Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

U.N. Prepares to Pass Resolution on Iraq; Bush Pushes for War; Gore Lashes Out on White House for Stance on Saddam

Aired September 23, 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: Well, here we go. Good evening again, everyone.
We lost count today of the number of voices we heard on the issue of what to do about Iraq. This is just a select list: there was the current President, President Bush; former President Jimmy Carter, who as you might have guessed had a very different take on Iraq; the former presidential candidate, perhaps future presidential candidate, Al Gore, he gave a speech on Iraq today, very heavy on criticism of the Bush administration, and politics aside, he raised some intriguing arguments that ought to be considered in the debate ahead. There was also testimony today from four retired generals.

But as we look at all of those with titles and ranks, we ought not forget you. And while polling is not our favorite science, it is still the best way to gauge public opinion, and our poll seems quite clear. Iraq has overtaken the economy as the most important issue going into the November elections.

There are plenty of Democrats who are suspicious of that. American's want Saddam Hussein gone, but, and this is important, they want Congress on board with the plan, and they want the U.N. on board as well. They do not want the U.S. military to take this on alone. They want Saddam Hussein gone, that's clear.

Americans by a very wide margin though still think Osama bin Laden is a bigger threat to the United States than is Saddam, and our polling shows they're split on whether President Bush has a clear policy where Iraq is concerned. We should add here that the President's approval rating remains extraordinarily high, 66 percent.

And we continue to believe the public debate is just now beginning on Iraq. There are huge questions that have yet to be answered. Questions like why now, and how will the country pay for the war? Who will pay? Will we pay, or will our children pay in higher deficits? Questions like what comes after Saddam is gone, what sort of government, how long do American troops stay? Lots of questions that have not been answered yet, but should be before we send our children off to fight a war.

I suppose we could have said all of this in one sentence. In the next weeks, the program is going to spend a lot of time on the public debate over whether the United States should go to war with Iraq. And so begins the whip tonight, it begins at the United Nations dealing not only with the Iraqi question, but also with the Israeli's retaliation against Yasser Arafat.

Our U.N. correspondent Richard Roth has the watch tonight. Richard the headlines from you please.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN UNITED NATIONS CORRESPONDENT: It's here, that hot highly anticipated resolution before the Security Council, but not about Iraq. It's the Middle East, and for the United States tonight, that could spell double trouble.

BROWN: Richard, thank you.

On to Israel next, what the government thinks it will get out of this latest military action. Matthew Chance has been following the story for us, and Matthew will be joining us in a moment or so. More now on the Vice President, the former Vice President's speech today on Iraq. Candy Crowley is covering the speech today from Al Gore. Candy the headline from you please.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron it was a 50 minute speech before a receptive San Francisco crowd, but the cliff note version is this, there is not much Al Gore likes about President Bush's policy in Iraq.

BROWN: Candy, thank you. Back to you, all of you shortly.

Also coming up in the program tonight, a reality check of sorts, and a story that's troubling and mysterious in the war on terror, just how did those men in Buffalo actually break the law?

And a moving story from a different time and a different war, two men from worlds apart with a single connection, a concentration camp, an American GI and the prisoner he helped to liberate. Also tonight Nissen joins us, an extraordinary piece of music commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to mark the extraordinary events of September 11. That comes up at the end, so it's a full Monday from us tonight.

We begin with a grab bag of developments on the subject of Iraq. A lot of moving parts to the story tonight, and a lot of pieces to each of those moving parts. The story is playing out at the U.N., it is playing out in the Congress, and as it turns out, on the campaign trail as well.

And now add this, it is playing out tonight in London. For some time, President Bush has been counting on the British prime minister to make the case. You may recall that in the days before the war in Afghanistan, it was Tony Blair who laid out the best evidence of the Taliban's complicity in harboring al Qaeda. Tomorrow he says he'll do the same on Iraq.

Here's CNN's Andrea Koppel.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Diplomatic sources say the British report lacks a smoking gun, hard evidence Iraq has acquired nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. But on the eve of its release, members of Tony Blair's Cabinet said the 50 plus page report, culled from British intelligence, still packs a powerful punch.

JACK STRAW, BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY: And what that dossier shows is that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime is not some historic leftover, but is real, serious, and represents a mounting challenge to the international community.

KOPPEL: Working in lockstep with the Bush administration, Prime Minister Tony Blair has coordinated the timing of the reports release to underscore the message delivered earlier this month by President Bush at the U.N., and repeated almost every day since, that Iraq's President cannot be trusted.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He's a man who told the United Nations time and time and time again, I will disarm. I don't have weapons. He either lied or deceived.

KOPPEL: The U.S.-U.K. strategy, to shore up support within the U.N. Security Council for a tough new resolution against Iraq.

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The entire world knows beyond dispute that Saddam Hussein holds weapons of mass destruction, in large quantities, and is seeking to acquire more.

KOPPEL: This carefully calibrated teamwork was most recently on display after the September 11 attacks, when the British government presented the world with evidence it said proved Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network was to blame. This time around there will likely be few surprises, but weapon's experts say the dossier could still prove valuable.

TERRY TAYLOR, FORMER U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: ... think it'll confirm a lot of the information, hard information that's out there already available.

KOPPEL: The first test of this report's power of persuasion could come from the British Parliament, which is set to receive the dossier tomorrow. But the bigger hurdle will be getting the U.N. Security Council to agree.

Andrea Koppel, CNN at the State Department.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And you can see Mr. Blair's speech here on CNN. Our live coverage begins at 6:30 in the morning, Eastern time. On now to the domestic side. With Congress expected to vote on a resolution on Iraq sometime in the next week, the debate is getting sharper. A number of Democrats in the House and the Senate are working on alternatives to a draft the President sent up last week, but this is a tricky political spot to be in. No one wants to give the President a blank check, but just the same, few seem to have the stomach for standing in his way.

But today former presidential candidate Al Gore made the argument against the war, a complex and reasoned argument regardless of where you stand on the issue.

Here again, CNN's Candy Crowley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CROWLEY (voice-over): As some in the room hummed "Hail to the Chief", Al Gore took to a podium in San Francisco to slam pretty much everything about the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq.

AL GORE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The war against terrorism manifestly requires a multilateral approach. It is impossible to succeed against terrorism unless we have secured the continuing sustained cooperation of many nations. Our ability to secure that kind of multilateral cooperation in the war against terrorism can be severely damaged in the way we go about undertaking unilateral action against Iraq.

CROWLEY: Gore said the President should instead build a coalition against Iraq, work through the U.N., come up with a plan to help rebuild a post-Saddam Iraq, and dispense with all that talk of preemptive strikes. Talk that has dissolved the world's post 9/11 goodwill.

GORE: That has been squandered in a year's time, and replaced with great anxiety all around the world, not primarily about what the terrorist networks are going to do, but about what we're going to do.

CROWLEY: It was arguably the most pointed, certainly the highest profile critique of Bush policy toward Iraq. And Gore delivered with sharp elbows, suggesting that this quote, sudden burst of urgency to take on Saddam is prompted by the mid-term elections.

GORE: Vice President Chaney meanwhile, has indignantly described suggestions of any such thing as reprehensible. And then the following week took his discussion of the war to the Rush Limbaugh show.

CROWLEY: There was in fact very little that the former, and perhaps future, presidential candidate found right about Bush policy in Iraq, except the premise.

GORE: Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CROWLEY (on-camera): The White House greeted Gore's blast with a cool rhetorical shrug. Said one senior Bush official, his is not a voice we are overly concerned with. The official added,

CROWLEY: The White House greeted Gore's blast with a cool rhetorical shrug. Said one senior Bush official, his is not a voice we are overly concerned with. The official added, Gore is out of step with the majority and the leadership of his own party -- Aaron. BROWN: Well and that is in fact true, at least at this point the majority of the Democrats seem to be supportive of the notion that if the United States has to go it alone, the United States has to go it alone. So what's Mr. Gore doing out there today?

