The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, a summary of the news; a report on today's major Supreme Court decisions by Jan Crawford Greenburg; some perspective on the guilty verdict against the Arthur Andersen accounting firm; an update of the U.S. soccer team's run in the World Cup; Watergate's effect on journalism, as seen by Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward, and Carl Bernstein; and a Clarence Page essay on the "Game of Life."

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled in favor of police looking for suspects and religious groups looking for converts. By 6-3, the Court decided police do not have to advise bus riders of their rights before searching them. The Justices also ruled Jehovah's Witnesses and others have the right to knock on doors without permission from local governments. The 8-1 decision said local laws requiring permits to visit homes violate free speech. We'll have more on these cases in a moment. The Arthur Andersen accounting firm will virtually shut down by summer's end. On Saturday, a federal jury in Houston convicted the auditors of obstructing justice in the Enron affair. Andersen had already lost one- third of its clients before the trial. It said it would stop all work for publicly traded companies by August 31. We'll have more on this later in the program. The head of another major company quit today, amid a federal probe of its accounting practices. Qwest Communications said Joseph Nacchio stepped down voluntarily. The "New York Times" and the "Wall Street Journal" reported he was forced out. Qwest is the Baby Bell regional phone company serving 14 western and Rocky Mountain states. Its stock has fallen more than 90% since March 2000. A U.S. Forest Service worker faced charges today of starting the huge wildfire near Denver. Betty Ann Bowser has our report.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: 38-year-old Forest Service Terry Barton appeared in federal court this morning. Wearing handcuffs, she was told by federal magistrate Judge Michael Watanabe she faces up to ten years in prison if convicted. Barton is charged with three counts: Setting fire to timber in a national forest; damaging federal property with a value of over $1,000; and making false statements to federal fire investigators. The Hayman fire southwest of Denver Barton's accused of setting has so far consumed more than 102,000 acres, including at least 25 homes. It's the largest wildfire in the history of the state. According to an affidavit, on June 8, Barton was scouring a southern area of the Pike National Forest looking for illegal campfires. She allegedly became angry over a letter from her estranged husband and decided to burn it. The fire went out of control after Barton left the scene. U.S. Attorney John Suthers says he will aggressively prosecute Barton, and will argue she be detained pending trial.

JOHN SUTHERS, U.S. Attorney: We think she's a flight risk. She's charged with very serious felonies. The consequences of her actions-- alleged actions-- could be quite severe. If she was returned to the community, she would be in a community that's obviously got some people in it that are quite hostile to her. So, for everybody's sake, but from the government's perspective, we think that would create a flight risk, and that's one of the reasons that we have that we can oppose any bond in the matter.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: On Thursday, Barton will have a bond hearing; meanwhile, a court-appointed attorney is being named. The Hayman fire is still burning, but fire officials said today it's nearly 50% contained.

JIM LEHRER: Iraq today dismissed possible U.S. efforts to oust Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi foreign minister said they were nothing new. On Sunday, the "Washington Post" reported President Bush had ordered covert operations to topple, or even kill, Saddam. Today, the "New York Times" reported the President's advisers were formalizing a policy for preemptive strikes. The targets would be nations or groups trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. At the Pentagon today, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was asked if it would be difficult to defend such a policy.

DONALD RUMSFELD: Life is difficult. It would also be difficult to know that a terrorist organization was about ready to fly airplanes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and not do something about it pre-emptively. There is no choice with terrorist acts other than to find them, and that is exactly what we did in Afghanistan. If you think about it, we... you can call that defense, which I do, because it is the only way in the world to deal with that type of problem; or you can call it pre-emptive.

JIM LEHRER: In the Philippines today, U.S. troops came under fire for the first time since they began training government forces to fight terrorists. It happened on the southern island of Basilan, where some 500 Americans are deployed. A U.S. military spokesman said none of the Americans were wounded. He said the attackers likely had ties to al-Qaida. Israel began work Sunday on a security fence along the west bank to stop Palestinian attackers. The defense minister said today the barrier could be extended the entire length of the West Bank. That's more than 200 miles, at a cost of up to $2 million a mile. We have a report from John Irvine of Independent Television News.

JOHN IRVINE, ITN: In places, it will be a concrete wall to prevent sniper attacks, but mostly, the dividing line will be a fence resembling this one on the Lebanese border. It, too, has electronic sensors. There are regular Army patrols, and beside the barricade, a strip of fine sand shows up the footprints of insurgents. Israel says the new fence-- already marked out in places by barbed wire-- will constitute a preventative step and not a political statement. In general terms, this fence will become a demarcation line for two peoples: Israelis to the west of it and Palestinians to the east. That concerns Israeli right- wingers, because Jewish settlements on the West Bank will be on the wrong side. Palestinians, too, are unhappy. Already they feel humiliated by Israeli checkpoints and they view the fence as imprisonment.

