The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, Kwame Holman and Gwen Ifill look at the rising debate about military spending, two experts examine the tragic collision between a US submarine and a Japanese fishing boat, and Susan Dentzer reports and Ray Suarez talks to the two major players in the mapping of the human genome. It all follows our summary of the news this Monday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Bush today reassured US troops he'd improve their quality of life in the military. He did so at Fort Stewart, Georgia, beginning a Presidential week focused on defense. He called for spending an extra $5.7 billion in 2002 on military pay, housing, and health benefits. He said the need was clear.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: These problems from low pay to poor housing reach across our military, and the result is predictable: Frustrations up, morale in some places is difficult to sustain, recruitment is harder. This is not the way a great nation should reward courage and idealism. It's ungrateful, it's unwise, and it is unacceptable.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Bush has said he won't increase spending for weapons, pending a review of the military. But there was more criticism of that decision today. It came from Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, the Democrats' Vice Presidential nominee last year. He said the President has made tax cuts a priority over defense.

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN: As a central plank his campaign, he and then Secretary, now Vice President Cheney, promised to deliver a substantial infusion of resources, memorably assuring the men and women in uniform that-- and I quote-- help is on the way. However, now that he is in the White House, President Bush seems content to tell our fighting forces not that help is on the way but that the check is in the mail.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have more on this story after the News Summary. President Bush today spoke of the collision between a US submarine and a Japanese fishing vessel. He called it a tragic accident, and offered prayers to the victims and their families. The USS "Greeneville" was surfacing Friday off Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, when it hit and sank the Japanese ship. 26 people from the ship were rescued. The search for nine others continued today. An investigation is under way. We'll have more on this story later in the program tonight. Two scientific teams today formally announced publication of the human genetic code. Their findings included surprises, such as the fact that humans carry only about 30,000 genes, far less than estimated. The work was done by a private firm, Celera Genomics, and by a publicly funded international consortium. The announcement came at a Washington news conference.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: The book of life is actually three books. It's a history book, a narrative of the journey of our species through time; it's a shop manual with an incredibly detailed blueprint for building a human cell; and it's a transformative textbook of medicine with insights that will give help care providers immense new powers to treat, prevent and cure disease.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have more on this story later in the program tonight. Napster will have to stop letting millions of people download copyrighted music. A federal appeals court issued that ruling today. It said the Internet music- swapping service could face sanctions if it failed to act. In Washington, music industry officials called it a clear victory.

HILARY ROSEN: Since the time that our case has been before the courts, Napster has grown from a few thousand users to over 50 million users, some 30% of them overseas. American intellectual property is our nation's greatest trade asset. We cannot stand idly by as our nation's assets are in jeopardy or dismissed by those who would use them for their own enrichment. That's why today's decision is so especially important. The court's decisive ruling is a victory for all creators.

JIM LEHRER: Napster said it would appeal the ruling. It was allowed to stay in business while a lower court rewrites an injunction against the company. A Virginia man was released from prison today after spending nearly a decade on the state's death row. Earl Washington, Jr., had been convicted of a 1982 murder. He was largely illiterate, with an IQ of just 69, and he confessed to the crime. But DNA tests later showed he was wrongly convicted, and he received a full pardon. Attorney General John Ashcroft today offered to cooperate with Congress in looking at the Marc Rich pardon. President Clinton granted the pardon to the fugitive financier just before leaving office. Ashcroft addressed the issue at his first news conference since becoming Attorney General. He was asked if he'd support immunity for Rich's former wife to get her to testify before Congress.

JOHN ASHCROFT: I respect the right of the United States Congress to get information and to grant immunity in order to get information. I don't want to say that we have made a decision on the request, but we will do... we will work with the understanding of the need for the Congress to get its work done as well.

JIM LEHRER: Ashcroft would not say whether he would name a special counsel to investigate President Clinton's pardons. A NASA spacecraft made history today by landing on an asteroid. It was the NEAR, which stands for "Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous." It landed on Eros, 196 million miles away. The NEAR was launched in 1996, and began orbiting the asteroid a year ago. It was designed to take pictures, and had no landing gear, but ground controllers fired braking rockets, allowing a soft touchdown. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the new military spending debate, the tragic submarine collision, and a genome update.

FOCUS - DEFENSE DOLLARS

JIM LEHRER: How much does it take to run the US military? First, some background from Kwame Holman.

GEORGE W. BUSH: (August 2000) Should I become the President, I will rebuild the military power of the United States of America. ( Cheers and applause )

KWAME HOLMAN: A stronger military was a key promise of George W. Bush's Presidential campaign.

GEORGE W. BUSH: As a percentage of the Gross National Product, our investment in national security is at the lowest point it has been since Pearl Harbor. Overall in the armed services, commitments around the world have tripled, while our forces have been reduced by nearly 40%.

KWAME HOLMAN: Even though Candidate Bush proposed smaller defense spending increases then did Vice President Al Gore, Bush attacks on Clinton administration defense policies drew endorsements from dozens of retired generals and admirals. After the election, members of Congress expected President Bush to recommend a significant boost in defense spending over President Clinton's proposed five-year, $40 billion increase. That money was to go for new ships, aircraft, and ground vehicles, as well as a missile defense system. And at his confirmation hearing, Defense Secretary Designee Donald Rumsfeld seemed on the same page as influential members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

DONALD RUMSFELD: (January 11) What the number is, I don't know. Is it clear that there needs to be an increase in the budget? There is no doubt in my mind. But I'm not well enough along in my thinking on it, and I've not had a chance to talk to the transition people who are thinking through the budget numbers and how - whatever it is --

QUESTIONER: But your commitment today is to work towards a significant increase?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Yes, sir.

