be made in breaking news. But I think that CNN is so thoroughly familiar with the places that they cover that the chance for mistakes is minuscule.

So I would say that in the broadest possible balance CNN's impact has been beneficial.

I spoke this morning, as you may know, at an early-morning breakfast at CNN to commence their celebrations, and I pointed out that CNN along with other news media quite often don't know what's going on in a war zone. There was tightly controlled censorship that was unprecedented, in my opinion, during the Gulf War, during the war in Kosovo, during the war in Bosnia, where the American people had no idea what was going on, and then when the war was over, we found that the reports that had been given us by the generals about the number of casualties and other people and the number of tanks destroyed of the Serbs were totally erroneous.

But with that exception, which is not CNN's fault, I think it's been positive.

KING: Do you think it would have affected your presidency if it were started in 1970?

CARTER: You mean would I have been elected at all?

KING: No. Or would you have used it more? I mean, presidents use the availability. They know when they do a 2 o'clock press conference they're seen on television.

CARTER: Well, I think it would have helped me, because I liked the press conferences. And with the abbreviated newscast of the major networks, even when a president has a press conference that's not covered full-time, which many of them are not, your mouth is moving, and Sam Donaldson or Walter Cronkite or whoever's on just tells the audience what you're saying rather than you say it yourself.

So I think it would have been better, for me, at least, if the entire press conferences could have been done. I had press conferences every two weeks, and I can understand why the major news networks wouldn't give me full coverage. I think had CNN been there, I may have had full coverage and it may have helped.

KING: And do you think it's going to get bigger?

CARTER: CNN?

KING: Yes, can it get bigger?

CARTER: Well, I think so. We see the growing impact of CNN. I think that feedback that we get through the United States television is not nearly so profoundly important as it is -- I just got back from Venezuela. In Venezuela, Paraguay, Haiti, Panama, when you're down there, CNN is dominant and watched thoroughly.

KING: Mr. President, we are out...

CARTER: And I think the...

KING: I...

CARTER: And I think the possibility for that to increase is quite real.

KING: Thanks so much for joining us.

CARTER: My pleasure.

KING: Former President Jimmy Carter from Plains, Georgia.

Still to come, one of the biggest stories CNN ever covered: a three-day drama about a little girl in danger.

Stay with us for more moments from the 1980s.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, SEPTEMBER 19, 1985)

ZARRELLA: I had been in the Middle East for four months for CNN in the bureau in Cairo, and had been back for five days after being overseas for four months. And all of a sudden, boom, these urgents move on the wire, Mexico City earthquake.

SONNENBLICK: It's difficult for people to understand the magnitude of an earthquake until they actually see it. Just absolutely amazing.

I find it very difficult to describe some of these things, because I don't believe that I have the vocabulary to tell the picture as I see it in my mind.

I had stakeout duty at night at the Juarez Hospital.

ZARRELLA: This hospital collapsed upon itself, floor on top of floor. And night after night, day after day, they would be sitting there with hundreds of people, trying to pull out the debris, listening for survivors. They had dog teams that were there searching through the rubble. And every once in a while, you would hear people start to yell, "Shh! Shh!" and "Hush! Hush!" as they listened because they thought they heard something.

And sometimes they did; then, of course, it would be a mad frenzy to find out exactly where the sound was coming from.

SONNENBLICK: When they actually brought out a victim that had been trapped in there, that was in fact alive, that lived three or four days in that hell hole, that to me, I think, was what -- why I was there, what I was doing there.

I got a glimpse of the person, and you could see the life in their eye, and you knew that everything was going to be OK at that point in time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We're back. Let's rewind to the fall of 1987. By then, CNN was more than seven years old. It had covered plenty of big, complex stories.

But sometimes it's the plight of a single person that takes center stage.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, OCTOBER 14-17, 1987)

FUMAD: This was a story of a human being and a defenseless little creature, and it was a story that just reached out and gripped America.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY CLARK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As for young Jessica, she appears to be doing all right, considering. Cameras and microphones have been dropped down. Jessica can be heard to call to her mother. She has been singing, humming, and occasionally crying.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: Jessica McClure was about 18 month sold. She was playing in the backyard of her aunt. She fell into an old abandoned well. The well was about 8 inches in diameter, and then it narrowed to about 6 inches.

GARY ULTEE, CAMERAMAN, 1987: Initially when we got the call and said we were going, I thought: Well, you know, a girl in a well. You know, she'll probably be out by the time we get there. I just didn't realize the significance of it.

CLARK: Everyone was gathered in the neighbor's backyard and looking over a fence. As soon as the crew and I got there, we went knocking on doors to get a ladder just to be able to see over the fence, to be able to shoot video of the rescue effort. ULTEE: And as other crews and still photographers showed up, they got a taller ladder so they could peek over the first guys, and the later guys got even taller ladders, and it was like a grandstand tier.

