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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Rescue Helicopter Crashes Near Mt. Hood; Al Qaeda May Be Able to Shoot Down U.S. Planes; Prosecutors Want Jury to Consider Manslaughter Charge in Skakel Trial

Aired May 30, 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, HOST: Good evening, again, everyone. We welcome to the world tonight Adam D. Pearl, the mother, Mariane Pearl of Paris, France, the father Daniel Pearl who is now deceased.

Most of what the program has to say about the birth of this beautiful six-pound child will come at the end. It will be in the form of a song written for the boy by a colleague of Danny's at the "Wall Street Journal."

It is beautiful, and while we always hope you'll stay to the end of the program, we especially hope you will tonight. It is a lovely and gentle song that says a lot about life and the man whose genes this newborn carries. It's not maudlin in the least, but it might make you cry. It will also make you smile, and it comes at the end.

What we can say now is that mom and newborn boy are doing well and given what Mariane Pearl went through, her husband kidnapped, the search for him and the discovery that he had been unmercifully murdered, that is no small blessing. So welcome, Adam. Despite it all, this world is a wonderful place, better no doubt because you've joined it.

We begin with the whip and the news of the day and it starts in a place we didn't expect to find much today, Mount Hood in Oregon. Those are live pictures you see in the corner. There was a terrible accident there today, but in truth it could have been much worse, when a rescue helicopter when down.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look out. Look out guys. There we are talking about things going wrong. Hang on, fellows. Oh, my goodness. Oh, that is horrible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: The helicopter had gone up to find nine climbers, three of whom are deceased. We'll have more on that coming up in a little bit. Also in the whip tonight another terror warning, vague, nonetheless alarming. Jamie McIntyre on that where he always is it seems at the Pentagon. Jamie, the headline from you. JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SENIOR PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, it started with a disturbing discovery in the remote desert near the Prince Sultan Air Base, a spent missile tube. The FBI now thinks it was an attempt to shoot down a U.S. plane by al Qaeda terrorists. Because of that, they have issued a warning to be on the lookout for the possible use of surface-to-air shoulder-fired missiles against U.S. commercial aircraft -- Aaron.

BROWN: We'll all consider how we were on the lookout for that. If that isn't enough to worry about, David Ensor has another troubling angle to this story, so David a headline from you tonight.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, though the CIA buy- back program bought back quite a few of the Stinger missiles that the U.S. gave to various people who were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan and then subsequently in some cases been fighting us, that buy-back program went well but Soviet and Russian-made S-7s and SAM 16s are all over the world. They're cheap. They're light. They're easy to use.

BROWN: Doesn't make you feel good tonight. Thank you, David, we're back with you also shortly. And one more stop in the whip, some fascinating legal maneuvers today in the Michael Skakel trial. Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin in New York has that. Jeffrey, a headline.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Aaron, prosecutors sprung a surprise this morning. They said they wanted the jury to be able to consider a lesser charge, manslaughter. And in the afternoon, they sprung an even bigger surprise, they said never mind. We'll explain.

BROWN: Jeffrey, thank you. We're back with all of you as we go along. Also coming up in the program, words fail as they say but the pictures do not, so we will take you to ground zero as the closing up played out this morning.

We'll also look at the end of what the recovery means for one very special church in Lower Manhattan, a community that was born on the September 11, a family now today.

And just because we like him, Charles Grodin is here. Anyone who's ever seen him on TV that knows only a fool would predict what he's going to say when he actually sits down. I'm no fool, honest. I will not try and predict it, all of that in the hour ahead. We're glad you're with us.

We begin on the slopes of Mount Hood in northern Oregon where a slip on an icy slope just below the 11,000-foot summit cost several climbers their lives today and led to a crash of a helicopter that sent rescue - that had been sent, rather, to rescue the survivors.

The group of climbers was about 800 feet short of the summit of Mount Hood at about 9:00 a.m. local time, when two of them lost their footing, sliding down the slope and dragging others into a crevasse. Nine people fell in. Three have died.

