The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: A summary of today's news; reporting and analysis on the new suicide bombing and Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's Washington mission; the latest on the growing pipe-bomb scare in the Midwest; a report on how 9/11 changed things for the U.S. Coast Guard; and an interview with Richard Russo, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: A suicide bomber killed at least 15 people late today in Israel. The blast targeted a nightclub, in a town south of Tel Aviv. Rescue workers said at least 60 people were hurt. They said some were trapped when part of the three-story building collapsed. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but an Israeli spokesman charged the Palestinians were clearly behind it. The bombing came as Israeli Prime Minister Sharon was meeting with President Bush at the White House. When they spoke to reporters afterward, they did not yet know of the suicide bombing. The President said he would send CIA Director Tenet back to the Middle East. His mission would be to help build a Palestinian security force to fight terrorism. In Bethlehem today, a deal to settle the standoff at the Church of the Nativity stalled. Initially, Israel agreed to withdraw troops around the compound. In return, 13 Palestinian gunmen inside the church would be deported to Italy, and 26 more transferred to Gaza. Later, Italy said it had not been consulted, and the Israeli army said no other country would accept the exiles. We'll have more on the Middle East in just a moment. In the Netherlands today, the prime minister announced national elections will go forward next week. That's despite the assassination yesterday of a leading anti-immigration candidate. We have a report from Juliet Bremner of Independent Television News.

JULIET BREMNER: Thousands lined the streets of Pim Fortuyn's home city of Rotterdam to mourn the loss of a maverick. Despite desperate attempts by paramedics, the 54-year-old died within minutes -- at least three shots fired directly at his head.

MAN ON STREET: Completely heartbroken. I couldn't believe it. I mean, I had the same feeling as the 11th of September. Something happened that was completely unnatural, like a movie script.

WOMAN ON STREET: It's a great loss. I was so much crying and I don't know the man only from television, but it was like friend for me.

SPOKESMAN: At your service.

JULIET BREMNER: Pim Fortuyn burst onto the political scene just six months ago-- a mass of contradictions. An immaculately dressed and openly gay man urging the legalization of drug laws, while demanding all immigrants be kept out because Holland was full. A minute's silence was held today by politicians who demonized him, but were now as appalled as his supporters.

JAN MARIJINISSAN, Socialist Party: I was a man that had respect for Mr. Fortuyn. He respected me and I respected him because of his courage.

JULIET BREMNER: A 33-year-old white man was arrested soon after the shooting. His motive is unknown. Ironically, Pim Fortuyn could be more potent in death. His party tonight claiming a vote for him would honor his name and his beliefs.

JIM LEHRER: Dutch political leaders agreed to cancel all campaigning between now and election day, May 15. In eastern Afghanistan today Canadian troops said they found an al-Qaida burial ground at Tora Bora. It may contain the bodies of senior leaders killed during heavy U.S. bombing last December. The Canadians, along with U.S. Army forensic experts, took D.N.A. samples from 23 bodies. A U.S. military spokesman said none appeared to be Osama bin Laden. The FBI issued an all-points bulletin today in a rash of mailbox bombs across the central United States. The man being sought was Luke John Helder, a 21-year-old college student from Minnesota. The announcement came a day after the latest pipe bomb was discovered outside Amarillo, Texas. Since Friday, 17 others have been found in Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Colorado. We'll have more on this story later in the program. A former Catholic priest pleaded innocent today, to charges he repeatedly raped a boy in the 1980s. Reverend Paul Shanley appeared in a Massachusetts courtroom. The judge set bail at $750,000 cash. She also ordered Shanley to surrender his passport and stay away from children under age 16. Shanley is a central figure in the sexual abuse scandal within the archdiocese of Boston. Enron deliberately drove up electricity prices during the California energy crisis of 2000 and 2001. That was widely reported today, based on internal company memos. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission made them public. According to the documents, Enron traders evaded price caps by sending energy outside the state, and created phony congestion on transmission lines. In Washington, California Senator Dianne Feinstein called for a federal criminal investigation.

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: The cost of electricity went from $7 billion one year to over $25 billion the next year. And that wasn't just because of a shortage of supply. What's coming... what's becoming crystal clear is that there was gaming, there was manipulation, and in this case specific corporate strategies set up to manipulate prices for the benefit of at least one company.

JIM LEHRER: State officials in California have long accused power companies of creating the crisis to reap billions in profits. The companies have blamed the state's own energy policies. A White House spokesman today promised a vigorous investigation of Enron's activities. In economic news today, the Federal Reserve left a key interest rate unchanged, at a 40-year low. The rate for overnight loans between banks remained at 1.75%. In a statement, the Fed said it still had concerns about the health of the economy. Separately, the Labor Department reported worker productivity jumped in the first quarter, at an annual rate of 8.6%. That was the strongest performance since mid-1983. There were two fatal plane crashes overseas today. A Chinese airliner with 112 people on board went down at sea, off northeastern China. The state-run news agency said it was unlikely anyone survived. It said the captain had reported a fire on board. And in Tunisia, an Egyptair plane crashed as it tried to land in bad weather. At least 18 people were killed, out of 62 on board. And Seattle Slew died today. In 1977, he won horse racing's triple crown, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes. After his racing career, he went on to become of the greatest sires in the history of the sport. He died in his sleep at a farm outside Lexington, Kentucky, at the age of 28. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the developments in and about the Middle East, the pipe bomb scare in the Midwest, the post-9/11 Coast Guard, and the fiction Pulitzer winner.

