The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer; March 9, 2007

I'm Judy Woodruff, today's news Patriot Act abuses shields and brooks and daylight saving time tonight on the news hour. Good evening, I'm Judy Woodruff, Jim Lehrer is away.

On the news hour tonight, the news of this Friday, then the views of two senior members of the House Judiciary Committee on the FBI's illegal use of the Patriot Act, the Weekly Analysis of Mark Shields and David Brooks, and a look at the impact of moving up daylight saving time. Major funding for the news hour with Jim Lehrer is provided by... The world's demand for energy will never stop, which is why a farmer is growing corn and a farmer is growing soy, and why ADM is turning these crops into biofuels.

The world's demand for energy will never stop, which is why ADM will never stop. We're only getting started, ADM, resourceful by nature. And by Chevron, Pacific Life, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the National Science Foundation, and with the continuing support of these institutions and foundations, and... This program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. A government review of the FBI has found misuse of the USA Patriot Act, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice reported that the FBI used the law improperly, and

at times illegally, to gain information on people in the U.S. The audit cited under reporting of how many so-called national security letters were sent. These help obtain telephone, email, and financial records in terrorism cases without a judge's approval. Also cited were agent error and shotty recordkeeping. In Washington today, FBI Director Robert Mueller said he was to blame, but he also defended the need for the letters. Those security letters are absolutely essential, absolutely essential for us to do our job in protecting the American public against terrorist attacks. But it is equally important that as we exercise these authorities, we do it consistent with the privacy protections and civil liberties that we in the FBI are sworn to uphold. I am the person responsible, I am the person accountable."

The outcry for members of Congress was swift with vows to hold investigative hearings. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, argued the FBI abused its authority. We all want to stop terrorists. We all want to stop criminals. But the FBI worked for us, the American people, not the other way around. And you cannot have a set of rules which says that they can be outside the rules. Everybody else has to be within them. The laws are there for everybody. And they have not been followed here, neither the spirit of the law nor the letter of the law. We'll have more on this story right after the news summary. President Bush today dismissed charges that under his leadership, the United States has ignored Latin America's problems. He made his remarks in San Paulo, Brazil. The first stop won a week-long trip to the region. Mr. Bush answered questions during a joint news conference with Brazilian President Lula

de Silva. I don't think America gets enough credit for trying to help improve people's lives. And so my trip is to explain as clearly as I can that our nation is generous and compassionate. That when we see poverty, we care, that when we see our literacy, we want to do something about it. That when we find there to be a deficiency in healthcare, we'll help to the extent we can. While in Brazil, President Bush hailed a new agreement between the two countries to boost production of ethanol, the biofuel, the two leaders expressed hope that it will help curb dependence on foreign oil. A U.S. Army commander in Iraq called for more U.S. troops today. Army Major General Benjamin Nixon commands Northern Iraq and said that he is asked for reinforcements in Diala Province, where violence is recently increased. Nixon did not specify how many troops he has requested.

In Baghdad today, Iraqi Prime Minister Al Maliki ventured out into the city. He visited a mostly Shiite neighborhood, showcasing security ahead of tomorrow's international conference. It is intended to bring Iraq's neighbors and others together to try and stop the violence. Daylight saving time in the U.S. begins this weekend, three weeks earlier than in the years past. Congress passed a law two years ago, moving it up in order to save energy. The switch is expected to create problems for computers with clocks that were pre-programmed to make the adjustment in April. All clocks will go forward this Sunday at 2am, meaning we lose an hour. We'll have more on that story later in the program tonight. Chrysler announced a major recall today of nearly half a million vehicles. The affected models are the Jeep Liberty, Dodge Durango, and the new 2008 Dodge Avengers sedan.

Each model had different problems from overheating to faulty door latches. In economic news, unemployment fell slightly in February. The Labor Department reported today that the jobless rate dipped a tenth of a point to 4.5 percent. And on Wall Street today at the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 15 points to close at 12,276. The Nasdaq fell less than one point to close at 2387. For the week, the Dow gained more than one and a quarter percent, the Nasdaq rose eight-tenths of a percent. That's it for the news summary tonight. Now, Patriot Act abuses, shields and brooks, and daylight saving time. FBI Mistakes and Misuse of the Patriot Act. Race Juarez has our story. FBI Director Robert Mueller's news conference followed this morning's release of a Justice Department audit, revealing the Bureau's abuse of the USA Patriot Act.

