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New Info About 9/11 Warnings Surfaces; Bush Makes Case for Attack on Iraq; FBI Sweeps In on Alleged Terrorist Cell in Buffalo

Aired September 21, 2002 - 10:00   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.


KATE SNOW, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Welcome to CNN's SATURDAY EDITION, where our journalists talk about the stories they covered this week.
I'm Kate Snow.

New information about specific warnings of terrorist attacks years before 9/11.

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: I'm Andrea Koppel. How U.S. policy toward Iraq is playing on the world stage.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I'm Suzanne Malveaux. How the Bush team is getting its point across back at home as well.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Deborah Feyerick in New York. The FBI sweeps in on an alleged terror cell in Buffalo. Could another attack be imminent?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN FINANCIAL NEWS CORRESPONDENT: And I'm Christine Romans. The economic fallout of war talk, terror fears and a new round of executive excess by big business.

All of these topics ahead, and we'll hear the president's radio address at the end of the hour. But first, a check on the hour's headlines from Atlanta.

(NEWSBREAK)

KOPPEL: President Bush and his team keep belting out the same tune for ears both in the United states but also overseas: Either join together with the United Nations to squeeze Saddam Hussein, or the United States does the job alone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The United Nations Security Council must work with the United States and Britain and other concerned parties to send a clear message that we expect Saddam to disarm. And if the United Nations Security Council won't deal with the problem, the United States and some of our friends will.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KOPPEL: Well, at the United Nations, the week ended better than it began, U.S. officials say, and that's really because there has been, you know, even though the Bush administration was saying at the beginning of the week it wasn't surprised by that sudden Iraqi letter to Kofi Annan that said, "Let the U.N. weapons inspectors come back in without condition," privately, U.S. officials were furious. They felt that Secretary General Annan had completely pulled a fast one on them, that he was portraying the glass as being half full when in point of fact, and he was saying, you know, "Let's let the inspectors get back in there, let's give them a chance."

And so ever since then, ever since Monday, you've seen the administration doing diplomatic damage control. They have had to focus especially on the five permanent members of the Security Council, obviously not on the U.S., not so much on Britain, but on France, on Russia and on China.

And in fact, just yesterday, Suzanne, you know, President Bush met with the Russian foreign minister and the defense minister and spoke with Russian President Putin. They are really trying to massage the Russians. And in point of fact, I'm told, that they feel as if the Russians are coming around, and that the real trouble is going to be the French.

FEYERICK: Andrea, what is the strategy over at the United Nations right now that we're looking at?

KOPPEL: What I'm being told is that it's really kind of a two- pronged strategy, a plan A and a plan B.

Plan A is to go for the gusto, to go for everything that they can get in this U.N. resolution, to try to lay out what Saddam Hussein has done over the last 11 years, all of the violations of U.N. resolutions, to get the weapons inspectors back in there, to force Saddam Hussein to disarm, and then of course the real, you know, "We hope we can get it, use of force if necessary."

But the plan B, because they're trying to be realistic here, is that they want to see, they want to get an international consensus behind a U.N. resolution. They're looking for political cover here. They want to get, if necessary, the U.N. to sign off on Saddam Hussein is in violation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, hold off on the use of force, because they believe they have the legal authority, based on previous U.N. resolutions.

MALVEAUX: And you know what was really interesting is how the policy, the Bush policy, really has evolved, we've seen in the last couple of weeks. Because on the first hand they argued, "Yes, well, after September 11th, we're seeing the link between Iraq and terror organizations. al Qaeda is in Iraq as well." But really a lot of countries, they said, "Yes, we sympathize with the fact that country has been attacked," but you know, really kind of a yawn the response.

And then so the administration again shifting focus, saying, "Well, let's take a look. You know, our argument is weapons of mass destruction, a preemptive action, that this is a threat to the world. We need to jump in there and deal with this threat." And again, world leaders saying, "We need more evidence. We don't see it. We don't see the argument for moving quickly."

And so again, again you saw the change in the Bush administration, focusing again. They said, "Well, look, if you say we have to do this multilaterally, not unilateralists, they we'll go ahead in the well of the United Nations and say, I'll work with all the countries."

SNOW: How long is the Bush administration going to try to for this resolution in the United Nations, do you think, before it gets to a point where they say, "Scrap it, go to plan B?"

KOPPEL: That's a good question because Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, said this week that he was going to go back in, he was going to -- not he -- figuratively, but he was going to send a preliminary team in to Iraq October 15th.

So the U.S. has to get this resolution in place before then. They intend, I'm told by British and American diplomats, that they plan to introduce this resolution as soon as Tuesday, and then hopefully have a resolution within the next week or so.

MALVEAUX: And this is really a race against time as well, because, I mean, Bush aides are saying, "Look, we need to have at least a rough draft by the end of the week. We are pushing the envelope here."

The Bush administration would not mind if they had a resolution before October 15th, that they could go in and do this in a concerted effort. But the problem is if really if they don't make that deadline, what's going to happen at that point.

ROMANS: The timing, though, as well, is interesting I think because, you know, by some estimates it takes five months to get a team in there to actually do any meaningful work, and a year to analyze what's coming out of the country as well. So it seems as though there's this race against the clock all together, both diplomatically and then practically in terms of the inspections.

KOPPEL: Which is why they've lowered the bar. They're lowering the bar. What they want to do is they want to have mini (ph) tests that Iraqis can fail.

ROMANS: Ah.

KOPPEL: What they want is immediately, when that team goes in, that they would have -- the Iraqis would have to present all of the evidence that's come up on the last 11 years on the various sites that are suspected weapons places.

FEYERICK: Well, ultimately does work -- ultimately does this work in the United States' favor? I mean, on one hand, you would think that they're waiting for the United Nations to fail on some levels, that they can't get their inspectors in and they can't do an actual check of all of the palaces, things like that. But ultimately, does it buy the U.S. more time to come up with some sort of a strategy in all of this? Are they thinking that? Or no, do they really -- are they ready to go in and they'd rather go in right now?

KOPPEL: I think, Deb, that it comes to the U.S. wants to get some kind of resolution. They need to have the political cover to say, look, the international community agrees with the Bush administration that Iraq is in violation, that weapons inspectors have to go in to prove that it's disarmed, and they have to do that in a very short period of time. They don't want to put the attention on the U.N., they want to put the attention on Iraq.

MALVEAUX: And the White House international offensive is intertwined, of course, with its push to win public and congressional support here. We'll talk about the challenges of that when CNN's SATURDAY EDITION returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: U.S. public opinion is split over whether the Bush administration has done enough to explain Iraq policy. The latest CNN-USA Today Gallup poll found that 50 percent of Americans say yes, up substantially from 39 percent earlier in the month. But roughly the same number say no, the administration has not done enough to explain its policy.

Another interesting fact is that 67 percent now of Americans say that they believe that military action is necessary in Iraq, but about a third of Americans say, look, we still don't want to go it alone. There is still some fear that the United States would be going it alone, that we don't have our allies, and that's just not a wise course of action.

But what we saw this past week, of course, a lot of diplomacy, Andrea, you mentioned before of course, overseas, but here at home, absolutely amazing. Kate, as you know, just this push for Congress and this resolution to pass really the broadest use or request of military action since we've seen since Lyndon Johnson. And surprisingly, it seemed as if a lot of members a Congress, including the Democrats, really came onboard.

ROMANS: Is it diplomacy alone that's the reason why the support both from the public and from Congress is starting to resonate more for the Bush administration's plan, or is it just the amount of time that this whole idea has been out there, people are getting used it more, as well?

MALVEAUX: Well, you know what I think? I think it's really the use of the bully pulpit. I mean, the president has done such a good job at that, and Democrats as well as Republicans will give him credit for that. That yes, he will pound this into the ground, sometimes ad nauseum when we're covering him...

(LAUGHTER) ... the same things, but yes, regime change, the importance of dealing with Saddam Hussein. And clearly, it seems as if, at least politically, it is in the Democrats' advantage now to come onboard.

SNOW: Yes, there's a couple -- I think there's a couple things going on. I mean, one is that speech at the U.N. last week got a lot of attention on Capitol Hill. Democrats and Republicans alike thought he did a really good job laying out the case.

MALVEAUX: A tough crowd and a tough room, and he got high marks.

SNOW: Tough crowd, and they really were impressed for the most part.

But the other thing that's going on is politics. And, I mean, it was clear this week on Capitol Hill that there was this shift with the Democrats. Last -- remember a couple weeks ago, Senator Daschle kept saying, "He hasn't made his case yet, the president hasn't made his case, I'm not convinced, I've still got questions." Well, this week, starting last Sunday, he went on one of the talk shows and a whole new message came out, and it was, "Well, you know, actually, maybe we should go after Saddam Hussein and maybe we should do it right now, and maybe we should take a vote before we leave to go campaign for the elections."