JIM LEHRER: In Washington, a State Department spokesman questioned the Israeli decision. He said the way to achieve peace is to offer the Palestinians a better life and to eliminate barriers. The United States beat Mexico today at the World Cup soccer championship in South Korea. The Americans won 2-0, and advanced to the quarterfinals. This is the best a U.S. men's squad has done since the first World Cup in 1930. We'll have more on the World Cup later in the program. Also coming, Supreme Court decisions; the Arthur Andersen verdict; Bradlee, Woodward, and Bernstein; and a Clarence Page essay.

FOCUS - SUPREME COURT WATCH

JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill has the Supreme Court story.

GWEN IFILL: The Supreme Court today decided that the Constitution protects the rights of individuals to go door-to- door without getting government permission. In a separate case, the court also ruled that police may search bus passengers for drugs or other evidence of a crime without first informing them of their legal rights. Both decisions have potentially far-reaching legal implications. Here to explain why is NewsHour regular Jan Crawford Greenburg, Supreme Court reporter for the "Chicago Tribune." Jan, we will welcome back.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Thank you.

GWEN IFILL: Let's start with the Jehovah Witness door to door case. We call it a Jehovah Witness case because they are actually the ones being challenged. Does this now mean that any kind of door to door solicitation, whether it's girl scout cookie knocking or religious proselytizing or simply selling fuller brushes all of that is allowed?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: It does unless a neighbor in the village of Stratton, Ohio unless a resident has posted a no solicitation sign in their window or by the front door or unless the resident says go away I don't want to hear from you. In his opinion today, Justice Stevens suggested that that was ample protection. He said in his opinion for the court that it's just as annoying or it may be just as annoying to hear an uninvited knock at the door as opposed to someone who may be carrying a permit. It's irrelevant, he said, to your annoyance level where whether you have a permit or not.

GWEN IFILL: This little town under 300 residents, Stratton, Ohio, how did this case get from there to the Supreme Court.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: The town leaders in 1998 decided they wanted to protect their residents mostly retirees from criminals and con artists and people who may be trying to sell them a bill of goods. So they said that was their reasons for it so they passed this offered ordinance that would require canvassers, people who are trying to explain or promote a cause, to go down to the mayor's office and fill out a form and register before they could go and ring a doorbell and explain or promote whatever their cause may be. Now the Jehovah's Witnesses who were active in this town filed suit. They said that this ordinance violated their First Amendment rights of free speech. And that worked its way through the courts. A lower court actually said no, that this ordinance was a legitimate interest on the part of the Stratton town leaders, that they had an interest in protecting their residents from crime and protecting their privacy. So they okayed the ordinance. So they took it up to the Supreme Court and then the court struck it down.

GWEN IFILL: Boiled down to a First Amendment versus a Fourth Amendment debate.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Well -- not so much. I mean, no, this one was just solely based on the first amendment and whether or not it's, as Justice Stevens really emphasized in quite a sweeping ruling today, that our free society, the very notion of our free society turns on people being able to go and ring a door bell, the little people, as he called them in his opinion today, who may not have the big money for the fancy campaigns, that it turns on their ability to do that -- to ring the doorbell.

GWEN IFILL: Is what the town did wrong in the Justices' opinion, is what they did wrong was making themselves a too sweeping a ban or regulation on the people's ability to do this?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: The court suggested if they had just stuck on their original idea, if they just said, "we're just going to apply this to people who are soliciting money or your Fuller Brush salesman trying to sell something, that maybe that would have been okay." But this was way more, you know, beyond that. I mean Justice Stevens said it would even apply to the neighbor who wanted to go across the street and ring the doorbell of a neighbor and say, "I think we need a new garbage collector." Or it would apply to somebody who just wanted to walk across the road on a Sunday afternoon to complain about the mayor. That person would have to go to the mayor's office to get a permit.

GWEN IFILL: Now, this wasn't one of those narrowly divided cases.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Right.

GWEN IFILL: This was an 8-1 case as you point out with Justice Stevens writing the opinion. The dissenter was no mere dissenter -- the Chief Justice.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: The Chief Justice - and he suggested this at the argument as well. He very strongly believed that the village had an interest in protecting its residents from criminals and con artists. And he detailed many examples of violent crimes that have been caused by people posing as door-to-door salespeople.

GWEN IFILL: For example?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Well, he specifically focused like he did at the argument on the crime that occurred in Hanford, New Hampshire, the two Dartmouth college professors who were brutally murdered allegedly by two teenagers who were posing as door-to-door canvassers saying that they were doing an environmental study seeking to gain access to the homes. Justice Rehnquist suggested in his dissent that that crime may have even been averted if this town in New Hampshire had had an ordinance similar to the one the court struck down today from Stratton.

GWEN IFILL: Now you say the court wrote in very broad terms with sweeping language is the term he used. Does this mean that this has legal significance beyond just the Jehovah's Witnesses even?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Sure. Had the court gone the other way, any village across the country could have passed a similar ordinance. It would have applied to not just Jehovah's Witnesses but people who were wanting to talk about politics or a candidate for the city council or somebody running against the mayor on, or as Justice O'Connor suggested at the oral argument, even the neighbor who wanted to go borrow a cup of sugar.

