The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER:

JIM LEHRER: Good evening, I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; a look at why U.S. intelligence got it wrong in Iraq with former CIA Directors Jim Woolsey and John Deutch; moments from last night's Democratic presidential debate in South Carolina; analysis by Mark Shields and David Brooks; a conversation with the prime minister of Turkey; and a Richard Rodriguez essay on a changing America.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Bush today again declined to support an outside investigation into the pre-war intelligence on Iraq's weapons. A number of Democrats and Republicans are asking for an investigation. And former chief weapons inspector David Kay said it's vital to find out why U.S. Intelligence believed Iraq had illegal weapons. So far, none has been found. Today, the president did not mention an outside probe. Instead, he said this:

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts. I want to be able to compare what the Iraqi survey group has found with what we thought prior to going into Iraq.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have more on the intelligence failures before the Iraq War, right after this News Summary. In Iraq today, the Dutch embassy in Baghdad came under rocket fire late today. The building was empty at the time and no one was hurt. As of today, American casualties stand at 519 troops killed from combat and other causes. More than 2,900 have been wounded or hurt in accidents. Israeli forces raided Bethlehem today to retaliate for a deadly suicide attack. They dynamited the home of the man who blew up a bus in Jerusalem yesterday. That bombing killed ten people and wounded more than 50. The annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, neared its climax today. Some two million people converged there under heavy security. They heard a Muslim cleric appeal for divine help to Muslim "holy warriors" everywhere. The pilgrims move next to the site where the prophet Muhammad delivered his last sermon in 632, A.D. The Democratic presidential front-runner, John Kerry, came under new fire today from his rivals. Wesley Clark attacked Kerry for criticizing affirmative action in 1992. Clark said, "when you make a mistake, you ought to fess up to it, take responsibility for it, and correct it." And Howard Dean said the country needs "a doer, not a talker." He said, "Senator Kerry is a fine person, but he hasn't accomplished much in the Senate." Kerry defended his record against both charges. We'll have more on the democratic race later in the program. The Bush administration insisted today it did not mislead congress on the cost of overhauling Medicare. The president's new budget puts the cost at $534 billion over ten years. That's far more than the Congressional Budget Office estimated when the bill passed last November. A White House spokesman said today the new estimate wasn't ready until now, but Republicans and Democrats demanded an explanation. The economy kept growing in the fourth quarter of 2003. The Commerce Department reported that today. It said the Gross Domestic Product increased at a 4 percent rate from October to December. That was strong, but less than expected. And it was just half the rate in the previous quarter. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 22 points to close at 10,488. The NASDAQ fell two points to close at 2,066. For the week, the Dow lost nearly 1%. The NASDAQ more than 2 percent. That's it for the news summary tonight. Now it's on to failures of U.S. Intelligence; the Democrats South Carolina debate; shields and brooks; the Turkish prime minister; and a Richard Rodriguez essay.

FOCUS - INTELLIGENCE FAILURE

JIM LEHRER: The growing uproar over pre-war intelligence on Iraq, triggered by the resignation and remarks of chief weapons inspector David Kay. And to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: After six months running the CIA-led Iraq survey group, Kay declared this week that the prewar intelligence about Iraq's weapons program was "almost all wrong." There were no significant stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons nor any evidence that any had been produced in recent years, he said. Kay called for an independent inquiry to identify the failures in intelligence gathering and analysis or risk repeating them. For insight on what might have gone wrong and how to fix it, we get the perspective of two former directors of central intelligence. James Woolsey was President Clinton's first CIA director, he is now a vice president at the consulting firm Booth Allen and serves on Secretary Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board and John Deutch, succeeded Woolsey as CIA Director in the Clinton administration. He is now a professor at MIT. Welcome to you both.

Professor Deutch, as you know, David Kay who believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq read all the pre-war intelligence estimates, went to Iraq and said the evidence on the ground didn't match the estimates. How could so many people have been so wrong?

JOHN DEUTCH: Well, Margaret, you have to salute David Kay for having said we were wrong. Intelligence is always a difficult business, and it is very important when you make an estimate and you learn that the facts on the ground are different from what you thought, that you start out by admitting that you made a mistake, that you were wrong. It is only by admitting that you're wrong that you can move on to prepare ourselves better for doing weapons of mass destruction intelligence in the years to come. So I am a great, great admirer of what David Kay has done. I admire him for having said we were wrong. We were wrong and that's the first step in making our intelligence better for the future.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me just follow up with one question. He did also point out that intelligence has been wrong, erring on the other side say about the Libyan and Iranian weapons programs, underestimating them. Is there some special challenge, intelligence wise, in assessing the weapons capabilities of other countries? And if so, what is it?

JOHN DEUTCH: It's a tremendously difficult job. Most of the countries who are trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction are closed societies. They are interested in keeping their efforts clandestine. They have secret programs. There are parts of the world which are not as well known to us as our own surroundings. So each nation which is seeking a nuclear weapon or chemical or biological weapons, whether we are talking about North Korea or Iran or the cases of Libya that we've been recently learning about, they represent especially difficult and demanding intelligence channels. But it is critical for the security of the United States going forward that we focus on this need to get excellent intelligence, reliable and accurate intelligence on weapons of mass destruction on these countries.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Woolsey, what's your view about why the evidence didn't match the estimates and what the special challenges are?

