The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

GWEN IFILL: Good evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Jim Lehrer is on vacation. On the NewsHour tonight: A summary of the news; a look at the history of race and politics in the United States; the question of false confessions in the Central Park jogger case; an encore report on telemarketing from afar; a look at the new picture book museum; and some Christmas poetry from Robert Pinsky.

NEWS SUMMARY

GWEN IFILL: North Korea warned today the U.S. is pushing a nuclear dispute toward "an uncontrollable catastrophe." The warning came as UN nuclear officials confirmed the Communist state is repairing a reactor at a site north of the capital. In Washington, a White House spokesman said, "We have no intention of invading North Korea." But he said the North was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program, and causing the confrontation. On the diplomatic front, Secretary of State Powell discussed the problem by phone with Japan's foreign minister. And South Korea's President- elect Noh met with the ambassadors from Japan, Russia, and China. Iran will continue building a nuclear power plant, but only for peaceful uses. President Mohammed Hatami made that pledge today, as he visited Pakistan. He offered to ship the reactor waste abroad so Iran could not use it for nuclear weapons. Iran canceled visits by UN nuclear inspectors this month. The next inspection is planned for February. Iraq offered today to discuss UN concerns about its 12,000- page weapons report. But the Iraqis gave no indication they have anything new to offer. We have a report from Richard Vaughan of Associated Press Television News.

RICHARD VAUGHAN: UN Inspectors continue their hunt for any weapons of mass destruction Iraq may have, but the regime has already been criticized by the chief inspectors. Last week they called the 12,000-page weapons declaration Iraq has presented a rehash of old information. Iraq's chief representative to the UN Commission, General Hossam Mohammed Amin, said his government is prepared to reply to these criticisms.

SPOKESMAN ( Translated ): About gaps and holes in the Iraqi declaration and the inspectors disappointment with it, Iraq can talk about it, but has nothing else to add.

RICHARD VAUGHAN: U.S. critics of Iraq have been calling for UN Weapons inspectors to be able to interview Iraqi scientists in private in order to learn more about Baghdad's alleged programs on chemical, biological, and nuclear arms. General Amin said his government would not threaten any Iraqi scientist who accepts an invitation from the inspectors to leave the country.

GWEN IFILL: Also today, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said any fair inspections would show Iraq has nothing to hide. State TV carried his message addressed to Iraq's Christian minority. He said the "powers of evil" were spreading lies about Iraq. On this Christmas Eve, thousands of Christian pilgrims gathered at the Vatican for midnight mass. In his message, Pope John Paul said the birth of Jesus remains "a sign of peace for those suffering from conflicts of every kind." In the Middle East, Israeli troops pulled back to the outskirts of Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace of Jesus. Local officials canceled all festivities to protest the Israeli occupation. Religious leaders led their annual procession, but few Christian pilgrims were on hand. In Caracas, Venezuela, leaders of a nation-wide strike rejected government appeals for a Christmas truce. For more than three weeks, the strikers have been trying to oust President Hugo Chavez. A Christmas Eve storm rolled across the U.S. today. It left heavy snow in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri, and guaranteed a rare "white Christmas" in places like Wichita, Kansas. Snow was likely on Christmas Day in the Northeast and New England. So far, the storm is blamed for at least a dozen deaths. Americans bought fewer cars, appliances, and other big-ticket items last month. The Commerce Department reported orders for durable goods fell 1.4% in November. The news didn't help Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 45 points to close at 8448. The NASDAQ fell nine points to close at 1372. As usual on Christmas Eve, the trading session lasted just half a day. People lined up to buy Powerball tickets across the nation today. The Christmas night drawing will be worth an estimated $280 million. Powerball is played in 23 states, plus the District of Columbia. The odds of winning tomorrow night are about 120,000,000-1. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to race and politics, the Central Park jogger case, long distance buying and selling, picture book art, and Christmas poetry.

FOCUS RACE & POLITICS

GWEN IFILL: Ray Suarez has the race and politics story.

