The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; then, the latest developments and theories on the London bombings; the Karl Rove and Supreme Court storms as seen by Mark Shields and David Brooks; and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay on the popularity of some golden oldies.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: A prime suspect behind the London bombings has been arrested in Egypt. The interior ministry in Cairo said today he was an Egyptian biochemist, Magdy al-Nashar. He was detained in Cairo after last week's attacks. The Egyptians said he claimed to be on vacation and denied any role in the plot. Al-Nashar lived and worked in Leeds, England, before leaving two weeks ago. Police found traces of powerful explosives at his apartment there. Police also confirmed today they're investigating the bombers' possible links to Pakistan and to al-Qaida.

SIR IAN BLAIR: This is this explosion has the hallmarks of al-Qaida, the simultaneous explosions, the fact that the dead appear to be foot soldiers and what we've got to find is the people who trained them, the people who made the bombs, the people who financed it. And that is where the investigation is going at the moment.

JIM LEHRER: There was also word authorities in Pakistan detained four people in the investigation. The Reuters News Agency reported that today, quoting unnamed sources. We'll have more on the investigation story right after this News Summary. Car bombs rocked Baghdad for a third straight day. At least half a dozen explosions killed more than 20 people, all of them Iraqis. One attack killed three guards near the home of Iraqi President Talabani. And the U.S. Military said two U.S. Marines were killed Thursday near the border with Jordan. All told, more than 1,760 Americans have died since the Iraq War began. More than 13,400 have been wounded. A U.S. federal appeals court ruled today military tribunals for terror suspects are legal. It said the president had congressional authority to create the tribunals. The case involved Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the allegeddriver for Osama bin Laden. He's being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A federal judge ruled last year he could not be tried by a military panel under the Geneva Conventions. Violence flared today between Israel and the Palestinians after a five-month cease-fire. Israeli air strikes in Gaza and the West Bank killed at least six members of Hamas. That followed rocket and mortar fire at Israeli settlements. Hamas said the attacks were retaliation for Israeli actions. In Gaza City, two teenagers died in gunfights between Hamas gunmen and Palestinian police. The police were trying to stop the mortar attacks. In Washington, officials announced Secretary of State Rice will go to the Middle East, hoping to shore up the cease-fire. Spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. is intent on seeing Israel withdraw from Gaza next month, as planned.

SEAN McCORMACK: It's a potentially historic moment and the party should seize the opportunity to realize all the potential from this disengagement. The secretary is going to travel to the region. She thought it was an appropriate time, an important time to go there and to try to spur the parties on to make the... to have the effective cooperation.

JIM LEHRER: Rice will add stops in the Middle East to a trip to Africa that begins on Tuesday. Chief justice William Rehnquist returned to work today, after squelching rumors he might retire. He left home today in a wheelchair, following a two-day hospital stay for a fever. Last night, he issued a statement saying: "I am not about to announce my retirement. I will continue to perform my duties as Chief Justice as long as my health permits." There was more today on presidential adviser Karl Rove and the leak of a CIA officer's name. Various news reports cited Rove's grand jury testimony. The New York Times said he testified columnist Robert Novak told him the name of CIA Officer Valerie Plame. Other accounts said Rove thought he learned the name earlier. Plame's diplomat husband Joseph Wilson had criticized pre-war claims about Iraqi weapons. The space shuttle Discovery won't launch until late next week at the earliest. NASA said today engineers still don't know why a fuel gauge malfunctioned on Wednesday. The glitch forced officials to scrub the initial launch attempt. Discovery is slated to make the first shuttle flight since the loss of Columbia. The man at the center of a sports drug scandal pleaded guilty today in a deal with prosecutors. Victor Conte admitted he distributed steroids and laundered money. He founded the Balco Lab in the San Francisco Bay area. He was charged with illegally giving steroids to more than 30 pro athletes. Conte will serve four months in prison and four months of home detention. Canadian cattle could begin entering the United States again by next week, after a two-year ban. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said that today. A federal appeals court lifted the ban on Thursday. It was imposed after Canada reported its first case of Mad Cow Disease. Enron agreed today to pay up to $1.5 billion to California, Oregon and Washington State. It's to settle claims the company gouged the states on energy prices in 2000 and 2001. Enron collapsed in late 2001 after disclosures of billions of dollars in hidden debts. In economic news, the Federal Reserve reported industrial production rose nearly one full percentage point last month, the most in 16 months. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained nearly 12 points to close at 10,640. The NASDAQ rose nearly four points to close at 2156. For the week, the Dow gained 1.8 percent, the NASDAQ. 2 percent. Golf legend Jack Nicklaus played his last round in a major championship today. He failed to make the cut at the British open in St. Andrews, Scotland. His final farewell came on the walk down the 18th Fairway, topped off with one last birdie putt. (Cheers and applause) (cheers and applause)

SPOKESPERSON: What a way to call it a career! (Cheers and applause)

JIM LEHRER: Later Nicklaus spoke to reporters about the emotions of this long day.

