The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; then, back- to-back looks at the dangers of doing business and doing journalism in Iraq; a report on the dramatic rise of an Internet search engine called Google; excerpts from Earth Day campaign speeches delivered today by President Bush and Senator Kerry; and a guest essay on military families by the father of a U.S. Marine.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The fighting in Fallujah may resume soon. The top U.S. Marine commander in Iraq so warned today. He said an agreement to end two weeks of fighting in the city and let refugees go home, wasn't working. We have a report narrated by Louise Bates of Associated Press Television News.

LOUISE BATES: More than 70,000 people, nearly a third of Fallujah's population, left the city when the fighting broke out. Now their return is being blocked following a serious attack on the marines on Wednesday, and because of the poor response to calls for weapons to be handed in. Disarmament and an end to the fighting were key parts of an agreement reached over the weekend aimed at bringing peace to the city.

LT. GEN. JAMES CONWAY: We were not pleased at all with the turn-in that we saw yesterday. In terms of volume, it probably amounted to a pickup truck-ful. I didn't see the actual weapons, although a number of my staff did, and I think that your characterization is pretty much the way they would cite it: Junk.

LOUISE BATES: The marine general warned that time was running out.

LT. GEN. JAMES CONWAY: The people of Fallujah, the negotiators, have to understand that it is a give-and-take process. We're allowed, we're expected to give certain things, and I think we have. We expect certain things in return, and those things, to date, have not been forthcoming.

REPORTER: How long do they have?

LT. GEN. JAMES CONWAY: Days, not weeks.

LOUISE BATES: U.S. Officials say the hand-over of heavy weapons is vital, and they have warned that if the deal falls through, the marines may launch a major assault on the city.

JIM LEHRER: In Basra today, British military officials in control of the city lowered the death toll in yesterday's suicide car bombings. They now say 50 people were killed, 20 of them children. The attackers targeted police stations around the city. There was word today that several major companies have cut back on reconstruction work in Iraq. It's because of the recent violence. Iraq's electricity minister said the German firm Siemens pulled out a number of its employees. And General Electric and Bechtel confirmed they suspended some projects. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. The coalition said today some former Baath Party members will be given new posts after all. Administrator Paul Bremer dissolved the Iraqi army last spring, and banned party members from future service. But today a coalition spokesman said that policy may have been too sweeping and too slow.

DANIEL SENOR: It sometimes excludes innocent, capable people who were Baathists in name only from playing a role in reconstructing Iraq, and those are the sorts of people for which there was a process built in to allow exceptions, to allow for appeals, but the exceptions and appeals process doesn't do anybody any good if it is not expeditious.

JIM LEHRER: The coalition has already brought back some former Iraqi generals to help run the new Iraqi military. A U.S. Military spokesman said today more former officers would be recruited. North Korea declared an emergency today, after a huge explosion at a train station. A South Korean TV station reported as many as 3,000 people were killed or injured. The South Korean reports said two fuel trains collided at a town 12 miles from the Chinese border. The North Korea leader, Kim Jong Il, had passed through the rail station hours earlier, returning from China. In Saudi Arabia today, an Islamic radical group linked to al-Qaida claimed responsibility for yesterday's suicide car bombing in Riyadh. The bomb blast gutted a national police building. Five people were killed, including a police captain who died of his wounds today. Nearly 150 others were injured. Saudi Arabia's top Islamic cleric denounced the attack today as a crime against Muslims. He said those responsible would "burn in hell." Airport security in the United States came under sharp new criticism today. The inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security reported to a House panel. He focused on a pilot program run by the Transportation Security Administration. It was designed to compare federal and private screeners. At today's hearing, the inspector general said the results were dismal, and he blamed the TSA.

CLARK KENT ERVIN: Available data from limited covert testing suggests that they performed about the same, which is to say equally poorly. The apparent consistency in performance was not unexpected, considering the extraordinary degree of TSA involvement in screening, hiring, deploying, training and promoting pilot screeners.

JIM LEHRER: The General Accounting Office issued a similar report. It, too, blamed the TSA for being inflexible and bureaucratic. The chairman of the subcommittee, Republican Congressman John Mica of Florida, said the situation is an emergency. He said, "We have a system that doesn't work." In economic news, inflation at the wholesale level heated up last month. The Labor Department reported today producer prices rose 0.5 percent in March. It was mostly due to higher costs of food and energy. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained nearly 144 points to close at 10,461. The NASDAQ rose 37 points to close just under 2,033. An independent investigation issued a scathing report today, in the scandal at "USA Today." It found lax editing and oversight allowed reporter Jack Kelley to fabricate stories and plagiarize for more than a decade. Kelley resigned in January. The report said editors did not enforce policies designed to spot problems. It said standards on using unnamed sources were "appallingly lax." And it said other staffers were afraid to challenge Kelley's work. "USA Today's" editor, Karen Jurgensen, resigned on Tuesday. Mary McGrory died last night at a Washington hospital. The veteran newspaper columnist had been ill since last year. She was a prominent liberal voice whose career covered five decades. She won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1974, for her work during the Watergate scandal. Mary McGrory was 85 years old. We'll have a few words about her at the end of the program tonight. Between now and then: Doing business and journalism in Iraq; the story of Google; Earth Day words from President Bush and Senator Kerry; and an essay on military families.

