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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Fire in Chicago Office Building Kills at Least 3; Student Admits Taking Box Cutters Aboard Southwest Flight; 4 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq

Aired October 17, 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.


ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: And a good Friday evening to you, I'm Anderson Cooper. Aaron Brown is off tonight.
The idea of being trapped in a high rise fire is certainly a frightening one. Tonight it was even worse for some people in Chicago. They were trapped in the stairwells in their burning county offices but were not noticed by rescue workers. More than an hour later they were found seriously injured.

That is where we begin the whip tonight with CNN's Jeff Flock on the phone from Chicago -- Jeff.

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CHICAGO BUREAU CHIEF: Indeed, Anderson. They thought they had the fire under control but then they began finding the bodies. The death toll is now three and it could go higher.

COOPER: Next to Washington and a strange and somewhat scary discovery aboard several passenger jets today, Jeanne Meserve with the headline on that -- Jeanne.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sources say a 20-year-old student has admitted putting box cutters and other contraband onboard two Southwest Airlines aircraft. An administration source says the student told the TSA what he had done in an e-mail last month describing it as an act of civil disobedience to point up weaknesses in airport security -- Anderson.

COOPER: More on that in a moment.

Now to San Francisco and the story of what could be a major doping scandal among athletes, Frank Buckley following that today, Frank a headline please.

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency calls it intentional doping of the worst sort and a conspiracy and it could keep some athletes from next summer's Olympic games.

COOPER: And finally to Baghdad, another bloody day for American soldiers, our Baghdad Bureau Chief Jane Arraf with a headline -- Jane.

JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: More trouble in the Shia holy city of Karbala where U.S. forces have clashed with bodyguards of a religious leader and in Baghdad a separate attack brings the toll to four U.S. military police dead.

COOPER: Jane Arraf in Baghdad, back to you in a moment and back to the rest shortly.

Still ahead tonight we'll have more on the latest athlete doping story with former Olympic athlete Marty Liquori and an expert in sports medicine.

Later, a sign of the times, the booming business of the repo men, yes they are still out there. We'll follow them as they recover cars of people who don't make their payments.

We'll live off the land, well maybe kind of, with the host of the new PBS program "Second Hand Stories" as they explore life among America's garbage and yard sales, garage sales I should say.

And Segment 7 tonight a story of the youngest victim of New York's ferry accident and the family and friends he left behind. You won't want to miss that, all that to come in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight with a fire in Chicago, a small fire that was quickly contained but a lot of smoke also which proved to be a killer. The building is a 34-story high rise that contains county as well as state offices.

For more now on what happened we want to go back to CNN's Jeff Flock on the phone.

FLOCK (via telephone): Indeed, Anderson, a real nightmare for the people that were trapped inside the office building. As you report, when the fire broke out late this afternoon, still daylight, there was flames and some smoke, unusual to see a fire in Chicago's downtown loop but they thought they had it under control.

In fact they did have it under control but then when they got inside they began finding the bodies. As you point out, a 34-story state office building, the fire on the 12th of those floors. Then the ambulances began to arrive when they began to find the bodies. Fourteen people injured inside, many of them with serious injuries, many of them now critical.

Some, according to the fire commissioner were breathing, others were not. Again, the ambulances, a sea of them outside this county office building which is right across from the Daly Center in downtown Chicago, a county coroner from City Hall and next to the tallest church in the world, the Chicago Temple, a Methodist church downtown. There was also a daycare center in the building. That was evacuated though. None of those injured expect to have come from that daycare center.

A hundred firefighters at the height of it were battling this and one of them described the scene inside.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The fire was pretty much contained to the 12th floor. Understand that in the efforts of fighting a fire you get peripheral damage from that. There is smoke damage, water damage. The fire walls are opened up to determine the travel of the fire. So, even though the fire was contained to the floor of origin just in the pure fact of fighting the fire there was no doubt some damage above the fire and some damage below the fire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLOCK: Now, as we pointed out most of the folks inside that office building did survive but we've still got, as we said at this point 14 serious injuries, three total dead, a lot of damage inside that office building as well. As we said, state offices and state documents inside that building. Also, among the survivors, some of them on their way out described that scene inside.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Walking back up to the 27th floor there were still people in the stairwell and if the door is shut they would be trapped in there, so I experienced some of the asphyxiation from the smoke because I was trying to keep the door open for my co-workers and once I got some help from one of my office people I was able to go and get some fresh air.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLOCK: A nightmare for those folks inside and that last report from the fire commissioner they were still searching that building to make sure that they haven't got any more people that they're not aware of, Anderson. We will, of course, continue to watch it.

COOPER: Yes, Jeff, I mean it's a little bit confusing to look at the pictures as you pointed out it doesn't look like a very large fire. My understanding and correct me if I'm wrong the people who died and I guess were the most injured from the smoke were trapped in the stairwell because the doors, I guess, self locked and wouldn't open?

FLOCK: In fact, they were trapped in both the stairwells as well as floors above the first because that smoke began to rise in the building. People went naturally upstairs and that is where they ran into trouble. As we said, some folks were breathing when they were found, other people not even breathing when they were found up there.

COOPER: It is just one of those nightmares of city living. All right, Jeff Flock thanks very much tonight.

We go next to the airport, an edgier place right now no doubt about it, edgier, busier, and somewhat less convenient than it was say this time last night whoever left what they did aboard two airliners saw to that. Why he or she or they did it is still another question and tonight authorities have someone to ask.

Here again, CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MESERVE (voice-over): Box cutters, bleach, clay resembling plastic explosives, contraband found Thursday night on two Southwest Airlines planes along with notes critical of the Transportation Security Administration.

FBI sources say a 20-year-old student at Gilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, has admitted putting the items onboard. A database search after the discovery of the contraband led to the student and an e-mail received by TSA's contact center last month.

According to an administration official the e-mail cited locations, times, and places when contraband had been put onboard. The e-mail said getting the items through security and onto the planes was an act of "civil disobedience." The author said he knew he was breaking the law but felt it was necessary to point up weaknesses in aviation security. It has done that.

REP. PETER DEFAZIO (D), HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE: We're lucky this hasn't happened for real.

MESERVE: Lucky, DeFazio says because ground personnel with easy access to aircraft are still not screened and passenger checks have weaknesses. A recent GAO report says TSA screeners are still missing threatening objects.

DEFAZIO: This is something that could be expected with the level of security we're providing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: The FBI says the student does not appear to pose any further threat to airline security and that proceedings are anticipated this Monday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

Meanwhile, officials say an investigation will be conducted into how the items got through security and onboard the planes and why the TSA didn't follow up on the e-mail when it was received last month -- Anderson.

COOPER: Jeanne, there's no chance that the government isn't going to pursue charges against this person is there?

MESERVE: Well, we don't know definitively that charges are going to be filed. We're told there will be proceedings in court on Monday but we have not been told definitively that charges will be filed.

COOPER: And is this person still in custody?

MESERVE: That's a difficult question to answer. Earlier this evening we were told pointedly he was not in custody, has not been arrested, that he was being questioned and that he was cooperating with authorities.

COOPER: All right, Jeanne Meserve thanks very much, great work on this tonight. Thank you. On to other business beginning with what officials are calling the largest steroid bust in sports history and we're not talking about an East German weightlifter here. It clearly says something about the state of things that there is an entire organization, the U.S. Anti- Doping Agency, devoted to testing amateur athletes for performance enhancing drugs or whatever else modern science has to offer.

Early last summer a track and field coach sent the USADA a used syringe containing a steroid designed to get around traditional methods of detection. Today, the agency announced that a number of big time track and field athletes have, in fact, tested positive for it.

Here again, CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY (voice-over): Some of the athletes in question had competed this past summer at the USA outdoor track and field championships, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency claiming they tested positive for THG, a designer steroid with a chemical structure similar to other prohibited steroids.

It was intentional doping, according to the USADA and "a far cry from athletes accidentally testing positive as a result of taking contaminated nutritional supplements. Rather" the agency says "this is a conspiracy involving chemists, coaches and certain athletes using what they developed to be undetectable designer steroids to defraud their fellow competitors and the American and world public."

GARY WADLER, WORLD ANTI-DOPING AGENCY: Steroids have been around a long time and athletes and chemists and those who want to cheat have been working long and hard to try and get around the various drug tests that we have to detect steroid and other drug abuse and this seems to be another example of that.

BUCKLEY: The Anti-Doping Agency claimed it was told that the source of the THG was this man, Victor Conte, the president of Balco Laboratories, a sports nutrition company in Burlingame, California. The USADA referred its information to the U.S. Justice Department.

In September, the firm was raided by IRS and drug enforcement agents. Conte strongly denied being the source of the THG in a series of e-mails to CNN. "Balco Laboratories is not the source of the substance found" Conte said.

"This is about jealous competitive coaches and athletes that all have a history of promoting and using performance enhancing agents being completely hypocritical in their actions."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY: The THG was not detectable in normal lab testing. It was only after the anti-doping lab at UCLA was able to identify the contents of that mystery syringe that had been sent to officials that they realized that they had on their hands what they believe is a designer steroid.

Then they were able to develop a test for it and that's when they began to look for this designer steroid. Anderson, what we don't know tonight is just how many athletes are allegedly involved in all of this.

