The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MARGARET WARNER: Good evening, and Happy Thanksgiving. I'm Margaret Warner. On the NewsHour tonight: A summary of the news; a day of terror for Israelis in Kenya and Israel; a report on vulnerable American sites in Indonesia; a conversation with the "Los Angeles Times'" Robin Wright on Iraqi Kurdistan; a debate on extending unemployment benefits; a reprise of a Richard Avedon portrait; and a Richard Rodriguez Thanksgiving essay.

NEWS SUMMARY

MARGARET WARNER: It was a day of terror for Israelis today. Israeli tourists came under attack in Kenya in two closely timed incidents. They happened almost simultaneously in the coastal towns of Mombasa and Kikambala. A suicide car bombing at an Israeli-owned hotel in Kikambala left at least 12 people dead; nine Kenyans and three Israelis. About 80 others were wounded. Moments earlier, ground-fired missiles narrowly missed an Israeli charter jet taking off from Mombasa. A previously unknown group calling itself the Army of Palestine claimed responsibility. We'll have more on this in a moment. In Israel today, Palestinian gunmen opened fire outside a Likud Party office and an adjacent bus station, killing six Israelis and wounding dozens. The office was crowded with people voting in today's party leadership elections. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon went on to defeat his more hawkish opponent, Benjamin Netanyahu. Sharon accused the Palestinian Authority and unnamed Arab states of trying to use violence to influence the election. The militant Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade claimed responsibility for the attacks. Israeli government spokesman Dore Gold said all of today's attacks were connected.

DORE GOLD: There's a clear effort to escalate the terrorist war against Israel, from northern Israel to Mombasa in Kenya. Israel will stand firm and work with its allies around the world to defeat this effort to globalize terrorism against the West, and the free democracies.

MARGARET WARNER: While Israeli and Kenyan officials blamed the Kenya attacks on al-Qaida, a White House spokesman said it was too early to make that connection. Indonesian police have arrested four more suspects in last month's nightclub bombing in Bali. That brings to 19 the number of suspects in police custody. Three international schools in Jakarta reopened today amid tight security. They'd been closed for two weeks out of fear of further attacks. We'll have more on terrorism in Indonesia in just a moment. In Iraq today, UN inspectors revisited two sites previously identified with Iraq's weapons program. One inspection team swept through a plant Iraq says used to make animal vaccines. Earlier inspections found it producing deadly toxins. Another team searched a munitions factory north of Baghdad. The UN experts had no comment on what they found. Americans celebrated Thanksgiving today. New Yorkers braved freezing temperatures to watch the 76th annual Macy's Day Parade, featuring giant balloon characters like Charlie Brown, Big Bird and nickelodeon's "Little Bill." Throughout the country, volunteers served up turkey at shelters, churches, and community centers. And in Afghanistan, U.S. troops lined up for a traditional Thanksgiving meal at Bagram Air Base. The day also marked a Thanksgiving first-- the first ever Thanksgiving spacewalk. Two astronauts, including the first American Indian in space, stepped out today to hook up the plumbing on the international space station's new high-tech beam. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to today's terrorist attacks, potential American targets in Indonesia, Iraqi Kurdistan, unemployment benefits, a Richard Avedon portrait, and a Thanksgiving essay.

FOCUS- TERRORIST ATTACKS

MARGARET WARNER: The double terrorist attack on Israelis in the African nation of Kenya. We have a report from Lindsey Hilsum of Independent Television News.

LINDSEY HILSUM: As the Paradise hotel smoldered, Kenyan troops rushed to the scene. The blast being her 12 mile as way in Mombasa. Two Israeli teen-aged brothers and one Israeli adult were killed. The Paradise hotel, like several others on the Kenyan coast, has many Israelis and the security was believed to be tight. These pictures of traditional Kenyan dancers were taken just before the blast. The target was clearly the Israelis. But the majority of the dead were Kenyans, performing a welcoming ceremony to the visitors.

SPOKESPERSON: It was a very big bomb near the lobby. And the whole roof started to go on fire, and I think the most people that got hurt... some of the people that were welcoming us also got hurt.

MAN: I wake up, I see all the fire, many people they cry, many people had a problem.

LINDSEY HILSUM: The injured suffering from burns, broken limbs and shock, were taken to hospital in Mombasa. Some are reported to be seriously hurt. Meanwhile, casings from two SAM 7 surface-to-air missiles were found near Mombasa airport. Such missiles are commonly used in the civil wars in Somalia and Sudan, and this morning used to fire on the Israeli charter plane as it took off. The returning passengers were unaware of their near miss, until the pilot announced it an hour before landing, and they saw two Israeli F-15 fighters escorting them home. They landed safely. Relatives had been waiting anxiously at the airport in Tel Aviv since early morning, only too aware of how close to disaster the plane had come.

MAN: While taking off on the runway, we heard a boom, I saw, I was just behind the left wing, and I saw just like a flashlight of something.

