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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Internet Ring of Parents Abusing Children is Being Broken; Powell Prosecution Ends in Mistrial; Prominent Republicans Speak Out Against War With Iraq
Aired August 09, 2002 - 22:00 ET
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.
Well, I don't think we've ever started the program by telling you what we are not doing, but in a moment of conscience -- and I know what you're thinking, conscience, on TV? you've got to be kidding -- but in a moment of conscience, I must tell you we are not doing the Nevada initiative that would pretty much legalize the personal use of marijuana tonight. We just never nailed down the right guests and we would have ended up with the usual suspects and you would have heard it all before, so why do it? Except that we've been running promos all day promising it.
So we'll do it when we find the right combination of people.
However, given that we have been promoting it, and believe me that these promos do work, and that perhaps more than a few of you have a special interest in the subject, we felt, in fairness, we ought to include at least a few other vices in the hour ahead, even if they were not exactly the vices we promised.
So we've included sex and nicotine.
The latter, actually, it's twice in the program. It is, after all, addicting. One we'll leave for a few moments, the others gets a few words here.
The mayor of New York wants to ban, completely, smoking in the city's thousands of bars and restaurants. It's a health issue, not for the smoker, but the workers.
Now, it is already mostly banned and, to be honest, like many other law in New York City -- heck, like most of the 10 commandments -- it's routinely violated. But that seems to be changing.
So here's my suggestion, a solution if you will. Set up one of those little glass rooms like they have in the airports in St. Louis and Atlanta and other places, these smokatoriums. They are, by the way, the most disgusting places in the world.
Anyway, set them up, enclose them in glass, but leave little slits in the door, sort of like prison cells, where the servers can pass the plates of red snapper and risotto to the diners who can smoke and eat at the same time if they so choose. That way -- and here's the beauty of it -- the smoker is happy, the owner is happy, the non-smokers are really delighted because they feel even more superior than they normally do, and the tobacco industry is happy.
It is a win-win situation as we like to say.
On to "The Whip."
We begin with a shocking story. "Shocking" is not a word we like around here, let's try sickening. That seems to fit.
Jeanne Meserve working the story tonight.
Jeanne, a headline from you please.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, parents are supposed to protect their children, not damage and exploit them. But authorities have uncovered a ring of parents who allegedly sexually abused their own children and traded not only photos of the abuse, but even the children themselves. The victims ranged in age from 14 to 2 -- Aaron.
BROWN: Man, I do not envy that assignment, Ms. Meserve. Thank you; back with you shortly.
The latest on the trial of a man accused of manslaughter in a drunk driving case, nowhere near the car or the bar.
Bob Franken in Salem, New Jersey tonight.
Bob, a headline from you, please.
BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well Aaron, the question was: What would this trial resolve about that new steps in law enforcement? And the answer is: nothing. But it resolved nothing quite dramatically. That's our story.
BROWN: Bob, we'll be back with you.
Sharp criticism of a possible invasion of Iraq today. It comes from a close ally of the president.
Jonathan Karl is with us tonight on Capitol Hill.
Jon, a headline from you.
JONATHAN KARL, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And the close ally of the president is Dick Armey, the No. 2 Republican in the House and a fellow Texan who says President Bush should leave Saddam Hussein alone as long as the Iraqi dictator remains in his own borders.
BROWN: Jon, thank you.
Back with you all shortly. Also coming up in the hour ahead: the latest on Martha Stewart. It was her birthday this week. We imagine she's had better ones. We'll talk with a guy who seems to own the Martha beat over at the "Wall Street Journal," Charles Gasparino.
We might have something good to say about baseball and labor -- imagine that. Baseball writer Paul White seems cautiously optimistic, and he'll join us as well.
As we mentioned, a couple stories about smoking. On the East Coast here in New York the mayor wants to ban smoking in bars and restaurants. We'll talk with Tim Zagat about that. And from Hollywood a mea culpa from screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, who admits he glamorized smoking in his movies for years. It seems cancer has given him a different perspective on things.
And "Segment 7" tonight on sunken treasure the truly warrants the phrase: the gun turret of the USS Monitor recovered -- that and more recovered -- lost at sea on New Year's Eve 1862.
All that and a bit more in the hour ahead.
But we begin with an awful story of child abuse. How many times in the past months have we seen parents of missing kids, seen their anguish, the rage in their voices; any parent, it seems, could relate. The thought that someone could be hurting your child, having no control over it, there could be nothing worse.
Maybe that's why the first story tonight is so horribly incomprehensible. A case where the natural instinct that parents have to protect has been turned utterly upside-down: parents who have become predators, who molested their own children and then put the pictures on the Internet as part of a worldwide child porn ring. As one dumbfounded official put it today: "If this isn't unusual, God help us."
Here again, CNN's Jeanne Meserve.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERT BONNER, U.S. CUSTOMS SERVICE COMMISSIONER: These crimes are beyond the pale. They are despicable and repulsive.