GWEN IFILL: The second case we're going to talk about talked about searching for drugs on an inter-state transport, as it were. Why in this case was a search conducted on a bus different from any other kind of search that would be conducted on a sidewalk, for instance? What was unique about that?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Well, when the Court is looking at whether or not a search violates the Fourth Amendment and is unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment, it considers all the circumstances of the case. So if you're on a bus and three police officers walk on the bus and one stands at the front and one stands at the back and one is walking down the aisle, which is what happened here, that's a lot different. It's a very different circumstance than if you're just on a sidewalk and an officer might walk up to you and say could I ask you a question. It may imply that you don't have as much choice to say no.

GWEN IFILL: The argument was that the very presence of these officers in a confined space left the impression among the people who were being searched that they didn't have a choice.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: That's right. That's what the lower court ruled in this case. Now the Supreme Court in 1991 said police officers could do this without violating the Fourth Amendment as long as a person felt, a reasonable person, felt they could say no. The issue today was whether or not the police officers actually had to tell the passengers, "look, you can say no. You don't have to cooperate."

GWEN IFILL: Well, now because the court ruled that you don't have to say... you don't have to read them their rights or be anymore explicit than these officers were, does that mean people riding on buses have a lesser expectation of privacy than people on other modes of transport or walking down the street?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Well, Justice Kennedy would say no. He focused the whole opinion today on the fact that these officers were not acting in any coercive way. He said that they, you know, didn't brandish their weapons. They didn't yell at people. They spoke in quiet tones. They weren't, you know, they were plain-clothes officers. But the dissenters didn't see it that way at all, of course. I mean the dissent which was written by Justice Souter said there's no way a reasonable person who is sitting on the bus, who is asked by a police officer, can I ask you a question or can I look in your bag, would feel he could say no.

Only an uncomprehending person would say no.

GWEN IFILL: Trace this case also to the Supreme Court. It started in Tallahassee Florida. This is not a hypothetical we've been talking about here.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: That's right. It was a bus on its way to Detroit, stopped in Tallahassee. Three police officers got on, local cops got on and started asking the passengers questions, asked if they could search their bags. When they got to these two men, Christopher Jake and Clifton Brown they said can we search your bag. They said sure. The bag was fine and then the officer said do you mind if I check you out? So the first man opened his jacket and the officer patted him down. He found hard packages on his inner thigh, a pretty intrusive search there that he believed were drugged -- turned out they were. The man was arrested. He did the same routine for the next guy, found the same packages. The guy was arrested. The men then moved to suppress that evidence which was cocaine. The federal appeals court agreed that that evidence was the result of this unreasonable seizure, that it violated the Fourth Amendment, that these men felt that they could not say no to this officer. So therefore that evidence could not be used against them. The court today reversed that and now the evidence can come in.

GWEN IFILL: One of the things that's interesting about this case is like everything else that's interesting in our world these days is that post 9/11 you wonder whether questions about searches and reasonable searches, reasonable searches or the debate by the Court is influenced by the idea that we are now in this investigatory climate in America. Was there any discussion about that either in the briefs or in the discussion?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: That's a good question. In some ways this case did take on heightened significance. The Justice Department in the briefs in this case said it was important, you know, post September 11, to ensuring that law enforcement could continue to get on buses and protect citizens. The court, the majority didn't squarely address that today though Justice Kennedy did say that people participate for their own safety, people would agree to cooperate for their own safety and the safety of others but in dissent Justice Souter took issue with that. He said we realize, even a small child would realize the risks that we face nowadays, the word that he used, and that searches on airplanes, we understand that we have conditions to boarding a plane we have a search. But that hasn't gone down to the level of buses and trains. So he suggested that we have to be careful that we can't just apply some of the same standards, kind of the slippery slope argument.

GWEN IFILL: Jan Crawford Greenburg, thank you once again.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Andersen found guilty; a World Cup update; and Bradlee, Woodward, and Bernstein on journalism and Watergate; plus a Clarence Page essay.

FOCUS - CALLED TO ACCOUNT

JIM LEHRER: Now, the verdict in the Arthur Andersen trial, and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: It was the first conviction in the Enron scandal. Enron's former accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, was found guilty Saturday of one count of obstruction of justice. The Houston jury took ten days to reach its verdict. Andersen said it would appeal, but also announced it will stop auditing publicly traded companies by August 31. Here to walk us through the verdict and its ramifications are Kurt Eichenwald, who covered the trial for the "New York Times," and Robert Mintz, a former assistant U.S. Attorney, now in private practice in New Jersey.

Welcome, gentlemen.

Kurt Eichenwald beginning with you, remind us briefly what this case was about. On what basis was the government charging Andersen with obstruction of justice?

