The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: The news of this Tuesday; then, a ten-years-later conversation with Bosnia peace negotiator Richard Holbrooke; a media unit report on Philadelphia going wireless; an update overview of how the recovery from Hurricane Katrina is going; and a Roger Rosenblatt essay about truth, fact and/or fiction.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Suicide bombers struck again today in Iraq as the U.S. death count passed another marker. At least 17 Iraqis were killed in a suicide car bombing that targeted police. It happened in Kirkuk. Officials said police were investigating a shooting when the bomb went off. In Tikrit, insurgents fired mortar rounds as the U.S. handed over a presidential palace to Iraqis. The U.S. ambassador and a top commander had to duck for cover, but no one was hurt.

Also today, the U.S. death toll in Iraq reached 2,100 with word of three more Americans killed. A top U.S. commander in Iraq today dismissed calls for a timetable to leave Iraq. Army Lt. Gen. John Vines said political wrangling over the issue will not be part of any military calculation. He said the key factor remains how the Iraqis are doing.

LT. GEN. JOHN VINES: Although Iraqi security force are able to conduct operations in a large portion of their area with only limited or coalition support, they do require our support at this time. That support will be increasingly less over a period of time, but a precipitous pullout, I believe, would be destabilizing.

JIM LEHRER: The general said the sometimes bitter debate in Washington is "disturbing" but has not affected troop morale. He spoke a day after Iraqi leaders meeting in Egypt made their own call for a pullout timetable. They also condemned attacks on civilians but made no mention of violence against U.S. and Iraqi troops.

A federal grand jury in Miami indicted the so-called dirty bomb suspect today on conspiracy charges. Jose Padilla was accused of plotting to murder, maim and kidnap people overseas. Padilla is an American citizen held for three years as an enemy combatant. Initially, federal officials alleged he wanted to set off conventional bombs packed with radioactive material inside in the United States. But today, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales declined to say why Padilla was not indicted on that charge.

ALBERTO GONZALES: Because of regulations with respect -- regulations for the Department of Justice. There are limits to what I can say outside the die. I am proscribed in talking about facts, which are included in the indictment. Mr. Padilla's designation as an enemy combatant has no legal relevance whatsoever with respect to the charges that we're announcing this morning.

JIM LEHRER: Gonzales said Padilla and four others formed a North American terror cell that sent money and recruits overseas. The indictment averts a showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court. Padilla had asked the court to decide how long the government may hold an American citizen without charges.

An Arab American college student was convicted today of joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate President Bush. Ahmed Omar Abu Ali was found guilty by a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia. He was arrested in Saudi Arabia in 2003. Defense lawyers claimed the Saudis tortured him into confessing. Abu Ali could be sentenced to life in prison.

Bosnia's three major ethnic groups agreed today on a new constitution. They did so ten years after the Dayton Accords ended the Bosnian war. Serb, Croat and Muslim leaders worked out the new deal in Washington. It called for replacing three presidents with one and streamlining parliament. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary.

Germany's first female chancellor took office today. Angela Merkel was sworn in at the parliament in Berlin. She succeeded outgoing Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Her conservative party will govern in a coalition with Schroeder's party, the Social Democrats. Merkel is expected to take a somewhat more pro-American stance in foreign policy.

Republican Congressman Tom DeLay of Texas went into a holding pattern today. A state judge in Austin declined to rule immediately on whether to throw out conspiracy charges. He said first he needs to read written filings from both sides. DeLay is accused of misusing corporate funds under state campaign law.

U.S. hurricane victims won a reprieve today on giving up their hotel rooms. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been footing the bill for evacuees from Katrina and Rita. Last week, FEMA said they'd have to leave by Dec. 1. Today, Acting Director David Paulison said ten states with the most evacuees now have until early January, if need be.

DAVID PAULISON: They should be able to get these people out by Dec. 15 we believe, however, we know there's some difficulties. I mean, Houston and Dallas and some others, San Antonio took a -- just thousands and thousands of people out of the graciousness of their heart, and so they have a lot of people there. We know it's going to be difficult. We know there's going to be some housing issues. So that's why we're giving them until Jan. 7; if they feel like they need that time, we'll grant them that time to do that.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have more on this later in the program. The UN reported today nearly six million children are dying every year from hunger and malnutrition. Many died from treatable diseases that killed undernourished victims. The report said more than 200 million people were malnourished in sub-Saharan Africa as of 2002. That was up from 170 million a decade earlier.

Veteran Time magazine correspondent Hugh Sidey died Monday in Paris. His family saidhe suffered a heart attack. Sidey covered ten U.S. presidents across four decades in a column titled "The Presidency." He gained unusual access, often focusing on the personal stories of American leaders. Hugh Sidey was 78 years old.

On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 51 points to close at 10,871. The NASDAQ rose more than 11 points to close above 2,253.

And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: Bosnia, then and now; wireless Philadelphia; the Katrina recovery; and a Roger Rosenblatt essay.

FOCUS - NEW ACCORD

JIM LEHRER: We begin our Bosnia story with some background narrated by Spencer Michels.

