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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

A look a Saddam's Torture Video; Firefighters Gain Ground in Stopping California Fires

Aired October 30, 2003 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone. A better day today on the fire lines of Southern California and while that could change with the shifting winds even one good day, the first really since Friday, gave crews time to gain a little ground, not a lot of ground to be sure but enough to change the mood on the fire lines from very grim to a little bit hopeful.
The fires again own the first section of the program and, again, begin the whip and the whip starts off in Lake Arrowhead. CNN's Frank Buckley is there, Frank a headline from you please.

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, it's freezing cold in the mountains tonight. The humidity level is over 70 percent, perfect conditions for suppressing the fire here. Sadly, they came a day late for this community where overnight hundreds of homes burned to the ground -- Aaron.

BROWN: Frank, thank you. We'll get to you early tonight.

CNN's Gary Tuchman is next, Gary with just one of the rare victories in this long fight, Gary a headline.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the Simi Valley fire is not the largest of the Southern California wildfires; however, we are a stone's throne away from the populous San Fernando Valley and that's why the colder weather, the moister air have led to great relief here tonight.

BROWN: Gary, thank you.

And finally the Pentagon, some especially unnerving videotape discovered in Iraq. Our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre has viewed the tapes, Jamie a headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Not that there was ever much question that this regime of Saddam Hussein was brutal but this videotape discovered by U.S. soldiers back in April and now obtained by CNN shows just how brutal members of the Fedayeen Saddam could be in enforcing discipline in their ranks.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest shortly.

Also ahead on the program tonight few of those stories have happy endings but this one does, a mother on her way to meet her daughter who was kidnapped from her years ago.

A troubling take on what NASA might have done but didn't to save the Space Shuttle Columbia and the seven astronauts onboard, the bottom line, when it comes to safety this is not your father's NASA. We'll talk with author Greg Easterbrook (ph) tonight.

And, of course, we'll get a jump on tomorrow's headlines with morning papers or two and a rooster who's up way past his bedtime, all of that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin once again tonight with the fire and for the first time in many days we can report a certain measure of progress. In no small part this is due to the exhausting and dangerous work of more than 13,000 firefighters from San Diego to the Simi Valley, hard work and a little help from above.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): People in Southern California have been waiting and praying for this for days. Finally the weather changed and cold, wet air blew in from the Pacific Ocean.

In the Simi Valley near Stevenson Ranch the news was good. The back fires now had a chance to keep the flames from jumping the six- lane firebreak of the Golden State Freeway and into the San Fernando Valley beyond.

In the resort country east of Los Angeles the mists were a welcome respite after last night's disappointments. Flames had broken through and plunged into the San Bernardino Forest almost encircling fire crews defending Lake Arrowhead.

By morning the cost of that defense was clear. The center of the town had been saved but hundreds of homes in outlying Book's (ph) Creek and Cedar Glen were lost.

To the south it was actually raining in the area west of San Diego but in the night this fire, already the cause of a dozen deaths, attacked again. The tourist town of (unintelligible) was almost gone. A night long struggle for Julian was at best a draw.

And in the tiny hamlet of Wynola a terrible loss, flames blew right over a fire crew and in the end three were hospitalized and one had died. Steve Rucker (ph) the father of two young children was the first firefighter to die in this. His wife insisted he perished doing what he loved best.

It is always, it seems, the individual deaths or the single home lost that hits us the hardest perhaps because the sheer magnitude of this disaster is beyond our grasp.

At least 20 dead now, over 2,600 homes destroyed, 100,000 people forced to evacuate and today's damp weather, as good and as important as it was, was simply a pause. The fires are still on the move, even the beginning of the end not yet in sight.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And that is the broad view of a very mixed picture tonight.

A closer look now at the battle fought to save a neighborhood in Lake Arrowhead and the people on the line. Here again, CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY (voice-over): Firefighters couldn't hold the fire back in Cedar Glen and the enormity of the losses are just beginning to sink in. Walter Brush (ph) heard about his wife's family home on TV.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know so we had to get up here to see but 40 years gone.

BUCKLEY: The firefighters who tried to save the homes in this neighborhood fought to the point of exhaustion.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because they are homes, they're somebody's homes and if we can't save that home then somebody is without a house.

BUCKLEY: We were with Strike Team 6224 Alpha as Cedar Glen burned. Nineteen men and one woman on five engines from San Bernardino County, their mission to cut off the fire and send it down a canyon away from homes.

(on camera): But conditions changed and when the fire started to hook around their position the strike team decided to move.

(voice-over): But as they prepared to move out a call comes over the radio, a CDF (ph) firefighter is injured. It turns out to be a minor injury but it could have been fatal. A tree branch broke or burned off. Part of it hit the fireman. It was a physical blow at the end of a difficult day and night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is very, very tough for us. We don't want to give up. The men do not want to stop.

BUCKLEY: But the exhausted firefighters find new life in a new day. It is foggy and cold.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My nose is turning red.

BUCKLEY: Great conditions for killing a fire and after their longest stretch of sleep in a week, four hours straight, Strike Team 6224 Alpha is ready to go back on the lines.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To pretty much footprint this to Yellowstone.

BUCKLEY: After a briefing they rolled and as they awaited their next assignment, rookie firefighter Brad Trutowski (ph) of the 29 Palms Fire Department told us this fire, his first ever wild land fire, taught him a lot about firefighting and his fellow firefighters.

Tell me what you've learned about the brotherhood of firefighting in a situation like this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, just from being here I know that I have to watch out for myself and everybody else and I also know that I'm in good hands just with the people I'm here with. I know everybody here had everybody's back.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY: And, as we mentioned before, Aaron, the great weather conditions for the firefighters, the fog, the increased humidity, the cold weather has helped to suppress the fire, to slow its progression today but, again, last night right in this neighborhood where I'm standing in, hundreds of homes burned. Now, officials believe that the number here in the Cedar Glen area is at around 225 homes burned last night -- Aaron.

BROWN: What do the firefighters hear about the weather? Are they getting constant updates or are they just too busy to deal with it?

BUCKLEY: Well, they get the updates. We, in fact, watched them get the update and it's a pretty extensive update and it's a pretty extensive update when they have a briefing.

The battalion chief gets his strike team together and he tells them as they go out on the lines what the relative humidity is, what they can expect in terms of wind, so they do have a sense going out because that's important in terms of how they deal with the fire, the fire's behavior. They need to know what the weather is because that affects how they fight the fire.

BROWN: Frank thanks again, nice work again today for you and your crew. Thank you very much.

A victory now, a small one perhaps in the greater scope of things but for the Baker family of Stevenson Ranch, California, it means the world to them; reporting for us tonight CNN's Gary Tuchman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN (voice-over): The irony of the name of the street is lost on none of its residents, especially after a wall of flames came perilously close to destroying the houses on Smokewood Way.

MYRON BAKER, SMOKEWOOD WAY RESIDENT: It got pretty hot and scary.

TUCHMAN: How close was the fire to your house?

M. BAKER: Well, right across the street here. This whole hill was on fire and behind there's a little bowl, sort of a little canyon behind that all went up.

TUCHMAN: Myron Baker, his wife and three children moved into this house, a half hour north of Los Angeles, just two weeks ago. EILEEN BAKER, SMOKEWOOD WAY RESIDENT: I was quite afraid after all our years of hard work that there it would be gone up in smoke in just a very few minutes.

TUCHMAN: Eileen Baker and two of her children, 13-year-old Christy (ph) and ten-year-old Jenna evacuated their home even before the flames came close. All three suffer from asthma.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was pretty scary. It was terrifying.

TUCHMAN: Mr. Baker and his 17-year-old son Kevin stayed behind to keep an eye on the house but firefighters recommended they evacuate. They didn't have to pack many of their valuables because they were still in boxes from their move.

M. BAKER: It got hot here actually. You could actually feel the heat.

TUCHMAN: But then the wind started to shift. The overworked firefighters began to successfully guide the flames away from the homes on Smokewood Way. They were safe for now.

M. BAKER: We had firemen in the backyards all along here and they pretty much saved this area right here.

TUCHMAN: His girls will continue to live at their relatives' miles away from the fire while there is still a threat but the Baker men will continue to stay in their new home.

Do you feel OK now?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TUCHMAN: Are you still a little scared?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kind of.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN: Firefighters are offering no guarantees but there is a forecast for rain here tomorrow, so there is a comfort level here tonight that wasn't present last night -- Aaron.

BROWN: Gary thank you, Gary Tuchman.

Over the last few days we've been very grateful for the time and the knowledge of Peter Brierty who's the fire marshal of San Bernardino County. He speaks with us either at the end of a very long day or the beginning of a very long night. We're not sure there's a difference at this point.