KURT EICHENWALD: Well, this all started back in October of last year. Andersen... some employees at Andersen had shredded several thousand documents and deleted thousands of emails related to Enron at a time that they knew the Securities & Exchange Commission was conducting a preliminary investigation into that company. This was discovered by Andersen in January; it was announced by them. The information was provided by the Justice Department -- or provided to the Justice Department. They conducted an investigation and concluded that Andersen itself should be indicted. Ultimately that's not what the case turned on. It was a very interesting element, where it turned. But I think that's for later in this discussion.

MARGARET WARNER: Let's go to that next because the document shredding, which we heard so much about and which the government's star witness David Duncan from Andersen was testified about, wasn't at the heart at why the jury found them guilty. Explain what they did find them guilty on.

KURT EICHENWALD: Well, I mean, on some levels it's sort of like there was a bank robbery trial and they convicted on the basis of what mask the man wore. You had a -- there was a memorandum that had been written by this individual David Duncan. And that memo described some discussions he had with an official at Enron, which declared that Enron in an announcement they were going to make had included information that was misleading. A lawyer for Andersen reviewed that memo, said, you know, "Edit that portion of the memo out -- also took some other words out. That is what the jury concluded was the crime here: That the Andersen lawyer had done so for the purpose of keeping that information from the SEC. The way it had actually been argued was to demonstrate that these kinds of draft memos thatexisted provided information that the SEC would have wanted and later on when there was shredding, you know, drafts were shredded and it showed why there would be a motive to do this. It never sounded to me like they were describing that single act in itself as a crime but rather a part of the whole leading up to the shredding. But juries are allowed to make their decisions on the facts they interpret. They found in that instance that the lawyer had a criminal intent and so they convicted.

MARGARET WARNER: Now there was a point last week, was there not, in which it looked like the jury might not even reach a verdict?

KURT EICHENWALD: They announced on Wednesday that they were deadlocked. And the judge came back with something that's called an Allen charge, sometimes called the dynamite charge, where she basically tells the jury, you know, a lot of money has been spent on this. Everybody is ready for a verdict. You are a very competent jury. We're not going to find one that's more competent. We're not going to find one that's more responsible. We're not going to find one that works harder. If you cannot reach a verdict, everybody has to do this again, spend more money on this process so I urge you to go back, reconsider what you're thinking. Don't let go of your personal convictions but look at it in the light of what your other members of the jury are saying. They went out. They came back two days later with the conviction.

MARGARET WARNER: But only after also sending out I gather what last Thursday a rather puzzling question to the judge. Tell us briefly about that.

KURT EICHENWALD: Under the law for obstruction of justice, as charged in this case, the jury had to find that someone within Andersen corruptly persuaded someone else to destroy documents or alter documents for the purpose of impeding the Securities & Exchange Commission's investigation. So this search for the corrupt persuader became a large part of the case. The defense argued there was no corrupt persuader; there was no crime. The government argued that there were five corrupt persuaders. The jury came back on Thursday with a question that was really intriguing, which was basically, "Can we convict if all of us believe there was a corrupt persuader" -- this isn't the language they used but it's close-- "if all of us believe there was a corrupt persuader at Andersen but we don't agree who it was, can we convict?" This led to two days of legal argument between the government and Andersen and ultimately the judge said yes, you all can have different theories as to who the corrupt persuader is and still convict the firm. Ultimately that proved to be irrelevant because the jury agreed that the corrupt persuader in this case was the lawyer who was dictating the edits in the memo.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let me get Robert Mintz in here. What's your view of this verdict and how unusual is it for a jury to essentially come up with its own theory to justify a guilty verdict?

ROBERT MINTZ: Well, it was a very important verdict for the government. The government really from the outset had a tremendous amount to lose here by going to trial and frankly not all that much to gain but by salvaging a conviction here, it has allowed them to put this behind them -- to basically vindicate their decision, which had been much criticized about proceeding with this prosecution and focus the thrust of their investigation on Enron. In terms of the question of how unusual is it for a jury to listen to evidence and come up with their own theory in order to convict, it does happen.Jurors will sometimes sit there through trial, they will hear the same evidence, listen to the same testimony that's being presented by the lawyers, at the end of the case, hear arguments from both lawyers as to what the lawyers believe are the important facts that will ultimately determine the jury's decision, and the jurors then go back into the jury room and the 12 men and women sift through all the evidence. They listen to the law that the judge has charged and then they decide on their own that the crucial facts and the crucial evidence may be very different from that which was presented by the lawyers.

MARGARET WARNER: Now Andersen said it would appeal. And I have two questions on that. One, do you see any good grounds here in your opinion for appeal; and two, if Andersen is essentially going out of business which is what the company is essentially saying, can it appeal? Is there any appeal possible?