COOPER: Yes, Frank, there's also a lot known about this THG. I guess, I mean it's a completely manmade synthetic substance and yet technically I guess it's not illegal because no one really knew it existed.

BUCKLEY: Yes, the DEA says this is not a controlled substance. It's not technically illegal but these anti-doping folks are saying that it is a prohibited substance, a prohibited agent and so they believe that they have a case to make against some of these athletes.

If they make that case, in fact, some of the athletes who are -- if they in fact are said to be doping, they could miss the Olympics because it's a two year ban. That's the sentence for involving in this kind of activity and if they're found to be doing that they will actually miss the Olympics coming up in 2004.

COOPER: Yes, the Anti-Doping Agency is basically saying illegal or not it is a form of a steroid and therefore not usable for our (unintelligible).

BUCKLEY: That's right.

COOPER: Frank Buckley, thanks very much tonight.

We are going to talk with a sports medicine expert and Olympic runner Marty Liquori a little bit later on in the program.

President Bush is wheels up as they say. He's bound from Tokyo for Manila where he'll stay for about eight hours, security concerns keeping his visit to a bare minimum. He's going to address the Philippine Congress, the first time an American president has done so since Dwight Eisenhower in 1960.

All this following a fairly quick stop in Japan, 17 hours, the president meeting with Japan's prime minister coming away with a commitment of $1.5 billion to rebuild Iraq.

But for all the president's hopes to get in the way of money and support from Japan and the rest of Asia it is Congress he needs for the lion's share of it, $87 billion give or take.

Today, House and Senate gave the OK, House first, then the Senate. The Senate version differing though in that a portion of the money for rebuilding Iraq would be treated as a loan, something the president opposes.

We talked about this in last night's program. It now falls to a conference committee to iron out differences between the House and the Senate version and put together a version the president can, in fact, sign. Well, we intended to make a day in the life of Baghdad the centerpiece of our reporting from Iraq today and it does remain a part of it but events to some degree have pushed that day in the life into the background.

Four soldiers were killed in Iraq today, not in the so-called Sunni Triangle where American troops have been having so much difficulty. For the latest we go back to Baghdad and CNN's Jane Arraf.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF: Well, Anderson, there's never a good place for violence to happen but when it happens in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, the holiest cities to Shia Muslims all over the world and in Iraq with their rivalries and the tense relationship with U.S. troops it's particularly troubling.

Now this one an overnight clash that left three U.S. military police dead including, according to the Pentagon, the female commanding officer of the battalion. At the end of it, two Iraqi police were also dead, seven more U.S. military MPs wounded and many more wounded as well, including Iraqis. The U.S. doesn't give figures on those.

Now, it happened as the soldiers were trying to impose a curfew in a neighborhood, a curfew after clashes this week and after what appeared to be 12 hours of gunfire. They were still counting the casualties when we got there.

Now part of the continuing struggle this one trying to disarm people in a very heavily armed country and very heavily armed cities. Those weren't as you mentioned the only casualties in Baghdad, an improvised explosive device, a homemade bomb killed another U.S. military MP, another military policeman and wounded two more.

Now, although it seems like it's all death and destruction this is a city of five million people and there's a lot going on every day. We followed one of those days.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF (voice-over): Sunrise over what until a few months ago was the Mother of all Battles Mosque, named by Saddam Hussein for the 1991 Gulf War. The mosque has been renamed Mother of all Cities after Mecca. A new name, a new Iraq, a new day dawns in Baghad.

At 6:30 a.m., (unintelligible) is already waiting for a taxi to take his teenager daughters to school. With crime rampant many parents won't let their daughters out of their sight.

As the military keeps saying the United States is still at war here but there are signs of peace. These garbage collectors back on the job make $3 a day, more than twice their pre-war salaries. They say they haven't been paid in weeks but they still show up for work. As morning rush hour approaches the newspapers hit the streets. With censorship largely gone there are more of them than Baghdad has ever seen. By 7:00 a.m. the commercial heart of Baghdad begins to fill with workers.

There is propane to be delivered to homes and restaurants, ice deliveries, Turkish cooking stoves and Chinese televisions to be taken to shops and for kids too poor to be in school instead of working fun wherever they can find it. Trusting safety in numbers, women walk in small groups to their jobs at the Central Bank down the street.

(on camera): Part of Rashid (ph) Street is closed off this morning because they're delivering the new currency to banks nearby, otherwise it would be even more crowded.

(voice-over): In schools across Baghdad, students no longer fill their day with praise for Saddam Hussein. In Mrs. Awan's (ph) eighth grade math class they're learning basic algebra. At lunch time in many neighborhoods, people meet in modest restaurants and in the afternoon they shop for fruits and vegetables, imported bananas, local apples, oranges, grapes, and watermelon.

In the street there are traffic police and today even workers washing the lights but the city is still unsettled. Traffic is snarled with the U.S. military blocking many of the roads for security.

After last week's car bombs workers are erecting concrete barriers to absorb any glass. By the end of the day there are reports of at least four explosions in Baghdad, none of them big enough to have much impact outside their neighborhoods.

But as dusk approaches, U.S. helicopters circle over the Tigris River and an egret on the riverbank takes flight perhaps as unsettled as many Iraqis by the changes in the city.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF: But in one dramatic change, the U.S. military tells us today that they are expecting to announce that they're totally lifting the curfew placed on Baghdad since the end of the war.

Now they say they'll do that next week which begins the holy fasting month of Ramadan when people traditionally go out on the streets pretty well all night long -- Anderson.

COOPER: Jane, just a fantastic piece. It's actually the first one I've seen in a long time where you actually get a sense of what life is like for a lot of people in Baghdad.

What struck me in particular is you don't see, at least in the images you just showed, American troops out. You don't see a lot of soldiers on the street. Can you go through a whole day as a Baghdad citizen and not come across, you know, what they I guess would call the American occupiers? ARRAF: You can if you stick to your neighborhood and if your neighborhood isn't one of those that's used as a main traffic route for the troops and there are a lot of those. Now part of the reason that you won't see a lot of those images is that it's getting harder to get them.

There are big signs that have gone up near military installations saying no photographs. It's very difficult sometimes for correspondents, for a cameraman to actually get those pictures. We tend to get them as they're passing.

But even if they don't see the troops what they do see are the things that have remained of the occupation and will remain those really big concrete barriers, the barbed wire stretched everywhere and the wound, the sound of helicopters and the sound of tanks rumbling by. It's almost inescapable and it's a reminder to most people that there is some respect still a war going on here -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right, great report Jane. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, we'll talk with former Olympian Marty Liquori and an expert in sports medicine about the latest doping scandal.

Then two years since the anthrax attacks, we'll meet a victim who is still sick.

And later, the repo men they're doing booming business recovering the cars of people who don't make their payments. It's a little window into the state of our economy that and more ahead.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Welcome back. More now on how far some athletes will go for an edge and how far chemists and coaches will go to make sure no one gets caught.

With us here in New York is Dr. Lewis Maharam, President of the New York Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine and Medical Director of the New York City Marathon. And, in Gainesville, Florida, Marty Liquori, the former Olympic middle distance runner. Currently he covers track and field for NBC sports. Welcome to both of you, appreciate you joining us.

Marty, let me start off with you. Were you surprised at all by these latest allegations about a doping scandal in track and field?

MARTY LIQUORI, FORMER OLYMPIC RUNNER: Well, no, I'm not surprised. Track and field has been dealing with this problem for about a decade and the testing keeps getting more sophisticated. It has to be a matter of time before the testers got a jump ahead of the cheaters. The cheaters had really had the advantage for the past decade.

COOPER: Dr. Maharam, though, if I mean if athletes know they are going to be tested why take the risk, why do it?

DR. LEWIS MAHARAM, PRESIDENT, NEW YORK CHAPTER, AMERICAN COLLEGE OF SPORTS MEDICINE: Well, there's always people seeking an edge so they're looking for these designer drugs that they won't get tested for. But now with these new testing procedures USADA is coming up with, the United States drug testing agency, and internationally they're going to be thinking twice because they're not going to know later on if some other test is going to come back to be able to check this out.

COOPER: We should point out though that they only knew to test for this because someone, an anonymous person sent them a syringe with this material in it.

But, Marty, how much of a difference can these sorts of drugs make?

LIQUORI: Well, we know from testing that the drugs and various ways of cheating can be three, four, five percent but in the Olympics even a one percent advantage is the difference between finishing in the medals and totally out of the medals.

In the longest race, the 10,000 meters, one percent would be 100 yards. In the 100-meter dash it would be one meter and that would be the difference between a gold medal and no medal at all and then after that millions of dollars over the career of an athlete.

COOPER: And, doctor, is it just that desire to win that is what is motivating these people because it's not always just a high level athlete? I mean it's high school kids. It's other people.

MAHARAM: It is but it's really interesting. There was a study done where they asked Olympic (unintelligible) athletes and people that were training toward that that if they took an anabolic steroid and they lost 20 years from their life but they were guaranteed to get a gold medal, 90 percent of them said that they would take the drug. Isn't that interesting? That's pretty sad because...

LIQUORI: I don't know if that's true. You know people have been quoting that study for years and I don't know where it comes from. I don't think any athletes are that dumb. The study is usually quoted that they would die in ten years and they said they would want to do that.

COOPER: Well, Marty, what is it? I mean is it...

