Editor's Note: Five Guantanamo Bay detainees with alleged ties to the 9/11 conspiracy, including accused mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be transferred to New York to go on trial in civilian court, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday.

Jill Dougherty and Elise Labott
CNN

A senior administration official spoke with CNN’s Jill Dougherty and Elise Labott about the resettlement of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

Here are some stats about Gitmo detainees and their transfers.

1. When President Obama took office there were 242 detainees at Guantanamo. Now there are 215. Of those, 115 have been approved for transfer.

2. Of those 115 approved for transfer, 25 have already been released.

• 9 of those have been repatriated to their own countries

• 16 have been "resettled" or transferred to third countries: France 1, Belgium 1, Bermuda 4, Portugal 2, Ireland 2, Palau 6

3. The Administration has lost six habeas cases (ordered released by the courts), and those have been repatriated

4. There are four more habeas cases the administration is expecting to lose – and the US has already found homes for them if and when that happens.

5. There are 90 more detainees approved for transfer.

• 40 will be resettled to a third country – the priority is the 7 remaining Uighurs and the others ordered released by the court or determined not to be enemy combatants

• The administration has either firm or soft commitments by about 15 countries to take 25 of these 40.

• The remaining 50 will be repatriated to their home country. Of this 50, the largest group are Yemenis and this presents what this official called the "hardest problem" for the administration, as Yemen is currently experiencing a major insurgency right now.

Jill Dougherty
CNN

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived Wednesday in nuclear-armed Pakistan, a country hit hard by terrorism, economic crisis and rising sentiment that it is paying too high a price for its partnership with the United States in fighting extremists.

Clinton is expected to meet with top Pakistani officials, including president Asif Ali Zardari, but a major challenge during this visit is to convince Pakistanis that the U.S. wants a partnership that goes beyond fighting al Qaeda and other extremist groups.

Talking with reporters en route to Pakistan, Clinton said she wants to "turn the page" on what has been, in the past few years, "primarily a security-anti-terrorist agenda."

"We hold that to be extremely important, and it remains a very high priority," she said. "But we also recognize that it is imperative that we broaden our engagement with Pakistan."

Keep Reading...

Jill Dougherty
CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent

With a runoff presidential election in Afghanistan likely, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CNN Friday that she expects the current president Hamid Karzai will win.

“It is likely that they will find that President Karzai got very close to the 50, plus 1, percent. I think one can conclude that the likelihood of him (Karzai) winning a second round is probably pretty high,” Clinton told CNN’s Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jill Dougherty in an exclusive interview.

Clinton said, however, the timing of President Obama’s decision on whether to commit more troops to the fight in Afghanistan will not hinge on the election results. “I think the president is expecting to make a decision on his own timetable,” she said, “when he is absolutely comfortable with what he believes is in the best interest of the United States.”

Karzai faces allegations of corruption and vote fraud during the election but the Secretary of State sidestepped a question of whether he is a “reliable” partner for the U.S. and the international community. Administration officials have said that, without a reliable partner, a counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan will not suceed. Clinton indicated that president Obama, while resigned to the inevitability that Karzai will be returned to office, is taking a dual-track approach: put pressure on Karzai to improve his performance while, at the same time, working with other power centers in Afghanistan.

“Let's wait and see how this election turns out, she said. “Let's determine what the winner – assuming it is President Karzai – commits to do and the measures of accountability that can be put into place to more effectively guarantee the outcomes that we're seeking.”

President Obama, she said, now is looking at “how we can have a different and more effective relationship with the Afghanistan government, whoever is the final victor, but not only with the government in Kabul but with governors throughout the country, with what they call sub-national, regional, local leaders and there's been a lot of thought given as to how we would do that.”

Over the past eight years, the Secretary said, the U.S. and the international community did not set high enough expectations for Karzai but, she said, “we're going to change that and we are in the process of working through the best ways to do that.”

Clinton also pulled back the curtain on how president Obama is approaching his decision on troops strength. Mr. Obama and members of his cabinet, she said, “wanted to examine every assumption” about the situation in Afghanistan.

“There were no questions or topics off limits,” she said. “I think we've done a thorough job of analysis, and now we're moving into the decision phase, and I'm sure that the president's going to be asking all of us what is our advice to him, and then when he makes a decision what is it we are all going to contribute to actually executing his decisions.”

Everyone in the process “has learned a lot,” she said. “I think the president has been extremely skillful in probing and asking all the hard questions…We've had just the most thorough scrubbing.”

But Clinton expressed some frustration about news media reporting on the president’s decision process. “It's understandable people want us to walk out of a meeting where we may have focused on the military side or we may have focused on the governmental side and say, "OK, fine, what have you guys decided?"

“I just think that it's to the president's credit that he has had the patience and the persistence to really force the process without responding prematurely.”

