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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
U.S. Citizens Detained on Suspicion of Bombing Plans; Have Recent Arrests Trampled Civil Rights?; Pez Celebrates 50th Birthday
Aired June 10, 2002 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again, I'm Aaron Brown.
So, here's a nice day at the office: the administration says the half-century-old doctrine of containment in matters military is outdated, and the United States in the future will exercise, if it so chooses, a first-strike option against terrorists and those countries that harbor them.
We've always said we are not a country that starts wars, and mostly that's been true, though perhaps the thugs who ran the island of Granada might argue the point.
It is another sign the world is changing; that the whole notion of war as we used to know it is changing as well.
And it's not the only thing that's changing. An American citizen, Abdullah Al Muhajir, is being held in a military brig with no access to a lawyer, none of the other rights afforded to a citizen because the government says he is part of a terrorist plot to detonate a dirty bomb.
He has been held uncharged for a month, and now has been declared an enemy combatant which, according to the attorney general, is the legal justification for this extraordinary action.
I'm not a lawyer, and I have no idea whether this guy was planning something terrible or not; nor am I especially interested in seeing a bunch of terrorists running around the country blowing up buildings and killing lots of people while they are out on bail.
But I'm also not especially interested in seeing the government deny citizens their most basic protection against governmental abuse. But that apparently is the trade-off -- at least the administration believes it to be. And it is an onerous trade-off. One more reason to hate what happened on September 11.
There's quite a lot on this story tonight. We get to it.
Kelli arena starts "The Whip" off at the Justice Department.
Kelli, the headline please.
KELLI ARENA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, U.S. officials call him an al Qaeda terrorist whose ultimate goal was to set off a radioactive bomb in the United States. The shocker: He's an American.
BROWN: Kelli, thanks. Back to you up top.
Jamie McIntyre, more on the civil liberties questions that this raises from the Pentagon tonight.
Jamie, a headline.
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well Aaron, the Bush administration is touting that the tension of this American al Qaeda as having thwarted potentially deadly terrorist attack. But many defense attorneys are asking the same question that you're asking: Were basic American rights trampled in the process?
I'll have details.
BROWN: Jamie, thank you. Also coming up in the program tonight, a busy day in terms of the Middle East. The story playing out both in Israel and in Washington. We spoke with Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, and we'll have that conversation in a bit.
We'll spend a little time tonight on the death of the Dapper Don, John Gotti, the Mafia kingpin whose ego was as big as his hair. We'll talk with someone who knows wiseguys better than almost anyone else, Jerry Capeci.
And we'll close the program tonight with a birthday party for Pez. Fifty years old and still a hit with candy lovers, and especially collectors around the globe.
All of that to come in the hour ahead. But we begin with the man in a brig in Charleston, South Carolina. There are questions tonight about nearly everything connected with him. Questions about the plot he's accused of taking part in. Big questions about the justice he faces and the civil liberties at stake. Questions, too, about the government's timing in all of this.
All questions for which, we point out now, we don't necessarily have answers, but questions we'll be asking nevertheless, beginning with the man in the brig.
Here again, CNN's Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ARENA (voice-over): He goes by the name Abdullah Al Muhajir, but was born Jose Padilla. U.S. officials say he's an al Qaeda terrorist, and he's an American.
JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Al Muhajir trained with the enemy, including studying how to wire explosive devices and researching radiological dispersion devices.
ARENA: Investigators say Padilla did research on dirty bombs in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and trained in al Qaeda camps. Officials say al Qaeda leaders sent him on a mission to scout out a possible target in the United States, but said he did not actually have the components to make a dirty bomb.
ROBERT MUELLER, FBI DIRECTOR: There were discussions about this possible plan; and it was in the discussion stage. And it had not gone, as far as we know, much past the discussion stage, but there were substantial discussions undertaken.
ARENA: The 31-year-old Padilla was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Chicago.
NELLY OJEDA, FORMER NEIGHBOR: I describe him like a very nice person; a very sweet person. I have nothing bad to say about him. Nothing at all.
ARENA: But Padilla ran into trouble early, spending some of his teenage years in the criminal juvenile system. In 1991 he was arrested on gun charges in Florida and did jail time there. Sometime after that he converted to Islam, and in 1998 left for the Middle East.
On May 8, as Padilla flew from Pakistan to Chicago, unbeknownst to him, FBI agents were on the same flight. He was taken into custody at Chicago's O'Hare airport.
At the time Padilla was carrying more than $10,000 in cash.
ASHCROFT: In apprehending Al Muhajir as he sought entry into the United States, we have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ARENA: U.S. investigators say that it was top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, now in U.S. custody, who first tipped them off to the dirty bomb plot.
But unlike Zubaydah, who is talking, officials say Padilla is not -- Aaron.