WATERS: Before you know it, there were news organizations from every corner of the world covering that story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: The rescuers are making progress literally by inches, and at that rate, it may be some time before young Jessica is brought to the surface.

Tony Clark, CNN, Midland, Texas.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: Midland is an oil town. This is a town that knows about drilling well, and has the personnel and the equipment. They drilled a second shaft parallel to the well that she was in, and then went over it. It was about six feet away from the well she was in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: She hasn't had anything to eat or drink for more than a day. But medical personnel on the scene say they don't want anything passed down to her for fear she'll choke.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: Jessica's parents were 17 and 18 years old and very scared. Jessica was their only child. They didn't know what to do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With the Lord's help and with your prayers, we know that little girl is going to make it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: It was really a very terrifying experience for them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: Friends and neighbors have come here offering their prayers and support for the McClures.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In Jesus' name we pray for your help, amen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREG LAMOTTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: When I first heard it, I thought, I'm sure they'll have her out in a few hours, no problem. And then as a few hours turned into 10 hours and 11 hours and 12 hours and 14 hours, you began to think that, or at least I did, that she wasn't going to make it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: For the second night, flood lights have lit the backyard of this West Midland, Texas home and day-care center.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: There were offers from people and companies all around the country, different suggestions of how to get her out. One of them came from a company in Tennessee. They had a -- kind of a high- powered water drill that used water under high pressure. And that was flown in on Friday. And that's the thing that really turned the tide.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: We're told that two paramedics are now down in the shaft. And if that is the case, then it may be just a matter of time now before they are able to pull young Jessica McClure, the 18-month-old, out of this hole that she's been in more than 52 hours now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMOTTE: CNN wanted to stay with it and not break away from it and not say, we'll be back to that story. They wanted to stay with this story. And there was always this anticipation that the little girl could be pulled up out of the hole at any minute.

EARL MAPLE, DIRECTOR: I was doing the 8 o'clock and 10 o'clock broadcasts, and when I got in, they said that we think they're going to get this little girl out of the hole tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BERNARD SHAW, CNN ANCHOR: You've been anxious, we've been anxious, the eyes, the hearts, the minds of people around the world have been on Jessica McClure underground in Midland, Texas.

For the latest, let's switch again live to our exhausted CNN personnel on the scene. Here again, correspondent Tony Clark -- Tony.

CLARK: You can see the same thing we're seeing here. The rescuers...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: I had lost my voice pretty much at that point.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: As you can see people are -- are looking down the shaft.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MAPLE: When there was a little dead air, we would say, talk, Tony, give us a little background, tell us what's happening. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: It looks like they're brining her up right now. We're seeing a lot of activity. The ropes are being pulled up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: The producer in Atlanta, he wanted me to describe what was happening up until the point where it was obvious that she was coming out of the well.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: You can see the cable coming up. Everyone -- everyone's eyes are looking down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: And then the instruction was simply be quiet. Let the pictures and the emotions tell the story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(APPLAUSE)

CLARK: You can see her there. She's -- you see the -- you see...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MAPLE: When she came out, it was just like everybody in the control room went, ahh. It was really -- it was really very emotional that evening.

FUMAD: What we learned then is that when there was a news event and people first learned about it somewhere else, people would turn to CNN to see what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: You can see the enthusiasm. You could hear the applause as Jessica is brought out. The smiles -- it has taken a long time...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: You know, you talk to a camera, a microphone, and then to hear that there are people halfway around the world that are waiting for every word that you have to say, that you are bringing them something that they want to see, I think it can't help but affect you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: We've been on a roller-coaster of emotion, and this is certainly the high point.

(END VIDEO CLIP) LAMOTTE: Clearly, this was one of those stories that you rarely get a chance to cover in your life of something extraordinarily positive happening and watching mankind help himself.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Welcome back to 20 years of stories.

A moment ago, we watched the rescue of little Jessica McClure. That was on a Friday in the fall of 1987. Just three days later the countries attention would suddenly shift from a backyard in Texas to a street in downtown Manhattan.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, OCTOBER 19, 1987)

JAN HOPKINS, CNN ANCHOR: You walk in the beginning of the day, just like anyone, walking into work the beginning of the day, not knowing how the day is going to evolve. And the day evolved in a way where things got worse, and worse, and worse and worse.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STUART VARNEY, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, the stock market has been in a freefall, and I use that word advisedly right from the opening bell.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VARNEY: A statement rather blunt, right up front, to catch attention, to make sure that very clear, this was going to be a big day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VARNEY: Quite clearly, we have a major sell-off in progress on Wall Street right now. Let's go back to the New York Stock Exchange and CNN business news correspondent Jan Hopkins. Jan, tell us, just how bad is it?