Clinton did not say whether she has urged the president to commit more troops to protect State Department and USAID staff working in Afghanistan on civilian and development projects. She did say “the military at least has the capacity to defend itself. You know, they get to carry guns. Our agronomists or our economic advisers, you know, are pretty much out there dependent upon the security environment that can be created by the military.”

The map shows the Pacific island nation of Palau in relation to China. Palau has also agreed to take some Uighurs.

Jill Dougherty | Bio
Foreign Affairs Correspondent

Four men held at the prison camp in Guantanamo for almost eight years have just been sent to live in Bermuda, land of Bermuda shorts, golf courses and white sandy beaches.

For months the Obama administration has been scouring the world to find a home for the Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority group from western China. The Chinese government considers them terrorists and that is what the U.S. initially thought, since some of them were members of a group allied with Al Qaeda which the U.S. labels a terrorist organization. But in 2008 the Bush administration determined that none of the Uighur detainees were “enemy combatants.”

The U.S. ruled out sending them back to China out of fear they would be tortured. Northern Virginia, which has a sizeable Uighur community, wasn’t possible either because of intense domestic political lobbying against having “terrorists” living down the street from Americans.

“We’re extremely grateful to the Government of Bermuda for its assistance in resettling these detainees,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Thursday.

But there’s a hitch: Bermuda is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom and the U.S. dealt directly with Bermuda, informing London about the deal only minutes before the men were transferred to the island. The U.K., the United States’ closest ally, is not pleased.

A British official familiar with the agreement but not authorized to speak publicly tells CNN “we feel we should have been consulted” before the deal was struck. A U.S. official, on background, admits the British feel blindsided

Asked about the rift, Kelly at the State Department said, “we understand that there are some concerns about some of the details of the resettlement, and we're confident that we can work these things through with the government of the U.K... I don’t think we bypassed anyone.”

In 2006 five other Guantanamo Uighurs found a home in Albania; thirteen more still remain in Guantanamo. The U.S. is working on an agreement that could send those men more than 8,000 miles away to the Pacific paradise of Palau. The president of Palau says he is happy to honor to a U.S. request on humanitarian grounds.

The tiny Uighur-American community says it’s pleased some of the men are free but the director of the Uighur American Association, Alim Saytoff, tells CNN his organization is worried the men will be “on their own.” Bermuda has no Uighur community. Many of the Guantanamo detainees, he says, speak only the Uighur language or some Chinese. A few have rudimentary knowledge of English.

Bermuda is just a two and a half-hour flight from U.S. shores. Administration officials say not to worry; the Uighurs won’t be able to come to the U.S. unless the U.S. government lets them, thanks to “biometric identification, passenger screening systems, and watch lists.”

As for the Uighurs who may end up living in Palau, Congressman Bill Delahunt, at a hearing on the Uighurs, has some encouraging words: “Wherever these 17 men end up and, hopefully, they’re on their way to that island in the Pacific which I understand has great surfing…whatever happens, it is important for us to learn from this.”

Jill Dougherty
CNN Foreign Affairs Editor

Forty-seven years after Cuba was suspended from the Organization of American States, the 34-member organization has decided to revoke that decision and allow Cuba to rejoin.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who represented the United States at the meeting, called the decision a “consensus that focuses on the future instead of the past.”

The move by the OAS to lift the Cold-War-era suspension does not mean that Cuba immediately regains its seat; it can return to the OAS if the OAS decides that the island nation’s participation is in line with the purposes and principles of the organization, especially in its protection of democracy and human rights. Secretary Clinton said Cuba’s rejoining the OAS was “down the road – if it ever chooses to seek reentry.”

Cuban officials have depicted the organization as a tool of the U.S. government. Clinton said “If and when the day comes to make that determination” on Cuba’s membership, the U.S. would continue to insist on “fundamental tenets of the organization” which she said include “strengthening good governance, democratic institutions, an unwavering commitment to fundamental human rights and freedoms, and the rule of law.”

The OAS decision was a compromise. Some member countries, demonstrating their growing sense of influence in a Western Hemisphere traditionally dominated by the U.S., were pushing to lift the suspension and allow Cuba to re-join immediately without preconditions. The United States, involved in a delicate process of improving relations with Cuba, wanted to avoid conflict with OAS members over the issue and kick the can down the road – putting off any final determination of whether Cuba could rejoin.

Briefing reporters on the decision, the National Security Council’s Dan Restrepo, who also is Special Assistant to the President, touted the decision as “testament to the hard work of multilateral diplomacy” and said “this outcome is in keeping with our forward-looking, principled approach to relations with Cuba and our hemisphere.”

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas A. Shannon said that president Barack Obama “want(s) a new relationship that is a forward-looking relationship, and one that is based on the future of the Cuban people, the well-being of the Cuban people. So in this regard, I think we accomplished our core goal, which, again, was not to defend a resolution that is 47 years old, but instead to recognize that as we try to construct a new relationship with Cuba, we have to help the rest of the region construct a new relationship.”

