The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, a summary of the news; analysis of the terrorist bombing in Bali that killed more than 180 people; a conversation with writer Salman Rushdie about Islamic terrorism and other matters; a report on the growth of ethnic media in the United States; and a look back at the NewsHour appearances of writer- historian Stephen Ambrose, who died over the weekend.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The government of Indonesia blamed al-Qaida today for a deadly bombing in Bali. The blast Saturday night killed more than 180 people, including two Americans, in a crowded tourist area. Hundreds more were hurt, and dozens are still missing. No one has claimed responsibility, but the defense minister said al-Qaida and "local" terrorists were involved. In Washington, President Bush said Indonesian President Megawati must take action.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I want to make it clear to her that we need to work together to find those who murdered all those innocent people and bring them to justice. I hope I hear the resolve of a leader that recognizes that any time terrorists take hold in a country it's going to weaken the country itself. And there has to be a firm and deliberate desire to find out... find the killers before they kill somebody else.

JIM LEHRER: The President said the Bali bombing is part of a pattern, with recent attacks on U.S. Marines in Kuwait and a French oil tanker off Yemen. He said al-Qaida is still extremely dangerous, whether Osama bin Laden is alive or not. An Arab satellite TV channel received a signed statement today attributed to bin Laden. It said the attacks in Kuwait and Yemen were a "clear and strong message that holy warriors, with God's help, haven't been weakened." We'll have more on all of this in a moment. The Washington area watched and waited today after a weekend free of sniper attacks. In all, eight people have been killed and two wounded since October 2. The last attack was Friday morning. Over the weekend, investigators released a composite image of a white box truck, based on descriptions by witnesses. As police looked for clues, local residents cut back on outdoor activities. The head of the local government in Montgomery County, Maryland, summed up the situation today.

DOUGLAS DUNCAN, Montgomery County Executive: We will not be at peace in this community until we catch whoever is doing this. That's why that single mission, that single focus is what's driving everything that's happening here. We do want people to do as much as their normal routine as they can for the long-term health of our community. Kids need to be in school. People need to be at work. People need to go about as best they can the normal routine with the understanding that they need to make those decisions. They're the only one who can make those decisions for their own personal situation.

JIM LEHRER: Police said today they've been flooded with tips and some false alarms. They said people have called in possible "shootings" that turned out to be everything from cars backfiring to fireworks going off. The largest recall of meat in U.S. history began Sunday. The "Pilgrim's Pride" Company in Philadelphia is taking back more than 27 million pounds of chicken and turkey deli meats. They were sold mostly under the "Wampler Foods" brand, and may be contaminated with listeria. An outbreak of a different strain of listeria has killed at least 20 people and sickened 120 in the northeast since early summer. Historian and author Stephen Ambrose died Sunday of lung cancer at a hospital in Mississippi. He wrote nearly 40 books, most of them about World War II. They included his 1994 best- seller on d-day, as well as "Band of Brothers" and "Undaunted Courage." Stephen Ambrose was 66 years old. We'll have more on him later in the program. Composer and big band leader Ray Conniff died Saturday in a Los Angeles-area hospital. He'd suffered a stroke in April. Conniff was at the height of his fame in the 1950s and '60s. He had more than 25 top 40 albums, including "S'Wonderful" and "Somewhere My Love." Ray Conniff was 85. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 27 points, to close at 7877, and the NASDAQ was up 10 points, at 1220. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Bali bombings; Salman Rushdie; ethnic media in the U.S.; and remembering Stephen Ambrose.

FOCUS TERROR IN PARADISE

JIM LEHRER: The terror attack on the Indonesian island of Bali: Our coverage begins with two Independent Television News reports. First, Julian Manyon in Bali.

JULIAN MANYON, ITN: It is the worst act of terrorism since last September's attacks on the United States, and it has left this holiday island stunned. Today Indonesian security forces were guarding the rubble of what was one of Bali's most popular night spots. Australian policemen and American FBI agents have joined the hunt for clues, and a team from Scotland Yard is on its way. As the death toll mounted, bodies were still being brought to the island's mortuaries. No one here could possibly have foreseen this carnage, and medical facilities have been struggling to cope. At one hospital, staff prayed for the victims while a local volunteer showed helpless anger.

MAN: Why they do this to us? Why? Do you know that? Can you tell me?

MAN: Anybody who has been evacuated who is anonymous.

JULIAN MANYON: Some are still hoping for a miracle. Today British businessman Mark Winegard searched the hospital's list of dead and injured for any sign of his girlfriend, Anaca, who was last seen with friends in the discotheque shortly before it was bombed. Some on the list are named. Others are unidentified with just chilling descriptions of their injuries. Mark became increasingly distraught.

MARK WEINGARD: I'm going to find her at any cost. I'm going to find her whether she's alive or dead, I'm going to find her and I'm going to take her home basically. I want to find her. I want to find my beautiful baby. If anybody knows where she is or any information whatsoever, please, please, please, you know, please let the authorities know.

JULIAN MANYON: Hundreds of tourists are heading for the airport, among them many Australians who normally regard Bali as a tropical playground on their doorstep. That peaceful reputation has now been shattered, perhaps forever.