R. JAMES WOOLSEY: In addition to the difficulties john pointed out about how hard this is, moving against closed societies and getting intelligence from closed societies. The secret of events is interesting. We did a good job of get is intelligence as long as the inspectors were there. Not so much the fact that they turned everything up. They flushed people. The Iraqis would leave some place and move something somewhere else or would come up on a communication and say we have to hide that from the inspectors. That helped a lot. And then after 1998 when the inspectors were kicked out, we had five years in which things were very hard to get information about. Satellites don't tell you much if things are inside or underground. Communication intercepts they were very careful about and some people said, including David Kay last night we would have done a lot better if we had better human intelligence. The real irony here is that it looks, from what David has said and others -- that the Iraqis were all lying to one another. Saddam's scientists were lying to him about what they were working on apparently.

MARGARET WARNER: So they could get money.

R. JAMES WOOLSEY: So they would get money and not really do the work. A number of people have said that Iraq's generals honestly thought that although they didn't have chemical weapons as the war was about to start, the unit to the right of them and the unit to the left of them each one thought they did have weapons. So someone was lying to them. If we had done a superb job, if George Tenet had done a superb job of penetrating the Iraqi military and had several generals on his payroll as assets and informants, they may well have provided even more information that is false. This is a very complicated and difficult situation.

MARGARET WARNER: What is your view of that, Professor Deutch, how important human intelligence is versus technical means as they call it, satellite and communication intercepts and whether the balance has gotten off in recent years.

JOHN DEUTCH: There is no question about it that human intelligence is vital in our effort to gain intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. Every director of Central Intelligence knows the special contribution and the importance of building up and doing the best one can to get reliable and important human sources in countries of concern. But we don't have to choose between technical intelligence and human intelligence. Indeed, working together, human intelligence and technical intelligence, is a much more effective way of gaining information for our intelligence community. When the New England Patriots go out this Sunday, they're not going to talk about an offensive line or linebackers. They're going to talk about how the whole team has to work together. And it's the same in intelligence. Human intelligence by itself is not as strong as if you have technical intelligence -- communications intelligence, for example, working with human collection in an integrated way, that's what you have to seek to establish in the community.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Woolsey, David Kay said that there was really a history here, and that at some point 20 or more years ago, the U.S. moved more away from the human intelligence, at least in terms of having American spies, and relied on foreign intelligence services, perhaps, and of course on these technical means; and probably in this case the exiles. Are all of those inferior to actually having American spies? And if so, how do you get American spies to penetrate, as Mr. Deutch is saying, closed societies and regimes like this one?

R. JAMES WOOLSEY: The Americans would generally be case officers, recruiting spies, recruiting assets say that are inside the Iraqi military. It is very difficult to do if you are not inside the country. You have to recruit them somewhere outside. During the Cold War, we were really rather lucky against the Soviets because they had a number of people who sort of defected in place. Thomas Jefferson used to do a lot of recruiting for us. A lot of people got killed over Ames. Dozens of American spies who were soviet citizens got killed. They were people who volunteered and were secret Democrats and wanted to help the United States. It's hard to find people like that and run them as spy fiscal you're not present in the country -- and run them as spies if you are not presented in the country. The Carter administration cut back on intelligence. Reagan built it up some. We were trying to build it up after the Cold War and we had trouble getting money from the Congress for Arabic language instruction and translators and so forth, so there has been a sort of a wave here in our focus on human intelligence. It is terribly important. We shouldn't ever slack off on it. What is ironic here is going against an enemy like Saddam Hussein's regime, which had gone sort of crazy. From what David said, and I find what he said very plausible -- even if we had had Iraqi generals somehow recruited....

MARGARET WARNER: Maybe we did considering.

R. JAMES WOOLSEY: Maybe we did. They may well have been honestly believing that they had weapons of mass destruction and lying to us for the regime. This is a much more complicated situation than just too much of a focus on one type of intelligence and too little on another.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me ask you about another element which I call the group think problem. And again David Kay described it I think in his interview with Jim last night. He said, you know, there was a history here. Saddam had the weapons, used it against his own people. We know the litany. U.N. Inspectors caught them lying over and over again. The inspectors leave in '98. At that point there was a consensus about Saddam Hussein, his regime and his intentions. After that, every little piece of intelligence was just, he said, acceded on to that basic consensus, but there was no real challenge of the consensus ever or reexamination. In fact, he told Jim, there were almost no nay sayers inside the intelligence community. The only nay sayers were really on the outside. Is that a problem? Explain that to us.

