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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Torricelli Withdraws From Senate Race; Iraqis Meet With U.N. Weapons Inspectors; Labor Dispute Threatens to Do Harm to U.S. Economy

Aired September 30, 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, HOST: Good evening again, everyone.
We'll spend quite a bit of time tonight on something that happened 40 years ago this evening. A shameful moment in American history, but in the end a profoundly important one.

September 30, 1962, the day a man named James Meredith arrived at the University of Mississippi to register for classes the following morning. For those of you who have forgotten or never knew in the first place we'll lay it out a bit later. But writer Linda Keenan (ph) came across one of those small facts that says a lot about the times: Then and now.

Back then, a young woman named Sydna Brower (ph) was the editor of the Old Miss student newspaper. She wrote an editorial called "Violence Will Not Help." It did not come out and support integration; nothing that radical. But she did take to task those white rioters who were doing everything they could to keep a black man out of the state's university.

Brower (ph) paid for her courage. She reportedly got letters from around the globe, many of them shocked that a southern girl would betray her roots. She told one journalist that she was pulled out of a history exam by a Mississippi state trooper and quizzed by a room full of state officials about why she, "didn't uphold the principles of the south." And the students senate back in Old Miss voted overwhelmingly to censor her because she "failed in a time of grave crisis to represent and uphold the rights of her fellow students."

We can report tonight that the student government at Old Miss held another vote repealing the censor. That vote was taken last week. Sometimes it can take 40 years to right a wrong.

On to this day's news. A day of fascinating political stories and maneuverings. Senator Robert Torricelli dropping his re-election bid. The speech itself was one of the moments. The ramifications could be enormous.

Jonathan Karl starts us off. Jon, a headline from you, please.

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, Senator Torricelli said he did not want to be responsible for the loss of the Democratic majority in the Senate. But by dropping out, he leaves his party scrambling to find a new candidate just 36 days before the election.

BROWN: Jon, thank you. Back to you in just a moment.

The latest now on Iraq and the preparation going on in Vienna involving the weapons inspections and the inspectors. Christiane Amanpour is in Vienna tonight. Christiane, a headline, please.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, it appears the Iraqis are trying to do all they can right now to avert a military showdown. And so at these first signs of Iraqi cooperation with weapons inspectors here in Vienna, the weapons inspectors say that the day went about as well as they could have expected. In fact, better than they could have expected. And they believe the Iraqis have come here to make a deal.

BROWN: Christiane, thank you.

And a labor dispute that's causing an enormous mess up and down the West Coast, and could spread as well. Casey Wian following that from Long Beach, California. Casey, the headline from you tonight.

CASEY WIAN, CNN FINANCIAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, 10,500 longshoremen remained locked out of their jobs on the West Coast tonight. Twenty-nine ports are shut down and half a million cargo containers are piling up at those ports. The economic damage is mounting, totaling $1 billion a day - Aaron.

BROWN: Casey, thank you. Back to you and all the rest of you in a moment.

Also coming up, we'll talk with Douglas Forrester, Republican candidate for Senate in New Jersey, who pretty much his entire campaign has been centered around the fact that he isn't Robert Torricelli.

Also tonight, author and sports writer Mike Lupica on his new book. This seems to be the year of stories about second chances and redemption.

And from Montana tonight another story about a wrongly accused man getting out of prison, but this time there's a twist that could throw open the prison doors to more people in at least a couple of states. All of that in the hour ahead.

But we begin with Senator Torricelli's decision to end his campaign for re-election. In a race that centered almost exclusively on his ethical transgressions, and with polls shows him running behind, the senator today said he was pulling out for the good of the Democratic Party.

That's the story in a nice clean nutshell, minus the legal questions about who will take his place, minus the political gamesmanship. And there's much more of that to come. And also minus the recriminations. And, not the least today, minus the personal drama of an ambitious man laid so low.

So there's a lot to start with tonight, and we begin with CNN's Jonathan Karl.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL (voice-over): His campaign in free fall, Robert Torricelli dropped out of a race he was almost certain to lose.

SEN. ROBERT TORRICELLI (D), NEW JERSEY: It is the most painful thing that I have ever done in my life. And for it, I apologize to everyone who has fought so hard, believed in me and all the causes that I value.

KARL: Just two months ago, Torricelli seemed to be coasting towards easy reelection, with a double-digit lead over a virtually unknown Republican opponent. But that all changed when the Senate Ethics Committee severely admonished Torricelli for receiving inappropriate gifts from David Chang, a former supporter who is now serving an 18-month prison term in part for making illegal contributions to Torricelli's 1996 Senate campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

NARRATOR: Improper gifts. Special favors linked to contributions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: Republicans pounced on his ethics problems and, almost overnight, Torricelli was down in the polls by double digits. Jeopardizing Democratic hopes of maintaining control of the Senate.

TORRICELLI: But I will not be responsible for the loss of the Democratic majority of the United States Senate. I will not allow it to happen.

KARL: But even as he apologized for dropping out, Torricelli was decidedly unapologetic about the ethics problems that forced him out.

TORRICELLI: When did we stop believing and trusting in each other? I remember an America where when a person made an error and they asked forgiveness it was given.

KARL: Democrats now scrambling to find a replacement for Torricelli, but Republicans say they will fight in court to keep Torricelli's name on the ballot, because the deadline for new candidates has already passed.

DOUG FORRESTER (R), N.J. SENATE CANDIDATE: The laws of the state of New Jersey do not include we think we are going to lose so we get to pick someone new clause.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KARL: Well, the someone new the Democrats were dreaming about picking to replace Torricelli is former Senator Bill Bradley, also a former presidential candidate. But Bradley tonight told supporters in New Jersey that he's not interested in a race. That leaves party officials talking to several other potential candidates.

They say that by Wednesday they will have somebody picked to replace Torricelli maybe not on the ballot, but at least to try to get on the ballot in New Jersey -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, it's pretty clear what the Republican legal strategy is. Are you getting hints from the Democrats how they are going to deal with the state law that doesn't seem terribly ambiguous?

KARL: Yes. Tomorrow they go to Superior Court in New Jersey at 3:00. They have a hearing on this. They are going right to court and they're going to cite a precedent. There was a 1969 candidate who died and then there was a scramble to replace him.

That person eventually got on the ballot to replace him. But Republicans are pointing out the last time they checked, Torricelli still has a pulse. So that precedent is not a perfect match here. But Democrats are going to try.

They believe they have a good chance there. And also, Aaron, the Democrats control the entire party machinery there in Trenton in New Jersey. They control the attorney general's office, the governor's office, the board of elections. They feel they have a good chance given all of that of getting their guy, whoever their guy will be on the ballot.

BROWN: Well, they don't necessarily control every judge. And this one is going to end up with a judge, I think, not the attorney general. Jon, thank you. Jonathan Karl on the Hill tonight.

Jeff Greenfield is here with us. Political deft doesn't count.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: No. And I'll tell you, I've looked at that law. And you know if you go beyond the law and ask, all right, what is the intent? Somebody dies, you have a pretty good case for replacing him.

BROWN: Yes.

GREENFIELD: Somebody says I don't think I can win, and that's exactly what Torricelli said today. He didn't pretend he was disabled or he even wanted to spend more time with his family. He said I'm afraid I'm going to lose and we can't let that happen.

And I just think it's going to be very difficult for a judge to look at the law and say, oh well, but it doesn't apply if the candidates are worried they're going to lose. And trying to compare someone who is dead with someone who is in political trouble, this is going to take some doing.

BROWN: OK. Tell me why this doesn't work. My ideas never work so I know it won't.

GREENFIELD: OK.

BROWN: OK. I'm not dead and I can't come off the ballot. But if I win and if you vote for me, I promise you I will re-sign and Joe Blow or Jane Blow...

GREENFIELD: And let Governor McGreevey...

AARON: Right, will pick my successor.

GREENFIELD: Well, there is a dead man's parallel here. When Mel Carnahan, the governor of Missouri, died a few weeks before the election, that's what everybody said. If Mel Carnahan beats John Ashcroft, which he did, I the governor promise to appoint his widow, Jean. And that's what happened.

The problem is that you are still asking people to pull the ballot lever for somebody who has the lowest approval ratings of any incumbent senator in America. That's the first problem.

And the second problem is given people's lack of trust in Senator Torricelli, which is a reason he got out, are they going to necessarily believe him? And the third thing is the British have a great expression -- I wish we had had a more American one -- too clever by half. Voters really don't like it when they see political people maneuvering.

You remember what happened when the House of Representatives tried to get a pay raise through about 12 years ago? The country really did react.

So that may be the only choice the Democrats have if a judge says you can't do this. But boy, I'd hate to be the guy making that case. That's a very tough thing to ask voters to do.

BROWN: So there's no downside for Mr. Forrester that you can see at this moment?

GREENFIELD: Well, there is one downside. In fact, yes.

The first downside is he's running in increasingly Democratic state. They last elected a Republican in 1972. A liberal Republican named Clifford Case (ph) for you trivia fans. The second thing is that Forrester actually said throughout the campaign, as you so wisely pointed out, he said I'm the guy running against Robert Torricelli.

He will deny that I'm sure in an interview. He will tell you his positions on 50 things. But basically somewhere between 60 and 75 percent of New Jersey voters voting for Forrester were voting for him because he wasn't Torricelli.

Now if they can persuade, say, former Senator Lautenberg, who has said he might consider this to step in, and the state is that Democratic, and then they go to the voters of New Jersey and say you're going to have to pull that lever for whoever is on the Democratic ballot or the Senate might go Republican, in the state of New Jersey it is possible that has some clout.

