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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
JFK Battled Illness in White House, Newly Released Reports Show
Aired November 18, 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: And good evening, again, everyone.
All right. Here are the vital statistics. I'm 54 going on 55. I watch my weight, had my appendix out when I was 30. But I'm not the president, I'm not running for president, so that's all you'll get out of me.
These days, the president's medical record is an open book, but it wasn't always so. Until recently, everything we knew about a president's health was governed by a simple rule: don't ask, don't tell and, of course, the corollary, when asked, lie. So Grover Cleveland's mouth cancer was merely a bad toothache. Woodrow Wilson's stroke a case of fatigue.
Eisenhower's heart attacks were mild, and no one even bothered to ask about FDR's paralysis, because it just wasn't done. The truth would eventually come out, but only years later. Still, it was a shock today to read that John F. Kennedy was seriously ill, in constant pain, that he needed sedatives to sleep, amphetamines to awaken, and the rest of a pharmacy simply to function.
But more fascinating we think is how things have changed. Today, we know everything about presidential polyps, but a whole lot less about the making of presidential policy. The president's energy plans are made in private. We're not entitled to know who gave advice and what their interests are.
This was true of the Clinton healthcare plan as well. Polyps open, policy closed.
Today, the courts hear cases in secret, war correspondents are kept in the battlefield. While I think it's important to know every detail of the president's body, in the end, I'm far more concerned with the influences on his mind.
On to the news of the day and The Whip. It begins tonight in Baghdad live with CNN's Nic Robertson. Nic, a headline, please.
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, one day inspectors back on the ground here, and so far their mission going, well, relatively well.
BROWN: Nic, thank you. Back to you at the top.
A court victory today for the administration in the area of domestic surveillance. CNN's Kelli Arena on that. Kelli, a headline from you.
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the attorney general says that a new court ruling will revolutionize the government's ability to investigate terrorists and prosecute terrorist acts. But critics say it threatens constitutional rights.
BROWN: Kelli, thank you. And the government meets the deadline on American airports. CNN's Patty Davis has been working that. So Patty, a headline from you tonight.
PATTY DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Federal passenger screeners are now in all U.S. airports in time for Tuesday's deadline to replace private screeners. But there's still a lot more to be done to secure the nation's skies.
BROWN: Patty, thank you. Back with all of you shortly.
Also coming up, another side of airline security, the kind needed to stop trouble on board. We'll look at the U.S. Air Marshal Program coming under criticism these days. It is a case of too many flights, too few marshals? And what about the way they're being used? That's coming up.
Also tonight, as we mentioned a moment ago, the medical trouble in Camelot. This is a picture of pain and endurance and courage, but also deception.
And we'll close things out with Hemingway, the things he left behind and how he might have told the story. All of that in the hour ahead.
But we begin with the inspectors' return to Baghdad, their mission and the consequences if their mission is thwarted by Iraq. Four years ago, the price came to a few days of air strikes. Four years later, the bottom line is almost certainly an all-out war. But that's getting ahead of the story.
Today, the inspectors began putting on their game faces, unloading the equipment and vacuuming four years worth of dust from their old offices. We begin tonight in Baghdad with CNN's Nic Robertson.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTSON (voice-over): Striding across the tarmac at Saddam International Airport, with his Iraqi counterpart, Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector Hans Blix begins what could be a long journey.
HANS BLIX, CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: The world wants to have assurances that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The situation is tense at the moment, but there is a new opportunity and we are here to provide inspection, which is credible.
ROBERTSON: Part of that process, facing questions from international media, not least about what happens next. MOHAMED EL-BARADEI, DIRECTOR GENERAL: We're still discussing the program, but we do hope to have meeting at the highest level and we hope to be able to come with the full understanding with Iraq on the necessity for full cooperation on the part of Iraq.
ROBERTSON: Cooperation apparently good this day and tenor and other equipment to be installed by the advance team accompanying Blix swiftly unloaded. Within hours, the same equipment arriving at the inspection team's headquarters, quickly followed by Blix and El- Baradei, ending an almost four-year absence by U.N. weapons inspection teams from their offices in Iraq.
In another sign, perhaps the day going well for inspectors, within hours the first of the hopeful meetings. At the foreign ministry, face-to-face talks with General Amir Al-Sadi (ph), president Saddam Hussein's top scientific adviser. For the advanced team of logistics and communications specialists traveling with Blix, a little over a week to make their preparations before the first inspectors get to work on November 27.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTSON: Now the Iraqi newspapers here calling on the inspectors to be independent, unbiased and honest. At the same time, reminding readers of allegations of spying by the previous teams. But it seems really here all the average Iraqi, if you will, wants the inspectors to do their job, give Iraq a clean bill of health, so that the U.N. sanctions that have been hammering the economy here for the last 12 years can be lifted and people can get back to a better way of life, Aaron.
BROWN: People talk more about the sanctions being lifted than the prospect of war?
ROBERTSON: People want to get their lives back to what they remember them being, before the Gulf War, before 1990, before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. It's difficult really perhaps for to us comprehend when we look around today what has happened to the average middle-class person in Iraq. Teachers paid 50 cents a day.
They see the U.N. sanctions because that's what they're told by the government as being responsible for all this.
BROWN: And one quick one here. You mention the 27th as the day the inspections begin for real, the real looking starts. What are the other benchmark dates we ought to pay attention to?
ROBERTSON: The biggest day really is going to be December 8. That's the day when Iraq has to put forward a dossier outlining its weapons of mass destruction, procurement, production, places of production. That's going to be the road map for Hans Blix and his team. And is certainly going to be the biggest indication of just how Iraq is going to play the situation now.
BROWN: Nic, thank you. Nic Robertson tonight live from Baghdad. Good to talk to you. U.S. and British warplanes today hit targets in Iraq's northern and southern no-fly zones. It's been going on for several months now. The mission, threefold: to enforce the no-fly zones, to pave the way for a larger attack, should the time come, and right now especially to send a message. The message being sent on other fronts as well.
Tomorrow, the president heads to Prague for a meeting of NATO countries. He's seeking political and diplomatic support from all of them, military support from some. Neither of which has been easy to come by so far. Here's CNN Senior White House Correspondent John King.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The president is counting on a strong NATO statement backing his position that Iraq must disarm or face military action.
CONDOLEEZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Iraq is typical or the most important example of the kind of threat that NATO will face in the future.
KING: The main summit focus is inviting seven eastern European nations to join the NATO alliance, but Iraq is a major subplot and a major diplomatic challenge for Mr. Bush. NATO was quick to offer help after the terrorist attacks on the United States, but had little role on the war in Afghanistan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Iraq issue has become kind of the next litmus test for whether the United States has made a fundamental shift away from working with others towards doing everything alone.
KING: Russia is now a NATO partner, and some see war with Iraq as a perfect test of whether an alliance formed to win the Cold War can adapt to changing times.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), FMR. NATO SUPREME COMMANDER: We can even use a NATO-led force, if necessary, to attack Iraq coming through the mountains between Turkey and Iraq and actually moving into northern Iraq. And I would hope we'll be able to do that.
KING: Pentagon war planning envisions far more modest help from NATO allies. Britain would be most involved, offering troops, fighter bombers and airbases. And Turkey's airbases are critical because it neighbors Iraq. Romania and Bulgaria are among the new NATO members offering bases and use of their air space.
Czech forces have expertise in defending against biological and chemical attacks. Germany is a key player in NATO, but Iraq is a sore spot in U.S.-German relations, because Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder says Germany would not take part in any military confrontation.
RICE: I would note that this is a U.N. Security Council resolution that has the backing of everybody in the world, including Syria.
KING: The president is keenly aware of European skepticism of his approach to Iraq.
(on camera): But as he travels to the NATO summit, Mr. Bush believes he is in a position of strength, fresh from his party's big win in the midterm elections and with the United Nations standing firmly behind him. John King, CNN, the White House.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Now the knotty question of where to draw the line on domestic surveillance in this war on terror. Last May, a top secret court, which handles sensitive national security cases, ruled that wiretap evidence gathered against potential terrorists and spies could not be used as well in criminal cases. The concern being law enforcement would get wiretaps they wouldn't ordinarily get and make cases they couldn't ordinarily make by invoking national security if constitutional protections were being whittled away.
The administration appealed the case to another top secret panel and today that court ruled in the administration's favor. Here again, CNN's Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ARENA (voice-over): It's a big victory for Attorney General Ashcroft.
JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: This will greatly enhance our ability to put pieces together that different agencies have. I believe this is a giant step forward.
ARENA: An appeals court backs Ashcroft's view that the Patriot Act, the new anti-terrorism law, gives the government more flexibility in how wiretap information is used. Wiretaps, otherwise known as (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and issued by a secret court at the Justice Department, are no longer limited to intelligence gathering missions but can be used to build criminal cases as long as an individual is acting on behalf of a foreign power. Critics say that is dangerous.
ANN BEESON, SENIOR ATTORNEY, ACLU: ... our primary concern is that they are going to use the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) law as an end run around the fourth amendment and spy on citizens when they have no probable cause to believe that those citizens have committed a crime.
ARENA: But one lawyer who used to work for the National Security Agency says the new wiretap rules are a crucial tool for tracking down terrorists.
STEWART BAKER, FMR. COUNSEL, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY: If we use them effectively, we'll catch them when they get sloppy, which happens, and we will deny them the use of modern telecommunications for many of the activities that they want to carry out.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ARENA: Under the law governing the secret court, the decision cannot be appealed. But experts say that this issue could eventually reach the Supreme Court if a convicted terrorist or spy challenges how information was gathered leading up to that conviction -- Aaron.
BROWN: Kelli, what do we know about the top secret panel that made the decision? We know who the judges are, obviously.
ARENA: Right. Well it was a three-judge panel appointed by a Supreme Court Justice, but nothing beyond that. They met in secret, sixth floor of the Justice department, and we heard there decision today.
BROWN: Kelli, thank you. Kelli Arena in Washington tonight.
Congress now and the homeland security bill. It made it through the House last week, but hit a few potholes in the Senate -- or were they pork barrels, depending on which senator you ask? From the beginning of the process, members in each party have found items to object to. Pork to some, vital to others. But they're also under pressure from the White House to put their differences aside and finally cut a deal. Here's CNN's Jonathan Karl.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JONATHAN KARL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A Senate showdown over what Democrats are calling special interest provisions in the homeland security bill may considerably delay and possibly derail the bill. At issue, a democratic amendment to remove seven provisions from the bill, including a measure that would limit the liability of pharmaceutical companies that make vaccines and another that limits the liabilities of companies that make anti-terrorism technologies and one that protects companies that make baggage screening machines.
SEN. BYRON DORGAN (D), NORTH DAKOTA: With these kinds of little special provisions, and especially the pharmaceutical provision in this bill called homeland security, who put it in and why? What was the motivation? Does this have anything at all to do with homeland security? The answer is no.
KARL: Democrats accuse Republicans of trying to help corporate special interests like drug companies, but Republicans say Democrats are fighting for their own special interests, the trial lawyers who would profit from unlimited lawsuits.
SEN. PHIL GRAMM (R), TEXAS: In every war we fought since the Civil War, we've granted some liability protection for people who have been making instruments of war. In this case, we grant liability protection for those that are making small position vaccine.
KARL: And Republicans warn if the Senate makes changes, the bill would be delayed and could even die because the House has already adjourned for the year.
GRAMM: Whether they would actually bring their people back to try to amend the bill I think is doubtful. And I think the worst case scenario is the bill dies.
KARL: Democrats have picked up a key Republican ally on the issue. SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I don't approve of a process where the House of Representatives throws a major piece of legislation over to the Senate and says good-bye. That's not the way the process is supposed to be conducted around here.
KARL: The president is personally involved in the last-minute wrangling over the bill, placing a phone call Monday to Senator Ben Nelson, one of the few Democrats still undecided on the amendment to remove the so-called special interest provisions.
(on camera): The senate will vote on the Democratic amendment Tuesday morning. If it passes, the only way a homeland security bill will be passed this year is if the House of Representatives came back to Washington to work out its differences with the Senate. Jonathan Karl, CNN, Capitol Hill.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, we'll update the status of America's sky marshal system. Also, the federal government takes over the screening of passengers in the nation's airports. We'll see how that went on the first day.
And later in the program, the early days of the war in Afghanistan. The behind-the-scenes story of how the Bush administration handled it. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Bat 300 in the big leagues, you'll retire rich. Bat 400, and you're the best of the best. But that's baseball. The public demands better numbers in other playing fields, and airline safety is one of them.
Today, the Transportation Safety Administration chocked up a big win, but only on the way to a 500 season. Here's CNN's Patty Davis.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PATTY DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Raynu Clark says she took the job of federal passenger screener for a reason.
RAYNU CLARK, FEDERAL SCREENER: I feel like doing my part. September 11th, we just wouldn't want something like that to happen again.
DAVIS: She's one of more than 44,000 federal screeners now on the job at more than 400 airports. Officials say they delivered on their promise to get screeners like Clark in place by Tuesday's deadline, making the skies safer against terrorists.
TOM RIDGE, HOMELAND SECURITY DIRECTOR: Today is a milestone, but it is not an ending. New and important deadlines loom ahead.
DAVIS: The next big deadline, December 31, to screen all checked bags for terrorist bombs, using these big explosive detection machines. While transportation officials say 100 airports are already screening all checked bags, Congress is considering a one-year deadline extension for others.
Bags at those airports would still be screened by hand or even by bomb sniffing dogs. Not good enough for some critics.
PAUL HUDSON, AVIATION CONSUMER ACTION PROJEDCT: They've lost some of their urgency. There's been some bureaucratic confusion, and Congress has taken, as it often does, one step forward and one step back.
DAVIS: Permanent reinforced cockpit doors still not in place. Holes in general aviation security, and concerns that cargo on commercial flights still goes unchecked.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: About 22 percent of the cargo that goes on to commercial aircraft is unconnected to passengers. So we need to make sure that we enhance that type of inspection so that if anybody attempts to utilize that source to attack an airplane that they're going to be caught.
DAVIS: The Transportation Security Administration says cargo is on the top of its list of next priorities.
ADM. JAMES LOY, TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION: Cargo and charters and general aviation and the caterers that are at the airport, the workers that are inside the so-called sanitized area of the airport, all of those things deserve our attention and, in fact, have gotten an awful lot of attention.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DAVIS: While transportation officials admit there's more work to be done, they say with federal screeners, air marshals and other security measures already in place, passengers should feel a lot safer -- Aaron.
BROWN: Patty, do we know how many of the 40,000 federal workers were screeners under the private system that existed before?
DAVIS: That's a good question. It really differs from airport to airport. We know that a lot of them are, that they were private screeners. But the difference here is that they've been trained more thoroughly. They've had to have 40 hours of classroom training, 60 hours on the job.
Now under the old system, there was only 40 hours of classroom training period and maybe four to five hours on the job. So almost double the training here. And the federal government has done background checks on these people. They've had to pass massive imaging tests and things like that to make sure that they know what they're doing. So they're confident that even though these private screeners did work for the previous companies, that they know what they're doing this time as federal screeners.
BROWN: Patty, thank you. Patty Davis in Washington tonight. We were, by the way, reminded over the weekend that even the best security in the world sometimes comes up short. Yesterday a man with a knife tried to take control of an El Al 757 headed for Turkey. The Israeli air marshals tackled the man before he could do any serious harm.
If the same thing happened on an American airliner, would it have ended differently? It's a question being asked by critics of the U.S. Air Marshal Program and some of the toughest critics come from within.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): Before federal air marshals are permitted to board a plane full of ticketed passengers, 11 weeks of training like this is required. Since the attack of September 11, the FAA has received 200,000 applications for the Air Marshal Program, 6,000 made the cut.
TOM QUINN, DIRECTOR, FEDERAL AIR MARSHALS SERVICE: They go through a wide array of basic and advanced firearms, tactics, close quarter combat. They learn to become problem solvers. They're very astute at how they operate on aircraft, communications with the flight crew. And essentially how to blend in to the traveling public.
BROWN: It's an anti-terrorism program more than three decades old coming under new criticism today.
BLAKE MORRISON, "USA TODAY": One of the big concerns that a number of these marshals have is that besides the flight schedules changing all the time, which is something that's very normal...
BROWN: "USA Today" reporter Blake Morrison has interviewed dozens of current and former air marshals. Many have told him they've become disillusioned with the program.
MORRISON: They're having to change partners, sometimes on a daily basis. And that, they say, is something that was stressed to them in training that they didn't want to do. They wanted to be able to develop a rapport with the same person so that you could essentially read the other person without having to communicate verbally.