LIQUORI: Athletes aren't doing that.

COOPER: What is it Marty? Is it coaches? Is it just, you know, shady chemists or is it something that is coming really from the athletes?

LIQUORI: Well, in the past certainly it was coming from governments and coaches when Russian and East German athletes were being given stuff by their coaches that they didn't even know about. Athletes certainly have had some culpability over the years and one of the many things that's different today is that not only are they going after the athletes with penalties but now the coaches will be -- if they're incriminated they'll also have some kind of penalty so that's something that's new.

There's a couple things that were new about what just happened and the main thing was a drug was discovered and then they went back and tested previous samples. That's not the way it worked in the past. In the past the designers were always able to stay a step ahead of the testers and if they got past that test on that day they were in the clear for a long time.

But now, the athletes do know, as the doctor said, at the next Olympics they may hold onto their urine samples for a while and if there's a rumor that a certain drug was being used they'll go back and test them for it.

COOPER: And, in fact, it's not just one sample. It's two samples. There's an A and a B sample, is that correct?

LIQUORI: Well, the A sample if you show up positive on the A sample then they will test the B sample and you're present. That's part of the legal process to make it a fair situation.

COOPER: But just as the testing progresses, I mean aren't people always one step ahead?

MAHARAM: They were one step ahead.

LIQUORI: Well they have been in the past.

MAHARAM: What's very cool now is that they can go back and test these old samples so it's going to be an added deterrent. And, Marty, by the way we'll send you copies of those studies that are out there. They're truly out there for these Olympic golden athletes and I know you and I'll send you copies of them.

COOPER: Marty, do you think there is something in, I mean is it just something in human nature that regardless of what level athlete you are at that you want to excel and will do anything to be the best?

LIQUORI: I think so. As the doctor said we see people using drugs in competitions which are very minor but it's one of the basic human needs like food, love, and safety. Right after that is people want recognition so, yes, there are athletes.

There are 203 countries in the Olympics and there are athletes from impoverished countries who will cheat for the money but there are also athletes that have a lot going for them in life that are cheating because they want the recognition. So, it's a basic human need that's been around since the Greeks.

COOPER: Doctor.

MAHARAM: I absolutely agree but I also see in my private practice in sports medicine here in New York I see athletes of this level and every day athletes.

COOPER: Right.

MAHARAM: And I would tell you that the majority of them aren't taking these type of drugs.

COOPER: You think it's a small number.

MAHARAM: It's a small number.

COOPER: all right, Dr. Lewis Maharam, appreciate you joining us, Marty Liquori as well. Thanks very much.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, a forgotten victim of terror an anthrax victim who is still suffering all the years later; NEWSNIGHT continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Well, two years ago, a few grams of dust in a few envelopes essentially terrified the country. It wasn't hard to see why. The dust was anthrax, the envelopes going through the postal system, killing people as they went. Five people died; 17 others got sick, some of them terribly so.

This week, Senators Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle introduced a bill to include the victims and the survivors in the September 11 compensation fund, long overdue, according to a number of survivors who say they have been painfully ignored.

Here is CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It has been two years since David Hose has been well enough to go to work, two years since he's been well enough to do much more than watch television, two years since he inhaled a deadly form of anthrax.

DAVID HOSE, ANTHRAX SURVIVOR: The doctor says I'll never be able to work again. The neurological exams they gave me said they were the strangest ones they had ever seen.

ARENA: Hose takes nine different medications a day, three for his heart.

HOSE: My heart is damaged. The part of my heart that pumps the last part of the blood out of your heart is damaged. My lungs, I don't exactly know to the extent they are damaged, but they are damaged, too.

ARENA (on camera): Hose is well-known here at this Winchester hospital, where he was first treated after inhaling the anthrax. Last year, he spent more than a month here after being diagnosed with a severe form of pneumonia. And his immune system remains seriously compromised. HOSE: It only took me 3 1/2 hours to get sick with that pneumonia. So I figure I'm about 3 1/2 hours away from death at any time.

ARENA (voice-over): Just like the thousands of victims attacked on September 11, Hose, who is now 61, was a random target. He was a contract worker handling State Department mail and other diplomatic correspondence when the anthrax-laced mail addressed to Senator Leahy accidentally ended up at his facility.

Even though Hose and other anthrax survivors are victims of what investigators are calling domestic terror, there is no victims fund for them, no government help for their families, at least not yet.

HOSE: We had to go to the Red Cross for food, because I had run out of money, OK? And they were kind enough to pay a bill and give us $200 for groceries.

ARENA: Currently, Hose receives workmen's compensation and will eventually switch to Medicare. But he says it will not be enough to cover his medical bills. He's seeking $12 million from the government.

HOSE: When they knew the letter came through our facility, they offered us rubber gloves and a dust mask, like you wear in a home workshop to keep sawdust from coming in, which wouldn't phase anthrax, it's so tiny.

ARENA: Hose still does not know who was responsible for his condition. A team of 50 FBI agents and postal inspectors continue to work the anthrax investigation. But Hose believes, as many investigators do, that the culprit may never be found.

Kelli Arena, CNN, Winchester, Virginia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, a couple of other stories now from around the country.

New York and the first bits and pieces from the investigation into yesterday's ferry accident. First off, the ship was going at full throttle when it hit the pier, this according to the NTSB. As for the ferry's pilot, he tested negative for alcohol. The NTSB issued a subpoena today for additional testing for prescription drugs.

And a statement today from General William Boykin, who is in hot water for seeming to cast the war on terrorism in starkly religious terms. "I am neither a zealot nor an extremist," it reads, "only a soldier who has an abiding faith." He goes on: "I do believe that radical extremists have tried to use Islam as a cause for attacks on America."

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT: Missing your car? Well, if you haven't made the payments, it may be because the repo men are in your neighborhood. Nissen reports when NEWSNIGHT continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: This is the kind of economy where anything you want can be yours for three, 12 or 36 easy month payments. But it's also the kind of economy in which a lot of people are finding the payments tougher and tougher to make.

At Ford Credit, for example, the number of loans ending in repossession has increased 30 percent in the last three years, to almost 200,000 cars -- 200,000. Most were taken back by professional recovery agents, repo men. And if, heaven forbid, you find yourself behind in your payments, here's what you can do, so the repo men don't get your car.

Absolutely nothing, CNN's Nissen saw for herself.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Looking for a red 2003 Toyota Matrix.

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Max Pineiro is about to take someone else's car. He and his partner approach a 2003 Toyota Matrix. They open the door with a custom-cut key.

MAX PINEIRO, ELITE COLLATERAL RECOVERY: Go, go, go, go, go, go.

NISSEN: In less than 30 seconds, they have the car, their third that night, a typical night for the repo man, or, more correctly, recovery agent, who legally repossesses property -- mostly cars -- from people who have fallen behind in their payments.

PINEIRO: Take it over to headquarters.

NISSEN: The person's car they have just taken has made no payments for three months, still owes almost $19,000.

PINEIRO: These are the new jobs that just came in right now.

NISSEN: Pineiro's company, Elite Collateral Recovery, gets 50 repossession orders a day from dealerships, financing companies and banks, twice the number they had last year.

PINEIRO: With the economy being down and people losing their jobs, you can't squeeze water out of a rock. And people's cars are going to get repossessed, especially those that have lost their jobs, that have fallen on hard times.

NISSEN: Pineiro has been in the recovery business for 17 years, seen it become increasingly professional.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is that a Jeep Grand Cherokee?

NISSEN: Like a growing number of recovery companies, his is bonded. He employs licensed private investigators to track down cars and their delinquent owners.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She's got to be staying at either a relative's house or a maybe a...

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They were on that whole street.

NISSEN: Few people voluntarily give up their cars after a repossession order is issued. Most try to hide the vehicles.

PINEIRO: They may turn around and switch cars with someone at work or they may take a car and put it into storage or simply park it three or four blocks away.

NISSEN: But Pineiro's team can find cars taken hundreds, thousands of miles from place of purchase.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bingo. That's our truck.

NISSEN: After three months of investigative work, they have homed in a vehicle from Texas by tracking down the address of the owner's mother in New Jersey.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go quick.

NISSEN: Again, they use a key made by using a code from the dealer. Hot-wiring the car can damage today's expensive electronic transmissions.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good job. I know that heart's beating.

NISSEN: Repo work can be dangerous.

PINEIRO: We get the customers that come out. And they're irate. And they may want to fight you or they may want to get loud with you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, here we go. This should be right on this block here.

NISSEN: To keep confrontations at a minimum, professional repo men work at night, when most people are sleeping, work fast to get the vehicle before anyone knows what's happening.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bingo. There it is.

PINEIRO: Our job is get in, get out. It's the element of surprise.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's our car.

NISSEN: Pineiro doesn't even have to get out of his specially- equipped truck or use a key. The truck has a remote controlled boom arm hidden under it. The boom extends, wraps around the car's front or rear tires, picks it up.

PINEIRO: OK, we're on.

NISSEN: In less than a minute, Pineiro drives off with the car.

PINEIRO: Back many years ago, the average repo men needed pretty much a slim-jim. Nowadays, you need hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, if not millions.

NISSEN: The best repo men can afford it. They can make more than $1,000 for finding and recovering each high-end vehicle, more for storing it until the car is sent to auction, the fate of 80 percent of repoed cars.

