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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Anti-Terrorist Police Discover Ricin In London; FBI Now Believes Five Fugitives Were Made Up; The Threat Of General Aviation Aircraft; President Bush's Economic Proposal

Aired January 07, 2003 - 22:00   ET

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

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


AARON BROWN, HOST: Good evening again, everyone. I really wanted to write a quick light piece at the top tonight. Something about all the nice mail we received from around the world after last night's first global NEWSNIGHT broadcast. But each time I tried I came back to a piece that was somewhat buried in the middle of the program last night, the death of this young child in Newark, New Jersey.
We don't know with certainty who is responsible for Faheem Williams' death. We hope the courts will someday figure that out and punish that person for starving a child to death. We also hope the citizens of New Jersey demand that their child welfare agency do something to make sure that such things never happen again. They have a responsibility for Faheem.

They were supposed to keep track of him and his siblings. And they failed him, as surely as so many other adults who failed him and his two brothers who managed to survive.

Sometimes I wonder how much we actually care about our children. There was young Faheem in New Jersey, there was a rash of child killings this past summer. Samantha Runnion, Danielle van Dam, to name two. Of course there is Rilya Wilson in Florida, the child the state lost and still has not found.

But there are other less tragic signs about how we feel about our kids. We'll air a report next week -- Monday, I hope -- on states that have cut the school week to four days because they can't or won't pay for the fifth. Not child abuse of the traditional sort, of course, but not good treatment either. And not especially responsible unless we've come to believe we are actually overeducating our children.

But here's the sad truth. We'll spend far more time talking about cutting taxes on this group or that than we will about these kids. We'll forget Faheem and how he lived in died in days, not weeks. In that regard, there is plenty of blame to go around.

On to the news of the day, which begins as always with "The Whip." And "The Whip" begins with a startling discovery by Scotland Yard. Nic Robertson following that from London. Nic, a headline from you tonight.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, that's right. Anti-terrorist police raiding a House in north London discover ricin, the deadly toxin there. They're still holding six North African men for questioning caught in the same raids -- Aaron.

BROWN: Nic, thank you. A very different story in the war on terrorism. Somewhat embarrassing we suspect for the FBI. Kelli Arena on that tonight. Kelli, a headline from you?

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, remember the five men that the FBI was looking for who officials said may have illegally entered the United States? Well, they've called off the search. Apparently the informant who warned the FBI about the men was lying.

BROWN: Kelli, thank you. A story now about a security threat involving planes, just not the giant commercial planes. Small private ones. Patty Davis covers aviation for us and has been working on this. Patty, the headline from you tonight.

PATTY DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well now that security has been beefed up at the nation's commercial airports, some say there is still an opening for terrorists at those smaller airports with smaller private planes.

BROWN: Patty, thank you. And yesterday's lead ends "The Whip." The president formally releasing his economic plan today. Dana Bash is on that, and Dana, a headline from you.

DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the president went to Chicago today to unveil the details of a high priced plan he says will help the economy. Democrats say the only thing it will boost is the deficit.

BROWN: And thank you. Back with all of you shortly.

Also coming up tonight, Candy Crowley on the race for the president that wasn't. A look at why Senator Tom Daschle will not challenge in 2004. A glimpse into the mind and the evolution of Malcolm X. His family turning over 700 pounds of documents to a Harlem library. We'll look at what more they can tell us about someone so compelling and controversial.

We'll say good-bye to another compelling figure of the civil rights era, the mother who wanted everyone just to see what the brutality of racism had done to her son. (UNINTELLIGIBLE). That's "Segment Seven" tonight. All of that to come in the hour ahead.

We begin with the news that police in London have six men in custody and are questioning them about a chilling discovery. A small amount of a type of poison that is nearly 100 percent deadly. No antidote, no vaccine, no treatment at all. Al-Qaeda is trying to make it; Iraq admits to making gallons of it. There's really no good use for it, only bad ones. Here again, CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Police keep watch outside a north London House, where the deadly toxin ricin was discovered during a raid early Sunday. Acting on an intelligence tip, anti-terrorist police led the predawn raids here and in east London, arresting six North African men who are still being questioned. Local residents said police wore protective clothing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They were dressed like (UNINTELLIGIBLE) space really. They had masks and space kind of suits on.

ROBERTSON: British police, intelligence services and health officials are combining forces to combat the potential threat posed by this discovery. Medical professionals are being briefed in an effort to allay public concerns. And some officials play down the threat.

PAT TROOP, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH: It appears that they found a very small amount. And it looks like a very low tech small production. So we're working on the basis at the moment. But if there is any material -- and we don't know if there is any other material -- that it's likely to be a very small amount.

ROBERTSON: According to experts, ricin is difficult to produce in large quantities. And very difficult to disperse. It was used successfully in Britain in a 1978 assassination of a journalist.

GARTH WHITLY, FMR. UN WEAPONS INSPECTOR: It can be ingested, it can be injected. There is talk of it having been produced in aerosol form. But it is the delivery that would make a problem to any potential terrorist use.

ROBERTSON: International intelligence agencies have been warning their coalition partners, including Britain, of the possibility of chemical or biological attacks on their subway systems.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON: Well, within an hour of the announcement of this discovery, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was warning delegates at a conference that the terrorist threat at this time to Britain is very real. The British police here calling on people to be very vigilant, particularly when they're in public areas, Aaron.

BROWN: What do we know about the six people in custody, anything?

ROBERTSON: We know that they're all of North African origin. We know they're all male. We know that their ages range between teenagers up to 20 years, and in their 30s as well. The police have so far not officially announced what nationality the men are. We don't know what organization they may have been working with. We don't even know at this time if they were all working for the same organization.

Telltale bits of information that hint at what may be going on. The ricin was found in a flat where only one of these six men was arrested. There was manufacturing equipment there as well. Perhaps an indication there the group broken down into a unit, one man who may have been producing the ricin for the materials. That, at this time, Aaron, speculation. BROWN: Do we know how they connected the one they found where the gas was found and the five they found obviously -- or presumably some other place?

ROBERTSON: It's very interesting the way that British police released the information. Scotland Yard, in a quite lengthy press release by their own standards, said that the anti-terrorist police were acting on a tip-off given to British security services. So possibly in that we can see that there perhaps had been a surveillance operation, that perhaps they had received a number -- or within that information they received, it pointed to a number of locations.

Not clear. But clearly the police there saying that this was the work of somebody able to trace these people through help from an informant.

BROWN: Nic, thank you. Nic Robertson in London tonight.

Back home, a big manhunt is over. The FBI calling it off because they now believe there aren't any fugitives at all. The five men they suspected of slipping into the country somewhere before New Year's have been nothing more than five phantoms conjured up by an informant perhaps looking to save his skin. We say might, because in the world of informers and intrigue no one, not even the FBI, knows for sure, only that the evidence is pointing in a certain direction tonight. Here again, CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA (voice-over): Their pictures were plastered worldwide on television, on the Internet. A holiday terror scare. Even the president got involved.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And if anybody has any information about the five, I would hope they would contact their local authorities.

ARENA: But it turns out it was all a false alarm. The FBI has called off the manhunt. The informant who gave the tip apparently lied. It's now believed he was hoping to strike a deal with prosecutors. Sources say even though there were some doubts from the start, the tip coincided with separate intelligence about a possible terror threat around the New Year's holiday. FBI supporters say it's a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

STEVE POMERANTZ, FMR. FBI COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL: I think the worst possible thing that could happen now for the credibility not only of the FBI, but the government as well, is for something to happen and it would later be revealed that the government had some information and didn't either act on it or make it public.

ARENA: Information about the five came from an alleged forger who was in Canadian custody. Michael Hamdani, who also faces charges in the United States.

DEEPAK PARADKAR, ATTORNEY: Mr. Hamdani, as I said previously, cooperated with authorities.

ARENA: An FBI investigation into a Pakistani human smuggling ring led to Hamdani. FBI officials say he claimed he sold the five fake documents, that they were traveling together and were anxious to get to the United States by December 24. But problems surfaced last week when a jeweler in Pakistan said his photo was among the five and that he'd never been to the US. Still, the manhunt continued, leading some to question how the public will react to the next alert.

LAWRENCE GOLDMAN, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYERS: When they come up again, people are not going to take them as seriously. People will not pay as much attention. And people will hear it and say, another wild goose chase.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA: FBI officials say that they understand that risk, but they insist they would react in the very same way given similar circumstances -- Aaron.

BROWN: Do we know anything about how Mr. Hamdani was vetted by his interrogators? Were there polygraphs? What do we know?

ARENA: Well we do know that the Canadian authorities issued a polygraph early on which he passed. The Canadian authorities, though, also say that they thought that the information he provided was very suspect. Several FBI officials that I spoke to today said that early on they also believed that it was suspect, but the time that it would take, they say, to vet the whole thing thoroughly wasn't time that they were willing to spare because they had separate intelligence coming in at the very same time suggesting that there could be a possible terror attack on US soil on New Year's Eve.