BROWN: So the campaign -- you're now designing -- I've asked you over the years, speechmaker and now I want you to be ad writer -- is the ad that goes: You don't want a Republican Congress vote for my guy.

GREENFIELD: That's right. It has to be almost a kind of -- in the political sense, an educational campaign. And you know I used to do this for a living before I became a virgin journalist. I would actually be right up front and say Robert Torricelli has told you that he did not earn your trust, but if you don't pull that ballot, Democrats or independents, you will get an anti-choice, anti -- pro- gun, anti-environment Senate.

That was the strategy that Torricelli was pursuing before he withdrew. Vote -- I'm going to give it in another context. When Edwin Edwards, the governor of Louisiana, was running against David Duke, they had a bumper sticker that said, "Vote for the crook, it's important."

Now it isn't quite that blunt, but they are going to have to say vote for this guy even if you don't like him, that name, because if you don't, terrible things will happen. It's a tough sell, but I think it's what they got. And they got to take whoever they have as their candidate and make sure voters know this is the guy who is going to get in.

BROWN: Five seconds, literally. Were you surprised when you heard he was pulling out?

GREENFIELD: Yes.

BROWN: Yes, I was too. I thought he'd fight to the end.

GREENFIELD: Yes, absolutely.

BROWN: Thank you. Jeff Greenfield tonight. We'll talk with Mr. Forrester a little bit later in the program. On to other news of the day.

First, there are so many moving pieces in the matter of Iraq tonight we should probably ask you to take notes as we go along. There is the fierce and nasty debate going on over the presence of American congressmen in Baghdad over the past few days. You heard them hear on Friday, what they had to say, what they implied about the U.S. government.

There is the battle at the U.N. over the language of a resolution, the rejection of that language by Iraq in an attempt to find something the Security Council will accept. And then there is the matter of the inspections themselves. The Iraqis have said they will allow them unfettered access, though few people in the United States government, at least, believe that is in fact what the government of Iraq means.

The U.N. team is in Vienna trying to work through the details. Again, here is CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said he had come to Vienna not to negotiate, but to layout the practical arrangements that are crucial for weapons inspectors to operate smoothly in Iraq.

HANS BLIX, CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: We'd rather go through these things outside in advance. And we even said that we would not deploy inspectors to Iraq until we have had talks about his these things.

AMANPOUR: In the past, there have been stand-offs and confrontations. So with the Iraqi delegation led by General Amir al- Sadi (ph), scientific and technical adviser to the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the two sides hammered out arrangements on everything from hotel accommodations to access, satellite communications and removing suspect samples.

These talks would be the first sign of Iraq's cooperation with weapons inspectors. And by the end of the day, Mohammed El Baradei, head of the international nuclear watch dog, the IAEA, told reporters the Iraqi delegation was positive and businesslike and that they had come with the desire to reach an agreement.

Diplomats close to the talks say there are still issues to be resolved, such as the over flights weapons inspectors want for aerial reconnaissance of suspect sites in Iraq. Also, access to certain sensitive areas, such as the ministries of defense and intelligence, which Iraq has restricted.

Significantly off the agenda were the eight so-called presidential sites. Since access there is governed by restrictions agreed to by the U.N. secretary general four years ago, diplomats here say it's up to the Security Council to resolve.

An important development, the Iraqi delegation plans Tuesday to deliver what it says are all the documents about what is being happening at dual use facilities since weapons inspectors were last there four years ago. This refers to places, material and equipment used for civilian purposes but which can also be used for military purposes, including the production of weapons of mass destruction.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Now these talks will wrap up on Tuesday by the end of the working day here in Vienna. And the senior diplomats here say that pending a successful outcome, they think weapons inspectors could be back in Iraq by mid to late October.

Now even though these talks, these technical talks have been going on against a very highly charged political backdrop, particularly with the U.S. circulating this tough new draft resolution of the U.N., even though that's been going on, diplomats here say none of the implications or the potential implications of that were discussed at these talks -- Aaron.

BROWN: Let's just go back and talk about the framework of this negotiations for a second. What Iraq has said is it will accept the conditions of the existing resolutions. So am I correct that the U.N. side, at this moment, is not even discussing at all the presidential palaces, those places that are special in the U.N. resolutions?

AMANPOUR: That is correct, but not because of any other resolution that may or may not be on the table in the future. But that is because the presidential palaces, there is an agreement, it's called a memorandum of understanding, between Secretary General Kofi Annan and the Iraqi government.

Now should that have to change, that is something that is -- would change in the U.N. at the Security Council, not here at this level of technical talks. And furthermore, on the issue of whether the Iraqis would or would not accept a tough new resolution, publicly they have said they would not. But in private talks with the senior Iraqi diplomat in Europe, they tell me that they expect there eventually to be a new resolution on the table, a compromise between the tough U.S.-U.K. position and the Russian and French position.

Should that happen, they believe -- or this diplomat believes -- Iraq would accept it.

BROWN: Christiane, thank you. More from there tomorrow. Christiane Amanpour in Vienna for us this evening.

More on the politics now of Iraq and the bitter fight about those congressmen on their way home tonight from Baghdad. While they were there they had a lot of criticisms for how the White House is approaching the possibility of war, including the veracity of the president.

Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, had his own harsh criticism of them in an interview with Jonathan Karl.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: If Congressmen McDermott and Congressman Bonior want to go to the floor of the House and question the president's credibility, go right ahead and do it. Don't go to Baghdad and do it.

You are helping the Iraqi government sell to the Iraqi people their hatred of the United States of America, and it's wrong and I honestly do not understand it.

KARL: You know George Will actually suggested that this was worse than when Jane Fonda went over to Hanoi back during the Vietnam War.

MCCAIN: Well, it's not as bad as what Jane Fonda did, because she got into a gun emplacement and said she would like to shoot down an American air pilot. But it's worse in the respect she was a young troubled actress. I mean, let's face what she was.

These are members of Congress. These are supposed to be grown mature individuals. I do not understand it.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BROWN: John McCain today on Congressman McDermott and Bonior's trip to Baghdad. The Senate expected to start debate on the Iraq resolution issue on Wednesday; the House next week. It will dominate the news for a while.

Later on NEWSNIGHT, we'll look back at the confrontation at the University of Mississippi, which was integrated 40 years ago tomorrow. The writing 40 years ago tonight.

Up next: Labor trouble holds up all the shipping on the West Coast.

This is NEWSNIGHT on a Monday from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Ask a kid where his Nikes come from and he will probably tell you they come from the store. And they do, but not for long if what's going on, on the West Coast, goes out much longer.

Ports up and down the coast are shut down. Longshoremen are locked in a dispute with management over modernization and jobs. Meantime the Nikes and a lot more are stuck at sea instead of moving off the waterfront.

Here's CNN Financial correspondent Casey Wian.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WIAN (voice-over): More than 100 cargo ships from San Diego to Seattle sit stranded in harbors or idle at docks, while half a million 40-foot containers filled with everyone from car parts to cotton, clothes to Christmas toys, pile up at the ports.

After the Pacific Maritime Association reopened the port Sunday, it accused longshoremen of again deliberately slowing down the movement of cargo. Tempers flared and shippers shut down the ports for a third day.

TOM EDWARDS, PACIFIC MARITIME ASSOCIATION NEGOTIATOR: The union in essence was striking us. We have statistics from up and down the West Coast, from Seattle to San Diego indicating production on the coast fell by 54 percent Sunday, when we hoped work would return to normal.

Based upon those type of job actions, what they are doing is striking while getting paid. That's something that is not acceptable.

WIAN: The central dispute remains over technology. Shippers want more automation of clerical functions at the ports so they can operate more efficiently. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union wants to protect old jobs and unionize new high tech positions. The union has been working without a contract for five months.

JIM SPINOSA, ILWU UNION PRESIDENT: We will meet you in the middle. We will allow for free flow of information. We will allow for technology to move forward so that we will strengthen our position in the world market on the West Coast of these ports, providing that you meet us halfway and half way are the jobs that are necessary to be done that is left in the industry.

WIAN: Port customers have few good options. Canadian port unions support their U.S. counterparts. Mexico lacks the port and rail infrastructure to handle the cargo. And many Pacific cargo ships are too big for the Panama Canal.

Shippers say the shutdown will continue until the union agrees to either a temporary extension of its old contract or an entirely new deal.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WIAN: Now there is perhaps a glimmer of hopeful news tonight. Both sides met at the negotiating table this evening. While they report little progress out of those talks, the union has agreed to meet with a federal mediator tomorrow morning.

Now we have to make a distinction here. The union has not agreed to formal mediation, which has been requested by the shippers, but the union has agreed to go ahead and meet with the federal mediator who is proposing figuring out a way to end this impasse and to listen to what he has to say and what his opinions are and how he can break this log jam -- Aaron.

BROWN: Casey, I'm not sure precisely what the question is here, but this is fascinating to me because that union on the West Coast used to be among the most powerful unions in the country. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) out in San Francisco. It sounds like it has been weakened some over time just by virtue of the fact that management feels it can lock the union out.

WIAN: I think that is a fair statement, Aaron, but it does still wield enormous power. Just the fact that the union dispute has been able to shut down shipping on the West Coast, half of the imports that come into the United States come in through these ports. The fact that the union has been able to do that still shows that it wields an enormous amount of power.

The union is very afraid of the federal mediation process. They believe with the current administration in place that they are not going to get a fair deal out of federal mediation. So they still have the power by not extending the contract, they have been without a contract for 5 months.

They were agreeing to temporary extensions. They stopped doing that and that is what led to this lock out. They still have a lot of power. Maybe not as much as they once did, but still wield an enormous amount of power -- Aaron.

BROWN: But it is a lock out. Casey, thank you. Casey Wian out on the West Coast tonight. And that is another one we keep track of.