And there's a reason for that. It's because the Democrats, I'm told by a number of senior aides, figured out that they were losing the momentum, they were being seen as weak. They were being seen as not being tough on Saddam Hussein, and that's the last thing they want.

So most of the leadership is now very much onboard. That doesn't mean that all Democrats are onboard. There's still a pocket of Democrats who think this is a bad idea.

MALVEAUX: And I think it's really a test at this point, too, I mean, just -- whether or not they're coming onboard, because just the last couple of days we saw this security strategy that was revealed by the Bush administration saying, "Look, preemptive action now. We're focusing on terrorists, terrorist sympathizers, that that is where we're going with this, it's a real threat." And I think that the Bush administration really putting the test on Democrats and members of Congress: Are you with us? Are you strong enough to carry this message? -- Deb.

FEYERICK: But now it also seems that we're hearing these sort of cryptic messages in from the president saying, you know, our friends will join us in this. Who exactly are these friends, and what deals have been made in the backrooms?

SNOW: Rumsfeld was asked about that the other day on Capitol Hill, which allies are with us, and he wouldn't answer.

MALVEAUX: And I have a question for Andrea that relates to that, because really you're talking about Russia, France and China.

KOPPEL: Right, exactly.

MALVEAUX: And my question is, what does the Bush administration have to offer those countries to allow them to say, yes, OK, we'll go onboard with the U.N. resolution? I mean, we asked Ari Fleischer this week, was there an offer that was made to perhaps settle the debts between Iraq and Russia? He said, no, no commitments, is what he said, but he didn't say no offers. I mean, what's on the table?

KOPPEL: I think it's important first to remind people that the reason Russia, China and France are so important is that they have veto power over any possible U.N. resolution.

SNOW: Right. They're on the U.N. Security Council.

KOPPEL: They're on the permanent -- they're the permanent members on the Security Council.

Let's sort of break it down. As far as Russia's concerned, you're absolutely right, Suzanne, there's $8 billion worth of debt that the Russians -- or that the Iraqis owed the Russians from before the Gulf War. That, U.S. officials believe, can be taken care of quite easily. They can either make sure that Russia, post-Saddam Hussein, gets a lot of business contracts, gets -- you know, they can pass the hat around for money, if necessary cough up some of it themselves, to compensate the Russians.

There's also the matter of Georgia -- not the state, but the country.

(CROSSTALK)

KOPPEL: Well, the idea that the Russians say that they have their own terrorist problem with the Chechen rebels in Georgia; the U.S. could turn a blind eye. And in fact, we've heard the Russian president up the rhetoric in recent days on that front.

As far as France is concerned, U.S. officials think it's an easier job -- well, a tougher job, but a potentially easier resolution in the sense that you could have two resolutions. That's something that the French president, Jacques Chirac, put forward a couple of weeks ago. What you would do is you would have one resolution which dealt with the stuff everybody agrees on -- the weapons violations, that you need to get them in there on a short deadline. The second resolution could possibly deal with force.

China, nobody's really talking about any kind of what do we need to do to get them onboard. In point of fact, they believe, worst case, that the Chinese would abstain.

MALVEAUX: But this two-resolution idea is really something that the Bush administration is quite afraid of, because Secretary Powell really pushing allies behind the scenes, as you know, not to go for the two-step resolution, because it's really belief that it has no teeth if these countries sign onboard and say, "Yes, go ahead, allow the weapons inspectors back in, but hey, no enforcement. We're not going to back up what we're saying." I mean, I really think that the administration is afraid that if you go with that two-step process, that it's going to be a quagmire. It's just going to allow more time for Hussein to stonewall the inspectors.

FEYERICK: Kate, are all Democrats onboard now? You say that there was a major shift. Did you mean that across the board?

SNOW: No, and I tried -- I quickly referenced that. Good catch, good catch. Because it's important.

Over the last few days, you know, there's been a lot of reporting that everybody is on the bandwagon. Not everybody is on the bandwagon. There are -- I'd say I've talked to at least 10 Senate Democrats who have some serious concerns, and about five or six of which are being really public about it: Senator Russ Feingold from Wisconsin, Senator Dianne Feinstein from California, not coincidentally they represent more liberal areas. Feinstein said to me, "I'm getting calls off the hook." She said, "Hundreds of calls from San Francisco area voters who are telling me, don't got for this resolution." You know, they don't want war with Iraq.

So there are -- the Democrats are in a tight spot. I was talking to Senator Rick Santorum, who's a Republican but a very political guy and he's the head of the Republican Conference in the Senate. So he's follows -- he's in charge of looking at the politics. And he said to me, "You know, Tom Daschle is in a real pickle because, you know, he's got some in his caucus among the Democrats who can't afford to just embrace President Bush and embrace a resolution."

KOPPEL: Very quickly, do you think there's any doubt that the Congress isn't going to support this?

SNOW: No. I think ultimately, I mean, the read, not just my read but the read from talking to everybody on the Hill, is that ultimately I think it will -- it will go through. But it may be a fight. We may have two different versions. The White House language may not fly. They may try to change the language. I think ultimately it will probably go through.

From looking ahead to the fight with Iraq, to looking back to what warnings the U.S. may have had and overlooked for the 9/11 terror attacks, we're going to talk about what Congress heard this week, when CNN's SATURDAY EDITION continues.

And a reminder that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will be a live guest here on CNN two hours from now. That's noon Eastern, 9:00 a.m. Pacific.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELEANOR HILL, STAFF DIRECTOR, JOINT CONGRESSIONAL INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: I don't think, in any of what we have seen here, smoking gun, if you mean by "smoking gun" that somebody had information of when, where, how this was going to happen in the United States government, we have not found that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: That's Eleanor Hill, the staff director of the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee, the Senate-House panel, saying that, despite lots of previously secret information, there was nothing that would have equipped the United States to stop the 9/11 attacks.

Welcome back to CNN's SATURDAY EDITION.

A flood of new information this week about what U.S. intelligence had learned or overheard before the terror attacks last year. Eleanor Hill is the staff director, a woman of much experience. She laid out part one on Wednesday, part two yesterday of her report. Part one had to do with some of the clues that were out there, that if you look, in hindsight, were missed. Things about potentially using airplanes as weapons, intercepts about potentially attacking U.S. targets and that perhaps al Qaeda might be interested in U.S. targets.

And then yesterday, she got into more detail about some of the hijackers, particularly two of them, and the fact that the FBI and CIA had information about these two, but it never -- it didn't get transferred very well, it was too compartmentalized. In those two cases, they weren't put on a State Department watch list until just one month before the September 11th attacks.

KOPPEL: I don't know if you were struck by it, but to see those two agents, the FBI agent and the CIA agent, behind that screen and also revealing all kinds of information that some of us had never heard before, you know, you got to wonder how controversial that is to air that publicly and not do a closed-door hearing.

SNOW: Yes, it is. And this was yesterday, if you missed it, there were two gentlemen, a CIA -- we don't know their names -- a CIA operative and an FBI agent. And these are guys -- there were frontline people who were out there gathering information, operatives. They were behind a screen to conceal their identities.

And it came up in the hearing yesterday, your point, that, are we giving out too much information? A couple of times the men themselves said, "I don't feel comfortable answering that question in a public arena." At one point, Senator Jon Kyl, who's a Republican from Arizona, said, "I think we're airing too much information here. We're helping our enemies, we're helping the terrorists."

Just one little anecdote. I saw Senator Kyl and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, a Democrat, in the hallway yesterday, just in a public place, but they were arguing, and I'm fairly sure they were arguing about that very point. They were going back and forth, and Senator Kyl was saying, "I just think it's wrong, I think it's wrong," and Senator Feinstein was saying, "We've got to get this information out there."

FEYERICK: You know, I think it's a huge leap, though, with all the information that is coming out, to say that we knew about this attack or we could have prevented this attack. And I think that while there were huge gaps in intelligence, call it just an outright intelligence failure, all the pieces that we did have didn't lead to what was going to happen.

And that is what is so difficult right now with law enforcement, is that they've got to act on everything. These hijackers, don't forget, didn't break any laws, except for a speeding ticket once or twice. They did not break any laws until they hijacked that plane, until the actual moment of attack.

