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Lou Dobbs Tonight
Connecticut Governor Resigns; Iranians Seize British Boats and Crew
Aired June 21, 2004 - 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.
LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight, after more than a year of allegations of corruption, one of this country's top governors is resigning. John Rowland of Connecticut at this hour is announcing he's leaving office.
The Justice Department intervenes in the controversy over allegations a U.S. Congressman tried to solicit money and votes from illegal aliens. We'll have the report.
The Iranians have seized three British patrol boats and arrested eight British troops. We'll have the latest on this breaking story from the Pentagon.
In Exporting America tonight, shocking new evidence that many companies with government contracts are using overseas tax shelters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. BYRON DORGAN (D), NORTH DAKOTA: These are the kind of companies that want all the benefits of American citizenship and all the benefits you can get from doing business with the federal government.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOBBS: Tonight, I'll talk with Congressman Sherrod Brown about his plan to stop the exporting of America, and I'll be join by author Bruce Weinstein who says corporate outsourcing to cheap overseas labor markets is clearly unethical.
And, for the first time in history, a privately financed rocket plane. "SpaceShipOne" has successfully journeyed to the edge of space and back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were going about 3,300 feet per second at that point, so a rifle bullet out of an M-16 is only 2,700 feet per second.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOBBS: Tonight, our live report from Mojave, California.
ANNOUNCER: This is LOU DOBBS TONIGHT" for Monday, June 21. Here now for an hour of news, debate and opinion is Lou Dobbs. DOBBS: Good evening.
Tonight, after months of scandal and allegations, Connecticut's governor, John Rowland, is resigning. The Republican governor is the focus of a federal corruption investigation and was facing possible impeachment.
Connecticut Governor John Rowland is speaking tonight from the governor's mansion in Hartford, Connecticut. Let's listen in.
GOV. JOHN ROWLAND (R), CONNECTICUT: I am thankful to my family for instilling in me the principle that public service to others is a noble cause.
My political journey has brought me from the statehouse to the U.S. Congress to the governor's office. It's been an incredible fulfilling journey, with a simple goal to help serve the people of Connecticut, and it's the people of Connecticut that I thank for giving me this privilege.
Throughout these years, I have never forgotten what the people of Connecticut have given me. I can only hope that when all is said and done, when the dust settles and time casts light back on our time in office that the people will see that we tried to give something back as well.
Through times of prosperity and times of recession, through times of tragedy and times of celebration, we have made much progress together. It's been an incredible honor, and I am pleased to have served you.
I am proud that there is new life in our cities, especially in Hartford and Waterbury and Bridgeport and New Haven and in New London. There is new life, there is new hope, and there is new opportunity.
What an enormous privilege to work with so many outstanding mayors and business people and elected local officials and clergy and volunteers and the not-for-profit agencies, all focused on making their communities better, all striving to prove that the good in society should outweigh the bad.
This has been my motivation for the past 10 years.
DOBBS: Governor John Rowland of Connecticut resigning his office, and he will be replaced by Lieutenant Governor M. Jodi Rell who will fill and will carry out the rest of this term. That term lasting until January of 2007.
Deborah Feyerick has been covering this breaking story, joining us now live from Hartford with more on the story -- Deborah.
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Lou, this is a man who as governor got the state's highest popularity ratings ever. He was once seen as a rising star in the Republican Party, making the short list of Bush Cabinet appointments. Now all that is over.
As you heard, he is now resigning. He is the focus of a federal bribery investigation and almost certain impeachment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MOIRA LYONS (D), CONNECTICUT HOUSE SPEAKER: We had an extremely talented individual with great ability to move up in the Republican hierarchy who of and by his own choice chose to be put in this very untenable situation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FEYERICK: Rowland's career really began crumbling in January. That's when he apologized to voters for taking gifts that he had received from people looking to do business with the state, one of those gifts a hot tub for his lakeside cottage.
Now the impeachment inquiry was in its third week. A number of insiders said Rowland saw the writing on the wall.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL ANISKOVICH (R), CONNECTICUT STATE SENATE: On balance, on policy, this governor's been a great governor. His personal misconduct, his ethical lapses have forced him to give up what the people gave him, and that's a sad thing, but it doesn't diminish what he's done as governor.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FEYERICK: Connecticut has been plagued by ethics problems by some of its politicians. One insider described this as a cleansing of the political psyche, saying that while the allegations may not look like such a big deal to outsiders, for John Rowland, it was like bleeding to death by a thousand tiny paper cuts -- Lou.
DOBBS: Deborah, this has got to be difficult beyond what would be a difficult circumstance. John Rowland, when he was elected in '94, the nation's youngest governor. He served three terms before that in the U.S. Congress, two in the state legislature.
What is the next step, the investigations that are going to continue? What is the expectation, Deborah?
FEYERICK: Well, we are told now that, as of this moment, the impeachment inquiry stops. The purpose of it, of course, was to get him to resign. He has done that. So what the committee will do is simply issue what it has found so far, but they will not continue.
And as for what his political future holds, I spoke to one person who said he could certainly go into lobbying, but, as for elected office, that's over.
DOBBS: Deborah Feyerick.
Thank you very much.
Turning now to developments overseas tonight, a mystery tonight over just what happened to eight British Marines who were seized by Iran in a waterway between Iran and Iraq. Britain says it lost contact with three of its small patrol boats in Shatt al-Arab Waterway. Iran says it confiscated the boats.
ITN's Bill Neely has the report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL NEELY, ITN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These are the types of boats seized, and this is the waterway where they were intercepted, filmed by ITV News four weeks ago.
Early this morning, three fast patrol boats of the royal Navy were here with eight Marines on board. They were on a daily patrol of the river searching for smugglers. The men were armed, they had maps of the river on board, but the boats have no sophisticated navigational equipment.
As they showed me last month, the large Iranian military base and numerous watchtowers hug the far shore, but, in fact, Iranian territory begins in the middle of the waterway that separates the two countries, and there's no line in the water that shows that border.
The Navy lost contact with its folks somewhere between the cities on either side. The Iranians say the three boats, known as Richard Raiders (ph), were guided to shore and confiscated. It's not known where the eight sailors are being held.
Analysts say the Iranians are sending a signal off to Britain.
PAUL CORNISH, CENTRE FOR DEFENSE STUDIES: I think what's going on here is not so much a matter between Iran and Great Britain as between Iran and the new Iraqi government that's going to be in position in less than two weeks' time.
I think what they're doing is sending a pretty important signal about an issue which is still alive -- very, very alive -- as far as the Iranians are concerned.
KNEEL: The issue: the borderline on this water. The pawns for now: eight British servicemen.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DOBBS: Bill Neely of ITN reporting.
And tonight, there remains no further word on when Iran will release those British Marines.
For the latest now from the Pentagon on this developing story and more, I'm joined by our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre.
Jamie, what are your sources telling you about just what happened to those British patrol boats and their eight crew members?
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SENIOR PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's still not clear whether they wandered into Iranian waters on that very narrow waterway. You could see in those pictures that the Shatt al- Arab is a very narrow river, essentially, in which Iraq controls the West Bank, Iran controls the East Bank.
A very similar incident to this happened last year with some Americans going down the waterway as well. They were detained briefly by Iran, questioned eventually, were returned. The U.S. Central Command essentially admitting in that case that the U.S. boats did stray into Iranian waters.
There are negotiations going on between the British government and Iran right now, and the Iranian government is indicating that assuming that they don't find "any malicious intent" that those British seamen will be also released as well -- Lou.
DOBBS: Jamie, obviously, a lot of questions to be answered there in the seizure of those three patrol boats and those British Marines, but also a lot of questions about another development. That shocking video today showing the bodies of four U.S. Marines who were killed in the City of Ramadi. Is the Pentagon giving any further details about just what happened to those Marines?
MCINTYRE: Not really. I have a feeling they know a little bit more than they're saying. It does appear that the four Marines were ambushed. They were on a patrol, as you said, in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. They didn't check in at their appointed time.
A rescue team was sent out to find them. They found them -- all four of them shot. They were also missing their flack jackets, so, apparently, that -- they might have been looted. One report suggested they'd been shot in the head, but we haven't confirmed that from the Associated Press.
The Marines say they're still in the process of notifying all the families, and they may have more details later on what happened in this apparent ambush in which four Marines were killed -- Lou.
DOBBS: Again, a lot of questions, whether those Marines were involved in an operation, an engagement. Are we expecting to get those answers?
MCINTYRE: Well, it does appear that they were in a firefight of some kind. They did report that apparently before they lost contact. But we're not sure of the circumstances, whether they were -- whether they were killed in the firefight or whether they were gunned down in some other kind of more devious ambush.
DOBBS: Jamie, thank you very much.
Jamie McIntyre, our senior Pentagon correspondent.
Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq who beheaded American Nick Berg tonight are threatening to behead a South Korean hostage. An Arab television network showed a videotape of the Korean hostage pleading for his life. The terrorists say they will kill the hostage if South Korea sends another 3,000 troops to Iraq. The South Korean government says it will go ahead with that deployment despite the threat to murder the hostage.
Turning now to Washington, two key rulings by the Supreme Court today. The court said patients cannot sue their HMOs for malpractice damages in state courts if the HMOs refuse to pay for medical care.
The court also ruled that Americans do not have a constitutional right to refuse to tell police officers their names.
Joining me now to discuss both of those decisions, CNN's Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin.
