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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Ashcroft wants Patriot Act expanded
Aired June 05, 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.
We are, we think, distanced enough from the tragedy of 9/11 to have a serious discussion about the conflict between protecting the country and protecting all that the country stands for, a loaded way of saying we'll look tonight at the attorney general's spirited defense of the Patriot Act and the methods used to stop another terrorist attack in the United States.
The attorney general not only defended the law today, he called for its expansion, so we'll look at that tonight at the top. The attorney general before Congress begins the whip. CNN's Kelli Arena starts us off, Kelli a headline from you please.
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the attorney general says the Patriot Act has several weaknesses which terrorists could exploit and he's asking for new powers, this while Congress pushed him to defend the powers that he already has.
BROWN: Kelli thank you, back to you at the top tonight.
Iraq next, another day of violence aimed at Americans there. CNN's Jane Arraf has the watch this morning in Baghdad, Jane a headline from you please.
JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the U.S. poured thousands of troops into the town of Fallujah but it seems to be breeding even more resentment among local people.
BROWN: Jane, thank you.
Rhode Island now and the lessons learned from a nightclub fire that took 100 lives, Jamie Colby there for us, Jamie your headline.
JAMIE COLBY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, just hours ago a legislative panel charged with investigating that blaze announced sweeping upgrades to the state's fire code they say will make Rhode Island the safest state in the nation -- Aaron.
BROWN: Jamie, thank you.
And now, New York, and at the end of a sunny day except at a building just a block off Times Square, CNN's Jason Carroll with the story of "The New York Times," Jason a headline.
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And morale at the paper is at an all time low, its credibility on the line, now two of its top editors have resigned. The question is will that be enough to restore confidence and get the paper back on track -- Aaron.
BROWN: Thank you very much Jason, back to you and the rest shortly.
Also tonight, we'll talk with Senator John McCain of Arizona as he and his colleagues get ready to hold hearings on Iraq and those weapons of mass destruction. We'll also talk to him about the storm over the FCC's vote on Monday.
More as well tonight on Martha Stewart, she fired back today at her accusers. We'll update you on the story and talk more about the fallout with an author who believes that when one successful woman falls it gets harder for any woman to succeed.
And, if you're looking for a fairy tale, we've got just the horse, just a mile and a half away from the happiest of endings but already one for the books, the story of Funny Cide tonight, all that and more coming up.
We begin with the Patriot Act which, depending on who you ask, is either keeping the country safe from terrorism or destroying American freedom in order to save it. There's precious little agreement since it passed and now with the question of the original still utterly unresolved a new debate is being joined over expanding it, reporting for us tonight CNN's Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ARENA (voice-over): The attorney general held up a copy of an al Qaeda declaration of war against America as he asked lawmakers to expand the Patriot Act.
JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Unfortunately the law has several weaknesses which terrorists could exploit undermining our defenses.
ARENA: Congress passed the act one month after the September 11 attacks and, as a result, federal agents can more easily access records, obtain wiretaps, and conduct searches.
ASHCROFT: The Patriot Act gave us the tools we needed to integrate our law enforcement and intelligence capabilities to win the war on terror.
ARENA: But lawmakers, citing a new report sharply critical of how the Justice Department treated illegal aliens detained in the 9/11 investigation, pressed Ashcroft on whether rights are being violated in the name of national security.
REP. MAXINE WATERS (D), CALIFORNIA: Isn't it a fact that after you rounded up these individuals you found that they had no involvement with terrorist activity?
ASHCROFT: In all of the conduct of the activities of the Justice Department, we have not violated the law and we will not violate the law. We will uphold the law.
ARENA: Concerns over the detention policy helped fuel the continuing debate over how the Patriot Act is being implemented. Many of the provisions of the act expire in 2005, and Congress must act to extend them or make them permanent.
The attorney general urged Congress to do that and more. Ashcroft wants to ensure that individuals who train with a terrorist organization can be more easily charged with a crime. He asked for new authority to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely before trials and to let him seek the death penalty or life imprisonment for any terrorist act which kills Americans.
LAURA MURPHY, ACLU: Before the Congress gives the Justice Department new powers, the Justice Department needs to justify what it has done with the powers that Congress gave them in October of 2001.
ARENA: But the attorney general says the new powers have already resulted in concrete success, the arrest and prosecution of suspected terrorists and not a single attack on U.S. soil.
Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: But as Kelli reported there is plenty of skepticism out there, and a bit later on in the program we'll hear from one of the skeptics, joining us then, Bob Barr the former Republican Congressman from the state of Georgia.
To other matters first, President Bush has arrived home now, did a short time ago. Instead of the movie that we get when we fly, he got an aerial tour of Baghdad. With a quartet of F-18s from the USS Nimitz keeping watch, Air Force One circled the Iraqi capital.
According to his press secretary Ari Fleischer no thought was given to landing. Mr. Fleischer didn't explain why. He did say that cutting across Iraq shortened the flight enough to make it nonstop which we expect came as a welcome surprise. It's been quite a week for the president.
Here's our Senior White House Correspondent John King.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The final stop was a pep rally, the commander-in-chief thanking the troops and dismissing those who say there was no reason to go to war to begin with.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime because the Iraqi regime is no more.
KING: Mr. Bush faces scrutiny in Congress from some Democrats who question whether the administration exaggerated the extent of Iraq's weapons programs and Parliament is putting even more heat on the British Prime Minister Tony Blair. But as he visited the U.S. military command post in Qatar, Mr. Bush was anything but apologetic.
BUSH: This is a man who spent decades hiding tools of mass murder. We're going to look. We'll reveal the truth.
KING: U.S. public support for the war remains high and administration officials say they see no political damage from the fact that no banned weapons have been discovered so far.
The Iraq war was an issue at every stop of a weeklong trip that included fence mending with Russia and another prominent war opponent, France. Mr. Bush sees the war as part of an ongoing evolution in the Middle East and was upbeat about the post-war transition despite festering complaints.
BUSH: Day by day the United States and our coalition partners are making the streets safer for the Iraqi citizens.
KING: U.S. troops are leaving Saudi Arabia but are welcome here in Qatar and Mr. Bush called on Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Alfani (ph) to say thanks. The new Israeli-Palestinian peace effort is the most dramatic change and, as he heads home, the president says he is optimistic his hands-on diplomacy will quickly bring progress.
(on camera): The president used an old cowboy term to describe his personal role in the peacemaking in the days ahead saying he will not hesitate to pick up the phone and "ride herd" if either the Israelis or the Palestinians are slow in keeping their new commitments.
John King CNN Doha, Qatar.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: From the distance in Qatar or from Air Force One high above Baghdad, the president saw nothing of what American soldiers are seeing every day on the ground in Iraq, progress in spots to be sure but deep trouble elsewhere, a good deal of trouble in the town of Fallujah.
A little more than a week ago, two U.S. soldiers were killed there at an ambush. Yesterday, more than 1,000 troops went into Fallujah to deal with the rebels and today one of them died trying.
So we go back to CNN's Jane Arraf who has the story from Baghdad -- Jane.
ARRAF: Aaron, soldiers in Fallujah are having a particularly tough time, though the U.S. military is pouring several thousand troops into that city about 35 miles west of Baghdad. In fact, they've sent in the 3rd Infantry Division.
Now these were the people who were first into Baghdad. They thought they were going home but they're not. They've been sent into the city to try to quell that violence. Now what seems to have happened early this morning was that a rocket-propelled grenade was thrown at a group of soldiers as they were passing by an abandoned police station that had been looted and gutted.
We arrived there and what people told us was essentially that they just did not like the way that the U.S. was acting and they didn't want troops in their town. Now, in these cases it doesn't really matter what the facts are.
It matters what people believe and what a lot of people in that town, a very conservative town, believe is that soldiers have been going house-to-house, going into houses, being rude to the women, in some cases making inappropriate comments to the women, staying on the roofs with night vision goggles and basically they say they just don't want them in the town.
It's a huge problem, Aaron, and it doesn't seem from the mood there today that it's going to get better any time soon.
BROWN: A couple of questions. Are these rebels we're calling them are they Ba'athist, are they loyalists of Saddam?
ARRAF: That's a really interesting question and perhaps the most important one. One person said to me in Fallujah this afternoon that it's a mistake to think that these are Ba'athist, that this is coordinated. He said all of us want the U.S. out, and certainly that's an overstatement.
There must be some people in that town of half a million who don't want the U.S. soldiers out but there is a significant body of opinion there that feels completely disaffected and this perhaps is one of the dangers of the war and one of the dangers of this occupation that it's left a large percentage of people who had a huge stake in the previous regime behind even if they're not Ba'athist.
This was a conservative town and a lot of people depended on the government and depended on the Ba'ath Party and it is now a Sunni enclave surrounded by Shias and everywhere they look in their minds they see the Shias getting power, the Kurds getting power, and nothing left for them. And it's far more than a military problem but there are just no answers right now -- Aaron.
BROWN: And does there seem to be leadership or organization or is it just a disaffected group over here and another disaffected group over there or is somebody pulling the strings?
ARRAF: It's a little bit of both. I mean there is certainly a leadership that was in place. It's quite a tribal area and that leadership still exists. They will be in place no matter what. This goes back centuries and far predates Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party.
But in another sense it just seems to be a growing resentment against the fact that a system that had done pretty good by them, by many of them, has been removed and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that will be put in its place. It's been made very clear to Iraqis that the Ba'ath Party is dead and that those who are involved with the Ba'ath Party will not be coming back.
Now, the other thing we heard is the refrain that we hear all over the country that they have no jobs. They have no money. There are shortages of basic things like cooking fuel and gasoline and certainly something has to be done about that before things start to get even a little better, but right now that city seems to be quite a dangerous place for those U.S. soldiers -- Aaron.
BROWN: Jane, thank you, Jane Arraf in Baghdad tonight.
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT on a Thursday from New York City, heads roll at "The New York Times" in the wake of the scandal over a rogue reporter.
And, a report out tonight calls for new rules to prevent fires like the one in Rhode Island that killed 100.
This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
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BROWN: It isn't exactly odd for an embarrassing news report to lead to someone's downfall. Almost always, though, the downfall is of the figure being written about not the one doing the writing or the one supervising the ones doing the writing.
But that's what happened today at "The New York Times" in a chain of events that began with the unmasking of a young star reporter is really more of a fiction writer. Two top men are out and the institution sometimes called the Good Gray Lady is blushing.
Here's CNN's Jason Carroll.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): One "New York Times" staffer called it the worst day in the paper's 150 year history, the two top editors at "The Times" resigned, executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd.
The paper's publisher, issued a statement saying: "Howell and Gerald have tendered their resignations and I have accepted them with sadness based on what we believe is best for 'The Times'."
Reporter Deborah Sontag said she too was sad but also hopeful.
DEBORAH SONTAG, REPORTER, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": I hope that we will come out of it, you know, reexamining some of the ways in which we've done business for many years now and growing from it.
CARROLL: But "Times" art director, Jerelle Kraus could barely contain her excitement and contempt for Raines, an editor criticized by staff for being arrogant and inaccessible.
JERELLE KRAUS, ART DIRECTOR, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Everybody was afraid and he was the nastiest editor I've ever worked with.
CARROLL: Raines was disliked by many staff after setting up a star system that they said favored a few at the expense of many others. Raines and Boyd stepped down after the paper found one of Raines' youngest stars, Jayson Blair, was responsible for dozens of infractions including plagiarism and lying, much of which was missed by management.
On Mother's Day, the paper printed a four-page article detailing Blair's deceptions. Morale at the paper plummeted. Then, weeks later, Pulitzer Prize winning writer Rick Bragg (ph) resigned after conceding a story with his byline had been reported mostly by a freelancer, former "Times" staffer and author Alex Jones says Raines and Boyd simply lost the staff support.
ALEX JONES, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: I think that the problem was that they didn't have enough in the bank with the staff. They had lost the confidence of the staff apparently and I think that when that happens in an institution like "The New York Times" that's something that you can't find a way around.
CARROLL: Joe Lelyveld, who was top editor for seven years before retiring, was named interim executive editor. He's respected by staff but his temporary appointment won't solve the paper's larger problem.
LENA WILLIAMS, NEWSPAPER GUILD OF NEW YORK: Joe is an interim. It's a Band-aid. We still don't know who our next executive editor and who our managing editor is going to be and until we have that resolved there's going to be some anxiety, some not discomfort, but we just don't know where we're going to go.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CARROLL: Obviously a number of people are weighing in on what happened today, including disgraced reporter Jayson Blair. He spoke to a local TV station here in New York City. He said he felt as though he was truly sorry for his actions. He also said he felt as though he was on a path of destruction and he never meant to hurt anyone, not his family, not his colleagues -- Aaron.
BROWN: Jason, thank you very much, Jason Carroll.
Tell the truth now, some of you are beginning this "Times" flap matters a lot more to those of us in the news business than it does or should to you.
Tonight, CNN's Jeff Greenfield invites you to think again.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): Okay, let's admit it. There is a fair amount of self absorption and self importance behind the media's fascination with the troubles at "The New York Times." It's not a coincidence that we feel the closing of a newspaper far more deeply than the closing of a factory. But there's a lot more to this unhappy story than the mendacious behavior of one young journalist or of the safeguards that failed at "The Times," or the management style of one executive editor.
