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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Investigators Find Key Piece of Evidence in Rudolph Case; Bush Set to Meet With Abbas; U.S. Faces Tough Questions on Iraqi WMD Claims
Aired June 02, 2003 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again, everyone.
Proof again that the FBI always gets its man, wait it wasn't the FBI that got Eric Rudolph was it, though you'd be hard pressed to know that from the press releases.
Had it not been for a rookie cop and a police force with seven officers, Mr. Rudolph would still be a fugitive tonight. But he's not. He's in jail and we'll spend some time tonight on how he got there and what he's been doing all these years.
Our first stop in the whip, Murphy, North Carolina where the search for clues to Eric Rudolph's activities goes on. Art Harris there for us tonight, Art a headline from you.
ART HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Investigators find what could be a crucial piece of deadly evidence in the case against Eric Rudolph who was sent off to Birmingham today to face the first of two murder charges.
BROWN: Art, thank you, get to you at the top tonight.
Next, to Egypt and the start of President Bush's Middle East peace mission. CNN senior White House correspondent John King is there, John a headline.
JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the president is in Egypt to begin two days of urgent Middle East peacemaking. His talks here include his first meeting with the new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.
Mr. Bush also will tell Arab leaders there should be no doubt about his commitment to dedicate whatever time and whatever energy it takes to move the process forward. Some the Arab leaders here, though, are still a bit skeptical -- Aaron.
BROWN: John, thank you.
More tough questions here and abroad about the administration's chief justification for the war with Iraq. CNN Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre on that. Jamie, a headline.
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, questions about the U.S. pre-war intelligence, was the U.S. deceiving the world or perhaps just deceiving itself? Plus, a new explanation for what may have happened to the weapons. Did Saddam Hussein destroy them and is he now hiding the means for production in plain sight -- Aaron.
BROWN: Jamie, thank you.
And, perhaps the only welcome development so far in a saga of high finance, possible insider trading, Martha Stewart and, oh by the way a cancer drug as well. CNN's Allan Chernoff with us tonight, Allan a headline.
ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the ImClone cancer drug roller coaster ride takes a new twist. It turns out the company's drug actually does work, this coming only one week before the company's founder is scheduled to be sentenced to jail.
BROWN: Allan, thank you, back to you and the rest shortly.
Also tonight the hugely controversial decision and just as contentious debate over deregulating the airwaves. Today, the FCC voted and some say the viewer, especially in smaller markets, be damned.
Also tonight, the mountain town of Murphy, North Carolina, a number of residents there expressing sympathy for Eric Rudolph. Did they go a step beyond and help him evade capture? We'll be joined by the mayor of Murphy tonight.
And we'll look ahead to a court decision that could dramatically affect the government's power to try Zacarias Moussaoui and other members of al Qaeda. All that and more coming up tonight on a Monday edition of NEWSNIGHT.
We begin with homegrown terrorism and the saga of Eric Rudolph. Today he began revisiting the places and cases behind nearly seven years of headlines, headlines announcing four bombings, two deaths, dozens of injuries, and countless people afraid to visit a park or a woman's clinic or a nightclub. And tonight there's another headline, he's in custody.
Here's CNN's Brian Cabell.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Eric Rudolph now resides in a jail just a few miles from the women's clinic he's charged with bombing five years ago. He arrived in Birmingham shackled and surrounded by heavy security. He was placed in an isolation cell with round-the-clock surveillance.
SHERIFF MIKE HALE, JEFFERSON COUNTY, ALABAMA: He seemed cooperative and soft spoken and he seemed a little bit relieved when he was introduced to myself and the marshal and the chief deputy here that he would be safe here.
CABELL: A trial date has not been set yet. The Birmingham bombing at a women's clinic that provided abortions killed an off duty policeman who was providing security for the clinic and severely injured a nurse. An eyewitness spotted a man leaving the scene and getting into a pickup. The pickup it turned out belonged to Rudolph.
Investigators have also linked Rudolph, who according to friends and family had anti-gay, anti-abortion, and anti-government views, to the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta in 1996 and to bombings at another women's clinic and a gay nightclub, both also in Atlanta, in 1997. His attorney denies the charges.
SEAN DEVEREUX, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: As far as I know he wasn't anywhere near anything that happened but I can tell you that nothing that he did was that sort of defiant, arrogant, it's their fault not my fault, you know, I'm in the army of God and they had it coming. I mean nothing. I mean he didn't talk like that.
CABELL: Rudolph managed to elude capture in spite of a massive manhunt in the rugged mountains of western North Carolina and the offer of a $1 million reward for information leading to his apprehension.
Officials now believe that Rudolph, who was a handyman and carpenter by trade, used his survivalist skills to hide in the mountains during the five-year manhunt. It's uncertain whether he was given any help by sympathetic local residents.
Emily Lyons who was disfigured and blinded in one eye by the Birmingham explosion has no sympathy at all.
EMILY LYONS, BOMBING VICTIM: Forgiveness doesn't come easy for me and this wouldn't be one of them at all. There's nothing that could forgive this. There could be no reason for forgiveness for this.
CABELL: Rudolph will make his first appearance in an Alabama courtroom Tuesday afternoon, the first in a process that's expected to last many, many months.
Brian Cabell, CNN, Birmingham.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Back now to that corner of western North Carolina where Eric Rudolph was caught. We're learning something tonight of what police are finding at his suspected campsite or at least one of them.
We got to CNN's Art Harris who's in the town of Murphy, Art good evening.
HARRIS: Good evening, Aaron.
CNN has learned that investigators have found a semi-automatic assault rifle at one of two secret campsites believed to belong to Eric Rudolph in the mountains around us. They have found this gun that Eric may have bought at a gun show they believe the same place that he bought the black powder, allegedly, that was used in Atlanta's Olympic Park bombing. Agents have discovered these two campsites in two days in the rugged hills above Murphy, North Carolina. One is above a parking lot where Rudolph was arrested. The other was five miles away atop another tall mountain.
We tried to go there but were stopped by police at a roadblock. An FBI agent who had just come down from that mountain advised us against trying that because he said he climbed it and he was in great shape as a jogger and a runner and it had been a tough climb for him -- Aaron.
BROWN: Well, given that agents have been swarming over this area literally for years, how is it that they found these campsites now?
HARRIS: Well, Aaron, in the first case a rookie cop found Mr. Rudolph when he apparently wandered down from one and was in effect dumpster diving in a grocery store parking lot, and I'm told that you could actually see the parking lot from this ridgeline where the campsite was located.
So, in effect, it was dumb luck. He had apparently been living there and traveling between Murphy and possibly his hometown in Topton along a ridgeline and I'm told they're now using bloodhounds to backtrack and try to find some of the other campsites.
One thing they're really concerned about, Aaron, is a stash of dynamite, dynamite stolen about two years ago, 200 pounds of it. It gets very volatile and deteriorates over time and this could be one danger for these agents -- Aaron.
BROWN: Art, let me try it again. I understand how they captured Mr. Rudolph. What I think I'm trying to understand here is this campsite that they found where they found the gun and other things, how did they find that?
HARRIS: Well, they were up in this one campsite that they found above the parking lot. Apparently he is cooperating enough so that they were able to locate that campsite and then they used dogs to track to the other.
BROWN: Got it. Art, thank you, Art Harris has been doing reporting with the law enforcement in Murphy, North Carolina.
There's been an awful lot of talk about the town, about whether residents in the town were sympathetic to Mr. Rudolph and whether their sympathies included helping him stay away from the police all these years. It's been more than five now.
Joining us is the mayor of Murphy, North Carolina, Bill Hughes. Mayor Hughes, good to have you with us. Do you believe there were residents in your city or in that area who might have helped Mr. Rudolph all these years?
MAYOR BILL HUGHES, MURPHY, NORTH CAROLINA: No, I don't. I believe Rudolph acted alone. I believe he lived alone and he was caught alone. I do not believe he received any assistance whatsoever. I know that's been theorized but I don't believe that's the case.
BROWN: Is it that you don't believe it because you have no evidence to support it or because you know the residents of your town or because you just don't want to believe it?
HUGHES: I know the residents. I know the residents of my town and I've tried to be very objective in my thinking. But I know the residents in our town and may I assure you they deplore his actions. There's no sympathy for him here.
BROWN: I think many of us in the country woke up today and in our newspapers we saw at a restaurant a reader board sign that was supportive of Mr. Rudolph. What do you make of that?
HUGHES: Well, I understand there perhaps may be one or two in the area. I personally haven't seen them myself but if that be the case may I assure you that's representing a very, very small minority of sympathy as far as that might be had in this area.
I haven't seen those signs but perhaps a few people might be in sympathy but they are indeed very few. I believe had they known that harboring a federal fugitive would be a felony perhaps they would not have done that.
BROWN: Well, one would hope that residents of your town and others would not be committing felonies. Is there sympathy to his purported beliefs, to his strong anti-abortion feelings, his anti- government feelings?
HUGHES: Absolutely not, perhaps in western North Carolina religious beliefs are somewhat conservative, but even then no one approves of the terrible acts that he committed or allegedly committed and, as I said, the people in this area are honest, industrious, hard- working, intelligent. They don't approve of things like that. No one does.
BROWN: And...
HUGHES: They're horrible and incidentally allow me to extend my sympathy to the families of those who were injured and those who were killed. We suffer right along with you and I extend the heartfelt sympathy of our town.
BROWN: One of the things that people should remember about your town is that it was one of your police officers, a 21-year-old rookie police officer, who found Mr. Rudolph the other night.
HUGHES: That's very true and we are very proud of Officer Postell. He was a rookie policeman on the job doing what he was supposed to do the way he was trained to do it and he just happened to be in the right place at the right time when Mr. Rudolph presented himself there.
BROWN: How did you find out about it?
HUGHES: The chief of police called me early the morning he was apprehended and told me that he thought one of our officers had captured Eric Robert Rudolph. I was in total disbelief.
BROWN: You knew right away who he was talking about?
HUGHES: I knew immediately who he was talking about. I had felt that Rudolph had long since left the area or was perhaps even dead. I was very, very surprised to hear he was still around. That really came as a surprise to me.
BROWN: Did you go down to the -- it's not a very big police station, is it? It's just about ten people total.
HUGHES: It's a very small police station.
BROWN: And did you go down there right away?
HUGHES: I did go (unintelligible) -- I did go down there right away. I had an opportunity to go by Cherokee County Jail and I was allowed to go in and actually see Mr. Rudolph through a one-way glass. And, incidentally, he looked nothing like I thought he might. He didn't resemble the pictures I didn't think. There was nothing out of the ordinary about him.
BROWN: Did he -- I don't know if you've seen pictures of him today or not but the pictures today of him are his hair is cut. He's reasonably well-groomed. He shaved and the rest. Is that how he looked to you the other night?
HUGHES: That's how he looked to me. He had rather short hair, had a moustache, wearing a dark tee shirt, dark trousers, had stubble beard. The tee shirt and trousers were dirty.
BROWN: Mayor, I assume you'll be more than happy when all this notoriety goes away and Murphy, North Carolina returns to being Murphy, North Carolina.
HUGHES: Well, it's good to have some closure and I think everyone will be very relieved to see this whole sad, unpleasant situation culminated and brought to an end. We're looking forward to that. Life will return to normal then.
BROWN: I bet it will. Mayor Bill Hughes thanks a lot for joining us tonight.
HUGHES: Indeed.
BROWN: Thank you, sir very much.
HUGHES: My pleasure, sir. Thank you so much.
BROWN: Thank you.
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT on a Monday night here in New York, President Bush arrives in Egypt to lay the groundwork for the Mid East Peace Summit which occurs in Jordan later in the week.
And, we'll take a look at the effect groups like Hamas will have on the prospects of peace, that and much more as NEWSNIGHT continues on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: President Bush is in Egypt tonight meeting with Arab leaders on a remote patch of sand once occupied by Israel. The spot is both real and a symbolic jumping off point for the rest of his journey on to Jordan selling a peace plan that calls for a good deal more sacrifice on both sides than just giving up a remote patch of sand.
Here's our senior White House correspondent John King.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KING (voice-over): Egypt is stop one in a push for Middle East peace the president says will erase any doubt about his personal commitment.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The first message is I will dedicate the time and energy to move the process forward and I think we'll make some progress. I know we're making progress.
KING: The main event is Wednesday's three-way summit in Jordan with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.
BUSH: My expectations in the Middle East are to call all the respective parties to their responsibility to achieve peace.
KING: Mr. Bush wants both leaders to implement the early benchmarks of his so-called Middle East road map.
For Prime Minister Sharon that means dismantling illegal settlements, easing more economic restrictions on Palestinians, and embracing a timetable to pull out of the Palestinian territories.
And from Prime Minister Abbas, Mr. Bush wants immediate improvements in Palestinian security forces, a crackdown on militant groups blamed for attacks on Israel, an acknowledgement of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
The first stop here at the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh is considered critical to building momentum. Mr. Bush will hold a get- to-know-you session with Prime Minister Abbas and he will talk strategy with Egypt's Mubarak, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, and other key Arab leaders.
U.S. officials say Mr. Bush will tell the Arab leaders he needs their help in isolating Yasser Arafat and enthusiastically backing Mr. Abbas as the frontline Palestinian leader.
Secretary of State Powell is on hand for the talks as well and the Bush administration will leave a team of diplomats and security experts behind after the summit to monitor progress in implementing any new promises. (on camera): The president calls this just a beginning of a long and difficult process but he says there now should be no doubt that he is willing to dedicate whatever time and whatever energy is necessary. That is a promise some of the Arab leaders gathered here are not yet convinced Mr. Bush plans to keep.
