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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Threat Level Orange Will Last Through Weekend; Iran Admits Several al Qaeda Operatives Are in Country

Aired May 22, 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. I'm Judy Woodruff in for Aaron Brown.
Another color has been added to the usual Memorial Day pallet of red, white, and blue. The color is orange and while many Americans are planning their travel for tomorrow or their barbeque for Monday, other Americans will be working hard to keep the country safe from terror. Those efforts and the latest on the threat are what lead off the program for us tonight.

And so, we begin the whip with the latest on the security heading into the holiday weekend. Jeanne Meserve is on that tonight, Jeanne the headline.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Judy, threat level orange will last through the weekend but are the ups and downs of the threat level compromising its effectiveness, that story ahead.

WOODRUFF: Thanks, Jeanne.

Increasing questions about Iran and al Qaeda, Justice Department Correspondent Kelli Arena is on that for us, Kelli the headline.

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Judy, an admission today by Iranian officials that several al Qaeda operatives are in the country. The Iranians say they're in custody but U.S. officials say Iran may be providing safe harbor.

WOODRUFF: And, Kelli, we'll be right back to you in a few minutes.

A development tonight on one of the mysteries of the first Gulf War, the fate of missing Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher, Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre is working on that story tonight, Jamie the headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Judy, when the war -- when the fighting broke down in the war last month the Pentagon was very hopeful it would be able to resolve the fate of what happened to Scott Speicher, but now a couple of weeks into the investigation it's beginning to look like the mystery may not be solved any time soon unless some senior Iraqi officials start talking -- Judy. WOODRUFF: All right, thanks Jamie, and we'll be talking to you in just a short time.

Well, it's been quite a day at the Colonial tournament in Fort Worth, Texas, for one golfer more than any other, Annika Sorenstam. Josie Karp was there to watch her play, Josie the headline.

JOSIE KARP, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Judy, Annika Sorenstam looked cool but she was not calm on the inside. Making history took a toll on her nerves -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: All right, and we'll be back to you shortly too Josie, and back with all of you in a moment.

Also coming up tonight on NEWSNIGHT, on the day when the U.N. votes to end sanctions on Iraq, we will look at hopes that a long, crippled economy can finally begin to heal. Matthew Chance is on that tonight.

And, a celebration of the Class of 2003 at the University Park Campus School in Massachusetts, kids with few advantages but one invaluable asset, a principal who refused to give up on them, the story from Beth Nissen.

Well, it used to be that orange was a color mostly beloved of little kids, the one they reached for first in the crayon box but that was in a more innocent age. Now, orange is the color of potential trouble especially at the beginning of a long, patriotic weekend.

As CNN's Jeanne Meserve reports getting ready for Memorial Day means much more in post 9/11 America than just buying extra charcoal and ice.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE (voice-over): At the capital and elsewhere preparations are being made for Memorial Day festivities, the forecast rain and continued threat level orange through the holiday. In fact, setting the terror threat is not unlike predicting the weather.

TOM RIDGE, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: It is as much art as it is science.

MESERVE: Administration officials say there is still a lot of so-called intelligence chatter and no indication al Qaeda's operational capabilities or planning have been disrupted.

As a result, big events this weekend will see a surge in security. Airspace will be closed over the Indianapolis 500 for example. And because Memorial Day means travel for a lot of people, the transportation sector will see stepped up security, including increased combat air patrols over Washington. The advice for the public, keep your eyes and ears open for anything suspicious.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think I pay more attention when they change it. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're more aware now. I think we look at things with a more critical eye.

MESERVE: It was a tip from the public that led to the arrest this week of a New York cab driver who allegedly tried to purchase C4 explosive, bulletproof vests and night vision goggles. Officials say he does not appear to have ties to a terrorist group but some citizens say the yo-yoing threat level no longer holds their interest.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a little bit complacent. I feel myself I have. You just hear it go up, you hear it go down and just you carry on as usual.

MESERVE: At the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, emergency personnel drill for possible terrorist attacks. More protection for a symbol like this is a no-brainer at a time of high security but some officials elsewhere in the country say they've gotten only vague information from the federal government about what to protect. Some members of Congress say local officials must be told more.

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D), CONNECTICUT: In all of the federal agencies, continue to keep state and local first responders and first preventers, as I call them, at arm's length.

MESERVE (on camera): But administration officials say in this instance they don't have any specific information to share. The intelligence does not give a time, location or means of attack just indications that an attack could be imminent.

Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: We're joined now by a man "Esquire" magazine a few years ago called America's best cop. John Timoney was once commissioner of police in Philadelphia. He holds that job now where he is at the moment in Miami. Thanks for being on NEWSNIGHT again Chief Timoney.

CHIEF JOHN TIMONEY, MIAMI POLICE DEPARTMENT: Thank you, Judy.

WOODRUFF: Is Miami a city on the edge tonight because of this raised terror threat level?

TIMONEY: No, I wouldn't say it's on the edge but clearly there is a concern. There are extra police officers, for example, at locations that didn't exist two days ago, kind of obvious locations, utility companies, things of that nature.

There are other locations that we require officers to make hourly visits. We're in constant contact with the hotel association and their security agents.

As you're well aware, I guess about two months ago when the last threat level came out at orange, high rise buildings specifically hotels were mentioned for the first time. Of course that was a real concern for places like Miami that has a huge tourist industry, convention industry and, of course large hotels.

WOODRUFF: Sure.

TIMONEY: Along the coastline.

WOODRUFF: How specific is the information that you've been given this time?

TIMONEY: Nothing specific just an increase in chatter and, even if there wasn't an increase in chatter, I know there are an awful lot of naysayers out there even in the police profession that seem to be ticked off because of these up and down again color coded alerts.

I think actually myself, I think they're a good thing that they remind us every once in a while that there's still an enemy out there and I think as Secretary Ridge said, you know, it's not a science. It's an art. And, I think they're giving us the best information they have.

It's not specific but just given what's going on in the Mid East in the last week, two weeks, Casablanca four bombings there and Israel and all the stuff that's going on, you know, I think with the Memorial Day weekend coming up the two things the terrorists look for, symbolism and a high body count this weekend presents both of those.

WOODRUFF: Well, I don't know if you were able to hear but a moment ago in Jeanne Meserve's report.

TIMONEY: Yes.

WOODRUFF: We heard Senator Joe Lieberman say that the federal intelligence agencies right now are keeping the state and local first responders at arm's length. Is that your perception?

TIMONEY: I wouldn't call it arm's length. I think the communications between the locals, us and the feds, has vastly improved over prior to September 11th. However, we're still not there yet. There are still pockets if you will, of resistance within the federal bureaucracy that don't trust the locals and that's a shame because at the end of the day if there is an interruption in terrorist activity it's going to be by the locals.

I'll remind you of Timothy McVeigh, while the feds prosecuted him it was a local police officer and a regular routine car stop that made that arrest and that's what you're going to see if we do intercept terrorists before they take any action. It's usually going to be local law enforcement because there are 800,000 of us and there are only 11,000 FBI agents.

WOODRUFF: Well, do you feel that you've got enough information right now to adequately protect the people of Miami?

TIMONEY: You know, again, it's not a science. It really is an art and you make the best guesstimates on your knowledge of the city, on what the likely threats are. Clearly, some targets get more protection than others, which is why terrorists when they see one location that's hardened, that's target hardened they'll turn around and choose a soft location, for example a pizza store or a delicatessen.

Now, they won't get the high body count there or the symbolism; however, it does have a dramatic psychological impact on the general population that they're vulnerable even walking the streets or going into a pizza shop.

WOODRUFF: So, what are you telling tonight, this week, what are you telling the citizens of your city?

TIMONEY: It may seem like a contradictory message. It really isn't. It's try and relax. Enjoy the Memorial Day weekend, however, if you see something that's out of the ordinary, you know, your newscaster pointed to the arrest of the fellow two days ago, the Afghan taxi driver.

WOODRUFF: Right.

TIMONEY: He was given up twice, one in New York when he engaged a computer store owner in a conversation, and also he got down to Miami and was doing surveillance on a commercial ship, doing surveillance of the port here looking at the infrastructure, bridges asking questions that brought his attention to the authorities.

He was brought in by the Joint Terrorist Task Force here in Miami and he was grilled and, of course, he was arrested two days ago. And so, in that situation with that one guy, it was civilian observers both in New York and in Miami that gave him up if you will.

WOODRUFF: Well, you're right about the contradictory feel here but I guess that's something we all are going to have to get used to.

TIMONEY: It really is. It's, you know, it's the sign of the times we're in and it's unfortunate but I think we're in this for the long road, the long haul if you will, and I think it's incumbent upon law enforcement not to get down, not to become complacent and not to become too argumentative if you will with these changes in the various color levels of signals of the threat level.

WOODRUFF: It sounds like you may be sending a message to some of your fellow police officials around the country. Chief John Timoney, it's good to have you back on NEWSNIGHT. Thanks very much for talking to us tonight.

TIMONEY: Thanks, Judy.

WOODRUFF: We appreciate it.

TIMONEY: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: Well, the fight against terror involves everything from the efforts of a beat cop on a crowded street to a diplomat grappling with foreign intrigue. This is about the second kind of fight, high-level pressure on Iran as more evidence points to an al Qaeda presence there, that story from our Justice Correspondent Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA (voice-over): Despite Iran's repeated denials, CNN has learned Iranian officials have told a U.N. representative that Iran does have several unnamed al Qaeda operatives in custody, but U.S. officials say it is unclear whether the operatives are allowed to receive visitors and communicate. If they are the U.S. says that would amount to safe haven. The U.S. and Britain are demanding Iran turn over any al Qaeda prisoners.

TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: We have said very clearly to the Iranian government that harboring al Qaeda would be entirely unacceptable.

ARENA: Among the operatives believed to have been detained by Iran at some point Saif al-Adel. He is said to be al Qaeda's top operational planner, third in the chain of command. Officials believe he may have played a role in the recent bombings that killed eight Americans in Saudi Arabia.

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: There's no question but that there have been and are today senior al Qaeda leaders in Iran and they're busy.

ARENA: Intercepts picked up around the time of last week's bombings is evidence, some officials say, of an operational al Qaeda post in Iran and that evidence in part led to raising the threat level to high alert in the United States.

BRUCE HOFFMAN, RAND CORP. TERRORISM EXPERT: Certainly Saif al- Adel in recent weeks have been issuing -- in recent months, rather, has been issuing propaganda and is being more active at least in al Qaeda's more outward external communications recruitment propaganda campaigns.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA: Optimism over U.S.-Iran relations was building after the countries began talks on issues such as post war Iraq but the U.S. is now refusing to attend any more sessions. Officials say that any momentum that was building has been stopped dead in its tracks -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: So, they would just cut it off just like that, Kelli?

ARENA: Well, they say that they -- if they have al Qaeda operatives that they should turn them over to the United States and they're playing hardball right now. Of course it was just recently that both sides even disclosed that they were talking at all under the auspices of the United Nations.

WOODRUFF: Right, in other words but the signal to Iran couldn't be more clear.

ARENA: This is true. WOODRUFF: All right, Kelli Arena thanks very much. We appreciate it.

And ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the latest on Iraq, as the U.N. votes to lift sanctions against that country where there has been so much suffering.

And dwindling hope for a U.S. pilot missing since the first Gulf War, that and more as we continue.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Post-war Iraq was on the agenda today, not only in Washington, but also at the United Nations in New York where at the Security Council all 14 nations present, the Syrian ambassador was not there, voted to end the sanctions imposed against the regime of Saddam Hussein in 1990.

The vote amounted to a recognition of the authority of the U.S. and Britain to administer Iraq for at least a year, and also to allocate revenue from the sale of Iraqi oil as they see fit.

Well, sanctions may sound as if they are dry bureaucratic measures of interest mostly to geopolitical accountants, but they have had a profound negative effect on the lives of the Iraqi people so their lifting may have a profound effect as well for the better.

From Baghdad, here is a report from CNN's Matthew Chance.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On the Iraqi streets, U.N. sanctions have taken a bitter toll. With massive oil wealth this is no poor country but under international embargo for 13 years it's among the most deprived. With U.N. authority that can now at least begin to change.

And change needs to come fast. In Iraq's beleaguered hospitals, the human cost of sanctions is paid every day. Essential medicines and equipment have been allowed under the Oil-for-Food program but doctors say people are still dying for lack of adequate healthcare.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Until now, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) not available and equipment not available because of sanctions and so the patients are here still suffering and he may going to die because we didn't diagnose because there is no equipment to do that.

CHANCE: With the U.S. and Britain now controlling Iraq's oil production revenues can be used to ease shortages and pay for reconstruction. Still, many Iraqis are suspicious of U.S. motives.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The lifting of sanctions is fine but we heard the companies getting the contracts will bring their own workers and not hire Iraqis. What do we Iraqis do then?

CHANCE: And many Iraqis say they want security and electricity and clean water first, not soon but now.

(on camera): Of course in the long term the lifting of sanctions will benefit virtually everybody here. The trade, the travel, and the reconstruction will only add to people's general quality of life. But the fact is for many Iraqis there are simply more important issues that should be dealt with now and the growing impatience for the benefits of regime change to filter through.