SPOKESMAN: The secretary of state, accompanied by...

SPENCER MICHELS: At a State Department luncheon today, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made the formal announcement that Bosnia would overhaul its constitution. The agreement among the Bosnian leaders came ten years after the U.S. brokered an end to Bosnia's civil war with the Dayton Peace Accords.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: To advance the promise of peace and progress, we must now move beyond the framework constructed a decade ago. A weak, divide state was appropriate in 1995, but today in 2005, the country needs a stronger, energetic state, capable of advancing the public good and securing the national interest.

SPENCER MICHELS: A decade ago at an air force base in Dayton, Ohio, the leaders of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and the Serb-ruled federal Republic of Yugoslavia initialed accords that created a loose confederation among the previously warring ethnic groups.

The three-and-a-half years of intense war had erupted after Bosnia followed Slovenia and Croatia in declaring independence from Yugoslavia in the early 1990'S.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher and one of his key deputies, Richard Holbrooke, were the principle U.S. negotiators for the plan at the time.

WARREN CHRISTOPHER: I trust that one day we'll look back at this time and say, Dayton was the place where fundamental choices were made; this is where the parties -- this is the place where the parties chose peace over war, dialogue over destruction, reason over revenge, and this is where each of us has accepted the challenges to make the choices made here meaningful and to put them into effect so that they will endure.

SPENCER MICHELS: The Bosnian conflict was Europe's worst since World War II. The fighting between Bosnian Serbs, Muslims and Croats killed 260,000 people.

To enforce the Dayton agreement, NATO deployed more than 60,000 troops from 40 countries to Bosnia, one-third of them U.S. soldiers. As ethnic fighting diminished, NATO handed over the peacekeeping mission to 7,000 European soldiers last year. No international soldiers have been killed in action in ten years.

Of the two million people displaced from their homes, about half have returned. The Dayton pact divided the nation of 3.2 million people into two ethnic mini states, one a Bosnian federation governed by Muslims and Croats, and the other an area controlled by Serbs. On the federal level, three presidents share power.

Paddy Ashdown, a former lead of Britain's Liberal Party, has served as Bosnia's international administrator for the past three-and-a-half years. Speaking in Washington yesterday, he said Bosnia needs to update its government if it wants to become a member of the European Union.

PADDY ASHDOWN: Dayton has brought us to the gates of Europe, but the ultimate destination of full European membership can only come about if we are prepared to modernize Dayton. So that is the task. That's the task for the next phase.

SPENCER MICHELS: One major outstanding issue is continued failure of international troops or local police to capture two indicted war criminals, former Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. Both still remain at large.

JIM LEHRER: And to Richard Holbrooke, one of the principal architects of the Dayton Accords. He was an assistant secretary of state at the time. He later served as President Clinton's ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Ambassador, welcome.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Good to be with you again, Jim.

JIM LEHRER: Is the Bosnia of today about what you and your fellow negotiators had in mind ten years ago?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: You know, when I appeared on this program with you the day of Bosnia's Dayton agreement, I don't think anyone in the world predicted it would be this good. No one, and you will recall this vividly, no one thought that there would be no casualties as your introductory piece showed -- no UN.... excuse me, no U.S. or NATO casualties. After all the UN peacekeepers had over 1,000 casualties before Dayton.

Most people thought it was a partition agreement dividing the country into two different countries, and many people said publicly, including many people on your program, that the U.S. and NATO troops would be running a demilitarized zone like Korea or Cyprus between the two halves.

Today you can drive all the way across the country from Banja Luka to Sarajevo, even to Srebrenica, up to Belgrade without ever stopping, and the line between those two entities on the map you just showed is like going from New York to Connecticut.

There is a single economy and a single currency. The military has belatedly but finally been integrated, fixing one of the mistakes that was made at Dayton, and the police reform is now under way. And today in Washington, Secretary Rice and Undersecretary Burns moved the ball forward.

So the answer to your question in short is, on a scale of minimum and maximum expectations, this did better than anyone predicted, and those of us involved in it are very, very pleased that we can look back now, ten years later, and say, this was a success.

JIM LEHRER: You agree with today's agreement that there are things that need to be fixed, there needs to be another stage, right?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: On Nov. 21, 1995, at Dayton, and on your program the next day, I said that Dayton was far from perfect. I said that we had had to choose between peace and justice.

There's no such thing as a perfect peace. When people are at war, in order to stop the war, each side has to give something up. And they were bludgeoned into doing it by American-led NATO bombing and by the NATO force, which included the 20,000 Americans that you mentioned earlier.

By the way, that was a lot of troops. If you pro rate the troops we sent to Bosnia against Iraq, it would be 600,000 troops in Iraq, not 150,000. But to get back to your question -

JIM LEHRER: What needs to be fixed?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: We thought from the beginning, we really thought that Dayton was flawed, it was imperfect and it needed to be improved.

For the last four years none of that happened, but now there is something going on, and I'm pleased there were these events today in Washington.