Every day, more join that sad lot. Every night, the repo men go out again to work on the closest thing there seems to be these days to economic recovery.

Beth Nissen, CNN, Elizabeth, New Jersey.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, a few more items now making news around the world tonight.

First up, Gaza and the bombing last week that left three Americans dead. A team of FBI investigators met today with their Palestinian counterparts. A spokesman declined to mention details. You'll recall, seven suspects from a rogue Palestinian militant group are already in custody.

And American troops are headed to Bolivia, a small team, to assess the security situation in light of the recent unrest there. This evening, Bolivia's president resigned from office and his vice president sworn in to take his place.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT: One man's junk is another's jewel, sort of the idea behind "Second Hand Stories." And we'll talk to the host coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Well, in a country obsessed with winning the lottery or, at the very least, getting something for nothing, the yard sale may the quintessential American event. I take all the junk that I have no use for and sell it to you. You get something you really want for almost nothing and I get rid of something I really don't want for nothing. Perfect.

And what's more important than taking that fact and making a TV show out of it? That's the background of a new PBS program, "Second Hand Stories."

Here's a clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "SECOND HAND STORIES")

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A full day of driving brings us to our next destination, the unclaimed baggage center. The merchandise in this store is the contents of your lost luggage. The center buys unclaimed luggage from all the major airlines and sells everything therein. Even the piece of luggage itself is for sale.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The unclaimed baggage center is quite different from the local ordinary thrift store. And the reason for that is, is that thrift stores are places where people get rid of their things that they don't want. But for us, we have treasures that people didn't want to lose.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Now you know where to get a wedding dress.

We welcome the hosts of "Second Hand Stories," Christopher Wilcha and John Freyer.

Thanks very much for being with us.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: It's Freyer, right?

JOHN FREYER, CO-HOST, "SECOND HAND STORIES": It's Freyer.

COOPER: Freyer. OK, there you go. That's why I only fill in.

This is an amazing idea. Basically, you got an ambulance online. You bought it online.

FREYER: Yes, we bought it on eBay.

COOPER: On eBay. And then you traveled across the country, just going from one yard sale and garage sale in places?

CHRISTOPHER WILCHA, CO-HOST, "SECOND HAND STORIES": Thrift stores, auctions.

FREYER: Yes, we traveled from New Jersey to Houston, Texas.

COOPER: Why?

FREYER: Well, we were really interested in the garage sales. And we were interested in the secondhand. So we were looking for a way to investigate it.

WILCHA: Plus, it was a road trip. The idea was that it was going to be a trip that would pay for itself. So we hit the road, bought stuff as we went. And then when we got to our destination, we sold it all. And it paid for the trip home.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Did it actually paid for the trip home?

(CROSSTALK) WILCHA: Well, we didn't sell the ambulance.

FREYER: We didn't sell the ambulance. And, actually, the gas on the ambulance...

WILCHA: Well...

FREYER: So we actually lost money. We thought it would be self- sufficient.

COOPER: What's the thing that surprised you most traveling crosscountry doing this?

WILCHA: I think I was kind of blown away by the one-of-a-kind stuff we were finding, not so much the sort of cast-off consumer goods that you would expect, but more things that you would just never imagine.

(CROSSTALK)

WILCHA: For instance, one example is this wobble light we found.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Tell about the wobble light.

WILCHA: It's a giant like highway light. And it's like a weeble wobble with a lamp on the top. And one of the original investors had invested...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: We're looking at a picture. This is the wobble light.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Now, this is a prototype. This is somebody

(CROSSTALK)

WILCHA: Somebody invested money in..

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: They invested a lot of money.

FREYER: A couple of hundred thousand dollars.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: That's a lot of money.

FREYER: Yes.

WILCHA: So there we are. And he wants $50 for it. So, of course, we had to buy it. FREYER: We had to get it.

COOPER: Wait a minute. This man is selling for $50 the prototype to an invention that he spent several hundred thousand dollars making?

WILCHA: Well, it ended up being a failed invention. So I think this was a just a relic that reminded him. It was a cruel reminder of his failed invention.

COOPER: That's why he was getting rid of it.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Fascinating.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: By the way, did you buy it?

FREYER: We bought it.

WILCHA: We bought it. We sold it for $100 at the end of the day.

COOPER: You made money on this poor's man invention?

FREYER: I think we actually sold it for $150, but I'm not keeping track.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: What else? What else surprised you?

FREYER: It became really interesting to see the different types of stuff that you find in thrift stores, from board games to old skateboards and so much stuff that you can -- and the way the show kind of works is, we find something. And then we start to investigate where it came from and the history of the object.

WILCHA: The sort of hidden history.

COOPER: Right.

WILCHA: And the other thing is, like, all of this stuff has -- you can kind of -- even a skateboard reveals so much about postwar suburban sprawl and all that kind of stuff.

COOPER: And you discovered, I think, a country music fan who had sort of a rare record collection.

FREYER: Oh, Leon Kagarise.

WILCHA: This guy named Leon Kagarise.

His obsession had been going to live country music performances in the '50s and '60s. And he was making these pristine recordings. And they languished in his basement until a secondhand record buyer came to sort of look through his collection and found them said, wow, these are worth money, and recovered them. And now it looks like they may have a home in the Smithsonian.

So it was like one those -- it's sort of the dream of every collector, is holding on to something for so long that it ends up actually having value.

COOPER: And what did it teach you about suburban sprawl, about America today?

FREYER: Well, you just get a -- you just get a sense of...

WILCHA: Well, people's biographies.

(CROSSTALK)

FREYER: You get a sense of people's biography. And you get a sense -- especially when you go to a garage sale or a yard sale, you walk into someone's home. And it's this kind of intimate look at all the things they had collected.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: And people were very willing to tell you the stories about what these things mean?

WILCHA: Well, yes and no.

Well, one -- again, another moment from the show was, we found this woman had this sprawl of little baskets and books and kind of kitchen debris. And then, in the middle of it was this pink-lined fur...

FREYER: Handcuffs

WILCHA: Handcuffs. And they were called the kinky cuffs. And she was just selling these for five bucks. And you would think that someone would be a little bit more protective of

(CROSSTALK)

FREYER: But you're kind of wondering why she has them.

WILCHA: And she just said: They're $5 and I've got nothing else to say. She didn't like, anonymously...

COOPER: Maybe bad memories, like the weeble wobble thing.

WILCHA: Exactly. Exactly.

COOPER: Did you buy the kinky cuffs, by the way?

(CROSSTALK)

WILCHA: We did. We did.

FREYER: And we resold them? I don't know. I think we probably got about $5 for them as well.

COOPER: Now, are these purchases from along the way?

WILCHA: Now, this jacket was a thrift score.

FREYER: Yes, this was a thrift store score as well.

COOPER: Now, so you had sold -- I've known of you -- you have infamy before this, because you had sold all your possessions on the

FREYER: Sure. Yes, I made a project. I did a project called "All My Life For Sale" and completed a book about it.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Now, where can people see this...

WILCHA: "Second Hand Stories" was on public television, PBS. It's going to be rerunning. And we're hoping to do more episodes. And so, if you write in and e-mail and let them know, we're hoping they'll let us do it as a series.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: All right, I'll send an e-mail.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Thanks. It was great to meet you.

WILCHA: Appreciate it.

FREYER: Thanks for having us on.

COOPER: Thanks.

All right, more NEWSNIGHT straight ahead. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Well, finally from us tonight, the story of Darius Marshall, a husband, a son, a teammate and a friend. He died on Wednesday when the Staten Island ferry crashed into a pier. Darius Marshall's story is a sad one, but his life was anything but. Those who knew him will tell you that, tonight, there is as much to celebrate as there is to miss.

His story now from CNN's Jason Carroll.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Darius Marshall was the youngest of those killed on the Staten Island ferry. He was 25. Marshall left work early on Wednesday, anxious to get home to his new wife. They had been married for just four months. His mother, unable to come to terms with her son being gone.

DENISE MARSHALL, MOTHER: I'm going to miss him so. And I don't know what else to do.

CARROLL: Marshall had already survived one tragedy. On 9/11, he was knocked unconscious by falling debris as he left the Borders bookstore in the World Trade Center.

MARSHALL: He was missing for 13 hours. And you think if he can survive that, with all the people that died and lost their lives, that he should have been able to survive this.

CARROLL: Following the 9/11 accident, Marshall left his job downtown as an investigator with the attorney general's office. Earlier this year, the United Nations hired him as a security guard. His family was thrilled, especially when they spotted him on TV last month as he stood next to the president addressing the General Assembly. His friend and fellow guard, Patel Nobel.

PATEL NOBEL, U.N. SECURITY GUARD: I want Darius to be remembered as committed, friendly, a lovable person.

CARROLL: That's how his football coach remembers him. Marshall was a linebacker at Wagner College in Staten Island for four years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Someone that, when he walked in a room, he had a big smile on his face and just brought a -- made you feel at ease and just a real, real good person.

MARSHALL: He's gone, but my heart is broken. I'll never get over this.

CARROLL: Jason Carroll, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: And that is NEWSNIGHT for tonight. Thanks for watching. Aaron Brown is going to be back on Monday.

I'm Anderson Cooper. I hope you'll join me on Monday as well, 7:00 p.m. Eastern, on "360."

