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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Fire at Birthplace of Jesus; Million People in Paris Really Against Presidential Candidate Le Pen

Aired May 01, 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: And good evening again everyone. A dramatic and important day in the Middle East and we plan to spend a lot of time on it tonight, so we don't feel too bad that we're going to take a moment or so on a smaller story at the top about two little girls lost.

Writer Linda Keenan, who often sees the things the rest of us miss, had these two lost children on her mind tonight. One's been known about for about a year, failed by the world, adopted in spirit by the good people of Kansas City. They named her Precious Doe, a girl thought to be about five years old, found in a park, murdered brutally. No one claimed her.

And now in Florida, the other little girl lost, five-year-old Rilya Wilson. Her grandmother thought the state had her. The state thought her grandmother had her. It took more than a year, a year for anyone to figure out that neither had her.

What ties the stories together was the thought that these two girls are one in the same, separate tragedies turned into one. Early fingerprint tests out today suggest that, in fact, they are too different girls, but investigators still want DNA from Rilya's mother to prove it, a mother by the way in name only, stripped of her rights as a parent because of drugs when her daughter was just an infant.

As it stands now, these are two horrible mysteries and it seems one lesson for the rest of us. You can look for it in the grave stone in Kansas City put up for Precious Doe. "Found April 28, 2001. Please keep her memory alive," it reads.

If only we can find kids like this before the system swallows them up, before they turn up in a park, before their smiling faces stare out at us from a newspaper. Only then will we have more than memories to keep alive.

On to the whip and the latest from the Middle East, the West Bank, Matthew Chance is in Ramallah. It has been a busy and important day there. Matthew the headline please.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, a day of dramatic developments here in Ramallah, an end to the siege around a presidential compound here, the transfer of six wanted Palestinians into international custody, celebrations here as the Israeli tanks pull out. And, last but not least, an exclusive interview with the Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat.

BROWN: Matthew, a full day for you and we'll get back to you in just a moment. To Bethlehem next, a frightening scene there today, Walt Rodgers is following that part of the story. Walter, a headline from you please.

WALTER RODGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, a near tragedy of what could have been monumental proportions, a fire in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, traditional site of Jesus' birth. Israelis and Palestinians both blame each other for the fire.

BROWN: Walter, thank you. To the White House next, our Senior White House Correspondent John King joining us. John, busy day there a headline from you tonight.

JOHN KING, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, today's events in the Middle East reinforcing the view of this White House, and especially this President, that if there is to be progress in the Middle East, it is likely to come slowly and be interspersed with setbacks. The White House sending signals to the Saudis and other who want what one aide calls a quantum leap to peace talks, but that's probably way too optimistic.

BROWN: John, thank you, and next to Christiane Amanpour. Christiane is in Paris, a May Day to remember there, Christiane a headline from you please.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, one of the largest turnouts in any May Day here. More than a million people took to the streets, not only in Paris but all around this country to say no to bigotry, hatred and xenophobia. Five days ahead of the next round, the final round of the presidential elections, everybody here is hoping that Paris, France will return to normal -- Aaron.

BROWN: Christiane, thank you, and we're back to all of you shortly. Some interesting people for us to talk to tonight, particularly on events in the Middle East, Israel's Consul General here in New York Alon Pinkas joins us, as does the Palestinian representative in Washington, Hasan Abdel Rahman.

Also the editor of the "New Yorker" magazine, David Remnick, who is just back from the region on what's next and what these last two months or so have meant in the region.

We’ll have the latest on the Hollywood murder mystery involving Robert Blake, been in jail for nearly two weeks now. It looks like he’s going to stay there for a while longer. Charles Feldman in Los Angeles has that.

And a story that is literally universal, spectacular pictures of the heavens above, of galaxies long ago and far away, as seen by the new and improved Hubble Telescope. Yes, you saw some of these last night. We want to look at them again and so we shall, all of that in the hour ahead on this Wednesday night.

You’ve heard the headlines already, so you know there is no neat and easy way to summarize what happened in the Middle East today. In Bethlehem, things got worse, much worse. CNN's Senior International Correspondent Walter Rodgers will join us again with more on that.

But there was progress. A significant day in the West bank too. That took place in Ramallah, so once again we go back to CNN’s Matthew Chance. Matthew.