In either case, we want to give you a taste of what his job has been like these days, so he was shadowed today by CNN's Jason Bellini.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) PETER BRIERTY, FIRE MARSHAL, SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY: It was absolutely amazing firefighting that went on in there, just incredible stuff and they stopped it.

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The most interesting thing about riding along with San Bernardino Fire Chief Peter Brierty is listening to his conversations.

BRIERTY: The other structure protection crews are saying we've never seen anything like what you guys did, you know, and they just said we're not leaving. This is our home and we're going to defend our home.

BELLINI: The fire is not out, Brierty is the first to admit, but he's already talking about it in the past tense in the language of legends.

BRIERTY: But they kept it from going over the top and that was just amazing, amazing work.

BELLINI: Pride and pain at this stage of the battle, though, seem inseparable.

BRIERTY: And now it's all gone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the backyard of where we work and this is 15 years I've been up here this is like nuts.

BRIERTY: Unbelievable.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, I'm sorry to hear about that firefighter down in San Diego, man.

BRIERTY: Yes, pretty bad news.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tough luck man.

BRIERTY: Well, you hang in there all right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right.

BRIERTY: Watch out overhead when you're in here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, that's why we're leaving.

BRIERTY: Keep your eyes up.

BELLINI: Brierty is also the first to admit his work isn't on the front lines. He observes, checks in, advises, and answers phone calls.

BRIERTY: I'm there for you, man. Conrad's up here. Gary Bush was up here.

BELLINI: This, it turned out, was an important one.

BRIERTY: You'd be so proud of those guys, Don. You trained them well, man. This is kind of a tribute to you.

BELLINI: Who was that?

BRIERTY: He's a battalion chief that was supposed to be in a retirement party today. He was retiring from the service and he's got real kind of pangs about not being up here with the guys.

BELLINI: These 75 firefighters don't want time off to rest. They know this is the fire of their careers.

BRIERTY: A lot of American dreams up here.

BELLINI: Absolutely.

BRIERTY: People who lived in this community all their lives. It's really tough.

BELLINI: Can I ask you an embarrassing question?

BRIERTY: Sure, you might as well.

BELLINI: Have you done anything heroic this week?

BRIERTY: No.

BELLINI: No?

BRIERTY: No. The best I can get is to be in the company of heroes.

BELLINI: So, Chief Brierty is in charge among other things of spreading the legend.

Jason Bellini CNN, Cedar Glen, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And the chief joins us again for a couple of minutes tonight. It's nice to see you on a day that is clearly better than the one 24 hours ago.

BRIERTY: Yes, it's an excellent day today with the weather. It's helping us suppress. The fire is moving very slowly if at all. The weather is a tremendous factor today and it's giving us a chance to take a deep breath.

It's given folks an opportunity to take a -- get a little sleep. Actually we had several people we had to order to go home to get some rest because they've been on their feet for 48 hours. It's been a very good day today.

We're not letting our guard down. This may come back up. The weather may change. There's a characteristic of this fire that predictability is totally unpredictable.

Even at this time we're cutting dozer line around Big Bear, starting a dozer line around Angeles Oaks for the progression of the fire on the eastern front. We still need to be vigilant and we're going to watch that very closely.

BROWN: Chief, do you begin to think of these fires as having personalities?

BRIERTY: This one is pretty schizophrenic if it has a personality.

BROWN: Yes. It's been very hard to predict. You woke up today, I gather, assuming you went to sleep at all, to better weather. Could you feel it on the fire lines when you talked to the men and women there that they realized that today finally they'd gotten a break?

BRIERTY: Well, about four o'clock this morning and driving the fire perimeter, having to use my windshield wipers was a real, real happy moment there and you could see the relief in a lot of folks' eyes when they say the rain dropping off the trees and the moisture in the air. Like I said, it's a good time to take a deep breath but, again, stay vigilant. We got to watch out, make sure the weather doesn't change on us.

BROWN: Assuming, and I know it's hard to do this, but assuming things go well, that the weather stays in your favor, that everything works your way, when do you think normal will return to your firefighters?

BRIERTY: Well, this will -- this is a career fire for our firefighters and our firefighters are most concerned about getting the citizens back home. Our San Bernardino County Emergency Operations Center at this time and even days before with the support of the Board of Supervisors has been working on all the necessary preparations to get the citizens back in here as soon as we can.

We need the utilities. We need the electricity back up but behind the scenes, even though you see a lot of activity out here with firefighters and equipment, behind the scenes are a lot of folks working to make sure our citizens get back to their homes safely and soundly.

BROWN: Do you think a week from now things will look a whole lot different?

BRIERTY: We just want the folks to get back home.

BROWN: OK.

BRIERTY: How it will look when folks get here there's a lot of the lake, this beautiful mountain area that was saved by the efforts of these firefighters and that will be great for those folks and unfortunately we're going to do everything for those unfortunate folks that had to lose their houses.

The County Board of Supervisor, the state of California is going to be there to make sure that everything happens in their favor to get them, try to get their lives back to normal if that's even possible. BROWN: Chief, again, thanks for your time tonight and a special thanks for letting us shadow you today.

BRIERTY: Sure.

BROWN: We have much better sense of all that was going on in your day and the day of the people you work with. Thank you, sir, very much, Peter Brierty.

BRIERTY: One of the things that your folks...

BROWN: Go ahead.

BRIERTY: One of the things your folks saw was a lot of the firefighting apparatus up here. They saw the names of cities and counties and tribal names on the doors of those pieces of equipment and they came from all over California and it goes to show you that the desire to help those in need is fulfilled by the fire service and the fire service knows no boundaries in providing that service.

BROWN: And they proved it yet again. Thanks again, sir, very much.

BRIERTY: Thank you.

BROWN: Peter Brierty who is the fire marshal in San Bernardino County, California on a better day.

Still ahead, we'll stay on the subject of the fires in California, talk with Governor Gray Davis.

And, we'll hear the experiences of one "Los Angeles Times" photographer who is covering the fire and we'll look at her photographs as well and they are terrific.

Later, the grisly evidence of Saddam's terror, tapes of people being tortured in Iraq, much to do tonight.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It is, we suppose, a point of pride that nothing small ever seems to happen in California, a point of pride and a curse besides, the fires no exception. California has seen its share of drama lately in every respect and its governor has had more than a little on his plate.

We spoke with Governor Gray Davis a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Governor it was a better day today.

GOV. GRAY DAVIS (D), CALIFORNIA: Yes, it was. The weather -- the weather was working with us rather than against us. The firefighters have been doing a great job and we made a little progress today.

BROWN: Is the progress, the progress that was made, is it in a specific area or was it pretty much across the board?

DAVIS: Pretty much across the board. The marine layer is starting to come in. The humidity is improving and it's helping firefighters both in the San Bernardino Mountains and San Diego, which are really the two major blazes that we still have to contend with.

BROWN: What are your people telling you about the weather and about the next few days?

DAVIS: You know it's all speculative because it can change in a heartbeat but if the weather holds in another seven or eight days I think these fires will be at least substantially contained.

The Big Bear fires, Lake Arrowhead, have not created too much damage in those communities and they're on a path that might take it to the desert where they might burn out.

In San Diego the humidity helped us a lot and the cooler weather helped us a lot. There's still some rough sledding and I can't say enough about the firefighters. You know we lost one last night, Steve Rucker.

There's a foundation established in his name and if anyone wants to contribute to his family we'd be enormously grateful. They can go to the California Department of Forestry website, www.fire.ca.gov. It will show you how to make a contribution to his family.

BROWN: He was a brave young man.

DAVIS: Very much so.

BROWN: With two young kids...

DAVIS: Yes, sir.

BROWN: ...who died just about this time yesterday. It gives -- when you talk about seven or eight more days to get this thing contained it gives people I think around the country, and in this case around the world, a sense of the magnitude that that's the best case scenario right now is another week of very difficult work ahead.

DAVIS: It has been extraordinarily difficult, Aaron. These have been the worst fires, the most expensive, the most severe, the largest casualties, the most loss of property and the longest in duration.

In San Diego, for example, in the very first day on Sunday, the fires were burning two acres a second, two acres a second. That's how rapid this fire was spreading.

BROWN: Is it too early to talk about getting, literally getting help to people? Is that process still some time away?

DAVIS: No. We're moving on two tracks, put the fire out, put people back on their feet and just today we opened the first one stop center in San Diego. We're opening one tomorrow in San Bernardino at Norton Air Force Base and in Claremont.

There should be six or seven open by week's end and people don't have to wait for these one stop centers even though I think all the agencies they will need will be under one roof. They can just call 1- 800-621-FEMA and they can just start applying over the phone and an awful lot of that work can be done electronically.

BROWN: Governor, I apologize if this seems inappropriate but I think everyone knows your political situation. The last week, I'm sure you've been much too busy to think about any of this. This too is the business of governance what you've been doing the last week or so. In a sense are you pleased that this is the sort of work you can do at the end of this term?

