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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

FBI Comes Under Scrutiny Again; Pentagon Reviews Operation Anaconda

Aired May 24, 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, everyone.

This has been a tough week in the news business, and tonight isn't exactly fun either.

Among the things we're going to look at tonight -- and we've looked this way before -- is the case of Rilya Wilson, the 5-year-old lost by the child-welfare system -- and that is using the words "welfare" and "system" very loosely -- in the State of Florida.

This has been a week of talking about little and not-so-little girls lost, but Rilya stands apart from the others.

Unlike Chandra Levy, she did not have reasonably well-to-do parents to keep interest in her story alive.

Unlike Martha Moxley, she did not come from a tony town like Greenwich, Connecticut, where a grieving mother could hire lawyers and investigators to keep the search for her killer alive.

Rilya is different, too, from the four little girls who were murdered in Birmingham, Alabama, almost 40 years ago. They were not children of privilege, to be sure, but their deaths at the hands of the cowards of the Ku Klux Klan made them an important chapter in the civil-rights movement and kept the search for justice in their deaths alive as well.

Rilya had none of that. All she has is your outrage.

We don't know tonight if this child is alive. What we do know today is more about the four years of her life before the State of Florida lost her. Later in the program, we'll report what we know about that life, and it isn't pretty.

And this is the summary. Rilya Wilson in the end had no one who really cared, not the woman who claims to be her grandmother, not the state that was supposed to protect her, not the mother who never raised her but gave her the name Rilya. Remember I love you always. That's where the name comes from. Remember Rilya. We will tonight. For goodness sake, someone should.

On to the whip we go. And, Jeanne Meserve, a fascinating and troubling story about an FBI terror investigation, the one happening before the 11th of September.

Jeanne, your headline, please.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: FBI headquarters accused of impeding a key terrorism investigation and misrepresenting what went on. A situation so frustrating that field agents reportedly joked headquarters was an unwitting accomplice of Osama bin Laden.

Aaron.

BROWN: Jeanne, thank you.

To the Pentagon next. Assessing a deadly fight during Operation Anaconda, the deadliest of the war on the American side. Jamie McIntyre on the story tonight.

Jamie, headline from you.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, a Pentagon review has given us a little look at what this operation was really like, and you know how intense the fighting was in the scenes -- the opening scenes of "Saving Private Ryan." It was as a little bit like that for a team of Army Rangers. I'll tell you their story.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you.

And as we said, Rilya Wilson. Tonight, Susan Candiotti covering that from Miami.

Susan, your headline, please.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, as you indicated, we learn more about Rilya's life and Florida's far-from-perfect child- welfare system, thanks to a court that ordered her case file be made available to the public and even more revelations from e-mails that CNN obtained, thanks to Florida's public-records law.

Back to you, Aaron.

BROWN: Susan, thank you.

And back with all of you shortly.

Also coming up on the program tonight, we'll take a look at their news from Russia with President Bush signing the landmark nuclear arms treaty today.

We'll talk with a reporter for "The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel" about a priest-abuse scandal that's led to a major shakeup in the church in Milwaukee. There is a fair amount more here than we saw at first blush last night.

A very different kind of memorial day for the history that just happened a few months ago. We'll preview the HBO documentary on September 11th. Joining us to talk about it, former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik.

And we'll end it all tonight with a smile, we hope. A fantasy come true for our guy who really loves cars. He is our guy, Dwight Collins. And we sent him to Indy for the 500.

All of that and more as we begin this holiday Friday night.

It's been a tough holiday tradition, these unconfirmed, uncorroborated threat advisories, and there are three more in effect tonight: one concerning city buses and subways, one to be on the lookout for suicide attacks using small planes; and the other warning that scuba divers may be targeting cruise ships and pipelines and nuclear power plants.

Like all the rest we've seen, we don't know precisely where they have come from. We don't know precisely how detailed the warnings are. The government rarely says how it knows, what it knows.

It often has good reason not to, but, again, today, the process of threat assessment came in for more questioning as it applied to the days before September 11th and the so-called case of the 20th hijacker and the story of one woman who took her bosses -- took on her bosses at the FBI.

