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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Interview With Dr. David Graham; Homeland Security Has No Plans to Raise Alert Level Over Holidays

Aired December 16, 2004 - 22:00   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.


AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
Drugs, the legal ones, are a huge business in the country and a huge part of our lives. The question on the table tonight is simple, though the answer is not. Is the government doing its job keeping the pipeline of good drugs open and keeping the dangerous ones off the market?

Vioxx, the pain medication pulled by Merck because of increased risk of heart attack, is the best current example. To critics of the FDA it is the tip of the iceberg.

A survey of FDA scientists found that two-thirds are less than fully confident in the safety of drugs on the market. Nearly 20 percent said they felt pressure to approve drugs they thought might be unsafe.

In a moment, the FDA's leading critic, a 20-year employee, Dr. David Graham, first some background from CNN's Elizabeth Cohen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tillman and Mary Harris were married for 47 years, raised a daughter, had grandchildren.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I miss him terribly, wish he were here.

COHEN: Tillman Harris isn't here because after taking a cholesterol-lowering drug called Baycol, he developed an unusual muscle wasting condition called rabdomyolysis. He became so weak his wife and daughter rushed him to the hospital where he died ten days later.

Six months after his death, Bayer pulled Baycol off the market. At that point, 31 people taking the drug had died of rabdomyolysis. And now the question is could Bayer have prevented those deaths?

Tillman Harris died in February, 2001. In March, 2000, nearly a year earlier, an internal Bayer memo that was quoted in the journal of the American Medical Association this month stated: "Baycol substantially elevates the risk for rabdomyolysis compared with other cholesterol-lowering drugs."

Dr. Jerry Avorn is a professor at Harvard Medical School and author of the book "Powerful Medicines."

DR. JERRY AVORN, AUTHOR, "POWERFUL MEDICINES": Baycol is one of several drugs that we are asking ourselves how in the world did this drug stay on the market as long as it did?

COHEN: The answer, he and others say, is complicated. When drug companies hear of serious side effects they have to by law report them to the Food and Drug Administration but connecting the dots and analyzing the data is time consuming.

AVORN: They haven't had the person power to receive and deal with all of these thousands and thousands of spontaneous reports that the companies send in.

COHEN: If a drug company finds a side effect before a drug goes on the market, it legally has to show that study to the FDA but the law prevents the FDA from making those studies public. Drugs companies say the studies contain trade secrets. Pharmaceutical companies say they reliably report side effects both before and after a drug is put on the market.

ALAN GOLDHAMMER, PH.D., ASSOC. V.P. FOR REGULATORY AFFAIRS: These are significant reporting requirements that companies engage on, on an ongoing basis.

COHEN: Concerning Baycol, Bayer says they kept the FDA fully informed about all pertinent safety information, including adverse event reports. When Bayer became aware of an increased rate of reports of rabdomyolysis it took appropriate action. But the Harris family is left wondering what if Bayer, what if the FDA had taken quicker action before there were 31 deaths.

ROSE HARRIS, DAUGHTER: Somewhere between the one and the 31 there were probably people who wouldn't have passed away.

COHEN: Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: It's a reality, if not always a welcome reality that stories like this one rarely take off until there's a media moment, if you will, even if a lot of people are hurt, some die, moments like the Army reservist in Kuwait or, in this case, an FDA whistleblower testifying before the Congress.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. DAVID GRAHAM, FDA SCIENTIST: I was pressured to change my conclusions and recommendations. One drug safety manager recommended that I should be barred from presenting the poster at the meeting and also noted that Merck needed to know our study results.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: That was Dr. David Graham and Dr. Graham joins us from Washington tonight. Sir, it's nice to see you. GRAHAM: Thank you.

BROWN: I suppose to one degree or another all drugs on the market have some risk associated with them and presumably if they got to market they have some reward. Is the basic allegation that you make that this risk/reward balance is out of balance at the FDA? They're more concerned about reward than the risk.

GRAHAM: That's partially correct. What I maintain is, is that the FDA places almost complete attention and focus and value on what they perceive to be the benefit of a product and discount almost completely the risk side, the safety side, a consequence of a drug.

But, in addition to that, they don't adequately measure what the actual benefit of a drug is. When a clinical trial is done they're measuring what is called the effect of the drug.

The effect of a drug is sort of does it lower your blood cholesterol? Does it lower your blood pressure? Does it lower your blood sugar? That would be the effect of a drug. The benefit of the drug is would it help you to live longer, to live healthier?

And, FDA only measures efficacy. It doesn't measure benefit and yet when a safety problem emerges there we're talking about real lives lost, real lives ruined. FDA typically places a very high value on the efficacy and translates that into saying there's a benefit when they have no established evidence of a benefit and this was the case with Vioxx (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Vioxx.

BROWN: I want to talk about Vioxx a little bit here and perhaps drugs generally as well. In the case of Vioxx, first of all, the number 100,000 heart attacks and the like has been thrown out. Are those actual people or is this a statistical model? Is it a best guess? Do we actually know the names of 100,000 people?

GRAHAM: Well, no. We don't know the names of 100,000 people. The government does this all the time in epidemiology, which is you can't be out there with people counting every person who has a heart attack from Vioxx.

So you take the data that you have at hand, such as the clinical trials that Merck did that showed that Vioxx increased the risk of heart attack for high dose Vioxx 500 percent or the lower dose Vioxx by 200 percent.

And then you determine how many people were treated with the high and the low dose and it's a very simple matter then to calculate out the number of heart attacks that would have resulted.

BROWN: Is it a larger -- we seem to take drugs longer. We're on anti-cholesterol drugs the rest of our lives that sort of thing. Is the problem greater in drugs that are on the market or drugs coming to the market?

GRAHAM: Well, there are several aspects to that question. FDA when it's looking at a drug for the pre-approval side before it comes to the market says that a drug is both safe and effective before they put it on the marketplace.

Well, they've got the efficacy part right. There they're 90 percent sure or better that the drug works. But when it comes to safety, they're not 95 percent sure that the drug is safe. Instead, what FDA is really saying is, is we don't have 95 percent confidence that the drug will kill you and that's a very different standard.

Now, on the post approval side, once a drug gets to the market drugs that are widely marketed, your blockbuster drugs have the potential theoretically at least to effect a much wider number of patients and with Vioxx that was precisely the reason why so many people were hurt by the drug.

It was a blockbuster drug. It increased the risk of heart attack by a very large amount and heart attack itself is a fairly common event in the general population. You put those things together and you have the formula for a national disaster.

BROWN: Is this about money in the end that the drug industry is powerful, that the agency in your view, people disagree with this I assume, is just simply too close to the industry it's supposed to regulate?

GRAHAM: My own view, and I'm not speaking for the agency of course, is that FDA views industry as its client and this is official FDA, not the FDA scientists. You mentioned the survey in your lead-in to our interview and there we see that many FDA scientists have experienced what I've experienced and that they realize and recognize that FDA is not doing what it needs to do to protect Americans from unsafe drugs.

In fact, I think what that survey demonstrates is, is that FDA is more interested in serving its business clients than it is from protecting the American public from unsafe drugs.

BROWN: There's another way to look at that. I mean in the -- I think it was 18 percent of scientists said they felt some pressure to approve a drug they felt was unsafe. That means there is 80 percent who did not feel that pressure and how ought we look at that number?

GRAHAM: I think the American people should be appalled by the thought that only 82 percent felt no pressure to change their opinion. Think about this. FDA is a scientific organization. In a scientific organization, the science should speak for itself. No one should feel pressured to change their opinion.

The fact that you've got 18 percent of FDA scientists saying that they felt this pressure is an appalling statistic but consider this also. Most drugs that FDA reviews don't have safety problems to begin with. They're me-too drugs, so they're very similar to other drugs that are already on the market where the problems have already been worked out.

So, the majority of drugs that FDA reviews nobody has a question about them, so we're talking about a subset and in that subset, that subset might just be 18 percent of the drugs that FDA sees and then what you can see is that virtually all the drugs where there is a question about safety, if the scientist raises that question, that scientist will experience pressure to change their opinion.

BROWN: Let's...

GRAHAM: So, it's a misleading statistic.

BROWN: I'm sorry. Dr. Graham, just as a final question, let's talk about the pressure a little bit. Since you testified before Congress or since it was clear you were going to testify before Congress, have they pretty much put you in a closet?