RAFI MARIK, Charter Pilot: We saw two white stripes coming up from behind the airplane on the left side, and a bit above us. And passing us from behind to the front of the airplane and disappearing after a few seconds.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Technicians inspected the plane. Israelis have grown used to attacks at home from Palestinian extremists, but despite the claims from the previously unknown Army of Palestine based in Beirut, the government assume this is was the work of al-Qaida.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: It's just a question of time before they'll down civilian aircraft. And may I say, it always begins with Israel, it never ends with Israel. So this is not just our battle, it's a common battle against this global terror network.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Osama bin Laden hasn't previously attacked the Israelis. And the American government says it's too early to assign blame. But in an audio message last month, bin Laden included Israel in his list of potential targets. And the Kenyans have few doubts.

JOHN SAWE, Kenyan Ambassador to Israel: There is no doubt in my mind that the al-Qaida is behind this attack, because we have no problem in our country. We have no domestic problem. We have no terrorism in our country.

LINDSEY HILSUM: This is the second major terrorist attack in Kenya. In 1998 a vehicle loaded with explosives like the one at the hotel today was driven into the American embassy in the capital, Nairobi. Investigation showed the bombers were linked to al-Qaida. More than 200 people were killed. Most of them Kenyan. And in recent years, many Kenyan Muslims have been radicalized. Some resent the Israeli presence in Kenya. But other Kenyans and the government are horrified. Tourism had only just recovered after the 1998 attack, the economy remains depressed, and as in 1998, the majority of victims are Kenyans.

FOCUS SOFT TARGETS

MARGARET WARNER: The attack in Kenya is another sign that terror groups are increasingly seeking out so-called soft targets worldwide. The nightclub bombed in Bali, Indonesia, last month, in which more than 190 mostly western tourists were killed, was one such unprotected target. The attack was attributed to a local Islamic group linked to al-Qaida. Indonesia was once a comfortable place for Americans and other western expatriates to visit or live. But no longer, as Ian Williams, of Independent Television News, reports.

IAN WILLIAMS: They're being turned into high security compounds, after what western diplomats call "credible terrorist threats." But these aren't embassies or even western companies, but international schools. Jakarta's largest have been closed for nearly two weeks while their defenses are beefed up, leaving parents and teachers shaken by this, the latest and most callous of threats.

WAYNE KALER, Teacher, Jakarta International School: It's the first time I can ever remember schools being mentioned as soft targets, I think is the term they used. To my knowledge, there's never been an international school that's been attacked while in session, where children might be hurt.

IAN WILLIAMS: Wayne has been a teacher in Jakarta for 18 years. His son, Kurt, has been here since a child. They have deep roots in Indonesia, and have never before felt threatened. But that was before the latest warnings of possible violence against foreigners, especially Americans.

WAYNE KALER: I am a little bit more cautious, a little bit more wary. I try to be a little bit more observant about things around me. Instead of just burying my nose in a magazine when stuck in traffic, I look around a little bit more. I guess I'm a little bit more... paranoid, maybe.

IAN WILLIAMS: The man who's had to deliver many of those warnings, the U.S. Ambassador, has had to make a few changes of his own.

RALPH BOYCE, U.S. Ambassador, Indonesia: Well, we have sent home a lot of people. I mean, we have reduced the footprint of the official embassy family, if you will. Our dependents have gone home. Half of our employees are gone. I mean, this is a very difficult and challenging time. But hunkering down inside the embassy is not going to work. You have to get out, and you know, interact, tell the story, listen to people's views.

IAN WILLIAMS: With that in mind, Mr. Boyce traveled to nearby Bandung this week as part of an effort to reach out and explain America's position to moderate Muslim leaders.

RALPH BOYCE: Hi. Good to see you again.

SPOKESMAN: Thanks.

RALPH BOYCE: Last time I saw you at my house. And you know there's a picture of you in my kitchen now.

SPOKESMAN: Thank you very much.

IAN WILLIAMS: His host was Abdullah Gymnastiar, Indonesia's most popular Islamic preacher. Aa Gym, as he's better known, has TV shows watched by millions. His sermons are full of jokes and gossip. He owns a Koranic cellular phone service for Muslims on the move. And he travels around his neighborhood by motorcycle. His is a tolerant, open Islam; just the sort the Americans want to engage. But even he wanted to know why the Americans are so enthusiastically backing Israel.

RALPH BOYCE: So, yeah, I understand that there's a feeling in a place like Indonesia that we should be doing more to recognize the Palestinian side, but I just want to say we are doing something.

SPOKESMAN: Yes.

RALPH BOYCE: And nobody seems to ever see that. We've made it very clear from the beginning that the war we are fighting is not against Islam.

SPOKESMAN: Yes, I know that, but... I know that, but many people, Muslims, it looks like this war's with Islam.

RALPH BOYCE: Right.

IAN WILLIAMS: The challenge the ambassador faces is that suspicion of America isn't confined to hard line groups here; even the most outlandish conspiracy theories, but see the detention of terror suspects for even the Bali bomb as some giant plot by America to discredit Islam and Indonesia, are given widespread credence here, much to the irritation of the ambassador.

