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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

9/11 Hearings Get Under Way; Hamas Picks New Leader

Aired March 23, 2004 - 22:00   ET

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

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


AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again, everyone.
It's nice to be back and it will be even better to be awake. We spend a fair amount of time tonight looking at the work of the 9/11 commission. They brought out the heavy hitters to testify about the events leading up to the attacks today.

At times, the tone was sharp. At times, it seemed more partisan than we expected or hoped and, at times, it seemed that everyone seemed to believe they got it and no one really knew how to deal with it. Even now we may not.

Military power has its limits. The incubators of terror, the hopelessness of so many in so many places cannot be bombed away. We have to figure out that part as well or we'll revisit Madrid and Bali and Turkey and New York and Washington, D.C. many times over.

The public hearings begin the program and they start the whip and the whip begins with the nuts and bolts and a headline from CNN's David Ensor -- David.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, there were tough questions from the commissioners for the witnesses today and there were some revelations, including that the CIA believes it may have had Osama bin Laden in its sights at least three times but the evidence wasn't quite good enough. They didn't pull the trigger.

BROWN: David, thank you. We'll get to you at the top tonight.

How is this playing out at the White House? Our Senior White House Correspondent John King with us tonight, John the headline.

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the president emphatically today said had he had any information at all that the attacks were coming he would have done something to stop it but there is a credibility test underway in those hearings by the 9/11 commission, some suggesting perhaps the president wasn't looking hard enough for the clues.

BROWN: John, thank you.

Finally, to Israel and growing repercussions from the assassination of the Hamas leader. CNN's Paula Hancocks in Jerusalem, so Paula a headline from you tonight.

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, Israel is threatening to kill the entire leadership of Hamas and also suggesting the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat could be on the hit list in the near future. The same day a new leader emerges for Hamas, a hard-liner who has rejected peace with Israel -- Aaron.

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

Also coming up on the program tonight, we'll preview the next step in the Kobe Bryant case as his accuser takes the witness stand tomorrow and will have to testify about her sexual history.

Segment 7 tonight is the story of Jim Minder who went from bank robber to board room but who maybe never could quite live down his past.

And, after almost two weeks in the Caribbean, or somewhere, the rooster returns tanned, rested and ready for a dose of your morning papers for Wednesday. That ought to be an experience tonight, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin with the 9/11 hearings. Until today, much of the work of the 9/11 commission has been behind closed doors. We got a public look today, a parade of current and former government officials.

Some very big names faced the commission and the television cameras and the country and some very tough questions the focus on why they did not do more to stop al Qaeda years before the 9/11 attacks. It all sounds so simple now.

Here again, CNN's David Ensor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR (voice-over): The commission staff director told of at least three different times the CIA thought it had Osama bin Laden in its sights, once in particular at a desert camp in Afghanistan in February of '99 where bin Laden stayed for a week but there was a problem.

PHILLIP ZELIKOW, EXEC. DIR., 9/11 COMMISSION: According to CIA officials, policymakers were concerned about the danger that a strike might kill an Emirati prince or other senior officials who might be with bin Laden or close by.

ENSOR: The Clinton administration hesitated, Philip Zelikow says, because near bin Laden were senior men from the United Arab Emirates at a hunting camp and, before long, the opportunity was lost. Then Defense Secretary William Cohen insists there never was a clear shot at bin Laden.

WILLIAM COHEN, FMR. DEFENSE SECRETARY: If the director of Central Intelligence says we don't have it then you have to rely upon that.

ENSOR: The commissioners grilled both Clinton administration and Bush administration officials about why they didn't strike al Qaeda earlier.

BOB KERREY, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: The fact that it's unpopular, that it's difficult, that our allies are not necessarily with it shouldn't deter a president who believes that what we have is a serial killer on our hands.

SLADE GORTON (R), COMMISSION MEMBER: What made you think even when you took over and got these first briefings, given the history of al Qaeda and its successful attacks on Americans that we had the luxury even of seven months before we could make any kind of response much less three years?

ENSOR: Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said time for planning was needed that just firing off cruise missiles, as the Clinton administration did once, seemed pointless.

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: You can hit their terrorist training camps over and over and over and expend millions of dollars in U.S. weapons against targets that are dirt and tents and accomplish next to nothing.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: We were mostly accused of over reacting not under reacting and I believe we reacted appropriately and, as I said earlier, we would have acted more had we had actionable intelligence.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR: And that was something both the Clinton and Bush people said that they never had enough of actionable intelligence. Wednesday, the commission will get a chance to ask why not of George Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence -- Aaron.

BROWN: Did it seem to you, David, more partisan today in the way the questions were framed?

ENSOR: It's getting a little bit that way. This is, after all, an election year. There's an awful lot at stake here. You have the book out by Richard Clarke who was in both administrations and who is quite tough on the Bush administration.

You got the sense that the Republicans wanted to justify or explain the Bush administration a little bit and thee were some Democrats on the attack I would say.

BROWN: David, thank you.

Later in the program we'll talk to the two, the chairman and the vice-chairman of the commission on the program. That's coming up a little bit later.

Other news of day, tomorrow the commission holds a second day of public hearings. Among those testifying will be Richard Clarke, who David just mentioned, the former White House counterterrorism chief in both the Bush and the Clinton administrations. In his new book, which has set off a political firestorm, Mr. Clarke accuses the Bush administration of ignoring the al Qaeda threat before 9/11. Today, the president defended his record, while some of his top advisers were up before the commission.

Here's our Senior White House Correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): The president says there should be no doubt.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on September 11th, we would have acted.

KING: Mr. Bush also rebutted any suggestion he ignored or underestimated the terror threat.

BUSH: Whether it be a Hamas threat or an al Qaeda threat we take them very seriously in this administration.

KING: The president's early commitment to confronting al Qaeda is called into question in this new book by former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and is a major focus of the commission investigating the September 11th attacks.

Secretary of State Powell says the president compared the Clinton administration approach to al Qaeda as swatting flies and wanted more.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: He decided early on that we needed to be more aggressive in going after terrorists and especially al Qaeda.

KING: That more aggressive plan was ordered soon after Mr. Bush took office on his desk when the Twin Towers fell, too long in the making to some.

BOB KERREY (D), COMMISSION MEMBER: Why in God's name I got to wait eight months to get a plan?

KING: The hearings are in part a credibility test for the Bush White House as Clarke and others suggest the administration put al Qaeda on the back burner early on because it was obsessed with Iraq.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I've never been dismissive of al Qaeda and I think precisely because I think terrorism is such a serious problem.

KING: The administration says Clarke's sharp criticism now contrasts with his time on the National Security Council staff. In his resignation letter 14 months ago Clarke wrote: "It has been an enormous privilege to serve in the Bush White House" and wished the president "good fortune as you lead our country through the continuing threats."

And the White House says Clarke is wrong to claim the president signed a directive shortly after 9/11 ordering military options for war in Iraq.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This is another example of his revisionist history.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: You can be sure, Aaron, they are watching the hearings quite closely here at the White House. They insist from day one they took the al Qaeda threat seriously. They also insist that they did all they could based on the intelligence they had but they understand also another credibility test coming tomorrow when Richard Clarke testifies.

BROWN: Is there a sense that he -- he's already had his headline, if you will. He's had his moment Sunday and then the reaction yesterday. Are they actually concerned they could be hurt worse again tomorrow?

KING: Well, they understand, you were just talking about this with David Ensor, the White House believes some of the Democrats on this commission are being overly and openly partisan and they believe they will give Mr. Clarke a hearing to make his case.

The White House is hoping though that it has allies on the commission as well and they have provided information to the commission pointing out what they consider to be factual errors, judgment errors, other inaccuracies in the book. They might have a bit of a competition tomorrow to see who can pull what out of Mr. Clarke.

BROWN: Thank you, John, John King at the White House tonight.

The Israeli-Palestinian problem now and it is a problem with many faces tonight. Whatever Israel hopes to achieve in the long run with the assassination of a Hamas leader, the effect so far has been fairly grim.

Terrorists have launched rocket attacks into northern Israel from southern Lebanon and the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, has answered with helicopter fire on suspected terrorist camps as well as shelling from gunboats off the coast of Gaza.

Add to the mix the announcement today that the Israeli government now considers the entire Hamas leadership to be fair game and you've got the recipe for more of the same and preparation for something worse.

More now from CNN's Paula Hancocks.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HANCOCKS (voice-over): Israel on high alert ready for retaliation promised by Hamas for the assassination of its spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The sheikh's wife spoke of her grief and called for God to punish her husband's killers. Yassin's daughter-in-law says the killing of the sheikh won't end the jihad. On the contrary, it will only strengthen us and recruit more people for the holy war.

