Trying to Keep It All Straight

By Rick Horowitz

Good evening! Welcome to "News From the Blender," your hottest mix of the week's hottest stories. Leading our report tonight? Tears of joy and outrage in a Cambridge, Mass., courtroom, as a trial that has captured attention around the world took yet another stunning turn.

In a lengthy decision later released on the Internet, trial judge Hiller Zobel reduced last week's jury verdict on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from "international pariah" to "occasional pest." He then reduced Hussein's sentence to sanctions already suffered, allowing the controversial au contraire to leave the courtroom a free man.

"What the heck," the judge told a hushed crowd as Hussein listened without visible emotion. "Give the guy a break."

In making his decision, Zobel relied on Massachusetts' seldom-used "fast-track" authority, which gives judges the power to determine verdicts and sentences without consulting juries. And though the case has turned into something of a worldwide cause celebre, the judge insisted that he made his decision without regard to public pressure one way or the other.

"After intensive, cool, calm reflection," said the judge, "I am morally certain that there is no one in this case named Alice, and as a matter of law, you simply can't keep imposing these sanctions without a finding of Alice."

While the judge's ruling drew a mixed response here in the United States, in pubs all across Baghdad it was greeted with cries of delight and sporadic gunfire.

"Our Saddam would never do such things as they said," declared a supporter, waving a flag in one hand and a poster of Hussein in the other. "We know he is innocent."

Back in Cambridge, meanwhile, chief prosecutor Madeleine Albright condemned the judge's decision as "totally looney tunes" and said she would file an immediate appeal. The prospect of additional work for appellate attorneys sent the stock market sharply lower on renewed fears of inflation.

In Denver this week, lawyers for Oklahoma City bombing suspect Louise Woodward insisted that their client had never even met Timothy McVeigh, already convicted for his part in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

"She was too busy going out with her friends and shaking babies," lead defense attorney Tariq Aziz argued before a special session of the United Nations Security Council. "She didn't have time to buy all that fertilizer."

And defense attorney Barry Scheck contended that Woodward's fingerprints were nowhere to be found on any of the recently released Nixon White House tapes.

"That's science," Scheck told the Security Council. "If that doesn't clinch the case, I don't know what does."

While consistently maintaining her innocence, Woodward has refused to allow American inspectors to examine her former living quarters in Elton, England, for evidence of wrongdoing. In recent days, she's also threatened to shoot down any U-2 spy planes that enter British airspace, a threat Washington is taking seriously.

"If the nanny wants war," said a Defense Department spokesman, "the nanny gets war."

And finally, speaking of Washington, President Clinton made clear this week that he would continue to fight for his embattled nominee to head the Justice Department's Office of Civil Rights.

"Marv Albert said `Yes!' for years," declared the president. "Now it's time to say `Yes!' to Marv Albert."

And that's tonight's "News From the Blender." Remember: When you're looking for news, we mix it up good!

11/12/97