Good night. Have a great weekend.

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





Admits Taking Box Cutters Aboard Southwest Flight; 4 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq>


Aired October 17, 2003 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: And a good Friday evening to you, I'm Anderson Cooper. Aaron Brown is off tonight.
The idea of being trapped in a high rise fire is certainly a frightening one. Tonight it was even worse for some people in Chicago. They were trapped in the stairwells in their burning county offices but were not noticed by rescue workers. More than an hour later they were found seriously injured.

That is where we begin the whip tonight with CNN's Jeff Flock on the phone from Chicago -- Jeff.

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CHICAGO BUREAU CHIEF: Indeed, Anderson. They thought they had the fire under control but then they began finding the bodies. The death toll is now three and it could go higher.

COOPER: Next to Washington and a strange and somewhat scary discovery aboard several passenger jets today, Jeanne Meserve with the headline on that -- Jeanne.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sources say a 20-year-old student has admitted putting box cutters and other contraband onboard two Southwest Airlines aircraft. An administration source says the student told the TSA what he had done in an e-mail last month describing it as an act of civil disobedience to point up weaknesses in airport security -- Anderson.

COOPER: More on that in a moment.

Now to San Francisco and the story of what could be a major doping scandal among athletes, Frank Buckley following that today, Frank a headline please.

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency calls it intentional doping of the worst sort and a conspiracy and it could keep some athletes from next summer's Olympic games.

COOPER: And finally to Baghdad, another bloody day for American soldiers, our Baghdad Bureau Chief Jane Arraf with a headline -- Jane.

JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: More trouble in the Shia holy city of Karbala where U.S. forces have clashed with bodyguards of a religious leader and in Baghdad a separate attack brings the toll to four U.S. military police dead.

COOPER: Jane Arraf in Baghdad, back to you in a moment and back to the rest shortly.

Still ahead tonight we'll have more on the latest athlete doping story with former Olympic athlete Marty Liquori and an expert in sports medicine.

Later, a sign of the times, the booming business of the repo men, yes they are still out there. We'll follow them as they recover cars of people who don't make their payments.

We'll live off the land, well maybe kind of, with the host of the new PBS program "Second Hand Stories" as they explore life among America's garbage and yard sales, garage sales I should say.

And Segment 7 tonight a story of the youngest victim of New York's ferry accident and the family and friends he left behind. You won't want to miss that, all that to come in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight with a fire in Chicago, a small fire that was quickly contained but a lot of smoke also which proved to be a killer. The building is a 34-story high rise that contains county as well as state offices.

For more now on what happened we want to go back to CNN's Jeff Flock on the phone.

FLOCK (via telephone): Indeed, Anderson, a real nightmare for the people that were trapped inside the office building. As you report, when the fire broke out late this afternoon, still daylight, there was flames and some smoke, unusual to see a fire in Chicago's downtown loop but they thought they had it under control.

In fact they did have it under control but then when they got inside they began finding the bodies. As you point out, a 34-story state office building, the fire on the 12th of those floors. Then the ambulances began to arrive when they began to find the bodies. Fourteen people injured inside, many of them with serious injuries, many of them now critical.

Some, according to the fire commissioner were breathing, others were not. Again, the ambulances, a sea of them outside this county office building which is right across from the Daly Center in downtown Chicago, a county coroner from City Hall and next to the tallest church in the world, the Chicago Temple, a Methodist church downtown. There was also a daycare center in the building. That was evacuated though. None of those injured expect to have come from that daycare center.

A hundred firefighters at the height of it were battling this and one of them described the scene inside.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The fire was pretty much contained to the 12th floor. Understand that in the efforts of fighting a fire you get peripheral damage from that. There is smoke damage, water damage. The fire walls are opened up to determine the travel of the fire. So, even though the fire was contained to the floor of origin just in the pure fact of fighting the fire there was no doubt some damage above the fire and some damage below the fire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLOCK: Now, as we pointed out most of the folks inside that office building did survive but we've still got, as we said at this point 14 serious injuries, three total dead, a lot of damage inside that office building as well. As we said, state offices and state documents inside that building. Also, among the survivors, some of them on their way out described that scene inside.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Walking back up to the 27th floor there were still people in the stairwell and if the door is shut they would be trapped in there, so I experienced some of the asphyxiation from the smoke because I was trying to keep the door open for my co-workers and once I got some help from one of my office people I was able to go and get some fresh air.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLOCK: A nightmare for those folks inside and that last report from the fire commissioner they were still searching that building to make sure that they haven't got any more people that they're not aware of, Anderson. We will, of course, continue to watch it.

COOPER: Yes, Jeff, I mean it's a little bit confusing to look at the pictures as you pointed out it doesn't look like a very large fire. My understanding and correct me if I'm wrong the people who died and I guess were the most injured from the smoke were trapped in the stairwell because the doors, I guess, self locked and wouldn't open?

FLOCK: In fact, they were trapped in both the stairwells as well as floors above the first because that smoke began to rise in the building. People went naturally upstairs and that is where they ran into trouble. As we said, some folks were breathing when they were found, other people not even breathing when they were found up there.

COOPER: It is just one of those nightmares of city living. All right, Jeff Flock thanks very much tonight.

We go next to the airport, an edgier place right now no doubt about it, edgier, busier, and somewhat less convenient than it was say this time last night whoever left what they did aboard two airliners saw to that. Why he or she or they did it is still another question and tonight authorities have someone to ask.

Here again, CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MESERVE (voice-over): Box cutters, bleach, clay resembling plastic explosives, contraband found Thursday night on two Southwest Airlines planes along with notes critical of the Transportation Security Administration.

FBI sources say a 20-year-old student at Gilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, has admitted putting the items onboard. A database search after the discovery of the contraband led to the student and an e-mail received by TSA's contact center last month.

According to an administration official the e-mail cited locations, times, and places when contraband had been put onboard. The e-mail said getting the items through security and onto the planes was an act of "civil disobedience." The author said he knew he was breaking the law but felt it was necessary to point up weaknesses in aviation security. It has done that.

REP. PETER DEFAZIO (D), HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE: We're lucky this hasn't happened for real.

MESERVE: Lucky, DeFazio says because ground personnel with easy access to aircraft are still not screened and passenger checks have weaknesses. A recent GAO report says TSA screeners are still missing threatening objects.

DEFAZIO: This is something that could be expected with the level of security we're providing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: The FBI says the student does not appear to pose any further threat to airline security and that proceedings are anticipated this Monday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

Meanwhile, officials say an investigation will be conducted into how the items got through security and onboard the planes and why the TSA didn't follow up on the e-mail when it was received last month -- Anderson.

COOPER: Jeanne, there's no chance that the government isn't going to pursue charges against this person is there?

MESERVE: Well, we don't know definitively that charges are going to be filed. We're told there will be proceedings in court on Monday but we have not been told definitively that charges will be filed.

COOPER: And is this person still in custody?

MESERVE: That's a difficult question to answer. Earlier this evening we were told pointedly he was not in custody, has not been arrested, that he was being questioned and that he was cooperating with authorities.

COOPER: All right, Jeanne Meserve thanks very much, great work on this tonight. Thank you. On to other business beginning with what officials are calling the largest steroid bust in sports history and we're not talking about an East German weightlifter here. It clearly says something about the state of things that there is an entire organization, the U.S. Anti- Doping Agency, devoted to testing amateur athletes for performance enhancing drugs or whatever else modern science has to offer.

Early last summer a track and field coach sent the USADA a used syringe containing a steroid designed to get around traditional methods of detection. Today, the agency announced that a number of big time track and field athletes have, in fact, tested positive for it.

Here again, CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY (voice-over): Some of the athletes in question had competed this past summer at the USA outdoor track and field championships, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency claiming they tested positive for THG, a designer steroid with a chemical structure similar to other prohibited steroids.

It was intentional doping, according to the USADA and "a far cry from athletes accidentally testing positive as a result of taking contaminated nutritional supplements. Rather" the agency says "this is a conspiracy involving chemists, coaches and certain athletes using what they developed to be undetectable designer steroids to defraud their fellow competitors and the American and world public."

GARY WADLER, WORLD ANTI-DOPING AGENCY: Steroids have been around a long time and athletes and chemists and those who want to cheat have been working long and hard to try and get around the various drug tests that we have to detect steroid and other drug abuse and this seems to be another example of that.

BUCKLEY: The Anti-Doping Agency claimed it was told that the source of the THG was this man, Victor Conte, the president of Balco Laboratories, a sports nutrition company in Burlingame, California. The USADA referred its information to the U.S. Justice Department.

In September, the firm was raided by IRS and drug enforcement agents. Conte strongly denied being the source of the THG in a series of e-mails to CNN. "Balco Laboratories is not the source of the substance found" Conte said.

"This is about jealous competitive coaches and athletes that all have a history of promoting and using performance enhancing agents being completely hypocritical in their actions."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY: The THG was not detectable in normal lab testing. It was only after the anti-doping lab at UCLA was able to identify the contents of that mystery syringe that had been sent to officials that they realized that they had on their hands what they believe is a designer steroid.

Then they were able to develop a test for it and that's when they began to look for this designer steroid. Anderson, what we don't know tonight is just how many athletes are allegedly involved in all of this.