KWAME HOLMAN: Last week, however, President Bush pulled back on big military spending increases. The White House announced it would submit the same $310 billion defense budget for next year President Clinton suggested, a $14 billion bump up from current spending. On Friday, President Bush said immediate spending increases would be quality-of-life improvements for the troops.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Starting with better pay for the men and women who wear the uniform.

KWAME HOLMAN: The President said other spending decisions would have to wait until the military need is evaluated.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I have said since I've been sworn in, it's important for us to do a top-to-bottom review, to review all missions, spending priorities. And that's exactly what the Secretary of Defense is going to do. And before people jump to conclusions, I think it's important to get that review finished.

KWAME HOLMAN: The review, several in fact, due to be completed this summer, will look at military strategy, force structure, weapons procurement, nuclear weaponry, and the quality-of-life issues the President spoke about today in Georgia.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I have great goals for our military: To advance its technology, to rethink its strategy; but as always, our strength begins with our people.

KWAME HOLMAN: But the President's decision to hold the line for now on defense spending raised concern with Virginia Republican John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In a letter released last week, Warnerurged Mr. Bush to address the immediate needs resulting from shortfalls in personnel and readiness through an emergency supplemental and the fiscal 2002 budget request. On Friday, President Bush addressed that issue as well.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I've sent the message that I think it's very important for us to not have an early supplemental.

KWAME HOLMAN: And the President's positions prompted an outcry from some defense hawks. Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote: "Obviously, Bush and his political advisers have decided to throw defense overboard in order to sell their tax-cut plan this year." While tax cuts are a top priority of the Bush administration, the President insists a stronger military is too. The President will continue to highlight military matters through most of this week.

JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill takes it from there.

GWEN IFILL: We get four views. Republican John Warner of Virginia, as noted, is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. General Merrill McPeak is former Air Force chief of staff. He's now President of a company that produces training and simulation equipment for the military. John Isaacs is President of the Council for a Livable World, an arms control advocacy group. And retired Army Lieutenant General Paul Cerjan was President of National Defense University, and Commandant of the Army War College. Senator Warner, today you heard President Bush talk about $5.7 billion for quality of life issues in the military. Do you think that's a good idea? Were you happy to hear that?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: I commend the President, and he's doing the right thing at the right time. And I think that I can clarify some of the confusion that possibly was raised when my good friend and colleague Senator Lieberman gave that short press comment. Let me explain that the President was correct in what he said today, and what he said a few days ago that I'm going to proceed to study very carefully the strategy of the United States, the threat that's posed from outside to our forces, to our country, to our allies, to determine what major weapons systems should be continued and others might be stopped. He's doing the right thing and he needs to let the Secretary of Defense put his team in place and make these studies. Now, secondly, at the same time the President has to address the urgent needs in the military. We're still short on some pay, some housing, and some health care and some other what we call dollars needed for training and steaming hours and so forth. I'm confident that the President will do the right thing at the right time on a supplemental to Congress to fix the budget now being expended to add those sums to take care of these needs, and I think he'll do it before the Fourth of July.

GWEN IFILL: When Senator Rumsfeld-- when Secretary Rumsfeld said there was no doubt in his mind that there would be additional funding and when Dick Cheney told people last August that the Bush administration would be riding to the rescue of the military financially, did you think you would be in a place where you'd have to write the President a letter to remind him of his commitment?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: Yeah - but I have got the letter right here. The first paragraph says we support you, Mr. President, and you're doing the right thing. But long term studies and on a parallel track at the same time they'll be addressing the supplemental. And I predict it will be done before the Fourth of July and you will not see any further degradation in the readiness of our military. The President, trust me, will do the right thing at the right time.

GWEN IFILL: General McPeak, do you believe there is the need for additional spending on the military?

GENERAL MERRILL McPEAK: No, I couldn't agree more with Senator Warner. The right thing to do here is to do this top-to-bottom review, decide what we want to use our forces for, that is to say, what our strategy will be and to make sure that we've got the forces constructed properly and configured properly for the job of work that we expect them to do. So that's very important. I think the President is going at this at exactly the right way.

GWEN IFILL: Are you and Senator Warner and the President talking about the same price tag?

GENERAL MERRILL McPEAK: Well, I think $300 billion, more or less, is a sizable amount of money. And we ought to be able to do a pretty good job of defending this country in peacetime. After all, we're as safe and secure as a nation as we've ever been in my lifetime. So it seems me that $300 billion ought to be enough. I would remind....

GWEN IFILL: Which is where we are right now?

GENERAL MERRILL McPEAK: Plus or minus, we're in that range.

GWEN IFILL: $297 billion.

GENERAL MERRILL McPEAK: I moreover regard the tax cut as a security issue. You know, the military strength of this country rests in the last analysis on our ability to create wealth. And to the extent that a tax cut improves our wealth-making capacity, then it's a security issue, arguably as important as the level of the defense budget.

GWEN IFILL: Before we get to the tax cut, I just want to clarify one thing. The $297/$300 billion Bill Clinton military budget is the budget that the joint chiefs and Senator Warner and other people have said is not enough. You believe it is sufficient?