As rescue workers tried to rescue the injured and remove the dead, a helicopter bringing help lost altitude and hit the mountain. Here is how a local reporter from Portland described the scene.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There it is waving off, so I didn't see anybody go up -- look out. Look out, guys. There we are talking about things going wrong. Hang on, fellows. Oh, my goodness. Oh, that is horrible.

JEFF LIVICK, WITNESS: I watched one guy take two entire flips in the helicopter hanging outside of it until his last gunner's belt finally broke, at which point it just left him sitting in the snow, and each consecutive roll left one more person sitting in the snow. So the helicopter finally came to rest upside down with five people just sitting in the snow, kind of wondering what in the heck had just happened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: None of the crew members of the helicopter were killed, though several were seriously hurt. Other helicopters then came in to rescue everyone, the climbers and the crew members from the helicopter team.

After leaving the mountain, one member of the original climbing team talked about what happened and one person he saw at all was Pat Dooris of KGW TV and he is with us now.

Pat, just go back a few hours now. This was, I suppose a fairly routine assignment for you up there in KGW's helicopter. As it started to play out, what were you thinking?

PAT DOORIS, KGW TV REPORTER: Well, I know that you've spent time here in the Northwest and there are mountain rescues that go on either on Ranier or here on Mount Hood and we've got the 939 Rescue Wing stationed out of Portland and we routinely see these guys go in and pluck people off mountains, off the back country wilderness area and you always know that there is a bit of danger there, but it always comes off really without a hitch and you always say, gee I wonder how they do that.

But as it was unfolding, you know because I've been up in the helicopter a few times with our pilot here, you know you could just sort of tell that it was a tense situation because there was no place to go and it just started to unravel, we were just talking about it right before that.

If anything goes wrong, they can't slide out on the mountainside because the mountain's there. They're not very high above the ground and they're at over 10,000 feet, so the air is thin and it was just like watching, no kidding, a movie as it started to come apart.

BROWN: Did it seem to play out in slow motion?

DOORIS: It really did, yes. You know I've interviewed trauma people and I know you have too and you always ask, does it seem like time stands still, and it really did. I mean as I was talking about how these guys live on the edge and how professional they are and how it's great that they have excellent training, we saw the tail dip down.

And that's when I was saying something like, whoops hang on there guys and then they started to slide down the mountain and bring the nose down and it was just, you know, instant to instant to instant just feeling like hours saying gee, this is just really unbelievable.

BROWN: It is remarkable and great news that the people in the helicopter are banged up some but apparently they're going to be all right. What is the status now of the people they went up to rescue?

DOORIS: Well it's my understanding, we're just on our way back now from the mountain, but there are three people that have died, slid down for about 600 feet. They were 600 feet from the summit, slid down into this crevasse.

At one point there were a total of about 11 people hanging in the crevasse. Three of those folks are dead. All the other injured people have been brought down off the mountain now, including the three people that were inside the military helicopter that were brought down on sleds and toboggans. One of them was airlifted directly into a Portland hospital.

So the helicopter crew, one in critical condition, three are pretty seriously banged up. Of the climbing group, there are three dead and I believe nine or ten that have varying degrees of injuries.

BROWN: Just, I'm not sure if you can explain this or not. Do you know what happened? Why that -- I mean obviously the helicopter is flying at almost 11,000 feet, do we know what happened, why it went out of control?

DOORIS: No, not really, because we have seen other helicopters come into that same area and get away OK, and in fact, we saw other helicopters coming after that and I believe picked a person up out of there.

You know we heard from eyewitnesses that they had lowered one of their steel cables with a gurney, that the folks on the ground had put the person into the gurney. They were all packaged up, they call it, and ready to go and they came and attacked the line again because the helicopter had gone out and rode around, which is their usual thing they do.

They came back, hovered, lowered the cable. They hooked it up and one of the guys on the ground said, right as he hooked it up and was covering this person from the downwash, the person in the basket, all of a sudden he felt the line go slack and looked up and the helicopter was sliding away.

