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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

NTSB Continues to Probe Charlotte Plane Crash; Could Bigfoot be Real After All?

Aired January 09, 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: And good evening again, everyone. Words are powerful, and here's a case in point. They were spoken by the architect Frank Geary, a world class architect, a man of extraordinary talent.
When asked why he had not offered a design for the rebuilt ground zero he said, "I was invited, but I found it demeaning that the agency paid only $40,000 for all that work." Well, excuse me, Mr. Geary. How much do you think the firefighters who perished in the building that day made? And I can't imagine any firefighter said I'm not running into that mess for what I make every year.

And how about the people down at the morgue here in New York, who now say it will be years before they can identify all the remains? You think they're paid big bucks? we can go on, but the point was best made by someone who did submit a plan. Earlier this week he got big applause at a meeting of architects saying this, "It doesn't matter a damn, Frank Geary, that we were paid only $40,000."

We'd like to believe that Mr. Geary meant his words differently than they came out. But his words hit us like a kick in the gut. How must they have felt for the people who did so much, lost so much, tried so hard and cried so long? Maybe we're still just a little bit sensitive.

On to "The Whip" tonight. And tonight we begin with the latest in the deadly plane crash in North Carolina yesterday. Gary Tuchman continues to work the story and there's a lot to work.

Gary, a headline from you.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes there is, Aaron. And the NTSB appears to have a good idea about what might have caused the plane crash, this fatal crash here in Charlotte, North Carolina yesterday. Meanwhile, all similar airplanes from Air Midwest will now be examined.

BROWN: Gary, thank you. We'll get back to you at the top tonight.

The Iraq situation now. Comments today from the men leading the inspections there. Richard Roth following that from the U.N.

Richard, a headline from you tonight.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN UNITED NATIONS CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, how fast can you find a smoking gun? The U.N. weapons inspectors say they haven't been able to find one yet buried in Baghdad, but they're not ready to give up.

BROWN: Richard, thank you.

On to Israel and a story that's not about violence this time, but about politics and accusations of corruption. Kelly Wallace over there for us tonight.

Kelly, a headline from you.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, it was an angry Israeli prime minister who called a news conference tonight trying to do some damage control with his Likud party rocked by a corruption scandal weeks before the election. The prime minister came out swinging. Suddenly he is in a tight race for reelection -- Aaron.

BROWN: Kelly, thank you. Good do see you. And back to the United States now and an arrest in this terrible abuse case involving three New Jersey brothers. Jamie Colby has been working that all week.

Jamie, a headline from you.

JAMIE COLBY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, after a multi-state manhunt, police have finally caught Sherry Murphy. But she's not in jail, she's in a hospital -- Aaron.

BROWN: OK. Back to you and the rest in a moment. Also coming up on the program tonight, we'll hear from the head of New Jersey's human services department on how the system failed those little boys and what the state intends to do to fix it.

And how much more reality can we take around here? We'll look at the explosion of reality TV. Ritual humiliation is the big ratings bonanza in primetime. We'll also be joined by the preeminent entertainment reporter in America, Pat O'Brien from "Access Hollywood."

And from reality to pure fantasy, "Segment 7" tonight, a friend to this program. Scott Harriet (ph) on the big, very fury friend he's just not willing to give up yet. Scott's (ph) search for Bigfoot.

All that in the hour ahead. But we begin with the investigation into yesterday's crash of that Air Midwest commuter flight. This evening, in another briefing by investigators who have quickly begun focusing on two problems that together could well have doomed the plane and its 21 passengers and crew. The first, recent maintenance of the plane. Investigators seem especially interested in the tail section of the plane.

And the second, the weight of the plane. Was it too heavy to fly safely? We begin tonight with CNN's Gary Tuchman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) TUCHMAN (voice-over): Investigators are examining whether a combination of faulty controls and an overloaded plane could have caused the Charlotte, North Carolina crash.

JOHN GOGLIA, NTSB: Seven degrees is a normal takeoff pitch angle. Something occurred to drive that pitch angle to 52 degrees. That is abnormal.

TUCHMAN: The plane had maintenance on its elevator, which controls whether the nose of the plane goes up or down, two days before the crash.

GOGLIA: They just told me that they're moving erratically. In fact, the erratic movement commences after the maintenance.

TUCHMAN: The FAA has ordered Air Midwest, the U.S. Airways commuter, to carefully check all 43 of its remaining Beechcraft (ph) 1900-Ds. In the meantime, CNN has learned the FAA received an anonymous tip that an employee loading the plane complained it was too heavy, but was overruled by a supervisor.

GOGLIA: If you have a light airplane, meaning not a lot of passengers, not a lot of fuel, not a lot of freight, it behaves differently than a heavy airplane.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN: The flight data recorder recorded the last 85 flights that this airplane made. Now the NTSB is unambiguous about this. It says the elevated tail elevator was not working properly on this fatal flight and not working properly on the eight flights before that, which all came after the elevator maintenance this past Monday.

The 76 flights before the maintenance, the elevator controls are working perfectly. We're being told, as we speak right now, interviews are being held with the mechanics in West Virginia who worked on the airplane. Those interviews are expected to be completed sometime early this morning.

Now more on the overloading factor, the baggage factor. The NTSB is holding a news conference as we speak, and they have some information that's a little bit different from the information the FAA gave us. And that's not unusual; they're two very different agencies.

The NTSB is telling us that this baggage loader did not object to the plane taking off, but had a problem initially. The baggage loaders said that he had a piece of paper that said no more than 26 bags should be on the plane. The NTSB is now telling us 31 bags went on the plane. Another person who works for the airline said 32 bags were allowed on the plane.

So they all talked to the captain. The decision was made that it was OK for the plane to fly with 31 bags. So there was an argument, but according to the NTSB, everyone then agreed the plane could take off. One more thing. Mesa Air -- that's the parent company of Air Midwest -- said three of its 43 Beechcraft (ph) 1900-Ds are maintained at that West Virginia facility. Mesa Air says all three of those planes will be inspected before they fly again. Because of an abundance of caution, Mesa Air says the other 40 planes, which are maintained elsewhere, will also be checked, but not necessarily before they fly again. Aaron, back to you.

BROWN: Gary, thank you. Gary Tuchman, with a lot to do down there in Charlotte, North Carolina tonight. Thank you.

The U.N. Security Council today heard from the weapons inspectors less than a month before their critical deadline of January 27. On the one hand, members were told there is no smoking gun, no clear evidence that Saddam has squirreled away weapons of mass destruction. On the other hand, and equally important, while not exactly obstructing the efforts of the inspectors, the Iraqis apparently aren't exactly helping them do their work either. Here again, CNN's Richard Roth.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROTH (voice-over): Lead international inspectors reported that, despite more access in Iraq, they haven't found weapons of mass destruction.

HANS BLIX, CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: In the course of these inspections, we have not found any smoking gun.

ROTH: But while Iraq is so far providing access to the roaming inspectors, U.N. arms experts say they are not receiving from Iraq proper details on weapons programs.

BLIX: The Iraqis could have looked at those questions and answered better. So we are not satisfied.

ROTH: Neither is the United States.

JOHN NEGROPONTE, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: There is still no evidence that Iraq has fundamentally changed its approach from one of deceit to a genuine attempt to be forthcoming in meeting the Council's demand that it disarm.

ROTH: But European nations were quick to state the inspectors should be given more time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The inspections should continue, and for that reason there are no grounds for military action.

ROTH: The U.S. has been putting pressure on the inspectors to interview scientists who may provide the smoking gun. Blix said he may start interviewing them by next week. But Iraq is not helping.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I told the Council today that we were not able, for example, to have interviews in Iraq in private. And that does not indicate the proactive cooperation we expect from Iraq. ROTH: Inspectors would still like to take scientists out of Iraq for interviews, but that process has not been agreed to yet with Iraq. Blix said for the first time the list of 500 scientists recently turned over by Baghdad is inadequate because some known scientist's names are missing. The inspectors also told the Council Iraq illegally imported missile engines and material for production of solid missile fuel. And there's a concern about a high explosive called HMX, which Baghdad says is used in cement mines, but the inspectors say it could also be part of nuclear weapons production.

The inspectors return to the U.N. on January 27. A larger assessment which some analysts think could be a trip wire for military action. But many diplomats at the U.N. think there is no rush to judgment.

JEREMY GREENSTOCK, BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: So my advice is calm down on the 27 of January.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROTH: And before that date is reached, Blix and El Baradei will be off to Baghdad for two days of talks. And they're going to be armed with questions for Iraqi authorities. Back to you, Aaron.

BROWN: Well, we heard from the German ambassador. And the Germans have been quite vocally opposed to any military action, so his words were not surprising. What about the rest of the members of the Council? What was their reaction today?

ROTH: Well, you even saw Britain saying, hold on, let's not have a rush to war so far. Britain, it is expected, may join with the rest of the Europeans in calling for a second Security Council resolution should it come to it, if the U.S. seeks to wage war on Iraq.

France wants Iraq to cooperate, but also thinks the inspectors should be given time. And naturally Russia and China agree. Not much was expected today. The 27 of January will inch a little closer. And if Baghdad doesn't cooperate with the latest trip by Blix and El Baradei, that might swing even those undecided.

BROWN: Richard, thank you. Richard Roth over at the U.N. tonight.

