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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Bush Signs Homeland Security Bill Into Law

Aired November 25, 2002 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


AARON BROWN, HOST: Good evening, again. I'm Aaron Brown.
Here's what I hate about taking time off. All these things happen I'd like to write about and can't. I'd write about the flap between the Canadians and the president being referred to as a moron. That would have been fun to write about. And I would have liked to write about the Rush Limbaugh-Tom Daschle flap.

And then there was the anniversary of the death of President Kennedy and the tapes that NEWSNIGHT aired last week. I would have liked to have written about that too. But when you're off, someone else gets to write the words.

So I missed all those good things last week and all I got in return was a reminder, a pretty firm reminder that there's a huge difference between not bad and really, really good. The question asked over and over again by my companions last week was, are we going to war with Iraq? My companions worried about going to war and they worried about not going to war.

They worried the economy would take a hit if we did, and they worried the country would take a hit if we did not. They worried that the president seemed too willing to go it alone, and they worried that the rest of the world was too timid to stand up to a tyrant. I was struck by their ambivalence.

Pro golfers are not exactly screaming liberals. And maybe they are unusual in this respect. Maybe the country is more certain than my companions. But on the day when the inspectors arrived in Iraq, I suspect that they, and a good many others, liberals and conservative, mothers and fathers, are holding their breath.

On to the day's news. We begin, as always, with "The Whip." And tonight, "The Whip" begins with homeland security. John King, our Senior White House Correspondent is at the White House. John, a headline from you.

JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, that long debate at Department of Homeland Security is now a reality. The president signed the legislation into law today. The White House goal: put the department on a fast track. The new secretary hopefully will be in place in January. He says he can have the bulk of the department up and running in March. As the White House moves forward, still many skeptics that this will work.

BROWN: John, thank you. Back to you in a moment. On to the diplomacy involving the weapons inspectors, who did arrive in Iraq today. Richard Roth at the U.N. tonight. Richard, a headline, please.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, his team's back on the ground in Iraq. Chief Weapons Inspectors Hans Blix briefed the Security Council and says Iraq must provide convincing evidence that it no longer has weapons of mass destruction.

BROWN: Thank you, Richard.

To Baghdad next and the job at hand for the weapons inspectors. Nic Robertson there. Nic, a headline, please.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, already Tuesday morning here in Baghdad, 6:00 AM. Weapons inspectors about to get up. One more day of preparation here in their hastily reconstructed offices before they begin those first inspections Wednesday.

BROWN: Thank you, Nic. Back to you too.

And now back home and a break in a massive case of identity theft. Jason Carroll worked the story. Jason, a headline from you tonight.

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the U.S. attorney's office is calling it the largest case of identity theft in U.S. history. There are at least 30,000 victims nationwide, and it's all because of one man and his computer -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jason, thank you. Back to you and the rest in a moment.

Also coming up tonight, the latest rift opening up between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Did money from a Saudi princess end up in the hand of two 9/11 hijackers? We'll also talk with Senator Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who wants to know just how much of an ally Saudi Arabia really is.

Their news tonight from a place that exists only in our minds. The news from Lake Wobegon. We'll talk with the voice of Minnesota, Garrison Keillor, who is out with a couple of books. And a must read for political pundits. One from the 18th Century, that is. Bruce Morton tonight on an American treasure buried in some dusty corner of the Senate basement.

That's segment seven. And that's a look at where we're headed in the next 60 minutes.

We begin with the new Department of Homeland Security. "We have to be right a thousand times a day forever." That came from the man who has been picked to lead the new department, someone who has been working on homeland security since September 20, 2001, the former Governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Ridge. From the beginning, there's been criticism that Ridge was given the responsibility for preventing more terror, but no real authority to knock heads around in Washington. Now he has the responsibility, the authority and 171,000 heads. Again, our Senior White House Correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): This signature launched the new Department of Homeland Security and the most dramatic shakeup of the federal government in more than 50 years.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The continuing threat of terrorism, the threat of mass murder on our own soil will be met with a unified, effective response.

KING: The new department will have 171,000 employees from 22 existing federal agencies and an annual budget of nearly $40 billion. The goal is one command for missions now scattered across the federal government. The Customs Service, Coast Guard, Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Border Patrol and the New Transportation Security Agency will now all be in one department instead of three.

Defending against chemical and biological attacks falls under the new department, as do key functions of the nation's nuclear laboratories. It will take a year or more to be fully operational. And the president took pains to limit expectations.

BUSH: And in a free and open society, no department of government can completely guarantee our safety against ruthless killers who move and plot in shadows.

KING: How the new department deals with intelligence about terror threats is a lingering controversy. The department is charged with assessing the threat of terrorist attacks, but does not gather its own intelligence. That information will come from existing agencies, mainly the FBI and the CIA.

TOM RIDGE, DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: We have a specific mission, we get that information, we'll do our own analysis, and we're going to use the analysis to protect America.

KING: Mr. Bush made official a choice he settled on long ago. Former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge will be nominated to launch and lead the new department.

RIDGE: Yes, it will be tough to merge history and culture and people. We will be persistent, we will be relentless, and we'll get it done.

KING: Ridge has been White House homeland security adviser for the past year, working just a few steps down the hall from the Oval Office.

(END VIDEOTAPE) KING: And when Governor Ridge first took that job, President Bush was firmly opposed to creating this giant new cabinet agency. It was Ridge's own experience, on the job frustration with turf battles and bureaucracy that persuaded him to go to the president, make the case for the new department. Governor Ridge, soon to be Secretary Ridge, says now he can have it up and running -- the big chunks anyway -- ready by March -- Aaron.

BROWN: And just a button (ph) on that idea. Was there or was there not, I'm not sure, bills moving through Congress or at least talk in Congress that would have created the department despite the president's opposition?

KING: Some Democrats in Congress were out in favor of this idea not long after the September 11 attacks. The president could have asked Republican allies in the Congress to block it. That would have been a tough political position for the president to be in. They were prepared to try and do that until Governor Ridge last spring went to the president and said I'm having a nightmare trying to get this job done, we have to put this under one roof.

BROWN: And on the intelligence question, has there ever been a discussion that you know of at the White House that there ought be a domestic intelligence-gathering agency, an agency separate from the FBI that's purpose is just that?

KING: Months of discussion. And, in fact, Aaron, that discussion continues. Governor Ridge -- again, soon to be Secretary Ridge -- recently traveled to Great Britain. Britain has the M-5 (ph) domestic intelligence agency.

The plan right now is to try this. Try to see if the CIA, the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency all cooperate with the new department. See if this new type of analysis works. If it doesn't, if there is frustration, there is a backup plan to create another agency, a separate domestic intelligence agency to spy on Americans here at home.

BROWN: John, thank you. Senior White House Correspondent John King tonight.

On to Iraq now. One of the more intriguing things that the chief U.N. weapons inspectors said today, Hans Blix said to Iraq, in effect, prove you don't have weapons of mass destruction. Blix was back at the U.N. today, as a team of inspectors made it into Baghdad ready to get their hands dirty for the first time there since 1998 searching for any traces of weapons.

The nitty gritty of that in a moment. The diplomacy comes first. Richard Roth joins us again from the United Nations. Richard, good evening to you.

ROTH: Good evening, Aaron. Hans Blix is kind of instead of being a chief weapons inspector, like a diplomatic messenger between Baghdad and the Security Council. Blix briefed the Council on his visit to Iraq last week. The chief inspector said full inspections will start Wednesday, as expected, and by Christmas he hopes to have up to 100 inspectors on the ground.

Blix said Baghdad is cooperating for now, and intends full cooperation, but when it comes to those controversial presidential sites now open for full access to inspectors, perhaps that might be a different story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HANS BLIX, U.N. CHIEF WEAPONS INSPECTOR: We said that we will inspect all sites on an equal basis, as the Security Council has said very explicitly. The Iraqi said that they are intent to cooperate in all respects under the resolution. They did remark, however, that ministerial buildings and ministries and presidential sites are not the same things as factories, and that is undeniable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: Asked if he is getting pressure from the U.S. to be more confrontational in his approach with the inspectors, Blix bristled and said, we get recommendations from a lot of countries. He said, "We may not be the brightest people, but we're not in anybody's pocket."

One diplomat, Aaron, said the atmosphere in the Security Council full of suspense. Everybody waiting to see if and how Baghdad tries to cooperate with that December 8 deadline for a full disclosure policy on weapons of mass destruction -- Aaron.

BROWN: We're two weeks away from that. Have said anything that suggests that they, on the 8th of December, will acknowledge having these weapons?

