The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MARGARET WARNER: Good evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Jim Lehrer is off this week. On the NewsHour tonight, our summary of the news; terrorists behead a South Korean contractor in Baghdad; a revised State Department report card paints a grim picture of worldwide terror; an inside look at how to get into one of the nation's most selective colleges; and analyzing the independent ads in the presidential race.

NEWS SUMMARY

MARGARET WARNER: Iraqi militants beheaded their South Korean hostage today. The kidnappers had threatened to do so unless South Korea withdrew its 600 troops in Iraq and canceled plans to send 3,000 troops to Iraq. South Korea refused. Arab television announced the beheading, just hours after South Korea said it would evacuate its civilian contractors early next month. We'll have more on the story after the news summary. The State Department today issued a revised score card on worldwide terror, correcting inaccuracies in its April report. The new report said 625 people died in terror attacks in 2003, nearly double the 307 reported earlier. And last year's 208 terror incidents caused more than 3,600, more than double the number reported earlier. At a briefing, Secretary of State Powell said there had been no attempt to manipulate the figures in the April report.

COLIN POWELL: The report is not designed to make our efforts look better or worse or terrorism look better or worse, but to provide the facts to the American people. And I think the way in which we have responded to this challenge to the report, by coming straight out and saying, "you're right, it needs correction." And it has been corrected.

MARGARET WARNER: We'll have more on the story later in the program. The White House today released a thick file of confidential memos on interrogation methods for prisoners. White House officials said they wanted to demonstrate that the administration had not authorized torture as a technique. Some internal legal memos leaked earlier this month suggested there had been attempts to narrow the definition of torture, and permit methods not sanctioned by the Geneva Conventions. President Bush addressed the issue with reporters today.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Let me make very clear the position of my government and our country. We do not condone torture. I have never ordered torture. I will never order torture. The values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being.

MARGARET WARNER: In Iraq today, more violence. Two U.S. Soldiers were killed when their convoy was attacked in Baghdad. Saboteurs struck another blow to Iraq's oil production overnight, bombing a key pipeline north of Baghdad. Exports from the southern oil fields, hit by sabotage last week, had resumed just yesterday. Also today, a car bomb explosion in a Baghdad neighborhood killed three civilians, including a three-year-old girl. U.S. forces in Iraq launched an air strike on a suspected militant safe house in Fallujah. They said it was used by fighters loyal to Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist thought to be linked to al-Qaida. U.S. officials offered no casualty figures, but al-Jazeera Television reported it killed three people and wounded six. Britain today urged Iran to release of eight sailors and three patrol boats Iran seized yesterday. We have a report narrated by Bill Neely of Independent Television News.

BILL NEELY: Eight British servicemen, blind folded, on the floor, paraded like hostages. The cameras of Iranian state television showing the equipment that was taken from them, radio, a satellite phone, night vision equipment, all standard issue. Another table loaded with the guns and ammunition they had on board -- all personal weapons, say the ministry of defense.

HARKINS: My name is Sgt. Thomas Harkins...

BILL NEELY: The men were shown apologizing. This marine says they made a big mistake.

MARINE: I apologize. I am sorry.

WEBSTER: My name is Chief Petty Officer Robert Webster.

BILL NEELY: Their team, they say, wrongly entered Iranian waters. This sailor appeared to read from a statement. They'd been delivering a patrol boat to Iraq's river police when they were seized. Iran says more than half a mile into Iranian territory. It's thought they're being held at this military base.

MAJ. IAN CLOONEY: We're doing a routine patrol, as has happened for many months now, as part of the support and training offered to both the Iraqi civil defense corps and the patrol department. There was nothing unusual in what they were doing.

BILL NEELY: Iran's army says the men could be released soon if it's shown they had no ill intent.

MARGARET WARNER: Russian troops poured into southern Russia today, pursuing Chechen rebels who launched a major assault last night in and around the republic of Ingushetia. The rebels killed 57, including 47 police and regional officials. They also set fire to police and government buildings. It was the largest militant operation in the Chechnya ten years ago. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered that the rebels be "found and destroyed." Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney today urged the senate judiciary committee to approve a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages. Romney's state is the only state that now recognizes gay marriages. He told the panel it's an issue that needs to be dealt with on the national level.

GOV. MITT ROMNEY: The decision of Massachusetts is now infringing on the rights of the states and citizens in other states and therefore my view is a constitutional amendment properly draft willed allow each state to make its own decisions with regards to the rights associated to same-sex couples but that marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman.

MARGARET WARNER: Senate floor debate on an amendment is scheduled for July 12, but Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois cautioned against hastening the process.

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: Why aren't we taking the time to see how this plays out in this politically charged atmosphere instead of rushing to judgment to bring an amendment to the floor. I hope that we have the good sense and wisdom on both sides of the isle to at least stop, catch our breath and realize that we swore to uphold this Constitution, not to make a mess of it.