GENERAL MERRILL McPEAK: Yes, I do. I don't think it's being spent properly. I think the Clinton administration mishandled the defense budget. They slashed the modernization programs. We went on a procurement holiday. As a consequence, our readiness is poorer today than it was eight years ago. We can confidently forecast that it will continue to get worse. So defense spending priorities need to be changed. But probably within pretty much the limits of the amount of dollars that are already being provided.

GWEN IFILL: Lieutenant General Paul Cerjan, what's your thought about that?

LT. GEN. PAUL CERJAN: Well, I hate to not take a different approach. I think that Senator Warner laid it out precisely the way anybody would lay it out. If you took a look at it in terms of the near term and the far term, I think it's absolutely correct that the Secretary of Defense have the opportunity to take a look, top to bottom, and determine if our strategy is correct, if our capabilities are sized correctly and what procurement is necessary to bring about the move to that status. On the near term, however, we do have readiness issues. We have infrastructure issues. We've had to take from various accounts in order to support operations over the last few years, over the last eight years so consequently we've got to take a very close look about what types of supplementals are needed now while we're taking a look at what the long-term impact ought to be on all the services.

GWEN IFILL: Are you hearing what you want to hear about the amount of money this administration is prepared to pledge in the near term?

LT. GEN. PAUL CERJAN: I don't think that the actual dollar value... I sort of agree with General McPeak. $300 million plus or minus is a good start point but you have a couple of issues that you have to attend to that may increase that a little. One is the pay comparability gap; it's a 10% gap right now. That's going to take some money. We take a look at the medical infusion that Senator Warner talked about. And then of course we've got to take a look at the infrastructure that is suffering whether it be housing or on-post installation maintenance and repairs and those types of things. We faced the same types of issue back in the '80s. That's one of the reasons that we had to go back and try to rebuild the infrastructure. So those increments will have to be added to and whether or not they're added to or taken away from the $300 million mark I think is a question that just has to be looked at as the Secretary of Defense looks at the entire program.

GWEN IFILL: John Isaacs, is $300 billion a good figure, too much, too little?

JOHN ISAACS: I hate to break up this love fest but while I think it's a good idea for the administration to study these issues and I commend the administration for undertaking that, I think the budget is much too high. And I hope the study looks at some of the real problems that exist in the military. One of those problems is we're still buying a lot of Cold War weapons. The F-22, the next generation Air Force plane, is a wonderful plane. It was designed to combat the Soviet Union but the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. And it's three times as expensive as a plane it would replace. We still are... have a two-war strategy planning to fight two wars which the non-partisan national defense panel called a justification for high military budgets. There's still huge accounting problems in the Pentagon. They don't even know how much money they have or are spending. The inspector general of the Pentagon said there are 2.3 trillion dollars in items that they can't quite account for. That's not billion. That's trillion dollars. $2.3 trillion - and the General Accounting Office said there are about $27 billion in inventory items that they can't find. It's not a matter of money -- if the review just results war money put into the pet gone we'll be going in the wrong direction. It's time to move back.

GWEN IFILL: Senator, that's the same question that Senator Byrd, one of your Democratic colleagues raised, which is how much should it take to fund the military?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: Well, if you can give me a specific definition of all the threats that face the United States, I can give you a precise answer. But let me say, I served briefly at the end of World War II when we knew exactly who the enemy was and what their capabilities were. Since that time, it's gotten more and more difficult to analyze the threats and today young men and women in the military, they don't know what to face where they go in the far-flung lands of the world. Terrorism is on the rise. So much of our budget today is directed at terrorism, and particularly threats could strike us here at home.

GWEN IFILL: Why don't you tell me what the priorities should be.

SEN. JOHN WARNER: The priorities, I think we're right on target. Let's get the figures straight. We had roughly $296 billion for defense in the budget we're now operating on, and I predict we'll add another $5 billion to that to do the shortfalls that we desperately need between now and Fourth of July. Then the President quite properly said we'll stick with the Clinton budget for '02 which is $310 (billion), but the President said I'm going to study everything and possibly come up with some programs canceled, some new added, so we may add dollars over and above the $310 (billion) for '02 after thePresident conducts three basic analyses, first the one required by Congress-- I brought our book from last year's law-- on the overall strategic. That's the nuclear. Then the other programs: Quality of life, conventional and all of the others that are being studied.

GWEN IFILL: Are you getting signals that we're not hearing that the White House is willing to pony up this kind of money?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: Look, the President is on the right track. Don't worry about these confused signals that others are sending out. I assure you studying long term for modifications to the '02 budget which starts next September and my own prediction is we will have a supplemental to take care of certain essential shortfalls between now and the Fourth of July.

GWEN IFILL: General McPeak, what do you think the priorities should be?

GENERAL MERRILL McPEAK: Well, I believe first of all we need to decide this business of what our strategic approach is going to be, and once having decided that, then I think there's a lot that can be done to reconfigure our armed forces our more efficient use of the resources provided. Frankly, one of our big problems now is we're dragging around way too big a logistics tail. At the end of the Cold War, we were spending about a 50-50 ratio-- in other words, about half of the dollars in the defense budget went to combat capabilities and half went to logistics support-- and that was a disgraceful ratio. It's gotten worse. Today it's something like 70-30, so we need to face up to the fact of closing down these excess bases that we don't need, closing depots, laboratories, arsenals that were obsolete 50 years ago and really take a whack at this logistics tail. That would give us the money to fund needed combat capabilities, including the modernization, which is really getting to be one of our more desperate priorities now. We simply must replace this equipment that was bought by the Reagan and early in the first Bush administration, which is gradually been allowed to be run down by Clinton.