JOHN DEUTCH: That was not my experience when I was director of Central Intelligence. I found that the analysts there were well equipped to raise questions. They did so whether they were from the CIA or the other intelligence agencies. They raised questions and they were very willing to look at alternative scenarios and different ideas. Whether that happened in this case, I don't know. But I think that a crucial part of understanding why we made this mistake, is to look at the process professionally that went on inside the National Intelligence Council leading to the estimates. Was the analysis done, was that careful and critical am lit cal thinking done, putting together whatever information we had from all the sources we had, to reach the key judgments that were made? Analysis is a central part of the intelligence process, and it is quite, quite possible that they lost the bubble on this sometime in the '90s, perhaps even when I was director, but most likely after the inspectors left. Understanding that analysis process is terribly important in doing the lessons learned and getting our intelligence systems stronger for the future.

R. JAMES WOOLSEY: Margaret, I think if we have an outside valuation, and at some point it is probably a good idea but there are five going on now. There is still Dulford taking over from Kay. There are two congressional investigations; there's Mr. Kerr out at the CIA and Brent Scowcroft with the foreign intelligence advisory board. They ought to get two or three or four of those out of the way before they do a sixth. But when we do one, it will be interesting to bring some of the other countries in that were deceived because this is not just an American problem or British problem. The Russians thought they had weapons of mass destruction, the French, the Germans did. The Israelis did. The Israelis distributed gas masks to their population worrying about chemical weapons from Saddam's Scuds. So we need to... this is not just something that happened in this country. Everybody agreed that they had weapons of mass destruction of some sort. The question was how many and where and how you might find them with inspectors and the like.

MARGARET WARNER: But briefly, isn't that a real problem -- that everyone keeps thinking it?

R. JAMES WOOLSEY: Well, sure. You do want someone standing back and saying Saddam lies about everything but he may not be lying about having destroyed this. I, myself, said I can't believe Saddam kicked out the inspectors in 1998 in order to unilaterally disarmed. But he may have destroyed some of the systems in the mid-'90s in the New York Times report last April and there was some intelligence from an Iraqi officer interviewed that some of these may have been destroyed at the very last minute as the war started-- also some material from David Kay and the American satellite surveillance saying that some things may have been smuggled out to Syria. We just don't quite know yet about all this.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Deutch, I'm going to ask you a combined final question. One, your view of the need for an independent inquiry. And two, does this call into question the reliability of intelligence estimates about what North Korea has?

JOHN DEUTCH: Well, Margaret, I want to be very clear on this. I think that the intelligence community would be well advised that I wish that my friend and successor, George Tenet, took a forward step here and said we were wrong, and we're going to get to the bottom of why we were wrong and have the initial inquiry done by the professional intelligence agencies themselves to put forward a very complete picture of what went wrong there not to fight this problem, but to get out in front of it. Put out that report, let Congress take a look at it, have an unclassified version that the public can see, and have the initial assessment of what went wrong here calm from the community. I think we turn all too often to outside commissions when we should be asking our professional agencies to carry out the work and be responsible for analyzing and be accountable for what happened. And yes, of course, the experience that we had here in Iraq places our intelligence estimates on other proliferation of weapons of mass destruction issues at issue. There will be more uncertainty. Although, as David Kay noted, there has been notable successes and there have been places where we overestimated as well as underestimated. But it is quite right that we are going to have more doubts about the intelligence estimates on key issues like North Korea.

MARGARET WARNER: Quick final response from you. Do you agree that that's what George Tenet should do? And as a practical matter, can he do it as long as the president is saying no mistakes were made?

R. JAMES WOOLSEY: Some of the other examinations have to go forward before they start yet another one. Margaret, there is one point we need to be clear on. There may be some aspects of this in which they were not wrong because the stockpiles people were talking about could be quite small in absolute terms. Saddam admitted to making 8,500 liters of anthrax. That's 8.5 tons. That's about a garage full of a suburban garage, and if that's reduced to powder, that's four suitcases. How many suitcases full of cocaine or how many garages of marijuana there may be in California, which is the size of Iraq that the authorities don't know about. Heck in Mendocino County alone.

MARGARET WARNER: And we'll have to leave it there. Thank you both very much.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: Another Democratic debate; Shields and Brooks; the prime minister of Turkey; and a Richard Rodriguez essay.

FOCUS - CAMPAIGN 2004

JIM LEHRER: The debate was last night in Greenville, South Carolina, broadcast on MSNBC, moderated by Tom Brokaw of NBC News. Kwame Holman has our report.

KWAME HOLMAN: Unlike in earlier debates, last night the democratic presidential candidates spent little time attacking each other and focused almost all of their criticism on President Bush. Several accused the administration of manipulating pre-war intelligence and rushing to invade Iraq. Moderator Tom Brokaw questioned former Vermont Governor Howard Dean.

TOM BROKAW: All this week, we've been hearing from David Kay, who was the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, saying that the intelligence was almost all wrong. You said that the "books were cooked." Cooking the books means that there was a fraud of some kind in an attempt to achieve something that wasn't, in fact, true. David Kay has said that wasn't the case. He thinks the president was just simply abused by the intelligence agencies.