We, again, turn to CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

Jeanne, good evening.

MESERVE: Hi, Aaron.

She says that FBI headquarters rewrote Minnesota agents' request for a search warrant for a terrorism suspect, according to The Associated Press, editing out intelligence information before forwarding the warrants to a legal office which then rejected them as insufficient. She says things got so bad that agents joked that headquarters was working with Osama bin Laden rather than against him. Who is she?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE (voice-over): She is Coleen Rowley, a veteran FBI agent and lawyer in the Minneapolis field office, and she socks it to her bosses in a letter. According to "Time" magazine, Rowley writes that "the FBI has created a climate of fear which has chilled aggressive FBI law-enforcement actions' decisions." She is being hailed as a hero.

SEN. BOB GRAHAM (D-FL), INTELLIGENCE CHAIRMAN: Obviously, there was a high level of personal risk to her career to write a letter that is as explicit and as condemning of her leadership as was in that letter.

MESERVE: Graham was among a few members of Congress who got the letter, along with FBI Director Robert Mueller. According to congressional sources, it is a detailed and devastating 13-page critique of how FBI headquarters handled the investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui and talked about it afterwards.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE (D-SD), MAJORITY LEADER: We don't know what the consequences of ignoring that information was, but the fact that it was ignored...

MESERVE: Investigators now believe that Moussaoui may have been the intended 20th hijacker on September 11th.

After his arrest in August on immigration charges, FBI Minneapolis asked headquarters for permission to seek a warrant to search his computer. Headquarters said, no, there wasn't enough evidence to back up the request.

According to The Associated Press, Rowley writes that when, in a desperate 11th-hour measure to bypass the FBI headquarters roadblock, the Minneapolis office turned to the CIA for help, FBI headquarters personnel chastised the Minneapolis agents for making the direct notification without their approval.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: According to congressional sources, the letter also raked senior FBI officials over the coals for mischaracterizing the Minnesota investigation to prevent embarrassment to the agency.

The joint congressional committee investigating September 11th is already looking into the allegations and has spoken with Rowley and FBI Director Mueller, and Mueller has asked the Justice Department's inspector general to investigate.

Aaron.

MESERVE: And do we expect her to be brought to Washington to testify? Do we know that at this point?

MESERVE: We do believe that the committee probably will summon her to Washington once again to speak with them. Unclear, at this point, however, whether any of what she has to say will be in public session.

Aaron.

BROWN: Jeanne, thank you.

Jeanne Meserve in Washington.

Also in Washington for us tonight, Michael Weisskopf who's reporting the story for "Time" magazine. He's a senior political correspondent there. The latest issue of the magazine, by the way, is titled "While America Slept."

Michael, good evening to you.

MICHAEL WEISSKOPF, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Hi, Aaron. BROWN: One quick thing here. Has she pretty much inoculated herself against getting sacked by invoking or at least trying to invoke the whistle-blower statute?

WEISSKOPF: Yes. And she quite poignantly points out that she's the sole breadwinner in her family. She has four children. And she's been at this job for 21 years, and she has -- she made clear to Mueller that she was doing this at some personal sacrifice, although she points out this was not a personal kind of attack, and she asked for whistle-blower protection in the letter to Mueller.

BROWN: You've seen parts of this letter, I know, and there are a number of intriguing parts of it, but one of them that jumped out at me is this kind of overview sense that the bureau these days operates in this climate of fear, that you're all right as long as it works out well, but if it doesn't work out well, whatever it is, you're in big trouble. Talk a little bit about how she saw that playing into this.

WEISSKOPF: Well, she really portrays a classic story of bureaucratic inertia and frustration. This was one member of a professional bureau desperate, as she says, to find out more information about this man Moussaoui and so anxious to get into this computer of his that they were constantly banging on supervisors in Washington for permission to go up one more step to the U.S. Attorney's office for a search warrant.

And she tells a story about how consistently she is thwarted, even to the point when she produced French intelligence showing that Moussaoui was connected to terrorists -- Islamic terrorists overseas, and her supervisor said, "Well, this really is not terribly worthwhile because all we've got is this man's name, and there may be there may be more than one Zacarias Moussaoui in France."