GWEN IFILL: Lieutenant General Cerjan, do you think that this military budget is at risk at all because of the Bush administration's priorities for tax cuts as we heard in our set-up piece here tonight?

LT. GEN. PAUL CERJAN: No, I don't think so at all. I agree with Senator Warner. Give the President time and the Secretary of Defense to take a good, thorough look at sizing the strategy, the capabilities, et cetera, relooking at the procurement program and getting us out into the future so we can be sure that when the President, God forbid that he has to commit young men and women into battle, that we have given them everything they need in order to do the job. There's an old adage that says we want to stay outside the enemy's range and inside their decision cycle. The only way to do that is to get out ahead in the technology business and that's going to cost money.

GWEN IFILL: And you think after this review is completed that there will be more money in the pipeline, that there will be a need for more cash to be spent to keep the military up to speed with whatever challenges it faces?

LT. GEN. PAUL CERJAN: There may be but it's going to be balances. General McPeak says taking a look at other issues in terms of whether or not we ought to delve into the logistics tail a little bit more. The last conflict in Kosovo has taught us we can work on a split-base operation where we don't deploy everything overseas that we do a lot of just in time inventory types of things. There's all sorts of new technology that can be applied but it hasto be evaluated. Does it mean more procurement dollars? Maybe. Does it mean that we're going to hold back some programs that we may be looking at right now? Probably. So give the President time and particularly give the Secretary of Defense time to take a real thorough look at where we ought to be going.

GWEN IFILL: John Isaacs, assuming there's a limited pot of money here, how should it be spent -- if you pass tax cuts is that at the expense of the military or do the two things don't really ever have to cross?

JOHN ISAACS: There are a lot of things have to be evaluated. But I just want to remind you that next year's military budget is about $324 billion because you have to include Department of Energy military activities. It's not just Defense Department. $324 billion is quite a lot of money. In fact it's almost 95% the Cold War average. What we are preparing to fight the huge Soviet conventional forces, the huge Soviet nuclear forces, the major threat we face. The Senator is correct. There are threats we face today but they're puny threats. North Korea, Iraq, Iran; they are problems but they're not problems that are solved by spending a huge amount of money on unnecessary weapons on an outdated strategy and with an accounting system where they can't even figure out what they're spending the money on.

SEN. JOHN WARNER: I have to disagree. They're not puny. The threats are very complex today with the spread of weapons of mass destruction, be they nuclear, chemical or biological. This is a very dangerous world, and I think our President is proceeding on the right course -- to protect us and our allies.

GWEN IFILL: We are out of time. We're going to have to leave it there. Thank you very, very much, Senator and gentlemen. Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a tragedy at sea, and the genome project.

FOCUS - COLLISION

JIM LEHRER: The collision of an American submarine and a Japanese fishing boat. Spencer Michels begins.

SPENCER MICHELS: With hope fading 48 hours after the collision, victims' relatives who arrived in Honolulu Sunday awaited word on whether there were any more survivors. The accident occurred at 1:45 PM Friday local time, about 20 miles Southeast of Pearl Harbor. The 190-foot Japanese fishing vessel "Ehime Maru" was carrying 13 high school students in addition to its crew of 22. The boat sank in 1,800 feet of water after it was struck by a fast-rising US attack submarine. The 360-foot nuclear-powered USS "Greeneville" was practicing an ascent maneuver like this, called an emergency ballast blow, when it struck the Japanese vessel. 26 people were saved. Reports differ on how long it took the Coast Guard to arrive and begin the rescue operation. Navy and Coast Guard boats and helicopters are sweeping an area more than three times the size of Rhode Island in the Pacific Ocean in their search for nine people still missing, including four 17-year-old fishery students. At a press conference Saturday, the captain of the "Ehime Maru" complained the rescue wasn't fast enough.

CAPTAIN HISAO ONISHI: (speaking through interpreter) We saw several people appear at the hatch. Then they lowered a ladder for us, but not a single one of my crew was saved by the submarine. It was just like they stood by and watched.

SPENCER MICHELS: But the Navy said the deck of the "Greeneville" was awash in high waves.

ADMIRAL THOMAS FARGO: That precludes the submarine from being able to open her hatches out there and take people onboard safely. But USS "Greeneville" was fully involved in the rescue effort both immediately after the accident and throughout the night.

SPENCER MICHELS: The "Greeneville" returned to its port at Pearl Harbor, where its captain, Commander Scott Waddle, was relieved of his post pending the results of the investigation. Throughout the weekend, US officials issued apologies.

DONALD RUMSFELD: All I can say to the families and the people of Japan is that we feel deep regrets about the incident, and we'll do everything humanly possible to determine what actually took place.

SPENCER MICHELS: Japan's prime minister, Yoshiro Mori, spoke about the accident on Saturday.

YOSHIRO MORI: (speaking through interpreter) I pray the missing are found as soon as possible. I spoke just a while ago with the foreign minister. It was reported that the United States extended its apologies and promised its utmost efforts to find the missing.