GRAHAM: Well, my supervisors have canceled all their meetings with me. Yesterday I was at a research seminar that we hold in our department and one of our senior managers came into the meeting and there was one empty seat, which was next to me. I greeted this manager with a hello and the manager just basically looked the other way, sat in the seat and didn't say a word to me the entire meeting.

So, it's basically being put into the gulag out in Siberia. I have plenty of work to do and I'm happy to do it and I do it well and my colleagues are very pleased to have me there to help them do the important business of monitoring drug safety in the United States.

BROWN: And we're happy you were with us tonight. We appreciate your time. Thank you, sir, very much.

GRAHAM: Thank you very much.

BROWN: Dr. David Graham, who has been at the FDA for 20 years, his view of the agency.

One other medical note before we move along to other matters. Remember the great flu vaccine shortage of 2004? Tomorrow the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta expected to hold an emergency conference call, not because the shortage is getting worse, in fact just the opposite.

Too many people who should be getting vaccinated have apparently concluded there's no vaccine to be had but there is and now the CDC wants to make sure none of it goes to waste.

In other matters tonight, the president fired an early shot in what figures to be a tough and extraordinarily important debate over the future of Social Security.

There are, in fact, a couple of stories here, a funding crunch that won't arrive for many years and whether or not to privatize a portion of Social Security. Critics accuse the president of using fears of the first to push for the second and today the president made no clear distinction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You may not feel it. Your constituents may not be overwhelming you with letters demanding a fix now but the crisis is now and so why don't we work together to do so? I will also assure members of Congress that this is an issue on which I campaigned and I'm still standing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: We ought to point out that there are good and bad reasons for privatization, just as there are many ways of addressing Social Security's financial challenges, so expect a lot more debate and discussion and reporting to come.

There's more ahead tonight on NEWSNIGHT. We'll tell you whether the security threat level is expected to change over the holidays.

Also coming up, Osama bin Laden has a new message. The United States does not appear to be the target in this one.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld finds himself becoming a bigger target of criticism. Will the president stand by his man?

And, it's almost ten minutes after the hour. Do you know what video games your kids are playing?

We'll take a break. This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There was word today that the Department of Homeland Security has no plans for raising the color-coded threat level for the holiday, the spokesman saying there's no need.

Well, yellow, orange or red, certain potential targets are more vulnerable than others and may remain so for quite some time, covering security tonight for us CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Twenty thousand containers enter the U.S. every day and their potential use as platforms of terror keeps the head of Seattle's port awake at night with worry.

M.R. DINSMORE, CEO, PORT OF SEATTLE: Here we are three years, three months older from 9/11. We're doing a lot but I think there's a tremendous amount of additional things we should do to make this nation safer.

BUCKLEY: M.R. Dinsmore says the nation's ports are doing a better job of monitoring for radiation and x-raying containers. Other efforts include boarding ships at sea to inspect cargo.

(on camera): But with so many containers coming into the U.S., customs and border protection inspectors only physically examine the contents of some six percent of the containers.

RANDOLPH HALL, USC HOMELAND SECURITY CENTER: Each container contains many cartons. Each carton contains many packages. Does that mean that we open up ever carton coming into this country or we open up every box to see what's inside? I think most people would say that's impractical.

BUCKLEY: Homeland security officials say international cooperation, including U.S. inspectors in 32 international ports, has tightened security significantly before containers ever approach U.S. waters.

TOM RIDGE, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: These new defenses begin thousands of miles away before a container is even loaded onto a cargo vessel bound for our shores.

BUCKLEY: But the Port of Seattle's Dinsmore says a network that tracks cargo from its source with cargo that's sealed and monitored is the ideal and more than three years after 9/11 it should be in place.

DINSMORE: Three years, three months older, we still do not have an implementation of a network at the national level. We're still testing. That's disconcerting.

BUCKLEY: Because Dinsmore warns it would take just one container shipped by terrorists to severely damage international trade and potentially cripple the U.S. economy.

Frank Buckley, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And, if that would cripple the economy, an attack on the oil industry wouldn't be much nicer. Today in a tape that surfaced on the Internet, a voice, purportedly Osama bin Laden, calls on followers to stop the flow of oil from the Middle East to the west and that wasn't all he said.

Here's CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A link from this jihadi Web site delivering what purports to be Osama bin Laden's latest message referring directly to this attack on the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah last week, almost undoubtedly recorded in the last ten days.

OSAMA BIN LADEN (through translator): We pray to Allah to accept the Mujahaddin who stormed the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah as martyrs.

ROBERTSON: In this poor quality message the voice, claimed to be bin Laden's, accuses the Saudi royals of being puppets of a crusader Zionist alliance led by America seeking to steal the wealth and occupy the lands of Muslims.

BIN LADEN (through translator): Millions are suffering in poverty while money pours into the hands of the Saudi royal family.

ROBERTSON: Possibly significant this message was released hours before a planned anti-royal demonstration inside Saudi Arabia.

PAUL EEDLE, MILITANT ISLAM ANALYST: Perhaps he wanted to lend his authority and his definition to the conflict.

ROBERTSON (on camera): The demonstration's organizers are here in London, a group of Saudi dissidents intent on overthrowing the Saudi government but despite website claims that thousands turned out, fought battles with police and were arrested, a witness in Jeddah said demonstrations there fizzled amid tight security, bin Laden's message apparently having little effect.

(voice-over): Already on heightened alert, following the attack on the consulate last week, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans about the demonstrations advising them to stay off the streets. Bin Laden is seen as adding to that threat.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: He's a terrorist. He's a murderer and we're going to continue to hunt for him until he is captured and brought to justice.

ROBERTSON: While Pakistani troops have all but closed down the hunt for bin Laden in their tribal lands, it seems the al Qaeda leader is so confident in his lines of communication now he can boldly release statements within days of al Qaeda attacks, though in this case without showing his face.

Nic Robertson, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Just looking at the program tonight from the ports on the West Coast to a voice on the web, it shows how vast the security and terror story has become, how much attention we and you all pay to it. A critic of ours said the other day we're pandering fear. We think we're reporting the story of our lifetime.

Coming up on the program tonight, paid to play, how much the city paid to get a baseball team, how much can it pay may be the better question?

And, retracing the trail of Lewis and Clark from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast; all part of NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Another grab bag of headlines on Iraq tonight starting with the troops, the military announcing expensive measures to beef up the National Guard, many of whom have ended up in Iraq. As much as $15,000 in bonuses will be paid to get people to enlist. The Guard missed recruitment goals this year for the first time since 1994.

Insurgents took aim again today in Baghdad at police officers, government officials and indirectly, we guess, the upcoming election, five people killed in a series of ambushes, including the deputy director of the ministry of communications who was gunned down in his convoy on the way to work. Saddam Hussein met with his lawyer today, a member of his legal team to be precise. Former dictators rarely have just one lawyer. This is just the first such meeting since his capture a year ago. The attorney declared his client in good health and high spirits.

One of his top henchmen, though remains at large and possibly in Syria, allegedly fomenting trouble in Iraq. It's an allegation denied today by the Syrian government not long after it was made by a four- star American general; from the Pentagon, CNN's Kathleen Koch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He is the highest-ranking former Saddam Hussein official still at large and the commander of multinational forces in Iraq says Izzat Ibrahim Al- Douri is leading and financing the anti-U.S. insurgency from Syria.

GEN. GEORGE CASEY, COMMANDER, MULTINATIONAL FORCE, IRAQ: We have fairly good information that there are senior former Ba'athists, members of what they call the new regional command, operating out of Syria with impunity and providing direction and financing for the insurgency in Iraq. That needs to stop.

KOCH: General George Casey called Al-Douri a back-and-forther who moves in and out of Syria. The general said while the government of Syria wasn't involved, he believes it could stop the operation if it wanted to. At the same time, Casey insisted violence has dropped dramatically since the Falluja offensive. He downplayed the threat presented by Iraqi insurgents.

CASEY: The insurgency that we're fighting is not ten-feet-tall. They're a tough, aggressive enemy but they're not ten feet tall.

KOCH: Casey cautioned insurgents would fight "every step of the way to block elections," but he said the coalition was broadly on track to establishing a democratic government with Iraqi forces keeping order.

