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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Political Week Centers on White House Business Dealings; Scientists Create Polio From Information on Internet; Snakehead Fish Ravages Maryland Pond
Aired July 12, 2002 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, HOST: Thank you very much and good evening again, everyone. I love that guy. It is not surprising. We knew it would come, but a fair number of people think the emphasis this week in the news and on the program about corporate ethics and the president's speech, and most specifically about the president's actions when he was a private citizen and on the board of Harken, has been an unfair attack.
You will not be surprised that we think otherwise. We've said a number of times this week that one of the problems in cleaning up this mess is that both Republicans and Democrats come to this with something less than clean hands.
A case in point, yesterday the House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt was talking about the loan that Mr. Bush received from Harken, the kind of loan the president now says is wrong. Mr. Gephardt jumped all over that. He may have or may not have been right, depending on your point of view.
Mr. Gephardt himself received an interesting loan when he was running for president back in 1988. Jon Karl, one of our congressional correspondents, confirms that Mr. Gephardt received $125,000 from the Federal City Bank, a loan that was unsecured. Your loans, by the way, probably are not. And, on the board of that bank was his chief fund-raiser Terry McAuliffe, who is now the head of the Democratic National Committee.
The SEC looked at the loan, Mr. Gephardt points out, and found nothing illegal and that is true enough. But there was nothing illegal about Mr. Bush's loans either. In both cases, the question isn't legality but propriety. Could you have gotten such a loan on such favorable terms? Could I? I think not.
Neither party here is blameless. Both parties, in our view, have been far too beholden to all manner of moneyed special interest groups who fund their campaigns and seem to own their ears. Campaign finance is supposed to clean all that up, make it all better. Want to bet?
On to the whip we go, and another terrible story about a child lost in the State of Florida. John Zarrella has the story. John, the headline from you, please. JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, for the second time in less than three months, the Florida agency responsible for looking after the welfare of Florida's children has apparently failed, and a two-year-old toddler is now dead.
BROWN: John, we'll get to you quite quickly here. On to California and the latest on the incident involving the teenager and the Inglewood police officer. Thelma Gutierrez continues to work the story. Thelma, a headline from you tonight.
THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, hundreds of protestors gathered in Inglewood today. They marched, they expressed their outrage and they demanded the immediate dismissal of all the officers who were present when Donovan Jackson and his father were arrested -- Aaron.
BROWN: Thank you very much, Thelma, and quite a week for the president and the story about the corporate scandals. Kelly Wallace working the White House for us tonight, Kelly it has been a long time since I have said to you a headline, please.
KELLY WALLACE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hello to you, Aaron. Well, it has been quite a week for this White House and with the market continuing to tumble President Bush does what he can to boost consumer confidence. He meets with the new task force he's created to go after corporate crooks -- Aaron.
BROWN: Kelly, thank you, back to you and the rest of you in a moment. Also coming up in the program tonight, not one but two stories about little boy lost. Maria Hinojosa tonight on a life that was horrid and still far too short for a young boy in New York, another child who fell through the cracks.
We'll also talk with a scientist about his controversial experiment and the troubling message he wants to send, showing us how easy it is to make a virus from scratch, from information available to anyone. In this case, the virus was polio. It could have been worse.
And, it's Friday, what better night for what we're calling NEWSNIGHT's own creature triple feature. Tonight, three tales about what lurks in the deep. We'll look at the secret lives of killer sharks with an authority on the subject.
Peter Benchley, the author of "Jaws"; the story of a killer whale who just wants to go home, the orphaned Orca, adopted by the City of Seattle and named Springer, and the really scary part of our creature triple feature, Anderson Cooper starring in "Snakehead: the Fish that Ate Crofton, Maryland." It's coming after your town next. Oh, my goodness, all of that in the hour ahead.
That is the fun stuff for Friday, but we do not begin with fun at all. When the disappearance of Rilya Wilson became a national story a few months ago, the people we talked to, who knew Florida's child welfare system, warned us she is not the only one. The system has big problems. You'll be doing this story again, they said. This time it's a two-year-old boy who died of abuse and a social worker accused of filing false reports about his treatment.
Unlike the last time, what the social worker did, if she did it, is a felony under a new state law, and this child wasn't precisely a ward of the state and the state was concerned enough to send a social worker to the home.
Our story was filed by CNN's John Zarrella.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA (voice over): The body of two-year-old Alfredo Montez was found wrapped in a blanket along Interstate 275 north of Tampa killed, authorities say, by his babysitter on July 1, the same day a Florida Department of Children and Families child protection investigator said she checked up on the boy and his sister and found them happy, clean, and well cared for.