Matthew Chance, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Well, it may take many years for Iraq's political life and economy to recover but there are some things we can imagine that will take much longer to heal and here we're talking about the brutal legacy of Saddam Hussein.

The top American administrator in Iraq saw that brutality up close today. L. Paul Bremer visited the largest known mass grave in Iraq, south of Baghdad. It is believed to contain the remains of thousands of victims of the Saddam Hussein regime. Bremer told reporters: "We are anxious that the people who committed these crimes be brought to justice."

There are many secrets, many unsolved mysteries, that haunt Iraq and not all of them involve the Iraqis themselves. One of the most enduring questions surrounds the fate of an American Navy pilot whose plane was shot down during the first Gulf War. There was hope that winning the second war in Iraq might lead to some answers for the family of Navy Captain Michael Scott Speicher.

But so far it remains only that, hope, more from CNN's Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): A month ago when U.S. searchers found what appeared to be the initials of Michael Scott Speicher scratched into the wall of a Baghdad prison it seemed they were on to something.

The discovery appeared to corroborate an informant's claim that an American pilot who might have been Speicher had been confined there sometime in the 1990s. But in the weeks since then, sources say, the trail has grown cold as lead after lead has failed to check out.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY: I wish I could tell you that we found a lot. We've had one trace here and another trace there but that seems to be the extent of it so far.

MCINTYRE: Though initially believed killed in the shoot down of his F-18 on the first night of the 1991 Gulf War, the Pentagon subsequently found evidence to suggest Speicher survived and was captured by Iraqi forces, but Pentagon sources say the investigation is now stalled even as Speicher's family and their supporters in Congress continue to urge the U.S. to devote more resources to the search. SEN. BILL NELSON (D), FLORIDA: I know exactly how many people that we have in there and I'm concerned that we don't have enough.

GEN. PETER PACE, VICE CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS: It's not a matter of manpower, sir. It's a matter of leads.

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon insists it is not giving up even though it has run out of places to look.

PACE: We have chased down every lead we have gotten. It is one of the things that we are interrogated our detainees and our prisoners about.

MCINTYRE: Speicher has been promoted twice in the 12 years he's been missing and is now a Navy Captain if he is still alive. Many in the Pentagon believe he was likely murdered by the Iraqis but they say even if that's true, the U.S. wants a full accounting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: And an attorney for the Speicher family says she believes Scott was alive before the war and may still be today. She says that among the more than two dozen senior Iraqi officials taken into custody by the U.S. military is at least one who knows where Speicher is or at least, at the very least what happened to him -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: Well, Jamie, if that's the case why isn't the Pentagon trying to squeeze that information out of him?

MCINTYRE: Well, they are and, in fact, they believe that's really the only hope at this point with most of the intelligence leads that they've pursued leading to basically dead ends. They now believe that they'll find Speicher if they find out what happened to him, the same way they'll find out what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, only if somebody who knows the answer comes forward and talks.

WOODRUFF: And, Jamie, Speicher's family how do they feel? Are they satisfied with what the government is doing to try to find Scott Speicher?

MCINTYRE: Well, of course, they still have the most optimistic interpretation of the known facts at this point. They believe that there's still a good chance that Speicher might be alive somewhere. They believe also it's possible that he may have been killed just recently, which they think would be a tragedy.

And they do believe that the answer does lie in some of the senior Iraqi officials. They're convinced, by the way, that one of Saddam Hussein's sons, Qusay, knows for sure what happened to Scott Speicher and if and when he is taken into custody they're hopeful that that might resolve the situation.

WOODRUFF: It's got to be just incredibly painful for the family. All right, Jamie, thank you very much. Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, a troubling SARS development as an American doctor working on the outbreak in Asia comes down with the symptoms of the illness, details in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: A few stories from around the country tonight beginning with a story involving SARS. An employee of the Centers for Disease Control is suspected of having SARS. The man is an infection control expert who has been in Taiwan evaluating hospitals that are trying to fight the spread of SARS. The man and three other CDC employees in Taiwan will be brought back to the U.S. by air ambulance and are expected back on Sunday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is reported to be considering whether to isolate Canadian cattle and beef already in the U.S. as a precaution against Mad Cow Disease. No decision has been made. Canada, meanwhile, has quarantined seven herds of cattle in Alberta and Saskatchewan believed connected to the case of Mad Cow Disease discovered earlier this week.

And, President Bush was hosting Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Prime Minister Koizumi who supported the war in Iraq got a tour and an overnight stay. The two leaders are expected to talk about putting pressure on North Korea to end its nuclear ambitions.

Mr. Bush, we're learning tonight, is also considering a trip to the Middle East where the White House said today it is hoped there may be a three-way meeting early in June between the president, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas. The meeting is not a certainty but one official today called it more and more likely. If it happened it would certainly be big news.

Also today from that part of the world, an Israeli Navy vessel boarded a small Egyptian fishing boat on which Israeli authorities say sailors found a Hezbollah activist and weapons bound for Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. Now, Hezbollah denies that any of its members were on the boat which was forced to sail into the Israeli port of Haifa.

On now to Algeria where the only thing certain about the death toll in yesterday's earthquake there is that it is disastrously high. Some sources have it that 400 or 500 people died, others that 600 or 700 or perhaps as many as 1,000 people perished in what was at 6.7 on the Richter scale the strongest earthquake in the region in 20 years. Many thousands have been injured and rescue workers are doing what they can in the havoc and the rubble.

And then our final item from around the world is actually about the world, all of it, as seen for the first time from 86 million miles away. NASA today released these stunning pictures taken and sent back by its Mars Global Surveyor Satellite which is in low orbit around the Red Planet. These are some pictures you need to take some time to look at. We only gave them to you for a few seconds. You're going to have to keep looking if you want to look at them longer.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, Annika Sorenstam tees off and holds her own against the men. We'll have a report from Fort Worth in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: And next on NEWSNIGHT, round one is done. We'll have the results of Annika Sorenson's first day against the men in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: That's that picture of Earth from Mars. I said a minute ago we didn't give you enough time so we decided to give you a few more seconds to look at it. Some thing spectacular.

Well, here on Earth, fans of Annika Sorenson would like to believe that golfer Vijay Singh is eating a big plate of crow for dinner tonight. He's the man who said Sorenstam -- quote -- "doesn't belong here with the men of the PGA Tour."

And today, Sorenstam became the first woman since World War II to play at a PGA event, the Colonial in Fort Worth, Texas. And judging by her game and her game alone, she belonged there.

Here's CNN's Josie Karp.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARP (voice-over): With (UNINTELLIGIBLE), Annika Sorenstam made history with.

But her smooth swing hid the panic inside. On the tenth tee, her first of the day, the enormity of the situation threatened to overwhelm her.

ANNIKA SORENSTAM, GOLFER: My heart was beating. I felt a little sick in my stomach and my hands were sweaty. I mean, every thing that you feel when you're under pressure and stress and, you know, on the first tee out, I kept telling myself, you know, Trust yourself. You can do it. Just, you know, I had one swing and I was just take it easy from the top.

KARP: Sorenstam gave an exaggerated display of relief immediately after getting her round under way.

Over the next four hours, she went on to show she could play as well as some of the men and even better than others, including one of her playing partners. Sorenstam finished 1 over par, a stroke ahead of Aaron Barber.

SORENSTAM: You know, I'm very pleased with 1-over par. It's not level par but, you know, first day under these circumstances, it feels better than par for me. AARON BARBER, PAIRED WITH SORENSTAM: Hey, I'm not ashamed to lose to her. She was awesome. So, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of guys that will be behind her.

KARP: Barber admitted he was rooting for Sorenstam to play well, and that made him one of thousands. An enormous crowd cheered her loudly and offered visible signs of support.

SORENSTAM: When everybody's, you know either, Go girl, Go Annika, you can do it. It's -- you know, every body is so encouraging and so positive, And, you know, obviously that gets me going as well.

KARP: A day that began with a sight rarely seen on a PGA Tour, a woman ended with another, a hug.

DEAN WILSON, PAIRED WITH SORENSTAM: You know, I just told her, I was -- I was just so proud of her. Just the way she handled herself, the way she obviously played.

SORENSTAM: I know the guys here, they're out here, you know, to compete and every thing, and I'm here to test myself. Whether I play the weekend or not, if I play like I did today, then I have tested myself in so many ways, and , you know, I've learned so much. And, you know, I'm thankful for that.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KARP: Sorenstam's score was good enough for her to beat 27 of the male professionals. She also tied with 13 others. But if she duplicates it on Friday, there's a good chance she won't make the cut. Because this course is playing a little bit easier than in years past, she'll probably have to shoot something under par in round 2 in order to have a chance to keep playing on Saturday and Sunday -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: So Josie, just how much harder is it going to be for her tomorrow? I mean, she must -- some of the relief or, you know, the tension is going to be gone. She's going to feel some sense of relief. But you're saying that's not going to count for enough?

KARP: Well, it will count for something. She said that she'll still be nervous tomorrow, Judy, but just about different things in terms of -- she'll be nervous about making the cut and wanting to concentrate more on her game and not just the enormity of the situation.

And she tees off later in the day than she did today in round one. She was one of the first players off this morning. They had a whole other later in the afternoon. So tomorrow, the entire environment could be different.

But if today was any indication, the guy who's leading this tournament was one of the last people to tee off. And maybe that will just make the conditions more favorable for her tomorrow afternoon, if it's anything like today -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: I bet they're going to be just as many eyeballs watching her tomorrow as their were today. Every body here at CNN in Washington was watching.

All right, Josie. Thanks so much. We'll talk to you in the days ahead. Thanks very much.

Well, as NEWSNIGHT continues, a special school where every graduating senior is going to college. A story of how they all overcame incredible odds in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Stories about education these days are often disheartening ones. There was one today about states lowering test standards to avoid federal penalties. There are those anecdotes about kids getting through high school barely able to comprehend Harry Potter, much less American history.

But this is an education story that is as inspiring as those are depressing. A school where the kids had everything going against them but has still managed to send all of them to college.

Here's CNN's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From the outside, it looks like one more aged public school in one more ragged inner city neighborhood. Inside, the students are like those slouched in a thousand other urban public schools.

Seventy-eight percent from families below the poverty line. Sixty-five percent from homes where no English is spoken.

DAMIAN RAMSEY: Stereotypically living in a neighborhood like this, you're not supposed to make it that far. You're not supposed to go to college. You're destined to fail.

NISSEN: Meet a woman determined to change destiny.

DONNA RODRIGUES, PRINCIPAL, UNIVERSITY PARK CAMPUS SCHOOL, WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS: The mission of the school is very succinct. It is to prepare all the kids at this school for college.

NISSEN: Donna Rodrigues is the principal of the University Park Campus School in Worcester, Massachusetts. Like many public schools, this one has an outside partner, a neighbor -- Clark University. Clark made a remarkable offer, a free college education to any graduating senior. That offer seemed unredeemable to those who came into the school's first seventh-grade class six years ago. They were years behind

RAMSEY: The majority of us were at a fourth-grade reading level.

JOVAN PRESSIE: In seventh grade, I could not read.

NISSEN (on camera): You could not read at all?

(voice-over): But principal Rodrigues told every one of them they were college bound.

RODRIGUES: No one ever told these kids they couldn't do it. From the beginning, they were told they could.

NISSEN: If they worked. Students had eight-hour school days, took home hours of work each night

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We did have a lot of homework -- like at least three hours.

NISSEN: Principal Rodrigues made her expectations clear starting with 100 percent attendance.

RODRIGUES: I won't accept the kids not being at school. If the parents don't have a phone, I go to the house. I want them in school.

NISSEN: And when in school, they are expected to honor a code of conduct.

RODRIGUES: There is no swearing allowed in the school. There is no fighting allowed in the school. There is no street talk. No disrespect whatsoever.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Someone please quickly tell me the difference between a civil and a criminal trial.

NISSEN: That means teachers spend virtually no time on what's called classroom control

RICCI HALL, TEACHER, UNIV. PARK CAMPUS SCHOOL, WORCESTER, MASS.: When I'm in a classroom teaching, I have 100 percent of their attention. Their eyes are on me. Kids don't think about acting up in my class because they don't want to deal with the wrath of Mrs. Rodrigues.

NISSEN (on camera): How tough is she?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Her standards are way up there.

NISSEN (voice-over): Errant students say Mrs. Rodrigues doesn't yell, doesn't threaten, just voices her grave disappointment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like -- letting your mom down. It's like -- I let her down. It's like -- what can I do to make it up to her.

NISSEN: The school's first class of 31 graduating seniors has not let Mrs. Rodrigues down.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Does anyone have a metaphor that comes to your mind that the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) represent just from your own experience?

NISSEN: Every member of the senior class passed the state's rigorous achievement tests in English and Math. Their scores ranked the class 34th out of 332 Massachusetts schools.

And as for college ...

RODRIGUES: 100 percent of the kids are going to college. Every kid in the senior class is going.

NISSEN: Most will be attending Clark University -- just down he street.

Tony Mastrorio (ph) is going to Georgetown. Class valedictorian Damian Ramsey was offered full scholarships to several colleges, including the University of Massachusetts and Dartmouth. He is going to Brown.

RODRIGUES: Some are them are extraordinary colleges, but they're all extraordinary to the kids who have been accepted. They were all accepted to the colleges they wanted to go to.

