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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Zawahiri Calls for More Terror Attacks; U.S. Increases Security; Mad Cow Disease Found in Canada

Aired May 21, 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.


JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again, everyone.
On a day when security went up around the nation, when the Pentagon deployed antiaircraft missile systems around us here in Washington, when any flights over sporting events were halted because of the fear or an attack, on a day like this it was a voice no one wanted to hear, the voice of someone said to be Osama bin Laden's right-hand man calling for more terror. The key question that we'll begin looking at tonight was he really the one we think he was?

So, it is the tape that begins the whip tonight. Nic Robertson has been working on that story for us, Nic the headline.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Judy, this tape calls for attacks on U.S., British, Australian, and Norwegian embassies and interests around the world. The question is was it really Ayman al-Zawahiri's voice on that tape?

WOODRUFF: All right, Nic, and we'll come back to you for that story.

And, meantime, more security measures were going into place today after the increase yesterday in the terror threat level. Kelli Arena is on that tonight, Kelli the headline.

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Judy, officials say that they are most concerned about a possible attack within the next few days but they insist that the intelligence is still short on specifics.

WOODRUFF: All right, Kelli, and we'll come back to you as well.

More now on the case of Mad Cow Disease found in Canada and a question, do you know where your beef comes from? Gary Tuchman is on that story for us, Gary the headline.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Judy, the U.S. imports one billion pounds of beef from Canada each year so how do you know if your beef comes from Canada or elsewhere for that matter? The answer it's hard to tell but it's going to get easier -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: We're all going to be watching that one, back with all of you in just a moment.

Also coming up tonight on NEWSNIGHT, we're going to talk with "New York Times" reporter Judith Miller on one of the great mysteries of the Iraq war, what about the weapons of mass destruction? We'll look at what intelligence agencies are saying about some mobile labs found in Iraq.

And, another great unsolved mystery, a very different one ripped from the headlines of a half century ago. Has the killer of the Black Dahlia been found at long last?

Well, all that is to come but we begin tonight with the tape which aired today on the Al Jazeera Network. It is not known where it came from. Like others that have surfaced recently, it is pretty simply produced but even if the voice is tough to authenticate or even to make out in places, the message comes across loud and clear.

A man purporting to be al Qaeda's second in command and chief strategist is once again calling for blood. Here again, CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Heavily edited and occasionally inaudible of background noise this message calls for attacks on U.S., British, Australian, and Norwegian embassies and interests.

AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI (through translator): Protests, demonstrations and conferences will not be enough. You will only benefit by taking arms and using them against the enemies, the Americans and the Jews. Protests are a waste of time.

ROBERTSON: Not clear if the audiotape is of Ayman al-Zawahiri's voice. Although it is Egyptian accented like Zawahiri it sounds much younger than the al Qaeda leader. Zawahiri or not the tape tells Muslims the war in Iraq is a prelude to U.S. and Israeli domination of the region, aided and abetted by Arab leaders.

AL-ZAWAHIRI (through translator): Here are the rulers of the Muslims granting airports, bases, and facilities and allowing the ships to cross their territorial waters and supplying them with fuel and food and granting permission to the planes that cross the air spaces and the launch of air raids from their airports.

ROBERTSON: Apparently recorded some time after the war in Iraq began, the broadcast portion of the audiotape makes no direct reference to the attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco last week. It does, however, offer support to the Iraqi people and hint of more attacks.

AL-ZAWAHIRI (through translator): Know that you are not alone in this battle. For your brethren the mujahideen are chasing your enemies. The mujahideen in Palestine, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and in the heart of America and the west are punishing severely these crusaders and may the next phase convey to you, God willing, good news.

(END VIDEOTAPE) ROBERTSON: Now not clear if this reference to good news is a reference to the bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco last week or a reference perhaps to attacks yet to come but certainly given the heightened security alerts here and in the Middle East and given as well that al Qaeda in the past has timed messages to coincide with attacks, whether or not this is Ayman al-Zawahiri on the tape certainly intelligence officials around the world, Judy, are going to be scrutinizing and analyzing this tape very carefully.

WOODRUFF: Nic, are they saying what makes this tape so different from the ones we've heard before?

ROBERTSON: Certainly this tape has been very, very heavily edited. There are references there to the situation in Iraq. It appears to have been recorded at least after the war with Iraq. There are references there calling, telling the Iraqi people that they are being supported by their Muslim brothers elsewhere that these crusaders, as the tape puts it, have been defeated before.

So, it perhaps here plays to al Qaeda here, playing to the post war situation in Iraq, trying to inflame passions there, trying to inflame passions in the region in general given what happened in the war, so trying to leverage perhaps what Muslims in the region there have seen happen in their countries and in neighboring countries. Perhaps this is a new element here to al Qaeda's offensive at this time.

WOODRUFF: All right, Nic Robertson reporting for us tonight from CNN Center in Atlanta. Thank you, Nic.

Well, there have been some dramatic new developments tonight out of Saudi Arabia. Three men taken into custody in Jeddah on Monday may have been captured on the brink of carrying out a 9/11 style attack. Here now the rest of the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHEILA MACVICAR, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Sheila MacVicar in Riyadh. The more we learn about what happened at Jeddah Airport on Monday night, the scarier this story gets.

Three men were arrested at Jeddah Airport after an alert security guard there noticed that one of the men was behaving in an odd fashion. The Saudi authorities realized that one of the three was on their wanted list. They pulled them aside and searched them.

When they searched them they found knives and what are being described to CNN as documents like a last will and testament, something that sounds pretty familiar from investigators of 9/11. It turns out, says a Saudi security source to CNN that these men had intended to try to hijack a Saudia Airlines plane and fly it into a building in downtown Jeddah.

Now, we're being told by Saudi security authorities that these men are being linked to al Qaeda that they are probably members of the same cell which carried out last week's bombing attacks here in the city.

We know that they are under interrogation and it's believed that they will have a lot to tell authorities, not only about their plot, but perhaps about other plots and those who may be preparing to carry them out.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: CNN's Sheila MacVicar reporting.

And we have more now on what to make of this, the tape, and what often seems like all the headlines lately. Daniel Benjamin joins us. Mr. Benjamin was director of counterterrorism on the National Security Council during the Clinton years. He's also the author of the book, "The Age of Sacred Terror."

Daniel Benjamin, first of all, what about this Zawahiri, alleged Zawahiri tape, what do you make of it? Is it authentic? Is it the real thing?

DANIEL BENJAMIN, AUTHOR, "THE AGE OF SACRED TERROR": Well, I can't tell from the voice but the message is absolutely authentic. Zawahiri in a book he wrote perhaps a year or so ago that was smuggled out to the west he talked about how Israel is in the Middle East to divide Muslim countries and that this is part of a larger plot to continue dividing and dividing. And now he is extending this argument and saying this is what the conquest of Iraq was about too. The rest of it is all very, very classic Zawahiri.

WOODRUFF: Classic and what about the locations, the United States, the U.K., Australia? We've heard that before in effect but Norway where does that come from?

BENJAMIN: I can't understand it. It's a bit of a red herring and there have been cases in the past where odd countries were thrown in. Who knows? I wouldn't want to speculate that he's signaling an attack in Norway but for some reason they threw it in.

WOODRUFF: How are we to assess the fact that these tapes are coming along at the rate that they are and the general message that's coming through on them? I mean how are we to digest all this when you put it all together?

BENJAMIN: Well, I think that the rate at which the message is coming across now is very important because the group needs to show that it is active in this Iraq, post Iraq period. It needs to reassert its claim that it is the true leader of believers, of Muslims, and that it is carrying forward the struggle for Muslim interests. And, so it's very important to show that they're active.

I think there's also another thing going on and that is that Zawahiri and others will want to see if they can get some fire out of the sparks that al Qaeda has thrown off. What I mean by that is that attacks like the one in Casablanca, which may or may not be al Qaeda but may be another group that shares the ideology but it's not part of the organization, they want to encourage more of that and they want to integrate them into the struggle.

WOODRUFF: All right, as somebody who was on the National Security Council, President Bush saying just today 50 percent, I think he said, of al Qaeda we've now done away with. Is this consistent with what we're hearing from what appears to be left of this group?

BENJAMIN: Well, we know that roughly half of the people at the very top have either been arrested or killed and so in that regard the president is right. You know a terrorist group is not the same as a military organization which if you remove 50 percent of it, it can't really continue to fight.

The key thing is that if it has cells that are intact and can carry out operations that's very, very dangerous. There's also a question as to whether the dozen or so who are still out there aren't in fact the most dangerous ones the Egyptian members of the organization.

WOODRUFF: And you're talking about 50 percent of the top. We had a guest last night who was saying in many ways al Qaeda is like a mutating virus at the bottom that it is spreading and reorganizing itself.

I also want to ask you, Daniel Benjamin, about this report today by ABC News that there was a covert effort during your years in the Clinton administration to go after Osama bin Laden but somehow, and the report was that it was then Attorney General Janet Reno put a stop to the whole thing. What do you know about that?

BENJAMIN: Well, I can't go into detail and the person who issued this report should know that he shouldn't be talking about a lot of classified activities as well. But what I can say is that we know from press reports there was plenty -- an effort to get bin Laden in Afghanistan but there were a lot of concerns and the key one was we never had the reliable intelligence to go after that person.

What is also true is that Janet Reno never would have been the person giving the green light or not because she wasn't in the chain of command. The person who would make that decision in the first instance would be the director of Central Intelligence.

WOODRUFF: Huh, all right. Well, so you're not confirming or denying but you're just saying maybe it didn't happen exactly that way?

BENJAMIN: I will say the story that is out there is a garble.

WOODRUFF: OK.

BENJAMIN: OK.

WOODRUFF: We'll leave it at that. Daniel Benjamin, good to see you. Thank you for talking with us tonight.

BENJAMIN: Thanks for having me.

WOODRUFF: We appreciate it.

Well, ordinarily the sight of naval vessels in New York Harbor would be reason to celebrate. Instead this year, like last, Fleet Week in New York is bringing more jitters and it goes without saying extra security.

Festivities began today with a foggy parade of warships up the Hudson River and even though the cloud cover made them impossible to see, we are told that Air Force fighters were patrolling the skies above.

Welcome home to the fleet and yet another case of welcome back to the new normal. Another holiday weekend spent waiting for something to happen, hoping that it doesn't and planning for the worst, more on that side of things from CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA (voice-over): In New York more patrols at bridges and tunnels. In Washington, antiaircraft missile batteries have been deployed and in Los Angeles, air travelers are subject to random searches. The country is on high alert, officials most concerned about a possible attack within the next two days but the head of the FBI says the intelligence is short on specifics.

ROBERT MUELLER, FBI DIRECTOR: I want to point out that we have no specificity as to targets. We have no specificity as to exact time.

ARENA: What officials do have is a high level of chatter or intercepted communications about possible attacks against the United States. Officials are hearing similar threat information from interrogations of people in custody.

But is an attack imminent? Officials say intelligence gathered since the bombings in Saudi Arabia suggest terrorists could strike in the "immediate future" but they quickly add the information points more toward the Gulf region than the United States.

ASA HUTCHINSON, HOMELAND SECURITY UNDERSECRETARY: There is concern worldwide as to the increased terrorist activity. We know that there is an interest in targeting the United States. Our security measures have been somewhat effective but we know that they continue to try to exploit any vulnerabilities.

ARENA: As a result, flight restrictions in the U.S. are in effect including the air space over large sports stadiums. There is more scrutiny at the nation's borders and an increased security presence in the nation's ports. A major concern remains soft targets like shopping malls or sports arenas, especially when there are a large number of people gathered.

JIM WALSH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: There is an endless number of soft targets. You can't predict where they're going to strike and you can't harden every target. There isn't enough money in the treasury to do that. So what you try to do is your prioritize. (END VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA: The FBI in a bulletin today warned state and local partners to remain vigilant, to keep watch for individuals who may be surveilling targets or obtaining explosive materials.

Now some officials say that they believe it is prudent to keep the level at orange at least through the Memorial Day festivities but that is a decision that is reconsidered daily -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: So, Kelli, the people that you're talking to, do they have a sense that there's just something lurking out there that they can't quite get their hands around even an ability to describe it?

ARENA: Exactly. That is exactly what many people have expressed that there is a lot of intelligence coming in that most of it at this point points to something happening overseas but they can't rule out something happening in the United States.

And, as for the timing, Judy, lots of concern about this week; however, ever single counterterrorism official has underscored that terrorists wait for opportunities that usually they don't work off of dates or off of holidays. They do it when they can.

WOODRUFF: Well, that certainly makes practical sense but a cause for a lot of worry. Kelli Arena thanks very much, Kelli our Justice Correspondent.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT for this Wednesday more terror tests but are they really doing any good?