I'm particularly concerned about the findings in the report that indicate that we did not have appropriate policies in place and in other areas where we did have appropriate policies, we did not adhere to them in using this important tool. The tool at issue is the national security letter. This has been used for more than three decades by the FBI to obtain sensitive information about business and individuals, approved by Congress after the 9-11 attacks. The USA Patriot Act extended the Bureau's access to telephone, email, library and financial records and suspected terrorism investigations without court approval. More than 150,000 national security letters have been issued over the last three years, compared with just 8,000, the year before 9-11. Today, Director Mueller underscored how important the Patriot Act and the national security letters in particular can be to the war on terror. As a reminder, national security letters enable us, the FBI, to obtain certain types of

transactional information, not content of conversations, but I didn't have such items such as telephone toll records, subscriber information, and the like. We'll say that these pieces of information are absolutely essential in our critical building blocks, in our counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations. The Inspector General's 126-page audit found the FBI underreported to Congress the number of national security letters issued over the past three years by some 20 percent. The Bureau failed to accurately report misuse of its authority and failed to properly destroy any unauthorized information collected, and the FBI improperly obtained telephone records using a tactic called exigent letters, claiming an emergency in non-emergency situations. Director Mueller said the Bureau had already taken steps to correct the mistakes made, but added the Inspector General indicated that his review did not reveal intentional violations

of national security letter authorities, AG guidelines, or internal FBI policy. On Capitol Hill, however, members of Congress from both parties promised to investigate the matter themselves. New York Democrat Chuck Schumer, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that oversees the Bureau, called the reported findings a profoundly disturbing breach of public trust. The number of letters that were used is way beyond what anyone imagined. They didn't comply with the most meager and rudimentary reporting requirements. The committee's top Republican, Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania, was disturbed by the report as well. There had to be checks, and the FBI has not followed its own rules. Speaking at a Washington meeting of privacy experts, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez conceded his department needs to rebuild public confidence. And for more on today's revelations, we're joined by two senior members of the House Judiciary

Committee. Democrat Gerald Nadler of New York is chairman of the subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights, and civil liberties. And Republican James Censin, Brenner of Wisconsin, is the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee. And one of the authors of the Patriot Act, and let me start with you, Representative Censin Brenner, perhaps you can remind us why these letters were proposed and authorized in the first place. Well, National Security Letters were not a part of the original Patriot Act. We've had them around at least since 1986 when a bill sponsored by Senator Leahy establishing these letters became law. What happened was, is that with the restrictions that were put on the Patriot Act in terms of getting court approval for FISA warrants and other types of investigative tools, the Justice Department simply went to the NSLs, which are a form of administrative subpoena, and started issuing them right and left.

What I can say is that the Patriot Act reauthorization, which I sponsored in which was passed and signed into law in March of last year, put four important civil liberties requirements on the Patriot Act, including ways that somebody who got one of these could go to court and get them quashed, as well as authorizing the Inspector General to do the audit which we found out about today. I am shocked. I think that the Justice Department has overreached. There's something seriously wrong with the internal management of the Justice Department, and that better be fixed because if it isn't the support for the internal part of our war against terrorism is going to evaporate rapidly. Or the audit was released, did you believe that the NSL system was operating properly? No, I didn't, and the four civil liberties requirements that we stuck in the Patriot Act reauthorization allowed people who received NSLs to at least get some judicial review to consult with attorneys to go to court to get them quashed, as well as to get

a reviewing court to modify a national security letter, and those were not provisions of the law prior to March of last year. Representative Nadler, during the debate over the first version of the Patriot Act and over its reauthorization, were the various powers defined for surveillance, investigative techniques anticipated to cause the kind of problems Director Mueller talked about today? Well, some of us did anticipate those problems. Among others, I voted against both the original Patriot Act and the Patriot Act reauthorization act last year. Remember the original Patriot Act was passed almost sight unseen. It was a 277 page draft that was drafted over weekend and passed with an hour or two debate on the floor and Wednesday, and almost nobody except the directors had had a chance to read it. So we were, it was an abuse of the process, there are lots of things in the bill that no one had a chance to really understand.