RAY SUAREZ: The furor and fallout over Senator Trent Lott's comments at the Strom Thurmond birthday party illustrate how entrenched race is in the politics of America, and the rise of Republican power in the last 40 years can be attributed in part to the party's success in breaking the Democratic lock on the South. With the signing of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in the mid-1960s, President Lyndon Johnson and much of the Democratic Party embraced the civil rights movement, completing a black shift to the Democratic Party that began with the New Deal. But many white Southerners saw new civil rights laws as unwarranted, unconstitutional intrusions by the federal government into their local affairs, and one of the results was a strong shift to the Republican Party. One of the GOP newcomers was veteran Democratic politician Strom Thurmond, who switched to the Republican Party over the issues of civil rights and state's rights, a major defection in the long march of Southern whites from their century-old political home in the Democratic Party to the GOP In 1968, Richard Nixon used what became known as his "Southern Strategy"-- a plan to draw support from the traditionally Democratic South by promising not to promote sweeping social changes in race relations. Republicans have carried white voters in every Presidential election since 1968. The success of that strategy not only brought Nixon into the White House twice, but also placed Ronald Reagan there for two terms in the 1980s. Reagan's 1980 campaign speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, stirred controversy when he told the crowd of his support for "states' rights." The phrase was long used as code for resistance to black advances, sure to be well-received by Southern voters. And during the elder George Bush's successful run for President in 1988, Republicans ran the infamous Willie Horton ad, which attacked Democratic contender Michael Dukakis for granting a furlough to the murderer-- an ad that was widely assumed to appeal to the racial prejudices of whites. With the election of Bill Clinton, a Southerner himself, the Democratic Party was still only able to make minor gains in the South over his two terms. As governor of Texas, and as a Presidential candidate, George W. Bush has often made a point of specifically appealing to black and Latino voters. But the President's victorious 2000 campaign was not free of racially tinged controversy. Candidate Bush reached out to Southern conservatives by visiting Bob Jones University, a school that was long segregated, anti-Catholic, and even today forbids interracial dating. In the general election, the Florida cliffhanger was fought out in the courts while charges of black voter suppression raged against the state government. George W. Bush became President with just 9% of the black vote. But Bush's large margin among white voters, especially in the South, helped him win the presidency and completed a half- century transition into GOP hands. Political analysts across the spectrum have said the President didn't throw a lifeline to the floundering Senator Lott.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: He has apologized, and rightly so. Every day our nation was segregated was a day that America was unfaithful to our founding ideals. And the founding ideals of our nation and in fact the founding ideals of the political party I represent was and remainse1 today the equal dignity and equal rights of every American.

RAY SUAREZ: Trent Lott resigned eight days later.

RAY SUAREZ: Here to help us put the Lott affair into a larger historical context Angela Dillard, professor of intellectual history and politics at New York University. Lee Edwards, political historian and senior fellow at the heritage foundation. He's the author of "The Conservative Revolution: The Movement that Remade America." And Ira Berlin, professor of history at the University of Maryland; he is the President of the Organization of American Historians. Well, Professor Dillard, let's start with you. Is this a two-week story, a bump in the road for the Republican Party, or was the downfall of Trent Lott something more significant than that?

ANGELA DILLARD: I think it might prove to be significant. It's hard to tell. I mean I think it's going to depend on things like what happens in the upcoming Senate around things like judicial nominations. Is this going to become that sort of story that means that everybody now has to use this as a reference point about what they can and cannot say and who they can and cannot approve? And, of course, everybody has got to be thinking about Judge Pickering on that issue.

RAY SUAREZ: Lee Edwards, a big deal for the GOP or something that you can get past rather quickly?

LEE EDWARDS: I think it is a defining moment for the Republican Party. If you look at the old guard, as represented by Senator Lott, and the new guard as represented by President Bush, I think that this is a very significant point. I think there's an opportunity here, and I think the way that the White House is looking at it is just that, as an opportunity to reach out and try to build bridges to the African American community.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor Berlin?

IRA BERLIN: I guess would I take a position somewhere between these two. I think it's a moment pregnant with significance. There are great possibilities there. Of course it speaks to an enormous change. The Republican Party, as you said in your opening remarks, is a party which has gotten fat on embracing the racist past. It has controlled the presidency since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 because of that racist strategy. It seems to be, in some ways, disabusing itself of that in dropping Senator Lott at this time. But at the same time, there's a constituency there, an important Republican constituency. And whether it is willing to abandon that constituency, which embraced Republicanism, precisely because the Democratic Party was the party of the Civil Rights Act, the Democratic Party was a party which increasingly was the party, which gained the vast majority of black voters, whether it's willing to do that, of course, is a big question. It entails major shifts in policy. Some of those policies are reflected in judicial nominations. But the policies are reflected in a whole variety of other matters that black voters are interested in.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Lee Edwards, listening to what Professor Berlin said, you talked about this as being a defining moment, but isn't it also a moment filled with risk for Republicans as well? If they work too hard to mend fences, in some places, don't they risk alienating people who have been steady voters and supporters in other places?

LEE EDWARDS: Well, I think there's always that possibility. But, number one, Republicans, it seems to me, and from what I understand from Karl Rove and people like that in the White House, want to reach out, try to build up, to perhaps win as much as 15-20% of the African American constituency. And if they can do that, they will be able to build, I think, and take a large step towards a true governing majority. I think the possibility of them losing significant support from the people who have been supporting them in the past because of that strategy is very, very slight and I think that's the calculation in which they're making.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor Dillard, Lee Edwards is talking about a party that is not a prisoner of its past. Do you see that in the offing?