RALPH BOYCE: And I tell people that, you know, a healthy suspicion of what foreign countries are up to in Indonesia or in their region is fine, perfectly understandable. Conspiracy theories -- them I can see a little over the edge.

SPOKESMAN: I believe American people in general respect the Islamic faith. Muslims care...

IAN WILLIAMS: The U.S. Government has sponsored a series of information films on Indonesian television, profiling Muslims living in America, and aimed at ending antagonism towards Washington. Though Indonesia's leading televangelist may need more convincing.

IAN WILLIAMS: A lot of people see America as being unfair.

ABDULLAH, GYMNASTIAR:, Muslim Cleric: Unfair. For us, why, every Muslim country-- Iraq or Libya. Many, many, many, many places in this world. Why?

IAN WILLIAMS: Do you ever feel that kind of by the foreign policy, they're making you more vulnerable?

KURT KALER, Indonesian Resident: Oh, sure. Sure. Sure, I mean, that's... I mean, it's all about that at some level. It's the actions and the reactions, and then those of us that are on this side of the fence and that we're... we're in the Islamic world. We're in a developing nation.

IAN WILLIAMS: It's Ramadan and prayers mark the end of the fasting day. Aa gym invites Mr. Boyce to breakfast on the outskirts of Bandung. No security fears here, since this is a police college. As always, smiles come easily in the world's most populous Muslim country. But that may no longer be enough to convince Americans of their continuing safety here.

MARGARET WARNER: As we reported earlier, three international schools in Jakarta reopened today.

FOCUS PROTECTED ZONE

MARGARET WARNER: Now, a report from the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq. The area of Iraq above the 36th parallel is a no-fly zone, protected by U.S. and British airplanes. On the ground, the Kurds are thriving, politically and culturally. Ray Suarez spoke with a reporter who just returned from there.

RAY SUAREZ: Robin Wright is the chief diplomatic correspondent for the "Los Angeles Times." She recently returned from a trip to Iraqi Kurdistan in Northern Iraq and joins us to talk about what she saw and heard there.

Well, Robin, when you're on the ground, does it feel like, does it look like a place that's getting ready for war?

ROBIN WRIGHT: There's certainly the feeling among the Kurds that something is about to happen, and I think that's backed up by the fact that the United States has quite quietly since the passage of the UN resolution moved into the North for the first time since 1996, when the CIA was forced to pull out. And the United States has now set up listening posts in Northern Iraq to monitor the rest of Iraq. It has inspected the four airfields up there to see what kind of usage there might be, if needed, and it's talked to the Kurdish leaders in both sectors of Northern Kurdistan about what kind of cooperation there might be. And that's generated the kind of buzz around Northern Kurdistan that has led people to think that their long battle with the Baathist Party in Baghdad dating back to 1961 might actually be heading towards its final battle.

RAY SUAREZ: But is there uniform support for the possibility of taking Saddam Hussein out with a war?

ROBIN WRIGHT: There is certainly backing for taking out Saddam Hussein. I think there's a great deal of nervousness about the war in part because of what role Northern Kurdistan might play, but most of all about what happens next, and the fear, of course, because of the long experience the Kurds have had with American betrayals that the United States might back out yet again and cost yet again thousands of Kurdish lives.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, for people whose early 90's history is getting a little rusty, what happened back then that might give them pause this time?

ROBIN WRIGHT: Well, in 1991, President Bush called in the aftermath of the Gulf War on the Kurds in the North and the Shiite Muslims in the South to rise up against Saddam Hussein, and they did, but unfortunately, the Bush administration allowed Saddam to use his helicopter gunships to put down both of the revolts, and that led in the North more than a million people to flee to the borders of Turkey and Iran and led to thousands of deaths as Saddam Hussein quashed the revolt, and of course this was not the first time the United States had done this; again, in 1975, again at a loss of thousands of Kurdish lives.

RAY SUAREZ: What about more recently? After the Oil for Food system got set up, didn't a lot of Kurds see some pretty good times in relative terms, peace, more food in the markets, that kind of thing?

ROBIN WRIGHT: Absolutely. In fact, one of the things that is so striking about the North, which was devastated when Iraq ruled up until 1991 is the way it is thriving today Saddam Hussein pulled out after the United States imposed a no-fly zone in 1991. Saddam's intention was to starve the Kurds in the North because they were already under an embargo from the United Nations, and then to impose a second one would really cut them off completely. But, in fact, the Kurds began to rebuild and under the protection of U.S. and British warplanes and then the Oil for Food program that was introduced in 1996, Kurds began to convert the North, and it is in many ways a model for what the outside world would like to see in Iraq after Saddam Hussein is ousted.

RAY SUAREZ: Is there any sign that you're actually in Iraq? Does the government in Baghdad run at all in that part of the country?