But even the protections, and last year's bill somewhat improved the national security letters, but this simply shows what happens, what almost inevitably happens when you give an investigative agency the power to issue letters without any review, by a judge and without any ability of the people who are really affected by it, because the national security letters, they go to your bank or your travel agent or your internet service provider to get the information about you, you never know about it, you can't challenge it, or you can depend on AOL to try to challenge it, but then not likely to do that, they're going to be tremendous abuses. Well, Representative Nadler, it sounds from what you're saying, as if you don't accept it face value, the FBI directors assurance that these were, in many cases, mistakes. No, I do, well, first of all, I don't know that I accept anything that face value from the Bush administration, but it's quite possible that they were mistakes, but what I'm saying is, if you don't have, and this is one of the fundamental things that we saw at some of us a few years ago, if you don't have judicial supervision, if you don't have

an ability, especially when you're dealing with a third party, that the real person's privacy who's invaded doesn't even know about it, you have to have some judicial supervision for the agency, for the FBI to go to a judge and say, this is why we need this, this is what makes this person a fair target for surveillance. This is why we suspect that he's a terrorist, that it's relevant to a terrorism investigation, and let a judge review that. Well, Representative Sensen-Brenner, have the letters become just a simpler way, simpler than getting a warrant, simpler than getting authorization and oversight, to find out the things you want to find out? Of course they have, and that's why the number of letters that have been issued have gone from 8,000 to tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of national security letters. Senator Spector and I in drafting the Patriot Act and the reauthorization of it, both vigorously opposed giving the FBI administrative subpoena power. I believe very strongly that if the FBI needs information, they ought to go to a judge

and say that it's relevant to an investigation rather than having a fishing expedition. What happened was, is because we've had these letters for over 20 years, the restrictions we put on the warrants in both the Patriot Act and its reauthorization ended up having the FBI go the easy route, and that's why we've seen the number of national security letters be increased, I guess, by a factor of 10 to 15 from what happened previously. But this was exactly what was predictable because before the Patriot Act, if the FBI wanted to get a national security letter, it had to say that it had specific and articulable facts connecting the record sort to a suspected terrorist. After the Patriot Act, all it had to say was this is relevant to an investigation. Almost anything can be said to be relevant to an investigation. In other words, you took all real and meaningful restraint on the issuance of these letters away.

Well, how do you fix that? Right. Let me start with you, Representative Sensen-Brenner, and then I'll go return to you, Congressman Nadler. How do you fix it, given the misgivings that you've just expressed about the law and its current form? Well, first of all, we do give law enforcement in this country a lot of discretion, and that's been the way since the beginning of the Republic. The FBI has very clearly abused its discretion, and its abuse of the discretion is going to end up bringing about a reaction by the Congress. I think the use of NSLs is going to have to be restricted by statute. And very frankly, I think there ought to be some heads that roll here, and I'm not calling for the resignation of Director Mueller, but whoever was responsible for this incredibly sloppy administration is going to have to be called to account. And remember, we've had this following the ham-handed dismissal of seven United States Attorneys and a raid on a congressional office that actually forced the President to intervene

to curtail the activities of the Justice Department. I can't remember if that's ever happened in history. Well, Representative Nadler earlier in the program, we heard Director Mueller call this an indispensable tool, something he absolutely needed and something that was working. And you tailor a legislative fix that gives him what he needs, but also answers your civil liberties. I think you can. I think you do a couple of things. First of all, you restore the pre-patriot act requirement to say that if the FBI wants permission to look at your records, they should have a specific and articulable facts connecting you or some reason to believe that you're connected to terrorists. They should have to say that, not simply that it's relevant to an investigation. Secondly, unless there's a really exigent emergency where time is of the essence, they should have to go to a judge and let him see or her see the specific and articulable facts. Secondly, I would change.