JACK NICKLAUS: The people were fantastic and as I actually was coming down the last few holes I'm sitting there saying "man, I don't want to go through this again. Maybe it's just as well I miss the cut." I said, "I think these people have been wonderful. They've given of themselves and gave me a lot more than I deserved. " And they... I'm probably better off getting out of here.

JIM LEHRER: In his career, Nicklaus won 18 major titles, more than any golfer in history. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: The widening London investigation, Shields and Brooks, and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay.

UPDATE - THE INVESTIGATION

JIM LEHRER: From Egypt to Pakistan goes the investigation into the London bombings. We start with a report from Simon Israel of Independent Television News.

SIMON ISRAEL: The fast and furious international hunt for those behind the London suicide bombers moved to Cairo today and to the home of this man: Magdy al-Nashar. He's a 33-year-old biochemist who allegedly facilitated the renting of the flat in Leeds to one of the four bombers three weeks ago. The postgraduate, described by a Leeds University colleague as a brilliant chemist, was awarded a PhD in May and left London for Cairo a fortnight ago. His arrest was confirmed by the metropolitan police commissioner.

METROPOLITAN POLICE COMMISSIONER: I can only tell you that I am aware of the development, as you'd expect me to be. We will be monitoring the developments in Egypt very carefully, and if it's necessary, we will send officers there or we will seek extradition or whatever other processes are necessary.

SIMON ISRAEL:A statement from the Egyptian interior minister said the biochemist denied any involvement. It may all be coincidence, but anti-terrorist officers are planning to fly to Cairo tonight to question him about the bombers' trail which has emerged in Leeds and West Yorkshire over the past week. Number 18 Alexandra Grove was rented by Magdy al-Nashar. It was the bomb factory where explosives were assembled in the bath before the attacks. Forensics at this property link all four bombers to the flat. But Magdy al-Nashar did not live there; his home was just around the corner at Number 22 St. Johns Terrace, which has also been searched by police. It's thought that el-Nashar met the fourth bomber, Lindsey Jamal, in the Islamic prayer room at Leeds University sometime ago. The pair then regularly attended Leeds grand mosque on Hyde Park Road, which is just around the corner from where the bombs are believed to have been constructed. Lindsey Jamal, seen here with his wife and baby, is thought to be the Russell Square bomber and the one who rented the flat. He left Jamaica at the age of one, moved to Huddersfield with his mother, and both later converted to Islam. His wife reported him missing after the bombs went off.

What's resulted from the continuing forensic examination of all the scenes in Leeds is a different theory of how the bombs were made, with chemicals readily available over the counter. Intelligence sources have confirmed to Channel 4 News that the highly unstable acetone peroxide formed part of the rucksack bombs that each suicide bomber wore last Thursday. It was originally thought that only high explosives could have done the damage like this to the bus. But that is now being revised in the light of what's come out of the searches in Leeds.

But this inquiry is rapidly becoming a series of concentric circles, one of which now encompasses the House of Commons. It emerged tonight Mohammed Sidique Khan had visited parliament a year ago on the invitation of his local MP before, by all accounts, he turned from a children's learning mentor into a radicalized mass murderer.

JIM LEHRER: Ray Suarez moves the story from there.

RAY SUAREZ: Schoolteacher Mohammed Sidique Khan was one of three native-born Britons of Pakistani descent named as the suicide bombers, along with the earlier-mentioned Jamaican immigrant. Add to that the possibility of an Egyptian mastermind, and the four reported arrests today in Pakistan in connection with the investigation, and a picture starts to emerge of a home-grown and international conspiracy to attack London.

We look now at the complex assembly of a terror attack with Jessica Stern, who served on the National Security staff in the Clinton administration and is now a lecturer at the Belfer Center in Harvard, and Bruce Hoffman, director of the Rand Corporation's Washington office; his latest book is "Inside Terrorism."

Bruce Hoffman, did the fruits of the investigation so far, this narrative as we saw that's starting to fall into place fit or not fit with recent bomb plots and terror attacks worldwide in recent years?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: Well, it certainly fits exactly with recent bomb plots that the British police were successful in derailing over the past two years. And there what we see is the genesis of the plot at least being directed or ordered from Pakistan with British Muslims, homegrown terrorists in Britain actually being entrusted with carrying out the operations.

RAY SUAREZ: And do we have a profile here that also is familiar, young men with an older mentor, a more established fellow who may be the leader of the cell?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: I think there may be a general pattern to the recruitment process. But what makes this particular type of attack and these adversaries so threatening is there is no one profile. Since 9/11, we've seen an array of individuals in the United Kingdom become involved in terrorism, ranging from people who were juvenile delinquents who were converted to Islam, for instance, in prison, to graduates of the London School of Economics and now potentially from the University of Leeds, so very educated people but also jail birds.

RAY SUAREZ: Jessica Stern, Britain has long been talked about, long before this most recent attack, as a center for radicalized Islamic cells, for clerics, for open speaking against the government. Why... is that an accurate depiction and why is it so? How did it become so?

JESSICA STERN: Yes. That is certainly the case that the United Kingdom has become a center of Islamist ferment, and partly it started as a result of the very lax asylum laws. But now we are seeing a radicalization with the Pakistani/British community. And this is a very, very troubling development, of course. Including Pakistani Britons going back and forth from Pakistan, getting exposed to radical ideologies, possibly attending madrassas; and now we see them actually successfully carrying out an attack.

