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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Westerfield Found Guilty on All Counts; Al Qaeda Tapes Startle Experts; Publisher Thinks He's Found New "Harry Potter"

Aired August 21, 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, everyone. I had the most fascinating experience today, an interview that I gave. I sat down with the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera.
Now I have given dozens of interviews in the last 11 months, to newspapers and TV programs and the rest. I did two of them today. But this one was completely different from all of the others.

The reporter here was smart and he was interesting. I liked him. I didn't care for some of his questions, but I imagine that guests on this program have said that as well. He wondered at one point if I thought our coverage of the war on terror was too pro-American. Well, no, I responded. I think we have operated as independent journalists covering an attack, an act of war on our country. I think we have reported the story fairly, but we have never lost sight of the fact that 3,000 innocent people were killed that day, in this country, by people who brought this war to us.

He asked, at least I think it was a question, if I thought we towed the government line? No, I respondend. I think we've reported the story without much regard for what the White House would think. We have joined debates on civil liberties and new laws to combat terrorism. We have reported on bombing runs that hit civilians. But, yes, I added, when an American was killed over there, we spent more time on that story. We cared more about that young man and his wife and his children because he was our son, our neighbor, our countrymen.

It is a fine line, he seemed to think, between being a reporter and being a citizen. No, it's not. It's no line at all. I and all of us are both. We do our jobs independent of the government but with a constant knowledge of how blessed we are to live here and how hurt and angered we were now, almost a year ago, when our country was attacked. He seemed to want an apology. We don't apologize for that.

We begin with "The Whip" and the news of the day, tehe verdict in the van Dam case. Charles Feldman has been working the end-game of that story. Charles, a headline from you tonight.

CHARLES FELDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: One verdict now, guilty, but one very important decision to go in the tragic case of Danielle van Dam -- Aaron.

BROWN: Charles, thank you. Back with you at the top of the program tonight. To Crawford, Texas next. The president's meeting with top advisers today. John King, our senior White House correspondent, is down in Crawford. John, a headline from you.

JOHN KING, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the president did not discuss Iraq with his military advisers today, but after one meeting with them, he did discuss it with reporters, and he said again clearly Saddam Hussein must go. But the president emphasized this. He said, as he considers his option, quote, "I'm a patient man."

BROWN: John, thank you.

And our latest installment from Nic Robertson tonight and the al Qaeda tapes. Nic, a headline please.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, tonight we take a look at an al Qaeda training camp in remote Afghanistan. But it's not for training for guerrilla warfare, it's training for al Qaeda members to bring their jihad to the West.

BROWN: Nic, thank you.

Back with all of you shortly. Also coming up on the program -- we're almost afraid to tease this story. We've been trying for two days to get it on the air. Third time is a charm. It's Jason Bellini's look at one campus and the controversy over whether it's fair to put a book about the Koran on the required reading list. Just who is outraged by this? May not be exactly who you think.

Also tonight CNN's Matthew Chance on a reality of the new Afghanistan, and that reality is that in some ways it is still the old Afghanistan: the virtue police are back in business.

And it's certainly the holy grail of the publishing world. What comes after Harry Potter? We'll talk about a book that's getting a lot of buzz with the publisher who plucked the first Harry manuscript out of obscurity. That's Barry Cunningham of Scholastic Publishing. So lots to do in the next 60 minutes. We begin with the verdict -- finally a verdict in the case of David Westerfield.

Reporters always like to talk with jurors. How were you split? How did you resolve the spilt? What was the critical evidence? This jury in this case is especially intriguing. They had this case a long time. They seemed to go about their business, important business, in a very methodical way. In nearly two weeks they never said they were deadlocked, but they were out far longer than most criminal juries are.

We don't know the answers to how they reached their decision, because they still must decide if David Westerfield lives or dies for killing 7-year-old Danielle van Dam. We go back to CNN's Charles Feldman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We, the jury, in the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) find the defendant, David Alan Westerfield, guilty of the crime of murder...

FELDMAN (voice-over): After 27 days of testimony for more than 100 witnesses, and after viewing nearly 200 exhibits, the six man-six woman jury returned guilty verdicts against David Westerfield on all three counts, murder, kidnapping and possessing child pornography.