(on camera): The reason why this story matters goes to the heart of what journalism is supposed to do in a free, open, politically clamorous society. It is about an old reliable maxim that, while we're all entitled to our own opinions, we are not entitled to our own facts.
(voice-over): We bring all sorts of assumptions and prejudices and values to public debate. We can disagree fundamentally about how to interpret what's happened. Was Reagan a good president? Was Clinton? You pay your money, you take your choice.
But even in the midst of the most contentious of debates, we need a sense that there is some commonly accepted source of facts and for a century nothing has filled that role better than "The New York Times."
For all of its flaws, its fawning coverage of Stalin in the 1930s, its downplaying of the Holocaust, its many foibles and blind spots, "The New York Times" has been the source of choice for just about every American engaged in the public business.
JAY LENO, "THE TONIGHT SHOW": How many read the "New York Inquirer" -- ah, "Times." How many read "The Times"?
GREENFIELD: So, the fact that "The Times" has now become a punch line for late night comedians may please those who believe its news pages came to reflect the assumptions of its editorial page, but in a broader sense it is troubling news for everyone.
In survey after survey, Americans are reflecting a deep sense of skepticism about the media in general that we're not what we say we are, that we're just another powerful institution, that the facts matter less than ratings, circulation, attention, money. And with the travails of this best-known and most prestigious of American media enterprises that skepticism is likely to deepen.
(on camera): And if we travel further down the road where we have no commonly trusted source of information, if every argument simply comes down to who can shout louder, or spin better, or better sweep aside uncomfortable facts, well that doesn't sound like a recipe for a healthy public debate and that, more than the fortunes of any one editor or newspaper, is why this story matters.
Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: We often turn to Alex Jones, who you heard briefly from a few moments ago, with issues like this one. Mr. Jones is the director of the Joan Schorenstein (ph) Center for Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard, co-author of a book about "The Times" called "The Trust," and he joins us again tonight from Boston. Alex, do you think that they were, particularly Mr. Raines, forced out essentially, that the resignations were something less than voluntary?
JONES: I don't know but I can imagine that it was certainly a meeting of minds. I think that it was, you know, a situation that cried out for resolution and a dramatic act and certainly there could not have been a more dramatic act than this one. There has never been anything like this in the history of "The Times."
BROWN: "The Times" is funny as these institutions go because it has been very good over 150 years at keeping its laundry inside the building and not letting it out as it did in this case. Did "The Times" in some respects by the way it handled this almost guarantee the certain ending?
JONES: Well, oddly enough "The New York Times" I think was, you know, exposed the way it was largely because Howell Raines was determined to deal with this straight on and frankly in the best traditions, in my opinion, of good journalism.
He did not try to shield "The Times" or shield himself. He not only issued that enormous study that he didn't have anything to do with, he assigned people to do it and then he stood up in front of a mass meeting and found to I'm sure his horror that he had not the confidence of the staff at "The New York Times" the way he thought I'm sure that he did.
BROWN: Let's talk about Mr. Raines for a second because there's, I think, a somewhat confused portrait here. To me he is an extraordinary news guy. "The Times" coverage which he led after 9/11, will I think -- will be the stuff of journalism history and yet there's obviously this other side to him as a manager, not necessarily a news guy that people were terribly troubled by.
JONES: I think that's a very, very important point, Aaron. He really is. He's a journalist's journalist. There's no man that loves "The New York Times" more. He really felt that this was his destiny to lead "The New York Times," and I think it was. I mean he led "The New York Times" in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, as you say seven Pulitzer Prizes. That also is an unprecedented thing.
He is a very serious journalist and I hope that his journalism career is not ended because he has a lot more to contribute. He has had a problem as a manager and I think in many cases people believed and he believed that he had really sort of solved this problem.
But I think that he apparently must have something of a tone deaf ear when it comes to how his style of editing and style of leadership lands. I don't think he intends it the way it falls but the way it seems to be interpreted and the way it was felt antagonized people and it meant that when the crisis of Jayson Blair came, they really didn't have the goodwill and trust in the bank that would have perhaps seen him through that crisis.
BROWN: How damaged do you think the paper is? JONES: I don't think the paper is damaged at all, frankly. I mean I know that may be a ridiculous thing to say on a night like this but I think that the newspaper as an institution, like Jeff was saying in his piece, you know, it's something with a long history and it's got such an enormous amount of goodwill and trust that I think built up that it will be able to be restored.
I think this dramatic gesture, the symbolism of what happened today, is a sign from the Sulzberger family, from Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., that they will do whatever it takes to restore "The New York Times." I think that the person that they put in as the new executive editor will be a person from within "The Times" family but someone above reproach and someone who will be able to, you know, put the paper internally back together again.
What they still do have to do, however, is convince people like me, who I'm a reader now and they have to convince me that they've learned something important from the Jayson Blair incident and are going to demonstrate to me that they care very much about the accuracy and the, you know, the resolve to be absolutely rigorous in the way they police the accuracy of "The New York Times." That is exactly what the paper's prominence, preeminence, and power is based on.
BROWN: And what will make Alex Jones and all the paper's other skeptics out there believe that?
JONES: Well, I tend to believe it. I worked there too long not to believe in it. I really do believe in it but I think that it will require them to do demonstrative things like make it very clear that they are going to invite corrections and pursue corrections in people who call in or indicate that something is wrong with a story are going to get a very serious airing and they're going to encourage people to let them know about things like that.
I think they may go further and have some sort of an ombudsman. They've never had something like that before. I think that frankly, that one of the things that I wish they would do, and I think this applies to everybody in American journalism, I wish they would have a random, you know, fact check of every reporter's story once a year.
Some reporter, you know, ever reporter have a story picked at random and they go back and talk to the people that the reporter talked to and see how the reporter did the job. I think that would be a kind of quality control that would be perfectly acceptable as far as I'm concerned.
I was a reporter at "The New York Times" for a long time and I think anything that shores up the credibility of the institution and the reporting team is something that the reporters would go for, at least I know that if I were in that situation I would go for it.
BROWN: Do you think it's the front page story in "The Times" tomorrow?
JONES: If it's not above the fold on the front page, I'm a monkey's uncle. BROWN: I think you're right. Always good to talk to you Alex, thank you very much.
JONES: My pleasure.
BROWN: Thank you.
Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the aftermath of a deadly fire, a new report offers proposals for preventing a Rhode Island club fire from happening again.
Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: There are moments you wouldn't wish to relive or even remember except to make sure that they never happen again and for the last three and a half months investigators and regulators in Rhode Island have been revisiting such a moment, looking at what happened one night last winter when a nightclub went up in flames and 100 people died.
Tonight, they came up with a list of changes they hope will make that tragedy the last, reporting for us CNN's Jamie Colby.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HAL PANCIERA, SURVIVED NIGHTCLUB FIRE: Every day I relive looking over that -- looking over that bar and looking at that stage.
JAMIE COLBY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 35-year-old Hal Panciera was out for a night of fun with three friends at the Rhode Island nightclub The Station February 20 when heavy metal group Great White took the stage.
PANCIERA: I caught the pyrotechnics out of the corner of my eye, and I said, "Ooh, what's that?" And then, as soon as I did that, the building started to burn.
COLBY: Within minutes, with no sprinkler system and only one of four exits visible through the blinding smoke, he says, a pileup grew at the front door. Few could escape.
PANCIERA: When the smoke hit me, it was so thick, so black, so toxic, you couldn't breathe or see. And my first instinct was to wait for my friend, to see if I could get my friend out.
COLBY: All of Hal's friends got out alive, though one was burned over 60 percent of his body.
PANCIERA: I heard bottles breaking, people screaming, women screaming, people screaming for their relatives, their boyfriends, their girlfriends, their wives, their husbands, their sisters, their brothers. It was -- it was a nightmare.
COLBY: Returning to the site, now a makeshift memorial, Hal tries to make sense of it all, wondering what, if anything, will come from the tragedy.
PANCIERA: I'm having a difficult time trying to accept the fact that people went out to enjoy an evening of fun and wound up not going home to their family and friends. And that's a hard pill to swallow.
COLBY: Hal and others touched by the tragedy have demanded Rhode Island enact more stringent fire safety laws prohibiting pyrotechnics in a club that small.
After an exhaustive investigation, a state commission has proposed significant upgrades to Rhode Island's fire code.
REP. PETER T. GINAITT, COMMISSION CO-CHAIR: Accomplishing this goal would be one of the appropriate contributes to the victims of the Station night fire of February 20, 2003.
COLBY: The measure calls for limited pyrotechnic displays, mandatory inspections, sprinklers in most large venues and the elimination of grandfather clauses.
GINAITT: Rhode Island must develop a culture of compliance with fire safety practices.
PANCIERA: Club owners, fire inspectors should all look into these facilities with more diligence so that something like this doesn't happen again.
COLBY: Hal has used his experience to teach his two sons about fire safety so they'll never be in danger in the first place.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLBY: Perhaps it was the emotional testimony of those who survived the blaze or the pleas for reform from loved ones of those who didn't. There is such sweeping bipartisan support for the measure, Aaron, that is expected to be fast tracked in the next two weeks. They say, it will get through the house and senate and be on the governor's desk ready for signature -- Aaron.
BROWN: Where, if anywhere is the criminal case here?
COLBY: Well, they are still continuing their investigation, Aaron, and a number of civil lawsuits in addition to any potential criminal penalties.
But you know, the code here dates back to 1968, and hadn't been upgraded. So it's very likely they will find that the club abided by whatever rules, if in fact, you know, they investigate and clear them.
But clearly on the civil charges there were tremendous injuries and 100 people died and those are expected to continue to push for the reform as well as bring money damages.
BROWN: Jamie, thank you very much. Jamie Colby in Rhode Island.
Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, we'll check some of the day's other top stories and later a looking at the group of friends who's four-legged investment could wind up in the record books. A great tale as we continue.
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BROWN: And as NEWSNIGHT continues, the saga of Sosa bats and more continues. So do we after a short break.
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BROWN: Suicide bombings, sadly, aren't limited to the Middle East. An especially deadly one starts out our look at stories making "News Around the World" tonight.
Happened on a bus headed for a Russian air base not far from Chechnya. Reports are a woman boarded the bus and detonated a bomb. At least 16 people died. No one claiming responsibility yet, but suspicion falling on Chechnyan rebels who launch hit and run attacks on Russians almost daily.
Croatia next where that faithful welcomed Pope John Paul II today. This is the pope's 100th foreign trip since becoming pope. Not an easy one for him to make in his condition. He's not as healthy as he once was to be sure. He'll spend the next three days visiting five Croatian cities before heading back to the Vatican.
And no Serena Slam this time around. Serena Williams lost today at a French Open semifinal to a Belgium contender Justine Henin. Largely hostile crowd watching the match at Roland Garros. Crowd cheered Serena's errors, booed when she left the court without saying as much of a word to the woman who beat her.
And some stories making "News Around the Country, now beginning in Chicago where all the rest of Sammy Sosa's bats, 76 of them, have been x-rayed and declared cork-free. I guess this was even more official than it was last night when we told you about it. Anyway, Sammy says he used that cork bat as an accident. He said he just used it for batting practice. it was just one of those mistakes, the kind of thing that can happen.
Mostly fans seem inclined to believe him. At least Chicago fans do. Baseball, we expect, will be a little less tolerant when it finally rules on the matter.
In Washington, a vote in the Senate to restore the $400 per child tax credit to millions of low-income families. The credit was cut out of the tax reduction package enacted last month. A lot of complaints about that. Senate passed the bill handily 94-2. It's future in the House somewhat less certain.
And in Birmingham, Alabama attorney for accused serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph said today he plans to challenge the characterization of his client as a hate-filled, anti-government extremist. Richard Jaffe says he hasn't seen any evidence of anger or extremism in any form or fashion. Ahead on NEWSNIGHT in defense of the Patriot Act. Secretary -- or rather Attorney General Ashcroft goes before Congress and we will have some reaction from a critic in a moment. This is NEWSNIGHT.
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BROWN: We begin tonight talking about the way the justice system deals with those accused or suspected of terrorism, and we'll talk more about that in just a moment.
First, though with some believe is a case in point from Tampa, Florida, Samuel Al-Arian a former college professor in Florida who was arrested in February and charged of being a North America head of a Palestinian group Islamic Jihad. He was told today he will have his day court, only his day in court won't come until January 2005. Lawyers for the three men arrested with him say they need that much time to go over the government's evidence and to prepare their case. Two of the indicted men are out on bond, but Samuel Al-Arian and other defendant are held without bond which is to say they will stay in jail until the trial starts in roughly 18 months.
This conflict over individual liberty and national security is hardly new. President Lincoln dealt with it during the Civil War, FDR did in World War II, and it is often true that decisions made in the heat of a moment, a war or after an attack look pretty good at the time, not so good as time passes. Whether that is true now, we cannot say. Others, however, have thoughts and Mr. Bob Barr is among them. Barr is a former member of Congress, a Republican from the state of Georgia, former prosecutor and about the last person on the planet that you would ever call bleeding heart liberal. He joins us from Atlanta tonight. We are always glad to see him.
