Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Were There Massive Intelligence Failures Pre-9/11?; Congress Prepares for Hearings on Missed Clues; Is U.S. Ready for Movie About Terrorism?

Aired June 03, 2002 - 17:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Judy Woodruff in Washington. Do new disclosures involving the CIA prove U.S. intelligence failures were massive before September 11?

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Jonathan Karl on Capitol Hill where lawmakers are gearing up for hearings tomorrow on the terror clues that were apparently missed.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: I'm Jeff Greenfield in New York. Is a new movie about terrorism too terrifying for American audiences? A look at what the box office says and what other movies have told us about our fears, past and present.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Susan Candiotti in Miami, where the disappearance of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson gleans more and more evidence that this is not an isolated incident.

ANNOUNCER: Live from Washington, this is INSIDE POLITICS WITH JUDY WOODRUFF.

WOODRUFF: Thank you for joining us. As evidence mounts of apparent intelligence lapses before September 11, including at the CIA, President Bush is responding to the controversy. In Arkansas Mr. Bush said the federal government is working to provide better intelligence to prevent any future terror attacks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The FBI is changing and they're doing a better job of communicating with the CIA. They're now sharing intelligence. My point to you is that whether it be at your airports, or on the border, or in law enforcement, the whole mission of the federal government working in conjunction with the state and local governments, is to protect the American people.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WOODRUFF: Officials acknowledge today that the CIA tracked two September 11 hijackers almost two years before the attacks. But the CIA did not alert other agencies to watch for them until August of last year. Over at the FBI, officials say Director Robert Mueller now plans to review any terrorism-related search warrant request that is rejected by a mid-level manager.

It is part of the FBI overhaul announced last week. And it comes after FBI headquarters refused last summer to approve a search warrant for the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was later charged as a conspirator in the 9/11 hijackings.

In recent weeks, the FBI has been under fire for failing to link various terror clues, including the so-called Phoenix memo warning that Middle Eastern men were training at U.S. flight schools. And a warning passed along to President Bush last August of possibly al Qaeda hijackings of U.S. planes.

Members of Congress are going to be looking into all this when they open hearings tomorrow. Our congressional correspondent Jonathan Karl is here. Jon, what should we expect?

KARL: Well, Judy, the revelations over the weekend about the CIA are a reminder that it's not just the FBI that will be on the hot seat when these hearings get under way, but also the CIA. And members of the committee also say the National Security Agency can also be expected to be looked at quite carefully as these hearings get under way.

What's interesting here, Judy, is that today is the very first day on the job for Eleanor Hill, who is the new staff director, the top staffer on this special joint committee. She took over after the previous director, Brit Snyder, last month resigned amid controversy over the fact that he had hired someone that had failed the CIA polygraph test.

She's just now getting to work. But this committee is under pressure to get started early, get started quickly, because they want to take away the momentum towards a national commission, the formation of a broader national commission to look into this. The intelligence committee wants to keep the work right on the intelligence committee, which by the way, is also where the White House wants to see this investigation limited. But it will start tomorrow in a very modest way, Judy.

WOODRUFF: What will the scope of these hearings be...

(AUDIO GAP)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL (voice-over): ... joint intelligence committee hearings will be closed. And it will feature no witnesses other than the committee's own 24-person staff, who will brief the committee on their preliminary investigation, which is including more than 200 interviews with key intelligence operatives at the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies.

FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA Director George Tenet will be among the first witnesses at the first public intelligence hearings. But they won't begin until June 25. But FBI whistle blower, Colleen Rowley, a key figure in the intelligence probe, will appear publicly before another committee Thursday to talk about the reorganization of the FBI.

Rowley is the Minneapolis field agent who accused FBI headquarters of bungling the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

What's interesting, Judy, is that not only will Rowley be testifying there on Thursday before that judiciary committee, but so will Robert Mueller, who Rowley, in her famous memo from Minneapolis, accused of essentially trying to whitewash problems at the FBI.

And as we went to that, Judy, you asked me what the scoop of these intelligence hearings will be. And what's interesting here is that this committee is authorized until the end of February of next year. And they're looking not just into September 11 and what went wrong there in terms of intelligence failures, but in every intelligence failure going back to 1986, when the CIA first started its counterterrorism center.

This committee is going to be going back and looking at the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, at the bombings of the Cole, Khobar Towers and of course, the embassy bombings in 1998 -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: All right, Jon Karl. He's going to be following those hearings all week. Thanks, Jon.