Jeffrey, the HMO decision. This is a major development.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Big victory for insurance companies, for HMOs, loss for patients who want to sue. Because state courts are much more favorable to plaintiffs, you get juries, you usually get more money.
DOBBS: On balance, the critical complaint has been that state courts have been putting forward just -- their juries have been putting forward just immense and unreasonable damage awards. This obviously constricts that. Is it a fair allegation? Is this the appropriate redress?
TOOBIN: Well, the court didn't address that directly, but, certainly, the insurance companies and medical -- and HMOs, who have been complaining so much about state juries, they really wanted this one because it insulates them from that whole problem. They don't have to worry about it, at least not in this part of the law.
DOBBS: And the limitations in the federal court decision for the plaintiff?
TOOBIN: They can still sue, but their options are -- it's much more difficult, and the money you're going to get is much smaller.
DOBBS: And the decision by the Supreme Court, a 5-4 decision, that one asked for his or her name must give it to a policeman.
TOOBIN: It's a very straightforward ruling. If the cops have a reasonable suspicion about you, which is a very low standard, and they ask you your name, you have to give them the answer or you can go to jail.
DOBBS: When you say a straightforward decision, but a 5-4 vote, if one decides that the officer does not have a reasonable basis to ask you that question?
TOOBIN: Then they don't have the right to ask, but that is rarely -- that's rarely the situation. Cops can usually come up with reasonable suspicion, it's such a low standard, and, basically, what the majority said was you don't have a right to refuse to give a fingerprint, a handwriting sample. Giving your name is just like those. It's not really testimony.
DOBBS: Five to four. What did the four say?
TOOBIN: The four said it's very different from a fingerprint because giving your name is something you can be prosecuted for making a false statement on. That's testimony. That's what the Fifth Amendment is supposed to protect. They only got four votes.
DOBBS: Four votes for the Fifth Amendment...
TOOBIN: That's right, yes.
DOBBS: ... in this instance, if I can put it that way.
Jeffrey Toobin, thank you, as always.
A bizarre turn of events tonight in the Utah congressional campaign that we reported to you last week. Incumbent Congressman Chris Cannon is accused of soliciting money and votes from illegal aliens. Now the Justice Department is involved.
Peter Viles reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PETER VILES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Provo, Utah, a congressional campaign so controversial, the Justice Department now says it will monitor tomorrow's voting. At issue, comments by a staffer for Congressman Chris Cannon on Spanish radio, an appeal for illegal aliens to break the law and funnel money to the campaign.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through interpreter): If you are undocumented, you must find -- we welcome this money, but you have to find someone who is legal in order to donate the money.
VILES: Cannon's office said he would never encourage illegal voting or contributions, but anti-immigration groups cried foul and said they might challenge some voters to prevent illegal voting. To that, the state attorney general said, "This is intimidation."
MARK SHURTLEFF, UTAH ATTORNEY GENERAL: We were concerned that people who were legal who did have foreign-sounding last names might be intimidated or afraid to come forward and vote, and we just wanted to make sure that they were -- you know, if you're allowed, if you're registered, please get out and vote.
VILES: But the anti-immigration group that opposes Cannon, Project USA, says it never considered challenging voters based on their names and isn't planning any sort of election challenge.
CRAIG NELSEN, PROJECT USA: It's very troubling. Here you have a sitting congressman, openly encouraging illegal activity, and we say, well, let's check into this, and, instead of the Department of Justice investigating the congressman, we're the ones who draw its attention.
VILES: In a press release, the Justice Department said it will monitor the election to "ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act." The department did not return phone calls to answer questions about what prompted the decision.
Like most incumbents, Cannon has a big money advantage, roughly 8-1 in spending. His campaign reported raising $355,000 through June and spending $307,000. His Republican opponent, Matt Throckmorton, has raised just $44,000 and spent $37,000.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VILES: It's not unusual for the Justice Department to monitor local elections. It says it monitored 60 in the last election cycle, and both campaigns, for the record, have said that they welcome the Justice Department's involvement in this -- Lou.
DOBBS: So the fact is tonight we don't know exactly what the Justice Department is monitoring aside from broadly the election.
VILES: Right. Although when they say it's the Voting Rights Act, the main point of that law is to guarantee the rights of citizens to vote. So you could guess from that or assume from that that they're more concerned about people being turned away from the polls.
DOBBS: Than they are about the wrong people perhaps going to the polls.
VILES: Exactly.
DOBBS: Well, it's almost Third World-like to hear the U.S. Justice Department monitoring an election.
VILES: They do monitor elections in the Third World.
DOBBS: Yes. Peter Viles, thank you.
Still ahead here, Accenture not the only large company with government contracts. Many of them are trying to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Other government contractors are using offshore tax shelters. We'll have this shocking report.
And America's intelligence agencies still stuck in a Cold war mentality and incapable of fighting the global war on terror. That's the view of James Bamford, author of "A Pretext for War," who is my guest next.
And Bill Clinton's autobiography will be launched in a blaze of publicity tomorrow. You may have noticed a minor firestorm of publicity already. We'll report on the impact the book may have on this year's presidential election.
Please stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Some members of the U.S. Senate tonight are looking for ways to block a multibillion-dollar government border security contract that was awarded to Bermuda-based Accenture. The House last week failed to block that deal.
Critics say the Accenture contract rewards a foreign company for abandoning the United States, but Accenture is not the only American company that profits from foreign tax shelters and U.S. government contracts.
Lisa Sylvester reports from Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LISA SYLVESTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tyco used to call New Hampshire home. It moved to Bermuda in 1997, but that did not stop the company from receiving federal contracts worth more than $330 million in 2002. In fact, many corporations based outside the United States still receive lucrative government contracts.
In 2002, Accenture received federal contracts worth nearly $450 million; McDermott International, $340 million; and Foster Wheeler, nearly $300 million in federal contracts.
DORGAN: These are the kind of companies that want all the benefits of American citizenship and all the benefits you can get from doing business with the federal government, but they don't want to bear the burden or the responsibility of paying taxes to our government.
SYLVESTER: Senator Dorgan also takes issue with American multinational companies that have subsidiaries in tax-haven countries and still reap millions in federal contracts. A General Accounting Office study this year found that 59 of the top 100 publicly traded federal contractors have subsidiaries in tax havens, including Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and the Bahamas.
The Fluor Corporation received more than $900 million in federal contracts in 2001 and has 27 tax-haven subsidiaries; ExxonMobile, $700 million in federal contracts with 11 tax-haven subsidiaries; Halliburton in 2001 received more than $534 million in contracts and has 17 tax-havens; and WorldCom took in more than $500 million in contracts with 10 tax-haven subsidiaries.
Corporations like Accenture argue they still employ thousands of Americans, even if they have a foreign address.
HARRY YOU, CFO, ACCENTURE: I think it's really a misperception, once again, because the work for a U.S. visit is being done entirely in the U.S. by our U.S. business and our colleagues in the United States who are over 25,000 strong.
SYLVESTER: But it's U.S. taxpayers who get stuck paying more than their share.
PETE SEPP, NATIONAL TAXPAYERS UNION: While individuals can certainly control their level of state taxes by picking up and moving, they can't really do that as easily with federal taxes, unless they want to give up their citizenship.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SYLVESTER: Corporations as late as 1943 used to pay about 40 percent of U.S. tax revenues, and now they pay only about 7 percent of federal revenue -- Lou.
DOBBS: Revealing numbers. Thank you very much.
Lisa Sylvester.
Congressman Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, has introduced legislation that would eliminate tax breaks for American companies relocating to foreign countries. The congressman says the Republicans' massive corporate tax bill will only further handicap American workers by giving tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs to cheap overseas labor markets. Congressman Brown joins us tonight from Capitol Hill.
Good to have you here.
REP. SHERROD BROWN (D), OHIO: thanks. Good to be back, Lou.
DOBBS: What are the prospects of getting anything done, whether it be your legislation or any other in this election year?
BROWN: Well, they're not good. There were -- two bad things happened last week. One, the amendment that just was cited in the previous report that would have stopped Accenture from doing what they did and all those others companies cited.
Second in this bill that you covered last week, interviewed Congressman Rangel, this bill that was a huge corporate tax break, sending -- putting -- blowing a hole in the federal budget, plus giving tax breaks to companies and encouraging them to continue to offshore and close plants in the U.S. and send jobs overseas.
DOBBS: As Congressman Rangel put it, Congress -- at least the House deciding to solve a $4 billion problem with $140 billion. That -- in fairness, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas said that it was a jobs creation bill and a normal way of doing business. Were both men right?
BROWN: No, they weren't. I mean Congressman Rangel was right. Mr. -- Chairman Thomas isn't. It's continuing to throw billions of dollars in huge tax breaks to the most privileged, the largest corporations, and these corp -- what we're in essence doing is rewarding these corporations with American tax dollars, corporations that, one, send jobs overseas, we're rewarding them.
Second, what they do is they -- they oftentimes go offshore to avoid taxes. And, third, some of these companies like Halliburton with close ties to the vice president, Halliburton does business through one of its Cayman Island subsidiaries with foreign terrorist organizations and state-sponsored terrorist governments.
DOBBS: Let me ask you this. Forty-eight Democrats crossed party lines to vote with the Republicans on the jobs creation bill. If Democrats are serious about protecting the American worker -- and you said that was an anti-worker piece of legislation -- how in the world is the voter to discern between a sincere Democratic initiative and simply talking the talk rather than walking the walk?