CROWLEY: Well, I mean, I think a couple of things. First of all, I talked to a number of Democrats today who said, you know, there is a real yearning out in the hustings, you know, out beyond the beltway, for someone to take this on and sort of articulate some of the things, and some of the objections that many have. Or at least some of the concerns.

The other thing that's going on is that Al Gore is stepping up his profile, as you know there is a mid-term coming up, and Al Gore has said, look by the end of the year I expect to make up my mind about what I'm going to do as far as 2004 is concerned. So there's some of that, and this is part of a higher profile.

BROWN: And is there any squeamishness among Congressional Democrats about the Gore speech today?

CROWLEY: You know, it's interesting, we'll see. My guess is no, and when we look at some of the other 2004 candidates, particularly if you look at John Edwards, if you look at Joe Lieberman, they've really been, if not wholly in step with the President, they've certainly been largely supportive of him.

Again, I think this is something that they'll pay attention to. It's certainly something that the more liberal members of the Democratic party will latch on to. But I'm not sure it actually moves the debate but, you know, this has just started as you said earlier, so perhaps anything can sway it one way or the other.

BROWN: Candy, thank you. Candy Crowley covering the politics of the Gore speech, as well as the substance. Thank you very much.

There was a great editorial cartoon we saw today. It showed the President sitting between a pair of chessboards, one for Congress, the other for the United Nations, which would be nice I suppose if it were only that simple. The White House tonight is playing at least two games at the U.N. alone, one concerning Iraq, the other with Israel and the Palestinians.

Richard Roth is at the U.N. for us again tonight.

Richard, good evening.

ROTH: Good evening Aaron.

Can the United States win support for a resolution on Iraq while not being in favor of an Arab resolution tonight, which strongly criticized Israel for the siege in Ramallah? That Security Council resolution on Iraq is not ready yet for primetime, it's still a few days away, according to the U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte.

More on Iraq, the U.S. says it's coming, but diplomats on the U.S. British side are still fine-tuning it. The French Ambassador today told me, he's waiting to see a text.

Kofi Annan, who you saw there, along with Hans Blix, a chief weapons inspector on Iraq, were at the traditional monthly lunch of the Security Council. Annan has tossed the Iraqi diplomatic pouch into the Council's hands, saying today it's really up to the Council to decide, when he was asked about Iraq's latest refusal to go along with a new resolution.

Iraq wants to keep existing agreements on presidential palace access to weapons inspector. One source said the French Ambassador inside that lunch said why do we need to really get into the issue of force right now?

A late night negotiating session is exactly going on now. This is what we expected Aaron, on Iraq. Instead tonight it's on the Middle East. Two competing resolutions regarding the Ramallah siege.

Inside the Security Council, the meeting began several hours ago. U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte was in the middle of it, along with Secretary General Annan. This resolution, the United States says, is not balanced, it's one-sided.

Speakers from Malaysia to Cuba said the U.S. is showing a double standard, supporting Israel, which they say has weapons of mass destruction, nuclear power, and supporting Israel which is not living up to existing Security Council resolutions on getting of the territories.

A U.S. official says, you can't have it that way, Israel is a democracy, Iraq has used chemical weapons against its own people. This debate may go on late into the evening. Aaron.

BROWN: How does the United States answer that very sticky question about the Israelis not being in compliance with U.N. resolutions though?

ROTH: Well, even tonight the U.S. is critical of Israel for staying in Ramallah as long as it is around Arafat's headquarters. But they're not willing to support a resolution, and they have their veto, and they're saying we're going to use it if the Palestinians insist on putting it to a vote. They'd say that Israeli is the democracy, that Israel respects international law, and they like to keep the focus on Iraq, and saying how Saddam Hussein has violated 16 resolutions. They know they really can't win on all of the Security Council resolutions on Israeli, so the aim, keep the focus on Saddam Hussein.

BROWN: Richard. Thank you, Richard Roth at the U.N. tonight.

To Ramallah next, the siege does go on there, White House admonitions notwithstanding, concern at the U.N. notwithstanding. But the two sides are talking, Israeli and Palestinian officials did meet today. The Israelis demanded a list of the people inside Yasser Arafat's compound, so that Israel could decide who's wanted and who isn't. The Palestinians say they will get no list. And for now it is somewhat of a moot point, since nobody's coming out, and Yasser Arafat shows no signs of giving in. Here again, CNN's Matthew Chance.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Supporters of Yasser Arafat on the streets of Gaza. If the Palestinian leader's popularity was ever slipping among his own people, protests here and across the West Bank have the appearance of bolstering him again. Thousands have come out, but Israeli officials deny their action in Ramallah, and to isolate Arafat is having an opposite effect.

DORE GOLD, SENIOR ISRAELI GOVERNMENT ADVISER: The Palestinian leaderships a little bit worried about the support that it has today from the Palestinian street. It's one thing to send your agents into various Palestinian cities in order to get out the crowds for a one- time demonstration, it's quite another thing to earn the support of the Palestinian people.

CHANCE: But even the United States, firm backers of Israel, criticizes this. U.S. officials say the virtual leveling of Arafat's compound in recent days, neither increases Israeli security, nor promotes Palestinian reform. It doesn't make U.S. coalition building against Iraq any easier either. The latest action in Ramallah followed this Palestinian suicide bombing of a crowded bus in Tel Aviv last week. Six people were killed. The Hamas says it was responsible, not Yasser Arafat, so why a renewed focus on the Palestinian leader?

LESLIE SUSSER, "JERUSALEM REPORT": I think Sharon is trying to get the world ready for Arafat's expulsion. And he's chipping away, each time he does a little bit more, gets closer to the actual act of removing Arafat from the West Bank. I think the Defense Minister Ben- Eliezer sees in the humiliation of Arafat an acceleration of the process of a new leadership taking over.

CHANCE: But neither may happen soon. Israeli forces delivering basic supplies to the compound to ease shortages among the hundreds encamped inside. And despite the pressure, neither Israel nor Arafat looks ready to leave.

Matthew Chance, CNN Jerusalem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT we'll get more on the Israeli perspective on all of this from spokesman Dore Gold. This is NEWSNIGHT from Atlanta.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Israeli government is no stranger to international criticism, like the kind of criticism it's hearing tonight, even criticism from the United States. We talk to you about that and more with Dori Gold, an Israeli close to the government, a man who often speaks for the Israeli government in times like this.

Mr. Gold, let's start with where we are today. Is this operation over? Do the people inside, what is ever left of the compound now, have food and water? Has the Israeli government allowed that much to go on?

GOLD: Well certainly Israelis saw on television tonight that the Israeli army was delivering food to the 200 or so fugitives from the law that are in the compound, as well as of course to Mr. Arafat, and therefore food, water, all necessities are available.

But the focus that we have right now is making sure that the 200 individuals leave the compound. Those who we find are involved in terrorism, and were involved in terrorism will be arrested and prosecuted. Those who weren't will be let go.

BROWN: You describe them, you said there are 200 fugitives in that building. Do you know who's in that building, and do you know that all of them are fugitives?

GOLD: No. We know specific individuals that are there. For example there's a Colonel Tawfik Tirawi, who is the head of the general security services of Mr. Arafat in the West Bank. Documents we discovered in our last military operations link Tirawi to the supply of weapons, the training, and also all kinds of communications with all the terrorist organizations in the West Bank, including the Hamas. Therefore certainly Mr. Tirawi is a fugitive who we're looking for.

There are numbers of others, I won't go into all the details. Again, we would interrogate the people there, those who have nothing to do with terrorism will be let go. Just this past weekend 38 individuals in the building turned themselves over to Israeli. Most of them were let go because they had nothing to do with terrorism.

BROWN: I'm going to talk about the effect of all of this. As you know, there is considerable debate within Israel, and around the world too, about whether this has been counterproductive. There was a headline in one of the papers today, Sharon saves Arafat. Would you agree, at the very least, that this operation has slowed down what seemed to be an effort towards Palestinian reform?

GOLD: Well, you know, in the short term there may be a certain amount of rallying of some individuals on the, for the sake of Arafat. You know, Arafat has operatives in sensitive areas, Palestinian cities, to bring out the protests. The protests were not that large.

