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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

David Brinkley Dies; Italian Police Find Explosives Aboard Plane; U.S. Forces Begin Counterattack in Iraq

Aired June 12, 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.
This is one of those days when in our sadness we celebrate two great lives lived. The actor Gregory Peck died today and so did journalist David Brinkley. As a kid, I watched David Brinkley, and as an adult I worked with him. Along the way I learned from him.

David was a writer, a writer for television, which is a different kind of writing. He was also incredibly gracious and generous to a much younger, greener, and less talented colleague, and his career served as a reminder that you didn't need to come from the cookie cutter to make your way. He wasn't and he made his way and then some. So, we'll spend some time on David's life and Gregory Peck's remarkable life as well.

A few other matters first, and first in the whip tonight, a very troubling discovery aboard a passenger plane in Italy. Alessio Vinci is on the phone from Rome with that, Alessio a headline please.

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN ROME BUREAU CHIEF: Hello, Aaron. Well, Italian police found what they believe was some explosives onboard a Rome-bound plane. There was no explosion, no death or injuries but many questions remain, first of all who placed it and why, back to you Aaron.

BROWN: Alessio, thank you, back to you at the top tonight.

To the Middle East now with Israel continuing to focus its attacks on Hamas; Matthew Chance on that tonight from Jerusalem, Matt a headline from you.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thank you, Aaron, and the violence that's becoming so tragically routine in this part of the world is intensifying once again. Israel says it will continue to strike at the leadership of Hamas. Members of that Palestinian militant group say they will take revenge. We'll have all the latest for you.

BROWN: Thank you very much.

On to Iraq next and a major push by U.S. forces to stop the attacks that continue to hurt and kill American troops. Ben Wedeman is on that from Baghdad, Ben a headline.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Aaron, well the Americans are stepping up their efforts to crush what seems to be a growing armed resistance to the U.S. presence here. They've launched major operations to the north and west of Baghdad.

BROWN: Ben, thank you.

And, back to the United States and a story about the effort to clean up the police department in Detroit. Jeff Flock has been working that, so Jeff your headline.

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CHICAGO BUREAU CHIEF: Aaron, tonight the headline is the Detroit Police Department is on notice. The Ashcroft Justice Department is watching you. I will explain why.

BROWN: Jeff, thank you, back to you and the rest shortly.

Also coming up tonight, on NEWSNIGHT David Brinkley his remarkable life and career one that brought him into our living rooms on so many evenings and Sunday mornings too.

We talked with Ted Koppel, one of Brinkley's great contributions to broadcast news, the driest of which, says Ted, and the ability to laugh at himself.

And, we remember another remarkable American, actor Gregory Peck once described by the great director John Houston as one of the nicest, greatest guys I ever knew, and he often played guys just like that on the big screen, most memorably a guy named Atticus Finch.

We'll look at the politics of prescription drug reform.

And, resurrect a story that's faded from view for too long, the investigation into the intelligence failures of 9/11. It will never fade for advocate Stephen Push who lost his wife that day. We'll talk to him tonight about where the inquiries stand.

Rory Kennedy joins us to talk about her new film on AIDS around the globe.

And, there is a cooking segment that even Emeril would envy, perhaps, all of that to come tonight.

We begin with the story that raised a chill, went across the wires earlier this evening. For that we go to the phone and CNN's Alessio Vinci.

VINCI: Well, Aaron, police officials in Ancona, which is about 300 kilometers to the east from her, from Rome, said that they received an anonymous phone call at around 2:30 p.m. local time. That was about 8:30 in the morning Eastern today.

And, the caller according to police sources was a male with a distinctive Italian accent and told police to search a plane that was due to leave Ancona about 30 minutes later for Rome.

After police searched that plane, they found a package underneath one of the seats in the rear part of the plane and the package police described in a news release later on as suspicious and containing "some explosive material."

The package was eventually removed from the plane and detonated in a controlled explosion. Police officials, however, would not say how much explosive was found in this package nor whether it was enough to blow up the plane.

At no time, however, were any passengers in danger as the plane was still empty when the police conducted its search. Passengers eventually booked on that flight flew to Rome on another plane. Police, of course, are investigating whatever is left of the contents of this suspicious package and, of course, have many questions to answer.

First of all, how was it possible that such a package made it onto the plane? Why did the would-be attacker alert the police of his intention to blow up the plane or even that the explosive was onboard? And finally, was the person behind this incident was just a lunatic in search of some publicity or whether some well-organized terrorist group may be involved in this incident -- Aaron.

BROWN: Questions for the days ahead. Thank you very much, Alessio Vinci in Italy tonight.

Next to the Middle East, a week and a world away from the peace summit, tonight Hamas is promising to target civilians in a new wave of bombings. Israel is promising more attacks on the leadership of Hamas while expressing regret for the deaths of a three-year-old girl and her mother in the latest operation, reporting for us tonight CNN's Matthew Chance.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHANCE (voice-over): This is the latest bloodletting that threatens to undermine efforts at Israeli-Palestinian peace.

A car carrying senior Hamas militant Yasser Taha was destroyed by Israeli missiles as it moved through Gaza's crowded streets. The assassination may be a small success for Israel but the killing of Taha's wife and three-year-old daughter as well has added to Palestinian anger. Hamas vows its militants will take revenge.

MAHMOUS AL ZAHER, HAMAS SPOKESMAN: Now this message should be sent for every Israeli. Your children and your women, your husbands, everybody is a target now. We have to react and if they are wanting to stop these activities they should ask Sharon to stop this crime and to withdraw from our land.

CHANCE: Israelis are painfully aware of what those words may mean. On Wednesday, a Hamas suicide bomber disguised as an Orthodox Jew boarded a crowded commuter bus in Jerusalem and detonated his explosives. Seventeen innocent people died. Israeli officials insist their actions against Hamas in Gaza are intended to stop these kinds of attacks not provoke them.

RA'ANAN GISSIN, SHARON SENIOR ADVISER: We're not happy of taking action in Gaza but there is a necessity to stop terrorism. Otherwise, it is going to become a major terrorist wave that is going to engulf the whole region and scuttle the roadmap to peace.

CHANCE: But now, just keeping that peace plan alive is proving a difficult task. How or even if the roadmap will survive this intense period of violence is hard to predict.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHANCE: Well, President Bush's envoy, the former Ambassador John Wolf, is scheduled to arrive in this area over the course of the next few days to oversee the implementation of the roadmap peace plan. It will be his first time in the region, Aaron. Clearly he has a big challenge ahead of him.

BROWN: Do you have any sense that Israelis believe that these attacks in Gaza on Hamas in fact make Israeli more secure?

CHANCE: I don't think that many Israelis have seen what's been happening here over the course of the last two and a half years or so who believe that these kinds of attacks carried out by Israel will make this place more secure, no, certainly not.

They believe though still that Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, is the only person they can turn to when they see their civilians, like we saw on Wednesday, being attacked in that way by the Palestinian militant group Hamas and others that carry out suicide bomb attacks like that.

There was a degree of hope amongst many Israelis and many Palestinians too after the Aqaba Summit that there would be a chance for peace. Those hopes though, Aaron, we've seen diminish over the course of the last few days.

BROWN: It didn't take long. Matthew, thank you very much, Matthew Chance in Jerusalem tonight.

On to Iraq next, to the war in Iraq, war complete with full scale battles and battlefield losses, the fighting and the dying clearly not over. For the last three days American forces have been fighting rebels in the central part of the country, now being called the Sunni crescent.

Our report comes from CNN's Ben Wedeman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): American forces in action in the air, in the water, on the ground in one of the most extensive operations in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Up to 4,000 U.S. soldiers descended upon an abandoned Tigris River 45 miles north of Baghdad searching for hard core loyalists to the deposed Iraqi leader. In the course of the operation, dubbed Peninsula Strike, the Americans rounded up hundreds of men, women and children. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're just not taking any chances. We're not going to approach them lightly. It's going to be -- it's going to be force, has to be. People are coming up with suicide bombs and weapons and drive-bys.

WEDEMAN: By mid week U.S. troops had detained nearly 400 men, none from their most wanted list. They also managed, however, to arouse a fair amount of resentment.

"The Americans are occupiers" says this man. "They have no manners or ethics. One of them grabbed a Quran and threw it to the ground."

This operation comes at a time when attacks against U.S. forces are on the increase raising suspicions among some U.S. officers that resistance to the American presence is becoming more organized and more lethal.

LT. GEN. DAVID MCKIERNAN, GROUND FORCES COMMANDER: There have been some handbills that we have found that offer monetary rewards for attacks against coalition forces.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WEDEMAN: In another operation 90 miles west of Baghdad, troops of the 101st Airborne Division went after what coalition officials are describing as a terrorist training camp. During that operation, hostile fire brought down an American Apache helicopter, the first U.S. aircraft shot down in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime -- Aaron.

BROWN: Ben, thank you, Ben Wedeman in Baghdad.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, we look back look back at the career of one of the greats of this business, the television news business, David Brinkley and we'll talk with "Nightline" anchor Ted Koppel about his thoughts on the passing of one of the giants of our craft.

We take a break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Newsman David Brinkley died last night. He was 82. As a young man, Mr. Brinkley helped invent television news. As he grew older, he reminded us of a time when words mattered as much as pictures, and thoughts, interesting and provocative thoughts, trumped them both. I plead where Mr. Brinkley is concerned on your total lack of objectivity. He was a mentor, a gentleman, and a friend.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): He was a stylist in the business so young and immature it didn't have much style at all. He grew old as the business grew up and he died a legend.

DAVID BRINKLEY: Obviously, the news has just got here. It was taken to Congress which of course recessed immediately to wait to see what has happened.

BROWN: He was hired by NBC Radio to be its first White House correspondent in the late '40s. He moved to television in 1956 and was ultimately paired with a laconic Montana native named Chet Huntley, a brand new broadcast with a rocky debut.

REUVEN FRANK, ORIGINAL EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, NBC "NIGHTLY NEWS": But it is part of my firm memory that October 29, '56, the first Huntley-Brinkley news report was the worst network television news broadcast in the history of the medium.

BROWN: The medium didn't have much history in '56, Huntley- Brinkley became the program to watch for a time an odd chemistry on the nightly news and in the booth together for political conventions when such things mattered.

ANNOUNCER: Here they are now in the Los Angeles Sports Arena as you will see them on your television screen.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: They weren't scripted coronations. We didn't even know who was necessarily going to be nominated, so they were big news and whoever won the coverage of the conventions basically had a running head start on the next couple of years.

And when NBC teamed Huntley and Brinkley, Huntley the kind of carved out of a mountain, and Brinkley much more at ease and with a little smile behind his words, it was a perfect combination. They went on to absolutely dominate the evening news ratings for the next decade and more.

BROWN: For all the words he wrote, and Mr. Brinkley was a superb writer, he will be remembered most for these words.

CHET HUNTLEY: Good night, David.

BRINKLEY: Good night, Chet.

HUNTLEY: And good night from Texaco.

BROWN: Which David Brinkley said he couldn't stand.

BRINKLEY: We both despised it. I thought it was silly and said so and we argued for -- we argued all day, maybe longer than a day because I thought we should say goodnight to the audience not to each other. Two men saying goodnight to each other on the air struck me as being a little dubious.

BROWN: David Brinkley was such a fixture at NBC News that most Americans never thought he would do anything else. They were wrong. NBC decided that his time was up. They essentially put him out to pasture.

ANNOUNCER: From ABC News...

BROWN: But over at ABC, Roone Arledge knew better, and after 38 years at NBC, Arledge brought Brinkley to ABC to reinvent Sunday morning TV which he did.

BRINKLEY: Send me the bill. Thank you for coming.

BROWN: For another dozen years, "This Week" or just "The Brinkley Show" as it was called at ABC was a huge success.

GREENFIELD: One of the remarkable things about Brinkley is the sheer length of his run. I mean if he became dominant in 1956, he was around before that, but really a national player, that's four decades on two different networks in two different formats both of which he helped to reinvent.

BROWN: Through it all, David Brinkley had perfect pitch for his audience.

JOE ANGOTTI, FORMER EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, NBC "NIGHTLY NEWS": David Brinkley revolutionized the way that people wrote for television news. Until David came along, the writers for television news were primarily newspaper people who had worked on newspapers, came over to television, and wrote the same way that they would write for a newspaper. David believed that people ought to write for television the way they speak.

BROWN: The first President Bush called him the elder statesman of television news. President Clinton liked him as well even though Brinkley once called Mr. Clinton a bore during a national broadcast.

He was 82 when he died today and he liked to say that he had done news longer than anyone on earth. So much of TV has become about volume, who talks the loudest or is the most outrageous.

Mr. Brinkley was the mirror opposite. In a soft voice and with just a few words he could make the larger, more important point than all the shouters and the screamers combined.

GREENFIELD: What Brinkley brought was a kind of a little bit of a twinkle in the eye, a little bit of a wink. He was invariably described as wry or ironic or dry but basically it meant he was using relatively simple language, relatively short observations with a kind of wink at the audience saying, you know, you don't have to take everything as if it were the most serious thing in the world, and it turns out in the medium of television that worked just wonderfully.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: There are a lot of people we could talk to about Mr. Brinkley. In the next section we'll talk to two of his bosses, Reuven Frank who produced "Huntley-Brinkley," and Dick Wald who ran NBC News and later was at ABC when David made the move. That's coming up.

