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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Commuter Airliner Crashes In Charlotte, North Carolina; Newark Commissioner Issues New Rules Regarding Child Abuse Case; Whereabouts of Approximately 33,000 Sex Offenders in California Are Unknown

Aired January 08, 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, everyone. At the risk of having our new international viewers think I am obsessive -- the rest of you know better, I'm sure -- I can't yet let go of this child murder in Newark, New Jersey. The starvation death of Faheem Williams and the torture of his two brothers.
The head of the state's Department of Human Services, the agency which in this case was responsible for checking on the welfare of these three children, issued some new rules today. Later in the program, NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen will report more on this. But here's a sample of the changes.

There are a number of them, but they are all boil down to one simple rule. Caseworkers can no longer close cases where abuse or neglect is alleged without first seeing the child. Now think about that. This is a new emergency rule. You can't close an abuse case without first actually seeing the child. Apparently you could before.

The Williams case was closed, according to the commissioner, despite abuse allegations, even though the kids in the case had not been seen by a caseworker for more than a year. The supervisor signed off on it.

Now, the caseworker and the supervisor did not kill Faheem. But the state clearly failed him and his brothers. And the fact that the head of that agency had to issue a rule saying don't close an abuse case without at least seeing the child is just one really sickening sign of how great that failure was. More on that later.

We begin "The Whip" with a deadly plane crash in North Carolina today. Gary Tuchman is in Charlotte. Gary, the headline from you tonight.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the visibility was perfect, the winds were light. All seemed routine when a commuter plane took off from here in Charlotte, North Carolina this morning. But the flight only lasted a few seconds when something went terribly wrong -- Aaron.

BROWN: Gary, thank you. And we'll get to you at the top tonight. We'll also be going to Chicago tonight, I promise you, for the arrest of a white supremacist there. Correspondent Jeff Flock will joins us. Troubling story out West. Sex offenders in that state have been lost in the system. Lots of them. Frank Buckley working the story from LA. Frank, the headline, please.

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, it's a staggering number of sex offenders whose whereabouts are unknown. They are supposed to be registered with authorities at all times. It turns out, more than 30,000 of them are not.

BROWN: Frank, thank you. And last stop on "The Whip," North Korea, and one of the problems facing U.S. forces stationed there. We're Not talking about a threat from the north this time. Rebecca MacKinnon is in Seoul for us. Rebecca, a headlines from you tonight.

REBECCA MACKINNON, CNN TOKYO BUREAU CHIEF: Aaron, South Korea's foreign ministry is calling on people here to stop protesting against the presence of 37,000 U.S. troops. The government here believes that the protests are complicating its efforts to coordinate with Washington over some kind of solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis. Meanwhile, the commanders of the U.S. forces here are trying to cope with their own public relations crisis.

BROWN: Rebecca, thank you. Back to you and the rest shortly.

Also coming up tonight, a story about drugs and war. We'll talk with a reporter from "Esquire" magazine about research into pills, even genetic engineering, that could keep soldiers awake not for hours, but for days, even weeks on end.

We'll also talk with veteran investigative reporter Lowell Bergman (ph) about one of the most dangerous places to work in America. Also, a new study promoting the health benefits of regular drinking. Not bingeing, but regular drinking. We'll talk with a scientist who has been behind that argument for a long time, Dr. Curtis Ellison.

And a woman that we talked about with Larry a moment ago. So many presidents loved her and loved to hate her, I suppose. A goodbye tonight to an intrepid White House correspondent, Sarah McClendin (ph).

So we've got a lot to do in the hour ahead. We begin tonight with the plane crash in Charlotte. It punctuates what had been nearly 14 months in which more than half a billion passengers boarded airliners in the country all without a single fatal accident. That winning streak ended this morning, when a small plane with 21 people on board took off then somehow suddenly lost its grip on the sky. We begin tonight with CNN's Gary Tuchman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN (voice-over): It was supposed to be a short trip of 76 nautical miles on a perfectly clear day. But U.S. Airways Express Flight 5481 was only in the air for seconds.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It hit nose first. I mean it just disintegrated upon impact. A huge fireball.

TUCHMAN: The blaze was intense, but extinguished quickly by firefighters on the scene within minutes. But there was no rescue. All 21 people aboard were killed.

Authorities say air traffic controllers heard the voice of pilot Katie Leslie (ph), just before the plane crashed into a U.S. Airways maintenance hangar.

JOHN GOGLIA, NTSB: I have been told -- I haven't heard the tape, but I have been told that one of the crewmembers declared an emergency. Said we have an emergency.

TUCHMAN: Investigators have recovered both the cockpit voice and data recorders. However, the National Transportation Safety Board says it's much too early to know what went wrong. Witnesses say the twin engine turbo prop, on its way from Charlotte, North Carolina to Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, came down at a steep angle.

GOGLIA: Witnesses have said that the propellers were turning. We don't have any way to verify that yet.

TUCHMAN: At the Greenville Airport, the arrival board at the U.S. Airways counter still said Flight 5481 was scheduled to arrive on time. Caroline Abrams (ph) said she had a reservation on the doomed flight but cancelled it. She found out about the crash after driving to the Greenville Airport for another flight.

CAROLINE ABRAMS: I'm here. I'm talking to you right now. I'm alive. And I'm very thankful. And it's just been a really emotional day for me.

TUCHMAN: The U.S. Airways commuter flight was operated by Air Midwest, which is owned by Arizona-based Mesa Airlines.

JONATHAN ORNSTEIN, CEO, MESA AIR: You don't operate 1,500 flights a day for 20 years, the way we have, without running a safe operation. But unfortunately an accident is an accident. And we have to deal with it.

TUCHMAN: Bereaved families spoke with counselors in a private room at the Greenville Airport. Meanwhile, investigators combed over the wreckage of the Beachcraft (ph) 1900-D, a model of plane that has had five fatal accidents worldwide since the first one was built in 1991.

GOGLIA: There's no indication of this airplane or any of the others having any systemic or long-term problems.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN: Behind us, the hangar where this happened earlier this morning. It looks relatively quiet from here, but we're told that NTSB officials are still on the scene. We're told there are members of the local medical examiner's office there still recovering the bodies of those who perished. About the recorders, the voice and data recorder, we are told by the NTSB they are burned but they are in "decent shape." And we could get preliminary results from the recorders some time tomorrow . Aaron, back to you.

BROWN: Well, it is usually so, and we suspect it will be here, these investigations overall take a long time. Anything unusual today about the condition at Charlotte? Wind, rain, snow, anything?

TUCHMAN: Well, that's the unusual part about it, Aaron. The conditions were perfect. Very light winds, clear visibility, unlimited ceiling. The NTSB at this point have absolutely no idea why this happened.

BROWN: Well, we will wait for them to find out. Gary, thank you. Gary Tuchman in Charlotte, North Carolina tonight.

As we said at the beginning of the program, New Jersey's commissioner of human services has issued new rules to prevent, it is hoped, the tragedy that has been unfolding in Newark the last few days. Caseworkers are now required to actually see a child suspected of having been abused before they close out the case.

Whether this would have saved Faheem Williams' life we will never know. Would it have saved his brothers from the torture they endured, we can't say. In part, because the boys seemed surrounded by adults who were out to harm them. Here is CNN's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): New Jersey authorities have arrested and arraigned the boyfriend of the children's mother on charges of sexually assaulting one of the boys, identified only as R.W. in 2001. Joseph Reece (ph) is also charged with endangering the welfare of a child.

(on camera): Will there be more charges?

CAROLYN WRIGHT, ASSISTANT PROSECUTOR, ESSEX COUNTY, NEW JERSEY: It is entirely possible that there could be more charges.

NISSEN (voice-over): In the meantime, the FBI has stepped up its multi-state hunt for Sherry Murphy, the woman who was supposedly caring for the boys in her Newark home while their mother served a jail term. Murphy, a cousin of the boys' mother, is wanted on assault charges and for questioning in the seven-year-old's death.

The case has special urgency for Newark police and FBI agents who are volunteering to work double shifts on the case.

LOUIE ALLEN, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, FBI, NEWARK, NEW JERSEY: Well it's one of the more egregious investigations that I've ever been involved in. And that's pretty high after 25 years in law enforcement. Kids have been starved, dehydrated. I mean, you don't treat prisoners of war like that.

NISSEN: Authorities have also stepped up their investigation of New Jersey's division of youth and family services, known as DYFS. And the boys caseworker, a DYFS employee, co-workers say was almost impossibly overburdened.

HETTY ROSENSTEIN, PRESIDENT, CASEWORKERS UNION: Our information is that the worker had 107 children on her caseload. And when you have an extremely large caseload, it's very possible that you could make a very bad mistake. You could be a really good worker and make a mistake. You could be a great supervisor and make a mistake.