Needless to say, the Iraqis view how the inspections are going in quite a different light. To them they've been cooperating, even inviting reporters to go along in the helicopters the inspectors have been using the last couple of days, while U.N. teams imply, and the White House says outright that a smoking gun hasn't been found, because it's hidden away, the head of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, it says, is because it does not exist.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. HUSSAM AMIN, IRAQ NATIONAL MONITORING DIRECTORATE: The results of inspection, which include (UNINTELLIGIBLE) air and sand (ph) sampling, in addition to the raw material and final products that are given to the inspection teams and all the industrial sites, did not indicate any availability of prohibited activities or prohibited items in Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So maybe the Iraqis have hidden the smoking gun or maybe, as they claim, it does not exist. But then the question becomes, can President Bush make his case to go to war absent hard evidence, absent that smoking gun? We're joined tonight by Danielle Pletka, who is the vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Thanks for joining us.

DANIELLE PLETKA, V.P., FOREIGN AND DEFENSE POLICY STUDIES, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: Pleasure.

BROWN: Well, no smoking gun. Does it matter?

PLETKA: No. I don't know that there's ever going to be a smoking gun. That's not what the inspectors are in Iraq to look for. You know, people seem to have forgotten what the premise is of this entire exercise. It is for Iraq to provide a full and a final and a complete declaration of its barred weapons programs and for the inspectors to go in and verify that.

It's not for them to go door to door, garage to garage, chicken coop to chicken coop looking for weapons of mass destruction. That's an unachievable exercise.

BROWN: So, in the end, assuming that two and a half weeks from now, three weeks from now we're exactly where we are now, has the whole inspection process then just been a waste of time?

PLETKA: No. I think the president did the right thing in going to the U.N. And I think it was proper to give the U.N. one last chance. But the bottom line is that the inspectors are never going to be able to achieve the disarmament of Iraq without cooperation of the Iraqi government. And it's clear even now that they're not going to get that cooperation. Iraq doesn't want to be disarmed and it's going to have to be and that's going to have to be by force.

BROWN: How does -- all of the polling that I've seen recently indicates that support for a war with Iraq is to at least some degree predicated on the U.N. going along. So what happens if the U.N. does not go along?

PLETKA: It depends whether you're talking about supporting the United States or support in the international community. As far as the international community is concerned, there are going to be those who support us and there are going to be those whom we simply cannot persuade to come along, no matter what we find. And I think that probably goes for finding a ticking nuclear bomb behind curtain number three.

As far as the American people are concerned, I think that everybody understands that it is nice for us to have a U.N. (UNINTELLIGIBLE). It is nice for us to have a lot of partners coming along with us. But that at the end of the day, President Bush has to stand up there and make his case to the American people for why we need to go, not why we need to go with the French or the Germans or the New Zealanders or anyone else.

BROWN: Did you find it troubling at all the comment that Richard Roth made just before we got to you that the British may now ask for a second U.N. Security Council vote?

PLETKA: The British have gone back and forth on this. You know their foreign minister, Jack Straw, said that they might like a second resolution. They have said that war is imminent, they said that war is not imminent. You do get the sense that we're playing bad cop, good cop with them on occasion.

And there's going to be pressure for a second resolution. But the United States expended a great deal of political capital, along with the Brits some months ago, in order to obtain a resolution that did not require us to go back to the U.N. if, in fact, Iraq is in material breach.

BROWN: I'm sorry. Just as a practical matter. Do you think the United States can go to war here if the Security Council as a body is saying, no, there ought to be a second resolution, we ought to talk about this some more? Does that not, at the very least, complicate this to an extraordinary degree?

PLETKA: Yes, it complicates it. But, on the other hand, if we wait for the U.N. Security Council every time, we could wait another 12 years. And I think that the evidence that's been presented to the Security Council, even on this, a not terribly special day, is very clear.

You know we are really talking about two things that are required of the Iraqis that were laid out in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441. One was the full, final and complete declaration that they handed over actually on December 7, the day before the deadline. And the other was total and complete cooperation with the inspectors.

What you heard today from Hans Blix, who is really not an American, not terribly aggressive, was that the declaration was incomplete. It didn't answer the questions, and that they are not getting full cooperation. Not the IAEA and not UNMOVIC. You know, if we keep looking for more, this can be an endless process and there's going to come a time when push is going to come to shove.

And if the Security Council comes along, that's terrific. And if they don't, we're just going to have to forward without them. You know action does actually take place in the world without the Security Council. We did Bosnia without them and I think we could probably do Iraq if we had to.

BROWN: Ms. Pletka, nice of you to join us tonight. Thanks for your time.

PLETKA: Pleasure.

BROWN: Thanks very much.

On we go. An update on North Korea now. A late headline coming out of Seoul that North Korea says it will formally withdraw from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. That news comes on a day when two North Korean representatives arrived in New Mexico to talk with the governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson. You'll recall Mr. Richardson has a long history of dealing with the North Koreans as a former U.N. ambassador and as U.S. Energy secretary as well.

A senior White House official telling CNN that Governor Richardson is expected to pass along the message that the United States may be willing to put in writing that it will not, does not plan to attack North Korea if and only if the North Koreans agree to give up their nuclear weapons plan. It's unclear how all of this will affect tomorrow's talks.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT: could Israel's prime minister lose the coming election? And up next, an arrest and more questions in the case of those lost boys in Newark, New Jersey. From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There's been an enormous outpouring for the little boys in Newark. And some of the donations struck us today. Funeral homes saying they want to bury seven-year-old Faheem Williams, cemeteries saying they want to give him a free plot. Treated well in death, it seems, certainly not in life.

His brothers are still in the hospital, and the world outside is still struggling to address how these boys were failed. But this we know for sure: a crime has been committed and the entire system has failed. The system we'll look at in a moment with the head of human services. But first, the latest on the crime and today's big break. Once again, CNN's Jamie Colby.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COLBY (voice-over): After a nationwide manhunt, New Jersey police and the FBI found Sherry Murphy virtually under their nose in the Newark area.

SHARPE JAMES, MAYOR, NEWARK: Newark Police were notified of her whereabouts by a person identified as Jean Claude Desourses.

COLBY: Monday, Desourses saw Murphy weeping at a pay phone. She tearfully told him her mother had died and she had nowhere to go. He took her to his apartment, then saw the news.

JEAN CLAUDE DESOURSES, CAB DRIVER: When did it hit me? When I saw her face. I mean, that picture looked exactly just like her. So that's when I confronted her. I said, look, this is you, what is going on? She said, "Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh."

COLBY: Convinced it was Murphy, Desourses led authorities to her. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She's expected to be arraigned in Essex County Superior Court later in the day on the outstanding charges of three counts of child endangerment and one count of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

COLBY: Murphy's arraignment was postponed and she has not yet had a chance to respond to the charges or retain an attorney. Feeling ill during questioning, police transported her to a nearby hospital. The same hospital where the two surviving brothers are recovering. Mayor Sharpe James, who has visited the boys at the hospital, is asking where the brothers will go. The boys have different fathers, and four-year-old Tyrone's wants him back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They've been so abused but they've been together. When they tried to separate them at the hospital, they began to cry. So what we ended up doing was putting two beds in one room. The one person that they each trust is the brother.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLBY: That will be for the Department of Youth and Family Services, of course, to decide. The same department that failed to protect these boys while their biological mother was in prison for child abuse -- Aaron.

BROWN: Now we reported last night the supervisor in the case had been suspended. And now we know something about the state's handling of the caseworker.

COLBY: Correct, Aaron. Today they let the caseworker that was actually responsible for this case go as well. But the question that the many caseworkers that I've talked to and families who have been in the system is, can you hide behind the fact that they may be overburdened, can you blame the caseworkers or the system? Something I think that we'll flesh out over time.

BROWN: Thank you, Jamie. Jamie Colby tonight.

On a very thoughtful note today, we were taken to task bay a respected child advocate, a man with considerable experience in matters like the one unfolding in New Jersey. And without going through it all, he felt like in last night's opening comments I was blaming the caseworker and the supervisor. "It is more complicated than that," he argued. And on that we agree, which is why we talked earlier tonight with Gwendolyn Harris, who runs the New Jersey Department of Human Services, which was supposed to be looking out for or just plain looking for these three kids.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ms. Harris, this is, in some respects, a suitable question, and I assume it's the central question. Was this a preventable tragedy in your view?

GWENDOLYN HARRIS, COMMISSIONER, NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES: I would like to believe that it was because of some of the mistakes relative to case handling. I think that we at least could have known and taken extraordinary measures to protect these children. I mean, the issue of having an open allegation of abuse but not having seen the child.

I question whether or not we should have been doing some other things in terms of more aggressive efforts to locate the family -- although the family was working very hard to stay missing -- so that we could see the children. I think we should have involved law enforcement. There was enough information that I think we should have been more aggressive. And hopefully our efforts in being more aggressive, the child may have been able to have been located and put in a safer situation.

BROWN: You've suspended in this case the supervisor. Why did you do that?

HARRIS: The supervisor approved the closing of the case.

BROWN: And?

HARRIS: And with an allegation of abuse that had not been substantiated or unsubstantiated, and with a child that had been missing for over a year, had not been seen, I think that that was -- definitely it was against agency policy.

BROWN: And so is it your view and is it the department's view that the failure here was at essentially the lowest level, the caseworker-supervisor level, or is there a more systemic failure to look at?