John King, CNN, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: There are significant doubts on the Israeli side as well, a chief concern being whether the new Palestinian prime minister can deliver on promises to reign in terrorists, suicide bombers.
Like the pope, the prime minister hasn't got much at his disposal, just the power to persuade and the possibility that Hamas and others are becoming a bit more open to persuasion.
Here's CNN's Kelly Wallace.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There is no cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers and Palestinian security guards sit dangerously close to each other. These officers told us they are here based on orders from the new Palestinian prime minister's government and that new government seems to be affecting the radical Palestinian group Hamas, which has been responsible for many of the suicide bombings against Israelis.
Only weeks ago, Hamas rejected any notion of a cease-fire. Now, at the urging of the Palestinian prime minister, Hamas leaders acknowledge the organization is considering halting attacks against Israelis.
"Hamas is learning the reality, the new developments in the region, and is trying to pass this period in a way that would preserve the Palestinians' legitimate rights," Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi told us.
Part of that new reality new pressure coming from moderate Arab leaders after terror attacks in their own backyard with recent blasts in Saudi Arabia and Morocco.
(on camera): Pressure is not only coming from abroad but here at home. In neighborhood like this one, a Hamas stronghold, many Palestinians are urging Hamas to give the Palestinian prime minister a chance.
(voice-over): "I think they should try the cease-fire option and go through the road map in a correct way and if it doesn't succeed they can go back to violence" this woman told us. But not everyone here agrees.
"I think that with the Jewish people there is no thing named cease-fire" this man said. Hamas, a major political force in the Gaza Strip knows that its strength, in part, depends on the support of the Palestinian people.
ABU SHANAB, HAMAS LEADER: We want to decide according to what is bringing the high interest of our people on top of the agenda.
WALLACE: Palestinian lawmakers say Hamas will only agree to a cease-fire if Israel takes steps, such as ending military operations in the Palestinian areas.
JAMAL ZAKOUT, PALESTINIAN LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL MEMBER: Cease-fire is not done by one side. Cease-fire is done by two sides.
WALLACE: Israeli officials say a cease-fire with Hamas can only be a first step and that the group itself must be dismantled but Hamas leaders say that won't happen until their definition of Israeli occupation comes to an end, which to them means an Islamic Palestinian state in place of Israel and that is why any Hamas-supported cease- fire is just one small step on any possible road to peace.
Kelly Wallace, CNN, Gaza.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Coming up on NEWSNIGHT tonight, the continuing fallout over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We'll have the latest, much more as NEWSNIGHT continues from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Lately, the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has morphed into two stories, the search itself which hasn't gone especially well, and the search for responsibility.
Did the intelligence community get it wrong? Did the administration oversell the case? Questions that have dogged the secretary of state and Britain's prime minister as well, questions that one good day of inspecting might answer, but that good and successful day hasn't happened yet.
Here's our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE (voice-over): Colin Powell says his presentation to the United Nations February 5th followed three straight days of preparation during which he grilled CIA analysts late into the night about the quality of U.S. intelligence. In Rome, Powell says he still stands by that report.
COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It wasn't a figment of anyone's imagination.
MCINTYRE: But an administration official tells CNN Powell did have doubts about evidence linking Iraq to al Qaeda and included the reference only after being persuaded by the White House. The failure of the U.S. to find any banned weapons so far has some in Congress calling for hearings into whether the case against Iraq was overstated or even intentionally inflated.
SEN. EVAN BAYH (D), ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: After all the facts are in, it looks as if the intelligence was simply wrong. I think we need to do two things. First, get to the bottom of why errors in judgment were made and, secondly, I think there will be a heightened level of skepticism.
MCINTYRE: A CNN-USA Today Gallup poll shows for now two-thirds of Americans seem willing to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt. Asked whether the Bush administration deliberately misled the American public about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, 31 percent said yes, it deliberately misled, but 67 percent said no, it did not. Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing a more skeptical public and criticism from within his own party.
TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: The idea that Saddam Hussein has for 12 years been obstructing the U.N. weapons inspectors, has been engaged in this huge battle with the international community, when all the way along he'd actually destroyed these weapons is completely absurd.
MCINTYRE: So, where are the weapons? It's clear intelligence indicating they were deployed on the battlefield was wrong. Some administration officials are saying instead that in an effort to ride out U.N. inspections, Saddam Hussein might have destroyed any large stockpiles and hidden production capability inside dual use commercial facilities.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE: The new Iraq search teams heading to Iraq this week are focusing on developing new intelligence that is finding the people and the documents that will lead them to the banned weapons of mass destruction.
And, Pentagon officials continue to insist that just because they haven't found any weapons of mass destruction doesn't mean they aren't there. For instance, one could argue that they haven't found Saddam Hussein either but no one is suggesting he wasn't actually there before the war -- Aaron.
BROWN: Well, no. That's an interesting way to look at it. Are they concerned, I assume they have some concern here, that the longer this goes on, the longer they fail to come up with something, the more skepticism will be greeting them should they come up with something?
MCINTYRE: Well, I think that absolutely is a concern and they're also concerned that if they have to in the end make the case that the weapons themselves were destroyed and that what Saddam Hussein was maintaining was his ability to produce them at a future date once the U.N. inspections ended, for instance, that that also is going to be a much harder sell for the world community. But there are some who believe at the end of the day that's what they're going to end up with.
BROWN: Are they -- have they started shifting the argument for the war itself, the justification for the war itself? Because we talked with Ken Adelman on the program last Friday and he made the argument that the principal weapon of mass destruction all along was Saddam Hussein himself.
MCINTYRE: Well, they would argue they're not shifting the basis because even if it turns out that the weapons were destroyed, they're going to say that the burden of proof was always on Saddam Hussein that he had to show that he'd come clean and he didn't do that and that's what provided the justification for the war, at least that's the argument you're going to hear from the administration.
BROWN: Jamie, thank you very much, Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon tonight.
We're joined now from Washington by "NEWSWEEK" magazine's Michael Isikoff. He writes this week of tensions between intelligence professionals and the political side, how they played into the run-up of the war. We're always glad to have him on the program and glad to have him tonight, Michael good to see you.
Was there a battle between the political guys and the intelligence guys and, if there was, how did this play out?
MICHAEL ISIKOFF, "NEWSWEEK": Well, there clearly was and where the administration presented the intelligence on Iraq as ironclad, as absolute, as representing the collective wisdom of the U.S. intelligence community, as reflected perhaps most dramatically when Secretary of State Powell gave the speech to the United Nations.
George Tenet, the CIA Director, was sitting right behind him. The signal being sent there was this is what our intelligence people believe. In fact, we now know through our reporting and the reporting of others that there was deep divisions within the U.S. intelligence community about much of the evidence that was being presented that day when Secretary Powell gave his speech and during earlier statements by the president and others, particularly, on whether Iraq had an ongoing nuclear weapons program and whether there were clear ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaeda.
BROWN: Is it, based on your reporting, is it that the political side exaggerated what was known, or that it took -- that there was essentially an intelligence vacuum and the administration put the strongest case on that uncertainty, if you will?
ISIKOFF: A little bit of both. Intelligence vacuum is perhaps not the right word, but certainly ambiguity is clear. There was a lot -- I mean, look. The nature of intelligence on these matters is inherently ambiguous, inherently sketchy. There isn't clear evidence about a lot of these things. Certainly, if we had perfect intelligence about al Qaeda, for instance, we would have anticipated the September 11 attacks. So, on its face, these are matters about which the U.S. intelligence community doesn't have real good information. In some cases, people in the intelligence community communicated to that. In other cases, the intelligence community, it can be argued, tried to provide their masters in the political realm what they wanted to hear. In the piece this week in "Newsweek," we cite a couple of examples on the Iraqi nuclear program. This was presented by the president, by Vice President Cheney and others as an imminent threat. Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program. It could possibly if it got the fissable (ph) uranium that was needed, produce a nuclear bomb within a year, the president said in a speech in Cincinnati last October.
Well, we now know and in the piece this week, we quote one of the top Iraqi WMD analysts at the State Department saying that the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which is the State Department's intelligence arm, had concluded last year that there was no good evidence that Iraq had reconstituted the nuclear program at all. This opinion was concurred in by the Department of Energy, which had consulted its experts in nuclear labs, and these were very strong dissents. Evidence being cited by the CIA about aluminum tube purchases that were purportedly being used for centrifuges, for uranium, the DEO and IRN at State concluded it was not for that purpose at all.
So there was clearly, as I say, dissent on that issue, which was key to the administration's argument about the nuclear program, within the intelligence community not reflected in the administration's public statements.
BROWN: Michael, it's a nice piece of reporting in "Newsweek" this week. We always enjoy having you with us. Thanks a lot.
ISIKOFF: Thanks.
BROWN: Michael Isikoff at "Newsweek" magazine.
As NEWSNIGHT continues, good news about cancer drug trial, and the part that plays in the fortunes of a company whose founder may be headed for jail. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: The great American short story writer O. Henry loved a surprise ending, that wild final twist that made the reader rethink everything that had come before, which is to say, O. Henry would have been crazy about today's development in the story of the drug the FDA once declined to approve, which moved the drug company's chief executive to unload his stock before anyone else heard that the drug wasn't going to be approved, which got him snagged in an insider trading scandal, which also tarnished a certain friend of his, named Martha Stewart. Are you following all of this? What's the surprise ending? Remember the drug at the heart of the story? It seems to work. Allan Chernoff follows the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHERNOFF (voice-over): A new ray of hope for cancer patients facing the toughest odds. Data from a German company with European rights to ImClone's Erbitux, called C-225 in the lab, show the drug is effective for patients with metastasized colon cancer.
DR. PAUL BUNN, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CLINICAL ONCOLOGY: These trials really confirm that the target is good, the drug is good and actually helps patients.
CHERNOFF: The data presented a the year's big oncology conference show Erbitux, combined with traditional chemotherapy, stabilized or improved cancer in half of the patients tested, and shrank tumors by more than half in 23 percent of patients. Results virtually identical to those ImClone had delivered to the FDA in 2001. Sam Waksal, the founder of ImClone Systems, had always claimed the drug worked.
SAM WAKSAL, FORMER CEO, IMCLONE: We feel very confident that we'll be on the market next year with a very important new drug.
CHERNOFF: That sort of talk raised hope for Rachel Hightower, a cancer patient who we profiled last summer.
RACHEL HIGHTOWER, CANCER PATIENT: If you think you have something that may cure you or may help you, at least extend your life, then you're real anxious to get to that drug. And there ought to be ways to expedite the process.
CHERNOFF: But the FDA rejected ImClone's application for fast track approval of Erbitux, finding the company's data not reliable enough because the clinical trial had been designed poorly. Before the rejection became public, Waksal tried to unload his ImClone stock and had his father and daughter sell their shares. Waksal eventually pled guilty to insider trading. Rachel Hightower never got Erbitux. She passed away last December.
DR. LEN LICHTFELD, DEPUTY CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY: It's a shame that we've had to go through all of this for the past several years with the drug that really, in fact, may show promise in treating patients with colon cancer. And there's a lesson here for all of us, there's a lesson on the corporate side, there's a lesson on the clinical trial side, that we really owe our patients, we owe our families, we owe our medical system the best efforts we can to do the right thing by people to make sure this doesn't happen again.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHERNOFF: To be sure, Erbitux is not a cure for colon cancer. The German company, Merck KGA hopes to have the drug approved in Europe by next year. ImClone plans to meet with the FDA to see if the new data might get the drug approved in the U.S. Meanwhile, Sam Waksal faces sentencing next Tuesday. A friend of his tells CNN Waksal is very happy about the drug results, and feels vindicated -- Aaron.
BROWN: And just quickly, and Martha Stewart in all of this?
CHERNOFF: She is still waiting, still waiting for the Justice Department and the SEC to make a decision as to whether or not they're going to go forward with charges.
BROWN: Allan, thank you very much.
On to a couple of other stories making news around the country today starting in Fairfax, Virginia, a hearing for sniper suspect Lee Malvo. Judge refusing to dismiss state charges against Malvo. His lawyers have claimed they overlap with federal charges now since dropped. They also argued for a change of ,venue moving the trial. The judge put that decision off.
Judge in Orlando, Florida today appointed a guardian for a mentally retarded rape victim. The guardian will next decide whether the woman who is pregnant should have an abortion. Earlier, the judge threw out a petition for a guardian for the fetus as well. An Orlando homemaker has filed a petition which also drew the support of Florida's Governor Jeb Bush.
And 'I'll bet this happens to you all the time. You're blocks away from the subway station when it hits you, you left your Picasso on the subway, Matisse too. It happened to William Bailey who's an art framing consultant in New York. Everyone's a consultant these days. Anyway, after losing the art on Thursday, Mr. Bailey posted some notices, offered a reward, and got the prints back today.
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, an accused terrorists wants to use another accused terrorist as a witness at the trial. And the government's attempts to prevent that. Details in a moment as NEWSNIGHT continues on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: A couple of quick stories around the world to get in tonight beginning in Evian, France where President Bush and Jacques Chirac, who famously did not see eye to eye on the subject of war in Iraq, did meet face to face today for the first time since that war.
Mr. Bush and the French leader were in Evian for the summit, the so-called G-8 group of industrialized nations. But they took time out for bilateral talks, as the diplomats say, in hopes to at least start settling their differences.