Congressman, good evening.
BOB BARR, FORMER CONGRESSMAN (R), GEORGIA: Thank you, Aaron, good to be with you.
BROWN: Let's talk about patriot one before we look as to what Justice Department wants or believes it might need.
Is it, the law itself that you find troubling, or is the application of the law?
BARR: Well, it's actually both of those plus something else altogether. And that is, seem to be part of a head long rush by government, Democrat or Republican administrations alike to simply gather more and more evidence, on more and more people, for less and less reason in the vain hopes this will somehow identify terrorists for us. We see this in many aspects of what the government is doing.
In regard to the Patriot Act in particular, the provisions that we looked at very careful we first considered it a year and a half ago, struck those of us who were voting on it at the time as rather odd, and that is virtually all of its provisions relate not to anti- terrorism, but to general criminal law procedures and changes to substantive criminal law. It's a power grabbed by the government. I would much rather see the government do a better job of enforcing existing powers rather than give it these vast new powers that are being applied, and this is also part of your question, far too broadly.
BROWN: All right, tell me as specifically as you can, if you could take three things out of the law or five things or two, pick a number you're comfortable with. But the things in the law that trouble you the most that the government can now do that it couldn't do before?
BARR: Well, one thing that bothers us is what are called the sneak and peek provisions. Previously under federal law as a matter of rule, as a matter of course, if the government was going to come execute a search warrant on Aaron Brown Enterprises or Bob Barr's home, they would have to give you notice. This would enable you, I, or whoever's premises were being searched, the opportunity to determine if in fact they got the right address, the right person and so forth. They had to give you notice. Then after they searched your premises or your business, they would have to give you an inventory of what they had taken.
This enabled you to exercise your right to challenge whether or not they taken what they were supposed to. It gave you a way to assert the constitutionality of your rights. The Patriot Act takes that away. Now the rule is the government can come in, search your home or your business or my home or my business without giving us notice. We don't know that they'd been there and they're not required to leave an inventory, so we don't know what they have taken. That's very troubling.
Also the whole business of using the lower standard that the government has always and quite properly been time use to gather foreign intelligence now is being used as a subterfuge legally under the Patriot Act, I might say, to gather evidence on U.S. persons, U.S. citizens to be used in criminal proceedings. It's sort of a back doorway of getting around the restrictions that the 4th amendment places on the government against unreasonable searches and seizures.
BROWN: I am curious, this is a total free-bee, do you think if the bill came before Congress today, not a month after 9/11 or two months after 9/11 or three months after 9/11 when, in fact after it was being heard, but came before today that it would pass?
BARR: It would run into a lot more difficult in terms of the ease with which it passed certainly. Many more questions have been and would be raised about it. Congressman Don Young, from Alaska just recently issued a very strong statement, raising as I and others have done, some very serious questions both how broadly the Patriot Act reaches and how even broader than that is being applied.
BROWN: And now, I mean the attorney general today I guess believing that the best defense is a good offense, talked about -- he says the law doesn't go far enough. He wants to expand it. There are there programs in the pentagon that if you are just a teensy bit paranoid person, and I am scare the daylights out of you, do you believe that the basic rules with which the society has operated for more than 200 years are significantly shifting?
BARR: Yes, they are, Aaron, in many ways and you put your finger on one aspect of it right there. Now the government is seeking to get the Department of Defense very heavily involved in gathering evidence, compiling dossier, electronic dossiers that is on American citizens. Gathering evidence on American citizens. This represents a dramatic change of how we have viewed the different responsibilities of government than in the past.
BROWN: Where do you think this -- do you think that Congress will be inclined to extent the Patriot Act as sunsets in 2005 and perhaps add onto it?
BARR: Well there's already...
BROWN: This is a very popular president and he has control of the Congress.
BARR: Well, and I think the administration would be very well advised to listen very carefully to people like Don Young. To legislature such as that and in Alaska that has passed an official act saying, let's take a close look at this. Let's not rush into abiding by the Patriot Act. Hundreds of municipality, local governments across the country have raised similar concerns and these aren't just left wing governments that one might traditionally associate with being concerned about federal government power. These are mainstream communities. And I think if the administration just ignores them, it will be creating a great division in this country between people who do in fact support law enforcement, but have a very healthy concern over the role of the federal government getting far too big.
BROWN: Congressman, thanks for your time tonight. Former Congressman Bob Barr out of Atlanta, Georgia, with us tonight.
Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, "Segment Seven," playing the odds -- the odds on whether some high school friends Upstate New York can hit a one in a million -- at least in one in a million jackpot and win the Triple Crown.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: There are moments in life, if you're lucky, when reality exceeds even your wildest dreams. This is a story of one of those moments which, if all goes according to plan, is about to come it a triumphant finish. It ends this weekend around a short trip around a mile-and-a-half dirt oval just outside the big city. It began in a small town in Upstate New York with six friends, a little cash, and a horse.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): They are high school friends who resisted the urge to leave home, raising their families in the same village now in Upstate New York on the shores of Lake Ontario.
As adults, there of them even on the same street and now firmly embedded in middle age, they are on the ride of their lives.
J. P. CONSTANCE, OPTICIAN/CO-OWNER: There's no question that my life has totally changed.
ANNOUNCER: Funny Cide has won the 129th Kentucky Derby.
BROWN: Changed forever because on a Saturday afternoon in May, the lightly regarded thoroughbred that these high school friends helped buy three years ago won the Kentucky Derby.
And two weeks later, won the Preakness.
And now their horse, Funny Cide, is poised to be the first horse in a quarter of a century to win the Triple Crown -- if Funny Cide can win the Belmont Stakes on Saturday.
MARK PHILLIPS, RETIRED TEACHER/CO-OWNER: Hopefully, we're going to have a trifecta. We're going to fect it. That's a term I learned!
BROWN: All of them admit they knew practically zero about horse racing until another classmate, Jack Knolwton told them about it. He owns the largest piece of horse, with about 20 percent of Funny Cide. His friends have about 4 percent each and four other investors own the remaining 60 percent. Total cost: $75,000.
JACK KNOWLTON, HEALTH CARE CONSULTANT/MAJORITY OWNER: We're not, you know, the people with a lot the money that can go out and do go out and spend hundred of thousands of dollars and million of dollars, people who for generations who have been involved in the sport.
BROWN: Instead the high school buddies from Sackets Harbor, New York, each forked over $5,000 a chance, a decision that was by no means easy.
HAROLD CRING, CONSTRUCTION COMPANY CEO/CO-OWNER: I had said, I would rather take that $5,000 that we were going to invest in this horse and put it in a tin can and bury it in the backyard.
BROWN: He didn't, of course.
CRING: I was still waffling when I came up here and J.P. mentioned that, you know -- wouldn't you like your obituary to read that you were a thoroughbred horse racer amongst all the other things you've done?. I said, You know what? That's the most sensible thing that he's said in a couple of days, so I signed right up.
BROWN: Funny Cide won three races in fairly short order. But even getting to the Kentucky Derby was not in the plans.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did we have any idea it was going to be a Kentucky Derby-bound horse? No. Was it was talked about? On a very fringe maybe. A little joke here and there.
BROWN: Even though Funny Cide did win the Derby and has since won millions, he is a gelding who cannot earn millions more in stud fees. To the guys from Sackets Harbor, it doesn't matter.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This horse is going to entertain crowds for years to come. Hopefully it'll stay healthy enough to do that. That's good. And who knows? It may bring in enough money to cover the fact that it can't breed.
BROWN: Funny Cide carries the colors of the only school and Sackets Harbor, maroon and silver. And this tiny town which still remembers a war most Americans have long forgotten is reeling.
MURRAY MAXON, ONTARIO PLACE NORTH: Oh, this is huge for us this little village of 1,400 people. This is probably the biggest thing since the War of 1812 and hopefully nobody's going to get hurt in this one.
BROWN: The $5,000 each of these friends put up will mean a round $100,000 a piece if Funny Cide wins the Belmont.
Important? You bet. But not, they say, what's most important.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's definitely life altering. I mean, there's no question that my life has totally changed. I will always have this memory, always the memory with family being in the winner circle in Kentucky. That is just priceless. Absolutely priceless.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Funny Cide goes on Saturday here in New York.
Sixty minutes down, thirty minutes to go on this edition of NEWSNIGHT. We'll talk with Senator John McCain about the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and more.
And then more on the trials and tribulations of Martha Stewart.
This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Not so long ago, it went something like this. When Hans Blix had something to say, we led with it. Today, someone called the retiring chief U.N. weapons inspector merely a footnote. But with the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction still coming up short, Mr. Blix's take on Iraq is coming back into synch with the headlines. Today he briefed the Security Council for the last time.
Our story's from CNN Richard Roth.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RICHARD ROTH, CNN SENIOR UNITED NATIONS CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): After four months investigating inside Iraq, Hans Blix's U.N. inspectors could not locate proof of weapons of mass destruction, such as anthrax and VX nerve agent. HANS BLIX, CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: This does not necessarily mean that such items could not exist. They might. There remain long lists, long lists of items unaccounted for. But it is not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted for.
ROTH: Blix would have liked more time but didn't get it from Washington. He said his agency received leads and names they were unable to research before the U.S. attacked Iraq.
BLIX: I trust that in the new environment in Iraq, in which there is full access and cooperation, and in which knowledgeable witnesses should no longer be inhibited to reveal what they know, it should be possible to establish the truth we all want to know.
ROTH: The U.S. has excluded Blix and company from the inspection process, but Washington too has come up empty-handed. Blix was vilified by some who claimed he was not aggressive enough. Now the Swedish diplomat refused to claim a measure of vindication, but said it still would be better if international inspectors were invited back in.
BLIX: Anybody that functions under a occupation, about a few foreign states, cannot have the same credibility internationally as international inspectors would be.
JOHN NEGROPONTE, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES: We are going to be searching all available sources of information, both documentary and human, and I simply would counsel patience.
ROTH: After his farewell appearance, the full Security Council praised Blix for his work.
BLIX: I came here, I hoped that it would be for a year, year and half, and it's now over three years. So I do long for picking both my mushrooms, and I am extend them to blueberries. But I also said to the council that, yes, I'm not abandoning my interest in the question of how do we prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction?
ROTH (on camera): Every country on the Security Council except the United States would like the inspectors in Iraq. The council has vowed to revisit that issue sometime in the future. But Blix is likely to be long back in his native Sweden before his staff sees Baghdad again.
Richard Roth, CNN, the United Nations.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: You can expect the question of weapons and the intelligence and the selling of the war to come up shortly on Capitol Hill, and you can expect Senator John McCain to do a fair bit of the asking. Congressional hearings are in the planning stages now. We spoke to the senator earlier today.
Senator, let's talk about weapons of mass destruction first. Do you think that the -- this is all political, what we're hearing, or that there's something we ought to be concerned with over the fact they haven't found any weapons yet?
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Well, I think it's a matter of concern, and I think that it's very appropriate to hold congressional hearings. But one, the case has already been made for regime change, with the release of 10-year-old boys from prison and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) uncovering of mass graves.
But also I think there's a lot more inspecting to do, and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) not to drag out my answer, but he had weapons of mass destruction in '91, he had them in '98 when the inspectors left. He did everything he could to prevent meaningful inspections. So it's hard to understand, if he had no weapons of mass destruction, why he went through the procedures that he went through. You see my point?
BROWN: Well, I think -- not only do I see it, it's a point we've made. At the same time, there is a credibility question that's on the table. Did the administration -- I don't -- I'm not suggesting it did, but we'll ask the question, did it cook the intelligence? Or did it highlight those parts of the intelligence that were most favorable to an outcome it clearly wanted?
MCCAIN: Well, I think that's a legitimate question that is clearly appropriate to be asked, and congressional hearings, by the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee, are entirely appropriate.
But I would add one more point, and that is that there is no one that I know that knows Saddam Hussein's record that, even if he didn't have them at the time, if we had left him alone and let him continue his practices, he would have attempted to and probably acquired them.
BROWN: So where, just give me a sense of where you think this goes, if you think this, in fact, goes anywhere.
MCCAIN: Well, I think the search for weapons of mass destruction goes on. There's various theories, and there's various places that have not been inspected. I think it's appropriate to have hearings not just on this issue, but also the issue of friendly fire, a number of other aspects of the conflict, why we did so well, what problems we had. That's appropriate after every conflict, and this should be part of that.
And I think also that most Americans are very satisfied that the regime change was fully justified.
BROWN: Let's move on to the question of the FCC, because this is going to land in your committee. You haven't been broadly critical of what the commission has done, but you have agreed to hold hearings. Can you just tell me why, in your view, what the commission did will make life better, richer, more thoughtful for viewers, for people who watch TV?
MCCAIN: Well, I think it probably will get a better diversification of voices. The question is, though, is it coming from one ventriloquist? It is a modest increase, from 35 percent to 45 percent of the market. But there is a problem in radio with too much concen -- media concentration in certain markets.
We've got to make sure that there is not further consolidation, both in programming as well as market share. And it's an issue that I think needs a lot more exploration.