HARRIS: Oh, there are definitely some systemic issues. There are systemic issues in who was involved in the decision making. We should never leave a caseworker or a first line supervisor in a position where they are making decisions on their own. I think the agency needs to have better protocols, better policy that directs when casework supervisors and district office managers, the regional office and even the central office become involved in decision making about a particular child and family depending upon the level of risk.

BROWN: How long does that sort of work take? I assume it takes a while.

HARRIS: Well, I don't know. I declared a state of emergency yesterday for the division and put in effect the case cannot be closed at the division or district office level. It must go to the division director's office for the division director to approve the closing of a case where a child has not been seen in, you know, over our basic protocol, which I believe is 30 days.

BROWN: Just finally, take a moment here and just tell us what it has been like in your offices, in your agency this week. This is -- I can only assume this has been a horrible, difficult week.

HARRIS: It has. I mean, you have everyone from the governor to frontline social workers grieving. The fact of the matter is we do have very committed, very dedicated workers, staff within our division. And when we lose a child, everyone collectively looks at how, you know, this is a failure and we all feel responsible. We all are grieving that our organization did not -- was not able to prevent it.

At the same time, I think we have other feelings like anger. There are a lot of feelings all through the division, the department and state government itself. This is not a good thing. This is a very bad thing. This is like one of the worst things that you can have happen.

BROWN: Ms. Harris, thank you for your time tonight. I know it's been a long week and tomorrow will not be any easier. We appreciate a few minutes tonight. Thank you.

HARRIS: Sure. Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Gwendolyn Harris who runs the New Jersey Department of Human Services. And still ahead tonight on NEWSNIGHT, Israel's prime minister under fire. A tough election, a scandal unfolding, and he gets yanked off TV, too. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is a man accustomed to being attacked. Sad to say, attacks of many kinds, rocket, mortar, bomb and suicide attacks have been features of life in his country for far too long.

But he isn't dealing with any of those right now.

What the prime minister is dealing with is another kind of attack entirely, one mounted by political opponents who accuse Mr. Sharon's sons of having skirted Israel's campaign financing laws.

And while Mr. Sharon has proved time and time again he is a resilient man, this charge, today at least, is hurting him and his party with elections just weeks away.

Again tonight from Jerusalem, CNN's Kelly Wallace.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALLACE (voice-over): Less than three weeks before the election, an unusually feisty Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tried to put to rest allegations of a loan scandal involving his sons.

ARIEL SHARON, ISRAEL PRIME MINISTER (through translator): I came here this evening in order to respond to the despicable slander that has been constructed against me and against the Likud Party.

WALLACE: The prime minister then launched a series of attacks against the Likud's main opponent, the Labor Party and its leader, Amram Mitzna.

SHARON (through translator): Mitzna himself has been investigated at the police with regard to two cases of perjury.

WALLACE: Then something unprecedented for an Israeli prime minister.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We are compelled to interrupt the broadcast, the live broadcast of the prime minister' press conference.

WALLACE: The Israeli Elections Committee ordered Israel's television and radio stations to stop airing the prime minister' comments, accusing Sharon of violating campaign rules when three weeks before an election, political comments are restricted to specific broadcast time periods.

Sharon was responding to a story that has been dominating the headlines in Israel. Israeli law bans political funding from abroad.

At issue, whether a $1.5 million loan from a businessman in South Africa was inappropriately used by Sharon's sons as collateral to obtain another loan to repay campaign contributions that a state auditor ruled illegal.

Sharon offered few details, saying he knew nothing about the loan and asked his sons to find a way to repay the illegal campaign funds.

SHARON (through translator): Everything that I did was absolutely in accordance with the law. Absolutely. Squeaky clean.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALLACE: The prime minister's verbal offensive was designed to fire up his base and convince the Israeli public he did nothing wrong.

Now the question is, will this strategy stop the significant slide in Likud support? Back in December Sharon's Likud Party had a commanding lead. Well, now that lead has almost been wiped away -- Aaron.

BROWN: Israeli politics is rough and tumble business. Does anyone expect that, barring something else, another shoe dropping here, that Likud could actually lose the election?

WALLACE: No one really expects that of course, Aaron. But again, you have to see if Likud Party support continues to fall.

What's more likely to happen, though, is if Sharon continues to lose more and more support, he could be faced with this reality of having a narrow majority. And then he might have to reach out to centrist and leftist parties to put together a coalition government. And that could have a significant impact on what he'll do when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- Aaron.

BROWN: Kelly, thank you. Kelly Wallace in Jerusalem tonight. Nice to see you over there.

Touching briefly now on a few stories from around the world, beginning with quite an odd tale coming out of Germany tonight.

A deranged man threatened to crash a small plane he was flying, into the European Central Bank over the weekend. He was threatening to do that unless he was interviewed live on CNN.

The "Wall Street Journal" reports that air traffic controllers called CNN in Frankfurt and Berlin and then told the pilot no one was answering.

"That's impossible," the man said.

"We'll keep on trying," the controllers responded. They kept on trying, they never got through and eventually talked the rogue pilot into settling for a conversation with a German news station.

And now NEWSNIGHT airs there.

Finally, some extraordinary pictures released today of an aerial dog fight somewhere over Iraq between an Iraqi fighter jet and a drone, an unmanned American Predator drone. The human fires at the drone first and wins the fight, but just barely.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, reality TV, the rage. Is it all that new?

And the story of a hospital ship, the USS Comfort, and it's unexpected rescue mission. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: And coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the reality TV mania. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We are, of course, grateful to every one of our viewers, but who can blame us for wanting oh, let's say 18 million more. We've been thinking strategies lately.

There is the "NEWSNIGHT: SURVIVOR" strategy, a test of wills among our reporters, and the winner gets his or her story on the air.

My personal favorite, Celebrity Whip where, say, one of the Baldwin brothers gives us a headline about the president's tax cut plan.

Or how about Baghdad Scavenger Hunt, sending in a group of perky and extraordinarily attractive 20-somethings to dig up what those inspectors can't.

OK, we'll admit it's tough for our reality to compete with their reality in primetime.

Of course, their reality isn't reality at all. It's guilty pleasure TV. And while it may seem like a relatively new thing, we have Jeff Greenfield to remind us that it is not. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They have seized control of your TV set like something out of that old sci-fi horror classic "Outer Limits."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is nothing wrong with your television set.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a whole new game.

GREENFIELD: Watch ordinary people struggle to become celebrities. Watch semi-celebrities struggle for another 15 minutes of fame. Watch bachelor's and bachelorettes find a mate.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The person I'm most sexually attracted to...

GREENFIELD: Watch couples go on bland dates while cartoons and a smarmy host insult the couple behind their backs.

Watch as people prove there is nothing, nothing they will not do as long as they can do it on television.

(on camera): So you ask, whatever happened to standards, to taste? How could this generation of TV executives have so thoroughly corrupted us? Sorry, wrong question.

Our hunger to watch people reveal, expose, even humiliate themselves goes way back, long before the birth of the coaxial wire. It may even be hardwired.

(voice-over): It wasn't television, after all, that put on exhibitions of public tortures and executions. That goes back a few millennia.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Step right up here and see them all.

GREENFIELD: And P.T. Barnum wasn't a TV executive when he and his contemporary showmen offered up freaks of nature for public ogling. Midgets, giants, fat ladies, the odder the better. They tried to sell it as educational. Right. Like Jerry Springer is really a crash course in abnormal psychology.

And as for sexual pandering, well, Little Egypt and Sally Rand, with her famous fan dance, scandalized and delighted onlookers when TV was barely a gleam in Milton Berle's eye.

Now, about those early, innocent days of TV. You want to talk about exploitation?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People have their own, true stories.

GREENFIELD: How about "Strike It Rich"? Your grandmother is suffocating from the summer heat you say? Just give her...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A great, big, 20-inch swing-around Nach Monarch (ph) window fan.

GREENFIELD: On "Queen for a Day," your child has asthma.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She would like a dehumidifier for their home.

GREENFIELD: You've been stuck with four kids whose father deserted them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She'd like a TV set for these four little fingers (ph).

GREENFIELD: You've got seven kids and are headed for the hospital. Well, let the audience pick the saddest story.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even before you get to the hospital, we're sending you flowers (ph).

GREENFIELD: We're not sure whether those were tears of joy or embarrassment. Maybe both.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (singing): It's time to beat the clock.

GREENFIELD: And on shows from "Beat the clock" to "Truth or Consequences"...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in.

GREENFIELD: ... to the father of them all...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "Candid Camera."

GREENFIELD: ... public humiliation was the key to success.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You taste one of those now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, I ain't going to taste it. No, no. No, indeed.

GREENFIELD (on camera): Yes, it's all more graphic today, the language coarser, the sexual innuendo more like crescendo, just as pictures you once couldn't sell under the counter are now plastered all over the counter.

But as far as any recent lapse of taste goes, that is a cop-out. It's just that there are so many more outlets today from which to distribute the media junk food so many clearly crave.

Not you, of course.

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Not you, of course. A little bit more on reality TV after the break. We'll be joined by America's foremost entertainment journalist, Pat O'Brien. Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: And after the break, America's number one entertainment journalist, Pat O'Brien, joins us to get to the bottom of the reality TV mania. This could only be NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In the early days after the attacks of September 11, some people were predicting that people would lose interest in reality TV, that it would seem far too trivial with the real world all of a sudden looking so dangerous.