ANGELA DILLARD: I think maybe -- I think for the last couple of decades, the GOP has, in fact been moving in a direction that says look, we're really going to work now to reach out to African American voters, to Latino voters, to Asian American voters. I mean, if you look back to what Lee Atwater was trying to do with the RNC in the late '80s around these questions, I mean, I think there's a real path here that they're trying to outline for themselves for the future. And it's a path that they have to go, especially when one considers the effect of demographic issues in American politics, the changing nature of American political culture, especially in terms of race and ethnicity. So I think that they have no choice but to get out there and reach out to those voters and to the moderate white suburban voters and I think in some ways, they might have to simply risk alienating that solid base.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor Berlin, is that easily done? Hasn't the electric charge of race been a part of the way both parties run campaigns for a long time?

IRA BERLIN: Oh, absolutely. The race card has been a part of American politics since 1776. The Declaration of Independence creates a problem. All men are created equal in a slave society. Somehow that contradiction has to be negotiated. We negotiate those contradictions through the political process. And we're still doing it. I think again, that for the Republican Party, this speaks to perhaps some internal needs. I think many Republicans are embarrassed by the existence within their party, which continues to carry the racist vote, are embarrassed by the Confederate Flag issue, are embarrassed the way questions like reparations and so on resonate within the party. And I think, as was said, that the country is changing as well and there's a large constituency not simply black, but others, who are -- also don't want to be part of a party which carries the banner of racism, whether it's done through code words or done in a more overt way. So I think there's something that's happening within the Republican Party that this is speaking to, and I think also there's something that's happening outside of the Republican Party as well. And it's the negotiation of that which seems to be happening at this moment, or I should say, the renegotiation of those changes.

RAY SUAREZ: Did this past month dredge up, Lee Edwards, a lot of history that neither party wanted to talk about, some conversations. Both sides would have been happy not to have?

LEE EDWARDS: Well, I think certainly this is the reason why conservatives are the first to criticize Trent Lott. Looking back to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Barry Goldwater's vote against it, now that vote, and I wrote a biography of Barry Goldwater and I studied this issue pretty carefully. He voted against that act on constitutional grounds saying that Title VII, equal employment opportunity, would lead to affirmative action. And of course he was right about that. But in 1964 and 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was passed, Mississippi was burning, and blacks looked at these two and said these are rights of political passage and if you're not for us, you're against us and therefore you're racist and you're a bigot. So conservatives and Republicans have been carrying that as an albatross around their neck for some 40 years and that is why they were among the first to come forward and say this is an opportunity for us to demonstrate that we're neither one of those things.

RAY SUAREZ: But if as you suggest black voters misread Goldwater's opposition to the Civil Rights Acts, could it perhaps be that white voters in the South misread it as well, because four of the six states that Goldwater carried nationwide were the same four states that Strom Thurmond carried in 1948?

LEE EDWARDS: They did, and the only thing I can say is that's true but this was not a deliberate Southern strategy by Barry Goldwater. He went on to eject George Wallace, who was hinting that he would like to run on the ticket with him. He then went to Lyndon Johnson in the White House and said let's you and I, as the nominees for this Presidential race, agree that we will not use race in this campaign this fall. So Barry Goldwater did his very best to demonstrate that he was not a segregationist, that he was not a racist, that he was not a bigot. But very understandably, African Americans saw it a very different way.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor Dillard, wasn't there a busy revolving door during that era? I mean, we have been paying attention to the way white Southern voters moved to the GOP but during those same cluster of decades, there was a hefty move of African American voters from the support to overwhelming support of Democratic candidates.

ANGELA DILLARD: I think that's right. I think those were key years for the way that American politics started to literally reshape itself around some of these issues. What I think is really interesting in a lot of this is to look at what's this meant for African American conservatives and Republicans as they've tried to kind of pull African Americans back to the Republican Party away from the Democrats. And in some ways, what they're trying to do now is what happened in the 1960s, especially where African American Democrats worked so hard to push the party on those issues and concerns of African Americans, and were enormously successful. So it seems to me that African American Republicans now are trying to play that kind of historic role, whether or not they will actually have the support of the Republican Party behind them in trying to do this I think is an interesting question, and one well worth keeping an eye out on for the future.

RAY SUAREZ: You might say they have nowhere to go but up. A poll taken Sunday by the Gallup organization says 6% of blacks in the United States say the Republican Party best reflects their views. But a lot of Republicans, Professor Berlin, are trying-- say they're trying to get American politics to a post-race issue-based footing. Is that possible now?

IRA BERLIN: That's interesting. Issue-based -- what exactly is that going to mean? My feeling is that voters, both white and black, generally read their understanding of politics is fairly shrewd and correct. That is there's a reason only 6% of black people consider themselves Republican. What exactly are the issues that are involved here? We know in some ways we are a more segregated society than we were in 1956. We know that changes in terms of the distribution of wealth have not changed greatly; that a disproportionate number of people of African descent are at the bottom, that affirmative action is a policy, in its various forms, that is something that black people are very interested in. There are a whole variety of other issues that also draw black people to the Democratic Party, even with all of the baggage that the Democratic Party itself, you know, itself carries. Now it seems to me, if you want to move black people out of the Democratic Party, you've got to address those issues. Is the Republican Party prepared to do that?