But in the longer term, most Palestinians understand that Yasser Arafat's strategy of violence and terror against Israeli has backfired, it hasn't yielded one tangible political result for the Palestinians. Moreover Palestinians are aware of how corrupt his regime is.

The fact that there's no transparency on the bookkeeping done by the regime, and a lot of people have lined their pockets with European aid dollars, and dollars from many other international donors. BROWN: So short-term you take a hit, long-term you feel there'll still be reform?

GOLD: Long-term the reform process is already going on, even today. There were meetings of senior Palestinians speaking about how to create a new position of Prime Minister in the Palestinian authority, someone who could implement the reform, someone who the international community might trust.

Certainly Mr. Arafat has demonstrated that he is still sticking to the path of terrorism, of supporting the murder of innocent civilians, which of course the U.N. Security Council certainly repudiated after September 11, and the international community has come to repudiate ever since.

BROWN: Well at the same time there is a fair amount of debate, as you know, within the United Nations today and ongoing about Israeli tactics as well. On the subject of tactics, why doesn't Israel go directly after Hamas? Why doesn't Israel go after the Islamic Jihad? Why go after Arafat, but not the people who seem to be perpetrating the bulk of these attacks?

GOLD: Well first of all, up until our last military operation in April, the bulk of the attacks came from Arafat loyal forces, particularly from the Tanzim, which is the militia of the Fatah movement, and from the al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades, which is an elite unit of the Tanzim. Lately we've been having specific problems with Hamas.

I think there's a more fundamental issue here as well. United Nations Security Council, again after September 11, determined that no country, no organization, no entity has a right to harbor, to give sanctuary to international terrorist organizations, and therefore governments that continue to support terrorism lose their right to rule.

The United States for example targeted not only al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but the Taliban regime, which gave support to al Qaeda. So here too we have targeted elements of Mr. Arafat's regime that have been supporting terrorism, and we now have documentary evidence to show the links between key individuals around Mr. Arafat in the Mukata, such as Colonel Tawfik Tirawi, and the terrorism that we have been facing as recently as last week in Tel Aviv.

BROWN: Mr. Gold, it's always good to have you on the program. We always appreciate your time. Thank you again for joining us tonight.

GOLD: It's a pleasure to be with you.

BROWN: Dore Gold on the situation as the Israelis see it tonight. Later on NEWSNIGHT, holocaust victims seek out the family of a soldier who helped liberate him. And up next, the Buffalo Six, just how strong is the government's case against these alleged terrorists? This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: Quick look at some of the stories making news around the country, beginning with smallpox. This'll keep you up, the government began sending states detailed instructions for vaccinating their entire populations. CDC offers guidelines on how to get everyone immunized within days of a terror attack, and what the states can do to prevent panic.

On to Isidore now. Tropical storm is still causing a lot of trouble. The storm is hitting the gulf coast now, tides rising a foot above normal. Isidore is expected to regain some strength, move back to hurricane strength as it moves into open waters, and then head toward Texas and Louisiana. Nervous tonight in Galveston.

And quite a homecoming at Cinergy Field in Cincinnati, though to us it will always be Riverfront Stadium, for a guy who was a legend. Yes, that guy, Pete Rose. He appeared at a celebrity softball game today marking the end of the stadium, which is being torn down. Pete Rose couldn't be part of the Cincinnati Reds' official ceremony yesterday, because of course he is banned for life from baseball for gambling.

On now to the case of the men in Buffalo accused of supporting terrorism. We were struck by something the judge in the case said last week. He admitted to having restless, sleepless nights, his words.

So why the tossing and the turning? It seems he's having a rough time trying to decide whether the government has in fact shown enough evidence so far that these men are dangerous and should be denied bail. And on that, he's not alone.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In the past 24 hours, federal authorities have arrested five United States citizens who reside near Buffalo, New York on charges of providing material support to al Qaeda.

BROWN (voice-over): The implication was clear. A terror cell had been broken up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These defendants could face a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

BROWN: But after three days of hearings, the defense and many other observers think there may be less here than meets the eye.

WILLIAM CLAUSS, FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER: The government has to prove today, by clear and convincing evidence, that they're a danger to the community. We don't think they've done that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The government's case seems to have some pretty big holes.

BROWN: But the law, the 1996 antiterrorism act, gives the government broad authority to make terrorist-related arrests. To some, the law is too broad. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So this is actually written so broadly, that if a Quaker were to sent a book by Gandhi to a leader of a terrorist organization, to encourage that leader to forego violence for nonviolence, that Quaker would face 15 years in prison under the statute.

BROWN: The government must prove that the suspects, who allegedly trained in an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan last year, came back to the United States to form a sleeper cell for terrorist activity.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The real question is, what of value did these people give to al Qaeda, if they merely attended a training camp? They may have received something of value from al Qaeda in training, et cetera. But did they actually give anything of value?

BROWN: But Kent Alexander, a former U.S. attorney, believes even though the government has tough task ahead, the 96th statute holds up.

KENT ALEXANDER, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: This case is an ultimate civil liberties case. It brings to mind the Japanese internments. It brings to mind associating with communist parties, and all the rest. That's on one side of the civil liberties.

The deputy attorney general said, Larry Thompson, one civil liberty is safety. And on the other side is the duty of the government to really work to protect us.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: These cases are rarely as simple as they seem when they first come to our attention. We'll talk about how the government is prosecuting this case with our legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin. A short break first. This is NEWSNIGHT from Atlanta.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Some perspective on the Buffalo case now with former prosecutor and legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin. You always have to introduce these legal analysts as former prosecutors.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Reveal my biases, that's right, Aaron.

BROWN: I want to talk about material support. If I go, let's just say hypothetically, to Afghanistan, I go to an al Qaeda training camp. I get there and go, wow, these people are crazy, I'm getting out -- have I committed a crime?

TOOBIN: I'm going to give you a lawyer's answer. It's not clear. The way the statute defines material support, it says it can include personnel. So if you give yourself over to al Qaeda, if you go to al Qaeda, give them your support, physically, you are violating the statute.

If you go there and leave, which is your example, harder to tell. But if you go there and train, it seems like you are in violation of the law.

BROWN: And so, to that extent, my freedom to associate, granted to me by the Constitution, is not absolute?

TOOBIN: Absolutely not. And you don't -- it is not association to carry a gun. That, I think, is pretty clear. If you are training as a soldier, that is not speech. The hard question, the interesting question is, what if you go over there and you just study? What if you go over there and you just -- you read the Koran? I mean, that's a tougher question.

TOOBIN: According to the cases from the 1950s, were Communists were prosecuted simply for being members of the Communist Party, those cases were usually thrown out, at least in later years, because the court said you not only had to be a member of an organization that advocated unlawful activity. You yourself had to intend to share these objectives. That requirement is not there anymore.

BROWN: That's what I was going to ask. Does the '96 law require that second step?

TOOBIN: It doesn't. At least, not on its face. And one appeals court in California, the sometimes infamous 9th circuit court of appeals, has struck down part of this statute. It's in an unrelated case and it doesn't bind the court in Buffalo.

But they have said, simply saying material support and saying that personnel is one purpose, that's unconstitutional, it's vague. It doesn't tell people what's prohibited.

BROWN: Couple of quick things here. Does -- is there any significance at all to the fact that the government did not take this case to a grand jury, as a federal case would normally go, but instead brought a criminal complaint?

TOOBIN: I don't think so. I think what it means is that the FBI wanted to work fast. Rather than going through the trouble of bringing witnesses before a grand jury, when you have an FBI agent, he could just write out a complaint right there. And you can arrest somebody. They are moving quickly here.

BROWN: The judge last week, or the magistrate, has to make a decision. The only decision he has to make now is whether to grant bail to these men. And he seemed deeply troubled about that. Tell me what your take on that is?

TOOBIN: You know, almost -- in federal court, people often are held without bail. It is -- in fact, in serious cases, more often than not, people are detained, in drug cases, you know, the routine business of the federal courts in criminal law now.