BROWN: Well, 80 percent of Democrats voted against it. Those that voted for it were from tobacco states. They were from states where there had been -- I mean, I didn't agree with them, but they were from states where they were simply given all kinds of advantages, all kinds of bailouts for industries in those states, all kinds of special-interest stuff.
When you put a special-interest bill like that in front of the Congress, unfortunately, too many people in both parties support it. But the driving force was Republican leadership and the president pushing for more tax breaks for the companies that already are going offshore, that already are avoiding taxes, that are already shipping jobs overseas.
DOBBS: Ohio, your state, an important swing state. You've lost about 190,000 jobs there. The president is putting on a full-court press, as is Senator Kerry. Which way, in your judgment, do you think Ohio will go based on the polls and your sense of the direction?
BROWN: It's a close election, Ohio, but Ohioans have seen one- sixth of our manufacturing jobs disappear. We've seen tuition at state universities go up double digit. We've seen the same kind of problems with health care and gasoline costs and all that.
But I think Ohioans understand that this economy is doing well for those who owns corporations, the biggest investors. The companies are doing well with sales and with profits, but workers continue to lose jobs, and communities continue to suffer, school districts and layoffs in police and fire, because we're losing so much manufacturing in places like Canton and Lorraine and Akron and Cleveland and Columbus.
DOBBS: Congressman Sherrod Brown, thanks for being here.
BROWN: Thank you, Lou.
DOBBS: Federal officials tonight are investigating a bizarre incident in South Dakota over the weekend. A Northwest Airlines flight landed at the wrong airport.
The Northwest flight from Minneapolis was supposed to arrive at Rapid City, South Dakota, but, instead, the aircraft landed at nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base. Shortly after, the crew told the 117 passengers aboard to close their window shades and not to look outside.
The passengers had to wait three hours, presumably with their shades drawn, I'm sure, for a different Northwest crew to arrive and fly the plane to the correct airport. The pilots were exchanged, I think, is the nice way to say it, after that incident.
Still ahead. We'll share your thoughts on the use of private security forces instead of military forces in Iraq.
And then, a bestselling author says systematic weakness is to blame for this nation's intelligence failures of recent years. James Bamford will be here. We'll be talking about his new book, "A Pretext for War." That's next.
And former President Bill Clinton's legacy from his perspective. We'll have the latest on the president's new memoir, his autobiography, cleverly entitled "My Life."
Those stories and much more still ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: LOU DOBBS TONIGHT continues. Here now for more news, debate and opinion, Lou Dobbs.
DOBBS: My guest tonight says our nation's intelligence agencies have failed for make the shift from the Cold War to the war on terror. James Bamford's has written two best-selling books on the National Security Agency. His new book is "A Pretext For War, 9/1l, Iraq, and the Views of America's Intelligence Agencies." Mr. Bamford joins me tonight from Washington. Good to have you here.
An outstanding book with a lot of revelations, but let's go first to the issue of the 9/11 commission, which within the next month will have its report out. Is it your judgment that our intelligence agencies are simply so flawed they can't be quickly reorganized and focused on the war on terror?
JAMES BAMFORD, AUTHOR, "A PRETEXT FOR WAR": Well, actually that's the judgment of the director of Central Intelligence. George tenet came out a few weeks ago and said it's probably take at least five years before the CIA gets up to speed. The problem is that the CIA really wasn't much paying much attention to the war on terrorism in terms of training people to fight it, training people to penetrate the al Qaeda organization and other places up until September 11.
DOBBS: Up until September 11, the fact that our intelligence worked so poorly, and you go into some considerable detail on the difference -- I don't want to get too detailed here -- the director of operations and director of intelligence, but the issues as just to how this agency has been working and focusing on the CIA for just a moment, is it your judgment that it can be fixed readily?
BAMFORD: I don't think so. What the CIA is doing right now, because they've got to get a lot of people together, train them how to penetrate places like al Qaeda, learn languages like Pashto and Dari so what they're doing now is hiring people from the private sector. And so much of the CIA headquarters, which few people really realize is made up of contractors from some big companies, some small companies, but more and more of the CIA is becoming privatized.
DOBBS: The second largest, as you well know, Jim, the second largest contingent of armed forces in Iraq after the U.S. and the coalition are private contractors for security. We are seeing contractors, as you point out, in intelligence. What is your judgment as to what that is doing. And let's focus first on intelligence. What is that doing to the way in which this country operates, what's it doing to government employees, the effectiveness of our intelligence agencies?
BAMFORD: Well, what you need is a good mix of the two. You shouldn't just exclude contractors, they play an important role. The problem is when you see something like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal where you have private contractors -- one of the CIA's private contractors last week was indicted for a homicide, one of the people in Afghanistan was interrogating a prisoner, and the prisoner died during his interrogation. So he was indicted for that. So you have problems when you have private contractors doing some of this work. Then the problem gets extended if his boss back at headquarters is a private contractor, and that person's boss is a private contractor, because you lose the accountability and that's what you need is Congress to take a closer look at it.
DOBBS: Going to the title of your book, "Pretext For War," you document and suggest strongly that basically the neoconservative cabal, as it's often popularly referred to, had laid out these policies five years before the strategy, five years before George W. Bush took office. Do you believe the neocons should be held responsible for the failures in Iraq, for the initial -- for the war itself?
BAMFORD: Well, certainly, because they -- they were the people in the forefront of the push and the push for the rush for war. These people, most of them are in the Pentagon, and they pretty much had this idea in 1996. They created a plan for Israel to invade Iraq, replace the leader with somebody that was friendly to Israel, and even go into Lebanon and Syria, and that plan was rejected by Benjamin Netanyahu but then these people decided to keep the plan alive and when they became part of the Bush administration in 2001, they brought it back to life, especially right after September 11.
DOBBS: Just in plain language, is it your view, your judgment that President Bush was duped by the neoconservatives?
BAMFORD: I think President Bush had his own agenda with regard to Iraq. People have heard that Saddam was allegedly trying to kill his father, the senior President Bush, when he was in Kuwait, but as I write in "Pretext For War," it was much larger than that according to the justice department. Virtually every member of his family were going to be killed. His father, his mother, his wife, his brothers and their wives. They were all part of the group that was going to Kuwait, and that's where the bomb was going to go off to kill them all. So he had his own personal animosity towards Saddam Hussein and numerous times he referred to him as I'm going to get him, that type of language.
DOBBS: James Bamford, the book is "A Pretext For War." Provocative and fascinating. Good to have you here. Come back soon.
BAMFORD: Thanks a lot, Lou, I appreciate it. DOBBS: President Clinton's life in shocking detail and some shocking critiques of his book as well. We'll have some of the more surprising information from the new book.
Also ahead, the ethics of outsourcing. Bruce Weinstein, the CEO of Ethics At Work, he says outsourcing is not only unethical, it's bad for business. He's my guest.
And out of this world, a private company makes history in space. That story is coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Former President Bill Clinton begins his nationwide book tour tomorrow promoting his new memoir, "My Life." The book will be released, of course, tomorrow, but Mr. Clinton has been talking and talking. Kelly Wallace reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is his latest campaign. Bill Clinton revealing a lot, but not everything, in interviews before the much anticipated release of his autobiography. Asked the worst day of his presidency...
BILL CLINTON, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When I was alone with Ms. Lewinsky...
WALLACE: He tells "60 Minutes," August 1998, when he woke wife Hillary in the middle of the night to tell her about his affair with White House Intern Monica Lewinsky just before testifying about it to a grand jury.
CLINTON: I had a sleepless night and woke her up and sat down on the side of the bed and just told her. And it was awful, but I had to do it.
WALLACE: On his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky.
CLINTON: When I was involved in the -- as I tried to say in the book, two great fights: a struggle with the Republicans over the future of the country, which I won; and a struggle with my old demons, which I lost.
WALLACE: His 957-page book also appears to be a chance to settle old scores, namely with Independent Prosecutor Kenneth Starr, who led a series of investigations of the Clintons.
He tells "60 Minutes"...
CLINTON: There was nothing left but my personal failing. That's what people got for over $70 million. They indicted innocent people because they wouldn't lie, and they exonerated people who committed crimes because they would lie, and they did it because it was nothing but a big political operation designed to bring down the presidency. KENNETH STARR, FMR. INDEPENDENT COUNSEL: Well, I regret it, but again, I understand it. There are very few individuals who are caught up in the process of criminal justice, who walk out saying how much I love the prosecutor.
WALLACE: His greatest regrets of his presidency? Not getting Osama bin Laden and failing to convince Israelis and Palestinians to make a peace deal at Camp David. But will his book satisfy his readers?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE (on camera): And if the initial reviews are any guide, some readers might be a little disappointed. Take a look at the review in yesterday's "New York Times." It was harsh. The "New York Times" called the book, quote, "sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye- crossingly dull - the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history."
Lou, though, this all said, it's not likely to affect sales of the book. It's expected to break all kinds of records, all kinds of crowds, but ready on the shelves at 12:01 this morning.
LOU DOBBS, HOST, LOU DOBBS TONIGHT: And you can imagine that there will be plenty of people lined up for it. That is, Kelly, one of the toughest reviews I've ever seen of any book.
WALLACE: It is, but if you listen to people who got the book in advance, signing confidentiality agreements, Joe Klein of "TIME" magazine, one, he says the first half of the book about his life in Arkansas, 476 pages worth about that, he says is pretty refreshing. But the rest of the book, about his presidency, he says it's almost as if the former president was rushing to meet a deadline and doesn't have a lot of reflection there.