Westerfield, who lived down the street from 7-year-old Danielle van Dam kidnapped her from her bedroom, killed her and dumped her body in the southern California desert. The young girl's body was so decomposed that the medical examiner was unable to determine whether van Dam had been sexually assaulted or, for that matter, how she was killed.

The trial was unusual because Westerfield's attorney argued that the so-called swinging lifestyle of Danielle's parents may have exposed the youngster to suspects other than his client.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Isn't it true that on Halloween evening in the year 2000 you engaged in sex with Denise and Andy and Brendon (ph) and -- I'm sorry, and Daniel (ph)?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

FELDMAN: But prosecutors had forensic evidence on their side. Danielle's blood was found on Westerfield's jacket. More of her blood was found in his motor home along with strands of her hair and fibers from her clothing.

JEFF DUSEK, PROSECUTOR: This is a smoking gun. This is hard evidence. And no explanation, because there is none except that he did it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FELDMAN: Now a judicial gag order remains in effect, and that's because there's a very important phase of this proceeding that still has to come. And that's going to happen next Wednesday, Aaron, when the jury will reconvene for the penalty phase, which is what happens here in California. The panel will hear from more witnesses, hear some more testimony, and then we'll have the decision of recommending to the judge whether or not Westerfield spends the rest of his life in prison or is executed by lethal injection -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, you got my attention just at the end there. Who makes this decision, the jury or the judge?

FELDMAN: Well, under California law, Aaron, the jury makes a recommendation to the judge. And the way it works is, if the jury says that David Westerfield ought to be executed, the judge has the right to downstep that, if you will, to life in prison without parole. But if the jury decides life in prison without parole, under California law the judge does not have the ability to upgrade that through execution. BROWN: Charles, thank you, Charles Feldman, who today caught the verdict in the Danielle van Dam case.

Just quickly to Laurie Levenson to talk more about the penalty phase. Laurie will be familiar to many of you from that other time in all of our lives, back when O.J. Simpson was on trial. She's a professor of criminal law of Loyola-Marymount University in Los Angeles, former prosecutor. It's always nice to see her.

LAURIE LEVENSON, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Good to see you.

BROWN: Good evening. Help me through this. the Supreme Court, not long ago, ruled on this question of juries and judges in death penalty cases. Does California law conform?

LEVENSON: Yes, California law, I believe, does conform. Because initially the jury makes the decision whether he's eligible for the death penalty. The jury decides whether the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors, and all the judge can do is downgrade, as he said, down to life without parole, but the judge can't override the jury and impose a death penalty when the jury hasn't recommended it.

BROWN: OK, are there any particular quirks in the California death penalty case that may make it different from others that people have followed over the years?

LEVENSON: Yes, they are. In fact, in California we have a real focus on what constitutes aggravating factors and mitigating factors. What we expect here for the aggravating factors are the victim impact statement, the family members getting up and testifying, and then there's the real question of what other evidence might they have on Westerfield, other bad violent conduct by him, other details regarding the crime.

Unlike other states that just sort of weigh that against the mitigating factors, in California we want to be really sure to open the door to all possible mitigating factors. So the defense has real strategy to call make. Do they have an explanation for what happened, or are they going to continue with the strategy of he didn't do it? That we don't know the answer. We do have a suspicion, however, that the one thing they're going to do is to start calling their own family members or friends to say, you know, there's another side of Westerfield, the side that's a citizen, the side that was a good neighbor, the side that is not this evil person that prosecutors want to you believe.

BROWN: Some states appoint or require two lawyers in a capital case on the defense side, because one lawyer has been up there arguing now for weeks that the client is not guilty. And now his credibility, this theory goes, is shot, so a different lawyer argues the penalty phase. Is that true in California?

LEVENSON: We have two lawyers on each side here in California as well. And how they use those lawyers, we're not quite sure yet, but they have the opportunity to get, as you say, a fresh lawyer in front of the jury so that the lawyer maintains the credibility.

BROWN: While all this is going on, the country has been exposed to an enormous amount of coverage of a number of other kidnappings and, in some cases kidnapping-murders.

This jury has not been sequestered. They certainly were ordered not to look at this sort of stuff, but it's hard to avoid some of it. Do we have an appeal issue here?