ROTH: They have said nothing except a very caustic, bitter letter over the weekend, which accused the Security Council of using the resolution on the inspectors to commit an act of war against Iraq. And again, Baghdad denied it has weapons of mass destruction.

Right now, the inspectors say Baghdad is a little confused on this letter they want to send back on the weapons of mass destruction. Who will read it, what will be in it? That kind of thing.

BROWN: So the Iraqi government is looking to the U.N. for clarification of specifically what this letter means, this declaration means?

ROTH: That's right. And the chief weapons inspector said he told them full disclosure of everything. Even if you say no, go back again and look at your stores, look at your stocks, Hans Blix said.

BROWN: Richard, thank you. Richard Roth at the United Nations tonight.

Now to the challenge facing the inspectors on the ground in Iraq. Four years is a very long time, especially for someone like Saddam Hussein, thought by most everyone to be a real innovator in the art of concealment. It's believed that Iraq has moved some weapons sites into crowded urban areas. Discovering them, one expert said, would be like something out of "The Man from Uncle." An ordinary looking storefront that turns into a weapons lab when you step inside. If only discovering them was as easy as it looks on TV. It's not. We go back to Baghdad and CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): The 11 missile, chemical and biological weapons experts and six nuclear scientists accompanied for the first time by uniformed and armed U.N. Security guards. They're due to begin their first inspections Wednesday. That tight schedule unchanged, despite a 15-page protest letter sent by Iraq's foreign minister to the United Nations to complain the U.N. resolution authorizing inspections could be used by the U.S. as a pretext for war.

MELISSA FLEMING, SPOKESWOMAN, INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY: We have no expectations. We come in here with, let's say, hope that things will go well this time and that we will get what is required of Iraq in our mandate Security Council Resolution 1441.

ROBERTSON: Over the last week, an advanced team of almost 40 technicians has been installing communications and computer equipment, as well as refurbishing laboratories at the U.N. inspection teams' headquarters. Although much work remains to be done, some vehicles and office space has been readied for these first inspectors.

Likely first to be targeted by the U.N., dual use sites, such as al Nasa (ph), north of Baghdad, where inspectors believe equipment used for civilian industrial processes could also have been used to work on weapons of mass destruction. Inspectors will check monitoring equipment, such as cameras installed by inspection teams in the 1990s and replace any found faulty.

The aim for these inspectors, to figure out exactly what has happened in Iraq over the past four years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON: Now the inspectors say they can go to any site at any time. They're not ruling out presidential palaces, those most contentious of sites. However, Hans Blix has called this a warming up period, at least for this initial team. So, for right now, Aaron, it does seem to be a softly approach.

BROWN: How much of this are we going to see? How much of this is going to go on in public or with the media present?

ROBERTSON: Aaron, at this time that's very, very difficult to tell. Certainly we don't have any indication that we will be able to get actually right inside those sites with the inspectors. There's no indication that we will be given permission to do that

Once the inspectors take over a site, it becomes their territory and they control it. It would be up to them if we were going to get in, see what goes on there.

BROWN: And do we have any feel yet for the protocol of all of this? Are they going to, on any given day, simply go where they want? Or will they give the Iraqis a day's notice, or a half a day's notice or a week's notice? Do we know?

ROBERTSON: We do. Absolutely no notice at all. Period, full stop. No notice.

What the inspectors will do is, once they drive out of their gates of their compound in the morning, they expect to be followed by what they call Iraqi minders (ph), what the Iraqi government likes to call guides. Now the role of these government officials will be to tail the inspectors until the inspectors get to their designated site.

When they get there, these Iraqi government officials go to the front of the line, they tell the guards at the site this is the inspection team, let them in. The inspectors go in, supposedly these Iraqi government officials wait outside of the gate for the inspectors to finish their jobs.

BROWN: We'll see how it goes. Nic, thank you. Nic Robertson in Baghdad tonight. Thank you.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, we'll talk about the continued strain in the relations with Saudi Arabia and other things, too, with Alabama Senator Richard Shelby joins us in a bit. And then we'll meet an Arab college student in this country who says he confessed to a crime because his family was threatened by the FBI.

And later tonight, a look at an amazing discovery in the boughs of the U.S. Capitol building. Some documents from the first days of this democracy. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We have on the program talked for months about the complex -- we use that word to be nice -- the complex relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Each side wants something from the other. The United States largely ignores some quaint little Saudi customs like mutilation or subjugating women, because the United States wants friends in the region and oil now more than ever.

What is hard to ignore is that so many of the hijackers were Saudis, and now accusations that money from an important Saudi family found its way to two of those hijackers as they went about their business of planning and executing the mass murder of 3,000 people on September 11. In a moment, we'll talk to Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, an important voice in matters like these. First, today's developments from State Department Correspondent Andrea Koppel.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On Capitol Hill, some U.S. legislators, Democrats and Republicans alike, are questioning just how good of an ally Saudi Arabia really is.

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R), ALABAMA: Let's follow the money. If we follow the money, we're going to get to the truth. And I think the truth will not be very nice.

KOPPEL: Firing back on morning news programs, the Saudi government seized the offensive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've heard these charges. They're absolutely outrageous. They're preposterous.

KOPPEL: The foreign policy adviser to the Saudi Crown Prince adamantly denied that the wife of Prince Bandar, the long-time Saudi ambassador to Washington, had knowingly donated thousands of dollars which may have ended up supporting two of the 9/11 hijackers.

ADEL AL JUBAIR, SAUDI FOREIGN POLICY ADVISER: We have realized over the years that people have now taken advantage of our charity, of our generosity, of our naivete, if you want to call it that, of our innocence. But those days are coming to an end.

KOPPEL: With a possible war in Iraq just around the corner, and Riyadh's reluctance to support military action, the news comes at a critical moment in U.S.-Saudi relations. Already strained after the 9/11 attacks revealed 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens.

But publicly, at least, the Bush administration is sticking to its carefully crafted script, refusing to criticize, calling the kingdom a good partner in the war on terrorism.

RICHARD BOUCHER, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: We believe the Saudi response on matters involving the war on terrorism has been very strong. There's always more to be done and there is much more that we need to do together with the Saudis in finding and stopping the funding sources for international terrorism.

KOPPEL (on camera): The State Department is quick to point out that it is the FBI that's heading up this investigation. Nevertheless, one frustrated (UNINTELLIGIBLE) told CNN "This just isn't the time to be doing this right now. Maybe if they had hard evidence." "Oh, by the way," he quipped, "they don't have hard evidence." Andrea Koppel, CNN, at the State Department.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We're joined for more on this now by Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, who is the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senator, it's good to see you.

SHELBY: Thanks, Aaron.

BROWN: Let's, I guess, cut to it, as they say. Do you think the administration has been unwilling to investigate fully the Saudis because it simply does not want to offend the Saudis?

SHELBY: Well, I don't believe any administration would go out of their way, whether it's the Bush, Clinton, Reagan, you name it administration, to offend the Saudis. I believe that what we're looking at is perhaps deeper than this. I thought for a long time that our relationship with the Saudi Arabia was more transactional than a real, pure ally, although we've tried hard to make them an ally.

They have a lot of oil, we have a lot of power, and it's worked up to a point. But I believe and my colleague, Senator Gramm, who is chairman of the committee now on the intelligence committee in the Senate, we believe that we ought to follow the money. That the FBI and anybody else, the Treasury Department of the United States government, ought to follow wherever the trail leads. It will tell us a lot.

I don't know of my own knowledge tonight whether some of the royal family actually knowingly gave money to terrorists, but we do know that a lot of the Saudis and perhaps people in the royal family have given money to a lot of charities that are fronts or have given money to the terrorists that have done us harm. I think we need to find out the truth. We should turn over every rock.

I think the relationship is what people need to know. What kind of a relationship do we have? What will we have in the future? We had a lot of victims of terrorism and we're going to have more. Is it going to be financed by people who purport to be our allies, or is it going to be something else? We don't know, Aaron, but we need to know.

BROWN: Given what you describe as a transactional relationship between the Saudis and the United states, if it were to turn out that members of the Saudi royal family were knowingly or not gave money that ended up in the hands of hijackers, what does the country do about it anyway, because the country still needs the oil?

SHELBY: Well, I think that we should not look the other way. There are a lot of things we can do about it. You know the Saudis need us as probably as much as we need them. They have the commodity, oil, but we have the power and they know it. I think what we've got to do is find out the truth.

BROWN: And do we -- does the government appear to be interested in finding out the truth?

