CNN news 2014-06-08 加文本

cnn news 2014-06-08

CARL AZUZ, cnn ANCHOR: It`s great to have you watching cnn STUDENT NEWS. This is our second to last show of the school year. I`m Carl Azuz. And I`m glad to bring it to you.

We`ve covered a lot of back and forth this week surrounding a controversial prisoner exchange. In order to bring home Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the last American captive from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Obama administration okayed the release of five high ranking members of the Taliban. Afghanistan`s former rulers who have ties to terrorists. A new video from the Taliban shows the moments when Sergeant Bergdahl was released. He`s taken from a truck, walked over to U.S. Special Forces who were seeing shaking hands with Taliban members, and put aboard a Black Hawk helicopter. A U.S. senator says this video will likely be used as propaganda by the Taliban. That group has called this exchange a big victory. The Obama administration, which has been criticized by Democrats and Republicans over the exchange says it needed to act fast, because Bergdahl`s health was in jeopardy. As debate over that continues, Randi Kaye looks into the history of prisoner exchanges.

RANDI KAYE, cnn CORRESPONDENT: Prisoner swaps in America are as old as the country itself. Think back to the American Revolutionary War when President George Washington exchanged enemy prisoners for Americans. This letter from the National Archives written by Washington himself lays out the terms of one such exchange.

President Madison swapped prisoners, too, during the war of 1812, trading the enemy for American military personnel. Abraham Lincoln also traded enemy fighters for American soldiers.

Fast forward to 1962 when Francis Gary Powers, an American U2 pilot was released by Russia in exchange for a convicted Soviet spy named Rudolph Abel. Powers plane was downed in 1960 during a reconnaissance flight over Moscow. The two were exchanged in the middle of a bridge between East Germany and West Germany. Powers family was informed just five minutes before the White House announced it.

In March, 1991 at the end of the First Gulf war, Iraq accepted the terms of cease-fire. That led to an exchange of POWs including 35 Americans, which were freed in center Riyadh. As many as 20 prisoners from allied forces were handed over, too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everyone on is a hero (ph). They look happy to be home, happy to be in freedom.

KAYE: But what about an ongoing conflict, when the U.S. soldier is being held by a designated terrorist organization? On that score, there does not seem to be any precedent. Randi Kaye, cnn, New York.