And despite the fact that she had this extraordinary profile of him in the flight schools attempting to fly but not land airplanes and many other signs pointing to the direction of his own terrorist background.

BROWN: Based on what you've seen -- and I know you've seen parts but not all here -- does she make the argument that the attack could have been stopped or just might -- maybe have led investigators to others involved?

WEISSKOPF: She's a little contradictory in the part we've seen. She points out that there's no guarantee that even discovering this in advance and following through in advance would have prevented 9/11.

She does make the point, however, that it may well have resulted in the arrest of more people like Moussaoui who were in flight school. We come to this extraordinary letter, of course, with the background of the Phoenix memo, which identified questionable Islamic gentlemen as taking to flight school people with potentially terrorist backgrounds in the Middle East.

We now know that the CIA briefed the president and talked about Osama bin Laden's plans to attack somewhere in the United States. Certainly, there must have been some kind of cross point in Washington where all this information was coming in.

She complains mightily about the isolation factor that her information was not distributed to other FBI bureaus or to the CIA and that her bureau was not made -- was not able to get hold of the Phoenix information.

BROWN: You've got about 30 seconds here. You say certainly there must have been a cross point where all this information was coming together. I'm not so certain about that. It -- you kind of have a sense that these bits and pieces -- formidable bits and piece were sitting separately somewhere.

WEISSKOPF: That's true, but somehow they have to be reported to Washington, and there was a special desk looking into Osama bin Laden and others into radical Islamic groups, and so presumably at some point this had to be sent up to Washington.

Somewhere there should have been some type of sifting process and some kind of synthesis process to see connections. If so, she points out that it would have been possible possibly to limit the number of deaths, to limit the amount of destruction of September 11th.

BROWN: Michael, nice -- nice piece of reporting on this. Good to talk to you. Thank you.

Michael Weisskopf, "Time" magazine, who's been working the story also.

On we go. It's a bit strange and a whole lot sad that America's new war has been going on long enough for at least a portion of the official history to be written about it.

Today, there came an especially grim chapter. The Pentagon releasing its report on what happened during the battle in which American forces suffered their greatest losses since the operation in Somalia. It was Operation Anaconda, now a page in history less than three months after the fact.

Here again, CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): The Pentagon investigation concludes a tragic miscommunication sent this MH-47 special operations helicopter carrying 10 Army Rangers into a killing zone of al Qaeda fighters atop a mountain called Takur Ghar.

BRADLEY GRAHAM, "WASHINGTON POST" REPORTER: They were coming in. They were just about 20 feet or so off the ground when the right engine got hit by an RPG. Machine gunfire broke out from a number of different sides. Both pilots were hit. A gunner was shot dead. There were bullets flying through the fuselage. The helicopter hit the ground, knocked everybody flat.

MCINTYRE: Reporter Bradley Graham interviewed every survivor of the battle for his series in "The Washington Post." GRAHAM: One never made it out of the helicopter. Two were shot dead on the ramp. When they came at the ramp, they were caught in a crossfire between a gun -- an enemy gun position.

MCINTYRE: This Pentagon photo taken the day after the March 4th firefighter shows the helicopter came down nearly on top of two well- concealed al Qaeda bunkers, the precise coordinates it was supposed to have been warned to avoid. It was the most deadly of a series communication failures.

GEN. TOMMY FRANKS, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND: Combat is a dirty, nasty, deadly business, and it costs us lives. Takur Ghar -- that battle showed heroism. It showed fog, uncertainty. It showed friction, elements common to every war, I think, we've ever fought.

MCINTYRE: When the Rangers with the help of reinforcements and air strikes finally took the mountain, they were frustrated to learn that commanders would not send in helicopters to extract them until after dark, even though a wounded medic, Senior Airman Jason Cunningham, lay bleeding to death.

Having lost seven men already, a daylight evacuation was judged too risky, and Cunningham died two hours before the rescue choppers arrived.