DAVIS: Well, I'm not pleased that people are suffering, Aaron.

BROWN: Of course not.

DAVIS: I'm not pleased that 100,000 people have been dislocated and are not at home tonight. But I know that I'm in public life to help people to improve their lives and everyone in public life will acknowledge their first order of business is to keep people safe.

They're not safe until these fires get put out. For that we need help from Mother Nature. We're getting some now. We're grateful and continued courage on the part of the firefighters.

I'm very pleased at the way Californians have responded. I've been to a number of evacuation centers and sometimes the volunteers outnumber the people in the centers needing help and they bring food and clothes and toys for the kids and they give folks hugs and that's just great.

So, if I have to be doing something my last couple weeks it's an honor to try and do what little I can to help the firefighters do their job and to coordinate the relief efforts because I hope a lot of this is behind me by the time I pass the baton to Governor-elect Schwarzenegger, who by the way has been terrific and we've been working hand-in-glove talking every day and I thank him for his efforts.

BROWN: We know from just the mail we've been getting literally thousands of people are thinking about California and Californians these days, worrying about you and hoping that the weather turns and all of this ends soon.

DAVIS: Thank you.

BROWN: Governor, again, thanks for your time.

DAVIS: Well we appreciate your prayers. Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you, sir, Governor Gray Davis.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And we talked to the governor a short time ago.

Another view now, if you watch the program with any regularity you'll know it is one we are especially partial to. It comes in this case from the lens and the sharp eye of Gina Ferazzi, one of the army of newspaper photographers who are working this story. She shoots pictures for the "Los Angeles Times."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GINA FERAZZI, "LOS ANGELES TIMES" (voice-over): I've been covering these wildfires since last Thursday evening. This fire is so big that they're doing the best that they can and, you know, these guys are working 36 hours straight.

They were setting back fires to try to fight the fire from coming over Highway 18. It's almost like he knew they were coming but he wasn't going to back off.

Homeowners that stay behind are just trying to save their belongings. It's mostly men who stay behind with all their garden hoses going and I think when it gets bad they know they have to leave.

One of the most dramatic photos I took there was a man trying to save his house and he jumped over, was running from a huge ball of fire while his neighbor's house was burning and he ran over his pool with a hose to try to save his house. I believe he did save his house.

I went down to Hope (ph) Creek because I saw that the fire was moving that direction. You could see the orange glow coming at you and then all of a sudden within a half an hour all those homes went up. I mean there's nothing anybody could do.

I ran into so many homes that were just decorated with all these Halloween decorations and, you know, that little pumpkin hadn't burned yet and it just gave it a human element.

You kind of have to distance yourself from people tragedy to do this kind of thing. A lot of people are in shock and it doesn't hit them right away. That home had been with her family for a long time. Her parents owned it and she said her mom was too upset to come up and see it.

Wyatt (ph) was pretty resilient. He wasn't too upset. He was understanding what had happened. You see the spirit of these people and you know they can rebuild and they're going to do whatever they can to get back on their feet again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The words and the work of Gina Ferazzi of the "Los Angeles Times."

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT evidence of evil as a videotape surfaces of Saddam Hussein's henchmen torturing.

We'll take a break first. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There's not much argument, never has been, over whether Saddam Hussein and his henchmen were evil. Thousands of bodies of his victims have been dug up since the end of the war, testimony to that. But so far, the evidence has all been after the fact. Tonight, however, a stunning look at evil in action from a videotape found in April by U.S. troops in Iraq.

We warn you, this tape is graphic and unsettling. It is perhaps as graphic as anything we've ever decided to air. But it's important to note that what you're about to see is not the worst of what's on the tape.

Here's our senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The tape is of poor quality, but what it shows is undeniably shocking, Iraqis whipped, beaten with sticks until their wrists are broken, even thrown off buildings from a height apparently intended to inflict maximum pain.

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: They portray a regime that was about as vicious as any regime could conceivably be.

MCINTYRE: According to a U.S. military analysis, the victims, including this man about to be beheaded by sword, all appear to be members of the Fedayeen Saddam who have been accused of crimes ranging from desertion to disobeying orders.

Other segments of the tape shows parts of fingers and tongues being cut off, all in public to instill fear in anyone who would oppose Saddam Hussein. The gruesome videos were recovered back in April by soldiers from the 308th Civil Affairs Brigade in Baghdad. The tapes were not released by the Pentagon, but obtained by CNN from independent sources. It's not clear when they were made.

But for the Pentagon, they have obvious value.

RUMSFELD: When you have people filming in front of crowds cheering and clapping, you have people cutting off people's tongues and cutting off people's heads and chopping off their fingers and chopping off their hands, throwing them off three-story buildings, you learn something about a group of people and how they lived their lives and how they treated their people.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: What we've shown you is just some short segments from the tape, which is 23 minutes long. Much of it is stomach-turning.

And while it is the only tape that CNN has obtained, the Pentagon says there are many more like it in Iraq -- Aaron.

BROWN: Lots of people have asked the question today, why is this tape out here now? Can we ascribe motive at all to the people who are giving the tape out?

MCINTYRE: Well, I think that some people who are getting the tape out would like people to take a look at the brutality of the regime.

I have to say that we didn't obtain the tape from the Pentagon, although we did learn about its existence from the Pentagon and had requested the Pentagon to release a copy of the tape, which, even today, they declined to do. But it apparently got out from the Army unit that originally found it. Copies were made. And a copy was passed to us.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. That's a tough day's work -- Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon tonight.

A few more items from around the world, starting in Columbus, Ohio. The president was there, touting a new batch of economic numbers, very good numbers, for a change. They show an economy growing by a very strong 7.2 percent in the third quarter. It's been a long, long time since the economy has grown like that, proof, the president said, the tax cuts were working. Leading Democrats also welcome the numbers, but pointed to continuing unemployment.

Guerrillas ambushed a freight train today in Iraq near Fallujah. They used RPGs to get the job done. Cars that didn't burn were looted. And with the exception of a number of helicopters flying by, witnesses say American forces were nowhere to be found.

And, in London, it's a Beatle. Paul McCartney and his wife, Heather, are now the proud parents of a 7-pound baby girl, Beatrice Millie McCartney, Heather McCartney's first, Sir Paul's fourth.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, some good news, as the daughter lost five years ago turns up safe, the story of a mother's vigil -- when NEWSNIGHT continues around the world.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Much more NEWSNIGHT still ahead. We'll talk with Gregg Easterbrook, who thinks NASA just gave up on saving the shuttle astronauts. We'll check morning papers, of course. And next, the story of a mother's vigil for her lost child and her happy ending.

A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There's no way to describe what Elke Hoercher has gone through the last five years without using the word nightmare. But that's a word she doesn't use when talking about her daughter's disappearance, instead, keeping her hopes alive with sweet dreams instead. And tonight, one of those dreams came true, when she was finally reunited with her child.

Here's CNN's Susan Candiotti.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For five years, Elke Hoercher...

ELKE HOERCHER, MISSING GIRL'S MOTHER: I never gave up hope, never.

CANDIOTTI: ... has been keeping a diary about the search for her missing daughter, Angeline. Ten days ago, this entry:

HOERCHER: "And they've 320 leads. Please, God, let there be one that leads us to you."

CANDIOTTI: One did. Five time zones away in Hawaii, a woman who saw this flier in her mail...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It hit 75 million households.

CANDIOTTI: ... called police in Delray Beach, Florida. The unidentified woman said she recognized father and daughter. Detectives tracked them down on the Island of Kauai. Elke was skeptical.

HOERCHER: I calmed myself down again, because I've looked at so many pictures before. And it was never them.

CANDIOTTI: Until now. They showed Elke a girl known as Lana Lee (ph), age 11. Was it Angeline, allegedly kidnapped by her ad in Florida at age 5?

HOERCHER: It was them. She looks the same.

CANDIOTTI (on camera): Just a little bit older?

HOERCHER: Just a little bit older.

CANDIOTTI: The same long blonde hair.

HOERCHER: Yes.

CANDIOTTI: Her eyes?

HOERCHER: I would have recognized her right away.

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): Police say Angeline's father, now under arrest for kidnapping, told his daughter and girlfriend that Elke abandoned them, a fantasy, says Elke, who kept her hope alive by dreaming about encounters with her daughter.

HOERCHER: And she was looking skeptical at me. And I said to her, "I live for you and I die for you." And then she hugged me. CANDIOTTI: On her way to Hawaii, escorted to the airport by her boyfriend, Elke Hoercher is nervous. She spoke briefly by phone with her daughter. Angeline said she missed her.

(on camera): You called her by her nickname?

HOERCHER: Yes. I said Shatz (ph) to her. I also called her Shatz.

CANDIOTTI: What does that mean?

HOERCHER: It's like an expression. It's like honey in English.

CANDIOTTI: And she said?