A few stories from around the country tonight, beginning with a big delay in the trial of the alleged 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui. Jury selection in the Moussaoui trial now will not begin at least until the end of May. This is the second time the judge has delayed the start of the trial.

One of the reasons, what she saw as the overwhelming quantity of discovery materials to contend with. A lot of papers for Mr. Moussaoui to go through. Things also got disrupted after the government last month gave Moussaoui more than 40 classified documents by mistake.

On to Florida and an update on two former America West pilots arrested for allegedly trying to fly while drunk. Lawyers for the pilots tried to get the charges against the two men dismissed because they weren't actually in control of the jet when police pulled them out of the cockpit. The two are charged with operating an aircraft while intoxicated. Both have plead not guilty.

And a court ruling today involving the privacy of the daughter of Florida Governor Jeb Bush. The court decided not to force staff members of a drug treatment center to answer questions from police. Earlier this month police said Noel Bush was under investigation after being found with a small amount of crack cocaine while getting treatment at the center. Miss Bush had been sent to treatment rather than jail after being caught forging a prescription for a controlled substance.

Later on NEWSNIGHT, a look back at the integration of Old Miss. State University in Mississippi 40 years ago. And we'll talk with a candidate who is still running for the Senate in New Jersey. That and more as we continue on NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Sports books, that is to say books about sports, seem to have a few things in common. They seem to have either the over-the- hill athlete, the Kevin Costner character, or perhaps the guy who's lived too hard too fast. That would be Nick Nolte. Mike Lupica's new novel "Wild Pitch" has a bit of both. What we like best beyond the writing, which with Mr. Lupica we always like, is the exploration of an issue that seems to us to transcend sports, but shows up in the sport pages often: the inability to let go, to walk away from the game or whatever.

For all the wacky characters and crazy events, at its core, seems to us that's what "Wild Pitch" is about.

We are pleased to have Mr. Lupica with us tonight.

Nice to see you.

MIKE LUPICA, SPORTS COLUMNIST, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Thank you for having me.

BROWN: First of all, before we get into this, did you once write just a mystery -- a straight ahead mystery?

LUPICA: Yes. Three. With a New York investigative television reporter.

BROWN: It was a television -- yes.

LUPICA: Named Peter Filly. It actually became a television movie that I wrote and had my whole movie career, about 90 seconds, playing a bartender. I look at the bartender at the boys department, but it was OK.

BROWN: Do you -- I remember once -- this was a long time ago -- reading it on an airplane.

Let's talk about the new book. It is about second chances and not letting go and redemption, I suppose.

LUPICA: Yes. It's about a pitcher named Charlie Stoddard who, when he was in his 20's. with the bad boy Mets of the 80's, was Michael Jordan as a pitcher, but a very bad boy. Busts out his shoulder in the '88 championship series, spends the next 15 years of his life feeling sorry for himself, doing card shows and way too much time in bars. And then through a set of circumstances, which parallels a couple things that have actually happened in baseball in my lifetime -- Dave Steve once took five years off,came back. Jose Rijo did it this year with the Reds -- he gets another trip on the merry-go-round.

People said, What made you want to write this book? Michael Jordan did it as much as anybody else because this was the all-time example of somebody who couldn't give up being Michael Jordan, and my character never got over the stroke, the celebrity, the money.

BROWN: Is that what it is? Do you think that's why -- I mean, I was listening to, a week or so ago, to Patrick Ewing who had a wonderful career and frankly, not that I want to go one-on-one with him or anything, but is not what he was. Saying, Well, he's going to go coach in Washington. Maybe he'll play a little.

And he's like 50 now.

LUPICA: Yes. And runs like he's 80.

BROWN: It's so -- it's particularly true in athletics but it's true in other things, too.

Ever thought about why it is people can't let go?

LUPICA: I really do buy into this whole thing that there is a narcotic involved with competition, but also with stardom.

I mean, Michael Jordan was making more money than anybody as a pitch man and a commercial guy and playing golf and living what we would think was the good life.

But he liked being Michael Jordan and that's what he has come back to do.

BROWN: How do you understand Bjorn Borg then? LUPICA: That will always mystify me. He got into a courtesy car one day at the U.S. Open after John McEnroe blew his doors off...

BROWN: He was, like, 26, 27-years old.

LUPICA: And never came -- I mean, we -- I watched the courtesy car pull away that day and I didn't know he was never coming back and McEnroe would say to me years later, It never occurred to him that I could screw up, which John did mightily after that.

And Borg just, some tripwire thing happened in his head, and he decided that after all the work he put in, he couldn't beat this guy. And when he did come back in his late 30's, it was just sad.

BROWN: Is there something about -- we got about a minute -- is there something about baseball that makes for the better foundation for the kind of stuff you like to write than football or hockey or anything else?

LUPICA: I wrote a novel I loved a couple years ago called "Bump and Run," which was funny and did well.

But baseball is rich because of the long season. And the funny thing about writing a fiction about baseball is keeping your imaginary season straight, because you go back in the checking and say, Well, wait a minute, if they were 2 and a half out on September -- what?

But no. Baseball, the tapestry of it and the fact that it's 162 games, does make every season a novel, just not quite like my novels.

BROWN: You work too much is my theory, by the way.

I mean, you're cranking out a book a year, right?

LUPICA: Yes. Yes.

BROWN: And you're doing -- how many columns do you do a week?

LUPICA: I do four columns a week.

BROWN: And a TV thing here and there.

LUPICA: Well, that's just bickering.

BROWN: You still have to show up for it.

LUPICA: You do have to show up to bicker, yes.

BROWN: You're a bad example to the rest of us.

LUPICA: It's not like I'm going to work in a coal mine every day and doing real, you know, heavy lifting.

BROWN: Nice to meet you, finally. Best of luck with the book and hope you'll come back.

LUPICA: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you. Sports writer -- writer -- well, do you care?, Sports writer-writer Mike Lupica.

We have more tonight. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Quite an unsettling story tonight about the justice system -- the criminal justice system and another apparently innocent man exonerated thanks to DNA.

This, of course, would be troubling enough, but in the course of investigating the case of Jimmy Ray Bromgard in Montana, the Innocence Project found suspicious testimony on the part of a laboratory manager for the Montana State Crime Lab.

Then, an independent panel of five forensic experts, agreed that it could mean, could mean, that many more cases involving this lab manager will be open for review.

"The New York Times" will break the story in tomorrow's edition. Joining us from Billings, Montana tonight, Times reporter Allen Liptak.

Nice to -- Adam Liptak. Nice to see you, Adam. Thank you for joining us.

ADAM LIPTAK, NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER: Thank you too, Aaron.

BROWN: Well, let's just start on the basics of the case. This is a standard, I gather, rape case where some years later DNA proves otherwise.

LIPTAK: Tomorrow morning, Jimmy Ray Bromgard will be, if all goes according to plan, released from prison after 15 and a half years for the rape of an 8-year-old girl that he supposedly did when he was 18 and DNA evidence has dispositively cleared him, making him the 111th person in America to be so cleared.

But as you said in your intro, there are larger questions here and people who do this work are now going back to ask, How did these wrongful convictions happen?

BROWN: The evidence against him at the time consisted of?

LIPTAK: Of very little. Of two basic pieces: there was an 8- year-old girl who said she was 60 percent sure that she recognized Jimmy Ray Bromgard and when questioned more closely about that, she said she just wasn't very sure. And really the only other evidence in the case was testimony from Arnold Melnikof, who was the manager of the Montana State Crime Laboratory at the time, and he said he had examined hair samples and he matched a hair sample from the scene with a hair sample from Bromgard's head and found there was a one in 100 percent -- one in 100 chance that they matched, and, moreover, he matched a pubic hair from the scene with a pubic hair from Bromgard, a separate one in 100 chance. He multiplied the two numbers, and said, Ladies and gentlemen there's a one in 10,000 chance that we have the right guy here -- that this is the man.

And it now turns out, according to what is consensus science and according to Mr. Melnikof himself, that those numbers really have no basis in science. Those statistics are essentially made up.

That's not to say he didn't believe what he was saying. That's not saying it's not consistent with his own experience, but there simply is no database as there is with fingerprints and other sorts of evidence that would let you draw those kinds of numbers and those numbers can be very, very persuasive to a jury.

BROWN: They certainly can if the only other numbers you have is a child who says she's 60 percent sure of something.

Walk away from this question if it's just beyond your scope here. Is this similar to the case in Oklahoma where the heed of the crime scene unit, whatever its title is there, has also been accused of similarly overstating the power of the evidence?

LIPTAK: Well it's similar in a sense, Aaron, and according to Peter Neufeld at the Innocence Project it's maybe a bigger deal here. That chemist, I think her name was Joyce Gilchrist, was a staffer. This gentleman ran the lab, set the tone. There, however, the state authorities came to the conclusion that all of her work should be reviewed. Here, it's early days. That request has been made and it's being considered by the authorities in Montana.

BROWN: And what have they said to you, by the way, the authorities, I want to talk about the manager himself?

LIPTAK: No one is very happy about what happened in this particular case. The Montana Supreme Court in this case and two other cases seemed to be quite persuaded by this kind of one in 10,000 sort of testimony. But what state officials are saying so far is that this is the rare case where this particular piece of testimony pushed -- was really all there was there and pushed it over the goal line, as it were, and in other cases where it perhaps played a smaller part, they think it's less important. That may or may not be the right way to think about it.

BROWN: And when you talk to Mr. Melnikof I think is his name, he says to you what, I overstated the power of the evidence or what?

