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All three newscasts assigned a correspondent to the report by the Defense Science Board on the blueprints for 29 different weapons systems that are now in the hands of the People's Liberation Army, thanks to Chinese hackers. NBC and CBS filed from the Pentagon, using Jim Miklaszewski and David Martin. ABC gave the story to Brian Ross, its investigative correspondent. CBS' Martin used the opportunity to show off whiz-bang R&D weapons video, as he likes to do (see drones, here and here, and lasers, here).
Remember that sensational, coordinated $45m ATM-withdrawal bank heist arrest earlier this month? CBS' Elaine Quijano reports that moneylaundering prosecutors have tied it to Arthur Budovsky's online Liberty Reserve bank in Costa Rica. Allegedly, funds end up there via Russia or Vietnam or Nigeria.
As usual, ABC and NBC treat cruise liner misadventures as newsworthy, while CBS downplays them. Matt Gutman jetted to The Bahamas to interview the passengers of Royal Caribbean's Grandeur of the Seas as they disembarked after a shipboard fire. Even Gutman could not keep up a tone of emergency: "Terror turns to tedium," he fessed up. On NBC, Tom Costello pointed to the flags of convenience from The Bahamas, or Panama, or Malta, flying from the liners' masts as an explanation for the lack of consumer protections for vacationing passengers.
Grant Acord, the Oregon teenager with a cache of bombs in his bedroom, was covered by ABC's Linzie Janis on Monday, and now by NBC's Mike Taibbi. Prosecutors allege that Acord's bombs were made from pipes, of napalm, and with Drano. Taibbi told us that Acord has been diagnosed with PANDIS, a strain of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and that at age seventeen, he is being prosecuted as an adult. Look at Acord's mugshot and adult is not what he looks like.
America Strong, ABC's series, turned to religious proselytizing in anchor Diane Sawyer's tribute to a trio of onetime prisoners of war, on the 40th anniversary of their release from Hanoi. CBS' Ben Tracy told us the history of the PoWs and President Richard Nixon (in whose White House Sawyer worked at the time) on Monday.
Instead, Sawyer turns to the religiosity of three officers -- she explained that the prison was for "ace pilots" -- Colonel Leon Ellis, Captain Charles Plumb, and Captain Guy Gruters. Three months of heavy prayer…God Bless You rapped out in Morse Code…a definition of courage: "fear that has said its prayers"…and that jailhouse hymn, The PoW Prayer, that was performed for Nixon at their welcome-home banquet.
"Oh God, to Thee we lift our Prayer and Sing…"
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