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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Does a Department of Homeland Security Mean More Security?; 911 Calls From the First Sniper Attacks

Aired November 19, 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.


ANDERSON COOPER, HOST: And good evening, again, everyone.
Before we begin, I've just got to say it is not easy being the network's designated fill-in anchor. It's not the last-minute phone calls to be in Atlanta the next day at 5:00 a.m. or trying to figure out what outfit to where to match Connie's set. That's all part of the job. I can deal with that.

The tough part is coming here and having the NEWSNIGHT staff try to dump all the lame page-two ideas that Aaron already rejected. I mean you can't believe some of the stuff I had to read today.

First, there was the barbery (ph) pirates idea. I ask you, would you listen to a comparison of the U.S. conflict with the barbery pirates 200 years ago and our current day conflict with Iraq? I mean, sure, it was well written, but barbery pirates? Please, this isn't Disney World -- well, not yet.

Then there were a couple of old sniper page two's and even one about anthrax. Come on people, I mean do I have to come up with all the new ideas around here? I'm telling you, once the merger goes through, this kind of attitude, it's just not going to be acceptable. Take my word for it.

So tomorrow, I promise you a really interesting page two. Tonight, let's just move on to the news of the day, and that has to do with Iraq and the inspectors. Nic Robertson is in Baghdad for us. Nic, a headline.

NIC ROBERSTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The Chief Weapons Inspector, Hans Blix, leaves in a few hours. He appears to have had a successful mission. He says he's got Iraqi compliance to go along with the new U.N. resoltuion.

COOPER: All right. Nic, check back with you in a moment.

On to Washington and a victory for the White House tonight. Jeanne Meserve is following that for us. Jeanne, a headline.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Does a new department of homeland security mean more security? Maybe someday, but the challenges of merging 170,000 people from 22 agencies into one bureaucracy are daunting -- Anderson. COOPER: And a harrowing thing to emerge from the sniper case. Calls for help. Kathleen Koch is on that story for us -- Kathleen, a headline.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, they are riveting and, for some, certainly very painful to listen to. The 911 calls that came that first morning, as victim after victim was gunned down and before we even knew a sniper was at work -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right, Kathleen.

We'll also have a report on an ecological disaster, and that is no overstatement. Al Goodman is in Camarinas, Spain. He will join us shortly.

Also coming up tonight, the new political heavyweight in the state of Alabama. Candice Jones (ph), a 14-year-old girl with an eagle eye. How she was decisive in one key race on election night. It is quite a story.

Also, a controversial tale, a Cold War love story of sorts. An American deserter alive in North Korea and the Japanese woman he met after she was kidnapped there. What should happen to them now?

And America's guilty pleasure, "The Bachelor." I don't know if you guys have seen it. It's like a big blond train wreck. You just can't turn away from it. We will try to figure out why.

All that to come in the hour ahead. We begin with the inspectors in Iraq. Their bosses head home shortly after getting what they say they come for, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to their old offices and a promise from Iraq to live up to its commitments. In other words, they've gotten the bare minimums so far. But, hey, diplomats take their victories where they can find them, and today was no exception.

Here again, CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): These pictures highly symbolic. Weapons Inspector Hans Blix greets Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabli (ph). It's not known what was said, but the meeting indicative of Iraqi cooperation. Blix, however, confident his two-day mission has brought Iraqi agreement to declare all weapons of mass destruction by December 8.

HANS BLIX, CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: The Iraqi side has stated that they do accept and are ready to implement this resolution and their willingness will be tested in practice.

ROBERTSON: It was Blix's late-night session Monday with President Saddam Hussein's top scientific advisor that gave him his first face-to-face opportunity to spell out what Iraq must do to comply with U.N. Resolution 1441. If Iraq intends to continue its claims it has no weapons of mass destruction, says Blix, it must back it up with hard evidence. BLIX: And in the analysis that we have made for which I'm responsible, the missiles and biological and chemical, we do not think that that has yet been convincingly done.

ROBERTSON: For the logistics and communications experts on Blix's team who will be left behind after he departs Wednesday, a more mundane task ahead, cleaning out offices deserted since the last inspection team fled in December 1998.

MARK GWOZDECKY, SPOKESMAN: It was like walking into a time capsule four years ago. You see lots of things that were obviously half under way when people up and walked away to begin the evacuation.

ROBERTSON: On Iraqi television, news anchors tell viewers Iraq's experience with inspectors is of bitterness and suffering, adding Iraq has nothing to hide.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON: Now Blix says he has 700 sites at least that need investigating. He says that number could go up after December 8, when Iraq does make a full declaration of its weapons of mass destruction. In the meantime, 27th of November is when the inspections will start with one team, four teams to follow soon after that -- Anderson.

COOPER: So Nic, just to be clear, Iraq basically is still sticking to their story that they have no chemical, nuclear or biological weapons at this point?

ROBERTSON: That is their story. And as Hans Blix has said, if they're going to stick with that story, then they need to come up with some serious evidence. He said they need to show documents and everything that it's going to take to convince those U.N. teams that that's the case. He's already been on the record, as we've seen, saying he doesn't believe them on many issues already.

COOPER: Nic, you also point out that Hans Blix has some 700 sites they say they already need to look at. That sounds like an awful lot. Who knows how many more are going to come to light between now and then. Any sense that they want to try to extend this timetable or they say they can do it in the given amount of time?

ROBERTSON: They've said that -- well, there are a number of deadlines. Obviously, they have to make a first report to the Security Council 60 days after they start, the 27th of November. That puts it late January.

They say that if they have full Iraqi compliance, then they could do their job in a year. Then if one looks at what the last U.N. inspection team achieved here over seven years, that was visits to 1,015 sites. So 700 in a year does sound pretty ambitious, but maybe Hans Blix is counting on that improved cooperation -- Anderson.

COOPER: And Nic, I had heard reports in the last couple of days some Iraqis sort of not really knowing what was going on, not even aware that these inspectors were arriving. Has that changed? I mean we saw in your report something from Iraqi state television. Do most people know what is going on now?

ROBERTSON: They do have an idea, but you still have to sort of dig into the newspapers a little bit to find it and also the news broadcasts. It tends to play low down. It's certainly put out there for the Iraqi people into terms from the government. So I think most people are aware of it now.

The government, it cannot hide it completely. So, although they want to kind of slip it under the carpet, it helps explain why they kept the inspectors out for four years and then suddenly let them back. Otherwise, it makes the government look kind of silly in a way as far as the Iraqi people are concerned. So letting it slip out slowly I think is perhaps the best way to look at it here, Anderson.

COOPER: All right. Nic Robertson, thank you very much.

President Bush today crossed the Atlantic in part to drum up support for any confrontation with Iraq. He's in Prague for a meeting of NATO leaders. But sources at the White House say the president will not ask NATO as a whole to endorse military action because there's just no consensus for it.

Instead, they say he's going to ask individual member nations to help out wherever they can with air bases or troops or technical assistance in case a war should break out. Security, meantime, is very tight around the summit. A bomb was found on local railroad tracks today. Thousands of protestors are expected to arrive there as well.

They will certainly have company. About 2,200 soldiers and 12,000 police have been called in to provide security.

Back home, the president got what he wanted from Congress, a homeland security bill this year not next. The Senate passed it today 90 votes to nine. The president is expected to sign the bill next week and it adds up to one of the largest government shakeups ever. It would certainly (UNINTELLIGIBLE) passage, but so did all the details.

Here again, CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE (voice-over): It is a huge country protecting it a huge task. And now there will be a huge bureaucracy charged with doing the job. Incorporating 22 separate agencies. Will it work?

JAMES LINSAY, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: It's sort of like trying to redesign, overhaul a plane's engines in mid flight.

MESERVE: The agencies that have had bits and pieces of responsibility for policing the nation's borders will be pulled together. Question: How hard will it be to make the system comprehensive and effective? A threat assessment division will synthesize intelligence with the aim of protecting against possible terrorist strikes. Question: Will the intelligence agencies and the private sector give the department the information it needs? Federal response capabilities will be merged and first responders given one-stop shopping for grants, equipment, training and information. Question: Where is the money?

CAMERON WHITMAN, THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF CITIES: Unfortunately, as long as Congress does not appropriate any money for first responders, the shelves in the shop will be pretty empty. There's not going to be anything there that they can give us.

MESERVE: Melding these disparate agencies together is going to be a gargantuan managerial task.

LEE HAMILTON, WOODROW WILSON CENTER: The difficulty here is you bring in a lot of different people from a lot of different agencies with many different cultures, all of whom are kind of protective of their own turf, very deeply concerned about their personal future.

MESERVE: Experts say the process could take years. And in the meantime, will the country be more safe or less so?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not only are people going to have their minds taken off their sort of every day task about concerns about what's going to happen to me, but as you sort of shuffle the organizational boxes around, information is bound not to get communicated to the right people. It may actually in the short term make things worse off.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: Some experts say this shuffling of boxes does have the potential to ultimately make the country safer because it will focus attention and resources for the first time in a single department whose top priority is homeland security. But they say it is not a sure bet and it will take time -- Anderson.

