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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Bush to Meet With Abbas, Sharon; White Speaks Out on Iraq War; Rudolph Makes Court Appearance
Aired June 03, 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.
It would be one of the great ironies, wouldn't it, if President Bush is able to succeed in the Middle East where so many other American presidents have failed. He is, after all, a man who as a candidate professed considerable disdain for immersing himself in the nasty negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and even today aides tell the "Washington Post" the president still doesn't care much for the detail of the region.
Yet, he's about to embark on his first Mid East Summit. The landscape in the region has been changed by the war and the presence of a new Palestinian leadership. Perhaps the time is right.
It's where we start the whip tonight, to Jordan and the peace summit about to begin. CNN's Christiane Amanpour is there, so Christiane a headline from you tonight.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, here we are in Acaba, Jordan's Red Sea port area. Behind me you see the lights of (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in Israel twinkling, and this is where the president of the United States will for the first time in his presidency immerse himself now in the symbolism of kicking off a new peace process.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian prime minister, and the president will meet here later this morning. There will be a joint photo op and statements and we will see what this means and what hope it can bring to this region after so many years of bloodshed.
BROWN: Christiane, thank you, we'll get back to you at the top tonight.
To the Pentagon next, a growing battle over how many troops will be needed to occupy Iraq. Our Senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre has the watch tonight. Jamie, a headline.
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, before the war when the army chief of staff suggested it might take several hundred thousand troops to secure the peace in Iraq Defense Secretary Rumsfeld scoffed at it. Tonight, the former Army secretary, a man Rumsfeld fired, says Rumsfeld got it wrong and should admit it -- Aaron.
BROWN: Jamie, thank you.
On to Birmingham, Alabama, Eric Rudolph's day in court, CNN's Martin Savidge there for us tonight, Marty a headline.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good evening to you, Aaron. Eric Rudolph in court on this exactly 1,920 days since he allegedly detonated a bomb in the city that left an off duty police officer dead and one woman severely injured. It also made him a nationally wanted fugitive. We'll tell you what he had to say in court and what the wife of one of his alleged victims had to say outside of court -- Aaron.
BROWN: Marty, thank you.
And to New York next where Martha Stewart is said to be on the brink of a federal indictment. CNN's Allan Chernoff covering, Allan a headline.
ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A showdown between Martha Stewart and federal prosecutors. The Feds say they're ready to bring criminal charges. Miss Stewart's attorney says she is prepared to go to trial to prove her innocence.
BROWN: Allan, thank you, back to you and the rest shortly.
Also coming up tonight on Tuesday night, the 3rd of June, we'll take the first look at Hillary Clinton's long awaited memoirs. She's promised a revealing take on her relationship with the president. It appears she's delivered.
Also tonight, we'll look at the challenges facing Ariel Sharon even if he does manage to hammer out a peace deal with the Palestinians. John Vause on that.
Kelly Wallace reports on his counterpart, the Palestinian prime minister, a man who leads his people and will have to win over the terrorists, all with an approval rating in the low, low single digits.
All of that and more just ahead but we begin by setting the stage. At the summit just a few hours from now, President Bush will be making his first serious venture into a part of the world where peace initiatives traditionally go to die.
The president has taken it upon himself to break that tradition. He made a start of it today and for the first time in a long time there are signs he'll have something to work with. Now, one good day does not peace make in the Middle East, something to keep in mind over the next 24 hours, but it is a start.
We begin tonight with our Chief International Correspondent CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
AMANPOUR: Aaron, the president of the United States has long avoided this moment preferring to stay out of the complex negotiations in the Middle East until the sides he believed would be ready to do so. And now, his aides, his senior ministers, the presidents are saying that the dynamics of this region has changed and therefore the time is right now to try to kick start a new Middle East peace summit, a new Middle East peace process.
The president comes here in about four hours. Ariel Sharon will also come here. The president comes from Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt where he met with other Arab leaders, key Arab leaders there yesterday, and also with Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian prime minister.
It was the first time that President Bush had met with a senior Palestinian. As you know, they have shunned Yasser Arafat and essentially insisted, along with Israel, that there be a new Palestinian prime minister to negotiate and deal with any potential road to peace.
From the Arab leaders in Sharm El Sheikh, he won the commitment that they would vow to continue to fight terrorism and indeed a fairly strongly worded statement from the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that they would cut off and try to deny any kind of funding to any kind of groups outside the Palestinian authority.
He said no matter the motive or the justification there would be no attempts to deliver any kind of money to any kind of resistance group outside the Palestinian Authority, so quite a clear statement there.
President Bush himself in Egypt was heard saying that Israel must "deal with the settlements" and that Palestinians must have a continuous and viable place to call home.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We see the potential for the birth of a new and Palestinian state. We see the potential for broader peace among the peoples of this region. Achieving these goals will require courage and moral vision on every side from every leader. America is committed and I am committed to helping all the parties to reach the hard and heroic decisions that will lead to peace.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Now, one thing that is clear, the president says he's committed and certainly many in this region insist and hope that the president of the United States will use all his political power, political will to really engage fully in this peace process.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, is due here by helicopter from Jerusalem later this morning. They will go into meetings with President Bush. There will be separate bilateral meetings between President Bush and Sharon and then President Bush and Mahmoud Abbas.
And then afterwards we expect them to meet in a trilateral, if you like, President Bush with the two prime ministers. And, after that, there will be statements from the three leaders and also from King Abdullah or Jordan, the host here.
Already, Israel has released something like 100 prisoners as a gesture of goodwill. Obviously, a lot of onus on the Palestinians to try to stop the terrorism.
Mahmoud Abbas, who has said that he favors a negotiated truce with Hamas rather than trying to crack down on them right now and everybody is waiting to see whether there will be any statement, any sign that there will be some kind of cease-fire from the radicals and the Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories -- Aaron.
BROWN: Christiane, quickly, is it all choreographed? Have the statements been written or will there actually be some uncertainty as to how the day will play out?
AMANPOUR: Well, we still haven't had the leaks which one expects to get but there is a certain amount of choreography obviously in the way the talks are planned, the fact that there will be a couple of separate meetings and then a trilateral, and the statements obviously have gone through a lot of drafting and a lot of overseeing by the United States as well who have seen the text and the drafts of these statements.
So, there is a certain amount that is already known to all the parties about what they're saying and certainly President Bush was hoping and the Americans hoping that Israel will say something about the settlements, most especially the illegal outposts, illegal according to Israeli law that have been set up over the last few years and waiting to see what the Palestinians say about the violence and the crack down there.
BROWN: Christiane, thank you, Christiane Amanpour in Jordan tonight.
Now, we get ahead of ourselves perhaps a bit. Making peace is one thing. Selling a peace is another. Ariel Sharon campaigned for prime minister as the one leader strong enough in Israel to make peace but there are a good many people in Israel and out who doubt that he is truly willing to help create a Palestinian state and all that that entails, and it's all made more complicated by the fact that among his best supporters are those least likely to agree to give up land they believe is theirs.
Here's CNN's John Vause.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is Sharon country, the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) market in Jerusalem. Here the heroes are men like Menachem Begin, the underground (UNINTELLIGIBLE) turned prime minister who made peace with Egypt and Benjamin Netanyahu the former leader who still opposes a Palestinian state and wants to send the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat into exile. Fred Hueman retired here ten years ago from New York an unabashed Sharon supporter.
FRED HUEMAN, SHARON SUPPORTER: He's been carrying on the affairs of this country under very trying circumstances. I don't think anybody else could have done better.
VAUSE: Do you think he is doing the right thing in supporting the road map?
HUEMAN: The road map will go down the road like all the other road maps.
VAUSE: Efraim Ludzkra 29-year-old religion student like most Israelis doubtful the road map will lead to peace but willing to go along for the ride as long as Ariel Sharon is driving.
EFRAIM LUDZKRA, SHARON SUPPORTER: There's no choice. If he doesn't do anything so he'll just be a useless prime minister.
VAUSE: Israelis already see General Sharon as a war hero, defending Israel from an Arab invasion in 1973 but to him personally analysts say there's now much more at stake.
GERALD STEINBERG, POLITICAL ANALYST: If this peace process lasts, Sharon certainly goes down in history like Begin in terms of his accomplishments on the peace front. Agreement with the Palestinians in some way would be even more fundamental.
VAUSE: Politically the road map looks safe, the opposition Labour Party supports it and within his own Likud Party, Ariel Sharon's leadership is unchallenged for the time being.
STEINBERG: If things go very, very badly as they did for Ehud Barak, both in terms of a failed political process and also great increase in violence, then certainly someone else will come up and challenge him.
VAUSE: There will be demonstrations in the coming days against this road map for peace but they're not expected to be a repeat of the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets in protest in the years after the Oslo Peace Accord.
(on camera): When it comes to his traditional supporters, it seems Ariel Sharon has little to worry about, at least for now. They may not understand what their prime minister is doing but they're willing to trust him. It's the road map they don't trust.
John Vause, CNN, Jerusalem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: The new Palestinian prime minister has that to contend with and more. To make peace with Israel he also has to make peace with Yasser Arafat, Arafat's army, Hamas and every other spoiler with a bomb factory out there, no small achievement but for the moment at least he seems to be doing as well as could be expected.
Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Kelly Wallace.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Gaza, only a few hundred members of radical Palestinian groups protest the Arab leader summit in Egypt, a small rally compared to the thousands who normally march with groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a sign of what may be a new mood in Gaza and a good omen for Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas who faces what may be a make or break challenge, trying to convince radical Palestinian groups, like Islamic Jihad, to stop their attacks against Israel. It is a tough sell.
"If the occupation is still there we will attack the settlers and soldiers" Abdullah El-Shami, an Islamic Jihad leader told us. "And if the Israelis continue to attack us, the only way to make a balance of pain is to attack them inside Israel."
Mr. Abbas' power of persuasion will no doubt depend on his power to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to take steps such as: easing Palestinian travel restrictions; continuing to release prisoners; stopping what Palestinians call assassinations of militants; and ending all military operations in places like the Gaza Strip.
ABDEL AZIZ RANTISI, HAMAS LEADER: If they are going to stop targeting our civilians then we are ready to stop targeting what they call their civilians.
WALLACE: But the Palestinian prime minister faces another problem. Under international pressure to completely dismantle groups like Hamas, he is trying to convince the groups to lay down their arms and become political parties under the Palestinian Authority, but they won't do that because unlike Mr. Abbas, they reject the Mid East road map as a solution to the decades old conflict.
ABU SHANAB, HAMAS LEADER: If he thinks the Israelis by accepting the road map will obey the road map and gradually withdraw he is totally mistaken.
(on camera): Mahmoud Abbas' success or failure will not only determine the future of the Mid East road map but also his stature and legitimacy on the Palestinian street.
(voice-over): Although he has only a three percent popularity rating, many Palestinians seem willing to give the prime minister a chance like this woman who says she has not been able to leave the area to see her daughter in Jerusalem in two and a half years. Do you think he can make life better for the Palestinian people?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We hope so. We'll see.
WALLACE: But if he fails to deliver a cease-fire and Israeli concessions, Mahmoud Abbas may not only dash the hopes of some Palestinians but his own hopes for leading his people into the future.
Kelly Wallace, CNN, Gaza. (END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: With us again tonight Stephen Cohen, the President of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development, good to have you with us.
STEPHEN COHEN, INSTITUTE FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT: Thank you.
BROWN: Let's start with today. Do all those Arab leaders who are sitting around the table with the president today, do they believe in him, do they trust him?
COHEN: They were testing him and so far they were happy with what they heard and as a result they gave him some of what they wanted to give him and some of what he wanted to get from them but not everything.
BROWN: That's an interesting distinction, some of what they wanted to give him which was?
COHEN: They wanted to give him support about the issue of fighting terrorism. They wanted to give him support in pushing the road map. But what they held back on was support for his idea that right now they would promise that they would start reestablishing some ties with Israel like sending the ambassadors back. They held back on that.
BROWN: This is the Egyptians and the Jordanians.
COHEN: Jordanians. Mostly they held back on that because of the Saudis. The Saudis were interested in trying to give him help about the terrorism issue which bothers them a lot but they weren't ready yet for making any big statements about opening up new contacts with Israel.
BROWN: The new Palestinian prime minister is someone you've been -- you've dealt with a fair amount of late. Does that mean that Mr. Arafat, Chairman Arafat, is someone we no longer have to think about, care about or worry about?
COHEN: No, I think that Arafat is there and, in fact, Arafat is the context in which Abu Mazen has his legitimacy within the Palestinian community. He completely knows that he was appointed in a system where Arafat was elected and where he is the candidate of those who are trying to say to Arafat, you have done enough.
You no longer know how to lead us in practical matters. You're still going to be the symbol but we want Abu Mazen. We want others to start trying to see whether they can do a better job of managing our lives and getting it on with the Israelis and the Americans.
BROWN: Perhaps this is naive. Does he seem to be, as you talk to him, somebody who believes he can deliver the goods?
COHEN: Abu Mazen believes a lot in this peace process. He has been trying to deal with Israelis from the very earliest days that he entered as a political actor. He wants to understand Israel. He knows that the Palestinian future is tied to making peace with Israel and he believes that what he does that is different from Arafat will have appeal, which is he knows he's not a big charismatic guy.