NISSEN: Late today, the caseworker's supervisor was suspended, as investigations continue into the horror that ended one young life and forever scarred two others. Beth Nissen, CNN, Newark, New Jersey.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Well, it's bad enough that any government would lose track of children in its care. Perhaps, we're not sure, but perhaps this is worse, the government losing track of the monsters who prey on them: convicted sex offenders who have done their time but are required to register with the state because they often offend again.

If it were one or two, it would be upsetting. In California, it's 33,000. That's the what. The why is worse. Here is CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY (voice-over): LA County sheriff's detective Dan White (ph) showed us how residents in his county are supposed to be able to keep track of registered sex offenders.

DAN WHITE, LA COUNTY DETECTIVE: This is what the public can view, high risk and serious sex offenders. Now if you want to, give me a zip code, and I can run a zip code for you.

BUCKLEY: And who is responsible for keeping the information on the sex offenders current? The sex offenders themselves. Megan's Law advocates say it is a flaw in the system.

WHITE: You can call it a flaw if you choose to. You can't -- you have them, but you can't watch them 24-7.

BUCKLEY: An analysis of California's Megan's Law database performed by The Associated Press shows how flawed it is. The AP obtained data from the California Department of Justice that indicates that some 76,000 sex offenders have registered at least once as required by law. But of those, the whereabouts of some 33,000 sex offenders are unknown.

MARC KLAAS, VICTIMS RIGHTS ADVOCATE: It's absolutely outrageous that we could lose a good third of the registered sex offenders in the state of California, and it points out the low priority this issue seems to have in government and law enforcement.

BUCKLEY: Local law enforcement is responsible for tracking sex offenders, but with limited resources, many say, it's a difficult task. In Sacramento, California, for example, one detective, Terry Chew, is responsible for tracking nearly 2,000 sex offenders. TERRY CHEW, DETECTIVE: It's very difficult to try to be able to track all of them. And we can't possibly do all of that with current research we have.

TUCHMAN: And the state's attorney general says if the public wants its officers spending more time on this task, it will have to be willing to spend more money to make it happen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The weak link in the system is having some, probably sworn police officer, who knocks on the door and asks if Mr. so and so still lives at that address and try to find out if they've moved, where they've moved. That's very labor intensive. We estimate it's a $15 million to $20 million expenditure each year.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY: The attorney general here says that's how much it would cost to pay for the officers to follow up on every sex offender who isn't properly registered. Now having said that, he also says that that large number, 33,000, may be a bit misleading. Because the state does have agents that do from time to time check up on offenders. And they have found that in roughly half of the cases that they follow up, the person is, in fact, where they last said they were.

In many cases, they simply weren't aware that the law now requires them to reregister every year. But Aaron, even if of half of the 33,000 offenders are accounted for, that leaves several thousand sex offenders whose whereabouts are unknown.

BROWN: I had actually two things. Let me just go with the one. California -- as a lot of states are these days -- but California in particular is in the midst of an extraordinarily difficult budget time, they're broke. Does that seem to play into this at all, or does the problem predate that?

BUCKLEY: It does seem to predate it. But Bill Lockier (ph), the attorney general, says that that is a part of what he and other policy makers face every day when they make these decisions. He said that it's a matter of priorities. And he cited the fact that here in California, for example, there are two million people who are wanted on arrest warrants.

They have to decide as law enforcement officers, do we devote a certain number to seek these two million people out who are wanted for crimes they have allegedly currently committed? Or do we spend some of that time tracking up offenders who are simply supposed to register in a database? So it does seem to predate it, but there is certainly -- this is taking place against the context of the budget woes.

BROWN: Thank you. And I know our viewers in California will feel good that there are two million people running around there with arrest warrants on them. Thank you, Frank Frank Buckley in LA tonight.

And on to Chicago now and the very strange case of Matt Hale. You may remember Mr. Hale as the leader of a church -- we use the term loosely -- dedicated to white supremacy, a member of which went on a shooting rampage a few years back. Recently, Mr. Hale and his church have been embroiled in a court battle over the rights to use the church's name.

Tonight, though, he's bound for another court on charges he tried to have the judge in the case murdered. Here is CNN's Jeff Flock.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CHICAGO BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): Rahoa (ph), it means racial holy war. Supporters of Matt Hale defiant after he walked into federal court in Chicago.

MATT HALE, WORLD CHURCH OF THE CREATOR: This is not Red China or the Soviet Union.

FLOCK: Hale railing against Judge Joan Lefkow, who ruled that Hale's white racist World Church of the Creator, based here in his brother's old bedroom in East Peoria, Illinois, had to change its name because another church trademarked it. Lefko ordered the church's Web site altered and the group's precious white man's bibles either destroyed or edited to remove the words "World Church of the Creator."

HALE: No court has the power or the right to order the burning of bibles.

FLOCK: Hale sued the judge and attacked her on his Web site. But, was there more?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're not going to comment on how we found out.

FLOCK: U.S. Attorney Pat Fitzgerald (ph) says Hale solicited someone -- he won't say who -- to kill Lefkow.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Blacks, Jews, hate them?

HALE: Yes, we hate them.

FLOCK: With venom on his tongue, Hitler stickers on his wall, and an Israeli flag on his floor, Hale has been running the World Church of the Creator since 1995. His critics say this is not the first time he has incited others to violence.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have believed for more than four years, since the tragic July 4 shooting rampage of his follower, Benjamin Smith, that Matthew Hale has had blood on his hands.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FLOCK: Aaron, many people have believed that it was Matt Hale who incited Ben Smith to that murderous rampage against blacks, Asians and Jews in the Midwest back in 1999. Now those in law enforcement say they have proof that he is inciting violence -- Aaron.

BROWN: Is he in jail tonight? FLOCK: Yes. In the metropolitan correction center, awaiting an appearance on Monday for a detention hearing.

BROWN: And the charges he faces are soliciting murder and...

FLOCK: Obstruction of justice.

BROWN: And obstruction of justice?

FLOCK: And obstruction of justice. Not clear exactly what that's about. Apparently he was inciting people to go to Judge Lefkow's church. She is an Episcopalian, I should point out. She's married to a Jew. To go to her church and try to disrupt the services there is in hopes of coercing her in some way.

BROWN: That's what they call in the military lesser included offenses. Thank you, Jeff, very much. Jeff Flock in Chicago.

And ahead on NEWSNIGHT tonight: can American soldiers stay awake for days, weeks on end? Just maybe, with the help of a new pill the military is trying to develop. And next: American soldiers caught in the middle in Korea. This is NEWSNIGHT from CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A quick look around the world tonight starts with the wreckage of an airliner in southwestern Turkey. The Turkish Airlines jet crashed on landing, apparently on the wrong end of a very foggy airport. Seventy-five people perished. At least one American is believed to have been on board. No solid confirmation of that as of yet.

Police in Great Britain are looking for additional suspects in connection with the discovery last weekend of the poison ricin. Yesterday, a seventh man was arrested. The concern is still others might be out there and so might the poison.

And it's cold in Moscow, tonight. OK, that's not news, it is winter. But it is really cold in the Russian capital. Cold as in 24 below zero or minus 31 degrees Celsius if you're watching us anywhere but the United States. Six people died from frost bite today. More than 200 have died in this cold Russian winter.

The latest from North Korea. It was yesterday the United States took a considerable shift in how it was approaching the situation, saying it was willing to talk to the North Koreans. The North Koreans were talking all right today, or maybe shouting is a better way to put it, at about 100 decibels.

The state news agency put out a statement that made no mention of the offer by the Americans to talk, but did say this: "The nuclear issue is a product of the U.S. strategy to dominate the world. To bring a holocaust of nuclear war to the Korean nation."

The sensitivities aren't confined to the north. And this is something can be very tricky for many Americans to understand. Americans believe that we stationed 37,000 troops in South Korea to protect South Koreans from the north. Many South Koreans, especially the younger ones, those not alive during the Korean War, see the Americans as an arrogant imperial force whose country might actually be provoking the north and endangering the south.

The clash has become a problem in recent weeks, not simply because of the global tension involving the United States and North Korea, but also something as local as a traffic accident whose memory has not yet died. Once again from Seoul tonight, CNN's Rebecca MacKinnon.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MACKINNON (voice-over): In the heart of South Korea's bustling capital, it's business as usual at the gates of Yongson (ph) U.S. Army Base. But the soldiers who live and train inside face a serious problem and they know it. It hit Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan literally, when three South Korean men attacked him with a knife last month.

LT. COL. STEVEN BOYLAN: They said something that was very derogatory, specifically about being a GI and an American.

MACKINNON: With anti-U.S. sentiment on the rise across the country, most of the 37,000 U.S. forces now stationed in Korea have been attending special seminars this week.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I crossed Korea today. Commanders and leaders are talking with their soldiers about what went wrong, what can we do to ensure that it doesn't happen again.