SHELBY: Well, they should be. I'm not going to judge the administration on that, yet I think that we need to push and we're going to do this on the Senate Intelligence Committee. We're going to push the FBI and others not to look the other way, but to get to the truth. We owe that to the victims and the victims' families in the U.S. And the victims to the future, just as sure will come.

BROWN: Why, by the way, are you so sure there are more victims to come?

SHELBY: Well, I wish there would not be. But I think even the president has told the American people this war is going to go on for many years, the war against terrorism. We have thousands of terrorists dispersed all over the world. Aaron, we have a lot of would-be terrorists in our country. The FBI has been relentlessly hunting down some, but I think they have to do a better job.

BROWN: This came up in our conversation with John King earlier in the program. I don't know if you heard it. Do you have a feeling, one way or the other, about whether the country needs a domestic intelligence-gathering agency, one that is separate from either the CIA or the FBI?

SHELBY: Well, that's a good question. And I think I did listen to the remarks, and we have had some hearings on that in the Senate Intelligence Committee. Do we go the route of the British, which is called MI-5 (ph), a domestic intelligence service that is not a police force? Or do we leave it with the FBI?

Today, our domestic intelligence service is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Can they do the job? Will they do the job? We're not sure. I think we should give them the opportunity, we should give them every chance, but if they can't do the job, we either will have to set up a freestanding domestic security agency, which scares a lot of people, or shift that over to the Homeland Security Department.

BROWN: Are you one of those people it scares or not?

SHELBY: Well, sometimes I worry about constitutional liberties, as all Americans do and should, and what is the proper balance. I think that's a common trait in all of us.

BROWN: Senator Shelby, we appreciate your time and have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thanks for joining us.

SHELBY: Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you, sir. Richard Shelby, Democratic Senator from Alabama and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT later, another distinguished guest, Garrison Keillor. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) from the great state of Minnesota -- and it is.

Up next, three alleged criminals and their 30,000 victims. This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: This is a story that only gets more troubling the more you think about it. For starters, imagine that right now someone you don't know from Adam is signing your name to a hefty credit card charge or is typing your name on an online order form for who knows what, a diamond ring, an airplane, a ticket to Hong Kong, a giant flat screen TV or renting a car somewhere in your name. Or checking into a hotel somewhere as you.

About 30,000 Americans don't have to imagine such a thing, because apparently it has already happened to them. Here's CNN's Jason Carroll. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARROLL (voice-over): Federal prosecutors say this man , Phillip Cummings (ph), used his computer keyboard to pick the pockets of thousands of consumers.

JAMES COMEY, U.S. ATTORNEY: We have stumbled upon something that is bigger than any of us imagined in terms of the 10's of thousands of people ripped off here.

CARROLL: Cummings and two other men stole the identities of 30,000 people across the country and sold the identities on the street for $60 apiece. Prosecutors say the scheme started in March 2000 after Cummings left his job here at Teledata Communications Inc., TCi. TCi Software allows companies to access consumer credit files from the big three reporting agencies, Experian, Equifax and Trans Union. Cummings (ph) kept the passwords and access codes when he left TCi, and simply used his laptop to get whatever information he needed, prosecutors said. The financial fallout -- victims' losses expected to top more than $2.5 million.

COMEY: Bank accounts of victims were depleted, addresses were changed on accounts, new checks were ordered, new ATM cards were ordered, new credit cards were ordered, new lines of credit were opened and quickly drained.

CARROLL: Financial institutions in several states that used TCi were defrauded out of millions. The one hit hardest -- Ford Motor Credit in Michigan. The company tipped off investigators eight months ago after discovering someone fraudulently used a code to obtain 15,000 credit records.

KEVIN DONOVAN, FBI: This case is a perfect example of how technology is a double edge sword for law enforcement. The defendants took advantage of insiders access to sensitive information. In much the same way a gang of thieves might get the combination to the bank vault from an insider.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARROLL: Cummings, is cooperation with authorities, and he's currently out on bail. There are still a number of question about this case. Namely, how would TCi former employee's still have access to so much sensitive information. TCi did release a statement saying they are cooperation with authorities and it would be inappropriate to comment any further -- Aaron.

BROWN: That's a lot of people, 30,000 people.

CARROLL: A lot of folks out of dough.

BROWN: Thank you, Jason. Jason Carroll tonight.

A few stories we need to get in, as well. The first of them about fans behaving badly, quite badly as it turns out. Ohio authorities today looked over the videotape trying to identify more of the people who overturned cars, set fires, threw bottles at police after the Ohio State football team beat Michigan on Saturday. Police have arrested 49 people. The university today said it may expel students who rioted.

The shuttle Endeavour arrived at the international space station today, with new crew. Endeavour will stay docked a full week so the crew can put up another girder for the space station. The shuttle to longer than usually to dock, we need one astronaut to joke, looks like you guys fly that thing like you stole it.

And a big birthday for the Bush twins today. Jenna and Barbara Bush turned 21. They're in Texas where they'll spend Thanksgiving weekend with the folks. Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, we'll talk to fellow Minnesota Garrison Keillor.

And up next, the strange tale of an Arab student and a false confession. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: And coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the Arab student and the confession that wasn't. Well be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

This is exactly the kind of nightmare that Alfred Hitchcock made maybe a dozen films about. The air tight casing in some guy who is as innocent as they come, but is in the wrong place at the wrong at the wrong time. In this case the wrong place for 33-year-old Egyptian engineering student, was a hotel across the street from the World Trade Center, and the wrong time, and it really was the wrong time was the 11th of September.

Then circumstance piles on circumstance, coincidence on coincidence, more and more fingers point his way. And finally, suspicions turns into certainty except that it's all dead wrong, according to unsealed FBI report, dead wrong. Including the poor saps own confession.

The rest of story from CNN's Deborah Feyerick.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The confession came following a polygraph test. This student said a pilot's radio never seen before was his, that he had stolen it. Abdallah Higazy says he made the phony admission because he was threatened, claiming the FBI agent giving the test told him...-

ABDALLAH HIGAZY, FORMER 9/11 DETAINEE: If you don't cooperate, the FBI will make your brother upstate live in scrutiny, and make sure the Egyptian security gives your family hell.

FEYERICK (on camera): Did you believe that he could make good on the threats against your brother and your family?

HIGAZY: I was 100 percent convinced that he can do something to my brother. As for my family, the first thing that crossed my mind was, oh my god, if whoever is setting me up set me up here, what in god's name could they make me appear as in Egypt?

FEYERICK (voice-over): Higazy was being set up by a wanna-be hero. A security guard at the Millennium Hotel, across from the Trade Center towers, admitted lying to FBI agents about finding the radio in the man's locked room safe. Higazy said the FBI told him two other people could back up that's story. That's why he believed the FBI threatened his agent.

HIGAZY: Either way I look at it, the device from their perspective is mine. So if I confess or if I say it's mine, my family is out of it. If I doesn't confess, my family could be in danger.

FEYERICK: After a month in a high-security jail, Higazy was released, all charges against him dropped.

HIGAZY: I'm happy I'm out. Nothing tops freedom!

FEYERICK: So what about the confession? An investigation by justice officials clears the FBI of any misconduct.

COMEY: I'm very proud of the way our office and the FBI conducted itself in the Higazy case.

FEYERICK: The report, unsealed in part at CNN's request, says he failed a polygraph test. His answers about a possible role in the 9/11 attacks labeled deceptive by the FBI polygraph taker.

ROBERT DUNN, HIGAZY DEFENSE ATTORNEY: We know he didn't have anything to do the advice or the attack. What does that say about the quality of whatever he was doing?

FEYERICK: Prosecutors say he waited 11 days before telling officials with the alleged threat, and they say Higazy could have stopped the interview at any time but didn't. Higazy never signed the report containing the apparent confession. He said he was so nervous during the polygraph test he almost fainted, completely forgetting his lawyer was just outside the door. Deborah Feyerick, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A couple of other items from around the world tonight, starting with the latest on a shooting incident that happened in Kuwait, a U.S. soldiers shot last week by a Kuwaiti policeman said the man had accused him of speeding before he fired on him and a colleague. They were both wounded. The other soldier is still in intensive care. The government of Kuwait said the suspect had been extradited for questioning from Saudi Arabia. He fled there after the shooting.

Bad weather off the coast of Hong Kong is making it harder to put out a fire aboard a tanker carrying 20,000 tons of fuel. The fire broke out on Saturday in the engine room. Nobody's hurt.