FOCUS - MIDEAST MEETING

JIM LEHRER: Another deadly turn in the Middle East story: A suicide bombing in Israel, as Prime Minister Sharon was talking to President Bush at the White House. We begin our coverage with this report narrated by Spencer Michels.

SPENCER MICHELS:: The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has spent the last few days in Washington talking with officials about a new outline for Mideast peace, as well as new allegations aimed at Yasser Arafat. Through a spokesman, Sharon said the Palestinian leader should be banned from the proposed international conference on the Mideast planned for this summer. And in a speech last night before the Anti-Defamation League, Sharon made two demands of Arafat and his organization.

ARIEL SHARON: Two things must happen: "A," major institutional structural reform in the Palestinian Authority with regard to the structure, operation, and unification of its security forces, and the restructuring of government institutes with full transparency and accountability. A responsible Palestinian Authority that can advance the cause of peace should not be dependent on the will of one man, and "b," complete cessation of violence, terrorism, and incitement.

SPENCER MICHELS: Sharon also gave the audience a sampling of his defiant rhetoric, rejecting a UN investigation of Israeli actions against the Palestinians.

ARIEL SHARON: Israeli citizens should not be tried by the world. I don't think that any nation in the world has the right to bring the Israeli citizens and the state of Israeli to court-- no one! (Cheers and applause)

SPENCER MICHELS: While he thanked his "many friends in the U.S.," Sharon made clear that "when it comes to our security, we have to depend on ourselves." During his Washington trip, Sharon's government released documents that it says reveal how terrorists have been financed. One set says Arafat himself approved payments to future suicide bombers, and that some of the funding for terrorists came from European Union donations to the Palestinian Authority. That group said the Israeli documents are forged. Other papers, according to Israel, show that the Saudi government gave money to families of suicide bombers, as well as to the radical group Hamas. Saudi Arabia called those charges "baseless." The White House has not commented publicly on the documents, but it did make clear it still regards Arafat as the leader of the Palestinian people, even though the President repeated his charge that Arafat "let me down" as far as curbing terrorism. Sharon has not had the diplomatic stage to himself. Administration officials have held parallel meetings with key Arab leaders, including the Saudi foreign minister and the king of Jordan, seeking support for a Mideast conference. Late this afternoon, Sharon and President Bush met with reporters before word of the latest suicide bombing in Israel.

ARIEL SHARON: Now, after the last operation that we carried out against the infrastructure of a terror in Samaria and Judea or as you call it the West Bank, I believe that there is a chance now to start and move forward. We discussed these issues, how to move forward. We emphasized about the need for reforms in the Palestinian Authority and I think that's very important.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: And one of the things we've got to make sure that we do is anything... any vision understands that there are people in Israel who long for security and peace, people in the Palestinian world who long for security, peace, and economic hope.

SPENCER MICHELS: There was no immediate comment from either Sharon or President Bush about the bombing near Tel Aviv. It was the first suicide attack since April 12. Israeli police said at least 15 people were killed in and around the three-story club.

JIM LEHRER: And a few minutes ago National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said President Bush offered condolences to Sharon over the suicide bombing. She said the President was disgusted at the wanton taking of innocent life.

JIM LEHRER: We get more on all of this now from Todd Purdum, chief diplomatic correspondent for the "New York Times"; Hisham Melhem, Washington correspondent for the Beirut newspaper "As-Safir"; and David Makovsky, who was executive editor of the "Jerusalem Post" and diplomatic correspondent for the Israeli newspaper "Ha'aretz," now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Todd Purdum, starting with you, what can you say about the possible fallout there may be from this latest suicide bombing and particularly how it affects all that's going on in Washington right now particularly the Sharon mission?

TODD PURDUM: Well, Jim it partly depends on what group ultimately may claim responsibility, but it's not a good thing. Israeli officials made it clear here this week that they were willing to move forward on certain terms toward talking about progress, but that all the progress depended on a cessation of violence, an end to the bombings. This has just been... just as it was when Secretary Powell was in Israel last month, a blow to all those hopes.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. There's been nothing that's leaked... there's been no immediate reaction, has there, beyond what I've just reported about from Condoleezza Rice?

TODD PURDUM: No, not that we've heard here. And, in fact, if it should be that the Hamas group claims responsibility for the bombing, for example, we don't know, that would be a group that Mr. Arafat himself is not on the same page with, so it's very hard to know what the fallout will be, but it's not good.

JIM LEHRER: David Makovsky, there have already been suggestions that maybe Prime Minister Sharon will close up his mission and go home. Is that likely at this point?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: I think it's possible. I don't think we can rule it out. I agree with Todd. We don't know yet who did this, and we have to be careful until we know but the reason why this resonates so strongly, no one could stop 100% attacks but if the Palestinian Security Authority isn't doing even 5% effort, that's why the focus turns on the PA, but it could be Hamas in this case. So we have to be careful in terms of saying who did it. But I want to be clear what this George Tenet was announced today that he's going to the region to reform the whole Palestinian security structure, I think that's very interesting but it's not all about technical reform. It's ultimately about political will, and therefore, I think that they've tried... Tenet has tried reforms in the past but it's the political will to stop the suicide bombing is the key.

JIM LEHRER: We'll come back to the Tenet and that sort of thing. I'm just trying to get some reading here, just... because I know nobody knows what the reaction is going to be but does that... do you think, Hisham, that it matters whether or not it's Hamas or whether or not it's some other group are that did this, or do you think it will have the same effect in the Arab world? What do you think it will be?