On to Kazakhstan, a Soyuz launch vehicle took off 9:45 p.m. Moscow time carrying aloft the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft. The Express should be in orbit around Mars in six months.
And finally, to London, Westminster Abby. In a sea of broad- brimmed hats, Queen Elizabeth II renewed her coronation vows, vows she originally took 50 years ago to the day, the 2nd of June, 1953. The ceremony part of a yearlong jubilee celebration in Elizabeth's honor. Though it does seems longer, doesn't it?
It is a tenet of American justice that the defendant is entitled to any evidence that casts doubt on the government's case. If an important witness says the guy didn't do it, the defendant entitled to talk to that witness, get his statement. That's just basic fairness, it has always seemed. But like so much else since 9/11, that, too, may have changed. The case in point, the so-called 20th hijacker. Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The government will argue that Zacarias Moussaoui should not be allowed to question another accused terrorist and alleged 9/11 planner, Ramzi Binalshibh.
Moussaoui, the only person charged in connection with the September 11 attacks, says that Binalshibh can clear him of involvement. And the judge overseeing the case, Leonie Brinkema, ruled to allow Moussaoui access.
Attorney George Harris, who represented American Taliban John Walker Lindh in a similar fight, says it's Constitutional rights.
GEORGE HARRIS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: There's a balance of interest that has to go on there. I think, though, we have to think very carefully before we would conclude as a county, as a judicial system that the compromise means that, you know, a defendant doesn't have the normal due process rights that pertain to every other criminal defendant.
ARENA: But the government says allowing the terrorists to communicate raises national security concerns. So, too, does the interruption of any interrogation of Binalshibh who is being held by the U.S. at an undisclosed location.
BRADFORD BERENSON, FRM. ASSOC. WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: You have to keep in mind that in the interrogation of a person like Ramzi Binalshibh the government's ability to get accurate, timely intelligence could save thousands of American lives here in the United States.
ARENA: Government sources say if the appeals court rules in Moussaoui's favor the case will likely have to be moved from the civilian to the military judicial system, a major blow to the Justice Department which is hoping for a public conviction of the alleged 9/11 conspirator.
ERIC HOLDER, FORMER DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: I think that we have learned something here. And I think if given that if the same choice in the future and the government decided to go with military tribunal opposed to putting it in the criminal justice system, I think that that would be appropriate.
ARENA (on camera): The case against Moussaoui cannot proceed until the appeals court makes it's and there's no way to tell when that will happen.
Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE) BROWN: More on the government's dilemma. We're joined tonight by retired Colonel Scott Silliman who served as a military lawyer during Desert Storm I and now serves as a professor at Duke University Law School.
Nice to have you with us, Professor. This is a battle, it sounds like a disagreement, not just between the defense and the prosecution, but between the Defense Department and the Justice Department.
SCOTT SILLIMAN, DUKE UNIVERSITY: I think you're exactly right, Aaron. The Justice Department obviously wants to have a successful prosecution in the eastern district of Virginia where this case was brought. And, to do that, they're going to have to comply with the rules of due process that the Constitution provides for any defendant in our criminal justice system. And that is the right to have access to information which can be exculpatory, that which might prove innocence or disprove the government's case as Kelli mentioned in her lead up.
Now, the Justice Department, I think, would be a little bit less concerned about access to Binalshibh than the Defense Department. The Defense Department all along has said that they don't want the courts or criminal defendant to have access to to anyone under interrogation outside the United States. '
So this is real a clash between the two departments.
BROWN: Can you explain -- I'm sure you can explain to me or why would we have booked you, for goodness' sake -- can you explain to me why moving this to a military tribunal mitigates the problem which is still one of essential fairness?
SILLIMAN: Aaron, the rules that have been established for military tribunals carry less due process than a trial in our federal district courts. That's the way it's set up and it's totally under the province of the Department of Defense. It clearly meets international law standards, but a military tribunal has certain restrictions on a defendant's right to demand access to witnesses against him and access to classified information.
What's at issue right now, the Fourth Circuit's problem is the Classified Information Procedure act of 1980 which says, basically, that when a defendant like Moussaoui wants to use classified information in his own defense, then the government must make that available unless it can provide a suitable substitute.
The government tried to do that, and Judge Brinkema, up in the Eastern District of Virginia, ruled that that was unacceptable. It's that ruling by the Judge Brinkema last January that is now being appealed to the 4th Circuit, and why this is such an important decision that will be forthcoming from that court.
BROWN: Is there middle ground here? Is there a way to compromise that protects -- I realize that perhaps Mr. Moussaoui doesn't have a lot of fans out there in the audience, but if the country stands for something, it ought to stand for giving people fair trial. Is there some middle ground here that might solve the problem for both sides?
SILLIMAN: I think Judge Brinkema tried to find that middle ground, Aaron. And she set up conditions for a videotaped interview of Binalshibh, and that was unacceptable to the government, and certainly unacceptable to the Department of Defense.
I think they're worried about the precedent that would occur. Not so much in Moussaoui's case but in any other case in which we would try to bring a terrorist to trial in our federal courts. Your viewers should remember, though, Aaron, that in 1993, in the first World Trade Center bombing, and also in 1998, after the bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, we brought those terrorists to trial in the federal district courts, and we were very successful in getting prosecutions. It's the Moussaoui case which has caused the problem and become a nightmare for the government.
BROWN: But just on the subject of precedent, it is important in the way you've seen this and the way you've laid this out that the Justice Department prove that it can try these cases in a normal fashion, in a normal courtroom, in this country.
SILLIMAN: I think that's exceptionally true as far as the Justice Department's view on this, Aaron. They have an awful lot going on this particular trial. For them to shut down the prosecution in the Eastern District of Virginia, and to just give the case to Secretary Rumsfeld and just say, OK, you take this over in a military tribunal outside this country, presumably, Guantanamo Bay or whatever, I think it's for the Justice Department to concede total defeat.
Further, Aaron, for the United States to pull a case out of the due process of the federal courts and then to ship it down to Guantanamo Bay is not the statement we want to make to the international community, which is watching every step we make in this war against terrorism.
BROWN: The very definition of conundrum. Professor, thanks a lot for joining us with your explanations tonight. Thank you.
SILLIMAN: Thank you, Aaron.
BROWN: Very good. Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, how could an accused murderer be considered a hero? America's long infatuation with those on the run. Back to the Rudolph case after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: It's always shocking for Americans to be reminded that bombers who take innocent lives in the Middle East are looked at by some in that part of the world as heroes. This is incomprehensible and could not happen, we think, in America. Only it has happened. Villains of a certain kind and then turned into something else entirely. Larger than life, almost admirable, and it may be that in a few places in America, that is happening again.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BROWN (voice-over): It is a little hard to understand how anyone can hold Eric Rudolph, charged with four bombings in which two people died and dozens were hurt, in high regard. A little hard to understand, that is, unless you think back. We have done this all before, more than once.
Pretty Boy Floyd was a violent bank robber, became a hero in a wonderful Woody Guthrie song. Bonnie and Clyde were psychotic killers transformed in Arthur Penn's famous movie into American icons. Butch Cassidy and Sundance, Thelma and Louise, Billy the Kid. Folklore transformed them all, and many others.
Still, Eric Rudolph is different. Those other outlaws were after money. They stole from the rich, and even if they didn't give all their loot away as Robin Hood did, at least they set something aside for the poor.
But if there is anything at all to the charges against Eric Rudolph, he is an outlaw motivated not by greed -- we all understand greed -- but by hatred. And it is hard to make a hero out of a hate monger.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Another 30 minutes of NEWSNIGHT ahead on a Monday during which we'll take a look at the ongoing struggle in Iraq with members of the Baath Party. Are they making a comeback after the war?
We'll also look at the FCC's decision today to increase ownership limits on media companies. That and more. Morning papers, too. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Iraq again starts the half hour. The American administrator in Baghdad announcing today that recruiting for a new Iraqi army would begin by the end of the month, which would be controversial enough, even without the political side of the equation to deal with.
Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Jane Arraf.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A question of balance. For the new U.S. administrator in Iraq, it's not so easy on the political field either. Paul Bremer was the hero handing out soccer balls, but he faces a much tougher time explaining why U.S. authorities are sidelining the idea of having Iraqis choose an interim government.
Instead, the coalition plans to appoint a political council.
PAUL BREMER, U.S./IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION ADMINISTRATOR: You know, there've been a lot of ideas around, both before I got here and after I got here. We've been trying to talk to a variety of Iraqis to find the best way. I found that in my consultations over the last -- well, I've been here almost three weeks, most of the Iraqis we've talked to have been anxious to move ahead rather quickly to establish an interim administration.
ARRAF: That interim administration would for now be U.S.-led. Officials say they need to solve more pressing problems, like getting government ministries running and creating jobs. A true Iraqi government would come much later.
Iraqi political leaders aren't opposing the move, but on the streets, many Iraqis are suspicious and offended.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, now, they came, they say, they change their goal. They say no government now. But we want to establish government after two years. Why?
ARRAF: Iraqis say what they most need are gasoline, electricity, jobs.
(on camera): Before the war, no one was allowed to even come near these palace gates. Now it's become a focal point for thousands of people expressing their worry and their anger at the problems unleashed by the fall of the government.
(voice-over): These army officers have no money and no jobs. Under U.S. rules, anyone above the rank of colonel will have to find work outside government.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's hundreds of people out there raging about their salaries and about their rights and about their army.
We cannot serve for 23 years (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You cannot, you cannot, you cannot serve for 23 years administration that's all. You can't toss us out in the streets. This is unfair, believe me.
ARRAF: Many officers say they followed U.S. advice not to resist the American forces and now have nothing.
"We brought down Saddam, not the American army," some say. Now, they say, they have no stake in their own country.
Jane Arraf, CNN, Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: "TIME" magazine's editor at large, Michael Elliott, has been writing about the state of play on the ground in Iraq, what has gone right, what has not. We're always pleased to have him with us, we are again tonight.
Hi, there. These attacks on Americans that have gone on, I think, where over a dozen have died, Americans have died, is there a sense that there is leadership directing these attacks?
MICHAEL ELLIOTT, EDITOR AT LARGE, "TIME" MAGAZINE: There's one triangle going west-north and then back to Baghdad within which the American forces seem to think there is some command and control, there is some cohesion, if you like, to the attacks.
Now, this, not coincidentally, perhaps, is the area that some informed sources think that Saddam and his sons may be in. It's a long, long way from that to saying at there is command and control from Saddam on his people.
But there do seem to be remnants of the Ba'ath Party who can let it be known that they would like particular kinds of attacks on particular American deployments in particular places.
BROWN: This inability to show that Saddam is dead or in custody is problematic in more than a public relations way (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
ELLIOTT: Well, Jerry Bremer, Paul Bremer, the administrator in Iraq, spoke to our reporters last week and made that precise point. I mean, he thinks that it is unquestionably an issue and a problem, that we have not been able to say either that we've killed him or that we've captured him, and that it would be hugely advantageous to our position if we could do either.
BROWN: Because?
ELLIOTT: Because then you would be able to say to the Iraqis, This truly is over. First of all, there are a lot of people who, for their own venal reasons, would like the Ba'ath regime still to be able to come back.
More importantly, I think there are still people who are scared that there is still Saddam's power out there and would like to be reassured that it is over for good, and then we can kind of get on and start the long, long process, not going to be short, of building a new Iraq.
BROWN: Longer than it seemed a month ago? I mean, have things gone -- well, do they acknowledge -- will they acknowledge that things have not gone great over the last month?
ELLIOTT: I think they'd have to. Don't you think? I think they'd have to.
BROWN: Well, I think they'd have to, but...
ELLIOTT: I think -- I mean, the problem -- I mean...
BROWN: ... you know, we ask this question all the time.
ELLIOTT: Yes.
BROWN: Doesn't mean they do.
ELLIOTT: Well, we go through, you know, we go through this all the time, Aaron, don't we? And every time you have a look at a speech that they might have given in January, February, or March, you'll always find the qualifiers there.
BROWN: Right.
ELLIOTT: You'll always find the words (UNINTELLIGIBLE), Of course, it's going to be a long time.
But I don't think there's much doubt that the message given was that there was going to be, not dancing in the streets, but a kind of broad sense of acceptance of the nature of the occupation. I think what has now become plain is that there's a lot broken in Iraq. This a traumatized society. It's a modern society...
BROWN: Yes.
ELLIOTT: ... as Jane's clip just showed, very urban, you know, but it's a traumatized society that's going to take a long time to be put back together.
BROWN: I think one of the interesting things that you all have written about is that in a sense, they prepared for something that didn't happen...
ELLIOTT: Absolutely.
BROWN: ... and didn't prepare for what did.
ELLIOTT: Absolutely. Jay Garner, someone said to one of our reporters in Iraq last week, was the perfect man for a job that didn't exist. And what they meant by that was that he had tremendous experience at ameliorating humanitarian catastrophes. If there'd been chemical and biological weapons, if there'd been millions of refugees fleeing the war, then Garner, who had experience in Kurdistan 10 years ago, was just the guy to do it.
But that wasn't what's needed. What was needed was putting back together a society that had been ravaged and traumatized by 20 years of dictatorship. And he wasn't the right guy for that.
Doing that, as we discovered in Germany in 1945, is a process that takes a long time. You can't do it overnight.
BROWN: There must be concern in Washington about the patience of Americans to support this lengthy years...
ELLIOTT: Of course.
