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Lou Dobbs Tonight

CIA Director Takes Responsibility For State of the Union Gaffe

Aired July 11, 2003 - 18:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


ANNOUNCER: This is LOU DOBBS TONIGHT for Friday, July 11. Sitting in for Lou Dobbs, Jan Hopkins.
JAN HOPKINS, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, everyone.

Tonight: damage control and finger-pointing by the White House in the controversy over the president's use of false information, false intelligence in his State of the Union address. The president said that U.S. intelligence services cleared his statement that Iraq tried to buy nuclear materials in Africa. His national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, went further. She said the CIA approved the specific wording of the president's speech.

White House correspondent Susanne Malveaux is traveling with the president in Africa and reports tonight from Entebbe, Uganda.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Bush insisted he did not intentionally mislead the American people in making his case for going to war.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services. And it was a speech that detailed to the American people the dangers posed by the Saddam Hussein regime. And my government took the appropriate response to those dangers.

MALVEAUX: Throughout his Africa trip, the president has been dogged by claims he made in his State of the Union address that Iraq tried to get uranium from Africa, an argument used to support the case that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop a nuclear weapons program, justifying the U.S. going to war.

Intelligence officials have since admitted that at least one report that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Niger was false. But Mr. Bush stands by his speech. Earlier, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, traveling with the president, said the CIA cleared the address and that the administration followed the CIA's recommendations to take out the specific reference to Niger.

The administration replaced with the broader claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. Dr. Rice said that line was approved. And she added, "The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety. If the director of Central Intelligence had said, 'Take this out of the speech,' then it would have been done." But Secretary of State Colin Powell, seven days after the president's address, did not include the Iraq uranium claim in his presentation before the United Nations because the State Department's own intelligence arm found it dubious.

But Thursday, Powell played down the difference.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: You have to make judgments. And at the time of the president's State of the Union address, a judgment was made that that was an appropriate statement for the president to make. There was no effort or attempt on the part of the president or anyone else in the administration to mislead or to deceive the American people.

MALVEAUX (on camera): The Bush administration insists that it's confident in the intelligence it receives, but a senior administration official did acknowledge that the vetting process, determining what gets in the State of the Union, has to be tightened.

Suzanne Malveaux, CNN, Entebbe, Uganda.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOPKINS: The controversy over the president's use of false intelligence crossed from Africa to Capitol Hill today. Democratic presidential candidates demanded answers, saying there should be an investigation. Tonight, a leading Republican senator also weighed in to the debate.

Jonathan Karl joins us live from Capitol Hill -- Jonathan.

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Jan, that leading Republican senator is Senator Pat Roberts, who is the chairman, the Republican chairman, of the Intelligence Committee in the Senate. He put the blame on this whole situation squarely on the shoulders of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George Tenet.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. PAT ROBERTS (R), KANSAS: If the CIA had changed its position, it was incumbent on the director of Central Intelligence to correct that record and certainly bring it to the immediate attention of the president. It appears that he did not. The director of Central Intelligence is the principal adviser to the president on intelligence matters. He should have told the president. He failed. He failed to do so.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: Now, closed-door investigations on the Intelligence Committee are under way now, investigations into the general question of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. CNN has learned that, next week, George Tenet himself is expected to appear before that committee to face some very tough questions from Republicans, as well as Democrats on the committee.

Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidates are hitting the president hard on this, saying the blame doesn't necessarily lie with the Central Intelligence Agency. It lies with the president himself.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOWARD DEAN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is beginning to sound a little like Watergate. They start throwing people over the side, but the deeper you go, the more interesting it will be. It's very clear that it may be George Tenet's responsibility, but that information also existed in the State Department. It also existed in the vice president's office. So they will not get away with simply throwing George Tenet over the side.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: As for this question of open investigations, the chairman of that Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, says that his committee will hold public hearings on the intelligence issue, generally, including very much this question of the president's State of the Union address, beginning in September.

That is not enough to satisfy many of the critics here. Howard Dean, who you just saw there, Democratic presidential candidate, says there needs to be an investigation. It is an independent investigation, not one conducted by a Republican-controlled committee -- Jan.

HOPKINS: George Tenet does seem to be in the hot seat at this point, though, yes?

KARL: He absolutely is. You do not hear anybody yet calling for his resignation up here, but, clearly, Republicans especially are placing a lot of blame directly on George Tenet. And you can imagine that he will be facing some incredibly intense questions at that closed-door hearing next week.

HOPKINS: Thanks, Jonathan Karl on Capitol Hill.

President Bush did not allow the intelligence controversy to distract him from his tour of Africa today. His first stop was Uganda, where he praised the government's prevention and treatment program for HIV/AIDS. Later, he arrived in Nigeria, a major oil exporter to the United States.

Jeff Koinange joins us now from the Nigerian capital -- Jeff.

JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jan.

And I can tell you that the leader of the world's most powerful nation landed in Africa's most populous nation a little over four hours ago. He and Mrs. Bush were met on the tarmac by host President Olusegun Obasanjo, his wife, some officials. And after the usual ceremony under very tight security, the Bushes got into their motorcade and headed down a highway known as Bill Clinton Drive, the 25-mile into the city.

Now, there's a very light schedule tonight, nothing official. The Bushes were meeting with embassy officials, because tomorrow morning is a very busy day for them, starting with a visit to an AIDS clinic. As you know, Jan, AIDS has been very high on Mr. Bush's agenda throughout his five-nation, five-day trip to Africa. And, in fact, earlier Friday, he got a chance to speak to some folks in Uganda about the AIDS situation there and how that country has managed to actually reverse the spread of the deadly disease.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: President Museveni in Uganda pursued a direct and comprehensive anti-AIDS strategy. He emphasized abstinence in marital fidelity, as well as condoms, to prevent HIV transmissions. They developed a strategy. They're implementing the strategy for the whole world to see. And the results have been magnificent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOINANGE: I can tell you, Jan, that AIDS is not the only problem facing Nigeria. There are other major challenges.

For instance, Nigeria has managed to accumulate a foreign debt of some $26 billion. In fact, Nigeria is still the world's sixth largest producer of crude oil and the world's eighth largest exporter. But it's relied so heavily on oil and oil products, making over 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings, that it hasn't had time to diversify in the four decades since independence.

They're going to have to look to Mr. Bush to see what the U.S., what the West can do to help them diversify into everything from agriculture to textiles and try and also get some debt relief. That $26 billion really sucks up a lot of the budget, Jan.

HOPKINS: Thanks, Jeff Koinange, in Nigeria.

An astonishing security breach during the president's trip today. The man was arrested in Uganda after he stowed away on a Boeing 747 carrying members of the White House press corps, White House staff, and members of the Secret Service. He flew to Uganda after boarding the aircraft in South Africa. Officials said that the man carried no weapons and was never a threat to the president.

Here in this country, a disturbing story tonight from an Air Force base in Texas: Nine people associated with that base have been quarantined, suspected of having the SARS virus.

Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr joins us now with the very latest on this developing story -- Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jan, we have just received word from Dyess Air Force base that count of nine people has now gone up to 11, two more people reporting to the clinic today apparently with respiratory symptoms.

Now, this is all taking place at Dyess Air Force Base in Texas. Officials are emphasizing, this quarantine of these 11 people is a public health precaution, so far, no confirmed indication that any of these people do have SARS. They are being tested, at least eight people. The preliminary tests show they do not have it. But in order to rule it out, under CDC guidelines, they will continue to be watched for the next several days.

All of this began several days ago, when an airman, a U.S. Air Force airman, returned to Dyess Air Force base after he and two of his colleagues passed through the airport in Toronto, Canada, for a short period of time. They returned, became ill, and, as we said, now 11 people exhibiting mild to moderate respiratory symptoms at Dyess Air Force base.

As the testing continues -- and so far, it's negative -- Canadian officials are reacting very bluntly, very forcefully. They do not believe it is possible these people contracted SARS in Canada.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JAMES YOUNG, ONTARIO COMMISSIONER OF PUBLIC SAFETY: There are a couple of concerns. First of all, it needlessly, potentially, worries relatives and people in and around the base in Texas. It worries people in Toronto that perhaps there is SARS, when in fact there isn't. And the third concern is that this kind of story, unfortunately, has an economic impact, because people remember hearing about SARS, when in fact it turns out to be a false alarm.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STARR: But CDC officials tell us they will continue to monitor the situation to see if any of these people do test positive. Of course, that might force them to reinstate that travel warning. That's not happening yet, of course.

And here at the Pentagon, military officials are also watching it very closely to make sure they know whether or not, down the road, SARS has occurred in the U.S. military, so all of this still pending -- Jan.

HOPKINS: Barbara, turning to Iraq, there was a change of strategy for the U.S. Army in the town of Fallujah today. What happened?

STARR: Well, indeed.

Now, Fallujah, west of Baghdad, has been a trouble spot. The Iraqi police there have objected over the last several days to the U.S. military presence, saying it's putting them at risk. So, earlier today, U.S. military forces pulled out, essentially, of one Iraqi police station, at least, in Fallujah. They dramatically reduced their presence.

Now, U.S. military officials are saying all of that is in order to underscore that the Iraqis are taking more responsibility for policing in Iraqi towns like Fallujah. But, of course, it is worth remembering that it is the Iraqi police who originally asked the U.S. to leave, saying they believed the military presence was putting them at risk -- Jan. HOPKINS: And, on another issue, I understand that Spain has announced details of a contribution to the peacekeeping force in Iraq. What can you tell us about that?