ROBIN WRIGHT: No. And that again is also very striking. You don't see any statues, no billboards of Saddam Hussein. All the schoolbooks, the first thing they do when the come from Baghdad is rip out the pages, the pictures of Saddam Hussein in the front of the book. A lot of the kids in the North actually don't remember his rule because there are two Kurdish parties that filled the political vacuum after Saddam Hussein pulled out his administration. And whether it's a free press dozens of different feisty independent newspapers, independent television the return of the Kurdish language in the North, the fact that there are a lot of new political parties that have been licensed, there is the beginning of a nascent democracy in the North.

RAY SUAREZ: But don't they possibly have some really complex choices to make in the near future? I mean, you mentioned that there are several factions. You've got Turkey next door, and we've been running a lot of stories in the NewsHour recently about how Turkey regards all of this. This isn't cut and dried, is it, by any means?

ROBIN WRIGHT: Not at all. The Kurds claim that despite the success of particularly the recent years in opening up society that they have begun to realize that their future lies in Baghdad, not in merging with the Kurds and Turkey and Iran and Syria, that they see that another mini state in a globalizing world isn't really going to work. And so the leaders anyway talk very much about creating a post Saddam system that includes all three major ethnic and religious groups. Now, at the same time, they do want a lot of self-determination; they want the kind of ability to maintain the system they have; they want a federal union, in effect, of Iraq. Of course, the issue is whether Turkey next door, with the world's largest Kurdish population, would welcome a strong northern Kurdish state in neighboring Iraq.

RAY SUAREZ: Because they have their own Kurdish minority?

ROBIN WRIGHT: Absolutely. And it the Kurds have fought a 15-year insurgency in Turkey, and there is a great deal of fear that if there is a model for a Kurdish entity, even if it's within another state, that it will inspire the rest of Kurds inside Turkey.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, by visiting Northern Iraq you were in a part of the world where the Bush administration says there are al-Qaida elements. Explain to me how that all works out.

ROBIN WRIGHT: Well, al-Qaida just in the run-up to 9/11 actually sent some of its personnel across through smuggling routes in Iraq into Northeast Iraq, into Kurdistan, and there's an enclave there that is probably the most active known group; they have fought both the Kurdish forces and they are opposed to the kind of secular rule in Baghdad. There are up to a hundred hard-core al-Qaida and there are up to it depends on who you listen to seven or eight hundred operatives of Unsar al Islam, which is the local militant Islamic group allied with the al-Qaida forces. And they have taken a lot of pot shots at the Kurdish, including an attempt to assassinate the prime minister, one of the U.S.'s closest allies in Northern Kurdistan.

RAY SUAREZ: So where does that stand right now, just sort of a stand-off, nobody really actively trying to wipe out the other side?

ROBIN WRIGHT: Well, the Kurds are very much trying to get the Iranians to help squeeze al-Qaida, but of course it's hoping that the United States, if there is some kind of military operation in the North, will move in and eliminate al-Qaida in the process, perhaps even in the run-up to any kind of confrontation to make sure they don't play any kind of role.

RAY SUAREZ: And very briefly, there is an armed Kurdish force in Northern Iraq. Is it going to play a role in anybody's war plan?

ROBIN WRIGHT: The Peshmirga have been fighting the Iraqi regime since 1961 on and off, and many of them would like to be the equivalent of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, allied with American troops, they have the most experience in fighting Saddam Hussein. They're the only armed force inside Iraq, but the United States also is very nervous about using them in part because of the feedback and the nervousness in Turkey.

RAY SUAREZ: Robin Wright, thanks for coming by.

ROBIN WRIGHT: Thank you.

FOCUS UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS

MARGARET WARNER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, extending unemployment benefits, a Richard Avedon portrait, and a Richard Rodriguez essay. Business correspondent Paul Solman of WGBH-Boston looks at the latest debate over jobless benefits.

PAUL SOLMAN: With their colleagues in the senate having already left for the year, members of the House last week debated one final item before leaving: Extending unemployment benefits to jobless workers, as the senate had already agreed to do. House democrats, led by Wisconsin's David Obey, pressed republicans to allow a vote on a bill that would continue the current extension through February.

REP. DAVID OBEY: The only thing that stands between providing these needed unemployment benefits... the only thing that stands between our doing that is the refusal to approve bringing the bill up by the house republican leadership. So the Congress is here insisting on playing scrooge at Christmastime, when we ought to be showing a little mercy. I don't understand that kind of logic. I don't understand that kind of priorities.

PAUL SOLMAN: But Majority Leader Dick Armey, on his final day in Congress before retirement, was not ready to give in.

REP. DICK ARMEY: I do appreciate your sense of urgency, but the fact of the matter is I am assured that when the next Congress convenes, that those people who are covered by the current extension of unemployment benefits, and who would be covered by any additional extension of unemployment benefits, would be able to receive their compensation flow in an uninterrupted fashion through this period of time.

PAUL SOLMAN: Laid-off workers are entitled to 26 weeks of unemployment insurance. Earlier this year, as is usual in recessions, the federal government granted a 13-week extension to those still out of work. But because the House didn't act before adjourning, 830,000 unemployed workers will now exhaust their benefits by December 28. And beginning the next day, an estimated 95,000 jobless workers per week will exhaust their benefits. The debate over benefit extensions comes at a difficult moment, when long-term unemployment is at a ten-year high, one in five jobless workers has been out of work for six months or more, and the number of people dependent on the extended benefits program is rising sharply as more and more people reach their cutoff date.

