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Rain Contributes to Dangerous Situation in Florida; New Questions About Safety of Shuttle Program; Fight Against Digital Piracy Continues

Aired June 22, 2003 - 17:00   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.


FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Well, welcome to NEXT@CNN for this Sunday, June 22.
Coming up in the next hour, days of rain and a jammed floodgate make for a dangerous situation in waterlogged Florida.

Did the space shuttle Columbia lift off with hundreds of potentially life-threatening problems? New questions about safety in the shuttle program.

And while moviegoers are flocking to "The Hulk" in theaters this weekend, other fans of the green monster have already seen the film, online no less. The latest in that fight against digital piracy.

Relentless rain is causing serious problems for residents of Manatee County, Florida. High water levels from over a foot of rain this past week alone, combined with a malfunctioning spill gate at the Manatee Dam all have caused officials to order an evacuation of more than 500 homes near the dam.

Meteorologist Orelon Sydney joins us a little bit later -- or actually right now -- sorry about that Orelon -- with the very latest on the weather situation there. More rain forecast.

ORELON SYDNEY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: More rain is forecast, but the good news, it's expected to come to an end by Tuesday. The problem for now looks like it's going to be the continuation of rain. The spillway from what I understand at the Manatee Dam has been pried open to the point that they can get some of the water out, which is excellent news. And that means we may not see it topping over the dam and then flowing out in an uncontrolled fashion.

Take a look at the radar right now. This is the Tampa area. We're showing still a pretty good area of rainfall, and showers and thunderstorms there. In general, now, the heaviest area of rain has moved from Tampa on to the south and east, Those areas in yellow and red. Those are about an inch, maybe even an inch and a half amounts per hour. Up around the Tampa Bay area we've seen anywhere from a quarter to a half inch. So the good news is that things do seem to be slowing down there as well. Take a look at what is a little orientation of the area. You can see that the Tampa Bay area is just up to the north right about here.

We're going to zoom in for you and show you exactly where the dam is and give you an idea of what the problem is. The Manatee River flows from east to west and heads towards Tampa Bay. The Manatee Dam is right -- there's the lake there. Here's the rest of the Manatee River as it flows its way on westward. We'll zoom in a little bit closer, and you can actually see where the dam itself is located. And in that area, there is some development. Here's the location of the dam. And then just to the south of that, right in here, is where we find some development.

Now, there have been reports of road closures and flooding in the area, especially up to the north and west, right along the river. Roads are closed. The upper Manatee River, also at Rye Road and right along the dam at Dam Road closed there as well.

Forecast for you looks a lot better, the stationary front causing all the problems is going to slip south. The rainfall moves southward tomorrow, should be over with by Tuesday -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right, that's a sliver of good news. Thanks very much, Orelon, I appreciate it.

Well, a newspaper report is raising new questions about safety procedures for the space shuttle program. "Florida Today" says today in its Sunday edition that the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia lifted off in January with over 1600 safety waivers for potentially life threatening situations. Here to help us put that in perspective is Randy Avera, a former NASA engineer and author of a book on the previous shuttle tragedy, "The Truth About Challenger." Randy, thanks very much for joining us.

RANDY AVERA, AUTHOR, "THE TRUTH ABOUT CHALLENGER": Thanks, Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: What do we mean when he we talk about these waivers, that there were 1600, at least, cited potential problems, life threatening, no less.

AVERA: The waiver system is associated with what NASA has in place. It's a criticality system. It has to do with the design of the space shuttle, the maintenance of the space shuttle and the operational aspects of the space shuttle. The program requirements, the minimum requirements that have to occur flight by flight for a safe and operational vehicle. Any of those requirements that are waived, the waiver process is used to do that. Now, the waiver system is not a way to get around the requirements. That's not what the design of that system was. When a waiver is attempted, it should be arguing about the risk and safety aspects, not arguing about why we should not achieve this requirement for the flight.

WHITFIELD: So there are always going to be expectations that there will be waivers, there will be some potential problems cited before any kind of shuttle launch, but the problem is you've got various levels of potential problems? We're talking about criticality one, the life threatening problems that may cause a loss of the entire flight, the crew, everything.

AVERA: That's correct. To simplify it, a criticality one, criticality two, criticality three. Criticality one is the top most serious, safety-related requirements. Criticality one by definition is loss of vehicle, loss of life and loss of the mission. That means that if the system fails, that you run the very high risk of losing the vehicle, the mission and the life of the astronauts, and possibly people on the ground. So criticality one items, when we see 1600 waivers, this is a staggering number. As I have said in "The Truth About Challenger," it takes almost an act of Congress for engineers to get even one single waiver, if necessary. But this is a program management issue. The waivers are really processed through the program management levels and review boards.

WHITFIELD: In all fairness, we wanted to get NASA's point of view on these reported 1,600 waivers. And Richard Bloomberg, former chairman of NASA's Aerospace Advisory Panel released this statement to us, quote, "A waiver sounds like a terrible thing, but in virtually every situation a waiver is a carefully thought out process by which you decide that something is an acceptable risk." So, really, no complete denial that there were 1,600 waivers but that there is an expectation that you will have waivers. When should the red flag be raised, however, that perhaps a certain amount is just too much to risk?

AVERA: Well, there are several ways a red flag can be raised. For example, a requirement might be something as simple sounding as an inspection. But the fundamental fact is that these requirements are in fact the program requirements for safe flight and operational use. So any of these waivers should have a very, very serious argument for why the waiver should be approved and processed. Humans have a condition where we tend to downsize the severity of problems. So it's very important to have a procedure and a process in place that minimizes the human condition and holds the program accountable to the meaningful rules. If the program requirements are not valid requirements, then the process should review them and remove them as a requirement, not just to get them off the list but, in fact, they're not required.

WHITFIELD: Like we say, there is always going to be an expectation there will be a number of waivers. When you talk about 1600 waivers and you're talking about some million parts on a shuttle, is this really a big deal? Or do you feel that in any way that the safety measures are being compromised because of this rush to get a shuttle in the air?

AVERA: Well, even in 1986 and even 1985 on 61 Charlie flight at Columbia, the flight right before the last flight of Challenger, both those vehicles had in the neighborhood of about 800-plus waivers that had been processed, which was a staggering amount of waivers.

WHITFIELD: So this would be double.

AVERA: This is double that, 1600 waivers. It's a staggering amount of waivers. I think it's a fair question to ask, in order to operate, why so many waivers and what are the nature of those waivers? For example, the obvious question, were any of these 1600 waivers associated with the leading edge reinforced carbon carbon of the space shuttle Columbia, which we already have learned from NASA and the investigation board that it's a primary element in the break-up of the vehicle over Texas during re-entry?

WHITFIELD: Randy Avera, thanks very much. Appreciate it.

AVERA: Your welcome.

Coming up here on NEXT@CNN, trouble in a sea that provides much of the seafood you eat, is over fishing the problem, or could it be something else?

And later, the Astronaut Hall of Fame has four new inductees. We'll tell you all about that, stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Well, did you know that the U.S. gets more than half of the fish it eats from the Bering Sea, and now it seems that fish are disappearing in that vital body of water that separates Alaska from Russia.

Our international environment correspondent Gary Strieker has just returning from the Bering Sea to tell us all about it. Good to see you, Gary.

GARY STRIEKER, CNN INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Fredricka.

Recently, two major scientific studies were released on the declining health of the world's ocean. One of them by the Pew Ocean's Commission concludes that America's oceans are in crisis because of human activities, including over fishing, habitat damage and pollution. To get our own perspective on what's happening in one ocean region, the very cold and highly productive Bering Sea, we found a small as a good place to start.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STRIEKER (voice-over): On the island of St. George, it's the start of fishing season.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is our gig line. This is what we use to catch the halibut when we're not long lining.

STRIEKER: But finding halibut off this island is not as easy as it used to be.

(on camera): What's causing this do you think?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trawlers.

STRIEKER: Trawlers are causing it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, a lot of them.

STRIEKER (voice-over): Factory trawlers owned by big fishing companies dragging miles of huge nets across the Bering Sea.

DAVID FOX, FISHERMAN: And us poor little fishermen are, you know ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trying to make a living.

FOX: ... we're trying to make a living in the summer and they're just -- they're killing us out there. They're just raking the sea.

STRIEKER: And it's not only some fish populations that are dropping. Marine mammals are also in trouble with stellar sea lions listed as an endangered species, and locals reporting dramatic reductions in northern fur seals, as well as declining populations of many kinds of sea birds, nesting and breeding here.