But first, a pretty fair journalist himself, Ted Koppel, we talked with Ted earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Why is David -- why was David important in the business? TED KOPPEL, "NIGHTLINE": He was the first guy to have a sense of humor about what we do and he applied that not only to himself but also to the men and women that he covered.

He did it with great affection so it was never jarring but until David Brinkley came along, I mean not that we don't take ourselves too seriously these days, but we really took ourselves seriously before he came along.

And then, all of a sudden here was David who always brought that touch of whimsy to every story that he covered and the business has never been the same. No one has ever been able to reproduce it exactly the way he did it but he changed the whole flavor of television news.

BROWN: Was he a better journalist than anchor, better anchor than journalist, what was he?

KOPPEL: He was a wonderful essayist and, above all, he was a gentleman who treated his guests and the objects of his journalism with respect even as he poked gentle fun at them.

BROWN: When -- I mean David really had a couple of careers. He had the NBC career and then he had the time at ABC. When you heard he was coming to ABC, what did you think?

KOPPEL: I thought how stupid NBC was and how lucky we were. There was that sense I guess David would have been, I think he came over in about 1980-81, so he would have been in his early 60s, late 50s, and somehow the suits over at NBC seemed to feel that he was washed up and he clearly was not and he had a lot of energy and a lot of vitality left.

And, Roone Arledge who, as you know, was then president of ABC News was smart enough to say let's build a program around him and thus, "This Week With David Brinkley" was born, and once again he became something of a pioneer because until that time those Sunday morning talk shows had been terribly, terribly dull.

I mean basically it was one or more journalists sitting in a row of chairs talking to one or more guests and that was the whole broadcast, and "This Week with David Brinkley" created the notion of a panel to discuss the news afterwards. It set things up with a video report before you ever began talking to the principal guests. It was just a much more interesting program the way it was done but also because he was doing it.

BROWN: I thought it was -- I always thought it was interesting that he seemed so comfortable in an ensemble program, which is what "This Week" ultimately became. He became the clear center of an ensemble group. There aren't a lot of anchors, honestly, who would have been as comfortable in that.

KOPPEL: No, and one of the reasons that he made his colleagues so comfortable, if you ever went back and sort of toted up the number of minutes that David was actually on the air, I think you would have been shocked to find out that there were very few.

David didn't do all that much on the broadcast except project his own presence onto it and the fact of the matter was that when it was time to go to a break all David had to do was sort of raise a finger and everybody shut up immediately. He projected that kind of authority.

When at the end of the program he would do one of his little commentaries, and they tended to be kind of whimsical, he almost inevitably broke himself up, which was one of the charming things about watching the program.

David really appreciated his own sense of humor but he did it in such a sweet way that it was always as though he couldn't contain the mirth that was just bubbling out of him and that was part of what made him so attractive.

And, I have to add one other thing. He was always so nice to people, not just to the people he had on the program, not just to his colleagues on the broadcast, but to those among us who were younger colleagues of his. I never recall David Brinkley ever saying a cross word to anybody. He was always supportive and kind and gentle, a dear, dear man.

BROWN: And he -- I met David for the first time literally in an elevator at ABC in Washington and one of the things that struck me beyond the fact he knew who I was and was nice about it is that he talked like David Brinkley on the air and off the air.

KOPPEL: He did and as I'll be saying a little later on "Nightline" this evening, one of the things that I guess younger people cannot possibly understand is that when David Brinkley and Chet Huntley were co-anchoring the NBC News, what was then called "The Huntley-Brinkley Report," there were only three networks and it was by far the dominant newscast among the three. So that, the Brinkley style became -- I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that half the male NBC reporters on the air sounded like David Brinkley.

BROWN: Yes.

KOPPEL: They were all doing sort of a faux Brinkley and I don't think they were even aware of the fact that they were doing it but such was his impact at that time that people started sounding like Brinkley. He had that kind of an effect and half of America was walking around being terribly clever and saying, good night, Chet, good night, David, because that's how they ended their broadcast every night.

BROWN: For me, and I suspect for you, he was one of those people you were just honored to say he was a colleague of yours.

KOPPEL: Indeed. I think and you can say that without a smirk. You can say that without sort of harboring evil thoughts in the back of your mind. He was a really nice man, a gentleman, a wonderful colleague, and a delight to watch. He was just a great, great television journalist. BROWN: Ted, thank you for your time today.

KOPPEL: My pleasure, Aaron, thank you.

BROWN: Good to talk to you.

KOPPEL: Same here.

BROWN: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ted Koppel, we talked with him earlier today. We'll continue to talk about David Brinkley in a moment.

We'll talk with two men who were intimately involved with his career behind the camera, Reuven Frank, and Dick Wald.

We'll take a break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: One of the best lines we read today about David Brinkley came from his old boss. Brinkley writes silence better than anyone else I know. His ability to know when to stop talking let the pictures tell the story.

We're fortunate to have that old boss, Reuven Frank, with us tonight, former NBC News president, and executive producer of "The Huntley-Brinkley Report," and also with us Dick Wald the former president of NBC News and a senior vice president at ABC News, former or current?

DICK WALD, FRM. PRESIDENT OF NBC AND ABC NEWS: Former. Former.

BROWN: Former senior vice president of ABC News, good to see you both.

How did Huntley-Brinkley become a pair? Were they in fact a good combination?

REUVEN FRANK, FMR. NBC NEWS PRESIDENT: We had no idea. We had no idea. We were looking for someone to anchor the '56 convention coverage and in those days, as I think Jeff mentioned convention coverage was key to a news division's next four years.

I think Swayze and Douglas Edwards came out of the '48 convention. Cronkite came out of the '52 convention. And, the man who had done the '52 convention for us was a very good journalist and broadcaster but he was a moonlighter. His basic jobs was with "The Los Angeles Times." His name was Bill Henry, a wonderful man and I was one of those who said, you can't go to Henry again. I loved Henry, but we get nothing out of it.

And my little group, which was rather far down the food chain, was split between wanting Huntley and Brinkley. I favored Brinkley and the man I worked for favored Huntley. And above us, the managers were arguing. And they wanted to go with Henry and tried to mollify us, they suggested Henry and somebody else. In a minute, they suggested two people. We said well if you want two people, we have two people. They're both competent.

BROWN: Yes.

FRANK: They're both trained journalists. They both know how to look into a camera. And we argued until we won. We had no idea that there was anything special between them, nor did they.

BROWN: Did you ever say to David, you know, David, a little less style, a little less humor? Let's play this a little straighter?

FRANK: Oh, no. No, no, no. I'd known David before. I'd worked on the camera news caravan and he was the Washington correspondent. I thought David was marvelous. He was still in my 40, 50 years the best writer I've ever worked with.

BROWN: Yes, he's pretty good. You guys over at ABC, your boss Reuven and you just saw an opening. You had no -- basically no Sunday morning TV show that anyone was watching, right?

FRANK: It would have been fourth had there been four networks, yes.

BROWN: Yes. And you knew that David was being essentially tossed aside?

FRANK: Yes.

BROWN: How did the deal happen?

FRANK: Well, David and I were friends. And we had been talking over a period when he was being pushed aside. And essentially they wanted -- NBC wanted him to retire. And he didn't feel he was ready to retire. He was 61, I believe at the time.

And so I said, well, there's probably a place here for you. We're looking for somebody to run a Sunday show. And we're not show of the shape or anything else. But -- and I talked to Reuven. And Reuven thought this was the greatest thing in the world.

So David and I met for drinks at a placed nobody in our place ever goes, Tavern on the Green, tourist headquarters. And I laid out to him what I thought a Sunday show might be and what he might do with it, and trying to persuade him to come out of retirement and come do this thing. And he said, well, it sounded good. And he said, okay, I'll do it. He said, -- and he shook my hand.

BROWN: Deal done?

FRANK: Deal done. And at that point, a woman walked into the bar. We were alone in the bar. She walked in with one of those throw-away cameras. And she said, "You're David Brinkley." About he said, "Yes." And she said, "Can I take your picture?" And he said, "Sure." And she hands me the camera and she says, "Take a picture with me with David." I took a picture. David's entirely polite all the time. And he said, "What are you doing here?" And she said, "I'm a lottery winner." She said, "We've got 100 reporters in the next room, and we're just going to -- I'm going to go back there and tell them you're here." And he said, "Thank you very much, ma'am." I threw 20 bucks on the bar and we both ran.

BROWN: Yes. 45 seconds or so. David's legacy into the business, Mr. Frank?

FRANK: News for grown-ups, news for television. The Huntley- Brinkley Report, October 29th, '56 was the dividing line. Up until then, it was all a continuation of wartime radio.

BROWN: Yes.

FRANK: Two kinds of newscasters, the singers and the shouters. And we did it for grown-ups.

BROWN: And in 15 seconds, his importance to ABC?

FRANK: At a period when ABC was beginning to grow, he brought it gravitas and he brought it dignity and he brought it a Sunday program that became number one in the ratings when he took it over and stayed number one until he retired.

BROWN: He's really a good guy, too.

FRANK: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

BROWN: And I thank you both. Nice to see you and nice to meet you, finally.

FRANK: My pleasure.

BROWN: Thank you very much. Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, Detroit's police department under fire. We'll explain why. And later, the other legend we lost today, Gregory Peck. From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: And next on NEWSNIGHT, federal oversight for the Detroit police department, an explanation after the break. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A quote that stood out to us was this one, "We have worked diligently to craft the best possible roadmap." This is not a story from the Middle East but from the American Midwest. This roadmap was crafted by the U.S. Justice Department, trying to bring peace to the city of Detroit at a police department that many say was operating like a rogue's paradise. The story reported for us tonight by CNN's Jeff Flock.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You've got a lot of anger against the Detroit Police Department, do you not?

HERMAN VALERIE: Yes, I do.

FLOCK (voice-over): A Detroit policeman shot Herman Valerie's son twice in the back.

VALERIE: One of the bullets came into his back and came out of his chest, which meant he was falling over at the time.

FLOCK: Just one of dozens of civilian police shootings that led to this agreement on a consent decree, ordering the Detroit police department get a federal watchdog that even the chief himself agrees it needs.

JERRY OLIVER, CHIEF, DETROIT POLICE DEPARTMENT: We have a long, long way to go. And this agreement -- these agreements will help us accelerate our movement toward excellence as a police department.

FLOCK: The agreement orders new policies, improving prisoner conditions in its precinct lock-ups, prohibiting police from holding people without reasonable suspicion or cause, and new policies by its use of the kind of the force that killed her Herman Valerie's son, Lamar.

(on camera): It is not easy being a cop in Detroit. There's poverty, blight, guns are everywhere. According to prosecutors, felony firearms convictions are up threefold in just the past two years.

(voice-over): But police have come under increasing criticism. Since 1997, Detroit has paid out $137 million in police misconduct lawsuits.

OLIVER: This won't take a long time. We're going to get it done, and get it done together, and get it done fast.

FLOCK: Many don't agree.

What is the main problem with the police department in this town? Detroit councilwoman Sheila Cockrell led her first protest against police misconduct in the '60s. She says in some ways it's worse now. Many don't trust Detroit police to protect them, even like on routine traffic stops like this one.

SHEILA COCKRELL, DETROIT CITY COUNCIL: We have a deeply ingrained problem the blue curtain of secrecy that has shrouded this department can't be opened and has to be torn away.

FLOCK: And so it will be. The agreement says the federal monitor could be in place until 2008.

(END VIDEOTAPE) FLOCK: And Aaron, an anti-police brutality group by its count, says 63 people have been shot by Detroit police since the year 1997. That would be vastly more than either Chicago or New York, vastly larger cities and much more trouble here.

BROWN: Jeff, thank you. Jeff Flock in Detroit.

A few other stories from around the country tonight, beginning with a finding in the Shuttle Columbia investigation. There are questions tonight now about the large bolts that attached solid rocket boosters to the shuttle's fuel tanks. The accident board says it has detected what it calls a radar event about two minutes after Columbia's launch, that might have been related to the bolts. That event would have been less than a minute after the foam insulation fell off, thought to be the moment the shuttle was mortally damaged.

Capitol Hill, the House voted today to extend an increase in the child tax credits. Through the rest of the decade, that would seem to be good news for low-income families that were originally left out of getting the tax break, but in truth, it sets up a confrontation with the Senate, which a week ago passed a much smaller bill. The White House said today that it wants the House and Senate to quickly resolve differences over an issue the president very much wants to go away.

And the judge in the Scott Peterson murder case has put a gag order on nearly everyone involved, saying press coverage would make it very difficult, extremely difficult in his words, to find an impartial jury. Covered by the gag order are prosecutors, defense lawyers, along with their agents, staff or experts, as well as all potential witnesses and any law enforcement officer involved.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, what's holding up the report on the September 11th attacks? We'll talk with the husband and one of the victims about his effort to get the information out to you, when NEWSNIGHT continues from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In all the talk about intelligence involving Iraq, there's something else we're afraid that's gotten lost in the shuffle, and that's the intelligence failure of 9/11. It's been more than a year and a half. And what do we have in terms of official findings? Not a whole lot.

A joint inquiry by Congress was done last year, but the Bush administration has refused to release the report. The White House also fought hard against creating an independent 9/11 commission, though, the president eventually bowed to a greater force. The outrage of people like Stephen Push, who lost his wife that morning.

