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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Dana Reeve Diagnosed with Lung Cancer; Fugitives Sought in Tenn., R.I.

Aired August 09, 2005 - 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.
Timing can and does magnify the news. So coming just after Peter Jennings' death, made what we heard today about Dana Reeve resonates that much more. The terrible news came in a statement: "I've recently been diagnosed with lung cancer and I'm currently undergoing treatment and have an excellent team of physicians and we are optimistic about my prognosis. Now more than ever I feel Chris with me as I face this challenge. As always I look to him as the ultimate example of defying the odds with strength, courage, and hope in the face of life's adversities."

For nearly 10 years, Dana Reeve helped her husband fight a good fight. Now she's fighting one of her own, for her own life. And she's not alone. In truth, this kind of news, people, most of them not famous, is news people get every day. It happens so often, in truth, it usually doesn't make news. We'll get into the larger picture in a moment.

First though, the story that did make news, not just because Dana Reeve is famous, but because of what came before.

Here's NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Theirs is the kind of story that makes you wonder if it's true that God only allows you as many burdens as you can handle. For years both led lives that seemed blessed. Christopher Reeve was one of those men who had good looks, did good works, had talent and success, was known around the world as Superman.

Dana Morosini was one of those women from the nursery rhyme. Fair of face and full of grace. An actress and singer who met Reeve in the summer of 1987. They married, had a son, Will, formed a good life with Reeve's two children from a previous relationship and a circle of strong friends. The kind of people who had it all and shared what they had.

And then it happened. On a spring day in 1995, as Reeve competed in a riding event in Virginia, his horse balked. He pitched forward, landed headfirst, broke his neck. Surgeons had to literally reattach Reeve's head to his spine. He was paralyzed from the neck down, unable to breathe on his own. From the first hours after his accident, it was clear that Chris and Dana were a team. That he knew the rough path ahead and that she would travel it with him.

DANA REEVE, ACTOR: He now faces what hundreds of thousands of disabled men and women face daily in this country and around the world. Limitations. Frustration. Sorrow. Anger. Humiliation. Injustice. But also, on a daily basis, he experiences great joy, genuine laughter, much hope, and an extraordinary amount of love.

NISSEN: Acknowledging what was difficult, but emphasizing what was possible, that was how the Reeves chose to live, how they did live for nine years. Nine years of intensive rehab, exercise, bedsores, infections, experimental surgeries, and hard-won triumphs. Chris could move an index finger, then his wrist. Chris could breathe on his own.

They didn't ask what earthly good could come of their tragedy but how much good, how fast.

D. REEVE: He just charges forward. He sets a goal and he meets it. He's always been that way.

NISSEN: Their goal, raise awareness, raise money for spinal cord injury research, for stem-cell research. With Dana at his side, Chris testified before Congress, did television interviews. They started the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, helped raise funds for others with spinal cord injuries.

And they loved each other. Everyone who knew them well said so. And perfect strangers could somehow see it in the way they looked at each other. They were happy.

D. REEVE: Life keeps me going. I'm basically a happy person. I don't need a lot of prompting to keep going.

NISSEN: Reeve too kept going. Kept believing he would walk again.

CHRISTOPHER REEVE, ACTOR: Very soon I will take my family by the hand and I will stand here in front of the star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

NISSEN: Christopher Reeve never lost heart, but in October 2004, his heart failed. He died at 52. Dana kept up the work they'd started, pressing for stem-cell research, better insurance, encouraging those who were disabled, ill.

D. REEVE: It's really sort of Chris' message, go forward. He worked so hard and his work was so important that we really need to go forward.

NISSEN: She raised her son, Will, who is now 13. She somehow bridged the Chris-shaped hole in her life. And then this, a diagnosis of lung cancer at 44. And again, her response is positive, optimistic, again she is hoping that a personal blow can be turned to greater purpose to raise awareness about lung cancer, especially in women, especially in young women, even those who don't smoke.

And again, she and Chris are a team. In her statement today, Dana Reeve said she feels he is with her now more than ever, the ultimate example, she said, of "defying the odds with strength, courage, and hope in the face of life's adversities." Theirs is the kind of story that makes you wonder if you'd face life's adversities half so well.

Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Boy, is that the truth. I don't know her any better than you know her. I mean, we know her all the same in that way. And this was like a body blow today, wasn't it? Coming on the heels of Peter's death of Sunday night. And now this. More than 170,000 Americans will be diagnosed with lung cancer this year. Most of them, over 80 percent, will be smokers or former smokers, their average age at diagnosis will be 70.