MARGARET WARNER: Constitutional amendments require approval by two-thirds of the House and Senate, and three-quarters of state legislatures. The senate today overwhelmingly approved higher indecency fines for broadcasters and personalities. The maximum fine would increase tenfold to $275,000 for each incident. Indecency violations are determined by the Federal Communications Commission. The bill must now be reconciled with a House version calling for even higher fines. Women employees suing Wal-Mart for sex discrimination won class-action status in federal court today. That means their suit may include 1.6 million current and former employees as plaintiffs, making it the largest private civil rights case in U.S. history. The women say they were paid less than men in comparable positions and steered to low- level jobs. Wal-Mart has denied the charges, and said it would appeal today's decision. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained more than 23 points to close at 10,395. The NASDAQ rose more than 19 points to close at 1994. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to a South Korean beheaded in Baghdad; a new report card on the war on terror; the competition to get into elite colleges; and truth squading the independent ads in the presidential race.

FOCUS - HOSTAGE KILLED

MARGARET WARNER: First, the beheading of a South Korean hostage in Iraq. Ray Suarez spoke earlier today with Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post from Baghdad.

RAY SUAREZ: Rajiv Chandrasekaran, welcome. It seemed that over the last day or so, there were more optimistic noises coming out of Baghdad regarding the kidnapping of this Korean hostage. What changed suddenly in the last half-day or so?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Well, it's hard to tell exactly what had changed, although the belief here was that these insurgents that had captured Mr. Kim, the hostage, really were probably set on killing him all along. There were some interlocutors-- a Korean security firm that tried to intercede, that tried to establish some communications with various Sunni Muslim leaders that have ties in to various shadowy insurgent and terrorist groups operating in Fallujah. But it appears tonight, well, clearly those efforts were in vain, and that Mr. Kim was indeed executed by his captors.

RAY SUAREZ: Was there a sudden break off of the negotiations? Was there a final pronouncement by the captors?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Well, it wasn't like there were any sort of face-to-face negotiations or anything that we might sort of consider a lot of two-way back-and-forth discussions. I think that there were more just sort of overtures to intermediaries, to other intermediaries. And for whatever reason, it just wasn't convincing enough. The hostage takers, as you all know, had a very clear demand that South Korea withdraw the 670 troops it has in the country-- those are primarily medical and engineering support personnel-- and cancel plans to send an additional 3,000 troops to Iraq. And when the South Korean government indicated that it wouldn't do so, a message that was pretty widely received in Iraq here, certainly carried on Arabic television stations, I think the captors realized that their efforts at trying to pressure the South Korean government weren't going to work.

RAY SUAREZ: What was Kim Sun-Il doing in Iraq, and had he been there long?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Well, he was an Arabic speaker, as we know, also an evangelical Christian -- had been working as a translator for a South Korean company that was providing equipment and supplies to the U.S. Army. What is particularly interesting is that he was captured around the Fallujah area, at least according to everything we've been hearing. Now, that's a very dangerous area. All sorts of foreigners are advised to stay away from there. There's only very limited traffic there. We don't know the exact circumstances of how he was grabbed or exactly where, but it does raise some questions-- you know, what exactly was he doing in and around this very volatile and dangerous city?

RAY SUAREZ: Well, there was a video released from the pronouncements of the group that claimed themselves responsible. Do we know if they're allied to or, in fact, the same group that kidnapped and later killed American Nicholas Berg?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: We don't know. I mean, there's certainly a lot of similarities here-- certainly the posing of the victim in an orange jumpsuit in front of them. One of the captors on the video that was released to al-Jazeera tonight had a large knife dangling from his belt. And certainly, according to people who have seen both of the videos, there are similarities in the way that the men were beheaded. But it's not at all clear that these were the same group. There was a lot of suspicion and belief that the killer of Nicholas Berg, the young American who died here, was Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant believed to be responsible for a number of the terrorist attacks in Iraq here over the last several months. His hands are not... at least have not been immediately tied to this latest killing. The group that has claimed responsibility here is one of many different shadowy upstart groups that are operating in Iraq, and the accents of the people speaking seem to be, at least according to Iraqis who have heard the tape... don't seem to be those of people from the Fallujah area. So it raises questions, who are these people, and where are they from?

RAY SUAREZ: In the video, Kim pleaded for his own life, and in heartrending words: "Korean soldiers, please get out of here. I don't want to die." Those words riveted his own home country, and were seen by virtually every South Korean. Did they attract the same kind of attention in Iraq?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Well, there was a lot of exposure. That video was replayed endlessly on al-Jazeera and Alarabiya, two Arab satellite channels that are widely watched here. So presumably not just the captors, who were savvy enough to have gotten their tape to al- Jazeera, they probably saw it, but a wide array of Iraqis have seen it. Now, it's not something, however, sad as it is to say, that galvanized a lot of attention here. I mean, Iraqis are... have become, in some ways, inured to the daily incidents of violence. There was a car bombing here in Baghdad today. A prominent Iraqi professor was killed up in the northern city of Mosul. Reports of violence have just become sort of an hourly occurrence here, so this was just one in a stream of very sort of tragic developments to have taken place here over the past 48 hours in Iraq.

RAY SUAREZ: The Washington Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Thanks a lot for being with us.

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Pleasure to talk to you.

FOCUS - FIGHTING TERROR

MARGARET WARNER: Who's winning the terror war? We start with some background from Kwame Holman.