HOWARD DEAN: Well, I don't think anybody knows for sure, and that's why I support the idea of an independent commission. What we do know is this: The president was not candid with the American people when we went to war. It's why I did not support going to war, even thought I did support the first Gulf War and I did support the Afghanistan War. I simply didn't believe what the president was saying. What we now find out is that the vice president, Dick Cheney, went to the CIA, on at least one occasion and maybe more, sat with middle-level CIA operatives and berated them because he didn't like their intelligence reports. It seems to me that the vice president of the United States, therefore, influenced the very reports that the president then used to decide to go to war.

TOM BROKAW: Senator Kerry, Governor Dean has made a very serious charge against the vice president, saying that he went to the CIA. We know that he did that. But do you believe that he berated middle-level people at the intelligence agency to, in effect, shape the intelligence that he wanted?

SEN. JOHN KERRY: There is a very legitimate question, tom, about what the vice president of the United States was doing at the CIA. There is an enormous question about the exaggeration by this administration. But the most important point, and I think this is the larger issues of how you choose somebody to run and to be president of the United States, the president gave guarantees not just to the Congress and to the American people, but to the world, about how he would conduct himself as president.

KWAME HOLMAN: Retired General Wesley Clark weighed in.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (Ret.): I heard from the pentagon two weeks after 9/11 that the administration was determined to go into Iraq, whether or not there was any connection with 9/11, that they were going to use it as a pretext for invading Iraq. And that was common knowledge in Washington. There should never have been a congressional authorization for the president to have a blank check to take this country to war because everybody knew that's what he intended to do and they knew what the timetable was. It was a politically motivated timetable to go on the 30th of March, just like this 30th of June date. We've got to change this government. We've got a president who is playing politics with national security and we need to hold him accountable, and that's what I want to do. ( Applause )

KWAME HOLMAN: North Carolina Senator John Edwards said the president's heavy focus on national security has left other domestic issues neglected.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS: I think the problem here is the administration's not doing the things, number one, that need to be done to keep this country safe both here and abroad. And number two, the president actually has to be able to do two things at once. This president thinks his presidency is only about the war on terrorism, only about national security. Those things are critical for a commander-in-chief, but as we're going to talk about, I'm sure, going forward, there's a lot the president's not doing-- about jobs lost, about a health care crisis in this country. The president of the United States has to actually be able to walk and chew chewing gum at the same time -- has to be able to do two things at the same time. ( Cheers and applause )

KWAME HOLMAN: The candidates also discussed South Carolina's economy. It has been decimated by overseas competition. The state has lost 65,000 textile jobs in the last ten years. Many voters here blame the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, ratified by congress a decade ago. Brokaw questioned Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman.

TOM BROKAW: Senator Lieberman, NAFTA has become the bogeyman of this campaign, especially among democrats. It was passed by your party.

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN: That's right.

TOM BROKAW: Was it a mistake?

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN: It was not a mistake. Very important to say that all of us up here and all democrats rightfully brag about the Clinton economic record-- 22 million new jobs created in the eight years. Trade was a key part of that. And NAFTA, though it's cost some jobs, has actually netted out 900,000 new jobs that were created by NAFTA.

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: By and large, the American people are not aware of how trade has changed dramatically. It's no longer about protectionism versus free trade. It's about global corporations who are accelerating a race to the bottom, trying to get cheap labor wherever they can get it. That's why we've lost hundreds of textile plants in this country. That's why our steel, automotive, aerospace, shipping and textile industries are in such severe trouble.

KWAME HOLMAN: The Reverend Al Sharpton followed up on Congressman Dennis Kucinich's point.

AL SHARPTON: We need to create jobs. Not only do we need to rescind NAFTA-- and I think we must rescind it. You can't correct it. It has cost jobs, it has sent jobs from this state to Asia and other places. We also must have a public works program. I propose a five-year, $250 billion plan to rebuild the infrastructure, highways, roadways, bridges. We must create jobs. This president has increased the deficit, has not increased jobs, and is embracing the rich at the expense of working class and poor people. And it's doubled in communities of color. Black unemployment in this state is double. We face class and race. I don't think we can tolerate that four more years.

KWAME HOLMAN: The only sharp exchange of the night came after Howard Dean was asked about the cost of the new Medicare prescription drug program. Dean used the opportunity to attack the candidate who replaced him as Democratic frontrunner, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.

HOWARD DEAN: When I was governor, I got everybody in my state who's under 18 health insurance. I got a third of all our seniors prescription benefits. Now, Senator Kerry is the front- runner and I mean him no insult, but in 19 years in the senate, Senator Kerry sponsored nine -- eleven bills that had anything to do with health care; not one of them passed. If you want a president who is going to get results, I suggest that you look at somebody who has executive experience in governing, particularly in health care, particularly somebody who is a doctor who understands these things, who is willing to get stuff done. And I don't think we're going to do that getting somebody from the United States Senate to be the democratic nominee. ( Applause )

TOM BROKAW: Senator, I think they'd say you deserve a response to that.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: Well, one of the things that you need to know as president is how things work in congress, if you want to get things done. ( Applause ) And one of the things that happens in congress is you can, in fact, write a bill, but if you're smart about it, you can get your bill passed on someone else's bill that doesn't carry your name.