But most is not all. Dana Reeve is 44, and from what we've learned today, apparently not a smoker. She is not most. She is also not the only one.

Here's CNN's Elizabeth Cohen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Three winters ago, Sandy Britt had a feeling that something was terribly wrong.

SANDY BRITT, DIAGNOSED WITH LUNG CANCER: I had noticed over the winter that I was getting one cold after the other.

COHEN: Sandy, who was 43, told her doctor she was worried about lung cancer. Her father and brother had died of the disease. She says the doctor told her not to worry.

BRITT: I could have been saved. I was -- you know, at that point, it was completely curable, and now it's not. Now I have a terminal diagnosis.

COHEN: Three years later, her suspicions turned out to be true. She was diagnosed with lung cancer so advanced it had already spread to other parts of her body.

Doctors told her she had eight months to live.

BRITT: I really believe that the reason I was ignored was that I was a young, healthy-looking woman who never smoked.

COHEN: Sandy Britt, Dana Reeve, part of a group you don't hear much about. Studies show that as many as 17 percent of newly-diagnosed lung cancer patients are lifelong non-smokers, 80 percent of those patients are women.

COHEN: That's approximately 11,000 women diagnosed each year, and the overall survival rates for lung cancer are grim: six out of 10 people will die within a year of being diagnosed; eight out of 10 people will die within two years.

BRITT: There is a whole subculture of us that people don't know about, and if I can get lung cancer, if Dana Reeve can get lung cancer, then nobody is safe. Anyone can get lung cancer.

COHEN: Sandy says it's bad enough that she has a fatal disease, but people who don't know her well often assume she brought it on herself. But she's never smoked, not ever.

BRITT: People don't care, because they say, well, you know, you smoked, you brought it on yourself. It absolutely infuriates me to have lung cancer, to have a smoker's disease when I actually hate smoking. You know, I belong to Americans for Non-Smokers Rights. I do everything possible my whole life to avoid it.

COHEN: Sandy is fighting for more money for lung cancer research.

BRITT: Twice as many women die of lung cancer than breast cancer, but breast cancer is something that everybody knows women get. So I think it's just more -- it's more logical, it's more easy to accept.

COHEN: Her statistics are on target. But today, thanks to an experimental therapy, Sandy has lived three months longer than her doctors expected. But she's also writing her will.

BRITT: One to five years. If I'm lucky, I'll live five years. I mean, it could be anytime.

COHEN: While she's still alive...

BRITT: You know, my mantra is, I'm a miracle, I'm going to go the distance. And I -- you know, I do hope and pray that I will be one of few that actually survives this disease. I mean, I am a realist, and I have to plan for the fact that there's a good chance I'm going to die.

COHEN: Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Scott Swanson is the director of thoracic oncology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

The breast cancer thing, when I heard that number today, I mean, seriously, I just think they have a better lobby, or they've worked the issue harder. I was kind of stunned by that. Pre-menopausal women, right? Does that tell us something about the cause?

DR. SCOTT SWANSON, MT. SINAI MEDICAL CENTER: I think it does. I think there's an issue about hormonal status in younger women. And there's a well-known estrogen receptor activity in lung cancer. So I don't think we understand it completely. But it probably is hormonally related.

BROWN: Is it something beyond the universe of all pre-menopausal women that can be screened for?

SWANSON: That's obviously the sort of million dollar question is how do you identify these things? And I don't think in the younger women we have it figured out. But clearly we don't even have it figured out in smokers. There is no...

BROWN: We don't know what triggers a cancer in an individual smoker?

SWANSON: Correct. And we don't screen smokers. There's no accepted lung cancer screening program in this country. We don't recommend X-rays, we don't recommend CT scans.

BROWN: Why don't we say, just forget for a second, setting aside -- I don't mean forget, setting aside pre-menopausal women, it's a huge universe of women we're talking about here. But if you just take the universe of smokers, people who currently smoke or people who once smoked, thinking about Peter, and say, let's do CT scans on all of them, why not do that?

SWANSON: Well, it's currently being looked at very carefully.

BROWN: But why would you not do it? It strikes me as a slam dunk.