And later, the latest on the Canadian Mad Cow situation and whether you really have anything to worry about.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: One day into threat level orange we got more than just a little chill when this bulletin crossed the wires tonight, an explosion on the campus of Yale University. It happened around 5:00 p.m. in a law school classroom. The room was empty. Nobody was hurt and the damage minor.

Federal officials say it looks to be caused by a bomb but they say there is no indication yet that this was an act of terrorism as such and no claim of responsibility for now. Just the same officials from the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force have been called to the scene.

Well, the explosion ended a fairly nerve-racking day, not the first one, and according to our next guest almost certainly not the last. Stephen Flynn is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He's with us tonight in New York. Stephen Flynn, since the term homeland security became a familiar one to all of us after 9/11, do you think this country is any safer than it was then? STEPHEN FLYNN, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: I remain deeply concerned that we are dangerously unprepared to prevent and respond effectively to a catastrophic terrorist attack on U.S. soil. This is a very difficult thing for a country to do. We built our national security establishment essentially to deal with problems away from us and just very dramatically illustrated by our budget.

We'll be spending $400 million this year on conventional military capability when we include the war in Iraq, and yet we spend less than one-twentieth of that on programs that we could describe as homeland security here at home.

We have an adversary, and this is ironic because one of the results perhaps of the war success of the three weeks in Iraq will make all our adversaries essentially look and say there is just no sense going toe-to-toe with American forces in the conventional realm.

The incentive for going to 9/11 style attacks for any of our future adversaries has likely gone up and we need to simply adapt ourselves to that new reality beyond just simply stating high alerts.

WOODRUFF: As we've been reporting this is Fleet Week in New York. What about the ports in the United States? How much safer are they or how much has been done to harden the security around American ports?

FLYNN: Well, one of the things as a number of folks have said is we can't protect everything and we have 361 ports in our country. What we can begin to do at least is begin to take assessments. OK, what's important? What might the consequences be and how much investment should we make as a nation?

There are only eight ports in this country that have just received a vulnerability assessment. For the last six months, no Coast Guard has gone into any port because of budget problems.

So, in the eight ports that were studied were really small ports. We haven't gotten to any of the major ones like New York, New Jersey, or L.A. So, we haven't even begun to get the data about just how vulnerable these ports really are. We know they are.

WOODRUFF: Are you just saying that this is a hopeless case here that they're -- I mean when you describe eight of 360-some it sounds like it's something we may never get to assessing?

FLYNN: Doing an assessment is not as painful an enterprise but you got to have resources. You got to have money and the problem is the money dedicated for this was reprogrammed away for other things that aren't port security related.

We have spent in this country only $100 million so far on protecting our ports. We have spent $5 billion this year protecting U.S. bases from terror. We're spending more money protecting San Diego with its Navy fleet there than we are on all the other commercial ports combined. And this is crazy because if I'm a terrorist coming into the U.S., am I going to go after a Navy combatant here in our port that's well defended or do I go to a place like L.A.-Long Beach where 43 percent of all the containers that feed our economy are there for which there is so few security measures in place?

WOODRUFF: Well, I guess if there are any would-be terrorists listening they know it now if they didn't already. What about -- what are you saying -- where are you saying the fault lies? Are you saying it lies with an administration that is allocating resources the way it is or what?

FLYNN: Well, first of all we know there's real problems because criminals have taken advantage of this for a long, long time, but -- so the bad guys do know how open the system is because they've been exploiting it to move drugs, illegal migrants, and so forth.

But the reality is if you really cut to the chase that the focus of Washington really has been to say this is too hard doing homeland security. It's too expensive, takes too long. It's too much government. So, therefore, we need to focus all our energies on the away game, eliminate this at the source.

We need to do both. We certainly need to do all we can do to eliminate terrorists at the source but just like the Israelis know you're not going to deter them just simply by running them to ground.

We have a great deal of vulnerabilities and it could cause mass disruption in our society and we got to begin the step of assessing that and investing resources to our first responders and so forth and we got to treat this like a way on the home front like we've done overseas and we just haven't started to do that.

WOODRUFF: All right, the message very clear coming from Stephen Flynn with the Council on Foreign Relations. Good to see you, thank you very much.

FLYNN: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: And coming up on NEWSNIGHT, where does the beef that you eat come from? We'll look at that question in light of a discovery of Mad Cow Disease in Canada as we continue.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: More news from around the country this evening, beginning in Buffalo. A seventh man charged in upstate New York for undergoing military training in an al Qaeda military camp in Afghanistan. He joins six others who attended the camp and heard Osama bin Laden speak. The man, a U.S. citizen, is at large and believed to be in Yemen.

In Skokie, Illinois, two adults were charged in connection with a high school hazing incident. Both adults were charged with misdemeanors that involve buying or delivering alcohol to minors. And, what could be called a compromise today on Capitol Hill, House and Senate negotiators agreed to a $350 billion ten-year tax cut package. It was a close call. Vice President Dick Cheney had to weigh in to cobble together a final agreement.

And finally in Florida, where an Appeals Court overturned a class-action lawsuit that was seen by tobacco companies as a death warrant, the original verdict ordered the companies to pay smokers $145 billion in punitive damages and $12.7 million in compensatory damages. The court decided that the damages were "grossly excessive."

Well, not long ago Canada's prime minister made a point of sleeping in a Toronto hotel trying to ease concerns about SARS. Well, today the disease was Mad Cow and Jean Chretien had prime Alberta steak, medium, for lunch, a day after a case emerged in that part of Canada.

Today, Mexico, Japan, and South Korea all joined the United States in banning Canadian beef. Most of us don't think of our steak or hamburger as having a nationality but they do have a nationality and it's not always easy to figure out the point of origin.

Here's CNN's Gary Tuchman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN (voice-over): A butcher and a slab of boned chuck roast being readied for the grocer's meat display case.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They come from Colorado (unintelligible).

TUCHMAN: It comes from Colorado?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Colorado, uh huh.

TUCHMAN: Right now the only way to find out where your boneless chuck, ground beef, or other cuts of meat come from is to ask but there is no requirement the answer has to be accurate or even known.

(on camera): When you buy your ground beef, do you ever worry about where it came from?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I just bless it.

TUCHMAN: You just bless it?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TUCHMAN: The beef American buy could be from anywhere in the United States, from North Dakota to Nebraska to California to Colorado, and it could also be from elsewhere, most frequently Australia, New Zealand, and yes Canada.

(voice-over): The National Cattlemen's Beef Association estimates seven percent of beef sold in the United States comes from Canada. Nearly 1.1 million live Canadian cattle are brought to the U.S. each year. Canadian imports are being stopped for the time being and Canadian beef already here will remain on U.S. shelves.

However, so far Canadian officials are only dealing with one Mad Cow case and the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture says Americans should not be worries.

ANN VENEMAN, U.S. SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE: The consumer should be assured that whether it comes from the United States or another country that it meets the strict standards that we have in the United States.

TUCHMAN: State agriculture officials have been told by Washington to be prepared to provide information on Canadian cattle in their states.

TOMMY IRVIN, GEORGIA SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE: We should always be concerned but we're not alarmed. We think we have in place the necessary protection to protect our consumers.

TUCHMAN: And a new element of protection will soon be part of U.S. law. Beef sold in stores will require a label stating the origin of the cut of meat. That takes effect October 2004.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN: The cow in question has been traced to three different farms in the Canadian province of Alberta. All the farms have been quarantined and additional cattle testing is taking place right now. Those results are expected by the beginning of next week. Judy, back to you.

WOODRUFF: All right. Gary Tuchman, reporting for us tonight from Atlanta. Thanks, Gary.

We're going to continue our look at mad cow in a moment. We're going to talk with a senior researcher from Consumers Union about the illness and how it is being handled.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Next on NEWSNIGHT, more on the mad cow situation. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: More now on the case of mad cow disease discovered in Canada, the first in a decade. Canada's Prime Minister Jean Chretien said today, quote, "we hope and pray, and we have all indication that it is one cow in one herd."

Our guest tonight is less optimistic. He says it would be highly unlikely for only one cow to be affected. Michael Hansen is senior research scientist for the Consumers Union, and he is in New York.

Michael Hansen, first of all, before I ask about that, if this cow was killed in January, why are we just now finding out about this in late may? MICHAEL HANSEN, CONSUMERS UNION, SENIOR RESEARCH SCIENTIST: Because, Judy, what happened with the cow is it was killed in January, but the head of the cow was put in the queue and wasn't tested for the first time until last Friday, on May 16. So it basically -- there was a long line of other animals in front of it that needed to be tested so it sat someplace for over 3 1/2 months.

WOODRUFF: Are all animals that die tested?

HANSEN: No. In Canada, it looks like only 1,000 animals on average each year are tested. In the United States, we tested last year about 20,000 cattle.

WOODRUFF: Interesting, though, that it took five months for this particular one to be tested.

What about the prime minister's comment that we -- we hope, he said, we pray that it's just one cow in one herd.

HANSEN: Well, we can hope and pray for that, but since this animal was born in 1995, it surely did not come from the United Kingdom since they cut off all movement of animals from the United Kingdom to the U.S. and Canada in 1989. So that suggests that this was something that the cow ate probably about five years ago, and it probably wasn't just the -- the material probably wasn't fed to just one cow. So there's a good chance that there have been other animals that received that same feed.

WOODRUFF: So what are we talking about here? I mean, what -- I don't -- I'm not going to -- I don't want to be alarmist, but what's the worst case scenario? What could we be looking at here in Canada?

HANSEN: Well, the worst case scenario I guess, is that there is more animals that haven't been found yet. There's also a problem. We know the animal was rendered, and that means, after it was slaughtered, it did not go into the human food chain, but the Canadian government did say it was rendered, and usually that material goes into either pet food or animal feed.

And since there was a 3 1/2 month period, that facility where the rendering happened and if it went into pet food or animal feed, the facility, the feed mill, those could have been contaminated. So all the stuff that was produced between the end of January, the beginning of February, and last Friday, or up until today, would have to ultimately be traced because that could potentially be tainted feed that could be going to feed animals elsewhere.

WOODRUFF: You're saying clearly that some Canadians should be worried. What about Americans? Should Americans be worried?

HANSEN: Well, since Canada ships their beef from -- 90 percent of the beef that they export comes to the United States, and as was pointed out, 1.1 million cattle come from last year from Canada to the United States. And from Alberta alone last year, over 511,000 cattle were shipped into the United States. So if there were any animals that were problematic, they could have been put into meat and shipped down to the U.S. or they could have gone into animal feed or pet food, and that could have been distributed.

HANSEN: Well, the question on everybody's mind is should they eat beef? What do you say to people? Do you eat beef? I mean, what should people do?

HANSEN: Well, I for a long time -- I'm not a -- I haven't eaten much red meat that much.

But what I tell people is we don't know what the size of this risk is. It could be vanishingly small, or it could be larger. So people just have to be informed. And so what I tell them, if you really like to eat meat, then you might try to take some actions because, if an animal is infected, most of the material is going to be in the central nervous system, in the brain and spinal cord.

So that means it might not be a good idea to eat brains, for example. There's 1 million brains that get sold and eaten in the U.S. every year. Also, processed meat products should be next on the list because you don't know what parts of the animal are in there...

WOODRUFF: But cut steaks and hamburger?

HANSEN: Well cut steaks would be less of a risk. But hamburger, part of the way that can be cut off the animal is there is a process called "mechanical meat recovery," automatic meat recovery systems, which can potentially contaminate hamburgers with parts of the central nervous system.

So I would tell people, if they really like hamburger, then what they should do is just buy a cut of meat and watch them grind it. You could also go for either organic, which wouldn't be fed this stuff, or grass-fed beef as well.

WOODRUFF: Well, all advice for us to think about this evening. Michael Hansen, thank you very much for talking with us, with the Consumers Union.

HANSEN: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: We appreciate it.

And ahead on NEWSNIGHT, we're going to talk with Judith Miller of "The New York Times" about the continuing search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Oops. We're telling you who the winner is. Hope nobody on the West Coast is watching.

An especially -- in the look at our "World Roundup" now, an especially damaging and deadly earthquake starts our look at the stories making news around the globe.

It struck the North African country of Algeria early in the evening local time doing extensive damage to a number of cities, including the capital. Entire buildings collapsed, including a hospital in the city of Abu Mardas. Reports are upwards of 450 people have been killed, at least 2,400 have been hurt and many more find themselves without power or even homes to go back to.

And just about 50 years since the first two men did it, 13 more climbers can now say "Top of the world, ma." A team of Chinese, South Korean, and American mountaineers reached the summit of Mount Everest today. The team included a 20-year-old, who is believed to be the youngest American to succeed. They and a record number of other people are climbing the mountain this month to celebrate Edmund Hillary and Kense Norge becoming the first to reach the summit May 29, 1953.