DOBBS: Kelly, thank you very much. Kelly Wallace.
That brings us to the subject of tonight's poll, and we thought the burning question should be asked, if not answered: Do you plan to read former President Clinton's new memoir, "My Life"? Yes or no; cast your vote at CNN.COM/LOU. We'll have the results coming up.
I forgot to ask Kelly Wallace where he came up with the title, "My Life," but I will take care of that omission later and share her response with you.
Still ahead tonight, my next guest says companies that outsource will ultimately pay a high cost for the practice. I'll be talking with the CEO of ethics at work, Bruce Weinstein.
And for the first time ever, a privately owned rocket plane has gone where only government craft have been before. We'll have the story of SpaceShipOne. A lot more still ahead here. Please stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) DOBBS: We've been reporting here on the shipment of American jobs to cheap overseas labor markets, its impact on our economy and society. My guest tonight says it's unethical for U.S. companies to outsource jobs to those cheap labor markets. Bruce Weinstein is a professional ethicist, and he is styled as well as The Ethics Guy.
Good to have you here, Bruce.
DR. BRUCE WEINSTEIN: THE ETHICS GUY: Thanks for inviting me, Lou.
DOBBS: A number of Fortune 500 companies consulting with you are talking about outsourcing now. What are you saying?
WEINSTEIN: It is unethical for U.S. companies to outsource, because the first obligation of any business is to make a profit. And it is less likely to do so by sending jobs overseas, because outsourcing creates ill will among the labor force and mostly among consumers that are going to rise up and say we're not going to support these companies any longer.
DOBBS: Bruce, as you say that, I keep thinking at some point people will do the right thing because it's the right thing. There's a business reason, as you suggest there, but they're saying -- the CEOs I'm talking with, many of them, and there is obviously a variety of opinions out there -- they're saying I have to do it, because everybody else is doing it.
WEINSTEIN: Well, the good news is that whether you do it for the right reason or you do it to maximize profits, the end result is the same. So, whether you believe outsourcing is wrong because it's unpatriotic or because it hurts the labor force or because it creates ill will among American consumers or because it damages profit potential, it's still wrong.
So, whether you take the high road for self-interested reasons or because it's the right thing to do, it's just important to do it. See, the good news is when we do the right thing -- as opposed to taking the low road, when we do the right thing, we do the ethical thing, it benefits us in the long run. That's the good news.
DOBBS: Us being all of us.
WEINSTEIN: All of us, yes.
DOBBS: And some people kind of forget that's what it's supposed to be about. But when you say this to a CEO -- and I've had the opportunity to talk with a number of CEOs whose firms are outsourcing, because nearly every firm is --what do they say to you?
WEINSTEIN: Well, they say in the short run, though, we're more likely to maximize profits by outsourcing. And I say to them, well, let's take a long-range view, because let's face it, the journey of any business is a marathon, not a sprint. In fact, our life's journey is a marathon, not a sprint. So, the key here is not really to focus so much on outsourcing, but on rather the long-range view of the lifeblood of any business. And if we take the long-range view, we're more than likely to see the damage that outsourcing is going to do to the U.S. businesses.
DOBBS: Bruce, we thank you very much.
WEINSTEIN: Thanks for inviting me.
DOBBS: A reminder now to vote in our poll tonight. The question is: Do you plan to read former President Clinton's new memoir, "My Life"? Yes or no. It goes on sale at 12:01 a.m. eastern time. Please vote at CNN.COM/LOU. We'll have the results for you later in the broadcast.
Still ahead here, out of this world, a breakthrough for private space travel. We'll have the amazing pictures. We'll talk with the spacecraft's designer and pilot who made it all happen, coming right up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: A private spacecraft and a highly skilled test pilot making history today in California. They successfully completed the first privately funded mission to space. The craft called SpaceShipOne flew more than 62 miles straight up to the edge of space.
Miles O'Brien reports from Mojave, California.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For pennies on the dollar and with only a few hundred feet to spare, 63-year-old Mike Melvill became the first civilian to fly a commercial craft into space. He enjoyed a few minutes of weightless flight and gaped at the gorgeous view.
MIKE MELVILL: SPACESHIPONE PILOT: Looking out of the window and seeing this -- white clouds over the L.A. basin just looked like snow on the ground.
O'BRIEN: It was a high-flying triumph for the little guy. Airplane and now spaceship designer Burt Rutan and his small company Scaled Composites sent SpaceShipOne on a sub-orbital flight for little more than $20 million.
MELVILL: You really do get the feeling that you've touched the face of God when you do something like this, believe me.
O'BRIEN: The history making flight was not trouble free. Shortly after Melvill lit the rocket motor fueled by a mixture of rubber and nitrous oxide - laughing gas -- there was a no-laughing- matter problem with the critical flight controls. The small craft veered off its vertical course.
BURT RUTAN, FOUNDER, SCALED COMPOSITES: We have just a five-mile box to reenter in. The spaceship actually reentered in 22 miles away from that box. It could have gone twice that far and still glided back to Mojave, though.
O'BRIEN: The problem lowered SpaceShipOne's apogee, but the craft squeaked into the record books, reaching 328,491 feet -- 400 feet beyond the official boundary of space, just enough for Melvill to earn his astronaut wings awarded by the FAA.
PATTIE GRACE SMITH, FAA: Today opens a new chapter in history, making space access within the reach of ordinary citizens.
O'BRIEN: Ordinary citizens in extraordinary circumstances.
MELVILL: Boy, when you reenter at 2.9 Mach and you start hitting the atmosphere, the noises you hear are somebody talking to you very, very sharply, you know? And you begin to believe, wow, should I really be doing this?
O'BRIEN: The effort was bankrolled by billionaire Microsoft co- founder Paul Allen, who hopes this is the beginning of a new space race for the rest of us.
PAUL ALLEN, CO-FOUNDER, MICROSOFT: It's a very emotional experience, and it does whet your appetite to want to do more things like this.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN (on camera): For now, Rutan and his team will troubleshoot that flight control problem and then might very well announce an attempt at the $10 million X Prize, it's a private purse awarded to the first civilian team to fly a three-place spacecraft to space and back twice in as many weeks. And you got to say, Lou, after today, SpaceShipOne is definitely the horse to beat in that category -- Lou.
DOBBS: A remarkable achievement. Thank you very much, Miles. Miles O'Brien.
Joining us now from Mojave, SpaceShipOne's test pilot, Mike Melvill, and the designer of the aircraft, a man whose vision brought it all to pass, Burt Rutan. Thank you both for being with us here tonight.
Burt, Mike, first of all, congratulations, just a remarkable achievement. Mike, your thoughts when you're up there in space?
MIKE MELVILL, PILOT, SPACESHIPONE: Well, it was an incredible experience to be able to look down at the beautiful Earth below me, all the colors of the desert and the blue ocean and white clouds over L.A. And three minutes of complete weightlessness, an experience that there is nothing to match that, that I've ever seen in my life. And I feel very honored to have been chosen to do that.
DOBBS: Mike, you heard at one point in the flight a loud bang. Have you got -- have you been able to determine what that was? MELVILL: I think it was related to the engine. The engine sometimes does things like that. We did not have any failures, structural failures...
DOBBS: Right.
MELVILL: ... so it was -- it had to have been a backfire or something out of the engine. It was a tremendous bang, though.
DOBBS: What a courageous flight, what a courageous journey for you, Mike, and you made history.
Burt Rutan, your courage has been longstanding, your vision, your dream of achieving this realized today. What are your emotions tonight?
BURT RUTAN, SPACESHIPONE DESIGNER: I -- in some ways, just complete relief, because this has been a three-year effort. It's been one in which we had just a little bit of money to produce an entire manned space program. So I've been under an enormous amount of pressure to make sure we get the technical job right, and also do all the elements, get all the people together, do all the flight tests, and all the engine tests, and build everything, simulator and so on, and make it all work together, and have a team just pull it off. We're doing this with a few dozen people. Actually we're only working about two dozen now. And that's normally something that's done with thousands of people. So it's a tough job, and today I'm enormously relieved that we have reached our goal.
DOBBS: And I know you have to be enormously proud of what you've been able to accomplish. Is this, in your judgment, a model for the future of private spacecraft in space?
RUTAN: Absolutely. When Wilbur Wright flew in Paris in 1908, people pretty much sorted out that if this bicycle shop guy can do it, that we can too. And in a very short period of time, there were a lot of airplanes in 39 different countries, so I think that is going to happen here.
DOBBS: Well, Burt, again our congratulations to you, to Mike. The courageousness of your achievement, and thanks for sharing part of your day with us. We thank you very much. And we salute you.
MELVILL: Thank you.
RUTAN: Thank you. OK. You bet.
DOBBS: Tonight's thought is from a man who knew something about great achievement. He said, quote, "It's kind of fun to do the impossible." Those are the words of Walt Disney.
We'll be right back with the results of our poll tonight. Please stay with us
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) DOBBS: The results of our poll: 63 percent of you say you plan to read former President Clinton's new memoir; and 37 percent of you say you do not.
Please join us tomorrow. I'll be joined by former U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky on this country's worsening record trade deficits. And rallying in support of Congressman Rush Holt's legislation to require an e-voting paper trail -- Congressman Holt. And California's Secretary of State Kevin Shelley joins us.