We'll be talking to a member of the Senate intelligence committee, Democrat Evan Bayh, in just a moment. But right now we are joined by Weldon Kennedy, who served as deputy FBI director during the Clinton administration.

Mr. Kennedy, given what we already know about information the FBI had, what we're learning today and over the weekend, about what the CIA had and didn't do, is it in your mind possible that an opportunity was missed to prevent at least part of the 9/11 attacks?

WELDON KENNEDY, FMR. FBI DEPUTY DIRECTOR: I don't believe so. That's totally pure speculation, as to what could have and would have, had all of this been put together in one single comprehensive report, which obviously it was not. We had various pieces isolated here and there. But they were not put together.

By the way, in hearing about the Moussaoui case, it turned out that that warrant was granted after 9/11. And guess what they found on that computer? Essentially nothing really material to the 9/11 situation.

WOODRUFF: So, how big a problem are we looking at here? As you know, we've been hearing bits and pieces about what the FBI had, didn't share. Now the CIA had information it didn't share. Is this typical of the way these two agencies and others worked up until now? KENNEDY: No, there's been quite a bit of sharing. In fact, since Director Webster left the FBI and went to CIA, from that point forward there were a rather large number -- I think the number was somewhere between 20 and 30 -- total personnel who were cross-assigned between the FBI and CIA, working in each of the two agencies to ensure that there was a complete exchange of information.

WOODRUFF: Well, if that's the case, how did this happen, do you think?

KENNEDY: Well, you're talking about an isolated memo. For example, the one written by Mr. Williams. That not only was not shared with the CIA, it was not shared very widely within the FBI. Even Mr. Williams at the time he wrote it, marked it as routine, as very speculative.

WOODRUFF: But given this, do you think that we're going to find other examples of information that either the FBI or the CIA had, that weren't shared?

KENNEDY: It's entirely possible that that will be found. I heard reference earlier that the NSA will be also participating in these hearings. And it very well could be that there were little bits and pieces of information that they may have had, which now, with our perfect hindsight, with our 20/20 spectacles on, we can see that those conversations or other information might have some significance, viewed in today's context as opposed to September the 10th.

WOODRUFF: Do you believe any reforms are in order?

KENNEDY: Of course. There is going to be a larger focus of resources of the FBI on terrorism matters, which they have been asking for and denied in the past. To increase those resources, more agents, more analysts, better computer systems.

WOODRUFF: Denied by whom. I'm sorry, denied by whom?

KENNEDY: Well, process of funding of the federal government, the FBI doesn't decide unilaterally that it's going to assign a certain number of personnel or staff, to a given investigative program. Those decisions are made jointly. The FBI proposes, the Justice Department reviews. The administration makes recommendations to Congress. Congress deliberates and has hearings. And ultimately, a budget is passed, giving the resources that are necessary in those particular programs.

And by the way, it's a very difficult process. And the FBI sometimes, for example, years ago when we had the failure of the Savings and Loans, the FBI had been asking for additional resources to investigate white-collar crime activities for years, and had been denied those resources. Finally, after the failure of big banks, additional resources were added.

WOODRUFF: There are those who say, Mr. Kennedy, that the culture in the intelligence community is not easy to change, that people get used to doing things the way they have for years, and they don't, you know, it's hard to get that to change. -

KENNEDY: Judy, I'm very concerned about people saying that they want to change the culture of the FBI. The FBI that I spent 33 years in, the culture is 26,000 men and women working their hearts out to protect the citizens of the United States. Working unbelievably long hours and risking their very lives for the protection of people of the United States. I don't think we want to change that culture.

WOODRUFF: All right, Weldon Kennedy, former deputy director of the FBI. We thank you very much for joining us.

KENNEDY: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: Good to see you, sir. Now, as promised, Senate intelligence committee member, Evan Bayh, is with us. And he joins us from Capitol Hill.

Senator, I don't think you were able to hear all of what Mr. Kennedy said. But I started by asking him if he thinks that this information now that the CIA had information it didn't share, added what we already knew about the FBI, if you believe that this says that an opportunity was missed to prevent at least some of the attacks on September 11.

SEN. EVAN BAYH (D), INDIANA: Well, that could be the case, Judy. We're going to follow it up in these hearings to determine exactly what the facts are, what happened, why, and most importantly, what could be done in the future to limit the potential for a terrorist attack.