FOCUS - DANGEROUS BUSINESS

JIM LEHRER: The business of trying to rebuild Iraq, and to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: Despite the dangers in Iraq, Americans are signing up by the hundreds to work on the ground there. They're mainly engineers, cook, plumbers, drivers and other laborers. The U.S. Military calls them soft targets. There are thousands of them trying to earn a living in Iraq. They can make upwards of $100,000 for a year of work; the first $80,000 tax free. They work for companies like Halliburton and its subsidiary, Kellogg and others like Bechtel and DynCorp. When General Electric and the German firms Siemens announced they'd suspended much of their operations in Iraq, they cited increasing security concerns. Before contractors head over to Iraq, they learn how to deal with the dangers they'll face at training session like this one.

PATRICE MINGO: The first thing that comes out of the recruiter's mouth is, "you're going to Iraq. This is a hostile zone. You need to know that at this point we lost nine employees."

MAN: They attacked our convoy.

RAY SUAREZ: A truck driver for Kellogg brown and route was one of them. He was captured by gunmen two weeks ago when his convoy came under attack. His fate is still unknown. As they load up their luggage to leave, some workers explained what motivates them to take these kinds of risks.

SYLVIA STURSKA: Because it's a great opportunity. It's an opportunity to do something for the military. They've done so much and they need our help.

JOHN WARREN: Her workman's comp just ran out. We're living with my mother-in-law. It's a necessity. Like I said, you know, it's giving me an opportunity to do things I wouldn't have been able to do before with my family.

RAY SUAREZ: Security is such a concern that some 15,000 bodyguards for hire currently work in Iraq, guarding non-military coalition employees, including U.S. Administrator Paul Bremer.

RAY SUAREZ: For a closer look at some of the challenges companies are facing in Iraq, I'm joined by Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, a trade group that represents many of the companies doing business in Iraq, including Halliburton and Northrop-Grumman. And Sheba Crocker, the co-director of the post conflict reconstruction project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Stan Soloway, today, more than a year after the invasion, is it getting more difficult, more expensive and more dangerous to do the work of rebuilding Iraq?

STAN SOLOWAY: From what I'm told by the companies that are over there, there are certainly pockets where the tensions are higher today than they were 60 days ago or 90 days ago, but these are companies that went in knowing this was going to be a hostile and difficult environment. You have to keep in mind that we really have three concurrent operations taking place today. We have the military support from a contractors' perspective, you have the military support, which is the logistics, the food, ammunitions supply, servicing the weapons systems and so forth, which is a very sophisticated, high technology system, the physical reconstruction of the country and then you have the developmental assistance, rule of law, environmental engineering, health care and so forth, all going on at the same time. That's what makes this an entirely unique environment from a contractor's perspective because it drives the numbers and it's a very large operation, the largest I think that we've ever seen of its kind. When you have situations such as occurred over the last few weeks, clearly in some areas the situation has gotten much more difficult. Some work has had to slow down. In other areas, frankly, it's continuing on a pace.

RAY SUAREZ: Is it also unique, Sheba Crocker, that they're trying to do all the work that Stan Soloway just described while the place is still hot, not pacified?

SHEBA CROCKER: I think that's a you freak aspect of this. I think it's important for us to remember that we have largely been in a war zone in Iraq since the president declared an end to major combat operations. It hasn't been major combat the entire time, but there have been pockets of real violence throughout since the end of the war last year. And what we've seen in the last few weeks is an upsurge in that violence. I think it's also fair to say that the security costs and some of the other things the companies are facing in Iraq have actually increased and have increased beyond what I think U.S. Government was expecting they might be for these companies when we started the reconstruction efforts.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, who bares those costs that you mentioned going up?

SHEBA CROCKER: Well, ultimately a number of different groups bare them. If the reconstruction is slowed down because of security problems, it's the Iraqi people who are bearing the cost, but from a financial perspective, it's actually the U.S. taxpayer that's bearing the cost because the cost for securing these companies, private security guards and other things they need, armored cars and the rest to protect employees in Iraq, actually come out of the reconstruction money that the U.S. Government is paying to these contractors.

RAY SUAREZ: Let's talk about how these contracts are structured. If a price is agreed to, to perform a certain task, if there are unforeseen increases in the cost of providing scrutiny, of insuring of people and equipment, are your member companies able to add that to the cost of the contract?

STAN SOLOWAY: There's a process you go through. These are not by and large fixed-price contracts. But there is a process you go through to determine if the costs associated with the change is a fair and reasonable one, if it's driven by a requirement from the government or the security environment itself. The security costs themselves that Sheba referenced can come in a number of ways. She referenced the reconstruction slowing down. There's also -- and this has been an ongoing case - not slowed down or sped up - and some construction sites, you may have 1,000 laborers coming in every day, it can take four or five hours to process them on the site through security. That takes away some of your productive labor time. They're a great work force when they're able to work but it's not their fault they have to go through security.

