The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MARGARET WARNER: Good evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Jim Lehrer is off. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; then, House Republicans agree to roll back their controversial ethics rules; a Newsmaker interview with weapons inspector Charles Duelfer; an update on the troubled Darfur region of Sudan; Jan Crawford Greenburg reports on an Enron-related case at the Supreme Court; and a North Pole adventure story.

NEWS SUMMARY

MARGARET WARNER: House Republicans moved to scrap their controversial new ethics rules changes today. Democrats had charged that the changes were designed to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay. And inturn, they blocked all Ethics Committee business. Speaker Dennis Hastert announced the offer this morning after meeting with the Republican caucus.

REP. DENNIS HASTERT: I'm willing to step back. We had a long discussion about that. I think we need to move forward in the ethics process. I think that there are issues out there that need to be discussed. I think that there's a member, especially on our side, that needs to have the process move forward so he can clear his name. Right now we can't clear his name. The media wants to talk about ethics, and as long as we're at a stalemate, that's all that is in the press today is the ethics stalemate.

MARGARET WARNER: The ranking Democrat on the Ethics Committee, Congressman Alan Mollohan of West Virginia, cautiously welcomed the change. But he objected to Republican plans to unilaterally name the committee's staff director.

REP. ALAN MOLLOHAN: What I am saying is that there is an additional issue out there, and that's a staffing issue, which Chairman Hastings has represented that he's very willing to talk about, wants to talk about, and I certainly want to talk to him about it. But what is crucially important, remember, the whole guiding light of the Ethics Committee, the guiding principle, is that the Ethics Committee be bipartisan. That means it has to be bipartisan in every aspect because if it's not, it breaks down at that one point.

MARGARET WARNER: The House was expected to vote this evening on returning to the original Ethics Committee rules. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. The incoming prime minister of Iraq moved today to end the three-month stalemate that's blocked formation of a new government. Ibrahim al-Jaafari asked the presidential council to approve his choices for 36 cabinet positions. He said he expected to get that approval and to send the list to the national assembly for a final vote tomorrow. Al Jaafari told a Baghdad news conference the wait was worth it.

IBRAHIM AL JAAFARI (Translated): We took this long because we wanted to establish a strong government which can sort out all the problems the country is facing. We know we are in a bad situation and that this is the first experiment in Iraq's political history.

MARGARET WARNER: Al Jaafari did not identify any of the new cabinet members, but he did say they represented all of the country's major ethnic groups, and seven of the 36 are women. His announcement came hours after insurgents killed a member of the national assembly in her Baghdad home. She belonged to the party led by outgoing Prime Minister Allawi. The Bush administration issued numbers today that appear to show terrorist attacks more than tripled last year. The National Counter Terrorism Center said a preliminary count showed about 650 significant attacks in 2004. That's up from 175 the year before. But center officials said they do not know if terrorism actually increased. They said the numbers may have gone up because the U.S. is more aggressive about compiling the data. What remains of the Arthur Andersen Accounting Firm told the U.S. Supreme Court today that it didn't get a fair criminal trial in the Enron scandal. The former accounting giant was convicted of shredding documents that government regulators subsequently asked for. The company argued the shredding instruction was simply a reminder to follow standard practice. At issue before the high court is whether the trial judge's jury instructions were fair. We'll have more on this story later in the program. Leaders of the National Football League promisedincreased testing for steroids today. The NFL Commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, and the players union's chief executive, Gene Upshaw, made that pledge at a House hearing. They said the league will increase the potential number of random off-season tests from two to six per player and add new drugs to the list of banned substances.

PAUL TAGLIABUE: We have not had all the answers, but we have worked with leading institutions, top scientists, top physicians and others to stay ahead of an ever- changing curve. Our policies, which have included stiff discipline and sanctions, as well as other elements we feel have been constructive.

MARGARET WARNER: Committee members praised the NFL for being more cooperative than Major League Baseball. But they warned there may still be a need for a uniform federal law on steroids to cover all professional sports. The world's largest passenger plane completed its maiden flight today over Southwest France. Thirty-six thousand spectators gathered to watch the super-jumbo plane complete the four-hour test run. The A-380, designed by the European consortium Airbus, can carry up to 800 passengers. Airbus says it has orders for 154 of the planes and needs at least 100 more to recover its investment. President Bush called today for building more nuclear power plants and oil refineries to boost energy supplies. He proposed using closed military bases as sites for new refineries and providing federal risk insurance to companies building nuclear plants. He also asked again for tax credits of up to $4,000 for people who buy hybrid and clean diesel vehicles. The price of crude oil dropped sharply today. In New York trading, oil fell more than $2.50 to settle at $51.61 cents a barrel. That news helped Wall Street rebound from losses earlier in the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended up gaining more than 47 points to close at 10,198. The NASDAQ rose three points to close at 1930. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: The ethics battle; Charles Duelfer; a Darfur update; Supreme Court arguments; and North to history.