But I think, more than anything else, it points out the fact that there has not been enough communication within these agencies and between these agencies. And there needs to be much better coordination going forward.

WOODRUFF: We heard Mr. Kennedy say that, contrary to, I guess what some are saying right now, that he said there was something like 20 to 30 some agents who were cross-assigned to coordinate between the two agencies. He characterized these documents and bits of information as pretty much isolated examples.

BAYH: Well, I have a respectful difference of opinion with Mr. Kennedy. I think clearly what we have is not only the need for systemic changes within the intelligence committee, but also, as your questioning of him suggested, the need for a cultural shift.

I do agree with him that the FBI has done a marvelous job of what it was created to do: stop bank robberies, and other crimes of that kind. But it was never really intended to take on much of an intelligence function. And so it has not performed as well as it might in that regard. And that does require a different kind of attitude and a different kind of culture.

WOODRUFF: But you heard Mr. Kennedy say you've tens of thousands of people at the FBI and for that matter, I'm sure he would he add at the CIA, working their hearts out to do the best they can for their country. And his point was, is that something you really want to change?

BAYH: Their devotion to their country and their willingness to work hard and even sacrifice themselves for the rest of us, no, absolutely not, we don't want to change that. But these are brave men and women who are being asked to perform a function within a system that is not designed to accomplish the function we're asking them to do.

That's what needs to change, Judy. A better coordination, better communications, so that all of these -- the reason these dots couldn't be connected is that the dots weren't on the same page. That's what needs to change going forward. Not the devotion and the dedication of these hard-working men and women.

WOODRUFF: Well, is that what you think will come out of these congressional hearings? Or is this primarily going to be a look back at what went wrong last year?

BAYH: I think the only thing that matters is looking forward. What do we need to do to protect this country? To accomplish that, of course you have to see, well, what are the weaknesses. What went wrong and how can we improve it for next time?

But the sole focus of these hearings should not be to point fingers or lay blame, but simply say what structural changes, cultural changes, other changes, do we need to make to protect America? That's what I hope the hearings will accomplish.

WOODRUFF: Can congressional intelligence committees acting on their own do a thorough enough job of investigating this, or do you believe in the last analysis, you're going to need an outside, independent commission of some sort?

BAYH: If we get the kind of cooperation that we need, I think the intelligence committees are the best place to handle this. They have a track record of handling discrete information in a confidential way. The expertise is there and I think that's the best place for the job to be done.

Now, there wasn't much cooperation until about two or three weeks ago. That seems to have changed now. And if that level of cooperation continues going forward, then I personally would favor keeping the hearings where they currently are.

WOODRUFF: Senator Evan Bayh, a member of the Senate intelligence committee. Senator, we appreciate your joining us.

BAYH: Glad to be here, Judy.

WOODRUFF: Thank you.

A welfare reform debate is coming up next. As the president counts tough work requirements. The governors of Vermont and Colorado will go "On the Record" about the Bush reform plan.

Is the Bush administration feeling the heat over its new report on climate change and what to do about it?

And why is Vice President Cheney trying to leave his mark on a map? Bob Novak has the "Inside Buzz." This is INSIDE POLITICS.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: "On the Record" this Monday, welfare reform. I'll talk with two governors on both sides of the issue in just a moment. Earlier today in Arkansas President Bush tried to drum up support to renew the 1996 welfare reform law, with certain changes.

Mr. Bush wants to require welfare recipients to work 40 hours a week instead of the current 30. The president also wants to include marriage incentives. And he wants states to move 70 percent of their welfare recipients into the work force within the next five years.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: I want to set high standards and aim for those standards. Anything that weakens the work requirement in a welfare reauthorization bill hurts the people we're trying to help. It's important to remember that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WOODRUFF: Governors, thank you very much for joining us. Governor Bill Owens of Colorado, Governor Howard Dean of Vermont. Governor Owens, I want to start with you. President Bush wants to see in the next few years the work requirement for 70 percent of welfare recipients to go up to 40 hours a week. Is this something you support across the board?

GOV. BILL OWENS (R), COLORADO: Absolutely. I think that the history of the welfare reform act that we passed in 1996 shows that work is something not only productive for the country, but it's also good for the individuals involved. We've seen dramatic reductions in welfare case loads, as we've reformed welfare.

I think we need to continue these improvements. And I think we need to center all of our welfare efforts around the fact that a good job is the best way to reduce welfare. So, yes, I strongly support what the administration is doing.