BROWN: There are 40,000 flights a day in the U.S. The FAA mandates there never be fewer than two air marshals on each flight. Morrison says the math just doesn't add up, too many flights, not enough marshals, fewer every day.
MORRISON: The reality is that a lot of these air marshals were told that they would be coming on, working four days a week, having three days off a week to help with those riggers of travel and were essentially sold a bill of goods, because that's not what's happened.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The hours are unusual hours, they can be long at times, as any other law enforcement organization would expect. The important thing I think is that they're out there every day serving the American public, flying the skies and traveling in and out of airports, operating in a very high-tempo fashion.
BROWN: The government lauded federal air marshals as the finest in law enforcement. Now its program is under fire. Criticism coming from the air marshals themselves.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Air Marshal Program.
Tonight, later on NEWSNIGHT, JFK's secret medical history revealed. And up next, details of the early days of America's involvement in Afghanistan. This is NEWSNIGHT on a Monday in New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Thirty years ago Bob Woodward and his partner Carl Bernstein made a name for themselves by getting a hold of an inside source no one else had and faithfully taking his advice. They followed the money and unraveled the story that became Watergate and brought Richard Nixon down.
Not perhaps the best way to win friends in the White House. But in the years since then, Woodward has enjoyed almost unparalleled access to sources from the oval office on out. He's used it to write history and the kind of detail that would choke even the fly on the wall.
He has chronicled budget battles, secret wars, campaigns and crises. And in his latest book, Mr. Woodward seems once again to be getting a lot of mileage out of following the money.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): Cash, mountains of cash, was the key to defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan. And, for a period of time, serious thought was being given to sending in tens of thousands of American troops there rather than rely on a far smaller operation that ultimately proved successful. All fascinating details from a new book "Bush At War," by long-time "Washington Post" reporter Bob Woodward.
BOB WOODWARD, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I was able to get a lot of the notes of the NSC meetings, there are 15,000 words quoted so you can see exactly what Bush says, what Cheney says, what Powell is saying and so forth.
BROWN: The CIA, according to Woodward, spent $70 million in direct cash payments in Afghanistan. Its first operation, a ten-man team with the code name jawbreaker, that landed in the country 16 days after 9/11. The team leader, Woodward writes, carried $3 million in a single attache case.
WOODWARD: They bought off more of those people than the military killed probably.
BROWN: As for the possibility of a much larger role for the American troops, Woodward quotes National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice as telling President Bush "There is always the thought you could use more Americans in this. You could Americanize this up front."
But the president didn't want to go that far, according to Woodward. "We have a good plan," the president is quoted as saying. "You're confident in it?" he asks.
WOODWARD: You see that these experienced heavyweight people have lot to say. Have a lot of ideas. There's some arguments sometime, some very tense arguments but Bush is in control.
BROWN: As in every administration, Woodward writes, there was some fierce internal bickering. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld felt usurped by the CIA Director George Tenet, a hold over from the Clinton administration. Secretary of State Powell was at odds over Iraq with both Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney. And as always he says there was a lot of attention paid to the media.
"Don't let the press panic us" Woodward quotes the president as saying. "How many times do you have to tell them this will be a different type of war and they don't believe it."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Chance now to talk a bit more about the book, and perhaps scratch our heads by how Bob Woodward does it all the time. We're joined in Washington by the another and author, one of the best in his own right, Evan Thomas assistant managing editor at "Newsweek" magazine and author of a string of books including the Wise Man.
Good to see you.
Why do they talk to Woodward? It's not like every reporter in town or most every -- it's not trying to get to the same people, trying to get to the president, trying to get to secretary of state, trying to do the same story. Why are they talk to him?
EVAN THOMAS, ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR, "NEWSWEEK": Well, there's a kind of inevitability about Bob Woodward, he objects to that term. I just talked to him, and he doesn't like to be called inevitable but he is. He's certainly viewed that way in Washington. When Bob Woodward comes, people feel they've got to talk to him because if they don't talk to him, it's going to happen any ways, and their side of the story won't be represented unless they talk. Now, Woodward to his credit, he doesn't just sashay in the door and be handed a bunch of documents. He's a very, very hard working guy, who camps out outside. He calls it iron pants, that he has iron pants. He just out waits people until they talk.
BROWN: Is there any -- when you read this stuff do you have any sense that there is a play or pay mentality here? I mean, in this book Rumsfeld did not play, and to a certain extent seems to me that he does paid. He did not come off looking especially good.
THOMAS: That certainly is the perception around Washington. That you use the phrase that if you don't play, you pay. In other words, if you don't talk to Woodward, you pay. Now, Woodward is fairly non-judgmental so he doesn't do anything overtly, and I don't think he really stacks the deck.
But the reality is that these are books where people are viewing other people, and so you will have -- Woodward sources will be looking at Rumsfeld. If you don't have Rumsfeld looking back, you miss Rumsfeld's side of the story. Rumsfeld was the one guy who did not talk, certainly at any length, about Woodward so you never get his point of view. It's always Rumsfeld being viewed by particularly Powell, Powell's deputy or the White House. Sometimes it's an unflattering look.
BROWN: And just -- let's talk a little more about that. What is it in your take on the book comes across as unflattering where the secretary of defense is concerned, because as the guy who was very much the public face at the briefings, and he had pretty good press for a while?
THOMAS: He sure did, and I think he deserved it because he was a reassuring presence at those briefings. Nonetheless, behind the scenes, at least how he is painted by Woodward sources, he's a little slippery. He doesn't want to take full responsibility for the war plan. The plot of Woodward's book, such as it, is the CIA is way out in front. They have a plan, they have money, there in there, the Pentagon is dragging along behind.
The uniform militaries, they're reluctant warrior, they have no plan available, it takes them more than a month to get boots on the ground, as they say, and Rumsfeld is sort of caught in the middle. He's not really keen on how slow the military is, but on the other hand he doesn't want to be blamed for it, at least in the view of Woodward sources, Rumsfeld doesn't want to be blame for it. There's kind of an evasive, slippery qualities to him, comes through in a couple of scenes. In fact, in one scene Rumsfeld basically says, well, looks like the CIA is in charge. And Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser, has to take Rumsfeld aside, and say look this is a military operation, you're in charge.
BROWN: Are you surprised -- all right, let me put it differently, I was surprised at how candid seemingly the president was. How in these two sessions that Mr. Woodward had with him, he opens up -- I mean, it's a great window into George W. Bush, a better window than I've ever seen.
THOMAS: Yeah, it's pretty emotional. Bush talks about how instinctive and intuitive he is, and he gets all exercise. He starts ranting about the president of North Korean, the North Korean dictator rather, Kim Dai-jung. And, you know, it's pretty much Bush unbuttoned. There's also a very affecting, touching scene, I think -- awkward but touching scene between President Bush and Laura. Woodward's talking to them, and Woodward naturally asked were you scared last fall and the president says, no, I wasn't but Laura says I was, and the president looks at her sort of startled, and he says, well, you didn't tell me that. And She says yeah, but I was and in fact I would wake up in the middle of the night, and I know that you were awake beside me. And it's an awkward scene but it's really very human and very affecting.
BROWN: In a half a minute, anything -- was there anything big that surprised you or is it just the great detail of this that makes it compelling?
THOMAS: It's the detail. I mean, Woodward is amazing that he just gets stuff that other reporters can't. What he got was all, you know, hundreds of meeting notes of what they were actually talking about behind the scenes.
BROWN: Evan, It's good to talk to you, thanks a lot.
THOMAS: Thanks -- Aaron.
BROWN: Can't imagine how galling it is for two reporters to sit around talking about another reporter's extraordinary work, man.
Still to come on NEWSNIGHT the life of the late Abba Eban intertwined with the country he helped found, the State of Israel.
And Next, new revelations about JFK's health. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Coming up on NEWSNIGHT. It's seems Jackie's pillbox wasn't the only one in the Kennedy White House.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: An important election result to kick off our Nation Roundup today. Important if you live in Alabama, for sure. Nearly three weeks after the vote, Alabama's Democratic governor John Siegelman has conceded defeat. The Republican challenger Bob Riley, Siegelman trailed by 32,000 votes out the more then 1.3 million cast. he said he decided to concede to avoid a decisive court battle over recounts. And we finally get to use that graphic.
Also in Alabama, a federal appeals court has ruled that a monument of the 10 commandments must be removed from the state's judicial building, because it goes too far in promoting religion. State's chief judge, who put the display there in the first place, says he will appeal the ruling.