An increase in roadblocks, a tightening of checkpoints throughout the West Bank, Israeli Police are working double shifts, all leaves canceled.

GIL KLEIMAN, ISRAELI POLICE SPOKESMAN: We will probably be at this high alert status until the end of the month. This is something that we've seen unfortunately many times before and it's better to be prepared. The Israeli Police, along with the other security agencies, is prepared for whatever might come.

HANCOCKS: Weary resignation on the streets of Jerusalem, fear of attacks a reality for the last three and a half years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Day after, always here it is the day after something, big things or small things but the day after.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sure. We are always worried. It's not a new thing. Maybe we're going to be a bit more careful but it doesn't make us very happy.

HANCOCKS: An Israeli newspaper poll shows the majority of people here approve of the assassination. Sixty percent of those questioned support the killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Eight-one percent acknowledge the assassination will increase terror attacks against Israel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HANCOCKS: Pockets of violence have been breaking out overnight. We have clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in a southern Gaza refugee camp. Israeli gun ships firing at Gaza as well and unspecified and suspicious objects, Israeli military is telling us and also Israeli helicopters firing at guerrillas inside Lebanon. Two Palestinians, we're hearing, have been killed.

So, Israel wants to score a decisive victory ahead of its planned withdrawal from Gaza. They don't want to leave a power vacuum. They want to make sure they have weakened the power structure of Hamas.

Hamas, on the other hand, does have a new leader, Abdel Aziz al- Rantisi, a hard-liner who has rejected peace with Israeli in the past -- Aaron.

BROWN: Paula, thank you. It's kind of a bleak situation there tonight.

Ahead on the program, more on the uproar over what was and wasn't done by the Bush administration in the war on terror.

Then later, a look ahead at tomorrow's hearing in the Kobe Bryant case, the most sensitive of issues. The accuser will have to answer defense questions about her sexual past. And later, another step in finding out whether there was ever life on Mars. NASA finds exactly what it was looking for.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: One could argue that today's 9/11 hearings their significance notwithstanding had a hard act to follow. Over the past few days, Richard Clarke's new book has set off a public and very nasty battle between the former White House insider and the administration he once served.

The speed and the intensity of the White House response gave more fuel to the story. It also got us wondering, which brings us to CNN's Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Some challenges we've seen before and some were like no others.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): This is the heart of the president's case for reelection, his response to the worst attack on American soil in our history.

ANNOUNCER: Steady leadership in times of change.

RICHARD CLARKE, FORMER NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM DIRECTOR: The administration had done nothing about al Qaeda prior to 9/11, despite the fact that the CIA director was telling them virtually every day that there was a major threat.

GREENFIELD: That is why the charge by this man, who was the president's top terrorism aide, is a dagger pointed squarely at that heart. That is also why from the moment Richard Clarke went public with his argument that the White House dismissed the terrorism threat before 9/11 and took the country into a needless and dangerous war with Iraq. That is why the White House began an all out challenge to Clarke's credibility on every front.

First, the White House suggested that Clarke might never have had a conversation with the president when Bush all but ordered Clarke to prove Iraq had been involved in 9/11 but when reporters found witnesses to that exchange, the White House backed down.

DAN BARTLETT, WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: The fact of the matter is whether there was a meeting or not, and we'll take Dick Clarke at his word and say that there was a meeting, let's go to the substance of it.

GREENFIELD: Then came the question of motives. Clarke was trying to sell a lot of books.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: He is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book.

GREENFIELD: Condoleezza Rice charged that Clarke never voiced any discontents while in the White House.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to.

GREENFIELD: And Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio show Monday, offered two distinct arguments. First, that Clarke was not a significant player.

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He wasn't in the loop frankly on a lot of the stuff.

GREENFIELD: And second, he had a record of failure.

CHENEY: And the question that ought to be asked is, you know, what were they doing in those days when he was in charge of counterterrorism efforts?

GREENFIELD (on camera): For partisans this is a very easy story. Richard Clarke is either a brave whistle-blower speaking truth to power or an embittered careerist trying to sell books.

But there's another side to the story. What the Bush White House is doing looks a lot like what the last White House did when confronted by charges of a very different kind.

(voice-over): For nearly eight years every time someone surfaced to charge Bill Clinton with misbehavior of one kind or another the answer was to challenge the accuser's credibility. Jennifer Flowers had sold her story to the tabloids.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Because I was excited to meet the governor.

GREENFIELD: Paula Jones was trailer park trash looking to cash in the tool of right wing zealots. Monica Lewinsky was a troubled young woman, perhaps a stalker, until forensic evidence surfaced. Counsel Ken Starr was a cog in the vast right wing conspiracy machine obsessed with sex.

And, while the arguments in Clarke's case are obviously radically different, they involve quite literally matters of life and death, the response seems very familiar. Rally your supporters by challenging not just what the accuser says but who the accuser is.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: And one more example of apparently now the rule that you don't just play defense when you're attacked, you play offense, as John King told us the White House today showed Richard Clarke's resignation letter, which had kind of boilerplate praise.

When Kathleen Willey leveled her charges of misbehavior at Bill Clinton, one of the first things the Clinton White House did was to find a letter from Kathleen Willey showering praise upon Clinton. This is why they call politics a contact sport.

BROWN: And these 9/11 hearings and Mr. Clarke's appearance before them tomorrow, like it or not and for better or for worse, I'm inclined to think for worse, that's where we are, take place in the middle of a campaign.

GREENFIELD: And we saw that on both sides. We saw two Democratic members of the commission press the Bush people on why Condoleezza Rice wouldn't testify. We saw former Navy Secretary John Lehman trying to get Madeleine Albright to talk about a possible Iraq connection. Why didn't you look at this evidence?

And I know what I'm going to be watching tomorrow when Richard Clarke takes the stand. I've got a hunch that John Lehman is going to be armed with some of that White House material that John King talked about. It's going to be a very interesting confrontation.

BROWN: We'll watch that tomorrow. Good to see you tonight.

GREENFIELD: OK, welcome back.

BROWN: Thank you very much, Jeff Greenfield.

A couple more items from around the country that made news today, vivid testimony in the state trial of Terry Nichols, an FBI lawyer telling jurors that barrels and fuses were found at Terry Nichols' home shortly after the bombing in Oklahoma City. Both were similar to the materials used to make the actual bomb. Just to make it clear, the prosecutor brought the barrels into the courtroom for the jury to see.

Mr. Nichols is on trial for 161 counts of first degree murder. He's already been convicted and given a life sentence in federal court. Oklahoma seeks the death penalty.

Tomorrow the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case testing whether the Pledge of Allegiance, as it is now written, violates the Constitution. Bringing the case is a California atheist who objects to his daughter being forced to recite the pledge in school, specifically the phrase "under God." He calls it sectarian dogma. he Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agree, set off a political firestorm, which landed it all before the Supreme Court, the arguments tomorrow.

Tonight, the comeback of morning papers but that's a long way away.

Up next the Kobe Bryant case and tomorrow's testimony by his accuser, her sexual history.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: Two legal principles are set to collide, at least awkwardly coexist in a court tomorrow in the case of Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant. One is that the defendant has the right to confront his accuser.

The other is that in a case of rape you just can't go digging through the alleged victim's life with a backhoe looking for dirt. Generally, that's the rule but it is a legal line that moves and in this case it has some.

With us to explore the implications is defense attorney and legal analyst Bob Tarver, good to see you. All right, these rape shield laws, which is basically what we're dealing with here, grew out of a defense which essentially was, oh wait, wait, wait the victim is, you'll excuse the expression, a slut, right?

ROBERT TARVER, LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. They grew out of the old trashing the victim type of arguments.

BROWN: Yes.

TARVER: Going back over the sexual past and saying because she's been such a promiscuous person, she probably was promiscuous here and you can't believe what she says. Therefore, the law had to step in and legislatures came forward and said, look, we've got to protect these people.

BROWN: OK. And what the judge here has said is that in a closed hearing you can explore, I assume in a fairly limited way, this young woman's sexual history and we'll see if any of it is relevant?

TARVER: Precisely. The judge has taken the balance here. He said, look, we're going to let the defense do what they need to do. In other words, this is someone who is on trial for their life so they need to be able to explore this but we're going to do it behind closed doors so that no one is going to be able to hear what happens here and the only people privy to this will be the attorneys themselves.

BROWN: OK. That's the easy part.

TARVER: Yes.

BROWN: Now it gets a little harder. What makes relevant? What is relevant here about her sex life?

TARVER: Relevant here is if it ties into a fact, an issue that makes something more or less likely. So, the defense says, look, we've got this problem because we believe that she has had sex with other people.