BROWN: A lot of people, Kelli, have been talking about the timing of all of this. They've had this guy for a month. The announcement came today. The cynics, I guess, would argue that the administration is trying to take some of the pressure off the intelligence investigations that are going on.
ARENA: Some would argue that, Aaron. What we have heard behind the scenes is that basically the Justice Department just simply did not have enough to go on to bring any charges, specific charges, against him. And so this was one way to detain someone that officials do believe is dangerous.
BROWN: So they -- as we sit here tonight, the feeling is they did not have the evidence to charge him in a normal matter in a civil court, bring him to trial in the normal way, and this is a way around that? Is that what they're arguing?
ARENA: That is what some people are suggesting behind the scenes, Aaron, that they're just-- because this was very much in the planning stages -- as you heard in the report earlier, this was -- he did not have the actual materials to put a dirty bomb together. But they did have enough connecting him to al Qaeda and to a plot, a conspiracy. So the charge would have been a conspiracy charge.
But of course this is not anything anybody is sayings on the record officially, Aaron. This is -- these are the murmurings behind the scenes, that basically the way to detain him and continue the investigation so that charges could eventually be brought, is to transfer him over to military custody.
BROWN: Kelli, thank you. We live in extraordinary times. Thank you very much, Kelli Arena working the Justice Department.
For all intents and purposes, an America now -- the second one, by the way -- is being held, essentially, as a foreign enemy of war.
Now consider a third American, John Walker Lindh, who was actually captured in Afghanistan. He is being given the standard rights of an American citizen. He has a lawyer. There is a trial date. And just to make all of this more confusing, add into the mix a fourth man in U.S. custody: the so-called 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui. He is a non-citizen. He is accused of being a part of the September plot. But he, too, has a lawyer; and he, too, will be tried in civilian court, with a presumption of innocence.
The pattern is a bit hard to figure here. The Bush administration clearly believes it is doing the right thing by the facts and by the law.
For more on that, here's CNN's Jamie McIntyre.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE (voice-over): American Abdullah Al Muhajir, born Jose Padilla, was moved to a high security Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina over the weekend, after President Bush designated him an enemy combatant because the Justice Department faced a deadline to either charge him or let him go.
ASHCROFT: We have acted with legal authority both under the laws of war and clear Supreme Court precedent, which establish that the military may detain a United States citizen who has joined the enemy and has entered our country to carry out hostile acts.
MCINTYRE: Muhajir joins Yasser Esam Hamdi who was also born in the U.S. but raised in Saudi Arabia as the second American to be held indefinitely, incommunicado, without criminal charges or legal counsel under the Bush administration's definition of enemy combatants. Civil libertarians think it's an outrage.
STANLEY COHEN, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: And what they've essentially done is said, "We think this is a bad guy. We can't prove anything. He's a U.S. citizen. So we're going to ignore his rights and simply put him in the military criminal justice system, military system and hold him indefinitely." MCINTYRE: While Hamdi was captured with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, Muhajir was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare Airport based on U.S. intelligence that he was part of an al Qaeda plot to attack the U.S. with a dirty bomb. Other prisoners, such as American, John Walker Lindh captured with enemy fighters in Afghanistan and Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen suspected of being the 20th hijacker, have been formally charged, so they both have attorneys and other legal rights. But the priority now on defending the homeland, the U.S. is making clear its willingness to lock away American citizens based on secret intelligence.
PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY: We must find them and we must stop them. And when we have them in our control, we must be able to question them about plans for future attacks.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE: Now Aaron, you asked the difference between the John Walker Lindh, the Zacarias Moussaoui cases in which they have attorneys, and these two Americans who are being held without access to attorneys.
And the short answer is evidence. In the first two cases, the U.S. has evidence they believe will stick against them in court. In the second case, they don't have the kind of hard evidence that they would need. And so now they have invoked this enemy combatant clause -- something that dates back to the time when the entire world was at war -- in order to hold these people because they're convinced if they let them go, they would be up to no good.
But it has raised a lot of concern among civil libertarians that the U.S. is simply running roughshod over some very basic civil rights -- Aaron.
BROWN: And just, again, going back -- I don't know if this came up at the briefing today or not -- but just picking up on the point you just made: Are they on the record saying that if they were -- on this question of evidence, that they don't have the evidence to bring the case to gain a conviction in civilian court, so this is a way around it. Will they say that on the record?
MCINTYRE: Well, they say either they don't have the evidence or, another convenient way for the government to respond to this, is to say that the evidence is too sensitive. It's classified. It would compromise sources and methods and tip the terrorists off. So they don't want to have to go into court or present that evidence in some sort of open forum. That's another rationale that's being used here.