HOERCHER: She said, "Yes, mama, yes, mommy."

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): On this long-anticipated day, her emotions are still raw, as she recalls one of her darkest hours, documented in her diary.

HOERCHER: "I'm totally down again, close to the state of depression, around in total darkness, no light. When can I get into the light again?"

CANDIOTTI: A flight now taking her back to the light of her life.

(on camera): What would you call the fact that you have now found her?

HOERCHER: A miracle. It's a miracle.

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): Susan Candiotti, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Pretty good story, that.

There are a few more from around the country today, the sniper trial first. Prosecutors today played the jury another 911 tape. In this tape, William Franklin frantically tells the operator his wife, Nancy (sic), has been shot. You might recall, she was gunned down in a parking lot at a Home Depot in Northern Virginia. Her daughter also took the witness stand today.

Atlantic City next, where a construction accident took four lives. It happened at a parking lot that was going up at the Tropicana Casino. Five stories came down. Basically, one worker said, what you heard was a big rumble and you knew something was wrong. Exactly what went wrong is under investigation tonight.

And in Washington, a piece of a Halloween costume caused a premature scare, shutting down the House Cannon Office Building for about two hours this morning. It was caused by something in a bag two women carried through a security checkpoint. The guards were distracted. The women went through. Once they were gone, one guard looked at the X-ray monitor and saw the image of a pistol. It was a toy pistol.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT: saving the shuttle astronauts. Did NASA give up on them, when it didn't need to?

A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In many ways, you could say the loss of the space shuttle Columbia hinges on four words: what if and why not. What if NASA had taken any number of steps, up to and including a rescue attempt? And, if not, why not?

The commission investigating the disaster asked those questions. And the answers it got, fair to say, don't speak highly of NASA. We got the executive summary this past summer. And this week, the commission released hundreds of pages of supporting material.

With us in Washington tonight is Slate.com's Gregg Easterbrook, who has written extensively about NASA and safety and the shuttle program.

Gregg, good to have you with us.

I think we ought to acknowledge, there is the perfect clarity here of hindsight.

GREGG EASTERBROOK, AUTHOR, "THE PROGRESS PARADOX": Yes. And, Aaron, I'm with "New Republic" magazine, not with Slate.

BROWN: OK.

EASTERBROOK: Yes, hindsight is always 20/20.

Surely, had NASA better understood how serious Columbia's situation was, they might have acted differently. And even if they had perfectly understood that, the astronauts might not have been saved. But what we have learned in the months since is that NASA acted in a highly cavalier manner about safety warnings about what had happened when Columbia blasted off, and now that the accident investigation board has found that rescue missions might have been possible.

BROWN: I want to talk about both of those things. Let's talk first about this notion that they acted cavalierly. How do you mean it, or how did the board see it?

EASTERBROOK: Well, many engineers, safety engineers, at NASA were extremely worried when they saw the piece -- your viewers know that a piece of foam broke off the shuttle as it was launching and hit the wing and that there was a worry of some damage that turned out to be the damage that destroyed the spacecraft.

Many safety engineers within NASA issued serious warnings about that. They wanted many steps to be taken, including, the Air Force has spy cameras that could have taken pictures of the wing to show whether it was damaged or not while the spacecraft was in orbit. It's possible that the astronauts aboard Columbia could have spacewalked and looked at the wing with their own eyes.

And strangely, very strangely, NASA top managers not only refused to take these cautious steps, but, for intents and purposes, ordered the safety engineers to stop talking about the possibility that there was a problem.

BROWN: Any theory on why that is?

EASTERBROOK: Well, it's a bureaucratic response, I suppose.

NASA went -- if you look at NASA's recent history, when the Challenger was lost in 1986, NASA had gone through a period of poor management, where it seemed mainly concerned about its budget and not so much about excellence in operations. Then there was two years without any flying. They started flying again in the late 1980s.

They came under the sway of a great administrator, Dan Goldin, who was there for 10 years. And, by the way, you know there's a controversy with him becoming president of the university -- excuse me, of Boston University.

BROWN: Yes.

EASTERBROOK: If any Boston University trustees are listening tonight, this is a great guy. Grab him while you can.

If you look at the 10 or 11 years that he was administrator of NASA, under three presidents, the shuttle flew approximately 60 times without any problems. He left. A year later, the shuttle blew up again. Now, of course, these things aren't directly related. But during the years that Goldin was there, the management culture was, pursuit of excellence and no excuses.

A little bit before then, it was a little more lax. And in the last couple of years, it's been, protect your budget.

BROWN: Let me just, in the last half-minute here, could a rescue have been affected?

EASTERBROOK: Yes, it would have been very difficult, and we can't be sure it would have worked.

But the shuttle Atlantis was already in preparation when Columbia went up. Had they understood the seriousness of the problem, Atlantis could have been hurried into a rescue mission status, probably gotten up in time to meet up with Columbia in orbit. There's no guarantee it would have worked. Spacewalks are difficult. Rescue missions are difficult.

But it could have been tried at least. When you think of how ably NASA rescued Apollo 13 -- that's the movie that everybody has seen -- when there was an explosion on board 30 years ago and much less was known about spaceflight, it is miraculous that Apollo 13 came back. That's because everyone in NASA worked around the clock on nothing but saving that aircraft.

When Columbia was in orbit with a problem, not only did people not work around the clock on saving it, top management of NASA worked to tell people to stop saying there was a problem. And the result was the loss of seven lives.

BROWN: Gregg, thank you very much. Great work in "The New Republic." We appreciate your time tonight.

We'll check morning papers after the break. Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, time to check the morning papers from around the country and around the world. A lot of them to get in tonight, so I'll try not to dawdle. Dawdle. Well, I'm doing it right now.

"The sun," the newspaper of San Bernardino County, California, gets the lead spot today. "Reprieve: Break in Weather Slows Fire at Big Bear. Respite Provides First Look At Devastation in the Mountains," a wonderful and sad picture on the front page of "The Sun" in San Bernardino County, California.

"The San Francisco Chronicle." "Fog and Drizzle Help Firefighters." They also put the economy on the front page and the death of Steve Rucker, the young firefighter who died yesterday. But here's the one that caught my eye down on the bottom. "Levi's Surprise:" New Looser Fit Gives Some the 501 Blues." Levi's changed the fit because we're getting fatter. Works for me.

"USA Today," "7.2 Percent GDP Growth, Fastest in 19 Years. Economists Credit Tax Relief and Shoppers. The Question Is, Will it Last?" Well, we certainly hope so. That's the lead in "USA Today." If you're traveling tomorrow, we just took the fun out of waking up, didn't we?

"The Washington Times." "Growth Erupts In Summer Quarter." They lead with the economy. "Democrats Won't Give Bush Credit For Gains." This is a very good story. I hadn't heard this story. This is Rowan Scarborough's reporting. "Colonel in Iraq Refuses to Resign. Prosecutors' Offer Rejected." Lieutenant Colonel Allen West charged with basically beating up an Iraqi to try and get information. And it's a complicated story. And he's not quitting, according to his lawyers. That's a pretty good tale in "The Washington Times."

How much time, David?

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: How much?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Forty-one. BROWN: Oh, OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thirty seconds.

BROWN: Thank you. Stop.

"The Miami Herald" -- you know, give a guy a microphone and that's what happened -- leads with Iraq. Explosions and Warnings Rattle Citizens In Baghdad" is the lead in "The Miami Herald." Down at the bottom, a story I've seen in a couple of papers, though: "Blacks Reverse Course, Return to the South." There's some migration of African-Americans heading south.

Why don't we just do "The Chicago Sun-Times." "Tax Refund Cash Heats Up the Economy." The weather tomorrow in Chicago is "boo- tiful," as in Halloween. Got it?

That's morning papers. What else, anything there I liked? No. We'll just take a break, wrap up the day, take a look at the top story, all that stuff in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Before we go tonight, a quick update on the day's top stories.

A break in the weather helped firefighters all across Southern California. This is Stevenson Ranch, north of Los Angeles, around the Simi Valley, better news there today, better news in San Diego to the south, better news to the east in San Bernardino. Overall, 700,000 acres burned. At least 2,600 homes have been destroyed, 20 people dead, including a firefighter who lost his life yesterday.

The governor told us a short time ago that, if all goes well, if all goes well, the fires will be contained in seven to eight days, another week of this, it seems. It is almost certain to be our lead story tomorrow.

But also on the program tomorrow, a change of pace to end the week. Bruce Burkhardt takes a trip to Oxford, Mississippi, to sample a Saturday tradition at Ole Miss, football to be sure, but also the place and the state of mind the fans call the Grove. The Grove was once a white-only tradition in Mississippi. But like many things down South, things have changed there, too. That's all part of tomorrow's program.

That does it for tonight. "LOU DOBBS" is next for our American audience, our North American audience. We'll see you tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern time.

Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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





in Stopping California Fires>


Aired October 30, 2003 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone. A better day today on the fire lines of Southern California and while that could change with the shifting winds even one good day, the first really since Friday, gave crews time to gain a little ground, not a lot of ground to be sure but enough to change the mood on the fire lines from very grim to a little bit hopeful.
The fires again own the first section of the program and, again, begin the whip and the whip starts off in Lake Arrowhead. CNN's Frank Buckley is there, Frank a headline from you please.

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, it's freezing cold in the mountains tonight. The humidity level is over 70 percent, perfect conditions for suppressing the fire here. Sadly, they came a day late for this community where overnight hundreds of homes burned to the ground -- Aaron.

BROWN: Frank, thank you. We'll get to you early tonight.

CNN's Gary Tuchman is next, Gary with just one of the rare victories in this long fight, Gary a headline.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the Simi Valley fire is not the largest of the Southern California wildfires; however, we are a stone's throne away from the populous San Fernando Valley and that's why the colder weather, the moister air have led to great relief here tonight.

BROWN: Gary, thank you.

And finally the Pentagon, some especially unnerving videotape discovered in Iraq. Our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre has viewed the tapes, Jamie a headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Not that there was ever much question that this regime of Saddam Hussein was brutal but this videotape discovered by U.S. soldiers back in April and now obtained by CNN shows just how brutal members of the Fedayeen Saddam could be in enforcing discipline in their ranks.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest shortly.

Also ahead on the program tonight few of those stories have happy endings but this one does, a mother on her way to meet her daughter who was kidnapped from her years ago.

A troubling take on what NASA might have done but didn't to save the Space Shuttle Columbia and the seven astronauts onboard, the bottom line, when it comes to safety this is not your father's NASA. We'll talk with author Greg Easterbrook (ph) tonight.

And, of course, we'll get a jump on tomorrow's headlines with morning papers or two and a rooster who's up way past his bedtime, all of that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin once again tonight with the fire and for the first time in many days we can report a certain measure of progress. In no small part this is due to the exhausting and dangerous work of more than 13,000 firefighters from San Diego to the Simi Valley, hard work and a little help from above.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): People in Southern California have been waiting and praying for this for days. Finally the weather changed and cold, wet air blew in from the Pacific Ocean.

In the Simi Valley near Stevenson Ranch the news was good. The back fires now had a chance to keep the flames from jumping the six- lane firebreak of the Golden State Freeway and into the San Fernando Valley beyond.

In the resort country east of Los Angeles the mists were a welcome respite after last night's disappointments. Flames had broken through and plunged into the San Bernardino Forest almost encircling fire crews defending Lake Arrowhead.

By morning the cost of that defense was clear. The center of the town had been saved but hundreds of homes in outlying Book's (ph) Creek and Cedar Glen were lost.

To the south it was actually raining in the area west of San Diego but in the night this fire, already the cause of a dozen deaths, attacked again. The tourist town of (unintelligible) was almost gone. A night long struggle for Julian was at best a draw.

And in the tiny hamlet of Wynola a terrible loss, flames blew right over a fire crew and in the end three were hospitalized and one had died. Steve Rucker (ph) the father of two young children was the first firefighter to die in this. His wife insisted he perished doing what he loved best.

It is always, it seems, the individual deaths or the single home lost that hits us the hardest perhaps because the sheer magnitude of this disaster is beyond our grasp.

At least 20 dead now, over 2,600 homes destroyed, 100,000 people forced to evacuate and today's damp weather, as good and as important as it was, was simply a pause. The fires are still on the move, even the beginning of the end not yet in sight.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And that is the broad view of a very mixed picture tonight.

A closer look now at the battle fought to save a neighborhood in Lake Arrowhead and the people on the line. Here again, CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY (voice-over): Firefighters couldn't hold the fire back in Cedar Glen and the enormity of the losses are just beginning to sink in. Walter Brush (ph) heard about his wife's family home on TV.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know so we had to get up here to see but 40 years gone.

BUCKLEY: The firefighters who tried to save the homes in this neighborhood fought to the point of exhaustion.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because they are homes, they're somebody's homes and if we can't save that home then somebody is without a house.

BUCKLEY: We were with Strike Team 6224 Alpha as Cedar Glen burned. Nineteen men and one woman on five engines from San Bernardino County, their mission to cut off the fire and send it down a canyon away from homes.

(on camera): But conditions changed and when the fire started to hook around their position the strike team decided to move.

(voice-over): But as they prepared to move out a call comes over the radio, a CDF (ph) firefighter is injured. It turns out to be a minor injury but it could have been fatal. A tree branch broke or burned off. Part of it hit the fireman. It was a physical blow at the end of a difficult day and night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is very, very tough for us. We don't want to give up. The men do not want to stop.

BUCKLEY: But the exhausted firefighters find new life in a new day. It is foggy and cold.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My nose is turning red.

BUCKLEY: Great conditions for killing a fire and after their longest stretch of sleep in a week, four hours straight, Strike Team 6224 Alpha is ready to go back on the lines.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To pretty much footprint this to Yellowstone.

BUCKLEY: After a briefing they rolled and as they awaited their next assignment, rookie firefighter Brad Trutowski (ph) of the 29 Palms Fire Department told us this fire, his first ever wild land fire, taught him a lot about firefighting and his fellow firefighters.

Tell me what you've learned about the brotherhood of firefighting in a situation like this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, just from being here I know that I have to watch out for myself and everybody else and I also know that I'm in good hands just with the people I'm here with. I know everybody here had everybody's back.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BUCKLEY: And, as we mentioned before, Aaron, the great weather conditions for the firefighters, the fog, the increased humidity, the cold weather has helped to suppress the fire, to slow its progression today but, again, last night right in this neighborhood where I'm standing in, hundreds of homes burned. Now, officials believe that the number here in the Cedar Glen area is at around 225 homes burned last night -- Aaron.

BROWN: What do the firefighters hear about the weather? Are they getting constant updates or are they just too busy to deal with it?

BUCKLEY: Well, they get the updates. We, in fact, watched them get the update and it's a pretty extensive update and it's a pretty extensive update when they have a briefing.

The battalion chief gets his strike team together and he tells them as they go out on the lines what the relative humidity is, what they can expect in terms of wind, so they do have a sense going out because that's important in terms of how they deal with the fire, the fire's behavior. They need to know what the weather is because that affects how they fight the fire.

BROWN: Frank thanks again, nice work again today for you and your crew. Thank you very much.

A victory now, a small one perhaps in the greater scope of things but for the Baker family of Stevenson Ranch, California, it means the world to them; reporting for us tonight CNN's Gary Tuchman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN (voice-over): The irony of the name of the street is lost on none of its residents, especially after a wall of flames came perilously close to destroying the houses on Smokewood Way.

MYRON BAKER, SMOKEWOOD WAY RESIDENT: It got pretty hot and scary.

TUCHMAN: How close was the fire to your house?

M. BAKER: Well, right across the street here. This whole hill was on fire and behind there's a little bowl, sort of a little canyon behind that all went up.

TUCHMAN: Myron Baker, his wife and three children moved into this house, a half hour north of Los Angeles, just two weeks ago. EILEEN BAKER, SMOKEWOOD WAY RESIDENT: I was quite afraid after all our years of hard work that there it would be gone up in smoke in just a very few minutes.

TUCHMAN: Eileen Baker and two of her children, 13-year-old Christy (ph) and ten-year-old Jenna evacuated their home even before the flames came close. All three suffer from asthma.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was pretty scary. It was terrifying.

TUCHMAN: Mr. Baker and his 17-year-old son Kevin stayed behind to keep an eye on the house but firefighters recommended they evacuate. They didn't have to pack many of their valuables because they were still in boxes from their move.

M. BAKER: It got hot here actually. You could actually feel the heat.

TUCHMAN: But then the wind started to shift. The overworked firefighters began to successfully guide the flames away from the homes on Smokewood Way. They were safe for now.

M. BAKER: We had firemen in the backyards all along here and they pretty much saved this area right here.

TUCHMAN: His girls will continue to live at their relatives' miles away from the fire while there is still a threat but the Baker men will continue to stay in their new home.

Do you feel OK now?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TUCHMAN: Are you still a little scared?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kind of.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN: Firefighters are offering no guarantees but there is a forecast for rain here tomorrow, so there is a comfort level here tonight that wasn't present last night -- Aaron.

BROWN: Gary thank you, Gary Tuchman.

Over the last few days we've been very grateful for the time and the knowledge of Peter Brierty who's the fire marshal of San Bernardino County. He speaks with us either at the end of a very long day or the beginning of a very long night. We're not sure there's a difference at this point.

In either case, we want to give you a taste of what his job has been like these days, so he was shadowed today by CNN's Jason Bellini.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) PETER BRIERTY, FIRE MARSHAL, SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY: It was absolutely amazing firefighting that went on in there, just incredible stuff and they stopped it.