She says that she has not had sex with other people and that the bruises and tearing that she has are the result of Kobe Bryant.

The defense says we need to be able to check this out. We need to be able to see whether or not someone else is responsible. If she's had sex with other people over this period of time, well then that could be terrifically relevant.

BROWN: Well, OK. The fact that someone had sex yesterday has arguably nothing to do with whether they were raped today.

TARVER: Precisely, however, when you argue that the indicia or the sign of that struggle are the bruises and cuts, et cetera, then the defense is entitled, this judge says, to be able to see whether or not those bruises could have come from Kobe Bryant or from repeated episodes of sex with other people.

BROWN: The defense put out a kind of tantalizing notion that shortly after the alleged rape the woman had sex again, the relevancy there being, if it is in fact true?

TARVER: Well, at least part of the relevancy is going to be that a person traumatized by rape or by the specter of rape would not necessarily be engaging in sexual intercourse immediately thereafter.

They at least have some argumentative physical evidence to go along with this. Don't forget when they went to the hospital and her underwear were examined, it bore the semen of someone other than Kobe Bryant.

BROWN: How long after the incident did she go to the hospital and this DNA was extracted or the semen was extracted?

TARVER: She apparently went the next day. As I understand it from my days of trying these types of cases, semen stays in underwear in an active state at least for 72 hours or thereabout.

BROWN: So, it doesn't answer, it doesn't say she had sex the next day?

TARVER: It doesn't say she had sex the next day. It doesn't say exactly when she had sex.

BROWN: If you were a betting man would you bet that some of the sexual history will come into the trial itself?

TARVER: I bet an awful lot of the sexual history is going to come into the trial itself and not just because it's Kobe Bryant but because this is a young man that's on trial for his life.

And when you're dealing with something that important I think a judge is going to say because they're alleging that this has a real tie-in and they can show it here, unlike other cases, I think the judge is going to say let it in.

BROWN: If there was not the semen in the underwear, would that change the likelihood that this testimony would come in?

TARVER: I really think it does and you got to remember judges are human beings. When they see something like the evidence here of semen in the underwear, they're going to start to question and say well perhaps we need to go a little bit further here. Perhaps a jury needs to be able to hear the whole story. BROWN: Anyway, this all starts to play out in Colorado tomorrow. It's nice to see you tonight.

TARVER: Good to see you too.

BROWN: Thank you.

Still to come on the program, NASA's eureka moment finding the key ingredient for life on Mars, water.

Around the world and back home this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Remember your grade school science players, when Mrs. Rodenbaur (ph) took a drop of pond water and put it on a slide and slid it under a microscope and gave the class a look and there were all those amoebas and paramecium and a whole bunch of other stuff, no doubt?

And "Why?" you might have asked her. And "Water," she might have said. And that might have been just enough for some of Mrs. Rodenbaur's young students to go off in search of water and maybe even life, through the lens of a microscope or years later at the end of a robot arm on Mars.

Here's CNN's miles O'Brien.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Scientists say they are surfing a tidal wave of evidence to back up their claim these rocks were laid down by water. Check out these ripples. Researchers say the pattern shows clear evidence that water flowed over these rocks during their formative years.

Compare these images gathered by Opportunity's microscopic camera on Mars to this one from the Colorado River.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We also know that the early conditions on Earth were probably not that much different than the early conditions on Mars. So who's to say Mars didn't have its shot at this magic we call life?

O'BRIEN: But, wait, there's more. Scientists say the chemicals in these rocks, bromine and chlorine in particular, also are screaming out water. And these spheres, scientists are calling them blueberries, are apparently like hunks of ready-mixed concrete. You can't make them without water.

ED WEILER, NASA ASSOCIATION ADMIN.: This is a profound discover. It has profound implications for astrobiology. And I'd like to say, if you have an interest in searching for fossils on Mars, this is the first place you want to go.

O'BRIEN (on camera): Unfortunately, Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, are not equipped to see the microscopic fossils that might be there. That will have to wait for future missions. The next one is scheduled for launch next year.

It's very likely now it will be headed to the very same place. For planetary scientists, there may be no more desirable piece of real estate in the solar system.

Miles O'Brien, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Gasoline, not water, to begin our "Moneyline Roundup" tonight.

According to AAA, the average price of gas at the pump has hit a record high of $1.738 a gallon. Just how much you pay, we're not sure, but it's a lot, a lot higher in places like New York and L.A. Blame the shortage on capacity at refineries or blame OPEC or blame SUVs. In any case, get ready for prices to climb even higher come summer.

The recording industry is at it again, filing lawsuits against 500 more alleged serial music downloaders. Of the 500, at least 80 are located at colleges and universities. That's all, huh?

Wall Street had a queasy day, up in the morning, down by closing time, nervous all day long for a number of reasons, foreign and domestic. It's been nasty on Wall Street of late, hasn't it?

Still ahead on the program, we go back to the 9/11 Commission story. We talk to the commission leaders, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, about what they thought of today's session.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A lot of them today.

It's fair to say the investigation into the 9/11 attacks has faced considerable obstacles from day one. The White House initially opposed the creation of an independent commission. There have been stops and starts ever since.

For a while, it looked like the commissioners might not get the extension they said they needed to finish their work. You remember that flap. They did get the extension and that worked continued today, a significant day for the commission.

Earlier, we spoke with the two men in charge, former Governor of New Jersey Republican Tom Kean and Former Indiana Congressman Democrat Lee Hamilton.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Governor, let me begin with you. What was the most telling thing you heard today?

THOMAS KEAN, CHAIRMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION: Oh, I think it was a combination of things. It wasn't just simply one thing. It was the whole story, really, of how two administrations tried to wrestle both diplomatically and militarily with the problem with terrorism and how you get al Qaeda and whether you can capture or kill bin Laden and the methodologies they tried. And, in all cases, of course, they failed.

BROWN: Congressman, as I was watching the hearings today, I jotted down on a notepad: We got it. We just didn't know what to do about it. Is that a fair characterization?

LEE HAMILTON, VICE-CHAIRMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION: Yes, I think it is a fair characterization, but you have to put that characterization in context.

The policy-maker -- and it came across very clearly today -- is confronted with a lot of intelligence coming at him or her, a lot of events going on in the world that he or she is trying to keep up with. And it's quite clear that terrorism was one of many threats to the national security of the United States.

Looking back, from our perspective, using hindsight, it's easy to say that, well, they should have figured this out. It was a clear indication on the intelligence. But we have to be careful of that in the commission and we have to make sure that we understand the environment in which the policy-maker is working.

BROWN: Governor, do you think it is possible that, in both administrations, they were so -- they were too concerned with failing, a repeat of the Iranian hostage rescue attempt, for example, that they were too afraid of failing to try it?

KEAN: Well, they were timid and I think that's part of it, is a couple of those failures. They had a number of failed efforts on intelligence in the past and special operations. And that made them gun-shy.

But, on the other hand, these were mud enclosures in many cases, these terrorist camps where they thought they had bin Laden. They only -- in most case, had only one witness who had seen him, so they were going on one source. And they didn't know how long he was going to stay. And they were talking about firing in cruise missiles, which take three or four hours to get to their target.

And some of those targets were near mosques or near schools. And they were looking at, what happens if we miss him and hit a school? What is going to be the worldwide repercussions of that? So there were very serious concerns that people had in both administrations.

BROWN: And, Congressman, just going back to something you said earlier, I wonder if all of us, journalists, citizens, all of us, expect sometimes too much of policy-makers. We expect perfection when perfection is beyond our grasp.

HAMILTON: I think that's an important paint. The policy-makers today, particularly those are at the very top level of policy-making, are just besieged with problems, with people who want to talk to them, with intelligence coming in from all over the world, stacks and stacks of files, all of which are labeled urgent. And making policy in that environment is a lot tougher than it looks.

And looking back, it's always easy to say, oh, here's a piece of intelligence. My goodness, those folks should have caught that and reacted immediately. But the fact is that, on that given day, they were not receiving just one piece of intelligence about the Taliban or about the terrorists. But they were receiving 50 or 60 or 100 intelligence messages.

We have to have some appreciation for that. It is important that we try to understand the flow of information going to the policy-maker in this critical period. And then we're going to have to make a judgment, did they, in fact, give this information coming to them sufficient priority, sufficient urgency?

BROWN: And, Congressman, just to finish that idea, if you will, can we say now, at this point -- and I know you all are loathe to reach broad conclusions at this point -- that, at the very least, the intelligence was inadequate?

KEAN: Oh, I think the -- look, we failed here. The No. 1 responsibility of government is to keep the people of this nation safe. We didn't do that.