JIM LEHRER: The central thing that's come out of this agreement is that there will now be one president. Do you agree that is important instead of three that exist now?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: That's a little bit further than they went today, Jim. They agreed to move towards a single presidency.

JIM LEHRER: They didn't decide to do it. They just decided to start going in that direction. Okay. Got it.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: They couldn't get that far. Listen, at Dayton ten years ago, Milosevic wanted seven presidents; Izetbegovic wanted seven presidents and - excuse me, Izetbegovic, the Bosnian Muslim wanted nine presidents. Tuchman of Croatia wanted seven because they were building off the old Yugoslav model, a very weak presidency.

We wanted one president because three presidents based on ethnicity is undemocratic. Getting it down to three was an achievement. I have always said we should have one president.

And I was very pleased today that Secretary Rice at the lunch where I sat at her table and Undersecretary Burns, who is leading the effort for the Bush administration, both told me that they had promised the participants in these negotiations that what had happened today in Washington was just the beginning of an aggressive reengaged American policy in the Balkans.

And without that... that will lead, I hope to, a single presidency, and it will also address the far more daunting negotiating task ahead in Kosovo.

JIM LEHRER: Now, why does it matter? Why will a single presidency make any difference?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: First of all, Bosnia-Herzegovina is not going to get into the European Union until it has a single president, and it shouldn't have an ethically divided presidency.

Secondly, why does the Balkans matter to us? Well, we went over this a decade ago. When the Balkans are at war, Europe is unstable. When Europe is unstable, we get sucked in.

I know a lot of people opposed our involvement a decade ago, and it was expensive in terms of dollars, and we lost three of our best diplomats there on our first attempt to get into Sarajevo, Bob Frasure, Joe Kruzel, and Nelson Drew. I was very pleased that Condoleezza Rice honored all three of them today at the ceremony.

JIM LEHRER: Refresh our memory as to how they died.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: On the first attempt we made to get into Sarajevo, we couldn't get in by airplane because the airport was under mortar attack. So we were reduced to driving in over the Mt. Igman Road, a winding, narrow road that went through what Bob Frasure, my deputy, called "Indian country," by which he meant Bosnian Serbs were there shooting at us.

Gen. Wes Clark and I were in the first vehicle, and the rest of our team, Joe Kruzel, Bob Frasure and Nelson Drew, were in the second vehicle. They went around the curve and the armored personnel carrier they were in went off a very steep ravine and tumbled some 400 yards straight down. All three of them were killed.

We brought them back to Washington, buried them in Arlington Cemetery and President Clinton met us there and sent us back out into the field immediately to show his determination. And we dedicated our negotiation to them, and today Condoleezza Rice honored the three widows and the children, and it was a very moving part of today's ceremony.

JIM LEHRER: Another thing, Mr. Ambassador, also remind us, particularly in the current climate as it relates to Iraq, this was opposed by Congress and even the public opinion polls, right? I mean, to take military action was not a popular move.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Well, you're absolutely right, Jim. 70 percent of the American public opposed it, thinking that it would mean more casualties, like the UN peacekeepers. But Congress, the House of Representatives under Newt Gingrich voted three to one against the policy on the day before Dayton.

President Clinton, showing the kind of commander-in-chief leadership that made us proud to be part of his administration, said that he would fulfill his responsibilities as commander-in-chief and he would do what was constitutionally necessary, and he sent in those troops.

Everyone was wrong about the casualties, even the Pentagon, Jim. They had body bags at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany ready to go. The secretary of defense said that the casualties would be at least as high as the Gulf War.

And, as you said in your setup piece, there were no casualties. So it was a very -- I don't think it's unfair to say that this was a successful peace agreement, perhaps the most successful since President Carter's Camp David 1978 agreement.

And I also think that it was very remarkable that the Bush administration honored today an achievement of the Clinton administration, but I think it was a wonderful thing to do in a bipartisan spirit.

JIM LEHRER: The lack of casualties and the fact that there's been no outbreak of violence since, is that because the NATO troops were there and they forced the peace, or was it really the people themselves said they were tired of war and they stopped on their own? What caused it to be peaceful for so long?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: The first thing is that the UN forces went in with a poor and weak mandate and took over 1,000 casualties -- peacekeepers chained to trees. It was a low point for the UN. Learning from that lesson, we did not let the UN even come to Dayton.

We wrote a very tough military annex -- Gen. Clark was the primary drafter of that - in which we gave NATO the authority, to put it bluntly, to shoot first and ask questions later.

The first time someone was challenged, they shot and killed the man. There were no more incidents. Then we shut down the radio television from the Bosnian Serbs, which was preaching racial hatred. And we took a very aggressive position throughout. And I think that was critically important.

The second point I would make is that we had a peace plan, unlike Iraq. We went in with a 200-page peace plan this thick with annexes on everything, and we got everyone to participate in it. And everyone agreed on the special powers that you mentioned earlier that Lord Paddy Ashdown has carried out so effectively in the last three years. I'm very sorry that he's leaving, but he is. and I'm concerned that we keep the same kind of pressure in the region.

