Hello, I'm Jane Pauling.
And I'm Stone Phillips.
Welcome to Dateline NBC.
Tonight on Dateline.
They're typical Americans who sat on a special grand jury, but now they risk prison for talking
to Dateline.
Lots of people don't want to let the public know what we know.
The case, possible contamination from the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.
The waste generated by this facility are radioactive and hazardous and will remain highly dangerous
for years.
The grand jury wanted numerous indictments.
The federal prosecutor said no.
And then you sent them home and you cut a deal with Rockwell.
That's uh, is that justice?
A Dateline exclusive, mutiny on the jury.
I love to perform.
I just, I feel like that's, it's like home in a way.
Then Harry Connick Jr., the media shy crooner who's compared to Sinatra.
Do a few bars of Sinatra and then do a few bars of Harry.
Let's fall in love.
Tonight he answers his critics, talks about his style and himself.
I'm no Calvin Klein ad.
Marky Mark is a Calvin Klein ad.
Harry Connick Jr., sometimes aloof, often controversial, but always his own man.
And to seven year old Stephanie, life is looking pretty good.
It wasn't always that way.
Like thousands of other children, she had a growth on her face.
I didn't like it.
It was in my way.
I couldn't eat drink.
Then came this plastic surgeon.
In 45 minutes, you take someone from no life to a new life.
I mean total rebirth.
If you think that's incredible, he does it for free all around the world.
Lee Thompson reports the gift of a smile.
Dateline NBC with correspondents, Brian Ross, Michelle Gillen, Deborah Roberts, John Scott
and Lee Thompson.
From our studios in New York, here are Jane Pauli and Stone Phillips.
Good evening.
We begin tonight with a story ready to burst into public awareness.
The place, Rocky Flats, Colorado.
It could soon become a household name.
The issue, waste disposal from nuclear weapons production.
To surprise, members of a federal grand jury fulfilling what they see as their civic duty
have rebelled against a federal prosecutor.
Operating in strict secrecy, grand juries evaluate whether someone accused of a crime should
be brought to trial.
They act as a safeguard against overzealous prosecutors among other things, but this case
offers the flip side.
Average citizens who feel a federal prosecutor is letting some bad guys get away.
So deep is their outrage that they agreed to talk to Brian Ross, even though doing so
could put them in jail.
I'm a cowboy.
My name's Wes McKinley.
I didn't know what a grand jury did.
When I couldn't find a courthouse for four hours the first day, I know I was in trouble.
My name's Jerry Sandoval and I drive a bus for a living.
It still seems like I'm walking in a dream or something because I don't quite understand
why they're investigating us.
We didn't do nothing wrong.
My name is Connie Martinez-Modecker and I'm a homemaker.
I'm sure they're trying to scare me and the rest of us.
They're doing a pretty good job of it, but it's also frustrating because we were doing
the job that we were told we were to do.
That job has now changed the lives of Connie Modecker and Jerry Sandoval and Wes McKinley
and 20 other residents of Colorado who were picked at random from a list of registered
voters to go to Denver to serve on a special federal grand jury.
It was called Grand Jury 8-9-2 and it began meeting here in August of 1989.
This was not a jury of 12 people that hears a murder case or a lawsuit.
This was a grand jury, 23 people convened to meet under a strict oath of secrecy to
hear evidence of possible crimes.
In this case, serious allegations involving a powerful corporation, its executives, and
high level officials of the government itself.
But now, three years later, in an almost unheard of development, it is the members of the grand
jury themselves who are under investigation because they have refused to stay silent about
what they say is a cover up of what really happened in the grand jury room.
Juror Ken Peck is a real estate lawyer.
I'm perplexed.
Someone, somewhere, or lots of people don't want to let the public know what we know.
What the grand jurors know is what they learned in their secret two and a half year investigation
of an American environmental nightmare.
Rocky Flats, a government bomb factory that for 40 years produced the plutonium triggers
for all the country's nuclear weapons.
Operated in the 1970s and 80s by a government contractor, the Rockwell Corporation, which
became the target of the grand jury investigation.
The waste generated by this facility are radioactive and hazardous and will remain highly dangerous
for years.
There'll be people in Colorado, unless this is made public, who may never know why they
are having health consequences or why they have suffered birth defects or generational
problems.
That's really tragic.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor who runs the Environmental Crimes Project at George
Washington University and is now working with the Rocky Flats Grand Juries.
Rocky Flats is a national scandal and no one has a right to tell the American people that
the resolution of this case is to shove it all under the rug.
You know, I had no idea that it would lead to this.
And despite the threat that they could be sent to jail for talking publicly, seven of
the grand jurors agreed to meet with Dateline in a law school courtroom.
What does it say to you that the Justice Department has decided you're the ones who should be
investigated?
Tina Hall is a bartender and an artist.
I think it's out of line.
Something should be made public.
It should be known.
Wouldn't it be easier to say, all right, we give up?
No, we can't just give up.
We were chosen to do this and that's what we're doing.
We're staying with it.
The case started in 1989 with great fanfare from the government.
FBI agents arrived at Rocky Flats early this morning.
The search warrant has been issued.