CASEY: I believe we will get there by the end of December, '05, and I believe we are on track to get there by December of '05.

KOCH (on camera): Casey did express disappointment that the coalition has not had more success on three points, building up an Iraqi intelligence service, training local police and protecting Iraq's borders.

Kathleen Koch, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: More incoming fire as well aimed at the secretary of defense today, as it was yesterday, much of it coming from his flanks.

Here's our Senior White House Correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Defending the defense secretary is of late a staple theme at the White House briefing.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I think that Secretary Rumsfeld continues to do a great job while we're at war. We are a nation at war.

KING: No leading Republican lawmakers have demanded Rumsfeld's resignation but a growing number are making clear they don't share the president's confidence in the defense secretary.

At home in Mississippi, GOP Senator Trent Lott said of Rumsfeld: "I don't think he listens enough to his uniformed officers. I'm not calling for his resignation" Lott went on to say, "but I think we do need a change at some point."

Secretary Rumsfeld angered critics last week with his answer to a soldier in Kuwait who complained about a lack of armored vehicles in Iraq.

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: You go to war with the Army you have.

KING: Already, a Rumsfeld critic, Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine fired off a letter to the secretary late Wednesday noting the Pentagon asked a supplier to speed up production of armored Humvees "apparently only after the soldier's complaint. Why was this request not placed earlier" Senator Collin asked promising the issue will be a major focus when Congress returns in January.

Earlier this week, Senator John McCain said he had no confidence in Rumsfeld and Republican colleague Chuck Hagel of Nebraska also took aim.

SEN. CHUCK HAGEL (R), NEBRASKA: We didn't go into Iraq with enough troops. He's dismissed his general officers. He's dismissed all outside influence.

KING: One key congressional supporter suggests Rumsfeld's style is more an issue with the Senators than his performance.

REP. DUNCAN HUNTER, CHMN., HOUSE ARMED SERVICES CMTE.: I think a lot of those folks want to be paid attention to. They're used to people listening to them at great length and I think sometimes the Senate thinks that the secretary has given them short shrift.

KING: One senior White House official called the complaint Washington chatter mostly from long-time Rumsfeld critics. Senior Bush aides also say showing any displeasure now would be tantamount to embracing Rumsfeld's critics and acknowledging major mistakes in Iraq.

(on camera): So, while the president is well aware of all this Republican grumbling, senior aides say he tells them to make clear he thinks the secretary is doing a great job at a difficult time and that he had no second thoughts at all about asking him to stay on into the second term.

John King, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still to come on the program tonight, the worst crimes imaginable at your fingertips, major violence being sold to minors, video game violence, and what one governor wants to do about it.

And then the Major Leagues and the cost of doing business, which is quite high.

A break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: If you're old enough to remember "Pong," you know how benign video games used to be. If you're young enough to wish for "Grand Theft Auto," you may not realize how things have changed. Trust me, they have.

A large part of the video game business is very violent and very raunchy. Warning labels are applied, but are they adhered to? And if they are not, what should be done?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): These games are raw and bloody and they are lucrative. They represent about 11 percent of the $7 billion the video game industry takes in every year. And it's not just the blood and guts. It's the sex as well.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's all about racking up points.

BROWN: No one argues that these games are great for kids. But should there be laws that criminalize their sale or rental to minors? The governor of Illinois is saying, absolutely.

GOV. ROD BLAGOJEVICH (D), ILLINOIS: Parents need help protecting their children and protecting the values that they teach their children to believe in. And they're up against a multibillion dollar industry.

BROWN: Governor Blagojevich says he's proposing fines and jail for retailers who sell or rent extremely violent or sexual video games to minors.

GAIL MARKELS, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, ENTERTAINMENT SOFTWARE ASSOC.: This is not the first time this type of legislation has been considered. The courts recently in three separate occasions have found that video games are protected speech and have declared similar bills to be unconstitutional.

BROWN: But the governor believes Illinois can make it work, despite the legal failures in other states. BLAGOJEVICH: We're drafting our legislation narrowly and the underlying premise of our legislation is based upon the same rationale that we in society have when it comes to kids buying cigarettes or buying alcohol.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I go in and hit this woman in the head. And people are screaming.

BROWN: This public service announcement is aimed at parents. According to the FTC, adults buy more than 80 percent of the 239 million video games sold each year. So, many youngsters who wind up playing the most graphic games often didn't even have to leave home to get them.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on the program, games of a different sort, baseball in this case. Is it fair play or foul for a city to foot the bill for a team owner's stadium?

And, later, a visual odyssey, retracing step of Lewis and Clark from Saint Louis to the Pacific Ocean.

We'll take a quick break first. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A great philosopher once said it ain't over until it's over. That would be Lawrence Berra, as in Yogi. He was talking about one game, of course, but he might well have been talking about the drama now playing out in the nation's capital, where the promise of Major League Baseball's reappearance after an absence of three decades or so may be just that, a promise and nothing more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): This is where the brand new Washington Nationals are supposed to play next spring. But the demands of Major League Baseball are colliding with the financial realities of the nation's capital and that has put the whole deal in doubt.

ANTHONY WILLIAMS (D), MAYOR OF WASHINGTON, D.C.: We're in great, great jeopardy. I do not underestimate the difficulty of what we have to accomplish.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who are the winners in this if it fails?

BROWN: The callers to the talk shows are just fans, of course. The stadium that Major League Baseball requires would cost every taxpayer. Baseball demands a stadium be publicly financed. The city council has said half of the money must come from private sources, that the city can ill afford the cost that baseball is demanding.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If there's no stadium, you're not going to get as much of a return on your investment. Baseball has owned the Expos for three years. They want to get rid of the Expos and they don't want to take a financial bath doing it.

BROWN: City officials had worked for two years to bring the Montreal Expos to the capital. Until the council balked, they'd agree not just to build the stadium with public money, but to give the team's still unknown owners all the profits, the parking, the signage, the concessions, a good deal for baseball, which is now furious.

"The legislation is inconsistent with our carefully negotiated agreement," baseball officials said in a statement, "and is wholly unacceptable to Major League Baseball."

WILLIAMS: Baseball is back in Washington, D.C.!

BROWN: But building a stadium for Major League Baseball is an unaffordable luxury, the council seemed to say, in a city with plenty of needs and too few dollars.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Certainly, one can see, you know, a city official's point of view, of, why are we paying this money, you know, so Major League Baseball can turn a profit?

BROWN: While cities and states routinely pay for new stadiums, often, owners pay a part, sometimes a large part. The Jets' owner is offering hundreds of millions of dollars of his money for a new stadium in New York. In Seattle, Paul Allen paid a chunk of money for a new stadium for the Seahawks. And next door, the Mariners paid a good deal for their new stadium as well.

But, in D.C., baseball is demanding something else and is giving the nation's capital two weeks to agree or the Nationals may become the team that never was.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Andy Zimbalist teaches and writes about the economics of sport and he joins us tonight from Springfield, Massachusetts.

Good to see you.

Did D.C. basically make a sweetheart deal with Major League Baseball on this thing?

ANDREW ZIMBALIST, AUTHOR, "MAY THE BEST TEAM WIN": Yes, I think so. I think that Mayor Williams underplayed his hand.

Washington, D.C., as we all know, is the nation's capital. It's the eighth largest media market. It's the fourth largest market in terms of hosting large corporations. They should have a good deal of leverage. This is a wonderful venue for Major League Baseball to occupy. If you look at the other large markets in baseball you see that the cities have a good deal of leverage.

You don't have the public putting forward 80, 90, 100 percent of financing of new ballparks. In your introduction, you talked about what's happening with the Jets right now. Look at what the Yankees are about to put on the table. They're talking about spending $600 or $800 million of their own money for a new stadium in the Bronx and then asking the city to put down $200 or $300 million in infrastructure money.

Look at what happened in San Francisco with Peter McGowan and the Giants. He financed that stadium entirely on his own. So, when you look at a very, very attractive market, the city should have some leverage. They should be able to elicit a substantial chunk of private financing. After all, Aaron, the average in Major League Baseball over the last 15 years is roughly 30 percent private financing.

And here you have Mayor Williams negotiating a deal where there's essentially no private financing at all for the new stadium in Washington.

