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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Good Bye to Christmas, and Bah Humbug; Snowfall Buries Northeast

Aired December 26, 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, GUEST HOST: Good evening again, everyone I'm Anderson Cooper in for Aaron Brown, who is off tonight.
Now it occurred to us that there is one reason why we're kind of glad to see Christmas 2002 bid us adieu. We've been weathering a kind of perfect storm wend we're not talking about the snow. It's more like a blizzard of cliches and other egregious examples of hackery that have tested the endurance, not to mention the holiday spirit, of me and we suspect a few of you viewers out there as well.

The grand prize for cliche generators has got to be the snowstorm yesterday. How many times did you hear someone say and, by the way, thinking they were the first ones ever to say it, the weather outside is frightful or some equally predictable lyric from "White Christmas."

Or the weather man in small hamlets across thy nation making the stale crack about spotting Santa as a tiny blip on the Doppler radar. That's rich.

This morning it was this line, the Northeast is wake up and digging out. Again and again and again. Then, of course, there is the day after-Christmas shopping bonanza. That story comes every year. Shoppers jamming the malls, the holiday crowds are lining up, ready to shop until they drop. Back you to, Sue.

But this year it's all about how badly the retailers are doing. You know, they're not seeing green and because of that, they're really seeing red but you can't leave blue out. This one is really a blue Christmas for retailers, didn't you know? No so happy returns to speak of.

They're having a not so merry little Christmas. We actually used that one last night. All because shoppers are being complete Scrooges. Don't you hate TV news sometimes? I do.

To all this we say, "Bah Humbug!" Oh come on, you didn't think we would get out of this without resorting our own lame cliche, did you? I'm allowed two per program. It's in my contract.

Let's get cracking right now "The Whip." And that begins in Seoul and the troubling developments surrounding North Korea. Sohn Jie-Ae is there for us tonight. Jie-Ae, a headline please.

SOHN JIE-AE, CNN SEOUL BUREAU CHIEF: Yes, Anderson. South Korea's president-elect and its outgoing president both expressed grave concern about the nuclear crisis escalating on the Korean peninsula. They also called for North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions. North Korea, meanwhile, says it has none. It says all it wants by regenerating this power plant is more electricity. The world doesn't seem to be quite convinced. Back to you, Anderson.

COOPER: All right, Jie-Ae, we'll check in with you in a moment.

On to Iraq and the challenge in finding not just the weapons, but also the scientists who know how to make them.

David Ensor is on that tonight. David, a headline.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT; Well, Anderson, today, Iraq's government announced within the next two or three days it will turn over to the United Nations a list of hundreds of Iraqi scientists who worked in the weapons programs in that country. The question now is will any of them, will any of the key ones that matter, be willing to come out of the country with their families and then tell all? It's not clear.

COOPER: All right. David Ensor, back to you.

Quite a turn now to the richest man in Hurricane, West Virginia. Jason Bellini is in Charleston, West Virginia Jason, a headline.

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, the largest lottery jackpot ever to go to a single winner here in West Virginia. The lucky ticket holder tells us what he plans to do with $315 million.

COOPER: All right, Jason, back with you. Back with all of you in a moment.

Also coming up tonight, Fredricka Whitfield has the story of a remarkable American woman living in Afghanistan helping Afghan children, something she has been doing for decades before 9/11.

Also tonight, a young investigative journalist and the ugly secret he discovered buried in the history of Harvard. A secret court from the 1920s searching for and punishing gay students.

And a good bye to the photographer who could capture the glamour and the beauty of everyone from Madonna to the Messiah of Africa, all with his well-placed camera lens, Herb Ritts.

All that to come in the hour ahead.

First, the growing confrontation with North Korea heating up today over fuel for a nuclear reactor. The fuel can make bombs and by loading it into the reactor, the North Koreans today took another step in that direction. Which is odd, we think, from a country seeking, among other things, a nonaggression treaty with the U.S. No shortage of oddities in this story.

We go back to Seoul and Sohn Jie-Ae for today's developments. SOHN: Yes -- yes, Anderson.

In Seoul today, South Korea's president-elect Roh Moo-hyun, had his strongest words yet for the North Korea's nuclear developments in recent days. He called upon North Korea to put back its nuclear facilities to its original state.

He also said what North Korea was doing was going against the global community's wishes for nonproliferation. He also said what North Korea was doing was going against the hopes of the Korean people for peace on the Korean peninsula.

This follows South Koreans' outgoing president Kim Dae Jung's words just made yesterday at an emergency cabinet meeting where he told his ministers that South Korea needed to take a leading role in resolving the nuclear issue.

He told his ministers to use all channels of communication open to them. He tried to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear program. He also called upon close cooperation, major allies such as Russia and China.

Now, meanwhile, North Korea has to start moving new fuel rods into the nuclear reactor. The International Atomic Energy Agency officials say North Korea put about 1,000 new reactors -- new fuel rods into their reactor. They say North Korea needs 8,000 to get the power plant running, though North Korea at this point seems step by step to -- on this path to getting the nuclear power plant started.

It said, however that North Korea had no interest in having nuclear weapons. It said all it needed was electricity. Back to you, Anderson.

COOPER: Jie-Ae, a lot of questions to ask about this.

First of all, let's talk about the fuel rods or what we know about it. You say they need 8,000 of these fuel rods. Do we know if North Korea -- and we not know this. Do we know if North Korea has all the fuel rods that they actually need and now it's just a question of putting them in place?

SOHN: Well, we know that North Korea has a plant that produces fuel rods which was also monitored by U.N. inspectors. They took the seals off of them so we don't know how much is -- how much of that plant is producing but apparently it is producing enough to get 1,000 in and it be -- it may take a little time, but that plant, if put into full operation, could make the more that they need -- Anderson.

COOPER: Jie-Ae, you know, obviously a lot of people in the United States are wondering what the U.S. can do, the Bush administration trying to figure out its options as well. I'm curious to know about the South Korean government.

As you mentioned, I think on Monday on this program, South Korea's new president really ran and was elected on a policy of engagement with North Korea. What are the options he has now? You said in your report he basically told North Korea to put the fuel rods back. But having said that, what options does South Korea really have?

SOHN: well, South Korea now, all it has is the channels of communication that are open with North Korea. This is what Washington doesn't have. South and North Korea so -- are continuing talks in various sectors. At the present time right now in the North Korean capital, South and North Korean officials are talking about new shipping routes between South and North Korea.

So when the South Korean president is talking about using and utilizing the channels of communication open to them, they're talking about using the various sectors -- various sectors that North Korea wants to open up with South Korea and with the outside world in order to convince North Korea that this is not the path that they want to take if they want a more openness and more aid from the outside world.

So that may be one of the things that South Korea can do -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right, Sohn Jie-Ae, thanks a lot. No doubt we will be talking to you a lot in the coming weeks and months. Thanks a lot.

We go now to Iraq. The government there taking steps in preparation for war. The military went on maneuvers in the central part of the country, that's the Iraqi military. They're practicing urban warfare.

Yesterday, in a speech to the nation, Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis to lay down their lives and their souls for their country. Perhaps as preparation for war or a bribe for support, Iraq's trade minister has increased the food ration. The move allows Iraqis to lay in at least a three-month supply of food in case of war.

Meantime today, The U.N. inspections went. Here's CNN's Rym Brahimi.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RYM BRAHIMI, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The latest point of focus for U.N. weapons inspectors: Baghdad's University of Technology, the second time in three days that inspectors have shown up there. Hardly a surprise for the university's president.

MAZEN MOHAMMED ALI, PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY (through translator): The university is specialized in the science of technology. It's one of the achievements of the 17th of July revolution (ph). It was established in 1975, so it's certain to be the focus of their attention.

BRAHIMI: That attention caused some excitement among students. The inspectors' visit followed shortly after by the international media and its cameras.

(on camera): There are about 15,000 students at this University of Technology. Many of them surprised to see the inspectors show up. Others wondering why they would have come here.

(voice-over): One offered an answer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The students here could maybe in the future threaten the Zionist entity. They are probably afraid of that. That's why they came here for inspections.

BRAHIMI: But the inspectors didn't question any students. They were more interested in talking to their professors and research directors instead. It was here that on Tuesday the inspectors conducted their first formal interview with an Iraqi scientist.

Nuclear researcher Dr. Saban Abdel Noor said he insisted on talking in the presence of a witness from the Iraqi national monitoring directorate.