GRAHAM: so the question of, well, could it have saved -- could an earlier evacuation have saved the life of Jason Cunningham -- they have agonized over that, and they say there really is no answer.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon's review recommends some changes in tactics but doesn't find fault with anyone in the chain of command. General Tommy Franks also refused to second guess his commanders, insisting they made the right decisions based on the information they had at the time.

Aaron.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you.

Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon on this Friday.

As we continue, we'll have a little bit later the latest on the priest-abuse scandal. The story coming out of Milwaukee.

And up next, the continuing puzzle of how the State of Florida lost a little girl and the sad life this child led.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: This is the story of a child who began life with everything stacked against her. Rilya Wilson was born to a mom who was just 18 and addicted to crack and homeless. She was taken away from that mother when she was just 5 weeks old, and it would seem unimaginable that her life could get much worse from there. It would seem so, but it did. And documents released today give you an idea of just how bad it was. Her older sister, living with severe diaper rash and bug bites, put out on the porch at night to sleep with the dog. Serious concerns. That's a quote about a home too filthy and unsafe for any child. Concerns that somehow were not serious enough to save this child.

Once again, here's CNN's Susan Candiotti.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): A day before notifying police Rilya Wilson was missing last month, Miami's child protection chief Charles Auslander knew the situation was bad. Very bad. "This one scares me," he writes to his bosses in Florida's capital.

In that e-mail and others obtained by CNN, some contents blacked out by authorities, Florida child-welfare officials raised questions about Rilya's caretaker who said she turned over the child to a social worker for tests 15 months earlier.

"I am quite concerned with a relative who allows a child to be taken for an evaluation," a supervisor writes, "and does not knock down our doors looking to see what we did with the child."

But caretaker Geralyn Graham has insisted she did everything she could.

GERALYN GRAHAM, RILYA'S CARETAKER: I went down there. Two times. But I didn't get any more results than I got on the phone.

CANDIOTTI: Newly released case files raise even more questions about those who were supposed to be watching over Rilya, including her caseworker. She's under investigation for submitting fake paperwork, including about a dozen expense reports, sources say, for visits that allegedly never took place. Officials say she and her supervisor were forced to resign in March.

The judge, not happy.

JUDGE CINDY LEDERMAN, FLORIDA CIRCUIT COURT: She misrepresented this child's well-being to this court.

CANDIOTTI: Last September, an attorney assigned to Rilya's case wrote, "Where are the children? Why haven't they been adopted?" At the time, according to Rilya's caretaker, the girl was long gone from her home.

The massive case file outlines the child's short, troubled life. Born to a mother who, files say, got hooked on crack at only 18. She's a recovering addict who lives in Cleveland. The man court files say is probably the father in jail.

MANVILLE CASH, POSSIBLY RILYA WILSON'S FATHER: We've got to find the child. The child is not dead. The child is somewhere. CANDIOTTI: That's what authorities hope. On Friday, four billboards went up across Florida trying to prompt new leads from travelers this holiday weekend.

(AUDIO GAP)

CANDIOTTI: ... of Rilya's case files. These are files that the State of Florida did not want you or the public to see, but a judge ruled otherwise, and now we're going to be sifting through these tonight. We hope inside this file we will find some of those reports allegedly filed by the caseworker that illustrate visits with the child, visits that apparently did not take place over the course of about 15 months.

Aaron.

BROWN: OK. We had just a little audio glitch, so we lost maybe the first 10 seconds of what you had to say. I suspect you were just explaining what you were holding, which is these files, correct?

CANDIOTTI: We just got another 700 pages that were released by the court tonight.

BROWN: All right. Let me ask you a quick one here because it is, in the end, the only question that really matters, I suppose. Is there -- have there been any leads in this case? Are police any closer to finding this child?

CANDIOTTI: Not according to the police. There were -- there was a published report earlier this week that they're looking at some of the medical records of little Rilya to see if, in fact, she had been seen by any doctors or had been taken to the doctor by some of her caretakers, and they might have something there, but publicly authorities are saying nothing.

BROWN: Susan, thank you.

Susan Candiotti in Miami tonight.

I shouldn't say this, but this is one of those things that makes you want to scream. The story does.

Later on NEWSNIGHT, we'll take a look at a new documentary on September 11th that HBO is running, and we'll talk with the former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik who was on the job that day.