We will probably be passing a bill throughout our committee that I won't vote for, but will hold the media ownership at the 35 percent level, and I under -- although I don't support the bill, I understand the concern that's been raised by three-quarters of a million Americans that wrote or contacted the FCC.
BROWN: Why don't you support that? Why, why is 45 a better number than 35? Why isn't...
MCCAIN: That...
BROWN: ... 25 a better...
MCCAIN: That's...
BROWN: ... number, for example?
MCCAIN: That's -- you just described why I have problems (UNINTELLIGIBLE) opposing what the FCC did, which, by the way, they were mandated by Congress to do every two years. It wasn't their idea, and the Cong -- and the courts have told them to carry out that responsibility.
I don't know, 25, 35, 45 -- I know that 100 percent is wrong. And where do you get past the point of having more people being able to provide higher quality program and cross over the threshold where you really aren't getting the localization, diversity, and content that's vital to the American people?
MCCAIN: Look, the people who want to further deregulate will say, 20 years ago, you had three networks, CNN wasn't one of them, certainly not with any audience, CBS, NBC, and ABC. Now you've got Fox, you've got CNN, you've got MSNBC, you've got (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- and they've got a point.
But the question is, are they really getting the diversified voice that this would indicate?
BROWN: And do you think they are, by the way?
MCCAIN: I think so today, but I do worry when I see what happened in radio, where one corporation can own six of seven stations in...
BROWN: Yes.
MCCAIN: ... Minot, North Dakota, then the -- a lot of us see what's happened in radio as the miner's canary for what could happen in television. BROWN: Well, for a variety of reasons, we'll follow the path of the bill through your committee. It's always good to have you on the program, senator, thank you very much.
MCCAIN: Thank you, Aaron.
BROWN: Senator John McCain. We talked with him earlier.
Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, Martha Stewart strikes back, defending herself in the papers and a Web site. The legal case against her, though, when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: As we reported last night, and who didn't, the other shoe finally fell in the Martha Stewart affair. So today was day one for her in a new life. And what will she spend that other life doing? She's no longer a CEO, but she still is Martha Stewart. Put it this way, it doesn't look as if she plans to go gentle into that good night.
Here's CNN's Chris Huntington.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Martha Stewart ducked all questions after pleading not guilty in court on Wednesday. But today she stood tall in an open letter published in "USA Today" and posted on her new Web site, marthatalks.com.
Stewart insists she is innocent and that she'll fight to clear her name.
MARTIN POLLNER, ATTORNEY, LOEB AND LOEB: It's brilliant lawyering for defense counsel, because she is a public person, to get her story out as quickly as possible, particularly after the U.S. attorney and the FBI had this enormous press conference.
HUNTINGTON: The defense may have the edge on public relations, but the government says it has crucial evidence showing Stewart and her broker, Peter Bacanovic, altered their records to cover up the allegedly improper sale of ImClone stock.
According to the indictment, "Stewart deleted the substance of Bacanovic's phone message, changing the message from 'Peter Bacanovic thinks ImClone is going to start trading downward,' to 'Peter Bacanovic regarding ImClone.'"
And in what could become the hallmark of this case, the indictment also alleges that "Bacanovic altered his worksheet, using ink that was blue ballpoint, but was scientifically distinguishable from the ink used elsewhere on the worksheet. Bacanovic added the notation "@60" near the entry for ImClone."
(on camera): The main defense for Stewart and Bacanovic against all the government's charges, including the SEC charge for insider trading, is that they had a long-standing order to sell ImClone stock if it fell below $60 a share. And that blue ink on Bacanovic's worksheet could play a pivotal role in the case.
JACOB ZAMANSKY, ATTORNEY, ZAMANSKY AND ASSOCIATES: You remember the O.J. Simpson case, when they had all these forensic DNA experts? We're going to see ink experts in this case. The allegation here is that he used two different pens on two different days. And I think that's going to be a big issue.
HUNTINGTON (voice-over): The government has another ace in the hole. Bacanovic's former assistant at Merrill Lynch, Douglas Faneuil, who has already told the feds there was no standing order to sell ImClone at $60 a share.
But defense attorneys are most perplexed by the government's charge that, in an effort to prop up her own company's stock, "Stewart made or caused to be made a series of false and misleading public statements," statements that she was innocent and had a standing order to sell ImClone stock.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the weakest count. I think, having been a former prosecutor, I think it was a negotiation with the SEC to get some securities count in this indictment. It shows the weakness of their original theory of the insider trading story.
HUNTINGTON: And as Stewart's lawyers will argue, if there was no crime for insider trading, there's no jail time for their client.
Chris Huntington, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: A look at this now from another angle. We're joined here in New York by Gail Evans, the writer of "She Wins, You Win," which is about the hard row that women have to hoe in the business world. It happens that Ms. Evans was also the first female executive vice president here at CNN, so she knows something about what she's talking about. And what seems like 100 years ago, she was a great luncheon companion too.
GAIL EVANS, AUTHOR, "SHE WINS, YOU WIN": Yes. Nice to see you, Aaron.
BROWN: Nice to see you.
Is it -- how -- is it the fact that Martha Stewart was successful, or how she's handled success that you think troubles some people? Really doesn't trouble everybody, because there are lots of people love her.
EVANS: Right, but definitely she's a polarizing figure.
BROWN: Yes.
EVANS: And I think this society still has a great deal of difficulty with very strong, powerful women. We still prefer women in those alter ego positions. We like the companion, we like the number two kind of woman and the rest. But we still have difficulty as a society, especially in business, having a woman who actually acts like she is just a accomplished business person.
You know, if Martha Stewart were to get upset and were to have -- apologized, were to have gotten in tears, or any one of a million other things, we probably would feel more sympathetic by her. But she's a woman who's just standing her ground, and that's not something that's comfortable in this society yet.
BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) let me come back to that. When you say this society, do you mean men?
EVANS: Men and women.
BROWN: OK.
EVANS: Yes, no, one of the things that's so interesting about this is, women were -- women have this sort of love-hate relationship, I think, with Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart represents perfect, and all the -- all -- women all want to be perfect, like Martha Stewart, but then they hate her because she's perfect.
And the fact that men have trouble with her, of course, she's brilliant and beautiful and blonde.
But women have trouble with her because of the perfection. And the irony about Martha Stewart is, she made her billions doing the most undervalued thing there is in this society. I mean, making the homemaker, who earns nothing, into billions.
So it's a fascinating kind of story on all the different sides.
BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) it's an odd thing to me that she is as polarizing as she is. I get it, and she -- in some respects, she's an easy person to make jokes about, she's an easy person to -- and people have, and to go after. But you have to, at some level, just simply admire what it has taken to go from where she started to where she was before yesterday.
EVANS: Right. She's a very good business person. She is a good business woman. She had built -- unlike the people at Enron, who destroyed something that was there, all Martha Stewart's done in this economy is build something and create something, you know, for a great deal of the economy.
BROWN: Now, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), I want to go back to what you said earlier. If, if, if, if she were Mike Stewart, OK...
EVANS: Yes.
BROWN: ... who's Mr. Stewart and not Ms. Stewart, and she gets indicted, he gets indicted, and he says, I didn't do it, and he doesn't start to cry and he doesn't cop a plea, do we, as a society, like him better? EVANS: I think he's not as polarizing. I think we just don't care as much. You know, it's almost like Leona Helmsley. I mean, it's like we care in -- I -- in inappropriate kind of ways. We want to get inside these people, we want to examine. How can any woman be this strong and this powerful and still be nice?
And so it's like we want to make her into all of these kind of unpleasant things. I mean, it's amazing how intimately we know Martha Stewart, and yet none of us know Martha Stewart. You have this made- for-television movie. Somebody said to me the other night, I can't believe Cybill Shepherd wanted to play such a mean role.
I'm, like, She's an actress.
So I think, I mean, we have these obsessions. We love to build icons and then destroy them.
BROWN: How can it be, or how is it that a full generation, maybe more, since the birth of this phase of American feminism, that this is still so?
EVANS: It just goes on and on and on. Well, one of the things, I think, I mean, and one of the premises of my new book is, women haven't yet learned how to play as a team. We don't really see our success as connected till we get in one of these situations. And we're the first ones to sort of begin sticking the nails in, that we think, if Martha comes down, it's about Martha. We don't understand it's about all of us.
BROWN: A woman I know well and admire a lot believes that women are much harder on women.
EVANS: Yes.
BROWN: Than men are on women.
EVANS: Absolutely. Women -- I mean, I think that all the time, when I'm not speaking, I mean, I always hear stories about women who say, The older women make it more difficult for me, my most difficult boss was a woman. It's time we understood that there's this thing that -- you know, we're on the women's team, because we were born there. And we need to start helping each other.
It's like when you say first female executive vice president...
BROWN: Yes.
EVANS: ... it's like I want to scream and go, well, beyond first and only, it's in the rest, I mean, I should be dead if I'm the first, you know, it should have happened years -- generations ago and things like that.
But we need to begin as women to understand, it's not I can make it, it's we can make it. And if Martha goes down, it hurts every woman in business. BROWN: It's a great story. The book is just out, and you'll be out talking about it. We're really pleased to see you. It is not, it is not untrue to say that I'm sitting here in large part because we had lunch a long time ago, and...
EVANS: It's great to see you, Aaron.
BROWN: ... it's wonderful to see you. Good luck with the book.
Still ahead, we have more, we'll look at the morning papers, other things still to do. NEWSNIGHT continues from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: We spent a fair amount of time earlier in the broadcast on the "New York Times" story, the resignation of the top two editors is sure to monopolize many headlines tomorrow. In fact, I can tell you now that it does, because I've seen many of those headlines, and you will too in a few moments.
But this latest chapter began with revelations that a reporter, using that term quite loosely, Jayson Blair, had systematically falsified stories and quotes, deceived readers, broke just about every rule in the business.
Tonight Mr. Blair spoke to Andrew Kurtzman, a reporter for CNN affiliate WCBS here in New York, and here is a bit of what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAYSON BLAIR, FORMER "NEW YORK TIMES" REPORTER: I've said a lot of things, you know, since this started, that I wish I could have taken back.
ANDREW KURTZMAN, REPORTER, WCBS: Like what?
BLAIR: Some of my comments in my interview with "The New York Observer," I felt, were cruel, and I felt were hurtful. And I felt that I should have waited. You know, my emotions are still in turmoil. And I should have waited to have some time to reflect before I talked.
KURTZMAN: Do you feel -- do you still feel that Howell Raines brought this upon himself?
BLAIR: I feel like -- I certainly understand that I played a significant role in the problems that "The Times" is having right now, and I feel like on many levels, what's going on right now inside of "The Times" is something that I would hope that the media will give them an opportunity to take care of sort of inside the family.
KURTZMAN: What do you (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?
BLAIR: It's a really good question. I don't know yet. The main thing that I've focused on is only -- I only really want to do something or some things that help people get some good things out of my situation.
KURTZMAN: Like what?
BLAIR: I've thought about doing some volunteer work with people who have mental illness. I've thought about doing some volunteer work related to substance abuse. I'm definitely going to write about my circumstance and my story, in I don't know what form yet.
KURTZMAN (voice-over): He circulated a book proposal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Well, it's said that Mr. Blair has a seven-figure book advance at least in negotiation, so that seems to be one of the things he will do.
We'll take a look at the headlines from the paper he badly damaged and other newspapers too. We'll go to break first? No. I hate it when I do that.
Okey-dokey.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
BROWN: Thank you.
Have you ever worked with someone like that? Yes, we all have.
OK, morning papers. Let's do this, let's just pretend that little moment before didn't happen.
Here's a quick look at the morning papers from around the country and around the world. I think I'll take my glasses off. In fact, I think I'll go hide.
What do you think's the -- up there above the fold in "The New York Times" today? "'Times''s Two Top Editors Resign After Furor on Writer's Fraud." Jacques Steinberg wrote the story, big story in "The Times." Also that's what every -- this first story, I always go read tomorrow, isn't it a nice picture of President Bush there? Tap on the head of a soldier in Qatar.
And "Senate Approves Child Tax Credit in Lower Bracket," lower income bracket, "GOP Reacts to Criticism." This is really a story "The Times" worked pretty hard, and so it front pages the resolution.
"USA Today," if you're traveling, I like this story, but I live out here. "It Just Doesn't Look Like the Home of Champions." New Jersey is playing for both the NHL and the NBA title. The Devils won today in hockey. I know many of you probably watched that. Anyway, it's a look at the Meadowlands.
"Ashcroft Lobbies for More Powers," "The Detroit News." It's their big story. Well, it's -- of course it's not their big story, their big story's an auto story. "Best Ever Rebates Rob Auto Profits." It's rare, isn't it, they put an auto story on the front page.
There was 40 seconds, really. I'm running out of time.
"Washington Times," pretty straight-ahead lead here, "Ashcroft Wants Powers Expanded to Fight Terror, House Panel Scolds Justice's Dubious Actions."
"The Oregonian" out in Portland, Oregon, "Surprise! Uncle Sam Now Giveth More Than He Taketh." Well, of course, that's why we have a deficit, because we spend more money than we tax. My goodness.
Anyway, that's a look at morning papers from around the country, and that's the end of the program. We're back here tomorrow 10:00 Eastern time. We hope you are too. Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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Aired June 5, 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.