SABAN ABDEL NOOR, NUCLEAR RESEARCHER: I consider this a much better situation for all of us.

BRAHIMI: And the head of Iraq's Monitoring Directorate says that the presence of an official is preferable to a tape recording of the interview.

GEN. HOSSAM MOHAMMED AMIN, DIR. IRAQI MONITORING DIRECTORATE: There is a human being who's a witness, he has a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) witness. This will the right of the interview, the person who is participating in the interview.

BRAHIMI: In a further visit at the University of Technology, the inspectors have questioned more scientists and asked for a list of the university's top researchers, a process the university's president says went smoothly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I must admit they were highly professional, highly skilled team. They were -- they exactly know what they want. They were looking into details regarding this matter. They were asking about the line of research, the end result of the research, where to go and so on.

BRAHIMI: Since this round of inspections began, U.N. biological, chemical and nuclear experts have visited a whole series of universities and engineering colleges ranging from the biotechnology institute to the college of veterinary medicine. Expanding their search for potential weapons from equipment to people who might be capable of making them.

Rym Brahimi, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Iraq today promised to provide a list of hundreds of scientists who worked on weapons of mass destruction. If it is an accurate list, and the experts have their doubts, it will be of some help to those inspectors. But those same experts say who the inspectors talk to will not matter unless they can also have their choice of where the interviews take place. Here again CNN's David Ensor.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR (voice-over): Iraqi nuclear scientist Khadhir Hamza brought secrets about Saddam Hussein's weapons with him when he defected to the West in the '90s. And he says only by interviewing Iraqi scientists outside Iraq will the United Nations' inspectors find out what weapons still exist.

KHIDHIR HAMZA, FORMER SENIOR IRAQI SCIENTIST: This could be the Achilles's heel of Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction program.

ENSOR: An Iraqi scientist's entire extended family, one former inspector says, might need to be brought out of Iraq before he or she could talk freely.

RAY ZILINKAS, FORMER U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: I would certainly say grandmothers, grandfathers, maybe even first cousins. It is hard to tell how brutal they would be because after all, they're trying to make a lesson.

ENSOR: The U.N. has already started conducting some interviews inside Iraq and says it will ask scientists if they want to be moved out of the country. But General Amin, Iraqi scientist and spokesman, predicted that many will refuse, including him.

AMIN: I don't like to leave my country and be interviewed there abroad. If there is any question, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) let them address it to me here in Iraq.

ENSOR: U.N. officials like Chief Inspector Hans Blix also say taking scientists secretly out of the country to talk would be extremely difficult.

HANS BLIX, CHIEF u.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: I don't think that is what the inspectors are for. Nor I do think that they are an abduction agency.

HAMZA: Even before I helped Western government, once they found I was out, three attempts were made on my son's life.

ENSOR: Eventually Hamza's immediate family did get out of Iraq and warnings were given to Baghdad not to touch his other relatives. He argues the interviews that have already started inside Iraq are a big mistake.

HAMZA: Nobody will show readiness inside Iraq to talk. Because this could alert the Iraqi government and end up in his death and his family members' deaths also.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR: U.N. officials say they are currently negotiating with the U.S. and others on this tricky question: what if an Iraqi scientist and his family are brought out and refuse to talk after all? Will they still be promised U.S. visas and resettlement? Ad what if no key scientist is willing to come out at all? On the face of it, there doesn't appear to be a way to force them to. But yet this, more than any other tool, is one that the Bush administration officials said they're counting on -- Anderson.

COOPER: David, has anything publicly been said about how this would work? You brought it up in your piece but how far back do you go in the family? Do you go as far back as first cousins or friends? It seems a very tricky thing to figure out.

ENSOR: It is a very tricky thing to figure out. You heard one of the former inspectors saying he thought it had to go to the extended family, grandchildren, all sorts of people.

Mr. Hamza, who we interviewed said he did not think so he said he thought the immediate family has to get out, that warnings have to be made to the Iraqi government that anyone else in the family who is touched, Amnesty International, the U.S. government and many others will be on their case about it. But he thought that would be enough.

COOPER: All right, David Ensor, thanks very much.

We go now to the war on terrorism and a thought experiment. Imagine yourself interrogating an al Qaeda captive. You suspect he knows something about an operation. Getting him to tell you means saving lives. Perhaps a lot of lives. So how far would you go?

This is not an experiment for many. Captives are being interrogated. We've known the broad strokes for quite some time. Today some of the details came to light in a story in "The Washington Post." Dana Priest shared a byline on it and she joins us tonight to talk about it.

Thanks for being with us. Your article was really fascinating and not so much because some of the information hadn't been out there, but it really focused a light on an area which few public officials have talked about. What do we know -- what did you put in your article for those who didn't read it about the conditions that these people are being interrogated under?

DANA PRIEST, "WASHINGTON POST": First of all, we're not talking about captives under military control such as those at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or those at Bagram.

We're talking captives under CIA control at a very special facility off limits of Bagram and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and other secret CIA interrogation centers where the CIA is controlling the interrogation of captives.

They, themselves, in public testimony as far back as September, alluded to the fact they were using a gloves off approach post-9/11 because they needed to, because they needed to extract tactical intelligence in order to thwart what they said were imminent threats.

COOPER: And practically speaking, what does gloves off mean? PRIEST: In CIA hands, the most we could say was that it means what is called in the interrogation trade, stress and duress techniques, everything from binding tightly, hooded, sleep deprivation, held in confinement in tight spaces, disorientation, questioning by female interrogators who are meant to psychologically disorient men who come from conservative Muslim societies where women are rarely in control. That sort of thing.

If that doesn't work, with some captives they are rendered to foreign governments. We name three, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan, whose intelligence services are known to use brutal means to extract information from their captives. You can find that in the State Department's human rights reports on all three of those countries, and officials we talked to said they're being given over to those countries in order at times to use those means to try to get information out of some of the captives.

COOPER: One of the other things that came out of the article which was very interesting is that in some cases, these captives being held by the CIA in these locations -- in some cases they're sort of duped into believing that they have already been handed over to a third party government, in a sense, tricked. They believe they are already in Saudi custody and therefore about to be tortured, right?

PRIEST: Right. You're talking about "false flag operations" is what it is called. And the CIA does not want to lose control over most of these people. They value them. They think they have information that they need. They don't want somebody misusing them to the point where they can no longer get information out of them.

So sometimes the mere threat of handing them over to countries with this sort of reputation will do it and in the false flag operations they go one step further and try to trick them by using false uniforms, people who speak the language who are of the country and that sort of thing.

COOPER: It is sort of tricky for the United States, to say the least, for the United States to be engaged in this kind of hands off interrogation as they call it because for years the U.S. has criticized other governments for using sleep deprivation in particular as an interrogation tool. Isn't that right?

PRIEST: Yes. And they still do officially criticize the use of torture and officials publicly deny that they are engaged in torture and we did not say they are engaged.

It is an arm length's relationship where they'll hand them over to the foreign government and then the relationship with the foreign government varies. Sometimes they give them questions to ask. We doubt they're in the room. That would be too close. That wouldn't be arm's length enough so they can have deniability that this is going on.

They don't turn them over to France and Germany. They're turning them over to these countries that use these sorts of methods.

COOPER: Right. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco. Do we have any sense of how many people have been turned over to third countries?

PRIEST: Not exactly. We think it is under 100. But there are thousands who are captive in countries such as Yemen where they're held by the Yemeni and the CIA participates in some degree in their interrogation as well. We think they have secret interrogation facilities in many of these countries.

COOPER: All right. Dana Priest of "The Washington Post," a fascinating article. Thank you for joining us tonight.

PRIEST: Thank you.

COOPER: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, ivy intrigue and a student reporter's accidental discovery.

And the one man most of us envy right now, that's right. Andrew Whittaker Jr., the man in the black hat, or Jack for short. The plans for his history-making millions coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: And the one man most of us envy now, the man in the black hat, Jack for short. The plans for his history-making millions coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: When it comes to winning the lottery, I think we all want winners to straight out of central casting. We want them to be colorful and humble. We want them to be generous to immediately show willingness to share the pot for a good cause. And we want them to have a long tear-jerking back story filled with financial struggles, sort of like George Bailey (ph). Andrew Jack Whittaker may not make the last requirement but on everything else he's pretty much pitch perfect to play the role of winner of the single biggest lottery prize.