So they say, to play it safe, they put the information out there, continued with the investigation, realized that he was lying because they had interrogated other people who were in custody in Pakistan and in Canada as well. Figured out that this was indeed a lie, and then had to retract it.

BROWN: Well, I think we both can be glad we're not the ones who have to make these decisions on whether to go public with this stuff or not.

ARENA: This is true, Aaron.

BROWN: Kelli, thank you very much. Kelli Arena tonight.

If the pictures over the weekend of a small plane buzzing the skyscrapers in Frankfurt, Germany didn't give you goose bumps, think back a little more than a year ago, when every crop duster in this country was grounded and small planes were banned from flying over New York City and a number of other major cities, too. Since then, the planes have been flying again, but critics say not enough has been done to address the potential threat they may pose. Here again tonight CNN's Patty Davis.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVIS (voice-over): Every time he taxis into an airport, private pilot Mike Doherty says he's on the lookout.

MIKE DOHERTY, PRIVATE PILOT: If anybody looks like they're just snooping around like they don't know what they're doing.

DAVIS: Small plane owners and pilots are joining with the government, asking half a million private pilots nationwide like Doherty to be the eyes and ears of a new airport watch program to help stop terrorists. Since the September 11 attacks, many small airports have also put up fences and restricted access to airplane keys.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you don't want to give the key to the student so they will not be able to start the engine.

DAVIS: The FAA now requires private pilots to show photo ID if asked, and student pilots from overseas undergo rigorous background checks.

WARREN MORNINGSTAR, AIRCRAFT OWNERS AND PILOTS ASSOCIATION: Truth be told, the concern is more about just the aircraft being stolen than being taken for terrorist activity. Even if one of those general aviation aircraft did hit something, they just don't do much damage.

DAVIS: But critics say they should worry about terrorism. Security at airports like this is so much looser than the beefed up security at commercial airports, that it could prove attractive to terrorists. In fact, at this Maryland airport, only about 20 miles from the White House, not a security guard in sight.

LARRY JOHNSON, SECURITY EXPERT: They go after, if you will, path of least resistance. If you can't get to the commercial carriers but you can get to the general aviation carriers, then that's where you go.

DAVIS: And private planes have proven vulnerable. Last January, a 15-year-old was killed when he slammed a stolen Cessna into a Tampa office building. His suicide note praised Osama bin Laden.

In April, a man piloted his single-engine plane into the Perelli (ph) building in Milan, Italy, killing himself and two others. And on Sunday in Germany, a man threatened to crash a stolen plane into the European central bank in Frankfurt, but landed and was arrested.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DAVIS: Also vulnerable, larger fuel-laden private charter airplanes. Starting in March, the Transportation Security Administration will screen passengers and bags on those charter airplanes with more than 61 seats. But that's just 10 percent of the fleet. And last July, the FAA did put out an alert to pilots and airports that terrorists might indeed turn to these smaller airports and these types of aircraft -- Aaron.

BROWN: So are you aware anywhere, either Congress or within the administration, that anybody's planning to tighten the regulations?

DAVIS: For the smaller guys, no. At this point, the Transportation Security Administration focused solely on the smaller charter aircraft. There is a regulation that is going into effect also February 1 that requires background checks for pilots of aircraft that are 12,500 pounds and above. So that's not the really small guys, but at least it's something more. So that's where they're focusing right now.

BROWN: Patty thank you. Patty Davis from Washington tonight.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the man who coined the phrase "axis of evil." David Frum, joins us with an insider's perspective on the president and his administration. Up next: what the president plans to do to stimulate the US economy. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: President Bush today took the wraps off his plan to get the economy moving again. No surprises. We've known the broad strokes for a few days now. We've heard the sales pitch already and gotten a taste of the opposition as well.

So when the president gave us the details in a speech in Chicago, it was a bit of an anticlimax. And in a way, the larger story was back in Washington, with the swearing in of a new Congress that's more likely than the old Congress to give the president what he wants. Here again, CNN's Dana Bash.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BASH (voice-over): The president headed to the middle of the country to unveil an economic plan he says will help middle America.

BUSH: We will not rest until every business has a chance to grow and every person who wants to find working can find a job.

BASH: Mr. Bush said the economy is improving. But as he heads towards re-election, the president wants Americans to know he's doing what he can to give it a boost. The cost of his proposal is now estimated at $674 billion over 10 years. Eliminating the dividend income tax, the centerpiece of his plan makes up roughly half the cost at $364 billion. Accelerating tax cuts passed in 2001, but not set to kick in until 2004 and 2006 will cost $64 billion.

BUSH: If tax relief is good enough for Americans three years from now, it is good enough for Americans today.

BASH: But even Democrats who helped Mr. Bush pass those tax cuts are skeptical of his new plan.

SEN. JOHN BREAUX (D), LOUISIANA: Cutting taxes is always good politics. The question is, can we also do it in a way that's also good public policy?

BASH: Answering criticism, Mr. Bush helps the wealthy, the plan also calls for accelerating the child tax credit at a cost of $91 billion, accelerating the so-called marriage penalty for about $58 billion. And other tax relief for businesses and individuals, adding up to $93 billion all over 10 years.

BUSH: We must be more creative when we help those who have the hardest time finding work.

BASH: With the jobless rate at its highest level in six months, the Bush plan gives $3.6 billion to states for new re-employment accounts which would pay for things like job training, child care and transportation for the unemployed.

(END VIDEOTAPE0

BASH: And Aaron, now comes the hard part, which, of course, is going to be selling the plan. Administration officials will fan out across the country to do that this week. But the toughest sales job will be in Congress. And, yes, the president has a Republican- controlled Congress now, but particularly in the Senate, you always need 60 votes to pass anything. And listening to the criticism from Democrats today on the plan, they need about nine to pass it, and it is not going to be easy to get that, Aaron.

BROWN: Dana, thank you. Dana Bash at the White House tonight.

Jeff Greenfield, our senior political analyst is with us. Remember when Republicans were obsessed with the deficit?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. This is not...

BROWN: Whatever happened to that?

GREENFIELD: This is not your father's Republican Party. About 1980, when Ronald Reagan converted the Republicans to a supply side tax cuts are the essence issue, the Republican Party basically has, by and large, with some exceptions like Chuck Grassley, John McCain, have abandoned this idea. And their idea, basically...

BROWN: Abandoned the idea that deficits matter.

GREENFIELD: That deficits are bad, right. And that tax cuts are now the central driving idea, I think it is fair to say of the Republican Party. And it's an all-purpose policy. George Bush advocated them in 2000, when we had triple digit surpluses. And the argument was we could afford it.

Now we have triple digit deficits. And tax cuts are good in times of peace and war, inflation and no inflation. That is their fixed idea. And I think there are two keys to why it comes out today. And they both are linked to George Bush's -- the father's problems.

One is, don't alienate your base. And the base of the Republican Party more than anything else wants tax cuts. Second, be proactive, to use that wretched word on the economy. Don't be passive. And this speech, a lot of the language in the speech almost sounded like a Democrat. You know, concern for the unemployed, let's get people back to work, let's give people a chance at jobs. And the other reason Republicans love tax cuts is it starves the government. Republicans as a party basically believe government is not a good idea, big government. And the more you cut taxes, the less money you leave in the hands of government people to create new programs.

So in that sense, it's a coherent program. Whether it is economically sensible or not is another question.

BROWN: Well, I'm going to take us off on a tangent. I'm probably going to regret it later. But so far we haven't seen much willingness from the president to cut programs as such. Just run up the deficit.

GREENFIELD: Because this country is ideologically conservative and institutionally liberal. The American people -- again, a phrase I abhor -- always say let's cut government waste, but let's spend more on things like Social Security, Medicare and the like. If I may, the Democratic problem is very quickly two-fold.

One, they seem to think that the rich are the same kind of rich that they were in 1948 in terms of an income level. Right? You make $100,000 a year family, they're comfortable, but that's a middle management person and an assistant principal. That's not plutocrats.

The second thing is that -- this goes back to George McGovern's confiscatory (ph) inheritance tax plan in...

BROWN: Boy, you're throwing around lots of words tonight.

GREENFIELD: Well that's what it was. It was a 90 percent inheritance tax. And the shoe workers in New Hampshire were furious at McGovern. And the McGovern campaign couldn't understand why until they realized the shoe workers believed their kids would be rich.

BROWN: All right. We have an interesting -- as a country -- or it's evolved as an interesting attitude about the wealthy. It does not as a political strategy seem to work very well.

GREENFIELD: Resentment -- the last CNN poll showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans believed that Bush's economic program favored the wealthy, but they didn't care. Because there is -- this country's never been a place, except during the depression and the 10 years thereafter, where you could run by on resentment. Because, as I said about those shoe workers in New Hampshire, this country believes -- and there's a lot of evidence to it -- in mobility.

Maybe you're not going to be wealthy, but maybe your grandchildren will be. And they don't want your grandchildren taxed that heavily. So it's a real problem for the Democrats to make this argument.