ROBERT MINTZ: Well, the real question on appeal that the appellate lawyers and legal pundits around the country that would have been waiting to watch very closely was this question of unanimity because there was no clear legal precedent on the question of whether every juror had to agree as to who the corrupt persuader was. It would be very interesting to see what the court of appeals did with that issue. There would have been some very compelling arguments to be made both by the government and by the defense on that issue. But, as it turned out after focusing in on a very fine point of law, a question that was almost something that you would expect to see on a law school final exam, the judge gave the instruction that they did not have to be unanimous and at the end of the day the jury decided that that was not relevant and they focused instead on Nancy Temple and decided that she was in their unanimous opinion the corrupt persuader. So in terms of appellate issues -- unfortunately for those of us who would love to see how that turned out on appeal -- that is not likely to be a centerpiece of Andersen's appeal. I would suspect that the issue that is going to be the most compelling point for Andersen goes back to the very beginning days of the trial. The government asked and the judge ultimately granted the government's request to inform the jury of two prior settlements that Andersen had entered into. That would be the Sunbeam and the Waste Management settlements. And generally in a courtroom, a prior bad act is inadmissible; that is, a jury is not entitled to infer guilt on the charges that are before them simply because a defendant, in this case a partnership, had committed a prior bad act. But there is an exception to that rule, and the exception is that if the government needs to use these prior bad acts not to show that they acted in conformity with the prior bad act but merely to show motive or intent, then it's admissible. And there's no question that the admission of those prior bad acts severely prejudiced Andersen, but the test is whether or not the probative value outweighs the prejudicial value. And I think at the end of the day here the court of appeals is going to uphold the judge's ruling and find that that evidence was properly admitted.

MARGARET WARNER: Before we run out of time I want to get your view on what the significance of this verdict and even some of the evidence in the case, what it is... what it says for the government's case against Enron itself and Enron executives.

ROBERT MINTZ: From the outset, this prosecution was a building block towards the ultimate Enron prosecution. The conviction here was absolutely vital. Without a conviction, it would have been a rejection of the government's entire theory of prosecution and more importantly in terms of recruiting future cooperating witnesses, the David Duncans and the Enron prosecution, those people I think would have looked very carefully at all of the evidence that was against them and would have had to have stopped and thought very carefully about joining the government's team in the event that Andersen here was acquitted. This conviction though gives the government some very crucial momentum that they will carry over into the Enron investigation, and I think it will assist them in recruiting key cooperators, which will be a vital part to that case because the Enron case is far more complicated than we saw in Arthur Andersen and without a number of insiders who can walk the jury through those complicated series of financial transactions it will be very difficult for the government to prove its case.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, Robert Mintz and Kurt Eichenwald, thank you both very much.

UPDATE - GLOBAL GOAL

JIM LEHRER: The United States team in the World Cup of soccer: Kwame Holman has our update.

ANNOUNCER: Cuts it back. Here's McBride. Scores!

KWAME HOLMAN: For the U.S. World Cup team, today's 2-0 victory over Mexico was historic, sending the Americans to the round of eight teams, the farthest a U.S. Men's team has gone in the tournament since it began in 1930. American women won the cup in 1999. Last week, the U.S. men nearly missed the opportunity to advance. Before today, they'd won only game. They only qualified to move on because another team lost. But, given the chance, the U.S. men won a spirited and physical match against the favored Mexican team, a frequent opponent in regional matches. Mexico controlled the ball for long stretches, but couldn't score on the American goalie. The game, in Yokohama, Japan, got under way at 2:30 in the morning, East Coast time. American fans stayed up through the night to savor the win and its meaning.

MAN: The USA wants it. It's great for the country with everything that's happened, 9/11, everything. This is just good for the country, good for U.S. soccer.

KWAME HOLMAN: The four-week World Cup tournament started at the end of may. 32 countries sent teams to venues in Japan and South Korea. By the end, the entire tournament will have been watched by a cumulative audience estimated at 50 billion-- numbers unparalleled in sport. The sport's dominance can be seen even in Afghanistan, where watching the World Cup was banned under the Taliban, and recently citizens lined up to purchase televisions and satellite dishes in order to see the games. Ray Hudson coaches Washington, DC's professional major league soccer team, DC United. Hudson grew up playing the game in soccer's birthplace, Great Britain.

RAY HUDSON, Coach, DC United Soccer Team: Well, for me and the entire soccer population on Planet Earth, this is the Olympics-- all the Super Bowls that's ever been played, all the World Series-- all rolled into one for a four-week extravaganza. It's everything. It's the world's greatest athletic stage for the soccer players at a time where the nations of the world are so galvanized by the passion of their national fervor. It reduces all sorts of different cultures to a level playing field, and it elevates the little minnows up into the sharks. And anything can happen in the World Cup, and it can invigorate entire continents.

KWAME HOLMAN: In the U.S., people are watching World Cup matches live at the odd-hours dictated by the time difference with Asia. At Summer's Bar in Arlington, Virginia, an overflow crowd gathered before 7:00 A.M. for the first-round meeting between historic rivals Argentina and England.

SIMON YEAMAN: I've been down here about 5:30, 5:00, 4:00 for the first England game. There's no alcohol being served, so that's a bit strange for a British guy.

KWAME HOLMAN: Marina Simon is an Argentinean working in the U.S.