Here is Jason Bellini

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BELLINI (voice-over): Jack Whittaker found his local convenient store full of reporters when drove up for gas.

ANDREW JACK WHITTAKER, POWERBALL LOTTERY WINNER: And I walked in and paid for everything and had to wait in line. It was like, I don't know, must have been 30 people in the store or more. I had to wait in line. I told the little girl that sold me the ticket, I asked her, I said how do you feel today? I said do you feel any different? She said, you have won the lottery, didn't you? I said, yes I did. She said, no you didn't. You're not excited enough. And pushed me on out the door.

BELLINI: Even his granddaughter Brandy doubted him.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's like you need to get dressed up because I won the lottery. I was like, no you didn't. You swear, you swear?

BELLINI: Whittaker is the biggest single ticket lottery winner ever. Almost $315 million at face value.

WHITTAKER: I've had to work for everything and I've got nobody that has ever given me -- this is the first thing that anybody has ever given me.

BELLINI: He chose to take cash, $170 million before taxes and he'll give 10 percent, $17 million, to the church of god.

WHITTAKER: $17 million in the state of West Virginia will do good for the poor.

BELLINI: He is already a millionaire businessman, owner of a sewer construction company which he plans to expand.

WHITTAKER: I have 25 people laid off now at Christmas. I want more work so I can put them back to work. I don't like them being off work.

BELLINI: He said the money won't change his life. He can't say the same for the rest of his family.

WHITTAKER: Their plans scare me. Their plans scare me. My biggest problem is going to be keeping my granddaughter and daughter from spending all their money in one week.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BELLINI: Well, Jack Whittaker after taxes will take home $111 million minus what he gives to his church. We asked Whittaker why he thinks he won the lottery. Religious man. He says I don't have luck, I'm blessed --Anderson.

COOPER: Well, Jason Bellini, thanks very much. I hope he's got a good lawyer.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, a not so very merry Christmas at the cash registers. I had to get one cliche in this last half hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: You can argue all you want about the true meaning of Christmas and never agree on the answer. The meaning of the day after Christmas is more clear cut. As Puffy would say, it is all about the Benjamins, about stores counting up sales and trying to figure out how they did. This year the answer is not too well and the answer to that is just to throw a sale, a big one.

Here is CNN's Mary Snow.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Crowds streamed in hoping to cash in. In New York there wasn't much elbow room in Bloomingdale's where discounts brought in the shoppers. Over at Macy's, prices were slashed by up to 75 percent. Retailers are hoping to make up for weak holiday sales, some shoppers were ready to bargain hunt at 7:00 a.m.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Christopher Radko ornaments, garland, glass ornaments, Santas especially some of these Santas that are just so gorgeous, too expensive before Christmas, perfect now. So it was great.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There really weren't any great sales, anything I could speak of. Everything we ended up buying wasn't on sale. It is just like any other day, business as usual.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Big discounts.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Prices are low because they seemed low they are year to begin with.

SNOW: Judging by the crowds, sales appear healthy. But looks can be deceiving. Federated which owns Macy's and Bloomingdale's said sales were below plan for December. And the largest retailer, WalMart, says while it picked up four days before Christmas it was too little too late. And expects its growth target to fall short of expectations. Analysts say overall it has been a disappointing season and there is only so much stores can recoup in the last days of December.

DANA TELSEY, RETAIL ANALYST, BEAR STEARNS: This last we after Christmas well busy. It certainly won't add as much to the retailers sells or profits given the heavy mark downs they are incurring.

SNOW: One bright spot: gift certificates. All told, some expect those certificates to bring in $38 billion in sales this year. But the boost for retailer is seen as limited.

DARREN RIGBY, RETAIL ANALYST, BAIN & CO.: It could be a gain, but I doubt that it's going to be enough to put them up to the growth level that they're looking for.

SNOW (on camera): Because of the deep discounts and because gift certificates are at an all-time high, some actually predict that today may turn out to be the busiest shopping day of the holiday season. And that would be a first. That's because it's normally the days leading up to the holiday that usually see the most traffic.

Mary Snow for CNN Financial News, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: A few other stories just to fit in tonight, beginning with the rescue from a small island in the Bahamas. Thirty-six Cubans were rescued by the Coast Guard after they were spotted by a plane waving for help. That's an infrared picture there. Officials believe they were abandoned on Christmas Eve. They were pulled to safety and turned over to the Bahamian authorities. A co-pilot for Delta airlines was taken off his plane at the Norfolk, Virginia airport this morning after a security screener smelled alcohol. The AP reported that the man failed a Breathalyzer test and was charged with a misdemeanor.

And in the Northeast today, residents were dealing with the aftermath of that massive snowstorm. The storm knocked out powers to tens of thousands of homes and businesses. At least 23 people have died since the storm began early in the week. Most of those involved in traffic accidents.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, a secret court uncovered at one of the country's most prestigious universities.

And an American-born woman who has dedicated half her life to serving the people and children of afghanistan.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: When we return, an Ivy League secret revealed after 80 years.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Harvard University has a simple motto. Just a single word: Veritas. It's Latin, I'm told, for truth, and you would have a tough time finding an institution with a longer history of nurturing the pursuit of truth than Harvard.

But this story, recently uncovered by a Harvard student, isn't so much about the pursuit of truth as it is about what happens when that search goes too far.

If you're looking for a word here, the word is inquisition.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): The year was 1920. And hidden behind the Ivy-covered walls of Harvard, five school officials secretly met for what would essentially become a witchunt.

They called themselves the court. Their mission: hunt down and expel gay students. The court was formed after a failing sophomore, Cyril Wilcox, killed himself. Wilcox's letters indicated he was gay and mentioned other gay students as well.

Fearing a scandal, Harvard's president, A. Lawrence Lowell, urged school administrators to investigate and interrogate anyone they suspected of being homosexual.

AMIT PALEY, JUNIOR, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: It ended up with almost a dozen men being forced to withdraw from the college. Most of them were never to return. A few were able to return after a year. Most of those students who were able to return were not actually gay themselves and were not involved in any gay acts. COOPER: Amit Paley, a Harvard junior, found out about the existence of the court almost by accident, and broke the story in the school newspaper "The Harvard Crimson."

He discovered that at least one of the students, Eugene Cummings, expelled in 1920, killed himself. Several others found it difficult to enroll anywhere else, because Harvard essentially blackballed them.

To be expelled, a student didn't have to be gay. They just acquainted with someone who was.

PALEY: There was one student, in fact, that in the records of the court he told them, Why should I stop talking to student X just because he's queer?

COOPER: After the course disbanded, school officials wanted no one, not a single soul to know of its existence. The records were hidden away in these archives at Harvard University. It took Paley six months of appeals before school officials would let him see the documents.

PALEY: This was about a secret as it gets. No one really knew about this court for a period of 80 years. They kept it secret from the normal levels.

There is an administrative board which actually has existed at Harvard for more than 100 years and they didn't know about this at first.

COOPER: Harvard officials refused to comment on camera. But University President Lawrence Summers has issued this statement: "I want to express our deep regret for the way this situation was handled, as well as the anguish the students and their families must have experience eight decades ago."

PALEY: I think the general mood on campus though is just that it's shocking that something like this could have happened, especially in an institution like Harvard where everything about it has been written to death. That there could be a huge secret that no one knew about for 80 years.

COOPER: After 80 years, the secret is now, finally, out. The students affected have all passed away. These fading records are all that's left of the court that dare not speak its name.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: A couple of stories now from around the world, starting in Bethlehem. Israeli troops moving back in after a two-day pullout for Christmas, the Israeli government saying the occupation and curfew will continue until terrorist activity stops in the biblical city. The incursion was part of a violent day on the West Bank. Troops clashed with armed fugitives in Ramallah. They shot and killed five, but also killed two bystanders. This was the deadliest day of fighting since 10 Palestinians killed on a raid on Gaza earlier this month. And in Venezuela today, more anti-government rallies after a day off for Christmas. The general strike there now in its fourth week. Some fault lines developing among the opposition. However, one strike leader saying the focus now should be on upcoming elections and not continuing the strike. Meantime, the strike is keeping millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil off the world market and driving up the price. Oil today closed above $32 a barrel. That is the highest has been in over two years.

And it's kind of odd to have both the Powerball winnings and Afghanistan in the same program. When you think of it, the Powerball prize is more than 12 times the entire economy of Afghanistan. In the past several decades, the world superpowers, including the U.S., have been accused of using Afghanistan to advance their own interests and then ignoring the country when their agenda changed.