MESERVE (voice over): Busted: an Internet pedophile ring. Eighty percent of the members, officials say, parents who allegedly not only sexually abused their own children, but took photographs and traded them, some of the children as young as 2.
BONNER: The normal safe harbor for children, which is their own parents, turned out to be these children's chamber of horrors.
MESERVE: The U.S. Customs Service Cyber-Smuggling Center has been on the case since January, but the investigation actually began last November when Danish National Police were tipped off to an Internet photograph of a man molesting his 9-year-old daughter. MIKE NETHERLAND, U.S. CUSTOMS SERVICE: He was identified, actually, through a company logo that happened to appear on his shirt on one of the images.
MESERVE: Names in the man's computer opened up the investigation. Thus far, there have been 10 arrests in six European countries and another 10 arrests in the U.S. One individual has pleaded guilty, another committed suicide before being charged.
An indictment unsealed Friday says the pedophile ring called itself The Club. It alleges that members, who included child care providers as well as parents, engaged in Internet chat sessions and communicated via e-mail about which sexual acts members wanted children to engage in. The indictment alleges that two members traded children to abuse them and one requested an audiotape of a child crying while being abused.
RUBEN RODRIGUEZ, JR., NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING AND EXPLOITED CHILDREN: When you hear about incest, now you're taking it to a higher plane and communicating and transmitting this information back and forth for the gratification of yourself and others.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MESERVE: Forty-five children have been removed from abusive situations as a result of this investigation. Most of the 37 in the U.S. have been placed in the custody of a parent or relative who was not involved in or aware of the abuse.
But as Commissioner Bonner points out, these pictures will be on the Internet for years. He calls this a crime that never ends -- Aaron.
BROWN: Two quick ones: Is it concentrated in any particular part of the country, or was it all over the country?
MESERVE: It was all over the place: California, Texas, two of the states that figure. But in all, I believe there are 11 states in which there were raids conducted, 10 arrests.
BROWN: And should these cases ultimately go to trial, end in convictions, what sort of sentences are the people facing?
MESERVE: Pretty stiff. They're facing charges of sexual exploitation of a child, conspiracy to commit sexual exploitation of a child, receipt and distribution of child pornography. Each of those charges carries a possible penalty of between 10 and 20 years. So if one of these people or all of these people are convicted on all three of those charges, they could be facing sentences as long as 60 years -- Aaron.
BROWN: Jeanne, thank you. Jeanne Meserve in Washington tonight.
On to New Jersey now. And only half an answer today in the case of the friend who didn't stop a friend from driving drunk. It's not quite as simple as that. Was Kenneth Powell responsible for a deadly accident simply because he picked up his friend at jail after a drunk driving arrest and dropped him off at his car? We batted this around a bit with Jeff Toobin the other night. It made for great conversation because it's easy to see both sides of the question. And, after all, we didn't have this man's fate in our hands. The jury did.
Here again, CNN's Bob Franken.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With considerable regret, I will declare a mistrial.
FRANKEN (voice-over): In their third day of deliberations, after a three-and-a-half week trial, the jurors said they were hopelessly deadlocked on two of three charges against Powell, vehicular homicide and aggravated assault, although they did reach a verdict on the third, manslaughter.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What was that unanimous verdict?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Not guilty.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not guilty.
FRANKEN: It was an inconclusive result in a unique legal action. The charges against Powell grew out of two deaths caused by the drunk driving of a friend. Powell was nowhere around when Michael Pangle slammed his car a bit more than two years ago into an automobile driven by Navy Ensign Johnny Elliott. Elliott had graduated just two months earlier from the Naval Academy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Count one to 30?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One, two, three, oh...
FRANKEN: But Michael Pangle had already been arrested once that night for driving under the influence. He called his friend, Kenneth Powell, to pick him up at the state police barracks. Powell took Pangle back to his car and left. Pangle got behind the wheel and went drinking again. Before the night had passed, his vehicle swerved into Elliott's oncoming car, and both were killed.
WILLIAM ELLIOTT, VICTIM'S FATHER: Today, you are looking into the faces of the saddest family in America. Not because of this decision today, but because two years ago, we lost the finest son and brother that any family could hope for.
FRANKEN: Johnny Elliott's family got a promise from prosecutors, Kenneth Powell will face another trial in January.
JOHN BERCH, PROSECUTOR: I'm here to tell you that the state of New Jersey, the Salem County Prosecutor's Office, we are prepared to proceed to move forward in this case. CHRISTOPHER MANGANELLO, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: If the Salem County Prosecutor's Office decides to try this case again on January 6 against Kenneth Powell, they will be on for the biggest fight of their lives.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FRANKEN: But for now, the legal question remains: Is it a crime for someone not to do enough to stop a drunk from driving? -- Aaron.
BROWN: Two quick ones here. Do we know how the jury was deadlocked, what the numbers were on the two other charges?
FRANKEN: No. As a matter of fact, they went to great pains to keep all of that secret. The jurors are not allowed to talk by order of the judge, so we don't know the break. Of course, we do know that there was a unanimous "not guilty" verdict on the manslaughter charge.