KATHLEEN KEARNEY, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN AND FAMILIES: The reality is there was no contact with Alfredo, Rheyna, and the mother of these children on July 1 by Protective Investigator Jones. She has admitted such to law enforcement. We believe very strongly at the Department of Children and Families that this work must be done with the utmost of integrity. It must always be done with a focus first on safety of children as the paramount concern.
ZARRELLA: Police say the boy's mother, Gina Swallows, told them she dropped Alfredo and his sister off with her friends, Amandy Lawrence and Richard Chouquer on June 28th, but she told authorities when she went back to pick her kids up, everybody was gone. The Department of Children and Families assigned Erica Jones to investigate the disappearance. She admits now falsifying visitation records.
JIM SEWELL, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT: She admitted under oath on July 11 that on July 9 she created and altered records of the Department of Children and Families by falsely indicating that she had visited the home of Alfredo Montez and Rheyna Montez on July 1, and that she observed the children have no marks or bruises. She did not, in fact, observe the children at all, and that's the basis for the felony we've charged her with. She's created this record.
ZARRELLA: Amandy Lawrence and Richard Chouquer, the babysitters, have been arrested in Utah. Police say Chouquer has admitted to beating the boy to death, after he soiled his pants. Alfredo's sister was found unharmed in Florida.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA (on camera): Florida officials now say that every case that Erica Jones has handled will be looked at one more time to make sure that no other children in her charge were neglected. Again, this is the second time in about three months that this has happened in Florida. The first case of course, Rilya Wilson who disappeared from the care of Florida's Family and Children Services and has still not been found. In both of these cases, investigators assigned to look after the children apparently failed to do their jobs. Aaron. BROWN: All right, John, a couple quick ones. Has the governor said anything about this? There is a gubernatorial campaign going on in the State of Florida. This is becoming an issue.
ZARRELLA: It certainly has become an issue. It was an issue during the Rilya case when his primary challenger, Janet Reno, came out and said that she felt that the head of Florida Family and Children Services should be dismissed, should quit. That didn't happen. A blue ribbon panel with non-binding resolutions that they could come out was appointed by the governor. Not all of those suggestions have been taken up, but you can bet that now, once again, this will become a hot button issue in the coming days and weeks, and certainly could become a much bigger campaign issue now -- Aaron.
BROWN: John, thank you, John Zarrella in south Florida for us tonight. On now to Inglewood, California, and the story of the arrest, the tape, the punch, and the reaction; in truth, our program has struggled a bit with this story, a good and important story, but when you do a program at the end of the day, as we do, there are times when we say it's all been said. Why go there again? So, we struggle trying to bring something new to the coverage.
At some point, we decided today we've been thinking too much and reporting too little. So today, there was a rally to protest the incident and how it's being handled. Today the mayor of Inglewood said two prior investigations into one of the officers involved will now be reopened, and a resident of Inglewood filed a lawsuit accusing that same officer, Jeremy Morse, of assaulting her. Here again, CNN's Thelma Gutierrez.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GUTIERREZ (voice-over): It was a community's call for action, anger unleashed because of this.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police brutality is a wrong thing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am sick and tired of every police department claiming racial profiling doesn't exist.
GUTIERREZ: Nearly 300 protestors marched peacefully side-by-side around Inglewood City Hall.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, III: This is not a black or white issue. This is a right and a wrong issue.
GUTIERREZ: They stood in front of the Inglewood police headquarters. Martin Luther King, III, took the podium and made demands of the police chief.
KING: They should be fired immediately. Why should a police officer have the legitimate legal right to beat up somebody because he's a police officer?
GUTIERREZ: The protestors also called for the dismissal of all the officers you see here in the video who did not jump in to stop it. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It seems that the only way to protect our civil liberties now is to have a camera.
GUTIERREZ: The attorney for 24-year-old Officer Jeremy Morse says this video doesn't tell the whole story. He claims 16-year-old Donovan Jackson grabbed the officer's groin area while his hands were cuffed behind his back and that Morse punched him so that he'd let go.
TALIBAH SHAKIR, COUSIN OF DONOVAN JACKSON: Donovan in no way did he hit anybody in the testicles, and if he did, it must have been an involuntary reflex action.
GUTIERREZ: The Inglewood police chief did not show up at the protest, but has said he thinks it's too soon to decide whether Officer Morse should be fired. It is a position that outraged the crowd.