SWANSON: I'm in your camp on this. But the counter argument is that we find lots of benign nodules. And most of the nodules are benign. So how do we separate the noise from the signal? And that's what we haven't figured out.

BROWN: I don't know, you're the doctor. I mean, is -- so you do a CT scan, you see something that looks funky, and you don't know if that thing that looks funky is cancer or just something funky, basically?

SWANSON: Right.

BROWN: Yes. There's no way to know without going in and...

SWANSON: Well, we're getting better at it. We can follow it over a short time and see changes in volume, changes in size. And that can trigger our concern for cancer.

BROWN: But what people say about lung cancer, or at least what I hear about it a lot, is by the time we actually see it, it's too late.

SWANSON: Well, I think if you wait for symptoms, like in Peter Jennings' case, when you're hoarse, you're losing weight, it's too late. You're...

BROWN: But if we're not...

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Right. But if you're not doing the prescreening, how do you not wait until the -- I mean, there's a catch-22 here.

SWANSON: Exactly right. In our country so far, it's said, well, you smoked, you brought it on, let's worry about breast cancer. And I think we're now, with Dana Reeve's case, realizing it's not that simple.

BROWN: Let me ask one really simple question. If your spouse smoked and quit, would you say, you know what, go get a CT scan.

SWANSON: I -- yes, I'd do that. And the reason for that is once you quit smoking your heart disease risk in five years goes back to baseline. Your lung cancer risk never goes to baseline. So you're always at risk. You need to follow those (INAUDIBLE) vigilantly.

BROWN: Thank you for coming in.

SWANSON: My pleasure.

BROWN: Thank you.

In a moment, two manhunts going on, one of them hot and bloody, unfortunately.

And later, how bad does a terrorist attack have to be on the United States before the military takes over?

First, though, at about a quarter past the hour, time for some of the other news of the day which means Erica Hill joins us from Atlanta.

Good evening, Ms. Hill.

ERICA HILL, CNN HEADLINE NEWS ANCHOR: Good evening to you, Aaron.

And actually, we start out with the attacks that first raised that question about how bad an attack has to be. Congressman Curt Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, says U.S. military intelligence identified Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers a year before they struck on 9/11, but failed to pass the information onto law enforcement. Now if true, that is an earlier link than any revealed so far.

Remember that bomb threat on a chewing gum wrapper that grounded a Southwest Airlines flight last week? A hoax. And today, police arrested a man in San Antonio in connection with it. Elias Cervantez is accused of leaving the note on an earlier leg of the flight. And now he is going to face up to five years in prison if convicted. John Roberts losing a bit of support today. A conservative group backing away now from the Supreme Court nominee because he once helped gay rights group on a landmark case. The conservative organization, Public Advocate of the United States, is a small one in which its president said he doesn't know if other conservative organizations will follow his lead.

And for the tenth straight time since last June, the Fed today raising interest rates. Alan Greenspan and company also signaled more rate hikes to come to keep inflation in check. Bottom line here, get ready to pay more if you're borrowing, today and tomorrow.

Not exactly poetry but kind of rhymes in a way.

BROWN: We'll take it, you know.

HILL: All right.

BROWN: Trying to figure out what the guy who writes the bomb threat on the gum wrapper is thinking. I mean, does he think, this will be funny?

HILL: Yes, you've got to be pretty stupid, quite honestly.

BROWN: Yes. That's a special category of crime. Dumb. Thank you, see you in a half an hour.

Much more ahead on the program tonight, it's just dumb, starting with the murder at the courthouse and a massive dragnet going on this evening.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM WASHAM, KINGSTON POLICE CHIEF: When the correctional officer brought him out and was loading him back up, a dark colored SUV appeared behind a van. Mr. Hyatte hollered, shoot him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: When the shooting stopped, a guard was dead. A convict and his wife were gone in a trail of bullets and blood.

Also tonight, the search for another man, if you can call him that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOY LEWIS, ASSAULT VICTIM: He's the master manipulator. That's what I've called him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: He used his power over women to seduce and destroy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DET. A.J. BUCCI, PORTSMOUTH, R.I., POLICE DEPARTMENT: And it's only a matter of time where his luck is going to run out and he's going to be caught.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Here's hoping.

Also tonight, a safe landing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nosegear touchdown. And Discovery is home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So is this the best we can expect from here on out?