But one key point is that neither of these people who are being held, both American citizens, are going to face these so-called military tribunals or military commissions. Those are not for U.S. citizen. So presumably they're being held indefinitely simply to keep them off the streets and to try to get as much information out of them as they can.
But they have no access to an attorney. They can't even communicate with their families. They have no way to defend themselves. They're really at the mercy of the U.S. government.
BROWN: Jamie, thank you. Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon.
Tonight, the people who created the American democracy worried about government. They made it clear in the Bill of Rights, the majority doesn't always rule; that government needs to be limited; that the individual facing the government and its power had rights that had to be honored and respected.
That's what we were all taught, and most of us believe. It is why today's news has raised so many questions.
David Cole is a professor of law at Georgetown University, and he joins us form Washington tonight.
David, nice to see you.
I want context first. How big a deal is this, that an American citizen is being held in this way under these conditions in the United States?
DAVID COLE, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER: Well, I think it's a really big deal. When President Bush announced the military tribunal order, and when they started putting people on Guantanamo and locking them up there indefinitely, the president made the claim, and administration made the claim, these are non-citizens we're dealing with. And Americans have a right to a day in court, but non-citizens don't.
But what we see now is that that line between non-citizens and citizens can be extinguished when the government decides that it thinks a person is a bad person, but doesn't have sufficient evidence to, in fact, prove that he's a bad personal.
The government was supposed to be filing an indictment tomorrow in this case because you're only allowed to hold someone for 30 days without indicting them. And it's clear that they took him out of this because they didn't want to go through the public process. They didn't want to go through a process where there was a presumption of innocence. And they simply want the authority to hold an American citizen without charges, without a lawyer, incommunicado indefinitely.
And that's a really remarkable power for our government to be asserting.
BROWN: The attorney general cited clear precedent here. What do you know about that?
COLE: Well, the clear precedent he's referring to is that during World War II we had military tribunals set up. We applied those military tribunals. And in one case we applied them to a U.S. citizen who was fighting for Germany. And the court, the Supreme Court, said you can apply military tribunals to U.S. citizens if they're fighting for the enemy.
The problem here is that the military tribunal order that President Bush announced in November doesn't apply to citizens. President Bush made the choice -- I think a politically opportunistic choice -- not to apply it to citizens. To sort of say to people, your rights aren't at stake.
So now we've taken this person, we've pulled him out of the criminal system. He's a citizen, so he can't be tried in the military tribunals, and yet we're treating him as if he's someone who's going to be tried, but there's no tribunal to try him.
And so essentially he's going to sit there without charges. And there isn't any precedent for that.
BROWN: That's what I want to go back to. In the case you cited, if I understood you, the court said it was OK under this very limited circumstance to try an American civilian in a military court. But what Jamie's reporting, what seems now to be the case -- and we'll see what happens -- this isn't even about trying someone anywhere. This is simply about holding someone.
COLE: That's right. It doesn't sound like they want to try him at all. It sounds like, you know, they had him in the criminal system where he would have had to be tried, and took him out of that criminal system precisely because they don't want to try him. They just want to hold him.
And so the Supreme Court case says you can, in a declared war, try a citizen who's fighting for the other side in a military tribunal.
But here we don't have a military tribunal to try this man. And so we've simply asserted the authority to hold him without any trial whatsoever. And his counterpart, Mr. Hamdi has been denied any right to have access to a lawyer, notwithstanding the fact that a federal judge has ordered the government to give him access to a lawyer, the government is not given him access to a lawyer.
So they're asserting the power to hold someone without trial, without an attorney, incommunicado, potentially indefinitely.
BROWN: About 20 seconds here, David.
Could any lawyer go into court in Washington or -- he's in South Carolina -- in South Carolina, and file some sort of habeas corpus petition or some other petition on his behalf?
COLE: Well, they could try, but it's very difficult. If you can't speak to him, and you don't know what he -- what claims he wants to make, how can you, as an attorney, assert that you're representing him?
Now, maybe that he has a relative here who can make that kind of assertion; but it will be very difficult for him to get any hearing in any court.
BROWN: David, thank you. David Cole of Georgetown University. Thanks a lot. Good to talk to you. COLE: Thank you.
BROWN: We live in extraordinary times.
One more development before we go to break here. Officials in Morocco say that they have three Saudi men in custody. They say the men who were arrested last month have ties to al Qaeda and were planning to bomb U.S. and British warships in Gibraltar; attacks similar to the one on the USS Cole in Yemen. Authorities in this country say they are aware of the men in custody, but are not saying much more than that tonight.
Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT: What exactly is a dirty bomb? If plans are in the works -- and we know at least some were from documents CNN found in Afghanistan -- just how much damage could a dirty bomb cause? We'll talk with a former U.N. chief nuclear weapons inspector, David Kay.