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lambasted the OAS decision: “Rather than upholding democratic principles and fundamental freedoms,” she said, “OAS member-states, led by the OAS Secretary General, could not move quickly enough to appease their tyrannical idols in Cuba. Today’s decision by the OAS is an affront to the Cuban people and all who struggle for freedom, democracy, and fundamental human rights.”

Assistant Secretary of State Shannon countered that stalwart diplomacy by the U.S. won out. The OAS, he said, was “on the verge of a four-line resolution that simply lifted the 1962 suspension and extended open arms to a government that does not abide by the basic principles that are at the core of our values and the values of the system.” When the U.S. “made very clear that our commitment to the core principles of the OAS was not up for negotiation,” countries who wanted to allow Cuba back in with no preconditions “realized they had to find a way to work with us in a fashion that protected those principles.”

The U.S., Shannon said, is pursuing a “two-track approach on Cuba”. “One is to enhance people-to-people contact and ensure that we are looking ways for improve the well-being of the Cuban people and increase their capacity to have a meaningful voice in determining their national destiny.”

The other, he said, is government-to-government: “to see whether or not we can have a dialogue with Cuba across areas of mutual benefit and interests.” This past Sunday, the U.S. revealed that Cuba has told the Obama administration that it is ready to resume talks on migration issues and opening direct postal service with the U.S., as well as cooperating on hurricane relief, and fighting terrorism and drug trafficking.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Jill Dougherty

U.S.-Russian relations “seriously deteriorated” late last year but don’t blame Moscow. That’s how Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sees it.

“The choice has not been ours,” he says in a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. “The plans of the previous U.S. administration have carried with them a serious damage to Russia’s security, security interests, and if realized would inevitably demand our response.”

Among other things, Lavrov points to U.S. plans to install a strategic missile defense system in Eastern Europe, the “hectic, unjustified” NATO expansion and “attempts to punish Russia” after its brief war with Georgia in August of last year.

If Russia and the United States are serious about “resetting” their relations they have to “get rid of the toxic assets, he says.

The previous U.S. administration (he doesn’t refer to president George W. Bush by name) had a “one-sided ambition toward absolute security,” but the Obama administration, Lavrov says, thinks that is dangerous. As a result, relations between Moscow and Washington have become “more pragmatic and contain less illusions.”

That opens possibilities for working together in a number of areas: Top of the list, Lavrov says, is arms control. The START I treaty expires at the end of this year. “START I is no longer an effective instrument of control,” Lavrov says. “Therefore we see no point in extending it.” Russia wants a new document. The Obama administration wants a new agreement too and both sides are working intensively on ironing out details.

Russia and the U.S. can work together on Afghanistan, Lavrov says, and he holds out the possibility that Moscow might expand possibilities for the U.S. to move military supplies through Russia to Afghanistan.

But Lavrov still finds plenty to criticize in U.S. foreign policy. On the missile defense plan he brushes off U.S. assertions that it is meant to protect against missiles strikes from Iran. “We know that these missile defense bases are directly related to Russian security,” he says.

Does he agree with the U.S. that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons? “We don’t have any confirmation of the Iranian nuclear program having military dimension.” Yet the Foreign Minister says Russia supports IAEA inspection and “strongly urges” Iran to cooperate fully.

Does Russia think it should have a “sphere of influence” in former Soviet republics which are now independent countries? No, he says, “So many countries, including Europe, the United States, China, others have the interest in this region.”

But that competition, he says, should be “fair.”

“Let’s not have some covert contact telling these countries, you must decide either you are still a colony of Moscow or you want to be with the free world.”

But with Lavrov, a subtle and sophisticated diplomat, you can almost see the fine print: “As far as Russian doctrine is considered, yes, we clearly state that CIS countries are our privileged partners, but the fact of the matter is that Russia for them is also a privileged partner.”

Toward the end of the speech, a questioner asks the Foreign Minister what lessons might be learned from Russia’s painful nine-year war in Afghanistan which ended in blistering defeat.

Minister Lavrov cuts him off with a smile: “No, I don’t want to.” The audience, many of them experts on Russia, laughs ruefully.

Jill Dougherty
CNN International Affairs Correspondent

At his daily briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was doing what some reporters call “tap dancing,” trying to avoid saying much about Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s decision to retire. The reason? The White House was waiting for a formal letter from Justice Souter notifying the President of his decision. CNN had cameras stationed on the White House front lawn, waiting to capture the moment when a marshall from the Supreme Court would arrive in a Lincoln Town Car would arrive, letter in hand.

All of a sudden, through the door into the briefing room, walks the president. Reporters jump to their feet. Cameras pivot.

“This is kind of cool, Robert,” Mr. Obama says with a big grin. Gibbs quips: “It is way cooler than it seems.”

“Absolutely,” the president says. “The reason I’m interrupting Robert is not because he’s not doing a good job. He is doing an unbelievable job. But it’s because I just got off the telephone with Justice Souter.”

The president praises Souter. “Fair minded…independent…no particular ideology.”

