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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Hurricane Frances Plods Slowly Toward Florida Coast; President Clinton To Undergo Bypass Surgery; Hundreds Dead In Russian School

Aired September 03, 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. Good to be back at our normal time.
The Friday before Labor Day should offer nothing more newsy than a story on travel plans and nothing more grim than the gentle depression that comes from summer's end, not tonight, not nearly.

In Florida, it is about waiting and hoping. Frances is doing a slow walk toward the coast.

In New York in a hospital there, it is about waiting and hoping also. Former President Bill Clinton waiting for heart surgery, hoping it goes well and, no doubt, doing some thinking about mortality, his own.

And, in Russia, a truly unspeakable horror what someone today called their 9/11, 200 dead, many of them children, hostages of yet another group with a cause but no soul, no heart and no decency.

Any one of these stories could have well led the program tonight or started the whip. We'll begin with the storm in Melbourne, Florida tonight CNN's Anderson Cooper, so Anderson a headline from you.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, as you said, the east coast of Florida is waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for Hurricane Frances. This storm has slowed. It has weakened but it still threatens a powerful punch -- Aaron.

BROWN: Anderson, thank you. We'll get to you quickly tonight.

On to Orlando where there's a been-there-done-that-and-don't- want-to-do-it-again feeling, CNN's Jonathan Freed on that side of things, so Jon a headline from you.

JONATHAN FREED, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, people here in Orlando are calling in mind blowing. That's the word that they're using. They say it does not make sense to them that they're being threatened by another storm so soon after Charley.

BROWN: Jonathan, logic doesn't have a whole lot to do with the weather, does it? Thank you.

Next to southern Russia where the hostage standoff at a local school ended horribly today, CNN's Matthew Chance is there, Matt a headline tonight. MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Aaron. In a day of confusion and tragedy here in Beslan as that three-day hostage siege around School No. 1 comes to a violent and bloody end. Hundreds are killed and injured. The president of Russia has come to Beslan within the last hour or so to show his sympathy for the people of this town in their time of grief.

BROWN: Matt, thank you. We'll get to you pretty quick tonight too.

And back home former President Clinton, as we said, faces heart surgery, bypass surgery, CNN's Elizabeth Cohen tonight on the story and the procedure and the headline.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: When Bill Clinton has his bypass surgery what can he expect in the operating room and in the recovery room and what lifelong changes will he need to make now that he has heart disease -- Aaron?

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

Also coming up on the program tonight, a unique and personal look at President Bush from the moments that make the man to the man that makes the moment the moment.

Also, the stories you will read about tomorrow. NEWSNIGHT will give you morning papers at the end of the hour. And this is Friday no matter what the news and so we'll throw in a tabloid or two as well, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight with the hurricane weakening a bit, slowing a bit but still big enough and bad enough, say the experts, to justify the largest evacuation in the history of the state of Florida.

Yesterday, they told us to expect landfall by tonight but hurricanes do what hurricanes do and this one is taking its sweet time, the better for people to get while the getting is good.

We begin tonight with CNN's Anderson Cooper.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GOV. JEB BUSH (R), FLORIDA: If you're on a barrier island or in a low-lying area and you haven't left, now's the time to do so.

COOPER (voice-over): As Hurricane Frances battered the Bahamas, Florida braced for the huge storm's arrival sometime on Saturday. Already winds and waves are picking up along the Florida Coast.

Governor Jeb Bush worries that Frances could be even more destructive than Hurricane Charley, which did billions of dollars worth of damage just three weeks ago.

BUSH: The storm, unlike Charley and others in the past, will be with us for a long, long while because of its -- the speed. So, as it hits the coast, it will -- it will take a long while for it to leave Florida, which means that there's going to be a lot of rain, a lot of sustained winds over the inland areas of our state.

COOPER: The Federal Emergency Management Agency is bringing in three times as many relief workers as it did for Charley putting out calls for crews from as far away as Seattle. Despite the extensive preparations, FEMA's Michael Brown has this warning.

MICHAEL BROWN, FEMA DIRECTOR: Be prepared to take care of yourself. Hurricane Frances is so large that in some cases it might be several hours or a couple of days before first responders can get to you.

COOPER: Mandatory evacuation orders are in effect for parts of 16 Florida counties and voluntary evacuations are in effect for five more. They are the largest evacuations in state history. Officials say about two and a half million people live in those areas.

The American Red Cross preparing for its largest natural disaster response ever opened 82 shelters. Thousands of displaced residents have already moved in. Others were staying with friends or relatives and, still others were hitting the road.

There were long lines at gas stations and some ran out of fuel. Near Valdosta, Georgia, a few miles north of the Florida state line, Interstate 75 was jammed with vehicles.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're going to head east over to Charleston, South Carolina, wherever, out of the storm's path until we can go back home and try to get back home and see what's left of our house.

COOPER: I'm now in Melbourne Beach, which is a barrier island, about an hour or so drive south and east of Orlando. The storm was supposed to hit here directly, of course not much has happened as it was supposed to happen.

It has dropped two categories in the last 24 hours. It is now just a little bit above 110 miles an hour and it has slowed dramatically here. No one can really tell you when it is going to hit or exactly where. There is really nothing left to do but wait at this point -- Aaron.

BROWN: Tell me how since you got there the weather has changed.

COOPER: Yes, it's interesting. It's really only in the last hour that the winds have picked up noticeably. I mean today, frankly, was kind of a lovely day. It was brisk. The sun was shining. The sky was blue. We just had a smattering of rain.

The winds now are becoming a little bit uncomfortable but it is nothing like what one would expect. I haven't spent many -- I've been in like maybe three hurricanes in my life. It is not what one would expect from such a major hurricane.

BROWN: Yes. Well we've all chased these things in this business about this time of year. Be safe down there. Don't do anything nuts, OK? Anderson Cooper out in Florida tonight.

COOPER: OK.

BROWN: Got a whole crew of people down there and we wish them all safety tonight.

With us now from AccuWeather in State College, Pennsylvania is Joe Bastardi, who certainly has seen his share of hurricanes over the years. What can you tell us, what dare you tell us at this point about the track of the hurricane, where it will make land and when it will make land?

JOE BASTARDI, ACCUWEATHER.COM HURRICANE EXPERT: Well, first of all, we want, accuweather.com, we want to let people know there's nothing mysterious about hurricanes compared to blizzards or cold waves or any other weather event. They're a product of the weather pattern that produces them.

On our site, we've been talking for a couple days about this particular system slowing down and weakening. We said it would not hit like Charley, would be a weakening system but still a formidable and major hurricane.

A picture's worth a thousand words, Aaron. What's going on is this. You see all this cloudiness shooting out here to the northeast? It is pumping heat into this upper air high pressure system here and helping it to build and making this storm come to the northwest right now very, very slowly.

What is also going on, as you can see, the spread of clouds more and more into the northwest and what will happen is this upper high will get over top of it and eventually turn it into the Florida coast.

Even at that there's some uncertainty. We think it's late tomorrow night or tomorrow night into early Sunday morning. Landfall occurs between West Palm Beach and Cape Canaveral and it continues northwestward and then eventually on up into Georgia and flooding rains are going to be a major problem with this. So, we are taking a stand.

I want to explain one more little uncertainty. When it gets to the coast it may try to jog northward some because of the frictional effects of the coastline. What happens is the eye wall tries to stay out over the water for a little while.

So there are some uncertainties but there's no uncertainty about the end game with this storm. It's a formidable major hurricane and flooding is going to be a major problem all the way into the Tennessee Valley and lower Appalachians before it's all said and done.

BROWN: OK. Let me try and do a couple quick ones. If you can keep your answers quick that will help.

BASTARDI: Sure.

BROWN: Are we more concerned do you think at this point about the rain than we are the wind?

BASTARDI: No, we're equally concerned about both but once the wind dies down we'll be more concerned about the rain.

BROWN: And the wind dies down as it makes landfall?

BASTARDI: Well, yes, it dies down at the core but this storm is so big that the outside bands of the storm will remain stronger relative to the inside bands of the storm, so it may be the kind of thing where if the storm's near Orlando, they get wind gusts 60, 70 miles an hour but they're getting it at Jacksonville and perhaps Tampa also.

BROWN: And does the slowing that it's done tell us anything about the intensity of the storm of is that just the behavior of this particular storm and it's irrelevant to anything else?

BASTARDI: No. It is very relative. Big storms when they slow down, it's like having a horse that eaten all the grass in an area. It doesn't have anything more to eat so it can't eat anymore, has no more fuel.

What happens is it causes upwelling and the water cools underneath it so big storms that slow down weaken. The smaller storms will slow down because they're smaller to begin with. It doesn't affect them that much.

These hurricanes need to keep moving 12, 14 miles an hour and getting fresh warm water underneath them to continue to develop. They need a perfect situation to develop the perfect storm.

BROWN: And finally, as quickly as you can, is it likely that it will get stronger or not?