The U.S. attorney in Denver, Michael Norton, held a big news conference and announced the
first special federal grand jury in Colorado history.
It was, I must say, an exciting and a heady day.
At the time, environmentalists praised Norton for finally doing something about a government
facility that had long seemed to be above the law.
It's one of the largest environmental cases the Department of Justice has ever dealt with.
It is the first time ever anyone has taken on a federal nuclear weapons facility.
Not as big as the case was for federal prosecutors.
When Wes McKinley first got the letter at his ranch calling him for grand jury duty,
not only did he have to find out what a grand jury was, he had to find out what Rocky Flats
was.
And I asked somebody, I said, what, could you tell me a little bit about Rocky Flats?
You didn't realize it was this top secret weapons production plant?
Well, no, I had no reason to realize that.
You know, I lived a little bit of a sheltered life, I guess, Brian.
But not for long.
Wes McKinley became the foreman of the grand jury.
And once a month, over the next two and a half years, McKinley made the six hour trip
to the courthouse in Denver, where he learned more than he ever wanted to about how the
system really works.
We worked real hard on this.
We worked real hard for two and a half years.
And the judge was real clear in his instructions.
It says right in there, remember, no one is above the law.
But McKinley and the other grand jurors say they found out differently.
And that is what has now led them to take the extraordinary step of going public.
After all their work, after recommending indictments, after preparing a damning report on Rockwell
and Rocky Flats, the government refused to indict anyone and refused to make the report
public.
The report is based on over a million pages of documents, two and a half years of intense
work and over a hundred witnesses that we heard.
It is a compiling of what we did.
Does it make you mad what's happening?
Shirley Kyle is a hairdresser.
Well, yes, it makes me mad because if what we say or did doesn't mean anything, why did
they choose to have a special grand jury?
What the grand jurors did not know was that the same prosecutor who had made so much of
their investigation, U.S. Attorney Michael Norton, had made a behind the scenes deal
with Rockwell to end the case.
A plea agreement ordered by Norton superiors at the Justice Department in Washington made
public in March of last year, just three days after the grand jury had been abruptly dismissed.
Under the agreement, the Rockwell Company paid a fine of eighteen and a half million
dollars and pled guilty to ten relatively minor criminal charges involving illegal storage
of hazardous wastes.
But that was nothing compared to what the grand jury heard about Rocky Flats, evidence
of far more serious crimes, including the possible radioactive contamination of the
local water supply.
Allegations Rockwell and the government now say were unfounded.
The grand jury met for two and a half years.
They heard all those witnesses, a million pages of documents, and then you sent them
home and you cut a deal with Rockwell.
That's a...
Is that justice?
That's a... well justice was done in this case, yes.
And there was more to the deal.
Norton agreed not to indict any Rockwell executives, even though the grand jury wanted to indict
at least five of them, as well as three government officials.
It is the prosecutor's responsibility to determine whether or not to indict.
Thus, when a prosecutor determines that there is insufficient to indict, that ends the question.
That's it.
Send them home?
Send them home.
This grand jury didn't go home.
This grand jury decided that it was going to come back.
They showed up even after they were dismissed by the government.
Law professor Jonathan Turley, who is serving as the grand jury's lawyer for free, says
what the grand jurors are really up against is a pattern by the Bush administration justice
department to go easy on corporations involved in environmental crimes.
I know that the Department of Justice is really confused of how they ended up with this group
of insane citizens on their hands.
But I can tell them now the secret.
When you told them that they were to be an independent grand jury, they believed it.
When you told them that they shouldn't stop at anything, that no one was above the law,
they believed that too.
The law on grand jury secrecy is very strict, and no grand jury has ever done what this
grand jury is doing.
President-elect William Clinton.
Last November, the foreman Wes McKinley angered the justice department by releasing a letter
12 of the grand jurors had sent asking President-elect Clinton for help.
Signed, some members of the special grand jury.
And earlier, someone did break the law by leaking a draft version of the grand jury
report on Rocky Flats to a Denver alternative newspaper.
I have to say as a criminal defense lawyer, I'm very offended by it.
Hal Hedden is Rockwell's Denver lawyer and helped to negotiate the plea agreement that
led to the grand jury report being kept secret.
What about that report so concerns Rockwell?
Why don't you want it made public?
What are you afraid of?
I haven't seen the report, so I have no idea what's in it.
Would you like to see a part of the draft of the report?
No.
It's improper for me to look at it frankly.
So we read to Hedden from a draft copy of the still secret grand jury report that Dateline
was able to obtain.
Let me read the opening paragraph.
It says the Department of Energy and Rockwell and many of their employees have quote engaged
in an ongoing criminal enterprise.
Is that true?
No.
This kind of a report, if you've characterized it properly, is in my view irresponsible.
Would you like to look at it?
I'll read that.
There's a whole long list here of what Rockwell has done wrong.
Or what there may be claims of wrongdoing.
This is the findings of the grand jury.
Illegal act after illegal act.
As you know, they wanted to indict at least five Rockwell employees, the grand jury.
I'm not aware of that.
You never heard that?
I've heard they wanted to indict some.
I didn't know how many.