We are, we think, distanced enough from the tragedy of 9/11 to have a serious discussion about the conflict between protecting the country and protecting all that the country stands for, a loaded way of saying we'll look tonight at the attorney general's spirited defense of the Patriot Act and the methods used to stop another terrorist attack in the United States.
The attorney general not only defended the law today, he called for its expansion, so we'll look at that tonight at the top. The attorney general before Congress begins the whip. CNN's Kelli Arena starts us off, Kelli a headline from you please.
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the attorney general says the Patriot Act has several weaknesses which terrorists could exploit and he's asking for new powers, this while Congress pushed him to defend the powers that he already has.
BROWN: Kelli thank you, back to you at the top tonight.
Iraq next, another day of violence aimed at Americans there. CNN's Jane Arraf has the watch this morning in Baghdad, Jane a headline from you please.
JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the U.S. poured thousands of troops into the town of Fallujah but it seems to be breeding even more resentment among local people.
BROWN: Jane, thank you.
Rhode Island now and the lessons learned from a nightclub fire that took 100 lives, Jamie Colby there for us, Jamie your headline.
JAMIE COLBY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, just hours ago a legislative panel charged with investigating that blaze announced sweeping upgrades to the state's fire code they say will make Rhode Island the safest state in the nation -- Aaron.
BROWN: Jamie, thank you.
And now, New York, and at the end of a sunny day except at a building just a block off Times Square, CNN's Jason Carroll with the story of "The New York Times," Jason a headline.
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And morale at the paper is at an all time low, its credibility on the line, now two of its top editors have resigned. The question is will that be enough to restore confidence and get the paper back on track -- Aaron.
BROWN: Thank you very much Jason, back to you and the rest shortly.
Also tonight, we'll talk with Senator John McCain of Arizona as he and his colleagues get ready to hold hearings on Iraq and those weapons of mass destruction. We'll also talk to him about the storm over the FCC's vote on Monday.
More as well tonight on Martha Stewart, she fired back today at her accusers. We'll update you on the story and talk more about the fallout with an author who believes that when one successful woman falls it gets harder for any woman to succeed.
And, if you're looking for a fairy tale, we've got just the horse, just a mile and a half away from the happiest of endings but already one for the books, the story of Funny Cide tonight, all that and more coming up.
We begin with the Patriot Act which, depending on who you ask, is either keeping the country safe from terrorism or destroying American freedom in order to save it. There's precious little agreement since it passed and now with the question of the original still utterly unresolved a new debate is being joined over expanding it, reporting for us tonight CNN's Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ARENA (voice-over): The attorney general held up a copy of an al Qaeda declaration of war against America as he asked lawmakers to expand the Patriot Act.
JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Unfortunately the law has several weaknesses which terrorists could exploit undermining our defenses.
ARENA: Congress passed the act one month after the September 11 attacks and, as a result, federal agents can more easily access records, obtain wiretaps, and conduct searches.
ASHCROFT: The Patriot Act gave us the tools we needed to integrate our law enforcement and intelligence capabilities to win the war on terror.
ARENA: But lawmakers, citing a new report sharply critical of how the Justice Department treated illegal aliens detained in the 9/11 investigation, pressed Ashcroft on whether rights are being violated in the name of national security.
REP. MAXINE WATERS (D), CALIFORNIA: Isn't it a fact that after you rounded up these individuals you found that they had no involvement with terrorist activity?
ASHCROFT: In all of the conduct of the activities of the Justice Department, we have not violated the law and we will not violate the law. We will uphold the law.
ARENA: Concerns over the detention policy helped fuel the continuing debate over how the Patriot Act is being implemented. Many of the provisions of the act expire in 2005, and Congress must act to extend them or make them permanent.
The attorney general urged Congress to do that and more. Ashcroft wants to ensure that individuals who train with a terrorist organization can be more easily charged with a crime. He asked for new authority to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely before trials and to let him seek the death penalty or life imprisonment for any terrorist act which kills Americans.
LAURA MURPHY, ACLU: Before the Congress gives the Justice Department new powers, the Justice Department needs to justify what it has done with the powers that Congress gave them in October of 2001.
ARENA: But the attorney general says the new powers have already resulted in concrete success, the arrest and prosecution of suspected terrorists and not a single attack on U.S. soil.
Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: But as Kelli reported there is plenty of skepticism out there, and a bit later on in the program we'll hear from one of the skeptics, joining us then, Bob Barr the former Republican Congressman from the state of Georgia.
To other matters first, President Bush has arrived home now, did a short time ago. Instead of the movie that we get when we fly, he got an aerial tour of Baghdad. With a quartet of F-18s from the USS Nimitz keeping watch, Air Force One circled the Iraqi capital.
According to his press secretary Ari Fleischer no thought was given to landing. Mr. Fleischer didn't explain why. He did say that cutting across Iraq shortened the flight enough to make it nonstop which we expect came as a welcome surprise. It's been quite a week for the president.
Here's our Senior White House Correspondent John King.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The final stop was a pep rally, the commander-in-chief thanking the troops and dismissing those who say there was no reason to go to war to begin with.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime because the Iraqi regime is no more.
KING: Mr. Bush faces scrutiny in Congress from some Democrats who question whether the administration exaggerated the extent of Iraq's weapons programs and Parliament is putting even more heat on the British Prime Minister Tony Blair. But as he visited the U.S. military command post in Qatar, Mr. Bush was anything but apologetic.
BUSH: This is a man who spent decades hiding tools of mass murder. We're going to look. We'll reveal the truth.
KING: U.S. public support for the war remains high and administration officials say they see no political damage from the fact that no banned weapons have been discovered so far.
The Iraq war was an issue at every stop of a weeklong trip that included fence mending with Russia and another prominent war opponent, France. Mr. Bush sees the war as part of an ongoing evolution in the Middle East and was upbeat about the post-war transition despite festering complaints.
BUSH: Day by day the United States and our coalition partners are making the streets safer for the Iraqi citizens.
KING: U.S. troops are leaving Saudi Arabia but are welcome here in Qatar and Mr. Bush called on Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Alfani (ph) to say thanks. The new Israeli-Palestinian peace effort is the most dramatic change and, as he heads home, the president says he is optimistic his hands-on diplomacy will quickly bring progress.
(on camera): The president used an old cowboy term to describe his personal role in the peacemaking in the days ahead saying he will not hesitate to pick up the phone and "ride herd" if either the Israelis or the Palestinians are slow in keeping their new commitments.
John King CNN Doha, Qatar.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: From the distance in Qatar or from Air Force One high above Baghdad, the president saw nothing of what American soldiers are seeing every day on the ground in Iraq, progress in spots to be sure but deep trouble elsewhere, a good deal of trouble in the town of Fallujah.
A little more than a week ago, two U.S. soldiers were killed there at an ambush. Yesterday, more than 1,000 troops went into Fallujah to deal with the rebels and today one of them died trying.
So we go back to CNN's Jane Arraf who has the story from Baghdad -- Jane.
ARRAF: Aaron, soldiers in Fallujah are having a particularly tough time, though the U.S. military is pouring several thousand troops into that city about 35 miles west of Baghdad. In fact, they've sent in the 3rd Infantry Division.
Now these were the people who were first into Baghdad. They thought they were going home but they're not. They've been sent into the city to try to quell that violence. Now what seems to have happened early this morning was that a rocket-propelled grenade was thrown at a group of soldiers as they were passing by an abandoned police station that had been looted and gutted.
We arrived there and what people told us was essentially that they just did not like the way that the U.S. was acting and they didn't want troops in their town. Now, in these cases it doesn't really matter what the facts are.
It matters what people believe and what a lot of people in that town, a very conservative town, believe is that soldiers have been going house-to-house, going into houses, being rude to the women, in some cases making inappropriate comments to the women, staying on the roofs with night vision goggles and basically they say they just don't want them in the town.
It's a huge problem, Aaron, and it doesn't seem from the mood there today that it's going to get better any time soon.
BROWN: A couple of questions. Are these rebels we're calling them are they Ba'athist, are they loyalists of Saddam?
ARRAF: That's a really interesting question and perhaps the most important one. One person said to me in Fallujah this afternoon that it's a mistake to think that these are Ba'athist, that this is coordinated. He said all of us want the U.S. out, and certainly that's an overstatement.
There must be some people in that town of half a million who don't want the U.S. soldiers out but there is a significant body of opinion there that feels completely disaffected and this perhaps is one of the dangers of the war and one of the dangers of this occupation that it's left a large percentage of people who had a huge stake in the previous regime behind even if they're not Ba'athist.
This was a conservative town and a lot of people depended on the government and depended on the Ba'ath Party and it is now a Sunni enclave surrounded by Shias and everywhere they look in their minds they see the Shias getting power, the Kurds getting power, and nothing left for them. And it's far more than a military problem but there are just no answers right now -- Aaron.
BROWN: And does there seem to be leadership or organization or is it just a disaffected group over here and another disaffected group over there or is somebody pulling the strings?
ARRAF: It's a little bit of both. I mean there is certainly a leadership that was in place. It's quite a tribal area and that leadership still exists. They will be in place no matter what. This goes back centuries and far predates Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party.
But in another sense it just seems to be a growing resentment against the fact that a system that had done pretty good by them, by many of them, has been removed and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that will be put in its place. It's been made very clear to Iraqis that the Ba'ath Party is dead and that those who are involved with the Ba'ath Party will not be coming back.
Now, the other thing we heard is the refrain that we hear all over the country that they have no jobs. They have no money. There are shortages of basic things like cooking fuel and gasoline and certainly something has to be done about that before things start to get even a little better, but right now that city seems to be quite a dangerous place for those U.S. soldiers -- Aaron.
BROWN: Jane, thank you, Jane Arraf in Baghdad tonight.
Ahead on NEWSNIGHT on a Thursday from New York City, heads roll at "The New York Times" in the wake of the scandal over a rogue reporter.
And, a report out tonight calls for new rules to prevent fires like the one in Rhode Island that killed 100.
This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: It isn't exactly odd for an embarrassing news report to lead to someone's downfall. Almost always, though, the downfall is of the figure being written about not the one doing the writing or the one supervising the ones doing the writing.
But that's what happened today at "The New York Times" in a chain of events that began with the unmasking of a young star reporter is really more of a fiction writer. Two top men are out and the institution sometimes called the Good Gray Lady is blushing.
Here's CNN's Jason Carroll.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): One "New York Times" staffer called it the worst day in the paper's 150 year history, the two top editors at "The Times" resigned, executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd.
The paper's publisher, issued a statement saying: "Howell and Gerald have tendered their resignations and I have accepted them with sadness based on what we believe is best for 'The Times'."
Reporter Deborah Sontag said she too was sad but also hopeful.
DEBORAH SONTAG, REPORTER, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": I hope that we will come out of it, you know, reexamining some of the ways in which we've done business for many years now and growing from it.
CARROLL: But "Times" art director, Jerelle Kraus could barely contain her excitement and contempt for Raines, an editor criticized by staff for being arrogant and inaccessible.
JERELLE KRAUS, ART DIRECTOR, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Everybody was afraid and he was the nastiest editor I've ever worked with.
CARROLL: Raines was disliked by many staff after setting up a star system that they said favored a few at the expense of many others. Raines and Boyd stepped down after the paper found one of Raines' youngest stars, Jayson Blair, was responsible for dozens of infractions including plagiarism and lying, much of which was missed by management.
On Mother's Day, the paper printed a four-page article detailing Blair's deceptions. Morale at the paper plummeted. Then, weeks later, Pulitzer Prize winning writer Rick Bragg (ph) resigned after conceding a story with his byline had been reported mostly by a freelancer, former "Times" staffer and author Alex Jones says Raines and Boyd simply lost the staff support.
ALEX JONES, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: I think that the problem was that they didn't have enough in the bank with the staff. They had lost the confidence of the staff apparently and I think that when that happens in an institution like "The New York Times" that's something that you can't find a way around.
CARROLL: Joe Lelyveld, who was top editor for seven years before retiring, was named interim executive editor. He's respected by staff but his temporary appointment won't solve the paper's larger problem.
LENA WILLIAMS, NEWSPAPER GUILD OF NEW YORK: Joe is an interim. It's a Band-aid. We still don't know who our next executive editor and who our managing editor is going to be and until we have that resolved there's going to be some anxiety, some not discomfort, but we just don't know where we're going to go.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CARROLL: Obviously a number of people are weighing in on what happened today, including disgraced reporter Jayson Blair. He spoke to a local TV station here in New York City. He said he felt as though he was truly sorry for his actions. He also said he felt as though he was on a path of destruction and he never meant to hurt anyone, not his family, not his colleagues -- Aaron.
BROWN: Jason, thank you very much, Jason Carroll.
Tell the truth now, some of you are beginning this "Times" flap matters a lot more to those of us in the news business than it does or should to you.
Tonight, CNN's Jeff Greenfield invites you to think again.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): Okay, let's admit it. There is a fair amount of self absorption and self importance behind the media's fascination with the troubles at "The New York Times." It's not a coincidence that we feel the closing of a newspaper far more deeply than the closing of a factory. But there's a lot more to this unhappy story than the mendacious behavior of one young journalist or of the safeguards that failed at "The Times," or the management style of one executive editor.
