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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Jury Will Now Decide if Yates Should Receive Death; Israel Engages in Largest Operation Since Lebanon

Aired March 12, 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, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again. I'm Aaron Brown.

This page will be brief tonight. We should spend it on the Yates case, I suppose. There was a verdict late today. She's guilty and, of course, we will devote a considerable amount of time on the program. There's a lot to say.

And if not talking about the Yates case, we probably should have written about these deadly days in the Middle East. We've learned over the years that no matter what we say, no matter how we report it, someone is going to be unhappy. We can wait a few minutes for that unhappiness to begin.

Instead, just a moment to say thanks to all of you, and there were far too many than we could reply to, who sent notes to us today about last night's program. Yes, it was special to us too. We do 250 or so programs a year, but in truth, we remember only a few and all of us here will remember last night's. So again, from the entire staff of NEWSNIGHT, thank you.

And if we needed to be reminded, today at ground zero, eight more bodies were found, pulled from the rubble, two were civilians, six firefighters. Two came from Ladder Company 4, a company that lost 17 members that day. Of the 343 firefighters lost on September 11, 148 have been found so far. The search for the rest goes on. Now, in 24 hours a day.

Onto the news of the day, and none of it is very pretty. The Yates case begins our whip tonight. Gary Tuchman in the courtroom in Houston. Gary, the headline from you, please.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, a Texas jury will now decide if Andrea Yates should die. After the eight women and four men found her guilty of murder, after less than four hours of deliberations.

BROWN: Gary, thank you. A major embarrassment for the Immigration and Naturalization Service involving two September 11 hijackers. Mark Potter is in Miami for us tonight. Mark, a headline.

MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, last September, terrorists Marwan al-Shehhi and Mohamed Atta died after flying jets into the World Trade Center. Yesterday, on the six-month anniversary of that event, the owner of the flight company where they trained received notice from the INS that requests for student visas for those two men had been approved. To say the least, as you said, the INS is very embarrassed -- Aaron.

BROWN: To say the least. Mark, thank you. And the latest on the violence in the Middle East. Ben Wedeman is in Ramallah tonight in the dark, save for a flashlight. We've got some security concerns. Ben, give us a quick headline, please.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Aaron, Israel is engaged in its largest military operation since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The death toll for just one day, around 40, that includes Israelis and Palestinians -- Aaron.

BROWN: Ben, thank you. We will get to you very quickly. Stay safe while we wait.

There are so many issues raised by the Yates case, we have a couple of guests to join us tonight to help sort through that. On a lighter note, and we could use one, couldn't we, something that even has the CIA crowd talking, a museum that's more get smart than van gogh.

And the story of an extramarital affair has gotten a whole lot more interesting and a whole lot more reason to take a look at it. The wife of Jack Welch wants a divorce and, perhaps, half of everything he's got. Another wife of a GE executive did the same thing a few years back and we will talk to her tonight, Lorna Went. All that's coming up in the hour ahead. A very diverse program.

We begin with the sad tale of Andrea Yates. There was something about watching Ms. Yates right after the verdict today, being led through a door that said no exit. Eight women and four men took less than four hours to decide that Ms. Yates was guilty of murder in the drowning deaths of her five children.

A few things, of course, were never in doubt in the case. Andrea Yates did kill her children and she does have a long history of mental illness. At times, it was severe. But being mentally, even psychotic, is not enough under the law in most states, including Texas. There, the question was quite simple, right from wrong? If you know the difference, you're guilty. But if that was an easy decision for the jury, we wonder about the next question, should she be executed? Here again is Gary Tuchman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JUDGE BELINDA HILL, 230TH DISTRICT COURT: Mrs. Yates, please stand.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): The verdict came after only three hours, 40 minutes of deliberations.

HILL: "In cause number 880205, The State of Texas vs. Andrea Pia Yates, we the jury find the defendant, Andrea Pia Yates, guilty of capital murder as charged in the indictment," signed by the foreperson.

TUCHMAN: 37-year-old Andrea Yates, with a history of severe mental problems, now faces the possibility of the death penalty. Her husband, Russell, who has supported her, put his head in his hands and said, oh God. Her mother just stared straight ahead, and the convicted murderer's cheek quivered.

QUESTION: What was Andrea's reaction to this?

GEORGE PARNHAM, ANDREA YATES' ATTORNEY: Not good, as you can imagine. Very upset. Very upset.

TUCHMAN: The defense told the jury Yates was trying to protect her children from spending eternity in hell. Her attorney said she was legally insane under Texas law because she didn't know the difference between right and wrong.