RAY SUAREZ: Professors, Lee Edwards, thank you all.

GWEN IFILL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the Central Park jogger case; long distance buying and selling; picture book art and a little Christmas poetry.

FOCUS CENTRAL PARK JUSTICE

GWEN IFILL: Next the Central Park jogger case and the reliability of confessions. Betty Ann Bowser reports.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: This is 14-year-old Raymond Santana confessing to a series of sensational robberies and beatings in Central Park in 1989, after more than 20 hours of questioning.

QUESTIONER: When you went into the park that night, why did you go into the park?

RAYMOND SANTANA: Cause I thought we were going to beat people up, and take bikes, booze, and get money.

QUESTIONER: You went into the park to beat people up, to take bikes and...

RAYMOND SANTANA: Rob people and get money.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The crimes took place all over Central Park that night 13 years ago, but the one that drew the most attention happened near this popular jogging spot. Where a young white investment banker was brutally raped, beaten and left for dead. She became known as the Central Park jogger. Here's what 16-year-old Kharey Wise had to say about the crime:

KHAREY WISE: Oh man, blood was scattered all over the place. I couldn't look at it no more. Like I said, the reason I said I did it not just to prove myself because I don't prove myself for nobody. I just did it because we went to the park.

QUESTIONER: To do what?

KHAREY WISE: For trouble. We went to the park for trouble and got trouble, a lot of trouble. That's they wanted and I guess that's what I wanted. When I was doing it, that's what I wanted too. I can't apologize because it's too late. Now we got to pay up for what we did.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And pay up they did. Santana and Wise, along with three other teenagers, were charged with attacking the Central Park jogger, based almost entirely on their video taped confessions, like this one from 16-year-old Antron McCray, taken after more than 22 hours of questioning.

QUESTIONER: What happened when she came closer?

ANTRON McCRAY: That's when we all charged her.

QUESTIONER: Did you charge her?

ANTRON McCRAY: Mm-hmm.

QUESTIONER: And who else charged her?

ANTRON McCRAY: Everybody. Everybody that was there,

QUESTIONER: What happened when you charged her?

ANTRON McCRAY: We charged her. She was on the ground. Everybody stomping and everything.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: There was almost no physical evidence linking the boys to the jogger. Still people were incensed. The boys seemed to show no remorse in their confessions, and the attack came at a time when crime rates were soaring. Attorney Barry Scheck, a life- long New Yorker, remembers what it was like.

BARRY SCHECK, Attorney: Just the incendiary nature of the attack on the jogger itself whipped New York City into a frenzy, it was awful. When the prosecutors came into court, you know, there were signs up saying we know where you live, the supporters of the young men were demonized in the press, it was a very, very difficult atmosphere, highly charged.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: All five boys were convicted of the attack on the jogger, but also of other crimes in the park that night. McCray, who has an I.Q. Of 87, served six years; Kevin Richardson then 14, served six and a half years in prison; Yusef Salaam, then 15, also six and a half years; Wise, the only one of the five charged as an adult, spent 11 and a half years behind bars, and Santana, convicted at 14, served eight years in prison. That seemed to be the end of the Central Park joggers case, until this man, a convicted murderer and serial rapist named Mathias Reyes, said he and he alone raped and beat the Central Park jogger. Here's how Reyes described the attack to ABC News correspondent Cynthia McFadden.

CYNTHIA McFADDEN: Did you do it alone?

MATHIAS REYES: Mm-hmm absolutely.

CYNTHIA McFADDEN: Did you rape her?

MATHIAS REYES: Yes.

CYNTHIA McFADDEN: Did you beat her?

MATHIAS REYES: Mm-hmm.

CYNTHIA McFADDEN: Did you leave her for dead?

MATHIAS REYES: I thought I left her there for dead.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: More important, Reyes's DNA matched that found on the jogger's clothing. Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morganthau, whose own prosecutors convicted the five boys, launched an investigation. After 11 months, the DA released a report that concluded it was Reyes who raped and beat the Central Park jogger. The DA also found "troubling discrepancies" in the video taped confessions, like this one from Kevin Richardson.

QUESTIONER: Did she scream a lot?

KEVIN RICHARDSON: Like "help" and "stop."

QUESTIONER: Did anybody gag her?

KEVIN RICHARDSON: No.

QUESTIONER: Did anybody tie up her hands?

KEVIN RICHARDSON: Not that I seen.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Records show when police found the jogger not only were her hands bound, she was also gagged with her own T- shirt. On December 6, Morganthau's office asked that the five-- now men in their late 20's-- be exonerated not just of the attack on the jogger, but of all crimes committed that night. State Supreme Court Justice Charles Tejada concurred.

JUSTICE TEJADA: The motion is granted. Everybody have a merry Christmas and happy new year.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Most New York City police officers are furious, like former detective John Hyland who investigated the case. They think the DA has implied the police did something wrong in their questioning of the five teenagers.

