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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Bin Laden Tape Examined

Aired October 29, 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.
Well, it's sort of simple, isn't it? There's a new bin Laden tape. It raises lots of questions coming as it does on the eve of the first presidential election since 9/11. Does the appearance of bin Laden remind the country of what it likes best about President Bush?

Or, on the other hand, does it remind the country that for all the tough talk, dead or alive and the like that the man who's responsible for the deaths of 3,000 Americans and countless others is still out there while the bulk of the American military effort is in a messy fight in Iraq, not exactly bin Laden country?

This election was bound to be determined in one way or another by terror. Now the face of it emerges with just four days to go and the whip begins there and with that, CNN's Nic Robertson so, Nic, the headline from you tonight.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, in Osama bin Laden's first video message in almost three years, he appears older but otherwise well in a message that seems timed and tailored to influence the U.S. elections -- Aaron.

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

Next the candidates starting with the president and our Senior White House Correspondent John King, John a headline from you.

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the president says Americans will not be influenced or intimidated by the reemergence of Osama bin Laden. Then, as if to prove the point, back to the campaign for the president and tough criticism for John Kerry.

BROWN: Thank you.

And to Florida and the Kerry campaign and CNN's Candy Crowley with the watch so, Candy the headline there.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, for one brief moment someone inside the Kerry campaign said quite openly "I'm not sure whether the tape works for us or against us or doesn't do anything at all." But I can tell you that publicly they are arguing that this is a plus for John Kerry -- Aaron.

BROWN: Candy, thank you. And finally the missing explosives story a day after pictures pretty much laid the central question to rest, CNN's Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon tonight, Jamie a headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Pentagon has adapted to the reality of the PR battleground and they've switched their argument away from the idea that Saddam Hussein might have moved these missing explosives and now they're looking at whether U.S. troops blew them up but the evidence remains inconclusive.

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

Also on the program on this Friday night putting together a winning combination of states four days from now, the answer may lie by going back four years ago. Jeff Greenfield joins us to draw a picture.

We'll go back to Ohio for another skirmish in the battle over who votes and who doesn't and who gets to have a say in it all.

And, no question about this, the rooster does get its say, morning papers caps off the night and the week, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight with the uninvited guest to the campaign, the country and, if we were being just plain about it, our day-to-day lives. Just after four o'clock this afternoon Eastern Time, Osama bin Laden stopped being a shadowy presence in all three. He stopped being a talking point and once again started talking.

In a moment we'll try to tease whatever meaning we can out of the tape, first, though, the reporting and CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Alive and apparently well, Osama bin Laden to have timed his first video message in nearly three years to influence the U.S. election.

OSAMA BIN LADEN (through translator): Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked.

ROBERTSON: He accuses President Bush of misleading the U.S. public and in a politically charged swipe says on September the 11th, Bush wasted time reading to school children after he was told of the attack on the World Trade Center.

BIN LADEN (through translator): It never occurred to us that he, the commander-in-chief of the country, would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone because he thought listening to a child discussing her goats was more important.

ROBERTSON: This criticism of President Bush appears in marked contrast with recent web-based al Qaeda sympathizers' comments favoring Bush over Senator Kerry. For some analysts, bin Laden's message is less about influencing the election's outcome and more about ensuring himself maximum publicity.

BRUCE HOFFMAN, RAND INSTITUTE: Bin Laden has never been one to miss an opportunity and I think with the election coming up the timing couldn't have been better.

ROBERTSON: Whatever the motivation, bin Laden not only reinforces his responsibility for 9/11 but sets out to justify why America has been singled out for attack by al Qaeda.

BIN LADEN (through translator): The event that affected me most personally was in 1982 when America gave permission for Israel to invade Lebanon. That built a strong desire in me to punish the guilty.

ROBERTSON: Bin Laden's is the second such video message from the al Qaeda leadership in a month and a half, an indication just how secure bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri must feel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON: And while this tape does appear to be aimed at the U.S. audience, undoubtedly there will be al Qaeda sympathizers who can feel buoyed by the fact that they've seen Osama bin Laden alive and apparently well -- Aaron.

BROWN: All right, two quick ones Nic. Do we have any idea when Al-Jazeera, which aired the tape, received the tape?

ROBERTSON: We don't and they've only aired portions of it. We know it's an 18-minute tape. We've heard perhaps up to six or seven minutes so far -- Aaron.

BROWN: OK but we don't know when they received it? We don't know if they held it for any length of time?

ROBERTSON: That's not at all clear to us at this stage, Aaron, no.

BROWN: OK. And is there on the tape any suggestion as to where bin Laden is?

ROBERTSON: Again, there are very, very, very few clues. It appears to be a background that looks like the same type of location where Ayman al-Zawahiri recorded his message that was delivered about a month and a half ago. It appears to be sort of a mud adobe type wall.

That could be the Pakistan-Afghan border. It could be the other border Pakistan has with India, the Kashmir area where there are jihadi type militants that would support Osama bin Laden. It could be there as well. There are really no clues. Interestingly, he doesn't have a weapon against the wall behind him. In the past, Osama bin Laden has tended to give these speeches with that kind of military type backup, if you will.

BROWN: OK, Nic, thank you very much. We have more on this, both the political implications and otherwise still ahead.

Not surprisingly, the president and Senator Kerry wasted no time in condemning the man in the message. In very tough language it was for both campaigns, an October surprise to say the least and, at first, not something to be spun or used or played for advantage, at first.

We begin with our Senior White House Correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): The president offered his assessment between campaign stops in Ohio.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Americans will not be intimidated or influenced by an enemy of our country. I'm sure Senator Kerry agrees with this. I also want to say to the American people that we are at war with these terrorists and I am confident that we will prevail.

KING: The reemergence of bin Laden four days before the election immediately became a campaign flashpoint. In Columbus, Ohio, the president lashed out at Democrat John Kerry for repeating after the bin Laden tape aired his assertion that bad planning by Mr. Bush allowed the al Qaeda leader to escape a manhunt in Afghanistan.

BUSH: It's simply not the case. It's the worst kind of Monday morning quarterbacking. It is especially shameful in the light of a new tape from America's enemy.

KING: At earlier stops, Mr. Bush made no mention of the tape but continued his relentless assault on Senator Kerry's credentials to assume command of the war on terror.

BUSH: During the last 20 years in key moments of challenge and decision for America, Senator Kerry has chosen the position of weakness and inaction.

KING: Mr. Bush was told of reports of a new bin Laden tape Friday morning as he flew to a New Hampshire event featuring family members of 9/11 victims.

BUSH: We are shrinking the area where terrorists can operate freely. We have the terrorists on the run.

KING: Mr. Bush was brief throughout the day and made his public statement after the tape aired on Al-Jazeera and then in the United States. Aides say Mr. Bush had no second thoughts about keeping his campaign schedule, including this evening Ohio event with a rowdy crowd of 20,000 and an introduction by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (R), CALIFORNIA: I'm here to pump you up to reelect President George W. Bush.

(END VIDEOTAPE) KING: There is the obvious risk for the president that voters see bin Laden and blame Mr. Bush for the fact that he is still at large but most senior Bush advisers believe that if there is any political benefit here it will fall to the president because voters consistently have said they view Mr. Bush as the toughest candidate when it comes to waging the war on terror -- Aaron.

BROWN: Help me a little bit on the time line. The president late this afternoon stands on the tarmac and delivers a very brief statement about the tape and then are there tape references or the bin Laden references in the speech included in the next speech?

KING: The next speech. He gave that statement in Toledo, got on Air Force One and flew here to Columbus and then he attacked Senator Kerry for that comment about Tora Bora, about an hour and a half after the initial statement.

BROWN: And I think we all sort of accept that while there are plenty of theories about how this might play out no one really knows whether the tape helps one side or helps the other side. It's all spin at this point, isn't it?

KING: Absolutely right. The first answer you get from everybody when you ask this question is "I don't know" or "who knows" and then they go on to offer their speculation from there. If one candidate were clearly ahead, we might have a better assessment of it. Because the race is so close, this is yet another element of uncertainty added into an already toss-up election.

BROWN: If you were just planning the last four days of a campaign, would you prefer to have no surprises and just go to the script?

KING: I think if you're the Bush team you do because they think, they think or at least they're telling us they think that they have a very slight advantage going into the final few days and that things were beginning to tip their way.

Anything that could disrupt the momentum or just stop whatever's going on is something you don't want to happen but nobody had any real big momentum anyway and I don't know that you can poll this going into the last few days of the election. Polls tend to be unreliable. By the time the pollsters can assess how this is playing out we'll be having an election.