LIPTAK: He said that it's consistent with his own experience. He's looked at a lot of hair, and those sorts of numbers sound right to him, even as he acknowledges, as he put it, there has been no thorough, proper study that would scientifically establish those kinds of numbers, and he said that, hey, in this case, it could be a coincidence. There could be two people with similar kinds of hair.

BROWN: And just in the 20 seconds we have left, the DNA evidence makes it absolutely clear that the young man who's served 15 plus years or 18 plus years was not the rapist? LIPTAK: Yes. Yes, it does. And that is not the kind of crime you want to go to prison for. He was not well treated in prison, and everyone agrees -- prosecutors, defense, everyone -- that he was innocent.

BROWN: Adam, thank you for joining us. Adam's story will be in "The Times," "The New York Times" tomorrow, which is obviously available around the country. Nice to talk to you. Thanks for this opportunity.

A little later in the program, back to a time that changed the world at the University of Mississippi. Up next, we're joined by Douglas Forrester, who is running for U.S. Senate in New Jersey, but running against whom? We shall see. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, Republican candidate for Senate in New Jersey. What does he do now after Robert Torricelli? We'll talk with Douglas Forrester in just a moment. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: All right. Imagine for a moment being a Senate candidate virtually no one expected to win. Imagine then running against incumbent who seemed to have more baggage than a sky cab at O'Hare Airport. Imagine designing a campaign for the most part that highlighted that baggage and seemed to put you in the lead. Then imagine waking up to find your opponent gone.

For Doug Forrester, there is no need to imagine. He was running and apparently beating Bob Torricelli who quit the New Jersey Senate race late today. Mr. Forester joins us now.

How did you find out? When did you first hear rumblings that the senator might be walking away from this?

DOUGLAS FORRESTER (R), U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE FROM STATE OF NEW JERSEY: Well, I didn't believe the rumors that I began to hear early in the afternoon until I saw the press conference, which was (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

BROWN: You didn't believe -- you didn't have guys calling you up saying they are making -- Democrats are making calls all over the state trying to find someone to run?

FORRESTER: There were quite a few rumors that have been circulating for a long time, and this particular senator has a reputation for being tenacious, so I was surprised.

BROWN: You perhaps will not agree with this, but let me throw it out anyway. It does seem to me as one who watches a bit of TV that you have, at least in your advertising, run a campaign almost totally, in effect, that you are not Robert Torricelli. So in that regard, who are you? What are you doing? What do you do next? What do you do next? FORRESTER: Well, I'm really grateful for the question, because it gives me an opportunity to say what we have been saying for months. You know, national security is the most important thing. We have been talking about that. We need to strengthen our national security. I've made a big point of that in the campaign. With Mr. Torricelli apparently, you know, stepping aside from the race, it removes a big distraction from those other issues. We've talked about the need to protect Social Security.

BROWN: But I know you have, and so has everyone. Honestly, you will concede, I know, I believe, that you based this campaign on the fact that you are not Torricelli, that you are -- do not have an ethics issue in your life, or at least none that is out there in the way that his is, and all the rest, and that something between 60 and 80 percent of the people who said they were going to vote said they were going to vote for you because you are not Robert Torricelli.

So what do you do now? Do you have to retool the whole campaign?

FORRESTER: I don't think so. You know, I had a press conference last Friday in which we talked about the fact that we have held all these press conferences over the months on these various issues that are very, very important, and somehow they always seem to get lost in the shuffle because the issue always came around to Mr. Torricelli's ethics and official misconduct and so forth. And for understandable reasons. You know, the press brought it back. But...

BROWN: Well, the press didn't do your advertising.

FORRESTER: No. Even in our advertising, though, we talked about introducing me in very, very positive ways. What I'm saying is that in the terms of the kind of coverage that we received, the campaign received, there were so many issues regarding Mr. Torricelli's behavior that that's what was generally covered. I'm relieved now in one sense that that distraction is off the table so we can talk about a need for, you know, greater national security, the need for protecting Social Security, the need for cleaning up the toxic waste sites in New Jersey. We have 130 (UNINTELLIGIBLE) sites, 19 cleaned up in 20 years -- that's a bad record.

We're going to be talking about these issues without the distraction of Mr. Torricelli now.

BROWN: Now you got a different distraction, and that will be the distraction over the legal fight I assume you intend to wage to keep him on the ballot now?

FORRESTER: Well, I think that it's important to understand that the election is under way. You know, people don't realize that ballots have been printed, sent out. People have voted and returned those ballots. So this isn't something, you know, that is a small matter. The election is under way. I would hope that -- and we hear that it may well happen that some political people are going to go into the court tomorrow and try to swap out candidates and so forth. Don't think that's a good idea. Don't think that's consistent with what an election should be all about. It's way late because the election is under way.

BROWN: And you'll oppose it?

FORRESTER: Well, we have to wait and see what happens. We can't, you know, speculate. All we know right now is that it appears that we are more free to talk about those issues that are so important to New Jersey. You know, national security and Social Security and economic security and cleaning up the environment. That's what I'm eager to get to. My hope that we don't get distracted by talking about swapping out candidates. That would be a bad thing.

BROWN: It's a weird business you found yourself in, this political business. Nice to meet you.

FORRESTER: Thank you so much.

BROWN: Good luck in the days ahead. I think it will be interesting. Thank you, Doug Forrester, the Republican candidate for senator. Who the Democrat is we shall see.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, looking back at the violent integration of Old Miss, the University of Mississippi, which happened 40 years ago tonight. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We were struck by quote from a federal marshal about a ferocious battle he fought 40 years ago tonight. He said, "I was more frightened at Mississippi than I was at Pearl Harbor." By Mississippi he means the University of Mississippi. The explosion of violence at Old Miss that erupted when a black man wanted nothing more but nothing less than an education at his state's university. The man who Martin Luther King Jr. considered first among heroes, James Meredith, and James Meredith, said a friend of ours today who covered those events long ago, was the bravest man he'd ever met.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): He is 69 years old now and real thin. But 40 years ago as a child of Mississippi, a black child of Mississippi, James Meredith wrote a page in his country's history and changed the state.

JAMES MEREDITH, CIVIL RIGHTS LEGEND: You have got to understand, the state of Mississippi was in rebellion. It had had rebelled against the United States. Now, that's been a very difficult story for America to tell. But that's what actually happened.

BROWN: The law was clear. The University of Mississippi had to integrate. The responsibility was clear. The federal government had to enforce the law. And James Meredith was clear as well. He would force both the state and the federal government to obey the law as written.

MEREDITH: I was engaged in a war. I considered myself engaged in a war from day one. And my objective was to force the federal government, the Kennedy administration at that time, into a position where they would have to use the United States military force to enforce my rights as a citizen.

BROWN: From the distance of four decades, it's difficult to imagine just how hard white Mississippi fought back. But the night before the inevitable day, whites rioted. Two died, hundreds were hurt in a showdown with federal marshals and young soldiers like Ted Cowsert who had been stationed at Fort Bragg.

TED COWSERT, FORMER ARMY M.P.: We were marching up through there. They would throw rocks and call us nigger lovers, and wanted to know if we were there to put on nigger brethren (ph) college. There was a lot of gasoline burning. A lot of automobiles burning on campus. Every concrete bench was broken and being thrown at us. And it -- I spent time in Vietnam, and I'll take Vietnam any time over Old Miss.

CONSTANCE BAKER-MOTLEY, ORIGINAL ATTORNEY, JAMES MEREDITH: People have forgotten about it, but it was, I say, the last battle of the Civil War actually fought on this campus that night.

BROWN: Forty years heals some wounds, but not all. University officials have spent the last two years preparing for this day. The university inviting back to campus as many of the soldiers and the marshals and the police as it could find. Constance Baker-Motley, Meredith's first lawyer from the NAACP is here, but so are symbols of the old south. They remain.

There's the statue honoring the confederate dead that greets all visitors at the main gate to the campus, and the Confederate battle flag, still part of the Mississippi state flag, waves in front of the building where James Meredith finally enrolled.

CHARLES REAGAN WILSON, CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF SOUTHERN CULTURE: I think that what happened at Old Miss 40 years ago can be a burden, but it should also be a responsibility, a special responsibility to take a leadership role in studying race relations and promoting racial reconciliation and remembering our past to good effect.

BROWN: Perhaps just remembering the past would be a place to start.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think it's important. I don't really know much about it, but I think that's important that we learn about it because it affects the university.

JASON THOMPSON, PRESIDENT, PHI BETA SIGMA: I can say that there are probably not enough students who know who James Meredith is and actually what he did.

BROWN: In so many ways, Mississippi is different today than it was 40 years ago. But in some ways, it is still the same.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I mean, I know that like my like grandmother and my great grandmother who still live in the Delta and everything still like refer to -- I mean, they still like think themselves better than the blacks.

Aaron: And it's not just down on the Mississippi Delta, but on campus too. So many things have changed. But to the eye of black students, some things remain the same.

THOMPSON: I know a lot of black students who just will not attend the university simply for the things they have heard.

BROWN: These days, James Meredith owns this tiny used car dealership in Jackson, Mississippi, the state capital. He's had it only six months.

But his mind still drifts back to generations ago, to the anger and the rioting, to the victory which was not his alone. James Meredith was the first black student at Old Miss, but not the first black on campus.

MEREDITH: I noticed in the hallway a black janitor, and I wondered why he was standing there. And he had a mop under his arm. And as I passed him, he turned his body, twisted his body and touched me with the mop handle.

Now, this delivered a message, and the message was clear: We are looking after you while you're here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: James Meredith, 40 years later.