MACKINNON: "It" is the death of two Korean teenagers crushed by a U.S. military vehicle in a road accident last year. Public outrage and protest followed the acquittal by a U.S. military court of the servicemen who drove the vehicle. All protesters want them retried in a South Korean court and a revision of the rules governing U.S. military personnel here. And some, even a total pullout of U.S. troops from Korea.

MAJOR JOHN KIM, 8TH ARMY: I think one of the problems that Koreans feel is that it's a misperception on their part that they're looked down by Americans towards them.

MACKINNON: But that is certainly the view of young South Koreans who go out on the street every day in the dead of winter to gather signatures protesting the U.S. military's handling of the recent road accident.

This young woman says she feels closer to North Korea than she does to the United States. "We are the same country," she says, "while the U.S. views us as inferior." "North Korea is a bigger threat right now," says this young man, "but we're all part of one country and I hope we can solve our differences." Such views have the U.S. military brass worried.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The key for us is how we connect with this younger generation who didn't have the Korean War experience. And recognizing that there has been generational change and most evident by the recent elections.

MACKINNON: These young people who turn out for anti-U.S. protests also vote. And they've just helped elect a new president whose campaign was critical of U.S. forces here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MACKINNON: Now, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea here tells us that U.S. forces are only going to stay in South Korea as long as the government wants them to. And at this point, the South Korean government says it does need U.S. troops to help guarantee South Korea's security.

Now we do have one late-breaking development to tell you. North Korea has told the South Korean officials that North Korea is willing to hold high-level ministerial talks here in Seoul from the 21st to the 24th of this month. This is part of a regular series of meetings, high-ranking meetings between north and south that have been going on as part of the sunshine policy of the administration here to engage North Korea.

Now, of course, at this meeting, South Korea intends to bring up the U.S. proposal for dialogue. And is hoping that it will get some kind of positive response -- Aaron.

BROWN: Rebecca, thank you. Rebecca MacKinnon in Seoul.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT: a new study says regular consumption of alcohol is good for you. The drink's on us. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Well, everyone agrees about one thing where alcohol is concerned: too much too often can cause a horror show of health problems. So it's always with caution that physicians approach the study, suggesting that a little drinking can actually do a whole lot for your health. And we have another one today.

This time it comes from "The New England Journal of Medicine." A long-term study showing that men who drink regularly and moderately cut their heart attack risk by about one-third compared to those who don't. We're joined tonight by Dr. Curtis Ellison. You might remember him from some very high-profile stories on "60 Minutes," where he promoted the benefits of wine drinking.

He is a professor of medicine at Boston University. And we should add that up to 10 percent of the research he does has been sponsored primarily by the beverage industry. Dr. Ellison, good to see you. Thank you sir.

The studies like this have been out there for almost -- literally for half a century, since about 1948. So is there anything in this one, other than it is confirmation yet again that we should take particular note of? DR. CURTIS ELLISON, BOSTON UNIVERSITY: This study is important for two reasons. It's a very well done study, a very large group of subjects. It confirms what we've known for many years, that people who drink moderately have less coronary heart disease. And that remains the leading cause of death in the United States and throughout the developed world. The value of this new study is that it has finally demonstrated it's how frequent, not how much you drink, that's most important.

BROWN: Yes. The study, as I was looking through it, indicates that you are -- if you have a little driven, half a drink, and it doesn't seem to matter whether it's wine, beer, or hard liquor. Something every day or so you are a lot better off than if you exercise every day or so.

ELLISON: Well, we're not saying that alcohol is the only component of a healthy lifestyle. It's been well demonstrated if you stay lean, eat a reasonable diet, don't smoke, and exercise a little and add a little bit of alcohol on almost a daily basis, five, six times a week, you will have the best protection against diabetes, heart disease, against aging.

BROWN: Any idea why, yet?

ELLISON: We've identified 40, 50 different mechanisms. The one that we hear a lot about is the effect of alcohol on raising the good cholesterol, the HDL cholesterol. This is important, and any type of alcohol will do that. But it also has an many effect on the platelets and the blood clotting mechanism. So, you must less likely to have a narrowing in the artery to form a clot and the clot is what precipitates a heart attack or a stroke.

And we know that all beverages and wine in particular, seem to be particularly protective against these cots. This only lasts for about 24 hours. It's dangerous to go more than 24 hours without a drink. If you are preventing the clotting in the arteries.

BROWN: I'll leave that line out there for anyone else to bat around. Would you do just as well with an aspirin a day?

ELLISON: Aspirin is good for you, it has to be taken on a regular basis. Alcohol adds to the protection of aspirin. Aspirin adds to the protection. It's not one single thing. It's the combination of a health lifestyle. Factors, aspirin is one. A little alcohol seems to be strongly supported by this study and many other studies to be another component for people in whom it is not contra indicated. I'm a physician and you know, we're always worried about alcohol abuse.

BROWN; That's what is a problem. Literally the first study, the 1948 study was suppressed, because, the sponsors, the government didn't like the conclusion. Are we societally more comfortable with this idea?

ELLISON: It's -- this is the United States. You know, it's a shame the pilgrims got mere before the Italians landed in this country. The Americans and Northern Europeans focus order alcohol abuse. Have been reluctant to admit that moderate amounts of alcohol may have protective effects. But I think it's more than that. It's trying to keep it in perspective.

When you see on the news tonight they're showing young college students guzzling down gallons of beer, we're not talking about this type of drinking. We're talking about for mature adults. Middle- aged, older man, or a post menopausal woman, you are at the greatest risk of coronary disease and stroke being the leading cause of death. And the moderate alcohol in this group, if it's not contra indicated, seems to be well substantiated as a way of helping reduce that risk.

BROWN: Dr. Ellison, good talking to you. Thanks for joining us.

ELLISON: Thank you very much.

BROWN: Thank you very much.

And still to come on the program tonight, research into keeping soldiers awake for days end. We'll talk about work being done on that.

And up next, a workplace where the workers are being hurt and killed in shocking numbers. What is the government doing about it? This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Next, a shocking story of an American company where workers are being injured by the thousands. This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: This story beginning quickly, beginning with a victory for the Bush administration. A federal appeals court ruled President Bush can name U.S. citizens as enemy combatants and keep them in military custody without lawyers, without charges, if he sees them as a threat to national security. The decision reverses a lower court ruling ordering the government to better defend its position for holding Hamdi. Hamdi a U.S. citizen is accused of fighting with the Taliban.

On to the case of Danielle Van Dam. The interrogation of David Westerfield was released today on videotape, just days after he was sentenced to death for murdering the 7-year-old girl. Police questioned him three days after the child was reported missing. Westerfield does not report say he played a role, but says, quote, his life is over and he was contemplating suicide.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Want to be left alone?

DAVID WESTERFIELD, CONVICTED MURDER: No, it's OK. If you want to leave a gun here for a few minutes, I'd appreciate it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's silly.

WESTERFIELD: Why is that silly?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're still a dad, right? think about your boy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Better things to report tonight. The navy hospital ship, Comfort, deployed just two days ago for the possibility of a war with Iraq, the crew has been of assistance far from the Persian Gulf. The ship helped rescue a man floating off Bermuda. He had been on a 40- foot boat that rolled over in high seas. Two other people on the boat remain missing tonight.

Imagine waking up in the morning and having an absolute fear that you will not come home from work alive. We're not talking about a military man going off to battle. In this case we're talking about a man named Rollin Haskin (ph), earning about $10 an hour at a pipe foundry in Texas who knew he was in danger. And then died in a gruesome accident on the job. Mr. Haskin (ph) worked for one of the most dangerous employers in America, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Incorporated, where where have been literally thousands of injuries since the mid '90s.

Injuries the state and federal government know about but don't seem able or willing to stop. Safety to them should never stand in the way of profits, it seems, and it does not. That's what the "New York Times" found along with reporting help from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and "Front Line." here is a clip from "Dangerous Business."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In iron foundries danger is everywhere. And demands on workers are relentless.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's production come hell or high water.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In this very dangerous business, where they make the water and sewer pipes essential to our lives, there is one company whose production, the government says, has left a trail of death and dismemberment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fatalities, injuries, illnesses, amputations are not accepted practice.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even when workers are killed the company continued to put employees at risk.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The sad thing is this keeps happening. Over and over and over.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the government has few tools to stop them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Willfully violate the law, and kill someone is a misdemeanor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Joining us now, two of the investigative reporters who have been working the story. Lowell Bergman and David Barstow. David works for "The Times."

Nice to see you both. Nice piece of work this morning. You have a couple more in the paper the next couple of days. Is that right?

Give me a sense of dimension here. At this plant, which is in Tyler, Texas as I recall, how many injuries do we know about?

DAVIS BARSTOW, "NEW YORK TIMES" CORRESPONDENT: Hundreds. Hundreds we know about from the internal corporate documents that we were able to obtain as part of our investigation.

BROWN: And given the company's attitude towards people, to workers who report injuries, they're not very thrilled with that, we have reason to believe there are more than the hundreds?

