BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Looking back during CNN's 20th anniversary this year: remembering now the legacy of a U.S. congressman lost on a peace mission in Africa.</s>GARY STRIEKER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Congressman Leland felt that it was time for the U.S. and Ethiopia to mend fences. The Marxist military had taken control of the country 15 years earlier, and relations between Ethiopia and the U.S. had deteriorated badly. The dynamics, of course, of the Soviet empire were changing, Ethiopia was no longer getting the support it had relied on from Moscow. So, it was in the interest of the government in Ethiopia to look around and find other sources of support. It was the proper time, Leland felt, to repair the relationship with Ethiopia. And he was in an Ethiopian aircraft with a number of U.S. assistants and some Ethiopian military people. In the course of this trip the accident happened. And there was a massive search and rescue mission set up to try and find the missing plane, hopefully to find some survivors. It was at that time that the relationship between Ethiopia and the United States started to recover. That was Mickey Leland's legacy. He had started the initiative to repair relations between Ethiopia and the U.S. He had already made substantial progress in that respect, but when that accident happened, he was lost along with 15 others. It marked, I think, a watershed in -- a turnaround in relationships between the U.S. and Ethiopia.
CNN 20: Mickey Leland's Plane Crashes, August 7, 1989