BASTARDI: It will get a little bit stronger probably over the Gulf Stream. We may see the pressure drop a little bit, the winds ramp up a little bit but the fact of the matter is that big part of the storm like that is what the nature, the characteristic of this storm is going to be, more like Isabel, the big storm, rather than Charley, the storm with just a solid punch in a small place.

BROWN: Joe, thank you, nice job tonight. Thank you very much over at AccuWeather in State College, Pennsylvania, right? Yes.

BASTARADI: Thanks a lot.

BROWN: On to southern Russia now and the ugliness there and this is truly the most devastating story of the day and in a while, a hostage taking by Islamic terrorists, some of them reportedly from Arab countries.

It certainly held every possibility of becoming a bloodbath and, today, it became just that. Could it have been even worse, numerically, absolutely. In every other way just by looking at the faces of the survivors it is hard to imagine how.

Julian Manion, a correspondent for Britain's ITN was just outside the school when the chaos and the carnage began.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIAN MANION, ITN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It wasn't clear how it began but by noon the battle to save the child hostages was underway. Russian armor moved towards the school and troops advanced down streets and alleyways.

Very soon the first of the children were freed as the sounds of fighting continued to echo around the town. The child hostages were in a state of shock after more than two days of real nightmare.

These children had been held at gunpoint with explosive charges placed among them. Some of them had apparently been used by the rebels as human shields. Now they were saved but there was still fear in their eyes.

Some were injured and were rushed away in ambulances and civilian cars. Many of them just looked lost and bewildered. One young girl I managed to talk to briefly gave a glimpse of the horror that she had survived.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): In the room where we were held, they had 18 big bombs hanging over us from the ceiling. One woman terrorist blew herself up with a suicide belt right among us and another one was pushed outside before she could do the same thing.

MANION: Then she was quickly led away. Some lucky children were immediately reunited with their families. And, as more and more hostages came out, many of them the parents and teachers who had also been held, there was utter pandemonium.

But while many were saved the battle at the school went on. The building was soon on fire and there were reports that part of the roof had fallen in. As the first bodies came out, the question was how many of the hostages had lost their lives?

Inside the school courtyard an extraordinary spectacle, Russian emergency teams trying to work while fighting continued to rage on the other side of the building where some of the Chechen rebels were still holding out. At times, gunfire was continuous.

Near us, a Russian soldier was hit. His friend helped him away to safety. Firemen worked to put out the blaze in the school gym where many of the hostages had been held and where the roof had collapsed.

Our cameraman Sasha Lamarkin (ph) managed to get inside. There appeared to be a large number of charred corpses lying in the ruins. There is unfortunately no doubt that many innocents died in the murderous chaos at the school.

Bodies are still arriving at the town's morgues and some have been identified. Already there is the sight that will become more frequent in the coming days of relatives in despair over the loss of loved ones. It's not yet clear if the fighting broke out by accident or if there could have been another way but it is certain that suicidal terrorists have delivered another savage blow to Russia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That was ITN's Julian Manion.

This all came undone, understatement, shortly after President Putin said his first priority was to ensure the safety of the hostages. It happened at the end of an especially bloody period by any standard.

In the space of two weeks, a pair of airliners blown from the sky, bombings in Moscow, then this complete with reports tonight coming in of the number of hostage takers, ten perhaps, were not Russian or Chechen but Arab, quite a bit for the Russian president to deal with tonight. He arrived at the scene earlier today.

For the latest we now go to CNN's Matthew Chance. Matthew, what, if anything, has President Putin said about this since it ended?

CHANCE: Well, he hasn't said a great deal because I think like the rest of the country he's in a good deal of shock himself. He's arrived here in Beslan to visit with local officials and to visit the hospitals, which have very much become the focus of the emergency operations at the moment with hundreds of people inside the hospitals, not just in Beslan but in the region.

The government has set aside 1,000 beds to treat the casualties, so that gives us an indication of the scale of this catastrophe, this small town in southern Russia.

But certainly, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, will face a great deal of angry questions from local people here. Many of whom we've spoken to blame the Russian government for allowing this to happen.

Vladimir Putin, as you say, had gone out publicly and said because of the fact there were children, so many of them inside the school which is right behind me here, he would do everything in his power to make sure this ended peacefully.

That, of course, couldn't have been further from what actually happened. It seems that hundreds of people were either killed or injured inside the school when whatever happened, happened, and an eight-hour gun battle, which involved explosions and the building catching fire and long running firefights between Russian security forces and these hostage takers inside resulted in so many deaths, so many injuries.

The latest casualty figures we have come to us from the Interfax News Agency, which is a semi-official news agency here, quoting local health officials saying at least 200 people have been killed, the Russian emergency situation's ministry saying that 704 people have been released from the siege but not necessarily unscathed. Many, if not all of those people, are actually being treated for injuries in these hospitals, some of them extremely serious. Some of them will require major surgery, so you can imagine the pandemonium inside these small hospitals in the region as they struggle to save more lives -- Aaron.

BROWN: OK. Matthew, let me run down a couple of things as quickly as you and I can do that. It is -- in reading the reports coming out of there, it is not clear to me what, in fact, caused the shooting to begin today but it sounds like there was some deal to allow bodies to be removed and, in the process of that, you'll forgive the expression, all hell broke loose but that wasn't necessarily started by the Russian government. Is that your understanding?

CHANCE: Yes. It's a very confused picture but from the people we've spoken to actually witnessed it we've managed to build up some kind of idea about what happened and, you're right.

It seemed that the negotiations were going pretty smoothly. There had been a sort of ceasefire agreement agreed to allow the Russian government to go in and to clear away some of the dead bodies that had been initially killed when the school was taken over.

They were in the process of doing that when suddenly these two enormous explosions rang out. Whether they were caused by the Russian government or whether they were caused by the rebels inadvertently setting off explosives they'd strewn around the classrooms and the playgrounds here we don't know.

What we do know is that in the chaos that resulted in these explosions a number of hostages tried to break for freedom. The rebels opened up on them, we're told. The Russian security forces returned fire.

A number of them were brought to safety but the gun battle that followed, as I say, lasted the best part of eight hours and in it most people inside the building were either killed outright or are now being treated for their injuries in the hospitals in the area -- Aaron.

BROWN: The last, setting aside this sounds almost ridiculous, setting aside the two airplane bombings there was the hostage taking at the theater back a year or so ago. That also ended badly with a tremendous loss of life at least. After that happened what did the Russian government do in Chechnya did they go in and try and wipe out rebel areas? Did they crack down? Were they what?

CHANCE: Well, I mean, you know, this is really an indictment of Vladimir Putin's strategy in Chechnya, which has been very hard line right away, since 1999 when he was brought to power.

What he's been doing there is cracking down in a very tough fashion on the Chechen rebels going in hard with the Russian military, doing whatever he can to really reassert Russian control there.

That's continued to this day but the very fact is that Chechnya itself is still a very unstable and insecure environment and it has produced this kind of virulent terrorist movement, which is producing these hostage sieges that we've witnessed over the course of the last few years.

The aircraft bombings possibly the work of Chechen terrorists as well, as well as the state of suicide bombings that have savaged the people of Moscow and other cities in Russia as well. And so, Vladimir Putin is facing a real challenge here to his actual strategy that he's been pursuing in the Chechen Republic -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, we'll watch and see what he does next. It doesn't sound like his personality to pull back, Matthew thank you, Matthew Chance tonight.

Ahead on the program, the president says he wants four more years. The former president gets candid about his health in an exclusive interview with Larry King.

Also, the race for the White House, President Bush, John Kerry turn up the heat as the campaign enters its final two months. We take a break.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Bill Clinton is in a New York City hospital tonight. He awaits bypass surgery on his heart. The former president, who is 58, had no history of heart disease, though his love of fast food and his battles with weight tempted fate.

In many respects he's lucky. He had warning signs. Many people don't. They simply have a heart attack and die. His symptoms started the other day, chest pains and shortness of breath.

He went to the doctor. The doctor sent him home and then they brought him back to the hospital near his home in Westchester, New York, north of the city. Those doctors performed more tests and, after those tests, they sent him to New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan early today and said surgery early next week.

Mr. Clinton, being Mr. Clinton, was on the phone with Larry King tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL CLINTON, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I feel really blessed, you know, because a lot of people who have a heart attack never get any advance warning.

As Dr. Frist said, or Senator Frist said, I've had some difficulty ever since I got out of the White House in getting my distance up and running and I just had a feeling a couple days ago I had to have it checked when I finally got some tightness in my chest and I hadn't done any exercise. It's the first time that ever happened to me and we did the angiogram and found out I had blockage that was too significant to open and put a stent in. We had to do the whole surgery, so I'm trying to get my head in the game.

KING: But you look so great. You'd lost so much weight. Didn't you think that if you had a problem, it was over?