BROWN: Andy, let's try and cover a couple things fairly quickly. You have made the argument many, many times that both civic officials and sports owners vastly overstate the economic advantage gained by owning a baseball team.

ZIMBALIST: That's correct. All of the independent studies that have been done by economists, academic economists who don't have an axe to grind, all of them have found that you can't anticipate a positive economic impact from building a new stadium or having a ball team in your city.

Yes, there can be a positive social and cultural benefit from it, but these ballparks seem to very often be sold or attempt to be sold on the grounds that there's an economic benefit, that it will increase employment, increase per capita income. Certainly, Mayor Williams was doing that in Washington, D.C. It's a bogus argument, as far as we can tell. The real argument is a cultural argument.

BROWN: Is there -- do you have any sense that baseball is overplaying its hand? It's basically saying you've got until the end of the year to give us the deal we bargained on or we're gone. Where are they going?

ZIMBALIST: I don't think there's any place for them to go, frankly.

Mayor Goodman is making noises and taking showgirls around from Las Vegas. But the interest in Las Vegas, the casinos in Las Vegas are used to rebuilding the whole world and paying for it privately. They're not interested in publicly funding a new stadium. So, he has a long political battle there. Las Vegas is not ready. Portland, Oregon, isn't ready. Mayor Katz hasn't been able to deliver there. The other places that have tried have not been able to advance a piece of legislation that says we're going to fund, fund publicly, or even mostly publicly fund a ballpark.

And besides all of that, Washington, D.C.'s a much better market than any of these other ones. So, look, Major League Baseball had reason to be angry right now. They did sign a deal, albeit they knew when they signed the deal that it had to be passed through the city council. And one of the reasons why they put the December 31 date on there was because they wanted this city council and not the next city council to vote on it.

But they did sign a deal. They expected the deal to be implemented. That was reasonable of them to expect that. For some reason, there was miscommunication or no communication between Mayor Williams and Linda Cropp. And the thing broke down. Right now, what baseball's trying to do is establish their bargaining leverage, take as hard a line as they can, and end up with the best deal that they can.

BROWN: Up or down in 10 seconds. Do you think baseball will come back to Washington or is this thing is going to blow up?

ZIMBALIST: I have to bet that it's going to happen, Aaron. I don't think there's anything else for them to do.

BROWN: Andy, there's no betting in baseball. Thank you.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: It's good to see you.

ZIMBALIST: You, too.

BROWN: Have a good holiday, Andy Zimbalist.

ZIMBALIST: Thanks. You, too.

BROWN: Still ahead -- oh, still ahead on the program, coming up at the top of the hour, here's what's next on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: Coming up next here on CNN, Mexico, home to tens of thousands of millionaires, so why are millions of Mexican illegal aliens invading this country desperate to escape poverty? We'll have a special report and a great deal more at the top of the hour next on CNN.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: That's what's coming up next on the network. Here's what's coming up next on NEWSNIGHT. Lewis and Clark looking for the Northern Passage. We'll see what they saw.

We'll take a break first.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Two hundred years after Lewis and Clark headed west from the Mississippi, the scenery has changed a bit, though not entirely, as photographer Brent Phelps discovered, panoramic camera in hand walking in their footsteps.

His work on display at the Amon Center Museum in Houston and here.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRENT PHELPS, PHOTOGRAPHER: The Lewis and Clark expedition was launched to explore those lands between Saint Louis, Missouri, and the Pacific Ocean. Most of that area was unknown at the time of Lewis and Clark. So, the purpose of the expedition was to explore those lands.

I was not trying to capture that 19th century perspective on how it looked when Lewis and Clark were there. I wanted to give an historical record of the changes that have come since. This is the view toward the original Fort Mandan site. And you can see there's a kind of a yellowish cloud in the background. That's actually a plume from a power generating station. The expedition spent the winter in this location with the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians.

The power plant today is built right on top of the location of the first Mandan village. This is the power plant that is built right on top of the Mandan village site. This is Mars that's tracking, actually setting down over the power plant. The monument is lit with the headlights of my truck. There was an eight-second exposure given for the monument. And then during the 1 1/2 hour exposure for the background, I turned the truck around and then stepped on the brake pedal to paint the foreground a slight pink cast from the taillights of the truck. And so I'm engaging in painting with light.

This is the photograph of Eye of the Needle. The Eye of the Needle is no longer intact, but this originally was a natural arch that occurred here. They actually camped on the other side of the river and just a little bit below to the left of the photograph.

They kept very extensive written journals of their expedition. It helped inform me by reading journals as to where I wanted to go to make photographs. When I approached the project, I felt like that I was approaching it with a similar level of curiosity that maybe Lewis and Clark had, because most of the locations I had not been to. And so I felt like that we both were going there for the first time to see how the land looked.

The two photographs, one on my left, one on my right, represent the Continental Divide. This is the point where the expedition crossed the Rocky Mountains for the first time. This is also the location where the dream of the Northwest Passage died, because when Lewis reached the summit of the pass and looked west, he didn't encounter another river, but encounter layers upon layers of mountains.

This is a photograph of Beaver Head Rock across the Columbia River on the Washington side. We start over on the left side of the photograph with a dead end sign that's pointing to the right and a dead end that's pointing to the left. No through traffic, dead end, no trespassing, keep out. And then, over on the right side of the photograph, a sign that says keep the F out.

So this photograph seems to me to be very, very representative, in contrast of then and now with the amount of change that has occurred in the landscape since Lewis and Clark's time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: If you're in Houston or heading there, it's the Amon Carter Museum, which is close to what I said.

Morning papers coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers. And, as they sometimes say in morning papers, just a quick correction. In Houston, it's Fort Worth. Go to the museum. See the pictures. It's getting to be more trouble than it's worth, isn't it?

"The International Herald Tribune" starts it off. This is a very big story. We were talking about security earlier in the program. "Anti-Terrorism Law Rejected in Britain. Indefinite Detentions Are Ruled Illegal."

"The Guardian" leads the same, as you would expect, but bigger. "Judges' Verdict on Terror Law Provokes Constitutional Crisis." The law basically said you could hold foreign terror suspects indefinitely. One judge saying the real threat to the life of the nation in the sense of a people living in accordance with traditional laws and political values comes not from terrorism, but from laws such as these. You can't hold people indefinitely, in my opinion.

"The Times" also leads with it. "Terror Law in Tatters." British paper, London paper.

OK, back to our country here. "Detroit News." We talked about leading local. "Big Three Face Bleak New Year. Governor Rejects Business Tax Cuts." Another tough year for the big three.

"Stars and Stripes" leads with "Army Officers May Get Less Time to Relocate." That's not as interesting to me, though I'm sure it is to them, as this one. "Rumsfeld Now Personally to Sign Letters of Condolence to Troops' Families." I gather they had a machine do it. Yikes.

"The Examiner" out in San Francisco. "City Unions Brace For $110 Million Overtime Fight." Down here, "Six Geese A-Laying." The paper is recreating in one form or another the 12 days of Christmas. And is there anything harder to cook in the world, by the way, than goose? I tried it once. It's just fat everywhere. It's unbelievable.

"The Philadelphia Inquirer." "Bush Pledges Safeguards in Privatization. Workers Use of Social Security Taxes Would Be Limited. It's Not There For a Lottery."

"The Rocky Mountain News" also put Social Security on the front page. This is going to be a huge story this year, you guys. "Bush Wants Limits on Social Security Private Accounts to Discourage Gambling." Look, it may be a good idea or not, but when you put money into the stock market, that is a gamble, OK? That's what it is. "The Oregonian." There are other ways to do it. That may be a better way. Not sure, but there are other ways. "The Oregonian." "War's Toll Far Worse on Oregon National Guard." Isn't that a nice picture on the front page. "Sun Holds Upper Hand." Not many sunny days this time of the year in the Pacific Northwest. That's pretty good.

And "The Washington Times" has baseball on the front page. "Cropp" -- city councilwoman who has been big trouble for Major League Baseball -- "Cropp, Baseball Refuse to Budge. Standoff Effectively Kills the Deal." Well, we'll see about that. "City Office Is Flooded With Financing Offers." Why not get some private dough in there? The owner is going to make millions of dollars on this. Speaking of making millions of dollars, "Pedro Vents. Sox Blew It. Pedro Martinez Will Be a New York Met."

The weather in Chicago is "chilling out."