STARR: Indeed, Jan.

Spain has announced it will send about 1,300 troops to Iraq. It will take them several weeks to complete that deployment, to have everyone arrive. But it's an important signal for the United States, at least, because the Bush administration had been pressing now to get a much larger contribution of forces from the allies, from other coalition members.

The U.S. would like to eventually see 30,000 non-U.S. troops participating in Iraq. They have a bit of a ways to go. But Spain is now contributing -- Jan.

HOPKINS: Thank you, Barbara Starr, at the Pentagon.

Nancy Reagan today made a surprise visit to the Navy's newest aircraft carrier, which is named in honor of her husband, former President Ronald Reagan. Mrs. Reagan was given a tour of the carrier's flight deck in a golf cart. The flight deck is nearly as long as the Empire State Building is tall.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: What was your impression as you went through the ship?

NANCY REAGAN, FORMER FIRST LADY: Oh, it's overwhelming, isn't it? It's so big.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOPKINS: The carrier will be commissioned tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. Eastern -- that's 8:00 a.m. Pacific -- at Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia. And CNN will have live coverage of that ceremony.

Coming up: murder mystery, the very latest in the hunt for the killer of two women and three children in Bakersfield, California.

And federal regulators crack down on some of the marketers who make infomercials that promise a lot, but deliver very little.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOPKINS: Enron has filed a reorganization plan that would leave its creditors with peanuts. The bankrupt energy trader owes thousands of creditors a total of $67 billion. But it has assets worth only $12 billion. That means most creditors would receive between 14 and 18 cents on every dollar that Enron owes them. Enron's reorganization plan would also split the company into two, one domestic, one international. The plan still must be approved by a bankruptcy court.

Updating our Enron corporate America criminal scoreboard, 75 executives in all of corporate America have been charged with crimes; 16 of them are from Enron. Sam Waksal is the only executive to be sent to jail. And it has been 585 days since Enron filed for bankruptcy.

Stocks closed the week with gains, thanks in part to optimistic news about corporate results. The Dow industrials rose 83 points. The Nasdaq added 18. The S&P 500 was up 9.

Christine Romans is here with more on the market -- Christine.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And, Jan, the Dow is now up nine of the past 11 weeks. So that's a decent trend.

And today, retail, financial, and biotech stocks were the big winners to end this week. Two stocks rose on the Big Board for each that fell; 69 percent of the volume was at higher prices. And 85 percent of the S&P 500 stocks are trading now above their 200-day moving average.

Home Depot jumped 2 percent after an analyst gave a bullish outlook for the shares, an upgrade also helping Intel as well. It, IBM and Microsoft all rallied today. And they all report earnings next week; 12 Dow components report next week. General Electric ended slightly lower. It tightened its earnings range for the year. And its profit fell 14 percent in its second quarter.

For the week, the Dow gained half a percent. The S&P 500 added a little more than 1 percent. And the Nasdaq jumped 4 percent. And, Jan, the focus next week will be on Mr. Greenspan's economic testimony that begins Tuesday, also on the consumer price index report. Wholesale price data today showed energy prices propping up overall prices. But the core rate fell one-tenth of 1 percent, so data, earnings, and Mr. Greenspan next week.

HOPKINS: Christine Romans, thanks.

Still to come tonight: Police still haven't made any arrests in the murders of two women and three children in Bakersfield, California, this week. We will have the latest on that investigation.

Plus: going broke in America. Rising debt and bankruptcy in this country are also hurting businesses that aren't out to make a profit. Kitty Pilgrim will have that report.

And an earth-shattering discovery thousands of light years away, scientists say that it's making them rethink much of what they know about the universe -- that and much more ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOPKINS: This news just in: The CIA director, George Tenet, says his agency made a mistake in letting President Bush say that Iraq tried to buy nuclear materials in Africa. The president made the allegation in his State of the Union speech in January. That information proved to be incorrect. Senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre will have more information on this developing story in just a moment. Police investigating the family murder in California continue to focus their attention on Vincent Brothers. They want to know where the vice principal was when his family was killed.

CNN's Miguel Marquez has the latest from Bakersfield, California.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Vincent Brothers' attorney said earlier today that Mr. Brothers would be heading back to Bakersfield, California. That appears to be the case. Mr. Brothers was seen boarding a plane in a Norfolk, Virginia, airport today, presumably heading back to California.

We're also learning some information from this search warrant affidavit about why police suspected Mr. Brothers in the first place. The affidavit places Brothers at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday, July 2. It says, the last time Brothers' wife, stepmother and three children were seen was on Sunday July 6 at church in the morning. They were found by a friend on Tuesday, July 8, dead in their Bakersfield home. And Brothers turned himself in to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, police later that day on Tuesday.

What police cannot account for, though, is where Brothers was between Thursday, July 2, and the following Tuesday, when the bodies were found. The supervising deputy coroner of Bakersfield says, they have not yet determined the time of death of the five family members. It's obviously a very important point in this case. He also says Bakersfield police have issued a gag order forbidding the coroner from releasing any information about the case.

Mr. Brothers' attorney also said earlier today that Mr. Brothers would be returning to Bakersfield as a grieving father, husband, and son-in-law. He also says that his only focus right now will be to bury his family.

In Bakersfield, California, Miguel Marquez, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOPKINS: Thank you.

In other news across America tonight: The Columbia Accident Investigation Board today released a working report on the shuttle disaster. The board said that one major piece of foam and at least two minor pieces fell off the shuttle, struck the wing, and ultimately led to its disintegration. The board hopes to complete its final report by late August.

Tropical Storm Claudette could be coming to the United States next week. Claudette is in the Gulf of Mexico tonight, where it's expected to gain strength. Earlier, the storm tossed heavy rain and strong winds at Cancun and other Mexican resorts.

They're still stacking sandbags in Indiana tonight. A week of rain forced thousands from their homes. Four people have been reported killed in accidents related to that flooding. At least 1,300 homes have been damaged.

More now on the breaking news about the CIA. The agency's director, George Tenet, has just said that the CIA made a mistake in letting President Bush say that Iraq tried to buy nuclear materials in Africa. The president made the allegation in his State of the Union speech in January. That information proved to be incorrect.

Senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre joins us live -- Jamie.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jan, this two-page statement from the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, as you said, admits that it was a mistake by the CIA to allow that language, the 16 words to be in the president's State of the Union address.

In the statement, Director Tenet says that the CIA did in fact approve the State of the Union address, that he was responsible for the approval process, even though it's not clear he saw the final draft of the speech, and that the president, at the time he delivered that speech, had every reason to believe it was accurate. Yet, he says, as he lays out the history of these events, that there was not enough evidence to say with any certainty that the intelligence was correct and, because of that, it should not have been in the speech. That, he said, was a mistake.

He said the speech was factually accurate in the sense that the British government did conclude that Iraq was aggressively seeking uranium from an African country. But that should not have been the test, he said, for clearing a presidential address. It did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required. And the CIA, he said, should have ensured that that language was removed, in other words, that they should have been more proactive.

Now, Director Tenet was praised today by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, who called him a terrific director of Central Intelligence, said that he had served everyone very, very well. According to a CIA spokesman, George Tenet has made no consideration of resigning or stepping down, nor has anyone asked or suggested that course of action -- Jan.

HOPKINS: Any apology?

MCINTYRE: Well, I think you can read this as a concession that the CIA made a mistake in not being more proactive and that, essentially, they're taking the blame for the president having had those statements in there. So, I think, if you want to read it as an apology, you could read it that way. The words "I'm sorry" or "I apologize" are not in the statement.

HOPKINS: Thanks very much, Jamie McIntyre, at the Pentagon.

Coming up: what could be one of the oldest planets in the universe. Space expert Michael Shara will tell us why this amazing discovery is so significant. And rock on: Aged rockers are pulling in much bigger audiences than pop stars young enough to be their children. Christopher John Farley of "TIME" magazine will tell us why.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOPKINS: Tonight, in our series of special reports, "Going Broke in America," we focus on nonprofit organizations. Severe budget cuts are forcing many nonprofits to fold. And others are barely scraping by.

Kitty Pilgrim has our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Glenn (ph) is 3. He lives in a shelter for homeless families. Glenn and his mother, Chantey (ph), are typical. Most of the 40 children here have single moms and were homeless. Some parents living in the Thorpe Family Residence have been released from prison or are recovering from drug addictions. In a tough neighborhood in the Bronx, they are grateful to have a place to live.

SISTER BARBARA LENNIGER, THORPE FAMILY RESIDENCE: Thanks very much.

PILGRIM: Sister Barbara Lenniger, who runs the facility, is under a severe budget squeeze these days, reduced funding from the city and state, higher insurance costs, and fewer donations. The shelter distributes clothing and food, but they often run out.

LENNIGER: To threaten us with more cuts is devastating. Right now, we're looking at our budgets and saying, we may have to cut services, we may have to cut back on staffing. That's an immediate concern. Plus, we have the long-range concern down the road of continuing the program without sufficient funds.

PILGRIM: A lot of nonprofits may not be going broke, but many are wondering how long it will be before they do.

TRENT STAMP, CHARITY NAVIGATOR ORG.: Last year we saw that the human service organizations like homeless shelters, soup kitchens, women's crisis centers, those types of things, they were the ones that were hurt the hardest in 2002. Their giving actually declined around 11 percent.