UPDATE - ETHICS BATTLE

MARGARET WARNER: A breakthrough in the ethics logjam in the U.S. House of Representatives. Ray Suarez has the story.

RAY SUAREZ: Once Republican leaders were convinced it was time to step back from new ethics rules, a repeal was on a fast track toward a full House vote. It could come later tonight. What brought us to this point, and why were the new rules so controversial? To help us sift through today's events we're joined on Capitol Hill by Gebe Martinez, congressional reporter for the Houston Chronicle.

Well, Gebe, this story has ricocheted through the hill from hearing rooms to news conferences, to fax machines. What's the latest?

GEBE MARTINEZ: Well, what we're getting ready for tonight, Ray, is a vote on the House floor tonight as you mentioned that's going to return the House back to the ethics rules that they had in place in the last session. It was during the last session, you'll remember, that Majority Leader Tom DeLay was admonished by the Ethics Committee. And after those admonishments occurred, Speaker Hastert especially was very critical of the ethics process, and he said that the Democrats have politicized it. So he pushed through some rules changes, breaking away from the tradition in recent years to have bipartisan ethics rules. He took GOP written rules to the House in January, they were passed on a partisan vote, and from that point on the Democrats said that they were going to refuse to let the Ethics Committee organize until they were allowed to go back to the bipartisan rules. So what's happened in the last few days is that as the questions about Mr. DeLay's overseas travel have intensified really over recent weeks, but more prominently in the last few days, the Republicans have come to the point where they just thought they could not let the Ethics Committee impasse stay in place. They needed to let the Committee get back to work so that Mr. DeLay could go before the Committee and presently his defense to these charges.

RAY SUAREZ: In mechanical terms, what did these new rules mean for the members sitting on the Committee? Five Democrats, five Republicans.

GEBE MARTINEZ: Right. You know, one of the things that the Democrats most fiercely opposed was a rule that would say after 45 days if a majority of the committee cannot agree to continue the investigation, then it disappears. Under the old rules, which they're going to be going back to, there's a process that actually allows the case to linger a little bit longer, and that was one objection that the Republicans had. But basically the case will not disappear now. It will require a vote by the committee whether either to dismiss it or to proceed to an investigative subcommittee level to continue the investigation to a deeper level. And I think that the Democrats felt that under the rules that the Republicans wanted to impose, it would have been very easy for the members to simply let the deadline slide and not have to take any action. So that was the one rule that they were particularly concerned about. There was another one that would have allowed the member under investigation to have the same attorney as other witnesses in the case. And the Democrats said that that could allow for coordinated testimony. And that was a situation that came up in a case last year, concerning the Medicare vote that the House took, there was a bit ethics investigation about how that vote occurred. So, you know, the Democrats were saying we liked the old rules that were written on a bipartisan basis, let's go back to that or restore the integrity of the ethics process in the House.

RAY SUAREZ: Earlier today during a hearing Democrats appeared to welcome the return to the old rules regarding how issues get voted onto the committee process. But earlier in tonight's broadcast, Representative Molihan of West Virginia was talking about an ongoing debate over staffing. What's that all about?

GEBE MARTINEZ: Well, when the Republicans decided to change the rules, they also removed from the committee three Republicans who were considered independent minded, including the former chairman. The Republicans said that the chairman's term was up and he was due to move off anyway. But that still created some controversy, and they also removed some of the key staffers, including the top staffer who was bipartisan staffer. So what Mr. Molihan was talking about is trying to make sure that the chairman of the committee, Doc Hastings of Washington, is not allowed to bring in a partisan staff director. They feel like if we're going to have bipartisan rules, we should also have bipartisan staffers. And the rules right now that they're going to be going back to, the old rules, say that in fact the chairman and the ranking Democrat have to agree on the staff. So what they're trying to do is get an agreement with Mr. Hastings to say we're going back to the old rules; that means the old rules that also apply to the staff.

RAY SUAREZ: Quickly, Gebe, before we go, have Republican members been expressing to you some relief that this is being moved on and that they might be able to get the charges involving Tom DeLay out on the floor and get them dispensed with?

GEBE MARTINEZ: Actually, there was more anger than relief, after the meeting this morning that was held behind closed doors with the speaker. You know, usually the speaker says that he likes to take a vote to the floor when it has the support of a majority of the majority of Republicans. And, you know, the House Republicans are the majority; he wants them to be in full support. Today they really were very reluctant. They don't like this, they don't like looking like they're this retreat and that their handing the Democrats a political victory. But they are doing this because they're following the leadership of Speaker Hastert, and they do agree that if they can at least diffuse this issue a little built, they take less than a little bit of the Democrats' political weaponry that they have, and even though Mr. DeLay will still be an issue, at least the Ethics Committee process is not.

RAY SUAREZ: Gebe Martinez, thanks for being with us.

GEBE MARTINEZ: Thank you.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, let's put this latest partisan wrangling over ethics into a larger context. Here to help with that is Richard Cohen, a longtime congressional reporter. He's the co-editor of National Journal's Almanac of American Politics.

