DATELINE, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14

DATELINE, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2001

JOHN HOCKENBERRY
INTERVIEWS LAMAR SMITH

(part of the interview)

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

The tracking provision was removed by congress last year. And as congressman Smith watched the teeth removed from his bill one-by-one, he made this frustrating and chilling prediction two years ago of another attack on the World Trade Center/

HOCKENBERRY:

After September 11 his anger turned to sadness. The personal pain of a lawmaker trying against all odds to make a difference.

LAMAR SMITH:

I don't know whether we would have possible caught a couple of the terrorists that were involved in the attack on September 11th or not, but if we had perhaps apprehended one or two we might have been able to unravel the conspiracy.

HOCKENBERRY:

Smith hopes that this time the ball doesn't get dropped but he's learned that making meaningful change is hard, even when lives are a stake.
(We inserted image at left. It was not used by Dateline.)

HOCKENBERRY:

In '93, somebody on an expired student visa, drive a truck load of explosives into the garage of the World Trade Center. Isn't that enough to get the law changed for good?

SMITH:

It didn't wake us up as much as it should have. The alarm wasn't quite as loud as it should have been. Certainly after September 11, the alarm is deafening.

JANE PAULEY

Congressman Smith wants to propose an even tougher measure; monitoring people who are on temporary visas with electronic IDs. That kind of system might have helped track two of the suspected hijackers aboard the plane the struck the Pentagon. They were already on an INS watch list, and the FBI had been looking for them for two weeks before September 11.

PLEASE NOTE HOT BUTTON WORDS USED BY LIBERAL PAULEY Monitoring? Sounds like we will be tracking their every move, doesn't it? We will not. Electronic IDS. She wants it to sound like we are implanting something in them. A drivers license is an electronic ID.

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	DATELINE, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2001 JOHN HOCKENBERRY INTERVIEWS LAMAR SMITH (part of the interview)
	JOHN HOCKENBERRY: The tracking provision was removed by congress last year. And as congressman Smith watched the teeth removed from his bill one-by-one, he made this frustrating and chilling prediction two years ago of another attack on the World Trade Center/
	HOCKENBERRY: After September 11 his anger turned to sadness. The personal pain of a lawmaker trying against all odds to make a difference.
	LAMAR SMITH: I don't know whether we would have possible caught a couple of the terrorists that were involved in the attack on September 11th or not, but if we had perhaps apprehended one or two we might have been able to unravel the conspiracy.
	HOCKENBERRY: Smith hopes that this time the ball doesn't get dropped but he's learned that making meaningful change is hard, even when lives are a stake. (We inserted image at left. It was not used by Dateline.)
	HOCKENBERRY: In '93, somebody on an expired student visa, drive a truck load of explosives into the garage of the World Trade Center. Isn't that enough to get the law changed for good?
	SMITH: It didn't wake us up as much as it should have. The alarm wasn't quite as loud as it should have been. Certainly after September 11, the alarm is deafening.
	JANE PAULEY Congressman Smith wants to propose an even tougher measure; monitoring people who are on temporary visas with electronic IDs. That kind of system might have helped track two of the suspected hijackers aboard the plane the struck the Pentagon. They were already on an INS watch list, and the FBI had been looking for them for two weeks before September 11.