(on camera): The reason why this story matters goes to the heart of what journalism is supposed to do in a free, open, politically clamorous society. It is about an old reliable maxim that, while we're all entitled to our own opinions, we are not entitled to our own facts.
(voice-over): We bring all sorts of assumptions and prejudices and values to public debate. We can disagree fundamentally about how to interpret what's happened. Was Reagan a good president? Was Clinton? You pay your money, you take your choice.
But even in the midst of the most contentious of debates, we need a sense that there is some commonly accepted source of facts and for a century nothing has filled that role better than "The New York Times."
For all of its flaws, its fawning coverage of Stalin in the 1930s, its downplaying of the Holocaust, its many foibles and blind spots, "The New York Times" has been the source of choice for just about every American engaged in the public business.
JAY LENO, "THE TONIGHT SHOW": How many read the "New York Inquirer" -- ah, "Times." How many read "The Times"?
GREENFIELD: So, the fact that "The Times" has now become a punch line for late night comedians may please those who believe its news pages came to reflect the assumptions of its editorial page, but in a broader sense it is troubling news for everyone.
In survey after survey, Americans are reflecting a deep sense of skepticism about the media in general that we're not what we say we are, that we're just another powerful institution, that the facts matter less than ratings, circulation, attention, money. And with the travails of this best-known and most prestigious of American media enterprises that skepticism is likely to deepen.
(on camera): And if we travel further down the road where we have no commonly trusted source of information, if every argument simply comes down to who can shout louder, or spin better, or better sweep aside uncomfortable facts, well that doesn't sound like a recipe for a healthy public debate and that, more than the fortunes of any one editor or newspaper, is why this story matters.
Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: We often turn to Alex Jones, who you heard briefly from a few moments ago, with issues like this one. Mr. Jones is the director of the Joan Schorenstein (ph) Center for Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard, co-author of a book about "The Times" called "The Trust," and he joins us again tonight from Boston. Alex, do you think that they were, particularly Mr. Raines, forced out essentially, that the resignations were something less than voluntary?
JONES: I don't know but I can imagine that it was certainly a meeting of minds. I think that it was, you know, a situation that cried out for resolution and a dramatic act and certainly there could not have been a more dramatic act than this one. There has never been anything like this in the history of "The Times."
BROWN: "The Times" is funny as these institutions go because it has been very good over 150 years at keeping its laundry inside the building and not letting it out as it did in this case. Did "The Times" in some respects by the way it handled this almost guarantee the certain ending?
JONES: Well, oddly enough "The New York Times" I think was, you know, exposed the way it was largely because Howell Raines was determined to deal with this straight on and frankly in the best traditions, in my opinion, of good journalism.
He did not try to shield "The Times" or shield himself. He not only issued that enormous study that he didn't have anything to do with, he assigned people to do it and then he stood up in front of a mass meeting and found to I'm sure his horror that he had not the confidence of the staff at "The New York Times" the way he thought I'm sure that he did.
BROWN: Let's talk about Mr. Raines for a second because there's, I think, a somewhat confused portrait here. To me he is an extraordinary news guy. "The Times" coverage which he led after 9/11, will I think -- will be the stuff of journalism history and yet there's obviously this other side to him as a manager, not necessarily a news guy that people were terribly troubled by.
JONES: I think that's a very, very important point, Aaron. He really is. He's a journalist's journalist. There's no man that loves "The New York Times" more. He really felt that this was his destiny to lead "The New York Times," and I think it was. I mean he led "The New York Times" in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, as you say seven Pulitzer Prizes. That also is an unprecedented thing.
He is a very serious journalist and I hope that his journalism career is not ended because he has a lot more to contribute. He has had a problem as a manager and I think in many cases people believed and he believed that he had really sort of solved this problem.
But I think that he apparently must have something of a tone deaf ear when it comes to how his style of editing and style of leadership lands. I don't think he intends it the way it falls but the way it seems to be interpreted and the way it was felt antagonized people and it meant that when the crisis of Jayson Blair came, they really didn't have the goodwill and trust in the bank that would have perhaps seen him through that crisis.
BROWN: How damaged do you think the paper is? JONES: I don't think the paper is damaged at all, frankly. I mean I know that may be a ridiculous thing to say on a night like this but I think that the newspaper as an institution, like Jeff was saying in his piece, you know, it's something with a long history and it's got such an enormous amount of goodwill and trust that I think built up that it will be able to be restored.
I think this dramatic gesture, the symbolism of what happened today, is a sign from the Sulzberger family, from Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., that they will do whatever it takes to restore "The New York Times." I think that the person that they put in as the new executive editor will be a person from within "The Times" family but someone above reproach and someone who will be able to, you know, put the paper internally back together again.
What they still do have to do, however, is convince people like me, who I'm a reader now and they have to convince me that they've learned something important from the Jayson Blair incident and are going to demonstrate to me that they care very much about the accuracy and the, you know, the resolve to be absolutely rigorous in the way they police the accuracy of "The New York Times." That is exactly what the paper's prominence, preeminence, and power is based on.
BROWN: And what will make Alex Jones and all the paper's other skeptics out there believe that?
JONES: Well, I tend to believe it. I worked there too long not to believe in it. I really do believe in it but I think that it will require them to do demonstrative things like make it very clear that they are going to invite corrections and pursue corrections in people who call in or indicate that something is wrong with a story are going to get a very serious airing and they're going to encourage people to let them know about things like that.
I think they may go further and have some sort of an ombudsman. They've never had something like that before. I think that frankly, that one of the things that I wish they would do, and I think this applies to everybody in American journalism, I wish they would have a random, you know, fact check of every reporter's story once a year.
Some reporter, you know, ever reporter have a story picked at random and they go back and talk to the people that the reporter talked to and see how the reporter did the job. I think that would be a kind of quality control that would be perfectly acceptable as far as I'm concerned.
I was a reporter at "The New York Times" for a long time and I think anything that shores up the credibility of the institution and the reporting team is something that the reporters would go for, at least I know that if I were in that situation I would go for it.
BROWN: Do you think it's the front page story in "The Times" tomorrow?
JONES: If it's not above the fold on the front page, I'm a monkey's uncle. BROWN: I think you're right. Always good to talk to you Alex, thank you very much.
JONES: My pleasure.
BROWN: Thank you.
Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the aftermath of a deadly fire, a new report offers proposals for preventing a Rhode Island club fire from happening again.
Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: There are moments you wouldn't wish to relive or even remember except to make sure that they never happen again and for the last three and a half months investigators and regulators in Rhode Island have been revisiting such a moment, looking at what happened one night last winter when a nightclub went up in flames and 100 people died.
Tonight, they came up with a list of changes they hope will make that tragedy the last, reporting for us CNN's Jamie Colby.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HAL PANCIERA, SURVIVED NIGHTCLUB FIRE: Every day I relive looking over that -- looking over that bar and looking at that stage.
JAMIE COLBY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 35-year-old Hal Panciera was out for a night of fun with three friends at the Rhode Island nightclub The Station February 20 when heavy metal group Great White took the stage.
PANCIERA: I caught the pyrotechnics out of the corner of my eye, and I said, "Ooh, what's that?" And then, as soon as I did that, the building started to burn.
COLBY: Within minutes, with no sprinkler system and only one of four exits visible through the blinding smoke, he says, a pileup grew at the front door. Few could escape.
PANCIERA: When the smoke hit me, it was so thick, so black, so toxic, you couldn't breathe or see. And my first instinct was to wait for my friend, to see if I could get my friend out.
COLBY: All of Hal's friends got out alive, though one was burned over 60 percent of his body.
PANCIERA: I heard bottles breaking, people screaming, women screaming, people screaming for their relatives, their boyfriends, their girlfriends, their wives, their husbands, their sisters, their brothers. It was -- it was a nightmare.
COLBY: Returning to the site, now a makeshift memorial, Hal tries to make sense of it all, wondering what, if anything, will come from the tragedy.
PANCIERA: I'm having a difficult time trying to accept the fact that people went out to enjoy an evening of fun and wound up not going home to their family and friends. And that's a hard pill to swallow.
COLBY: Hal and others touched by the tragedy have demanded Rhode Island enact more stringent fire safety laws prohibiting pyrotechnics in a club that small.
After an exhaustive investigation, a state commission has proposed significant upgrades to Rhode Island's fire code.
REP. PETER T. GINAITT, COMMISSION CO-CHAIR: Accomplishing this goal would be one of the appropriate contributes to the victims of the Station night fire of February 20, 2003.
COLBY: The measure calls for limited pyrotechnic displays, mandatory inspections, sprinklers in most large venues and the elimination of grandfather clauses.
GINAITT: Rhode Island must develop a culture of compliance with fire safety practices.
PANCIERA: Club owners, fire inspectors should all look into these facilities with more diligence so that something like this doesn't happen again.
COLBY: Hal has used his experience to teach his two sons about fire safety so they'll never be in danger in the first place.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLBY: Perhaps it was the emotional testimony of those who survived the blaze or the pleas for reform from loved ones of those who didn't. There is such sweeping bipartisan support for the measure, Aaron, that is expected to be fast tracked in the next two weeks. They say, it will get through the house and senate and be on the governor's desk ready for signature -- Aaron.
BROWN: Where, if anywhere is the criminal case here?
COLBY: Well, they are still continuing their investigation, Aaron, and a number of civil lawsuits in addition to any potential criminal penalties.
But you know, the code here dates back to 1968, and hadn't been upgraded. So it's very likely they will find that the club abided by whatever rules, if in fact, you know, they investigate and clear them.
But clearly on the civil charges there were tremendous injuries and 100 people died and those are expected to continue to push for the reform as well as bring money damages.
BROWN: Jamie, thank you very much. Jamie Colby in Rhode Island.
Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, we'll check some of the day's other top stories and later a looking at the group of friends who's four-legged investment could wind up in the record books. A great tale as we continue.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: And as NEWSNIGHT continues, the saga of Sosa bats and more continues. So do we after a short break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Suicide bombings, sadly, aren't limited to the Middle East. An especially deadly one starts out our look at stories making "News Around the World" tonight.
Happened on a bus headed for a Russian air base not far from Chechnya. Reports are a woman boarded the bus and detonated a bomb. At least 16 people died. No one claiming responsibility yet, but suspicion falling on Chechnyan rebels who launch hit and run attacks on Russians almost daily.
Croatia next where that faithful welcomed Pope John Paul II today. This is the pope's 100th foreign trip since becoming pope. Not an easy one for him to make in his condition. He's not as healthy as he once was to be sure. He'll spend the next three days visiting five Croatian cities before heading back to the Vatican.
And no Serena Slam this time around. Serena Williams lost today at a French Open semifinal to a Belgium contender Justine Henin. Largely hostile crowd watching the match at Roland Garros. Crowd cheered Serena's errors, booed when she left the court without saying as much of a word to the woman who beat her.
And some stories making "News Around the Country, now beginning in Chicago where all the rest of Sammy Sosa's bats, 76 of them, have been x-rayed and declared cork-free. I guess this was even more official than it was last night when we told you about it. Anyway, Sammy says he used that cork bat as an accident. He said he just used it for batting practice. it was just one of those mistakes, the kind of thing that can happen.
Mostly fans seem inclined to believe him. At least Chicago fans do. Baseball, we expect, will be a little less tolerant when it finally rules on the matter.
In Washington, a vote in the Senate to restore the $400 per child tax credit to millions of low-income families. The credit was cut out of the tax reduction package enacted last month. A lot of complaints about that. Senate passed the bill handily 94-2. It's future in the House somewhat less certain.
And in Birmingham, Alabama attorney for accused serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph said today he plans to challenge the characterization of his client as a hate-filled, anti-government extremist. Richard Jaffe says he hasn't seen any evidence of anger or extremism in any form or fashion. Ahead on NEWSNIGHT in defense of the Patriot Act. Secretary -- or rather Attorney General Ashcroft goes before Congress and we will have some reaction from a critic in a moment. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: We begin tonight talking about the way the justice system deals with those accused or suspected of terrorism, and we'll talk more about that in just a moment.
First, though with some believe is a case in point from Tampa, Florida, Samuel Al-Arian a former college professor in Florida who was arrested in February and charged of being a North America head of a Palestinian group Islamic Jihad. He was told today he will have his day court, only his day in court won't come until January 2005. Lawyers for the three men arrested with him say they need that much time to go over the government's evidence and to prepare their case. Two of the indicted men are out on bond, but Samuel Al-Arian and other defendant are held without bond which is to say they will stay in jail until the trial starts in roughly 18 months.
This conflict over individual liberty and national security is hardly new. President Lincoln dealt with it during the Civil War, FDR did in World War II, and it is often true that decisions made in the heat of a moment, a war or after an attack look pretty good at the time, not so good as time passes. Whether that is true now, we cannot say. Others, however, have thoughts and Mr. Bob Barr is among them. Barr is a former member of Congress, a Republican from the state of Georgia, former prosecutor and about the last person on the planet that you would ever call bleeding heart liberal. He joins us from Atlanta tonight. We are always glad to see him.