PARNHAM: If this woman doesn't meet the test of insanity in this state, then nobody does.

KAYLYNN WILLIFORD, PROSECUTOR: Maybe she wanted to punish Rusty.

TUCHMAN: But prosecutors said she knew what she did was wrong and may have wanted to get back at a domineering husband.

WILLIFORD: She had a plan and it was to take these children's lives, not to take her own life. She didn't want to do that because if this was to punish her husband, because of what she -- the circumstances she had been put in which is a possibility, we don't know for sure her motive, to kill herself, she would still -- he would still have the children. She would just be gone.

TUCHMAN: The eight women and four men in the jury have been sequestered and will stay that way because starting Thursday, they will begin deciding in the penalty phase whether Andrea Yates should get life in prison or be executed.

PARNHAM: I think mental illness is just still obviously not understood, not appreciated, and I hope that we will be able to save her life.

TUCHMAN: Russell Yates visited his wife in jail following the verdict.

RUSSELL YATES, ANDREA YATES' HUSBAND: I don't really want to talk right now.

TUCHMAN: If she does not receive the death penalty, she would not be eligible for parole until she is 77 years old.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(on camera): The penalty phase is, in essence, a mini-trial, where Andrea Yates' lawyers will literally try to save her life. For her to receive death by lethal injection, all 12 jurors must agree. Any less than 12, she gets life with the possibility of parole after 40 years -- Aaron.

BROWN: Gary, do we know much about how the two sides now are going to proceed, the witnesses they will call, the arguments they will make?

TUCHMAN: Aaron, there's a gag order in this case -- despite the fact that there is a gag order, we do get some comments from the attorneys, but they're being very quiet about who they will call to testify.

What usually happens though is the defense will call up family members and friends who will talk about the problems Andrea Yates has. It's very possible that the prosecution may not call anybody at all.

BROWN: And perhaps I'm going to get the same answer, there's a gag order here, but has either side been able to give you a sense of how long they think the trial phase or the punishment trial phase will take?

TUCHMAN: OK, well, the gag order certainly hasn't stopped us getting some information. That little piece of information that you just asked about comes from court employees. They say traditionally, this penalty phase takes one, two, maximum of three days. That's what we are going by right now.

BROWN: Gary, thank you. Gary Tuchman in Houston tonight.

Two perspectives now on how Ms. Yates might be punished, how the jury got to where it did so quickly today, someone who knows the process well and someone who has been watching the jury throughout the trial. In Houston, author Suzy Spencer joins us again. She's been in the courtroom almost every day and has been with us a couple of times before. Suzy, nice to see you. And from Los Angeles, former -- an assistant district attorney in New York County, now a writer, Robert Tanenbaum. Again, Mr. Tanenbaum is in Los Angeles.

I want to get to you, Mr. Tanenbaum, and talk about the death penalty. But Suzy, you first here. I had the feeling that you thought the defense might have you had pulled this one out?

SUZY SPENCER, AUTHOR: Just on the last two days, I thought maybe they did, but it was like the prosecution went, OK, let's think, with fire and brimstone emotion. And the defense was saying let's think with a rational brain. And they decided to go with fire and brimstone emotion.

BROWN: And one of her lawyers said today, essentially that -- well, not essentially, I think he said literally if this case isn't an insanity case, nothing will. In that regard, the law was on trial. Any sense down there that people were troubled by the narrow nature of the insanity law?

SPENCER: I don't really think so. I mean, this is Houston, Texas, the death capital of the nation. So, no, I'm not so sure about that. Will this bring maybe a bigger fight for change in insanity laws? Maybe, but I don't know for a fact. BROWN: Mr. Tanenbaum, you support the death penalty generally?

ROBERT TANENBAUM, FORMER ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Generally, for those particular cases where it is justified, where you have people going around with evil intent, with a long criminal record, engaged in violent crime, the kind of cases, for example, assassination of police officers, rapes, murders, cases of child abuse that lead to murder, those kinds of cases are reserved for some very, very violent actors where the death penalty in my judgment is justified.

BROWN: And in this case, here you have five dead children, apparently a deliberate act. The jury didn't take much time sorting through it. Is this a death penalty case as you see it?