BROWN: Have a good weekend. We'll talk to you this weekend. Thank you, John, John King in Ohio tonight.

And, as John just touched on, Osama bin Laden's continued existence on the planet was central to Senator Kerry's critique of the administration long before the tape emerged this afternoon. No sign of that changing between now and Election Day.

But, as CNN's Candy Crowley reports tonight out on the stump, the time for any single person or theme is over. It's time now to go everywhere. There's still a race and say everything there is to say, everything and bin Laden.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CROWLEY (voice-over): As a campaign issue there's only one way to treat the video of Osama bin Laden, very carefully.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: As Americans we are absolutely united in our determination to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. They are barbarians and I will stop at absolutely nothing to hunt down, capture or kill the terrorists wherever they are, whatever it takes, period.

CROWLEY: Kerry was briefed on the tape by foreign policy adviser Rand Beers, who got his briefing from the administration. The Kerry campaign treated the whole thing very gingerly with the candidate walking out solo, un-campaign like, to seriously talk to the cameras, no questions taken.

But Camp Kerry was very critical of the president for knowing about the videotape and still delivering what aides call the most divisive, negative speech of the campaign. They did not, Kerry aides insisted, want to touch the politics of this thing. Still, there it is reading between the lines.

KERRY: And I regret that when George Bush had the opportunity in Afghanistan at Tora Bora he didn't choose to use American forces to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden. He outsourced the job to Afghan warlords. I would never have done that. I think it was an enormous mistake and we're paying the price for it today.

CROWLEY: This drives the Bush campaign up the wall. They say there was conflicting information that cast doubt on whether bin Laden was even in Tora Bora. They note that retired General Tommy Franks, the man in charge of the Afghanistan operation and a Bush supporter, has disputed every point Kerry has made about the battle.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CROWLEY: All of which is to say that no matter how much everybody says this is not an issue that belongs on the campaign trail, there it is right where it's always been right in the heart of the campaign -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, if it leads the news it's in the campaign. It's in the campaign whether they like it or not. So, the question we asked John, we ask you, would the Kerry side have preferred to have a case to make on this? Would they have preferred not to see Mr. bin Laden out there on television all afternoon?

CROWLEY: What they don't like are surprises really. I think both sides, I think John's absolutely right, at this stage of the game you've got these four days. You have them planned out doing your final arguments, having your rallies and then this comes up.

And it was very clear that they didn't know how to handle it because what happened was when he was first asked about it in that local interview that you saw, John Kerry talked about how it's such a shame that George Bush didn't get Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora.

And then when he came and talked to us on the tarmac, there was no mention of that because they thought better of doing it, so it was something that kind of, you know, threw a monkey wrench into what they were trying to do today and that's never a good thing in the last four days. Having said that, when you talk to them they said "I don't know how this is going to play." They don't know whether it's going to play for or against them.

BROWN: Candy, has there been an event since, since the tarmac?

CROWLEY: There has. There have been, let's see, one or two. I'm trying to think when the tarmac -- one of them.

BROWN: And has he brought it up in those?

CROWLEY: No and they made a decision not to bring it up in those. I mean so they're walking this really fine line. They said, "No, we're just going to go on with the campaign. This doesn't make any difference," and so they're not going to bring it up. But does he still talk about how he would lead the war against terrorism better, yes.

BROWN: OK.

CROWLEY: But not, you know, specifically about the videotape.

BROWN: Candy, we'll talk Sunday. Have a good weekend until then. Thank you.

CROWLEY: OK.

BROWN: Candy Crowley down in Florida tonight.

More now on the tape itself, to our eye the most direct statement yet of who al Qaeda is, what it's done and why, not in other words the ravings of a madman but certainly the cold logic of the enemy and in that regard open to a closer look.

We're joined now by Philip Smucker who broke the story of the bin Laden escape from Tora Bora and tells it again in "Al Qaeda's Great Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror's Trail," always good to see him, welcome again. What do you make of the tape? This is a pretty shrewd PR move to put it in pretty base terms.

PHILIP SMUCKER, AUTHOR, "AL QAEDA'S GREAT ESCAPE": Yes. Well, Nic Robertson pointed out that Osama bin Laden didn't have a gun here. He sounded conciliatory. This is almost a classic guerrilla tactic. He wants to show that his organization is not only militant but it's political and he's done a very good job of doing that.

And not only that, Aaron, but you see both candidates, no matter how carefully they treated this they both reacted immediately to what Osama bin Laden had to say. Now, how much does that say about the clout of one terrorist all the way around the world maybe hiding in a cave somewhere? BROWN: Well, that raises a couple of questions. Do you believe he's hiding in a cave somewhere or that he's operating under the protection of some entity other than simply al Qaeda thugs?

SMUCKER: Well, I think one of the overlooked locations that he may well very be in is on the Afghan-Iranian border over on the Iranian side harbored, aided and abetted by the Revolutionary Guard. They actually had a role in helping some of the al Qaeda members escape from Tora Bora, moving them through Tehran and then back to the Middle East.

Nobody really knows where bin Laden is and that's what's so fascinating about this. The only time we know where he was, in fact the most recent time was at Tora Bora. It may be a little bit disingenuous for the regime, the administration now to say "Well, he was never at Tora Bora." In fact, the Green Beret commander on the ground agrees that he left Tora Bora early in December, 2001.

BROWN: Just a couple more things on the tape. Were you surprised by how he looked? Are you surprised by the tone of what he had to say? Was he speaking from strength when he said you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone, or is that a guy speaking from weakness?

SMUCKER: Well, I saw what you saw, Aaron. He looked very relaxed frankly. He looked comfortable. He looked as if he had a message to deliver and he addressed, if you listen very closely to the language he addressed the American public in a tone and a fashion that they could understand.

He did away with a lot of the language that he usually uses with his own followers quoting the Hadis and the Quran. He was speaking directly to the American public and I think he's quite a clever man and some people would argue, well, he wants Kerry to win.

But, in fact, he probably knows that coming out at this point and bashing George Bush the way he did in a very incisive manner that this will probably redound to the Bush administration's advantage.

BROWN: And why just to finish the thought, why would he prefer a George Bush win?

SMUCKER: I think there's no doubt in the Arab world and you talk to most of the analysts that watch al Qaeda, the al Qaeda organization and bin Laden prefer the Bush administration because as George Bush says he wants to fight the terrorists in the Middle East so they don't get to America.

Well, Osama bin Laden is more than happy to be fighting the Americans in Iraq. He likes the Bush administration's offensive policy. He thinks he has America where he wants them and he likes George Bush as an opponent, if you will.

BROWN: Good to see you, Phil. Thank you.

SMUCKER: My pleasure.

BROWN: Thank you, a fascinating night this.

Ahead on the program the missing explosives and a Pentagon shift, new questions and no clear answers from there.

And the death toll of civilians in Iraq is it much, much greater than had been estimated before? We'll take a break first.

From New York on a Friday night this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Now to the missing explosives. Last night on the program, a former top American weapons inspector looked at the pictures of the bunker, the seals on the door, the explosives inside and said, "Yep, that's it," the closest thing to proof positive without actually being there that one of the three bunkers where the explosives were held was sealed and stocked when American forces arrived on the road to Baghdad.

We wondered what the answer would be today from the Pentagon and, today, the answer came, the story reported tonight by CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): These pictures taken by Minneapolis television station KSTP strongly suggest at least some of the missing HMX explosives were at the al Qa Qaa facility on April 18th, 2003, so the Pentagon is shifting its argument no longer pushing the idea behind this satellite photograph that Saddam Hussein might have trucked away the more than 300 tons before the war.

Now the Pentagon suggests, U.S. troops may have destroyed much of the stockpile and to support that it produced a demolition expert who was at the facility April 13th. The Army major says his unit blew up an estimated 250 tons of munitions but he couldn't say any of it was the missing explosives.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you tell us that that was the same material? Are we talking about the same material?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you don't know, say it.

MAJ. AUSTIN PEARSON, U.S. ARMY: I don't know. I don't have that information.

MCINTYRE: Pearson says he never saw any of the IAEA wire seals that experts say are the telltale sign the missing HMX was there on April 18th and he wasn't sure what specific explosives were destroyed.

PEARSON: Off the top of my head I'm sure there's at least 80 or 90 different type and whether it's HMX I couldn't verify.

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon says it believes some of one of the missing explosives, called RDX, that was not under seal was likely destroyed but it can't prove it. LARRY DI RITA, PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: Some percentage of that total in question was almost certainly removed from bunkers and destroyed by Major Pearson's unit.