From the first paragraph to the last, it is clear why Rockwell and the government would
not want the grand jury report made public.
The report found a culture of criminal misconduct and concluded the Rocky Flats plant should
be closed.
Who would have given this out?
When we asked the grand jurors who met with us about the secret report, their lawyer,
Jonathan Turley, warned them the wrong answer could put them in jail.
At that point we're going to have to hold off on it and that's a little bit too far.
The Department of Justice is deadly serious.
You know, they do not start an FBI investigation on a whim.
And then each juror denied being the one who leaked the secret report.
I don't know what came from it or what it says.
That nobody here did it?
No.
Shirley, Connie, Jerry?
Not me.
I can understand that frustration.
In sitting for the long period of time that they sat, this grand jury never had the pleasure,
if you will, or the vicarious ability, if you will, of participating in the return of
an indictment.
You think they wanted some pleasure to indict people?
Oh, I don't know.
That's what you just said.
I'm just saying, that would be my guess.
I don't really know.
I've not talked to these grand jurors.
You apparently have.
I have.
So you know what they're thinking.
And you're saying they may have broken the law to talk to me?
I don't know if they did or didn't.
If they have talked to you, they may have violated the law.
How far are you willing to go with this?
I'm sitting right here.
I think that's pretty far.
Yeah, I thought real hard about it, but I just let my conscience be my guide because
I know we're doing the right thing.
We had a duty to do.
Every person in America has a duty, and we're going to finish it as everyone else would.
What will you do when the FBI agent comes to the door?
Because he wants to talk to you.
Probably pray over him and close the door.
Just last week, a congressional investigation of the Rocky Flats case accused the Justice
Department of bargaining away the truth and recommended the grand jurors be given presidential
pardons.
But as it stands now, the grand jury report on what really happened inside this nuclear
weapons plant remains sealed, and the grand jurors themselves remain under the threat
of prosecution and jail.
They sit there, and all they can say over and over again is, I've got something to say.
Just let me say it.
Just let me say it and go home.
Let me finish what you told me to do as a grand juror, and let me go back to being who
I am, a rancher.
Wes McKinley isn't somebody who is a hero.
He's an ordinary citizen who helped organize a group of other ordinary citizens and said,
we can't let it happen.
They did what's right.
Let them finish.
Let them say what they found and let them go home and then leave them alone.
The grand jurors are now holding their breath to see what happens in the final week of the
Bush administration, to see whether they will be prosecuted by the Justice Department for
standing up for what they believe for talking to Dateline.
Jane?
They can't, the federal prosecutors can't really ignore this, can they, because the
whole grand jury system is predicated on secrecy.
So that's a real possibility, isn't it?
It's a very distinct possibility.
The only hope the grand jurors have is if Congress calls them to testify, then they
can say publicly what they want and not be sent to jail.
What a moral dilemma this is, because breaking a vow of secrecy on one hand and, you know,
holding on to information they feel so strongly about.
It's a classic case of civil disobedience.
Well, thank you, Brian.
Well, later, music man Harry Connick Jr., do his critics have him wrong?
First, young lives transformed before your eyes.
Faces remade, dreams come true thanks to plastic surgeons who donate their time for kids who
need their expertise.
Lee Thompson reports after this.
With each new day, you find a way to be your best.
Gillette sensor for the closest, safest shave ever.
Only Gillette sensor has spring mounted twin blades that sense and adjust to every detail
of every face.
Gillette sensor.
When you're the best, there's no feeling like it.
You can actually taste the vegetables, you know, your tomatoes, spinach, spinach, and
celery, carrots, it's a zippy kind of thing, a zippy thing.
Contact wrote a book on cold medicine, then added this chapter, Contact Day and Night,
day caplets for non-drowsy cold relief, night caplets to relieve your symptoms to let you
rest.
Contact Day and Night, another important chapter in cold relief.
What are you doing?
Pouring on A1.
Before?
Don't you do that after?
Yeah, but today I'm doing it before instead of after.
Hmm, it looks different doing it before.
I think it'll taste different after, because before you did it after.
Try it.
Whoa, before you eat it all.
Oh, after you.
A1, it's how steak is done.
It will be their most intriguing case ever.
An older woman is dead, her young lover has a motive for murder.
Two million dollars.
I didn't do anything, I loved her.
You're closed for business.
It should have been an open and shut case, but...
Jiggalos steal, they don't kill.
It's a powerful all new law and order with an ending that will shock you NBC Wednesday.
Tomorrow, the Fighting Irish, fighting over New York's St. Patrick's Day parade.
Should gays and lesbians be able to march up Fifth Avenue on NBC Nightly News?
Few of us are completely satisfied with the way we look, but most of us get by just fine
with the face God gave us.
Not everyone is so lucky, but lately, fortune has smiled on some of them.
Lee Thompson has a story tonight about the power of a pair of hands multiplied by thousands.
It makes for an organization that gives countless children the gift of a smile.
Stephanie Dietz has a wonderful smile.
Like most kids her age, the seven year old Virginia Beach girl is happy and carefree.
But it hasn't always been that way.
Stephanie was born with a hemangioma, a birth defect on her lip.
At first doctors told her mother, a struggling single parent, that it would just go away.