I think they can do it by saying let's cut taxes for middle income and wealthy people. But they can't just do it by saying the rich, the rich, the rich. It's a buzzword that hasn't played in a very long time.

BROWN: Thank you. And you used proactive, and you made the quote sign, too, in the same three and a half minutes.

GREENFIELD: You know, next week I'll come back and do charades. Obscene charades.

BROWN: Good to see you.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT: the man who coined the phrase "axis of evil" gives an insider's perspective of the Bush White House. And inspectors in Iraq take to the air in search of weapons of mass destruction. This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A quick look around the world now. Focusing entirely on the buildup for a possible war with Iraq, the Pentagon began moving senior military planners to a command post in Qatar. That's where they would run the war. The US central command would do the work. Sources tell us elements of it are expected to arrive within the next week or two. A full contingent to come a bit later.

Meanwhile, Britain ordered an aircraft carrier, three destroyers and about 3,000 Royal Marines to the region. The government called up a number of reservists as well. And for the first time today, UN weapons inspectors are using helicopters to get around in Iraq. They were tailed by Iraqi choppers. The inspectors surveyed a number of places from above. On the ground they visited half a dozen sites today, including a missile factory and a cancer research center.

As the country moves closer to a possible war with Iraq, it seemed like a good time to check where the country is on the issue. The latest CNN-"USA Today" Gallup Poll found 53 percent of those surveyed support going to war with Iraq; 42 percent oppose it. Looking at polls over the last few months, the 42 percent opposed is at the high end of the trend but not dramatically so.

Again, polls are just snapshots of a moment. A week from now it could all be different.

Whether it is Iraq today or the war on terrorism that began more than a year ago, President Bush's term so far has been defined by his handles of foreign affairs of the most difficult kind. How it changed the president and his administration is just one of the things that David Frum saw from an inside view. He was a speechwriter for the president.

He has now written a book about his experiences and his president. And the book is called "The Right Man." And he joins us tonight. Nice to see you.

DAVID FRUM, FORMER SPEECH WRITER FOR PRESIDENT BUSH: Thank you. Nice to be here. BROWN: The war changed the president or did it change our collective perception of the president?

FRUM: I think both. I think it changed the country, first of all. And that made all the changes possible. You'll remember January 2001, we're all talking about what a divided country this was, blue nation, red nation, and how irreconcilable it all seemed. And suddenly the country found things that were bigger than those divisions.

The country changed. And it became ready for a new kind of leadership. And George Bush found -- and that's the surprise, part of the surprise -- found within himself an ability to speak to this united country in a way that he'd never quite been able to click with the country that was more divided before.

BROWN: David, there's an awful lot of things to talk to you about. Some of the personal observations I found interesting. You wrote "In private, Bush was not the genial man he is in public. Close up, one saw a man keeping a tight grasp on himself." What does that mean?

FRUM: Bush is an intensely disciplined man. You know, I remember when I went to work there, I heard all these stories about how he knocked off every day at 6:00. I thought, terrific, I also would like to knock off at 6:00. I hadn't thought hard enough about there's a sinister explanation why he does, is because he starts at 5:00.

This is a man who works on a very precise schedule. The presidency is a thing that's almost impossible to keep control of. There's so much to know, so many decisions to make. The first job of the presidency begins with marshaling the president's minutes. Every presidency is made up of a certain number of minutes. That many, no more. You have to use them right. That includes making time to sleep and see your family.

BROWN: Did you find -- this is personal. Did you find writing speeches for the president or writing parts of speeches -- I'm not precisely sure how that works, whether you have to write a paragraph or the whole thing.

FRUM: Varies from speech to speech.

BROWN: Yes. Did you find what you expected it to be, more complicated than you ever imagined, really cool? Any of those things?

FRUM: It was cool. I remember a week after I started, working on a speech on the economy. And it was a day that I was driving car pool, I was late, the car, the indicator light went on, I was cursing all the way to work. I was looking for a way to describe the early warnings we were getting for economic difficulty.

And I wrote a speech that began a warning light is flashing on the dashboard of our economy. And bang, it was like the lead item in every financial report. That was very thrilling. But for a writer, someone who's just writing in his own name, it's like -- I'm old enough to remember this -- when you make the switch from the old wooden tennis racket to a graphite one, what used to give you a nice lift over the net is suddenly sending the ball whizzing around the court. You have to modulate your tone...

BROWN: Because anything the president says or fails to say, but anything he says is magnified enormously.

FRUM: Yes. This is a president who cares enormously about his words. This is a presidency that has been defined by words. One of the things I find so interesting about George Bush as, I talk about this, is how his thinking grew and evolved during the course of fighting this war.

George Bush made a series of commitments at the very beginning of the war. Big commitments that the United States was going to fight -- treat it as a war and it was going to take the war not just to the terrorists but to their sponsors. Those commitments had enormous effect and we didn't see all of that effect at the beginning.

As the war unfolded, people would say to him, hold on, Mr. President. You take this course, and we're going to have to change a lot of the ways this country has done business for a long time. Again and again and again Bush had to weigh his words, his commitments against America's traditions. He always went with his commitment. And that's one of the reason is honor him in this book.

BROWN: About a minute left. There is buzz that there are people in the White House -- it's a largely flattering book -- that there are people in the White House who still aren't very happy about it. What do you make of that?

FRUM: Look, they have no reason to be unhappy. There may be people unhappy because they prefer a paper mache Bush to the real Bush. I found -- it was my experience the more I knew this president, the better I liked him and I think Americans will feel the same way.

They have not had a good, clear look at him. This book, for the first time, gives them a good clear look. But it's a story of how I became a supporter of George Bush and I think the White House should want a story like that to be heard.

BROWN: There are so many things. Do you imagine that he will read it?

FRUM: I have no idea. He's got a lot on his plate.

BROWN: Well but -- all right. Would he care what you or someone else wrote about him?

FRUM: One of the things that is impressive about George Bush, is he is secure in his own skin in a way that few presidents are. And that can sometimes cause him trouble because in many ways he's not a natural or normal politician. He's not somebody who thinks politically all the time and thinks -- who checks how he will be seen. He is somebody who is just is who he is. I find that very attractive.

BROWN: All, right. It's nice to meet you. Good luck with the book. I know you've got the heavy lifting in selling the book to go there for a while. It's nice to meet you...

FRUM: Thank you.

BROWN: Hope you'll come back.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, the story of Mamie Till-Mobley and her heroic stand in the face of racism that claimed the life of her only son.

Up next, one Democrat who says no thanks to a run for the White House. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: And next on NEWSNIGHT, one Democrat who says he will not run for the presidency. A short break and we're right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Sometimes, not always, but sometimes it's what people don't do that can tell a great story. And today it was what Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle said he won't do that had all of Washington buzzing. He won't run for president in the year 2004.

This seemed like such a sure thing that some editor in South Dakota is no doubt kicking himself tonight for the headline he had in the paper this morning: "He's Running." So why isn't he? A look at the whole mix of theories from CNN's Candy Crowley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It boils down to this: you can't moonlight as a presidential candidate.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE (D-SD), MINORITY LEADER: I'm not going to run for president because my passion is right here. And I must say I feel as good about this decision as any I've ever made.

CROWLEY: The Senate Democratic leader will keep his day job. As late as last night, Tom Daschle told people around him he planned to run for president and stay on for a while as leader of the Senate Democrats. He had been leaning, yes, for weeks. His staff was putting together a weekend announcement tour. And then Daschle took what he called a gut check and saw he could not do it all and that the fire in his belly burned brightest the Senate.

DASCHLE: As I think about where I want to be, what fights I want to fight, I want to fight the fights on the Senate floor.

CROWLEY: Daschle is the second big shoe that did not drop. He joins Al Gore in this sit it out in '04 field. Two men with big names and even bigger political ambition opting out of a wide open primary has to make you wonder whether they also weighed a run at George Bush as not worth the risk.

Gore did not rule out a future run, but said he could not foresee it. Daschle apparently can.

DASCHLE: There may come a time in my future when a national campaign, a campaign for the presidency is one that I will again entertain. I'm certainly not discounting that at some point in the future.

CROWLEY: Daschle's no doesn't change things as much as a yes would have. But rest assure assured the six men now running are relieved in a very statesmanlike way, of course.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: I think that's laudable for a number of reasons. Because he is the leader with experience, with respect to the Democratic Senate campaign committee, our national recruitment efforts and the capacity to hopefully win back the Senate.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS (D), NORTH CAROLINA: I think he made this decision for exactly the right reason. He believes that he can do the most good for the country as the Democratic leader in the United States Senate.

CROWLEY: The truth is, all the '04 campaigns concede Daschle would have been a formidable opponent, but no one is breathing easier than Richard Gephardt.

"I am particularly grateful," Gephardt wrote in a statement, "that I won't be facing him in a presidential debate."