Now the reauthorization act last year did allow the recipient to protest the order, but the conditions for that protest were made impossible because whatever is said by the government are taken as dispositive and as true without giving the judge the ability to make a judgment as to whether on the evidence and that should be changed. Representative Sensen-Brenner does an incident of this kind of bring into doubt other aspects of the Patriot Act and perhaps open to further scrutiny other parts of that overall approach that have been controversial. During the five plus years from the time the first Patriot Act was passed and my leaving the chairmanship of the judiciary committee, the current chairman and then ranking member John Conyers and I did very vigorous oversight over the Justice Department's activity. We were somewhat hamstrung in dealing with the national security letter issue because again it wasn't the part of the Patriot Act and it had been around since 1986.

Now obviously we have to broaden our oversight activities in dealing with this because of what the FBI itself has admitted has been a gross abuse of the process. It seems to me that if there is a gross abuse of the FBI ought to come up and say what they're going to do to stop it from happening again and while I heard the director say he was sorry I don't see any concrete steps to make sure that six months from now when the next inspector general's report is do we're not going to be talking about the same problems? Well during his news conference he did say that they've tightened internal procedures in order to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again but if that's not enough for you? No it's not enough for me. I guess the road to hell is paved in good intentions and while I think director Mueller has good intentions what the inspector general found has gone way way over the line and he's going to have to be accountable for it.

In Congressman Nadler you are a subcommittee chair will you be making this the subject of hearings? Well there will be hearings either the subcommittee or the full committee on this subject and I think that Mr. Sensenbrand is completely correct that there will be a reaction that there is going to be reaction that the law ought to be tightened. Some of us were opposed to the lobbying as loose as it is but the abuses that have happened here are not evidence that anybody is terribly evil they are evidence that any bureaucracy must be restrained by law and particularly by oversight by the judiciary. Representative Nadler, Representative Sensenbrand or gentlemen thank you both. You're quite welcome. Still to come on the news hour tonight shields and brooks and changing time but first this is pledge week on public television we're taking a short break now so that your public

television station can ask for your support that support helps keep programs like ours on the air. For those stations not taking a pledge break the news hour continues now with an on-core look at a science unit report on some commercial aviation advancements that could make flying cheaper and more comfortable. Lee Hockberg of Oregon Public Television reports from Seattle. There's no bigger celebration at an aerospace factory than the rollout of a new airplane like Boeing 777 a decade ago. So it was last month with Boeing's latest jet the 787 Dreamliner except there was no airplane it was a virtual rollout symbolic of the virtual way the 787 is being built.

Boeing designers and engineers have created the jetliner on computer screens and they say they've worked the bugs out there enough so says process engineer Simon Cook that they don't need actual wings and wheels. They're not actually physically producing parts and that's the important thing about this software is we're doing it all prior to doing physical parts we're building it before we build it. 787 Chief Engineer Tom Kogan says the latest generation of animation software has changed all of that. You think about how we used to do it and it just feels archaic. Kogan says 3D models produced by Francis DeSoe Systems enabled his engineers to see if parts will fit in the 787 or if workers can squeeze into install them before those parts are even built. They found for example that a planned cargo door wouldn't be able to be installed properly and that a rack for electronics wouldn't fit.

So you can see they've tipped the rack over and they're moving it out of position and there it is hitting structure hitting those the top beams. It could have been very expensive because not only do you have to redesign the rack but maybe you have to redesign some structure around it or redesign the tool and it can get very expensive. Software manufacturer DeSoe says such 3D simulation is the way of the future and not only for airplanes CEO Bernard Charley. You think about any physical products you touch everyday whether it's a phone, a car, a coffee machine, no matter what it is, the world of manufacturing now is becoming virtualized. People look at the 787 and think just another airplane. It is not aviation analyst Michael Boyd of Colorado says virtual design is only one of several technological advancements that make the 787 a history making plane. It is every bit as much of a breakthrough as the first 707 was when it was announced

in 1955 it is going to change air transportation all for the better. Still for all of the fanfare there are nagging concerns about the 787. Early estimates have it coming in 5,000 pounds overweight. This thing a light fast airplane or when they get it off the line is it weighs 30 tons more than it's supposed to. If they can bring it in close to what they're planning yet they're going to have a winner. If it's significantly heavier that's going to change the equation a great deal. We have a better design that will take several hundred pounds out. Boeing 787 General Manager Michael Bear says there are several places where the airplane can be made lighter. But critics also wonder about the revolutionary change in where the 787 is going to be built. Boeing has partnered with entities worldwide to design and build entire sections of the 787 which will then be flown to Seattle for final assembly. People will say it could leave the 787 subject to the vagaries of international politics.