And work crews are still cleaning up the mess left in the Northeast by this weekend's storms. Tens of thousands of people, most of them in Connecticut, some in Massachusetts, had their power knocked out by the ice storm. Wind gusts today knocked down even more trees and power lines here in the Northeast.
Looking back on the Kennedy presidency, people have always been puzzled by his fatalism. Why was such a vital and vigorous young man so certain he would never live to see old age? Perhaps we put it down to premonitions of Dallas. But it wasn't just that. Vitality may have been the Kennedy family trademark, but not JFK's. Secrecy was. Lately, though, the secrecy was lifted. Robert Dallek, the historian, has been given access to JFK's medical records, and for the first time we know. The story from CNN's Bruce Morton.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KENNEDY, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Ask not...
BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He was ill most of his life. Scarlet fever at 2; it killed back then. A childhood illness, weight loss, apathy they couldn't diagnose. Writing to a friend just out of prep school, "eat drink and make Olive," a girlfriend. "As to tomorrow or next week, we attend my funeral."
Campaigned on crutches, a campaign for president denying he had Addison's disease, though he did. He took steroids for it, starting in the 1940s or maybe the '30s, and doctors didn't know back then that steroids had side affects: Osteoporosis, adrenal problems, susceptibility to infections and so on.
During his presidential campaign they carried a bag of medicines. It got mislaid once, and an aide warned that if the wrong people got a hold of it, it would be murder. They found the bag.
As president, he was sometimes was taking eight medications at once; steroids for Addison, penicillin and other antibiotics for prostatitis and (UNINTELLIGIBLE), Procaine, a pain killer to relieve back pain, anti-spasmatics like Lomotil (ph) for his collitis, testosterone to keep his weight up, Nembutal (ph) to help him sleep. And once, for two days, an antipsychotic drug Stelazine (ph) to combat a mood swing Jacqueline Kennedy blamed on the antihistamines. It worked.
His cholesterol once registered an astounding 410. He took a lot of drugs and the doctors worried and wondered. Robert Dallek says he deceived voters about his health, like other presidents including Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt before him, but also sees a man coping with extraordinary pain.
ROBERT DALLEK, AUTHOR HISTORIAN: He made a bet that he could carry it off effectively, and I think ultimately the most important thing is that he was absolutely right. It's amazing how courageous he was, strong-willed, stoic, call it what you will, and effective in handling his presidential duties.
MORTON: Tapes of strategy sessions during the Cuban missile crisis are now public. And on them, Kennedy, despite all the medications, sounds like a president, the man in charge. What the new information tells us that we didn't know is, how very far most of his life was from Camelot.
Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: As NEWSNIGHT continues on a Monday, the administration says it is bin Laden's voice on that audiotape, and we'll mark the passing of Israel's most famous diplomat. Short break. We'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: More news today about that audiotape supposedly from Osama bin Laden that surfaced last week on Al-Jazeera. Administration officials confirmed today that they believe the tape is, in fact, the voice of bin Laden. The tape, which refers to recent terror attacks in Bali and in Moscow is still being analyzed, but officials say they have no reason to believe it was manufactured or altered. So bin Laden is alive, or at least was alive a couple of weeks ago.
There's been an apparent terror attack on a U.S. military base in Japan. Two explosions were heard outside the U.S. Army's Japan headquarters south of Tokyo. A projectile launcher was found outside the base. No reports of any injuries.
And three men are under arrest in London charged with violating the Terrorism Act, though exactly what they are accused of plotting remains unclear tonight. Reports in the British press over the weekend had them planning to release poison gas in the subway system of London, but both defense lawyers and the British government denied that today.
Abba Eban died over the weekend. If you were trying to come up with a list of the founders of the state of Israel, his name would be up there, with David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir. While he never served as prime minister of his country, he was its eloquent defender at the United Nations for a critical 10 years after the state of Israel was founded. During those same years, he was Israel's ambassador to the United States, and later served as his country's foreign minister during both the Six-Day and the Yom Kippur wars.
A few years back, ABC News put together what might be called a point/counterpoint with Abba Eban and the noted Palestinian historian, Walid Khalidi, contrasting their views on the creation of the state of Israel and all that followed. The origin of much of today's turmoil in the Middle East can be found in those events of 50 years ago with roots that go back 2,000 years. So tonight, some of those perspectives on history.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In May of 1948, a new Jewish state, Israel, was born in a bath of blood. Jewish troops rounded Arab forces from the city of Haifa, in the first of a series of battles that would reverberate through the years.
Meanwhile, on May 14, 1948, the new government, headed by David Ben-Gurion, is installed in Tel Aviv. Thus, for the first time since the Roman Legion destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D., the Jewish people have a nation of their own.
ABBA EBAN: I would say that the period 1947 to 1949 is a dramatic turning point in Jewish history, rather like the exodus from Egypt or the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, after a Babylonian exile. A constitutive moment when the Jewish people changed its identity, assisted prodigiously by an international organization. WALID KHALIDI, PALESTINIAN HISTORIAN: It was like a nightmare, from the Palestinian point of view, like a nightmare come true. Because of the balance of power between us and the Zionists, when the day of reckoning, as it were, came, when it was ultimately these two protagonists, face to face, the balance of power was in favor of the Jews, and we were defeated.
EBAN: I would say the period of political struggle, 1947 to 1949, our success in the international forum, which preceded and inspired our successful military action in 1948, that was I would think the most dramatic turning point of the whole of Jewish history.
KHALIDI: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) catastrophe and the 1948 is referred to in Arabic political literature as the year of the catastrophe. What is the war of independence to Israel is the war of the catastrophe to the Arabs, and I think there is irony in the fact that what is independence to one party is catastrophe to the other and vice versa.
EBAN: The Israeli army swept to its victories, of course it swept to those victories on the ground, which created vacuums. In other words, Arabs fled before the advancing armies in order to make sure that they didn't always return. Many of the villages were razed to the ground. In other words, Israel really have to fashion the state by its own self-defensive force against the attempt to destroy it.
KHALIDI: It was during this period that the balance of power in favor of the Israelis had its most tremendous effect in causing the exodus of Palestinians from scores of towns and hundreds of villages. This was the beginning of the refugee problem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Abba Eban died over the weekend. We thank ABC News for the help with that.
Next on NEWSNIGHT, papa's got a brand new bag of writing. It's a Cuban treasure trove of Hemingway. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Finally from us tonight: Hemingway. Here is something Ernest Hemingway once said. He said there is no friend as loyal as a book.
If that's true, Papa Hemingway left a lot of his most loyal friends down in Cuba when he left back in 1960 after 20 years as a part time residence there.
Books and a whole lot of other stuff recently rediscovered and about to be saved from moldering away by a preservation grant by the Rockefeller Foundation. It is a good yarn, the kind of yarn Hemingway himself might have written.
(END VIDEOTAPE) REP. JIM MCGOVERN (D), MASSACHUSETTS: I believe that the Cuban and American people have been kept apart for far too long.
BROWN (voice-over): This is a story of an island in the sea where the sun shines and the breezes blow and a man with a beard has been in charge for many years.
Another man with a beard also lived here once, before he won the Nobel Prize for literature and left to die far away back home in another country.
There has been trouble between the land of the bearded dictator and the land of the bearded writer ever since the writer left, so very few from the writer's country had seen his old house on the island in the sea.
But some have seen it and have been down in the cellar of the writer's house, which is how they came to know that many of the writer's papers are still there, left by him long ago and untouched, except by the damp and the bugs.
There are letters there in the cellar of the writer's house, parts of stories and novels, early drafts, photos and books with hand- written notes in the margins, unread by Americans in all the years since the writer left.
In the writer's room, there is no clock on the wall but mounted animal heads, as if time was never as important to him as the hunting of big game was.
Now the thousands of pages he left behind will be microfilmed and the microfilm will be sent back here to the writer's country for all the many scholars of his work to look at and to study.
But the papers themselves will stay on the island in the sea. That is often the way it is with the great ones. They leave their things behind in the cellar of a house to be discovered many years later by others who make news reports about those things and the finding of them and what it all means.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: That's our report for tonight. A reminder you can subscribe to our daily e-mail. Go to cnn.com/newsnight and fill out some form and we'll send you an e-mail each and every day except on the days when the server doesn't work, which is Thursday.
