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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Israeli Warplanes Strike Target in Gaza Strip; Another Big Down Day on Wall Street; What Is Best Way to Rebuild Ground Zero?
Aired July 22, 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 everyone. This page is short tonight. News has been breaking, and it is the kind of news that leads to more news. And the worst of it is, all of the news is bad.
There has been a while, but we're going to begin tonight with the Middle East. It was an Israeli F-16. A missile hit some buildings. We'll get into the details in a moment.
But it seems clear that either the planning was horrible, or that the missile missed his target, or the Israelis simply didn't care who they killed if they got their man, a Hamas military leader.
At the risk of provoking an e-mail barrage, we reject the latter possibility. We don't believe the Israeli government would risk killing a couple of hundred people in order to maybe -- maybe -- get one guy.
But, of course, some people will believe that. In the same way some people who support Israel will believe anything bad about Palestinians, some Palestinians will believe anything evil about Israel. It is just one of the many reasons the tragedy of the Middle East is the most maddening story for us to report.
It is not our nature to assume the absolute worst about any people, and we're not going to do that here. Others may. No, what we will do is what we always do. We will look for facts and we will report them as we find them. And the facts alone tonight aren't going to make anyone -- anyone -- feel very good.
"The Whip" begins in the Middle East, the attack and the likely reaction.
Matthew Chance has the latest.
Matt, the headline from you tonight, please.
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Once again, Aaron, the region plunged into violence and bloodshed, and an Israeli warplane strike against the Hamas target in the Gaza Strip. Confusion, though, Aaron, over whether the target was hit or not.
BROWN: Matthew, thank you. We'll be back with you in a moment. Another very difficult day on Wall Street. Christine Romans covering the market for us; another selloff.
Christine, the headline from you please.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the telecoms tanked, the financial stocks are weak; the volume at the Big Board soars. Investors are running scared. And Aaron, it was another big down day on Wall Street.
BROWN: Sounds pleasant. Christine, we'll be back with you shortly.
Now the story of Samantha Runnion and the man accused of killing her. In court today David Mattingly worked that story.
David, the headline from you tonight.
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, we were expecting to get our first look at Alejandro Avila in the courtroom today, as well as hear how he responds to the charges that he kidnapped, molested and murdered young Samantha Runnion.
That's not exactly what we got. I'll explain.
BROWN: Thank you David. Back to you. Back to all of you shortly.
Also coming up on NEWSNIGHT tonight: How best to rebuild Ground Zero.
The former mayor of New York said late last year that whatever it is, whatever takes the place of the Trade Centers has to be soaring and beautiful. We haven't heard anyone describe the proposals which came out last week as soaring or beautiful. We did hear the word "dismal" more than once. There was a town hall meeting this weekend in New York. We'll talk about that with Ed Wyatt, who's reporting on these matters for the "New York Times."
Always a report tonight about billions of dollars unaccounted for, and the people responsible. They are not the people you think they are. Here's a big hint, though: The story comes from our congressional correspondent Jonathan Karl.
And you may not know his name, but you probably do know the people he helped promote. People like Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters. A pioneer in preserving American music in its purest form tonight. At the end we'll remember Alan Lomax.
It is a very full hour. We begin in the Middle East. An Israeli airstrike, a possible Palestinian response, and what is looking like another bad week in the Middle East -- but, then, what constitutes a good one there?
This morning the story was Israeli and Palestinian negotiations. Some sort of Israeli troop pullback possible in the West Bank, and just maybe Hamas might stop the suicide bombings.
Events tonight take us in a different direction. One step forward, two steps back, that's life in the Middle East.
We go back to Jerusalem with CNN's Matthew Chance.
CHANCE: Well hopes, Aaron, that there could be some kind of peace on the move have been shattered as a result of this latest violence, this latest bloodshed. This time in the Gaza Strip at the hands of the Israeli military carrying out F-16 strikes against what they say was a terror target inside the Gaza Strip. Targeting their number one public enemy, Sheikh Salah Shehadeh, the military commander of the militant group Hamas, responsible, of course, they say, for hundreds of attacks against Israelis, the suicide attacks, the shootings. They say they are determined to fight.
The end result, though, a lot of carnage on the streets of Gaza. At least 12 people killed, about 150 injured.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): As the Palestinian death total rises, the scenes are provoking public shock and the wrath of militant groups.
In addition to the dead, which includes a number of children, hospital officials say as many as 150 people have been injured. Witnesses say three buildings collapsed after the airstrike.