And later, where's the beef?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE MOTZ, DIRECTOR, "HAMBURGER AMERICA": This is called Louis' Lunch. The Sally's in Milwaukee. The Billy Goat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: A film about hamburger because rare, medium, or well done, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In case you harbor any romantic notions about fugitives from the law, these next two stories ought to clear things up some. One about a doctor in disgrace who used status and money to seduce and then rape. As for the other manhunt, police are following a trail of bullets and blood tonight in search for a violent felon and his wife. Not Bonnie and Clyde.

First, from Kingston, Tennessee, CNN's David Mattingly.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Inmate George Hyatte walked out of the county courthouse in Kingston, Tennessee, looking at 30 more years in prison when he took matters into his own hands.

WASHAM: When the correctional officer brought him out and was loading him back up, a dark colored SUV appeared behind a van. Mr. Hyatte hollered, shoot him.

MATTINGLY: According to authorities, Hyatte's wife, a former prison nurse, opened fire, killing one officer. The two escaped, but it's believed one of them was wounded in the shootout. WASHAM: We did find the vehicle that they escaped in. It is a blue Explorer SUV. There is blood in the driver's side. The other correctional officer did get a shot off, apparently striking one of the individuals. We don't know which one yet. But it appears that most of the blood is on the driver's side.

MATTINGLY: Hyatte's wife is identified as Jennifer Hyatte, who, according to a corrections spokeswoman, lost her job as a prison nurse because of her romantic relationship with the inmate she later married.

George Hyatte has a long and violent criminal history. He escaped from jail twice before, once in 1998 and again in 2002. Both times he was recaptured in other states.

MARK GWYN, TBI DIRECTOR: I guess they just made the decision that they didn't have anything to lose and now was the most opportune time to make a break, and that's what they did.

MATTINGLY: The parking lot where it all took place was easily accessible and unguarded. As investigators trace the path of the flurry of bullets, it's a wonder bystanders were not shot as well.

From this point, the state line is just an hour away. But the question remains, how far could they go? George Hyatte was wearing handcuffs, leg irons, and waist chains. And either he or his wife may need medical attention.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY: And this manhunt is now 12 hours old, literally spanning the entire state of Tennessee from here all the way to Memphis -- Aaron.

BROWN: Quickly, have there been any reported sightings of either?

MATTINGLY: They are getting reports from the public, suspected sightings. And these are things they are looking into. But at this point, no one feels like they have anything that is imminent.

BROWN: Not to be accused of asking the obvious, but given that the guy had escaped twice before, is anybody there talking about the fact that maybe, just maybe, they would have wanted to run a little tighter security operation than they did?

MATTINGLY: They were following all the protocols for someone prone to escape. Because of his past history, he had handcuffs, he had a chain belt on, he was wearing shackles, and he was accompanied by two armed guards. This is very high security for one inmate. The element of surprise apparently is what foiled all of their fail-safes here.

BROWN: Thank you, David. I'll take my 20/20 hindsight and go home. Thank you. Rhode Island next, and the convicted rapist who has been running for six months, his whereabouts unknown. About what he did, on the other hand, to six women, maybe more, according to police, that much we do know.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): She was a twice divorced mother of four, looking for what most of us want in life, a companion. A lover. And Dr. Ronald Stevenson (ph) seemed perfect. He was a doctor. He seemed stable and decent and comfortably well off. He seemed that way. After all, he owned a yacht.

CHERYL GINGERICH, RAPE VICTIM: He took out a Palm Pilot and he wanted to show me -- before we got to the yacht, he wanted to show me pictures of the yacht on the Palm Pilot while driving with one hand and using the stylus of the Palm Pilot with the other hand.

BROWN: So Cheryl Gingerich went along with the ride with her new doctor friend, went to the marina, went on board the yacht, "The Lion King," and got raped.

GINGERICH: The next thing I know, he just took his right hand and pushed my left shoulder and just pushed me down on the bed. And you know, I'm five-foot-two, and at that time I weighed about 110 pounds. And he was almost a foot taller and outweighed me by 70 pounds.

BROWN: Ronald Stevenson was none of the things Cheryl believed he was. He was not decent. He was a rapist. He'd already been convicted of assault and battery in Massachusetts. He was not a doctor. He'd lost his license. He was not even Ronald Stevenson. He was Ronald Fischer. And she brought rape charges against him.

GINGERICH: After the first day of testimony, my attorney notified me that they would offer me $50,000 to have some kind of a plea bargain. They didn't say what the terms of the plea bargain would be. And I said, no thank you. And after my second day of testimony my attorney notified me that they'd offer me $200,000 to be quiet and go away.