CLINTON: Well, I know and I'd also been treating the high cholesterol and then I stopped taking that medicine because I got my cholesterol down low and I had in the past had a little blood pressure problem, which I treated and then I got it down.

But, you know, some of this is genetic and I may have done some damage in those years when I was too careless about what I ate, so for whatever reason I've got a problem and I got a chance to deal with it and I feel that I really got -- let me just say this. Republicans aren't the only people who want four more years here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That was former President Bill Clinton on the phone a short time ago with Larry King on "LARRY KING LIVE."

About 13 million people suffer from heart disease and, for many, surgery is the treatment. Thousands of bypass surgeries are performed every year and, while they're hardly routine, after all this is open heart surgery, the risk of death during those surgeries is quite low.

Here's CNN's Elizabeth Cohen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COHEN (voice-over): A few hours in the operating room, a few days in the hospital and several weeks of recovery at home. That's what Bill Clinton has in front of him.

First the surgery, after opening the chest cavity, doctors take healthy blood vessels, usually from the legs, and attach them to the heart allowing blood to bypass the blockages in diseased arteries.

The arteries rarely clog up again. In fact, 90 percent of people who have bypass surgery have clear arteries 20 years later. According to the American Heart Association, the death rate for this surgery for someone who's young and relatively healthy, like Clinton, is less than one percent. After the surgery...

DR. HARVEY MECHT, BETH ISRAEL MEDICAL CENTER: Typically he'll be out of bed by the next day, starting to walk a little bit and hopefully out the door of the hospital by four days, engaging in cardiac rehabilitation program and feeling pretty normal we would hope by about two months after the surgery.

COHEN: But the recovery doesn't end there. Doctors give bypass patients strict orders for the rest of their lives.

MECHT: He will have to be on an appropriate diet, lose weight, be physically active.

COHEN: The recovery isn't just physical.

DR. LAURENCE SPERLING, EMORY UNIV. SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: We know very well from scientific studies that it's not uncommon for individuals to suffer some degree of emotional trauma related to the procedure.

COHEN: Depression and anxiety set in sometimes after bypass surgery because the patient all of a sudden is faced with his or her mortality.

SPERLING: This is a major life event. This is a major wake-up call.

COHEN: And because patients like Clinton are told to reduce stress, sometimes Type A people like Clinton miss being in the center of things, on the go all the time and have a hard time following doctor's orders to slow down.

SPERLING: He's got to recognize that, number one right now has got to be his own health and recovery from this procedure.

COHEN: Former President Clinton is one of the lucky ones. Many people with sudden chest pain have heart attacks and die immediately. They don't get a second chance.

Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Dr. Roger Blumenthal is the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Prevention of Heart Disease, also the national spokesperson for the American Heart Association. He joins us from Baltimore tonight. We're pleased to have him with us.

I have a question about how this was diagnosed. He goes and sees the doctors and they presumably do some sort of stress test and they say, it looks OK, no problems there.

They send him home and then they decide or he decides to go back and they decide to do an angiogram. An angiogram is a pretty invasive procedure. Is this an unusual sequence that happened?

DR. ROGER BLUMENTHAL, JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL: Well, Aaron, first off I'm proud to represent the American Heart Association and thank you for the opportunity.

We really don't know if Mr. Clinton had a stress test on this particular occasion. We do know that he had significant symptoms of chest pain and perhaps some shortness of breath and the doctors did decide to do an angiogram, which gives us a roadmap of the heart arteries.

It was based on that roadmap of the hard arteries that it was decided that because of the number of blockages that the former president should undergo bypass surgery. If there had been one or two blockages, doctors would most likely have recommended angioplasty and a stenting procedure.

BROWN: Yes, just shorthand here, the angioplasty is they do the angiogram. They stick a tube basically up your leg through your chest into your heart and they inflate a balloon, more or less, and clear that artery out, right?

BLUMENTHAL: Exactly. The angioplasty is the balloon procedure to push open the fat and cholesterol that's clogging the artery and the stenting refers to a metal scaffolding that helps to hold the artery open. Approximately 80 to 90 percent of stenting procedures are very successful long term in keeping the artery open.

BROWN: But in this case that's not an option because there are -- is it that there are too many arteries that are clogged or that the arteries that are clogged are too clogged?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, we really don't know, Aaron.

BROWN: OK.

BLUMENTHAL: My suspicion is that there are multiple blockages, based on what we've heard, and doctors felt that it would be safer actually to do bypass surgery than try the multiple stenting procedures.

BROWN: Are doctors -- are cardiologists absolutely certain, for example, that stress is a factor?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, the American Heart Association has really led the research for many decades on this. And we know that the major risk factors for heart disease are increasing age, high blood pressure, increased cholesterol, cigarette smoking, poor dietary habits, diabetes, and lack of exercise.

Emotional stress is clearly a strong indicator that someone may be prone to developing heart disease. But it's been very hard to quantify how much stress really contributes to heart attacks.

BROWN: Yes.

And, finally, anybody -- a guy who was in -- like Mr. Clinton, who seems to be in pretty good health and very active, any reason why he can't go back to a normal, active life, assuming the surgery goes fine?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, you expect that Mr. Clinton will do very well. He has about a 95 percent chance of going through the surgery without any significant complication, and a 5 percent chance of having a moderate to a severe complication.

We hope that after his surgery, he'll become a poster child for prevention. And we would welcome Mr. Clinton and perhaps someone from the other party, such as Mr. Cheney, to be spokespeople for the American Heart Association, because, clearly, heart disease strikes both parties and both political persuasions.

BROWN: Sure.

Doc, one of the things I'm sure of is, heart disease knows no politics. Thank you, sir, for your time.

BLUMENTHAL: Thank you, sir.

BROWN: Appreciate it very much.

Coming up on the program still, the day-after bounce. Fresh from the Republican Convention, President Bush gets a bump in the polls, a pretty good one. And John Kerry hits back on the campaign trail. Will the tough talk last? But, more importantly for him, will it help?

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Last night on the program, we pushed CNN's Bill Schneider out on a limb. "Ask me anything," he said, "except how much of a bounce in the polls the president will get out of the convention."

So we asked him, how much of a bounce will the president get out of the convention? And he graciously said, about five points. And then he sent me an e-mail this morning and walked by my office tonight to point out he nailed it. "TIME" magazine poll of likely voters released today, but taken before the president's speech, shows 52 percent would vote for the president if the election were hell today, 41 percent for Senator Kerry, the first meaningful lead for either candidate since the campaign began, all of this if the election were held today, which it's not, even though both major candidates have started campaigning like there's no tomorrow.

Two reports tonight, of course, first, John King with the president.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The signs reinforce one message of the president's postconvention push, painting his opponent as on the wrong side of gay marriage and gun control another.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If you voted against the bipartisan Defense of Marriage Act, which my predecessor signed, you are not the candidate of conservative values. If you consistently vote against the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment, as my opponent has, you are not the candidate of conservative values.

KING: Just 60 days left, and cautious postconvention optimism in the Bush campaign. One priority now, especially in small town America, is to paint Democrat John Kerry as a liberal far left of the mainstream. Mr. Bush promises to simplify the tax code if given a second term, and he mocks a central Kerry promise.

BUSH: Yes, tax the rich, you know what that means. They dodge, you pay...

KING: The new banners are for backup. As Mr. Bush campaigned in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, in Iowa, he cast his opponent as too indecisive to take command of the war on terror.

BUSH: Only four United States senators voted to authorize the use of force and then voted against funding our troops. Two of those senators were my opponent and his running mate.

KING: The president sought a silver lining in new economic data that Democrats suggest is a major Bush weakness, a modest addition of just 200,000 jobs the past two months.

BUSH: The national unemployment rate is down to 5.4 percent.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

BUSH: That is nearly a full point below the rate last summer.

KING (on camera): The Bush campaign launched a new round of ads in key battleground states, hoping to protect and perhaps build on what aides predict will be a modest convention bounce. One key test there, whether the president for the first time can crack 50 percent support against Senator Kerry.

John King, CNN, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And the president did exactly that, crack that 50 percent level.

Today, John Kerry hit the campaign trail as well. He was in Ohio.

So was CNN's Joe Johns.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At his second large rally in Ohio in less than a day, Senator John Kerry was still unloading on Republicans with newer, sharper attack lines for questioning his fitness to serve.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think misleading your nation into war makes you unfit to lead this nation. I think that doing nothing when millions of Americans are losing their jobs over four years and doing nothing makes you unfit to lead this nation.

I think that leaving 45 million Americans without any health insurance at all and allowing 5 million more Americans to lose their health insurance in the last four years makes you unfit to lead this nation.

JOHNS: Kerry also set his sights Friday on the latest unemployment report.

KERRY: My friends, at the rate that this administration is creating jobs, you're not going to have a net-plus one job in the state of Ohio until the year 2011.

JOHNS: He argues the increase was not enough to keep up with population growth.