COOPER: And this will be cabinet level positions, right?

MESERVE: Absolutely.

COOPER: You talk about the boxes. Where does the FBI, the customs, where does their box go? I mean, is it now under this umbrella or do they continue to be separate with the Justice Department and the various agencies?

MESERVE: Twenty-two agencies, as I said, are being folded in. Amongst them Customs. But the president himself has said that more than 100 agencies are involved in homeland security, so there are more than 70 still outside, and those would include, for instance, the FBI and CIA and the Department of Defense, major players in this.

It's going to be a tough act to try and keep the coordination going, not just within this big department, but between the different agencies. As someone said to me, this really would be more appropriately named the department of some aspects of homeland security.

COOPER: And I don't know if you know this, but how big an agency are we talking about? Do we know number of employees or how big in relation to the other agencies that already exist?

MESERVE: It is 170,000 employees. It is absolutely a beast, just enormous. It's going to be very tough to bring this together. As we mentioned in the package, a lot of people are going to be so worried about who their bosses are going to be, what's their pension going to be, what's going to happen to their seniority, it may be tough for some of them to keep their eye on the ball of actually improving homeland security. It's going to be a very, very tough job by anybody's account.

COOPER: Indeed it will. Jeanne Meserve, thank you very much tonight. Appreciate eit.

And tonight, the Spanish coast is bracing for the kind of environmental disaster we have not seen since the Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska. The crippled tanker that we've been following since last week, well it split in two and sank today. The ship had been headed out into open ocean; the crew trying to put as much distance between the ship and the shore. The question at this hour, was it enough?

Here's CNN's Al Goodman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AL GOODMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This video today of a giant oil tanker sinking off the coast of Spain may not be as devastating as it looks or it may be much worse. It all depends on what happened on its journey to the ocean floor. The oil tanker, The Prestige, got into trouble after entering what the Spanish call "La Costa de la Muerte," the coast of death. Famous for countless shipwrecks.

In a fierce storm off the Coast of Death on Wednesday, something caused a gash in its hull. The newest oil tankers are required to have two hulls to prevent spills, but this was an older ship with a single hull and the gash caused a gush.

With waves reaching 20 feet and winds blowing at nearly 50 miles an hour, Spanish officials had a choice. Tow the wounded tanker seven miles to port and transfer the oil to another ship, but at the risk of breaking apart on the way. Or, tow it farther out to sea.

Out to sea whas what they chose. The ship proved too weaken to survive. For days we've seen the upsetting images that we associate with oil spills, the wildlife covered with oil, the blackened beaches. Now, the fear of a worse case scenario, as the last section of the ship went down today, the majority of the oil was still contained.

If the ship broke apart on the way down, we could see an oil spill twice as large as that of the Exxon Valdez. But if it remained in fact, the frigid waters, more than two miles beneath the surface, could help to congeal the oil, preventing it from spreading. That is the mystery at the bottom of the sea tonight near one of the most unspoiled corners of the world.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GOODMAN: And, Anderson, even if this spill doesn't get any worse, the damage from it -- and that's of course not sure -- a leading fishing industry executive says that the Christmas season is already ruined by this spill for several thousand Spanish fishermen and their families. Now there are late reports that up to 10 percent of the oil did spill as it went down.

That hasn't gotten to shore yet. But clearly they are bracing for the worst, and there could be a new kind of Spanish armada. The fishing fleet that is tied up because they can't fish is preparing to go out a thousand fishing vessels strong trying to protect the coastline where the clams and the crabs and the muscles are trying to be saved from this oil spill -- Anderson.

COOPER: Well, Al, that leads me to my question, which is, how well equipped are Spanish authorities to deal with this? I mean if right now it seems like the front line of this is going to be fought by some fishing vessels, that doesn't seem to be an indication that Spanish authorities really are capable of handling this on their own.

GOODMAN: Anderson, the fishing vessels are being poured in as a sort of a measure of solidarity by the fishing fleet. But Spain already has had these kind of problems for several years. It is quite well equipped, and 10 European nations have offered help. France and Holland have already sent ships here. So they are trying to tackle this problem in the most modern way possible -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right. Al Goodman, thank you very much for this developing story. Appreciate it.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, new 911 tapes that tell the story of the sniper scare day one. Then, the missing votes in the Alabama governor's race and the 14-year-old girl who found them.

And later, the story of an American soldier, a deserter who disappeared into North Korea and turned up nearly 40 years later. That is him there. He has a wife, who has a bizarre story of her own to tell about how she got to North Korea.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Well, the sniper nightmare showed how easy it is for one or two people to terrorize literally millions. Today, we were reminded of the chaos right from day one before any of us really knew what they were dealing with. The story now from CNN's Kathleen Koch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KOCH (voice-over): The dramatic 911 tapes show the growing confusion and panic, as the calls began pouring in that bright October morning, when the first victim, Sonny Buchanan, was shot at 7:41. Some people thought his lawn mower had exploded.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's going on there?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This guy's lawn mower did something, man. It chopped him up and he's bleeding real bad. He's down and out.

KOCH: About 30 minutes later, a few miles away, the 911 call from the next shooting of cab driver Prenkumar Walekar at a Mobil gas station. It was clear to that caller that the man had been shot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ma'am, listen to me. What is wrong?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A man has been killed in front of me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How has he been killed in front of you?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's been shot. I don't know.

KOCH: Just 15 minutes later, another call just nearby for a woman, Sara Ramos, spotted dead on a bench near Leisure World, a retirement community. Again, the caller didn't realize Ramos had been murdered.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I need (UNINTELLIGIBLE) police at Leisure World Plaza at the end by the post office. A girl just shot herself.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She just what?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She just shot herself sitting on the bench there.

KOCH: Then, at 9:58, the next shooting. Again just miles away. Lori Ann Lewis Rivera (ph) killed at a gas station while vacuuming her van. Again, a stuned caller uncertain about what had happened.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, we need an ambulance at the corner of Rove (ph) and Connecticut. A woman was vacuuming her car, something blew up. She's unconscious. She's got blood coming out of her nose and her mouth.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Rove and where?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Rove and Connecticut Avenue, across from Kensington.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She was vacuuming her car and something blew up?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Something blew up or I have no idea. She's lying next to the vacuum cleaner, but she's unconscious and blood is coming out of her nose and her mouth.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOCH: Four killings in just over two hours, four lives abruptly ended. It would take time to understand just what had happened and weeks to catch the suspects accused in the shooting spree that left 10 dead here in the Washington, D.C. area and three wounded -- Anderson.

COOPER: Kathleen, just listening to those tapes, it seems so long ago, and yet it really wasn't. What's the latest on the investigation on the various court cases that are pending?

KOCH: Well, we had several hearings actually this morning in juvenile court in Fairfax County. The attorney for one of the suspects, John Lee Malvo, was there arguing a number of things, asking for a continuance, more time basically to prepare the defense for his client. The judge did grant that continuance.

The preliminary hearing will be held in mid January. However, the defense did not win on all the things they were asking for. They also wanted a variety of experts to help them mount their defense to begin to get ready for the preliminary hearing. They wanted a DNA expert, a fingerprint expert, a ballistics expert, a psychiatrist. And the judge basically agreed with the prosecution.

It's just a little too early to be spending money on experts like that. But the defense says, hey, all we want is a level playing field. But they're not getting it right now.

COOPER: All right. Kathleen Koch, thanks very much.

A high-speed chase tops our look at stories from around the country. It took place last night in north central Ohio. Police say the man behind the wheel of a carjacked BMW is a fugitive named Chadwick Fochs (ph). He got away.

The car's owner is missing. Police are now looking for both tonight. Now this all started two weeks ago. Fochs and a fellow inmate broke out of jail in Kentucky and went on a crime spree that took them to South Carolina, Ohio and back into Kentucky.

Police caught Mr. Fochs' partner in Ashland (ph), Kentucky on the Ohio border. According to the cops, he was trying to hijack a car from a shopping mall parking lot when they caught him.

From NASA tonight, a starjacking of a kind. The Chandra X-Ray Observatory picked it up. You're looking at two black holes circling one another. Gravity is apparently drawing them together. Now, at some point, scientists expect them to gobble each other up. And when that happens, the collision will bend the very fabric of the space- time continuum.

And Michael Jackson made an appearance today, but his physical appearance is not what caught our attention. The one-time king of pop was in Berlin showing off the prince, his son, Prince Michael II. Now, I ask you, was he showing off or dangling? Dangling or showing off? We report, you decide.

Prince Michael II is Jackson's youngest son. There's the dangle or the show off, not sure which. Not to be confused with Prince Michael, his oldest son. Dad is in Germany to attend a benefit for homeless children. Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, a tanker sinks off the coast of spain. How big a disaster is it? And also the story of the American soldier missing for nearly 40 years who turned up alive in North Korea. And that is just half of the story.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Well, as clean-up crews work in the waters off Spain, talk has already begun about the potential effects of the Prestige spill. Now this is a part of the country that relies heavily on fishing for its economy, and thousands of fisherman and their families will be effected, no doubt about it.