WOODRUFF: Governor Dean, your whole-hearted support, 40 hours a week?

GOV. HOWARD DEAN (D), VERMONT: No, big mistake. Let me set the table a little bit. I was the first governor in the country to do welfare reform on a statewide basis. We got our waivers two weeks before Wisconsin did. We designed our program long before the Congress got into this.

I agree with everything that Bill said. I think welfare reform has been an enormous success and has done good things. The problem with the 40-hour workweek here is that it exceeds the average workweek of most American women with small children by 10 hours a week. And even women with older children average about 34 hours a week. So we're asking single mothers who are poorly prepared for work force now to work longer hours and leave their children at home, than we would middle-class mothers. I think that's a mistake.

I think the president is right to push welfare reform and extend it. But I think he is wrong to tell the states how to run their programs. Ours has been incredibly successful, the way it's been run so far.

WOODRUFF: Governor Owens, what about that? That this is above what single mothers are now asked to do, mothers with small children.

OWENS: Well, I think that it is important to make sure that there is enough flexibility in this welfare act. That's why I support the House version, the version that passed the U.S. House of Representatives, which granted extensive waiver authority.

I just wish my friends in the Senate Democratic Party would grant us that power as well.

(CROSSTALK)

WOODRUFF: When you say waivers, what do you mean?

OWENS: Waivers, where we're allowed, as states, to design more or less our own programs, with some federal requirements underlying these problems.

WOODRUFF: Well, if that's the case...

OWENS: I want more flexibility at the state level. And in fact, this bill gives us more flexibility than we have under current law.

WOODRUFF: Governor Dean, if that's the case, what's the concern? States can adjust this as they see fit.

DEAN: It's not the case. This is micro-managing. The president's education bill has micro-managed education, taken power away from the local school boards. This takes power away from the local states.

Look, here's what we want out of welfare reform. What we want is to have people on welfare going into permanent, long-term positions in the private sector. What this bill would force us to do -- in 41 out of 47 welfare directors in the country, on a bipartisan basis were surveyed -- is to do make work jobs simply to jack up our participation rate.

The problem with make work jobs is they don't lead to long term independence from welfare. When the make work jobs, which cost the taxpayers money, goes away, the person goes back on welfare. That's not what we want.

WOODRUFF: Governor Owens, I want to ask you about this new study reported today from Connecticut, showing single mothers on welfare were less inclined to get married with these higher work requirements.

The author of the study was quoted as saying "Tough love, less romance." "If tough love work policies suppress marriage at this magnitude nationwide, just under a quarter million women would not be getting married in any one year."

My question is, doesn't this conflict with the Bush administration's policy of wanting to promote marriage?

OWENS: No, I don't think so, because what it really shows is, we need to do a better job of promoting the importance of marriage in the family, as we work towards reforming welfare. I don't think there's anything inconsistent between working and marriage. In fact, I think that there is a lot of benefit to families, in having the head of that household, be it a woman or a man...

(CROSSTALK)

OWENS: And, Judy, that's why I think what it does show us is we need to do a better job of supplementing welfare reform with family assistance planning. That's what the Bush administration is doing. It has a $300 million program to help states do exactly that. If you don't do it, you may have the impact we saw in the Connecticut study.

WOODRUFF: Governor Dean?

DEAN: I actually call this act the "leave every child behind" act. They require poor women to get -- we've already got the best welfare recipients, who are most equipped to work, into the work force. We're talking about poor women with relatively small job skills.

We're asking them to work 10 hours longer a week than the average American woman with small children, and we're not giving them any child care benefits. Tell me how is this going to work. Most states don't think they can make this work.

Look, we're all in favor of welfare reform. Tommy Thompson and I were the two first governors who ever did it as a bipartisan issue. We just say to the Bush administration, let the states continue to work the way we have. We'll do the 70 percent requirement. But the 40-hour workweek is simply not sensible because most Americans don't have to do that.

WOODRUFF: Gentlemen, we are going to have to leave it there. Governors, we thank you both. Governor Howard Dean of Vermont, Governor Bill Owens of Colorado. Good to see you both. We appreciate it.

OWENS: Thanks.

DEAN: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: The INSIDE POLITICS "Newscycle" is next, including an update on the tense standoff between India and Pakistan.