But it grew.
By the time she was three years old, she had a red bump the size of a walnut projecting
from her lip.
I didn't like it.
It was in my way.
I couldn't eat, drink.
Really?
Did it hurt?
Yes.
Yeah.
Is it true that you don't like to look at pictures with the bump on them?
Yes, it's true.
Why not?
Because I don't like those pictures.
Why?
They make me hurt.
Stephanie's grandmother, Betty Dietz, spent years trying to find help for her granddaughter's
deformity.
The children were starting to tease her about it when they found out that it wasn't just
a hurt that would go away in a few days.
Then a friend suggested Betty take Stephanie to see plastic surgeon Bill McGee in Norfolk,
Virginia.
I took her in.
He took one look at her.
He said, this has to come off this child's lip.
I want to see a beautiful smile on her face.
She is really just an adorable little girl.
Bill McGee operated on Stephanie free of charge.
We just got her on over in the hospital to excise it into a reconstructive lip.
Dr. McGee makes it sound simple, but for the last 10 years, he has made profound changes
in children like Stephanie.
Thousands of other kids with tumors and scars and cleft lips that have left gaping holes
in their faces have been helped.
Bill and his wife, Kathy, are the co-founders of a remarkable medical charity aptly named
Operation Smile.
They and their volunteers work miracles for people in the United States and around the
world by giving the gift of a smile.
He cut the bump off my lip.
Do you think you're prettier now?
Yes.
We were so grateful for what he did, and it has made a tremendous difference in her life
and in ours too because naturally we suffered along with her.
Bill's wife, Kathy McGee, is a nurse, social worker, and the motivating force behind Operation
Smile.
She and Bill carry pictures that prove better than words ever could the difference their
organization makes for their patients.
These children are really rejected in a flash by other human beings, even though they have
nothing else wrong with them.
Imagine the children that have had to go through life never being able to feel the gentleness
of a kiss.
Here is a problem that we know exactly how to take care of, that in 45 minutes you take
someone from no life to a new life.
I mean total rebirth.
The idea for Operation Smile came to the McGees in 1982 when they joined a team of American
plastic surgeons and spent two days operating on children in the Philippines.
I'll never forget the smells and the taste and the feel of watching 300 kids and their
families come into a tiny little room with 100% humidity it seemed and having to select
out 40 kids that were going to be operated on in those two days.
And leaving the rest behind.
And watching them go home.
That trip inspired Bill and Kathy to set up Operation Smile 10 years ago.
Since then it has taken on a life of its own.
Teams of doctors, nurses, technicians, even speech therapists have operated in 11 different
countries and all over the United States.
This year alone, Operation Smile has been able to take care of over 7,000 American children.
And it's all volunteer.
It's all volunteer.
We can make a call to another state and say can you take care of this child?
He needs help.
Okay what we're going to do is we're going to close this defect.
Jasmine Holliman of Virginia Beach was only three months old when her parents sought help
and the gift of a smile.
Jasmine was born with a cleft lip and palate, probably a genetic defect inherited from her
mom Cherie who has a cleft lip.
Jasmine's father Leroy says they feel guilty about that.
That was really bothering us a lot.
You know she's an innocent person so that really bothers you know that she has a whole
life ahead of her.
At only seven pounds, Jasmine was almost too small for the operating table and the various
instruments.
She was a little girl who was born with a bilateral cleft which means that both sides
were opened up into the nose and her palate was completely open.
Jasmine underwent two hours of surgery to repair her lip and came through it well.
She's holding steady at 93.
How you doing?
Everything just went beautifully.
She's doing fine, no problems at all.
While Jasmine is too young to realize how much Dr. McGee changed her life, Cherie and
Leroy certainly know.
I know she's happy you know and that she'll continue to be happy and now you know she
better just enjoy her childhood you know and that's important to both of us.
Much of Operation Smile's work begins in modern hospitals like this but more often than not,
surgery is done in makeshift operating rooms and hallways, even closets in developing countries
all around the world.
No matter where the Operation Smile teams go, there's only one goal, building new lives
for their patients and their families one face at a time.
But doing it means moving a medical team, drugs, instruments and enough equipment to
literally outfit an entire operating room overseas.
It is a tremendous undertaking.
Kathy McGee spends the majority of her time organizing the trips and raising money to
pay for the foreign missions.
We get calls every day.
Can you come to you know a South American country or an Asian country and then we put
the whole mission together.
It's funding, it's awareness, it's supplies.
Where do you get all of the material that comes into this warehouse?
Where's it coming from?
Well basically we just try and work with different companies to see what kind of donations they
would give.
We purely operate on donated supplies.
You beg and you plead.
Yeah we really do beg.
It's hard to say no to Bill and Kathy McGee.
Last year they raised over four million dollars enabling them to take volunteer teams to eight
different countries including Vietnam, China, Romania, Colombia, Russia and Kenya.
Sometimes those teams find cultural differences almost impossible to believe, such as the
child they took care of recently in Kenya.
Parents came in with a child and they had been asked to let this child die, do not feed
it anymore, do not touch this child anymore.
The child has a curse on us.
What was wrong with the child?
The child had a cleft lip and a palate.