HISHAM MELHEM: A lot will depend on who did it.

JIM LEHRER: You think it will depend?

HISHAM MELHEM: Of course to a great deal. After all, those who did it are sending multiple messages; they are sending a message to Sharon saying even after a major invasion you're not going to stop us. They're also sending a message to the American President to the Europeans, to the Arab states, to the Saudis, and the Jordanians and those who are interested in reviving the peace process that we are not interested too and we're trying to undermine you too. So I would argue that the Saudis and the Jordanians and others will be as angry at this attack as we were against the Natami attack, which occurred immediately after the summit in Beirut. And they saw it as an attack on them too. So obviously if it Hamas-- again we're only speculating here-- then the impact on Arafat and the Palestinian Authority will be less, because nobody can accuse him of being in control of Hamas. If, if, just a big if, if it's a group that is somewhat affiliated with the PA, with the Palestinian Authority, then Arafat will come under tremendous pressure and then Sharon could argue or this will embolden Sharon to say let's focus on the security issue and ignore the political underlying causes of the conflict.

JIM LEHRER: But David, some Israeli officials say it doesn't matter whether it's Hamas or whatever, Arafat is responsible. Could that be a prevailing view in Israel?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: In this one case, like I said, we don't know, but I think you're right, Jim, that that will be the prevailing view because the feeling is that, (a), there's a whole climate here of exhorting, going on al Jazeera, calling for people to become martyrs, exhorting suicide bombers, the Israeli documents claiming he signed off and made payments to these suicide bombers, their families. And that's why, sure, there's frustration on the ground on all sides by the way, but people want to know is the leadership viewing terror as a strategy? That's the key issue. And I would say 95% of Israelis believe that's what he's doing, and therefore, this I think hurts Arafat because the broader picture is that he endorses this approach, whether indeed he endorsed this attack, we don't know.

JIM LEHRER: But I mean that Arafat, if he wanted to, could have stopped an attack on the day that Sharon... I mean not on the day but literally while President Bush was meeting with Ariel Sharon in Washington?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: Well, like I said, I don't mean to say that we know....

JIM LEHRER: Exactly.

DAVID MAKOVSKY: If he could have stopped this one attack but the point is that this approach didn't begin yesterday. We've had this for 18 months. It's in that context that he's never come out and saying that this is more morally wrong. I mean also the President asked the Saudis and all the other Arabs that Hisham mentioned -- he said condemn this. Say they're not martyrs, they're murderers. That the Arabs have not done since the April 4 speech of the President.

JIM LEHRER: Why have they not done that Hisham?

HISHAM MELHEM: Arafat did it in English, he did it in Arabic, he did it in major speeches. He did it in interview. The grand mufti of Saudi Arabia did it; the grand mufti of the university in Cairo did it; they've done it many times. What the Israelis want is a blanket condemnation from the Arabs of all kinds of resistance against the Israelis. Yes, you condemn and you should condemn the killing of civilians and innocent people in Israel just as one should condemn the killing of Palestinians by Israelis. But you cannot ask the Arabs or even Arafat himself to say any active resistance against a heavily armed Israeli soldier in Nablus or in Tulkarem on Palestinian soil is an act of terror. That's the problem. When you talk about the word martyr, everybody in the world Arab world whether Christian or Muslim who dies in an Israeli attack is referred to as martyr. It's a cultural thing -- whether your name is Mohammed as a Muslim or George, and there are many Palestinian Georges too. It's a cultural thing. So when Arafat says they want me to surrender but I would rather die, what do you expect him to say? It doesn't mean that he is inciting..

DAVID MAKOVSKY: But your point they don't won't do what you just said publicly and attack those who are killing innocent civilians inside Israel, women and children, even that standard which some of us might think is insufficient they won't do that minimal standard that you just condemned here.

JIM LEHRER: Back to Todd to the context for all of this here in Washington. The mission that Ariel Sharon came with was to isolate Arafat, right, and get the United States to go along with that?

TODD PURDUM: I'm not sure how much he really thought the United States would be willing to go along with it, but it's certainly the point he wanted to make about the unreliability of Mr. Arafat as a peace partner. Of course he's leaning on an open door in President Bush who has never met Mr. Arafat. This was his fifth meeting with Prime Minister Sharon but Prime Minister Sharon also came with proposals for increased security, buffer zones, a fence, if you will, dividing Israel and much of the West Bank, that he felt would be the first step toward any resumption of serious discussions of peace. He's made it quite clear that he's willing only to move in interim steps toward some version of a Palestinian state that remains ill defined. It's also not clear exactly how aggressively the Bush Administration wants to move to that goal although President Bush repeated again today that that is his goal, a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel.

JIM LEHRER: Now, while that is Mr. Sharon's mission, the various Arab officials who are coming to Washington are coming here with an entirely different agenda, are they not? They want something more long range than just interim steps?

TODD PURDUM: Absolutely, they want guarantees, timetables. They want something focused. Today Saudi foreign Policy Advisor Adel Al-Jubeir had an unusual news conference at the Saudi embassy to rebut some of these allegations of Saudi financing for suicide bombers, families and so forth, and his point was that peace conference would be fine but not if it's just to talk about, as he said, modalities and concepts. It has to talk about concrete steps.

JIM LEHRER: Is there any authoritative reading you could give us, Todd, on where the Administration stands on these two conflicting approaches?