PILGRIM: Other non-profits have also been hit, libraries, zoos, museums. Cutting back on hours or closing a few days a week, canceling exhibitions, cutting staff and services. Many symphonies are going broke, as states have slashed their arts budgets and donations have dried up. The Miami Philharmonic, Colorado Springs Symphony, and the San Antonio Symphony all filed for chapter 11. Michael Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center, is the master of the non-profit turnaround, saving such institutions as Alvin Ailey Dance Company and American Ballet Theater. He says don't cut back, instead boost marketing to lure that discretionary dollar. MICHAEL KAISER, PRESIDENT OF THE KENNEDY CENTER: Typically arts organizations, particularly their boards, get very conservative in an economic downturn and they believe if they really cut back they'll save their way to health. But because the arts are really an ephemeral product and they really require a great deal of excitement on the part of the audience and the donors that's exactly the wrong way to proceed.

PILGRIM: Sister Barbara Lenniger is trying that approach, boosting the profile of her organization, trying to lure more donations, and for her it's not art, it's life.

SISTER BARBARA LINNIGER: Just give me two $50,000 grants a year and I can do it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PILGRIM: Now, the number of non-profit organizations has been growing steadily, about 5 percent last year. And that makes the situation even tougher because more institutions are competing for a smaller amount of money -- Jan?

HOPKINS: Thanks, Kitty.

California state budget cuts are hurting the San Diego Community College district. Many programs and services have been slashed, staffing has been cut, thousands of students will be denied admission. Augustine Gallego is the chancellor of the San Diego Community College district. He joins us now from San Diego. Have you ever seen it this bad?

AUGUSTINE GALLEGO, CHANCELLOR, SAN DIEGO COMMUNITY COLLEGE: No, I have never seen it this bad. In my almost 34 years of higher education experiences here in California I have never seen a budget reduction that we are faced with or a budget that faces a $38 billion shortfall statewide. This is the first time that I've ever seen anything as massive as this.

HOPKINS: So in terms of your students, how many are you going to have to turn away?

GALLEGO: Well, given the -- what we are anticipating as our budget for 2003-2004, we have planned in eliminating approximately 6,000 students or so. We will be denying them admissions. And by reducing the numbers of class sections that we offer.

HOPKINS: You are a past president of some national organizations. What do your colleagues around the country say about what they're dealing with?

GALLEGO: Well, I had the opportunity to serve as chair of the American Association of Community Colleges, which represent about 1200 community colleges in the country and also served and currently serve as the immediate past chair of the American Council on Education. So I have a very good idea as to what is happening nationwide. Let me reflect on the community college environment. There are 47 states that are currently facing a budget deficit. Many of my peers with whom I have spoken here in the western states, Washington and Oregon and certainly in California and Texas, they are faced with budget reductions and they are also planning on doing several things. One, reducing their programs and services and in many cases increasing the student tuition.

HOPKINS: Now, the other thing is that in times when the economy is not doing well you tend to get more students. Is that right?

GALLEGO: Well, that is a dilemma, Jan. What we are -- for example, in the fall of 2002 for this current academic year we provided instructional opportunities for over 2,500 full-time equivalent students, for which we received no funding.

We are experiencing a lot of student growth in community colleges, certainly here in san diego. And the dilemma is as we are growing we are seeing a significant decrease in funding. And it is unfortunate that we will not be able to meet the growing demand.

HOPKINS: Thanks very much. The Chancellor of San Diego Community College, Augustine Gallego.

And now our poll question tonight. Which story held your interest the most this week? Questions about weapons of mass destruction, President Bush in Africa, U.S. troops under fire in Iraq, the sausage knockdown? You can vote on our Web site, CNN.com/lou. We'll share early results later in the program.

And now the results of our poll question last night. We asked, what should Randall Simon's punishment be for hitting the human sausage? 25 percent of you said jail time, 27 percent said suspension, 19 percent said a fine, 29 percent said that Simon should have to work in a sausage factory.

And now a follow-up to that story. Mandy Block is a sausage again. She's back at work in Milwaukee tonight. Mandy says that she finds the whole controversy kind of funny and ridiculous.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANDY BLOCK, SAUSAGE VICTIM: It wasn't that big of a blow. It just -- I think just because I'm so small and it's such a big costume that I tumbled. And the reason I couldn't get up right away is because I couldn't get up. I wasn't like hurt so bad. I just couldn't get up. And luckily someone helped me up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOPKINS: Randall Simon apologized to Mandy by phone today. He also autographed and gave her the bat that he hit her with.

And now tonight's thought on the true measure of success, "Success is how high you bounce, when you hit bottom." That's from General George S. Patton.

The search for this weeks CEO took us to Latham, New York where we found a small company well known in technology circles but little known as a publicly traded stock. Glenn Epstein from Intermagnetics is our "CEO of the Week".

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HOPKINS (voice-over): Intermagnetics makes magnets so powerful they provide a look inside your body when you have an MRI.

GLENN EPSTEIN, CEO INTERMAGNETICS TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION: This is the core of what Intermagnetics Technology is all about, is taking superconductors and winding them into these very high field magnets. So we see here in the factory is one of the world's unique production operations.

HOPKINS: Intermagnetics is one of only three companies in the world that make MRI magnets. Sales of the machines total about $3 billion a year.

EPSTEIN: That market has grown fairly consistently at about the 10 percent rate for many, many years.

HOPKINS: That consistent growth has resulted in four years of record earnings and revenues for Intermagnetics and a balance sheet with no debt and $80 million in cash. Epstein prides himself on Intermagnetics' standards of corporate governance.

EPSTEIN: We'll take scrutiny by anybody, anytime, anywhere. We are very proactive in our disclosures, what's going on with the company technically, financially, what happens with executives when they receive equity, when they sell equity. All of it's in a very proactive stance.

We just went with restricted stock, which by definition is expensed. And by saying it was performance-based, that management wins if the shareholders win. And that's a healthy -- that's a healthy balance.

HOPKINS: Intermagnetics' future might have a twist. Today the Department of Energy awarded intermagnetics a $13 million contract for a project in Albany in New York involving power transmission using superconductors. Without tearing up the nation's roadways and highways the new lines would replace existing infrastructure that's 30 to 50 years old.

EPSTEIN: It's withdrawing the old copper and oil-filled cables and putting in supercooled, superconducting lines but at a ratio of about one to two lines per four to five lines of existing copper. So not only can we use the existing space, we can still have reserve space for future expansion.

HOPKINS: This new way of transmitting and distributing power is a revolution similar to fiberoptic data transmission in the computer industry.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOPKINS: Glenn Epstein of Intermagnetics, our "CEO of the Week." Congratulations to you.

Still to come tonight -- the FTC is taking action against infomercials that make promises and don't deliver. Bill Tucker will have our report.

Plus, how some of the oldest acts in rock and roll are finding new life on the concert stage. "Time" magazine's senior editor and music guru, Christopher John Farley, will be our guest.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOPKINS: In news around the world tonight, the bodies of the conjoined twins who died this week during an attempt to separate them are back home in Iran tonight. Hundreds of mourners were on hand when their separate caskets arrived. The twins will be buried tomorrow.

A rare great white whale has returned to Australian waters. The albino humpback was first spotted there a decade ago. But he's been absent for three years. The whale marked his return with an -- a great show for spectators.

And a classic car is coming to the end of its long road. Production of the old style Volkswagen beetle is ending this summer. Volkswagen marked the occasion with a ceremony at a Mexican factory in Puebla. That VW factory in Mexico is the last one in the world to make the old bug.

Astronomers have discovered a new planet and say it is the oldest known planet in the universe. The planet is nearly 13 billion years old, three times as old as Earth, and nearly as old as the universe itself. Based on measurements taken by the Hubble telescope, scientists were able to determine the mass and other properties of that planet. For more on this amazing discovery, we're joined by Michael Shara. He is the curator of astrophysics at the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the Museum of Natural History here in New York City. Michael, how significant is this discovery?

MICHAEL SHARA, CURATOR OF ASTROPHYSICS, ROSE CENTER FOR EARTH AND SPACE: Extremely significant. We had really never had any evidence of planets being older than Earth, and astronomers seriously doubted that planets could get born in the first couple of billion year history of the universe until lots of heavy elements, silicon, magnesium and iron, got cooked up inside the interiors of stars and then expelled into the interstellar medium.

But today with this announcement in "Science," it's abundantly clear to everyone in the astronomical community that nature at least has figured out a way of making Jupiter-like planets in less than a billion years after the universe was born.

HOPKINS: It's actually bigger than Jupiter. Jupiter's behind you, right? Over your head.

SHARA: Well, that's actually a model of Jupiter, but yes. The object we have here is about twice, perhaps 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter. It's probably 15, 20, 30 percent bigger than Jupiter. HOPKINS: So does this mean that you have to kind of go back to the drawing board and rethink everything?

SHARA: We don't really understand in a lot of detail, in fact even in some detail, the mechanisms that create planets. There are some beautiful models that have been proposed by theorists in the last decade or so, some involving dust to cool off the stuff left around stars after they form and let planets begin to agglomerate. Others having whirlpools and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and hydrodynamics instabilities. But neither one of these two models is really very effective at giving us the details of how planets form, and certainly neither one of these two models is very good at making the kind of planet that's been announced today.

HOPKINS: How was this planet found?

SHARA: There is a pulsar, a pulsing neutron star in this very ancient globular cluster that was discovered about a decade ago, and this pulsar alternately moves towards and away from us. It's orbited by another dead star, and orbited by yet a third body. The discovery just now, or the announcement of the discovery of that second dead star, or white dwarf, and its characterization by the team that announced their results in "Science" finally allowed us to pin down its mass and thereby deduce the mass of the planet and show that it was two Jupiters.