TANENBAUM: Not in my opinion. I think that this case, in large measure, has very serious repercussions and considerations that we have to take into account in the criminal justice system, and ask whether or not in fact if you have this woman who had no prior evil intent and has no background of violence, and ask the simple question from inception, but for her mental disease, would she have engaged in these acts? And then try to make a determination with the best forensic psychiatrists you can get, not just some hired guns who you may be involved in trying to win the case with, either from the defense or from the prosecution, but to try and find out what is the kind of qualitative disposition this case requires?

From the moral point of view, it doesn't seem to me that she comes into this case even after conviction, which I think there's some serious questions about here, given this severe mental disease that she had prior to committing these acts. Unlike most of the cases where you have invocation of not guilty by reason of insanity, all of a sudden the defendant comes up in with the excuse of the devil told me to do it and those kinds of things, I'm hallucinating and all that, which are fabricated. That's not what this case is about, it seems to me.

We have a very serious case of mental disease and if rejected out of hand, then maybe the insanity defense is not something that we ought to have in the statutes and have the criminal justice system simply evaluate whether or not the accused committed the wrongful acts, and then decided in the second phase what punishment the defendant should be meeted out and have the opportunity at the second phase, which is the second trial, for the defendant to bring in mitigators and the prosecution to bring in aggravators and try and decide what the proper punishment is qualitatively in the case.

BROWN: This is really an interesting argument because there is, as you know in the legal community, there is often in cocktail parties and other such places where these conversations go on, a discussion about whether the adversarial system itself is always the best way to get the correct outcome. And I think the argument you're making is that at least in these narrow cases, and perhaps there aren't very many of them, the adversarial system is set up in such a way as to make a proper or just or correct outcome harder to reach. TANENBAUM: Much harder, because the prosecution, from their point of view, wants a win. That means they want to get a conviction. And the defense is basically trying to do everything legally possible to get the defendant found, in this case, not guilty by reason of insanity.

And the other aspect of the case is one should not be misled that in Texas, for example, you focus on wrongfulness. That is did the defendant know that the acts committed at the time of commission were wrong on the issue of responsibility, which in lay terms, we call insanity. But even if the case, where the defendant did not know as a result of mental disease or defect the nature and quality of her acts, and that they were wrong, which is generally the model penal code, definition of insanity, as it relates to the defensive responsibility here. You would have had the same kind of a verdict in all probability.

The overwhelming horrendous nature of these acts is what persuaded the jurors, given the hired-gun nature of the forensic psychiatrists that were involved in this case from both sides. And the overwhelming facts are what carried the day, unfortunately, to the extent -- I say unfortunately -- we don't know exactly what was in Andrea Yates' mind. We do know she had no violent background. We do know that she comes to this case with severe documented mental disease, and the question is, why did she commit these acts? And to speculate on it from the prosecution point of view, when you talk about potential death penalty, is exactly the wrong thing to do, it seems to me.

BROWN: Suzy, Mr. Tanenbaum mentioned hired guns here. One of them was Park Dietz. We never covered on the program for a couple of reasons. One is it happened over the weekend, his cross-examination. Give me, in 30 or 40 seconds or so, a sense of how the defense attacked this experienced witness who made the argument that sick or not she knew right or wrong?

SPENCER: Well, basically, I think if Park Dietz -- let me rephrase that -- if the verdict had come back not guilty by reason of insanity, Park Dietz's career would be in trouble because what I saw on Saturday, barring the way things came out, was the downfall of Park Dietz because so many of the things that he insinuated and inferred on Friday, they totally got him to contradict on Saturday. And whereas on Friday, he walked in Mr. Confident, on Saturday he was stroking his tie and looking very nervous. In fact, admitted that he wanted out of that courtroom and didn't want to come back.

BROWN: Mr. Tanenbaum, Mr. Dietz is, in fact -- he's not the only professional witness out there. There are lots of them in lots of different fields. Have you encountered him, know much about him, have a feel for him?

TANENBAUM: What I know about him and having discussed him with several attorneys is, like other hired guns, he falls into the category of being generally pro-prosecution. He's going to come up with a solution generally to help out the prosecution. This forensic psychiatrist, by the way, are not very helpful in this field, are they, wherein on the defense side, you have a prestigious forensic pathologist saying who is exactly the opposite from the prosecution doctor, in this case, Dr. Dietz.

So where does that leave the lay juror with respect to trying to understand what the state of mind of the defendant was? In a non- adversarial, qualitative analysis, that is to say what is the right thing to do with this case? What should we do here? And yet, you have two alleged experts who were telling you exactly different things with respect to her responsibility.

BROWN: Let me interrupt you just for one second here. Do you imagine a time when in -- that in -- where we will get away from this adversarial kind of trial in some of these cases or is this just the kind of thing we are all going to sit around and drink martinis and talk about?