HOPKINS: Well, Stuart, what you're looking at now is, the trading pit for IBM stock.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOPKINS: I was there, I was watching, I was reporting as it all fell apart basically.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOPKINS: Incredible activity, a frenzy, and I would say some fear and panic going on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LOU DOBBS, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT/MANAGING EDITOR, CNN BUSINESS NEWS: The first thing I said to all of our people, is I asked everybody to be very calm, understand now that when it becomes a situation this severe, that the messengers does become part of the message.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VARNEY: The Dow Jones Industrial Average is still way, way down, but it is not as bad as it was about a half hour ago.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VARNEY: You have to be extremely careful what language you used. Do not use the word "crash." Do not be overemotional. Do not do that, because you could be accused, rightly so I think, of talking the market down.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOPKINS: Here on floor, you could see fear in eyes of the traders. There was pushing. There was profanity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOPKINS: You really in the back of your head you kept thinking, when I walk out of here tonight, are people going to be jumping off buildings? I mean, what kind of impact is this is going to have on people's lives?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOPKINS: The pace has actually picked up and probably will for the last half hour, as we go into the closing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VARNEY: Everybody thought back in 1929 -- would this usher in another Great Depression?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DOBBS: Taking a look at some of these staggering numbers, the Dow Jones industrial average losing more than 500 points today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DOBBS: I wish I could say to you that as the market closed that day, and we counted up a losses and mopped the blood from the floor of the exchanges, that I had some sort of far-reaching philosophical, geoeconomic conclusion. I was, frankly, just happy to have survived the day and that the market had closed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is a special edition of MONEYLINE, with Lou Dobbs.

(END VIDEO CLIP) VARNEY: If I'm not mistaken, the first time the word "crash" was used was when Lou Dobbs opened up MONEYLINE with a simple statement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DOBBS: Good evening. The stock market today crashed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DOBBS: We struggled mightily with the use of the word "crash" and resisted it, as long as one possibly could, for fear of adding to the story, but it was impossible to avoid the word after the day's events.

VARNEY: In subsequent days, there was an attempt to soften the image, to make it not a crash. Good heavens, that sounds like 1929. No, they wanted to call it a break, a market break. In other words, the natural progression of the stock market was somehow interrupted by this nasty break. I don't think it worked. I think people still recall the market crashed of 1987, and rightly so, because it was crash.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: That was the first time a business story dominated the news on CNN. But the show MONEYLINE has been on the air from the beginning. Over 20 years, shows have come and gone. Here is another one still going strong.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELSA KLENCH, HOST, "STYLE WITH ELSA KLENCH": This is "STYLE," and I'm Elsa Klench, with news from the design world of fashion, beauty and decorating.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KLENCH: We opened the world of design, to people around the world.

LEON: Fashion had never been covered on television, the way Elsa had done it, taking us into the shows, on to the runways, behind the scenes.

SCHONFELD: Maybe we had 10 people actually knew everything about the subject they were supposed to cover, and Elsa was one of them.

KLENCH: When we started, maybe for the first five years, we were only television crew there. So there were so few crews, and my big problem in the beginning was fashion shows are so set up, there were lots of chairs, so I would say, I need space of four chairs for my camera, and there would say, you want four chairs in the front row? I always got the four chairs space, but it was sometimes a hassle. Designers really didn't understand the concept of television. But once we started, once they saw the far-reaching effect of it, there's never been a problem.

There was nothing as exciting as a good collection. I can go, and like many other fashion editors, tired, depressed, fed up; once those good clothes come down the runway, the whole world changes. It is absolutely amazing the effect good design has on us.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: From the first, CNN has been able to devote 24 hours a day, seven days a week to covering the news, and that means plenty time for stories that develop over weeks, months, even years.

Our next story is still unfolding, in epic proportions, all over the world.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FUMAD: We had a major commitment to cover medical news before medical news was as big as it is today. So when the AIDS story surfaced, it was a natural. This is not a pretty story. This not one of those you feel good about. It's one of those "have to do," not "want to do" stories.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GREG LEFEVRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In San Francisco alone, 109 AIDS cases have been reported in last two years, all in the gay community. Thirty five victims have died.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEFEVRE: I came to the city just as the AIDS epidemic was exploding. It was foreign news in other cities where I'd lived, but here, it was right at the heart of things. It was terrifying. That's all you could say. The most vital element of this society -- young, virile men -- were dropping left and right. The most energetic part of our populous was disappearing. We were all affected.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEFEVRE: So far, researchers are baffled by AIDS. Some experts believe AIDS is an infection transmitted sexually or through blood products. Others think the process is more subtle.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREG LAMOTTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Despite the fact that when were told sexual transmission or blood, it was one of those unknown areas where you are thinking to yourself, that's what the health people are saying today, but maybe five years from now they'll find out that breathing the same air that somebody with AIDS might infect you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAMOTTE: Doctors don't know what causes AIDS or how it is transmitted. There is no cure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMOTTE: Consequently, there became some fear in doing stories with AIDS patients in the mid '80s, fear of the unknown and fear that you might contract it. And consequently, whenever we would go out and do interviews with AIDS patients, either in their homes or at the hospital, I developed this habit of grabbing the light kit with my right when we'd walk into the house or the hospital room, because I had a fear of shaking hands with somebody who had AIDS.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAMOTTE: In the same time period, increases in the number of new AIDS cases were reported in California, particularly San Francisco and Los Angeles, and in Dallas, Texas.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMOTTE: Some of the people that I interviewed really touched my heart, in terms of their agony, and pain and -- but had come to grips with the fact they were going to die, and it was very heart wrenching.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The point of the game is to extend our lives as long as possible, to be alive when the cure is found.