CHANCE: Aaron, the day started here, as you say, with a positive development, a resolution and agreement to end the siege of Yasser Arafat’s presidential compound. Both Israeli and Palestinian officials agreed with U.S. and British security experts about a way to implement the U.S. initiative to bring that siege to an end and to transfer the six Palestinians wanted by Israel into international jurisdiction and to move them under international guard to a jail, Palestinian jail, in the West Bank town of Jericho. That happened.

Just hours afterwards, Israel began its military withdrawal from Ramallah, loosening its tight security cordon first of all around Yasser Arafat’s compound, in which the Palestinian Leader has been holed up for more than a month, before finally move out the tanks out of Ramallah, leaving behind a battered compound. You can see just part of it now. I’m bringing you this broadcast from inside the compound itself.

When the Israelis left, there were scenes of jubilation here in the compound. We got here within a few minutes after their departure, people chanting slogans in support of Yasser Arafat. We also managed to get the opportunity to go in to speak exclusively to the Palestinian Leader, found a man who is very emotional and very upset, of course, about what he’s been through. Here’s what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

YASSER ARAFAT, PALESTINIAN LEADER: Who can accept what is going on now in Tulkarem and in Jenin, and in Qalqilya and in Betjala (ph) and Betzahor (ph) and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and everywhere? Who can accept this?

CHANCE: There is going to be increased pressure on you though, President Arafat, to do more to fight militant groups and their activities. What further pressure can you bring to bear on those militant groups to stop their activities against the Israeli civilians?

ARAFAT: Not to forget what they are doing with these big crimes is increasing these activities, and I hope that you have heard President Mubarak who is right like me from this barbarian activities from the Israeli army.

CHANCE: What pressure are you prepared to bring to bear on militant groups to get them to stop their attacks on civilians? What pressure specifically?

ARAFAT: Not to forget, I can't forget myself the peace of the brave which I had signed with my partner Rabin, who had been killed by these fanatic groups who is in power now in Israel. But for this, I have to follow up and not to forget the peace of the brave, which I have signed with my partner Rabin. We, the Palestinians can not forget and we have to follow-up with all our power.

CHANCE: Have you given up hope in that peace process? Do you think it could possibly revived at this stage?

ARAFAT: I believe that if there is a will, there is a way.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHANCE: Well, still hope being expressed there by the Palestinian Leader that despite everything that has occurred over the terrible recent weeks and recent months, there are still possibilities, he believes, for the peace process to be restored. It’s difficult for us to see though how that can happen.

For the immediate future, Yasser Arafat told me he plans to visit Palestinian areas that had been damaged, to speak to Palestinian people who have been affected by the Israeli military action in the territories. Only then, after he’d seen everything there was to see, he said, would he consider going on an overseas trip to the Arab states and later to Europe. These are things, he says, he does want to do in time. Aaron.

BROWN: Well, first of all, Matthew, nice try on the, what are you going to do about terrorism question. You can only ask it twice and hope you’ll get an answer. Tell me more about what the compound looked like. It’s been a long haul for the people living in there. I gather it was a disaster.

CHANCE: That’s right. It’s an important point actually, Aaron. It wasn’t just Yasser Arafat holed up inside here for more than a month, nor just him and the six Palestinians wanted by Israel. Several hundred people have spent a lot of time here over the past month, together in very close quarters, with very little sanitation facilities.

Let me just give you an indication. I mean you can see the scene behind me. This is the result, of course, of the Israeli military action when they came in and surrounded this compound. They were met with resistance; their response, quite heavy destruction of some of the buildings, the walls, the razor wire that’s been laid down here.

Inside the building itself, appalling conditions of sanitation. Rubbish on the floor. Furniture has been smashed up. It’s in a terrible state. Let me just make one further point, though, which is of course there is this sense of relief being expressed by the people inside the compound.

There’s also relief being expressed by the Palestinians immediately outside it, because remember Israel had this tight security military cordon around the compound. The people, a few thousand or so people in that area were under a total curfew for the duration of the military incursion, and they suffered a great deal as well. They’re extremely relieved tonight that that military intervention has come to an end. Aaron. BROWN: Matthew, terrific work today, thank you very much. Matthew Chance in Ramallah, it’s been a long, difficult haul for him today as well.

Today’s developments in Ramallah have been expected. This has been building for several days now. What happened in Bethlehem late in the day came as a shock or out of the blue or out of the black as it was already dark when the shooting began. CNN’s Senior International Correspondent is in Bethlehem. To the extent anyone knows what actually happened there, we certainly hope Walter Rodgers does, so Walter good evening to you again.