And in London, the Miss World contestants settled in after relocating from Nigeria. That's a strange story. U.S. contestant said today she hadn't seen any of the rioting that killed hundreds of people, and today the pageant organizers said the contest was not to blame for the violence, which broke out after a newspaper said the Prophet Mohammed probably would have married one of the contestants were he alive today.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the story of the lost ledgers of the U.S. Senate. And up next, fellow Minnesotan, Garrison Keillor, joins us. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Once many years ago on the radio, I said lutefisk was perhaps the worst single tasting food ever devised. In most parts of the country, that would have left people scratching their heads, but I wasn't in most parts of the country. I was home in Minnesota. In Minnesota, I had either committed a great sin or spoken a great truth. In any case, it consumed four hours on the radio. Alas, I wasn't destined to be Minnesota's great radio star. A lot of reasons for that, not the least of which was talent. That title clearly goes to Garrison Keillor, who is of Minnesota Public Radio and NPR's "Prairie Home Companion."

Keillor has two books on the shelves these days. "Good Poems," the first volume is called, selected and introduced by Mr. Keillor, and then there is a novel that is newly out in paperback.

Nice to meet you.

GARRISON KEILLOR, HOST, "A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION": Good to see you, Mr. Brown.

BROWN: Welcome to the program.

KEILLOR: Thank you. Sorry you had bad lutefisk.

BROWN: All lutefisk is bad lutefisk, isn't it?

KEILLOR: Where did you go to get your lutefisk?

BROWN: Can you explain what it is, what lutefisk is?

KEILLOR: It's a dried cod. It's been dried...

BROWN: In like acid or something?

KEILLOR: Lye. Lye. Ordinary lye. We wash our hands with it, and then it's soaked to reconstitute it, and then the lye is washed off. And if it's cooked by the right person, an older woman with her socks rolled down to her ankles, it's really good. But you know, there's good lutefisk and not so good.

BROWN: I've never had the good stuff.

KEILLOR: I'm so sorry.

BROWN: Never had the good stuff.

KEILLOR: Come back home.

BROWN: Why poetry?

KEILLOR: Why poetry?

BROWN: Yeah.

KEILLOR: Because it's crucial. Because it's where our language reposes. Poets are the guardians of language.

BROWN: These aren't poems that you wrote, these are the poems that you like that are in the poetry book, right?

KEILLOR: I don't like my own poems, and so I collected other people's poems.

BROWN: Off the top of your head, read me a poem.

KEILLOR: "When a disgrace with fortune in men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, and think upon myself and curse my fate, wishing me like to one more rich in hope, featured like him, like him with friends possessed, desiring this man's art and that man's scope, with what I most enjoy, content at least. Yet in these thoughts, myself almost despising; happily, I think on thee" -- not thee but somebody else -- "happily I think on thee and then my state like to the lark at break of day arising from sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate for thy sweet love" -- not thy but somebody else -- "for thy love remembered such wealth brings that I would scorn to change my lot with kings."

BROWN: Very good. I mean, just for a moment I thought I was falling in love, so that was pretty cool. You know on the income tax form where it says occupation, what do you write?

KEILLOR: Writer.

BROWN: Writer. Not performer, not...?

KEILLOR: No.

BROWN: What's the difference between a writer and a storyteller?

KEILLOR: I have no idea what a storyteller is. My uncle Bill was a storyteller, but he didn't get paid for it, but he was a terrific storyteller. I'm a writer, and I write. I type and hand things in, and get paid for it.

BROWN: And the performance of it is -- if you didn't do that anymore, if you weren't on the radio, that would be OK as long as you could write?

KEILLOR: I would write. I would write for you. I would write this.

BROWN: You would write news copy? KEILLOR: Of course.

BROWN: What was the first writing job you had?

KEILLOR: I wrote sports for the "Analka (ph) Herald." And I wrote...

BROWN: Outside of Minneapolis.

KEILLOR: ... the football and the basketball games for $2.50 for home games and $3 for away.

BROWN: You had travel money. And how old were you when you did that?

KEILLOR: I was 15.

BROWN: Were you a happy kid in Minnesota growing up?

KEILLOR: No, but I was happy writing. I was happy reading books. No, I wasn't happy with other kids.

BROWN: Why?

KEILLOR: Because I just was odd sort of a...

BROWN: You didn't fit?

KEILLOR: No, not at all. My hands stuck out at my wrists and my pants were too short and I wore half-rim glasses. That was a terrible thing socially, you know, with the horn rim on top, and I had no social grace whatsoever.

BROWN: Well, you showed them, didn't you?

KEILLOR: Barely have some now.

BROWN: You want to talk about this political flap you created?

KEILLOR: Well, no, but I certainly can.

BROWN: You wrote -- I would describe it as an angry column about the senator-elect from Minnesota, Norm Coleman. You basically called him a fraud.

KEILLOR: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) angry diatribe.

BROWN: Called him a fraud.

KEILLOR: A screed. It's very seldom that one gets to write out of pure anger, especially at my age. You feel it so seldom. So when you do, it seems to me you ought to take advantage of it.

BROWN: And you did. You unloaded on the guy.

KEILLOR: I wrote a piece for Salon.com. They asked me to write it. And the amazing thing about it to me is the power of the Internet and all of those people who just lift this piece of passionate writing and they send it off to all of their friends, and they send it off.

We have no idea how far this gets around the country, but this thing was bouncing back to me within days from people I barely know. I really was astonished. We don't have any measurement for that, do we?

BROWN: Do you think -- do you think the column -- the piece was a bit harsh. You talked about his family in the piece. Do you think it was a bit...

KEILLOR: It was an angry diatribe against a very beautifully packaged politician. And one could have written in different ways but I come from St. Paul. We're a small town, we know people. And so that's how I wrote it.

BROWN: Do you think you'll do the radio program forever or do you see a time when you'll step away from it?

KEILLOR: I think I'll do it for another five years. It's a lot of fun. It's a great deal. It's you know, I get to play a cowboy. I get to play a private eye. I get to smoke a cigar on the radio. I don't smoke a cigar.

BROWN: Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming in.

KEILLOR: Good to see you.

BROWN: Please come back.

KEILLOR: Thanks.

BROWN: Garrison Keillor. We'll be right back after a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: You know what a pain it is keeping track of financial records, old checkbook stubs, heating oil receipts, phone bills, chits, tear-offs, figures scrolled on napkins and matchbook covers too. You can't throw this stuff away; the IRS may ask to see it one of these days, but you just can't have it taking up space on your desk. So you stow it somewhere. Behind the furnace maybe. Down in the basement. And inevitably, you forget about it.

Guess what? Happens in Washington too. Here's CNN's Bruce Morton.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's the Senate sub-basement. Down the narrow stairs, avoid the file cabinet, hang a left, then a right. And you're in a cluttered full of old health insurance forms and, Claire Amoruso and Doug Connolly learned, buried treasure. Senate ledgers dating back to the second Congress, 1791. CLAIRE AMORUSO, DEMOCRATIC POLICY COMMITTEE: We opened one of the more current ones first and then we started looking around. And then we found the earliest one and knew we had found something very special.

DOUGLAS CONNOLLY, DEMOCRATIC POLICY COMMITTEE: We were holding something in our hands that has, you know, John Adams' name on it. We started turning the pages and see John Adams again and again and we began to wonder, Can this be real or is this simply a copy? By the time we go to Thomas Jefferson, I mean that's a signature everybody knows. And that's the point we realized, We have to tell somebody about this.

MORTON: They were working nearby and just got curious.A day later this stuff would have been thrown out.

RICHARD BAKER, SENATE HISTORIAN: These books, you know, survived an awful lot. They survived the trip down from Philadelphia in 1800, they survived the British burning the capitol in 1814. They survived the Civil War. They almost didn't survive this time.

MORTON: The first book, 1791 to 1881 is the valuable one.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE (D), SOUTH DAKOTA: For the first several Congresses, before the secretary of the Senate could actually pay senators, he had to get the vice president of the United States, the president of the Senate or the president pro tem of the Senate to sign the payroll. So this book actually contains actual signatures of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. It may well be the only document in existence that bears the signatures of all three of those giants of American history. It is literally priceless.

MORTON: And it tells us what the Senate was like, annual budget way under $100,000. Senators got $6 a day when they were in session. Travel, it could take days to get to D.C. from New England, was 30 cents a mile. CNN pays 36 and a half now, but the Senate's 30 had to include food and lodging or saddle (ph) and horse.

They kept trying to give themselves a raise and an annual salary, but voters objected.

All that we almost lost with the book.

BAKER: In 1982, they closed up shop in the Capitol -- the dispersing office did and moved over to the Senate office building and forgot to take their books.

MORTON: Makes you wonder what else is down there, doesn't it?

Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Good to see you and we'll see you tomorrow. Goodnight for all of us.