Congressman, good evening.
BOB BARR, FORMER CONGRESSMAN (R), GEORGIA: Thank you, Aaron, good to be with you.
BROWN: Let's talk about patriot one before we look as to what Justice Department wants or believes it might need.
Is it, the law itself that you find troubling, or is the application of the law?
BARR: Well, it's actually both of those plus something else altogether. And that is, seem to be part of a head long rush by government, Democrat or Republican administrations alike to simply gather more and more evidence, on more and more people, for less and less reason in the vain hopes this will somehow identify terrorists for us. We see this in many aspects of what the government is doing.
In regard to the Patriot Act in particular, the provisions that we looked at very careful we first considered it a year and a half ago, struck those of us who were voting on it at the time as rather odd, and that is virtually all of its provisions relate not to anti- terrorism, but to general criminal law procedures and changes to substantive criminal law. It's a power grabbed by the government. I would much rather see the government do a better job of enforcing existing powers rather than give it these vast new powers that are being applied, and this is also part of your question, far too broadly.
BROWN: All right, tell me as specifically as you can, if you could take three things out of the law or five things or two, pick a number you're comfortable with. But the things in the law that trouble you the most that the government can now do that it couldn't do before?
BARR: Well, one thing that bothers us is what are called the sneak and peek provisions. Previously under federal law as a matter of rule, as a matter of course, if the government was going to come execute a search warrant on Aaron Brown Enterprises or Bob Barr's home, they would have to give you notice. This would enable you, I, or whoever's premises were being searched, the opportunity to determine if in fact they got the right address, the right person and so forth. They had to give you notice. Then after they searched your premises or your business, they would have to give you an inventory of what they had taken.
This enabled you to exercise your right to challenge whether or not they taken what they were supposed to. It gave you a way to assert the constitutionality of your rights. The Patriot Act takes that away. Now the rule is the government can come in, search your home or your business or my home or my business without giving us notice. We don't know that they'd been there and they're not required to leave an inventory, so we don't know what they have taken. That's very troubling.
Also the whole business of using the lower standard that the government has always and quite properly been time use to gather foreign intelligence now is being used as a subterfuge legally under the Patriot Act, I might say, to gather evidence on U.S. persons, U.S. citizens to be used in criminal proceedings. It's sort of a back doorway of getting around the restrictions that the 4th amendment places on the government against unreasonable searches and seizures.
BROWN: I am curious, this is a total free-bee, do you think if the bill came before Congress today, not a month after 9/11 or two months after 9/11 or three months after 9/11 when, in fact after it was being heard, but came before today that it would pass?
BARR: It would run into a lot more difficult in terms of the ease with which it passed certainly. Many more questions have been and would be raised about it. Congressman Don Young, from Alaska just recently issued a very strong statement, raising as I and others have done, some very serious questions both how broadly the Patriot Act reaches and how even broader than that is being applied.
BROWN: And now, I mean the attorney general today I guess believing that the best defense is a good offense, talked about -- he says the law doesn't go far enough. He wants to expand it. There are there programs in the pentagon that if you are just a teensy bit paranoid person, and I am scare the daylights out of you, do you believe that the basic rules with which the society has operated for more than 200 years are significantly shifting?
BARR: Yes, they are, Aaron, in many ways and you put your finger on one aspect of it right there. Now the government is seeking to get the Department of Defense very heavily involved in gathering evidence, compiling dossier, electronic dossiers that is on American citizens. Gathering evidence on American citizens. This represents a dramatic change of how we have viewed the different responsibilities of government than in the past.
BROWN: Where do you think this -- do you think that Congress will be inclined to extent the Patriot Act as sunsets in 2005 and perhaps add onto it?
BARR: Well there's already...
BROWN: This is a very popular president and he has control of the Congress.
BARR: Well, and I think the administration would be very well advised to listen very carefully to people like Don Young. To legislature such as that and in Alaska that has passed an official act saying, let's take a close look at this. Let's not rush into abiding by the Patriot Act. Hundreds of municipality, local governments across the country have raised similar concerns and these aren't just left wing governments that one might traditionally associate with being concerned about federal government power. These are mainstream communities. And I think if the administration just ignores them, it will be creating a great division in this country between people who do in fact support law enforcement, but have a very healthy concern over the role of the federal government getting far too big.
BROWN: Congressman, thanks for your time tonight. Former Congressman Bob Barr out of Atlanta, Georgia, with us tonight.
Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, "Segment Seven," playing the odds -- the odds on whether some high school friends Upstate New York can hit a one in a million -- at least in one in a million jackpot and win the Triple Crown.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: There are moments in life, if you're lucky, when reality exceeds even your wildest dreams. This is a story of one of those moments which, if all goes according to plan, is about to come it a triumphant finish. It ends this weekend around a short trip around a mile-and-a-half dirt oval just outside the big city. It began in a small town in Upstate New York with six friends, a little cash, and a horse.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): They are high school friends who resisted the urge to leave home, raising their families in the same village now in Upstate New York on the shores of Lake Ontario.
As adults, there of them even on the same street and now firmly embedded in middle age, they are on the ride of their lives.
J. P. CONSTANCE, OPTICIAN/CO-OWNER: There's no question that my life has totally changed.
ANNOUNCER: Funny Cide has won the 129th Kentucky Derby.
BROWN: Changed forever because on a Saturday afternoon in May, the lightly regarded thoroughbred that these high school friends helped buy three years ago won the Kentucky Derby.
And two weeks later, won the Preakness.
And now their horse, Funny Cide, is poised to be the first horse in a quarter of a century to win the Triple Crown -- if Funny Cide can win the Belmont Stakes on Saturday.
MARK PHILLIPS, RETIRED TEACHER/CO-OWNER: Hopefully, we're going to have a trifecta. We're going to fect it. That's a term I learned!
BROWN: All of them admit they knew practically zero about horse racing until another classmate, Jack Knolwton told them about it. He owns the largest piece of horse, with about 20 percent of Funny Cide. His friends have about 4 percent each and four other investors own the remaining 60 percent. Total cost: $75,000.
JACK KNOWLTON, HEALTH CARE CONSULTANT/MAJORITY OWNER: We're not, you know, the people with a lot the money that can go out and do go out and spend hundred of thousands of dollars and million of dollars, people who for generations who have been involved in the sport.
BROWN: Instead the high school buddies from Sackets Harbor, New York, each forked over $5,000 a chance, a decision that was by no means easy.
HAROLD CRING, CONSTRUCTION COMPANY CEO/CO-OWNER: I had said, I would rather take that $5,000 that we were going to invest in this horse and put it in a tin can and bury it in the backyard.
BROWN: He didn't, of course.
CRING: I was still waffling when I came up here and J.P. mentioned that, you know -- wouldn't you like your obituary to read that you were a thoroughbred horse racer amongst all the other things you've done?. I said, You know what? That's the most sensible thing that he's said in a couple of days, so I signed right up.
BROWN: Funny Cide won three races in fairly short order. But even getting to the Kentucky Derby was not in the plans.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did we have any idea it was going to be a Kentucky Derby-bound horse? No. Was it was talked about? On a very fringe maybe. A little joke here and there.
BROWN: Even though Funny Cide did win the Derby and has since won millions, he is a gelding who cannot earn millions more in stud fees. To the guys from Sackets Harbor, it doesn't matter.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This horse is going to entertain crowds for years to come. Hopefully it'll stay healthy enough to do that. That's good. And who knows? It may bring in enough money to cover the fact that it can't breed.
BROWN: Funny Cide carries the colors of the only school and Sackets Harbor, maroon and silver. And this tiny town which still remembers a war most Americans have long forgotten is reeling.
MURRAY MAXON, ONTARIO PLACE NORTH: Oh, this is huge for us this little village of 1,400 people. This is probably the biggest thing since the War of 1812 and hopefully nobody's going to get hurt in this one.
BROWN: The $5,000 each of these friends put up will mean a round $100,000 a piece if Funny Cide wins the Belmont.
Important? You bet. But not, they say, what's most important.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's definitely life altering. I mean, there's no question that my life has totally changed. I will always have this memory, always the memory with family being in the winner circle in Kentucky. That is just priceless. Absolutely priceless.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Funny Cide goes on Saturday here in New York.
Sixty minutes down, thirty minutes to go on this edition of NEWSNIGHT. We'll talk with Senator John McCain about the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and more.
And then more on the trials and tribulations of Martha Stewart.
This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Not so long ago, it went something like this. When Hans Blix had something to say, we led with it. Today, someone called the retiring chief U.N. weapons inspector merely a footnote. But with the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction still coming up short, Mr. Blix's take on Iraq is coming back into synch with the headlines. Today he briefed the Security Council for the last time.
Our story's from CNN Richard Roth.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RICHARD ROTH, CNN SENIOR UNITED NATIONS CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): After four months investigating inside Iraq, Hans Blix's U.N. inspectors could not locate proof of weapons of mass destruction, such as anthrax and VX nerve agent. HANS BLIX, CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: This does not necessarily mean that such items could not exist. They might. There remain long lists, long lists of items unaccounted for. But it is not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted for.
ROTH: Blix would have liked more time but didn't get it from Washington. He said his agency received leads and names they were unable to research before the U.S. attacked Iraq.
BLIX: I trust that in the new environment in Iraq, in which there is full access and cooperation, and in which knowledgeable witnesses should no longer be inhibited to reveal what they know, it should be possible to establish the truth we all want to know.
ROTH: The U.S. has excluded Blix and company from the inspection process, but Washington too has come up empty-handed. Blix was vilified by some who claimed he was not aggressive enough. Now the Swedish diplomat refused to claim a measure of vindication, but said it still would be better if international inspectors were invited back in.
BLIX: Anybody that functions under a occupation, about a few foreign states, cannot have the same credibility internationally as international inspectors would be.
JOHN NEGROPONTE, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES: We are going to be searching all available sources of information, both documentary and human, and I simply would counsel patience.
ROTH: After his farewell appearance, the full Security Council praised Blix for his work.
BLIX: I came here, I hoped that it would be for a year, year and half, and it's now over three years. So I do long for picking both my mushrooms, and I am extend them to blueberries. But I also said to the council that, yes, I'm not abandoning my interest in the question of how do we prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction?
ROTH (on camera): Every country on the Security Council except the United States would like the inspectors in Iraq. The council has vowed to revisit that issue sometime in the future. But Blix is likely to be long back in his native Sweden before his staff sees Baghdad again.
Richard Roth, CNN, the United Nations.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: You can expect the question of weapons and the intelligence and the selling of the war to come up shortly on Capitol Hill, and you can expect Senator John McCain to do a fair bit of the asking. Congressional hearings are in the planning stages now. We spoke to the senator earlier today.
Senator, let's talk about weapons of mass destruction first. Do you think that the -- this is all political, what we're hearing, or that there's something we ought to be concerned with over the fact they haven't found any weapons yet?
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Well, I think it's a matter of concern, and I think that it's very appropriate to hold congressional hearings. But one, the case has already been made for regime change, with the release of 10-year-old boys from prison and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) uncovering of mass graves.
But also I think there's a lot more inspecting to do, and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) not to drag out my answer, but he had weapons of mass destruction in '91, he had them in '98 when the inspectors left. He did everything he could to prevent meaningful inspections. So it's hard to understand, if he had no weapons of mass destruction, why he went through the procedures that he went through. You see my point?
BROWN: Well, I think -- not only do I see it, it's a point we've made. At the same time, there is a credibility question that's on the table. Did the administration -- I don't -- I'm not suggesting it did, but we'll ask the question, did it cook the intelligence? Or did it highlight those parts of the intelligence that were most favorable to an outcome it clearly wanted?
MCCAIN: Well, I think that's a legitimate question that is clearly appropriate to be asked, and congressional hearings, by the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee, are entirely appropriate.
But I would add one more point, and that is that there is no one that I know that knows Saddam Hussein's record that, even if he didn't have them at the time, if we had left him alone and let him continue his practices, he would have attempted to and probably acquired them.
BROWN: So where, just give me a sense of where you think this goes, if you think this, in fact, goes anywhere.
MCCAIN: Well, I think the search for weapons of mass destruction goes on. There's various theories, and there's various places that have not been inspected. I think it's appropriate to have hearings not just on this issue, but also the issue of friendly fire, a number of other aspects of the conflict, why we did so well, what problems we had. That's appropriate after every conflict, and this should be part of that.
And I think also that most Americans are very satisfied that the regime change was fully justified.
BROWN: Let's move on to the question of the FCC, because this is going to land in your committee. You haven't been broadly critical of what the commission has done, but you have agreed to hold hearings. Can you just tell me why, in your view, what the commission did will make life better, richer, more thoughtful for viewers, for people who watch TV?
MCCAIN: Well, I think it probably will get a better diversification of voices. The question is, though, is it coming from one ventriloquist? It is a modest increase, from 35 percent to 45 percent of the market. But there is a problem in radio with too much concen -- media concentration in certain markets.
We've got to make sure that there is not further consolidation, both in programming as well as market share. And it's an issue that I think needs a lot more exploration.