RAY SUAREZ: Out of an eight-hour day...

STAN SOLOWAY: In some cases you may end up with a four-hour productive work day, but you may be paying the people for more because they were at the gate at time, it's not their fault. That's not the fault of the company; it's not the fault of the army. It's driven by the environment itself. So if the cost is determined to be fair and reasonable and Sheba is right, some of the costs are clearly going up, the security needs and insurance and so forth, then the government will cover it. If the government determines that it's not fair and reasonable price for what's being adjusted, then they won't.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, what are some of the near-term impacts that you imagine we're going to see out of a couple of weeks like this one? Will it be harder, for instance, to locate people who want to go?

SHEBA CROCKER: Well, I think so far we haven't seen a major downturn in the number of people who are willing to go over to Iraq, because I think the financial incentives are still really large. At the same time, I think it's largely an individual decision, and we have heard stories from some companies that are over there that some of their employees are just wanting to come home earlier, actually leaving before their contracts run out. I think on the ground in Iraq, the impact of some of this may be that we see further delays, for example, in trying to get the electricity grid up to where the coalition provisional authority was hoping it would be by the summer, and we're about to enter the summer months in Iraq, so if we see some of the companies that have been in there doing the electricity contracts in particular pulling out, that could cause some problems in the summer months.

RAY SUAREZ: Are the way these things are contracted so interlocking that if a GE and a Siemens pull out or slow down or at least temporarily cease work that slows up other people? Anybody who has ever had a contractor in their house may think...

STAN SOLOWAY: Come of them are interlocking. I think you have to be a little bit careful here. First of all, if you look at the Siemens situation, they're a German company. I don't know what the German government is telling their companies. That's the guiding force here is for U.S. companies with a GE slowdown or whatever they've done, a partial shutdown, it's probably driven by a security situation, probably recommended by the CPA or another authority in Iraq. What we have not seen are companies that just arbitrarily say, "We're not going to do the work." In terms of the personnel, I have talked to no fewer than a dozen CEO's in the last two days who have people over there, and what you have really are a lot of folks, as you heard in the clip you ran, take very seriously their role supporting the military. They are in fact accompanying the force. You have folks who are in the business of developmental assistance. They do a lot of work for USAID. USAID rightly takes great pride in completing the road from Baghdad to Kandahar despite the hostilities. These are people who take very seriously that role. This is what they do. They've been in hostile territory before. Many of these people may have worked in parts of Africa and the Middle East doing developmental work or military support. A lot of it has to do with the ethic and the spirit that they bring to the job. And then for some there's clearly an economic incentive. But, frankly, for most people, I don't think that the economics are going to outweigh the risks. And right now we're seeing the commitment to the job outweighing that risk concern.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, right now, Sheba Crocker, you're seeing news releases from United States Government sources talking about how everything is going full steam ahead and measured progress, this many miles of road and this many kilowatt hours of electricity. And you're hearing stories from truck drivers who got stoned and shot at every day, pulled out of their cabs and beaten up. Can both be true at the same time? Does it really depend on where you're looking from, from 30,000 feet at the whole country or from a road that you have to drive down?

SHEBA CROCKER: I think both probably can be true at the same time, even though it seems a bit incongruous. I think in part, as Stan was saying earlier, it does depend on what part of the country you're in. And in certain parts of the country, a lot of these projects have been able to go forward with fewer problems. I don't think anywhere has been completely free of problems. But there are certainly places in the country where it has probably been easier to do things than in others. But, again, I think it gets back to the idea that these companies are just being asked to do work in a very hostile and violent environment in some cases. And so the work is ongoing. There are a number of dedicated people there. It's also important to remember that there are a number of Iraqi employees who are working for these companies, and in certain cases, even when the foreign employees may be stuck inside the green zone in Baghdad or in heavily fortified compounds, some work at least may still be carried out by some of the Iraqi employees on the projects.

RAY SUAREZ: Is there also a political dimension to this in that if you can't get some of this work done, the job of long-term winning over of the people to a new way of doing things, a new way of running a country, is going to be more difficult?

STAN SOLOWAY: That's probably more a question for Sheba than me, but clearly there is a general consensus amongst anybody you talk to, regardless of their views on whether we should have got involved in Iraq in the first place, is that we're there and it's very important to move the reconstruction and the development process along as quickly as possible to show results and to provide support that's necessary and to create an environment that has the sort of situation on the ground, if you will, to move forward rather than stagnate. I think everybody would agree with that.