Also, American troops and the so-called Bush doctrine. One of the issues in our "Taking Issue" segment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Among the stories in our "Newscycle," a joint intelligence committee from the House and Senate is preparing to begin hearings tomorrow. The hearings come as new information shows the CIA let more than six months go by without putting two of the September 11 hijackers on a list of people to be kept out of the United States.

In London, musical artists from the worlds of pop and rock are helping Queen Elizabeth II celebrate 50 years on the throne. The artists include Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin and Rod Stewart. An estimated 150,000 people are attending the free concert.

In New Jersey, fire crews have extinguished much of a 13,000 acre wildfire that closed the Garden State Parkway for a time, and forced hundreds to evacuate their homes. Damage is estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

With us now, Margaret Carlson of "TIME" magazine and Tucker Carlson, co-host of CNN's "CROSSFIRE."

Margaret, to you first. The Bush administration, in a report to the U.N., acknowledges for the first time that there's a human element involved in creating what they call global warming. But it doesn't offer, in this report, anyway, solutions for what to do about it. Is it significant that the Bush administration is saying this, even though they're not proposing a solution?

MARGARET CARLSON, "TIME": Well, it's significant in that up until this time the Bush administration has said it needs more research.

Well, the research is in. And it is in this report. And the report goes to the U.N. And the research says that what some scientists and all environmentalists said for a long time, is that global warming is getting worse, and we're going to have drought and many other bad things happening from it.

So, the question is whether Bush's answer to all this, which is, "Let's see what happens, que sera, que sera," is going to be acceptable. It is acceptable to his base. The energy industry doesn't want to make any changes. But, surely now, it is hard to explain away what he has done so far to anybody in the Republican Party that cares about the environment.

WOODRUFF: Tucker, if there's no different solution being proposed, does it make a difference that the administration is even saying this?

TUCKER CARLSON, "CROSSFIRE" CO-HOST: Well, it seems to me the headline here is, this report is not something the energy industry, as Margaret said, wanted to hear at all. You would think environmentalists would be happy about that, but they just continue to attack the Bush administration. The environmental industry really is just sort of an adjunct to the Democratic Party, and never more obviously than now. It seems to me, though, what do you do about it? Well, the Kyoto treaty puts the onus on the United States, which is not the world's great polluter. That is the Third World, of course, is far more responsible for greenhouse gases than the United States.

And so the question is: What is a fair solution? Kyoto was obviously not fair to the U.S. And I don't think the Bush administration would ever go along with it.

WOODRUFF: Margaret.

M. CARLSON: But there are things that out there to do that the Bush administration has resisted, like even changing mileage standards for the SUV gas guzzlers.

The Bush administration didn't necessarily want this report against the wishes of the energy industry. It is that this report was due. So the Bush administration couldn't have sat on it any longer.

WOODRUFF: Let me quickly change the subject -- my apologies -- to something the president said in a speech over the weekend, the graduation at West Point, in which he, for the first time -- well, more clearly than ever laid out his belief that the U.S. is within its rights to strike first if it believes another country is going to make a move on the U.S.

Here is part of what the president said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants who solemnly sign nonproliferation treaties and then systematically break them. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WOODRUFF: Tucker, is this the new Cold War doctrine from the administration?

T. CARLSON: Well, it certainly sounds like it. The old doctrine of deterrence doesn't work. How do you deter terrorism?

The line, the clip that you played has been taken widely as foreshadowing of an invasion of Iraq. It sounds to me like it could be taken as a critique of U.S. intelligence agencies before 9/11, however, who did wait far too long, we now know, for the threat to materialize before doing anything about it.

WOODRUFF: Margaret.

M. CARLSON: What we can tell from this is what you need to know. It could foreshadow Iraq, where we haven't had any U.N. -- we haven't had any weapons inspection for a long time, but suspect that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. But there are probably 60 countries on the list of countries that harbor known terrorists. Are those all countries against which we can have a first-use policy?

You know, this needs to be elucidated some. I am all for a policy in which we get tough and go after terrorists, but it can't be 60 countries. Which countries are they? And what do those countries have to pose as an imminent danger to the United States?

WOODRUFF: We're going to have to leave it there, sadly.

Margaret Carlson, Tucker Carlson, thank you both.

M. CARLSON: Thanks, Judy.

T. CARLSON: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: It's great to see you. We appreciate it.

Coming up next: Bob Novak will have the "Inside Buzz" on political fallout for the FBI chief; plus, echoes of Elvis in today's "Campaign News Daily".