Israel's military says its most wanted man was the target. Sheikh Salah Shehadeh, the military commander of Hamas in Gaza, responsible for hundreds of attacks against Israelis, including suicide bombings, the army insists is now dead.
But Palestinians say they've pulled only the bodies of his wife and children from the rubble.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sharon succeed in killing kids and killing innocent women and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and demolishing houses by the American F-16, but he failed in assassinating Sheikh Salah Shehadeh.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHANCE: So the Palestinians, Aaron, saying they have no evidence at this stage that the intended target of the Israeli strike has actually been killed. They say they have not yet pulled his body from the rubble.
Israel says that any attempt to say they did not succeed in taking out this Hamas military commander is merely an attempt to try and create an image around him of invulnerability.
Whatever the truth, whether he's dead or alive, Hamas, the militant group, have already vowed more revenge attacks against Israelis, Aaron.
BROWN: Well, setting aside for a second what the Israelis say about the Hamas military guy and whether he's dead or alive -- setting that aside what, if anything, did the Israelis say about the fact that 150 people, presumably many of them only innocents in all of this, have been hurt, and 10 people or more have been killed?
CHANCE: Well, they haven't had any comment so far on the civilian casualties of this strike. But obviously this is something that's provoking a great deal of outrage on the streets of Gaza amongst the Palestinian community and amongst the international community at large, of course.
This was a strike, perhaps a pinpoint strike, a targeted assassination, that seems to have gone wrong in some way. As I say, hospital officials say at least 12 people have now been killed, confirmed dead as a result of this attack, including the wife and three children of the Hamas military commander, 150 others injured, Aaron.
BROWN: OK Matt, thank you. Matthew Chance in Jerusalem reporting on the Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Thank you.
That is not the only violence in the Middle East tonight. A firefight erupted in the town of Rafah on the southern tip of Gaza right at that point where Gaza meets Egypt.
CNN's John Vause is there. And John joins us by phone.
John, what can you tell us?
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Israeli border post. It's a small border post here which patrols that border between Egypt and Gaza. A few hours after the airstrike on Gaza City, a fairly intensive firefight erupted here.
This border post is attacked almost nightly, but tonight it was a sustained, ferocious attack which lasted for two-and-a-half hours, during which the base commander was taken quite by surprise -- it took him quite by surprise.
There were dozens of grenades. There were anti-tank missiles. There was stutter (ph) fire and small arms fire. As I said, it lasted for several hours.
At one stage the base commander here feared that the outpost would, in fact, be overrun by Palestinians. He feared the anti-tank missiles would take out a wall of this post. He then called in some heavy armor. He called in an Israeli tank and a specially reinforced armored APC. They fired several rounds into the Rafah camp, the Rafah city, and then the Palestinians fled.
But as I said, this was a very ferocious firefight, and something which they don't see here all that often. They certainly are making the assumption that the Palestinians were, in the words of the base commander here, "highly motivated" after the attack on Gaza City, Aaron.
BROWN: John, thank you. Be safe out there. John Vause on the tip of Gaza tonight.
More on the Middle East now. We're joined from Philadelphia by Mideast scholar Daniel Pipes. It's good to see you again. What do you make of the events today? This is a difficult -- this is going to be difficult, I would think, for the Israelis to deal with.
DANIEL PIPES, MIDDLE EAST SCHOLAR: It certainly is. The Israelis have clearly made a mistake, and need to be more careful. It's a tragedy. We must all urge the Israelis to approach these problems more carefully.
That said, it is also important to realize that the Palestinians have a moral problem here in having the leaders of their military in civilian areas. There is no distinction, and they are making it I think on purpose a target for the Israelis so that when the Israelis do strike, it's likely that they will have civilian casualties.
So, the Israelis have got to be more careful, but the Palestinians are not playing fair. You don't put your military men in houses with children.
BROWN: Well, the guy -- I want to understand this because this strikes me a bit of a stretch. You got a guy apparently at home with his wife and children. Now, other than walking around the streets with a target on his back, what is it he's supposed to be doing?
PIPES: Military installations in the Palestinian areas are consistently found in civilian areas. So, what one finds all the time is the Israelis are trying very hard to avoid taking -- inflicting casualties and sometimes even taking themselves.
You remember, a few months ago, some 13 Israelis were killed because they fell into a booby trap. So, it happens both ways. I mean, I'm in no way apologizing for what the Israelis have done today. I'm just saying there's a context, and it's one which is tragic.