BROWN: ... at the same time, there must be perhaps even greater concern about absorbing 10, 12 casualties a week, which I don't think anybody thought was part of the bargain after the war.
ELLIOTT: No. I mean, I think both those points are really vital. I don't think people did expect that that was part of the bargain after the war. But there are firefights happening all the time.
There was that very interesting colloquy, if you remember, about 10 days ago between Joe Biden and Paul Wolfowitz at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when Biden said, Now, when are you going to tell people that this is going to be really long, it's going to be really expensive, and incidentally, my voters in Delaware, who expected that their boys and to some extent girls were going to be back home soon, are actually going to be disappointed, because they're going to be for quite a long time?
So I do think that now might be the right time for the administration to say -- they always say, Well, we've said this, we've said this. But now might be the right time for them to say openly, plainly, and clearly, in a way that people, I think, would understand, This is going to take a long time.
BROWN: Just half a minute, maybe a little less. Is anything happened on the ground, when you talk to "TIME" reporters there, that suggests that it won't be 10 American casualties this week, maybe it'll -- you know, that they have a handle on that particular part of the problem? Because the other problems, I think, from American point of view...
ELLIOTT: Right.
BROWN: ... could be dealt with...
ELLIOTT: Right.
BROWN: ... but casualties something else again.
ELLIOTT: No, I mean, I think the Army feel that getting hold of the violence is something that they can cope with pretty quick, that there are really bad guys out there, but these are guys who scare easily, and that it is a matter of some modest amount of time before one can make the environment more secure for American soldiers.
And one should remember, in parts of Baghdad, in parts of Iraq, places that were less sympathetic to Saddam and the Ba'ath, like the south...
BROWN: Sure.
ELLIOTT: ... it's already safer. So this could use too.
BROWN: Well, I hope so. Michael, good to see you. Thank you for coming in. Michael Elliott, "TIME" magazine tonight.
On to other matters. Television is digital now, high-def, flatscreen, plasma, TiVo, satellite dish connected, way too 21st century for us, in other words, to be governed by those stodgy old rules.
Well, that's at least the view of the chairman of Federal Communications, more or less, Michael Powell's actual words today were, changes had to be made to replace, quote, "the graying rules of a bygone black-and-white era."
So that's what the FCC did, or, at any rate, that's what its three Republican members did.
More now on a very consequential decision from CNN's Bob Franken.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The question is whether the FCC's three-Republican, two-Democrat vote will mean fewer owners and ultimately mean fewer choices, worse choices.
JONATHAN ADELSTEIN, FCC COMMISSIONER: More sensationalism, more commercialism, more crassness, more violence, more homogenization, and noticeably less serious coverage of news and local events.
MICHAEL POWELL, FCC CHAIRMAN: I believe that our actions will advance our diversity and localism's goals and maintain a vigorously competitive environment.
FRANKEN: The order allows major media companies, including the networks, to own TV stations in markets covering 45 percent of the nation's population, up from 35 percent. It will allow a single owner to buy at least two TV stations in all but the smallest markets and three in the very biggest.
And it will allow a single media organization to own a newspaper, TV, and radio stations in the same area.
The protests at the FCC were small, but the public response by mail and e-mail has been massive, about three-quarters of a million people weighed in, the comment almost unanimously opposed. Almost all complain the competition of ideas will be swept aside by a lack of media competition.
But supporters of the changes say the old rules were relics of a distant past.
KEVIN MARTIN, FCC COMMISSIONER: No CNN, no Fox, no MSNBC, no CNBC. Local news was broadcast by the local stations just once at 6:00 and just once at 11:00.
FRANKEN: Maybe so. But the dissenters complain that the bigger selection is really controlled by a smaller group of companies. They point to the experience of radio deregulation, which allowed one company, for instance, ClearChannel Communications, to acquire 1,200 stations nationwide, and that meant, they contend, less local content, more automation.
In one celebrated case, no one was there to answer the frantic phone calls from officials in Minot, North Dakota, wanting to spread the word of a poisonous gas cloud from a train derailment.
MICHAEL COPPS, FCC COMMISSIONER: ClearChannelization of the rest of the American media will harm our country.
FRANKEN (on camera): In any case, the FCC decision is clearly not the last word. There will certainly be lawsuits, and Congress will consider the matter. There have already been 150 members of the House and Senate who have expressed their opposition.
Bob Franken, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: There are lots of opinions about what this decision will mean, lots of theories. But today, they are just that, theories.
Here's CNN's Jeff Greenfield.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST (voice-over): Mass media the way it was, roughly half a century ago, just a few TV channels maneuvering through clogged airwaves. Scarcity was the rule, and federal regulations reflected that, one station per market to a customer, and no station for you if you own the town's newspaper.
Mass media today, dozens, often hundreds of channels for the 80 percent-plus of us who get our TV by way of cable or satellite, and on the Web, the voices and choices are literally infinite.
With all that diversity, the FCC majority said Monday, we just don't need the old limits on ownership. If one owner has two, even three stations in a big market, if media giants get bigger, what's the harm?
(on camera): Well, that's one way to look at it. But the dissenters point to a different set of facts, the sheer size and reach of these media giants. Now, the fact of concentrated media ownership is undeniable. What is open for debate is what that concentration means.
(voice-over): Consider Viacom. It owns the CBS TV network, the UPN, 39 TV stations, Showtime, the MTV networks, Paramount Pictures, Paramount TV, and Infinity Broadcasting, with some 185 radio stations.
Or AOL Time Warner, the world's biggest Internet service provider that also owns the Turner networks, including this one, CNN, and the WB, Time Warner Cable with some 13 million subscribers, Warner Brothers movie and TV studios, TIME Incorporated, and Atlanta's baseball, basketball, and hockey teams.
Critics say all this concentration will limit what is said and who says it, will stifle creativity. But the evidence is less clear.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, HBO)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It wasn't premeditated. I'm not Jeffrey Dahmer...
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GREENFIELD: HBO, often praised for its risk-taking, is owned by AOL Time Warner. And while Fox is owned by staunch conservative Rupert Murdoch, it airs "The Simpsons."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE SIMPSONS")
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't care if it is illegal, I'm making a stand here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GREENFIELD: Perhaps the most cheerfully subversive of any prime time program.
On the other hand, concentrated ownership clearly does hurt localism, one of the long-cherished goals of U.S. communications policy. For instance, ClearChannel Communications owns some 1,250 radio stations, often programming them by remote control, hundreds of miles away, with people who have never set foot in those towns.
And there's another potential problem, conflicts of interest. Can a news division candidly cover, say, a human rights issue in China if its parent company is negotiating a billion-dollar deal with that same Chinese government?
And finally, there's this cautionary note. Deregulating the communications industry in the '80s brought us a range of new innovations and services. Deregulating the energy industry in the '90s helped bring us Enron. Anyone who confidently predicts the outcome of this new government policy is kidding you.
Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: To use a cliche, stay tuned.
Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, you're watching me, but who might be watching you? We'll tell you about another Department of Defense proposal to keep a very close eye on us.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: If I tell you that we're about to talk for a bit with the editor of defensetech.org, you may be tempted to wonder what the work of such a reporter could possibly have to do with you. And the answer is, perhaps, quite a lot.
Noah Shachtman is among the first to write about plans of a division of the Department of Defense to collect, quite literally, every scrap of information it could possibly get on just about anyone it wanted to collect that information on.
Mr. Shachtman joins us now, talk about a Pentagon dream.
That's what it is, right, no, at this point.
NOAH SHACHTMAN, EDITOR, DEFENSETECH.ORG: Yes, it is a dream. It's just a proposal at this point.
BROWN: Lifelog (ph).
SHACHTMAN: Lifelog. And what Lifelog aims to do is take every e-mail you wrote, every Web page you visited, every magazine you've read, and couple that with global position system data to find out where you went, and cameras to see what you see.
It's really -- they call it a diary or a scrapbook, a way to trace the threads of your life.
BROWN: How would they do that? How would they know every Web site I've ever visited, or every step I've ever taken?
SHACHTMAN: Well, some of this is very do-able right now. It's, as I'm sure you know, it's not that hard to find out where people have traveled over the Internet, and it's certainly not that hard to find out what e-mail they've sent.
Some of this other positioning data is obviously much more difficult to get, but with the number of surveillance cameras increasing every day, I think that it becomes increasingly easier to find out where we've gone.
BROWN: Now, all of this is -- we digress for a moment. All of this is going on within that office in the Department of Defense that I guess is designed to scare hell out of everyone, right?
SHACHTMAN: It sure seems like it. Let's also remember that the Department of Defense program that we're talking about here, DARPA, these are the guys that invented the Internet, actually.
BROWN: Right.
SHACHTMAN: So it's a bunch of very smart people. And they're now taking on what seems to be increasingly scarier and scarier tasks.
BROWN: Quite. The last chapter of -- that we had with them was the Total Information Awareness.
SHACHTMAN: Oh, now it's Terrorist Information Awareness.
BROWN: Terror -- well, I know, but that -- it wasn't before...
SHACHTMAN: Right.
BROWN: ... it was basically that they could find out every transaction...
SHACHTMAN: Right.
BROWN: ... you'd ever made.
SHACHTMAN: Right. And this goes a couple of steps further by taking what they call media data, what TV programs you watch, what radio programs you listen to, what magazines you read.
BROWN: For what purpose?
SHACHTMAN: They say the purpose -- well, they say a lot of different things about what the purposes is. At one point, they said it would be to track epidemics. At another point they said it would be to create computerized assistance for generals on the battlefield. It's...
BROWN: Tell me, tell me about that one.
SHACHTMAN: I -- you know, I wish I could...
BROWN: Yes.
SHACHTMAN: ... but frankly, I can't make sense of it. What seems to make a lot more sense to me is to profile potential terrorist suspects, right? So you go down to the corner store every day, you get a bagel and a cup of coffee, and, you know, you call your wife afterwards. And hey, Osama bin Laden's agent in New York City does the same thing. Maybe you two have something in common.
BROWN: How far along is this? I mean, there are -- is this a bunch of -- look, this -- there's two ways, I think, to look at these things. One is, my God, they could do this, and we need to understand clearly the implications.
The other is, to me more benign, is, that you have a number of really smart people sitting around in offices and think about what might be done, what could be done, what might be helpful.
But doesn't mean that there isn't some perhaps even smarter person who says, Yes, but...
SHACHTMAN: Right. Well, look, I think it's a combination of the two. But I think what is very disturbing is the track record that DARPA seems to have with the Total Information Awareness project, and now this, and there's some other projects that actually I'll be talking about soon that sort of fit into this.
And I think it's the combination of all those that -- it's the trend, it's the pattern, that really is disturbing.
BROWN: And the technology for this is here, almost here, will be here a week from Thursday?
SHACHTMAN: Well, I can't say exactly. But there are a number of private sector efforts that are under way to do similar things to Lifelog. One is by a very famous computer scientist named Gordon Bell, who works for Microsoft, and he's been, on his own, taking every memo he ever wrote...
BROWN: Yes.
SHACHTMAN: ... and every greeting card he ever got, and taking pictures everywhere he went, and he is collecting that into a sort of scrapbook. He says it's to help business productivity. Hey, what was the name of that hotel I stayed at in Washington?
And it's also something to pass on to his grandkids. And it sounds great in that way, right? You can find out really what Grandad was like.
But...
BROWN: Right.
SHACHTMAN: ... with the Department of Defense running this, it takes on a more nerve-wracking tone.
BROWN: It's really interesting. Thank you.
SHACHTMAN: Yes, it is interesting.
BROWN: Nice job of explaining it all, and we appreciate that.
SHACHTMAN: Thank you.
BROWN: Come back.
SHACHTMAN: Thanks.
BROWN: Thank you.
Though it scares me little bit, so maybe I'll have you come back.
The best we can do is tell you what tomorrow's news is, and we shall. We'll look at morning papers in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Okey-dokey, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world.
We begin for you travelers with "USA Today," their big story. I have a friend, Linda, she's going to scream right now. "Hillary's 'History' About to Be Unveiled." Mrs. Clinton, Senator Clinton's new book about to come out. Going to be getting a lot of attention. And it was a big battle over who would get the first interview. I'm not sure who ended up with that. Probably Barbara, right? Because she always does.
Best story on the front page, however, "Ex-Army Boss, Pentagon Won't Admit Reality in Iraq." A former head of the Army, Secretary White, saying that it's going to take a long -- lot longer and a lot more troops than the Pentagon has publicly admitted. That's "USA Today" tomorrow.
Right. "The Cincinnati Enquirer," best story, I think, on the front page, "Bill Would Erase Race Terms From Law." It turns out in the state of Ohio, there's a lot of references to "colored persons" and "white persons" and "Negroes" over the years. And a state senator is saying, Enough of that, let's clean that up and take that out.
"The Washington Times" banner story, "CIA Says al Qaeda Ready to Use Nukes." Glad to tell you that before we go to bed, huh? Bill Gerst the reporter on that. Not terribly sophisticated weapons, but nevertheless not very comforting.
"Chicago Sun Times," "Spot a 'Lazy' Road Worker? State Wants You to Tattle." I don't know what I think about that. Probably doesn't matter.
The weather tomorrow, "Enough Already!" Sounds like bad weather again.
And above the top here, "The New Jewel," a feature on the singer Jewel, who actually I knew nothing about until yesterday, because I took my daughter to Zootopia. You want to feel old, take your daughter to a concert. Man, it was unbelievable.