We have much more as NEWSNIGHT continues on a Monday. ^
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Probably not bad to remember in this conversation that one of the things the terrorists want to do is not just kill people, but terrorize people -- it's where the word comes -- scare everyone. And put the word nuclear or radioactive in this discussion, and terror, fear is one of the things you're going to get out of it, which makes a dirty bomb an almost perfect terrorist weapon.
David Kay is a former U.S. chief nuclear weapons inspector, currently the senior vice president for science applications, International Corporation.
David, it's nice to see you tonight.
As simply as you can, tell me what a dirty bomb is and how it's different from a nuclear bomb.
DAVID KAY, FORMER U.N. CHIEF NUCLEAR WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Well, Aaron, a nuclear weapon gets it's energy from the actual physics reaction -- or fission reaction inside the bomb, and considerable explosive power.
A dirty bomb, a radiation dispersal device, to be technical, is simply a lot of radioactive material mixed in with high explosives, and you disburse the material by exploding the bomb -- the high explosives in the bomb.
BROWN: So instead of putting screws and nails in the bomb, which we see all the time, you put some radioactive waste in the bomb, is that it?
KAY: That may not be waste. It could actually be radioactive material from an industrial site, or from a cancer therapy machine.
There are probably at least 2 million isotopes -- radioactive isotopes used in the United States. And they're widely disbursed.
BROWN: I'm sorry -- and I assume I don't get a big mushroom clouds and tens of thousands of deaths. What do I get, depending, of course, on the size of the bomb?
KAY: Well, I think you put it very well. What you're likely to get are not large numbers of kill, but you're getting a terror because of the very nature of radioactivity.
Now, in general you're not going to kill anyone with a radiation dispersal device other than those you kill from the high explosive going off. In fact, if you get enough explosives to really radically spread the radioactivity, it's going to be spread so thin that it does very little harm other than panic.
These are weapons of mass disruption, of tremendous panic and terror potential, not of lethality in the way that a military nuclear weapon is.
BROWN: We saw in Afghanistan and Kabul the documents supporting the notion that al Qaeda was working on this sort of thing. Do we have any idea -- do you have any idea how far along they were, or how hard it is to do it in the first place?
KAY: Well, it's not very hard at all in terms of technically of -- anyone who can wire up an explosive device can, in fact, do it, if you can get the radioactive isotopes. So the real difficulty is getting the isotopes, not the explosive device.
For example, we know some countries have explored this. The Iraqis, during the Iran-Iraq war, set off two experimental radiation dispersal devices and abandoned it because it was not militarily a good weapon.
BROWN: I have a feeling I'm going to regret asking this: How hard is it to get the radioactive material?
KAY: Well, Aaron, there are about 2 million licensed isotope applications around the U.S. It ranges into how active a source is. The best would clearly be if you could get spent fuel from a nuclear reactor. Fortunately, that is so radioactive that a terrorist would likely die before he got the bomb assembled.
But if you wanted to break into a cancer hospital, an oil rig that happens to be using cesium-137 for log hole boring -- any number of applications around, it's not very difficult.
BROWN: Maybe this is naive. If this thing its relatively easy to construct and it is not terribly hard to find the radioactive material, why hasn't it been used before?
KAY: Well, you have to think of what's different between 9/11 and before 9/11. Airplanes were easy to hijack, and people certainly could get pilot training. Why didn't anyone decide to crash an airplane in a building? Most terrorists, up until the present time, have not had the aim of mass casualties and self-destruction. Terrorism has been for a political purpose.
Clearly using a radiation weapon would not accomplish anyone's political purpose, unless you have an aim that is to bring down society around the ears of the terrorist, and you don't mind killing yourself.
BROWN: David, thanks. David Kay, a former U.N. nuclear weapons inspector. I'm sure everyone is going to sleep great after that conversation. David, thank you very much.
KAY: I'm sorry about that, Aaron. That's the world we live in.
BROWN: It's what we do. You're exactly right, it is the world we live in. Thank you. Goodness.
Later on NEWSNIGHT: remembering the Dapper Don, the life of John Gotti, his legacy of crime. Gotti died today. That's coming up.
Before that we'll talk with the Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi on the day the president meets the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, at the White House. The doings in the Middle East as NEWSNIGHT continues on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Another stumbling block in the long, frustrating obstacle course towards peace in the Middle East. President Bush met with the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, at the White House today.
The two emerged with a message that mostly sounded like a holding pattern. It's not clear if that means that a summer Mideast peace conference will occur. But even it does, there isn't a lot of reason to believe it will get very far.