I don't think you can blink or talk away by some fancy rhetoric that fundamental failure. And we have to try to put our finger on it as to why we failed and to see how we can correct it. And we will take advantage, as we have to, of hindsight to do that. But I think, by doing that, we will fulfill our mandate to tell a story of 9/11 fairly and accurately, factually as we can, and of course to make recommendations to make people more secure.

BROWN: And, Governor, just a final question for you tonight. Are you concerned at all that these public hearings sound a little more partisan than you might be comfortable with?

KEAN: I've always been concerned about that. I think it's the one thing that could lead the American people to not have confidence in our final result.

We've got to be not five Republicans and five Democrats. We've got to be 10 Americans. This is serious for partisan politics. And we have really got to make a report that is bipartisan and nonpartisan. And I think the commissioners are dedicated to that. In this election year, we have got to be particularly cautious. And what I'd love to see and we're going to do our best to do is a unanimous report, because, if we can do that, then our recommendations are going to have real impact.

BROWN: I hope you get there. I know you have a busy and interesting day tomorrow. We appreciate your time tonight. Thank you both for your patience.

KEAN: Thank you.

HAMILTON: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Richard Clarke, who has created so much fuss this week, testifies before the commission tomorrow and it will be an interesting day, to say the least.

Coming up next, segment seven and the question of whether a debt to society can ever be paid in full. It's Jim Minder's story, a man who went from bank robber to boardroom.

A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: This is both a great story and a sad one. The theme is simple and universal, as old as Greek tragedy and as fresh as the headlines.

The headline in this case concerns a man, the chairman of a gun company, Smith & Wesson. He has a past, an armed robber. And that past catches up with him at a ripe old age, after serving his time, after making amends, after a life well lived. And because this country incarcerates so many people and because so many get out, 600,000 expected to this year, his story isn't alone. It is also perhaps their story foretold.

In this case, it's reported by NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He's now 74, a quiet family man, retired professional. It is hard to believe that this Jim Minder is the same as this Jim Minder, a practiced criminal by the age of 20, shoplifting at 10, stealing cars as a teen. And by the time he was in college at the University of Michigan in the early 1950s, majoring in sociology and journalism, with a minor in armed robberies.

JIM MINDER, FORMER CHAIRMAN, SMITH & WESSON: Oh, there was a lot of them, supermarkets, drugstores. Drug marts were favorites, because they were so easy. Banks.

NISSEN: Banks that Minder held up with a sawed-off shotgun. One bank heist in Dearborn, Michigan, in the spring of 1954 netted Minder and an accomplice almost $55,000 before an FBI sting netted them. Minder served a series of sentences in state and federal penitentiaries, all of which failed to reform him. He'd be paroled, go back to the University of Michigan, go back to armed robbery.

MINDER: I'd go to school. Then I'd go out and commit robberies in the evening. It becomes habitual and it's fairly easy to do. So you do them. And you don't consider the consequences. You should, but you don't.

NISSEN: The consequences of Minder's actions didn't hit him until he was in his early 30s and back behind bars. To his surprise, a few of his professors at the University of Michigan stayed in contact, encouraged him to take correspondence courses and urged him how to rethink how he was using his intelligence, his energies.

MINDER: They said, you know, this is ridiculous. What are you doing with your life?

NISSEN: That question finally hit home.

MINDER: You have to make up your own mind that you're not going to do this anymore. And I did.

NISSEN: After his release from prison in 1969, Minder finished at the University of Michigan, went on for a Master's degree in social work. Then he and his new wife, Susan Davis, started a nonprofit, now known as Spectrum Human Services for needy, neglected at-risk children in Michigan.

MINDER: I wanted to give back. And I really felt that I could really do something for kids, so the kids wouldn't be going through what I went through.

NISSEN: Minder's past gave him special credibility with those in Spectrum's juvenile program. Like Minder, many had criminal records, had used guns.

MINDER: We had zip guns. We had pistols. You name it, we had it.

NISSEN: Over and over, Minder told them that there was another way to get what they wanted.

MINDER: Education is the escape. It's the escape from poverty. It's the escape from so many different things.

NISSEN: By the time Minder and his wife retired in 1997, Spectrum was serving 1,000 children a day. The state of Michigan, which had incarcerated Minder in his 20s, gave him a proclamation of appreciation.

MINDER: If I helped one child somewhere change his life, I've accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.

NISSEN: Jim Minder's story doesn't end there. He and his wife retired to Arizona. A family friend, Mitch Saltz, knowing of Minder's work with at-risk kids, approached him about investing in a gun safety device he developed.

MINDER: They came up with a hammer which you could take out of a gun and hang it on your keychain, you know. And I thought it was just an absolutely brilliant idea for the safety of children.

NISSEN: Minder joined the board of Saltz' new company, Saf-T- Hammer. When Saf-T-Hammer acquired Smith & Wesson in 2001, Minder joined the new board and early in January was made its chairman.

(on camera): Did you disclose your record to the Smith & Wesson board?

MINDER: No.

NISSEN: Why?

MINDER: It just never came up. Nobody asked. And it was just so far in the past, I never mentioned it.

NISSEN (voice-over): His decades-old record would soon come to very harsh light. In February, "The Arizona Republic" ran an expose, detailing Minder's early years of crime and punishment. Minder was engulfed in what calls a firestorm of criticism, outrage.

MINDER: I think there's a certain segment of the population that has this attitude, once a bad apple, always a bad apple.

NISSEN: Minder felt compelled to resign as chairman, although he remains a board member. He's outwardly stoic about all that's happened.

MINDER: I've always said, let's move on. The past is the past and there's nothing I can do about it.

NISSEN: Yet, he cannot help but wonder, can an ex-offender's debt to society ever be fully paid? Will nothing work to put his past behind him, not time served, time since, service since?

(on camera): Is this the land of the second chance?

MINDER: I don't know. I don't know. From what I've seen, I don't think so. I'm sorry to say that, but I don't think so.

NISSEN (voice-over): Beth Nissen, CNN, Scottsdale, Arizona.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK. Time to check morning papers from around the country.

And just I hate making excuses, OK? I really don't believe in excuses, but I'm a little jet-lagged. I could fall asleep at any moment. This may not be as seamless as it normally is. Of course, it isn't.

"International Herald Tribune," published by "The New York Times" in Paris, leads it off. Everybody pretty much leading the same, OK? So it's just interesting to see the words they use. "Officials Pressed on Terror Response. Both Ex-Clinton and Bush Aides Face Tough Questions in Public 9/11 Hearing." That's "The International Herald Tribune."

Here is how "The Richmond Times-Dispatch" leads it. "Report Asserts U.S. Lagged on Terror Fight." Madeleine Albright and Secretary of State Powell the two pictures there on the front page of that paper. There was something -- oh, yes, nice little local story down at the bottom. "City Firm's Turf Going to Grease. GreenTech, Inc., Will Provide Grass For Main Olympic Field." So that makes the front page of "The Richmond Times-Dispatch."

"Philadelphia Inquirer." "U.S. Had bin Laden In its Sights in the '90s, 9/11 Panel Critical of Efforts to Stop Terror," pictures of a number of the relevant witness there as well.

"The Detroit News" does not -- it's not even on the front page -- oh, no, it is, down at the bottom. "U.S. Considered Taliban Overthrow." But that's not the lead. There's a Ford story. I never understood those stories. "Medicare Fund May Go Broke By 2019." That scares the dickens out of me. I expect to be around in 2019. But over here, I love this story. "Harwell Gives $2 Million to Library." That's Ernie Harwell, one of the greatest baseball announcers of all time. And he apparently socked away some dough, too. So good for Mr. Harwell. God bless him. He's a wonderful man, a great interview we did with him a while back.

"The Oregonian" out in Portland, Oregon. "9/11 Panel Faults Clinton, Bush. Aides To Both Say International Help to Hit Al Qaeda Was Out of Reach." Pretty straight ahead there.

"The Atlanta Journal-Constitution." "9/11 Blame Scattered. Bush, Clinton Teams Swear They Did All They Could."

Those are the headlines, except for "The Chicago Sun-Times," which is always too far down at the bottom, isn't it, when you do morning papers? It is for me. The weather tomorrow in Chicago is "rumbly."

(CHIMES)

My, I missed that little thing there, whatever that was.

Soledad has a look at what's coming up on "AMERICAN MORNING."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Aaron.

Tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING," another milestone for NASA and the little Mars rover, as another major discovery on the red planet. NASA's top scientist for Mars and the moon, Jim Garvin, tells us what his team is learning and why what we know of Mars will never again be the same.

That's CNN tomorrow, 7:00 a.m. Eastern -- Aaron, back to you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Thank you, Ms. O'Brien.

Good to see you all again. Off tomorrow to Washington for a fancy-dancy dinner, but we'll see you again on Thursday.