BROWN: She said no to that offer too. But by the end of the trial's first week, Dr. Fischer sent an e-mail to his lawyers. The subject line was simple. "Goodbye."

"Although I believe my trial has gone very well and expect to be acquitted and dismissed," he wrote, "the small chance of losing could carry extremely and unacceptably harsh penalties. I have therefore decided not to take the risk and to leave the U.S. and enjoy life in another country."

Three days later, Fischer was convicted of rape in absentia. Authorities believe his flight was anything but spur of the moment. And they believe he has enough money to hide. They don't know how much but enough, they say, for a solid head start. DET. A.J. BUCCI, PORTSMOUTH, R.I., POLICE DEPARTMENT: Inside his residence we found books, not only how to conceal his identity but to find people who conceal their identity.

BROWN: And police began receiving other information as well, from women across Rhode Island who said they, too, had been assaulted, or come dangerously close.

LEWIS: He's the master manipulator. That's what I've called him.

BABETTE AUGUSTIN, ASSAULT VICTIM: He definitely was groping. And again, in a very child-like, awkward, teenage way. And he finally -- you know, I kept backing away from him. He said, what's wrong with you, don't you like sex?

BROWN: Ronald Fischer hasn't been seen in six months. Authorities say no records exists of him either leaving the United States or entering a foreign country. But the women he had contact with and the police who are searching to find him are convinced they will find him somewhere, eventually.

LEWIS: I honestly think that he's such a cocky person who's gotten away with so much in his life, that he's going to make a mistake that is going to get him caught.

BUCCI: You have to remember that he has to look behind his back each and every day, every single minute. And it's only a matter of time where his luck is going to run out and he's going to be caught.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Hope so.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, a couple of safe landings. The Space Shuttle Discovery makes it back down to Earth. But is it worth the tremendous cost?

And the Russian submarine crew who made it back to the surface. No doubt in their minds of their rescuers that it was worth it. Their story too.

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The space shuttle came home today, nearly 43 years after President John F. Kennedy committed the country to sending a man to the Moon, 36 years after we made it to the Moon.

NASA has now managed to send a few men and women not to Mars, but merely back into orbit around the Earth, and not without problems either, truth be told. So tonight you can breathe a sigh of relief and get ready for a question or two.

Here's CNN's Miles O'Brien. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Glowing hot, but guided by a cool, steady hand, Discovery dropped like a rock from the dark desert sky, then eased up and kissed the runway, an apparition that brought with it the words NASA's shuttle team yearned to hear.

EILEEN COLLINS, COMMANDER, SPACE SHUTTLE DISCOVERY: Discovery, wheels stopped.

M. O'BRIEN: "Wheels stopped," the phrase sent a ripple of cheers throughout the far-flung NASA empire. And in Mission Control, a palpable sense of relief.

BILL READDY, ASTRONAUT: It really was an incredible feeling, almost a little bit unreal that we had just accomplished what we did.

M. O'BRIEN: More than anything, they prove they could return to flight, after Columbia.

EILEEN COLLINS, COMMANDER, SPACE SHUTTLE DISCOVERY: We have worked very, very hard to do the right things and to make sure that we didn't miss anything.

M. O'BRIEN: It was, in fact, a mixed bag, a step forward, a step back. Discovery did bring essential supplies to the space station and repaired some crucial gyroscopes. The seven crew members took home a lot of space station clutter and even fixed their own spaceship.

But after 2 1/2 years of work trying to stop big pieces of foam from falling, NASA's best and brightest realized just two minutes into the mission that they must head back to the drawing board.

READDY: We've got some more work to do. But now we have some data to work with. And for the first time in the shuttle era, we've got a real solid place to start.

M. O'BRIEN: Twenty-four years after the first shuttle launched amid inflated promises of a cost-effective spaceship that could be flown like an airliner, NASA is talking as if it is the dawn of a new experimental age.

MIKE GRIFFIN, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: This was the 145th American manned spaceflight. Compare that with the development of aviation and we're in still the very first stages of learning how to do spaceflight. It's just barely possible to do it. If anything goes wrong, it's not possible to do it.

M. O'BRIEN: After all these years, it still isn't as easy or, for that matter, as cool as the movies, not by a long shot. And perhaps that is where the public and NASA disconnect. The agency that gave us the moon is still refining an idea that first took shape when we were walking on it.