What will he look for in a nominee to replace Justice Souter? “Someone with a sharp and independent mind and a record of excellence and integrity.”

So far, it’s what you expect a president to say. But this president taught constitutional law for ten years. “I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook,” he say. “It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives, whether they can make a living and care for their families.”

So far, we’re hearing a liberal: “…I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.”

Now comes the “conservative” side of president Obama: “I will seek somebody who is dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions. Who respects the integrity of the judicial process, and the appropriate limits of the judicial role.”

Mr. Obama promises to consult with members of both parties, “across the political spectrum.” But conservatives already are attacking some possible Obama nominees as "disturbingly out of the mainstream.”

The briefing room “interruption” is over. The president says he hopes he can swear in the new Supreme Court justice by the first Monday in October when the new term begins.

“I would like you to give Robert a tough time again,” he laughs...and strolls out of the briefing room.

A soldier on guard on a street in Quetta, Pakistan, earlier in April.

Jill Dougherty | Bio
Foreign Affairs Correspondent

The Pakistan government thought it would work: allow hardline Islamic groups to rule tribal areas, impose strict sharia law and, in return, the Taliban would declare a ceasefire. They tried it in the Swat Valley but the militants weren't satisfied, and widened their grasp, taking over more villages and moving within 60 miles of the capital Islamabad.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls Pakistan's deal "abdicating" to those groups and says the policy "poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world."

"I think that we cannot underscore the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan," she says, "by the continuing advances, now within hours of Islamabad, that are being made by a loosely confederated group of terrorists and others who are seeking the overthrow of the Pakistani state, which as we all know, is a nuclear-armed state."

No one is predicting it will happen, but there is a possible worst-case scenario: militants strengthen, overthrow the government, and take control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. On Capitol Hill, Clinton heard it from California Congressman Howard Berman: "We can't allow al Qaeda or any other terrorist group that threatens our national security, to operate with impunity in the tribal regions. Nor can we permit the Pakistani state and its nuclear arsenal to be taken over by the Taliban or any other radical groups."

The Obama administration knows the fragility of president Asif Ali Zadari's government and wants to provide $1.5 billion on top of the $11 billion in U.S. money given to Pakistan since 9/11. But with the Pakistani army's inability – or reluctance – to take on the militant groups, this could be a harder case to make with Congress and the administration is threatening to condition the additional funds on how successfully Pakistan fights terrorism.

"We do think that there need to be the right kind of conditions," Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday. "You know it is a little bit like the Goldilocks story. I mean if they are too weak we don't get changes. If they are too strong we get a backlash. So we are trying to figure out what is the area that will influence behavior and produce results. We are creating measure of performance that we will share with the Congress so you and we can follow whether we are getting the positive outcomes we are attempting to achieve."

In her four-hour marathon before the House, Clinton hopscotched across the world map, from Cuba to Fiji to Afghanistan, with repeated questions about interrogations of terror suspects and abortion. But her comments on Pakistan were some of the toughest.

The Obama administration's concern over Pakistan's instability seems to be growing. U.S. officials, including president Obama's special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, have been shuttling in and out of Pakistan on a regular basis, seemingly to no avail.

Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, tells CNN's Wolf Blitzer that the government and people of Pakistan generally agree that there is a threat of terrorism in the country, but "the only question is – is the recent development in Swat an existential threat to Pakistan and it's not."

Secretary Clinton is upping the pressure on the Pakistani government: "Not only do the Pakistani government officials but the Pakistani people and the Pakistani Diaspora many of whom are extremely successful Americans here in academia, business, the professions and so much else, need to speak out forcefully against a policy that is ceding more and more territory to the insurgents, to the Taliban, to al-Qaeda, to the allies that are in this terrorist syndicate."

Jill Dougherty | Bio
Foreign Affairs Correspondent

When it comes to Russia, the Obama administration has been talking about “pressing the reset button.” It’s meant to symbolize a possible new start in U.S./Russian relations that “crashed” after Russian invaded Georgia last August.

So when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton greeted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva before sitting down to their working dinner in Geneva she was all smiles when she presented him a small green box with a ribbon.

Lavrov opened it and, inside, there was a red button with the Russian word “peregruzka” printed on it.

"I would like to present you with a little gift that represents what President Obama and Vice President Biden and I have been saying and that is: “We want to reset our relationship and so we will do it together.”

Secretary Clinton, laughing, added "We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got
it?" she asked Lavrov.

“You got it wrong," said Lavrov." Both diplomats laugh, Clinton with a loud, throaty laugh.

“It should be “perezagruzka” (the russian word for reset,) Lavrov says. "This says “peregruzka” which means “overcharged."

A quick comeback – and recovery – from Clinton: "We won't let you do that to us, I promise. We mean it and we look forward to it." A line that seemed like it might have had more than one meaning.

Ever the diplomat, Lavrov says he’ll put the “reset” button on his desk.