And we'll see you tomorrow. Good night for all of us.

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


Aired December 16, 2004 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
Drugs, the legal ones, are a huge business in the country and a huge part of our lives. The question on the table tonight is simple, though the answer is not. Is the government doing its job keeping the pipeline of good drugs open and keeping the dangerous ones off the market?

Vioxx, the pain medication pulled by Merck because of increased risk of heart attack, is the best current example. To critics of the FDA it is the tip of the iceberg.

A survey of FDA scientists found that two-thirds are less than fully confident in the safety of drugs on the market. Nearly 20 percent said they felt pressure to approve drugs they thought might be unsafe.

In a moment, the FDA's leading critic, a 20-year employee, Dr. David Graham, first some background from CNN's Elizabeth Cohen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tillman and Mary Harris were married for 47 years, raised a daughter, had grandchildren.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I miss him terribly, wish he were here.

COHEN: Tillman Harris isn't here because after taking a cholesterol-lowering drug called Baycol, he developed an unusual muscle wasting condition called rabdomyolysis. He became so weak his wife and daughter rushed him to the hospital where he died ten days later.

Six months after his death, Bayer pulled Baycol off the market. At that point, 31 people taking the drug had died of rabdomyolysis. And now the question is could Bayer have prevented those deaths?

Tillman Harris died in February, 2001. In March, 2000, nearly a year earlier, an internal Bayer memo that was quoted in the journal of the American Medical Association this month stated: "Baycol substantially elevates the risk for rabdomyolysis compared with other cholesterol-lowering drugs."

Dr. Jerry Avorn is a professor at Harvard Medical School and author of the book "Powerful Medicines."

DR. JERRY AVORN, AUTHOR, "POWERFUL MEDICINES": Baycol is one of several drugs that we are asking ourselves how in the world did this drug stay on the market as long as it did?

COHEN: The answer, he and others say, is complicated. When drug companies hear of serious side effects they have to by law report them to the Food and Drug Administration but connecting the dots and analyzing the data is time consuming.

AVORN: They haven't had the person power to receive and deal with all of these thousands and thousands of spontaneous reports that the companies send in.

COHEN: If a drug company finds a side effect before a drug goes on the market, it legally has to show that study to the FDA but the law prevents the FDA from making those studies public. Drugs companies say the studies contain trade secrets. Pharmaceutical companies say they reliably report side effects both before and after a drug is put on the market.

ALAN GOLDHAMMER, PH.D., ASSOC. V.P. FOR REGULATORY AFFAIRS: These are significant reporting requirements that companies engage on, on an ongoing basis.

COHEN: Concerning Baycol, Bayer says they kept the FDA fully informed about all pertinent safety information, including adverse event reports. When Bayer became aware of an increased rate of reports of rabdomyolysis it took appropriate action. But the Harris family is left wondering what if Bayer, what if the FDA had taken quicker action before there were 31 deaths.

ROSE HARRIS, DAUGHTER: Somewhere between the one and the 31 there were probably people who wouldn't have passed away.

COHEN: Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: It's a reality, if not always a welcome reality that stories like this one rarely take off until there's a media moment, if you will, even if a lot of people are hurt, some die, moments like the Army reservist in Kuwait or, in this case, an FDA whistleblower testifying before the Congress.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. DAVID GRAHAM, FDA SCIENTIST: I was pressured to change my conclusions and recommendations. One drug safety manager recommended that I should be barred from presenting the poster at the meeting and also noted that Merck needed to know our study results.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: That was Dr. David Graham and Dr. Graham joins us from Washington tonight. Sir, it's nice to see you. GRAHAM: Thank you.

BROWN: I suppose to one degree or another all drugs on the market have some risk associated with them and presumably if they got to market they have some reward. Is the basic allegation that you make that this risk/reward balance is out of balance at the FDA? They're more concerned about reward than the risk.

GRAHAM: That's partially correct. What I maintain is, is that the FDA places almost complete attention and focus and value on what they perceive to be the benefit of a product and discount almost completely the risk side, the safety side, a consequence of a drug.

But, in addition to that, they don't adequately measure what the actual benefit of a drug is. When a clinical trial is done they're measuring what is called the effect of the drug.

The effect of a drug is sort of does it lower your blood cholesterol? Does it lower your blood pressure? Does it lower your blood sugar? That would be the effect of a drug. The benefit of the drug is would it help you to live longer, to live healthier?

And, FDA only measures efficacy. It doesn't measure benefit and yet when a safety problem emerges there we're talking about real lives lost, real lives ruined. FDA typically places a very high value on the efficacy and translates that into saying there's a benefit when they have no established evidence of a benefit and this was the case with Vioxx (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Vioxx.

BROWN: I want to talk about Vioxx a little bit here and perhaps drugs generally as well. In the case of Vioxx, first of all, the number 100,000 heart attacks and the like has been thrown out. Are those actual people or is this a statistical model? Is it a best guess? Do we actually know the names of 100,000 people?

GRAHAM: Well, no. We don't know the names of 100,000 people. The government does this all the time in epidemiology, which is you can't be out there with people counting every person who has a heart attack from Vioxx.

So you take the data that you have at hand, such as the clinical trials that Merck did that showed that Vioxx increased the risk of heart attack for high dose Vioxx 500 percent or the lower dose Vioxx by 200 percent.

And then you determine how many people were treated with the high and the low dose and it's a very simple matter then to calculate out the number of heart attacks that would have resulted.

BROWN: Is it a larger -- we seem to take drugs longer. We're on anti-cholesterol drugs the rest of our lives that sort of thing. Is the problem greater in drugs that are on the market or drugs coming to the market?

GRAHAM: Well, there are several aspects to that question. FDA when it's looking at a drug for the pre-approval side before it comes to the market says that a drug is both safe and effective before they put it on the marketplace.

Well, they've got the efficacy part right. There they're 90 percent sure or better that the drug works. But when it comes to safety, they're not 95 percent sure that the drug is safe. Instead, what FDA is really saying is, is we don't have 95 percent confidence that the drug will kill you and that's a very different standard.

Now, on the post approval side, once a drug gets to the market drugs that are widely marketed, your blockbuster drugs have the potential theoretically at least to effect a much wider number of patients and with Vioxx that was precisely the reason why so many people were hurt by the drug.

It was a blockbuster drug. It increased the risk of heart attack by a very large amount and heart attack itself is a fairly common event in the general population. You put those things together and you have the formula for a national disaster.

BROWN: Is this about money in the end that the drug industry is powerful, that the agency in your view, people disagree with this I assume, is just simply too close to the industry it's supposed to regulate?

GRAHAM: My own view, and I'm not speaking for the agency of course, is that FDA views industry as its client and this is official FDA, not the FDA scientists. You mentioned the survey in your lead-in to our interview and there we see that many FDA scientists have experienced what I've experienced and that they realize and recognize that FDA is not doing what it needs to do to protect Americans from unsafe drugs.

In fact, I think what that survey demonstrates is, is that FDA is more interested in serving its business clients than it is from protecting the American public from unsafe drugs.

BROWN: There's another way to look at that. I mean in the -- I think it was 18 percent of scientists said they felt some pressure to approve a drug they felt was unsafe. That means there is 80 percent who did not feel that pressure and how ought we look at that number?

GRAHAM: I think the American people should be appalled by the thought that only 82 percent felt no pressure to change their opinion. Think about this. FDA is a scientific organization. In a scientific organization, the science should speak for itself. No one should feel pressured to change their opinion.

The fact that you've got 18 percent of FDA scientists saying that they felt this pressure is an appalling statistic but consider this also. Most drugs that FDA reviews don't have safety problems to begin with. They're me-too drugs, so they're very similar to other drugs that are already on the market where the problems have already been worked out.

So, the majority of drugs that FDA reviews nobody has a question about them, so we're talking about a subset and in that subset, that subset might just be 18 percent of the drugs that FDA sees and then what you can see is that virtually all the drugs where there is a question about safety, if the scientist raises that question, that scientist will experience pressure to change their opinion.

BROWN: Let's...

GRAHAM: So, it's a misleading statistic.

BROWN: I'm sorry. Dr. Graham, just as a final question, let's talk about the pressure a little bit. Since you testified before Congress or since it was clear you were going to testify before Congress, have they pretty much put you in a closet?