KWAME HOLMAN: In April, the State Department released its annual report on global terrorism for 2003 and Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage said it bolstered the administration's claim that it was winning the war on terror.

SPOKESMAN: This report details the steps the United States and some 92 other nations took in 19...2003 to fight back and to protect our peoples. Indeed you will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight.

KWAME HOLMAN: Among the findings then was that the number of people killed in terrorist attacks worldwide fell dramatically in 2003 to 307 from 725 a year earlier and that the number of terrorist attacks fell to a 34-year low last year to 190, down from 198 attacks in 2002 and 346 in 2001. Soon after the April report was released, members of Congress and others began to question the accuracy of its numbers. A leading critic, Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, wrote to Secretary of State Colin Powell last month saying, "it appears that the decline in terrorism reported by the State Department results from manipulation of the data, not an actual decline in terrorism incidents. This manipulation may serve the administration's political interests, but it calls into serious doubt the integrity of the report." Early this month, the State Department acknowledged errors in the terrorism report and said it would be changed. The revised report, issued today, showed higher numbers of terror attacks, injuries and deaths than originally reported in April. Cofer Black, the State Department's counter-terrorism chief, acknowledged the errors in the original report, called patterns of global terrorism.

BLACK: I want to be very clear: We here in the counter-terrorism office, and I personally, should have caught any errors that marred the patterns draft before we published it. I assure you and the American people that the errors in the patterns report were honest mistakes and certainly not deliberate deceptions as some have speculated.

KWAME HOLMAN: The revised report concluded that 625 people were killed in terror attacks in 2003, more than double the deaths cited in April. The number of terror incidents last year was revised upward to 208, a slight increase from the 190 first reported. And the number of incidents in 2002 also was revised upward to 205, from 198 originally reported in April.

MARGARET WARNER: Now to the State Department's anti-terrorism point man, Cofer Black. I talked with him earlier this evening from the State Department. Ambassador Black, welcome.

COFER BLACK: Thank you very much, Margaret.

MARGARET WARNER: The last time you all released this report in April, Secretary Armitage introduced you by saying, "in these pages, you'll find clear evidence that we're prevailing in this fight." Based on these new numbers, would you say that today?

COFER BLACK: I think the global war on terrorism is one that has witnessed a considerable amount of success, and we certainly should do a lot better job cataloging our successes. We have been able to catalog the significant loss of life and the injuries in this report, Margaret, we just put out there. We list 625 dead and 3,646 injured. I think to me the most significant statistic is that Islamic extremist terrorism is a prime factor in this. More than almost 50 percent of these casualties have taken place in 11 instances during the year. So we have both a few number of attacks with tremendous amounts of casualties, and at the same time we have an all-time high in the number of significant terrorist events, 175. The last time we had that was 1999 where there were 168. At the same time, we have 208 total instances. So we have basically a mixed story in this-- the numbers of instances, the numbers of casualties. But I think the bottom line for your audience to consider is that of all these casualties and this considerable loss of life and injury, it's been mainly among non-Americans. Only approximately 1.5 percent of all these casualties are Americans. And so that means that 98.5 percent are foreigners. So the brunt of this global war on terrorism in terms of casualties so far in the year 2003 has been with non-Americans abroad.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me ask you, you mentioned that you needed to do a better job cataloging them. There was an editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that said the old report-- and I'm going to quote-- "suggested sloppiness and wishful thinking at the highest levels of the U.S. counter-terrorism effort." Now, you've been involved for a long time, at the CIA before you were at State. Didn't the rosy numbers just strike you as off?

COFER BLACK: Well, let me just say, that editorial, which I have not read, but if I take your sense, is incorrect. As I stated in the conference, this is very important, the secretary stated that the people that are involved in this effort, both in the intelligence area and here at the State Department that look at this report in terms of proofreading, are hardworking men and women. What you have here essentially is antiquated technology, and the way these instances were reviewed can be improved. And frankly, I and my people should have done a lot better job proofreading. These are numbers. There's no intervention or assome people allege, politics, as well. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I can guarantee you that we are here to defend our people and do the best job of it. What you've got here is a really unfortunate mistake.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, you talked about how the number of casualties is so much greater. Is this a shift in what's shown evolution in the tactics of the terrorists, in other words, going for mass casualties, attacking soft targets, is that the underlying trend here?

COFER BLACK: I think the underlying trend, if we look at this as a snapshot, Margaret, is that what - the point that I raised at the beginning is significant: 625 dead; 3,646 injured; and only 1 percent, approximately 1 percent of these are Americans. So you see global basis from the Philippines to Saudi Arabia to Ankara Turkey, you see the victims of the extremist Islamic attacks of terrorism tend to be non-Americans.

MARGARET WARNER: How do you explain that the number of attacks and the number killed have not significantly improved since 2002, given that governments are, as you yourself said, cooperating so much more? Shouldn't - if, if we were winning the war on terror, shouldn't it be getting better?