Joining us to talk about the clean-up and what comes next, Thomas Grasso, who is the U.S. Director of the Marine Conservation Program for the World Wildlife Fund. Mr. Grasso, I know you have a team who is already on site helping authorities there with all they can about the spill. What are you hearing from your team?

TOM GRASSO, U.S. DIRECTOR OF MARINE CONSERVATION, WORLD WILDLIFE FUND, U.S.: Well, the latest news we have from Spain is that now that the tanker has gone down that there is a 30-mile long by four-mile wide oil slick heading towards the coast of Spain. Unfortunately, nature is not cooperating with us and the wind is blowing westerly towards the coast of Spain.

In between the coast of Spain and oil slick right now is the CS (ph) Island National Park, which is home to many endemic species of sea birds in Spain. Some species that are found nowhere else on the planet.

COOPER: So just to try to get a sense of how big a spill we're talking about, can you compare this in size? And maybe it's too early to do this, to the Exxon Valdez spill and -- yeah, how big is it? How bad is it?

GRASSO: Well, Anderson, this is a tragedy really that is still unfolding. But what we know is that the tanker was carrying oil in the amount of twice that of what spilled with the Exxon Valdez. So the potential is very great. Right now, 200 kilometers of the coast has been damaged by about 10 percent of the oil that's already been spilled.

COOPER: But only -- at this point we think about 10 percent of the oil that could be spilled has been spilled?

GRASSO: The latest news we have is 10 percent was spilled as it was being transported over a very sensitive area of ocean, which the World Wildlife Fund recommended to the authorities not to do. Unfortunately, our recommendations were not heeded and the oil has now gone down in the ocean, which is a very sensitive area for fish habitat, breeding grounds and other populations of marine species.

COOPER: Authorities faced two optionss. They could, as I understand it, they could have towed the ship to the nearest port, or they could have brought it out to sea, which is what they tried to do to try to distance it as much from the coastline. Why were you recommending not a good idea to drag it out to sea? You were recommending to bring it to port and why?

GRASSO: Well, we were recommending that they should consider a variety of alternatives before taking it over what is known as the Galisia (ph) Bank, which is a breeding ground for over 100 species of fish, 11 species of sharks, and is a place where the largest population of European porpoises aggregate during the year.

One option would have been -- when the seas were still calm -- would have been to pump some of the oil out of the vessel, bring it into port, which would have been better than bringing it over a very sensitive area of ocean habitat. Unfortunately, that was not done. There was a race to get it out -- outside of the territorial boundaries of Spain and Portugal. And what ended up was the shortest distance was over this very sensitive area.

COOPER: You know, given that we don't have all the information at this point. It's to soon obvious to say what the long term impact is going to be in terms of the environment.

Can you talk about the impact on the communities around there, the fishermen and the people who live along there?

GRASSO: This is what's sad to see is that there are -- that part of Spain is very reliant on fishing. The fisheries along 100 kilometers of coast have already been closed. There are roughly 4,500 fishing families in that region that will be affected by this disaster.

In addition, we already know there are many birds coming in that are covered with oil. WWF, has their rapid response team in place there, working with local officials to train them in wildlife rescue and rehabilitation. And we expect the situation to probably evolve in the next few days.

COOPER: Tom Grasso, with the World Wildlife Fund.

GRASSO: Thank you very much.

COOPER: This is one of the strangest stories we've heard of. It's about an American man who deserted the Army for North Korea in the 1960s and the Japanese woman he eventually met there, a woman brought there by force. North Korea, recently admitted that she was among the 13 Japanese citizens, kidnapped in the 1970s. Their story is a love story perhaps, perhaps a story of the Cold War.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): He is 62-years-old now, and according to the Pentagon, a genuine rarity, an Army deserter who has been living in North Korea for 37 years.

Charles Robert Jenkins was an Army sergeant assigned to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea in 1965, during the American buildup in Vietnam. One day he simply disappeared, dropped from sight until the mid 1980's when he showed up in this North Korean propaganda film, and no one had seen him since until now.

"All say is that I walked to Korea," he told a Japanese magazine recently. "I refused to fight in the Vietnam War. I have no interest in military issues now."

HATSUHISHA TAKASHIMA, JAPANESE FOREIGN MINISTER: If there is any possibility of giving pardon, to him. Or if there is any way for Mr. Jenkins to live with his wife, and children safely in Japan.

COOPER: Now to make the saga of Robert Jenkins even more strange, a third country, Japan, is involved. While in North Korea he met, and married this woman, a Japanese citizen named Hitomi Soga. It turns out she wasn't in North Korea by choice. She one of several Japanese women kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970's, and only recently returned to Japan, returned without her husband and two daughters.

HITOMI SOGO (through translator): I told my family I'd be in Japan only for about ten days. They must be worried. That's why I cried when I heard I could not go back.

COOPER: The Japanese say they want the Bush administration to grant Jenkins a pardon so the family can live together once more. But the Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is for now saying no. Jenkins was never discharged from the army, and there is no statute of limitations on desertion.

TAKASHIMA: We are talking with American administration, what to do with this husband of Miss Soga's.

COOPER: Robert Jenkins says he doesn't want to leave North Korea. He wears a lapel pin adorned with the image of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. All he wants, he says, is the return of his wife. I would rather die, he says, if my wife does not come back.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Still to come on NEWSNIGHT. What is with this bachelor thing and all those bottle blonds? We will try to get to the bottom of it.

And later, a look back at the career of actor James Coburn.

And up next, a girl and the governor, how a teenager determined the winner of the Alabama governor's race.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: So there was a singular sound heard across Alabama political landscape, right after election day. A sound borrowed from the sage of the ages, Homer Simpson, "D'oh." The hero of this story, like Lisa Simpson, is a young girl with a good head on her shoulders, a young girl who knew on election night that something just didn't add up.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) GOV. DON SIEGELMAN (D), ALABAMA: I was declared the winner, then sometime after midnight votes were changed in Baldwin County, and what was a victory for me turned into a victory for Bob Riley.

COOPER (voice-over): Alabama governor done Siegelman lost his reelection bid because of a computer glitch a 7,000 ballot voting error caught by a girl too young to vote herself, 14-year-old Candice Jones.

CANDICE JONES: My mom sat there, and added all the numbers up, and they came up different than the numbers on the screen. I called voters news service.

COOPER: Governor Siegelman went to bed election night thinking he was the winner, Candice Jones and her mother counted votes. The two were hired by Voters News Service, which reports election results to the media. The two never thought the ballots they counted would sway the election.

CARMEN JONES: It was uncomfortable, and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) were getting aggravated, because they wanted to us leave. And yes, it was late and I was tired, and nervous by the end of it, but, you know, it was the right thing to do. And you just don't give up.

COOPER: Which led the Baldwin County District Attorney's Office to get involved. There was an error, Siegelman's Republican opponent was really in the lead.

DAVID WHETSTONE, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, BALDWIN COUNTY: It took a very brave act, because at that time everybody thought at one point in time -- all the media thought that the other total was correct. So you had these two people with the right numbers insisting that their numbers were correct.

COOPER: Siegelman petitioned for a recount. Then 13 days later reconsidered. He conceded, turning over the job to his opponent, Bob Riley.

BOB RILEY (R), GOVERNOR-ELECT, ALABAMA: The results today, ladies and gentlemen, are conclusive. You're looking at the next governor of Alabama.

WHETSTONE: Somebody cared enough to get the numbers right, and I think that's a credit to her and her daughter.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: It certainly is.

A few stories from around the world tonight beginning in Israel. The Labor Party chose a former general to challenge Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in elections in January. Armon Mitzna (ph) the Mayor of Hafia is more of a dove than a man he beat out, current Labor Party Leader Benjamin Al-Iza (ph). Sharon for his part is battling Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for leadership of the rival Likud Party. And that will be decided in a primary next week. A follow up on the execution of a Pakistani man for murdering two CIA workers. Thousands packed a soccer stadium in Quetta for Mir Aimal Kasi, who was executed in Virginia, last night. There was some anti-American protests, but no violence as some had feared.

And a different kind of protest, this time it comes from the U.S. and it is directed against Iran. The State Department today said the death sense tense against an Irani reformer was outrageous. Irani students had been protesting in support of the reformer -- that's some of the protest right there. The reformer had questioned the right of the clergy to rule Iran.

And a big moment for hardcore Beatles fans, at least ones with cash. It is an auction going on in London. Things like the sign from the bus of the "Magical Mystery Tour," a shirt worn by John, not to mention the thing that was apparently near and dear to John's heart, the holder where he kept his pot.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, in memory of our man Flint, James Coburn.

And up next, the hottest star for sad singletons deconstructing the bachelor.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: So we all know a showdown is brewing, one with major consequences for all involved. The world is watching.