Mr. Push is the co-founder of Families of September 11 and he joins us now to talk about the need, painful though it may be, to point fingers. He joins us from Washington. Good to have you with us. What do you know about the congressional report first, and why it hasn't been released? STEPHEN PUSH, CO-FOUNDER AND TREASURER, FAMILIES OF SEPTEMBER 11: Well, it hasn't been released because the administration has not agreed to declassify certain sections of the report. And I believe this is an abuse of the administration's privilege, because most of the leaders of the joint inquiry, particularly Senators Bob Graham and Richard Shelby, feel that the information that is being withheld is not legitimately classifiable information.

BROWN: The one Republican, the other a Democrat. Have they given you any idea, at least in the broad strokes, what the report contains?

PUSH: Well, they're really not at liberty to do so, but I believe that the -- that the hang-ups on the report have to do with the role of Saudi Arabia, which we believe has been funding terrorism, and supporting it, and also with the presidential daily briefings, the briefings that were given to the president by the intelligence community, particularly those prior to 9/11.

BROWN: And so, the Saudi Arabia question becomes a delicate diplomatic question. And the other, I gather you would argue becomes one of embarrassment to the White House, to the president. What did the president know prior to 9/11? What action was taken or not taken?

PUSH: Right. Yes, I believe that the president should waive executive privilege in this case, and release all information, and declassify information except that which is really legitimately can be withheld in order to protect sources and methods of intelligence gathering.

BROWN: You said earlier that you thought it appropriate that fingers be pointed here. And it's one of the things that I think makes people a little uncomfortable, the idea that these reports will be used in some way to blame people for what they didn't do. Explain why you think a little finger-pointing is probably a good thing here.

PUSH: Well, I don't think that we should be looking for scapegoats. But clearly, there were people who made egregious errors, errors that led to the deaths of more than 3,000 people. If these same people are still in positions of power and influence today, and still responsible for national security, that's a problem. If they've failed before.

Now understandably, sometimes it's just a mistake. And sometimes, you know, there's really no point in punishing the person. But if a person has a pattern, a history of poor performance, as many in some of these agencies appeared to have had, they should be taken out of positions where they control the intelligence and counterterrorism activities that protect all of America.

BROWN: And the status of the independent commission, and does it have any relationship to the families? Does it talk to the families? Do you have much input in any of this?

PUSH: I have an excellent relationship, as do many other family members with the independent commission. I just met the other day with one of the staff members and provided them with some useful information, some leads that they're going to follow up on. We meet on a regular basis with the commissioners and with the senior staff. And we're very satisfied that they are seeking and listening to our input in this process.

BROWN: And are you equally satisfied and confident that they will get the information they need to do the work that Congress has mandated for them?

PUSH: No, I'm not. I'm concerned that because the administration has had a history of withholding information from the joint inquiry, that they will practice the same pattern with the 9/11 commission and withhold vital information. And that's where I think the president needs to waive executive privilege, as President Clinton did for Whitewater, as President Reagan did for Iran-contra, waive executive privilege and give all of the information to the commission.

Now the commissioners have full security clearances. So giving the information to them doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be released to the public if it is legitimately classifiable information. But the commissioners can't make a judgment if they can't see that information when they finish their report.

BROWN: Do you think we'll ever know, really know what the government knew before 9/11, what it did and didn't do? Do you think those answers will ever really be available to us?

PUSH: We may never know all of the answers, but 3,000 people died. And we owe it to them to squeeze every bit of useful information out of this lesson, so that we can try to prevent future tragedies of this like from occurring.

BROWN: Stephen, it's good to have you on the program. Thanks very much.

PUSH: Thank you, Aaron. Pleased to be here.

BROWN: Thank you, Steven Push.

Next on NEWSNIGHT, another legend lost. We'll look back at the career, extraordinary actor, Gregory Peck. We'll take a break first. It's NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Someone on the NEWSNIGHT staff got a message from a friend today that said simply, "Oh, no, Atticus died." Such is the impression that the actor, Gregory Peck, made on so many people as the father, the lawyer, the conscience of one southern town torn up by race in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Atticus Finch was his best known and most loved role in a remarkable career that began with a stint as a barker at the 1939 World's Fair.

Gregory Peck once said his great goal was to be thought of by the audience as an old friend. Tonight, remembering that old friend, Gregory Peck, who died overnight at 87. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Gregory Peck played heroes, but Gregory Peck did not play safe. He was the idealistic Southern lawyer in "To Kill a Mockingbird."

PECK: You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

BROWN: Using film to make a point about the country and race. It's seen that Gregory Peck was born to be Atticus Finch.

PECK: The evil assumption that all Negroes lie, all Negroes are basically immoral beings, all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber. And which is in itself gentlemen, a lie.

BROWN: Finch was named the number one movie hero in the American Film Institute's study of heroes and villains. Most of Gregory Peck's characters were upright and moral.

PECK: You're not safe, running around loose, partner. You've got to be lock up.

BROWN: Battling the bad guys, the enemies of justice.

PECK: It rises!

BROWN: And the occasional giant whale. His list of great movies is staggering. "Gentlemen's Agreement," a daring film on its time on anti-Semitism.

PECK: Here, take my hand. Feel it. Same flesh as yours, isn't it? No different today than it was yesterday. The only thing that's different is the word Christian.

BROWN: "12:00 High," he got an Oscar nomination for that.

PECK: That means we start dropping practice bombs every day that we haven't got a mission.

BROWN: And "Roman Holiday," a romantic triumph with then newcomer Audrey Hepburn.

AUDREY HEPBURN, ACTRESS: For me, he was the bigger star ever.

BROWN: Off the screen, Mr. Peck was also a man of conviction and a man who refused to play safe. The great director John Houston said of Peck that he had superb dignity. And the writer, Cleveland Amory (ph), said Peck was perhaps Hollywood's best-liked liberal.

In 1947, Gregory Peck stood against the blacklisting of the alleged Communists in the film industry. He served as president in the Motion Picture Academy and the founding chairman of the American Film Institute. During his first five years in movies, Gregory Peck scored four Academy Award nominations as best actor. He was, by all measures, the greatest of stars, but he saw his role more humbling.

PECK: I think what I'm proud of is that I just survived and kept on working, and always gave it my best shot. And here and there, there are some movies that play as well now as they did 25 or 30 years ago, though that ultimately -- that's the best reward an actor can have.

BROWN: Gregory Peck was lanky and handsome, strong and accessible. He brought both grace and courage to the characters he portrayed. Those characters embodied in the person of Gregory Peck represented another time, a time when, like the actor himself, Hollywood seemed so much larger than life.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We lost a couple important people today, didn't we?

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, Democrats and Republicans racing to get on the bandwagon for Medicare drug benefits. And the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, backhands the Belgians. We'll explain why as NEWSNIGHT continues from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: H.L. Mencken once said that for every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.

We can only guess what he'd make of today's debate over drug benefits and Medicare reform, but we imagine it would set his nose a- twitching.

The problem, after all, is complicated. It is costly. And it affects millions of Americans who vote -- a recipe for deadlock, you might think. Well, you'd be wrong.

Here's CNN's Jonathan Karl.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With the kind of zeal he put into the tax cut fight, the president is stumping for his Medicare prescription drug plan.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Congress must understand, we've got a problem of Medicare. They should not politicize the issue. They ought to focus on what's best for our fellow Americans and get a package done. And the House needs to get it done, and the Senate needs to get it done prior to the Fourth of July break.

KARL: It looks like that may happen. Unlike the bitter and drawn-out fight over taxes, a modified version of the president's Medicare plan is flying through Congress with relative ease. Even Democrats are saying nice things about it.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE (D-SD), MINORITY LEADER: This is an historic moment, and I too commend our distinguished leaders...

SEN. KENT CONRAD (D), NORTH DAKOTA: This proposal is a major step in the right direction.

KARL: Just days ago, Democratic leader Tom Daschle slammed the compromise.

DASCHLE: We think that it is flawed, seriously. We think that there are many improvements that must be made in order for it to be acceptable to seniors.

KARL: Now Daschle has done a virtual about-face, and the bill's supporters think it will ultimately pass with as many as 75 votes, including a majority of Democrats.

What happened? The Kennedy factor, in part, explains the dramatic turnaround. Ted Kennedy praised the plan as a major breakthrough even as Democratic leaders attacked it. At a closed-door meeting of Democratic senators on Tuesday, Kennedy made an appeal based on pragmatism, saying this was the best chance of getting seniors drug coverage.

There will be continued resistance from other liberal Democrats who don't want to hand the president a political victory on such a hot-button issue. And some conservatives, including former leader Trent Lott, argue the plan costs too much and reforms too little.

But most conservatives are jumping on the prescription drug bandwagon.

SEN. JIM BUNNING (R), KENTUCKY: Seniors across the country are tired -- believe me, I've heard from them -- are tired of politicians promising a prescription drug benefit year after year only to be let down year after year.

KARL: But this year, America's 40 million Medicare beneficiaries may finally get what they've been demanding.

(on camera): The bills making their way through Congress both would give seniors a prescription drug benefit for a $35 monthly premium, including catastrophic drug coverage and the opportunity to choose a private plan. Total cost to the taxpayer, $400 billion over 10 years.

Jonathan Karl, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: At this point, it would be tough to call Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's European trip a goodwill tour, although that clearly was part of the plan. Yesterday he took aim at Germany and France for what he called their lack of vision on Iraq. Today at a NATO meeting in Brussels, he opened fire on Belgium.

Here's our chief Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CHIEF PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): By all accounts, this meeting of NATO defense ministers was historic, as the alliance completely revamped its organization and mission. But it may also be one of the last the U.S. attends in Belgium, which has been hosting the alliance's headquarters since it left France in 1967.

At least, that was the clear impression left by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is furious about Belgium's claim to have jurisdiction over U.S. citizens accused of war crimes.

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: This law calls into serious question whether NATO can continue to hold meetings in Belgium, and whether senior U.S. officials, military and civilian, will be able to continue to visit international organizations in Belgium.

MCINTYRE: Under Belgium's 10-year-old Universal Competence Law, a local attorney was able to file charges against U.S. General Tommy Franks and an American colonel, accusing them of war crimes for the deaths of civilians in Iraq.

RUMSFELD: These suits are absurd. Indeed, I would submit there's no general in history who has gone to greater lengths than General Franks and his superb team to avoid civilian casualties.

MCINTYRE: Other Americans named in Belgian war crime lawsuits, the first President Bush, Desert Storm commander Norman Schwarzkopf, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Rumsfeld insisted he was not threatening to force NATO to move its headquarters out of Belgium, but he was clearly playing hardball.

RUMSFELD: Certainly until this matter is resolved, we will have to oppose any further spending for construction for a new NATO headquarters here in Brussels.

MCINTYRE: Rumsfeld's bombshell threatened to overshadow significant progress NATO made in mending the divisions among the allies over the U.S.-led war in Iraq. For instance, NATO agreed to support Poland's intention to lead a peacekeeping division in Iraq, and several NATO countries, including Spain and Hungary, pledged troops.

And NATO ministers approved a major overhaul of their military organization, consolidating operations under a single commander, approving the next phase in creating a rapid reaction force, and acquiring much-needed heavy-lift transport aircraft.

Before the war in Iraq, NATO, in the words of one U.S. diplomat, suffered a near-death experience when a divided alliance hesitated in providing defensive forces requested by Turkey. But now the U.S. feels NATO is back on track, moving surely, albeit slowly, to remake its military along the American model of lighter, faster forces capable of hunting terrorists or enforcing peace.

Jamie McIntyre, CNN, NATO headquarters, Brussels. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The next time you take off your shoes at airport security, you might want to consider this. Whatever threat you and your sneakers may pose to life and limb, it doesn't even to begin to match the potential danger from another source, the big ports through which millions of shipping containers flow.

Many experts call shaky port security the dirty little secret of the war on terrorism. And today, the secretary of homeland security announced more than $300 million in new funding to meet the challenge.

Here's CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Thousands of pleasure boats dart among the ships in Los Angeles Harbor and tie up a stone's throw away. Any one of them could be used as a platform for a terrorist attack like that on the U.S.S. "Cole."

(on camera): So boy, that would be a quick hop, take your -- I mean, you wouldn't have time to stop anybody.

CHIEF NOEL CUNNINGHAM, PORT OF LOS ANGELES: No, absolutely not. Absolutely not.

MESERVE (voice-over): The chief of the Los Angeles Port Police evaluates security every day.

CUNNINGHAM: On a scale of 10, we're probably at -- probably at 2.

MESERVE: Twelve million cargo containers pass through this, the nation's biggest port, every year. Any one of them could contain a weapon of mass destruction or even a terrorist. How many get screened?

CUNNINGHAM: I'm afraid to tell you.

MESERVE: The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection says paperwork on every container is scrutinized and all suspicious containers are inspected. But the cargo manifests on which the decisions are based are unreliable.

(on camera): OK, someone can just lie.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And they often do.

MESERVE (voice-over): Customs officers wear pagers to alert them to radiological materials. But there is no screening for biological or chemical weapons.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're working currently on developing that kind of technology. MESERVE: Sea marshals board some inbound ships to check out security, including the documentation of the foreign crews. Names are run through databases, but only known terrorists are flagged.

CUNNINGHAM: I am certain there are sympathizers with al Qaeda that may be on these ships.