Mr. Sharon continues to say he will not sit down and negotiate for peace as long as Yasser Arafat is involved. And the president came out of the meeting sounding very much like he agrees.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No one has confidence in the emerging Palestinian government. And so it's first things first. And that is, what institutions are necessary to give the Palestinian people hope and to give the Israelis confidence that the emerging government will be someone with whom they can deal?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Meanwhile, with the Israelis back in Ramallah, and both sides seemingly farther apart than ever, it remains a deadly time in the Middle East on all sides. It is against that backdrop that we talked this afternoon with Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Let's start with the situation both in Washington and in the region. The situation in the region, you said to me, you think is more dangerous than it was even a month ago.
HANAN ASHRAWI, PALESTINIAN LEGISLATOR: Yes, it certainly is much more dangerous because there is rapidly a lethal agenda on the ground, the dynamic of escalation and military brutality that may supersede the political agenda.
And of course there's Sharon's policies that want to block off any possible peaceful options, and wants to avoid by all means any type of political negotiations, or even see this American intervention with a road map, with a time table and with a clear articulation of objectives.
So on the ground you see one dynamic that is rapidly overtaking any kind of political process.
BROWN: One of the things the president has said is there need to be reforms within the Palestinian Authority before a timetable can be set. And, in fact, you've made the same argument, that there needs to be reform.
ASHRAWI: Of course there needs to be reform. This is something we've been saying all along. I mean, way back, since the first days of the formation of the Palestinian Authority we've been asking for a genuinely inclusive, active democratic system: rule of law, respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms, building off institutions that are efficient, transparent and accountable.
These are issues that we want for our own sake. However, the peace process was a source of distortion in our realities. And both the U.S., Israel and even the rest of the world were quite willing to look the other way to ignore any type of distortion or aberration, provided the Palestinian Authority was committed only to its obligations as per the peace agreements.
And therefore the peace process was the important thing, regardless of what it did to the Palestinians. And they didn't pay attention to the fact that the process without a constituency and without a nation-building process would backfire and would collapse, actually.
BROWN: Well, maybe it is that Mr. Arafat doesn't want reform, and that that is now a legitimate obstacle to taking whatever the next step is.
ASHRAWI: No. Listen, old habits die hard. But right now it's become inevitable. And there is a momentum. And there is a tremendous public outcry and pressure. People are asking for genuine reform, not just cosmetic changes. The problem is not Palestinian reform. I don't see how people all of a sudden woke up and decided reform is essential.
The problem is the occupation, the Israeli occupation's military policies, the brutal escalation and the critical situation that is resulting from not just the unhappy years of unaccountable occupation. But from a mentality of domination, control, absolutism, that seems to think that you can dictate to the weak, you can under value and undermine the rights of the other, and that you can continue to have a colonial occupation without any type of intervention or accountability. That's the real issue. It's not the domestic reality in Palestine, even though that is essential.
And it is not something that should be done only to respond to Israeli requirements in order to have a tailor-made (UNINTELLIGIBLE) system, that would do Israel's bidding and sell the Palestinians short. It's important that we put things in perspective. It is for our own sake that we want reform and a vibrant, active democracy and a program of government.
And at the same time, we want to be able to withstand Israeli assaults, Israeli military assaults and pressures and so on, under siege. And we want to be able to interact with the rest of the world with a clear political plan that has a timeline, that has a plan of action, that has steps of implementation, and that can translate the oft repeated vision of a true state solution into a reality.
BROWN: One final question. There was an idea being floated around last week that the Palestinians would give up the right of return to Israel in exchange for no settlements in the territories. sound acceptable?
ASHRAWI: Well, there is no moral equivalency here. You are asking us to give up a legal right, in order for Israel to give up something which it did illegally. Settlements by international law and U.N. resolutions are illegal. They are based on land theft. They are creating a situation of conflict and volatility. And they must be dismantled and ordered to be -- to comply with international law.
Now the rights of the refugees are rights that are guaranteed by international law, with numerous precedence, with numerous resolutions also. So by equating or creating a trade-off situation, you are mixing apples and oranges. What we need to do is look at all the components of the conflict, in an integrated comprehensive manner, manner and solve them all on the basis of a global rule of law, and legality that will do justice to all parties.
BROWN: It's -- thanks for your time. It's always nice to talk with you. Our best wishes, thank you.
ASHRAWI: Thank you Aaron. It's my pleasure.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Middle East today.
Just ahead, the death and life of mobster John Gotti. We'll talk with the chronicler of the mob, Jerry Capeci about his legacy. Up next also, the fire's now scorching so much of Colorado.