But I think he has misgivings. I mean, the only evidence really presented here is that these guys went to these camps. He's looking for a reason to hold them. And frankly, I think a magistrate judge, who's a pretty low level performer in the judicial system, is not going to release these people. But, you know, he's troubled and you can see why.

BROWN: Jeffrey, former prosecutor and legal analyst, it's good to talk to you, as always. Thank you. Perhaps we'll talk about this again. Jeffrey Toobin.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the story of one Holocaust survivor and how he shared it with the family who helped save him. That story and more as we continue on Monday night from Atlanta.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: This is the story about the unexpected blessings of remembering, even when the memories seem too painful to bear, let alone talk about. It is the story of two men who shared a moment during a nightmare, then went their separate ways, both of them haunted by what they went through.

They married, raised families, and for years, kept their memories to themselves. Now the story is being told and in more way than one way, it's a blessing. Here's CNN's David Mattingly.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GEORGE SALTON, HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR: They liberated me. They gave me life. They gave me the sweet gift of freedom.

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Freedom came very late to George Salton. Before being liberated by American soldiers at the age of 17, the young Polish Jew had survived three years in 10 Nazi concentration camps, losing both parents and his brother.

After the war he emigrated to the U.S., got a Masters degree, raised a family, but rarely spoke of the torment he endured as a teenager. Now 73 and retired after a career as a Pentagon engineer, it was Salton's children who overcame his reluctance and compelled him to write down every detail of his painful story.

ANNA SALTON ELSEN, HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR'S DAUGHTER: My father carried it in his heart for so long. And then I said, you can't do this alone. Share it with us.

MATTINGLY: That story, the atrocities of his confinement and the cruelties of his captures, became a book called "The 23rd Psalm." But what started as a labor of love for his family quickly caught the attention of another.

MARGARET WALSH, DAUGHTER OF G.I. WILLIAM WALSH: When I heard the name of the camp I said, Wobbelin? Oh, I think that was my dad.

MATTINGLY: Margaret Walsh worked for Salton's publisher. She realized the horrors he wrote about at the Wobbelin concentration camp were the same ones described by her father. A 27-year-old GI at the time, William Walsh was part of a handful of U.S. soldiers liberating the camp in 1945. What he saw there haunted him the rest of his life, so much so that for decades, like Salton, he couldn't talk about it. WALSH: He didn't want to be called a hero. He said he was surrounded by heroes.

MATTINGLY (on camera): Eventually, Walsh decided he was ready to tell his story to his family. But before he could, fate intervened. He suffered a stroke that left him unable to talk. He died in 1990, leaving many unanswered questions about what he did in the war and what he saw at that camp that affected him so deeply.

SALTON: The American soldiers around were helpful. They came, they shared their food with me. They gave us a piece of wonderful candy, which I later discovered was Hershey.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): Salton's gratitude toward his American liberators remains as strong as it was the day he was finally set free. And word of Walsh's passing and his family's lingering curiosity filled him with a sense of duty: meet with Walsh's children and finish the story that Walsh himself was unable to tell.

SALTON: They should know from someone like me, who was personally affected by it, that it was special and that I'm very grateful.

MATTINGLY: So, 57 years, four months, two weeks and two days since the lives of a Holocaust survivor and an American GI crossed in a Nazi concentration camp...

SALTON: Hello. Hi, hi.

MATTINGLY: ... their shared legacy continues in a crowded conference room in Madison, Wisconsin.

SALTON: That day, he had the special opportunity to bring life to people that were beyond hope. That was special. And I thank him. I thank all of you. And I just want you to remember that he was a special guy.

MATTINGLY: Then, new emotions of gratitude as their children come to understand the magnitude of the events that profoundly changed the lives of two young men and the world around them.

KATIE WALSH-BRATTON, DAUGHTER OF GI WILLIAM WALSH: I've always been proud of my dad. But this really just reaffirms that he was a great guy.

MATTINGLY: And at the end of their meeting, a surprise. Unknown to Salton, Walsh had captured the Nazi flag at the Wobbelin camp, a symbol of so much pain from the past for one family, now tempered by an act of courage from another.

SALTON: I'm glad that this flag continues to exist. I'm glad it exists in your father's, children's closet, or attic or trunk, and not on some flagpole.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, it'll never be on a flagpole. WALSH: In a way we find, I think, some healing today. And hopefully we can give them a way to honor the memory of their father. And that makes us feel good.

MATTINGLY: A way to keep the story of two families, silenced for half a century, alive for generations to come. David Mattingly, CNN, Madison, Wisconsin.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A few quick stories from around the world tonight, or I guess as it turns out more correctly, from Russia. In southern Russian, more than 100 people unaccounted for after a devastating landslide caused when a 500-foot piece of a glacier broke off. Authorities are afraid the death toll will grow. As more information comes in, they're also worried about flooding as the ice begins to melt.

And, Miss Universe has lost her crown. But there's a dispute over just how she lost it. Oksana Fyodorova, the former Miss Russia, says she gave up the crown willingly because Miss Universe was interfering with school. The "New York Post" is reporting, in classic "Post" fashion, by the way, that the crown was yanked away because she was a prima donna who wasn't fulfilling her duties. Whatever the truth, she's gone.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the New York Philharmonic pays tribute to the victims of 9/11 with a major new work. We'll take a short break. This is NEWSNIGHT from Atlanta.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Finally from us tonight, September 11 and a line that comes to mind from a poet: "The power of still sad music of humanity." We know so many of the sounds of that day a year ago. We heard about them, the plane flying overhead, the thunder of the buildings collapsing, the utter silence after that.

There were the bagpipes at the funerals that would come forever, it seemed. But of course, sound is not music, something that moves us, gets us to think in an entirely different way. Some of the music of September 11 can be heard here in New York City, and the final performance is tomorrow night. Here's CNN's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): To open its season this September, the New York Philharmonic commissioned an original work commemorating what happened last September. They turned to American composer John Adams, who knew what he did not want the piece to be: a musical narrative of 9/11.

There would be no clash of cymbals symbolizing the planes hitting, no de crescendo to mimic the Towers falling.

JOHN ADAMS, COMPOSER: In this piece, "On the Transmigration of Souls," I'm trying to get the listener away from the jittery data of television and print news, and to simply think on a deeper level about what happened.

NISSEN: Adams wrote his score for a full symphony orchestra, an adult and children's chorus, plus pre-recorded sound.

ADAMS: The piece begins with the sound of New York City, just a quiet traffic sound. And then you hear footsteps. Footsteps leaving one existence and going into another.

NISSEN: Recorded voices read randomly selected names of the missing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Christina Flannery. Richard Fitzsimmons.

ADAMS: When these names are read in a very quiet, respectful way, it creates its own kind of music.

NISSEN: The choruses sing phrases that Adams found on the desperate missing posters that papered Manhattan for weeks.

ADAMS: It's almost as if you were digging as an archaeologist, and you found little tiny clues about a life. He was 5'11, he had a gold chain around his neck and he wore a ring around his forefinger.

NISSEN: Several of the most poignant phrases in Adams's work came from "The New York Times'" "Portraits of Grief" pages. The sister of Francis Nazario recalled that her brother was "the apple of my father's eye."

CHOIR (singing): The sister says, he was the apple of my father's eye. He was the apple of my father's eye.

NISSEN: Joshua Piver's friend remembered him as tall and extremely good-looking.

CHOIR (singing): He was tall, extremely good-looking. And girls never talked to me when he was around.

ADAMS: I hope that, by listening to the music, people will be able to empathize with these little vignettes of loss, of love, that are pictured in the piece in very fragmented form.

NISSEN: The music is often discordant, difficult, unsettled, as so many lives are still.

A final chorus, the repetition of the word "light," seems to offer a measure of hope for the lost and the living.

ADAMS: In a sense, my piece is not just about 9/11. It's really about the transition of souls from one state of being into another, and the effect it has on the souls of the survivors.