KERRY: I don't think this is something to celebrate. I think it's something to get to work on. JOHNS: And the campaign was using jobs-stressed residents of battleground Ohio to try to make the point that the quality of the new jobs created is equally as important as the quantity.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of the jobs that are out there now, I made more money 25 years ago.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: As for that poll suggesting the president has a big lead, the Kerry campaign says it doesn't believe it. They say, even if he does get a bounce, they think the race will be back at equilibrium in a couple weeks -- Aaron, back to you.

BROWN: Joe, thank you very much.

Still to come on the program tonight, Hurricane Frances, we told you, coming into Florida a little slower and weaker than a day ago, but nothing to mess around with.

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: As we reported at the top, the National Weather Service tonight downgraded Hurricane Frances to a Category 2 storm, but an especially large one, wider across than Charley or Hurricane Andrew 12 years ago.

Right now, the center of the hurricane about 200 miles east- southeast of lower Florida, the Keys, moving at just about four miles an hour. So it is just creeping along in the Atlantic. Although the eye isn't expected to make landfall at the earliest until tomorrow afternoon, and maybe even later, strong winds have already begun lashing parts of the state. So it is there. It is coming. It is building.

Close to 15 million Floridians live in areas under hurricane watches and warnings tonight, many still digging out from Hurricane Charley.

That part of the story from Orlando and CNN's Jonathan Freed.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN FREED, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Any other hurricane season, Mike Gault would just be cleaning up after last month's storm. But this isn't any other hurricane season.

MIKE GAULT, HURRICANE VICTIM: It split the chimney apart. It sucked the flue right out of the chimney.

FREED: The Gault family is now boarding up its windows, bracing for Frances, the second major storm in just three weeks.

M. GAULT: It's like, well, what's left for it to take?

(LAUGHTER)

FREED: When Hurricane Charley hit, Mike and Jody Gault and their three children were huddled in this bedroom closet and can now tell you what $10,000 in roof damage sounds like.

JODY GAULT, HURRICANE VICTIM: The shingles were being torn off one by one. It sounded like 100 soldiers up there. It's like you could hear every single shingle at each moment being ripped off the roof. That was the scariest.

M. GAULT: My daughter's bedroom is here just to the left of this boarded-up window. And the closets actually collapsed inside. And it was just like -- it was like a stream.

J. GAULT: This whole part of the ceiling just collapsed. It was so wet, it just fell in.

FREED: This Orlando community is still littered with debris from Charley and many people, like the Gaults, haven't even settled with their insurance companies yet. Frances is just fueling frustration.

(on camera): With Frances bearing down now, is it hard for you to imagine a time when your house is going to look normal again?

M. GAULT: I'm probably looking at a year.

FREED: Mike Gault has decided to ride out the coming storm at home, determined to protect his property. His family is equally determined to protect him.

J. GAULT: I don't want him to be alone. I can't leave him.

FREED: So the Gaults are praying that bedroom closet will keep them safe one more time.

J. GAULT: I've had my moments where I've had some silent tears. But I have faith. And everything's going to be OK.

(END VIDEOTAPE) FREED: Now, Aaron, this town is already starting to shut down. We are here across the street from SeaWorld. SeaWorld is shut down. Universal is closed. And the big one, Disney -- it takes a lot to shut Disney down -- it, too, has closed its gates -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, it's going to be a few day before all this passes.

Jonathan, be safe down there. Thank you very much, Jonathan Freed.

Again, it's expected to make land at earliest midday tomorrow, probably later than that. Lots of rain, a fair amount of wind, but most of it rain before it's all over. And it's going to take some time.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, we'll have more of President Clinton's exclusive interview with Larry King, or conversation. He gets candid about his health and his future. And we'll get some morning papers in and throw a tabloid or two as well on a day that hasn't offered much to laugh about.

A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A bit earlier on the program, our guest from the American Heart Association said he hoped that, after his bypass surgery, President Clinton would become sort of a poster child for the prevention of heart disease and so forth. Already tonight, we can say he's become a poster child for the phone company. He spoke at length with Larry King earlier tonight.

Here's a bit more of that exclusive interview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, "LARRY KING LIVE")

WILLIAM J. CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: But I feel really blessed, you know, because a lot of people who have a heart attack never get any advance warning, as DR. Fist said, or Senator Frist said.

I've had some difficulty ever since I got out of the White House in getting my distance up in running. And I just had a feeling a couple of days ago I had to have it checked, when I finally got some tightness in my chest. And I hadn't done any exercise. That's the first time that ever happened to me, and we did this angiogram and found out I had blockage that was too significant to open and put a stent in. We had to do the whole surgery. So I'm trying to get my head in the game.

LARRY KING, HOST: But you look so great. You lost so much weight. Didn't you think that if you had a problem, it was over?

CLINTON: Well, no. I've also been treating the high cholesterol and then I stopped taking that medicine because I got my cholesterol down low. And I had, in the past, had a little blood pressure problem, which I've treated and then I got it down.

But, you know, some of this is genetic, and I may have done some damage in those years when I was too careless about what I ate. So for whatever reason, I've got a problem, and I've got a chance to deal with it, and I feel that I really got to -- let me just say this, Republicans aren't the only people who want four more years here.

KING: Well, the whole world is watching. We appreciate you giving us this time. But I must ask this question, in all fairness. Are you a little frightened?

CLINTON: Well, not as much as I thought I would be. You know, I don't -- I grew up, as you know, in a home where my mother was an anesthetist. I knew doctors. I knew surgeons. I think the first time I ever saw any serious surgery, I was about 12 years old. I know what's involved, and I know what the options are. I mean, I think that -- there is virtually -- my blockage is so substantial, I think if I don't do this, there is virtually 100 percent chance I'll have a heart attack.

And I've been very lucky. I don't have any heart damage now. If I do the procedure, it has been done now for some few decades, and an enormous number of them are done -- you pointed out you've had it, David Letterman has had it, a whole slew of my friends have had it. Without exception, the people I know have good years afterwards. I'm just going to have to be really careful. I've put about 10 pounds of that weight I had lost back on on my book tour, and I've got to take it off, and you know, just do everything I can to try to keep my cholesterol down, keep my blood pressure down.

But I agree with whoever it was that said that we ought to have a lot of these exams, that you got the early warning signs, that you can get your cholesterol and blood pressure down, that's a big thing. And then, at some point, I understand why there is a reluctance to do angiograms here and invasive surgery. But I aced my stress test, four, five years in a row, every year I was in the White House and every year since, so that's more than four or five years.

So about 10 percent of the people, for whatever reason, are in good enough health that they just do fine on the stress test and they still have a problem. And I was one of them. So I think if people have a family history there, and high cholesterol and high blood pressure, they ought to consider the angiogram, even if they don't have the symptoms I had. There is some chance of damage there, but it's like one in 1,000. And I really think it probably saved my life.

And I'm very grateful to them...

(CROSSTALK)

CLINTON: ... my physician, with Dr. Bardock (ph) and all the great people at Westchester County who did that, and then these people at Columbia Presbyterian. I just feel just grateful. I guess I'm a little scared, but not much. I'm looking forward to it. I want to get back -- I want to see what it's like to run five miles again.

KING: Thank you for giving us this time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: That was the former president with Larry King a short time ago. I think, by the end of the week, he'll know more about bypass surgery than the doctors know about bypass surgery.

We'll have morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world.

A lot of what is powerful in the papers today is really not the words, but the pictures. So we'll pay some particular attention to that tonight.

"The International Herald Tribune." "Hundreds Free, Scores Dead in Russia Hostage Crisis." Just look at the face of that boy. And that is -- this is just one of the most horrific -- those people are nuts, OK? I mean, these are children. What have they got to do with anything? Who did they hurt? They got nothing to do with Chechnya. Leave them alone.

"Death Toll in Russia At Least 200" headlines "The Washington Times." "Commandos Move In, Rout Militants at School." They also put the politics on the front page. "Poll Sees Bush Ahead by 11 Percent; Kerry Slams Cheney's Service." Actually, that would be Kerry slamming Cheney's nonservice, if you want to be technically accurate.

"The Guardian," a British paper. Just look -- the headline doesn't matter. Look at the picture. Look at the picture of that kid. What's he going to think? I mean, man. So, if you're wondering, yes, this thing made me nuts today. I don't get it.

"The Chicago Sun-Times" had the headline exactly right. I wish I had written it today. "They Slaughtered the Children." That's "The Chicago Sun-Times"' headline on this dreadful story.

"Sweat-stained" is the weather in Chicago tomorrow. Going to be hot there.

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: I don't get cranked up like that often. And I'm not really apologizing for it. But I probably shouldn't do stuff like that. But, man, these are kids, OK?

The good news of the day is, the hurricane, it has calmed down a little bit and is moving pretty slowly, which gives the people in Florida a chance to get out of the way. And, hopefully, they will to that. Our coverage of that will continue across the weekend.

Hope your Labor Day weekend is terrific.