And one of the guys inside the helicopter, also noticing what was going on, instantly disconnected that steel cable or else they would have dragged that poor person down the mountain with them.

BROWN: Dan, I hat to fall on a cliche, but you're talking about something that could have been a whole lot worse.

DOORIS: Oh, incredible.

BROWN: Pat, thank you for your work for us tonight, and thank all your colleagues from KGW for their help and their extraordinary pictures of all of this. It's good to talk to you, thanks.

DOORIS: Thank you.

BROWN: Pat Dooris of KGW TV in Portland. You might recall that, I think it was last week, there was an accident on Mount Ranier, which is about 100 miles to the north. Three climbers died that day. This is the time of the year when people climb mountains. It's warm enough to do it. It's not too warm, so that theoretically at least it's not dangerous, and these accidents do sometimes happen.

On we go to another warning this time from the FBI like the others and there have been a lot. This one is unconfirmed, uncorroborated. It was issued out of an abundance of caution, all the standard boilerplate words apply, and yet this one like the rest, brings a new chill.

So in addition to watching out for scuba divers and bridge bombers and dirty bombs and loose nukes, we can now add anti-aircraft missiles to the list. Good luck. Here again, CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): The nationwide warning followed a disturbing discovery earlier this month at the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, first reported by CNN. An empty, expended SA-7 shoulder-fired missile tube was found by a Saudi patrol inside a perimeter fence approximately two miles from where U.S. planes routinely take off and land.

GENERAL PETER PACE, JOINT CHIEFS VICE CHAIRMAN: There are no reports by any U.S. aircraft or any aircraft that we've been able to identify, of any sightings of surface-to-air missile firings. That does not mean it was not fired. It simply means we do not know if that particular weapon was fired at that location or simply dropped off there.

MCINTYRE: But the FBI now believes terrorists linked to al Qaeda may have tried to shoot down a plane. A May 22 advisory says: "Subsequent investigations suggest that the discovery is likely related to al Qaeda targeting efforts against U.S. led forces on the Arabian Peninsula.

Two days after the FBI alert, airlines and domestic law enforcement agencies were advised of the information but weren't asked to take any specific precautions. In fact, the FBI warning says: "The FBI possesses no information indicating that al Qaeda is planning to use Stinger missiles or any type of portable anti-aircraft weapons against commercial aircraft."

PACE: Regardless, we take very seriously the fact that our opponents to have surface-to-air missiles, shoulder-fired surface-to- air missiles, and we take precautions on the ground and in the air anytime we have our aircraft arriving and departing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: Now despite the fact that this warning went out to just about every government agency and law enforcement agency in the country, administration officials today were downplaying somewhat the threat of a firing of a surface-to-air missile at an airliner, saying that this warning was meant primarily to educate police and law enforcement officials around the country, not necessarily to sound a big alarm. But in these days, nobody wants to be accused of failing to share information that might have made a difference in some unknown way. Aaron.

BROWN: I think -- this is a tough one because in all of these warnings, people always say well, you know, what can I do about it, but realistically, what can the commercial airline business do about the fact that bad guys may be out there with this sort of weapon?

MCINTYRE: Well, remember this went to a lot of local police and law enforcement. So, for instance, here in Washington, D.C., Reagan National Airport, there are several parks around here that are certainly within shoulder-fired missile range of airplanes taking off and landing.

If you were a police officer and you get one of these warnings, you might ask yourself are we patrolling those areas enough? Is the access good enough? Have we cleared away shrubs or places where people might hide? And that's the whole intention of this is to just get people thinking that something could happen.

And you know this one, it's not based on a specific threat but it is based on a specific incident. They did find a spent missile tube in Saudi Arabia, and they do think that that was an attempt to shoot down a plane there.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. We'll all sleep well tonight. Thank you, Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon. There is, we've been told at least, one piece of good news in all of this, but reporting it calls for a sentence about as absurd and terrifying as any we've uttered recently. Here it goes.