Good night from all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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Aired November 18, 2002 - 22:00 ET
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AARON BROWN, HOST: And good evening, again, everyone.
All right. Here are the vital statistics. I'm 54 going on 55. I watch my weight, had my appendix out when I was 30. But I'm not the president, I'm not running for president, so that's all you'll get out of me.
These days, the president's medical record is an open book, but it wasn't always so. Until recently, everything we knew about a president's health was governed by a simple rule: don't ask, don't tell and, of course, the corollary, when asked, lie. So Grover Cleveland's mouth cancer was merely a bad toothache. Woodrow Wilson's stroke a case of fatigue.
Eisenhower's heart attacks were mild, and no one even bothered to ask about FDR's paralysis, because it just wasn't done. The truth would eventually come out, but only years later. Still, it was a shock today to read that John F. Kennedy was seriously ill, in constant pain, that he needed sedatives to sleep, amphetamines to awaken, and the rest of a pharmacy simply to function.
But more fascinating we think is how things have changed. Today, we know everything about presidential polyps, but a whole lot less about the making of presidential policy. The president's energy plans are made in private. We're not entitled to know who gave advice and what their interests are.
This was true of the Clinton healthcare plan as well. Polyps open, policy closed.
Today, the courts hear cases in secret, war correspondents are kept in the battlefield. While I think it's important to know every detail of the president's body, in the end, I'm far more concerned with the influences on his mind.
On to the news of the day and The Whip. It begins tonight in Baghdad live with CNN's Nic Robertson. Nic, a headline, please.
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, one day inspectors back on the ground here, and so far their mission going, well, relatively well.
BROWN: Nic, thank you. Back to you at the top.
A court victory today for the administration in the area of domestic surveillance. CNN's Kelli Arena on that. Kelli, a headline from you.
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the attorney general says that a new court ruling will revolutionize the government's ability to investigate terrorists and prosecute terrorist acts. But critics say it threatens constitutional rights.
BROWN: Kelli, thank you. And the government meets the deadline on American airports. CNN's Patty Davis has been working that. So Patty, a headline from you tonight.
PATTY DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Federal passenger screeners are now in all U.S. airports in time for Tuesday's deadline to replace private screeners. But there's still a lot more to be done to secure the nation's skies.
BROWN: Patty, thank you. Back with all of you shortly.
Also coming up, another side of airline security, the kind needed to stop trouble on board. We'll look at the U.S. Air Marshal Program coming under criticism these days. It is a case of too many flights, too few marshals? And what about the way they're being used? That's coming up.
Also tonight, as we mentioned a moment ago, the medical trouble in Camelot. This is a picture of pain and endurance and courage, but also deception.
And we'll close things out with Hemingway, the things he left behind and how he might have told the story. All of that in the hour ahead.
But we begin with the inspectors' return to Baghdad, their mission and the consequences if their mission is thwarted by Iraq. Four years ago, the price came to a few days of air strikes. Four years later, the bottom line is almost certainly an all-out war. But that's getting ahead of the story.
Today, the inspectors began putting on their game faces, unloading the equipment and vacuuming four years worth of dust from their old offices. We begin tonight in Baghdad with CNN's Nic Robertson.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTSON (voice-over): Striding across the tarmac at Saddam International Airport, with his Iraqi counterpart, Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector Hans Blix begins what could be a long journey.
HANS BLIX, CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: The world wants to have assurances that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The situation is tense at the moment, but there is a new opportunity and we are here to provide inspection, which is credible.
ROBERTSON: Part of that process, facing questions from international media, not least about what happens next. MOHAMED EL-BARADEI, DIRECTOR GENERAL: We're still discussing the program, but we do hope to have meeting at the highest level and we hope to be able to come with the full understanding with Iraq on the necessity for full cooperation on the part of Iraq.
ROBERTSON: Cooperation apparently good this day and tenor and other equipment to be installed by the advance team accompanying Blix swiftly unloaded. Within hours, the same equipment arriving at the inspection team's headquarters, quickly followed by Blix and El- Baradei, ending an almost four-year absence by U.N. weapons inspection teams from their offices in Iraq.
In another sign, perhaps the day going well for inspectors, within hours the first of the hopeful meetings. At the foreign ministry, face-to-face talks with General Amir Al-Sadi (ph), president Saddam Hussein's top scientific adviser. For the advanced team of logistics and communications specialists traveling with Blix, a little over a week to make their preparations before the first inspectors get to work on November 27.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTSON: Now the Iraqi newspapers here calling on the inspectors to be independent, unbiased and honest. At the same time, reminding readers of allegations of spying by the previous teams. But it seems really here all the average Iraqi, if you will, wants the inspectors to do their job, give Iraq a clean bill of health, so that the U.N. sanctions that have been hammering the economy here for the last 12 years can be lifted and people can get back to a better way of life, Aaron.
BROWN: People talk more about the sanctions being lifted than the prospect of war?
ROBERTSON: People want to get their lives back to what they remember them being, before the Gulf War, before 1990, before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. It's difficult really perhaps for to us comprehend when we look around today what has happened to the average middle-class person in Iraq. Teachers paid 50 cents a day.
They see the U.N. sanctions because that's what they're told by the government as being responsible for all this.
BROWN: And one quick one here. You mention the 27th as the day the inspections begin for real, the real looking starts. What are the other benchmark dates we ought to pay attention to?
ROBERTSON: The biggest day really is going to be December 8. That's the day when Iraq has to put forward a dossier outlining its weapons of mass destruction, procurement, production, places of production. That's going to be the road map for Hans Blix and his team. And is certainly going to be the biggest indication of just how Iraq is going to play the situation now.
BROWN: Nic, thank you. Nic Robertson tonight live from Baghdad. Good to talk to you. U.S. and British warplanes today hit targets in Iraq's northern and southern no-fly zones. It's been going on for several months now. The mission, threefold: to enforce the no-fly zones, to pave the way for a larger attack, should the time come, and right now especially to send a message. The message being sent on other fronts as well.
Tomorrow, the president heads to Prague for a meeting of NATO countries. He's seeking political and diplomatic support from all of them, military support from some. Neither of which has been easy to come by so far. Here's CNN Senior White House Correspondent John King.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The president is counting on a strong NATO statement backing his position that Iraq must disarm or face military action.
CONDOLEEZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Iraq is typical or the most important example of the kind of threat that NATO will face in the future.
KING: The main summit focus is inviting seven eastern European nations to join the NATO alliance, but Iraq is a major subplot and a major diplomatic challenge for Mr. Bush. NATO was quick to offer help after the terrorist attacks on the United States, but had little role on the war in Afghanistan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Iraq issue has become kind of the next litmus test for whether the United States has made a fundamental shift away from working with others towards doing everything alone.
KING: Russia is now a NATO partner, and some see war with Iraq as a perfect test of whether an alliance formed to win the Cold War can adapt to changing times.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), FMR. NATO SUPREME COMMANDER: We can even use a NATO-led force, if necessary, to attack Iraq coming through the mountains between Turkey and Iraq and actually moving into northern Iraq. And I would hope we'll be able to do that.
KING: Pentagon war planning envisions far more modest help from NATO allies. Britain would be most involved, offering troops, fighter bombers and airbases. And Turkey's airbases are critical because it neighbors Iraq. Romania and Bulgaria are among the new NATO members offering bases and use of their air space.
Czech forces have expertise in defending against biological and chemical attacks. Germany is a key player in NATO, but Iraq is a sore spot in U.S.-German relations, because Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder says Germany would not take part in any military confrontation.
RICE: I would note that this is a U.N. Security Council resolution that has the backing of everybody in the world, including Syria.
KING: The president is keenly aware of European skepticism of his approach to Iraq.
(on camera): But as he travels to the NATO summit, Mr. Bush believes he is in a position of strength, fresh from his party's big win in the midterm elections and with the United Nations standing firmly behind him. John King, CNN, the White House.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Now the knotty question of where to draw the line on domestic surveillance in this war on terror. Last May, a top secret court, which handles sensitive national security cases, ruled that wiretap evidence gathered against potential terrorists and spies could not be used as well in criminal cases. The concern being law enforcement would get wiretaps they wouldn't ordinarily get and make cases they couldn't ordinarily make by invoking national security if constitutional protections were being whittled away.
The administration appealed the case to another top secret panel and today that court ruled in the administration's favor. Here again, CNN's Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ARENA (voice-over): It's a big victory for Attorney General Ashcroft.
JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: This will greatly enhance our ability to put pieces together that different agencies have. I believe this is a giant step forward.
ARENA: An appeals court backs Ashcroft's view that the Patriot Act, the new anti-terrorism law, gives the government more flexibility in how wiretap information is used. Wiretaps, otherwise known as (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and issued by a secret court at the Justice Department, are no longer limited to intelligence gathering missions but can be used to build criminal cases as long as an individual is acting on behalf of a foreign power. Critics say that is dangerous.
ANN BEESON, SENIOR ATTORNEY, ACLU: ... our primary concern is that they are going to use the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) law as an end run around the fourth amendment and spy on citizens when they have no probable cause to believe that those citizens have committed a crime.
ARENA: But one lawyer who used to work for the National Security Agency says the new wiretap rules are a crucial tool for tracking down terrorists.
STEWART BAKER, FMR. COUNSEL, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY: If we use them effectively, we'll catch them when they get sloppy, which happens, and we will deny them the use of modern telecommunications for many of the activities that they want to carry out.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ARENA: Under the law governing the secret court, the decision cannot be appealed. But experts say that this issue could eventually reach the Supreme Court if a convicted terrorist or spy challenges how information was gathered leading up to that conviction -- Aaron.
BROWN: Kelli, what do we know about the top secret panel that made the decision? We know who the judges are, obviously.
ARENA: Right. Well it was a three-judge panel appointed by a Supreme Court Justice, but nothing beyond that. They met in secret, sixth floor of the Justice department, and we heard there decision today.
BROWN: Kelli, thank you. Kelli Arena in Washington tonight.
Congress now and the homeland security bill. It made it through the House last week, but hit a few potholes in the Senate -- or were they pork barrels, depending on which senator you ask? From the beginning of the process, members in each party have found items to object to. Pork to some, vital to others. But they're also under pressure from the White House to put their differences aside and finally cut a deal. Here's CNN's Jonathan Karl.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JONATHAN KARL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A Senate showdown over what Democrats are calling special interest provisions in the homeland security bill may considerably delay and possibly derail the bill. At issue, a democratic amendment to remove seven provisions from the bill, including a measure that would limit the liability of pharmaceutical companies that make vaccines and another that limits the liabilities of companies that make anti-terrorism technologies and one that protects companies that make baggage screening machines.
SEN. BYRON DORGAN (D), NORTH DAKOTA: With these kinds of little special provisions, and especially the pharmaceutical provision in this bill called homeland security, who put it in and why? What was the motivation? Does this have anything at all to do with homeland security? The answer is no.
KARL: Democrats accuse Republicans of trying to help corporate special interests like drug companies, but Republicans say Democrats are fighting for their own special interests, the trial lawyers who would profit from unlimited lawsuits.
SEN. PHIL GRAMM (R), TEXAS: In every war we fought since the Civil War, we've granted some liability protection for people who have been making instruments of war. In this case, we grant liability protection for those that are making small position vaccine.
KARL: And Republicans warn if the Senate makes changes, the bill would be delayed and could even die because the House has already adjourned for the year.
GRAMM: Whether they would actually bring their people back to try to amend the bill I think is doubtful. And I think the worst case scenario is the bill dies.
KARL: Democrats have picked up a key Republican ally on the issue. SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I don't approve of a process where the House of Representatives throws a major piece of legislation over to the Senate and says good-bye. That's not the way the process is supposed to be conducted around here.
KARL: The president is personally involved in the last-minute wrangling over the bill, placing a phone call Monday to Senator Ben Nelson, one of the few Democrats still undecided on the amendment to remove the so-called special interest provisions.
(on camera): The senate will vote on the Democratic amendment Tuesday morning. If it passes, the only way a homeland security bill will be passed this year is if the House of Representatives came back to Washington to work out its differences with the Senate. Jonathan Karl, CNN, Capitol Hill.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, we'll update the status of America's sky marshal system. Also, the federal government takes over the screening of passengers in the nation's airports. We'll see how that went on the first day.
And later in the program, the early days of the war in Afghanistan. The behind-the-scenes story of how the Bush administration handled it. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Bat 300 in the big leagues, you'll retire rich. Bat 400, and you're the best of the best. But that's baseball. The public demands better numbers in other playing fields, and airline safety is one of them.
Today, the Transportation Safety Administration chocked up a big win, but only on the way to a 500 season. Here's CNN's Patty Davis.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PATTY DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Raynu Clark says she took the job of federal passenger screener for a reason.
RAYNU CLARK, FEDERAL SCREENER: I feel like doing my part. September 11th, we just wouldn't want something like that to happen again.
DAVIS: She's one of more than 44,000 federal screeners now on the job at more than 400 airports. Officials say they delivered on their promise to get screeners like Clark in place by Tuesday's deadline, making the skies safer against terrorists.
TOM RIDGE, HOMELAND SECURITY DIRECTOR: Today is a milestone, but it is not an ending. New and important deadlines loom ahead.
DAVIS: The next big deadline, December 31, to screen all checked bags for terrorist bombs, using these big explosive detection machines. While transportation officials say 100 airports are already screening all checked bags, Congress is considering a one-year deadline extension for others.
Bags at those airports would still be screened by hand or even by bomb sniffing dogs. Not good enough for some critics.
PAUL HUDSON, AVIATION CONSUMER ACTION PROJEDCT: They've lost some of their urgency. There's been some bureaucratic confusion, and Congress has taken, as it often does, one step forward and one step back.
DAVIS: Permanent reinforced cockpit doors still not in place. Holes in general aviation security, and concerns that cargo on commercial flights still goes unchecked.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: About 22 percent of the cargo that goes on to commercial aircraft is unconnected to passengers. So we need to make sure that we enhance that type of inspection so that if anybody attempts to utilize that source to attack an airplane that they're going to be caught.
DAVIS: The Transportation Security Administration says cargo is on the top of its list of next priorities.
ADM. JAMES LOY, TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION: Cargo and charters and general aviation and the caterers that are at the airport, the workers that are inside the so-called sanitized area of the airport, all of those things deserve our attention and, in fact, have gotten an awful lot of attention.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DAVIS: While transportation officials admit there's more work to be done, they say with federal screeners, air marshals and other security measures already in place, passengers should feel a lot safer -- Aaron.
BROWN: Patty, do we know how many of the 40,000 federal workers were screeners under the private system that existed before?
DAVIS: That's a good question. It really differs from airport to airport. We know that a lot of them are, that they were private screeners. But the difference here is that they've been trained more thoroughly. They've had to have 40 hours of classroom training, 60 hours on the job.
Now under the old system, there was only 40 hours of classroom training period and maybe four to five hours on the job. So almost double the training here. And the federal government has done background checks on these people. They've had to pass massive imaging tests and things like that to make sure that they know what they're doing. So they're confident that even though these private screeners did work for the previous companies, that they know what they're doing this time as federal screeners.
BROWN: Patty, thank you. Patty Davis in Washington tonight. We were, by the way, reminded over the weekend that even the best security in the world sometimes comes up short. Yesterday a man with a knife tried to take control of an El Al 757 headed for Turkey. The Israeli air marshals tackled the man before he could do any serious harm.
If the same thing happened on an American airliner, would it have ended differently? It's a question being asked by critics of the U.S. Air Marshal Program and some of the toughest critics come from within.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): Before federal air marshals are permitted to board a plane full of ticketed passengers, 11 weeks of training like this is required. Since the attack of September 11, the FAA has received 200,000 applications for the Air Marshal Program, 6,000 made the cut.
TOM QUINN, DIRECTOR, FEDERAL AIR MARSHALS SERVICE: They go through a wide array of basic and advanced firearms, tactics, close quarter combat. They learn to become problem solvers. They're very astute at how they operate on aircraft, communications with the flight crew. And essentially how to blend in to the traveling public.
BROWN: It's an anti-terrorism program more than three decades old coming under new criticism today.
BLAKE MORRISON, "USA TODAY": One of the big concerns that a number of these marshals have is that besides the flight schedules changing all the time, which is something that's very normal...
BROWN: "USA Today" reporter Blake Morrison has interviewed dozens of current and former air marshals. Many have told him they've become disillusioned with the program.
MORRISON: They're having to change partners, sometimes on a daily basis. And that, they say, is something that was stressed to them in training that they didn't want to do. They wanted to be able to develop a rapport with the same person so that you could essentially read the other person without having to communicate verbally.