TANENBAUM: Well, hopefully not. It's really the responsibility of the prosecution, not the defense. Defense has its task to do, and that is to challenge the evidence that the government is offering. It has to do everything about who the prosecutor is and how that prosecutor goes about doing his or her business, in these cases.

And that is to say, in this case, you start off with that question that we chattered about a moment ago, but for her mental disease, would she have committed these acts? Is there any history of violence in her background? What kind of motive did she have other than mental disease? And even if she had this mental disease, can we say to a moral certainty that, in fact, she did not know what she was doing was wrong? That is to say, or on the other hand, that she knew exactly what she was doing and it was violating the law, given her confused state of mind. Now, how do you go about answering that question?

You don't help the situation by hiring, by paying testimony for a hired gun. What you would like to do in this kind of a case, it seems to me, which is very different from the run of the mill cases where the defendant invokes insanity and has committed a vicious, heinous act and/or acts, what you would like to do is get a panel of the best forensic people in the country and have a sit-down and have a discussion on how this case is best answered with respect to what's going to happen.

BROWN: It will be interesting to see if, in fact, this case leads to any conversation like that. Mr. Tanenbaum, thanks. Nice to meet you. Suzy, good to talk to you again. Thank you both for joining us tonight.

As we move on tonight on NEWSNIGHT, we will go the Middle East, grimmer bloodier by the day. This is NEWSNIGHT on a Tuesday.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It would be hard to overstate just how bad things are in the Middle East tonight. But consider a few numbers. In just the last two days, 33 more Palestinians and seven more Israelis are killed. Israeli TV is reporting 20,000 Israeli troops are now engaged in the operation, the largest operation since the invasion of Lebanon.

On one hand the Israeli government says it's ready to negotiate a cease-fire. On the other hand it is striking back even harder than it ever has before. And then on the other side, the Palestinians say they want violence in their cities and towns to stop, but on the other hand they seem unwilling to stop their killing in Israeli towns and villages. This is the Middle East and it is bloody again tonight. We will start with Ben Wedeman in Ramallah -- Ben.

WEDEMAN: Yes Aaron, those military operations have been focused essentially in two areas. One is the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip. That is the largest refugee camp in that area. In Jabaliya, approximately 17 Palestinians were killed during an early morning incursion there. Israelis looking for factories they say, or workshops that were involved in the manufacture of Kasam rockets.

Those are the rockets that have been used in some cases with lethal results upon adjacent settlements with Israel. Here in Ramallah, the operation began just around midnight, that's well over 24 hours ago, when dozens of Israeli armored personnel carriers and tanks entered the city.

They have taken over most of the city in fact with the exception of a small area around the center. They focused their activities however around one refugee camp where about 8,000 people live. They are trying to dismantle, in their words, the terrorist infrastructure. And the refugee camps over the last week, two weeks have really taken the brunt of that focus.

Here in Ramallah, about five people have been killed but those statistics are somewhat unreliable at this point because the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has suspended its activities following an incident in which Israeli forces fired upon one of their ambulances which had, none the less received clearance from the Israeli forces.

Now, another incident took place in northern Israel in which gunmen attacked Israeli motorists, killing 6 of them, two of the assailants were killed as well. That attack was claimed by the Al Aqsa Martyrs brigade. That is a unit that has been tied with Yasser Arafat's fatah movement.

Now despite the intensity of the Israeli attacks, two members of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's cabinet have in fact withdrawn from the government saying that Sharon's military offensive against the Palestinians is not strong enough -- Aaron.

BROWN: All right, let's take a second here at least and talk about your situation there. You're sitting there with a flashlight on your face. Is Ramallah sealed off? Are you unable to move around at this point?

WEDEMAN: Basically since we arrived here yesterday, at about 1:00 in the afternoon local time we have not been able to leave this building. There are Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers combing the area. There has been some intense fire fights in this immediate area. We've been hearing explosions as well.

Really very difficult to move around. We do have an armored car but even that isn't a guarantee against some of the heavier firepower the Israelis have. In fact when we were driving up to this building just yesterday, we ran into or rather we drove right up in front of a tank which leveled its barrel at us.

Fortunately our armored car has a loud speaker and I told them in Hebrew and English that we are the press, please don't shoot. Fortunately they did not. But it is very dangerous. Now we are as you can see, I am illuminated by a flashlight -- may look like the "Blair Witch Project" but this is basically the only way we can illuminate ourselves because we don't want to create a situation where we make a very good target for some of the gunmen in this area or the soldiers as well, so we have to be very careful -- Aaron.