For all of us here, goodnight from New York. ANDERSON COOPER 360 is next.
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Aired June 21, 2004 - 18:00 ET
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LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight, after more than a year of allegations of corruption, one of this country's top governors is resigning. John Rowland of Connecticut at this hour is announcing he's leaving office.
The Justice Department intervenes in the controversy over allegations a U.S. Congressman tried to solicit money and votes from illegal aliens. We'll have the report.
The Iranians have seized three British patrol boats and arrested eight British troops. We'll have the latest on this breaking story from the Pentagon.
In Exporting America tonight, shocking new evidence that many companies with government contracts are using overseas tax shelters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. BYRON DORGAN (D), NORTH DAKOTA: These are the kind of companies that want all the benefits of American citizenship and all the benefits you can get from doing business with the federal government.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOBBS: Tonight, I'll talk with Congressman Sherrod Brown about his plan to stop the exporting of America, and I'll be join by author Bruce Weinstein who says corporate outsourcing to cheap overseas labor markets is clearly unethical.
And, for the first time in history, a privately financed rocket plane. "SpaceShipOne" has successfully journeyed to the edge of space and back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were going about 3,300 feet per second at that point, so a rifle bullet out of an M-16 is only 2,700 feet per second.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOBBS: Tonight, our live report from Mojave, California.
ANNOUNCER: This is LOU DOBBS TONIGHT" for Monday, June 21. Here now for an hour of news, debate and opinion is Lou Dobbs. DOBBS: Good evening.
Tonight, after months of scandal and allegations, Connecticut's governor, John Rowland, is resigning. The Republican governor is the focus of a federal corruption investigation and was facing possible impeachment.
Connecticut Governor John Rowland is speaking tonight from the governor's mansion in Hartford, Connecticut. Let's listen in.
GOV. JOHN ROWLAND (R), CONNECTICUT: I am thankful to my family for instilling in me the principle that public service to others is a noble cause.
My political journey has brought me from the statehouse to the U.S. Congress to the governor's office. It's been an incredible fulfilling journey, with a simple goal to help serve the people of Connecticut, and it's the people of Connecticut that I thank for giving me this privilege.
Throughout these years, I have never forgotten what the people of Connecticut have given me. I can only hope that when all is said and done, when the dust settles and time casts light back on our time in office that the people will see that we tried to give something back as well.
Through times of prosperity and times of recession, through times of tragedy and times of celebration, we have made much progress together. It's been an incredible honor, and I am pleased to have served you.
I am proud that there is new life in our cities, especially in Hartford and Waterbury and Bridgeport and New Haven and in New London. There is new life, there is new hope, and there is new opportunity.
What an enormous privilege to work with so many outstanding mayors and business people and elected local officials and clergy and volunteers and the not-for-profit agencies, all focused on making their communities better, all striving to prove that the good in society should outweigh the bad.
This has been my motivation for the past 10 years.
DOBBS: Governor John Rowland of Connecticut resigning his office, and he will be replaced by Lieutenant Governor M. Jodi Rell who will fill and will carry out the rest of this term. That term lasting until January of 2007.
Deborah Feyerick has been covering this breaking story, joining us now live from Hartford with more on the story -- Deborah.
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Lou, this is a man who as governor got the state's highest popularity ratings ever. He was once seen as a rising star in the Republican Party, making the short list of Bush Cabinet appointments. Now all that is over.
As you heard, he is now resigning. He is the focus of a federal bribery investigation and almost certain impeachment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MOIRA LYONS (D), CONNECTICUT HOUSE SPEAKER: We had an extremely talented individual with great ability to move up in the Republican hierarchy who of and by his own choice chose to be put in this very untenable situation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FEYERICK: Rowland's career really began crumbling in January. That's when he apologized to voters for taking gifts that he had received from people looking to do business with the state, one of those gifts a hot tub for his lakeside cottage.
Now the impeachment inquiry was in its third week. A number of insiders said Rowland saw the writing on the wall.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL ANISKOVICH (R), CONNECTICUT STATE SENATE: On balance, on policy, this governor's been a great governor. His personal misconduct, his ethical lapses have forced him to give up what the people gave him, and that's a sad thing, but it doesn't diminish what he's done as governor.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FEYERICK: Connecticut has been plagued by ethics problems by some of its politicians. One insider described this as a cleansing of the political psyche, saying that while the allegations may not look like such a big deal to outsiders, for John Rowland, it was like bleeding to death by a thousand tiny paper cuts -- Lou.
DOBBS: Deborah, this has got to be difficult beyond what would be a difficult circumstance. John Rowland, when he was elected in '94, the nation's youngest governor. He served three terms before that in the U.S. Congress, two in the state legislature.
What is the next step, the investigations that are going to continue? What is the expectation, Deborah?
FEYERICK: Well, we are told now that, as of this moment, the impeachment inquiry stops. The purpose of it, of course, was to get him to resign. He has done that. So what the committee will do is simply issue what it has found so far, but they will not continue.
And as for what his political future holds, I spoke to one person who said he could certainly go into lobbying, but, as for elected office, that's over.
DOBBS: Deborah Feyerick.
Thank you very much.
Turning now to developments overseas tonight, a mystery tonight over just what happened to eight British Marines who were seized by Iran in a waterway between Iran and Iraq. Britain says it lost contact with three of its small patrol boats in Shatt al-Arab Waterway. Iran says it confiscated the boats.
ITN's Bill Neely has the report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL NEELY, ITN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These are the types of boats seized, and this is the waterway where they were intercepted, filmed by ITV News four weeks ago.
Early this morning, three fast patrol boats of the royal Navy were here with eight Marines on board. They were on a daily patrol of the river searching for smugglers. The men were armed, they had maps of the river on board, but the boats have no sophisticated navigational equipment.
As they showed me last month, the large Iranian military base and numerous watchtowers hug the far shore, but, in fact, Iranian territory begins in the middle of the waterway that separates the two countries, and there's no line in the water that shows that border.
The Navy lost contact with its folks somewhere between the cities on either side. The Iranians say the three boats, known as Richard Raiders (ph), were guided to shore and confiscated. It's not known where the eight sailors are being held.
Analysts say the Iranians are sending a signal off to Britain.
PAUL CORNISH, CENTRE FOR DEFENSE STUDIES: I think what's going on here is not so much a matter between Iran and Great Britain as between Iran and the new Iraqi government that's going to be in position in less than two weeks' time.
I think what they're doing is sending a pretty important signal about an issue which is still alive -- very, very alive -- as far as the Iranians are concerned.
KNEEL: The issue: the borderline on this water. The pawns for now: eight British servicemen.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DOBBS: Bill Neely of ITN reporting.
And tonight, there remains no further word on when Iran will release those British Marines.
For the latest now from the Pentagon on this developing story and more, I'm joined by our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre.
Jamie, what are your sources telling you about just what happened to those British patrol boats and their eight crew members?
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SENIOR PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's still not clear whether they wandered into Iranian waters on that very narrow waterway. You could see in those pictures that the Shatt al- Arab is a very narrow river, essentially, in which Iraq controls the West Bank, Iran controls the East Bank.
A very similar incident to this happened last year with some Americans going down the waterway as well. They were detained briefly by Iran, questioned eventually, were returned. The U.S. Central Command essentially admitting in that case that the U.S. boats did stray into Iranian waters.
There are negotiations going on between the British government and Iran right now, and the Iranian government is indicating that assuming that they don't find "any malicious intent" that those British seamen will be also released as well -- Lou.
DOBBS: Jamie, obviously, a lot of questions to be answered there in the seizure of those three patrol boats and those British Marines, but also a lot of questions about another development. That shocking video today showing the bodies of four U.S. Marines who were killed in the City of Ramadi. Is the Pentagon giving any further details about just what happened to those Marines?
MCINTYRE: Not really. I have a feeling they know a little bit more than they're saying. It does appear that the four Marines were ambushed. They were on a patrol, as you said, in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. They didn't check in at their appointed time.
A rescue team was sent out to find them. They found them -- all four of them shot. They were also missing their flack jackets, so, apparently, that -- they might have been looted. One report suggested they'd been shot in the head, but we haven't confirmed that from the Associated Press.
The Marines say they're still in the process of notifying all the families, and they may have more details later on what happened in this apparent ambush in which four Marines were killed -- Lou.
DOBBS: Again, a lot of questions, whether those Marines were involved in an operation, an engagement. Are we expecting to get those answers?
MCINTYRE: Well, it does appear that they were in a firefight of some kind. They did report that apparently before they lost contact. But we're not sure of the circumstances, whether they were -- whether they were killed in the firefight or whether they were gunned down in some other kind of more devious ambush.
DOBBS: Jamie, thank you very much.
Jamie McIntyre, our senior Pentagon correspondent.
Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq who beheaded American Nick Berg tonight are threatening to behead a South Korean hostage. An Arab television network showed a videotape of the Korean hostage pleading for his life. The terrorists say they will kill the hostage if South Korea sends another 3,000 troops to Iraq. The South Korean government says it will go ahead with that deployment despite the threat to murder the hostage.
Turning now to Washington, two key rulings by the Supreme Court today. The court said patients cannot sue their HMOs for malpractice damages in state courts if the HMOs refuse to pay for medical care.
The court also ruled that Americans do not have a constitutional right to refuse to tell police officers their names.
Joining me now to discuss both of those decisions, CNN's Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin.