Well, we haven't had much to report lately about the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Ever since the discovery of two mobile laboratories, the story has largely gone quiet. But not for long, we expect.

Today in the pages of "The New York Times," Judith Miller and William Broad report that the verdict is in. As far as intelligence agencies are concerned, the labs couldn't be anything but germ factories.

Judith Miller is with us tonight in New York. Judy, good to see you again.

JUDITH MILLER, "NEW YORK TIMES": Nice to be back.

WOODRUFF: How can intelligence authorities be so convinced that these are germ weapons-making labs if they don't have the evidence with them to be absolutely convincing?

MILLER: Well, Judy, three different sets of experts went over these labs. They not only went through them, they kind of took them apart bit by bit. They studied them from an engineering standpoint. They drew schematics to figure out what would go on inside these factories, and they basically concluded at the end of this extensive process, part of which I witnessed in Iraq, that there really wasn't any other plausible explanation for them or any other plausible use for them except as mobile germ factories.

WOODRUFF: So they found no biological agents, and they didn't find the equipment to make biological agents. In a way, this is a circumstantial case?

MILLER: No -- no, they did find the equipment. The equipment inside one of those facilities, one of those little units was precisely what you would need to make biological agents. And, in fact, they even did an estimate of how much each one of these units could make.

WOODRUFF: But still -- but no --no precise evidence that the equipment was used to make the germ weapons?

MILLER: No, that's because -- in fact, what they did find were traces of a caustic agent, which is believed to be either bleach or ammonia, something that decontaminated the units at some point. Basically, the experts don't know when.

WOODRUFF: Now, Judy, these are U.S. intelligence officials...

MILLER: And British. And British.

WOODRUFF: And British that you're talking to.

MILLER: Yes.

WOODRUFF: Is this likely to be accepted by the international, the U.N. weapons inspectors?

MILLER: Well, just to be certain, it was announced yesterday in Baghdad that the Americans were going to invite an international team of experts in to go through the labs -- I should say the factories, as they have done, so that the international experts too can come to a conclusion. So I think we'll soon have more than just a coalition view on this.

WOODRUFF: What about chemical weapons? Have they made any progress in that direction?

MILLER: Not as much. I think what the group that I was traveling with, Med Alpha, which is part of the exploitation task force, which has been on the ground now for over three months, they found bits and pieces of programs. They found precursors. They found chemicals that would be used in weapons.

But I think, ever since mid-April, when the Americans were told in Iraq that they weren't going to find stockpiles because Saddam Hussein had destroyed them all or sent some of them to Syria, I think the focus of the weapons hunters have really shifted from looking for stockpiles to looking for a research and development program.

WOODRUFF: How important do you think it is to the international community that the Bush administration, that the U.S. and the British do turn up some sort of hard proof that there were these weapons of mass destruction capability in Iraq?

MILLER: Well, I think it's quite important to the Bush administration because, after all, before the war began, the existence, or the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction was one of the primary justifications cited by Bush administration officials for this war, for the invasion.

So if they don't find more than what they found to date, I think some people will say and will conclude that the administration oversold this argument in order to build support for the war at home. I'm not sure, ultimately, Judy, how significant it will be because, when you look at the president's poll ratings, you see that they are enormously high. People seem ready to kind of move on. But were to some thing else -- if something else were to happen in the Middle East or if there were some proliferation of agents or chemical weapons, you know, the focus might shift back.

WOODRUFF: Well, we assume that they are still looking, and we know that Judy Miller is going to continue to report on what they're finding.

(CROSSTALK)

WOODRUFF: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, "Segment Seven" and the story of one of L.A.'s most famous murder cases possibly solved by the son of the murderer.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: It's a shocking crime story from California, and we're not talking about the murder of Laci Peterson.

This is a story of L.A. noir -- the murder of a beautiful young woman that happened more than a half-century ago and still stirs as much interest as if it happened yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF (voice-over): For nearly 60 years, it has been the perfect lurid L.A. murder mystery. Legions of amateur detectives, millions of words in news print, dozens of "whodunit" theories -- a case made in tabloid heaven.

STEVE HODEL, RET. DETECTIVE, LOS ANGELES: Detectives of that day had never seen anything like it. I have never seen anything like that in the 300 murders I've come across.

WOODRUFF: Steve Hodel spent more than two decades as a homicide cop in Los Angeles. Now retired at age 61, he's talking about the murder of this raven-haired young woman, Elizabeth Short, found dead and horribly mutilated in a vacant lot. It was 1947.

HODEL: Her body had been bisected in half cleanly, surgically. Vicious lacerations to the face and breasts. It had been exsanguinated -- completely drained of blood. Her hair had been washed. Her whole body had been washed and scrubbed clean. They actually found fibers from a scrub brush on the body. It had been posed, deliberately and carefully posed.

WOODRUFF: Because one witness told a reporter that Elizabeth Short had liked a special kind of flower in her hair, she became known as the Black Dahlia, a haunting name that dominated the headlines for months and a case that, to this day, is considered open by the Los Angeles Police Department.

HODEL: Most likely, the bathtub of the Franklin residence here was the actual crime scene.

WOODRUFF: Now, 56 years after the murder, Steve Hodel believes he has solved the case. He's written a book about it -- naming the killer as the man who once owned this garish house in Hollywood, a man he says who killed many other women as well but was never arrested.

HODEL: It was a house of horrors, and I've come to discover this is most probably the actual crime scene, based on witnesses, statements that saw bloody clothing here, bloody sheets at the time of the murder, and other statements that have come from witnesses.

WOODRUFF: But the real show stopper is this. The killer, Steve Hodel believes, was his own father -- a surgeon named Dr. George Hodel who left The United States in 1950 to spend most of the rest of his life in Asia. He died in 1999.

HODEL: Here I am sitting on father's lap. This, to me, is one of the most remarkable photographs. Father has just come in from killing Aura Murray (ph), one of the victims in my book. He's about to go out and kill Georgette Bourdorf (ph), another victim. Here sitting on his lap is the future L.A.P.D. homicide detective who ultimately solved the Black Dahlia and the other murders.

WOODRUFF: This tiny palm-sized photo album is what started Steve Hodel on his journey. It belonged to his father, and inside -- mesmerizing pictures.

HODEL: Here's a photograph of a strikingly beautiful young woman -- appears to be in her early twenties -- with flowers in her hair. In one, she appears to be nude from the shoulders up, as the shot shows.

WOODRUFF: Those photos, Hodel says, are, in fact, of Elizabeth Short, and he's not the only one who believes it.

STEVE KAY, ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY, LOS ANGELES: I came to the conclusion that he did have enough evidence to file two of the cases -- the murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, and the murder of Jean French, known as the Red Lipstick Murder.

WOODRUFF: Steve Kay has been a prosecutor in Los Angeles for 37 years and has read all of Steve Hodel's notes and seen all of the pictures. Circumstantial evidence, yes, but convincing.

KAY: In this type of a case with circumstantial evidence, it's like putting a puzzle together, and when the pieces are all put together, you're left with an inescapable conclusion of Dr. Hodel's guilt.

WOODRUFF: Dr. George Hodel was arrested two years after the Black Dahlia murder, charged with incest against his own daughter. A jury found him innocent. But just after he was freed, the district attorney's office opened a mammoth investigation, wiretapping his phone.

Only weeks ago, the transcripts of those wiretaps have come to light, and at one point, Dr. George Hodel does mention the infamous crime. HOTEL: He's talking to a man with a German accent -- my father is -- and here's the quote from the officer's recording. One statement made to the German was as follows, "Supposin' I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead."

HODEL: Even with all that, Steve Hodel's theory is still bathed in controversy. There are other theories. Another doctor may have done it, says a different author. An earlier book says even a third man is guilty. Officially, the murder is still considered unsolved. A case that will not die. A mystery that still endures.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Fifty years later. Some kind of mystery.

Well, still ahead on NEWSNIGHT -- another member of the Bush administration decides to leave. And how long will it take to get the peace process going between Israel and the Palestinians? That and more in our next half hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Tomorrow the U.N. Security Council is expected to approve a resolution lifting 13 years of economic sanctions on Iraq. France, Russia and Germany signed on today, backing an American proposal that would let the U.S.-led coalition run Iraq until there is a recognized government in place.

On that note, Iraq's civilian administrator pushed back the timetable a bit, saying that the first steps toward an interim government may not happen until mid-July. The reason is plain to see. Here's CNN's Ben Wedeman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Eighteen -- year- old Walid Abdullah (ph) hasn't had much of a chance to see the new Baghdad. Shortly after the Americans entered the city, he joined in the looting of a fuel storage facility when it exploded. Burns cover 65 percent of his body. Doctors are doing all they can with what they have, which isn't much.

Washington's new man in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, has promised to restore law and order. He started his day Wednesday by reopening a jail, once for political detainees, now cleaned up, repainted and waiting for looters and common criminals. We spoke to many people in Baghdad who thought the opening of the jail was great news, but the cells are empty. The jail still has no electricity or running water.

PAUL BREMER, CHIEF CIVILIAN ADMINISTRATOR: It's very important for people to realize this city is not an anarchy city. People are going about their business well. I spent an hour flying over the city yesterday and looking at markets that are open, traffic that is flowing, people that are going about their business. WEDEMAN: What appears open and flowing from the air looks a lot different from the ground. It's a mess. Garbage once collected by the authorities now burns and smolders in the streets. In some parts of town, kids sniff glue. In Saddam's time, they would have been arrested. Now they do what they like.

Over and over, you hear the same question: Why don't the Americans do more?

"I know the Americans can make Iraq into a paradise," says this Kurdish businessman. "But they'd better hurry up and do something before it's too late."

In the new Baghdad, everything seems upside-down. In a country floating on oil, you can wait all day to fill your tank. Oil production has dropped dramatically since the war, and many of the trucks that once delivered fuel have been stolen or destroyed.

"Security, security, security" repeats store owner Mohammed. "That's what we need most, and that's what we don't have."

(on camera): Iraqis have a deep fear of the dangers posed by the disorder. In the lawlessness, they see the beginnings of the breakdown of their society. Few people miss the old regime, but they're still searching for clear signs that the new one has truly taken control.

Ben Wedeman, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: We're pleased to be joined now by "Newsweek" magazine's Melinda Liu, who has spent a considerable length of time in Iraq during and after the war. She's with us tonight in New York.

Melinda Liu, you did some remarkable reporting from Iraq during the war. And listening to this report just now from Ben Wedeman, are you surprised that so little progress has been made since the war ended?

MELINDA LIU, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, "NEWSWEEK": I'm not at all surprised, Judy. It was an amazingly successful military campaign, but I think armies are generally better at making war than they are at making peace. And it -- the level of devastation from the looting that I saw even before I left Baghdad was so intense and so devastating that I think it'll take a long, long time for the damage to be repaired.

WOODRUFF: You were just telling me before we went on the air that to you, the damage from the looting is worse than what was done by the war itself.

LIU: Yes. I mean, I was in Baghdad through the bombing. I spent more than three months in Baghdad non-stop, and I was really struck by how surgical and how precise the bombardment was. It was really the most, you know, amazing of the high-tech war that one could imagine. But the looting that followed was -- in its ferocity and its depth, it was almost medieval. I mean, people were carting away everything, including racehorses that had belonged to Uday, the son of Saddam Hussein, things that they couldn't even use, broken things. It'll take a long time to put that all back together again.

WOODRUFF: Tom Friedman wrote today in "The New York Times" -- there were a couple of things I wanted to cite. He said in socioeconomic terms, he said, we were at war with the Flintstones. What does that mean to you?

LIU: Yes and no. Saddam's reign in Baghdad had impoverished the country. No question about it. He basically stole the country blind. However, in contrast to Afghanistan, Iraq had once upon a time been a middle-class, actually pretty well-to-do society. They had oil money. So in the end, ironically, there was more looting -- worse looting in Iraq than there was in Afghanistan because there was more to loot. People knew that there was money out there. There were monied things. There were skyscrapers. There were amazing pieces of furniture and gold bars and things. And they wanted to look and find them.

WOODRUFF: What is it that the United States can do right now? I mean, another thing -- another point Tom Friedman makes today is this can be won, if it's gone about the right way, but you listen to that report from Baghdad and our Ben Wedeman, and it sounds like there's so much more to be done, it is almost -- I mean, it's enough to lead anyone, you know, throwing their hands up in the air.

LIU: Absolutely. I think there's -- from the very beginning, there has to be one basic decision. Is the U.S. administration going to try to create a democratic government in Iraq, or is it going to try to extricate quickly from Iraq? These two things can both be done, but they can't be both done at the same -- simultaneously. To make a democratic administration in Iraq will take a long time. You can't do it quickly. And that acknowledgement has to come.