And that's all?
And that's all.
There are hundreds of other poignant stories about people helped by Operation Smile but
few are more moving than Jose Valiegas, a young man from the Philippines.
This is how Jose looked when he first walked through the door of the Operation Smile mission.
He had an enormous tumor hanging from his jaw.
I can remember when I locked down, it touches my chest.
When I lock sideways like that, it touches my shoulder.
I feel so much rejected.
I can remember I can no longer lock people eye to eye.
He felt that he was the phantom of the opera and he would only go out at night because
when he went out during the day, if people touched him they felt that he was throwing
a curse on them.
I'm thinking like this.
I said, God, if you want to take me now, it's okay.
I'm tired.
That's in my mind.
I'm kind of tired, you know, living in this situation.
But everything changed for Jose when Bill McGee told him he could help.
Dr. McGee gathered all the surgeons in that room.
They returned to me and said, Jose will be the first priority.
I remember I almost jumped there.
I want to hug everybody in the room.
Jose's surgery was too complicated to do in a makeshift operating room in the Philippines.
He was brought to the United States.
We took off his tumor and rebuilt his jaw and put dental implants into the bone that
used to be in his skull, now it's jaw bone, so that he can have implants and now has a
lower set of teeth.
Do you ever look at pictures of yourself before the surgery and then look in the mirror at
yourself and compare the two?
Yeah.
Every time I see my picture it humbles me.
It humbles me.
Not only change my looks but they change my heart.
I learned that the greatest thing in life is how to extend or how to help other people.
Jose is a really wonderful human being and now wants to give back and I think that's
the other thing that happens with Operation Smile.
People want to give back what they've been given.
Jose is already doing that.
He works full time at the headquarters in Norfolk and wants someday to return to the
Philippines as Operation Smile's goodwill ambassador.
But more enduring than the faces it rebuilds is the legacy Operation Smile creates in the
doctors it trains.
For the last year, doctors Jimmy Sanchez from the Philippines and Hong Kai from China have
been supported by Operation Smile to appreciate the impact their training will have.
When Hong Kai returns to China, he will be the only specialist of his kind in a country
with more than 1.2 billion people.
He came to me and said, my people really need this.
I know that if I could learn it I could really go back and help my people a lot.
Good morning, Operation Smile.
Optimism like Hong Kai's is infectious at Operation Smile.
You sense it from the devotion of the volunteers and you know it when you see the faces of
people like Stephanie.
And Jasmine and Jose, patients who Bill and Kathy McGee call Operation Smile's traveling
billboards.
You gave them hope, you gave them smiles to take them back to their normal life.
So helping is a blessing for people today.
I'm always telling my friend that Operation Smile is part of my life from a hopeless kind
of person, from nothing, from nothing, from scratch.
They give me hope.
They give me this chance to become a normal person.
Consider the scope of Operation Smile.
Last year they treated 7,000 American kids for free or at cost.
And nearly 8,000 children have been treated abroad to date.
The numbers are staggering and that doesn't include kids who have benefited indirectly
from the training Operation Smile has provided for at least 10,000 medical professionals
around the world.
Well when we come back, Harry Connick Jr., you've heard about him.
Have you ever heard his music?
You took the best.
So sugar, why not come on over to my place and take the rest.
You'd think to be compared with Frank Sinatra would be a blessing to any singer.
But Connick has had to live it down.
I'll have his story after this.
I do this every day.
Nine years as of last Wednesday.
Two and a half years.
A little bit under five.
I've been there 14 years.
I work in the shipping department.
I'm traffic manager.
Shipping manager.
Eight years.
14 years.
Ten years next October.
What overnight service would I recommend?
Of all the shipping companies?
Who would I recommend?
Coast to coast.
1030 guaranteed.
UPS.
The best overnight delivery service is UPS.
Send it out Tuesday, it gets there Wednesday.
If they say it's 1030, absolutely it's 1030.
They pick up when they say they're going to and they deliver when they say they're going
to.
Anything that makes my job easier, I like.
We're at this greasy spoon to make a point about greasy stains and whisk power scoop.
Greasy stains can be the worst kind of stains.
Stains like this and this.
Ordinary detergent action barely budges tough grease.
But whisk power scoop doesn't work like ordinary detergents.
It's organically powered to release the grease like that.
To clean your whole wash like this and this.
So when it comes to grease, you're either whisked or without.
Whisk.
At Ford Motor Company, quality is more than just the way a car is built.
It's the design of the instrument panel.
The richness of the finish.
The turn of a wheel.
The safety of a loved one.
It's the way your car or truck makes you feel.
For us, our commitment to quality is an obsession.
And it's paying off.
Five of the ten best-selling vehicles in America are built by Ford Motor Company.
Ford Motor Company, quality is job one.
It's working.
I do.
Could it be that some phrases are never with me?
Well, maybe.
Oh, you better hold on tight.
Harry Connick, Jr.
He sold millions of albums.
You've heard his music, but do you know his story?
Critics call him unoriginal, saying he gets more attention than he deserves.
Does he?
Stone Phillips reports when Dateline continues.
One of the most powerful politicians in America is gunned down.