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Here now with some "Inside Buzz": our Bob Novak.

All right, first of all, Robert, how is FBI head Robert Mueller handling all the criticism that has been directed at him?

ROBERT NOVAK, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: There has been a tremendous avalanche of criticism, as you know.

And he had his first Sunday-talk-show baptismal fire from Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press." He got a going-over. I have been checking with some of the Republican insiders today. They thought he did a really good job, that he was smooth. He looked like he was serious.

But I think he has got some problems. He answers a lot of questions by saying that the inspector general at the FBI will take care of that and he don't answer the question. When he goes up before Congress, they want to have answers. They don't want a closed-door hearing before the inspector general. So, I think the jury is still out on whether Mr. Mueller is going to survive all this criticism.

WOODRUFF: And some of that may come out in public on the Hill, too.

NOVAK: Yes.

WOODRUFF: New York state redistricting, and there's an interesting person who's gotten interested in that. (LAUGHTER)

NOVAK: You know, Judy, there are some stories you hear in Washington, and you say, "That can't be true." And you check it. And, my goodness, this is true.

Dick Cheney, the vice president of the United States, has made more than one phone call to the president of the New York state Senate, Joe Bruno, a Republican, objecting to the federal master's redistricting plan, which everybody thought was locked in cement, and wanting to have a new redistricting plan. That is really getting down to the grassroots level.

Why is he doing that? Well, some prominent Republican congressmen didn't like having a tough race, particularly Tom Reynolds, who is going to be the new Republican campaign chairman in the House. But I just imagine that, when Senator Bruno got a call from the vice president to talk about redistricting in New York, he was amazed. Today was supposed to be the deadline. They didn't meet it. But they got another day, I think, to try to put it together.

WOODRUFF: All right, we have heard about -- different subject -- about Republicans reaching out to the Teamsters labor union here in Washington. But now in Maryland, what's going on?

NOVAK: Well, this is a buzz that proved not to be true.

The big story around town, Judy, has been that the feud between the late James Hoffa and the late Robert F. Kennedy is being renewed by their children, the present Teamsters president, James P. Hoffa, and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the lieutenant governor of Maryland, who is running for governor.

Some Teamsters showed up at an event for Congressman Bob Ehrlich, the Republican candidate for governor of Maryland, and people connected the dots. And they said that, boy, it looks like Hoffa is going to against Bobby Kennedy's daughter. But I checked somebody who is very close to Hoffa. And they say that is not the case, that going into that event didn't mean anything. And they predicted to me, on background, that Hoffa will probably endorse the lieutenant governor.

WOODRUFF: Last but not least, it was not so long ago that we were talking about the farm aid bill as being the end-all and be-all of subsidies for farmers. But now what is happening?

NOVAK: The president said, this bill spends an awful lot more money, but at least we won't have these emergency farm bills. If you listened closely during the debate, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Tom Harkin of Iowa, promised there would be an emergency bill. They are going to start work on it this week for the drought conditions in the West, Montana, Idaho, more money on top of this huge bill going to farmers. Will the president sign another farm bill? The betting is, he will.

WOODRUFF: All right, Bob Novak, it's Monday. Great to see you.

NOVAK: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: Thanks. Appreciate you dropping by.

Two would-be Democratic presidential candidates are strengthening their ties to the kickoff caucus state. CNN's political unit has learned that House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt and Senator John Edwards have sent key aides to Iowa. An Edwards supporter who previously worked on Capitol Hill started working today as the Iowa Democratic Party's deputy communications director. An assistant to Gephardt's chief of staff will be running an Iowa state Senate campaign. And an assistant in Gephardt's leadership office will work on the Iowa Democratic Party's campaign for state and federal candidates this fall.

Gephardt also has a new link to New Hampshire. One of his former aides now is an organizer for congressional candidate Martha Fuller Clark. Democrats deny that Gephardt and Edwards are planting operatives in Iowa or New Hampshire to further their presidential aspirations.

Tomorrow is a big primary day in election 2002, with contests being held in Alabama, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota. Among the races to watch. Three Republicans in New Jersey are duking it out to challenge Democratic Senator Bob Torricelli. Multimillionaire Doug Forrester is widely regarded as the favorite.

In Iowa, Republican Congressman Greg Ganske is facing a strong Senate primary challenge from conservative activist Bill Salier. In South Dakota, a battle of political titans: Governor Bill Janklow is favored over former U.S. Senator Larry Pressler in the GOP primary race to succeed Congressman John Thune, who is running unopposed in the Senate primary.