A few minutes later, an email message to the reporters covering Clinton from Philippe Reines , senior adviser ro Secretary Clinton.

“Since we're all learning a little Russian today, “opechatka” is Russian for “typo.” So the *Opechatka* is being fixed, the gift will correctly read "Perezagruzka" by the time of the joint press conference. If any of you travel with labelmaking devices equipped with Russian spell-check, please do let me know...”

Moral of the story, as Ronald Reagan used to say:

“Trust, but verify.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Haneda International Airport, Tokyo, Japan, Monday.

Jill Dougherty
CNN Foreign Affairs Editor

As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has a big plane, the official seal of the Secretary on the door, a bed and easy chair aboard. She doesn't appear to be sleeping much but she doesn't look tired. Aides say she's digesting more briefing books, in addition to the thousand of pages of backgrounders she boned up on for her confirmation hearing about a month ago. She also deliberately planned this trip to be intense, they say, that's how she likes to travel.

On this leg of the trip en route to Tokyo she came back to the section of the plane where the journalists sit (near the galley where the crew makes the meals) to take some questions. Planes are noisy places to talk so her aides set up a mini-speaker system with a microphone so that she – and the questioners – can be heard. We set our tape recorders in front of the speakers to make sure we get the quotes right. No one stumped her.

As one woman who knows Hillary Clinton well put it: "Wellesley girls know how to do their homework." Diplomats, experts and even cynical journalists I've talked with who have met with Clinton or seen her in action says she has an extraordinary ability to delve into the minutiae of a subject, from extraction industries to global warming's effects on the Arctic. She's also learned the diplomatic art of saying something – and not saying something.

I watched her hone some of these skills back in the 1990's when, as First Lady, she traveled to a number of countries in Asia, Latin America, Europe and the former Soviet Union. I was one of the White House correspondents covering what we dubbed the "Hillary trips." We traveled on the plane with her during those trips too and they were relatively informal affairs. We had a chance to have dinner with her and talk about subjects other than work.

Her speaking style at that time was a bit stiff but those trips, plus two years of running for president, seem to have helped her connect with people more effectively, in fact, she often comes across best in one-on-one conversations which she peppers with a surprisingly loud laugh.

Which is not to say that Hillary Rodham Clinton is not a wonk. She is; just listen to her delved into the issue of plutonium enrichment versus highly enriched uranium. It's enough to make a physicist jealous.

Running for office also teaches you to control your face. Try it – it's not easy. One yawn, one glance at a watch, one frown can be caught by a camera and become the story of the day. Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, stands erect, and wears the smile of a woman in charge.

Her fellow diplomats seemed charmed. Or have they simply mastered the art of looking enamored with someone? Who knows? Whatever it is, it seems to be working.

Jill Dougherty | Bio
Foreign Affairs Correspondent

Watch Jill Doughtery report on the status of the Iraqi shoe-thrower.

Jill Dougherty | Bio
U.S. Affairs Correspondent

It’s 7 a.m. on a cold Thanksgiving morning and 500 volunteers at Food & Friends already are at work wrapping up turkey dinners – 3,000 of them. A whole roast turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, green beans and three pies.

Another team of volunteers picks up the boxes and heads for their cars to deliver the dinners to Food and Friends’ clients: people with few financial resources and many health challenges, including HIV/Aids and cancer.

For twenty years, Food and Friends has been providing them with nutritionally balanced meals, three per day, delivered six days a week – for free. “People are making difficult choices in this community between paying for their medical care and eating,” says Craig Shniderman, executive director, “and the job of Food & Friends is to make sure that, for our clients at least, they don't have to make that choice.”

Most people are referred by their doctors; some hear about Food & Friends and call for help. Each person is evaluated by a licensed dietician who then designs the appropriate meals. There are 14 different menus. Some critically ill people cannot eat salt; others need special nutrients. Food & Friends also provides meals for dependent children. “We know the parents sometimes will not eat if they can’t provide food for their children,” says Shniderman.

We drive out with two of the volunteers, Stephanie George a researcher with the National Cancer Institute, and Larry O’Connor, a web designer. They started volunteering when they were at the University of Maryland.

“I think, especially with this economic crisis right now,” Stephanie says, “a lot of people are realizing how close so many people are from not being able to afford healthcare and not be able to provide yourself with the nutrition and the food that you need to make yourself as healthy as you can be, given your illness.”

“It kinda keeps you grounded,” says Larry. “It shows you how much the things you take for granted can truly be appreciated by other people.”

We arrive at the home of Balinda Cunningham. She is HIV positive and has cancer. She lives on the third floor of an apartment building without an elevator. Sometimes she feels so weak, she says, she crawls up the stairs.

Her face is beaming as Stephanie and Larry help her to unload a turkey and all the fixings. “I'm gonna let it sit in my special sauce,” she tells me. “It's a secret!!” Without Food & Friends, she says “my health would be bad and I would be eating whatever I could get. You know, being sick and on Social Security, it's just impossible, you know. With the food prices going up, you can't go out and grow a garden. The squirrels eat it up!!!” Today, Balinda is laughing.