Good to have you with us tonight. Looks like it's going to be an interesting week. We'll see you all tomorrow at 10:00 o'clock Eastern time. 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






U.N. Weapons Inspectors; Labor Dispute Threatens to Do Harm to U.S. Economy>


Aired September 30, 2002 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, HOST: Good evening again, everyone.
We'll spend quite a bit of time tonight on something that happened 40 years ago this evening. A shameful moment in American history, but in the end a profoundly important one.

September 30, 1962, the day a man named James Meredith arrived at the University of Mississippi to register for classes the following morning. For those of you who have forgotten or never knew in the first place we'll lay it out a bit later. But writer Linda Keenan (ph) came across one of those small facts that says a lot about the times: Then and now.

Back then, a young woman named Sydna Brower (ph) was the editor of the Old Miss student newspaper. She wrote an editorial called "Violence Will Not Help." It did not come out and support integration; nothing that radical. But she did take to task those white rioters who were doing everything they could to keep a black man out of the state's university.

Brower (ph) paid for her courage. She reportedly got letters from around the globe, many of them shocked that a southern girl would betray her roots. She told one journalist that she was pulled out of a history exam by a Mississippi state trooper and quizzed by a room full of state officials about why she, "didn't uphold the principles of the south." And the students senate back in Old Miss voted overwhelmingly to censor her because she "failed in a time of grave crisis to represent and uphold the rights of her fellow students."

We can report tonight that the student government at Old Miss held another vote repealing the censor. That vote was taken last week. Sometimes it can take 40 years to right a wrong.

On to this day's news. A day of fascinating political stories and maneuverings. Senator Robert Torricelli dropping his re-election bid. The speech itself was one of the moments. The ramifications could be enormous.

Jonathan Karl starts us off. Jon, a headline from you, please.

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, Senator Torricelli said he did not want to be responsible for the loss of the Democratic majority in the Senate. But by dropping out, he leaves his party scrambling to find a new candidate just 36 days before the election.

BROWN: Jon, thank you. Back to you in just a moment.

The latest now on Iraq and the preparation going on in Vienna involving the weapons inspections and the inspectors. Christiane Amanpour is in Vienna tonight. Christiane, a headline, please.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, it appears the Iraqis are trying to do all they can right now to avert a military showdown. And so at these first signs of Iraqi cooperation with weapons inspectors here in Vienna, the weapons inspectors say that the day went about as well as they could have expected. In fact, better than they could have expected. And they believe the Iraqis have come here to make a deal.

BROWN: Christiane, thank you.

And a labor dispute that's causing an enormous mess up and down the West Coast, and could spread as well. Casey Wian following that from Long Beach, California. Casey, the headline from you tonight.

CASEY WIAN, CNN FINANCIAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, 10,500 longshoremen remained locked out of their jobs on the West Coast tonight. Twenty-nine ports are shut down and half a million cargo containers are piling up at those ports. The economic damage is mounting, totaling $1 billion a day - Aaron.

BROWN: Casey, thank you. Back to you and all the rest of you in a moment.

Also coming up, we'll talk with Douglas Forrester, Republican candidate for Senate in New Jersey, who pretty much his entire campaign has been centered around the fact that he isn't Robert Torricelli.

Also tonight, author and sports writer Mike Lupica on his new book. This seems to be the year of stories about second chances and redemption.

And from Montana tonight another story about a wrongly accused man getting out of prison, but this time there's a twist that could throw open the prison doors to more people in at least a couple of states. All of that in the hour ahead.

But we begin with Senator Torricelli's decision to end his campaign for re-election. In a race that centered almost exclusively on his ethical transgressions, and with polls shows him running behind, the senator today said he was pulling out for the good of the Democratic Party.

That's the story in a nice clean nutshell, minus the legal questions about who will take his place, minus the political gamesmanship. And there's much more of that to come. And also minus the recriminations. And, not the least today, minus the personal drama of an ambitious man laid so low.

So there's a lot to start with tonight, and we begin with CNN's Jonathan Karl.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL (voice-over): His campaign in free fall, Robert Torricelli dropped out of a race he was almost certain to lose.

SEN. ROBERT TORRICELLI (D), NEW JERSEY: It is the most painful thing that I have ever done in my life. And for it, I apologize to everyone who has fought so hard, believed in me and all the causes that I value.

KARL: Just two months ago, Torricelli seemed to be coasting towards easy reelection, with a double-digit lead over a virtually unknown Republican opponent. But that all changed when the Senate Ethics Committee severely admonished Torricelli for receiving inappropriate gifts from David Chang, a former supporter who is now serving an 18-month prison term in part for making illegal contributions to Torricelli's 1996 Senate campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

NARRATOR: Improper gifts. Special favors linked to contributions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: Republicans pounced on his ethics problems and, almost overnight, Torricelli was down in the polls by double digits. Jeopardizing Democratic hopes of maintaining control of the Senate.

TORRICELLI: But I will not be responsible for the loss of the Democratic majority of the United States Senate. I will not allow it to happen.

KARL: But even as he apologized for dropping out, Torricelli was decidedly unapologetic about the ethics problems that forced him out.

TORRICELLI: When did we stop believing and trusting in each other? I remember an America where when a person made an error and they asked forgiveness it was given.

KARL: Democrats now scrambling to find a replacement for Torricelli, but Republicans say they will fight in court to keep Torricelli's name on the ballot, because the deadline for new candidates has already passed.

DOUG FORRESTER (R), N.J. SENATE CANDIDATE: The laws of the state of New Jersey do not include we think we are going to lose so we get to pick someone new clause.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KARL: Well, the someone new the Democrats were dreaming about picking to replace Torricelli is former Senator Bill Bradley, also a former presidential candidate. But Bradley tonight told supporters in New Jersey that he's not interested in a race. That leaves party officials talking to several other potential candidates.

They say that by Wednesday they will have somebody picked to replace Torricelli maybe not on the ballot, but at least to try to get on the ballot in New Jersey -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, it's pretty clear what the Republican legal strategy is. Are you getting hints from the Democrats how they are going to deal with the state law that doesn't seem terribly ambiguous?

KARL: Yes. Tomorrow they go to Superior Court in New Jersey at 3:00. They have a hearing on this. They are going right to court and they're going to cite a precedent. There was a 1969 candidate who died and then there was a scramble to replace him.

That person eventually got on the ballot to replace him. But Republicans are pointing out the last time they checked, Torricelli still has a pulse. So that precedent is not a perfect match here. But Democrats are going to try.

They believe they have a good chance there. And also, Aaron, the Democrats control the entire party machinery there in Trenton in New Jersey. They control the attorney general's office, the governor's office, the board of elections. They feel they have a good chance given all of that of getting their guy, whoever their guy will be on the ballot.

BROWN: Well, they don't necessarily control every judge. And this one is going to end up with a judge, I think, not the attorney general. Jon, thank you. Jonathan Karl on the Hill tonight.

Jeff Greenfield is here with us. Political deft doesn't count.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: No. And I'll tell you, I've looked at that law. And you know if you go beyond the law and ask, all right, what is the intent? Somebody dies, you have a pretty good case for replacing him.

BROWN: Yes.

GREENFIELD: Somebody says I don't think I can win, and that's exactly what Torricelli said today. He didn't pretend he was disabled or he even wanted to spend more time with his family. He said I'm afraid I'm going to lose and we can't let that happen.

And I just think it's going to be very difficult for a judge to look at the law and say, oh well, but it doesn't apply if the candidates are worried they're going to lose. And trying to compare someone who is dead with someone who is in political trouble, this is going to take some doing.

BROWN: OK. Tell me why this doesn't work. My ideas never work so I know it won't.

GREENFIELD: OK.

BROWN: OK. I'm not dead and I can't come off the ballot. But if I win and if you vote for me, I promise you I will re-sign and Joe Blow or Jane Blow...

GREENFIELD: And let Governor McGreevey...

AARON: Right, will pick my successor.

GREENFIELD: Well, there is a dead man's parallel here. When Mel Carnahan, the governor of Missouri, died a few weeks before the election, that's what everybody said. If Mel Carnahan beats John Ashcroft, which he did, I the governor promise to appoint his widow, Jean. And that's what happened.

The problem is that you are still asking people to pull the ballot lever for somebody who has the lowest approval ratings of any incumbent senator in America. That's the first problem.

And the second problem is given people's lack of trust in Senator Torricelli, which is a reason he got out, are they going to necessarily believe him? And the third thing is the British have a great expression -- I wish we had had a more American one -- too clever by half. Voters really don't like it when they see political people maneuvering.

You remember what happened when the House of Representatives tried to get a pay raise through about 12 years ago? The country really did react.

So that may be the only choice the Democrats have if a judge says you can't do this. But boy, I'd hate to be the guy making that case. That's a very tough thing to ask voters to do.

BROWN: So there's no downside for Mr. Forrester that you can see at this moment?

GREENFIELD: Well, there is one downside. In fact, yes.

The first downside is he's running in increasingly Democratic state. They last elected a Republican in 1972. A liberal Republican named Clifford Case (ph) for you trivia fans. The second thing is that Forrester actually said throughout the campaign, as you so wisely pointed out, he said I'm the guy running against Robert Torricelli.

He will deny that I'm sure in an interview. He will tell you his positions on 50 things. But basically somewhere between 60 and 75 percent of New Jersey voters voting for Forrester were voting for him because he wasn't Torricelli.

Now if they can persuade, say, former Senator Lautenberg, who has said he might consider this to step in, and the state is that Democratic, and then they go to the voters of New Jersey and say you're going to have to pull that lever for whoever is on the Democratic ballot or the Senate might go Republican, in the state of New Jersey it is possible that has some clout.

BROWN: So the campaign -- you're now designing -- I've asked you over the years, speechmaker and now I want you to be ad writer -- is the ad that goes: You don't want a Republican Congress vote for my guy.