And Alabama's first black congressman since Reconstruction, Earl Hilliard, is in a tough and nasty Democratic primary battle against African-American lawyer Artur Davis.

The Alabama governor's race leads off our "Campaign News Daily." A new poll finds GOP Congressman Bob Riley has the lead in a potential head-to-head match-up with incumbent Democrat Don Siegelman. Now, both men have strong leads in the polls their respective party primaries. And, in a theoretical one-on-one showdown, Riley leads Siegelman 51 to 43 percent.

A former state House member and Elvis impersonator has joined the race for governor of Wisconsin. Bill Lorge served in the House for 10 years and now works as a real estate agent. And, in his free time, he moonlights as the king of rock 'n' roll.

Down south in Florida, meantime, Rudy Giuliani is giving Governor Jeb Bush a political boost. Giuliani was on hand today, as the governor won the endorsement of the Florida Professional Firefighters Association. The group has 16,000 members. Bush and Giuliani are also attending a fund-raiser later this evening. Well, reality TV may be all the rage, but the weekend's box winner may be a little too real for some people. Up next: Jeff Greenfield on "The Sum of All Fears", what it tells us about truth and fiction.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: The nuclear thriller "Sum of All Fears" brought in big money at the weekend box office.

Our Jeff Greenfield has some thoughts on Hollywood films and the public fear factor -- hello, Jeff.

GREENFIELD: Hi, Judy.

You know, when a movie opens, Hollywood watches the box office the way we political types read exit polls. "What do these early numbers tell us about how the movie will do?" But when "The Sum of All Fears" opened this past weekend, it wasn't just the movie industry that was taking note. Political types were curious about how a film about a terrorist attack in the U.S. would play to a nation whose memories of real-life terrorism were still strong. And it reminds us of how often scary movie stories reflect real-life fears.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE SUM OF ALL FEARS")

BEN AFFLECK, ACTOR: The bomb is in play!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: The film takes a sharp turn away from real life. When Baltimore gets nuked...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE SUM OF ALL FEARS")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: You get Russia and America to fight each other.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: It's a plot by neo-fascists in Europe to trigger an all-out U.S.-Russian war -- no al Qaeda plotters here.

But the fear of nuclear terror is depicted head on. And, in movies, that hasn't always been the case. During the Cold War, for example, alien invasions of Earth were all over the screen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Where do they come from?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: This is from the 1956 classic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," where aliens take over human bodies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: It's a malignant disease spreading through the whole country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: That fear that may have had more to do with the fear of communist subversion than with interplanetary plots.

That is also true of 1953's "War of the Worlds." Yes, the H.G. Wells book was published back in 1958. And the Orson Welles radio broadcast in 1938 petrified a lot of Americans. But the Cold War concerns of the early '50s...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "WAR OF THE WORLDS")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Nothing was effective against them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: ... gave the tale new life.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: The future of your planet is at stake.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: On the other hand, the fear of nuclear war drove the plot of "The Day the Earth Stood Still," the 1951 movie where the aliens warn the Earth that if it doesn't stop playing around with nuclear weapons, the other planets will wipe the world out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Your choice is simple.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: And the fear of radiation was a constant theme in sci-fi movies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "GODZILLA")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Tokyo, a smoking memorial to the unknown.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: What brought Godzilla back to life in 1956? Atomic tests.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "GODZILLA")

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's as tall as a 30-story building. (END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: Atomic testing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "FRANKENSTEIN")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: It might even horrify you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: How venerable is the tradition of horror stories that reflect other fears?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "FRANKENSTEIN")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Go and see for yourself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: Well, while Boris Karloff's "Frankenstein" showed up in 1931, it was actually based on a novel first published in 1818...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "FRANKENSTEIN")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: It's alive!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: ... when the Industrial Revolution brought new, sometimes frightening forms of machinery and technology to England.

And, as Freud might have put it, sometimes a scary movie is just a scary movie.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "INDEPENDENCE DAY")

BILL PULLMAN, ACTOR: There's going to be a lot of frightened people out there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: The 1996 hit "Independence Day" came out at a time when the Cold War was over, when no terrorist threat was obvious.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "INDEPENDENCE DAY")

JEFF GOLDBLUM, ACTOR: Time's up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: It's hard to see the blowing up of the White House as, say, a symbol of anti-Clinton sentiment. And al Qaeda hadn't even been formed 25 years ago, when a bunch of terrorists tried to blow up the Super Bowl in "Black Sunday."

