Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Non-Stop Efforts Continue to Save Trapped Miners; Four Ft. Bragg Soldiers Accused of Killing Wives
Aired July 26, 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.
Those of you who get the daily e-mail know I seem to be in a bit of a mood today. I hate that. It's just something about the week. The Middle East is always a tough one. The sides are so passionate and so certain. And this was a difficult week there.
But it was more than that. Too many kids are dying. And while I know the statistics and I believe them, our kids are in no greater danger now, the fact is that too many, even if too many is just the average number, are dying. There was Samantha Runnion and today, this child in Missouri, Casey Williamson. There's a story I did in the newsbreak tonight about a kid in Florida who was swimming in a lake and contracted a deadly disease. And then, not far away in another lake, another kid, a different disease, this child is in critical condition.
There was the kidnapping the other day in Philadelphia of Erica Pratt, and then there's another story tonight out of Florida, and the Child Welfare Department that lost Rilya Wilson, that department has yet another sad embarrassment on its hands. So there have been just too many of them and they take a toll on you and all of us.
So, I did today what I suspect many of you do in these moments. I spent the day with my kid. I taught her to putt, and while it is against the rules, so please don't tell, I let her drive the golf cart. We had lunch and we laughed a lot.
This page, I know, shouldn't be this self indulgent. It should be about big issues and big questions, and so for that I apologize, and I apologize for this as well tonight. Just this one time, I'd rather be playing foosball with a 13-year-old beauty than hanging out with you. It's been that sort of week.
On to "The Whip" we go, which begins in Somerset, Pennsylvania, an extraordinary drama is being played out there. Nine men trapped underground in a mine, the non-stop effort to save their lives. Jeff Flock is still there. Jeff the headline from you tonight.
JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the headline tonight is that it's been a frustrating day but I can tell you now, as we speak, two holes are being dug simultaneously, escape holes. They are literally both racing against each other and to save these men. We'll tell you about it.
BROWN: Jeff, thank you very much. A strange and troubling story out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, a string of murders there of military wives, their husbands suspected. Mark Potter is in Fayetteville tonight. So, Mark, the headline from you.
MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, officials here say they've never seen anything like it, four soldiers accused of killing their wives. Three of those soldiers served in Afghanistan, and now there are lots of questions about why this occurred and whether it could have been prevented. Aaron.
BROWN: Mark, thank you, good to see you again. A new figure has emerged in the war on terror. He is in U.S. custody tonight. Kelli Arena has the story. Kelli, a headline.
KELLI ARENA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right, Aaron, officials say he's an al Qaeda operative and he's admitted to participating in a terrorist plot against the U.S. He's providing other information as well, back to you.
BROWN: Thank you. And a debate over the Homeland Security Department is on the Hill and so is Jonathan Karl. Jon, the headline from you.
JONATHAN KARL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, in a remarkable twist, the president is so upset with what the Democrats have done to his homeland security proposal that today he threatened to reject it.
BROWN: Jon, thank you very much, we're back to you, all of you shortly. Also coming up on the program tonight, we'll take a look at the trial of Alejandro Avila, not the one he's facing, the one where he was acquitted. A lot of scrutiny in that case and a lot of anger for the distraught family of Samantha Runnion, we'll take a look.
The days of high fives and hugs seem like a century ago, don't they? AOL Time Warner is the latest big company to have investigators looking through its books, a story naturally that hits close to home for us. We'll talk with "Wall Street Journal" reporter Kara Swisher tonight.
"Segment Seven" is the All-American Soapbox Derby, downhill racers who are part of a great American tradition that goes back to the days of the depression. And not a soapbox, but a soap opera from Candy Crowley, the political kind, the star is the mayor of Washington, D.C., and the title of this one might well be "what was he thinking?"
All of that in the hour ahead, a bit of Friday stuff, but some very serious stuff and that's where we start, the trapped coalminers and the efforts to save them. We ought to say right now that this is not a frantic effort as such. It is measured and professional and cool.
The people manning the drills and operating the pumps don't need to be reminded how to do their jobs or what's at stake. They know and they are not frantic. We've seen work like this before in other places and it's never frantic, neither is it easy, especially not today. Here's CNN's Jeff Flock.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FLOCK (voice over): There it is, the rig drilling the escape hole for the nine veteran miners silent.
GOV. MARK SCHWEIKER (R), PENNSYLVANIA: Great four-hour run and we're stopped.
FLOCK: Admits Pennsylvania Governor Mark Schweiker first thing Friday morning. The bit broke off overnight after they got down about 100 feet. Drilling crews spent most of the day with giant wrenches and other equipment trying to fish it up.
JOE SHAFIONI: You can't do anything else until you pull that drill bit out.
SCHWEIKER: We're going to send equipment down that will kind of grab a hold of it and you got to kind of screw it and you tighten it up and you bring it up, but it's 50/50.
FLOCK: Beneath a warm rain, family members watch the frantic efforts. The rest holed up in this fire station nearby.