Richard, the official name is the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

RICHARD COHEN: Right.

RAY SUAREZ: Is it always in this spotlight and often a tense place, of wrestling matches?

RICHARD COHEN: Any time issues come up that deal with the ethics of members of Congress and the Senate has its own Ethics Committee, it's inevitable that members will get pretty anxious about it. But what has not been the case in the past is that we have not seen this kind of partisan warfare take place, as openly as has been the case in the last few months on the organization of the committee, both the changes in procedures that Gebe just described, and the issues, the charges that have been lobbed back and forth particularly about Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

RAY SUAREZ: Is this a committee of longstanding tradition in the House? And has it always had the form it has now?

RICHARD COHEN: The House as part of its reform movement of an earlier period in the 1960s created this so-called Standards of Official Conduct Committee. And it had relatively weak powers when it was first created in the 1960s, and it operated in a fairly awkward fashion. Over the years it's been strengthened, some of the rules have been modified to create a fair process and a tough process to pursue violations. I should say before the 1960s, before the House had an Ethics Committee, if there were violations of conduct then the only recourse would be for law enforcement, prosecution, through the criminal division of the Justice Department, or local district attorneys.

RAY SUAREZ: Is this a busy place? I mean, do committee members have a lot on their plate or are there peaks and valleys?

RICHARD COHEN: Well, they generally don't tell us how busy it is, most of their work is done behind closed doors. They typically don't even tell reporters or the general public that they're meeting; and they will simply issue a statement at the end of a proceeding, and the proceeding may go for weeks, months, even a couple years at times. So they don't provide much in the way of briefing. The members who serve on it, it's regarded as the equivalent of being sent off on a terrible assignment, members hate doing this, they hate having to judge their peers, their colleagues, in one party or the other. So it's regarded as kind of, whoever has to serve on the committee generally has drawn the short straw.

RAY SUAREZ: For all the reluctance to serve on the committee, has it enjoyed some time in the spotlight, and has it collected some pretty big names that it's brought down over the years?

RICHARD COHEN: No question, that House Speaker, in the 1980s, Jim Wright, Democrat from Texas, essentially was forced to resign as a result of a lengthy investigation of a book deal and some other personal finances; that investigation found that he committed 69 violations, according to the investigation that was done by the committee and the unanimous action of the committee. So Jim Wright resigned as speaker and then as a result of a complaint that, ironically, a complaint that was brought by Newt Gingrich, then a back bench Republican in the House, what became ironic was that in the 1990s Newt Gingrich became the Republican Speaker of the House and then the Ethics Committee investigated his personal finances, found a violation or two, and while he didn't step down immediately, the bipartisan judgment that Gingrich violated the ethics rules and the committee reprimanded him for those violations, weakened him and two years later he resigned under fire from within his party.

RAY SUAREZ: You mentioned earlier that the committee does a lot of its work out of the public view. But still is that committee able to be swayed by public opinion? Is the interest, for instance, in a case like Tom DeLay's one that's likely to be felt very much inside that committee room?

RICHARD COHEN: Sure, they're all members - they're all elected public officials, they're all members of Congress. And there have been suggestions that retired judges or other people should serve as the Ethics Committee of the House, but the House and the Senate separately have insisted they want to judge their own members. In fact there's a provision in the Constitution that says that the House and Senate have the authority to judge their own members. And I think, to some extent even though it's an unpleasant assignment, members would rather be put in this position of judging their own, their colleagues, rather than have the judgments made from the outside. As we see now, obviously, some of these ethics charges that are being made are getting a lot of attention. And so the big question now is, now presumably that the committee is going to be reorganized and Republican leaders have said that they will investigate Tom DeLay so, now we await that investigation, we don't know how long -- what the charges will be, the nature of the review, how long will it take. We really as a result of the apparent agreement today, we're really just now at the start of the process.

RAY SUAREZ: Richard Cohen, thanks for being with us.

NEWSMAKER

MARGARET WARNER: A two-year search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, sponsored by the CIA formally ended this week. The final report by the Iraq Survey Group reaffirmed its earlier conclusion that Iraq did not possess any stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons before the U.S. invasion in 2003. But it said: "Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability after sanctions were removed." In an addendum this week, the survey group also said that despite administration suspicions: "It was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD from Iraq to Syria took place before the war," though it couldn't completely rule out the possibility that some material was smuggled out.

For more on all this and what it says about the flaws in America's intelligence about WMD programs in Iraq and elsewhere, is the survey group's chief former U.N. Weapons Inspector Charles Duelfer.

Welcome back to the program, Mr. Duelfer.

CHARLES DUELFER: Thank you.

MARGARET WARNER: Does this settle it? Is the debate over? Are you totally confident that the U.S. Government or the Iraqi government is not going to stumble on some significant stockpile of WMD in Iraq?