COFER BLACK: I'm sorry. From a counterterrorism standpoint it may seem a little counterintuitive, but if you look at what Congress requires of us and how we count terrorist incidents, it has a certain criteria. It's got to meet a specific legal criteria. As an example, a sort of low level significant terrorist event that would count as one event was an attack in Spain in September against an ATM machine. It qualified because it was international; it qualified because the equivalent of 10,000 U.S. dollars in damage was conducted, so, you know, perhaps counting incidents isn't the best way to do it, particularly when you match it up against horrific attacks in Ankara, where hundreds are killed, so you have that sort of dichotomy.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, let me ask - critics say that actually the war in Iraq is one of the factors that has led to this continuing an intensified terror with more horrific attacks because in a sense by going into Iraq the U.S. has sort of proven al-Qaida's point, that the U.S. is out to take over Muslim lands, or whatever. I mean, what do you say to that? Do you think there's something to that?

COFER BLACK: You hear this a lot, and nothing could really be farther from the truth. At one point the al-Qaida organization alleged that the reason for their activities is because the previous significant U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. Military pulls out and they continue. I think that is incorrect. I will tell you, Margaret, in my professional life I have looked at Afghanistan and the al-Qaida organization build and there were elements within the United States government did all they could to counter it. I do not believe it's a good strategy to rely upon the goodwill of your enemies for your own protection. These guys have sworn to kill as many innocent people as they possibly can. It is the obligation of a government and it is the determination of this administration to do everything possible to protect the American people and those innocent men and women and children around the world. And that's not done by wishful thinking and sitting back and waiting to be struck.

MARGARET WARNER: And just briefly, do you think by, with the war in Afghanistan, which essentially fragmented the top of the al-Qaida leadership, has it made terrorists harder to fight on some level?

COFER BLACK: Well, Afghanistan used to be a terrorist sanctuary. Something like-- you to ask intelligence people-- but I recall something like 60,000 to 80,000 terrorist went through al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan and proliferated to other countries. When the coalition projected into Afghanistan, approximately 70 percent of the al-Qaida leadership has been arrested, detained or killed. Their mid-management essentially no longer exists. It's an organization under catastrophic stress. More than 3,500 of their operators and supporters are out of business. You need to think, Margaret, what would this world look like and what would those casualty figures look like if those people were free to operate around the world and project attacks? The bottom line is the way to defend yourself is to link up with like-minded countries, which is virtually every country in the world, have a coalition of nations whose cause is defending innocent men, women and children, and to stop terrorist whose objective is to kill as many innocent people as possible. To me the issue is very simple. It is very clear-cut. We defend the weak and the defenseless.

MARGARET WARNER: Ambassador Cofer Black, thank you for joining us.

COFER BLACK: Thank you very much for having me, Margaret.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, for another look at the State Department's revised report, we're joined by Daniel Benjamin, a former director for transnational threats on the National Security Council staff during the Clinton administration. He recently co-authored "The Age of Sacred Terror," which traces the rise of al-Qaida.

Dan Benjamin, welcome.

DANIEL BENJAMIN: Thanks for having me.

MARGARET WARNER: First of all, do you accept what Secretary Powell and Ambassador Black said, there was no attempt to manipulate the figures in the April report?

DANIEL BENJAMIN: I think that's right. I worked with Cofer Black, and he's a man of integrity. I don't think he would be involved in that sort of thing. Frankly, when you have an error of more than 100 percent, that's the whopper you can't rally slip through. I think it's more a reflection of the fact that this task had been given to the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which is this new creation and that they just weren't up to their job. I do think that the senior officials at the State Department probably should have done a better scrub of the report when it came through.

MARGARET WARNER: As he himself said. All right. Now, you look at these numbers. We have these graphs in front of us. Why... let's jump to the question I asked him: Why, with more countries cooperating in the war on terror and much more aggressively, are the number of incidents and the number of people killed essentially not any better than last year, and, in fact, the number of wounded much greater?

DANIEL BENJAMIN: Well, first of all, the terrorists are extremely motivated. Since 9/11, we've seen more and more groups, more and more individual terrorists getting into the act. Remember, 9/11 we think of as just an attack on us, but for al-Qaida and for the Jihadist movement, it was a huge PR event. It was a declaration that they were the true champions of Muslim interests, and because they were the first to truly damage the United States, this was very popular with like- minded individuals. Groups that were affiliated with al-Qaida saw that they had to step up their activity and increase their attacks, and others who had not had a big connection with al-Qaida in the past decided that this was the way to go, that the tactics were right, the ideology was right. We face a global insurgency now, and 9/11 was really the day it began. It's growing in strength.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you think Iraq is a factor one way or another? You heard Ambassador Black put it in the same category really with Afghanistan. You have to go out aggressively and go to where these terrorists are.

DANIEL BENJAMIN: Well, Iraq is definitely a factor in the sense that Iraq has functioned as another propaganda coup for the terrorists. It really does speak to the Jihadist argument. They said, you know, the United States wants to occupy Muslim lands and destroy Islam, and now they can portray our action in Iraq as precisely that. Many intelligence services, many governments have said that they see recruitment is way up and fundraising continues to be strong, and we see from the polling data that America is incredibly unpopular around the world because of our action in Iraq. You know, there was not a big al-Qaida presence in Iraq before the war, but it has become a magnet for terrorists now. There's no question this is the front now, but it was not before. This is because of our action there.