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The most interesting thing about riding along with San Bernardino Fire Chief Peter Brierty is listening to his conversations.

BRIERTY: The other structure protection crews are saying we've never seen anything like what you guys did, you know, and they just said we're not leaving. This is our home and we're going to defend our home.

BELLINI: The fire is not out, Brierty is the first to admit, but he's already talking about it in the past tense in the language of legends.

BRIERTY: But they kept it from going over the top and that was just amazing, amazing work.

BELLINI: Pride and pain at this stage of the battle, though, seem inseparable.

BRIERTY: And now it's all gone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the backyard of where we work and this is 15 years I've been up here this is like nuts.

BRIERTY: Unbelievable.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, I'm sorry to hear about that firefighter down in San Diego, man.

BRIERTY: Yes, pretty bad news.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tough luck man.

BRIERTY: Well, you hang in there all right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right.

BRIERTY: Watch out overhead when you're in here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, that's why we're leaving.

BRIERTY: Keep your eyes up.

BELLINI: Brierty is also the first to admit his work isn't on the front lines. He observes, checks in, advises, and answers phone calls.

BRIERTY: I'm there for you, man. Conrad's up here. Gary Bush was up here.

BELLINI: This, it turned out, was an important one.

BRIERTY: You'd be so proud of those guys, Don. You trained them well, man. This is kind of a tribute to you.

BELLINI: Who was that?

BRIERTY: He's a battalion chief that was supposed to be in a retirement party today. He was retiring from the service and he's got real kind of pangs about not being up here with the guys.

BELLINI: These 75 firefighters don't want time off to rest. They know this is the fire of their careers.

BRIERTY: A lot of American dreams up here.

BELLINI: Absolutely.

BRIERTY: People who lived in this community all their lives. It's really tough.

BELLINI: Can I ask you an embarrassing question?

BRIERTY: Sure, you might as well.

BELLINI: Have you done anything heroic this week?

BRIERTY: No.

BELLINI: No?

BRIERTY: No. The best I can get is to be in the company of heroes.

BELLINI: So, Chief Brierty is in charge among other things of spreading the legend.

Jason Bellini CNN, Cedar Glen, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And the chief joins us again for a couple of minutes tonight. It's nice to see you on a day that is clearly better than the one 24 hours ago.

BRIERTY: Yes, it's an excellent day today with the weather. It's helping us suppress. The fire is moving very slowly if at all. The weather is a tremendous factor today and it's giving us a chance to take a deep breath.

It's given folks an opportunity to take a -- get a little sleep. Actually we had several people we had to order to go home to get some rest because they've been on their feet for 48 hours. It's been a very good day today.

We're not letting our guard down. This may come back up. The weather may change. There's a characteristic of this fire that predictability is totally unpredictable.

Even at this time we're cutting dozer line around Big Bear, starting a dozer line around Angeles Oaks for the progression of the fire on the eastern front. We still need to be vigilant and we're going to watch that very closely.

BROWN: Chief, do you begin to think of these fires as having personalities?

BRIERTY: This one is pretty schizophrenic if it has a personality.

BROWN: Yes. It's been very hard to predict. You woke up today, I gather, assuming you went to sleep at all, to better weather. Could you feel it on the fire lines when you talked to the men and women there that they realized that today finally they'd gotten a break?

BRIERTY: Well, about four o'clock this morning and driving the fire perimeter, having to use my windshield wipers was a real, real happy moment there and you could see the relief in a lot of folks' eyes when they say the rain dropping off the trees and the moisture in the air. Like I said, it's a good time to take a deep breath but, again, stay vigilant. We got to watch out, make sure the weather doesn't change on us.

BROWN: Assuming, and I know it's hard to do this, but assuming things go well, that the weather stays in your favor, that everything works your way, when do you think normal will return to your firefighters?

BRIERTY: Well, this will -- this is a career fire for our firefighters and our firefighters are most concerned about getting the citizens back home. Our San Bernardino County Emergency Operations Center at this time and even days before with the support of the Board of Supervisors has been working on all the necessary preparations to get the citizens back in here as soon as we can.

We need the utilities. We need the electricity back up but behind the scenes, even though you see a lot of activity out here with firefighters and equipment, behind the scenes are a lot of folks working to make sure our citizens get back to their homes safely and soundly.

BROWN: Do you think a week from now things will look a whole lot different?

BRIERTY: We just want the folks to get back home.

BROWN: OK.

BRIERTY: How it will look when folks get here there's a lot of the lake, this beautiful mountain area that was saved by the efforts of these firefighters and that will be great for those folks and unfortunately we're going to do everything for those unfortunate folks that had to lose their houses.

The County Board of Supervisor, the state of California is going to be there to make sure that everything happens in their favor to get them, try to get their lives back to normal if that's even possible. BROWN: Chief, again, thanks for your time tonight and a special thanks for letting us shadow you today.

BRIERTY: Sure.

BROWN: We have much better sense of all that was going on in your day and the day of the people you work with. Thank you, sir, very much, Peter Brierty.

BRIERTY: One of the things that your folks...

BROWN: Go ahead.

BRIERTY: One of the things your folks saw was a lot of the firefighting apparatus up here. They saw the names of cities and counties and tribal names on the doors of those pieces of equipment and they came from all over California and it goes to show you that the desire to help those in need is fulfilled by the fire service and the fire service knows no boundaries in providing that service.

BROWN: And they proved it yet again. Thanks again, sir, very much.

BRIERTY: Thank you.

BROWN: Peter Brierty who is the fire marshal in San Bernardino County, California on a better day.

Still ahead, we'll stay on the subject of the fires in California, talk with Governor Gray Davis.

And, we'll hear the experiences of one "Los Angeles Times" photographer who is covering the fire and we'll look at her photographs as well and they are terrific.

Later, the grisly evidence of Saddam's terror, tapes of people being tortured in Iraq, much to do tonight.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It is, we suppose, a point of pride that nothing small ever seems to happen in California, a point of pride and a curse besides, the fires no exception. California has seen its share of drama lately in every respect and its governor has had more than a little on his plate.

We spoke with Governor Gray Davis a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Governor it was a better day today.

GOV. GRAY DAVIS (D), CALIFORNIA: Yes, it was. The weather -- the weather was working with us rather than against us. The firefighters have been doing a great job and we made a little progress today.

BROWN: Is the progress, the progress that was made, is it in a specific area or was it pretty much across the board?

DAVIS: Pretty much across the board. The marine layer is starting to come in. The humidity is improving and it's helping firefighters both in the San Bernardino Mountains and San Diego, which are really the two major blazes that we still have to contend with.

BROWN: What are your people telling you about the weather and about the next few days?

DAVIS: You know it's all speculative because it can change in a heartbeat but if the weather holds in another seven or eight days I think these fires will be at least substantially contained.

The Big Bear fires, Lake Arrowhead, have not created too much damage in those communities and they're on a path that might take it to the desert where they might burn out.

In San Diego the humidity helped us a lot and the cooler weather helped us a lot. There's still some rough sledding and I can't say enough about the firefighters. You know we lost one last night, Steve Rucker.

There's a foundation established in his name and if anyone wants to contribute to his family we'd be enormously grateful. They can go to the California Department of Forestry website, www.fire.ca.gov. It will show you how to make a contribution to his family.

BROWN: He was a brave young man.

DAVIS: Very much so.

BROWN: With two young kids...

DAVIS: Yes, sir.

BROWN: ...who died just about this time yesterday. It gives -- when you talk about seven or eight more days to get this thing contained it gives people I think around the country, and in this case around the world, a sense of the magnitude that that's the best case scenario right now is another week of very difficult work ahead.

DAVIS: It has been extraordinarily difficult, Aaron. These have been the worst fires, the most expensive, the most severe, the largest casualties, the most loss of property and the longest in duration.

In San Diego, for example, in the very first day on Sunday, the fires were burning two acres a second, two acres a second. That's how rapid this fire was spreading.

BROWN: Is it too early to talk about getting, literally getting help to people? Is that process still some time away?

DAVIS: No. We're moving on two tracks, put the fire out, put people back on their feet and just today we opened the first one stop center in San Diego. We're opening one tomorrow in San Bernardino at Norton Air Force Base and in Claremont.

There should be six or seven open by week's end and people don't have to wait for these one stop centers even though I think all the agencies they will need will be under one roof. They can just call 1- 800-621-FEMA and they can just start applying over the phone and an awful lot of that work can be done electronically.

BROWN: Governor, I apologize if this seems inappropriate but I think everyone knows your political situation. The last week, I'm sure you've been much too busy to think about any of this. This too is the business of governance what you've been doing the last week or so. In a sense are you pleased that this is the sort of work you can do at the end of this term?

