Life has to go on 24/10/01

The head of the FBI said that a quarter of the entire organisation's workforce was now working on the September 11 attacks and the anthrax scare.

In the immediate days after the most spectacularly horrifying crime in American history, it was often said that nothing would ever be the same again.

That was six weeks ago. Yet, somehow, life has to go on.

To gauge how that's happening, Jeremy Vine went back to New York.

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Trying to balance freedom with security 3/10/01

When parliament returns - drawn back early by the crisis - it will be updated on the governments plans for emergency legislation.

The immediate proposal is to accelerate the mechanism for extraditing people from this country, a process which at the moment can take years.

There will be other legislation, to allow people to come to this country as economic migrants, and to make it a crime to incite religious hatred.

It is all the responsibility of the Home Secretary.

Kirsty Wark managed to catch up with him just after his speech to the Labour Conference in Brighton.

The events of the 11th of September, the Prime Minister said in his speech to the Labour Conference, marked a turning point in history.

It was clear that the terrorist atrocities had renewed his moral vision for a world based on community and interdependency, in which isolationism was not an option.

He was condemned the Taleban regime - based on fear and funded by the drugs trade, where women are treated in a way too revolting to be credible.

After the speech Kirsty Wark spoke to the Foreign Secretary, and asked him first about the Prime Minister's ultimatum to the Taleban - surrender the terrorists or surrender power. Did that mean that if they gave Bin Laden up, the regime would remain.

The former King of Afghanistan is now being touted as a possible post-Taleban leader.

Mohammed Zahir Shah was deposed in 1973 but is now apparently calculating his chances of swapping his villa in Rome for life in ruined Kabul.

The Taleban were courting some tribal leaders, apparently worried about growing support for the King.

It is now clear that the resumption of parliament next week will not just be a matter of expressing sympathy for America or good wishes for British forces.

There will be legislation to debate.

More than half the hijackers responsible for the outrages in America were here earlier this year and the FBI are asking Britain to follow up more than one hundred leads.

Newsnight understands that bills will be introduced to change the law and make life harder for terrorists.

Jeremy Paxman spoke to the Home Secretary and began by asking him whether the fact that eleven of the terrorists involved in the American hijackings had passed through London pointed to a failure of British intelligence.

The American Deputy Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, - a man who makes Colin Powell look like a sandal-wearer - told NATO that his country is not seeking a collective response from the organisation.

It has been taken as another signal there will not be a strike just yet. But there has been no let up in the diplomatic offensive.

Indeed, America is going to great lengths to placate and please nations it needs in its coalition. But at what price is this alliance being forged?

Ever since the attacks on America, the question asked repeatedly and bewilderedly has been 'what could drive people to take their own lives and those of thousands of others guilty, only, of working in New York's tallest building?'

The usual political issue cited is the Israeli-Palestinian question. But a close reading of rarely-discussed statements by America's Public Enemy Number One reveals an ideology which goes much further.

America's support for various regimes in the Arab world is at the heart of his jihad - particularly its role in Saudi Arabia.

Our Diplomatic Editor Mark Urban has been immersed in the apocalyptic thinking of Osama Bin Laden.

President Bush has warned the people that eradicating terrorism, if such a thing can be done, will not involve a short war.

The administration believes terrorists may be active or drawing logistical support from as many as sixty countries.

In a charged speech to congress, he claimed that 'all necessary weapons' would be used.

Defining the target of this war is the easy part. Prosecuting it will be another matter.

Jeremy Paxman went to the state Department, where he met one of the architects of Operation Infinite Justice, General Colin Powell.

The American Defence Secretary said that the war in which America is engaged is going to be a marathon not a sprint.

The difficulty is that no war like it has ever been fought before. And for all the US's stealth bombers and missiles and aircraft carriers, it will turn upon the oldest military assets of all - intelligence and courage.

To find out what that means, Jeremy Paxman went to see Donald Rumsfeld's immediate predecessor as Defence Secretary, William Cohen.

He was the last man to assemble a coalition. Jeremy asked him what was needed.

The world still waits on the Taleban. What are they planning to do?

There was a clue at least, as the Taleban discussed it, their leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, told a meeting of clerics: the Americans should display 'complete patience.'

But the Pakistani President, addressing his people on television, looked as if he knew there was not that much time to play with.

The problem of the Middle East, and specifically, America's relations with Israel, lies at the heart of the difficulties in getting a military coalition together.

It is taken as read that, even if it has to act alone, America will strike back, repeatedly, in response to last week's attacks.

We have already heard of some anxieties about what the effects of that might be.

Jeremy Paxman discussed whether the Bush administration has a choice with Terry Waite, Max Hastings and Professor Tony Judt.

Over the weekend Jeremy Vine went into the country, into Pennsylvania and the small town of Lockhaven - where everybody asked 'why are you coming to talk to us? This place isn't important.'

But of course that is the point - across the United States, beyond the big cities, there has been a wave of revulsion at what happened last Tuesday, and it is not yet clear which direction public sentiment is heading in.

The terrible attacks in America have affected all manner of things.

Audiences around the world tuning into the Last Night of the Proms will hear an altered programme, with new works specially selected to honour those who died.

Leonard Slatkin, the American conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra - who himself has several friends among the dead - says the message of the evening will be unity through music.

Newsnight closed with one of the new pieces chosen - Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings - and with some of the images from a week most of us will never forget.

Photos and messages about the missing have been put up all around the city of New York .

Nearly 5000 are now officially missing and there could be more - people of all nationalities - including several hundred from Britain.

As world leaders reiterated support for the US, George Bush showed both sadness and anger.

Kirsty Wark asked a senior member of President Bush's foreign policy team whether the US can build a coalition to fight back.

The number of casualties is still unknown. The number of survivors is distressingly small.

In this war - undeclared and unethical - the combatants are prepared to kill men, women and children.

An aircraft carrier off New York and the US government reveals that the White House itself was a target. But how will America respond?

With contributions from America, Europe and the Middle East: how the world was changed by a handful of desperate men.

The US has been shaken to its foundations and the world may now be a changed place.

The sheer scale of the terror and destruction visited on one of the world's most powerful cities was unimaginable - but no less sickening for that.

At first it looked like it must have been an appalling accident - a passenger plane crashing into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. But then it became clear this was no accident, but an attack on the centres of American financial, political and economic power.

The fact there is still not even an estimate of the numbers dead defines the human tragedy.

Jeremy Vine discussed who might have done this and how the US might react with a panel of guests