Up next, the latest on the case of the archbishop of Milwaukee, what he did and didn't do and why he paid a lot.

This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We spent some time last night reporting the story of the archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland, whose request for an expedited resignation was accepted by the Vatican today. The archbishop made the request after it became known that the archdiocese in Milwaukee had paid $450,000 to a man who claimed he was sexually assaulted by the archbishop 20 years ago.

Two points to make right now. One is the archbishop absolutely denies it was a sexual assault, and the accuser was no child when it happened. He was 30 years old. We said last night that the payment appeared to be hush money.

A viewer wrote in saying "blackmail" would have been a better choice of words. This may or may not be a distinction without difference. It is one of the questions we can ask Meg Kissinger who has been reporting this story for "The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel."

Good evening to you.

MEG KISSINGER, "THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL" Good evening.

BROWN: You have talked with the accuser here, and you have read this lengthy letter that the archbishop wrote some years ago now. Do you think you know what the relationship between these two people was?

KISSINGER: Well, I thought I did. It's confusing, and Paul Marcoux tells a couple of different stories. When I first spoke to him, he talked about a consensual relationship that seemed to be -- maybe have gone bad after some time, and what he's now saying is date rape, which is altogether different.

BROWN: Is it -- does he talk about this as date rape in the way I think most of us think of it, or does he talk about it as a kind of power relationship where the archbishop was an older man, a man in authority, a man who had some power over Mr. Marcoux' future? Is that how he talks about it?

KISSINGER: Well, again, both. And earlier -- early in conversations, he did talk about this unequal relationship with the archbishop as being the head of the church and the moral authority for Milwaukee Catholics, and he was a theology student.

What's inconsistent then, when really talks about date rape, suggesting a physical assault, is that then he goes on to say that there were several encounters and that they spent quite a lot of time together, dinner, a trip to Nantucket, visits to Chicago to enjoy music together, and so it makes you wonder if there was was an assault, why the -- why did they keep getting together?

BROWN: And, again, Mr. Marcoux was not a child. He was 30 years old at the time.

KISSINGER: Right. Yeah.

BROWN: In the -- the archbishop's letter here does suggest -- it suggests but does not absolutely say that there was a sexual relationship. Is that a fair reading?

KISSINGER: Yes. Yes. It stops short of that. It says that he needed to return to the idea of celibacy and the commitment that the celibate life -- freedom that the celibate life gives.

BROWN: Has the archdiocese explained why it paid the money out?

KISSINGER: Not to anybody's real satisfaction. It just simply acknowledged that it has.

BROWN: And is that -- is that where they've just sort of left it, "That's as much as we're going say about it."

KISSINGER: So far. In fact, we're told today that the archbishop is going to be giving an apology. No details forthcoming on that yet, but, yesterday, they were saying that they were bound by this confidentiality agreement, which really is not correct. Mr. Marcoux was bound by that, but the archdiocese and the archbishop were not.

BROWN: It's also my impression they have released Mr. Marcoux from that. Is that...

KISSINGER: That's also not really well known. In fact, that question was put to the spokesman for the archdiocese today. And that's not for certain.

BROWN: OK.

KISSINGER: They issued a blanket statement, saying that all people should feel free to talk about their cases, but this particular case remains to be seen.

BROWN: I want to go back to the accuser here for a bit, because I'm not playing blame the victim here. I mean, that's not what this is, but...

KISSINGER: Right.

BROWN: ...but you've learned some things about him. You know some things about him.

KISSINGER: Right.

BROWN: Tell me as much as you can, as much as you reported about who this guy is, where he is, what he does, all of that?

KISSINGER: He's sort of all over the map. And I mean that literally and figuratively. He's lived in many different locations, never really set down roots. His sister tells me that he's, even though he received this lump sum payment, $450,000 four years ago, she says the money's gone. He made a series of bad investments in the stock market. This is his sister reporting that.

He doesn't own any property that we know of. And the last car that he had registered was in '92. So if he has a lot of money, he's not throwing it around in any kind of obvious way.