HOPKINS: So we haven't seen it? There are no pictures or anything?

SHARA: No direct images of this thing. It's going to be extraordinarily faint. And it's sitting next to two objects that are much brighter than it is. It's well beyond any technology we have today, even with the Hubble telescope, to directly image it.

HOPKINS: Any chance that there's life on this planet?

SHARA: If there is life on Jupiter, for example, then perhaps on this planet. But it's probably a gas giant, a hydrogen-helium planet, with very, very crushing atmosphere, probably no solid surface.

Now, it is possible that there are oceans, maybe oceans of hydrogen, methane and ammonia. If so, there might be great fishing on the planet. But I don't think that this is the best place to go look for life outside of our solar system.

HOPKINS: Thanks for joining us. Michael Shara of the American Museum of Natural History Planetarium, the Rose Planetarium.

Now a reminder to vote in our poll question tonight. We're asking, which story held your interest the most this week? Questions about weapons of mass destruction? President Bush in Africa? U.S. troops under fire in Iraq? The sausage knockdown? You can vote on our Web site, cnn.com/lou. We'll share the early results later in the show.

You viewers of late-night television are very familiar with infomercials, perhaps too familiar. Infomercials were those endless pitches for products that often seemed to promise far more than they deliver. Now the Federal Trade Commission has taken action against several marketers for making false and unsubstantiated promises. Bill Tucker has that report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Herbal breast enhancement tablet that will increase your bustline by...

BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We all watch them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is snoring keep you up at night?

TUCKER: We all wonder if they work. And the dirty little secret is a lot of us buy them. We buy more than $14 billion worth of products shown on those half-hour infomercials, and nearly $86 billion from the shorter-form ads, according to the infomercial trade group the Electronic Retailing Association. Fitness and personal care products top the list.

Getting a cut of that revenue are the TV stations and cable networks that run the ads, the vast majority of which are legitimate products. The Federal Trade Commission's advice is simple and age old.

HEATHER HIPPSLEY, FTC: Listen to the claims that are being made. Really, the old adage still is if it's too good to be true, it's probably not true. And that particularly goes for miraculous health claims. If these products actually worked the way they were claimed to, you wouldn't be hearing it first on a TV commercial.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stimulate sexual energy by...

TUCKER: Since December, the FTC has filed claims attacking over $1 billion in health marketing. Until now, infomercials have escaped the rules which govern traditional advertising.

DONNY DEUTSCH, DEUTSCH, INC.: Interestingly enough, classic advertising, 30-second product advertising, goes through a very strict litmus test in terms of through the network clearance people and whatnot, testing every claim. Yet these long form commercials somehow fly under the radar and don't go through the same scrutiny. I think you're going to see that start to change a bit.

TUCKER: We can expect to see those changes soon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCKER: Since September, the Electronic Retailing Association says it will unveil a set of self-regulatory rules for the industry, complete with independent reviews of claims and an enforcement division which will work closely with the Federal Trade Commission -- Jan.

HOPKINS: That's progress. TUCKER: It is. Small steps.

HOPKINS: Still to come -- a pair of stories for the ages. Some of the hottest summer concerts this year feature musicians in their 50s. Christopher John Farley of "Time" magazine tells us why.

And a pair of old salts take on Mother Nature in a century-old battle on Lake Michigan. That story and more still ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOPKINS: Concert attendance has jumped by 24 percent this year, but it's not the Britneys or the Christinas that are drawing the crowds. It's the older acts. Elton John, Billy Joel, the Rolling Stones, the Dixie Chicks and Cher have pulled in a combined $190 million on the road this year. Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Bon Jovi, and country acts Tim Mcgraw and Kenny Chesney continue to pull in fans as well. Christopher John Farley of "Time" magazine calls it the summer of musical memories. So is that it? Are people coming out because it's the acts that they want to see? Or what's happening?

CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Well, people tend to want to go to concerts with people who have a library of songs. If someone just has one album out there, that album is going to last 60 minutes, it's tough for them to flesh out an entire concert. But some of these older acts are able to draw the fans because the fans know they'll hear a lot of hits. I also think the baby boomers don't just go to these concerts to sort of relive their youth, they go to sort of prove they're still living. I mean, if Bruce Springsteen can put on a three, four-hour act and still look good and still get people roaring, that shows there's some life in people who are 40 and 50 yet.

HOPKINS: Also, the tickets are very expensive for these acts, and kids have a hard time paying over $100 for a ticket, don't they?

FARLEY: Yes. For like Paul McCartney, for instance, when he did his swing through North America, some of his tickets were north of $100. And that's not the kind of money you can really raise just having a paper route. You really have to have a real job and some, you know, 401(k) stuff you can cash in to pay for that kind of a ticket.

HOPKINS: It's interesting, though, because record sales, cd sales are down, and yet concert attendance is up. How do you explain that?

FARLEY: Well, there are two reasons. I mean, concert sales are up -- ticket sales for the first half of this year are up 24 percent over last year because last year was a really bad year. It was following up on, you know the tragedy of September 11. People weren't going out to concerts in the numbers that perhaps one might have expected. And so now we're having a big balance over a bad year.

And I think the other reason is that there are some acts out there that are draws. The Elton John-Billy Joel ticket was an attractive ticket for a lot of people, sort of an inventive pairing. And inventive pairings with acts that have a fan base are going to draw the crowds.

HOPKINS: Well, and that's happening with other than baby boomer acts too, right? The pairings of artists.

FARLEY: Well, yes, of course a lot of these alternative rock bands have become sort of the baby boomer acts of their generations. People know they have a library of songs. They go out to see them. So Dave Matthews, Pearl Jam, they're both on the road. Radiohead's on the road. Later in the year we'll see R.E.M. hit the road. And the all draw fans because they have a library of songs, they have loyal acts, whether or not they have hot new albums on the charts, no one cares. They know they have a lot of great hits in their duffel bags.

HOPKINS: Well and in the case of Cher it's supposedly her last tour. I mean, is this part of the interest in these older acts, that maybe it's the last time you're going to see them?

FARLEY: It never hurts to say it's your last tour. The Rolling Stones always kind of hint maybe this is the last time. It gets people out to see you because they think maybe this is the last time, maybe this t-shirt will be worth something, this tour t-shirt will be worth something in the future. So when you hint that it's your last, hint that maybe you might not come back, people will see you.

HOPKINS: And the rain in the -- you know, the early part of this summer, did that put a damper at all on any of the attendance?

FARLEY: You know, it's hard to say whether the rain had an effect. I do think technology has an effect. You know, a lot of people in the industry think that downloading is actually hurting record sales. But I actually think it's helping concert tickets because it's creating more excitement about live music. If you go on the Internet you can find all sorts of live tracks that are being traded, that are being downloaded. In the past the only way you could hear a band live is if they came through your town or if they released a live record album or maybe if they appeared on some TV show that you liked.

Now you can hear live tracks all the time almost any acts' live tracks are available for downloading. It gets people excited just like the way they were excited about their Grateful Dead when they used to allow people to tape their music for free.

HOPKINS: Thanks very much. Christopher John Farley of "Time" magazine.

FARLEY: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

HOPKINS: Tonight's quote comes from Capitol Hill. One senator suggested that this is a solution to the controversy surrounding the president's State of the Union Address, quote Find out who's responsible for it and fire them." That is from senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.

Well no, one has been fired yet, but CIA Director George Tenet tonight said the agency made a mistake in allowing the president to use false intelligence in his speech.

Coming up next, the results of tonight's poll and the old man and the lake. A story of sailors who've been battling nature for nearly a century.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOPKINS: Now the preliminary results of our poll question tonight. We asked, which story hell your interest the most this week? Almost two thirds of you said questions about weapons of mass destruction.

Finally tonight, the 333-mile Chicago to Mackinaw Island race begins this weekend on lake Michigan. The race is over a century old, and it's open to yachtsmen of all ages. But as Keith Oppenheim reports, there are a couple of sailors this year who are defying the odds.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL STEIN, 94-YEAR-OLD SAILOR: I owe a lot of this to my parents because I've got good genes.

KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ever the modest gentleman, Karl Stein is at ease behind the helm.

STEIN: In the beginning it was all dead reckoning.

OPPENHEIM: Over the course of half a century Karl Stein has been in 29 Mackinak races, a journey that sends 300 boats up lake Michigan and requires lots of endurance. At 94 years of age, that's right 94, Karl Stein says what he lacks in strength he makes up for in wits.

STEIN: I seem to come to life when the weather gets nasty.

OPPENHEIM: In fact, three times Karl has crewed on boats that won this race overall. But he is by comparison inexperienced as some who have done this course a lot more like one guy who's nearly 20 years his junior, and this year will have completed 50 races.

GENE MCCARTHY, SAILOR: North Charlie 10, please.

OPPENHEIM: His name is Gene McCarthy, who at age 75 can say he's medaled in the Mac 15 times.

MCCARTHY: You get thunderstorms and line squalls and all sorts of vicious stuff because people who are experienced know how to handle that and they keep going forward.

OPPENHEIM: And it appears going forward is the very spirit of these senior sailors, who as old men of the sea have high aspirations on this very big lake.

STEIN: There's nothing like sailing.

OPPENHEIM: Keith Oppenheim, CNN, Chicago. (END VIDEOTAPE)

HOPKINS: Good luck to them.