LAMOTTE: Many gay Catholics are confused that the same church which preaches that the gay lifestyle is a sin is offering its hand compassion and assistance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEFEVRE: After a few months, I was doing an AIDS story almost every day, because almost every day, there was some new facet of the disease, be it social implications, or political implications or fiscal implications, somehow AIDS was affecting the community, and every day, there was a new story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEFEVRE: Mr. Hudson is being evaluated and treated for complications of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rock Hudson was a great shocker for most of the general public I believe. Those of us in news business knew that he had AIDS, and for a long time, and was dying, but in those days, you didn't report it until they were dead. And so it was a big, quick education for the viewing public about the extent of how far AIDS has gone. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CHICAGO BUREAU CHIEF: Ryan White's ordeal began in 1984 when he was 13 years old. Doctors told the Indiana teenager he contacted AIDS from tainted blood products used to treat his hemophilia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLOCK: It was through Ryan White that most people, many people, learned about AIDS and learned that you don't get it from touching, you know, shaking hands with Ryan White.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FLOCK: White became focus of a national controversy about whether children with AIDS should be allowed to attend school.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLOCK: He was really the first one who was, you know, for want better explanation, a middle class, white middle-class kid from suburbs, and people didn't think people like that got AIDS.

BRUCE FINE, CNN CAMERAMAN: When he died, a lot of us died with him. He had dignity, he had pride, and he had this wonderful childish grin that he carried around with him, that I think about it all the time. I see him right now smiling.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Gary Christopher, Gene Earl, Mike...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLOCK: The calamity seems to have either passed or been mitigated. People are still contracting AIDS and people are still dying from AIDS in our communities, but at significantly lower rate, and there is a great deal more hope, given the modern medicines now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EARVIN "MAGIC" JOHNSON, FORMER LOS ANGELES LAKER: Because of the HIV virus that I have attained, I will have to retire from the Lakers today. But I am going to go on, I'm going to beat it, and I'm going to have fun, OK. So thank you again, and I'll see you soon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Joining me now from Los Angeles, all-time basketball great Magic Johnson, who made that announcement in 1991.

How are you doing?

JOHNSON: I'm doing great.

KING: How do you explain it?

JOHNSON: Everything is great.

KING: You were HIV positive. You've never contracted AIDS, right?

JOHNSON: Right.

KING: How do explain it, Magic?

JOHNSON: Well, the virus acts different in everybody, so if you have the virus and I have the virus, that doesn't mean that you are going to -- if you get AIDS, that don't mean I'm going to get AIDS. So it acts different in everybody, it attacks everybody's immune system differently. My immune system is very strong, and I think because of my frame of mind, and I work out and the medicine as well.

KING: You take a lot of medication?

JOHNSON: No, not a lot at all, only two, two different types of medicine. They've got a combination as they call it, cocktail, and that's it. Twice a day, that's it.

KING: Why did you go public with it?

JOHNSON: Well, because of probably all those stories that you just ran before I came on, is just to help other people, to let them know how big AIDS is and how people are -- not only I think at that time everybody thought it was just a gay person's disease, and no, it's an everybody's disease, and that's why I wanted to come out, to help other people, and to help educate people about HIV and AIDS.

KING: Do you remember your first reaction, Magic, when you were told, you were HIV positive?

JOHNSON: Oh, no question about it. I was devastated. They had called me back from a road trip in Utah. We were playing an exhibition game there, and, called me in, Dr. Mellman (ph) sat me down and told me that I had the HIV virus, and you know, you just -- almost just hit the floor, but I was more worried not about myself as much as I was Cookie and my baby, because that time, Cookie was pregnant with our son, E.J.

KING: Is E.J. fine?

JOHNSON: Yes E.J. is fine and Cookie is fine.

KING: And you have no indication of AIDS at all, right?

JOHNSON: No. No, not at all, not even close.

KING: Do you fear you are going to get it?

JOHNSON: No. No. I'm never worried about that one moment of all of this. You know, what is it? Nine years. You know, later, and because I work out every day, I take my medicine, but my frame of mind, I've never thought one moment that I was going to die. And I've always had met every challenge in my life. And I think because I came out, that was probably the most important thing, because I didn't have to live with that inside, because a lot of times what the doctors say, you must keep stress out of your life, and I think when I announced, that kept all the stress out of my life.

