Preview -- World News Tonight 09/28/01

Sept. 28 -- Good Afternoon.

We'll start our Friday broadcast with the five pages a hijacker left behind.

Mohammed Atta was one of the men who commandeered American Airlines Flight 11 and steered it into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Atta's suitcase never made the flight. Now we know that one of the things he had packed was a checklist for the final operation. Those five pages mix practical suggestions ("Check all of your items — your bag, your clothes, your knives, your will, your IDs … ") with talk of the afterlife ("Everybody hates death, fears death. But only those, the believers who know the life after death and the reward after death, would be the ones seeking death.") Pierre Thomas has this story — as well as some new details about how these men spent their final morning. On a Tuesday that would be the last morning for so many other people.

The news from the Pentagon and Afghanistan today is in large part about a mass migration. The United Nations now believes more than seven million people may be on the move, without homes, inside Afghanistan. Afghanistan's borders are, for the most part, closed — and international relief workers have left the country. It is a calamity in the making. Hilary Brown reports tonight from Quetta, Pakistan. As for the Pentagon, national security correspondent John McWethy tells us that the "battle plan" against terrorism now includes plans to drop food and other supplies — in addition to whatever else the military intends to do there.

We take a Closer Look tonight at a question of culture. In this time, what seems appropriate, and what does not, for musicians and writers, political satirists and comedians? This is in the category, frankly, of one of those many things we never considered when the story first broke. Jackie Judd reports for us tonight.

And finally tonight, letters from the kids. Today in Madison, Ga., they had a parade. Erin Hayes was there, and as she says, it was "a march of schoolchildren, carrying a chain of letters." Letters to the president. Letters to the mayor of New York. Letters to cops and letters to firefighters. They have some fascinating questions — and some wonderful messages. A poignant story and a better way to end our week.