JULIAN RUSH, ITN: Even as the police and his troops hunt for clues, Indonesia's defense minister is certain who is guilty: Al-qaida.

MATORI ABDUL DJALIL, Indonesian Defense Minister (speaking through interpreter): I am convinced that al-Qaida is in Indonesia. I don't have any doubts about it.

JULIAN RUSH: The finger of suspicion is being pointed most directly at this man. Abu Bakar Bashir is usually described as the spiritual leader of the group Jemaah Islamiyah, which is alleged to have links with al-Qaida. When Channel 4 News interviewed him exclusively recently at the religious school he runs, he praised Osama bin Laden but denied an al-Qaida connection.

ABU BAKAR BASHIR, Jemaah Islamiyah: (speaking through interpreter) Osama bin Laden is an Islamic fiber. He's a soldier of Allah. As for al-Qaida, I only know what I have read. We have to respond to American aggression. It makes absolutely no sense for us to just stand and watch. It's only natural that we respond to American aggression and arrogance.

JULIAN RUSH: Today the cleric said he did not agree with bombs. The attack, he said, was orchestrated by America.

ABU BAKAR BASHIR (speaking through interpreter): These are part of the United States global strategy to make it look as if there are terrorists in Indonesia so that the United States can come to interfere.

JULIAN RUSH: The evidence comes from two sources. First the interrogation of Jemaah Islamiyah militants arrested in Singapore in December last year. Some are thought to have trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan. There's evidence too from a Kuwaiti arrested in June in Indonesia, a senior al-Qaida member, he's reported to have said he was planning car bomb attacks against U.S. Targets and to have linked Abu Bakar Bashir to the plots.

JIM LEHRER: Three further perspectives now on the attack: Robert Gelbard, a career diplomat, was U.S. ambassador to Indonesia from 1999 to 2001. Zachary Abuza is an assistant professor of political science at Simmons College; he's writing a book on militant groups in Southeast Asia, and he traveled to the region earlier this year. Michael Sheehan was the State Department coordinator for counterterrorism in the last two years of the Clinton administration. Mr. Sheehan, does the Bali bombing add up to an al-Qaida operation to you?

MICHAEL SHEEHAN: It certainly has all the hallmarks of an al-Qaida operation a massive car bomb probably with links to a local organization or directly involved witness al-Qaida, but it certainly is there modus operandi.

JIM LEHRER: Professor Abuza, do you agree?

ZACHARY ABUZA: I absolutely agree. I see this, Jim, as I see this -- Jemmah Islamiyah's fingerprints all over this. It's within their capabilities and means. We know they have stock piled ammonium nitrate and TNT from the Philippines. And it's also part of a reaction or revenge for the arrests of Jemmah Islamiyah members in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Mr. Ambassador, how does it look to you?

ROBERT GELBARD: I certainly agree with them that it has all the earmarks of al-Qaida working with Jemmah Islamiyah. It's important to recognize that Jemmah Islamiyah has worked back and forthwith Filipino terrorists from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the MLIF, in Mindenow. Some of its members have been arrested in the Philippines including the man who is considered the leading bomb maker for the MLIF, Fathur al-Ghozi. So the effort at creating large spectacular bombings has been building over time both in Indonesia and in the Philippines.

JIM LEHRER: Now, when you were the ambassador, you had some problems, did you not, convincing the Indonesian government to recognize the fact that they even had a terrorist threat? Tell us about that.

ROBERT GELBARD: It was very clear when I arrived three years ago, almost exactly three years ago, that al-Qaida had begun to establish itself through front organizations of various kinds. This is something which was al-Qaida's trademark in countries that were going through a transition from authoritarian or totalitarian systems to new democratic systems. I had seen that earlier in Albania and in Bosnia as those countries had become very open too. Indonesia itself was going from the 32-year dictatorship of Suharto to a very wide open new democracy. I tried to explain to the newly democratic government of President Abdurrahman Wahid in October of 1999 that then was the time to go after the newly implanted al-Qaida and Hezbollah front organizations. We offered briefings and we continued to for a long time but we were spurned.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Sheehan, what can you add to that? You also had some difficulty, did you not, or I mean you and your folks convincing the Indonesians that they had a threat?

MICHAEL SHEEHAN: Yes, we clearly saw in the late '90s, early 2000 time period, a shift of al-Qaida operatives moving into East Asia, both in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. It was a crossroads of some of their most important operatives. And we knew that they were preparing to make attacks against U.S. and U.S. interests in that region. We were pursuing diplomatic and intelligence efforts with those countries to try to get them to step up their activities. But al-Qaida is there for a reason. They knew that they would be able to find refuge in a massive country in this archipelago throughout Southeast Asia, knowing no borders they could move around and hide with some of the local organizations that governments were reluctant to take on.

JIM LEHRER: How do you, Mr. Sheehan, read the forceful statement, we just ran it, from the defense minister of Indonesia saying this was al-Qaida, al-Qaida is now here. How do you read that?