MESERVE (on camera): And none of the background checks would necessarily pick them up.

CUNNINGHAM: They would not pick them up, no.

MESERVE (voice-over): Things are safer here than they used to be. Before 9/11, there wasn't even fencing around parts of the port.

Recognizing there is further to go, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge traveled to Port Elizabeth, New Jersey, Thursday to announce the expansion of a well-regarded program which allows U.S. Customs agents to inspect cargo bound for the U.S. in foreign ports. Already in operation in 13 of the world's largest ports, the program will now push to include ports in the Arab world, Asia, and Africa.

TOM RIDGE, SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: It's very important for us to think not only in terms of tonnage and volume of shipping, but strategically, where terrorists might be more inclined, because of access, to either put terrorists or terrorist weapons in some of these container ships.

MESERVE: The goal is to push the nation's security perimeter out, away from the U.S., while more work is done and more money spent to close up the gaps that are still so evident at ports like Los Angeles.

Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Port Elizabeth, New Jersey.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the AIDS pandemic. We'll look at the worldwide situation with filmmaker Rory Kennedy in a moment.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Came across a statistic in "New Yorker" about a place where the life expectancy is 42. We wish we could say this was the life expectancy of our ancestors thousands of years ago, before good nutrition, modern medicine, and high-tech drug companies.

But this is the life for people as modern and human as you or I, the people of Uganda and many countries devastated by the most modern of diseases, AIDS.

The AIDS disaster is the focus of a new series, a documentary to air on HBO called "Pandemic: Facing AIDS." Here's a look at some of the countries that director Rory Kennedy visited. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "PANDEMIC: FACING AIDS," HBO)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (singing in African language)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (singing in African language)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (singing in African language)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (speaking in Russian)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (speaking in Russian)

NARRATOR: Every year in India, 100,000 women with HIV give birth. More than 30 percent of these women will pass the infection on to their baby. But India has increased its efforts towards prevention. And Nagaraj Mbanu (ph) have taken every precaution.

For less than $2, Mbanu has taken a medication called Naveripine (ph), and this has cut the probability of transmission in half.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: The series starts on HBO Sunday night, 7:00.

Rory Kennedy is with us now. It's nice to have you here.

RORY KENNEDY, DIRECTOR, "PANDEMIC: FACING AIDS": Thank you.

BROWN: How'd you get into this project?

KENNEDY: Well, I had the honor of going on a White House delegation to Africa about four years ago. We were looking at the AIDS crisis there, and I had been asked to make a 15-minute film about what I saw, and the impact of that trip was very profound.

I saw devastation that I could never have imagined. I met a woman there, Bernadette, who had 11 children, 10 of whom had died of AIDS. She was the sole caretaker of 35 grandchildren, five of whom were HIV-positive.

And so when we talk about the devastation that AIDS has caused, that's the level that we're talking about, entire families being decimated.

So it was really after that trip that I decided to expand the project into a global film.

BROWN: It's a series of stories, really, about five different characters in five different countries. Do you find that the societal reaction in each of these countries is similar, or is it quite different from country to country?

KENNEDY: It's similar in some ways, but it's also different. We've seen countries like Brazil and Uganda really take on the AIDS epidemic, and in those countries, in Uganda, for example, the rate of transmission has been reduced by 80 percent. In Russia it's -- in Brazil, rather, it's been reduced by 50 percent.

So there's some great success stories in countries that have really made this a -- an important issue and a priority. In other countries, like Russia, we're seeing explosive numbers, and that's because the country's really not dealing with it.

BROWN: Was it difficult to get the characters to agree to participate?

KENNEDY: It was in some cases. And again, it's -- it really depends on the country. In India, where the stigma is very significant, it was very, very difficult to even get somebody to speak to us. Just to say that you've HIV-positive in India is a great act of courage.

So in many cases, it was very challenging.

BROWN: Couple of other things. What do you want out of this? What do you hope will come from the project?

KENNEDY: Well, you know, the statistics are so overwhelming with AIDS. There are 40 million people who are HIV-positive in the world today. There are 24 million people who have already died of AIDS. There are 13 million orphans.

But we really chose in this film to focus on one or two stories in each of the countries to try to humanize AIDS, to try to go beyond the numbers and put a human face on the epidemic.

And my hope is that people will really connect to the people they see in this series, and I hope they'll tune in on Sunday on June 15 and connect with people. And then we have a Web site, pandemicfacingaids.org that I developed with my partner, Nan Richardson, to allow people to get involved in the fight against AIDS.

BROWN: Are you hopeful?

KENNEDY: I am hopeful. That's definitely one of the things that came out of my experience, is that, you know, I saw countries that made this a priority. I saw individuals stand up against AIDS. And I saw what happens when that occurs. And what happens is that we win, we beat AIDS.

But it's really a question of making it a priority and committing the resources that are needed to fight AIDS.

BROWN: It's -- do you worry at all, half a minute, do you worry at all that the people who will come and watch the program are essentially converts in the first place, that it -- this is a little bit of preaching to the choir?

KENNEDY: Well, the truth is, I really don't think that many people are aware of...

BROWN: OK. KENNEDY: the degree of the pandemic, and how it's penetrated so many countries. My feeling is, is that we are on the brink of this becoming a really explosive situation. Many people feel like, Well, we didn't do enough, and it's over, and, you know, it's too bad.

But the truth of the matter is, is, we're at the tip of the iceberg with this pandemic, and if we don't do something now, then we're going to see really scary numbers.

So I -- my hope is that when people see this, this film, that they'll understand that a little bit better and they'll get involved in the fight against AIDS.

BROWN: Series starts Sunday night on HBO, 7:00 Eastern time, and it's HBO, so it's probably on a number of other times as well.

It's nice to meet you. Congratulations.

KENNEDY: Thank you for having me.

BROWN: All right.

KENNEDY: I appreciate it.

BROWN: Good for you. Good for you.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, something a bit lighter. We'll take some of you back to your first cooking experience. This is a crazy idea. But it's the Easy-Bake Oven's 40th birthday, and we'll celebrate it.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We spent time this week talking about some of the momentous events of 1963 involving civil rights. This is one of the less-momentous events of 1963, although anyone who owned and dearly loved an Easy-Bake Oven may beg to differ.

The Easy-Bake was created 40 years ago, allowing kids to escape the adult world outside by cooking tiny little cakes with a tiny light bulb, or two.

Helping to mark this pivotal moment of 1963 in our young lives, David Hoffman, the author of "The Easy-Bake Oven Gourmet," which tells you how to make such things as Deep Dish Truffle Lobster Pie with an Easy-Bake Oven.

Why, David, would you want to do that, I do not know, but welcome.

DAVID HOFFMAN, AUTHOR, "THE EASY-BAKE OVEN GOURMET": Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: How'd you get interested in this?

HOFFMAN: Well, actually, I had written a book about classic toys.

BROWN: Yes.

HOFFMAN: And when I went on a publicity tour with it, I noticed whenever I did a talk show or morning news show, and as you know, most of those are staffed by women, or a lot of them are staffed...

BROWN: Yes.

HOFFMAN: ... by women, women went weak at the knees at the sight of an Easy-Bake Oven.

BROWN: That...

HOFFMAN: And I decided that there was some sort of phenomenon that had to be investigated.

BROWN: Now, this is the old one.

HOFFMAN: This is the original one...

BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

HOFFMAN: ... 1963, guy named Norman Shapiro, worked for the Kennet (ph) Corporation, saw pretzel vendors all over the streets of Manhattan, decided to make a miniature pretzel maker, and it evolved into a miniature oven.

BROWN: And it's been updated so that it looks like a microwave.

HOFFMAN: Well, it has...

BROWN: Basically. Right?

HOFFMAN: Yes, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- well, the point is, is, through the years, and we trace -- I trace all this in the book, it sort of evolved as Mom's oven evolved. So like in the early '70s, it was in Harvest Gold and Avocado Green, because those were the colors...

BROWN: Yes, they were.

HOFFMAN: ... of Mom's oven. Yes, as we all well remember and wish to forget.

BROWN: The -- I didn't know this to -- or I was reading about this today, is that a lot of people who cook for a living, who are really good, started out with light-bulb cooking.

HOFFMAN: Well, that's what I discovered is, people like Bobby Flay, who said when he was 8 years old, he had -- he was more fascinated, not about cooking, but about the fact that you could actually cook with a light bulb, and asked his parents for one. Because he was a boy, there was a little bit of a hesitancy, but they finally gave him one.

Rick Bayliss (ph), who's a big chef in Chicago, same story.

BROWN: Yes, yes.

HOFFMAN: And then a lot of very popular female chefs like Gail Gant (ph), who's also out of Chicago, and Emily Luchetti (ph), who's a big pastry chef at Fairlawn (ph) in San Francisco.

BROWN: Now, so you set out to do a cookbook. These are actual recipes that actually will work, is that right?

HOFFMAN: You got it. I went to the chefs, and I said, I want to know what you can do in an Easy-Bake. So the first thing they did was toss out the mix, and the next thing they did is, they got creative. A lot of them took their existing recipes, or staples of their restaurant, and then pared them down to the Easy Bake.

Now, the -- the -- it's a really simple theory. It gets to be 350 degrees. You're looking at me like I'm a crazy individual there. It gets to be 350...

BROWN: No.

HOFFMAN: ... degrees within the oven. The light bulb...

BROWN: That light bulb.

HOFFMAN: ... the light bulb will generate heat...

BROWN: So you could roast a chicken.

HOFFMAN: ... of 350 degrees. Well, someone did. Rob Feeney (ph) roasted quail breasts.

BROWN: Right, because a chicken would be tough to fit in it.

HOFFMAN: Mark Bittman (ph), "How to Cook Everything," writes for "The New York Times"...

BROWN: Yes, yes.

HOFFMAN: ... he made chicken with capers and cherry tomatoes.

BROWN: In an Easy-Bake?

HOFFMAN: In the Easy-Bake Oven.

BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) 350 is 350 whether it's a light bulb of gas.

HOFFMAN: You got it. All it has to do is fit in that little pan and be able to slide through the chamber and not rise too high, otherwise it'll get lopped off at the top of it. So...

BROWN: Yes, that, that, that would be a problem. Is still, does still sell well? HOFFMAN: It's still probably -- they sold about, they tell me, 40 million of these things in the last 40 years. So that's pretty successful in terms of toy business.

BROWN: And if you had to make one...

HOFFMAN: It's very successful.

BROWN: Yes. If you had to make one really fine dish in an Easy- Bake, what would it be?

HOFFMAN: Well, I think everyone knows you can make cakes, cookies, pies, and stuff like that.

BROWN: Well, of course you can.

HOFFMAN: So -- and even though I show you how to make a white chocolate cream cheese frosted raspberry almond cake, we also show you, as I said. I think when someone comes up with quail breasts with wild mushrooms and potatoes, Pommes Anna, you know, you're pretty impressed.

BROWN: Yes, as Easy-Bake goes, that's as good as it gets. Nice to meet you. Thank you.

HOFFMAN: Thanks, Aaron.

BROWN: What a great way to make a living, writing a book on that.

Morning papers, tomorrow's news tonight. Take a break first.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Okey dokey, time to check -- I'm going to stop that, I promise, next week I'm not saying "Okey dokey." Time to check morning papers for across the country and around the world. Here we go. Not much time tonight, unfortunately.

But I love this one, this is great. "The Star News," which is the newspaper of Wilmington, North Carolina, front page says, "Good Night" to David. It's a great shot of Mr. Brinkley too, isn't it? David -- David -- this is where he worked, and this is where he grew up, and this is where he'll be buried, and it is a great front page for them in tomorrow morning's paper.

"Chicago Sun Times," couple stories we note. Forget that big one. It's down at the bottom. "Ex-Lover's $5 million Lawsuit Against Jordan," that would be Michael Jordan, "Thrown Out." And they're playing the U.S. Open outside of Chicago. And this may be the best single story of the day anywhere, sports news, otherwise, Tom Watson at 53 years old shares the lead in the U.S. Open, and that's pretty cool.

Pardon? Another minute? Really? Throws my timing off, David. OK.

"The St. Louis Post Dispatch" puts both Gregory Peck, "Actor Personified Integrity in the Movie 'To Kill a Mockingbird,'" on the front page, and then puts Mr. Brinkley. I like this headline too. "Television Made Him a Star, He Made TV News an Institution," made both -- they put both on the front page, and Middle East on the front page there as well.

This is such a "USA Today" front-page story. I don't mean that disrespectfully. "Prince William Comes of Age." He's not, he's about to turn 21, "The Dashing Heir Stubbornly Clings to Normalcy." This is going to sell a lot of papers, because, like, you know, because he's a hunk, right? Anyway, that's "USA Today."

"Iraq War Costs Less Than Was Expected," also reports "USA Today" in its front page in its Friday edition, David Brinkley and Gregory Peck on the front page as well, if only briefly.

Thirty seconds, you say? Here we go.

The two Detroit papers both lead the same, "U.S. Demand to Detroit, Put Police on Right Path." We reported that story earlier tonight. And the -- that's "The Detroit Free Press," did I mention that? Well, I guess you could see it.

And "The Detroit News," "Feds Order Overhaul of Detroit Police." But I like this story, "Lawmakers OK Four-Day School Week in Effort to Save Money." I don't know if it's a good idea or a bad idea, but that's what they agreed to do.