That's our show tonight. Thanks for joining us. Have a great weekend. For all of us here, good night from New York.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com





Gaffe>


Aired July 11, 2003 - 18:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: This is LOU DOBBS TONIGHT for Friday, July 11. Sitting in for Lou Dobbs, Jan Hopkins.
JAN HOPKINS, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, everyone.

Tonight: damage control and finger-pointing by the White House in the controversy over the president's use of false information, false intelligence in his State of the Union address. The president said that U.S. intelligence services cleared his statement that Iraq tried to buy nuclear materials in Africa. His national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, went further. She said the CIA approved the specific wording of the president's speech.

White House correspondent Susanne Malveaux is traveling with the president in Africa and reports tonight from Entebbe, Uganda.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Bush insisted he did not intentionally mislead the American people in making his case for going to war.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services. And it was a speech that detailed to the American people the dangers posed by the Saddam Hussein regime. And my government took the appropriate response to those dangers.

MALVEAUX: Throughout his Africa trip, the president has been dogged by claims he made in his State of the Union address that Iraq tried to get uranium from Africa, an argument used to support the case that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop a nuclear weapons program, justifying the U.S. going to war.

Intelligence officials have since admitted that at least one report that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Niger was false. But Mr. Bush stands by his speech. Earlier, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, traveling with the president, said the CIA cleared the address and that the administration followed the CIA's recommendations to take out the specific reference to Niger.

The administration replaced with the broader claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. Dr. Rice said that line was approved. And she added, "The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety. If the director of Central Intelligence had said, 'Take this out of the speech,' then it would have been done." But Secretary of State Colin Powell, seven days after the president's address, did not include the Iraq uranium claim in his presentation before the United Nations because the State Department's own intelligence arm found it dubious.

But Thursday, Powell played down the difference.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: You have to make judgments. And at the time of the president's State of the Union address, a judgment was made that that was an appropriate statement for the president to make. There was no effort or attempt on the part of the president or anyone else in the administration to mislead or to deceive the American people.

MALVEAUX (on camera): The Bush administration insists that it's confident in the intelligence it receives, but a senior administration official did acknowledge that the vetting process, determining what gets in the State of the Union, has to be tightened.

Suzanne Malveaux, CNN, Entebbe, Uganda.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOPKINS: The controversy over the president's use of false intelligence crossed from Africa to Capitol Hill today. Democratic presidential candidates demanded answers, saying there should be an investigation. Tonight, a leading Republican senator also weighed in to the debate.

Jonathan Karl joins us live from Capitol Hill -- Jonathan.

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Jan, that leading Republican senator is Senator Pat Roberts, who is the chairman, the Republican chairman, of the Intelligence Committee in the Senate. He put the blame on this whole situation squarely on the shoulders of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George Tenet.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. PAT ROBERTS (R), KANSAS: If the CIA had changed its position, it was incumbent on the director of Central Intelligence to correct that record and certainly bring it to the immediate attention of the president. It appears that he did not. The director of Central Intelligence is the principal adviser to the president on intelligence matters. He should have told the president. He failed. He failed to do so.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: Now, closed-door investigations on the Intelligence Committee are under way now, investigations into the general question of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. CNN has learned that, next week, George Tenet himself is expected to appear before that committee to face some very tough questions from Republicans, as well as Democrats on the committee.

Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidates are hitting the president hard on this, saying the blame doesn't necessarily lie with the Central Intelligence Agency. It lies with the president himself.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOWARD DEAN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is beginning to sound a little like Watergate. They start throwing people over the side, but the deeper you go, the more interesting it will be. It's very clear that it may be George Tenet's responsibility, but that information also existed in the State Department. It also existed in the vice president's office. So they will not get away with simply throwing George Tenet over the side.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: As for this question of open investigations, the chairman of that Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, says that his committee will hold public hearings on the intelligence issue, generally, including very much this question of the president's State of the Union address, beginning in September.

That is not enough to satisfy many of the critics here. Howard Dean, who you just saw there, Democratic presidential candidate, says there needs to be an investigation. It is an independent investigation, not one conducted by a Republican-controlled committee -- Jan.

HOPKINS: George Tenet does seem to be in the hot seat at this point, though, yes?

KARL: He absolutely is. You do not hear anybody yet calling for his resignation up here, but, clearly, Republicans especially are placing a lot of blame directly on George Tenet. And you can imagine that he will be facing some incredibly intense questions at that closed-door hearing next week.

HOPKINS: Thanks, Jonathan Karl on Capitol Hill.

President Bush did not allow the intelligence controversy to distract him from his tour of Africa today. His first stop was Uganda, where he praised the government's prevention and treatment program for HIV/AIDS. Later, he arrived in Nigeria, a major oil exporter to the United States.

Jeff Koinange joins us now from the Nigerian capital -- Jeff.

JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jan.

And I can tell you that the leader of the world's most powerful nation landed in Africa's most populous nation a little over four hours ago. He and Mrs. Bush were met on the tarmac by host President Olusegun Obasanjo, his wife, some officials. And after the usual ceremony under very tight security, the Bushes got into their motorcade and headed down a highway known as Bill Clinton Drive, the 25-mile into the city.

Now, there's a very light schedule tonight, nothing official. The Bushes were meeting with embassy officials, because tomorrow morning is a very busy day for them, starting with a visit to an AIDS clinic. As you know, Jan, AIDS has been very high on Mr. Bush's agenda throughout his five-nation, five-day trip to Africa. And, in fact, earlier Friday, he got a chance to speak to some folks in Uganda about the AIDS situation there and how that country has managed to actually reverse the spread of the deadly disease.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: President Museveni in Uganda pursued a direct and comprehensive anti-AIDS strategy. He emphasized abstinence in marital fidelity, as well as condoms, to prevent HIV transmissions. They developed a strategy. They're implementing the strategy for the whole world to see. And the results have been magnificent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOINANGE: I can tell you, Jan, that AIDS is not the only problem facing Nigeria. There are other major challenges.

For instance, Nigeria has managed to accumulate a foreign debt of some $26 billion. In fact, Nigeria is still the world's sixth largest producer of crude oil and the world's eighth largest exporter. But it's relied so heavily on oil and oil products, making over 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings, that it hasn't had time to diversify in the four decades since independence.

They're going to have to look to Mr. Bush to see what the U.S., what the West can do to help them diversify into everything from agriculture to textiles and try and also get some debt relief. That $26 billion really sucks up a lot of the budget, Jan.

HOPKINS: Thanks, Jeff Koinange, in Nigeria.

An astonishing security breach during the president's trip today. The man was arrested in Uganda after he stowed away on a Boeing 747 carrying members of the White House press corps, White House staff, and members of the Secret Service. He flew to Uganda after boarding the aircraft in South Africa. Officials said that the man carried no weapons and was never a threat to the president.

Here in this country, a disturbing story tonight from an Air Force base in Texas: Nine people associated with that base have been quarantined, suspected of having the SARS virus.

Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr joins us now with the very latest on this developing story -- Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jan, we have just received word from Dyess Air Force base that count of nine people has now gone up to 11, two more people reporting to the clinic today apparently with respiratory symptoms.

Now, this is all taking place at Dyess Air Force Base in Texas. Officials are emphasizing, this quarantine of these 11 people is a public health precaution, so far, no confirmed indication that any of these people do have SARS. They are being tested, at least eight people. The preliminary tests show they do not have it. But in order to rule it out, under CDC guidelines, they will continue to be watched for the next several days.

All of this began several days ago, when an airman, a U.S. Air Force airman, returned to Dyess Air Force base after he and two of his colleagues passed through the airport in Toronto, Canada, for a short period of time. They returned, became ill, and, as we said, now 11 people exhibiting mild to moderate respiratory symptoms at Dyess Air Force base.

As the testing continues -- and so far, it's negative -- Canadian officials are reacting very bluntly, very forcefully. They do not believe it is possible these people contracted SARS in Canada.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JAMES YOUNG, ONTARIO COMMISSIONER OF PUBLIC SAFETY: There are a couple of concerns. First of all, it needlessly, potentially, worries relatives and people in and around the base in Texas. It worries people in Toronto that perhaps there is SARS, when in fact there isn't. And the third concern is that this kind of story, unfortunately, has an economic impact, because people remember hearing about SARS, when in fact it turns out to be a false alarm.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STARR: But CDC officials tell us they will continue to monitor the situation to see if any of these people do test positive. Of course, that might force them to reinstate that travel warning. That's not happening yet, of course.

And here at the Pentagon, military officials are also watching it very closely to make sure they know whether or not, down the road, SARS has occurred in the U.S. military, so all of this still pending -- Jan.

HOPKINS: Barbara, turning to Iraq, there was a change of strategy for the U.S. Army in the town of Fallujah today. What happened?

STARR: Well, indeed.

Now, Fallujah, west of Baghdad, has been a trouble spot. The Iraqi police there have objected over the last several days to the U.S. military presence, saying it's putting them at risk. So, earlier today, U.S. military forces pulled out, essentially, of one Iraqi police station, at least, in Fallujah. They dramatically reduced their presence.

Now, U.S. military officials are saying all of that is in order to underscore that the Iraqis are taking more responsibility for policing in Iraqi towns like Fallujah. But, of course, it is worth remembering that it is the Iraqi police who originally asked the U.S. to leave, saying they believed the military presence was putting them at risk -- Jan. HOPKINS: And, on another issue, I understand that Spain has announced details of a contribution to the peacekeeping force in Iraq. What can you tell us about that?

STARR: Indeed, Jan.