MARGARET WARNER: Also when we look at these numbers, what we see, as he was just discussing, the number of attacks is actually quite a bit less than '99 and 2000, but the number of people for instance killed and wounded are higher. What does that tell you, same question I asked him, about the evolution of the methodology of these terrorists?

DANIEL BENJAMIN: Well, terrorism has been changing for a number of years, and this predates 9/11. As we've seen a change to increasingly religious motivation, we've seen that there is a higher and higher premium on mass casualty attacks. In the old days of the Palestinian Liberation Organization or the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, terrorists just wanted to just kill a few people and get a lot of attention. This is an entirely different kind of terrorism. These terrorists don't want to become part of a negotiating process, they don't want to be accepted by their enemies. They want to kill as many people as possible. They believe the violence itself is divinely mandated and therefore the more the better.

MARGARET WARNER: So do you think that this report shows that the United States is prevailing in this fight?

DANIEL BENJAMIN: I don't think that any one report is going to show that. That. In fact, I think it's a very mixed picture. We are doing, as Ambassador Black said, we're doing quite well at the tactical level, but we are disrupting a lot of plots. We've arrested a lot of terrorists. In fact, one of the interesting things would be to see how many more plots there are now, not just how many went off, because I think we're seeing an awful lot of very big endeavors, huge plans, as we saw in Jordan, as we saw in Britain. But at the same time, the wave seems to be growing, the amount of Jihadist activity globally is increasing, so we may be winning in the short term, but we face another bigger problem in the long-term.

MARGARET WARNER: One point that Ambassador Black made was that the number of Americans killed and wounded in these attacks, at least the ones they documented, is fairly small.

DANIEL BENJAMIN: Well, that's true, although there is something squirrelly about if report in that it excludes almost all the Americans killed in Iraq, especially those in uniform. If the administration is referring to this as the war on terror and it's terrorists like Abu Musab al-Zarqaui killing American soldiers, then it seems like they should be counted, as well. So that's an oddity.

MARGARET WARNER: To be clear, they exclude them becausethey say they're combatants.

DANIEL BENJAMIN: That is correct. Soldiers who are killed in Khobar Towers or who were killed in the "Cole" are considered terrorist victims. So it's not a very consistent or intelligible approach. The other thing is everything changes with every report. If you look at the report in 2001, it was 95 percent Americans killed. Terrorists are having a harder time attacking in America now, and that may be reflected in this report, but there is a lot of terrorism going on against the U.S. and its allies around the world.

MARGARET WARNER: Daniel Benjamin, thank you.

DANIEL BENJAMIN: Thank you.

MARGARET WARNER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, getting in-- or not-- and grade campaign ads.

FOCUS -THE BEST & THE BRIGHTEST

MARGARET WARNER: Now the NewsHour's special correspondent for education, John Merrow, looks at how an elite college, Amherst, selected its class of 2008.

JOHN MERROW: Amherst College, nestled in the hills of western Massachusetts, was founded in 1821. It's one of the nation's most prestigious colleges. This year, more than 5,400 of the best and brightest students competed for just 423 places in the freshman class. Among the applicants this year is Sharlene Brown, a senior at Dewitt Clinton High School in New York City.

SHARLENE BROWN: Amherst is my first choice. They accept the best students, and I feel I want to be a part of those best students that they accept.

JOHN MERROW: Sharlene, who has a straight-a average and high SAT scores, hopes to be the first member of her family to graduate from college. Ruben Harris, another Amherst applicant, is also at Dewitt Clinton. He's a straight-A student and starting quarterback on the football team.

JOHN MERROW: Do you have an advantage applying because you're an athlete?

RUBIN HARRIS: When you go to school, you can contribute academically. But if you can contribute both academically and athletically, it's a big advantage.

JOHN MERROW: And Aiden Redmond is a senior at Fordham Prep, a private school in New York City. Aidan is what colleges call a legacy. His mother is a graduate of Amherst, and also served on the board of trustees.

AIDEN REDMOND: Amherst is the one I really want to go to.

JOHN MERROW: First choice?

AIDEN REDMOND: Yeah.

JOHN MERROW: The competition to get into elite private colleges like Amherst is fierce. Amherst has been ranked the best small liberal arts college in the country nine times in the last 20 years. It turns down more than 80 percent of applicants. So who gets into Amherst, and why?

WOMAN: We start with Sharlene Brown, who is number two in the class. She has a 97.2 unweighted GPA. Her senior grades are excellent.

JOHN MERROW: Amherst let us look inside the admissions process to find out how it weighs grades, SAT scores, athletics, family connections and other factors. The process began in the fall. Every application was read at least twice. By the time the 11-member admissions committee met in March, they'd already eliminated half the applicants.

SPOKESPERSON: He plays the alto sax. He plays the baritone sax. He's in the wind ensemble.

JOHN MERROW: They discussed the remaining 2,700 candidates in these two rooms.

SPOKESPERSON: Julie has had an interesting taste of consensus governing.

SPOKESPERSON: His drive is astonishing, but in a wonderful way.