What happens if that company that you go in the bid for for say let's say an elevator section has a revolution at that country or the company goes out of business. You could have a glitch in the supply chain very easily with that. Boeing says that's just the modern reality of doing business. Is there additional risk? Sure there is. But with that risk there's reward and we think that's a great trade. The world is global and for us to think that all the best ideas we're here in the United States it's a little short-sighted. With airlines facing aging fleets industry forecasts say that in the next 20 years nearly 20,000 new airplanes will be needed. And to the analysis of shields and Brooks syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times

columnist David Brooks. Mark joins us from New York this evening. Mark to you first the Democrat in the House trying again in the Senate but trying again this week to get some legislative language together to get US troops out of Iraq by a certain date. Are they about to get their act together? I think they are given the fact that the party is obviously not a homogenous or terribly unified group but I think that this is probably a proposal and initiative duty that as many Democrats will agree on this as any other idea that could be proposed and I think the problem that Nancy Pelosi faces this speaker is with her colleagues and comrades and arms philosophically and that's the left of the liberal anti-war wing of the party and I think that if anything they may have been brought into support for this new idea, this new proposal by the White House's statement that the president tended to veto it,

which of course then makes the case that it is not a toothless meaningless resolution if the president so upset that he's going to exercise the second veto of his presidency. David do you think they'll be successful the Democrat system? Not in passing it. No, I mean this was a case where they actually had an opportunity there in private there are a lot of Republicans who would love to get out tomorrow and in private there is a lot of disunity within the Republican party believe me you sit around with the Republican senators, they're all over the map but the Democrats actually made it easy for them to be lockstep on this because it seems to them like a partisan exercise and I think there's some justice in that. I mean they're arguing about when we get out of the end of 2007, 2008 but the fact is there's a surge going on now and we'll probably know by summer whether it's working or not and it's not working then everybody will want to get out and whether we have a resolution now about the end of 2007, the end of 2008 is somewhat abstracted from that reality. Mark has it really come down to that where they're just arguing over whether it's this

month or that month, a few six months later? No I don't think it is Judy I think that on one side you've got an open ended commitment on the part of the president, a resistance on the administration's part for any limitation, any test, any benchmarks that either the administration that we have to achieve in our own success or that the Iraqis have and I agree that it's a political document as all political statements are and initiatives are ultimately but I think it contains elements that make it very difficult for the president to veto it for Republicans to oppose it. For example, $20 million more for Walter Reed and another billion dollars for brain injured troops but even more importantly an insistence that the president certify that the troops are going over there have the best equipment, the best training and the most safe body armor and vehicle armor available and if in fact it improvised electronic devices continue

and the explosions continue, I think that is going to put the Republicans in a very difficult position if the president is certified that the equipment is the best we can do and just waves that requirement. Does that make it all that make it harder David for the Republicans in the White House? Politically it's hard for them, I mean no question about the polls are against them whether we stay or whether we go people are sick of the war, nonetheless if you take a look at what's actually happening in Iraq and I'm not someone who was super charged up about the surge, nonetheless we've had the oil law recently, we've had a really cleaning out of the interior ministry, we've had some cooperation from Ann Barr, we've had quieting down in Sutter City and now our troops can go into these areas, it seems to be the events in the last couple weeks lead you to think let's give it a chance and we'll know as I say in a few months whether it works or not and whether we have funding in this resolution for Walter Reed or Ag subsidies, whatever it is, that has nothing to do with a real reality which is should we be there or not.

Market's true, the calendar, the days are passing in terms of the surge and seeing whether it's working or not. No I agree Judy and I do think that part of the sense of urgency on the administration is the growing resistance and independence in Congress in opposition, I mean we've essentially had a war policy that has gone unexamined and really uncritised from Congress in any substantive way for five years and I think that there is some sense of urgency for the first time, that the better show progress and the better be improvements in the situation. Can you back home been a tough period for the Justice Department David on top of this news today about FBI agents abusing the way they go out and gather information about people you had, we've learned that not only the eight U.S. attorneys were fired, we now learn the administration to side back off, change the law, make it harder to do that.