SPENCER MICHELS: But Prime Minister Mori's spokesman said he has formally lodged a protest with the US, and is demanding the Japanese vessel be razed from the ocean floor. Coast Guard officials said search and rescue efforts were expected to continue at least through this afternoon.

JIM LEHRER: Joining us are retired Navy Captain Jim Bush, who commanded both diesel and nuclear submarines in the Pacific and Atlantic; and Sherry Sontag, who has written extensively about submarines. She is co-author of "Blind Man's Bluff," a book about submarine espionage. There are a couple of issues that have been raised here. First, the rapid ascent. Captain Bush, what is exactly the procedure for doing that, and why do you want to do a rapid ascent?

CAPT. JIM BUSH (Ret.): Well, a rapid ascent is a legitimate exercise for a submarine to do on rare occasions. It's unlikely that you would have to use a rapid ascent. However, if you're going to do that in peacetime, you have to make sure that there's absolutely no chance that you're going to hit a ship when you surface. There's a lot of ways that you can do this. You come up to periscope depth, put up your periscope, look around, you listen with your listening sonar, you could use your active sonar. If you wanted to be really certain, you could surface and use your radar to make sure that there were no ships in the area. Having done this, you then go down to whatever depth you want to practice your emergency surface from, and you surface from down there. But before you practice that emergency surface, you make absolutely certain that there is no possibility that there would be a civilian ship in the area.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Let's take some of these things one at a time. The emergency ascent, the rapid ascent, it's for an emergency. If something goes wrong down below and you need to get up in a hurry, that's what this is all about.

CAPT. JIM BUSH (Ret.): That's true.

JIM LEHRER: What they were doing off the coast of Hawaii, they were just practicing this emergency procedure, correct?

CAPT. JIM BUSH (Ret.): That's correct.

JIM LEHRER: Which is a routine thing?

CAPT. JIM BUSH (Ret.): It's a routine thing. But also it's peacetime. There was not an emergency. So the thing that you want to do as a good submariner is make absolutely certain that there's no ship there when you surface.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Now let's take... for instance, you mentioned three or four things they could have done and probably did do. We'll assume they did do. First of all, you look through the periscope. Based on your experience, how good a look is that? What can you really see through the periscope when you come up like they must have done?

CAPT. JIM BUSH (Ret.): Well, you come up and you can see very well through the periscope, but the fact of the matter is, because of the sea or some other problem-- rain-- if you couldn't see, you wouldn't practice the surface. If you weren't absolutely certain that there was no ship there, you would not practice an emergency surface.

JIM LEHRER: Now, the sonar and the radar, those are back-ups, then, to sight? Would you agree with that?

CAPT. JIM BUSH (Ret.): Well, they're back-ups to sight, but radar could be very significant, significantly useful to determine whenever it's possible, even plausible, for a ship to be in the area.

JIM LEHRER: So, based on your experience, if the captain did everything along the lines you outlined before, it's almost impossible to have happened what happened over the weekend?

CAPT. JIM BUSH (Ret.): That's exactly correct. If he had taken every precaution possible, it was almost impossible for that to have happened.

JIM LEHRER: Now, Sherry Sontag, this has happened before. In 1989 it happened, did it not, with a similar submarine? Well, you tell us.

SHERRY SONTAG, Journalist/Author: Off the coast of San Diego Beach, the "Houston" was... actually, that same day it was filming "Hunt for Red October." It came up, but this time it came up to periscope depth and somehow snagged a cable between where a tugboat was pulling two barges and then pulled the barges down. There have been times that we had submarines come up under great shipping freighters during the Cold War, under a Vietnamese freighter, but that's more in wartime. That's more when you are trying to sort of, you know, come up stealthily. Maybe you don't want to come up twice. This is just amazing, the idea that you can come up under a fishing boat that is that large, and on top of that end up with a boat that had high school kids on it. The submariners were sending out an e-mail today where they were, like, doing a fake dialogue of what they would have had on their boats had they come up. It was six pages of back-and- forth between sonar, con, and the diving officers and everything else. I mean, they were all sitting there flabbergasted that anything like this could go on.

JIM LEHRER: Was there an explanation offered in this?

SHERRY SONTAG: You know, they were just talking about two things. They were talking about how somebody's career is over, and they're talking about how upset the guys on board must be, because submariners do not like the idea that they're going to bring down civilians. They don't like the idea that they're going to bring down enemy submariners. I mean, I will tell you that the folks on the "Greeneville" are probably rather depressed today. It's a mystery. I think everybody is pretty anxious to hear the briefing tonight-- it's supposed to be 9:00 PM Eastern Time-- to find out a little bit more about how this could have happened.

JIM LEHRER: Captain Bush, what about the weather? What affect would the weather have on all this? I mean, it's said, for instance, that there were choppy waves, six or seven feet high, that sort of thing. Under your experience, you'd say forget it, don't do the rapid ascent in that kind of circumstance?

CAPT. JIM BUSH (Ret.): Certainly. If you were not absolutely certain that there was no ship up there, you don't do the rapid ascent. You don't do the emergency surfacing procedure.

JIM LEHRER: Now the second...

CAPT. JIM BUSH (Ret.): And the...

JIM LEHRER: Go ahead. Yes, sir.

CAPT. JIM BUSH (Ret.): I was just going to say, as far as picking up survivors goes...