MCINTYRE: Critics say one thing is becoming increasingly clear. Few U.S. troops knew anything about the missing stockpile in the first weeks of the war.

DAVID ALBRIGHT, ISIS: There were lists of sites prepared and kinds of things you needed to worry about located at those sites but what I found in May particularly, in May of 2003, the people in the field often didn't know about those lists.

MCINTYRE: Comparing the IAEA's map of bunkers containing HMX with commercial satellite images of the al Qa Qaa facility shows that by November, 2003 many of the bunkers had been destroyed but the Pentagon can't say when that happened or if the HMX was destroyed or lost. Pentagon officials are reviewing images like these sent in by a U.S. Marine who believes he may have destroyed some of the missing explosives but so far that cannot be verified.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: Pentagon officials now say it's unlikely they'll put together a full picture of what happened until sometime after the presidential election. Many of those officials wonder that if they get that answer after the election, absent the heat of the campaign, whether anyone will really care about what it argues is a small fraction of Iraq's prewar arsenal, a dangerous fraction but a very small one -- Aaron.

BROWN: And that is true. It's symbolic in political terms but setting that aside for a second and not honestly wanting to pick a fight, Mr. Di Rita today says almost certainly some of that stuff that we've been talking about for four days, five days now, was destroyed by the major's unit. He also said earlier in the week that almost certainly it was moved before the war began, correct?

MCINTYRE: Well, no. What they said was they thought it was highly probable that it had been moved.

BROWN: Highly probable.

MCINTYRE: And when he says it's almost certain it's because some of the pictures that show what appears to be RDX, the explosive that was not under IAEA seal, very closely matches the kinds of things that this unit blew up but there's no way for them to say that it was part of the batch that was under IAEA monitoring. They just don't know.

BROWN: Well, I guess my question really is how did they move from it is highly probable the stuff was moved before the war and Secretary Rumsfeld yesterday saying we owned the skies, they couldn't have moved it after the war, to almost certainly we destroyed some of it?

MCINTYRE: Well, first of all obviously they got a reality check with those photographs from KTSP, the video that shows clearly some portion of it was there. They're still clinging to the argument that it would be very difficult to move it out in any large quantity, so again they've shifted their argument now to looking at whether it was in fact destroyed in the weeks and months after U.S. troops got there.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you very much, Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon tonight.

On any given day, as those of you who watch the program know, we can tell you exactly how many Americans have died in Iraq. We can tell you how many were wounded. What we've never been able to tell you with any degree of confidence at all, any, is how many Iraqis have died.

A report out this week has tried to figure that out. The number researchers came up with 100,000, a number that is dramatically higher, dramatically than any previous estimate which therefore raises as many questions as it may answer.

Here's CNN's Elizabeth Cohen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We may never know exactly how many civilians have died in Iraq. The Pentagon says it doesn't keep track.

GEN. TOMMY FRANKS (RET.), FMR. COMMANDER IN CHIEF, U.S. CENTCOM: You know that we don't -- that we don't do body counts.

COHEN: But some people wish they would. They say the military sets out to kill as few civilians as possible but...

MARC GARLASCO, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: If you don't go on the ground when it's all over and see if you were right, how do you ever know that your models are correct?

COHEN: A new study says 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died because of the war, most directly from battle but many also from deteriorating conditions.

GILBERT BURNHAM, JOHNS HOPKINS: The majority of the casualties are women and children.

COHEN: The study was done in Iraq by American and Iraqi researchers and published in (UNINTELLIGIBLE), a British medical journal. A Pentagon spokesperson said it's impossible to validate the study's numbers and that U.S.-led forces have painstakingly avoided the loss of innocent lives.

Other researchers who have estimated civilian deaths in Iraq say 100,000 is way too high. Marc Gerlasko's group, Human Rights Watch, estimated 10,000 dead Iraqi civilians at the end of official hostilities in April, 2003 and he doubts the number could have gone up ten times since then but he says the exact number is not so important. He says what is important is for the Pentagon to keep track so they can figure out how to kill fewer civilians in the future and so the world knows the true human impact of the war.

Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead on the program tonight, voter registration and Ohio's attempt not to be the next Florida.

And, if it's Friday, the rooster could be crowing in Ohio, Florida and everywhere else, morning papers on a Friday night.

This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: For days, we've been reporting on the election run-up in Ohio, the contentious battle over registration, charges made by the state's Republicans that thousands of voters have been fraudulently registered.

Federal court ended some of those challenges midweek, almost all of which turned out to be bogus. And, today, the secretary of state tried to calm the royal waters. Well, sort of.

Here's CNN's Joe Johns.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Donna Habegger is one of about 27,000 people whose voter registration has been challenged by the Ohio Republican Party. The twist, she herself is a registered Republican.

DONNA HABEGGER, OHIO VOTER: I've been voting there for 13 years in that same precinct. So I was pretty upset. I'm glad they're checking people out. But I couldn't understand why I was being challenged.

JOHNS: Habegger was the only challenged voter on Allen County's list to show up at this hearing to get her registration straightened out, a confusing scene with lawyers for both parties present, and Democrats arguing the hearing shouldn't even be held, because a federal judge had just shut down such proceedings statewide and hadn't officially notified the county.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What this has been about is the disenfranchisement of individuals in this county.

JOHNS: Law, passion and pre-election politics threatening to turn this state upside down.

Friday, the Republican secretary of state, whose job it is to make sure Ohio doesn't become this election's Florida, proposed banning voting registration challengers from both parties from camping out in voting precincts on Election Day, an issue already in the courts.

KENNETH BLACKWELL, OHIO SECRETARY OF STATE: This action will allow Ohio's dedicated bipartisan election officials present in each polling place, Republicans and Democrats, to concentrate for the next four days on preparation for this important election without the distraction and uncertainties this litigation brings.

JOHNS: State law allows challengers. The attorney general immediately dismissed the idea. Democrats quipped that the two men were jockeying for position in the next election, because both may run for governor.

Meanwhile, with charges of attempted fraud and voter suppression swirling, elections boards large and small here are struggling with all the additional work.

KEITH CUNNINGHAM, ALLEN COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS: This has been beyond inconvenient. We have approximately 90 staff hours over the course of the last seven days in this project, including Saturday and Sunday. And it comes at a time when it is really critical that we be preparing for this election.

JOHNS: Court battles are expected to continue up to Election Day, if not after, creating uncertainty and confusion.

Joe Johns, CNN, Lima, Ohio.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: If history holds true -- and, in this election, that's a big if -- most of those who get challenged will be challenged by Republicans in Ohio or elsewhere. Democrats say Republicans are really trying to suppress the vote. Republicans say they are just trying to make sure only registered voters do vote, in a sense, two civil rights in conflict.

Here's our senior legal analyst, Jeff Toobin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST (voice-over): Hardball Republican politics 2004, in Las Vegas, challenging the registration of 17,000 voters, in Milwaukee, contesting 5,600, in Florida, thousands kept off the rolls because of omissions in their registrations.

Also in Florida, Missouri, Michigan and other states, including Ohio, the GOP plans to station poll watchers on Election Day in minority neighborhoods. To these Republicans, it's all about making sure that everybody is playing by the rules.

JOHN FUND, COLUMNIST, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": Two civil rights here. There's a civil right to vote. We fought a long civil rights struggle in the 1960s to pass the Voting Rights Act. We need to preserve and protect that. But there's an equal civil right that everyone has. They have the right not to have their vote voided out or canceled by someone who should not be voting, someone who voted twice, or someone who doesn't even exist.

TOOBIN: But Democrats say there's more at work here.

PAMELA KARLAN, PROFESSOR, STANFORD LAW SCHOOL: I think, in this election, it's probably accurate to say that most of the reports of attempts to suppress turnout are about Republican efforts to suppress turnout. And I think the reason for that is the common belief that increased voter turnout is more likely to help the Democratic Party than to help the Republican Party.

TOOBIN: Democrats say today's GOP efforts are part of a long history of intimidation of voters, in California in 1988, private guards at polling stations in minority neighborhoods, in Louisiana, in 1986, challenges from a so-called ballot security task force.

This week, activists went to federal court in New Jersey to try to enforce a 1982 nationwide consent decree in which Republicans agreed to forgo voter intimidation tactics for good. The conflict, are Republicans stopping voter fraud or just stopping Democratic voters, will continue into and through Election Day.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And Mr. Toobin is here with us.

I remarked the other night that the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was involved many years ago in allegations of suppressing the vote out in Arizona.

TOOBIN: It is a long part of American political history.