PAUL SOLMAN: There are those, therefore, who think this is a critical time to be extending benefits, like Jeffrey Wenger of the Economic policy institute, who joins us from Washington. And there are those, like Ron Bird of the Employment Policy Foundation, who are more supportive of Congress' caution. He joins us from Montgomery, Alabama, where he's celebrating Thanksgiving.

Gentlemen, thanks for joining us, both.

Mr. Bird, was the House being scrooge-like or sensible?

RON BIRD: I don't think the House was being scrooge-like, Paul. I think that Mr. Armey's comments that we can expect to see some attention to this issue when the new Congress reconvenes in January, that any interruption of benefits will be minor and will be made up, is an important thing to consider. I think everybody is concerned about the unemployed, and we want to provide help for the unemployed. But we have to recognize that the help that the unemployed need the most is a job, not just an extended unemployment benefits check. And we really... it's a complicated issue that should not be rushed in the last minutes of a closing session of Congress, but needs a thorough, careful, and reasonable examination of all the elements of the issue.

PAUL SOLMAN: Even if people are going to lose their benefits at least for a while, that's okay, as long as we're not jumping into something that might be precipitous; is that your point?

RON BIRD: Well, I think it's important to realize that the temporary extended unemployment benefits program was a temporary program. It... whenever you end a temporary program, there are problems with adjustment to that. I think that the method of ending it, phasing it out and so forth, needs to be looked at more carefully, and also in the context of looking at the overall unemployment insurance program. Certainly the seasonal timing here leaves a lot to be deserved... or a lot to be...

PAUL SOLMAN: Desired.

RON BIRD: Desired, yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: But we knew what you meant. Mr. Wenger, does the extension of benefits create overly great expectations, if we're staying with a Dickens theme here? I mean, is there something about them that you can fairly argue with?

JEFFREY WENGER: The extension is needed help for the people who haven't had a job for a very long period of time. So it seems curious to me that even though we may not experience an interruption, we're going to nevertheless get one. Regardless of what Representative Armey said, these benefits will be interrupted for people.

PAUL SOLMAN: Explain this, just technically. Let's say I'm unemployed and I've been getting my benefits and I've had my 26 weeks, and now I'm in my, I don't know, seventh extra week. Am I going to get my full 13 extra weeks and then get cut off?

JEFFREY WENGER: No, you're not. This has got what we call a hard deadline, so the week of the 28th, you're cut off completely.

PAUL SOLMAN: I see. That's why it's 830,000.

JEFFREY WENGER: It's 830,000 that day. And as a result, you'll not receive any benefits until Congress reconvenes and reestablishes an extension to this program, which for most people, they don't want to go two to four weeks without receiving a paycheck, after having experienced six to ten months of unemployment. This seems to me to be folly.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, Mr. Bird, what's the argument for reconsidering the program? I mean, what's wrong with the program, since on its face you think, hey, somebody is out of work, they're out of work longer than they used to be because of the nature of the job market or something, and therefore Congress extends the benefits? I think most people would say, "Gee, that's a good thing; it would be bad that it gets cut off," especially, as even you acknowledge, at Christmastime.

RON BIRD: As I said, the seasonal timing here is not the best thing in the world. And you need to look at how the end of a temporary program is phased out. It's important to recognize too that all extended benefits are not being cut off. There are two distinct extended benefits programs. One is the regular extended benefits program that is triggered at individual state levels by individual state rules. Right now, Washington and Oregon have extended benefits under their normal state programs. Their recipients will continue receiving benefits. The temporary extended benefits program was instituted last March by Congress as a temporary expedient in response to the special circumstances, special pressures put on the labor market by the terrorist attacks in the fall. And it was seen as a temporary expedient.

PAUL SOLMAN: But it's a temporary expedient, if I'm not wrong, Mr. Wenger, that the United States has been putting in when there are recessions for decades.

JEFFREY WENGER: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this has been a program that we've developed and worked hard to build over time, and yet what we see is in 1991, this extension was... or these types of extensions were in place for 20 weeks, and they took place over three years. So there was a much more generous set of extensions in the previous recession. To say that these were in some way related to the events of September 11 seems to not really reconcile the facts with what's actually occurred.

RON BIRD: But I think more fundamentally, the thing that we need to look at is just extending benefits is not really solving the problem for the unemployed. I think the question we need to look at is, why are extended benefits necessary? Why are people exhausting their benefits after 26 weeks? Why isn't the system working as it was designed, to help people find jobs quicker?

PAUL SOLMAN: I see. So you're afraid that unemployment insurance may wind up being a kind of a welfare program that keeps people from actually looking for work.