TODD PURDUM: I don't think there's any authoritative answer, Jim. I think segments of the Administration stand more forward-leaning; others are more cautious. Others are more cautious about the prospects for any short-term resolution. So I think the Administration itself continues to make it clear that it hasn't reached a final conclusion and in part one of the things it hopes to get from a peace conference of ministers this summer is a further discussion of what the best ideas out there are. That's clearly not enough for many in Europe, for many... most in the Arab world. But at the moment it seems to be as far as the Bush Administration is willing to go in a firm way.

JIM LEHRER: And it would only be speculation to try to figure out how today's events in Israel, the bombing, could affect any decision of the Administration, right?

TODD PURDUM: Any time the violence continues, it makes it harder for those people to argue for the supporters of an aggressive peace process to argue that there can be serious negotiations because the President's view as well as Prime Minister Sharon's is that you cannot deal with terrorism and you cannot accept it as a fact of life.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Let me bring Hisham and David back into this. There are two ways of looking at this. There's a bombing today. That means we must have a long- term peace agreement. Some people would argue that. This is proof of that. And then there's others who would argue, no, no, this is proof of just the opposite. Take it one step. Security is first and whatever. Where do you think it's going to go?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: It comes down to land for peace: A land for the Palestinians, peace for the Israelis. I think we demonstrated the whole world when it saw what Barak offered a 97% that the land part, the Israelis are willing to do. All they want is the peace part. And if Sharon isn't willing to do the land part, the Israeli public will find someone else if they think the Palestinians will do the peace part. What is peace? Peace is reconciliation between peoples, counter terrorism and a sense of reform. And I think that is the equation. If the Israelis have a sense they're going to get peace, they're going to give that land for sure, I have no doubt about it. But if they feel that they're going to get bombed out of there and people think that you can, you know, like it's going to be like Lebanon, you just bomb them and they'll run away - then if it's land for nothing,if it's land for terrorism, this isn't going to work. So I come back to land for peace. If we have a balance between these two ideas, we'll have states for two peoples and dignity for each side, which is what I think we all want.

JIM LEHRER: Hisham?

HISHAM MELHEM: I don't want to revisit what happened at Camp David. I don't think the Palestinians were offered 97% and definitely Ariel Sharon does not subscribe to this kind of vision -- dismantling settlements and giving the Palestinians their territory along the borders of 1967. But I agree there has to be peace for the Israelis and land for the Palestinians. And we all agree on the vision of peace: Two states living side by side. The problem is I'm not sure this prime minister of Israel is committed to this. Again, also in Washington, the $64,000 question is whether George Bush is going to engage personally and directly and in a sustained way to lean on Ariel Sharon to deliver on this. There are more than one school of thought in the Administration. You have Colin Powell leaning towards the international community's consensus that there has to be a linkage between security measures and reviving what we call the political process or the political horizon. You have other groups, the NSC, the National Security Council, and the Defense Department who are instinctively supportive of Sharon. Sharon has benefited from this. He's benefiting from the support that he gets in the Congress. From that new strange alliance now with between Israel's traditional friends in the democratic party, the liberal wing of the democratic party and the right wing Christian right. He goes to the President, looks him in the eye and he says, look, I have domestic immunity system against any kind of potential pressure that you're going to put in my face, and that's really part of the problem now.

JIM LEHRER: Let me bring up an awful possibility, not awful but awful for the people on the ground, on both sides -- that there could be... that this starts a whole new, in other words, the Israeli troops, David, have just pulled out of the West Bank. Is this likely -- is there likely to be pressure on Sharon to go back in?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: Sure. I mean they'll say, you know, when the bomb stop, the incursion will stop -- if the bombs don't stop, the incursions don't stop. I think it will be very grim if again if we can't find a way out. I just challenge Hisham here and everyone I think it's normal. It's not about politics, Hisham. It's about policy. There's not a person on earth, I think, that would say, here, I'm going to divide the city in two to the people who want to blow me up. All they want to know is they don't want to get blown up. If they have a sense they have a leader, which Arafat has totally shown incapable to do, who wants to accept them and say welcome to the neighborhood, then they will give the land. There is no ideological... there might be among a few, but the majority are willing to do it. They just want to know they're not going to get blown up.

HISHAM MELHEM: This is a political problem with the security dimension. You know that. There were periods of time when there were no suicide bombings, when Arafat did arrest Hamas people. You have to give the Palestinians incentive to crack down on the so called evil doers. Arafat at this stage today can never benefit from something awful like what we've seen today in Israel. There's no way he can benefit politically from it.

DAVID MAKOVSKY: You would agree Hisham that it's five-and-a-half out of seven years he didn't do it.

JIM LEHRER: Let me goback to Todd finally on this. You heard what Hisham just said and everybody keeps saying this, Todd, that the United States is now involved. In ways that they never wanted to, at least the Bush Administration did not want to get involved. I think everybody would agree on that. How involved are they now and how does this latest turn, how is it likely to affect the involvement of the President and the Secretary of State, the man you went with, you were on that trip, of course -- when Secretary Powell went over there.