He knows he's going to have to work by consensus. He knows he's going to have to bring up the young people. He knows he's going to have to work with a lot of people from within the territories and he believes that's going to turn out to be more popular, not getting him popularity but getting the system popularity and getting the Palestinians to understand that their deliverance is not going to come from some dramatic act, either of violence or of some great charismatic leader but by working systematically to show that they're capable of ruling themselves, that they know what democracy means, that they really want it for themselves and that they can show that they are the right partner for the United States and Israel in making peace.
BROWN: Just give me -- give us a sense of markers, things that over the next days, weeks, months perhaps, we should look for that will say this time there's something here?
COHEN: What you need to know first of all is the United States going to put something on the ground? Is there going to be an American presence on the ground, a real monitoring presence of the United States on a day-to-day basis? The president is going to go home. The process is going to have to go on. The hard decisions are still going to have to be made. What's going to be the American presence day-to-day? That's number one.
Second thing, we're going to have to see whether Abu Mazen is able to deliver Hamas and others to actually stop killing Israelis. That's going to be critical to everything.
Third, we're going to have to see that Sharon goes ahead, stops the assassinations of Palestinians, starts to remove these illegal outposts, and starts to talk with Abu Mazen in a way in which both his leadership and the Palestinian leadership thinks this is not a fly-by- night operation. This is something where they have a real intention of keeping the thing going.
BROWN: Nice to meet you, good to talk to you tonight.
COHEN: Good.
BROWN: Thank you, come back.
COHEN: Thank you.
BROWN: Thank you very much, Stephen Cohen.
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT on a Tuesday, Eric Rudolph enters a not guilty plea to charges he bombed a woman's clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.
And later, we'll look at just how many troops it will take to keep the peace in Iraq and how long they will be there, that and more. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Eric Rudolph was in court today surrounded by the lawmen he had eluded for so long. He was there to enter a plea for the first time but certainly not the last.
Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Martin Savidge.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SAVIDGE (voice-over): Seated in a Birmingham, Alabama federal courtroom, Eric Rudolph, the man who had been nearly invisible for years stood out dressed in a red jail jumpsuit.
Rudolph entered a plea of not guilty to charges he detonated a bomb outside a Birmingham women's clinic in 1998 killing an off duty police officer and severely wounding a nurse. His defense attorney urged people to presume Rudolph's innocence.
RICHARD JAFFE, RUDOLPH'S ATTORNEY: I think it's only fair for all of us to suspend judgment and allow the courtroom to test whether the proof is really proof or whether it's more speculation and hearsay.
SAVIDGE: But standing in nearly the same place just minutes later, the widow of slain police officer Robert "Sandy" Sanderson said she had been waiting five years for this day.
FELECIA SANDERSON, SLAIN OFFICERS' WIFE: I believe that justice is going to be served. I have the utmost faith and confidence in the justice system and the law itself. My husband gave his life upholding and defending the law.
SAVIDGE: Rudolph is charged with carrying out three earlier bombings in Georgia prior to the one in Birmingham, including a fatal attack during the 1996 Olympics. But it was in Birmingham where Eric Rudolph became a suspect when his pickup truck was reportedly spotted near the scene. It is that alleged direct link that led federal authorities to try Rudolph here first.
Another factor that could make the Alabama case more clear-cut is Rudolph's supposed method. The other bombings were allegedly carried out using timers. In Birmingham, investigators say the device was set off by remote control hinting Rudolph saw his victims and detonated the bomb in their faces.
SANDERSON: I was so relieved that he is in custody. He's not going anywhere and I truly, honestly feel that we have the right man.
SAVIDGE: In Birmingham, victims' families are hopeful justice will be easier to find than the man they believe is responsible for their pain.
(END VIDEOTAPE) SAVIDGE: And, Eric Rudolph is expected to be back in a Birmingham courtroom exactly one week from today for a detention hearing. That is to see if he is eligible for bond. There are a lot of people in this town that say don't hold your breath on that one considering it took five years to bring him into custody. Still, it is his legal right to ask.
As far as a trial date, that has been set for August 4, but there is a great deal of skepticism on that thought as well, many people saying that would be entirely too soon given the way the justice system tends to work -- Aaron.
BROWN: Marty, thank you, Martin Savidge down in Birmingham, Alabama tonight.
Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, we'll talk with Florida Senator Bob Graham about what we did or did not know about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
And, we'll report on questions of how many troops it will take to pacify Iraq and how long they will be there.
Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Leading up to the war it seemed to many that the secretary of defense wanted to have it both ways when it came to how many troops it would take for the occupation. On the one hand he called the number unknowable, on the other estimates other than his own were considered too high.
Now that the occupation is well underway, questions are being asked about whether his numbers were wrong and why and today the former secretary of the Army weighed in.
Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Jamie McIntyre.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE (voice-over): The controversy began back in February when Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki gave this pre-war estimate on how many troops would be needed to keep the peace in post-war Iraq.
GEN. ERIC SHINSEKI, ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF: Somewhere on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably a figure that would be required.
MCINTYRE: Pentagon leaders immediately rejected Shinseki's estimate as far off the mark.
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Any idea that it's several hundred thousand over any sustained period is simply not the case.
MCINTYRE: With U.S. commanders saying it's hard to impose order in Iraq with just 150,000 troops, former Army Secretary Tom White, fired by Rumsfeld in April, now says Rumsfeld was wrong. In a telephone interview with CNN, White said Rumsfeld's rebuke of Shinseki was unfair.
TOM WHITE, FMR. ARMY SECRETARY: In retrospect I think Shinseki was right. The facts bear out that he was pretty accurate in his estimate.
MCINTYRE: On Capitol Hill late last month, the Pentagon was sticking to its pre-war estimates.
SEN. PAUL SARBANES (D), MARYLAND: Secretary Wolfowitz, I'd ask you whether you think it was fair to label General Shinseki's remarks back in February that we would need roughly several hundred thousand troops in post-war Iraq as an estimate wildly off the mark?
PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY: Several hundred thousand to me means 300,000 or more and I don't think we're close to that.
MCINTYRE: White in the CNN interview says Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld can't come to grips with the idea they need more troops.
WHITE: I just think we mis-estimated it and I think the sooner we come to that realization and set ourselves up for the long term, I think the better off everybody will be.
MCINTYRE: According to White, the Pentagon's original optimistic projection was that it might be able to cut the occupation force in half by this point. Instead, the return of the 3rd Infantry Division has been delayed indefinitely.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE: Now, back in February, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said it wouldn't be logical to think it would take more troops to secure the peace than it took to win the war. Secretary White, the former secretary, said he thinks it's perfectly logical that the complicated task of reconstruction would require a larger force. I asked White, is it possible the Pentagon is reluctant to send any more troops now because that would show they were wrong? He said, there probably is that tendency, in his opinion -- Aaron.
BROWN: Jamie, thank you. I am feeling this question will come back on the table several more times before it goes away. Thank you very much. Jamie McIntyre.
Now on to another question of what we knew about Iraq going into the war, the question of weapons of mass destruction. How the intelligence was gathered? Did politics come to bear on the gathering of it? We're joined tonight by Bob Graham, Democratic senator from the state of Florida, presidential hopeful as well. He and a number of prominent Republicans are calling for hearings on the matter. The senator joins us from San Francisco tonight. Senator, good to have you with us.
SEN. BOB GRAHAM (D-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Good evening, Aaron.
BROWN: You heard a lot of this intelligence before the war. Is it your view now that -- well, I guess there are three possibilities. One, is it just hasn't been found yet. B, the intelligence was flawed. Or, C, that the intelligence was manipulated so the administration could get an end that it desired.
GRAHAM: Aaron, we hope that we will find the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Failing to do that, there will be a serious question as to the credibility of the United States in the world and undercutting of confidence of the American people in the veracity of their government. I think that there are a series of possibilities if we don't find weapons. One is that they were spirited out of Iraq, which may be is the worst of all possibilities, because now the very thing that we were trying to avoid, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could be in the hands of dozens of groups.
Second, that we had bad intelligence. Or third, that the intelligence was satisfactory but that it was manipulated, so as just to present to the American people and to the world those things that made the case for the necessity of war against Iraq.
BROWN: Did you hear, and to the extent that you can talk about this, in any of these hearings where intelligence was discussed, did you hear equivocation, did you hear the sort of the gray areas that are hardly uncommon in the intelligence universe?
GRAHAM: What was a part of the intelligence briefings that I heard was that there was a tendency to present the information in a classified form, that is not available to the public, and then subsequently declassified those portions of the briefings which were most favorable to the position that the administration wanted to take and to not allow the public access to the information that was of the same level of national security concern but ran counter to the administration's position.
BROWN: Well, that suggests that the administration -- I don't know if you mean to suggest this -- was deliberately tried to manipulate the country into supporting its position?
GRAHAM: I think there's been a pattern of manipulation by this administration, and it's not all just Iraq-related. It relates to the war on terror, where the fact that we essentially have abandoned the war on terror for the last 14 months has been held from the American people, and I think it goes to domestic issues, such as the recently passed tax cut, which in my judgment was sold under the false label that it was going to generate economic growth, when it, in fact, its details have very little capacity to generate that growth.
BROWN: Let me bring you back to war on terror. Can you tell me briefly what you mean when you say we have, we as a country, have abandoned the war on terror? There was an operation going on in Afghanistan today, for example. So what are you saying?
GRAHAM: What I'm saying is that approximately 14 months ago, the militaries began to say we are no longer engaged in a war on terror, a war that has the goal of crushing al Qaeda. Rather, we are in a manhunt, attempting to detain specific individuals. At about the same time, military and intelligence assets that had been in Afghanistan and Pakistan began to be shifted to prepare for the war in Iraq.
What are the consequences of that? The consequences that al Qaeda has gotten off the floor, has regenerated, and was able less than three weeks ago to carry out very sophisticated attacks in Saudi Arabia and quite possibly in Morocco and Chechnya as well.
BROWN: On the subject of the war on terror, do you think that the country will ever get a cogent report out of the government on what happened on 9/11? The failures, in some cases, the intelligence failures, what government knew, what it didn't know. Will it ever be laid out in a cogent fashion for all of us to understand?
GRAHAM: Aaron, I'm doing everything in my power to see that the American people has access to an 800-page narrative that covers what happened before September the 11th, what were the lessons that we learned, and how well have we applied those lessons.
In many ways that third issue is the most stinging, because we did, in fact, learn a lot about why we were so vulnerable on September the 11th, and in my judgment have inadequately applied that information to make Americans more secure today.
BROWN: Senator, we've been chasing around trying to get you on the program for a long time. We're glad we finally cornered you out in San Francisco tonight. Thank you very, very much.
GRAHAM: Thank you very much, Aaron.
BROWN: Senator Bob Graham from the state of Florida. Still ahead on the program tonight, while ImClone's stock makes a comeback, can Martha Stewart recover from the insider trading scandal that has damaged her? Break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: The Martha Stewart story has become the Martha Stewart saga. New installments keeps appearing, but it looks as if the saga is heading toward some sort of conclusion, though it may not be the conclusion the famous and successful woman at its center anticipated or predicted. Here's CNN's Allan Chernoff.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHERNOFF (voice-over): What first appeared to be an awkward step in mud for Martha Stewart has turned into legal quicksand. Federal prosecutors have warned they are going to ask a grand jury to indict her as early as this week. And the Securities and Exchange Commission has warned it will bring a civil complaint.
Her lawyer released a statement saying Stewart would hang tough. Quote, "If Martha Stewart is indicted, she intends to declare her innocence and proceed to trial." This is not what Martha Stewart expected when she unloaded nearly 4,000 shares of ImClone Systems, a company founded by her friend, Sam Waksal. Stewart sold the stock one day before the Food and Drug Administration rejected ImClone's application for review of its cancer drug. After Waksal was charged with insider trading in the stock, Stewart said, "I had no improper information. My transaction was entirely lawful." And on a CBS television segment she brushed the issue off.
MARTHA STEWART, CEO, LIVING OMNIMEDIA: As I said, I think this will all be resolved in the very near future and I will be exonerated of this ridiculousness.
CHERNOFF: Instead prosecutors kept digging. They gain the cooperation of Doug Thanniel, former assistant to the Merrill Lynch broker that Stewart and Waksal shared. Legal experts say prosecutors may be trying to make an example of Martha Stewart.
JOHN COFFEE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL: This is very atypical. In this case, the government is pushing the envelope on what constitutes insider trading further than they've ever pushed it before. I think it's partly because they have the kind of high- profile person who in this post-Enron world the government wants to clearly communicate is not above the law.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHERNOFF: There is still the possibility that the two sides can reach a plea bargain, but at the moment, it appears Martha Stewart will soon be fighting criminal charges. Her friend Sam Waksal pled guilt to insider trading. He is scheduled to be sentenced a week from today -- Aaron.
BROWN: I love good coincidence. So tell me if you think it is coincidental that all of this came out on the day that her company held its annual meeting?
CHERNOFF: Certainly, very interesting and it would appear, some legal analysts believe, that the prosecutors are trying to put the final squeeze on Martha Stewart, a final effort to try to get a plea from her.
BROWN: Allan, thank you very much. Allan Chernoff.
We are joined now by someone who understands perhaps better than most the spot Ms. Stewart finds herself in. Foster Winans has been there himself although he had a different checkbook at the time than Ms. Stewart seems to have.
Former writer for "The Wall Street Journal"'s "Heard it on the Street" column, spent nine months in a minimum security prison after being convicted on insider trading charges. He's also the author of a number of books including one called "Trading Secrets."