RODGERS: Hello, Aaron. The first faint streets of dawn are breaking in the east over the little town of Bethlehem. Within an hour or so, we should have enough daylight to determine the extent of damage to the Church of the Nativity in Manger Square in Bethlehem, the traditional site of Jesus’ birth.

The fires began about midnight local time. There was a firefight between Palestinians, who are holed up inside the church and Israelis who have the church surrounded. Flares were dropped. There were explosions and there was considerable small arms fire, an exchange again between Israelis outside the church, Palestinians inside the church. A fire was started. Several fires were started, according to the Israeli version of events.

The Israelis claim that the Palestinians were under the misimpression that they were about to be stormed by the Israelis, and the Israelis claim that the Palestinians inside the Church of the Nativity deliberately set three fires.

Palestinians, however, claim it was Israeli fire, perhaps even an errant flare, which the Israelis set off, which may have ignited the fires around the Church of the Nativity here in Bethlehem.

Again, at this point, it’s impossible to determine the extent of the damage, both sides quarreling over who was responsible for the shooting. It will be some time before we can determine the full extent of the damage, simply because the church itself is under siege.

The Israelis do not let you close and the Palestinians inside clearly do not let you in close. We do not know the extent of the damage. We hope to learn that as daylight dawns here very shortly. Aaron.

BROWN: Just a couple quick things. How long did all of this take to play out? Were we talking hours, minutes, how long?

RODGERS: Probably an hour and a half, Aaron. The worst of the firefight erupted around midnight local time, and it was essentially small arms fire. But then there were some substantial explosions. Those could have been concussion grenades. They could have been flares going off.

We’re not exactly sure what it was, but this exchange of fire extended at least an hour and a half around the Church of the Nativity. The Israelis say they were not pouring fire into the church. The Palestinians say they were at this point.

Remember, there are at least, according to the Israelis, 20 to 30 Palestinians inside people the Israelis say are terrorists. They are wanted in Israel for perpetrating acts of violence against Israeli citizens. That’s why the Israelis have that church surrounded. Aaron.

BROWN: Walt, thank you, Walter Rodgers in Bethlehem for us tonight. Quickly on to Jenin, the ongoing controversy over what Israeli forces did or did not do there; and here again, we may never know the answer one way or another.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has decided to disband the fact-finding team he had put together to investigate Jenin. Last night we reported he was leaning in that direction. In a letter today to the Security Council, Kofi Annan said he would break up the team, which is in Switzerland, in Geneva, would break them up tomorrow.

The Ramallah pullback is in some ways a victory for two reluctant players in the Middle East, the Saudi Crown Prince and the President of the United States. Both have come to realize that sitting out the conflict is not an option, and both must feel some pride and relief that they have an accomplishment to point to.

Both have complicated domestic political concerns where the Mid East is concerned. The Crown Prince, of course, doesn’t have to worry about anything as inconvenient as an election, but he does have to worry about public opinion and how it plays out in the streets. The President of the United States has more obvious political concerns. Our Senior White House Correspondent John King joins us again, John, good to see you tonight.

KING: Good to see you, Aaron. As the President deals with complicated domestic politics, and that will begin tomorrow morning. The House of Representative will take up a resolution that praises Israel and condemns the Palestinians. The White House actually shares that view on most of the issues, but believes the resolution is an unnecessary distraction.

Prime Minister Sharon will be here next week. The President wants to pressure him to pull all Israeli troops out of the Palestinian territories, to lift economic restrictions on the Palestinians, to at least consider the possibility of broader peace negotiations.

The White House view is that Congress is being a nuisance. They say it’s not a problem, but definitely a nuisance and as they try to put out that problem here at home, if you will. Just sort through the confusion you just went through with Matthew Chance, with Walter Rodgers, with the situation in Jenin; Mr. Bush trying to decide what next in terms of Middle East diplomacy.

One senior official tonight saying today was a lesson. Every step forward brings one, maybe two steps backwards. The U.S. of course working closely with the Saudis, but as you noted, some different interests at play there. The Saudis have said what they want most from President Bush is to pressure the Israelis into comprehensive peace talks now. At the White House, they say they view that as a near impossibility. They point to today’s developments, angry words from Yasser Arafat, finger pointing over the situation in Bethlehem. They say the President’s hope is slow but steady progress, but they say as he pursues that path, he will have to deal with even allies like Saudi Arabia who want much more. They just don’t think that’s realistic right now because, as you just heard, Yasser Arafat says Sharon is a barbarian. Sharon still says Arafat is a terrorist.

