it is important for government oversight and nornt more the public. integrity of the process. yeah. and e-mail is not as central at that point in time. and colon powell. they don t say there was another secretary of state in between. and on the one hand we know a lot of people don t care about this. on the other hand there is years of freedom information act lawsuits and they can relate to more important things. i m watching government officials actively figure how do i prevent this from becoming this is a problem. a systemic issue, liberal, conservative, democrat republican. and no we shouldn t be figuring that out. we should be figuring out how do we stars archiving this information for the public s good.
of course, all of this happening on memorial day weekend with the detonation happening before the annual memorial day concert on the u.s. capital s west lawn. this is a major event and this year included big names, including gloria estefan and colon powell and chairmans of the joint chiefs of staff martin dempsey. a lot of people scared out there. i can imagine. the nation is pausing on this memorial day to remember service members who gave their lives. ceremonies at arlington national cemetery will get under way. cnn will be watching. correspondent barbara starr is there, in fact with more for us. barbara. reporter: good morning, mikaela. we are here at arlington. it will open to the public in just under an hour and we expect of course every memorial day as we always see a great number of people american coming here to pay their respects to the nation s fallen here at arlington, 400,000 are interred here.
it. and that letter from the red cross went to the u.s. state department. and the state department, at the time, appears to have been flabbergasted by this allegation. the state department sent a delegation to geneva, to red cross headquarters and said it was u.s. policy to encourage all countries to provide access to the red cross for detainees, including the specific country in question. secretary of state colon powell went as far as ordering the u.s. ambassador to demand that that country provide full access to the red cross for all prisoners being held in that country. so the red cross says to the country that you have prisoners that you re not giving access to. the state department always gives the red cross as e access to our prisoners and we demand that country x do the same thing mplt and while the state department was doing that, what we now know is that the c.i.a., behind the scenes, was telling that same country to deny the
and that letter from the red cross went to the u.s. state department. and the state department, at the time appears to have been flabbergasted by this allegation. the state department sent a delegation to geneva, to ledred cross headquarters and said it was u.s. policy to encourage all countries to provide access to the red cross for detainees, including the specific country in question. secretary of state colon powell went as far as ordering the u.s. ambassador to demand that that country provide full access to the red cross for all prisoners being held in that country. so the red cross says to the country that you have prisoners that you re not giving access to. the state department always gives the red cross as e access to our prisoners and we demand that country x do the same thing mplt and while the state department was doing that what we now know is that the c.i.a. behind the scenes was telling that same country to deny the
need to be prudent but do you agree with that assessment. fa was gur jez said he doesn t think they pose necessarily a threat right now. they could eventually. what threat is this group to the u.s. in your estimation? i don t see an immediate threat to the united states. what our concern is we have invested almost 4500 lives in this conflict. we ve invested trillions of dollars. so we will try to help stabilize a situation that, of course, i believe we shouldn t have been in in the first place and that was badly played because remember, the secretary of state then said colon powell, you know, you break it, we own it. i can recall some of the same individuals back then saying that mission accomplished. the former president and they would be waving the flag. we made certain missteps. because we didn t think it through. that s why i appreciate what president boem is doing now is thinking it through on a regional basis and all of the