MARINA SIMON: The whole country woke up very early to see this game, and this was very important because right now, Argentina is quite screwed up. It's like we have many, many problems-- economical problems-- and people are just really sad, so there is a lot of hope in this World Cup -- you know, something to feel happy about, something to feel proud about. I really... maybe another time, I wouldn't be so "yes, I want Argentina to win," but this time I think that we really need it.

KWAME HOLMAN: But Argentina would lose this day, and eventually be eliminated in the first round-- an especially painful outcome for a team once considered a favorite to make it to the finals. Passions also were strong at some of Washington, DC's foreign embassies. Last Wednesday, the South African embassy staff was in early to cheer on their team.

VICKY MAHARAJ, Press Secretary, South African Embassy: Sport has played a major role in unifying the nation, and if you look at the South African country playing, it's a very mixed team. Black, white-- all races-- and everyone is behind the sport, so it has a unifying factor. And the more... the better the team performs, the more unifying it becomes for the nation.

KWAME HOLMAN: Major league soccer Coach Hudson says, in a different way, soccer also is transforming its newest converts-- American-born youngsters.

RAY HUDSON: The immigrant population have known this for years, and decades and decades, but the American kid now is saying, "this is what I want to do. I'm active. I want the ball. I want to be always the quarterback." Well, that's what soccer gives the kids, and I think that's what's the American community at large and the children at the recreational level are buying into. It's just going to take a while for the mom and pops to get it.

KWAME HOLMAN: What is it that Americans don't get, by and large, about this sport that is so passionately felt by others?

RAY HUDSON: I think it's a very, very good question forming, and it's not able to be answered in such a very - one way -- I think the American mentality to sports is such that, you know, they want the snap. They want to know what's happening at a specific five- second interval, whether it's the pitch or the snap of the football, and that's the American mentality towards sports. And with soccer, it's a much more fluid-moving game. It's a much more elongated time of theatrics. It's not splitting the timeouts or any of that. And that's the way the rest of the world is always identified -- with Americans, by and large, that populous that's watching, don't quite get it and I come back again to the children. We are getting it. It's just you cannot force the sand through the time glass, you know. It's going to take time, but we are getting there. This game isn't going away. It's only got one way to go and that's right up.

KWAME HOLMAN: The quarter finals of the World Cup begin Thursday. On Friday, the U.S. will face Germany.

FOCUS - 30 YEARS LATER

JIM LEHRER: Now, the journalistic legacy of Watergate, and to media correspondent Terence Smith.

TERENCE SMITH: 30 years ago today, a little-noticed break-in at the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee began a chain of events that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon two years later. Two young reporters at the "Washington Post," Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, began investigating Watergate. What was at first characterized as a third-rate burglary grew into much more. Under withering political fire, the paper's editor Ben Bradlee and its publisher, the late Katharine Graham, helped guide and protect the "Post" as its reporting gradually exposed abuses of power and a conspiracy to obstruct justice that led directly to the Oval Office. The newspaper won the Pulitzer Prize for public service and secured its place in the annals of American journalism.

TERENCE SMITH: With us now to take a look back at Watergate, and what it has meant to American journalism, are Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the "Washington Post," now its vice president at large; Bob Woodward, reporter and an assistant managing editor at the paper; and Carl Bernstein, an author and contributing editor to "Vanity Fair." Gentlemen, welcome.

Ben Bradlee, looking back on it with this hindsight of 30 years-- we're all geniuses, right? -- With 30 years of hindsight. What's the impact on... of Watergate, of the Post's coverage of it, on American journalism and particularly investigative journalism?

BEN BRADLEE: I think it can be overstated. I think it attracted a large number of competent and really good young journalists. I think it made politicians more scared of lying, but it sure as hell didn't stop 'em. And I think it was very good for the "Washington Post."

TERENCE SMITH: Put the "Washington Post" on the map.

BEN BRADLEE: On the map.

TERENCE SMITH: Bob Woodward, what do you think was the impact especially on investigative journalism?

BOB WOODWARD: Well, there's a lot more in- depth reporting, but that tradition converges with the Internet and 24-hour television so there's this sense of impatience in journalism. Get it out right now. And investigative reporting is the opposite of impatience. You have to just wait and slug it out and talk to people. And when you have a news environment of "let's be first, let's get it on the web site," Carl and I could work on stories for weeks and Bradlee was impatient, but patient enough to let us chase the needed sources and establish the basics as fact.

TERENCE SMITH: And that wouldn't happen today?

BOB WOODWARD: Yes, it does happen today at the "Washington Post" and a number of newspapers. There is a lot of good journalism, but the environment is, "hey, that's on CNN. My God, let's go chase it."

TERENCE SMITH: Carl Bernstein, what do you think has been the impact?