RAY SUAREZ: A Muslim member of the British parliament, Mohammed Sarwar said young British Muslims are open to persuasion by radical Islam because they're alienated from the mainstream and their own communities. How did they end up caught in between like that?

JESSICA STERN: I think that's a very common... a common feeling among European Muslims. They are integrated in many ways but psychologically not integrated. They are living between two communities. They have very confused identities. This is especially true... I've been spending a lot of time in the Netherlands and there it's extremely dramatic where Moroccan Dutch youth are referred to as Moroccans when they're in the Netherlands but when they go to Morocco, they don't speak the language, they know nothing about contemporary Morocco and they're considered, rightly, to be Dutch.

RAY SUAREZ: Bruce Hoffman, today it emerged in a Reuters report that one of the men said to be one of the London bomb team met with an already jailed bomber in Pakistan, a man now convicted and serving time for bombing churches in Pakistan. How is it that they're able to find each other?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: Generally, I think that they all travel in a very broad circle and that once one becomes enmeshed in this Jihadist radicalism, they're then put in contact with one another and particularly on an opportunity, for instance, to go to Pakistan; this may not only have been for training or for information but also for reinforcement. In other words, the person who has made the sacrifice and is serving in prison now may be held up as an exemplar, an example to another young individual to follow in his footsteps, to dedicate his life to this particular cause.

RAY SUAREZ: And I guess it is important to point out that a lot of people travel to Pakistan to study without being involved in anything like this, right?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: No. Absolutely. But I think this is an important point. We're not talking necessarily about a bottoms-up process where people who are alienated, frustrated are immediately sucked into this vortex of terrorism. Rather, I think there talent spotters and recruitment. It's an organizational process where individuals are selected and then dispatched on these overseas training missions or religious study or educational missions. In other words, become further inculcated but also to be tested to see how determined they are to actually go down this path of violence and terrorism.

RAY SUAREZ: So Jessica Stern, does that mean the fairly optimistic reports we've heard in recent years since the Sept. 11 attacks, for instance, about networks being smashed, rolled up, made no longer operational has been, well, a little overstated or a little too optimistic?

JESSICA STERN: Yes, I think it probably is a little too optimistic because I think it's not... we not only see the kind of talent scouts that Bruce is talking about but we're also seeing cases of self-radicalization where individual Muslims are radicalizing themselves as a result of what they read on the Internet. And then they want to join these organizations, in some cases not recruited by an imam but actually recruiting their own imam to provide support for the violence they hope to perpetrate.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, help me out a little bit to understand how that happens. You're in your room in a midlands town somewhere in Britain typing away, surfing the Internet at night, you decide you've got these political convictions. Then what do you do if you're an older teenager, a young university student? How do you hook up with the people who can get you to the people who eventually get you on a team?

JESSICA STERN: By asking questions, by actually sendinge-mails to the manager of the web site. People are brought into networks in that way.

RAY SUAREZ: Bruce Hoffman, do you agree with that? Is it as easy as that?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: It is as easy as that but again I think it's a two-way process. You have many talent spotters or recruiters looking for people who respond as Jessica described, to postings on bulletin boards, who enter into Internet chat rooms, in other words, to find some of the most sensitive al-Qaida phantom web sites your acquire them through contacts on bulletin boards. And then through that association, those affiliations, you're drawn deeper into this process often for an association with individuals who you then meet up with, places of worships, schools, youth associations. And then you're repeatedly tested and you're repeatedly questioned as to how far you'll be willing to go, how deep your commitment is to the struggle.

RAY SUAREZ: Let's talk a little bit about the use of the explosive TATP. Does this also fit into a profile, and would you have to be an expert, someone who understands the use of chemicals well to be able to handle this?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: Well, I think any bomber, for example, doesn't want to blow themselves up assembling the bomb so you would turn perhaps to someone with greater technical knowledge to actually assemble the device and arm it. The material TATP can be... it's three or four different ingredients that can be readily purchased at the equivalent of a Home Depot or the pharmacy shop that can be put together. It's one of the main explosives that's used in Palestinian suicide bombs. It's so widespread this was the explosive material that this was in the shoe of Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber who attempted to blow up an American Airlines flight in December 2001.

RAY SUAREZ: Jessica Stern, are there lessons here for the United States? We're told these agencies learn from each other and immediately are in contact after any terrorist incident. What should American agencies be taking away from the British experience?

JESSICA STERN: Well, I actually think this is very bad news for the United States. Europe is a very important leaping off point for terrorists that might like to attack the United States. The European Jihadi is a very important asset toe the international Jihadi movement because of the possibility that such a person could travel easily throughout Europe and also more easily into the United States.

RAY SUAREZ: Bruce Hoffman?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: Well, on the one hand it's not a precise comparison because as Ian Blair, the head of the London police has said, some 3,000 British Muslims were trained by al-Qaida during the 1990s. I don't think we have quite that problem in the United States. But at the same time, I think we shouldn't think we can remain aloof to this particular threat. And now really is the time before suicide terrorism materializes in this country where law enforcement and the authorities should be paying attention to training and preparing for it so that their responses are in place should, in fact, the sort of tragedy come to this country.