Good to see you again.
FOSTER WINANS, AUTHOR, "TRADING SECRETS": Yes.
BROWN: Just let's establish your position here. If her name were Jane Johnson and not Martha Stewart, rich, well-known, all of that, would this be going on at all?
WINANS: Absolutely not. This is a show trial, or if it's going to be a trial, it's going to be a show trial.
BROWN: Do you think it matters by the way that she's a high- profile Democrat?
WINANS: I have no idea. I don't think politics has anything to do with it. I really don't.
BROWN: OK. There is that out there. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) think they want to get somebody on an insider trading charge that people know about and then they can say look see what we have done?
WINANS: Well my case was very similar in that the money that was involved and what happened was relatively minor compared to the enormous frauds that have taken place on Wall Street.
Martha Stewart was an easy target. If you remember Congressman Green was dragging her -- trying to drag her in front of a subcommittee in the House. What did Martha Stewart know about Enron and Andersen and all of that? So very similar situation.
Listen, I did what I did and I was wrong and I admitted what I did. But the government made a really big deal about it.
BROWN: You said to us earlier that you thought when this all gets done that it may not be insider trading at all?
WINANS: Everything I'm reading tells me that insider trading is very difficult to prosecute because there's usually not a paper trail. Somebody doesn't write down I'm giving you insider information. It's usually a coded message.
But obstruction of justice is really easy. I mean that is, in fact, a worse crime in the eyes of prosecutors and judges. If Martha Stewart had come forward in the beginning and said look, I made a mistake, I'm going to pay you back lots of money, I will work in a soup kitchen, I'm going to do this, that and the other, she would have been fine. All she had to do was shred one document and she suddenly is looking at a five-year sentence.
BROWN: Do you think she will do time by the way?
WINANS: Actually, I do think she will do a little bit of time. Obstruction of justice is particularly nasty charge. It's fairly easy to prosecute. and in this case, it looks like the U.S. attorney's office refused to do a deal with her. And when they refuse to do a deal, it means they probably have exactly what they need to win a conviction.
BROWN: At this stage -- go back now 15 years or so when you were in the center of this. At this stage when you know they're coming, they haven't quite come yet, but you know they're coming, how are you sleeping? What's going on in your life? How do you think she's doing today?
WINANS: Well, she's probably not going to work every day I would say. Especially if her TV made for movie was on the air. I don't thin she showed up to the office the next morning.
But when I think about Martha Stewart, I actually have a lot of sympathy for her even though she obviously did something that was wrong. She's kind of ruined. I see her as sort of ruined. Her reputation has been taken away from her. I don't see a good outcome for her company. I see a -- I see a conviction or a plea. I see a little bit of jail time.
And I think it's a tragedy for women in business really. I think that Martha Stewart's case has a sort of subliminal effect on the opportunities of women in business, the same as Jayson Blair's might have on young African-American journalists.
BROWN: Do you really -- come on.
WINANS: Absolutely.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: ... there are in American business today, arguably pressed not as many as there should be. But there are lots of women who have high-profile jobs, certainly as few as high profile as Ms. Stewart. But you think that women generally will be hurt by her stock deal, whatever she did or didn't do?
WINANS: I think that it's very difficult for women to succeed in a lot of different areas in our culture because of lots of different glass ceilings. And I think when a very visible well-known woman who did it on her own and mostly by herself fails, it hurts all women.
I'm not saying that that's a major issue this case. It's just an observation.
BROWN: But you have some sympathy for her? Do you think they should let her walk?
WINANS: Well, I don't think she should go to jail. My sentence for Martha Stewart would be an orange jump suit that says "I trashed my company and all I got was this lousy jump suit." An inmate in the back. And have her work in a soup kitchen.
BROWN: Going back about to where we began, which is if she were nobody, would they go after her at all. If she broke the law, if that's in fact what happened, whether her name is Martha Stewart or mud, why not go after her? Why make the argument they shouldn't go after her?
WINANS: I am not saying they shouldn't go after her. I'm saying that they -- if I were looking at this fairly I would say, let's make a deal. Let's give her a little bit of dignity, let's show the world -- look at this woman has been vilified -- it's not surprised by the way that this case didn't come out during the Iraq war, for example, when it wouldn't have been noticed. It's all about demonstrating that the cop is on the beat and Martha Stewart is the flavor of the month.
BROWN: It's nice to see you. The program is full of cynicism tonight, though, I must say. Thank you.
WINANS: So is the world.
BROWN: I guess so. We all had our full dose of cynicism today. It's nice to have you with us again.
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT the long-awaited Hillary Clinton book is out. I rest my case. She describes her husband's admission of his relationship with a certain intern. A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Well, it's probably the most anticipated book of the year. Senator Hillary Clinton's book, "Living History," hits the book stores next Monday. It's already leaking out, and promises to be an interesting read.
In a copy obtained by the Associated Press, the former first lady describes dealing with Monica Lewinsky scandal and how her husband revealed the details of it to her. Senator Clinton writes until august 1998 she believed her husband was being railroaded but just before the president was to testify to the grand jury, he told her, quote. "He now realized he would have to testify that there had been an inappropriate intimacy. "
Senator Clintons she was quote, dumbfounded, heart broken and outraged by that admission. She write, I could hardly breathe, gulping for air, I started crying and yells at him, "What do you mean? What are you saying? Why did you lie to me? I was furious of getting more so by the second," she writes. "He took stood there saying over and over again, I am sorry, I am sorry. I was trying to protect you and Chelsea." She goes on to say that her toughest decision was to stay with Mr. Clinton and that shortly after they all went to vacation together at Martha's Vineyard's but the Buddy dog was the only member of the family who wanted the president along.
Simon and Schuster has printed a million copies of the book. That is an extraordinarily large number of hard copy books to sell. Mrs. Clinton has been given an $8 million advance. The book is out Monday.
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, "Segment 7." Goes to Saddam's home town where there are still plenty of people proud that the local boy made good. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: There is an odd thing about human nature, if some larger than life figure are even a disreputable one hails from our home town, we tend to boast about it, feel a kind of (UNINTELLIGIBLE). This is true even in Iraq, and even when that guy is a deposed tyrant. CNN's Ben Wedeman tonight from Tikrit.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Saddam Hussein's legacy is brushed over. Under American guard and American orders, a worker covers up a mural depicting Saddam leading his army to battle. The Americans had to take the initiative in Tikrit, the banished dictator is a hero to many, the local boy who rose from poverty to the pinnacle of wealth and power. Just how wealthy and powerful is clear from the dozens of pleasure houses he ordered built for himself in this once impoverished and neglected bend of the Tigris River. Newcomers have moved into those new imposing buildings. Putting their particular stamp on the premises. One of Saddam's indoor swimming pools now being readied for American soldiers eager to cool off during Tikrit's blistering summer.
(on camera): Saddam's opulence and extravagance shock many Iraqis, but in this part of the country, feelings are much more ambiguous. Among many people here loyalty to the old leader lingers on.
(voice-over): That loyalty is apparent on the walls of his birthplace, Alga (ph) just south of Tikrit. Many of Saddam's relatives from Algae occupied senior positions, in intelligence, the army and the Ba'ath party. Ali Neda Hussein (ph) describes himself as Saddam Hussein's cousin. The precise nature of his relationship to Saddam is unclear. But he is a close relative.
Saddam Hussein is a hero he told me. Since his childhood he was a hero and brave. History will judge him fairly. He didn't betray his country. In his relative's eyes, he did no wrong. The Iraqi people don't hate Saddam, he said. They hate those who were around here. Saddam didn't hurt anyone. Saddam didn't destroy anyone. By day, Tikrit is peaceful enough, but when the sun sets American soldiers say, the shooting begins.
MAJOR JOSSLYN ABERLE, U.S. ARMY: Feelings are much different when the United States and the United States coalition forces rolled in, the people of Tikrit basically lost, their lifestyle as they knew it. Everything changed for them.
WEDEMAN: In Tikrit, nostalgia for Saddam combined with anger over the disorder that has accompanied America's new order.
It's ridiculous, according to this man. There's no safety. Before we were secure. Now, nothing makes sense. Everyone is confused. Saddam's legacy may be tattered but here it's still intact. Ben Wedeman, CNN, Tikrit, central Iraq.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: That's NEWSNIGHT for this hour, but still 30 big minutes to go, including these stories. The accused terrorist who wants to use another accused terrorist a character witness. And in Arizona, the of the Bishop and the plan to prevent abuse by priest imposed by civil authorities. That and a look at morning papers too. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Few people would argue that the American justice system is efficient, or that it makes life easy for the prosecution. Efficiency is not the point, justice is, and under normal circumstances, basic justice dictates the defense has the right to call whomever it chooses as a witness. But these, of course, aren't normal times, and the so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, is hardly a normal case. The government has objected to the defense calling or even questioning a witness who also happens to be an important member of al Qaeda. The question now is before an appeals court. If the decision goes against the government, the government still has an option of trying Moussaoui before a military tribunal, but the desire is very much for a public trial, so the government today made the best argument it could. Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Lawyers for accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui say the argument is over a basic constitutional right.
FRANK DUNHAM, MOUSSAOUI ATTORNEY: In a death penalty case, the defendant really ought to have the right to present witnesses on his own behalf. That's the argument in a nutshell.
ARENA: The Justice Department is trying to block a trial court ruling requiring the government to allow Moussaoui to question a top al Qaeda captive in U.S. custody overseas.
Moussaoui believes this man, Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged coordinator of the 9/11 attack, can clear him of any involvement.
But Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff (ph) argued in court if the government is forced to interrupt his interrogation, the "damage to the United States would be immediate and irreparable."
In response, Moussaoui's attorney, Frank Dunham, told the court, "Declaring a witness unavailable who was alive in kicking in their custody should not be a freebie."
FRANK DUNHAM, MOUSSAOUI ATTORNEY: And my view is, is, that if you can't have the witness, the case should be dismissed.
ARENA: It was revealed in court that Attorney General John Ashcroft said in an affidavit the government will not produce Binalshibh. Chertoff said the constitutional right to call witnesses in your defense does not extend to "noncitizens outside the United States."
And even if it did, he said, the judiciary branch has no place telling the executive branch what decisions to make in a war.
(on camera): The choice is akin to blackmail, Chertoff said. The government must sacrifice its ability to defend the country or renounce its ability to prosecute terrorists. Moussaoui's lawyers concede it is a tough choice, but one that the government might just have to make.
Kelli Arena, CNN, Richmond, Virginia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: One other development to tell you about in the war on terror tonight. In Detroit today, a federal jury convicted three members of what prosecutors call a terrorist sleeper cell. Two were convicted of conspiring to support terrorism, one of conspiracy to falsifying documents.
They face jail time ranging from five to 40 years. Prosecutors say the men were associates of an Algerian terror group that received financial support from al Qaeda. A fourth man who was on trial was acquitted.
Arizona prosecutor is saying tonight that he may bring criminal charges after all against Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas O'Brien of Phoenix unless the bishop fully implements an agreement he signed promising to revamp the way his diocese handles cases of alleged sex abuse by priests.
The agreement was supposed to bring Bishop O'Brien immunity from prosecution, but things seem to have gone wrong, quickly.
Here's CNN's Charles Feldman.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHARLES FELDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If a statement by the bishop of Phoenix was supposed to begin a period of healing for his flock of more than 400,000, so far that is not proving to be the case.
Bishop Thomas O'Brien, who has been the bishop of Phoenix since 1981, had signed an agreement with an Arizona prosecutor acknowledging, and we quote, "that I allowed Roman Catholic priests under my supervision to work with minors after becoming aware of allegations of sexual misconduct."
RICHARD ROMLEY, PHOENIX COUNTY ATTORNEY: I don't believe I've ever seen a statement acknowledging covering up the misconduct by a bishop as strongly as this one.
FELDMAN: But the bishop, in interviews with local TV stations, seemed to backtrack considerably.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BISHOP THOMAS O'BRIEN, DIOCESE OF PHOENIX: To describe this as a coverup, I think, is wrong, because that's not in my conscience, that's not in my heart. I do not believe there was a coverup.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FELDMAN: To the prosecutor, the bishop's words sound like defiance.
ROMLEY: I have let the bishop know in a variety of ways that I expect this agreement to be followed 100 percent. And if he does not, I'm snore than willing to go back to court and have this agreement nullified. And I will then be free to bring criminal charges against the bishop.
FELDMAN: The bishop's office told CNN he was too busy to be interviewed by us.
Among other things, the agreement calls for the appointment of a special independent advocate who will review allegations of sexual abuse.
Among parishioners, there is a sense of sadness mixed with compassion.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What was done was wrong, as far as the priests hurting children. I'm not for that, of course. But I do not judge bishop, because it is not my place to judge him.
FELDMAN: A grand jury probe that lasted a year has led to the indictment of six priests in Phoenix on charges of sexually abusing children. The question now is that if the bishop drags his heels, will he be indicted as well?
Charles Feldman, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Talk some more about things where -- where things stand with the Catholic Church in America. Nearly a year after the forums that were talked about in Dallas, we're joined in Minneapolis tonight by Professor Patrick Schiltz, the University of St. Thomas School of Law. The professor has advised and defended hundreds of religious organizations over the years, literally all over the country.
Good to have you with us.
PROF. PATRICK SCHILTZ, UNIVERSITY OF ST. THOMAS SCHOOL OF LAW: Thank you.