SHEBA CROCKER: I think that's right. And one of the things all this shows is how interlocking all of these various aspects to a reconstruction effort are. So security is very heavily dependent on political considerations on the ground and also on economic considerations, and one of the that things we're seeing in Iraq, there has been very high unemployment throughout, and although the coalition provisional authority numbers now suggest the unemployment levels have somewhat gone down, I think it's fair to say they are still very high. And when you have a number of people out on the streets without anything to do and possibly getting angrier by the day at things like the lack of basic services or at least inadequate basic services in their view, it becomes that much more important to get those people employed and back to work and to start things going on the economic front that will actually help somewhat on the scrutiny front. Of course, it's hard to say which should come first. I think at the base you really have to focus on the security force. Until we get the security situation somewhat stabilized throughout the entire country, it really will be hard to get these other efforts going to the degree we'd like to see them going. It doesn't mean they can't be chugging along. I think we will continue to see fits and starts like we have been seeing all along.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, bottom line, Stan Soloway, does it mean that we are going to get less stuff done for the $87 billion that's been budgeted for this year, just because it's turning out to be more expensive?

STAN SOLOWAY: To the degree the security environment remains unstable in certain area, it's clearly going to slow down some of the work in those areas, and other area, asSheba said, work is continuing along at a relatively reasonable pace, not problem-free, but relatively so. So clearly there is a direct relationship between the security environment and your ability to get the job done in a timely fashion.

RAY SUAREZ: Thanks for being here.

SHEBA CROCKER: Thank you.

FOCUS - BATTLEFIELDS & BYLINES

JIM LEHRER: Now, to another risky business in Iraq, and to media correspondent Terence Smith.

TERENCE SMITH: Covering the ongoing conflict in Iraq is proving to be a dangerous and deadly assignment. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 25 news people have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war. Two of those, a correspondent and a driver for the U.S.-funded Iraqi Television Network, were killed this week by American troops near a checkpoint. Journalists are now among the explicit targets of some of the insurgents opposing the coalition. In addition, reporters have been kidnapped, detained, and menaced. Hazards of this sort are not new to reporters accustomed to covering war, but taken as a whole, the threat condition, to use a military term, may have established a new and deadly benchmark in Iraq. Here with me to discuss the conditions for reporting in Iraq are two men with broad experience covering conflict. John Burns is chief foreign correspondent of the "New York Times," and serves as the papers' Baghdad bureau chief. And Eason Jordan is executive vice president and chief news executive for CNN.

Welcome to you both. John Burns, describe for us, if you will, the practical realities of covering Baghdad and Iraq today.

JOHN BURNS: Well, the events of the past three weeks have changed the geography of the country radically for most of us. We of the "New York Times," and most print and broadcast organizations, have decided for the time being to pull back from our wider coverage outside Baghdad because there's no such thing as an even approximately safe road in Iraq, and there is, of course, no commercial air traffic. So bombings in Basra yesterday... 50 or 60 people dead, including perhaps 20 schoolchildren in a bus-- a story we would normally dispatch a correspondent to immediately; we decided after discussions with New York that the risks on the road were too great. Inside Baghdad, it's also pretty dangerous. Just today, as I'm sure you know, there was a foreigner, a South African, I believe, who was shot dead by masked men in an area not much more than a mile or two from where most of us have our offices. So we have to be extremely wary.

TERENCE SMITH: Is it your sense now, John Burns, that journalists have themselves become targets rather than just observers and bystanders?

JOHN BURNS: I don't think it's right to say we're targets. I think what's probably closer to the truth is to say that we don't have an exception from the general rule that foreigners here, and any foreigner who has any association with the American occupation-- and we are deemed-- that is to say, American and British citizens in particular-- to have that link-- are included as targets along with everybody else. I don't think we are being selected out, although we don't go to any trouble, as we've done elsewhere in the world, to identify our vehicles, for example, as being press vehicles. It's simply that if we get stopped or we get identified, we are just as likely to be killed in drive-by shootings or to be hit with rocket-propelled grenades or to be hauled from our vehicles and kidnapped, as a number of us have been in the past two or three weeks, as anybody else. But are we more likely to be dealt with in that fashion than foreign aid workers and people driving truck convoys? No, we're not.

TERENCE SMITH: Eason Jordan, I know you've been back and forth to Iraq several times, and that you deal on a daily basis with the security of your people there. How has CNN's situation changed? What new procedures have you put in place in this very difficult three weeks that John Burns is talking about?

EASON JORDAN: Well, this has been a nightmarish time for CNN. In January, I was in Baghdad to bury two of my colleagues, Iraqi nationals who were killed on the job for CNN. In the last few weeks, we've had to batten down the hatches even further, very rarely sending people outside of the hotel where we have our office because it's just too dangerous to go outside the hotel. We have armed security guards. We've sent out the smallest number of people possible when we feel we can and must send people out. But I think news consumers are being shortchanged to a degree, not just on television but in print, because journalists are not able to do their jobs effectively, and certainly the depth and breadth of reporting that you saw even a month ago was far more vast than what news consumers get today.

TERENCE SMITH: And what are the networks doing-- the normally very competitive networks doing-- to cover the hot spots outside of Baghdad, such as the fighting in Fallujah?