Some prediction.

Joining us now to help us understand this whole phenomenon, the world renowned entertainment reporter and the host of "Access Hollywood," Mr. Pat O'Brien.

Nice to see you, Mr. O'Brien.

PAT O'BRIEN, "ACCESS HOLLYWOOD" HOST: Hello, Mr. Brown. Happy new year.

BROWN: Happy new year to you, sir. What did you lead with tonight?

O'BRIEN: Well, tonight we led with "The Bachelorette;" last night we led with "Joe Millionaire" and the night before -- Can you remember what you led with three nights ago? I can't, but I think it was reality television. It's big.

BROWN: Why is it so big? It's cheap, right?

O'BRIEN: Well, the main reasons why it's so big, especially "Joe Millionaire" -- let's start with the most recent one -- is because 18.5 million people watched the first episode. And when 18.5 million people watch any television show, network executives stood up and advertisers stood up.

And that's what happened with "Joe Millionaire." And that show will just continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

And so many shows, you know, so many of them are thrown out there. Some of them hit, some of them don't. And the ones that hit, hit big.

BROWN: The -- It's not just that 18.5 million people watch, it's that I gather the right 18.5 million people watch?

O'BRIEN: Well, the -- And you brought up cheaper, yes. These shows are cheaper than making the traditional "The West Wing," or "CSI," "CSI: Miami," "E.R." They're much, much cheaper. And that's, of course, attractive to any business, to do something that gets people to watch that's cheaper.

And they attract that great demographic. By that we mean people under 30 years old, the MTV crowd, so to speak, who you know, want reality. Here are people who watched O.J. and who watched all the stuff going on television. And when they watch regular television, they want to see reality again and that's what's happening in this country.

BROWN: Just as an aside, picking your prospective spouse on television is not, in my view reality, but I'm old.

What sort of things do you hear that they're pitching? I always love -- I said once on the air that I thought that the greatest moment of my life would have been if I'd been there when they pitched "Manimal," that NBC show some years back. I just wanted to be there for that.

What are they pitching?

O'BRIEN: Well, every show now in Hollywood begins with "It's 'American Idol' and" blank. "American Idol meets blank."

Now it's going to be "Joe Millionaire" meets "Aaron Brown" or whatever they're going to come up with.

There's one guy, Eric Shotzen (ph), a friend of mine, he does -- he has Elemental Productions and does a lot of these reality shows, with "Boot Camp" and those sort of things.

He's got one out now called "Man Versus Beast". And one of the highlights is going to be 40 little people versus an elephant pulling two DC-10s. And I'm told somebody wins by 25 feet.

There was one, Eric told me, his producer told me that a major network came to him and said, "Can we figure out a way for someone to break into the Getty Museum and steal a painting and see how far they get?" So it's getting a little crazy out there.

BROWN: Right. Now that -- Now even in Los Angeles that would be a crime, would it not?

O'BRIEN: Even in Los Angeles, it would be a crime.

The great thing about Joe Millionaire, though, and you have to agree, it's like Alfred Hitchcock. Because you know the ending, and you know how it's going to turn out, that he doesn't have any money, he's got $19,000, $12,000, whatever he has.

But it's like a Hitchcock movie where you know the bomb is in the room, you just don't know when it's going to go off or what the reaction is going to be. So this, I'm told it's got a wild ending. And this thing will just continue to build.

BROWN: Well, of course they're going to tell you it has a wild ending.

O'BRIEN: Well, I'm told that the ending, I mean, we know what the ending is, a woman falls in love with him and says, "I want this guy's $50 million," and in some fashion he says to her, "I'm sorry, I only make $19,000."

BROWN: Seriously, for someone who has -- I'm serious here, Pat, has to watch all this, write this, think about it, interview about it. Is it discouraging how the medium is being used?

O'BRIEN: Well, what's discouraging to me, as an entertainment reporter, is that -- and I think discouraging to a lot -- you see a lot of celebrities on the streets say they watch these shows now.

But I think it demeans what somebody like Sean Penn or somebody like Tom Hanks has done with their career. When suddenly these guys are on the red carpet, you know, out there with their movies, "Road to Perdition."

And here comes, you know, "Joe Millionaire" walking down, and all the cameras go, "Oh, there's our latest reality star." And Kelly Clarkson or somebody like that, who suddenly become bigger than life because, you know, they're on a show that got 14, 15, 16 million people watching.

And I think to me, as an observer of all this, that is a little discouraging.

But you can't argue with the ratings, you can't argue with, you know, how they're put together and how they've been successful for the networks. And I think we're going to have it for a while.

BROWN: Whatever happened to the woman who married the millionaire, by the way?

O'BRIEN: Couldn't tell you.

BROWN: What's her name again?

O'BRIEN: Couldn't tell you.

BROWN: Whatever happened...?

O'BRIEN: And I couldn't tell you what happened to the first bachelor. See, that's where we are.

These things are so in the news and in every paper, in every tabloid and we're talking about them on your show...

BROWN: I know.

O'BRIEN: ... for crying out loud. But we forget about it all too quickly.

BROWN: Pat, describing yourself as just an entertainment reporter is really underselling. You are the preeminent entertainment reporter and we are pleased to have you with us.

Thank you, Mr. O'Brien.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Brown, my pleasure. See you again, I hope.

BROWN: I hope so, too. Pat O'Brien in Los Angeles.

Next on NEWSNIGHT, is the search for Bigfoot over? Never.

Reality TV, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DANNY FREYER, PERFORMER (singing): Well, I still believe in Bigfoot / don't care what they say. / Still believe in apple pie, the good old USA.

BROWN: All right, our thanks to the NEWSNIGHT orchestra.

You know what they say about people who are plagued with delusions -- be careful not to shatter the fantasy, they just might get dangerous.

We keep that in mind when thinking about a good friend to our program. He's clinging for dear life to a fantasy, even though front page headlines last week seemed to have exposed it all as a big hoax.

But for our own good, we're not about to tell him to give up his belief and so with that we say simply this, yes, Scott Herriott, there is a Bigfoot.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCOTT HERRIOTT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Bigfoot burst on to the international scene in 1958 when a road builder named Jerry Crew came out of the thick forest of northwest California with this cast of what appears to be a giant, human-like footprint.

Now, nearly 45 years later, there are some that think Bigfoot has died. After family members of a deceased logger named Ray Wallace claim that old Ray started the whole shebang with these wooden feet.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're looking at the original Bigfoot feet.

HERRIOTT: Are these the objects that made the oversized footprints found in 1958?

No, says John Green, long-time Canadian Bigfoot author and eyewitness to some of these and other tracks found around the same time, some of which were cast in what Green says was very hard sand and soil.

JOHN GREEN, Bigfoot RESEARCHER: For somebody to come along and say all you have to do is put a pair of wooden feet on and go for a walk, and all the press of all the world proclaim that this has solved the mystery, it's pretty ridiculous and pretty hard to take. HERRIOTT: Dale Lee Wallace had agreed to bring the wooden feet and be interviewed. But on the day before the shoot, he called and said his cousin had the wooden prints locked away and was out of town.

As luck would have it, John brought a similar pair of fiberglass fakies...

GREEN: That's what we're going to use to see whether or not you can make shaped tracks.

HERRIOTT: ... which he say came from a mold made by Bob Titmouse (ph), a late researcher who also found tracks in the late 50's.

(on camera): Child senses the beast is real. Bigfoot's real, we're just doing a demonstration.

(voice over): Green feels the Wallace fake feet are derived from copies Titmouse (ph) had made from that cast. I tried to make a good impression.

(on camera): I'm thinking maybe a salad there, Tom (ph). OK.

GREEN: There's 400 pounds.

HERRIOTT: It is, yes.

About an inch here and not even -- not much more than a quarter of an inch there.

(voice-over): Green also claims that the first nationally publicized photo of the first print cast at that time doesn't come close at all to matching what Dale Lee Wallace has been holding up in newspapers over the past month.

But enough about the Wallace affair. What about the eyewitnesses?

DAVID A. WALSH, Bigfoot EYEWITNESS: Out into this 30-foot wide, clear opening stepped this humongous 8 or -- 7 or 8 foot tall creature I would guess weighed somewhere between 600 and 800 pounds, walking with this very pronounced long arm swing.

HERRIOTT: Some of the evidence appears in a documentary on the Discovery Channel. Producer Doug Hajicek tells what got him interested.

DOUG HAJICEK, PRODUCER, "SASQUATCH: LEGEND MEETS SCIENCE:" Back in the early 90s I made an expedition up to a lake called Salmon Lake (ph), which is up in the Northwest Territories in Canada.

And we came upon a trackway of footprints that were absolutely amazing. They were 18 inches long, they had a stride of about 5.5 to 6 feet. From that moment on, I wanted answers.

HERRIOTT: When asked if she thought Sasquatches were real, primatologist Jane Goodall said, quote, "You'd be amazed when I tell you that I'm sure that they exist."

So the Wallace family may feel that old Ray gave birth to Bigfoot, but it may very well be science that puts it to death.

Or something like that.

Scott Herriott for NEWSNIGHT from somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (singing): Happy trails to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: If the other guys are going to do reality TV, we're going to do that.