(on camera): There are others still thinking about running, but Daschle is the last of the question marks who could have changed the dynamic. This is a pretty even playing field. And barring some last- minute move by a Democratic Bigfoot, the Democratic presidential nomination is up for grabs.

Candy Crowley, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN; Very different nomination starts off our national roundup tonight. The second nomination by President Bush for Charles Pickering to seat on the U.S. Appeals Court. Mississippi native and friend of Senator Trent Lott was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee last year when it was controlled by Democrats. Pickering was criticized by Democrats for his record on civil rights and on abortion rights. He'll likely have a better shot at confirmation now with Republicans in control of the Senate.

The latest on the sniper case. The government in Antigua believes that 17-year-old John Lee Malvo may have been handed over to John Muhammad, the older suspect in the shoot go ahead, by his mother. That Malvo may have been used as collateral to guarantee that his mother would pay Muhammad for forged immigration documents that got her into the United States two years ago.

And fires continued in Southern California today. But the Santa Ana winds that have been fueling them are starting to die down. Three homes damaged in the Santa Monica mountains today but no one has been hurt in the fires.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT a family treasury of papers and what they may tell us about an enigma in the civil rights movement, the papers of Malcom X.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: If Martin Luther King Jr. was the hero of the American civil rights movement, Malcolm X was the enigma. Not hard to see why Spike Lee would make a film about this man. His path was nothing short of epic, converting to Islam in jail. Becoming a fierce supporter of black power. Eventually decides that maybe, just maybe, we all could get along. How did they get there? Where would he have gone? We'll never really know. His assassins thought to be men he once helped lead in the Nation of Islam. They made sure of that. But now his family has turned over an enormous batch of private papers to a Harlem library, papers that just may help explain some of the enigma.

Here is CNN's Jamie Colby.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MALCOLM X, CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: Show black people how to do something, stand on our own feet and solve our own problems.

JAMIE COLBY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Archivists at the Schaumburg Center are sorting through the largest collection of Malcolm X's personal effects, piecing together his evolution from prison inmate to spiritual leader. His personal photos with controversial leaders and celebrities. His speeches to followers and the unconverted. His diaries detailing his pilgrimage to Mecca. And his struggle with the black Muslim group, the Nation of Islam.

HOWARD DODSON, DIRECTOR, SCHAUMBURG CENTER: I believe this is the first time he makes a public statement about the split. This is his record of his thought. This is what he has written. This is the edits that he's made on his speeches and his radio programs and all the rest. This is his voice captured in a textural form.

COLBY: We're told the documents unpack sod far are in relatively good condition considering that many of them are 40 years old. Anyone who handles the documents in these two crates will have to wear special preservation gloves. But what they'll see for the very first time is the evolution of Malcolm's teaching, speeches that he gave over a period of time. Take for example, this speech from 1963 initially entitled "God's Judgment of America," later changed to "God's Judgment of White America." MANNING MARABLE, MALCOLM X BIOGRAPHER: So much of what has been written and portrayed on Malcolm X are a series of iconic misleading images. He's been exprocreated from everybody from the hip-hop generation to the U.S. Postal Service. Let's now document the true meaning of Malcolm through his own words.

COLBY: Malcolm's eldest daughter says this collection will fill in the blanks in her father's legacy.

ATTALLAH SHABAZZ, DAUGHTER OF MALCOLM X: That my father in his own living existence did not see the benefit of his words in his lifetime could matter some 30 some odd or 40 years later is a testament to the strength of what he stood for then.

COLBY: The family retains ownership of the collection, but the library will organize it for eventual public viewing in 18 months.

Jamie Colby, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Howard Dodson is the director of the Schaumberg Center For Research and Black Culture. He's here to talk more about this. This is one of those kid in a candy store moments for people in your business and with your interest. And you are very lucky to have it.

DODSON: You are absolutely correct. But for the fact that in this particular instance someone did choose to purchase the material...

BROWN: They were in a storage locker.

DODSON: In a storage locker.

BROWN: A bad debt involved.

DODSON: And what usually happens if no one purchases the material in that kind of situation, the storage house usually just destroys it or throws it away. In some respects the good thing that happened was it was purchased, but then ends up on eBay about to be auctioned off and would have an almost equally impact on it. Keeping it together and having it as a complete record is absolutely essential in terms of making this significant aspect of Malcolm X's legacy both documented and preserved for posterity.

BROWN: I want to talk about the substance in a second. Somebody call you up and say, you ought to check eBay because...

DODSON; Actually a friend of mine did call and said, have you checked eBay today? I said no. He said there's a wonderful body of stuff that looks like Malcolm X's stuff and he said it looks like it's real. And I sat down with him and went on the Internet and started going page by page through the catalog and it actually did look real. It frightened me quite seriously. It was like this stuff could be dispersed to the world in another few months. BROWN: It will take years to go through all this, to really come and understand the implications of all of this. For you, what would you like to know that you don't know now about him?

DODSON: What would I like to know? I have always been intrigued by the quality of his critical thought. I think you account for the constant evolution of this man by the degree to which he has, in fact, been both critical of his world and critical of himself. And it's the criticism of himself and his ability, his willingness to look for other ways of knowing self and knowing his world, that is accounts I think for this evolution. But want to know that through a critical reading of the material that's there. Because if it's true, then it becomes a kind of basis for living for all of us. We tend to be very soft on ourselves, and I think it's hard criticism of himself made him the extraordinary person that he was.

BROWN: Do you think he -- do you think African-Americans and white people need to draw the same thing from the story of his life or are there different things each should draw or ought to draw?

DODSON: Well, he always spoke to both the African-American community and the American community in general very directly. And the things that he had to say to the African-American community were primarily directed at how do you come to know yourself better? How do you mobilize the power that's within you individually and as a group, to take your place, your rightful place as a self-realizing human being in the world today? That was the message constantly delivered to the African-American community.

At the same time, he spoke to the American community from the perspective of what he considered and perceived to by the hypocrisy of the society. And his measure of the greatness or lack of same of American society was the way in which it treated and interpreted the lives and experiences of people of African descent. So he had these two stories that he was carrying on. I think you when you put them together and read through his message, through his words, what you begin to realize is that he is, in fact, speaking through the African- American experience to all of us.

BROWN: I said at the beginning it must feel like a kid in a candy shop. I would think that you could pick up any notebook and find something in there that's just marvelous from your point of view.

DODSON: Well, I haven't had the privilege of going through everything. But each time I picked up an item and started to read it against what that I already know...

BROWN: Yes.

DODSON: I learn something new. So that's the kind of thing that will keep me going back and back again for years to come.

BROWN: We thank you very much for coming in tonight. This is an interesting day. We look forward to hearing more about the papers as you go through them.

DODSON: Wonderful day. Thank you for the opportunity to come and share with the audience.

BROWN: Thank you very much.

And up next on NEWSNIGHT, Mamie Till and her bravery in the face of racist violence that claimed the life of her son in one of the most important moments of the American civil rights era. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Finally from us tonight, a passing to which attention must be paid. Of an 81-year-old woman in a hospital in Chicago. Mamie Till Mobley died yesterday of heart failure. Truth is her heart should have failed long ago.

In 1955, when her 14-year-old son Emmett Till was abducted while visiting relatives in Mississippi, abducted and beaten to death, his body fished out of a river days later. It was alleged that he had whistled at a white woman.

Mamie Till's heart should have failed then, but it didn't. To the contrary, she made a brave and astonishing decision that changed the course of the history of civil rights in the United States. Mamie Till decided that those who came to those to mourn her boy at a funeral parlor back home in Chicago, should face what she had to face, an open casket and the appalling sight of what had been done to her only son.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the muddy back woods Tallahatchie River, where a weighted body was found alleged to be that of young Emmett Till.

MAMIE TILL, MOTHER OF EMMITT TILL: I decided then that I would start at his feet and work my way up, maybe gathering strength as I went. I paused at his midsection because I knew he would not want me looking at him. But I saw enough that I knew he was intact. I kept on up until I got to his chin and then I was forced to deal with his face.

I kept on up until I got to his chin, and then I was forced to deal with his face. I saw that his tongue was choked out. I noticed that the right eye was lying on midway his cheek. I noticed that his nose had been broken like somebody took a meat chopper and chopped his nose in several places.

BROWN (voice-over): The undertaker asked Mamie Till whether she wanted her son touched up.

TILL: I said, No, Mr. Rainer (ph), let the people see what I've seen. I was just willing to bare it all. I think everybody needed to know what had happened to Emmett Till.

BROWN: Everything changed after the murder of Emmett Till. People in this country who had let themselves believe that Jim Crow was only a matter, only of separate wash rooms and water fountains could no longer believe that.

A black boy, and he was only a boy, had been rendered unrecognizable by two white men -- two white men who were tried and acquitted of murder.

Because Emmett Till died and his mother's courage did not, an old strain of brutality at long last began to fade away.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The excerpt we just saw came from a documentary done for the "American Experience" by the award winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson. The murder of Emmett Till airs the 20th of this month on most PBS stations in this country. Check your local listings or go to www.pbs.org.