(on camera): The people on these islands have seen it and researchers are now producing evidence that many wildlife species here are quickly declining in numbers. Scientists tell us something is upsetting the natural balance in the Bering Sea. And what might result from that could be serious.

(voice-over): More than half of the annual fish catch in the United States and in Russia comes from the Bering Sea. St. George is one of the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in the eastern part of the sea near the edge of the continental shelf. Biologically it's a highly productive area, important for science and conservation.

EVIE WITTEN, WORLD WILDLIFE FUND: By looking at the Pribilof Islands and monitoring what's going on, it's like taking the temperature of the rest of the Bering Sea. It gives us an indication of the biological health of other parts of the Bering Sea.

STRIEKER: And because fur seals and sea birds survive on a diet of fish, declining numbers of these animals could be a warning signal that giant trawlers are over fishing the Bering Sea.

DOROTHY CHILDERS, AK MARINE CONSERVATION COUN. If fisheries are having a serious impact on this food web question and we don't do anything because we can't prove it, then some day we may be in a heap of trouble. And we may already be there.

STRIEKER: That's not so, say the big fishing and processing companies. And they're supported by U.S. authorities responsible for managing fisheries in the region.

DAVID WITHERELL, N. PACIFIC FISHERY MGMT COUNCIL: The ecosystem itself is considered very healthy.

STRIEKER: They cite a recent scientific study concluding it's highly unlikely fisheries are causing declines in marine mammals and birds. And they say stability in wildlife populations should not be expected.

WITHERELL: That's not the case with nature, especially in these near Arctic ecosystems. Things fluctuate due to environmental conditions.

STRIEKER: Maybe there's more to this problem than over fishing. Maybe it's climate change or pollution or maybe it's all natural. But that's small consolation to these fishermen looking for halibut that are no longer there.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STRIEKER: Only about 800 people live on the two inhabited Pribilof Islands, most are descendants of native Aleut and Siberian slave laborers brought there by the Russians to work in the fur seal trade during the 18th and 19th centuries. Many of them still depend for their livelihood on fishing and hunting fur seals.

WHITFIELD: That's powerful stuff. So since there are differing opinions on whether the Bering Sea is actually being threatened, what are some the things that the conservationists want to do?

STRIEKER: Well, above all, the conservationists believe that even though it's generally understood -- and many of them agree that the North Pacific Fishery is probably the best-managed fishery in U.S. waters, they want more aggressive enforcement of what they call the precautionary principle. And that is even if we don't have enough scientific information to prove that something bad is happening in the Bering Sea that may be irreversible, it's better to err on the side of caution and to take measures that might be necessary to protect -- you know protect the Bering Sea and prevent any further deterioration in the biological processes there.

And one of the things they will want to see in the coming months and years -- and there's going to be more pressure for that -- is the creation of marine reserves that will protect nurseries, breeding grounds, foraging grounds, migration routes, because it's generally understood that if you protect a well designed marine reserve, the fishing resources outside those reserves will increase in number, in bounty. So the conservationists believe that, after all, what we're after is a sustainable fishery in the years ahead, and unless we take these measures to protect the fishery for the future generations in our country, we may not have it in the future.

WHITFIELD: All right, Gary Strieker, thanks very much.

Coming up next, he's big, he's bad, but he's not bad enough to beat the bootleggers. We'll look at "The Hulk" and online privacy.

Also ahead, circular logic results in a bumper crop of baby penguins? We'll explain.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD (voice-over): If a cup of coffee keeps you up at night or gives you heart palpitations shall get a load of this plant. It's been genetically decaffeinated. The plant has 70 percent less caffeine than the typical coffee plant. Developed by researchers at Japan's Nara Institute of Science and Technology and published in the journal "Nature." Instead of chemically extracting caffeine from the beans, which is how we make decaffeinated coffee today and can reduce the flavor, researchers say they altered the plant's genes so the plant produces less caffeine without affecting the taste. But researchers say it will be years before we sip the benefits. Since the decaffeinated plants have led sheltered lives in a greenhouse, researchers can't say how these altered plants will fair in the outside world where caffeine could be crucial to a plant's survival. Caffeine, they say, may be a natural pesticide that protects the plants against insects and disease.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Well, taking a look now at some NEXT news headlines, federal officials are assessing damage caused by a wildfire near Tucson, Arizona this week. The blaze destroyed more than 200 homes, and prompted the evacuation of 1,000 others. The fire is continuing to move north and is now threatening the University of Arizona's Stewart Observatory.

An ancient burial chest did not belong to the brother of Jesus, according to a panel of scientists. When the bone box was discovered last year, some people believed the inscription linked it to Jesus. Well, now the experts say the inscription is a fake, even though the box really does date to biblical times. They found evidence that the inscription was written recently by somebody trying to imitate ancient Hebrew characters. One scientist says it wasn't even a good fake.

Remember a few months ago we told you how the penguins at the San Francisco zoo were swimming around in circles as if they were migrating. Well, it turns out they were doing more than just swimming, those sneaky rascals. Well, this spring, they produced a bumper crop of chicks, twice the usual number. Zookeepers took the fledglings out of their burrows onto the zoo's Penguin Island Thursday to band them, give them a checkup and to transfer them to a facility where they'll learn to swim and get used to humans. After they're grown they'll be returned to Penguin Island, and perhaps to join in on another a mock migration, going about their old ways again.

Well, as you probably already know, "The Hulk," the summer's next anticipated blockbuster opened this weekend. But you may not know that some fans were getting an unauthorized look at their favorite green giant, even before the flick hit the big screen.

Andy Culpepper explains how and what is being done to try to stop digital bootleggers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think you're going to like me when I'm angry.

ANDY CULPEPPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "The Hulk," he's big, he's bad and he's bootlegged.

JAMES SCHAMUS, WRITER/CO-PRODUCERS: You spend two and a half years crafting something very, very beautiful, very specific, of the highest artistry, and then some creep puts it on the Internet, the early version without all the effects, the sound and the music. And he'll go to jail. CULPEPPER: More than a week before it debuted in theaters, "The Hulk" had already been plundered by movie pirates, the latest on a growing list of first-run films that have fallen prey to counterfeiting that's costing the studios more than $3 billion a year.

JACK VALENTI, PRESIDENT, MOTION PICTURE ASSN.: One way they get a hold of them is a premier of a picture and -- or you might have a sneak preview and they camcord it.

CULPEPPER: Industry estimates indicate hundreds of millions of copies of bootlegged Hollywood movies are being sold around the world every year.

FRANK HARRILL, SPECIAL AGENT, FBI: We're going to see the effect right here in U.S. jobs and U.S. economy in the buying power of the average American. The price of movies is going to go up. The price of cable television is going to go up, and we'll all see it in our pocketbooks. And so we've got to put a stop to it.

CULPEPPER: The movie industry is fighting back. Studios are studying ways to put a digital fingerprint on movies, which would allow pirated copies to be traced. At advance screenings and premiers, guests are being warned, don't bring in any recording devices. Another strategy by studios, simultaneously releasing movies in as many countries as possible to beat pirates to the punch. But the strategy isn't foolproof.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I keep feeling something terrible is about to happen.

CULPEPPER: When "X-Men 2" debuted in nearly 100 countries in May, pirated copies weren't far behind. This copy was recorder by a bootlegger in a Hong Kong theater and made available on the Internet. According to the Motion Picture Association, authorities confiscated more than 7 million pirated DVDs worldwide last year.

VALENTI: It is technology that's causing this. The reason (ph) is going to be technology and it will be the salvation. So I'm very convinced in a short time that we will find some technological sturdy ways to protect our movies.

CULPEPPER: In the meantime, films such as "The Hulk" will share a portion of their revenues with the bootleggers.

Andy Culpepper, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Well, another huge moneymaker, the latest "Harry Potter" book, it's finally here and we already got our copy here at NEXT. But it seems that not even Harry's magic can stop digital pirates. Along with "The Hulk", reports of pirated Harry Potter video games have surfaced recently.

Michael Copeland joins us now from "Business 2.0." with more on that. Well, Michael, good to see you. MICHAEL COPELAND, "BUSINESS 2.0": Nice to see you.

WHITFIELD: Well, I can't imagine too many fans really complaining about these pirated copies because, after all, they are the market which is going to buy these pirated copies.