BROWN: It just strikes me that today is a great example of why the administration’s first inclination was to try and sit this out for as long as it could because the time wasn’t right. The administration view, and you know far more about this than I, is that there is some danger in trying to force the parties if they’re not ready, and there’s no reason to look at the situation and think they’re ready.

KING: No reason at all. We have resolved some of the short-term issues, but there is still no cease-fire even, no agreement to have a political dialog, no agreement even for Sharon and Arafat to look each other in the eye and meet.

The administration’s view at the beginning, as you stated, was that before the President would get involved in a sustained way, the parties had to demonstrate a commitment not only to a peace process, but that they were ready to make the tough decisions. The administration had to put that aside because of the bloodshed, because of international pressure. They’re hoping now to get to that moment, but there’s no optimism here. They are looking first and foremost in the short-term simply to bring some calm.

BROWN: John, thank you. CNN White House Correspondent John King at the White House tonight. We’re joined from Washington now by the spokesman for the Palestinian Authority Hasan Abdel Rahman. It is always good to see you and it’s nice to see you again tonight.

HASAN ADBEL RAHMAN, PALESTINIAN REPRESENTATIVE: Thank you.

BROWN: On balance, I guess this is a good day with a bad glitch, right?

RAHMAN: Yes, you can say that, but I believe that that is a positive step if we want to move forward, and I believe there is the opportunity to do so. There has to be a parallel process. Security has to go hand-in-hand with political, but to try to address the security issues without addressing the political issues, I don’t think it is going to work. The Palestinians need to see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that can be achieved only through a political process.

BROWN: Mr. Rahman, I thought we were in a sense beyond that point. I thought that certainly the administration’s view is that we can’t expect to split this into two anyway, that the two, the political settlement, the cease-fire, what you call security, has to be dealt with at the same time. Is that not your view?

RAHMAN: No, what I’m saying that they have to go parallel, hand- in-hand.

BROWN: Right.

RAHMAN: Yes.

BROWN: But isn’t that now generally the agreement by the parties that sort of everybody’s agreed that’s probably what’s got to happen?

RAHMAN: At least from our side, that’s what I’m saying that we hope that this is the agreement, but we do not see a response from the Israeli side on this. Of course, there’s a conviction in Washington and in every other capitol of the world. We have to wait and see if Mr. Sharon will be brought in to this format.

BROWN: Let me – this is I suppose my most discouraging question of the night and I’ll ask Mr. Pinkas the same question when we get to him in a few moments.

RAHMAN: Thank you.

BROWN: But honestly you look at both sides, your side, the Israeli side. So much damage has been done on both sides. There is so much bad feeling on the Palestinian side, so much on the Israeli side. Is it even realistic to think in the near term about a peace process?

RAHMAN: I believe that we have to, because the alternative is so horrible. The status quo is untenable. We can not continue to live under Israeli occupation, and Israeli occupation generates violence from the Palestinians. So we have to come to an end of this occupation. Only through a political process, we can achieve that, so both parties need really to move in that direction. Any delay will create more tension and will create more violence.

BROWN: Mr. Rahman, as always, it is good to talk to you. We look forward to our next conversation too.

RAHMAN: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you, sir. We’ll continue in a moment with the Israeli perspective on the day’s events. Coming up later of NEWSNIGHT the search for one wise man in the Middle East; that and more as we continue from New York on a Wednesday.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: As with Mr. Rahman earlier, we’re pleased to welcome back to the program Alon Pinkas who is the Israeli Consul General here in New York, and it being New York, it means he’s on TV nearly as much as he’s in his office. We’re always delighted to see him and we are tonight. Nice to see you, sir.

ALON PINKAS, ISRAELI CONSUL GENERAL: Good evening, thank you.

BROWN: I think I’m in a sort of practical mood, so let me try and work some practical things here. Without getting into whether it was necessary or not necessary, the good and the bad of this, the reasons for it, would you agree that the last six, eight weeks or so has made Yasser Arafat more popular among his own people and therefore more difficult for the Israeli government than he would have been otherwise?

PINKAS: Yes, but that in itself is not necessarily relevant in terms of the political process that we hope will resume in the future, and by that I mean we never questioned his authority or his legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinians. After all, this is a man who was never up for reelections, who was never reelected. He is the product of a terror organization, which turned into a political national liberation movement.

The fact that he’s a hero in the eyes of the Palestinians doesn’t make him a credible, a trustworthy or a viable interlocketer with which we can make a deal.