WOODRUFF: What are -- what is a decision or two that you -- that the U.S. you see has to make in the short term, to determine which way it's going to go?

LIU: Well, ironically, I think in the very beginning, some of the Americans thought it would reassure the Iraqis to tell them, We're only going to be here for a short period of time, and then we'll turn everything over to Iraqis. Believe it or not, a lot of Iraqis would like to see Americans hang around for a little bit longer because they're quite afraid that Saddam himself or his cronies or people who are influenced by him will just play a waiting game, and then come back and try to take things over again, once the Americans leave or, indeed, once American attention subsides.

So I think right now, unfortunately, it sounds a little bit heavy-handed, but I think the message has to be, We're here. We want to do it right, even if it's going to take a long time.

WOODRUFF: All right, Melinda Liu with "Newsweek" magazine. She was in Baghdad throughout the war, before and after. And again, some remarkable reporting from over there. Melinda, thanks very much for talking to us.

LIU: Thanks.

WOODRUFF: Well, there was more back-and-forth today between Israelis and Palestinians. Israel's foreign minister said today that Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas needs to crack down on terror or risk losing legitimacy. Abbas said that Israel's constant movement into Palestinian-controlled areas does nothing but, quote, "deepen the hatred between the two peoples." Israel's push into those areas has involved more than just Palestinians. There are outsiders there, as well. They say they are there to support the Palestinian people and cause. Israel says they are meddling in a war zone and bad things can happen in war zones. The story from CNN's Kelly Wallace.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do not shoot us (UNINTELLIGIBLE) people!

KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): An activist shouting at Israeli soldiers in the Gaza strip last month, a member of a pro-Palestinian rights group which says it tries to monitor and prevent Israeli military actions against Palestinian civilians, a dangerous mission, just how dangerous proven later, when a fellow activist, 21-year-old Tom Hurndall of England, is shot in the head. His parents told us they understand he was trying to help two little Palestinian children who were caught in a dangerous spot after shots rang out. They believe he was shot by an Israeli soldiers. Now he is brain-dead, in a coma.

ANTHONY HURNDALL, FATHER OF PEACE ACTIVIST: Yes, they're putting themselves in danger, but what they're trying to do is to prevent something which is unlawful and they view as an act of terror and intimidation. And they are bravely standing up to that.

KELLY: But the Israel Defense Forces charges these activists, members of a group called the International Solidarity Movement, have gone too far and now the army has launched a crackdown. The Israeli soldiers raided one of the group's offices, with three people arrested, one maybe deported. This after the group revealed that the two British men who carried out the recent Tel Aviv suicide bombing briefly visited an International Solidarity Movement apartment in the Gaza strip five days before the attack, along with some other people. The group called a news conference to declare the two men have no link to the organization.

HUWAIDA ARRAF, INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT SPOKESWOMAN: We ran into them while they were visiting Gaza, but our encounter with them was very brief, and I don't believe that there's anything we could have done to foresee this kind of action or to prevent it.

KELLY: The Israeli government said its decision to limit the group's movements is not connected to the Tel Aviv attack but to the actions of the activists.

JONATHAN PELED, ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER SPOKESMAN: They don't actually necessarily have to put themselves at life's risk and -- and confront bulldozers, tanks and Israeli soldiers in war zones. I think that's sort of very, very irresponsible and dangerous.

KELLY: In March, 23-year-old Rachel Quarry (ph) of the United States was run over and killed by an Israeli bulldozer as she tried to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home. Almost two months later, in the same area, James Miller, a British journalist, was shot. The autopsy results suggest it is highly probable he was killed by Israeli fire. It was partly because of these incidents that the Israeli government announced that journalists and foreign nationals who enter the Gaza strip must now sign a waiver freeing the IDF of responsibility if something happens.

Critics charge the Israeli army is trying to restrict coverage of its military operations, but the government says it cannot be responsible for areas in the Gaza strip it does not control.

Kelly Wallace, CNN, Jerusalem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: More now on the prospects for peace in the Middle East, which have dimmed considerably after a weekend of deadly suicide bombings. Some fear that the so-called road map to peace has actually become a roadblock. And there's pressure on the White House to get things on track. "The New York Times" reported today that President Bush is considering a trip to the region where he could potentially meet with both leaders.

We want to talk about the situation with Gideon Rose. He is the managing editor of "Foreign Affairs," and he's in New York tonight.

Gideon Rose, do you think the president will go?

GIDEON ROSE, MANAGING EDITOR, "FOREIGN AFFAIRS": I doubt it, actually, because there's not much to be gained except the appearance of trying. And I don't think this administration is going to put his personal capital on the line for that.

WOODRUFF: Do you think, though, that they must be debating it seriously for it to make the pages of "The Times"?

ROSE: There are some people in the administration who really want to do whatever they can to try to make the road map work, and there are others in the administration who think it's wise to be seen to be trying. Whether they'll actually commit the president's personal authority and time is doubtful, I think.

WOODRUFF: It sounds like you're saying the latter group is the group that's winning, at this point.

ROSE: Well, the -- the administration has been very leery about getting involved in this conflict and following the Clinton administration down what they see as the primrose path to direct involvement and humiliation, when the parties themselves aren't really ready to make peace. But it's also gotten a lot of attacks for staying out. So they've come up with this plan, but they're clearly not all that attached to it, and the president himself has to keep saying, I really mean it this time. I really am in favor of it. But that's, I think, a measure of how the fact that few people outside the administration really do think they have their heart in it.

WOODRUFF: Well, that's what I -- I mean, you're getting at exactly what I want to ask you. Short of the president going over there himself, what can the Bush White House or the Bush administration do to tell the Palestinians -- to say to the Palestinians and the Israelis, We really do mean this. We care.

ROSE: Well, the basic problem here is that the United States wants peace and a settlement, quite frankly, at this point, more than the local parties themselves do, and that's true of all the outsiders. And in that situation, it's going to be very, very difficult to bring about any kind of reconciliation. The parties have shown they can't do it themselves, and the outsiders really are leery about exerting too much pressure or stepping the middle of it themselves.

So the road map, while well-intentioned, is almost certainly doomed to failure, and the kinds of steps that would have to be taken by outsiders are so great, to really get things going, that it's unlikely that anybody, particularly this administration, will take them.

WOODRUFF: That's a pretty grim assessment. Do you mean to be so bleak?

ROSE: Yes, unfortunately. The Oslo peace process fell apart, and with it most hopes of a settlement that could be reached by the parties themselves. And right now, the Israelis feel deeply burned by the breakdown of talks. The Palestinians launched the intifada and have spent essentially two years beating their heads up against an Israeli wall and getting nothing to show for it except making the Israelis even more skeptical. And while there are some Palestinians and a number of Israelis who really would like to see all this end and agree on something like the Clinton plan of 2000, two states living together, they just don't have the institutional capacity to control the militants and terrorists who want to see conflict continue.

WOODRUFF: Al Qaeda activity elsewhere, in Riyadh and perhaps in Casablanca, or wherever it's active, having any bearing on the Middle East right now?

ROSE: Well, I mean, it's -- they're separate issues. Al Qaeda and the Palestinian issue are not organically connected, I think. But essentially, American involvement in the region has not been as active in the Palestinian arena as in the Iraqi arena, but even in Iraq, we haven't done enough, as you heard from the previous segment.

So I think that the al Qaeda involvement and activity will be enough to keep us involved in the region, but it's going to make the Bush administration even leerier of getting their feet too deep into Israeli-Palestinian issues for fear that in addition to dealing with al Qaeda terrorism, they might actually have to become direct targets of Palestinian terrorism.

WOODRUFF: We're going to have to leave it there. Gideon Rose with a pretty bleak assessment of what's going on in the Middle East. But we very much thank you for talking with us.

ROSE: Thanks. I wish I could be more optimistic.

WOODRUFF: As do we all.

As NEWSNIGHT continues, another loss for the Bush administration as EPA chief Christie Whitman says she's going back to New Jersey. And Annika Sorenstam finally plays some golf at the Colonial.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: The increase in the terror threat level touched many places today, including a major Republican fund-raiser attended by President Bush. Security was stepped up for the fund-raiser, the 2003 President's Dinner. It's an annual event, and organizers were expecting their biggest crowd ever, with more than 7,500 attending the event at the new Washington Convention Center. Tickets were $2,500 a plate, but many donors have contributed much more to Republican candidates.

As the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christie Todd Whitman has not always seen eye to eye with her boss, the president. Well, today Whitman said she was leaving, and she was quick to say that it wasn't because she was fighting with the White House. Whitman says it's because she has a family she doesn't see enough of. The story from CNN's Bruce Morton.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Christine Todd Whitman is stepping down as head of the EPA, saying, like press secretary Ari Fleischer earlier this week, it's just time to go home.

CHRISTIE TODD WHITMAN, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY: My husband and I have been married 29 years. For 26-and-a-half of them we lived together. The last 2-and-a-half we haven't. And we like it better the other way.

MORTON: Her resignation's been predicted often, an environment- friendly EPA head in a pro-business administration. And she did early on announce that the president was for mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide emissions only to have him say a week later that he wasn't. But she's had successes, too, imposing a tough Hudson River clean-up paid for by General Electric, issuing tough new standards for diesel fuel emissions, for example.

WHITMAN: I'm not leaving because of clashes with the administration. In fact, I haven't had any. I report to the president. He has always asked me to give him by best, unadulterated advice. I've always done that, and we have been on the same page.

MORTON: How did she do in her two-and-a-half years? It depends on whom you ask.

JERRY TAYLOR, CATO INSTITUTE: The more environmental policy is in the newspaper and the more it's in the airwaves, the worse Republicans are for it. And so I think it's rather clear the administration gave Christie Todd Whitman a directive, which is, Keep out of the press. Keep a low profile. Don't get me in trouble. Don't make waves. And to the extent possible, I think she's tried to do that.

PHILIP CLAPP, NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL TRUST: I would probably give her an A for effort and a D for performance. And the A for effort is because she tried to move this administration in the direction of some much more progressive environmental policies, but the White House preferred to listen much more to industry lobbyists than to its EPA administrator.

MORTON: Whitman, who served two terms as New Jersey's governor, said she had no plans to run for office but ruled nothing out. She leaves an unusual legacy -- not a bill or a monument, but a Scotch terrier named Barney, a Whitman gift to the Bush family. She gave them a dog. Her husband gave her...

WHITMAN: When my husband gives me roses for Mother's Day saying, Welcome home, you know it's time to go home.

MORTON: Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Well, we'd all like to leave some kind of legacy.

Up next on NEWSNIGHT, golfer Annika Sorenstam gets ready to take on the big boys.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: We can imagine that it just might be a night of tossing and turning for golfer Annika Sorenstam. Tomorrow begins the Colonial tournament in Fort Worth, Texas, and she admits to having some butterflies about competing with the men of the PGA tour. But compete she will. Here's CNN's Josie Karp.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOSIE KARP, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was just a pro- am, and because of heavy rain, she played only 10 holes. But Annika Sorenstam learned quickly on Wednesday that while she is playing the same game, she's doing it in a different world.

ANNIKA SORENSTAM, GOLFER: I've never seen anything like it. I mean, last time I saw a crowd like this was the U.S. Open on a Sunday.

KARP: They lined the fairways, cheered her shots and wore $3 buttons that urged, "Go Annika." When Sorenstam tees off for real at 8:58 Thursday morning, even more people will crowd in to offer support or pass judgment. Either way, the most watched golfer in the world proclaimed herself ready to play.

SORENSTAM: Today I was a little more calm than yesterday, so I felt like I hit some good shots. I can't prepare anymore. I mean, I've been -- I've been waiting for this day for a long time. I've been practicing a lot the last few months and, you know, I went the day to come. You know, it's here, so...

KARP: Sorenstam still views her appearance as a personal test, yet that provided her no shelter from the larger controversy this week. While she was on the course, male players debated whether the PGA tour by-laws should change. Currently, there are no gender restrictions.

DAVID TOMS, GOLFER: Do you not think that the atmosphere this week is some sort -- somewhat of a circus-type deal?. If we think that this is not the direction we need to go and we need to take action, then we'll vote on it. But to me, I -- you know, what'd you see?

KARP (on camera): Sorenstam estimated that when rain drove her off the course, she was no worse than one over par. But then she added she really wasn't keeping score. On Thursday, that will change dramatically. Everyone will be keeping score. Josie Karp, CNN, Fort Worth.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: We're all hoping she gets a good night's sleep tonight.

That's NEWSNIGHT for tonight. Thank you for watching. I'm Judy Woodruff. I'll see you tomorrow. Good night.