BROWN: And does he, just quickly, does it -- has he gone public with this, which is what's happened? He's gone public with this. KISSINGER: Right.

BROWN: Is he looking to make some money on this again?

KISSINGER: Well, he told me he wants to write a book. So I'll let you figure that one out.

BROWN: I'll -- I don't even want to tell you how devious my mind is. Thank you, Meg Kissinger with "The Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel"...

KISSINGER: Thank you.

BROWN: ...who's been reporting the crisis in the Catholic Church from that city. Thanks for joining us on a holiday Friday. We appreciate it.

KISSINGER: Thank you.

BROWN: Still ahead on the program, we'll talk with New York City's former police commissioner, Bernard Kerik, about his recollections of September 11 and show you and excerpt or two from a powerful HBO documentary that airs Sunday night on 9/11. Up next, how the Russians saw the summit between Presidents Bush and Putin, another edition of "Their News." This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: When Russian President Putin visited President Bush's ranch in Crawford last November, Mr. Bush took pains to keep things casual, as if driving the leader of the former Soviet Union around in a pickup truck could be anything but casual. No pickup this evening in Moscow, but the president and Mrs. Bush came calling on President and Mrs. Putin, dressed Friday casual.

Look of the door of the limo there. Man, could that get any thicker? The dinner came after quite a day. Earlier, in a much more formal location, St. Andrews Hall at the Kremlin, two leaders signed the biggest arms control treaty in history. Calls on the two sides to cut nuclear arsenals by two-thirds by the 2112, if you're counting. Mr. Bush saying the Cold War is in a rearview mirror now.

Perhaps, although differences between the United States and Russia remain. It is our fifth story to report tonight, but as you can imagine, it was the lead in Russia on their news.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): And today's news, the main topics: Putin, Bush open up a new era in their relations between the countries, a friendly one. But did not forget about chickens and steel. Bush admires the luxury of the Kremlin and gets rid of the chewing gum. The First Lady goes to the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) gallery. The northern care patrol is getting prepared to receive the high guests.

It's an historical day between -- in the relations between Russia and the United States. The treaty on reduction of Oslo has been signed. Moscow and Washington demonstrate they are friends, no longer enemies. As that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) from a prolonged fight against terror. The economic relations between the countries promised not to make people hostages of policy.

American chicken and steel become an object for the joke. There is a breakthrough in this field energy. But politicians believe it is a manifestation of interest in cooperation. More details from our...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): This time we were promised to put an end to Cold War. There had been such promises before. There were many -- there was a lot of euphoria about friendliness. The pragmatic -- there is more pragmatism now. And there are little people who can be received by the new agreement. Russia can keep up its face.

For the first time, the press conference was held in the Andrew Hall of the Kremlin. Before summarizing, the long awaited agreement was signed on reduction of Strategic Offensive Arsenals, as well as the decoration of the new strategic relations, which were the (UNINTELLIGIBLE). There were two joint statements on economic -- on anti-terrorism and on the situation in the Middle East.

Bush, he is the first speaker, calls this day a day of history. He talks a lot about fight against terrorism. He mentions Iran. He talks about the new format of Russian NATO relations. Putin proposes a forum on mass media. The new agreement is important. Each country retains 2000 warheads, but anyone who just for once held a rifle in his hands, any weapon or any rifle, knows what to will. It is much better and much more safer to have the rifle unloaded than loaded.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Their news from Russia tonight. Did we say 2112 when this reduction goes into effect? That would be 2012. We'll get this number right. We'll go to the Indianapolis 500 a little bit later. Before we do that, we'll show you a preview of an extraordinary piece of television, HBO documentary on 9/11. That's coming up next on NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Next week for Memorial Day on, it's going to be dominated by thoughts of 9-11 and the people who died that day. On Thursday, there will be a ceremony officially ending the recovery operation at ground zero. This coming Sunday, HBO will air a documentary on 9-11 called "In Memoriam." It is, by all accounts, quite graphic. And based on the pieces we saw today, it is very powerful. It is not an easy watch, but then how could it be? In a moment, we'll talk with the former New York police chief, Bernard Kerik, about the film and the day.