RAY SUAREZ: And the graduate work and U.S. experience of today's Egyptian arrestee, just a circumstantial part of the story or one that should really attract a lot of attention?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: Well, I think one that has to attract a lot of attention. He's certainly not the first terrorist nor the first al-Qaida operative that has either lived in the United States or studied in the United States. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, for example, was a student at North Carolina as well but at a different university. So this is why I don't think...

JESSICA STERN: I want to point out that never at Harvard University.

BRUCE HOFFMAN: This is, I think, why we can see that will be held completely immune from this threat as well.

RAY SUAREZ: Bruce Hoffman, Jessica Stern, thank you both.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: Shields and Brooks, and essayist Anne Taylor Fleming.

FOCUS - SHIELDS & BROOKS

JIM LEHRER: Now to the Friday night analysis of Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks. Topic one, the Karl Rove uproar. Kwame Holman sets up their discussion.

KWAME HOLMAN: All week long political Washington was rife with speculation over what role senior White House aide Karl Rove played in revealing to journalists the identity of an undercover CIA employee. And late yesterday, the controversy erupted on the Senate floor.

SEN. HARRY REID: This is an abuse of power. This is a diversion.

KWAME HOLMAN: Democratic Leader Harry Reid first proposed an amendment to the homeland security spending bill aimed at Rove, denying access to classified information to any federal employee who discloses a covert CIA operative's identity.

SEN. HARRY REID: At least one senior White House official disclosed the identity of a CIA intelligence officer to a reporter or reporters, and then this administration proceeded to deny and deflect the truth after it was discovered it had been leaked. It put this agent's life in jeopardy-- I repeat, put this agent's life in jeopardy-- plus people she had dealt with from other countries.

KWAME HOLMAN: Republicans proposed their own amendment, aimed at Reid and his deputy, Dick Durbin, that would strip their security clearances for statements each made using classified FBI documents. It clearly was in retaliation for the Democrats' efforts to discredit Rove. Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions:

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS: Karl Rove has served this country exceedingly well. And one reason people are not wanting to involve themselves in public service is they go out and try to do something and then somebody accuses them of a crime. He had no intent whatsoever to do anything wrong, to violate any law or "out" any undercover agent.

KWAME HOLMAN: A heated debate ensued, lasting an hour and a half. Maine Republican Susan Collins, a leading moderate, admonished colleagues on both sides for deviating from the business of the day.

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS: We should not be doing this. This is exactly why the American public holds Congress in such low esteem right now. We should be focusing on the national security and homeland security challenges facing this nation. We should not be engaging in this debate. And I, for one, am going to vote "no" on both of the amendments before us.

KWAME HOLMAN: Collins' words seemed to deflate the partisanship. Both amendments failed, and senators immediately got back to the business at hand: Homeland security.

JIM LEHRER: David, did Sen. Collins have it about right as to what was happening on the floor of the Senate yesterday?

DAVID BROOKS: Absolutely. This was like taking nursery school in a Senate day. It was unbelievable. Harry Reid was completely out of line. He was making accusations which there's no evidence for so far that there was this leak, this unveiling, and then the Republican reaction was just immature. I mean, the thing you have to remember about the scandal is we don't know what happened. We don't know if a crime was committed. We don't know who leaked ValeriePlame's name. There was this whole... there was this whole charge, you know, that there was this White House operation to discredit Joe Wilson. There's absolutely no evidence for that. We are in early days and so far what seems to have happened is that people called Karl Rove and said "I heard that his wife was a CIA agent. Is that true?" And he apparently said, according to reports today, "Yeah, I heard that, too." Maybe he heard it from reporters. So there's this exchange but we have no idea of a crime and people are so far out in front of it, so disproportionate it's like a summer fever right now.

JIM LEHRER: Summer fever, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: Let me first say, Jim, Susan Collins, the Senator from Maine, was absolutely right. The Congress now...

JIM LEHRER: That was weird, wasn't it?

MARK SHIELDS: The lowest esteem since before the earthquake which drove the Democrats out and Republicans in. That ought to be a cautionary note, particularly to Republicans because when people take out their vengeance, they take it out on the party that's controlling things as the Democrats found out to their ever-lasting pain in 1994 -- by a 2-1 margin people think the Congress is in terrible shape. We do know this, Jim. We do know that two journalists wrote about this. That Joe Wilson's wife, Joe Wilson having gone there and come back and concluded and written that there was no... as the CIA knew and as the State Department knew that there wasn't any effort on the part of Saddam Hussein to buy the yellow cake uranium; that two journalists wrote about it and both of them talked to Karl Rove. Okay? Now, what we're seeing on the part of the White House and this is a White House that has lost 24 points in George Bush as an honest and straightforward leader since January, what we've seen is Clintonian answers. "Well, he didn't actually say it. He said it was Joe Wilson's wife but he never spoke her name when revealing whether she was undercover." She was an undercover agent, she had a front. So, you know, what we've got is getting into all this parsing of words. There is no is, is here. And I think this has been a terrible week for the White House. David's right, there hasn't been an indictment yet but right now all the reports are that Fitzgerald is...