So there was a commitment; it was international. It didn't have the kind of bitter acrimony with our European allies that plagued the Iraq thing. One more point, Jim, al-Qaida. We wrote into the agreement that we would give ourselves the unilateral right to get rid of foreign elements. There were over 1,000 people in the country who belonged to what we then called Mujahideen freedom fighters.

We now know that that was al-Qaida. I'd never heard the word before, but we knew who they were. And if you look at the 9/11 hijackers, several of those hijackers were trained or fought in Bosnia. We cleaned them out, and they had to move much further east into Afghanistan. So if it hadn't been for Dayton, we would have been fighting the terrorists deep in the ravines and caves of Central Bosnia in the heart of Europe.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Mr. Ambassador, congratulations. You feel good about what you did ten years ago, do you?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Well, of course all of us today felt an amazing feeling, Jim, that something that had happened ten years ago had held. And even the criticisms -- and your criticisms of it are absolutely correct -- we all agree with those. The criticisms showed that it was worth criticizing.

And now I hope that the Bush administration with Condi Rice and Nick Burns will take it to the next level and also take on Kosovo, which is going to be much tougher.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Ambassador, thank you very much.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Thank you, Jim.

FOCUS - WIRELESS CITY

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: Wireless Philadelphia; recovering from Katrina; and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. Special correspondent Terence Smith reports our media unit story on Philadelphia.

TERENCE SMITH: Philadelphia is one of the nation's oldest cities. Its revolutionary roots are on display all over town. Now, Philadelphia intends to join the digital revolution and become one of the nation's most up-to-date cities.

Mayor John Street is the driving force behind Wireless Philadelphia, a project to make the city of brotherly love the first of its size in the nation to have wireless broadband access available to everyone, regardless of income, at below- market prices. The mayor sees it as an essential 21st century utility.

MAYOR JOHN STREET: I believe the day will come when having access to the Internet will be just as common as having water in one's house or having, you know, some form of electricity or some form of heat.

TERENCE SMITH: The city recently announced a deal with Earthlink, an Internet service provider, to build a wireless system within a year using some 3,000 small antennas like these around the city. The mayor believes it will attract new businesses and tourists as well as giving its own citizens a technological leg-up.

MAYOR JOHN STREET: We want a 135-square-mile hot spot so that when a person visits the city of Philadelphia and registers in a hotel and pays $10 a day, they can be connected everywhere, all the time, 24 hours a day, wherever they go in the entire city of Philadelphia.

TERENCE SMITH: Some people are already taking advantage of "WiFi," or wireless fidelity Internet access in this experimental hot spot at the city's famed Love Park. Anyone with a laptop or handheld device can get immediate Internet access without plugging into a phone line. In fact, some Internet clubs have begun to gather there.

And computer training is under way, as well. Tech Access, PA, A local non- profit, has assembled lower- income neighbors in this basement at St. Paul's Church. Using the city's pilot WiFi connection, they are learning basic personal computer and Internet research skills.

Over the next year, city officials hope to extend the wireless service to all of Philadelphia's 560,000 homes and 1.5 million residents at rates ranging from $10 to $20 a month. Not surprisingly, private companies such as Philadelphia-based Comcast and Verizon that offer similar services are less than enthusiastic about the city's plan. In fact, Verizon offers both dial-up and wireless Internet access throughout the city.

ERIC RABE: We think that cities ought to go into this with their eyes open.

TERENCE SMITH: Verizon's Eric Rabe thinks wireless Philadelphia is going to hit some bumps in the road.

ERIC RABE: This is a complex business. The technology evolves, probably turns over every three years, so you need to continually invest in the technology. There are customer service issues; somebody has to be there to fix it at 3:00 in the morning if it doesn't work. And frankly, those of us who have been in the network operations business for years do understand how complex this is.

TERENCE SMITH: The mayor hopes the citywide service will close the digital divide, the technological gulf that separates Philadelphia's affluent areas, where more than 90 percent of residents have Internet access, from the impoverished areas, where fewer than 25 percent can get online.

MAYOR JOHN STREET: Wireless Philadelphia will allow low-income families, families that are on the cusp of their financial capacity, to be able to be fully and completely connected. We believe that our public school children should be -- their families have to be connected or else they will fall behind, and, in many cases, never catch up.

TERENCE SMITH: Some of those families live in west Philadelphia in the neighborhood around the People's Emergency Center, a private, non-profit shelter for homeless women and children that launched its own digital inclusion project a year ago.

It is, in effect, a miniature version of what WiFi Philly may look like in the future. At this neighborhood lab, residents, including the youngest, learn how to use computers.

SPOKESMAN: So this sends out an Internet signal?

SPOKESMAN: Yes.

TERENCE SMITH: Others learn to repair and rebuild donated computers in a workshop. Gloria Guard is the center's president.

GLORIA GUARD: What we realized is if we can't get computers into the homes of our constituents and our neighbors and of this neighborhood, there are children in those households who will not be able to keep up in the marketplace. They won't be able to keep up with their schoolmates. They won't be able to even apply for college. So we thought it was really important to get computer skills and connection to the Internet into as many homes as possible.