BROWN: Please do. Ben Wedeman in Ramallah. Thank you very much.

We are joined by Pulitzer Prize winning author, former Jerusalem bureau chief from the "New York Times" David Shipler. He joins us from Washington. David, nice to see you.

DAVID SHIPLER, MIDEAST ANALYST: Nice to see you.

BROWN: I don't know what's worse, the dying going on or the scars that are being created on both sides. The anger and distrust which seems worse now than ever before.

SHIPLER: That's a good point, Aaron, because we know how many are dying but we don't see the full extent of the wounds that are done inside minds. And the expectations were very high. You know it's especially bad now because it got so good several years ago, when the two sides seemed closer to agreement and there was a great deal of interaction, health positive interaction between the Israelis and Palestinians.

There were teenagers going to camp with each other, there were business people doing business with each other. Israeli were going to Ramallah, which is now, as we just saw, in a war situation, for its night life, its cafes, Israelis going to shop on the West Bank in markets and so forth, and the promise was really alive that this could produce something tangible in terms of peaceful coexistence. And when promises are injured it's very hard to heal them.

BROWN: And this is what the president's envoy is walking into, General Zinni, when he gets to the region, the two sides at this moment seem much more willing to go to war than to peace.

SHIPLER: Well the people who are running the show are willing to go to war. I think it's important not to overlook the fact that there's a great and powerful yearning on both sides still to find a peaceful resolution to this.

BROWN: But David, am I being too negative here to say that at least on the Israeli side, the Israeli left if you will, the peace movement on the Israeli side doesn't have much of a voice these days if it wants to speak at all, and I'm not clear that it does.

SHIPLER: That's true. I think what happened when the intifada, the uprising broke out in September of 2000 the left was stunned because their whole concept had been that if land were given up, that is if the Israelis got out of the West Bank and Gaza, which was proposed by the former prime minister, Ehud Barak, the Palestinians would them give Israel what it needed which was security and a sense of belonging and a legitimacy to be in that part of the world.

When the violence broke out the left was speechless and the rug was really pulled out from under them.

BROWN: The Saudi plan, anything to you, anything more than words on a page?

SHIPLER: Well it's important in a context. I mean there's nothing brand new in the idea if Israeli withdraws it should be recognized. I mean that is a concept that has been around for 30 years or more, but the fact that this comes now from the Saudis in the context of this violence means something, because sometimes often in the Middle East spasms of violence produce diplomatic initiatives that have some result.

I don't think we can predict that this is the end of the road or this is going to go on forever. Sometimes people begin to wake up when they see this amount of killing.

BROWN: It has happened before. One final question perhaps 30 seconds or so here -- is Mr. Arafat even relevant at this point, and if he is, is he relevant because he's the only option the Israelis have to deal with?

SHIPLER: He is the only option. One can criticize him and he deserves a good deal of criticism just as Sharon does. Both sides have exaggerated the usefulness of military power in getting what they want.

Each side needs to understand that the only way it can win is to give the other what it needs. I don't think Arafat understands that but he's the only Palestinian leader with whom the Israelis can deal right now and negotiate. So there is no choice.

BROWN: David, it is nice to talk to you. Thank you. I hope you will come back and talk to us some more.

SHIPLER: Thanks, Aaron.

BROWN: David Shipler in Washington. Tonight when we come back on NEWSNIGHT, the war in Afghanistan and a brief message to the world from the detainees at Guantanamo. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: War in Afghanistan now and what a major from the Army's 10th Mountain Division had to say about it after eight days of combat in the rugged hills of eastern Afghanistan. "If I were an al Qaeda guy," he said, "I wouldn't go out for pizza. This battle is not over."

Not over, but different today. And perhaps more dangerous tomorrow. As troops begin searching cave by cave for the enemy.

From the Pentagon tonight, CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A smart bomb from a U.S. Air Force F-16 hits a cave entrance, collapsing it with suspected enemy forces inside. It's just one of more than 2500 bombs the U.S. has dropped since Operation Anaconda began 10 days ago. U.S. commanders originally expected to route the al Qaeda and Taliban in two or three days, but facing stiffer resistance and greater numbers, U.S. troops are just now reaching the mopping up stage.

JOHN ROSA, BRIG. GEN., DEPUTY OPERATING DIRECTOR JOINT STAFF: The last 72 hours, it's been more sporadic, focused on smaller pockets of Taliban and al Qaeda.