What is all this add up to do you think? Well I think I was struck in raised interview with James Simpson-Brenner's attitude which was quite aggressive, he's a Republican and he was not defending the administration, he was pretty tough, he said heads will roll and he linked the FBI thing with the firing of the prosecutors, so I think the administration is facing a pretty high set of opposition even within its own party on this and there are two slightly different issues, one, the politicization of the prosecutors, they are a political office, they serve at the duty of the president because they are political appointees and Clinton fired all the Republicans when he came in, nonetheless they have to have some credibility and the administration has handled this so poorly that is now in doubt. The FBI thing is a little different because it's incompetence, not ideology, it's sloppiness as the interspector general said, nonetheless there's clearly a high degree of frustration on all these issues where the administration is not super, super sensitive on matters of civil liberties. Mark, even the Republicans are saying this was not handled right. Well, I agree, Judy, I agree with David, I dissent on the question of comparing it to Clinton

coming in, a Bush coming in and firing U.S. attorneys of the other party, that certainly has been the tradition and the custom, but what this administration did was fire its own U.S. attorneys. In 26 years, from 1981 forward, through the Reagan years, eight of them and eight Clinton years and four first Bush and five of this Bush, we had three out of 486 U.S. attorneys who were relieved, removed and George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzalez did eight on December 6th and then made the terrible mistake of saying they were doing it for professional performance, which immediately guaranteed that one of them was going to fight for his or her own professional reputation and that their legislative sponsors who were Republican senators in most cases would come to the defense, so it really is a political black eye at a time of the administration, ill needs another one.

Well, there's some agreement on that. Now, a couple of other things I want to ask you about, the Scooter Libby verdict, Vice President's former chief of staff, David, convicted of found guilty on perjury, lying obstruction of justice. What's your reaction? My reaction is one of sadness. I mean, I didn't know particularly well, but I did think of him as an honorable man. I still think of him as an honorable man who I believe was guilty of this crime and I personally don't think he should be pardoned, I think he should serve as that to society. Nonetheless, I think he was a culmination of a very ugly episode. I think Joe Wilson started this all by making a series of sensational and now we know false charges, the White House were overreacted in a vicious way. I thought Fitzgerald overreacted in a vicious way. This was supposed to be a leak investigation. He knew from his first day on the job that Richard Armitage was the leaker and he didn't go off in that direction. He went off in the direction of Libby and Rov and Cheney and obviously, fatter targets for a prosecutor, but that's not where the original problem was. I think he overreacted, so a whole series of unlovely episodes and Libby was the only one who's going to probably end up going to jail for it.

Well, I think the first of all, I disagree that Joe Wilson lied, I mean what Joe Wilson found was what upset the administration at the point where the vice president emerged as the architect and producer of the program and project to discredit Joe Wilson by outing his wife as a CIA operative, I do think that the vice president has been hurt politically on this. I think the press has been hurt. Whatever pretense we had, a legal cover we had that we could offer protection to a source who would talk to us off the record. That has certainly been blown by this case and I think the press really comes off with a serious black eye in the run-up to the war. I mean they were cheerleaders overwhelmingly, they didn't ask tough questions, they did not scrutinize, they analyzed or even remotely performed their adversarial role toward the administration and the regulation that a New York Times star reporter would attribute a remark in statements to the president's chief of staff, scooter Libby, describing him

as an ex-capital hill aide, certainly raises doubts about the candor that we have at dealing with our own readers. Just a couple of questions, two questions about the presidential politics, it's early, early David, but we noticed Rudy Giuliani in the early, early polls ahead of John McCain, who the conventional wisdom was, it was John McCain who was the front-runner for him, really far ahead. And I know a lot of very socially conservative people who want Rudy Giuliani, they know where he stands on abortion and gay marriage, they know all that stuff, but they like him because they think he's a fighter and they buy the story which he tells quite well, which he fought liberals in New York. He even fought my newspaper which goes a long way in the Republican party. And so they like that idea. And so they're willing to support him, they say we may not be a great guy, he may not agree with us, but we need that kind of guy now. So his lead is serious.