SCHWEIKER: As you can easily imagine in a state of high anxiety.
FLOCK: It gets worse. Just after noon, 24 hours since the rescuers last heard tapping from the miners, word comes that they got the drill bit free. Then, they changed their story.
UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: So the drill bit is not yet out of the hole?
FLOCK: Three hours later, it finally is.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We just got positive confirmation a few minutes ago that the drill bit for Rescue Shaft 1 is in fact out of the hole.
FLOCK: In the meantime, they started a second shaft, and now they'll drill both of them setting up a race to the bottom. How long can the miners last?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's been cases where people have been in a mine for a week before being rescued.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FLOCK (on camera): Of course, what is not said here tonight, Aaron, on everyone's minds of course is that they have not heard from these men in any real substantive way since Noon yesterday, and of course what is not said is the fear that they are not alive down there. They are operating, of course, as though they are and there are vigils. There are prayers being said all around this town. As you know, miners stick together. They're a solid bunch. They are people that often have a long history of mining in their background and they're trying to keep their wits about them tonight as this effort continues, because they don't know how long it's going to take. We expect to get a briefing here in a few moments and probably some better indication of that.
They were about 100 feet down on the one hole last they checked, about 40 or 45 feet down on the second hole. They have to go 247, 250 feet or so, and when they'll get there, we don't know. That's it from Somerset, back to you.
BROWN: Thank you. Why don't we let you go deal with the briefing and you let us know what comes out of it and we'll update the story as we need to. Jeff, thank you, Jeff Flock, Somerset, Pennsylvania.
It is a difficult thing that is going on there because they really don't know and have no reason to believe right now, so they simply hope, and we'll update the story as we can.
On we go. We are very hesitant about drawing any quick inferences from this string of murders at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The facts speak for themselves as the facts so often do. Four army wives have been killed over the past month and a half, allegedly by their husbands.
Three of the husbands were in the Special Forces. One was Airborne. Three of the four were just back from combat. Two of the husbands killed themselves as well. All of this in a military community and this is really intriguing to note, where there has not been a domestic killing in two years. Here again CNN's Mark Potter.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
POTTER (voice over): Three of the four soldiers accused of murdering their wives were assigned to Special Operations and had served in Afghanistan. On June 11th, police say one of them, after just returning home from his deployment, shot and killed his wife, then turned the gun on himself.
On June 29th, investigators say Master Sergeant William Wright, home six weeks from Afghanistan, strangled his wife to death, buried her in a forest, then finally confessed to police.
SHERIFF EARL BUTLER, CUMBERLAND COUNTY: Sergeant Wright led detectives to his wife's body, which he had buried on June 29th in a remote wooded area off Plank (ph) Road on the Fort Bragg Military Reservation.
POTTER: On July 9th, Sergeant Cedric Griffin allegedly stabbed his wife 50 times, then set fire to their home with his two children still inside. The children escaped and their father was arrested.
And, on July 19th, Sergeant First Class Brandon Floyd, who left Afghanistan seven months ago, allegedly shot and killed his wife, then killed himself. Cumberland County Sheriff Earl Butler wonders whether the stresses of deployment and military life played a role in these tragedies.
BUTLER: Well, I think this could very easily bring about the homicides that we've seen. Now I'm not saying it did, but I think it very easily could have precipitated this type of behavior among these people.
POTTER: Three of the cases occurred in Cumberland County, where another theory is the murders had little to do with military life, but instead were the sad results of longstanding domestic problems.
LT. SAM PENNICA, HOMICIDE COMMANDER: All three of these occurred within their own bedrooms and they were in our investigation, without discussing the details of it, all of them were having a lot of difficulty in their marriage and some of them have had difficulty for a long time or a number of years.
POTTER: Military authorities say they were shocked by the series of murders. While Fort Bragg already offers family counseling programs, the recent tragedies are causing officials to rethink their procedures.
COL. TAD DAVIS, GARRISON COMMANDER: I think that this will provide renewed emphasis on the part of all of us as leaders who care genuinely and very deeply for each of our soldiers, you know, and their families to make sure that we're doing everything we can, you know, to reach out to these families, to these young men and women who so proudly serve our country each and every day.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
POTTER (on camera): Now the human toll here is stunning, four wives dead, two soldiers dead, two others in jail facing First Degree Murder charges and nine children without their parents now, and a lot more questions than answers. Aaron.
BROWN: Mark, I know you have been frantically reporting the story in the last few hours. Do you know if the army has a kind of formal process when soldiers come back from combat to check them out emotionally, that sort of thing?
POTTER: They say that they have programs, but the stress that we get is that it's upon, it's voluntary, and some of the talk that we are hearing now is that they're thinking about making some of this mandatory in light of what we've seen here, this tragedy here at Fort Bragg.
This is all a work in progress. They're just getting on it now, but they say that this is something they're going to have to work on because this is such a stunning development and, as we said at the outset, something they've never seen here before.