MICHAEL SHEEHAN: Well, it's a step in the right direction. We've all known they've been there for quite a while. I'm encouraged by those remarks but now it's time to step up and increase their law enforcement activities thatbreak down these cells and get hold of the main leadership and get a handle on this situation that is very dangerous not only in Indonesia but throughout Southeast Asia.

JIM LEHRER: Professor Abuza, tell us a little bit about this local organization in Indonesia. We know its ties to al-Qaida. But where does it come from? What generates it locally in Indonesia?

ZACHARY ABUZA: Abu Bakar Bashir and Abdullah Sungkar --

JIM LEHRER: Bashir is the guy we just saw twice in that clip, --

ZACHARY ABUZA: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: -- in the introduction piece. Go ahead, yes, sir.

ZACHARY ABUZA: He was committed to establishing an Islamic state in Indonesia going back to the 1960s. He was arrested and detained under the Suharto new order regime. He was arrested and when he was in the appeals process, he and Abdullah Sungkar fled to Malaysia. They lived there for two decades, and they recruited amongst Indonesia exiles, they preached in house congregations, not in state-controlled mosques. And they developed a loyal following. Sometime around 1993 to 1994, he authorized two of his lieutenants, Riduan Isamuddin, who goes by the name of Hambali, and Abu Jabril, to establish the Jemmah Islamiyah, a network with cells in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia. In 1998 following the collapse of the Suharto regime, Bashir and Abdullah Sungkar returned to Indonesia, they returned to their Islamic boarding school in Solo, in central Java. Bashir then established an overt civil society organization known as the Mujahadin Council of Indonesia.

JIM LEHRER: This was in the open and everybody knew about it, the government and everybody knew about it.

ZACHARY ABUZA: Yes, absolutely. They held conferences, they published books. They have their own companies. But it was a civil society organization as Bashir described it to me when I interviewed him this summer. And he said their goal was to bring about an Islamic state in Indonesia. Members of the MMI included the Las-Kar Jahad, the Las Kar Umdullah, and other groups.

JIM LEHRER: What do you make of his statement that we just ran that he doesn't approve of bombings?

ZACHARY ABUZA: I think he's denying this completely. I believe he's completely responsible for this attack. It is certainly within his capabilities. He has the motive to do so. And for some someone who wants to create an Islamic state in the country he has to discredit the Indonesian government, Megawati's. I think he'd love to create economic chaos in the country.

JIM LEHRER: Speaking of that, Mr. Ambassador, why Bali? Why is that a good target?

ROBERT GELBARD: Bali is probably the best possible target that terrorists would want to attack right now. First, the Balinese people who are predominantly Hindu have kept extremist Islamic movements at bay and away from Bali over their history. They have, in fact, even fought in recent years against Islamic groups that wanted to show militancy on the island. Second, there has been a revival of tourism over the last two or three years. It has helped the Indonesian economy, which of course had collapsed in 1997. As more tourists have come back, it's contributed to some economic growth, which Indonesia desperately needs. This has the dual benefit for the terrorists of going after the westerners and it's well known that Kuta is the area where westerners congregate the most in Bali, and second hitting the Indonesian government right at its heart, the economy. So they can discredit the government and hurt the foreigners and walk away very happy.

JIM LEHRER: Shouldother attacks like this be expected?

ROBERT GELBARD: We have felt that something like this would happen at some point. I would not be surprised at all if more attacks occur. Other attacks have occurred in the past, but simply haven't gotten much press. Christmas Eve of the year 2000, 30 churches were bombed and Omar al Farooq, the Kuwaiti who is now in our custody has said he worked with Jemmah Islamiyah on that. The Philippine ambassador was attacked with a car bomb a block-and-a-half from my house and it was clearly both Philippine and Indonesian groups working together. We've seen a lot of these attacks but never anything close to this dimension.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. In fact there was a bomb that went off near the U.S. Consul just this weekend. Nobody was hurt.

ROBERT GELBARD: Well, during my time as ambassador, in fact, we knew that al-Qaida was making plans to try to blow up our embassy.

JIM LEHRER: You knew they were going to do that?

ROBERT GELBARD: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: And what did you do about it? I hope you got out of there.

ROBERT GELBARD: We closed the embassy. In October and November of 2000, right at the time of our presidential election, we knew the embassy was under very heavy surveillance by al-Qaida. The Indonesian government's reaction was to say we were trying to discredit the Indonesian government when we asked for more police protection. They vilified me and for a long time refused to give us the protection we needed. In June and July of last year when we discovered that an al-Qaida hit team had come in from the Middle East to try to attack the embassy, again we asked for help. Again we found a tremendous amount of denial on the one hand by the Indonesian government and really offensive attacks on the other.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Sheehan, just broaden this out before we go; President Bush said today that he sees the relationship-- and a relationship must be assumed between this attack and Bali and the one in Kuwait and the... what's it? My mind has gone blank. The three of them in Yemen, the small boat going up against the French tanker blowing up -- trying to blow up the French tanker in Yemen. Do you see the same pattern?