COOPER: Yes, Frank, there's also a lot known about this THG. I guess, I mean it's a completely manmade synthetic substance and yet technically I guess it's not illegal because no one really knew it existed.

BUCKLEY: Yes, the DEA says this is not a controlled substance. It's not technically illegal but these anti-doping folks are saying that it is a prohibited substance, a prohibited agent and so they believe that they have a case to make against some of these athletes.

If they make that case, in fact, some of the athletes who are -- if they in fact are said to be doping, they could miss the Olympics because it's a two year ban. That's the sentence for involving in this kind of activity and if they're found to be doing that they will actually miss the Olympics coming up in 2004.

COOPER: Yes, the Anti-Doping Agency is basically saying illegal or not it is a form of a steroid and therefore not usable for our (unintelligible).

BUCKLEY: That's right.

COOPER: Frank Buckley, thanks very much tonight.

We are going to talk with a sports medicine expert and Olympic runner Marty Liquori a little bit later on in the program.

President Bush is wheels up as they say. He's bound from Tokyo for Manila where he'll stay for about eight hours, security concerns keeping his visit to a bare minimum. He's going to address the Philippine Congress, the first time an American president has done so since Dwight Eisenhower in 1960.

All this following a fairly quick stop in Japan, 17 hours, the president meeting with Japan's prime minister coming away with a commitment of $1.5 billion to rebuild Iraq.

But for all the president's hopes to get in the way of money and support from Japan and the rest of Asia it is Congress he needs for the lion's share of it, $87 billion give or take.

Today, House and Senate gave the OK, House first, then the Senate. The Senate version differing though in that a portion of the money for rebuilding Iraq would be treated as a loan, something the president opposes.

We talked about this in last night's program. It now falls to a conference committee to iron out differences between the House and the Senate version and put together a version the president can, in fact, sign. Well, we intended to make a day in the life of Baghdad the centerpiece of our reporting from Iraq today and it does remain a part of it but events to some degree have pushed that day in the life into the background.

Four soldiers were killed in Iraq today, not in the so-called Sunni Triangle where American troops have been having so much difficulty. For the latest we go back to Baghdad and CNN's Jane Arraf.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF: Well, Anderson, there's never a good place for violence to happen but when it happens in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, the holiest cities to Shia Muslims all over the world and in Iraq with their rivalries and the tense relationship with U.S. troops it's particularly troubling.

Now this one an overnight clash that left three U.S. military police dead including, according to the Pentagon, the female commanding officer of the battalion. At the end of it, two Iraqi police were also dead, seven more U.S. military MPs wounded and many more wounded as well, including Iraqis. The U.S. doesn't give figures on those.

Now, it happened as the soldiers were trying to impose a curfew in a neighborhood, a curfew after clashes this week and after what appeared to be 12 hours of gunfire. They were still counting the casualties when we got there.

Now part of the continuing struggle this one trying to disarm people in a very heavily armed country and very heavily armed cities. Those weren't as you mentioned the only casualties in Baghdad, an improvised explosive device, a homemade bomb killed another U.S. military MP, another military policeman and wounded two more.

Now, although it seems like it's all death and destruction this is a city of five million people and there's a lot going on every day. We followed one of those days.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF (voice-over): Sunrise over what until a few months ago was the Mother of all Battles Mosque, named by Saddam Hussein for the 1991 Gulf War. The mosque has been renamed Mother of all Cities after Mecca. A new name, a new Iraq, a new day dawns in Baghad.

At 6:30 a.m., (unintelligible) is already waiting for a taxi to take his teenager daughters to school. With crime rampant many parents won't let their daughters out of their sight.

As the military keeps saying the United States is still at war here but there are signs of peace. These garbage collectors back on the job make $3 a day, more than twice their pre-war salaries. They say they haven't been paid in weeks but they still show up for work. As morning rush hour approaches the newspapers hit the streets. With censorship largely gone there are more of them than Baghdad has ever seen. By 7:00 a.m. the commercial heart of Baghdad begins to fill with workers.

There is propane to be delivered to homes and restaurants, ice deliveries, Turkish cooking stoves and Chinese televisions to be taken to shops and for kids too poor to be in school instead of working fun wherever they can find it. Trusting safety in numbers, women walk in small groups to their jobs at the Central Bank down the street.

(on camera): Part of Rashid (ph) Street is closed off this morning because they're delivering the new currency to banks nearby, otherwise it would be even more crowded.

(voice-over): In schools across Baghdad, students no longer fill their day with praise for Saddam Hussein. In Mrs. Awan's (ph) eighth grade math class they're learning basic algebra. At lunch time in many neighborhoods, people meet in modest restaurants and in the afternoon they shop for fruits and vegetables, imported bananas, local apples, oranges, grapes, and watermelon.

In the street there are traffic police and today even workers washing the lights but the city is still unsettled. Traffic is snarled with the U.S. military blocking many of the roads for security.

After last week's car bombs workers are erecting concrete barriers to absorb any glass. By the end of the day there are reports of at least four explosions in Baghdad, none of them big enough to have much impact outside their neighborhoods.

But as dusk approaches, U.S. helicopters circle over the Tigris River and an egret on the riverbank takes flight perhaps as unsettled as many Iraqis by the changes in the city.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF: But in one dramatic change, the U.S. military tells us today that they are expecting to announce that they're totally lifting the curfew placed on Baghdad since the end of the war.

Now they say they'll do that next week which begins the holy fasting month of Ramadan when people traditionally go out on the streets pretty well all night long -- Anderson.

COOPER: Jane, just a fantastic piece. It's actually the first one I've seen in a long time where you actually get a sense of what life is like for a lot of people in Baghdad.

What struck me in particular is you don't see, at least in the images you just showed, American troops out. You don't see a lot of soldiers on the street. Can you go through a whole day as a Baghdad citizen and not come across, you know, what they I guess would call the American occupiers? ARRAF: You can if you stick to your neighborhood and if your neighborhood isn't one of those that's used as a main traffic route for the troops and there are a lot of those. Now part of the reason that you won't see a lot of those images is that it's getting harder to get them.

There are big signs that have gone up near military installations saying no photographs. It's very difficult sometimes for correspondents, for a cameraman to actually get those pictures. We tend to get them as they're passing.

But even if they don't see the troops what they do see are the things that have remained of the occupation and will remain those really big concrete barriers, the barbed wire stretched everywhere and the wound, the sound of helicopters and the sound of tanks rumbling by. It's almost inescapable and it's a reminder to most people that there is some respect still a war going on here -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right, great report Jane. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, we'll talk with former Olympian Marty Liquori and an expert in sports medicine about the latest doping scandal.

Then two years since the anthrax attacks, we'll meet a victim who is still sick.

And later, the repo men they're doing booming business recovering the cars of people who don't make their payments. It's a little window into the state of our economy that and more ahead.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Welcome back. More now on how far some athletes will go for an edge and how far chemists and coaches will go to make sure no one gets caught.

With us here in New York is Dr. Lewis Maharam, President of the New York Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine and Medical Director of the New York City Marathon. And, in Gainesville, Florida, Marty Liquori, the former Olympic middle distance runner. Currently he covers track and field for NBC sports. Welcome to both of you, appreciate you joining us.

Marty, let me start off with you. Were you surprised at all by these latest allegations about a doping scandal in track and field?

MARTY LIQUORI, FORMER OLYMPIC RUNNER: Well, no, I'm not surprised. Track and field has been dealing with this problem for about a decade and the testing keeps getting more sophisticated. It has to be a matter of time before the testers got a jump ahead of the cheaters. The cheaters had really had the advantage for the past decade.

COOPER: Dr. Maharam, though, if I mean if athletes know they are going to be tested why take the risk, why do it?

DR. LEWIS MAHARAM, PRESIDENT, NEW YORK CHAPTER, AMERICAN COLLEGE OF SPORTS MEDICINE: Well, there's always people seeking an edge so they're looking for these designer drugs that they won't get tested for. But now with these new testing procedures USADA is coming up with, the United States drug testing agency, and internationally they're going to be thinking twice because they're not going to know later on if some other test is going to come back to be able to check this out.

COOPER: We should point out though that they only knew to test for this because someone, an anonymous person sent them a syringe with this material in it.

But, Marty, how much of a difference can these sorts of drugs make?

LIQUORI: Well, we know from testing that the drugs and various ways of cheating can be three, four, five percent but in the Olympics even a one percent advantage is the difference between finishing in the medals and totally out of the medals.

In the longest race, the 10,000 meters, one percent would be 100 yards. In the 100-meter dash it would be one meter and that would be the difference between a gold medal and no medal at all and then after that millions of dollars over the career of an athlete.

COOPER: And, doctor, is it just that desire to win that is what is motivating these people because it's not always just a high level athlete? I mean it's high school kids. It's other people.

MAHARAM: It is but it's really interesting. There was a study done where they asked Olympic (unintelligible) athletes and people that were training toward that that if they took an anabolic steroid and they lost 20 years from their life but they were guaranteed to get a gold medal, 90 percent of them said that they would take the drug. Isn't that interesting? That's pretty sad because...

LIQUORI: I don't know if that's true. You know people have been quoting that study for years and I don't know where it comes from. I don't think any athletes are that dumb. The study is usually quoted that they would die in ten years and they said they would want to do that.

COOPER: Well, Marty, what is it? I mean is it...

LIQUORI: Athletes aren't doing that.