But there are also individual stories that defy the stereotype. One of them tonight. The story of one American woman who stood by the Afghan people for decades and has never turned her back. Her story and theirs from Fredricka Whitfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Eastern Afghanistan. Breathtaking snow-capped mountains, Sienna hillsides dotted with homes made of mud. So much natural beauty, men of modest means herding goat to the valley creek seem rich in both place and pride. This setting both majestic and misleading.

Life is hard. From the remote villages to the capital city, especially for children and women. What's it like exactly?

MARY MACMAKIN, HUMANITARIAN WORKER: You got to carry the water, you got to carry the food and everything so...

WHITFIELD: We wanted to know, so we tagged along with American- born Mary MacMakin.

A Stanford-university trained physical therapist who has navigated the neediest neighborhoods here for 41 years.

MACMAKIN: Well, my goal is to do a good job. And to take care of these poor widows or poor women as best I can.

WHITFIELD: And helping those crippled. It is what she's been doing since 1961 when her printer husband at the time moved their family of six here for his job with the country's education ministry. Mary, who loves horses, at age 74, shows no signs of fatigue.

MACMAKIN: I spent a lifetime doing various things, mostly supporting myself with physical therapy. And now that I've gotten into this humanitarian business, I find it is exactly what I want to do. I enjoy it.

WHITFIELD: Six years ago, she became the head of her licensed humanitarian group called PARCA. Like an old time family doctor, she makes house calls, delivering hope to people in places where there is none. Speaking the language. On this day, she treks to visit two little girls. Both so malnourished, this 5-year-old can't walk and the 6-year-old is nearly deaf. It is believed their mother, unable to meet their special needs, abandoned them.

MACMAKIN: There is a little sound, right?

WHITFIELD: Mary found a widow to be their foster parent. For $100 a month from PARCA, the widow provides the girls' food.

MACMAKIN: Carrots, potatoes.

WHITFIELD: And shelter in their tiny two-room home. At no charge, Mary takes the girls to physical therapy across town.

MACMAKIN: She has no muscle in the calf.

WHITFIELD: Helping to stretch the muscles of dozens of crippled children. But the day's work still is not over. Thirty bumpy miles and one hour later, Mary helps broaden young minds as well. In small agricultural villages where home schools are packed. Little girls like Nazelah (ph) eager to tell us about their ambitions.

MACMAKIN: This little girl says she can be a doctor, she can be a teacher, she can be either one, whichever she wants to be.

(on camera): Before now, did you ever have that dream?

MACMAKIN: Yes, they have had this dream. It is not something new. They have had this thought. They've been wanting to go to school for a while.

WHITFIELD (voice-over): This, she calls, a reward. After enduring one of the biggest challenges she had in this part of the world. When the Taliban took over here in 1996, Mary MacMacken's nongovernment, women and children's advocacy group was just getting started. After several encountered with the Taliban she described as not so nice, a final threatening ultimatum, leave in 24 hours or else.

MACMAKIN: I didn't have any choice at that point but that was -- that was in 2000.

WHITFIELD (on camera): How was that message conveyed to you?

MACKMAKIN: By a letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It says it is clear to us that you're engaged in espionage activities and we do not have any need for you in the country anymore.

WHITFIELD: So she relocated to Pakistan until the fall of the Taliban.

MACMAKIN: That was a happy moment. November 11, I'll never forget it, yes.

WHITFIELD (voice-over): Two months later, she returned to Kabul, re-establishing her humanitarian group, even opening this store selling crafts made by women and she is still not finished.

MACMAKIN: Another goal is a swimming pool for women so women can learn how to swim.

WHITFIELD: Mary MacMacken, at an age when many Americans have retired, living her golden years in Afghanistan, still on the go.

MACMAKIN: Got legs that want to move so I have to move.

WHITFIELD: And a heart that continues to reach out to Afghans in desperate living conditions.

MACMAKIN: I need a couple more strong arms for this.

WHITFIELD: Fredricka Whitfield CNN, Afghanistan.

COOPER: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, Herb Ritts and the images he brought to life.

But first, another art form this one, well, up for debate. Art and the eye of the beholder when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, designs by Cristo. Is it art or hutspah? You can decide for yourself when we return. we see Michael. Marine biologist, Broadway star, or maybe astronaut. At Microsoft, we started club tech with boys and girls clubs of America so kids learn more than just what computers can do. They learn what they themselves can do.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: New York has always been the home for the big, the brash, the socially ambitious. We're not just talking about art or art as a Brooklynite might say it. Not some painting, a canvas across 26 miles of Central Park. It may sound outlandish to some but it is completely in character for an artist who has made a career out of thinking bigger and brasher than almost anyone.

His name, Cristo.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): His work has sparked controversy all over the world. There was the time he placed 1,340 blue umbrellas in Japan's rice fields.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Young people may understand but older people like us, we don't understand.

COOPER: Then there was the time that Cristo used 6.5 million feet of pink fabric to surround the islands off Florida's Biscayne Bay. He also took 1,760 yellow umbrellas and tucked them into a California mountain side at a cost of $26 million. Some call it art. Others a waste of money. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of hungry people could have been fed for that. We got a lot of hungry people in this world.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The most important thing is that people try to experience the project not only by driving, but walk to the umbrellas.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Marvelous shades of the umbrellas.

COOPER: As a young man, born in Bulgaria, Cristo began creating his large scale fabric installations. In 1976, he gained notoriety when he built a 24-mile fence that cut across California. But state and city officials have not always been ready to embrace Cristo's vision. For 10 years he fought to wrap Paris' Pontnif. And it took 20 years to get German officials to allow him to wrap Berlin's Reichstag. Cristo how appears close to winning another two digged a old battle with New York to unveil the gates in Central Park, a design that was first rejected in 1981 as too grandiose.

ROBIN CEMBALEST, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "ARTNEWS" MAGAZINE: The case of Central Park, it might be a place that you've walked by 100 times but all of a sudden when the gates are there, creating this kind of, like, processional walkway or whatever it will be -- I'm sure the visitors -- the public will be experiencing that space in a way they've never done it before.

COOPER: A final permit from the city is now all that is required. In the end, it will be decided by New York City hall.

CEMBALEST: Obviously there will be people debating this plus the permits to protect the environment, plus the precedence it will start if we let this guy in. How many other guys will want to come in and do something else?

So you can understand from the point of the view of the city government why they're going to take a while to try and figure out if this is going to work.

COOPER: It still may take a while, but if Cristo has proved anything over the years, it is that he is certainly willing to wait.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Certainly is.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, you may not recognize his face, but you certainly know the faces he has photographed. Tonight we remember Herb Ritts.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: We ran across a quote that tried to sum up the work of Herb Ritts who died today at the age of 50. It said, quote, "Ritts fuses the classical traditions of photography with a flesh modern idiom." We think it's best with Ritts not to over think it with art world mumbo jumbo. Ritts took beautiful photos of very beautiful people and his outlet wasn't a stodgy gallery but the stylish magazines of the 1980s and 1990s.

Some of his subjects were obscure, many more were famous. You could credit his success not just to his incomparable eye, but also to his uncanny ability to get people to drop their guard. And sometimes drop more than their guard.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): You may never have seen Herb Ritts the man, but chances are you know the artist. You have seen his vision. In magazines, in museums, books and posters. "Fred with tires." "Back flip."

His photographs are sexual, a celebration of sensuality. "Woman in the sea," "Two men in the sand."

(SINGING)

COOPER: He made music videos as well, winning awards for Janet Jackson and Chris Isaac. Even in his videos, Herb Ritts' camera was the star. Somehow he gave black and white a color all its own.

(SINGING)

COOPER: Ritts used film to expose and explore the human body, its beauty, its strength, no shame involved. He photographed athletes, Jackie Joyner Kersey and artists, the dancer Bill T. Jones.

Celebrities loved him behind the lens and in their lives. He befriended many of those whose picture he took. Madonna, Jack Nicholson.