We'll see you tomorrow. Good night from 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





Bigfoot be Real After All?>


Aired January 9, 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: And good evening again, everyone. Words are powerful, and here's a case in point. They were spoken by the architect Frank Geary, a world class architect, a man of extraordinary talent.
When asked why he had not offered a design for the rebuilt ground zero he said, "I was invited, but I found it demeaning that the agency paid only $40,000 for all that work." Well, excuse me, Mr. Geary. How much do you think the firefighters who perished in the building that day made? And I can't imagine any firefighter said I'm not running into that mess for what I make every year.

And how about the people down at the morgue here in New York, who now say it will be years before they can identify all the remains? You think they're paid big bucks? we can go on, but the point was best made by someone who did submit a plan. Earlier this week he got big applause at a meeting of architects saying this, "It doesn't matter a damn, Frank Geary, that we were paid only $40,000."

We'd like to believe that Mr. Geary meant his words differently than they came out. But his words hit us like a kick in the gut. How must they have felt for the people who did so much, lost so much, tried so hard and cried so long? Maybe we're still just a little bit sensitive.

On to "The Whip" tonight. And tonight we begin with the latest in the deadly plane crash in North Carolina yesterday. Gary Tuchman continues to work the story and there's a lot to work.

Gary, a headline from you.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes there is, Aaron. And the NTSB appears to have a good idea about what might have caused the plane crash, this fatal crash here in Charlotte, North Carolina yesterday. Meanwhile, all similar airplanes from Air Midwest will now be examined.

BROWN: Gary, thank you. We'll get back to you at the top tonight.

The Iraq situation now. Comments today from the men leading the inspections there. Richard Roth following that from the U.N.

Richard, a headline from you tonight.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN UNITED NATIONS CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, how fast can you find a smoking gun? The U.N. weapons inspectors say they haven't been able to find one yet buried in Baghdad, but they're not ready to give up.

BROWN: Richard, thank you.

On to Israel and a story that's not about violence this time, but about politics and accusations of corruption. Kelly Wallace over there for us tonight.

Kelly, a headline from you.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, it was an angry Israeli prime minister who called a news conference tonight trying to do some damage control with his Likud party rocked by a corruption scandal weeks before the election. The prime minister came out swinging. Suddenly he is in a tight race for reelection -- Aaron.

BROWN: Kelly, thank you. Good do see you. And back to the United States now and an arrest in this terrible abuse case involving three New Jersey brothers. Jamie Colby has been working that all week.

Jamie, a headline from you.

JAMIE COLBY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, after a multi-state manhunt, police have finally caught Sherry Murphy. But she's not in jail, she's in a hospital -- Aaron.

BROWN: OK. Back to you and the rest in a moment. Also coming up on the program tonight, we'll hear from the head of New Jersey's human services department on how the system failed those little boys and what the state intends to do to fix it.

And how much more reality can we take around here? We'll look at the explosion of reality TV. Ritual humiliation is the big ratings bonanza in primetime. We'll also be joined by the preeminent entertainment reporter in America, Pat O'Brien from "Access Hollywood."

And from reality to pure fantasy, "Segment 7" tonight, a friend to this program. Scott Harriet (ph) on the big, very fury friend he's just not willing to give up yet. Scott's (ph) search for Bigfoot.

All that in the hour ahead. But we begin with the investigation into yesterday's crash of that Air Midwest commuter flight. This evening, in another briefing by investigators who have quickly begun focusing on two problems that together could well have doomed the plane and its 21 passengers and crew. The first, recent maintenance of the plane. Investigators seem especially interested in the tail section of the plane.

And the second, the weight of the plane. Was it too heavy to fly safely? We begin tonight with CNN's Gary Tuchman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) TUCHMAN (voice-over): Investigators are examining whether a combination of faulty controls and an overloaded plane could have caused the Charlotte, North Carolina crash.

JOHN GOGLIA, NTSB: Seven degrees is a normal takeoff pitch angle. Something occurred to drive that pitch angle to 52 degrees. That is abnormal.

TUCHMAN: The plane had maintenance on its elevator, which controls whether the nose of the plane goes up or down, two days before the crash.

GOGLIA: They just told me that they're moving erratically. In fact, the erratic movement commences after the maintenance.

TUCHMAN: The FAA has ordered Air Midwest, the U.S. Airways commuter, to carefully check all 43 of its remaining Beechcraft (ph) 1900-Ds. In the meantime, CNN has learned the FAA received an anonymous tip that an employee loading the plane complained it was too heavy, but was overruled by a supervisor.

GOGLIA: If you have a light airplane, meaning not a lot of passengers, not a lot of fuel, not a lot of freight, it behaves differently than a heavy airplane.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN: The flight data recorder recorded the last 85 flights that this airplane made. Now the NTSB is unambiguous about this. It says the elevated tail elevator was not working properly on this fatal flight and not working properly on the eight flights before that, which all came after the elevator maintenance this past Monday.

The 76 flights before the maintenance, the elevator controls are working perfectly. We're being told, as we speak right now, interviews are being held with the mechanics in West Virginia who worked on the airplane. Those interviews are expected to be completed sometime early this morning.

Now more on the overloading factor, the baggage factor. The NTSB is holding a news conference as we speak, and they have some information that's a little bit different from the information the FAA gave us. And that's not unusual; they're two very different agencies.

The NTSB is telling us that this baggage loader did not object to the plane taking off, but had a problem initially. The baggage loaders said that he had a piece of paper that said no more than 26 bags should be on the plane. The NTSB is now telling us 31 bags went on the plane. Another person who works for the airline said 32 bags were allowed on the plane.

So they all talked to the captain. The decision was made that it was OK for the plane to fly with 31 bags. So there was an argument, but according to the NTSB, everyone then agreed the plane could take off. One more thing. Mesa Air -- that's the parent company of Air Midwest -- said three of its 43 Beechcraft (ph) 1900-Ds are maintained at that West Virginia facility. Mesa Air says all three of those planes will be inspected before they fly again. Because of an abundance of caution, Mesa Air says the other 40 planes, which are maintained elsewhere, will also be checked, but not necessarily before they fly again. Aaron, back to you.

BROWN: Gary, thank you. Gary Tuchman, with a lot to do down there in Charlotte, North Carolina tonight. Thank you.

The U.N. Security Council today heard from the weapons inspectors less than a month before their critical deadline of January 27. On the one hand, members were told there is no smoking gun, no clear evidence that Saddam has squirreled away weapons of mass destruction. On the other hand, and equally important, while not exactly obstructing the efforts of the inspectors, the Iraqis apparently aren't exactly helping them do their work either. Here again, CNN's Richard Roth.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROTH (voice-over): Lead international inspectors reported that, despite more access in Iraq, they haven't found weapons of mass destruction.

HANS BLIX, CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: In the course of these inspections, we have not found any smoking gun.

ROTH: But while Iraq is so far providing access to the roaming inspectors, U.N. arms experts say they are not receiving from Iraq proper details on weapons programs.

BLIX: The Iraqis could have looked at those questions and answered better. So we are not satisfied.

ROTH: Neither is the United States.

JOHN NEGROPONTE, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: There is still no evidence that Iraq has fundamentally changed its approach from one of deceit to a genuine attempt to be forthcoming in meeting the Council's demand that it disarm.

ROTH: But European nations were quick to state the inspectors should be given more time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The inspections should continue, and for that reason there are no grounds for military action.

ROTH: The U.S. has been putting pressure on the inspectors to interview scientists who may provide the smoking gun. Blix said he may start interviewing them by next week. But Iraq is not helping.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I told the Council today that we were not able, for example, to have interviews in Iraq in private. And that does not indicate the proactive cooperation we expect from Iraq. ROTH: Inspectors would still like to take scientists out of Iraq for interviews, but that process has not been agreed to yet with Iraq. Blix said for the first time the list of 500 scientists recently turned over by Baghdad is inadequate because some known scientist's names are missing. The inspectors also told the Council Iraq illegally imported missile engines and material for production of solid missile fuel. And there's a concern about a high explosive called HMX, which Baghdad says is used in cement mines, but the inspectors say it could also be part of nuclear weapons production.

The inspectors return to the U.N. on January 27. A larger assessment which some analysts think could be a trip wire for military action. But many diplomats at the U.N. think there is no rush to judgment.

JEREMY GREENSTOCK, BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: So my advice is calm down on the 27 of January.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROTH: And before that date is reached, Blix and El Baradei will be off to Baghdad for two days of talks. And they're going to be armed with questions for Iraqi authorities. Back to you, Aaron.

BROWN: Well, we heard from the German ambassador. And the Germans have been quite vocally opposed to any military action, so his words were not surprising. What about the rest of the members of the Council? What was their reaction today?

ROTH: Well, you even saw Britain saying, hold on, let's not have a rush to war so far. Britain, it is expected, may join with the rest of the Europeans in calling for a second Security Council resolution should it come to it, if the U.S. seeks to wage war on Iraq.

France wants Iraq to cooperate, but also thinks the inspectors should be given time. And naturally Russia and China agree. Not much was expected today. The 27 of January will inch a little closer. And if Baghdad doesn't cooperate with the latest trip by Blix and El Baradei, that might swing even those undecided.

BROWN: Richard, thank you. Richard Roth over at the U.N. tonight.

