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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Pentagon Defends Treatment of Detainees; John Walker on His Way Home

Aired January 22, 2002 - 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, NEWSNIGHT CORRESPONDENT: I am indeed, Larry. Thank you very much. That's the nicest thing that's happened today. Thank you. Good evening again, everyone. We use this page for a variety of things, and tonight we use it to tell you I'm really cranky.

You know how some days are just one battle after another? That's my day today. So we had this idea for a segment, a little debate on the question of the detainees and how they should be treated under international law and all that seemed simple enough. And then the guest we thought we had cancelled on us, and then the guest we booked to replace him said he didn't want to do a debate. He just wanted to appear alone.

OK we said. We're not that crazy about these staged debates anyway. We'll do each side separately. And then we told him since he was the one filing suit, he would go first and he said "no, I want the last word."

Then we said something like, "we'll produce the program, thank you very much," and we cancelled him. I'm not happy about that. Based on the e-mails you're not that happy we're discussing the issue at all and that's OK to a point and here's the point.

It's our job to talk about an issue like this. Someone actually said to us today we're just trying to be politically correct. No, we're just trying to report on an issue that actually matters, that will be part of our history, that our children and their children will read about and judge us on. Encouraging discussion is not the same thing as taking a position. So yes, I'm cranky tonight and having gotten that out of my system, I feel better already so we'll move on.

We begin with the whip around the world and the reporters covering it. We begin at the Pentagon and Jamie McIntyre. It must be the detainees, Jamie, a headline please.

JAMIE McINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was a little cranky on this issue too. He spent the better part of an hour vigorously defending the Pentagon's treatment of the captured al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, and this in the face of growing international criticism, criticism he dismissed as misinformed.

BROWN: Jamie, back to you shortly. Susan Candiotti is covering another very high-profile detainee, John Walker, the American. Susan, a headline from you please.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, and the headline is, John Walker's on his way back to the states. The Californian who joined the Taliban about to touch U.S. soil again, under arrest, to face charges including one that he conspired to kill Americans overseas. He'll see a judge soon. What about his parents?

BROWN: Susan, back with you. The latest on Enron, a lot of developments out of Houston today, Ed Lavandera is there. Ed, a headline from you please tonight.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, if you're feeling cranky, imagine being an Enron executive when you turned on the TV last night and saw a couple of media savvy attorneys show up in Houston with a box full of shredded documents, accusing the company of shredding them inside the Enron building.

Today, officials at Enron making sense of all this and everybody's got a lot to say about the entire story right now. Aaron, back to you.

BROWN: Ed, thank you. My cup feels half full already. Thank you very much. We'll be back with all of you shortly. A lot more on the program tonight too. We'll look at some of the proposals for what to do with 16 acres of Lower Manhattan. It's going to be very tough and an emotional decision to be sure. We'll see what the designers have come up with for Ground Zero after the cleanup.

And yes, you probably heard about it by now, Mike Tyson's latest blowup, irresistible to watch, a bit like a train wreck, undeniably depressing. This is about as important as a car chase without the cars.

And a girl with a legendary sense of adventure tonight, at 96 years old, it's our Segment and we'll leave the details for later. All of that in the hour ahead.

We begin with the detainees. It may seem like we're going over old ground here, this question of their treatment and their legal status, but today that issue got a little more complicated on a number of fronts. More U.S. allies had their say and in a Federal courthouse, so did the lawyers. The legal side in a moment, first the allies. Once again to the Pentagon and CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

McINTYRE (voice over): The governments of Germany and France Tuesday joined the chorus of international criticism aimed at the United States for its treatment of captured Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, both countries calling on the United States to treat them as prisoners of war.

The Pentagon dismisses the charge, arguing it is abiding by the Geneva Conventions, even while arguing the detainees don't qualify as POWs. DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Let there be no doubt, the treatment of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay is proper. It's humane. It's appropriate, and it is fully consistent with international conventions.

McINTYRE: The Pentagon insists this picture, which ran in a British paper under the headline "Torture" shows detainees in the process of being transferred, and is not representative of the conditions under which they are being held once they are put in chain link enclosures at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

RUMSFELD: The numerous articles, statements, questions, allegations and breathless reports on television are undoubtedly by people who are either uninformed, misinformed, or poorly informed.

McINTYRE: The Pentagon says the more than 150 detainees have good food, clean clothes, warm showers, exercise time, prayer mats, writing materials, Red Cross visits, and first-rate medical attention. What they don't have is prisoner of war status, which continues to draw fire from human rights advocates.

WILLIAM SCHULZ, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: Until an appropriate tribunal, like a U.S. civilian court, determines whether they are prisoners of war, the Geneva Conventions require that they be treated like prisoners of war.

McINTYRE: Pentagon sources say the United States intends to announce, within a week or 10 days, a comprehensive policy on the status of the detainees, including whether some, such as Taliban forces who fought for a de facto government might be granted POW status, something that would likely be denied to al Qaeda terrorists.