This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: The latest now on the wildfires that are rampaging through the outskirts of Denver, Colorado. I don't think it's an overstatement to describe this as a rampage. This is what one man said, as he was being evacuated. We could just see trees exploding. Thousands more people may have to follow his exodus. As many as 40,000 people may be evacuated, according to state officials. Wild fires have now spread over 75,000 acres. It all began as an illegal campfire 40 miles from Denver. And that city tonight has been shrouded in smoke and in ash.
Ordinarily, this next story would be a sad one. A man finds himself fighting a brave, but losing battle against cancer. Problems with the family business have landed him in prison, where he spends his days watching everything in he business go downhill. His adversaries who once feared him no longer do. His children, who are running the business, become a disappointment. They don't listen to him any more.
Indeed, one son is already in jail, another business failure. His son-in-law is in jail, too. And finally cancer wins. And the man who is just 61-years old dies. The stuff that tragedies are made of, or would be if the family business didn't involve extortion, racketeering and murder, and if the man who died today wasn't John Joseph Gotti, the mobster. So tonight, not a sad story as such, but an irresistible one, just the same.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): Beneath the broad smiles and the Robin Hood complex, he was, as one writer put it, just a thug in a great looking suit. And he spoke like Central Casting's version of a mob boss.
JOHN GOTTI: You tell this punk that me, John Gotti, will sever your (EXPLETIVE DELETED) head off."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gotti would say this guy has to go and snap his fingers, he'd give the contract to somebody. And a few days later, the guy would be dead.
BROWN: John Gotti began hijacking trucks and cargo at 19, and committed his first murder at 25. He was jailed not once, but twice, as he worked his way up to a leadership role in the Gambino family. And the FBI was watching. And so was a young federal prosecutor named Rudolph Giuliani.
RUDOLPH GIULIANI, FORMER PROSECUTOR: Number of the organized crime families, their highest level members are now spending 50 and 100 years in prison, not the 5 years and 10 years they used to get in the past.
BROWN: Like most Mafia guys, he was no more than a local story, until a winter's night in 1985. That night, he ordered the killing of rival Paul Castellano in front of a New York steakhouse, while he and his best friend, Sammy the Bull Gravano, watched from a half a block away.
GOTTI: There's always gonna be a Cosa Nostra 'till I die. Be an hour from now or be it tonight or a hundred years from now when I'm in jail. It's gonna be Cosa Nostra.
BROWN: Like it or not, there was a swagger about John Gotti. He threw neighborhood block parties, fireworks and all. He was loved by some, feared by anyone with a brain. He saw himself as a modern day Robin Hood. Well, Robin Hood with a really good tailor, his $2000 suits earned him the name "the Dapper Don." And he virtually taunted police, basking it appeared, in the government's five indictments against him in four years, three times he avoided conviction.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We find him not guilty.
BROWN: The Dapper Don then became the teflon Don. And that name stuck. And he became more arrogant and he became less careful.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This guy, who prided himself on being a La Cosa Nostra loyalist, was -- had the biggest mouth in the world. He just talked things on tape he should never have talked about.
BROWN: His undoing came at the hands of that boyhood friend, Sammy Gravano, the bull, who cooperated with the federal authorities and whose bloodless testimony about murder after murder put John Gotti in prison for life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The teflon is gone. The Don is covered with velcro. And every charge in the indictment stuck.
BROWN: John Gotti seemed to feed off the limelight, but he spent the last years of his life inside a tiny, underground prison cell in the nation's toughest prison, alone.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Before we talk about what Gotti meant to the mob, and what the mob still may mean to the country, a conversation with someone who knew Gotti in a way few other people did. Christine Cornell knew him by the tilt of his head, by the set of his shoulders, the glint in his eyes. She knew him better than most, even though she saw him only now and then and mostly from across a crowded room. But then again, Christine Cornell is an artist. And in a way, John Gotti was her muse.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTINE CORNELL, COURTROOM ARTIST: Gotti was a little bit larger than life. The courtroom was full of people who idolized him. He had a whole bunch of fans who would show up. They would line up at 4:00 in the morning. And it was kind of hard to imagine that he was capable of such brutality because he was so put together. He was really, he was really so above it all.
This was the first federal trial with John Gotti. He wore these beautiful suits. He was very square shouldered. His chin was up. He often rested his arm on the table, as if -- it was like he was sitting at a throne, and not sitting in the defendant seat. He didn't break that presentation. When you spoke to him, he was gracious. These were very polite guys. They were like overly polite guys, you know. The would -- if you were getting into an elevator with them, man, they would hold the door for you. When someone's too polite, I get a little nervous, especially these guys.
This was my -- I was trying to get how angry Gotti was. I was trying to get a little bit, show a little bit of that, because I wasn't always drawing him at the right times, you know. I'd come in and I'd start my drawing. And I put Gotti in right away. And you know, he'd get more animated as the day would progress. And I was trying to actually try and get a little bit of that.