Jeffrey, the HMO decision. This is a major development.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Big victory for insurance companies, for HMOs, loss for patients who want to sue. Because state courts are much more favorable to plaintiffs, you get juries, you usually get more money.
DOBBS: On balance, the critical complaint has been that state courts have been putting forward just -- their juries have been putting forward just immense and unreasonable damage awards. This obviously constricts that. Is it a fair allegation? Is this the appropriate redress?
TOOBIN: Well, the court didn't address that directly, but, certainly, the insurance companies and medical -- and HMOs, who have been complaining so much about state juries, they really wanted this one because it insulates them from that whole problem. They don't have to worry about it, at least not in this part of the law.
DOBBS: And the limitations in the federal court decision for the plaintiff?
TOOBIN: They can still sue, but their options are -- it's much more difficult, and the money you're going to get is much smaller.
DOBBS: And the decision by the Supreme Court, a 5-4 decision, that one asked for his or her name must give it to a policeman.
TOOBIN: It's a very straightforward ruling. If the cops have a reasonable suspicion about you, which is a very low standard, and they ask you your name, you have to give them the answer or you can go to jail.
DOBBS: When you say a straightforward decision, but a 5-4 vote, if one decides that the officer does not have a reasonable basis to ask you that question?
TOOBIN: Then they don't have the right to ask, but that is rarely -- that's rarely the situation. Cops can usually come up with reasonable suspicion, it's such a low standard, and, basically, what the majority said was you don't have a right to refuse to give a fingerprint, a handwriting sample. Giving your name is just like those. It's not really testimony.
DOBBS: Five to four. What did the four say?
TOOBIN: The four said it's very different from a fingerprint because giving your name is something you can be prosecuted for making a false statement on. That's testimony. That's what the Fifth Amendment is supposed to protect. They only got four votes.
DOBBS: Four votes for the Fifth Amendment...
TOOBIN: That's right, yes.
DOBBS: ... in this instance, if I can put it that way.
Jeffrey Toobin, thank you, as always.
A bizarre turn of events tonight in the Utah congressional campaign that we reported to you last week. Incumbent Congressman Chris Cannon is accused of soliciting money and votes from illegal aliens. Now the Justice Department is involved.
Peter Viles reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PETER VILES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Provo, Utah, a congressional campaign so controversial, the Justice Department now says it will monitor tomorrow's voting. At issue, comments by a staffer for Congressman Chris Cannon on Spanish radio, an appeal for illegal aliens to break the law and funnel money to the campaign.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through interpreter): If you are undocumented, you must find -- we welcome this money, but you have to find someone who is legal in order to donate the money.
VILES: Cannon's office said he would never encourage illegal voting or contributions, but anti-immigration groups cried foul and said they might challenge some voters to prevent illegal voting. To that, the state attorney general said, "This is intimidation."
MARK SHURTLEFF, UTAH ATTORNEY GENERAL: We were concerned that people who were legal who did have foreign-sounding last names might be intimidated or afraid to come forward and vote, and we just wanted to make sure that they were -- you know, if you're allowed, if you're registered, please get out and vote.
VILES: But the anti-immigration group that opposes Cannon, Project USA, says it never considered challenging voters based on their names and isn't planning any sort of election challenge.
CRAIG NELSEN, PROJECT USA: It's very troubling. Here you have a sitting congressman, openly encouraging illegal activity, and we say, well, let's check into this, and, instead of the Department of Justice investigating the congressman, we're the ones who draw its attention.
VILES: In a press release, the Justice Department said it will monitor the election to "ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act." The department did not return phone calls to answer questions about what prompted the decision.
Like most incumbents, Cannon has a big money advantage, roughly 8-1 in spending. His campaign reported raising $355,000 through June and spending $307,000. His Republican opponent, Matt Throckmorton, has raised just $44,000 and spent $37,000.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VILES: It's not unusual for the Justice Department to monitor local elections. It says it monitored 60 in the last election cycle, and both campaigns, for the record, have said that they welcome the Justice Department's involvement in this -- Lou.
DOBBS: So the fact is tonight we don't know exactly what the Justice Department is monitoring aside from broadly the election.
VILES: Right. Although when they say it's the Voting Rights Act, the main point of that law is to guarantee the rights of citizens to vote. So you could guess from that or assume from that that they're more concerned about people being turned away from the polls.
DOBBS: Than they are about the wrong people perhaps going to the polls.
VILES: Exactly.
DOBBS: Well, it's almost Third World-like to hear the U.S. Justice Department monitoring an election.
VILES: They do monitor elections in the Third World.
DOBBS: Yes. Peter Viles, thank you.
Still ahead here, Accenture not the only large company with government contracts. Many of them are trying to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Other government contractors are using offshore tax shelters. We'll have this shocking report.
And America's intelligence agencies still stuck in a Cold war mentality and incapable of fighting the global war on terror. That's the view of James Bamford, author of "A Pretext for War," who is my guest next.
And Bill Clinton's autobiography will be launched in a blaze of publicity tomorrow. You may have noticed a minor firestorm of publicity already. We'll report on the impact the book may have on this year's presidential election.
Please stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Some members of the U.S. Senate tonight are looking for ways to block a multibillion-dollar government border security contract that was awarded to Bermuda-based Accenture. The House last week failed to block that deal.
Critics say the Accenture contract rewards a foreign company for abandoning the United States, but Accenture is not the only American company that profits from foreign tax shelters and U.S. government contracts.
Lisa Sylvester reports from Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LISA SYLVESTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tyco used to call New Hampshire home. It moved to Bermuda in 1997, but that did not stop the company from receiving federal contracts worth more than $330 million in 2002. In fact, many corporations based outside the United States still receive lucrative government contracts.
In 2002, Accenture received federal contracts worth nearly $450 million; McDermott International, $340 million; and Foster Wheeler, nearly $300 million in federal contracts.
DORGAN: These are the kind of companies that want all the benefits of American citizenship and all the benefits you can get from doing business with the federal government, but they don't want to bear the burden or the responsibility of paying taxes to our government.
SYLVESTER: Senator Dorgan also takes issue with American multinational companies that have subsidiaries in tax-haven countries and still reap millions in federal contracts. A General Accounting Office study this year found that 59 of the top 100 publicly traded federal contractors have subsidiaries in tax havens, including Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and the Bahamas.
The Fluor Corporation received more than $900 million in federal contracts in 2001 and has 27 tax-haven subsidiaries; ExxonMobile, $700 million in federal contracts with 11 tax-haven subsidiaries; Halliburton in 2001 received more than $534 million in contracts and has 17 tax-havens; and WorldCom took in more than $500 million in contracts with 10 tax-haven subsidiaries.
Corporations like Accenture argue they still employ thousands of Americans, even if they have a foreign address.
HARRY YOU, CFO, ACCENTURE: I think it's really a misperception, once again, because the work for a U.S. visit is being done entirely in the U.S. by our U.S. business and our colleagues in the United States who are over 25,000 strong.
SYLVESTER: But it's U.S. taxpayers who get stuck paying more than their share.
PETE SEPP, NATIONAL TAXPAYERS UNION: While individuals can certainly control their level of state taxes by picking up and moving, they can't really do that as easily with federal taxes, unless they want to give up their citizenship.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SYLVESTER: Corporations as late as 1943 used to pay about 40 percent of U.S. tax revenues, and now they pay only about 7 percent of federal revenue -- Lou.
DOBBS: Revealing numbers. Thank you very much.
Lisa Sylvester.
Congressman Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, has introduced legislation that would eliminate tax breaks for American companies relocating to foreign countries. The congressman says the Republicans' massive corporate tax bill will only further handicap American workers by giving tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs to cheap overseas labor markets. Congressman Brown joins us tonight from Capitol Hill.
Good to have you here.
REP. SHERROD BROWN (D), OHIO: thanks. Good to be back, Lou.
DOBBS: What are the prospects of getting anything done, whether it be your legislation or any other in this election year?
BROWN: Well, they're not good. There were -- two bad things happened last week. One, the amendment that just was cited in the previous report that would have stopped Accenture from doing what they did and all those others companies cited.
Second in this bill that you covered last week, interviewed Congressman Rangel, this bill that was a huge corporate tax break, sending -- putting -- blowing a hole in the federal budget, plus giving tax breaks to companies and encouraging them to continue to offshore and close plants in the U.S. and send jobs overseas.
DOBBS: As Congressman Rangel put it, Congress -- at least the House deciding to solve a $4 billion problem with $140 billion. That -- in fairness, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas said that it was a jobs creation bill and a normal way of doing business. Were both men right?
BROWN: No, they weren't. I mean Congressman Rangel was right. Mr. -- Chairman Thomas isn't. It's continuing to throw billions of dollars in huge tax breaks to the most privileged, the largest corporations, and these corp -- what we're in essence doing is rewarding these corporations with American tax dollars, corporations that, one, send jobs overseas, we're rewarding them.
Second, what they do is they -- they oftentimes go offshore to avoid taxes. And, third, some of these companies like Halliburton with close ties to the vice president, Halliburton does business through one of its Cayman Island subsidiaries with foreign terrorist organizations and state-sponsored terrorist governments.
DOBBS: Let me ask you this. Forty-eight Democrats crossed party lines to vote with the Republicans on the jobs creation bill. If Democrats are serious about protecting the American worker -- and you said that was an anti-worker piece of legislation -- how in the world is the voter to discern between a sincere Democratic initiative and simply talking the talk rather than walking the walk?