And the arguments really are always the same, you know, Republicans saying, look, we're just trying to make sure people play by the rules, and Democrats saying, yes, sure you are.

BROWN: Well, in some cases, I'm sure that's fair. In some cases, in this election, it's been sort of petty. In Ohio, there was an argument over whether registration was on the right weight paper.

TOOBIN: That's right. And that sure does sound like a technicality to try to keep the registration numbers down.

BROWN: And, in Florida, wasn't there a dispute over whether someone who had affirmed that they were a citizen had also checked the box affirming they were a citizen?

TOOBIN: But you may think that is trivial, and it may be trivial. But the state of the law is now, that if you didn't check the correct boxes, your registration is not going to count. So the Republicans won that one.

BROWN: Let me ask you one more thing. Well, I know they won that one. And the law is the law. I mean, this is what we're going to get to when we get to provisional ballots in a couple of days.

The question is how they're going to square all of this with Bush v. Gore, or Gore v. Bush -- I forget which one -- is that every vote has to be treated equally.

TOOBIN: Well, this is the greatest mystery of Gore v. -- of Bush v. Gore. It is Bush v. Gore.

BROWN: Thank you.

TOOBIN: Is, how do you apply that unusual decision and the unusual circumstances to every other election?

Because if you take Bush v. Gore at its terms, it does say that everybody has to be treated equally. But you have situations where, as we mentioned before, in Pennsylvania, there are five different kinds of voting machines. How do you apply -- in Ohio, 88 counties can decide how to handle provisional ballots in 88 different ways. Is that consistent with Bush v. Gore? The courts may have to decide November 3rd forward.

BROWN: It's a good thing to have expertise, Mr. Toobin. Thank you.

TOOBIN: Well, it's nice to be here.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: And we'll be -- as we say in television, we'll be seeing more of you, I'm sure.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: Still to come tonight, George Bush, John Kerry, Jeff Greenfield and a map -- the numbers games still ahead. Relics of the 2000 election also, voting booths that helped elect or not elect a president.

A break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: At some point -- and we are well past it -- a presidential campaign becomes a math problem. How do you get to 270 electoral votes? That's a game each side is playing. And since it's no fun unless you know the game, too, we are here to help. So how do you get to 270?

You turn to Jeff Greenfield, for starters.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congratulations.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): This is how it wound up four years ago, Gore winning the coasts, most of the big industrial states and, barely, the Upper Midwest, Bush taking the rest. If these states all stay the same, Bush would wind up with 278 electoral votes. You need 270 to win.

So, where are Kerry's best chances to take a state away from Bush? New Hampshire, Ohio, with the worst job loss picture of all, Florida, and two Western possibilities, Colorado and Nevada. They're sending ex-President Clinton to Arkansas. That's an outside possibility.

For Bush, Pennsylvania is target No. 1. He spent more time there than just about anywhere else. And Michigan, though he seems to trail a bit there. Bush is running relatively well in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota, all states that Gore barely won. New Mexico is a target because Gore won it by just 366 votes. And, surprisingly, Hawaii appears in play. Some polls say New Jersey is gettable for Bush, but that still seems a long shot.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: Now, that's the what. The deeper question is why might these votes go the way they're going -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, let me try a couple things. Does bin Laden, the emergence of bin Laden today, hijack all the theories and make this about one thing?

GREENFIELD: I think it increases the chance that people who want change and are concerned that they shouldn't change in a national security terrorism umbrella will think more that way. Whether this is the late October surprise, I don't know.

BROWN: Different states are moved by different things.

GREENFIELD: Yes.

BROWN: It was a less-than-stellar, not terrible, but less-than- stellar economic report out today.

GREENFIELD: Right.

But Ohio is the state where people think the economy most endangers Bush. It's had the worst job losses of any. You've got switches in traditional constituencies. But may be helped in Florida by an increase in his percentage of the Jewish vote, even the African- American vote. Kerry is bidding for non-Cuban Hispanics. We talked about that a few days ago.

BROWN: Yes.

GREENFIELD: There's gay marriage on the ballot in Michigan.

But, fundamentally, I still think this comes down to one overarching question, which is, marginally, the country would rather change than continue. They are not at all sure that they can take that risk. In fact, one of the Bush campaign ads said, you can't take that risk. BROWN: So what you're saying more gently than I'm about to is, after all this time and all this money, John Kerry has yet to convince the country to be comfortable with him.

GREENFIELD: I can be less gentle, too. I think that John Kerry has run a risk-reverse, very cautious campaign, nothing like what challengers like Reagan and Clinton did, where they defined themselves in sometimes very bold ways, challenging conventional orthodoxy.

And I think that the failure to do that, if Kerry doesn't make this, may turn out to be as critical a matter as anything else. We might go back and look at that Democratic Convention and say, that's where he failed to define himself. And it took that first debate to even get him back in the game.

BROWN: Good to see you. Have a good weekend. And we'll spend all of Monday night together, or most of it, and Tuesday night -- Tuesday night as well.

GREENFIELD: Sounds like a plan.

BROWN: Thank you. And then you're probably off for a month. Thank you.

Ahead on the program, art imitates life. Here's one place we know your vote doesn't count.

And since it's the end of the week -- well, every day, we do the morning papers.

A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: This just in, as they say.

The plane carrying Senator John Edwards and staff and press made a quick emergency landing in Raleigh, North Carolina, tonight. I think they were headed there, in fact, for the Edwards to vote -- a small fire on board caused by a battery, a press battery exploding. The Secret Service put it out. Everybody is fine.

The ballot box is a very simple and powerful image, from the big old mechanical voting machines here in New York, to the slick new voting machines we all hope work come next Tuesday. Then there were those punch card machines in Florida that caused so much fuss four years ago, all symbols, and, in some cases, now art as well. The voting machine now on display at the Parsons School of Design here in New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL GOLDBERGER, DEAN, PARSONS SCHOOL OF DESIGN: This is the Voting Booth Project, which is a kind of riff on the whole idea of not just the Florida presidential voting in 2000, but the question of the connection between design and democracy. As we all know, the election was bitterly disputed because the voting machines didn't work. People didn't understand the design. The way we design things really affects the way history comes out. And this exhibit is meant to remind people of that.

We have almost 50 of the actual voting booths that were used in 2000. And we've given them to a whole range of brilliant artists, architects and designers, and said, do something with this.

CHEE PEARLMAN, CURATOR, THE VOTING BOOTH PROJECT: Some of them are very optimistic. Some of them are much more cynical. Some of them are quite fearful. Almost all of them make some kind of reference to the idea that our democracy is a very fragile place.

GOLDBERGER: A lot of the pieces are very beautiful. I think of Milton Glaser's exquisite gold covering. It was democracy as a kind of a gilded treasure.

Some of them are very funny. Two different groups with different sensibilities actually turned the voting booth into a kind of slot machine, which was itself a kind of commentary on the random outcome of elections.

PEARLMAN: This piece shows us how many people are feeling right now about November 2. We are nervous. People are concerned. We may have another drawn-out and ugly fight to the finish that is not that dissimilar from what we experienced in 2000.

GOLDBERGER: This exhibit is urgent right now because the election is in front of all of us. The entire country is focused, not just on the candidates and the issues, but also on the process. How does voting work? Will it work right? And what can we do to make it work better?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

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

Here is what is so -- well, there's a million things annoying about bin Laden. But he can command a headline and hijack just about everything.

"International Herald Tribune." "Bin Laden in Video Assails U.S. Policy."

"Chattanooga Times Free Press," over in the corner, "Bin Laden" -- "Bin Laden: Attacks Could Be Avoided. Al Qaeda Leader Tells Americans Security is in Your Own Hands." Front page.

"Philadelphia Inquirer," big bold, "Bin Laden Sends U.S. a Message. He Warns of New Attacks if Nation Does Not Change. Bush, Kerry Dismiss Tape as Analysts Weigh Its Impact." I assume that's its political impact.

Even up in the Catskills.

How much? Oh, my goodness.

"Times Herald-Record." "Best Way to Avoid Another Manhattan," bin Laden again.

"The Oregonian" out in Portland, bin Laden again. This is a very good story. "Deceptive Tactics in Play. GOP Voter Registration."

I wish we had more time for it.

The weather tomorrow in Chicago -- please.

(CHIMES)

BROWN: Thank you. "Boisterous."

We'll wrap it up for the week in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: That's our report for tonight. Have a terrific weekend.

I'm back here 8:00 Eastern time on Sunday for a special "CNN PRESENTS." We hope you will join us for that, and then all of us back here Monday.