All right, maybe not the world but several million viewers each week. One man has a decision to make. I speak of course of Aaron Broig (ph), the man known by his nom d'guerre, "The Bachelor."

Now, at first I didn't understand why this show has such a following. It's not really a reality show, it's fantasy. And it's not really porn, because denouement, if you will.

But then I began watching and I kind of figured it out. The real appeal isn't the bachelor, it's the women who want to be his woman. See, at first they seem normal. They're attractive, quaffed, coutered, composed. They don't all work at Hooters.

But then after one date with this guy, something happens. They become unhinged. They claim they love this man. They want to bear his bland, blond children. And this is after like one date to Napa.

Take, for instance, Christy (ph). One minute, she's stepping out of a limo, a modern day independent woman. A few episodes later, check out what love has wrought.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I'm sorry and I'm sensitive. And I have the most tender heart of anyone you'll ever meet.

I'm going to be fine. I'm going to be fine. I'm not going to be OK. (END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: And then there's Heather, a former beauty queen, tough as nails, but look at what ended up happening to her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a loser. That's what you feel like. I wonder what's so wrong with me that someone can't accept for who I am?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Now, frankly, I don't even see what's so special about this bachelor. I mean, sure he can make out with a lot of women on camera but so can Ron Jeremy.

And when did hot tubs become a fetish? What is this, Aspen in the 1970s? I at least hope they drain and clean that tub between maulings.

I may be confused by this show, but luckily we have a relationship expert with us who is not. Psychologist Dr. Joy Browne. Dr. Browne, thanks for being with us.

JOY BROWNE, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: You just want your own hot tub, right?

COOPER: No. No, believe me, no -- not hot tubs for moi.

Why do you think this show is so popular? This is hugely popular.

BROWNE: Yes. I think there are a couple of reasons. First of all, as point out, it really is fantasy but it's fantasy not of 2002, it's fantasy of 1952, when men were men and women were nincompoops. I mean, we're Barbie dolls.

And I think there's, as you point out, everybody looks all -- exactly the same.

COOPER: They're all of a certain type, yes.

BROWNE: Like clones. It's almost like Miss America. So there's that. You're sort of voting for your candidate. I think there's also that sense that Americans are kind of scared, I think, right now of the world. And so this is a way of kind of reverting to something that makes no sense. This is like comic book dating.

COOPER: But there is an element, too, of wanting, from the viewers perspective, of watching because you want to see these people just get totally dumped.

BROWNE: Yes. I do think that's -- because, remember in high school. See you were a boy, but I was a girl in high school and there was always like the prom queen and she was so cool and what you really wanted was something to happen to her and it happens. COOPER: I wanted it to be like Carrie with the blood pouring down.

BROWNE: It happens. This happens. Look, there are 25 women and every week one of those gorgeous, self-assured, perfect women is going to get dumped and you think, Yeah!

And I think there's also that possibility -- because if you hear these perfectly reasonable women fall apart because -- under -- beneath all of our grown-up exteriors is the heart that says, We believe in love at first sight. There will be some man and I will be so in love with him and he will be so in love with me and it will be captured on film and I'll be famous.

COOPER: Right.

It's amazing how popular this show is among the NEWSNIGHT staff even. A lot of the women on the staff, you know, were like -- know every little detail on this program. Do you think someone actually can find love on this kind of a program?

BROWNE: Yes and no, all right. The grownup part of me says, Are you kidding? How much more fraudulent can be be?

But the other part of me, the romantic part of me, says can you meet somebody anyplace. You can meet somebody on an airplane, you can meet somebody at the grocery store, you can meet somebody at a funeral. I mean, you can meet somebody...

COOPER: Funeral dates are the hottest.

BROWNE: They are. It's sort of gets you down to basics.

But, I mean, I think the thing is it's a combination of fantasy horrifying, saccharine that you're rooting both for and against somebody. How can this lose? Plus hot tubs.

COOPER: Why -- all right and this is the question that endlessly fascinates me. And I've worked on one of these kind of shows but why do people go on this? I mean, why would these women who -- you know, they all have jobs and they certainly are attractive and eligible. Why would they do this to themselves?

BROWNE: All right, do you know want to know what I really think? I think this is what I would call the Monica Lewinsky phenomenon in America.

COOPER: Uh-oh.

BROWNE: It used to be that people wanted to grow up and do good. Then people wanted to grow up and do good and be famous. Then people wanted to grow up and just be famous. And then people finally figured out that you have a much longer half life if you're naughty.

And so the idea of sort of being rejected or actually being accepted. I mean, all the women, the blonde bimbos, with all due respect or disrespect, who have somehow gotten thrown off a show, gotten thrown out of the Miss America pageant, slept with the boss, shredded documents, they're all famous.

I mean, those of us who just sort of work and, you know, are kind of ordinary, we just pass into history. So I think there's the possibility that -- plus I -- look, everybody -- every man and woman in America thinks sooner or later they will fall around the corner and fall instantly love. We believe in love at first sight. It's lust with potential. But that isn't what we call it. We call it love at first sight. It's instant, it's easy, it's fast, fabulous.

COOPER: I think the producers of the show probably initially thought that men would be the primary viewers of the show because of all the attractive women and stuff, but that has not turned out to be the case at all. It is hugely women.

BROWNE: I think it's the same reason that women forgave Bill Clinton and men didn't. Is why would men watch a man get to choose all these women? I think it's the women are feeling like, Gee, could be me or Ha, ha, ha. The nannner nanner phenomenon. Ha, ha, ha, she's better looking than I am and she got rejected. Yes, I mean, I think it's a woman's show.

COOPER: Did it surprise -- I mean, I guess you see people like breaking apart in front of you all the time. But it surprised me the extent to which these women instantly said they were -- I mean, literally, it was like one date to Napa -- and I don't know, I mean, maybe Napa's really hot. I don't know.

BROWNE: It's pretty fabulous, yeah.

COOPER: Yes, it must be great. But, I mean, they were saying they were in love.

BROWNE: Well, but you and I have both done TV and we've both watched that sort of odd phenomenon of normal people becoming weird in front of a camera. But it's the way people define themselves, especially people who feel disenfranchised. That they feel that nobody really notices them. I think there's a huge element of small town girl in this and even the ones who aren't from small town pretend they're from small town. I think we've taught people how to behave on television and they confuse television and life.

COOPER: They definitely start to do things for the cameras, even if it's subconscientiously, even if you tell them not to, it's hard for them to overcome that.

BROWNE: Everything is bigger than life, everything is larger than life. You have ever gone out with somebody who would go into a hot tub with you on a second date? Well, maybe you have.

COOPER: That's mandatory for date one.

BROWNE: If you haven't gone in the hot tub with me by date three, you're history. What is that?

COOPER: Well, Dr. Browne, thank you so much for being with us.

BROWNE: So are you going to be -- you know, there's a "Bachelorette" coming up. Are you going...

COOPER: There is a "Bachelorette," yes. I don't think I'm eligible. I don't think Sandy would like that. But "Bachelorette" is going to be on ABC...

BROWNE: The next one after that is we've got "Bachelor," "Bachelorette" and the next then married man, married woman who's looking to have a fling. It will be fabulous.

COOPER: The question I want to know is will on "Bachelorette" will all the men cry and break down?

BROWNE: I hope so, I doubt it. I think they'll just macho out and say who cared about her? She had bad breath.

COOPER: Dr. Browne, thanks a lot.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, remembering one of the great men of Hollywood. He didn't need a program like that. The life and legend of James Coburn.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Finally from us tonight, a farewell to the actor James Coburn who died yesterday at the age of 74. James Coburn made a hundred films from the late 1950s on. Many of those films were first rate, but even when they weren't, he always was. James Coburn had range.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rhett, Rhett, wake up. I'm talking to you. Look at me.

COOPER (voice-over): He could be rough as sand paper. Or smooth as silk. His snarl was as convincing as his grin. And he had style, whether he was being debonair or dangerous.

JAMES COBURN, ACTOR: (UNINTELLIGIBLE), bouillabaisse.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Huh?

COBURN: Sir, throughout the world in the preparation of bouillabaisse, the usual proportion to garlic to buttered saffron fennel is two cloves of garlic to a pinch of buttered saffron to a dash of fennel.

COOPER: Yes, he had a way with words. But he had a way without them as well.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You'll tell him. I wanted him there.

COOPER: He was a man among men when he wasn't a man among women. He seemed pretty comfortable in any company really. James Coburn was one of those guy who made the very hard thing he did look easy for four decades.

COBURN: Say, why does that eagle attack me?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's been trained to recognize and attack Americans.

COBURN: An anti-American eagle. It's diabolical.

What do I have to be grateful for, Captain?

COOPER: Thank you, Mr. Coburn. It was a heck of a ride.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: It certainly was. That is NEWSNIGHT for tonight. Thanks a lot for watching, I'll be here tomorrow. Hope you'll join me. Good night.