JOHN MERROW: It's around this table that Tom Parker, dean of admissions and financial aid, and several of his colleagues make the tough decisions. How difficult is it to put together a freshman class?

TOM PARKER: It's enormously difficult. We're a small school. There are going to be 423 people entering. And we have the ambitions of a large university.

JOHN MERROW: After review, an applicant's future comes down to a simple vote.

SPOKESPERSON: Any more questions? We're going to vote. Accept?

JOHN MERROW: The community considers each applicant's situation.

SPOKESPERSON: He's a National Merit semi- finalist, AP scholar, class president, managing editor for the Classics Magazine.

SPOKESMAN: The reading essay is easily the best I've read this year. He may also be a finalist for the classics scholarship here.

JOHN MERROW: Just when things were looking up, the committee came across a problem. The student's grades had slipped in one semester back in tenth grade.

SPOKESPERSON: When I was reading it, I saw, you know, okay, so he had a slump. I was thinking a "B" or two, or, you know, even just "B" pluses. But it's pretty much he went down as far as "b" minuses. I think there were three of them.

TOM PARKER: I spoke with the counselor, and he just said that he was under tremendous parental pressure.

SPOKESMAN: Okay. Questions? Anything else you want to know? Accept? Two? Hover? One, two, three.

JOHN MERROW: By voting "hover," the committee was electing to revisit this student's application. In the end, he was wait-listed.

TOM PARKER: I think that was a bad decision. I do. And I bet that there are some that maybe I didn't vote for, and some people could say, well, he didn't vote the way I would have.

JOHN MERROW: Is there one characteristic that would make a student a shoo-in at Amherst?

TOM PARKER: Yes. I think where you just say, I can see the kid sitting in the seminar with his hand up, just shining.

JOHN MERROW: Is there one characteristic that would make a student an automatic rejection?

TOM PARKER: It would be bad grades. I think that's the killer.

SPOKESPERSON: 94.4 weighted GPA. She got a 67 in math for the second semester.

JOHN MERROW: How important are extracurricular activities?

TOM PARKER: At a small residential college like this, very. The life of the place, in many respects, springs from the willingness of students to do things other than study.

SPOKESPERSON: She plays the violin. She was a model U.N. at Eunice. She was... or she is in student government. She's on the editorial board for the lit mag. She's editor of the newspaper. She's founder and president of the community service club.

JOHN MERROW: So extracurricular activities are essential. What about SAT scores?

TOM PARKER: SAT scores are important if you are a person who has had a lot of opportunities in your life. For people who have had fewer opportunities, SAT's are going to be less important for that person.

SPOKESPERSON: His home language is Spanish. His mother is a housewife. His father is a handyman. Brian has used his failure to be admitted to two other independent schools because of low testing and the constant vision of his father working himself to death to drive himself to achieve.

SPOKESPERSON: He's doing everything he can.

SPOKESPERSON: He's doing everything he can. I mean, clearly testing is not his strength, but...

SPOKESPERSON: Okay. Any more questions?

SPOKESPERSON: Let's vote. Accept?

TOM PARKER: If you tie admission strictly to S.A.T. scores, you're going to end up with a very wealthy student body.

SPOKESPERSON: They live in a tiny studio apartment, and Victoria must wake up in the middle of the night sometimes to have any peace to do her homework. What an amazing girl.

SPOKESPERSON: That's amazing that some of these kids can do so well, coming from such a limited background. You know?

JOHN MERROW: How important is race in getting into Amherst?

TOM PARKER: We would love to be not conscious of race for a whole number of reasons, but we are conscious of race-- race in the context of other factors.

JOHN MERROW: Up until 1975, Amherst was all-male and virtually all-white. Today the school is half female, and one-third of its students are non-white. Amherst is expensive, about $40,000 a year, but half the students receive financial aid. The average financial aid package is $28,000 a year.

TOM PARKER: We give out, you know, tens of millions of dollars of financial aid a year. All of that comes out of the generosity of our alumni. We have an endowment of close to $1 billion that allows us to have half of our kids on financial aid.

JOHN MERROW: Does the alumni office tell you, hey, this candidate's mother or father has given a lot of money to Amherst?

TOM PARKER: Sure. I mean, I think that's something that's going to be the case anywhere. Yeah.

JOHN MERROW: Is that a factor in your decision?

TOM PARKER: Yeah, it's one of several.

JOHN MERROW: It also helps to be a legacy. This year, 3 percent of the applicants had close relatives who graduated from Amherst.

SPOKESPERSON: The reason we're discussing her, with those scores, is because her sister Christina is a student here.

SPOKESPERSON: Is wonderful.

SPOKESPERSON: And is wonderful.

JOHN MERROW: In the end, Amherst accepted half the legacies. That's 6 percent of next year's freshman class. Other applicants have an advantage, as well. Amherst reserves 15 percent of the spots in the incoming class for athletes. You set aside places for athletes.

TOM PARKER: We do.

JOHN MERROW: How many?

TOM PARKER: 65 in each class.

JOHN MERROW: Does an athlete have to meet the same standards that other candidates do?

TOM PARKER: Sure. I mean, if you look at the average S.A.T. Scores of our athletes, of our varsity athletes, they're over 1400.