RUMSFELD: And to give standing under a Geneva Convention to a terrorist organization that's not a country is something that I think some of the lawyers who did not drop out of law school as I did worry about as a precedent.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

McINTYRE: The Pentagon says it is only detaining people if caught fighting against the United States, but there are at least six prisoners who do not fit that description.

Recently, the United States flew six Algerians from - arrested in Bosnia to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These are people the United States believes has intelligence that could help crack the al Qaeda terrorist network, but who were not involved in the fighting in Afghanistan. Aaron.

BROWN: And the legal position of holding those people, you want to take a run at that, Jamie?

McINTYRE: Well, it wasn't explained. I think the question here is that the United States insists that it has the right to defend itself, that these people are believed to be involved with a group that has attacked the United States, and the U.S. is taking them into custody for questioning, even though in Bosnia they were released for lack of evidence.

The question here might be the reason the United States is doing it, because it can and because it believes it's important.

BROWN: And ultimately, and we don't know when that is, do we expect that these detainees will have lawyers, will go before a judge, will have some sort of trial?

McINTYRE: Well, we're told within a week or maybe 10 days or so, that they'll have a policy in which it will spell out which detainees might be prosecuted in criminal courts, which ones might go before military tribunals. A lot of them might be sent back to their home countries, where the system of justice might deal with them even more harshly, and some might simply be detained for an indeterminate amount of time.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you, a long day. Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon. Now, to the legal side. This was the point in the program where we planned to have the debate, no screaming. We don't do that here, but polite disagreement. But as we said earlier, it didn't quite work out.

So the people who filed suit in Los Angeles will not have their say exactly, which simply means we have a bit more time with former prosecutor and legal commentator Victoria Toensing who joins us from Washington. It's nice to see you. You have the -

VICTORIA TOENSING, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Aaron, how could you possibly be cranky when I'm on to talk to you.

BROWN: I was going to say, you have the stage to yourself, so. Well, not exactly to yourself. All right. I actually read the relevant portions of the Geneva Convention today and it does seem to say that until it is determined that they are not, people held like this should be considered POWs. Am I misreading it?

TOENSING: There is a convention that talks about whether somebody's immediately our POW or goes through a process to decide whether the person is a POW.

But let's talk about, you know, really what is at issue here. This whole thing about legal status is a red herring. I think the first question is, do these people have adequate physical treatment? Do they have humane physical treatment? I don't think there's much debate about that. I mean, I haven't heard somebody say something very specifically, except for the one picture showing they had the ear muffs on and the -

BROWN: They were tied.

TOENSING: -- their hands tied, bound, but if we're going to talk about legal status, we are in new territory. We are in new water. We have people who have absolutely, Aaron, disobeyed all the rules of the rules of engagement, of war.

Does that mean that we should do that? Of course not, but that does mean we ought to reevaluate the rules that we made when people complied with the rules of engagement, and we're going to have to develop some new rules. That's what the Pentagon's now doing.

BROWN: Ultimately, do they get lawyers? Do they get trials? Do they know what they're charged with? All of those basic things?

TOENSING: Aaron, I would hope - I would think so. I can't imagine the Defense Department deciding that that would not happen with those people who are going to be tried before a military commission. There's no other way. We have to give due process. It's just not the process that is always the exact kind that we have in our, what we call our civil court that John Walker's going to get in Virginia, for example.

BROWN: How would you go about - I mean some of these people perhaps, we know who they are and we know something they have done. Others of these people, we found in a cave somewhere. They were there, but we don't exactly know what they did. How exactly do you begin to prosecute them?

TOENSING: Well, we do know then from the get-go that that particular person who was found in a cave, I assume with ammunition and a gun, and with people shooting at Americans or fighting Americans, was fighting with either the Taliban or al Qaeda, depending on which cave they were found in.

So, you know, there's a start. That is the crime. I mean they are charged with that right now. Whether they're going to be charged with more or more specificity will be left as Jamie reported in a week or 10 days.

BROWN: Victoria, do we have to treat - are we obligated as a country to treat the Taliban prisoners differently from the al Qaeda prisoners?

TOENSING: Probably. I would think that the Pentagon would come to that decision. We didn't recognize the Taliban as an official government, but two countries did I believe, Pakistan and maybe another.

BROWN: Saudi Arabia.

TOENSING: Was it Saudi Arabia?

BROWN: Yes.

TOENSING: That was it. I knew there was another one. So perhaps we will say that if you were with the Taliban that was official, but certainly if you were with al Qaeda, you were with a terrorist organization.

Let's play out on the chess board if we call them prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention, what does that mean? You know, when is there a VE day, a Victory in Europe day or a VGA day or something? You know, when do you sign the armistice and with who? But - and with whom. Oh gosh, pardon me. I taught English, with whom do you sign? BROWN: This is simple tonight.