NISSEN: Donna Rodrigues is retiring soon, but she is confident she has blazed a trail others can follow.

RODRIGUES: We know how to behave now over there?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

RODRIGUES: You going to prove that to me?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

RODRIGUES: Educators can't give up on that bottom 80 percent of any class. They can't give up on the kids who come from dismal demographic backgrounds.

You'll be all set. You're a good student.

It's never too late. You can never give up on a kid. Never.

NISSEN: Beth Nissen, CNN, Worcester, Massachusetts

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: What a story. Well, the retirement of Donna Rodrigues is obviously a loss for these students. But it's part of a bigger trend, a nationwide shortage of principals.

Our next guest says that principals like Donna Rodrigues are crucial to improving schools. And we don't have nearly enough of them.

Dr. Milli Pierce is the director of the Principal Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. And she is in Boston.

WOODRUFF: Dr. Pierce, have you ever heard of a story like this one?

DR. MILLI PIERCE, DIR., PRINCIPAL CENTER, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, HARVARD UNIV.: There are several around the country but not enough. We need more stories like this.

WOODRUFF: Why are there so few?

We heard there are 31 kids in the graduating class. That tells me it's a fairly small school, but why is it so hard to duplicate this experience, to have somebody come in, like Ms. Rodrigues and just be tough and expect a lot from these kids?

PIERCE: Because you have to set very high expectations, and you have to work hard at it everyday. And that doesn't mean just working hard with the kids. You have to work hard with the teachers. You have to support the teachers. You have to give the teachers a belief that they can do the work.

WOODRUFF: What you're saying sounds like common sense. Why isn't it done more often?

PIERCE: Because it is such hard work and because there are teacher unions and there are all kinds of reasons and blocks that stand in the way. But the principals that really want to get the work done are able to make a difference. And the way they do it is by going in and setting very high expectations, supporting teachers every day, finding out what teachers need, talking to parents, being up front with kids about what they're going to have to do to succeed. It takes an enormous amount of strength every day.

WOODRUFF: You're describing a situation where they've got to go in and they've really got to want to make this work, and yet they need some support from the outside as well. One person can't do this. Right?

PIERCE: Well, University Park has a school -- has Clark. And there are other ways to do it as well. You need to get into the community. You need a lot of community support, particularly in urban areas.

Principals have to go out to the community and bring the community into the school, to bring in the kind of support that's really going to make a difference for kids. Parents have to be partners in the school as well. Teachers can't do it alone anymore

WOODRUFF: That's what I wanted to ask you about because we know that these schools that are in the inner cities are in cities where you have a number of families struggling for whatever reasons to make ends meet or just to stay together as a family. There are forces working on these kids that, you know, have to work against their being able to work hard in school.

PIERCE: That's right. But parents want the best for their kids even when they may not have had a successful school experience themselves. What happens is they send their children to school -- believing the teachers will try to do the best for them. The principal's job is to make sure the teachers do that -- do the best for every child in every classroom.

WOODRUFF: What's your message, Dr. Pierce, to anyone listening out there who's thinking, "Maybe I want to try to be a principal. I'm not sure I'm up to it." What would you say to them?

PIERCE: Well, at the School of Education at Harvard, we get lots of very young people that want to be principals. What I tell them is they can do this work. They have to believe that they can make a difference. They have to be willing to put in the hard hours, the long hours, and do the hard work, but, yes, they can make a difference in children's lives.

And you know what? That's what parents want. Parents send their kids to school because they want them to have a better life than the life they had. The way that's going to happen is by every teacher in every classroom doing the best for every child. The principal's job is to make sure that happens.

WOODRUFF: One thing is for sure. Donna Rodrigues's experience is an ir inspiration to all of us.

Dr. Milli Pierce at Harvard, we thank you so much for talking to us

PIERCE: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: We appreciate it.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, we're going to take you to what may now be the most dangerous spot on earth -- the Korean DMZ -- with James Brady, who fought there during the Korean War and who went back there recently to see his old battleground.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: North Korea is in the news nearly everyday now and was in the news nearly everyday almost exactly 50 years ago, too, when the makings of what still is a dangerous standoff first began. To talk about that beginning and the way things are now in that tense peninsular.

We're joined by writer and reporter James Brady. He commanded Marine rifle platoon during the Korean War. His new novel called "The Marine" is about the unresolved conflict some still call the forgotten war.

Welcome, James Brady and I guess we should say the Korean conflict.

JAMES BRADY, AUTHOR: They're splitting hairs there. We called it a war. It was a pretty good war while it lasted. President Truman didn't think he could get a declaration of war through the Congress, so he sort of went around the end and got the U.N. to go in on it. That's how it became a conflict rather than a war.

WOODRUFF: How much of your novel is -- your story autobiographical?

BRADY: Very little of it. This is the fourth book I've written about the Korean War. I've written about my owned a ventures a couple of times. This was about the first 100 days of Korea, a dramatic time. Suddenly the North Koreans backed by the Russians came over the 38th Parallel, and they rolled over the South Korean Army. And Douglas McArthur, the top soldiers over in the area over in Japan send over a couple of occupation troops. And the idea was the first 100 Americans show up, the North Koreans will turn tail and go back home like the Iraqi army. Well, it didn't happen that way. The first G.I.'s landed in Korea were just simply murdered. The war developed from there on. And there were battles back and forth across the peninsular. This deals with the first 100 days, very, very dramatic time.

WOODRUFF: There intense interest, as you know, in Korea. What was it about that war that set it apart. For those of us -- for so many Americans born after the war had no memory of it?

BRADY: Well first of all Judy, it came just five years after World War II had ended. So it was kind of overshadowed by the greatest historical event of the century. At the same time it was the first hot shooting war between the Cold War and ourselves and the Soviets. A lot of people thought it was going to lead to World War III. At the end when it tapered down, and died and went to this uneasy and sometimes violent truce in 1953, right after that, Vietnam came along, which was no larger or more savage war than Korea but longer lasting and much more bitterly divisive at home. So Korea sort of fell between stools of those two other events.

WOODRUFF: When you wrote last about Korea, maybe what, over 10 years ago, you said you didn't want to go back there. But you've obviously changed your mind. What drew to you go back this time?

BRADY: I ended a book called "The Coldest War: The Poetically." And I said I didn't think I'd ever go back and sign up for an old soldier's tour. I didn't want to see the hills again or feel the cold or hear the wind out of Siberia moaning. I didn't want to disturb the dead. And for almost 50 years, there was no reason for me to go back. And then suddenly early this year, things began to heat up there. The North Koreans began to talk about having nukes, the tensions built and "Parade Magazine" came to me, said, can you go over, revisit the hills you fought on, revisit the battlefield and come back and write about it and tell us what's going on in Korea today.

It was just -- I'm a journalist. I've been a reporter all my life. It was too good and assignment to turn down. Off I went. I'm 74 years old, I've got a bum left knee and they sent me and Eddie Adams who has a Pulitzer Prize for combat photography in Vietnam, and he's damn near as old as I amount. And we went up and -- He got white pigtail and dresses like a guy out of the Matrix. So off we went and, interviewed G.I.'s and generals. And got up to every one of the ridge lines I had fought on including one called Hill 749 actually up in North Korea, that maybe was the high start of what was really a very cool pilgrimage indeed.

WOODRUFF: It's a remarkable set of stories. The book is "The Marine" and it's the cover story in "Parade Magazine" coming up this Sunday.

James Brady, it's always good to talk to you. You have reminded us again why Korea is such a dangerous place. Thanks very being here.

BRADY: Thanks very much.

WOODRUFF: Well, we have 30 minutes to go on this edition of NEWS NIGHT. We have a lot of ground to cover, including why the intelligence community is reassessing what it knows and doesn't know about Iraq. And the story of the teenager with a $90 million endorsement deal. That is before he gets his day job. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: It is an important question in terms of American credibility around the world. Where are the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

It wasn't so long ago that the threat posed by those weapons was the main justification for the war, and while it's still possible the weapons will be found, it turns out that the CIA is now reviewing whether the intelligence they had going into the war was flawed.

The story from CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Now that the war is over, CIA director George Tenet has ordered a review of whether the U.S. had accurate information before the war about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and any links to al Qaeda and terrorism.

Officials insist it's a routine after-action review, first conceived in October.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: What you will see is an accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behavior.

STARR: But the entire portfolio of evidence Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the United Nations, the basis for the U.S. case to go to war, will be scrutinized.

Powell seems convinced.

POWELL: The presentation I made before the United Nations on the 5th of February was at the end of four straight days of living with the entire intelligence community and going over every single thing we knew.

STARR: So far, the U.S. has not found the evidence to prove the case Powell made with Tenet at his ear. The U.S. has confirmed two mobile vans were built as biological weapons labs, but no biological or chemical weapons have been found.

A senior intelligence official tells CNN the review, first reported in "The New York Times," may find that some of Iraq's secrets were too well hidden to discover.

It could bring changes in how the U.S. intelligence community gathers and analyzes information.

Officials insist the review was agreed to by Tenet and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The two often, at least perceived by outsiders, to be at odds.

STEVEN AFTERGOOD, FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS: There have been indications coming out of the Pentagon that they were impatient with what they regarded as equivocation by the CIA. Likewise, there have been reports coming out of CIA that there was undue pressure from the Pentagon to come up with the desired result.

STARR (on camera): No word on whether the American public will be told if U.S. intelligence was right.

Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: More now on the quality of the intelligence going into the war and the question of possible sparring between the Defense Department and the CIA. We're joined by Mark Kagan. He's an analyst with the International Strategic Studies Association. He's a former Middle East analyst for the Defense Department.

Mark Kagan, how could it be, you had top administration officials saying just a matter of weeks ago that they were certain that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological, and that there was a danger that they could have nuclear within a reasonable period of time. How could that be wrong?

MARK KAGAN, ANALYST, INTERNATIONAL STRATEGIC STUDIES ASSOCIATION: Well, there are two issues here. One is that there's an old Washington saying that policy analysts tell you why something can't be, and policy makers tell you why something will be. And there's always a culture clash involved there. And there may have been that culture clash involved here.

Intelligence is always referred to as putting together a jigsaw puzzle in which most of the people -- most of the pieces are blue sky, and you have to figure out which goes with which. And policy makers generally don't have the patience for that kind of information and the bits and pieces that have to be put together in an incomplete picture.

The second issue is, I think, that the Bush administration and the Defense Department and even the State Departments had been making a serious error in not distinguishing between the weapons of mass destruction and the infrastructure for making those weapons of mass destruction, which I think is far more important than the actual weapons themselves.

WOODRUFF: What do you mean by infrastructure?

KAGAN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...

WOODRUFF: You mean, like, these labs that... KAGAN: The labs, the scientists, the blueprints, the computer hard drives and the disks, the information on the Western companies that supplied materiel and technology to Iraq for building these.

These are far more easy to hide, and they're far more important. If you take the analogy that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach a man to fish, he can feed himself for the rest of his life. The weapons are that one fish.

The infrastructure and, if you will, the intellectual property, the designs and the blueprints, are what enable -- would enable Iraq to put together an entire program of weapons of mass destruction once there would have been no more international supervision.

WOODRUFF: And you're saying that all they had to do was just be more specific in what they were describing, and you wouldn't have this situation now with people saying, What happened?

KAGAN: I don't think it's just a matter of being specific in describing. I think there's been a definite emphasis by the administration on the actual weapons themselves.

As far as the weapons are concerned, there is an intelligence issue here, that there have been all these reports about these weapons in specific places, and it turns out that they go to those places, and they aren't there. It may have been a case that they weren't there, and that the intelligence reports were inaccurate or false. And that has to be examined now that the war's over.

It also may have been the case that they were moved and we didn't have the intelligence to track them.

WOODRUFF: All right. And what about this disagreement, if you will, difference of interpretation between the CIA and the Pentagon, where at the CIA, you have reports coming out that they felt pressured by the Pentagon to come up with more than they actually had, whereas the Pentagon putting out the sense, we just saw in Barbara Starr's report, putting out the word that they thought the CIA was a little squishy, was equivocating, and they should have been more harder with their information.

KAGAN: It's not so much a question of coming up with more, it's a question of how -- what context do you put it in? And as I said, intelligence is more a matter of taking bits and pieces and trying to assemble that jigsaw puzzle, and what kind of picture you're going to have at the end, and the pressure from the Pentagon, perhaps, and from higher administration officials, was, they wanted the picture to come out a certain way, and maybe the intelligence didn't necessarily justify it. But it could have gone either way, because it just wasn't clear enough.

WOODRUFF: What do you think, Mark Kagan? Do you think the Bush administration is going to end up with some egg on its face over all this? Or do you think we're going to find enough, whether it's infrastructure or actual weapons, and now they're -- by the way, they're calling them "unconventional" rather than weapons of mass destruction, we've noticed, which is it is going to be?

KAGAN: I think they're going to end up with egg on their face, because they're -- they may not find much of anything. And then the question becomes, what is large amount? They may find some weapons, and then it becomes a matter of, is that -- did that justify going to war with Iraq?

Because the emphasis has been so much on weapons rather than the infrastructure, even if they do find the mother lode of blueprints and diagrams and the scientists and other things, just like they found in 1996 after Hussein Kamal (ph) defected, he was the one who revealed the entire Iraqi bioweapons program when the U.N. inspectors were about to say there wasn't any Iraqi bioweapons program, they could find that, and people will say, But you didn't find the weapons.