TODD PURDUM: I think, Jim, they're pretty involved -- if only because they realize as Vice President Cheney said a month or so ago there's nobody but us. That's always been true. It's been true through all of Israel's wars. It's been true really since the founding of Israel. The United States is Israel's guarantor of security on the world stage. The United States for better or worse, for all the intense feelings on the ground, is still seen by both parties as the only honest broker with enough clout to make a deal happen. And I think the Administration is also increasingly realized that all its broader strategic goals in the region whether it has to do with toppling Saddam Hussein in Iraq or securing a stable middle east and a steady flow of oil, they all involve the Middle East and I think every Administration goes through this period. Every Administration has this learning curve and I don't think this one is nip different. It is still a question exactly what timetable they'll push on and how hard and how fast they'll push. I don't think that internal discussion within the Administration is even close to over.

JIM LEHRER: Well, what about events of today? Is it likely to escalate that discussion?

TODD PURDUM: I think every time there's an event like this, it just adds fuel to the fire, rubs the scab raw of the situation for the parties in Israel and in the Palestinian areas, and it rubs raw the internal policy debates of the Administration about what the best way to proceed will be.

JIM LEHRER: Thank you, Todd. Gentlemen, thank you.

FOCUS - BOMB SCARE

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the pipe bombs in the Midwest, the Coast Guard's new world, and a Pulitzer winner. Gwen Ifill has the pipe bomb story.

GWEN IFILL: The latest pipe bomb was found yesterday afternoon in this mailbox along a country road near Amarillo, Texas, bringing to 18 the total number of devices found in five states. The first mailbox bombs were discovered Friday in Illinois and Iowa. Five of them detonated injuring half a dozen people, including four mail carriers.

WOMAN: It's scary, and it's scaring a lot of people. I mean, not to be able to open your mailbox, I mean, that is insane.

WOMAN: I think it's terrible. You're not even safe in your own home, you know, in your own neighborhood.

GWEN IFILL: By the end of the weekend, whoever was planting the bombs had moved west to Nebraska. Of the eight devices found there, none exploded. Yesterday, another bomb was found 400 miles west in Salida, Colorado. Officials said most of the devices are three-quarter inch steel pipes attached to 9-volt batteries. They are rigged to go off when touched or moved. Attached to most of the devices were letters, as posted on the FBI website, the author wrote: "I'm obtaining your attention in the only way I can," adding, "More attention getters are on the way." FBI officials say one person appears to be responsible for all the bombs. Today, they said they wanted to talk to college student Luke John Helder.

JIM BOGNER: He is a 21-year-oldwhite male from Minnesota, he is described as 5'9" tall, 150 pounds; he has brown hair and green eyes. He has been described as an intelligent young man with strong family ties. He is believed to be operating a 1992 Honda four-door sedan either black or dark gray in color. It bears Minnesota license plate... I have a picture here of the individual that we are seeking to question in this matter, and we're hoping for a very safe outcome in this situation. Thank you.

GWEN IFILL: Officials said Helder does not have a criminal record. They would not say whether they believe he is armed.

GWEN IFILL: For more on today's developments, we're joined by former FBI Special Agent Clint Van Zandt. He spent 25 years with the Bureau. As a supervisor at the behavioral science unit at the FBI Academy, he was instrumental in identifying Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber. He also profiled Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City Federal Building bomber. So Clint, we're talking about no criminal record -- a college kid, strong family ties. What about what we know about this young man would make him even a likely suspect?

CLINTON VAN ZANDT, Former FBI Profiler: Well, he is at first blush the all American boy. He's someone we think would just finish a college career and go off on his own. But again if he turns out to be what we think he is, a young man who has perhaps some fundamental values that come from a very small town, much like the places where he's accused or suspected of placing these bombs, and then he takes that to a college environment where your thought processes, your religious beliefs, whatever, are challenged and then you mix in music, you mix in social challenges, you mix in perhaps challenges with a girlfriend, but whatever has happened to this young man, should he be the person who has placed these devices-- and I say should he because we all remember what happened in Atlanta during the bombing with the Richard Jewel Eric Rudolph case. And I think the FBI is moving with discretion right now. They say they want to talk to this young man. But it appears that information has been developed that he's involved in this. And this is someone who for whatever the challenge, whatever the reason, feels somewhat disenfranchised. He doesn't feel that his... that people listen to him.

GWEN IFILL: Late this afternoon his father came out and gave a statement to the press in which he said I really want you to know that Luke is not a dangerous person. I think he's just trying to make a statement about the way our government is run. Luke, you need to talk to someone. Please don't hurt anyone else. And he says some other things. It seems that his father is signaling that he believes that his son is involved in this.

CLINTON VAN ZANDT: Well, at least he believes his son would be a good suspect. Look, it took us 18 years to identify the Unabomber. What it took for that was Ted Kaczynski to generate his 35,000 word manifesto and his brother read it, raised his hand and said, hey, that looks like it could be my brother.

GWEN IFILL: In the letters that were attached to so many of these bombs, what could you read in that letter and the way he talked about death and the way he talked about fearing death, that would tell you... that would lead a profiler to understand who the perpetrator of all this was?

CLINTON VAN ZANDT: Well, one message he gives us was the term either death or die. He refers to that ten different times in this very short letter. That is... that's a very challenging concept for a young man to be dealing with, but when we read the entire communication, even though he uses some terms like attention getters, talking about planting more devices, which I'll be perfectly honest I thought might have signaled an older person. When my team, when we discussed this last night we said, no, this is a younger man, probably in his mid 20s at most, probably not all the way through college because we could see ideas. It's like he felt things, he was voicing ideas and concepts but they weren't fitting together. They weren't meshing together. He didn't have the maturity to bring that about yet.

GWEN IFILL: Was there anyway to tell either from the letters or from any other information that the FBI would gather in a case like this who the intended targets might be?