NAJI ALI, PROJECT ISLAMIC HOPE: Ten years ago, we protested and we forced Darryl Gates out of office because he did not take the Rodney King beating seriously. And 10 years later, we're here to say if you don't get rid of these rogue officers, we'll get rid of you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GUTIERREZ (on camera): Now the Inglewood police chief has not made any comments on any of the protests that happened today. But after that protest, Inglewood Mayor Roosevelt Dorn said that allegations and investigations will be reopened into two previous complaints filed against Officer Jeremy Morse. Now the mayor declined to provide details on those cases. Aaron.
BROWN: Update us, if you can, on the guy who shot the tape, who at this point last night was in custody and not very happy about it.
GUTIERREZ: Yes, you're right, Aaron. Well, the guy is Mitchell Crooks. He's 27 years old. He's a video, an amateur photographer who videotaped the incident. He's now on his way back to Placer County in northern California to face charges of driving under the influence and felony hit and run. Aaron.
BROWN: Thelma, thank you very much, Thelma Gutierrez in Los Angeles tonight. A little later in the program, we'll talk with Martin Luther King III about the situation in Inglewood and his presence there and how that may help.
Other news now, there was little on the economic front to be happy about today. The stock market was down again. The Dow lost 700 points this week. The government said the deficit will be considerably higher than first anticipated.
The White House says that's because the recession they didn't create, a stock market decline that began before the president took office, and a war on terrorism that no one could have anticipated, thrown in a week's worth of Harken stories involving the president, when a private citizen, and all in all not a terrific week for the administration. We go back to CNN's Kelly Wallace at the White House. Kelly.
WALLACE: Aaron, not a good week definitely by the numbers. First the markets, then the White House announcing today that the federal budget deficit expected to be $165 billion this year, that's almost $60 billion more than the White House was projecting earlier this year, and that is not all.
A new poll is out and it could lead to some concern in the West Wing. According to this new CNN TIME poll, when people were asked: Do you approve of the president's handling of the economy? Back in April, 62 percent said yes. That number now down to 54 percent.
White House advisers are downplaying the significance of any one poll, and they say what we are seeing in that number is the American public's concern about the economy. That is why advisers say the president will continue using the bully pulpit to try to boost consumer confidence. In fact, he will hit the road on Monday traveling to Alabama, where we are told, he will say the fundamentals of the U.S. economy are strong.
It is also why we saw the president meeting for the first time with his new Corporate Fraud Task Force. The president created this earlier this week in his speech on Wall Street. He likes to call it a SWAT team to go after corporate criminals. The message behind this photo op, that this administration is doing everything it can to go after and stop corporate abuse.
Now, Aaron, aides tell me that they don't see so far the president being hurt by these corporate scandals, and they believe the Democrats, who have been criticizing Mr. Bush's own record as a corporate leader are overplaying their hands. But I can tell you, Democrats are seizing on these new deficit numbers, criticizing the White House, and accusing the administration of cooking the books to hide the real numbers, something corporations are accused of doing themselves. Aaron.
BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) going, thank you very much, Kelly Wallace at the White House tonight, good to see her again. Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the short, sad life of Patrick Bhola, that's a little bit later in the program. Up next, we'll go back to Inglewood, California, and talk with Martin Luther King III. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: More now on the story out of Inglewood, California, the protest today outside the police station and what the protestors think of the investigation so far. As we showed you a moment ago, Martin Luther King III was at the rally today. Mr. King is the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the SCLC, an organization that dates back to the days of the freedom rides in the south, and I talked to him earlier this evening.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice over): Briefly here, if you can, tell me why you got involved in this thing today.
KING: Well, this is, of course, a situation that is nothing new for us as an organization, SCLC. As president of SCLC, we have been working around the issue of racial profiling and police brutality and misconduct for several years.
In fact in 2000, Reverend Al Sharpton and I led a demonstration in Washington around the anniversary of my father's "I Have a Dream" speech, the 37th anniversary. It was called Redeem the Dream and the goal was to end racial profiling and, of course, also police brutality and misconduct. We saw this as an incident, as an organization, of police brutality and misconduct.
BROWN: You said you wanted the officers fired immediately, jailed at one point. I'm a little confused by this, because the process that's going on out there, there's a Grand Jury looking at this. The FBI and the Justice Department are looking at this. Aren't all the right things being done? This is being taken very seriously out there.
KING: Well, I think you have to always pursue the highest level of justice, and I guess if I was to go out and jump on someone and do what that officer did to that young man, I'd be put in jail. Because a person is in a uniform, why should they have the right to just beat up someone, even if that person had hit them?
There is a procedure that officers should go through, and we are not against police officers. We're against police brutality and misconduct. There are many men and women officers throughout our nation who do outstanding jobs every day. We applaud them, but we certainly do not and can not support the kind of activity that we saw just the other day.