We understand the CIA Stinger buy-back program has gone quite well, but then Stingers aren't the only weapons to worry about, are they? Back to CNN's David Ensor who's in Washington tonight. David, good evening to you.

ENSOR: Yes, good evening, Aaron. As you say, the buy-back program went well. The Stingers that were taken by the CIA into Afghanistan to get the Soviets out and did a very effective job there, many of them were bought back at $100,000 or more a pop. Some of them are still thought to be there. They're pretty old at this point.

The problem is there are all these other missiles. The one in Saudi Arabia was a S-7. That's a Soviet or Russian-made shoulder held weapon. It's simpler. It's less expensive than the American model, but it's extremely effective. About 30 pounds in weight, can be hand carried. It's pretty cheap. It's about five feet long and it works on the same principle, point it at an aircraft and it has a heat- seeking device in it. It will try to hit that aircraft. There are thousands of them around the world.

Now this is not a new threat and American air bases and airports even have been long aware of this possibility and have taken a number of measures against it. Still, there's nothing that's foolproof, and the fact is it is something that security officials around the country do need to start worrying about, thus the warning.

I should point out though that there are -- the weapon has its drawbacks too. It doesn't work that well at night, doesn't go well against high speed aircraft. It's easily deflected by heat-seeking flares.

I used to fly with the Russians over Afghanistan when they occupied the place and they used to throw flares out the back every time we went into Kabul. That was a pretty effective deterrent.

BROWN: I suspect if you're a military pilot, that's a good way to go and if you're a commercial pilot, it probably doesn't help at all. On the subject of this is not new, I remember when the war started, talking about these are the kinds of weapons we believe these guys have in Afghanistan. But during the course of the fighting of the war and the heavy air campaign, we didn't really see these sorts of weapons very much, did we?

ENSOR: We did not. They're effective against helicopters if the helicopters hover at the right height for long enough. The U.S. has gotten pretty good with its tactics against this sort of weapon. They aren't good at night, as I said. They don't reach high-flying or fast aircraft and military aircraft have many ways of defending themselves, such as flares.

BROWN: Yes.

ENSOR: It is commercial airlines that need to worry, but as I say, they've taken quite a few measures, higher fences and various surveillance equipment around airports. So it's not as easy as it used to be.

BROWN: David, thank you, David Ensor, national security correspondent in Washington with more on the missile threat. Ahead on NEWSNIGHT tonight, new and greatly expanded powers for the FBI as the tradeoff for more security in the country, less liberty perhaps. Some see it that way. We'll have that story and more as NEWSNIGHT continues on a Thursday night in New York City.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We learned more today about the new guidelines that would allow the FBI more freedom to conduct intelligence operations in the United States. History does teach us some things about government and power and those lessons aren't always pretty, but one clear result of September 11 is the belief by the administration that law enforcement needs to have more freedom to go fishing, to cast their intelligent nets in waters that may or may not contain dangerous elements. So old rules are being updated, old restrictions have been lifted. Again, here's CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA (voice-over): The old guidelines were put in place back in the '70s in reaction to the FBI keeping intelligence files on civil rights figures. But it's a new day and the FBI has a new mission.

JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: These restrictions are a competitive advantage for terrorists.

ARENA: New guidelines give FBI agents more freedom to look for terrorism clues, even if they're not pursuing a criminal investigation.

ASHCROFT: Under the current guidelines, FBI investigators can not, for example, surf the web in the same way that you and I can to look for information, nor can FBI investigators simply walk into a public event or a public place to observe ongoing activity.

ARENA: But civil rights groups say the rule changes go too far.

LAURA MURPHY, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES ASSOCIATION: People who go to places of worship, people who go to libraries, people who are in chat rooms are going to have Big Brother listening in, even though there's no evidence that they are involved in anything illegal whatsoever.

ARENA: What's more, critics contend the new powers could be easily abused.

REP. JOHN CONYERS (D), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: We can't be naive. You don't lower the standards to a point of extinction and say everything is OK. Trust me. We're just doing what citizens do.