Back at Food & Friends headquarters, a volunteer assembly line is boxing up more turkey dinners. A group of twelve young men from Norway, here on vacation, has shown up to help out. They’re packing up vegetables and gravy – and cheering as they do it.

By noon, the volunteers will have packed 8, 400 pounds of whole turkeys, 1,000 pounds of green beans, 1,000 pounds of mashed potatoes and 130 gallons of gravy. By the end of this year, Food & Friends estimates, they will have served an astounding one million meals.

“Yeah. It is a tough economy,” Craig Shniderman tells me. Food & Friends’ client list grew by 18% this year. “But the whole concept of Food & Friends is that people can, through common cause, take action to improve the lives of their neighbors, even in difficult times.”

The list of volunteers continues to grow; it’s now at 10,000. For Thanksgiving Day they had to turn away volunteers. People, Craig says, “just want to help.”

Jill Dougherty | Bio
U.S. Affairs Correspondent

What does the Russian leadership really think about Barack Obama? At the start of a day-long conference in Washington, D.C. on Russia-U.S. relations I pull aside a friend, a Moscow political analyst. Some Russians are intrigued by Obama, he tells me, surprised by his win, but ultimately they think Obama’s policy on Russia won’t be that different from George W. Bush’s. The “Washington establishment,” they believe, is just too strong.

The experts gathered here by the American Enterprise Institute are Russian, American, Western European and Eastern European. They advise presidents, presidential candidates, prime ministers. Many of them have spent significant time in Russia. They live and breathe Russia. Few of them are optimistic.

“Integrating Russia into the West on the West’s terms is dead,” says Thomas Graham of Kissinger Associates. Barack Obama needs a new goal, in Graham’s opinion, but it won’t be easy. The world is now in a “period of great uncertainty of unknown duration,” Graham says. There is a new global equilibrium resulting from the end of the Cold War but it’s notable how little this influences our ideas on Russia, Graham says: “It’s still a “zero-sum, Cold War paradigm.”

How did that happen?

Andrei Kortunov of the New Eurasia Foundation says “we destroyed the old foundations of the relationship and have not built new ones.” The two countries’ visions used to be compatible, he says: a linear movement toward a market economy but Russia’s vision has “changed dramatically.” Moscow’s leaders no longer believe a market economy and liberal democracy offer solutions to current problems. Trust is low on both sides and it cuts across political groups and social strata, Kortunov says. Other experts here put it more bluntly: throughout Russian society the U.S. now is perceived as “the enemy.” Vladimir Putin has a “narrative of grievance,” says another expert. “We’re back and if you don’t like it – tough!”

Barack Obama faced his first challenge from Russia just the day after he was elected; Russian president Dmitry Medvedev announcing that Moscow will station missiles on its western European border if the U.S. carries out its plans to build a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech republic. There could be more to come: Russia’s attempts to create a sphere of influence or, as they call it, “privileged interests” in the former republics and satellites of the Soviet Union; Moscow’s efforts to establish a monopoly in Caspian Sea oil; the Russian leadership’s furious reaction to the United States’ desire to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO; tweaking the U.S. by holding joint military maneuvers with Venezuela in the Caribbean. As one expert puts it “Obama’s challenge is not only defining what Russia wants but what Russia will do next.”

Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? For these experts, at most, it’s just a glimmer. It’s hard to re-think a relationship; much easier to slip back into the crusty but comfortable old-think of the Cold War. But with a new administration in Washington and a relatively new president in Russia there are possibilities, they say. Ironically, the world economic crisis could help both countries to shift focus from their differences to their common interests.

Jill Dougherty | Bio
U.S. Affairs Correspondent

Six years ago, Aliaksei Karol was returning at night from a forum of democracy activists in Lithuania. “He was hit from behind with some heavy object, fainted and came to his senses in a puddle of blood,” says Zhanna Litvina, chair of the Belarusian Association of Journalists. There was an investigation but Karol’s attackers were never found.

Karol, the 63 year old editor-in-chief of the Belarus weekly newspaper Novy Chas, knows the price journalists in his country pay for telling the truth. Belarus, headed by President Alexander Lukashenko, is often called “Europe’s last dictatorship” and there’s good reason.

In 1992, a year after the end of the Soviet Union, Karol founded one of the first newspapers in Belarus not under government control. It was called “Zgoda” and in those heady days of hope, it celebrated democratic values by simply telling truthfully what was happening in the country. The paper’s staff were hounded by the government and questioned by the KGB. “Zgoda” finally was shut down in 2006.

The following year, Aliaksei Karol opened a second paper, Novy Chas. Repression by the government continued and last December a member of Parliament and ally of the Belarus president sued Novy Chas for allegedly defaming him. He won and the paper was ordered to pay the equivalent of $23,500. With the help of supporters from around the world, Karol paid the fine and continues to publish.