KATHY SULLIVAN, ASTRONAUT: It's taken many decades, and we're an impatient bunch as a species. But this really is the very first halting steps. And each one of these really is still a work of engineering art.

M. O'BRIEN: But it is also about a commitment to continue building the space station. The shuttle was conceived to service an orbiting outpost. It just took a while for it to materialize.

But now that it is in space and 15 other nations are partners in the project, NASA is unwilling to simply take its shuttle and go home.

COLLINS: We're going to continue to fly the shuttle until we finish our commitment to the International Space Station.

M. O'BRIEN (on-screen): In the end, the space station seems more like engineering than exploring. And it clearly isn't selling the program. NASA's next big thing, a manned mission to the moon and perhaps one day to Mars, might be different.

But you can't get there before you learn a little something more, no matter how painful and slow that process may be.

Miles O'Brien, CNN, at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Of triumphs and tragedies, another Marine died in combat in Iraq today, one of 26 Marines to die so far this month. He or she, the Pentagon isn't saying, was killed in a firefight with insurgents in Ramadi, that we know.

Who they are, are they native or foreign jihadis or Baathists? We don't know that. Who supports them, however, with money and arms, that perhaps we night.

From the Pentagon tonight, CNN's Barbara Starr.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the latest worry about the Iraq insurgency, the Pentagon has confirmed Iran is now smuggling weapons into Iraq.

DONALD RUMSFELD, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: It is true that weapons, clearly, unambiguously from Iran have been found in Iraq.

STARR: Military officials tell CNN Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is talking about a truckload of explosives seized recently at a border checkpoint. Explosive devices more sophisticated than the improvised explosive devices, IEDs, so many have come to fear on the streets of Iraq.

U.S. intelligence officials believe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, but not the central government in Tehran, may be behind it. Either way, Rumsfeld is furious.

RUMSFELD: If one sees it there on the ground, you identify it, it's from Iran. And you don't know who brought it in, or who tolerated it being brought in, and who facilitated it to be brought in, who sold it to someone to bring in. What you do know of certain knowledge is the Iranians did not stop it from coming in.

STARR: This, as the insurgency continues its march of violence. News agency video from a U.S. military drone showing insurgents scrambling after firing mortars, trying to escape attack by U.S. forces in Haditha a few days ago. But they didn't get very far.

As the violence continues, General Richard Myers says the insurgency retains much of its punch.

GENERAL RICHARD MYERS, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF CHAIRMAN: And their capacity has stayed about the same, in terms of numbers of incidents, particularly the number of incidents that have any effect, wounding people, killing people, be they coalition or be they Iraqis or whatever.

STARR (on-screen): In one of the worst attacks against U.S. forces, the Pentagon now confirms the roadside bomb that killed 14 Marines in Haditha last week was made up of three mines strung together.

Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And the Iraqis have about a week now to come up with a constitution. On the "Security Watch" tonight, a question: Would you be surprised to learn that almost four years since the attacks of 9/11, the military only now is coming up with a unified plan for dealing with another attack?

Wouldn't four months seem better, or four days? Instead, four years it is, give or take. And timing is only one concern. The other has to do with where civilian control would end and martial law would begin, should worse come to worst. Here's CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When the tsunami hit Southeast Asia last year, the U.S. military helped save lives and ease suffering. If terrorists used a weapon of mass destruction in the United States, the military might play a similar role.

MICHAEL CHERTOFF, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: And obviously, the Department of Defense has certain capabilities, including the ability to put a lot of hospitals and a lot of personnel in the field, which would be critical if we had a truly mass event.

MESERVE: Military sources have confirmed to CNN that they are drawing up specific plans for homeland defense, how to deal with scenarios involving chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. The head of Northern Command, which coordinates military involvement in homeland security, says it's simply another part of the job.

ADM. TIMOTHY KEATING, UNITED STATES NORTHERN COMMAND: We're concerned about getting appropriate response capability where it's needed as quickly a possible.

MESERVE: Although the U.S. Air Force already patrols the nation's skies and the Navy assisted with security during the G-8 summit in Georgia last year, this Department of Defense strategy document lays out an expanded role for the military inside the United States.

Former Virginia Governor James Gilmore headed a commission that examined the issue. Though he finds much to praise in the document, he is disturbed that it appears to give the military wide leeway, possibly even opening the door to martial law.