EASON JORDAN: Well, in Fallujah in particular, there's been an effort to pool resources. The five U.S. TV networks have come together and agreed to share resources. For example, right now in Fallujah there's a Fox News cameraman, a CNN producer, and one or two others working together to provide reports for all of the U.S. Networks, and that's an effort to minimize exposure, keep the fewest number of people in these hot spots as absolutely necessary, but still provide the absolutely essential coverage from the most intense battlefield in Iraq right now, which is Fallujah.

TERENCE SMITH: And are you sharing and cooperating on intelligence information-- about security, I'm talking about-- within... certainly within Baghdad?

EASON JORDAN: Well, about three weeks ago, there was a meeting in New York among my five network counterparts and a few others, and we decided to do something that was unprecedented in working together, cooperating, collaborating on safety and security issues and in sharing a certain amount of news coverage, all in an effort to minimize exposure in the field and to bring our people home alive.

TERENCE SMITH: John Burns, what has been the editorial impact of these restrictions on your safe movement around, yours and your colleagues, in terms of what the reader learns or doesn't learn?

JOHN BURNS: Well, we're certainly not covering it in the depth and at the closeness we would like to do with our own correspondents. We do have workarounds. We do have stringers -- that's to say, Iraqi reporters -- that we hire in most of the major cities, who can file reports to us. We have some of our own staff members who, with considerable courage -- Iraqi staff members -- have volunteered to go into some of these conflicted areas, and we learn a good deal from that. Do we learn as much as we would like to? Absolutely not. We know very little, for example, about what is really going on in Najaf or Kufa, where Muqtada al-Sadr has made his headquarters. These past two or three weeks, when we made an attempt to go in there -- and I'm speaking now of myself and a photographer -- we were taken hostage for 12 hours and driven out into the desert, blindfolded, and put at some risk. It's difficult. We do the best we can. It's not unique. I think those with memories of the war in Cambodia will tell you there were periods then towards the end when it was similarly difficult. We just have to find new ways to do it, and we have to be honest with our readers about the restrictions that we have to place on ourselves.

TERENCE SMITH: What do you think they're not learning, the readers, as a result? Are you talking about the opportunity, for example, to go and interview people on site in Najaf or somewhere else? What is it that's missing?

JOHN BURNS: We have been puzzled about exactly the degree of support that Muqtada al-Sadr has in Najaf. The fragmentary reports that we've had within the last 24 hours, which we're going to test in the way I suggested, by having some people, some Iraqis who work for us or who are on contract to us, going the take a closer look, that Muqtada al-Sadr is nowhere near as powerful and certainly nowhere near as popular as he would have us believe in Najaf. We can only test that by having people go into the city to talk to people. But it's very intriguing, what we're hearing. And were we free to do so, either I or one of my colleagues would go to Najaf. It's only 110 miles south of Baghdad. We'd go there in two, two-and-a- half hours. We could report it in some depth for tomorrow's paper. We're not able to do that. We'll do the best we can, and we'll test what we're hearing. It's not ideal, but we're not out of this game yet. We can still report a great deal. And I think that the broad and most important outlines of what's happening are still going to be in the "New York Times" and the "Washington Post" and other major newspapers, and on the television networks. I think we're some way away from being in a Beirut situation where most American media had to simply shut down.

TERENCE SMITH: Eason Jordan, of course it's more difficult for television. You've got to get a camera to these sites. You're more conspicuous by your presence. How are you working it out?

EASON JORDAN: Well, we do what we can to minimize our exposure, but we do think it's important to get out there, and so we just send the smallest number of people possible out on stories, on assignments. We try to do it in a very intelligent way, taking advice from security experts who carry guns to protect us into the field. But I do have to take issue with John's point in the beginning. He believes that journalists are not targeted. I do believe journalists are targeted. There are very specific examples of that. And then beyond what's actually happened on the ground, you have Osama bin Laden in his most recent statement saying that he intends to target big media institutions because he views them as evil propagandists for the U.S. Government. And so we take all these threats-- and there are real examples we can cite very specifically -- we take them very specifically and we do consider ourselves targeted.

TERENCE SMITH: John Burns?

JOHN BURNS: Well, I think Eason has a point. There are... there have been occasions, and the incident involving CNN in January was certainly one of them. The assassination... the targeted assassination of Iraqi interpreters working for, in one case the Voice of America, in the other case "Time" Magazine, and other warnings given to people working for us, are other indications. But these sorts of warnings have been given to other institutions: Aid agencies and other western organizations. I'm not sure myself that we, for example, of the "New York Times" are a specifically targetedorganization. We may be, but we don't know that for sure. We assume that we are targeted in general, and we take all the precautions that we can. I'm not sure what more ... but the fact of the matter is, as any foreigner who lives here and works here will tell you, that there's just so much that you can do, and that going out of your compound, out of the Palestine Sheraton Hotel, or in the case of the American official presence here, out of the green zone, is in itself an inherently dangerous enterprise. There is no certainty on any there is no certainty on any there is no certainty on any such journey that you're going to come back safe.