But it's one in which this man, Salah Shehadeh, has a very important role. He is one of the founders of the military wing of Hamas. He was in Israeli jail for 14 years, from 1984 to 1998. He's a close associate of the leader of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin (ph). He's been, as was indicated earlier, on the top of the Israelis' most wanted list for some months now. The Israelis did blow up his house actually in December of last year. He is their target and he is, as I said before, and I think it's fair to say, he's making sure that he's surrounded by his wife, his children and other civilians.
BROWN: Would you agree that the end results of this, whether it was a good move, bad move, stupid, however, the end result of this is simply going to be more violence on both sides, that that is the natural outcome of this sort of event?
PIPES: No. I think I disagree, Aaron. Because I don't think it's a state of peace that's interrupted by the occasional, you know, spasmodic event of violence. I think there's a war taking place and there are occasional lulls in that war. And the key question is not when is the next act of violence going take place. The key question is who is winning this war, who is losing this war, what are the implications of that. It's a war.
We just heard from John Vause about a firefight. This is war. And we should expect more violence. We shouldn't expect that just when there's nothing happening, that's the normal state. No, that's a lull between battles in this war. And it's a war that has been going on now for almost two years, since September of the year 2000.
BROWN: Professor, it's always good to talk to you. Thank you.
PIPES: Thank you.
BROWN: It's a difficult story to report for us tonight. Thank you, sir. Daniel Pipes in Philadelphia.
That's the Middle East. We'll keep an eye on that as the hour goes along. If we hear from the Israeli government, we'll be reporting on that too.
On to other things, the stock markets. Investors had the weekend to think things over and they woke up on Monday morning, and they said hey, come on, sell some more. Large companies small, old economy high-tech, didn't matter a whole lot. We're all being sold off. Dow racking up another day of triple-digit losses. Investor confidence suffering.
And the president, who has any number of other things we suspect he would rather be dealing with, instead rather spent another day reacting to the market. And somewhere back in the distant past, Sunday I think it was, we saw the biggest corporate bankruptcy ever. News enough for a dozen financial correspondents, which means it was a very busy day for Christine Romans.
ROMANS: It has been a busy nine weeks, six months. I tell you, stocks are still falling. No relief today, Aaron. The Dow has its eighth triple-digit selloff in just 11 sessions.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): What's wrong with stocks? Earnings reports are pouring in, but investors don't believe company executives who wrote the reports, the auditors who check the numbers or the analysts who recommend the stocks and that mistrust breeds fear.
HUGH JOHNSON, FIRST ALBANY ASSET MANAGEMENT: What's driving the markets now is clearly emotion. There's not much consideration of the economic fundamentals. They are good. The earnings numbers that we are seeing, they are good. This is primarily emotions, the emotion of fear and despair.
ROMANS: Add to that WorldCom's bankruptcy filing, the largest in U.S. history, and even the president couldn't help the stock market today.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm an optimist. I believe the future is going to be bright. But, look, you are talking to the wrong guy about what stocks to buy. ROMANS: After a roller coaster ride, the Dow closed down 234 points to 7784. We haven't seen that level since October 1998. Meanwhile, investors are pulling their money out of mutual funds.
JEFF TABAK, MILLER TABAK & CO., INC: Where the policy had been previously let's buy the dip, now the average retail investor is saying, get me out and get me out at any cost.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: All that selling has pummeled the major indices. So far this year, the Dow is down 22 percent, the Nasdaq down 34 percent, the S&P 500 down 28 percent. Any way you cut it, Aaron, it has been a painful six months on the market.
BROWN: We are at about the middle of the year. How much was the market down last year?
ROMANS: The market down last year was about 18 percent, 12 to 18 percent depending on the indice.
BROWN: And that's with September 11 factored in.
ROMANS: Absolutely. Remember the market bounced very nicely after September 11.
BROWN: Right. They had a very difficult opening after that, but they came back. And the lowest point in the market in that -- in the post-September 11 period was where?
ROMANS: 8062 for the Dow. We closed at 7784 today. So, we are well below those levels. I mean, you have got to go back to 1997 to see where the Nasdaq was, to see where the S&P was. Five years of market gains are gone.
BROWN: I worked really hard for those five-year gains too. Thank you very much. Nice to see you again. It has been a long time.
ROMANS: Thanks.
BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, later in the program, will this year pennant race be sidetracked by a strike. Imagine that, a strike in baseball. Who would have thought?
Coming up next, we'll go to court in Orange County, California. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Legal wheels have started to turn in the case of Samantha Runnion, the 5-year-old kidnapped and murdered a week ago in Orange County, California. The man accused in the crime made a court appearance by closed-circuit TV today. His lawyers asked for another month before entering a plea. The prosecution says, come on, let's go, we are ready. And what the prosecution seems ready for is a death penalty case against Alejandro Avila. Here again, CNN David Mattingly.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JUDGE GARY PAER, ORANGE COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT: Your true name Alejandro Avila?