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


Aired March 23, 2004 - 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.
It's nice to be back and it will be even better to be awake. We spend a fair amount of time tonight looking at the work of the 9/11 commission. They brought out the heavy hitters to testify about the events leading up to the attacks today.

At times, the tone was sharp. At times, it seemed more partisan than we expected or hoped and, at times, it seemed that everyone seemed to believe they got it and no one really knew how to deal with it. Even now we may not.

Military power has its limits. The incubators of terror, the hopelessness of so many in so many places cannot be bombed away. We have to figure out that part as well or we'll revisit Madrid and Bali and Turkey and New York and Washington, D.C. many times over.

The public hearings begin the program and they start the whip and the whip begins with the nuts and bolts and a headline from CNN's David Ensor -- David.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, there were tough questions from the commissioners for the witnesses today and there were some revelations, including that the CIA believes it may have had Osama bin Laden in its sights at least three times but the evidence wasn't quite good enough. They didn't pull the trigger.

BROWN: David, thank you. We'll get to you at the top tonight.

How is this playing out at the White House? Our Senior White House Correspondent John King with us tonight, John the headline.

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the president emphatically today said had he had any information at all that the attacks were coming he would have done something to stop it but there is a credibility test underway in those hearings by the 9/11 commission, some suggesting perhaps the president wasn't looking hard enough for the clues.

BROWN: John, thank you.

Finally, to Israel and growing repercussions from the assassination of the Hamas leader. CNN's Paula Hancocks in Jerusalem, so Paula a headline from you tonight.

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, Israel is threatening to kill the entire leadership of Hamas and also suggesting the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat could be on the hit list in the near future. The same day a new leader emerges for Hamas, a hard-liner who has rejected peace with Israel -- Aaron.

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

Also coming up on the program tonight, we'll preview the next step in the Kobe Bryant case as his accuser takes the witness stand tomorrow and will have to testify about her sexual history.

Segment 7 tonight is the story of Jim Minder who went from bank robber to board room but who maybe never could quite live down his past.

And, after almost two weeks in the Caribbean, or somewhere, the rooster returns tanned, rested and ready for a dose of your morning papers for Wednesday. That ought to be an experience tonight, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin with the 9/11 hearings. Until today, much of the work of the 9/11 commission has been behind closed doors. We got a public look today, a parade of current and former government officials.

Some very big names faced the commission and the television cameras and the country and some very tough questions the focus on why they did not do more to stop al Qaeda years before the 9/11 attacks. It all sounds so simple now.

Here again, CNN's David Ensor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR (voice-over): The commission staff director told of at least three different times the CIA thought it had Osama bin Laden in its sights, once in particular at a desert camp in Afghanistan in February of '99 where bin Laden stayed for a week but there was a problem.

PHILLIP ZELIKOW, EXEC. DIR., 9/11 COMMISSION: According to CIA officials, policymakers were concerned about the danger that a strike might kill an Emirati prince or other senior officials who might be with bin Laden or close by.

ENSOR: The Clinton administration hesitated, Philip Zelikow says, because near bin Laden were senior men from the United Arab Emirates at a hunting camp and, before long, the opportunity was lost. Then Defense Secretary William Cohen insists there never was a clear shot at bin Laden.

WILLIAM COHEN, FMR. DEFENSE SECRETARY: If the director of Central Intelligence says we don't have it then you have to rely upon that.

ENSOR: The commissioners grilled both Clinton administration and Bush administration officials about why they didn't strike al Qaeda earlier.

BOB KERREY, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: The fact that it's unpopular, that it's difficult, that our allies are not necessarily with it shouldn't deter a president who believes that what we have is a serial killer on our hands.

SLADE GORTON (R), COMMISSION MEMBER: What made you think even when you took over and got these first briefings, given the history of al Qaeda and its successful attacks on Americans that we had the luxury even of seven months before we could make any kind of response much less three years?

ENSOR: Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said time for planning was needed that just firing off cruise missiles, as the Clinton administration did once, seemed pointless.

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: You can hit their terrorist training camps over and over and over and expend millions of dollars in U.S. weapons against targets that are dirt and tents and accomplish next to nothing.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: We were mostly accused of over reacting not under reacting and I believe we reacted appropriately and, as I said earlier, we would have acted more had we had actionable intelligence.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR: And that was something both the Clinton and Bush people said that they never had enough of actionable intelligence. Wednesday, the commission will get a chance to ask why not of George Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence -- Aaron.

BROWN: Did it seem to you, David, more partisan today in the way the questions were framed?

ENSOR: It's getting a little bit that way. This is, after all, an election year. There's an awful lot at stake here. You have the book out by Richard Clarke who was in both administrations and who is quite tough on the Bush administration.

You got the sense that the Republicans wanted to justify or explain the Bush administration a little bit and thee were some Democrats on the attack I would say.

BROWN: David, thank you.

Later in the program we'll talk to the two, the chairman and the vice-chairman of the commission on the program. That's coming up a little bit later.

Other news of day, tomorrow the commission holds a second day of public hearings. Among those testifying will be Richard Clarke, who David just mentioned, the former White House counterterrorism chief in both the Bush and the Clinton administrations. In his new book, which has set off a political firestorm, Mr. Clarke accuses the Bush administration of ignoring the al Qaeda threat before 9/11. Today, the president defended his record, while some of his top advisers were up before the commission.

Here's our Senior White House Correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): The president says there should be no doubt.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on September 11th, we would have acted.

KING: Mr. Bush also rebutted any suggestion he ignored or underestimated the terror threat.

BUSH: Whether it be a Hamas threat or an al Qaeda threat we take them very seriously in this administration.

KING: The president's early commitment to confronting al Qaeda is called into question in this new book by former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and is a major focus of the commission investigating the September 11th attacks.

Secretary of State Powell says the president compared the Clinton administration approach to al Qaeda as swatting flies and wanted more.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: He decided early on that we needed to be more aggressive in going after terrorists and especially al Qaeda.

KING: That more aggressive plan was ordered soon after Mr. Bush took office on his desk when the Twin Towers fell, too long in the making to some.

BOB KERREY (D), COMMISSION MEMBER: Why in God's name I got to wait eight months to get a plan?

KING: The hearings are in part a credibility test for the Bush White House as Clarke and others suggest the administration put al Qaeda on the back burner early on because it was obsessed with Iraq.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I've never been dismissive of al Qaeda and I think precisely because I think terrorism is such a serious problem.

KING: The administration says Clarke's sharp criticism now contrasts with his time on the National Security Council staff. In his resignation letter 14 months ago Clarke wrote: "It has been an enormous privilege to serve in the Bush White House" and wished the president "good fortune as you lead our country through the continuing threats."

And the White House says Clarke is wrong to claim the president signed a directive shortly after 9/11 ordering military options for war in Iraq.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This is another example of his revisionist history.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: You can be sure, Aaron, they are watching the hearings quite closely here at the White House. They insist from day one they took the al Qaeda threat seriously. They also insist that they did all they could based on the intelligence they had but they understand also another credibility test coming tomorrow when Richard Clarke testifies.

BROWN: Is there a sense that he -- he's already had his headline, if you will. He's had his moment Sunday and then the reaction yesterday. Are they actually concerned they could be hurt worse again tomorrow?

KING: Well, they understand, you were just talking about this with David Ensor, the White House believes some of the Democrats on this commission are being overly and openly partisan and they believe they will give Mr. Clarke a hearing to make his case.

The White House is hoping though that it has allies on the commission as well and they have provided information to the commission pointing out what they consider to be factual errors, judgment errors, other inaccuracies in the book. They might have a bit of a competition tomorrow to see who can pull what out of Mr. Clarke.

BROWN: Thank you, John, John King at the White House tonight.

The Israeli-Palestinian problem now and it is a problem with many faces tonight. Whatever Israel hopes to achieve in the long run with the assassination of a Hamas leader, the effect so far has been fairly grim.

Terrorists have launched rocket attacks into northern Israel from southern Lebanon and the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, has answered with helicopter fire on suspected terrorist camps as well as shelling from gunboats off the coast of Gaza.

Add to the mix the announcement today that the Israeli government now considers the entire Hamas leadership to be fair game and you've got the recipe for more of the same and preparation for something worse.

More now from CNN's Paula Hancocks.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HANCOCKS (voice-over): Israel on high alert ready for retaliation promised by Hamas for the assassination of its spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The sheikh's wife spoke of her grief and called for God to punish her husband's killers. Yassin's daughter-in-law says the killing of the sheikh won't end the jihad. On the contrary, it will only strengthen us and recruit more people for the holy war.