COPELAND: That's true. I think the film industry's biggest problem isn't online downloading at this juncture, at least. It still takes hours to get these movies downloaded. Video games are even trickier. It takes the same hours. And since they are digital, if there's one glitch, you can't play the game very well.

WHITFIELD: So ...

COPELAND: So ...

WHITFIELD: Go ahead.

COPELAND: The pirating of video games is actually much lower than in films, just because it's much more difficult. And companies like Nintendo actually have sort of low-tech fixes where they have these small discs that only they make. It makes it that much harder.

WHITFIELD: All right, so you've got two different types of pirating taking place, not just of the movies out there but of these video games as well. When we talk about say, "The Hulk," for instance, and the movies, we saw in the piece that people literally sometimes will just take their home video cameras in a movie theater and tape them. But for something like "The Hulk," when something hasn't hit the big screens yet, how are they going about getting these bootlegged copies?

COPELAND: Well, you can download them. Again, they'll take them into the theater. They'll make a low-quality recording. And that's one thing that should be mentioned is that these things that you buy in the street typically aren't very good quality. Eventually, downloading via the Internet will allow for high-quality films to be shot around from person to person. And that's what the industry's up against. They have bought themselves some time because these files are so big and they will get bigger still. But they don't want to end up like the music industry and not have a solution. And I don't think technology by itself will be able to foil these people bootlegging films. They need not to -- the approach shouldn't be so much security as embracing a better business model that includes technology that makes it easy for people.

WHITFIELD: So say, for example, the "Harry Potter" video, already people have downloaded that or somehow got a copy of that. It's not as good a quality. What, if anything, can these manufacturers do, the movie industry or even the digital video industry do to try and thwart these efforts?

COPELAND: Well, I think they should take a tip from Steve jobs and make -- provide services that make it easy for us to do the right thing. So better quality, faster and at a good price. I-tunes has shown that if you offer music at a good price and a good quality, people will buy it. The movie industry should do something similar. Online video gaming is becoming popular. And we should see services that make it easy to do the right thing, for us to be honest. At the same time, they shouldn't disregard all security measures. But for every security measure they come up with, somebody will figure out a way to go around it. And I don't think they can win that fight, fighting technology with technology.

WHITFIELD: All right. Michael Copeland, thanks very much. Appreciate it.

COPELAND: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: Lots more to come right here in the next half hour of NEXT@CNN, including doubts about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. CNN's national security correspondent David Ensor joins us to look at both sides of the issue.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: NEXT@CNN continues in just a moment after a check of the headlines at this hour.

The threat of disastrous flooding is subsiding in Manatee County, Florida. Engineers have managed to open a jammed spill gate, one of three on the Lake Manatee Dam. With only two spill gates working, the rising lake was in endangering homes near the water, prompting numerous evacuations. Now an official says, quote, "The dam's going to hold."

Witnesses say three Palestinians were killed by Israeli tank shells in Gaza today. Palestinians say those who died were members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Israeli forces have been in the area for several weeks trying to keep Palestinians from firing rockets at a nearby town. Earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell reaffirmed U.S. commitment to the Middle East road map to peace. He told a World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan that despite, the quote, "wreckage of dashed hopes, the U.S. will not shrink from pursuing peace." And he called on the international community to follow suit.

More news at the top of the hour. NEXT@CNN resumes right now.

Seven weeks after the declared end of combat in Iraq, the passionate debate over weapons of mass destruction intensifies. President Bush initiated the war arguing that the world faced a grave and gathering danger from Iraq's hidden weapons. But U.S. forces have come up empty handed so far in the search for WMD.

CNN national security correspondent David Ensor takes a look at holes in both sides of the argument, and he joins us now from Washington. Good to see you, David.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, thank you, Fredricka. And as you say, it is a very passionate debate these days here in Washington. Over the last week, we've had a closed-door hearings by both the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. There have been a number of statements by some of the Democratic presidential candidates questioning the way the administration has handled intelligence, and whether or not members of the administration have exaggerated the threat from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the buildup to the war.

We looked at the arguments of both sides and, in effect, at what the other side sees as the holes in the arguments. So let's look first now at what the critics see as the problems with the case that the administration made before the war.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GEORGE W. BUSH. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The dictator of Iraq is not disarming.

ENSOR (voice-over): The case for war against Iraq from the leader of the free world in the state of the union address. Exhibit a, for the administration's critics, President Bush citing a close ally.

BUSH: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

ENSOR: The allegation was wrong. It was based on documents later exposed as sloppy forgeries with the wrong letterhead and wrong names designed to falsely implicate Niger in selling yellow cake, raw uranium to Iraq.

RAY CLOSE, FORMER CIA OFFICIAL: It's amazing to me that this could have happened. It perhaps is a measure of the kind of pressure that people are under in Washington now to produce information that adds to the dossier of evidence against the Iraqis.

ENSOR: Worst of all, U.S. officials now tell CNN the White House should have known better.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR: A CIA report cited a former ambassador sent to Niger to investigate. He listed multiple reasons the allegation had to be false. The White House had that report, officials say, nearly a year before the president made the speech.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR (voice-over): Exhibit B for the administration's critics, Vice President Cheney on a March TV talk show talking about Saddam Hussein.

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons.

ENSOR: Exaggeration, say critics. U.S. intelligence officials say they have no evidence Iraq reconstituted its nuclear program as Cheney suggested, only that it may or may not have tried to unsuccessfully. Pressed for what intelligence was behind Cheney's assertion, administration officials cited evidence Iraq had tried to acquire aluminum tubes, which could be used to make gas centrifuges to enrich uranium. But the International Atomic Energy Agency and other experts say the tubes would have been unsuitable.

DAVID ALBRIGHT, FMR. U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: I think the administration is making a mistake by focusing on the aluminum tubes, because they're not a clear indicator of a nuclear weapons effort in Iraq.

ENSOR: Exhibit C for critics, the president post-war on Polish television.

BUSH: We found the weapons of mass destruction. You know, we found biological laboratories.

ENSOR: Questionable, say the critics. U.S. intelligence officials do say they cannot find any other potential use for the trailers filled with sophisticated equipment, but actual weapons of mass destruction? U.S. officials have yet to find a single molecule.

JONATHAN TUCKER, BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS EXPERT: The fact that no traces of agent have yet been found and that, in fact, other chemicals that one would not expect in this type of facility have been found do raise doubts about the conclusiveness of the analysis.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR: There is ammunition, then, for the critics in this argument over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And they will be pointing to some of these examples of the administration making comments, the president, the vice president and others. But there are also holes that the administration and its supporters on the war see in some of the major arguments that are being made by the critics. Let's look at those.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR (voice-over): As the president and his supporters on the war in Iraq see it, the arguments of the critics are full of holes. Argument number one. Maybe there are no longer any weapons of mass destruction to find.

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH (D), OHIO: So where are those vast stockpiles?

SEN. ROBERT BYRD (D), WEST VIRGINIA: Do they actually exist? The questions are mounting.

ENSOR: That's playing politics, say the president's supporters. Raising that now after years of accumulating evidence.

SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS (R), GEORGIA: Saddam Hussein has openly admitted to the world that he had weapons of mass destruction. He used those weapons to kill his own people.

ENSOR: And if Iraq destroyed the weapons itself, why did Saddam refuse to prove that to the U.N.? Bush supporters note that not even U.N. inspectors and the last president were satisfied on that point.

HANS BLIX, CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared. And there at least some of it was retained after the declared destruction date.

BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And someday, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal.

ENSOR: Argument number two. The administration exaggerated or got the CIA to embellish the evidence on Iraqi WMD.

REP. ELIOT ENGEL (D), NEW YORK: I'm deeply concerned about reports that the administration twisted the arms of our intelligence analysts to produce analysis which agree with the policies that you wanted to pursue.

ENSOR: That charge is false and unfair, say administration supporters.

RICHARD PERLE, DEFENSE POLICY BOARD: These are lies. There's not a word of truth in them.

JOHN BOLTON, UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE: I personally never asked anybody in the intelligence community to change a single thing that they presented. And I am not aware of any other official in this administration who did that.

ENSOR: At the CIA, Director George Tenet issued a statement saying, "Our role is to call it like we see it." Concerning Iraq's weapons, Tenet said, "That is exactly what was done." Finally, argument three. The administration hyped the danger from Saddam in a rush to war.

BYRD: How reliable were the claims of this president and the key members of his administration that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed a clear and imminent threat to the United States?