CHARLES DUELFER: I have confidence that the reality represented in the report is going to be borne out by what happens in the future. But it's -- I would emphasize that the report is more than just a statement that there are no weapons in Iraq, and there were no weapons at the time of the war. What it does is it describes the relationship of the Saddam regime with WMD. Here is a guy who chose at one point to have weapons of mass destruction and at another point not to, and we wanted to understand what was his thinking behind those two decisions, and I think the report does a good job on that.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, I want to ask you about that, but first let me just ask, and what about Syria?

CHARLES DUELFER: Syria, we had some intelligence that perhaps some materials, suspicious materials had been moved there. We looked as closely as we could at that, there were a few leads which we were not able to fully run down, largely because of the security situation, but it's my judgment that had substantial stocks, important stocks been moved to Syria, someone would have told something to us about that. So I have a lot of confidence that basically the picture is as you reflected it.

MARGARET WARNER: So one question on Saddam, following up on what you just said: What is your conclusion about the great mystery, one of the great mysteries, which is: if leading up to the war Saddam had no big stockpiles of weapons, why didn't he just invite the inspectors to go wherever they wanted, give them all the information they were demanding, essentially remove any pretext for an invasion?

CHARLES DUELFER: Well, I've had this debate not only with a lot of Americans, but with a lot of Iraqis, including very senior ones. And I must say that some of his own ministers debate that point themselves. But I think there's a few factors which are important in bear in mind. One is that, you know, Saddam had other threats besides the United States. He liked to present some ambiguity about whether, in fact, he had given up all of his weapons, and he did that intentionally. The second point is, you know, his sense of place in history and glory among the Iraqi leaders is important to me, and in a certain way he was I think fatalistic. There was also a sense that this President Bush was going to complete the work that the first President Bush did not complete. So there's a mix of things.

MARGARET WARNER: Meaning he was going to invade anyway, that's what Saddam thought?

CHARLES DUELFER: That it was inevitable at a certain point; that there were also messages which Saddam was getting from other members of the Security Council, that - perhaps telling him that this was not really going to happen. It's difficult to know with great confidence, but clearly he made a series of mistakes, which Iraqis acknowledge themselves.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, in the report, in the addendum, you do identify some lingering dangers, and one has to do with Iraqi scientists who have all of this WMD expertise.

CHARLES DUELFER: That's correct. And we analyzed to a certain extent no matter how much residual risk there was, how much residual proliferation risk there was, the reality is somewhat smaller than you might think, but it's not to be ignored. Many of these scientists have lost their jobs because the weapons programs turned out to have ended in the early 90s. So they've already been looking for other jobs. But many of them are getting old. Things like a nuclear program takes a large number of them, but there are a few that you have to concern yourself with, largely in a biological area, where one or two people can make a big difference in a program.

MARGARET WARNER: The other lingering danger you identified is that there was still a lot of equipment and infrastructure which was then looted, WMD manufacturing equipment or dual use equipment. How serious a risk is that?

CHARLES DUELFER: We judge that that's fairly small. We went to a lot of sites and there of course was a lot of looting; some of the looting was destructive, a bit like a demolition derby. And some of it was with malice of forethought; I mean, there were carefully removed pieces of equipment. But, you know, our sense was that this was done for economic reasons rather than to try to export it to a country that might obtain or have a weapons of mass destruction program. Bear in mind that if Iraq could get this equipment, then other countries could as well, and would you buy a used piece of equipment from a country which had just been invaded and at war -- probably not.

MARGARET WARNER: But your report did say something about - I'm just looking at my notes here - that it could contribute to terrorist production of chemical or biological agents.

CHARLES DUELFER: We were very concerned about the spread of the knowledge to anti-coalition people and we ran into some evidence that this, in fact, was happening. We had an investigation during last summer in particular of something we call the Alan Boud investigation, but we did find anti-coalition elements trying to create their own chemical weapons. And I think we got ahead of that, I think we nipped that problem in the bud. But it's something we have to keep an eye than.

MARGARET WARNER: So really looking to the future, let's talk about the intelligence failures, because a month ago, as you know, the WMD Commission, the one investigating all the intelligence problems with other countries as well as Iraq, concluded that really the intelligence failures on display in the Iraq case are being replicated even now vis- -vis other countries and what we're trying to find out about them; Iran, North Korea, a couple of others. What did you conclude about what those failures were?

CHARLES DUELFER: Well, Iraq was a difficult target. And we have difficult targets in North Korea, and then Iran. So in a certain sense the problem is similar. There are ways we could have done things better. You know, bear in mind that with Iraq the United States didn't have relations with Iraq for, you know, well over a decade so there were very few Americans who had direct experience. Therefore the analysts who were making judgments, making assessments, didn't have a tactile feel, they didn't -- many of them had never even met an Iraqi. But their reality comes from a computer screen.

MARGARET WARNER: Not terribly different from the situation in either Iran or North Korea.