We're all back tomorrow. Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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

Plane; U.S. Forces Begin Counterattack in Iraq>

Aired June 12, 2003 - 22:00 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.
This is one of those days when in our sadness we celebrate two great lives lived. The actor Gregory Peck died today and so did journalist David Brinkley. As a kid, I watched David Brinkley, and as an adult I worked with him. Along the way I learned from him.

David was a writer, a writer for television, which is a different kind of writing. He was also incredibly gracious and generous to a much younger, greener, and less talented colleague, and his career served as a reminder that you didn't need to come from the cookie cutter to make your way. He wasn't and he made his way and then some. So, we'll spend some time on David's life and Gregory Peck's remarkable life as well.

A few other matters first, and first in the whip tonight, a very troubling discovery aboard a passenger plane in Italy. Alessio Vinci is on the phone from Rome with that, Alessio a headline please.

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN ROME BUREAU CHIEF: Hello, Aaron. Well, Italian police found what they believe was some explosives onboard a Rome-bound plane. There was no explosion, no death or injuries but many questions remain, first of all who placed it and why, back to you Aaron.

BROWN: Alessio, thank you, back to you at the top tonight.

To the Middle East now with Israel continuing to focus its attacks on Hamas; Matthew Chance on that tonight from Jerusalem, Matt a headline from you.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thank you, Aaron, and the violence that's becoming so tragically routine in this part of the world is intensifying once again. Israel says it will continue to strike at the leadership of Hamas. Members of that Palestinian militant group say they will take revenge. We'll have all the latest for you.

BROWN: Thank you very much.

On to Iraq next and a major push by U.S. forces to stop the attacks that continue to hurt and kill American troops. Ben Wedeman is on that from Baghdad, Ben a headline.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Aaron, well the Americans are stepping up their efforts to crush what seems to be a growing armed resistance to the U.S. presence here. They've launched major operations to the north and west of Baghdad.

BROWN: Ben, thank you.

And, back to the United States and a story about the effort to clean up the police department in Detroit. Jeff Flock has been working that, so Jeff your headline.

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CHICAGO BUREAU CHIEF: Aaron, tonight the headline is the Detroit Police Department is on notice. The Ashcroft Justice Department is watching you. I will explain why.

BROWN: Jeff, thank you, back to you and the rest shortly.

Also coming up tonight, on NEWSNIGHT David Brinkley his remarkable life and career one that brought him into our living rooms on so many evenings and Sunday mornings too.

We talked with Ted Koppel, one of Brinkley's great contributions to broadcast news, the driest of which, says Ted, and the ability to laugh at himself.

And, we remember another remarkable American, actor Gregory Peck once described by the great director John Houston as one of the nicest, greatest guys I ever knew, and he often played guys just like that on the big screen, most memorably a guy named Atticus Finch.

We'll look at the politics of prescription drug reform.

And, resurrect a story that's faded from view for too long, the investigation into the intelligence failures of 9/11. It will never fade for advocate Stephen Push who lost his wife that day. We'll talk to him tonight about where the inquiries stand.

Rory Kennedy joins us to talk about her new film on AIDS around the globe.

And, there is a cooking segment that even Emeril would envy, perhaps, all of that to come tonight.

We begin with the story that raised a chill, went across the wires earlier this evening. For that we go to the phone and CNN's Alessio Vinci.

VINCI: Well, Aaron, police officials in Ancona, which is about 300 kilometers to the east from her, from Rome, said that they received an anonymous phone call at around 2:30 p.m. local time. That was about 8:30 in the morning Eastern today.

And, the caller according to police sources was a male with a distinctive Italian accent and told police to search a plane that was due to leave Ancona about 30 minutes later for Rome.

After police searched that plane, they found a package underneath one of the seats in the rear part of the plane and the package police described in a news release later on as suspicious and containing "some explosive material."

The package was eventually removed from the plane and detonated in a controlled explosion. Police officials, however, would not say how much explosive was found in this package nor whether it was enough to blow up the plane.

At no time, however, were any passengers in danger as the plane was still empty when the police conducted its search. Passengers eventually booked on that flight flew to Rome on another plane. Police, of course, are investigating whatever is left of the contents of this suspicious package and, of course, have many questions to answer.

First of all, how was it possible that such a package made it onto the plane? Why did the would-be attacker alert the police of his intention to blow up the plane or even that the explosive was onboard? And finally, was the person behind this incident was just a lunatic in search of some publicity or whether some well-organized terrorist group may be involved in this incident -- Aaron.

BROWN: Questions for the days ahead. Thank you very much, Alessio Vinci in Italy tonight.

Next to the Middle East, a week and a world away from the peace summit, tonight Hamas is promising to target civilians in a new wave of bombings. Israel is promising more attacks on the leadership of Hamas while expressing regret for the deaths of a three-year-old girl and her mother in the latest operation, reporting for us tonight CNN's Matthew Chance.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHANCE (voice-over): This is the latest bloodletting that threatens to undermine efforts at Israeli-Palestinian peace.

A car carrying senior Hamas militant Yasser Taha was destroyed by Israeli missiles as it moved through Gaza's crowded streets. The assassination may be a small success for Israel but the killing of Taha's wife and three-year-old daughter as well has added to Palestinian anger. Hamas vows its militants will take revenge.

MAHMOUS AL ZAHER, HAMAS SPOKESMAN: Now this message should be sent for every Israeli. Your children and your women, your husbands, everybody is a target now. We have to react and if they are wanting to stop these activities they should ask Sharon to stop this crime and to withdraw from our land.

CHANCE: Israelis are painfully aware of what those words may mean. On Wednesday, a Hamas suicide bomber disguised as an Orthodox Jew boarded a crowded commuter bus in Jerusalem and detonated his explosives. Seventeen innocent people died. Israeli officials insist their actions against Hamas in Gaza are intended to stop these kinds of attacks not provoke them.

RA'ANAN GISSIN, SHARON SENIOR ADVISER: We're not happy of taking action in Gaza but there is a necessity to stop terrorism. Otherwise, it is going to become a major terrorist wave that is going to engulf the whole region and scuttle the roadmap to peace.

CHANCE: But now, just keeping that peace plan alive is proving a difficult task. How or even if the roadmap will survive this intense period of violence is hard to predict.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHANCE: Well, President Bush's envoy, the former Ambassador John Wolf, is scheduled to arrive in this area over the course of the next few days to oversee the implementation of the roadmap peace plan. It will be his first time in the region, Aaron. Clearly he has a big challenge ahead of him.

BROWN: Do you have any sense that Israelis believe that these attacks in Gaza on Hamas in fact make Israeli more secure?

CHANCE: I don't think that many Israelis have seen what's been happening here over the course of the last two and a half years or so who believe that these kinds of attacks carried out by Israel will make this place more secure, no, certainly not.

They believe though still that Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, is the only person they can turn to when they see their civilians, like we saw on Wednesday, being attacked in that way by the Palestinian militant group Hamas and others that carry out suicide bomb attacks like that.

There was a degree of hope amongst many Israelis and many Palestinians too after the Aqaba Summit that there would be a chance for peace. Those hopes though, Aaron, we've seen diminish over the course of the last few days.

BROWN: It didn't take long. Matthew, thank you very much, Matthew Chance in Jerusalem tonight.

On to Iraq next, to the war in Iraq, war complete with full scale battles and battlefield losses, the fighting and the dying clearly not over. For the last three days American forces have been fighting rebels in the central part of the country, now being called the Sunni crescent.

Our report comes from CNN's Ben Wedeman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): American forces in action in the air, in the water, on the ground in one of the most extensive operations in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Up to 4,000 U.S. soldiers descended upon an abandoned Tigris River 45 miles north of Baghdad searching for hard core loyalists to the deposed Iraqi leader. In the course of the operation, dubbed Peninsula Strike, the Americans rounded up hundreds of men, women and children. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're just not taking any chances. We're not going to approach them lightly. It's going to be -- it's going to be force, has to be. People are coming up with suicide bombs and weapons and drive-bys.

WEDEMAN: By mid week U.S. troops had detained nearly 400 men, none from their most wanted list. They also managed, however, to arouse a fair amount of resentment.

"The Americans are occupiers" says this man. "They have no manners or ethics. One of them grabbed a Quran and threw it to the ground."

This operation comes at a time when attacks against U.S. forces are on the increase raising suspicions among some U.S. officers that resistance to the American presence is becoming more organized and more lethal.

LT. GEN. DAVID MCKIERNAN, GROUND FORCES COMMANDER: There have been some handbills that we have found that offer monetary rewards for attacks against coalition forces.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WEDEMAN: In another operation 90 miles west of Baghdad, troops of the 101st Airborne Division went after what coalition officials are describing as a terrorist training camp. During that operation, hostile fire brought down an American Apache helicopter, the first U.S. aircraft shot down in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime -- Aaron.

BROWN: Ben, thank you, Ben Wedeman in Baghdad.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, we look back look back at the career of one of the greats of this business, the television news business, David Brinkley and we'll talk with "Nightline" anchor Ted Koppel about his thoughts on the passing of one of the giants of our craft.

We take a break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Newsman David Brinkley died last night. He was 82. As a young man, Mr. Brinkley helped invent television news. As he grew older, he reminded us of a time when words mattered as much as pictures, and thoughts, interesting and provocative thoughts, trumped them both. I plead where Mr. Brinkley is concerned on your total lack of objectivity. He was a mentor, a gentleman, and a friend.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): He was a stylist in the business so young and immature it didn't have much style at all. He grew old as the business grew up and he died a legend.

DAVID BRINKLEY: Obviously, the news has just got here. It was taken to Congress which of course recessed immediately to wait to see what has happened.

BROWN: He was hired by NBC Radio to be its first White House correspondent in the late '40s. He moved to television in 1956 and was ultimately paired with a laconic Montana native named Chet Huntley, a brand new broadcast with a rocky debut.

REUVEN FRANK, ORIGINAL EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, NBC "NIGHTLY NEWS": But it is part of my firm memory that October 29, '56, the first Huntley-Brinkley news report was the worst network television news broadcast in the history of the medium.

BROWN: The medium didn't have much history in '56, Huntley- Brinkley became the program to watch for a time an odd chemistry on the nightly news and in the booth together for political conventions when such things mattered.

ANNOUNCER: Here they are now in the Los Angeles Sports Arena as you will see them on your television screen.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: They weren't scripted coronations. We didn't even know who was necessarily going to be nominated, so they were big news and whoever won the coverage of the conventions basically had a running head start on the next couple of years.

And when NBC teamed Huntley and Brinkley, Huntley the kind of carved out of a mountain, and Brinkley much more at ease and with a little smile behind his words, it was a perfect combination. They went on to absolutely dominate the evening news ratings for the next decade and more.

BROWN: For all the words he wrote, and Mr. Brinkley was a superb writer, he will be remembered most for these words.

CHET HUNTLEY: Good night, David.

BRINKLEY: Good night, Chet.

HUNTLEY: And good night from Texaco.

BROWN: Which David Brinkley said he couldn't stand.

BRINKLEY: We both despised it. I thought it was silly and said so and we argued for -- we argued all day, maybe longer than a day because I thought we should say goodnight to the audience not to each other. Two men saying goodnight to each other on the air struck me as being a little dubious.

BROWN: David Brinkley was such a fixture at NBC News that most Americans never thought he would do anything else. They were wrong. NBC decided that his time was up. They essentially put him out to pasture.

ANNOUNCER: From ABC News...

BROWN: But over at ABC, Roone Arledge knew better, and after 38 years at NBC, Arledge brought Brinkley to ABC to reinvent Sunday morning TV which he did.

BRINKLEY: Send me the bill. Thank you for coming.

BROWN: For another dozen years, "This Week" or just "The Brinkley Show" as it was called at ABC was a huge success.

GREENFIELD: One of the remarkable things about Brinkley is the sheer length of his run. I mean if he became dominant in 1956, he was around before that, but really a national player, that's four decades on two different networks in two different formats both of which he helped to reinvent.

BROWN: Through it all, David Brinkley had perfect pitch for his audience.

JOE ANGOTTI, FORMER EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, NBC "NIGHTLY NEWS": David Brinkley revolutionized the way that people wrote for television news. Until David came along, the writers for television news were primarily newspaper people who had worked on newspapers, came over to television, and wrote the same way that they would write for a newspaper. David believed that people ought to write for television the way they speak.

BROWN: The first President Bush called him the elder statesman of television news. President Clinton liked him as well even though Brinkley once called Mr. Clinton a bore during a national broadcast.

He was 82 when he died today and he liked to say that he had done news longer than anyone on earth. So much of TV has become about volume, who talks the loudest or is the most outrageous.

Mr. Brinkley was the mirror opposite. In a soft voice and with just a few words he could make the larger, more important point than all the shouters and the screamers combined.

GREENFIELD: What Brinkley brought was a kind of a little bit of a twinkle in the eye, a little bit of a wink. He was invariably described as wry or ironic or dry but basically it meant he was using relatively simple language, relatively short observations with a kind of wink at the audience saying, you know, you don't have to take everything as if it were the most serious thing in the world, and it turns out in the medium of television that worked just wonderfully.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: There are a lot of people we could talk to about Mr. Brinkley. In the next section we'll talk to two of his bosses, Reuven Frank who produced "Huntley-Brinkley," and Dick Wald who ran NBC News and later was at ABC when David made the move. That's coming up.