We'll see you on Tuesday, but the program is here on Monday. Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

Aired September 3, 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. Good to be back at our normal time.
The Friday before Labor Day should offer nothing more newsy than a story on travel plans and nothing more grim than the gentle depression that comes from summer's end, not tonight, not nearly.

In Florida, it is about waiting and hoping. Frances is doing a slow walk toward the coast.

In New York in a hospital there, it is about waiting and hoping also. Former President Bill Clinton waiting for heart surgery, hoping it goes well and, no doubt, doing some thinking about mortality, his own.

And, in Russia, a truly unspeakable horror what someone today called their 9/11, 200 dead, many of them children, hostages of yet another group with a cause but no soul, no heart and no decency.

Any one of these stories could have well led the program tonight or started the whip. We'll begin with the storm in Melbourne, Florida tonight CNN's Anderson Cooper, so Anderson a headline from you.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, as you said, the east coast of Florida is waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for Hurricane Frances. This storm has slowed. It has weakened but it still threatens a powerful punch -- Aaron.

BROWN: Anderson, thank you. We'll get to you quickly tonight.

On to Orlando where there's a been-there-done-that-and-don't- want-to-do-it-again feeling, CNN's Jonathan Freed on that side of things, so Jon a headline from you.

JONATHAN FREED, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, people here in Orlando are calling in mind blowing. That's the word that they're using. They say it does not make sense to them that they're being threatened by another storm so soon after Charley.

BROWN: Jonathan, logic doesn't have a whole lot to do with the weather, does it? Thank you.

Next to southern Russia where the hostage standoff at a local school ended horribly today, CNN's Matthew Chance is there, Matt a headline tonight. MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Aaron. In a day of confusion and tragedy here in Beslan as that three-day hostage siege around School No. 1 comes to a violent and bloody end. Hundreds are killed and injured. The president of Russia has come to Beslan within the last hour or so to show his sympathy for the people of this town in their time of grief.

BROWN: Matt, thank you. We'll get to you pretty quick tonight too.

And back home former President Clinton, as we said, faces heart surgery, bypass surgery, CNN's Elizabeth Cohen tonight on the story and the procedure and the headline.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: When Bill Clinton has his bypass surgery what can he expect in the operating room and in the recovery room and what lifelong changes will he need to make now that he has heart disease -- Aaron?

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

Also coming up on the program tonight, a unique and personal look at President Bush from the moments that make the man to the man that makes the moment the moment.

Also, the stories you will read about tomorrow. NEWSNIGHT will give you morning papers at the end of the hour. And this is Friday no matter what the news and so we'll throw in a tabloid or two as well, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight with the hurricane weakening a bit, slowing a bit but still big enough and bad enough, say the experts, to justify the largest evacuation in the history of the state of Florida.

Yesterday, they told us to expect landfall by tonight but hurricanes do what hurricanes do and this one is taking its sweet time, the better for people to get while the getting is good.

We begin tonight with CNN's Anderson Cooper.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GOV. JEB BUSH (R), FLORIDA: If you're on a barrier island or in a low-lying area and you haven't left, now's the time to do so.

COOPER (voice-over): As Hurricane Frances battered the Bahamas, Florida braced for the huge storm's arrival sometime on Saturday. Already winds and waves are picking up along the Florida Coast.

Governor Jeb Bush worries that Frances could be even more destructive than Hurricane Charley, which did billions of dollars worth of damage just three weeks ago.

BUSH: The storm, unlike Charley and others in the past, will be with us for a long, long while because of its -- the speed. So, as it hits the coast, it will -- it will take a long while for it to leave Florida, which means that there's going to be a lot of rain, a lot of sustained winds over the inland areas of our state.

COOPER: The Federal Emergency Management Agency is bringing in three times as many relief workers as it did for Charley putting out calls for crews from as far away as Seattle. Despite the extensive preparations, FEMA's Michael Brown has this warning.

MICHAEL BROWN, FEMA DIRECTOR: Be prepared to take care of yourself. Hurricane Frances is so large that in some cases it might be several hours or a couple of days before first responders can get to you.

COOPER: Mandatory evacuation orders are in effect for parts of 16 Florida counties and voluntary evacuations are in effect for five more. They are the largest evacuations in state history. Officials say about two and a half million people live in those areas.

The American Red Cross preparing for its largest natural disaster response ever opened 82 shelters. Thousands of displaced residents have already moved in. Others were staying with friends or relatives and, still others were hitting the road.

There were long lines at gas stations and some ran out of fuel. Near Valdosta, Georgia, a few miles north of the Florida state line, Interstate 75 was jammed with vehicles.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're going to head east over to Charleston, South Carolina, wherever, out of the storm's path until we can go back home and try to get back home and see what's left of our house.

COOPER: I'm now in Melbourne Beach, which is a barrier island, about an hour or so drive south and east of Orlando. The storm was supposed to hit here directly, of course not much has happened as it was supposed to happen.

It has dropped two categories in the last 24 hours. It is now just a little bit above 110 miles an hour and it has slowed dramatically here. No one can really tell you when it is going to hit or exactly where. There is really nothing left to do but wait at this point -- Aaron.

BROWN: Tell me how since you got there the weather has changed.

COOPER: Yes, it's interesting. It's really only in the last hour that the winds have picked up noticeably. I mean today, frankly, was kind of a lovely day. It was brisk. The sun was shining. The sky was blue. We just had a smattering of rain.

The winds now are becoming a little bit uncomfortable but it is nothing like what one would expect. I haven't spent many -- I've been in like maybe three hurricanes in my life. It is not what one would expect from such a major hurricane.

BROWN: Yes. Well we've all chased these things in this business about this time of year. Be safe down there. Don't do anything nuts, OK? Anderson Cooper out in Florida tonight.

COOPER: OK.

BROWN: Got a whole crew of people down there and we wish them all safety tonight.

With us now from AccuWeather in State College, Pennsylvania is Joe Bastardi, who certainly has seen his share of hurricanes over the years. What can you tell us, what dare you tell us at this point about the track of the hurricane, where it will make land and when it will make land?

JOE BASTARDI, ACCUWEATHER.COM HURRICANE EXPERT: Well, first of all, we want, accuweather.com, we want to let people know there's nothing mysterious about hurricanes compared to blizzards or cold waves or any other weather event. They're a product of the weather pattern that produces them.

On our site, we've been talking for a couple days about this particular system slowing down and weakening. We said it would not hit like Charley, would be a weakening system but still a formidable and major hurricane.

A picture's worth a thousand words, Aaron. What's going on is this. You see all this cloudiness shooting out here to the northeast? It is pumping heat into this upper air high pressure system here and helping it to build and making this storm come to the northwest right now very, very slowly.

What is also going on, as you can see, the spread of clouds more and more into the northwest and what will happen is this upper high will get over top of it and eventually turn it into the Florida coast.

Even at that there's some uncertainty. We think it's late tomorrow night or tomorrow night into early Sunday morning. Landfall occurs between West Palm Beach and Cape Canaveral and it continues northwestward and then eventually on up into Georgia and flooding rains are going to be a major problem with this. So, we are taking a stand.

I want to explain one more little uncertainty. When it gets to the coast it may try to jog northward some because of the frictional effects of the coastline. What happens is the eye wall tries to stay out over the water for a little while.

So there are some uncertainties but there's no uncertainty about the end game with this storm. It's a formidable major hurricane and flooding is going to be a major problem all the way into the Tennessee Valley and lower Appalachians before it's all said and done.

BROWN: OK. Let me try and do a couple quick ones. If you can keep your answers quick that will help.

BASTARDI: Sure.

BROWN: Are we more concerned do you think at this point about the rain than we are the wind?

BASTARDI: No, we're equally concerned about both but once the wind dies down we'll be more concerned about the rain.

BROWN: And the wind dies down as it makes landfall?

BASTARDI: Well, yes, it dies down at the core but this storm is so big that the outside bands of the storm will remain stronger relative to the inside bands of the storm, so it may be the kind of thing where if the storm's near Orlando, they get wind gusts 60, 70 miles an hour but they're getting it at Jacksonville and perhaps Tampa also.

BROWN: And does the slowing that it's done tell us anything about the intensity of the storm of is that just the behavior of this particular storm and it's irrelevant to anything else?

BASTARDI: No. It is very relative. Big storms when they slow down, it's like having a horse that eaten all the grass in an area. It doesn't have anything more to eat so it can't eat anymore, has no more fuel.

What happens is it causes upwelling and the water cools underneath it so big storms that slow down weaken. The smaller storms will slow down because they're smaller to begin with. It doesn't affect them that much.

These hurricanes need to keep moving 12, 14 miles an hour and getting fresh warm water underneath them to continue to develop. They need a perfect situation to develop the perfect storm.

BROWN: And finally, as quickly as you can, is it likely that it will get stronger or not?