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





Security?; 911 Calls From the First Sniper Attacks>


Aired November 19, 2002 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, HOST: And good evening, again, everyone.
Before we begin, I've just got to say it is not easy being the network's designated fill-in anchor. It's not the last-minute phone calls to be in Atlanta the next day at 5:00 a.m. or trying to figure out what outfit to where to match Connie's set. That's all part of the job. I can deal with that.

The tough part is coming here and having the NEWSNIGHT staff try to dump all the lame page-two ideas that Aaron already rejected. I mean you can't believe some of the stuff I had to read today.

First, there was the barbery (ph) pirates idea. I ask you, would you listen to a comparison of the U.S. conflict with the barbery pirates 200 years ago and our current day conflict with Iraq? I mean, sure, it was well written, but barbery pirates? Please, this isn't Disney World -- well, not yet.

Then there were a couple of old sniper page two's and even one about anthrax. Come on people, I mean do I have to come up with all the new ideas around here? I'm telling you, once the merger goes through, this kind of attitude, it's just not going to be acceptable. Take my word for it.

So tomorrow, I promise you a really interesting page two. Tonight, let's just move on to the news of the day, and that has to do with Iraq and the inspectors. Nic Robertson is in Baghdad for us. Nic, a headline.

NIC ROBERSTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The Chief Weapons Inspector, Hans Blix, leaves in a few hours. He appears to have had a successful mission. He says he's got Iraqi compliance to go along with the new U.N. resoltuion.

COOPER: All right. Nic, check back with you in a moment.

On to Washington and a victory for the White House tonight. Jeanne Meserve is following that for us. Jeanne, a headline.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Does a new department of homeland security mean more security? Maybe someday, but the challenges of merging 170,000 people from 22 agencies into one bureaucracy are daunting -- Anderson. COOPER: And a harrowing thing to emerge from the sniper case. Calls for help. Kathleen Koch is on that story for us -- Kathleen, a headline.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, they are riveting and, for some, certainly very painful to listen to. The 911 calls that came that first morning, as victim after victim was gunned down and before we even knew a sniper was at work -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right, Kathleen.

We'll also have a report on an ecological disaster, and that is no overstatement. Al Goodman is in Camarinas, Spain. He will join us shortly.

Also coming up tonight, the new political heavyweight in the state of Alabama. Candice Jones (ph), a 14-year-old girl with an eagle eye. How she was decisive in one key race on election night. It is quite a story.

Also, a controversial tale, a Cold War love story of sorts. An American deserter alive in North Korea and the Japanese woman he met after she was kidnapped there. What should happen to them now?

And America's guilty pleasure, "The Bachelor." I don't know if you guys have seen it. It's like a big blond train wreck. You just can't turn away from it. We will try to figure out why.

All that to come in the hour ahead. We begin with the inspectors in Iraq. Their bosses head home shortly after getting what they say they come for, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to their old offices and a promise from Iraq to live up to its commitments. In other words, they've gotten the bare minimums so far. But, hey, diplomats take their victories where they can find them, and today was no exception.

Here again, CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): These pictures highly symbolic. Weapons Inspector Hans Blix greets Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabli (ph). It's not known what was said, but the meeting indicative of Iraqi cooperation. Blix, however, confident his two-day mission has brought Iraqi agreement to declare all weapons of mass destruction by December 8.

HANS BLIX, CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: The Iraqi side has stated that they do accept and are ready to implement this resolution and their willingness will be tested in practice.

ROBERTSON: It was Blix's late-night session Monday with President Saddam Hussein's top scientific advisor that gave him his first face-to-face opportunity to spell out what Iraq must do to comply with U.N. Resolution 1441. If Iraq intends to continue its claims it has no weapons of mass destruction, says Blix, it must back it up with hard evidence. BLIX: And in the analysis that we have made for which I'm responsible, the missiles and biological and chemical, we do not think that that has yet been convincingly done.

ROBERTSON: For the logistics and communications experts on Blix's team who will be left behind after he departs Wednesday, a more mundane task ahead, cleaning out offices deserted since the last inspection team fled in December 1998.

MARK GWOZDECKY, SPOKESMAN: It was like walking into a time capsule four years ago. You see lots of things that were obviously half under way when people up and walked away to begin the evacuation.

ROBERTSON: On Iraqi television, news anchors tell viewers Iraq's experience with inspectors is of bitterness and suffering, adding Iraq has nothing to hide.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON: Now Blix says he has 700 sites at least that need investigating. He says that number could go up after December 8, when Iraq does make a full declaration of its weapons of mass destruction. In the meantime, 27th of November is when the inspections will start with one team, four teams to follow soon after that -- Anderson.

COOPER: So Nic, just to be clear, Iraq basically is still sticking to their story that they have no chemical, nuclear or biological weapons at this point?

ROBERTSON: That is their story. And as Hans Blix has said, if they're going to stick with that story, then they need to come up with some serious evidence. He said they need to show documents and everything that it's going to take to convince those U.N. teams that that's the case. He's already been on the record, as we've seen, saying he doesn't believe them on many issues already.

COOPER: Nic, you also point out that Hans Blix has some 700 sites they say they already need to look at. That sounds like an awful lot. Who knows how many more are going to come to light between now and then. Any sense that they want to try to extend this timetable or they say they can do it in the given amount of time?

ROBERTSON: They've said that -- well, there are a number of deadlines. Obviously, they have to make a first report to the Security Council 60 days after they start, the 27th of November. That puts it late January.

They say that if they have full Iraqi compliance, then they could do their job in a year. Then if one looks at what the last U.N. inspection team achieved here over seven years, that was visits to 1,015 sites. So 700 in a year does sound pretty ambitious, but maybe Hans Blix is counting on that improved cooperation -- Anderson.

COOPER: And Nic, I had heard reports in the last couple of days some Iraqis sort of not really knowing what was going on, not even aware that these inspectors were arriving. Has that changed? I mean we saw in your report something from Iraqi state television. Do most people know what is going on now?

ROBERTSON: They do have an idea, but you still have to sort of dig into the newspapers a little bit to find it and also the news broadcasts. It tends to play low down. It's certainly put out there for the Iraqi people into terms from the government. So I think most people are aware of it now.

The government, it cannot hide it completely. So, although they want to kind of slip it under the carpet, it helps explain why they kept the inspectors out for four years and then suddenly let them back. Otherwise, it makes the government look kind of silly in a way as far as the Iraqi people are concerned. So letting it slip out slowly I think is perhaps the best way to look at it here, Anderson.

COOPER: All right. Nic Robertson, thank you very much.

President Bush today crossed the Atlantic in part to drum up support for any confrontation with Iraq. He's in Prague for a meeting of NATO leaders. But sources at the White House say the president will not ask NATO as a whole to endorse military action because there's just no consensus for it.

Instead, they say he's going to ask individual member nations to help out wherever they can with air bases or troops or technical assistance in case a war should break out. Security, meantime, is very tight around the summit. A bomb was found on local railroad tracks today. Thousands of protestors are expected to arrive there as well.

They will certainly have company. About 2,200 soldiers and 12,000 police have been called in to provide security.

Back home, the president got what he wanted from Congress, a homeland security bill this year not next. The Senate passed it today 90 votes to nine. The president is expected to sign the bill next week and it adds up to one of the largest government shakeups ever. It would certainly (UNINTELLIGIBLE) passage, but so did all the details.

Here again, CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE (voice-over): It is a huge country protecting it a huge task. And now there will be a huge bureaucracy charged with doing the job. Incorporating 22 separate agencies. Will it work?

JAMES LINSAY, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: It's sort of like trying to redesign, overhaul a plane's engines in mid flight.

MESERVE: The agencies that have had bits and pieces of responsibility for policing the nation's borders will be pulled together. Question: How hard will it be to make the system comprehensive and effective? A threat assessment division will synthesize intelligence with the aim of protecting against possible terrorist strikes. Question: Will the intelligence agencies and the private sector give the department the information it needs? Federal response capabilities will be merged and first responders given one-stop shopping for grants, equipment, training and information. Question: Where is the money?

CAMERON WHITMAN, THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF CITIES: Unfortunately, as long as Congress does not appropriate any money for first responders, the shelves in the shop will be pretty empty. There's not going to be anything there that they can give us.

MESERVE: Melding these disparate agencies together is going to be a gargantuan managerial task.

LEE HAMILTON, WOODROW WILSON CENTER: The difficulty here is you bring in a lot of different people from a lot of different agencies with many different cultures, all of whom are kind of protective of their own turf, very deeply concerned about their personal future.

MESERVE: Experts say the process could take years. And in the meantime, will the country be more safe or less so?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not only are people going to have their minds taken off their sort of every day task about concerns about what's going to happen to me, but as you sort of shuffle the organizational boxes around, information is bound not to get communicated to the right people. It may actually in the short term make things worse off.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: Some experts say this shuffling of boxes does have the potential to ultimately make the country safer because it will focus attention and resources for the first time in a single department whose top priority is homeland security. But they say it is not a sure bet and it will take time -- Anderson.