MICHAEL SHEEHAN: Clearly al-Qaida since 9/11 and the loss of their safe haven in Afghanistan is reorganizing, regrouping and on the offensive again with the series of attacks. I definitely see a link. It underscores the need for the U.S. Government to engage in a wide range of countries diplomatically first with training, with equipment, with exchanges of information, to ensure that they remain focused, that these countries remain focused on the threat that is within their midst. That's going to require the U.S. to remain focused on this threat.

JIM LEHRER: Do you buy the theory that's what's happened here is that the al-Qaida leadership -- whether it's Osama bin Laden or whoever -- has just said okay, "cells, everywhere, do your thing" and that's what's happening, each little group of al-Qaida people are doing what they want to do?

MICHAEL SHEEHAN: I think clearly that there are indications that al-Qaida has put on the green light to its cells that operate in at least sixty or seventy countries around the world. And these cells that operate semi-independently with support, technical support, some types of explosives, detonating devices from the central organization, with that type of linkages they're beginning to step up their attacks and I think this could continue over the months ahead.

JIM LEHRER: And Professor Abuza, in this part of Asia, Indonesia, that part, we should expect more as well?

ZACHARY ABUZA: I am afraid so. I hope the Indonesian government is going to stop being in denial about this. The Singaporeans have been very helpful. The Malaysians have cracked down, the Filipinos but the weak link in all of this has been the Indonesians. I am a bit concerned about the statement of the minister of defense that you heard before where, as he said, he believes that it is al-Qaida. He did not go so far as to name Abu-Bakar Bashir or the Jemmah Islamiyah, who has received political support and protection in the past from the country's vice president, Hamza Haz, who will be Megawati Sukarno Putri's primary rival in the election of 2004.

JIM LEHRER: That's a serious, serious situation then, is it not?

ZACHARY ABUZA: Yes, it is.

JIM LEHRER: Yet there are people within the government who are in denial about that particular organization after this bombing. It could be a very serious problem.

ZACHARY ABUZA: There is intense competition also between the intelligence services, the military and the police. The intelligence services and the military are starting to be a little more concerned about the threat posed by terrorists. The police have more or less been in denial and have stalled most investigations. There is some word in Jakarta today that Megawati will turn over this task of internal security to the military.

JIM LEHRER: Is that good or bad? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

ZACHARY ABUZA: It's a mixed blessing. The Indonesian military certainly has committed egregious human rights violations in places like East Timor. On the other hand, if they are going to deal with the terrorist threat, we have to see it as a step in the right direction.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Thank you all three very much.

CONVERSATION CROSSING BOUNDARIES

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a conversation with Salman Rushdie; America's growing ethnic media; and remembering Stephen Ambrose. Ray Suarez talked with Rushdie last week.

RAY SUAREZ: Salman Rushdie is an author, essayist, and critic, an Indian whose family was split by the partition of India and Pakistan. He's written eight novels, including the Booker Prize- winning "Midnight's Children," but he's probably best known for "The Satanic Verses," a fantasy published in 1989. Its publications enraged many Muslims. The ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, then the country's supreme leader, issued a religious decree, a Fatwa, offering a multimillion- dollar award for Rushdie's assassination. He spent most of the next decade in hiding, until 1998, when the Iranian government disassociated itself from the death threat. After long years working and living in England, he now lives in New York City, and has just published "Step Across This Line," his first collection of non-fiction in ten years. And the title itself is provocative, since you write so much and so often in fiction and non-fiction about frontiers, borders, and the way ideas and people move around the world

SALMAN RUSHDIE, Author: Yeah, it's been really the story of my life, the engagement with the frontier, you know, because as you mentioned, I was born just before the partition of India, and that frontier that was driven across the Indian subcontinent that split my family, not to mention led to the deaths of many, many thousands of people. I mean, there's disputes about whether there was fifty or a hundred or even more thousands of people. So I grew up in the aftermath of that piece of line drawing. And ever since then, the frontier has seemed to me to be not just a scary place, but a place to confront, you know, and as I suggest, if possible, to step across. And then in my own life, you know, I stepped across all sorts of frontiers-- literal ones, the frontiers that brought me to the West and to England, and then later, as you mentioned, to the United States, but also metaphorical frontiers, you know, because I think every serious artist, including myself, tries to work at the edge, not in the middle. You try to go to the frontier. You try to go to the borderline, if not step across it, then at least try to push it outwards, you know, to increase the sum of what it is possible to say and to think, and to increase the ways in which it is possible to express one's self in a work of art. And I guess sometimes, as in the case of "The Satanic Verses," that gets writers into trouble.

RAY SUAREZ: I've read a lot of your writing from other places in the world about the United States, and how it fills the imagination of people all over the world.

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Indeed.

RAY SUAREZ: But one very striking change in tone across these ten years of essays comes with September 11, where the sort of undercurrent of your writing changes quite abruptly, and you begin to write about the United States with a lot of sympathy, a great deal of empathy that might not have been there before.

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Well, I think, you know, I felt that attack on New York City-- I speak particularly of New York because that's where I was living-- I felt it very much as a kind of domestic assault. I felt, as many New Yorkers felt it, all New Yorkers felt it, as an attack on their home. And I amazed myself, actually, by the depth of my action, and then felt I had to honestly write out of that. So, yes, I think it was a very emotional event in all our lives who watched those terrible things.