But first, a pretty fair journalist himself, Ted Koppel, we talked with Ted earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Why is David -- why was David important in the business? TED KOPPEL, "NIGHTLINE": He was the first guy to have a sense of humor about what we do and he applied that not only to himself but also to the men and women that he covered.

He did it with great affection so it was never jarring but until David Brinkley came along, I mean not that we don't take ourselves too seriously these days, but we really took ourselves seriously before he came along.

And then, all of a sudden here was David who always brought that touch of whimsy to every story that he covered and the business has never been the same. No one has ever been able to reproduce it exactly the way he did it but he changed the whole flavor of television news.

BROWN: Was he a better journalist than anchor, better anchor than journalist, what was he?

KOPPEL: He was a wonderful essayist and, above all, he was a gentleman who treated his guests and the objects of his journalism with respect even as he poked gentle fun at them.

BROWN: When -- I mean David really had a couple of careers. He had the NBC career and then he had the time at ABC. When you heard he was coming to ABC, what did you think?

KOPPEL: I thought how stupid NBC was and how lucky we were. There was that sense I guess David would have been, I think he came over in about 1980-81, so he would have been in his early 60s, late 50s, and somehow the suits over at NBC seemed to feel that he was washed up and he clearly was not and he had a lot of energy and a lot of vitality left.

And, Roone Arledge who, as you know, was then president of ABC News was smart enough to say let's build a program around him and thus, "This Week With David Brinkley" was born, and once again he became something of a pioneer because until that time those Sunday morning talk shows had been terribly, terribly dull.

I mean basically it was one or more journalists sitting in a row of chairs talking to one or more guests and that was the whole broadcast, and "This Week with David Brinkley" created the notion of a panel to discuss the news afterwards. It set things up with a video report before you ever began talking to the principal guests. It was just a much more interesting program the way it was done but also because he was doing it.

BROWN: I thought it was -- I always thought it was interesting that he seemed so comfortable in an ensemble program, which is what "This Week" ultimately became. He became the clear center of an ensemble group. There aren't a lot of anchors, honestly, who would have been as comfortable in that.

KOPPEL: No, and one of the reasons that he made his colleagues so comfortable, if you ever went back and sort of toted up the number of minutes that David was actually on the air, I think you would have been shocked to find out that there were very few.

David didn't do all that much on the broadcast except project his own presence onto it and the fact of the matter was that when it was time to go to a break all David had to do was sort of raise a finger and everybody shut up immediately. He projected that kind of authority.

When at the end of the program he would do one of his little commentaries, and they tended to be kind of whimsical, he almost inevitably broke himself up, which was one of the charming things about watching the program.

David really appreciated his own sense of humor but he did it in such a sweet way that it was always as though he couldn't contain the mirth that was just bubbling out of him and that was part of what made him so attractive.

And, I have to add one other thing. He was always so nice to people, not just to the people he had on the program, not just to his colleagues on the broadcast, but to those among us who were younger colleagues of his. I never recall David Brinkley ever saying a cross word to anybody. He was always supportive and kind and gentle, a dear, dear man.

BROWN: And he -- I met David for the first time literally in an elevator at ABC in Washington and one of the things that struck me beyond the fact he knew who I was and was nice about it is that he talked like David Brinkley on the air and off the air.

KOPPEL: He did and as I'll be saying a little later on "Nightline" this evening, one of the things that I guess younger people cannot possibly understand is that when David Brinkley and Chet Huntley were co-anchoring the NBC News, what was then called "The Huntley-Brinkley Report," there were only three networks and it was by far the dominant newscast among the three. So that, the Brinkley style became -- I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that half the male NBC reporters on the air sounded like David Brinkley.

BROWN: Yes.

KOPPEL: They were all doing sort of a faux Brinkley and I don't think they were even aware of the fact that they were doing it but such was his impact at that time that people started sounding like Brinkley. He had that kind of an effect and half of America was walking around being terribly clever and saying, good night, Chet, good night, David, because that's how they ended their broadcast every night.

BROWN: For me, and I suspect for you, he was one of those people you were just honored to say he was a colleague of yours.

KOPPEL: Indeed. I think and you can say that without a smirk. You can say that without sort of harboring evil thoughts in the back of your mind. He was a really nice man, a gentleman, a wonderful colleague, and a delight to watch. He was just a great, great television journalist. BROWN: Ted, thank you for your time today.

KOPPEL: My pleasure, Aaron, thank you.

BROWN: Good to talk to you.

KOPPEL: Same here.

BROWN: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ted Koppel, we talked with him earlier today. We'll continue to talk about David Brinkley in a moment.

We'll talk with two men who were intimately involved with his career behind the camera, Reuven Frank, and Dick Wald.

We'll take a break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: One of the best lines we read today about David Brinkley came from his old boss. Brinkley writes silence better than anyone else I know. His ability to know when to stop talking let the pictures tell the story.

We're fortunate to have that old boss, Reuven Frank, with us tonight, former NBC News president, and executive producer of "The Huntley-Brinkley Report," and also with us Dick Wald the former president of NBC News and a senior vice president at ABC News, former or current?

DICK WALD, FRM. PRESIDENT OF NBC AND ABC NEWS: Former. Former.

BROWN: Former senior vice president of ABC News, good to see you both.

How did Huntley-Brinkley become a pair? Were they in fact a good combination?

REUVEN FRANK, FMR. NBC NEWS PRESIDENT: We had no idea. We had no idea. We were looking for someone to anchor the '56 convention coverage and in those days, as I think Jeff mentioned convention coverage was key to a news division's next four years.

I think Swayze and Douglas Edwards came out of the '48 convention. Cronkite came out of the '52 convention. And, the man who had done the '52 convention for us was a very good journalist and broadcaster but he was a moonlighter. His basic jobs was with "The Los Angeles Times." His name was Bill Henry, a wonderful man and I was one of those who said, you can't go to Henry again. I loved Henry, but we get nothing out of it.

And my little group, which was rather far down the food chain, was split between wanting Huntley and Brinkley. I favored Brinkley and the man I worked for favored Huntley. And above us, the managers were arguing. And they wanted to go with Henry and tried to mollify us, they suggested Henry and somebody else. In a minute, they suggested two people. We said well if you want two people, we have two people. They're both competent.

BROWN: Yes.

FRANK: They're both trained journalists. They both know how to look into a camera. And we argued until we won. We had no idea that there was anything special between them, nor did they.

BROWN: Did you ever say to David, you know, David, a little less style, a little less humor? Let's play this a little straighter?

FRANK: Oh, no. No, no, no. I'd known David before. I'd worked on the camera news caravan and he was the Washington correspondent. I thought David was marvelous. He was still in my 40, 50 years the best writer I've ever worked with.

BROWN: Yes, he's pretty good. You guys over at ABC, your boss Reuven and you just saw an opening. You had no -- basically no Sunday morning TV show that anyone was watching, right?

FRANK: It would have been fourth had there been four networks, yes.

BROWN: Yes. And you knew that David was being essentially tossed aside?

FRANK: Yes.

BROWN: How did the deal happen?

FRANK: Well, David and I were friends. And we had been talking over a period when he was being pushed aside. And essentially they wanted -- NBC wanted him to retire. And he didn't feel he was ready to retire. He was 61, I believe at the time.

And so I said, well, there's probably a place here for you. We're looking for somebody to run a Sunday show. And we're not show of the shape or anything else. But -- and I talked to Reuven. And Reuven thought this was the greatest thing in the world.

So David and I met for drinks at a placed nobody in our place ever goes, Tavern on the Green, tourist headquarters. And I laid out to him what I thought a Sunday show might be and what he might do with it, and trying to persuade him to come out of retirement and come do this thing. And he said, well, it sounded good. And he said, okay, I'll do it. He said, -- and he shook my hand.

BROWN: Deal done?

FRANK: Deal done. And at that point, a woman walked into the bar. We were alone in the bar. She walked in with one of those throw-away cameras. And she said, "You're David Brinkley." About he said, "Yes." And she said, "Can I take your picture?" And he said, "Sure." And she hands me the camera and she says, "Take a picture with me with David." I took a picture. David's entirely polite all the time. And he said, "What are you doing here?" And she said, "I'm a lottery winner." She said, "We've got 100 reporters in the next room, and we're just going to -- I'm going to go back there and tell them you're here." And he said, "Thank you very much, ma'am." I threw 20 bucks on the bar and we both ran.

BROWN: Yes. 45 seconds or so. David's legacy into the business, Mr. Frank?

FRANK: News for grown-ups, news for television. The Huntley- Brinkley Report, October 29th, '56 was the dividing line. Up until then, it was all a continuation of wartime radio.

BROWN: Yes.

FRANK: Two kinds of newscasters, the singers and the shouters. And we did it for grown-ups.

BROWN: And in 15 seconds, his importance to ABC?

FRANK: At a period when ABC was beginning to grow, he brought it gravitas and he brought it dignity and he brought it a Sunday program that became number one in the ratings when he took it over and stayed number one until he retired.

BROWN: He's really a good guy, too.

FRANK: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

BROWN: And I thank you both. Nice to see you and nice to meet you, finally.

FRANK: My pleasure.

BROWN: Thank you very much. Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, Detroit's police department under fire. We'll explain why. And later, the other legend we lost today, Gregory Peck. From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: And next on NEWSNIGHT, federal oversight for the Detroit police department, an explanation after the break. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A quote that stood out to us was this one, "We have worked diligently to craft the best possible roadmap." This is not a story from the Middle East but from the American Midwest. This roadmap was crafted by the U.S. Justice Department, trying to bring peace to the city of Detroit at a police department that many say was operating like a rogue's paradise. The story reported for us tonight by CNN's Jeff Flock.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You've got a lot of anger against the Detroit Police Department, do you not?

HERMAN VALERIE: Yes, I do.

FLOCK (voice-over): A Detroit policeman shot Herman Valerie's son twice in the back.

VALERIE: One of the bullets came into his back and came out of his chest, which meant he was falling over at the time.

FLOCK: Just one of dozens of civilian police shootings that led to this agreement on a consent decree, ordering the Detroit police department get a federal watchdog that even the chief himself agrees it needs.

JERRY OLIVER, CHIEF, DETROIT POLICE DEPARTMENT: We have a long, long way to go. And this agreement -- these agreements will help us accelerate our movement toward excellence as a police department.

FLOCK: The agreement orders new policies, improving prisoner conditions in its precinct lock-ups, prohibiting police from holding people without reasonable suspicion or cause, and new policies by its use of the kind of the force that killed her Herman Valerie's son, Lamar.

(on camera): It is not easy being a cop in Detroit. There's poverty, blight, guns are everywhere. According to prosecutors, felony firearms convictions are up threefold in just the past two years.

(voice-over): But police have come under increasing criticism. Since 1997, Detroit has paid out $137 million in police misconduct lawsuits.

OLIVER: This won't take a long time. We're going to get it done, and get it done together, and get it done fast.

FLOCK: Many don't agree.

What is the main problem with the police department in this town? Detroit councilwoman Sheila Cockrell led her first protest against police misconduct in the '60s. She says in some ways it's worse now. Many don't trust Detroit police to protect them, even like on routine traffic stops like this one.

SHEILA COCKRELL, DETROIT CITY COUNCIL: We have a deeply ingrained problem the blue curtain of secrecy that has shrouded this department can't be opened and has to be torn away.

FLOCK: And so it will be. The agreement says the federal monitor could be in place until 2008.

(END VIDEOTAPE) FLOCK: And Aaron, an anti-police brutality group by its count, says 63 people have been shot by Detroit police since the year 1997. That would be vastly more than either Chicago or New York, vastly larger cities and much more trouble here.

BROWN: Jeff, thank you. Jeff Flock in Detroit.

A few other stories from around the country tonight, beginning with a finding in the Shuttle Columbia investigation. There are questions tonight now about the large bolts that attached solid rocket boosters to the shuttle's fuel tanks. The accident board says it has detected what it calls a radar event about two minutes after Columbia's launch, that might have been related to the bolts. That event would have been less than a minute after the foam insulation fell off, thought to be the moment the shuttle was mortally damaged.

Capitol Hill, the House voted today to extend an increase in the child tax credits. Through the rest of the decade, that would seem to be good news for low-income families that were originally left out of getting the tax break, but in truth, it sets up a confrontation with the Senate, which a week ago passed a much smaller bill. The White House said today that it wants the House and Senate to quickly resolve differences over an issue the president very much wants to go away.

And the judge in the Scott Peterson murder case has put a gag order on nearly everyone involved, saying press coverage would make it very difficult, extremely difficult in his words, to find an impartial jury. Covered by the gag order are prosecutors, defense lawyers, along with their agents, staff or experts, as well as all potential witnesses and any law enforcement officer involved.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, what's holding up the report on the September 11th attacks? We'll talk with the husband and one of the victims about his effort to get the information out to you, when NEWSNIGHT continues from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In all the talk about intelligence involving Iraq, there's something else we're afraid that's gotten lost in the shuffle, and that's the intelligence failure of 9/11. It's been more than a year and a half. And what do we have in terms of official findings? Not a whole lot.

A joint inquiry by Congress was done last year, but the Bush administration has refused to release the report. The White House also fought hard against creating an independent 9/11 commission, though, the president eventually bowed to a greater force. The outrage of people like Stephen Push, who lost his wife that morning.