BROWN: So, you reject the idea that the tape itself doesn't tell the entire story? As you look at the tape, there's enough of the story told to reach a judgment that the officers were absolutely wrong?
KING: The wrongness of it was this young man was apprehended - after he was apprehended. If he had not been apprehended, perhaps there would have been a gray area. But the fact of the matter, he was in handcuffs and his head was bashed up against that car and then he was smacked. He was clogged in a serious way by that officer. Now, I do not know what happened prior to that, but again it is really about the procedure and, therefore, I would also say that there needs to be a standard of conduct, a code of conduct and a standard of operations from a procedural standpoint or universal standard of how people should be apprehended.
We saw a few days later, a day or so later, a man in Oklahoma City being beaten with batons, and perhaps he was not cooperating, but it seems to me there's got to be a better way to get people to cooperate than to beat them. These are not animals.
I mean the animal rights people would be up in arms if we saw someone beating an animal like that, but it's all right to beat a person because they're not doing what an officer tells them to do in the context of trying to apprehend them.
And so, I'm just saying all of these incidents, the tragedy is that this happens most days or most weeks, certainly, and no one knows about it. This one was caught on video and we thank the media. I must thank the media because the media could have made it a story or not made it a story.
BROWN: One other thing you said today that I found really interesting and that is that your view is that since September 11th, things have gotten worse in some respects because of September 11th.
KING: Well, what has happened is police officers; we all want the officers to be able to do their jobs. We all are on a heightened level of security. We were almost - essentially, we almost had racial profiling whipped, if you will, or resolved and then September 11th came. What that did was it re-empowered police officers basically to run roughshod and, those who were doing it.
Now again, I'm not indicting police departments, all police officers, because as I said there are hundreds of thousands and maybe even millions of police officers who do their jobs correctly every day, but there sometimes are rogue elements and those rogue elements are the elements that we've got to figure out how to address.
Part of it probably has to do with training. Police officers need human relation sensitivity training, diversity training, and it needs to be done consistently because they are in Vietnam everyday, so how can we expect someone to be in a killer mode every day, every hour, and then expect them to perform in a different kind of manner. They can not do that unless that additional training is provided.
BROWN: That's a good place to end it. Mr. King, thanks for joining us today, sir.
KING: Thank you for the opportunity.
BROWN: Thank you, sir.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Martin Luther King III. Coming up on NEWSNIGHT a little bit later, the scientists who made the polio virus with a recipe off the Internet. This will help you sleep well tonight, I'm sure. Up next, the sad life and tragic, horrible death of Patrick Bhola; this is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: A second story tonight about a lost child and the child at the center of this story is somewhat different than two-year-old Alfredo Montez in south Florida. At 13, he was old enough to get into trouble, and reportedly he did get into some trouble. He also knew what it was like to live with just one parent, and then for a time, with no parents at all.
As one New York cop said, there's a million kids like this on the streets of Brooklyn. We hope that number isn't even close to correct, though you can't be sure. What you can be certain of is that the child in this story led a dreadful life, met a horrible and senseless death, and that he's getting far more attention now than he ever did while he was alive; the story of Patrick Bhola tonight from CNN's Maria Hinojosa.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARIA HINOJOSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The corner bodegas are everywhere in Brooklyn, just a place to get whatever is missing, a magnet for children with no other place to play and for the older ones, teens who often take the place of parents, but on these streets, it's the parents who can best teach their kids the lessons for survival.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know you escort your children and you teach them and while you're walking with them, you tell them, you know, you show them things, who to mingle with, who not to, you know, and to really not have any conversations with those people that are outside of your league.
HINOJOSA: It was here that 13-year-old Patrick Bhola, newly homeless, found some older kids to step in for his parents. But on Monday, he crossed a line with them, and jokingly swiped a dollar from the couple. People didn't want to show their faces when they talked about this case.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He did what I did basically. He was raised in the south, you know what I'm saying, and the family members wasn't there and that girl was the one that was there taking him in. He was listening to her, doing things that she was doing.
HINOJOSA (on camera): According to police, the couple who young Patrick admired, wanted to confront him over the dollar he had stolen, so they brought him here to this abandoned house where they used to get high.
HINOJOSA (voice over): Police arrested the couple who confessed to tying up little Patrick, beating him with a bat, stabbing him to death, and leaving his body in a closet. Twenty-one-year-old Clarine (ph) Jones had a record of robbing stores at knifepoint.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She was an upset woman, just say that. Come around the block and she'll start havoc on the block. If she didn't like somebody, something's going to get done on the block.