BROWN: Mark, thank you, Mark Potter in Fayetteville tonight. Thank you very much. A couple of late developments tonight in the war on terrorism. First, a State Department warning to American embassies around the world; it comes after a number of news organizations, including CNN, received phone calls from a man identifying himself as a representative of Osama bin Laden.
CNN was called three times. The caller promised that U.S. embassies would be attacked - in Islamic countries would be attacked in the week to come. Were the calls for real? The State Department says it can't say, doesn't know, continues to investigate.
The second development concerns a suspected terrorist who has been in custody since last month. He may have ties to al Qaeda, and he has apparently admitted his involvement in a plot against U.S. and Israeli embassies in Singapore. CNN's Kelli Arena has been working that for us tonight and she joins us from Washington. Kelli, it's good to see you.
ARENA: Good to see you, Aaron. Well, his name is Mohammed Monsur Gibara (ph), his code name Sammy, and he's described as an al Qaeda foot soldier by Southeast Asian intelligence sources. U.S. officials say he has admitted he is a member of al Qaeda and that he admits to involvement in a plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Singapore.
He was arrested in Oman about three months ago and has been in U.S. custody for at least one month. Officials tell CNN he is being held in a U.S. military base in the northeast. Now, Gibara is being interrogated and has provided some information. Investigators, though, are still trying to determine exactly how much he knows.
Sources say that he has been directly linked to Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (ph) who, as we have reported, has been described as a key planner of the September 11th attacks. He is also believed to have met personally with Osama bin Laden in the summer of 2001.
Now those sources say that he was considered especially useful, able to easily blend in, and they describe his English as excellent. Those sources also say that Gibara would know about ongoing al Qaeda plots, Aaron back to you.
BROWN: So he's in custody now, a quick question on that. Is he a planner or an operator?
ARENA: According to sources, he is an operator. He is somebody who is sent to a location to plan and get a plot, a terrorist plot started, to get the people in place, to get the materials in place, and then he gets out of there. So, someone described him to me tonight as an al Qaeda flying squad, sent to various places around the world. We know that he's traveled extensively through Southeast Asia, Aaron.
BROWN: OK, now I'm about to blindside you on something, OK?
ARENA: OK.
BROWN: I just want to go back to a story we reported on these threats to the embassies. In your reporting generally, have you come across an example where al Qaeda sent out a warning that it was about to do something? My memory is that it's just not how al Qaeda has operated.
ARENA: Al Qaeda, from my reporting, has generally sent out communications suggesting that something might be up, but I do not believe and I may be wrong but I do not believe that they have ever been specific, Aaron.
BROWN: OK and I don't either, and we'll check on that more and I'll try not to blindside you too often.
ARENA: That's OK.
BROWN: But I never promise such things. Thank you, Kelli, have a good weekend, Kelli Arena.
ARENA: You too.
BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, still tonight another black eye for the Florida agency that is supposed to protect children. Up next, how did the man accused of killing Samantha Runnion get out of trouble in the first trial? We'll take a look at that and much more ahead. This is NEWSNIGHT from CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Well, as you know, we spent a lot of time this week on two little girls who had been kidnapped, stories with drastically different outcomes. There was the heartbreaking funeral for Samantha Runnion and then the extraordinary escape of Erica Pratt in Philadelphia.
So, when we saw the breaking news flash today from Missouri, we immediately thought, what if this turned out to be like Erica? It didn't. Police this afternoon said they found what appears to be the body of six-year-old Cassandra Williamson. She was known as Casey, and she was reported missing this morning.
The body has not been positively identified, but the St. Louis County Police Chief says he feels certain at least it is Casey. A 24- year-old transient, a man named Johnny Johnson, has been taken into custody. We should add that he was staying in the same home as Casey last night, so were her parents. It is the home of one of their neighbors.
Today, Samantha Runnion would have turned six. Just two weeks ago, she was like most five-year-olds, counting the days until her sixth birthday. She's gone now and her family is left only with memories and the pain of hindsight, could something have been done to prevent this tragedy?
Samantha's mom was the model of composure last night on Larry King, except when it came to one topic, the first trial of the man accused of killing her daughter, the one where he was acquitted. Samantha's mom was clearly enraged that Alejandro Avila was set free. In that case, he was accused of molesting two girls, children he knew. His acquittal was a surprise to everyone involved.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice over): On the facts, the prosecution team believed it was not just a winnable case, but very nearly a legal sure thing.
MICHAEL SOCCIO, CHIEF DEPUTY DA, RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CA: In fact, at some points, I heard people refer to it as a slam dunk type case, that the girls were excellent witnesses, strong victims. The facts were clear enough.
BROWN: And these were not inexperienced prosecutors. They had won 43 convictions in cases of child sexual assault since 2000. There had been but three hung juries and not a single acquittal, and the case was more than simple sexual assault.
SOCCIO: After the charges, the sex charges were filed against the two young girls, one of their mothers received a phone call saying "you're dead."