FMR. GOV. JAMES GILMORE (R), VIRGINIA: There's an overarching, larger strategy here that is being articulated, which is one that says that the military has an appropriate role anytime, anyplace, anywhere, including entirely through the homeland. I think that has to be very, very carefully examined.

MESERVE: Admiral Keating says such fears are unfounded.

KEATING: But we understand the Constitution. We understand the Fourth Amendment. We have lawyers in all of our planning processes who are vigilant -- vigilant -- about making sure that those rights are very well-protected.

MESERVE: Other experts raise a different concern. It has been almost four years since the September 11th attacks, and they wonder what has taken the Pentagon so long.

For CNN's America bureau, Jeanne Meserve, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, the American dream. A hamburger taken to the heights of excellence. This is a great story.

And the American pastime. Bad sportsmanship, but apparently not bad enough. What exactly do you have to do? From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Well, you could make a documentary about just about anything. This one is about hamburgers. We have an excerpt tonight. You can TiVo it, play it back a few hours and a few beers from now, that's one option. Or you can watch the entire documentary, as we like to say, on television with the works on the Sundance Channel.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you can only imagine the best, greasiest tasting, delicious hamburger you've ever had when you needed one the most, that's what it tastes like.

GEORGE MOTZ, DIRECTOR, "HAMBURGER AMERICA": "Hamburger America" is a film about eight different burger places in the United States. We have pretty strict criteria in order to be in the film. And the number-one criteria was that you had to have a burger on the menu for over 40 years.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The restaurant has been here for almost 50 years. Prior to that, it was a trading post and a gun shop.

MOTZ: That limited it a few thousand places right away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know some places try to use frozen beef. We get our beef fresh four days a week.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's ground chuck, fresh. I get it twice a week.

MOTZ: You also had to have fresh beef on the menu.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My grandfather invented the steak sandwich. And as a byproduct, we made the first hamburger sandwiches in the United States.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What year was that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 1900.

MOTZ: There are actually five or six claims to the invention of the hamburger. There's a place in the movie that can claim to be the oldest and the longest continually operating hamburger restaurant in the United States. That's called Louis' Lunch in New Haven.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The first burgers were made on toast. And we've kept that tradition right through the years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a wheel-inn drive-in, home of the good burgers. It's a hamburger with a little peanut butter on it.

MOTZ: The burgers in the film are all cooked differently. That's kind of why we chose it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Green chile cheeseburgers, that's what we're known for.

MOTZ: Some of them are broiled. Some of them are grilled. Some of them are griddle-fried, which means they're put on a flat-top griddle.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We strain and process our grease daily, but we've never thrown it out and started over. So somewhere in there is molecules from 1912.

MOTZ: One of them, in this case, in the film is deep fried in fat. It tastes great.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Each box holds 12 meat and 12 cheese.

MOTZ: There's one very, very interesting burger that is steamed. It's a steamed cheeseburger. They actually steam the beef in a metal container, and then they steam the cheese that then gets ladled or poured on top, sort of molten cheese goo that goes on top of the steam burger.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is Sally's Grill from Glendale, Wisconsin, right next to Milwaukee. And we serve the old-fashioned butter burger.

MOTZ: The butter burger is a very -- again, it's a regional burger that's specific only to Wisconsin, pretty much and, you know, surrounding Midwestern states. But the keeper of the flame for the butter burger is a place called Sally's in Milwaukee.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Plop it on the hamburger and let it melt.

MOTZ: The reason they are the keeper of the flame is because they're one of the only places that still put like a good two to three tablespoon dollop of butter on the burger.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The secret is, eat them before the butter gets unworkable.

MOTZ: It sounds gross. You have to taste it to believe it. It is an out-of-body experience, this thing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pride, tradition and grease. We take pride in what we do. We have tremendous tradition, and it's all about the grease.

MOTZ: I think the one thing that all the restaurants had in common was they all shared a very severe sense of pride. There was one situation where a third-generation Greek family in Chicago ran the Billy Goat, that was like profoundly proud to be American.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the famous Billy Goat Tavern and Grill.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Double cheese!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Double cheese!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Triple much better!

MOTZ: Proud of being an American, or only an American establishment, or carrying the torch for an American tradition, a very serious American tradition.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger!

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The crew, which hasn't watched a story in three months, has been drooling for the last five minutes.