BASTARDI: It will get a little bit stronger probably over the Gulf Stream. We may see the pressure drop a little bit, the winds ramp up a little bit but the fact of the matter is that big part of the storm like that is what the nature, the characteristic of this storm is going to be, more like Isabel, the big storm, rather than Charley, the storm with just a solid punch in a small place.

BROWN: Joe, thank you, nice job tonight. Thank you very much over at AccuWeather in State College, Pennsylvania, right? Yes.

BASTARADI: Thanks a lot.

BROWN: On to southern Russia now and the ugliness there and this is truly the most devastating story of the day and in a while, a hostage taking by Islamic terrorists, some of them reportedly from Arab countries.

It certainly held every possibility of becoming a bloodbath and, today, it became just that. Could it have been even worse, numerically, absolutely. In every other way just by looking at the faces of the survivors it is hard to imagine how.

Julian Manion, a correspondent for Britain's ITN was just outside the school when the chaos and the carnage began.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIAN MANION, ITN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It wasn't clear how it began but by noon the battle to save the child hostages was underway. Russian armor moved towards the school and troops advanced down streets and alleyways.

Very soon the first of the children were freed as the sounds of fighting continued to echo around the town. The child hostages were in a state of shock after more than two days of real nightmare.

These children had been held at gunpoint with explosive charges placed among them. Some of them had apparently been used by the rebels as human shields. Now they were saved but there was still fear in their eyes.

Some were injured and were rushed away in ambulances and civilian cars. Many of them just looked lost and bewildered. One young girl I managed to talk to briefly gave a glimpse of the horror that she had survived.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): In the room where we were held, they had 18 big bombs hanging over us from the ceiling. One woman terrorist blew herself up with a suicide belt right among us and another one was pushed outside before she could do the same thing.

MANION: Then she was quickly led away. Some lucky children were immediately reunited with their families. And, as more and more hostages came out, many of them the parents and teachers who had also been held, there was utter pandemonium.

But while many were saved the battle at the school went on. The building was soon on fire and there were reports that part of the roof had fallen in. As the first bodies came out, the question was how many of the hostages had lost their lives?

Inside the school courtyard an extraordinary spectacle, Russian emergency teams trying to work while fighting continued to rage on the other side of the building where some of the Chechen rebels were still holding out. At times, gunfire was continuous.

Near us, a Russian soldier was hit. His friend helped him away to safety. Firemen worked to put out the blaze in the school gym where many of the hostages had been held and where the roof had collapsed.

Our cameraman Sasha Lamarkin (ph) managed to get inside. There appeared to be a large number of charred corpses lying in the ruins. There is unfortunately no doubt that many innocents died in the murderous chaos at the school.

Bodies are still arriving at the town's morgues and some have been identified. Already there is the sight that will become more frequent in the coming days of relatives in despair over the loss of loved ones. It's not yet clear if the fighting broke out by accident or if there could have been another way but it is certain that suicidal terrorists have delivered another savage blow to Russia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That was ITN's Julian Manion.

This all came undone, understatement, shortly after President Putin said his first priority was to ensure the safety of the hostages. It happened at the end of an especially bloody period by any standard.

In the space of two weeks, a pair of airliners blown from the sky, bombings in Moscow, then this complete with reports tonight coming in of the number of hostage takers, ten perhaps, were not Russian or Chechen but Arab, quite a bit for the Russian president to deal with tonight. He arrived at the scene earlier today.

For the latest we now go to CNN's Matthew Chance. Matthew, what, if anything, has President Putin said about this since it ended?

CHANCE: Well, he hasn't said a great deal because I think like the rest of the country he's in a good deal of shock himself. He's arrived here in Beslan to visit with local officials and to visit the hospitals, which have very much become the focus of the emergency operations at the moment with hundreds of people inside the hospitals, not just in Beslan but in the region.

The government has set aside 1,000 beds to treat the casualties, so that gives us an indication of the scale of this catastrophe, this small town in southern Russia.

But certainly, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, will face a great deal of angry questions from local people here. Many of whom we've spoken to blame the Russian government for allowing this to happen.

Vladimir Putin, as you say, had gone out publicly and said because of the fact there were children, so many of them inside the school which is right behind me here, he would do everything in his power to make sure this ended peacefully.

That, of course, couldn't have been further from what actually happened. It seems that hundreds of people were either killed or injured inside the school when whatever happened, happened, and an eight-hour gun battle, which involved explosions and the building catching fire and long running firefights between Russian security forces and these hostage takers inside resulted in so many deaths, so many injuries.

The latest casualty figures we have come to us from the Interfax News Agency, which is a semi-official news agency here, quoting local health officials saying at least 200 people have been killed, the Russian emergency situation's ministry saying that 704 people have been released from the siege but not necessarily unscathed. Many, if not all of those people, are actually being treated for injuries in these hospitals, some of them extremely serious. Some of them will require major surgery, so you can imagine the pandemonium inside these small hospitals in the region as they struggle to save more lives -- Aaron.

BROWN: OK. Matthew, let me run down a couple of things as quickly as you and I can do that. It is -- in reading the reports coming out of there, it is not clear to me what, in fact, caused the shooting to begin today but it sounds like there was some deal to allow bodies to be removed and, in the process of that, you'll forgive the expression, all hell broke loose but that wasn't necessarily started by the Russian government. Is that your understanding?

CHANCE: Yes. It's a very confused picture but from the people we've spoken to actually witnessed it we've managed to build up some kind of idea about what happened and, you're right.

It seemed that the negotiations were going pretty smoothly. There had been a sort of ceasefire agreement agreed to allow the Russian government to go in and to clear away some of the dead bodies that had been initially killed when the school was taken over.

They were in the process of doing that when suddenly these two enormous explosions rang out. Whether they were caused by the Russian government or whether they were caused by the rebels inadvertently setting off explosives they'd strewn around the classrooms and the playgrounds here we don't know.

What we do know is that in the chaos that resulted in these explosions a number of hostages tried to break for freedom. The rebels opened up on them, we're told. The Russian security forces returned fire.

A number of them were brought to safety but the gun battle that followed, as I say, lasted the best part of eight hours and in it most people inside the building were either killed outright or are now being treated for their injuries in the hospitals in the area -- Aaron.

BROWN: The last, setting aside this sounds almost ridiculous, setting aside the two airplane bombings there was the hostage taking at the theater back a year or so ago. That also ended badly with a tremendous loss of life at least. After that happened what did the Russian government do in Chechnya did they go in and try and wipe out rebel areas? Did they crack down? Were they what?

CHANCE: Well, I mean, you know, this is really an indictment of Vladimir Putin's strategy in Chechnya, which has been very hard line right away, since 1999 when he was brought to power.

What he's been doing there is cracking down in a very tough fashion on the Chechen rebels going in hard with the Russian military, doing whatever he can to really reassert Russian control there.

That's continued to this day but the very fact is that Chechnya itself is still a very unstable and insecure environment and it has produced this kind of virulent terrorist movement, which is producing these hostage sieges that we've witnessed over the course of the last few years.

The aircraft bombings possibly the work of Chechen terrorists as well, as well as the state of suicide bombings that have savaged the people of Moscow and other cities in Russia as well. And so, Vladimir Putin is facing a real challenge here to his actual strategy that he's been pursuing in the Chechen Republic -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, we'll watch and see what he does next. It doesn't sound like his personality to pull back, Matthew thank you, Matthew Chance tonight.

Ahead on the program, the president says he wants four more years. The former president gets candid about his health in an exclusive interview with Larry King.

Also, the race for the White House, President Bush, John Kerry turn up the heat as the campaign enters its final two months. We take a break.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Bill Clinton is in a New York City hospital tonight. He awaits bypass surgery on his heart. The former president, who is 58, had no history of heart disease, though his love of fast food and his battles with weight tempted fate.

In many respects he's lucky. He had warning signs. Many people don't. They simply have a heart attack and die. His symptoms started the other day, chest pains and shortness of breath.

He went to the doctor. The doctor sent him home and then they brought him back to the hospital near his home in Westchester, New York, north of the city. Those doctors performed more tests and, after those tests, they sent him to New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan early today and said surgery early next week.

Mr. Clinton, being Mr. Clinton, was on the phone with Larry King tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL CLINTON, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I feel really blessed, you know, because a lot of people who have a heart attack never get any advance warning.

As Dr. Frist said, or Senator Frist said, I've had some difficulty ever since I got out of the White House in getting my distance up and running and I just had a feeling a couple days ago I had to have it checked when I finally got some tightness in my chest and I hadn't done any exercise. It's the first time that ever happened to me and we did the angiogram and found out I had blockage that was too significant to open and put a stent in. We had to do the whole surgery, so I'm trying to get my head in the game.

KING: But you look so great. You'd lost so much weight. Didn't you think that if you had a problem, it was over?

CLINTON: Well, I know and I'd also been treating the high cholesterol and then I stopped taking that medicine because I got my cholesterol down low and I had in the past had a little blood pressure problem, which I treated and then I got it down.