BROWN: There are 40,000 flights a day in the U.S. The FAA mandates there never be fewer than two air marshals on each flight. Morrison says the math just doesn't add up, too many flights, not enough marshals, fewer every day.
MORRISON: The reality is that a lot of these air marshals were told that they would be coming on, working four days a week, having three days off a week to help with those riggers of travel and were essentially sold a bill of goods, because that's not what's happened.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The hours are unusual hours, they can be long at times, as any other law enforcement organization would expect. The important thing I think is that they're out there every day serving the American public, flying the skies and traveling in and out of airports, operating in a very high-tempo fashion.
BROWN: The government lauded federal air marshals as the finest in law enforcement. Now its program is under fire. Criticism coming from the air marshals themselves.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Air Marshal Program.
Tonight, later on NEWSNIGHT, JFK's secret medical history revealed. And up next, details of the early days of America's involvement in Afghanistan. This is NEWSNIGHT on a Monday in New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Thirty years ago Bob Woodward and his partner Carl Bernstein made a name for themselves by getting a hold of an inside source no one else had and faithfully taking his advice. They followed the money and unraveled the story that became Watergate and brought Richard Nixon down.
Not perhaps the best way to win friends in the White House. But in the years since then, Woodward has enjoyed almost unparalleled access to sources from the oval office on out. He's used it to write history and the kind of detail that would choke even the fly on the wall.
He has chronicled budget battles, secret wars, campaigns and crises. And in his latest book, Mr. Woodward seems once again to be getting a lot of mileage out of following the money.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): Cash, mountains of cash, was the key to defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan. And, for a period of time, serious thought was being given to sending in tens of thousands of American troops there rather than rely on a far smaller operation that ultimately proved successful. All fascinating details from a new book "Bush At War," by long-time "Washington Post" reporter Bob Woodward.
BOB WOODWARD, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I was able to get a lot of the notes of the NSC meetings, there are 15,000 words quoted so you can see exactly what Bush says, what Cheney says, what Powell is saying and so forth.
BROWN: The CIA, according to Woodward, spent $70 million in direct cash payments in Afghanistan. Its first operation, a ten-man team with the code name jawbreaker, that landed in the country 16 days after 9/11. The team leader, Woodward writes, carried $3 million in a single attache case.
WOODWARD: They bought off more of those people than the military killed probably.
BROWN: As for the possibility of a much larger role for the American troops, Woodward quotes National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice as telling President Bush "There is always the thought you could use more Americans in this. You could Americanize this up front."
But the president didn't want to go that far, according to Woodward. "We have a good plan," the president is quoted as saying. "You're confident in it?" he asks.
WOODWARD: You see that these experienced heavyweight people have lot to say. Have a lot of ideas. There's some arguments sometime, some very tense arguments but Bush is in control.
BROWN: As in every administration, Woodward writes, there was some fierce internal bickering. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld felt usurped by the CIA Director George Tenet, a hold over from the Clinton administration. Secretary of State Powell was at odds over Iraq with both Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney. And as always he says there was a lot of attention paid to the media.
"Don't let the press panic us" Woodward quotes the president as saying. "How many times do you have to tell them this will be a different type of war and they don't believe it."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Chance now to talk a bit more about the book, and perhaps scratch our heads by how Bob Woodward does it all the time. We're joined in Washington by the another and author, one of the best in his own right, Evan Thomas assistant managing editor at "Newsweek" magazine and author of a string of books including the Wise Man.
Good to see you.
Why do they talk to Woodward? It's not like every reporter in town or most every -- it's not trying to get to the same people, trying to get to the president, trying to get to secretary of state, trying to do the same story. Why are they talk to him?
EVAN THOMAS, ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR, "NEWSWEEK": Well, there's a kind of inevitability about Bob Woodward, he objects to that term. I just talked to him, and he doesn't like to be called inevitable but he is. He's certainly viewed that way in Washington. When Bob Woodward comes, people feel they've got to talk to him because if they don't talk to him, it's going to happen any ways, and their side of the story won't be represented unless they talk. Now, Woodward to his credit, he doesn't just sashay in the door and be handed a bunch of documents. He's a very, very hard working guy, who camps out outside. He calls it iron pants, that he has iron pants. He just out waits people until they talk.
BROWN: Is there any -- when you read this stuff do you have any sense that there is a play or pay mentality here? I mean, in this book Rumsfeld did not play, and to a certain extent seems to me that he does paid. He did not come off looking especially good.
THOMAS: That certainly is the perception around Washington. That you use the phrase that if you don't play, you pay. In other words, if you don't talk to Woodward, you pay. Now, Woodward is fairly non-judgmental so he doesn't do anything overtly, and I don't think he really stacks the deck.
But the reality is that these are books where people are viewing other people, and so you will have -- Woodward sources will be looking at Rumsfeld. If you don't have Rumsfeld looking back, you miss Rumsfeld's side of the story. Rumsfeld was the one guy who did not talk, certainly at any length, about Woodward so you never get his point of view. It's always Rumsfeld being viewed by particularly Powell, Powell's deputy or the White House. Sometimes it's an unflattering look.
BROWN: And just -- let's talk a little more about that. What is it in your take on the book comes across as unflattering where the secretary of defense is concerned, because as the guy who was very much the public face at the briefings, and he had pretty good press for a while?
THOMAS: He sure did, and I think he deserved it because he was a reassuring presence at those briefings. Nonetheless, behind the scenes, at least how he is painted by Woodward sources, he's a little slippery. He doesn't want to take full responsibility for the war plan. The plot of Woodward's book, such as it, is the CIA is way out in front. They have a plan, they have money, there in there, the Pentagon is dragging along behind.
The uniform militaries, they're reluctant warrior, they have no plan available, it takes them more than a month to get boots on the ground, as they say, and Rumsfeld is sort of caught in the middle. He's not really keen on how slow the military is, but on the other hand he doesn't want to be blamed for it, at least in the view of Woodward sources, Rumsfeld doesn't want to be blame for it. There's kind of an evasive, slippery qualities to him, comes through in a couple of scenes. In fact, in one scene Rumsfeld basically says, well, looks like the CIA is in charge. And Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser, has to take Rumsfeld aside, and say look this is a military operation, you're in charge.
BROWN: Are you surprised -- all right, let me put it differently, I was surprised at how candid seemingly the president was. How in these two sessions that Mr. Woodward had with him, he opens up -- I mean, it's a great window into George W. Bush, a better window than I've ever seen.
THOMAS: Yeah, it's pretty emotional. Bush talks about how instinctive and intuitive he is, and he gets all exercise. He starts ranting about the president of North Korean, the North Korean dictator rather, Kim Dai-jung. And, you know, it's pretty much Bush unbuttoned. There's also a very affecting, touching scene, I think -- awkward but touching scene between President Bush and Laura. Woodward's talking to them, and Woodward naturally asked were you scared last fall and the president says, no, I wasn't but Laura says I was, and the president looks at her sort of startled, and he says, well, you didn't tell me that. And She says yeah, but I was and in fact I would wake up in the middle of the night, and I know that you were awake beside me. And it's an awkward scene but it's really very human and very affecting.
BROWN: In a half a minute, anything -- was there anything big that surprised you or is it just the great detail of this that makes it compelling?
THOMAS: It's the detail. I mean, Woodward is amazing that he just gets stuff that other reporters can't. What he got was all, you know, hundreds of meeting notes of what they were actually talking about behind the scenes.
BROWN: Evan, It's good to talk to you, thanks a lot.
THOMAS: Thanks -- Aaron.
BROWN: Can't imagine how galling it is for two reporters to sit around talking about another reporter's extraordinary work, man.
Still to come on NEWSNIGHT the life of the late Abba Eban intertwined with the country he helped found, the State of Israel.
And Next, new revelations about JFK's health. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Coming up on NEWSNIGHT. It's seems Jackie's pillbox wasn't the only one in the Kennedy White House.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: An important election result to kick off our Nation Roundup today. Important if you live in Alabama, for sure. Nearly three weeks after the vote, Alabama's Democratic governor John Siegelman has conceded defeat. The Republican challenger Bob Riley, Siegelman trailed by 32,000 votes out the more then 1.3 million cast. he said he decided to concede to avoid a decisive court battle over recounts. And we finally get to use that graphic.
Also in Alabama, a federal appeals court has ruled that a monument of the 10 commandments must be removed from the state's judicial building, because it goes too far in promoting religion. State's chief judge, who put the display there in the first place, says he will appeal the ruling.