CHARLES DUELFER: It is very similar. Those Americans and other nationalities who had experience in Iraq, who were members of the U.N. inspection team, you know, they had a better sense. For example, many of my former colleagues at UNSCOM, when they listened to Secretary Powell give his speech at the United Nations where Secretary Powell gave a lot of evidence for why weapons of mass destruction exist in Iraq, many of my colleagues looked at that and said, well, a lot of that is wrong. They wouldn't know what pats were wrong, but they knew from experience that when you got a report like that and then you went into Iraq to find, you know, what exists on the ground, there would be some weird unanticipateable Iraqi explanation for that behavior.

MARGARET WARNER: So is the problem though with the U.S., which now has a massive effort to try to improve its intelligence capability on WMD -- was it collection and analysis failures, and are these, did you see evidence of failures that you would agree are systemic, which is what the Commission, I mean I know you're not an expert in Iran or North Korea, but these were failures that cut across the board?

CHARLES DUELFER: I think there were a number of things which, you know, the intelligence community is looking at now: the relationship between collectors and analysts, I mean, it's often very distant. But I think that can be closed up a bit so that the people out there who are doing the real spying have a better sense of what it is that the analysts really need. I think that's one factor that can be addressed. Access to countries, I think that we make it harder than it really is in many ways. I think access to some of these countries like North Korea doesn't need to be that hard.

MARGARET WARNER: Why not? It's a very closed society.

CHARLES DUELFER: Well, but these are not hermetically sealed pieces of geography, people go in and out all the time; it's just a question of can you get to the right ones. You know, I think - for example, when Iraq - you could go to your local physician and he may have a brother in Baghdad and he could call him up and he could tell you what going on in Baghdad. So it's just a question of how you - how you -- what kind of information you're after. I think open source information may be more useful. But there's a number of incremental steps which the intelligence communities can take, and I think the analysts could be improving their work by getting out more, looking at, spending more time doing analysis as opposed to current threats. There's a lot of responding to questions which are put to by political leaders rather than doing original analysis themselves.

MARGARET WARNER: So you mean that it's - they let it be known that the president or vice president or the secretary of state wants to know about X that happened overnight, and you think maybe there's just too much focus on that and not in a broader sense?

CHARLES DUELFER: Well, two things: It is natural and appropriate that political leaders put questions to the intelligence community; that then serves as their agenda, and that shapes in some ways the analysis. Not that they're satisfying, you know, intentionally the political, but because political people put the question to them, that's what they analyze. The other thing is they tend to serve one customer, the president. And I think if there was a broader attitude where the intelligence community had to make a case - information for 280 million customers -- that might serve everyone a bit better.

MARGARET WARNER: Finally, one other thing; the WMD Commission talked about deliberate deception. I assume when you went out in Iraq you were following up on leads on suspect sites that had been given to you by various agencies of the U.S. intelligence. Were those leaps just wrong and if so, why, where did they come from?

CHARLES DUELFER: Well, there's a number of reasons, sometimes they were defectors who, you know, had other a agendas; sometimes we were seeing something which we didn't understand. And the Iraqis, for example, they knew how we thaw much better than we knew how they thought. I mean, no one on my IST team had gone to the University of Baghdad. Many of the Iraqis had studied in the United States, so that was our change. Also our analysts tend to think of things from our own perspective. We have, you know, an operating system in our head, like Windows 2000, the Iraqis don't, they have a different perspective and we have to be able to move from our own perspective to the Iraqi perspective.

MARGARET WARNER: So all lessons that apply going forward?

CHARLES DUELFER: All lessons apply; the same is true of North Korea; the same is true in Iran.

MARGARET WARNER: Charles Duelfer, thank so you much.

CHARLES DUELFER: Thank you.

FOCUS - RAVAGED REGION

MARGARET WARNER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: An update on the situation in Darfur; Jan Crawford Greenburg; and an arctic adventure. Fred de Sam Lazaro of Twin Cities Public Television has our Darfur update. He's one of the few western reporters who has been able to gain access to the remote region.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Conditions in this camp in Sudan's Darfur region could hardly be more primitive for Sawah al Mansur. Still, the 38-year-old widow has enough food these days for her four children, and some refuge from the terror that she fled in her village about three hours away by foot.

SAWAH AL MANSUR (Translated): They came at 4:00 in the morning with people on trucks with mounted guns. They killed a lot of people. They killed my husband; they took my animals and took our food stocks.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Sawah al Mansur is among an estimated 2.5 million, mostly widowed women and children, who, beginning in 2003, were driven from their homes across this vast remote land. They are black Africans, pursued by so-called Arab militiamen or Janjaweed, men allegedly armed by Sudan's government which has been battling black-led rebel groups in Darfur. One year ago, before refugee camps were fully established in Darfur and neighboring Chad, relief organizations feared a humanitarian catastrophe with starvation and disease outbreaks from unsanitary conditions and unsafe water. Today, thanks to one of the largest international relief efforts in recent history, that catastrophe has been averted. Swedish diplomat Jan Pronk is U.N. Special Envoy for Sudan.