TOENSING: Yes.

BROWN: We're even correcting grammar on the program.

TOENSING: Well, my own. My own. But I mean how do you play it out that way when you're fighting a terrorist organization? There is no final day that we all have come to know, when you're really having a war and people sit down at a peace table, and then they say OK, you're prisoners will be returned on the same day, you know, we get ours back.

There isn't that kind of a scenario. We don't even know, our President tells us, we all know it in our gut, we don't even know when this war, conflict is going to be over, whatever it is we call it.

BROWN: It's interesting. We're back at the question honestly that we started with all those months ago when the war started. How do we know when it ends? Victoria, it's nice to see you.

TOENSING: Good to see you.

BROWN: Thank you. We'll talk again, and I'm sure we'll revisit this again, and I'm sure we'll get all the e-mails when we do and then I'll feel cranky again.

Now to the American, the Taliban John Walker, he's on his way out of the war zone tonight after spending weeks on a Navy ship off the coast of Pakistan. He will not go to Guantanamo, and his status is perfectly clear.

Sometime tomorrow, John Walker will arrive in suburban Washington, D.C. Soon after that, he'll appear before a Federal judge and face charges that might keep him locked up for the rest of his life. Back to CNN's Susan Candiotti in Washington. Susan, good evening to you again.

CANDIOTTI: Good evening, Aaron. A government source tells us Walker likely will be landing at Dulles Airport in Virginia. Security? Maximum. Depending on the time of day, Walker will face a judge soon after, and a courtroom full of reporters curious to see the American Taliban in person.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CANDIOTTI (voice over): Walker's first appearance at this courthouse in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia probably won't last long, but should prove intriguing.

For example, how will Walker look? How different from his grimy, disheveled appearance following his arrest? Will he look similar to this photo, taken after he converted to Islam?

During an exclusive interview with CNN after his capture, Walker called martyrdom in his words "the goal of every Muslim." JOHN WALKER: I tell you, to be honest, every single one of us, without any exaggeration, every single one of us was 100 percent sure that we would all be (inaudible) all be martyred, but you know. Allah chooses to take a person's life when he chooses."

CANDIOTTI: Defense attorneys are expected to challenge every statement Walker's made without a lawyer present.

MAJOR GENERAL MICHAEL NARDOTTI, U.S. ARMY: He could argue that the duress that his client was under over that extended period of time could make the situation one in which the statements that have been made by John Walker were not truly made voluntarily.

CANDIOTTI: In court, the judge will tell Walker what he's charged with, including conspiracy to kill Americans overseas, and providing material support to terrorists, that he could face life behind bars.

JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Our complaint, based on Walker's own words, is very clear. Terrorists did not compel John Walker Lindh to join them. John Walker Lindh chose terrorists.

CANDIOTTI: Walker will be asked if he has a lawyer. The legal team hired by his family has insisted Walker is represented. Will 20- year-old Walker agree?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CANDIOTTI (on camera): If not, the court will probably appoint or would appoint an attorney to represent Walker. His parents are trying to arrange a meeting with their son as soon as possible after he arrives. Under tough Justice Department guidelines, it's possible that meeting could be monitored with the government listening to every word. Aaron.

BROWN: Susan, if it happens tomorrow, we'll talk tomorrow. Whenever it happens, it's going to be the beginning of an interesting chapter in all this. Thank you very much.

CANDIOTTI: We'll be back.

BROWN: Susan Candiotti. On to the volcano in Congo, Africa now and all the people who went back to the destruction that was their homes, their villages. Relief agencies warned them not to do that, but couldn't guarantee their safety as refugees in the camps in Rwanda either.

Now it's a question of getting aid into eastern Congo before people begin starving. Here's CNN's Chris Burns.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS BURNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The ground still shakes under their feet, even as their bellies now growl with hunger. Residents of Goma, their homes under the deep sheet of lava from Mount Nyriagongo, are trying to find a way to survive, as the earthquakes persist.

The U.N. estimates 300,000 fled over the border into Rwanda, but many have returned, even though aid agencies have set up camps there. After years of warfare, the Congolese are wary of Rwandans. Caleb Bihati (ph) is among them.

CALEB BIHATI: It's better just to come here to be helped here in our country.

BURNS: But the rush back home left aid agencies off guard. This distribution point run by local officials is overwhelmed.

BURNS (on camera): Claude Moushagaluza (ph) was one of the lucky ones who arrived early enough this morning to receive a few handouts. Claude what did you receive? You got some rice. That's about one kilo of rice, a little bit of oil, some salt. That's sugar. Claude is in a family of 11 people, 11 children. They're trying to get by. Their house was not destroyed here in Goma, but their lives are extremely difficult.