Needless to say, the Iraqis view how the inspections are going in quite a different light. To them they've been cooperating, even inviting reporters to go along in the helicopters the inspectors have been using the last couple of days, while U.N. teams imply, and the White House says outright that a smoking gun hasn't been found, because it's hidden away, the head of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, it says, is because it does not exist.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. HUSSAM AMIN, IRAQ NATIONAL MONITORING DIRECTORATE: The results of inspection, which include (UNINTELLIGIBLE) air and sand (ph) sampling, in addition to the raw material and final products that are given to the inspection teams and all the industrial sites, did not indicate any availability of prohibited activities or prohibited items in Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So maybe the Iraqis have hidden the smoking gun or maybe, as they claim, it does not exist. But then the question becomes, can President Bush make his case to go to war absent hard evidence, absent that smoking gun? We're joined tonight by Danielle Pletka, who is the vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Thanks for joining us.

DANIELLE PLETKA, V.P., FOREIGN AND DEFENSE POLICY STUDIES, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: Pleasure.

BROWN: Well, no smoking gun. Does it matter?

PLETKA: No. I don't know that there's ever going to be a smoking gun. That's not what the inspectors are in Iraq to look for. You know, people seem to have forgotten what the premise is of this entire exercise. It is for Iraq to provide a full and a final and a complete declaration of its barred weapons programs and for the inspectors to go in and verify that.

It's not for them to go door to door, garage to garage, chicken coop to chicken coop looking for weapons of mass destruction. That's an unachievable exercise.

BROWN: So, in the end, assuming that two and a half weeks from now, three weeks from now we're exactly where we are now, has the whole inspection process then just been a waste of time?

PLETKA: No. I think the president did the right thing in going to the U.N. And I think it was proper to give the U.N. one last chance. But the bottom line is that the inspectors are never going to be able to achieve the disarmament of Iraq without cooperation of the Iraqi government. And it's clear even now that they're not going to get that cooperation. Iraq doesn't want to be disarmed and it's going to have to be and that's going to have to be by force.

BROWN: How does -- all of the polling that I've seen recently indicates that support for a war with Iraq is to at least some degree predicated on the U.N. going along. So what happens if the U.N. does not go along?

PLETKA: It depends whether you're talking about supporting the United States or support in the international community. As far as the international community is concerned, there are going to be those who support us and there are going to be those whom we simply cannot persuade to come along, no matter what we find. And I think that probably goes for finding a ticking nuclear bomb behind curtain number three.

As far as the American people are concerned, I think that everybody understands that it is nice for us to have a U.N. (UNINTELLIGIBLE). It is nice for us to have a lot of partners coming along with us. But that at the end of the day, President Bush has to stand up there and make his case to the American people for why we need to go, not why we need to go with the French or the Germans or the New Zealanders or anyone else.

BROWN: Did you find it troubling at all the comment that Richard Roth made just before we got to you that the British may now ask for a second U.N. Security Council vote?

PLETKA: The British have gone back and forth on this. You know their foreign minister, Jack Straw, said that they might like a second resolution. They have said that war is imminent, they said that war is not imminent. You do get the sense that we're playing bad cop, good cop with them on occasion.

And there's going to be pressure for a second resolution. But the United States expended a great deal of political capital, along with the Brits some months ago, in order to obtain a resolution that did not require us to go back to the U.N. if, in fact, Iraq is in material breach.

BROWN: I'm sorry. Just as a practical matter. Do you think the United States can go to war here if the Security Council as a body is saying, no, there ought to be a second resolution, we ought to talk about this some more? Does that not, at the very least, complicate this to an extraordinary degree?

PLETKA: Yes, it complicates it. But, on the other hand, if we wait for the U.N. Security Council every time, we could wait another 12 years. And I think that the evidence that's been presented to the Security Council, even on this, a not terribly special day, is very clear.

You know we are really talking about two things that are required of the Iraqis that were laid out in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441. One was the full, final and complete declaration that they handed over actually on December 7, the day before the deadline. And the other was total and complete cooperation with the inspectors.

What you heard today from Hans Blix, who is really not an American, not terribly aggressive, was that the declaration was incomplete. It didn't answer the questions, and that they are not getting full cooperation. Not the IAEA and not UNMOVIC. You know, if we keep looking for more, this can be an endless process and there's going to come a time when push is going to come to shove.

And if the Security Council comes along, that's terrific. And if they don't, we're just going to have to forward without them. You know action does actually take place in the world without the Security Council. We did Bosnia without them and I think we could probably do Iraq if we had to.

BROWN: Ms. Pletka, nice of you to join us tonight. Thanks for your time.

PLETKA: Pleasure.

BROWN: Thanks very much.

On we go. An update on North Korea now. A late headline coming out of Seoul that North Korea says it will formally withdraw from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. That news comes on a day when two North Korean representatives arrived in New Mexico to talk with the governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson. You'll recall Mr. Richardson has a long history of dealing with the North Koreans as a former U.N. ambassador and as U.S. Energy secretary as well.

A senior White House official telling CNN that Governor Richardson is expected to pass along the message that the United States may be willing to put in writing that it will not, does not plan to attack North Korea if and only if the North Koreans agree to give up their nuclear weapons plan. It's unclear how all of this will affect tomorrow's talks.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT: could Israel's prime minister lose the coming election? And up next, an arrest and more questions in the case of those lost boys in Newark, New Jersey. From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There's been an enormous outpouring for the little boys in Newark. And some of the donations struck us today. Funeral homes saying they want to bury seven-year-old Faheem Williams, cemeteries saying they want to give him a free plot. Treated well in death, it seems, certainly not in life.

His brothers are still in the hospital, and the world outside is still struggling to address how these boys were failed. But this we know for sure: a crime has been committed and the entire system has failed. The system we'll look at in a moment with the head of human services. But first, the latest on the crime and today's big break. Once again, CNN's Jamie Colby.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COLBY (voice-over): After a nationwide manhunt, New Jersey police and the FBI found Sherry Murphy virtually under their nose in the Newark area.

SHARPE JAMES, MAYOR, NEWARK: Newark Police were notified of her whereabouts by a person identified as Jean Claude Desourses.

COLBY: Monday, Desourses saw Murphy weeping at a pay phone. She tearfully told him her mother had died and she had nowhere to go. He took her to his apartment, then saw the news.

JEAN CLAUDE DESOURSES, CAB DRIVER: When did it hit me? When I saw her face. I mean, that picture looked exactly just like her. So that's when I confronted her. I said, look, this is you, what is going on? She said, "Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh."

COLBY: Convinced it was Murphy, Desourses led authorities to her. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She's expected to be arraigned in Essex County Superior Court later in the day on the outstanding charges of three counts of child endangerment and one count of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

COLBY: Murphy's arraignment was postponed and she has not yet had a chance to respond to the charges or retain an attorney. Feeling ill during questioning, police transported her to a nearby hospital. The same hospital where the two surviving brothers are recovering. Mayor Sharpe James, who has visited the boys at the hospital, is asking where the brothers will go. The boys have different fathers, and four-year-old Tyrone's wants him back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They've been so abused but they've been together. When they tried to separate them at the hospital, they began to cry. So what we ended up doing was putting two beds in one room. The one person that they each trust is the brother.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLBY: That will be for the Department of Youth and Family Services, of course, to decide. The same department that failed to protect these boys while their biological mother was in prison for child abuse -- Aaron.

BROWN: Now we reported last night the supervisor in the case had been suspended. And now we know something about the state's handling of the caseworker.

COLBY: Correct, Aaron. Today they let the caseworker that was actually responsible for this case go as well. But the question that the many caseworkers that I've talked to and families who have been in the system is, can you hide behind the fact that they may be overburdened, can you blame the caseworkers or the system? Something I think that we'll flesh out over time.

BROWN: Thank you, Jamie. Jamie Colby tonight.

On a very thoughtful note today, we were taken to task bay a respected child advocate, a man with considerable experience in matters like the one unfolding in New Jersey. And without going through it all, he felt like in last night's opening comments I was blaming the caseworker and the supervisor. "It is more complicated than that," he argued. And on that we agree, which is why we talked earlier tonight with Gwendolyn Harris, who runs the New Jersey Department of Human Services, which was supposed to be looking out for or just plain looking for these three kids.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ms. Harris, this is, in some respects, a suitable question, and I assume it's the central question. Was this a preventable tragedy in your view?

GWENDOLYN HARRIS, COMMISSIONER, NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES: I would like to believe that it was because of some of the mistakes relative to case handling. I think that we at least could have known and taken extraordinary measures to protect these children. I mean, the issue of having an open allegation of abuse but not having seen the child.

I question whether or not we should have been doing some other things in terms of more aggressive efforts to locate the family -- although the family was working very hard to stay missing -- so that we could see the children. I think we should have involved law enforcement. There was enough information that I think we should have been more aggressive. And hopefully our efforts in being more aggressive, the child may have been able to have been located and put in a safer situation.

BROWN: You've suspended in this case the supervisor. Why did you do that?

HARRIS: The supervisor approved the closing of the case.

BROWN: And?

HARRIS: And with an allegation of abuse that had not been substantiated or unsubstantiated, and with a child that had been missing for over a year, had not been seen, I think that that was -- definitely it was against agency policy.

BROWN: And so is it your view and is it the department's view that the failure here was at essentially the lowest level, the caseworker-supervisor level, or is there a more systemic failure to look at?