BROWN: So, prosecutors filed another charge against Alejandro Avila, making a terrorist threat, and adding to their confidence was this.
SOCCIO: Mr. Avila took a polygraph, failed the polygraph, and after that changed, contradicted what he had said earlier about having touched one of the victims.
BROWN: The victims, cousins, were nine at the time the charges were brought. They had lived with their mother and for a time with Avila here at the same apartment complex where Samantha Runnion and her parents lived. In court, one of the victims was clear and unambiguous. She spoke of Avila penetrating here with his finger.
JOHN POZZA, AVILA'S FORMER DEFENSE ATTORNEY: From the surface, a lot of the evidence that the prosecution or the police had gathered would give one the impression that there was evidence of guilt there.
BROWN: As children must in cases like this, the girls were forced to explain in graphic detail what happened to them.
Question: Did you ever touch the defendant with you were in the bathroom?
Answer from the child: He would make me kiss his private part.
Question: When you say that, what happened?
Answer: Like, when, like after he would wash me and he would make me wash him. He would, like, when we were still in the shower, he would make me kiss his private part.
It was testimony like that, detailed stuff that left even the defense team shaking its head at the eventual outcome.
POZZA: Quite frankly, I was surprised as I am in most cases where the jury comes back not guilty.
SOCCIO: The words I got from everyone were stunned, devastated, worried, concerned about Avila being loose.
ERIN RUNNION, SAMANTHA'S MOTHER: I blame every juror who let him go, every juror who sat on that trial and believed this man over those little girls, I will never understand, and that is why he was out and that is why his sickness was allowed to do this.
SOCCIO: If there had been an opportunity to put Avila away in prison and Samantha to be alive today, Mrs. Runnion has every right to be upset.
BROWN: None of the jurors have spoken about the case. Their names are sealed, so there is only speculation from prosecutors that one possible reason for the verdict was the timing of the charges. They were filed six months after the mother of one of the girls had split up with Avila. The accusation of lewd conduct, therefore, was revenge, the theory goes, but unless the jurors speak, that will only be a guess.
SOCCIO: The prosecutor's biggest fear just came true. A person who actually did it but walked went out and committed a crime even more atrocious than the one before.
BROWN: If Alejandro Avila killed Samantha Runnion, as prosecutors now believe, that is absolutely and tragically true.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (on camera): Up next on the program, the latest on the plan for the Department of Homeland Security, and we'll also take a look at the controversy over just who will be voting for the mayor of Washington, D.C. This is NEWSNIGHT on a Friday from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Reporter Kate Snow, who works on the Hill, described the day on the Hill as the all-nighter before final exams. House members are juggling trade legislation, changes in the bankruptcy laws, the new Homeland Security Department, and it is that last item that's a bit sticky right now.
President Bush and Democratic members of both the House and the Senate are at odds over the rules for hiring and firing thousands of department workers. Now, Kate, as best I could tell only described it as an all-nighter. She left the reporting of the all-nighter to her colleague on the Hill, CNN's Jonathan Karl.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KARL (voice over): Even as the House voted to approve a new Department of Homeland Security, the president threatened to reject the Democratic Senate's version of the plan.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm not going to accept legislation that limits or weakens the president's well- established authorities.
KARL: The president didn't use the word "veto," but his press secretary did, prompting a retort from the top Democrat in the Senate on the issue.
SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN (D), CONNECTICUT: As I mentioned to the president this morning, I've heard from President Fleischer that there might be a veto, but I have not yet heard that I hope I will not from President Bush.
KARL: The president's objection is to workplace protections in the new department. Senate Democrats included in their bill a guarantee that employees would be covered by the same Civil Service and union right as other federal employees. The president says he wants to have maximum flexibility to hire and fire employees of the new department.
SEN. FRED THOMPSON (R), TENNESSEE: We're going to have to have that setting up any new department but especially one as important as this one dealing with our national security in time of war.
KARL: The labor protections were not included in the House version, prompting Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt to vote against it. Gephardt also objected to a provision extending the deadline for airports to screen all checked baggage.
In a written statement he said: "While I applaud the hard and diligent work of Congress to achieve the worthy goal of establishing a homeland defense department by September 11, 2002, I can not in good conscience vote for a homeland security bill that weakens homeland security."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KARL (on camera): Gephardt's no vote is significant because he was such an enthusiastic supporter of the president's plan that it was he that set the September 11th deadline for getting it done. Now, as the battle moves to the Senate, that September 11th deadline is very much in doubt. Aaron.
BROWN: Is this about the Democrats not wanting to offend organized labor?
KARL: Well, that's exactly what the Republicans say and clearly the unions have been very active on this. They know there will be 55,000 union members that would be moved into this new Department of Homeland Security and they're very concerned, as Joe Lieberman acknowledged today, that the Republicans, the president would use his power to take away their collective bargaining rights. So clearly an element of this is all about organized labor.