COOPER: What is it Marty? Is it coaches? Is it just, you know, shady chemists or is it something that is coming really from the athletes?

LIQUORI: Well, in the past certainly it was coming from governments and coaches when Russian and East German athletes were being given stuff by their coaches that they didn't even know about. Athletes certainly have had some culpability over the years and one of the many things that's different today is that not only are they going after the athletes with penalties but now the coaches will be -- if they're incriminated they'll also have some kind of penalty so that's something that's new.

There's a couple things that were new about what just happened and the main thing was a drug was discovered and then they went back and tested previous samples. That's not the way it worked in the past. In the past the designers were always able to stay a step ahead of the testers and if they got past that test on that day they were in the clear for a long time.

But now, the athletes do know, as the doctor said, at the next Olympics they may hold onto their urine samples for a while and if there's a rumor that a certain drug was being used they'll go back and test them for it.

COOPER: And, in fact, it's not just one sample. It's two samples. There's an A and a B sample, is that correct?

LIQUORI: Well, the A sample if you show up positive on the A sample then they will test the B sample and you're present. That's part of the legal process to make it a fair situation.

COOPER: But just as the testing progresses, I mean aren't people always one step ahead?

MAHARAM: They were one step ahead.

LIQUORI: Well they have been in the past.

MAHARAM: What's very cool now is that they can go back and test these old samples so it's going to be an added deterrent. And, Marty, by the way we'll send you copies of those studies that are out there. They're truly out there for these Olympic golden athletes and I know you and I'll send you copies of them.

COOPER: Marty, do you think there is something in, I mean is it just something in human nature that regardless of what level athlete you are at that you want to excel and will do anything to be the best?

LIQUORI: I think so. As the doctor said we see people using drugs in competitions which are very minor but it's one of the basic human needs like food, love, and safety. Right after that is people want recognition so, yes, there are athletes.

There are 203 countries in the Olympics and there are athletes from impoverished countries who will cheat for the money but there are also athletes that have a lot going for them in life that are cheating because they want the recognition. So, it's a basic human need that's been around since the Greeks.

COOPER: Doctor.

MAHARAM: I absolutely agree but I also see in my private practice in sports medicine here in New York I see athletes of this level and every day athletes.

COOPER: Right.

MAHARAM: And I would tell you that the majority of them aren't taking these type of drugs.

COOPER: You think it's a small number.

MAHARAM: It's a small number.

COOPER: all right, Dr. Lewis Maharam, appreciate you joining us, Marty Liquori as well. Thanks very much.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, a forgotten victim of terror an anthrax victim who is still suffering all the years later; NEWSNIGHT continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Well, two years ago, a few grams of dust in a few envelopes essentially terrified the country. It wasn't hard to see why. The dust was anthrax, the envelopes going through the postal system, killing people as they went. Five people died; 17 others got sick, some of them terribly so.

This week, Senators Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle introduced a bill to include the victims and the survivors in the September 11 compensation fund, long overdue, according to a number of survivors who say they have been painfully ignored.

Here is CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It has been two years since David Hose has been well enough to go to work, two years since he's been well enough to do much more than watch television, two years since he inhaled a deadly form of anthrax.

DAVID HOSE, ANTHRAX SURVIVOR: The doctor says I'll never be able to work again. The neurological exams they gave me said they were the strangest ones they had ever seen.

ARENA: Hose takes nine different medications a day, three for his heart.

HOSE: My heart is damaged. The part of my heart that pumps the last part of the blood out of your heart is damaged. My lungs, I don't exactly know to the extent they are damaged, but they are damaged, too.

ARENA (on camera): Hose is well-known here at this Winchester hospital, where he was first treated after inhaling the anthrax. Last year, he spent more than a month here after being diagnosed with a severe form of pneumonia. And his immune system remains seriously compromised. HOSE: It only took me 3 1/2 hours to get sick with that pneumonia. So I figure I'm about 3 1/2 hours away from death at any time.

ARENA (voice-over): Just like the thousands of victims attacked on September 11, Hose, who is now 61, was a random target. He was a contract worker handling State Department mail and other diplomatic correspondence when the anthrax-laced mail addressed to Senator Leahy accidentally ended up at his facility.

Even though Hose and other anthrax survivors are victims of what investigators are calling domestic terror, there is no victims fund for them, no government help for their families, at least not yet.

HOSE: We had to go to the Red Cross for food, because I had run out of money, OK? And they were kind enough to pay a bill and give us $200 for groceries.

ARENA: Currently, Hose receives workmen's compensation and will eventually switch to Medicare. But he says it will not be enough to cover his medical bills. He's seeking $12 million from the government.

HOSE: When they knew the letter came through our facility, they offered us rubber gloves and a dust mask, like you wear in a home workshop to keep sawdust from coming in, which wouldn't phase anthrax, it's so tiny.

ARENA: Hose still does not know who was responsible for his condition. A team of 50 FBI agents and postal inspectors continue to work the anthrax investigation. But Hose believes, as many investigators do, that the culprit may never be found.

Kelli Arena, CNN, Winchester, Virginia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, a couple of other stories now from around the country.

New York and the first bits and pieces from the investigation into yesterday's ferry accident. First off, the ship was going at full throttle when it hit the pier, this according to the NTSB. As for the ferry's pilot, he tested negative for alcohol. The NTSB issued a subpoena today for additional testing for prescription drugs.

And a statement today from General William Boykin, who is in hot water for seeming to cast the war on terrorism in starkly religious terms. "I am neither a zealot nor an extremist," it reads, "only a soldier who has an abiding faith." He goes on: "I do believe that radical extremists have tried to use Islam as a cause for attacks on America."

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT: Missing your car? Well, if you haven't made the payments, it may be because the repo men are in your neighborhood. Nissen reports when NEWSNIGHT continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: This is the kind of economy where anything you want can be yours for three, 12 or 36 easy month payments. But it's also the kind of economy in which a lot of people are finding the payments tougher and tougher to make.

At Ford Credit, for example, the number of loans ending in repossession has increased 30 percent in the last three years, to almost 200,000 cars -- 200,000. Most were taken back by professional recovery agents, repo men. And if, heaven forbid, you find yourself behind in your payments, here's what you can do, so the repo men don't get your car.

Absolutely nothing, CNN's Nissen saw for herself.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Looking for a red 2003 Toyota Matrix.

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Max Pineiro is about to take someone else's car. He and his partner approach a 2003 Toyota Matrix. They open the door with a custom-cut key.

MAX PINEIRO, ELITE COLLATERAL RECOVERY: Go, go, go, go, go, go.

NISSEN: In less than 30 seconds, they have the car, their third that night, a typical night for the repo man, or, more correctly, recovery agent, who legally repossesses property -- mostly cars -- from people who have fallen behind in their payments.

PINEIRO: Take it over to headquarters.

NISSEN: The person's car they have just taken has made no payments for three months, still owes almost $19,000.

PINEIRO: These are the new jobs that just came in right now.

NISSEN: Pineiro's company, Elite Collateral Recovery, gets 50 repossession orders a day from dealerships, financing companies and banks, twice the number they had last year.

PINEIRO: With the economy being down and people losing their jobs, you can't squeeze water out of a rock. And people's cars are going to get repossessed, especially those that have lost their jobs, that have fallen on hard times.

NISSEN: Pineiro has been in the recovery business for 17 years, seen it become increasingly professional.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is that a Jeep Grand Cherokee?

NISSEN: Like a growing number of recovery companies, his is bonded. He employs licensed private investigators to track down cars and their delinquent owners.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She's got to be staying at either a relative's house or a maybe a...

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They were on that whole street.

NISSEN: Few people voluntarily give up their cars after a repossession order is issued. Most try to hide the vehicles.

PINEIRO: They may turn around and switch cars with someone at work or they may take a car and put it into storage or simply park it three or four blocks away.

NISSEN: But Pineiro's team can find cars taken hundreds, thousands of miles from place of purchase.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bingo. That's our truck.

NISSEN: After three months of investigative work, they have homed in a vehicle from Texas by tracking down the address of the owner's mother in New Jersey.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go quick.

NISSEN: Again, they use a key made by using a code from the dealer. Hot-wiring the car can damage today's expensive electronic transmissions.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good job. I know that heart's beating.

NISSEN: Repo work can be dangerous.

PINEIRO: We get the customers that come out. And they're irate. And they may want to fight you or they may want to get loud with you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, here we go. This should be right on this block here.

NISSEN: To keep confrontations at a minimum, professional repo men work at night, when most people are sleeping, work fast to get the vehicle before anyone knows what's happening.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bingo. There it is.

PINEIRO: Our job is get in, get out. It's the element of surprise.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's our car.

NISSEN: Pineiro doesn't even have to get out of his specially- equipped truck or use a key. The truck has a remote controlled boom arm hidden under it. The boom extends, wraps around the car's front or rear tires, picks it up.

PINEIRO: OK, we're on.

NISSEN: In less than a minute, Pineiro drives off with the car.

PINEIRO: Back many years ago, the average repo men needed pretty much a slim-jim. Nowadays, you need hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, if not millions.

NISSEN: The best repo men can afford it. They can make more than $1,000 for finding and recovering each high-end vehicle, more for storing it until the car is sent to auction, the fate of 80 percent of repoed cars.