RAY SUAREZ: For years before this arrival in the United States, you had your own very rough and difficult encounter with worldwide Islam, one that the United States is now engaged in. Now you write in several essays, at one point chiding, "Well, this isn't about Islam-- of course it's about Islam!" But the question is, what does that mean? What does it mean?

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Well, what I meant to say is, if you look at figures from the Christian fundamentalist extreme wing, if you look at a Jerry Falwell or whoever, you can't say that they have nothing to do with Christianity. Of course they do. It's a view of Christianity which maybe most Christians would not share, but clearly Christianity is a part of who they are. And in the same way, if you look at the extremists in the Muslim world and their actions, you can't say it's got nothing to do with Islam. It's to do with a view of Islam, which most Muslims would reject, but on the other hand, it's a view of Islam that is being purveyed across the Muslim world by religious schools and by fanatical organizations, and it's clearly something to grapple with, not only for us outside the Muslim world, but I believe for people inside the Muslim world, because I think in the end, the war on terror can only be won when Muslim societies themselves reject this kind of rhetoric, this kind of highly inflamed, retrograde rhetoric from which fanaticism springs.

RAY SUAREZ: Are you saying that that's already begun? At one point, you refer to Osama and Mullah Omar as yesterday's men, in a widespread feeling that maybe jihad is no longer cool.

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Well, I think clearly the defeat of al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan did make many people think again. Many young people... actually, a lot of them European Muslims, you know, in places like Britain made them think again about joining up, signing up for this kind of catastrophic army whose leaders hide in caves while recommending that their followers commit suicide in the name of God. I don't think they look that glamorous in the aftermath of the American intervention in Afghanistan. And I think there's other signs that fundamentalism, in certain places, anyway, may have peaked. You know, in Iran it quite clearly has. In Iran, it's quite clear that the regime of the mullahs is now loathed and detested by the people, who would get rid of it tomorrow if they could. In other places, such as Algeria, where in the last decade the fanatics have had a lot of momentum, and have killed and scared a lot of people, they now seem to be in retreat. So there is evidence, in my view-- not even across the world-- but there is evidence to show that fundamentalism tends to be like a short-lived illness in a society that, once people have had a serious taste of it, they soon wish to recover from it.

RAY SUAREZ: So by emphasizing Islam versus the west, we miss out on what might even be the more interesting Islam versus Islam, that internal tug of war?

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Well, I think there is, you know, a great internal struggle. You sometimes see its effects. For instance, when the Taliban fell, you saw the rejoicing of the people of Afghanistan. That showed how great the unhappiness of the people of Afghanistan had been under the Taliban rule. I think when and if the rule of the mullahs ends in Iran, you'll see something similar. You'll see celebration at the fall of a regime that is so unpopular. So, yes, of course, the first people who are oppressed by fundamentalist Islam are Muslims, people in Muslim countries where those forces are at their strongest. I do think there are great problems remaining associated with it. And a lot of that has to do with the very murky role, in my view, of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, after all, allowed bin Laden and his group to fund-raise and recruit freely for years before September 11. Saudi Arabia is also the source of the financing for these extremist Muslim schools, the so-called Madrassahs, which are spreading all over the world, in which the Taliban were trained, in which many of the radicals now creating terrorist actions in Kashmir were trained-- a phenomenon in my view as dangerous as al-Qaida, the spread of the religious schools, and entirely financed by supposed ally of the West --Saudi Arabia.

RAY SUAREZ: One passage in "Step Across This Line" really caused me to sort of sit up and put on the brakes: "America finds itself facing an ideological enemy that may turn out to be harder to defeat than militant Islam; that is to say, anti- Americanism, which is presently taking the world by storm."

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Mm-hmm. Well, this is... I mean, I am not here representing my view. I'm representing a phenomenon that really worries me profoundly, a union, if you like, of opposition to America from, on the one hand, fundamentalist Islam, and on the other hand, kind of leftist European thinkers and commentators who ought to be in such a war on America's side. And I think this clearly is an issue that Washington needs to confront, and clearly feels so itself. I mean, it's only recently that the State Department actually held a major conference on the subject to see what could be done about it. And clearly one of the things that I would suggest should be done about it is that the United States needs to regain an ability to act in concert with other nations, and not unilaterally and preemptively. I think the breaking of treaties by the Bush administration annoyed a lot of people in Europe, and now we're once again in a situation where European leaders are trying to persuade the United States to act in concert with them and with the United Nations, and not off its own path. And I think there is something important to think about.

RAY SUAREZ: Salman Rushdie, thanks for being with us.

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Thank you.

FOCUS CHANGING TIMES

JIM LEHRER: Now, a growing media story, about one segment in the United States that is expanding while others are standing still. Media correspondent Terence Smith has our report.

TERENCE SMITH: These are the faces of a changing California, the so- called new California, where minorities are now the majority. In the last census, 53% of Californians identified themselves as non-white. That's some 18 million people, 40% of whom speak a language other than English at home.

MAN: So help me God.

GROUP: So help me God.

MAN: Congratulations, and welcome as American citizens.