(END VIDEOTAPE) GREENFIELD: On its opening weekend, "The Sum of All Fears" took in more money, some $31.2 million, than any other film in the United States.

Now, it will take a few more weeks to really judge how well the movie will stack up against "Star Wars" and "Spider-Man" and the other summer contenders. But what these first numbers seem to be telling us is that moviegoers are not afraid to confront their fears in the dark, as long as they're surrounded, Judy, by a few hundred other people.

WOODRUFF: But it doesn't tell us how they are going to vote in November.

All right, Jeff.

(LAUGHTER)

WOODRUFF: Thanks very much. We appreciate it.

GREENFIELD: Tomorrow.

WOODRUFF: We'll see you tomorrow.

Still ahead on INSIDE POLITICS: The disappearance of Rilya Wilson has caused a political outcry in Florida. How many others like her may be out there?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: A town hall meeting is planned this evening in Miami on the case of missing 5-year-old Rilya Wilson. And the Reverend Al Sharpton plans to be there to urge a criminal probe into how the girl vanished without the knowledge of the state's child welfare agency.

CNN's Susan Candiotti is in Miami with more on the problems of missing children under that Florida agency's oversight -- hello, Susan.

CANDIOTTI: Hello, Judy.

Just moments ago, we received updated numbers from the Florida Department of Children and Families about the current state of affairs and exactly how many children are missing in the state of Florida, or whether, indeed, Rilya Wilson's case is an isolated one.

Bottom line: We're still not sure. There are indications that hers is not an isolated case, but here are the numbers. In the state of Florida, there are more than 46,000 children who are in the state's care, because these are children who are neglected or abused. In the month of May, the state reports that more than 1,200 of those children had not been seen as they were supposed to.

However, they do indicate that by of this week, 265 children remain to be seen. All the others, they said, have been accounted for, although, when we asked whether they definitely know where the 265 children are who have not been seen, we were told, "Well, we think we know where they were."

Now, compare this to some numbers that we received earlier this day from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. We have prepared this graphic for you. Between January and May of this year, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement reports 155 children are reported missing to them by the state child welfare agency, the Department of Children and Family Services.

Now, when we -- Rilya Wilson, as you see indicated, is the only child that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is labeling as an endangered child. All the others, they say, are runaway children, children who have been taken by someone who is not a custodial parent, although they can't say for sure that these other children may not be in danger themselves.

Now, going now to a Miami police report, this seems to indicate that in fact Rilya Wilson's case is not an isolated one. For example, a police report that was received just about three weeks ago on May 13 involved a child that was reported missing on January the 25th, but the police were not notified until May 13.

Going to the next page there, here's an except remember from that report. The police say that the caseworker called the mother's home to check up on him. The person reported, stated she did not physically go the home. He is just going by what he was told by the unknown woman that answered the telephone.

So this, you see, Judy, is part of the problem that police are encountering and the Florida Department of Child Welfare is also encountering: that, in many of these cases, there is a lack of follow- up to find out exactly where these children are -- all of these new numbers providing, Judy, a backdrop for this town hall meeting that is scheduled for tonight. Clearly, there will be a lot to talk about.

WOODRUFF: No question. Susan Candiotti, this new information, it seems, raises even more questions than it answers.

CANDIOTTI: That's true.

WOODRUFF: All right, Susan, thanks very much. We appreciate it.

There is more INSIDE POLITICS straight ahead, but first let's join Wolf for a look at what's coming up on "WOLF BLITZER REPORTS" -- hi there.

WOLF BLITZER, "WOLF BLITZER REPORTS": Hi, Judy.

During the coming hour, we will go live to Buckingham Palace and the historic events marking Queen Elizabeth's 50 years on the throne. We will also have the latest on the intelligence failures in advance of September 11 and why one of my guests says the blame should go beyond the CIA and the FBI. And "The Sum of All Fears": Would this kind of fiction play out in reality? Your government has an answer.

It's all coming up at the top of the hour right after INSIDE POLITICS. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOODRUFF: Tomorrow on INSIDE POLITICS, as the joint intelligence hearings get under way on Capitol Hill, I will interview Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, vice chairman of the Senate committee.

That's it for today. "WOLF BLITZER REPORTS" is next. I'm Judy Woodruff. Thanks for 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