JON PRONK: At the moment the situation in the camps is quite good. Of course, it's an awful life. But in terms of nutrition, sanitation, water and education, we can reach many people.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Over the past year, some 10,000 workers from dozens of aid groups have come to the region. So have hundreds of tons of food staples, much of it American. Children in camps like this one near the city of Geneina attend school. And wells are being bored in villages across Darfur. The group Islamic Relief alone, using sophisticated equipment, is creating up to 35 safe wells every week. Relief organizations say they've had reasonable luck finding water underground here in Darfur. The challenge is to secure these facilities once they're up and running. One of the hallmarks of this war has been burned villages and spoiled wells. Despite two cease-fire agreements between the government and rebels, Darfur remains a dangerous place. The U.N. says about 200 people are still killed each month across the region. Other estimates are much higher. There's also plenty of freelance banditry.

SPOKESMAN: Many of our cars are being looted, there's plundering by groups which are split away either from the military or from the rebel movements, and they start for themselves, you may say. So the insecurity of humanitarian workers is quite a problem for us. For instance in the place where we are now, which is Geneina at the border of Chad, I had to decide to withdraw all the humanitarian workers for about ten days back to the capital in order to assess the situation, because there were threats.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The situation is that much worse for ordinary Darfurians.

MAN (Translated): We've been attacked by the Janjaweed more than four times. They have stolen sheep, horses, people's belongings.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Even living in camps run by international aid groups doesn't fully shield civilians. They complain of raids by armed men. The government has installed police, but camp residents say it hasn't helped.

MAN (Translated): There are not enough police. The police themselves are afraid to go after the criminals.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Life is especially perilous for women. They leave the camps in search of firewood, the main cooking fuel. Dahabiya Ramadan Sirri says many camp women have been assaulted.

DAHABIYA RAMADAN SIRRI (Translated): It's become common. The people come and ambush us, they rape us. We're very afraid any time we leave the camp. We're very worried here, and we cannot sleep at night because the Janjaweed can come at any time and take our daughters, and can take our women.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The mass killings that took most of their men have been called the worst atrocities since Rwanda; as many as 200,000 people are thought to have died. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell called it genocide. Recently, the U. N. announced indictments before the International Criminal Court of leading figures in the Darfur killings, a move fiercely criticized by Sudan's government.

SULEIMAN ABD ALLA ADAM (Translated): We're capable in Sudan to bring the perpetrators if they are proved guilty to justice. Our constitution to them provides for a fair trial and fair sentences. The punishments here can be more aggressive than at the International Criminal Court.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Suleiman Abd Alla Adam is the governor of west Darfur province. Like the Khartoum government he represents, the governor blamed rebel forces for the atrocities.

SULEIMAN ABD ALLA ADAM (Translated): It's not the government of Sudan, not the government forces, but the opposition factions who are responsible for killing the people. They occupy these villages and they use the people in those villages as human shields. Once they antagonize the people toward the government and make them lose confidence, they will be more able to draft the men from these people into the opposition movement.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Whoever is to blame, and international observers mostly blame the government and Janjaweed militias, the conflict has made the marginal land here even less productive. Thousands of villages like this one, which was called Tabarik, have been literally burned out of existence. There's hardly a trace of the communities here that grew several different crops and raised livestock. Food production has been wiped out across a vast region of Sudan, and it will take years to recover.

SPOKESMAN (Translated): Today Team 3C was asked to conduct a routine patrol by road...

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: One hope for a return of security and villagers is the recently formed African Union peacekeeping force. Even though it's mandated restricted to monitoring the cease-fire,aid workers say the troops' mere presence could deter violence. However, just 2,300 soldiers must patrol dozens of camps for internally displaced people, or IDP's, in a region the size of France. Western section commander Lord Sarfo, a Ghanaian colonel, says that number should be twice or three times its size.

COL. LORD SARFO: We have so many IDP camps, and to deploy to protect all these IDP camps would be a strain on our resources. And I've already said we don't have enough men on the ground. The greatest challenge is the terrain. Short distances you take about, say, two hours to cover a journey of only 40 kilometers and here to use the helicopter would be a waste of resources.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Absent firm security, there's little likelihood of getting Sawah al Mansur to return to her village to rebuild her life. For the moment, ironically, the nutrition and health of many refugees is better than it was prior to the conflict in this impoverished region. Still, al Mansur says what she had at home was her dignity.

SAWAH AL MANSUR (Translated): I didn't used to live in a place like this. In my house I had a bed and many other things; now, I have nothing. In the village I used to be independent. I didn't depend on anybody, and now I have to depend on others for everything. I can't even change my children's clothes. This is all we have.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Even that may not last. Aid officials, short of money, had planned to cut some food rations by a half. However, this week the U.S. stepped in with a major food donation. Even so, there's worry that this region, isolated by forbidding geography and limited media access, will fade from the world's consciousness. Youssif el Tayeb works for the aid group Islamic Relief.