BROWN: Well, Jon, I guess it's an all-nighter for you. Thank you very much, Jonathan Karl on Capitol Hill tonight. It may be payback time for the Clinton, the Clinton family in terms of Whitewater in a strangely literal sense. Former President Clinton and Senator Clinton have asked the federal government to pay the legal fees they racked up during the Whitewater investigation. Under the law, those who are investigated but not indicted have the right to request reimbursement. They're said to be asking for $3.5 million in legal fees. The Clintons are not asking to be reimbursed, not, for any legal bills involving the Monica Lewinsky investigation.
This next story reminds us of H.L. Menkin (ph), the great political writer and the famous grump. "Politics" he once said grumpily, "isn't merely ratty. It's not just obscene or lowdown. It's also great entertainment." Mr. Menkin welcome to Washington, D.C. and the mayor's race there.
It features a sitting mayor running very nearly unopposed. He's a Democrat in a democratic city, hasn't been caught smoking crack on videotape. That was a different mayor. All Mayor Anthony Williams needed was a couple of thousand signatures on a ballot petition. The bar could not have been set lower, yet somehow he tripped over it. Here's CNN's Candy Crowley.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): And now another in our series of occasional soap operas from the nation's capitol, starring the mayor who has pronounced himself nauseated by the whole story and sought refuge in the third person.
MAYOR ANTHONY WILLIAMS, WASHINGTON, D.C.: Mistakes were made by this mayor, by this candidate.
CROWLEY: There are cameo appearances from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, actor Kelsey Grammar, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, all of whose names appear on D.C. voter petitions supporting the mayor's reelection, and none of whom signed the petition, nor in fact even vote in the district or in some cases the United States.
MARK PLOTKIN, WTOP POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, this is supposed to be a political city, right? This is Washington, D.C. This is the center of national politics, but we've always been the Rodney Dangerfield of national politics.
CROWLEY: The mayor needed 2,000 signatures to satisfy D.C. law. His reelection campaign offered signature collectors $1 a name. More than 10,000 signatures were submitted, including bogus names, celebrity names, pages of names in what even the amateur eye can see is the same handwriting. Not only is there apparent fraud. It is needless fraud.
PLOTKIN: This is an extreme act of political masochism. No Republican is running against him. No serious Democrat is running in the Democratic primary. No independent is going to surface in a general election.
CROWLEY: His honor, a bow-tied, buttoned-up, bookish kind of guy, had left the signature collecting to his reelection team.
CHARLES DUNCAN, FORMER WILLIAMS CAMPAIGN ADVISER: I had limited involvement in the petition process until I was advised of the numerous alleged forged and otherwise fraudulent signatures on many of the petitions.
CROWLEY: Make that the ex-reelection team. Most have been fired. And a passel of lawyers have been hired to argue the mayor's case before the D.C. Board of Elections and -- ahem -- ethics, which is having trouble, because the signature collectors who do show up say they don't know what happened. And those who might know won't talk or don't show.
STEPHEN CALLAS, D.C. BOARD OF ELECTIONS AND ETHICS: Mr. Chairman, justice must prevail. And these witnesses who were subpoenaed have shown an absolute total disregard. And I feel outraged.
CROWLEY: Meanwhile:
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you observe lines one, four, five...
CROWLEY: They are examining signatures at a rate of one every two minutes.
(on camera): At that rate, the board might well miss its Tuesday deadline, meaning Williams would go on the ballot as the Democratic Party candidate. But there are reports here Williams may end it all by running as a write-in Democrat or an independent. In either case, in any case, he is expected to win, making this an apparent meaningless and, by the way, incompetent fraud.
Candy Crowley, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: I love this stuff.
Still to come on NEWSNIGHT tonight, we'll go off to the races. The soap box derby. That's later tonight. Up next, the story with no laughs at all. Another case of trouble for the Florida agency that is supposed to be protecting children. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: And coming up on NEWSNIGHT, another embarrassment for the Florida department that looks after children. Sort of. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: In all the talk about missing girls, there is one name we ought not forget, and that's Rilya Wilson. She's the 5-year-old lost by the state of Florida for more than a year before anyone noticed she was gone. She is still gone. Soon after the story broke, it became clear that Rilya's case was not especially exceptional. Outrageous, yes, but not exceptional. There are apparently hundreds of children unaccounted for. That's been awhile since we talked about Florida and child welfare, but this whole sorry mess came flooding back today. Another one of those cases that makes your stomach drop -- maybe your jaw as well. A child welfare worker arrested for drunk driving, not alone. A seven-month- old girl who was under state supervision was there, too.
Here's CNN's John Zarrella.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mirala Pranga (ph) was found asleep behind the wheel of her car in this fashionable Coral Gables neighborhood. Police say she was so out of it officers had to force their way into her car.
SGT. PAUL PEDROSO, CORAL GABLES, FLORIDA POLICE: She would not come to. She would not make contact with them. Fortunately, they were able to make entry into the vehicle. They were able to get to the baby, which over all, appeared OK.