We'll see ya'll tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern. Good night.

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





Believes Five Fugitives Were Made Up; The Threat Of General Aviation Aircraft; President Bush's Economic Proposal>


Aired January 7, 2003 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, HOST: Good evening again, everyone. I really wanted to write a quick light piece at the top tonight. Something about all the nice mail we received from around the world after last night's first global NEWSNIGHT broadcast. But each time I tried I came back to a piece that was somewhat buried in the middle of the program last night, the death of this young child in Newark, New Jersey.
We don't know with certainty who is responsible for Faheem Williams' death. We hope the courts will someday figure that out and punish that person for starving a child to death. We also hope the citizens of New Jersey demand that their child welfare agency do something to make sure that such things never happen again. They have a responsibility for Faheem.

They were supposed to keep track of him and his siblings. And they failed him, as surely as so many other adults who failed him and his two brothers who managed to survive.

Sometimes I wonder how much we actually care about our children. There was young Faheem in New Jersey, there was a rash of child killings this past summer. Samantha Runnion, Danielle van Dam, to name two. Of course there is Rilya Wilson in Florida, the child the state lost and still has not found.

But there are other less tragic signs about how we feel about our kids. We'll air a report next week -- Monday, I hope -- on states that have cut the school week to four days because they can't or won't pay for the fifth. Not child abuse of the traditional sort, of course, but not good treatment either. And not especially responsible unless we've come to believe we are actually overeducating our children.

But here's the sad truth. We'll spend far more time talking about cutting taxes on this group or that than we will about these kids. We'll forget Faheem and how he lived in died in days, not weeks. In that regard, there is plenty of blame to go around.

On to the news of the day, which begins as always with "The Whip." And "The Whip" begins with a startling discovery by Scotland Yard. Nic Robertson following that from London. Nic, a headline from you tonight.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, that's right. Anti-terrorist police raiding a House in north London discover ricin, the deadly toxin there. They're still holding six North African men for questioning caught in the same raids -- Aaron.

BROWN: Nic, thank you. A very different story in the war on terrorism. Somewhat embarrassing we suspect for the FBI. Kelli Arena on that tonight. Kelli, a headline from you?

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, remember the five men that the FBI was looking for who officials said may have illegally entered the United States? Well, they've called off the search. Apparently the informant who warned the FBI about the men was lying.

BROWN: Kelli, thank you. A story now about a security threat involving planes, just not the giant commercial planes. Small private ones. Patty Davis covers aviation for us and has been working on this. Patty, the headline from you tonight.

PATTY DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well now that security has been beefed up at the nation's commercial airports, some say there is still an opening for terrorists at those smaller airports with smaller private planes.

BROWN: Patty, thank you. And yesterday's lead ends "The Whip." The president formally releasing his economic plan today. Dana Bash is on that, and Dana, a headline from you.

DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the president went to Chicago today to unveil the details of a high priced plan he says will help the economy. Democrats say the only thing it will boost is the deficit.

BROWN: And thank you. Back with all of you shortly.

Also coming up tonight, Candy Crowley on the race for the president that wasn't. A look at why Senator Tom Daschle will not challenge in 2004. A glimpse into the mind and the evolution of Malcolm X. His family turning over 700 pounds of documents to a Harlem library. We'll look at what more they can tell us about someone so compelling and controversial.

We'll say good-bye to another compelling figure of the civil rights era, the mother who wanted everyone just to see what the brutality of racism had done to her son. (UNINTELLIGIBLE). That's "Segment Seven" tonight. All of that to come in the hour ahead.

We begin with the news that police in London have six men in custody and are questioning them about a chilling discovery. A small amount of a type of poison that is nearly 100 percent deadly. No antidote, no vaccine, no treatment at all. Al-Qaeda is trying to make it; Iraq admits to making gallons of it. There's really no good use for it, only bad ones. Here again, CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Police keep watch outside a north London House, where the deadly toxin ricin was discovered during a raid early Sunday. Acting on an intelligence tip, anti-terrorist police led the predawn raids here and in east London, arresting six North African men who are still being questioned. Local residents said police wore protective clothing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They were dressed like (UNINTELLIGIBLE) space really. They had masks and space kind of suits on.

ROBERTSON: British police, intelligence services and health officials are combining forces to combat the potential threat posed by this discovery. Medical professionals are being briefed in an effort to allay public concerns. And some officials play down the threat.

PAT TROOP, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH: It appears that they found a very small amount. And it looks like a very low tech small production. So we're working on the basis at the moment. But if there is any material -- and we don't know if there is any other material -- that it's likely to be a very small amount.

ROBERTSON: According to experts, ricin is difficult to produce in large quantities. And very difficult to disperse. It was used successfully in Britain in a 1978 assassination of a journalist.

GARTH WHITLY, FMR. UN WEAPONS INSPECTOR: It can be ingested, it can be injected. There is talk of it having been produced in aerosol form. But it is the delivery that would make a problem to any potential terrorist use.

ROBERTSON: International intelligence agencies have been warning their coalition partners, including Britain, of the possibility of chemical or biological attacks on their subway systems.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON: Well, within an hour of the announcement of this discovery, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was warning delegates at a conference that the terrorist threat at this time to Britain is very real. The British police here calling on people to be very vigilant, particularly when they're in public areas, Aaron.

BROWN: What do we know about the six people in custody, anything?

ROBERTSON: We know that they're all of North African origin. We know they're all male. We know that their ages range between teenagers up to 20 years, and in their 30s as well. The police have so far not officially announced what nationality the men are. We don't know what organization they may have been working with. We don't even know at this time if they were all working for the same organization.

Telltale bits of information that hint at what may be going on. The ricin was found in a flat where only one of these six men was arrested. There was manufacturing equipment there as well. Perhaps an indication there the group broken down into a unit, one man who may have been producing the ricin for the materials. That, at this time, Aaron, speculation. BROWN: Do we know how they connected the one they found where the gas was found and the five they found obviously -- or presumably some other place?

ROBERTSON: It's very interesting the way that British police released the information. Scotland Yard, in a quite lengthy press release by their own standards, said that the anti-terrorist police were acting on a tip-off given to British security services. So possibly in that we can see that there perhaps had been a surveillance operation, that perhaps they had received a number -- or within that information they received, it pointed to a number of locations.

Not clear. But clearly the police there saying that this was the work of somebody able to trace these people through help from an informant.

BROWN: Nic, thank you. Nic Robertson in London tonight.

Back home, a big manhunt is over. The FBI calling it off because they now believe there aren't any fugitives at all. The five men they suspected of slipping into the country somewhere before New Year's have been nothing more than five phantoms conjured up by an informant perhaps looking to save his skin. We say might, because in the world of informers and intrigue no one, not even the FBI, knows for sure, only that the evidence is pointing in a certain direction tonight. Here again, CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA (voice-over): Their pictures were plastered worldwide on television, on the Internet. A holiday terror scare. Even the president got involved.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And if anybody has any information about the five, I would hope they would contact their local authorities.

ARENA: But it turns out it was all a false alarm. The FBI has called off the manhunt. The informant who gave the tip apparently lied. It's now believed he was hoping to strike a deal with prosecutors. Sources say even though there were some doubts from the start, the tip coincided with separate intelligence about a possible terror threat around the New Year's holiday. FBI supporters say it's a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

STEVE POMERANTZ, FMR. FBI COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL: I think the worst possible thing that could happen now for the credibility not only of the FBI, but the government as well, is for something to happen and it would later be revealed that the government had some information and didn't either act on it or make it public.

ARENA: Information about the five came from an alleged forger who was in Canadian custody. Michael Hamdani, who also faces charges in the United States.

DEEPAK PARADKAR, ATTORNEY: Mr. Hamdani, as I said previously, cooperated with authorities.

ARENA: An FBI investigation into a Pakistani human smuggling ring led to Hamdani. FBI officials say he claimed he sold the five fake documents, that they were traveling together and were anxious to get to the United States by December 24. But problems surfaced last week when a jeweler in Pakistan said his photo was among the five and that he'd never been to the US. Still, the manhunt continued, leading some to question how the public will react to the next alert.

LAWRENCE GOLDMAN, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYERS: When they come up again, people are not going to take them as seriously. People will not pay as much attention. And people will hear it and say, another wild goose chase.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA: FBI officials say that they understand that risk, but they insist they would react in the very same way given similar circumstances -- Aaron.

BROWN: Do we know anything about how Mr. Hamdani was vetted by his interrogators? Were there polygraphs? What do we know?

ARENA: Well we do know that the Canadian authorities issued a polygraph early on which he passed. The Canadian authorities, though, also say that they thought that the information he provided was very suspect. Several FBI officials that I spoke to today said that early on they also believed that it was suspect, but the time that it would take, they say, to vet the whole thing thoroughly wasn't time that they were willing to spare because they had separate intelligence coming in at the very same time suggesting that there could be a possible terror attack on US soil on New Year's Eve.