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 October 29, 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.
Well, it's sort of simple, isn't it? There's a new bin Laden tape. It raises lots of questions coming as it does on the eve of the first presidential election since 9/11. Does the appearance of bin Laden remind the country of what it likes best about President Bush?

Or, on the other hand, does it remind the country that for all the tough talk, dead or alive and the like that the man who's responsible for the deaths of 3,000 Americans and countless others is still out there while the bulk of the American military effort is in a messy fight in Iraq, not exactly bin Laden country?

This election was bound to be determined in one way or another by terror. Now the face of it emerges with just four days to go and the whip begins there and with that, CNN's Nic Robertson so, Nic, the headline from you tonight.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, in Osama bin Laden's first video message in almost three years, he appears older but otherwise well in a message that seems timed and tailored to influence the U.S. elections -- Aaron.

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

Next the candidates starting with the president and our Senior White House Correspondent John King, John a headline from you.

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the president says Americans will not be influenced or intimidated by the reemergence of Osama bin Laden. Then, as if to prove the point, back to the campaign for the president and tough criticism for John Kerry.

BROWN: Thank you.

And to Florida and the Kerry campaign and CNN's Candy Crowley with the watch so, Candy the headline there.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, for one brief moment someone inside the Kerry campaign said quite openly "I'm not sure whether the tape works for us or against us or doesn't do anything at all." But I can tell you that publicly they are arguing that this is a plus for John Kerry -- Aaron.

BROWN: Candy, thank you. And finally the missing explosives story a day after pictures pretty much laid the central question to rest, CNN's Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon tonight, Jamie a headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Pentagon has adapted to the reality of the PR battleground and they've switched their argument away from the idea that Saddam Hussein might have moved these missing explosives and now they're looking at whether U.S. troops blew them up but the evidence remains inconclusive.

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

Also on the program on this Friday night putting together a winning combination of states four days from now, the answer may lie by going back four years ago. Jeff Greenfield joins us to draw a picture.

We'll go back to Ohio for another skirmish in the battle over who votes and who doesn't and who gets to have a say in it all.

And, no question about this, the rooster does get its say, morning papers caps off the night and the week, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin tonight with the uninvited guest to the campaign, the country and, if we were being just plain about it, our day-to-day lives. Just after four o'clock this afternoon Eastern Time, Osama bin Laden stopped being a shadowy presence in all three. He stopped being a talking point and once again started talking.

In a moment we'll try to tease whatever meaning we can out of the tape, first, though, the reporting and CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Alive and apparently well, Osama bin Laden to have timed his first video message in nearly three years to influence the U.S. election.

OSAMA BIN LADEN (through translator): Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked.

ROBERTSON: He accuses President Bush of misleading the U.S. public and in a politically charged swipe says on September the 11th, Bush wasted time reading to school children after he was told of the attack on the World Trade Center.

BIN LADEN (through translator): It never occurred to us that he, the commander-in-chief of the country, would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone because he thought listening to a child discussing her goats was more important.

ROBERTSON: This criticism of President Bush appears in marked contrast with recent web-based al Qaeda sympathizers' comments favoring Bush over Senator Kerry. For some analysts, bin Laden's message is less about influencing the election's outcome and more about ensuring himself maximum publicity.

BRUCE HOFFMAN, RAND INSTITUTE: Bin Laden has never been one to miss an opportunity and I think with the election coming up the timing couldn't have been better.

ROBERTSON: Whatever the motivation, bin Laden not only reinforces his responsibility for 9/11 but sets out to justify why America has been singled out for attack by al Qaeda.

BIN LADEN (through translator): The event that affected me most personally was in 1982 when America gave permission for Israel to invade Lebanon. That built a strong desire in me to punish the guilty.

ROBERTSON: Bin Laden's is the second such video message from the al Qaeda leadership in a month and a half, an indication just how secure bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri must feel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON: And while this tape does appear to be aimed at the U.S. audience, undoubtedly there will be al Qaeda sympathizers who can feel buoyed by the fact that they've seen Osama bin Laden alive and apparently well -- Aaron.

BROWN: All right, two quick ones Nic. Do we have any idea when Al-Jazeera, which aired the tape, received the tape?

ROBERTSON: We don't and they've only aired portions of it. We know it's an 18-minute tape. We've heard perhaps up to six or seven minutes so far -- Aaron.

BROWN: OK but we don't know when they received it? We don't know if they held it for any length of time?

ROBERTSON: That's not at all clear to us at this stage, Aaron, no.

BROWN: OK. And is there on the tape any suggestion as to where bin Laden is?

ROBERTSON: Again, there are very, very, very few clues. It appears to be a background that looks like the same type of location where Ayman al-Zawahiri recorded his message that was delivered about a month and a half ago. It appears to be sort of a mud adobe type wall.

That could be the Pakistan-Afghan border. It could be the other border Pakistan has with India, the Kashmir area where there are jihadi type militants that would support Osama bin Laden. It could be there as well. There are really no clues. Interestingly, he doesn't have a weapon against the wall behind him. In the past, Osama bin Laden has tended to give these speeches with that kind of military type backup, if you will.

BROWN: OK, Nic, thank you very much. We have more on this, both the political implications and otherwise still ahead.

Not surprisingly, the president and Senator Kerry wasted no time in condemning the man in the message. In very tough language it was for both campaigns, an October surprise to say the least and, at first, not something to be spun or used or played for advantage, at first.

We begin with our Senior White House Correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): The president offered his assessment between campaign stops in Ohio.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Americans will not be intimidated or influenced by an enemy of our country. I'm sure Senator Kerry agrees with this. I also want to say to the American people that we are at war with these terrorists and I am confident that we will prevail.

KING: The reemergence of bin Laden four days before the election immediately became a campaign flashpoint. In Columbus, Ohio, the president lashed out at Democrat John Kerry for repeating after the bin Laden tape aired his assertion that bad planning by Mr. Bush allowed the al Qaeda leader to escape a manhunt in Afghanistan.

BUSH: It's simply not the case. It's the worst kind of Monday morning quarterbacking. It is especially shameful in the light of a new tape from America's enemy.

KING: At earlier stops, Mr. Bush made no mention of the tape but continued his relentless assault on Senator Kerry's credentials to assume command of the war on terror.

BUSH: During the last 20 years in key moments of challenge and decision for America, Senator Kerry has chosen the position of weakness and inaction.

KING: Mr. Bush was told of reports of a new bin Laden tape Friday morning as he flew to a New Hampshire event featuring family members of 9/11 victims.

BUSH: We are shrinking the area where terrorists can operate freely. We have the terrorists on the run.

KING: Mr. Bush was brief throughout the day and made his public statement after the tape aired on Al-Jazeera and then in the United States. Aides say Mr. Bush had no second thoughts about keeping his campaign schedule, including this evening Ohio event with a rowdy crowd of 20,000 and an introduction by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (R), CALIFORNIA: I'm here to pump you up to reelect President George W. Bush.

(END VIDEOTAPE) KING: There is the obvious risk for the president that voters see bin Laden and blame Mr. Bush for the fact that he is still at large but most senior Bush advisers believe that if there is any political benefit here it will fall to the president because voters consistently have said they view Mr. Bush as the toughest candidate when it comes to waging the war on terror -- Aaron.

BROWN: Help me a little bit on the time line. The president late this afternoon stands on the tarmac and delivers a very brief statement about the tape and then are there tape references or the bin Laden references in the speech included in the next speech?

KING: The next speech. He gave that statement in Toledo, got on Air Force One and flew here to Columbus and then he attacked Senator Kerry for that comment about Tora Bora, about an hour and a half after the initial statement.

BROWN: And I think we all sort of accept that while there are plenty of theories about how this might play out no one really knows whether the tape helps one side or helps the other side. It's all spin at this point, isn't it?

KING: Absolutely right. The first answer you get from everybody when you ask this question is "I don't know" or "who knows" and then they go on to offer their speculation from there. If one candidate were clearly ahead, we might have a better assessment of it. Because the race is so close, this is yet another element of uncertainty added into an already toss-up election.

BROWN: If you were just planning the last four days of a campaign, would you prefer to have no surprises and just go to the script?

KING: I think if you're the Bush team you do because they think, they think or at least they're telling us they think that they have a very slight advantage going into the final few days and that things were beginning to tip their way.

Anything that could disrupt the momentum or just stop whatever's going on is something you don't want to happen but nobody had any real big momentum anyway and I don't know that you can poll this going into the last few days of the election. Polls tend to be unreliable. By the time the pollsters can assess how this is playing out we'll be having an election.