TERENCE SMITH: And what is happening in California is happening elsewhere around the nation, which is in the midst of the greatest wave of immigration in nearly a century. (Speaking Spanish)

TERENCE SMITH: Not surprisingly, these are boom times as well for ethnic and foreign language media. In an era when many mainstream English-language news organizations are actually losing readers and viewers, the ethnic sector is growing rapidly. And it has impact. A recent survey found that ethnic media reach 84% of the three largest minority groups in California. In fact, the Spanish language Univision Station in Los Angeles has a larger audience than any of the English-speaking stations. KSCI-Television is another thriving ethnic station. From studios in Los Angeles, it broadcasts in 14 different languages during the course of a typical day. Its audience has quadrupled in the last five years.

SPOKESMAN: It's primarily Chinese, Korean, Tagalog for the Filipino community, Vietnamese, and Japanese.

TERENCE SMITH: Jon Yasuda, a third- generation Japanese American, runs the 25-year-old KSCI. He says up to 1.5 million people may be watching at any given time.

JON YASUDA, President & CEO, SCI-TV: What we try to provide is a mixture of local news and news from their home country. So it gives them a feel for what's happening here in the Los Angeles and southern California area, but also gives them a feel for what's happening back home.

TERENCE SMITH: On a recent day, KSCI highlighted a story important to its viewers: The first Taiwanese baseball player to make the major leagues was called up by the Los Angeles Dodgers.

JON YASUDA: That's big news within the Chinese community, so we gave it a little mover coverage than what you would see on general markets.

TERENCE SMITH: Indeed they did. KSCI blanketed the story, while the local network-owned stations ignored it, offering instead the usual highlights from the Dodgers' game. KSCI also covers general news in the studio and on the streets. KSCI reporter Harry Chang says the station provides a bridge between the old world and the new. In San Gabriel east of Los Angeles, he samples opinion on the story of the day, Iraq. KSCI emphasizes success stories within the community, but tries to avoid boosterism and outright advocacy.

JON YASUDA: We see ourselves more as serving the community and providing them with information and news in assisting them in theassimilation and acculturation process, as opposed to advocating on behalf of them here in this region.

TERENCE SMITH: Assisting and assimilation is an important role for ethnic media, in the view of Sandra Ball-Rokeach, who heads a program at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

SANDRA BALL-ROKEACH, United Nations of Southern California: It's something we have been talking about for four years now, trying to get people to recognize the importance of these media in the daily lives of large, large populations, not only for understanding their home country, but also leading their everyday lives, like where to go to purchase goods, where to go to have recreation. Where is it safe? What's going on in the community that you should know about?

TERENCE SMITH: Representatives of some 400 ethnic media organizations came to this Los Angeles hotel for an award ceremony that is known as the Ethnic Pulitzers. The awards recognized outstanding work by journalists who write and broadcast in 21 languages serving a vast and diverse community that politicians, advertisers, and

mainstream media largely ignore.

SPOKESPERSON: Congratulations.

TERENCE SMITH: Phil Bronstein, executive editor of the "San Francisco Chronicle," was honored for his paper's coverage of immigrant communities. He says the mainstream media have a lot to learn from their mostly smaller ethnic counterparts.

PHIL BRONSTEIN, "San Francisco Chronicle:" The mainstream media ignores the communities, and then, of course, by extension ignores the ethnic press. In San Francisco, to me that would be suicide, because the ethnic communities are not only such a large part of the community, but such a big and significant cultural part. So for us it's a no-brainer.

TERENCE SMITH: Bronstein credits Sandy Close, the founder of New California Media, a consortium of ethnic news organizations, with raising the visibility of ethnic media. The "Chronicle" runs a series of news briefs from ethnic outlets each week, and has joined with some ethnic organizations to report sensitive stories that can be hard for an Anglo reporter to cover.

PHIL BRONSTEIN: We've had any number of stories like that, where our understanding and appreciation for that community or for any community really was helped, if not initiated by Sandy and New California Media, helped by them significantly.

TERENCE SMITH: Sandy Close:

SANDY CLOSE, Executive Director, New California Media: Ethnic media themselves are coming together. They recognize that if you really want to knit together the horizontal city, it isn't just about the Chinese getting visibility for itself, or the Spanish media, or the black media. It's about each of these media come together to make a big bang, to showcase all of this segment that for so long has been in the shadows, so long been treated as kind of an afterthought or footnote of American journalism.

TERENCE SMITH: "La Opinion," the largest and most established Spanish-language newspaper in the country, is anything but a footnote. 130,000 people buy the paper each day. But industry studies show that between 500,000 and 700,000 actually read it, according to editor Gerardo Lopez.

GERARDO LOPEZ, Editor, "La Opinion:" When people call us ethnic media, they usually have a connotation that we are a second-class journalism publication, or that we are somehow biased, or that we have to package our newspaper just so we can advocate for something. We are a mainstream newspaper in this country.

TERENCE SMITH: But you happen to publish in another language.

GERARDO LOPEZ: We happen... yeah.

TERENCE SMITH: The paper is owned by the Lozano Family and the Tribune Company, which also publishes the "Los Angeles Times."

