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CNN Saturday Morning News
Interview With Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman
Aired June 22, 2002 - 09:38 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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: On the home front, the FBI is shooting down a story about an alleged plot to attack Las Vegas on the Fourth of July. After extensively questioning, agents say the man, who claimed he overheard the conversation on his cell phone, is not credible.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL HAMDAN, ALLEGED CELL PHONE INTERCEPTOR: And it seems there is many people in this side talking to one -- another individual, telling him exactly in Arabic, which I'm going to say it in English, of course: "We are here in the city of corruption, the city of prostitution and gambling, the city of the unbelievers, and they are talking about freedom. We are going to hit them in the day of freedom."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: All right. Now, we just told you this man has no credibility, then we put his views on the air. But the mayor here will help us sort all this out, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman. What you just heard has been discredited, folks, we want to make that very clear.
Mayor Goodman, I got to admit, when I heard the story, this guy is, you know, of Lebanese descent, pushes Send on the cell phone, by some chance he hears an Arabic conversation, by some chance, blah, blah, blah. It just didn't add up to me.
Did you feel the same way?
MAYOR OSCAR GOODMAN, LAS VEGAS, NEVADA: Yes, I'm a criminal defense lawyer by profession, and this was beyond my imagination. It didn't make any sense at all, it sounded bogus right off the bat. And of course when they checked this guy out, they found out that it looks like he's a phony.
O'BRIEN: He is (UNINTELLIGIBLE), all right. And was there some record there that made you -- lead you to believe that, or was it just the polygraph?
GOODMAN: Well, I understood from high law enforcement officials here that he has a record. They haven't made this public yet, and it was a flim-flam type allegation, according to my source. And that gives you a little bit of a basis to start off with why somebody would look for his 15 minutes in the sun this way.
Just didn't make any sense. When somebody has information which is of such an important nature, they go to the authorities right away. This fellow, he delayed it, then he became a star, he called all the TV stations, he called the radio, he called the papers, his picture was every place.
And I think he was basking it and enjoying it. I'm surprised he even took the polygraph, to be quite frank with you.
O'BRIEN: All right. Now, mayor, there -- you do have a constituent in Las Vegas who does have a bone to pick with you. Let's go to the e-mail quickly. This one comes from Danny. Danny doesn't give his last name, Mr. Mayor, so I guess that saves him from, you know, retribution or whatever.
GOODMAN: Right, whatever I would do, (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
O'BRIEN: I -- anyway, "I live in Las Vegas, and on our local news last night, Mayor Goodman said, `He's a liar. I say he's a liar, and let him sue me for saying so.' Wouldn't you say, though," says Danny, "officials making comments like that are unacceptable? How many people are going to come forward with tips now?"
That's a pretty good point, don't you think?
GOODMAN: No, not really. When you're a liar, you have to be called a liar. I think it's very important...
O'BRIEN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
GOODMAN: ... I think it's important that government officials tell it the way it is. And this fellow wasn't holding anything back, it'd be different if he went to the authorities, whispered something to them, and then sat back. But he was selling his story out there. He was looking to get a message across.
Just the mere way that he described the city was inaccurate, inappropriate. And it had a devastating or potentially devastating economic effect on us. After September the 11th, our tourism and visitor industry is very, very brittle, and we've come back, and we're really making great strides to be where we were before and are succeeding at that.
So when you throw this into the mix and people start saying, Well, maybe we don't go to Las Vegas over the Fourth of July, that hurts us. And I want to hurt somebody who causes that kind of problem.
O'BRIEN: All right, but mayor, just before we let this go, because I -- we can dismiss this, but the general concept of terrorists picking the Fourth of July, you really don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that would be a time of opportunity for a terrorist attack, large gatherings of people celebrating freedom, on and on. What is Las Vegas doing? Do you feel confident you're going into this with security where it should be to protect against these kinds of things?
GOODMAN: Yes, I really do feel very, very confident. Las Vegas is unique, in the sense that we virtually have many police forces here. We have our Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which is made up of about 2,000 members, and then each hotel has their own, in effect, police force and their security officers. So we're very, very well situated in order to address any kind of a situation.
The city of Las Vegas has an emergency operations manager, actually, who spends full time checking things out. The FBI, with the new agent in charge, is very, very cooperative with the city. The police department works very well with the city.
So I feel very confident that there will be no problem. And, you know, with -- in this age of terrorism, to even change our lifestyle, I think, is a big, big mistake, because that gives the opposition a win right off the bat. I think that we have to live as we did before we, we have to think as we did before. We have to be vigilant, we have to be alert. But the bottom line, really, is, we have to be Americans.
O'BRIEN: All right, that's a good way to end it. Mayor Oscar Goodman, thank you very much, telling it like it is in Las Vegas. Whatever you do, don't mess around with the house security in the casinos, right?
GOODMAN: You got that right.
O'BRIEN: All right. We'll see you.
GOODMAN: OK, thank you.
O'BRIEN: And happy Fourth to you.
GOODMAN: Thank you very much.
O'BRIEN: All right.
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