He began photographing professionally in the 1970s. And his career spanned three decades. A lifetime in Hollywood where fame is fleeting. Thankfully Herb Ritts' pictures are not.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Thanks for joining us tonight on NEWSNIGHT. I'll be covering for Aaron once again tomorrow night. We hope you'll join us. As always at 10:00 p.m. Eastern. Thanks for tuning in tonight. Have a great 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





Northeast>


Aired December 26, 2002 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, GUEST HOST: Good evening again, everyone I'm Anderson Cooper in for Aaron Brown, who is off tonight.
Now it occurred to us that there is one reason why we're kind of glad to see Christmas 2002 bid us adieu. We've been weathering a kind of perfect storm wend we're not talking about the snow. It's more like a blizzard of cliches and other egregious examples of hackery that have tested the endurance, not to mention the holiday spirit, of me and we suspect a few of you viewers out there as well.

The grand prize for cliche generators has got to be the snowstorm yesterday. How many times did you hear someone say and, by the way, thinking they were the first ones ever to say it, the weather outside is frightful or some equally predictable lyric from "White Christmas."

Or the weather man in small hamlets across thy nation making the stale crack about spotting Santa as a tiny blip on the Doppler radar. That's rich.

This morning it was this line, the Northeast is wake up and digging out. Again and again and again. Then, of course, there is the day after-Christmas shopping bonanza. That story comes every year. Shoppers jamming the malls, the holiday crowds are lining up, ready to shop until they drop. Back you to, Sue.

But this year it's all about how badly the retailers are doing. You know, they're not seeing green and because of that, they're really seeing red but you can't leave blue out. This one is really a blue Christmas for retailers, didn't you know? No so happy returns to speak of.

They're having a not so merry little Christmas. We actually used that one last night. All because shoppers are being complete Scrooges. Don't you hate TV news sometimes? I do.

To all this we say, "Bah Humbug!" Oh come on, you didn't think we would get out of this without resorting our own lame cliche, did you? I'm allowed two per program. It's in my contract.

Let's get cracking right now "The Whip." And that begins in Seoul and the troubling developments surrounding North Korea. Sohn Jie-Ae is there for us tonight. Jie-Ae, a headline please.

SOHN JIE-AE, CNN SEOUL BUREAU CHIEF: Yes, Anderson. South Korea's president-elect and its outgoing president both expressed grave concern about the nuclear crisis escalating on the Korean peninsula. They also called for North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions. North Korea, meanwhile, says it has none. It says all it wants by regenerating this power plant is more electricity. The world doesn't seem to be quite convinced. Back to you, Anderson.

COOPER: All right, Jie-Ae, we'll check in with you in a moment.

On to Iraq and the challenge in finding not just the weapons, but also the scientists who know how to make them.

David Ensor is on that tonight. David, a headline.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT; Well, Anderson, today, Iraq's government announced within the next two or three days it will turn over to the United Nations a list of hundreds of Iraqi scientists who worked in the weapons programs in that country. The question now is will any of them, will any of the key ones that matter, be willing to come out of the country with their families and then tell all? It's not clear.

COOPER: All right. David Ensor, back to you.

Quite a turn now to the richest man in Hurricane, West Virginia. Jason Bellini is in Charleston, West Virginia Jason, a headline.

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, the largest lottery jackpot ever to go to a single winner here in West Virginia. The lucky ticket holder tells us what he plans to do with $315 million.

COOPER: All right, Jason, back with you. Back with all of you in a moment.

Also coming up tonight, Fredricka Whitfield has the story of a remarkable American woman living in Afghanistan helping Afghan children, something she has been doing for decades before 9/11.

Also tonight, a young investigative journalist and the ugly secret he discovered buried in the history of Harvard. A secret court from the 1920s searching for and punishing gay students.

And a good bye to the photographer who could capture the glamour and the beauty of everyone from Madonna to the Messiah of Africa, all with his well-placed camera lens, Herb Ritts.

All that to come in the hour ahead.

First, the growing confrontation with North Korea heating up today over fuel for a nuclear reactor. The fuel can make bombs and by loading it into the reactor, the North Koreans today took another step in that direction. Which is odd, we think, from a country seeking, among other things, a nonaggression treaty with the U.S. No shortage of oddities in this story.

We go back to Seoul and Sohn Jie-Ae for today's developments. SOHN: Yes -- yes, Anderson.

In Seoul today, South Korea's president-elect Roh Moo-hyun, had his strongest words yet for the North Korea's nuclear developments in recent days. He called upon North Korea to put back its nuclear facilities to its original state.

He also said what North Korea was doing was going against the global community's wishes for nonproliferation. He also said what North Korea was doing was going against the hopes of the Korean people for peace on the Korean peninsula.

This follows South Koreans' outgoing president Kim Dae Jung's words just made yesterday at an emergency cabinet meeting where he told his ministers that South Korea needed to take a leading role in resolving the nuclear issue.

He told his ministers to use all channels of communication open to them. He tried to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear program. He also called upon close cooperation, major allies such as Russia and China.

Now, meanwhile, North Korea has to start moving new fuel rods into the nuclear reactor. The International Atomic Energy Agency officials say North Korea put about 1,000 new reactors -- new fuel rods into their reactor. They say North Korea needs 8,000 to get the power plant running, though North Korea at this point seems step by step to -- on this path to getting the nuclear power plant started.

It said, however that North Korea had no interest in having nuclear weapons. It said all it needed was electricity. Back to you, Anderson.

COOPER: Jie-Ae, a lot of questions to ask about this.

First of all, let's talk about the fuel rods or what we know about it. You say they need 8,000 of these fuel rods. Do we know if North Korea -- and we not know this. Do we know if North Korea has all the fuel rods that they actually need and now it's just a question of putting them in place?

SOHN: Well, we know that North Korea has a plant that produces fuel rods which was also monitored by U.N. inspectors. They took the seals off of them so we don't know how much is -- how much of that plant is producing but apparently it is producing enough to get 1,000 in and it be -- it may take a little time, but that plant, if put into full operation, could make the more that they need -- Anderson.

COOPER: Jie-Ae, you know, obviously a lot of people in the United States are wondering what the U.S. can do, the Bush administration trying to figure out its options as well. I'm curious to know about the South Korean government.

As you mentioned, I think on Monday on this program, South Korea's new president really ran and was elected on a policy of engagement with North Korea. What are the options he has now? You said in your report he basically told North Korea to put the fuel rods back. But having said that, what options does South Korea really have?

SOHN: well, South Korea now, all it has is the channels of communication that are open with North Korea. This is what Washington doesn't have. South and North Korea so -- are continuing talks in various sectors. At the present time right now in the North Korean capital, South and North Korean officials are talking about new shipping routes between South and North Korea.

So when the South Korean president is talking about using and utilizing the channels of communication open to them, they're talking about using the various sectors -- various sectors that North Korea wants to open up with South Korea and with the outside world in order to convince North Korea that this is not the path that they want to take if they want a more openness and more aid from the outside world.

So that may be one of the things that South Korea can do -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right, Sohn Jie-Ae, thanks a lot. No doubt we will be talking to you a lot in the coming weeks and months. Thanks a lot.

We go now to Iraq. The government there taking steps in preparation for war. The military went on maneuvers in the central part of the country, that's the Iraqi military. They're practicing urban warfare.

Yesterday, in a speech to the nation, Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis to lay down their lives and their souls for their country. Perhaps as preparation for war or a bribe for support, Iraq's trade minister has increased the food ration. The move allows Iraqis to lay in at least a three-month supply of food in case of war.

Meantime today, The U.N. inspections went. Here's CNN's Rym Brahimi.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RYM BRAHIMI, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The latest point of focus for U.N. weapons inspectors: Baghdad's University of Technology, the second time in three days that inspectors have shown up there. Hardly a surprise for the university's president.

MAZEN MOHAMMED ALI, PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY (through translator): The university is specialized in the science of technology. It's one of the achievements of the 17th of July revolution (ph). It was established in 1975, so it's certain to be the focus of their attention.

BRAHIMI: That attention caused some excitement among students. The inspectors' visit followed shortly after by the international media and its cameras.

(on camera): There are about 15,000 students at this University of Technology. Many of them surprised to see the inspectors show up. Others wondering why they would have come here.

(voice-over): One offered an answer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The students here could maybe in the future threaten the Zionist entity. They are probably afraid of that. That's why they came here for inspections.

BRAHIMI: But the inspectors didn't question any students. They were more interested in talking to their professors and research directors instead. It was here that on Tuesday the inspectors conducted their first formal interview with an Iraqi scientist.

Nuclear researcher Dr. Saban Abdel Noor said he insisted on talking in the presence of a witness from the Iraqi national monitoring directorate.