GRAHAM: Well, my supervisors have canceled all their meetings with me. Yesterday I was at a research seminar that we hold in our department and one of our senior managers came into the meeting and there was one empty seat, which was next to me. I greeted this manager with a hello and the manager just basically looked the other way, sat in the seat and didn't say a word to me the entire meeting.

So, it's basically being put into the gulag out in Siberia. I have plenty of work to do and I'm happy to do it and I do it well and my colleagues are very pleased to have me there to help them do the important business of monitoring drug safety in the United States.

BROWN: And we're happy you were with us tonight. We appreciate your time. Thank you, sir, very much.

GRAHAM: Thank you very much.

BROWN: Dr. David Graham, who has been at the FDA for 20 years, his view of the agency.

One other medical note before we move along to other matters. Remember the great flu vaccine shortage of 2004? Tomorrow the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta expected to hold an emergency conference call, not because the shortage is getting worse, in fact just the opposite.

Too many people who should be getting vaccinated have apparently concluded there's no vaccine to be had but there is and now the CDC wants to make sure none of it goes to waste.

In other matters tonight, the president fired an early shot in what figures to be a tough and extraordinarily important debate over the future of Social Security.

There are, in fact, a couple of stories here, a funding crunch that won't arrive for many years and whether or not to privatize a portion of Social Security. Critics accuse the president of using fears of the first to push for the second and today the president made no clear distinction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You may not feel it. Your constituents may not be overwhelming you with letters demanding a fix now but the crisis is now and so why don't we work together to do so? I will also assure members of Congress that this is an issue on which I campaigned and I'm still standing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: We ought to point out that there are good and bad reasons for privatization, just as there are many ways of addressing Social Security's financial challenges, so expect a lot more debate and discussion and reporting to come.

There's more ahead tonight on NEWSNIGHT. We'll tell you whether the security threat level is expected to change over the holidays.

Also coming up, Osama bin Laden has a new message. The United States does not appear to be the target in this one.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld finds himself becoming a bigger target of criticism. Will the president stand by his man?

And, it's almost ten minutes after the hour. Do you know what video games your kids are playing?

We'll take a break. This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There was word today that the Department of Homeland Security has no plans for raising the color-coded threat level for the holiday, the spokesman saying there's no need.

Well, yellow, orange or red, certain potential targets are more vulnerable than others and may remain so for quite some time, covering security tonight for us CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Twenty thousand containers enter the U.S. every day and their potential use as platforms of terror keeps the head of Seattle's port awake at night with worry.

M.R. DINSMORE, CEO, PORT OF SEATTLE: Here we are three years, three months older from 9/11. We're doing a lot but I think there's a tremendous amount of additional things we should do to make this nation safer.

BUCKLEY: M.R. Dinsmore says the nation's ports are doing a better job of monitoring for radiation and x-raying containers. Other efforts include boarding ships at sea to inspect cargo.

(on camera): But with so many containers coming into the U.S., customs and border protection inspectors only physically examine the contents of some six percent of the containers.

RANDOLPH HALL, USC HOMELAND SECURITY CENTER: Each container contains many cartons. Each carton contains many packages. Does that mean that we open up ever carton coming into this country or we open up every box to see what's inside? I think most people would say that's impractical.

BUCKLEY: Homeland security officials say international cooperation, including U.S. inspectors in 32 international ports, has tightened security significantly before containers ever approach U.S. waters.

TOM RIDGE, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: These new defenses begin thousands of miles away before a container is even loaded onto a cargo vessel bound for our shores.

BUCKLEY: But the Port of Seattle's Dinsmore says a network that tracks cargo from its source with cargo that's sealed and monitored is the ideal and more than three years after 9/11 it should be in place.

DINSMORE: Three years, three months older, we still do not have an implementation of a network at the national level. We're still testing. That's disconcerting.

BUCKLEY: Because Dinsmore warns it would take just one container shipped by terrorists to severely damage international trade and potentially cripple the U.S. economy.

Frank Buckley, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And, if that would cripple the economy, an attack on the oil industry wouldn't be much nicer. Today in a tape that surfaced on the Internet, a voice, purportedly Osama bin Laden, calls on followers to stop the flow of oil from the Middle East to the west and that wasn't all he said.

Here's CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A link from this jihadi Web site delivering what purports to be Osama bin Laden's latest message referring directly to this attack on the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah last week, almost undoubtedly recorded in the last ten days.

OSAMA BIN LADEN (through translator): We pray to Allah to accept the Mujahaddin who stormed the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah as martyrs.

ROBERTSON: In this poor quality message the voice, claimed to be bin Laden's, accuses the Saudi royals of being puppets of a crusader Zionist alliance led by America seeking to steal the wealth and occupy the lands of Muslims.

BIN LADEN (through translator): Millions are suffering in poverty while money pours into the hands of the Saudi royal family.

ROBERTSON: Possibly significant this message was released hours before a planned anti-royal demonstration inside Saudi Arabia.

PAUL EEDLE, MILITANT ISLAM ANALYST: Perhaps he wanted to lend his authority and his definition to the conflict.

ROBERTSON (on camera): The demonstration's organizers are here in London, a group of Saudi dissidents intent on overthrowing the Saudi government but despite website claims that thousands turned out, fought battles with police and were arrested, a witness in Jeddah said demonstrations there fizzled amid tight security, bin Laden's message apparently having little effect.

(voice-over): Already on heightened alert, following the attack on the consulate last week, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans about the demonstrations advising them to stay off the streets. Bin Laden is seen as adding to that threat.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: He's a terrorist. He's a murderer and we're going to continue to hunt for him until he is captured and brought to justice.

ROBERTSON: While Pakistani troops have all but closed down the hunt for bin Laden in their tribal lands, it seems the al Qaeda leader is so confident in his lines of communication now he can boldly release statements within days of al Qaeda attacks, though in this case without showing his face.

Nic Robertson, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Just looking at the program tonight from the ports on the West Coast to a voice on the web, it shows how vast the security and terror story has become, how much attention we and you all pay to it. A critic of ours said the other day we're pandering fear. We think we're reporting the story of our lifetime.

Coming up on the program tonight, paid to play, how much the city paid to get a baseball team, how much can it pay may be the better question?

And, retracing the trail of Lewis and Clark from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast; all part of NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Another grab bag of headlines on Iraq tonight starting with the troops, the military announcing expensive measures to beef up the National Guard, many of whom have ended up in Iraq. As much as $15,000 in bonuses will be paid to get people to enlist. The Guard missed recruitment goals this year for the first time since 1994.

Insurgents took aim again today in Baghdad at police officers, government officials and indirectly, we guess, the upcoming election, five people killed in a series of ambushes, including the deputy director of the ministry of communications who was gunned down in his convoy on the way to work. Saddam Hussein met with his lawyer today, a member of his legal team to be precise. Former dictators rarely have just one lawyer. This is just the first such meeting since his capture a year ago. The attorney declared his client in good health and high spirits.

One of his top henchmen, though remains at large and possibly in Syria, allegedly fomenting trouble in Iraq. It's an allegation denied today by the Syrian government not long after it was made by a four- star American general; from the Pentagon, CNN's Kathleen Koch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He is the highest-ranking former Saddam Hussein official still at large and the commander of multinational forces in Iraq says Izzat Ibrahim Al- Douri is leading and financing the anti-U.S. insurgency from Syria.

GEN. GEORGE CASEY, COMMANDER, MULTINATIONAL FORCE, IRAQ: We have fairly good information that there are senior former Ba'athists, members of what they call the new regional command, operating out of Syria with impunity and providing direction and financing for the insurgency in Iraq. That needs to stop.

KOCH: General George Casey called Al-Douri a back-and-forther who moves in and out of Syria. The general said while the government of Syria wasn't involved, he believes it could stop the operation if it wanted to. At the same time, Casey insisted violence has dropped dramatically since the Falluja offensive. He downplayed the threat presented by Iraqi insurgents.

CASEY: The insurgency that we're fighting is not ten-feet-tall. They're a tough, aggressive enemy but they're not ten feet tall.

KOCH: Casey cautioned insurgents would fight "every step of the way to block elections," but he said the coalition was broadly on track to establishing a democratic government with Iraqi forces keeping order.

CASEY: I believe we will get there by the end of December, '05, and I believe we are on track to get there by December of '05.