BROWN: Well, 80 percent of Democrats voted against it. Those that voted for it were from tobacco states. They were from states where there had been -- I mean, I didn't agree with them, but they were from states where they were simply given all kinds of advantages, all kinds of bailouts for industries in those states, all kinds of special-interest stuff.
When you put a special-interest bill like that in front of the Congress, unfortunately, too many people in both parties support it. But the driving force was Republican leadership and the president pushing for more tax breaks for the companies that already are going offshore, that already are avoiding taxes, that are already shipping jobs overseas.
DOBBS: Ohio, your state, an important swing state. You've lost about 190,000 jobs there. The president is putting on a full-court press, as is Senator Kerry. Which way, in your judgment, do you think Ohio will go based on the polls and your sense of the direction?
BROWN: It's a close election, Ohio, but Ohioans have seen one- sixth of our manufacturing jobs disappear. We've seen tuition at state universities go up double digit. We've seen the same kind of problems with health care and gasoline costs and all that.
But I think Ohioans understand that this economy is doing well for those who owns corporations, the biggest investors. The companies are doing well with sales and with profits, but workers continue to lose jobs, and communities continue to suffer, school districts and layoffs in police and fire, because we're losing so much manufacturing in places like Canton and Lorraine and Akron and Cleveland and Columbus.
DOBBS: Congressman Sherrod Brown, thanks for being here.
BROWN: Thank you, Lou.
DOBBS: Federal officials tonight are investigating a bizarre incident in South Dakota over the weekend. A Northwest Airlines flight landed at the wrong airport.
The Northwest flight from Minneapolis was supposed to arrive at Rapid City, South Dakota, but, instead, the aircraft landed at nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base. Shortly after, the crew told the 117 passengers aboard to close their window shades and not to look outside.
The passengers had to wait three hours, presumably with their shades drawn, I'm sure, for a different Northwest crew to arrive and fly the plane to the correct airport. The pilots were exchanged, I think, is the nice way to say it, after that incident.
Still ahead. We'll share your thoughts on the use of private security forces instead of military forces in Iraq.
And then, a bestselling author says systematic weakness is to blame for this nation's intelligence failures of recent years. James Bamford will be here. We'll be talking about his new book, "A Pretext for War." That's next.
And former President Bill Clinton's legacy from his perspective. We'll have the latest on the president's new memoir, his autobiography, cleverly entitled "My Life."
Those stories and much more still ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: LOU DOBBS TONIGHT continues. Here now for more news, debate and opinion, Lou Dobbs.
DOBBS: My guest tonight says our nation's intelligence agencies have failed for make the shift from the Cold War to the war on terror. James Bamford's has written two best-selling books on the National Security Agency. His new book is "A Pretext For War, 9/1l, Iraq, and the Views of America's Intelligence Agencies." Mr. Bamford joins me tonight from Washington. Good to have you here.
An outstanding book with a lot of revelations, but let's go first to the issue of the 9/11 commission, which within the next month will have its report out. Is it your judgment that our intelligence agencies are simply so flawed they can't be quickly reorganized and focused on the war on terror?
JAMES BAMFORD, AUTHOR, "A PRETEXT FOR WAR": Well, actually that's the judgment of the director of Central Intelligence. George tenet came out a few weeks ago and said it's probably take at least five years before the CIA gets up to speed. The problem is that the CIA really wasn't much paying much attention to the war on terrorism in terms of training people to fight it, training people to penetrate the al Qaeda organization and other places up until September 11.
DOBBS: Up until September 11, the fact that our intelligence worked so poorly, and you go into some considerable detail on the difference -- I don't want to get too detailed here -- the director of operations and director of intelligence, but the issues as just to how this agency has been working and focusing on the CIA for just a moment, is it your judgment that it can be fixed readily?
BAMFORD: I don't think so. What the CIA is doing right now, because they've got to get a lot of people together, train them how to penetrate places like al Qaeda, learn languages like Pashto and Dari so what they're doing now is hiring people from the private sector. And so much of the CIA headquarters, which few people really realize is made up of contractors from some big companies, some small companies, but more and more of the CIA is becoming privatized.
DOBBS: The second largest, as you well know, Jim, the second largest contingent of armed forces in Iraq after the U.S. and the coalition are private contractors for security. We are seeing contractors, as you point out, in intelligence. What is your judgment as to what that is doing. And let's focus first on intelligence. What is that doing to the way in which this country operates, what's it doing to government employees, the effectiveness of our intelligence agencies?
BAMFORD: Well, what you need is a good mix of the two. You shouldn't just exclude contractors, they play an important role. The problem is when you see something like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal where you have private contractors -- one of the CIA's private contractors last week was indicted for a homicide, one of the people in Afghanistan was interrogating a prisoner, and the prisoner died during his interrogation. So he was indicted for that. So you have problems when you have private contractors doing some of this work. Then the problem gets extended if his boss back at headquarters is a private contractor, and that person's boss is a private contractor, because you lose the accountability and that's what you need is Congress to take a closer look at it.
DOBBS: Going to the title of your book, "Pretext For War," you document and suggest strongly that basically the neoconservative cabal, as it's often popularly referred to, had laid out these policies five years before the strategy, five years before George W. Bush took office. Do you believe the neocons should be held responsible for the failures in Iraq, for the initial -- for the war itself?
BAMFORD: Well, certainly, because they -- they were the people in the forefront of the push and the push for the rush for war. These people, most of them are in the Pentagon, and they pretty much had this idea in 1996. They created a plan for Israel to invade Iraq, replace the leader with somebody that was friendly to Israel, and even go into Lebanon and Syria, and that plan was rejected by Benjamin Netanyahu but then these people decided to keep the plan alive and when they became part of the Bush administration in 2001, they brought it back to life, especially right after September 11.
DOBBS: Just in plain language, is it your view, your judgment that President Bush was duped by the neoconservatives?
BAMFORD: I think President Bush had his own agenda with regard to Iraq. People have heard that Saddam was allegedly trying to kill his father, the senior President Bush, when he was in Kuwait, but as I write in "Pretext For War," it was much larger than that according to the justice department. Virtually every member of his family were going to be killed. His father, his mother, his wife, his brothers and their wives. They were all part of the group that was going to Kuwait, and that's where the bomb was going to go off to kill them all. So he had his own personal animosity towards Saddam Hussein and numerous times he referred to him as I'm going to get him, that type of language.
DOBBS: James Bamford, the book is "A Pretext For War." Provocative and fascinating. Good to have you here. Come back soon.
BAMFORD: Thanks a lot, Lou, I appreciate it. DOBBS: President Clinton's life in shocking detail and some shocking critiques of his book as well. We'll have some of the more surprising information from the new book.
Also ahead, the ethics of outsourcing. Bruce Weinstein, the CEO of Ethics At Work, he says outsourcing is not only unethical, it's bad for business. He's my guest.
And out of this world, a private company makes history in space. That story is coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Former President Bill Clinton begins his nationwide book tour tomorrow promoting his new memoir, "My Life." The book will be released, of course, tomorrow, but Mr. Clinton has been talking and talking. Kelly Wallace reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is his latest campaign. Bill Clinton revealing a lot, but not everything, in interviews before the much anticipated release of his autobiography. Asked the worst day of his presidency...
BILL CLINTON, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When I was alone with Ms. Lewinsky...
WALLACE: He tells "60 Minutes," August 1998, when he woke wife Hillary in the middle of the night to tell her about his affair with White House Intern Monica Lewinsky just before testifying about it to a grand jury.
CLINTON: I had a sleepless night and woke her up and sat down on the side of the bed and just told her. And it was awful, but I had to do it.
WALLACE: On his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky.
CLINTON: When I was involved in the -- as I tried to say in the book, two great fights: a struggle with the Republicans over the future of the country, which I won; and a struggle with my old demons, which I lost.
WALLACE: His 957-page book also appears to be a chance to settle old scores, namely with Independent Prosecutor Kenneth Starr, who led a series of investigations of the Clintons.
He tells "60 Minutes"...
CLINTON: There was nothing left but my personal failing. That's what people got for over $70 million. They indicted innocent people because they wouldn't lie, and they exonerated people who committed crimes because they would lie, and they did it because it was nothing but a big political operation designed to bring down the presidency. KENNETH STARR, FMR. INDEPENDENT COUNSEL: Well, I regret it, but again, I understand it. There are very few individuals who are caught up in the process of criminal justice, who walk out saying how much I love the prosecutor.
WALLACE: His greatest regrets of his presidency? Not getting Osama bin Laden and failing to convince Israelis and Palestinians to make a peace deal at Camp David. But will his book satisfy his readers?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE (on camera): And if the initial reviews are any guide, some readers might be a little disappointed. Take a look at the review in yesterday's "New York Times." It was harsh. The "New York Times" called the book, quote, "sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye- crossingly dull - the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history."
Lou, though, this all said, it's not likely to affect sales of the book. It's expected to break all kinds of records, all kinds of crowds, but ready on the shelves at 12:01 this morning.
LOU DOBBS, HOST, LOU DOBBS TONIGHT: And you can imagine that there will be plenty of people lined up for it. That is, Kelly, one of the toughest reviews I've ever seen of any book.
WALLACE: It is, but if you listen to people who got the book in advance, signing confidentiality agreements, Joe Klein of "TIME" magazine, one, he says the first half of the book about his life in Arkansas, 476 pages worth about that, he says is pretty refreshing. But the rest of the book, about his presidency, he says it's almost as if the former president was rushing to meet a deadline and doesn't have a lot of reflection there.