SABAN ABDEL NOOR, NUCLEAR RESEARCHER: I consider this a much better situation for all of us.

BRAHIMI: And the head of Iraq's Monitoring Directorate says that the presence of an official is preferable to a tape recording of the interview.

GEN. HOSSAM MOHAMMED AMIN, DIR. IRAQI MONITORING DIRECTORATE: There is a human being who's a witness, he has a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) witness. This will the right of the interview, the person who is participating in the interview.

BRAHIMI: In a further visit at the University of Technology, the inspectors have questioned more scientists and asked for a list of the university's top researchers, a process the university's president says went smoothly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I must admit they were highly professional, highly skilled team. They were -- they exactly know what they want. They were looking into details regarding this matter. They were asking about the line of research, the end result of the research, where to go and so on.

BRAHIMI: Since this round of inspections began, U.N. biological, chemical and nuclear experts have visited a whole series of universities and engineering colleges ranging from the biotechnology institute to the college of veterinary medicine. Expanding their search for potential weapons from equipment to people who might be capable of making them.

Rym Brahimi, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Iraq today promised to provide a list of hundreds of scientists who worked on weapons of mass destruction. If it is an accurate list, and the experts have their doubts, it will be of some help to those inspectors. But those same experts say who the inspectors talk to will not matter unless they can also have their choice of where the interviews take place. Here again CNN's David Ensor.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR (voice-over): Iraqi nuclear scientist Khadhir Hamza brought secrets about Saddam Hussein's weapons with him when he defected to the West in the '90s. And he says only by interviewing Iraqi scientists outside Iraq will the United Nations' inspectors find out what weapons still exist.

KHIDHIR HAMZA, FORMER SENIOR IRAQI SCIENTIST: This could be the Achilles's heel of Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction program.

ENSOR: An Iraqi scientist's entire extended family, one former inspector says, might need to be brought out of Iraq before he or she could talk freely.

RAY ZILINKAS, FORMER U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: I would certainly say grandmothers, grandfathers, maybe even first cousins. It is hard to tell how brutal they would be because after all, they're trying to make a lesson.

ENSOR: The U.N. has already started conducting some interviews inside Iraq and says it will ask scientists if they want to be moved out of the country. But General Amin, Iraqi scientist and spokesman, predicted that many will refuse, including him.

AMIN: I don't like to leave my country and be interviewed there abroad. If there is any question, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) let them address it to me here in Iraq.

ENSOR: U.N. officials like Chief Inspector Hans Blix also say taking scientists secretly out of the country to talk would be extremely difficult.

HANS BLIX, CHIEF u.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: I don't think that is what the inspectors are for. Nor I do think that they are an abduction agency.

HAMZA: Even before I helped Western government, once they found I was out, three attempts were made on my son's life.

ENSOR: Eventually Hamza's immediate family did get out of Iraq and warnings were given to Baghdad not to touch his other relatives. He argues the interviews that have already started inside Iraq are a big mistake.

HAMZA: Nobody will show readiness inside Iraq to talk. Because this could alert the Iraqi government and end up in his death and his family members' deaths also.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR: U.N. officials say they are currently negotiating with the U.S. and others on this tricky question: what if an Iraqi scientist and his family are brought out and refuse to talk after all? Will they still be promised U.S. visas and resettlement? Ad what if no key scientist is willing to come out at all? On the face of it, there doesn't appear to be a way to force them to. But yet this, more than any other tool, is one that the Bush administration officials said they're counting on -- Anderson.

COOPER: David, has anything publicly been said about how this would work? You brought it up in your piece but how far back do you go in the family? Do you go as far back as first cousins or friends? It seems a very tricky thing to figure out.

ENSOR: It is a very tricky thing to figure out. You heard one of the former inspectors saying he thought it had to go to the extended family, grandchildren, all sorts of people.

Mr. Hamza, who we interviewed said he did not think so he said he thought the immediate family has to get out, that warnings have to be made to the Iraqi government that anyone else in the family who is touched, Amnesty International, the U.S. government and many others will be on their case about it. But he thought that would be enough.

COOPER: All right, David Ensor, thanks very much.

We go now to the war on terrorism and a thought experiment. Imagine yourself interrogating an al Qaeda captive. You suspect he knows something about an operation. Getting him to tell you means saving lives. Perhaps a lot of lives. So how far would you go?

This is not an experiment for many. Captives are being interrogated. We've known the broad strokes for quite some time. Today some of the details came to light in a story in "The Washington Post." Dana Priest shared a byline on it and she joins us tonight to talk about it.

Thanks for being with us. Your article was really fascinating and not so much because some of the information hadn't been out there, but it really focused a light on an area which few public officials have talked about. What do we know -- what did you put in your article for those who didn't read it about the conditions that these people are being interrogated under?

DANA PRIEST, "WASHINGTON POST": First of all, we're not talking about captives under military control such as those at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or those at Bagram.

We're talking captives under CIA control at a very special facility off limits of Bagram and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and other secret CIA interrogation centers where the CIA is controlling the interrogation of captives.

They, themselves, in public testimony as far back as September, alluded to the fact they were using a gloves off approach post-9/11 because they needed to, because they needed to extract tactical intelligence in order to thwart what they said were imminent threats.

COOPER: And practically speaking, what does gloves off mean? PRIEST: In CIA hands, the most we could say was that it means what is called in the interrogation trade, stress and duress techniques, everything from binding tightly, hooded, sleep deprivation, held in confinement in tight spaces, disorientation, questioning by female interrogators who are meant to psychologically disorient men who come from conservative Muslim societies where women are rarely in control. That sort of thing.

If that doesn't work, with some captives they are rendered to foreign governments. We name three, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan, whose intelligence services are known to use brutal means to extract information from their captives. You can find that in the State Department's human rights reports on all three of those countries, and officials we talked to said they're being given over to those countries in order at times to use those means to try to get information out of some of the captives.

COOPER: One of the other things that came out of the article which was very interesting is that in some cases, these captives being held by the CIA in these locations -- in some cases they're sort of duped into believing that they have already been handed over to a third party government, in a sense, tricked. They believe they are already in Saudi custody and therefore about to be tortured, right?

PRIEST: Right. You're talking about "false flag operations" is what it is called. And the CIA does not want to lose control over most of these people. They value them. They think they have information that they need. They don't want somebody misusing them to the point where they can no longer get information out of them.

So sometimes the mere threat of handing them over to countries with this sort of reputation will do it and in the false flag operations they go one step further and try to trick them by using false uniforms, people who speak the language who are of the country and that sort of thing.

COOPER: It is sort of tricky for the United States, to say the least, for the United States to be engaged in this kind of hands off interrogation as they call it because for years the U.S. has criticized other governments for using sleep deprivation in particular as an interrogation tool. Isn't that right?

PRIEST: Yes. And they still do officially criticize the use of torture and officials publicly deny that they are engaged in torture and we did not say they are engaged.

It is an arm length's relationship where they'll hand them over to the foreign government and then the relationship with the foreign government varies. Sometimes they give them questions to ask. We doubt they're in the room. That would be too close. That wouldn't be arm's length enough so they can have deniability that this is going on.

They don't turn them over to France and Germany. They're turning them over to these countries that use these sorts of methods.

COOPER: Right. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco. Do we have any sense of how many people have been turned over to third countries?

PRIEST: Not exactly. We think it is under 100. But there are thousands who are captive in countries such as Yemen where they're held by the Yemeni and the CIA participates in some degree in their interrogation as well. We think they have secret interrogation facilities in many of these countries.

COOPER: All right. Dana Priest of "The Washington Post," a fascinating article. Thank you for joining us tonight.

PRIEST: Thank you.

COOPER: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, ivy intrigue and a student reporter's accidental discovery.

And the one man most of us envy right now, that's right. Andrew Whittaker Jr., the man in the black hat, or Jack for short. The plans for his history-making millions coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: And the one man most of us envy now, the man in the black hat, Jack for short. The plans for his history-making millions coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: When it comes to winning the lottery, I think we all want winners to straight out of central casting. We want them to be colorful and humble. We want them to be generous to immediately show willingness to share the pot for a good cause. And we want them to have a long tear-jerking back story filled with financial struggles, sort of like George Bailey (ph). Andrew Jack Whittaker may not make the last requirement but on everything else he's pretty much pitch perfect to play the role of winner of the single biggest lottery prize.