HINOJOSA: Her boyfriend, 18-year-old Delong Lucas (ph) was another young man who grew up quickly and with little supervision. Patrick's family will bury him this weekend.
VANESSA JENKINS, PATRICK'S SISTER: I'm the oldest, and I was taking care of the house and Patrick was always in the house before 10:00 p.m. and in bed before 10:00 p.m. So, it's like if he wasn't out on the street, if he wasn't scattered, maybe this wouldn't have happened. HINOJOSA: On the corner, reminders of what happens to a kid who doesn't follow the rules of the street, and in an old cardboard box, candles mourning Patrick's death. "The older ones will miss him" someone has written. In this case, police say, it was the older ones who killed him. Maria Hinojosa, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: On we go, a quick update now on the case of John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban. A judge today said that a freelance reporter can not avoid testifying about his videotaped interview with Lindh in Afghanistan last year. Robert Pelton was freelancing for CNN when he conducted the interview. Lawyers for Lindh have subpoenaed Pelton.
They argue he was essentially acting as an agent for the U.S. government, which means Lindh should have been read his Miranda rights before giving the interview. The decision means Pelton may have to testify next week at Lindh's pretrial hearing. We hoped to have Pelton with us tonight, but because of the court decision, he and his lawyers felt it was not appropriate for him to join us. We hope we'll have him and talk to him again next week. We'll see how it goes.
On to the national roundup, beginning with a story about potential terror threats in two Pasadenas. Police around Houston and nearby Pasadena, Texas, have beefed up security in light of intelligence information about a possible terror plot. Information a week ago suggested the possible threat involved oil refineries in Pasadena, California. But Pasadena, California doesn't have oil refineries. Pasadena, Texas does, so the FBI alerted that city as well.
In Baltimore, a man pleaded innocent to shooting a priest who allegedly molested him when he was a teenager. Donte Stokes is charged with attempted murder, after wounding the Reverend Maurice Blackwell in May. His attorney said he planned to argue temporary insanity. The trial date is set for the 21st of October.
And, the space shuttle fleet will stay on the ground for at least two more months. NASA grounded the four shuttles because of small cracks in fuel lines. In all, 11 cracks have been found over the past month, three each in Atlantis and Discovery and Columbia, and two in the Shuttle Endeavor.
Still to come on NEWSNIGHT on a Friday, we'll talk with "Jaws" author Peter Benchley about what he's been up to. Up next, though, a scientist who's made a virus in a test tube and just how scared should we be about that? Not the most settling program. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: We're going to back into this a little bit tonight. The story begins on April 12, 1955. On that day a young doctor announced that the vaccine he had been working on was effective against polio, and in cities and towns big and small everywhere, church bells rang out to celebrate what was, and honestly there's no other way to put it, a miracle.
Polio was the bogeyman of its time even, more so even than the Russians. The bomb was a distant possibility, but wheelchairs and funerals and iron lungs were real. So for many people the news this week that scientists have managed to create a polio virus from scratch in the lab inspires mixed emotions. This one is a breakthrough, not a miracle. It may hold great potential and perhaps great peril.
No church bells this time. Just lots of questions. We're joined tonight by one of the researchers behind all this, Dr. Eckard Wimmer, who joins us tonight from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Dr. Wimmer, it's nice to meet you. Thank you for joining us. I want to talk about the ramifications in a moment, but just explain what it is you did. You had no polio virus to start, correct?
DR. ECKARD WIMMER, VIROLOGIST: No. That is not correct.
BROWN: That's not correct?
WIMMER: I have been working with polio virus -- that's not correct.
BROWN: OK.
WIMMER: I have been working with polio virus for over 30 years, and we have actually created some of the information necessary to do the experiment that was published today. And based on...
BROWN: Go ahead.
WIMMER: Yes?
BROWN: I'm sorry, go ahead.
WIMMER: And based on that -- based on that information, in fact, in 1998 we thought whether it was possible to create, recreate the virus from the genetic information we had determined in 1981 and other methodology which we had developed doing the following years.
BROWN: And so this -- just walk me through this. This information is out there. You can go to the Internet and find what? What is it that you needed to find to recreate...
WIMMER: Well, what you -- yes. What you have to find is the sequence of the genome of the virus. This is the string of codons (ph) and nucleotides that make up a genome, just like you and I have a genome in ourselves. So where do you get the sequence from? We had a sequence determined ourselves, but you can get the sequence of other viruses and of polio virus from the Internet.
And now you ask the question, can I synthesize, in fact, chemically, that sequence, and with polio virus that is not possible, because it has an RNA virus. RNA is a unstable compound that you cannot synthesize in large quantities. So we had to convert that genetic information -- again on paper -- into DNA.