JIM LEHRER: Special prosecutor.

MARK SHIELDS: Special prosecutor is going after who was involved in a cover up after the initial information came out.

JIM LEHRER: Whatever you think about it, do you agree with Mark that it's been a bad week for the White House?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think they have been Clintonian. The part where the White House was clearly wrong was when they said "it's ridiculous to think Rove was involved in this." Well, Rove was involved in it. Did he commit a crime? Based on the evidence now, no. Did he do anything particularly wrong? Maybe a little questionable but certainly not anything that deserves to be fired. Listen, we had a situation where Joe Wilson said "the vice president sent me on this mission." That turned out to be untrue. People were calling around. Rove was trying to scare people off that story saying, you know, don't believe this guy. And Rove turned out to be telling the truth about that.

JIM LEHRER: You mean about... the involvement of the vice president?

DAVID BROOKS: The vice president. Wilson is questionable on all these issues. You said earlier that Wilson issued a report saying Iraq did not try to buy weapons. That's not what the report said. We have a Senate investigating committee, we've in Britain the Butler committee. Both of them concluded from Wilson's own report that the Iraqis were trying to buy weapons. But what we're doing is getting out of the reality and into all this realm of speculation.

MARK SHIELDS: David, the CIA, the administration has said the 16 words that were in the state of the union were wrong. That's what the whole thing was about. And this talking point, Jim, that Karl Rove was really interested altruistically in saving reporters from writing false stories, now, I've seen talking points in 40 years in Washington. This is the most ludicrous...

JIM LEHRER: You're talking about the White House talking points.

MARK SHIELDS: -- that came out from the Republican National Committee and were used by virtually every Republican shoe leather t his week. If that was the case, if Karl was so concerned about stopping bad stories being written, he must have been awfully busy in 2000 when the stories were being circulated by the Bush campaign that John McCain was mentally unstable because of five years as a prisoner of war; when Anne Richards was too comfortable in the company of gays and lesbians when she was governor of Texas. I mean, but we had nothing to do with it.

DAVID BROOKS: This is unrelated to that --

MARK SHIELDS: It's a pattern of clear behavior.

DAVID BROOKS: People are assuming that Rove is Satan and anything he does must be satanic. But what we know, the facts we actually know from the Cooper memo to his boss at Newsweek is that Rove was saying "Don't go too fast for this Wilson guy because the vice president had nothing to do with it." And he did it to steer Cooper in the right direction, it seems, but also to say, hey this thing isn't too important, this report, this guy Wilson who makes us look bad, he is not as important as he made it out to be. Is it purely altruistic? No. But Rove was a lot closer to the truth than Wilson has been.

JIM LEHRER: Do you see this, David, as a legal situation that has been politicized or a political situation that has been legalized?

DAVID BROOKS: I want to make clear I don't know what happened.

JIM LEHRER: Okay.

DAVID BROOKS: Because there are people who have looked at some of the judicial appointments and there are a lot of redacted pages where they do seem to imply that there is some sort of serious national security issue here. Why is Fitzgerald, who just seems to be an honest guy, pushing this so hard?

JIM LEHRER: He really is pushing.

DAVID BROOKS: Right. Based on what we know.

JIM LEHRER: For the record, this is a guy who was appointed by a Republican attorney general to look into this.

DAVID BROOKS: So based on what we know, there is no reason he should be pushing this so hard. So maybe there's something there. I want to make it clear. I don't want to get further out in front the way, you know, a lot of people are getting far out front, so I just want to make that clear.

MARK SHIELDS: But, Jim, there's retaliation and vengeance as work here. Let's go back to summer of 2003. They just found out that there weren't weapons of mass destruction. They hadn't found them. They weren't there. Saddam did not have these drone planes that could devastate the United States or surrounding regions, that the whole thing was a myth and the reasons for going to war. Then along comes this further evidence that the president's case for going to war is further shredded. They were angry. They were trying to stop. They were trying divert attention. They were trying to change the subject. That's what it was about in the summer of 2003.

JIM LEHRER: Speaking of changing the subject, having resolved this issue to everybody's satisfaction, let's move on to topic two, and that's the continuing dialogues about who President Bush should nominate to the United States Supreme Court. Once again Kwame Holman has the setup.

KWAME HOLMAN: William Rehnquist, the 80-year-old Chief Justice who is battling thyroid cancer, last night put to rest rumors about his immediate future. After returning from a brief stay in a Virginia hospital, Rehnquist released a statement saying he had no plans to retire. That, for now, ended speculation President Bush would be considering two picks for the high court. As for the seat that is open, that of Sandra Day O'Connor, there was no shortage of opinions as to the kind of candidate who should fill it. First Lady Laura Bush weighed in earlier this week from South Africa.

LAURA BUSH: I would really like for him to name another woman. But whether it is a woman or a man, of course, I have no idea, but I'm proud that Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman on the Supreme Court.