Now, years later, Unsolved Mysteries uncovers the cover-up.
NBC Wednesday.
Someone's been watching her.
Someone's been terrorizing her.
Thursday, Gwen comes face to face with her worst nightmare, a shocking new L.A. law.
NBC Thursday.
A haunting telephone message from Kenneth Seguin.
Tonight at 11 with Jack Williams and Liz Walker.
A message left on an answering machine by Kenneth Seguin was played in court.
Prosecutors say shortly after that he killed his two small children, then his wife.
Details on Nightcats.
Magic 106.7 gets me through the day.
They play all my favorites.
Bonnie Rae, James Taylor, Elton John.
Try magic.
Wherever you work.
Lorenzo's Oil has been called incredibly powerful and truly inspirational.
It made me believe that love conquers all.
It was absolutely fantastic.
Nick Nolte is superb.
They must see.
Susan Sarandon deserves an Oscar.
It's all about love and hope.
Golden Globe nominee, Best Actress.
Lorenzo's Oil.
The very movie, movie.
Exclusive engagement starts Friday at Lowe's Copley Place.
I'm a good example that you can get AIDS from heterosexual sex.
Find out more about HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
David Bowie's ex-wife reveals their wild life together on the next DT.
If at only 25 you're one of the most popular singers of your time and you're being compared
to Frank Sinatra, what could possibly ruin your day?
For Harry Connick Jr. it's getting arrested at New York's Kennedy Airport.
It happened to him over the holidays.
Just before boarding a plane he told authorities he had an unloaded gun in a carry-on bag.
Another example that as successful as Connick is, it's possible that more people know him
by his reputation than by his music stone.
Jane, what's interesting is that Harry Connick Jr. will tell you that he hasn't been packaged
by anyone, that he drives his own image.
Still he's aware that he has a bit of an image problem, unpredictable, at times temperamental.
But for all of that, Connick has an enormous following.
His fans range from teens to grandmothers.
And they don't care about the labels, they only see the charm.
Here's what we found.
bring it on.
High up in the sky, the little stars climb.
Oh, I've never played this.
Probably not since the 50s has a crooner captured hearts and charmed ears on the American music
scene like 25-year-old Harry Connick Jr.
It's reminding me that we're apart.
You wander down the lane and far away.
Maybe it's the smooth style, a blend of southern charm, chiseled looks, Armani suits, and
slicked hair.
Or is it the music, a nostalgic mix of romance and youthful energy, and his passion for the
spotlight?
Where's gone by?
When they say, ladies and gentlemen, Harry Connick Jr., you walk out, man, I just can't
tell you what that feels like.
It's just, I love to perform.
I feel like it's like home in a way.
It's the wrong time and the wrong place, though your face is charming, it's the wrong face,
it's not her face.
Such a charming face that it's all right with me.
One magazine writer described you as, and I quote, a cross between a Calvin Klein obsession
ad and Jesse Helms.
Rake-ish, but clean cut, sexy, but looks responsible.
He's the kind of guy you wish would marry your daughter.
That's nice, that's very nice.
That's quite complimentary.
Does it accurately describe you, do you think?
No, no it doesn't describe me.
I'm no Calvin Klein ad.
Marky Marky's a Calvin Klein ad.
And I'm certainly not rake-ish.
The hell does a rake-ish mean?
We spent an afternoon with Harry at the Steinway Piano Showroom in Manhattan, surrounded by
15 concert grams.
I mean that New Orleans piano has his beat like.
Harry's enormous popularity has come despite critical reviews, little radio airplay, and
by his own admission, the absence of a distinct musical style.
This straight-laced pop star has managed to cash in on his love for 40s and 50s style swing
and jazz hits by resurrecting the sounds of the past.
Now you know, I know that you do some pretty mean impersonations.
Somebody told me that you do a pretty mean Judy Garland.
Oh well, you know it.
Thank you.
I'd like to do a little song for you now, hope you like it.
Somewhere over the rainbow, where the high.
What are you doing on that piano?
Excuse me, Mr. Garland.
The voices of greats like Garland, Armstrong, and Bennett filled Harry's life growing up.
But there was one voice he didn't like, his own.
So at 17, Harry adopted that of another hero, Frank Sinatra.
And I started to imitate him, and I started to try to be like him.
And then as soon as the comparison started, I stopped immediately.
I put all the Sinatra records away, I said I'll figure it out from here on out.
Do a few bars of Sinatra, and then do a few bars of Harry.
Can you show us the difference?
The cigarettes you like, one after another, that won't help you forget her.
Here he goes, forget her.
He'll slide up the notes.
But like when I sing a swing number, it'll be like, let's fall in love.
Why shouldn't we fall in love?
Our hearts are made of it.
Let's take a chance.
Why be afraid of it?
It's more of a, they both sounded pretty much identical just then.
So I defeated my purpose.
If somebody wanted to imitate Harry Connick, Jr., what essential quality about you would
they have to capture to do it well?
I don't know.
I guess you'd have to have more of an airy quality to your voice.
See people say, God, when you sing, you don't have any accent.
You know, all accent disappears.
Like how's it go?
How's Stardust go?
I can't remember the words.