Good to have you with us this Monday. Come back again tomorrow. We'll be here, 10:00 Eastern time. Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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Bush Set to Meet With Abbas; U.S. Faces Tough Questions on Iraqi WMD Claims>
Aired June 2, 2003 - 22:00 Â ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again, everyone.
Proof again that the FBI always gets its man, wait it wasn't the FBI that got Eric Rudolph was it, though you'd be hard pressed to know that from the press releases.
Had it not been for a rookie cop and a police force with seven officers, Mr. Rudolph would still be a fugitive tonight. But he's not. He's in jail and we'll spend some time tonight on how he got there and what he's been doing all these years.
Our first stop in the whip, Murphy, North Carolina where the search for clues to Eric Rudolph's activities goes on. Art Harris there for us tonight, Art a headline from you.
ART HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Investigators find what could be a crucial piece of deadly evidence in the case against Eric Rudolph who was sent off to Birmingham today to face the first of two murder charges.
BROWN: Art, thank you, get to you at the top tonight.
Next, to Egypt and the start of President Bush's Middle East peace mission. CNN senior White House correspondent John King is there, John a headline.
JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the president is in Egypt to begin two days of urgent Middle East peacemaking. His talks here include his first meeting with the new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.
Mr. Bush also will tell Arab leaders there should be no doubt about his commitment to dedicate whatever time and whatever energy it takes to move the process forward. Some the Arab leaders here, though, are still a bit skeptical -- Aaron.
BROWN: John, thank you.
More tough questions here and abroad about the administration's chief justification for the war with Iraq. CNN Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre on that. Jamie, a headline.
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, questions about the U.S. pre-war intelligence, was the U.S. deceiving the world or perhaps just deceiving itself? Plus, a new explanation for what may have happened to the weapons. Did Saddam Hussein destroy them and is he now hiding the means for production in plain sight -- Aaron.
BROWN: Jamie, thank you.
And, perhaps the only welcome development so far in a saga of high finance, possible insider trading, Martha Stewart and, oh by the way a cancer drug as well. CNN's Allan Chernoff with us tonight, Allan a headline.
ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the ImClone cancer drug roller coaster ride takes a new twist. It turns out the company's drug actually does work, this coming only one week before the company's founder is scheduled to be sentenced to jail.
BROWN: Allan, thank you, back to you and the rest shortly.
Also tonight the hugely controversial decision and just as contentious debate over deregulating the airwaves. Today, the FCC voted and some say the viewer, especially in smaller markets, be damned.
Also tonight, the mountain town of Murphy, North Carolina, a number of residents there expressing sympathy for Eric Rudolph. Did they go a step beyond and help him evade capture? We'll be joined by the mayor of Murphy tonight.
And we'll look ahead to a court decision that could dramatically affect the government's power to try Zacarias Moussaoui and other members of al Qaeda. All that and more coming up tonight on a Monday edition of NEWSNIGHT.
We begin with homegrown terrorism and the saga of Eric Rudolph. Today he began revisiting the places and cases behind nearly seven years of headlines, headlines announcing four bombings, two deaths, dozens of injuries, and countless people afraid to visit a park or a woman's clinic or a nightclub. And tonight there's another headline, he's in custody.
Here's CNN's Brian Cabell.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Eric Rudolph now resides in a jail just a few miles from the women's clinic he's charged with bombing five years ago. He arrived in Birmingham shackled and surrounded by heavy security. He was placed in an isolation cell with round-the-clock surveillance.
SHERIFF MIKE HALE, JEFFERSON COUNTY, ALABAMA: He seemed cooperative and soft spoken and he seemed a little bit relieved when he was introduced to myself and the marshal and the chief deputy here that he would be safe here.
CABELL: A trial date has not been set yet. The Birmingham bombing at a women's clinic that provided abortions killed an off duty policeman who was providing security for the clinic and severely injured a nurse. An eyewitness spotted a man leaving the scene and getting into a pickup. The pickup it turned out belonged to Rudolph.
Investigators have also linked Rudolph, who according to friends and family had anti-gay, anti-abortion, and anti-government views, to the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta in 1996 and to bombings at another women's clinic and a gay nightclub, both also in Atlanta, in 1997. His attorney denies the charges.
SEAN DEVEREUX, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: As far as I know he wasn't anywhere near anything that happened but I can tell you that nothing that he did was that sort of defiant, arrogant, it's their fault not my fault, you know, I'm in the army of God and they had it coming. I mean nothing. I mean he didn't talk like that.
CABELL: Rudolph managed to elude capture in spite of a massive manhunt in the rugged mountains of western North Carolina and the offer of a $1 million reward for information leading to his apprehension.
Officials now believe that Rudolph, who was a handyman and carpenter by trade, used his survivalist skills to hide in the mountains during the five-year manhunt. It's uncertain whether he was given any help by sympathetic local residents.
Emily Lyons who was disfigured and blinded in one eye by the Birmingham explosion has no sympathy at all.
EMILY LYONS, BOMBING VICTIM: Forgiveness doesn't come easy for me and this wouldn't be one of them at all. There's nothing that could forgive this. There could be no reason for forgiveness for this.
CABELL: Rudolph will make his first appearance in an Alabama courtroom Tuesday afternoon, the first in a process that's expected to last many, many months.
Brian Cabell, CNN, Birmingham.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Back now to that corner of western North Carolina where Eric Rudolph was caught. We're learning something tonight of what police are finding at his suspected campsite or at least one of them.
We got to CNN's Art Harris who's in the town of Murphy, Art good evening.
HARRIS: Good evening, Aaron.
CNN has learned that investigators have found a semi-automatic assault rifle at one of two secret campsites believed to belong to Eric Rudolph in the mountains around us. They have found this gun that Eric may have bought at a gun show they believe the same place that he bought the black powder, allegedly, that was used in Atlanta's Olympic Park bombing. Agents have discovered these two campsites in two days in the rugged hills above Murphy, North Carolina. One is above a parking lot where Rudolph was arrested. The other was five miles away atop another tall mountain.
We tried to go there but were stopped by police at a roadblock. An FBI agent who had just come down from that mountain advised us against trying that because he said he climbed it and he was in great shape as a jogger and a runner and it had been a tough climb for him -- Aaron.
BROWN: Well, given that agents have been swarming over this area literally for years, how is it that they found these campsites now?
HARRIS: Well, Aaron, in the first case a rookie cop found Mr. Rudolph when he apparently wandered down from one and was in effect dumpster diving in a grocery store parking lot, and I'm told that you could actually see the parking lot from this ridgeline where the campsite was located.
So, in effect, it was dumb luck. He had apparently been living there and traveling between Murphy and possibly his hometown in Topton along a ridgeline and I'm told they're now using bloodhounds to backtrack and try to find some of the other campsites.
One thing they're really concerned about, Aaron, is a stash of dynamite, dynamite stolen about two years ago, 200 pounds of it. It gets very volatile and deteriorates over time and this could be one danger for these agents -- Aaron.
BROWN: Art, let me try it again. I understand how they captured Mr. Rudolph. What I think I'm trying to understand here is this campsite that they found where they found the gun and other things, how did they find that?
HARRIS: Well, they were up in this one campsite that they found above the parking lot. Apparently he is cooperating enough so that they were able to locate that campsite and then they used dogs to track to the other.
BROWN: Got it. Art, thank you, Art Harris has been doing reporting with the law enforcement in Murphy, North Carolina.
There's been an awful lot of talk about the town, about whether residents in the town were sympathetic to Mr. Rudolph and whether their sympathies included helping him stay away from the police all these years. It's been more than five now.
Joining us is the mayor of Murphy, North Carolina, Bill Hughes. Mayor Hughes, good to have you with us. Do you believe there were residents in your city or in that area who might have helped Mr. Rudolph all these years?
MAYOR BILL HUGHES, MURPHY, NORTH CAROLINA: No, I don't. I believe Rudolph acted alone. I believe he lived alone and he was caught alone. I do not believe he received any assistance whatsoever. I know that's been theorized but I don't believe that's the case.
BROWN: Is it that you don't believe it because you have no evidence to support it or because you know the residents of your town or because you just don't want to believe it?
HUGHES: I know the residents. I know the residents of my town and I've tried to be very objective in my thinking. But I know the residents in our town and may I assure you they deplore his actions. There's no sympathy for him here.
BROWN: I think many of us in the country woke up today and in our newspapers we saw at a restaurant a reader board sign that was supportive of Mr. Rudolph. What do you make of that?
HUGHES: Well, I understand there perhaps may be one or two in the area. I personally haven't seen them myself but if that be the case may I assure you that's representing a very, very small minority of sympathy as far as that might be had in this area.
I haven't seen those signs but perhaps a few people might be in sympathy but they are indeed very few. I believe had they known that harboring a federal fugitive would be a felony perhaps they would not have done that.
BROWN: Well, one would hope that residents of your town and others would not be committing felonies. Is there sympathy to his purported beliefs, to his strong anti-abortion feelings, his anti- government feelings?
HUGHES: Absolutely not, perhaps in western North Carolina religious beliefs are somewhat conservative, but even then no one approves of the terrible acts that he committed or allegedly committed and, as I said, the people in this area are honest, industrious, hard- working, intelligent. They don't approve of things like that. No one does.
BROWN: And...
HUGHES: They're horrible and incidentally allow me to extend my sympathy to the families of those who were injured and those who were killed. We suffer right along with you and I extend the heartfelt sympathy of our town.
BROWN: One of the things that people should remember about your town is that it was one of your police officers, a 21-year-old rookie police officer, who found Mr. Rudolph the other night.
HUGHES: That's very true and we are very proud of Officer Postell. He was a rookie policeman on the job doing what he was supposed to do the way he was trained to do it and he just happened to be in the right place at the right time when Mr. Rudolph presented himself there.
BROWN: How did you find out about it?
HUGHES: The chief of police called me early the morning he was apprehended and told me that he thought one of our officers had captured Eric Robert Rudolph. I was in total disbelief.
BROWN: You knew right away who he was talking about?
HUGHES: I knew immediately who he was talking about. I had felt that Rudolph had long since left the area or was perhaps even dead. I was very, very surprised to hear he was still around. That really came as a surprise to me.
BROWN: Did you go down to the -- it's not a very big police station, is it? It's just about ten people total.
HUGHES: It's a very small police station.
BROWN: And did you go down there right away?
HUGHES: I did go (unintelligible) -- I did go down there right away. I had an opportunity to go by Cherokee County Jail and I was allowed to go in and actually see Mr. Rudolph through a one-way glass. And, incidentally, he looked nothing like I thought he might. He didn't resemble the pictures I didn't think. There was nothing out of the ordinary about him.
BROWN: Did he -- I don't know if you've seen pictures of him today or not but the pictures today of him are his hair is cut. He's reasonably well-groomed. He shaved and the rest. Is that how he looked to you the other night?
HUGHES: That's how he looked to me. He had rather short hair, had a moustache, wearing a dark tee shirt, dark trousers, had stubble beard. The tee shirt and trousers were dirty.
BROWN: Mayor, I assume you'll be more than happy when all this notoriety goes away and Murphy, North Carolina returns to being Murphy, North Carolina.
HUGHES: Well, it's good to have some closure and I think everyone will be very relieved to see this whole sad, unpleasant situation culminated and brought to an end. We're looking forward to that. Life will return to normal then.
BROWN: I bet it will. Mayor Bill Hughes thanks a lot for joining us tonight.
HUGHES: Indeed.
BROWN: Thank you, sir very much.
HUGHES: My pleasure, sir. Thank you so much.
BROWN: Thank you.
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT on a Monday night here in New York, President Bush arrives in Egypt to lay the groundwork for the Mid East Peace Summit which occurs in Jordan later in the week.
And, we'll take a look at the effect groups like Hamas will have on the prospects of peace, that and much more as NEWSNIGHT continues on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: President Bush is in Egypt tonight meeting with Arab leaders on a remote patch of sand once occupied by Israel. The spot is both real and a symbolic jumping off point for the rest of his journey on to Jordan selling a peace plan that calls for a good deal more sacrifice on both sides than just giving up a remote patch of sand.
Here's our senior White House correspondent John King.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KING (voice-over): Egypt is stop one in a push for Middle East peace the president says will erase any doubt about his personal commitment.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The first message is I will dedicate the time and energy to move the process forward and I think we'll make some progress. I know we're making progress.
KING: The main event is Wednesday's three-way summit in Jordan with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.
BUSH: My expectations in the Middle East are to call all the respective parties to their responsibility to achieve peace.
KING: Mr. Bush wants both leaders to implement the early benchmarks of his so-called Middle East road map.
For Prime Minister Sharon that means dismantling illegal settlements, easing more economic restrictions on Palestinians, and embracing a timetable to pull out of the Palestinian territories.
And from Prime Minister Abbas, Mr. Bush wants immediate improvements in Palestinian security forces, a crackdown on militant groups blamed for attacks on Israel, an acknowledgement of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
The first stop here at the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh is considered critical to building momentum. Mr. Bush will hold a get- to-know-you session with Prime Minister Abbas and he will talk strategy with Egypt's Mubarak, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, and other key Arab leaders.
U.S. officials say Mr. Bush will tell the Arab leaders he needs their help in isolating Yasser Arafat and enthusiastically backing Mr. Abbas as the frontline Palestinian leader.
Secretary of State Powell is on hand for the talks as well and the Bush administration will leave a team of diplomats and security experts behind after the summit to monitor progress in implementing any new promises. (on camera): The president calls this just a beginning of a long and difficult process but he says there now should be no doubt that he is willing to dedicate whatever time and whatever energy is necessary. That is a promise some of the Arab leaders gathered here are not yet convinced Mr. Bush plans to keep.