And work crews are still cleaning up the mess left in the Northeast by this weekend's storms. Tens of thousands of people, most of them in Connecticut, some in Massachusetts, had their power knocked out by the ice storm. Wind gusts today knocked down even more trees and power lines here in the Northeast.
Looking back on the Kennedy presidency, people have always been puzzled by his fatalism. Why was such a vital and vigorous young man so certain he would never live to see old age? Perhaps we put it down to premonitions of Dallas. But it wasn't just that. Vitality may have been the Kennedy family trademark, but not JFK's. Secrecy was. Lately, though, the secrecy was lifted. Robert Dallek, the historian, has been given access to JFK's medical records, and for the first time we know. The story from CNN's Bruce Morton.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KENNEDY, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Ask not...
BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He was ill most of his life. Scarlet fever at 2; it killed back then. A childhood illness, weight loss, apathy they couldn't diagnose. Writing to a friend just out of prep school, "eat drink and make Olive," a girlfriend. "As to tomorrow or next week, we attend my funeral."
Campaigned on crutches, a campaign for president denying he had Addison's disease, though he did. He took steroids for it, starting in the 1940s or maybe the '30s, and doctors didn't know back then that steroids had side affects: Osteoporosis, adrenal problems, susceptibility to infections and so on.
During his presidential campaign they carried a bag of medicines. It got mislaid once, and an aide warned that if the wrong people got a hold of it, it would be murder. They found the bag.
As president, he was sometimes was taking eight medications at once; steroids for Addison, penicillin and other antibiotics for prostatitis and (UNINTELLIGIBLE), Procaine, a pain killer to relieve back pain, anti-spasmatics like Lomotil (ph) for his collitis, testosterone to keep his weight up, Nembutal (ph) to help him sleep. And once, for two days, an antipsychotic drug Stelazine (ph) to combat a mood swing Jacqueline Kennedy blamed on the antihistamines. It worked.
His cholesterol once registered an astounding 410. He took a lot of drugs and the doctors worried and wondered. Robert Dallek says he deceived voters about his health, like other presidents including Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt before him, but also sees a man coping with extraordinary pain.
ROBERT DALLEK, AUTHOR HISTORIAN: He made a bet that he could carry it off effectively, and I think ultimately the most important thing is that he was absolutely right. It's amazing how courageous he was, strong-willed, stoic, call it what you will, and effective in handling his presidential duties.
MORTON: Tapes of strategy sessions during the Cuban missile crisis are now public. And on them, Kennedy, despite all the medications, sounds like a president, the man in charge. What the new information tells us that we didn't know is, how very far most of his life was from Camelot.
Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: As NEWSNIGHT continues on a Monday, the administration says it is bin Laden's voice on that audiotape, and we'll mark the passing of Israel's most famous diplomat. Short break. We'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: More news today about that audiotape supposedly from Osama bin Laden that surfaced last week on Al-Jazeera. Administration officials confirmed today that they believe the tape is, in fact, the voice of bin Laden. The tape, which refers to recent terror attacks in Bali and in Moscow is still being analyzed, but officials say they have no reason to believe it was manufactured or altered. So bin Laden is alive, or at least was alive a couple of weeks ago.
There's been an apparent terror attack on a U.S. military base in Japan. Two explosions were heard outside the U.S. Army's Japan headquarters south of Tokyo. A projectile launcher was found outside the base. No reports of any injuries.
And three men are under arrest in London charged with violating the Terrorism Act, though exactly what they are accused of plotting remains unclear tonight. Reports in the British press over the weekend had them planning to release poison gas in the subway system of London, but both defense lawyers and the British government denied that today.
Abba Eban died over the weekend. If you were trying to come up with a list of the founders of the state of Israel, his name would be up there, with David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir. While he never served as prime minister of his country, he was its eloquent defender at the United Nations for a critical 10 years after the state of Israel was founded. During those same years, he was Israel's ambassador to the United States, and later served as his country's foreign minister during both the Six-Day and the Yom Kippur wars.
A few years back, ABC News put together what might be called a point/counterpoint with Abba Eban and the noted Palestinian historian, Walid Khalidi, contrasting their views on the creation of the state of Israel and all that followed. The origin of much of today's turmoil in the Middle East can be found in those events of 50 years ago with roots that go back 2,000 years. So tonight, some of those perspectives on history.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In May of 1948, a new Jewish state, Israel, was born in a bath of blood. Jewish troops rounded Arab forces from the city of Haifa, in the first of a series of battles that would reverberate through the years.
Meanwhile, on May 14, 1948, the new government, headed by David Ben-Gurion, is installed in Tel Aviv. Thus, for the first time since the Roman Legion destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D., the Jewish people have a nation of their own.
ABBA EBAN: I would say that the period 1947 to 1949 is a dramatic turning point in Jewish history, rather like the exodus from Egypt or the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, after a Babylonian exile. A constitutive moment when the Jewish people changed its identity, assisted prodigiously by an international organization. WALID KHALIDI, PALESTINIAN HISTORIAN: It was like a nightmare, from the Palestinian point of view, like a nightmare come true. Because of the balance of power between us and the Zionists, when the day of reckoning, as it were, came, when it was ultimately these two protagonists, face to face, the balance of power was in favor of the Jews, and we were defeated.
EBAN: I would say the period of political struggle, 1947 to 1949, our success in the international forum, which preceded and inspired our successful military action in 1948, that was I would think the most dramatic turning point of the whole of Jewish history.
KHALIDI: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) catastrophe and the 1948 is referred to in Arabic political literature as the year of the catastrophe. What is the war of independence to Israel is the war of the catastrophe to the Arabs, and I think there is irony in the fact that what is independence to one party is catastrophe to the other and vice versa.
EBAN: The Israeli army swept to its victories, of course it swept to those victories on the ground, which created vacuums. In other words, Arabs fled before the advancing armies in order to make sure that they didn't always return. Many of the villages were razed to the ground. In other words, Israel really have to fashion the state by its own self-defensive force against the attempt to destroy it.
KHALIDI: It was during this period that the balance of power in favor of the Israelis had its most tremendous effect in causing the exodus of Palestinians from scores of towns and hundreds of villages. This was the beginning of the refugee problem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Abba Eban died over the weekend. We thank ABC News for the help with that.
Next on NEWSNIGHT, papa's got a brand new bag of writing. It's a Cuban treasure trove of Hemingway. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Finally from us tonight: Hemingway. Here is something Ernest Hemingway once said. He said there is no friend as loyal as a book.
If that's true, Papa Hemingway left a lot of his most loyal friends down in Cuba when he left back in 1960 after 20 years as a part time residence there.
Books and a whole lot of other stuff recently rediscovered and about to be saved from moldering away by a preservation grant by the Rockefeller Foundation. It is a good yarn, the kind of yarn Hemingway himself might have written.
(END VIDEOTAPE) REP. JIM MCGOVERN (D), MASSACHUSETTS: I believe that the Cuban and American people have been kept apart for far too long.
BROWN (voice-over): This is a story of an island in the sea where the sun shines and the breezes blow and a man with a beard has been in charge for many years.
Another man with a beard also lived here once, before he won the Nobel Prize for literature and left to die far away back home in another country.
There has been trouble between the land of the bearded dictator and the land of the bearded writer ever since the writer left, so very few from the writer's country had seen his old house on the island in the sea.
But some have seen it and have been down in the cellar of the writer's house, which is how they came to know that many of the writer's papers are still there, left by him long ago and untouched, except by the damp and the bugs.
There are letters there in the cellar of the writer's house, parts of stories and novels, early drafts, photos and books with hand- written notes in the margins, unread by Americans in all the years since the writer left.
In the writer's room, there is no clock on the wall but mounted animal heads, as if time was never as important to him as the hunting of big game was.
Now the thousands of pages he left behind will be microfilmed and the microfilm will be sent back here to the writer's country for all the many scholars of his work to look at and to study.
But the papers themselves will stay on the island in the sea. That is often the way it is with the great ones. They leave their things behind in the cellar of a house to be discovered many years later by others who make news reports about those things and the finding of them and what it all means.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: That's our report for tonight. A reminder you can subscribe to our daily e-mail. Go to cnn.com/newsnight and fill out some form and we'll send you an e-mail each and every day except on the days when the server doesn't work, which is Thursday.
Good night from all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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