ARENA: Ashcroft says the limits are clear.

ASHCROFT: Very simply stated, for the purpose of detecting or preventing terrorist activities.

ARENA: The changes, which do not require congressional approval, also give FBI field offices the authority to open terror investigations, undercover operations and seek search warrants without going to headquarters first.

(on camera): The new guidelines are a part of a wholesale reorganization aimed at helping the FBI anticipate and not react to acts of terrorism. As one senior justice official put it, we will never return to the bad old days.

Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE) BROWN: So just in the last two days, you have two major events coming out of the Justice Department, the reorganization of the FBI and now today, these new guidelines that broadly increase the bureau's ability to gather intelligence. All of this makes the Attorney General John Ashcroft the man of the hour, and the attorney general will be Paula Zahn's guest tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING." "AMERICAN MORNING" comes from Washington tomorrow, and again, among the guests, the Attorney General of the United States in a very important time.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, something we'll leave to the professionals, understanding the twists and turns of the Skakel trial. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It's been said that history happens twice, first as tragedy and then as farce. The murder of Martha Moxley was clearly the first. The trial more than 25 years later of her neighbor, Michael Skakel may seem like some to be the second.

We've seen Skakel's brothers and sister called by the defense and by the prosecution. Sometimes it seemed hard to find a witness who the police at one time or another didn't consider a suspect in the murder.

Today the prosecution considered giving jurors a lesser charge, manslaughter, to opt for, and then by afternoon, prosecutors changed their minds and pulled that off the table. Jurors want to have a barbecue, believe it or not. Closing arguments come next.

I can only imagine what the judge is thinking in all of this. We have some idea of what our legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin thinks. Jeffrey is here tonight, nice to see you as always.

TOOBIN: Aaron.

BROWN: Well, a two-part question on this manslaughter deal. It doesn't sound like the most confident move I've ever heard prosecutors make.

TOOBIN: No, what happens is, when you're a prosecutor and you're going into a trial and you think -- well you're going into the deliberations stage, you think well how are we doing? Do we want to give the jury an option of maybe a compromise verdict? If we think we can't get our top count, her it's murder, can we give them somewhere to go so that we can win this case somehow?

So what they came up with was this idea of manslaughter, the idea that well he was so emotionally overwrought that it wasn't intentional murder, it was just manslaughter.

Now the first problem with that was there hasn't really been any evidence in this trial that he was so overwrought, but more importantly, this trial as we all know concerns a crime that was 25 years old. The statute of limitations on manslaughter is five years.

BROWN: Right.

TOOBIN: So, they probably could never have gotten that charge to stick anyway, so by afternoon, rather shame-facedly, they pulled it off the table.

BROWN: Now the other side of the coin is, if you're really good on this legal stuff, you remember this came up in the trial up in Boston or outside of Boston of the young woman, the nanny Louise Woodward, where prosecutors wanted a manslaughter charge and the defense said no. We'll take our chances, and lost.

TOOBIN: Exactly. I mean this was a very confident defense. Mickey Sherman said, "we don't want" -- said essentially the same thing that the Louise Woodward defense attorney said. We want an all or nothing verdict. We're so confident that we're going to win that we want the jurors to have to find murder or nothing.

Well, in the Louise Woodward case, they found murder. Now, the judge is going to let them off the hook and Louise Woodward will end up getting out of prison very quickly.

But here, it's very much the same scenario. Defense very confident, they want an all or nothing jury.

BROWN: So it is a high-stakes gamble on the defense side?

TOOBIN: Very much so.

BROWN: All right. These two sides are going to close the case and you could not have, I don't think, two more different lawyers closing it. Draw pictures of the prosecutor and the defense lawyers here.

TOOBIN: Jonathan Benedict looks like Mr. Chips, the prosecutor, very earnest, kind of ruffled. Mickey Sherman the defense attorney, I think his haircuts cost more than Jonathan Benedict's suits. I mean this guys is -- you've got Doctor Smooth and Mr. Chips.