KWAME HOLMAN: One person believed to be high on the president's list of potential nominees is his longtime friend Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who was front and center at the president's speech on the war on terror on Monday. They shook hands after the speech, prompting a flurry of picture-taking and more speculation. But at a gathering of his cabinet on Wednesday, President Bush said all options were on the table.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We're considering all kinds of people-- judges, non-judges. You know, Laura gave me some good advice yesterday, which is to consider women, which, of course, I'm doing. (Laughter) And in terms of the process, we're still consulting with members of the Senate, and I anticipate continued consultations.

KWAME HOLMAN: Those consultations began on Tuesday, when the president invited Senate leaders from both parties to the White House for an early morning chat about the Supreme Court vacancy. Of course the White House press corps was there, too. Democratic Leader Reid:

SEN. HARRY REID: This is the longest time in the history of the country where we haven't had a vacancy on the court. This process needs to move forward. And I was impressed with the fact the president said it would; that there will be more meetings, consultation. I think that we're at a time in the history of this country where we've had enough discussion, debate and contention on judges.

KWAME HOLMAN: Majority Leader Bill Frist:

SEN. BILL FRIST: We expect a process in the United States Senate that is fair, that treats the nominee with dignity and respect, and that will be conducted in a timely way.

KWAME HOLMAN: But later that same morning on the Senate floor Frist warned that Democrats may demand too much say in who the president chooses.

SEN. BILL FRIST: I am concerned that no amount of consultation will be sufficient for a few of our colleagues in this body. And statements will continue to be, and I say that because co-nomination rather than consultation may be their ultimate goal.

KWAME HOLMAN: And the next day, while the leaders spoke of cooperation, they also traded barbs, particularly over a possible Democratic filibuster of the president's nominee.

SEN. BILL FRIST: And history will reflect on the Senate's deliberations: How senators conduct themselves, how we treat a nominee, and how we reach a decision. In the past, the judicial nominations process has been marked by obstruction, many times partisan obstruction, and attacks on the character and integrity of nominees. I hope that we have put this kind of painful and humiliating process behind us. The fair and dignified nomination process requires civility, requires common sense and some self-restraint.

SEN. HARRY REID: It is easy to throw words around like "obstructionism," but the fact is that the vast, vast majority of the president's nominees were approved easily. We don't need words like that. We need to look at this in a positive sense.

SEN. ROBERT BYRD: Make way for the voice of reason.

KWAME HOLMAN: Meanwhile, the so- called Gang of 14, seven Republicans and seven Democrats who in May crafted a deal to prevent a Senate crisis over lower court nominees, met yesterday in the office of one of its leaders, Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson. Nelson suggested the group is prepared to play a similar role in the Supreme Court process.

SEN. BEN NELSON: The accomplishment is to make sure that the group is holding together, that we have got the same vision that we had at the beginning. And I can say without any question that we are together; we understand what it is we want to do. And many of those accomplishments have already occurred.

KWAME HOLMAN: Group member Collins of Maine said partisans on both ends of the political spectrum may find themselves disappointed.

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS: It just amazes me how many outside interest groups are spoiling for a fight. They're going to be very disappointed if the president nominates a consensus choice. They're not going to be able to raise as much money. They're not going to be able to put on as many divisive ads. They're going to be really crushed.

KWAME HOLMAN: And with no nominee announced, no date set for confirmation hearings and Congress soon to go on its five- week summer recess, it still could be several weeks before action on a new Supreme Court Justice actually begins.

JIM LEHRER: And back to Mark and David.

Mark, is it possible that the big, bad, ugly fight that everybody was anticipating over the Supreme Court nominee isn't going to happen?

MARK SHIELDS: It's possible, Jim. I think the odds were better, quite frankly, when it looked like both Chief Justice and Justice O'Connor were leaving at the same time. That gave the president a lot more political latitude. He could take a moderate conservative and substitute them for Sandra Day O'Connor and then an ardent conservative for Judge Rehnquist. But I think right now he's got to make a choice, and that is does he want to choose somebody, nominate somebody who could get past... landslide confirmation? I mean, Judge McConnell from Utah David wrote about, or Harvey Wilkinson or John Roberts here in the District of Columbia. I mean, those are... those are judges who would sail through. Alberto Gonzales would, too.

JIM LEHRER: And the whole thing would go away?

MARK SHIELDS: Or do you want to go to a 49, 50, 51, I mean, do you want to try judges like Ludig or Janice Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owen? I mean, do you want to really kind of -- do you go to the base? The irony is this, that George Bush has been more of a divider than a uniter. I don't think anybody would deny that. And yet the Republican Party under his leadership has grown. So you can make the case that tactic has worked for the Republicans because there's more Republicans in office today than there were when he was elected.

JIM LEHRER: David, mark mentioned your column this week. You said "Mr. President, forget all this politics stuff and go for the best mind."

DAVID BROOKS: My theory was, you know, the politics people are saying get a fresh face, get somebody who will play to Hispanics, get somebody who will help the gender gap with women. But the Supreme Court nominee is on there for 20 years. And the way --

JIM LEHRER: Is that the average, 20 years?