ZARRELLA: The seven-and-a-half-month-old baby was, it turns out, under the supervision of Florida's beleaguered Department of Children and Families. Pranga (ph) was, until her firing Friday morning, a foster care counselor. Gable police have charged Pranga with neglect of a child and driving under the influence with a passenger under 18. A bottle of rum was found in the car.
DCF officials would not return our calls, but issued a paper statement saying in part, quote: "The department absolutely will not tolerate behavior that endangers children who are under our supervision," end quote. The question is, will that kind of behavior ever end? The system, according to child welfare advocates, is simply a mess.
CHRISTINE ZAWISZA, CHILDREN FIRST PROJECT: I just think that the DCF system of child welfare is in meltdown. I mean, it's just crisis after crisis after crisis.
ZARRELLA: This is just the latest in a series of black eyes for Florida's DCF. First, it was the case of Rilya Wilson. In April, she was reported missing, but had not been seen for 15 months before that. She's still missing. Then, six girls, ages 11 to 15, were placed in two rooms at this hotel because of a shortage of foster homes. Police had to be called because the girls were left unsupervised.
And two weeks ago, a 2-year-old boy was found dead on the side of an interstate in Tampa. The DCF caseworker admitted lying about having seen him alive on the day he was killed. At least in this latest case, the child was OK.
John Zarrella, CNN, Miami.
(END VIDEOTAPE) BROWN: A quick look at other stories making news around the country today, beginning with the crash of a FedEx cargo jet in Tallahassee, Florida. Two member crew escaped. No one seriously hurt. When you look at those pictures, that's incredible. Strange sidebar to all of this: The plane was carrying paperwork of several candidates in legislative races. They were rushing to meet the filing deadlines to run for office. After the crash, Governor Jeb Bush set a new deadline for them, 5:00 p.m. tomorrow. Florida.
On the California wildfire, which grew to 60,000 acres today, firefighters say they are optimistic they can keep flames away from all the sequoia trees that are threatened. And today, a 45-year-old woman was arraigned on felony charges of unlawfully starting the fire.
We probably should check back with Jeff Flock on any late developments in missing miners in southwestern Pennsylvania. Authorities have been talking to reporters, Jeff is there, so we quickly will check with him. Jeff, what have they been saying?
FLOCK: Yeah, forgive the hushed tones, Aaron. They are just about wrapping this up, as perhaps you can see, as we speak. The news is this. If you are following the story very closely, you can go to sleep tonight and not miss the rescue. They say they are virtually certain it won't be until at least sunrise, that they will be in a position to punch through down at the bottom and see what and who is down there.
Two holes now that they are drilling on, simultaneously, in some sense both racing each other to the bottom. The first hole is about 105 feet down. The second one about 48 feet down. They have got to go about 240, 250, and as I said, best case scenario some time tomorrow morning.
Final note is with regard to family members. They, we are told, remain very hopeful. They have been told of other scenarios where other miners in similar cases have survived. They are hopeful, but I think it's fair to say they have some sense of realism as well about what could be at the bottom of that shaft. Back to you.
BROWN: Well, for now, we don't need to dwell on that. We'll wait until sunrise and hope for the best. Jeff, thank you.
FLOCK: Exactly.
BROWN: Jeff Flock in Somerset, Pennsylvania.
Still ahead tonight, end of the program, we'll go to the soap box derby. Up next, the troubles for AOL. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Well, this is not easy. There's a four-letter word here in the office that's not really a word at all. It's 401(k). We know there's a lot of pain to go around in terms of the stock market these days. But AOL stock has gotten beaten down even more than the rest of the market. On Wednesday, that glorious day when the market soared, AOL shares fell. That was the day the company said the financial feds in Washington were looking into AOL's accounting practices, something that had been rumored for a while.
What a far cry from the frothy talk back in January 2000, when the company was born as AOL Time Warner. The mega deal for the new millennium, it was billed.
Sort of a mega letdown. Joining us to talk about it all again tonight -- well, not again, this is the first time she's been here. We've talked about this before. You know what I mean. Kara Swisher from the "Wall Street Journal."
You've been writing about AOL for a while for the "Journal" and books and other stuff. Nice to see you.
KARA SWISHER, "WALL STREET JOURNAL" REPORTER: Nice to see you.
All right. Just tell me -- I feel like my retirement's going up in smoke as we talk here...
SWISHER: Well, it couldn't get any lower.
BROWN: No, that's one way to look at it. How serious is the accounting deal?
SWISHER: Well, I think the issue is not necessarily what's been revealed so far, and a very good series of articles, in fact the "Washington Post," but what could be discovered.
That's the problem right now, because everything is kind of in this witch hunty mode for any problems and any company's accounting, and I think once you start investigating companies, everyone has a little bit of a problem.
And it's a question if they find fraudulent things, which means handcuffs, which is what happened to the Rigases of Adelphia, or if it's just accounting problems, you know, that they need to correct, and they'll get a fine.