We have couple of excerpts to show you. Here is the first.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "IN MEMORIAM") RUDY GIULIANI, FMR. MAYOR NEW YORK CITY: I think we're going to have to remember it, September 11, in its reality, much the same way as we have to remember other horrific events in our history, because somehow I think it pushes the human consciousness towards finding ways to avoid this in the future. But if you, if you censor it too much, if you try to find too many euphemisms for what happened, then I think you rob people of the ability to actually relive it, and therefore motivate them to prevent it from happening in the future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik is with us.

That's the argument for why it is as graphic as it is. In a sense, that to sanitize it, is to sanitize an ugly chapter in history. And that's not smart.

BERNARD KERIK, FMR. POLICE COMMISSIONER, NYPD: I agree. I think this is something that should be remembered. I think historically, looking back in this country, we have, we tend to deny evil. You know, if we listen to Hitler, perhaps we would have been able to do something about it. He told us for years what he was going to do and nobody paid attention until it was too late.

1993, the bombing of the World Trade Center. They hit the El Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. They hit the Cole. They hit the embassies in South Africa. I think this time, we have to really focus on what they've done to this country. And we shouldn't forget. And this is one way to do that.

BROWN: The only question about that that I have is whether the time is right. Are we still too close? And again, this may be a New Yorker's view of this, but are we still too close to the events of 9- 11 to deal with this again?

KERIK: Well I think every -- everybody will look at this differently. You know, for the people in New York City, it may be a little different because they were here. A number of the things whether they were at ground zero, whether they were in southern Manhattan, they may not be as ready as others, but I think for the most part, I think this country, this nation, they want to know what happened. They want to know why it happened. And I think this will be a reminder to them, you know, of those images, of the things that happened on that day. And I think in reality it benefits this country to know the history, to understand the history.

BROWN: How did you find out?

KERIK: I was in my office when the first plane hit tower 1. My staff told me. I responded...

BROWN: Somebody walked into the office and said?

KERIK: They basically, they were banging on my office door. I was taking a shower. And I came out. And they said that a plane had hit tower one. I thought it was a small plane. And I went to the conference room window, and I looked out. And I realized at the point it wasn't a small plane. In fact, I didn't think it was a plane at all. I thought it was something else. I didn't know what that was. I responded to the scene. And I was, I was at the base of tower one when the second plane hit tower two.

BROWN: Did you call the mayor at that point?

KERIK: I went back into my office. I called the mayor right before I left. I told him that something had happened. And I could hear the motorcade, I could hear the phones, I could hear the siren. The mayor was already on the way.

BROWN: In motion. Was your impulse at that moment, terrorism or accident?

KERIK: My impulse I think at that moment was an accident. But I was, I was there when the second plane hit. And I realized at that point it was terrorism. We were under attack.

BROWN: That day seemed in slow motion to you then, now, how do you see it?

KERIK: That day, I think what really grasped me with regard to slow motion was coming out of 100 Church Street after tower two had fallen, and the debris was basically a clear white dust.

BROWN: Church Street is way south in Manhattan.

KERIK: Right, it's in southern Manhattan. It's about -- where I came out onto Church, it's probably eight or nine blocks from the tower. Tower two had fallen. And there was no sound outside. It was solid white. It was just like this paper. You couldn't see anything in front of you. And it was like watching one of these old movies that had no sound, no images. It was horrifying.

BROWN: Were you scared?

KERIK: I think we were concerned -- I don't know if I had time to be afraid. We were concerned. We had a job to do. And we were trying to get the most done that we could.

BROWN: I want to run one more clip from the HBO program. And we'll talk some more about people and how they reacted to it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They can't go in. They'll want to turn around. They just...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People were just in awe. They can't go to work anyway. What's the difference?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's horrible. It's horrible.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The building just disappeared. It was an incredible sight.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's horrible. She works there.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It really hurts.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can see the buildings in the smoke.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can see the buildings in the smoke?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes? Couple of buildings are missing now.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But I don't want the buildings in the smoke.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So nobody gets hurt, right?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Did you cry?

KERIK: I have. Not on that day.

BROWN: Yes.

KERIK: Maybe a little that morning, but I have.