BURNS (voice over): In fact, many need far more than food. "There's no plastic sheeting. There isn't anything," says Guraha (ph). Aid officials say they still believe it's too dangerous for people to return here. They face a dilemma, as they try to accommodate the returnees.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were seeking to find out how we can provide food to people who have - who in fact have gone back, they've gone back, without encouraging, further encouraging people to return.

BURNS: But as aid officials try to decide what to do, the humanitarian situation worsens, in a city half destroyed by the lava flows. This used to be Goma's main street. Chris Burns, CNN, Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Not much good news in the world tonight, certainly not much in the Middle East. Israel's former prime minister had this to say about Yasser Arafat today. "He looks like one" Ahub Barak (ph) said. "He walks like one, so maybe he really is a terrorist." He said it a short time after a Palestinian gunmen opened fire in Jerusalem, wounding at least 15 people. Police shot the gunman to death. A military wing of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement took credit for the attack, calling it revenge for an Israeli raid.

In a moment, the shredding at Enron, the troubles for Kmart, and keeping companies accountable so you can figure out what to risk your money on. Business, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: President Bush traveled to West Virginia today to campaign for his domestic agenda. His visit came at a key point. Lawmakers back in Washington this week, partisan squabbling continues over the President's tax cut, economic policy generally, energy policy and more.

Speaking to workers at the Walker Machine Factory, the President said he'll push Congress to focus on jobs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Jobs depend on affordable energy. If there's a prizefight or a disruption in supply, people may not have work. And it's also in our nations' national security interests that we become less dependent on foreign sources of energy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Energy policy and the rest certainly to come up at the President's State of the Union speech, a week from tonight. Bob Woodward once said that the key to figuring out just about any scandal is to follow the money.

Plenty of that in the Enron case, but at least for today, the focus is elsewhere, on the shredding. The FBI is looking into who destroyed what and when they did it at Enron. So we go back to CNN's Ed Lavandera who is in Houston for us tonight. Ed, good evening.

LAVANDERA: Good evening, Aaron. Well, when a couple of media savvy attorneys showed up in Houston with what really has become the most visual explosive prop we've seen in this Enron story so far, it turned out to be more than just a stunt. It has raised some serious questions about the direction of this investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAVANDERA (voice over): The scene was made for TV, drinks and mingling in a post downtown hotel room and at the center of attention, what attorneys representing Enron investors say, are shredded documents taken from inside the company's headquarters.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is an absolute smoking gun.

LAVANDERA: Enron is investigating the charges of shredding, saying it's found one wastebasket full but no more. Attorneys for shareholders say at least five people witnessed documents being shredded inside Enron since late November in the finance and accounting departments after SEC subpoenas had been served.

One woman used the shreds as packing material. When she got home, she noticed the fine print on the slips.

MAUREEN CASTANEDA, FORMER ENRON EMPLOYEE: There was a lot of arrogance at the company. I mean to the point where an arrogance at the level where you think you can lie to Wall Street and get away with it.

LAVANDERA: Enron has opened the doors to FBI investigators. They'll be allowed to interview people who worked on the 19th and 20th floors, where the alleged shredding occurred. But some attorneys want sensitive documents taken into protective custody and out of the Andersen and Enron offices.

BILL LERACH, ATTORNEY, ENRON INVESTORS: What we want is the right to question Arthur Andersen people and Enron people about the document destruction that has admittedly occurred.

RUSTY HARDIN, ARTHUR ANDERSEN ATTORNEY: We feel very badly about what happened to the investors and there's nothing we can say that will make it better for those people, and we very, very much feel badly about it. But we know that we did what we thought was right, and we're trying to do what we think is right now and that's all we can do.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAVANDERA (on camera): Enron says it's still trying to investigate these allegations and to find the truth here. Andersen is also saying the same thing, and Enron is also saying that over the last several months that they've issued several e-mails instructing employees not to shred any documents of any kind, no matter under any circumstances.

Also as all of this is going on, the Federal judge here in Houston is supposed to announce tomorrow her decision as to exactly how the documents, the financial documents that still exist at Andersen and Enron, how those should be preserved and taken care of, as this investigation moves forward. Aaron, back to you.

BROWN: Ed, thank you very much. Ed Lavandera in Houston for us tonight. A couple of other business stories to note, beginning with Kmart, and in the interest of full disclosure, I'll repeat what I said last week. There was a time in my life when I was a PA announcer at Kmart, uttering the words "attention Kmart shoppers" and more.

Having said that, we go on. As many people feared, Kmart filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today, not my fault. The CEO said it will give the company a chance to make a fresh start. Funny how bankruptcy and fresh start can somehow work their way into the same sentence.

That contradiction in a way goes to what we want to talk about next, another story that got Wall Streets attention today and ours as well, was about Amazon.com. Amazon turned a profit last quarter.

It's going to be hard for some people to believe the company had never earned a dime before that, but they earned in the holiday shopping season in profit $5 million. Now is that enough of a reason for the stock to soar more than 20 percent, which is what it did in a tough market today?