NISSEN: The work ends as it began, with everyday sounds of traffic, the city. And somehow, under the silence, the sound of souls moving on, of humans simply moved. Beth Nissen, CNN, New York. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That's our report for tonight. From Atlanta, we'll see you tomorrow. Until then, good night from all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com





War; Gore Lashes Out on White House for Stance on Saddam>


Aired September 23, 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: Well, here we go. Good evening again, everyone.
We lost count today of the number of voices we heard on the issue of what to do about Iraq. This is just a select list: there was the current President, President Bush; former President Jimmy Carter, who as you might have guessed had a very different take on Iraq; the former presidential candidate, perhaps future presidential candidate, Al Gore, he gave a speech on Iraq today, very heavy on criticism of the Bush administration, and politics aside, he raised some intriguing arguments that ought to be considered in the debate ahead. There was also testimony today from four retired generals.

But as we look at all of those with titles and ranks, we ought not forget you. And while polling is not our favorite science, it is still the best way to gauge public opinion, and our poll seems quite clear. Iraq has overtaken the economy as the most important issue going into the November elections.

There are plenty of Democrats who are suspicious of that. American's want Saddam Hussein gone, but, and this is important, they want Congress on board with the plan, and they want the U.N. on board as well. They do not want the U.S. military to take this on alone. They want Saddam Hussein gone, that's clear.

Americans by a very wide margin though still think Osama bin Laden is a bigger threat to the United States than is Saddam, and our polling shows they're split on whether President Bush has a clear policy where Iraq is concerned. We should add here that the President's approval rating remains extraordinarily high, 66 percent.

And we continue to believe the public debate is just now beginning on Iraq. There are huge questions that have yet to be answered. Questions like why now, and how will the country pay for the war? Who will pay? Will we pay, or will our children pay in higher deficits? Questions like what comes after Saddam is gone, what sort of government, how long do American troops stay? Lots of questions that have not been answered yet, but should be before we send our children off to fight a war.

I suppose we could have said all of this in one sentence. In the next weeks, the program is going to spend a lot of time on the public debate over whether the United States should go to war with Iraq. And so begins the whip tonight, it begins at the United Nations dealing not only with the Iraqi question, but also with the Israeli's retaliation against Yasser Arafat.

Our U.N. correspondent Richard Roth has the watch tonight. Richard the headlines from you please.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN UNITED NATIONS CORRESPONDENT: It's here, that hot highly anticipated resolution before the Security Council, but not about Iraq. It's the Middle East, and for the United States tonight, that could spell double trouble.

BROWN: Richard, thank you.

On to Israel next, what the government thinks it will get out of this latest military action. Matthew Chance has been following the story for us, and Matthew will be joining us in a moment or so. More now on the Vice President, the former Vice President's speech today on Iraq. Candy Crowley is covering the speech today from Al Gore. Candy the headline from you please.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron it was a 50 minute speech before a receptive San Francisco crowd, but the cliff note version is this, there is not much Al Gore likes about President Bush's policy in Iraq.

BROWN: Candy, thank you. Back to you, all of you shortly.

Also coming up in the program tonight, a reality check of sorts, and a story that's troubling and mysterious in the war on terror, just how did those men in Buffalo actually break the law?

And a moving story from a different time and a different war, two men from worlds apart with a single connection, a concentration camp, an American GI and the prisoner he helped to liberate. Also tonight Nissen joins us, an extraordinary piece of music commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to mark the extraordinary events of September 11. That comes up at the end, so it's a full Monday from us tonight.

We begin with a grab bag of developments on the subject of Iraq. A lot of moving parts to the story tonight, and a lot of pieces to each of those moving parts. The story is playing out at the U.N., it is playing out in the Congress, and as it turns out, on the campaign trail as well.

And now add this, it is playing out tonight in London. For some time, President Bush has been counting on the British prime minister to make the case. You may recall that in the days before the war in Afghanistan, it was Tony Blair who laid out the best evidence of the Taliban's complicity in harboring al Qaeda. Tomorrow he says he'll do the same on Iraq.

Here's CNN's Andrea Koppel.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Diplomatic sources say the British report lacks a smoking gun, hard evidence Iraq has acquired nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. But on the eve of its release, members of Tony Blair's Cabinet said the 50 plus page report, culled from British intelligence, still packs a powerful punch.

JACK STRAW, BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY: And what that dossier shows is that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime is not some historic leftover, but is real, serious, and represents a mounting challenge to the international community.

KOPPEL: Working in lockstep with the Bush administration, Prime Minister Tony Blair has coordinated the timing of the reports release to underscore the message delivered earlier this month by President Bush at the U.N., and repeated almost every day since, that Iraq's President cannot be trusted.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He's a man who told the United Nations time and time and time again, I will disarm. I don't have weapons. He either lied or deceived.

KOPPEL: The U.S.-U.K. strategy, to shore up support within the U.N. Security Council for a tough new resolution against Iraq.

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The entire world knows beyond dispute that Saddam Hussein holds weapons of mass destruction, in large quantities, and is seeking to acquire more.

KOPPEL: This carefully calibrated teamwork was most recently on display after the September 11 attacks, when the British government presented the world with evidence it said proved Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network was to blame. This time around there will likely be few surprises, but weapon's experts say the dossier could still prove valuable.

TERRY TAYLOR, FORMER U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: ... think it'll confirm a lot of the information, hard information that's out there already available.

KOPPEL: The first test of this report's power of persuasion could come from the British Parliament, which is set to receive the dossier tomorrow. But the bigger hurdle will be getting the U.N. Security Council to agree.

Andrea Koppel, CNN at the State Department.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And you can see Mr. Blair's speech here on CNN. Our live coverage begins at 6:30 in the morning, Eastern time. On now to the domestic side. With Congress expected to vote on a resolution on Iraq sometime in the next week, the debate is getting sharper. A number of Democrats in the House and the Senate are working on alternatives to a draft the President sent up last week, but this is a tricky political spot to be in. No one wants to give the President a blank check, but just the same, few seem to have the stomach for standing in his way.

But today former presidential candidate Al Gore made the argument against the war, a complex and reasoned argument regardless of where you stand on the issue.

Here again, CNN's Candy Crowley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CROWLEY (voice-over): As some in the room hummed "Hail to the Chief", Al Gore took to a podium in San Francisco to slam pretty much everything about the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq.

AL GORE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The war against terrorism manifestly requires a multilateral approach. It is impossible to succeed against terrorism unless we have secured the continuing sustained cooperation of many nations. Our ability to secure that kind of multilateral cooperation in the war against terrorism can be severely damaged in the way we go about undertaking unilateral action against Iraq.

CROWLEY: Gore said the President should instead build a coalition against Iraq, work through the U.N., come up with a plan to help rebuild a post-Saddam Iraq, and dispense with all that talk of preemptive strikes. Talk that has dissolved the world's post 9/11 goodwill.

GORE: That has been squandered in a year's time, and replaced with great anxiety all around the world, not primarily about what the terrorist networks are going to do, but about what we're going to do.

CROWLEY: It was arguably the most pointed, certainly the highest profile critique of Bush policy toward Iraq. And Gore delivered with sharp elbows, suggesting that this quote, sudden burst of urgency to take on Saddam is prompted by the mid-term elections.

GORE: Vice President Chaney meanwhile, has indignantly described suggestions of any such thing as reprehensible. And then the following week took his discussion of the war to the Rush Limbaugh show.

CROWLEY: There was in fact very little that the former, and perhaps future, presidential candidate found right about Bush policy in Iraq, except the premise.

GORE: Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CROWLEY (on-camera): The White House greeted Gore's blast with a cool rhetorical shrug. Said one senior Bush official, his is not a voice we are overly concerned with. The official added,

CROWLEY: The White House greeted Gore's blast with a cool rhetorical shrug. Said one senior Bush official, his is not a voice we are overly concerned with. The official added, Gore is out of step with the majority and the leadership of his own party -- Aaron. BROWN: Well and that is in fact true, at least at this point the majority of the Democrats seem to be supportive of the notion that if the United States has to go it alone, the United States has to go it alone. So what's Mr. Gore doing out there today?

CROWLEY: Well, I mean, I think a couple of things. First of all, I talked to a number of Democrats today who said, you know, there is a real yearning out in the hustings, you know, out beyond the beltway, for someone to take this on and sort of articulate some of the things, and some of the objections that many have. Or at least some of the concerns.