TERENCE SMITH: To do that, the center created its own hotspot that provides wireless Internet access to about 100 homes in the surrounding five-block area.

GLORIA GUARD: We've put antennas from rooftop to rooftop, all the properties that we own or friends of ours, and that bounces out there. And then, after one year, those people who are the recipients will roll off and migrate onto a mainstream system because this is really just a pilot.

TERENCE SMITH: Diane Mapp is a 23- year-old single mother who took the training program, bought a rebuilt computer for $125 and uses it for everything from job hunting to schoolwork.

We brought Mapp and some other low-income women together at the People's Emergency Center to discuss how the digital inclusion project has made a difference in their lives.

DIANE MAPP: I am currently enrolled in community college Philadelphia and I use it for different essays, different homework activities and stuff like that. It's very hard for me to use the computers at school -- they're overcrowded -- and it's better for me to use it at home. And I get to study and also spend time with my kid, all in the same place.

TERENCE SMITH: Veronica Meyers is a 50-year-old teacher who lives in the neighborhood and gets her wireless service through the center for $5 a month.

VERONICA MEYERS: I wouldn't have any Internet access if it were not for this program, and it's just been really lifesaving for me. I do all of the small things that everybody does -- pay bills and banking and shopping.

TERENCE SMITH: Tania Sultana is a 17-year-old from Bangladesh who learned English on the computer and now repairs them.

TERENCE SMITH: Tania, so, as part of this, here at the shelter, you learned to take computers apart and put them back together again?

TANIA SULTANA: Yes. Like, now, like, most of my friends or family members, when their computer is messed up or, you know, something is wrong with it, they'll call me and they'll be, like, "Tania, I have a problem." I'm like, "okay, I'm not a technician, but I'll come and help you."

GLORIA GUARD: We train these young guys and girls, and they go out into the neighborhood; they're our help desk. And these young people, instead of getting involved in problematic issues in their neighborhoods, they are now considered the computer czars, the tech geeks, the stars of their schools and of the classrooms because they have this kind of expertise.

TERENCE SMITH: While this project has been widely praised, government-subsidized wireless service such as WiFi Philly remains controversial.

Opponents, including the Internet service providers, labor and education groups, got a bill through the Pennsylvania legislature last year restricting other cities in the state from offering subsidized services when private alternatives are available.

At the national level, two bills are pending on Capitol Hill, one similar to the Pennsylvania bill and one that prevents states from banning city-sponsored wireless systems.

Verizon's Eric Rabe:

ERIC RABE: Our view is that this is potentially extremely unfair. I think, if you think this through for a second, you realize that the city is taxing us, to some degree they are regulating us, and now they're a competitor of ours. And I think you have to question whether that's a really genuinely fair situation.

TERENCE SMITH: Mayor John Street:

MAYOR JOHN STREET: It always amazes me that people -- that people raise this argument. There are public utilities all over the country. We own a public utility. We own a gas utility right here. In the end, in the absolute end, Wireless Philadelphia will be a big boost not only to the city of Philadelphia, but to our suburbs, and, in the end, to our commonwealth.

TERENCE SMITH: In fact, private enterprise may already be responding to the competitive gauntlet thrown down by Philadelphia and other smaller cities.

Not long after wireless Philadelphia announced a pricing structure of $10 to $20 for its service, Verizon rolled out a new offer of its own.

AD SPOKESMAN: More and more people are getting it, getting Verizon Online DSL, that is, especially now that it's just $14.95 a month.

TERENCE SMITH: The battle over whether WiFi should be a public utility or a private enterprise and how it should be priced may just be warming up.

FOCUS - CHALLENGES

JIM LEHRER: Now, Louisiana's long road back from Hurricane Katrina, and to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: After the storm, more than million residents were forced to relocate across the country in new home, temporary shelters and hotel rooms.

First the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, said it wouldn't pay for hotel rooms after Dec. 1, a decision that sparked complaints around the country.

But today FEMA's acting director, David Paulison, said the deadline is extended.

DAVID PAULISON: We want these families to be back in some sense of normalcy. We want them in decent housing. We want them out of these hotels and motels and into apartments.

And let me make this really clear: We are not kicking people out into the streets. We are simply moving them from hotels and motels into apartments that we will continue to pay for. So we're not stopping money flowing. We just don't want to pay for hotels and motels anymore. We want to now start paying for apartments and to move those families in there. And I think that is the right thing to do.

RAY SUAREZ: Most evacuees came from the hardest-hit state, Louisiana. Officials there are struggling to come up with the funds to finance reconstruction. So far the federal government has approved more than $62 billion for hurricane recovery efforts, but much of that money has not filtered down to state and local governments.

The overwhelming problems have been the focus of a special legislative session in Baton Rouge ending today. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco opened the session two-and-a-half weeks ago, telling legislators they would have to make tough choices.

GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO: The challenges presented by our budget crisis are some of the most difficult we have ever faced. We, are very simply put, adjusting to reality. These times and our citizens demand change.