Spain has announced it will send about 1,300 troops to Iraq. It will take them several weeks to complete that deployment, to have everyone arrive. But it's an important signal for the United States, at least, because the Bush administration had been pressing now to get a much larger contribution of forces from the allies, from other coalition members.

The U.S. would like to eventually see 30,000 non-U.S. troops participating in Iraq. They have a bit of a ways to go. But Spain is now contributing -- Jan.

HOPKINS: Thank you, Barbara Starr, at the Pentagon.

Nancy Reagan today made a surprise visit to the Navy's newest aircraft carrier, which is named in honor of her husband, former President Ronald Reagan. Mrs. Reagan was given a tour of the carrier's flight deck in a golf cart. The flight deck is nearly as long as the Empire State Building is tall.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: What was your impression as you went through the ship?

NANCY REAGAN, FORMER FIRST LADY: Oh, it's overwhelming, isn't it? It's so big.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOPKINS: The carrier will be commissioned tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. Eastern -- that's 8:00 a.m. Pacific -- at Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia. And CNN will have live coverage of that ceremony.

Coming up: murder mystery, the very latest in the hunt for the killer of two women and three children in Bakersfield, California.

And federal regulators crack down on some of the marketers who make infomercials that promise a lot, but deliver very little.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOPKINS: Enron has filed a reorganization plan that would leave its creditors with peanuts. The bankrupt energy trader owes thousands of creditors a total of $67 billion. But it has assets worth only $12 billion. That means most creditors would receive between 14 and 18 cents on every dollar that Enron owes them. Enron's reorganization plan would also split the company into two, one domestic, one international. The plan still must be approved by a bankruptcy court.

Updating our Enron corporate America criminal scoreboard, 75 executives in all of corporate America have been charged with crimes; 16 of them are from Enron. Sam Waksal is the only executive to be sent to jail. And it has been 585 days since Enron filed for bankruptcy.

Stocks closed the week with gains, thanks in part to optimistic news about corporate results. The Dow industrials rose 83 points. The Nasdaq added 18. The S&P 500 was up 9.

Christine Romans is here with more on the market -- Christine.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And, Jan, the Dow is now up nine of the past 11 weeks. So that's a decent trend.

And today, retail, financial, and biotech stocks were the big winners to end this week. Two stocks rose on the Big Board for each that fell; 69 percent of the volume was at higher prices. And 85 percent of the S&P 500 stocks are trading now above their 200-day moving average.

Home Depot jumped 2 percent after an analyst gave a bullish outlook for the shares, an upgrade also helping Intel as well. It, IBM and Microsoft all rallied today. And they all report earnings next week; 12 Dow components report next week. General Electric ended slightly lower. It tightened its earnings range for the year. And its profit fell 14 percent in its second quarter.

For the week, the Dow gained half a percent. The S&P 500 added a little more than 1 percent. And the Nasdaq jumped 4 percent. And, Jan, the focus next week will be on Mr. Greenspan's economic testimony that begins Tuesday, also on the consumer price index report. Wholesale price data today showed energy prices propping up overall prices. But the core rate fell one-tenth of 1 percent, so data, earnings, and Mr. Greenspan next week.

HOPKINS: Christine Romans, thanks.

Still to come tonight: Police still haven't made any arrests in the murders of two women and three children in Bakersfield, California, this week. We will have the latest on that investigation.

Plus: going broke in America. Rising debt and bankruptcy in this country are also hurting businesses that aren't out to make a profit. Kitty Pilgrim will have that report.

And an earth-shattering discovery thousands of light years away, scientists say that it's making them rethink much of what they know about the universe -- that and much more ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOPKINS: This news just in: The CIA director, George Tenet, says his agency made a mistake in letting President Bush say that Iraq tried to buy nuclear materials in Africa. The president made the allegation in his State of the Union speech in January. That information proved to be incorrect. Senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre will have more information on this developing story in just a moment. Police investigating the family murder in California continue to focus their attention on Vincent Brothers. They want to know where the vice principal was when his family was killed.

CNN's Miguel Marquez has the latest from Bakersfield, California.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Vincent Brothers' attorney said earlier today that Mr. Brothers would be heading back to Bakersfield, California. That appears to be the case. Mr. Brothers was seen boarding a plane in a Norfolk, Virginia, airport today, presumably heading back to California.

We're also learning some information from this search warrant affidavit about why police suspected Mr. Brothers in the first place. The affidavit places Brothers at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday, July 2. It says, the last time Brothers' wife, stepmother and three children were seen was on Sunday July 6 at church in the morning. They were found by a friend on Tuesday, July 8, dead in their Bakersfield home. And Brothers turned himself in to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, police later that day on Tuesday.

What police cannot account for, though, is where Brothers was between Thursday, July 2, and the following Tuesday, when the bodies were found. The supervising deputy coroner of Bakersfield says, they have not yet determined the time of death of the five family members. It's obviously a very important point in this case. He also says Bakersfield police have issued a gag order forbidding the coroner from releasing any information about the case.

Mr. Brothers' attorney also said earlier today that Mr. Brothers would be returning to Bakersfield as a grieving father, husband, and son-in-law. He also says that his only focus right now will be to bury his family.

In Bakersfield, California, Miguel Marquez, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOPKINS: Thank you.

In other news across America tonight: The Columbia Accident Investigation Board today released a working report on the shuttle disaster. The board said that one major piece of foam and at least two minor pieces fell off the shuttle, struck the wing, and ultimately led to its disintegration. The board hopes to complete its final report by late August.

Tropical Storm Claudette could be coming to the United States next week. Claudette is in the Gulf of Mexico tonight, where it's expected to gain strength. Earlier, the storm tossed heavy rain and strong winds at Cancun and other Mexican resorts.

They're still stacking sandbags in Indiana tonight. A week of rain forced thousands from their homes. Four people have been reported killed in accidents related to that flooding. At least 1,300 homes have been damaged.

More now on the breaking news about the CIA. The agency's director, George Tenet, has just said that the CIA made a mistake in letting President Bush say that Iraq tried to buy nuclear materials in Africa. The president made the allegation in his State of the Union speech in January. That information proved to be incorrect.

Senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre joins us live -- Jamie.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jan, this two-page statement from the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, as you said, admits that it was a mistake by the CIA to allow that language, the 16 words to be in the president's State of the Union address.

In the statement, Director Tenet says that the CIA did in fact approve the State of the Union address, that he was responsible for the approval process, even though it's not clear he saw the final draft of the speech, and that the president, at the time he delivered that speech, had every reason to believe it was accurate. Yet, he says, as he lays out the history of these events, that there was not enough evidence to say with any certainty that the intelligence was correct and, because of that, it should not have been in the speech. That, he said, was a mistake.

He said the speech was factually accurate in the sense that the British government did conclude that Iraq was aggressively seeking uranium from an African country. But that should not have been the test, he said, for clearing a presidential address. It did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required. And the CIA, he said, should have ensured that that language was removed, in other words, that they should have been more proactive.

Now, Director Tenet was praised today by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, who called him a terrific director of Central Intelligence, said that he had served everyone very, very well. According to a CIA spokesman, George Tenet has made no consideration of resigning or stepping down, nor has anyone asked or suggested that course of action -- Jan.

HOPKINS: Any apology?

MCINTYRE: Well, I think you can read this as a concession that the CIA made a mistake in not being more proactive and that, essentially, they're taking the blame for the president having had those statements in there. So, I think, if you want to read it as an apology, you could read it that way. The words "I'm sorry" or "I apologize" are not in the statement.

HOPKINS: Thanks very much, Jamie McIntyre, at the Pentagon.

Coming up: what could be one of the oldest planets in the universe. Space expert Michael Shara will tell us why this amazing discovery is so significant. And rock on: Aged rockers are pulling in much bigger audiences than pop stars young enough to be their children. Christopher John Farley of "TIME" magazine will tell us why.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOPKINS: Tonight, in our series of special reports, "Going Broke in America," we focus on nonprofit organizations. Severe budget cuts are forcing many nonprofits to fold. And others are barely scraping by.

Kitty Pilgrim has our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Glenn (ph) is 3. He lives in a shelter for homeless families. Glenn and his mother, Chantey (ph), are typical. Most of the 40 children here have single moms and were homeless. Some parents living in the Thorpe Family Residence have been released from prison or are recovering from drug addictions. In a tough neighborhood in the Bronx, they are grateful to have a place to live.

SISTER BARBARA LENNIGER, THORPE FAMILY RESIDENCE: Thanks very much.

PILGRIM: Sister Barbara Lenniger, who runs the facility, is under a severe budget squeeze these days, reduced funding from the city and state, higher insurance costs, and fewer donations. The shelter distributes clothing and food, but they often run out.

LENNIGER: To threaten us with more cuts is devastating. Right now, we're looking at our budgets and saying, we may have to cut services, we may have to cut back on staffing. That's an immediate concern. Plus, we have the long-range concern down the road of continuing the program without sufficient funds.

PILGRIM: A lot of nonprofits may not be going broke, but many are wondering how long it will be before they do.

TRENT STAMP, CHARITY NAVIGATOR ORG.: Last year we saw that the human service organizations like homeless shelters, soup kitchens, women's crisis centers, those types of things, they were the ones that were hurt the hardest in 2002. Their giving actually declined around 11 percent.