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







Aired November 25, 2002 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, HOST: Good evening, again. I'm Aaron Brown.
Here's what I hate about taking time off. All these things happen I'd like to write about and can't. I'd write about the flap between the Canadians and the president being referred to as a moron. That would have been fun to write about. And I would have liked to write about the Rush Limbaugh-Tom Daschle flap.

And then there was the anniversary of the death of President Kennedy and the tapes that NEWSNIGHT aired last week. I would have liked to have written about that too. But when you're off, someone else gets to write the words.

So I missed all those good things last week and all I got in return was a reminder, a pretty firm reminder that there's a huge difference between not bad and really, really good. The question asked over and over again by my companions last week was, are we going to war with Iraq? My companions worried about going to war and they worried about not going to war.

They worried the economy would take a hit if we did, and they worried the country would take a hit if we did not. They worried that the president seemed too willing to go it alone, and they worried that the rest of the world was too timid to stand up to a tyrant. I was struck by their ambivalence.

Pro golfers are not exactly screaming liberals. And maybe they are unusual in this respect. Maybe the country is more certain than my companions. But on the day when the inspectors arrived in Iraq, I suspect that they, and a good many others, liberals and conservative, mothers and fathers, are holding their breath.

On to the day's news. We begin, as always, with "The Whip." And tonight, "The Whip" begins with homeland security. John King, our Senior White House Correspondent is at the White House. John, a headline from you.

JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, that long debate at Department of Homeland Security is now a reality. The president signed the legislation into law today. The White House goal: put the department on a fast track. The new secretary hopefully will be in place in January. He says he can have the bulk of the department up and running in March. As the White House moves forward, still many skeptics that this will work.

BROWN: John, thank you. Back to you in a moment. On to the diplomacy involving the weapons inspectors, who did arrive in Iraq today. Richard Roth at the U.N. tonight. Richard, a headline, please.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, his team's back on the ground in Iraq. Chief Weapons Inspectors Hans Blix briefed the Security Council and says Iraq must provide convincing evidence that it no longer has weapons of mass destruction.

BROWN: Thank you, Richard.

To Baghdad next and the job at hand for the weapons inspectors. Nic Robertson there. Nic, a headline, please.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, already Tuesday morning here in Baghdad, 6:00 AM. Weapons inspectors about to get up. One more day of preparation here in their hastily reconstructed offices before they begin those first inspections Wednesday.

BROWN: Thank you, Nic. Back to you too.

And now back home and a break in a massive case of identity theft. Jason Carroll worked the story. Jason, a headline from you tonight.

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the U.S. attorney's office is calling it the largest case of identity theft in U.S. history. There are at least 30,000 victims nationwide, and it's all because of one man and his computer -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jason, thank you. Back to you and the rest in a moment.

Also coming up tonight, the latest rift opening up between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Did money from a Saudi princess end up in the hand of two 9/11 hijackers? We'll also talk with Senator Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who wants to know just how much of an ally Saudi Arabia really is.

Their news tonight from a place that exists only in our minds. The news from Lake Wobegon. We'll talk with the voice of Minnesota, Garrison Keillor, who is out with a couple of books. And a must read for political pundits. One from the 18th Century, that is. Bruce Morton tonight on an American treasure buried in some dusty corner of the Senate basement.

That's segment seven. And that's a look at where we're headed in the next 60 minutes.

We begin with the new Department of Homeland Security. "We have to be right a thousand times a day forever." That came from the man who has been picked to lead the new department, someone who has been working on homeland security since September 20, 2001, the former Governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Ridge. From the beginning, there's been criticism that Ridge was given the responsibility for preventing more terror, but no real authority to knock heads around in Washington. Now he has the responsibility, the authority and 171,000 heads. Again, our Senior White House Correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): This signature launched the new Department of Homeland Security and the most dramatic shakeup of the federal government in more than 50 years.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The continuing threat of terrorism, the threat of mass murder on our own soil will be met with a unified, effective response.

KING: The new department will have 171,000 employees from 22 existing federal agencies and an annual budget of nearly $40 billion. The goal is one command for missions now scattered across the federal government. The Customs Service, Coast Guard, Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Border Patrol and the New Transportation Security Agency will now all be in one department instead of three.

Defending against chemical and biological attacks falls under the new department, as do key functions of the nation's nuclear laboratories. It will take a year or more to be fully operational. And the president took pains to limit expectations.

BUSH: And in a free and open society, no department of government can completely guarantee our safety against ruthless killers who move and plot in shadows.

KING: How the new department deals with intelligence about terror threats is a lingering controversy. The department is charged with assessing the threat of terrorist attacks, but does not gather its own intelligence. That information will come from existing agencies, mainly the FBI and the CIA.

TOM RIDGE, DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: We have a specific mission, we get that information, we'll do our own analysis, and we're going to use the analysis to protect America.

KING: Mr. Bush made official a choice he settled on long ago. Former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge will be nominated to launch and lead the new department.

RIDGE: Yes, it will be tough to merge history and culture and people. We will be persistent, we will be relentless, and we'll get it done.

KING: Ridge has been White House homeland security adviser for the past year, working just a few steps down the hall from the Oval Office.

(END VIDEOTAPE) KING: And when Governor Ridge first took that job, President Bush was firmly opposed to creating this giant new cabinet agency. It was Ridge's own experience, on the job frustration with turf battles and bureaucracy that persuaded him to go to the president, make the case for the new department. Governor Ridge, soon to be Secretary Ridge, says now he can have it up and running -- the big chunks anyway -- ready by March -- Aaron.

BROWN: And just a button (ph) on that idea. Was there or was there not, I'm not sure, bills moving through Congress or at least talk in Congress that would have created the department despite the president's opposition?

KING: Some Democrats in Congress were out in favor of this idea not long after the September 11 attacks. The president could have asked Republican allies in the Congress to block it. That would have been a tough political position for the president to be in. They were prepared to try and do that until Governor Ridge last spring went to the president and said I'm having a nightmare trying to get this job done, we have to put this under one roof.

BROWN: And on the intelligence question, has there ever been a discussion that you know of at the White House that there ought be a domestic intelligence-gathering agency, an agency separate from the FBI that's purpose is just that?

KING: Months of discussion. And, in fact, Aaron, that discussion continues. Governor Ridge -- again, soon to be Secretary Ridge -- recently traveled to Great Britain. Britain has the M-5 (ph) domestic intelligence agency.

The plan right now is to try this. Try to see if the CIA, the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency all cooperate with the new department. See if this new type of analysis works. If it doesn't, if there is frustration, there is a backup plan to create another agency, a separate domestic intelligence agency to spy on Americans here at home.

BROWN: John, thank you. Senior White House Correspondent John King tonight.

On to Iraq now. One of the more intriguing things that the chief U.N. weapons inspectors said today, Hans Blix said to Iraq, in effect, prove you don't have weapons of mass destruction. Blix was back at the U.N. today, as a team of inspectors made it into Baghdad ready to get their hands dirty for the first time there since 1998 searching for any traces of weapons.

The nitty gritty of that in a moment. The diplomacy comes first. Richard Roth joins us again from the United Nations. Richard, good evening to you.

ROTH: Good evening, Aaron. Hans Blix is kind of instead of being a chief weapons inspector, like a diplomatic messenger between Baghdad and the Security Council. Blix briefed the Council on his visit to Iraq last week. The chief inspector said full inspections will start Wednesday, as expected, and by Christmas he hopes to have up to 100 inspectors on the ground.

Blix said Baghdad is cooperating for now, and intends full cooperation, but when it comes to those controversial presidential sites now open for full access to inspectors, perhaps that might be a different story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HANS BLIX, U.N. CHIEF WEAPONS INSPECTOR: We said that we will inspect all sites on an equal basis, as the Security Council has said very explicitly. The Iraqi said that they are intent to cooperate in all respects under the resolution. They did remark, however, that ministerial buildings and ministries and presidential sites are not the same things as factories, and that is undeniable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: Asked if he is getting pressure from the U.S. to be more confrontational in his approach with the inspectors, Blix bristled and said, we get recommendations from a lot of countries. He said, "We may not be the brightest people, but we're not in anybody's pocket."

One diplomat, Aaron, said the atmosphere in the Security Council full of suspense. Everybody waiting to see if and how Baghdad tries to cooperate with that December 8 deadline for a full disclosure policy on weapons of mass destruction -- Aaron.

BROWN: We're two weeks away from that. Have said anything that suggests that they, on the 8th of December, will acknowledge having these weapons?