I'm cutting some of your favorite programs. Some of you will consider these cuts way too painful, and you'll try to avoid them. Let me warn you, this is just the beginning.

RAY SUAREZ: The prospect of painful cuts dominated the session. More than $600 million was trimmed from the state budget. Legislators also complained about FEMA and the lack of coordination between federal, state and local authorities.

State Sen. Joe McPherson.

SEN. JOE McPHERSON: FEMA has kind of been like drunk sailors in here the way they've spent their money and thrown it around. A drunk sailor would probably at least know where he put the money the next morning. He could check for receipts and lipstick and stuff.

RAY SUAREZ: The legislature did make progress on several key issues. It passed stricter building codes statewide, set aside low-interest loans for businesses and gave the governor control over most of New Orleans' troubled public schools; a handful of public schools in the city are expected to reopen next month. But some said the session had not addressed the most fundamental issues.

SEN. DONALD CRAVINS: We need to get people into the New Orleans area where they can work and make and contribute in the rebuilding of the city. And, of course, the time has passed now. We're certainly not going to do it this time.

RAY SUAREZ: Only about 15 percent or some 70,000 of the pre-Katrina population has returned to New Orleans. Small businesses and restaurants that once contributed to the city's vibrant atmosphere and tax base remain boarded up, paperwork for loans caught up in red tape.

Those who have returned in neighborhoods like Algiers and the French Quarter face an uphill battle. Many homes are filled with mold. Much of the city lacks electricity and clean water. And piles of debris still litter city blocks.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, three assessments of how the recovery effort is going. Anthony Patton is president and founder of EBONetworks, a marketing company geared toward urban professionals. He's a member of Mayor Nagin's commission to bring New Orleans back. William Hudnut, the former mayor of Indianapolis and congressman. He is now the mayor of Chevy Chase, Maryland, and senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute. He was in New Orleans last week as part of a panel that made rebuilding recommendations to Mayor Nagin's commission. And Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a research and policy organization; he is the vice chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, a state rebuilding commission established by Gov. Blanco.

Anthony Patton, let's start with you. I want to get an impression from everybody as we approach three months how things are going. How is the recovery going in New Orleans?

ANTHONY PATTON: Well, the recovery, as told by your summary, is very slow at this point in time. Only 70,000 of our residents have homes that are inhabitable. We want to make sure that the headlines stay in front of the newspapers, that we still need help. We're looking for the federal government to continue to reach out and support us as it did when it pulled some of us off our rooftops. We are in dire straits from our perspective of governmental support, as well as private sector support. We're looking for businesses and those to reach out and help us.

We first want to start by thanking all of the business community and the cities in the southern area that have taken us in and allowed us to have a temporary home, but there's no home like New Orleans for us. We want to go back, and we feel like we have the right to go back, and we hope that the city opens its doors to all of its citizens and allows that to happen.

RAY SUAREZ: Walter Isaacson, your quick overview.

WALTER ISAACSON: I think people are working really hard to get it back. New Orleans has a magic to it that draws people back, as Anthony just said. People want to come home and help. We know we have to do most of it ourselves, and people like myself who live up here in Washington but are from New Orleans, now we're feeling the tug. We want to go back. So I think it's going to lure people back.

I think we're very thankful for all the support we've gotten from around the country, from Washington and other places, but we know we have to do the bulk of the work ourselves. And every time I go back to New Orleans and back to Louisiana in the past three or four weeks, I get kind of surprised by how hard people are working and how the spirit is getting back there.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, you were urban chief executive for a long time, Mayor Hudnut. You just got back. What did you see?

WILLIAM HUDNUT: Clean up the streets, do what you can to bring the city back in a visible way right away. And that is really, frankly, not happening. It's not happening in Jefferson Parish, either, as you drive in from the airport. You see mounds of trash. The mayor says there are seven million tons of trash to pick up; they've picked up two and a half.

Well, before people are going to get any kind of a positive impression, you have got to get the city cleaned up and made safe. And that seems to me to be the number-one priority -- and affordable housing for a lot of people who need it and who can't come back until they get it. So these three things -- safety, cleanliness, if you want to put it that way and affordable housing -- are in my opinion the three top priorities.

And it makes me sad because when you compare the slowness which has already been mentioned of this recovery to what happened after 9/11, you wonder, who is fixing this? Who is in charge? Is there a paralysis here of goodwill? Are people all saying the right things but there is no forward movement? Sure there's been some, and certainly this there is a resilient spirit in the city. And certainly we all believe, I think, that death is a precondition for rebirth.

But the fundamental question is: How are you going to make your -- walk the talk? How are you going to do it? They need people down there to really take charge and fix it.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Walter Isaacson, $62 billion was appropriated by Congress. How come it's not being spent more quickly? How come the conditions are just as Mayor Hudnut described?

WALTER ISAACSON: Well, first of all, the money that's been appropriated hasn't gone to the state or the localities. That was for the federal relief effort like FEMA, the Corps of Engineers and stuff.