John King, CNN, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: There are significant doubts on the Israeli side as well, a chief concern being whether the new Palestinian prime minister can deliver on promises to reign in terrorists, suicide bombers.
Like the pope, the prime minister hasn't got much at his disposal, just the power to persuade and the possibility that Hamas and others are becoming a bit more open to persuasion.
Here's CNN's Kelly Wallace.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There is no cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers and Palestinian security guards sit dangerously close to each other. These officers told us they are here based on orders from the new Palestinian prime minister's government and that new government seems to be affecting the radical Palestinian group Hamas, which has been responsible for many of the suicide bombings against Israelis.
Only weeks ago, Hamas rejected any notion of a cease-fire. Now, at the urging of the Palestinian prime minister, Hamas leaders acknowledge the organization is considering halting attacks against Israelis.
"Hamas is learning the reality, the new developments in the region, and is trying to pass this period in a way that would preserve the Palestinians' legitimate rights," Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi told us.
Part of that new reality new pressure coming from moderate Arab leaders after terror attacks in their own backyard with recent blasts in Saudi Arabia and Morocco.
(on camera): Pressure is not only coming from abroad but here at home. In neighborhood like this one, a Hamas stronghold, many Palestinians are urging Hamas to give the Palestinian prime minister a chance.
(voice-over): "I think they should try the cease-fire option and go through the road map in a correct way and if it doesn't succeed they can go back to violence" this woman told us. But not everyone here agrees.
"I think that with the Jewish people there is no thing named cease-fire" this man said. Hamas, a major political force in the Gaza Strip knows that its strength, in part, depends on the support of the Palestinian people.
ABU SHANAB, HAMAS LEADER: We want to decide according to what is bringing the high interest of our people on top of the agenda.
WALLACE: Palestinian lawmakers say Hamas will only agree to a cease-fire if Israel takes steps, such as ending military operations in the Palestinian areas.
JAMAL ZAKOUT, PALESTINIAN LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL MEMBER: Cease-fire is not done by one side. Cease-fire is done by two sides.
WALLACE: Israeli officials say a cease-fire with Hamas can only be a first step and that the group itself must be dismantled but Hamas leaders say that won't happen until their definition of Israeli occupation comes to an end, which to them means an Islamic Palestinian state in place of Israel and that is why any Hamas-supported cease- fire is just one small step on any possible road to peace.
Kelly Wallace, CNN, Gaza.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Coming up on NEWSNIGHT tonight, the continuing fallout over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We'll have the latest, much more as NEWSNIGHT continues from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Lately, the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has morphed into two stories, the search itself which hasn't gone especially well, and the search for responsibility.
Did the intelligence community get it wrong? Did the administration oversell the case? Questions that have dogged the secretary of state and Britain's prime minister as well, questions that one good day of inspecting might answer, but that good and successful day hasn't happened yet.
Here's our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE (voice-over): Colin Powell says his presentation to the United Nations February 5th followed three straight days of preparation during which he grilled CIA analysts late into the night about the quality of U.S. intelligence. In Rome, Powell says he still stands by that report.
COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It wasn't a figment of anyone's imagination.
MCINTYRE: But an administration official tells CNN Powell did have doubts about evidence linking Iraq to al Qaeda and included the reference only after being persuaded by the White House. The failure of the U.S. to find any banned weapons so far has some in Congress calling for hearings into whether the case against Iraq was overstated or even intentionally inflated.
SEN. EVAN BAYH (D), ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: After all the facts are in, it looks as if the intelligence was simply wrong. I think we need to do two things. First, get to the bottom of why errors in judgment were made and, secondly, I think there will be a heightened level of skepticism.
MCINTYRE: A CNN-USA Today Gallup poll shows for now two-thirds of Americans seem willing to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt. Asked whether the Bush administration deliberately misled the American public about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, 31 percent said yes, it deliberately misled, but 67 percent said no, it did not. Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing a more skeptical public and criticism from within his own party.
TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: The idea that Saddam Hussein has for 12 years been obstructing the U.N. weapons inspectors, has been engaged in this huge battle with the international community, when all the way along he'd actually destroyed these weapons is completely absurd.
MCINTYRE: So, where are the weapons? It's clear intelligence indicating they were deployed on the battlefield was wrong. Some administration officials are saying instead that in an effort to ride out U.N. inspections, Saddam Hussein might have destroyed any large stockpiles and hidden production capability inside dual use commercial facilities.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE: The new Iraq search teams heading to Iraq this week are focusing on developing new intelligence that is finding the people and the documents that will lead them to the banned weapons of mass destruction.
And, Pentagon officials continue to insist that just because they haven't found any weapons of mass destruction doesn't mean they aren't there. For instance, one could argue that they haven't found Saddam Hussein either but no one is suggesting he wasn't actually there before the war -- Aaron.
BROWN: Well, no. That's an interesting way to look at it. Are they concerned, I assume they have some concern here, that the longer this goes on, the longer they fail to come up with something, the more skepticism will be greeting them should they come up with something?
MCINTYRE: Well, I think that absolutely is a concern and they're also concerned that if they have to in the end make the case that the weapons themselves were destroyed and that what Saddam Hussein was maintaining was his ability to produce them at a future date once the U.N. inspections ended, for instance, that that also is going to be a much harder sell for the world community. But there are some who believe at the end of the day that's what they're going to end up with.
BROWN: Are they -- have they started shifting the argument for the war itself, the justification for the war itself? Because we talked with Ken Adelman on the program last Friday and he made the argument that the principal weapon of mass destruction all along was Saddam Hussein himself.
MCINTYRE: Well, they would argue they're not shifting the basis because even if it turns out that the weapons were destroyed, they're going to say that the burden of proof was always on Saddam Hussein that he had to show that he'd come clean and he didn't do that and that's what provided the justification for the war, at least that's the argument you're going to hear from the administration.
BROWN: Jamie, thank you very much, Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon tonight.
We're joined now from Washington by "NEWSWEEK" magazine's Michael Isikoff. He writes this week of tensions between intelligence professionals and the political side, how they played into the run-up of the war. We're always glad to have him on the program and glad to have him tonight, Michael good to see you.
Was there a battle between the political guys and the intelligence guys and, if there was, how did this play out?
MICHAEL ISIKOFF, "NEWSWEEK": Well, there clearly was and where the administration presented the intelligence on Iraq as ironclad, as absolute, as representing the collective wisdom of the U.S. intelligence community, as reflected perhaps most dramatically when Secretary of State Powell gave the speech to the United Nations.
George Tenet, the CIA Director, was sitting right behind him. The signal being sent there was this is what our intelligence people believe. In fact, we now know through our reporting and the reporting of others that there was deep divisions within the U.S. intelligence community about much of the evidence that was being presented that day when Secretary Powell gave his speech and during earlier statements by the president and others, particularly, on whether Iraq had an ongoing nuclear weapons program and whether there were clear ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaeda.
BROWN: Is it, based on your reporting, is it that the political side exaggerated what was known, or that it took -- that there was essentially an intelligence vacuum and the administration put the strongest case on that uncertainty, if you will?
ISIKOFF: A little bit of both. Intelligence vacuum is perhaps not the right word, but certainly ambiguity is clear. There was a lot -- I mean, look. The nature of intelligence on these matters is inherently ambiguous, inherently sketchy. There isn't clear evidence about a lot of these things. Certainly, if we had perfect intelligence about al Qaeda, for instance, we would have anticipated the September 11 attacks. So, on its face, these are matters about which the U.S. intelligence community doesn't have real good information. In some cases, people in the intelligence community communicated to that. In other cases, the intelligence community, it can be argued, tried to provide their masters in the political realm what they wanted to hear. In the piece this week in "Newsweek," we cite a couple of examples on the Iraqi nuclear program. This was presented by the president, by Vice President Cheney and others as an imminent threat. Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program. It could possibly if it got the fissable (ph) uranium that was needed, produce a nuclear bomb within a year, the president said in a speech in Cincinnati last October.
Well, we now know and in the piece this week, we quote one of the top Iraqi WMD analysts at the State Department saying that the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which is the State Department's intelligence arm, had concluded last year that there was no good evidence that Iraq had reconstituted the nuclear program at all. This opinion was concurred in by the Department of Energy, which had consulted its experts in nuclear labs, and these were very strong dissents. Evidence being cited by the CIA about aluminum tube purchases that were purportedly being used for centrifuges, for uranium, the DEO and IRN at State concluded it was not for that purpose at all.
So there was clearly, as I say, dissent on that issue, which was key to the administration's argument about the nuclear program, within the intelligence community not reflected in the administration's public statements.
BROWN: Michael, it's a nice piece of reporting in "Newsweek" this week. We always enjoy having you with us. Thanks a lot.
ISIKOFF: Thanks.
BROWN: Michael Isikoff at "Newsweek" magazine.
As NEWSNIGHT continues, good news about cancer drug trial, and the part that plays in the fortunes of a company whose founder may be headed for jail. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: The great American short story writer O. Henry loved a surprise ending, that wild final twist that made the reader rethink everything that had come before, which is to say, O. Henry would have been crazy about today's development in the story of the drug the FDA once declined to approve, which moved the drug company's chief executive to unload his stock before anyone else heard that the drug wasn't going to be approved, which got him snagged in an insider trading scandal, which also tarnished a certain friend of his, named Martha Stewart. Are you following all of this? What's the surprise ending? Remember the drug at the heart of the story? It seems to work. Allan Chernoff follows the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHERNOFF (voice-over): A new ray of hope for cancer patients facing the toughest odds. Data from a German company with European rights to ImClone's Erbitux, called C-225 in the lab, show the drug is effective for patients with metastasized colon cancer.
DR. PAUL BUNN, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CLINICAL ONCOLOGY: These trials really confirm that the target is good, the drug is good and actually helps patients.
CHERNOFF: The data presented a the year's big oncology conference show Erbitux, combined with traditional chemotherapy, stabilized or improved cancer in half of the patients tested, and shrank tumors by more than half in 23 percent of patients. Results virtually identical to those ImClone had delivered to the FDA in 2001. Sam Waksal, the founder of ImClone Systems, had always claimed the drug worked.
SAM WAKSAL, FORMER CEO, IMCLONE: We feel very confident that we'll be on the market next year with a very important new drug.
CHERNOFF: That sort of talk raised hope for Rachel Hightower, a cancer patient who we profiled last summer.
RACHEL HIGHTOWER, CANCER PATIENT: If you think you have something that may cure you or may help you, at least extend your life, then you're real anxious to get to that drug. And there ought to be ways to expedite the process.
CHERNOFF: But the FDA rejected ImClone's application for fast track approval of Erbitux, finding the company's data not reliable enough because the clinical trial had been designed poorly. Before the rejection became public, Waksal tried to unload his ImClone stock and had his father and daughter sell their shares. Waksal eventually pled guilty to insider trading. Rachel Hightower never got Erbitux. She passed away last December.
DR. LEN LICHTFELD, DEPUTY CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY: It's a shame that we've had to go through all of this for the past several years with the drug that really, in fact, may show promise in treating patients with colon cancer. And there's a lesson here for all of us, there's a lesson on the corporate side, there's a lesson on the clinical trial side, that we really owe our patients, we owe our families, we owe our medical system the best efforts we can to do the right thing by people to make sure this doesn't happen again.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHERNOFF: To be sure, Erbitux is not a cure for colon cancer. The German company, Merck KGA hopes to have the drug approved in Europe by next year. ImClone plans to meet with the FDA to see if the new data might get the drug approved in the U.S. Meanwhile, Sam Waksal faces sentencing next Tuesday. A friend of his tells CNN Waksal is very happy about the drug results, and feels vindicated -- Aaron.
BROWN: And just quickly, and Martha Stewart in all of this?
CHERNOFF: She is still waiting, still waiting for the Justice Department and the SEC to make a decision as to whether or not they're going to go forward with charges.
BROWN: Allan, thank you very much.
On to a couple of other stories making news around the country today starting in Fairfax, Virginia, a hearing for sniper suspect Lee Malvo. Judge refusing to dismiss state charges against Malvo. His lawyers have claimed they overlap with federal charges now since dropped. They also argued for a change of ,venue moving the trial. The judge put that decision off.
Judge in Orlando, Florida today appointed a guardian for a mentally retarded rape victim. The guardian will next decide whether the woman who is pregnant should have an abortion. Earlier, the judge threw out a petition for a guardian for the fetus as well. An Orlando homemaker has filed a petition which also drew the support of Florida's Governor Jeb Bush.
And 'I'll bet this happens to you all the time. You're blocks away from the subway station when it hits you, you left your Picasso on the subway, Matisse too. It happened to William Bailey who's an art framing consultant in New York. Everyone's a consultant these days. Anyway, after losing the art on Thursday, Mr. Bailey posted some notices, offered a reward, and got the prints back today.
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, an accused terrorists wants to use another accused terrorist as a witness at the trial. And the government's attempts to prevent that. Details in a moment as NEWSNIGHT continues on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: A couple of quick stories around the world to get in tonight beginning in Evian, France where President Bush and Jacques Chirac, who famously did not see eye to eye on the subject of war in Iraq, did meet face to face today for the first time since that war.
Mr. Bush and the French leader were in Evian for the summit, the so-called G-8 group of industrialized nations. But they took time out for bilateral talks, as the diplomats say, in hopes to at least start settling their differences.