THOMAS HYLAND, Former NYPD Detective: I think that's a miscarriage. I think that's wrong. It's a tragedy and it's a tragedy for every other detective who has to follow this, to be tagged or tattooed with the fact that the Manhattan district attorney's not standing up for the detectives who took those statements. He's kind of leaving it out there, if you know what I'm saying, that they were coerced. It's really not fair because they were not coerced.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Hyland agrees with overturning the verdict on the jogger, but thinks it was wrong for the five to be exonerated of other crimes committed in the park that night.

THOMAS HYLAND: Let's make no mistake about it, I mean, these kids were involved in acts prior to the jogger. They were involved in robberies, they were involved in assaulting one or two of the joggers. Two of them just as recently I think as this year actually said they were in the park robbing people and attacking people. It's their own admission that they said that, this past year. Because somebody comes forward and says yeah, I raped her, does not mean that the other acts did not happen.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is adamant that his department did nothing wrong in the jogger case, but attorneys for three of the men disagree.

MICHAEL WARREN, Defense Attorney: This happened as a result of overzealous police activity that resulted in the unwarranted and illegal and some say criminal seizure of statements from young children who were separated from their parents or those who could give aid and assistance to them during hours and hours and hours of interrogation.

ROGHER WAREHMAN, Defense Attorney: When a white woman is attacked or accused of being attacked by someone who is black or Latino, then logic, sense, justice, evidence go out the window. It becomes a question of "lets get one of them," any one of them -- and that's what happened here. Just get them.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The outcome has left a lot of people asking how and why the teenagers would confess to something they didn't do. Williams College psychologist Saul Kassin has been studying false confessions for nearly 20 years, and says when people are interrogated for 18, 20, 25 hours as were the suspects in the jogger case were, false confessions go up.

SAUL KASSIN, Williams College: What you often see in these false confession cases, when the men are declared innocent, the microphone is put in their face and obvious question is asked, if you're innocent, why did you give a confession? Almost all of them say something like "because I just wanted to go home" -- indicating a kind of a warped state of mind when you think about it. Are you trying to tell me the outside observer says, that you thought you were actually going to go home after confessing to a murder? Well, believe it or not, they did.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Long interrogations are not unconstitutional. Neither is confronting a suspect with false evidence, and there are other police practices that have passed constitutional muster.

JOHN TIMONEY, Former Deputy Commissioner, NYPD: If I'm convinced you've committed a crime, I can lie to you, I can tell you I found your glove at the scene, I found your fingerprints. Your partner gave you up, I can lie and deceive. Good cop-bad cop. I can do all that stuff.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: John Timoney is a former New York City detective who has also served as police commissioner in Philadelphia.

JOHN TIMONEY: The Supreme Court has ruled that that's fine. As long as I didn't force you to confess to something you didn't commit, police officers are allowed to engage, if you will, in deceit, in trickery, in making up stories. Pretend like you have evidence you don't have.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Can they promise you something in terms of prosecution?

JOHN TIMONEY: Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Or threaten you, conversely, with something?

JOHN TIMONEY: No. They should not. Absolutely not.

SAUL KASSIN: I think presentation of false evidence is one of those problem areas implicated in almost every false confession, lab studies that I and others have done show we can produce false confession in a laboratoryby presenting false evidence to people. It clearly increases the risk of a false confession.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Attorney Barry Scheck works with law students on the innocence project, which uses DNA to overturn the convictions of innocent people.

BARRY SCHECK: We've now had 122 post- conviction DNA exonerations, and in 35 of those cases there have been false confessions or admissions and that's just the tip of the iceberg. When one goes back and looks at cases in the recent past where people have been arrested or indicted and then DNA tested, the cases are dismissed and they also falsely confessed.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Scheck, who assisted defense attorneys in getting the jogger conviction thrown out, thinks the answer is for state's to require that confessions and interrogations be taped.

BARRY SCHECK: It won't handcuff police. They can use all the tactics that Sipowitz uses on "NYPD Blue" when he's acting ethically to tune up a suspect-- good cop, bad cop, deception-- can all be done. The only difference is that there's a record. It protects police from unfair allegations that they coerced a confession or they suggested details; that happens a lot. It's going to happen a whole lot more after the Central Park jogger case, and so many of these false confession cases. It only protects police and enhances their reputation for fairness if that whole procedure is video taped.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Timoney is not opposed to video taped interrogations, so long as the rules are clear.

JOHN TIMONEY: Before I would agree to do anything like that I want to make sure the definitions are correct, because I don't want some slick lawyer misusing what was meant to be a good system. So for example, when the lawyers tell you we want all custodial interrogations videotape, as to what do you mean by that. Is that in the interrogation room in the precinct? Fine. But you can have a custodial interrogation two miles away from the station, out at the scene where you first put the handcuffs on, or you're driving into the station house and you're talking to him in the back seat of the car and you've advised him of his rights and he decides to confess. What are they going to say? "No, you can't talk to him until you get to the station house and click on the cameras and do the recording." I don't think so.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: While the debate over videotaping grows, the five exonerated men are keeping low profiles, but their attorneys are out front saying they'll fight for police reforms and seek monetary damages for their clients.