Here is Jason Bellini

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BELLINI (voice-over): Jack Whittaker found his local convenient store full of reporters when drove up for gas.

ANDREW JACK WHITTAKER, POWERBALL LOTTERY WINNER: And I walked in and paid for everything and had to wait in line. It was like, I don't know, must have been 30 people in the store or more. I had to wait in line. I told the little girl that sold me the ticket, I asked her, I said how do you feel today? I said do you feel any different? She said, you have won the lottery, didn't you? I said, yes I did. She said, no you didn't. You're not excited enough. And pushed me on out the door.

BELLINI: Even his granddaughter Brandy doubted him.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's like you need to get dressed up because I won the lottery. I was like, no you didn't. You swear, you swear?

BELLINI: Whittaker is the biggest single ticket lottery winner ever. Almost $315 million at face value.

WHITTAKER: I've had to work for everything and I've got nobody that has ever given me -- this is the first thing that anybody has ever given me.

BELLINI: He chose to take cash, $170 million before taxes and he'll give 10 percent, $17 million, to the church of god.

WHITTAKER: $17 million in the state of West Virginia will do good for the poor.

BELLINI: He is already a millionaire businessman, owner of a sewer construction company which he plans to expand.

WHITTAKER: I have 25 people laid off now at Christmas. I want more work so I can put them back to work. I don't like them being off work.

BELLINI: He said the money won't change his life. He can't say the same for the rest of his family.

WHITTAKER: Their plans scare me. Their plans scare me. My biggest problem is going to be keeping my granddaughter and daughter from spending all their money in one week.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BELLINI: Well, Jack Whittaker after taxes will take home $111 million minus what he gives to his church. We asked Whittaker why he thinks he won the lottery. Religious man. He says I don't have luck, I'm blessed --Anderson.

COOPER: Well, Jason Bellini, thanks very much. I hope he's got a good lawyer.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, a not so very merry Christmas at the cash registers. I had to get one cliche in this last half hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: You can argue all you want about the true meaning of Christmas and never agree on the answer. The meaning of the day after Christmas is more clear cut. As Puffy would say, it is all about the Benjamins, about stores counting up sales and trying to figure out how they did. This year the answer is not too well and the answer to that is just to throw a sale, a big one.

Here is CNN's Mary Snow.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Crowds streamed in hoping to cash in. In New York there wasn't much elbow room in Bloomingdale's where discounts brought in the shoppers. Over at Macy's, prices were slashed by up to 75 percent. Retailers are hoping to make up for weak holiday sales, some shoppers were ready to bargain hunt at 7:00 a.m.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Christopher Radko ornaments, garland, glass ornaments, Santas especially some of these Santas that are just so gorgeous, too expensive before Christmas, perfect now. So it was great.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There really weren't any great sales, anything I could speak of. Everything we ended up buying wasn't on sale. It is just like any other day, business as usual.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Big discounts.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Prices are low because they seemed low they are year to begin with.

SNOW: Judging by the crowds, sales appear healthy. But looks can be deceiving. Federated which owns Macy's and Bloomingdale's said sales were below plan for December. And the largest retailer, WalMart, says while it picked up four days before Christmas it was too little too late. And expects its growth target to fall short of expectations. Analysts say overall it has been a disappointing season and there is only so much stores can recoup in the last days of December.

DANA TELSEY, RETAIL ANALYST, BEAR STEARNS: This last we after Christmas well busy. It certainly won't add as much to the retailers sells or profits given the heavy mark downs they are incurring.

SNOW: One bright spot: gift certificates. All told, some expect those certificates to bring in $38 billion in sales this year. But the boost for retailer is seen as limited.

DARREN RIGBY, RETAIL ANALYST, BAIN & CO.: It could be a gain, but I doubt that it's going to be enough to put them up to the growth level that they're looking for.

SNOW (on camera): Because of the deep discounts and because gift certificates are at an all-time high, some actually predict that today may turn out to be the busiest shopping day of the holiday season. And that would be a first. That's because it's normally the days leading up to the holiday that usually see the most traffic.

Mary Snow for CNN Financial News, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: A few other stories just to fit in tonight, beginning with the rescue from a small island in the Bahamas. Thirty-six Cubans were rescued by the Coast Guard after they were spotted by a plane waving for help. That's an infrared picture there. Officials believe they were abandoned on Christmas Eve. They were pulled to safety and turned over to the Bahamian authorities. A co-pilot for Delta airlines was taken off his plane at the Norfolk, Virginia airport this morning after a security screener smelled alcohol. The AP reported that the man failed a Breathalyzer test and was charged with a misdemeanor.

And in the Northeast today, residents were dealing with the aftermath of that massive snowstorm. The storm knocked out powers to tens of thousands of homes and businesses. At least 23 people have died since the storm began early in the week. Most of those involved in traffic accidents.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, a secret court uncovered at one of the country's most prestigious universities.

And an American-born woman who has dedicated half her life to serving the people and children of afghanistan.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: When we return, an Ivy League secret revealed after 80 years.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Harvard University has a simple motto. Just a single word: Veritas. It's Latin, I'm told, for truth, and you would have a tough time finding an institution with a longer history of nurturing the pursuit of truth than Harvard.

But this story, recently uncovered by a Harvard student, isn't so much about the pursuit of truth as it is about what happens when that search goes too far.

If you're looking for a word here, the word is inquisition.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): The year was 1920. And hidden behind the Ivy-covered walls of Harvard, five school officials secretly met for what would essentially become a witchunt.

They called themselves the court. Their mission: hunt down and expel gay students. The court was formed after a failing sophomore, Cyril Wilcox, killed himself. Wilcox's letters indicated he was gay and mentioned other gay students as well.

Fearing a scandal, Harvard's president, A. Lawrence Lowell, urged school administrators to investigate and interrogate anyone they suspected of being homosexual.

AMIT PALEY, JUNIOR, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: It ended up with almost a dozen men being forced to withdraw from the college. Most of them were never to return. A few were able to return after a year. Most of those students who were able to return were not actually gay themselves and were not involved in any gay acts. COOPER: Amit Paley, a Harvard junior, found out about the existence of the court almost by accident, and broke the story in the school newspaper "The Harvard Crimson."

He discovered that at least one of the students, Eugene Cummings, expelled in 1920, killed himself. Several others found it difficult to enroll anywhere else, because Harvard essentially blackballed them.

To be expelled, a student didn't have to be gay. They just acquainted with someone who was.

PALEY: There was one student, in fact, that in the records of the court he told them, Why should I stop talking to student X just because he's queer?

COOPER: After the course disbanded, school officials wanted no one, not a single soul to know of its existence. The records were hidden away in these archives at Harvard University. It took Paley six months of appeals before school officials would let him see the documents.

PALEY: This was about a secret as it gets. No one really knew about this court for a period of 80 years. They kept it secret from the normal levels.

There is an administrative board which actually has existed at Harvard for more than 100 years and they didn't know about this at first.

COOPER: Harvard officials refused to comment on camera. But University President Lawrence Summers has issued this statement: "I want to express our deep regret for the way this situation was handled, as well as the anguish the students and their families must have experience eight decades ago."

PALEY: I think the general mood on campus though is just that it's shocking that something like this could have happened, especially in an institution like Harvard where everything about it has been written to death. That there could be a huge secret that no one knew about for 80 years.

COOPER: After 80 years, the secret is now, finally, out. The students affected have all passed away. These fading records are all that's left of the court that dare not speak its name.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: A couple of stories now from around the world, starting in Bethlehem. Israeli troops moving back in after a two-day pullout for Christmas, the Israeli government saying the occupation and curfew will continue until terrorist activity stops in the biblical city. The incursion was part of a violent day on the West Bank. Troops clashed with armed fugitives in Ramallah. They shot and killed five, but also killed two bystanders. This was the deadliest day of fighting since 10 Palestinians killed on a raid on Gaza earlier this month. And in Venezuela today, more anti-government rallies after a day off for Christmas. The general strike there now in its fourth week. Some fault lines developing among the opposition. However, one strike leader saying the focus now should be on upcoming elections and not continuing the strike. Meantime, the strike is keeping millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil off the world market and driving up the price. Oil today closed above $32 a barrel. That is the highest has been in over two years.

And it's kind of odd to have both the Powerball winnings and Afghanistan in the same program. When you think of it, the Powerball prize is more than 12 times the entire economy of Afghanistan. In the past several decades, the world superpowers, including the U.S., have been accused of using Afghanistan to advance their own interests and then ignoring the country when their agenda changed.