So they say, to play it safe, they put the information out there, continued with the investigation, realized that he was lying because they had interrogated other people who were in custody in Pakistan and in Canada as well. Figured out that this was indeed a lie, and then had to retract it.

BROWN: Well, I think we both can be glad we're not the ones who have to make these decisions on whether to go public with this stuff or not.

ARENA: This is true, Aaron.

BROWN: Kelli, thank you very much. Kelli Arena tonight.

If the pictures over the weekend of a small plane buzzing the skyscrapers in Frankfurt, Germany didn't give you goose bumps, think back a little more than a year ago, when every crop duster in this country was grounded and small planes were banned from flying over New York City and a number of other major cities, too. Since then, the planes have been flying again, but critics say not enough has been done to address the potential threat they may pose. Here again tonight CNN's Patty Davis.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVIS (voice-over): Every time he taxis into an airport, private pilot Mike Doherty says he's on the lookout.

MIKE DOHERTY, PRIVATE PILOT: If anybody looks like they're just snooping around like they don't know what they're doing.

DAVIS: Small plane owners and pilots are joining with the government, asking half a million private pilots nationwide like Doherty to be the eyes and ears of a new airport watch program to help stop terrorists. Since the September 11 attacks, many small airports have also put up fences and restricted access to airplane keys.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you don't want to give the key to the student so they will not be able to start the engine.

DAVIS: The FAA now requires private pilots to show photo ID if asked, and student pilots from overseas undergo rigorous background checks.

WARREN MORNINGSTAR, AIRCRAFT OWNERS AND PILOTS ASSOCIATION: Truth be told, the concern is more about just the aircraft being stolen than being taken for terrorist activity. Even if one of those general aviation aircraft did hit something, they just don't do much damage.

DAVIS: But critics say they should worry about terrorism. Security at airports like this is so much looser than the beefed up security at commercial airports, that it could prove attractive to terrorists. In fact, at this Maryland airport, only about 20 miles from the White House, not a security guard in sight.

LARRY JOHNSON, SECURITY EXPERT: They go after, if you will, path of least resistance. If you can't get to the commercial carriers but you can get to the general aviation carriers, then that's where you go.

DAVIS: And private planes have proven vulnerable. Last January, a 15-year-old was killed when he slammed a stolen Cessna into a Tampa office building. His suicide note praised Osama bin Laden.

In April, a man piloted his single-engine plane into the Perelli (ph) building in Milan, Italy, killing himself and two others. And on Sunday in Germany, a man threatened to crash a stolen plane into the European central bank in Frankfurt, but landed and was arrested.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DAVIS: Also vulnerable, larger fuel-laden private charter airplanes. Starting in March, the Transportation Security Administration will screen passengers and bags on those charter airplanes with more than 61 seats. But that's just 10 percent of the fleet. And last July, the FAA did put out an alert to pilots and airports that terrorists might indeed turn to these smaller airports and these types of aircraft -- Aaron.

BROWN: So are you aware anywhere, either Congress or within the administration, that anybody's planning to tighten the regulations?

DAVIS: For the smaller guys, no. At this point, the Transportation Security Administration focused solely on the smaller charter aircraft. There is a regulation that is going into effect also February 1 that requires background checks for pilots of aircraft that are 12,500 pounds and above. So that's not the really small guys, but at least it's something more. So that's where they're focusing right now.

BROWN: Patty thank you. Patty Davis from Washington tonight.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the man who coined the phrase "axis of evil." David Frum, joins us with an insider's perspective on the president and his administration. Up next: what the president plans to do to stimulate the US economy. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: President Bush today took the wraps off his plan to get the economy moving again. No surprises. We've known the broad strokes for a few days now. We've heard the sales pitch already and gotten a taste of the opposition as well.

So when the president gave us the details in a speech in Chicago, it was a bit of an anticlimax. And in a way, the larger story was back in Washington, with the swearing in of a new Congress that's more likely than the old Congress to give the president what he wants. Here again, CNN's Dana Bash.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BASH (voice-over): The president headed to the middle of the country to unveil an economic plan he says will help middle America.

BUSH: We will not rest until every business has a chance to grow and every person who wants to find working can find a job.

BASH: Mr. Bush said the economy is improving. But as he heads towards re-election, the president wants Americans to know he's doing what he can to give it a boost. The cost of his proposal is now estimated at $674 billion over 10 years. Eliminating the dividend income tax, the centerpiece of his plan makes up roughly half the cost at $364 billion. Accelerating tax cuts passed in 2001, but not set to kick in until 2004 and 2006 will cost $64 billion.

BUSH: If tax relief is good enough for Americans three years from now, it is good enough for Americans today.

BASH: But even Democrats who helped Mr. Bush pass those tax cuts are skeptical of his new plan.

SEN. JOHN BREAUX (D), LOUISIANA: Cutting taxes is always good politics. The question is, can we also do it in a way that's also good public policy?

BASH: Answering criticism, Mr. Bush helps the wealthy, the plan also calls for accelerating the child tax credit at a cost of $91 billion, accelerating the so-called marriage penalty for about $58 billion. And other tax relief for businesses and individuals, adding up to $93 billion all over 10 years.

BUSH: We must be more creative when we help those who have the hardest time finding work.

BASH: With the jobless rate at its highest level in six months, the Bush plan gives $3.6 billion to states for new re-employment accounts which would pay for things like job training, child care and transportation for the unemployed.

(END VIDEOTAPE0

BASH: And Aaron, now comes the hard part, which, of course, is going to be selling the plan. Administration officials will fan out across the country to do that this week. But the toughest sales job will be in Congress. And, yes, the president has a Republican- controlled Congress now, but particularly in the Senate, you always need 60 votes to pass anything. And listening to the criticism from Democrats today on the plan, they need about nine to pass it, and it is not going to be easy to get that, Aaron.

BROWN: Dana, thank you. Dana Bash at the White House tonight.

Jeff Greenfield, our senior political analyst is with us. Remember when Republicans were obsessed with the deficit?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. This is not...

BROWN: Whatever happened to that?

GREENFIELD: This is not your father's Republican Party. About 1980, when Ronald Reagan converted the Republicans to a supply side tax cuts are the essence issue, the Republican Party basically has, by and large, with some exceptions like Chuck Grassley, John McCain, have abandoned this idea. And their idea, basically...

BROWN: Abandoned the idea that deficits matter.

GREENFIELD: That deficits are bad, right. And that tax cuts are now the central driving idea, I think it is fair to say of the Republican Party. And it's an all-purpose policy. George Bush advocated them in 2000, when we had triple digit surpluses. And the argument was we could afford it.

Now we have triple digit deficits. And tax cuts are good in times of peace and war, inflation and no inflation. That is their fixed idea. And I think there are two keys to why it comes out today. And they both are linked to George Bush's -- the father's problems.

One is, don't alienate your base. And the base of the Republican Party more than anything else wants tax cuts. Second, be proactive, to use that wretched word on the economy. Don't be passive. And this speech, a lot of the language in the speech almost sounded like a Democrat. You know, concern for the unemployed, let's get people back to work, let's give people a chance at jobs. And the other reason Republicans love tax cuts is it starves the government. Republicans as a party basically believe government is not a good idea, big government. And the more you cut taxes, the less money you leave in the hands of government people to create new programs.

So in that sense, it's a coherent program. Whether it is economically sensible or not is another question.

BROWN: Well, I'm going to take us off on a tangent. I'm probably going to regret it later. But so far we haven't seen much willingness from the president to cut programs as such. Just run up the deficit.

GREENFIELD: Because this country is ideologically conservative and institutionally liberal. The American people -- again, a phrase I abhor -- always say let's cut government waste, but let's spend more on things like Social Security, Medicare and the like. If I may, the Democratic problem is very quickly two-fold.

One, they seem to think that the rich are the same kind of rich that they were in 1948 in terms of an income level. Right? You make $100,000 a year family, they're comfortable, but that's a middle management person and an assistant principal. That's not plutocrats.

The second thing is that -- this goes back to George McGovern's confiscatory (ph) inheritance tax plan in...

BROWN: Boy, you're throwing around lots of words tonight.

GREENFIELD: Well that's what it was. It was a 90 percent inheritance tax. And the shoe workers in New Hampshire were furious at McGovern. And the McGovern campaign couldn't understand why until they realized the shoe workers believed their kids would be rich.

BROWN: All right. We have an interesting -- as a country -- or it's evolved as an interesting attitude about the wealthy. It does not as a political strategy seem to work very well.

GREENFIELD: Resentment -- the last CNN poll showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans believed that Bush's economic program favored the wealthy, but they didn't care. Because there is -- this country's never been a place, except during the depression and the 10 years thereafter, where you could run by on resentment. Because, as I said about those shoe workers in New Hampshire, this country believes -- and there's a lot of evidence to it -- in mobility.

Maybe you're not going to be wealthy, but maybe your grandchildren will be. And they don't want your grandchildren taxed that heavily. So it's a real problem for the Democrats to make this argument.