The other thing that's going on is that Al Gore is stepping up his profile, as you know there is a mid-term coming up, and Al Gore has said, look by the end of the year I expect to make up my mind about what I'm going to do as far as 2004 is concerned. So there's some of that, and this is part of a higher profile.

BROWN: And is there any squeamishness among Congressional Democrats about the Gore speech today?

CROWLEY: You know, it's interesting, we'll see. My guess is no, and when we look at some of the other 2004 candidates, particularly if you look at John Edwards, if you look at Joe Lieberman, they've really been, if not wholly in step with the President, they've certainly been largely supportive of him.

Again, I think this is something that they'll pay attention to. It's certainly something that the more liberal members of the Democratic party will latch on to. But I'm not sure it actually moves the debate but, you know, this has just started as you said earlier, so perhaps anything can sway it one way or the other.

BROWN: Candy, thank you. Candy Crowley covering the politics of the Gore speech, as well as the substance. Thank you very much.

There was a great editorial cartoon we saw today. It showed the President sitting between a pair of chessboards, one for Congress, the other for the United Nations, which would be nice I suppose if it were only that simple. The White House tonight is playing at least two games at the U.N. alone, one concerning Iraq, the other with Israel and the Palestinians.

Richard Roth is at the U.N. for us again tonight.

Richard, good evening.

ROTH: Good evening Aaron.

Can the United States win support for a resolution on Iraq while not being in favor of an Arab resolution tonight, which strongly criticized Israel for the siege in Ramallah? That Security Council resolution on Iraq is not ready yet for primetime, it's still a few days away, according to the U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte.

More on Iraq, the U.S. says it's coming, but diplomats on the U.S. British side are still fine-tuning it. The French Ambassador today told me, he's waiting to see a text.

Kofi Annan, who you saw there, along with Hans Blix, a chief weapons inspector on Iraq, were at the traditional monthly lunch of the Security Council. Annan has tossed the Iraqi diplomatic pouch into the Council's hands, saying today it's really up to the Council to decide, when he was asked about Iraq's latest refusal to go along with a new resolution.

Iraq wants to keep existing agreements on presidential palace access to weapons inspector. One source said the French Ambassador inside that lunch said why do we need to really get into the issue of force right now?

A late night negotiating session is exactly going on now. This is what we expected Aaron, on Iraq. Instead tonight it's on the Middle East. Two competing resolutions regarding the Ramallah siege.

Inside the Security Council, the meeting began several hours ago. U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte was in the middle of it, along with Secretary General Annan. This resolution, the United States says, is not balanced, it's one-sided.

Speakers from Malaysia to Cuba said the U.S. is showing a double standard, supporting Israel, which they say has weapons of mass destruction, nuclear power, and supporting Israel which is not living up to existing Security Council resolutions on getting of the territories.

A U.S. official says, you can't have it that way, Israel is a democracy, Iraq has used chemical weapons against its own people. This debate may go on late into the evening. Aaron.

BROWN: How does the United States answer that very sticky question about the Israelis not being in compliance with U.N. resolutions though?

ROTH: Well, even tonight the U.S. is critical of Israel for staying in Ramallah as long as it is around Arafat's headquarters. But they're not willing to support a resolution, and they have their veto, and they're saying we're going to use it if the Palestinians insist on putting it to a vote. They'd say that Israeli is the democracy, that Israel respects international law, and they like to keep the focus on Iraq, and saying how Saddam Hussein has violated 16 resolutions. They know they really can't win on all of the Security Council resolutions on Israeli, so the aim, keep the focus on Saddam Hussein.

BROWN: Richard. Thank you, Richard Roth at the U.N. tonight.

To Ramallah next, the siege does go on there, White House admonitions notwithstanding, concern at the U.N. notwithstanding. But the two sides are talking, Israeli and Palestinian officials did meet today. The Israelis demanded a list of the people inside Yasser Arafat's compound, so that Israel could decide who's wanted and who isn't. The Palestinians say they will get no list. And for now it is somewhat of a moot point, since nobody's coming out, and Yasser Arafat shows no signs of giving in. Here again, CNN's Matthew Chance.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Supporters of Yasser Arafat on the streets of Gaza. If the Palestinian leader's popularity was ever slipping among his own people, protests here and across the West Bank have the appearance of bolstering him again. Thousands have come out, but Israeli officials deny their action in Ramallah, and to isolate Arafat is having an opposite effect.

DORE GOLD, SENIOR ISRAELI GOVERNMENT ADVISER: The Palestinian leaderships a little bit worried about the support that it has today from the Palestinian street. It's one thing to send your agents into various Palestinian cities in order to get out the crowds for a one- time demonstration, it's quite another thing to earn the support of the Palestinian people.

CHANCE: But even the United States, firm backers of Israel, criticizes this. U.S. officials say the virtual leveling of Arafat's compound in recent days, neither increases Israeli security, nor promotes Palestinian reform. It doesn't make U.S. coalition building against Iraq any easier either. The latest action in Ramallah followed this Palestinian suicide bombing of a crowded bus in Tel Aviv last week. Six people were killed. The Hamas says it was responsible, not Yasser Arafat, so why a renewed focus on the Palestinian leader?

LESLIE SUSSER, "JERUSALEM REPORT": I think Sharon is trying to get the world ready for Arafat's expulsion. And he's chipping away, each time he does a little bit more, gets closer to the actual act of removing Arafat from the West Bank. I think the Defense Minister Ben- Eliezer sees in the humiliation of Arafat an acceleration of the process of a new leadership taking over.

CHANCE: But neither may happen soon. Israeli forces delivering basic supplies to the compound to ease shortages among the hundreds encamped inside. And despite the pressure, neither Israel nor Arafat looks ready to leave.

Matthew Chance, CNN Jerusalem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT we'll get more on the Israeli perspective on all of this from spokesman Dore Gold. This is NEWSNIGHT from Atlanta.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Israeli government is no stranger to international criticism, like the kind of criticism it's hearing tonight, even criticism from the United States. We talk to you about that and more with Dori Gold, an Israeli close to the government, a man who often speaks for the Israeli government in times like this.

Mr. Gold, let's start with where we are today. Is this operation over? Do the people inside, what is ever left of the compound now, have food and water? Has the Israeli government allowed that much to go on?

GOLD: Well certainly Israelis saw on television tonight that the Israeli army was delivering food to the 200 or so fugitives from the law that are in the compound, as well as of course to Mr. Arafat, and therefore food, water, all necessities are available.

But the focus that we have right now is making sure that the 200 individuals leave the compound. Those who we find are involved in terrorism, and were involved in terrorism will be arrested and prosecuted. Those who weren't will be let go.

BROWN: You describe them, you said there are 200 fugitives in that building. Do you know who's in that building, and do you know that all of them are fugitives?

GOLD: No. We know specific individuals that are there. For example there's a Colonel Tawfik Tirawi, who is the head of the general security services of Mr. Arafat in the West Bank. Documents we discovered in our last military operations link Tirawi to the supply of weapons, the training, and also all kinds of communications with all the terrorist organizations in the West Bank, including the Hamas. Therefore certainly Mr. Tirawi is a fugitive who we're looking for.

There are numbers of others, I won't go into all the details. Again, we would interrogate the people there, those who have nothing to do with terrorism will be let go. Just this past weekend 38 individuals in the building turned themselves over to Israeli. Most of them were let go because they had nothing to do with terrorism.

BROWN: I'm going to talk about the effect of all of this. As you know, there is considerable debate within Israel, and around the world too, about whether this has been counterproductive. There was a headline in one of the papers today, Sharon saves Arafat. Would you agree, at the very least, that this operation has slowed down what seemed to be an effort towards Palestinian reform?

GOLD: Well, you know, in the short term there may be a certain amount of rallying of some individuals on the, for the sake of Arafat. You know, Arafat has operatives in sensitive areas, Palestinian cities, to bring out the protests. The protests were not that large.