KWAME HOLMAN: Voters will go to the polls in South Carolina and six other states on Tuesday.

FOCUS - SHIELDS & BROOKS

JIM LEHRER: And to Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and "New York Times" columnist David Brooks.

Yourassessment of the debate, sir.

MARK SHIELDS: Jim, John Kerry's ahead in the polls in state after state we're told. People are getting on that bandwagon, even as we sit here. We don't know tonight whether John Kerry, that lantern jaw of his is glass in any way because nobody laid a glove on him. I don't know if these guys were all auditioning for vice president or what was going on. But campaigns are about differences, there are differences in value, differences in experience, differences in vision, differences in character, personality and temperament. And, boy, you wouldn't have known it last night.

JIM LEHRER: Even today there were a couple of hits. Dean went ahead and said that we need a doer not a talker, and General Clark also took a hit on Kerry, but it is a different world, isn't it?

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah. I thought at the debate they were going to endorse him at the end. It was so gentle. It was the ten millionth debate of the campaign. We had 10 debates for every voter. And they were all a waste of time, but especially this one.

JIM LEHRER: All a waste of time, David?

DAVID BROOKS: I really think the campaign really got going when they were out on their own giving their own speeches, giving the full presentations of themselves rather than the one-minute versions here. They really -- Napoleon would have taken a chance. Sometimes you just have to take a chance and attack the guy, especially if you are way behind as all the other six are. And none of them took a chance, especially John Edwards, Howard Dean at least took a little chance.

JIM LEHRER: Why is Edwards... of course Edwards is the nice guy, a nice guy. Is he overdoing it?

MARK SHIELDS: Victimized by a public perception of him as the positive candidate. I mean, here he is in South Carolina. He's got NAFTA, which John Kerry voted for and now wants to modify, amplify, whatever, qualify. He's got John Kerry's statement in New Hampshire that, you know, Al Gore didn't really need the South. He could have just carried West Virginia and New Hampshire and he would have been elected.

JIM LEHRER: Brokaw brought that up last night.

MARK SHIELDS: Brought it up. Where was John Edwards? They start talking about textile jobs and he's talking about growing up in a mill town, which is wonderful and it's part of his profile and biography and he means it, but, boy, talk about drawing differences, he didn't do it.

DAVID BROOKS: I think it's in part our fault. We come down so hard on negative advertising, but comparing things is not an attack. It is not a vicious thing. Richard Daly, the first Mayor Daly, used to say politics ain't beanbag. And you've got to be tough about it. But somehow they've determined if they're showing any contrast, somehow that's negative advertising and we've all turned into the League of Women Voters.

JIM LEHRER: Whether we talk about it here, I mean, is there also this kind of lingering thing from Iowa that Gephardt destroyed Dean and Dean destroyed Gephardt and they destroyed each other and that's kind of got everybody on pins and needles?

DAVID BROOKS: It's Iowan cultural hegemony.

JIM LEHRER: Say that again please.

DAVID BROOKS: Iowan cultural hegemony. It's Iowa spreading out. You know, South Carolina, four years ago, Bush was doing push polling; McCain was hitting back. I thought South Carolina was the one place....

JIM LEHRER: Explain what push pulling is.

DAVID BROOKS: That's when you call up somebody and pretend you are doing a poll. And you say, Mark Shields, would you agree that Mark Shields is a terrible person? You ask the leading questions to blacken the person's character. And so that was nasty. I thought South Carolina had a tolerance and I thought we would see a change in mood but we are seeing nothing.

JIM LEHRER: Speaking of change, Mark, Howard Dean did change his campaign manager, Joe Trippy. This is inside baseball, but he replaced Joe Trippy with Roy Neil, who is a former top aide of Vice President Gore. What does that mean?

MARK SHIELDS: It's a campaign very much in turmoil, Jim. I mean, there's been a rather open secret --those of us covering the Dean campaign, that there was great trouble between Joe Trippy. There was just not a great personal relationship between them. There was open talk that there would be changes irrespective of what happened in New Hampshire.

JIM LEHRER: Even if he had won in New Hampshire - won in Iowa --

MARK SHIELDS: There was going to be a change in campaign leadership. But now we've got - now we've got Howard Dean who has gone in the space of two weeks from prohibitive front-runner for the Democratic nomination, to the involuntarily retired list of the taxi squad of American politics. He is not even competing in the February 3 --

JIM LEHRER: He is moving on to Michigan.

MARK SHIELDS: It's a campaign that's very much in turmoil.

DAVID BROOKS: The choice of Neil is paradoxical. He is a very impressive guy. People think a lot of him. He is the consummate Washington insider. He was a lobbyist for the telecommunications industry, Al Gore's chief of staff.

MARK SHIELDS: The Baby Bells. The outsider Bells.