I'm not sure it'll hold up, his campaign is very poorly developed. But he is now the front-runner with the support of a lot of social conservatives who will stay with him, I think. How does that look to you more? Well, I don't disagree with David, I would say that John McCain, whom I confess to be enormously fond, has to be heard by the disclosure that Rudy Giuliani is beating him by 20 points among independent voters because those were always John McCain's really strong base and most enthusiastic backers. And I have to think that John McCain is by nature and definition and total inclination temperamentally and insurgent, a Maverick candidate. And as the front-runner going into this race, he almost became the establishment candidate and it doesn't work for John McCain. And I guess the only thing I'd add to that is that John McCain, fairly or unfairly, has become the face and the voice on Capitol Hill of George Bush's Iraq War. And that has hurt him, even though Rudy Giuliani has been a backer and supporter of that

war, he hasn't voted for it, he hasn't spoken on it, he hasn't been as identified with it. But how much does it matter, David, if who's ahead by 20 points or behind by 20 points? At this phase, March of 2007. There's a long way to go, but I do think it matters. The money is being decided now, the press is being decided now. Obviously, a lot can change, but the campaigns have to react. McCain, as Mark suggested, has to come back to the magic. A friend of mine put it this way, what the country wants is the McCain of 2000, what McCain is offering them is the Bush of 2000, the big front-runner campaign, the big bloated operation. And he's got to come back to that. So he's got to respond to what is a genuine and substantive shift in Republican opinion. Giuliani has to respond by actually offering a campaign. People like the past of Giuliani, he hasn't yet developed the future. And you're saying he hasn't done that yet, right? All right. That's a good point, Judy. I just add one thing, and that is the Republican who has led in the Gallup poll one year before the nominating convention.

The last 14 times has been leading, has been the eventual nominee. That's not been the case with the Democrat. That's only happened three times. But on the Republican side, to be the early leader is not unimportant. Are you saying the Republicans are a consistent party mark? The Republicans are a royal party, they believe in a natural order of succession. Mark Shields, David Brooks, gentlemen, thank you both. We appreciate it. Finally tonight, what time is it? Time to spring forward. Three weeks early, Jeffrey Brown explains. Two years ago, Congress added a little noticed provision to an energy bill to move up daylight saving time by three weeks to early March. The country was given time to get ready, and now this Sunday morning, clocks will or should change.

Daylight saving time will also be extended a week in the fall. It's the first such move since 1986. The thinking more sunshine means less power usage. But in an increasingly automated society, that little time change is causing big headaches. A wide array of handheld electronic devices like blackberries and cell phones were set for the original time change and need reprogramming. Companies are scrambling to update systems that control financial transactions, paycheck dispersals, power consumption, even meeting schedules. Apple and Microsoft have issued so-called patches that update systems for the change, and companies are working overtime to make sure the transition runs smoothly. All told, the effort may end up costing business as much as $2 billion. The question now, how much will it benefit the nation as a whole? And we get some further explanation of all this from David Prayrau, a computer scientist

and author of the book, Seize the Daylight. He consulted with members of Congress when they drafted the 2005 Energy Legislation. And Michael Downing, Professor of English at Tufts University, and author of the book, Spring Forward. Mr. Prayrau, the idea here is to save energy. Why don't you explain to us how that's supposed to work? Well, there's actually two different facets of it. One is that by using more daylight in the evening, we can eliminate some electric light usage. And everybody is up at sunset, but only some people are up at sunrise, and most businesses are closed at sunrise, but several are open at sunset, so they have more usage during the evening than the morning. So there's a net saving there, and most studies have shown a saving of electrical energy. A second part of it is that daylight saving time smooths the use of energy over the day, electrical energy over the day, so the energy can be generated more efficiently because