You never know how that's going to play in front of a jury until you hear from them afterwards. Mickey Sherman has really dominated the courtroom. He's very glib. He's very smart. He's often very funny. Benedict is much more sort of three yards in a cloud of dust kind of person. You know, ultimately I think the evidence matters more than the lawyers, but it's been a dramatic contrast in the courtroom all this month.

BROWN: How important is the close, do you think by the way?

TOOBIN: I think it's important. I think especially in a case where the evidence has been so spread out. Evidence over 25 years, various different comments that Michael Skakel allegedly made really decades apart -- the ability to pull it all together so that it either makes sense or that it doesn't, I think it is going to matter a lot to this jury.

BROWN: Half a minute. You know what I found really powerful evidence? I don't know whether the guy did this or not, is they had these confessions he allegedly made when he was at the school for bad kids...

TOOBIN: Correct.

BROWN: And then the defense talked about the pressures on him up to and including getting the tar beat out of him if he didn't confess?

TOOBIN: That was very powerful defense evidence, that -- so even if you believed that he confessed, and it's very hard to -- that evidence was pretty shaky -- there were compelling witnesses who said he was forced on pain of violence to confess. That's why he did it. Hard to argue with that.

BROWN: Thank you, and I suspect we'll chat some about this next week.

TOOBIN: We'll talk about the barbecue then.

BROWN: OK. Thank you, Jeff. Jeffrey Toobin, our legal analyst tonight on the Skakel case.

Coming up in a little bit, we'll talk with Charles Grodin about his new book and his new job and his old life. And that should be fun.

Up next, not fun, the last day of ground zero in pictures. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Still ahead on the program, we'll look at the closing of ground zero, if you missed that this morning. We'll also take you to St. Paul's Church, where the mission to serve the rescue workers is also ending, and we'll end the program tonight in music -- a special song for the newly born son of slain "Wall Street Journal" reporter Danny Pearl. All of that ahead in the second half-hour of NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Ground zero tonight. The evening after. We spent most of the night last night talking about today's closing of ground zero. We'll spend no time talking about it tonight. Here is how this somber and important ceremony played out this morning, beginning at 10:29 Eastern Time, 260 days to the minute after the second tower fell.

(MUSIC)

BROWN: There were so few miracles on that morning, September 11, but we think it's fair to say that one of them was St. Paul's Chapel, the oldest church in New York. It wasn't damaged, though it is literally in the shadow of the towers, or was. It's almost as if St. Paul's was spared by some grand design, spared because the workers needed a haven, and people from all over needed a place to pay their respects. The workers made their mark inside, the church, the rest outside. And on Sunday, the volunteers and the workers will pack up the church and go home, the home they created over nine months at St. Paul's. Yesterday, the final service, where the workers could thank the volunteers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(MUSIC)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Today we give thanks for all the volunteers who have come our way, over 5,000 strong, who have come from all walks of life, from all over the country to give themselves in support of the recovery effort.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would just like to thank all of you, because you're heroes too to all of us, for comforting us the way you have and getting us through these 262 days. Thank you so very much. God bless you. I will never, ever forget you people for what you have done for us. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

REV. LYNDON HARRIS, ST. PAUL'S CHAPEL: When I came down September the 12th, I was astonished to see the spire from a distance still standing. I took that as a sign that we had a big job to do. And that's what we tried to do here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Initially we were here to provide food, shelter, you know, supplies.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my gosh, it's coffee.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think that sort of revolved. I think as we came more as a family, we hopefully we were giving something more than a sandwich. You know, I think that it really became a spiritually fulfilling place.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Healing, mostly healing, when you walk through the site and you're walking over bodies and, you know, people you knew, and see what you saw down there. This was a place to come. It was a sanctuary.