ENCORE DIALING FOR DOLLARS

GWEN IFILL: That telemarketing call you got last night at dinnertime may have come from half a world away. Fred de Sam Lazaro of Twin Cities Public Television has our encore story.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Bangalore may be best-known as India's Silicon Valley, but these days, instead of perfecting their computer programming language, many young people are perfecting their English.

MAN: A-e-I-o-u...

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: That's because the back-office business is booming here-- back office for American and British companies, that is: Sorting insurance claims, clearing credit card transactions...

SPOKESPERSON: Thank-you for calling. Good-bye.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: ...And now, running phone banks, talking to customers in Europe and America-- everything from tech support on computer help lines to telemarketing calls selling credit cards and vacations, to filling catalog orders.

SPOKESMAN: The black bra and the CD recorder will be delivered by 6:00 PM Friday.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Bangalore is fast becoming the 1-800 capital of the world-- at least the English-speaking world.

P. GANESH, Call Center Founder: In India, people have always been anglophiles. They love to learn... they love to actually learn more about other cultures, speak like them. It's part of the fun.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It's been much more than fun for P. Ganesh. Two years ago, he started a company called Customer Asset. It takes advantage or lower long distance rates and new technology that automatically forwards local or 1-800 calls dialed in America to operators in India. Ganesh recently sold the business to an Indian conglomerate for $20 million.

P. GANESH: If somebody had told me even five years back that this kind of industry would be possible in this kind of numbers, and these kind of things would be happening in India, I wouldn't have believed it, that we would actually work with the housewife and consumer in U.S. and U.K., sitting in India...

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: How many of you kids study English and like it?

GROUP: Almost everyone.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The key asset in this land of one billion is an infinite supply of English- speakers, the legacy of British times and the modern-day colonial power, satellite TV.

LITTLE GIRL: I like to watch nickelodeon because there is many games on it-- game shows and many cartoons and many good, good things.

LITTLE BOY: I like watching Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, National Geographic.

LITTLE GIRL: I like AXN. I like that, and I like my favorite serial at 9:00 and all that stuff.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The challenge is how to make their English readily understandable to non- Indians, how to neutralize an English richly flavored by India's diverse tongues.

SPOKESMAN: So what does a Malayalam accent sound like? Thomas, why don't you give us a small demonstration?

SPOKESMAN (Heavily accented): Why did the student go to the college? ( Laughter ) to gain some knowledge.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: So even before they learn about the products they'll be selling, call center hires begin with accent training.

SPOKESMAN: "Come da." "Da," that is a very common Bangalore colloquialism. You shouldn't say colloquialisms in any form.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In a land where English is spoken with no speed limit, they are taught to slow down.

INSTRUCTOR: Come to the park. Now, what's wrong? What is happening there? Can you tell me? Come to the park. Indian come "do" the park.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: And to bite their lips.

INSTRUCTOR: Say the word "averse." Do you see what's happening there? The Indians... your upper teeth must touch the lower lip. Say the word "averse."

MAN: Averse.

INSTRUCTOR: Say "available."

MAN: Available.

INSTRUCTOR: A good practice word is "West Virginia."

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Call center companies in India don't like naming their clients in the West, where the issue of jobs going overseas is a sensitive one. They also cite competitive reasons. But many of the largest companies: from GE, to British Airways and Dell Computer-- have set up their own call centers here, and they seem to take pains to make the calls sound as though they're just down the street. Vivek Kulkarni is the information technology secretary for the state government in Bangalore.

VIVEK KULKARNI, Minister, Information Technology: For example, her local name will be Geta, where she will be known as Mary for the people in America.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Why do they make people say they're from somewhere else for the American market?

VIVEK KULKARNI: They don't really say that they're from somewhere else. All that theysay is the name which the other person is familiar with. The idea is that you finish the call quickly, you solve his problem quickly, the customer doesn't have time to get into anything else.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: But just in case a customer does want to engage in small talk, C.R. Suman says she studies the Internet for weather or current events, and can chat in her friendly, recently acquired American accent.

C.R. SUMAN: When it comes to the culture or the way they live, yes, we have done a lot of research. We have had a lot of training here. We had Americans come and train us for some time.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Customers don't usually know they're talking to someone overseas, and especially with telemarketing calls, don't want to be talking at all.

C.R. SUMAN: They don't like the sales calls too much. So we didn't know about that. It was a whole new experience when they just sometimes put the phone down. You know, they just don't even think of saying, "I'm not interested." Just bang the phone down. It was like, "Oh, my God."