BROWN: All right. This one is a little trickier, so walk away, as I know you will, if you can't answer it. When he picked his friend up at the police station or the trooper barracks or wherever it was, did he make a commitment of any sort as to what he would do with him? Did he say, OK, I'll take him home and agree to do that, or not?
FRANKEN: Well, that was one of the matters that was in dispute. Exactly what had been the exchange with the police. Now, the defense was that the police had not in any way suggested that there be any course of action taken, had not warned about the man, Michael Pangle, driving any more. But the prosecution charged that in fact the police had done everything and that Elliott (sic) had every reason to know that Pangle should not have been allowed to go into his car.
BROWN: Bob, thank you, Bob Franken in Salem, New Jersey tonight. Thank you.
We actually think we saw a hint of this coming some months back when Charlton Heston was on the program. It was not one of his better nights, and we worried about it afterward. Today he announced he probably has Alzheimer's disease. He spoke to his fans and to his followers -- and he has both from his career first as an actor and then his job later as a spokesman for and president of the National Rifle Association. Today, he talked to his family, his future, the disease that will take his memories and perhaps his life. There is something especially sad about a hero writing the first chapter of his farewell speech. Our report tonight comes from CNN's Anne McDermott.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNE MCDERMOTT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Charlton Heston has always seemed a little bit larger than life, whether leading the National Rifle Association...
CHARLTON HESTON, ACTOR: From my cold dead hands...
MCDERMOTT: Or coming out on top in that famous chariot race. But Heston seemed very, very human this day as he released a videotaped statement saying his doctors suspect he has Alzheimer's disease.
HESTON: If you see a little less spring in my step, if your name fails to leap to my lips, you'll know why. And if I tell you a funny story for the second time, please, laugh anyway.
MCDERMOTT: Heston isn't the first famous person to reveal his Alzheimer's. His long time friend Ronald Reagan did it back in 1994. And the former president's wife said of Heston: "I'm extremely sad to hear that he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. However, I applaud his going public with the information."
Heston, like Reagan, was once president of the Screen Actors Guild back in the 60's, back when Heston marched for civil rights and rallied around Martin Luther King. Later, though, he would become more identified with conservative politics as he fought against the forces of gun control.
But it is his movies we remember the most. "Ben-Hur." He won an Oscar for that one. "Planet of the Apes."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "PLANET OF THE APES")
HESTON: Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCDERMOTT: But to a lot of people, he'll always be Moses. A role he alluded to in his videotaped statement.
HESTON: I can part the Red Sea, but I can't part with you.
MCDERMOTT: Heston's statement sounded just the way all his characters do: Strong, imposing. But there was a bit of a quaver just once when he referred to his wife of 58 years.
HESTON: Above all, I'm proud of my family. My wife Lydia, the queen of my heart.
MCDERMOTT: Heston says he'll keep working as long as he can.
Anne McDermott, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, talk about smoking from Hollywood, an amazing confession by one filmmaker. And from New York, how the city wants to ban it entirely from its restaurants and its bars.
But up next, dissent in the Republican ranks over Iraq. This is NEWSNIGHT from CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: More talk of war today in Washington from Iraqi opposition leaders pressing Secretary of State Powell for action. And a powerful voice in Congress advising the administration and country to stand pat. The voice belongs not to a Democrat, but a leading Republican, House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Mr. Armey is retiring, which may have something to do with his statements, but it is also been hard to imagine Mr. Armey saying otherwise, even if he was not stepping down.
Here again, CNN's Jonathan Karl.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KARL (voice-over): Last week's Senate hearings on Iraq showed that Democrats have some misgivings about military action. But now the president is facing friendly fire, second-guessing from a fellow Republican.
REP. DICK ARMEY (R-TX), MAJORITY LEADER: If we try to act against Saddam Hussein, somebody as obnoxious as he is, without proper provocation, we will not have the support of what other nation states might otherwise do so.
KARL: Dick Armey, not just a fellow conservative but also a fellow Texas and the number two Republican in the House told reporters President Bush would be better off leaving Saddam Hussein alone.
ARMEY: My own view would be that let him bluster, and let him rant and rave all he wants. And let that be a matter between he and his own country. As long as he behaves himself within his own borders, we should not be addressing any attack of resources against him.
KARL: A White House spokesman declined to comment directly on Armey's advice, saying only: "The president has not made a decision. As he has said, he is keeping all options open and will consult with Congress."
Armey's views are not widely held among Republicans, or Democrats for that matter, but many in both parties on Capitol Hill agree with Armey that the White House has not yet made the case for military action against Saddam Hussein.
SEN. LARRY CRAIG (R), IDAHO: He's the most disruptive force in the Middle East today, and I'm not going to suggest that he ought to survive. But I am going to suggest that we have to make the case to take him out.
KARL: Even if Hussein continues to refuse to let U.N. weapons inspectors back in Iraq, Congressman Armey said that is not reason enough for a U.S. strike. In fact, Armey said, Hussein may be justified in keeping the inspectors out.