Wednesday night in Washington, D.C., Aliaksei Karol received the 2008 Knight International Journalism Award from the International Center for Journalists. Another journalist was honored as well, Ugandan human rights reporter Frank Nyakairu.

In spite of more positive reports on Belarus by the international press, Karol says internal repression continues. He says pressure from the United States, along with growing economic pressure on the Belarus government, are making the lives of journalists somewhat easier but true freedom of expression is still a distant goal.

People line up to see world headlines touting President-Elect Barack Obama's victory outside the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

Jill Dougherty | Bio
U.S. Affairs Correspondent

The sun is up on a new and different America and people are moving slowly along the front of the Newseum, the sleek new museum of journalism, reading newspaper front pages from around the world. The Newseum gets 600 of them every day, via internet, in PDF form. They print them up the size of real newspapers and post approximately 80 of them in glass-covered cases in front of the building and inside.

This morning the headlines are huge and so are the color photos: “It’s Obama” the Chicago Tribune trumpets. “Obama Makes History” exclaims the Washington Post. “Change has come,” announces the Cleveland Plain Dealer. There’s a frontpage from South Korea, from Germany, from Brazil and if there’s one word you can find in almost every story it’s “historic.”

An African-American grandmother approaches with her young granddaughter, pointing and explaining what happened last night. A man from Asia walks along, snapping pictures of every single headline. A college girl with blond hair poses in front of one of the newspapers, smiling and flashing a thumbs up.

Several people I speak with say they didn’t sleep much last night, too excited by the news, by the celebrations in the streets. A couple from Sweden, Arne and Marliese Dervall, tell me they can’t believe their fortune that they happened to be in the U.S. when history was made.

Even in a world of instant news, internet blogs, constantly-refreshed headlines, there is something so solid, so real, so, well, “historic” about a newspaper front page. Something you can hold in your hands, put in your scrapbook, show your grandchildren. As one man tells me, “it’s tangible.”

The crowd is growing. Men and women in suits, on their lunch hour; grammar school kids chanting “Obama!;” a woman in African dress. They read, they smile, they point, they raise their phones and snap a picture. Obama made history – and so did they.

Jill Dougherty | Bio
U.S. Affairs Correspondent
Ten-year-old Gabriel Kane thinks Barack Obama is “really cool.” “Because he looks kinda like me,” Gabriel tells me. “And if he's elected, I feel like I could be elected too.”

Gabriel isn’t running for president, at least not yet, but he has some other things in common with this year’s Democratic candidate: like Obama’s father, Gabriel’s mother is from Kenya. Both of Gabriel’s parents went to Harvard Law School, just like Barack and Michelle Obama.

Gabriel and his parents, along with his two sisters, live in Arlington, Virginia and they are watching this election carefully. His father, Bill Kane, a government lawyer from Rochester, New York, says “it's just blowing me away, actually.”

Veronica, 13, knows, win or lose, Obama’s candidacy is historic. “Through the whole thing I just keep getting this image of me telling my grandchildren or someone – I was there!” But, she adds, “I don't really relate to him solely on the fact that he's, like, half-black, half-white like me. I'm very impressed with everything that he does, you know? He’s a very smart person and you hear him speak and you get really inspired.”

Her sister, Cynthia, 14 puts it this way: “I think of his race as kind of a side note, like, he's a great person AND he's also African American. If I didn't like his policies, but he was African-American, then I wouldn't like him because I wouldn't like him as a person. So the race is important but not as important as what he is going to do.”

The Kane children’s parents say, regardless of who wins this election, the mere fact of Obama’s candidacy is an “amazing, uplifting thing.” After all, this bi-racial family is living in Virginia, a state where, just 41 years ago, they could have been arrested; it was against the law to marry someone of a different race.

“You know I started to tell my children a long time ago that it's hard for you to even imagine what this means,” Minneh Kane tells me. “To me it's such a huge thing and, in a way, it's a testament to how fortunate they are that it's not as huge a deal in many ways for them as it is for me. But I'm telling them, can you imagine that this person, who has a parent who's from Kenya, who's African American, who has this very strange background, is able to aspire to the highest office in this land and will probably get there? For me that is such an enormous thing.”

Miriam's Kitchen has been providing meals to the homeless for 25 years.

Jill Dougherty | Bio
U.S. Affairs Correspondent

It’s 6:30 a.m., still dark outside, as the men, along with a few women, line up outside of Western Presbyterian Church in the affluent Washington, D.C. neighborhood of Foggy Bottom. They are homeless, many carrying plastic bags with their belongings. As the doors to the church basement open, they file in, the smell of breakfast wafting up to the street.

On the menu this morning: scrambled eggs, salad, biscuits and gravy, grits and a fruit smoothie made from fresh apples, bananas, strawberries and honey. “Good morning,” one of the young volunteers behind the counter near the kitchen says. “Would you like some grits?” The customers point to what they want, then move to tables where they sit down to enjoy it.