LEVENSON: Well, we have lots of appeals issue here. And one is the publicity. I think the defense all along has made the record by asking for the jury to be sequestered. But the judge came out today and said he's confident that they haven't been reading this.

In the back of any juror's mind, even if they haven't read the recent publicity, is the idea of what this case is all about. It is the scariest type of case to the public: A girl who's snatched out of her own bedroom and killed in the most heinous matter.

Even if they haven't heard about the rash of recent cases, the facts of this case alone will make them pause.

BROWN: I have no doubt it will make them pause. But how -- I mean, honestly -- I mean, you were a prosecutor. Would you have believed, as a prosecutor, that this jury would not have known that up the road about an hour Samantha Runnion had been kidnaped and murdered?

LEVENSON: No, as I said, some jurors might know. We'll never know, right now, the answer to that question because they're not supposed to know.

But frankly, if they've heard any of those reports, it spells an even worse situation for the defense because what they're going to be worrying about -- they should be worrying about the dangerousness of Westerfield. What they're going to be worrying about are all the other possible child killers out there.

BROWN: One final question. It's only slightly off point. If you get sentenced to death in the state of California, are you likely, in fact, to be executed in the state of California?

LEVENSON: Not really. To be honest with you, more people die on death row from natural causes or suicide than are executed here.

We've only had 11 executions. We have over 600 people on death row. At minimum it takes about nine years for someone to be executed. The percentage is less than 2 percent are executed.

So this is only the beginning of a very long process, even if he does get the death penalty.

BROWN: Laurie, it's nice to see you. Laurie Levenson out in Los Angeles tonight, good to see you.

Still to come on the program, part three of our look inside al Qaeda -- Nic Robertson's story. That's coming up in a little bit.

But first, the secretary of defense, the president, and what they are not talking about.

This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: President Bush today had his top military and national security advisers over to the ranch in Crawford, Texas. The vice president was there as well. The meeting happened with the administration taking hits almost daily from allies, from a few members of Congress, pundits as well, over Iraq and whether we should go to war with Iraq.

So you might expect that subject to dominate the agenda today, or at least come up, which the administration says it did not.

Yesterday the defense secretary went so far as to warn reporters about becoming obsessed with the issue of Iraq. We don't know if we're obsessed, but today, at least, we're pretty intrigued.

Here again, our senior White House correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice over): As advertised, a top-level meeting about military spending priorities, not a mention of Iraq.

BUSH: I know there's this kind of intense speculation that seems to be going on, kind of, I don't know how you would describe it. It's kind of a churning frenzy -- frenzy is how the secretary would describe it. But the subject didn't come up.

KING: That said, Mr. Bush made clear removing Saddam Hussein from power remains a top priority. And during a visit to Kazakhstan, the general who would lead any military confrontation with Iraq said planning is well under way.

GENERAL TOMMY FRANKS, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND: Planning that is necessary in order to be sure that our nation, the United States of America and its allies have credible options, which can be presented to the president.

KING: General Franks was not among those on the helicopters arriving for their big meeting at the Bush ranch, nor was Secretary of State Colin Powell, and the president seemed determined to calm those who think he's in a rush to war.

BUSH: I'm a patient man. And when I say I'm a patient man, I mean I'm a patient man and that we will look at all options.

KING: A fellow Texan offered help in the political debate. Tom DeLay, the number three Republican in the House of Representatives pointedly challenged other conservatives who have questioned the need to remove Saddam Hussein. REP. TOM DELAY (R-TX), HOUSE MAJORITY WHIP: And every generation must summon the courage to disregard the timid counsel of those who would mortgage our security to the false promises of wishful thinking and appeasement.

KING: Mr. Bush says he will consult Congress and key allies once he settles on a strategy.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: And because of all the criticism from fellow Republicans in recent days and weeks, the White House grateful for those strong words of support today from Congressman Tom DeLay in part because of the sales job ahead. Most senior U.S. officials say a confrontation with Iraq is now a near certainty. But they also say they don't expect the president to have to make that fateful decision for probably several months -- Aaron.

BROWN: OK, being the cynic I am, twice in two days they've suggested we're all spending too much time thinking about, talking about, hammering (ph) it about Iraq. What are they doing there?