And that will be the egg on the face, because they'll say, This is what we were looking for. This was the clear and present danger, not some blueprints and diagrams and some lists of companies.

WOODRUFF: Mark Kagan, a lot here to think about in the days to come. All right.

KAGAN: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: Great to see you. Thank you for coming by tonight. We appreciate it.

As NEWSNIGHT continues, the tax cut deal. Who won and lost? We'll have the details in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: You know the famous question about the 12-ounce glass containing 6 ounces of liquid. Is it half full, or half empty?

Essentially same question is being asked in Washington today about a tax cut some call enormous, but which others wanted to be twice as big.

Here's CNN's Jonathan Karl.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What a difference a week makes. Today the president went to Capitol Hill to congratulate Republicans on a $350 billion tax plan.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This is a Congress which is able to identify problems facing the American people and get things done. These are can-do people. And I'm real proud of what they've done.

KARL: Just a week ago, he derided Congress for failing to pass a much larger tax cut.

BUSH: We don't need to be little bitty in this deal, we need to be robust.

KARL: He wanted $726 billion. He settled for little bitty. So was it a loss for the president? If it was, why are these people so upset?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE (D-SD), MINORITY LEADER: I think it's an embarrassment to tax policy, and I think we're going to pay dearly for it for years and years to come.

SEN. KENT CONRAD (D), NORTH DAKOTA: Under this bill, the debt of the country is going to skyrocket.

KARL: The final tax plan may be less than half the size the president wanted, but it's about two and a half times larger than the tax plan pushed by Democrats.

The president didn't get his complete elimination of the dividend tax, but he did get the tax cut in half. And, as a bonus, he got a cut in the capital gains tax, something long on the Republican wish list. And on size, the tax cut may be much larger than meets the eye.

Republicans made most of the tax cut temporary. Some provisions expire after just two years. That will leave future Congresses a choice of either raising taxes or renewing the cuts. If they are renewed, as Republicans expect, the true 10-year cost of the tax cut could be as high as $800 billion.

In addition to reducing the tax on dividends and capital gains to 15 percent, the plan increases the child tax credit from $600 to $1,000, sending a $400 check per child to families this summer.

It also reduces income tax rates, meaning more money in the paychecks of most workers by July 1. And businesses get a tax break on new equipment purchases.

(on camera): Final vote on the tax deal is expected Friday, making it possible for the president to meet his goal of signing the third-largest tax cut in American history by Memorial Day.

Jonathan Karl, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Well, to talk some more now about what the tax cut may mean to the country and to the politicians who were for and against it, we're joined by "The Los Angeles Times"' man in Washington, Ron Brownstein.

Ron, thanks for being here.

RON BROWNSTEIN, "The Los Angeles Times": Hi, Judy.

WOODRUFF: The White House says this was a win. Are they right?

BROWNSTEIN: I think they are right. I mean, first of all, in American history, we have never before had a significant tax cut in wartime, ever. And we have now, as Jonathan pointed out, one of the largest tax cuts in American history pushed through Congress at a time when the country has been at war and is already facing enormous deficits.

By any measure, that is a political achievement for the president, in the sense of getting his agenda through Congress.

The other point that is really important is the one that John stressed for the end of his piece there. Many of the provisions in here were given artificial end points. They were short-circuited...

WOODRUFF: Sunsetted, (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...

BROWNSTEIN: Sunsetted...

WOODRUFF: ... is the...

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, sunsetted is the phrase. In all likelihood, there will be enormous pressure from this president and from Republicans in Congress to extend those. And if you do, the size of the tax cut is very formidable indeed.

WOODRUFF: Well, which raises the -- which raises a dilemma for the Democrats, and I want to ask you about that in a minute. Are there any downsides, are there any risks for the president?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, well, the...

WOODRUFF: Coming out of this?

BROWNSTEIN: ... the upsides from the president clearly, image of leadership, he has gotten what he wanted, he seems effective in Washington. He excites his base, and as we say, he creates some problems for the Democrats we can talk about in a moment.

The downside is really the flip side of the upside, often. He has gotten his agenda through Congress, he has put his stamp on the economy. It'll be very hard to argue now that he has not gotten a lot of what he wants, both in 2001 and 2003, out of the Congress.

And if the economy doesn't improve, it will be easier, I think, for the Democrats to then argue, Look, we had an approach that was working in the '90s, we had a lot of job creation. Now here we are two and a half years into this presidency, and we're down over 2 million jobs.

So he gets more ownership out of the economy with this tax cut.

WOODRUFF: And responsibility.

BROWNSTEIN: Ownership and...

WOODRUFF: As well.

BROWNSTEIN: ... responsibility. If things go well, he can point to the tax cut. If things don't go well, you can bet Democrats are going to be the one pointing to the tax cut.

WOODRUFF: All right. But, but getting back to the point you were making a minute ago, the fact that these tax cuts expire, if you will, in a few years and have -- and when the vote comes back to continue them, in effect, if you're against that, you're for a tax increase.

BROWNSTEIN: Right.

WOODRUFF: Right?

BROWNSTEIN: And in fact, it's gotten even worse than that for the Democrats. If you go back to the 2001 tax bill, it cut income tax rate in three increments, 2001 itself, 2004, 2006. Many of the Democratic presidential candidates seized on that and wanted to finance their agenda not by repealing any taxes that had already been cut, but by simply not going through the '04 and the '06 cuts.

Well, this bill has accelerated all of those rate cuts into this year, into 2003, which means the Democrats are put in a position that many of them wanted to avoid. They have to explicitly raise taxes, at least on the affluent, to fund their agenda. And you can bet the White House is looking forward to that contrast.

Democrats will try to make the case Bill Clinton did in '92, yes, we may be raising taxes on the most affluent, but we'll be cutting taxes on the middle class, we'll be using the money to reduce the deficit and increase public investments.

WOODRUFF: You can just hear that tune, you know, playing in your head, which the Republicans love to repeat, and that is, We cut taxes, the Democrats raise them.

BROWNSTEIN: Right. It is not an insurmountable argument. As I say, Bill Clinton survived it. But it can be difficult. Certainly the Democrats wanted to, John Kerry, John Edwards, Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, all wanted to avoid being put in the position of explicitly raising taxes by simply freezing these future tax cuts. Now that option has been run over by events.

WOODRUFF: I'm going to, I know you cover politics, but I'm going to ask you a purely economic question, because I know you talk to a lot of folks, including those who are expert in economics. How many jobs is this bill likely to create? I asked this question today of Dan Bartlett, who's the president's communications director...

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, I saw that.

WOODRUFF: ... and he said, Well, we need to look at it again, because it's a smaller package...

BROWNSTEIN: Right.

WOODRUFF: ... than what we originally asked for.

BROWNSTEIN: Well, you know, they were hoping for a million jobs above the baseline from this package. It's going to be a little hard to figure this out. It's smaller package, but on the other hand, it's more concentrated. It could have a bigger bang for the buck.

The stakes for the president cannot be overstated in this. He could be the first president since World War II to have a net loss of jobs throughout his entire presidential terms. No one has done that. That would be a devastating statistic...

WOODRUFF: And at this point...

BROWNSTEIN: ... to have to run on...

WOODRUFF: ... there is a loss.

BROWNSTEIN: ... and at this point, there's a loss of more than 2 million. So even his father had a net plus of 2.5 million in his term, with a slow economy. Clinton created -- had the economy create nearly 23 million jobs under his presidency. George Bush does not want to go into reelection being the first president in half a century to have the economy lose jobs over a four-year term.

He has a lot riding in not only getting this things passed, but having it be effective in what he wants to achieve.

WOODRUFF: They've got all sorts of reasons to root for an -- a healthy economy at the White House.

BROWNSTEIN: Right, absolutely.

WOODRUFF: All right, Ron Brownstein, thanks for coming by.

BROWNSTEIN: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: We appreciate it. Great to see you.

Well, as NEWSNIGHT continues, the teenager with money to burn, and then some. The story of LeBron James and the shoe deal, in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Major these days, major concerns might run, say, from concerned about getting into college all the way to finding the perfect prom date. Well, LeBron James is not your ordinary teenager. He has an extraordinary talent. And because of that, his concerns include where he will end up next year, not which college, but which NBA team. And the very grownup concern of managing an enormous endorsement deal that he just signed with Nike.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: The 2003 NBA draft lottery.

WOODRUFF (voice-over): The worst teams in professional basketball lined up tonight with a single goal, to be the franchise lucky enough to pay millions to an 18-year-old high school senior to play for them next fall.

RUSS GRANICK, NBA DEPUTY COMMISSIONER: The first pick in the 2003 NBA draft goes to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

WOODRUFF: This is that young man, a teenager named LeBron James, who hasn't been paid a dime yet by a professional team, but who is already very wealthy, thanks to an endorsement deal he agreed to yesterday with the country's biggest maker of sneakers, Nike, a deal that, over its lifetime, is estimated to be worth $90 million.

LEBRON JAMES, 2003 NBA NUMBER ONE DRAFT PICK: I'm so excited about being a Nike guy, and I just felt that that was the best fit for me, you know. And somewhat had to do about the money, of course. But I just think that they showed me that it was going to be a long-term thing.

WOODRUFF: There was a spirited bidding war, of course, over the entire issue of sneakers. During his fabulous and flashy high school career, LeBron James wore Adidas sneakers. Recently another sneaker company, Reebok, was reported to have the inside track.

But Nike, the company that paid Tiger Woods $40 million to represent it, and has paid Michael Jordan millions more, won out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, TV COMMERCIAL)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did you expect?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WOODRUFF: Now, all LeBron James has to do is play with the pros, and succeed.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: More on the LeBron James phenomenon. Ian Thomsen, senior writer for "Sports Illustrated," he's in New York.

Ian Thomsen, as my late grandmother would say, What is the world coming to? Ninety million dollars for an 18-year-old.

IAN THOMSEN, SENIOR WRITER, "SPORTS ILLUSTRATED": The more this happens, the older I feel, Judy, I'll tell you. But the -- I mean, this is really an amazing figure. There are only a few players in the NBA who will sign basketball contracts that are worth more than this $90 million deal for LeBron James.

WOODRUFF: Is this a smart bet on the part of Nike? I mean, he's only played in high school. He's never played against some of these grownups who are on these pro teams.

THOMSEN: You know, this is a lot like the deal they did with Tiger Woods a few years ago. They took a big chance on Tiger. They bet a lot of money on him. And he came through right off the bat. And that's what they're hoping LeBron James will do for them as well. But it is a big gamble. No high school player, except for Amarry Stattemeier (ph), who was the rookie of the year this year, has come out of high school directly to the NBA and performed well right off the bat.

WOODRUFF: So what makes you think he's going to be different?

THOMSEN: Well, everybody I talk to in the league says this is the next Magic Johnson, this is the player of a generation. He's going to make all his teammates better because he's a wonderful passer, he's a great playmaker. He really is a genius with the basketball. And his age is not going to be held against him. In fact, he's got the body of a much older player. And everybody thinks he's going to be terrific, really.

WOODRUFF: What about his emotional makeup? How grown-up is he? What do you hear about that?

THOMSEN: And that's what we're going to find out, because, first of all, the Cleveland Cavaliers got the rights to draft him, number one, which they will undoubtedly do. And so he's going to be playing 40 minutes from home. I think a lot of people would actually would have preferred if he'd gone to another city, just so he could make new friendships, get away from old friends. A lot of the demands that he's going to have.

And as an 18- or 19-year-old rookie, he's going to have to make a lot of tough choices about how he spends his time, who gets to see him when, who doesn't. These are all things that older guys have to do, and he's going to have to it at a very young age.

WOODRUFF: What about the message, Ian Thomsen, this sends for Nike to be spending this much money? And not only that, that somebody can pull in that kind of money for going out on a court and putting on a pair of shorts and shooting admittedly very good baskets, basketball, what's the message to young people everywhere?

THOMSEN: Well, the message is, first of all, if you can play basketball, you're in good shape. And second, secondly, secondly, this is the same message that sports is sending out across the board, that, in fact, all the entertainment industries are sending out, that, you know, this is a Britney Spears kind of deal. This is Michael Jackson with the Jackson Five kind of deal.

I mean, this, this is an entertainment industry now. And we should not be worrying about the age of the performers. It's the audience that they can pull in. And they're betting that this guy is going to pull in the biggest audience.

WOODRUFF: And so we're old-fashioned to ask way -- you know, what about college?

THOMSEN: Well...

WOODRUFF: Right? THOMSEN: Yes, exactly. I mean, I'm sorry for laughing, but it is such a passe issue at this point. I mean, if LeBron James were my son and he could sign a $90 million deal just for wearing shoes, I mean, you know, I would not tell him to be going to college and passing up the $90 million. I'd say if he had to go to college, I'd say, Try to get a job for $90 million.

WOODRUFF: Ian Thomsen, good to talk to you.

THOMSEN: Yes, thanks a lot.

WOODRUFF: It's quite a story.

THOMSEN: Yes, thanks, Judy.

WOODRUFF: And he joins me in saying that's NEWSNIGHT for tonight. Thank you for watching. I'm Judy Woodruff.