Still ahead on the program, the emotions of the men who saved the crew of that Russian sub stuck at the bottom of the ocean. And the runaway bride, no, she's back cutting lawn because of all her cutting and running.

A break first from New York. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In a moment, the photo of the day, which is also the piece of art of the day. A few other things we'll mention in a bit. Morning papers coming up.

First, it's about quarter to the hour. Time for other headlines from Erica Hill, who's in Atlanta, probably munching on a burger down there.

HILL: You were killing me. I really wanted one, I've got to tell you.

BROWN: Oh, my goodness.

HILL: It's not fair. Maybe tomorrow.

Now, we're going to start actually with a developing story out of Michigan. An explosion in a chemical plant in suburban Detroit sent fireballs of smoke hundreds of feet into the air. Now, this all happened shortly after 9:00 p.m. local time.

No immediate reports of injuries or fatalities. And you're looking at live pictures now of this fire coming to us from our affiliate WDIV in Detroit. This is the EQ Resource and Recovery Plant (ph).

We've been told that a half-mile radius around the plant has been evacuated. The fumes apparently going out as far as ten miles, a ten- mile radius on those fumes.

If you keep watching this, I mean, the cloud of smoke is absolutely amazing. These bright orange flames every now and then, some fireballs popping up. As we said, though, no word yet on injuries or fatalities. We're, of course, hoping that there aren't any.

Also, no word at this hour on what caused the blast. But, again, we'll continue to follow this fire for you happening at a plant just outside suburban Detroit.

Moving on to some other news now, when push comes to shove, Kenny Rogers is getting off a little bit easier than expected. An arbitrator deciding today to allow him back on the mound after sitting out 13 games, not 20, as Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig had wanted.

Rogers, a pitcher for the Texas Rangers, was suspended after roughing up two cameramen back in June.

And all, right, in case you've ever wondered, here's what happens when you cut out of town. You end up cutting some grass. Jennifer Wilbanks, affectionately known as the runaway bride, doing her community service back home in Georgia today. Better than a chain gang, right?

Although we're told she was going to pick up some trash later on today. Also, better than the work she was given scrubbing toilets. She has, though, fulfilled, I believe it's 24 hours now, Aaron, of her 120 hours of community service that was she sentenced to.

BROWN: OK, I'll jot that down so I can keep track of when she's completed all her community service.

HILL: There you go.

BROWN: Because I want to know every last detail of that young woman's life, thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Hill.

You can assault someone on a baseball field, and that's 12 days' suspension.

This story could have ended differently, but thankfully did not. I'm a little rambunctious tonight. The British team that helped rescue seven Russian sailors from a trapped submarine arrived in Scotland today to a hero's welcome.

Russia had to appeal for outside help to retrieve the sub, which was stuck for nearly three days 600 feet below the surface of the Pacific. A British team used a remote-controlled underwater vehicle to cut the sub free from cables that -- we didn't have anything to do with that -- that had entangled it.

Today, the officer who led the team fought back tears.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I cannot ever explain to you properly the feelings of elation amongst us all. And it would be wrong of me to say that grown men don't cry. I can assure you a lot of grown men cried that day to see that submarine back on the surface. And I'm sorry, but the emotion is getting to me again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Those British, they emote, don't they?

Russian prosecutors today said they've opened a criminal investigation into the accident. An initial investigation found violations by officials responsible for preparing and overseeing the sub's mission.

When we come back, proof there is nothing more serious in the state of Texas than football. Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK, a very quick run through papers tonight. The "Dallas Morning News" still not out of options. "Robbery Arrest May Not Keep Prep Star Off the Field with Lancaster." This young man, Brendan Jackson (ph), was arrested on six counts of aggravated robbery. He admits it. But he'll -- you could do 99 years for this, but it's OK for him to play high school football, because let's keep our priorities in order.

"San Antonio Express-News," can you keep track of whether the Iranians are running their nuclear program or not running? It's like Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we're going to say we do it. "Ante is being raised in Iran in nuke talks."

What did you say? That's it?

Weather tomorrow in Chicago. Knock it off, and we will. The "Picture of the Day" in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Here's your "Picture of the Day." That's Tiger Woods carved in butter, part of the Iowa State Fair in honor of the PGA or the cholesterol extravaganza we did earlier.

We'll see you tomorrow at 10:00 Eastern. Good night, from all of us.

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