GERARDO LOPEZ: Our journalism is, on one end, the traditional type. We send the news like everybody else, just the way it is. We also do a great deal of public service journalism because of the fact that we... our readers need some explanations of certain things.

TERENCE SMITH: Reporter Maria Luisa Arredondo has been tracking a story about proposed cutbacks at Los Angeles county hospitals, which would disproportionately hurt the poor. She interviews in English and Spanish, as all the reporters do. Her story, which made page one, was not covered that day by the "Los Angeles Times" or the local network affiliates. Attorney Sylvia Argueta of the Legal Aid Foundation says "La Opinon" plays a critical role in the community she serves.

SYLVIA ARGUETA: We work with low-income people in East Los Angeles, and it's amazing how many of them walk in with the newspaper in their hand. That's where they get their information. No matter how low-income they are-- and the people we see are very low-income-- they always have enough to buy the paper, make an effort to at least share it with people and really keep themselves informed.

TERENCE SMITH: "La Opinion's" readers have responded. The paper's circulation has grown nearly 30% in the last three years. The paper also focuses on news beyond the border, much of it lately in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela.

GERARDO LOPEZ: We define international news as anything that happens outside this country. The rest of the editors, or most of the editors in this country, would define international news as anything outside the United States. Not us.

TERENCE SMITH: "La Opinion" and KSCI-TV have succeeded where many other ethnic media have failed, by attracting national advertisers.

SPOKESMAN: Among her clients are Northwest Airlines, J.C. Penney...

TERENCE SMITH: How to attract those advertisers, the lifeblood of most media outlets, was among the topics discussed at this convention in Los Angeles, where hundreds of ethnic news organizations and advertisers came together to network and collaborate. Heide Gardner of the American Advertising Federation:

HEIDE GARDNER, American Advertising Federation: There is a gap. There is an information gap. Many national advertisers are still not aware of the opportunities they have by targeting multicultural consumers. Growth is flat in the general market in many product categories, and so there is tremendous opportunity by targeting multicultural consumers.

TERENCE SMITH: Calculating the size of that multicultural audience has been difficult as ethnic media try to sell themselves to advertisers. Nonetheless, says Sandra Ball- Rokeach:

SANDRA BALL-ROKEACH: If I were an advertiser of whatever consumer product, I would want to put ads in these media. Those are the media that these people go to in large, large numbers to make decisions about where to go and what to buy.

TERENCE SMITH: And what of the future?

SANDRA BALL-ROKEACH: The question I have is, will the thing that used to happen with immigrant media happen again, or will something new happen? In the past, immigrant media survived only through about the third generation, and then they tended to die off. So the question for me now is, will they stay around?

TERENCE SMITH: For now, the answer is yes.

FINALLY IN MEMORIAM

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, remembering afrequent guest on the "NewsHour," historian Stephen Ambrose. He wrote several best-selling books, and spoke and lectured. Last year he was criticized for some of his writing and research methods, and was accused of plagiarism, which he denied. He died Sunday of lung cancer. Spencer Michels guides us through excerpts from Ambrose's appearances on this program over the years.

SPENCER MICHELS: Ambrose was a story teller, and he was best known for his tales about World War II. He talked to David Gergen about his book "Citizen Soldiers" and about the Battle of the Bulge toward the end of the war.

STEPHEN AMBROSE: The real story of the Bulge is the one that captures everybody's imagination is Bastogne and the 101st Airborne being surrounded there, and rightly so, but it's a bigger story than that. It's an American lieutenant with a platoon over here, and an American corporal with a squad over here saying, I ain't gonna retreat no more. We're going to stand and fight here. And they held up German columns all across the front and threw the German timetable completely out of kilter, and eventually some clear weather arrived, and with clear weather trucks could move on the road, planes could fly and hit at the Germans, and it was done, and the Germans were hurled back from the Battle of the Bulge, so that by January of 1945, the end of January, the lines were back to where they had been in September.

Then they get to the Rhine River in March of 1945, the greatest river in Europe, and it looked like it was going to be a very, very tough proposition to get across this river and any bridgehead over it was going to be pure gold. An American lieutenant named Carl Timmerman spotted the biggest bridge over the Rhine River. It was a railroad bridge--the Ludendorff Bridge--and Timmerman saw it, and without hesitating, he took a squad that was a really wonderfully American squad. There was a Polish sergeant and an Irish corporal and a couple of Germans and an Indian in it, and--American. And Karl Timmerman, a German, of course, German-American, saw that bridge, and he said, "Let's go." And he led his men across that bridge in one of the greatest actions of the Second World War, machine gun fire cutting everywhere. They knew the bridge was scheduled to be blown up; they expected it to be blown in their faces. What apparently happened, David, was a stray bullet cut the wire leading out to the demolition charges. Timmerman got across, took the bridge. Now we were over the Rhine, and then it was the time for the exploitation and rolling across Germany till we met with the Red Army at the Elbe River in April of 1945.

SPENCER MICHELS: In 1998 Ambrose described the landing on Omaha Beach to Phil Ponce, the scene depicted in the movie "Saving Private Ryan."