MCINTYRE: The focus is now unclearing a mountain ridge dubbed the whaleback for the way it rises from the Shah-e-Kot Valley floor like the back of a whale and inspecting more than 40 heavily fortified caves, where al Qaeda forces were dug in for a fight to the death.

ROSA: We have started, but are nowhere near completing entering the large majority of those caves. You can imagine with the booby traps, with land mines, with unexpended ordnance, we've got to go very slow, very calculating, very carefully.

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon says this particular operation may be winding down, but there will be more.

VICTORIA CLARKE, PENTAGON SPOKESWOMAN: There's still a lot of work to be done in Afghanistan. And there are still pockets of resistance that we will have to root out.

MCINTYRE: The U.S. is taking few prisoners. Only 17 have been taken alive and one died of illness shortly after capture. And Pentagon officials say it will be difficult for more than a handful of al Qaeda to escape with U.S. and Afghan troops on the high ground, watching all routes out.

Orders could come this week to dispatch U.S. troops to both Yemen and Georgia. They will be limited to training and equipping Georgia troops. But in Yemen, Pentagon sources say, U.S. troops may accompany Yemeni forces on anti-terrorist raids.

(on camera): After first saying it was unaware of any women or children killed in Operation Anaconda, the Pentagon now says some were among 14 people killed in an airstrike last week. Officials say a U.S. fighter jet attacked a vehicle fleeing a known al Qaeda stronghold and insists it was a legitimate target. One wounded survivor, a child, was evacuated to a U.S. military hospital and is said to be in stabile condition.

Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ever since the detainees began arriving at Camp X-ray, reporters have been kept at a distance. No face to face visits, no interviews with them. But today, by happenstance, we heard from one of the prisoners. A Canadian radio reporter was touring the camp in a van, when it passed by an area reserved for the hard cases at the prison. And a prisoner inside shouted out in English and the reporter's microphone picked it up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've been on a hunger strike for 14 days and nobody cares. We need the world to know about us. We are innocent here in this place. We got no legal rights. Nothing. So can somebody know about us? Can you tell the world about us?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: From the detainees, or at least one of them. 13 prisoners remain on a hunger strike. Three are now being fed intravenously. And a note from the Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge today. He set out to give what he called a national framework and common vocabulary for threats of terror, so local governments and businesses can respond more effectively.

This works out to a kind of color coding for terror. A low threat called code green. Guarded would be a code blue. Elevated, and that's where we are today, an elevated threat is yellow. High is orange. And look out if it gets to red. No word yet on just why -- what kind of threat will trigger each of these codes or even who will activate the system, but the system is out there. And you can expect to hear a lot about it each and every day.

In a moment, a look at the agency in charge of keeping dangerous people out of the country, an agency just now sent a letter saying two of the 9/11 hijackers can have their visas renewed. This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There's a kind of Washington story we used to get a lot of my mileage out of, the dumb bureaucracy story. It's funny, after all, when I the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing. Funny, for example, when Social Security checks go out to someone's oh, cocker spaniel. It's less funny now when a letter arrives at a flight school saying that student visas have been granted to a pair of students who left the school a month ago. It turned out to be September 11 hijackers.

Once again, CNN's Mark Potter.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

POTTER (voice-over): It was at Huffman Aviation International, a flight operations and training center in Venice, Florida, where Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehi received flight lessons. They entered the United States on tourist visas and trained at Huffman on this plane from July 2000 until early January, 2001.

Nine months later, they each flew a jet into the towers of the World Trade Center. Huffman's owner, Rudy Deckers, spent months afterward answering questions from investigators and reporters, although recently things had begun to slow down.

(on camera): But early this week, on the sixth month anniversary of the September attacks, Rudy Deckers got a big surprise. In the mail he received two envelopes from an INSs processing center. Inside were documents showing that the INS had granted student visas to Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehi. They had been granted permission by the U.S. government to take flight lessons.

(voice-over): The letters from the Immigration and Naturalization Service showed the student visa requests were made at the end of August, 2000, but weren't approved until almost a year later, last July and August, long after both men had completed their flight training and before the September attacks. The letters arrived six months after their deaths.

RUDI DEKKERS, PRESIDENT, HUFFMAN AVIATION: That's why we don't understand why this came in today and why is this not done a year ago.