I think Louisiana made a mistake by putting in a $200 billion request a few weeks ago -- or a couple months ago when we had a lot of goodwill from around the country. We were just asking for too much. Everything was put on that wish list.

But, by the way, nothing got passed. That bill didn't get passed. So there have been no appropriations that went directly to the state and localities.

And we do hope that people will realize we've set the priorities, which are get the levees and coastal protection back, get small business loans back, and we will do the rest. We in Louisiana will do the rest. We're working really hard because we love the state so much.

WILLIAM HUDNUT: I'm not an engineer, Ray, but I think that they need to consider the urban type of levee rather than the agrarian levee where they just mound up dirt. Everybody has promised that it will be back to a Category Three level by next summer. That's fine. But most of the residents want a Category Five protection, a protection from a Category Five hurricane. And that's going to take many years and billions of dollars to do.

But where is the money, the $60 some billion you talk about going? You still have streets that are lined with cars that are covered with mud and streets that are covered with mud and refrigerators, you know, hundreds of refrigerators all over the place. And somebody has got to start making the cleanup.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, I hear you, Anthony Patton agreeing. Where are the bottlenecks? Why aren't Mayor Hudnut's questions being answered?

ANTHONY PATTON: Well, first of all I agree with Mayor Hudnut. And I want to say hello to him. The Urban Land Institute came down and did sought research and gave us some final recommendations to the commission to form a business plan.

There were three things that I took away from that that I thought were very interesting. Number one was government efficiencies and how to change the structure of Louisiana. We do know that the reputation of our state has not been one that has been a good one. We understand that that is a slowdown, and we're addressing that issue as we speak. I think the mayor and the governor are becoming on board with one another; our commissions which the mayor and the governor both have one, are working in sync. We understand that we have to speak with one voice to Congress and to the president in order to get what we need to happen.

Also, one of the big bottlenecks from my perspective, and I sit on the economic development aspect of the commission, is that we're not getting money directly down to the small businesses. Tim Ryan, who's the chancellor of the University of New Orleans, offered a report that suggested pre-Katrina we had 115,000 businesses in New Orleans, and by Jan. 1, we'll lose 60,000 of those because we don't have the resources.

The SBA process has been a process that has just taken way too long. I know they're working on solutions. They've just recently offered a go loan, which is supposed to help speed up the process, but the problem is if we can't bring back, and I agree completely with Walter, that if we can just open up the playing field, we're not asking for everything to be paid for, but if we can ignite our small businesses, which represents in New Orleans alone 85 percent of all jobs, if we can ignite the small businesses, we'll bring back our own city by ourselves. We just need some support.

RAY SUAREZ: Walter Isaacson, people are probably sitting in the rest of the country and hearing Bill Hudnut talk about cars that are still on the street, hearing Anthony Patton talk about small-business loans that aren't being made and saying somebody ought to take care of it.

Well, is there a somebody, is there a controlling authority that lights a fire under things that aren't going, says yes to good ideas, no to bad ones and pushes this along?

WALTER ISAACSON: Yes, the Louisiana Recovery Authority is now, as Anthony said very well, working very well with the City of New Orleans and all the other parishes. So we've set to clear eight priorities. We've set the spending requests. We've gotten them down to a reasonable level. We have Don Powell, who's a very good, you know, a respectable person who is running for the federal government now, being the coordinator.

We have Deloitte and Touche coming in as the auditing firm so we don't squander any of the money, we don't misspend it. We have zero tolerance for corruption. And, like Anthony said, we're not asking for everything.

The main things that would be helpful right now is to get the small businesses back because that doesn't cost the country something. That will end up helping the economy. If we can just get those small business loans, then those people like they are on Magazine Street now, because they're back, they've cleaned up Magazine Street.

And once you get the businesses back, that's where you get the people working and cleaning up. So you need right now, and I think Anthony said it to, get the Small Business Administration and others really fast to cut the red tape and give those 90-day bridge loans so people can come back right away.

RAY SUAREZ: Okay. Quickly, if only one out of every seven New Orleanians are back in the city, if you get those small businesses open, are there people to come in and be customers, are there people to work the counters?

WALTER ISAACSON: Oh, absolutely. When I go back in the city now, all the restaurants are crowded. Anything that's open, people are flocking to. We need to get more people back because we have a lot of jobs and a lot of work to do.

WILLIAM HUDNUT: They're not going to come back until you get some affordable housing. Mayor Nagin told me that one of the critical needs is affordable housing immediately for the musicians. The Edge is out there trying to hustle musical instruments from around the country to replace the ones that were lost because New Orleans has this great culture. And they have to build on the food and on music and on jazz and on sports. I hope the Saints stay there and the basketball team. They have got a port authority that is a great economic driver for them. And they need to, in my opinion, just get going if you want to put it that way.