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Irate consumers don't detract from the lure of these jobs. Unemployment and other professions is as high as 20% for college graduates. And the new customer service industry is helped by favorable exchange rates and is able to offer better pay than traditional professions. Veena Suwant has a graduate degree in architecture.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Obviously this was a more lucrative industry than architecture?

SPOKESPERSON: Yes, much, much.

SPOKESMAN: I've done one year of hotel management and would probably be working in hotel as a chef by now. I wanted to be a chef when I was young, so I make three times less than I make here.

SPOKESPERSON: I don't have any hang-ups about being an MBA graduate and I'm working in a call center.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Although it's considered a good career, call center workers typically earn just $200 to $250 a month. American and British companies moving their back offices here save up to 40%, and they're moving in droves.

VIVEK KULKARNI: In fact, we receive every week one new foreign company here. We have been doing it for the last 104 weeks.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: One foreign company per week.

VIVEK KULKARNI: One foreign company which sets up base, which opens an office in that week.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: India's call center and back office business, which literally did not exist two years ago, is expected to earn $25 billion in annual revenues in just five years. That's three times what the venerable software business brings in today.

FOCUS BIG BOOK ART

GWEN IFILL: A museum built by a caterpillar. Arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown reports.

SPOKESMAN: You know, I still don't know this book by heart.

JEFFREY BROWN: The book is "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," and though author and illustrator Eric Carle forgets his words, for most anyone born after 1969 or anyone who has read to a child since then, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" is very familiar fare.

ERIC CARLE: "One Sunday morning, the warm sun came up and, pop, out of the egg came a tiny, and a very hungry caterpillar."

JEFFREY BROWN: The story of a tiny insect who eats too much has sold more than 17 million copies and been translated into 33 languages. Now the original, brilliantly colored images from the book have found a new home, appropriately enough, in an apple orchard in Central Massachusetts, in the brand new Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, the brainchild of the artist and his wife. Classics like "Good Night Moon," The Babar Stories, "Curious George," and so many more have a cherished place in the hearts of millions, but they have rarely been honored in the traditional art world. That's what makes this an unusual, if not unique, institution. On this museum's walls: A very grouchy lady bug, a horse, and a spider.

WOMAN: And what book is that from, Nicholas?

LITTLE BOY: Spider.

WOMAN: "The very busy spider."

SPOKESMAN: Okay, this is it.

JEFFREY BROWN: Nick Clark is the museum's director.

H. NICHOLAS CLARK: We're taking it out of the book and putting it up on the wall. It is honoring the art of the picture book, and recognizing it as a more legitimate and serious genre than it has heretofore been recognized as.

JEFFREY BROWN: Inside the exhibition rooms, Eric Carle's work occupies one large gallery. Trained as a graphic designer, Carle worked in advertising before turning to children's books. He uses bright colors and bold shapes that appeal to very young children or to anyone who's ever felt a bit small in the world.

ERIC CARLE: A painting draws you in, and you slowly digest everything. But in advertising it's, boom! I don't draw too well really. I'm a graphic designer, and big, small, night, day are graphic elements to draw you into pictures, for instance, I believe the white against a picture. As you notice, my picture -- my books are a lot of white space, concentrated color, and those are graphic... devices to entertain you and to entertain your eyes. And I just think whatever our eyes touch should be beautiful, tasteful, appealing, important.

JEFFREY BROWN: A second large gallery hosts guest exhibitions. The first is the work of Maurice Sendak, perhaps the most renowned figure in picture books. Illustrator of "A Hole is to Dig" and the "Little Bear" tales from the '50s; author and illustrator of the classic, "Where the Wild Things Are." Sendak is a master draftsman, his drawings full of detail and subtlety.

JEFFREY BROWN: You have said that this picture book makes aesthetic demands that few have mastered. So it's a hard form.

MAURICE SENDAK: It's a very difficult form. It's like balancing picture with words. It's rhythm, it's syncopation. It's where you stop writing and start drawing. It's a continuous thread-- words, pictures, words, pictures-- and it has a tempo, almost a metronome at the beginning, because why would children go through a book? So you've got to catch them with your metronome right from the start so they syncopate with the book.

JEFFREY BROWN: Sendak says he writes for the frightened child in all of us, young and old, himself included.

MAURICE SENDAK: People say, "oh, Mr. Sendak, you live with your child self," like Peter Pan under a mushroom. And I say, "how'd you like to live with your psychotic ancient self, grumbling and bumbling around in your belly? That's what it's like." You live with your child self, you have no choice. He is there lurking.

SPOKESPERSON: "In the Night Kitchen," by Maurice Sendak.

JEFFREY BROWN: One of the museum's goals is to bring children to art, through the books they already love.

PEOPLE READING IN UNISON: "Milk in the batter, milk in the batter, we bake cake and nothing's the matter."

JEFFREY BROWN: In another part of the museum, kids can create their own art. At a time when many museums are going high-tech, interactivity here means passing out crayons and glue. In fact, the tools are much the same in Eric Carle's professional studio a few miles away from the museum.