ALEJANDRO AVILA, SUSPECT: Yes.
PAER: Is it spelled A-V-I-L-A?
AVILA: Yes.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Soft spoken and with one-word answers, Alejandro Avila's first court appearance by video remote. The special hook-up kept the man accused of killing Samantha Runnion in the Orange County jail as the judge read the four-count indictment.
PAER: In count one, you're charged with kidnapping. That's a felony. Count two, you are charged with forcible lewd conduct upon a child under the age of 14. That's filed as a felony. Count three is identical. You're charged with forcible lewd act upon a child under 14. That's also filed as a felony. In count four you are charged with murder.
MATTINGLY: According to the indictment the case carries special circumstances. In other words, murder during a kidnapping and murder in connection with sexual assault. Both allow prosecutors to pursue the death penalty.
TONY RACKAUCKAS, ORANGE COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Anyone who commits an act like this in Orange County will either die in prison of natural causes or will be executed.
MATTINGLY: But the question of guilty or not guilty remains unresolved for now by Avila, who also remains in jail without bond, alone in a cell for his own protection. His attorney appealing for a month's delay in the case because of the abundance of evidence. The judge, however, siding with prosecutors, delaying only until August 9.
(on camera): And the prosecutors you say are ready to go. They balk at that idea of a delay. They are now ready to go back into court and we'll be there with them on August 9 - Aaron.
BROWN: Just briefly on the evidence. There was a lot of talk over the weekend about DNA evidence, other evidence. What are you hearing?
MATTINGLY: Today they are still very confident, that confidence transferred from the authorities who were gathering the evidence now transferred to the prosecutors in the case. That DNA evidence they have been talking about, supposedly the smoking gun, that definitively connects the defendant to Samantha Runnion.
BROWN: David, thank you. David Mattingly in Orange County, California. We quickly turn to legal analyst and former prosecutor Jeffrey Toobin. While prosecutors never come out and go, I don't know, the case a little squishy, hopefully it will work out, but we are not that sure. So we don't necessarily put a lot of stock in that.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Absolutely. You don't arrest someone, you don't announce an arrest without feeling confident. They seem confident, but obviously we'll wait to see what the evidence is.
BROWN: Just give me your practiced eye on this. At this point in listening to both the sheriff last week, and he was out there to be listened to, and the district attorney today, where do you think the case is, what kind of case you think they are playing with?
TOOBIN: Well, what is unusual here is that they keep saying there's a lot we are not telling you. So that obviously is tantalizing, but you don't know what it is. Clearly in a case like this, the silver bullet evidence is DNA. If Samantha's hair, blood, turns up in the car, in Avila's car, in his clothing, in his house, there's just - the case is over. Even without that it looks like a pretty strong case. This astonishing sketch based on the little girl's evidence, that's pretty impressive stuff.
BROWN: But nobody goes down on a sketch.
TOOBIN: Nobody goes down on a sketch, but the fact that he had ties across the corridor in this housing development. It's looking pretty bad for this guy.
BROWN: These are death penalty - the possibility of death penalty, it's a special circumstance case, the prosecution has the option here, he's not getting out on bail.
TOOBIN: It is impossible to get out on bail legally and as a factual matter you would never let anyone out like this.
BROWN: What kind of record - let's assume something for a second. Crazy as it may seem, I think they're going to go for the death penalty here. What kind of record does California have in providing quality legal help in a death penalty case?
TOOBIN: Better than most states. It has a pretty good record. What is the real problem in the California death penalty case, I guess you could call it a problem, is that once people are sentenced to death, the appeals process is endless. There are people who are on death row in California for 10 years. It is a system that has completely stopped at the appellate stage. But in...
BROWN: More so than other states?
TOOBIN: More so than other states, absolutely. They just don't - they have a lot of people on death row and almost no executions scheduled. And I don't want to sound like a cheerleader for the death penalty but it's just the system has really failed to function at the appellate level. But these trials tend to be sort of fair. There are people who are prepared. They have specialists in the death penalty and undoubtedly if this is a death case I think the representation will be adequate.
BROWN: I want to go back to the evidence here. The sheriff last week talked about physical evidence. I assume that would - the DNA would be part of that. And then he talked about investigative evidence. What is he talking about there, some witnesses?
TOOBIN: Witnesses. People who saw and also physical evidence that is not DNA, just the -people seeing the car, people seeing him, his possible connection to the family previously that would be other evidence.