That's why the ULI panel that was down there all last week, we interviewed over 300 people. We have 50 people down there from our side interviewing 300 or more. And we recommended the construction or the creation of a temporary financial control board in order to do some of the things that Walter was just talking about -

ANTHONY PATTON: Great idea -

WILLIAM HUDNUT: -- to get control of this and to funnel the money and to make sure that it's not siphoned off into -- a lot of people around the country would call it corrupt endeavors.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, let me say to Anthony Patton, we have two guests in Washington urging people to go back to New Orleans. If you're down there living in one of the surrounding city, place you've been evacuated to, what is there? Is there any confidence that there is help waiting for you when you get back to town that you'll have help finding a place to live, getting the electricity turned back on, making sure your sewer is reconnected?

ANTHONY PATTON: Well, that's definitely an issue that is being addressed. I will tell you with confidence that ULI made an excellent recommendation that communication has got to improve, and I think that it will. However, I do want to say something about when we had the opening of the show, I overheard an interview from the FEMA representative talking about moving people out of hotels and into apartments.

And, quite frankly, the people of New Orleans feel like that's the wrong move. You're locking people into one-year contracts outside the city of New Orleans. And what that does is it stops those people from partaking in the re-growth of New Orleans and the rebuild.

I would suggest use those same resources, put people up down here in New Orleans next to their home in the hotels or wherever we can find space for them and allow them to be involved in rebuilding their own neighborhoods.

And I think you'll find things will happen a lot quicker because they're personally invested and it probably will save the taxpayers money, too, because folks want to build their homes; people want to be back home.

RAY SUAREZ: And, Walter, I'm guessing, very briefly, that you'd say amen to exactly that.

WALTER ISAACSON: Amen. Come home to New Orleans, everybody should come home, and even people like me who haven't lived there for a while, it's time for us to come home. It's a great place to live

WILLIAM HUDNUT: They have got to come home to homes or houses. And some of that can't be rebuilt for several years. We have got to face it. New Orleans is going to become a smaller city, but we do hope they'll come home.

That's why the ULI is holding various different public hearings in Dallas and Houston, Atlanta, Baton Rouge and Memphis in order to give those people an insight into what is happening and how they can get home.

RAY SUAREZ: Guests, thank you all very much.

JIM LEHRER: Tonight's editions of Nova and Frontline focus on the science and political aftermaths of Hurricane Katrina. Please check your local listing for the times.

ESSAY - TELL ME A STORY

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt wonders whether truth is more in fiction or fact.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: In the Sunday New York Times Book Review, there was an interesting article by Rachael Dinadio about the novelist V.S. Naipaul, who spoke of the necessity of writing nonfiction because, he said, "If you spend your life just writing fiction, you're going to falsify your material." He implied that without nonfiction, a grasp of the truth is incomplete.

Events in publishing seem to support this. The Atlantic Monthly has cut back on fiction. Publishers avidly seek nonfiction that promises a big, quick sale rather than serious novels in part because the market beckons but also because of the wider idea Naipaul was getting at. Where does the truth of experience lie -- in what you see in the real world or in what you make up?

There are some kinds of literature to which the question does not apply. Autobiographical novels about coming of age, such as Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" or Baldwin's "Go Tell it on the Mountain." Both novels decorate the facts of the author's young manhood with invented names, places and thoughts to make sense of reality, the deeper sense that only dreams can unearth.

But if the truth is what you're after, you have to define the terms. An essay question: Compare and contrast "The Perfect Storm," nonfiction, with "Moby Dick" -- fiction to a tee -- two first-rate tales of terror and obsession at sea and of the stubborn pursuit of men for profit.

Yet, we will remember Captain Ahab long after we've forgotten "The Perfect Storm" not because Ahab was believably real, but because he was not.

Truth is preposterous both in fiction and in fact. Which really happened, the events of 9/11 or Welles's "War of the Worlds"? Much less significantly, which was harder to believe, last year's Red Sox or the musical "Damn Yankees?" For me I can tell you which was harder to take.

The test of endurance has to do with the quality of the story. The choice in and of writing is not Naipauls', it seems to me, is the story worth telling, whether it happened or it didn't.

When a child asks, tell me a story, he's not asking for fact or fiction, just something wonderful. Both creationists and scientists are single-mindedly devoted to great stories, Adam, Eve, God and Satan, no more or less than frogs birds, apes and us. The stories are not to be confused in the classroom. But when it comes to individual truth, neither story falsifies the material.

In his autobiographical novel, "Manchild in the Promised Land," Claude Brown offers a way to see fiction and nonfiction as both factual and fanciful as the truth is itself. In a story about growing up in the hell of Harlem in the 1960's, Brown leaves us stunned equally with belief and disbelief.

"You might see someone get cut or killed," he writes in the novel's last lines. "I could go out on the street, and I would see so much that when I came in the house I'd be talking and talking. Dad would say, "Boy, why don't you stop that lyin'. You know you didn't see all that. You know you didn't see nobody do that.' But I knew I had."

I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: At least 21 people died after a suicide car bomb attack on Iraqi police in Kirkuk. A federal grand jury in Miami indicted the so-called dirty bomb suspect, Jose Padilla, on conspiracy charges. And Bosnia's three major ethnic groups agreed on a new constitution; they did so ten years after the Dayton Accords ended the Bosnian war.

We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.