Joining us from Chicago, something of a prodigy in the financial world, Jonathan Hoenig, better known as the capitalist pig. I'm sure that's the first time I've ever said that in an introduction. Nice to see you.

JONATHAN HOENIG, PORTFOLIO MANAGER, CAPITALISTPIG & ASSET MANAGEMENT: Aaron. BROWN: Nice to see you.

HOENIG: You as well.

BROWN: OK, is it a real five million or is it one of those Enron five million?

HOENIG: It's not an Enron five million, Aaron. I mean what we had at Enron really was fraudulent accounting. We don't have that at Amazon. We do have, however, aggressive accounting and that's what you have in the five million. I mean there's good news and bad news when you take a look at the earnings out for Amazon today.

I'm going to tell you, you're going to need a magnifying glass to take a look at it, because that's what really matters these days is the fine print. I mean there's nothing about what Amazon disclosed today that is inaccurate or fraudulent. It is, however, very aggressive.

BROWN: Is it misleading? And here's what I mean by that Jon, that can I look at those numbers and say "you know what, Amazon is actually doing better than it was before?"

HOENIG: Yes. Yes, absolutely. Here's the truth. The company earned a profit of $5 million. This is great, record revenue. This is positive. They have cut costs. They've increased efficiency.

A lot of their product areas that were slowing, like books and movies and stuff, have picked up as well and they're doing well in the international market. So there's a lot to be very enthusiastic about, about Amazon, and I think you saw that today with the company shares, as you said up 24 percent in fact in a real down market.

So they do have a lot to be happy about, especially since, and this was a company a lot of people doubted whether they would literally be in business at this point. So there's a lot to be - there's a lot to be proud about and a lot to be happy about. At the same time, it's these pro forma earnings that most people pay attention to that ultimately could spell trouble for investors further on down the line.

BROWN: Jon, it's not like us to dwell on good news here, so let me move to Enron for a minute. I'm curious if you think from the investment side of this that one of the outcomes will be much tougher regulations where auditors are concerned, so that people have a much clearer idea of what, in fact, a company earns and doesn't earn?

HOENIG: Well I hope frankly, Aaron, there's not tighter regulations. I think ultimately what hurt most investors, at least when it comes to Enron, wasn't necessarily the regulations, but you know frankly, was their own portfolios, Aaron, and it's not a real hip kind of attitude to have when people have lost tons of money. But the truth is, is that the people who lost tons of money had tons of money in Enron, all right. If I put 30 or 40 percent of my client's money into one stock -

BROWN: Yes, but if -

HOENIG: -- I'd be put in jail.

BROWN: OK, but if I worked for Enron and they were putting 401 (k) money into their own stock, I didn't have an option, except to own Enron. That was not - that was the only option I had.

HOENIG: I think it's a good point but the segue back to the Kmart story which you mentioned as well, we saw the bad news in Enron long before the news actually hit the tape. That is, the stock didn't go from, you know, $80 to 80 cents in one day.

You know, so if you bought Enron at the height or you were investing in Enron at $80 a share, you know, by the time it got to $40, even though the news hadn't changed, I think an active investor, who's not frankly just pushing the blame off on someone else, you know, needs to say "all right, something's up here." Yes, there was fraud at Enron, both on the accounting side and on the management side.

Yes, management misled investors, but I think ultimately it's buyer beware when it comes to the securities industry these days and more than ever investors need to be skeptical of accountants, especially the accountants who also consult for the companies they work for.

That's about as double dipping as I think you can get.

BROWN: That's about as capless an argument as you can make, and given your nickname, I wouldn't expect any less. Thank you. Thanks for joining us tonight. Good to talk to you.

HOENIG: You too.

BROWN: Coming up next on NEWSNIGHT, we went to a press conference and a fight broke out. Sounds like a goofy joke, doesn't it? This is NEWSNIGHT. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There's a line in "Dr. Strangelove" the movie, that's about irresistible tonight. You can't fight in here, the president says, this is the war room! We thought of this this afternoon when we saw Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis get into a brawl, which is what they're supposed to do, only this brawl took place at a news conference which is not where it's supposed to happen.

And now there's a very real and weird possibility that someone will have to tell Tyson and Lewis: Unless you two stop hitting each other, we won't let you fight anymore. It's a fine line between boxing and showbiz.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): Ho hum, just another prenight news conference. This one promoting Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis in the spring. WALLACE MATTHEWS, "NEW YORK POST": It was just mayhem. It was clear that fists were flying, but it was hard to see. I saw Tyson throw a punch at somebody, and after seeing the videotape I saw that he actually was punching at a bodyguard.

BROWN: Boxing has always been this way a bit, but these days it has little more. And by the standards of past brawls today's wasn't even that good.