BROWN: And just for the record, his previous trial is irrelevant to this case and will never come in.
TOOBIN: It could never come into evidence but I have to say, talking about it as a former prosecutor, how haunted they must be by the fact that they lost that case, because if he had been convicted he would have been off the street.
BROWN: Thank you, Jeffrey. Jeffrey Toobin in tonight.
Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, back to the drawing board it does appear for the plans to rebuild Ground Zero. We're going to deal with that some tonight.
And up next, the case of the missing moon rocks and who took them. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: When you hear the rough outline of this story, you might ask yourself, why does this thing make it onto a national news program? A group of four people, three of the student employees, used their access to steal a safe then try to hock the stuff on the Internet. That's the story's outline. Sounds cut and dried until you hear what was inside the safe: Moon rocks and meteorites from every single Apollo mission. They were stolen from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The four were offering to sell "priceless Moon rocks" as they put it. The price: $1000 to $5000 per gram. Undercover agents pulled off an online sting to catch the four and recover the rocks. They're charged with conspiracy to steal government property and transportation of stolen goods.
Here are a couple of other stories making news around the country tonight. We start in Detroit. The U.S. Customs Service has arrested Jordanian-born man at the airport in Detroit coming from Indonesia with $12 million in counterfeit checks. Omar Shishani was on the terrorism watch list after his name was found on documents in several raids in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He's in custody.
Wildfires out west. Firefighters try to control blazes in Oregon and Washington state. Fires that blackened more than a 100,000 acres of the high desert. They are very concerned about the Lake Chelan fire in Washington. Nearly 1000 people fighting the blaze, 11 miles long. Forecast isn't encouraging. More hot dry weather expected along with erratic winds. And the forecast is most definitely not encouraging for those snakehead fish, not these things again, that found their way into a pond in Maryland. Scientists have recommending poisoning the pond to kill the fish, which can live outside the water and eat everything in their path. My. A local man had ordered the fish from New York a few years back to make a special soup for his ailing. But she got well and so he dumped the fish in a pond and here we are.
This is one of those stories that if it wasn't so serious, it would be funny. There is, after all, something slightly amusing about government officials, members of Congress in both parties, budget directors past and present railing against the accounting shenanigans of corporate America. After all, the federal government may not have invented bookkeeping dishonesty, but it does seem to have turned it into an art form. The story from CNN's Jonathan Karl.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JONATHAN KARL, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There's been no shortage of congressional outrage over shady corporate accounting.
SEN. CHRIS DODD (D), CONNECTICUT: This wasn't just cooking the books. This was marinating them, sauteeing them and garnishing them. This was a recipe for financial disaster.
REP. BILLY TAUZIN (R), LOUISIANA: This is not accounting 101. This is fraud 101.
KARL: All that tough talk obscures a basic fact: Congress' own accounting practices look eerily like the schemes used by Enron and WorldCom.
REP. MICHAEL OXLEY (R), OHIO: It appears now that senior WorldCom executives deliberately hid almost $4 billion in expenses, disguising its true performance.
KARL: But Congress has perfected the art of understating expenses, sometimes not counting them at all. For example, last year Congress approved a $15 billion bail-out of the Railroad Workers Pension Fund, but not a dime of that money was counted on the ballot sheet -- a trick not even WorldCom can pull off.
(on camera): There's more. A lot more. Congress classified money for the 2000 census sues as emergency spending. Of course, the census is not an emergency. It has been done every 10 years since the dawn of the republic, but the move enabled Congress to keep $4.5 billion off the books.
(voice-over): And Congress was able to wipe $2.3 billion in cost off the 2001 budget by simply paying military employees a day early. That's because it moved the big payday from the first day of fiscal year 2001 to the last day of 2000. And this sort of thing is nothing new.
TIM PENNY, FORMER MEMBER OF CONGRESS: That kind of gimmickry, that kind of smoke and mirrors was part and parcel of the way we did budgeting all during the 1980's.
KARL: In fact, back in 1985 David Stockman, Reagan's budget director said: "We have increasingly resorted to squaring the circle with accounting gimmicks, evasions, half-truths and downright dishonesty in our budget numbers. If the SEC had jurisdiction over the executive and legislative branches, many of us would be in jail.
SEN. PETER FITZGERALD (R), ILLINOIS: I'd say you were a carnival barker, except that wouldn't be fair to carnival barkers. A carney will at least tell you up front that he's running a shell game.
KARL: Enron's alleged crime was using accounting gimmicks to conceal its debts, which is exactly what Congress does, but with much bigger numbers.