BROWN: What do you remember about the end of that day for you? At what point did you, I don't know, did you go home?

KERIK: No. I didn't go home for about three weeks. I basically lived out of my office. But about 2:30 that morning, I said goodbye to the mayor. The mayor said he was going home. I said I was going home. I went one way, he went the other. And we both wound up back at ground zero. And I can remember walking through the smoke and seeing him walking toward me. And he came up to me and he said, "I thought were you leaving?" And I said, "Well, I thought he was, too." And I just wanted to go, it was, you know, my mind was sort of in denial. I just, I really didn't want to leave. It was like walking through hell. And I had people that were there. And I just, I couldn't believe they were gone.

BROWN: Did you sleep that night at all?

KERIK: Slept for about an hour.

BROWN: And when you woke up, did you have that moment that we have in life where you wondered if it was a nightmare?

KERIK: Was it a dream, was it a nightmare?

BROWN: Yes. KERIK: Absolutely. I think if I would have woke up at home, I would have really thought it was a nightmare, but I was sitting -- I was lying on my couch in my office.

BROWN: You go down do ground zero much now?

KERIK: I've been down there from time to time. I guess I was there about a week and a half ago.

BROWN: Yes. It all looks so different.

KERIK: Well, now it looks like a big construction site.

BROWN: Yes. Thanks for coming in tonight. Appreciate very much. Nice to meet you finally.

KERIK: Thank you.

BROWN: Again, HBO documentary runs Sunday night and depends on what part of the country you're in, I guess, what time it runs. You want to check on that. Nice to meet you. Thank you.

We'll change the tone here quite a bit. Take a break and go to the Indianapolis 500. We could use the break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: I'm a little concerned about this segment, but absent risk, there is no reward. You no doubt recall that a couple months of ago, we sent Dwight Collins, our senior tape operator to report at the New York auto show. We did this because we like Dwight. Dwight likes cars. And frankly, in these economic times, everyone has to do more than one job. Dwight became the auto guy. And the piece was spectacular. And we could have quit while we were ahead. But as we said, absent risk there is no reward.

So the other day we sent Dwight to the Indy 500. I have not seen this piece. I do not know how it turned out, but I am told it is 1,000 times better than the accordion guy. What more can you ask for? Here's Dwight at Indy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DWIGHT COLLINS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Whoa, look at the size of this place. Oh, man. This is amazing. Am I allowed to talk to you? This is really, really wild. He's been like my idol. So now, who do you think is going to be your most major competitor here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, yes, you have to look at what he's done -- I mean, once he won this race 11 times. Right?

COLLINS: Yes, 11 times.

Now I'm looking at this. This is from last year.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, that's right. COLLINS: That's beautiful.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got one, too.

COLLINS: Well, we're going to talk about that a little later. Anyway, so how does it feel to win that? How did it feel to win here at Indianapolis?

GIL DE FERRAN, DRIVER: It's something special. I tell you, every time I came down here, I mean, talking about...

BELIO CASTRONEVES, DRIVER: He still cries when the thinks about it. The other day, I saw him staring into the distance and he was going...

COLLINS: I can't believe the speed on these things.

You lost a lap, didn't you? I want to be the guy that drives the car out to the track, so I can smile at all the ladies.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There we go. Look at the guy.

COLLINS: You know what I'm saying. I have to get into -- man, I'm telling you, this is a dream come true, Mr. Bensky (ph). I've been following you since I was old enough to reach the TV. Can you all say, "Hey, Mr. Aaron Brown?"

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, Mr. Brown. Welcome where?

CASTRONEVES: NEWSNIGHT. Welcome to NEWSNIGHT, Mr. Aaron Brown.

FERRAN: He's a spokesperson. I'm just a face. He said smile and I speak.

COLLINS: So this is my first day here at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Hope you enjoyed. See you in a couple of days to bring you more.

This is Dwight reporting for NEWSNIGHT with Aaron Brown. See you in a couple of days.

All right. Here we go. Hahaha.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Program's always been big with race car drivers for nine months now. Dwight lives again. Have a wonderful holiday weekend and a safe one. We're back here Monday. We hope you are, too. Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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