BROWN: Have a good weekend. We'll talk to you this weekend. Thank you, John, John King in Ohio tonight.

And, as John just touched on, Osama bin Laden's continued existence on the planet was central to Senator Kerry's critique of the administration long before the tape emerged this afternoon. No sign of that changing between now and Election Day.

But, as CNN's Candy Crowley reports tonight out on the stump, the time for any single person or theme is over. It's time now to go everywhere. There's still a race and say everything there is to say, everything and bin Laden.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CROWLEY (voice-over): As a campaign issue there's only one way to treat the video of Osama bin Laden, very carefully.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: As Americans we are absolutely united in our determination to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. They are barbarians and I will stop at absolutely nothing to hunt down, capture or kill the terrorists wherever they are, whatever it takes, period.

CROWLEY: Kerry was briefed on the tape by foreign policy adviser Rand Beers, who got his briefing from the administration. The Kerry campaign treated the whole thing very gingerly with the candidate walking out solo, un-campaign like, to seriously talk to the cameras, no questions taken.

But Camp Kerry was very critical of the president for knowing about the videotape and still delivering what aides call the most divisive, negative speech of the campaign. They did not, Kerry aides insisted, want to touch the politics of this thing. Still, there it is reading between the lines.

KERRY: And I regret that when George Bush had the opportunity in Afghanistan at Tora Bora he didn't choose to use American forces to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden. He outsourced the job to Afghan warlords. I would never have done that. I think it was an enormous mistake and we're paying the price for it today.

CROWLEY: This drives the Bush campaign up the wall. They say there was conflicting information that cast doubt on whether bin Laden was even in Tora Bora. They note that retired General Tommy Franks, the man in charge of the Afghanistan operation and a Bush supporter, has disputed every point Kerry has made about the battle.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CROWLEY: All of which is to say that no matter how much everybody says this is not an issue that belongs on the campaign trail, there it is right where it's always been right in the heart of the campaign -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, if it leads the news it's in the campaign. It's in the campaign whether they like it or not. So, the question we asked John, we ask you, would the Kerry side have preferred to have a case to make on this? Would they have preferred not to see Mr. bin Laden out there on television all afternoon?

CROWLEY: What they don't like are surprises really. I think both sides, I think John's absolutely right, at this stage of the game you've got these four days. You have them planned out doing your final arguments, having your rallies and then this comes up.

And it was very clear that they didn't know how to handle it because what happened was when he was first asked about it in that local interview that you saw, John Kerry talked about how it's such a shame that George Bush didn't get Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora.

And then when he came and talked to us on the tarmac, there was no mention of that because they thought better of doing it, so it was something that kind of, you know, threw a monkey wrench into what they were trying to do today and that's never a good thing in the last four days. Having said that, when you talk to them they said "I don't know how this is going to play." They don't know whether it's going to play for or against them.

BROWN: Candy, has there been an event since, since the tarmac?

CROWLEY: There has. There have been, let's see, one or two. I'm trying to think when the tarmac -- one of them.

BROWN: And has he brought it up in those?

CROWLEY: No and they made a decision not to bring it up in those. I mean so they're walking this really fine line. They said, "No, we're just going to go on with the campaign. This doesn't make any difference," and so they're not going to bring it up. But does he still talk about how he would lead the war against terrorism better, yes.

BROWN: OK.

CROWLEY: But not, you know, specifically about the videotape.

BROWN: Candy, we'll talk Sunday. Have a good weekend until then. Thank you.

CROWLEY: OK.

BROWN: Candy Crowley down in Florida tonight.

More now on the tape itself, to our eye the most direct statement yet of who al Qaeda is, what it's done and why, not in other words the ravings of a madman but certainly the cold logic of the enemy and in that regard open to a closer look.

We're joined now by Philip Smucker who broke the story of the bin Laden escape from Tora Bora and tells it again in "Al Qaeda's Great Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror's Trail," always good to see him, welcome again. What do you make of the tape? This is a pretty shrewd PR move to put it in pretty base terms.

PHILIP SMUCKER, AUTHOR, "AL QAEDA'S GREAT ESCAPE": Yes. Well, Nic Robertson pointed out that Osama bin Laden didn't have a gun here. He sounded conciliatory. This is almost a classic guerrilla tactic. He wants to show that his organization is not only militant but it's political and he's done a very good job of doing that.

And not only that, Aaron, but you see both candidates, no matter how carefully they treated this they both reacted immediately to what Osama bin Laden had to say. Now, how much does that say about the clout of one terrorist all the way around the world maybe hiding in a cave somewhere? BROWN: Well, that raises a couple of questions. Do you believe he's hiding in a cave somewhere or that he's operating under the protection of some entity other than simply al Qaeda thugs?

SMUCKER: Well, I think one of the overlooked locations that he may well very be in is on the Afghan-Iranian border over on the Iranian side harbored, aided and abetted by the Revolutionary Guard. They actually had a role in helping some of the al Qaeda members escape from Tora Bora, moving them through Tehran and then back to the Middle East.

Nobody really knows where bin Laden is and that's what's so fascinating about this. The only time we know where he was, in fact the most recent time was at Tora Bora. It may be a little bit disingenuous for the regime, the administration now to say "Well, he was never at Tora Bora." In fact, the Green Beret commander on the ground agrees that he left Tora Bora early in December, 2001.

BROWN: Just a couple more things on the tape. Were you surprised by how he looked? Are you surprised by the tone of what he had to say? Was he speaking from strength when he said you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone, or is that a guy speaking from weakness?

SMUCKER: Well, I saw what you saw, Aaron. He looked very relaxed frankly. He looked comfortable. He looked as if he had a message to deliver and he addressed, if you listen very closely to the language he addressed the American public in a tone and a fashion that they could understand.

He did away with a lot of the language that he usually uses with his own followers quoting the Hadis and the Quran. He was speaking directly to the American public and I think he's quite a clever man and some people would argue, well, he wants Kerry to win.

But, in fact, he probably knows that coming out at this point and bashing George Bush the way he did in a very incisive manner that this will probably redound to the Bush administration's advantage.

BROWN: And why just to finish the thought, why would he prefer a George Bush win?

SMUCKER: I think there's no doubt in the Arab world and you talk to most of the analysts that watch al Qaeda, the al Qaeda organization and bin Laden prefer the Bush administration because as George Bush says he wants to fight the terrorists in the Middle East so they don't get to America.

Well, Osama bin Laden is more than happy to be fighting the Americans in Iraq. He likes the Bush administration's offensive policy. He thinks he has America where he wants them and he likes George Bush as an opponent, if you will.

BROWN: Good to see you, Phil. Thank you.

SMUCKER: My pleasure.

BROWN: Thank you, a fascinating night this.

Ahead on the program the missing explosives and a Pentagon shift, new questions and no clear answers from there.

And the death toll of civilians in Iraq is it much, much greater than had been estimated before? We'll take a break first.

From New York on a Friday night this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Now to the missing explosives. Last night on the program, a former top American weapons inspector looked at the pictures of the bunker, the seals on the door, the explosives inside and said, "Yep, that's it," the closest thing to proof positive without actually being there that one of the three bunkers where the explosives were held was sealed and stocked when American forces arrived on the road to Baghdad.

We wondered what the answer would be today from the Pentagon and, today, the answer came, the story reported tonight by CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): These pictures taken by Minneapolis television station KSTP strongly suggest at least some of the missing HMX explosives were at the al Qa Qaa facility on April 18th, 2003, so the Pentagon is shifting its argument no longer pushing the idea behind this satellite photograph that Saddam Hussein might have trucked away the more than 300 tons before the war.

Now the Pentagon suggests, U.S. troops may have destroyed much of the stockpile and to support that it produced a demolition expert who was at the facility April 13th. The Army major says his unit blew up an estimated 250 tons of munitions but he couldn't say any of it was the missing explosives.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you tell us that that was the same material? Are we talking about the same material?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you don't know, say it.

MAJ. AUSTIN PEARSON, U.S. ARMY: I don't know. I don't have that information.

MCINTYRE: Pearson says he never saw any of the IAEA wire seals that experts say are the telltale sign the missing HMX was there on April 18th and he wasn't sure what specific explosives were destroyed.

PEARSON: Off the top of my head I'm sure there's at least 80 or 90 different type and whether it's HMX I couldn't verify.

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon says it believes some of one of the missing explosives, called RDX, that was not under seal was likely destroyed but it can't prove it. LARRY DI RITA, PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: Some percentage of that total in question was almost certainly removed from bunkers and destroyed by Major Pearson's unit.