ARMEY: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for a moment. What if the French decided they wanted to inspect American military facilities? I'm confident that we would not allow it. (END VIDEOTAPE)
KARL: Dick Armey has made a career out of speaking his mind, even on those times when he disagrees with his party's other leaders. But now he has an ability to be especially independent, because as you said earlier, Aaron, he is not running for reelection.
BROWN: I was with him -- I mean, I was tracking on him until the last one. Let me ask you one thing. One of the things I read today that he said, which I think is actually in many ways at the center of this, is that we as a country have not started wars, we have responded when we had to, but we've not started them, and the administration has made the argument, initially at least, that we need to be more active or proactive, in the language of the time.
Is there any talk on the Hill at all these days that, absent provocation, we ought not to be doing this?
KARL: Well, there is a discussion of what exactly is provocation.
BROWN: Ah.
KARL: And where Armey would disagree, where most people up here, Democrats and Republicans, would disagree with Armey, is that question of those weapons inspectors. I spoke with Dick Lugar, who was up here today on Capitol Hill, and he said yes, Armey is exactly right. We don't attack without provocation, but if Saddam Hussein is not let those weapons inspectors in there, if he doesn't give up the weapons of mass destruction, that in itself is or could be provocation.
BROWN: Mr. Lugar, Senator Lugar being -- correct me -- the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee?
KARL: Jesse Helms is the ranking Republican, but he's right below Jesse Helms, and Jesse Helms hasn't become around here for a while, so yes, he's the top...
BROWN: Defacto.
KARL: Yes.
BROWN: Defacto.
Any chance that he -- that Mr. Armey was sending a message on behalf of other conservative Republicans who are in a somewhat different political situation than is he.
KARL: I do not think so, Aaron.
BROWN: OK.
KARL: This caught everybody by surprise. As a matter of fact, watch for this. In about 10 days, Tom Delay, who replaces Dick Armey as the second Republican in the House next year, will be giving a speech, what they're calling a major policy address, where he will call for tougher, more proactive action against Iraq.
So I think as far as Republican leaders are concerned, Armey is on his own here.
BROWN: Thank you much, Jon. Jonathan Karl on Capitol Hill tonight. Thank you.
KARL: A few quick items from around the world that made news today. First, Nagasaki, Japan and memorial services for the victims of the second and the last time atomic weapons were used on people in the world, 11:02 a.m. local time. Today bells rang and the air raid siren went off to mark the moment when the bomb called Fat Man detonated above the city.
And the mayor of Nagasaki used the occasion to scold the Bush Administration for pulling out of a number of nuclear treaties.
In Africa white farmers in Zimbabwe spent the day waiting to be thrown off their land. A deadline for them to leave came and went last night. Local police say they have no plans to evict the farmers. Meantime, though, the farms do remain idle. Millions in Zimbabwe continue to face starvation.
And finally, around the world Groundhog Day at Rome's Trevi Fountain. The fat guy's been here. You know about him. He's been arrested. He has come back. Now copycats have gotten into the act, collecting the money from the fountain. Police arrested one today. Authorities have put up security cameras around the famed fountain to catch them. What's the world coming to?
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, we'll have the latest on Martha Stewart's stock troubles. They seem to grow worse. Up next, Hollywood filmmaker bears his soul about smoking, himself, and the movies. This is NEWSNIGHT on Friday from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: This is the nicotine segment. Two unrelated stories that have to tobacco at their center. The danger of a segment like this is that it can come across as prissy or preachy, and we intend it neither.
For one thing, we get the powerful addiction that nicotine is. First story deals with Hollywood screenwriter Joe Eszterhas. He has always had a flare for dramatic, and we don't mean just in his movies. There's no denying the power of what he had to say today in the pages of the "New York Times," that he played a part in glamorizing smoking on the pig screen. That it was wrong, and that he knows what it can do to young impressionable kids, because he was one of them decades ago.
He got religion, so to speak, when he was diagnosed with a cancer. Here's CNN's Beth Nissen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no smoking in this building, Miss Termel (ph).
SHARON STONE, ACTRESS: What are you going to do, charge me with smoking?
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is a famous -- some would say infamous scene -- from modern Hollywood movies. In "Basic Instinct" Sharon Stone's character smokes -- some would say in more ways than one -- throughout her scenes.
The man who wrote the "Basic Instinct" screenplay says the cigarettes are deliberate.
"I've written 14 movies," writes screenwriter Joe Eszterhas in his op-ed piece. "My characters smoke in many of them, and they look cool and glamorous doing it." Eszterhas then makes a stunning confession. "I have been accomplice to the murders of untold numbers of human beings," he writes. "I am admitting this only because I have made a deal with God. Spare me, I said, and I will try to stop others from committing the same crimes I did."
Eszterhas, a smoker since the age of 12, has been diagnosed with throat cancer.
"I am alive but maimed. Much of my larynx is gone. I have some difficulty speaking. Others have some difficulty understanding me. I don't wish my fate upon anyone Hollywood, but I beg that Hollywood stop imposing it upon millions of others."