KING: I know you're an activist now. Do you think the sense of urgency is faded in this country, that people are not as worried about it as they were five, six years ago?

JOHNSON: I think you're right, because it was almost like it was the thing then, and it is not the thing now. But if you look, the numbers are still up there. And then don't even look in our country, you look in Africa and of these other countries, and it's even worse, I mean, 100 times worse in Africa. So I think, too, what's -- the educational part is the government got involved and educated people. They made more drugs available for people, and that has helped, but we still need to do more.

KING: It's an epidemic in South Africa.

Oh, without a doubt without a doubt. And, you don't see how they are going to rebound it from either. I mean it's just keeps getting passed on and on and on, and you know, you almost cringe to say, how can we help? And you just don't know how, you can't...

KING: And you think your personalities had a lot to do with it? Your always upbeat "Magic" Johnson.

JOHNSON: No question about it, I know it has. Because I just kept going, I kept living, and I think a lot of people, when they find out they have a virus, they stop living, they give up.

KING: Not you.

JOHNSON: Not me, not at all. And i think Elizabeth Glaser really helped me out a lot.

KING: Thanks so much, Magic, always great seeing you.

JOHNSON: And happy anniversary to you, too.

KING: Thank you.

JOHNSON: All right.

KING: Still ahead, ABC's Peter Jennings and a lot more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, MARCH 24, 1989)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAMOTTE: It was March 24 when North America experienced its worst ever oil spill. More than 10 million gallons of crude spewed into the waters of Prince William Sound, polluting hundreds miles of pristine shoreline and killing thousands of birds and hundreds of sea animals.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMOTTE: I guess the biggest thing that really struck me about being there was on the one side, the environmental impact and devastation that it caused, and at the same time, seeing the most beautiful sites I'd ever seen in my entire life.

It was very a very stark contrast of looking at water that's polluted with oil and looking up and seeing the most beautiful mountains -- it's likes being in heaven almost.

LEFEVRE: When this oil spill happens to such a beautiful place, the calamity got bigger, and bigger and bigger.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEFEVRE: Scientists say they do not know may not know for months how many animals died as a result of the spill, and they say it may be years, before they know if or how well those populations bounced back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMOTTE: At some point in time, the cleanup operation that seemed immense and watching, hundreds, if not thousands of people, along the shoreline, with sponges and towels in their hands picking up rocks, washing them off, and putting them down and picking up another one, and when you'd look, and would see an entire coastline blackened, think this is going to take them forever, you know, they'll never get this done.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAMOTTE: It clearly will take months of massive effort to restore the natural beauty of this wondrous part of the world, and possibly, years before the wounds of this manmade disaster begin to heal.

Greg LaMotte, CNN, Valdez, Alaska.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: During the 1980s, many of the really big stories at CNN took place in the United States. But by 1989, it was truly an international network, ready to go live with breaking news anywhere in the world.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, 1989)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHAW: Unbelievable. We all came here to cover summit and we walked into a revolution.

Good morning from Beijing. Good evening to you, your time in the United States. If I sound out of breath, it's because I've come down an elevator and I have run to the CNN anchor position.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SHAW: I went to Beijing to cover a very important summit. The Chinese and the Russians finally were going to do something about this rift between them.

MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Protesting students literally stole the stage out from under Gorbachev.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHINOY: Thousands of protesters remain camped in Beijing's downtown Tiananmen Square, demanding democracy and vowing to stay put through the Gorbachev visit.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SHAW: This situation just deteriorated in the Square to the point that the Chinese leadership decided that they were going to crack heads and clear the square.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHINOY: Then came word that troops were massing on the outskirts of Beijing. The mood grew sullen. Protesters began to mass around the perimeter of the square.

The government then went on public address systems to say continued demonstrations were illegal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MAXWELL: You kept saying, what's going to happen next, what's going to happen next? And the Chinese were watching us, and Chinese didn't like the coverage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHAW: Here in Beijing, the People's Liberation Army blocked by the people. The troops do not, cannot move to clear Tiananmen Square.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALEC MIRAN, PRODUCER, SPECIAL EVENTS, 1989: When the Chinese government saw the demonstrations, I think it scared them, because they realized that suddenly there was this open spigot of information on CNN and it was flowing out to the West. They looked to the media as part of the problem.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SHAW: We were just told by the government of China that about 58 minutes from now the government will pull the plug on all transmissions out of this nation. That is why we're rushing to get our report on the air to you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SHAW: We had lookouts posted a couple of blocks away from the hotel, because we wanted the earliest possible warning: If they saw troops moving toward our hotel, they would be coming for us, we knew that. Instead, they sent two civilians into our control room.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHAW: I'm being told that the government officials are coming into the CNN control room now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MIRAN: The mandate was do whatever it takes, do what you can to try to stay on the air.