you use the least efficient means at the peak energy usage. And by spreading that usage over the day, you're able to generate the same amount of energy more efficiently and less polluting. Now, Professor Downing, I was interested in reading about all this today that the idea of daylight saving goes back about 100 years, and for most of that time, there's been a debate about its actual impact. Tell us about that. There's been a debate right from the start, in fact, that carries on Rachel today. We tried this in World War I as a way of saving energy for the war effort, and Congress was told at that point that no matter how hard we squeezed our clocks, we really couldn't come up with a lump of coal. And since then, Congress has repeatedly gone back to this well as a substitute for regular energy policy like conservation. The problem is it's very hard first of all to document energy saving, but more importantly, there are a couple of unintended consequences with this law which has caused so much confusion. One thing is daylight saving really does push us outside of our homes, and we go to the

mall and we go to the ballpark, possibly a social benefit, but when we go there, Americans don't walk. We get into our SUVs. Since 1930, the petroleum industry has really known daylight saving actually increases the use of gasoline. And just this week, after 100 years of trying this as an experiment, the Department of Energy said that the jury is still out on whether we're going to save any energy with this program. So, Mr. Prayra, how do you calculate the cost and benefits? Is it something worth trying at this point, or do you feel pretty confident that there are actual savings? Well, historically, daylight saving time has always been used to save energy and, in fact, there's 70 countries in the world that utilize daylight saving time, and almost all of them consider energy the main impetus why they use daylight saving time. I should say that there was studies that have been done that have shown the saving in energy, and those studies did look into whether daylight saving time increased gasoline

usage or travel, or even effect on home heating oil. And they were found that there was no effect found at the time. Of course, there's a new situation, possibly, and so as part of the law, Congress has asked the Department of Energy to make a new study of the effects of daylight saving time and energy. I noticed Professor Downey, you said that one clear winner here in the fall is the candy industry. Right? Absolutely. Daylight saving has been a remarkably effective spending plan in this country. The most persistent lobby since 1915 has been the Chamber of Commerce, initially on behalf of department stores, who realize that if workers had sunlight in the evening, they'd stop and shop on the way home. Since 1986, the last time we got an extra month of daylight saving, the candy makers have been pressing to have daylight saving include trick or treat. They figure if our children have an extra hour of sunlight in the evening, they'll stay out longer, collect more candies, and it should mean millions of dollars in candy bars.

Now, let's turn to the other part of this, which we mentioned in our setup, the technological side. Mr. Preyrau, there have been, of course, we all remember the Y2K scare. How do you compare this? What's going on and how serious is it? Well, there are some similarities in that people had lots of time before Y2K. They knew it was coming and a lot of people and companies waited for the last minute. And I think the same thing is true here. Congress gave two years between the passage of the bill and the implementation of daylight saving time and a lot of companies have waited for a close to the end to do it. However, I think the difference is that for most computer applications and for most people, if a clock is off by an hour, it isn't a major thing. We have a certain things such as calendaring systems and financial systems that based on a time stamp that's very important and they have to be updated.

And we will see, there could be some major glitches, but I think the main thing to think about is that this is a transitional problem. Once it's fixed, it's going to be fixed and we may have the same daylight saving time period for a long time. The last time we changed daylight saving time, as we mentioned, was 1986 and we had that period of daylight saving time for 20 years. Well, Professor Downing, how do you see it? It is at least an interesting reminder of how we're all linked by computers and technology and kind of bound by them, I suppose. Well absolutely, the link is really the key word. Clocks have really limited virtues. We could look up at the sun and tell the time, but what we rely on clock time for is synchronicity and predictability. The United States Congress deciding to go it alone to unilaterally change its period of daylight saving is going to put us further out of sync with European clocks. It's been a big bust for the airlines who say it's going to cost them somewhere between 75 and 150 million are the latest estimates I saw just to renegotiate landing and take-off

times. I just think as a substitute for real energy policy to create all this confusion and the amount of work that has to go on in IT departments, whether you're in a hospital, a university or a corporation, I don't see where the real wind is going to be. All right, we'll all, I guess, wake up on Sunday morning and continue the debate there. Michael Downing and David Preyrau. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Again, the major developments of the day, a Department of Justice review found the FBI misused the USA Patriot Act at times illegally to gain information on people in the US. President Bush dismissed charges that the United States has ignored Latin America's problems and the Labor Department reported that the jobless rate dipped a tenth of a point to 4.5%. And again, to our honor role of American service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. Here in silence are 15 more. Thank you. .

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