KING: Well, they're trying to get us to stop thinking about it and obsessing about it -- or the frenzy, as the secretary calls it -- Iraq.

And there's a reason for that. They, at some point, are going to have to make a difficult political case to the American people and to key allies overseas. They insist -- and we have no reason, watching the military movements, any troop movements -- we have no reason to think they're pulling one over us, if you will. There are none of that -- none of those preparations are underway, so they insist they're sincere: that the president won't make this decision for some time to come.

At the very same time, they know that we're going to talk about this. And look at what the defense secretary said just yesterday before he came here. Not only did he say Saddam Hussein is a menace, he said there is al Qaeda in Iraq. So of course we're going to talk about this.

BROWN: Is it a concern, do you think, that they're losing control of the agenda; that lots of other people are talking about this and that they know they need to make their case on Iraq, both internationally and domestically, and they don't want other people stealing the agenda?

KING: I think that is a concern. And there is a debate within the administration about how to go about this argument.

Some close friends of this president have cautioned him that he makes it too personal; he makes it too easy for critics to say, this George Bush wants to go after Saddam Hussein because the last George Bush left him in Baghdad. So they have urged this administration: focus on issues like the weapons of mass destruction, focus on the fact that Saddam Hussein has broken his words to the United Nations, the cease-fire agreement he signed at the end of the Gulf war; make it about the issues, make it about the weapons, don't make it personal. That is the advice this president is getting from many of his closest advisers.

BROWN: John, thank you, our senior White House correspondent John King who is in Crawford, Texas tonight.

A few quick stories from around the country today, beginning with a court appearance for the first Enron executive to admit he committed a crime. Remember Enron? Michael Kopper pleaded guilty to money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He told the judge he ran, or helped create partnerships that inflated profits at Enron. He also admitted funneling money to his old boss, former CFO, chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow, who prosecutors think engineered the partnerships. Fastow not indicted yet.

A scare today at Miami International Airport; a concourse closed for several hours, dozens of people treated today for respiratory problems. It seems a security officer took a container thought to be Mace from a passenger. It appears he left it on the supervisor's table and forgot about it. It leaked. No one was taken to the hospital; everyone is fine.

A successful liftoff tonight for the Atlas 5. It's a powerful new version of the rocket that carried John Glenn into orbit. It debuted three decades ago or more. This is the view from the camera mounted on the rocket. That is something. The hope is that Atlas 5 will jump-start the commercial launch business, which has been in a deep slump now for several years.

And in lower Manhattan today, the first section of a viewing wall was installed, one that will surround Ground Zero throughout the many years of construction. The wall will run 1,800 feet. It should be done by the end of the year. Officials still trying to decide -- this, computer animation -- trying to decide whether the names of the victims will be included on the wall.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, al Qaeda in training. In tonight's report: rehearsals for urban attacks and assassinations; a surprising level of sophistication.

We'll take a break. This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Well, we admit it is nice, for a change, to introduce the next in Nic Robertson's series of reports on the al Qaeda tapes without much explanation -- without a warning or a disclaimer. And, we add, that he has done a remarkable job of telling the story, despite all the noise and the controversy this week surrounding the tapes.

Tonight we look at how al Qaeda turns angry young men into trained killers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ROBERTSON (voice-over): Explosions resonate around a remote Afghan hillside as al Qaeda fighters burst into what appears to be a stone hut, but all is not as it seems on this al Qaeda training video, one of several tapes CNN obtained, that record al Qaeda's never- before-seen battle plans.

ROHAN GUNARATNA, AUTHOR "INSIDE AL QAEDA": Al Qaeda has created a series of exercises to train the recruits who came to Afghanistan to come to the West and to conduct terrorist operations.

ROBERTSON (on camera): In the urban environment?

GUNARATNA: In the urban environment. At least they are able to operate in cities.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): This is a remote setting, but the training we see here is, according to al Qaeda analyst Gunaratna, designed to teach the terrorist trainees how to take their jihad to western cities. In this case, a Western city replicated in canvass and stone on a hillside in Eastern Afghanistan.

GUNARATNA: Al Qaeda has built a small city and they're training and they're placing real explosives and blowing up that region. They're blowing up some of the houses, some of the offices. It is a real thing. It is more advanced than training. It is almost like doing the operation, so that when they go to the real operation in the theater, they will be 100 percent confident.