Christiane Amanpour here tomorrow night. 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

Several al Qaeda Operatives Are in Country>

Aired May 22, 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. I'm Judy Woodruff in for Aaron Brown.
Another color has been added to the usual Memorial Day pallet of red, white, and blue. The color is orange and while many Americans are planning their travel for tomorrow or their barbeque for Monday, other Americans will be working hard to keep the country safe from terror. Those efforts and the latest on the threat are what lead off the program for us tonight.

And so, we begin the whip with the latest on the security heading into the holiday weekend. Jeanne Meserve is on that tonight, Jeanne the headline.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Judy, threat level orange will last through the weekend but are the ups and downs of the threat level compromising its effectiveness, that story ahead.

WOODRUFF: Thanks, Jeanne.

Increasing questions about Iran and al Qaeda, Justice Department Correspondent Kelli Arena is on that for us, Kelli the headline.

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Judy, an admission today by Iranian officials that several al Qaeda operatives are in the country. The Iranians say they're in custody but U.S. officials say Iran may be providing safe harbor.

WOODRUFF: And, Kelli, we'll be right back to you in a few minutes.

A development tonight on one of the mysteries of the first Gulf War, the fate of missing Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher, Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre is working on that story tonight, Jamie the headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Judy, when the war -- when the fighting broke down in the war last month the Pentagon was very hopeful it would be able to resolve the fate of what happened to Scott Speicher, but now a couple of weeks into the investigation it's beginning to look like the mystery may not be solved any time soon unless some senior Iraqi officials start talking -- Judy. WOODRUFF: All right, thanks Jamie, and we'll be talking to you in just a short time.

Well, it's been quite a day at the Colonial tournament in Fort Worth, Texas, for one golfer more than any other, Annika Sorenstam. Josie Karp was there to watch her play, Josie the headline.

JOSIE KARP, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Judy, Annika Sorenstam looked cool but she was not calm on the inside. Making history took a toll on her nerves -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: All right, and we'll be back to you shortly too Josie, and back with all of you in a moment.

Also coming up tonight on NEWSNIGHT, on the day when the U.N. votes to end sanctions on Iraq, we will look at hopes that a long, crippled economy can finally begin to heal. Matthew Chance is on that tonight.

And, a celebration of the Class of 2003 at the University Park Campus School in Massachusetts, kids with few advantages but one invaluable asset, a principal who refused to give up on them, the story from Beth Nissen.

Well, it used to be that orange was a color mostly beloved of little kids, the one they reached for first in the crayon box but that was in a more innocent age. Now, orange is the color of potential trouble especially at the beginning of a long, patriotic weekend.

As CNN's Jeanne Meserve reports getting ready for Memorial Day means much more in post 9/11 America than just buying extra charcoal and ice.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE (voice-over): At the capital and elsewhere preparations are being made for Memorial Day festivities, the forecast rain and continued threat level orange through the holiday. In fact, setting the terror threat is not unlike predicting the weather.

TOM RIDGE, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: It is as much art as it is science.

MESERVE: Administration officials say there is still a lot of so-called intelligence chatter and no indication al Qaeda's operational capabilities or planning have been disrupted.

As a result, big events this weekend will see a surge in security. Airspace will be closed over the Indianapolis 500 for example. And because Memorial Day means travel for a lot of people, the transportation sector will see stepped up security, including increased combat air patrols over Washington. The advice for the public, keep your eyes and ears open for anything suspicious.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think I pay more attention when they change it. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're more aware now. I think we look at things with a more critical eye.

MESERVE: It was a tip from the public that led to the arrest this week of a New York cab driver who allegedly tried to purchase C4 explosive, bulletproof vests and night vision goggles. Officials say he does not appear to have ties to a terrorist group but some citizens say the yo-yoing threat level no longer holds their interest.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a little bit complacent. I feel myself I have. You just hear it go up, you hear it go down and just you carry on as usual.

MESERVE: At the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, emergency personnel drill for possible terrorist attacks. More protection for a symbol like this is a no-brainer at a time of high security but some officials elsewhere in the country say they've gotten only vague information from the federal government about what to protect. Some members of Congress say local officials must be told more.

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D), CONNECTICUT: In all of the federal agencies, continue to keep state and local first responders and first preventers, as I call them, at arm's length.

MESERVE (on camera): But administration officials say in this instance they don't have any specific information to share. The intelligence does not give a time, location or means of attack just indications that an attack could be imminent.

Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: We're joined now by a man "Esquire" magazine a few years ago called America's best cop. John Timoney was once commissioner of police in Philadelphia. He holds that job now where he is at the moment in Miami. Thanks for being on NEWSNIGHT again Chief Timoney.

CHIEF JOHN TIMONEY, MIAMI POLICE DEPARTMENT: Thank you, Judy.

WOODRUFF: Is Miami a city on the edge tonight because of this raised terror threat level?

TIMONEY: No, I wouldn't say it's on the edge but clearly there is a concern. There are extra police officers, for example, at locations that didn't exist two days ago, kind of obvious locations, utility companies, things of that nature.

There are other locations that we require officers to make hourly visits. We're in constant contact with the hotel association and their security agents.

As you're well aware, I guess about two months ago when the last threat level came out at orange, high rise buildings specifically hotels were mentioned for the first time. Of course that was a real concern for places like Miami that has a huge tourist industry, convention industry and, of course large hotels.

WOODRUFF: Sure.

TIMONEY: Along the coastline.

WOODRUFF: How specific is the information that you've been given this time?

TIMONEY: Nothing specific just an increase in chatter and, even if there wasn't an increase in chatter, I know there are an awful lot of naysayers out there even in the police profession that seem to be ticked off because of these up and down again color coded alerts.

I think actually myself, I think they're a good thing that they remind us every once in a while that there's still an enemy out there and I think as Secretary Ridge said, you know, it's not a science. It's an art. And, I think they're giving us the best information they have.

It's not specific but just given what's going on in the Mid East in the last week, two weeks, Casablanca four bombings there and Israel and all the stuff that's going on, you know, I think with the Memorial Day weekend coming up the two things the terrorists look for, symbolism and a high body count this weekend presents both of those.

WOODRUFF: Well, I don't know if you were able to hear but a moment ago in Jeanne Meserve's report.

TIMONEY: Yes.

WOODRUFF: We heard Senator Joe Lieberman say that the federal intelligence agencies right now are keeping the state and local first responders at arm's length. Is that your perception?

TIMONEY: I wouldn't call it arm's length. I think the communications between the locals, us and the feds, has vastly improved over prior to September 11th. However, we're still not there yet. There are still pockets if you will, of resistance within the federal bureaucracy that don't trust the locals and that's a shame because at the end of the day if there is an interruption in terrorist activity it's going to be by the locals.

I'll remind you of Timothy McVeigh, while the feds prosecuted him it was a local police officer and a regular routine car stop that made that arrest and that's what you're going to see if we do intercept terrorists before they take any action. It's usually going to be local law enforcement because there are 800,000 of us and there are only 11,000 FBI agents.

WOODRUFF: Well, do you feel that you've got enough information right now to adequately protect the people of Miami?

TIMONEY: You know, again, it's not a science. It really is an art and you make the best guesstimates on your knowledge of the city, on what the likely threats are. Clearly, some targets get more protection than others, which is why terrorists when they see one location that's hardened, that's target hardened they'll turn around and choose a soft location, for example a pizza store or a delicatessen.

Now, they won't get the high body count there or the symbolism; however, it does have a dramatic psychological impact on the general population that they're vulnerable even walking the streets or going into a pizza shop.

WOODRUFF: So, what are you telling tonight, this week, what are you telling the citizens of your city?

TIMONEY: It may seem like a contradictory message. It really isn't. It's try and relax. Enjoy the Memorial Day weekend, however, if you see something that's out of the ordinary, you know, your newscaster pointed to the arrest of the fellow two days ago, the Afghan taxi driver.

WOODRUFF: Right.

TIMONEY: He was given up twice, one in New York when he engaged a computer store owner in a conversation, and also he got down to Miami and was doing surveillance on a commercial ship, doing surveillance of the port here looking at the infrastructure, bridges asking questions that brought his attention to the authorities.

He was brought in by the Joint Terrorist Task Force here in Miami and he was grilled and, of course, he was arrested two days ago. And so, in that situation with that one guy, it was civilian observers both in New York and in Miami that gave him up if you will.

WOODRUFF: Well, you're right about the contradictory feel here but I guess that's something we all are going to have to get used to.

TIMONEY: It really is. It's, you know, it's the sign of the times we're in and it's unfortunate but I think we're in this for the long road, the long haul if you will, and I think it's incumbent upon law enforcement not to get down, not to become complacent and not to become too argumentative if you will with these changes in the various color levels of signals of the threat level.

WOODRUFF: It sounds like you may be sending a message to some of your fellow police officials around the country. Chief John Timoney, it's good to have you back on NEWSNIGHT. Thanks very much for talking to us tonight.

TIMONEY: Thanks, Judy.

WOODRUFF: We appreciate it.

TIMONEY: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: Well, the fight against terror involves everything from the efforts of a beat cop on a crowded street to a diplomat grappling with foreign intrigue. This is about the second kind of fight, high-level pressure on Iran as more evidence points to an al Qaeda presence there, that story from our Justice Correspondent Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA (voice-over): Despite Iran's repeated denials, CNN has learned Iranian officials have told a U.N. representative that Iran does have several unnamed al Qaeda operatives in custody, but U.S. officials say it is unclear whether the operatives are allowed to receive visitors and communicate. If they are the U.S. says that would amount to safe haven. The U.S. and Britain are demanding Iran turn over any al Qaeda prisoners.

TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: We have said very clearly to the Iranian government that harboring al Qaeda would be entirely unacceptable.

ARENA: Among the operatives believed to have been detained by Iran at some point Saif al-Adel. He is said to be al Qaeda's top operational planner, third in the chain of command. Officials believe he may have played a role in the recent bombings that killed eight Americans in Saudi Arabia.

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: There's no question but that there have been and are today senior al Qaeda leaders in Iran and they're busy.

ARENA: Intercepts picked up around the time of last week's bombings is evidence, some officials say, of an operational al Qaeda post in Iran and that evidence in part led to raising the threat level to high alert in the United States.

BRUCE HOFFMAN, RAND CORP. TERRORISM EXPERT: Certainly Saif al- Adel in recent weeks have been issuing -- in recent months, rather, has been issuing propaganda and is being more active at least in al Qaeda's more outward external communications recruitment propaganda campaigns.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA: Optimism over U.S.-Iran relations was building after the countries began talks on issues such as post war Iraq but the U.S. is now refusing to attend any more sessions. Officials say that any momentum that was building has been stopped dead in its tracks -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: So, they would just cut it off just like that, Kelli?

ARENA: Well, they say that they -- if they have al Qaeda operatives that they should turn them over to the United States and they're playing hardball right now. Of course it was just recently that both sides even disclosed that they were talking at all under the auspices of the United Nations.

WOODRUFF: Right, in other words but the signal to Iran couldn't be more clear.

ARENA: This is true. WOODRUFF: All right, Kelli Arena thanks very much. We appreciate it.

And ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the latest on Iraq, as the U.N. votes to lift sanctions against that country where there has been so much suffering.

And dwindling hope for a U.S. pilot missing since the first Gulf War, that and more as we continue.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Post-war Iraq was on the agenda today, not only in Washington, but also at the United Nations in New York where at the Security Council all 14 nations present, the Syrian ambassador was not there, voted to end the sanctions imposed against the regime of Saddam Hussein in 1990.

The vote amounted to a recognition of the authority of the U.S. and Britain to administer Iraq for at least a year, and also to allocate revenue from the sale of Iraqi oil as they see fit.

Well, sanctions may sound as if they are dry bureaucratic measures of interest mostly to geopolitical accountants, but they have had a profound negative effect on the lives of the Iraqi people so their lifting may have a profound effect as well for the better.

From Baghdad, here is a report from CNN's Matthew Chance.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On the Iraqi streets, U.N. sanctions have taken a bitter toll. With massive oil wealth this is no poor country but under international embargo for 13 years it's among the most deprived. With U.N. authority that can now at least begin to change.

And change needs to come fast. In Iraq's beleaguered hospitals, the human cost of sanctions is paid every day. Essential medicines and equipment have been allowed under the Oil-for-Food program but doctors say people are still dying for lack of adequate healthcare.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Until now, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) not available and equipment not available because of sanctions and so the patients are here still suffering and he may going to die because we didn't diagnose because there is no equipment to do that.

CHANCE: With the U.S. and Britain now controlling Iraq's oil production revenues can be used to ease shortages and pay for reconstruction. Still, many Iraqis are suspicious of U.S. motives.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The lifting of sanctions is fine but we heard the companies getting the contracts will bring their own workers and not hire Iraqis. What do we Iraqis do then?

CHANCE: And many Iraqis say they want security and electricity and clean water first, not soon but now.

(on camera): Of course in the long term the lifting of sanctions will benefit virtually everybody here. The trade, the travel, and the reconstruction will only add to people's general quality of life. But the fact is for many Iraqis there are simply more important issues that should be dealt with now and the growing impatience for the benefits of regime change to filter through.

Matthew Chance, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Well, it may take many years for Iraq's political life and economy to recover but there are some things we can imagine that will take much longer to heal and here we're talking about the brutal legacy of Saddam Hussein.