JIM LEHRER: That's the next issue. What do you think about that?

CAPT. JIM BUSH (Ret.): Well, every mariner in the world understands that if you have a collision and there are casualties in the water, you do everything possible to try to pick up those casualties. Now, they're not going to open their hatches on the deck, but they did have the hatch open in the conning tower. Let the people over the side of the conning tower. They have a safety track on the ship that they could have put people... attached them to the safety track with life belts on, and they could have had a line to go out and try and catch survivors, but the important thing is that you do everything you can. Now, if that submarine did everything it could, okay.

JIM LEHRER: We don't know that yet, right, Miss Sontag? What were you going to say?

SHERRY SONTAG: What I was going to say, as I was watching the pictures of the seas shortly after this accident, and the waves crashing over, if what you've got is you've got lifeboats out there and people are being pulled into it, maybe the best thing you can do off the conning tower is use your binocs, if the people in the ocean are already doing a pretty good job about pulling themselves out and into the life boats, because you can also lose more people if you just throw everybody over. I mean, when the "Kachina" went down...

JIM LEHRER: What was that? Tell us about that.

SHERRY SONTAG: The "Kachina" was our first spy sub we had sent off from waters of the Barents. It went down. The "Tusk" was nearby, another submarine, and the "Kachina" was trying so hard to tell the "Tusk" how bad things were they sent over a raft with two guys on it. The raft overturned. In order to save those two guys, six guys on the "Tusk" died, and one of the guys in the raft did. So basically if you think the people in the water are doing a pretty good job of taking care of themselves, and you've got the binocs and you have the stats where you can look further out and see where everybody else is, that may be the best thing to do until you know that there's something only you can do. Remember, these people weren't just floundering. In fact, the kids, the high school kids, I heard reported, said they thought their friends that were lost may have been below decks.

JIM LEHRER: Dow below decks. Yes, captain. You wanted to say.

CAPT. JIM BUSH (Ret.): Well, the "Kachina" and "Tusk" is a very good example. The "Kachina" had a battery explosion. The "Tusk" came alongside. They rescued the people from the "Kachina," and some people from the "Tusk" were killed, but the point is that you... when you see a ship in distress, you do everything you can to deal with the survivors. Now, if the captain of the "Greeneville" feels that he did everything he could, okay, and if the Navy thinks they did everything they could, okay.

SHERRY SONTAG: Captain Bush, isn't it possible that the best they could do at that moment was, like I said, use the binocs and make sure that the people were getting into those life rafts?

CAPT. JIM BUSH (Ret.): It's possible.

SHERRY SONTAG: When the folks from the "Kachina" crossed over to "Tusk," you didn't have men on the "Tusk" getting on that shaky plank between the two subs. The "Kachina" guys raced across the planks while the guys on "Tusk" stood on "Tusk" and held on.

JIM LEHRER: We're not going to be able to resolve that one. Let me just ask you one quick question for each of you - same question. Captain Bush, to you first, based on what you know now and based on your own experience and other submarines, do you think we will eventually get an answer as to what happened in both of these issues, whether or not they did the rescue attempt, whether or not they should have even done the rapid ascent?

CAPT. JIM BUSH (Ret.): I'm certain that we will have an answer.

JIM LEHRER: There are no mysteries here, you don't think?

CAPT. JIM BUSH (Ret.): There won't be any mysteries, and we'll have very thorough investigations.

JIM LEHRER: Sherry Sontag, do you agree?

SHERRY SONTAG: The Navy can't afford to have a mystery here. This is a foul-up of the worst proportions under the worst possible circumstances. It's in American waters. You have got kids on board a fishing boat. They have to be really open and really transparent in this process or they're never going to survive it.

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

FOCUS - SEQUENCING LIFE

FOCUS - SEQUENCING LIFE

JIM LEHRER: More information on the human genetic code. Susan Dentzer begins our report. She's from our health unit, which is a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

SUSAN DENTZER: The excitement was palpable last year when scientists announced that they'd virtually completed rough drafts of the human genome. Today at a Washington news conference they called the results even more remarkable than they'd expected.

DR. ERIC LANDER: 3.5 billion years in the making, the text is filled with long-sought answers, some amazing surprises, puzzling mysteries, and lots of useful information for medicine.

SUSAN DENTZER: The results reported today stemmed from two separate efforts to decode the genome. One was carried out by a consortium of researchers known as the human genome project, and headed by Francis Collins; a second was done by a private US company, Celera Genomics, under its CEO, J. Craig Venter. In completing the rough draft of the genome, researchers in effect assembled a map of all human DNA, much of it distributed in the form of genes along 23 pairs of chromosomes. DNA's chemical structure looks a twisted ladder or double helix. The rungs are made up of four chemicals whose names begin with the letters "A," "T," "G," and "C." These chemicals pair up, forming a total of around three billion pairs. Even now scientists don't know what most of this DNA does, but about 1 percent of it functions like keys that switch on protein-making factories in cells. These proteins carry out most of the body's vital work. So sequencing the genome means figuring out how all three billion pairs of letters are arrayed, in large part to trigger the manufacture of proteins. At today's press conference, the two groups noted that, although they used different methods to sequence the genome, they had arrived at surprisingly similar results. These were sometimes simpler and sometimes more complicated than they'd expected. Eric Lander of MIT worked with the Human Genome Project.