You're asking me?
I can't remember the words.
Sometimes I wonder why.
The lonely night.
Harry has achieved a level of commercial success not normally associated with jazz musicians.
His big break came in 1989 when at age 21 he scored the hit movie when Harry Met Sally.
It had to be you.
It won him the first of two Grammys and so far he's had two albums go platinum.
But Harry has yet to win over many of the music critics around the country.
He's still dogged by comparisons to Sinatra and grumblings from jazz purists that he's
overrated.
If there's one criticism of you, it's this.
He borrows.
He doesn't invent.
It is said that your genius comes not in your originality, but in your knack for bringing
back the old greats.
How do you respond to that kind of criticism?
Well I certainly don't agree with it.
I mean, who am I imitating?
I mean, Sinatra didn't arrange so I'm not imitating him.
Sammy Davis Jr. didn't play the piano so I'm not imitating him.
I mean, of course I borrowed from those people.
I'm not denying that.
But the rap is that you are sort of a collection of all of those people.
Well maybe I am.
I'm not denying it.
I mean, I don't want to say, maybe I am.
I have to say I'm 25 and I got a long way to go.
I'm still, there's so much to learn.
There's really a lot to learn.
And for the people who say that, I hope they'll stick around long enough to watch me grow.
One person who is watching him grow is Ellis Marsalis, father of jazz stars Wynton and
Brantford Marsalis.
Ellis was one of Harry's first teachers and accompanies Harry on his latest album.
The culture in New Orleans is so unique, so consequently Harry was able to absorb at a
very young age a good bit of that culture in his music.
The composite of Harry Connick really speaks to the best of what one could get from a city
like New Orleans.
When I was growing up they had 10, 15 clubs down Bourbon Street that played New Orleans
traditional jazz and I would go down and be a part of these clubs and sit in and listen
and learn and talk to musicians and stuff like that.
I just feel like I've been all over the world and I go to this one little part and I just
feel like this is my home, this is it.
Harry was born in 1967, started toying with music at age three, at five made his first
public appearance and by the time he was 11 he was a regular performer in the clubs along
Bourbon Street.
His father Harry Senior, the New Orleans district attorney for the past 20 years, does some
jazz singing himself and has always been Harry's idol.
But his inspiration as we discovered is his mother Anita, she died of cancer when Harry
was 13.
I remember when she died I thought to myself I'm just going to dedicate everything to her
because I know how proud she would have been and that's what I try to do.
Was the music comforting to you?
I mean do you think through your teenage years?
Playing, did that help it?
I guess it was a distraction in many respects, anything was a distraction, but it's a grieving
that you can't, it's just so hard to put this into words.
You have a sense that she's still with you?
Oh man no doubt about it, I mean I know she is.
I really know, I couldn't, I don't think I'd go on if I felt that she wasn't watching,
you know.
But for me that's what keeps me going, it's one of those things that makes you a better
jazz musician I guess.
I better be a damn good jazz musician after that, that was a rough one.
Come on baby!
What an entrance, have a seat.
Today there's another special woman in Harry's life, one who seems to be exerting just as
much influence.
Play a little, would you play a little of Jill?
Oh sure.
While she's seated.
I know a girl who says she loves me, she says she needs me, and I have reason to believe
her, good reason.
How's that?
I wrote that for Jill.
Her name is Jill Goodacre, a fashion model most recognizable for the lingerie ads that
launched her career.
Though she knew almost nothing about jazz when they met, Jill has since directed two
of Harry's music videos.
At first you didn't know the difference between like a clarinet and a trumpet, and now you're
like changing my arrangements.
You look over my shoulder, I think that should be a B flat.
Not that far.
You've asked her to marry you.
Yeah I did, I did ask her.
And she came up with the right answer.
Man, you ain't lying.
Are you nervous?
Oh, was I nervous.
Harry has just released two albums, 11 and 25, so named for his age when he recorded
the songs featured on each of them.
And it seems only fitting that the albums were released together, because Harry remains
very much that precocious kid, playful and unpredictable.
And at the same time, the more accomplished adult, still searching for his own musical
identity.
I'm 25 years old, so you know, I mean I think I'm alright now, but I think when I'm 35 or
45, 55, I'm gonna start to really blossom and come into my own style.
I hope so anyway.
Harry Connick.
It's hard to believe that somebody with moves like that is only 25 years old.
It is.
But he's got to understand better than most that success in show business is a pretty
perishable commodity and he's got his whole life ahead of him.
It must be fairly daunting.
I think he does appreciate that.
And he also appreciates the fact that he really hasn't paid his dues the way most jazz musicians
have.
He grew up in an upper middle class family.
When he first moved to New York City from New Orleans when he was 18 years old, his
dad subsidized his rent and his life here in the Big Apple.
And yet he says he hasn't been dealt a perfect hand.
The loss of his mother of course was very difficult for Harry and he just doesn't believe
that poverty is necessarily a prerequisite to being a great jazz player.
Gives more time to practice.
That it does.
Next we'll show you why air travel may be a little safer now.
The Buick LeSaber, Family Circle Magazine's domestic family car of the year.