On to Kazakhstan, a Soyuz launch vehicle took off 9:45 p.m. Moscow time carrying aloft the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft. The Express should be in orbit around Mars in six months.
And finally, to London, Westminster Abby. In a sea of broad- brimmed hats, Queen Elizabeth II renewed her coronation vows, vows she originally took 50 years ago to the day, the 2nd of June, 1953. The ceremony part of a yearlong jubilee celebration in Elizabeth's honor. Though it does seems longer, doesn't it?
It is a tenet of American justice that the defendant is entitled to any evidence that casts doubt on the government's case. If an important witness says the guy didn't do it, the defendant entitled to talk to that witness, get his statement. That's just basic fairness, it has always seemed. But like so much else since 9/11, that, too, may have changed. The case in point, the so-called 20th hijacker. Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The government will argue that Zacarias Moussaoui should not be allowed to question another accused terrorist and alleged 9/11 planner, Ramzi Binalshibh.
Moussaoui, the only person charged in connection with the September 11 attacks, says that Binalshibh can clear him of involvement. And the judge overseeing the case, Leonie Brinkema, ruled to allow Moussaoui access.
Attorney George Harris, who represented American Taliban John Walker Lindh in a similar fight, says it's Constitutional rights.
GEORGE HARRIS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: There's a balance of interest that has to go on there. I think, though, we have to think very carefully before we would conclude as a county, as a judicial system that the compromise means that, you know, a defendant doesn't have the normal due process rights that pertain to every other criminal defendant.
ARENA: But the government says allowing the terrorists to communicate raises national security concerns. So, too, does the interruption of any interrogation of Binalshibh who is being held by the U.S. at an undisclosed location.
BRADFORD BERENSON, FRM. ASSOC. WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: You have to keep in mind that in the interrogation of a person like Ramzi Binalshibh the government's ability to get accurate, timely intelligence could save thousands of American lives here in the United States.
ARENA: Government sources say if the appeals court rules in Moussaoui's favor the case will likely have to be moved from the civilian to the military judicial system, a major blow to the Justice Department which is hoping for a public conviction of the alleged 9/11 conspirator.
ERIC HOLDER, FORMER DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: I think that we have learned something here. And I think if given that if the same choice in the future and the government decided to go with military tribunal opposed to putting it in the criminal justice system, I think that that would be appropriate.
ARENA (on camera): The case against Moussaoui cannot proceed until the appeals court makes it's and there's no way to tell when that will happen.
Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE) BROWN: More on the government's dilemma. We're joined tonight by retired Colonel Scott Silliman who served as a military lawyer during Desert Storm I and now serves as a professor at Duke University Law School.
Nice to have you with us, Professor. This is a battle, it sounds like a disagreement, not just between the defense and the prosecution, but between the Defense Department and the Justice Department.
SCOTT SILLIMAN, DUKE UNIVERSITY: I think you're exactly right, Aaron. The Justice Department obviously wants to have a successful prosecution in the eastern district of Virginia where this case was brought. And, to do that, they're going to have to comply with the rules of due process that the Constitution provides for any defendant in our criminal justice system. And that is the right to have access to information which can be exculpatory, that which might prove innocence or disprove the government's case as Kelli mentioned in her lead up.
Now, the Justice Department, I think, would be a little bit less concerned about access to Binalshibh than the Defense Department. The Defense Department all along has said that they don't want the courts or criminal defendant to have access to to anyone under interrogation outside the United States. '
So this is real a clash between the two departments.
BROWN: Can you explain -- I'm sure you can explain to me or why would we have booked you, for goodness' sake -- can you explain to me why moving this to a military tribunal mitigates the problem which is still one of essential fairness?
SILLIMAN: Aaron, the rules that have been established for military tribunals carry less due process than a trial in our federal district courts. That's the way it's set up and it's totally under the province of the Department of Defense. It clearly meets international law standards, but a military tribunal has certain restrictions on a defendant's right to demand access to witnesses against him and access to classified information.
What's at issue right now, the Fourth Circuit's problem is the Classified Information Procedure act of 1980 which says, basically, that when a defendant like Moussaoui wants to use classified information in his own defense, then the government must make that available unless it can provide a suitable substitute.
The government tried to do that, and Judge Brinkema, up in the Eastern District of Virginia, ruled that that was unacceptable. It's that ruling by the Judge Brinkema last January that is now being appealed to the 4th Circuit, and why this is such an important decision that will be forthcoming from that court.
BROWN: Is there middle ground here? Is there a way to compromise that protects -- I realize that perhaps Mr. Moussaoui doesn't have a lot of fans out there in the audience, but if the country stands for something, it ought to stand for giving people fair trial. Is there some middle ground here that might solve the problem for both sides?
SILLIMAN: I think Judge Brinkema tried to find that middle ground, Aaron. And she set up conditions for a videotaped interview of Binalshibh, and that was unacceptable to the government, and certainly unacceptable to the Department of Defense.
I think they're worried about the precedent that would occur. Not so much in Moussaoui's case but in any other case in which we would try to bring a terrorist to trial in our federal courts. Your viewers should remember, though, Aaron, that in 1993, in the first World Trade Center bombing, and also in 1998, after the bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, we brought those terrorists to trial in the federal district courts, and we were very successful in getting prosecutions. It's the Moussaoui case which has caused the problem and become a nightmare for the government.
BROWN: But just on the subject of precedent, it is important in the way you've seen this and the way you've laid this out that the Justice Department prove that it can try these cases in a normal fashion, in a normal courtroom, in this country.
SILLIMAN: I think that's exceptionally true as far as the Justice Department's view on this, Aaron. They have an awful lot going on this particular trial. For them to shut down the prosecution in the Eastern District of Virginia, and to just give the case to Secretary Rumsfeld and just say, OK, you take this over in a military tribunal outside this country, presumably, Guantanamo Bay or whatever, I think it's for the Justice Department to concede total defeat.
Further, Aaron, for the United States to pull a case out of the due process of the federal courts and then to ship it down to Guantanamo Bay is not the statement we want to make to the international community, which is watching every step we make in this war against terrorism.
BROWN: The very definition of conundrum. Professor, thanks a lot for joining us with your explanations tonight. Thank you.
SILLIMAN: Thank you, Aaron.
BROWN: Very good. Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, how could an accused murderer be considered a hero? America's long infatuation with those on the run. Back to the Rudolph case after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: It's always shocking for Americans to be reminded that bombers who take innocent lives in the Middle East are looked at by some in that part of the world as heroes. This is incomprehensible and could not happen, we think, in America. Only it has happened. Villains of a certain kind and then turned into something else entirely. Larger than life, almost admirable, and it may be that in a few places in America, that is happening again.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BROWN (voice-over): It is a little hard to understand how anyone can hold Eric Rudolph, charged with four bombings in which two people died and dozens were hurt, in high regard. A little hard to understand, that is, unless you think back. We have done this all before, more than once.
Pretty Boy Floyd was a violent bank robber, became a hero in a wonderful Woody Guthrie song. Bonnie and Clyde were psychotic killers transformed in Arthur Penn's famous movie into American icons. Butch Cassidy and Sundance, Thelma and Louise, Billy the Kid. Folklore transformed them all, and many others.
Still, Eric Rudolph is different. Those other outlaws were after money. They stole from the rich, and even if they didn't give all their loot away as Robin Hood did, at least they set something aside for the poor.
But if there is anything at all to the charges against Eric Rudolph, he is an outlaw motivated not by greed -- we all understand greed -- but by hatred. And it is hard to make a hero out of a hate monger.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Another 30 minutes of NEWSNIGHT ahead on a Monday during which we'll take a look at the ongoing struggle in Iraq with members of the Baath Party. Are they making a comeback after the war?
We'll also look at the FCC's decision today to increase ownership limits on media companies. That and more. Morning papers, too. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Iraq again starts the half hour. The American administrator in Baghdad announcing today that recruiting for a new Iraqi army would begin by the end of the month, which would be controversial enough, even without the political side of the equation to deal with.
Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Jane Arraf.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A question of balance. For the new U.S. administrator in Iraq, it's not so easy on the political field either. Paul Bremer was the hero handing out soccer balls, but he faces a much tougher time explaining why U.S. authorities are sidelining the idea of having Iraqis choose an interim government.
Instead, the coalition plans to appoint a political council.
PAUL BREMER, U.S./IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION ADMINISTRATOR: You know, there've been a lot of ideas around, both before I got here and after I got here. We've been trying to talk to a variety of Iraqis to find the best way. I found that in my consultations over the last -- well, I've been here almost three weeks, most of the Iraqis we've talked to have been anxious to move ahead rather quickly to establish an interim administration.
ARRAF: That interim administration would for now be U.S.-led. Officials say they need to solve more pressing problems, like getting government ministries running and creating jobs. A true Iraqi government would come much later.
Iraqi political leaders aren't opposing the move, but on the streets, many Iraqis are suspicious and offended.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, now, they came, they say, they change their goal. They say no government now. But we want to establish government after two years. Why?
ARRAF: Iraqis say what they most need are gasoline, electricity, jobs.
(on camera): Before the war, no one was allowed to even come near these palace gates. Now it's become a focal point for thousands of people expressing their worry and their anger at the problems unleashed by the fall of the government.
(voice-over): These army officers have no money and no jobs. Under U.S. rules, anyone above the rank of colonel will have to find work outside government.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's hundreds of people out there raging about their salaries and about their rights and about their army.
We cannot serve for 23 years (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You cannot, you cannot, you cannot serve for 23 years administration that's all. You can't toss us out in the streets. This is unfair, believe me.
ARRAF: Many officers say they followed U.S. advice not to resist the American forces and now have nothing.
"We brought down Saddam, not the American army," some say. Now, they say, they have no stake in their own country.
Jane Arraf, CNN, Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: "TIME" magazine's editor at large, Michael Elliott, has been writing about the state of play on the ground in Iraq, what has gone right, what has not. We're always pleased to have him with us, we are again tonight.
Hi, there. These attacks on Americans that have gone on, I think, where over a dozen have died, Americans have died, is there a sense that there is leadership directing these attacks?
MICHAEL ELLIOTT, EDITOR AT LARGE, "TIME" MAGAZINE: There's one triangle going west-north and then back to Baghdad within which the American forces seem to think there is some command and control, there is some cohesion, if you like, to the attacks.
Now, this, not coincidentally, perhaps, is the area that some informed sources think that Saddam and his sons may be in. It's a long, long way from that to saying at there is command and control from Saddam on his people.
But there do seem to be remnants of the Ba'ath Party who can let it be known that they would like particular kinds of attacks on particular American deployments in particular places.
BROWN: This inability to show that Saddam is dead or in custody is problematic in more than a public relations way (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
ELLIOTT: Well, Jerry Bremer, Paul Bremer, the administrator in Iraq, spoke to our reporters last week and made that precise point. I mean, he thinks that it is unquestionably an issue and a problem, that we have not been able to say either that we've killed him or that we've captured him, and that it would be hugely advantageous to our position if we could do either.
BROWN: Because?
ELLIOTT: Because then you would be able to say to the Iraqis, This truly is over. First of all, there are a lot of people who, for their own venal reasons, would like the Ba'ath regime still to be able to come back.
More importantly, I think there are still people who are scared that there is still Saddam's power out there and would like to be reassured that it is over for good, and then we can kind of get on and start the long, long process, not going to be short, of building a new Iraq.
BROWN: Longer than it seemed a month ago? I mean, have things gone -- well, do they acknowledge -- will they acknowledge that things have not gone great over the last month?
ELLIOTT: I think they'd have to. Don't you think? I think they'd have to.
BROWN: Well, I think they'd have to, but...
ELLIOTT: I think -- I mean, the problem -- I mean...
BROWN: ... you know, we ask this question all the time.
ELLIOTT: Yes.
BROWN: Doesn't mean they do.
ELLIOTT: Well, we go through, you know, we go through this all the time, Aaron, don't we? And every time you have a look at a speech that they might have given in January, February, or March, you'll always find the qualifiers there.
BROWN: Right.
ELLIOTT: You'll always find the words (UNINTELLIGIBLE), Of course, it's going to be a long time.
But I don't think there's much doubt that the message given was that there was going to be, not dancing in the streets, but a kind of broad sense of acceptance of the nature of the occupation. I think what has now become plain is that there's a lot broken in Iraq. This a traumatized society. It's a modern society...
BROWN: Yes.
ELLIOTT: ... as Jane's clip just showed, very urban, you know, but it's a traumatized society that's going to take a long time to be put back together.
BROWN: I think one of the interesting things that you all have written about is that in a sense, they prepared for something that didn't happen...
ELLIOTT: Absolutely.
BROWN: ... and didn't prepare for what did.
ELLIOTT: Absolutely. Jay Garner, someone said to one of our reporters in Iraq last week, was the perfect man for a job that didn't exist. And what they meant by that was that he had tremendous experience at ameliorating humanitarian catastrophes. If there'd been chemical and biological weapons, if there'd been millions of refugees fleeing the war, then Garner, who had experience in Kurdistan 10 years ago, was just the guy to do it.
But that wasn't what's needed. What was needed was putting back together a society that had been ravaged and traumatized by 20 years of dictatorship. And he wasn't the right guy for that.
Doing that, as we discovered in Germany in 1945, is a process that takes a long time. You can't do it overnight.
BROWN: There must be concern in Washington about the patience of Americans to support this lengthy years...
ELLIOTT: Of course.
BROWN: ... at the same time, there must be perhaps even greater concern about absorbing 10, 12 casualties a week, which I don't think anybody thought was part of the bargain after the war.