CLINTON VAN ZANDT: Well, I think the jury is going to be still out on that one, but I would suggest that he wasn't targeting Mr. and Mrs. America. In fact he probably wasn't necessarily targeting postal workers, but he like Timothy McVeigh, the federal building bomber, would probably say if someone was injured it's collateral damage. What's more important is that America understand my statement, what I have to say. This young man again should he be the bomber was looking for a forum. He was looking for a platform to stand up and say, "listen to me. I have something to say."

GWEN IFILL: What about the evidence that the FBI seems to have assembled would indicated that there is only one person involved, that a single person made all of these devices?

CLINTON VAN ZANDT: I think that's exactly what we're going to find out. From the beginning, this type of activity is usually one person. When you read the statements that he passed out with his bombs, even though he may have used "we" a couple of times he fell back to "I" again, which tells us one person. The letter itself was only written by one person. There doesn't appear to be two contributors. So this is a young man who had this idea, who developed it. But what's important is that he would have shared philosophically some of his beliefs with other people, and when his letter-- and I think rightfully so-- the FBI moved very quickly to publish that. They didn't hold it back. Since September 11, I think there's a new sharing of information. We have to do that -- domestic, foreign terrorism. I think when someone else, just like Ted Kaczynski's brother David saw that writing and saw that letter, knew about his thought process, they put two and two together.

GWEN IFILL: But since September 11 we haven't been that focused on domestic terror.

How common an occurrence are, say, pipe bombs and incidents of domestic terrorism maybe not on this scale?

CLINTON VAN ZANDT: There are probably incidents of 1500 pipe bombs per year that are detonated in the United States that are located, that are found. So it's a relatively common thing that takes place. The challenge is, of course, you know, postal carriers, rain, snow, sleet, hail, now anthrax and pipe bombs and it's... it all seems to be directed at that group of men and women who serve our country so well. If you can imagine going to a mailbox and when you're look to go put that mail in, in this case you're looking down the barrel of a loaded gun.

GWEN IFILL: If you're an FBI Agent investigating this now and you have certain information gathered what do you do now? They have put out the public plea to him. They have a very gentle plea, almost please turn yourself in, please call your parents, what is that intended to accomplish and then what happens next? Do they have to just wait for him to call?

CLINTON VAN ZANDT: No they won't wait for him to call. There'll be a fugitive investigation conducted right now. They've obviously talked to his parents, people he went to college with, girl friends, social acquaintances, places he's traveled. The FBI by now will know every place this man has ever been. They will be looking at his credit card records, his telephone records, gas mileage on his vehicle. They'll draw a radius from the last time he was seen and known to be in Texas and figure how far he could have gone. But this is the type of man you've got to be very careful with because he can hurt others and he can hurt himself. He feels trapped. He's got the adrenaline flowing. But he's scared too. We need to be careful with the emotions, but we need to protect law enforcement officers also.

GWEN IFILL: Okay. Clint Van Zandt, thank you very much for joining us.

CLINTON VAN ZANDT: Thanks for having me.

FOCUS - COASTAL WATCHDOG

JIM LEHRER: Now, the Coast Guard's changing role in the post-9/11 world. Jeffrey Kaye of KCET-Los Angeles reports.

JEFFREY KAYE: The many duties of the United States Coast Guard range from search-and-rescue operations, to the hot pursuit of drug runners, to protection of the marine environment. But as the war on terror continues, the Coast Guard, one of the five branches of the U.S. military, has been ordered to do even more. The Coast Guard is now focusing on homeland defense, with its primary mission to beef up security along America's 95,000 miles of coastline, and in 360 ports and harbors. Admiral Tim Josiah is the Coast Guard's chief of staff.

ADMIRAL TIM JOSIAH, Coast Guard Chief of Staff: In Coast Guard terms, we made a big course change on the 11th of September. We were challenged to do missions that we have not spent a lot of time on since World War II.

JEFFREY KAYE: One of those missions can be seen in the pre- dawn hours off the coast of southern California. A Coast Guard launch rendezvous with vessels approaching the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Aboard the Coast Guard's boat are armed units of the services newly-created sea marshal program. The marshals' job is to board vessels arriving in U.S. harbors, such as this cruise liner returning from Mexico, to ensure that ships, passengers, and crews arrive in port safely; it's work sea marshals are doing in harbors across America. Once aboard, the sea marshals fan out across the ship to begin a deck-by-deck inspection. Their rounds take them from operational areas in the bowels of the vessel, to passenger lounges.

JASON RAIDER, Sea Marshal: When we're up here basically, we look for anything that's out of the ordinary, you know, suspicious packages that might be left unattended to; suspicious- looking individuals - it's basically a security sweep.

JEFFREY KAYE: Sea marshals board all cruise ships arriving in the United States because of their potential attraction as terrorist targets.

BILL VEON, Sea Marshal: I don't even want to think about what somebody could do with 2,500 passengers on board a ship, and taking the hostages. That's what we are here to prevent.

JEFFREY KAYE: The Coast Guard's motto is semper paratus, always ready. But some analysts question whether the Coast Guard is fully prepared to take on new homeland security responsibilities, while fulfilling its normal duties. Scott Truver is a defense analyst who's studied and advised the Coast Guard for nearly 30 years.

SCOTT TRUVER, Defense Analyst: Basically, what it has done is that the new normalcy for the Coast Guard is the war on terrorism. And certain things like fisheries patrols, like drug patrols, have been downgraded.