STEPHEN AMBROSE: The ramp goes down for Company A, the 116th regiment of the 29th infantry division, with the second Rangers right beside him, and they're all wiped out. They're just hit with a wall of steel that just blows men away. And you're not ready for this because you had a calm scene that proceeds and you just jump out of your seat and people say what-you know, it couldn't have been that bad.

I'll tell you how bad it was-that company A of the 116th took 95 percent casualties in the first minute. They never got a shot off. They were most of them just wiped out right inside their Higgins boats, and he shows you this. A lot of guys drowned because the Coxswain dropped the ramps in too deep a water, because the Coxswains didn't want to go in any closer or they hit obstacles, and these guys come into water that's over their head, and a lot of them drowned. They were way overweight with equipment. And Spielberg goes underwater to show you these guys drowning, and I tell you, it's just terrifying to look at!

SPENCER MICHELS: The "Wild Blue" told of the men who flew B-24s over Germany in World War II. Among the pilots was George McGovern. He and Ambrose talked to Gwen Ifill.

STEPHEN AMBROSE: What's unique about George McGovern is how good he was. I interviewed the members of his crew. Every one of them said he always got us back. We just trusted in him. We knew he was going to do it right, and he did. He was courageous, of course, but he had a level head. He could keep that plane level, too. He had a lot of muscles to do that. It was very difficult to keep that plane flying. He had an instinctive understanding of what's going to work. Bringing back these planes that have been all shot up, 150 holes in them-- shrapnel holes-- and bringing them down and landing them safely, most especially of the Isle of Viz in the Adriatic, where he brought in a plane that two engines were gone, a third one was about half-gone; there was only one engine working, he was losing gas... It was a desperate situation, and the airfield, the strip, was only 2,200 yards long. And he needed 5,000 yards to land that plane. But the alternative was we're all going to bail out into the Adriatic, and then we're going to get hypothermia and that's it. So he brought it in. He told the crew, "anybody who wants to bail out, bail out." That happened on more than one occasion. They never did. "What are you going to do?" "I'm going to bring this plane in." "We're sticking with you," was their answer. And the Isle of Viz, he came down... He and his copilot, Bill Rollins, they hit that runway right at the absolute edge of it, and they hit those brakes with everything they had. And they could, ahead of them, see a mountain that came right up at the far end of the runway that had the carcasses of a number of B-24s on it that had tried the same thing. They couldn't get all the way back to Italy and they had tried to land there and-- boom!-- into the mountain and then blow up and everybody is gone. So they hit those brakes, and they're straining and straining, and they get right to the edge of that mountain and they bring her to a stop. The crew jumped out of the plane and started kissing the ground.

SPENCER MICHELS: Six years ago he penned "Undaunted Courage," the tale of the 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark expedition across North America.

STEPHEN AMBROSE: Sacagawea, the most famous American Indian woman in our history, saved them on a lot of occasions. She was a 15-year-old girl with a baby on her back who made the whole expedition and on a number of occasions when they were close to starvation using her native skills she dug up roots with a stick and was able to feed them.

She did something, David--I interrupt to get into this--that you and I and all Americans will never ever be able to repay her for. One day on the Missouri, they had a sail up on the, on the dugout, the wind switched, caught the sail, the dugout went over. There were six men in it, four of 'em started swimming frantically toward shore. The other two were yelling at each other. And meanwhile, the journals of Lewis & Clark, our greatest national literary treasury, our odyssey, were floating away down the Missouri River, and this 15-year-old girl was the only one with presence enough of mind to swim back there and grab those journals and save them for us.

SPENCER MICHELS: Last summer DavidGergen sat down with Ambrose in his Louisiana home for what both acknowledged was a final interview.

DAVID GERGEN: I meet veterans from World War II around the country, and they so frequently say, in effect, "Stephen Ambrose gave us our voice." Is that one of your greatest satisfactions as an historian?

STEPHEN AMBROSE: I didn't give them their voice. They have their own voices, and they speak out with them. I listen. I'll tell you what my greatest satisfaction is: I know how to listen and I know how to pick up good lines, and then I know how to weave them into a story. It's very nice that they say that, but it's not true.

SPENCER MICHELS: Ambrose has written a final book called "to America: Personal reflections of an historian" which will be released next month.

DAVID GERGEN: So this... this is really a love song to America.

STEPHEN AMBROSE: Oh, yeah.

DAVID GERGEN: It's the realization you've had over the years, some 30-plus years as an historian, that it's basically a very positive epic, what this country is all about.

STEPHEN AMBROSE: The best in the world. There are many reasons for it, and I write about them in this book: The Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, what they did and the government they set up and how they did it. And I don't want to get into details on this, but they created a nation that had many sins, slavery being number one; the discrimination against minorities and women and so on. There's quite a lot. They haven't all been solved, but many of them have been.

This is a country that can change faster and quicker in the right direction than anybody else in the world. We are the world's leaders because we live in the best country that ever was.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: The government of Indonesia blamed al-Qaida for a deadly bombing in Bali. The blast Saturday night killed more than 180 people, and President Bush said the Bali bombing, and other recent attacks, demonstrate al-Qaida is still extremely dangerous. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.