DR. ERIC LANDER: There are far fewer genes than we expected, only about 30,000 or so rather than the figure of 100,000 in the textbooks. There is a lesson in humility in this. We only have twice as many genes as a fruit fly or a lowly nematode or worm. What a comedown.

SUSAN DENTZER: On the other hand, Lander said, even this limited number of genes triggers production of myriad proteins.

DR. ERIC LANDER: A typical human gene can make twice as many proteins as the gene in a fly or a worm on average. The proteins themselves also appear to be more complex. There are more multifunctional proteins that do double or triple duty in the cell.

SUSAN DENTZER: Scientists also noted that the sequence tells an amazing story of evolution. For example, humans have apparently inherited more than 200 genes from bacteria that invaded the species long ago, and the relatively small number of genetic variations that occur from one person to another shed new light on our common ancestor, homo sapiens, which emerged in Africa some 100,000 years ago. Much of today's excitement focused on understanding how newly discovered genetic irregularities contribute to disease. That will pave the way for scores of new drugs and other treatments that could ultimately be the real legacy of sequencing the genome.

JIM LEHRER: And to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: Now to the two men leading the efforts to decode the genome: Dr. Francis Collins, director of the human genome project; and Craig Venter, the president of Celera Genomics. Well, we've heard it called many times the book of life. It turns to be a lot shorter than anybody figured. Is that significant?

J. CRAIG VENTER: I think it's going to be significant in lots of ways. The implications are going to be on everything from pharmaceutical development and how that happens to how we view our place in the biological continuum and the universe.

RAY SUAREZ: Does it make the job from here on out harder, easier?

J. CRAIG VENTER: It makes it different than a lot of people expected. I think we were being fed this notion that you get one gene, one protein, one drug. Out of the biotech industry. The number of those that's going to be happen is going to be counted on both hands probably. What's going to happen is we have to go into the protein world to really understand where the genome is taking the next level of Biology. That's ten times as complex at least. We have fortunately new tools that we're setting up to be able to do protein sequencing and characterization at equal if not faster paces than we were able to do the human genetic code. But I think the challenge is understanding the complex of all these pieces working together so that you and I can have this conversation.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Dr. Collins, go ahead.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: Well, I think the book is different than we thought. It tells us because we have only about a third the number of genes that we expected that those genes must be particularly clever in carrying out their functions. We're still just as complicated as before we figured this out, right? So it must mean that our genes have a certain elegant way of doing multiple tasks more so than perhaps than simpler organisms do. For me as a physician, as somebody who is really interested in tracking down the genes that contribute to disease, to heart disease, to colon cancer, to diabetes, to Alzheimer's Disease, it means that the number of genes we have to deal with and sift through is a shorter list. And that's good news. That means we should be able to find the ones we're most interested in, somewhat more easily. Our haystack isn't quite as big as we feared it would be. That should advance the rate of progress in the medical consequences of this project, which is really the reason to do it.

RAY SUAREZ: Don't you have to go down an extra level, an extra layer of complexity to figure out what's going on, if you have fewer genes that it's not as Craig Venter suggested one gene, one disease, one protein that has to be modified?

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: It depends on the circumstance. There are certainly some diseases for which it is one gene, one disease. If you've inherited a particularly misspelling of the Huntington's Disease gene, you're going to get Huntington's Disease. If you've inherited a particular misspelling of the gene for cystic fibrosis of a certain type, you're going to get that disease. But diabetes and heart disease and mental illnesses we know and we've known long before today are going to be the effects of multiple genes. And we will now move forward with this book of life in front of us to identify those over the course of the next five to seven years. So I'm actually pretty optimistic that this situation puts us in a much more settled way to move forward over the next few years and find what those causes are and then use those diagnostically and better yet therapeutically.

RAY SUAREZ: Help me with a little bit of mechanics. Part of the explanation that we've been reading over the years for the 100 to 140,000 gene theory was that human beings are a much more complex organism, more complex nervous systems, more complex systems - a lot of things going on. And now it turns out that we've got a third of the genes we thought we did. Where is this complexity hidden now -- so few genes more than a round worm?

J. CRAIG VENTER: It's a wonderful question. In fact one of the articles that's in one of the journals compares us to a triple 7 airplane in that we have the same number of parts and therefore they claim it must be solvable but in fact that's the wrong way. We're not hard wired like the airplane is. We have 100 trillion cells. If we have 200 to 300,000 different proteins constantly changing, whether they're phosphorylated or not, we have something like 10 to the 20th different potential combinations in our cells....

RAY SUAREZ: So it's 10 with 20 zeros?

J. CRAIG VENTER: That's right. So instead of the simplicity view of life which we had a large number of genes and there was a gene for everything, in fact, the fact that we have fewer genes means we have to understand these next levels of complexity much more than we would have otherwise.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: There's actually data now to support that. We've done a systematic comparison as have the scientists at Celera of the proteins that we humans can make. How do they compare to worms and flies? The numbers of genes are not that different but the number of proteins can be significantly different, and you can get more out of a gene if you're a human. If you look at proteins, they're interesting. They have acquired additional domains, additional properties along the evolutionary process. Think of it this way: A worm protein needs to cut another protein called a protease, it will do - it will do it really well but may not do a lot of other things. The human counterpart may not only cut the protein but be regulated in some way. If they've got the cutting knife, we've got the Cuisinart that you can set all sort of slicing and dicing options to instead of just doing one thing. So our come complexity is recovered, our self-pride is recovered. We're really just at complicated. It comes about in a different way. The simple idea that gene count explains everything has gone out the window.