COOPER: And this will be cabinet level positions, right?

MESERVE: Absolutely.

COOPER: You talk about the boxes. Where does the FBI, the customs, where does their box go? I mean, is it now under this umbrella or do they continue to be separate with the Justice Department and the various agencies?

MESERVE: Twenty-two agencies, as I said, are being folded in. Amongst them Customs. But the president himself has said that more than 100 agencies are involved in homeland security, so there are more than 70 still outside, and those would include, for instance, the FBI and CIA and the Department of Defense, major players in this.

It's going to be a tough act to try and keep the coordination going, not just within this big department, but between the different agencies. As someone said to me, this really would be more appropriately named the department of some aspects of homeland security.

COOPER: And I don't know if you know this, but how big an agency are we talking about? Do we know number of employees or how big in relation to the other agencies that already exist?

MESERVE: It is 170,000 employees. It is absolutely a beast, just enormous. It's going to be very tough to bring this together. As we mentioned in the package, a lot of people are going to be so worried about who their bosses are going to be, what's their pension going to be, what's going to happen to their seniority, it may be tough for some of them to keep their eye on the ball of actually improving homeland security. It's going to be a very, very tough job by anybody's account.

COOPER: Indeed it will. Jeanne Meserve, thank you very much tonight. Appreciate eit.

And tonight, the Spanish coast is bracing for the kind of environmental disaster we have not seen since the Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska. The crippled tanker that we've been following since last week, well it split in two and sank today. The ship had been headed out into open ocean; the crew trying to put as much distance between the ship and the shore. The question at this hour, was it enough?

Here's CNN's Al Goodman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AL GOODMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This video today of a giant oil tanker sinking off the coast of Spain may not be as devastating as it looks or it may be much worse. It all depends on what happened on its journey to the ocean floor. The oil tanker, The Prestige, got into trouble after entering what the Spanish call "La Costa de la Muerte," the coast of death. Famous for countless shipwrecks.

In a fierce storm off the Coast of Death on Wednesday, something caused a gash in its hull. The newest oil tankers are required to have two hulls to prevent spills, but this was an older ship with a single hull and the gash caused a gush.

With waves reaching 20 feet and winds blowing at nearly 50 miles an hour, Spanish officials had a choice. Tow the wounded tanker seven miles to port and transfer the oil to another ship, but at the risk of breaking apart on the way. Or, tow it farther out to sea.

Out to sea whas what they chose. The ship proved too weaken to survive. For days we've seen the upsetting images that we associate with oil spills, the wildlife covered with oil, the blackened beaches. Now, the fear of a worse case scenario, as the last section of the ship went down today, the majority of the oil was still contained.

If the ship broke apart on the way down, we could see an oil spill twice as large as that of the Exxon Valdez. But if it remained in fact, the frigid waters, more than two miles beneath the surface, could help to congeal the oil, preventing it from spreading. That is the mystery at the bottom of the sea tonight near one of the most unspoiled corners of the world.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GOODMAN: And, Anderson, even if this spill doesn't get any worse, the damage from it -- and that's of course not sure -- a leading fishing industry executive says that the Christmas season is already ruined by this spill for several thousand Spanish fishermen and their families. Now there are late reports that up to 10 percent of the oil did spill as it went down.

That hasn't gotten to shore yet. But clearly they are bracing for the worst, and there could be a new kind of Spanish armada. The fishing fleet that is tied up because they can't fish is preparing to go out a thousand fishing vessels strong trying to protect the coastline where the clams and the crabs and the muscles are trying to be saved from this oil spill -- Anderson.

COOPER: Well, Al, that leads me to my question, which is, how well equipped are Spanish authorities to deal with this? I mean if right now it seems like the front line of this is going to be fought by some fishing vessels, that doesn't seem to be an indication that Spanish authorities really are capable of handling this on their own.

GOODMAN: Anderson, the fishing vessels are being poured in as a sort of a measure of solidarity by the fishing fleet. But Spain already has had these kind of problems for several years. It is quite well equipped, and 10 European nations have offered help. France and Holland have already sent ships here. So they are trying to tackle this problem in the most modern way possible -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right. Al Goodman, thank you very much for this developing story. Appreciate it.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, new 911 tapes that tell the story of the sniper scare day one. Then, the missing votes in the Alabama governor's race and the 14-year-old girl who found them.

And later, the story of an American soldier, a deserter who disappeared into North Korea and turned up nearly 40 years later. That is him there. He has a wife, who has a bizarre story of her own to tell about how she got to North Korea.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Well, the sniper nightmare showed how easy it is for one or two people to terrorize literally millions. Today, we were reminded of the chaos right from day one before any of us really knew what they were dealing with. The story now from CNN's Kathleen Koch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KOCH (voice-over): The dramatic 911 tapes show the growing confusion and panic, as the calls began pouring in that bright October morning, when the first victim, Sonny Buchanan, was shot at 7:41. Some people thought his lawn mower had exploded.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's going on there?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This guy's lawn mower did something, man. It chopped him up and he's bleeding real bad. He's down and out.

KOCH: About 30 minutes later, a few miles away, the 911 call from the next shooting of cab driver Prenkumar Walekar at a Mobil gas station. It was clear to that caller that the man had been shot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ma'am, listen to me. What is wrong?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A man has been killed in front of me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How has he been killed in front of you?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's been shot. I don't know.

KOCH: Just 15 minutes later, another call just nearby for a woman, Sara Ramos, spotted dead on a bench near Leisure World, a retirement community. Again, the caller didn't realize Ramos had been murdered.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I need (UNINTELLIGIBLE) police at Leisure World Plaza at the end by the post office. A girl just shot herself.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She just what?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She just shot herself sitting on the bench there.

KOCH: Then, at 9:58, the next shooting. Again just miles away. Lori Ann Lewis Rivera (ph) killed at a gas station while vacuuming her van. Again, a stuned caller uncertain about what had happened.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, we need an ambulance at the corner of Rove (ph) and Connecticut. A woman was vacuuming her car, something blew up. She's unconscious. She's got blood coming out of her nose and her mouth.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Rove and where?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Rove and Connecticut Avenue, across from Kensington.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She was vacuuming her car and something blew up?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Something blew up or I have no idea. She's lying next to the vacuum cleaner, but she's unconscious and blood is coming out of her nose and her mouth.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOCH: Four killings in just over two hours, four lives abruptly ended. It would take time to understand just what had happened and weeks to catch the suspects accused in the shooting spree that left 10 dead here in the Washington, D.C. area and three wounded -- Anderson.

COOPER: Kathleen, just listening to those tapes, it seems so long ago, and yet it really wasn't. What's the latest on the investigation on the various court cases that are pending?

KOCH: Well, we had several hearings actually this morning in juvenile court in Fairfax County. The attorney for one of the suspects, John Lee Malvo, was there arguing a number of things, asking for a continuance, more time basically to prepare the defense for his client. The judge did grant that continuance.

The preliminary hearing will be held in mid January. However, the defense did not win on all the things they were asking for. They also wanted a variety of experts to help them mount their defense to begin to get ready for the preliminary hearing. They wanted a DNA expert, a fingerprint expert, a ballistics expert, a psychiatrist. And the judge basically agreed with the prosecution.

It's just a little too early to be spending money on experts like that. But the defense says, hey, all we want is a level playing field. But they're not getting it right now.

COOPER: All right. Kathleen Koch, thanks very much.

A high-speed chase tops our look at stories from around the country. It took place last night in north central Ohio. Police say the man behind the wheel of a carjacked BMW is a fugitive named Chadwick Fochs (ph). He got away.

The car's owner is missing. Police are now looking for both tonight. Now this all started two weeks ago. Fochs and a fellow inmate broke out of jail in Kentucky and went on a crime spree that took them to South Carolina, Ohio and back into Kentucky.

Police caught Mr. Fochs' partner in Ashland (ph), Kentucky on the Ohio border. According to the cops, he was trying to hijack a car from a shopping mall parking lot when they caught him.

From NASA tonight, a starjacking of a kind. The Chandra X-Ray Observatory picked it up. You're looking at two black holes circling one another. Gravity is apparently drawing them together. Now, at some point, scientists expect them to gobble each other up. And when that happens, the collision will bend the very fabric of the space- time continuum.

And Michael Jackson made an appearance today, but his physical appearance is not what caught our attention. The one-time king of pop was in Berlin showing off the prince, his son, Prince Michael II. Now, I ask you, was he showing off or dangling? Dangling or showing off? We report, you decide.

Prince Michael II is Jackson's youngest son. There's the dangle or the show off, not sure which. Not to be confused with Prince Michael, his oldest son. Dad is in Germany to attend a benefit for homeless children. Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, a tanker sinks off the coast of spain. How big a disaster is it? And also the story of the American soldier missing for nearly 40 years who turned up alive in North Korea. And that is just half of the story.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Well, as clean-up crews work in the waters off Spain, talk has already begun about the potential effects of the Prestige spill. Now this is a part of the country that relies heavily on fishing for its economy, and thousands of fisherman and their families will be effected, no doubt about it.