BROWN: Anything that's going on in this -- let's talk about Phoenix first before we broaden this out a bit. Anything that's going on there, where you have essentially the district attorney writing, at least appears to me, writing church policy, make you feel uncomfortable, a little squeamish?
SCHILTZ: Well, yes, I mean, the whole thing makes me feel squeamish, what the bishop did in the last two years makes me squeamish, what the prosecutor did here. Mostly I feel bad for the people of Phoenix.
I mean, what happened here is, you had a prosecutor and a bishop sit at a table and cut a deal, where the prosecutor got what he wanted, which was a press conference and good publicity, and whatever. The bishop got what he wanted, which was immunity. And the people of Phoenix were stuck with a $700,000 bill, which the people in the pews have to pay.
They weren't represented at that table. They didn't do anything wrong. They, in fact, were put at risk by the bishop's conduct, and now they're left to foot the bill for this. I really think it's a sad moment.
BROWN: Well, that's -- but, in fact, that's what's happened, what, I mean, it's what's happened in L.A., where they've paid millions of dollars in settlements and they're having to sell property and close schools and the rest.
SCHILTZ: Yes, but Aaron, the difference between what happened in L.A. and this is, in L.A. they're closing schools to pay money to compensate victims who were harmed by abuse. This is paying money to the state. Four hundred thousands of this goes to the state to essentially buy the bishop out of a prosecution for his own misconduct.
That seems to me a very different thing.
BROWN: I would agree.
Has the, has in, has in fact things changed? Have things changed in the way these cases are handled around the country? Is there uniformity in the way they're handled? Are oversight boards working? Has anything significantly changed?
SCHILTZ: Yes. I -- you know, the great lost story here, and it gets further buried every time somebody like this bishop in Phoenix does something like this, is that the vast majority of dioceses have pretty much eradicated clergy sexual misconduct from the Roman Catholic Church.
There are very, very few reports of recent abuse, meaning in the last three, five, seven years. And by and large, the reforms that really began in the late '80s and early '90s have worked, and worked very well.
That's a great story. But unfortunately it gets lost every time something like this happens.
BROWN: How did they do it? What were the significant steps that were taken?
SCHILTZ: Well, it has to be said, the first thing that happened is, they got sued, and sued a lot. And...
BROWN: Yes. SCHILTZ: ... even though I represent churches, I would be the first to credit the plaintiffs' bar for bringing this to the attention of bishops in a way they couldn't ignore.
Well, one of the things that happened is, lots of priests got taken out of the ministry. When you take people like John Gagen and Paul Shanley and James Porter out of ministry, there's less abuse going on.
Another thing that happened is, there's much more lay participation, independent participation in the process. It isn't just done in the bishop's office.
And there's also been -- you know, I don't mean to excuse the bishops, but the kind of mistakes, especially, that were made in the '70s and '80s were made throughout society and reflected a misunderstanding of the perniciousness of sexual addiction and sexual abuse. And part of it is society just woke up.
BROWN: Do you think, just in the half-minute we have, that it could not happen again the way it happened before?
SCHILTZ: NO, it can't happen again. And I could give you several reasons. But the one I would cite is, one reason a lot of these priests could get away with this as long as they did is, people, people in the pews, parents of victims, just couldn't believe that a priest would do this, and they wouldn't come forward and report it.
No one's laboring under that illusion any more.
BROWN: Professor, good to talk to you. Thank you very much.
SCHILTZ: Thanks, Aaron.
BROWN: Thank you.
On to other business tonight. There are stories that play as high drama long before Hollywood gets ahold of them. This one is equal parts "On the Waterfront," Cain and Abel, and a folk song, a sad one.
It revolves around a couple of central characters, political power broker is one, and his brother. His brother is a fugitive gangster wanted for murder. The stakes couldn't be higher for both.
In the coming weeks, one of the brothers will be asked to save what's left of his good name by betraying the other -- "On the Waterfront," yes. But in Boston, not Brooklyn.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
THOMAS REILLY, ATTORNEY GENERAL, MASSACHUSETTS: There are choices in life that we all have to make, and those choices can sometimes be very, very difficult.
BROWN (voice-over): The choices Attorney General Thomas Reilly means are the ones he says that this man, William Bulger, the president of the University of Massachusetts, now has to make.
REILLY: And I can't imagine a more difficult situation than when your brother is accused of killing up to 19 people and essentially being accused of being a mass murderer.
BROWN: The attorney general believes that William Bulger, a long-time Democratic power broker in the state, has refused to provide meaningful help to authorities who would like to find his brother, James "Whitey" Bulger, a long-time federal fugitive accused of many murders.
WILLIAM BULGER, PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS: Mr. Reilly is profoundly wrong when he suggests that I have ever taken steps that were at odds with my political and my public responsibilities.
BROWN: The university president has agreed to testify about his brother before a committee of Congress under a grant of immunity. But the remarks by the attorney general mean that the top two elected officials in the state, Mitt Romney, the governor, a Republican, and Democrat Reilly, believe it's time for Bulger to go.
J.M LAWRENCE, REPORTER, "THE BOSTON HERALD": That means that the winds have changed, and the decades of the good brother and the bad brother are started to shift towards maybe the good brother isn't as good as we thought.
BROWN: Whitey Bulger has been on the FBI's 10 most wanted list for years. And for years, he was actually an informer for the FBI as well. Part of the indictments against him allege he was protected against arrest and imprisonment despite a string of murders officials say he either committed or knew about.
He telephoned his brother, William, at least once. That was in 1995.
BULGER: It was brief. It was a discussion of some legal aspects. And also his assurance that he was quite well.
BROWN: But William Bulger, then the president of the Massachusetts State Senate, never told authorities of that phone call. And the drama continues.
LAWRENCE: It's the longest-running saga in Boston in a lot of ways, and I don't think it truly ends until we know what happened to James "Whitey" Bulger, and that's the multimillion-dollar question. And without that fact, we won't really know.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Seems our crime and punishment half-hour tonight.
As NEWSNIGHT continues, the man who grew pot, and the jurors who say they should not have found him guilty.
We'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: By the end of the day tomorrow, it is at least possible, and perhaps even likely, that Ed Rosenthal will be placed in handcuffs and hauled off to federal prison. If that happens, he'll become a poster boy in a battle between the state of California and the federal government.
For a while there is no question that Mr. Rosenthal broke federal law, there's also no question he was acting in support of the laws of the state.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ed, we love you, we support you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ed, we love you, we support you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ed, we love you, we support you.
BROWN: Ed Rosenthal is the perfect example of the confused state of affairs where medical marijuana is concerned. There is no question he grew pot and sold it and was convicted of both in federal court.
What jurors didn't know is that the man presented to them as just another pot grower/drug dealer was working with Oakland city officials to provide marijuana to the sick, which is perfectly legal in the state of California.
ED ROSENTHAL, MEDICAL MARIJUANA ADVOCATE: It's a terrible situation when a citizen conducting business, being told that what he's doing is legal, is then arrested for it. It can happen to anybody.
BROWN: But the judge never allowed jurors to know all of the facts, which has left several of them feeling misled.
CHARLES SACKETT, FORMER JUROR: I ask myself how I could have allowed myself to juror in such a case where the outcome was so deliberately stacked against state right and patient rights from the beginning.
MARNEY CRAIG, JUROR: We were sent into the jury room with half the evidence and expected to come up with a fair and just verdict.
BROWN: Rosenthal faces five to 85 years in prison. Seven jurors and two alternates told the judge they oppose any prison time at all for Rosenthal. They plan to attend tomorrow's hearing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: We're joined now in San Francisco by two of the jurors in the Rosenthal case. Charles Sackett, who you heard from earlier in the piece, and Pam Klarkowski, who was on the jury as well.
Good to see you both. Thank you. Mr. Sackett, let's start with you. It's not quite accurate to say, is it, that you knew absolutely nothing of the circumstances?
SACKETT: I had a gut feeling during the trial that we were missing some of the evidence and testimony, mainly because every day, the courtroom was packed with people, many of them obviously ill, patients, some of them in wheelchairs. And every time that the defense tried to address the idea of medical marijuana, the judge would deny that being brought into evidence and testimony.
BROWN: Just before I go to Pam, let me just follow this up. So in the end, is it that you didn't know, or that you were bound by the instructions of the court?
SACKETT: I wasn't sure if this was a case regarding medical marijuana or not. And therefore, what I was sure is that this was a case involving marijuana. And I knew that this guy was growing marijuana, and it was presented to me that he was just another drug kingpin.
It wasn't until I walked out of the jury deliberation room after convicting Mr. Rosenthal that a reporter came up to me and asked me, Do you realize that you just sent a man to prison for the rest of his life? No. Do you realize that you just overturned the California medical marijuana law? No.
Do you realize that this man was deputized by the city of Oakland, under the auspices of the state of California and the county of Alameda, to legally grow medical marijuana?
BROWN: Ms. Klarkowski, first of all, did you have any inkling at all, either from the questions that were overruled from the bench or what was going on in the courtroom, that this was something other than your routine drug case? And add to that, was there no discussion in the jury room during the deliberations that this might be something other than what it seemed?
PAM KLARKOWSKI, FORMER JUROR: It was brought forth, and I really felt that it was pretty clear that there was something about medical marijuana. The problem was, is as you... as mentioned before, we were bound, really, by the law, that we could not use that information and take that into consideration for the verdict.
As far as talking about it in deliberations, we were real -- there were some questions, there were some questions about what it was really -- what it was that they were actually trying to get at. But it was pretty darn clear that we couldn't use the medical marijuana issue as a part of our evaluation of this.
And the evidence that was presented to us was in such a tidy package from the prosecution, that in some -- in most ways, it really allowed us only to go in that direction, to find him guilty, when we take that evidence and weigh it against the federal law...
BROWN: Right.
KLARKOWSKI: ... whether we agreed with it or not, which we had problems with it, because...
BROWN: Well, the, the...
KLARKOWSKI: ... of the state of California.
BROWN: Right. The fact is -- I mean, here is -- I'm not telling you anything you don't know here. Here's the essential problem. Under federal law, he is guilty.
KLARKOWSKI: That's...
BROWN: You found him so.
KLARKOWSKI: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- yes, we did. And we were following the instructions carefully. But we were asked to take that information, which wasn't all of the information, and come up with a verdict. And so we felt that we were in many ways, at least I felt...
BROWN: Yes.
KLARKOWSKI: ... that I was being denied and being compromised, my rights as a citizen, and as a juror to make an educated decision.
BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
SACKETT: This should have been a Supreme Court case. The judge decided to deny the evidence regarding states' rights, medical marijuana patients' and doctors' rights, because it was a federal case, and only federal law applied.
BROWN: Right. Let me, let me ask the question this way, just to kind of clarify the point. Let's say that you knew everything. You knew that the city of Oakland was involved, and you knew that Mr. Rosenthal was, exactly what he was doing, the circumstances under which he was doing it, and the state law that protected him from doing it.
You knew all that, but the judge said, The fact that you know it is irrelevant because still under federal law it's illegal, and if you find that he broke federal law you have to convict him. Would you have convicted him then?
KLARKOWSKI: I think in that situation, having known all the evidence -- what we know now, had we known it then, there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that I wouldn't have been able to convict him.
BROWN: And Mr. Sackett, how about you? Would you have essentially nullified federal law and acquitted him?
SACKETT: That is certainly a possibility that we were never able to look at, because of the court's direction to us as a jury. And we could only find...
BROWN: Yes.
SACKETT: ... Mr. Rosenthal guilty. And that's where my problem is, that...
BROWN: I understand. I'm -- I'm sorry, I know that you'll be there at the sentencing tomorrow, and we will too, so we'll see how that goes.
Thank you both for your time. And I think we're all glad we're not in your situation.
SACKETT: Thank you.
BROWN: Thank you.
Next on NEWSNIGHT, morning papers. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: OK, time -- you know what I said yesterday? I said, Okey-dokey. Time to check -- man, that embarrassed me. Time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world.
We'll begin with "USA Today," for all of those, all of those of you who are traveling. Be a long segment at this rate, isn't it, ladies and gentlemen?
Down at the bottom here, guys, "Rudolph Ate Acorns, Lizards, and Game." This is Eric Rudolph. I don't know if that was a normal meal for him -- I'd like some acorns, lizards, and game -- or if that was just one day.
And then there's a little boxed story here, "Never Eat Meat Raw, Survivalist Scoffs at Rudolph." I guess this is one of those news- you-can-use stories, if you're ever on the lam and you have to -- well, perhaps "lam" was not a good choice of words there.
In Chicago, the "Sun Times," "Say It Ain't So-Somalia, Sammy Caught Cheating with Cork Bat, Ejected From Game." Oh, my! I can't believe that! Sammy Sosa using a cork bat, can you imagine cheating in baseball? Big front-page story in tomorrow's "Sun Times." By the way, "Monotony" is the weather word, nice job, up there.
The -- we were talking about this just a moment ago, "The Oregonian," the paper of Portland, Oregon, "Bill Would Strip States of Cash to Fight Drugs." States that have passed medical marijuana laws, the citizens of those states that have passed medical marijuana laws, are -- may lose, under a Republican-sponsored House bill, $11 million in drug money to fight drugs, other forms of illegal drugs.
Do I get one more in? How much time? Fifteen? Well, let's just stop. I can't do it justice. We'll just stop there.