We will probably be passing a bill throughout our committee that I won't vote for, but will hold the media ownership at the 35 percent level, and I under -- although I don't support the bill, I understand the concern that's been raised by three-quarters of a million Americans that wrote or contacted the FCC.
BROWN: Why don't you support that? Why, why is 45 a better number than 35? Why isn't...
MCCAIN: That...
BROWN: ... 25 a better...
MCCAIN: That's...
BROWN: ... number, for example?
MCCAIN: That's -- you just described why I have problems (UNINTELLIGIBLE) opposing what the FCC did, which, by the way, they were mandated by Congress to do every two years. It wasn't their idea, and the Cong -- and the courts have told them to carry out that responsibility.
I don't know, 25, 35, 45 -- I know that 100 percent is wrong. And where do you get past the point of having more people being able to provide higher quality program and cross over the threshold where you really aren't getting the localization, diversity, and content that's vital to the American people?
MCCAIN: Look, the people who want to further deregulate will say, 20 years ago, you had three networks, CNN wasn't one of them, certainly not with any audience, CBS, NBC, and ABC. Now you've got Fox, you've got CNN, you've got MSNBC, you've got (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- and they've got a point.
But the question is, are they really getting the diversified voice that this would indicate?
BROWN: And do you think they are, by the way?
MCCAIN: I think so today, but I do worry when I see what happened in radio, where one corporation can own six of seven stations in...
BROWN: Yes.
MCCAIN: ... Minot, North Dakota, then the -- a lot of us see what's happened in radio as the miner's canary for what could happen in television. BROWN: Well, for a variety of reasons, we'll follow the path of the bill through your committee. It's always good to have you on the program, senator, thank you very much.
MCCAIN: Thank you, Aaron.
BROWN: Senator John McCain. We talked with him earlier.
Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, Martha Stewart strikes back, defending herself in the papers and a Web site. The legal case against her, though, when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: As we reported last night, and who didn't, the other shoe finally fell in the Martha Stewart affair. So today was day one for her in a new life. And what will she spend that other life doing? She's no longer a CEO, but she still is Martha Stewart. Put it this way, it doesn't look as if she plans to go gentle into that good night.
Here's CNN's Chris Huntington.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Martha Stewart ducked all questions after pleading not guilty in court on Wednesday. But today she stood tall in an open letter published in "USA Today" and posted on her new Web site, marthatalks.com.
Stewart insists she is innocent and that she'll fight to clear her name.
MARTIN POLLNER, ATTORNEY, LOEB AND LOEB: It's brilliant lawyering for defense counsel, because she is a public person, to get her story out as quickly as possible, particularly after the U.S. attorney and the FBI had this enormous press conference.
HUNTINGTON: The defense may have the edge on public relations, but the government says it has crucial evidence showing Stewart and her broker, Peter Bacanovic, altered their records to cover up the allegedly improper sale of ImClone stock.
According to the indictment, "Stewart deleted the substance of Bacanovic's phone message, changing the message from 'Peter Bacanovic thinks ImClone is going to start trading downward,' to 'Peter Bacanovic regarding ImClone.'"
And in what could become the hallmark of this case, the indictment also alleges that "Bacanovic altered his worksheet, using ink that was blue ballpoint, but was scientifically distinguishable from the ink used elsewhere on the worksheet. Bacanovic added the notation "@60" near the entry for ImClone."
(on camera): The main defense for Stewart and Bacanovic against all the government's charges, including the SEC charge for insider trading, is that they had a long-standing order to sell ImClone stock if it fell below $60 a share. And that blue ink on Bacanovic's worksheet could play a pivotal role in the case.
JACOB ZAMANSKY, ATTORNEY, ZAMANSKY AND ASSOCIATES: You remember the O.J. Simpson case, when they had all these forensic DNA experts? We're going to see ink experts in this case. The allegation here is that he used two different pens on two different days. And I think that's going to be a big issue.
HUNTINGTON (voice-over): The government has another ace in the hole. Bacanovic's former assistant at Merrill Lynch, Douglas Faneuil, who has already told the feds there was no standing order to sell ImClone at $60 a share.
But defense attorneys are most perplexed by the government's charge that, in an effort to prop up her own company's stock, "Stewart made or caused to be made a series of false and misleading public statements," statements that she was innocent and had a standing order to sell ImClone stock.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the weakest count. I think, having been a former prosecutor, I think it was a negotiation with the SEC to get some securities count in this indictment. It shows the weakness of their original theory of the insider trading story.
HUNTINGTON: And as Stewart's lawyers will argue, if there was no crime for insider trading, there's no jail time for their client.
Chris Huntington, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: A look at this now from another angle. We're joined here in New York by Gail Evans, the writer of "She Wins, You Win," which is about the hard row that women have to hoe in the business world. It happens that Ms. Evans was also the first female executive vice president here at CNN, so she knows something about what she's talking about. And what seems like 100 years ago, she was a great luncheon companion too.
GAIL EVANS, AUTHOR, "SHE WINS, YOU WIN": Yes. Nice to see you, Aaron.
BROWN: Nice to see you.
Is it -- how -- is it the fact that Martha Stewart was successful, or how she's handled success that you think troubles some people? Really doesn't trouble everybody, because there are lots of people love her.
EVANS: Right, but definitely she's a polarizing figure.
BROWN: Yes.
EVANS: And I think this society still has a great deal of difficulty with very strong, powerful women. We still prefer women in those alter ego positions. We like the companion, we like the number two kind of woman and the rest. But we still have difficulty as a society, especially in business, having a woman who actually acts like she is just a accomplished business person.
You know, if Martha Stewart were to get upset and were to have -- apologized, were to have gotten in tears, or any one of a million other things, we probably would feel more sympathetic by her. But she's a woman who's just standing her ground, and that's not something that's comfortable in this society yet.
BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) let me come back to that. When you say this society, do you mean men?
EVANS: Men and women.
BROWN: OK.
EVANS: Yes, no, one of the things that's so interesting about this is, women were -- women have this sort of love-hate relationship, I think, with Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart represents perfect, and all the -- all -- women all want to be perfect, like Martha Stewart, but then they hate her because she's perfect.
And the fact that men have trouble with her, of course, she's brilliant and beautiful and blonde.
But women have trouble with her because of the perfection. And the irony about Martha Stewart is, she made her billions doing the most undervalued thing there is in this society. I mean, making the homemaker, who earns nothing, into billions.
So it's a fascinating kind of story on all the different sides.
BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) it's an odd thing to me that she is as polarizing as she is. I get it, and she -- in some respects, she's an easy person to make jokes about, she's an easy person to -- and people have, and to go after. But you have to, at some level, just simply admire what it has taken to go from where she started to where she was before yesterday.
EVANS: Right. She's a very good business person. She is a good business woman. She had built -- unlike the people at Enron, who destroyed something that was there, all Martha Stewart's done in this economy is build something and create something, you know, for a great deal of the economy.
BROWN: Now, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), I want to go back to what you said earlier. If, if, if, if she were Mike Stewart, OK...
EVANS: Yes.
BROWN: ... who's Mr. Stewart and not Ms. Stewart, and she gets indicted, he gets indicted, and he says, I didn't do it, and he doesn't start to cry and he doesn't cop a plea, do we, as a society, like him better? EVANS: I think he's not as polarizing. I think we just don't care as much. You know, it's almost like Leona Helmsley. I mean, it's like we care in -- I -- in inappropriate kind of ways. We want to get inside these people, we want to examine. How can any woman be this strong and this powerful and still be nice?
And so it's like we want to make her into all of these kind of unpleasant things. I mean, it's amazing how intimately we know Martha Stewart, and yet none of us know Martha Stewart. You have this made- for-television movie. Somebody said to me the other night, I can't believe Cybill Shepherd wanted to play such a mean role.
I'm, like, She's an actress.
So I think, I mean, we have these obsessions. We love to build icons and then destroy them.
BROWN: How can it be, or how is it that a full generation, maybe more, since the birth of this phase of American feminism, that this is still so?
EVANS: It just goes on and on and on. Well, one of the things, I think, I mean, and one of the premises of my new book is, women haven't yet learned how to play as a team. We don't really see our success as connected till we get in one of these situations. And we're the first ones to sort of begin sticking the nails in, that we think, if Martha comes down, it's about Martha. We don't understand it's about all of us.
BROWN: A woman I know well and admire a lot believes that women are much harder on women.
EVANS: Yes.
BROWN: Than men are on women.
EVANS: Absolutely. Women -- I mean, I think that all the time, when I'm not speaking, I mean, I always hear stories about women who say, The older women make it more difficult for me, my most difficult boss was a woman. It's time we understood that there's this thing that -- you know, we're on the women's team, because we were born there. And we need to start helping each other.
It's like when you say first female executive vice president...
BROWN: Yes.
EVANS: ... it's like I want to scream and go, well, beyond first and only, it's in the rest, I mean, I should be dead if I'm the first, you know, it should have happened years -- generations ago and things like that.
But we need to begin as women to understand, it's not I can make it, it's we can make it. And if Martha goes down, it hurts every woman in business. BROWN: It's a great story. The book is just out, and you'll be out talking about it. We're really pleased to see you. It is not, it is not untrue to say that I'm sitting here in large part because we had lunch a long time ago, and...
EVANS: It's great to see you, Aaron.
BROWN: ... it's wonderful to see you. Good luck with the book.
Still ahead, we have more, we'll look at the morning papers, other things still to do. NEWSNIGHT continues from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: We spent a fair amount of time earlier in the broadcast on the "New York Times" story, the resignation of the top two editors is sure to monopolize many headlines tomorrow. In fact, I can tell you now that it does, because I've seen many of those headlines, and you will too in a few moments.
But this latest chapter began with revelations that a reporter, using that term quite loosely, Jayson Blair, had systematically falsified stories and quotes, deceived readers, broke just about every rule in the business.
Tonight Mr. Blair spoke to Andrew Kurtzman, a reporter for CNN affiliate WCBS here in New York, and here is a bit of what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAYSON BLAIR, FORMER "NEW YORK TIMES" REPORTER: I've said a lot of things, you know, since this started, that I wish I could have taken back.
ANDREW KURTZMAN, REPORTER, WCBS: Like what?
BLAIR: Some of my comments in my interview with "The New York Observer," I felt, were cruel, and I felt were hurtful. And I felt that I should have waited. You know, my emotions are still in turmoil. And I should have waited to have some time to reflect before I talked.
KURTZMAN: Do you feel -- do you still feel that Howell Raines brought this upon himself?
BLAIR: I feel like -- I certainly understand that I played a significant role in the problems that "The Times" is having right now, and I feel like on many levels, what's going on right now inside of "The Times" is something that I would hope that the media will give them an opportunity to take care of sort of inside the family.
KURTZMAN: What do you (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?
BLAIR: It's a really good question. I don't know yet. The main thing that I've focused on is only -- I only really want to do something or some things that help people get some good things out of my situation.
KURTZMAN: Like what?
BLAIR: I've thought about doing some volunteer work with people who have mental illness. I've thought about doing some volunteer work related to substance abuse. I'm definitely going to write about my circumstance and my story, in I don't know what form yet.
KURTZMAN (voice-over): He circulated a book proposal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Well, it's said that Mr. Blair has a seven-figure book advance at least in negotiation, so that seems to be one of the things he will do.
We'll take a look at the headlines from the paper he badly damaged and other newspapers too. We'll go to break first? No. I hate it when I do that.
Okey-dokey.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
BROWN: Thank you.
Have you ever worked with someone like that? Yes, we all have.
OK, morning papers. Let's do this, let's just pretend that little moment before didn't happen.
Here's a quick look at the morning papers from around the country and around the world. I think I'll take my glasses off. In fact, I think I'll go hide.
What do you think's the -- up there above the fold in "The New York Times" today? "'Times''s Two Top Editors Resign After Furor on Writer's Fraud." Jacques Steinberg wrote the story, big story in "The Times." Also that's what every -- this first story, I always go read tomorrow, isn't it a nice picture of President Bush there? Tap on the head of a soldier in Qatar.
And "Senate Approves Child Tax Credit in Lower Bracket," lower income bracket, "GOP Reacts to Criticism." This is really a story "The Times" worked pretty hard, and so it front pages the resolution.
"USA Today," if you're traveling, I like this story, but I live out here. "It Just Doesn't Look Like the Home of Champions." New Jersey is playing for both the NHL and the NBA title. The Devils won today in hockey. I know many of you probably watched that. Anyway, it's a look at the Meadowlands.
"Ashcroft Lobbies for More Powers," "The Detroit News." It's their big story. Well, it's -- of course it's not their big story, their big story's an auto story. "Best Ever Rebates Rob Auto Profits." It's rare, isn't it, they put an auto story on the front page.
There was 40 seconds, really. I'm running out of time.
"Washington Times," pretty straight-ahead lead here, "Ashcroft Wants Powers Expanded to Fight Terror, House Panel Scolds Justice's Dubious Actions."
"The Oregonian" out in Portland, Oregon, "Surprise! Uncle Sam Now Giveth More Than He Taketh." Well, of course, that's why we have a deficit, because we spend more money than we tax. My goodness.
Anyway, that's a look at morning papers from around the country, and that's the end of the program. We're back here tomorrow 10:00 Eastern time. We hope you are too. Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.
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