Mr. Push is the co-founder of Families of September 11 and he joins us now to talk about the need, painful though it may be, to point fingers. He joins us from Washington. Good to have you with us. What do you know about the congressional report first, and why it hasn't been released? STEPHEN PUSH, CO-FOUNDER AND TREASURER, FAMILIES OF SEPTEMBER 11: Well, it hasn't been released because the administration has not agreed to declassify certain sections of the report. And I believe this is an abuse of the administration's privilege, because most of the leaders of the joint inquiry, particularly Senators Bob Graham and Richard Shelby, feel that the information that is being withheld is not legitimately classifiable information.

BROWN: The one Republican, the other a Democrat. Have they given you any idea, at least in the broad strokes, what the report contains?

PUSH: Well, they're really not at liberty to do so, but I believe that the -- that the hang-ups on the report have to do with the role of Saudi Arabia, which we believe has been funding terrorism, and supporting it, and also with the presidential daily briefings, the briefings that were given to the president by the intelligence community, particularly those prior to 9/11.

BROWN: And so, the Saudi Arabia question becomes a delicate diplomatic question. And the other, I gather you would argue becomes one of embarrassment to the White House, to the president. What did the president know prior to 9/11? What action was taken or not taken?

PUSH: Right. Yes, I believe that the president should waive executive privilege in this case, and release all information, and declassify information except that which is really legitimately can be withheld in order to protect sources and methods of intelligence gathering.

BROWN: You said earlier that you thought it appropriate that fingers be pointed here. And it's one of the things that I think makes people a little uncomfortable, the idea that these reports will be used in some way to blame people for what they didn't do. Explain why you think a little finger-pointing is probably a good thing here.

PUSH: Well, I don't think that we should be looking for scapegoats. But clearly, there were people who made egregious errors, errors that led to the deaths of more than 3,000 people. If these same people are still in positions of power and influence today, and still responsible for national security, that's a problem. If they've failed before.

Now understandably, sometimes it's just a mistake. And sometimes, you know, there's really no point in punishing the person. But if a person has a pattern, a history of poor performance, as many in some of these agencies appeared to have had, they should be taken out of positions where they control the intelligence and counterterrorism activities that protect all of America.

BROWN: And the status of the independent commission, and does it have any relationship to the families? Does it talk to the families? Do you have much input in any of this?

PUSH: I have an excellent relationship, as do many other family members with the independent commission. I just met the other day with one of the staff members and provided them with some useful information, some leads that they're going to follow up on. We meet on a regular basis with the commissioners and with the senior staff. And we're very satisfied that they are seeking and listening to our input in this process.

BROWN: And are you equally satisfied and confident that they will get the information they need to do the work that Congress has mandated for them?

PUSH: No, I'm not. I'm concerned that because the administration has had a history of withholding information from the joint inquiry, that they will practice the same pattern with the 9/11 commission and withhold vital information. And that's where I think the president needs to waive executive privilege, as President Clinton did for Whitewater, as President Reagan did for Iran-contra, waive executive privilege and give all of the information to the commission.

Now the commissioners have full security clearances. So giving the information to them doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be released to the public if it is legitimately classifiable information. But the commissioners can't make a judgment if they can't see that information when they finish their report.

BROWN: Do you think we'll ever know, really know what the government knew before 9/11, what it did and didn't do? Do you think those answers will ever really be available to us?

PUSH: We may never know all of the answers, but 3,000 people died. And we owe it to them to squeeze every bit of useful information out of this lesson, so that we can try to prevent future tragedies of this like from occurring.

BROWN: Stephen, it's good to have you on the program. Thanks very much.

PUSH: Thank you, Aaron. Pleased to be here.

BROWN: Thank you, Steven Push.

Next on NEWSNIGHT, another legend lost. We'll look back at the career, extraordinary actor, Gregory Peck. We'll take a break first. It's NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Someone on the NEWSNIGHT staff got a message from a friend today that said simply, "Oh, no, Atticus died." Such is the impression that the actor, Gregory Peck, made on so many people as the father, the lawyer, the conscience of one southern town torn up by race in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Atticus Finch was his best known and most loved role in a remarkable career that began with a stint as a barker at the 1939 World's Fair.

Gregory Peck once said his great goal was to be thought of by the audience as an old friend. Tonight, remembering that old friend, Gregory Peck, who died overnight at 87. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Gregory Peck played heroes, but Gregory Peck did not play safe. He was the idealistic Southern lawyer in "To Kill a Mockingbird."

PECK: You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

BROWN: Using film to make a point about the country and race. It's seen that Gregory Peck was born to be Atticus Finch.

PECK: The evil assumption that all Negroes lie, all Negroes are basically immoral beings, all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber. And which is in itself gentlemen, a lie.

BROWN: Finch was named the number one movie hero in the American Film Institute's study of heroes and villains. Most of Gregory Peck's characters were upright and moral.

PECK: You're not safe, running around loose, partner. You've got to be lock up.

BROWN: Battling the bad guys, the enemies of justice.

PECK: It rises!

BROWN: And the occasional giant whale. His list of great movies is staggering. "Gentlemen's Agreement," a daring film on its time on anti-Semitism.

PECK: Here, take my hand. Feel it. Same flesh as yours, isn't it? No different today than it was yesterday. The only thing that's different is the word Christian.

BROWN: "12:00 High," he got an Oscar nomination for that.

PECK: That means we start dropping practice bombs every day that we haven't got a mission.

BROWN: And "Roman Holiday," a romantic triumph with then newcomer Audrey Hepburn.

AUDREY HEPBURN, ACTRESS: For me, he was the bigger star ever.

BROWN: Off the screen, Mr. Peck was also a man of conviction and a man who refused to play safe. The great director John Houston said of Peck that he had superb dignity. And the writer, Cleveland Amory (ph), said Peck was perhaps Hollywood's best-liked liberal.

In 1947, Gregory Peck stood against the blacklisting of the alleged Communists in the film industry. He served as president in the Motion Picture Academy and the founding chairman of the American Film Institute. During his first five years in movies, Gregory Peck scored four Academy Award nominations as best actor. He was, by all measures, the greatest of stars, but he saw his role more humbling.

PECK: I think what I'm proud of is that I just survived and kept on working, and always gave it my best shot. And here and there, there are some movies that play as well now as they did 25 or 30 years ago, though that ultimately -- that's the best reward an actor can have.

BROWN: Gregory Peck was lanky and handsome, strong and accessible. He brought both grace and courage to the characters he portrayed. Those characters embodied in the person of Gregory Peck represented another time, a time when, like the actor himself, Hollywood seemed so much larger than life.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We lost a couple important people today, didn't we?

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, Democrats and Republicans racing to get on the bandwagon for Medicare drug benefits. And the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, backhands the Belgians. We'll explain why as NEWSNIGHT continues from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: H.L. Mencken once said that for every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.

We can only guess what he'd make of today's debate over drug benefits and Medicare reform, but we imagine it would set his nose a- twitching.

The problem, after all, is complicated. It is costly. And it affects millions of Americans who vote -- a recipe for deadlock, you might think. Well, you'd be wrong.

Here's CNN's Jonathan Karl.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With the kind of zeal he put into the tax cut fight, the president is stumping for his Medicare prescription drug plan.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Congress must understand, we've got a problem of Medicare. They should not politicize the issue. They ought to focus on what's best for our fellow Americans and get a package done. And the House needs to get it done, and the Senate needs to get it done prior to the Fourth of July break.

KARL: It looks like that may happen. Unlike the bitter and drawn-out fight over taxes, a modified version of the president's Medicare plan is flying through Congress with relative ease. Even Democrats are saying nice things about it.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE (D-SD), MINORITY LEADER: This is an historic moment, and I too commend our distinguished leaders...

SEN. KENT CONRAD (D), NORTH DAKOTA: This proposal is a major step in the right direction.

KARL: Just days ago, Democratic leader Tom Daschle slammed the compromise.

DASCHLE: We think that it is flawed, seriously. We think that there are many improvements that must be made in order for it to be acceptable to seniors.

KARL: Now Daschle has done a virtual about-face, and the bill's supporters think it will ultimately pass with as many as 75 votes, including a majority of Democrats.

What happened? The Kennedy factor, in part, explains the dramatic turnaround. Ted Kennedy praised the plan as a major breakthrough even as Democratic leaders attacked it. At a closed-door meeting of Democratic senators on Tuesday, Kennedy made an appeal based on pragmatism, saying this was the best chance of getting seniors drug coverage.

There will be continued resistance from other liberal Democrats who don't want to hand the president a political victory on such a hot-button issue. And some conservatives, including former leader Trent Lott, argue the plan costs too much and reforms too little.

But most conservatives are jumping on the prescription drug bandwagon.

SEN. JIM BUNNING (R), KENTUCKY: Seniors across the country are tired -- believe me, I've heard from them -- are tired of politicians promising a prescription drug benefit year after year only to be let down year after year.

KARL: But this year, America's 40 million Medicare beneficiaries may finally get what they've been demanding.

(on camera): The bills making their way through Congress both would give seniors a prescription drug benefit for a $35 monthly premium, including catastrophic drug coverage and the opportunity to choose a private plan. Total cost to the taxpayer, $400 billion over 10 years.

Jonathan Karl, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: At this point, it would be tough to call Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's European trip a goodwill tour, although that clearly was part of the plan. Yesterday he took aim at Germany and France for what he called their lack of vision on Iraq. Today at a NATO meeting in Brussels, he opened fire on Belgium.

Here's our chief Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CHIEF PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): By all accounts, this meeting of NATO defense ministers was historic, as the alliance completely revamped its organization and mission. But it may also be one of the last the U.S. attends in Belgium, which has been hosting the alliance's headquarters since it left France in 1967.

At least, that was the clear impression left by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is furious about Belgium's claim to have jurisdiction over U.S. citizens accused of war crimes.

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: This law calls into serious question whether NATO can continue to hold meetings in Belgium, and whether senior U.S. officials, military and civilian, will be able to continue to visit international organizations in Belgium.

MCINTYRE: Under Belgium's 10-year-old Universal Competence Law, a local attorney was able to file charges against U.S. General Tommy Franks and an American colonel, accusing them of war crimes for the deaths of civilians in Iraq.

RUMSFELD: These suits are absurd. Indeed, I would submit there's no general in history who has gone to greater lengths than General Franks and his superb team to avoid civilian casualties.

MCINTYRE: Other Americans named in Belgian war crime lawsuits, the first President Bush, Desert Storm commander Norman Schwarzkopf, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Rumsfeld insisted he was not threatening to force NATO to move its headquarters out of Belgium, but he was clearly playing hardball.

RUMSFELD: Certainly until this matter is resolved, we will have to oppose any further spending for construction for a new NATO headquarters here in Brussels.

MCINTYRE: Rumsfeld's bombshell threatened to overshadow significant progress NATO made in mending the divisions among the allies over the U.S.-led war in Iraq. For instance, NATO agreed to support Poland's intention to lead a peacekeeping division in Iraq, and several NATO countries, including Spain and Hungary, pledged troops.

And NATO ministers approved a major overhaul of their military organization, consolidating operations under a single commander, approving the next phase in creating a rapid reaction force, and acquiring much-needed heavy-lift transport aircraft.

Before the war in Iraq, NATO, in the words of one U.S. diplomat, suffered a near-death experience when a divided alliance hesitated in providing defensive forces requested by Turkey. But now the U.S. feels NATO is back on track, moving surely, albeit slowly, to remake its military along the American model of lighter, faster forces capable of hunting terrorists or enforcing peace.

Jamie McIntyre, CNN, NATO headquarters, Brussels. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The next time you take off your shoes at airport security, you might want to consider this. Whatever threat you and your sneakers may pose to life and limb, it doesn't even to begin to match the potential danger from another source, the big ports through which millions of shipping containers flow.

Many experts call shaky port security the dirty little secret of the war on terrorism. And today, the secretary of homeland security announced more than $300 million in new funding to meet the challenge.

Here's CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Thousands of pleasure boats dart among the ships in Los Angeles Harbor and tie up a stone's throw away. Any one of them could be used as a platform for a terrorist attack like that on the U.S.S. "Cole."

(on camera): So boy, that would be a quick hop, take your -- I mean, you wouldn't have time to stop anybody.

CHIEF NOEL CUNNINGHAM, PORT OF LOS ANGELES: No, absolutely not. Absolutely not.

MESERVE (voice-over): The chief of the Los Angeles Port Police evaluates security every day.

CUNNINGHAM: On a scale of 10, we're probably at -- probably at 2.

MESERVE: Twelve million cargo containers pass through this, the nation's biggest port, every year. Any one of them could contain a weapon of mass destruction or even a terrorist. How many get screened?

CUNNINGHAM: I'm afraid to tell you.

MESERVE: The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection says paperwork on every container is scrutinized and all suspicious containers are inspected. But the cargo manifests on which the decisions are based are unreliable.

(on camera): OK, someone can just lie.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And they often do.

MESERVE (voice-over): Customs officers wear pagers to alert them to radiological materials. But there is no screening for biological or chemical weapons.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're working currently on developing that kind of technology. MESERVE: Sea marshals board some inbound ships to check out security, including the documentation of the foreign crews. Names are run through databases, but only known terrorists are flagged.

CUNNINGHAM: I am certain there are sympathizers with al Qaeda that may be on these ships.

MESERVE (on camera): And none of the background checks would necessarily pick them up.