DAVID WALKER, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE: What you won't find in the U.S. government's financial statements is you won't find shown as a liability the amount that the U.S. government owes to the trust funds of Social Security and Medicare.
KARL: If you counted all the money Congress owes future retirees, he's the true size of the federal debt is several trillion dollars higher, but don't look for the true debt to show up on the debt clock any time soon. Like most federal laws, the corporate accountability law won't apply to Congress.
Jonathan Karl, CNN, Capitol Hill.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: A few quick items making news around the world, starting in Afghanistan, where American advisers may soon be called upon to train a new security force to protect the Afghan President Karzai. No easy job in a country where assassination is a fairly popular way of settling political disputes. A spokesman for President Karzai says the advisers might come from the U.S. Secret Service. A "no comment" from U.S. officials on that.
The Saudi prince who knew a winning horse or two has died. Prince Ahmed, as they called him, as Prince Charming, as others did, he owned War Emblem, the horse that nearly won the Triple Crown this year. Prince Ahmed died in Riyadh. He had been ill for some time. He was but 44.
And in Tasmania, there is this. It washed up over the weekend, all 500 pounds of it. Scientists are very excited, after all, and you should be too. They rarely see a squid this big. And they think it could belong to an entirely new species -- thank goodness for that.
Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, a new fall classic -- baseball braces for a strike. Would those two sides be dumb enough to go on strike? Do you think that could happen? That and much more as we continue. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: New Yorkers are a famously argumentative bunch, so it's remarkable when so many New Yorkers agree on something, and the something we are talking about are the six proposals for rebuilding lower Manhattan down by the Trade Center, where the Trade Centers were. In a nutshell, no one seemed to like them very much. Of course, the designers probably do. And some officials who are very much concerned with bringing office space and economic development and tax revenue back to the area certainly like the concept, but pretty much no one else seemed to like it a whole lot. Not "The New York Times," not the mayor of New York, not the outside architects, and not the majority of some 4,000 New Yorkers who turned out at the Jarvis (ph) center on Saturday for a town hall meeting on the proposals.
Here's some of what some of them had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think we are pretty unanimous about the six proposals that they put out. We thought that there was far too much weight given to commercial development.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I really feel we have other ways that we can get the revenue that was lost and generated by having a beautiful memorial on the site, which accommodates for the amount of people that are going to be coming there, working there, so that we can have a 24- seven, 365-day community.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: After hearing the outcry on Saturday, officials decided -- this actually was quite remarkable -- to slow down the design process, do some rethinking of the criteria. Edward Wyatt is covering the planning for the site for "The New York Times" and he joins us tonight. It's nice to have you with us.
EDWARD WYATT, "NEW YORK TIMES" REPORTER: Thank you.
BROWN: Quickly, has "The Times" editorialized on the designs?
WYATT: They did.
BROWN: OK, and they did not care for them. No, I know you did not.
WYATT: They did not.
BROWN: They did not. And they didn't care for them.
WYATT: No.
BROWN: OK. Let's move on. My sense is that -- I don't mean this as my sense of what's wrong with them -- my sense of the way people are reacting is that the designs lack a vision or boldness about them. A grandness.
WYATT: Well, that was one of Mayor Giuliani's last statements, about the memorial. We need something soaring and grand. What people said this weekend was they want something soaring and grand to put back in the New York skyline. They want their skyline back. And they also were completely uninspired by this. They want to go down there and see something and feel something that is in character with what this tragedy was.
BROWN: And this was a pretty good smack in the face to the Port Authority, which had come up with the criteria, fair?
WYATT: The Port Authority said, we have to put back everything that's there. People said without a doubt we don't want all of it. It's just too much to put on that space.
BROWN: And as a practical matter, does the city need that much commercial space?
WYATT: Not right now. There's an enormous amount of empty office space down there. The World Trade Center itself just got filled up really with commercial tenants in the last few years. So, it would be a long time before all that space would be needed again.
BROWN: There's another side to delay, and it looks like we are headed for delay, which is there's a lot of work that I think everybody in one form or another know needs to be done. The things that went on under the Trade Center, the transportation hubs and that sort of thing, all of that is delayed now, right?
WYATT: Well, everything is interrelated. You can't start what is underground until you know what is going to be above ground because buildings have to have foundations, and the pillars have to go through somewhere. So, to design a train station underground, you need to have a general idea where buildings are going to go. You can't design the buildings on top until you know what is below them.
BROWN: All right. So, how much of a delay do you think we are looking at?