That was done very easily by a computer program within split seconds. And so we had on paper now the DNA. That you can synthesize, and how do you synthesize it? You order small fragments from a biotech company, and you put together these fragments until you have the entire strand of the virus in DNA.
BROWN: OK. All right. Now let me walk quickly through something else. Could you do this with, let's say, Ebola, and then release it out into the population and do great damage?
WIMMER: In principle you can do these experiments with other viruses, too. And I think what we are saying is that what we have shown and proven now that you can in principle generate viruses from the public domain information, namely from just sequences that are in the data bank.
And that would include, in a way, Ebola, although that's a very difficult virus to do.
BROWN: And...
WIMMER: It would...
BROWN: I'm sorry. Once that information is out there, and it is out there on lots of things now, how do you put that genie back in the bottle? I mean, obviously you need a certain level of sophistication to do this. But the information is now there, correct?
WIMMER: The information is now there. You are absolutely right. But as you have read today in the newspapers, for bioterrorists this is of no use as yet because to make new bioterrorist agents this way is tedious and it can be done much better. Moreover, the real scare would be whether you can make smallpox virus, and I can say with certainty that this is currently not possible.
BROWN: OK. "Currently," I think, is the operative word. Dr. Wimmer, thanks for joining us tonight. This is complicated science, but its ramifications are important and we appreciate your time. Thank you, sir.
Still ahead on the program tonight, Anderson Cooper gets to the bottom of the alien fish story. Thank goodness someone is getting to the bottom of the alien fish story.
And up next, even bigger fish to fry, as it were. We'll talk with "Jaws" author Peter Benchley. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: OK, everyone calm down now. Time for what we are calling NEWSNIGHT creature triple feature. And the underwater edition it is. And, no, it isn't a tie-in with the new movie "Crocodile Hunter." This is our own collection of three stories about creatures from the deep, starting with Springer, the orphaned Orca, which is not easy to say. Springer, a baby Orca, was found in January in Puget Sound off of Seattle. Marine scientists are trying to get her back to her home waters at the northern end of Vancouver Island, about 350 miles away. Today was supposed to be the day, but the trip got scuttled because the catamaran that's carrying her tank was moving too slowly. The crew will try again tomorrow. Maybe it was an overtime issue.
Now, onto to our second creature feature tonight. It was about a year ago this week, or exactly a year ago this week, and boy doesn't it feel longer than that, that the summer of shark was plastered across the cover of "Time" magazine. The name Jessie Arbogast filled parents with terror that their child could be happily swimming one minute, in the jaws of a shark the next.
Never mind that statistics never warranted the hysteria, sharks became public enemy No. 1 and with very, very big and sharp teeth. Author Peter Benchley wanted to set the record straight to give us a sense of the real risk and, yes, the wonder of shark life in a book called "Shark Trouble." In a way, Benchley owes it all to the sharks. After all, he ushered in the first summer of sharks, that was 1975. He is the guy who wrote "Jaws," and we talked with him not long ago.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
Everyone is going to ask you this question. Why did you go back to the well on sharks?
PETER BENCHLEY, AUTHOR: I didn't go back to the well. I thought that this was a time to do the non-fiction treatment and sort of talk about the progress that has happened in the last 25 years to dispel the myth that I created in 1974.
BROWN: And that's sort of the funny -- there is something remarkably mythical about sharks.
BENCHLEY: It certainly is.
BROWN: And it presumably pre-dated "Jaws," but certainly "Jaws" just contributed to this fascination and myth.
BENCHLEY: Of course it did, yes. The fear of sharks is as old as mankind, of course. But nobody had tapped it really until I did. And I wish I could take credit for doing it on purpose, but going back 30 years, one must remember how unambitious "Jaws" was. It was a first novel. It was the first novel about a fish, so I knew nobody was going to read it anyway. And I knew they couldn't make a movie about it. So it was an attempt to tell a long short story or a short long story and then it became this weird phenomenon.
BROWN: And I hope you are better at predicting things now than you were then.
BENCHLEY: Well, not really. It destroyed my faith in actuarial tables because the odds against something like that happening are too high. BROWN: I want to talk about that. Let me go back to this sort of mythical question. And setting "Jaws" aside, the book and movie, what is it about sharks?
BENCHLEY: For years, I sort of stumbled around and didn't know. And then I read a piece by E.L. Wilson, a Harvard socio-biologist, who explained it. And he said we don't just fear our predators. We are transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter on endlessly about them because fascination breeds preparedness, and preparedness survival. In a deeply tribal sense, we love our monsters. And to me, that said it.