MAXWELL: Somebody started shooting it, what was going on, the negotiation between the Chinese officials and our producer, Alec, and me in Atlanta.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIRAN: We require a letter. Is that our company's policy, correct?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MIRAN: They popped my boss, Jane Maxwell, on the air.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAXWELL: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we'd like it in writing as to why we are being asked to pull this (UNINTELLIGIBLE) down now, why we are being asked...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MAXWELL: I told Alec I will not stop the transmission unless they withdraw the permission in writing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIRAN: Did you hear that, sir?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MAXWELL: That was the only thing I could think of at that point.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIRAN: So all we are requesting is the same thing we requested to get in here. It's a letter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MAXWELL: I'm known to speak like a truck driver on occasions. It made me speak in a much more hesitant fashion than I would normally do, because I couldn't use the breadth of my vocabulary.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIRAN: We asked for permission to be here, and if you're revoking that permission early just send us a letter and we will be perfectly willing to comply.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MIRAN: We normally do our fighting off-camera. This time we were arguing for our broadcasting rights in front of the world.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This gentleman is writing a letter to us. He's...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MIRAN: Finally, one of the authorities was told that he had the permission to write us a letter.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now I'm here announcing that CNN should stop the movable Earth station and its transmitting frequencies right away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MIRAN: They had complied with what we wanted, which was it in writing, and that was about as far as we could go.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAXWELL: Well, the government has ordered us to shut down our facility, Alec. We'll have to shut it down.

MIRAN: OK, the government's ordered -- our policy is the government has ordered us to shut down our facility. We're -- we are shutting down our facility.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MAXWELL: They had the presence of mind to ask them if it was OK for our anchors and reporters to sign off.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHAW: That's the story to the moment. For all of the hardworking men and women of CNN, goodbye from Beijing. (END VIDEO CLIP)

SHAW: Can you imagine federal marshals storming into a news room telling you to stop broadcasting?

After I signed off I started crying. I realized how far away from democracy I was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WATERS: The Chinese government has effectively ended CNN's live broadcasting by satellite from Beijing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MIRAN: We started getting tapes out in any way we could.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The nation is now facing a choice: to live or to die.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD ROTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We would two to the airport and beg tourists: Please, can you take this videotape out with you?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are afraid of nothing: neither shedding blood nor giving ours lives nor anything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: People who lived in China really knew the danger that they were facing in taking this tape and putting it in a suitcase and taking it out, but they did it because they thought it was important.

We saw the crowds growing larger and larger, and more boisterous, and taking out into the streets, expanding their demonstrations beyond Tiananmen Square. And we watched the police and the military encircling them and trying to control them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: Throughout the day, army helicopters swooped low over the heart of Beijing. Some dropped leaflets warning that force would be used if the demonstrators didn't give up

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MIRAN: We were so desperate to get pictures out, we brought in a box that you plug a phone line into, and you could feed video frames to Atlanta.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Chaotic situation in Beijing, China right now as the army starts to move into Tiananmen Square to try to...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHINOY: I could literally hear the bullets whizzing overhead as the soldiers moved into the square.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHINOY: There are bodies and injured and dead all over the place. I can see flames from an armored personnel carrier overturned and set alight by the protesters.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: At one point, the soldiers lined up. The first row in a prone position. The second row in the kneeling position. The third row in a standing position, and they were all firing.

Nothing can survive that kind of shooting, and it went on for hours and hours and hours.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: There simply aren't enough ambulances to deal with the wounded here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: They were totally outmanned and outgunned.

CHINOY: The images from the spring of 1989 remain some of the most powerful to have ever been on television screens.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: The world witnessed a daring act by one man, armed with only courage, standing in the middle of a street facing more than a dozen tanks bearing down on him. He refused to move.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: He climbed up on top of the tank, he was banging on the hatch. We're all holding our breath for the longest time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: Finally, several other people ran into the street carrying a white flag and dragged the man to safety.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: It represented, I think, what the students were up against.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(SHOUTING)

MINTIER: The actual number of people killed in Beijing may never be known, but the images of the past few days will never be forgotten.

Tom Mintier, CNN, Beijing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Welcome back to our 20th anniversary celebration.

Joining us now, a journalist who has been on the scene for just about every one of the stories we've shown you tonight. From New York, Peter Jennings, the anchor and senior editor of ABC's "World News Tonight," long a supporter of international coverage.

Has CNN helped others in that regard, do you think, Peter, for more of a focus in other places?

PETER JENNINGS, ABC NEWS: Well I have to tell you, first of all, congratulations from a member of the enemy forces.

KING: Thank you.

JENNINGS: I was early -- early convinced that you would make an enormous difference. I don't think we appreciated how much a difference CNN would make. I'm sitting here covering pages with notes, and being reminded of things and events and trends and the impact that you and the general globalization of the media have had.

Tom Mintier, I think, said it well: The power of a single image will never be forgotten.