ROBERTSON: For al Qaeda, effectively a kind of special forces.

Magnus Ranstorp, one of several al Qaeda experts CNN asked to examine this collection of tapes, says he is startled by the level of expertise.

MAGNUS RANSTORP, UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS: I don't think anyone ever fathomed, even in the intelligence community, how sophisticated the training was, how well prepared they were, and how they were working their way in secret and imparting this advice and developing and thinking, not only what to do but also the defenses the enemy has.

ROBERTSON: This tape is labeled "Exclusive Abu Haps (ph)." The nondiger (ph) for al Qaeda's now dead top military commander Mohammed Atef. The tape provides step-by-step instruction on how to use a surface-to-air missile.

GUNARATNA: The video of the surface-to-air missile training is something that has never been made public before. No intelligence agency has any idea that al Qaeda has made a video where they train a person to fire a surface-to-air missile, and I think that this video comes as a shock to the international intelligence community because civil aviation will become very vulnerable because of this type of video.

ROBERTSON: Other training tapes add insights into how al Qaeda works. Here, recruits learn to repel down the side of a cliff. One trainee gets stuck, unable to move. Exercises like these, an indication al Qaeda was not only putting new fighters through their paces, but selecting the right people for the right job.

RANSTORP: They are really training for specific missions and it's weeding out the elite of the elite, the crime de la crime who may be deployed for even more specialized training and who may even be deployed into the West for terrorist purposes.

ROBERTSON: Elsewhere on the same training tape, al Qaeda operatives repeatedly rehearsed complex hostage taking, and assassination operations, procedures that exactly match diagrams in this handwritten manual, recovered by CNN last November from a former al Qaeda safehouse in Kabul.

For CNN's military analyst, retired General David Grange, al Qaeda's tactics present a very clear and present danger.

BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE (RET.), U.S. ARMY: Just the intensity of the training that's described in these tapes, very determined, covering a lot of different areas, information warfare, bomb making, assassinations, raids, snatches, destruction of bridges, lines of communication.

ROBERTSON: For Grange, the training tapes provide more than just a wakeup call on al Qaeda's sophistication. He says the tapes also show weaknesses in al Qaeda's organization.

GRANGE: And so you have to be on the lookout of how they use motorcycles together with automobiles as an example. But what really is apparent looking at a higher level of how they operate is that one, they have to have an idea. They have to have a plan. They have to have resources. They need money. They need chemicals. They need ammunition. They need weapons.

And then, they have to rehearse, practice, stage, and then there are communications requirements. They end up talking to leaders and then they have to do the hit. They have to withdraw safely and then they have to recover somewhere in a safe area. Throughout that whole stage, that whole process, there are vulnerabilities and again, they teach offensive, not defensive measures.

ROBERTSON: But those offensive measures were taught to the trainees on these tapes at least four years ago, giving al Qaeda a substantial head start, experts say, in putting trained operatives in place.

GUNARATNA: In terms of preparation, in terms of planning, al Qaeda has created a large number of killers, a large number of terrorists who will, you know over the years will (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

ROBERTSON: If al Qaeda has indeed stolen the initiative as these experts fear, the threat of terrorism may be as real now as it was September the 11th, 2001.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And Nic joins us from Atlanta tonight. Very nice, by the way. Setting September 11 aside for a second, do we know of any example where the kinds of training we just saw has actually been executed for real?

ROBERTSON: There has been a case where an al Qaeda operation was known about that was in Saudi Arabia, and there was a known target. The execution of that operation didn't go ahead, didn't take place, but it was discovered, so it is known that they have specifically tried to put in this type of operation ready, yes.

BROWN: Perhaps until earlier, when I looked at these stories, I had thought of al Qaeda operations as a high concept operations, big targets, big messages. These are not that, are they?

ROBERTSON: Well, the targets -- the target may not have, in this particular case, been big, but the concepts were big. The plans around a particular hostage taken that they had planned had a very complex agenda to it. It was to extract somebody's release from jail. It was to get a large sum of money, it was to be given some other high government official in return. So it is, it was in that particular case a complex operation.