But in the longer term, most Palestinians understand that Yasser Arafat's strategy of violence and terror against Israeli has backfired, it hasn't yielded one tangible political result for the Palestinians. Moreover Palestinians are aware of how corrupt his regime is.

The fact that there's no transparency on the bookkeeping done by the regime, and a lot of people have lined their pockets with European aid dollars, and dollars from many other international donors. BROWN: So short-term you take a hit, long-term you feel there'll still be reform?

GOLD: Long-term the reform process is already going on, even today. There were meetings of senior Palestinians speaking about how to create a new position of Prime Minister in the Palestinian authority, someone who could implement the reform, someone who the international community might trust.

Certainly Mr. Arafat has demonstrated that he is still sticking to the path of terrorism, of supporting the murder of innocent civilians, which of course the U.N. Security Council certainly repudiated after September 11, and the international community has come to repudiate ever since.

BROWN: Well at the same time there is a fair amount of debate, as you know, within the United Nations today and ongoing about Israeli tactics as well. On the subject of tactics, why doesn't Israel go directly after Hamas? Why doesn't Israel go after the Islamic Jihad? Why go after Arafat, but not the people who seem to be perpetrating the bulk of these attacks?

GOLD: Well first of all, up until our last military operation in April, the bulk of the attacks came from Arafat loyal forces, particularly from the Tanzim, which is the militia of the Fatah movement, and from the al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades, which is an elite unit of the Tanzim. Lately we've been having specific problems with Hamas.

I think there's a more fundamental issue here as well. United Nations Security Council, again after September 11, determined that no country, no organization, no entity has a right to harbor, to give sanctuary to international terrorist organizations, and therefore governments that continue to support terrorism lose their right to rule.

The United States for example targeted not only al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but the Taliban regime, which gave support to al Qaeda. So here too we have targeted elements of Mr. Arafat's regime that have been supporting terrorism, and we now have documentary evidence to show the links between key individuals around Mr. Arafat in the Mukata, such as Colonel Tawfik Tirawi, and the terrorism that we have been facing as recently as last week in Tel Aviv.

BROWN: Mr. Gold, it's always good to have you on the program. We always appreciate your time. Thank you again for joining us tonight.

GOLD: It's a pleasure to be with you.

BROWN: Dore Gold on the situation as the Israelis see it tonight. Later on NEWSNIGHT, holocaust victims seek out the family of a soldier who helped liberate him. And up next, the Buffalo Six, just how strong is the government's case against these alleged terrorists? This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: Quick look at some of the stories making news around the country, beginning with smallpox. This'll keep you up, the government began sending states detailed instructions for vaccinating their entire populations. CDC offers guidelines on how to get everyone immunized within days of a terror attack, and what the states can do to prevent panic.

On to Isidore now. Tropical storm is still causing a lot of trouble. The storm is hitting the gulf coast now, tides rising a foot above normal. Isidore is expected to regain some strength, move back to hurricane strength as it moves into open waters, and then head toward Texas and Louisiana. Nervous tonight in Galveston.

And quite a homecoming at Cinergy Field in Cincinnati, though to us it will always be Riverfront Stadium, for a guy who was a legend. Yes, that guy, Pete Rose. He appeared at a celebrity softball game today marking the end of the stadium, which is being torn down. Pete Rose couldn't be part of the Cincinnati Reds' official ceremony yesterday, because of course he is banned for life from baseball for gambling.

On now to the case of the men in Buffalo accused of supporting terrorism. We were struck by something the judge in the case said last week. He admitted to having restless, sleepless nights, his words.

So why the tossing and the turning? It seems he's having a rough time trying to decide whether the government has in fact shown enough evidence so far that these men are dangerous and should be denied bail. And on that, he's not alone.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In the past 24 hours, federal authorities have arrested five United States citizens who reside near Buffalo, New York on charges of providing material support to al Qaeda.

BROWN (voice-over): The implication was clear. A terror cell had been broken up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These defendants could face a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

BROWN: But after three days of hearings, the defense and many other observers think there may be less here than meets the eye.

WILLIAM CLAUSS, FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER: The government has to prove today, by clear and convincing evidence, that they're a danger to the community. We don't think they've done that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The government's case seems to have some pretty big holes.

BROWN: But the law, the 1996 antiterrorism act, gives the government broad authority to make terrorist-related arrests. To some, the law is too broad. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So this is actually written so broadly, that if a Quaker were to sent a book by Gandhi to a leader of a terrorist organization, to encourage that leader to forego violence for nonviolence, that Quaker would face 15 years in prison under the statute.

BROWN: The government must prove that the suspects, who allegedly trained in an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan last year, came back to the United States to form a sleeper cell for terrorist activity.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The real question is, what of value did these people give to al Qaeda, if they merely attended a training camp? They may have received something of value from al Qaeda in training, et cetera. But did they actually give anything of value?

BROWN: But Kent Alexander, a former U.S. attorney, believes even though the government has tough task ahead, the 96th statute holds up.

KENT ALEXANDER, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: This case is an ultimate civil liberties case. It brings to mind the Japanese internments. It brings to mind associating with communist parties, and all the rest. That's on one side of the civil liberties.

The deputy attorney general said, Larry Thompson, one civil liberty is safety. And on the other side is the duty of the government to really work to protect us.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: These cases are rarely as simple as they seem when they first come to our attention. We'll talk about how the government is prosecuting this case with our legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin. A short break first. This is NEWSNIGHT from Atlanta.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Some perspective on the Buffalo case now with former prosecutor and legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin. You always have to introduce these legal analysts as former prosecutors.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Reveal my biases, that's right, Aaron.

BROWN: I want to talk about material support. If I go, let's just say hypothetically, to Afghanistan, I go to an al Qaeda training camp. I get there and go, wow, these people are crazy, I'm getting out -- have I committed a crime?

TOOBIN: I'm going to give you a lawyer's answer. It's not clear. The way the statute defines material support, it says it can include personnel. So if you give yourself over to al Qaeda, if you go to al Qaeda, give them your support, physically, you are violating the statute.

If you go there and leave, which is your example, harder to tell. But if you go there and train, it seems like you are in violation of the law.

BROWN: And so, to that extent, my freedom to associate, granted to me by the Constitution, is not absolute?

TOOBIN: Absolutely not. And you don't -- it is not association to carry a gun. That, I think, is pretty clear. If you are training as a soldier, that is not speech. The hard question, the interesting question is, what if you go over there and you just study? What if you go over there and you just -- you read the Koran? I mean, that's a tougher question.

TOOBIN: According to the cases from the 1950s, were Communists were prosecuted simply for being members of the Communist Party, those cases were usually thrown out, at least in later years, because the court said you not only had to be a member of an organization that advocated unlawful activity. You yourself had to intend to share these objectives. That requirement is not there anymore.

BROWN: That's what I was going to ask. Does the '96 law require that second step?

TOOBIN: It doesn't. At least, not on its face. And one appeals court in California, the sometimes infamous 9th circuit court of appeals, has struck down part of this statute. It's in an unrelated case and it doesn't bind the court in Buffalo.

But they have said, simply saying material support and saying that personnel is one purpose, that's unconstitutional, it's vague. It doesn't tell people what's prohibited.

BROWN: Couple of quick things here. Does -- is there any significance at all to the fact that the government did not take this case to a grand jury, as a federal case would normally go, but instead brought a criminal complaint?

TOOBIN: I don't think so. I think what it means is that the FBI wanted to work fast. Rather than going through the trouble of bringing witnesses before a grand jury, when you have an FBI agent, he could just write out a complaint right there. And you can arrest somebody. They are moving quickly here.

BROWN: The judge last week, or the magistrate, has to make a decision. The only decision he has to make now is whether to grant bail to these men. And he seemed deeply troubled about that. Tell me what your take on that is?

TOOBIN: You know, almost -- in federal court, people often are held without bail. It is -- in fact, in serious cases, more often than not, people are detained, in drug cases, you know, the routine business of the federal courts in criminal law now.

But I think he has misgivings. I mean, the only evidence really presented here is that these guys went to these camps. He's looking for a reason to hold them. And frankly, I think a magistrate judge, who's a pretty low level performer in the judicial system, is not going to release these people. But, you know, he's troubled and you can see why.