DOBBS: Kelly, thank you very much. Kelly Wallace.
That brings us to the subject of tonight's poll, and we thought the burning question should be asked, if not answered: Do you plan to read former President Clinton's new memoir, "My Life"? Yes or no; cast your vote at CNN.COM/LOU. We'll have the results coming up.
I forgot to ask Kelly Wallace where he came up with the title, "My Life," but I will take care of that omission later and share her response with you.
Still ahead tonight, my next guest says companies that outsource will ultimately pay a high cost for the practice. I'll be talking with the CEO of ethics at work, Bruce Weinstein.
And for the first time ever, a privately owned rocket plane has gone where only government craft have been before. We'll have the story of SpaceShipOne. A lot more still ahead here. Please stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) DOBBS: We've been reporting here on the shipment of American jobs to cheap overseas labor markets, its impact on our economy and society. My guest tonight says it's unethical for U.S. companies to outsource jobs to those cheap labor markets. Bruce Weinstein is a professional ethicist, and he is styled as well as The Ethics Guy.
Good to have you here, Bruce.
DR. BRUCE WEINSTEIN: THE ETHICS GUY: Thanks for inviting me, Lou.
DOBBS: A number of Fortune 500 companies consulting with you are talking about outsourcing now. What are you saying?
WEINSTEIN: It is unethical for U.S. companies to outsource, because the first obligation of any business is to make a profit. And it is less likely to do so by sending jobs overseas, because outsourcing creates ill will among the labor force and mostly among consumers that are going to rise up and say we're not going to support these companies any longer.
DOBBS: Bruce, as you say that, I keep thinking at some point people will do the right thing because it's the right thing. There's a business reason, as you suggest there, but they're saying -- the CEOs I'm talking with, many of them, and there is obviously a variety of opinions out there -- they're saying I have to do it, because everybody else is doing it.
WEINSTEIN: Well, the good news is that whether you do it for the right reason or you do it to maximize profits, the end result is the same. So, whether you believe outsourcing is wrong because it's unpatriotic or because it hurts the labor force or because it creates ill will among American consumers or because it damages profit potential, it's still wrong.
So, whether you take the high road for self-interested reasons or because it's the right thing to do, it's just important to do it. See, the good news is when we do the right thing -- as opposed to taking the low road, when we do the right thing, we do the ethical thing, it benefits us in the long run. That's the good news.
DOBBS: Us being all of us.
WEINSTEIN: All of us, yes.
DOBBS: And some people kind of forget that's what it's supposed to be about. But when you say this to a CEO -- and I've had the opportunity to talk with a number of CEOs whose firms are outsourcing, because nearly every firm is --what do they say to you?
WEINSTEIN: Well, they say in the short run, though, we're more likely to maximize profits by outsourcing. And I say to them, well, let's take a long-range view, because let's face it, the journey of any business is a marathon, not a sprint. In fact, our life's journey is a marathon, not a sprint. So, the key here is not really to focus so much on outsourcing, but on rather the long-range view of the lifeblood of any business. And if we take the long-range view, we're more than likely to see the damage that outsourcing is going to do to the U.S. businesses.
DOBBS: Bruce, we thank you very much.
WEINSTEIN: Thanks for inviting me.
DOBBS: A reminder now to vote in our poll tonight. The question is: Do you plan to read former President Clinton's new memoir, "My Life"? Yes or no. It goes on sale at 12:01 a.m. eastern time. Please vote at CNN.COM/LOU. We'll have the results for you later in the broadcast.
Still ahead here, out of this world, a breakthrough for private space travel. We'll have the amazing pictures. We'll talk with the spacecraft's designer and pilot who made it all happen, coming right up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: A private spacecraft and a highly skilled test pilot making history today in California. They successfully completed the first privately funded mission to space. The craft called SpaceShipOne flew more than 62 miles straight up to the edge of space.
Miles O'Brien reports from Mojave, California.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For pennies on the dollar and with only a few hundred feet to spare, 63-year-old Mike Melvill became the first civilian to fly a commercial craft into space. He enjoyed a few minutes of weightless flight and gaped at the gorgeous view.
MIKE MELVILL: SPACESHIPONE PILOT: Looking out of the window and seeing this -- white clouds over the L.A. basin just looked like snow on the ground.
O'BRIEN: It was a high-flying triumph for the little guy. Airplane and now spaceship designer Burt Rutan and his small company Scaled Composites sent SpaceShipOne on a sub-orbital flight for little more than $20 million.
MELVILL: You really do get the feeling that you've touched the face of God when you do something like this, believe me.
O'BRIEN: The history making flight was not trouble free. Shortly after Melvill lit the rocket motor fueled by a mixture of rubber and nitrous oxide - laughing gas -- there was a no-laughing- matter problem with the critical flight controls. The small craft veered off its vertical course.
BURT RUTAN, FOUNDER, SCALED COMPOSITES: We have just a five-mile box to reenter in. The spaceship actually reentered in 22 miles away from that box. It could have gone twice that far and still glided back to Mojave, though.
O'BRIEN: The problem lowered SpaceShipOne's apogee, but the craft squeaked into the record books, reaching 328,491 feet -- 400 feet beyond the official boundary of space, just enough for Melvill to earn his astronaut wings awarded by the FAA.
PATTIE GRACE SMITH, FAA: Today opens a new chapter in history, making space access within the reach of ordinary citizens.
O'BRIEN: Ordinary citizens in extraordinary circumstances.
MELVILL: Boy, when you reenter at 2.9 Mach and you start hitting the atmosphere, the noises you hear are somebody talking to you very, very sharply, you know? And you begin to believe, wow, should I really be doing this?
O'BRIEN: The effort was bankrolled by billionaire Microsoft co- founder Paul Allen, who hopes this is the beginning of a new space race for the rest of us.
PAUL ALLEN, CO-FOUNDER, MICROSOFT: It's a very emotional experience, and it does whet your appetite to want to do more things like this.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN (on camera): For now, Rutan and his team will troubleshoot that flight control problem and then might very well announce an attempt at the $10 million X Prize, it's a private purse awarded to the first civilian team to fly a three-place spacecraft to space and back twice in as many weeks. And you got to say, Lou, after today, SpaceShipOne is definitely the horse to beat in that category -- Lou.
DOBBS: A remarkable achievement. Thank you very much, Miles. Miles O'Brien.
Joining us now from Mojave, SpaceShipOne's test pilot, Mike Melvill, and the designer of the aircraft, a man whose vision brought it all to pass, Burt Rutan. Thank you both for being with us here tonight.
Burt, Mike, first of all, congratulations, just a remarkable achievement. Mike, your thoughts when you're up there in space?
MIKE MELVILL, PILOT, SPACESHIPONE: Well, it was an incredible experience to be able to look down at the beautiful Earth below me, all the colors of the desert and the blue ocean and white clouds over L.A. And three minutes of complete weightlessness, an experience that there is nothing to match that, that I've ever seen in my life. And I feel very honored to have been chosen to do that.
DOBBS: Mike, you heard at one point in the flight a loud bang. Have you got -- have you been able to determine what that was? MELVILL: I think it was related to the engine. The engine sometimes does things like that. We did not have any failures, structural failures...
DOBBS: Right.
MELVILL: ... so it was -- it had to have been a backfire or something out of the engine. It was a tremendous bang, though.
DOBBS: What a courageous flight, what a courageous journey for you, Mike, and you made history.
Burt Rutan, your courage has been longstanding, your vision, your dream of achieving this realized today. What are your emotions tonight?
BURT RUTAN, SPACESHIPONE DESIGNER: I -- in some ways, just complete relief, because this has been a three-year effort. It's been one in which we had just a little bit of money to produce an entire manned space program. So I've been under an enormous amount of pressure to make sure we get the technical job right, and also do all the elements, get all the people together, do all the flight tests, and all the engine tests, and build everything, simulator and so on, and make it all work together, and have a team just pull it off. We're doing this with a few dozen people. Actually we're only working about two dozen now. And that's normally something that's done with thousands of people. So it's a tough job, and today I'm enormously relieved that we have reached our goal.
DOBBS: And I know you have to be enormously proud of what you've been able to accomplish. Is this, in your judgment, a model for the future of private spacecraft in space?
RUTAN: Absolutely. When Wilbur Wright flew in Paris in 1908, people pretty much sorted out that if this bicycle shop guy can do it, that we can too. And in a very short period of time, there were a lot of airplanes in 39 different countries, so I think that is going to happen here.
DOBBS: Well, Burt, again our congratulations to you, to Mike. The courageousness of your achievement, and thanks for sharing part of your day with us. We thank you very much. And we salute you.
MELVILL: Thank you.
RUTAN: Thank you. OK. You bet.
DOBBS: Tonight's thought is from a man who knew something about great achievement. He said, quote, "It's kind of fun to do the impossible." Those are the words of Walt Disney.
We'll be right back with the results of our poll tonight. Please stay with us
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) DOBBS: The results of our poll: 63 percent of you say you plan to read former President Clinton's new memoir; and 37 percent of you say you do not.
Please join us tomorrow. I'll be joined by former U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky on this country's worsening record trade deficits. And rallying in support of Congressman Rush Holt's legislation to require an e-voting paper trail -- Congressman Holt. And California's Secretary of State Kevin Shelley joins us.
For all of us here, goodnight from New York. ANDERSON COOPER 360 is next.
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