TERENCE SMITH: John Burns and Eason Jordan, thank you very much for bringing us up to date on what is obviously a very tricky situation. Thank you both.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: The rise of Google, Earth Day campaign speeches, and a military families essay.

FOCUS - GOOGLE - GOING PUBLIC?

JIM LEHRER: Now, the Google story. Spencer Michels reports.

SPENCER MICHELS: From Silicon Valley to Wall Street, the buzz is that Google, the six-year-old privately owned company that created the world's most popular Internet search engine, may soon issue stock and go public. That prospect has prompted intense interest in Google and in the possibility of a rebound for high tech. Google would become the first major high-tech firm to issue an initial public offering, or IPO, since the dot.Com bubble burst in 2000, casting a pall on the whole field of technology. Veteran stock watchers like Tom Taulli, who writes and teaches about corporate finance, are intrigued.

TOM TAULLI: It's really interesting, the phenomenon, and even the mania. I haven't seen this since the late '90s, you know, or the mid- '90s with the Netscape IPO.

SPENCER MICHELS: On the Stanford University campus, where the founders of Google went to grad school, there's great anticipation about a Google IPO, especially among business students.

KARA NORTMAN: I'm definitely interested in seeing what's under the covers when they disclose it all in their public statements.

MOHAN LAKHAMRAJU: They have been very aggressive at getting, you know, the brightest minds. So many smart people cannot go wrong. Four of my classmates from undergrad are at Google, and four of my ex-colleagues are at Google, so we're all hoping that Google's going to make them all very rich.

SPENCER MICHELS: These students and others in the investment community say Google's going public could spur a renewal of enthusiasm for high tech.

EFE CAKAREL: The IPO market was shut down basically over the past two, two-and-a-half years. And so this IPO can really have a huge impact to show the people.

SPENCER MICHELS: Greg Raifman took his former Internet advertising company, Mediaplex, public, and watched as its price soared and then plummeted. Now running an investment firm, he's watching the Google phenomenon, and says an IPO Could energize not just Silicon Valley, but Wall Street as well.

GREG RAIFMAN, Former Mediaplex CO: There's no question that Google's the flag bearer, if you will, of the return of the IPO, the big IPO. The interest level around investment is higher because of the Google IPO. Wall Street loves that because the average folk is asking, "how can I get shares in the Google IPO?"

SPENCER MICHELS: Today, Google is going strong. It has 1,500 employees, most of them in its Silicon Valley headquarters in California. It has recently added e-mail, an online shopping service called Froogle, and Orkut, for making business and personal contacts, to its main feature: Its innovative search engine. Google handles 200 million online searches a day, in 86 languages for all manner of topics, using thousands of high- speed computers which comb through the Internet at the speed of light. The results of those split- second searches are displayed on the user's computer, along with text-only advertisements placed near the search results. According to Charlene Li, principal analyst for Forrester Research, those ads, plus sales of Google's ad technology have made the company highly profitable.

CHARLENE LI: Advertisers love it because they can target people online who are looking for their products, as opposed to general advertisements.

SPENCER MICHELS: Li says Google's profitability would make for a successful IPO

CHARLENE LI: They have close to a billion dollars in revenues. It's already proven that it has a business model that works, it has very loyal users, and it continues to innovate.

SPENCER MICHELS: The company's exact profits are a matter of conjecture. Analysts are estimating its value at anywhere from $6 billion to $25 billion. In recent months, Google appears to be following government guidelines for companies going public by remaining silent about its intentions. Google, which recently expanded to these quarters, hasn't filed anything about an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Nevertheless, the company won't comment about a possible IPO, saying it's private and it doesn't discuss its finances. Others potentially involved, like investment banks, won't talk either, saying they fear legal action if they do. Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, wouldn't comment either, but his company has never denied its interest in an IPO, and has said eventually it expects to go public. And now the market has improved, and the timing may be right. Marc Andreessen, who took public both Netscape and his current software company, Opsware, says that for any growing company, pressures to issue stock increase over time.

MARC ANDREESSEN: Your venture capitalists want to be able to distribute their stock and sell it, which is very difficult for them to do if you don't go public. You want to be able to go buy other companies and consolidate your industry, which is much easier to do once you're public. Third is, ultimately, you want to give your employees a liquidity path, a way to ultimately sell some of their stock, to be able to put their kids through college or buy houses of whatever.

SPENCER MICHELS: What about the downside?

MARC ANDREESSEN: Oh, the downside. You're open to public scrutiny. Every single quarter, everybody sees all of your financials. Your competitors see all of your financials; investors see all your financials. Your stock price is going to go up and down and up and down; that's going to effect how people think about your business.

SPENCER MICHELS: Former CEO says from his own experience that newly issued stock can cause employees with stock options to lose focus.

GREG RAIFMAN: There were times when I walked down the hall and saw that employees spent maybe a little too much time looking at the quotrons or the computers than they did dealing with customers or clients.