We're all back tomorrow. We hope you are too, 10:00 Eastern time. Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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War; Rudolph Makes Court Appearance>
Aired June 3, 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.
It would be one of the great ironies, wouldn't it, if President Bush is able to succeed in the Middle East where so many other American presidents have failed. He is, after all, a man who as a candidate professed considerable disdain for immersing himself in the nasty negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and even today aides tell the "Washington Post" the president still doesn't care much for the detail of the region.
Yet, he's about to embark on his first Mid East Summit. The landscape in the region has been changed by the war and the presence of a new Palestinian leadership. Perhaps the time is right.
It's where we start the whip tonight, to Jordan and the peace summit about to begin. CNN's Christiane Amanpour is there, so Christiane a headline from you tonight.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, here we are in Acaba, Jordan's Red Sea port area. Behind me you see the lights of (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in Israel twinkling, and this is where the president of the United States will for the first time in his presidency immerse himself now in the symbolism of kicking off a new peace process.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian prime minister, and the president will meet here later this morning. There will be a joint photo op and statements and we will see what this means and what hope it can bring to this region after so many years of bloodshed.
BROWN: Christiane, thank you, we'll get back to you at the top tonight.
To the Pentagon next, a growing battle over how many troops will be needed to occupy Iraq. Our Senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre has the watch tonight. Jamie, a headline.
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, before the war when the army chief of staff suggested it might take several hundred thousand troops to secure the peace in Iraq Defense Secretary Rumsfeld scoffed at it. Tonight, the former Army secretary, a man Rumsfeld fired, says Rumsfeld got it wrong and should admit it -- Aaron.
BROWN: Jamie, thank you.
On to Birmingham, Alabama, Eric Rudolph's day in court, CNN's Martin Savidge there for us tonight, Marty a headline.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good evening to you, Aaron. Eric Rudolph in court on this exactly 1,920 days since he allegedly detonated a bomb in the city that left an off duty police officer dead and one woman severely injured. It also made him a nationally wanted fugitive. We'll tell you what he had to say in court and what the wife of one of his alleged victims had to say outside of court -- Aaron.
BROWN: Marty, thank you.
And to New York next where Martha Stewart is said to be on the brink of a federal indictment. CNN's Allan Chernoff covering, Allan a headline.
ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A showdown between Martha Stewart and federal prosecutors. The Feds say they're ready to bring criminal charges. Miss Stewart's attorney says she is prepared to go to trial to prove her innocence.
BROWN: Allan, thank you, back to you and the rest shortly.
Also coming up tonight on Tuesday night, the 3rd of June, we'll take the first look at Hillary Clinton's long awaited memoirs. She's promised a revealing take on her relationship with the president. It appears she's delivered.
Also tonight, we'll look at the challenges facing Ariel Sharon even if he does manage to hammer out a peace deal with the Palestinians. John Vause on that.
Kelly Wallace reports on his counterpart, the Palestinian prime minister, a man who leads his people and will have to win over the terrorists, all with an approval rating in the low, low single digits.
All of that and more just ahead but we begin by setting the stage. At the summit just a few hours from now, President Bush will be making his first serious venture into a part of the world where peace initiatives traditionally go to die.
The president has taken it upon himself to break that tradition. He made a start of it today and for the first time in a long time there are signs he'll have something to work with. Now, one good day does not peace make in the Middle East, something to keep in mind over the next 24 hours, but it is a start.
We begin tonight with our Chief International Correspondent CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
AMANPOUR: Aaron, the president of the United States has long avoided this moment preferring to stay out of the complex negotiations in the Middle East until the sides he believed would be ready to do so. And now, his aides, his senior ministers, the presidents are saying that the dynamics of this region has changed and therefore the time is right now to try to kick start a new Middle East peace summit, a new Middle East peace process.
The president comes here in about four hours. Ariel Sharon will also come here. The president comes from Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt where he met with other Arab leaders, key Arab leaders there yesterday, and also with Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian prime minister.
It was the first time that President Bush had met with a senior Palestinian. As you know, they have shunned Yasser Arafat and essentially insisted, along with Israel, that there be a new Palestinian prime minister to negotiate and deal with any potential road to peace.
From the Arab leaders in Sharm El Sheikh, he won the commitment that they would vow to continue to fight terrorism and indeed a fairly strongly worded statement from the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that they would cut off and try to deny any kind of funding to any kind of groups outside the Palestinian authority.
He said no matter the motive or the justification there would be no attempts to deliver any kind of money to any kind of resistance group outside the Palestinian Authority, so quite a clear statement there.
President Bush himself in Egypt was heard saying that Israel must "deal with the settlements" and that Palestinians must have a continuous and viable place to call home.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We see the potential for the birth of a new and Palestinian state. We see the potential for broader peace among the peoples of this region. Achieving these goals will require courage and moral vision on every side from every leader. America is committed and I am committed to helping all the parties to reach the hard and heroic decisions that will lead to peace.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Now, one thing that is clear, the president says he's committed and certainly many in this region insist and hope that the president of the United States will use all his political power, political will to really engage fully in this peace process.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, is due here by helicopter from Jerusalem later this morning. They will go into meetings with President Bush. There will be separate bilateral meetings between President Bush and Sharon and then President Bush and Mahmoud Abbas.
And then afterwards we expect them to meet in a trilateral, if you like, President Bush with the two prime ministers. And, after that, there will be statements from the three leaders and also from King Abdullah or Jordan, the host here.
Already, Israel has released something like 100 prisoners as a gesture of goodwill. Obviously, a lot of onus on the Palestinians to try to stop the terrorism.
Mahmoud Abbas, who has said that he favors a negotiated truce with Hamas rather than trying to crack down on them right now and everybody is waiting to see whether there will be any statement, any sign that there will be some kind of cease-fire from the radicals and the Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories -- Aaron.
BROWN: Christiane, quickly, is it all choreographed? Have the statements been written or will there actually be some uncertainty as to how the day will play out?
AMANPOUR: Well, we still haven't had the leaks which one expects to get but there is a certain amount of choreography obviously in the way the talks are planned, the fact that there will be a couple of separate meetings and then a trilateral, and the statements obviously have gone through a lot of drafting and a lot of overseeing by the United States as well who have seen the text and the drafts of these statements.
So, there is a certain amount that is already known to all the parties about what they're saying and certainly President Bush was hoping and the Americans hoping that Israel will say something about the settlements, most especially the illegal outposts, illegal according to Israeli law that have been set up over the last few years and waiting to see what the Palestinians say about the violence and the crack down there.
BROWN: Christiane, thank you, Christiane Amanpour in Jordan tonight.
Now, we get ahead of ourselves perhaps a bit. Making peace is one thing. Selling a peace is another. Ariel Sharon campaigned for prime minister as the one leader strong enough in Israel to make peace but there are a good many people in Israel and out who doubt that he is truly willing to help create a Palestinian state and all that that entails, and it's all made more complicated by the fact that among his best supporters are those least likely to agree to give up land they believe is theirs.
Here's CNN's John Vause.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is Sharon country, the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) market in Jerusalem. Here the heroes are men like Menachem Begin, the underground (UNINTELLIGIBLE) turned prime minister who made peace with Egypt and Benjamin Netanyahu the former leader who still opposes a Palestinian state and wants to send the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat into exile. Fred Hueman retired here ten years ago from New York an unabashed Sharon supporter.
FRED HUEMAN, SHARON SUPPORTER: He's been carrying on the affairs of this country under very trying circumstances. I don't think anybody else could have done better.
VAUSE: Do you think he is doing the right thing in supporting the road map?
HUEMAN: The road map will go down the road like all the other road maps.
VAUSE: Efraim Ludzkra 29-year-old religion student like most Israelis doubtful the road map will lead to peace but willing to go along for the ride as long as Ariel Sharon is driving.
EFRAIM LUDZKRA, SHARON SUPPORTER: There's no choice. If he doesn't do anything so he'll just be a useless prime minister.
VAUSE: Israelis already see General Sharon as a war hero, defending Israel from an Arab invasion in 1973 but to him personally analysts say there's now much more at stake.
GERALD STEINBERG, POLITICAL ANALYST: If this peace process lasts, Sharon certainly goes down in history like Begin in terms of his accomplishments on the peace front. Agreement with the Palestinians in some way would be even more fundamental.
VAUSE: Politically the road map looks safe, the opposition Labour Party supports it and within his own Likud Party, Ariel Sharon's leadership is unchallenged for the time being.
STEINBERG: If things go very, very badly as they did for Ehud Barak, both in terms of a failed political process and also great increase in violence, then certainly someone else will come up and challenge him.
VAUSE: There will be demonstrations in the coming days against this road map for peace but they're not expected to be a repeat of the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets in protest in the years after the Oslo Peace Accord.
(on camera): When it comes to his traditional supporters, it seems Ariel Sharon has little to worry about, at least for now. They may not understand what their prime minister is doing but they're willing to trust him. It's the road map they don't trust.
John Vause, CNN, Jerusalem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: The new Palestinian prime minister has that to contend with and more. To make peace with Israel he also has to make peace with Yasser Arafat, Arafat's army, Hamas and every other spoiler with a bomb factory out there, no small achievement but for the moment at least he seems to be doing as well as could be expected.
Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Kelly Wallace.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Gaza, only a few hundred members of radical Palestinian groups protest the Arab leader summit in Egypt, a small rally compared to the thousands who normally march with groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a sign of what may be a new mood in Gaza and a good omen for Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas who faces what may be a make or break challenge, trying to convince radical Palestinian groups, like Islamic Jihad, to stop their attacks against Israel. It is a tough sell.
"If the occupation is still there we will attack the settlers and soldiers" Abdullah El-Shami, an Islamic Jihad leader told us. "And if the Israelis continue to attack us, the only way to make a balance of pain is to attack them inside Israel."
Mr. Abbas' power of persuasion will no doubt depend on his power to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to take steps such as: easing Palestinian travel restrictions; continuing to release prisoners; stopping what Palestinians call assassinations of militants; and ending all military operations in places like the Gaza Strip.
ABDEL AZIZ RANTISI, HAMAS LEADER: If they are going to stop targeting our civilians then we are ready to stop targeting what they call their civilians.
WALLACE: But the Palestinian prime minister faces another problem. Under international pressure to completely dismantle groups like Hamas, he is trying to convince the groups to lay down their arms and become political parties under the Palestinian Authority, but they won't do that because unlike Mr. Abbas, they reject the Mid East road map as a solution to the decades old conflict.
ABU SHANAB, HAMAS LEADER: If he thinks the Israelis by accepting the road map will obey the road map and gradually withdraw he is totally mistaken.
(on camera): Mahmoud Abbas' success or failure will not only determine the future of the Mid East road map but also his stature and legitimacy on the Palestinian street.
(voice-over): Although he has only a three percent popularity rating, many Palestinians seem willing to give the prime minister a chance like this woman who says she has not been able to leave the area to see her daughter in Jerusalem in two and a half years. Do you think he can make life better for the Palestinian people?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We hope so. We'll see.
WALLACE: But if he fails to deliver a cease-fire and Israeli concessions, Mahmoud Abbas may not only dash the hopes of some Palestinians but his own hopes for leading his people into the future.
Kelly Wallace, CNN, Gaza. (END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: With us again tonight Stephen Cohen, the President of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development, good to have you with us.
STEPHEN COHEN, INSTITUTE FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT: Thank you.
BROWN: Let's start with today. Do all those Arab leaders who are sitting around the table with the president today, do they believe in him, do they trust him?
COHEN: They were testing him and so far they were happy with what they heard and as a result they gave him some of what they wanted to give him and some of what he wanted to get from them but not everything.
BROWN: That's an interesting distinction, some of what they wanted to give him which was?
COHEN: They wanted to give him support about the issue of fighting terrorism. They wanted to give him support in pushing the road map. But what they held back on was support for his idea that right now they would promise that they would start reestablishing some ties with Israel like sending the ambassadors back. They held back on that.
BROWN: This is the Egyptians and the Jordanians.
COHEN: Jordanians. Mostly they held back on that because of the Saudis. The Saudis were interested in trying to give him help about the terrorism issue which bothers them a lot but they weren't ready yet for making any big statements about opening up new contacts with Israel.
BROWN: The new Palestinian prime minister is someone you've been -- you've dealt with a fair amount of late. Does that mean that Mr. Arafat, Chairman Arafat, is someone we no longer have to think about, care about or worry about?
COHEN: No, I think that Arafat is there and, in fact, Arafat is the context in which Abu Mazen has his legitimacy within the Palestinian community. He completely knows that he was appointed in a system where Arafat was elected and where he is the candidate of those who are trying to say to Arafat, you have done enough.
You no longer know how to lead us in practical matters. You're still going to be the symbol but we want Abu Mazen. We want others to start trying to see whether they can do a better job of managing our lives and getting it on with the Israelis and the Americans.
BROWN: Perhaps this is naive. Does he seem to be, as you talk to him, somebody who believes he can deliver the goods?
COHEN: Abu Mazen believes a lot in this peace process. He has been trying to deal with Israelis from the very earliest days that he entered as a political actor. He wants to understand Israel. He knows that the Palestinian future is tied to making peace with Israel and he believes that what he does that is different from Arafat will have appeal, which is he knows he's not a big charismatic guy.