SPOKESMAN: The demand has been, frankly, more than we can meet. There are more facilities out there than we can provide individual protection for.

JEFFREY KAYE: The Coast Guard admits that even with increased vigilance, security shortcomings abound at America's major ports. In the port of Los Angeles, for instance, the Coast Guard and other harbor authorities inspect only a minuscule fraction of cargo containers, prompting fears that the ones that go uninspected could contain everything from stowaway terrorists to nuclear devices. America's coastline, as well as its ports, are still too vulnerable, says Scott Truver.

SCOTT TRUVER: Practically anybody can get into the United States. And it's only the odd chance that we have good intel that allows us to intercept a threat coming, whether it is a boat full of alien migrants or whether it's drug runners in a "go fast."

SPOKESMAN: All right, here we go.

JEFFREY KAYE: To help with harbor patrol duties, the guard has turned to the Coast Guard auxiliary, whose unpaid volunteer members use their own boats. The auxiliary is serving as a kind of neighborhood watch in many U.S. ports. Ken Smith is a rear commodore in the auxiliary. He has been patrolling LA's harbor nearly every day since September 11.

KEN SMITH, Coast Guard Auxiliary: If it wasn't for us, the harbor would not be covered, and none of the harbors would be covered across the country. The Coast Guard Auxiliary fills in all of those spots that the regulars aren't able to do just because they do not have enough people or vessels. So we volunteer our time. And we're the eyes and the ears.

SCOTT TRUVER: When you get down to the auxiliary, they do a wonderful job, but they do a wonderful job primarily in promoting recreational-boating safety. They are being pressed into areas for which they were not necessarily envisioned. So this is another example of mission creep.

JEFFREY KAYE: With only 35,000 active duty personnel in its ranks, the guard is smaller than the New York City Police Department. And its annual operating budget of $5.5 billion would buy the Navy only a single aircraft carrier. One paramount challenge the Coast Guard says it faces, whether the country is at war or peace, is an increasingly obsolete fleet of long-range cutters and aircraft that need to be replaced. Out of 41 coastal fleets in the world, the U.S. Coast Guard's are the 39th oldest.

ADMIRAL TIM JOSIAH, Coast Guard Chief of Staff: We need faster ships, we need aircraft with better communications, sensors, raiders to detect who might be approaching the U.S. coastline.

JEFFREY KAYE: One Coast Guard vessel showing its age is "The Alert," a 30-year-old 210-foot cutter whose missions range from drug interdiction to fisheries enforcement.

SPOKESMAN: This is the refrigeration space.

JEFFREY KAYE: The Alert's chief engineer, lt. Jay Shuman, shows off the vessel's operations areas like a proud father. But he admits in cat-and-mouse chases with Mexican drug runners, his ship often loses.

LT. JAY SHUMAN: The top speed is somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 and a half to 19 knots, which translates to around 21 or 22 miles per hour, which is nothing compared to some of the other vessels that are out there. I mean, we have... some of the "go fast" boats that we were looking at doing our time down off the coast of Mexico were 25- foot wooden boats with three outboards on the back that can do upwards of 50 knots. And we can't keep up with them with the cutter, and we don't have a helicopter to go chase after them with.

JEFFREY KAYE: In recent years, the Coast Guard has replaced its near-shore fleet with fast, state-of-the art vessels, such as its 47-foot rescue boats-- water-going hot rods.

SPOKESMAN: We can take it on up to 20- foot, sir.

SPOKESMAN: Yeah.

SPOKESMAN: And up to 30 knot winds.

JEFFREY KAYE: Now, the Guard wants to embark on a massive, multibillion-dollar initiative that would modernize and replace hundreds of ships and aircraft that patrol 50 miles and more off the U.S. coast.

SPOKESMAN: Over this next year and a half with the resources that the administration is seeking for us, we will begin a rapid build- up of capability that will be for the long term.

JEFFREY KAYE: Additional duties and expectations are placing what was once a neglected branch of the military squarely on the radar screen.

SERIES - WINNER

JIM LEHRER: Finally, tonight, another conversation with a winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize in the arts, and to Elizabeth Farnsworth.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: This year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to Richard Russo for "Empire Falls." It's a novel of big themes set in a small Maine town whose shirt factory has gone south. The main character, Miles Roby, finds himself caught in a life he hadn't wanted. Richard Russo makes that knowledge and all its rich limitations come alive. Russo is the author of four other novels, including "Straight Man" and "Nobody's Fool." Congratulations, Mr. Russo.

RICHARD RUSSO: Thank you.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You make Miles Roby such a decent, ordinary, and yet heroic guy. Tell us how you did that and what you wanted to accomplish through Miles Roby.

RICHARD RUSSO: Well, that's kind of my, that's my forte, I think, is turning characters that are somehow beneath the radar... because they're not terribly dramatic people necessarily or successful in the ways that we like to measure success, and yet see in their everyday lives a kind of heroism. I grew up in a small town in upstate New York and did a lot of work among exactly such people doing such jobs as road construction and bartending and lots of jobs with a kind of repetitive motion to them and watched people work really hard at these kinds of jobs, and it always seemed sort of like a kind of heroism to me.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I wondered if there wasn't something of you in Miles Roby. Your grandfather was a glover cutter, right? And your mother wanted to make sure you got a good education, which his mother did, too.