But, you know, some of this is genetic and I may have done some damage in those years when I was too careless about what I ate, so for whatever reason I've got a problem and I got a chance to deal with it and I feel that I really got -- let me just say this. Republicans aren't the only people who want four more years here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That was former President Bill Clinton on the phone a short time ago with Larry King on "LARRY KING LIVE."

About 13 million people suffer from heart disease and, for many, surgery is the treatment. Thousands of bypass surgeries are performed every year and, while they're hardly routine, after all this is open heart surgery, the risk of death during those surgeries is quite low.

Here's CNN's Elizabeth Cohen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COHEN (voice-over): A few hours in the operating room, a few days in the hospital and several weeks of recovery at home. That's what Bill Clinton has in front of him.

First the surgery, after opening the chest cavity, doctors take healthy blood vessels, usually from the legs, and attach them to the heart allowing blood to bypass the blockages in diseased arteries.

The arteries rarely clog up again. In fact, 90 percent of people who have bypass surgery have clear arteries 20 years later. According to the American Heart Association, the death rate for this surgery for someone who's young and relatively healthy, like Clinton, is less than one percent. After the surgery...

DR. HARVEY MECHT, BETH ISRAEL MEDICAL CENTER: Typically he'll be out of bed by the next day, starting to walk a little bit and hopefully out the door of the hospital by four days, engaging in cardiac rehabilitation program and feeling pretty normal we would hope by about two months after the surgery.

COHEN: But the recovery doesn't end there. Doctors give bypass patients strict orders for the rest of their lives.

MECHT: He will have to be on an appropriate diet, lose weight, be physically active.

COHEN: The recovery isn't just physical.

DR. LAURENCE SPERLING, EMORY UNIV. SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: We know very well from scientific studies that it's not uncommon for individuals to suffer some degree of emotional trauma related to the procedure.

COHEN: Depression and anxiety set in sometimes after bypass surgery because the patient all of a sudden is faced with his or her mortality.

SPERLING: This is a major life event. This is a major wake-up call.

COHEN: And because patients like Clinton are told to reduce stress, sometimes Type A people like Clinton miss being in the center of things, on the go all the time and have a hard time following doctor's orders to slow down.

SPERLING: He's got to recognize that, number one right now has got to be his own health and recovery from this procedure.

COHEN: Former President Clinton is one of the lucky ones. Many people with sudden chest pain have heart attacks and die immediately. They don't get a second chance.

Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Dr. Roger Blumenthal is the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Prevention of Heart Disease, also the national spokesperson for the American Heart Association. He joins us from Baltimore tonight. We're pleased to have him with us.

I have a question about how this was diagnosed. He goes and sees the doctors and they presumably do some sort of stress test and they say, it looks OK, no problems there.

They send him home and then they decide or he decides to go back and they decide to do an angiogram. An angiogram is a pretty invasive procedure. Is this an unusual sequence that happened?

DR. ROGER BLUMENTHAL, JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL SCHOOL: Well, Aaron, first off I'm proud to represent the American Heart Association and thank you for the opportunity.

We really don't know if Mr. Clinton had a stress test on this particular occasion. We do know that he had significant symptoms of chest pain and perhaps some shortness of breath and the doctors did decide to do an angiogram, which gives us a roadmap of the heart arteries.

It was based on that roadmap of the hard arteries that it was decided that because of the number of blockages that the former president should undergo bypass surgery. If there had been one or two blockages, doctors would most likely have recommended angioplasty and a stenting procedure.

BROWN: Yes, just shorthand here, the angioplasty is they do the angiogram. They stick a tube basically up your leg through your chest into your heart and they inflate a balloon, more or less, and clear that artery out, right?

BLUMENTHAL: Exactly. The angioplasty is the balloon procedure to push open the fat and cholesterol that's clogging the artery and the stenting refers to a metal scaffolding that helps to hold the artery open. Approximately 80 to 90 percent of stenting procedures are very successful long term in keeping the artery open.

BROWN: But in this case that's not an option because there are -- is it that there are too many arteries that are clogged or that the arteries that are clogged are too clogged?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, we really don't know, Aaron.

BROWN: OK.

BLUMENTHAL: My suspicion is that there are multiple blockages, based on what we've heard, and doctors felt that it would be safer actually to do bypass surgery than try the multiple stenting procedures.

BROWN: Are doctors -- are cardiologists absolutely certain, for example, that stress is a factor?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, the American Heart Association has really led the research for many decades on this. And we know that the major risk factors for heart disease are increasing age, high blood pressure, increased cholesterol, cigarette smoking, poor dietary habits, diabetes, and lack of exercise.

Emotional stress is clearly a strong indicator that someone may be prone to developing heart disease. But it's been very hard to quantify how much stress really contributes to heart attacks.

BROWN: Yes.

And, finally, anybody -- a guy who was in -- like Mr. Clinton, who seems to be in pretty good health and very active, any reason why he can't go back to a normal, active life, assuming the surgery goes fine?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, you expect that Mr. Clinton will do very well. He has about a 95 percent chance of going through the surgery without any significant complication, and a 5 percent chance of having a moderate to a severe complication.

We hope that after his surgery, he'll become a poster child for prevention. And we would welcome Mr. Clinton and perhaps someone from the other party, such as Mr. Cheney, to be spokespeople for the American Heart Association, because, clearly, heart disease strikes both parties and both political persuasions.

BROWN: Sure.

Doc, one of the things I'm sure of is, heart disease knows no politics. Thank you, sir, for your time.

BLUMENTHAL: Thank you, sir.

BROWN: Appreciate it very much.

Coming up on the program still, the day-after bounce. Fresh from the Republican Convention, President Bush gets a bump in the polls, a pretty good one. And John Kerry hits back on the campaign trail. Will the tough talk last? But, more importantly for him, will it help?

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Last night on the program, we pushed CNN's Bill Schneider out on a limb. "Ask me anything," he said, "except how much of a bounce in the polls the president will get out of the convention."

So we asked him, how much of a bounce will the president get out of the convention? And he graciously said, about five points. And then he sent me an e-mail this morning and walked by my office tonight to point out he nailed it. "TIME" magazine poll of likely voters released today, but taken before the president's speech, shows 52 percent would vote for the president if the election were hell today, 41 percent for Senator Kerry, the first meaningful lead for either candidate since the campaign began, all of this if the election were held today, which it's not, even though both major candidates have started campaigning like there's no tomorrow.

Two reports tonight, of course, first, John King with the president.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The signs reinforce one message of the president's postconvention push, painting his opponent as on the wrong side of gay marriage and gun control another.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If you voted against the bipartisan Defense of Marriage Act, which my predecessor signed, you are not the candidate of conservative values. If you consistently vote against the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment, as my opponent has, you are not the candidate of conservative values.

KING: Just 60 days left, and cautious postconvention optimism in the Bush campaign. One priority now, especially in small town America, is to paint Democrat John Kerry as a liberal far left of the mainstream. Mr. Bush promises to simplify the tax code if given a second term, and he mocks a central Kerry promise.

BUSH: Yes, tax the rich, you know what that means. They dodge, you pay...

KING: The new banners are for backup. As Mr. Bush campaigned in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, in Iowa, he cast his opponent as too indecisive to take command of the war on terror.

BUSH: Only four United States senators voted to authorize the use of force and then voted against funding our troops. Two of those senators were my opponent and his running mate.

KING: The president sought a silver lining in new economic data that Democrats suggest is a major Bush weakness, a modest addition of just 200,000 jobs the past two months.

BUSH: The national unemployment rate is down to 5.4 percent.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

BUSH: That is nearly a full point below the rate last summer.

KING (on camera): The Bush campaign launched a new round of ads in key battleground states, hoping to protect and perhaps build on what aides predict will be a modest convention bounce. One key test there, whether the president for the first time can crack 50 percent support against Senator Kerry.

John King, CNN, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And the president did exactly that, crack that 50 percent level.

Today, John Kerry hit the campaign trail as well. He was in Ohio.

So was CNN's Joe Johns.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At his second large rally in Ohio in less than a day, Senator John Kerry was still unloading on Republicans with newer, sharper attack lines for questioning his fitness to serve.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think misleading your nation into war makes you unfit to lead this nation. I think that doing nothing when millions of Americans are losing their jobs over four years and doing nothing makes you unfit to lead this nation.

I think that leaving 45 million Americans without any health insurance at all and allowing 5 million more Americans to lose their health insurance in the last four years makes you unfit to lead this nation.

JOHNS: Kerry also set his sights Friday on the latest unemployment report.

KERRY: My friends, at the rate that this administration is creating jobs, you're not going to have a net-plus one job in the state of Ohio until the year 2011.

JOHNS: He argues the increase was not enough to keep up with population growth.