An increase in roadblocks, a tightening of checkpoints throughout the West Bank, Israeli Police are working double shifts, all leaves canceled.

GIL KLEIMAN, ISRAELI POLICE SPOKESMAN: We will probably be at this high alert status until the end of the month. This is something that we've seen unfortunately many times before and it's better to be prepared. The Israeli Police, along with the other security agencies, is prepared for whatever might come.

HANCOCKS: Weary resignation on the streets of Jerusalem, fear of attacks a reality for the last three and a half years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Day after, always here it is the day after something, big things or small things but the day after.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sure. We are always worried. It's not a new thing. Maybe we're going to be a bit more careful but it doesn't make us very happy.

HANCOCKS: An Israeli newspaper poll shows the majority of people here approve of the assassination. Sixty percent of those questioned support the killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Eight-one percent acknowledge the assassination will increase terror attacks against Israel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HANCOCKS: Pockets of violence have been breaking out overnight. We have clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in a southern Gaza refugee camp. Israeli gun ships firing at Gaza as well and unspecified and suspicious objects, Israeli military is telling us and also Israeli helicopters firing at guerrillas inside Lebanon. Two Palestinians, we're hearing, have been killed.

So, Israel wants to score a decisive victory ahead of its planned withdrawal from Gaza. They don't want to leave a power vacuum. They want to make sure they have weakened the power structure of Hamas.

Hamas, on the other hand, does have a new leader, Abdel Aziz al- Rantisi, a hard-liner who has rejected peace with Israeli in the past -- Aaron.

BROWN: Paula, thank you. It's kind of a bleak situation there tonight.

Ahead on the program, more on the uproar over what was and wasn't done by the Bush administration in the war on terror.

Then later, a look ahead at tomorrow's hearing in the Kobe Bryant case, the most sensitive of issues. The accuser will have to answer defense questions about her sexual past. And later, another step in finding out whether there was ever life on Mars. NASA finds exactly what it was looking for.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: One could argue that today's 9/11 hearings their significance notwithstanding had a hard act to follow. Over the past few days, Richard Clarke's new book has set off a public and very nasty battle between the former White House insider and the administration he once served.

The speed and the intensity of the White House response gave more fuel to the story. It also got us wondering, which brings us to CNN's Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Some challenges we've seen before and some were like no others.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): This is the heart of the president's case for reelection, his response to the worst attack on American soil in our history.

ANNOUNCER: Steady leadership in times of change.

RICHARD CLARKE, FORMER NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM DIRECTOR: The administration had done nothing about al Qaeda prior to 9/11, despite the fact that the CIA director was telling them virtually every day that there was a major threat.

GREENFIELD: That is why the charge by this man, who was the president's top terrorism aide, is a dagger pointed squarely at that heart. That is also why from the moment Richard Clarke went public with his argument that the White House dismissed the terrorism threat before 9/11 and took the country into a needless and dangerous war with Iraq. That is why the White House began an all out challenge to Clarke's credibility on every front.

First, the White House suggested that Clarke might never have had a conversation with the president when Bush all but ordered Clarke to prove Iraq had been involved in 9/11 but when reporters found witnesses to that exchange, the White House backed down.

DAN BARTLETT, WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: The fact of the matter is whether there was a meeting or not, and we'll take Dick Clarke at his word and say that there was a meeting, let's go to the substance of it.

GREENFIELD: Then came the question of motives. Clarke was trying to sell a lot of books.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: He is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book.

GREENFIELD: Condoleezza Rice charged that Clarke never voiced any discontents while in the White House.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to.

GREENFIELD: And Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio show Monday, offered two distinct arguments. First, that Clarke was not a significant player.

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He wasn't in the loop frankly on a lot of the stuff.

GREENFIELD: And second, he had a record of failure.

CHENEY: And the question that ought to be asked is, you know, what were they doing in those days when he was in charge of counterterrorism efforts?

GREENFIELD (on camera): For partisans this is a very easy story. Richard Clarke is either a brave whistle-blower speaking truth to power or an embittered careerist trying to sell books.

But there's another side to the story. What the Bush White House is doing looks a lot like what the last White House did when confronted by charges of a very different kind.

(voice-over): For nearly eight years every time someone surfaced to charge Bill Clinton with misbehavior of one kind or another the answer was to challenge the accuser's credibility. Jennifer Flowers had sold her story to the tabloids.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Because I was excited to meet the governor.

GREENFIELD: Paula Jones was trailer park trash looking to cash in the tool of right wing zealots. Monica Lewinsky was a troubled young woman, perhaps a stalker, until forensic evidence surfaced. Counsel Ken Starr was a cog in the vast right wing conspiracy machine obsessed with sex.

And, while the arguments in Clarke's case are obviously radically different, they involve quite literally matters of life and death, the response seems very familiar. Rally your supporters by challenging not just what the accuser says but who the accuser is.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: And one more example of apparently now the rule that you don't just play defense when you're attacked, you play offense, as John King told us the White House today showed Richard Clarke's resignation letter, which had kind of boilerplate praise.

When Kathleen Willey leveled her charges of misbehavior at Bill Clinton, one of the first things the Clinton White House did was to find a letter from Kathleen Willey showering praise upon Clinton. This is why they call politics a contact sport.

BROWN: And these 9/11 hearings and Mr. Clarke's appearance before them tomorrow, like it or not and for better or for worse, I'm inclined to think for worse, that's where we are, take place in the middle of a campaign.

GREENFIELD: And we saw that on both sides. We saw two Democratic members of the commission press the Bush people on why Condoleezza Rice wouldn't testify. We saw former Navy Secretary John Lehman trying to get Madeleine Albright to talk about a possible Iraq connection. Why didn't you look at this evidence?

And I know what I'm going to be watching tomorrow when Richard Clarke takes the stand. I've got a hunch that John Lehman is going to be armed with some of that White House material that John King talked about. It's going to be a very interesting confrontation.

BROWN: We'll watch that tomorrow. Good to see you tonight.

GREENFIELD: OK, welcome back.

BROWN: Thank you very much, Jeff Greenfield.

A couple more items from around the country that made news today, vivid testimony in the state trial of Terry Nichols, an FBI lawyer telling jurors that barrels and fuses were found at Terry Nichols' home shortly after the bombing in Oklahoma City. Both were similar to the materials used to make the actual bomb. Just to make it clear, the prosecutor brought the barrels into the courtroom for the jury to see.

Mr. Nichols is on trial for 161 counts of first degree murder. He's already been convicted and given a life sentence in federal court. Oklahoma seeks the death penalty.

Tomorrow the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case testing whether the Pledge of Allegiance, as it is now written, violates the Constitution. Bringing the case is a California atheist who objects to his daughter being forced to recite the pledge in school, specifically the phrase "under God." He calls it sectarian dogma. he Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agree, set off a political firestorm, which landed it all before the Supreme Court, the arguments tomorrow.

Tonight, the comeback of morning papers but that's a long way away.

Up next the Kobe Bryant case and tomorrow's testimony by his accuser, her sexual history.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: Two legal principles are set to collide, at least awkwardly coexist in a court tomorrow in the case of Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant. One is that the defendant has the right to confront his accuser.

The other is that in a case of rape you just can't go digging through the alleged victim's life with a backhoe looking for dirt. Generally, that's the rule but it is a legal line that moves and in this case it has some.

With us to explore the implications is defense attorney and legal analyst Bob Tarver, good to see you. All right, these rape shield laws, which is basically what we're dealing with here, grew out of a defense which essentially was, oh wait, wait, wait the victim is, you'll excuse the expression, a slut, right?

ROBERT TARVER, LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. They grew out of the old trashing the victim type of arguments.

BROWN: Yes.

TARVER: Going back over the sexual past and saying because she's been such a promiscuous person, she probably was promiscuous here and you can't believe what she says. Therefore, the law had to step in and legislatures came forward and said, look, we've got to protect these people.

BROWN: OK. And what the judge here has said is that in a closed hearing you can explore, I assume in a fairly limited way, this young woman's sexual history and we'll see if any of it is relevant?

TARVER: Precisely. The judge has taken the balance here. He said, look, we're going to let the defense do what they need to do. In other words, this is someone who is on trial for their life so they need to be able to explore this but we're going to do it behind closed doors so that no one is going to be able to hear what happens here and the only people privy to this will be the attorneys themselves.

BROWN: OK. That's the easy part.

TARVER: Yes.

BROWN: Now it gets a little harder. What makes relevant? What is relevant here about her sex life?

TARVER: Relevant here is if it ties into a fact, an issue that makes something more or less likely. So, the defense says, look, we've got this problem because we believe that she has had sex with other people.

She says that she has not had sex with other people and that the bruises and tearing that she has are the result of Kobe Bryant.