And AOL has been here before in that particular area before it merged with Time Warner.
BROWN: Is it -- I'm so naive on some of this stuff, honestly. Is accounting one of those things where, like holding penalties in football, it's actually there on every play. It's just a question of whether you want to call it.
SWISHER: Absolutely. Like the eBay thing, whether they should have booked eBay revenues in a certain manner. Now accountants, because they're such fascinating people, can sit up all night and argue this point and they will and they will never come to a conclusion.
The problem is it's so gray, so many of these things, and you can often, I mean, one set of rules which applied yesterday don't apply today. And two years ago AOL was brilliant for doing these kind of accounting things, and how smart and how interesting deal making.
And now today in this environment with the Enrons and some very serious fraud problems, anything like WorldCom, it looks really funny if there's any problem, and you have to be as pure as the driven snow, and we all know how pure most corporations are.
BROWN: Yes, now there's a reason why we tend to talk about this as AOL as opposed to AOL Time Warner.
SWISHER: Right.
BROWN: Because the Time Warner side of the business is actually OK, right?
SWISHER: It's OK. It wasn't growing hugely, but it's a very solid, mature business. Magazines, cables, all sorts of thing.
BROWN: Right. We're doing fine.
SWISHER: But not very exciting. You were doing great. You were doing fine. It's a mature business. And the reason they did the merger was to try to jump start all these businesses into this hyper space kind of thing.
BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) what is going wrong on the AOL side?
SWISHER: Something that Time Warner knew about at the time of the merger and were hoping to get on the dot-com express, which immediately stopped at the next station and the train fell apart right after the Time Warner -- I mean the timing of this deal in terms of Time Warner executives was spectacularly bad, and -- but I think the problem is there's a difference between a bad deal and bad strategy, and I'm not so sure the strategy was so bad, which was to try to invigorate, and I hate to use the word synergy, but there are some synergies there among all these media properties and subscription services, and the problem with AOL was the dial-up service, which was you type in AOL and your dial-up was going away. Because people are getting high speed connections.
BROWN: But why is -- why is, since it is my belief that every child in America does nothing but instant message on AOL.
SWISHER: Right. IM. Strong product.
BROWN: Why is it difficult to transition from dial-up to fast -- to DSL.
SWISHER: It just is. It's just another -- the problem with the Internet is it changes so quickly. AOL, again, has gone through this. They used to charge flat fees, I mean, hourly rates.
They had to go to flat fee, and at that time, when I was writing this book, everyone was like, AOL was dead, AOL was finished, they couldn't make the transition, and they did. Now the question is can they make this transition into the high speed broadband, and a lot of people question that. No again, they used to question it before and they did fine.
BROWN: And because everybody else wants faster Internet service, it's imperative that they do that. But I'm not sure I understand why it would be easier for MSN to make that transition.
SWISHER: It doesn't. AOL is an amazing brand name in terms of on-line connection. So that is a plus for them. The problem is that at some point -- the reason AOL was so great is because it was so easy to use. You know, you see those idiotic commercials on at night.
It's so idiotic to use. I'm an idiot, so I can use it.
BROWN: They may be idiotic to you, but they pay my salary.
SWISHER: Exactly, sorry. And it's a good salary, I'm sure. But what they do is they make it easy, and that was a real plus, and now a lot of people are more savvy and MSN, which was -- made by Microsoft. It was incredibly difficult to use. Now it's easier to use. Yahoo is easier to use. It's -- everything is a lot easier, and the Internet is a lot more suer friendly.
The Internet moved towards what AOL was doing. So now what is AOL's unique selling point, and are you going to pay $23 -- whatever -- 95 a month extra for that?
BROWN: You know what I think they need? They haven't asked. I think they need more pop-up adds.
SWISHER: Really? No, they pulled those away. Because I said it was like you were at a shopping center, that they attacked you with billboards and hit you on the head, and they have gotten rid of those. But we'll see what happens. I mean, I wouldn't sell the stock. It's pretty low.
BROWN: Well, you got to find somebody to buy it first.
SWISHER: Well, what's interesting is the assets of Time Warner are worth more.
BROWN: Thank you for coming in. It's good to talk to you. I expect we'll talk again.
Before we go to break, couple of quick items that made news around the world today. Starts on the West Bank. It is all too familiar. This time, four Israelis settlers ambushed, shot today just outside a settlement near Hebron. Gunman got away in a car. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade taking credit for the killings.
Forty-nine years ago today -- 49 years ago -- Fidel Castro fired the first shots of the Cuban Revolution. No surprise he still likes talking about it. He did today. Tends to make very long speeches, too. He also talked about the troubles on Wall Street, and whether capitalism can really last. Castro also said he welcomes closer ties with the United States and thanked lawmakers in the House who voted this week -- in little notice vote, by the way -- to ease travel restrictions to Cuba.