YOUSSIF EL TAYEB: There is going to be donor fatigue, media disinterest, because old-fashioned stories fetch no headlines. Huge, huge sums of money are needed elsewhere. So that's it. I am afraid the powers who will have the strength to push for reconciliation, I'm not sure how much are they interested in this part of the world.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Unless the world remains focused on Darfur, he says, this region could quickly slip back to where it was a year ago, on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

FOCUS - SUPREME COURT WATCH

MARGARET WARNER: Now, the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in a case stemming from the Enron debacle. Terence Smith has that.

TERENCE SMITH: Corporate document shredding: Standard operating procedure or a felony? Throw in Arthur Andersen and Enron, and it's a case for the Supreme Court. Here to walk us through today's arguments is NewsHour regular Jan Crawford Greenburg, Supreme Court reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Jan, welcome.

We all know that Arthur Andersen over the last few years has been decimated by this case. What is left of the company to either sue or defend?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Well, of course, back in the day Arthur Andersen was one of the largest, most respected accounting firms in the world. It had more than 28,000 employees. Today it's down to about 200 employees, who largely are defending litigation and lawsuits. So the company really is in ruins.

TERENCE SMITH: Tell us about the case, what it involves.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Well, this is Arthur Andersen's attempt to have the Supreme Court throw out its criminal conviction for witness tampering. This case came about back in 2001, when Enron's problems-- and Enron was Andersen's largest client-- when Enron's problems started becoming public. At that time, Andersen's lawyers advised employeesthat they should follow the company's retention, document retention policies, which called for them to destroy drafts and handwritten notes and memos and retain the final official versions. So Andersen began really stepping up some of the shredding efforts, the government contends. But at that point there was no formal official government investigation under way. And when Andersen got a subpoena later, some weeks later, requesting records from the Securities and Exchange Commission, requesting records that related to Enron, it stopped its shredding. But to the government, the damage had been done, a crime had been committed. The government stepped in and indicted Andersen for witness tampering because its lawyers had reminded the employees to make... that they could destroy those documents, and the jury convicted Arthur Andersen of that federal crime.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. Now, today, they get to the Supreme Court. What was Andersen's defense?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Andersen's lawyer, Marie Mahoney, very forcefully argued that the company had done nothing wrong, that the company lawyers had committed no crime when they advised the employees that they could follow this document retention policy. Now, the law issue, and Andersen was convicted for corruptly persuading these employees to destroy documents that might be of use in a subsequent investigation. The lawyer for Andersen said this company didn't corruptly persuade; it just reminded the employees of this policy. And "corruptly persuade" means bribing or inducing them to violate the law. They weren't violating law; they were following a lawful company policy. And furthermore, there was no official investigation underway. So the employees, by shredding the documents, did nothing wrong either because under obstruction of justice statutes, under federal law, it's not a crime for an employee to destroy a document if there's no official investigation underway. So bottom line, Andersen didn't commit a crime.

TERENCE SMITH: And the government's response today and their accusation?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: The government, Michael Dreaven, and the solicitor general's office, Justice Department, argued again very forcefully-- it was a terrific argument, very well-argued on both sides-- that Andersen had clearly violated this law, that they weren't destroying documents just out of concern for neatness, and that they were trying to cover up wrongdoing, and that they knew that an official investigation was headed down the pike. So in the government's view, that was enough to bring Andersen into court and to have them convicted under this federal witness-tampering statute.

TERENCE SMITH: And the Justices, did they indicate their thinking in any way?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: This was a very lively, very intense argument. The Justices peppered these attorneys with very tough questions, and they were, through their questions, quite sympathetic to Arthur Andersen's argument. Justice Scalia at one point said he thought the government's interpretation of this law was "weird." Justice Kennedy expressed concern that this conviction, the conviction of Arthur Andersen, could have far- reaching consequences for countless corporations and small businesses that have similar policies about the retention and destruction of documents. Justices O'Connor and Breyer and Souter and, you know, we're covering the ideological spectrum here from left to moderate to right-- also expressed serious concerns about Andersen's conviction, offering different reasons for why they were troubled by the government's prosecution of Andersen's conviction in this case. So it was a fascinating argument, last argument of the term, and so well argued, it was a great way to wrap the term up.

TERENCE SMITH: But you still have, and very briefly, some important decisions to come down?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: We do. As I said, today is the last day of arguments, and now the court finish writing all these controversial and interesting cases that we've talked about throughout this term. Of course, we have the Ten Commandments case and whether or not the government can display the Ten Commandments on public property. We've got other cases involving property rights, the internet, file sharing on the Internet, government taking of someone's real estate and land. All very controversial cases, and we'll have opinions by the end of June.

TERENCE SMITH: Okay, that's great, Jan. Thank you very much.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: >> You're welcome.