BROWN: That's a really interesting way to look at it. I mean, so we have this kind of grudging respect for the shark, but we have also blown out of proportion its ability or willingness to do us harm.
BENCHLEY: Absolutely. And 25 years ago, 30 years ago, when "Jaws" was written, I used the best possible information available at the time, which just shows how ignorant everybody was, myself included, about sharks, because every behavior that's in the book had been done by a great white shark at one time or another.
But all the reasons were wrong. I had seen them attack boats. I had seen them attack people. I had seen this and seen that. Well, they weren't attacking boats and they weren't attacking people. The way they determine if something is edible is to go bite it. And so, when they were coming up and I was on a boat and you see this monster head come out of the water and gnash at the back of the boat, it was trying to see if this thing was edible. And similarly in the cage, when you get in the cage with these animals and they bite at the cage, you are sure they are trying to get at you. Not at all. They are trying to see if what is in there is edible.
BROWN: Well, yes, but, I mean, you throw blood in the water and Lord know what else, that is probably going to get their attention.
BENCHLEY: Absolutely. Sure. It's -- you are stimulating their feeding impulse, but then they come and they see now what's this coming from? Where is it? And then they gnaw at it to see if it's edible.
BROWN: You have been in those cages, right?
BENCHLEY: Many times.
BROWN: Really? And they are strong and you know nothing is going to happen to you. Presumably you know that, you believe that, or you wouldn't be down there, right?
BENCHLEY: Well, I had one bad incident with them. And when the shark got wrapped up in the rope that held the cage to the boat. And I knew from past history that what happens is if that happens, he'll tear through the rope with his teeth and then he's felled (ph) in the rope. And he'll take the cage to the bottom and beat it against the bottom until he gets rid of it. So I was quite concerned as the shark was, it was a big shark, about 3,000 pounds, was lashing back and forth and taking the cage under the boat and beating it against the bottom of the boat, and I had no idea what was going on. And finally, my wife, who was on board the boat, saw what was happening and came and shook the rope out of the shark's mouth and it went away. So, yes, it's unpleasant.
BROWN: I would think so. When you're -- just kind of on a good day in the cage, whatever that might be, and the shark comes at you to decide whether it is edible or not, what does that feel like?
BENCHLEY: It's the most remarkable feeling, especially the first time.
BROWN: Exhilirating.
BENCHLEY: It's wildly exhilarating. You see an animal, in my case, that I had written about, studied and done everything else. And it doesn't behave like any other animal in the world. It fears nothing. It knows no other animal that can give it problems. So it doesn't circle hesitantly. It doesn't do anything hesitantly. It comes in out of the gloom from way in the distance and it comes right at you.
And as it gets near you, it opens its mouth. And it clongs on the bars to the cage. And for that 10 seconds, five seconds, whatever it is, you think for sure you have made a serious error and it is an enormously amazing feeling.
Now, the subsequent times I have done it, when I knew what was going to happen, it was just pure admiration and awe at the beauty and efficiency of this creature.
BROWN: Is that part of the reason why you wrote this book that, you know, we went through last summer, the summer of sharks, and this kind of nonsensical sense that they were out there eating people left and right?
BENCHLEY: Absolutely. This was a large motive for it, because the first thing I began to do was write an essay, for whom I didn't know, about the hysteria, the hype that had gone on about what "Time" called on its cover "The Summer of the Shark." And I knew at the time and it was proven out that there were less -- there were fewer shark attacks in 2001 than in 2000. There were fewer fatalities.
What had happened was the Internet had given everybody the ability to be their own anchorman, their own editor, their own broadcaster, because what was in the past local news, shark attack in Sarasota, let's say, suddenly become national and international news when a guy could pick it up on the Internet and connect the one in Florida with the one in California with the one in South Africa, and from there he would build a trend. And then suddenly you are saying sharks all over the world are eating people.
So I was writing a letter, an essay against that when my editor and my agent said, why don't you turn this into a book and talk about, for instance, how to swim safely in the ocean. Forty percent of Americans say they swim for pleasure in the ocean and fewer than five percent know what the heck they are doing. So I did a whole chapter on how to...
BROWN: So, this is sort of a how-to to avoid being eaten alive?
BENCHLEY: Well, how to swim safely in the ocean. If you have got children, you want to have your kids know how to swim. Three little girls died last summer right off the beaches in Manhattan, Coney Island, from being in knee-deep water. So, people don't know about the ocean. It's the largest wilderness in the world and it's right at our doorstep.