ENSOR: Wait until then, say the president's supporters, and you could be too late.

KEN ADELMAN, FMR. ARMS CONTROL DIRECTOR: Listen, it comes to how much a chance are you willing to take.

BUSH: Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions politely putting us on notice before they strike?

ENSOR: The fact no weapons have been found yet should raise questions, not about the president, say his supporters, but about Saddam Hussein.

ADELMAN: What will be most interesting and most astonishing is if four years from now we look back and say, there were no weapons of mass destruction. And what we'll say then is that Saddam Hussein had to be the stupidest leader that ever, ever existed.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR: So there are arguments for the administration, against the critics as well. Now, in a minute, we'll be coming back. And with me will be Ken Pollack, a former White House official, a former CIA officer, and someone who really knows Iraq, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ENSOR: We're back in Washington. I'm David Ensor. And with me is Ken Pollack of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. He worked in the Clinton White House, and worked prior to that on issues of the region, Iraq and the region at the CIA, so he knows the area well. Ken, news today that there was a convoy attacked with hell fire missiles on Wednesday. Apparently, that information that led to the attack came from this man, Mahmud, who was Saddam Hussein's personal secretary and was captured a few days earlier. There were erroneous reports that Saddam Hussein and his sons might have been in that convoy. Now we're hearing from officials that's simply not true. Still, clearly, the U.S. military is going after the leadership now in an aggressive way. Is that the key to this weapons of mass destruction search?

KEN POLLACK, CNN ANALYST: I think it is, David, because the simple fact of the matter is that whether or not the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction -- my guess is that they've got something -- the only way we are going to find it is if somebody tells us about it. This was always the problem. We spent 13 years after the Gulf War trying to find this stuff. We, the British, the Israelis and the U.N. inspectors, whom we were helping, were trying desperately to find this stuff. And they couldn't, which says that the Iraqis have got it hidden well enough that the average American just wandering around Iraq is not going to be able to find it. Until you have got high- ranking Iraqi officials who are willing to say to the United States, yes, that is where we've got the stuff hidden, this is where the plans are, it's very unlikely that we're just going to stumble across it.

ENSOR: Do you think there are weapons?

POLLACK: I don't know if there are weapons. Weapons was always something that never made a whole lot of sense to me, to tell you the truth, because chemical and biological rounds deteriorate very quickly in storage, and you could actually produce them very quickly. So as a result, my expectation was that the Iraqis were probably hiding the production capability, knowing full well that they could very quickly generate a very large arsenal of weapons of mass destruction munitions whenever Saddam gave the word.

Now, that said, there is still, I think -- and a very interesting mystery out there to be explained -- which is why didn't Saddam manufacture a whole bunch of WMD munitions in expectation that the United States was about to invade? And you remember, of course, that U.S. intelligence had leaked that there were Iraqi WMD munitions being deployed with Republican Guard divisions before the war. Those clearly were erroneous reports. And I think the mystery out there still is why didn't Saddam do what U.S. intelligence was saying he was doing. ENSOR: Why indeed? What about the reports in the last few weeks quoting some intelligence officials, complaining that they were pressured into putting out intelligence that wasn't always as on the mark as it might have been?

POLLACK: Well, as a former NSC and CIA official myself, I will say that I heard a lot of things before the war along similar lines. What I heard was not that the administration was necessarily going to the CIA and saying, you better say this because we need to make the case for war and this is what's going to help us. But simply that you had some administration officials who were pressuring CIA in terms of asking constant questions, making the CIA analysts explain every last detail, source their reports in ways that was rather unusual. And, in fact, had made the whole process so unpleasant that the CIA analysts themselves felt that it was purposeful, that they were trying to be made to feel like this was such an unpleasant process that the best thing they could do is either say what those officials wanted or else keep their mouth shut.

ENSOR: Ken Pollack, thank you very, very much.

Well, this debate is going to continue in the coming weeks and there will be quite a lot of activity within the Congress and the administration as the nation tries to figure out if there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or not, and what the political implications are if not -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right. Still a hot issue, indeed. Thanks a lot, David Ensor in Washington.

Well, still to come right here on NEXT@CNN, what might happen if humans went to Mars. With U.S. and European probes being sent to the red planet this month, we'll look at the possibilities for a manned mission.

Also ahead, why is this SUV going in circles? The answer when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Checking out some NEXT news headlines, the Astronaut Hall of Fame has four new members this weekend. Inducted yesterday at a ceremony in Cape Canaveral were Story Musgrave, whose space walking expertise helped fix the Hubble space telescope, Sally Ride, America's first woman in space, and two veteran pilots, Robert "Hoot" Gibson and Daniel Brandenstein. They join 48 astronauts already honored in the Hall of Fame.

Well, talk about taking your car for a spin, the high-tech centrifuge at the Goddard Space Flight Center is being used to test the rollover limits of SUVS. The spinning centrifuge simulates the kind of G-forces a vehicle would experience when making a turn at high speeds. Engineers hope this study will help them prevent deadly rollovers in the future. NASA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration teamed up for the project. The NASA and the European Space Agency both launched missions to Mars this month, sending rovers and an orbiter to probe the red planet for more clues about its makeup and history. One of the big questions about Mars is when or whether humans will ever be able to visit. It's an idea plagued with unsolved problems. The latest issue of "Popular Science Magazine" takes a look at some of the challenges that NASA is facing.

And joining us now from New York is "Pop Sci" contributing editor Jeff Rothfeder. Well, good to see you, Jeff.

JEFF ROTHFEDER, "POPULAR SCIENCE MAGAZINE": Thank you.

WHITFIELD: Well, it was only about 30 years ago when we went to the moon. So what's the difficulty in being able to go to Mars?

ROTHFEDER: It's unimaginably difficult and different. Mars is, at most times, 100 million miles away from us. It's a nine-month trip. And then if we stay there for about a year or two, the whole trip could last about three years. We're talking about conditions where there's radiation in space, cosmic radiation that could cause cancer. The communications conditions once you're on Mars, just to talk to people on earth, there's a 20-minute delay in the conversation. So the issues are so much larger than going to the moon.

WHITFIELD: And for now, it's 250 days, which seems to be the maximum for astronauts in space anyway. But as you say, it's a much further travel. But let's talk about some of the hurdles that hamper humans to be able to survive there -- the dust, for one thing, cataracts another. Let's talk about the right kind of spacecraft that would be able to allow humans to actually get that far and to survive.

ROTHFEDER: Right. Well, first of all, the spacecraft would not be launched from earth. You'd have to launch it from in space already, which means we would have to build it in space. So that means we need a good shuttle that's going to take us back and forth to build the spacecraft. Then we have to come up with the fuel that will take it out of the earth's orbit all the way to Mars. That's probably going to be nuclear propulsion at this point, again something we haven't really developed yet, because we couldn't carry that much fuel, obviously. Liquid oxygen would be way too heavy to carry all the way to Mars.

But the bigger issue is once we get there, we can't carry oxygen or water or food to stay there three years, so we're going to have to do all of that on the surface of the planet. And think of it. Mars is carbon dioxide. So we can't breathe there. So we're going to have to come up with some conversion technique to create water, to create oxygen and then some way of growing food on the planet itself. All of this is in the works now, but I think it's going to take quite a few years to develop it.

WHITFIELD: And you talk about the cosmic radiation. Then, of course, there is the zero bone loss, almost like the eroding of bone to humans that would be at risk as well. ROTHFEDER: Absolutely. There could be as much as 50 percent bone loss in astronauts in Mars.

WHITFIELD: Why?

ROTHFEDER: During the time in Mars, because when the body has -- when there is no gravity as there is on mars, the body doesn't pick up the calcium in the bones, so it doesn't keep getting the bones stronger and stronger. So they will just lose it. They will be almost like old people even at the age of 40.

WHITFIELD: Jeff Rothfeder. Thanks very much for joining us, appreciate it. Looks like it will be some time before we make our way to Mars.

That's it for us. But before we go, here's a peak at what's coming up for next week. A controversial incinerator is just about ready to start destroying chemical weapons at an Anniston, Alabama military facility. What might the risk be to people downwind?

That story and much more coming up next week. Hope you'll join us.

Coming up next on "CNN LIVE SUNDAY" a look at America's storage of natural gas.

That's followed by "PEOPLE IN THE NEWS," profiling Harry Potter and Harrison Ford.

And at 8:00 Eastern, "CNN PRESENTS" "Road to Baghdad."