PILGRIM: Other non-profits have also been hit, libraries, zoos, museums. Cutting back on hours or closing a few days a week, canceling exhibitions, cutting staff and services. Many symphonies are going broke, as states have slashed their arts budgets and donations have dried up. The Miami Philharmonic, Colorado Springs Symphony, and the San Antonio Symphony all filed for chapter 11. Michael Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center, is the master of the non-profit turnaround, saving such institutions as Alvin Ailey Dance Company and American Ballet Theater. He says don't cut back, instead boost marketing to lure that discretionary dollar. MICHAEL KAISER, PRESIDENT OF THE KENNEDY CENTER: Typically arts organizations, particularly their boards, get very conservative in an economic downturn and they believe if they really cut back they'll save their way to health. But because the arts are really an ephemeral product and they really require a great deal of excitement on the part of the audience and the donors that's exactly the wrong way to proceed.

PILGRIM: Sister Barbara Lenniger is trying that approach, boosting the profile of her organization, trying to lure more donations, and for her it's not art, it's life.

SISTER BARBARA LINNIGER: Just give me two $50,000 grants a year and I can do it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PILGRIM: Now, the number of non-profit organizations has been growing steadily, about 5 percent last year. And that makes the situation even tougher because more institutions are competing for a smaller amount of money -- Jan?

HOPKINS: Thanks, Kitty.

California state budget cuts are hurting the San Diego Community College district. Many programs and services have been slashed, staffing has been cut, thousands of students will be denied admission. Augustine Gallego is the chancellor of the San Diego Community College district. He joins us now from San Diego. Have you ever seen it this bad?

AUGUSTINE GALLEGO, CHANCELLOR, SAN DIEGO COMMUNITY COLLEGE: No, I have never seen it this bad. In my almost 34 years of higher education experiences here in California I have never seen a budget reduction that we are faced with or a budget that faces a $38 billion shortfall statewide. This is the first time that I've ever seen anything as massive as this.

HOPKINS: So in terms of your students, how many are you going to have to turn away?

GALLEGO: Well, given the -- what we are anticipating as our budget for 2003-2004, we have planned in eliminating approximately 6,000 students or so. We will be denying them admissions. And by reducing the numbers of class sections that we offer.

HOPKINS: You are a past president of some national organizations. What do your colleagues around the country say about what they're dealing with?

GALLEGO: Well, I had the opportunity to serve as chair of the American Association of Community Colleges, which represent about 1200 community colleges in the country and also served and currently serve as the immediate past chair of the American Council on Education. So I have a very good idea as to what is happening nationwide. Let me reflect on the community college environment. There are 47 states that are currently facing a budget deficit. Many of my peers with whom I have spoken here in the western states, Washington and Oregon and certainly in California and Texas, they are faced with budget reductions and they are also planning on doing several things. One, reducing their programs and services and in many cases increasing the student tuition.

HOPKINS: Now, the other thing is that in times when the economy is not doing well you tend to get more students. Is that right?

GALLEGO: Well, that is a dilemma, Jan. What we are -- for example, in the fall of 2002 for this current academic year we provided instructional opportunities for over 2,500 full-time equivalent students, for which we received no funding.

We are experiencing a lot of student growth in community colleges, certainly here in san diego. And the dilemma is as we are growing we are seeing a significant decrease in funding. And it is unfortunate that we will not be able to meet the growing demand.

HOPKINS: Thanks very much. The Chancellor of San Diego Community College, Augustine Gallego.

And now our poll question tonight. Which story held your interest the most this week? Questions about weapons of mass destruction, President Bush in Africa, U.S. troops under fire in Iraq, the sausage knockdown? You can vote on our Web site, CNN.com/lou. We'll share early results later in the program.

And now the results of our poll question last night. We asked, what should Randall Simon's punishment be for hitting the human sausage? 25 percent of you said jail time, 27 percent said suspension, 19 percent said a fine, 29 percent said that Simon should have to work in a sausage factory.

And now a follow-up to that story. Mandy Block is a sausage again. She's back at work in Milwaukee tonight. Mandy says that she finds the whole controversy kind of funny and ridiculous.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANDY BLOCK, SAUSAGE VICTIM: It wasn't that big of a blow. It just -- I think just because I'm so small and it's such a big costume that I tumbled. And the reason I couldn't get up right away is because I couldn't get up. I wasn't like hurt so bad. I just couldn't get up. And luckily someone helped me up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOPKINS: Randall Simon apologized to Mandy by phone today. He also autographed and gave her the bat that he hit her with.

And now tonight's thought on the true measure of success, "Success is how high you bounce, when you hit bottom." That's from General George S. Patton.

The search for this weeks CEO took us to Latham, New York where we found a small company well known in technology circles but little known as a publicly traded stock. Glenn Epstein from Intermagnetics is our "CEO of the Week".

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HOPKINS (voice-over): Intermagnetics makes magnets so powerful they provide a look inside your body when you have an MRI.

GLENN EPSTEIN, CEO INTERMAGNETICS TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION: This is the core of what Intermagnetics Technology is all about, is taking superconductors and winding them into these very high field magnets. So we see here in the factory is one of the world's unique production operations.

HOPKINS: Intermagnetics is one of only three companies in the world that make MRI magnets. Sales of the machines total about $3 billion a year.

EPSTEIN: That market has grown fairly consistently at about the 10 percent rate for many, many years.

HOPKINS: That consistent growth has resulted in four years of record earnings and revenues for Intermagnetics and a balance sheet with no debt and $80 million in cash. Epstein prides himself on Intermagnetics' standards of corporate governance.

EPSTEIN: We'll take scrutiny by anybody, anytime, anywhere. We are very proactive in our disclosures, what's going on with the company technically, financially, what happens with executives when they receive equity, when they sell equity. All of it's in a very proactive stance.

We just went with restricted stock, which by definition is expensed. And by saying it was performance-based, that management wins if the shareholders win. And that's a healthy -- that's a healthy balance.

HOPKINS: Intermagnetics' future might have a twist. Today the Department of Energy awarded intermagnetics a $13 million contract for a project in Albany in New York involving power transmission using superconductors. Without tearing up the nation's roadways and highways the new lines would replace existing infrastructure that's 30 to 50 years old.

EPSTEIN: It's withdrawing the old copper and oil-filled cables and putting in supercooled, superconducting lines but at a ratio of about one to two lines per four to five lines of existing copper. So not only can we use the existing space, we can still have reserve space for future expansion.

HOPKINS: This new way of transmitting and distributing power is a revolution similar to fiberoptic data transmission in the computer industry.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOPKINS: Glenn Epstein of Intermagnetics, our "CEO of the Week." Congratulations to you.

Still to come tonight -- the FTC is taking action against infomercials that make promises and don't deliver. Bill Tucker will have our report.

Plus, how some of the oldest acts in rock and roll are finding new life on the concert stage. "Time" magazine's senior editor and music guru, Christopher John Farley, will be our guest.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOPKINS: In news around the world tonight, the bodies of the conjoined twins who died this week during an attempt to separate them are back home in Iran tonight. Hundreds of mourners were on hand when their separate caskets arrived. The twins will be buried tomorrow.

A rare great white whale has returned to Australian waters. The albino humpback was first spotted there a decade ago. But he's been absent for three years. The whale marked his return with an -- a great show for spectators.

And a classic car is coming to the end of its long road. Production of the old style Volkswagen beetle is ending this summer. Volkswagen marked the occasion with a ceremony at a Mexican factory in Puebla. That VW factory in Mexico is the last one in the world to make the old bug.

Astronomers have discovered a new planet and say it is the oldest known planet in the universe. The planet is nearly 13 billion years old, three times as old as Earth, and nearly as old as the universe itself. Based on measurements taken by the Hubble telescope, scientists were able to determine the mass and other properties of that planet. For more on this amazing discovery, we're joined by Michael Shara. He is the curator of astrophysics at the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the Museum of Natural History here in New York City. Michael, how significant is this discovery?

MICHAEL SHARA, CURATOR OF ASTROPHYSICS, ROSE CENTER FOR EARTH AND SPACE: Extremely significant. We had really never had any evidence of planets being older than Earth, and astronomers seriously doubted that planets could get born in the first couple of billion year history of the universe until lots of heavy elements, silicon, magnesium and iron, got cooked up inside the interiors of stars and then expelled into the interstellar medium.

But today with this announcement in "Science," it's abundantly clear to everyone in the astronomical community that nature at least has figured out a way of making Jupiter-like planets in less than a billion years after the universe was born.

HOPKINS: It's actually bigger than Jupiter. Jupiter's behind you, right? Over your head.

SHARA: Well, that's actually a model of Jupiter, but yes. The object we have here is about twice, perhaps 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter. It's probably 15, 20, 30 percent bigger than Jupiter. HOPKINS: So does this mean that you have to kind of go back to the drawing board and rethink everything?

SHARA: We don't really understand in a lot of detail, in fact even in some detail, the mechanisms that create planets. There are some beautiful models that have been proposed by theorists in the last decade or so, some involving dust to cool off the stuff left around stars after they form and let planets begin to agglomerate. Others having whirlpools and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and hydrodynamics instabilities. But neither one of these two models is really very effective at giving us the details of how planets form, and certainly neither one of these two models is very good at making the kind of planet that's been announced today.

HOPKINS: How was this planet found?

SHARA: There is a pulsar, a pulsing neutron star in this very ancient globular cluster that was discovered about a decade ago, and this pulsar alternately moves towards and away from us. It's orbited by another dead star, and orbited by yet a third body. The discovery just now, or the announcement of the discovery of that second dead star, or white dwarf, and its characterization by the team that announced their results in "Science" finally allowed us to pin down its mass and thereby deduce the mass of the planet and show that it was two Jupiters.