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





Security; Mad Cow Disease Found in Canada>


Aired May 21, 2003 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again, everyone.
On a day when security went up around the nation, when the Pentagon deployed antiaircraft missile systems around us here in Washington, when any flights over sporting events were halted because of the fear or an attack, on a day like this it was a voice no one wanted to hear, the voice of someone said to be Osama bin Laden's right-hand man calling for more terror. The key question that we'll begin looking at tonight was he really the one we think he was?

So, it is the tape that begins the whip tonight. Nic Robertson has been working on that story for us, Nic the headline.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Judy, this tape calls for attacks on U.S., British, Australian, and Norwegian embassies and interests around the world. The question is was it really Ayman al-Zawahiri's voice on that tape?

WOODRUFF: All right, Nic, and we'll come back to you for that story.

And, meantime, more security measures were going into place today after the increase yesterday in the terror threat level. Kelli Arena is on that tonight, Kelli the headline.

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Judy, officials say that they are most concerned about a possible attack within the next few days but they insist that the intelligence is still short on specifics.

WOODRUFF: All right, Kelli, and we'll come back to you as well.

More now on the case of Mad Cow Disease found in Canada and a question, do you know where your beef comes from? Gary Tuchman is on that story for us, Gary the headline.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Judy, the U.S. imports one billion pounds of beef from Canada each year so how do you know if your beef comes from Canada or elsewhere for that matter? The answer it's hard to tell but it's going to get easier -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: We're all going to be watching that one, back with all of you in just a moment.

Also coming up tonight on NEWSNIGHT, we're going to talk with "New York Times" reporter Judith Miller on one of the great mysteries of the Iraq war, what about the weapons of mass destruction? We'll look at what intelligence agencies are saying about some mobile labs found in Iraq.

And, another great unsolved mystery, a very different one ripped from the headlines of a half century ago. Has the killer of the Black Dahlia been found at long last?

Well, all that is to come but we begin tonight with the tape which aired today on the Al Jazeera Network. It is not known where it came from. Like others that have surfaced recently, it is pretty simply produced but even if the voice is tough to authenticate or even to make out in places, the message comes across loud and clear.

A man purporting to be al Qaeda's second in command and chief strategist is once again calling for blood. Here again, CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Heavily edited and occasionally inaudible of background noise this message calls for attacks on U.S., British, Australian, and Norwegian embassies and interests.

AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI (through translator): Protests, demonstrations and conferences will not be enough. You will only benefit by taking arms and using them against the enemies, the Americans and the Jews. Protests are a waste of time.

ROBERTSON: Not clear if the audiotape is of Ayman al-Zawahiri's voice. Although it is Egyptian accented like Zawahiri it sounds much younger than the al Qaeda leader. Zawahiri or not the tape tells Muslims the war in Iraq is a prelude to U.S. and Israeli domination of the region, aided and abetted by Arab leaders.

AL-ZAWAHIRI (through translator): Here are the rulers of the Muslims granting airports, bases, and facilities and allowing the ships to cross their territorial waters and supplying them with fuel and food and granting permission to the planes that cross the air spaces and the launch of air raids from their airports.

ROBERTSON: Apparently recorded some time after the war in Iraq began, the broadcast portion of the audiotape makes no direct reference to the attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco last week. It does, however, offer support to the Iraqi people and hint of more attacks.

AL-ZAWAHIRI (through translator): Know that you are not alone in this battle. For your brethren the mujahideen are chasing your enemies. The mujahideen in Palestine, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and in the heart of America and the west are punishing severely these crusaders and may the next phase convey to you, God willing, good news.

(END VIDEOTAPE) ROBERTSON: Now not clear if this reference to good news is a reference to the bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco last week or a reference perhaps to attacks yet to come but certainly given the heightened security alerts here and in the Middle East and given as well that al Qaeda in the past has timed messages to coincide with attacks, whether or not this is Ayman al-Zawahiri on the tape certainly intelligence officials around the world, Judy, are going to be scrutinizing and analyzing this tape very carefully.

WOODRUFF: Nic, are they saying what makes this tape so different from the ones we've heard before?

ROBERTSON: Certainly this tape has been very, very heavily edited. There are references there to the situation in Iraq. It appears to have been recorded at least after the war with Iraq. There are references there calling, telling the Iraqi people that they are being supported by their Muslim brothers elsewhere that these crusaders, as the tape puts it, have been defeated before.

So, it perhaps here plays to al Qaeda here, playing to the post war situation in Iraq, trying to inflame passions there, trying to inflame passions in the region in general given what happened in the war, so trying to leverage perhaps what Muslims in the region there have seen happen in their countries and in neighboring countries. Perhaps this is a new element here to al Qaeda's offensive at this time.

WOODRUFF: All right, Nic Robertson reporting for us tonight from CNN Center in Atlanta. Thank you, Nic.

Well, there have been some dramatic new developments tonight out of Saudi Arabia. Three men taken into custody in Jeddah on Monday may have been captured on the brink of carrying out a 9/11 style attack. Here now the rest of the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHEILA MACVICAR, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Sheila MacVicar in Riyadh. The more we learn about what happened at Jeddah Airport on Monday night, the scarier this story gets.

Three men were arrested at Jeddah Airport after an alert security guard there noticed that one of the men was behaving in an odd fashion. The Saudi authorities realized that one of the three was on their wanted list. They pulled them aside and searched them.

When they searched them they found knives and what are being described to CNN as documents like a last will and testament, something that sounds pretty familiar from investigators of 9/11. It turns out, says a Saudi security source to CNN that these men had intended to try to hijack a Saudia Airlines plane and fly it into a building in downtown Jeddah.

Now, we're being told by Saudi security authorities that these men are being linked to al Qaeda that they are probably members of the same cell which carried out last week's bombing attacks here in the city.

We know that they are under interrogation and it's believed that they will have a lot to tell authorities, not only about their plot, but perhaps about other plots and those who may be preparing to carry them out.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: CNN's Sheila MacVicar reporting.

And we have more now on what to make of this, the tape, and what often seems like all the headlines lately. Daniel Benjamin joins us. Mr. Benjamin was director of counterterrorism on the National Security Council during the Clinton years. He's also the author of the book, "The Age of Sacred Terror."

Daniel Benjamin, first of all, what about this Zawahiri, alleged Zawahiri tape, what do you make of it? Is it authentic? Is it the real thing?

DANIEL BENJAMIN, AUTHOR, "THE AGE OF SACRED TERROR": Well, I can't tell from the voice but the message is absolutely authentic. Zawahiri in a book he wrote perhaps a year or so ago that was smuggled out to the west he talked about how Israel is in the Middle East to divide Muslim countries and that this is part of a larger plot to continue dividing and dividing. And now he is extending this argument and saying this is what the conquest of Iraq was about too. The rest of it is all very, very classic Zawahiri.

WOODRUFF: Classic and what about the locations, the United States, the U.K., Australia? We've heard that before in effect but Norway where does that come from?

BENJAMIN: I can't understand it. It's a bit of a red herring and there have been cases in the past where odd countries were thrown in. Who knows? I wouldn't want to speculate that he's signaling an attack in Norway but for some reason they threw it in.

WOODRUFF: How are we to assess the fact that these tapes are coming along at the rate that they are and the general message that's coming through on them? I mean how are we to digest all this when you put it all together?

BENJAMIN: Well, I think that the rate at which the message is coming across now is very important because the group needs to show that it is active in this Iraq, post Iraq period. It needs to reassert its claim that it is the true leader of believers, of Muslims, and that it is carrying forward the struggle for Muslim interests. And, so it's very important to show that they're active.

I think there's also another thing going on and that is that Zawahiri and others will want to see if they can get some fire out of the sparks that al Qaeda has thrown off. What I mean by that is that attacks like the one in Casablanca, which may or may not be al Qaeda but may be another group that shares the ideology but it's not part of the organization, they want to encourage more of that and they want to integrate them into the struggle.

WOODRUFF: All right, as somebody who was on the National Security Council, President Bush saying just today 50 percent, I think he said, of al Qaeda we've now done away with. Is this consistent with what we're hearing from what appears to be left of this group?

BENJAMIN: Well, we know that roughly half of the people at the very top have either been arrested or killed and so in that regard the president is right. You know a terrorist group is not the same as a military organization which if you remove 50 percent of it, it can't really continue to fight.

The key thing is that if it has cells that are intact and can carry out operations that's very, very dangerous. There's also a question as to whether the dozen or so who are still out there aren't in fact the most dangerous ones the Egyptian members of the organization.

WOODRUFF: And you're talking about 50 percent of the top. We had a guest last night who was saying in many ways al Qaeda is like a mutating virus at the bottom that it is spreading and reorganizing itself.

I also want to ask you, Daniel Benjamin, about this report today by ABC News that there was a covert effort during your years in the Clinton administration to go after Osama bin Laden but somehow, and the report was that it was then Attorney General Janet Reno put a stop to the whole thing. What do you know about that?

BENJAMIN: Well, I can't go into detail and the person who issued this report should know that he shouldn't be talking about a lot of classified activities as well. But what I can say is that we know from press reports there was plenty -- an effort to get bin Laden in Afghanistan but there were a lot of concerns and the key one was we never had the reliable intelligence to go after that person.

What is also true is that Janet Reno never would have been the person giving the green light or not because she wasn't in the chain of command. The person who would make that decision in the first instance would be the director of Central Intelligence.

WOODRUFF: Huh, all right. Well, so you're not confirming or denying but you're just saying maybe it didn't happen exactly that way?

BENJAMIN: I will say the story that is out there is a garble.

WOODRUFF: OK.

BENJAMIN: OK.

WOODRUFF: We'll leave it at that. Daniel Benjamin, good to see you. Thank you for talking with us tonight.

BENJAMIN: Thanks for having me.

WOODRUFF: We appreciate it.

Well, ordinarily the sight of naval vessels in New York Harbor would be reason to celebrate. Instead this year, like last, Fleet Week in New York is bringing more jitters and it goes without saying extra security.

Festivities began today with a foggy parade of warships up the Hudson River and even though the cloud cover made them impossible to see, we are told that Air Force fighters were patrolling the skies above.

Welcome home to the fleet and yet another case of welcome back to the new normal. Another holiday weekend spent waiting for something to happen, hoping that it doesn't and planning for the worst, more on that side of things from CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA (voice-over): In New York more patrols at bridges and tunnels. In Washington, antiaircraft missile batteries have been deployed and in Los Angeles, air travelers are subject to random searches. The country is on high alert, officials most concerned about a possible attack within the next two days but the head of the FBI says the intelligence is short on specifics.

ROBERT MUELLER, FBI DIRECTOR: I want to point out that we have no specificity as to targets. We have no specificity as to exact time.

ARENA: What officials do have is a high level of chatter or intercepted communications about possible attacks against the United States. Officials are hearing similar threat information from interrogations of people in custody.

But is an attack imminent? Officials say intelligence gathered since the bombings in Saudi Arabia suggest terrorists could strike in the "immediate future" but they quickly add the information points more toward the Gulf region than the United States.

ASA HUTCHINSON, HOMELAND SECURITY UNDERSECRETARY: There is concern worldwide as to the increased terrorist activity. We know that there is an interest in targeting the United States. Our security measures have been somewhat effective but we know that they continue to try to exploit any vulnerabilities.

ARENA: As a result, flight restrictions in the U.S. are in effect including the air space over large sports stadiums. There is more scrutiny at the nation's borders and an increased security presence in the nation's ports. A major concern remains soft targets like shopping malls or sports arenas, especially when there are a large number of people gathered.

JIM WALSH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: There is an endless number of soft targets. You can't predict where they're going to strike and you can't harden every target. There isn't enough money in the treasury to do that. So what you try to do is your prioritize. (END VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA: The FBI in a bulletin today warned state and local partners to remain vigilant, to keep watch for individuals who may be surveilling targets or obtaining explosive materials.

Now some officials say that they believe it is prudent to keep the level at orange at least through the Memorial Day festivities but that is a decision that is reconsidered daily -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: So, Kelli, the people that you're talking to, do they have a sense that there's just something lurking out there that they can't quite get their hands around even an ability to describe it?

ARENA: Exactly. That is exactly what many people have expressed that there is a lot of intelligence coming in that most of it at this point points to something happening overseas but they can't rule out something happening in the United States.

And, as for the timing, Judy, lots of concern about this week; however, ever single counterterrorism official has underscored that terrorists wait for opportunities that usually they don't work off of dates or off of holidays. They do it when they can.

WOODRUFF: Well, that certainly makes practical sense but a cause for a lot of worry. Kelli Arena thanks very much, Kelli our Justice Correspondent.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT for this Wednesday more terror tests but are they really doing any good?