POTTER: A spokesman for the INS blamed the slip up on a backlog of cases and paperwork, involving millions of applications a year. He said, "It's certainly embarrassing that the letter showed up at this late date. But it does serve to illustrate what we have been saying since 1995 -- that the current system for collecting information and tracking foreign students is antiquated, outdated, inaccurate and untimely."

A former INS district director says the letter should never have been sent.

TOM FISCHER, FMR. INS DISTRICT DIRECTOR: I see this as characteristic of an agency in free fall, that really doesn't have a control over the databases.

POTTER: The INS spokesman says a new computer system for tracking and monitoring international students has been tested and will be available to schools, including flight schools this fall.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(on camera): Now as to how Atta and al-Shehi could have taken flight lessons before they received their student visas, there is a provision in U.S. law that says someone who is here on a tourist visa can take courses, up to 18 hours a week including flight lessons without scrutiny from the U.S. government. That's what Atta and al- Shehi did. It's legal. And that provision, Aaron, is still on the books.

BROWN: Well, maybe I missed this one while I was shaking my head, but explain again, because I read it. I'm not sure I understand what the INS is saying here. At some point fairly recently, somehow these pages got stuck in an envelope and sent down to Florida. Now did anybody look at them?

POTTER: Apparently not. You'd think those names, Atta, Al- Shehi, which were in the news.

BROWN: Yes.

POTTER: Probably more than anybody's, would stand out. It didn't happen. Now the INS says that this paperwork simply got lost in the system, that as the spokesman said, backlogged. They deal with almost eight million visa and other applications a year with limited personnel and an antiquated computer system, which they say they're trying to fix. It just got lost and got kicked out in the end. That letter was mailed on March 5 and it arrived on March 11, the sixth month anniversary of the event.

BROWN: Well, I guess if they want to make the argument they need a better system, this does it about as well as anything, Mark. Thank you very much.

Yes, that was editorial. Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, Welch versus Welch, high profile divorce and more questions about what a wife deserves and how to protect yourself. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: This story has been hovering around the edges of the NEWSNIGHT offices for a while, a bit too salacious for us to deal with until today. It's about Jack Welch, the former head of G.E., easily worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It's also about Jane Welch, his wife for more than decade, who's now filed for divorce after it became known that her husband had an affair. Obviously, there's an enormous amount of money involved here. And while we do get that this is a bit tabloidy, there are also some pretty interesting and important issues to look at, too.

This isn't the first time G.E. has been the backdrop for a high profile divorce. Lorna Wendt went after an equal split when she divorced former G.E. executive, Gary Wendt. You need to be taking notes on this, folks.

She didn't quite get that, but she raised a lot of interests in the question of whether wives are treated as equal partners in marriage. And she's an advocate now.

And she joins us. And it's nice to see you. Thank you for coming in. Actually in the moments before, we were talking a little bit about this. Is it uncomfortable to find yourself, it must be, in a situation where other people, people like me, people in the street, people in radio are talking about your life, your money, your marriage, all of that?

LORNA WENDT, FOUNDER, INSTITUTE FOR EQUALITY AND MARRIAGE: Yes, it is uncomfortable. But in my own case, the principle that I was a partner in our marriage of a long-term marriage and the fact that my ex-husband had offered me such a small amount was actually an affront to me and what I brought to our marriage.

And so, I was fighting for what I believed that I had brought to the marriage. So when I talked about myself in that case, it wasn't about the nitty gritty of a marriage. Every divorce is sad.

BROWN: Right.

WENDT: No matter what the length of the marriage, but what resonated with the people on me was that it was someone who stood up for themselves and especially resonated in the corporate world, because I knew about the stock options and all of these things that the money is really high money involved.

BROWN: But it's never like just what's in your savings account. It's a lot of other things. I heard you earlier talking today about the importance of prenuptial agreements. And my first reaction to that, was that -- I always thought that prenups were sought by the partner with the money, which is more often than not still the man, as a way to protect his assets from an equal split.

WENDT: Well, that's probably what prenuptials -- and many, many years ago, it was often the family that had the money, that was protecting a marriage. It really just means before marriage. And what I and the Institute for Equality in Marriage advocate, now I did not have a prenuptial.

BROWN: Right.

WENDT: That was not in...

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Yes.

WENDT: ...the lexicon of how I grew up.

BROWN: Right.

WENDT: But I would advise everyone today, whether they have money or not, to enter into a prenuptial. And by that, I mean, basically, the conversation that you are going to have with your spouse to be. Am I an equal partner in this marriage that we're about to enter? How are we going to raise the children? It's really a vehicle for communication.