BROWN: I want to talk about something broader that's come up a bunch in correspondence with viewers, and you may have addressed this throughout the week. I know you've been asked just about every question under the sun.

How do we know that al Qaeda didn't want us to have these tapes simply because it just shows them to be bigger, badder, scarier than perhaps we ever thought we were? And it's, in that regard, terrific propaganda.

ROBERTSON: Coalition intelligence sources have told us that they believe the location of the tapes were held out, was a location that was secure and only for very, very senior al Qaeda leaders. We also know, looking across the broad range of tapes, that there were tapes, for example, the tape of Osama bin Laden the day he announces a jihad on the United States, where there were people on that the video tape that al Qaeda very much didn't really want to be seen.

That there were people, if their faces were put -- were made available to the intelligence community, that it might make them easier to round up. So there are indications that the tapes here -- they just didn't intend them to get into general circulation, and very much may the knowledge that's contained within them may very much give away part of their game plan.

There's no reason for us to believe, at all, that it was -- that al Qaeda was any way linked to the timing, that when we received these videos, or that they were behind some effort here to give themselves some great publicity. Absolutely no reason to believe that at all.

BROWN: Nic, thank you. Nic Robertson in Atlanta tonight. He'll be back in tomorrow. Tomorrow night, we'll take a look inside an al Qaeda bomb laboratory and how recruits are taught to make high explosives out of everyday material. That will help you sleep, won't it? And Friday, a focus again on Osama bin Laden, as the weeks continues in this series. Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, the man who discovered Harry Potter -- boy, talk about whiplash. Go from al Qaeda tapes to kids' stories. Anyway, he thinks he's found the next big children's book. We're looking forward to talking to him. But first the local barber in Afghanistan may be out of a job. The vice and virtue police are back. That story and more as NEWSNIGHT continues from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: To Afghanistan now. Life under the Taliban was harsh. Well, it was harsh for the people of Afghanistan. The Taliban leader Sheikh Omar seemed to live pretty well, as I recall. But for everyone else, fear was a constant. As they went about their lives, they were constantly watched by the morals police. Sort of an Orwellian and medieval creation at the same time, men with a radical view of how a good Muslim should behave, who stalked the streets and villages, punishing those who got out of line, and often brutally so.

It's hard to forget those pictures just after the Taliban fell: women out from under their veils, men thrilled just to get a shave. That's why it's a bit hard to accept the fact that the religious enforcers are still very much in business. They insist their weapons these days are persuasion, not intimidation. Here's CNN's Matthew Chance.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the barber shops of Kabul, the men are shaving while they still can. Outside religious law enforcers are back in the shape of the old Vice and Virtue Ministry, and beard trimming is just one of the acts frowned upon by these re-empowered custodians of Afghan Islamic law.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We'll keep on shaving, he says, until our government tells us enough.

CHANCE: At prayers, the faithful have gathered to hear the official vice and virtue decrees. Beards should be grown long, they're told. Shaving is a sin against Islam.

Familiar ground to those who lived under the Taliban and expected, perhaps, in the new Afghanistan.

But after showing me the old Taliban whips for offenders, the man heading up the resurrected vice and virtue office says he'll be depending on the power of persuasion to make Afghans more virtuous.

MOHAMMAD WAZIR RAZI KABULI, VICE AND VIRTUE DEPARTMENT (through translator): We are not like the Taliban. We're not focussing too much on specific sins. But it is the duty of every Muslim and every government to direct people in what is right and what is wrong. We will offer moral guidance. God will punish those who sin.

CHANCE: And this is one weapon the Taliban vice and virtue ministry never used. Women, here in prayer, now being trained to carry the message of Islamic law, and to report wherever it is transgressed. It is a truly Afghan brand of women's lib.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): A woman has to lead her children towards Islam and obey the orders of her husband. She is responsible for the education of her children, but also should not leave the house or talk to strangers without her husband's permission.

CHANCE (on camera): It's clear the emphasis of the new Vice and Virtue Department is a much softer approach towards enforcing Islamic law. These people will go out into the community, into schools and offices to try and make people, in their eyes, more virtuous.

But, they say, there will be none of the severe punishment beatings so many here feared in the past.