The defense says we need to be able to check this out. We need to be able to see whether or not someone else is responsible. If she's had sex with other people over this period of time, well then that could be terrifically relevant.

BROWN: Well, OK. The fact that someone had sex yesterday has arguably nothing to do with whether they were raped today.

TARVER: Precisely, however, when you argue that the indicia or the sign of that struggle are the bruises and cuts, et cetera, then the defense is entitled, this judge says, to be able to see whether or not those bruises could have come from Kobe Bryant or from repeated episodes of sex with other people.

BROWN: The defense put out a kind of tantalizing notion that shortly after the alleged rape the woman had sex again, the relevancy there being, if it is in fact true?

TARVER: Well, at least part of the relevancy is going to be that a person traumatized by rape or by the specter of rape would not necessarily be engaging in sexual intercourse immediately thereafter.

They at least have some argumentative physical evidence to go along with this. Don't forget when they went to the hospital and her underwear were examined, it bore the semen of someone other than Kobe Bryant.

BROWN: How long after the incident did she go to the hospital and this DNA was extracted or the semen was extracted?

TARVER: She apparently went the next day. As I understand it from my days of trying these types of cases, semen stays in underwear in an active state at least for 72 hours or thereabout.

BROWN: So, it doesn't answer, it doesn't say she had sex the next day?

TARVER: It doesn't say she had sex the next day. It doesn't say exactly when she had sex.

BROWN: If you were a betting man would you bet that some of the sexual history will come into the trial itself?

TARVER: I bet an awful lot of the sexual history is going to come into the trial itself and not just because it's Kobe Bryant but because this is a young man that's on trial for his life.

And when you're dealing with something that important I think a judge is going to say because they're alleging that this has a real tie-in and they can show it here, unlike other cases, I think the judge is going to say let it in.

BROWN: If there was not the semen in the underwear, would that change the likelihood that this testimony would come in?

TARVER: I really think it does and you got to remember judges are human beings. When they see something like the evidence here of semen in the underwear, they're going to start to question and say well perhaps we need to go a little bit further here. Perhaps a jury needs to be able to hear the whole story. BROWN: Anyway, this all starts to play out in Colorado tomorrow. It's nice to see you tonight.

TARVER: Good to see you too.

BROWN: Thank you.

Still to come on the program, NASA's eureka moment finding the key ingredient for life on Mars, water.

Around the world and back home this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Remember your grade school science players, when Mrs. Rodenbaur (ph) took a drop of pond water and put it on a slide and slid it under a microscope and gave the class a look and there were all those amoebas and paramecium and a whole bunch of other stuff, no doubt?

And "Why?" you might have asked her. And "Water," she might have said. And that might have been just enough for some of Mrs. Rodenbaur's young students to go off in search of water and maybe even life, through the lens of a microscope or years later at the end of a robot arm on Mars.

Here's CNN's miles O'Brien.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Scientists say they are surfing a tidal wave of evidence to back up their claim these rocks were laid down by water. Check out these ripples. Researchers say the pattern shows clear evidence that water flowed over these rocks during their formative years.

Compare these images gathered by Opportunity's microscopic camera on Mars to this one from the Colorado River.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We also know that the early conditions on Earth were probably not that much different than the early conditions on Mars. So who's to say Mars didn't have its shot at this magic we call life?

O'BRIEN: But, wait, there's more. Scientists say the chemicals in these rocks, bromine and chlorine in particular, also are screaming out water. And these spheres, scientists are calling them blueberries, are apparently like hunks of ready-mixed concrete. You can't make them without water.

ED WEILER, NASA ASSOCIATION ADMIN.: This is a profound discover. It has profound implications for astrobiology. And I'd like to say, if you have an interest in searching for fossils on Mars, this is the first place you want to go.

O'BRIEN (on camera): Unfortunately, Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, are not equipped to see the microscopic fossils that might be there. That will have to wait for future missions. The next one is scheduled for launch next year.

It's very likely now it will be headed to the very same place. For planetary scientists, there may be no more desirable piece of real estate in the solar system.

Miles O'Brien, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Gasoline, not water, to begin our "Moneyline Roundup" tonight.

According to AAA, the average price of gas at the pump has hit a record high of $1.738 a gallon. Just how much you pay, we're not sure, but it's a lot, a lot higher in places like New York and L.A. Blame the shortage on capacity at refineries or blame OPEC or blame SUVs. In any case, get ready for prices to climb even higher come summer.

The recording industry is at it again, filing lawsuits against 500 more alleged serial music downloaders. Of the 500, at least 80 are located at colleges and universities. That's all, huh?

Wall Street had a queasy day, up in the morning, down by closing time, nervous all day long for a number of reasons, foreign and domestic. It's been nasty on Wall Street of late, hasn't it?

Still ahead on the program, we go back to the 9/11 Commission story. We talk to the commission leaders, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, about what they thought of today's session.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A lot of them today.

It's fair to say the investigation into the 9/11 attacks has faced considerable obstacles from day one. The White House initially opposed the creation of an independent commission. There have been stops and starts ever since.

For a while, it looked like the commissioners might not get the extension they said they needed to finish their work. You remember that flap. They did get the extension and that worked continued today, a significant day for the commission.

Earlier, we spoke with the two men in charge, former Governor of New Jersey Republican Tom Kean and Former Indiana Congressman Democrat Lee Hamilton.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Governor, let me begin with you. What was the most telling thing you heard today?

THOMAS KEAN, CHAIRMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION: Oh, I think it was a combination of things. It wasn't just simply one thing. It was the whole story, really, of how two administrations tried to wrestle both diplomatically and militarily with the problem with terrorism and how you get al Qaeda and whether you can capture or kill bin Laden and the methodologies they tried. And, in all cases, of course, they failed.

BROWN: Congressman, as I was watching the hearings today, I jotted down on a notepad: We got it. We just didn't know what to do about it. Is that a fair characterization?

LEE HAMILTON, VICE-CHAIRMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION: Yes, I think it is a fair characterization, but you have to put that characterization in context.

The policy-maker -- and it came across very clearly today -- is confronted with a lot of intelligence coming at him or her, a lot of events going on in the world that he or she is trying to keep up with. And it's quite clear that terrorism was one of many threats to the national security of the United States.

Looking back, from our perspective, using hindsight, it's easy to say that, well, they should have figured this out. It was a clear indication on the intelligence. But we have to be careful of that in the commission and we have to make sure that we understand the environment in which the policy-maker is working.

BROWN: Governor, do you think it is possible that, in both administrations, they were so -- they were too concerned with failing, a repeat of the Iranian hostage rescue attempt, for example, that they were too afraid of failing to try it?

KEAN: Well, they were timid and I think that's part of it, is a couple of those failures. They had a number of failed efforts on intelligence in the past and special operations. And that made them gun-shy.

But, on the other hand, these were mud enclosures in many cases, these terrorist camps where they thought they had bin Laden. They only -- in most case, had only one witness who had seen him, so they were going on one source. And they didn't know how long he was going to stay. And they were talking about firing in cruise missiles, which take three or four hours to get to their target.

And some of those targets were near mosques or near schools. And they were looking at, what happens if we miss him and hit a school? What is going to be the worldwide repercussions of that? So there were very serious concerns that people had in both administrations.

BROWN: And, Congressman, just going back to something you said earlier, I wonder if all of us, journalists, citizens, all of us, expect sometimes too much of policy-makers. We expect perfection when perfection is beyond our grasp.

HAMILTON: I think that's an important paint. The policy-makers today, particularly those are at the very top level of policy-making, are just besieged with problems, with people who want to talk to them, with intelligence coming in from all over the world, stacks and stacks of files, all of which are labeled urgent. And making policy in that environment is a lot tougher than it looks.

And looking back, it's always easy to say, oh, here's a piece of intelligence. My goodness, those folks should have caught that and reacted immediately. But the fact is that, on that given day, they were not receiving just one piece of intelligence about the Taliban or about the terrorists. But they were receiving 50 or 60 or 100 intelligence messages.

We have to have some appreciation for that. It is important that we try to understand the flow of information going to the policy-maker in this critical period. And then we're going to have to make a judgment, did they, in fact, give this information coming to them sufficient priority, sufficient urgency?

BROWN: And, Congressman, just to finish that idea, if you will, can we say now, at this point -- and I know you all are loathe to reach broad conclusions at this point -- that, at the very least, the intelligence was inadequate?

KEAN: Oh, I think the -- look, we failed here. The No. 1 responsibility of government is to keep the people of this nation safe. We didn't do that.