DAVIS: Well, I'm not pleased that people are suffering, Aaron.

BROWN: Of course not.

DAVIS: I'm not pleased that 100,000 people have been dislocated and are not at home tonight. But I know that I'm in public life to help people to improve their lives and everyone in public life will acknowledge their first order of business is to keep people safe.

They're not safe until these fires get put out. For that we need help from Mother Nature. We're getting some now. We're grateful and continued courage on the part of the firefighters.

I'm very pleased at the way Californians have responded. I've been to a number of evacuation centers and sometimes the volunteers outnumber the people in the centers needing help and they bring food and clothes and toys for the kids and they give folks hugs and that's just great.

So, if I have to be doing something my last couple weeks it's an honor to try and do what little I can to help the firefighters do their job and to coordinate the relief efforts because I hope a lot of this is behind me by the time I pass the baton to Governor-elect Schwarzenegger, who by the way has been terrific and we've been working hand-in-glove talking every day and I thank him for his efforts.

BROWN: We know from just the mail we've been getting literally thousands of people are thinking about California and Californians these days, worrying about you and hoping that the weather turns and all of this ends soon.

DAVIS: Thank you.

BROWN: Governor, again, thanks for your time.

DAVIS: Well we appreciate your prayers. Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you, sir, Governor Gray Davis.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And we talked to the governor a short time ago.

Another view now, if you watch the program with any regularity you'll know it is one we are especially partial to. It comes in this case from the lens and the sharp eye of Gina Ferazzi, one of the army of newspaper photographers who are working this story. She shoots pictures for the "Los Angeles Times."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GINA FERAZZI, "LOS ANGELES TIMES" (voice-over): I've been covering these wildfires since last Thursday evening. This fire is so big that they're doing the best that they can and, you know, these guys are working 36 hours straight.

They were setting back fires to try to fight the fire from coming over Highway 18. It's almost like he knew they were coming but he wasn't going to back off.

Homeowners that stay behind are just trying to save their belongings. It's mostly men who stay behind with all their garden hoses going and I think when it gets bad they know they have to leave.

One of the most dramatic photos I took there was a man trying to save his house and he jumped over, was running from a huge ball of fire while his neighbor's house was burning and he ran over his pool with a hose to try to save his house. I believe he did save his house.

I went down to Hope (ph) Creek because I saw that the fire was moving that direction. You could see the orange glow coming at you and then all of a sudden within a half an hour all those homes went up. I mean there's nothing anybody could do.

I ran into so many homes that were just decorated with all these Halloween decorations and, you know, that little pumpkin hadn't burned yet and it just gave it a human element.

You kind of have to distance yourself from people tragedy to do this kind of thing. A lot of people are in shock and it doesn't hit them right away. That home had been with her family for a long time. Her parents owned it and she said her mom was too upset to come up and see it.

Wyatt (ph) was pretty resilient. He wasn't too upset. He was understanding what had happened. You see the spirit of these people and you know they can rebuild and they're going to do whatever they can to get back on their feet again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The words and the work of Gina Ferazzi of the "Los Angeles Times."

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT evidence of evil as a videotape surfaces of Saddam Hussein's henchmen torturing.

We'll take a break first. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There's not much argument, never has been, over whether Saddam Hussein and his henchmen were evil. Thousands of bodies of his victims have been dug up since the end of the war, testimony to that. But so far, the evidence has all been after the fact. Tonight, however, a stunning look at evil in action from a videotape found in April by U.S. troops in Iraq.

We warn you, this tape is graphic and unsettling. It is perhaps as graphic as anything we've ever decided to air. But it's important to note that what you're about to see is not the worst of what's on the tape.

Here's our senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The tape is of poor quality, but what it shows is undeniably shocking, Iraqis whipped, beaten with sticks until their wrists are broken, even thrown off buildings from a height apparently intended to inflict maximum pain.

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: They portray a regime that was about as vicious as any regime could conceivably be.

MCINTYRE: According to a U.S. military analysis, the victims, including this man about to be beheaded by sword, all appear to be members of the Fedayeen Saddam who have been accused of crimes ranging from desertion to disobeying orders.

Other segments of the tape shows parts of fingers and tongues being cut off, all in public to instill fear in anyone who would oppose Saddam Hussein. The gruesome videos were recovered back in April by soldiers from the 308th Civil Affairs Brigade in Baghdad. The tapes were not released by the Pentagon, but obtained by CNN from independent sources. It's not clear when they were made.

But for the Pentagon, they have obvious value.

RUMSFELD: When you have people filming in front of crowds cheering and clapping, you have people cutting off people's tongues and cutting off people's heads and chopping off their fingers and chopping off their hands, throwing them off three-story buildings, you learn something about a group of people and how they lived their lives and how they treated their people.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: What we've shown you is just some short segments from the tape, which is 23 minutes long. Much of it is stomach-turning.

And while it is the only tape that CNN has obtained, the Pentagon says there are many more like it in Iraq -- Aaron.

BROWN: Lots of people have asked the question today, why is this tape out here now? Can we ascribe motive at all to the people who are giving the tape out?

MCINTYRE: Well, I think that some people who are getting the tape out would like people to take a look at the brutality of the regime.

I have to say that we didn't obtain the tape from the Pentagon, although we did learn about its existence from the Pentagon and had requested the Pentagon to release a copy of the tape, which, even today, they declined to do. But it apparently got out from the Army unit that originally found it. Copies were made. And a copy was passed to us.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. That's a tough day's work -- Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon tonight.

A few more items from around the world, starting in Columbus, Ohio. The president was there, touting a new batch of economic numbers, very good numbers, for a change. They show an economy growing by a very strong 7.2 percent in the third quarter. It's been a long, long time since the economy has grown like that, proof, the president said, the tax cuts were working. Leading Democrats also welcome the numbers, but pointed to continuing unemployment.

Guerrillas ambushed a freight train today in Iraq near Fallujah. They used RPGs to get the job done. Cars that didn't burn were looted. And with the exception of a number of helicopters flying by, witnesses say American forces were nowhere to be found.

And, in London, it's a Beatle. Paul McCartney and his wife, Heather, are now the proud parents of a 7-pound baby girl, Beatrice Millie McCartney, Heather McCartney's first, Sir Paul's fourth.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, some good news, as the daughter lost five years ago turns up safe, the story of a mother's vigil -- when NEWSNIGHT continues around the world.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Much more NEWSNIGHT still ahead. We'll talk with Gregg Easterbrook, who thinks NASA just gave up on saving the shuttle astronauts. We'll check morning papers, of course. And next, the story of a mother's vigil for her lost child and her happy ending.

A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There's no way to describe what Elke Hoercher has gone through the last five years without using the word nightmare. But that's a word she doesn't use when talking about her daughter's disappearance, instead, keeping her hopes alive with sweet dreams instead. And tonight, one of those dreams came true, when she was finally reunited with her child.

Here's CNN's Susan Candiotti.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For five years, Elke Hoercher...

ELKE HOERCHER, MISSING GIRL'S MOTHER: I never gave up hope, never.

CANDIOTTI: ... has been keeping a diary about the search for her missing daughter, Angeline. Ten days ago, this entry:

HOERCHER: "And they've 320 leads. Please, God, let there be one that leads us to you."

CANDIOTTI: One did. Five time zones away in Hawaii, a woman who saw this flier in her mail...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It hit 75 million households.

CANDIOTTI: ... called police in Delray Beach, Florida. The unidentified woman said she recognized father and daughter. Detectives tracked them down on the Island of Kauai. Elke was skeptical.

HOERCHER: I calmed myself down again, because I've looked at so many pictures before. And it was never them.

CANDIOTTI: Until now. They showed Elke a girl known as Lana Lee (ph), age 11. Was it Angeline, allegedly kidnapped by her ad in Florida at age 5?

HOERCHER: It was them. She looks the same.

CANDIOTTI (on camera): Just a little bit older?

HOERCHER: Just a little bit older.

CANDIOTTI: The same long blonde hair.

HOERCHER: Yes.

CANDIOTTI: Her eyes?

HOERCHER: I would have recognized her right away.

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): Police say Angeline's father, now under arrest for kidnapping, told his daughter and girlfriend that Elke abandoned them, a fantasy, says Elke, who kept her hope alive by dreaming about encounters with her daughter.

HOERCHER: And she was looking skeptical at me. And I said to her, "I live for you and I die for you." And then she hugged me. CANDIOTTI: On her way to Hawaii, escorted to the airport by her boyfriend, Elke Hoercher is nervous. She spoke briefly by phone with her daughter. Angeline said she missed her.

(on camera): You called her by her nickname?

HOERCHER: Yes. I said Shatz (ph) to her. I also called her Shatz.

CANDIOTTI: What does that mean?

HOERCHER: It's like an expression. It's like honey in English.

CANDIOTTI: And she said?