SPENCER MICHELS: Distraction can be fatal if a company is facing major competition, and Google now has big-time rivals. At Netscape, Marc Andreessen lived through a similar scenario.

MARK ANDREESSEN: All of a sudden every big gorilla company out there, Microsoft and every other company, starts shooting at your head with high-powered ammunition. So, in my experience usually going public coincides with a big escalation in competition from much larger companies.

SPENCER MICHELS: Rivals Microsoft and Yahoo offer a variety of services like email and shopping on their home pages called portals, and both are developing their own improved search engine. Analysts say they appear ready to take on Google.

CHARLENE LI: I think Google at this point is winning the battle for search. Yahoo is winning the battle for portals. Microsoft has a lot of the - it's always in the running. It's like second in many of these places and gunning for first

SPENCER MICHELS: Do you think Google is in trouble?

CHARLENE LI: I think Google needs to stay on its toes. In the past it's had that luxury of being very smart and innovative. Now you have very strong competitors.

TOM TAULLI: Including Yahoo, including Amazon and maybe even EBay.

SPENCER MICHELS: And this writer points to another hazard for potential Google investors. Most new stocks drop in price.

TOM TAULLI: Historically they go down. On average they go down after one or two years. So it's usually a losing proposition from the investor's standpoint. But those are averages. If you happen to get the Microsoft, you happen to get the Oracle or the E-Bay, a totally different story.

SPENCER MICHELS: The likelihood of going public and the specter of Microsoft and yahoo ma be spurring Google into new arenas. Its launching of additional products in recent months is part of its strategy to keep ahead of the increasing competition at a crucial juncture in its short history.

SERIES - CAMPAIGN WRAP

JIM LEHRER: Next, matching speeches by President Bush and Senator Kerry. Both celebrated Earth Day today. The president was at the Little River Salt Marsh in Wells, Maine, where he talked about preserving the nation's wetlands.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The importance about Earth Day is it reminds us that we can't take the natural wonders for granted. That's what Earth Day says to me and I hope it says to you, as well - that we have responsibilities to the natural world to conserve that which we have and to make it even better. We've made tremendous progress during the last four years. My administration has put in place some of the most important anti-pollution policies in a decade -- policies that have reduced harmful emission, reclaimed brown fields, cut phosphorous releases into our rivers and streams. Since 2001, the condition of America's land, air and water has improved. (Applause) Today I want to talk about wetlands -- up to half of all North American bird species nest or feed in wetlands. About half of all threatened and endangered species use wetlands. There are some endangered species using the wetlands right here on this piece of property. Our wetlands help to trap pollution, but I bet a lot of people don't understand that the wetlands help to clean the water, as well. The old policy of wetlands was to limit the loss of wetlands. Today I'm going to announce a new policy, a new goal for our country: Instead of just limiting our losses, we will expand the wetlands of America. To do so we will work to restore and to improve and to protect at least three million acres of wetlands over the next five years. First we'll restore at least one million acres of wetlands that do not exist today through expanded incentive and partnership measures such as the wetlands reserve program and through the new grants under the Interior Department's North American Wetlands Conservation Act. Second, we will improve the quality of another million acres of existing wetlands through expanded public-private efforts such as the Interior Department's Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program. We'll protect an additional one million acres of wetlands currently at risk by increasing grants for land protection programs and by making it easier for farmers and other landowners to participate in these programs. The budget I've sent to congress proposes to spend $349 million on two key wetlands programs, which is an increase of more than 50 percent since I first took office. These monies will help and they will provide proper incentive for good conservation measures. I've come here because this is a great example of people seizing the initiative and a great example of where the government can help but not stand in the way of common sense policies that will make a significant difference to the wetlands and the native species, and it sends a clear signal to everybody else in our country that if you want to be a responsible citizen, do something about the quality of the life in the community in which you live.

JIM LEHRER: Senator Kerry spoke at a rally at the University of Houston.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: Today we have a president who has gone to Maine, and he went to Maine to talk about what he's doing for wetlands. Once again, once again, my friends, this administration is playing the smoke and mirrors game. Once again the say one thing do another administration is pretending to the American people. Once again they are misleading Americans because for the last three-and-a-half years, this administration, this president had a proposal that would have lost us 20 million acres of wetlands. And it wasn't until the objections rose, the hue and cry came back, and finally they said, well, we'll revisit that rule. Now, they say they'll revisit it over the next five years, but you know as well as I do once they get reelected they'll walk away from that promise the same way they've walked away from all the others. And why is it, why is it that we have a president who waits until the fourth year, waits until election time, waits until the criticisms are out there before he even announces the possibility of what he could have been fighting for, for the last three-and-a-half to four years? I believe that never has the argument been as compelling as it is today. This is the most important election of our lifetimes, and we need to take back our democracy. (Applause) But it's not just the water. It's not just the air: Superfund sites. They're cleaning them at half the rate that we were cleaning them under Bill Clinton. Why? Did any American write and say, "slow down the rate at which we take the toxics out of our water?" Did any American write and say, "we like living next to these superfund sites where our kids may get cancer"? You think if we were being responsible, we would speed up the rate at which we're doing it. When I'm president, we're going to reauthorize superfund, and we're going to hold polluters accountable for the pollution that they make. We are going to set a goal that by the year 2020, 20 percent of America's electricity is going to be produced by alternative and renewable sources, and if we do that, we'll grow the future of this country. You see these signs? You see these signs? A clean environment, a strong economy. I believe we deserve leadership in our nation that trusts how smart the American people are. That's prepared to level with people and not give them false choices. The false choice that we've been working on in America these last years is that somehow protecting the environment comes at the expense of jobs and the economy. I don't believe that. I believe that protecting the environment done properly is jobs and it is a strong economy and it is the future. It's how we protect ourselves.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have similar matching speeches like these throughout the campaign.