BROWN: But here’s where I think it’s relevant and you know me well enough. I’m not picking a fight here. The fact of the matter is, if you’re going to do business, you’re going to have to do business with him.

You may walk away from this question, I understand that, or at least you’ve put yourselves in a position for whatever reasons where it is less likely anyone else is going to emerge. It is not likely that a moderate now is going to emerge in the Palestinian leadership.

PINKAS: We hope that the demographic, the geographic, the political reality would dictate common sense and good politics on behalf of a Palestinian leadership that does exist, in fact, under Arafat. Some of these people have been complicit with him in terror activity and some of these people have therefore lost their credentials as far as we’re concerned, as people who are real trustworthy partners.

You’re right. It’s a vexing dilemma. We’re not doubting that. I wish, and I think I told you this before, I wish there was a Thomas Jefferson out there to succeed Arafat. There isn’t.

BROWN: Yes.

PINKAS: And there’s always the chance that the Islamic extremists would take over and I don’t want that to happen. With Arafat, and I think this is the prevailing conventional wisdom, in Cairo, in Amman, in London, in Paris, in Moscow, definitely in Washington, and absolutely in Jerusalem, that this is not a man whose word is worth anything, who keeps his promises, who abides by, complies with agreements.

BROWN: Right. We’ve got a minute. I want to talk a little about Jenin. Whatever U.N. investigation there was to be, it seems pretty much a dead deal now. One result of that, but not the only result, is that it’s likely that Israel will continue to get hammered in some respects in the international community. That’s just the way life is? It’s one of those realities you have to accept?

PINKAS: Yes. BROWN: Yes.

PINKAS: You know, there’s a big picture out there. It is that there is a democracy that is fighting terrorism, and I’m sure it sounds familiar to your viewers. That’s what we are. That’s what we are doing. There was Jenin. The soldiers who were in Jenin, they were hotel managers and investment bankers and doctors and students and journalists, reservists. There was no massacre. There were no atrocities. There was nothing wrong done there. There was a battle, a fierce battle. No urban war is antiseptic. We will not accept a predisposed, politically inclined (UNINTELLIGIBLE) indictment tribunal that pretends to be a fact-finding commission. We said we have nothing to hide. We will therefore welcome the commission if its terms of reference. If its mandate, if its scope of inquiry are so far reaching as to indicate that it already knows what it is going to recommend, then we will not cooperate with it. This is a blood liable, plain and simple.

BROWN: Appreciate your time again. It’s nice to see you.

PINKAS: Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: One of these days we’ll talk on better days, you know. One of these days, but I don’t think either of us will be there though.

PINKAS: It’s going to have to be about something else, not Arafat.

BROWN: I got that part, thank you. It’s good to see you, sir.

Later on NEWSNIGHT, we’ll talk with the editor of “New Yorker” magazine, David Remnick. He’s just back from the Middle East, had a series of interesting conversations and we’ll take a look at that.

Up next, the French take to the streets to protest one of their own politicians, a fascinating day in Paris. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It has been said that one consolation to Jean-Marie Le Pen coming in second last week in the French presidential election is that so many French people, many of whom didn’t bother to go to the polls, seem appalled by his strong showing. In case you’re unfamiliar with Le Pen, he is a far right politician who once described the Holocaust as “a detail of history.”

Today more than a million people observed May Day by demonstrating against him just days before he faces President Jacques Chirac in a run-off election. In Paris for us tonight, Christiane Amanpour, Christiane good evening.

AMANPOUR: Aaron, good evening. It was as you say May Day, a day of traditional demonstrations and parades in France and around Europe. But of course today in France, it took on added significance because of the Le Pen factor. There were dueling demonstrations in Paris and around the rest of this country.

By far the largest turnout was the anti Le Pen demonstrations that took place. More than a million people, according to police, in Paris and around the country turned out to march against all the values that Le Pen stands for, the racism, the Arab bashing, the Jew bating, the xenophobia, all of this. They say they are trying to unite to deny him any win and even a respectable showing in the final round of presidential elections that gets underway on Saturday here in France.

In the meantime, Le Pen took several thousand people on his annual May Day demonstration and parade. He marched to the Statue of Jeanne d’Arc, Joan of Arc, here in Paris, where he laid a wreath. Joan of Arc, the 15th Century peasant girl who fought off British invasions back then is a symbol for the National Front of their resistance towards invasion of foreigners as they call it.