He knows he's going to have to work by consensus. He knows he's going to have to bring up the young people. He knows he's going to have to work with a lot of people from within the territories and he believes that's going to turn out to be more popular, not getting him popularity but getting the system popularity and getting the Palestinians to understand that their deliverance is not going to come from some dramatic act, either of violence or of some great charismatic leader but by working systematically to show that they're capable of ruling themselves, that they know what democracy means, that they really want it for themselves and that they can show that they are the right partner for the United States and Israel in making peace.
BROWN: Just give me -- give us a sense of markers, things that over the next days, weeks, months perhaps, we should look for that will say this time there's something here?
COHEN: What you need to know first of all is the United States going to put something on the ground? Is there going to be an American presence on the ground, a real monitoring presence of the United States on a day-to-day basis? The president is going to go home. The process is going to have to go on. The hard decisions are still going to have to be made. What's going to be the American presence day-to-day? That's number one.
Second thing, we're going to have to see whether Abu Mazen is able to deliver Hamas and others to actually stop killing Israelis. That's going to be critical to everything.
Third, we're going to have to see that Sharon goes ahead, stops the assassinations of Palestinians, starts to remove these illegal outposts, and starts to talk with Abu Mazen in a way in which both his leadership and the Palestinian leadership thinks this is not a fly-by- night operation. This is something where they have a real intention of keeping the thing going.
BROWN: Nice to meet you, good to talk to you tonight.
COHEN: Good.
BROWN: Thank you, come back.
COHEN: Thank you.
BROWN: Thank you very much, Stephen Cohen.
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT on a Tuesday, Eric Rudolph enters a not guilty plea to charges he bombed a woman's clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.
And later, we'll look at just how many troops it will take to keep the peace in Iraq and how long they will be there, that and more. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Eric Rudolph was in court today surrounded by the lawmen he had eluded for so long. He was there to enter a plea for the first time but certainly not the last.
Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Martin Savidge.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SAVIDGE (voice-over): Seated in a Birmingham, Alabama federal courtroom, Eric Rudolph, the man who had been nearly invisible for years stood out dressed in a red jail jumpsuit.
Rudolph entered a plea of not guilty to charges he detonated a bomb outside a Birmingham women's clinic in 1998 killing an off duty police officer and severely wounding a nurse. His defense attorney urged people to presume Rudolph's innocence.
RICHARD JAFFE, RUDOLPH'S ATTORNEY: I think it's only fair for all of us to suspend judgment and allow the courtroom to test whether the proof is really proof or whether it's more speculation and hearsay.
SAVIDGE: But standing in nearly the same place just minutes later, the widow of slain police officer Robert "Sandy" Sanderson said she had been waiting five years for this day.
FELECIA SANDERSON, SLAIN OFFICERS' WIFE: I believe that justice is going to be served. I have the utmost faith and confidence in the justice system and the law itself. My husband gave his life upholding and defending the law.
SAVIDGE: Rudolph is charged with carrying out three earlier bombings in Georgia prior to the one in Birmingham, including a fatal attack during the 1996 Olympics. But it was in Birmingham where Eric Rudolph became a suspect when his pickup truck was reportedly spotted near the scene. It is that alleged direct link that led federal authorities to try Rudolph here first.
Another factor that could make the Alabama case more clear-cut is Rudolph's supposed method. The other bombings were allegedly carried out using timers. In Birmingham, investigators say the device was set off by remote control hinting Rudolph saw his victims and detonated the bomb in their faces.
SANDERSON: I was so relieved that he is in custody. He's not going anywhere and I truly, honestly feel that we have the right man.
SAVIDGE: In Birmingham, victims' families are hopeful justice will be easier to find than the man they believe is responsible for their pain.
(END VIDEOTAPE) SAVIDGE: And, Eric Rudolph is expected to be back in a Birmingham courtroom exactly one week from today for a detention hearing. That is to see if he is eligible for bond. There are a lot of people in this town that say don't hold your breath on that one considering it took five years to bring him into custody. Still, it is his legal right to ask.
As far as a trial date, that has been set for August 4, but there is a great deal of skepticism on that thought as well, many people saying that would be entirely too soon given the way the justice system tends to work -- Aaron.
BROWN: Marty, thank you, Martin Savidge down in Birmingham, Alabama tonight.
Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, we'll talk with Florida Senator Bob Graham about what we did or did not know about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
And, we'll report on questions of how many troops it will take to pacify Iraq and how long they will be there.
Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Leading up to the war it seemed to many that the secretary of defense wanted to have it both ways when it came to how many troops it would take for the occupation. On the one hand he called the number unknowable, on the other estimates other than his own were considered too high.
Now that the occupation is well underway, questions are being asked about whether his numbers were wrong and why and today the former secretary of the Army weighed in.
Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Jamie McIntyre.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE (voice-over): The controversy began back in February when Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki gave this pre-war estimate on how many troops would be needed to keep the peace in post-war Iraq.
GEN. ERIC SHINSEKI, ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF: Somewhere on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably a figure that would be required.
MCINTYRE: Pentagon leaders immediately rejected Shinseki's estimate as far off the mark.
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Any idea that it's several hundred thousand over any sustained period is simply not the case.
MCINTYRE: With U.S. commanders saying it's hard to impose order in Iraq with just 150,000 troops, former Army Secretary Tom White, fired by Rumsfeld in April, now says Rumsfeld was wrong. In a telephone interview with CNN, White said Rumsfeld's rebuke of Shinseki was unfair.
TOM WHITE, FMR. ARMY SECRETARY: In retrospect I think Shinseki was right. The facts bear out that he was pretty accurate in his estimate.
MCINTYRE: On Capitol Hill late last month, the Pentagon was sticking to its pre-war estimates.
SEN. PAUL SARBANES (D), MARYLAND: Secretary Wolfowitz, I'd ask you whether you think it was fair to label General Shinseki's remarks back in February that we would need roughly several hundred thousand troops in post-war Iraq as an estimate wildly off the mark?
PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY: Several hundred thousand to me means 300,000 or more and I don't think we're close to that.
MCINTYRE: White in the CNN interview says Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld can't come to grips with the idea they need more troops.
WHITE: I just think we mis-estimated it and I think the sooner we come to that realization and set ourselves up for the long term, I think the better off everybody will be.
MCINTYRE: According to White, the Pentagon's original optimistic projection was that it might be able to cut the occupation force in half by this point. Instead, the return of the 3rd Infantry Division has been delayed indefinitely.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE: Now, back in February, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said it wouldn't be logical to think it would take more troops to secure the peace than it took to win the war. Secretary White, the former secretary, said he thinks it's perfectly logical that the complicated task of reconstruction would require a larger force. I asked White, is it possible the Pentagon is reluctant to send any more troops now because that would show they were wrong? He said, there probably is that tendency, in his opinion -- Aaron.
BROWN: Jamie, thank you. I am feeling this question will come back on the table several more times before it goes away. Thank you very much. Jamie McIntyre.
Now on to another question of what we knew about Iraq going into the war, the question of weapons of mass destruction. How the intelligence was gathered? Did politics come to bear on the gathering of it? We're joined tonight by Bob Graham, Democratic senator from the state of Florida, presidential hopeful as well. He and a number of prominent Republicans are calling for hearings on the matter. The senator joins us from San Francisco tonight. Senator, good to have you with us.
SEN. BOB GRAHAM (D-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Good evening, Aaron.
BROWN: You heard a lot of this intelligence before the war. Is it your view now that -- well, I guess there are three possibilities. One, is it just hasn't been found yet. B, the intelligence was flawed. Or, C, that the intelligence was manipulated so the administration could get an end that it desired.
GRAHAM: Aaron, we hope that we will find the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Failing to do that, there will be a serious question as to the credibility of the United States in the world and undercutting of confidence of the American people in the veracity of their government. I think that there are a series of possibilities if we don't find weapons. One is that they were spirited out of Iraq, which may be is the worst of all possibilities, because now the very thing that we were trying to avoid, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could be in the hands of dozens of groups.
Second, that we had bad intelligence. Or third, that the intelligence was satisfactory but that it was manipulated, so as just to present to the American people and to the world those things that made the case for the necessity of war against Iraq.
BROWN: Did you hear, and to the extent that you can talk about this, in any of these hearings where intelligence was discussed, did you hear equivocation, did you hear the sort of the gray areas that are hardly uncommon in the intelligence universe?
GRAHAM: What was a part of the intelligence briefings that I heard was that there was a tendency to present the information in a classified form, that is not available to the public, and then subsequently declassified those portions of the briefings which were most favorable to the position that the administration wanted to take and to not allow the public access to the information that was of the same level of national security concern but ran counter to the administration's position.
BROWN: Well, that suggests that the administration -- I don't know if you mean to suggest this -- was deliberately tried to manipulate the country into supporting its position?
GRAHAM: I think there's been a pattern of manipulation by this administration, and it's not all just Iraq-related. It relates to the war on terror, where the fact that we essentially have abandoned the war on terror for the last 14 months has been held from the American people, and I think it goes to domestic issues, such as the recently passed tax cut, which in my judgment was sold under the false label that it was going to generate economic growth, when it, in fact, its details have very little capacity to generate that growth.
BROWN: Let me bring you back to war on terror. Can you tell me briefly what you mean when you say we have, we as a country, have abandoned the war on terror? There was an operation going on in Afghanistan today, for example. So what are you saying?
GRAHAM: What I'm saying is that approximately 14 months ago, the militaries began to say we are no longer engaged in a war on terror, a war that has the goal of crushing al Qaeda. Rather, we are in a manhunt, attempting to detain specific individuals. At about the same time, military and intelligence assets that had been in Afghanistan and Pakistan began to be shifted to prepare for the war in Iraq.
What are the consequences of that? The consequences that al Qaeda has gotten off the floor, has regenerated, and was able less than three weeks ago to carry out very sophisticated attacks in Saudi Arabia and quite possibly in Morocco and Chechnya as well.
BROWN: On the subject of the war on terror, do you think that the country will ever get a cogent report out of the government on what happened on 9/11? The failures, in some cases, the intelligence failures, what government knew, what it didn't know. Will it ever be laid out in a cogent fashion for all of us to understand?
GRAHAM: Aaron, I'm doing everything in my power to see that the American people has access to an 800-page narrative that covers what happened before September the 11th, what were the lessons that we learned, and how well have we applied those lessons.
In many ways that third issue is the most stinging, because we did, in fact, learn a lot about why we were so vulnerable on September the 11th, and in my judgment have inadequately applied that information to make Americans more secure today.
BROWN: Senator, we've been chasing around trying to get you on the program for a long time. We're glad we finally cornered you out in San Francisco tonight. Thank you very, very much.
GRAHAM: Thank you very much, Aaron.
BROWN: Senator Bob Graham from the state of Florida. Still ahead on the program tonight, while ImClone's stock makes a comeback, can Martha Stewart recover from the insider trading scandal that has damaged her? Break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: The Martha Stewart story has become the Martha Stewart saga. New installments keeps appearing, but it looks as if the saga is heading toward some sort of conclusion, though it may not be the conclusion the famous and successful woman at its center anticipated or predicted. Here's CNN's Allan Chernoff.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHERNOFF (voice-over): What first appeared to be an awkward step in mud for Martha Stewart has turned into legal quicksand. Federal prosecutors have warned they are going to ask a grand jury to indict her as early as this week. And the Securities and Exchange Commission has warned it will bring a civil complaint.
Her lawyer released a statement saying Stewart would hang tough. Quote, "If Martha Stewart is indicted, she intends to declare her innocence and proceed to trial." This is not what Martha Stewart expected when she unloaded nearly 4,000 shares of ImClone Systems, a company founded by her friend, Sam Waksal. Stewart sold the stock one day before the Food and Drug Administration rejected ImClone's application for review of its cancer drug. After Waksal was charged with insider trading in the stock, Stewart said, "I had no improper information. My transaction was entirely lawful." And on a CBS television segment she brushed the issue off.
MARTHA STEWART, CEO, LIVING OMNIMEDIA: As I said, I think this will all be resolved in the very near future and I will be exonerated of this ridiculousness.
CHERNOFF: Instead prosecutors kept digging. They gain the cooperation of Doug Thanniel, former assistant to the Merrill Lynch broker that Stewart and Waksal shared. Legal experts say prosecutors may be trying to make an example of Martha Stewart.
JOHN COFFEE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL: This is very atypical. In this case, the government is pushing the envelope on what constitutes insider trading further than they've ever pushed it before. I think it's partly because they have the kind of high- profile person who in this post-Enron world the government wants to clearly communicate is not above the law.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHERNOFF: There is still the possibility that the two sides can reach a plea bargain, but at the moment, it appears Martha Stewart will soon be fighting criminal charges. Her friend Sam Waksal pled guilt to insider trading. He is scheduled to be sentenced a week from today -- Aaron.
BROWN: I love good coincidence. So tell me if you think it is coincidental that all of this came out on the day that her company held its annual meeting?
CHERNOFF: Certainly, very interesting and it would appear, some legal analysts believe, that the prosecutors are trying to put the final squeeze on Martha Stewart, a final effort to try to get a plea from her.
BROWN: Allan, thank you very much. Allan Chernoff.
We are joined now by someone who understands perhaps better than most the spot Ms. Stewart finds herself in. Foster Winans has been there himself although he had a different checkbook at the time than Ms. Stewart seems to have.
Former writer for "The Wall Street Journal"'s "Heard it on the Street" column, spent nine months in a minimum security prison after being convicted on insider trading charges. He's also the author of a number of books including one called "Trading Secrets."
Good to see you again.