MATTHEWS: Boxing has a long history of this. A lot of its hype. I've been to a press conferences where they actually sawed the podium so the fighters could pound it and have it fall down and that's a set up thing -- this is what I'm going to him -- boom -- and then the thing would go down and that's clearly a fake. This wasn't a fake but if you really want to rank it in boxing press conference mayhem, it's not at the top.

BROWN: Probably closer to the bottom and maybe just maybe all fake, an act by the aging Tyson to sell some tickets the way a pro wrestler might.

MATTHEWS: The only thing he really has to sell at this point is this madman persona that he has created. He clearly hasn't won an important fight in 14 years. He fought Michael Spinx in 1988 and knocked him out in one round, and he hasn't fought an important fight or won an important fight since then. So the thing he has to sell is that he's a lunatic and could snap at any moment. He's capable of biting your ear off as well as knocking you out.

BROWN: Mike Tyson did of course to Evander Holyfield, but that was in the ring. And even that only slowed his career, didn't stop it and today's spectacle won't either. After all, it's boxing.

MATTHEWS: Nobody said hey this may not be the guy we want on our network or in our hotel or in our arena. Everybody said, how much money can way make with Mike Tyson? And the answer is, a heck of a lot. And this hasn't hurt at all, what happened.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Dan Rafael writes about boxing for "USA Today." He is with us. He was at the press conference.

I guess you had a ring side seat.

DAN RAFAEL, BOXING WRITER, "U.S.A. TODAY": Yes, I did.

BROWN: I have no shame. So, what do you think? Was it all theater or did Tyson just go nuts?

RAFAEL: I think it's the latter. I think Tyson basically just went nuts. It wasn't theater. Anybody who was there and saw the intention when he went after Lennox knows that this was not staged, this wasn't a mock thing. They weren't trying to sell more tickets. The fight was going to be sold out anyway.

BROWN: They saw those pay per view, but was there provocation?

RAFAEL: That was the strange thing about it, there was no provocation. It was simply, we had barely gotten comfortable in our seats when the ring announcer, Jimmy Lennin (ph) came in, they did a dramatic showing of some of the highlights of their careers, and Jimmy Lennin came out he introduced Mike Tyson and then he introduced Lennox and as Lennox was striding to his spot on the stage, you know, Tyson threw his hat down and ran across the stage, and one of Lennox's bodyguards tried to stop him from doing that and Mike didn't like that and threw a punch, and Lennox answered and hit Mike back and then it was on, and there was dozens of people rolling around on the stage and it was just a mess.

BROWN: Is the guy just nuts?

RAFAEL: I think he's probably pretty nuts. The fact is he can't control himself in public. And you can't expect him after all the things that have happened in his life to, now all of a sudden be put on this pedestal once again, and act like a normal human being, when people think part of his mystique is to act like a freak and do things that are usually not acceptable in our society.

BROWN: It's all sort of sad isn't it? The guy at one time was a great fighter.

RAFAEL: At one time owe.

BROWN: A long time ago now.

RAFAEL: The funny thing was, I commented to my colleague, John Serrasino (ph) , one of our columnists at the paper, and I said to him, when they were showing these videoclips of the careers of Lennox and Mike that fact was that most of the clips they were showing from Mike's great knock outs and fights were clips from 10 years ago.

He hasn't had a meaningful and extremely impressive performance in many, many years. So they were showing fights when he was beating Trevor Burbick back in the old days to win the heavy weight title.

BROWN: What does it say about boxing that the best fight you can make right now is Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis?

RAFAEL: It says that there is a serious dearth of talent in the heavy weight division, and that like a lot of things, people are attracted to what used to be. They know the names they know, Lennox, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, and that boxing is not -- it doesn't have the new young stars on the rise in that division. Now, there are a lot of good fighters in other divisions. Unfortunately, people don't know about them.

Coming up tomorrow is a press conference for Shane Mosely, who is pound for pound the best fighter in the world. He has a fight at Madison Square Garden here in New York on Saturday against Vernon Forrest (ph) , and these guys are gentlemen, but they're not going to get on CNN because they're not going to throw punches at tomorrow's press conference, unfortunately. That's the way it works. BROWN: Which is pretty much the standard of whether you get on CNN.

RAFAEL: Exactly.

BROWN: Do you think they'll make this fight, or they will or they will cancel this fight? What do you think is going to happen?

RAFAEL: Well there are some serious issues for them to address before were we know whether or not it will happen. They were supposed to announce it at today's news conference, and never got around to actually saying words.

The fight was supposed to be April 6 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The problem is Mike Tyson doesn't at this point have a license to box in Nevada. And so he was supposed to go before the Nevada commission on January 29, which is a week from Tuesday, or this coming Tuesday, actually, and there was supposed to be an item on the agenda, and they were going to go through, and it was going to be a rubber stamp and they were going vote him to get his license. Now -- so much for that -- now it is a big thing and now Mike has to appear there and you know, who knows with the public pressure?

BROWN: We will see what happens.

RAFAEL: Who knows if he will get it?