Joining us to talk about the clean-up and what comes next, Thomas Grasso, who is the U.S. Director of the Marine Conservation Program for the World Wildlife Fund. Mr. Grasso, I know you have a team who is already on site helping authorities there with all they can about the spill. What are you hearing from your team?

TOM GRASSO, U.S. DIRECTOR OF MARINE CONSERVATION, WORLD WILDLIFE FUND, U.S.: Well, the latest news we have from Spain is that now that the tanker has gone down that there is a 30-mile long by four-mile wide oil slick heading towards the coast of Spain. Unfortunately, nature is not cooperating with us and the wind is blowing westerly towards the coast of Spain.

In between the coast of Spain and oil slick right now is the CS (ph) Island National Park, which is home to many endemic species of sea birds in Spain. Some species that are found nowhere else on the planet.

COOPER: So just to try to get a sense of how big a spill we're talking about, can you compare this in size? And maybe it's too early to do this, to the Exxon Valdez spill and -- yeah, how big is it? How bad is it?

GRASSO: Well, Anderson, this is a tragedy really that is still unfolding. But what we know is that the tanker was carrying oil in the amount of twice that of what spilled with the Exxon Valdez. So the potential is very great. Right now, 200 kilometers of the coast has been damaged by about 10 percent of the oil that's already been spilled.

COOPER: But only -- at this point we think about 10 percent of the oil that could be spilled has been spilled?

GRASSO: The latest news we have is 10 percent was spilled as it was being transported over a very sensitive area of ocean, which the World Wildlife Fund recommended to the authorities not to do. Unfortunately, our recommendations were not heeded and the oil has now gone down in the ocean, which is a very sensitive area for fish habitat, breeding grounds and other populations of marine species.

COOPER: Authorities faced two optionss. They could, as I understand it, they could have towed the ship to the nearest port, or they could have brought it out to sea, which is what they tried to do to try to distance it as much from the coastline. Why were you recommending not a good idea to drag it out to sea? You were recommending to bring it to port and why?

GRASSO: Well, we were recommending that they should consider a variety of alternatives before taking it over what is known as the Galisia (ph) Bank, which is a breeding ground for over 100 species of fish, 11 species of sharks, and is a place where the largest population of European porpoises aggregate during the year.

One option would have been -- when the seas were still calm -- would have been to pump some of the oil out of the vessel, bring it into port, which would have been better than bringing it over a very sensitive area of ocean habitat. Unfortunately, that was not done. There was a race to get it out -- outside of the territorial boundaries of Spain and Portugal. And what ended up was the shortest distance was over this very sensitive area.

COOPER: You know, given that we don't have all the information at this point. It's to soon obvious to say what the long term impact is going to be in terms of the environment.

Can you talk about the impact on the communities around there, the fishermen and the people who live along there?

GRASSO: This is what's sad to see is that there are -- that part of Spain is very reliant on fishing. The fisheries along 100 kilometers of coast have already been closed. There are roughly 4,500 fishing families in that region that will be affected by this disaster.

In addition, we already know there are many birds coming in that are covered with oil. WWF, has their rapid response team in place there, working with local officials to train them in wildlife rescue and rehabilitation. And we expect the situation to probably evolve in the next few days.

COOPER: Tom Grasso, with the World Wildlife Fund.

GRASSO: Thank you very much.

COOPER: This is one of the strangest stories we've heard of. It's about an American man who deserted the Army for North Korea in the 1960s and the Japanese woman he eventually met there, a woman brought there by force. North Korea, recently admitted that she was among the 13 Japanese citizens, kidnapped in the 1970s. Their story is a love story perhaps, perhaps a story of the Cold War.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): He is 62-years-old now, and according to the Pentagon, a genuine rarity, an Army deserter who has been living in North Korea for 37 years.

Charles Robert Jenkins was an Army sergeant assigned to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea in 1965, during the American buildup in Vietnam. One day he simply disappeared, dropped from sight until the mid 1980's when he showed up in this North Korean propaganda film, and no one had seen him since until now.

"All say is that I walked to Korea," he told a Japanese magazine recently. "I refused to fight in the Vietnam War. I have no interest in military issues now."

HATSUHISHA TAKASHIMA, JAPANESE FOREIGN MINISTER: If there is any possibility of giving pardon, to him. Or if there is any way for Mr. Jenkins to live with his wife, and children safely in Japan.

COOPER: Now to make the saga of Robert Jenkins even more strange, a third country, Japan, is involved. While in North Korea he met, and married this woman, a Japanese citizen named Hitomi Soga. It turns out she wasn't in North Korea by choice. She one of several Japanese women kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970's, and only recently returned to Japan, returned without her husband and two daughters.

HITOMI SOGO (through translator): I told my family I'd be in Japan only for about ten days. They must be worried. That's why I cried when I heard I could not go back.

COOPER: The Japanese say they want the Bush administration to grant Jenkins a pardon so the family can live together once more. But the Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is for now saying no. Jenkins was never discharged from the army, and there is no statute of limitations on desertion.

TAKASHIMA: We are talking with American administration, what to do with this husband of Miss Soga's.

COOPER: Robert Jenkins says he doesn't want to leave North Korea. He wears a lapel pin adorned with the image of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. All he wants, he says, is the return of his wife. I would rather die, he says, if my wife does not come back.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Still to come on NEWSNIGHT. What is with this bachelor thing and all those bottle blonds? We will try to get to the bottom of it.

And later, a look back at the career of actor James Coburn.

And up next, a girl and the governor, how a teenager determined the winner of the Alabama governor's race.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: So there was a singular sound heard across Alabama political landscape, right after election day. A sound borrowed from the sage of the ages, Homer Simpson, "D'oh." The hero of this story, like Lisa Simpson, is a young girl with a good head on her shoulders, a young girl who knew on election night that something just didn't add up.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) GOV. DON SIEGELMAN (D), ALABAMA: I was declared the winner, then sometime after midnight votes were changed in Baldwin County, and what was a victory for me turned into a victory for Bob Riley.

COOPER (voice-over): Alabama governor done Siegelman lost his reelection bid because of a computer glitch a 7,000 ballot voting error caught by a girl too young to vote herself, 14-year-old Candice Jones.

CANDICE JONES: My mom sat there, and added all the numbers up, and they came up different than the numbers on the screen. I called voters news service.

COOPER: Governor Siegelman went to bed election night thinking he was the winner, Candice Jones and her mother counted votes. The two were hired by Voters News Service, which reports election results to the media. The two never thought the ballots they counted would sway the election.

CARMEN JONES: It was uncomfortable, and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) were getting aggravated, because they wanted to us leave. And yes, it was late and I was tired, and nervous by the end of it, but, you know, it was the right thing to do. And you just don't give up.

COOPER: Which led the Baldwin County District Attorney's Office to get involved. There was an error, Siegelman's Republican opponent was really in the lead.

DAVID WHETSTONE, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, BALDWIN COUNTY: It took a very brave act, because at that time everybody thought at one point in time -- all the media thought that the other total was correct. So you had these two people with the right numbers insisting that their numbers were correct.

COOPER: Siegelman petitioned for a recount. Then 13 days later reconsidered. He conceded, turning over the job to his opponent, Bob Riley.

BOB RILEY (R), GOVERNOR-ELECT, ALABAMA: The results today, ladies and gentlemen, are conclusive. You're looking at the next governor of Alabama.

WHETSTONE: Somebody cared enough to get the numbers right, and I think that's a credit to her and her daughter.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: It certainly is.

A few stories from around the world tonight beginning in Israel. The Labor Party chose a former general to challenge Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in elections in January. Armon Mitzna (ph) the Mayor of Hafia is more of a dove than a man he beat out, current Labor Party Leader Benjamin Al-Iza (ph). Sharon for his part is battling Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for leadership of the rival Likud Party. And that will be decided in a primary next week. A follow up on the execution of a Pakistani man for murdering two CIA workers. Thousands packed a soccer stadium in Quetta for Mir Aimal Kasi, who was executed in Virginia, last night. There was some anti-American protests, but no violence as some had feared.

And a different kind of protest, this time it comes from the U.S. and it is directed against Iran. The State Department today said the death sense tense against an Irani reformer was outrageous. Irani students had been protesting in support of the reformer -- that's some of the protest right there. The reformer had questioned the right of the clergy to rule Iran.

And a big moment for hardcore Beatles fans, at least ones with cash. It is an auction going on in London. Things like the sign from the bus of the "Magical Mystery Tour," a shirt worn by John, not to mention the thing that was apparently near and dear to John's heart, the holder where he kept his pot.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, in memory of our man Flint, James Coburn.

And up next, the hottest star for sad singletons deconstructing the bachelor.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: So we all know a showdown is brewing, one with major consequences for all involved. The world is watching.