CUNNINGHAM: They would not pick them up, no.

MESERVE (voice-over): Things are safer here than they used to be. Before 9/11, there wasn't even fencing around parts of the port.

Recognizing there is further to go, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge traveled to Port Elizabeth, New Jersey, Thursday to announce the expansion of a well-regarded program which allows U.S. Customs agents to inspect cargo bound for the U.S. in foreign ports. Already in operation in 13 of the world's largest ports, the program will now push to include ports in the Arab world, Asia, and Africa.

TOM RIDGE, SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: It's very important for us to think not only in terms of tonnage and volume of shipping, but strategically, where terrorists might be more inclined, because of access, to either put terrorists or terrorist weapons in some of these container ships.

MESERVE: The goal is to push the nation's security perimeter out, away from the U.S., while more work is done and more money spent to close up the gaps that are still so evident at ports like Los Angeles.

Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Port Elizabeth, New Jersey.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, the AIDS pandemic. We'll look at the worldwide situation with filmmaker Rory Kennedy in a moment.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Came across a statistic in "New Yorker" about a place where the life expectancy is 42. We wish we could say this was the life expectancy of our ancestors thousands of years ago, before good nutrition, modern medicine, and high-tech drug companies.

But this is the life for people as modern and human as you or I, the people of Uganda and many countries devastated by the most modern of diseases, AIDS.

The AIDS disaster is the focus of a new series, a documentary to air on HBO called "Pandemic: Facing AIDS." Here's a look at some of the countries that director Rory Kennedy visited. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "PANDEMIC: FACING AIDS," HBO)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (singing in African language)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (singing in African language)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (singing in African language)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (speaking in Russian)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (speaking in Russian)

NARRATOR: Every year in India, 100,000 women with HIV give birth. More than 30 percent of these women will pass the infection on to their baby. But India has increased its efforts towards prevention. And Nagaraj Mbanu (ph) have taken every precaution.

For less than $2, Mbanu has taken a medication called Naveripine (ph), and this has cut the probability of transmission in half.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: The series starts on HBO Sunday night, 7:00.

Rory Kennedy is with us now. It's nice to have you here.

RORY KENNEDY, DIRECTOR, "PANDEMIC: FACING AIDS": Thank you.

BROWN: How'd you get into this project?

KENNEDY: Well, I had the honor of going on a White House delegation to Africa about four years ago. We were looking at the AIDS crisis there, and I had been asked to make a 15-minute film about what I saw, and the impact of that trip was very profound.

I saw devastation that I could never have imagined. I met a woman there, Bernadette, who had 11 children, 10 of whom had died of AIDS. She was the sole caretaker of 35 grandchildren, five of whom were HIV-positive.

And so when we talk about the devastation that AIDS has caused, that's the level that we're talking about, entire families being decimated.

So it was really after that trip that I decided to expand the project into a global film.

BROWN: It's a series of stories, really, about five different characters in five different countries. Do you find that the societal reaction in each of these countries is similar, or is it quite different from country to country?

KENNEDY: It's similar in some ways, but it's also different. We've seen countries like Brazil and Uganda really take on the AIDS epidemic, and in those countries, in Uganda, for example, the rate of transmission has been reduced by 80 percent. In Russia it's -- in Brazil, rather, it's been reduced by 50 percent.

So there's some great success stories in countries that have really made this a -- an important issue and a priority. In other countries, like Russia, we're seeing explosive numbers, and that's because the country's really not dealing with it.

BROWN: Was it difficult to get the characters to agree to participate?

KENNEDY: It was in some cases. And again, it's -- it really depends on the country. In India, where the stigma is very significant, it was very, very difficult to even get somebody to speak to us. Just to say that you've HIV-positive in India is a great act of courage.

So in many cases, it was very challenging.

BROWN: Couple of other things. What do you want out of this? What do you hope will come from the project?

KENNEDY: Well, you know, the statistics are so overwhelming with AIDS. There are 40 million people who are HIV-positive in the world today. There are 24 million people who have already died of AIDS. There are 13 million orphans.

But we really chose in this film to focus on one or two stories in each of the countries to try to humanize AIDS, to try to go beyond the numbers and put a human face on the epidemic.

And my hope is that people will really connect to the people they see in this series, and I hope they'll tune in on Sunday on June 15 and connect with people. And then we have a Web site, pandemicfacingaids.org that I developed with my partner, Nan Richardson, to allow people to get involved in the fight against AIDS.

BROWN: Are you hopeful?

KENNEDY: I am hopeful. That's definitely one of the things that came out of my experience, is that, you know, I saw countries that made this a priority. I saw individuals stand up against AIDS. And I saw what happens when that occurs. And what happens is that we win, we beat AIDS.

But it's really a question of making it a priority and committing the resources that are needed to fight AIDS.

BROWN: It's -- do you worry at all, half a minute, do you worry at all that the people who will come and watch the program are essentially converts in the first place, that it -- this is a little bit of preaching to the choir?

KENNEDY: Well, the truth is, I really don't think that many people are aware of...

BROWN: OK. KENNEDY: the degree of the pandemic, and how it's penetrated so many countries. My feeling is, is that we are on the brink of this becoming a really explosive situation. Many people feel like, Well, we didn't do enough, and it's over, and, you know, it's too bad.

But the truth of the matter is, is, we're at the tip of the iceberg with this pandemic, and if we don't do something now, then we're going to see really scary numbers.

So I -- my hope is that when people see this, this film, that they'll understand that a little bit better and they'll get involved in the fight against AIDS.

BROWN: Series starts Sunday night on HBO, 7:00 Eastern time, and it's HBO, so it's probably on a number of other times as well.

It's nice to meet you. Congratulations.

KENNEDY: Thank you for having me.

BROWN: All right.

KENNEDY: I appreciate it.

BROWN: Good for you. Good for you.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, something a bit lighter. We'll take some of you back to your first cooking experience. This is a crazy idea. But it's the Easy-Bake Oven's 40th birthday, and we'll celebrate it.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We spent time this week talking about some of the momentous events of 1963 involving civil rights. This is one of the less-momentous events of 1963, although anyone who owned and dearly loved an Easy-Bake Oven may beg to differ.

The Easy-Bake was created 40 years ago, allowing kids to escape the adult world outside by cooking tiny little cakes with a tiny light bulb, or two.

Helping to mark this pivotal moment of 1963 in our young lives, David Hoffman, the author of "The Easy-Bake Oven Gourmet," which tells you how to make such things as Deep Dish Truffle Lobster Pie with an Easy-Bake Oven.

Why, David, would you want to do that, I do not know, but welcome.

DAVID HOFFMAN, AUTHOR, "THE EASY-BAKE OVEN GOURMET": Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: How'd you get interested in this?

HOFFMAN: Well, actually, I had written a book about classic toys.

BROWN: Yes.

HOFFMAN: And when I went on a publicity tour with it, I noticed whenever I did a talk show or morning news show, and as you know, most of those are staffed by women, or a lot of them are staffed...

BROWN: Yes.

HOFFMAN: ... by women, women went weak at the knees at the sight of an Easy-Bake Oven.

BROWN: That...

HOFFMAN: And I decided that there was some sort of phenomenon that had to be investigated.

BROWN: Now, this is the old one.

HOFFMAN: This is the original one...

BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

HOFFMAN: ... 1963, guy named Norman Shapiro, worked for the Kennet (ph) Corporation, saw pretzel vendors all over the streets of Manhattan, decided to make a miniature pretzel maker, and it evolved into a miniature oven.

BROWN: And it's been updated so that it looks like a microwave.

HOFFMAN: Well, it has...

BROWN: Basically. Right?

HOFFMAN: Yes, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- well, the point is, is, through the years, and we trace -- I trace all this in the book, it sort of evolved as Mom's oven evolved. So like in the early '70s, it was in Harvest Gold and Avocado Green, because those were the colors...

BROWN: Yes, they were.

HOFFMAN: ... of Mom's oven. Yes, as we all well remember and wish to forget.

BROWN: The -- I didn't know this to -- or I was reading about this today, is that a lot of people who cook for a living, who are really good, started out with light-bulb cooking.

HOFFMAN: Well, that's what I discovered is, people like Bobby Flay, who said when he was 8 years old, he had -- he was more fascinated, not about cooking, but about the fact that you could actually cook with a light bulb, and asked his parents for one. Because he was a boy, there was a little bit of a hesitancy, but they finally gave him one.

Rick Bayliss (ph), who's a big chef in Chicago, same story.

BROWN: Yes, yes.

HOFFMAN: And then a lot of very popular female chefs like Gail Gant (ph), who's also out of Chicago, and Emily Luchetti (ph), who's a big pastry chef at Fairlawn (ph) in San Francisco.

BROWN: Now, so you set out to do a cookbook. These are actual recipes that actually will work, is that right?

HOFFMAN: You got it. I went to the chefs, and I said, I want to know what you can do in an Easy-Bake. So the first thing they did was toss out the mix, and the next thing they did is, they got creative. A lot of them took their existing recipes, or staples of their restaurant, and then pared them down to the Easy Bake.

Now, the -- the -- it's a really simple theory. It gets to be 350 degrees. You're looking at me like I'm a crazy individual there. It gets to be 350...

BROWN: No.

HOFFMAN: ... degrees within the oven. The light bulb...

BROWN: That light bulb.

HOFFMAN: ... the light bulb will generate heat...

BROWN: So you could roast a chicken.

HOFFMAN: ... of 350 degrees. Well, someone did. Rob Feeney (ph) roasted quail breasts.

BROWN: Right, because a chicken would be tough to fit in it.

HOFFMAN: Mark Bittman (ph), "How to Cook Everything," writes for "The New York Times"...

BROWN: Yes, yes.

HOFFMAN: ... he made chicken with capers and cherry tomatoes.

BROWN: In an Easy-Bake?

HOFFMAN: In the Easy-Bake Oven.

BROWN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) 350 is 350 whether it's a light bulb of gas.

HOFFMAN: You got it. All it has to do is fit in that little pan and be able to slide through the chamber and not rise too high, otherwise it'll get lopped off at the top of it. So...

BROWN: Yes, that, that, that would be a problem. Is still, does still sell well? HOFFMAN: It's still probably -- they sold about, they tell me, 40 million of these things in the last 40 years. So that's pretty successful in terms of toy business.

BROWN: And if you had to make one...

HOFFMAN: It's very successful.

BROWN: Yes. If you had to make one really fine dish in an Easy- Bake, what would it be?

HOFFMAN: Well, I think everyone knows you can make cakes, cookies, pies, and stuff like that.

BROWN: Well, of course you can.

HOFFMAN: So -- and even though I show you how to make a white chocolate cream cheese frosted raspberry almond cake, we also show you, as I said. I think when someone comes up with quail breasts with wild mushrooms and potatoes, Pommes Anna, you know, you're pretty impressed.

BROWN: Yes, as Easy-Bake goes, that's as good as it gets. Nice to meet you. Thank you.

HOFFMAN: Thanks, Aaron.

BROWN: What a great way to make a living, writing a book on that.

Morning papers, tomorrow's news tonight. Take a break first.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Okey dokey, time to check -- I'm going to stop that, I promise, next week I'm not saying "Okey dokey." Time to check morning papers for across the country and around the world. Here we go. Not much time tonight, unfortunately.

But I love this one, this is great. "The Star News," which is the newspaper of Wilmington, North Carolina, front page says, "Good Night" to David. It's a great shot of Mr. Brinkley too, isn't it? David -- David -- this is where he worked, and this is where he grew up, and this is where he'll be buried, and it is a great front page for them in tomorrow morning's paper.

"Chicago Sun Times," couple stories we note. Forget that big one. It's down at the bottom. "Ex-Lover's $5 million Lawsuit Against Jordan," that would be Michael Jordan, "Thrown Out." And they're playing the U.S. Open outside of Chicago. And this may be the best single story of the day anywhere, sports news, otherwise, Tom Watson at 53 years old shares the lead in the U.S. Open, and that's pretty cool.

Pardon? Another minute? Really? Throws my timing off, David. OK.

"The St. Louis Post Dispatch" puts both Gregory Peck, "Actor Personified Integrity in the Movie 'To Kill a Mockingbird,'" on the front page, and then puts Mr. Brinkley. I like this headline too. "Television Made Him a Star, He Made TV News an Institution," made both -- they put both on the front page, and Middle East on the front page there as well.

This is such a "USA Today" front-page story. I don't mean that disrespectfully. "Prince William Comes of Age." He's not, he's about to turn 21, "The Dashing Heir Stubbornly Clings to Normalcy." This is going to sell a lot of papers, because, like, you know, because he's a hunk, right? Anyway, that's "USA Today."

"Iraq War Costs Less Than Was Expected," also reports "USA Today" in its front page in its Friday edition, David Brinkley and Gregory Peck on the front page as well, if only briefly.

Thirty seconds, you say? Here we go.

The two Detroit papers both lead the same, "U.S. Demand to Detroit, Put Police on Right Path." We reported that story earlier tonight. And the -- that's "The Detroit Free Press," did I mention that? Well, I guess you could see it.

And "The Detroit News," "Feds Order Overhaul of Detroit Police." But I like this story, "Lawmakers OK Four-Day School Week in Effort to Save Money." I don't know if it's a good idea or a bad idea, but that's what they agreed to do.

We're all back tomorrow. Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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