BROWN: Just a final question. It's -- the fascinating animals have, obviously, served you well in your life. Do you ever get tired of it, though? I mean, it's been 30 years.
BENCHLEY: I never get tired of diving, and I never get tired of seeing new animals and being under water. Never.
BROWN: That's not really what I meant though. Do you get ever tired of talking about it or being identified with sharks?
BENCHLEY: Of course. But yet, I know if I get elected pope and I find the cure for cancer, my funeral they are going to play dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
BROWN: I think you are right.
BENCHLEY: Absolutely.
BROWN: So, you might as well enjoy it and have good humor about it?
BENCHLEY: I'll never escape it, so why not.
BROWN: All our problems should be so crazy. It's nice to meet you. Thanks for coming in.
BENCHLEY: Thank you. My pleasure.
BROWN: Thank you very much.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
Peter Benchley, and the book is called "Shark Trouble." There we go.
Next on NEWSNIGHT, Anderson Cooper gets to the bottom of the great alien fish mystery. You really do not want to go to bed yet. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
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BROWN: Our final -- oh, don't do this, Aaron. Our final creature feature tonight from the depths of the dark and mysterious waters, it's about an amphibious beast known to haunt only the waters of remote Asia that somehow appeared in a quiet unsuspecting spot in southern Maryland.
Vicious, threatening, no known predators, and bent, it seems, on global conquest.
There were two ways NEWSNIGHT could approach this. We could have sent one of the many capable science reporters on the CNN staff to look into this, or we could have sent Anderson Cooper. Serious science reporter? Anderson? Here's Anderson and the snakehead.
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ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Our tawdry tale begins innocently enough in this murky Maryland pond. Hidden by the still water lurks an alien terror.
All right, so maybe alien terror is a little too Geraldo.
Hidden by the still water lurks something kind of creepy. It's a fish, a northern snakehead, indigenous to China. for the purposes of ratings, however, we'll call it demon spawn, a monster, a Frankenfish.
(on camera): Krikey! Snakeheads are predators. They grow up to three feet in length and feast on fish and insects. They're not content to stay in the water, so they creep ashore using the creepily -- did I say creep twice -- using their eerily strong pectoralis fins. I didn't even know fish had pecs, but that's beside the point.
They survive for days on land moving from pond to pond, destroying all God's creatures in their path. Krikey!
(voice-over): The trail of terror began a few weeks ago when the first fish was found, oddly enough, by a fisherman.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I grabbed his mouth. He opened me some mean looking teeth.
COOPER: OK, I didn't really understand any of that, but I'm assuming he's saying he was surprised by the fish.
Authorities didn't like the smell of it. It was fishy, damn fishy. How did a Chinese fish get in a Maryland pond? Were there more? Had they bred like slimy, scaly rabbits? Had they moved to other ponds, other lakes? Would Washington itself be threatened?
Local media, not wanting to blow the danger out of proportion, tried to play down the story.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Their focus now is to make sure these land- walking eating machines don't try to make a break for it.
COOPER: Local villagers mobilized.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You search there! Fritz (ph), come with me! COOPER: Not since Frankenstein have they been so determined. They sent their bravest and not-so-brightest out to hunt the tiny tadpoles.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If they're not going to do the job, we will.
COOPER: But the kids failed to find all the fish, so federal officials called in the big guns, just as they had when Godzilla battled Geigen (ph), only this time they used much smaller guns, electric prods, actually, to stun the fish. They have killed about 100 so far, and they're trying to figure out how to get the rest.
ERIC SCHWAB, MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES: We have put together a scientific panel of experts to recommend eradication options to us, from electric to shocking on a large scale basis, which is a temporary stunning of the fish in the pond, to large scale netting.
Other options we might consider would include draining of the pond, possibly a limited use of poison.
COOPER: The problem is snakeheads have no natural enemies, so right now, it seems, the only thing standing between them and us is a man named Reserve Officer Fisher (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So if you see one coming up here, what are you going to do?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stomp on it.
COOPER: Anderson Cooper, CNN, New York.
BROWN: OK. If you thought the mystery was good, here come the facts, how the snakehead fish got into Maryland. According to the "Washington Post" it all began with a local man who wanted to make soup for his sister who was sick.
Two years ago the man called an Asian fish market here in New York City and ordered some live snakehead fish. Because, and who would have ever thought it, they make great soup.
By the time the fish arrived the sister was already well. The snakeheads grew too big for the house, so he tossed them into the pond, where they did what snakeheads do. They mated and spawned and on it goes. Well, actually it stops right now.
We'll see you again on Monday. Have a wonderful weekend. From all of us at NEWSNIGHT, good night.
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