ROTH: They have said nothing except a very caustic, bitter letter over the weekend, which accused the Security Council of using the resolution on the inspectors to commit an act of war against Iraq. And again, Baghdad denied it has weapons of mass destruction.

Right now, the inspectors say Baghdad is a little confused on this letter they want to send back on the weapons of mass destruction. Who will read it, what will be in it? That kind of thing.

BROWN: So the Iraqi government is looking to the U.N. for clarification of specifically what this letter means, this declaration means?

ROTH: That's right. And the chief weapons inspector said he told them full disclosure of everything. Even if you say no, go back again and look at your stores, look at your stocks, Hans Blix said.

BROWN: Richard, thank you. Richard Roth at the United Nations tonight.

Now to the challenge facing the inspectors on the ground in Iraq. Four years is a very long time, especially for someone like Saddam Hussein, thought by most everyone to be a real innovator in the art of concealment. It's believed that Iraq has moved some weapons sites into crowded urban areas. Discovering them, one expert said, would be like something out of "The Man from Uncle." An ordinary looking storefront that turns into a weapons lab when you step inside. If only discovering them was as easy as it looks on TV. It's not. We go back to Baghdad and CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): The 11 missile, chemical and biological weapons experts and six nuclear scientists accompanied for the first time by uniformed and armed U.N. Security guards. They're due to begin their first inspections Wednesday. That tight schedule unchanged, despite a 15-page protest letter sent by Iraq's foreign minister to the United Nations to complain the U.N. resolution authorizing inspections could be used by the U.S. as a pretext for war.

MELISSA FLEMING, SPOKESWOMAN, INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY: We have no expectations. We come in here with, let's say, hope that things will go well this time and that we will get what is required of Iraq in our mandate Security Council Resolution 1441.

ROBERTSON: Over the last week, an advanced team of almost 40 technicians has been installing communications and computer equipment, as well as refurbishing laboratories at the U.N. inspection teams' headquarters. Although much work remains to be done, some vehicles and office space has been readied for these first inspectors.

Likely first to be targeted by the U.N., dual use sites, such as al Nasa (ph), north of Baghdad, where inspectors believe equipment used for civilian industrial processes could also have been used to work on weapons of mass destruction. Inspectors will check monitoring equipment, such as cameras installed by inspection teams in the 1990s and replace any found faulty.

The aim for these inspectors, to figure out exactly what has happened in Iraq over the past four years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON: Now the inspectors say they can go to any site at any time. They're not ruling out presidential palaces, those most contentious of sites. However, Hans Blix has called this a warming up period, at least for this initial team. So, for right now, Aaron, it does seem to be a softly approach.

BROWN: How much of this are we going to see? How much of this is going to go on in public or with the media present?

ROBERTSON: Aaron, at this time that's very, very difficult to tell. Certainly we don't have any indication that we will be able to get actually right inside those sites with the inspectors. There's no indication that we will be given permission to do that

Once the inspectors take over a site, it becomes their territory and they control it. It would be up to them if we were going to get in, see what goes on there.

BROWN: And do we have any feel yet for the protocol of all of this? Are they going to, on any given day, simply go where they want? Or will they give the Iraqis a day's notice, or a half a day's notice or a week's notice? Do we know?

ROBERTSON: We do. Absolutely no notice at all. Period, full stop. No notice.

What the inspectors will do is, once they drive out of their gates of their compound in the morning, they expect to be followed by what they call Iraqi minders (ph), what the Iraqi government likes to call guides. Now the role of these government officials will be to tail the inspectors until the inspectors get to their designated site.

When they get there, these Iraqi government officials go to the front of the line, they tell the guards at the site this is the inspection team, let them in. The inspectors go in, supposedly these Iraqi government officials wait outside of the gate for the inspectors to finish their jobs.

BROWN: We'll see how it goes. Nic, thank you. Nic Robertson in Baghdad tonight. Thank you.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, we'll talk about the continued strain in the relations with Saudi Arabia and other things, too, with Alabama Senator Richard Shelby joins us in a bit. And then we'll meet an Arab college student in this country who says he confessed to a crime because his family was threatened by the FBI.

And later tonight, a look at an amazing discovery in the boughs of the U.S. Capitol building. Some documents from the first days of this democracy. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We have on the program talked for months about the complex -- we use that word to be nice -- the complex relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Each side wants something from the other. The United States largely ignores some quaint little Saudi customs like mutilation or subjugating women, because the United States wants friends in the region and oil now more than ever.

What is hard to ignore is that so many of the hijackers were Saudis, and now accusations that money from an important Saudi family found its way to two of those hijackers as they went about their business of planning and executing the mass murder of 3,000 people on September 11. In a moment, we'll talk to Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, an important voice in matters like these. First, today's developments from State Department Correspondent Andrea Koppel.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On Capitol Hill, some U.S. legislators, Democrats and Republicans alike, are questioning just how good of an ally Saudi Arabia really is.

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R), ALABAMA: Let's follow the money. If we follow the money, we're going to get to the truth. And I think the truth will not be very nice.

KOPPEL: Firing back on morning news programs, the Saudi government seized the offensive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've heard these charges. They're absolutely outrageous. They're preposterous.

KOPPEL: The foreign policy adviser to the Saudi Crown Prince adamantly denied that the wife of Prince Bandar, the long-time Saudi ambassador to Washington, had knowingly donated thousands of dollars which may have ended up supporting two of the 9/11 hijackers.

ADEL AL JUBAIR, SAUDI FOREIGN POLICY ADVISER: We have realized over the years that people have now taken advantage of our charity, of our generosity, of our naivete, if you want to call it that, of our innocence. But those days are coming to an end.

KOPPEL: With a possible war in Iraq just around the corner, and Riyadh's reluctance to support military action, the news comes at a critical moment in U.S.-Saudi relations. Already strained after the 9/11 attacks revealed 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens.

But publicly, at least, the Bush administration is sticking to its carefully crafted script, refusing to criticize, calling the kingdom a good partner in the war on terrorism.

RICHARD BOUCHER, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: We believe the Saudi response on matters involving the war on terrorism has been very strong. There's always more to be done and there is much more that we need to do together with the Saudis in finding and stopping the funding sources for international terrorism.

KOPPEL (on camera): The State Department is quick to point out that it is the FBI that's heading up this investigation. Nevertheless, one frustrated (UNINTELLIGIBLE) told CNN "This just isn't the time to be doing this right now. Maybe if they had hard evidence." "Oh, by the way," he quipped, "they don't have hard evidence." Andrea Koppel, CNN, at the State Department.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We're joined for more on this now by Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, who is the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senator, it's good to see you.

SHELBY: Thanks, Aaron.

BROWN: Let's, I guess, cut to it, as they say. Do you think the administration has been unwilling to investigate fully the Saudis because it simply does not want to offend the Saudis?

SHELBY: Well, I don't believe any administration would go out of their way, whether it's the Bush, Clinton, Reagan, you name it administration, to offend the Saudis. I believe that what we're looking at is perhaps deeper than this. I thought for a long time that our relationship with the Saudi Arabia was more transactional than a real, pure ally, although we've tried hard to make them an ally.

They have a lot of oil, we have a lot of power, and it's worked up to a point. But I believe and my colleague, Senator Gramm, who is chairman of the committee now on the intelligence committee in the Senate, we believe that we ought to follow the money. That the FBI and anybody else, the Treasury Department of the United States government, ought to follow wherever the trail leads. It will tell us a lot.

I don't know of my own knowledge tonight whether some of the royal family actually knowingly gave money to terrorists, but we do know that a lot of the Saudis and perhaps people in the royal family have given money to a lot of charities that are fronts or have given money to the terrorists that have done us harm. I think we need to find out the truth. We should turn over every rock.

I think the relationship is what people need to know. What kind of a relationship do we have? What will we have in the future? We had a lot of victims of terrorism and we're going to have more. Is it going to be financed by people who purport to be our allies, or is it going to be something else? We don't know, Aaron, but we need to know.

BROWN: Given what you describe as a transactional relationship between the Saudis and the United states, if it were to turn out that members of the Saudi royal family were knowingly or not gave money that ended up in the hands of hijackers, what does the country do about it anyway, because the country still needs the oil?

SHELBY: Well, I think that we should not look the other way. There are a lot of things we can do about it. You know the Saudis need us as probably as much as we need them. They have the commodity, oil, but we have the power and they know it. I think what we've got to do is find out the truth.

BROWN: And do we -- does the government appear to be interested in finding out the truth?

SHELBY: Well, they should be. I'm not going to judge the administration on that, yet I think that we need to push and we're going to do this on the Senate Intelligence Committee. We're going to push the FBI and others not to look the other way, but to get to the truth. We owe that to the victims and the victims' families in the U.S. And the victims to the future, just as sure will come.