SPOKESPERSON: Angela is an accomplished lacrosse player, and so, that may prove a hook.

JOHN MERROW: Would you say that this is a fair process?

TOM PARKER: It's as far fair as we can make it, but we're thoroughly aware of the flaws in it and the degree to which we're making judgments that are open to interpretation.

SPOKESPERSON: Accept? Hover? Wait list?

TOM PARKER: Sometimes those decisions that you make are based on such tiny distinctions that you wonder if somebody had presented a candidate slightly differently, whether your vote, your hand would have gone up or remained down.

JOHN MERROW: At the end of March, Amherst sent out 1,034 acceptance letters. And then the tables turned. All of a sudden, Amherst finds itself competing for students. What colleges do you lose students to?

TOM PARKER: It's a relatively small group, and it's Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Swarthmore, Williams, Dartmouth, Duke, Colombia. Those are the schools with whom we compete.

JOHN MERROW: Is it frustrating that you accept 1,000, and more than half of them are going to say no to you?

TOM PARKER: Oh, sure. Yeah, I mean, I have to laugh about it. In a certain sense, I call it the day of the great reversal, which is, you've been judging people, you know, for all these years, and now it's your turn to be judged.

JOHN MERROW: Remember Sharlene Brown?

SHARLENE BROWN: Yeah!

JOHN MERROW: Amherst accepted her, but so did Harvard, where she'll be going in the fall. As for Aiden Redmond, despite his family connection, he was wait listed, and will be going to Providence College. And Ruben Harris, the star quarterback?

TOM PARKER: And we missed out on Ruben Harris, who was my favorite. He's going to Yale.

JOHN MERROW: Reporter: Of the 1,034 accepted by Amherst, 393 said yes. Amherst then took 30 more applicants from the waiting list.

FOCUS - AIR WARS

MARGARET WARNER: And now, for a return look at the political ad wars, we turn to media correspondent Terence Smith.

TERENCE SMITH: The presidential campaigns are not alone in running political television ads this election year. Independent advocacy groups are joining the fray. Those groups have raised some $183 million so far this cycle, much of which has been spent on ads. Here with me to discuss some of these independent ads is Brooks Jackson, director of factcheck.Org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Brooks, welcome. These independent ads that we're about to screen are from groups that are not formally affiliated with either campaign, and yet they don't leave a great deal of doubt as to who they're supporting.

BROOKS JACKSON: Well, that's true, and legally they can't be affiliated or even coordinate their efforts without running afoul of the law. That's nothing new. We've seen independent groups spending big time in campaigns before, but nothing on this scale. What's happening is lots of money, tens of millions of dollars that used to go to political parties as soft money for these kinds of ads, is now going to these independent groups because of the McCain- Feingold campaign finance law.

TERENCE SMITH: Okay. Well, let's take a look at some of these ads. The first one is called "corporate headquarters," and it's sponsored by the Media Fund, which is a high-profile Democratic group. Let's take a look.

AD SPOKESMAN: Instead of protecting pensions, George Bush supported a bill giving Enron huge new tax breaks. Instead of giving seniors more prescription drug benefits, Bush gave drug companies billions in his Medicare bill. Instead of fighting corporate corruption, George Bush gave no- bid contracts to Halliburton, a company caught overcharging for fuel and food for our soldiers in Iraq. George Bush: He turned the White House into corporate headquarters.

TERENCE SMITH: All right, now that is... that's laying it directly at George Bush's doormat.

BROOKS JACKSON: Oh, boy, one of my favorites, and the images are great. Now, that, of course, is run by a group headed by Harold Ickes, who ought to know about the White House and corporate influence. He was the guy in charge of the White House sleepovers during the Clinton administration when he was deputy chief of staff. This ad is... really, it's hard to cram this much distortion into a 30-second ad, but they do it. Just a couple of points: They say Bush didn't do anything about pensions. In fact, he signed a pension reform bill addressing some of the abuses that came up during the Enron scandal. It said he didn't do anything about corporate corruption. There's never been such a wave of corporate prosecutions-- 250 individuals convicted so far, 20 Enron executives alone charged already, on and on. But it's an effective ad, though.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. A second one. It's called "Man of the People." It's sponsored by Citizens United, a conservative group, and it pokes fun at Senator Kerry's wealth. So, let's take a look at it.

AD SPOKESMAN: Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. Hairstyle by Christophe's: $75. Designer shirts: $250. 42-foot luxury yacht: $1 million. Four lavish mansions and beach front estate: Over $30 million. Another rich liberal elitist from Massachusetts who claims he's a "man of the people." ( Laughter ) Priceless.

TERENCE SMITH: All right, also clever. Is it a fair description of John Kerry's status?

BROOKS JACKSON: Well, yes and no. For one thing, John Kerry... I've never heard him claim to be a man of the people, and I don't think he ever would. And some of his ads, in fact, he makes a point of his privileged upbringing, says it gives him special responsibilities. Of course, the wealth that's portrayed here, all pretty much accurate. Most of those houses are in his wife's name, of course. The yacht, yes, he's got a big Hinckley, and that's all true. The thing that strikes me as amusing about this is usually it's Republicans you hear complaining about class warfare when Democrats attack the rich for being rich or for getting tax breaks. Now the shoe's on the other foot.