The top American administrator in Iraq saw that brutality up close today. L. Paul Bremer visited the largest known mass grave in Iraq, south of Baghdad. It is believed to contain the remains of thousands of victims of the Saddam Hussein regime. Bremer told reporters: "We are anxious that the people who committed these crimes be brought to justice."

There are many secrets, many unsolved mysteries, that haunt Iraq and not all of them involve the Iraqis themselves. One of the most enduring questions surrounds the fate of an American Navy pilot whose plane was shot down during the first Gulf War. There was hope that winning the second war in Iraq might lead to some answers for the family of Navy Captain Michael Scott Speicher.

But so far it remains only that, hope, more from CNN's Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): A month ago when U.S. searchers found what appeared to be the initials of Michael Scott Speicher scratched into the wall of a Baghdad prison it seemed they were on to something.

The discovery appeared to corroborate an informant's claim that an American pilot who might have been Speicher had been confined there sometime in the 1990s. But in the weeks since then, sources say, the trail has grown cold as lead after lead has failed to check out.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY: I wish I could tell you that we found a lot. We've had one trace here and another trace there but that seems to be the extent of it so far.

MCINTYRE: Though initially believed killed in the shoot down of his F-18 on the first night of the 1991 Gulf War, the Pentagon subsequently found evidence to suggest Speicher survived and was captured by Iraqi forces, but Pentagon sources say the investigation is now stalled even as Speicher's family and their supporters in Congress continue to urge the U.S. to devote more resources to the search. SEN. BILL NELSON (D), FLORIDA: I know exactly how many people that we have in there and I'm concerned that we don't have enough.

GEN. PETER PACE, VICE CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS: It's not a matter of manpower, sir. It's a matter of leads.

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon insists it is not giving up even though it has run out of places to look.

PACE: We have chased down every lead we have gotten. It is one of the things that we are interrogated our detainees and our prisoners about.

MCINTYRE: Speicher has been promoted twice in the 12 years he's been missing and is now a Navy Captain if he is still alive. Many in the Pentagon believe he was likely murdered by the Iraqis but they say even if that's true, the U.S. wants a full accounting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: And an attorney for the Speicher family says she believes Scott was alive before the war and may still be today. She says that among the more than two dozen senior Iraqi officials taken into custody by the U.S. military is at least one who knows where Speicher is or at least, at the very least what happened to him -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: Well, Jamie, if that's the case why isn't the Pentagon trying to squeeze that information out of him?

MCINTYRE: Well, they are and, in fact, they believe that's really the only hope at this point with most of the intelligence leads that they've pursued leading to basically dead ends. They now believe that they'll find Speicher if they find out what happened to him, the same way they'll find out what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, only if somebody who knows the answer comes forward and talks.

WOODRUFF: And, Jamie, Speicher's family how do they feel? Are they satisfied with what the government is doing to try to find Scott Speicher?

MCINTYRE: Well, of course, they still have the most optimistic interpretation of the known facts at this point. They believe that there's still a good chance that Speicher might be alive somewhere. They believe also it's possible that he may have been killed just recently, which they think would be a tragedy.

And they do believe that the answer does lie in some of the senior Iraqi officials. They're convinced, by the way, that one of Saddam Hussein's sons, Qusay, knows for sure what happened to Scott Speicher and if and when he is taken into custody they're hopeful that that might resolve the situation.

WOODRUFF: It's got to be just incredibly painful for the family. All right, Jamie, thank you very much. Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, a troubling SARS development as an American doctor working on the outbreak in Asia comes down with the symptoms of the illness, details in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: A few stories from around the country tonight beginning with a story involving SARS. An employee of the Centers for Disease Control is suspected of having SARS. The man is an infection control expert who has been in Taiwan evaluating hospitals that are trying to fight the spread of SARS. The man and three other CDC employees in Taiwan will be brought back to the U.S. by air ambulance and are expected back on Sunday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is reported to be considering whether to isolate Canadian cattle and beef already in the U.S. as a precaution against Mad Cow Disease. No decision has been made. Canada, meanwhile, has quarantined seven herds of cattle in Alberta and Saskatchewan believed connected to the case of Mad Cow Disease discovered earlier this week.

And, President Bush was hosting Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Prime Minister Koizumi who supported the war in Iraq got a tour and an overnight stay. The two leaders are expected to talk about putting pressure on North Korea to end its nuclear ambitions.

Mr. Bush, we're learning tonight, is also considering a trip to the Middle East where the White House said today it is hoped there may be a three-way meeting early in June between the president, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas. The meeting is not a certainty but one official today called it more and more likely. If it happened it would certainly be big news.

Also today from that part of the world, an Israeli Navy vessel boarded a small Egyptian fishing boat on which Israeli authorities say sailors found a Hezbollah activist and weapons bound for Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. Now, Hezbollah denies that any of its members were on the boat which was forced to sail into the Israeli port of Haifa.

On now to Algeria where the only thing certain about the death toll in yesterday's earthquake there is that it is disastrously high. Some sources have it that 400 or 500 people died, others that 600 or 700 or perhaps as many as 1,000 people perished in what was at 6.7 on the Richter scale the strongest earthquake in the region in 20 years. Many thousands have been injured and rescue workers are doing what they can in the havoc and the rubble.

And then our final item from around the world is actually about the world, all of it, as seen for the first time from 86 million miles away. NASA today released these stunning pictures taken and sent back by its Mars Global Surveyor Satellite which is in low orbit around the Red Planet. These are some pictures you need to take some time to look at. We only gave them to you for a few seconds. You're going to have to keep looking if you want to look at them longer.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, Annika Sorenstam tees off and holds her own against the men. We'll have a report from Fort Worth in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: And next on NEWSNIGHT, round one is done. We'll have the results of Annika Sorenson's first day against the men in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: That's that picture of Earth from Mars. I said a minute ago we didn't give you enough time so we decided to give you a few more seconds to look at it. Some thing spectacular.

Well, here on Earth, fans of Annika Sorenson would like to believe that golfer Vijay Singh is eating a big plate of crow for dinner tonight. He's the man who said Sorenstam -- quote -- "doesn't belong here with the men of the PGA Tour."

And today, Sorenstam became the first woman since World War II to play at a PGA event, the Colonial in Fort Worth, Texas. And judging by her game and her game alone, she belonged there.

Here's CNN's Josie Karp.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARP (voice-over): With (UNINTELLIGIBLE), Annika Sorenstam made history with.

But her smooth swing hid the panic inside. On the tenth tee, her first of the day, the enormity of the situation threatened to overwhelm her.

ANNIKA SORENSTAM, GOLFER: My heart was beating. I felt a little sick in my stomach and my hands were sweaty. I mean, every thing that you feel when you're under pressure and stress and, you know, on the first tee out, I kept telling myself, you know, Trust yourself. You can do it. Just, you know, I had one swing and I was just take it easy from the top.

KARP: Sorenstam gave an exaggerated display of relief immediately after getting her round under way.

Over the next four hours, she went on to show she could play as well as some of the men and even better than others, including one of her playing partners. Sorenstam finished 1 over par, a stroke ahead of Aaron Barber.

SORENSTAM: You know, I'm very pleased with 1-over par. It's not level par but, you know, first day under these circumstances, it feels better than par for me. AARON BARBER, PAIRED WITH SORENSTAM: Hey, I'm not ashamed to lose to her. She was awesome. So, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of guys that will be behind her.

KARP: Barber admitted he was rooting for Sorenstam to play well, and that made him one of thousands. An enormous crowd cheered her loudly and offered visible signs of support.

SORENSTAM: When everybody's, you know either, Go girl, Go Annika, you can do it. It's -- you know, every body is so encouraging and so positive, And, you know, obviously that gets me going as well.

KARP: A day that began with a sight rarely seen on a PGA Tour, a woman ended with another, a hug.

DEAN WILSON, PAIRED WITH SORENSTAM: You know, I just told her, I was -- I was just so proud of her. Just the way she handled herself, the way she obviously played.

SORENSTAM: I know the guys here, they're out here, you know, to compete and every thing, and I'm here to test myself. Whether I play the weekend or not, if I play like I did today, then I have tested myself in so many ways, and , you know, I've learned so much. And, you know, I'm thankful for that.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KARP: Sorenstam's score was good enough for her to beat 27 of the male professionals. She also tied with 13 others. But if she duplicates it on Friday, there's a good chance she won't make the cut. Because this course is playing a little bit easier than in years past, she'll probably have to shoot something under par in round 2 in order to have a chance to keep playing on Saturday and Sunday -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: So Josie, just how much harder is it going to be for her tomorrow? I mean, she must -- some of the relief or, you know, the tension is going to be gone. She's going to feel some sense of relief. But you're saying that's not going to count for enough?

KARP: Well, it will count for something. She said that she'll still be nervous tomorrow, Judy, but just about different things in terms of -- she'll be nervous about making the cut and wanting to concentrate more on her game and not just the enormity of the situation.

And she tees off later in the day than she did today in round one. She was one of the first players off this morning. They had a whole other later in the afternoon. So tomorrow, the entire environment could be different.

But if today was any indication, the guy who's leading this tournament was one of the last people to tee off. And maybe that will just make the conditions more favorable for her tomorrow afternoon, if it's anything like today -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: I bet they're going to be just as many eyeballs watching her tomorrow as their were today. Every body here at CNN in Washington was watching.

All right, Josie. Thanks so much. We'll talk to you in the days ahead. Thanks very much.

Well, as NEWSNIGHT continues, a special school where every graduating senior is going to college. A story of how they all overcame incredible odds in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Stories about education these days are often disheartening ones. There was one today about states lowering test standards to avoid federal penalties. There are those anecdotes about kids getting through high school barely able to comprehend Harry Potter, much less American history.

But this is an education story that is as inspiring as those are depressing. A school where the kids had everything going against them but has still managed to send all of them to college.

Here's CNN's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From the outside, it looks like one more aged public school in one more ragged inner city neighborhood. Inside, the students are like those slouched in a thousand other urban public schools.

Seventy-eight percent from families below the poverty line. Sixty-five percent from homes where no English is spoken.

DAMIAN RAMSEY: Stereotypically living in a neighborhood like this, you're not supposed to make it that far. You're not supposed to go to college. You're destined to fail.

NISSEN: Meet a woman determined to change destiny.

DONNA RODRIGUES, PRINCIPAL, UNIVERSITY PARK CAMPUS SCHOOL, WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS: The mission of the school is very succinct. It is to prepare all the kids at this school for college.

NISSEN: Donna Rodrigues is the principal of the University Park Campus School in Worcester, Massachusetts. Like many public schools, this one has an outside partner, a neighbor -- Clark University. Clark made a remarkable offer, a free college education to any graduating senior. That offer seemed unredeemable to those who came into the school's first seventh-grade class six years ago. They were years behind

RAMSEY: The majority of us were at a fourth-grade reading level.

JOVAN PRESSIE: In seventh grade, I could not read.

NISSEN (on camera): You could not read at all?

(voice-over): But principal Rodrigues told every one of them they were college bound.

RODRIGUES: No one ever told these kids they couldn't do it. From the beginning, they were told they could.

NISSEN: If they worked. Students had eight-hour school days, took home hours of work each night

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We did have a lot of homework -- like at least three hours.

NISSEN: Principal Rodrigues made her expectations clear starting with 100 percent attendance.

RODRIGUES: I won't accept the kids not being at school. If the parents don't have a phone, I go to the house. I want them in school.

NISSEN: And when in school, they are expected to honor a code of conduct.

RODRIGUES: There is no swearing allowed in the school. There is no fighting allowed in the school. There is no street talk. No disrespect whatsoever.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Someone please quickly tell me the difference between a civil and a criminal trial.

NISSEN: That means teachers spend virtually no time on what's called classroom control

RICCI HALL, TEACHER, UNIV. PARK CAMPUS SCHOOL, WORCESTER, MASS.: When I'm in a classroom teaching, I have 100 percent of their attention. Their eyes are on me. Kids don't think about acting up in my class because they don't want to deal with the wrath of Mrs. Rodrigues.

NISSEN (on camera): How tough is she?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Her standards are way up there.

NISSEN (voice-over): Errant students say Mrs. Rodrigues doesn't yell, doesn't threaten, just voices her grave disappointment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like -- letting your mom down. It's like -- I let her down. It's like -- what can I do to make it up to her.

NISSEN: The school's first class of 31 graduating seniors has not let Mrs. Rodrigues down.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Does anyone have a metaphor that comes to your mind that the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) represent just from your own experience?

NISSEN: Every member of the senior class passed the state's rigorous achievement tests in English and Math. Their scores ranked the class 34th out of 332 Massachusetts schools.

And as for college ...

RODRIGUES: 100 percent of the kids are going to college. Every kid in the senior class is going.

NISSEN: Most will be attending Clark University -- just down he street.

Tony Mastrorio (ph) is going to Georgetown. Class valedictorian Damian Ramsey was offered full scholarships to several colleges, including the University of Massachusetts and Dartmouth. He is going to Brown.

RODRIGUES: Some are them are extraordinary colleges, but they're all extraordinary to the kids who have been accepted. They were all accepted to the colleges they wanted to go to.

NISSEN: Donna Rodrigues is retiring soon, but she is confident she has blazed a trail others can follow.