I think they can do it by saying let's cut taxes for middle income and wealthy people. But they can't just do it by saying the rich, the rich, the rich. It's a buzzword that hasn't played in a very long time.

BROWN: Thank you. And you used proactive, and you made the quote sign, too, in the same three and a half minutes.

GREENFIELD: You know, next week I'll come back and do charades. Obscene charades.

BROWN: Good to see you.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT: the man who coined the phrase "axis of evil" gives an insider's perspective of the Bush White House. And inspectors in Iraq take to the air in search of weapons of mass destruction. This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A quick look around the world now. Focusing entirely on the buildup for a possible war with Iraq, the Pentagon began moving senior military planners to a command post in Qatar. That's where they would run the war. The US central command would do the work. Sources tell us elements of it are expected to arrive within the next week or two. A full contingent to come a bit later.

Meanwhile, Britain ordered an aircraft carrier, three destroyers and about 3,000 Royal Marines to the region. The government called up a number of reservists as well. And for the first time today, UN weapons inspectors are using helicopters to get around in Iraq. They were tailed by Iraqi choppers. The inspectors surveyed a number of places from above. On the ground they visited half a dozen sites today, including a missile factory and a cancer research center.

As the country moves closer to a possible war with Iraq, it seemed like a good time to check where the country is on the issue. The latest CNN-"USA Today" Gallup Poll found 53 percent of those surveyed support going to war with Iraq; 42 percent oppose it. Looking at polls over the last few months, the 42 percent opposed is at the high end of the trend but not dramatically so.

Again, polls are just snapshots of a moment. A week from now it could all be different.

Whether it is Iraq today or the war on terrorism that began more than a year ago, President Bush's term so far has been defined by his handles of foreign affairs of the most difficult kind. How it changed the president and his administration is just one of the things that David Frum saw from an inside view. He was a speechwriter for the president.

He has now written a book about his experiences and his president. And the book is called "The Right Man." And he joins us tonight. Nice to see you.

DAVID FRUM, FORMER SPEECH WRITER FOR PRESIDENT BUSH: Thank you. Nice to be here. BROWN: The war changed the president or did it change our collective perception of the president?

FRUM: I think both. I think it changed the country, first of all. And that made all the changes possible. You'll remember January 2001, we're all talking about what a divided country this was, blue nation, red nation, and how irreconcilable it all seemed. And suddenly the country found things that were bigger than those divisions.

The country changed. And it became ready for a new kind of leadership. And George Bush found -- and that's the surprise, part of the surprise -- found within himself an ability to speak to this united country in a way that he'd never quite been able to click with the country that was more divided before.

BROWN: David, there's an awful lot of things to talk to you about. Some of the personal observations I found interesting. You wrote "In private, Bush was not the genial man he is in public. Close up, one saw a man keeping a tight grasp on himself." What does that mean?

FRUM: Bush is an intensely disciplined man. You know, I remember when I went to work there, I heard all these stories about how he knocked off every day at 6:00. I thought, terrific, I also would like to knock off at 6:00. I hadn't thought hard enough about there's a sinister explanation why he does, is because he starts at 5:00.

This is a man who works on a very precise schedule. The presidency is a thing that's almost impossible to keep control of. There's so much to know, so many decisions to make. The first job of the presidency begins with marshaling the president's minutes. Every presidency is made up of a certain number of minutes. That many, no more. You have to use them right. That includes making time to sleep and see your family.

BROWN: Did you find -- this is personal. Did you find writing speeches for the president or writing parts of speeches -- I'm not precisely sure how that works, whether you have to write a paragraph or the whole thing.

FRUM: Varies from speech to speech.

BROWN: Yes. Did you find what you expected it to be, more complicated than you ever imagined, really cool? Any of those things?

FRUM: It was cool. I remember a week after I started, working on a speech on the economy. And it was a day that I was driving car pool, I was late, the car, the indicator light went on, I was cursing all the way to work. I was looking for a way to describe the early warnings we were getting for economic difficulty.

And I wrote a speech that began a warning light is flashing on the dashboard of our economy. And bang, it was like the lead item in every financial report. That was very thrilling. But for a writer, someone who's just writing in his own name, it's like -- I'm old enough to remember this -- when you make the switch from the old wooden tennis racket to a graphite one, what used to give you a nice lift over the net is suddenly sending the ball whizzing around the court. You have to modulate your tone...

BROWN: Because anything the president says or fails to say, but anything he says is magnified enormously.

FRUM: Yes. This is a president who cares enormously about his words. This is a presidency that has been defined by words. One of the things I find so interesting about George Bush as, I talk about this, is how his thinking grew and evolved during the course of fighting this war.

George Bush made a series of commitments at the very beginning of the war. Big commitments that the United States was going to fight -- treat it as a war and it was going to take the war not just to the terrorists but to their sponsors. Those commitments had enormous effect and we didn't see all of that effect at the beginning.

As the war unfolded, people would say to him, hold on, Mr. President. You take this course, and we're going to have to change a lot of the ways this country has done business for a long time. Again and again and again Bush had to weigh his words, his commitments against America's traditions. He always went with his commitment. And that's one of the reason is honor him in this book.

BROWN: About a minute left. There is buzz that there are people in the White House -- it's a largely flattering book -- that there are people in the White House who still aren't very happy about it. What do you make of that?

FRUM: Look, they have no reason to be unhappy. There may be people unhappy because they prefer a paper mache Bush to the real Bush. I found -- it was my experience the more I knew this president, the better I liked him and I think Americans will feel the same way.

They have not had a good, clear look at him. This book, for the first time, gives them a good clear look. But it's a story of how I became a supporter of George Bush and I think the White House should want a story like that to be heard.

BROWN: There are so many things. Do you imagine that he will read it?

FRUM: I have no idea. He's got a lot on his plate.

BROWN: Well but -- all right. Would he care what you or someone else wrote about him?

FRUM: One of the things that is impressive about George Bush, is he is secure in his own skin in a way that few presidents are. And that can sometimes cause him trouble because in many ways he's not a natural or normal politician. He's not somebody who thinks politically all the time and thinks -- who checks how he will be seen. He is somebody who is just is who he is. I find that very attractive.

BROWN: All, right. It's nice to meet you. Good luck with the book. I know you've got the heavy lifting in selling the book to go there for a while. It's nice to meet you...

FRUM: Thank you.

BROWN: Hope you'll come back.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, the story of Mamie Till-Mobley and her heroic stand in the face of racism that claimed the life of her only son.

Up next, one Democrat who says no thanks to a run for the White House. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: And next on NEWSNIGHT, one Democrat who says he will not run for the presidency. A short break and we're right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Sometimes, not always, but sometimes it's what people don't do that can tell a great story. And today it was what Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle said he won't do that had all of Washington buzzing. He won't run for president in the year 2004.

This seemed like such a sure thing that some editor in South Dakota is no doubt kicking himself tonight for the headline he had in the paper this morning: "He's Running." So why isn't he? A look at the whole mix of theories from CNN's Candy Crowley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It boils down to this: you can't moonlight as a presidential candidate.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE (D-SD), MINORITY LEADER: I'm not going to run for president because my passion is right here. And I must say I feel as good about this decision as any I've ever made.

CROWLEY: The Senate Democratic leader will keep his day job. As late as last night, Tom Daschle told people around him he planned to run for president and stay on for a while as leader of the Senate Democrats. He had been leaning, yes, for weeks. His staff was putting together a weekend announcement tour. And then Daschle took what he called a gut check and saw he could not do it all and that the fire in his belly burned brightest the Senate.

DASCHLE: As I think about where I want to be, what fights I want to fight, I want to fight the fights on the Senate floor.

CROWLEY: Daschle is the second big shoe that did not drop. He joins Al Gore in this sit it out in '04 field. Two men with big names and even bigger political ambition opting out of a wide open primary has to make you wonder whether they also weighed a run at George Bush as not worth the risk.

Gore did not rule out a future run, but said he could not foresee it. Daschle apparently can.

DASCHLE: There may come a time in my future when a national campaign, a campaign for the presidency is one that I will again entertain. I'm certainly not discounting that at some point in the future.

CROWLEY: Daschle's no doesn't change things as much as a yes would have. But rest assure assured the six men now running are relieved in a very statesmanlike way, of course.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: I think that's laudable for a number of reasons. Because he is the leader with experience, with respect to the Democratic Senate campaign committee, our national recruitment efforts and the capacity to hopefully win back the Senate.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS (D), NORTH CAROLINA: I think he made this decision for exactly the right reason. He believes that he can do the most good for the country as the Democratic leader in the United States Senate.

CROWLEY: The truth is, all the '04 campaigns concede Daschle would have been a formidable opponent, but no one is breathing easier than Richard Gephardt.

"I am particularly grateful," Gephardt wrote in a statement, "that I won't be facing him in a presidential debate."

(on camera): There are others still thinking about running, but Daschle is the last of the question marks who could have changed the dynamic. This is a pretty even playing field. And barring some last- minute move by a Democratic Bigfoot, the Democratic presidential nomination is up for grabs.