CARL BERNSTEIN: I wish it had been a much more effective one in terms of better journalism. I think that the real trends in journalism in the past 30 years have been toward gossip, sensationalism, manufactured controversy, and at the same time as we're doing the dumbing down of most American journalism to the point where we're losing most of our context, then you have these great newspapers like the" Washington Post "and the "New York Times "and the "Wall Street Journal" that are doing better reporting in many ways than they ever have. And, as Ben says, small papers are getting great young reporters. But then they're going to places that are owned by the conglomerates where the agenda is no longer the best obtainable version of the truth; the agenda is really about sales. That's the bottom line.

TERENCE SMITH: You know, for years after Watergate and after your experiences, the notion among many young reporters coming on was that they had to do the same thing. They had to, quote, get a President in the common phrase. Was that a good thing?

BEN BRADLEE: It wasn't bad because there are editors who can take all that attitude out of -- out of a story with a stroke of the pencil.

TERENCE SMITH: What about the mindset?

BEN BRADLEE: The mindset is not bad. I mean, the mindset says probably this guy is not telling me all of the truth, and that makes for better reporting. I wouldn't worry too much about that.

TERENCE SMITH: Did it sow the seeds of distrust among reporters about government and government officials in your view?

BOB WOODWARD: Well, government and government officials sowed that distrust by their behavior and the repeated scandals and examples. But it was really our former ultimate boss Katharine Graham who set the bar on this when in Watergate we said, you know, we're doing the stories but we think all the truth will never come out. She said never? She said don't tell me never. She said get to the bottom of it. And she created an environment and Ben practiced that of, "come on, guys, there's on movie about this." Ben is in there yelling, Woodstein," get your blank in here" and that means tell us what's going on, does it make sense, and never stop. He was not... he didn't have a foot on the brakes.

TERENCE SMITH: Carl, is there a down side beyond -- what you already mentioned, the quality of so much of journalism today, but was there a down side in terms of investigative overkill?

CARL BERNSTEIN: Yes.

TERENCE SMITH: I mean I'm thinking, for example, the pursuit of Wen Ho Lee and that story of a man accused of... in the papers of spying and ultimately acquitted?

CARL BERNSTEIN: That was actually I think some bad reporting. That was bad reporting.

BEN BRADLEE: You can't blame Watergate for that.

CARL BERNSTEIN: That was just bad reporting, but I think you're on to something here. I'm going to disagree a tiny bit with Bradlee.

BEN BRADLEE: Very carefully.

CARL BERNSTEIN: Which I'm very reluctant to do and always have been.

BOB WOODWARD: Remember he's the vice president at large.

CARL BERNSTEIN: That's right. But I think we have created an atmosphere that has a kind of gotcha environment in which a new reporter comes to the paper and is assigned to go to the county fair and instead of looking at the cows and the exhibits is looking at the cookie jar and somebody with their hand in it. What happens is you lose context so that if you're covering city hall and what you're really looking for most of the time is to catch the mayor saying something that's a little untrue and turning it into a big story when, in fact, the sewer system of the whole city is falling apart and people can't get their water and they're getting poisoned, you're missing the news. And I think that's a big problem.

TERENCE SMITH: Ben, what do you think?

BEN BRADLEE: You set up an obvious problem. If the water... the people are dying from bad water, you're not going to spend a lot of time poking around the mayor's wastebasket.

TERENCE SMITH: But the question is not that Watergate created bad reporting, not at all, but that it created a mindset where you went after the scandal. I think that's what Carl is saying. That you went after the scandal at the price perhaps of a broader issue.

BEN BRADLEE: I'll make a deal with you. I'll worry about that but I won't worry a whole lot about it. I'll worry about are they out there? Are they finding out? Are they skeptical? Do they believe everything they say? Do they check what he says? And do we they work, you know, the way the... the kind of hours that these guys worked?

TERENCE SMITH: So you would argue that there's not even enough of it, of this sort of same aggressive reporting.

BEN BRADLEE: I think whatever ailment he was trying to describe is not a fatal ailment. You can cure that with a little....

CARL BERNSTEIN: Well, with a great editor.

BEN BRADLEE: I didn't want to say that.

CARL BERNSTEIN: I'll finish it for you. You don't have to say it. But what I'm saying is there aren't many Bradlee's around.

BEN BRADLEE: Come on.

CARL BERNSTEIN: If you look at what the values of so much of our journalistic institutions are today, they are not what we are talking about anymore.

TERENCE SMITH: Not to interrupt this love fest, but Bob, your view.

BOB WOODWARD: But what Ben is saying is we need more digging. We need more energy - more of this focus on, you know, what's this story really about? There was a time in 1977, I mean, this breaks my heart to tell this story but Bradlee called me in. This is after Watergate. Nixon resigned. I'm still young. And he sits me down in his office and he said, "Wall Street. Wall Street. It's the big story. Get your ass to New York and go on it." Or, you know, it may have been more... do you remember this moment?

BEN BRADLEE: Of course I remember it.

BOB WOODWARD: And I did not do it.

BEN BRADLEE: I remember that too. (Laughing)

BOB WOODWARD: How many stories... that's how much control he had over me at that point. How many stories about... I mean, there have been a sequence almost a plague of stories out of Wall Street and he spotted them instinctively and there's been a lot of great reporting on Wall Street in lots of things. But in a way it comes from the bottom reporters with the facts but also it has to meet the top with the editors and the owners saying, "Come on, Wall Street. Go."