LES SPELSER, VOLUNTEER: Every day it's been a hard day here. It's just not coming in and making people laugh. It's coming in and just walking up to a man sitting by himself who has just found a piece of somebody. That's what we do here, day in and day out. We comfort them. What we did here, we were able for them to get in their cars to come down here into this hellhole and to think that, you know what? I have St. Paul's on my break to come in here and to be cared about, and fed, clothed, nourished, medicated, a joke. Spoiling them rotten, that was the goal. And I think we've succeeded.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In my opinion, I've been a part of a miracle. And the goodness of people have completely shun through the entire term. The paradox is very powerful for me, because we have seen how bad and how horrible people can be. And then we've seen how wonderful they can be, in a span of block and a half. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've lived in this place now, eight or nine months, however long it's been. And it's been open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So it'd be hard to transition out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What you see over here all around you won't be here on Monday. Every card, every letter, every banner will be taken down and boxed. St. Paul's will be cleaned, painted, and it will be open to the public again. I'm going to miss this place. This is new family. And we're going to go through our withdrawal. But I can't get on with my life until I leave here. And the whole point of this was when they left, we go. I'm not saying life shouldn't go on. But you don't forget this. How can you forget this?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Well, we thank them for their work and we also thank NEWSNIGHT producer Katherine Mitchell (ph) who put that together. Nice job.

Up next, Charles Grodin joins us. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK, here's the truth: A tricky thing about introducing Charles Grodin is this -- when he's not writing books or making movies or doing television commentary for cable talk shows, Mr. Grodin is known for, shall we say, taking issue with how he's introduced.

So, having stated the danger, let's just say that Charles Grodin has worked with Cybil Shepherd, Dan Rather and a Saint Bernard. His new book is called, "I Like It Better When You're Funny." And we're really glad.

CHARLES GRODIN, ACTOR/WRITER: I really take exception the way you just introduced me.

BROWN: Never occurred to me that you would do otherwise.

GRODIN: Aaron, you know, I want to thank you on behalf of the viewing public for the calm, reasonable manner that you present the news in these very stressful times. And I want to ask on behalf, I'm sure most of your viewers, are you on something, Aaron? Are you on a tranquilizer or something?

BROWN: No.

GRODIN: This is your actual...

BROWN: I'm always this way.

GRODIN: No matter what happens?

BROWN: You know, my daughter says to me, why don't you get angry like the rest of the people? I just don't.

GRODIN: Well, see, since you're reporting... BROWN: No, no, no. You have the talk show.

GRODIN: Yes.

BROWN: I got (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

GRODIN: No, but I have to ask you one question, as a follow-up. Since you're reporting there's a report that it's dangerous now -- it might be dangerous if you put your left sock on before your right sock, or you have to be careful the way you put your jacket on or get into your car because you might shoot you from a missile -- see, we really appreciate how calm you say that, because if you said it in a kind of a wild voice, we'd like all be diving under our beds, which I'm going through anyway.

BROWN: OK, here are the prepared questions.

GRODIN: Yes.

BROWN: On your income tax form, where it says "occupation," what do you write?

GRODIN: Writer.

BROWN: Is that right?

GRODIN: Yes, well, I've been a writer for about 39 years. And but when you're in the movies, you become that, and then everything else you've ever done is kind of -- I actually wrote and produced a television special, "The Simon & Garfunkel" special for CBS in 1969. Where were you in 1969?

BROWN: I was in the U.S. Coast Guard, protecting our country. Thank you very much.

GRODIN: That's what I thought. And you still are, as far as I'm concerned, you know, because if we didn't have you here, we'd have the other shows on cable where everyone says, (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

BROWN: That we don't do here.

GRODIN: And we appreciate it.

BROWN: Do you miss the talk show? You were great on that. You were fun and kind of nutty.

GRODIN: I do. I do. And you know, I'm paid so much money, you know, by the CBS television network that I really can't, you know.

BROWN: Is that what it's like in broadcast? You get big money?

GRODIN: Dan Rather gives me most of his salary.

BROWN: Does he?

GRODIN: Yes. I mean, he has got this $8 million. He says, "I don't need all this, Charles. I really appreciate what you do; I'm a big fan of yours," so I get four of Dan's. And then of course what I get.