KERRY: I don't think this is something to celebrate. I think it's something to get to work on. JOHNS: And the campaign was using jobs-stressed residents of battleground Ohio to try to make the point that the quality of the new jobs created is equally as important as the quantity.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of the jobs that are out there now, I made more money 25 years ago.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: As for that poll suggesting the president has a big lead, the Kerry campaign says it doesn't believe it. They say, even if he does get a bounce, they think the race will be back at equilibrium in a couple weeks -- Aaron, back to you.

BROWN: Joe, thank you very much.

Still to come on the program tonight, Hurricane Frances, we told you, coming into Florida a little slower and weaker than a day ago, but nothing to mess around with.

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: As we reported at the top, the National Weather Service tonight downgraded Hurricane Frances to a Category 2 storm, but an especially large one, wider across than Charley or Hurricane Andrew 12 years ago.

Right now, the center of the hurricane about 200 miles east- southeast of lower Florida, the Keys, moving at just about four miles an hour. So it is just creeping along in the Atlantic. Although the eye isn't expected to make landfall at the earliest until tomorrow afternoon, and maybe even later, strong winds have already begun lashing parts of the state. So it is there. It is coming. It is building.

Close to 15 million Floridians live in areas under hurricane watches and warnings tonight, many still digging out from Hurricane Charley.

That part of the story from Orlando and CNN's Jonathan Freed.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN FREED, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Any other hurricane season, Mike Gault would just be cleaning up after last month's storm. But this isn't any other hurricane season.

MIKE GAULT, HURRICANE VICTIM: It split the chimney apart. It sucked the flue right out of the chimney.

FREED: The Gault family is now boarding up its windows, bracing for Frances, the second major storm in just three weeks.

M. GAULT: It's like, well, what's left for it to take?

(LAUGHTER)

FREED: When Hurricane Charley hit, Mike and Jody Gault and their three children were huddled in this bedroom closet and can now tell you what $10,000 in roof damage sounds like.

JODY GAULT, HURRICANE VICTIM: The shingles were being torn off one by one. It sounded like 100 soldiers up there. It's like you could hear every single shingle at each moment being ripped off the roof. That was the scariest.

M. GAULT: My daughter's bedroom is here just to the left of this boarded-up window. And the closets actually collapsed inside. And it was just like -- it was like a stream.

J. GAULT: This whole part of the ceiling just collapsed. It was so wet, it just fell in.

FREED: This Orlando community is still littered with debris from Charley and many people, like the Gaults, haven't even settled with their insurance companies yet. Frances is just fueling frustration.

(on camera): With Frances bearing down now, is it hard for you to imagine a time when your house is going to look normal again?

M. GAULT: I'm probably looking at a year.

FREED: Mike Gault has decided to ride out the coming storm at home, determined to protect his property. His family is equally determined to protect him.

J. GAULT: I don't want him to be alone. I can't leave him.

FREED: So the Gaults are praying that bedroom closet will keep them safe one more time.

J. GAULT: I've had my moments where I've had some silent tears. But I have faith. And everything's going to be OK.

(END VIDEOTAPE) FREED: Now, Aaron, this town is already starting to shut down. We are here across the street from SeaWorld. SeaWorld is shut down. Universal is closed. And the big one, Disney -- it takes a lot to shut Disney down -- it, too, has closed its gates -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, it's going to be a few day before all this passes.

Jonathan, be safe down there. Thank you very much, Jonathan Freed.

Again, it's expected to make land at earliest midday tomorrow, probably later than that. Lots of rain, a fair amount of wind, but most of it rain before it's all over. And it's going to take some time.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, we'll have more of President Clinton's exclusive interview with Larry King, or conversation. He gets candid about his health and his future. And we'll get some morning papers in and throw a tabloid or two as well on a day that hasn't offered much to laugh about.

A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A bit earlier on the program, our guest from the American Heart Association said he hoped that, after his bypass surgery, President Clinton would become sort of a poster child for the prevention of heart disease and so forth. Already tonight, we can say he's become a poster child for the phone company. He spoke at length with Larry King earlier tonight.

Here's a bit more of that exclusive interview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, "LARRY KING LIVE")

WILLIAM J. CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: But I feel really blessed, you know, because a lot of people who have a heart attack never get any advance warning, as DR. Fist said, or Senator Frist said.

I've had some difficulty ever since I got out of the White House in getting my distance up in running. And I just had a feeling a couple of days ago I had to have it checked, when I finally got some tightness in my chest. And I hadn't done any exercise. That's the first time that ever happened to me, and we did this angiogram and found out I had blockage that was too significant to open and put a stent in. We had to do the whole surgery. So I'm trying to get my head in the game.

LARRY KING, HOST: But you look so great. You lost so much weight. Didn't you think that if you had a problem, it was over?

CLINTON: Well, no. I've also been treating the high cholesterol and then I stopped taking that medicine because I got my cholesterol down low. And I had, in the past, had a little blood pressure problem, which I've treated and then I got it down.

But, you know, some of this is genetic, and I may have done some damage in those years when I was too careless about what I ate. So for whatever reason, I've got a problem, and I've got a chance to deal with it, and I feel that I really got to -- let me just say this, Republicans aren't the only people who want four more years here.

KING: Well, the whole world is watching. We appreciate you giving us this time. But I must ask this question, in all fairness. Are you a little frightened?

CLINTON: Well, not as much as I thought I would be. You know, I don't -- I grew up, as you know, in a home where my mother was an anesthetist. I knew doctors. I knew surgeons. I think the first time I ever saw any serious surgery, I was about 12 years old. I know what's involved, and I know what the options are. I mean, I think that -- there is virtually -- my blockage is so substantial, I think if I don't do this, there is virtually 100 percent chance I'll have a heart attack.

And I've been very lucky. I don't have any heart damage now. If I do the procedure, it has been done now for some few decades, and an enormous number of them are done -- you pointed out you've had it, David Letterman has had it, a whole slew of my friends have had it. Without exception, the people I know have good years afterwards. I'm just going to have to be really careful. I've put about 10 pounds of that weight I had lost back on on my book tour, and I've got to take it off, and you know, just do everything I can to try to keep my cholesterol down, keep my blood pressure down.

But I agree with whoever it was that said that we ought to have a lot of these exams, that you got the early warning signs, that you can get your cholesterol and blood pressure down, that's a big thing. And then, at some point, I understand why there is a reluctance to do angiograms here and invasive surgery. But I aced my stress test, four, five years in a row, every year I was in the White House and every year since, so that's more than four or five years.

So about 10 percent of the people, for whatever reason, are in good enough health that they just do fine on the stress test and they still have a problem. And I was one of them. So I think if people have a family history there, and high cholesterol and high blood pressure, they ought to consider the angiogram, even if they don't have the symptoms I had. There is some chance of damage there, but it's like one in 1,000. And I really think it probably saved my life.

And I'm very grateful to them...

(CROSSTALK)

CLINTON: ... my physician, with Dr. Bardock (ph) and all the great people at Westchester County who did that, and then these people at Columbia Presbyterian. I just feel just grateful. I guess I'm a little scared, but not much. I'm looking forward to it. I want to get back -- I want to see what it's like to run five miles again.

KING: Thank you for giving us this time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: That was the former president with Larry King a short time ago. I think, by the end of the week, he'll know more about bypass surgery than the doctors know about bypass surgery.

We'll have morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world.

A lot of what is powerful in the papers today is really not the words, but the pictures. So we'll pay some particular attention to that tonight.

"The International Herald Tribune." "Hundreds Free, Scores Dead in Russia Hostage Crisis." Just look at the face of that boy. And that is -- this is just one of the most horrific -- those people are nuts, OK? I mean, these are children. What have they got to do with anything? Who did they hurt? They got nothing to do with Chechnya. Leave them alone.

"Death Toll in Russia At Least 200" headlines "The Washington Times." "Commandos Move In, Rout Militants at School." They also put the politics on the front page. "Poll Sees Bush Ahead by 11 Percent; Kerry Slams Cheney's Service." Actually, that would be Kerry slamming Cheney's nonservice, if you want to be technically accurate.

"The Guardian," a British paper. Just look -- the headline doesn't matter. Look at the picture. Look at the picture of that kid. What's he going to think? I mean, man. So, if you're wondering, yes, this thing made me nuts today. I don't get it.

"The Chicago Sun-Times" had the headline exactly right. I wish I had written it today. "They Slaughtered the Children." That's "The Chicago Sun-Times"' headline on this dreadful story.

"Sweat-stained" is the weather in Chicago tomorrow. Going to be hot there.

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: I don't get cranked up like that often. And I'm not really apologizing for it. But I probably shouldn't do stuff like that. But, man, these are kids, OK?

The good news of the day is, the hurricane, it has calmed down a little bit and is moving pretty slowly, which gives the people in Florida a chance to get out of the way. And, hopefully, they will to that. Our coverage of that will continue across the weekend.

Hope your Labor Day weekend is terrific.

We'll see you on Tuesday, but the program is here on Monday. Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.