ESSAY - MILITARY FAMILIES

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, some thoughts about those who send troops to war. Our guest essayist is Frank Schaeffer, whose latest book is "Faith of our Sons: A Father's Wartime Diary."

FRANK SCHAEFFER: The military records of the presidential candidates are hot topics. But as the father of a member of our military, I'm less interested in the candidate's past service than in asking "Where are their children?" From March through December of 2003, my son, a corporal in the United States Marine corps, was facing roadside bombs and random bullets in Afghanistan. I was proud of John's service, and terrified. What our political leaders said about "supporting our troops" didn't comfort me. In one crucial respect, they and I had nothing in common. Almost none of their children were in harm's way.

SPOKESMAN: Yesterday, December 7, 1941...

FRANK SCHAEFFER: At one time, many of our leaders were also military parents. Jon Meacham notes in his recent book, "Franklin and Winston," that Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, "I think my husband would have been very much upset if the boys had not wanted to go into the war immediately, but he did not have to worry very much because they either were already in before the war began, or they went in immediately." Roosevelt's most influential advisor, Harry Hopkins, also had children who volunteered. His youngest son, Stephen, was killed in the Pacific. Many members of Congress had sons or daughters serving. Some were wounded, and others killed. A lot has changed since our political elites were encouraging, even expected, their children to volunteer. According to an article by Tom Ford in the "Minneapolis-St. Paul star tribune" wherein he cited two experts on trends in military service, only 30 percent of the 535 members of congress have a military background. This number is down from 1969 when more than two-thirds had served. And only six representatives and one senator are known to have children serving. I never served in the military, and I was dismayed when my son volunteered. And I don't mean to single out individuals, but several examples illustrate a serious dilemma: When it comes to service, our ruling class no longer puts its money where its mouth is. President Bush refers to the U.S. Military as our finest young men and women; his daughters did not volunteer. As First Lady, Senator Hilary Clinton often said that she looked to Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt as role models. But there is no evidence Senator Clinton is "very much upset" by the fact that her service-age daughter did not volunteer to fight in the war that Senator Clinton voted for and Senator Kerry's children did not volunteer. Yet the fact that he did not inspire his children to serve is not seen as a disqualification for his seeking the office of commander- and, in these days of the all-volunteer military, recruiter-in-chief. Leaders on the right talk about the need to project American power. Where is their practical patriotism? Where are their children? Leaders on the left talk about fairness to working people. Where is their practical solidarity with the working people defending them? Where are their children? In Pericles' funeral oration, he says, "for a man's counsel cannot have equal weight or worth when he alone has no children to risk in the general danger." To me, this summarizes a serious moral problem: The unfairness of being led by a class that only sends the sons and daughters of others to defend us. Eleanor wrote of her wartime farewell to her sons, "I imagine every mother felt as I did when I said good-bye. Life had to go on, and you had to do what was required of you, but something inside of you died." I wish we were still led by women and men who could honestly identify with "every mother" and father who has experienced the heart-stopping mix of pride and sorrow attending a farewell to a son or daughter who has volunteered to defend us. If we were, this country would be fairer. If we were, our leader's words about war and peace would have weight.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: in Iraq, the top U.S. Marine commander warned the fighting in Fallujah may resume soon unless guerrillas turn in heavy weapons. The coalition confirmed some former Baath Party members will be given new posts after all. And North Korea declared an emergency after a huge explosion at a train station. A South Korean report said up to 3,000 people were killed or injured. A personal word about Mary McGrory, the famous newspaper columnist who died last night in Washington. She was 85 years old, but she always worked like she was 25 or younger. Journalism really is little boy and little girl work. You hear the siren and chase the fire engine, to a fire or to a war, an election, a whatever, wherever. Mary was the ultimate story-chasing kid reporter. She had strong opinions about most everything and she shared them regularly in public, first in the Washington Star and then the Washington Post. With her journalist colleagues and friends, she shared a zest for the news, for the story, for the angle, for the perfect word or phrase that was truly something remarkable. For many of us, this year's presidential campaign will be our first without her. It will not be the same.

JIM LEHRER: We'll see you on line and again here tomorrow evening with Mark Shields and David Brooks, among others. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.