SNOW: And it's so much easier, Deb, people have been saying all week, it's so much easier to look backwards than it is to put pieces together when they're in front of you looking forward. I mean, in hindsight, sure, you can go, "Oh, well, if we had linked that to this to that," it's much easier to put a puzzle together when you're looking backwards.

KOPPEL: Yes, but I think that the critics are saying, "Maybe that's so, but nobody was trying to put the pieces together."

SNOW: There wasn't one person. Senator Bob Graham has said that. There wasn't one person.

KOPPEL: They weren't sharing information, and that's what they should've been doing and that's what they will be doing.

MALVEAUX: Well, one of the things that the Bush administration had argued, too, was you brought up the whole idea of what kind of information are we revealing? And Bush aides saying, look, well, that's one of the reasons why we didn't want an independent commission, we don't want to reveal these type of secrets. But even the Bush administration is coming around and saying, OK, it seems as if we have all of this information out. What was classified has become declassified, that we're putting everything out that we are going to put out, so let's go ahead, establish an independent commission. We've heard from a lot of family members of the victims of September 11. Let's go ahead and look at broader issues.

SNOW: Tell me if you agree with this, because here is my read of what happened last night. This happened late yesterday, the Bush White House suddenly comes out with a letter that they wrote, they're legislate liaison, Nick Calio, wrote a letter to the speaker and to the congressional leaders saying, we now support an independent commission, a blue-ribbon panel, that would be appointed by Congress and possibly Bush, but not -- they wouldn't be members of the government. They'd be real people, maybe former government officials, much like the Warren commission looked at JFK and the assassination and tried to piece that together.

But my -- tell me if you agree, Suzanne, my read is that the White House saw the writing on the wall, that the House has already passed a bill forming that kind of a commission, the Senate is taking it up on Tuesday of next week, and they thought, "We better be on the right side of this one, because we don't want all those family members thinking we don't care."

MALVEAUX: Absolutely. It was a no-brainer, really, for the administration. And it was very little risk involved as well, because as you mentioned before, Congress is going to be voting on this very shortly. The momentum is clearly for this independent commission. They've gotten a lot of pressure from these family members as well. And there really wasn't any cost.

And it was interesting what happened late last night as well, that letter that came out saying, "Yes, we're informing Congress about the update on the war on terror in our effort to keep members of Congress more informed." I mean, really a couple of, you know, carrots that they're hanging out there to get Congress to move along with that resolution.

FEYERICK: But you know, there's one thing about keeping people informed -- and I think that is very critical. I know one thing tht the families really do want, is they want answers, the want the facts. They really want to know what happened and how it happened. There's a lawsuit right now, and it's exactly what they're looking for: What happened when those planes were hijacked, and how was it allowed to happen?

I think one thing, though, is that the focus has really got to be on the intelligence. When they hear of something, it's almost as if they have to run worst-case scenarios. We knew that a plane was hijacked in France and that the hijackers there demanded that the tanks be filled as much as possible because they were planning on flying the plane into the Eiffel Tower.

So again, that could have been used as, all right, this is what the hijackers are thinking now, or this is what these terrorists are gunning for.

SNOW: And, Deb, if you read that letter closely that the White House sent over last night, it doesn't say they want that independent commission to look at intelligence, which I know is what the families want it to look at. They sort of skirted that a little bit. They said maybe it could look at other things.

FEYERICK: That's what needs to be done, but I think, you know, again, just taking little clues if you can and seeing everything as a clue, the question is, how do you really figure it out until something happens?

I think we're now better prepared with all of the efforts that have been made to stop some sort of attack. I mean, we have F-16s now that are ready to be scrambled in the blink of an eye. We didn't have that on 9/11; now we do. Does it make you feel any better? Not if you're on a plane.

ROMANS: Another focus of Congress this week, along with the rest of us, the latest woes of the U.S. economy and how a divorce is costing one of the best-known U.S. business leaders a planeload of perks. Plus, the president's weekly radio address.

But first, we go to Atlanta for a check on the stories making headlines right now.

(NEWSBREAK)

ROMANS: Still ahead on CNN's SATURDAY EDITION, does big business mean bigger-than-life pay and perks for the executives at the very top? The latest on the terrorism suspects arrested and jailed inside the United States. And outrage over art depicting a victim of the World Trade Center attacks. All coming up, and the president's weekly radio address, on SATURDAY EDITION.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACK WELCH, FORMER CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF GENERAL ELECTRIC: I don't want money. I (UNINTELLIGIBLE), and I'll sign a contract not to compete and everything, but I'd like to have in-kind benefits which I -- a company plane and the use of his (ph) office.

And we wrote up that contract in '96, reported every day, and it was fine. Now I'm in a world that's different.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Former chairman and CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch, who's soon-to-be former wife made public the big perks he received from the company when he retired, perks worth some $2.5 million a year, including the use of a corporate apartment in New York City, corporate jets, even small stuff like satellite television. In the end, the guy himself, the company, employer, stockholders were disgusted by all of the negative publicity.

I'm not in the habit of covering the divorce trials of rich and famous CEOs...

(LAUGHTER)

... but in this environment, on Wall Street, with everyone so concerned about corporate excess, this got an awful lot of attention.

Now, keep in mind, Jack Welch wasn't really accused of doing anything illegal or even wrong. He just had a very, a very, you know, nice-looking, padded expense account, if you will, into his retirement.

This all came out because he is being sued for divorce by his former wife, not to be confused with the Tyco situation which also involves a former wife. The former wife of Dennis Kozlowski putting up $10 million in bond for him this week. He, of course, is being charged with all kinds of federal crimes, involved with, what, federal prosecutors say looting Tyco International.

That involves everything from a $2,300 waste basket to an $11,000 dog umbrella stand. I don't even know what that is. A shower curtain...

SNOW: I was reading it was French and a poodle.

ROMANS: ... and a $2 million 40th birthday party for his wife in Sardinia where Jimmy Buffet played.

You know, so it makes really great headlines, but these are two different things. Jack Welch is a tempest in a teapot, according to a lot of folks on Wall Street, and Tyco International is a criminal situation.

SNOW: But it's the climate right now, I guess, that's getting Jack Welch lumped in with all of these other people.

Here's what I want to know. There's no law that says you can't pay corporate executives...

ROMANS: Right.

SNOW: ... a lot of money, right? I mean, it's a free market.

ROMANS: It is.

SNOW: So are we going to see changes now, do you think, though, with the climate?

ROMANS: Some people are concerned that there could be regulation and that that just stifles business. The important thing is for the board of directors to know what's going on, that there's a compensation committee that knows what's going on.

In the case of Tyco, it looks as though there were millions and millions of dollars of loans that were forgiven, you know, that...

KOPPEL: How did they get away with that? It's just -- it was extraordinary to me to read that these guys were giving themselves loans to buy $15 million vacation homes...

ROMANS: I know. It's really unbelievable.

KOPPEL: ... and then not paying it back.

ROMANS: And now shareholders are screaming about it, and this is why Tyco -- you know, Tyco, the former Tyco chief and a bunch of different executives there, they can't get a hold of any money. All of their money has been frozen because, you know, the government prosecutors want to give that money back to shareholders, back to the company.

(CROSSTALK)

FEYERICK: Christine, it looks to me as if you -- with Tyco there was a lot of criminal conduct there.

ROMANS: Right.

FEYERICK: With Jack Welch, this golden umbrella is the complete antithesis of a pink slip, which is what I guess one of us would get. (LAUGHTER)

I'm not getting a golden umbrella. What I don't understand, the man's net worth is close to $900 million.

ROMANS: Yes.

FEYERICK: And you're telling me that he can't pay for his own...

(CROSSTALK)

ROMANS: He decided to take the high road. He said, "You know what, this is crazy." He's also a big GE shareholder, so what's good for the company is good for him. So he turned around and he said, "You know, I'm going to pay for some of these perks."

But, you know, it was a contract that was drawn up in 1996 when it was the go-go days of the '90s. And if the board had allowed Jack Welch to slip away, there would have been screaming that they hadn't done everything that they could to keep him. So they gave him this great retirement package and kept him, and now people are screaming because they did all of this to keep him. So it's sort of interesting.

KOPPEL: And I was just going to say, I bet a lot of mothers are screaming and fathers, out there, just thinking...

ROMANS: Right.

KOPPEL: ... just thinking about the perks that somebody like Jack Welch gets. Meantime, they're paying for day care, the equivalent of what it costs to send a kid to college.

ROMANS: Right.

KOPPEL: And most Americans can't afford that.

ROMANS: An interesting study this week, and it was a really great juxtaposition of the stories I was covering, from $2,300 waste baskets to the fact that child care in this country is growing at a 6.4 annual rate. That is double the rate of inflation.