RON BIRD: Well, certainly people who are unemployed face a lot of hurdles, and the original design of the system combined the weekly benefits with also going to the unemployment insurance office and getting help, getting coaching, getting guidance, getting assistance to help you, encourage you, in the process of looking for jobs, to give you job leads and so forth. I think one of the things that's gone wrong in recent years is in the.. first of all, the resources provided for the operation of the job service offices has not kept pace with the level of the number of unemployed people that need to be served. Secondly, they've adopted new approaches that maybe don't reach out and proactively provide the unemployed with the services they need.

PAUL SOLMAN: Mr. Wenger, would you respond to this? What's your take on this?

JEFFREY WENGER: I think that's putting the cart before the horse. I mean, in essence, saying that the unemployment insurance system is in some way responsible for unemployment is putting the cart before the horse. We have an economy right now that has 8.1 million unemployed workers, and three-and-a-half million job openings. There is virtually nothing workers can do about getting jobs. And to argue that this is a malfunction with the unemployment insurance system or it's inadequate funding for the employment services is just missing the fundamentals of the economy right now. We have a big deficit in the number of people firms are willing to hire. And what this program does is it provides temporary assistance until the economy rectifies itself.

PAUL SOLMAN: Mr. Bird, isn't it the case that the reason people are out of work longer is because it's so much harder to find work?

RON BIRD: Certainly that's an important aspect of it. And I agree with what Jeff said, that we need to get this economy moving faster; we need to get the job creation engine going again. But even when we do that, we will still see a lot of variation among the states, as we did in 1998, 1999, in the exhaustion rates among the states. And I think that reflects differences in howthe system is operating in terms of getting the other half of the equation together: Providing the unemployed with the help they need and the help they deserve to find new jobs quickly. An unemployment system that works best is one that gets people back to work.

PAUL SOLMAN: Mr. Wenger, what would you address to fix the system? What do you think is wrong?

JEFFREY WENGER: Well, I mean, the job service isn't going to put food on the table, isn't going to pay your health insurance, isn't going to do the kinds of things that you need when you don't have a job.

PAUL SOLMAN: And it isn't going to create jobs that aren't there.

JEFFREY WENGER: And it's not going to create jobs. So we need to adequately fund and finance the unemployment insurance system, and make sure that all the people who are working are covered by the system. We have allocated money for the extension... the extended benefits program, and we can't spend that money in any other way, other than to use it for extended benefits. So we have $24 billion waiting to be spent for this purpose, and Congress failed to act.

PAUL SOLMAN: One last point. You wrote recently in an economics journal that this economy needs stabilization, automatic stabilization measures-- that is, things that kick in automatically when the economy is in recession or in danger of going into recession, and one of them you cited was the old system of unemployment insurance. Can you explain that very briefly? We don't have much time, and I'd like to get...

JEFFREY WENGER: The unemployment insurance system is a very, very effective automatic stabilizer. It puts money into people's hands who will spend it, and it puts it into the local communities that are experiencing the highest levels of unemployment. So it's extremely well targeted, and it's automatic. We don't have to wait for Congress to act. If we passed good legislation, we would only strengthen that system.

PAUL SOLMAN: Mr. Bird, don't you think that extending the benefits system would provide a much-needed economic stimulus at this point?

RON BIRD: And certainly we need benefits as well as other kinds of stimulus right now. I think that what's happening is that we're going to have Congress in the new session looking carefully at this entire issue, and I hope that they will take a broad look at it, and not just go to the short-term immediate need, but also while recognizing those needs, also look at the deeper aspects of the problem.

PAUL SOLMAN: Okay, great. Well, thank you very much, and Happy Thanksgiving to you both.

JEFFREY WENGER: Thank you, Paul.

RON BIRD: Thank you.

SECOND LOOK AN AVEDON PORTRAIT

MARGARET WARNER: Now, a portrait of a portrait-maker. Arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown has our reprise.

JEFFREY BROWN: A portrait by Richard Avedon is instantly recognizable. Often the subject is well-known: A celebrity like Marilyn Monroe; a political figure like Henry Kissinger; singer Marian Anderson, from the world of the arts. But even when the man in the photo is an unknown drifter, the Avedon signature is there. Black and white images-- no background, no props, just individuals in a void, staring out of the frame. A chance to stare back is offered at New York's Metropolitan Museum in a major retrospective of 180 portraits. This turns out to be an homage to a neighborhood son. Avedon grew up just blocks from the museum, and used to roam its halls after school. He first made his name as a fashion photographer, in magazines such as "Harper's Bazaar" and "Vogue." But portraiture is the work he does for himself, and it's become a key part of what makes the 79-year-old perhaps the world's most famous photographer. We talked in the museum's exhibition hall. I asked him what he's after when he takes a portrait.

RICHARD AVEDON: I'm trying to condense all of my feelings about what it is to be any one of us. It's not... it's specific, and at the same time it's general. I come into this room, and I can't help but see what I think at the moment about each of you. I could be completely wrong, but the combination of what's there, no... it's like fingerprints; no two people are alike. But they all express facets of the same thing.

JEFFREY BROWN: Help me, for our audience, conjure up what it really looks like when you take a portrait of someone. How far away is the subject? Not very far, right?