Hollywood has long featured smoking in its movies, for dramatic effect in old black-and-white films, to signal that a character is rebellious or rugged or cool.
More recently smoking helps establish a character as dangerous, defiant or quirky, strong willed, and often sexy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you happen to have a cigarette?
NISSEN: Public health advocates have long called for Hollywood to reduce the depiction of smoking in mass market films, especially those films that appeal or have stars who appeal to teen and pre-teen audiences.
Hollywood has done little in response.
"We in Hollywood hide behind a smokescreen of phrases like 'creative freedom' and 'artistic expression', writes Eszterhas. Those lofty words are lies, designed at best to obscure laziness. I know. I have told those lies. The truth is that there are 1,000 better and more original ways to reveal a character's personality."
Eszterhas concludes, "What we are doing be glamorizing smoking is unconscionable. We are the advertising agency and sales force for an industry that kills nearly 10,000 people daily. I want to do everything I can do undo the damage I have done with me own big screen words and images."
Many might see him as having made a fair start.
Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: On to our other story about smoking. This one comes from New York. The mayor here, Michael Bloomberg, wants to ban smoking in all restaurants and bars to toughen up some earlier restrictions, making it one of the toughest anti-smoking laws in the country. Can't get much tougher than banning it in all restaurants and bars.
It's one of those things you might think restaurants are rebelling against. It's not necessarily true. If anything, it may be the tobacco industry that cares the most about it. It seems that bars, particularly, are the last frontier of acceptable smoking.
Joining us now about how the restaurants and bars see all this, Tim Zagat of the Zagat Restaurant Survey. Everybody has these books in their home, in just about every city in the country. He joins us tonight from Millbrook, New York. It's nice to see you.
Is there much research on -- and around the country now restaurants pretty much routinely, I think, don't allow smoking -- at least most of them. Any sense that it has affected business one way or another?
TIM ZAGAT, ZAGAT RESTAURANT SURVEY: In fact, in New York, until about six or seven years ago, smoking was prohibited in all restaurants above 35 seats. And it did nothing, except actually help the restaurants. In fact, that's one of the reasons why the New York State Restaurant Association has done a survey, and over 70 percent of all the restaurants are in favor of cutting smoking altogether. And I might add that we have done surveys of the public, and the most recent one showed 87 percent wanting to eliminate smoking in restaurants and bars. And I would suggest that that includes many smokers who do not like to have smoking while they are eating.
BROWN: Are there many places anywhere in the country where smoking is not at the very least segregated out from the main restaurant area?
ZAGAT: Almost everywhere has some degree of segregation, mainly because the customers insist on it. The 80 percent who don't smoke are not very happy when somebody is smoking with them.
But I think the real issue that is facing and I think is behind the proposed legislation in New York is health. And it's health of the people who work in the restaurants and work in the bars, because the concentration of people smoking in the bars is really a health hazard from the standpoint of the bartenders, and in order to have a job, you shouldn't have to necessarily expose yourself to cancer.
BROWN: Now, there are these trade groups, perhaps legitimate and perhaps not, honestly, that say this -- if you ban smoking in bars, it's going kill the bar business. California has banned them. Any evidence that the bars have suffered out there for it? ZAGAT: Not as far as I have heard. In fact, I have heard the contrary. And I think the fact that 80 percent or more of the people would prefer to be in a non-smoking environment would speak for itself. The experience does not seem to have injured the bar business at all, and I frankly don't think that's the issue. And it shouldn't be.
The people who work in the bar ought to be safe from secondhand smoke. And that's the issue. It's a health issue. And you have a right to smoke, but you don't have a right to cause somebody else sicknesses. And frankly, I don't understand the big deal about all this, because almost all the public buildings in New York already, including my office building and the one CNN is in, every public building, every office building is smoke-free. And the reason they are smoke-free is because it's considered to be a health hazard for one person to be smoking in contact with other people in close quarters.
BROWN: You know, I'm almost certain this is true. The only major office building in Manhattan, perhaps in all of New York, that is not by law smoke-free is Philip Morris.
ZAGAT: Well, that's interesting. I didn't know that. But I think the same rationale for the -- requiring people in seven hours out of eight that they are working to be in a smoke-free environment applies equally to the one hour that they may be in a restaurant or having a drink in a bar. If they want to smoke, there's plenty of places to do so without necessarily forcing somebody else to breathe it.
BROWN: Just a final area here. Has the industry trade group, the restaurant association, now pretty much conceded that their earlier concerns were not valid, and will they support a ban on smoking in total in restaurants and bars?
ZAGAT: In today's "New York Times," that was exactly the same, and if Chuck Hunt, who is the executive director of New York State Restaurant Association, who said that all he wants to do is have an even playing field, and that if there's going to be no smoking in some restaurants or some bars, then there should be no smoking in any of them. And that speaks not just for New York City, but that's the state restaurant association. And I think that reflects both the restaurants' attitude and also the overwhelming attitude of the individual consumers, and of course, the health community.