And for the, you know, for people who really need it, for lower- income, two-working-parent families, that is actually more than a mortgage in some cases, a higher cost than the education of your children.

SNOW: So the monthly cost of child care is more than...

ROMANS: For some families, is now more than rent or mortgage. And that's something that is a real problem, and it's not going away.

FEYERICK: No, definitely not going away, I can tell you, because I pay for child care. So I'm here, and she's there.

But anyway, one thing that is hanging over the economy is the war on terrorism. Prosecutors nabbed what the call a sleeper cell in western New York. And also coming up, could your kids survive a nerve gas attack when quick antidotes are available only for grownups?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER AHEARN, FBI, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE: Western New Yorkers should be no more or less concerned than anybody else in the United States with regard to terrorism. That kind of question, "Are there more out there?" Well, I'm a -- I would have to say from my experience, yes, they're all over the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FEYERICK: That was FBI Special Agent in Charge Peter Ahearn, talking about the six men in custody in Buffalo, New York. A big courtroom standoff this week, the men fighting for release on bail, but prosecutors saying that these men are going to run and they're going to take their terror training with them.

The reason that these guys were picked up is because one of the men sent an e-mail basically saying "Goodbye, you will not hear from me again." And this came just a couple of months after an even more suspicious and cryptic e-mail where he said, "I would like to remind you the next meal will be very huge and only those of faith will essentially survive."

So they rounded up these guys. They had no choice. They didn't want to take the chance.

MALVEAUX: Deb, I have a question here. I mean, if -- I don't know if it's a parallel situation, but if you have a bunch of guys, Americans who went to say a militia camp, anti-American, they were trained with guns, weapons, that type of thing, would they -- is there a law that's on the books that says, "Hey, if you're involved in this type of anti-American, anti-government activity, we can lock you up and put you in jail?"

Is there any parallel between that and these guys who were arrested and held for being a part of al Qaeda and training with al Qaeda?

FEYERICK: Well, it's a great question. And some of the laws that are on the books right now were enacted right after the bombing of the federal building by Timothy McVeigh. And the government wanted the ability to go after people who looked as if they were doing terror training. Here's the issue. We don't know whether in fact the government is now really focused on domestic terrorism per se by these right-wing militias or whether in fact right now everybody's attention, or at least 98 percent of it, is on the terrorists, the al Qaeda terrorists.

So, but that's exactly why they put these on the books, to make sure that if they found anything suspicious, they could go after these guys. The lawyers for these men are basically saying, "Our people didn't do anything. They didn't provide material support to terrorists. They just went to one of these camps."

Well, excuse me, but if you're going to learn how to shoot and fire rocked launchers and learn how to kill and kidnap people, it's not exactly self-improvement.

SNOW: Deborah, another story that you did this week that was so fascinating about a potential nerve gas attack and the fact that kids might not be protected if something that horrible were to happen. Why?

FEYERICK: It's very interesting. There's something that's called an auto-injector. A lot of U.S. troops carry this into battle. They carried them during Desert Storm because of course the big fear was nerve gas was going to be used by Saddam Hussein.

Well, these things can shoot through, and you can see something that's a quarter inch thick. The problem is that the doses that are prepackaged are doses that are only for adults, not for children. There's a big debate right now, can they actually give the adult doses to kids? Many pediatricians say, "No, you cannot because the -- it's just too dangerous. It could potentially be lethal."

But on the other hand, we're not at a point where kid auto- injectors are available. The ones you just saw, those are for children, but they have been sold only to Israel. Again, the FDA saying, "Not enough information on the table, and we cannot sign-off on the kid dose auto-injectors."

SNOW: Fascinating.

FEYERICK: Yes, it's going to be difficult.

SNOW: I know you reported that it might end up being the people on the front line who have to figure out in the moment whether to give them to kids or not.

FEYERICK: That's exactly right.

SNOW: Coming up, another grab-bag of other issues we're following this week, including how New Yorkers said, "No way," to a sculpture memorializing World Trade Center victims.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FEYERICK: And a very controversial statue in New York City. The artists said it represented profound vulnerability and an incredible loss of grounding. It was of a woman who was basically hitting the pavement, moment of impact at the World Trade Center. As you know, some people on the upper floors so desperate that they had no chance but to jump. Other people say it was horrible, sad and depressing. So that statue was wrapped up and taken away this week.

ROMANS: You know, Deborah, it's only been a year, you know, and being in New York City, 26,000 people got out of those buildings and then thousands other -- probably hundreds of thousands of others know people in those buildings. So it's a very personal thing, and it wasn't very long ago.

My sister-in-law was coming out of a meeting at Rockefeller Center and hadn't heard really anything about the statue and saw it. And even though -- I guess if you didn't know what it was, you would sort of look at it and wonder what was that all about. She immediately went back to that day on September 11th, and it was a very troubling for her. And you could see people looking at it and becoming very upset. Then other people who said it wasn't a very big deal.

But I just think, Deborah, don't you, it was just too soon, right?

FEYERICK: It's too raw. It's simply too raw. And that is one of the most horrifying images to come out of 9/11 -- that is, the people who were so desperate that they jumped. And you hear firefighters tell their stories, and they say that they started hearing these noises, these thuds, and they couldn't understand what it was. And then they realized people were jumping, not from the second, not from the third floor, but from 80, 90, 100 floors above. This is the city of skyscrapers, so that's the last the last image you want to be reminded of.

KOPPEL: Well, another story this week about freedom, this time of religion and how it may run counter to what government and a majority of society thinks is proper behavior.

Fifteen-year-old Jessica Lynn Crank was buried in Tennessee this week. Her mother and the leader of the religious group called New Life Ministries had refused to take her for advanced medical treatment for a rare form of bone cancer. The religious group put their faith in prayer over doctors, and the mother and the head of the church may be facing a homicide count in addition to a child abuse charge.

Guys, this wasn't, like, cancer, the kind of cancer that you don't see. This was a 17-pound tumor that she had on her shoulder. She went into a clinic and they diagnosed her, and her mother and this man, who is not even her stepfather, said we're going to pray.

SNOW: But our legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, was on the air the other day and he knows more about this than I do. But he said that it's possible that it couldn't have been treated in a hospital, that it may have been incurable. And therefore, that helps the defense because -- the defense of the parents, the mother.

KOPPEL: You know what? I'm not even talking legal issues here. I'm just saying, do you think that was right? And I recognize that there is freedom of religion and that people have different ways of dealing with many things. But a 17-pound tumor?

MALVEAUX: This is something that happened over a long period of time, or was it something that they realized was getting worse?

KOPPEL: My understanding is it didn't take very long, that by the time they brought her there, her cancer was so advanced that, you know, whether or not treatment would have helped, should it have been given?

SNOW: It's interesting. Congress actually passed a law a number of years ago telling the states that they -- each state should have a law exempting religious freedom, you know, from -- from, you know, the general rule that you have to take care of your kids. There's an exemption for freedom of religion...

(CROSSTALK)

SNOW: ... if you believe strongly in something like prayer, that you should have that option. And Tennessee is one of those states that still has that law on the book.

MALVEAUX: And family history is part of the Iraq debate, as well, that's underneath (UNINTELLIGIBLE) United States -- the Bush family history, as son follows in father's footsteps and faces off against Saddam Hussein.

And this week in an interview with CNN's Paula Zahn, former President Bush made clear his feelings about the Iraqi leader.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: But you hate him?

GEORGE H.W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Oh, yes. I hate Saddam Hussein. I don't hate a lot of people. I don't hate easily. But I think he's -- as I say, his word is no good. And he's a brute. He's used poison gas on his own people. So there is nothing redeeming about this man. And I have nothing but hatred in my heart for him. He's got a lot of problems, but immortality isn't one of them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: So political observers really thought this was rather odd, that President Bush Sr. would say that he hated Saddam Hussein, that it was very personal.

And one of the things that President Bush, when he went before the United Nations, was trying to do is really take away that personal element. Even when he brought up the fact that Saddam Hussein had tried to assassinate his father, he didn't even mention his father's name. We asked a senior White House official about that, and they said, Well, it was because they didn't want to bring in that personal aspect. But it seems as if some people are really jumping on this and saying it looks like this whole thing, going after Saddam, has become -- it's really a family matter.

KOPPEL: You got to wonder about that as well because you hear that Saddam Hussein has put out, you know, a hit on your father. Wouldn't you have personal feelings about that? And certainly, you could understand that George Bush would have that as well.

SNOW: That's our SATURDAY EDITION this week. Thanks to all of our colleagues here, and all of you joining us.