FOSTER WINANS, AUTHOR, "TRADING SECRETS": Yes.
BROWN: Just let's establish your position here. If her name were Jane Johnson and not Martha Stewart, rich, well-known, all of that, would this be going on at all?
WINANS: Absolutely not. This is a show trial, or if it's going to be a trial, it's going to be a show trial.
BROWN: Do you think it matters by the way that she's a high- profile Democrat?
WINANS: I have no idea. I don't think politics has anything to do with it. I really don't.
BROWN: OK. There is that out there. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) think they want to get somebody on an insider trading charge that people know about and then they can say look see what we have done?
WINANS: Well my case was very similar in that the money that was involved and what happened was relatively minor compared to the enormous frauds that have taken place on Wall Street.
Martha Stewart was an easy target. If you remember Congressman Green was dragging her -- trying to drag her in front of a subcommittee in the House. What did Martha Stewart know about Enron and Andersen and all of that? So very similar situation.
Listen, I did what I did and I was wrong and I admitted what I did. But the government made a really big deal about it.
BROWN: You said to us earlier that you thought when this all gets done that it may not be insider trading at all?
WINANS: Everything I'm reading tells me that insider trading is very difficult to prosecute because there's usually not a paper trail. Somebody doesn't write down I'm giving you insider information. It's usually a coded message.
But obstruction of justice is really easy. I mean that is, in fact, a worse crime in the eyes of prosecutors and judges. If Martha Stewart had come forward in the beginning and said look, I made a mistake, I'm going to pay you back lots of money, I will work in a soup kitchen, I'm going to do this, that and the other, she would have been fine. All she had to do was shred one document and she suddenly is looking at a five-year sentence.
BROWN: Do you think she will do time by the way?
WINANS: Actually, I do think she will do a little bit of time. Obstruction of justice is particularly nasty charge. It's fairly easy to prosecute. and in this case, it looks like the U.S. attorney's office refused to do a deal with her. And when they refuse to do a deal, it means they probably have exactly what they need to win a conviction.
BROWN: At this stage -- go back now 15 years or so when you were in the center of this. At this stage when you know they're coming, they haven't quite come yet, but you know they're coming, how are you sleeping? What's going on in your life? How do you think she's doing today?
WINANS: Well, she's probably not going to work every day I would say. Especially if her TV made for movie was on the air. I don't thin she showed up to the office the next morning.
But when I think about Martha Stewart, I actually have a lot of sympathy for her even though she obviously did something that was wrong. She's kind of ruined. I see her as sort of ruined. Her reputation has been taken away from her. I don't see a good outcome for her company. I see a -- I see a conviction or a plea. I see a little bit of jail time.
And I think it's a tragedy for women in business really. I think that Martha Stewart's case has a sort of subliminal effect on the opportunities of women in business, the same as Jayson Blair's might have on young African-American journalists.
BROWN: Do you really -- come on.
WINANS: Absolutely.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: ... there are in American business today, arguably pressed not as many as there should be. But there are lots of women who have high-profile jobs, certainly as few as high profile as Ms. Stewart. But you think that women generally will be hurt by her stock deal, whatever she did or didn't do?
WINANS: I think that it's very difficult for women to succeed in a lot of different areas in our culture because of lots of different glass ceilings. And I think when a very visible well-known woman who did it on her own and mostly by herself fails, it hurts all women.
I'm not saying that that's a major issue this case. It's just an observation.
BROWN: But you have some sympathy for her? Do you think they should let her walk?
WINANS: Well, I don't think she should go to jail. My sentence for Martha Stewart would be an orange jump suit that says "I trashed my company and all I got was this lousy jump suit." An inmate in the back. And have her work in a soup kitchen.
BROWN: Going back about to where we began, which is if she were nobody, would they go after her at all. If she broke the law, if that's in fact what happened, whether her name is Martha Stewart or mud, why not go after her? Why make the argument they shouldn't go after her?
WINANS: I am not saying they shouldn't go after her. I'm saying that they -- if I were looking at this fairly I would say, let's make a deal. Let's give her a little bit of dignity, let's show the world -- look at this woman has been vilified -- it's not surprised by the way that this case didn't come out during the Iraq war, for example, when it wouldn't have been noticed. It's all about demonstrating that the cop is on the beat and Martha Stewart is the flavor of the month.
BROWN: It's nice to see you. The program is full of cynicism tonight, though, I must say. Thank you.
WINANS: So is the world.
BROWN: I guess so. We all had our full dose of cynicism today. It's nice to have you with us again.
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT the long-awaited Hillary Clinton book is out. I rest my case. She describes her husband's admission of his relationship with a certain intern. A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Well, it's probably the most anticipated book of the year. Senator Hillary Clinton's book, "Living History," hits the book stores next Monday. It's already leaking out, and promises to be an interesting read.
In a copy obtained by the Associated Press, the former first lady describes dealing with Monica Lewinsky scandal and how her husband revealed the details of it to her. Senator Clinton writes until august 1998 she believed her husband was being railroaded but just before the president was to testify to the grand jury, he told her, quote. "He now realized he would have to testify that there had been an inappropriate intimacy. "
Senator Clintons she was quote, dumbfounded, heart broken and outraged by that admission. She write, I could hardly breathe, gulping for air, I started crying and yells at him, "What do you mean? What are you saying? Why did you lie to me? I was furious of getting more so by the second," she writes. "He took stood there saying over and over again, I am sorry, I am sorry. I was trying to protect you and Chelsea." She goes on to say that her toughest decision was to stay with Mr. Clinton and that shortly after they all went to vacation together at Martha's Vineyard's but the Buddy dog was the only member of the family who wanted the president along.
Simon and Schuster has printed a million copies of the book. That is an extraordinarily large number of hard copy books to sell. Mrs. Clinton has been given an $8 million advance. The book is out Monday.
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, "Segment 7." Goes to Saddam's home town where there are still plenty of people proud that the local boy made good. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: There is an odd thing about human nature, if some larger than life figure are even a disreputable one hails from our home town, we tend to boast about it, feel a kind of (UNINTELLIGIBLE). This is true even in Iraq, and even when that guy is a deposed tyrant. CNN's Ben Wedeman tonight from Tikrit.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Saddam Hussein's legacy is brushed over. Under American guard and American orders, a worker covers up a mural depicting Saddam leading his army to battle. The Americans had to take the initiative in Tikrit, the banished dictator is a hero to many, the local boy who rose from poverty to the pinnacle of wealth and power. Just how wealthy and powerful is clear from the dozens of pleasure houses he ordered built for himself in this once impoverished and neglected bend of the Tigris River. Newcomers have moved into those new imposing buildings. Putting their particular stamp on the premises. One of Saddam's indoor swimming pools now being readied for American soldiers eager to cool off during Tikrit's blistering summer.
(on camera): Saddam's opulence and extravagance shock many Iraqis, but in this part of the country, feelings are much more ambiguous. Among many people here loyalty to the old leader lingers on.
(voice-over): That loyalty is apparent on the walls of his birthplace, Alga (ph) just south of Tikrit. Many of Saddam's relatives from Algae occupied senior positions, in intelligence, the army and the Ba'ath party. Ali Neda Hussein (ph) describes himself as Saddam Hussein's cousin. The precise nature of his relationship to Saddam is unclear. But he is a close relative.
Saddam Hussein is a hero he told me. Since his childhood he was a hero and brave. History will judge him fairly. He didn't betray his country. In his relative's eyes, he did no wrong. The Iraqi people don't hate Saddam, he said. They hate those who were around here. Saddam didn't hurt anyone. Saddam didn't destroy anyone. By day, Tikrit is peaceful enough, but when the sun sets American soldiers say, the shooting begins.
MAJOR JOSSLYN ABERLE, U.S. ARMY: Feelings are much different when the United States and the United States coalition forces rolled in, the people of Tikrit basically lost, their lifestyle as they knew it. Everything changed for them.
WEDEMAN: In Tikrit, nostalgia for Saddam combined with anger over the disorder that has accompanied America's new order.
It's ridiculous, according to this man. There's no safety. Before we were secure. Now, nothing makes sense. Everyone is confused. Saddam's legacy may be tattered but here it's still intact. Ben Wedeman, CNN, Tikrit, central Iraq.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: That's NEWSNIGHT for this hour, but still 30 big minutes to go, including these stories. The accused terrorist who wants to use another accused terrorist a character witness. And in Arizona, the of the Bishop and the plan to prevent abuse by priest imposed by civil authorities. That and a look at morning papers too. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Few people would argue that the American justice system is efficient, or that it makes life easy for the prosecution. Efficiency is not the point, justice is, and under normal circumstances, basic justice dictates the defense has the right to call whomever it chooses as a witness. But these, of course, aren't normal times, and the so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, is hardly a normal case. The government has objected to the defense calling or even questioning a witness who also happens to be an important member of al Qaeda. The question now is before an appeals court. If the decision goes against the government, the government still has an option of trying Moussaoui before a military tribunal, but the desire is very much for a public trial, so the government today made the best argument it could. Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Lawyers for accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui say the argument is over a basic constitutional right.
FRANK DUNHAM, MOUSSAOUI ATTORNEY: In a death penalty case, the defendant really ought to have the right to present witnesses on his own behalf. That's the argument in a nutshell.
ARENA: The Justice Department is trying to block a trial court ruling requiring the government to allow Moussaoui to question a top al Qaeda captive in U.S. custody overseas.
Moussaoui believes this man, Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged coordinator of the 9/11 attack, can clear him of any involvement.
But Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff (ph) argued in court if the government is forced to interrupt his interrogation, the "damage to the United States would be immediate and irreparable."
In response, Moussaoui's attorney, Frank Dunham, told the court, "Declaring a witness unavailable who was alive in kicking in their custody should not be a freebie."
FRANK DUNHAM, MOUSSAOUI ATTORNEY: And my view is, is, that if you can't have the witness, the case should be dismissed.
ARENA: It was revealed in court that Attorney General John Ashcroft said in an affidavit the government will not produce Binalshibh. Chertoff said the constitutional right to call witnesses in your defense does not extend to "noncitizens outside the United States."
And even if it did, he said, the judiciary branch has no place telling the executive branch what decisions to make in a war.
(on camera): The choice is akin to blackmail, Chertoff said. The government must sacrifice its ability to defend the country or renounce its ability to prosecute terrorists. Moussaoui's lawyers concede it is a tough choice, but one that the government might just have to make.
Kelli Arena, CNN, Richmond, Virginia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: One other development to tell you about in the war on terror tonight. In Detroit today, a federal jury convicted three members of what prosecutors call a terrorist sleeper cell. Two were convicted of conspiring to support terrorism, one of conspiracy to falsifying documents.
They face jail time ranging from five to 40 years. Prosecutors say the men were associates of an Algerian terror group that received financial support from al Qaeda. A fourth man who was on trial was acquitted.
Arizona prosecutor is saying tonight that he may bring criminal charges after all against Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas O'Brien of Phoenix unless the bishop fully implements an agreement he signed promising to revamp the way his diocese handles cases of alleged sex abuse by priests.
The agreement was supposed to bring Bishop O'Brien immunity from prosecution, but things seem to have gone wrong, quickly.
Here's CNN's Charles Feldman.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHARLES FELDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If a statement by the bishop of Phoenix was supposed to begin a period of healing for his flock of more than 400,000, so far that is not proving to be the case.
Bishop Thomas O'Brien, who has been the bishop of Phoenix since 1981, had signed an agreement with an Arizona prosecutor acknowledging, and we quote, "that I allowed Roman Catholic priests under my supervision to work with minors after becoming aware of allegations of sexual misconduct."
RICHARD ROMLEY, PHOENIX COUNTY ATTORNEY: I don't believe I've ever seen a statement acknowledging covering up the misconduct by a bishop as strongly as this one.
FELDMAN: But the bishop, in interviews with local TV stations, seemed to backtrack considerably.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BISHOP THOMAS O'BRIEN, DIOCESE OF PHOENIX: To describe this as a coverup, I think, is wrong, because that's not in my conscience, that's not in my heart. I do not believe there was a coverup.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FELDMAN: To the prosecutor, the bishop's words sound like defiance.
ROMLEY: I have let the bishop know in a variety of ways that I expect this agreement to be followed 100 percent. And if he does not, I'm snore than willing to go back to court and have this agreement nullified. And I will then be free to bring criminal charges against the bishop.
FELDMAN: The bishop's office told CNN he was too busy to be interviewed by us.
Among other things, the agreement calls for the appointment of a special independent advocate who will review allegations of sexual abuse.
Among parishioners, there is a sense of sadness mixed with compassion.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What was done was wrong, as far as the priests hurting children. I'm not for that, of course. But I do not judge bishop, because it is not my place to judge him.
FELDMAN: A grand jury probe that lasted a year has led to the indictment of six priests in Phoenix on charges of sexually abusing children. The question now is that if the bishop drags his heels, will he be indicted as well?
Charles Feldman, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Talk some more about things where -- where things stand with the Catholic Church in America. Nearly a year after the forums that were talked about in Dallas, we're joined in Minneapolis tonight by Professor Patrick Schiltz, the University of St. Thomas School of Law. The professor has advised and defended hundreds of religious organizations over the years, literally all over the country.
Good to have you with us.
PROF. PATRICK SCHILTZ, UNIVERSITY OF ST. THOMAS SCHOOL OF LAW: Thank you.