MCINTYRE: Critics say one thing is becoming increasingly clear. Few U.S. troops knew anything about the missing stockpile in the first weeks of the war.

DAVID ALBRIGHT, ISIS: There were lists of sites prepared and kinds of things you needed to worry about located at those sites but what I found in May particularly, in May of 2003, the people in the field often didn't know about those lists.

MCINTYRE: Comparing the IAEA's map of bunkers containing HMX with commercial satellite images of the al Qa Qaa facility shows that by November, 2003 many of the bunkers had been destroyed but the Pentagon can't say when that happened or if the HMX was destroyed or lost. Pentagon officials are reviewing images like these sent in by a U.S. Marine who believes he may have destroyed some of the missing explosives but so far that cannot be verified.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: Pentagon officials now say it's unlikely they'll put together a full picture of what happened until sometime after the presidential election. Many of those officials wonder that if they get that answer after the election, absent the heat of the campaign, whether anyone will really care about what it argues is a small fraction of Iraq's prewar arsenal, a dangerous fraction but a very small one -- Aaron.

BROWN: And that is true. It's symbolic in political terms but setting that aside for a second and not honestly wanting to pick a fight, Mr. Di Rita today says almost certainly some of that stuff that we've been talking about for four days, five days now, was destroyed by the major's unit. He also said earlier in the week that almost certainly it was moved before the war began, correct?

MCINTYRE: Well, no. What they said was they thought it was highly probable that it had been moved.

BROWN: Highly probable.

MCINTYRE: And when he says it's almost certain it's because some of the pictures that show what appears to be RDX, the explosive that was not under IAEA seal, very closely matches the kinds of things that this unit blew up but there's no way for them to say that it was part of the batch that was under IAEA monitoring. They just don't know.

BROWN: Well, I guess my question really is how did they move from it is highly probable the stuff was moved before the war and Secretary Rumsfeld yesterday saying we owned the skies, they couldn't have moved it after the war, to almost certainly we destroyed some of it?

MCINTYRE: Well, first of all obviously they got a reality check with those photographs from KTSP, the video that shows clearly some portion of it was there. They're still clinging to the argument that it would be very difficult to move it out in any large quantity, so again they've shifted their argument now to looking at whether it was in fact destroyed in the weeks and months after U.S. troops got there.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you very much, Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon tonight.

On any given day, as those of you who watch the program know, we can tell you exactly how many Americans have died in Iraq. We can tell you how many were wounded. What we've never been able to tell you with any degree of confidence at all, any, is how many Iraqis have died.

A report out this week has tried to figure that out. The number researchers came up with 100,000, a number that is dramatically higher, dramatically than any previous estimate which therefore raises as many questions as it may answer.

Here's CNN's Elizabeth Cohen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We may never know exactly how many civilians have died in Iraq. The Pentagon says it doesn't keep track.

GEN. TOMMY FRANKS (RET.), FMR. COMMANDER IN CHIEF, U.S. CENTCOM: You know that we don't -- that we don't do body counts.

COHEN: But some people wish they would. They say the military sets out to kill as few civilians as possible but...

MARC GARLASCO, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: If you don't go on the ground when it's all over and see if you were right, how do you ever know that your models are correct?

COHEN: A new study says 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died because of the war, most directly from battle but many also from deteriorating conditions.

GILBERT BURNHAM, JOHNS HOPKINS: The majority of the casualties are women and children.

COHEN: The study was done in Iraq by American and Iraqi researchers and published in (UNINTELLIGIBLE), a British medical journal. A Pentagon spokesperson said it's impossible to validate the study's numbers and that U.S.-led forces have painstakingly avoided the loss of innocent lives.

Other researchers who have estimated civilian deaths in Iraq say 100,000 is way too high. Marc Gerlasko's group, Human Rights Watch, estimated 10,000 dead Iraqi civilians at the end of official hostilities in April, 2003 and he doubts the number could have gone up ten times since then but he says the exact number is not so important. He says what is important is for the Pentagon to keep track so they can figure out how to kill fewer civilians in the future and so the world knows the true human impact of the war.

Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead on the program tonight, voter registration and Ohio's attempt not to be the next Florida.

And, if it's Friday, the rooster could be crowing in Ohio, Florida and everywhere else, morning papers on a Friday night.

This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: For days, we've been reporting on the election run-up in Ohio, the contentious battle over registration, charges made by the state's Republicans that thousands of voters have been fraudulently registered.

Federal court ended some of those challenges midweek, almost all of which turned out to be bogus. And, today, the secretary of state tried to calm the royal waters. Well, sort of.

Here's CNN's Joe Johns.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Donna Habegger is one of about 27,000 people whose voter registration has been challenged by the Ohio Republican Party. The twist, she herself is a registered Republican.

DONNA HABEGGER, OHIO VOTER: I've been voting there for 13 years in that same precinct. So I was pretty upset. I'm glad they're checking people out. But I couldn't understand why I was being challenged.

JOHNS: Habegger was the only challenged voter on Allen County's list to show up at this hearing to get her registration straightened out, a confusing scene with lawyers for both parties present, and Democrats arguing the hearing shouldn't even be held, because a federal judge had just shut down such proceedings statewide and hadn't officially notified the county.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What this has been about is the disenfranchisement of individuals in this county.

JOHNS: Law, passion and pre-election politics threatening to turn this state upside down.

Friday, the Republican secretary of state, whose job it is to make sure Ohio doesn't become this election's Florida, proposed banning voting registration challengers from both parties from camping out in voting precincts on Election Day, an issue already in the courts.

KENNETH BLACKWELL, OHIO SECRETARY OF STATE: This action will allow Ohio's dedicated bipartisan election officials present in each polling place, Republicans and Democrats, to concentrate for the next four days on preparation for this important election without the distraction and uncertainties this litigation brings.

JOHNS: State law allows challengers. The attorney general immediately dismissed the idea. Democrats quipped that the two men were jockeying for position in the next election, because both may run for governor.

Meanwhile, with charges of attempted fraud and voter suppression swirling, elections boards large and small here are struggling with all the additional work.

KEITH CUNNINGHAM, ALLEN COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS: This has been beyond inconvenient. We have approximately 90 staff hours over the course of the last seven days in this project, including Saturday and Sunday. And it comes at a time when it is really critical that we be preparing for this election.

JOHNS: Court battles are expected to continue up to Election Day, if not after, creating uncertainty and confusion.

Joe Johns, CNN, Lima, Ohio.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: If history holds true -- and, in this election, that's a big if -- most of those who get challenged will be challenged by Republicans in Ohio or elsewhere. Democrats say Republicans are really trying to suppress the vote. Republicans say they are just trying to make sure only registered voters do vote, in a sense, two civil rights in conflict.

Here's our senior legal analyst, Jeff Toobin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST (voice-over): Hardball Republican politics 2004, in Las Vegas, challenging the registration of 17,000 voters, in Milwaukee, contesting 5,600, in Florida, thousands kept off the rolls because of omissions in their registrations.

Also in Florida, Missouri, Michigan and other states, including Ohio, the GOP plans to station poll watchers on Election Day in minority neighborhoods. To these Republicans, it's all about making sure that everybody is playing by the rules.

JOHN FUND, COLUMNIST, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": Two civil rights here. There's a civil right to vote. We fought a long civil rights struggle in the 1960s to pass the Voting Rights Act. We need to preserve and protect that. But there's an equal civil right that everyone has. They have the right not to have their vote voided out or canceled by someone who should not be voting, someone who voted twice, or someone who doesn't even exist.

TOOBIN: But Democrats say there's more at work here.

PAMELA KARLAN, PROFESSOR, STANFORD LAW SCHOOL: I think, in this election, it's probably accurate to say that most of the reports of attempts to suppress turnout are about Republican efforts to suppress turnout. And I think the reason for that is the common belief that increased voter turnout is more likely to help the Democratic Party than to help the Republican Party.

TOOBIN: Democrats say today's GOP efforts are part of a long history of intimidation of voters, in California in 1988, private guards at polling stations in minority neighborhoods, in Louisiana, in 1986, challenges from a so-called ballot security task force.

This week, activists went to federal court in New Jersey to try to enforce a 1982 nationwide consent decree in which Republicans agreed to forgo voter intimidation tactics for good. The conflict, are Republicans stopping voter fraud or just stopping Democratic voters, will continue into and through Election Day.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And Mr. Toobin is here with us.

I remarked the other night that the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was involved many years ago in allegations of suppressing the vote out in Arizona.

TOOBIN: It is a long part of American political history.