WYATT: Well, initially, the plan was to narrow this down by the end of the year to one master plan for the site. I think we are well into next year before that happens. It will be the end of the year I think before we get narrowed down to two or three ideas that people can then react to and way down the road for one.
BROWN: People -- were people more upset with the way the memorials were done, because I thought the one memorial, particularly the promenade that sort of focuses your eye out on to the harbor and the Statue of Liberty, was actually quite nice. Were they more upset about the way the memorials have been laid out or the concepts of the memorials or the commercial space around it?
WYATT: I think they were more upset by the commercial space around it. They said two things about a memorial. One is that they want the footprints of the Towers left untouched.
BROWN: Yes, someone wrote me the other day and said, when you say footprints, what do you mean? And we mean where the Towers once stood.
WYATT: That's basically a one-acre square where each of the Towers were. Now, the strange thing about what they said on Saturday is that the one design they liked the most, one that builds a large promenade all the way down the west side of the highway and would have a beautiful stretch from Battery Park to the World Trade Center site, builds on those. It sets apart two plots that are representational, but not exactly where the Towers were. People said that won't work either. You have to make some adjustments there.
BROWN: Sounds like you have got work for awhile.
WYATT: It's going to be a long process, but one that's fascinating.
BROWN: It is fascinating. Thanks for coming in. It's nice to meet you.
WYATT: Thank you.
BROWN: Ed Wyatt of the "New York Times," who is reporting on the attempt to rebuild what was the World Trade Center site.
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, a look at the life of a man who spent 70 years traveling this country in search of American music.
When we come back, we go to Boston, Fenway Park, a tribute to Ted Williams and more. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
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BROWN: Recently, someone who was a huge Red Sox fan as a high school student seven decades ago said this: "I worship the ground Ted Williams walked on." That someone was George Herbert Walker Bush, and while the former president wasn't able to get to Fenway tonight, many others were, a tribute that was thankfully free of controversy.
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SEAN MCDONOUGH, ANNOUNCER: Earlier today, more than 10,000 people filed through our historic ballpark to pay their respects to the legendary No. 9. Tonight, we will focus on the aspects of Ted Williams' life that made him an American icon.
JERRY COLEMAN, FORMER BASEBALL PLAYER: He was a great patriot. He was an even greater American. And his greatest pride was being a Naval aviator in the United States Marine Corps.
JOHN GLENN, FORMER ASTRONAUT: Baseball excellence may be what Ted will be remembered by most people. But his dedication to another kind of excellence as a Marine jet fighter pilot will be my greatest memory of him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To be able to say, you know, he's the greatest hitter that ever lived, but to be able to say he's my friend meant even more. When he spoke, I hung on every word. You really do. You listen to every single thing he says and you remember it.
TED WILLIAMS, BASEBALL HALL-OF-FAMER: I never met a great baseball player who didn't have to work harder or willing (ph) to play baseball than anything else he ever did. To me, it was the greatest line I ever had, which probably explains why today, I feel both the humility and pride because God let me play the game and to learn to be good at it, proud because I spent most of my life in the company of so many wonderful people.
KEN BURNS, HISTORIAN: Ted Williams is a true God of baseball. And I think I speak for all of us when I say to him godspeed and batspeed, Ted.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Fenway Park tonight. That's the baseball good for the night. Now comes the baseball bad. Sport seems to be inching toward another strike. Somehow they can't figure out how to divide equitably $3 billion. Keith Olbermann is here. You know, it used to be that arbitration day was my favorite day in sport. But now...
KEITH OLBERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we could have a series of them, about 150 in a row. On the record, an executive with the Baseball Player's Association says Monday, September 16 has no more significance than any other date right now.
A trade publication, the "Sports Business Journal," says the union today sent a memo to its membership insisting it has not set eights weeks from tonight as its strike deadline. Tuesday's "New York Times" reports an earlier strike date is still under consideration.
Off the record though, one source close to the union told me tonight the 16th is it. Several sources indicated last week and the "Los Angeles Times" reported this morning that September 16 is the union's tentative strike date, and that its selection rests on three key elements, the first of them being that on September 15, the players are to receive their next to last paychecks of the season.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: No more strike! No more strike!
OLBERMANN (voice-over): Even a repeat of 1994's disastrous season-ending strike would cost the players just one-twelfth of their salaries while devastating management's ticket revenues during the pennant races and its postseason income from tickets and television.
WILLIAM J. CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: In a great event like the baseball strike, I think there's an assumption that customers are always there. But the only thing I'd like to say to both sides is that there are a lot of little kids out there who want to see this season come to a close.