(voice-over): And that's good news, to say the least, for the many Afghans keen to continue exercising their freedom to sin.

Matthew Chance, CNN, Kabul.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A number of items making news around the world now, starting with Muslim terrorists in the Philippines, a group with ties to al Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf group. The Associate Press reporting they have beheaded at least two of the six Jehovah's Witnesses that they kidnapped yesterday.

To Israel now. Security forces today arresting a number of suspects in the bombing at Hebrew University late last month. Nine people died in that attack, including five Americans.

To China: no end to the flooding in the central part of the country. More than 200 people have died, and the water is still rising in a huge lake nearby. Much of the area lies below the level of the lake. Residents are counting on a system of levies to hold until the weather finally begins to dry out.

And finally in the roundup, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien said today he will not seek another term in office. The prime minister is facing a challenge within his party. Poll numbers are slipping, too. But he said he decided two years ago not to run, but had waited -- but had wanted to wait a little bit longer before announcing his intentions.

Up ahead, the editor who discovered Harry Potter joins us to talk about what may be the next Harry Potter, or, at least, so he hopes.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK, this is a true story. I asked my daughter the other day if she would be so kind as to do me a favor. Because she's 13, her eyes started rolling before the sentence was finished. I'd like you to read a book for me, I said, something for the program. It was found by the same guy who found the Harry Potter books, and he thinks this one is quite cool. The woman-child looked at me and said, as if I should have known better, dad, I have 700 pages still to read of "Gone With the Wind" before school starts.

"The Thief Lord" remains unread by dad or child, but the prospect of a new hit on the kids' reading list does not go unnoticed, not by any parent who watched with the delight as their kids did not just read, but devoured the "Harry Potter" series.

So could lightening strike twice? If it does, Barry Cunningham is a lucky man, indeed.

He found Harry, and now he's got "The Thief Lord." And he joins us tonight.

It's nice to see you again.

BARRY CUNNINGHAM, CHILDREN'S BOOK PUBLISHER: Thank you.

BROWN: Similarities?

CUNNINGHAM: Well, it's very, very, very child sensitive. It's about big adventure, it's about a big romantic setting. And it's all about how children, real children, react in a wonderful, complicated story.

BROWN: Is that, in some sense, the key to a good -- the difference between a good kid's book and a bad kids' book is that good kids' books are about kids acting like kids and bad ones are about kids acting like adults?

CUNNINGHAM: That's absolutely right. And bad ones are all full of how adults see childhood: as good children (UNINTELLIGIBLE) children see childhood.

And I think that's completely different. And I think that's really, really true.

And in this book it's -- you know, it's set in Venice. It has a gang of street kids, it has a magical carousel that makes kids into adults and adults into kids.

And the children react as children. In a difficult situation, they overcome difficulties. They don't always make the right choices, but it's very exciting. And it's about building their imagination, really.

And in the end it's about hope. It's about kids solving these things for themselves, which children love to read.

So I think that's absolutely right. I think that is the difference.

BROWN: Obviously a lot from a publisher's-- this is a German woman who wrote this?

CUNNINGHAM: Yes, Cornelia. BROWN: A lot was learned by you all in how to market with "Harry Potter." Are you -- we were talking, in fact, earlier about how you did this big midnight rollout on one, and there was tremendous hype and tremendous excitement. And, are you going to market in much the same way?

CUNNINGHAM: No. In the end, really, all we can do is we can talk about it; we can get the books into shops and into children's hands. But then, at the end of the day, I think, maybe unlike adult books, the books really, really do depend on children liking it and telling their friends, and parents telling their friends. And the book is working because I think...

BROWN: Can't you just go buy off like 5,000 teachers?

CUNNINGHAM: No, I don't think it works like that. I don't think it works like that.

It really has to work with children, and it has to light up, and it has to make them want to read and talk about it.

And the thing about "Harry," which I'm endlessly proud of, is it got all those kids reading who never read anything else, really. And the time we did Harry, they said that, you know, especially boys would have difficulty finishing the back of a computer program whereas, you know, they're enjoying 750 pages.

BROWN: One of the wonderful things -- I don't know, obviously, about this one -- one of the wonderful thing about "Harry," though, was -- there were many wonderful things about "Harry," by the way -- is that it worked on boys and girls.