DAVID BROOKS: I think it's getting close to nineteen, twenty, right up there. And the average... or the impact of these people is do they write the kind of opinions that filter throughout the country, that shift the whole frame of the debate, that get law students talking for a generation? That's the opportunity you have here. And if you pick someone because they meet some ethnic criteria or a fresh face or some political criteria, you leave all that important stuff, which is the quality of the opinions and the judgments up to chance.

Now, as to what Mark was saying, I think it's not only left/right. You could pick a very conservative person who will sail through. Michael McConnell is someone the social conservatives really admire but he's also a very serious person, an honest person with a lot of intellectual integrity who liberals like Cass Sunstein have written about positively in the past. So it's not only pick conservative moderate. But if you pick a conservative-- which Bush is going to do

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

DAVID BROOKS: -- pick someone with intellectual seriousness that the other side can say "okay, he's respected."

JIM LEHRER: What do you think the chances of his doing that?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, you can name -- Mark mentioned a lot of people who I think would fit the bill, McConnell, Ludig, Roberts --

MARK SHIELDS: I think Ludig would be a harder sell, I really do. Wilkinson, Roberts and McConnell. I mean, McConnell, to give you an idea, I think it was intellectual integrity, and he's an ardently conservative man, but he was opposed to the 5-4 decision that the court took to put George Bush in power. Now, that's going to cost him conservative support. But he let his reason and the facts carry him. He was against the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

Now, you know, there's going to be some conservatives who say, wait a minute, what are you doing here? My one argument - a cautionary note about David's proposal which I think, you know, is sort of the SAT approach to judgeships is that --

JIM LEHRER: Take that. Take that, Brooks.

MARK SHIELDS: I mean, Earl Warren... the Warren court was historic. Earl Warren was a politician. I mean, most successful...

JIM LEHRER: Governor of California.

MARK SHIELDS: Won both parties' nominations, enormously successful governor of California and a vice presidential nominee; failed in '48 but it turned out to be a dominant and influential and important Chief Justice.

JIM LEHRER: Well, Sen. Specter suggested that, in fact, a few days ago that maybe the president should look at people who have not been judges, have been something else. What do you think of that?

DAVID BROOKS: To me that sounds like you're hiring a talk show host. No offense. (Laughs).

JIM LEHRER: This is not a talk show. I'm not offended.

MARK SHIELDS: I am.

DAVID BROOKS: I was making - my colleague joked about competing against Katie Couric. You know, you want somebody who knows the law; you want somebody who knows how to issue opinions. This is not, you're not... you're starting at the top here. You want... I think there's a reason in recent years they've tended to go to judges and high-level judges because you want somebody who's been doing this for a long time. You know, Scalia is the model Bush mentioned. Scalia's a good model. You may not think he's too conservative but the guy writes serious opinions; he's had a huge impact on the law. That's the sort of person you want, whether it's a Scalia or somebody else. You want that substance.

JIM LEHRER: What about Sen. Collins who has emerged as the oracle of reason this week on... and she just said in the second Kwame piece about the big disappointment if this thing works out, if they do something that... select somebody who will go through with a landslide all these interest groups on both sides are all geared up for this fight for fund-raising purposes, for all kinds of --

MARK SHIELDS: Membership recruitment.

JIM LEHRER: -- membership reasons, attention reasons, what is going to happen to them?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, you know, there will be a fight. The question is...

JIM LEHRER: No matter what.

MARK SHIELDS: But you talk to people on both sides and they're realistic. I mean, talk to folks on the liberal side and candidly they'll tell you off the record that a McConnell or a Roberts... I mean, is going to sail through. A Gonzalez will sail through.

JIM LEHRER: They'll fight but -

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, but they know it is not going to be the big thing. They're geared up if it's going to be... both sides will get geared up if it's one of those 51-49 fights.

JIM LEHRER: What's your reading on Alberto Gonzales as we speak tonight? The attorney general, the conservatives went after him for a while. Are they still after him?

DAVID BROOKS: A bit, yes. In fact, I think Dobson, James Dobson is still waiting in the wings. I forget who mentioned, who first founded the great mentioner, was it Russell Baker? And so the great mentioner has been very active this week and it's funny. Earlier the week the great mentioner was mentioning Alberto Gonzales as almost the inevitable choice but the great mentioner shifted away from Gonzales to Joy Clement and other people. So I don't know how seriously to take any of this. But there was an assumption that he was the inevitable pick and now that assumption is gone.

JIM LEHRER: Would the Democrats vote for him?

MARK SHIELDS: I think enough Democrats certainly would that it would be a decisive confirmation. He's aided in a strange way, Jim, by the events in London because where he was seen as an Achilles Heel to many Democrat were his opinions on the abusive treatment of prisoners. That seems less prominent in people's minds. I think the problem that the president has is they were counting on Rehnquist going first and O'Connor has left them very much at six's and seven's. They're undecided.

JIM LEHRER: A quick question: Is this Game of 14 going to have any impact or has their day come and gone?

MARK SHIELDS: I think they're already having an impact. Susan Collins has got to be careful because there's a great Turkish proverb that "He who he speaks the truth better keep one foot in the stirrup." And she's getting off --

DAVID BROOKS: That's always been my motto.

JIM LEHRER: (Laughs).