LOWELL BERGMAN, PBS, "FRONTLINE" CORRESPONDENT: We know they have a record of falsifying their accident reports to OSHA. They have been find for that in the past. Managers in the plant have told us that they target people who report or try to, let's say, insist on government regulations.

BROWN: Tell me about the company itself, the corporation that runs the pipe factory.

BERGMAN: It's a privately-held company. Very wealthy family that's had almost no publicity before, even in its hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Their annual revenues, we've been able to estimate are around a billion and a half to two billion.

BROWN: In all of their businesses.

BERGMAN: In all of their 12 foundries and other businesses they have in the United States. But they operate under different names in different states. They're not very well known.

BROWN: Did they talk to you?

BERGMAN: Not on the record, no. Except by writing, in writing, by e-mail. They refused to meet with us, even off record.

BROWN: Did they, in response to whatever written questions you submitted, did they acknowledge they have horrible, dreadful record?

BARSTOW: No, they did not. They acknowledge isolated error, instances when, perhaps, other employees of theirs didn't follow their own safety procedures. They actually dismissed many of the safety violations that have been found against them, saying we settled these without acknowledging blame or fault on our part.

They also point out, and we think there's some corroboration to this that they have been making recent efforts to improve their safety and environmental record. Whether this reflects some kind of fundamental change on the part of the corporation, many of the employees have serious doubts about that.

BROWN: In your lead, in "The New York Times" piece today, one of the things you talk about is that workers are essentially prohibited from leaving the line to the point -- it's very hot in there. And they're drinking lots of water. To the point where they're literally urinating in their pants.

BARSTOW: When I first heard it, I didn't believe it. I really didn't believe it. Then we heard it again. And again. And again, and again. From employee after employee. And I guess one of us felt like a place like this really existed any more.

BROWN: It's very 1910.

BARSTOW: Yes. We were sort of struck by that. And we began to just sort of gradually peel away the layers of this plant down in Tyler, Texas.

Of course the workers down there were more than happy to talk. A lot of people, sort of nobody has been there to really protect them or help them. They were more than happy to have somebody pay attention.

BROWN: The union certainly hasn't...

BERGMAN: But you should understand that we didn't begin to look at this holding company, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), or even at Tyler Pipe itself. It was a report that we got our hands on about the fact that if you willfully and neglectly kill an employee under federal law of the United States, it's a misdemeanor.

BROWN: If you willfully?

BERGMAN: And it turned out, it was this plant in Tyler where there was a case where the Justice Department did get involved. It rarely prosecutes any of these cases because it is a misdemeanor.

But the OSHA inspectors were so upset with the situation in this plant that they asked the Justice Department to come in and prosecute that case.

Now, a misdemeanor means six months or less. So it's the equivalent under federal law of driving with a suspended license a national park.

BROWN: "The Times" has two more installments I believe over the next couple of days, for those of you who get "The Times." PBS runs its "Frontline" piece tomorrow night. Good to meet you both. Nice piece of work.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the passing of a White House Press Corp legend. That's later.

Up next, how the military wants to keep its soldiers awake for a week at a time. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Next on NEWSNIGHT, can a little pill or genetic engineering keep American soldiers awake for days on end? This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A war story now, one part red badge of courage, one part brave new world. Scientists working for the Defense Department are on the verge of building more than just a smarter bomb. They think they can build a better soldier and do it from the DNA on up.

This brave new soldier might still get scared, he might still need to eat, but he could go days and days and days without sleeping. Wil Hylton has been looking at the research, he's written a fascinating and somewhat chilling article which can be found in the pages of the latest edition of "Esquire" magazine.

Mr. Hylton joins us tonight from Austin, Texas. Welcome to the program. We're not talking about here is little green pills that pilots take. This is something far more complicated.

WIL HYLTON, CONTRIBUTING, "ESQUIRE" MAGAZINE: That's right. What they've been doing is using pills. We've seen the possibility of some serious problems with those pills recently with the friendly fire incident in Afghanistan where the pilots who were flying F-16 dropped the 270-kiloton bomb on four Canadian soldiers and killed them.

They're now claiming that the "go-pills". as they call them which is Dexedrine, a sort of low-grade -- almost like diet pills, form of speed, an amphetamine. They claim that this stuff is the reason they were so irresponsible in their fighting.

BROWN: Wil, am I right that what scientists are trying to do is figure out a way to sort of genetically trick the brain into thinking it doesn't need sleep?

HYLTON: That's right. They're looking for something better and looking at genetics. So what they've done is at the Pentagon's military laboratory, which is called DARPA, the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, they've found a way in the fruit fly to change the genetics so that one gene stops producing its protein and the fruit flies no longer experience the need for sleep.

Now this is not to say the fruit flies are OK without sleep because there are certain metabolic shifts and advantages you get during the nighttime while you are at sleep, obviously, which they will to have find a way to supplement so that if people do -- can have the same fix, people get the benefits of sleep without needing to sleep. What they hope is that the same gene that exists in the fruit fly can -- will also exist in humans. There's about a 50-50 chance. Humans share about 50 percent of the same genes that fruit flies have.

BROWN: We should probably ask why did they think it would be helpful to keep soldiers awake for a week at a time?

HYLTON: It's funny. I was work on a story about six months ago that involved speaking with a lot of special operations soldiers coming back from Afghanistan. And one of the things that was really impressed upon me at the time, before I even knew about this sleep project, this genetic sleep project, was that these guys really have to go unbelievable lengths of time, some of them 40, 60 hours, sometimes lying in cold mud, in the middle of the night, after, you know, having been in the back of an open-air helicopter, you know, where they have door gunners, there's air flying through, everyone gets dehydrated.

Then they parachute in to secure (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Air Field. They fight for the control of the air field. There's fires burning every where. It's the most incredibly high-stress situation you can imagine. And then they're expected to lie there in the mud for eight, 10, 12, 20 hours and defend the place while backups arrive.

And talking to them, it's just -- they would tell me that the hardest part of the experience sometimes was staying awake those hours ,in the middle of the night, when the body just wanted to shut down.

BROWN: Am I right, that they -- if everything goes well here, they hope they will actually have something usable by, what? 2005 or 06? Something like that?

HYLTON: Yes. Yes. They're looking at a couple years. That's one of the interesting about this project is that they've kind of thrown aside scientific ethics and scientific conventions and they've gone into this thing headlong without any real hypothesis.

They've just been tinkering with genetics in the fruit fly. They've accomplished it in the fruit fly. They're now looking at the mouse. They don't really know exactly -- they don't have theories about how this stuff might work. They're just experimenting to see what will happen, and they're hope that by not holding themselves to that sort of rigorous and deliberate standard of the scientific method, they'll be able to get something a little faster.

BROWN: Wil, thanks a lot. Wil Hylton.

HYLTON: Thank you.

BROWN: Ready for "Esquire" magazine and you dealt with our audio problems really well tonight. Thank you, sir.

HYLTON: No problem.

BROWN: Very much.

Up next on NEWSNIGHT, Sarah McClendon, one of a kind. We will be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Take a moment tonight to remember Sarah McClendon, who will be missed in a way that is different from most, for her persistent wrangling, some might say rudeness, to 12 presidents of the United States. President Eisenhower asked why she hadn't been fired. George Bush, Sr. called her absurd. "The New York Times" said she was boorish and "The Washington Post," crank-inspired.

But for her 56-year career in journalism she had the gumption to ask the questions no one else would. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

Here's CNN's Bruce Morton.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARAH MCCLENDON, REPORTER: This hospital hasn't been made public. Would you please let us see it? And will you do something about it?

Mr. President?

And don't go away, Mr. President.

BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): She asked questions -- yelled questions in her carrying Texas voice at every president since Franklin Roosevelt.

MCCLENDON: I always know that he is against certain civil rights legislation.

I'm not trying to be rude. I'm trying to get my questions answered.

MORTON: Bill Clinton said in a statement, All of us who called on her did so with a mixture of fear and respect, I suspect because we would never quite know what she might say.

This day it was a treaty with China.

MCCLENDON: Would you just go ahead and sign this? Because after all, that's one of greatest enemies, is China.

WILLIAM J. CLINTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, Sarah, I'm not sure I know the specific issue you're referring to. But I would not make any agreements with China in secret.

MORTON: Ronald Reagan, defense contracts.

MCCLENDON: If you were going to leave this curtain down on this national scandal...

RONALD REAGAN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There have been hundreds of indictments. There have been convictions for fraud. There have been rebates from companies of all kinds.

MCCLENDON: Picayune is what I'm talking about.

REAGAN: The what?

MCCLENDON: Picayune is what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the big stuff.

REAGAN: Sarah, you've been long here than I have. I haven't been here long enough to call $600 million picayune.

MORTON: Sarah McClendon was 92 and unique. They don't come like that any more.

Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We'll miss her and we'll see you tomorrow at 10:00 Eastern time. Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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





Newark Commissioner Issues New Rules Regarding Child Abuse Case; Whereabouts of Approximately 33,000 Sex Offenders in California Are Unknown>


Aired January 8, 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, everyone. At the risk of having our new international viewers think I am obsessive -- the rest of you know better, I'm sure -- I can't yet let go of this child murder in Newark, New Jersey. The starvation death of Faheem Williams and the torture of his two brothers.
The head of the state's Department of Human Services, the agency which in this case was responsible for checking on the welfare of these three children, issued some new rules today. Later in the program, NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen will report more on this. But here's a sample of the changes.

There are a number of them, but they are all boil down to one simple rule. Caseworkers can no longer close cases where abuse or neglect is alleged without first seeing the child. Now think about that. This is a new emergency rule. You can't close an abuse case without first actually seeing the child. Apparently you could before.

The Williams case was closed, according to the commissioner, despite abuse allegations, even though the kids in the case had not been seen by a caseworker for more than a year. The supervisor signed off on it.

Now, the caseworker and the supervisor did not kill Faheem. But the state clearly failed him and his brothers. And the fact that the head of that agency had to issue a rule saying don't close an abuse case without at least seeing the child is just one really sickening sign of how great that failure was. More on that later.

We begin "The Whip" with a deadly plane crash in North Carolina today. Gary Tuchman is in Charlotte. Gary, the headline from you tonight.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the visibility was perfect, the winds were light. All seemed routine when a commuter plane took off from here in Charlotte, North Carolina this morning. But the flight only lasted a few seconds when something went terribly wrong -- Aaron.

BROWN: Gary, thank you. And we'll get to you at the top tonight. We'll also be going to Chicago tonight, I promise you, for the arrest of a white supremacist there. Correspondent Jeff Flock will joins us. Troubling story out West. Sex offenders in that state have been lost in the system. Lots of them. Frank Buckley working the story from LA. Frank, the headline, please.

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, it's a staggering number of sex offenders whose whereabouts are unknown. They are supposed to be registered with authorities at all times. It turns out, more than 30,000 of them are not.

BROWN: Frank, thank you. And last stop on "The Whip," North Korea, and one of the problems facing U.S. forces stationed there. We're Not talking about a threat from the north this time. Rebecca MacKinnon is in Seoul for us. Rebecca, a headlines from you tonight.

REBECCA MACKINNON, CNN TOKYO BUREAU CHIEF: Aaron, South Korea's foreign ministry is calling on people here to stop protesting against the presence of 37,000 U.S. troops. The government here believes that the protests are complicating its efforts to coordinate with Washington over some kind of solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis. Meanwhile, the commanders of the U.S. forces here are trying to cope with their own public relations crisis.

BROWN: Rebecca, thank you. Back to you and the rest shortly.

Also coming up tonight, a story about drugs and war. We'll talk with a reporter from "Esquire" magazine about research into pills, even genetic engineering, that could keep soldiers awake not for hours, but for days, even weeks on end.

We'll also talk with veteran investigative reporter Lowell Bergman (ph) about one of the most dangerous places to work in America. Also, a new study promoting the health benefits of regular drinking. Not bingeing, but regular drinking. We'll talk with a scientist who has been behind that argument for a long time, Dr. Curtis Ellison.

And a woman that we talked about with Larry a moment ago. So many presidents loved her and loved to hate her, I suppose. A goodbye tonight to an intrepid White House correspondent, Sarah McClendin (ph).

So we've got a lot to do in the hour ahead. We begin tonight with the plane crash in Charlotte. It punctuates what had been nearly 14 months in which more than half a billion passengers boarded airliners in the country all without a single fatal accident. That winning streak ended this morning, when a small plane with 21 people on board took off then somehow suddenly lost its grip on the sky. We begin tonight with CNN's Gary Tuchman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN (voice-over): It was supposed to be a short trip of 76 nautical miles on a perfectly clear day. But U.S. Airways Express Flight 5481 was only in the air for seconds.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It hit nose first. I mean it just disintegrated upon impact. A huge fireball.

TUCHMAN: The blaze was intense, but extinguished quickly by firefighters on the scene within minutes. But there was no rescue. All 21 people aboard were killed.

Authorities say air traffic controllers heard the voice of pilot Katie Leslie (ph), just before the plane crashed into a U.S. Airways maintenance hangar.

JOHN GOGLIA, NTSB: I have been told -- I haven't heard the tape, but I have been told that one of the crewmembers declared an emergency. Said we have an emergency.

TUCHMAN: Investigators have recovered both the cockpit voice and data recorders. However, the National Transportation Safety Board says it's much too early to know what went wrong. Witnesses say the twin engine turbo prop, on its way from Charlotte, North Carolina to Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, came down at a steep angle.

GOGLIA: Witnesses have said that the propellers were turning. We don't have any way to verify that yet.

TUCHMAN: At the Greenville Airport, the arrival board at the U.S. Airways counter still said Flight 5481 was scheduled to arrive on time. Caroline Abrams (ph) said she had a reservation on the doomed flight but cancelled it. She found out about the crash after driving to the Greenville Airport for another flight.

CAROLINE ABRAMS: I'm here. I'm talking to you right now. I'm alive. And I'm very thankful. And it's just been a really emotional day for me.

TUCHMAN: The U.S. Airways commuter flight was operated by Air Midwest, which is owned by Arizona-based Mesa Airlines.

JONATHAN ORNSTEIN, CEO, MESA AIR: You don't operate 1,500 flights a day for 20 years, the way we have, without running a safe operation. But unfortunately an accident is an accident. And we have to deal with it.

TUCHMAN: Bereaved families spoke with counselors in a private room at the Greenville Airport. Meanwhile, investigators combed over the wreckage of the Beachcraft (ph) 1900-D, a model of plane that has had five fatal accidents worldwide since the first one was built in 1991.

GOGLIA: There's no indication of this airplane or any of the others having any systemic or long-term problems.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN: Behind us, the hangar where this happened earlier this morning. It looks relatively quiet from here, but we're told that NTSB officials are still on the scene. We're told there are members of the local medical examiner's office there still recovering the bodies of those who perished. About the recorders, the voice and data recorder, we are told by the NTSB they are burned but they are in "decent shape." And we could get preliminary results from the recorders some time tomorrow . Aaron, back to you.

BROWN: Well, it is usually so, and we suspect it will be here, these investigations overall take a long time. Anything unusual today about the condition at Charlotte? Wind, rain, snow, anything?

TUCHMAN: Well, that's the unusual part about it, Aaron. The conditions were perfect. Very light winds, clear visibility, unlimited ceiling. The NTSB at this point have absolutely no idea why this happened.

BROWN: Well, we will wait for them to find out. Gary, thank you. Gary Tuchman in Charlotte, North Carolina tonight.

As we said at the beginning of the program, New Jersey's commissioner of human services has issued new rules to prevent, it is hoped, the tragedy that has been unfolding in Newark the last few days. Caseworkers are now required to actually see a child suspected of having been abused before they close out the case.

Whether this would have saved Faheem Williams' life we will never know. Would it have saved his brothers from the torture they endured, we can't say. In part, because the boys seemed surrounded by adults who were out to harm them. Here is CNN's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): New Jersey authorities have arrested and arraigned the boyfriend of the children's mother on charges of sexually assaulting one of the boys, identified only as R.W. in 2001. Joseph Reece (ph) is also charged with endangering the welfare of a child.

(on camera): Will there be more charges?

CAROLYN WRIGHT, ASSISTANT PROSECUTOR, ESSEX COUNTY, NEW JERSEY: It is entirely possible that there could be more charges.

NISSEN (voice-over): In the meantime, the FBI has stepped up its multi-state hunt for Sherry Murphy, the woman who was supposedly caring for the boys in her Newark home while their mother served a jail term. Murphy, a cousin of the boys' mother, is wanted on assault charges and for questioning in the seven-year-old's death.

The case has special urgency for Newark police and FBI agents who are volunteering to work double shifts on the case.

LOUIE ALLEN, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, FBI, NEWARK, NEW JERSEY: Well it's one of the more egregious investigations that I've ever been involved in. And that's pretty high after 25 years in law enforcement. Kids have been starved, dehydrated. I mean, you don't treat prisoners of war like that.

NISSEN: Authorities have also stepped up their investigation of New Jersey's division of youth and family services, known as DYFS. And the boys caseworker, a DYFS employee, co-workers say was almost impossibly overburdened.

HETTY ROSENSTEIN, PRESIDENT, CASEWORKERS UNION: Our information is that the worker had 107 children on her caseload. And when you have an extremely large caseload, it's very possible that you could make a very bad mistake. You could be a really good worker and make a mistake. You could be a great supervisor and make a mistake.