TERENCE SMITH: Apparently, it works both ways.

BROOKS JACKSON: They're attacking Kerry for being wealthy.

TERENCE SMITH: Here's another one. This is called "Halliburton," which gives you some idea. It's funded by moveon.Org, which is a liberal, web-based Political Action Committee. So let's take a look at it.

AD SPOKESMAN: The Bush administration gave Dick Cheney's old company no-bid contracts for Iraq on a silver platter. Then, the pentagon caught Halliburton overcharging $61 million for gasoline. Worse, they billed over $100 million for meals for our troops that they never delivered. And George Bush is still doing business with them. George Bush, a failure of leadership. Moveon PAC is responsible for the content of this advertisement.

TERENCE SMITH: Fair or unfair?

BROOKS JACKSON: Well, unfair in some ways. This... if all you knew about Halliburton is what you saw in ads like this one, you would think they had been officially charged with wrongdoing, and they haven't. Their auditors are questioning expenditures for gasoline, it's true, and for meals served to troops, it's true. Nothing's been finally settled. These billing disputes arise all the time. The idea that the contracts were given on a silver platter with all these wads of cash, independent congressional General Accounting Office ruled that the contracts were legal and while there were some discrepancies in some of the add-ons, they probably could have been justified if they filled in the right blanks in the paperwork.

TERENCE SMITH: Here's another one. It's called "Michael." It's funded again by the conservative Citizens United and it's aired in several battleground states. Let's take a look.

MAN IN AD: On Sept. 11, terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 Americans, including 346 firefighter-- one of which was my son, Michael. I lost my son. I spoke to him that day. He went to work that morning and he died for a reason-- because somebody hates America. And that day, George Bush became a leader, a war president. I feel very comfortable with him as president. We want a guy that's going to lead us to victory in this war.

TERENCE SMITH: So those are some painful and sensitive images.

BROOKS JACKSON: Absolutely. And George Bush, of course, in his initial ad was criticized by the Democrats when he showed about three seconds of imagery from Ground Zero. What this illustrates is that an independent group can do things that the candidate himself can't do.

TERENCE SMITH: Precisely.

BROOKS JACKSON: Another remarkable thing about this is how few people saw it. Only about $100,000 spent behind that ad. Liberals really have the advantage in this independent spending war so far.

TERENCE SMITH: Here's another one. This is called "Position." It's paid for by the League of Conservation Voters, which is a well-established environmental group. Let's take a look at it.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: You can see there is no ambiguity in my position on drilling off the coast of Florida.

AD SPOKESMAN: There sure isn't. President Bush opened up Florida's coast to off-shore drilling and he supported an energy bill that could lead to even more. Well, what would you expect from a Texas oilman? Just one accident can destroy a coastline.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I put programs in place that help Mother Nature.

AD SPOKESMAN: Mr. President, your oil drilling off Florida's coast isn't one of them.

TERENCE SMITH: Accurate?

BROOKS JACKSON: Well, off Florida's coast? The truth is, the Bush administration allowed drilling 100 miles off Florida's coast. I think anybody watching this ad would probably get the wrong idea.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. And finally, "Freedom," which is funded by the Conservative Club for Growth, which describes itself as a free market political advocacy organization. Let's take a look at it.

AD SPOKESMAN: The World Trade Center Towers were more than just buildings. They were symbols of hard working people, economic freedom and opportunity-- the American way of life. That's why the terrorists attacked them. Our enemies want to destroy America's freedoms. President Bush is fighting terrorism to save lives and protect liberty. George W. Bush, the vision to promote freedom and the courage to defend it.

TERENCE SMITH: Again, Brooks, the direct use of 9/11 images.

BROOKS JACKSON: Absolutely, in a way, again, that the candidate himself probably doesn't want to do right now, and doesn't have to do if groups like these supporting him. Now, you have to note here that so far liberal groups have been overwhelmingly on the attack with these ads. There's been very few conservative ads of the kind we've been showing here. They've had very little money behind them comparatively so far. That may even up as we proceed because conservative groups are trying the raise more money. But, so far, it's kind of a one- two punch. John Kerry is running mostly positive ads while liberal groups are busy attacking Bush with tens of millions of ads like the ones we just saw.

TERENCE SMITH: And as you said, they have greater latitude than the candidates themselves.

BROOKS JACKSON: Absolutely. They can do that and hopefully from their standpoint it's not going to back-splatter on the candidate.

TERENCE SMITH: (Laughs) Brooks Jackson, thanks very much.

BROOKS JACKSON: My pleasure, Terry.

RECAP

MARGARET WARNER: Again, the major developments of the day: Kidnappers in Iraq killed a South Korean hostage, after his government refused to cancel plans to send 3,000 more troops to Iraq. The State Department corrected its 2003 report on global terrorism, doubling the number of terror-related deaths and injuries it had originally published in April. And the Bush administration released declassified documents to bolster its claim that torture had not been authorized as an interrogation technique in Iraq and Afghanistan. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Thanks for being with us. Good night.