There have always been -- there was the genre of kind of horror stories that boys, few years back -- I forget the guy's name -- but boys seemed to lap those up pretty good. Girls have always been better readers, I think.

But "Harry" works on both. Does this work one work on both, do you think?

CUNNINGHAM: Yes, I think really good books transcend that. You know, the really, really good books work for boys and girls because they're about the same kind of bigger issues and the same kind of excitement. And I think this absolutely does as well.

BROWN: Yes, and how about and adults? Harry worked great for adults at times.

CUNNINGHAM: Yes. I think -- that's surprised me, to be honest. I always knew that the kids would love Harry. But I think it's another children's author, called Philip Pullman, who said that adults respond to children's books nowadays because they're about the big issues, they're about good and evil and vanquishing the bad guys, whereas a lot of adult writing is just about kind of fashion and fun and how big your bum is in something.

BROWN: If this book were a tenth as successful as Harry Potter, it would be a smash, wouldn't it?

CUNNINGHAM: Yes, yes.

BROWN: And you'd be one happy guy?

CUNNINGHAM: I would be. And I'm sure it's going to be. It's got all the right qualtities.

BROWN: Eventually I'll get my kid to read it. We'll find out. Nice to see you again.

CUNNINGHAM: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you very much, good luck.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the flap over summer reading assignments for students, older students are the ones we've been talking about. They go to the University of North Carolina. This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We came across a quote from a student in all this fuss over freshmen at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill being required to read a book about the Koran. The quote went like this: "I don't believe that intolerance of other religions is the guide set before us to follow."

This came from a member of the Campus Crusade for Christ, and we think it goes to the complexity of this story. Conservative commentators, some of them, and outside Christian groups -- some of them -- have billed this as some titanic struggle: liberal academics forcing one religion down the throats of impressionable kids, many of whom are really upset about it.

But the reality isn't quite so black and white, when you actually talk to the students themselves. That's what Jason Bellini's been doing in Chapel Hill this first week back in school.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When they arrived at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill campus, this year's incoming freshmen were expecting this.

(CHANTING)

But they were also met with this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did you read the book that we have to read, sir?

BELLINI: A small group of protesters, none of them students, who oppose the assignment to read the book about the Koran.

MOODY ADAMS, PROTESTOR: I'm not Muslims. I'm not against academic freedom. I'm against the Koran, because (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the bin Ladens. He did not convince those terrorists that they would go to Heaven. This is the book that convinced them.

BELLINI: Freshman Bartwelt (ph) was just standing around.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're just the radicals that are coming out and protesting.

BELLINI: The book itself, entitled approaching the Koran, hardly makes a political statement. Written before 9/11, it highlights passages from the Koran that express the beauty and the richness of the text.

DANIEL MILLER, FRESHMAN, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA: When you read the Koran, the bit that we read, you see it as what they believe as, it's God's word. And so God is telling them to live a good life.

BELLINI: Most students we talked to were like Daniel. We had to search the campus for an actual student who objected to the an assignment. Alek Shah, a sophomore, who didn't have to do the assignment, protested the book to student government because he says it promotes a political correctness agenda.

ALEK SHAH, SOPHOMORE, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA: My main issue with the book is it contains one-third of the Koran. The two- thirds that's left out are the parts about the infidels and killing the people in name of jihad and Allah, so essentially what the author has done, he has taken the most peaceful parts of Islam and he's trying to taint the view of all the students there reading the book.

CARL ERNST, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA: If we wanted to avoid all controversy, we would have had to pick "The Cat in the Hat." What other outside groups do we can't predict, but we're in the business of recommending knowledge rather than fear and suspicion. And we believe the best way to do that is by directly encountering the subject matter.

BELLINI: So is there a controversy at all among those who are given the assignment? It appears that what the university had hoped would be an academic exercise proved to some students ideas can't be divorced from emotion.

ISRAA DORGHAM, FRESHMAN, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA: In the aftermath of September 11, this religion has been bashed most of the time. And they just wanted to open people's minds. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. That's not offending anyone.

BELLINI: It's new school year. Jason Bellini, CNN, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That's the program for tonight. A good and varied program tonight. Glad you were with us. Hope you join us tomorrow. Until then, good night from all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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