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




Attack on Iraq; FBI Sweeps In on Alleged Terrorist Cell in Buffalo>


Aired September 21, 2002 - 10:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KATE SNOW, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Welcome to CNN's SATURDAY EDITION, where our journalists talk about the stories they covered this week.
I'm Kate Snow.

New information about specific warnings of terrorist attacks years before 9/11.

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: I'm Andrea Koppel. How U.S. policy toward Iraq is playing on the world stage.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I'm Suzanne Malveaux. How the Bush team is getting its point across back at home as well.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Deborah Feyerick in New York. The FBI sweeps in on an alleged terror cell in Buffalo. Could another attack be imminent?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN FINANCIAL NEWS CORRESPONDENT: And I'm Christine Romans. The economic fallout of war talk, terror fears and a new round of executive excess by big business.

All of these topics ahead, and we'll hear the president's radio address at the end of the hour. But first, a check on the hour's headlines from Atlanta.

(NEWSBREAK)

KOPPEL: President Bush and his team keep belting out the same tune for ears both in the United states but also overseas: Either join together with the United Nations to squeeze Saddam Hussein, or the United States does the job alone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The United Nations Security Council must work with the United States and Britain and other concerned parties to send a clear message that we expect Saddam to disarm. And if the United Nations Security Council won't deal with the problem, the United States and some of our friends will.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KOPPEL: Well, at the United Nations, the week ended better than it began, U.S. officials say, and that's really because there has been, you know, even though the Bush administration was saying at the beginning of the week it wasn't surprised by that sudden Iraqi letter to Kofi Annan that said, "Let the U.N. weapons inspectors come back in without condition," privately, U.S. officials were furious. They felt that Secretary General Annan had completely pulled a fast one on them, that he was portraying the glass as being half full when in point of fact, and he was saying, you know, "Let's let the inspectors get back in there, let's give them a chance."

And so ever since then, ever since Monday, you've seen the administration doing diplomatic damage control. They have had to focus especially on the five permanent members of the Security Council, obviously not on the U.S., not so much on Britain, but on France, on Russia and on China.

And in fact, just yesterday, Suzanne, you know, President Bush met with the Russian foreign minister and the defense minister and spoke with Russian President Putin. They are really trying to massage the Russians. And in point of fact, I'm told, that they feel as if the Russians are coming around, and that the real trouble is going to be the French.

FEYERICK: Andrea, what is the strategy over at the United Nations right now that we're looking at?

KOPPEL: What I'm being told is that it's really kind of a two- pronged strategy, a plan A and a plan B.

Plan A is to go for the gusto, to go for everything that they can get in this U.N. resolution, to try to lay out what Saddam Hussein has done over the last 11 years, all of the violations of U.N. resolutions, to get the weapons inspectors back in there, to force Saddam Hussein to disarm, and then of course the real, you know, "We hope we can get it, use of force if necessary."

But the plan B, because they're trying to be realistic here, is that they want to see, they want to get an international consensus behind a U.N. resolution. They're looking for political cover here. They want to get, if necessary, the U.N. to sign off on Saddam Hussein is in violation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, hold off on the use of force, because they believe they have the legal authority, based on previous U.N. resolutions.

MALVEAUX: And you know what was really interesting is how the policy, the Bush policy, really has evolved, we've seen in the last couple of weeks. Because on the first hand they argued, "Yes, well, after September 11th, we're seeing the link between Iraq and terror organizations. al Qaeda is in Iraq as well." But really a lot of countries, they said, "Yes, we sympathize with the fact that country has been attacked," but you know, really kind of a yawn the response.

And then so the administration again shifting focus, saying, "Well, let's take a look. You know, our argument is weapons of mass destruction, a preemptive action, that this is a threat to the world. We need to jump in there and deal with this threat." And again, world leaders saying, "We need more evidence. We don't see it. We don't see the argument for moving quickly."

And so again, again you saw the change in the Bush administration, focusing again. They said, "Well, look, if you say we have to do this multilaterally, not unilateralists, they we'll go ahead in the well of the United Nations and say, I'll work with all the countries."

SNOW: How long is the Bush administration going to try to for this resolution in the United Nations, do you think, before it gets to a point where they say, "Scrap it, go to plan B?"

KOPPEL: That's a good question because Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, said this week that he was going to go back in, he was going to -- not he -- figuratively, but he was going to send a preliminary team in to Iraq October 15th.

So the U.S. has to get this resolution in place before then. They intend, I'm told by British and American diplomats, that they plan to introduce this resolution as soon as Tuesday, and then hopefully have a resolution within the next week or so.

MALVEAUX: And this is really a race against time as well, because, I mean, Bush aides are saying, "Look, we need to have at least a rough draft by the end of the week. We are pushing the envelope here."

The Bush administration would not mind if they had a resolution before October 15th, that they could go in and do this in a concerted effort. But the problem is if really if they don't make that deadline, what's going to happen at that point.

ROMANS: The timing, though, as well, is interesting I think because, you know, by some estimates it takes five months to get a team in there to actually do any meaningful work, and a year to analyze what's coming out of the country as well. So it seems as though there's this race against the clock all together, both diplomatically and then practically in terms of the inspections.

KOPPEL: Which is why they've lowered the bar. They're lowering the bar. What they want to do is they want to have mini (ph) tests that Iraqis can fail.

ROMANS: Ah.

KOPPEL: What they want is immediately, when that team goes in, that they would have -- the Iraqis would have to present all of the evidence that's come up on the last 11 years on the various sites that are suspected weapons places.

FEYERICK: Well, ultimately does work -- ultimately does this work in the United States' favor? I mean, on one hand, you would think that they're waiting for the United Nations to fail on some levels, that they can't get their inspectors in and they can't do an actual check of all of the palaces, things like that. But ultimately, does it buy the U.S. more time to come up with some sort of a strategy in all of this? Are they thinking that? Or no, do they really -- are they ready to go in and they'd rather go in right now?

KOPPEL: I think, Deb, that it comes to the U.S. wants to get some kind of resolution. They need to have the political cover to say, look, the international community agrees with the Bush administration that Iraq is in violation, that weapons inspectors have to go in to prove that it's disarmed, and they have to do that in a very short period of time. They don't want to put the attention on the U.N., they want to put the attention on Iraq.

MALVEAUX: And the White House international offensive is intertwined, of course, with its push to win public and congressional support here. We'll talk about the challenges of that when CNN's SATURDAY EDITION returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: U.S. public opinion is split over whether the Bush administration has done enough to explain Iraq policy. The latest CNN-USA Today Gallup poll found that 50 percent of Americans say yes, up substantially from 39 percent earlier in the month. But roughly the same number say no, the administration has not done enough to explain its policy.

Another interesting fact is that 67 percent now of Americans say that they believe that military action is necessary in Iraq, but about a third of Americans say, look, we still don't want to go it alone. There is still some fear that the United States would be going it alone, that we don't have our allies, and that's just not a wise course of action.

But what we saw this past week, of course, a lot of diplomacy, Andrea, you mentioned before of course, overseas, but here at home, absolutely amazing. Kate, as you know, just this push for Congress and this resolution to pass really the broadest use or request of military action since we've seen since Lyndon Johnson. And surprisingly, it seemed as if a lot of members a Congress, including the Democrats, really came onboard.

ROMANS: Is it diplomacy alone that's the reason why the support both from the public and from Congress is starting to resonate more for the Bush administration's plan, or is it just the amount of time that this whole idea has been out there, people are getting used it more, as well?

MALVEAUX: Well, you know what I think? I think it's really the use of the bully pulpit. I mean, the president has done such a good job at that, and Democrats as well as Republicans will give him credit for that. That yes, he will pound this into the ground, sometimes ad nauseum when we're covering him...

(LAUGHTER) ... the same things, but yes, regime change, the importance of dealing with Saddam Hussein. And clearly, it seems as if, at least politically, it is in the Democrats' advantage now to come onboard.

SNOW: Yes, there's a couple -- I think there's a couple things going on. I mean, one is that speech at the U.N. last week got a lot of attention on Capitol Hill. Democrats and Republicans alike thought he did a really good job laying out the case.

MALVEAUX: A tough crowd and a tough room, and he got high marks.

SNOW: Tough crowd, and they really were impressed for the most part.

But the other thing that's going on is politics. And, I mean, it was clear this week on Capitol Hill that there was this shift with the Democrats. Last -- remember a couple weeks ago, Senator Daschle kept saying, "He hasn't made his case yet, the president hasn't made his case, I'm not convinced, I've still got questions." Well, this week, starting last Sunday, he went on one of the talk shows and a whole new message came out, and it was, "Well, you know, actually, maybe we should go after Saddam Hussein and maybe we should do it right now, and maybe we should take a vote before we leave to go campaign for the elections."