I'm struck by how many images of Tiananmen Square I'd forgotten until I saw them again, but never the image of that guy sitting in front of the tank, whether it was a still picture or a television picture, whether it was yours or whether it was ours.

And watching Jimmy Carter tonight, because I was in Iran all during the revolution, I remember how tough the globalization of the media, led by CNN, has made diplomacy in the world today, because I used to get these calls in the middle of the night in downtown Tehran saying, Jimmy Carter said x, and I'd rush up to foreign minister's apartment in Tehran. He'd already have seen it on television in some devious way.

And so the idea of having calm and contemplation in foreign policy went out with the window with all of this globalization.

KING: And Peter, unlike naysayers is it true that -- I know you were based in London. You came to New York and saw CNN for the first time. You told executives at ABC that it would work?

JENNINGS: I did indeed. I'd come on vacation to Florida, and I saw you on the air for the first time. And there were indeed a lot of naysayers, as you recall, a lot of people who just sort of gave you the back of the hand -- and it may have had to do with the fact that I lived overseas. It was clear to me that you were going to make a difference.

On the other hand, listening to Jimmy Carter tonight talk about the impact overseas, I think people at home should understand that having CNN in many parts of the world is a privilege and very often the privilege of the elite.

I have been in an awful lot of countries where the only place you could see CNN was in the foreign ministry or the hotels. And while that's changing, it has in some ways enabled, as I said, this elite to have this American, very largely American view of the world, but not everybody.

KING: How about the whole changing news business? What has been the effect of this on you?

JENNINGS: Well, you know, any time you want to -- any time Mike Chinoy's contract is up we would like to have him.

(LAUGHTER)

And the reason for that is very simple: I think it doesn't matter where you plug in. If you don't have substance, if you don't have good reporters, if you only train a camera on something -- I don't mean to imply that this is what you do -- if you only train a camera on something without having the kind of context that a guy like Mike Chinoy gives you, then I don't think coverage of this continuous nature is always the most valuable thing in the world.

But goodness knows, you can go anywhere in the world, from Bombay in the morning to Beirut in the afternoon, and plug in and show us what is happening.

I think that makes it very difficult for your reporters. I think technology's made it very difficult for reporters in general, because it gives us less time to go and report the story. It gives us less time to gather the background that is important to contextual reporting.

And so I think it's made us in the commercial networks -- you know, ABC, NBC, CBS -- it's made us look to what we think are our strengths, which is the value-added business, of giving you at this one and only time of the day -- or two or only times of the day in our case -- that we get some added value of context.

KING: What's next? What about tomorrow? And you know, I mean it in the sense of, say, the next 10 years. What changes are coming?

JENNINGS: Well, you know, it's interesting: Magic Johnson reminds me a little bit. You know, he says that he went public in part because he wanted to educate people in the world. I take him at his word. But I think he also went public because those of us in television -- in the press and those of you who do it all the time were in some respects hounding him, almost forcing him to come out. And I think one of the dangers of having all this media all the time is that we do hound people in a way that we didn't do 20 or 30 years ago.

So I think there's going to be more media all the time. I think the Internet is going to transform our children's lives if it doesn't transform ours. And the hardest thing of all will be for you at CNN and us at ABC and people who have access to the Internet to make sense of it all for ourselves and for everybody else.

KING: And what might it do to privacy and personal lives?

JENNINGS: Well, I think that's a little what I'm alluding to in the case of Magic Johnson. The truth of the matter is that the first really great reporting, the great responsible reporting about AIDS in America was done on public broadcasting, on PBS, long before those of us in commercial television got as serious about it as we needed to be in the '80s. I think we finally got there.

But I think there is always the danger that when you train a camera, yours or ours for that matter -- on something all the time, when Elian becomes such a centerpiece of our lives, as it was again today, then I think we have to be very careful. It sounds a little pompous, I realize. We have to be very careful that we don't go over these lines.

KING: We have less than a minute. You're so big, Disney. We're so big, Time Warner. Worried about that at all? Can it be too big?

JENNINGS: Yes, of course. Yes. Well, I think all of us should worry that the more media there is in the fewer hands, that raises the possibility -- I emphasize the word "possibility" -- the potential that fewer people will have access, fewer people with as many opinions will have access to media.

I have to say very quickly that in the case of Disney I have not seen a shred of evidence in it in the time that they have owned ABC News. I am relieved by that. I'm exhilarated by that. But it's always going to be an issue: As long as more media is in fewer hands, yes, I think the citizenry should worry.

KING: Great talking with you. Thanks so much, Peter.

JENNINGS: Nice to see you, Larry. Congratulations to all of you. You do a great job.

KING: Thanks for celebrating with us. Peter Jennings, the anchor and senior editor of ABC's "World News Tonight."