And later, the latest on the Canadian Mad Cow situation and whether you really have anything to worry about.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: One day into threat level orange we got more than just a little chill when this bulletin crossed the wires tonight, an explosion on the campus of Yale University. It happened around 5:00 p.m. in a law school classroom. The room was empty. Nobody was hurt and the damage minor.

Federal officials say it looks to be caused by a bomb but they say there is no indication yet that this was an act of terrorism as such and no claim of responsibility for now. Just the same officials from the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force have been called to the scene.

Well, the explosion ended a fairly nerve-racking day, not the first one, and according to our next guest almost certainly not the last. Stephen Flynn is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He's with us tonight in New York. Stephen Flynn, since the term homeland security became a familiar one to all of us after 9/11, do you think this country is any safer than it was then? STEPHEN FLYNN, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: I remain deeply concerned that we are dangerously unprepared to prevent and respond effectively to a catastrophic terrorist attack on U.S. soil. This is a very difficult thing for a country to do. We built our national security establishment essentially to deal with problems away from us and just very dramatically illustrated by our budget.

We'll be spending $400 million this year on conventional military capability when we include the war in Iraq, and yet we spend less than one-twentieth of that on programs that we could describe as homeland security here at home.

We have an adversary, and this is ironic because one of the results perhaps of the war success of the three weeks in Iraq will make all our adversaries essentially look and say there is just no sense going toe-to-toe with American forces in the conventional realm.

The incentive for going to 9/11 style attacks for any of our future adversaries has likely gone up and we need to simply adapt ourselves to that new reality beyond just simply stating high alerts.

WOODRUFF: As we've been reporting this is Fleet Week in New York. What about the ports in the United States? How much safer are they or how much has been done to harden the security around American ports?

FLYNN: Well, one of the things as a number of folks have said is we can't protect everything and we have 361 ports in our country. What we can begin to do at least is begin to take assessments. OK, what's important? What might the consequences be and how much investment should we make as a nation?

There are only eight ports in this country that have just received a vulnerability assessment. For the last six months, no Coast Guard has gone into any port because of budget problems.

So, in the eight ports that were studied were really small ports. We haven't gotten to any of the major ones like New York, New Jersey, or L.A. So, we haven't even begun to get the data about just how vulnerable these ports really are. We know they are.

WOODRUFF: Are you just saying that this is a hopeless case here that they're -- I mean when you describe eight of 360-some it sounds like it's something we may never get to assessing?

FLYNN: Doing an assessment is not as painful an enterprise but you got to have resources. You got to have money and the problem is the money dedicated for this was reprogrammed away for other things that aren't port security related.

We have spent in this country only $100 million so far on protecting our ports. We have spent $5 billion this year protecting U.S. bases from terror. We're spending more money protecting San Diego with its Navy fleet there than we are on all the other commercial ports combined. And this is crazy because if I'm a terrorist coming into the U.S., am I going to go after a Navy combatant here in our port that's well defended or do I go to a place like L.A.-Long Beach where 43 percent of all the containers that feed our economy are there for which there is so few security measures in place?

WOODRUFF: Well, I guess if there are any would-be terrorists listening they know it now if they didn't already. What about -- what are you saying -- where are you saying the fault lies? Are you saying it lies with an administration that is allocating resources the way it is or what?

FLYNN: Well, first of all we know there's real problems because criminals have taken advantage of this for a long, long time, but -- so the bad guys do know how open the system is because they've been exploiting it to move drugs, illegal migrants, and so forth.

But the reality is if you really cut to the chase that the focus of Washington really has been to say this is too hard doing homeland security. It's too expensive, takes too long. It's too much government. So, therefore, we need to focus all our energies on the away game, eliminate this at the source.

We need to do both. We certainly need to do all we can do to eliminate terrorists at the source but just like the Israelis know you're not going to deter them just simply by running them to ground.

We have a great deal of vulnerabilities and it could cause mass disruption in our society and we got to begin the step of assessing that and investing resources to our first responders and so forth and we got to treat this like a way on the home front like we've done overseas and we just haven't started to do that.

WOODRUFF: All right, the message very clear coming from Stephen Flynn with the Council on Foreign Relations. Good to see you, thank you very much.

FLYNN: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: And coming up on NEWSNIGHT, where does the beef that you eat come from? We'll look at that question in light of a discovery of Mad Cow Disease in Canada as we continue.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: More news from around the country this evening, beginning in Buffalo. A seventh man charged in upstate New York for undergoing military training in an al Qaeda military camp in Afghanistan. He joins six others who attended the camp and heard Osama bin Laden speak. The man, a U.S. citizen, is at large and believed to be in Yemen.

In Skokie, Illinois, two adults were charged in connection with a high school hazing incident. Both adults were charged with misdemeanors that involve buying or delivering alcohol to minors. And, what could be called a compromise today on Capitol Hill, House and Senate negotiators agreed to a $350 billion ten-year tax cut package. It was a close call. Vice President Dick Cheney had to weigh in to cobble together a final agreement.

And finally in Florida, where an Appeals Court overturned a class-action lawsuit that was seen by tobacco companies as a death warrant, the original verdict ordered the companies to pay smokers $145 billion in punitive damages and $12.7 million in compensatory damages. The court decided that the damages were "grossly excessive."

Well, not long ago Canada's prime minister made a point of sleeping in a Toronto hotel trying to ease concerns about SARS. Well, today the disease was Mad Cow and Jean Chretien had prime Alberta steak, medium, for lunch, a day after a case emerged in that part of Canada.

Today, Mexico, Japan, and South Korea all joined the United States in banning Canadian beef. Most of us don't think of our steak or hamburger as having a nationality but they do have a nationality and it's not always easy to figure out the point of origin.

Here's CNN's Gary Tuchman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN (voice-over): A butcher and a slab of boned chuck roast being readied for the grocer's meat display case.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They come from Colorado (unintelligible).

TUCHMAN: It comes from Colorado?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Colorado, uh huh.

TUCHMAN: Right now the only way to find out where your boneless chuck, ground beef, or other cuts of meat come from is to ask but there is no requirement the answer has to be accurate or even known.

(on camera): When you buy your ground beef, do you ever worry about where it came from?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I just bless it.

TUCHMAN: You just bless it?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TUCHMAN: The beef American buy could be from anywhere in the United States, from North Dakota to Nebraska to California to Colorado, and it could also be from elsewhere, most frequently Australia, New Zealand, and yes Canada.

(voice-over): The National Cattlemen's Beef Association estimates seven percent of beef sold in the United States comes from Canada. Nearly 1.1 million live Canadian cattle are brought to the U.S. each year. Canadian imports are being stopped for the time being and Canadian beef already here will remain on U.S. shelves.

However, so far Canadian officials are only dealing with one Mad Cow case and the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture says Americans should not be worries.

ANN VENEMAN, U.S. SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE: The consumer should be assured that whether it comes from the United States or another country that it meets the strict standards that we have in the United States.

TUCHMAN: State agriculture officials have been told by Washington to be prepared to provide information on Canadian cattle in their states.

TOMMY IRVIN, GEORGIA SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE: We should always be concerned but we're not alarmed. We think we have in place the necessary protection to protect our consumers.

TUCHMAN: And a new element of protection will soon be part of U.S. law. Beef sold in stores will require a label stating the origin of the cut of meat. That takes effect October 2004.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN: The cow in question has been traced to three different farms in the Canadian province of Alberta. All the farms have been quarantined and additional cattle testing is taking place right now. Those results are expected by the beginning of next week. Judy, back to you.

WOODRUFF: All right. Gary Tuchman, reporting for us tonight from Atlanta. Thanks, Gary.

We're going to continue our look at mad cow in a moment. We're going to talk with a senior researcher from Consumers Union about the illness and how it is being handled.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Next on NEWSNIGHT, more on the mad cow situation. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: More now on the case of mad cow disease discovered in Canada, the first in a decade. Canada's Prime Minister Jean Chretien said today, quote, "we hope and pray, and we have all indication that it is one cow in one herd."

Our guest tonight is less optimistic. He says it would be highly unlikely for only one cow to be affected. Michael Hansen is senior research scientist for the Consumers Union, and he is in New York.

Michael Hansen, first of all, before I ask about that, if this cow was killed in January, why are we just now finding out about this in late may? MICHAEL HANSEN, CONSUMERS UNION, SENIOR RESEARCH SCIENTIST: Because, Judy, what happened with the cow is it was killed in January, but the head of the cow was put in the queue and wasn't tested for the first time until last Friday, on May 16. So it basically -- there was a long line of other animals in front of it that needed to be tested so it sat someplace for over 3 1/2 months.

WOODRUFF: Are all animals that die tested?

HANSEN: No. In Canada, it looks like only 1,000 animals on average each year are tested. In the United States, we tested last year about 20,000 cattle.

WOODRUFF: Interesting, though, that it took five months for this particular one to be tested.

What about the prime minister's comment that we -- we hope, he said, we pray that it's just one cow in one herd.

HANSEN: Well, we can hope and pray for that, but since this animal was born in 1995, it surely did not come from the United Kingdom since they cut off all movement of animals from the United Kingdom to the U.S. and Canada in 1989. So that suggests that this was something that the cow ate probably about five years ago, and it probably wasn't just the -- the material probably wasn't fed to just one cow. So there's a good chance that there have been other animals that received that same feed.

WOODRUFF: So what are we talking about here? I mean, what -- I don't -- I'm not going to -- I don't want to be alarmist, but what's the worst case scenario? What could we be looking at here in Canada?

HANSEN: Well, the worst case scenario I guess, is that there is more animals that haven't been found yet. There's also a problem. We know the animal was rendered, and that means, after it was slaughtered, it did not go into the human food chain, but the Canadian government did say it was rendered, and usually that material goes into either pet food or animal feed.

And since there was a 3 1/2 month period, that facility where the rendering happened and if it went into pet food or animal feed, the facility, the feed mill, those could have been contaminated. So all the stuff that was produced between the end of January, the beginning of February, and last Friday, or up until today, would have to ultimately be traced because that could potentially be tainted feed that could be going to feed animals elsewhere.

WOODRUFF: You're saying clearly that some Canadians should be worried. What about Americans? Should Americans be worried?

HANSEN: Well, since Canada ships their beef from -- 90 percent of the beef that they export comes to the United States, and as was pointed out, 1.1 million cattle come from last year from Canada to the United States. And from Alberta alone last year, over 511,000 cattle were shipped into the United States. So if there were any animals that were problematic, they could have been put into meat and shipped down to the U.S. or they could have gone into animal feed or pet food, and that could have been distributed.

HANSEN: Well, the question on everybody's mind is should they eat beef? What do you say to people? Do you eat beef? I mean, what should people do?

HANSEN: Well, I for a long time -- I'm not a -- I haven't eaten much red meat that much.

But what I tell people is we don't know what the size of this risk is. It could be vanishingly small, or it could be larger. So people just have to be informed. And so what I tell them, if you really like to eat meat, then you might try to take some actions because, if an animal is infected, most of the material is going to be in the central nervous system, in the brain and spinal cord.

So that means it might not be a good idea to eat brains, for example. There's 1 million brains that get sold and eaten in the U.S. every year. Also, processed meat products should be next on the list because you don't know what parts of the animal are in there...

WOODRUFF: But cut steaks and hamburger?

HANSEN: Well cut steaks would be less of a risk. But hamburger, part of the way that can be cut off the animal is there is a process called "mechanical meat recovery," automatic meat recovery systems, which can potentially contaminate hamburgers with parts of the central nervous system.

So I would tell people, if they really like hamburger, then what they should do is just buy a cut of meat and watch them grind it. You could also go for either organic, which wouldn't be fed this stuff, or grass-fed beef as well.

WOODRUFF: Well, all advice for us to think about this evening. Michael Hansen, thank you very much for talking with us, with the Consumers Union.

HANSEN: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: We appreciate it.

And ahead on NEWSNIGHT, we're going to talk with Judith Miller of "The New York Times" about the continuing search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Oops. We're telling you who the winner is. Hope nobody on the West Coast is watching.

An especially -- in the look at our "World Roundup" now, an especially damaging and deadly earthquake starts our look at the stories making news around the globe.

It struck the North African country of Algeria early in the evening local time doing extensive damage to a number of cities, including the capital. Entire buildings collapsed, including a hospital in the city of Abu Mardas. Reports are upwards of 450 people have been killed, at least 2,400 have been hurt and many more find themselves without power or even homes to go back to.

And just about 50 years since the first two men did it, 13 more climbers can now say "Top of the world, ma." A team of Chinese, South Korean, and American mountaineers reached the summit of Mount Everest today. The team included a 20-year-old, who is believed to be the youngest American to succeed. They and a record number of other people are climbing the mountain this month to celebrate Edmund Hillary and Kense Norge becoming the first to reach the summit May 29, 1953.