KOCH (on camera): Casey did express disappointment that the coalition has not had more success on three points, building up an Iraqi intelligence service, training local police and protecting Iraq's borders.

Kathleen Koch, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: More incoming fire as well aimed at the secretary of defense today, as it was yesterday, much of it coming from his flanks.

Here's our Senior White House Correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Defending the defense secretary is of late a staple theme at the White House briefing.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I think that Secretary Rumsfeld continues to do a great job while we're at war. We are a nation at war.

KING: No leading Republican lawmakers have demanded Rumsfeld's resignation but a growing number are making clear they don't share the president's confidence in the defense secretary.

At home in Mississippi, GOP Senator Trent Lott said of Rumsfeld: "I don't think he listens enough to his uniformed officers. I'm not calling for his resignation" Lott went on to say, "but I think we do need a change at some point."

Secretary Rumsfeld angered critics last week with his answer to a soldier in Kuwait who complained about a lack of armored vehicles in Iraq.

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: You go to war with the Army you have.

KING: Already, a Rumsfeld critic, Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine fired off a letter to the secretary late Wednesday noting the Pentagon asked a supplier to speed up production of armored Humvees "apparently only after the soldier's complaint. Why was this request not placed earlier" Senator Collin asked promising the issue will be a major focus when Congress returns in January.

Earlier this week, Senator John McCain said he had no confidence in Rumsfeld and Republican colleague Chuck Hagel of Nebraska also took aim.

SEN. CHUCK HAGEL (R), NEBRASKA: We didn't go into Iraq with enough troops. He's dismissed his general officers. He's dismissed all outside influence.

KING: One key congressional supporter suggests Rumsfeld's style is more an issue with the Senators than his performance.

REP. DUNCAN HUNTER, CHMN., HOUSE ARMED SERVICES CMTE.: I think a lot of those folks want to be paid attention to. They're used to people listening to them at great length and I think sometimes the Senate thinks that the secretary has given them short shrift.

KING: One senior White House official called the complaint Washington chatter mostly from long-time Rumsfeld critics. Senior Bush aides also say showing any displeasure now would be tantamount to embracing Rumsfeld's critics and acknowledging major mistakes in Iraq.

(on camera): So, while the president is well aware of all this Republican grumbling, senior aides say he tells them to make clear he thinks the secretary is doing a great job at a difficult time and that he had no second thoughts at all about asking him to stay on into the second term.

John King, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still to come on the program tonight, the worst crimes imaginable at your fingertips, major violence being sold to minors, video game violence, and what one governor wants to do about it.

And then the Major Leagues and the cost of doing business, which is quite high.

A break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: If you're old enough to remember "Pong," you know how benign video games used to be. If you're young enough to wish for "Grand Theft Auto," you may not realize how things have changed. Trust me, they have.

A large part of the video game business is very violent and very raunchy. Warning labels are applied, but are they adhered to? And if they are not, what should be done?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): These games are raw and bloody and they are lucrative. They represent about 11 percent of the $7 billion the video game industry takes in every year. And it's not just the blood and guts. It's the sex as well.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's all about racking up points.

BROWN: No one argues that these games are great for kids. But should there be laws that criminalize their sale or rental to minors? The governor of Illinois is saying, absolutely.

GOV. ROD BLAGOJEVICH (D), ILLINOIS: Parents need help protecting their children and protecting the values that they teach their children to believe in. And they're up against a multibillion dollar industry.

BROWN: Governor Blagojevich says he's proposing fines and jail for retailers who sell or rent extremely violent or sexual video games to minors.

GAIL MARKELS, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, ENTERTAINMENT SOFTWARE ASSOC.: This is not the first time this type of legislation has been considered. The courts recently in three separate occasions have found that video games are protected speech and have declared similar bills to be unconstitutional.

BROWN: But the governor believes Illinois can make it work, despite the legal failures in other states. BLAGOJEVICH: We're drafting our legislation narrowly and the underlying premise of our legislation is based upon the same rationale that we in society have when it comes to kids buying cigarettes or buying alcohol.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I go in and hit this woman in the head. And people are screaming.

BROWN: This public service announcement is aimed at parents. According to the FTC, adults buy more than 80 percent of the 239 million video games sold each year. So, many youngsters who wind up playing the most graphic games often didn't even have to leave home to get them.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on the program, games of a different sort, baseball in this case. Is it fair play or foul for a city to foot the bill for a team owner's stadium?

And, later, a visual odyssey, retracing step of Lewis and Clark from Saint Louis to the Pacific Ocean.

We'll take a quick break first. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A great philosopher once said it ain't over until it's over. That would be Lawrence Berra, as in Yogi. He was talking about one game, of course, but he might well have been talking about the drama now playing out in the nation's capital, where the promise of Major League Baseball's reappearance after an absence of three decades or so may be just that, a promise and nothing more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): This is where the brand new Washington Nationals are supposed to play next spring. But the demands of Major League Baseball are colliding with the financial realities of the nation's capital and that has put the whole deal in doubt.

ANTHONY WILLIAMS (D), MAYOR OF WASHINGTON, D.C.: We're in great, great jeopardy. I do not underestimate the difficulty of what we have to accomplish.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who are the winners in this if it fails?

BROWN: The callers to the talk shows are just fans, of course. The stadium that Major League Baseball requires would cost every taxpayer. Baseball demands a stadium be publicly financed. The city council has said half of the money must come from private sources, that the city can ill afford the cost that baseball is demanding.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If there's no stadium, you're not going to get as much of a return on your investment. Baseball has owned the Expos for three years. They want to get rid of the Expos and they don't want to take a financial bath doing it.

BROWN: City officials had worked for two years to bring the Montreal Expos to the capital. Until the council balked, they'd agree not just to build the stadium with public money, but to give the team's still unknown owners all the profits, the parking, the signage, the concessions, a good deal for baseball, which is now furious.

"The legislation is inconsistent with our carefully negotiated agreement," baseball officials said in a statement, "and is wholly unacceptable to Major League Baseball."

WILLIAMS: Baseball is back in Washington, D.C.!

BROWN: But building a stadium for Major League Baseball is an unaffordable luxury, the council seemed to say, in a city with plenty of needs and too few dollars.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Certainly, one can see, you know, a city official's point of view, of, why are we paying this money, you know, so Major League Baseball can turn a profit?

BROWN: While cities and states routinely pay for new stadiums, often, owners pay a part, sometimes a large part. The Jets' owner is offering hundreds of millions of dollars of his money for a new stadium in New York. In Seattle, Paul Allen paid a chunk of money for a new stadium for the Seahawks. And next door, the Mariners paid a good deal for their new stadium as well.

But, in D.C., baseball is demanding something else and is giving the nation's capital two weeks to agree or the Nationals may become the team that never was.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Andy Zimbalist teaches and writes about the economics of sport and he joins us tonight from Springfield, Massachusetts.

Good to see you.

Did D.C. basically make a sweetheart deal with Major League Baseball on this thing?

ANDREW ZIMBALIST, AUTHOR, "MAY THE BEST TEAM WIN": Yes, I think so. I think that Mayor Williams underplayed his hand.

Washington, D.C., as we all know, is the nation's capital. It's the eighth largest media market. It's the fourth largest market in terms of hosting large corporations. They should have a good deal of leverage. This is a wonderful venue for Major League Baseball to occupy. If you look at the other large markets in baseball you see that the cities have a good deal of leverage.

You don't have the public putting forward 80, 90, 100 percent of financing of new ballparks. In your introduction, you talked about what's happening with the Jets right now. Look at what the Yankees are about to put on the table. They're talking about spending $600 or $800 million of their own money for a new stadium in the Bronx and then asking the city to put down $200 or $300 million in infrastructure money.

Look at what happened in San Francisco with Peter McGowan and the Giants. He financed that stadium entirely on his own. So, when you look at a very, very attractive market, the city should have some leverage. They should be able to elicit a substantial chunk of private financing. After all, Aaron, the average in Major League Baseball over the last 15 years is roughly 30 percent private financing.

And here you have Mayor Williams negotiating a deal where there's essentially no private financing at all for the new stadium in Washington.

BROWN: Andy, let's try and cover a couple things fairly quickly. You have made the argument many, many times that both civic officials and sports owners vastly overstate the economic advantage gained by owning a baseball team.