He was a dark subject. I remember thinking about his eyes. They just got so dark. And he was scary when you saw that. It wasn't like he looked like that all the time but every once in a while, you just saw his eyes get small and dark. And it was his anger. I mean, he had a really dark side, that man.
This is Sammy Gravano on the stand. Gotti and Gravano were as tight as two men could be. They were like peas in a pod. I think Gotti recognized the same blackness of heart in Gravano. And Gravano was on the stand for a very long time. And the more things that Gravano admitted to, the less Gotti had as ammunition against him. Gotti, I think, saw the world closing in on him. He knew he was in serious trouble. And he was completely indignant that this man was up there able to admit to all this stuff and that that was what was going to bring him down.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: We have more on John Gotti tonight. In his life of crime, we'll talk with a guy who covers wise guys for a living and has for a long time, Jerry Capeci. That's coming up after this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Our next guest says that John Gotti's death is an end of an era for Mafia, which is the second time he said that in a month. Last month, the legendary mobster, Joe Bonano, aka Joe Bananas died. Jerry Capeci has covered the wise guys for decades, wrote the book on Gotti, called "Gotti: Rise and Fall." He's also the director of communications for John Jay College in criminal justice. So he's gone straight from his reporting days.
Nice to see you again. I asked you during the break if you thought it was going to be a big funeral. You said you didn't know. If it is a big -- it's going to be the funeral he wanted.
JERRY CAPECI, AUTHOR, "GOTTI, RISE AND FALL": Exactly.
BROWN: I assume. And if it is a big funeral, all the wise guy from his all over town and all over the country, they're not all going to come here for that, are they? CAPECI: Well, they're not going to come from all over the country, but if John has indicated to his family that he was looking to have a big funeral, my guess, and it's only a guess, would be that that is the case. Then the wise guys from his family and from the other five families in New York and probably in New Jersey, Philadelphia might show up to pay their respects.
BROWN: And is there any reason for the New York police or the FBI to go out there, shooting pictures of everybody? Or do they know all these guys?
CAPECI: They would tell that you that it is in their interests to go out and shoot pictures, to see who comes with who, who shows up, who's in, who's out. They would be there if, they will be there. The FBI will be there.
BROWN: Yes.
CAPECI: The local police will be there to see who comes.
BROWN: Do you think he knew, I don't mean in the end since he was sent away. I mean, obviously, since he was sent away, he knew how it was going to end. But do you think that various times in his life, he knew that it ends badly for a mob boss? You either end up dead, in prison, or dead in front of a steakhouse?
CAPECI: Well, I don't -- in the end, there's no question.
BROWN: Right.
CAPECI: No, he was not a stupid man. But I think in the beginning, in the 1980s, when he was flying high, he believed that the press clippings. He believed he was the teflon Don. He believed people loved him, and that he was going to ride forever. There's no question about it.
BROWN: Now the day that he hears that Sammy the Bull has been taken from that cell, not far from where he was in New York, and had flipped, he must have started to think oh, my this is going to go badly.
CAPECI: Yes, no question about it.
BROWN: Yes.
CAPECI: He -- I think he knew before then, Aaron. I think he was caught on tape admitting to committing three murders.
BROWN: But you know, in one of the acquittals, he had been caught on tape.
CAPECI: No, no, no, no. Not saying I knew what I was doing, what -- but I done it anyway.
BROWN: Yes. CAPECI: I whacked him because he wasn't coming in. That was not on any tape before. I mean, he admitted committing three murders on tape. Sammy Gravano was window dressing at his trial. I mean, no question that Gravano did a good job after that trial in bringing down another couple of dozen gangsters, but Gotti brought himself down. I think, you know, Bruce Mao (ph) said it before.
BROWN: Yes.
CAPECI: I think he had it right. The other thing I found interesting, Christine Cornell has a real good insight sometimes into these guys. And Gotti was, during that first trial, man, he knew, he was on the throne, but the reason why he was so confident, it was in the bag.
BROWN: Because he bought a juror.
CAPECI: Because he had bought a juror.
BROWN: He bought a juror.
CAPECI: He knew he bought a juror.
BROWN: Yes.
CAPECI: No wonder he was...
BROWN: It's easier to go to trial if you bought a juror.
CAPECI: Right, even if you're here, boy you know...
BROWN: That's all you need.
CAPECI: You know you can't be convicted, right.
BROWN: Somebody said today, you probably had this experience, that you could you write almost anything about the guy, and he'd be OK if you didn't drag his family into it, and you didn't drugs into it.