Well, we haven't had much to report lately about the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Ever since the discovery of two mobile laboratories, the story has largely gone quiet. But not for long, we expect.

Today in the pages of "The New York Times," Judith Miller and William Broad report that the verdict is in. As far as intelligence agencies are concerned, the labs couldn't be anything but germ factories.

Judith Miller is with us tonight in New York. Judy, good to see you again.

JUDITH MILLER, "NEW YORK TIMES": Nice to be back.

WOODRUFF: How can intelligence authorities be so convinced that these are germ weapons-making labs if they don't have the evidence with them to be absolutely convincing?

MILLER: Well, Judy, three different sets of experts went over these labs. They not only went through them, they kind of took them apart bit by bit. They studied them from an engineering standpoint. They drew schematics to figure out what would go on inside these factories, and they basically concluded at the end of this extensive process, part of which I witnessed in Iraq, that there really wasn't any other plausible explanation for them or any other plausible use for them except as mobile germ factories.

WOODRUFF: So they found no biological agents, and they didn't find the equipment to make biological agents. In a way, this is a circumstantial case?

MILLER: No -- no, they did find the equipment. The equipment inside one of those facilities, one of those little units was precisely what you would need to make biological agents. And, in fact, they even did an estimate of how much each one of these units could make.

WOODRUFF: But still -- but no --no precise evidence that the equipment was used to make the germ weapons?

MILLER: No, that's because -- in fact, what they did find were traces of a caustic agent, which is believed to be either bleach or ammonia, something that decontaminated the units at some point. Basically, the experts don't know when.

WOODRUFF: Now, Judy, these are U.S. intelligence officials...

MILLER: And British. And British.

WOODRUFF: And British that you're talking to.

MILLER: Yes.

WOODRUFF: Is this likely to be accepted by the international, the U.N. weapons inspectors?

MILLER: Well, just to be certain, it was announced yesterday in Baghdad that the Americans were going to invite an international team of experts in to go through the labs -- I should say the factories, as they have done, so that the international experts too can come to a conclusion. So I think we'll soon have more than just a coalition view on this.

WOODRUFF: What about chemical weapons? Have they made any progress in that direction?

MILLER: Not as much. I think what the group that I was traveling with, Med Alpha, which is part of the exploitation task force, which has been on the ground now for over three months, they found bits and pieces of programs. They found precursors. They found chemicals that would be used in weapons.

But I think, ever since mid-April, when the Americans were told in Iraq that they weren't going to find stockpiles because Saddam Hussein had destroyed them all or sent some of them to Syria, I think the focus of the weapons hunters have really shifted from looking for stockpiles to looking for a research and development program.

WOODRUFF: How important do you think it is to the international community that the Bush administration, that the U.S. and the British do turn up some sort of hard proof that there were these weapons of mass destruction capability in Iraq?

MILLER: Well, I think it's quite important to the Bush administration because, after all, before the war began, the existence, or the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction was one of the primary justifications cited by Bush administration officials for this war, for the invasion.

So if they don't find more than what they found to date, I think some people will say and will conclude that the administration oversold this argument in order to build support for the war at home. I'm not sure, ultimately, Judy, how significant it will be because, when you look at the president's poll ratings, you see that they are enormously high. People seem ready to kind of move on. But were to some thing else -- if something else were to happen in the Middle East or if there were some proliferation of agents or chemical weapons, you know, the focus might shift back.

WOODRUFF: Well, we assume that they are still looking, and we know that Judy Miller is going to continue to report on what they're finding.

(CROSSTALK)

WOODRUFF: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, "Segment Seven" and the story of one of L.A.'s most famous murder cases possibly solved by the son of the murderer.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: It's a shocking crime story from California, and we're not talking about the murder of Laci Peterson.

This is a story of L.A. noir -- the murder of a beautiful young woman that happened more than a half-century ago and still stirs as much interest as if it happened yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF (voice-over): For nearly 60 years, it has been the perfect lurid L.A. murder mystery. Legions of amateur detectives, millions of words in news print, dozens of "whodunit" theories -- a case made in tabloid heaven.

STEVE HODEL, RET. DETECTIVE, LOS ANGELES: Detectives of that day had never seen anything like it. I have never seen anything like that in the 300 murders I've come across.

WOODRUFF: Steve Hodel spent more than two decades as a homicide cop in Los Angeles. Now retired at age 61, he's talking about the murder of this raven-haired young woman, Elizabeth Short, found dead and horribly mutilated in a vacant lot. It was 1947.

HODEL: Her body had been bisected in half cleanly, surgically. Vicious lacerations to the face and breasts. It had been exsanguinated -- completely drained of blood. Her hair had been washed. Her whole body had been washed and scrubbed clean. They actually found fibers from a scrub brush on the body. It had been posed, deliberately and carefully posed.

WOODRUFF: Because one witness told a reporter that Elizabeth Short had liked a special kind of flower in her hair, she became known as the Black Dahlia, a haunting name that dominated the headlines for months and a case that, to this day, is considered open by the Los Angeles Police Department.

HODEL: Most likely, the bathtub of the Franklin residence here was the actual crime scene.

WOODRUFF: Now, 56 years after the murder, Steve Hodel believes he has solved the case. He's written a book about it -- naming the killer as the man who once owned this garish house in Hollywood, a man he says who killed many other women as well but was never arrested.

HODEL: It was a house of horrors, and I've come to discover this is most probably the actual crime scene, based on witnesses, statements that saw bloody clothing here, bloody sheets at the time of the murder, and other statements that have come from witnesses.

WOODRUFF: But the real show stopper is this. The killer, Steve Hodel believes, was his own father -- a surgeon named Dr. George Hodel who left The United States in 1950 to spend most of the rest of his life in Asia. He died in 1999.

HODEL: Here I am sitting on father's lap. This, to me, is one of the most remarkable photographs. Father has just come in from killing Aura Murray (ph), one of the victims in my book. He's about to go out and kill Georgette Bourdorf (ph), another victim. Here sitting on his lap is the future L.A.P.D. homicide detective who ultimately solved the Black Dahlia and the other murders.

WOODRUFF: This tiny palm-sized photo album is what started Steve Hodel on his journey. It belonged to his father, and inside -- mesmerizing pictures.

HODEL: Here's a photograph of a strikingly beautiful young woman -- appears to be in her early twenties -- with flowers in her hair. In one, she appears to be nude from the shoulders up, as the shot shows.

WOODRUFF: Those photos, Hodel says, are, in fact, of Elizabeth Short, and he's not the only one who believes it.

STEVE KAY, ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY, LOS ANGELES: I came to the conclusion that he did have enough evidence to file two of the cases -- the murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, and the murder of Jean French, known as the Red Lipstick Murder.

WOODRUFF: Steve Kay has been a prosecutor in Los Angeles for 37 years and has read all of Steve Hodel's notes and seen all of the pictures. Circumstantial evidence, yes, but convincing.

KAY: In this type of a case with circumstantial evidence, it's like putting a puzzle together, and when the pieces are all put together, you're left with an inescapable conclusion of Dr. Hodel's guilt.

WOODRUFF: Dr. George Hodel was arrested two years after the Black Dahlia murder, charged with incest against his own daughter. A jury found him innocent. But just after he was freed, the district attorney's office opened a mammoth investigation, wiretapping his phone.

Only weeks ago, the transcripts of those wiretaps have come to light, and at one point, Dr. George Hodel does mention the infamous crime. HOTEL: He's talking to a man with a German accent -- my father is -- and here's the quote from the officer's recording. One statement made to the German was as follows, "Supposin' I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead."

HODEL: Even with all that, Steve Hodel's theory is still bathed in controversy. There are other theories. Another doctor may have done it, says a different author. An earlier book says even a third man is guilty. Officially, the murder is still considered unsolved. A case that will not die. A mystery that still endures.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Fifty years later. Some kind of mystery.

Well, still ahead on NEWSNIGHT -- another member of the Bush administration decides to leave. And how long will it take to get the peace process going between Israel and the Palestinians? That and more in our next half hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Tomorrow the U.N. Security Council is expected to approve a resolution lifting 13 years of economic sanctions on Iraq. France, Russia and Germany signed on today, backing an American proposal that would let the U.S.-led coalition run Iraq until there is a recognized government in place.

On that note, Iraq's civilian administrator pushed back the timetable a bit, saying that the first steps toward an interim government may not happen until mid-July. The reason is plain to see. Here's CNN's Ben Wedeman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Eighteen -- year- old Walid Abdullah (ph) hasn't had much of a chance to see the new Baghdad. Shortly after the Americans entered the city, he joined in the looting of a fuel storage facility when it exploded. Burns cover 65 percent of his body. Doctors are doing all they can with what they have, which isn't much.

Washington's new man in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, has promised to restore law and order. He started his day Wednesday by reopening a jail, once for political detainees, now cleaned up, repainted and waiting for looters and common criminals. We spoke to many people in Baghdad who thought the opening of the jail was great news, but the cells are empty. The jail still has no electricity or running water.

PAUL BREMER, CHIEF CIVILIAN ADMINISTRATOR: It's very important for people to realize this city is not an anarchy city. People are going about their business well. I spent an hour flying over the city yesterday and looking at markets that are open, traffic that is flowing, people that are going about their business. WEDEMAN: What appears open and flowing from the air looks a lot different from the ground. It's a mess. Garbage once collected by the authorities now burns and smolders in the streets. In some parts of town, kids sniff glue. In Saddam's time, they would have been arrested. Now they do what they like.

Over and over, you hear the same question: Why don't the Americans do more?

"I know the Americans can make Iraq into a paradise," says this Kurdish businessman. "But they'd better hurry up and do something before it's too late."

In the new Baghdad, everything seems upside-down. In a country floating on oil, you can wait all day to fill your tank. Oil production has dropped dramatically since the war, and many of the trucks that once delivered fuel have been stolen or destroyed.

"Security, security, security" repeats store owner Mohammed. "That's what we need most, and that's what we don't have."

(on camera): Iraqis have a deep fear of the dangers posed by the disorder. In the lawlessness, they see the beginnings of the breakdown of their society. Few people miss the old regime, but they're still searching for clear signs that the new one has truly taken control.

Ben Wedeman, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: We're pleased to be joined now by "Newsweek" magazine's Melinda Liu, who has spent a considerable length of time in Iraq during and after the war. She's with us tonight in New York.

Melinda Liu, you did some remarkable reporting from Iraq during the war. And listening to this report just now from Ben Wedeman, are you surprised that so little progress has been made since the war ended?

MELINDA LIU, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, "NEWSWEEK": I'm not at all surprised, Judy. It was an amazingly successful military campaign, but I think armies are generally better at making war than they are at making peace. And it -- the level of devastation from the looting that I saw even before I left Baghdad was so intense and so devastating that I think it'll take a long, long time for the damage to be repaired.

WOODRUFF: You were just telling me before we went on the air that to you, the damage from the looting is worse than what was done by the war itself.

LIU: Yes. I mean, I was in Baghdad through the bombing. I spent more than three months in Baghdad non-stop, and I was really struck by how surgical and how precise the bombardment was. It was really the most, you know, amazing of the high-tech war that one could imagine. But the looting that followed was -- in its ferocity and its depth, it was almost medieval. I mean, people were carting away everything, including racehorses that had belonged to Uday, the son of Saddam Hussein, things that they couldn't even use, broken things. It'll take a long time to put that all back together again.

WOODRUFF: Tom Friedman wrote today in "The New York Times" -- there were a couple of things I wanted to cite. He said in socioeconomic terms, he said, we were at war with the Flintstones. What does that mean to you?

LIU: Yes and no. Saddam's reign in Baghdad had impoverished the country. No question about it. He basically stole the country blind. However, in contrast to Afghanistan, Iraq had once upon a time been a middle-class, actually pretty well-to-do society. They had oil money. So in the end, ironically, there was more looting -- worse looting in Iraq than there was in Afghanistan because there was more to loot. People knew that there was money out there. There were monied things. There were skyscrapers. There were amazing pieces of furniture and gold bars and things. And they wanted to look and find them.

WOODRUFF: What is it that the United States can do right now? I mean, another thing -- another point Tom Friedman makes today is this can be won, if it's gone about the right way, but you listen to that report from Baghdad and our Ben Wedeman, and it sounds like there's so much more to be done, it is almost -- I mean, it's enough to lead anyone, you know, throwing their hands up in the air.

LIU: Absolutely. I think there's -- from the very beginning, there has to be one basic decision. Is the U.S. administration going to try to create a democratic government in Iraq, or is it going to try to extricate quickly from Iraq? These two things can both be done, but they can't be both done at the same -- simultaneously. To make a democratic administration in Iraq will take a long time. You can't do it quickly. And that acknowledgement has to come.