DAVID BROOKS: Okay. Small corporations. And so for the people who have been "Deaniacs" who have been sleeping in tents for three months, it's dispiriting. And so we've got a populist who's a millionaire educated in Sweden, another populist who's a trial lawyer, another populist who's got a millionaire from Yale who's got a lobbyist as a campaign manager. Where is the real populist?

MARK SHIELDS: I guess he's in the White House, David.

DAVID BROOKS: He doesn't pretend to be a populist.

MARK SHIELDS: Oh, sure he does. Wait a minute. Let's go swagger down here and do the Texas two step.

JIM LEHRER: Everybody's a populist.

DAVID BROOKS: I withdraw the comment.

MARK SHIELDS: I'm running as an elitist, Jim. Joe Trippy, though, was interesting. I was out at a couple of events where Dean and Trippy were both there. David is right. The loyalty and affection toward Joe Trippy on the part of the Dean volunteers was legendary. I've known Joe Trippy for 25 years. He was frankly embarrassed by it. He said I'm sorry, Mark. They're coming up, Joe Trippy, you're the guy who did it. You're the architect. They really regarded him as an icon.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. In summary here before we move on to David Kay and weapons of mass destruction, remember people are listening to you now to your answers I'm about to ask you, so be careful what you say. But do you see anybody there catching Kerry, based on just the evidence that is presented last night and what is happening today?

DAVID BROOKS: I vow to use a hot poker on my skin if I veer into the future tense. Nonetheless, it is hard to see somebody beating Kerry. He might sweep the table on Tuesday and then it will be over.

JIM LEHRER: All seven states. If anybody does take him, who would it be?

DAVID BROOKS: Edwards. I think there is a majority in the Democratic Party who does not want Dean and so the only really viable alternative is Edwards.

MARK SHIELDS: I don't argue with that. Maybe perhaps General Clark has concentrated enough time and energy in Oklahoma, he has established a beachhead there but victory has a fragrance all its own and it's the smell of money. Lou Sussman, who is a long time Democratic activist fund-raiser, John Kerry's principal fund-raiser, told me that people who wouldn't take his calls prior to Iowa are now chasing him down and saying, gee Lou, I've been looking for you. I wanted to get this check to you. I've been carrying it around.

IM LEHRER: Dated today but....

MARK SHIELDS: Dated January 1. But it enables Kerry to campaign in places where he isn't physically present. That's the great advantage of money -- through paid television advertising.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. David Kay, the weapon inspector. We just heard the discussion with Woolsey and Deutch. John McCain among others on the Republican side and many Democrats, of course, want an independent investigation of the prewar intelligence. The president has pretty much said no up to this point. What is going on, David?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, there are two things going in the White House. One, the Bush administration has trouble admitting error. Second, there is incredible pressure in the agency itself not to have some kind of investigation. I think it is going to buckle; I hear from people within the administration telling people in the senate that there will be an investigation. But we've just got to have a discussion. This guy, David Kay, is an honest person who came up and said some things that favor the Democrats, if you want to put it in political terms, some things that favor the Republicans that the Bush administration did not lean on the CIA, did not try to influence or cook the books. What happens? We need to have a group of people in Washington who can look at complicated facts and have a discussion about it. We've got a White House....

JIM LEHRER: Right now you've got then a screaming argument.

DAVID BROOKS: If you looked at the Armed Services Committee, you have the Republicans making the incredibly weak case as John Warner tried to do, if you look harder, maybe you'll find them. That's a weak case. Then you had the Democrats reading their prepared questions, which is all gotcha questions about Cheney and Bush and whether they influenced the CIA. There was no serious question of the systemic problem which is what Kay was trying to get at. As he said on the program last night, he was just a little ball being tossed back and forth.

MARK SHIELDS: Jim, Ray LaHood, a very, took loyal congressman from Illinois, took Bob Michael's place in the House told Janet Hook of the LA Times politically the president needs to explain this to the American people, it undermines his ability to talk to the American people about the war on terrorism. I think he is absolutely right and I think that really leads inevitably to an independent commission because the administration finds itself in the truly awkward position right now of saying Bill Clinton made me do it. I mean, they just keep coming back to the 1998 finding and the change of regime. There is a big difference of going on record saying we need a change of regime; we back a change of regime in Iraq and a preemptive strike and invasion and occupation. That demands a much higher and more solid level of intelligence and information before you do that.

JIM LEHRER: But what about David's point that here you have David Kay with no axes to grind and who's saying -- I won't say I, but the people who listened to him come away with the impression that if he did pick up some evidence that the CIA had cooked the books or the pressure had been there, he would come on thisprogram and the world and tell people that. So do you think that that issue of cooking the books makes sense for the Democrats to hang in there short of some kind of smoking gun?

MARK SHIELDS: Without a smoking gun. But I mean there is no question that statements were made that were proved subsequently wrong, absolutely wrong. And an amazing change in American policy and we said gee, well, the Germans knew about it, the French knew about it. The Russians knew about it. None of them went to war. We went to war. That is such a grave and serious act, Jim. Not to beat it into the ground but I'm waiting for the president to express some anger that he was misled, that the information was wrong.