I don't think you can blink or talk away by some fancy rhetoric that fundamental failure. And we have to try to put our finger on it as to why we failed and to see how we can correct it. And we will take advantage, as we have to, of hindsight to do that. But I think, by doing that, we will fulfill our mandate to tell a story of 9/11 fairly and accurately, factually as we can, and of course to make recommendations to make people more secure.

BROWN: And, Governor, just a final question for you tonight. Are you concerned at all that these public hearings sound a little more partisan than you might be comfortable with?

KEAN: I've always been concerned about that. I think it's the one thing that could lead the American people to not have confidence in our final result.

We've got to be not five Republicans and five Democrats. We've got to be 10 Americans. This is serious for partisan politics. And we have really got to make a report that is bipartisan and nonpartisan. And I think the commissioners are dedicated to that. In this election year, we have got to be particularly cautious. And what I'd love to see and we're going to do our best to do is a unanimous report, because, if we can do that, then our recommendations are going to have real impact.

BROWN: I hope you get there. I know you have a busy and interesting day tomorrow. We appreciate your time tonight. Thank you both for your patience.

KEAN: Thank you.

HAMILTON: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Richard Clarke, who has created so much fuss this week, testifies before the commission tomorrow and it will be an interesting day, to say the least.

Coming up next, segment seven and the question of whether a debt to society can ever be paid in full. It's Jim Minder's story, a man who went from bank robber to boardroom.

A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: This is both a great story and a sad one. The theme is simple and universal, as old as Greek tragedy and as fresh as the headlines.

The headline in this case concerns a man, the chairman of a gun company, Smith & Wesson. He has a past, an armed robber. And that past catches up with him at a ripe old age, after serving his time, after making amends, after a life well lived. And because this country incarcerates so many people and because so many get out, 600,000 expected to this year, his story isn't alone. It is also perhaps their story foretold.

In this case, it's reported by NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He's now 74, a quiet family man, retired professional. It is hard to believe that this Jim Minder is the same as this Jim Minder, a practiced criminal by the age of 20, shoplifting at 10, stealing cars as a teen. And by the time he was in college at the University of Michigan in the early 1950s, majoring in sociology and journalism, with a minor in armed robberies.

JIM MINDER, FORMER CHAIRMAN, SMITH & WESSON: Oh, there was a lot of them, supermarkets, drugstores. Drug marts were favorites, because they were so easy. Banks.

NISSEN: Banks that Minder held up with a sawed-off shotgun. One bank heist in Dearborn, Michigan, in the spring of 1954 netted Minder and an accomplice almost $55,000 before an FBI sting netted them. Minder served a series of sentences in state and federal penitentiaries, all of which failed to reform him. He'd be paroled, go back to the University of Michigan, go back to armed robbery.

MINDER: I'd go to school. Then I'd go out and commit robberies in the evening. It becomes habitual and it's fairly easy to do. So you do them. And you don't consider the consequences. You should, but you don't.

NISSEN: The consequences of Minder's actions didn't hit him until he was in his early 30s and back behind bars. To his surprise, a few of his professors at the University of Michigan stayed in contact, encouraged him to take correspondence courses and urged him how to rethink how he was using his intelligence, his energies.

MINDER: They said, you know, this is ridiculous. What are you doing with your life?

NISSEN: That question finally hit home.

MINDER: You have to make up your own mind that you're not going to do this anymore. And I did.

NISSEN: After his release from prison in 1969, Minder finished at the University of Michigan, went on for a Master's degree in social work. Then he and his new wife, Susan Davis, started a nonprofit, now known as Spectrum Human Services for needy, neglected at-risk children in Michigan.

MINDER: I wanted to give back. And I really felt that I could really do something for kids, so the kids wouldn't be going through what I went through.

NISSEN: Minder's past gave him special credibility with those in Spectrum's juvenile program. Like Minder, many had criminal records, had used guns.

MINDER: We had zip guns. We had pistols. You name it, we had it.

NISSEN: Over and over, Minder told them that there was another way to get what they wanted.

MINDER: Education is the escape. It's the escape from poverty. It's the escape from so many different things.

NISSEN: By the time Minder and his wife retired in 1997, Spectrum was serving 1,000 children a day. The state of Michigan, which had incarcerated Minder in his 20s, gave him a proclamation of appreciation.

MINDER: If I helped one child somewhere change his life, I've accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.

NISSEN: Jim Minder's story doesn't end there. He and his wife retired to Arizona. A family friend, Mitch Saltz, knowing of Minder's work with at-risk kids, approached him about investing in a gun safety device he developed.

MINDER: They came up with a hammer which you could take out of a gun and hang it on your keychain, you know. And I thought it was just an absolutely brilliant idea for the safety of children.

NISSEN: Minder joined the board of Saltz' new company, Saf-T- Hammer. When Saf-T-Hammer acquired Smith & Wesson in 2001, Minder joined the new board and early in January was made its chairman.

(on camera): Did you disclose your record to the Smith & Wesson board?

MINDER: No.

NISSEN: Why?

MINDER: It just never came up. Nobody asked. And it was just so far in the past, I never mentioned it.

NISSEN (voice-over): His decades-old record would soon come to very harsh light. In February, "The Arizona Republic" ran an expose, detailing Minder's early years of crime and punishment. Minder was engulfed in what calls a firestorm of criticism, outrage.

MINDER: I think there's a certain segment of the population that has this attitude, once a bad apple, always a bad apple.

NISSEN: Minder felt compelled to resign as chairman, although he remains a board member. He's outwardly stoic about all that's happened.

MINDER: I've always said, let's move on. The past is the past and there's nothing I can do about it.

NISSEN: Yet, he cannot help but wonder, can an ex-offender's debt to society ever be fully paid? Will nothing work to put his past behind him, not time served, time since, service since?

(on camera): Is this the land of the second chance?

MINDER: I don't know. I don't know. From what I've seen, I don't think so. I'm sorry to say that, but I don't think so.

NISSEN (voice-over): Beth Nissen, CNN, Scottsdale, Arizona.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK. Time to check morning papers from around the country.

And just I hate making excuses, OK? I really don't believe in excuses, but I'm a little jet-lagged. I could fall asleep at any moment. This may not be as seamless as it normally is. Of course, it isn't.

"International Herald Tribune," published by "The New York Times" in Paris, leads it off. Everybody pretty much leading the same, OK? So it's just interesting to see the words they use. "Officials Pressed on Terror Response. Both Ex-Clinton and Bush Aides Face Tough Questions in Public 9/11 Hearing." That's "The International Herald Tribune."

Here is how "The Richmond Times-Dispatch" leads it. "Report Asserts U.S. Lagged on Terror Fight." Madeleine Albright and Secretary of State Powell the two pictures there on the front page of that paper. There was something -- oh, yes, nice little local story down at the bottom. "City Firm's Turf Going to Grease. GreenTech, Inc., Will Provide Grass For Main Olympic Field." So that makes the front page of "The Richmond Times-Dispatch."

"Philadelphia Inquirer." "U.S. Had bin Laden In its Sights in the '90s, 9/11 Panel Critical of Efforts to Stop Terror," pictures of a number of the relevant witness there as well.

"The Detroit News" does not -- it's not even on the front page -- oh, no, it is, down at the bottom. "U.S. Considered Taliban Overthrow." But that's not the lead. There's a Ford story. I never understood those stories. "Medicare Fund May Go Broke By 2019." That scares the dickens out of me. I expect to be around in 2019. But over here, I love this story. "Harwell Gives $2 Million to Library." That's Ernie Harwell, one of the greatest baseball announcers of all time. And he apparently socked away some dough, too. So good for Mr. Harwell. God bless him. He's a wonderful man, a great interview we did with him a while back.

"The Oregonian" out in Portland, Oregon. "9/11 Panel Faults Clinton, Bush. Aides To Both Say International Help to Hit Al Qaeda Was Out of Reach." Pretty straight ahead there.

"The Atlanta Journal-Constitution." "9/11 Blame Scattered. Bush, Clinton Teams Swear They Did All They Could."

Those are the headlines, except for "The Chicago Sun-Times," which is always too far down at the bottom, isn't it, when you do morning papers? It is for me. The weather tomorrow in Chicago is "rumbly."

(CHIMES)

My, I missed that little thing there, whatever that was.

Soledad has a look at what's coming up on "AMERICAN MORNING."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Aaron.

Tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING," another milestone for NASA and the little Mars rover, as another major discovery on the red planet. NASA's top scientist for Mars and the moon, Jim Garvin, tells us what his team is learning and why what we know of Mars will never again be the same.

That's CNN tomorrow, 7:00 a.m. Eastern -- Aaron, back to you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Thank you, Ms. O'Brien.

Good to see you all again. Off tomorrow to Washington for a fancy-dancy dinner, but we'll see you again on Thursday.

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

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