ELLIOTT: No. I mean, I think both those points are really vital. I don't think people did expect that that was part of the bargain after the war. But there are firefights happening all the time.
There was that very interesting colloquy, if you remember, about 10 days ago between Joe Biden and Paul Wolfowitz at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when Biden said, Now, when are you going to tell people that this is going to be really long, it's going to be really expensive, and incidentally, my voters in Delaware, who expected that their boys and to some extent girls were going to be back home soon, are actually going to be disappointed, because they're going to be for quite a long time?
So I do think that now might be the right time for the administration to say -- they always say, Well, we've said this, we've said this. But now might be the right time for them to say openly, plainly, and clearly, in a way that people, I think, would understand, This is going to take a long time.
BROWN: Just half a minute, maybe a little less. Is anything happened on the ground, when you talk to "TIME" reporters there, that suggests that it won't be 10 American casualties this week, maybe it'll -- you know, that they have a handle on that particular part of the problem? Because the other problems, I think, from American point of view...
ELLIOTT: Right.
BROWN: ... could be dealt with...
ELLIOTT: Right.
BROWN: ... but casualties something else again.
ELLIOTT: No, I mean, I think the Army feel that getting hold of the violence is something that they can cope with pretty quick, that there are really bad guys out there, but these are guys who scare easily, and that it is a matter of some modest amount of time before one can make the environment more secure for American soldiers.
And one should remember, in parts of Baghdad, in parts of Iraq, places that were less sympathetic to Saddam and the Ba'ath, like the south...
BROWN: Sure.
ELLIOTT: ... it's already safer. So this could use too.
BROWN: Well, I hope so. Michael, good to see you. Thank you for coming in. Michael Elliott, "TIME" magazine tonight.
On to other matters. Television is digital now, high-def, flatscreen, plasma, TiVo, satellite dish connected, way too 21st century for us, in other words, to be governed by those stodgy old rules.
Well, that's at least the view of the chairman of Federal Communications, more or less, Michael Powell's actual words today were, changes had to be made to replace, quote, "the graying rules of a bygone black-and-white era."
So that's what the FCC did, or, at any rate, that's what its three Republican members did.
More now on a very consequential decision from CNN's Bob Franken.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The question is whether the FCC's three-Republican, two-Democrat vote will mean fewer owners and ultimately mean fewer choices, worse choices.
JONATHAN ADELSTEIN, FCC COMMISSIONER: More sensationalism, more commercialism, more crassness, more violence, more homogenization, and noticeably less serious coverage of news and local events.
MICHAEL POWELL, FCC CHAIRMAN: I believe that our actions will advance our diversity and localism's goals and maintain a vigorously competitive environment.
FRANKEN: The order allows major media companies, including the networks, to own TV stations in markets covering 45 percent of the nation's population, up from 35 percent. It will allow a single owner to buy at least two TV stations in all but the smallest markets and three in the very biggest.
And it will allow a single media organization to own a newspaper, TV, and radio stations in the same area.
The protests at the FCC were small, but the public response by mail and e-mail has been massive, about three-quarters of a million people weighed in, the comment almost unanimously opposed. Almost all complain the competition of ideas will be swept aside by a lack of media competition.
But supporters of the changes say the old rules were relics of a distant past.
KEVIN MARTIN, FCC COMMISSIONER: No CNN, no Fox, no MSNBC, no CNBC. Local news was broadcast by the local stations just once at 6:00 and just once at 11:00.
FRANKEN: Maybe so. But the dissenters complain that the bigger selection is really controlled by a smaller group of companies. They point to the experience of radio deregulation, which allowed one company, for instance, ClearChannel Communications, to acquire 1,200 stations nationwide, and that meant, they contend, less local content, more automation.
In one celebrated case, no one was there to answer the frantic phone calls from officials in Minot, North Dakota, wanting to spread the word of a poisonous gas cloud from a train derailment.
MICHAEL COPPS, FCC COMMISSIONER: ClearChannelization of the rest of the American media will harm our country.
FRANKEN (on camera): In any case, the FCC decision is clearly not the last word. There will certainly be lawsuits, and Congress will consider the matter. There have already been 150 members of the House and Senate who have expressed their opposition.
Bob Franken, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: There are lots of opinions about what this decision will mean, lots of theories. But today, they are just that, theories.
Here's CNN's Jeff Greenfield.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST (voice-over): Mass media the way it was, roughly half a century ago, just a few TV channels maneuvering through clogged airwaves. Scarcity was the rule, and federal regulations reflected that, one station per market to a customer, and no station for you if you own the town's newspaper.
Mass media today, dozens, often hundreds of channels for the 80 percent-plus of us who get our TV by way of cable or satellite, and on the Web, the voices and choices are literally infinite.
With all that diversity, the FCC majority said Monday, we just don't need the old limits on ownership. If one owner has two, even three stations in a big market, if media giants get bigger, what's the harm?
(on camera): Well, that's one way to look at it. But the dissenters point to a different set of facts, the sheer size and reach of these media giants. Now, the fact of concentrated media ownership is undeniable. What is open for debate is what that concentration means.
(voice-over): Consider Viacom. It owns the CBS TV network, the UPN, 39 TV stations, Showtime, the MTV networks, Paramount Pictures, Paramount TV, and Infinity Broadcasting, with some 185 radio stations.
Or AOL Time Warner, the world's biggest Internet service provider that also owns the Turner networks, including this one, CNN, and the WB, Time Warner Cable with some 13 million subscribers, Warner Brothers movie and TV studios, TIME Incorporated, and Atlanta's baseball, basketball, and hockey teams.
Critics say all this concentration will limit what is said and who says it, will stifle creativity. But the evidence is less clear.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, HBO)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It wasn't premeditated. I'm not Jeffrey Dahmer...
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GREENFIELD: HBO, often praised for its risk-taking, is owned by AOL Time Warner. And while Fox is owned by staunch conservative Rupert Murdoch, it airs "The Simpsons."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE SIMPSONS")
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't care if it is illegal, I'm making a stand here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GREENFIELD: Perhaps the most cheerfully subversive of any prime time program.
On the other hand, concentrated ownership clearly does hurt localism, one of the long-cherished goals of U.S. communications policy. For instance, ClearChannel Communications owns some 1,250 radio stations, often programming them by remote control, hundreds of miles away, with people who have never set foot in those towns.
And there's another potential problem, conflicts of interest. Can a news division candidly cover, say, a human rights issue in China if its parent company is negotiating a billion-dollar deal with that same Chinese government?
And finally, there's this cautionary note. Deregulating the communications industry in the '80s brought us a range of new innovations and services. Deregulating the energy industry in the '90s helped bring us Enron. Anyone who confidently predicts the outcome of this new government policy is kidding you.
Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: To use a cliche, stay tuned.
Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, you're watching me, but who might be watching you? We'll tell you about another Department of Defense proposal to keep a very close eye on us.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: If I tell you that we're about to talk for a bit with the editor of defensetech.org, you may be tempted to wonder what the work of such a reporter could possibly have to do with you. And the answer is, perhaps, quite a lot.
Noah Shachtman is among the first to write about plans of a division of the Department of Defense to collect, quite literally, every scrap of information it could possibly get on just about anyone it wanted to collect that information on.
Mr. Shachtman joins us now, talk about a Pentagon dream.
That's what it is, right, no, at this point.
NOAH SHACHTMAN, EDITOR, DEFENSETECH.ORG: Yes, it is a dream. It's just a proposal at this point.
BROWN: Lifelog (ph).
SHACHTMAN: Lifelog. And what Lifelog aims to do is take every e-mail you wrote, every Web page you visited, every magazine you've read, and couple that with global position system data to find out where you went, and cameras to see what you see.
It's really -- they call it a diary or a scrapbook, a way to trace the threads of your life.
BROWN: How would they do that? How would they know every Web site I've ever visited, or every step I've ever taken?
SHACHTMAN: Well, some of this is very do-able right now. It's, as I'm sure you know, it's not that hard to find out where people have traveled over the Internet, and it's certainly not that hard to find out what e-mail they've sent.
Some of this other positioning data is obviously much more difficult to get, but with the number of surveillance cameras increasing every day, I think that it becomes increasingly easier to find out where we've gone.
BROWN: Now, all of this is -- we digress for a moment. All of this is going on within that office in the Department of Defense that I guess is designed to scare hell out of everyone, right?
SHACHTMAN: It sure seems like it. Let's also remember that the Department of Defense program that we're talking about here, DARPA, these are the guys that invented the Internet, actually.
BROWN: Right.
SHACHTMAN: So it's a bunch of very smart people. And they're now taking on what seems to be increasingly scarier and scarier tasks.
BROWN: Quite. The last chapter of -- that we had with them was the Total Information Awareness.
SHACHTMAN: Oh, now it's Terrorist Information Awareness.
BROWN: Terror -- well, I know, but that -- it wasn't before...
SHACHTMAN: Right.
BROWN: ... it was basically that they could find out every transaction...
SHACHTMAN: Right.
BROWN: ... you'd ever made.
SHACHTMAN: Right. And this goes a couple of steps further by taking what they call media data, what TV programs you watch, what radio programs you listen to, what magazines you read.
BROWN: For what purpose?
SHACHTMAN: They say the purpose -- well, they say a lot of different things about what the purposes is. At one point, they said it would be to track epidemics. At another point they said it would be to create computerized assistance for generals on the battlefield. It's...
BROWN: Tell me, tell me about that one.
SHACHTMAN: I -- you know, I wish I could...
BROWN: Yes.
SHACHTMAN: ... but frankly, I can't make sense of it. What seems to make a lot more sense to me is to profile potential terrorist suspects, right? So you go down to the corner store every day, you get a bagel and a cup of coffee, and, you know, you call your wife afterwards. And hey, Osama bin Laden's agent in New York City does the same thing. Maybe you two have something in common.
BROWN: How far along is this? I mean, there are -- is this a bunch of -- look, this -- there's two ways, I think, to look at these things. One is, my God, they could do this, and we need to understand clearly the implications.
The other is, to me more benign, is, that you have a number of really smart people sitting around in offices and think about what might be done, what could be done, what might be helpful.
But doesn't mean that there isn't some perhaps even smarter person who says, Yes, but...
SHACHTMAN: Right. Well, look, I think it's a combination of the two. But I think what is very disturbing is the track record that DARPA seems to have with the Total Information Awareness project, and now this, and there's some other projects that actually I'll be talking about soon that sort of fit into this.
And I think it's the combination of all those that -- it's the trend, it's the pattern, that really is disturbing.
BROWN: And the technology for this is here, almost here, will be here a week from Thursday?
SHACHTMAN: Well, I can't say exactly. But there are a number of private sector efforts that are under way to do similar things to Lifelog. One is by a very famous computer scientist named Gordon Bell, who works for Microsoft, and he's been, on his own, taking every memo he ever wrote...
BROWN: Yes.
SHACHTMAN: ... and every greeting card he ever got, and taking pictures everywhere he went, and he is collecting that into a sort of scrapbook. He says it's to help business productivity. Hey, what was the name of that hotel I stayed at in Washington?
And it's also something to pass on to his grandkids. And it sounds great in that way, right? You can find out really what Grandad was like.
But...
BROWN: Right.
SHACHTMAN: ... with the Department of Defense running this, it takes on a more nerve-wracking tone.
BROWN: It's really interesting. Thank you.
SHACHTMAN: Yes, it is interesting.
BROWN: Nice job of explaining it all, and we appreciate that.
SHACHTMAN: Thank you.
BROWN: Come back.
SHACHTMAN: Thanks.
BROWN: Thank you.
Though it scares me little bit, so maybe I'll have you come back.
The best we can do is tell you what tomorrow's news is, and we shall. We'll look at morning papers in a moment.
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BROWN: Okey-dokey, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world.
We begin for you travelers with "USA Today," their big story. I have a friend, Linda, she's going to scream right now. "Hillary's 'History' About to Be Unveiled." Mrs. Clinton, Senator Clinton's new book about to come out. Going to be getting a lot of attention. And it was a big battle over who would get the first interview. I'm not sure who ended up with that. Probably Barbara, right? Because she always does.
Best story on the front page, however, "Ex-Army Boss, Pentagon Won't Admit Reality in Iraq." A former head of the Army, Secretary White, saying that it's going to take a long -- lot longer and a lot more troops than the Pentagon has publicly admitted. That's "USA Today" tomorrow.
Right. "The Cincinnati Enquirer," best story, I think, on the front page, "Bill Would Erase Race Terms From Law." It turns out in the state of Ohio, there's a lot of references to "colored persons" and "white persons" and "Negroes" over the years. And a state senator is saying, Enough of that, let's clean that up and take that out.
"The Washington Times" banner story, "CIA Says al Qaeda Ready to Use Nukes." Glad to tell you that before we go to bed, huh? Bill Gerst the reporter on that. Not terribly sophisticated weapons, but nevertheless not very comforting.
"Chicago Sun Times," "Spot a 'Lazy' Road Worker? State Wants You to Tattle." I don't know what I think about that. Probably doesn't matter.
The weather tomorrow, "Enough Already!" Sounds like bad weather again.
And above the top here, "The New Jewel," a feature on the singer Jewel, who actually I knew nothing about until yesterday, because I took my daughter to Zootopia. You want to feel old, take your daughter to a concert. Man, it was unbelievable.
Good to have you with us this Monday. Come back again tomorrow. We'll be here, 10:00 Eastern time. Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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