DAVID BROOKS: One of the things they're closed about, the administration - first they tend to be closed in general but secondly because they're confronted with the Democratic Party, Ted Kennedy, Carl Levin, Howard Dean, John Kerry --who can't just say they were wrong, they have to say they lied. They have to come close to accusing them of treason; they can never say they were a little wrong; they made a big mistake, it has to be failure of a good intentions and so they just clam up.

JIM LEHRER: But don't you agree with Mark, this is a huge thing to take your country to war on bad intelligence?

DAVID BROOKS: This goes back decades that our intelligence has been of this quality. That's why they need not just the Pat Roberts report which is about Iraq, which is the Senate investigation; they need to have a much broader report and I suspect the administration is going to have to get there

JIM LEHRER: John Deutch just told Margaret, yes, this casts a doubt on any intelligence that might come on North Korea and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

MARK SHIELDS: And I think it makes it very difficult, Jim, for the president to go before the nation and say we are going to have to take action. We have to initiate. Trust me on this -- absent a full investigation.

JIM LEHRER: Politics aside. All right. Thank you both very much.

CONVERSATION - VIEW FROM TURKEY

JIM LEHRER: Now to Ray Suarez for a conversation with the prime minister of Turkey.

RAY SUAREZ: Recep Tayyip Erdogan is approaching his first anniversary as Turkish prime minister after leading his justice and development party to a landslide victory in the 2002 election. His party has Islamic roots, but Erdogan now proclaims a conservative secular agenda. A month shy of his 50th birthday the former mayor of Istanbul has led his country through tumult in the neighborhood, war and occupation in neighboring Iraq that Turkey appeared ready to join but didn't; a parliamentary decision not to allow American troops to invade Iraq from Turkish soil. The prime minister spoke to us in Washington yesterday where he has met with the president and senior administration officials.

Mr. Prime Minister, welcome to the program.

TAYYIP RECEP ERDOGAN, Prime Minister, Turkey (Translated): Thank you.

RAY SUAREZ: There have been some ups and downs in the Turkish-American relationship over the past twelve to eighteen months. How would you describe where things are today?

TAYYIP RECEP ERDOGAN (Translated): Welt,-- well, I can say that the relationship is very good at the moment. Especially the steps we've both taken in recent times have really helped develop our relationship. And as the result of these bilateral contacts, Turkey and the U.S., I believe, will have an even better relationship and that this strategic partnership will continue and we will have a very positive trend.

RAY SUAREZ: Looking at theconversations that went on between Turkey and the United States over whether or not Turkish military would participate in both the invasion and the occupation of Iraq, how do you assess that today? Turkish troops ended up not participating. Do you think that, on reflection it was better that way?

TAYYIP RECEP ERDOGAN (Translated): A lot of time has passed and I don't believe that there is any benefit in reassessing that situation because that was yesterday. What we're doing today is more important. And what we will do for tomorrow is even more important, and I think we need to discuss that. For example, the U.S. right now is rotating 60,000 troops, and we are using the air base for the rotation of these U.S. troops. We opened up this facility and we are providing the necessary support to the U.S. for the rotation of these troops.

RAY SUAREZ: One of the most critical things that the United States is trying to accomplish this year is to begin the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government. Does Turkey have an interest in what kind of government emerges in Iraq? One model that has been talked about is a federal model where there is power held in the regions, a certain amount of autonomy. Would Turkey not want to see a state structure where the Kurds are largely self-governing?

TAYYIP RECEP ERDOGAN (Translated): Now I would like to say here that if there is a federation based on ethnicity, I don't believe that this will create a healthy democratic structure. In the same way, I also don't believe that a sectarian-based federation will not be healthy for Iraq because there are different ethnic groups in Iraq, there are different religious sects being represented in Iraq, and there are other people having different religions. So having these separate federative structures would I'm afraid perhaps create civil war in Iraq because there is also the issue of interests and how you balance those interests. So we're saying that the territorial integrity of Iraq is very important. We are also saying that the riches, the underground riches of oil and natural resources belong to all of the people in Iraq. That's what we need to underline because we do not wish to see the domination of this or that element or ethnic orientation against or over another one. Another important point is the need to have a census of in Iraq under the auspices of an international organization, following the census, a national a local and national election should be held so that a democratic process can begin; if this process can be initiated, then this will be hope for the Iraqi people. Then they can look to the future for tomorrow because otherwise, Iraq has and will become a training ground for terrorist organizations.

RAY SUAREZ: You are the leader of a party that in the West is often called an Islamist party but perhaps there is a better term for it. You can tell me. But I'm wondering if in your view, Turkey has a very important reason to succeed right now; that the interests of Europe should be watching; that the United States should be watching Turkey demonstrate that an Islamic democracy, a modern place, can be successful and stable in the 21st century.