The police say that only about 10,000 people turned out for the Le Pen rally. Le Pen claims many, many more and observers indeed say there were perhaps as many as 50,000. Nonetheless, as we say, his rally dwarfed by the anti Le Pen rallies.

Now people here in France of all political persuasions are trying to unite despite their political views on the left and on the center right. They are trying to unite to deny the far and extreme right Le Pen from gaining any kind of foothold, trying to restore France’s honor and making sure that France returns to, as they say, normal after May the 5th. Aaron.

BROWN: Does anybody think he can win?

AMANPOUR: No. Basically nobody thinks he can win, but what they don’t really know is just how significant or insignificant a showing that he’s going to make. The polls before the first round on September 23rd singularly were unable to predict this showing that he made then.

So people now are very wary of saying what might be the result. The latest poll gave about 81 percent to the incumbent President Jacques Chirac, and around 18 or 19 to Le Pen. Le Pen although is claiming that he’s going to get much more. Aaron.

BROWN: Christiane, thanks, Christiane Amanpour in Paris tonight. Not bad duty that. Later on NEWSNIGHT, we’ll tell you what’s going on in the Robert Blake case. He’s back in court today. Up next though, the story of a little girl missing a year before anyone noticed. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Thank you, ma’am. Coming up in the next half hour of NEWSNIGHT, a little less than that, the story behind the amazing pictures from outer space, yes the Hubble. These pictures are so cool. In court with Robert Blake as he’s trying to get out of jail, and up next, a shocking story and it is that of a little girl supposedly in the care of the state missing for a year before anyone noticed, lovely. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We spent a bit of time at the top of the program talking about this next story, so I’ll keep this short and simple now. We told you about a little girl lost in Florida, and what it says about the child welfare system that seemed to allow her to fall through the cracks. Now we’ll go look and see how that may have happened and what’s next in trying to find this child. Here’s CNN’s Susan Candiotti.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Her mother says Rilya’s name stands for "remember I love you always."

GLORIA WILSON, MISSING GIRL’S MOTHER: I want her to always remember that I love her, always.

CANDIOTTI: The last time the State of Florida saw chubby-cheeked Rilya Wilson, it was more than a year ago. They thought the five-year- old was living with her grandmother in this house until last week, when welfare workers who were supposed to be checking on the girl once a month but weren’t discovered she was missing. The grandmother told authorities a social worker took the child away 15 months ago.

CHALES ALEXANDER, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN AND FAMILIES: Appeared to know about the case and indicated to her that the child needed psychological, neurological testing, would have to be taken for that evaluation and apparently could be gone for a certain amount of time.

CANDIOTTI: The grandmother, who declined to show her face on camera, told a Miami TV station she called the state several times but got nowhere. The state has no record of the calls, but police have confirmed at least one contact.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think that somebody has her. I think that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that she’s just fallen through the cracks in the system somewhere.

CANDIOTTI: Complicating matters, one of the little girl’s caseworkers was forced to resign last month. The state says she faked visitation logs in another case.

CANDIOTTI (on camera): Mr. Roslander (ph), you are in the unenviable position of trying to answer this question. What went wrong here? How could something like this happen?

ROSLANDER: I think the short answer is that people weren’t doing their job.

WILSON: How in the hell does a whole state department lose a five-year-old child.

CANDIOTTI: Meantime a possible connection to a year-old unsolved murder case in Kansas City. Police asking for DNA evidence from Rilya Wilson’s mother to compare with an unidentified decapitated girl known as Precious Doe found in Kansas City last year, a few months after Rilya’s disappearance. This composite of the dead youngster bears some similarities to Rilya, but so far the fingerprints do not match.

GEORGE ROBERTS, DEPUTY CHIEF, KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI: Prints do not compare to those of Precious Doe.

CANDIOTTI: Police in Florida say no one has been ruled out as a suspect in Rilya Wilson’s disappearance.

DETECTIVE PETE ANDREW, MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA: We got a missing child out there and it’s a scary thought.

CANDIOTTI: Scarier still, authorities admit, is how they could have lost track of a child in its care. Susan Candiotti, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: On we go. Two things came out of the Robert Blake bail hearing today. One was expected, the other not. Blake, the 68-year- old one-time TV star was denied bail, no surprise there. We’ll let Charles Feldman pick up that part of the story and throw in the surprise as well.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHARLES FELDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Robert Blake’s attorney arguing in favor of bail for the former “Beretta” star said Blake is not a flight risk and would agree to at-home electronic monitoring.