GREENFIELD: That's right. It has to be almost a kind of -- in the political sense, an educational campaign. And you know I used to do this for a living before I became a virgin journalist. I would actually be right up front and say Robert Torricelli has told you that he did not earn your trust, but if you don't pull that ballot, Democrats or independents, you will get an anti-choice, anti -- pro- gun, anti-environment Senate.

That was the strategy that Torricelli was pursuing before he withdrew. Vote -- I'm going to give it in another context. When Edwin Edwards, the governor of Louisiana, was running against David Duke, they had a bumper sticker that said, "Vote for the crook, it's important."

Now it isn't quite that blunt, but they are going to have to say vote for this guy even if you don't like him, that name, because if you don't, terrible things will happen. It's a tough sell, but I think it's what they got. And they got to take whoever they have as their candidate and make sure voters know this is the guy who is going to get in.

BROWN: Five seconds, literally. Were you surprised when you heard he was pulling out?

GREENFIELD: Yes.

BROWN: Yes, I was too. I thought he'd fight to the end.

GREENFIELD: Yes, absolutely.

BROWN: Thank you. Jeff Greenfield tonight. We'll talk with Mr. Forrester a little bit later in the program. On to other news of the day.

First, there are so many moving pieces in the matter of Iraq tonight we should probably ask you to take notes as we go along. There is the fierce and nasty debate going on over the presence of American congressmen in Baghdad over the past few days. You heard them hear on Friday, what they had to say, what they implied about the U.S. government.

There is the battle at the U.N. over the language of a resolution, the rejection of that language by Iraq in an attempt to find something the Security Council will accept. And then there is the matter of the inspections themselves. The Iraqis have said they will allow them unfettered access, though few people in the United States government, at least, believe that is in fact what the government of Iraq means.

The U.N. team is in Vienna trying to work through the details. Again, here is CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said he had come to Vienna not to negotiate, but to layout the practical arrangements that are crucial for weapons inspectors to operate smoothly in Iraq.

HANS BLIX, CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: We'd rather go through these things outside in advance. And we even said that we would not deploy inspectors to Iraq until we have had talks about his these things.

AMANPOUR: In the past, there have been stand-offs and confrontations. So with the Iraqi delegation led by General Amir al- Sadi (ph), scientific and technical adviser to the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the two sides hammered out arrangements on everything from hotel accommodations to access, satellite communications and removing suspect samples.

These talks would be the first sign of Iraq's cooperation with weapons inspectors. And by the end of the day, Mohammed El Baradei, head of the international nuclear watch dog, the IAEA, told reporters the Iraqi delegation was positive and businesslike and that they had come with the desire to reach an agreement.

Diplomats close to the talks say there are still issues to be resolved, such as the over flights weapons inspectors want for aerial reconnaissance of suspect sites in Iraq. Also, access to certain sensitive areas, such as the ministries of defense and intelligence, which Iraq has restricted.

Significantly off the agenda were the eight so-called presidential sites. Since access there is governed by restrictions agreed to by the U.N. secretary general four years ago, diplomats here say it's up to the Security Council to resolve.

An important development, the Iraqi delegation plans Tuesday to deliver what it says are all the documents about what is being happening at dual use facilities since weapons inspectors were last there four years ago. This refers to places, material and equipment used for civilian purposes but which can also be used for military purposes, including the production of weapons of mass destruction.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Now these talks will wrap up on Tuesday by the end of the working day here in Vienna. And the senior diplomats here say that pending a successful outcome, they think weapons inspectors could be back in Iraq by mid to late October.

Now even though these talks, these technical talks have been going on against a very highly charged political backdrop, particularly with the U.S. circulating this tough new draft resolution of the U.N., even though that's been going on, diplomats here say none of the implications or the potential implications of that were discussed at these talks -- Aaron.

BROWN: Let's just go back and talk about the framework of this negotiations for a second. What Iraq has said is it will accept the conditions of the existing resolutions. So am I correct that the U.N. side, at this moment, is not even discussing at all the presidential palaces, those places that are special in the U.N. resolutions?

AMANPOUR: That is correct, but not because of any other resolution that may or may not be on the table in the future. But that is because the presidential palaces, there is an agreement, it's called a memorandum of understanding, between Secretary General Kofi Annan and the Iraqi government.

Now should that have to change, that is something that is -- would change in the U.N. at the Security Council, not here at this level of technical talks. And furthermore, on the issue of whether the Iraqis would or would not accept a tough new resolution, publicly they have said they would not. But in private talks with the senior Iraqi diplomat in Europe, they tell me that they expect there eventually to be a new resolution on the table, a compromise between the tough U.S.-U.K. position and the Russian and French position.

Should that happen, they believe -- or this diplomat believes -- Iraq would accept it.

BROWN: Christiane, thank you. More from there tomorrow. Christiane Amanpour in Vienna for us this evening.

More on the politics now of Iraq and the bitter fight about those congressmen on their way home tonight from Baghdad. While they were there they had a lot of criticisms for how the White House is approaching the possibility of war, including the veracity of the president.

Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, had his own harsh criticism of them in an interview with Jonathan Karl.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: If Congressmen McDermott and Congressman Bonior want to go to the floor of the House and question the president's credibility, go right ahead and do it. Don't go to Baghdad and do it.

You are helping the Iraqi government sell to the Iraqi people their hatred of the United States of America, and it's wrong and I honestly do not understand it.

KARL: You know George Will actually suggested that this was worse than when Jane Fonda went over to Hanoi back during the Vietnam War.

MCCAIN: Well, it's not as bad as what Jane Fonda did, because she got into a gun emplacement and said she would like to shoot down an American air pilot. But it's worse in the respect she was a young troubled actress. I mean, let's face what she was.

These are members of Congress. These are supposed to be grown mature individuals. I do not understand it.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BROWN: John McCain today on Congressman McDermott and Bonior's trip to Baghdad. The Senate expected to start debate on the Iraq resolution issue on Wednesday; the House next week. It will dominate the news for a while.

Later on NEWSNIGHT, we'll look back at the confrontation at the University of Mississippi, which was integrated 40 years ago tomorrow. The writing 40 years ago tonight.

Up next: Labor trouble holds up all the shipping on the West Coast.

This is NEWSNIGHT on a Monday from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Ask a kid where his Nikes come from and he will probably tell you they come from the store. And they do, but not for long if what's going on, on the West Coast, goes out much longer.

Ports up and down the coast are shut down. Longshoremen are locked in a dispute with management over modernization and jobs. Meantime the Nikes and a lot more are stuck at sea instead of moving off the waterfront.

Here's CNN Financial correspondent Casey Wian.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WIAN (voice-over): More than 100 cargo ships from San Diego to Seattle sit stranded in harbors or idle at docks, while half a million 40-foot containers filled with everyone from car parts to cotton, clothes to Christmas toys, pile up at the ports.

After the Pacific Maritime Association reopened the port Sunday, it accused longshoremen of again deliberately slowing down the movement of cargo. Tempers flared and shippers shut down the ports for a third day.

TOM EDWARDS, PACIFIC MARITIME ASSOCIATION NEGOTIATOR: The union in essence was striking us. We have statistics from up and down the West Coast, from Seattle to San Diego indicating production on the coast fell by 54 percent Sunday, when we hoped work would return to normal.

Based upon those type of job actions, what they are doing is striking while getting paid. That's something that is not acceptable.

WIAN: The central dispute remains over technology. Shippers want more automation of clerical functions at the ports so they can operate more efficiently. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union wants to protect old jobs and unionize new high tech positions. The union has been working without a contract for five months.

JIM SPINOSA, ILWU UNION PRESIDENT: We will meet you in the middle. We will allow for free flow of information. We will allow for technology to move forward so that we will strengthen our position in the world market on the West Coast of these ports, providing that you meet us halfway and half way are the jobs that are necessary to be done that is left in the industry.

WIAN: Port customers have few good options. Canadian port unions support their U.S. counterparts. Mexico lacks the port and rail infrastructure to handle the cargo. And many Pacific cargo ships are too big for the Panama Canal.

Shippers say the shutdown will continue until the union agrees to either a temporary extension of its old contract or an entirely new deal.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WIAN: Now there is perhaps a glimmer of hopeful news tonight. Both sides met at the negotiating table this evening. While they report little progress out of those talks, the union has agreed to meet with a federal mediator tomorrow morning.

Now we have to make a distinction here. The union has not agreed to formal mediation, which has been requested by the shippers, but the union has agreed to go ahead and meet with the federal mediator who is proposing figuring out a way to end this impasse and to listen to what he has to say and what his opinions are and how he can break this log jam -- Aaron.

BROWN: Casey, I'm not sure precisely what the question is here, but this is fascinating to me because that union on the West Coast used to be among the most powerful unions in the country. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) out in San Francisco. It sounds like it has been weakened some over time just by virtue of the fact that management feels it can lock the union out.

WIAN: I think that is a fair statement, Aaron, but it does still wield enormous power. Just the fact that the union dispute has been able to shut down shipping on the West Coast, half of the imports that come into the United States come in through these ports. The fact that the union has been able to do that still shows that it wields an enormous amount of power.

The union is very afraid of the federal mediation process. They believe with the current administration in place that they are not going to get a fair deal out of federal mediation. So they still have the power by not extending the contract, they have been without a contract for 5 months.

They were agreeing to temporary extensions. They stopped doing that and that is what led to this lock out. They still have a lot of power. Maybe not as much as they once did, but still wield an enormous amount of power -- Aaron.

BROWN: But it is a lock out. Casey, thank you. Casey Wian out on the West Coast tonight. And that is another one we keep track of.