TAYYIP RECEP ERDOGAN (Translated): Well, let me say at the outset the following: We are not an Islamist party. And I find that term very wrong actually because there cannot be a political party which is Islamist or non-Islamist. This is an expression that actually harms religions. When you look at the political parties around the world, there are two important realities that we come face to face with. Oneis a group that exploits religion and uses religion as an instrument of politics. And there are others which also use politics as a way for individual gain. These kinds of people have failed in Turkey. We are a very different party. From the moment we established our party, we said that we would not be a party using religion as a political instrument. And therefore, our party's identity is conservative Democrats. It is not Islamist. The word "Islamist" is used for example, as radical religious. You can't have a Islamic terrorist organization, for example. You can have radically religious terrorists but you cannot have an Islamic terrorist organization because none of the Islamic traditions allow terrorism. Islam doesn't allow terrorism. And I don't know how this has been really so misrepresented because it is really wrong.

RAY SUAREZ: Okay. So let me use the term "conservative democratic." Turkey is a state with a Muslim majority, and in a part of the world that has not successfully had stable democratic government in many countries.

TAYYIP RECEP ERDOGAN (Translated): What we're trying to do is to do our job. Everyone has religious beliefs and they practice religion in their own way, and we don't want to use that as a means, an instrument of politics. We want to separate the two from each other. One more point: We are a democratic secular country. I see all of the citizens of my country as being equal regardless of what faith they have. This is my job, this is what I have to do. This is my responsibility. I did this and I will continue to do it.

RAY SUAREZ: Mr. Prime minister. Thanks for joining us.

TAYYIP RECEP ERDOGAN (Translated): Thank you very much. And would I like to extend our greetings to all of our American friends. Thank you very much.

RAY SUAREZ: Thank you.

TAYYIP RECEP ERDOGAN: Thank you.

ESSAY - THE NEW AMERICANS

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Richard Rodriguez considers how illegal immigrants are changing America.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: We see them lined up on American streets at dawn's early light. Depending on our point of view, we call them "illegal" or "undocumented." The question preoccupying us now as a nation, from the White House on down, is "them"-- what to do with them? Grant them amnesty? Send them all back? Make them guest workers? But I wonder about us. How they have changed us, even while we have paid them cheaply to wash our restaurant dishes and to pick our apples and to sit with a dying grandparents. For much of the 20th century, we employed Mexicans when it suited us. For example, during the war, we needed Mexicans to harvest our crops. Slowly, mutual dependence was established. A rumor of dollars spread through Mexican villages, and Americans grew accustomed to cheap laboring hands. Now they come, children following the footsteps of parents and grandparents, often at the risk of death or injury. We say about them that they are disrespectful of American laws. But for every illegal worker employed today in America, there is an employer-- one of us-- equally disrespectful of American law. Mexicans reveal our hypocrisy to ourselves. They, in their relentless movement back and forth, are forcing us to see America within the Americas. Long before diplomats and politicians spoke of NAFTA or feckless college students headed to Cancun for spring break, Mexican peasants saw the Americas whole. They -- in Peruvian villages, they know when apples are being picked in the Yakima Valley. Brazilian teenagers know when fishing companies are hiring in Alaska. They -- they know all about us. But now they are forcing us to acquire a working knowledge of them. Because of them, Spanish is, unofficially, the second language of the United States, apparent on signs all over the city. Though we are the employers dispensing dollars at the end of the day or short-changing them or threatening to call the police if they complain, they leave us with an odd sense of powerlessness, for we are not in control of the movements of peoples across the borders. We are not in control because the movement of peoples across the earth is an aspect of tragedy, of circumstances-- drought, plague, civil war, poverty. Peasants all over the world are in movement, violating borders. Even President Bush in announcing his sympathetic proposals for how to deal with them, assumed the given: They are here. We pay them as little as we can, of course, which is how the undocumented, undercut America's working class, white and black. We say about them, sometimes, that "the illegals work very hard, work harder for less than we can get Americans to work." On a carefree weekend, we might suddenly see "them" on the horizon working amidst rows of dusty green. They force us to wonder if we have the courage of such labor or the stamina? Sometimes, Americans will compare these people to their own great-grandparents. The difference, people say, is that these Mexicans and central Americans are illegally here, whereas our ancestors came here legally. Consider the familiar images of those ships headed for Ellis Island, which have become commonplace in American legend. We picture those immigrants enthralled to the Goddess of Liberty and the freedom she represents. Today's undocumented workers do not speak of the Federalist Papers or of Thomas Jefferson. They want only a job. They undermine the romanticism we harbor about earlier generations and about ourselves. They, today's illegal immigrants, may lead us to wonder whether for our ancestors America was not simply an exalted vision, but also partook of tragedy: A loaf of stale bread. A backbreaking job. A terrible loneliness. "Trabajo? Cheap, Se or, cheap. Roof? Digging? Barato, si, barato. I'm Richard Rodriguez.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day. President Bush again declined to support an outside investigation into pre-war intelligence on Iraq's weapons. And the Democratic presidential front-runner, John Kerry, came under new fire from his rivals. A reminder, "Washington Week" can be seen on most PBS stations later this evening. We'll see you online and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.