BROWN: Anything that's going on in this -- let's talk about Phoenix first before we broaden this out a bit. Anything that's going on there, where you have essentially the district attorney writing, at least appears to me, writing church policy, make you feel uncomfortable, a little squeamish?
SCHILTZ: Well, yes, I mean, the whole thing makes me feel squeamish, what the bishop did in the last two years makes me squeamish, what the prosecutor did here. Mostly I feel bad for the people of Phoenix.
I mean, what happened here is, you had a prosecutor and a bishop sit at a table and cut a deal, where the prosecutor got what he wanted, which was a press conference and good publicity, and whatever. The bishop got what he wanted, which was immunity. And the people of Phoenix were stuck with a $700,000 bill, which the people in the pews have to pay.
They weren't represented at that table. They didn't do anything wrong. They, in fact, were put at risk by the bishop's conduct, and now they're left to foot the bill for this. I really think it's a sad moment.
BROWN: Well, that's -- but, in fact, that's what's happened, what, I mean, it's what's happened in L.A., where they've paid millions of dollars in settlements and they're having to sell property and close schools and the rest.
SCHILTZ: Yes, but Aaron, the difference between what happened in L.A. and this is, in L.A. they're closing schools to pay money to compensate victims who were harmed by abuse. This is paying money to the state. Four hundred thousands of this goes to the state to essentially buy the bishop out of a prosecution for his own misconduct.
That seems to me a very different thing.
BROWN: I would agree.
Has the, has in, has in fact things changed? Have things changed in the way these cases are handled around the country? Is there uniformity in the way they're handled? Are oversight boards working? Has anything significantly changed?
SCHILTZ: Yes. I -- you know, the great lost story here, and it gets further buried every time somebody like this bishop in Phoenix does something like this, is that the vast majority of dioceses have pretty much eradicated clergy sexual misconduct from the Roman Catholic Church.
There are very, very few reports of recent abuse, meaning in the last three, five, seven years. And by and large, the reforms that really began in the late '80s and early '90s have worked, and worked very well.
That's a great story. But unfortunately it gets lost every time something like this happens.
BROWN: How did they do it? What were the significant steps that were taken?
SCHILTZ: Well, it has to be said, the first thing that happened is, they got sued, and sued a lot. And...
BROWN: Yes. SCHILTZ: ... even though I represent churches, I would be the first to credit the plaintiffs' bar for bringing this to the attention of bishops in a way they couldn't ignore.
Well, one of the things that happened is, lots of priests got taken out of the ministry. When you take people like John Gagen and Paul Shanley and James Porter out of ministry, there's less abuse going on.
Another thing that happened is, there's much more lay participation, independent participation in the process. It isn't just done in the bishop's office.
And there's also been -- you know, I don't mean to excuse the bishops, but the kind of mistakes, especially, that were made in the '70s and '80s were made throughout society and reflected a misunderstanding of the perniciousness of sexual addiction and sexual abuse. And part of it is society just woke up.
BROWN: Do you think, just in the half-minute we have, that it could not happen again the way it happened before?
SCHILTZ: NO, it can't happen again. And I could give you several reasons. But the one I would cite is, one reason a lot of these priests could get away with this as long as they did is, people, people in the pews, parents of victims, just couldn't believe that a priest would do this, and they wouldn't come forward and report it.
No one's laboring under that illusion any more.
BROWN: Professor, good to talk to you. Thank you very much.
SCHILTZ: Thanks, Aaron.
BROWN: Thank you.
On to other business tonight. There are stories that play as high drama long before Hollywood gets ahold of them. This one is equal parts "On the Waterfront," Cain and Abel, and a folk song, a sad one.
It revolves around a couple of central characters, political power broker is one, and his brother. His brother is a fugitive gangster wanted for murder. The stakes couldn't be higher for both.
In the coming weeks, one of the brothers will be asked to save what's left of his good name by betraying the other -- "On the Waterfront," yes. But in Boston, not Brooklyn.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
THOMAS REILLY, ATTORNEY GENERAL, MASSACHUSETTS: There are choices in life that we all have to make, and those choices can sometimes be very, very difficult.
BROWN (voice-over): The choices Attorney General Thomas Reilly means are the ones he says that this man, William Bulger, the president of the University of Massachusetts, now has to make.
REILLY: And I can't imagine a more difficult situation than when your brother is accused of killing up to 19 people and essentially being accused of being a mass murderer.
BROWN: The attorney general believes that William Bulger, a long-time Democratic power broker in the state, has refused to provide meaningful help to authorities who would like to find his brother, James "Whitey" Bulger, a long-time federal fugitive accused of many murders.
WILLIAM BULGER, PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS: Mr. Reilly is profoundly wrong when he suggests that I have ever taken steps that were at odds with my political and my public responsibilities.
BROWN: The university president has agreed to testify about his brother before a committee of Congress under a grant of immunity. But the remarks by the attorney general mean that the top two elected officials in the state, Mitt Romney, the governor, a Republican, and Democrat Reilly, believe it's time for Bulger to go.
J.M LAWRENCE, REPORTER, "THE BOSTON HERALD": That means that the winds have changed, and the decades of the good brother and the bad brother are started to shift towards maybe the good brother isn't as good as we thought.
BROWN: Whitey Bulger has been on the FBI's 10 most wanted list for years. And for years, he was actually an informer for the FBI as well. Part of the indictments against him allege he was protected against arrest and imprisonment despite a string of murders officials say he either committed or knew about.
He telephoned his brother, William, at least once. That was in 1995.
BULGER: It was brief. It was a discussion of some legal aspects. And also his assurance that he was quite well.
BROWN: But William Bulger, then the president of the Massachusetts State Senate, never told authorities of that phone call. And the drama continues.
LAWRENCE: It's the longest-running saga in Boston in a lot of ways, and I don't think it truly ends until we know what happened to James "Whitey" Bulger, and that's the multimillion-dollar question. And without that fact, we won't really know.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Seems our crime and punishment half-hour tonight.
As NEWSNIGHT continues, the man who grew pot, and the jurors who say they should not have found him guilty.
We'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: By the end of the day tomorrow, it is at least possible, and perhaps even likely, that Ed Rosenthal will be placed in handcuffs and hauled off to federal prison. If that happens, he'll become a poster boy in a battle between the state of California and the federal government.
For a while there is no question that Mr. Rosenthal broke federal law, there's also no question he was acting in support of the laws of the state.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ed, we love you, we support you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ed, we love you, we support you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ed, we love you, we support you.
BROWN: Ed Rosenthal is the perfect example of the confused state of affairs where medical marijuana is concerned. There is no question he grew pot and sold it and was convicted of both in federal court.
What jurors didn't know is that the man presented to them as just another pot grower/drug dealer was working with Oakland city officials to provide marijuana to the sick, which is perfectly legal in the state of California.
ED ROSENTHAL, MEDICAL MARIJUANA ADVOCATE: It's a terrible situation when a citizen conducting business, being told that what he's doing is legal, is then arrested for it. It can happen to anybody.
BROWN: But the judge never allowed jurors to know all of the facts, which has left several of them feeling misled.
CHARLES SACKETT, FORMER JUROR: I ask myself how I could have allowed myself to juror in such a case where the outcome was so deliberately stacked against state right and patient rights from the beginning.
MARNEY CRAIG, JUROR: We were sent into the jury room with half the evidence and expected to come up with a fair and just verdict.
BROWN: Rosenthal faces five to 85 years in prison. Seven jurors and two alternates told the judge they oppose any prison time at all for Rosenthal. They plan to attend tomorrow's hearing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: We're joined now in San Francisco by two of the jurors in the Rosenthal case. Charles Sackett, who you heard from earlier in the piece, and Pam Klarkowski, who was on the jury as well.
Good to see you both. Thank you. Mr. Sackett, let's start with you. It's not quite accurate to say, is it, that you knew absolutely nothing of the circumstances?
SACKETT: I had a gut feeling during the trial that we were missing some of the evidence and testimony, mainly because every day, the courtroom was packed with people, many of them obviously ill, patients, some of them in wheelchairs. And every time that the defense tried to address the idea of medical marijuana, the judge would deny that being brought into evidence and testimony.
BROWN: Just before I go to Pam, let me just follow this up. So in the end, is it that you didn't know, or that you were bound by the instructions of the court?
SACKETT: I wasn't sure if this was a case regarding medical marijuana or not. And therefore, what I was sure is that this was a case involving marijuana. And I knew that this guy was growing marijuana, and it was presented to me that he was just another drug kingpin.
It wasn't until I walked out of the jury deliberation room after convicting Mr. Rosenthal that a reporter came up to me and asked me, Do you realize that you just sent a man to prison for the rest of his life? No. Do you realize that you just overturned the California medical marijuana law? No.
Do you realize that this man was deputized by the city of Oakland, under the auspices of the state of California and the county of Alameda, to legally grow medical marijuana?
BROWN: Ms. Klarkowski, first of all, did you have any inkling at all, either from the questions that were overruled from the bench or what was going on in the courtroom, that this was something other than your routine drug case? And add to that, was there no discussion in the jury room during the deliberations that this might be something other than what it seemed?
PAM KLARKOWSKI, FORMER JUROR: It was brought forth, and I really felt that it was pretty clear that there was something about medical marijuana. The problem was, is as you... as mentioned before, we were bound, really, by the law, that we could not use that information and take that into consideration for the verdict.
As far as talking about it in deliberations, we were real -- there were some questions, there were some questions about what it was really -- what it was that they were actually trying to get at. But it was pretty darn clear that we couldn't use the medical marijuana issue as a part of our evaluation of this.
And the evidence that was presented to us was in such a tidy package from the prosecution, that in some -- in most ways, it really allowed us only to go in that direction, to find him guilty, when we take that evidence and weigh it against the federal law...
BROWN: Right.
KLARKOWSKI: ... whether we agreed with it or not, which we had problems with it, because...
BROWN: Well, the, the...
KLARKOWSKI: ... of the state of California.
BROWN: Right. The fact is -- I mean, here is -- I'm not telling you anything you don't know here. Here's the essential problem. Under federal law, he is guilty.
KLARKOWSKI: That's...
BROWN: You found him so.
KLARKOWSKI: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- yes, we did. And we were following the instructions carefully. But we were asked to take that information, which wasn't all of the information, and come up with a verdict. And so we felt that we were in many ways, at least I felt...
BROWN: Yes.
KLARKOWSKI: ... that I was being denied and being compromised, my rights as a citizen, and as a juror to make an educated decision.
BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
SACKETT: This should have been a Supreme Court case. The judge decided to deny the evidence regarding states' rights, medical marijuana patients' and doctors' rights, because it was a federal case, and only federal law applied.
BROWN: Right. Let me, let me ask the question this way, just to kind of clarify the point. Let's say that you knew everything. You knew that the city of Oakland was involved, and you knew that Mr. Rosenthal was, exactly what he was doing, the circumstances under which he was doing it, and the state law that protected him from doing it.
You knew all that, but the judge said, The fact that you know it is irrelevant because still under federal law it's illegal, and if you find that he broke federal law you have to convict him. Would you have convicted him then?
KLARKOWSKI: I think in that situation, having known all the evidence -- what we know now, had we known it then, there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that I wouldn't have been able to convict him.
BROWN: And Mr. Sackett, how about you? Would you have essentially nullified federal law and acquitted him?
SACKETT: That is certainly a possibility that we were never able to look at, because of the court's direction to us as a jury. And we could only find...
BROWN: Yes.
SACKETT: ... Mr. Rosenthal guilty. And that's where my problem is, that...
BROWN: I understand. I'm -- I'm sorry, I know that you'll be there at the sentencing tomorrow, and we will too, so we'll see how that goes.
Thank you both for your time. And I think we're all glad we're not in your situation.
SACKETT: Thank you.
BROWN: Thank you.
Next on NEWSNIGHT, morning papers. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: OK, time -- you know what I said yesterday? I said, Okey-dokey. Time to check -- man, that embarrassed me. Time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world.
We'll begin with "USA Today," for all of those, all of those of you who are traveling. Be a long segment at this rate, isn't it, ladies and gentlemen?
Down at the bottom here, guys, "Rudolph Ate Acorns, Lizards, and Game." This is Eric Rudolph. I don't know if that was a normal meal for him -- I'd like some acorns, lizards, and game -- or if that was just one day.
And then there's a little boxed story here, "Never Eat Meat Raw, Survivalist Scoffs at Rudolph." I guess this is one of those news- you-can-use stories, if you're ever on the lam and you have to -- well, perhaps "lam" was not a good choice of words there.
In Chicago, the "Sun Times," "Say It Ain't So-Somalia, Sammy Caught Cheating with Cork Bat, Ejected From Game." Oh, my! I can't believe that! Sammy Sosa using a cork bat, can you imagine cheating in baseball? Big front-page story in tomorrow's "Sun Times." By the way, "Monotony" is the weather word, nice job, up there.
The -- we were talking about this just a moment ago, "The Oregonian," the paper of Portland, Oregon, "Bill Would Strip States of Cash to Fight Drugs." States that have passed medical marijuana laws, the citizens of those states that have passed medical marijuana laws, are -- may lose, under a Republican-sponsored House bill, $11 million in drug money to fight drugs, other forms of illegal drugs.
Do I get one more in? How much time? Fifteen? Well, let's just stop. I can't do it justice. We'll just stop there.
We're all back tomorrow. We hope you are too, 10:00 Eastern time. Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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War; Rudolph Makes Court Appearance>