A few stories from around the country tonight, beginning with a big delay in the trial of the alleged 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui. Jury selection in the Moussaoui trial now will not begin at least until the end of May. This is the second time the judge has delayed the start of the trial.

One of the reasons, what she saw as the overwhelming quantity of discovery materials to contend with. A lot of papers for Mr. Moussaoui to go through. Things also got disrupted after the government last month gave Moussaoui more than 40 classified documents by mistake.

On to Florida and an update on two former America West pilots arrested for allegedly trying to fly while drunk. Lawyers for the pilots tried to get the charges against the two men dismissed because they weren't actually in control of the jet when police pulled them out of the cockpit. The two are charged with operating an aircraft while intoxicated. Both have plead not guilty.

And a court ruling today involving the privacy of the daughter of Florida Governor Jeb Bush. The court decided not to force staff members of a drug treatment center to answer questions from police. Earlier this month police said Noel Bush was under investigation after being found with a small amount of crack cocaine while getting treatment at the center. Miss Bush had been sent to treatment rather than jail after being caught forging a prescription for a controlled substance.

Later on NEWSNIGHT, a look back at the integration of Old Miss. State University in Mississippi 40 years ago. And we'll talk with a candidate who is still running for the Senate in New Jersey. That and more as we continue on NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Sports books, that is to say books about sports, seem to have a few things in common. They seem to have either the over-the- hill athlete, the Kevin Costner character, or perhaps the guy who's lived too hard too fast. That would be Nick Nolte. Mike Lupica's new novel "Wild Pitch" has a bit of both. What we like best beyond the writing, which with Mr. Lupica we always like, is the exploration of an issue that seems to us to transcend sports, but shows up in the sport pages often: the inability to let go, to walk away from the game or whatever.

For all the wacky characters and crazy events, at its core, seems to us that's what "Wild Pitch" is about.

We are pleased to have Mr. Lupica with us tonight.

Nice to see you.

MIKE LUPICA, SPORTS COLUMNIST, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Thank you for having me.

BROWN: First of all, before we get into this, did you once write just a mystery -- a straight ahead mystery?

LUPICA: Yes. Three. With a New York investigative television reporter.

BROWN: It was a television -- yes.

LUPICA: Named Peter Filly. It actually became a television movie that I wrote and had my whole movie career, about 90 seconds, playing a bartender. I look at the bartender at the boys department, but it was OK.

BROWN: Do you -- I remember once -- this was a long time ago -- reading it on an airplane.

Let's talk about the new book. It is about second chances and not letting go and redemption, I suppose.

LUPICA: Yes. It's about a pitcher named Charlie Stoddard who, when he was in his 20's. with the bad boy Mets of the 80's, was Michael Jordan as a pitcher, but a very bad boy. Busts out his shoulder in the '88 championship series, spends the next 15 years of his life feeling sorry for himself, doing card shows and way too much time in bars. And then through a set of circumstances, which parallels a couple things that have actually happened in baseball in my lifetime -- Dave Steve once took five years off,came back. Jose Rijo did it this year with the Reds -- he gets another trip on the merry-go-round.

People said, What made you want to write this book? Michael Jordan did it as much as anybody else because this was the all-time example of somebody who couldn't give up being Michael Jordan, and my character never got over the stroke, the celebrity, the money.

BROWN: Is that what it is? Do you think that's why -- I mean, I was listening to, a week or so ago, to Patrick Ewing who had a wonderful career and frankly, not that I want to go one-on-one with him or anything, but is not what he was. Saying, Well, he's going to go coach in Washington. Maybe he'll play a little.

And he's like 50 now.

LUPICA: Yes. And runs like he's 80.

BROWN: It's so -- it's particularly true in athletics but it's true in other things, too.

Ever thought about why it is people can't let go?

LUPICA: I really do buy into this whole thing that there is a narcotic involved with competition, but also with stardom.

I mean, Michael Jordan was making more money than anybody as a pitch man and a commercial guy and playing golf and living what we would think was the good life.

But he liked being Michael Jordan and that's what he has come back to do.

BROWN: How do you understand Bjorn Borg then? LUPICA: That will always mystify me. He got into a courtesy car one day at the U.S. Open after John McEnroe blew his doors off...

BROWN: He was, like, 26, 27-years old.

LUPICA: And never came -- I mean, we -- I watched the courtesy car pull away that day and I didn't know he was never coming back and McEnroe would say to me years later, It never occurred to him that I could screw up, which John did mightily after that.

And Borg just, some tripwire thing happened in his head, and he decided that after all the work he put in, he couldn't beat this guy. And when he did come back in his late 30's, it was just sad.

BROWN: Is there something about -- we got about a minute -- is there something about baseball that makes for the better foundation for the kind of stuff you like to write than football or hockey or anything else?

LUPICA: I wrote a novel I loved a couple years ago called "Bump and Run," which was funny and did well.

But baseball is rich because of the long season. And the funny thing about writing a fiction about baseball is keeping your imaginary season straight, because you go back in the checking and say, Well, wait a minute, if they were 2 and a half out on September -- what?

But no. Baseball, the tapestry of it and the fact that it's 162 games, does make every season a novel, just not quite like my novels.

BROWN: You work too much is my theory, by the way.

I mean, you're cranking out a book a year, right?

LUPICA: Yes. Yes.

BROWN: And you're doing -- how many columns do you do a week?

LUPICA: I do four columns a week.

BROWN: And a TV thing here and there.

LUPICA: Well, that's just bickering.

BROWN: You still have to show up for it.

LUPICA: You do have to show up to bicker, yes.

BROWN: You're a bad example to the rest of us.

LUPICA: It's not like I'm going to work in a coal mine every day and doing real, you know, heavy lifting.

BROWN: Nice to meet you, finally. Best of luck with the book and hope you'll come back.

LUPICA: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you. Sports writer -- writer -- well, do you care?, Sports writer-writer Mike Lupica.

We have more tonight. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Quite an unsettling story tonight about the justice system -- the criminal justice system and another apparently innocent man exonerated thanks to DNA.

This, of course, would be troubling enough, but in the course of investigating the case of Jimmy Ray Bromgard in Montana, the Innocence Project found suspicious testimony on the part of a laboratory manager for the Montana State Crime Lab.

Then, an independent panel of five forensic experts, agreed that it could mean, could mean, that many more cases involving this lab manager will be open for review.

"The New York Times" will break the story in tomorrow's edition. Joining us from Billings, Montana tonight, Times reporter Allen Liptak.

Nice to -- Adam Liptak. Nice to see you, Adam. Thank you for joining us.

ADAM LIPTAK, NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER: Thank you too, Aaron.

BROWN: Well, let's just start on the basics of the case. This is a standard, I gather, rape case where some years later DNA proves otherwise.

LIPTAK: Tomorrow morning, Jimmy Ray Bromgard will be, if all goes according to plan, released from prison after 15 and a half years for the rape of an 8-year-old girl that he supposedly did when he was 18 and DNA evidence has dispositively cleared him, making him the 111th person in America to be so cleared.

But as you said in your intro, there are larger questions here and people who do this work are now going back to ask, How did these wrongful convictions happen?

BROWN: The evidence against him at the time consisted of?

LIPTAK: Of very little. Of two basic pieces: there was an 8- year-old girl who said she was 60 percent sure that she recognized Jimmy Ray Bromgard and when questioned more closely about that, she said she just wasn't very sure. And really the only other evidence in the case was testimony from Arnold Melnikof, who was the manager of the Montana State Crime Laboratory at the time, and he said he had examined hair samples and he matched a hair sample from the scene with a hair sample from Bromgard's head and found there was a one in 100 percent -- one in 100 chance that they matched, and, moreover, he matched a pubic hair from the scene with a pubic hair from Bromgard, a separate one in 100 chance. He multiplied the two numbers, and said, Ladies and gentlemen there's a one in 10,000 chance that we have the right guy here -- that this is the man.

And it now turns out, according to what is consensus science and according to Mr. Melnikof himself, that those numbers really have no basis in science. Those statistics are essentially made up.

That's not to say he didn't believe what he was saying. That's not saying it's not consistent with his own experience, but there simply is no database as there is with fingerprints and other sorts of evidence that would let you draw those kinds of numbers and those numbers can be very, very persuasive to a jury.

BROWN: They certainly can if the only other numbers you have is a child who says she's 60 percent sure of something.

Walk away from this question if it's just beyond your scope here. Is this similar to the case in Oklahoma where the heed of the crime scene unit, whatever its title is there, has also been accused of similarly overstating the power of the evidence?

LIPTAK: Well it's similar in a sense, Aaron, and according to Peter Neufeld at the Innocence Project it's maybe a bigger deal here. That chemist, I think her name was Joyce Gilchrist, was a staffer. This gentleman ran the lab, set the tone. There, however, the state authorities came to the conclusion that all of her work should be reviewed. Here, it's early days. That request has been made and it's being considered by the authorities in Montana.

BROWN: And what have they said to you, by the way, the authorities, I want to talk about the manager himself?

LIPTAK: No one is very happy about what happened in this particular case. The Montana Supreme Court in this case and two other cases seemed to be quite persuaded by this kind of one in 10,000 sort of testimony. But what state officials are saying so far is that this is the rare case where this particular piece of testimony pushed -- was really all there was there and pushed it over the goal line, as it were, and in other cases where it perhaps played a smaller part, they think it's less important. That may or may not be the right way to think about it.

BROWN: And when you talk to Mr. Melnikof I think is his name, he says to you what, I overstated the power of the evidence or what?

LIPTAK: He said that it's consistent with his own experience. He's looked at a lot of hair, and those sorts of numbers sound right to him, even as he acknowledges, as he put it, there has been no thorough, proper study that would scientifically establish those kinds of numbers, and he said that, hey, in this case, it could be a coincidence. There could be two people with similar kinds of hair.