BROWN: Jeffrey, former prosecutor and legal analyst, it's good to talk to you, as always. Thank you. Perhaps we'll talk about this again. Jeffrey Toobin.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the story of one Holocaust survivor and how he shared it with the family who helped save him. That story and more as we continue on Monday night from Atlanta.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: This is the story about the unexpected blessings of remembering, even when the memories seem too painful to bear, let alone talk about. It is the story of two men who shared a moment during a nightmare, then went their separate ways, both of them haunted by what they went through.

They married, raised families, and for years, kept their memories to themselves. Now the story is being told and in more way than one way, it's a blessing. Here's CNN's David Mattingly.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GEORGE SALTON, HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR: They liberated me. They gave me life. They gave me the sweet gift of freedom.

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Freedom came very late to George Salton. Before being liberated by American soldiers at the age of 17, the young Polish Jew had survived three years in 10 Nazi concentration camps, losing both parents and his brother.

After the war he emigrated to the U.S., got a Masters degree, raised a family, but rarely spoke of the torment he endured as a teenager. Now 73 and retired after a career as a Pentagon engineer, it was Salton's children who overcame his reluctance and compelled him to write down every detail of his painful story.

ANNA SALTON ELSEN, HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR'S DAUGHTER: My father carried it in his heart for so long. And then I said, you can't do this alone. Share it with us.

MATTINGLY: That story, the atrocities of his confinement and the cruelties of his captures, became a book called "The 23rd Psalm." But what started as a labor of love for his family quickly caught the attention of another.

MARGARET WALSH, DAUGHTER OF G.I. WILLIAM WALSH: When I heard the name of the camp I said, Wobbelin? Oh, I think that was my dad.

MATTINGLY: Margaret Walsh worked for Salton's publisher. She realized the horrors he wrote about at the Wobbelin concentration camp were the same ones described by her father. A 27-year-old GI at the time, William Walsh was part of a handful of U.S. soldiers liberating the camp in 1945. What he saw there haunted him the rest of his life, so much so that for decades, like Salton, he couldn't talk about it. WALSH: He didn't want to be called a hero. He said he was surrounded by heroes.

MATTINGLY (on camera): Eventually, Walsh decided he was ready to tell his story to his family. But before he could, fate intervened. He suffered a stroke that left him unable to talk. He died in 1990, leaving many unanswered questions about what he did in the war and what he saw at that camp that affected him so deeply.

SALTON: The American soldiers around were helpful. They came, they shared their food with me. They gave us a piece of wonderful candy, which I later discovered was Hershey.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): Salton's gratitude toward his American liberators remains as strong as it was the day he was finally set free. And word of Walsh's passing and his family's lingering curiosity filled him with a sense of duty: meet with Walsh's children and finish the story that Walsh himself was unable to tell.

SALTON: They should know from someone like me, who was personally affected by it, that it was special and that I'm very grateful.

MATTINGLY: So, 57 years, four months, two weeks and two days since the lives of a Holocaust survivor and an American GI crossed in a Nazi concentration camp...

SALTON: Hello. Hi, hi.

MATTINGLY: ... their shared legacy continues in a crowded conference room in Madison, Wisconsin.

SALTON: That day, he had the special opportunity to bring life to people that were beyond hope. That was special. And I thank him. I thank all of you. And I just want you to remember that he was a special guy.

MATTINGLY: Then, new emotions of gratitude as their children come to understand the magnitude of the events that profoundly changed the lives of two young men and the world around them.

KATIE WALSH-BRATTON, DAUGHTER OF GI WILLIAM WALSH: I've always been proud of my dad. But this really just reaffirms that he was a great guy.

MATTINGLY: And at the end of their meeting, a surprise. Unknown to Salton, Walsh had captured the Nazi flag at the Wobbelin camp, a symbol of so much pain from the past for one family, now tempered by an act of courage from another.

SALTON: I'm glad that this flag continues to exist. I'm glad it exists in your father's, children's closet, or attic or trunk, and not on some flagpole.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, it'll never be on a flagpole. WALSH: In a way we find, I think, some healing today. And hopefully we can give them a way to honor the memory of their father. And that makes us feel good.

MATTINGLY: A way to keep the story of two families, silenced for half a century, alive for generations to come. David Mattingly, CNN, Madison, Wisconsin.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A few quick stories from around the world tonight, or I guess as it turns out more correctly, from Russia. In southern Russian, more than 100 people unaccounted for after a devastating landslide caused when a 500-foot piece of a glacier broke off. Authorities are afraid the death toll will grow. As more information comes in, they're also worried about flooding as the ice begins to melt.

And, Miss Universe has lost her crown. But there's a dispute over just how she lost it. Oksana Fyodorova, the former Miss Russia, says she gave up the crown willingly because Miss Universe was interfering with school. The "New York Post" is reporting, in classic "Post" fashion, by the way, that the crown was yanked away because she was a prima donna who wasn't fulfilling her duties. Whatever the truth, she's gone.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the New York Philharmonic pays tribute to the victims of 9/11 with a major new work. We'll take a short break. This is NEWSNIGHT from Atlanta.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Finally from us tonight, September 11 and a line that comes to mind from a poet: "The power of still sad music of humanity." We know so many of the sounds of that day a year ago. We heard about them, the plane flying overhead, the thunder of the buildings collapsing, the utter silence after that.

There were the bagpipes at the funerals that would come forever, it seemed. But of course, sound is not music, something that moves us, gets us to think in an entirely different way. Some of the music of September 11 can be heard here in New York City, and the final performance is tomorrow night. Here's CNN's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): To open its season this September, the New York Philharmonic commissioned an original work commemorating what happened last September. They turned to American composer John Adams, who knew what he did not want the piece to be: a musical narrative of 9/11.

There would be no clash of cymbals symbolizing the planes hitting, no de crescendo to mimic the Towers falling.

JOHN ADAMS, COMPOSER: In this piece, "On the Transmigration of Souls," I'm trying to get the listener away from the jittery data of television and print news, and to simply think on a deeper level about what happened.

NISSEN: Adams wrote his score for a full symphony orchestra, an adult and children's chorus, plus pre-recorded sound.

ADAMS: The piece begins with the sound of New York City, just a quiet traffic sound. And then you hear footsteps. Footsteps leaving one existence and going into another.

NISSEN: Recorded voices read randomly selected names of the missing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Christina Flannery. Richard Fitzsimmons.

ADAMS: When these names are read in a very quiet, respectful way, it creates its own kind of music.

NISSEN: The choruses sing phrases that Adams found on the desperate missing posters that papered Manhattan for weeks.

ADAMS: It's almost as if you were digging as an archaeologist, and you found little tiny clues about a life. He was 5'11, he had a gold chain around his neck and he wore a ring around his forefinger.

NISSEN: Several of the most poignant phrases in Adams's work came from "The New York Times'" "Portraits of Grief" pages. The sister of Francis Nazario recalled that her brother was "the apple of my father's eye."

CHOIR (singing): The sister says, he was the apple of my father's eye. He was the apple of my father's eye.

NISSEN: Joshua Piver's friend remembered him as tall and extremely good-looking.

CHOIR (singing): He was tall, extremely good-looking. And girls never talked to me when he was around.

ADAMS: I hope that, by listening to the music, people will be able to empathize with these little vignettes of loss, of love, that are pictured in the piece in very fragmented form.

NISSEN: The music is often discordant, difficult, unsettled, as so many lives are still.

A final chorus, the repetition of the word "light," seems to offer a measure of hope for the lost and the living.

ADAMS: In a sense, my piece is not just about 9/11. It's really about the transition of souls from one state of being into another, and the effect it has on the souls of the survivors.

NISSEN: The work ends as it began, with everyday sounds of traffic, the city. And somehow, under the silence, the sound of souls moving on, of humans simply moved. Beth Nissen, CNN, New York. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That's our report for tonight. From Atlanta, we'll see you tomorrow. Until then, good night from all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com





War; Gore Lashes Out on White House for Stance on Saddam>