Then in a dramatic moment, the 68-year-old Blake interrupted his lawyer to address the judge. Blake said he is severely dyslexic and has suffered brain damage, making it extremely difficult for him to read evidence against him while sitting in a jail cell.

HARLAND BRAUN, BLAKE’S ATTORNEY: So when the prosecution delivers 35,000 pages of information to us, let’s assume he has to read ten percent of it, 3,500 pages. He reads at perhaps five pages an hour, something like that, so Mr. Blake was trying to explain to the judge that keeping him in a cage is more than just being in a cage. It prevents him from having someone read these documents to him.

FELDMAN: Prosecutors told the judge that Blake is charged with a capital crime, killing his wife Bonny Lee Bakley, and is not entitled to bail. The judge, as expected, declined bail for Blake but said he would revisit the issue at a preliminary hearing which could be months away.

FELDMAN (on camera): There was one surprise in Wednesday’s proceeding. Prosecutors revealed for the first time that Robert Blake may have planned to kill Bonny Lee Bakley as far back as 1999.

FELDMAN (voice over): Court documents claim Blake approached a private investigator, after learning Bakley was pregnant. He allegedly suggested they could force her to have an abortion or, “whack her.” Charles Feldman, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Later on NEWSNIGHT, the pictures from Hubble. Up next, "New Yorker" editor David Remnick on the Middle East, we’ll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: David Remnick is a wonderful and talented reporter and writer. He’s also the editor of the “New Yorker” magazine, and so he assigned himself a trip to the Middle East. He was there looking for something. He found a number of things and we talked about them earlier this afternoon.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Let me start with maybe what should be the end. You spent some time in the Middle East. Did you come back with a sense that there is hope there or that actually when you look at both sides, there’s a good deal of hopelessness today?

DAVID REMNICK, EDITOR, "NEW YORKER" MAGAZINE: Well, I think hopelessness is the dominant emotion everywhere, and I went with the idea of being like Diogenes with my lamp looking for one sensible man. And so, I wrote a piece about a man named Sari Nusaba (ph) who is the Palestinian Authority’s representative in Jerusalem, and by far the most liberal and peace-minded leader in the PA. Unfortunately, his power is absolutely nil.

BROWN: And it’s a really interesting piece in that way because there’s been so much talk from the Israeli side about somebody other than Arafat, and you come away with a sense that anyone other than Arafat is, in fact, worse than Arafat.

REMNICK: Well, they don’t have the street credibility at this point. The successors to Arafat –

BROWN: The moderates don’t have the street credibility?

REMNICK: No, of course not.

BROWN: Right. Sure.

REMNICK: And the people that have the possibility of succeeding Arafat at this point, if that were ever to come about, are an older generation, people who negotiated the Oslo Agreement, the so-called (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and so on. But they’re probably too old and then the younger generation are security chiefs and who are anything but peace- minded, especially in recent months. So the picture is fairly bleak in pure, tough Machiavellian power terms.

BROWN: On both sides of the line here, on the Israeli side of the line you find Oslo, the spirit of Oslo dead?

REMNICK: As a doornail, I’m afraid. BROWN: Yes.

REMNICK: Yes, but there’s a huge difference. Israel is a democracy and there is a back and forth between politicians who are in the Labor Party, more liberal from the Likud (ph) less so. But the person in that region who has the strongest vote in electing Israeli prime ministers is Yasser Arafat. Time after time he has elected the Israeli prime minister whether through violence or the withdrawal of violence.

BROWN: I forget who it is in the piece, but someone in the peace speaks of Israeli schizophrenia, where all of this is concerned. On the one hand, yes we want and on the other hand, we don’t really believe.

REMNICK: Schizophrenia is the word of the moment that everybody uses. There’s always a catch word at a historical moment. The schizophrenia is this. It has to do with public opinion. On the one hand, 75 percent or so of the population is for the military incursions staged by Ariel Sharon and his military. On the other hand, the majority of the Israeli public is ready for a deal for a Palestinian State with secure borders, West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem as its capitol in some form or another.

Ariel Sharon, on the other hand, is not ready for that. I think he sees the possibility of a Palestinian state, but it’s one that’s completely unacceptable to the Palestinians, those ones with non- continuous cantons within the West Bank, and certainly Sharon has shown no inclination to let Arafat back on the stage as a negotiating partner.