LeSaber won by finishing first in important family categories like value, comfort, dealer
satisfaction, performance, safety, style, and of course dependability.
Buick LeSaber, a welcome addition to the American family.
A grapefruit drink that's actually sweet?
Yeah.
Ocean Spray Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice drink.
It's got a sweet taste that's really different.
If this is grapefruit juice, this is sweeter Ruby Red.
Surprisingly sweet Ocean Spray Ruby Red.
It's just unbelievable what's about to happen here.
We're almost at 10 million.
This place is getting wild.
We're just about ready to hit our 10 million friends and family members.
Now friends and family gets even better.
When you join MCI in friends and family, you'll get a month of free-loan distance.
With friends around the world, you'll get the lowest priced international calls to two
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And you'll save up to 50% on holidays throughout the year.
MCI and friends and family, there's never been a better time to join.
If you find the interest rate on your credit card to be rather high, you might want to
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Now doesn't that put everything in a whole new perspective?
Smart rate as low as 14.9%.
Money pays to discover the card that pays you back.
All God's creatures get constipated and most of them solve it naturally.
Now you can too with Per Diem, a 100% natural accident that works just as fast as all the
chemical ones.
An all new special eyewitness video Sunday.
Exclusive never before seen video of the conflict in the Persian Gulf shot by our soldiers.
An all new eyewitness video, NBC Sunday.
A police chief who can't control his own man hires a cop and two can.
Somebody want to tell me what my new job is?
You're going to be a cop.
But in this precinct, life can be void deadly when your partners watch you dead.
I want his heart cut out.
I care about you.
Kill somebody, make sure they're dead.
Billy D. Williams and Powers Booth are marked for murder, NBC Sunday.
Those of you who saw our story last May on airplane parts can rest a little easier now.
Here's why.
You may remember Brian Ross's report on how unreliable spare parts can end up in the maintenance
hangers of the major airlines.
Our investigation focused on this aircraft parts brokerage and repair firm, KC Aerospace
and its owner, Dan Campbell.
Nothing but a big scam.
KC Aerospace manager Tom Coffey revealed that the company regularly sold suspect, potentially
dangerous parts to the airlines.
They would actually take in a piece of equipment and never even touch it and just put the yellow
tag on it as if it had been repaired.
That's correct.
And that would go off to the airlines to be put on the airplane?
Correct.
When Brian confronted Campbell about the allegations, he denied any wrongdoing.
I got attorneys handled.
I got the proper people involved.
I told you it was bullsh.
After our report aired last spring, Dan Campbell and two of his associates were indicted by
a federal grand jury.
And just last month, the three men pleaded guilty to issuing false inspection certificates
for parts sold to Northwest Airlines.
The three are now awaiting sentencing.
They each face up to five years in prison and a quarter million dollars in fines.
And we'll have more in a moment after this.
A haunting telephone message from Kenneth Seguin.
Next on Nightcast with Jack Williams and Liz Walker.
A message left on an answering machine by Kenneth Seguin was played in court.
Prosecutors say shortly after that he killed his two small children, then his wife.
We'll hear it next.
Eggnog, mashed potatoes and gravy, Santa cookies, Aunt Wilma's Bundt cake.
The average American can gain four to seven pounds during the holidays.
And you're probably one of them.
Sweet potatoes.
So include the Kellogg's special K breakfast in your New Year's diet.
And get the scale moving in the right direction.
Fruitcake, fruitcake, fruitcake.
Kellogg's special K. Lose the holiday fat.
Why do I choose Alka-Seltzer Plus over the leading cold pill?
They only relieve congestion.
But Alka-Seltzer Plus is so tough it relieves sore throats, sneezing, headaches, even body
aches.
That's why I choose Alka-Seltzer Plus.
Alka-Seltzer Plus, it's tough medicine.
Now introducing the dandruff shampoo just for women.
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Hey, tune in to Jay's show with Larry Miller and Tori Amos.
Then on late night think the D word for Jimmy Walker plus the Jayhawks.
Keep watching tonight.
Madonna, she brought you sex.
She brought you erotica.
Now she joined Brian Gumbel for an exclusive two part preview of her new movie, Body of
Evidence.
Madonna, beginning Thursday on Today.
Now one of the stories you'll be seeing next week on Dateline.
In the rich, clubby world of horsemen, some greedy owners have hired hitmen to kill their
horses for insurance money.
I had one girl came out to me three years ago.
I barely knew her.
Really nice girl, I thought.
She came up to me and said, gee, would you kill my horse for ten thousand dollars?
I said sure.
Dateline correspondent John Scott goes inside the world of horse killers who pride themselves
on making deaths look like accidents.
I would take the nose and the plastic would get sucked up into their, right up into their
nostrils from trying to breathe so hard the lungs inside they collapsed.
They're horse killers.
That's next week on Dateline.
Hope you'll join us.
That's Dateline for now.
A reminder to watch NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw and today with Brian Gumbel and
Katie Couric.
I'm Jane Pauley.
And I'm Stone Phillips.
Thanks for watching.
For everyone here at NBC News, good night.
For a transcript of this program, please send a five dollar check or money order to NBC
News Transcripts, Box 7, Livingston, New Jersey, 07-039.