BROWN: Pretty remarkable change on their part. Tim, nice to meet you. Thanks for joining us tonight to talk about this. Tim Zagat of the Zagat Guides, which, as we say, are the restaurant guides in so many major cities around the country.
Later on NEWSNIGHT, can a strike by baseball players be averted? Why not, huh? And up next, can Martha get out of hot water? This is NEWSNIGHT on a Friday from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: Well, no matter what happens to Martha Stewart, she might be able to carve out a new image for herself as some sort of strange cult hero. At least one guy is on board. John Smalley's (ph) behind SaveMartha.com. Oh, man. He's trying to start a Marthalution (ph), as he calls it, complete with a five-point action plan. He's even held a pro-Martha rally recently, and 10 people showed up. Dinner for 10, if you will.
But if Martha was feeling lonely these past few months, we can't imagine what she feels like today. News that another key witness is cooperating with investigators. A friend who was traveling with Ms. Stewart the day she dumped her shares of ImClone.
Joining us now, Charles Gasparino, who seems to be beating the pants off just about everybody on this story as he reports it for "The New York Times."
CHARLES GASPARINO, "WALL STREET JOURNAL": "New York Times?"
BROWN: I'm sorry, "The Wall Street Journal."
GASPARINO: Is that a Freudian slip?
BROWN: One's nice to me, the other isn't. No, that's not true. They've both been very kind.
Let's talk about the friend first, the e-mails next. And then I have a really wacky question for you. The story today is that this friend does not back up Ms. Stewart's story at all.
GASPARINO: Right. Actually from what we understand, she may contradict it. It's a very good friend of hers, Mariana Pasternak. I believe Martha was Mariana's maid of honor at her wedding. They go back many years together. Martha baked her wedding cake, from what I understand.
BROWN: This is perfect. And they are on the day of the transaction, they are flying together.
GASPARINO: They are flying. To go on vacation or something. And that's when the deal goes out. That's when the trade occurred.
BROWN: And what is she saying to investigators?
GASPARINO: Well, we don't know exactly what she's saying. But from we understand, what she at least indicated to them contradicts Martha's stated story, which was that there was a $60 stop loss order. When ImClone stock fell below 60, she had an order to sell.
BROWN: I'm concerned here that we are shorthanding a little bit people who aren't following this exactly. She owned a lot of these ImClone shares, and she is friends with the president, the CEO of ImClone. And ImClone is developing this cancer drug, and the FDA says it's not there yet. We are not ready.
GASPARINO: Absolutely. BROWN: OK. And on the day before that becomes public, the CEO of ImClone dumps his shares and Ms. Stewart dumps her.
GASPARINO: The CEO has been indicted.
BROWN: Right. He's been indicted. Now, the question is, does she have insider information that leads her to do that.
And she says -- correct me -- that no, no for a long time I had this order in that if the stock hit a certain price...
GASPARINO: With her broker.
BROWN: With her broker. Now the friend says, well that's not what I hear.
GASPARINO: Well, first there was the broker's assistant...
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: Right, there's another character in this story.
GASPARINO: Another interesting character. Doug Faneuil comes out and says -- first he corroborates the account, the $60 stop loss order. Then he comes out and says, you know, I was pressured to say that by Peter Bacanovic, the broker. There was no $60 stop loss order.
As a matter of fact, recently we reported that his words were to Martha -- he actually alerted Martha to sell on the orders of Mr. Bacanovic: Sell because the family is selling.
BROWN: Now this is really interest to go me because I'm not sure that that constitutes insider trading.
GASPARINO: It may not. You know, insider trading is a notoriously difficult thing to prove to begin with. So who knows if it's insider trading.
It's clearly information that the market generally -- you know, most people in the market didn't have. We know that.
BROWN: That Mr. Waksal -- is it Mr. or Dr. Waksal?
GASPARINO: He's a doctor, but you can call him Mr.
BROWN: In any case, Mr. Waksal was -- it was not generally known he was selling.
GASPARINO: Right. As a matter of fact, he didn't even -- he couldn't sell the stock. Merrill denied the order. The fact that he tried to sell the stock, no one would have known that.
BROWN: Well that's really interesting.
Now a House committee had couple e-mails that came out today that seemed to again support the notion that she was -- it's not absolutely clear -- that she was told that Waksal was selling. But, again, that might be used to form a defense, might it not?
GASPARINO: Could be. You know, this stuff is so murky right now. And that's one of the great things about this House committee. You know, they find stuff out, they release it. And it's really -- I think in some ways this is giving everybody an education on how the stock market works, at the very least.
You know, even if it's not insider trading, people really are getting this picture of a market, that there's two kinds of markets. There's a market for all these connected people, then there's market for everybody else, where you don't get a broker, you can't get this s sort of, quote, unquote, inside information. So it's pretty fascinating.
BROWN: And I hear viewers all over the word going, duh.
GASPARINO: Right.