BROWN: You also write in the peace, it’s not a large part of the peace but it’s there, that there is perhaps a growing sense on the Palestinian side that look, we’ve been fighting for this land for hundreds of years, and we’ll just keep fighting for it until the Israelis are gone. Is there a strong sense on the Palestinian side that they actually can do what both the Israeli community believes and the American Jewish community often says, they just want to drive them into the sea?

REMNICK: Well, there are people without a doubt whose politics are devoted to the destruction of the State of Israel, Hamas for one, the group called Hamas.

The person you’re referring to, I went to Jenin, and outside of Jenin just in the village outside, I was talking to somebody who in earlier days would have been considered someone quite liberal. He’s a tour guide. He’s lived abroad a little bit. He gets around. He’s more – he has more money and is more culture or more educated than the average Palestinian perhaps.

But the recent military incursions have radicalized him in a sense, and he said look, “I am surrounded by people that I know who know that the Turks once ruled this region and the Arabs waited out the Turks and they left. The British Empire once ruled this region and the British Empire is where, and we will do the same with the State of Israel, which has existed now for just a half a century.” There is that mindset to be aware of.

BROWN: Just a half a minute or so. What do you think isn’t being said or heard in this story? It’s dominated us for a month. In some respects it’s been out there for both of our entire lifetimes. Is there something that Americans particularly aren’t hearing these days or don’t get these days?

REMNICK: What occurs to me always when I go to the Middle East is the way that both peoples more and more speak on a parallel track of narratives, of historical narratives that are – that never meet in any one place. These are people that live as close as Manhattan and Queens, or even closer within the city of Jerusalem, and yet their versions, their internalized versions of history are so far apart, so incongruous that it breaks your heart every time. That’s really what’s at the very core of this debate, this war or whatever you call it.

BROWN: It’s always nice to see you.

REMNICK: It’s good to be here.

BROWN: Hope you’ll come back.

REMNICK: Thank you.

BROWN: The piece is fascinating.

REMNICK: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: David Remnick of "New Yorker" magazine. We go to outer space after a break. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK, here’s a little truth. If we hadn’t done the program we did last night, a full program on race, we would have run this story then. By now, you’ve likely seen the Hubble pictures from space. You have been awed by them as we were. They were news yesterday, news as in new. Today, they’re just wondrous. There ought to be a little room in the program for wondrous.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

EDWARD WEILER, NASA SPACE SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION: Without the intervention of astronauts over four shuttle missions and 18 successful space walks, HST would not be the greatest success story in space science history. It would be 25,000 pounds of orbiting space junk.

BROWN (voice over): For time, the Hubble Space Telescope, HST to NASA, threatened to be just that. NEIL DE GRASSE TYSON, DIRECTOR, HAYDEN PLANETARIUM: When Hubble was first launched, of course we were all disappointed, not only we in the professional community, but I’m sure the public was disappointed. It was a big investment and the optics didn’t match up.

BROWN: But these newly-released photos, a series of four spectacular images from the deepest reaches of space offer concrete evidence that the time and the money spent to fix Hubble is paying off.

TYSON: These galaxies are more than 100 million light years away, so we see them not as they are but as they once were 100 million years ago, back when dinosaurs were roaming the earth. That’s when that light left the galaxy en route to earth.

BROWN: Since the problems with Hubble emerged over a decade ago, NASA has spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to fix it, and more still for the upgrades, every one of them handled by space- walking astronauts.

TYSON: The analogy of being able to give their engine an overhaul is precisely accurate in this case using the latest in digital detection technology. Also, the detectors are not only better, they’re bigger. It is so sensitive to light that you could be taking a snapshot of some object in a picture, and meanwhile in the background a thousand galaxies reveal themselves.

HOLLAND FORD, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY: This new window is the widest and clearest that Hubble has ever had. Looking through this window, we will search for the first generation of galaxies emerging from a twilight zone 13 billion years ago.

BROWN: All of which is fine, of course. The images are and no doubt will continue to be spectacular. But there is always that nagging question, what does it mean for the rest of us?

TYSON: I can’t tell you that it puts food on your plate. I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you that it gives you something different to think about when you go home. People have looked up for all time, across time and across culture, and asked where did it all come from? What does it all mean? Where are we all headed? And now we can use the methods and tools of science to answer those questions, and I see that as a privilege of our generation to be able to do that.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (on camera): Hubble and the pictures we’ve been looking at for the last 24 hours. That’s the report for tonight. I’m off for a couple of days of speech making. My friend and colleague Kate Snow sits in Thursday and Friday. We hope you’ll join us for that, and we’ll see you again next week. Goodnight from all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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