NISSEN: Late today, the caseworker's supervisor was suspended, as investigations continue into the horror that ended one young life and forever scarred two others. Beth Nissen, CNN, Newark, New Jersey.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Well, it's bad enough that any government would lose track of children in its care. Perhaps, we're not sure, but perhaps this is worse, the government losing track of the monsters who prey on them: convicted sex offenders who have done their time but are required to register with the state because they often offend again.

If it were one or two, it would be upsetting. In California, it's 33,000. That's the what. The why is worse. Here is CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY (voice-over): LA County sheriff's detective Dan White (ph) showed us how residents in his county are supposed to be able to keep track of registered sex offenders.

DAN WHITE, LA COUNTY DETECTIVE: This is what the public can view, high risk and serious sex offenders. Now if you want to, give me a zip code, and I can run a zip code for you.

BUCKLEY: And who is responsible for keeping the information on the sex offenders current? The sex offenders themselves. Megan's Law advocates say it is a flaw in the system.

WHITE: You can call it a flaw if you choose to. You can't -- you have them, but you can't watch them 24-7.

BUCKLEY: An analysis of California's Megan's Law database performed by The Associated Press shows how flawed it is. The AP obtained data from the California Department of Justice that indicates that some 76,000 sex offenders have registered at least once as required by law. But of those, the whereabouts of some 33,000 sex offenders are unknown.

MARC KLAAS, VICTIMS RIGHTS ADVOCATE: It's absolutely outrageous that we could lose a good third of the registered sex offenders in the state of California, and it points out the low priority this issue seems to have in government and law enforcement.

BUCKLEY: Local law enforcement is responsible for tracking sex offenders, but with limited resources, many say, it's a difficult task. In Sacramento, California, for example, one detective, Terry Chew, is responsible for tracking nearly 2,000 sex offenders. TERRY CHEW, DETECTIVE: It's very difficult to try to be able to track all of them. And we can't possibly do all of that with current research we have.

TUCHMAN: And the state's attorney general says if the public wants its officers spending more time on this task, it will have to be willing to spend more money to make it happen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The weak link in the system is having some, probably sworn police officer, who knocks on the door and asks if Mr. so and so still lives at that address and try to find out if they've moved, where they've moved. That's very labor intensive. We estimate it's a $15 million to $20 million expenditure each year.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY: The attorney general here says that's how much it would cost to pay for the officers to follow up on every sex offender who isn't properly registered. Now having said that, he also says that that large number, 33,000, may be a bit misleading. Because the state does have agents that do from time to time check up on offenders. And they have found that in roughly half of the cases that they follow up, the person is, in fact, where they last said they were.

In many cases, they simply weren't aware that the law now requires them to reregister every year. But Aaron, even if of half of the 33,000 offenders are accounted for, that leaves several thousand sex offenders whose whereabouts are unknown.

BROWN: I had actually two things. Let me just go with the one. California -- as a lot of states are these days -- but California in particular is in the midst of an extraordinarily difficult budget time, they're broke. Does that seem to play into this at all, or does the problem predate that?

BUCKLEY: It does seem to predate it. But Bill Lockier (ph), the attorney general, says that that is a part of what he and other policy makers face every day when they make these decisions. He said that it's a matter of priorities. And he cited the fact that here in California, for example, there are two million people who are wanted on arrest warrants.

They have to decide as law enforcement officers, do we devote a certain number to seek these two million people out who are wanted for crimes they have allegedly currently committed? Or do we spend some of that time tracking up offenders who are simply supposed to register in a database? So it does seem to predate it, but there is certainly -- this is taking place against the context of the budget woes.

BROWN: Thank you. And I know our viewers in California will feel good that there are two million people running around there with arrest warrants on them. Thank you, Frank Frank Buckley in LA tonight.

And on to Chicago now and the very strange case of Matt Hale. You may remember Mr. Hale as the leader of a church -- we use the term loosely -- dedicated to white supremacy, a member of which went on a shooting rampage a few years back. Recently, Mr. Hale and his church have been embroiled in a court battle over the rights to use the church's name.

Tonight, though, he's bound for another court on charges he tried to have the judge in the case murdered. Here is CNN's Jeff Flock.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CHICAGO BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): Rahoa (ph), it means racial holy war. Supporters of Matt Hale defiant after he walked into federal court in Chicago.

MATT HALE, WORLD CHURCH OF THE CREATOR: This is not Red China or the Soviet Union.

FLOCK: Hale railing against Judge Joan Lefkow, who ruled that Hale's white racist World Church of the Creator, based here in his brother's old bedroom in East Peoria, Illinois, had to change its name because another church trademarked it. Lefko ordered the church's Web site altered and the group's precious white man's bibles either destroyed or edited to remove the words "World Church of the Creator."

HALE: No court has the power or the right to order the burning of bibles.

FLOCK: Hale sued the judge and attacked her on his Web site. But, was there more?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're not going to comment on how we found out.

FLOCK: U.S. Attorney Pat Fitzgerald (ph) says Hale solicited someone -- he won't say who -- to kill Lefkow.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Blacks, Jews, hate them?

HALE: Yes, we hate them.

FLOCK: With venom on his tongue, Hitler stickers on his wall, and an Israeli flag on his floor, Hale has been running the World Church of the Creator since 1995. His critics say this is not the first time he has incited others to violence.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have believed for more than four years, since the tragic July 4 shooting rampage of his follower, Benjamin Smith, that Matthew Hale has had blood on his hands.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FLOCK: Aaron, many people have believed that it was Matt Hale who incited Ben Smith to that murderous rampage against blacks, Asians and Jews in the Midwest back in 1999. Now those in law enforcement say they have proof that he is inciting violence -- Aaron.

BROWN: Is he in jail tonight? FLOCK: Yes. In the metropolitan correction center, awaiting an appearance on Monday for a detention hearing.

BROWN: And the charges he faces are soliciting murder and...

FLOCK: Obstruction of justice.

BROWN: And obstruction of justice?

FLOCK: And obstruction of justice. Not clear exactly what that's about. Apparently he was inciting people to go to Judge Lefkow's church. She is an Episcopalian, I should point out. She's married to a Jew. To go to her church and try to disrupt the services there is in hopes of coercing her in some way.

BROWN: That's what they call in the military lesser included offenses. Thank you, Jeff, very much. Jeff Flock in Chicago.

And ahead on NEWSNIGHT tonight: can American soldiers stay awake for days, weeks on end? Just maybe, with the help of a new pill the military is trying to develop. And next: American soldiers caught in the middle in Korea. This is NEWSNIGHT from CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A quick look around the world tonight starts with the wreckage of an airliner in southwestern Turkey. The Turkish Airlines jet crashed on landing, apparently on the wrong end of a very foggy airport. Seventy-five people perished. At least one American is believed to have been on board. No solid confirmation of that as of yet.

Police in Great Britain are looking for additional suspects in connection with the discovery last weekend of the poison ricin. Yesterday, a seventh man was arrested. The concern is still others might be out there and so might the poison.

And it's cold in Moscow, tonight. OK, that's not news, it is winter. But it is really cold in the Russian capital. Cold as in 24 below zero or minus 31 degrees Celsius if you're watching us anywhere but the United States. Six people died from frost bite today. More than 200 have died in this cold Russian winter.

The latest from North Korea. It was yesterday the United States took a considerable shift in how it was approaching the situation, saying it was willing to talk to the North Koreans. The North Koreans were talking all right today, or maybe shouting is a better way to put it, at about 100 decibels.

The state news agency put out a statement that made no mention of the offer by the Americans to talk, but did say this: "The nuclear issue is a product of the U.S. strategy to dominate the world. To bring a holocaust of nuclear war to the Korean nation."

The sensitivities aren't confined to the north. And this is something can be very tricky for many Americans to understand. Americans believe that we stationed 37,000 troops in South Korea to protect South Koreans from the north. Many South Koreans, especially the younger ones, those not alive during the Korean War, see the Americans as an arrogant imperial force whose country might actually be provoking the north and endangering the south.

The clash has become a problem in recent weeks, not simply because of the global tension involving the United States and North Korea, but also something as local as a traffic accident whose memory has not yet died. Once again from Seoul tonight, CNN's Rebecca MacKinnon.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MACKINNON (voice-over): In the heart of South Korea's bustling capital, it's business as usual at the gates of Yongson (ph) U.S. Army Base. But the soldiers who live and train inside face a serious problem and they know it. It hit Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan literally, when three South Korean men attacked him with a knife last month.

LT. COL. STEVEN BOYLAN: They said something that was very derogatory, specifically about being a GI and an American.

MACKINNON: With anti-U.S. sentiment on the rise across the country, most of the 37,000 U.S. forces now stationed in Korea have been attending special seminars this week.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I crossed Korea today. Commanders and leaders are talking with their soldiers about what went wrong, what can we do to ensure that it doesn't happen again.