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





Questions About Safety of Shuttle Program; Fight Against Digital Piracy Continues>


Aired June 22, 2003 - 17:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Well, welcome to NEXT@CNN for this Sunday, June 22.
Coming up in the next hour, days of rain and a jammed floodgate make for a dangerous situation in waterlogged Florida.

Did the space shuttle Columbia lift off with hundreds of potentially life-threatening problems? New questions about safety in the shuttle program.

And while moviegoers are flocking to "The Hulk" in theaters this weekend, other fans of the green monster have already seen the film, online no less. The latest in that fight against digital piracy.

Relentless rain is causing serious problems for residents of Manatee County, Florida. High water levels from over a foot of rain this past week alone, combined with a malfunctioning spill gate at the Manatee Dam all have caused officials to order an evacuation of more than 500 homes near the dam.

Meteorologist Orelon Sydney joins us a little bit later -- or actually right now -- sorry about that Orelon -- with the very latest on the weather situation there. More rain forecast.

ORELON SYDNEY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: More rain is forecast, but the good news, it's expected to come to an end by Tuesday. The problem for now looks like it's going to be the continuation of rain. The spillway from what I understand at the Manatee Dam has been pried open to the point that they can get some of the water out, which is excellent news. And that means we may not see it topping over the dam and then flowing out in an uncontrolled fashion.

Take a look at the radar right now. This is the Tampa area. We're showing still a pretty good area of rainfall, and showers and thunderstorms there. In general, now, the heaviest area of rain has moved from Tampa on to the south and east, Those areas in yellow and red. Those are about an inch, maybe even an inch and a half amounts per hour. Up around the Tampa Bay area we've seen anywhere from a quarter to a half inch. So the good news is that things do seem to be slowing down there as well. Take a look at what is a little orientation of the area. You can see that the Tampa Bay area is just up to the north right about here.

We're going to zoom in for you and show you exactly where the dam is and give you an idea of what the problem is. The Manatee River flows from east to west and heads towards Tampa Bay. The Manatee Dam is right -- there's the lake there. Here's the rest of the Manatee River as it flows its way on westward. We'll zoom in a little bit closer, and you can actually see where the dam itself is located. And in that area, there is some development. Here's the location of the dam. And then just to the south of that, right in here, is where we find some development.

Now, there have been reports of road closures and flooding in the area, especially up to the north and west, right along the river. Roads are closed. The upper Manatee River, also at Rye Road and right along the dam at Dam Road closed there as well.

Forecast for you looks a lot better, the stationary front causing all the problems is going to slip south. The rainfall moves southward tomorrow, should be over with by Tuesday -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right, that's a sliver of good news. Thanks very much, Orelon, I appreciate it.

Well, a newspaper report is raising new questions about safety procedures for the space shuttle program. "Florida Today" says today in its Sunday edition that the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia lifted off in January with over 1600 safety waivers for potentially life threatening situations. Here to help us put that in perspective is Randy Avera, a former NASA engineer and author of a book on the previous shuttle tragedy, "The Truth About Challenger." Randy, thanks very much for joining us.

RANDY AVERA, AUTHOR, "THE TRUTH ABOUT CHALLENGER": Thanks, Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: What do we mean when he we talk about these waivers, that there were 1600, at least, cited potential problems, life threatening, no less.

AVERA: The waiver system is associated with what NASA has in place. It's a criticality system. It has to do with the design of the space shuttle, the maintenance of the space shuttle and the operational aspects of the space shuttle. The program requirements, the minimum requirements that have to occur flight by flight for a safe and operational vehicle. Any of those requirements that are waived, the waiver process is used to do that. Now, the waiver system is not a way to get around the requirements. That's not what the design of that system was. When a waiver is attempted, it should be arguing about the risk and safety aspects, not arguing about why we should not achieve this requirement for the flight.

WHITFIELD: So there are always going to be expectations that there will be waivers, there will be some potential problems cited before any kind of shuttle launch, but the problem is you've got various levels of potential problems? We're talking about criticality one, the life threatening problems that may cause a loss of the entire flight, the crew, everything.

AVERA: That's correct. To simplify it, a criticality one, criticality two, criticality three. Criticality one is the top most serious, safety-related requirements. Criticality one by definition is loss of vehicle, loss of life and loss of the mission. That means that if the system fails, that you run the very high risk of losing the vehicle, the mission and the life of the astronauts, and possibly people on the ground. So criticality one items, when we see 1600 waivers, this is a staggering number. As I have said in "The Truth About Challenger," it takes almost an act of Congress for engineers to get even one single waiver, if necessary. But this is a program management issue. The waivers are really processed through the program management levels and review boards.

WHITFIELD: In all fairness, we wanted to get NASA's point of view on these reported 1,600 waivers. And Richard Bloomberg, former chairman of NASA's Aerospace Advisory Panel released this statement to us, quote, "A waiver sounds like a terrible thing, but in virtually every situation a waiver is a carefully thought out process by which you decide that something is an acceptable risk." So, really, no complete denial that there were 1,600 waivers but that there is an expectation that you will have waivers. When should the red flag be raised, however, that perhaps a certain amount is just too much to risk?

AVERA: Well, there are several ways a red flag can be raised. For example, a requirement might be something as simple sounding as an inspection. But the fundamental fact is that these requirements are in fact the program requirements for safe flight and operational use. So any of these waivers should have a very, very serious argument for why the waiver should be approved and processed. Humans have a condition where we tend to downsize the severity of problems. So it's very important to have a procedure and a process in place that minimizes the human condition and holds the program accountable to the meaningful rules. If the program requirements are not valid requirements, then the process should review them and remove them as a requirement, not just to get them off the list but, in fact, they're not required.

WHITFIELD: Like we say, there is always going to be an expectation there will be a number of waivers. When you talk about 1600 waivers and you're talking about some million parts on a shuttle, is this really a big deal? Or do you feel that in any way that the safety measures are being compromised because of this rush to get a shuttle in the air?

AVERA: Well, even in 1986 and even 1985 on 61 Charlie flight at Columbia, the flight right before the last flight of Challenger, both those vehicles had in the neighborhood of about 800-plus waivers that had been processed, which was a staggering amount of waivers.

WHITFIELD: So this would be double.

AVERA: This is double that, 1600 waivers. It's a staggering amount of waivers. I think it's a fair question to ask, in order to operate, why so many waivers and what are the nature of those waivers? For example, the obvious question, were any of these 1600 waivers associated with the leading edge reinforced carbon carbon of the space shuttle Columbia, which we already have learned from NASA and the investigation board that it's a primary element in the break-up of the vehicle over Texas during re-entry?

WHITFIELD: Randy Avera, thanks very much. Appreciate it.

AVERA: Your welcome.

Coming up here on NEXT@CNN, trouble in a sea that provides much of the seafood you eat, is over fishing the problem, or could it be something else?

And later, the Astronaut Hall of Fame has four new inductees. We'll tell you all about that, stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Well, did you know that the U.S. gets more than half of the fish it eats from the Bering Sea, and now it seems that fish are disappearing in that vital body of water that separates Alaska from Russia.

Our international environment correspondent Gary Strieker has just returning from the Bering Sea to tell us all about it. Good to see you, Gary.

GARY STRIEKER, CNN INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Fredricka.

Recently, two major scientific studies were released on the declining health of the world's ocean. One of them by the Pew Ocean's Commission concludes that America's oceans are in crisis because of human activities, including over fishing, habitat damage and pollution. To get our own perspective on what's happening in one ocean region, the very cold and highly productive Bering Sea, we found a small as a good place to start.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STRIEKER (voice-over): On the island of St. George, it's the start of fishing season.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is our gig line. This is what we use to catch the halibut when we're not long lining.

STRIEKER: But finding halibut off this island is not as easy as it used to be.

(on camera): What's causing this do you think?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trawlers.

STRIEKER: Trawlers are causing it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, a lot of them.

STRIEKER (voice-over): Factory trawlers owned by big fishing companies dragging miles of huge nets across the Bering Sea.

DAVID FOX, FISHERMAN: And us poor little fishermen are, you know ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trying to make a living.

FOX: ... we're trying to make a living in the summer and they're just -- they're killing us out there. They're just raking the sea.

STRIEKER: And it's not only some fish populations that are dropping. Marine mammals are also in trouble with stellar sea lions listed as an endangered species, and locals reporting dramatic reductions in northern fur seals, as well as declining populations of many kinds of sea birds, nesting and breeding here.