BROWN: Let me throw one thing at you that I'm not sure I understand. Why is the House going after her so hard? And might it have something to do -- she's been politically active. She's given a lot of money to Democrats. Is there any sense -- I mean, there are a lot of bad guys out there these days that could be flogged in public, why her?
GASPARINO: Well, you know, I listened to Congressman Greenwood today, and he kind of -- he had an interesting explanation. He said, it didn't start with her, it started with ImClone. This, you know, company that came out touted a drug that didn't pan out. And then as they started peeling the layers of the onion, Martha popped up.
And I'll tell you, it's a pretty juicy example of how the market isn't -- maybe not corrupt, but just doesn't work right.
BROWN: It's a terrific example of that. You're reporting for the "Wall Street Journal."
GASPARINO: Thank you.
BROWN: You know, we make a lot of mistakes; we hate to make that one. They'll get you. For the "Wall Street Journal" has been terrific. And it's nice to see you again. Come back.
GASPARINO: OK, I will.
BROWN: Thank you. I suspect there are more chapters to come. Thanks. Have a good weekend.
A few quick stories from around the country.
We begin with the man accused of killing 5-year-old Samantha Runnion in Stanton, California, Orange County. Alejandro Avila pleaded not guilty today. In Orange County Superior Court prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty, and they say they will not consider a plea bargain.
Two more deaths have been reported in Louisiana as a result of West Nile virus. Seven people nationwide have now died from the virus this season. The worst outbreak of West Nile in U.S. history.
And we can't deny we feel a bit like these two guys at some points in our day today, but we did resist, thankfully, putting our heads down. The photo of these two clerks for a big Chicago trading firm ended up in the "Chicago Sun-Times." And in this case the old cliche "you snooze, you lose" proved true. They were fired. Gee, you newspaper people are tough.
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT: a bit of history recovered from the Atlantic Ocean. A very cool story at the end of the program.
Up next: Will baseball players walk.
This is NEWSNIGHT on Friday from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Baseball now, and here's where we are. The players are ready to set a strike date, which doesn't mean a strike; but a strike is their ultimate weapon, of course. And the owners continue to refuse to either not lock the players out at the beginning of next season or declare an impasse and implement the own labor plan without an agreement, because a lock out at the beginning of the season and implementation are their best weapons, as the NBA and the NHL proved.
So everybody has the best weapons in the holsters ready to use, but will they?
We're joined tonight from Washington by Paul White, who is the senior writer for "Baseball Weekly" magazine.
Nice to see you.
They're going to work over the weekend. You've got to like that. These are not guy that normally work over the weekend ever.
PAUL WHITE, SENIOR WRITER & COLUMNIST, "BASEBALL WEEKLY": Yes, absolutely. They're 9:00 to 5:00, Monday to Friday guys, and it's tough enough to get them to sit down for meetings for that long.
So that's a good sign. I think it's probably the most optimistic signs we've seen this deep in negotiations in many years.
BROWN: Have they gotten past -- they seem to have agree on things like there will still be three strikes and four balls, nine innings and all that. Have they gotten past, not the major hurdle, but have they gotten past any really sticky points yet?
WHITE: Well, I think they've made a lot of progress. They've gotten very close on revenue sharing. You know, we keep hearing numbers. They're $70 million apart, or maybe more than that. In these terms, that's not huge because in the past they were arguing about, is it a ball or is it a strike? They were arguing concepts instead of numbers. And I think that's very promising.
BROWN: There are two major issues that have to be addressed here. One is revenue sharing. Essentially, how much the rich teams give to the rest. And the other is a payroll tax, correct?
WHITE: Correct. And that's going to be the toughest point. A payroll tax at a certain threshold. If a team's payroll exceeds an amount, they start to pay a tax on that payroll. And the players are more strongly against this because they think that inhibits the richest teams -- The New York Yankees, for example -- from doling out the biggest contracts.
And the big contracts at the top end are the ones that drive up, pull up the rest of the salaries.
BROWN: And the way that would work is if, at a certain point, if you paid a player $10 million you would have to put an additional $5 million, the way the owners have proposed it to this point, in some sort of fund, right?
WHITE: Yes. And then that fund could be used by the commissioner's office in whatever formula they work out to help the poorer teams. And then the poorer teams that have less revenue get some of that money and can use it for signing players themselves.
BROWN: Should they choose to.
Here's what I think is the most interesting part about all of this. And that is the pressure on both sides right now to actually close a deal, which is different for a variety of reasons than, at least in my view, than it's ever been before.
WHITE: Yes. Several reasons, not the least of which is we're getting very close to September 11, and baseball's role around that date last year and after it was very, very important in this country, and sort of a release. And I don't think either side wants to be perceived as the ones that take baseball away from America on September 11.
And the other one, more concrete one, is the economy. Now, as opposed to 1994 when they had the last strike, the economy is bad, baseball has tremendous debt -- its teams do -- and bankers and lenders aren't going to really stand for baseball shutting down for any extended period of time.