1989 was a year when the fight for freedom was front-page news. Some six months after the student protests in Beijing, in another capital halfway around the world the people once again took to the streets. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, AUTUMN 1989)

MINTIER: When I was a child I watched the Berlin Wall going up. To be there on the day that it started coming down was an unbelievable experience.

JANE EVANS, CAMERAWOMAN, 1989: It was amazing, the whole thing, watching this. You didn't want to go to sleep. You didn't want to miss anything.

JIM CLANCY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's a once-in-a-lifetime story. The politicians were going to officially declare the border open between the two Germanies. The people didn't wait for that at all. They began walking past the politicians. They began climbing over the walls, hugging each other.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After almost three decades of separation, Germans of East and West embraced in a common victory. Some came because they wanted to test whether it was true. Others, embittered by years of repression, came vowing they would never go back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: It was really history. This was actually happening right in front of you, and you saw these waves of people and reunions and hugs. Unbelievable drama.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's great. I just can't believe it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLANCY: When they finally saw that the governments could no longer hold them back, there was nothing to restrain them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw it on TV, and I think it's not possible. I must go to Berlin and look at it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wonderful. Just wonderful.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The symbol of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, was under attack Friday night. Berliners from East and West yielded hammers, sticks, whatever they could lay their hands on to chip away at years of separation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: This was the beginning of the end of communism in Europe. The first chips that were, you know, coming out of that wall as people were pulverizing it.

I have a piece of the Berlin Wall. It's about this big, and I'll cherish it forever.

MIRAN: We were told that part of the Wall was being torn down. There were about 3,000 people on the West German side, and all of a sudden, out of the dark of the East German side, this crane just showed up and brought down its claw.

And finally this slab of wall just sort of cracked open, and it brought a tremendous cheer, like you've never heard at any sporting event. It just -- it gave you tingles.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: The tide is clearly turning in favor of those who want significant political change here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: I wasn't in Berlin long because I was then sent to Prague to see what was happening there in what was then Czechoslovakia.

There was a demonstration. On November 17th, 1989, they marched down the streets, they marched to a cemetery, they marched all over the place. And the police blocked them, and there was really a showdown.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: It was on November 17th that Czechoslovakia's communist leaders decided the growing protest movement could somehow be crushed by the force of clubs and the fear of arrest.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EVANS: I got beaten up a lot back then. The times when the police were coming at us, even at the press, and beating us up, I just -- the anger on these troops' faces, just very scary anger, and you turned around and you looked at the protesters and they had a lot of determination on their face. They were going forward no matter what.

ROTH: One week later, I came back, and I'm in Wenceslaus Square with a million people.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: At the biggest rally in the history of Czechoslovakia, half a million people braved frigid weather to send a message to the government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: And then the new eventual president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, is addressing the people.

EVANS: Every night, we'd go out to the square, and it would be absolutely dead-quiet, deserted, and people would come, you know, and hear the keys ringing. MINTIER: 10,000 people are jingling their keys, and it made a horrific sound. These were people that were waiting for the oppression to be lifted. And again, it was almost like they were walking out of a cave into the sunshine.

CLANCY: Czechoslovakia and Germany then encouraged Romania. But when we arrived at the border crossing, they've already cut the hammer and sickle out of the heart of the Romanian flag.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MINTIER: The first time they opened their mouths freely was to cry down with Ceausescu in last week's demonstrations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLANCY: It was a scene over and over again, wherever we went, 1989, people standing by the road, flashing the V at us. And they knew who CNN was. They had been using CNN International, via satellite, in order to get their news.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD BLYSTONE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Despite the provisional government's call for a cease-fire, war played its Christmas drum in the center Bucharest.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARK BIELLO, CAMERAMAN: Romania was the bloodiest of the East European revolutions. There were a lot of people that were killed. There was still securitatai (ph), which was special police on the street.

When you had to feed a tape at the TV station, you know, I had to run through a sniper's alley. They executed Ceausescu on Christmas day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BLYSTONE: The dictator is dead, but he's left a mark on everyday life here that will take much more than a one-week revolution to rub out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will be happy if we have liberty, and we have what -- what to eat, what to sleep, to have warm water...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For the children.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For the children, you know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLYSTONE: I remember, they'd come up to you and tug at your sleeve and try to tell you their story even if they didn't speak any English and knew you spoke no Romanian. MINTIER: These people had been denied Christmas by their leader. They'd been told they couldn't have one. They had been waiting all those years for a Christmas tree.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BLYSTONE: And not far away, people gathering, normal for Christmas anywhere else but forbidden here for four decades. From now on Christmastime here will be more than a joyful religious celebration, it will be a time when a nation remembers its heroes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: For all of us here at CNN, thanks so much for watching. Our 20th anniversary celebration continues tomorrow night with Ken Starr, Anita Hill, Colin Powell, Barbara Walters, plus legal adversaries together, Johnnie Cochran and Chris Darden, not to mention the Gulf War and a presidency under fire. And many more incredible moments from the 1990s.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

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