(on camera): The people on these islands have seen it and researchers are now producing evidence that many wildlife species here are quickly declining in numbers. Scientists tell us something is upsetting the natural balance in the Bering Sea. And what might result from that could be serious.

(voice-over): More than half of the annual fish catch in the United States and in Russia comes from the Bering Sea. St. George is one of the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in the eastern part of the sea near the edge of the continental shelf. Biologically it's a highly productive area, important for science and conservation.

EVIE WITTEN, WORLD WILDLIFE FUND: By looking at the Pribilof Islands and monitoring what's going on, it's like taking the temperature of the rest of the Bering Sea. It gives us an indication of the biological health of other parts of the Bering Sea.

STRIEKER: And because fur seals and sea birds survive on a diet of fish, declining numbers of these animals could be a warning signal that giant trawlers are over fishing the Bering Sea.

DOROTHY CHILDERS, AK MARINE CONSERVATION COUN. If fisheries are having a serious impact on this food web question and we don't do anything because we can't prove it, then some day we may be in a heap of trouble. And we may already be there.

STRIEKER: That's not so, say the big fishing and processing companies. And they're supported by U.S. authorities responsible for managing fisheries in the region.

DAVID WITHERELL, N. PACIFIC FISHERY MGMT COUNCIL: The ecosystem itself is considered very healthy.

STRIEKER: They cite a recent scientific study concluding it's highly unlikely fisheries are causing declines in marine mammals and birds. And they say stability in wildlife populations should not be expected.

WITHERELL: That's not the case with nature, especially in these near Arctic ecosystems. Things fluctuate due to environmental conditions.

STRIEKER: Maybe there's more to this problem than over fishing. Maybe it's climate change or pollution or maybe it's all natural. But that's small consolation to these fishermen looking for halibut that are no longer there.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STRIEKER: Only about 800 people live on the two inhabited Pribilof Islands, most are descendants of native Aleut and Siberian slave laborers brought there by the Russians to work in the fur seal trade during the 18th and 19th centuries. Many of them still depend for their livelihood on fishing and hunting fur seals.

WHITFIELD: That's powerful stuff. So since there are differing opinions on whether the Bering Sea is actually being threatened, what are some the things that the conservationists want to do?

STRIEKER: Well, above all, the conservationists believe that even though it's generally understood -- and many of them agree that the North Pacific Fishery is probably the best-managed fishery in U.S. waters, they want more aggressive enforcement of what they call the precautionary principle. And that is even if we don't have enough scientific information to prove that something bad is happening in the Bering Sea that may be irreversible, it's better to err on the side of caution and to take measures that might be necessary to protect -- you know protect the Bering Sea and prevent any further deterioration in the biological processes there.

And one of the things they will want to see in the coming months and years -- and there's going to be more pressure for that -- is the creation of marine reserves that will protect nurseries, breeding grounds, foraging grounds, migration routes, because it's generally understood that if you protect a well designed marine reserve, the fishing resources outside those reserves will increase in number, in bounty. So the conservationists believe that, after all, what we're after is a sustainable fishery in the years ahead, and unless we take these measures to protect the fishery for the future generations in our country, we may not have it in the future.

WHITFIELD: All right, Gary Strieker, thanks very much.

Coming up next, he's big, he's bad, but he's not bad enough to beat the bootleggers. We'll look at "The Hulk" and online privacy.

Also ahead, circular logic results in a bumper crop of baby penguins? We'll explain.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD (voice-over): If a cup of coffee keeps you up at night or gives you heart palpitations shall get a load of this plant. It's been genetically decaffeinated. The plant has 70 percent less caffeine than the typical coffee plant. Developed by researchers at Japan's Nara Institute of Science and Technology and published in the journal "Nature." Instead of chemically extracting caffeine from the beans, which is how we make decaffeinated coffee today and can reduce the flavor, researchers say they altered the plant's genes so the plant produces less caffeine without affecting the taste. But researchers say it will be years before we sip the benefits. Since the decaffeinated plants have led sheltered lives in a greenhouse, researchers can't say how these altered plants will fair in the outside world where caffeine could be crucial to a plant's survival. Caffeine, they say, may be a natural pesticide that protects the plants against insects and disease.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Well, taking a look now at some NEXT news headlines, federal officials are assessing damage caused by a wildfire near Tucson, Arizona this week. The blaze destroyed more than 200 homes, and prompted the evacuation of 1,000 others. The fire is continuing to move north and is now threatening the University of Arizona's Stewart Observatory.

An ancient burial chest did not belong to the brother of Jesus, according to a panel of scientists. When the bone box was discovered last year, some people believed the inscription linked it to Jesus. Well, now the experts say the inscription is a fake, even though the box really does date to biblical times. They found evidence that the inscription was written recently by somebody trying to imitate ancient Hebrew characters. One scientist says it wasn't even a good fake.

Remember a few months ago we told you how the penguins at the San Francisco zoo were swimming around in circles as if they were migrating. Well, it turns out they were doing more than just swimming, those sneaky rascals. Well, this spring, they produced a bumper crop of chicks, twice the usual number. Zookeepers took the fledglings out of their burrows onto the zoo's Penguin Island Thursday to band them, give them a checkup and to transfer them to a facility where they'll learn to swim and get used to humans. After they're grown they'll be returned to Penguin Island, and perhaps to join in on another a mock migration, going about their old ways again.

Well, as you probably already know, "The Hulk," the summer's next anticipated blockbuster opened this weekend. But you may not know that some fans were getting an unauthorized look at their favorite green giant, even before the flick hit the big screen.

Andy Culpepper explains how and what is being done to try to stop digital bootleggers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think you're going to like me when I'm angry.

ANDY CULPEPPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "The Hulk," he's big, he's bad and he's bootlegged.

JAMES SCHAMUS, WRITER/CO-PRODUCERS: You spend two and a half years crafting something very, very beautiful, very specific, of the highest artistry, and then some creep puts it on the Internet, the early version without all the effects, the sound and the music. And he'll go to jail. CULPEPPER: More than a week before it debuted in theaters, "The Hulk" had already been plundered by movie pirates, the latest on a growing list of first-run films that have fallen prey to counterfeiting that's costing the studios more than $3 billion a year.

JACK VALENTI, PRESIDENT, MOTION PICTURE ASSN.: One way they get a hold of them is a premier of a picture and -- or you might have a sneak preview and they camcord it.

CULPEPPER: Industry estimates indicate hundreds of millions of copies of bootlegged Hollywood movies are being sold around the world every year.

FRANK HARRILL, SPECIAL AGENT, FBI: We're going to see the effect right here in U.S. jobs and U.S. economy in the buying power of the average American. The price of movies is going to go up. The price of cable television is going to go up, and we'll all see it in our pocketbooks. And so we've got to put a stop to it.

CULPEPPER: The movie industry is fighting back. Studios are studying ways to put a digital fingerprint on movies, which would allow pirated copies to be traced. At advance screenings and premiers, guests are being warned, don't bring in any recording devices. Another strategy by studios, simultaneously releasing movies in as many countries as possible to beat pirates to the punch. But the strategy isn't foolproof.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I keep feeling something terrible is about to happen.

CULPEPPER: When "X-Men 2" debuted in nearly 100 countries in May, pirated copies weren't far behind. This copy was recorder by a bootlegger in a Hong Kong theater and made available on the Internet. According to the Motion Picture Association, authorities confiscated more than 7 million pirated DVDs worldwide last year.

VALENTI: It is technology that's causing this. The reason (ph) is going to be technology and it will be the salvation. So I'm very convinced in a short time that we will find some technological sturdy ways to protect our movies.

CULPEPPER: In the meantime, films such as "The Hulk" will share a portion of their revenues with the bootleggers.

Andy Culpepper, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Well, another huge moneymaker, the latest "Harry Potter" book, it's finally here and we already got our copy here at NEXT. But it seems that not even Harry's magic can stop digital pirates. Along with "The Hulk", reports of pirated Harry Potter video games have surfaced recently.

Michael Copeland joins us now from "Business 2.0." with more on that. Well, Michael, good to see you. MICHAEL COPELAND, "BUSINESS 2.0": Nice to see you.

WHITFIELD: Well, I can't imagine too many fans really complaining about these pirated copies because, after all, they are the market which is going to buy these pirated copies.