WOODRUFF: What are -- what is a decision or two that you -- that the U.S. you see has to make in the short term, to determine which way it's going to go?

LIU: Well, ironically, I think in the very beginning, some of the Americans thought it would reassure the Iraqis to tell them, We're only going to be here for a short period of time, and then we'll turn everything over to Iraqis. Believe it or not, a lot of Iraqis would like to see Americans hang around for a little bit longer because they're quite afraid that Saddam himself or his cronies or people who are influenced by him will just play a waiting game, and then come back and try to take things over again, once the Americans leave or, indeed, once American attention subsides.

So I think right now, unfortunately, it sounds a little bit heavy-handed, but I think the message has to be, We're here. We want to do it right, even if it's going to take a long time.

WOODRUFF: All right, Melinda Liu with "Newsweek" magazine. She was in Baghdad throughout the war, before and after. And again, some remarkable reporting from over there. Melinda, thanks very much for talking to us.

LIU: Thanks.

WOODRUFF: Well, there was more back-and-forth today between Israelis and Palestinians. Israel's foreign minister said today that Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas needs to crack down on terror or risk losing legitimacy. Abbas said that Israel's constant movement into Palestinian-controlled areas does nothing but, quote, "deepen the hatred between the two peoples." Israel's push into those areas has involved more than just Palestinians. There are outsiders there, as well. They say they are there to support the Palestinian people and cause. Israel says they are meddling in a war zone and bad things can happen in war zones. The story from CNN's Kelly Wallace.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do not shoot us (UNINTELLIGIBLE) people!

KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): An activist shouting at Israeli soldiers in the Gaza strip last month, a member of a pro-Palestinian rights group which says it tries to monitor and prevent Israeli military actions against Palestinian civilians, a dangerous mission, just how dangerous proven later, when a fellow activist, 21-year-old Tom Hurndall of England, is shot in the head. His parents told us they understand he was trying to help two little Palestinian children who were caught in a dangerous spot after shots rang out. They believe he was shot by an Israeli soldiers. Now he is brain-dead, in a coma.

ANTHONY HURNDALL, FATHER OF PEACE ACTIVIST: Yes, they're putting themselves in danger, but what they're trying to do is to prevent something which is unlawful and they view as an act of terror and intimidation. And they are bravely standing up to that.

KELLY: But the Israel Defense Forces charges these activists, members of a group called the International Solidarity Movement, have gone too far and now the army has launched a crackdown. The Israeli soldiers raided one of the group's offices, with three people arrested, one maybe deported. This after the group revealed that the two British men who carried out the recent Tel Aviv suicide bombing briefly visited an International Solidarity Movement apartment in the Gaza strip five days before the attack, along with some other people. The group called a news conference to declare the two men have no link to the organization.

HUWAIDA ARRAF, INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT SPOKESWOMAN: We ran into them while they were visiting Gaza, but our encounter with them was very brief, and I don't believe that there's anything we could have done to foresee this kind of action or to prevent it.

KELLY: The Israeli government said its decision to limit the group's movements is not connected to the Tel Aviv attack but to the actions of the activists.

JONATHAN PELED, ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER SPOKESMAN: They don't actually necessarily have to put themselves at life's risk and -- and confront bulldozers, tanks and Israeli soldiers in war zones. I think that's sort of very, very irresponsible and dangerous.

KELLY: In March, 23-year-old Rachel Quarry (ph) of the United States was run over and killed by an Israeli bulldozer as she tried to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home. Almost two months later, in the same area, James Miller, a British journalist, was shot. The autopsy results suggest it is highly probable he was killed by Israeli fire. It was partly because of these incidents that the Israeli government announced that journalists and foreign nationals who enter the Gaza strip must now sign a waiver freeing the IDF of responsibility if something happens.

Critics charge the Israeli army is trying to restrict coverage of its military operations, but the government says it cannot be responsible for areas in the Gaza strip it does not control.

Kelly Wallace, CNN, Jerusalem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: More now on the prospects for peace in the Middle East, which have dimmed considerably after a weekend of deadly suicide bombings. Some fear that the so-called road map to peace has actually become a roadblock. And there's pressure on the White House to get things on track. "The New York Times" reported today that President Bush is considering a trip to the region where he could potentially meet with both leaders.

We want to talk about the situation with Gideon Rose. He is the managing editor of "Foreign Affairs," and he's in New York tonight.

Gideon Rose, do you think the president will go?

GIDEON ROSE, MANAGING EDITOR, "FOREIGN AFFAIRS": I doubt it, actually, because there's not much to be gained except the appearance of trying. And I don't think this administration is going to put his personal capital on the line for that.

WOODRUFF: Do you think, though, that they must be debating it seriously for it to make the pages of "The Times"?

ROSE: There are some people in the administration who really want to do whatever they can to try to make the road map work, and there are others in the administration who think it's wise to be seen to be trying. Whether they'll actually commit the president's personal authority and time is doubtful, I think.

WOODRUFF: It sounds like you're saying the latter group is the group that's winning, at this point.

ROSE: Well, the -- the administration has been very leery about getting involved in this conflict and following the Clinton administration down what they see as the primrose path to direct involvement and humiliation, when the parties themselves aren't really ready to make peace. But it's also gotten a lot of attacks for staying out. So they've come up with this plan, but they're clearly not all that attached to it, and the president himself has to keep saying, I really mean it this time. I really am in favor of it. But that's, I think, a measure of how the fact that few people outside the administration really do think they have their heart in it.

WOODRUFF: Well, that's what I -- I mean, you're getting at exactly what I want to ask you. Short of the president going over there himself, what can the Bush White House or the Bush administration do to tell the Palestinians -- to say to the Palestinians and the Israelis, We really do mean this. We care.

ROSE: Well, the basic problem here is that the United States wants peace and a settlement, quite frankly, at this point, more than the local parties themselves do, and that's true of all the outsiders. And in that situation, it's going to be very, very difficult to bring about any kind of reconciliation. The parties have shown they can't do it themselves, and the outsiders really are leery about exerting too much pressure or stepping the middle of it themselves.

So the road map, while well-intentioned, is almost certainly doomed to failure, and the kinds of steps that would have to be taken by outsiders are so great, to really get things going, that it's unlikely that anybody, particularly this administration, will take them.

WOODRUFF: That's a pretty grim assessment. Do you mean to be so bleak?

ROSE: Yes, unfortunately. The Oslo peace process fell apart, and with it most hopes of a settlement that could be reached by the parties themselves. And right now, the Israelis feel deeply burned by the breakdown of talks. The Palestinians launched the intifada and have spent essentially two years beating their heads up against an Israeli wall and getting nothing to show for it except making the Israelis even more skeptical. And while there are some Palestinians and a number of Israelis who really would like to see all this end and agree on something like the Clinton plan of 2000, two states living together, they just don't have the institutional capacity to control the militants and terrorists who want to see conflict continue.

WOODRUFF: Al Qaeda activity elsewhere, in Riyadh and perhaps in Casablanca, or wherever it's active, having any bearing on the Middle East right now?

ROSE: Well, I mean, it's -- they're separate issues. Al Qaeda and the Palestinian issue are not organically connected, I think. But essentially, American involvement in the region has not been as active in the Palestinian arena as in the Iraqi arena, but even in Iraq, we haven't done enough, as you heard from the previous segment.

So I think that the al Qaeda involvement and activity will be enough to keep us involved in the region, but it's going to make the Bush administration even leerier of getting their feet too deep into Israeli-Palestinian issues for fear that in addition to dealing with al Qaeda terrorism, they might actually have to become direct targets of Palestinian terrorism.

WOODRUFF: We're going to have to leave it there. Gideon Rose with a pretty bleak assessment of what's going on in the Middle East. But we very much thank you for talking with us.

ROSE: Thanks. I wish I could be more optimistic.

WOODRUFF: As do we all.

As NEWSNIGHT continues, another loss for the Bush administration as EPA chief Christie Whitman says she's going back to New Jersey. And Annika Sorenstam finally plays some golf at the Colonial.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: The increase in the terror threat level touched many places today, including a major Republican fund-raiser attended by President Bush. Security was stepped up for the fund-raiser, the 2003 President's Dinner. It's an annual event, and organizers were expecting their biggest crowd ever, with more than 7,500 attending the event at the new Washington Convention Center. Tickets were $2,500 a plate, but many donors have contributed much more to Republican candidates.

As the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christie Todd Whitman has not always seen eye to eye with her boss, the president. Well, today Whitman said she was leaving, and she was quick to say that it wasn't because she was fighting with the White House. Whitman says it's because she has a family she doesn't see enough of. The story from CNN's Bruce Morton.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Christine Todd Whitman is stepping down as head of the EPA, saying, like press secretary Ari Fleischer earlier this week, it's just time to go home.

CHRISTIE TODD WHITMAN, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY: My husband and I have been married 29 years. For 26-and-a-half of them we lived together. The last 2-and-a-half we haven't. And we like it better the other way.

MORTON: Her resignation's been predicted often, an environment- friendly EPA head in a pro-business administration. And she did early on announce that the president was for mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide emissions only to have him say a week later that he wasn't. But she's had successes, too, imposing a tough Hudson River clean-up paid for by General Electric, issuing tough new standards for diesel fuel emissions, for example.

WHITMAN: I'm not leaving because of clashes with the administration. In fact, I haven't had any. I report to the president. He has always asked me to give him by best, unadulterated advice. I've always done that, and we have been on the same page.

MORTON: How did she do in her two-and-a-half years? It depends on whom you ask.

JERRY TAYLOR, CATO INSTITUTE: The more environmental policy is in the newspaper and the more it's in the airwaves, the worse Republicans are for it. And so I think it's rather clear the administration gave Christie Todd Whitman a directive, which is, Keep out of the press. Keep a low profile. Don't get me in trouble. Don't make waves. And to the extent possible, I think she's tried to do that.

PHILIP CLAPP, NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL TRUST: I would probably give her an A for effort and a D for performance. And the A for effort is because she tried to move this administration in the direction of some much more progressive environmental policies, but the White House preferred to listen much more to industry lobbyists than to its EPA administrator.

MORTON: Whitman, who served two terms as New Jersey's governor, said she had no plans to run for office but ruled nothing out. She leaves an unusual legacy -- not a bill or a monument, but a Scotch terrier named Barney, a Whitman gift to the Bush family. She gave them a dog. Her husband gave her...

WHITMAN: When my husband gives me roses for Mother's Day saying, Welcome home, you know it's time to go home.

MORTON: Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Well, we'd all like to leave some kind of legacy.

Up next on NEWSNIGHT, golfer Annika Sorenstam gets ready to take on the big boys.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: We can imagine that it just might be a night of tossing and turning for golfer Annika Sorenstam. Tomorrow begins the Colonial tournament in Fort Worth, Texas, and she admits to having some butterflies about competing with the men of the PGA tour. But compete she will. Here's CNN's Josie Karp.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOSIE KARP, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was just a pro- am, and because of heavy rain, she played only 10 holes. But Annika Sorenstam learned quickly on Wednesday that while she is playing the same game, she's doing it in a different world.

ANNIKA SORENSTAM, GOLFER: I've never seen anything like it. I mean, last time I saw a crowd like this was the U.S. Open on a Sunday.

KARP: They lined the fairways, cheered her shots and wore $3 buttons that urged, "Go Annika." When Sorenstam tees off for real at 8:58 Thursday morning, even more people will crowd in to offer support or pass judgment. Either way, the most watched golfer in the world proclaimed herself ready to play.

SORENSTAM: Today I was a little more calm than yesterday, so I felt like I hit some good shots. I can't prepare anymore. I mean, I've been -- I've been waiting for this day for a long time. I've been practicing a lot the last few months and, you know, I went the day to come. You know, it's here, so...

KARP: Sorenstam still views her appearance as a personal test, yet that provided her no shelter from the larger controversy this week. While she was on the course, male players debated whether the PGA tour by-laws should change. Currently, there are no gender restrictions.

DAVID TOMS, GOLFER: Do you not think that the atmosphere this week is some sort -- somewhat of a circus-type deal?. If we think that this is not the direction we need to go and we need to take action, then we'll vote on it. But to me, I -- you know, what'd you see?

KARP (on camera): Sorenstam estimated that when rain drove her off the course, she was no worse than one over par. But then she added she really wasn't keeping score. On Thursday, that will change dramatically. Everyone will be keeping score. Josie Karp, CNN, Fort Worth.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: We're all hoping she gets a good night's sleep tonight.

That's NEWSNIGHT for tonight. Thank you for watching. I'm Judy Woodruff. I'll see you tomorrow. Good night.

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