TERENCE SMITH: Wall Street certainly a huge story now. And lots to be done there. But let me ask you about the relationship Watergate set up between the press corps and the administration, whichever administration, in terms of... in other words, did administrations become hostile to reporters and to the press or more hostile as a result of Watergate?

BEN BRADLEE: You couldn't get much more hostile than the Nixon administration was. There haven't been administrations that liked reporters since Kennedy.

TERENCE SMITH: I understand that. But what I'm getting at is, is there a point where skepticism is replaced by cynicism? You can apply that to reporters too.

BEN BRADLEE: I'll worry about that too. I think there is but not... that isn't what's wrong.

TERENCE SMITH: That's the least of your concerns as far as you're concerned. Carl?

BEN BRADLEE: Give me energy and I'll take care of the cynicism.

CARL BERNSTEIN: That's right. If you've got a good news institution, you can do all that you have to do. What the Nixon White House was successful in doing was to make our conduct the issue in Watergate, not the conduct of the President and his men. It is a technique that every subsequent President has used. Reagan used it extensively and got away with it. Every President has since.

TERENCE SMITH: In fact there's an article that you wrote in the "New Republic" in 1992 saying and now we have George Bush, another President obsessed with leaks and secrecy and of course you were talking about George Bush, the father.

CARL BERNSTEIN: Yes, well he attacked the press for not being on the right side when there was a drug bust that his drug people had set up in Lafayette Square that was a total fake. And when it was revealed it was a total fake, he attacked the press.

BOB WOODWARD: And all of these problems you're asking about are compounded during the war. Now we are in a war. The war on terrorism is really serious business. And we have to be able to find out what's going on. And at the same time no one wants to publish something that's going to get somebody killed or an operation blown, so there needs to be some relationship of trust. There needs to be the person in the White House or in the CIA or in the Defense Department that you can call or go see and say, "look, we understand this. How do we inform the public and not get someone killed?" Tough.

CARL BERNSTEIN: I think you can set up a situation though where sometimes we've been combative without doing our work, and that that has made the atmosphere worse.

TERENCE SMITH: Gentlemen, thank you all. We've gotten through another session and you still haven't identified Deep Throat. It's your last opportunity but unless you want to do it, thanks very much.

FINALLY - THE GAME OF LIFE

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Clarence Page of the "Chicago Tribune" considers the game of life.

CLARENCE PAGE: Here's how you play the game: You roll the dice, make your choices, and take your chances. Pull a card, any card-- maybe you'll get lucky. You can get into college. You pull a career card; good move. Hang on to it-- good schooling leads to better income later. Maybe you find yourself in church. Collect your spiritual rewards. Or maybe you get a big break in show business, in glamour world; you get a starring role in a new sitcom. Don't let it go to your head. On the other hand, you could choose a life of crime. There's lots of crime in the ghetto, for example. But, no matter what path you take, crime is always an option-- a tempting option-- that offers an immediate payback: Lots of cash, but not without risks. For example, you can get busted-- go directly to court-- or you can get killed. Game over. But you have better choices. You can rise in corporate America; every payday on the board will bring you a salary, but watch out for those red squares marked "racism." No, this is not monopoly. It's not even the game of life-- not exactly. This is "life as a black man, the game," a board game with attitude. This is life as a black man might see it; in fact, as one did see it-- the one who invented the game: Chuck Sawyer, 33, a former advertising executive in Redondo Beach, California, who sells it mostly on his web site. You might bristle at its stereotypes, but this game, like life, offers you an opportunity to rise above those stereotypes, too. Like Bill Cosby used to say on the Cosby kids, you can have fun, and you might learn something.

SPOKESMAN: Okay, here we go.

CLARENCE PAGE: What better way than a board game to illustrate the difference that race still makes in our American lives, and also, how little difference? It reassures us to see our chaotic, high-risk lives reduced to their essence in a neat and orderly little morality play. Such is the appeal of board games. They offer us a non-threatening version of life, one that rests on a reassuring subtext of hope. No matter how tough things get, the game tells you, you can survive. If you lose, no matter how badly, you can always play again. My only quarrel with "Life as a Black Man, the Game," is with the object of the game. The first player to reach freedom wins. Freedom seems like a modest goal for us African Americans to be seeking now, after all these years, after all those hard-won victories of the Civil Rights movement. Freedom for what? And to do what? Freedom is not the end of hard work and tough choices. Freedom only offers us more opportunities for hard work and tough choices in pursuit of greater goals. You roll the dice, make your choices, and take your chances. That's life. It's what you make it. I'm Clarence Page.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of the day. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of police looking for suspects on buses and other public transit. It also ruled religious groups don't need local permits to go door-to-door. And a U.S. Forest Service worker appeared in federal court, on charges of starting the huge wildfire near Denver. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.