CAPECI: Right. Yes, but he did both -- well, he never was put into the same room with drugs or that, but all his key players were drug dealers. The four shooters who killed Paul Castellano and Tommy Bilati (ph), were all drug dealers. His under boss, the under boss he chose, who is the under boss right now, Arnold Squiteri (ph), Zeke, is a convicted drug dealer. And his brother, Gene, is a convicted drug dealer. His best friend Angelo...
BROWN: I have this odd sensibility about that, though, that they won't cop to that.
CAPECI: Well, Gotti had a sensibility you couldn't cop to anything.
BROWN: Right.
CAPECI: You know, you couldn't cop to anything if you were in John's Gotti's family and John Gotti's crew.
BROWN: I'm not sure what exactly the question is here, but at some level I sort of understand that for economic reasons, you end up in this life. And it's a tradition in your neighborhood or whatever it is. The thing I never understood is how you allow your kid into the life?
CAPECI: Well, I think that's there's a lot to be said for what you just said. I could almost understand a guy going into the life and becoming a gangster and making all the money, but to bring your son into it is something that is hard to understand. I mean, Gravano made a big deal about it with John Gotti and his own son, Junior. And here he is dealing Ecstasy...
BROWN: ...with his own kid.
CAPECI: With his son, too.
BROWN: Yes.
CAPECI: So it's hard to say, you know, what these guys are all about, but...
BROWN: So John Junior's in the slammer now for how long?
CAPECI: Another couple years. He got 6.5 years. He should be out in another two years.
BROWN: And this brother-in-law, the son-in-law.
CAPECI: The son-in-law is Carmine Agnello is in for -- he took a nine year hit. Peter Gotti, the boss, I mean his irony is that his brother gets indicted a couple of days before he dies.
BROWN: Yes.
CAPECI: And now, I mean, he's detained without bail. And it's unlikely he'll be able to get out to attend his brother's funeral.
BROWN: I this macabre interest in watching the funeral. I know that there's something sick about it. Nice to see you again.
CAPECI: Good to see you, Aaron.
BROWN: Thank you.
Next on -- just me -- next on NEWSNIGHT, a jubilee celebration. No, this definitely is not -- not, it's not about the Queen of England. It's "Segment Seven," and it's worth staying up for. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Finally from us tonight, there are people who are obsessed with a certain hobby, and then there are people who love Pez. The Pez heads, as they call themselves, take their devotion to the candy character to a whole new realm. Some say they need a 12-step program. There's at least one band, Zep and the Pezheads. There's even a dance, the Pez dance of joy, or as we call it, PDOJ. It's also the 50th birthday of Pez.
Here's Ann McDermott.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANN MCDERMOTT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Don't recognize this candy? Bet you recognize it now. Pez. It gets its weird name from the German word for peppermint, but when the candy came to the U.S. in 1952, it was remade into fruit flavors and repackaged into colorful character dispensers, that you load one by one or you can do it the hard way.
And 50 years later, Pez is still going strong. It's a pop icon. Check out Seinfeld. Check out the movie, "stand by Me."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If I can only have one food for the rest of my life, that's easy. Pez.
MCDERMOTT: Pez. There's even a Pez museum just south of San Francisco, where curator Gary Doss exhibits old favorites, like the psychedelic eye from the '60s man, and tons of hot new stuff.
GARY DOSS, Pez MUSEUM CURATOR: Bob the builder and his friend Wendy.
MCDERMOTT: OK, maybe that's not so hot, but how about this customized crystal covered ghost? $150. But at about $1.50 each, most of us prefer our Pez in plastic. So what are you looking for?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Homer.
MCDERMOTT: But hey, don't turn up your nose at the older models. The '70s era change of face Pez is worth about $4,000.
It's something you can collect.
MCDERMOTT: Yes, you can collect them. And here's one Pez head, who says she's never selling.
ANDREA SMITH, Pez COLLECTOR: I'm going to be this old lady with a bunch of Pez around me, going yes, my Pez. So crazy Pez lady, they'll call me.
MCDERMOTT: Don't laugh. Pez is such a phenomenon, that it doesn't need to advertise, though it did appear once in this old TV commercial as a prize with the purchase of Cocoa Marsh.
How are sales? Well, at the privately owned company's Connecticut headquarters, they're not talking. They don't sling numbers around just Pez. Still the Pez pres did give us a scoop on the upcoming holiday season.
Santa Clause is changing dramatically. MCDERMOTT: Gosh, what will they think up next? Well, at Sparky's in L.A., how about clothes and accessories for your Pez pals? How about Pez pets? How about Pez popcorn?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Popcorn comes in orange, lemon, grape and strawberry flavored.
MCDERMOTT: Sounds good, but it'll never take the place of Lisa or Spidey, or Chewy, or...
Ann McDermott, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: It's quite a program. Good night. Pez. We'll see you tomorrow at 10:00 Eastern time. Join us.
Good night from all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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