BROWN: Thanks for coming in.

RAFAEL: My pleasure.

BROWN: Nicely done tonight.

One another sports note, we don't do sports notes, this one, as you will see, is not usual either. Jack Shea, the oldest American gold medalist for a winter Olympic games is dead at the age of 91.

He was an athlete and he was a gentlemen, and we certainly saw today the world could use more of them. He won two medals in as many days back in 1932, an amazing speed skater, and he had a conscience as well. He boycotted the '36 games in Germany after talking with a rabbi. Shea's drive seemed to be in his genes. He was planning to watch his grandson Jim compete next month in Salt Lake City. CNN had the good fortune to speak with him yesterday, shortly before in fact, he died in that car crash.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACK SHEA, OLDEST AMERICAN GOLD MEDALIST AT A WINTER GAMES: I got on the dais and I gave the Olympic oath, and you know, I still get a big thrill about repeating the Olympic oath because here in the stands was Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of the state of New York who was to be elected president of the United States that fall, and I stood there and I raised my hands, you know, and I said, we swear that we will take part in the Olympic games in loyal competition, respecting the rules and regulations that govern them, and desirous of participating in them in the true spirit of sportsmanship for the honor of country and the glory of sport.

And that you know, still echoes in my memory today, and I won the first event on February 4, 1932 in the third winter Olympic games. I hope Jim takes hold as I have, a great silent pride in having the opportunity to honor country, that his experience will give a good background to make decisions that will be good for the Olympics and be good for the young people of the United States of America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: That was just yesterday, Jack Shea at 91.

Up next on NEWSNIGHT, how is the movie "Black Hawk Down" playing in Mogadishu? We'll show you. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The movie "Black Hawk Down" is playing to sellout crowds, and not just here in the United States. Somalis in Mogadishu watched it last night, and it was a stark reminder that there were victims on both sides in what happened there back in 1993. In this country, an American audience might sit in silence or look away from the screen some times -- pretty graphic movie. In Mogadishu, the audience was glued, and in their bitterness, actually found reason to applaud.

Here's CNN's Jeff Koinange.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): By 7:00 at night, virtually everyone in Mogadishu had heard "Black Hawk Down", the movie, was here, the first bootleg copy to reach Somalia. The price of a ticket, 10 U.S. cents. Hundreds of Somalis crowded into this outdoor playground less than a mile from where the real Black Hawk went down.

In this country, where the U.S.'s military effort to capture the powerful Somali warlord, Mohamed Aidid, was opposed, the audience took delight in scenes of American defeat. Each time an American chopper goes down, the audience cheers. Each time an American serviceman is killed, the audience cheers some more.

The Hollywood production relives the events of October 1993. By the time the battle was over 16 hours later, 18 elite American Rangers and hundreds of Somalis lay dead in the streets of Mogadishu. Ahmed Abdullah (ph) says he witnessed the actual battle and says the movie is more fiction that fact.

"It's not fair what the U.S. is trying to do. What I saw that day was different from what I see in this film today. It's not accurate", he says. Others say the movie brings back disturbing memories of a day they will never forget.

"I felt very sad watching the film", says this woman. "It's not right what the Americans are trying to do." Some in this audience were actually proud of the way Somalis were portrayed in "Black Hawk Down". They believed they were defending their country and their pride against what they considered U.S. military aggression.

"As you can see", says this man, "Somalis are brave fighters. If the Americans come back to fight us, we shall defeat them again."

"Let them try again", this man says. "They'll be making more films about us when we defeat them like we did that day." The events of that day led to the eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Somalia, ending their mission here. Eight years later, Somalia continues to slide into the abyss as anarchy and lawlessness combine to make it one of the most ungovernable places in the world today.

(on camera): While "Black Hawk Down" may prove entertaining to movie audience worldwide, Somalis here see it as a painful reenactment of their past, a past that could come back to haunt coming at a time when they look to the outside world for a helping hand.

Jeff Koinange, CNN, Mogadishu.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I can imagine the e-mails now.

When we come back, designers weigh in on rebuilding ground zero, a very different sort of controversy. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Hard to believe it's been three months, but after three months of heavy duty cleaning, legislators returned to an anthrax-free Hart Senate Office Building today. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said the clean-up efforts were, quote, "a complete success", thankfully. Clean-up efforts were so successful, in fact, that even a pet goldfish stayed alive. Democratic Senator John Breaux of Louisiana left his pet fish in the building on the day it was evacuated. The fish were only fed twice in the last three months. But they were declared, quote, "in good health today" by a fish specialist who inspected their tank. You cannot make this up, ladies and gentlemen.