The president says he'll veto it. Another anniversary as well today. This one could play on Broadway. Thousands of Argentines filed past a crypt in Buenos Aires, marking 50 years since the death of Eva Peron, Evita, in Buenos Aires today.
Up next, a story with gravity. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Finally from us tonight, the soap box derby. We began the program talking about kids and will end it that way, too. And we could not have planned a better closer for this week.
While this is very much a story about today, it has the feel of another time, a simpler time. It's not that we yearn for yesterday. That's not really what we are. But an occasional trip back in time is refreshing, even if that trip lasts just a few seconds down a really steep hill.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): Welcome to Bristol, Connecticut. Bristol, you know, just down the road from the Lock Museum in Terryville. Anyway, this is a big day in Bristol.
A couple of dozen local kids have hitched rides to be here today. It's not because they don't have cars of their own; they do. And they are lovely. But their cars don't have engines, which is the point and the reason for this hill.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 1, 2, 3.
BROWN: By the way, you may think that you can't see where the hill ends, but you can. Not really. Because it actually ends 600 miles away in Akron, Ohio. Kids from Bristol and hundreds of towns like it, cities too, have been rolling toward Akron for a long time now.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The technical committee stands ready on the ridge. There they go.
BROWN: By 1936, the All-American Soap Box Derby was already two years old. Things were different then, of course. As you can see, the derby was a boys only event and would be for the next 36 years. And the cars were cobbled together from scratch out of whatever the builders could lay their hands on. Baby buggy wheels and orange crates, sheets of tin. These days, bolt-together kits let kids who aren't wizards in the wood and metal shop, boys and girls, get rolling, too. But then, a lot of things have not changed. The idea is still to get down the hill as fast as you can. Serious racers, and Ben Poratti (ph) here, he's a serious racer, study the course.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: You could take like a golf ball and roll it down like the coins and see where it would go.
BROWN: Ben spins his wheels from time to time, too, to keep the bearings warm -- and you thought spinning the wheels was a bad thing. It isn't. Not when the difference between first and second place might be a matter of .01 or .001 of a second.
The cars are all exactly the same in their separate classes, with drivers aboard, metal balances adjusted so their total weights are the same as well. And the wheels are the same, which means that it all comes down to a mysterious edge. The uninitiated might think there's nothing to it, but just ask a veteran racer. Someone like Brianne Briganti (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: I have two friends today here trying it themselves, and they thought that it was just going down a hill and doing nothing at all, and that it was just, you know, it was a gravitational pull. And really, there's a lot more into the racing than just going down the hill.
BROWN: Between Brianne (ph) and Ben and Martin Burke (ph) there, you are looking at a dozen years of racing experience. Given their ages, that is a good part of their lifetime. This is like talking to Ruth and Gehrig and Hank Aaron all at once. They know what they are doing, and today they are still in it.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: I haven't lost a race yet, so I'm like doing really good.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: I'm like doing like really good today, and luckily have a good car.
BROWN: They hunker down as low as they can, then veer a little out of the gate in search of a long sweet groove that will take them all the way to the nationals.
Watching all of this on a hot summer's day make you think that we forget nearly as much as we learn in the process of growing up. Otherwise, why would adults say with a sad shrug what they say with such great joy, it's all downhill from here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Waiting for a green.
BROWN: The man sending them down here is Gene LeBlanc (ph), the derby's regional director for this part of the northeast. He's mindful of the value of the other all-American pursuits, of course, but he thinks this all-American pursuit is something quite special.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nothing against baseball, or soccer, or basketball. But here your father putting the daughter in the gate, give them a kiss goodbye, and mom is catching the child at the bottom of the hill. It's a family-oriented sport.
BROWN: Gene (ph) should know. His daughter Carly (ph) was queen of the hill in Akron a couple of years back, national champ. She's retired now at the ripe old age of 20. Hey, the race track is no place for the old.
All day long, two-by-two, the kids compete. Winners advance. Losers turn right around to try again. You know what they say? What comes down must go up.
They go fast enough, 20 or 30 miles an hour, but this isn't about speed, really. Maybe it's not even about winning, though winning is nice. So what is this about? It's about being a kid and free as a bird. They won't know this for a long time yet, but this sport of theirs is about doing something they'll hardly ever get to do once they are all grown up. It's about coasting.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: I have double-phased twice already in the past two races, and hopefully I'll go to the top and I'll get first.
BROWN: You know what? She did. This day in Bristol, in her class, Brianne Briganti (ph) finished first. She's going to Akron, along with 400 or so other kids to race for trophies and scholarship money and for glory. Good luck, Brianne (ph). It is all downhill from here.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: But that may be. Before we go, we need to make a correction in a story we brought you earlier. The Florida Department of Children and Families worker who was arrested -- this is the correct picture of Mirala Pranga, who was found asleep at the wheel of her car in Coral Gables with the child in the back seat. We'll see you again on Monday. Glad you were with us. Good night for all of us.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