HARRIS: Oh, there are definitely some systemic issues. There are systemic issues in who was involved in the decision making. We should never leave a caseworker or a first line supervisor in a position where they are making decisions on their own. I think the agency needs to have better protocols, better policy that directs when casework supervisors and district office managers, the regional office and even the central office become involved in decision making about a particular child and family depending upon the level of risk.

BROWN: How long does that sort of work take? I assume it takes a while.

HARRIS: Well, I don't know. I declared a state of emergency yesterday for the division and put in effect the case cannot be closed at the division or district office level. It must go to the division director's office for the division director to approve the closing of a case where a child has not been seen in, you know, over our basic protocol, which I believe is 30 days.

BROWN: Just finally, take a moment here and just tell us what it has been like in your offices, in your agency this week. This is -- I can only assume this has been a horrible, difficult week.

HARRIS: It has. I mean, you have everyone from the governor to frontline social workers grieving. The fact of the matter is we do have very committed, very dedicated workers, staff within our division. And when we lose a child, everyone collectively looks at how, you know, this is a failure and we all feel responsible. We all are grieving that our organization did not -- was not able to prevent it.

At the same time, I think we have other feelings like anger. There are a lot of feelings all through the division, the department and state government itself. This is not a good thing. This is a very bad thing. This is like one of the worst things that you can have happen.

BROWN: Ms. Harris, thank you for your time tonight. I know it's been a long week and tomorrow will not be any easier. We appreciate a few minutes tonight. Thank you.

HARRIS: Sure. Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Gwendolyn Harris who runs the New Jersey Department of Human Services. And still ahead tonight on NEWSNIGHT, Israel's prime minister under fire. A tough election, a scandal unfolding, and he gets yanked off TV, too. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is a man accustomed to being attacked. Sad to say, attacks of many kinds, rocket, mortar, bomb and suicide attacks have been features of life in his country for far too long.

But he isn't dealing with any of those right now.

What the prime minister is dealing with is another kind of attack entirely, one mounted by political opponents who accuse Mr. Sharon's sons of having skirted Israel's campaign financing laws.

And while Mr. Sharon has proved time and time again he is a resilient man, this charge, today at least, is hurting him and his party with elections just weeks away.

Again tonight from Jerusalem, CNN's Kelly Wallace.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALLACE (voice-over): Less than three weeks before the election, an unusually feisty Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tried to put to rest allegations of a loan scandal involving his sons.

ARIEL SHARON, ISRAEL PRIME MINISTER (through translator): I came here this evening in order to respond to the despicable slander that has been constructed against me and against the Likud Party.

WALLACE: The prime minister then launched a series of attacks against the Likud's main opponent, the Labor Party and its leader, Amram Mitzna.

SHARON (through translator): Mitzna himself has been investigated at the police with regard to two cases of perjury.

WALLACE: Then something unprecedented for an Israeli prime minister.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We are compelled to interrupt the broadcast, the live broadcast of the prime minister' press conference.

WALLACE: The Israeli Elections Committee ordered Israel's television and radio stations to stop airing the prime minister' comments, accusing Sharon of violating campaign rules when three weeks before an election, political comments are restricted to specific broadcast time periods.

Sharon was responding to a story that has been dominating the headlines in Israel. Israeli law bans political funding from abroad.

At issue, whether a $1.5 million loan from a businessman in South Africa was inappropriately used by Sharon's sons as collateral to obtain another loan to repay campaign contributions that a state auditor ruled illegal.

Sharon offered few details, saying he knew nothing about the loan and asked his sons to find a way to repay the illegal campaign funds.

SHARON (through translator): Everything that I did was absolutely in accordance with the law. Absolutely. Squeaky clean.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALLACE: The prime minister's verbal offensive was designed to fire up his base and convince the Israeli public he did nothing wrong.

Now the question is, will this strategy stop the significant slide in Likud support? Back in December Sharon's Likud Party had a commanding lead. Well, now that lead has almost been wiped away -- Aaron.

BROWN: Israeli politics is rough and tumble business. Does anyone expect that, barring something else, another shoe dropping here, that Likud could actually lose the election?

WALLACE: No one really expects that of course, Aaron. But again, you have to see if Likud Party support continues to fall.

What's more likely to happen, though, is if Sharon continues to lose more and more support, he could be faced with this reality of having a narrow majority. And then he might have to reach out to centrist and leftist parties to put together a coalition government. And that could have a significant impact on what he'll do when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- Aaron.

BROWN: Kelly, thank you. Kelly Wallace in Jerusalem tonight. Nice to see you over there.

Touching briefly now on a few stories from around the world, beginning with quite an odd tale coming out of Germany tonight.

A deranged man threatened to crash a small plane he was flying, into the European Central Bank over the weekend. He was threatening to do that unless he was interviewed live on CNN.

The "Wall Street Journal" reports that air traffic controllers called CNN in Frankfurt and Berlin and then told the pilot no one was answering.

"That's impossible," the man said.

"We'll keep on trying," the controllers responded. They kept on trying, they never got through and eventually talked the rogue pilot into settling for a conversation with a German news station.

And now NEWSNIGHT airs there.

Finally, some extraordinary pictures released today of an aerial dog fight somewhere over Iraq between an Iraqi fighter jet and a drone, an unmanned American Predator drone. The human fires at the drone first and wins the fight, but just barely.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, reality TV, the rage. Is it all that new?

And the story of a hospital ship, the USS Comfort, and it's unexpected rescue mission. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: And coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the reality TV mania. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We are, of course, grateful to every one of our viewers, but who can blame us for wanting oh, let's say 18 million more. We've been thinking strategies lately.

There is the "NEWSNIGHT: SURVIVOR" strategy, a test of wills among our reporters, and the winner gets his or her story on the air.

My personal favorite, Celebrity Whip where, say, one of the Baldwin brothers gives us a headline about the president's tax cut plan.

Or how about Baghdad Scavenger Hunt, sending in a group of perky and extraordinarily attractive 20-somethings to dig up what those inspectors can't.

OK, we'll admit it's tough for our reality to compete with their reality in primetime.

Of course, their reality isn't reality at all. It's guilty pleasure TV. And while it may seem like a relatively new thing, we have Jeff Greenfield to remind us that it is not. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They have seized control of your TV set like something out of that old sci-fi horror classic "Outer Limits."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is nothing wrong with your television set.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a whole new game.

GREENFIELD: Watch ordinary people struggle to become celebrities. Watch semi-celebrities struggle for another 15 minutes of fame. Watch bachelor's and bachelorettes find a mate.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The person I'm most sexually attracted to...

GREENFIELD: Watch couples go on bland dates while cartoons and a smarmy host insult the couple behind their backs.

Watch as people prove there is nothing, nothing they will not do as long as they can do it on television.

(on camera): So you ask, whatever happened to standards, to taste? How could this generation of TV executives have so thoroughly corrupted us? Sorry, wrong question.

Our hunger to watch people reveal, expose, even humiliate themselves goes way back, long before the birth of the coaxial wire. It may even be hardwired.

(voice-over): It wasn't television, after all, that put on exhibitions of public tortures and executions. That goes back a few millennia.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Step right up here and see them all.

GREENFIELD: And P.T. Barnum wasn't a TV executive when he and his contemporary showmen offered up freaks of nature for public ogling. Midgets, giants, fat ladies, the odder the better. They tried to sell it as educational. Right. Like Jerry Springer is really a crash course in abnormal psychology.

And as for sexual pandering, well, Little Egypt and Sally Rand, with her famous fan dance, scandalized and delighted onlookers when TV was barely a gleam in Milton Berle's eye.

Now, about those early, innocent days of TV. You want to talk about exploitation?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People have their own, true stories.

GREENFIELD: How about "Strike It Rich"? Your grandmother is suffocating from the summer heat you say? Just give her...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A great, big, 20-inch swing-around Nach Monarch (ph) window fan.

GREENFIELD: On "Queen for a Day," your child has asthma.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She would like a dehumidifier for their home.

GREENFIELD: You've been stuck with four kids whose father deserted them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She'd like a TV set for these four little fingers (ph).

GREENFIELD: You've got seven kids and are headed for the hospital. Well, let the audience pick the saddest story.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even before you get to the hospital, we're sending you flowers (ph).

GREENFIELD: We're not sure whether those were tears of joy or embarrassment. Maybe both.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (singing): It's time to beat the clock.

GREENFIELD: And on shows from "Beat the clock" to "Truth or Consequences"...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in.

GREENFIELD: ... to the father of them all...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "Candid Camera."

GREENFIELD: ... public humiliation was the key to success.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You taste one of those now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, I ain't going to taste it. No, no. No, indeed.

GREENFIELD (on camera): Yes, it's all more graphic today, the language coarser, the sexual innuendo more like crescendo, just as pictures you once couldn't sell under the counter are now plastered all over the counter.

But as far as any recent lapse of taste goes, that is a cop-out. It's just that there are so many more outlets today from which to distribute the media junk food so many clearly crave.

Not you, of course.

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Not you, of course. A little bit more on reality TV after the break. We'll be joined by America's foremost entertainment journalist, Pat O'Brien. Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: And after the break, America's number one entertainment journalist, Pat O'Brien, joins us to get to the bottom of the reality TV mania. This could only be NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In the early days after the attacks of September 11, some people were predicting that people would lose interest in reality TV, that it would seem far too trivial with the real world all of a sudden looking so dangerous.