HOERCHER: She said, "Yes, mama, yes, mommy."

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): On this long-anticipated day, her emotions are still raw, as she recalls one of her darkest hours, documented in her diary.

HOERCHER: "I'm totally down again, close to the state of depression, around in total darkness, no light. When can I get into the light again?"

CANDIOTTI: A flight now taking her back to the light of her life.

(on camera): What would you call the fact that you have now found her?

HOERCHER: A miracle. It's a miracle.

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): Susan Candiotti, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Pretty good story, that.

There are a few more from around the country today, the sniper trial first. Prosecutors today played the jury another 911 tape. In this tape, William Franklin frantically tells the operator his wife, Nancy (sic), has been shot. You might recall, she was gunned down in a parking lot at a Home Depot in Northern Virginia. Her daughter also took the witness stand today.

Atlantic City next, where a construction accident took four lives. It happened at a parking lot that was going up at the Tropicana Casino. Five stories came down. Basically, one worker said, what you heard was a big rumble and you knew something was wrong. Exactly what went wrong is under investigation tonight.

And in Washington, a piece of a Halloween costume caused a premature scare, shutting down the House Cannon Office Building for about two hours this morning. It was caused by something in a bag two women carried through a security checkpoint. The guards were distracted. The women went through. Once they were gone, one guard looked at the X-ray monitor and saw the image of a pistol. It was a toy pistol.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT: saving the shuttle astronauts. Did NASA give up on them, when it didn't need to?

A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In many ways, you could say the loss of the space shuttle Columbia hinges on four words: what if and why not. What if NASA had taken any number of steps, up to and including a rescue attempt? And, if not, why not?

The commission investigating the disaster asked those questions. And the answers it got, fair to say, don't speak highly of NASA. We got the executive summary this past summer. And this week, the commission released hundreds of pages of supporting material.

With us in Washington tonight is Slate.com's Gregg Easterbrook, who has written extensively about NASA and safety and the shuttle program.

Gregg, good to have you with us.

I think we ought to acknowledge, there is the perfect clarity here of hindsight.

GREGG EASTERBROOK, AUTHOR, "THE PROGRESS PARADOX": Yes. And, Aaron, I'm with "New Republic" magazine, not with Slate.

BROWN: OK.

EASTERBROOK: Yes, hindsight is always 20/20.

Surely, had NASA better understood how serious Columbia's situation was, they might have acted differently. And even if they had perfectly understood that, the astronauts might not have been saved. But what we have learned in the months since is that NASA acted in a highly cavalier manner about safety warnings about what had happened when Columbia blasted off, and now that the accident investigation board has found that rescue missions might have been possible.

BROWN: I want to talk about both of those things. Let's talk first about this notion that they acted cavalierly. How do you mean it, or how did the board see it?

EASTERBROOK: Well, many engineers, safety engineers, at NASA were extremely worried when they saw the piece -- your viewers know that a piece of foam broke off the shuttle as it was launching and hit the wing and that there was a worry of some damage that turned out to be the damage that destroyed the spacecraft.

Many safety engineers within NASA issued serious warnings about that. They wanted many steps to be taken, including, the Air Force has spy cameras that could have taken pictures of the wing to show whether it was damaged or not while the spacecraft was in orbit. It's possible that the astronauts aboard Columbia could have spacewalked and looked at the wing with their own eyes.

And strangely, very strangely, NASA top managers not only refused to take these cautious steps, but, for intents and purposes, ordered the safety engineers to stop talking about the possibility that there was a problem.

BROWN: Any theory on why that is?

EASTERBROOK: Well, it's a bureaucratic response, I suppose.

NASA went -- if you look at NASA's recent history, when the Challenger was lost in 1986, NASA had gone through a period of poor management, where it seemed mainly concerned about its budget and not so much about excellence in operations. Then there was two years without any flying. They started flying again in the late 1980s.

They came under the sway of a great administrator, Dan Goldin, who was there for 10 years. And, by the way, you know there's a controversy with him becoming president of the university -- excuse me, of Boston University.

BROWN: Yes.

EASTERBROOK: If any Boston University trustees are listening tonight, this is a great guy. Grab him while you can.

If you look at the 10 or 11 years that he was administrator of NASA, under three presidents, the shuttle flew approximately 60 times without any problems. He left. A year later, the shuttle blew up again. Now, of course, these things aren't directly related. But during the years that Goldin was there, the management culture was, pursuit of excellence and no excuses.

A little bit before then, it was a little more lax. And in the last couple of years, it's been, protect your budget.

BROWN: Let me just, in the last half-minute here, could a rescue have been affected?

EASTERBROOK: Yes, it would have been very difficult, and we can't be sure it would have worked.

But the shuttle Atlantis was already in preparation when Columbia went up. Had they understood the seriousness of the problem, Atlantis could have been hurried into a rescue mission status, probably gotten up in time to meet up with Columbia in orbit. There's no guarantee it would have worked. Spacewalks are difficult. Rescue missions are difficult.

But it could have been tried at least. When you think of how ably NASA rescued Apollo 13 -- that's the movie that everybody has seen -- when there was an explosion on board 30 years ago and much less was known about spaceflight, it is miraculous that Apollo 13 came back. That's because everyone in NASA worked around the clock on nothing but saving that aircraft.

When Columbia was in orbit with a problem, not only did people not work around the clock on saving it, top management of NASA worked to tell people to stop saying there was a problem. And the result was the loss of seven lives.

BROWN: Gregg, thank you very much. Great work in "The New Republic." We appreciate your time tonight.

We'll check morning papers after the break. Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, time to check the morning papers from around the country and around the world. A lot of them to get in tonight, so I'll try not to dawdle. Dawdle. Well, I'm doing it right now.

"The sun," the newspaper of San Bernardino County, California, gets the lead spot today. "Reprieve: Break in Weather Slows Fire at Big Bear. Respite Provides First Look At Devastation in the Mountains," a wonderful and sad picture on the front page of "The Sun" in San Bernardino County, California.

"The San Francisco Chronicle." "Fog and Drizzle Help Firefighters." They also put the economy on the front page and the death of Steve Rucker, the young firefighter who died yesterday. But here's the one that caught my eye down on the bottom. "Levi's Surprise:" New Looser Fit Gives Some the 501 Blues." Levi's changed the fit because we're getting fatter. Works for me.

"USA Today," "7.2 Percent GDP Growth, Fastest in 19 Years. Economists Credit Tax Relief and Shoppers. The Question Is, Will it Last?" Well, we certainly hope so. That's the lead in "USA Today." If you're traveling tomorrow, we just took the fun out of waking up, didn't we?

"The Washington Times." "Growth Erupts In Summer Quarter." They lead with the economy. "Democrats Won't Give Bush Credit For Gains." This is a very good story. I hadn't heard this story. This is Rowan Scarborough's reporting. "Colonel in Iraq Refuses to Resign. Prosecutors' Offer Rejected." Lieutenant Colonel Allen West charged with basically beating up an Iraqi to try and get information. And it's a complicated story. And he's not quitting, according to his lawyers. That's a pretty good tale in "The Washington Times."

How much time, David?

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: How much?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Forty-one. BROWN: Oh, OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thirty seconds.

BROWN: Thank you. Stop.

"The Miami Herald" -- you know, give a guy a microphone and that's what happened -- leads with Iraq. Explosions and Warnings Rattle Citizens In Baghdad" is the lead in "The Miami Herald." Down at the bottom, a story I've seen in a couple of papers, though: "Blacks Reverse Course, Return to the South." There's some migration of African-Americans heading south.

Why don't we just do "The Chicago Sun-Times." "Tax Refund Cash Heats Up the Economy." The weather tomorrow in Chicago is "boo- tiful," as in Halloween. Got it?

That's morning papers. What else, anything there I liked? No. We'll just take a break, wrap up the day, take a look at the top story, all that stuff in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Before we go tonight, a quick update on the day's top stories.

A break in the weather helped firefighters all across Southern California. This is Stevenson Ranch, north of Los Angeles, around the Simi Valley, better news there today, better news in San Diego to the south, better news to the east in San Bernardino. Overall, 700,000 acres burned. At least 2,600 homes have been destroyed, 20 people dead, including a firefighter who lost his life yesterday.

The governor told us a short time ago that, if all goes well, if all goes well, the fires will be contained in seven to eight days, another week of this, it seems. It is almost certain to be our lead story tomorrow.

But also on the program tomorrow, a change of pace to end the week. Bruce Burkhardt takes a trip to Oxford, Mississippi, to sample a Saturday tradition at Ole Miss, football to be sure, but also the place and the state of mind the fans call the Grove. The Grove was once a white-only tradition in Mississippi. But like many things down South, things have changed there, too. That's all part of tomorrow's program.

That does it for tonight. "LOU DOBBS" is next for our American audience, our North American audience. We'll see you tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern time.

Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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