BROWN: Why, by the way, are you so sure there are more victims to come?

SHELBY: Well, I wish there would not be. But I think even the president has told the American people this war is going to go on for many years, the war against terrorism. We have thousands of terrorists dispersed all over the world. Aaron, we have a lot of would-be terrorists in our country. The FBI has been relentlessly hunting down some, but I think they have to do a better job.

BROWN: This came up in our conversation with John King earlier in the program. I don't know if you heard it. Do you have a feeling, one way or the other, about whether the country needs a domestic intelligence-gathering agency, one that is separate from either the CIA or the FBI?

SHELBY: Well, that's a good question. And I think I did listen to the remarks, and we have had some hearings on that in the Senate Intelligence Committee. Do we go the route of the British, which is called MI-5 (ph), a domestic intelligence service that is not a police force? Or do we leave it with the FBI?

Today, our domestic intelligence service is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Can they do the job? Will they do the job? We're not sure. I think we should give them the opportunity, we should give them every chance, but if they can't do the job, we either will have to set up a freestanding domestic security agency, which scares a lot of people, or shift that over to the Homeland Security Department.

BROWN: Are you one of those people it scares or not?

SHELBY: Well, sometimes I worry about constitutional liberties, as all Americans do and should, and what is the proper balance. I think that's a common trait in all of us.

BROWN: Senator Shelby, we appreciate your time and have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thanks for joining us.

SHELBY: Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you, sir. Richard Shelby, Democratic Senator from Alabama and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT later, another distinguished guest, Garrison Keillor. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) from the great state of Minnesota -- and it is.

Up next, three alleged criminals and their 30,000 victims. This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

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BROWN: This is a story that only gets more troubling the more you think about it. For starters, imagine that right now someone you don't know from Adam is signing your name to a hefty credit card charge or is typing your name on an online order form for who knows what, a diamond ring, an airplane, a ticket to Hong Kong, a giant flat screen TV or renting a car somewhere in your name. Or checking into a hotel somewhere as you.

About 30,000 Americans don't have to imagine such a thing, because apparently it has already happened to them. Here's CNN's Jason Carroll. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARROLL (voice-over): Federal prosecutors say this man , Phillip Cummings (ph), used his computer keyboard to pick the pockets of thousands of consumers.

JAMES COMEY, U.S. ATTORNEY: We have stumbled upon something that is bigger than any of us imagined in terms of the 10's of thousands of people ripped off here.

CARROLL: Cummings and two other men stole the identities of 30,000 people across the country and sold the identities on the street for $60 apiece. Prosecutors say the scheme started in March 2000 after Cummings left his job here at Teledata Communications Inc., TCi. TCi Software allows companies to access consumer credit files from the big three reporting agencies, Experian, Equifax and Trans Union. Cummings (ph) kept the passwords and access codes when he left TCi, and simply used his laptop to get whatever information he needed, prosecutors said. The financial fallout -- victims' losses expected to top more than $2.5 million.

COMEY: Bank accounts of victims were depleted, addresses were changed on accounts, new checks were ordered, new ATM cards were ordered, new credit cards were ordered, new lines of credit were opened and quickly drained.

CARROLL: Financial institutions in several states that used TCi were defrauded out of millions. The one hit hardest -- Ford Motor Credit in Michigan. The company tipped off investigators eight months ago after discovering someone fraudulently used a code to obtain 15,000 credit records.

KEVIN DONOVAN, FBI: This case is a perfect example of how technology is a double edge sword for law enforcement. The defendants took advantage of insiders access to sensitive information. In much the same way a gang of thieves might get the combination to the bank vault from an insider.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARROLL: Cummings, is cooperation with authorities, and he's currently out on bail. There are still a number of question about this case. Namely, how would TCi former employee's still have access to so much sensitive information. TCi did release a statement saying they are cooperation with authorities and it would be inappropriate to comment any further -- Aaron.

BROWN: That's a lot of people, 30,000 people.

CARROLL: A lot of folks out of dough.

BROWN: Thank you, Jason. Jason Carroll tonight.

A few stories we need to get in, as well. The first of them about fans behaving badly, quite badly as it turns out. Ohio authorities today looked over the videotape trying to identify more of the people who overturned cars, set fires, threw bottles at police after the Ohio State football team beat Michigan on Saturday. Police have arrested 49 people. The university today said it may expel students who rioted.

The shuttle Endeavour arrived at the international space station today, with new crew. Endeavour will stay docked a full week so the crew can put up another girder for the space station. The shuttle to longer than usually to dock, we need one astronaut to joke, looks like you guys fly that thing like you stole it.

And a big birthday for the Bush twins today. Jenna and Barbara Bush turned 21. They're in Texas where they'll spend Thanksgiving weekend with the folks. Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, we'll talk to fellow Minnesota Garrison Keillor.

And up next, the strange tale of an Arab student and a false confession. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

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BROWN: And coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the Arab student and the confession that wasn't. Well be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

This is exactly the kind of nightmare that Alfred Hitchcock made maybe a dozen films about. The air tight casing in some guy who is as innocent as they come, but is in the wrong place at the wrong at the wrong time. In this case the wrong place for 33-year-old Egyptian engineering student, was a hotel across the street from the World Trade Center, and the wrong time, and it really was the wrong time was the 11th of September.

Then circumstance piles on circumstance, coincidence on coincidence, more and more fingers point his way. And finally, suspicions turns into certainty except that it's all dead wrong, according to unsealed FBI report, dead wrong. Including the poor saps own confession.

The rest of story from CNN's Deborah Feyerick.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The confession came following a polygraph test. This student said a pilot's radio never seen before was his, that he had stolen it. Abdallah Higazy says he made the phony admission because he was threatened, claiming the FBI agent giving the test told him...-

ABDALLAH HIGAZY, FORMER 9/11 DETAINEE: If you don't cooperate, the FBI will make your brother upstate live in scrutiny, and make sure the Egyptian security gives your family hell.

FEYERICK (on camera): Did you believe that he could make good on the threats against your brother and your family?

HIGAZY: I was 100 percent convinced that he can do something to my brother. As for my family, the first thing that crossed my mind was, oh my god, if whoever is setting me up set me up here, what in god's name could they make me appear as in Egypt?

FEYERICK (voice-over): Higazy was being set up by a wanna-be hero. A security guard at the Millennium Hotel, across from the Trade Center towers, admitted lying to FBI agents about finding the radio in the man's locked room safe. Higazy said the FBI told him two other people could back up that's story. That's why he believed the FBI threatened his agent.

HIGAZY: Either way I look at it, the device from their perspective is mine. So if I confess or if I say it's mine, my family is out of it. If I doesn't confess, my family could be in danger.

FEYERICK: After a month in a high-security jail, Higazy was released, all charges against him dropped.

HIGAZY: I'm happy I'm out. Nothing tops freedom!

FEYERICK: So what about the confession? An investigation by justice officials clears the FBI of any misconduct.

COMEY: I'm very proud of the way our office and the FBI conducted itself in the Higazy case.

FEYERICK: The report, unsealed in part at CNN's request, says he failed a polygraph test. His answers about a possible role in the 9/11 attacks labeled deceptive by the FBI polygraph taker.

ROBERT DUNN, HIGAZY DEFENSE ATTORNEY: We know he didn't have anything to do the advice or the attack. What does that say about the quality of whatever he was doing?

FEYERICK: Prosecutors say he waited 11 days before telling officials with the alleged threat, and they say Higazy could have stopped the interview at any time but didn't. Higazy never signed the report containing the apparent confession. He said he was so nervous during the polygraph test he almost fainted, completely forgetting his lawyer was just outside the door. Deborah Feyerick, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A couple of other items from around the world tonight, starting with the latest on a shooting incident that happened in Kuwait, a U.S. soldiers shot last week by a Kuwaiti policeman said the man had accused him of speeding before he fired on him and a colleague. They were both wounded. The other soldier is still in intensive care. The government of Kuwait said the suspect had been extradited for questioning from Saudi Arabia. He fled there after the shooting.

Bad weather off the coast of Hong Kong is making it harder to put out a fire aboard a tanker carrying 20,000 tons of fuel. The fire broke out on Saturday in the engine room. Nobody's hurt.

And in London, the Miss World contestants settled in after relocating from Nigeria. That's a strange story. U.S. contestant said today she hadn't seen any of the rioting that killed hundreds of people, and today the pageant organizers said the contest was not to blame for the violence, which broke out after a newspaper said the Prophet Mohammed probably would have married one of the contestants were he alive today.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the story of the lost ledgers of the U.S. Senate. And up next, fellow Minnesotan, Garrison Keillor, joins us. We'll be right back.