MACKINNON: "It" is the death of two Korean teenagers crushed by a U.S. military vehicle in a road accident last year. Public outrage and protest followed the acquittal by a U.S. military court of the servicemen who drove the vehicle. All protesters want them retried in a South Korean court and a revision of the rules governing U.S. military personnel here. And some, even a total pullout of U.S. troops from Korea.

MAJOR JOHN KIM, 8TH ARMY: I think one of the problems that Koreans feel is that it's a misperception on their part that they're looked down by Americans towards them.

MACKINNON: But that is certainly the view of young South Koreans who go out on the street every day in the dead of winter to gather signatures protesting the U.S. military's handling of the recent road accident.

This young woman says she feels closer to North Korea than she does to the United States. "We are the same country," she says, "while the U.S. views us as inferior." "North Korea is a bigger threat right now," says this young man, "but we're all part of one country and I hope we can solve our differences." Such views have the U.S. military brass worried.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The key for us is how we connect with this younger generation who didn't have the Korean War experience. And recognizing that there has been generational change and most evident by the recent elections.

MACKINNON: These young people who turn out for anti-U.S. protests also vote. And they've just helped elect a new president whose campaign was critical of U.S. forces here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MACKINNON: Now, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea here tells us that U.S. forces are only going to stay in South Korea as long as the government wants them to. And at this point, the South Korean government says it does need U.S. troops to help guarantee South Korea's security.

Now we do have one late-breaking development to tell you. North Korea has told the South Korean officials that North Korea is willing to hold high-level ministerial talks here in Seoul from the 21st to the 24th of this month. This is part of a regular series of meetings, high-ranking meetings between north and south that have been going on as part of the sunshine policy of the administration here to engage North Korea.

Now, of course, at this meeting, South Korea intends to bring up the U.S. proposal for dialogue. And is hoping that it will get some kind of positive response -- Aaron.

BROWN: Rebecca, thank you. Rebecca MacKinnon in Seoul.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT: a new study says regular consumption of alcohol is good for you. The drink's on us. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Well, everyone agrees about one thing where alcohol is concerned: too much too often can cause a horror show of health problems. So it's always with caution that physicians approach the study, suggesting that a little drinking can actually do a whole lot for your health. And we have another one today.

This time it comes from "The New England Journal of Medicine." A long-term study showing that men who drink regularly and moderately cut their heart attack risk by about one-third compared to those who don't. We're joined tonight by Dr. Curtis Ellison. You might remember him from some very high-profile stories on "60 Minutes," where he promoted the benefits of wine drinking.

He is a professor of medicine at Boston University. And we should add that up to 10 percent of the research he does has been sponsored primarily by the beverage industry. Dr. Ellison, good to see you. Thank you sir.

The studies like this have been out there for almost -- literally for half a century, since about 1948. So is there anything in this one, other than it is confirmation yet again that we should take particular note of? DR. CURTIS ELLISON, BOSTON UNIVERSITY: This study is important for two reasons. It's a very well done study, a very large group of subjects. It confirms what we've known for many years, that people who drink moderately have less coronary heart disease. And that remains the leading cause of death in the United States and throughout the developed world. The value of this new study is that it has finally demonstrated it's how frequent, not how much you drink, that's most important.

BROWN: Yes. The study, as I was looking through it, indicates that you are -- if you have a little driven, half a drink, and it doesn't seem to matter whether it's wine, beer, or hard liquor. Something every day or so you are a lot better off than if you exercise every day or so.

ELLISON: Well, we're not saying that alcohol is the only component of a healthy lifestyle. It's been well demonstrated if you stay lean, eat a reasonable diet, don't smoke, and exercise a little and add a little bit of alcohol on almost a daily basis, five, six times a week, you will have the best protection against diabetes, heart disease, against aging.

BROWN: Any idea why, yet?

ELLISON: We've identified 40, 50 different mechanisms. The one that we hear a lot about is the effect of alcohol on raising the good cholesterol, the HDL cholesterol. This is important, and any type of alcohol will do that. But it also has an many effect on the platelets and the blood clotting mechanism. So, you must less likely to have a narrowing in the artery to form a clot and the clot is what precipitates a heart attack or a stroke.

And we know that all beverages and wine in particular, seem to be particularly protective against these cots. This only lasts for about 24 hours. It's dangerous to go more than 24 hours without a drink. If you are preventing the clotting in the arteries.

BROWN: I'll leave that line out there for anyone else to bat around. Would you do just as well with an aspirin a day?

ELLISON: Aspirin is good for you, it has to be taken on a regular basis. Alcohol adds to the protection of aspirin. Aspirin adds to the protection. It's not one single thing. It's the combination of a health lifestyle. Factors, aspirin is one. A little alcohol seems to be strongly supported by this study and many other studies to be another component for people in whom it is not contra indicated. I'm a physician and you know, we're always worried about alcohol abuse.

BROWN; That's what is a problem. Literally the first study, the 1948 study was suppressed, because, the sponsors, the government didn't like the conclusion. Are we societally more comfortable with this idea?

ELLISON: It's -- this is the United States. You know, it's a shame the pilgrims got mere before the Italians landed in this country. The Americans and Northern Europeans focus order alcohol abuse. Have been reluctant to admit that moderate amounts of alcohol may have protective effects. But I think it's more than that. It's trying to keep it in perspective.

When you see on the news tonight they're showing young college students guzzling down gallons of beer, we're not talking about this type of drinking. We're talking about for mature adults. Middle- aged, older man, or a post menopausal woman, you are at the greatest risk of coronary disease and stroke being the leading cause of death. And the moderate alcohol in this group, if it's not contra indicated, seems to be well substantiated as a way of helping reduce that risk.

BROWN: Dr. Ellison, good talking to you. Thanks for joining us.

ELLISON: Thank you very much.

BROWN: Thank you very much.

And still to come on the program tonight, research into keeping soldiers awake for days end. We'll talk about work being done on that.

And up next, a workplace where the workers are being hurt and killed in shocking numbers. What is the government doing about it? This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Next, a shocking story of an American company where workers are being injured by the thousands. This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: This story beginning quickly, beginning with a victory for the Bush administration. A federal appeals court ruled President Bush can name U.S. citizens as enemy combatants and keep them in military custody without lawyers, without charges, if he sees them as a threat to national security. The decision reverses a lower court ruling ordering the government to better defend its position for holding Hamdi. Hamdi a U.S. citizen is accused of fighting with the Taliban.

On to the case of Danielle Van Dam. The interrogation of David Westerfield was released today on videotape, just days after he was sentenced to death for murdering the 7-year-old girl. Police questioned him three days after the child was reported missing. Westerfield does not report say he played a role, but says, quote, his life is over and he was contemplating suicide.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Want to be left alone?

DAVID WESTERFIELD, CONVICTED MURDER: No, it's OK. If you want to leave a gun here for a few minutes, I'd appreciate it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's silly.

WESTERFIELD: Why is that silly?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're still a dad, right? think about your boy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Better things to report tonight. The navy hospital ship, Comfort, deployed just two days ago for the possibility of a war with Iraq, the crew has been of assistance far from the Persian Gulf. The ship helped rescue a man floating off Bermuda. He had been on a 40- foot boat that rolled over in high seas. Two other people on the boat remain missing tonight.

Imagine waking up in the morning and having an absolute fear that you will not come home from work alive. We're not talking about a military man going off to battle. In this case we're talking about a man named Rollin Haskin (ph), earning about $10 an hour at a pipe foundry in Texas who knew he was in danger. And then died in a gruesome accident on the job. Mr. Haskin (ph) worked for one of the most dangerous employers in America, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Incorporated, where where have been literally thousands of injuries since the mid '90s.

Injuries the state and federal government know about but don't seem able or willing to stop. Safety to them should never stand in the way of profits, it seems, and it does not. That's what the "New York Times" found along with reporting help from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and "Front Line." here is a clip from "Dangerous Business."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In iron foundries danger is everywhere. And demands on workers are relentless.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's production come hell or high water.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In this very dangerous business, where they make the water and sewer pipes essential to our lives, there is one company whose production, the government says, has left a trail of death and dismemberment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fatalities, injuries, illnesses, amputations are not accepted practice.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even when workers are killed the company continued to put employees at risk.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The sad thing is this keeps happening. Over and over and over.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the government has few tools to stop them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Willfully violate the law, and kill someone is a misdemeanor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Joining us now, two of the investigative reporters who have been working the story. Lowell Bergman and David Barstow. David works for "The Times."

Nice to see you both. Nice piece of work this morning. You have a couple more in the paper the next couple of days. Is that right?

Give me a sense of dimension here. At this plant, which is in Tyler, Texas as I recall, how many injuries do we know about?

DAVIS BARSTOW, "NEW YORK TIMES" CORRESPONDENT: Hundreds. Hundreds we know about from the internal corporate documents that we were able to obtain as part of our investigation.

BROWN: And given the company's attitude towards people, to workers who report injuries, they're not very thrilled with that, we have reason to believe there are more than the hundreds?