FOCUS - NORTH TO HISTORY

MARGARET WARNER: Finally tonight, a northern adventure. Jeffrey Brown has the story.

JEFFREY BROWN: It was a trip many thought impossible. But Tuesday, five explorers reached the North Pole in record time: 36 days, 22 hours, and 11 minutes, completing a 475-mile trip that began at Cape Columbia in northern Nunavut, the Inuit territory of Canada opposite Greenland. The idea was to retrace the famous, but disputed, 1909 expedition of American explorers Robert Perry and Matthew Henson. For decades, skeptics said Perry, Henson and four Inuit men could not have made the trip in just 37 days. But 29-year-old British explorer Tom Avery organized an expedition to prove it could be done. Guided by an American woman, Matty McNair, Avery and three men from Britain, South Africa and Canada traveled in a style similar to Perry, using Inuit huskies and wooden sleds, called sledges. In their trek to the top of the world, the adventurers beat Perry's party by nearly five hours. 53-year-old Matty McNair is an experienced trekker, including a previous trip to the North Pole. She spoke to us by phone from there this afternoon. There this afternoon.

Matty McNair, welcome and congratulations to you.

MATTY McNAIR: Thank you.

JEFFREY BROWN: I read of ice ridges 30-feet high and temperatures 40 degrees below zero. Tell us what it was like to make this trip.

MATTY McNAIR: Well, it was hard. With the wind chill, which really has a lot more to do with feeling that cold, temperatures were down to minus-50 Celsius; so Fahrenheit, more than that, in the beginning. Now, of course, it's warmed up, and we get 24 hours of light. But as soon as that ice fog rolls in, whoa, it's cold again. The cold has been a big one, and lots of pressure ridges to push our sleds up and over, and dealing with open leads, and ones that are frozen with thin ice. Those have... those have been the challenges for us.

JEFFREY BROWN: I gather that once you made it up there and were settled in, you suddenly realized that you weren't alone. Tell us what happened.

MATTY McNAIR: (Laughs) Oh, we had been at the North Pole for maybe an hour or two, we had a camp set up, we had dinner, and I was just looking forward to crashing, when I heard voices and I thought, "oh, that's really odd." And along come three Russian guys pulling Polk. They had come from Borneo, which is an ice station... a research station about 60 nautical miles away. And they came tromping along. And we invited them in to the tent, and they said "No, there's... we... the helicopter comes for us soon. We must be ready." And within five minutes this huge, big Russian chopper comes... (imitates chopper) ...and it lands beside us. And the dogs are kind of looking at it like, "what's going on here?" (Laughs) and out jump a bunch of tourists that have just flown in to be at the North Pole, and... and it was quite bizarre.

JEFFREY BROWN: So you can't even be alone on the North Pole anymore, huh?

MATTY McNAIR: That's right. That's right; a pretty crowded place.

JEFFREY BROWN: Why was it important for you all to try to retrace and match this 1909 trip that Perry and Henson made?

MATTY McNAIR: Well, there's been a lot of controversy as to whether Perry could have made it in that time, and there's been lots of talk of "Well, that's too fast; he couldn't have done it; he must have lied about having reached the North Pole." So for us, it was walking sort of if the footsteps of history and proving that, yes, you know, when you're out here, you realize the type of planning that he did and the amount of dogs and men he had to support him, those mileages are very doable. And it really enriched our experience, too.

JEFFREY BROWN: I know you had some modern communications equipment with you, but you tried to make it as much like his trip as possible?

MATTY McNAIR: Well, certainly within means. We used the same style of sled that was built on... from photographs of sleds that he used and projected up on the wall and traced out. So we built sleds that are Perry sleds, and they... they handled beautifully -- using the same kind of dogs that he used; running them in a fan hitch instead of a two-by-two tandem-- each dog's on their own line-- means that if they go through the water, they could climb out. Just they don't drown by putting their collar over their necklines. They don't have necklines in this instance. We had... the approximate weight in the sleds were... had 500 pounds each on them, which is what he carried, carrying two pounds a person a day of food. So, yes, we had a lot of similarities. Our equipment was different -- I mean, our clothing. We were using more modern clothing. And.. but other than that, I mean, the challenges are the same.

JEFFREY BROWN: And finally, a personal question. I was reading about you today and many of your other adventures. Why do you do this sort of thing?

MATTY McNAIR: Well, if you have to ask the question, you might not understand the answer.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. Matty McNair, again, congratulations, and thanks a lot.

MATTY McNAIR: Okay, thank you. Bye-bye.

RECAP

MARGARET WARNER: Again, the major developments of the day: House Republicans moved to scrap their controversial ethics rule changes today. And the incoming prime minister of Iraq moved to end the three- month stalemate that's blocked formation of a new government.

MARGARET WARNER: And 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 seven more.

MARGARET WARNER: That last photograph showed Marine Captain Edge wearing the cadet uniform of his alma mater, the Virginia Military Institute.

MARGARET WARNER: We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Thanks for being with us. Good night.