BROWN: And just in the 20 seconds we have left, the DNA evidence makes it absolutely clear that the young man who's served 15 plus years or 18 plus years was not the rapist? LIPTAK: Yes. Yes, it does. And that is not the kind of crime you want to go to prison for. He was not well treated in prison, and everyone agrees -- prosecutors, defense, everyone -- that he was innocent.

BROWN: Adam, thank you for joining us. Adam's story will be in "The Times," "The New York Times" tomorrow, which is obviously available around the country. Nice to talk to you. Thanks for this opportunity.

A little later in the program, back to a time that changed the world at the University of Mississippi. Up next, we're joined by Douglas Forrester, who is running for U.S. Senate in New Jersey, but running against whom? We shall see. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, Republican candidate for Senate in New Jersey. What does he do now after Robert Torricelli? We'll talk with Douglas Forrester in just a moment. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: All right. Imagine for a moment being a Senate candidate virtually no one expected to win. Imagine then running against incumbent who seemed to have more baggage than a sky cab at O'Hare Airport. Imagine designing a campaign for the most part that highlighted that baggage and seemed to put you in the lead. Then imagine waking up to find your opponent gone.

For Doug Forrester, there is no need to imagine. He was running and apparently beating Bob Torricelli who quit the New Jersey Senate race late today. Mr. Forester joins us now.

How did you find out? When did you first hear rumblings that the senator might be walking away from this?

DOUGLAS FORRESTER (R), U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE FROM STATE OF NEW JERSEY: Well, I didn't believe the rumors that I began to hear early in the afternoon until I saw the press conference, which was (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

BROWN: You didn't believe -- you didn't have guys calling you up saying they are making -- Democrats are making calls all over the state trying to find someone to run?

FORRESTER: There were quite a few rumors that have been circulating for a long time, and this particular senator has a reputation for being tenacious, so I was surprised.

BROWN: You perhaps will not agree with this, but let me throw it out anyway. It does seem to me as one who watches a bit of TV that you have, at least in your advertising, run a campaign almost totally, in effect, that you are not Robert Torricelli. So in that regard, who are you? What are you doing? What do you do next? What do you do next? FORRESTER: Well, I'm really grateful for the question, because it gives me an opportunity to say what we have been saying for months. You know, national security is the most important thing. We have been talking about that. We need to strengthen our national security. I've made a big point of that in the campaign. With Mr. Torricelli apparently, you know, stepping aside from the race, it removes a big distraction from those other issues. We've talked about the need to protect Social Security.

BROWN: But I know you have, and so has everyone. Honestly, you will concede, I know, I believe, that you based this campaign on the fact that you are not Torricelli, that you are -- do not have an ethics issue in your life, or at least none that is out there in the way that his is, and all the rest, and that something between 60 and 80 percent of the people who said they were going to vote said they were going to vote for you because you are not Robert Torricelli.

So what do you do now? Do you have to retool the whole campaign?

FORRESTER: I don't think so. You know, I had a press conference last Friday in which we talked about the fact that we have held all these press conferences over the months on these various issues that are very, very important, and somehow they always seem to get lost in the shuffle because the issue always came around to Mr. Torricelli's ethics and official misconduct and so forth. And for understandable reasons. You know, the press brought it back. But...

BROWN: Well, the press didn't do your advertising.

FORRESTER: No. Even in our advertising, though, we talked about introducing me in very, very positive ways. What I'm saying is that in the terms of the kind of coverage that we received, the campaign received, there were so many issues regarding Mr. Torricelli's behavior that that's what was generally covered. I'm relieved now in one sense that that distraction is off the table so we can talk about a need for, you know, greater national security, the need for protecting Social Security, the need for cleaning up the toxic waste sites in New Jersey. We have 130 (UNINTELLIGIBLE) sites, 19 cleaned up in 20 years -- that's a bad record.

We're going to be talking about these issues without the distraction of Mr. Torricelli now.

BROWN: Now you got a different distraction, and that will be the distraction over the legal fight I assume you intend to wage to keep him on the ballot now?

FORRESTER: Well, I think that it's important to understand that the election is under way. You know, people don't realize that ballots have been printed, sent out. People have voted and returned those ballots. So this isn't something, you know, that is a small matter. The election is under way. I would hope that -- and we hear that it may well happen that some political people are going to go into the court tomorrow and try to swap out candidates and so forth. Don't think that's a good idea. Don't think that's consistent with what an election should be all about. It's way late because the election is under way.

BROWN: And you'll oppose it?

FORRESTER: Well, we have to wait and see what happens. We can't, you know, speculate. All we know right now is that it appears that we are more free to talk about those issues that are so important to New Jersey. You know, national security and Social Security and economic security and cleaning up the environment. That's what I'm eager to get to. My hope that we don't get distracted by talking about swapping out candidates. That would be a bad thing.

BROWN: It's a weird business you found yourself in, this political business. Nice to meet you.

FORRESTER: Thank you so much.

BROWN: Good luck in the days ahead. I think it will be interesting. Thank you, Doug Forrester, the Republican candidate for senator. Who the Democrat is we shall see.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, looking back at the violent integration of Old Miss, the University of Mississippi, which happened 40 years ago tonight. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We were struck by quote from a federal marshal about a ferocious battle he fought 40 years ago tonight. He said, "I was more frightened at Mississippi than I was at Pearl Harbor." By Mississippi he means the University of Mississippi. The explosion of violence at Old Miss that erupted when a black man wanted nothing more but nothing less than an education at his state's university. The man who Martin Luther King Jr. considered first among heroes, James Meredith, and James Meredith, said a friend of ours today who covered those events long ago, was the bravest man he'd ever met.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): He is 69 years old now and real thin. But 40 years ago as a child of Mississippi, a black child of Mississippi, James Meredith wrote a page in his country's history and changed the state.

JAMES MEREDITH, CIVIL RIGHTS LEGEND: You have got to understand, the state of Mississippi was in rebellion. It had had rebelled against the United States. Now, that's been a very difficult story for America to tell. But that's what actually happened.

BROWN: The law was clear. The University of Mississippi had to integrate. The responsibility was clear. The federal government had to enforce the law. And James Meredith was clear as well. He would force both the state and the federal government to obey the law as written.

MEREDITH: I was engaged in a war. I considered myself engaged in a war from day one. And my objective was to force the federal government, the Kennedy administration at that time, into a position where they would have to use the United States military force to enforce my rights as a citizen.

BROWN: From the distance of four decades, it's difficult to imagine just how hard white Mississippi fought back. But the night before the inevitable day, whites rioted. Two died, hundreds were hurt in a showdown with federal marshals and young soldiers like Ted Cowsert who had been stationed at Fort Bragg.

TED COWSERT, FORMER ARMY M.P.: We were marching up through there. They would throw rocks and call us nigger lovers, and wanted to know if we were there to put on nigger brethren (ph) college. There was a lot of gasoline burning. A lot of automobiles burning on campus. Every concrete bench was broken and being thrown at us. And it -- I spent time in Vietnam, and I'll take Vietnam any time over Old Miss.

CONSTANCE BAKER-MOTLEY, ORIGINAL ATTORNEY, JAMES MEREDITH: People have forgotten about it, but it was, I say, the last battle of the Civil War actually fought on this campus that night.

BROWN: Forty years heals some wounds, but not all. University officials have spent the last two years preparing for this day. The university inviting back to campus as many of the soldiers and the marshals and the police as it could find. Constance Baker-Motley, Meredith's first lawyer from the NAACP is here, but so are symbols of the old south. They remain.

There's the statue honoring the confederate dead that greets all visitors at the main gate to the campus, and the Confederate battle flag, still part of the Mississippi state flag, waves in front of the building where James Meredith finally enrolled.

CHARLES REAGAN WILSON, CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF SOUTHERN CULTURE: I think that what happened at Old Miss 40 years ago can be a burden, but it should also be a responsibility, a special responsibility to take a leadership role in studying race relations and promoting racial reconciliation and remembering our past to good effect.

BROWN: Perhaps just remembering the past would be a place to start.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think it's important. I don't really know much about it, but I think that's important that we learn about it because it affects the university.

JASON THOMPSON, PRESIDENT, PHI BETA SIGMA: I can say that there are probably not enough students who know who James Meredith is and actually what he did.

BROWN: In so many ways, Mississippi is different today than it was 40 years ago. But in some ways, it is still the same.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I mean, I know that like my like grandmother and my great grandmother who still live in the Delta and everything still like refer to -- I mean, they still like think themselves better than the blacks.

Aaron: And it's not just down on the Mississippi Delta, but on campus too. So many things have changed. But to the eye of black students, some things remain the same.

THOMPSON: I know a lot of black students who just will not attend the university simply for the things they have heard.

BROWN: These days, James Meredith owns this tiny used car dealership in Jackson, Mississippi, the state capital. He's had it only six months.

But his mind still drifts back to generations ago, to the anger and the rioting, to the victory which was not his alone. James Meredith was the first black student at Old Miss, but not the first black on campus.

MEREDITH: I noticed in the hallway a black janitor, and I wondered why he was standing there. And he had a mop under his arm. And as I passed him, he turned his body, twisted his body and touched me with the mop handle.

Now, this delivered a message, and the message was clear: We are looking after you while you're here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: James Meredith, 40 years later.

Good to have you with us tonight. Looks like it's going to be an interesting week. We'll see you all tomorrow at 10:00 o'clock Eastern time. Until then, good night from all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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U.N. Weapons Inspectors; Labor Dispute Threatens to Do Harm to U.S. Economy>