Some prediction.

Joining us now to help us understand this whole phenomenon, the world renowned entertainment reporter and the host of "Access Hollywood," Mr. Pat O'Brien.

Nice to see you, Mr. O'Brien.

PAT O'BRIEN, "ACCESS HOLLYWOOD" HOST: Hello, Mr. Brown. Happy new year.

BROWN: Happy new year to you, sir. What did you lead with tonight?

O'BRIEN: Well, tonight we led with "The Bachelorette;" last night we led with "Joe Millionaire" and the night before -- Can you remember what you led with three nights ago? I can't, but I think it was reality television. It's big.

BROWN: Why is it so big? It's cheap, right?

O'BRIEN: Well, the main reasons why it's so big, especially "Joe Millionaire" -- let's start with the most recent one -- is because 18.5 million people watched the first episode. And when 18.5 million people watch any television show, network executives stood up and advertisers stood up.

And that's what happened with "Joe Millionaire." And that show will just continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

And so many shows, you know, so many of them are thrown out there. Some of them hit, some of them don't. And the ones that hit, hit big.

BROWN: The -- It's not just that 18.5 million people watch, it's that I gather the right 18.5 million people watch?

O'BRIEN: Well, the -- And you brought up cheaper, yes. These shows are cheaper than making the traditional "The West Wing," or "CSI," "CSI: Miami," "E.R." They're much, much cheaper. And that's, of course, attractive to any business, to do something that gets people to watch that's cheaper.

And they attract that great demographic. By that we mean people under 30 years old, the MTV crowd, so to speak, who you know, want reality. Here are people who watched O.J. and who watched all the stuff going on television. And when they watch regular television, they want to see reality again and that's what's happening in this country.

BROWN: Just as an aside, picking your prospective spouse on television is not, in my view reality, but I'm old.

What sort of things do you hear that they're pitching? I always love -- I said once on the air that I thought that the greatest moment of my life would have been if I'd been there when they pitched "Manimal," that NBC show some years back. I just wanted to be there for that.

What are they pitching?

O'BRIEN: Well, every show now in Hollywood begins with "It's 'American Idol' and" blank. "American Idol meets blank."

Now it's going to be "Joe Millionaire" meets "Aaron Brown" or whatever they're going to come up with.

There's one guy, Eric Shotzen (ph), a friend of mine, he does -- he has Elemental Productions and does a lot of these reality shows, with "Boot Camp" and those sort of things.

He's got one out now called "Man Versus Beast". And one of the highlights is going to be 40 little people versus an elephant pulling two DC-10s. And I'm told somebody wins by 25 feet.

There was one, Eric told me, his producer told me that a major network came to him and said, "Can we figure out a way for someone to break into the Getty Museum and steal a painting and see how far they get?" So it's getting a little crazy out there.

BROWN: Right. Now that -- Now even in Los Angeles that would be a crime, would it not?

O'BRIEN: Even in Los Angeles, it would be a crime.

The great thing about Joe Millionaire, though, and you have to agree, it's like Alfred Hitchcock. Because you know the ending, and you know how it's going to turn out, that he doesn't have any money, he's got $19,000, $12,000, whatever he has.

But it's like a Hitchcock movie where you know the bomb is in the room, you just don't know when it's going to go off or what the reaction is going to be. So this, I'm told it's got a wild ending. And this thing will just continue to build.

BROWN: Well, of course they're going to tell you it has a wild ending.

O'BRIEN: Well, I'm told that the ending, I mean, we know what the ending is, a woman falls in love with him and says, "I want this guy's $50 million," and in some fashion he says to her, "I'm sorry, I only make $19,000."

BROWN: Seriously, for someone who has -- I'm serious here, Pat, has to watch all this, write this, think about it, interview about it. Is it discouraging how the medium is being used?

O'BRIEN: Well, what's discouraging to me, as an entertainment reporter, is that -- and I think discouraging to a lot -- you see a lot of celebrities on the streets say they watch these shows now.

But I think it demeans what somebody like Sean Penn or somebody like Tom Hanks has done with their career. When suddenly these guys are on the red carpet, you know, out there with their movies, "Road to Perdition."

And here comes, you know, "Joe Millionaire" walking down, and all the cameras go, "Oh, there's our latest reality star." And Kelly Clarkson or somebody like that, who suddenly become bigger than life because, you know, they're on a show that got 14, 15, 16 million people watching.

And I think to me, as an observer of all this, that is a little discouraging.

But you can't argue with the ratings, you can't argue with, you know, how they're put together and how they've been successful for the networks. And I think we're going to have it for a while.

BROWN: Whatever happened to the woman who married the millionaire, by the way?

O'BRIEN: Couldn't tell you.

BROWN: What's her name again?

O'BRIEN: Couldn't tell you.

BROWN: Whatever happened...?

O'BRIEN: And I couldn't tell you what happened to the first bachelor. See, that's where we are.

These things are so in the news and in every paper, in every tabloid and we're talking about them on your show...

BROWN: I know.

O'BRIEN: ... for crying out loud. But we forget about it all too quickly.

BROWN: Pat, describing yourself as just an entertainment reporter is really underselling. You are the preeminent entertainment reporter and we are pleased to have you with us.

Thank you, Mr. O'Brien.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Brown, my pleasure. See you again, I hope.

BROWN: I hope so, too. Pat O'Brien in Los Angeles.

Next on NEWSNIGHT, is the search for Bigfoot over? Never.

Reality TV, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DANNY FREYER, PERFORMER (singing): Well, I still believe in Bigfoot / don't care what they say. / Still believe in apple pie, the good old USA.

BROWN: All right, our thanks to the NEWSNIGHT orchestra.

You know what they say about people who are plagued with delusions -- be careful not to shatter the fantasy, they just might get dangerous.

We keep that in mind when thinking about a good friend to our program. He's clinging for dear life to a fantasy, even though front page headlines last week seemed to have exposed it all as a big hoax.

But for our own good, we're not about to tell him to give up his belief and so with that we say simply this, yes, Scott Herriott, there is a Bigfoot.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCOTT HERRIOTT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Bigfoot burst on to the international scene in 1958 when a road builder named Jerry Crew came out of the thick forest of northwest California with this cast of what appears to be a giant, human-like footprint.

Now, nearly 45 years later, there are some that think Bigfoot has died. After family members of a deceased logger named Ray Wallace claim that old Ray started the whole shebang with these wooden feet.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're looking at the original Bigfoot feet.

HERRIOTT: Are these the objects that made the oversized footprints found in 1958?

No, says John Green, long-time Canadian Bigfoot author and eyewitness to some of these and other tracks found around the same time, some of which were cast in what Green says was very hard sand and soil.

JOHN GREEN, Bigfoot RESEARCHER: For somebody to come along and say all you have to do is put a pair of wooden feet on and go for a walk, and all the press of all the world proclaim that this has solved the mystery, it's pretty ridiculous and pretty hard to take. HERRIOTT: Dale Lee Wallace had agreed to bring the wooden feet and be interviewed. But on the day before the shoot, he called and said his cousin had the wooden prints locked away and was out of town.

As luck would have it, John brought a similar pair of fiberglass fakies...

GREEN: That's what we're going to use to see whether or not you can make shaped tracks.

HERRIOTT: ... which he say came from a mold made by Bob Titmouse (ph), a late researcher who also found tracks in the late 50's.

(on camera): Child senses the beast is real. Bigfoot's real, we're just doing a demonstration.

(voice over): Green feels the Wallace fake feet are derived from copies Titmouse (ph) had made from that cast. I tried to make a good impression.

(on camera): I'm thinking maybe a salad there, Tom (ph). OK.

GREEN: There's 400 pounds.

HERRIOTT: It is, yes.

About an inch here and not even -- not much more than a quarter of an inch there.

(voice-over): Green also claims that the first nationally publicized photo of the first print cast at that time doesn't come close at all to matching what Dale Lee Wallace has been holding up in newspapers over the past month.

But enough about the Wallace affair. What about the eyewitnesses?

DAVID A. WALSH, Bigfoot EYEWITNESS: Out into this 30-foot wide, clear opening stepped this humongous 8 or -- 7 or 8 foot tall creature I would guess weighed somewhere between 600 and 800 pounds, walking with this very pronounced long arm swing.

HERRIOTT: Some of the evidence appears in a documentary on the Discovery Channel. Producer Doug Hajicek tells what got him interested.

DOUG HAJICEK, PRODUCER, "SASQUATCH: LEGEND MEETS SCIENCE:" Back in the early 90s I made an expedition up to a lake called Salmon Lake (ph), which is up in the Northwest Territories in Canada.

And we came upon a trackway of footprints that were absolutely amazing. They were 18 inches long, they had a stride of about 5.5 to 6 feet. From that moment on, I wanted answers.

HERRIOTT: When asked if she thought Sasquatches were real, primatologist Jane Goodall said, quote, "You'd be amazed when I tell you that I'm sure that they exist."

So the Wallace family may feel that old Ray gave birth to Bigfoot, but it may very well be science that puts it to death.

Or something like that.

Scott Herriott for NEWSNIGHT from somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (singing): Happy trails to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: If the other guys are going to do reality TV, we're going to do that.

We'll see you tomorrow. Good night from all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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Bigfoot be Real After All?>