Miriam’s Kitchen has been providing meals and other services to the homeless for 25 years. It’s been at its current location since 1994. Their client list is growing; this past September, its director says, 20% more people came for breakfast than during the same month last year. In 2007 the Kitchen served almost 53,000 meals.

Randall Cook, 47, is one of them. He’s in town from Dayton, Ohio. “It took me like six months to find a restaurant job in Dayton,” he tells me, “so I says, this economy go belly up, recession and all that. Let me go back to D.C. because D.C. has always provided plenty of opportunity for myself.”

I sit down with Harry Powell. He’s 60 years old and he’s carrying a cane. He’s been homeless for three months, ever since he got out of prison for selling drugs. The meal, he tells me, is “so important to me because of the fact, ain't nowhere else to eat. No money in your pocket. No work nowhere.”

Steve Badt, a trained chef who is director of kitchen operations and volunteer operations, says he can prepare a meal like this for approximately $1.50 per person. Just last year the cost was about a dollar. He doesn’t use canned food and relies on donations from supermarkets and farmer’s markets. “We're really pushing our donors harder,” he says. “I'm being a little more blunt, a little more aggressive, saying hey, I need vegetables, I need fruit, I need meat, I need – you know, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise. Anything helps to keep our food costs down.”

Miriam’s Kitchen’s executive director, Scott Schenkelberg, tells me he’s having a harder time as commodity prices soar. “Basics such as flour, milk, eggs, butter have increased as much as 50% over the past few years,” he says, “so we're even more reliant on food donations and scrimping even more on our regular food budget to be able to make ends meet.”

Schenkelberg also is worried about cash donations. This is the time of year many people make charitable contributions but he knows some of them are looking at dwindling home values, disappearing 401K’s and other hits from the economic crisis. Will they continue to support the Kitchen?

There’s no lack of volunteers, however. More than a thousand of them plus a waiting list. Caroline Weaver, a yoga teacher and a writer, has been volunteering for two years. “There are a lot of programs that help individuals who are homeless but this one in particular,” she says, “there's a lot of love, there's a lot of care, there's a lot of thought that goes into it.”

Jill Dougherty | Bio
U.S. Affairs Correspondent

“Is American-style free-market capitalism dead?” That’s the question I’m asking students in the economics class of Professor Robert M. Dunn, Jr. of the George Washington University.

Bank nationalizations, bailouts, more government control – doesn’t Washington’s proposed solution to the economic meltdown undermine the United States’ free-wheeling free market approach?

Grant Tudor, a third-year student, doesn’t think capitalism is dead but he does think it's going to look a lot different. "Because I think we've grown up in a system where it's very laissez-faire, he says. "Now, government will have a much heavier hand and it's not going to be such a black/white picture between big government and small government and big markets and regulated markets. I think there's going to be a strong mix between the two.”

These are young people who aren’t fazed by charts and graphs and economic theory. But this crisis no theory to them; it’s real. It’s likely to mean more expensive student loans – if they can get loans at all- and re-evaluating their future careers. They may try to stay in school longer. One student quips “We're all gonna be government employees!!”

Sam Dewitt agrees with Grant Tudor: “I don't think capitalism is dead,” he says. “When you have a bad economy you tend to have a shift away from capitalism, you tend to have more business regulations especially with failing businesses. But, in history, you've had that before and eventually, as the economy gets better, people are going to want to have more of a free-market economy back.”

Professor Dunn is at the board, using a felt-tip pen to illustrate trade with Japan. He says financial bailouts are nothing new in American-style capitalism:

“We had crises like this throughout the 19th century, every decade or so…in 1807 there was a huge crash which JP Morgan sort of bailed out,” he says.

Alex Mitko is sitting in the front row. He’s from Russia but he’s watching how this crisis is affecting average Americans. “The discrepancy between the American lifestyle and the lifestyle all over the world is really extraordinary,” he says. “I mean it will change and it will be less exorbitant but it will still be very much alive.”

Max Koenig thinks the switch to more government control after years of de-regulation does undercut the principles of America’s free market but he says it’s temporary. “It’s only to get more confidence in the markets right now. That the big reason, I think in a couple of years down the road, maybe ten, twenty, however long it takes, we're going to be back to things as normal, it just gonna take confidence. “

But for these George Washington University students, whose classrooms are just a few blocks from the White House, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, will be facing the effects of this global financial crisis in their own lives.

I strike up a conversation with Cory Struble, who just finished watching the Obama/McCain debate. “I think that we’re the first generation in a long time that really is scared of whether or not we are going to have the same opportunity to make a better life for ourselves than our parents have,” he says. “When you look at paying for college and all the bills, and all the high interests rates that students are facing, and then when this loan crisis also is affecting student loans…. I think that we are going to start families later than our parents did. We are going to buy homes later than our parents did and we are going to find job security far later than our parents did.”

For many U.S. students today, capitalism may not be dead but financial security is on hold, at least for now.