DAVID BROOKS: I think the Gang of 14, for the reason Mark was talking about earlier, the groups, remember, when that filibuster fight was going, the groups were really fighting to have the fight over the filibuster.

JIM LEHRER: They wanted to have it. They needed the money.

DAVID BROOKS: And those 14 senators run the Senate -- groups don't run the Senate. So that sentiment is still alive, and they're sort of the embodiment of it.

JIM LEHRER: And the president has been saying over and over now that the public interest groups cool it, too, right?

MARK SHIELDS: I...

JIM LEHRER: Well....

MARK SHIELDS: I don't get the same thing on the right, Jim. The president is consulting. Let's give him credit. He's consulting more than any time in his administration so the process, he's asking people for suggestions and so forth and the test will be in the product, I mean, whether he comes up with somebody who can enjoy that kind of backing on both sides of the aisle.

JIM LEHRER: I've got a couple other things I wanted to talk about. I'm just going to mention them, then we'll talk about them. The new deficit numbers; the president takes credit for that. The Democrats say "no way." Do you agree with the Democrats?

MARK SHIELDS: I agree, Jim what they did with the budget is to basically say "we're not going to cover utilities or car payments." As it is everything else looks good.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think the president deserves to take credit?

DAVID BROOKS: A chunk of credit.

JIM LEHRER: -- says is tax cuts - okay -- well, we covered it after all. Thank you both.

MARK SHIELDS: In depth.

JIM LEHRER: In depth. Thank you both.

ESSAY - NOSTALGIA TRIP

JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, essayist Anne Taylor Fleming goes nostalgic.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: They're coming again, strutting and growling their golden oldies.

SINGING: I can't get no satisfaction...

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Late this summer, the Rolling Stones are starting their sweep through the country's arenas and amphitheaters, aiming to tug hard at the nostalgia of us aging baby boomers. Let me calculate. Let me not. Mick must be, what? 60-something now. Do I really want to go see him do his thing, let him cavort with my memories? Isn't he in danger of becoming a caricature, a corny, prancing grandfather of a rock star? He is not alone. The summer venues have been full in recent years of retro acts. The Eagles are in the midst of their final tour.

SINGING: Take it to the limit one more time.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Fleetwood Mac made its reunion tour last year. Brian Wilson has been resurrected. Crosby, Stills, and Nash are also out again this summer.

SINGING: Do we find the cost of freedom...

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Eventually, their shows will probably turn up on public television, where a dreamy-eyed, gray-haired, aging audience will sway along, mouthing all the words. And watching them, I feel a tender embarrassment for them and their ever so-naked nostalgia.

SINGING: Pretty woman walking down the street...

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: In fairness, I do it, too: Mouth the words, but in the privacy of my living room, just as, on a given night, I might play some of the old Roy Orbison, his voice, as always, sending chills up my slightly osteoporotic spine. Or I listen to Janis Joplin.

SINGING: And cry, cry baby!

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Thirty-five years after her death, she still startles me with her ragged, bare-bones longing. What's clear is that we baby boomers are at the nostalgia tipping point, and if we're not careful, we're going to turn into some fusty, crusty, sentimental-eyed parody of our former selves. It is not just us, though. These acts are now big business, the biggest in the music tour world, drawing younger crowds as well as older. No question, nostalgia is hot. We are always told that America is a bustling, driven, future-oriented country. That maybe so, but it is also a backward-yearning one as well. That yearning was never so evident as now when our sway over the world seems more fragile and complicated than it ever has been, when we are feeling threatened by the rise of other mega-economies, or when we are puzzled why so many other countries don't feel as grateful to us as we think they should and when we are terrorized by rogue bands of zealots, our borders permeable in ways we never imagined possible. It's no accident that our bookshelves are full of books about our founders. Such books are a beacon, a balm for our current complicated position in the world, our hands not as clean as we would want them, our image, certainly not. Nostalgia does have its uses. It can call us back to our younger, more optimistic selves. It can also siphon off the grief that comes with aging and loss. But it can also be a trap, a hiding place we retreat to when the present is unpleasant or confusing, and we don't want to face it or ourselves.

(MUSIC)

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: I think of the other performers like Bob Dylan, who have refused to be stuck in the past.

(MUSIC)

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: So too, Neil Young, who has morphed forward musically. Bruce Springsteen is another...

SING: I got God on my side just trying to survive...

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: ...pushing on into darker waters, taking on complexity as the country has taken it on. These are not just performers, but artists who are continuing to dig for their truth, however ragged or uncomfortable that might sometimes be. And if we listen to them or go see them out of our own nostalgic longing, they insist on showing us a different, more- admirable version of the aging rock megastar.

SINGING: I look inside my heart -- there's just devils in the dust...

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: I'm Anne Taylor Fleming.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: A prime suspect behind the London bombings was arrested in Egypt. British police confirmed they're investigating the bombers' possible links to Pakistan and to al-Qaida. And at least half a dozen car bombs in Baghdad killed more than 20 Iraqis.

JIM LEHRER: And once again to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq. We add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. Here, in silence, are eight more.

JIM LEHRER: Washington Week can be seen on most PBS stations later this evening. We'll see you online and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.