COPELAND: That's true. I think the film industry's biggest problem isn't online downloading at this juncture, at least. It still takes hours to get these movies downloaded. Video games are even trickier. It takes the same hours. And since they are digital, if there's one glitch, you can't play the game very well.

WHITFIELD: So ...

COPELAND: So ...

WHITFIELD: Go ahead.

COPELAND: The pirating of video games is actually much lower than in films, just because it's much more difficult. And companies like Nintendo actually have sort of low-tech fixes where they have these small discs that only they make. It makes it that much harder.

WHITFIELD: All right, so you've got two different types of pirating taking place, not just of the movies out there but of these video games as well. When we talk about say, "The Hulk," for instance, and the movies, we saw in the piece that people literally sometimes will just take their home video cameras in a movie theater and tape them. But for something like "The Hulk," when something hasn't hit the big screens yet, how are they going about getting these bootlegged copies?

COPELAND: Well, you can download them. Again, they'll take them into the theater. They'll make a low-quality recording. And that's one thing that should be mentioned is that these things that you buy in the street typically aren't very good quality. Eventually, downloading via the Internet will allow for high-quality films to be shot around from person to person. And that's what the industry's up against. They have bought themselves some time because these files are so big and they will get bigger still. But they don't want to end up like the music industry and not have a solution. And I don't think technology by itself will be able to foil these people bootlegging films. They need not to -- the approach shouldn't be so much security as embracing a better business model that includes technology that makes it easy for people.

WHITFIELD: So say, for example, the "Harry Potter" video, already people have downloaded that or somehow got a copy of that. It's not as good a quality. What, if anything, can these manufacturers do, the movie industry or even the digital video industry do to try and thwart these efforts?

COPELAND: Well, I think they should take a tip from Steve jobs and make -- provide services that make it easy for us to do the right thing. So better quality, faster and at a good price. I-tunes has shown that if you offer music at a good price and a good quality, people will buy it. The movie industry should do something similar. Online video gaming is becoming popular. And we should see services that make it easy to do the right thing, for us to be honest. At the same time, they shouldn't disregard all security measures. But for every security measure they come up with, somebody will figure out a way to go around it. And I don't think they can win that fight, fighting technology with technology.

WHITFIELD: All right. Michael Copeland, thanks very much. Appreciate it.

COPELAND: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: Lots more to come right here in the next half hour of NEXT@CNN, including doubts about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. CNN's national security correspondent David Ensor joins us to look at both sides of the issue.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: NEXT@CNN continues in just a moment after a check of the headlines at this hour.

The threat of disastrous flooding is subsiding in Manatee County, Florida. Engineers have managed to open a jammed spill gate, one of three on the Lake Manatee Dam. With only two spill gates working, the rising lake was in endangering homes near the water, prompting numerous evacuations. Now an official says, quote, "The dam's going to hold."

Witnesses say three Palestinians were killed by Israeli tank shells in Gaza today. Palestinians say those who died were members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Israeli forces have been in the area for several weeks trying to keep Palestinians from firing rockets at a nearby town. Earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell reaffirmed U.S. commitment to the Middle East road map to peace. He told a World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan that despite, the quote, "wreckage of dashed hopes, the U.S. will not shrink from pursuing peace." And he called on the international community to follow suit.

More news at the top of the hour. NEXT@CNN resumes right now.

Seven weeks after the declared end of combat in Iraq, the passionate debate over weapons of mass destruction intensifies. President Bush initiated the war arguing that the world faced a grave and gathering danger from Iraq's hidden weapons. But U.S. forces have come up empty handed so far in the search for WMD.

CNN national security correspondent David Ensor takes a look at holes in both sides of the argument, and he joins us now from Washington. Good to see you, David.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, thank you, Fredricka. And as you say, it is a very passionate debate these days here in Washington. Over the last week, we've had a closed-door hearings by both the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. There have been a number of statements by some of the Democratic presidential candidates questioning the way the administration has handled intelligence, and whether or not members of the administration have exaggerated the threat from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the buildup to the war.

We looked at the arguments of both sides and, in effect, at what the other side sees as the holes in the arguments. So let's look first now at what the critics see as the problems with the case that the administration made before the war.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GEORGE W. BUSH. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The dictator of Iraq is not disarming.

ENSOR (voice-over): The case for war against Iraq from the leader of the free world in the state of the union address. Exhibit a, for the administration's critics, President Bush citing a close ally.

BUSH: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

ENSOR: The allegation was wrong. It was based on documents later exposed as sloppy forgeries with the wrong letterhead and wrong names designed to falsely implicate Niger in selling yellow cake, raw uranium to Iraq.

RAY CLOSE, FORMER CIA OFFICIAL: It's amazing to me that this could have happened. It perhaps is a measure of the kind of pressure that people are under in Washington now to produce information that adds to the dossier of evidence against the Iraqis.

ENSOR: Worst of all, U.S. officials now tell CNN the White House should have known better.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR: A CIA report cited a former ambassador sent to Niger to investigate. He listed multiple reasons the allegation had to be false. The White House had that report, officials say, nearly a year before the president made the speech.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR (voice-over): Exhibit B for the administration's critics, Vice President Cheney on a March TV talk show talking about Saddam Hussein.

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons.

ENSOR: Exaggeration, say critics. U.S. intelligence officials say they have no evidence Iraq reconstituted its nuclear program as Cheney suggested, only that it may or may not have tried to unsuccessfully. Pressed for what intelligence was behind Cheney's assertion, administration officials cited evidence Iraq had tried to acquire aluminum tubes, which could be used to make gas centrifuges to enrich uranium. But the International Atomic Energy Agency and other experts say the tubes would have been unsuitable.

DAVID ALBRIGHT, FMR. U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: I think the administration is making a mistake by focusing on the aluminum tubes, because they're not a clear indicator of a nuclear weapons effort in Iraq.

ENSOR: Exhibit C for critics, the president post-war on Polish television.

BUSH: We found the weapons of mass destruction. You know, we found biological laboratories.

ENSOR: Questionable, say the critics. U.S. intelligence officials do say they cannot find any other potential use for the trailers filled with sophisticated equipment, but actual weapons of mass destruction? U.S. officials have yet to find a single molecule.

JONATHAN TUCKER, BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS EXPERT: The fact that no traces of agent have yet been found and that, in fact, other chemicals that one would not expect in this type of facility have been found do raise doubts about the conclusiveness of the analysis.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR: There is ammunition, then, for the critics in this argument over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And they will be pointing to some of these examples of the administration making comments, the president, the vice president and others. But there are also holes that the administration and its supporters on the war see in some of the major arguments that are being made by the critics. Let's look at those.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR (voice-over): As the president and his supporters on the war in Iraq see it, the arguments of the critics are full of holes. Argument number one. Maybe there are no longer any weapons of mass destruction to find.

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH (D), OHIO: So where are those vast stockpiles?

SEN. ROBERT BYRD (D), WEST VIRGINIA: Do they actually exist? The questions are mounting.

ENSOR: That's playing politics, say the president's supporters. Raising that now after years of accumulating evidence.

SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS (R), GEORGIA: Saddam Hussein has openly admitted to the world that he had weapons of mass destruction. He used those weapons to kill his own people.

ENSOR: And if Iraq destroyed the weapons itself, why did Saddam refuse to prove that to the U.N.? Bush supporters note that not even U.N. inspectors and the last president were satisfied on that point.

HANS BLIX, CHIEF U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared. And there at least some of it was retained after the declared destruction date.

BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And someday, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal.

ENSOR: Argument number two. The administration exaggerated or got the CIA to embellish the evidence on Iraqi WMD.

REP. ELIOT ENGEL (D), NEW YORK: I'm deeply concerned about reports that the administration twisted the arms of our intelligence analysts to produce analysis which agree with the policies that you wanted to pursue.

ENSOR: That charge is false and unfair, say administration supporters.

RICHARD PERLE, DEFENSE POLICY BOARD: These are lies. There's not a word of truth in them.

JOHN BOLTON, UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE: I personally never asked anybody in the intelligence community to change a single thing that they presented. And I am not aware of any other official in this administration who did that.

ENSOR: At the CIA, Director George Tenet issued a statement saying, "Our role is to call it like we see it." Concerning Iraq's weapons, Tenet said, "That is exactly what was done." Finally, argument three. The administration hyped the danger from Saddam in a rush to war.

BYRD: How reliable were the claims of this president and the key members of his administration that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed a clear and imminent threat to the United States?