But there are also individual stories that defy the stereotype. One of them tonight. The story of one American woman who stood by the Afghan people for decades and has never turned her back. Her story and theirs from Fredricka Whitfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Eastern Afghanistan. Breathtaking snow-capped mountains, Sienna hillsides dotted with homes made of mud. So much natural beauty, men of modest means herding goat to the valley creek seem rich in both place and pride. This setting both majestic and misleading.

Life is hard. From the remote villages to the capital city, especially for children and women. What's it like exactly?

MARY MACMAKIN, HUMANITARIAN WORKER: You got to carry the water, you got to carry the food and everything so...

WHITFIELD: We wanted to know, so we tagged along with American- born Mary MacMakin.

A Stanford-university trained physical therapist who has navigated the neediest neighborhoods here for 41 years.

MACMAKIN: Well, my goal is to do a good job. And to take care of these poor widows or poor women as best I can.

WHITFIELD: And helping those crippled. It is what she's been doing since 1961 when her printer husband at the time moved their family of six here for his job with the country's education ministry. Mary, who loves horses, at age 74, shows no signs of fatigue.

MACMAKIN: I spent a lifetime doing various things, mostly supporting myself with physical therapy. And now that I've gotten into this humanitarian business, I find it is exactly what I want to do. I enjoy it.

WHITFIELD: Six years ago, she became the head of her licensed humanitarian group called PARCA. Like an old time family doctor, she makes house calls, delivering hope to people in places where there is none. Speaking the language. On this day, she treks to visit two little girls. Both so malnourished, this 5-year-old can't walk and the 6-year-old is nearly deaf. It is believed their mother, unable to meet their special needs, abandoned them.

MACMAKIN: There is a little sound, right?

WHITFIELD: Mary found a widow to be their foster parent. For $100 a month from PARCA, the widow provides the girls' food.

MACMAKIN: Carrots, potatoes.

WHITFIELD: And shelter in their tiny two-room home. At no charge, Mary takes the girls to physical therapy across town.

MACMAKIN: She has no muscle in the calf.

WHITFIELD: Helping to stretch the muscles of dozens of crippled children. But the day's work still is not over. Thirty bumpy miles and one hour later, Mary helps broaden young minds as well. In small agricultural villages where home schools are packed. Little girls like Nazelah (ph) eager to tell us about their ambitions.

MACMAKIN: This little girl says she can be a doctor, she can be a teacher, she can be either one, whichever she wants to be.

(on camera): Before now, did you ever have that dream?

MACMAKIN: Yes, they have had this dream. It is not something new. They have had this thought. They've been wanting to go to school for a while.

WHITFIELD (voice-over): This, she calls, a reward. After enduring one of the biggest challenges she had in this part of the world. When the Taliban took over here in 1996, Mary MacMacken's nongovernment, women and children's advocacy group was just getting started. After several encountered with the Taliban she described as not so nice, a final threatening ultimatum, leave in 24 hours or else.

MACMAKIN: I didn't have any choice at that point but that was -- that was in 2000.

WHITFIELD (on camera): How was that message conveyed to you?

MACKMAKIN: By a letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It says it is clear to us that you're engaged in espionage activities and we do not have any need for you in the country anymore.

WHITFIELD: So she relocated to Pakistan until the fall of the Taliban.

MACMAKIN: That was a happy moment. November 11, I'll never forget it, yes.

WHITFIELD (voice-over): Two months later, she returned to Kabul, re-establishing her humanitarian group, even opening this store selling crafts made by women and she is still not finished.

MACMAKIN: Another goal is a swimming pool for women so women can learn how to swim.

WHITFIELD: Mary MacMacken, at an age when many Americans have retired, living her golden years in Afghanistan, still on the go.

MACMAKIN: Got legs that want to move so I have to move.

WHITFIELD: And a heart that continues to reach out to Afghans in desperate living conditions.

MACMAKIN: I need a couple more strong arms for this.

WHITFIELD: Fredricka Whitfield CNN, Afghanistan.

COOPER: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, Herb Ritts and the images he brought to life.

But first, another art form this one, well, up for debate. Art and the eye of the beholder when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, designs by Cristo. Is it art or hutspah? You can decide for yourself when we return. we see Michael. Marine biologist, Broadway star, or maybe astronaut. At Microsoft, we started club tech with boys and girls clubs of America so kids learn more than just what computers can do. They learn what they themselves can do.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: New York has always been the home for the big, the brash, the socially ambitious. We're not just talking about art or art as a Brooklynite might say it. Not some painting, a canvas across 26 miles of Central Park. It may sound outlandish to some but it is completely in character for an artist who has made a career out of thinking bigger and brasher than almost anyone.

His name, Cristo.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): His work has sparked controversy all over the world. There was the time he placed 1,340 blue umbrellas in Japan's rice fields.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Young people may understand but older people like us, we don't understand.

COOPER: Then there was the time that Cristo used 6.5 million feet of pink fabric to surround the islands off Florida's Biscayne Bay. He also took 1,760 yellow umbrellas and tucked them into a California mountain side at a cost of $26 million. Some call it art. Others a waste of money. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of hungry people could have been fed for that. We got a lot of hungry people in this world.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The most important thing is that people try to experience the project not only by driving, but walk to the umbrellas.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Marvelous shades of the umbrellas.

COOPER: As a young man, born in Bulgaria, Cristo began creating his large scale fabric installations. In 1976, he gained notoriety when he built a 24-mile fence that cut across California. But state and city officials have not always been ready to embrace Cristo's vision. For 10 years he fought to wrap Paris' Pontnif. And it took 20 years to get German officials to allow him to wrap Berlin's Reichstag. Cristo how appears close to winning another two digged a old battle with New York to unveil the gates in Central Park, a design that was first rejected in 1981 as too grandiose.

ROBIN CEMBALEST, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "ARTNEWS" MAGAZINE: The case of Central Park, it might be a place that you've walked by 100 times but all of a sudden when the gates are there, creating this kind of, like, processional walkway or whatever it will be -- I'm sure the visitors -- the public will be experiencing that space in a way they've never done it before.

COOPER: A final permit from the city is now all that is required. In the end, it will be decided by New York City hall.

CEMBALEST: Obviously there will be people debating this plus the permits to protect the environment, plus the precedence it will start if we let this guy in. How many other guys will want to come in and do something else?

So you can understand from the point of the view of the city government why they're going to take a while to try and figure out if this is going to work.

COOPER: It still may take a while, but if Cristo has proved anything over the years, it is that he is certainly willing to wait.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Certainly is.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, you may not recognize his face, but you certainly know the faces he has photographed. Tonight we remember Herb Ritts.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: We ran across a quote that tried to sum up the work of Herb Ritts who died today at the age of 50. It said, quote, "Ritts fuses the classical traditions of photography with a flesh modern idiom." We think it's best with Ritts not to over think it with art world mumbo jumbo. Ritts took beautiful photos of very beautiful people and his outlet wasn't a stodgy gallery but the stylish magazines of the 1980s and 1990s.

Some of his subjects were obscure, many more were famous. You could credit his success not just to his incomparable eye, but also to his uncanny ability to get people to drop their guard. And sometimes drop more than their guard.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): You may never have seen Herb Ritts the man, but chances are you know the artist. You have seen his vision. In magazines, in museums, books and posters. "Fred with tires." "Back flip."

His photographs are sexual, a celebration of sensuality. "Woman in the sea," "Two men in the sand."

(SINGING)

COOPER: He made music videos as well, winning awards for Janet Jackson and Chris Isaac. Even in his videos, Herb Ritts' camera was the star. Somehow he gave black and white a color all its own.

(SINGING)

COOPER: Ritts used film to expose and explore the human body, its beauty, its strength, no shame involved. He photographed athletes, Jackie Joyner Kersey and artists, the dancer Bill T. Jones.

Celebrities loved him behind the lens and in their lives. He befriended many of those whose picture he took. Madonna, Jack Nicholson.

He began photographing professionally in the 1970s. And his career spanned three decades. A lifetime in Hollywood where fame is fleeting. Thankfully Herb Ritts' pictures are not.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Thanks for joining us tonight on NEWSNIGHT. I'll be covering for Aaron once again tomorrow night. We hope you'll join us. As always at 10:00 p.m. Eastern. Thanks for tuning in tonight. Have a great night.

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