ZIMBALIST: That's correct. All of the independent studies that have been done by economists, academic economists who don't have an axe to grind, all of them have found that you can't anticipate a positive economic impact from building a new stadium or having a ball team in your city.

Yes, there can be a positive social and cultural benefit from it, but these ballparks seem to very often be sold or attempt to be sold on the grounds that there's an economic benefit, that it will increase employment, increase per capita income. Certainly, Mayor Williams was doing that in Washington, D.C. It's a bogus argument, as far as we can tell. The real argument is a cultural argument.

BROWN: Is there -- do you have any sense that baseball is overplaying its hand? It's basically saying you've got until the end of the year to give us the deal we bargained on or we're gone. Where are they going?

ZIMBALIST: I don't think there's any place for them to go, frankly.

Mayor Goodman is making noises and taking showgirls around from Las Vegas. But the interest in Las Vegas, the casinos in Las Vegas are used to rebuilding the whole world and paying for it privately. They're not interested in publicly funding a new stadium. So, he has a long political battle there. Las Vegas is not ready. Portland, Oregon, isn't ready. Mayor Katz hasn't been able to deliver there. The other places that have tried have not been able to advance a piece of legislation that says we're going to fund, fund publicly, or even mostly publicly fund a ballpark.

And besides all of that, Washington, D.C.'s a much better market than any of these other ones. So, look, Major League Baseball had reason to be angry right now. They did sign a deal, albeit they knew when they signed the deal that it had to be passed through the city council. And one of the reasons why they put the December 31 date on there was because they wanted this city council and not the next city council to vote on it.

But they did sign a deal. They expected the deal to be implemented. That was reasonable of them to expect that. For some reason, there was miscommunication or no communication between Mayor Williams and Linda Cropp. And the thing broke down. Right now, what baseball's trying to do is establish their bargaining leverage, take as hard a line as they can, and end up with the best deal that they can.

BROWN: Up or down in 10 seconds. Do you think baseball will come back to Washington or is this thing is going to blow up?

ZIMBALIST: I have to bet that it's going to happen, Aaron. I don't think there's anything else for them to do.

BROWN: Andy, there's no betting in baseball. Thank you.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: It's good to see you.

ZIMBALIST: You, too.

BROWN: Have a good holiday, Andy Zimbalist.

ZIMBALIST: Thanks. You, too.

BROWN: Still ahead -- oh, still ahead on the program, coming up at the top of the hour, here's what's next on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: Coming up next here on CNN, Mexico, home to tens of thousands of millionaires, so why are millions of Mexican illegal aliens invading this country desperate to escape poverty? We'll have a special report and a great deal more at the top of the hour next on CNN.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: That's what's coming up next on the network. Here's what's coming up next on NEWSNIGHT. Lewis and Clark looking for the Northern Passage. We'll see what they saw.

We'll take a break first.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Two hundred years after Lewis and Clark headed west from the Mississippi, the scenery has changed a bit, though not entirely, as photographer Brent Phelps discovered, panoramic camera in hand walking in their footsteps.

His work on display at the Amon Center Museum in Houston and here.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRENT PHELPS, PHOTOGRAPHER: The Lewis and Clark expedition was launched to explore those lands between Saint Louis, Missouri, and the Pacific Ocean. Most of that area was unknown at the time of Lewis and Clark. So, the purpose of the expedition was to explore those lands.

I was not trying to capture that 19th century perspective on how it looked when Lewis and Clark were there. I wanted to give an historical record of the changes that have come since. This is the view toward the original Fort Mandan site. And you can see there's a kind of a yellowish cloud in the background. That's actually a plume from a power generating station. The expedition spent the winter in this location with the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians.

The power plant today is built right on top of the location of the first Mandan village. This is the power plant that is built right on top of the Mandan village site. This is Mars that's tracking, actually setting down over the power plant. The monument is lit with the headlights of my truck. There was an eight-second exposure given for the monument. And then during the 1 1/2 hour exposure for the background, I turned the truck around and then stepped on the brake pedal to paint the foreground a slight pink cast from the taillights of the truck. And so I'm engaging in painting with light.

This is the photograph of Eye of the Needle. The Eye of the Needle is no longer intact, but this originally was a natural arch that occurred here. They actually camped on the other side of the river and just a little bit below to the left of the photograph.

They kept very extensive written journals of their expedition. It helped inform me by reading journals as to where I wanted to go to make photographs. When I approached the project, I felt like that I was approaching it with a similar level of curiosity that maybe Lewis and Clark had, because most of the locations I had not been to. And so I felt like that we both were going there for the first time to see how the land looked.

The two photographs, one on my left, one on my right, represent the Continental Divide. This is the point where the expedition crossed the Rocky Mountains for the first time. This is also the location where the dream of the Northwest Passage died, because when Lewis reached the summit of the pass and looked west, he didn't encounter another river, but encounter layers upon layers of mountains.

This is a photograph of Beaver Head Rock across the Columbia River on the Washington side. We start over on the left side of the photograph with a dead end sign that's pointing to the right and a dead end that's pointing to the left. No through traffic, dead end, no trespassing, keep out. And then, over on the right side of the photograph, a sign that says keep the F out.

So this photograph seems to me to be very, very representative, in contrast of then and now with the amount of change that has occurred in the landscape since Lewis and Clark's time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: If you're in Houston or heading there, it's the Amon Carter Museum, which is close to what I said.

Morning papers coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers. And, as they sometimes say in morning papers, just a quick correction. In Houston, it's Fort Worth. Go to the museum. See the pictures. It's getting to be more trouble than it's worth, isn't it?

"The International Herald Tribune" starts it off. This is a very big story. We were talking about security earlier in the program. "Anti-Terrorism Law Rejected in Britain. Indefinite Detentions Are Ruled Illegal."

"The Guardian" leads the same, as you would expect, but bigger. "Judges' Verdict on Terror Law Provokes Constitutional Crisis." The law basically said you could hold foreign terror suspects indefinitely. One judge saying the real threat to the life of the nation in the sense of a people living in accordance with traditional laws and political values comes not from terrorism, but from laws such as these. You can't hold people indefinitely, in my opinion.

"The Times" also leads with it. "Terror Law in Tatters." British paper, London paper.

OK, back to our country here. "Detroit News." We talked about leading local. "Big Three Face Bleak New Year. Governor Rejects Business Tax Cuts." Another tough year for the big three.

"Stars and Stripes" leads with "Army Officers May Get Less Time to Relocate." That's not as interesting to me, though I'm sure it is to them, as this one. "Rumsfeld Now Personally to Sign Letters of Condolence to Troops' Families." I gather they had a machine do it. Yikes.

"The Examiner" out in San Francisco. "City Unions Brace For $110 Million Overtime Fight." Down here, "Six Geese A-Laying." The paper is recreating in one form or another the 12 days of Christmas. And is there anything harder to cook in the world, by the way, than goose? I tried it once. It's just fat everywhere. It's unbelievable.

"The Philadelphia Inquirer." "Bush Pledges Safeguards in Privatization. Workers Use of Social Security Taxes Would Be Limited. It's Not There For a Lottery."

"The Rocky Mountain News" also put Social Security on the front page. This is going to be a huge story this year, you guys. "Bush Wants Limits on Social Security Private Accounts to Discourage Gambling." Look, it may be a good idea or not, but when you put money into the stock market, that is a gamble, OK? That's what it is. "The Oregonian." There are other ways to do it. That may be a better way. Not sure, but there are other ways. "The Oregonian." "War's Toll Far Worse on Oregon National Guard." Isn't that a nice picture on the front page. "Sun Holds Upper Hand." Not many sunny days this time of the year in the Pacific Northwest. That's pretty good.

And "The Washington Times" has baseball on the front page. "Cropp" -- city councilwoman who has been big trouble for Major League Baseball -- "Cropp, Baseball Refuse to Budge. Standoff Effectively Kills the Deal." Well, we'll see about that. "City Office Is Flooded With Financing Offers." Why not get some private dough in there? The owner is going to make millions of dollars on this. Speaking of making millions of dollars, "Pedro Vents. Sox Blew It. Pedro Martinez Will Be a New York Met."

The weather in Chicago is "chilling out."

And we'll see you tomorrow. Good night for all of us.

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