ENSOR: Wait until then, say the president's supporters, and you could be too late.

KEN ADELMAN, FMR. ARMS CONTROL DIRECTOR: Listen, it comes to how much a chance are you willing to take.

BUSH: Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions politely putting us on notice before they strike?

ENSOR: The fact no weapons have been found yet should raise questions, not about the president, say his supporters, but about Saddam Hussein.

ADELMAN: What will be most interesting and most astonishing is if four years from now we look back and say, there were no weapons of mass destruction. And what we'll say then is that Saddam Hussein had to be the stupidest leader that ever, ever existed.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR: So there are arguments for the administration, against the critics as well. Now, in a minute, we'll be coming back. And with me will be Ken Pollack, a former White House official, a former CIA officer, and someone who really knows Iraq, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ENSOR: We're back in Washington. I'm David Ensor. And with me is Ken Pollack of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. He worked in the Clinton White House, and worked prior to that on issues of the region, Iraq and the region at the CIA, so he knows the area well. Ken, news today that there was a convoy attacked with hell fire missiles on Wednesday. Apparently, that information that led to the attack came from this man, Mahmud, who was Saddam Hussein's personal secretary and was captured a few days earlier. There were erroneous reports that Saddam Hussein and his sons might have been in that convoy. Now we're hearing from officials that's simply not true. Still, clearly, the U.S. military is going after the leadership now in an aggressive way. Is that the key to this weapons of mass destruction search?

KEN POLLACK, CNN ANALYST: I think it is, David, because the simple fact of the matter is that whether or not the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction -- my guess is that they've got something -- the only way we are going to find it is if somebody tells us about it. This was always the problem. We spent 13 years after the Gulf War trying to find this stuff. We, the British, the Israelis and the U.N. inspectors, whom we were helping, were trying desperately to find this stuff. And they couldn't, which says that the Iraqis have got it hidden well enough that the average American just wandering around Iraq is not going to be able to find it. Until you have got high- ranking Iraqi officials who are willing to say to the United States, yes, that is where we've got the stuff hidden, this is where the plans are, it's very unlikely that we're just going to stumble across it.

ENSOR: Do you think there are weapons?

POLLACK: I don't know if there are weapons. Weapons was always something that never made a whole lot of sense to me, to tell you the truth, because chemical and biological rounds deteriorate very quickly in storage, and you could actually produce them very quickly. So as a result, my expectation was that the Iraqis were probably hiding the production capability, knowing full well that they could very quickly generate a very large arsenal of weapons of mass destruction munitions whenever Saddam gave the word.

Now, that said, there is still, I think -- and a very interesting mystery out there to be explained -- which is why didn't Saddam manufacture a whole bunch of WMD munitions in expectation that the United States was about to invade? And you remember, of course, that U.S. intelligence had leaked that there were Iraqi WMD munitions being deployed with Republican Guard divisions before the war. Those clearly were erroneous reports. And I think the mystery out there still is why didn't Saddam do what U.S. intelligence was saying he was doing. ENSOR: Why indeed? What about the reports in the last few weeks quoting some intelligence officials, complaining that they were pressured into putting out intelligence that wasn't always as on the mark as it might have been?

POLLACK: Well, as a former NSC and CIA official myself, I will say that I heard a lot of things before the war along similar lines. What I heard was not that the administration was necessarily going to the CIA and saying, you better say this because we need to make the case for war and this is what's going to help us. But simply that you had some administration officials who were pressuring CIA in terms of asking constant questions, making the CIA analysts explain every last detail, source their reports in ways that was rather unusual. And, in fact, had made the whole process so unpleasant that the CIA analysts themselves felt that it was purposeful, that they were trying to be made to feel like this was such an unpleasant process that the best thing they could do is either say what those officials wanted or else keep their mouth shut.

ENSOR: Ken Pollack, thank you very, very much.

Well, this debate is going to continue in the coming weeks and there will be quite a lot of activity within the Congress and the administration as the nation tries to figure out if there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or not, and what the political implications are if not -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right. Still a hot issue, indeed. Thanks a lot, David Ensor in Washington.

Well, still to come right here on NEXT@CNN, what might happen if humans went to Mars. With U.S. and European probes being sent to the red planet this month, we'll look at the possibilities for a manned mission.

Also ahead, why is this SUV going in circles? The answer when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Checking out some NEXT news headlines, the Astronaut Hall of Fame has four new members this weekend. Inducted yesterday at a ceremony in Cape Canaveral were Story Musgrave, whose space walking expertise helped fix the Hubble space telescope, Sally Ride, America's first woman in space, and two veteran pilots, Robert "Hoot" Gibson and Daniel Brandenstein. They join 48 astronauts already honored in the Hall of Fame.

Well, talk about taking your car for a spin, the high-tech centrifuge at the Goddard Space Flight Center is being used to test the rollover limits of SUVS. The spinning centrifuge simulates the kind of G-forces a vehicle would experience when making a turn at high speeds. Engineers hope this study will help them prevent deadly rollovers in the future. NASA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration teamed up for the project. The NASA and the European Space Agency both launched missions to Mars this month, sending rovers and an orbiter to probe the red planet for more clues about its makeup and history. One of the big questions about Mars is when or whether humans will ever be able to visit. It's an idea plagued with unsolved problems. The latest issue of "Popular Science Magazine" takes a look at some of the challenges that NASA is facing.

And joining us now from New York is "Pop Sci" contributing editor Jeff Rothfeder. Well, good to see you, Jeff.

JEFF ROTHFEDER, "POPULAR SCIENCE MAGAZINE": Thank you.

WHITFIELD: Well, it was only about 30 years ago when we went to the moon. So what's the difficulty in being able to go to Mars?

ROTHFEDER: It's unimaginably difficult and different. Mars is, at most times, 100 million miles away from us. It's a nine-month trip. And then if we stay there for about a year or two, the whole trip could last about three years. We're talking about conditions where there's radiation in space, cosmic radiation that could cause cancer. The communications conditions once you're on Mars, just to talk to people on earth, there's a 20-minute delay in the conversation. So the issues are so much larger than going to the moon.

WHITFIELD: And for now, it's 250 days, which seems to be the maximum for astronauts in space anyway. But as you say, it's a much further travel. But let's talk about some of the hurdles that hamper humans to be able to survive there -- the dust, for one thing, cataracts another. Let's talk about the right kind of spacecraft that would be able to allow humans to actually get that far and to survive.

ROTHFEDER: Right. Well, first of all, the spacecraft would not be launched from earth. You'd have to launch it from in space already, which means we would have to build it in space. So that means we need a good shuttle that's going to take us back and forth to build the spacecraft. Then we have to come up with the fuel that will take it out of the earth's orbit all the way to Mars. That's probably going to be nuclear propulsion at this point, again something we haven't really developed yet, because we couldn't carry that much fuel, obviously. Liquid oxygen would be way too heavy to carry all the way to Mars.

But the bigger issue is once we get there, we can't carry oxygen or water or food to stay there three years, so we're going to have to do all of that on the surface of the planet. And think of it. Mars is carbon dioxide. So we can't breathe there. So we're going to have to come up with some conversion technique to create water, to create oxygen and then some way of growing food on the planet itself. All of this is in the works now, but I think it's going to take quite a few years to develop it.

WHITFIELD: And you talk about the cosmic radiation. Then, of course, there is the zero bone loss, almost like the eroding of bone to humans that would be at risk as well. ROTHFEDER: Absolutely. There could be as much as 50 percent bone loss in astronauts in Mars.

WHITFIELD: Why?

ROTHFEDER: During the time in Mars, because when the body has -- when there is no gravity as there is on mars, the body doesn't pick up the calcium in the bones, so it doesn't keep getting the bones stronger and stronger. So they will just lose it. They will be almost like old people even at the age of 40.

WHITFIELD: Jeff Rothfeder. Thanks very much for joining us, appreciate it. Looks like it will be some time before we make our way to Mars.

That's it for us. But before we go, here's a peak at what's coming up for next week. A controversial incinerator is just about ready to start destroying chemical weapons at an Anniston, Alabama military facility. What might the risk be to people downwind?

That story and much more coming up next week. Hope you'll join us.

Coming up next on "CNN LIVE SUNDAY" a look at America's storage of natural gas.

That's followed by "PEOPLE IN THE NEWS," profiling Harry Potter and Harrison Ford.

And at 8:00 Eastern, "CNN PRESENTS" "Road to Baghdad."

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