RICHARD RUSSO: Yeah. I think that the most... where I see myself most in Miles Roby is in his absolute and unequivocal love of his daughter, Tick. This novel, more than any other of mine, is... derives, I think, from a kind of fear, really. The book was written mostly when my daughters were in high school. They're both in college. One is getting ready to graduate right now, as a matter of fact. But in high school, I was really worried about what the world was going to have to offer them. I was quite confident about them and the kind of young women that they were, but I was a little bit worried about what the world had in store for them. And this novel is big, it's complex, it's sweeping, but at its heart it's a father-daughter love story, I think.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And we won't give it away, but there is a shocking act of violence at the end.

RICHARD RUSSO: Yeah.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: When you started this novel, did you foresee it, or do you start a novel and work out as you're going, the story, and what happens at the end?

RICHARD RUSSO: Usually I don't know very much at the beginning of a novel. I like to figure out who my characters are, set them in motion and let what happens happen, but I have to admit, in the case of this novel I had a pretty good idea where I was headed, not necessarily in the details. I knew there was going to be this violent act. Right up to the end, however, what I did not know was exactly whom it was going to happen to, what the results would be, and I found myself the closer I got towards this denouement of this novel, the closer I got to it, the more panicked and constricted and just terrified I became because it was beginning to feel at that point absolutely inevitable. And, of course, that's what you want to feel in a novel, that things... that things could not be any other way.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Russo, would you read from the novel for us?

RICHARD RUSSO: Oh, I'd be delighted. "In the fall of Miles Roby's junior year, his father flush with summer house painting money bought a secondhand Mercury Cougar, the idea being that Miles would soon be old enough to get his license. By thanksgiving, however, Max had received three speeding tickets and run over a cat. Miles had been with him for the latter and seen, as Max had not, the animal streak under the wheels, and he turned in time to see the cat continue to run frantically around its own head, which had been flattened by one of the Cougar's rear wheels. 'What the hell was that?', Max said a few seconds after he felt the thump. He'd been leaning forward, one hand on the wheel, the other pressing the lighter to the tip of his cigarette. 'A cat,' Miles sighed, disappointed in himself for not seeing the animal in time to alert his father and save its life. When he rode anywhere with his father, Miles always felt a deep kinship with anything alive that couldn't run as fast as Max drove which, since there were no cheetahs in Maine, was just about everything."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: That reading sort of gets to the heart of it. Max is actually a comic figure. We won't give this away either, but lots of funny things happen with Max. There's something very sad in this, a cat and a very graphic description of a cat's death. And then there are these very big scenes that are just touched on and that become part of this novel. "Empire Falls" is the title. It's the name of the Falls, the name of the town, but it's also about an empire that falls in the same way that these little towns failed in New England. Did you mean all that at the beginning, too? Did you head out, did you start out with that in mind?

RICHARD RUSSO: No, that was one of the things that I was pleased to stumble across as... as I was writing the novel. Originally, actually, the title of this novel was not "Empire Falls," and the name of the town was "Empire Mills," but there were big events that were going to happen at the Falls. And I recall one day, many hundreds of pages into the book, for some reason or other I'd mistyped the name of the town and... because the word "Falls" was going to come out later in the sense and I wrote "Empire Falls," and I thought, "wow, I really like that a lot" because there are lots of towns in Maine that actually do have the title "Falls" in their name, the word "falls" in their name. So this was a fortuitous accident. And like most writers, I think we're not always smart enough to figure things out and invent them, but we have to be smart enough to recognize them when they happen serendipitously, and that's what happened in this case.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You started writing-- at least this is what I read-- when you were a graduate student at Arizona, and your first attempt at a novel was about Arizona, but it... somehow you went back to the towns in upstate New York and Maine that you've been writing about ever since. Why do you think that happened? Why are you staying in those towns?

RICHARD RUSSO: Well, one of the things that I learned in that first aborted... although it wasn't aborted soon enough. I continued, I continued to follow that mistake right straight through to the end. But one of the things that I learned, and a very kind and wise writing teacher taught me, was that the vast majority of that novel, which was set in Tucson, was really written with the eye of a tourist. I have a reasonably good eye, and I see what I'm looking at, at least part of the time. But there's a difference between seeing something with the eyes of a tourist and seeing something from the inside out. And these towns that I write about are towns that I don't have to research. I don't really even have to be observing all that carefully anymore because they're kind of in my blood and in the rhythms of people's speech. These are the rhythms that I've been listening to since I was a kid. And I just know these folks, and I know these places, and I know how people get from one place to another in them. I have a geography in my own mind with all of these places which, in some cases, I've made up to a degree, but they're very real to me.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Russo, just briefly, will this award change the way you live or work, do you think?

RICHARD RUSSO: Well, the best news, the best news after the prize itself, is that I was fortunate enough to have gotten about 75 or 100 pages into a new novel. I might very well have been paralyzed if I had gotten... if I'd gotten the prize and then had to think, "Well, what do you write after you get a prize like this?" But blessedly, I already had a book started. It's a book that I'm already convinced of the characters in. I can't wait to get back to. So, and I will be doing that at my first opportunity.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, Richard Russo, congratulations again, and thanks for being with us.

RICHARD RUSSO: Thank you so much for having me.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of the day: A suicide comer killed at least 15 people, wounded 60 at a nightclub in Israel. The attack came at Sharon was meeting with President Bush at the White House. Later Sharon cut short his visit to return home. And the FBI issued an all points bulletin for a Minnesota man in a rash of mailbox bombs across the central United States. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.