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BROWN: Once many years ago on the radio, I said lutefisk was perhaps the worst single tasting food ever devised. In most parts of the country, that would have left people scratching their heads, but I wasn't in most parts of the country. I was home in Minnesota. In Minnesota, I had either committed a great sin or spoken a great truth. In any case, it consumed four hours on the radio. Alas, I wasn't destined to be Minnesota's great radio star. A lot of reasons for that, not the least of which was talent. That title clearly goes to Garrison Keillor, who is of Minnesota Public Radio and NPR's "Prairie Home Companion."

Keillor has two books on the shelves these days. "Good Poems," the first volume is called, selected and introduced by Mr. Keillor, and then there is a novel that is newly out in paperback.

Nice to meet you.

GARRISON KEILLOR, HOST, "A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION": Good to see you, Mr. Brown.

BROWN: Welcome to the program.

KEILLOR: Thank you. Sorry you had bad lutefisk.

BROWN: All lutefisk is bad lutefisk, isn't it?

KEILLOR: Where did you go to get your lutefisk?

BROWN: Can you explain what it is, what lutefisk is?

KEILLOR: It's a dried cod. It's been dried...

BROWN: In like acid or something?

KEILLOR: Lye. Lye. Ordinary lye. We wash our hands with it, and then it's soaked to reconstitute it, and then the lye is washed off. And if it's cooked by the right person, an older woman with her socks rolled down to her ankles, it's really good. But you know, there's good lutefisk and not so good.

BROWN: I've never had the good stuff.

KEILLOR: I'm so sorry.

BROWN: Never had the good stuff.

KEILLOR: Come back home.

BROWN: Why poetry?

KEILLOR: Why poetry?

BROWN: Yeah.

KEILLOR: Because it's crucial. Because it's where our language reposes. Poets are the guardians of language.

BROWN: These aren't poems that you wrote, these are the poems that you like that are in the poetry book, right?

KEILLOR: I don't like my own poems, and so I collected other people's poems.

BROWN: Off the top of your head, read me a poem.

KEILLOR: "When a disgrace with fortune in men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, and think upon myself and curse my fate, wishing me like to one more rich in hope, featured like him, like him with friends possessed, desiring this man's art and that man's scope, with what I most enjoy, content at least. Yet in these thoughts, myself almost despising; happily, I think on thee" -- not thee but somebody else -- "happily I think on thee and then my state like to the lark at break of day arising from sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate for thy sweet love" -- not thy but somebody else -- "for thy love remembered such wealth brings that I would scorn to change my lot with kings."

BROWN: Very good. I mean, just for a moment I thought I was falling in love, so that was pretty cool. You know on the income tax form where it says occupation, what do you write?

KEILLOR: Writer.

BROWN: Writer. Not performer, not...?

KEILLOR: No.

BROWN: What's the difference between a writer and a storyteller?

KEILLOR: I have no idea what a storyteller is. My uncle Bill was a storyteller, but he didn't get paid for it, but he was a terrific storyteller. I'm a writer, and I write. I type and hand things in, and get paid for it.

BROWN: And the performance of it is -- if you didn't do that anymore, if you weren't on the radio, that would be OK as long as you could write?

KEILLOR: I would write. I would write for you. I would write this.

BROWN: You would write news copy? KEILLOR: Of course.

BROWN: What was the first writing job you had?

KEILLOR: I wrote sports for the "Analka (ph) Herald." And I wrote...

BROWN: Outside of Minneapolis.

KEILLOR: ... the football and the basketball games for $2.50 for home games and $3 for away.

BROWN: You had travel money. And how old were you when you did that?

KEILLOR: I was 15.

BROWN: Were you a happy kid in Minnesota growing up?

KEILLOR: No, but I was happy writing. I was happy reading books. No, I wasn't happy with other kids.

BROWN: Why?

KEILLOR: Because I just was odd sort of a...

BROWN: You didn't fit?

KEILLOR: No, not at all. My hands stuck out at my wrists and my pants were too short and I wore half-rim glasses. That was a terrible thing socially, you know, with the horn rim on top, and I had no social grace whatsoever.

BROWN: Well, you showed them, didn't you?

KEILLOR: Barely have some now.

BROWN: You want to talk about this political flap you created?

KEILLOR: Well, no, but I certainly can.

BROWN: You wrote -- I would describe it as an angry column about the senator-elect from Minnesota, Norm Coleman. You basically called him a fraud.

KEILLOR: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) angry diatribe.

BROWN: Called him a fraud.

KEILLOR: A screed. It's very seldom that one gets to write out of pure anger, especially at my age. You feel it so seldom. So when you do, it seems to me you ought to take advantage of it.

BROWN: And you did. You unloaded on the guy.

KEILLOR: I wrote a piece for Salon.com. They asked me to write it. And the amazing thing about it to me is the power of the Internet and all of those people who just lift this piece of passionate writing and they send it off to all of their friends, and they send it off.

We have no idea how far this gets around the country, but this thing was bouncing back to me within days from people I barely know. I really was astonished. We don't have any measurement for that, do we?

BROWN: Do you think -- do you think the column -- the piece was a bit harsh. You talked about his family in the piece. Do you think it was a bit...

KEILLOR: It was an angry diatribe against a very beautifully packaged politician. And one could have written in different ways but I come from St. Paul. We're a small town, we know people. And so that's how I wrote it.

BROWN: Do you think you'll do the radio program forever or do you see a time when you'll step away from it?

KEILLOR: I think I'll do it for another five years. It's a lot of fun. It's a great deal. It's you know, I get to play a cowboy. I get to play a private eye. I get to smoke a cigar on the radio. I don't smoke a cigar.

BROWN: Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming in.

KEILLOR: Good to see you.

BROWN: Please come back.

KEILLOR: Thanks.

BROWN: Garrison Keillor. We'll be right back after a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: You know what a pain it is keeping track of financial records, old checkbook stubs, heating oil receipts, phone bills, chits, tear-offs, figures scrolled on napkins and matchbook covers too. You can't throw this stuff away; the IRS may ask to see it one of these days, but you just can't have it taking up space on your desk. So you stow it somewhere. Behind the furnace maybe. Down in the basement. And inevitably, you forget about it.

Guess what? Happens in Washington too. Here's CNN's Bruce Morton.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's the Senate sub-basement. Down the narrow stairs, avoid the file cabinet, hang a left, then a right. And you're in a cluttered full of old health insurance forms and, Claire Amoruso and Doug Connolly learned, buried treasure. Senate ledgers dating back to the second Congress, 1791. CLAIRE AMORUSO, DEMOCRATIC POLICY COMMITTEE: We opened one of the more current ones first and then we started looking around. And then we found the earliest one and knew we had found something very special.

DOUGLAS CONNOLLY, DEMOCRATIC POLICY COMMITTEE: We were holding something in our hands that has, you know, John Adams' name on it. We started turning the pages and see John Adams again and again and we began to wonder, Can this be real or is this simply a copy? By the time we go to Thomas Jefferson, I mean that's a signature everybody knows. And that's the point we realized, We have to tell somebody about this.

MORTON: They were working nearby and just got curious.A day later this stuff would have been thrown out.

RICHARD BAKER, SENATE HISTORIAN: These books, you know, survived an awful lot. They survived the trip down from Philadelphia in 1800, they survived the British burning the capitol in 1814. They survived the Civil War. They almost didn't survive this time.

MORTON: The first book, 1791 to 1881 is the valuable one.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE (D), SOUTH DAKOTA: For the first several Congresses, before the secretary of the Senate could actually pay senators, he had to get the vice president of the United States, the president of the Senate or the president pro tem of the Senate to sign the payroll. So this book actually contains actual signatures of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. It may well be the only document in existence that bears the signatures of all three of those giants of American history. It is literally priceless.

MORTON: And it tells us what the Senate was like, annual budget way under $100,000. Senators got $6 a day when they were in session. Travel, it could take days to get to D.C. from New England, was 30 cents a mile. CNN pays 36 and a half now, but the Senate's 30 had to include food and lodging or saddle (ph) and horse.

They kept trying to give themselves a raise and an annual salary, but voters objected.

All that we almost lost with the book.

BAKER: In 1982, they closed up shop in the Capitol -- the dispersing office did and moved over to the Senate office building and forgot to take their books.

MORTON: Makes you wonder what else is down there, doesn't it?

Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Good to see you and we'll see you tomorrow. Goodnight for all of us.

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