RICHARD AVEDON: Exactly as far away as I am from you.

JEFFREY BROWN: As you and I are, so we can reach out; we could touch?

RICHARD AVEDON: Yeah.

JEFFREY BROWN: And you're using a large camera on a tripod, but you're not behind it, you're next to it?

RICHARD AVEDON: Next to it. So when the sitter or the subject is looking into the lens, he's not looking at me.

JEFFREY BROWN: The sitter is looking into the lens.

RICHARD AVEDON: Yeah, unless he's looking a little over the horizon, and that's when he's looking at me. So I'm able, through conversation... in other words, I could make you laugh right now if I wanted to. I've done it, right?

JEFFREY BROWN: Mm-hmm.

RICHARD AVEDON: Click! In other words, I'm in a very controlling position, and I can bring... and I've already... if the camera's on you, your face is very concentrated. You're listening. You don't know what I'm going to say next, and now you're smiling. All these things are the things I work with.

JEFFREY BROWN: When you're taking the photographs, do you take many photographs? Are you talking to the person while it's happening? Is it a kind of confrontation, or is it a conversation?

RICHARD AVEDON: It's all of those things, every one of them. It's a subtle, unspoken collaboration between myself and the person who is in front of the camera.

JEFFREY BROWN: For decades, Avedon's portraits have served as a chronicle of the times. The exhibition playfully features a '60s era face-off between key figures of the Vietnam War effort, called the Mission Council, and the antiwar activists known as the Chicago Seven. A series of photographs called "The Family" shows the American business and political elite of the 1970s. Some of them-- here is a young Donald Rumsfeld-- are very much still with us. But Avedon's prime focus has been on leading cultural figures: Actors Buster Keaton and a playful Charlie Chaplin; writers like Ezra Pound and Truman Capote; composer Igor Stravinsky. Avedon often shows a different side of famous faces, as here, with Groucho Marx. He captured the larger-than- life personality of one of his favorite writers, Isak Dinesan, in a Copenhagen hotel room.

RICHARD AVEDON: The door bell rang, and I looked at the door, and this woman in this uncured black wolf coat said, "I judge people by what they think of King Lear." I was in my early 20s, and I never spoke again. I just did the picture, and she left.

JEFFREY BROWN: Later, Avedon photographed former President Eisenhower near the end of his life at his retirement home on a golf course.

RICHARD AVEDON: Old retired people would go by in their golf carts and say, "Hi, Ike!" And this ravishing smile would come across his face, and then die. And that's what I saw-- had nothing to do with the public image of him as a smiling President.

JEFFREY BROWN: Avedon would later take a series of portraits of his own father in his last years.

JEFFREY BROWN: You've said a number of times, you say, "All photographs are accurate; none of them is the truth."

RICHARD AVEDON: They're representations of what's there. "This jacket is cut this way"; that's very accurate. This really did happen in front of this camera at this... at a given moment. But it's no more truth... the given moment is part of what I'm feeling that day, what they're feeling that day, and what I want to accomplish as an artist.

JEFFREY BROWN: So the old line, "the camera never lies"...

RICHARD AVEDON: Camera lies all the time. It's all it does is lie, because when you choose this moment instead of this moment, when you... the moment you've made a choice, you're lying about something larger. Lying is an ugly word. I don't mean lying. But any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.

JEFFREY BROWN: Not everyone is always happy with the results. Avedon took this portrait of the renowned literary critic Harold Bloom.

RICHARD AVEDON: And he said, "I hate that picture. It doesn't look like me." Well, for a very smart man to think that a picture is supposed to look like him... would you go to Modigliani and say, "I want it to look like me?"

JEFFREY BROWN: But, see, we think of photography differently, don't we? We take pictures of each other all the time, and we want it... we expect it to look like us.

RICHARD AVEDON: How many pictures have you torn up because you hate them? What ends up in your scrapbook? The pictures where you look like a good guy and a good family man, and the children look adorable-- and they're screaming the next minute. I've never seen a family album of screaming people.

JEFFREY BROWN: You do have, though, people say, "I don't like this; this isn't me."

RICHARD AVEDON: Pretty general response.

JEFFREY BROWN: It doesn't worry you?

RICHARD AVEDON: No. Worry? I mean, it's a picture, for God's sake.

JEFFREY BROWN: Avedon's portraits have been very much part of, even helped define, our age of celebrity. It's a symbiotic relationship: Avedon, the celebrity photographer; celebrities, eager to be photographed. But Avedon has also looked hard at the decidedly unfamous. In the early '80s, he traveled through the American West and took pictures of young people, workers, and especially drifters.

RICHARD AVEDON: Do you know Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot"? It's about hoboes, about men who are lost out on the road, waiting for something, waiting for some answer. And I found that in drifters... and these people are so raw in their emotions.

JEFFREY BROWN: Avedon took photographs of "Waiting for Godot's" author, Samuel Beckett, wearing a better cut of suit, but displaying the same craggy face as the western drifters -- and this, of actor Bert Lahr, in character from the play, taken in 1956.