OLBERMANN: Secondly, many including the union believe the owners cannot sustain a long strike. With a short one, the playoffs and World Series could be saved. And thirdly, September 16 is not September 11. The players are terrified of public reaction if they are on strike on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks. They seem less concerned about public reaction if they are talking about a strike on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks.
Baseball has already taken heat for just scheduling games on September 11. Fans, like those in Milwaukee for the All-Star Game fiasco two weeks ago, seem to be showing an undercurrent of anger, seem to be spoiling for a fight. The amount of heat were games to be played on the anniversary while millionaires talk about striking can only be guessed at.
Moreover, there is the matter of September 17. Monday, September 17, 2001 was the day the baseball season resumed and began to play its part in the healing of the nation.
(APPLAUSE)
OLBERMANN: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 in the midst of a solemn time of remembrance as ever in this country's history would be the first full day of canceled games, empty stadiums and re-embittered fans.
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OLBERMANN: Compared to the timing and symbolism, the rank-and- file willing to face what could well be unprecedented public wrath, the economics here seem almost incidental, but they are hardly that. Just by forfeiting their last paychecks, the players would lose over $168 million in salaries, plus their $40 million share of World Series receipts.
Tonight, Sal Gallattione (ph) of the Lehman Brothers Firm, perhaps the leading analyst of sports finance in the business world, told me that the owners' losses from the season-ending strike would be a quote, "huge multiple of the players' losses." Minimally that's five to 10 times as much, even subtracting those unpaid salaries, the owners conservatively face a loss of more than $1 billion -- Aaron.
BROWN: They get a bunch of -- the owners have stocked a bunch of money away just in case.
OLBERMANN: Not quite that much. They are talking also about what man used the term "helter-skelter contraction," with some of the larger teams going out of business, because they are just stretched out financially and heavily invested in the stock market, too.
BROWN: It's remarkable. Thank you. Good to see you.
OLBERMANN: My pleasure.
BROWN: I have a feeling we are going to be seeing a lot of each other...
OLBERMANN: Oh, yeah.
BROWN: ... in the months ahead. BROWN: When we come back, remembering a harvester of music. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Finally from us tonight, Alan Lomax. Mr. Lomax died the other day. He was 87 and he will be sorely missed. It is hard to imagine what American music would be like if it were not for Mr. Lomax. It's not that there would be fewer songs; it's that we never would have known how many rich and varied and wonderful songs American musical heritage has produced.
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(MUSIC)
BROWN (voice-over): For almost 70 years, first with his father, John Lomax and then on his own, Alan Lomax traveled the back roads of this country, lugging primitive recording equipment that weighed hundreds of pounds in search of whatever music might be springing up out of the soil and out of the soul of those American places outsiders hardly ever visit.
He went to prison farms, to cotton fields, to cowboy camps, to shacks and shanties, sat on who knows how many front porches. The American music he wanted the rest of America to hear had nothing to do with Tin Pan Alley or Nashville, or recording studios, or Hollywood. What he was after was the musical equivalent of moonshine -- raw, homemade, seldom offered to strangers, and strong enough when taken straight to make your head snap back.
To get that music, he sat at the knees of people whose lives were nothing to sing about, but who sang anyway.
During his travels, he ran into a young fellow named Woody Guthrie and a guy calling himself Muddy Waters, and a parolee nicknamed Leadbelly who had written a song called "Good Night Irene." Ran into lots of others, too, Cajuns and convicts, sharecroppers, fishermen, gandy dancers, working people of every kind and color, and plenty of people without work, too.
What Alan Lomax found among all those overlooked Americans, in all those overlooked places, what he harvested, he put into books, radio broadcast, films, TV shows, recording thousands of recordings. In time, those recordings were heard by the pioneers of pretty nearly every other kind of American music still to come -- blues, R&B, gospel, rock'n'roll -- all have in their bloodstream strong doses of what Alan Lomax spent his life collecting.
Last year's Grammy award album of the year is the soundtrack to the film "O Brother Where Art Thou?" has on it a recording made by Lomax in a penitentiary in Mississippi 43 years ago.
He traveled the rest of the world too, and dreamed toward the end of his life putting together what he called "a global jukebox," a giant computer database of all the native music and dance of the world. That is work others will have to finish now. But it was not as if Alan Lomax didn't do enough.
Even now, if you ignore the rhinestones and the reverb when you hear something that rings especially true, you are probably hearing some bit of pure powerful American song that Alan Lomax tracked down long ago, back when it was growing wild.
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BROWN: Alan Lomax.
Good to have you with us on a Monday. We hope we'll see you again tomorrow at 10:00 o'clock Eastern time. Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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