LOWELL BERGMAN, PBS, "FRONTLINE" CORRESPONDENT: We know they have a record of falsifying their accident reports to OSHA. They have been find for that in the past. Managers in the plant have told us that they target people who report or try to, let's say, insist on government regulations.

BROWN: Tell me about the company itself, the corporation that runs the pipe factory.

BERGMAN: It's a privately-held company. Very wealthy family that's had almost no publicity before, even in its hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Their annual revenues, we've been able to estimate are around a billion and a half to two billion.

BROWN: In all of their businesses.

BERGMAN: In all of their 12 foundries and other businesses they have in the United States. But they operate under different names in different states. They're not very well known.

BROWN: Did they talk to you?

BERGMAN: Not on the record, no. Except by writing, in writing, by e-mail. They refused to meet with us, even off record.

BROWN: Did they, in response to whatever written questions you submitted, did they acknowledge they have horrible, dreadful record?

BARSTOW: No, they did not. They acknowledge isolated error, instances when, perhaps, other employees of theirs didn't follow their own safety procedures. They actually dismissed many of the safety violations that have been found against them, saying we settled these without acknowledging blame or fault on our part.

They also point out, and we think there's some corroboration to this that they have been making recent efforts to improve their safety and environmental record. Whether this reflects some kind of fundamental change on the part of the corporation, many of the employees have serious doubts about that.

BROWN: In your lead, in "The New York Times" piece today, one of the things you talk about is that workers are essentially prohibited from leaving the line to the point -- it's very hot in there. And they're drinking lots of water. To the point where they're literally urinating in their pants.

BARSTOW: When I first heard it, I didn't believe it. I really didn't believe it. Then we heard it again. And again. And again, and again. From employee after employee. And I guess one of us felt like a place like this really existed any more.

BROWN: It's very 1910.

BARSTOW: Yes. We were sort of struck by that. And we began to just sort of gradually peel away the layers of this plant down in Tyler, Texas.

Of course the workers down there were more than happy to talk. A lot of people, sort of nobody has been there to really protect them or help them. They were more than happy to have somebody pay attention.

BROWN: The union certainly hasn't...

BERGMAN: But you should understand that we didn't begin to look at this holding company, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), or even at Tyler Pipe itself. It was a report that we got our hands on about the fact that if you willfully and neglectly kill an employee under federal law of the United States, it's a misdemeanor.

BROWN: If you willfully?

BERGMAN: And it turned out, it was this plant in Tyler where there was a case where the Justice Department did get involved. It rarely prosecutes any of these cases because it is a misdemeanor.

But the OSHA inspectors were so upset with the situation in this plant that they asked the Justice Department to come in and prosecute that case.

Now, a misdemeanor means six months or less. So it's the equivalent under federal law of driving with a suspended license a national park.

BROWN: "The Times" has two more installments I believe over the next couple of days, for those of you who get "The Times." PBS runs its "Frontline" piece tomorrow night. Good to meet you both. Nice piece of work.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the passing of a White House Press Corp legend. That's later.

Up next, how the military wants to keep its soldiers awake for a week at a time. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Next on NEWSNIGHT, can a little pill or genetic engineering keep American soldiers awake for days on end? This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A war story now, one part red badge of courage, one part brave new world. Scientists working for the Defense Department are on the verge of building more than just a smarter bomb. They think they can build a better soldier and do it from the DNA on up.

This brave new soldier might still get scared, he might still need to eat, but he could go days and days and days without sleeping. Wil Hylton has been looking at the research, he's written a fascinating and somewhat chilling article which can be found in the pages of the latest edition of "Esquire" magazine.

Mr. Hylton joins us tonight from Austin, Texas. Welcome to the program. We're not talking about here is little green pills that pilots take. This is something far more complicated.

WIL HYLTON, CONTRIBUTING, "ESQUIRE" MAGAZINE: That's right. What they've been doing is using pills. We've seen the possibility of some serious problems with those pills recently with the friendly fire incident in Afghanistan where the pilots who were flying F-16 dropped the 270-kiloton bomb on four Canadian soldiers and killed them.

They're now claiming that the "go-pills". as they call them which is Dexedrine, a sort of low-grade -- almost like diet pills, form of speed, an amphetamine. They claim that this stuff is the reason they were so irresponsible in their fighting.

BROWN: Wil, am I right that what scientists are trying to do is figure out a way to sort of genetically trick the brain into thinking it doesn't need sleep?

HYLTON: That's right. They're looking for something better and looking at genetics. So what they've done is at the Pentagon's military laboratory, which is called DARPA, the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, they've found a way in the fruit fly to change the genetics so that one gene stops producing its protein and the fruit flies no longer experience the need for sleep.

Now this is not to say the fruit flies are OK without sleep because there are certain metabolic shifts and advantages you get during the nighttime while you are at sleep, obviously, which they will to have find a way to supplement so that if people do -- can have the same fix, people get the benefits of sleep without needing to sleep. What they hope is that the same gene that exists in the fruit fly can -- will also exist in humans. There's about a 50-50 chance. Humans share about 50 percent of the same genes that fruit flies have.

BROWN: We should probably ask why did they think it would be helpful to keep soldiers awake for a week at a time?

HYLTON: It's funny. I was work on a story about six months ago that involved speaking with a lot of special operations soldiers coming back from Afghanistan. And one of the things that was really impressed upon me at the time, before I even knew about this sleep project, this genetic sleep project, was that these guys really have to go unbelievable lengths of time, some of them 40, 60 hours, sometimes lying in cold mud, in the middle of the night, after, you know, having been in the back of an open-air helicopter, you know, where they have door gunners, there's air flying through, everyone gets dehydrated.

Then they parachute in to secure (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Air Field. They fight for the control of the air field. There's fires burning every where. It's the most incredibly high-stress situation you can imagine. And then they're expected to lie there in the mud for eight, 10, 12, 20 hours and defend the place while backups arrive.

And talking to them, it's just -- they would tell me that the hardest part of the experience sometimes was staying awake those hours ,in the middle of the night, when the body just wanted to shut down.

BROWN: Am I right, that they -- if everything goes well here, they hope they will actually have something usable by, what? 2005 or 06? Something like that?

HYLTON: Yes. Yes. They're looking at a couple years. That's one of the interesting about this project is that they've kind of thrown aside scientific ethics and scientific conventions and they've gone into this thing headlong without any real hypothesis.

They've just been tinkering with genetics in the fruit fly. They've accomplished it in the fruit fly. They're now looking at the mouse. They don't really know exactly -- they don't have theories about how this stuff might work. They're just experimenting to see what will happen, and they're hope that by not holding themselves to that sort of rigorous and deliberate standard of the scientific method, they'll be able to get something a little faster.

BROWN: Wil, thanks a lot. Wil Hylton.

HYLTON: Thank you.

BROWN: Ready for "Esquire" magazine and you dealt with our audio problems really well tonight. Thank you, sir.

HYLTON: No problem.

BROWN: Very much.

Up next on NEWSNIGHT, Sarah McClendon, one of a kind. We will be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Take a moment tonight to remember Sarah McClendon, who will be missed in a way that is different from most, for her persistent wrangling, some might say rudeness, to 12 presidents of the United States. President Eisenhower asked why she hadn't been fired. George Bush, Sr. called her absurd. "The New York Times" said she was boorish and "The Washington Post," crank-inspired.

But for her 56-year career in journalism she had the gumption to ask the questions no one else would. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

Here's CNN's Bruce Morton.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARAH MCCLENDON, REPORTER: This hospital hasn't been made public. Would you please let us see it? And will you do something about it?

Mr. President?

And don't go away, Mr. President.

BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): She asked questions -- yelled questions in her carrying Texas voice at every president since Franklin Roosevelt.

MCCLENDON: I always know that he is against certain civil rights legislation.

I'm not trying to be rude. I'm trying to get my questions answered.

MORTON: Bill Clinton said in a statement, All of us who called on her did so with a mixture of fear and respect, I suspect because we would never quite know what she might say.

This day it was a treaty with China.

MCCLENDON: Would you just go ahead and sign this? Because after all, that's one of greatest enemies, is China.

WILLIAM J. CLINTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, Sarah, I'm not sure I know the specific issue you're referring to. But I would not make any agreements with China in secret.

MORTON: Ronald Reagan, defense contracts.

MCCLENDON: If you were going to leave this curtain down on this national scandal...

RONALD REAGAN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There have been hundreds of indictments. There have been convictions for fraud. There have been rebates from companies of all kinds.

MCCLENDON: Picayune is what I'm talking about.

REAGAN: The what?

MCCLENDON: Picayune is what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the big stuff.

REAGAN: Sarah, you've been long here than I have. I haven't been here long enough to call $600 million picayune.

MORTON: Sarah McClendon was 92 and unique. They don't come like that any more.

Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We'll miss her and we'll see you tomorrow at 10:00 Eastern time. Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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





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