BROWN: And I think that -- we don't have much time -- but I think that point, while there's always been sort of contentious discussion about whether these teams are making money or not making money, I think everybody pretty much agrees that there is enormous debt in baseball right now.
WHITE: Absolutely, and that is the key. And in the past lenders might have said, well, OK, if you're going to have a shut down for awhile we'll kind of let it slide and we can catch up later on. That's not the case anymore.
BROWN: Paul, nice to talk to you, and I suspect in the weeks ahead we'll do this again. I hope we will. Thank you.
WHITE: My pleasure.
BROWN: That's baseball.
Quick look at a few of the ideas we've been getting for what to do with lower Manhattan. We want to do this a little bit every night.
We've been struck by -- we talked about this a lot today -- how many of you want the towers rebuilt exactly as they were. Others seem to want to stay close to the original idea with some variations.
This one came from Italy. I love this. This would be the exact contours of the original towers, but in steel frames, empty space inside. Roberto says it's a great sanctuary of peace, one that will restore the skyline. It's a little eerie, too, isn't it?
This one from Austin, Texas. Something that goes to what New Yorkers often talk about, walking around the streets and trying to place where the towers would be when you were looking downtown. These towers would fill the same footprint. They'd actually be taller than the originals. Thanks for sending that one our way.
We'd like to see your idea. If you would like to send them to us, CNN.com/newsnight. The links make it pretty easy actually now to submit this if you have a little computer savvyness. Again, there are no prizes for these. This is not a contest. And please don't send me personally your sketches. I haven't a clue what to do with them. OK? Honestly.
Up next on NEWSNIGHT, history-making ship both 100 years ago and yet again today. We'll wrap it up for the week after this short break. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Finally tonight for the week, raising the Monitor. The USS Monitor was the ultimate high-tech weapon of its day. To our eyes, it looks like something from Wiley Coyote's drawing board, but 140 years ago in the middle of the Civil War, it was a fearsome thing. An ironclad warship, the first in the fleet. Canon fire that would sink a wooden ship in a heartbeat just bounced off this one. It was the Union Navy's ultimate weapon. But there was a catch. An arms race. The confederates built one too, the Virginia, and neither one could sink the other.
So why are we talking about raising the Monitor tonight? Well, what man and the Virginia could not do, mother nature did. Bad weather sent her to the bottom of the Atlantic, where she stayed until now.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BROWN (voice-over): It is one thing to try to unlock the many mysteries of the sea. It is quite another thing to actually succeed. When the revolving gun turret of the USS Monitor broke the ocean surface this week off the North Carolina coast, it not only ended a five-year joint naval and archaeological effort, it brought back to life a story that is 140 years old.
March the 9th, 1862. Back to the Civil War and an extraordinary battle on the high seas.
DR. JOHN BROADWATER, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION: And it was really the gun turret that made the Monitor the most famous and made it one of the most great innovation in naval warfare, because instead of having to turn the ship to aim the guns, this gun turret could revolve, point the guns in any direction, and it was armored, so it completely protected the men inside.
BROWN: The four-hour gunfight between the Monitor and the Confederate vessel the Virginia ended in a draw. But nine months later, the Monitor sank during a New Year's Eve storm. Sixteen men on board perished.
One hundred and forty years and $7 million later, history reborn.
COMMANDER BOBBIE SCHOLLEY, U.S. NAVY: I think it's important for people, because that turret represents a period in our country's past where Americans used technology to push the envelope back then, and in this case to help our naval forces along, which for me is quite personal that we use that technology, we were pushing the envelope. We were pushing innovation back then.
BROWN: The raising of the Monitor's 120-ton turret has now raised many questions. What is inside? Will any of the more than 200 artifacts found point to men who died at sea? And what else is down there? Dr. Broadwater was the first person to set foot inside that turret.
BROADWATER: We also saw a lot of bracing and levers and gearing that we had not seen before. It was never documented, and so there were all sorts of new things to look at. But the thing that we knew also we would find inside the turret was something that we discovered during the excavation by Navy divers, and that was human remains. It made it a much more somber occasion for all of us to actually have the turret on deck, knowing that people who perished in the Monitor were still inside. We know there are at least two crewmen still inside, possibly more.
SCHOLLEY: We are pushing the envelope right here with these winds and seas.
BROWN: And yet there were many times along the way the expedition nearly ended in failure. Poor weather along the coast proved a huge challenge. It looked as if the naysayers might be right. SCHOLLEY: A lot of second-guessing I think was going on then. But we kept with the plan, and we knew what kind of conditions we really needed in order to do this safely. So the weather was fighting us every step of the way, but we finally managed to get that one day, and we were ready to make the lift. The turret was ready to the best of our capabilities, so it worked out very well in the long run.
BROWN: They call these waters the graveyard of the Atlantic. A resting place for those who have traveled the open sea and for those who died trying. With the raising of the USS Monitor, the bridge between then and now got a little bit closer.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: That's our report for tonight, for the week. Have a wonderful weekend. Come back and see us on Monday at 10:00. Good night from all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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