And there's a reason for that. It's because the Democrats, I'm told by a number of senior aides, figured out that they were losing the momentum, they were being seen as weak. They were being seen as not being tough on Saddam Hussein, and that's the last thing they want.

So most of the leadership is now very much onboard. That doesn't mean that all Democrats are onboard. There's still a pocket of Democrats who think this is a bad idea.

MALVEAUX: And I think it's really a test at this point, too, I mean, just -- whether or not they're coming onboard, because just the last couple of days we saw this security strategy that was revealed by the Bush administration saying, "Look, preemptive action now. We're focusing on terrorists, terrorist sympathizers, that that is where we're going with this, it's a real threat." And I think that the Bush administration really putting the test on Democrats and members of Congress: Are you with us? Are you strong enough to carry this message? -- Deb.

FEYERICK: But now it also seems that we're hearing these sort of cryptic messages in from the president saying, you know, our friends will join us in this. Who exactly are these friends, and what deals have been made in the backrooms?

SNOW: Rumsfeld was asked about that the other day on Capitol Hill, which allies are with us, and he wouldn't answer.

MALVEAUX: And I have a question for Andrea that relates to that, because really you're talking about Russia, France and China.

KOPPEL: Right, exactly.

MALVEAUX: And my question is, what does the Bush administration have to offer those countries to allow them to say, yes, OK, we'll go onboard with the U.N. resolution? I mean, we asked Ari Fleischer this week, was there an offer that was made to perhaps settle the debts between Iraq and Russia? He said, no, no commitments, is what he said, but he didn't say no offers. I mean, what's on the table?

KOPPEL: I think it's important first to remind people that the reason Russia, China and France are so important is that they have veto power over any possible U.N. resolution.

SNOW: Right. They're on the U.N. Security Council.

KOPPEL: They're on the permanent -- they're the permanent members on the Security Council.

Let's sort of break it down. As far as Russia's concerned, you're absolutely right, Suzanne, there's $8 billion worth of debt that the Russians -- or that the Iraqis owed the Russians from before the Gulf War. That, U.S. officials believe, can be taken care of quite easily. They can either make sure that Russia, post-Saddam Hussein, gets a lot of business contracts, gets -- you know, they can pass the hat around for money, if necessary cough up some of it themselves, to compensate the Russians.

There's also the matter of Georgia -- not the state, but the country.

(CROSSTALK)

KOPPEL: Well, the idea that the Russians say that they have their own terrorist problem with the Chechen rebels in Georgia; the U.S. could turn a blind eye. And in fact, we've heard the Russian president up the rhetoric in recent days on that front.

As far as France is concerned, U.S. officials think it's an easier job -- well, a tougher job, but a potentially easier resolution in the sense that you could have two resolutions. That's something that the French president, Jacques Chirac, put forward a couple of weeks ago. What you would do is you would have one resolution which dealt with the stuff everybody agrees on -- the weapons violations, that you need to get them in there on a short deadline. The second resolution could possibly deal with force.

China, nobody's really talking about any kind of what do we need to do to get them onboard. In point of fact, they believe, worst case, that the Chinese would abstain.

MALVEAUX: But this two-resolution idea is really something that the Bush administration is quite afraid of, because Secretary Powell really pushing allies behind the scenes, as you know, not to go for the two-step resolution, because it's really belief that it has no teeth if these countries sign onboard and say, "Yes, go ahead, allow the weapons inspectors back in, but hey, no enforcement. We're not going to back up what we're saying." I mean, I really think that the administration is afraid that if you go with that two-step process, that it's going to be a quagmire. It's just going to allow more time for Hussein to stonewall the inspectors.

FEYERICK: Kate, are all Democrats onboard now? You say that there was a major shift. Did you mean that across the board?

SNOW: No, and I tried -- I quickly referenced that. Good catch, good catch. Because it's important.

Over the last few days, you know, there's been a lot of reporting that everybody is on the bandwagon. Not everybody is on the bandwagon. There are -- I'd say I've talked to at least 10 Senate Democrats who have some serious concerns, and about five or six of which are being really public about it: Senator Russ Feingold from Wisconsin, Senator Dianne Feinstein from California, not coincidentally they represent more liberal areas. Feinstein said to me, "I'm getting calls off the hook." She said, "Hundreds of calls from San Francisco area voters who are telling me, don't got for this resolution." You know, they don't want war with Iraq.

So there are -- the Democrats are in a tight spot. I was talking to Senator Rick Santorum, who's a Republican but a very political guy and he's the head of the Republican Conference in the Senate. So he's follows -- he's in charge of looking at the politics. And he said to me, "You know, Tom Daschle is in a real pickle because, you know, he's got some in his caucus among the Democrats who can't afford to just embrace President Bush and embrace a resolution."

KOPPEL: Very quickly, do you think there's any doubt that the Congress isn't going to support this?

SNOW: No. I think ultimately, I mean, the read, not just my read but the read from talking to everybody on the Hill, is that ultimately I think it will -- it will go through. But it may be a fight. We may have two different versions. The White House language may not fly. They may try to change the language. I think ultimately it will probably go through.

From looking ahead to the fight with Iraq, to looking back to what warnings the U.S. may have had and overlooked for the 9/11 terror attacks, we're going to talk about what Congress heard this week, when CNN's SATURDAY EDITION continues.

And a reminder that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will be a live guest here on CNN two hours from now. That's noon Eastern, 9:00 a.m. Pacific.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELEANOR HILL, STAFF DIRECTOR, JOINT CONGRESSIONAL INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: I don't think, in any of what we have seen here, smoking gun, if you mean by "smoking gun" that somebody had information of when, where, how this was going to happen in the United States government, we have not found that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: That's Eleanor Hill, the staff director of the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee, the Senate-House panel, saying that, despite lots of previously secret information, there was nothing that would have equipped the United States to stop the 9/11 attacks.

Welcome back to CNN's SATURDAY EDITION.

A flood of new information this week about what U.S. intelligence had learned or overheard before the terror attacks last year. Eleanor Hill is the staff director, a woman of much experience. She laid out part one on Wednesday, part two yesterday of her report. Part one had to do with some of the clues that were out there, that if you look, in hindsight, were missed. Things about potentially using airplanes as weapons, intercepts about potentially attacking U.S. targets and that perhaps al Qaeda might be interested in U.S. targets.

And then yesterday, she got into more detail about some of the hijackers, particularly two of them, and the fact that the FBI and CIA had information about these two, but it never -- it didn't get transferred very well, it was too compartmentalized. In those two cases, they weren't put on a State Department watch list until just one month before the September 11th attacks.

KOPPEL: I don't know if you were struck by it, but to see those two agents, the FBI agent and the CIA agent, behind that screen and also revealing all kinds of information that some of us had never heard before, you know, you got to wonder how controversial that is to air that publicly and not do a closed-door hearing.

SNOW: Yes, it is. And this was yesterday, if you missed it, there were two gentlemen, a CIA -- we don't know their names -- a CIA operative and an FBI agent. And these are guys -- there were frontline people who were out there gathering information, operatives. They were behind a screen to conceal their identities.

And it came up in the hearing yesterday, your point, that, are we giving out too much information? A couple of times the men themselves said, "I don't feel comfortable answering that question in a public arena." At one point, Senator Jon Kyl, who's a Republican from Arizona, said, "I think we're airing too much information here. We're helping our enemies, we're helping the terrorists."

Just one little anecdote. I saw Senator Kyl and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, a Democrat, in the hallway yesterday, just in a public place, but they were arguing, and I'm fairly sure they were arguing about that very point. They were going back and forth, and Senator Kyl was saying, "I just think it's wrong, I think it's wrong," and Senator Feinstein was saying, "We've got to get this information out there."

FEYERICK: You know, I think it's a huge leap, though, with all the information that is coming out, to say that we knew about this attack or we could have prevented this attack. And I think that while there were huge gaps in intelligence, call it just an outright intelligence failure, all the pieces that we did have didn't lead to what was going to happen.

And that is what is so difficult right now with law enforcement, is that they've got to act on everything. These hijackers, don't forget, didn't break any laws, except for a speeding ticket once or twice. They did not break any laws until they hijacked that plane, until the actual moment of attack.

SNOW: And it's so much easier, Deb, people have been saying all week, it's so much easier to look backwards than it is to put pieces together when they're in front of you looking forward. I mean, in hindsight, sure, you can go, "Oh, well, if we had linked that to this to that," it's much easier to put a puzzle together when you're looking backwards.