BROWN: So you get like what 4.1.

GRODIN: I get a total of 12.8 million. And you never see that reported. You hear about David Letterman. But I get 12.8, but I only work like two minutes.

BROWN: What do you think of cable news management?

GRODIN: Oh, cable news management is wonderful. Look at this place. This is like -- I feel like we have been captured. I wish you could turn the camera on and see -- this is like a desolate place. What are we, in custody here? Look at this. It's like an empty placement or something.

BROWN: Talk about -- no, my guys are terrific. Talk about the people you work for.

GRODIN: Oh, they're wonderful.

BROWN: You know, the CNBC people, the MSNBC people, you know, the people who fired you about nine times.

GRODIN: I got fired in the '60s. I got fired from "Candid Camera" three times in six weeks, which I'm, you know, very proud of.

(CROSSTALK)

GRODIN: Allen Funt fired me several times. He did, and so I'm proud of that. And then, you know, I've just canceled on CNBC and MSNBC. I did five years, but they canceled me, canceled me. And they're trying to cancel me from "60 Minutes," but I've got a lot of people on my side.

BROWN: That's -- is that a hard job? No, I'm serious. Come on, one serious question (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

GRODIN: I'll tell you what's hard about it. I'm supposed to talk about the events of the day in a way that nobody else has, that has some originality, some freshness, some humor and some special insight. And frankly, I can't do that. I have no idea how to do that. I have no special insight or originality or a fresh point of view.

BROWN: I've heard that said about you.

GRODIN: That's right. And yet, that's what's hard about it. So basically, I watch your monologue, which pretty much goes through the entire show, as I've noticed, and I just take the better parts and I adopt them for "60 minutes II."

The name of the book is "I Liked It Better When You're Funny," by the way.

BROWN: Didn't we mention that, or did you just figure you'd get it in again.

GRODIN: Oh, again.

BROWN: How many books have you written?

GRODIN: Five.

BROWN: Have you really?

GRODIN: Yeah, really.

BROWN: Because they only list one other one on the jacket?

GRODIN: Well, we don't want to talk about the other ones. No, I've written five. One was a children's book, you know, for younger people.

BROWN: What's your next job? What would you like to do next?

GRODIN: You know, being here at CNN, you know, this is Charles Grodin, CNN.

BROWN: It took me a long time to get this gig.

GRODIN: I don't mean your job. I mean just being part of it. This is Charles Grodin, CNN. What do you call the CNN what?

BROWN: CNN. We don't have to call it anything.

GRODIN: Charles Grodin.

BROWN: When you're one of the world's great brands, you don't have to jazz it up.

GRODIN: I like that. No, I'd like to be on CNN. I would. I'd been on MSNBC, CNBC, CBS.

BROWN: A clean sweep. Nice to meet you, sir. I hope you sell a lot of books.

GRODIN: Did you read any of the books?

BROWN: I did. I read that whole middle part where you blast all these...

GRODIN: And what did you think of that?

BROWN: I said I know those people.

GRODIN: That's it?

BROWN: Thank you.

GRODIN: We can sell a lot of books.

BROWN: It's nice book. Buy it. We'll be right back. We'll wrap it up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Our final piece tonight is for a son. A while back, we mentioned that reporter Danny Pearl once wrote a song for a friend's newborn child. "The World Is Not a Bad Place," the song was called. It was Danny Pearl's way of welcoming a new life into the world. Pearl loved music, and he especially loved playing his fiddle. And after he was murdered, another friend wanted to do the same for his child.

I first heard this song at a memorial for Danny Pearl, and I thought that afternoon that it would be such a nice thing if we could have it for the program when Danny Pearl's son was born. We asked Bryan Gruley (ph) to come in and perform his song, "For a Son," along with violinist Sarah Lueck (ph). As we said, Adam Pearl came into the world today. This is for him, advice from the dad he'll get to know only through the memories of the people who loved him.

(MUSIC)

BROWN: We'll see you tomorrow at 10:00. Good night.

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