RODRIGUES: We know how to behave now over there?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

RODRIGUES: You going to prove that to me?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

RODRIGUES: Educators can't give up on that bottom 80 percent of any class. They can't give up on the kids who come from dismal demographic backgrounds.

You'll be all set. You're a good student.

It's never too late. You can never give up on a kid. Never.

NISSEN: Beth Nissen, CNN, Worcester, Massachusetts

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: What a story. Well, the retirement of Donna Rodrigues is obviously a loss for these students. But it's part of a bigger trend, a nationwide shortage of principals.

Our next guest says that principals like Donna Rodrigues are crucial to improving schools. And we don't have nearly enough of them.

Dr. Milli Pierce is the director of the Principal Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. And she is in Boston.

WOODRUFF: Dr. Pierce, have you ever heard of a story like this one?

DR. MILLI PIERCE, DIR., PRINCIPAL CENTER, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, HARVARD UNIV.: There are several around the country but not enough. We need more stories like this.

WOODRUFF: Why are there so few?

We heard there are 31 kids in the graduating class. That tells me it's a fairly small school, but why is it so hard to duplicate this experience, to have somebody come in, like Ms. Rodrigues and just be tough and expect a lot from these kids?

PIERCE: Because you have to set very high expectations, and you have to work hard at it everyday. And that doesn't mean just working hard with the kids. You have to work hard with the teachers. You have to support the teachers. You have to give the teachers a belief that they can do the work.

WOODRUFF: What you're saying sounds like common sense. Why isn't it done more often?

PIERCE: Because it is such hard work and because there are teacher unions and there are all kinds of reasons and blocks that stand in the way. But the principals that really want to get the work done are able to make a difference. And the way they do it is by going in and setting very high expectations, supporting teachers every day, finding out what teachers need, talking to parents, being up front with kids about what they're going to have to do to succeed. It takes an enormous amount of strength every day.

WOODRUFF: You're describing a situation where they've got to go in and they've really got to want to make this work, and yet they need some support from the outside as well. One person can't do this. Right?

PIERCE: Well, University Park has a school -- has Clark. And there are other ways to do it as well. You need to get into the community. You need a lot of community support, particularly in urban areas.

Principals have to go out to the community and bring the community into the school, to bring in the kind of support that's really going to make a difference for kids. Parents have to be partners in the school as well. Teachers can't do it alone anymore

WOODRUFF: That's what I wanted to ask you about because we know that these schools that are in the inner cities are in cities where you have a number of families struggling for whatever reasons to make ends meet or just to stay together as a family. There are forces working on these kids that, you know, have to work against their being able to work hard in school.

PIERCE: That's right. But parents want the best for their kids even when they may not have had a successful school experience themselves. What happens is they send their children to school -- believing the teachers will try to do the best for them. The principal's job is to make sure the teachers do that -- do the best for every child in every classroom.

WOODRUFF: What's your message, Dr. Pierce, to anyone listening out there who's thinking, "Maybe I want to try to be a principal. I'm not sure I'm up to it." What would you say to them?

PIERCE: Well, at the School of Education at Harvard, we get lots of very young people that want to be principals. What I tell them is they can do this work. They have to believe that they can make a difference. They have to be willing to put in the hard hours, the long hours, and do the hard work, but, yes, they can make a difference in children's lives.

And you know what? That's what parents want. Parents send their kids to school because they want them to have a better life than the life they had. The way that's going to happen is by every teacher in every classroom doing the best for every child. The principal's job is to make sure that happens.

WOODRUFF: One thing is for sure. Donna Rodrigues's experience is an ir inspiration to all of us.

Dr. Milli Pierce at Harvard, we thank you so much for talking to us

PIERCE: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: We appreciate it.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, we're going to take you to what may now be the most dangerous spot on earth -- the Korean DMZ -- with James Brady, who fought there during the Korean War and who went back there recently to see his old battleground.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: North Korea is in the news nearly everyday now and was in the news nearly everyday almost exactly 50 years ago, too, when the makings of what still is a dangerous standoff first began. To talk about that beginning and the way things are now in that tense peninsular.

We're joined by writer and reporter James Brady. He commanded Marine rifle platoon during the Korean War. His new novel called "The Marine" is about the unresolved conflict some still call the forgotten war.

Welcome, James Brady and I guess we should say the Korean conflict.

JAMES BRADY, AUTHOR: They're splitting hairs there. We called it a war. It was a pretty good war while it lasted. President Truman didn't think he could get a declaration of war through the Congress, so he sort of went around the end and got the U.N. to go in on it. That's how it became a conflict rather than a war.

WOODRUFF: How much of your novel is -- your story autobiographical?

BRADY: Very little of it. This is the fourth book I've written about the Korean War. I've written about my owned a ventures a couple of times. This was about the first 100 days of Korea, a dramatic time. Suddenly the North Koreans backed by the Russians came over the 38th Parallel, and they rolled over the South Korean Army. And Douglas McArthur, the top soldiers over in the area over in Japan send over a couple of occupation troops. And the idea was the first 100 Americans show up, the North Koreans will turn tail and go back home like the Iraqi army. Well, it didn't happen that way. The first G.I.'s landed in Korea were just simply murdered. The war developed from there on. And there were battles back and forth across the peninsular. This deals with the first 100 days, very, very dramatic time.

WOODRUFF: There intense interest, as you know, in Korea. What was it about that war that set it apart. For those of us -- for so many Americans born after the war had no memory of it?

BRADY: Well first of all Judy, it came just five years after World War II had ended. So it was kind of overshadowed by the greatest historical event of the century. At the same time it was the first hot shooting war between the Cold War and ourselves and the Soviets. A lot of people thought it was going to lead to World War III. At the end when it tapered down, and died and went to this uneasy and sometimes violent truce in 1953, right after that, Vietnam came along, which was no larger or more savage war than Korea but longer lasting and much more bitterly divisive at home. So Korea sort of fell between stools of those two other events.

WOODRUFF: When you wrote last about Korea, maybe what, over 10 years ago, you said you didn't want to go back there. But you've obviously changed your mind. What drew to you go back this time?

BRADY: I ended a book called "The Coldest War: The Poetically." And I said I didn't think I'd ever go back and sign up for an old soldier's tour. I didn't want to see the hills again or feel the cold or hear the wind out of Siberia moaning. I didn't want to disturb the dead. And for almost 50 years, there was no reason for me to go back. And then suddenly early this year, things began to heat up there. The North Koreans began to talk about having nukes, the tensions built and "Parade Magazine" came to me, said, can you go over, revisit the hills you fought on, revisit the battlefield and come back and write about it and tell us what's going on in Korea today.

It was just -- I'm a journalist. I've been a reporter all my life. It was too good and assignment to turn down. Off I went. I'm 74 years old, I've got a bum left knee and they sent me and Eddie Adams who has a Pulitzer Prize for combat photography in Vietnam, and he's damn near as old as I amount. And we went up and -- He got white pigtail and dresses like a guy out of the Matrix. So off we went and, interviewed G.I.'s and generals. And got up to every one of the ridge lines I had fought on including one called Hill 749 actually up in North Korea, that maybe was the high start of what was really a very cool pilgrimage indeed.

WOODRUFF: It's a remarkable set of stories. The book is "The Marine" and it's the cover story in "Parade Magazine" coming up this Sunday.

James Brady, it's always good to talk to you. You have reminded us again why Korea is such a dangerous place. Thanks very being here.

BRADY: Thanks very much.

WOODRUFF: Well, we have 30 minutes to go on this edition of NEWS NIGHT. We have a lot of ground to cover, including why the intelligence community is reassessing what it knows and doesn't know about Iraq. And the story of the teenager with a $90 million endorsement deal. That is before he gets his day job. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: It is an important question in terms of American credibility around the world. Where are the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

It wasn't so long ago that the threat posed by those weapons was the main justification for the war, and while it's still possible the weapons will be found, it turns out that the CIA is now reviewing whether the intelligence they had going into the war was flawed.

The story from CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Now that the war is over, CIA director George Tenet has ordered a review of whether the U.S. had accurate information before the war about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and any links to al Qaeda and terrorism.

Officials insist it's a routine after-action review, first conceived in October.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: What you will see is an accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behavior.

STARR: But the entire portfolio of evidence Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the United Nations, the basis for the U.S. case to go to war, will be scrutinized.

Powell seems convinced.

POWELL: The presentation I made before the United Nations on the 5th of February was at the end of four straight days of living with the entire intelligence community and going over every single thing we knew.

STARR: So far, the U.S. has not found the evidence to prove the case Powell made with Tenet at his ear. The U.S. has confirmed two mobile vans were built as biological weapons labs, but no biological or chemical weapons have been found.

A senior intelligence official tells CNN the review, first reported in "The New York Times," may find that some of Iraq's secrets were too well hidden to discover.

It could bring changes in how the U.S. intelligence community gathers and analyzes information.

Officials insist the review was agreed to by Tenet and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The two often, at least perceived by outsiders, to be at odds.

STEVEN AFTERGOOD, FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS: There have been indications coming out of the Pentagon that they were impatient with what they regarded as equivocation by the CIA. Likewise, there have been reports coming out of CIA that there was undue pressure from the Pentagon to come up with the desired result.

STARR (on camera): No word on whether the American public will be told if U.S. intelligence was right.

Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: More now on the quality of the intelligence going into the war and the question of possible sparring between the Defense Department and the CIA. We're joined by Mark Kagan. He's an analyst with the International Strategic Studies Association. He's a former Middle East analyst for the Defense Department.

Mark Kagan, how could it be, you had top administration officials saying just a matter of weeks ago that they were certain that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological, and that there was a danger that they could have nuclear within a reasonable period of time. How could that be wrong?

MARK KAGAN, ANALYST, INTERNATIONAL STRATEGIC STUDIES ASSOCIATION: Well, there are two issues here. One is that there's an old Washington saying that policy analysts tell you why something can't be, and policy makers tell you why something will be. And there's always a culture clash involved there. And there may have been that culture clash involved here.

Intelligence is always referred to as putting together a jigsaw puzzle in which most of the people -- most of the pieces are blue sky, and you have to figure out which goes with which. And policy makers generally don't have the patience for that kind of information and the bits and pieces that have to be put together in an incomplete picture.

The second issue is, I think, that the Bush administration and the Defense Department and even the State Departments had been making a serious error in not distinguishing between the weapons of mass destruction and the infrastructure for making those weapons of mass destruction, which I think is far more important than the actual weapons themselves.

WOODRUFF: What do you mean by infrastructure?

KAGAN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...

WOODRUFF: You mean, like, these labs that... KAGAN: The labs, the scientists, the blueprints, the computer hard drives and the disks, the information on the Western companies that supplied materiel and technology to Iraq for building these.

These are far more easy to hide, and they're far more important. If you take the analogy that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach a man to fish, he can feed himself for the rest of his life. The weapons are that one fish.

The infrastructure and, if you will, the intellectual property, the designs and the blueprints, are what enable -- would enable Iraq to put together an entire program of weapons of mass destruction once there would have been no more international supervision.

WOODRUFF: And you're saying that all they had to do was just be more specific in what they were describing, and you wouldn't have this situation now with people saying, What happened?

KAGAN: I don't think it's just a matter of being specific in describing. I think there's been a definite emphasis by the administration on the actual weapons themselves.

As far as the weapons are concerned, there is an intelligence issue here, that there have been all these reports about these weapons in specific places, and it turns out that they go to those places, and they aren't there. It may have been a case that they weren't there, and that the intelligence reports were inaccurate or false. And that has to be examined now that the war's over.

It also may have been the case that they were moved and we didn't have the intelligence to track them.

WOODRUFF: All right. And what about this disagreement, if you will, difference of interpretation between the CIA and the Pentagon, where at the CIA, you have reports coming out that they felt pressured by the Pentagon to come up with more than they actually had, whereas the Pentagon putting out the sense, we just saw in Barbara Starr's report, putting out the word that they thought the CIA was a little squishy, was equivocating, and they should have been more harder with their information.

KAGAN: It's not so much a question of coming up with more, it's a question of how -- what context do you put it in? And as I said, intelligence is more a matter of taking bits and pieces and trying to assemble that jigsaw puzzle, and what kind of picture you're going to have at the end, and the pressure from the Pentagon, perhaps, and from higher administration officials, was, they wanted the picture to come out a certain way, and maybe the intelligence didn't necessarily justify it. But it could have gone either way, because it just wasn't clear enough.

WOODRUFF: What do you think, Mark Kagan? Do you think the Bush administration is going to end up with some egg on its face over all this? Or do you think we're going to find enough, whether it's infrastructure or actual weapons, and now they're -- by the way, they're calling them "unconventional" rather than weapons of mass destruction, we've noticed, which is it is going to be?

KAGAN: I think they're going to end up with egg on their face, because they're -- they may not find much of anything. And then the question becomes, what is large amount? They may find some weapons, and then it becomes a matter of, is that -- did that justify going to war with Iraq?

Because the emphasis has been so much on weapons rather than the infrastructure, even if they do find the mother lode of blueprints and diagrams and the scientists and other things, just like they found in 1996 after Hussein Kamal (ph) defected, he was the one who revealed the entire Iraqi bioweapons program when the U.N. inspectors were about to say there wasn't any Iraqi bioweapons program, they could find that, and people will say, But you didn't find the weapons.