KOPPEL: Yes, but I think that the critics are saying, "Maybe that's so, but nobody was trying to put the pieces together."

SNOW: There wasn't one person. Senator Bob Graham has said that. There wasn't one person.

KOPPEL: They weren't sharing information, and that's what they should've been doing and that's what they will be doing.

MALVEAUX: Well, one of the things that the Bush administration had argued, too, was you brought up the whole idea of what kind of information are we revealing? And Bush aides saying, look, well, that's one of the reasons why we didn't want an independent commission, we don't want to reveal these type of secrets. But even the Bush administration is coming around and saying, OK, it seems as if we have all of this information out. What was classified has become declassified, that we're putting everything out that we are going to put out, so let's go ahead, establish an independent commission. We've heard from a lot of family members of the victims of September 11. Let's go ahead and look at broader issues.

SNOW: Tell me if you agree with this, because here is my read of what happened last night. This happened late yesterday, the Bush White House suddenly comes out with a letter that they wrote, they're legislate liaison, Nick Calio, wrote a letter to the speaker and to the congressional leaders saying, we now support an independent commission, a blue-ribbon panel, that would be appointed by Congress and possibly Bush, but not -- they wouldn't be members of the government. They'd be real people, maybe former government officials, much like the Warren commission looked at JFK and the assassination and tried to piece that together.

But my -- tell me if you agree, Suzanne, my read is that the White House saw the writing on the wall, that the House has already passed a bill forming that kind of a commission, the Senate is taking it up on Tuesday of next week, and they thought, "We better be on the right side of this one, because we don't want all those family members thinking we don't care."

MALVEAUX: Absolutely. It was a no-brainer, really, for the administration. And it was very little risk involved as well, because as you mentioned before, Congress is going to be voting on this very shortly. The momentum is clearly for this independent commission. They've gotten a lot of pressure from these family members as well. And there really wasn't any cost.

And it was interesting what happened late last night as well, that letter that came out saying, "Yes, we're informing Congress about the update on the war on terror in our effort to keep members of Congress more informed." I mean, really a couple of, you know, carrots that they're hanging out there to get Congress to move along with that resolution.

FEYERICK: But you know, there's one thing about keeping people informed -- and I think that is very critical. I know one thing tht the families really do want, is they want answers, the want the facts. They really want to know what happened and how it happened. There's a lawsuit right now, and it's exactly what they're looking for: What happened when those planes were hijacked, and how was it allowed to happen?

I think one thing, though, is that the focus has really got to be on the intelligence. When they hear of something, it's almost as if they have to run worst-case scenarios. We knew that a plane was hijacked in France and that the hijackers there demanded that the tanks be filled as much as possible because they were planning on flying the plane into the Eiffel Tower.

So again, that could have been used as, all right, this is what the hijackers are thinking now, or this is what these terrorists are gunning for.

SNOW: And, Deb, if you read that letter closely that the White House sent over last night, it doesn't say they want that independent commission to look at intelligence, which I know is what the families want it to look at. They sort of skirted that a little bit. They said maybe it could look at other things.

FEYERICK: That's what needs to be done, but I think, you know, again, just taking little clues if you can and seeing everything as a clue, the question is, how do you really figure it out until something happens?

I think we're now better prepared with all of the efforts that have been made to stop some sort of attack. I mean, we have F-16s now that are ready to be scrambled in the blink of an eye. We didn't have that on 9/11; now we do. Does it make you feel any better? Not if you're on a plane.

ROMANS: Another focus of Congress this week, along with the rest of us, the latest woes of the U.S. economy and how a divorce is costing one of the best-known U.S. business leaders a planeload of perks. Plus, the president's weekly radio address.

But first, we go to Atlanta for a check on the stories making headlines right now.

(NEWSBREAK)

ROMANS: Still ahead on CNN's SATURDAY EDITION, does big business mean bigger-than-life pay and perks for the executives at the very top? The latest on the terrorism suspects arrested and jailed inside the United States. And outrage over art depicting a victim of the World Trade Center attacks. All coming up, and the president's weekly radio address, on SATURDAY EDITION.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACK WELCH, FORMER CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF GENERAL ELECTRIC: I don't want money. I (UNINTELLIGIBLE), and I'll sign a contract not to compete and everything, but I'd like to have in-kind benefits which I -- a company plane and the use of his (ph) office.

And we wrote up that contract in '96, reported every day, and it was fine. Now I'm in a world that's different.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Former chairman and CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch, who's soon-to-be former wife made public the big perks he received from the company when he retired, perks worth some $2.5 million a year, including the use of a corporate apartment in New York City, corporate jets, even small stuff like satellite television. In the end, the guy himself, the company, employer, stockholders were disgusted by all of the negative publicity.

I'm not in the habit of covering the divorce trials of rich and famous CEOs...

(LAUGHTER)

... but in this environment, on Wall Street, with everyone so concerned about corporate excess, this got an awful lot of attention.

Now, keep in mind, Jack Welch wasn't really accused of doing anything illegal or even wrong. He just had a very, a very, you know, nice-looking, padded expense account, if you will, into his retirement.

This all came out because he is being sued for divorce by his former wife, not to be confused with the Tyco situation which also involves a former wife. The former wife of Dennis Kozlowski putting up $10 million in bond for him this week. He, of course, is being charged with all kinds of federal crimes, involved with, what, federal prosecutors say looting Tyco International.

That involves everything from a $2,300 waste basket to an $11,000 dog umbrella stand. I don't even know what that is. A shower curtain...

SNOW: I was reading it was French and a poodle.

ROMANS: ... and a $2 million 40th birthday party for his wife in Sardinia where Jimmy Buffet played.

You know, so it makes really great headlines, but these are two different things. Jack Welch is a tempest in a teapot, according to a lot of folks on Wall Street, and Tyco International is a criminal situation.

SNOW: But it's the climate right now, I guess, that's getting Jack Welch lumped in with all of these other people.

Here's what I want to know. There's no law that says you can't pay corporate executives...

ROMANS: Right.

SNOW: ... a lot of money, right? I mean, it's a free market.

ROMANS: It is.

SNOW: So are we going to see changes now, do you think, though, with the climate?

ROMANS: Some people are concerned that there could be regulation and that that just stifles business. The important thing is for the board of directors to know what's going on, that there's a compensation committee that knows what's going on.

In the case of Tyco, it looks as though there were millions and millions of dollars of loans that were forgiven, you know, that...

KOPPEL: How did they get away with that? It's just -- it was extraordinary to me to read that these guys were giving themselves loans to buy $15 million vacation homes...

ROMANS: I know. It's really unbelievable.

KOPPEL: ... and then not paying it back.

ROMANS: And now shareholders are screaming about it, and this is why Tyco -- you know, Tyco, the former Tyco chief and a bunch of different executives there, they can't get a hold of any money. All of their money has been frozen because, you know, the government prosecutors want to give that money back to shareholders, back to the company.

(CROSSTALK)

FEYERICK: Christine, it looks to me as if you -- with Tyco there was a lot of criminal conduct there.

ROMANS: Right.

FEYERICK: With Jack Welch, this golden umbrella is the complete antithesis of a pink slip, which is what I guess one of us would get. (LAUGHTER)

I'm not getting a golden umbrella. What I don't understand, the man's net worth is close to $900 million.

ROMANS: Yes.

FEYERICK: And you're telling me that he can't pay for his own...

(CROSSTALK)

ROMANS: He decided to take the high road. He said, "You know what, this is crazy." He's also a big GE shareholder, so what's good for the company is good for him. So he turned around and he said, "You know, I'm going to pay for some of these perks."

But, you know, it was a contract that was drawn up in 1996 when it was the go-go days of the '90s. And if the board had allowed Jack Welch to slip away, there would have been screaming that they hadn't done everything that they could to keep him. So they gave him this great retirement package and kept him, and now people are screaming because they did all of this to keep him. So it's sort of interesting.

KOPPEL: And I was just going to say, I bet a lot of mothers are screaming and fathers, out there, just thinking...

ROMANS: Right.

KOPPEL: ... just thinking about the perks that somebody like Jack Welch gets. Meantime, they're paying for day care, the equivalent of what it costs to send a kid to college.

ROMANS: Right.

KOPPEL: And most Americans can't afford that.

ROMANS: An interesting study this week, and it was a really great juxtaposition of the stories I was covering, from $2,300 waste baskets to the fact that child care in this country is growing at a 6.4 annual rate. That is double the rate of inflation.