RAY SUAREZ: It's only been a couple of months since that first flush rapturous announcement that the whole thing had been decoded in the first place. This is really your first run at it.

J. CRAIG VENTER: This is our first look now. It's so much information it's taken both teams the last seven months since gathering the data and getting it put together to really try and see what it means. Only a little over 1% of those 3 billion letters code for proteins. If you'd asked any of us a year ago, I would have said 3%. A lot of scientists would have said 5 to 10%. I think we're all stunned that it's in the 1 to 2% range. These are clear surprises but in fact you have to sort through all the rest of this material. They're all A, C, Gs, and Ts to find out the right pattern to interpret and say this looks like a gene. But one of the questions you might ask is what is different in our genome from a fruit fly? We have roughly twice as many genes. Do we just have two of everything or are they more complex like Francis said? In fact, they're definitely more complicated but we see specific sets of genes that expanded in the last 600 million years. We have an immune system; we have a blood system -- a great expansion of the central nervous system but the most interesting category that fits with all the things we've been talking about is we see a huge expansion in the genes that are responsible for regulating the expression of other genes -- so more complex networks and interactions with the same basic components.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, I already knew coming in here that I was more complex than a fruit fly, but before today...before your research came out I didn't realize that humans shared almost every gene with a mouse, for instance. There's not that much different.

J. CRAIG VENTER: And with a dog and a cat. In fact studies at NIH a few years ago showed that in fact the X chromosome the gene order on the human X chromosome is identical as far as scientists could tell at the time to the gene order on the cat X chromosome. I think we only found one or two differences from the mouse X chromosome. Yes, we have the same parts and really puts the emphasis on this difference in regulation, the timing, the riostats that says these genes should be turned on now. Some people have argued the entire difference between us and chimpanzees is just in the regulation of the gene expression.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: And we shouldn't overstate that there's a small number of genes between us and other species because if you look at the genes we share they probably do have subtle differences. If there are only a few hundred genes that differ between us and the mouse, it doesn't mean that you could put those genes back into the mouse and the mouse would start singing opera and playing golf. There would be all sorts of other differences in all of those other 30,000 genes that are subtle enough to have a pretty significant effect.

RAY SUAREZ: So this first round of research, this first set of interpretations, do you feel closer to actually having practical results like drugs and therapies coming out of this than you did last month, two months ago?

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: I think this is a big step forward. This is a fundamental moment in the history of science where, for the first time, we have the book of life in front of us. We found out it's not just one book. It's three books. It's a history book that tells us a lot about where we came from. It's a parts manual that tells us about the genes and the proteins and maybe something how they fit together. But most importantly it's a textbook of medicine. And having this in front of us, even though right now we can't read a lot of the sentences and we don't quite understand the language, now gives us that bounded set of information about hereditary which should enable us to come up with diagnostics and preventive medicine strategies and new medicines more rapidly than we could have contemplated in the past without this information. I can't tell you we're going to cure all those diseases tomorrow or next week but we are substantially further along now because we have this information.

RAY SUAREZ: So, where do you start? What do you do first?

J. CRAIG VENTER: The biggest danger is over promising. That's happened so many times over and over when there's a basic science advance like this. One thing is very clear. I spent ten years trying to find one gene. That now can be done in a 15- second computer search on our web site and thousands of scientists did that today maybe saving ten years of research with that 15-second search. So every genome that we've published, every genome that has been published is like a catalytic event that changes the baseline for scientists and the world where if they can save ten years, they do it and start at that next stage and build on it. It's hard to estimate how fast thing will change because we're in one of these rare periods where things are changing catalytically on the discoveries that the scientists will make with this new information. Cumulatively that will change things even faster. So we're both I think extremely optimistic.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: Think of this way: Having this information available on the Internet for any scientist with a good idea -- which has been the case for the sequence produced by this international consortium every 24 hours for years in the past -- allows an empowering of all the brains of the planet to work together now to try to understand what this book is telling us and to move into those medical advances that we all dream of and deserve.

RAY SUAREZ: Are there certain questions that were sort of damned up behind waiting for this first rush of research?

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: Absolutely.

RAY SUAREZ: Where we may see things moving fairly rapidly now?

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: You now have the ability not to look at one gene at a time and try to guess what its partners are. You have the whole list in front of you. Of course we need new technologies and they're being developed all the time to allow us to do that on such a global scale. But we have the foundation. No longer will we have to build a house without being sure of what it's built on. We understand those very important pillars and bricks that underlie human biology.

J. CRAIG VENTER: But even more important than that, as Francis and people have been doing gene at the time biology, we've been limited in terms of the scope of what we can do to try and measure one protein at a time, one gene at a time and guess how that impacts biology as a whole. We're not alive one gene or one protein at a time. We're now going to start, as of today, this era of holistic biology where we have to... if you look at that gene chart of all that information there, you can't just look at one component without taking the rest into consideration. That's going to fundamentally change how research is done.

RAY SUAREZ: Craig Venter, Dr. Collins, thank you both.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: Thank you.

J. CRAIG VENTER: Thank you.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the other major story of this Monday: President Bush today reassured US troops he'd improve their quality of life in the military. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.