And the arguments really are always the same, you know, Republicans saying, look, we're just trying to make sure people play by the rules, and Democrats saying, yes, sure you are.

BROWN: Well, in some cases, I'm sure that's fair. In some cases, in this election, it's been sort of petty. In Ohio, there was an argument over whether registration was on the right weight paper.

TOOBIN: That's right. And that sure does sound like a technicality to try to keep the registration numbers down.

BROWN: And, in Florida, wasn't there a dispute over whether someone who had affirmed that they were a citizen had also checked the box affirming they were a citizen?

TOOBIN: But you may think that is trivial, and it may be trivial. But the state of the law is now, that if you didn't check the correct boxes, your registration is not going to count. So the Republicans won that one.

BROWN: Let me ask you one more thing. Well, I know they won that one. And the law is the law. I mean, this is what we're going to get to when we get to provisional ballots in a couple of days.

The question is how they're going to square all of this with Bush v. Gore, or Gore v. Bush -- I forget which one -- is that every vote has to be treated equally.

TOOBIN: Well, this is the greatest mystery of Gore v. -- of Bush v. Gore. It is Bush v. Gore.

BROWN: Thank you.

TOOBIN: Is, how do you apply that unusual decision and the unusual circumstances to every other election?

Because if you take Bush v. Gore at its terms, it does say that everybody has to be treated equally. But you have situations where, as we mentioned before, in Pennsylvania, there are five different kinds of voting machines. How do you apply -- in Ohio, 88 counties can decide how to handle provisional ballots in 88 different ways. Is that consistent with Bush v. Gore? The courts may have to decide November 3rd forward.

BROWN: It's a good thing to have expertise, Mr. Toobin. Thank you.

TOOBIN: Well, it's nice to be here.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: And we'll be -- as we say in television, we'll be seeing more of you, I'm sure.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: Still to come tonight, George Bush, John Kerry, Jeff Greenfield and a map -- the numbers games still ahead. Relics of the 2000 election also, voting booths that helped elect or not elect a president.

A break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: At some point -- and we are well past it -- a presidential campaign becomes a math problem. How do you get to 270 electoral votes? That's a game each side is playing. And since it's no fun unless you know the game, too, we are here to help. So how do you get to 270?

You turn to Jeff Greenfield, for starters.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congratulations.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): This is how it wound up four years ago, Gore winning the coasts, most of the big industrial states and, barely, the Upper Midwest, Bush taking the rest. If these states all stay the same, Bush would wind up with 278 electoral votes. You need 270 to win.

So, where are Kerry's best chances to take a state away from Bush? New Hampshire, Ohio, with the worst job loss picture of all, Florida, and two Western possibilities, Colorado and Nevada. They're sending ex-President Clinton to Arkansas. That's an outside possibility.

For Bush, Pennsylvania is target No. 1. He spent more time there than just about anywhere else. And Michigan, though he seems to trail a bit there. Bush is running relatively well in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota, all states that Gore barely won. New Mexico is a target because Gore won it by just 366 votes. And, surprisingly, Hawaii appears in play. Some polls say New Jersey is gettable for Bush, but that still seems a long shot.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: Now, that's the what. The deeper question is why might these votes go the way they're going -- Aaron.

BROWN: Well, let me try a couple things. Does bin Laden, the emergence of bin Laden today, hijack all the theories and make this about one thing?

GREENFIELD: I think it increases the chance that people who want change and are concerned that they shouldn't change in a national security terrorism umbrella will think more that way. Whether this is the late October surprise, I don't know.

BROWN: Different states are moved by different things.

GREENFIELD: Yes.

BROWN: It was a less-than-stellar, not terrible, but less-than- stellar economic report out today.

GREENFIELD: Right.

But Ohio is the state where people think the economy most endangers Bush. It's had the worst job losses of any. You've got switches in traditional constituencies. But may be helped in Florida by an increase in his percentage of the Jewish vote, even the African- American vote. Kerry is bidding for non-Cuban Hispanics. We talked about that a few days ago.

BROWN: Yes.

GREENFIELD: There's gay marriage on the ballot in Michigan.

But, fundamentally, I still think this comes down to one overarching question, which is, marginally, the country would rather change than continue. They are not at all sure that they can take that risk. In fact, one of the Bush campaign ads said, you can't take that risk. BROWN: So what you're saying more gently than I'm about to is, after all this time and all this money, John Kerry has yet to convince the country to be comfortable with him.

GREENFIELD: I can be less gentle, too. I think that John Kerry has run a risk-reverse, very cautious campaign, nothing like what challengers like Reagan and Clinton did, where they defined themselves in sometimes very bold ways, challenging conventional orthodoxy.

And I think that the failure to do that, if Kerry doesn't make this, may turn out to be as critical a matter as anything else. We might go back and look at that Democratic Convention and say, that's where he failed to define himself. And it took that first debate to even get him back in the game.

BROWN: Good to see you. Have a good weekend. And we'll spend all of Monday night together, or most of it, and Tuesday night -- Tuesday night as well.

GREENFIELD: Sounds like a plan.

BROWN: Thank you. And then you're probably off for a month. Thank you.

Ahead on the program, art imitates life. Here's one place we know your vote doesn't count.

And since it's the end of the week -- well, every day, we do the morning papers.

A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: This just in, as they say.

The plane carrying Senator John Edwards and staff and press made a quick emergency landing in Raleigh, North Carolina, tonight. I think they were headed there, in fact, for the Edwards to vote -- a small fire on board caused by a battery, a press battery exploding. The Secret Service put it out. Everybody is fine.

The ballot box is a very simple and powerful image, from the big old mechanical voting machines here in New York, to the slick new voting machines we all hope work come next Tuesday. Then there were those punch card machines in Florida that caused so much fuss four years ago, all symbols, and, in some cases, now art as well. The voting machine now on display at the Parsons School of Design here in New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL GOLDBERGER, DEAN, PARSONS SCHOOL OF DESIGN: This is the Voting Booth Project, which is a kind of riff on the whole idea of not just the Florida presidential voting in 2000, but the question of the connection between design and democracy. As we all know, the election was bitterly disputed because the voting machines didn't work. People didn't understand the design. The way we design things really affects the way history comes out. And this exhibit is meant to remind people of that.

We have almost 50 of the actual voting booths that were used in 2000. And we've given them to a whole range of brilliant artists, architects and designers, and said, do something with this.

CHEE PEARLMAN, CURATOR, THE VOTING BOOTH PROJECT: Some of them are very optimistic. Some of them are much more cynical. Some of them are quite fearful. Almost all of them make some kind of reference to the idea that our democracy is a very fragile place.

GOLDBERGER: A lot of the pieces are very beautiful. I think of Milton Glaser's exquisite gold covering. It was democracy as a kind of a gilded treasure.

Some of them are very funny. Two different groups with different sensibilities actually turned the voting booth into a kind of slot machine, which was itself a kind of commentary on the random outcome of elections.

PEARLMAN: This piece shows us how many people are feeling right now about November 2. We are nervous. People are concerned. We may have another drawn-out and ugly fight to the finish that is not that dissimilar from what we experienced in 2000.

GOLDBERGER: This exhibit is urgent right now because the election is in front of all of us. The entire country is focused, not just on the candidates and the issues, but also on the process. How does voting work? Will it work right? And what can we do to make it work better?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

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

Here is what is so -- well, there's a million things annoying about bin Laden. But he can command a headline and hijack just about everything.

"International Herald Tribune." "Bin Laden in Video Assails U.S. Policy."

"Chattanooga Times Free Press," over in the corner, "Bin Laden" -- "Bin Laden: Attacks Could Be Avoided. Al Qaeda Leader Tells Americans Security is in Your Own Hands." Front page.

"Philadelphia Inquirer," big bold, "Bin Laden Sends U.S. a Message. He Warns of New Attacks if Nation Does Not Change. Bush, Kerry Dismiss Tape as Analysts Weigh Its Impact." I assume that's its political impact.

Even up in the Catskills.

How much? Oh, my goodness.

"Times Herald-Record." "Best Way to Avoid Another Manhattan," bin Laden again.

"The Oregonian" out in Portland, bin Laden again. This is a very good story. "Deceptive Tactics in Play. GOP Voter Registration."

I wish we had more time for it.

The weather tomorrow in Chicago -- please.

(CHIMES)

BROWN: Thank you. "Boisterous."

We'll wrap it up for the week in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: That's our report for tonight. Have a terrific weekend.

I'm back here 8:00 Eastern time on Sunday for a special "CNN PRESENTS." We hope you will join us for that, and then all of us back here Monday.

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

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