And for the, you know, for people who really need it, for lower- income, two-working-parent families, that is actually more than a mortgage in some cases, a higher cost than the education of your children.

SNOW: So the monthly cost of child care is more than...

ROMANS: For some families, is now more than rent or mortgage. And that's something that is a real problem, and it's not going away.

FEYERICK: No, definitely not going away, I can tell you, because I pay for child care. So I'm here, and she's there.

But anyway, one thing that is hanging over the economy is the war on terrorism. Prosecutors nabbed what the call a sleeper cell in western New York. And also coming up, could your kids survive a nerve gas attack when quick antidotes are available only for grownups?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER AHEARN, FBI, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE: Western New Yorkers should be no more or less concerned than anybody else in the United States with regard to terrorism. That kind of question, "Are there more out there?" Well, I'm a -- I would have to say from my experience, yes, they're all over the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FEYERICK: That was FBI Special Agent in Charge Peter Ahearn, talking about the six men in custody in Buffalo, New York. A big courtroom standoff this week, the men fighting for release on bail, but prosecutors saying that these men are going to run and they're going to take their terror training with them.

The reason that these guys were picked up is because one of the men sent an e-mail basically saying "Goodbye, you will not hear from me again." And this came just a couple of months after an even more suspicious and cryptic e-mail where he said, "I would like to remind you the next meal will be very huge and only those of faith will essentially survive."

So they rounded up these guys. They had no choice. They didn't want to take the chance.

MALVEAUX: Deb, I have a question here. I mean, if -- I don't know if it's a parallel situation, but if you have a bunch of guys, Americans who went to say a militia camp, anti-American, they were trained with guns, weapons, that type of thing, would they -- is there a law that's on the books that says, "Hey, if you're involved in this type of anti-American, anti-government activity, we can lock you up and put you in jail?"

Is there any parallel between that and these guys who were arrested and held for being a part of al Qaeda and training with al Qaeda?

FEYERICK: Well, it's a great question. And some of the laws that are on the books right now were enacted right after the bombing of the federal building by Timothy McVeigh. And the government wanted the ability to go after people who looked as if they were doing terror training. Here's the issue. We don't know whether in fact the government is now really focused on domestic terrorism per se by these right-wing militias or whether in fact right now everybody's attention, or at least 98 percent of it, is on the terrorists, the al Qaeda terrorists.

So, but that's exactly why they put these on the books, to make sure that if they found anything suspicious, they could go after these guys. The lawyers for these men are basically saying, "Our people didn't do anything. They didn't provide material support to terrorists. They just went to one of these camps."

Well, excuse me, but if you're going to learn how to shoot and fire rocked launchers and learn how to kill and kidnap people, it's not exactly self-improvement.

SNOW: Deborah, another story that you did this week that was so fascinating about a potential nerve gas attack and the fact that kids might not be protected if something that horrible were to happen. Why?

FEYERICK: It's very interesting. There's something that's called an auto-injector. A lot of U.S. troops carry this into battle. They carried them during Desert Storm because of course the big fear was nerve gas was going to be used by Saddam Hussein.

Well, these things can shoot through, and you can see something that's a quarter inch thick. The problem is that the doses that are prepackaged are doses that are only for adults, not for children. There's a big debate right now, can they actually give the adult doses to kids? Many pediatricians say, "No, you cannot because the -- it's just too dangerous. It could potentially be lethal."

But on the other hand, we're not at a point where kid auto- injectors are available. The ones you just saw, those are for children, but they have been sold only to Israel. Again, the FDA saying, "Not enough information on the table, and we cannot sign-off on the kid dose auto-injectors."

SNOW: Fascinating.

FEYERICK: Yes, it's going to be difficult.

SNOW: I know you reported that it might end up being the people on the front line who have to figure out in the moment whether to give them to kids or not.

FEYERICK: That's exactly right.

SNOW: Coming up, another grab-bag of other issues we're following this week, including how New Yorkers said, "No way," to a sculpture memorializing World Trade Center victims.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FEYERICK: And a very controversial statue in New York City. The artists said it represented profound vulnerability and an incredible loss of grounding. It was of a woman who was basically hitting the pavement, moment of impact at the World Trade Center. As you know, some people on the upper floors so desperate that they had no chance but to jump. Other people say it was horrible, sad and depressing. So that statue was wrapped up and taken away this week.

ROMANS: You know, Deborah, it's only been a year, you know, and being in New York City, 26,000 people got out of those buildings and then thousands other -- probably hundreds of thousands of others know people in those buildings. So it's a very personal thing, and it wasn't very long ago.

My sister-in-law was coming out of a meeting at Rockefeller Center and hadn't heard really anything about the statue and saw it. And even though -- I guess if you didn't know what it was, you would sort of look at it and wonder what was that all about. She immediately went back to that day on September 11th, and it was a very troubling for her. And you could see people looking at it and becoming very upset. Then other people who said it wasn't a very big deal.

But I just think, Deborah, don't you, it was just too soon, right?

FEYERICK: It's too raw. It's simply too raw. And that is one of the most horrifying images to come out of 9/11 -- that is, the people who were so desperate that they jumped. And you hear firefighters tell their stories, and they say that they started hearing these noises, these thuds, and they couldn't understand what it was. And then they realized people were jumping, not from the second, not from the third floor, but from 80, 90, 100 floors above. This is the city of skyscrapers, so that's the last the last image you want to be reminded of.

KOPPEL: Well, another story this week about freedom, this time of religion and how it may run counter to what government and a majority of society thinks is proper behavior.

Fifteen-year-old Jessica Lynn Crank was buried in Tennessee this week. Her mother and the leader of the religious group called New Life Ministries had refused to take her for advanced medical treatment for a rare form of bone cancer. The religious group put their faith in prayer over doctors, and the mother and the head of the church may be facing a homicide count in addition to a child abuse charge.

Guys, this wasn't, like, cancer, the kind of cancer that you don't see. This was a 17-pound tumor that she had on her shoulder. She went into a clinic and they diagnosed her, and her mother and this man, who is not even her stepfather, said we're going to pray.

SNOW: But our legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, was on the air the other day and he knows more about this than I do. But he said that it's possible that it couldn't have been treated in a hospital, that it may have been incurable. And therefore, that helps the defense because -- the defense of the parents, the mother.

KOPPEL: You know what? I'm not even talking legal issues here. I'm just saying, do you think that was right? And I recognize that there is freedom of religion and that people have different ways of dealing with many things. But a 17-pound tumor?

MALVEAUX: This is something that happened over a long period of time, or was it something that they realized was getting worse?

KOPPEL: My understanding is it didn't take very long, that by the time they brought her there, her cancer was so advanced that, you know, whether or not treatment would have helped, should it have been given?

SNOW: It's interesting. Congress actually passed a law a number of years ago telling the states that they -- each state should have a law exempting religious freedom, you know, from -- from, you know, the general rule that you have to take care of your kids. There's an exemption for freedom of religion...

(CROSSTALK)

SNOW: ... if you believe strongly in something like prayer, that you should have that option. And Tennessee is one of those states that still has that law on the book.

MALVEAUX: And family history is part of the Iraq debate, as well, that's underneath (UNINTELLIGIBLE) United States -- the Bush family history, as son follows in father's footsteps and faces off against Saddam Hussein.

And this week in an interview with CNN's Paula Zahn, former President Bush made clear his feelings about the Iraqi leader.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: But you hate him?

GEORGE H.W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Oh, yes. I hate Saddam Hussein. I don't hate a lot of people. I don't hate easily. But I think he's -- as I say, his word is no good. And he's a brute. He's used poison gas on his own people. So there is nothing redeeming about this man. And I have nothing but hatred in my heart for him. He's got a lot of problems, but immortality isn't one of them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: So political observers really thought this was rather odd, that President Bush Sr. would say that he hated Saddam Hussein, that it was very personal.

And one of the things that President Bush, when he went before the United Nations, was trying to do is really take away that personal element. Even when he brought up the fact that Saddam Hussein had tried to assassinate his father, he didn't even mention his father's name. We asked a senior White House official about that, and they said, Well, it was because they didn't want to bring in that personal aspect. But it seems as if some people are really jumping on this and saying it looks like this whole thing, going after Saddam, has become -- it's really a family matter.

KOPPEL: You got to wonder about that as well because you hear that Saddam Hussein has put out, you know, a hit on your father. Wouldn't you have personal feelings about that? And certainly, you could understand that George Bush would have that as well.

SNOW: That's our SATURDAY EDITION this week. Thanks to all of our colleagues here, and all of you joining us.

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Attack on Iraq; FBI Sweeps In on Alleged Terrorist Cell in Buffalo>