BROWN: But if you're the partner who is at home, the partner who doesn't have the paying job, and the marriage goes south, why not take your chances in court if you can get 50/50, what the heck. If you get 60-40, I mean why bargain beforehand?

WENDT: Well, I tell you, most courts -- first of all, most marriages don't end in divorce go to court.

BROWN: Right. WENDT: It's usually the ones that have got some kind of money or something involved. To me, I think it's a way to discuss, first of all, and if there's a red light that goes on before you ever enter into a relationship. Now right now, you and I are talking about first time marriages, because there's a difference in second and third marriages.

It would seem, and what I advocate is let's discuss this open. And you know, you wear a seat belt in hopes that you're into the going to have a car crash.

BROWN: Yes.

WENDT: Wouldn't it be better to discuss these things? And to me, it would just be the absolute trust that I'm putting into you, as my potential partner and to turn it around that way, as I believe. And I want to work for this marriage, but if it doesn't work out, let's now bust decide, instead of letting a judge...

BROWN: Sure.

WENDT: ...who we don't know and doesn't know us decide.

BROWN: Yes. I heard or at least read a statement from the Welchs saying they hope they could work this out amicably. So do we.

WENDT: Yes.

BROWN: Thanks for coming in.

WENDT: Thank you.

BROWN: Nice to meet you. Thank you very much. When with we come back, the spy museum. This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: I have to read this pretty quick. In Washington, there's a museum dedicated to deception, to assassination, to snooping and disinformation. And you don't even need a secret handshake to get in the spy museum, reported for us by CNN's David Ensor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Most people, when they think of spies, think of the Hollywood version. James Bond maybe and that Astin Martin. A car like that will be on show, but the real stars at the new spy museum under construction in Washington will be the real spies. Why Washington? Thanks to Alridge Ames and Robert Hanssen, this city has become the undisputed world capitol of espionage.

PETER EARNEST, DIRECTOR, SPY MUSEUM: I would say that as you and I stand here talking at 9th and F, there's espionage going on around us. Somebody is developing somebody for a recruitment. Someone's putting down a dead drop, as we speak. BUGS BUNNY: I just learned a secret it's a honey it's a pip, but the enemy is listening, so I'll never let it slip.

ENSOR: With wartime cartoons, interactive exhibits, and artifacts, the museum will shine new slide into a shadowy world. Historian Keith Melton collected many of the most interesting items, like this shoe, designed by Czech intelligence to bug American diplomats.

KEITH MELTON: And essentially the person that was wearing them became a walking radio station.

ENSOR: Here's another charming item, created by Stalin's secret police. Looks like lipstick, but it's loaded.

MELTON: At close range next to the person behind the head, it would be devastatingly accurate and would cause a lethal wound if it was correctly pointed at the head. And it's a type of example that the KGB used.

ENSOR: Contrary to the Hollywood version, the best real spies aren't interested in killing. They are interested in stealing secrets without getting caught. Now the museum has one of the German enigma machines. The elaborate secret code message machines they relied on, never guessing allies had broken their code.

MELTON: You'd literally hold it like this.

ENSOR: And it has a collection of spy cameras from small to the very small.

MELSON: And the idea is that what I'm wearing, if I can take a picture of you, and you have absolutely no idea that it's been taken.

ENSOR: The spy museum turned to this legendary couple, CIA veterans Tony and Jonah Mendez, now retired, for advice on how spies use disguises. In 1980, during the Iran hostage crisis, Tony spirited six American diplomats out of Tehran using false identities.

TONY MENDEZ, AUTHOR, "THE MASTER OF DISGUISE, MY SECRET LIFE IN THE CIA": I've turned a lot of people into older people, and turned a few into younger people, and turned a few into different Genders and different races you know.

ENSOR: Whatever it takes?

MENDEZ: Whatever it takes.

ENSOR: And as the spy museum will show, Mendez still has a few tricks up his sleeve.

MENDEZ: This is what we call a dental facade and this pops in over your regular teeth.

ENSOR (on camera): The art of physical, visual disguises has always been part of the world of espionage. And it still is. During the Cold War, the CIA used disguises to spirit its agents out of danger in Eastern Europe. And in the post-September 11h world, you can rest assured the same techniques will be use ended in the war on terrorism. Things are not always as they seem.

David Ensor, CNN, Knoxville, Maryland.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Just quickly before we go, in the time we've been on the air, the bodies of five more firefighters have been found at ground zero in the southern part of the pit area there. 343 New York firemen died that day.

We'll see you tomorrow. Good night.

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