HOPKINS: So we haven't seen it? There are no pictures or anything?

SHARA: No direct images of this thing. It's going to be extraordinarily faint. And it's sitting next to two objects that are much brighter than it is. It's well beyond any technology we have today, even with the Hubble telescope, to directly image it.

HOPKINS: Any chance that there's life on this planet?

SHARA: If there is life on Jupiter, for example, then perhaps on this planet. But it's probably a gas giant, a hydrogen-helium planet, with very, very crushing atmosphere, probably no solid surface.

Now, it is possible that there are oceans, maybe oceans of hydrogen, methane and ammonia. If so, there might be great fishing on the planet. But I don't think that this is the best place to go look for life outside of our solar system.

HOPKINS: Thanks for joining us. Michael Shara of the American Museum of Natural History Planetarium, the Rose Planetarium.

Now a reminder to vote in our poll question tonight. We're asking, which story held your interest the most this week? Questions about weapons of mass destruction? President Bush in Africa? U.S. troops under fire in Iraq? The sausage knockdown? You can vote on our Web site, cnn.com/lou. We'll share the early results later in the show.

You viewers of late-night television are very familiar with infomercials, perhaps too familiar. Infomercials were those endless pitches for products that often seemed to promise far more than they deliver. Now the Federal Trade Commission has taken action against several marketers for making false and unsubstantiated promises. Bill Tucker has that report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Herbal breast enhancement tablet that will increase your bustline by...

BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We all watch them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is snoring keep you up at night?

TUCKER: We all wonder if they work. And the dirty little secret is a lot of us buy them. We buy more than $14 billion worth of products shown on those half-hour infomercials, and nearly $86 billion from the shorter-form ads, according to the infomercial trade group the Electronic Retailing Association. Fitness and personal care products top the list.

Getting a cut of that revenue are the TV stations and cable networks that run the ads, the vast majority of which are legitimate products. The Federal Trade Commission's advice is simple and age old.

HEATHER HIPPSLEY, FTC: Listen to the claims that are being made. Really, the old adage still is if it's too good to be true, it's probably not true. And that particularly goes for miraculous health claims. If these products actually worked the way they were claimed to, you wouldn't be hearing it first on a TV commercial.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stimulate sexual energy by...

TUCKER: Since December, the FTC has filed claims attacking over $1 billion in health marketing. Until now, infomercials have escaped the rules which govern traditional advertising.

DONNY DEUTSCH, DEUTSCH, INC.: Interestingly enough, classic advertising, 30-second product advertising, goes through a very strict litmus test in terms of through the network clearance people and whatnot, testing every claim. Yet these long form commercials somehow fly under the radar and don't go through the same scrutiny. I think you're going to see that start to change a bit.

TUCKER: We can expect to see those changes soon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCKER: Since September, the Electronic Retailing Association says it will unveil a set of self-regulatory rules for the industry, complete with independent reviews of claims and an enforcement division which will work closely with the Federal Trade Commission -- Jan.

HOPKINS: That's progress. TUCKER: It is. Small steps.

HOPKINS: Still to come -- a pair of stories for the ages. Some of the hottest summer concerts this year feature musicians in their 50s. Christopher John Farley of "Time" magazine tells us why.

And a pair of old salts take on Mother Nature in a century-old battle on Lake Michigan. That story and more still ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOPKINS: Concert attendance has jumped by 24 percent this year, but it's not the Britneys or the Christinas that are drawing the crowds. It's the older acts. Elton John, Billy Joel, the Rolling Stones, the Dixie Chicks and Cher have pulled in a combined $190 million on the road this year. Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Bon Jovi, and country acts Tim Mcgraw and Kenny Chesney continue to pull in fans as well. Christopher John Farley of "Time" magazine calls it the summer of musical memories. So is that it? Are people coming out because it's the acts that they want to see? Or what's happening?

CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Well, people tend to want to go to concerts with people who have a library of songs. If someone just has one album out there, that album is going to last 60 minutes, it's tough for them to flesh out an entire concert. But some of these older acts are able to draw the fans because the fans know they'll hear a lot of hits. I also think the baby boomers don't just go to these concerts to sort of relive their youth, they go to sort of prove they're still living. I mean, if Bruce Springsteen can put on a three, four-hour act and still look good and still get people roaring, that shows there's some life in people who are 40 and 50 yet.

HOPKINS: Also, the tickets are very expensive for these acts, and kids have a hard time paying over $100 for a ticket, don't they?

FARLEY: Yes. For like Paul McCartney, for instance, when he did his swing through North America, some of his tickets were north of $100. And that's not the kind of money you can really raise just having a paper route. You really have to have a real job and some, you know, 401(k) stuff you can cash in to pay for that kind of a ticket.

HOPKINS: It's interesting, though, because record sales, cd sales are down, and yet concert attendance is up. How do you explain that?

FARLEY: Well, there are two reasons. I mean, concert sales are up -- ticket sales for the first half of this year are up 24 percent over last year because last year was a really bad year. It was following up on, you know the tragedy of September 11. People weren't going out to concerts in the numbers that perhaps one might have expected. And so now we're having a big balance over a bad year.

And I think the other reason is that there are some acts out there that are draws. The Elton John-Billy Joel ticket was an attractive ticket for a lot of people, sort of an inventive pairing. And inventive pairings with acts that have a fan base are going to draw the crowds.

HOPKINS: Well, and that's happening with other than baby boomer acts too, right? The pairings of artists.

FARLEY: Well, yes, of course a lot of these alternative rock bands have become sort of the baby boomer acts of their generations. People know they have a library of songs. They go out to see them. So Dave Matthews, Pearl Jam, they're both on the road. Radiohead's on the road. Later in the year we'll see R.E.M. hit the road. And the all draw fans because they have a library of songs, they have loyal acts, whether or not they have hot new albums on the charts, no one cares. They know they have a lot of great hits in their duffel bags.

HOPKINS: Well and in the case of Cher it's supposedly her last tour. I mean, is this part of the interest in these older acts, that maybe it's the last time you're going to see them?

FARLEY: It never hurts to say it's your last tour. The Rolling Stones always kind of hint maybe this is the last time. It gets people out to see you because they think maybe this is the last time, maybe this t-shirt will be worth something, this tour t-shirt will be worth something in the future. So when you hint that it's your last, hint that maybe you might not come back, people will see you.

HOPKINS: And the rain in the -- you know, the early part of this summer, did that put a damper at all on any of the attendance?

FARLEY: You know, it's hard to say whether the rain had an effect. I do think technology has an effect. You know, a lot of people in the industry think that downloading is actually hurting record sales. But I actually think it's helping concert tickets because it's creating more excitement about live music. If you go on the Internet you can find all sorts of live tracks that are being traded, that are being downloaded. In the past the only way you could hear a band live is if they came through your town or if they released a live record album or maybe if they appeared on some TV show that you liked.

Now you can hear live tracks all the time almost any acts' live tracks are available for downloading. It gets people excited just like the way they were excited about their Grateful Dead when they used to allow people to tape their music for free.

HOPKINS: Thanks very much. Christopher John Farley of "Time" magazine.

FARLEY: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

HOPKINS: Tonight's quote comes from Capitol Hill. One senator suggested that this is a solution to the controversy surrounding the president's State of the Union Address, quote Find out who's responsible for it and fire them." That is from senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.

Well no, one has been fired yet, but CIA Director George Tenet tonight said the agency made a mistake in allowing the president to use false intelligence in his speech.

Coming up next, the results of tonight's poll and the old man and the lake. A story of sailors who've been battling nature for nearly a century.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOPKINS: Now the preliminary results of our poll question tonight. We asked, which story hell your interest the most this week? Almost two thirds of you said questions about weapons of mass destruction.

Finally tonight, the 333-mile Chicago to Mackinaw Island race begins this weekend on lake Michigan. The race is over a century old, and it's open to yachtsmen of all ages. But as Keith Oppenheim reports, there are a couple of sailors this year who are defying the odds.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL STEIN, 94-YEAR-OLD SAILOR: I owe a lot of this to my parents because I've got good genes.

KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ever the modest gentleman, Karl Stein is at ease behind the helm.

STEIN: In the beginning it was all dead reckoning.

OPPENHEIM: Over the course of half a century Karl Stein has been in 29 Mackinak races, a journey that sends 300 boats up lake Michigan and requires lots of endurance. At 94 years of age, that's right 94, Karl Stein says what he lacks in strength he makes up for in wits.

STEIN: I seem to come to life when the weather gets nasty.

OPPENHEIM: In fact, three times Karl has crewed on boats that won this race overall. But he is by comparison inexperienced as some who have done this course a lot more like one guy who's nearly 20 years his junior, and this year will have completed 50 races.

GENE MCCARTHY, SAILOR: North Charlie 10, please.

OPPENHEIM: His name is Gene McCarthy, who at age 75 can say he's medaled in the Mac 15 times.

MCCARTHY: You get thunderstorms and line squalls and all sorts of vicious stuff because people who are experienced know how to handle that and they keep going forward.

OPPENHEIM: And it appears going forward is the very spirit of these senior sailors, who as old men of the sea have high aspirations on this very big lake.

STEIN: There's nothing like sailing.

OPPENHEIM: Keith Oppenheim, CNN, Chicago. (END VIDEOTAPE)

HOPKINS: Good luck to them.

That's our show tonight. Thanks for joining us. Have a great weekend. For all of us here, good night from New York.

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