Every day, more join that sad lot. Every night, the repo men go out again to work on the closest thing there seems to be these days to economic recovery.

Beth Nissen, CNN, Elizabeth, New Jersey.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, a few more items now making news around the world tonight.

First up, Gaza and the bombing last week that left three Americans dead. A team of FBI investigators met today with their Palestinian counterparts. A spokesman declined to mention details. You'll recall, seven suspects from a rogue Palestinian militant group are already in custody.

And American troops are headed to Bolivia, a small team, to assess the security situation in light of the recent unrest there. This evening, Bolivia's president resigned from office and his vice president sworn in to take his place.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT: One man's junk is another's jewel, sort of the idea behind "Second Hand Stories." And we'll talk to the host coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Well, in a country obsessed with winning the lottery or, at the very least, getting something for nothing, the yard sale may the quintessential American event. I take all the junk that I have no use for and sell it to you. You get something you really want for almost nothing and I get rid of something I really don't want for nothing. Perfect.

And what's more important than taking that fact and making a TV show out of it? That's the background of a new PBS program, "Second Hand Stories."

Here's a clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "SECOND HAND STORIES")

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A full day of driving brings us to our next destination, the unclaimed baggage center. The merchandise in this store is the contents of your lost luggage. The center buys unclaimed luggage from all the major airlines and sells everything therein. Even the piece of luggage itself is for sale.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The unclaimed baggage center is quite different from the local ordinary thrift store. And the reason for that is, is that thrift stores are places where people get rid of their things that they don't want. But for us, we have treasures that people didn't want to lose.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Now you know where to get a wedding dress.

We welcome the hosts of "Second Hand Stories," Christopher Wilcha and John Freyer.

Thanks very much for being with us.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: It's Freyer, right?

JOHN FREYER, CO-HOST, "SECOND HAND STORIES": It's Freyer.

COOPER: Freyer. OK, there you go. That's why I only fill in.

This is an amazing idea. Basically, you got an ambulance online. You bought it online.

FREYER: Yes, we bought it on eBay.

COOPER: On eBay. And then you traveled across the country, just going from one yard sale and garage sale in places?

CHRISTOPHER WILCHA, CO-HOST, "SECOND HAND STORIES": Thrift stores, auctions.

FREYER: Yes, we traveled from New Jersey to Houston, Texas.

COOPER: Why?

FREYER: Well, we were really interested in the garage sales. And we were interested in the secondhand. So we were looking for a way to investigate it.

WILCHA: Plus, it was a road trip. The idea was that it was going to be a trip that would pay for itself. So we hit the road, bought stuff as we went. And then when we got to our destination, we sold it all. And it paid for the trip home.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Did it actually paid for the trip home?

(CROSSTALK) WILCHA: Well, we didn't sell the ambulance.

FREYER: We didn't sell the ambulance. And, actually, the gas on the ambulance...

WILCHA: Well...

FREYER: So we actually lost money. We thought it would be self- sufficient.

COOPER: What's the thing that surprised you most traveling crosscountry doing this?

WILCHA: I think I was kind of blown away by the one-of-a-kind stuff we were finding, not so much the sort of cast-off consumer goods that you would expect, but more things that you would just never imagine.

(CROSSTALK)

WILCHA: For instance, one example is this wobble light we found.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Tell about the wobble light.

WILCHA: It's a giant like highway light. And it's like a weeble wobble with a lamp on the top. And one of the original investors had invested...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: We're looking at a picture. This is the wobble light.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Now, this is a prototype. This is somebody

(CROSSTALK)

WILCHA: Somebody invested money in..

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: They invested a lot of money.

FREYER: A couple of hundred thousand dollars.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: That's a lot of money.

FREYER: Yes.

WILCHA: So there we are. And he wants $50 for it. So, of course, we had to buy it. FREYER: We had to get it.

COOPER: Wait a minute. This man is selling for $50 the prototype to an invention that he spent several hundred thousand dollars making?

WILCHA: Well, it ended up being a failed invention. So I think this was a just a relic that reminded him. It was a cruel reminder of his failed invention.

COOPER: That's why he was getting rid of it.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Fascinating.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: By the way, did you buy it?

FREYER: We bought it.

WILCHA: We bought it. We sold it for $100 at the end of the day.

COOPER: You made money on this poor's man invention?

FREYER: I think we actually sold it for $150, but I'm not keeping track.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: What else? What else surprised you?

FREYER: It became really interesting to see the different types of stuff that you find in thrift stores, from board games to old skateboards and so much stuff that you can -- and the way the show kind of works is, we find something. And then we start to investigate where it came from and the history of the object.

WILCHA: The sort of hidden history.

COOPER: Right.

WILCHA: And the other thing is, like, all of this stuff has -- you can kind of -- even a skateboard reveals so much about postwar suburban sprawl and all that kind of stuff.

COOPER: And you discovered, I think, a country music fan who had sort of a rare record collection.

FREYER: Oh, Leon Kagarise.

WILCHA: This guy named Leon Kagarise.

His obsession had been going to live country music performances in the '50s and '60s. And he was making these pristine recordings. And they languished in his basement until a secondhand record buyer came to sort of look through his collection and found them said, wow, these are worth money, and recovered them. And now it looks like they may have a home in the Smithsonian.

So it was like one those -- it's sort of the dream of every collector, is holding on to something for so long that it ends up actually having value.

COOPER: And what did it teach you about suburban sprawl, about America today?

FREYER: Well, you just get a -- you just get a sense of...

WILCHA: Well, people's biographies.

(CROSSTALK)

FREYER: You get a sense of people's biography. And you get a sense -- especially when you go to a garage sale or a yard sale, you walk into someone's home. And it's this kind of intimate look at all the things they had collected.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: And people were very willing to tell you the stories about what these things mean?

WILCHA: Well, yes and no.

Well, one -- again, another moment from the show was, we found this woman had this sprawl of little baskets and books and kind of kitchen debris. And then, in the middle of it was this pink-lined fur...

FREYER: Handcuffs

WILCHA: Handcuffs. And they were called the kinky cuffs. And she was just selling these for five bucks. And you would think that someone would be a little bit more protective of

(CROSSTALK)

FREYER: But you're kind of wondering why she has them.

WILCHA: And she just said: They're $5 and I've got nothing else to say. She didn't like, anonymously...

COOPER: Maybe bad memories, like the weeble wobble thing.

WILCHA: Exactly. Exactly.

COOPER: Did you buy the kinky cuffs, by the way?

(CROSSTALK)

WILCHA: We did. We did.

FREYER: And we resold them? I don't know. I think we probably got about $5 for them as well.

COOPER: Now, are these purchases from along the way?

WILCHA: Now, this jacket was a thrift score.

FREYER: Yes, this was a thrift store score as well.

COOPER: Now, so you had sold -- I've known of you -- you have infamy before this, because you had sold all your possessions on the

FREYER: Sure. Yes, I made a project. I did a project called "All My Life For Sale" and completed a book about it.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Now, where can people see this...

WILCHA: "Second Hand Stories" was on public television, PBS. It's going to be rerunning. And we're hoping to do more episodes. And so, if you write in and e-mail and let them know, we're hoping they'll let us do it as a series.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: All right, I'll send an e-mail.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Thanks. It was great to meet you.

WILCHA: Appreciate it.

FREYER: Thanks for having us on.

COOPER: Thanks.

All right, more NEWSNIGHT straight ahead. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Well, finally from us tonight, the story of Darius Marshall, a husband, a son, a teammate and a friend. He died on Wednesday when the Staten Island ferry crashed into a pier. Darius Marshall's story is a sad one, but his life was anything but. Those who knew him will tell you that, tonight, there is as much to celebrate as there is to miss.

His story now from CNN's Jason Carroll.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Darius Marshall was the youngest of those killed on the Staten Island ferry. He was 25. Marshall left work early on Wednesday, anxious to get home to his new wife. They had been married for just four months. His mother, unable to come to terms with her son being gone.

DENISE MARSHALL, MOTHER: I'm going to miss him so. And I don't know what else to do.

CARROLL: Marshall had already survived one tragedy. On 9/11, he was knocked unconscious by falling debris as he left the Borders bookstore in the World Trade Center.

MARSHALL: He was missing for 13 hours. And you think if he can survive that, with all the people that died and lost their lives, that he should have been able to survive this.

CARROLL: Following the 9/11 accident, Marshall left his job downtown as an investigator with the attorney general's office. Earlier this year, the United Nations hired him as a security guard. His family was thrilled, especially when they spotted him on TV last month as he stood next to the president addressing the General Assembly. His friend and fellow guard, Patel Nobel.

PATEL NOBEL, U.N. SECURITY GUARD: I want Darius to be remembered as committed, friendly, a lovable person.

CARROLL: That's how his football coach remembers him. Marshall was a linebacker at Wagner College in Staten Island for four years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Someone that, when he walked in a room, he had a big smile on his face and just brought a -- made you feel at ease and just a real, real good person.

MARSHALL: He's gone, but my heart is broken. I'll never get over this.

CARROLL: Jason Carroll, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: And that is NEWSNIGHT for tonight. Thanks for watching. Aaron Brown is going to be back on Monday.

I'm Anderson Cooper. I hope you'll join me on Monday as well, 7:00 p.m. Eastern, on "360."

Good night. Have a great weekend.

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