JEFFREY BROWN: You wrote in the catalog essay that "Photography is a sad art." Why?

RICHARD AVEDON: It's something about a minute later, it's gone, it's dead, and the only thing that lives on the wall is the photograph. And do you realize that in this exhibition, almost everyone is dead? They're all gone, and their work lives, and the photograph lives. They never get old in a photograph. So it's sad in that way.

JEFFREY BROWN: At the very end of the exhibition is a portrait of Richard Avedon. It's a triptych of poses. So how does the master portrait- maker come to make a portrait of himself?

RICHARD AVEDON: I see pictures of myself and I always knew that what I was feeling didn't look like that guy in the pictures. But my face is beginning to look like an Avedon. It look a long while. And I looked in the mirror and I thought, okay, I think I can photograph this face.

JEFFREY BROWN: Avedon is beginning to look like an Avedon?

RICHARD AVEDON: Yeah, finally.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, Richard Avedon, thank you for talking to us.

RICHARD AVEDON: Thank you.

ESSAY AT THE TABLE

MARGARET WARNER: Finally tonight, essayist Richard Rodriguez takes a Thanksgiving look at the role of food in our lives.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: All these centuries later, for one day, we remember the meal shared by the Wampaganoag Indians and the English pilgrims. We tend to dwell less on the extraordinary social event of that day than on the generosity of the God-given land that their feast celebrated. Other countries have harvest festivals, but what makes Thanksgiving so distinctly American is that it reminds us as no other national holiday does of this benevolent land that names us Americans; this earth, this soil-- not blood-- gives us the sense of ourselves as a people. Most of the year, of course, in present day America, we assume that the supermarket shelves will be generously stocked; though we also often seem uneasy or even unbalanced by such plenty. Here in California, early Europeans saw the California Indians as lotus-eaters, so benevolent was this land. But this autumn, the state's librarians are encouraging Californians to read and discuss together John Steinbeck's depression-era classic, "The Grapes of Wrath." No small irony that in a state where the soil is so famously generous, California's most famous novel describes Okie migrants starving on the land. And then there is our famous American neurosis about eating; eating too much, or eating too little. We go on diets, we fail to stay on diets. Our bookstores are full of cookbooks, and just as numerous are diet books that debate whether or not a steak is healthy. One television advertisement promises the abs we've always wanted, a competing commercial is for junk food. We know... many of us know young women and men who so lack any sense of control in their lives that they turn their bodies into machines that binge and purge, or who will not swallow. On the other hand, here at Berkeley High School, school officials recently came up with the idea of offering students nutritious, but stylish food. From nearby Chez Panise restaurant, Chef Alice Waters concocted recipes for hormone- free chicken sandwiches and organic pork tacos. In the end, the kids decided to go off-campus to indulge their usual diet of unruly French fries and garish burritos. In California this season, the hot restaurant is a cool vegan restaurant in larkspur called Roxanne's, where ovens never ascend higher than 118 degrees Fahrenheit, lest enzymes be lost. In this gleaming kitchen crammed with vegetables and fruits, lasagna is prepared without eggs, or dairy products. Ice cream is prepared without cream. It as though Roxanne's is attempting to reimagine our human relationship to food within the idea of the uncooked. But for all of our innovations and preoccupation with food-- raw or cooked, junk or organic-- for all our concern for dieting or not dieting, what's missing is that idea central to ancient considerations of food. I mean the communal experience of eating. In his elegant scholarly history of food, "Near a Thousand Tables," Philippe Fernandez Armisto argues that the campfire is one of the revolutionary innovations of history. The camp fire becomes a way not just of preparing food, but more importantly it is a way of organizing society around the act of eating. Our Thanksgiving meal is a rare event in today's America: A holiday, indeed, precisely because it is a meal shared by several generations recollecting the foods gathered by Puritans and Indians, using family recipes from dead great grandmothers. The meal borders on the sentimental, as in the Norman Rockwell rendering. So rare is it, so unearned by our ordinary lives. Most days we Americans are in a rush, which is why we invented fast foods that taste like aluminum foil. In a nation of individuals, even within a single family, what is there to serve in common, when one kid is a vegetarian, another is on a diet, and someone else demands meat with every meal? That early communal idea of eating was, after all, soon lost in America. Melancholy descends on the memory of the first Thanksgiving. Within several years of their feast, the pilgrims would be at war with the Indians, and the achievement of that day-- separate people, strangers together eating food from a generous land, must seem improbable to high school students to whom we tell the story, even as they wait impatiently for lunchtime to go off campus for a burger and a shake. I'm Richard Rodriguez.

RECAP

MARGARET WARNER: Again, the major developments this Thanksgiving Day: There were two near-simultaneous attacks on Israelis in Kenya-- a suicide car-bombing at an Israeli-owned hotel killed at least 12 Israelis and Kenyans, and two ground-fired missiles narrowly missed an Israeli charter jet taking off from Mombasa Airport. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening with Shields and Brooks, among others. I'm Margaret Warner. Thanks for being with us. Good night.