And that will be the egg on the face, because they'll say, This is what we were looking for. This was the clear and present danger, not some blueprints and diagrams and some lists of companies.

WOODRUFF: Mark Kagan, a lot here to think about in the days to come. All right.

KAGAN: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: Great to see you. Thank you for coming by tonight. We appreciate it.

As NEWSNIGHT continues, the tax cut deal. Who won and lost? We'll have the details in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: You know the famous question about the 12-ounce glass containing 6 ounces of liquid. Is it half full, or half empty?

Essentially same question is being asked in Washington today about a tax cut some call enormous, but which others wanted to be twice as big.

Here's CNN's Jonathan Karl.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What a difference a week makes. Today the president went to Capitol Hill to congratulate Republicans on a $350 billion tax plan.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This is a Congress which is able to identify problems facing the American people and get things done. These are can-do people. And I'm real proud of what they've done.

KARL: Just a week ago, he derided Congress for failing to pass a much larger tax cut.

BUSH: We don't need to be little bitty in this deal, we need to be robust.

KARL: He wanted $726 billion. He settled for little bitty. So was it a loss for the president? If it was, why are these people so upset?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE (D-SD), MINORITY LEADER: I think it's an embarrassment to tax policy, and I think we're going to pay dearly for it for years and years to come.

SEN. KENT CONRAD (D), NORTH DAKOTA: Under this bill, the debt of the country is going to skyrocket.

KARL: The final tax plan may be less than half the size the president wanted, but it's about two and a half times larger than the tax plan pushed by Democrats.

The president didn't get his complete elimination of the dividend tax, but he did get the tax cut in half. And, as a bonus, he got a cut in the capital gains tax, something long on the Republican wish list. And on size, the tax cut may be much larger than meets the eye.

Republicans made most of the tax cut temporary. Some provisions expire after just two years. That will leave future Congresses a choice of either raising taxes or renewing the cuts. If they are renewed, as Republicans expect, the true 10-year cost of the tax cut could be as high as $800 billion.

In addition to reducing the tax on dividends and capital gains to 15 percent, the plan increases the child tax credit from $600 to $1,000, sending a $400 check per child to families this summer.

It also reduces income tax rates, meaning more money in the paychecks of most workers by July 1. And businesses get a tax break on new equipment purchases.

(on camera): Final vote on the tax deal is expected Friday, making it possible for the president to meet his goal of signing the third-largest tax cut in American history by Memorial Day.

Jonathan Karl, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Well, to talk some more now about what the tax cut may mean to the country and to the politicians who were for and against it, we're joined by "The Los Angeles Times"' man in Washington, Ron Brownstein.

Ron, thanks for being here.

RON BROWNSTEIN, "The Los Angeles Times": Hi, Judy.

WOODRUFF: The White House says this was a win. Are they right?

BROWNSTEIN: I think they are right. I mean, first of all, in American history, we have never before had a significant tax cut in wartime, ever. And we have now, as Jonathan pointed out, one of the largest tax cuts in American history pushed through Congress at a time when the country has been at war and is already facing enormous deficits.

By any measure, that is a political achievement for the president, in the sense of getting his agenda through Congress.

The other point that is really important is the one that John stressed for the end of his piece there. Many of the provisions in here were given artificial end points. They were short-circuited...

WOODRUFF: Sunsetted, (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...

BROWNSTEIN: Sunsetted...

WOODRUFF: ... is the...

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, sunsetted is the phrase. In all likelihood, there will be enormous pressure from this president and from Republicans in Congress to extend those. And if you do, the size of the tax cut is very formidable indeed.

WOODRUFF: Well, which raises the -- which raises a dilemma for the Democrats, and I want to ask you about that in a minute. Are there any downsides, are there any risks for the president?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, well, the...

WOODRUFF: Coming out of this?

BROWNSTEIN: ... the upsides from the president clearly, image of leadership, he has gotten what he wanted, he seems effective in Washington. He excites his base, and as we say, he creates some problems for the Democrats we can talk about in a moment.

The downside is really the flip side of the upside, often. He has gotten his agenda through Congress, he has put his stamp on the economy. It'll be very hard to argue now that he has not gotten a lot of what he wants, both in 2001 and 2003, out of the Congress.

And if the economy doesn't improve, it will be easier, I think, for the Democrats to then argue, Look, we had an approach that was working in the '90s, we had a lot of job creation. Now here we are two and a half years into this presidency, and we're down over 2 million jobs.

So he gets more ownership out of the economy with this tax cut.

WOODRUFF: And responsibility.

BROWNSTEIN: Ownership and...

WOODRUFF: As well.

BROWNSTEIN: ... responsibility. If things go well, he can point to the tax cut. If things don't go well, you can bet Democrats are going to be the one pointing to the tax cut.

WOODRUFF: All right. But, but getting back to the point you were making a minute ago, the fact that these tax cuts expire, if you will, in a few years and have -- and when the vote comes back to continue them, in effect, if you're against that, you're for a tax increase.

BROWNSTEIN: Right.

WOODRUFF: Right?

BROWNSTEIN: And in fact, it's gotten even worse than that for the Democrats. If you go back to the 2001 tax bill, it cut income tax rate in three increments, 2001 itself, 2004, 2006. Many of the Democratic presidential candidates seized on that and wanted to finance their agenda not by repealing any taxes that had already been cut, but by simply not going through the '04 and the '06 cuts.

Well, this bill has accelerated all of those rate cuts into this year, into 2003, which means the Democrats are put in a position that many of them wanted to avoid. They have to explicitly raise taxes, at least on the affluent, to fund their agenda. And you can bet the White House is looking forward to that contrast.

Democrats will try to make the case Bill Clinton did in '92, yes, we may be raising taxes on the most affluent, but we'll be cutting taxes on the middle class, we'll be using the money to reduce the deficit and increase public investments.

WOODRUFF: You can just hear that tune, you know, playing in your head, which the Republicans love to repeat, and that is, We cut taxes, the Democrats raise them.

BROWNSTEIN: Right. It is not an insurmountable argument. As I say, Bill Clinton survived it. But it can be difficult. Certainly the Democrats wanted to, John Kerry, John Edwards, Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, all wanted to avoid being put in the position of explicitly raising taxes by simply freezing these future tax cuts. Now that option has been run over by events.

WOODRUFF: I'm going to, I know you cover politics, but I'm going to ask you a purely economic question, because I know you talk to a lot of folks, including those who are expert in economics. How many jobs is this bill likely to create? I asked this question today of Dan Bartlett, who's the president's communications director...

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, I saw that.

WOODRUFF: ... and he said, Well, we need to look at it again, because it's a smaller package...

BROWNSTEIN: Right.

WOODRUFF: ... than what we originally asked for.

BROWNSTEIN: Well, you know, they were hoping for a million jobs above the baseline from this package. It's going to be a little hard to figure this out. It's smaller package, but on the other hand, it's more concentrated. It could have a bigger bang for the buck.

The stakes for the president cannot be overstated in this. He could be the first president since World War II to have a net loss of jobs throughout his entire presidential terms. No one has done that. That would be a devastating statistic...

WOODRUFF: And at this point...

BROWNSTEIN: ... to have to run on...

WOODRUFF: ... there is a loss.

BROWNSTEIN: ... and at this point, there's a loss of more than 2 million. So even his father had a net plus of 2.5 million in his term, with a slow economy. Clinton created -- had the economy create nearly 23 million jobs under his presidency. George Bush does not want to go into reelection being the first president in half a century to have the economy lose jobs over a four-year term.

He has a lot riding in not only getting this things passed, but having it be effective in what he wants to achieve.

WOODRUFF: They've got all sorts of reasons to root for an -- a healthy economy at the White House.

BROWNSTEIN: Right, absolutely.

WOODRUFF: All right, Ron Brownstein, thanks for coming by.

BROWNSTEIN: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: We appreciate it. Great to see you.

Well, as NEWSNIGHT continues, the teenager with money to burn, and then some. The story of LeBron James and the shoe deal, in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Major these days, major concerns might run, say, from concerned about getting into college all the way to finding the perfect prom date. Well, LeBron James is not your ordinary teenager. He has an extraordinary talent. And because of that, his concerns include where he will end up next year, not which college, but which NBA team. And the very grownup concern of managing an enormous endorsement deal that he just signed with Nike.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: The 2003 NBA draft lottery.

WOODRUFF (voice-over): The worst teams in professional basketball lined up tonight with a single goal, to be the franchise lucky enough to pay millions to an 18-year-old high school senior to play for them next fall.

RUSS GRANICK, NBA DEPUTY COMMISSIONER: The first pick in the 2003 NBA draft goes to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

WOODRUFF: This is that young man, a teenager named LeBron James, who hasn't been paid a dime yet by a professional team, but who is already very wealthy, thanks to an endorsement deal he agreed to yesterday with the country's biggest maker of sneakers, Nike, a deal that, over its lifetime, is estimated to be worth $90 million.

LEBRON JAMES, 2003 NBA NUMBER ONE DRAFT PICK: I'm so excited about being a Nike guy, and I just felt that that was the best fit for me, you know. And somewhat had to do about the money, of course. But I just think that they showed me that it was going to be a long-term thing.

WOODRUFF: There was a spirited bidding war, of course, over the entire issue of sneakers. During his fabulous and flashy high school career, LeBron James wore Adidas sneakers. Recently another sneaker company, Reebok, was reported to have the inside track.

But Nike, the company that paid Tiger Woods $40 million to represent it, and has paid Michael Jordan millions more, won out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, TV COMMERCIAL)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did you expect?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WOODRUFF: Now, all LeBron James has to do is play with the pros, and succeed.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: More on the LeBron James phenomenon. Ian Thomsen, senior writer for "Sports Illustrated," he's in New York.

Ian Thomsen, as my late grandmother would say, What is the world coming to? Ninety million dollars for an 18-year-old.

IAN THOMSEN, SENIOR WRITER, "SPORTS ILLUSTRATED": The more this happens, the older I feel, Judy, I'll tell you. But the -- I mean, this is really an amazing figure. There are only a few players in the NBA who will sign basketball contracts that are worth more than this $90 million deal for LeBron James.

WOODRUFF: Is this a smart bet on the part of Nike? I mean, he's only played in high school. He's never played against some of these grownups who are on these pro teams.

THOMSEN: You know, this is a lot like the deal they did with Tiger Woods a few years ago. They took a big chance on Tiger. They bet a lot of money on him. And he came through right off the bat. And that's what they're hoping LeBron James will do for them as well. But it is a big gamble. No high school player, except for Amarry Stattemeier (ph), who was the rookie of the year this year, has come out of high school directly to the NBA and performed well right off the bat.

WOODRUFF: So what makes you think he's going to be different?

THOMSEN: Well, everybody I talk to in the league says this is the next Magic Johnson, this is the player of a generation. He's going to make all his teammates better because he's a wonderful passer, he's a great playmaker. He really is a genius with the basketball. And his age is not going to be held against him. In fact, he's got the body of a much older player. And everybody thinks he's going to be terrific, really.

WOODRUFF: What about his emotional makeup? How grown-up is he? What do you hear about that?

THOMSEN: And that's what we're going to find out, because, first of all, the Cleveland Cavaliers got the rights to draft him, number one, which they will undoubtedly do. And so he's going to be playing 40 minutes from home. I think a lot of people would actually would have preferred if he'd gone to another city, just so he could make new friendships, get away from old friends. A lot of the demands that he's going to have.

And as an 18- or 19-year-old rookie, he's going to have to make a lot of tough choices about how he spends his time, who gets to see him when, who doesn't. These are all things that older guys have to do, and he's going to have to it at a very young age.

WOODRUFF: What about the message, Ian Thomsen, this sends for Nike to be spending this much money? And not only that, that somebody can pull in that kind of money for going out on a court and putting on a pair of shorts and shooting admittedly very good baskets, basketball, what's the message to young people everywhere?

THOMSEN: Well, the message is, first of all, if you can play basketball, you're in good shape. And second, secondly, secondly, this is the same message that sports is sending out across the board, that, in fact, all the entertainment industries are sending out, that, you know, this is a Britney Spears kind of deal. This is Michael Jackson with the Jackson Five kind of deal.

I mean, this, this is an entertainment industry now. And we should not be worrying about the age of the performers. It's the audience that they can pull in. And they're betting that this guy is going to pull in the biggest audience.

WOODRUFF: And so we're old-fashioned to ask way -- you know, what about college?

THOMSEN: Well...

WOODRUFF: Right? THOMSEN: Yes, exactly. I mean, I'm sorry for laughing, but it is such a passe issue at this point. I mean, if LeBron James were my son and he could sign a $90 million deal just for wearing shoes, I mean, you know, I would not tell him to be going to college and passing up the $90 million. I'd say if he had to go to college, I'd say, Try to get a job for $90 million.

WOODRUFF: Ian Thomsen, good to talk to you.

THOMSEN: Yes, thanks a lot.

WOODRUFF: It's quite a story.

THOMSEN: Yes, thanks, Judy.

WOODRUFF: And he joins me in saying that's NEWSNIGHT for tonight. Thank you for watching. I'm Judy Woodruff.

Christiane Amanpour here tomorrow night. Good night.

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