Candy Crowley, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN; Very different nomination starts off our national roundup tonight. The second nomination by President Bush for Charles Pickering to seat on the U.S. Appeals Court. Mississippi native and friend of Senator Trent Lott was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee last year when it was controlled by Democrats. Pickering was criticized by Democrats for his record on civil rights and on abortion rights. He'll likely have a better shot at confirmation now with Republicans in control of the Senate.

The latest on the sniper case. The government in Antigua believes that 17-year-old John Lee Malvo may have been handed over to John Muhammad, the older suspect in the shoot go ahead, by his mother. That Malvo may have been used as collateral to guarantee that his mother would pay Muhammad for forged immigration documents that got her into the United States two years ago.

And fires continued in Southern California today. But the Santa Ana winds that have been fueling them are starting to die down. Three homes damaged in the Santa Monica mountains today but no one has been hurt in the fires.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT a family treasury of papers and what they may tell us about an enigma in the civil rights movement, the papers of Malcom X.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: If Martin Luther King Jr. was the hero of the American civil rights movement, Malcolm X was the enigma. Not hard to see why Spike Lee would make a film about this man. His path was nothing short of epic, converting to Islam in jail. Becoming a fierce supporter of black power. Eventually decides that maybe, just maybe, we all could get along. How did they get there? Where would he have gone? We'll never really know. His assassins thought to be men he once helped lead in the Nation of Islam. They made sure of that. But now his family has turned over an enormous batch of private papers to a Harlem library, papers that just may help explain some of the enigma.

Here is CNN's Jamie Colby.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MALCOLM X, CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: Show black people how to do something, stand on our own feet and solve our own problems.

JAMIE COLBY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Archivists at the Schaumburg Center are sorting through the largest collection of Malcolm X's personal effects, piecing together his evolution from prison inmate to spiritual leader. His personal photos with controversial leaders and celebrities. His speeches to followers and the unconverted. His diaries detailing his pilgrimage to Mecca. And his struggle with the black Muslim group, the Nation of Islam.

HOWARD DODSON, DIRECTOR, SCHAUMBURG CENTER: I believe this is the first time he makes a public statement about the split. This is his record of his thought. This is what he has written. This is the edits that he's made on his speeches and his radio programs and all the rest. This is his voice captured in a textural form.

COLBY: We're told the documents unpack sod far are in relatively good condition considering that many of them are 40 years old. Anyone who handles the documents in these two crates will have to wear special preservation gloves. But what they'll see for the very first time is the evolution of Malcolm's teaching, speeches that he gave over a period of time. Take for example, this speech from 1963 initially entitled "God's Judgment of America," later changed to "God's Judgment of White America." MANNING MARABLE, MALCOLM X BIOGRAPHER: So much of what has been written and portrayed on Malcolm X are a series of iconic misleading images. He's been exprocreated from everybody from the hip-hop generation to the U.S. Postal Service. Let's now document the true meaning of Malcolm through his own words.

COLBY: Malcolm's eldest daughter says this collection will fill in the blanks in her father's legacy.

ATTALLAH SHABAZZ, DAUGHTER OF MALCOLM X: That my father in his own living existence did not see the benefit of his words in his lifetime could matter some 30 some odd or 40 years later is a testament to the strength of what he stood for then.

COLBY: The family retains ownership of the collection, but the library will organize it for eventual public viewing in 18 months.

Jamie Colby, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Howard Dodson is the director of the Schaumberg Center For Research and Black Culture. He's here to talk more about this. This is one of those kid in a candy store moments for people in your business and with your interest. And you are very lucky to have it.

DODSON: You are absolutely correct. But for the fact that in this particular instance someone did choose to purchase the material...

BROWN: They were in a storage locker.

DODSON: In a storage locker.

BROWN: A bad debt involved.

DODSON: And what usually happens if no one purchases the material in that kind of situation, the storage house usually just destroys it or throws it away. In some respects the good thing that happened was it was purchased, but then ends up on eBay about to be auctioned off and would have an almost equally impact on it. Keeping it together and having it as a complete record is absolutely essential in terms of making this significant aspect of Malcolm X's legacy both documented and preserved for posterity.

BROWN: I want to talk about the substance in a second. Somebody call you up and say, you ought to check eBay because...

DODSON; Actually a friend of mine did call and said, have you checked eBay today? I said no. He said there's a wonderful body of stuff that looks like Malcolm X's stuff and he said it looks like it's real. And I sat down with him and went on the Internet and started going page by page through the catalog and it actually did look real. It frightened me quite seriously. It was like this stuff could be dispersed to the world in another few months. BROWN: It will take years to go through all this, to really come and understand the implications of all of this. For you, what would you like to know that you don't know now about him?

DODSON: What would I like to know? I have always been intrigued by the quality of his critical thought. I think you account for the constant evolution of this man by the degree to which he has, in fact, been both critical of his world and critical of himself. And it's the criticism of himself and his ability, his willingness to look for other ways of knowing self and knowing his world, that is accounts I think for this evolution. But want to know that through a critical reading of the material that's there. Because if it's true, then it becomes a kind of basis for living for all of us. We tend to be very soft on ourselves, and I think it's hard criticism of himself made him the extraordinary person that he was.

BROWN: Do you think he -- do you think African-Americans and white people need to draw the same thing from the story of his life or are there different things each should draw or ought to draw?

DODSON: Well, he always spoke to both the African-American community and the American community in general very directly. And the things that he had to say to the African-American community were primarily directed at how do you come to know yourself better? How do you mobilize the power that's within you individually and as a group, to take your place, your rightful place as a self-realizing human being in the world today? That was the message constantly delivered to the African-American community.

At the same time, he spoke to the American community from the perspective of what he considered and perceived to by the hypocrisy of the society. And his measure of the greatness or lack of same of American society was the way in which it treated and interpreted the lives and experiences of people of African descent. So he had these two stories that he was carrying on. I think you when you put them together and read through his message, through his words, what you begin to realize is that he is, in fact, speaking through the African- American experience to all of us.

BROWN: I said at the beginning it must feel like a kid in a candy shop. I would think that you could pick up any notebook and find something in there that's just marvelous from your point of view.

DODSON: Well, I haven't had the privilege of going through everything. But each time I picked up an item and started to read it against what that I already know...

BROWN: Yes.

DODSON: I learn something new. So that's the kind of thing that will keep me going back and back again for years to come.

BROWN: We thank you very much for coming in tonight. This is an interesting day. We look forward to hearing more about the papers as you go through them.

DODSON: Wonderful day. Thank you for the opportunity to come and share with the audience.

BROWN: Thank you very much.

And up next on NEWSNIGHT, Mamie Till and her bravery in the face of racist violence that claimed the life of her son in one of the most important moments of the American civil rights era. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Finally from us tonight, a passing to which attention must be paid. Of an 81-year-old woman in a hospital in Chicago. Mamie Till Mobley died yesterday of heart failure. Truth is her heart should have failed long ago.

In 1955, when her 14-year-old son Emmett Till was abducted while visiting relatives in Mississippi, abducted and beaten to death, his body fished out of a river days later. It was alleged that he had whistled at a white woman.

Mamie Till's heart should have failed then, but it didn't. To the contrary, she made a brave and astonishing decision that changed the course of the history of civil rights in the United States. Mamie Till decided that those who came to those to mourn her boy at a funeral parlor back home in Chicago, should face what she had to face, an open casket and the appalling sight of what had been done to her only son.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the muddy back woods Tallahatchie River, where a weighted body was found alleged to be that of young Emmett Till.

MAMIE TILL, MOTHER OF EMMITT TILL: I decided then that I would start at his feet and work my way up, maybe gathering strength as I went. I paused at his midsection because I knew he would not want me looking at him. But I saw enough that I knew he was intact. I kept on up until I got to his chin and then I was forced to deal with his face.

I kept on up until I got to his chin, and then I was forced to deal with his face. I saw that his tongue was choked out. I noticed that the right eye was lying on midway his cheek. I noticed that his nose had been broken like somebody took a meat chopper and chopped his nose in several places.

BROWN (voice-over): The undertaker asked Mamie Till whether she wanted her son touched up.

TILL: I said, No, Mr. Rainer (ph), let the people see what I've seen. I was just willing to bare it all. I think everybody needed to know what had happened to Emmett Till.

BROWN: Everything changed after the murder of Emmett Till. People in this country who had let themselves believe that Jim Crow was only a matter, only of separate wash rooms and water fountains could no longer believe that.

A black boy, and he was only a boy, had been rendered unrecognizable by two white men -- two white men who were tried and acquitted of murder.

Because Emmett Till died and his mother's courage did not, an old strain of brutality at long last began to fade away.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The excerpt we just saw came from a documentary done for the "American Experience" by the award winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson. The murder of Emmett Till airs the 20th of this month on most PBS stations in this country. Check your local listings or go to www.pbs.org.

We'll see ya'll tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern. Good night.

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