In New York, it's a question that will have to be answered a lot faster than anyone anticipated. And the answer clearly will not come easily and probably without a fight. What to do with ground zero, what to build there, how to remember the dead with dignity and how to get the economy of lower Manhattan going again? The cleanup is going to be done possibly by this summer. And so designers from all over the world have been coming up with their ideas for ground zero. We visited one New York gallery that brought dozens of artist proposals together.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRAD CLOEPFIL, ARCHITECT: The idea for the show came out of those dark days immediately after September 11. I thought every architect that I know must be thinking exactly what I'm thinking even though they probably wouldn't want to admit it at this moment because it was too soon, like what's going to be built? I tried to think of the most optimistic thing that I possibly could do and that was to do a show about what would replace these buildings.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I thought the symbolic gesture of building high was inappropriate actually.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think for me and I think for everybody else, the way into the project was to think of it as a dialogue of potentials. And I think that's what's exciting about Max's show is that he has a broad array of architects from over the world to propose not what we should build, but what we might think about.

CLOEPFIL: The architects are really sticking their necks out or they are challenged by the question. It's a difficult project and I think a lot of them are going to get criticized for what they've done as well. It's not without risk that they're doing this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that people are very excited about coming and seeing an exhibit like this, but I think that, I mean, you can see with the variety of everything that you see here how much or what the variety of opinion there is. And I think it would be very difficult to come out with something so soon after the 11th that would please everybody.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They didn't just choose skyscrapers. They chose the World Trade Center in the financial district in New York City. I don't think that there has ever been a moment in the history of the United States that people understood the symbolic, social, political and economic importance of architecture in this country. And suddenly, all of us understood it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you think of it in the context of contemporary history and contemporary culture, certainly in the United States, none of us have been asked ever in our lives or would ever even want to be asked to consider to think about the possibilities of architecture in a context such as this.

MEL CHIN, ARCHITECT: In the wake of destruction, you look for some kind of response. And that response I think, when people understand there's a creative response to it, that it shows the power of the human imagination and creativity.

CLOEPFIL: One of the things that many of the architects here captured is that the core of their project is a memorial, but memorializing in a way that, you know, we are showing that life goes on in New York City and that we are not going to be stuck in the past.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And that's ground zero tonight, as it is four-and-a-half months after the attack. What will it be? This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Finally tonight, "Segment 7". In truth, we all sort of yawned when we heard about this story, the story of a woman who wrote many of the Nancy Drew mysteries. And then we read the script. Millie Benson has seen more life than we expect to see. She has done more things, written more words, influenced more people. And, oh, how she's lived that life.

Her story tonight from CNN's Brian Cabell.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): She's 96 and still working. Millie Benson is a one day a week reporter and columnist for the "Toledo Blade". But it's not her news writing for which she's best known. It's her alter-ego, Nancy Drew. Under the pen name Caroline Keen, Millie Benson wrote 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew novels in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, stories about a girl who was assertive, curious, independent.

MILLIE BENSON, NANCY DREW AUTHOR: At that time, Nancy Drew was -- girls weren't like that. Girls were dependent. My characters took on more activity, more like a boy.

CABELL: Not unlike Ms. Bensen herself.

BENSON: I didn't follow the pattern that normal girls follow. I just was myself always, and what I wanted to be or do or think I did and nobody opposed me on it.

CABELL: She sold her first story, she figures, when she was a child growing up in Iowa around 1915, even though her father said storytelling would never pay. She graduated high school in three years and became a champion diver and swimmer. She was the first woman to claim a journalism master's degree at the University of Iowa.

Later, she got her pilot's license and flew solo all over the country. She journeyed alone to Central America. Yes, she was a real life Nancy Drew, the character who has enchanted so many young female readers over the years.

DIANE HIRES, PHOTOGRAPHER/NANCY DREW ENTHUSIAST: It was adventure. It was exciting. It was -- she talked back sometimes to adults. She went in places. She was fearless.

CABELL: Millie Benson insists Nancy Drew wasn't her best writing. She wrote more than a hundred other novels, but Nancy Drew, she concedes, will be her enduring legacy.

BENSON: I always felt I had a good book, but I never felt that it was a remarkable book or anything like that.

CABELL (on camera): Millie was hired by a syndicate to write the Nancy Drew novels. She was given a brief outline of each story along with some of the main characters, and then she took it from there. Her compensation: $125 a book, no royalties. That's the way contracts were written. But she has no regrets.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's Katie's birthday on Friday and she was so excited...

CABELL: Autograph seekers still show up, the fan mail still piles up, but failing eyesight and poor hearing are slowly taking their toll on her.

BENSON: There isn't an awful lot left in me anymore, but it's all I have to work for.

CABELL: And at 96, Millie still needs to be in the news room. She needs to pound out that column.

REBEKAH SCOTT, "TOLEDO BLADE" REPORTER: Well, if she quits, she will die and I think she knows that this is why she lives.

CABELL: More than 80 years of putting words together, telling stories. And the job isn't done yet.

Brian Cabell, CNN, Toledo, Ohio.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Can't stay cranky in this job. See you tomorrow at 10. Good night from NEWSNIGHT.

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