ERIC CARLE: Here are my reds, for instance.

JEFFREY BROWN: Carle's craft is collage. He paints large sheets of tissue paper. Storage drawers are color-coded.

ERIC CARLE: Let's say I need a red head, I cut it out, and I add one segment after the other. And it's easy for children to do, they love to do it. You know, kids in pre-school already do collages.

JEFFREY BROWN: Right, with these same materials: Paper, crayons, paints, glue.

ERIC CARLE: Yeah, yeah. And when I do a picture for kids and it's finished, then I say, "okay, now the picture is finished, what do you do when the picture is finished?" One time, a kid said, "Do another picture." I said, "no, no, no. When a picture is finished, you sign it."

JEFFREY BROWN: But do collages created to illustrate children's books belong in a museum? For both Carle and Sendak, the question is irrelevant.

ERIC CARLE: I think it's a silly debate, what is illustration? You know, the Sistine Chapel, the pope said to Michelangelo, "you go up there and paint a picture on the wall." Well, it's an illustration.

JEFFREY BROWN: And it tells a story, too, right?

ERIC CARLE: It tells a story.

MAURICE SENDAK: There has always been that divide between those who painted and cut their ears off, and those who were commercial and made a lot of money. It's no longer a battle for me, because it's an idiotic discussion altogether. It is art. I mean the first things I fell in love with was "Babar." By the time you finish that book, you are so in love with Babar and Celeste and the atmosphere and the country, the continent, everything, the lucidity of the language, which is so simple and so plain, and those pictures going. It's like exquisite poetry. That is art. That is very refined art.

JEFFREY BROWN: This sophisticated young museum-goer agreed, even if she didn't have all her vocabulary words down.

JEFFREY BROWN: What do you think about seeing the pictures from the books on the wall of a museum?

TAYLOR WITHERSPOON: I think it's very daring.

JEFFREY BROWN: Daring? Why?

TAYLOR WITHERSPOON: Because I think they're beautiful and expiring.

JEFFREY BROWN: Inspiring?

TAYLOR WITHERSPOON: Yeah.

JEFFREY BROWN: Museum Director Clark hopes this is just the beginning of a broader recognition for picture book art.

JEFFREY BROWN: You're an art historian who's worked in museums. Could you have imagined 20 years ago that gorillas, bears, caterpillars would be on the walls of a museum?

H. NICHOLS CLARK: No, and certainly the climate has changed enormously. My hope is that someday we will be able to lend those gorillas, and those monkeys, and those bears to the best museums in the country, and that they will want them.

JEFFREY BROWN: Eric Carle calls the museum, "the house the caterpillar built." In his book, the tiny insect grows and grows, until it transforms itself into something new and beautiful.

ERIC CARL: I never imagined that it would become so important to so many children. Why do children love it? It's a book of hope. You little, ugly, little, insignificant bug, you, too, can grow up to be a beautiful, big butterfly and fly into the world, and unfold your talents.

JEFFREY BROWN: In the end, it may be this extraordinary connection that so many of us have to the books of childhood that lends extra power to the art of the picture book on the page or on the walls of a museum.

ERIC CARL: "Then he made a hole in the cocoon, pushed his way out, and he was a beautiful butterfly."

FINALLY - BETHLEHEM

GWEN IFILL: And finally tonight, some reflection on this Christmas Eve from former poet laureate, Robert Pinsky.

ROBERT PINKSY: The words of Phillips Brooks' Christmas carol, "O Little Town of Bethlehem,"

has had a mysterious power for me ever since I first heard them sung when I was a small child. Years later, I learned that Brooks wrote his carol as a poem on a visit he made to Bethlehem in 1868. Phillips Brooks was famous for a sermon he delivered at about that same time on the subject of the Civil War dead.

"Now I associate the silent dark streets of the song with all those young men missing from the streets of towns all over the North and South."

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light; The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight

ROBERT PINSKY: That haunting evocation of seasonal hopes and fears were in my mind when I wrote my own poem "December Blues." My poem too includes fears as well as hopes -- as in this holiday season now with potential war. Here are my closing lines.

In the shopping center lots lights mounted on cold standards tower and stir, condensing the blue vapor of the stars, between the rows of cars people in coats walk, bundling packages in their arms or holding the hands of children. Across the highway, where a town thickens by the tracks with stores open late and cr ches in front of the churches, even in the bars, a business-like set of the face keeps up the nostalgic pitfalls of the carols tugging. In bed, how low and still the people lie. Some awake, holding the carols consciously at bay oh, little town enveloped in unease.

RECAP

GWEN IFILL: Again the major developments of the day. North Korea warned the U.S. is pushing a nuclear dispute toward "an uncontrollable catastrophe." Iraq offered to discuss UN concerns about its weapons report. And on this Christmas Eve, thousands of Christian pilgrims gathered at the Vatican for Midnight Mass. Pope John Paul said the birth of Jesus remains "a sign of peace" for humanity. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Thank you and good night.