All right, maybe not the world but several million viewers each week. One man has a decision to make. I speak of course of Aaron Broig (ph), the man known by his nom d'guerre, "The Bachelor."

Now, at first I didn't understand why this show has such a following. It's not really a reality show, it's fantasy. And it's not really porn, because denouement, if you will.

But then I began watching and I kind of figured it out. The real appeal isn't the bachelor, it's the women who want to be his woman. See, at first they seem normal. They're attractive, quaffed, coutered, composed. They don't all work at Hooters.

But then after one date with this guy, something happens. They become unhinged. They claim they love this man. They want to bear his bland, blond children. And this is after like one date to Napa.

Take, for instance, Christy (ph). One minute, she's stepping out of a limo, a modern day independent woman. A few episodes later, check out what love has wrought.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I'm sorry and I'm sensitive. And I have the most tender heart of anyone you'll ever meet.

I'm going to be fine. I'm going to be fine. I'm not going to be OK. (END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: And then there's Heather, a former beauty queen, tough as nails, but look at what ended up happening to her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a loser. That's what you feel like. I wonder what's so wrong with me that someone can't accept for who I am?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Now, frankly, I don't even see what's so special about this bachelor. I mean, sure he can make out with a lot of women on camera but so can Ron Jeremy.

And when did hot tubs become a fetish? What is this, Aspen in the 1970s? I at least hope they drain and clean that tub between maulings.

I may be confused by this show, but luckily we have a relationship expert with us who is not. Psychologist Dr. Joy Browne. Dr. Browne, thanks for being with us.

JOY BROWNE, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: You just want your own hot tub, right?

COOPER: No. No, believe me, no -- not hot tubs for moi.

Why do you think this show is so popular? This is hugely popular.

BROWNE: Yes. I think there are a couple of reasons. First of all, as point out, it really is fantasy but it's fantasy not of 2002, it's fantasy of 1952, when men were men and women were nincompoops. I mean, we're Barbie dolls.

And I think there's, as you point out, everybody looks all -- exactly the same.

COOPER: They're all of a certain type, yes.

BROWNE: Like clones. It's almost like Miss America. So there's that. You're sort of voting for your candidate. I think there's also that sense that Americans are kind of scared, I think, right now of the world. And so this is a way of kind of reverting to something that makes no sense. This is like comic book dating.

COOPER: But there is an element, too, of wanting, from the viewers perspective, of watching because you want to see these people just get totally dumped.

BROWNE: Yes. I do think that's -- because, remember in high school. See you were a boy, but I was a girl in high school and there was always like the prom queen and she was so cool and what you really wanted was something to happen to her and it happens. COOPER: I wanted it to be like Carrie with the blood pouring down.

BROWNE: It happens. This happens. Look, there are 25 women and every week one of those gorgeous, self-assured, perfect women is going to get dumped and you think, Yeah!

And I think there's also that possibility -- because if you hear these perfectly reasonable women fall apart because -- under -- beneath all of our grown-up exteriors is the heart that says, We believe in love at first sight. There will be some man and I will be so in love with him and he will be so in love with me and it will be captured on film and I'll be famous.

COOPER: Right.

It's amazing how popular this show is among the NEWSNIGHT staff even. A lot of the women on the staff, you know, were like -- know every little detail on this program. Do you think someone actually can find love on this kind of a program?

BROWNE: Yes and no, all right. The grownup part of me says, Are you kidding? How much more fraudulent can be be?

But the other part of me, the romantic part of me, says can you meet somebody anyplace. You can meet somebody on an airplane, you can meet somebody at the grocery store, you can meet somebody at a funeral. I mean, you can meet somebody...

COOPER: Funeral dates are the hottest.

BROWNE: They are. It's sort of gets you down to basics.

But, I mean, I think the thing is it's a combination of fantasy horrifying, saccharine that you're rooting both for and against somebody. How can this lose? Plus hot tubs.

COOPER: Why -- all right and this is the question that endlessly fascinates me. And I've worked on one of these kind of shows but why do people go on this? I mean, why would these women who -- you know, they all have jobs and they certainly are attractive and eligible. Why would they do this to themselves?

BROWNE: All right, do you know want to know what I really think? I think this is what I would call the Monica Lewinsky phenomenon in America.

COOPER: Uh-oh.

BROWNE: It used to be that people wanted to grow up and do good. Then people wanted to grow up and do good and be famous. Then people wanted to grow up and just be famous. And then people finally figured out that you have a much longer half life if you're naughty.

And so the idea of sort of being rejected or actually being accepted. I mean, all the women, the blonde bimbos, with all due respect or disrespect, who have somehow gotten thrown off a show, gotten thrown out of the Miss America pageant, slept with the boss, shredded documents, they're all famous.

I mean, those of us who just sort of work and, you know, are kind of ordinary, we just pass into history. So I think there's the possibility that -- plus I -- look, everybody -- every man and woman in America thinks sooner or later they will fall around the corner and fall instantly love. We believe in love at first sight. It's lust with potential. But that isn't what we call it. We call it love at first sight. It's instant, it's easy, it's fast, fabulous.

COOPER: I think the producers of the show probably initially thought that men would be the primary viewers of the show because of all the attractive women and stuff, but that has not turned out to be the case at all. It is hugely women.

BROWNE: I think it's the same reason that women forgave Bill Clinton and men didn't. Is why would men watch a man get to choose all these women? I think it's the women are feeling like, Gee, could be me or Ha, ha, ha. The nannner nanner phenomenon. Ha, ha, ha, she's better looking than I am and she got rejected. Yes, I mean, I think it's a woman's show.

COOPER: Did it surprise -- I mean, I guess you see people like breaking apart in front of you all the time. But it surprised me the extent to which these women instantly said they were -- I mean, literally, it was like one date to Napa -- and I don't know, I mean, maybe Napa's really hot. I don't know.

BROWNE: It's pretty fabulous, yeah.

COOPER: Yes, it must be great. But, I mean, they were saying they were in love.

BROWNE: Well, but you and I have both done TV and we've both watched that sort of odd phenomenon of normal people becoming weird in front of a camera. But it's the way people define themselves, especially people who feel disenfranchised. That they feel that nobody really notices them. I think there's a huge element of small town girl in this and even the ones who aren't from small town pretend they're from small town. I think we've taught people how to behave on television and they confuse television and life.

COOPER: They definitely start to do things for the cameras, even if it's subconscientiously, even if you tell them not to, it's hard for them to overcome that.

BROWNE: Everything is bigger than life, everything is larger than life. You have ever gone out with somebody who would go into a hot tub with you on a second date? Well, maybe you have.

COOPER: That's mandatory for date one.

BROWNE: If you haven't gone in the hot tub with me by date three, you're history. What is that?

COOPER: Well, Dr. Browne, thank you so much for being with us.

BROWNE: So are you going to be -- you know, there's a "Bachelorette" coming up. Are you going...

COOPER: There is a "Bachelorette," yes. I don't think I'm eligible. I don't think Sandy would like that. But "Bachelorette" is going to be on ABC...

BROWNE: The next one after that is we've got "Bachelor," "Bachelorette" and the next then married man, married woman who's looking to have a fling. It will be fabulous.

COOPER: The question I want to know is will on "Bachelorette" will all the men cry and break down?

BROWNE: I hope so, I doubt it. I think they'll just macho out and say who cared about her? She had bad breath.

COOPER: Dr. Browne, thanks a lot.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, remembering one of the great men of Hollywood. He didn't need a program like that. The life and legend of James Coburn.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Finally from us tonight, a farewell to the actor James Coburn who died yesterday at the age of 74. James Coburn made a hundred films from the late 1950s on. Many of those films were first rate, but even when they weren't, he always was. James Coburn had range.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rhett, Rhett, wake up. I'm talking to you. Look at me.

COOPER (voice-over): He could be rough as sand paper. Or smooth as silk. His snarl was as convincing as his grin. And he had style, whether he was being debonair or dangerous.

JAMES COBURN, ACTOR: (UNINTELLIGIBLE), bouillabaisse.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Huh?

COBURN: Sir, throughout the world in the preparation of bouillabaisse, the usual proportion to garlic to buttered saffron fennel is two cloves of garlic to a pinch of buttered saffron to a dash of fennel.

COOPER: Yes, he had a way with words. But he had a way without them as well.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You'll tell him. I wanted him there.

COOPER: He was a man among men when he wasn't a man among women. He seemed pretty comfortable in any company really. James Coburn was one of those guy who made the very hard thing he did look easy for four decades.

COBURN: Say, why does that eagle attack me?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's been trained to recognize and attack Americans.

COBURN: An anti-American eagle. It's diabolical.

What do I have to be grateful for, Captain?

COOPER: Thank you, Mr. Coburn. It was a heck of a ride.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: It certainly was. That is NEWSNIGHT for tonight. Thanks a lot for watching, I'll be here tomorrow. Hope you'll join me. Good night.

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