The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; then some details on the spy investigation at the Guantanamo detention center; today's Senate debate over the money to police and reconstruct Iraq; an update of the search for Iraq's antiquities from the U.S. Marine colonel in charge; a look at forecasting hurricanes in a debut report from our new science unit; and a conversation with Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice president, about her new children's book.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The United States Senate opened debate today on spending $87 billion, mostly in Iraq. The main focus was on some $20 billion for reconstruction. Democrats and some Republicans said Iraq should repay that money with oil revenues. A White House spokesman said the administration was listening to that argument. We'll have more on this later in the program tonight. The questions kept coming at the White House today over the leak of a CIA Operative's name. The agent is married to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. In July, he challenged the president's claims that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa. Days later, his wife was identified in a newspaper column. Today White House spokesman Scott McClellan was asked why the administration took no action then.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: It was an anonymous source in the newspaper. There are plenty of anonymous sources in news reports on a daily basis. We could spend all our time trying to track down the information from those anonymous sources, but we want to be able to focus on the people's business, and I made it very clear back there in July, too, that there was no information beyond the media reports with anonymous sources to suggest any White House involvement.

JIM LEHRER: The Justice Department is now conducting a criminal investigation in the matter. McClellan said White House staffers had started going through papers and telephone logs in response to that probe, and he indicated White House officials would agree to let staffers take polygraph tests, if asked. Two more U.S. Soldiers were killed today in Iraq. One died during an attack in Baghdad; another died in a roadside bombing just outside the main U.S. Base in Tikrit. She was the fourth American woman soldier to be killed in Iraq since the war began. In Baghdad today, protesters stormed a police station, demanding jobs. They set fire to cars and threw stones, and Iraqi police opened fire. At least one demonstrator and two officers were hurt. To the North, police in Mosul broke up a similar protest. Thousands of Iraqi students returned to school today. It marked the first time they've been in the classroom since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. U.S. troops handed out donated books and supplies, but many students went without. They're still waiting for new textbooks that delete references to Saddam. The Israeli cabinet today approved another section of a security barrier on the West Bank. We have a report narrated by Lindsey Hilsum of Independent Television News.

LINDSEY HILSUM: The barrier is cutting itself off from the Palestinians include trenches, electric sensors and watchtowers. The first 90 miles have already been built at times snaking into Palestinian territory stopping at el kana. They'll now build 12 miles inside the West Bank to shield several Jewish settlements, including Ariel. But to placate the Americans, they're not connecting the new wall with the section already built. The Israeli government says soldiers will patrol the gap. When they met today, the cabinet was mindful of America's threats to withdraw loan guarantees if they effectively seized the area around Ariel.

EHUD OLMERT, Deputy Prime Minister, Israel: Certainly it has to pass east of Ariel, but in a manner which will not antagonize the population of the territories and which will be in coordination with the agreements we have with the U.S. Government.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Here, there used to be a Palestinian olive grove; now there's the wall. Palestinian farmlands have been destroyed by the barrier, Palestinian villages cut off from each other and turned into isolated enclaves.

SAEB EREKAT: This is not a security fence as they call it. This is a wall that intends to grab more Palestinian land. This does not separate between Israelis and Palestinians. This separates between Palestinians and Palestinians.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Most Israelis say neither negotiations nor military incursions have stopped the suicide bombers. They're putting their faith in the wall.

JIM LEHRER: In Washington, a State Department spokesman said again the security barrier is a problem. He did not comment directly on today's decision by the Israeli cabinet. Also today, Israeli commandos arrested a top leader of Islamic Jihad in one West Bank town. Later, troops killed another member of the group in a separate raid. New violence erupted in Liberia's capital of Monrovia today, even as the U.N. took over peacekeeping duties. A fire fight broke out when a rebel leader attempted to visit the city. At least three people were killed. It was the worst fighting in Monrovia since August. This was the day that a do-not- call list for U.S. telemarketers was to take effect. The Federal Communications Commission said it would try to enforce that program despite federal court rulings against it. For now, the FCC can't even receive a copy of the list from the Federal Trade Commission, which originated the project. Instead, it's depending on telemarketers to acknowledge they have copies. In the California recall, independent candidate Arianna Huffington withdrew last night. She urged voters to keep Democratic Governor Gray Davis. But a new "Los Angeles Times" poll found 56 percent of likely voters favor the recall, and 40 percent now support Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor. 35 percent favor Democrat Cruz Bustamante, the current lieutenant governor. Manufacturing in the United States expanded in September for the third month in a row: That word came today from the Institute for Supply Management, a business research group. On wall street, the news helped push stocks higher. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 194 points, or 2 percent, to close at 9469. The NASDAQ rose 45 points, 2.5 percent, to close at 1832. And that's it for the news summary tonight. Now it's on to looking for spies at Guantanamo, paying for the reconstruction of Iraq, returning the antiquities of Iraq, forecasting hurricanes, and talking with Lynne Cheney.

FOCUS - GUANTAMO ARRESTS

JIM LEHRER: The investigations at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center and to Ray Suarez.

RAYSUAREZ: This week, attention has focused on the arrests of three people who worked with al-Qaida and Taliban detainees at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Thirty-one-year old Ahmed Fathy Mehalba was taken into custody Monday at Boston's Logan Airport. The Egyptian-born American was a civilian Arabic translator. Customs inspectors found 132 compact discs in his luggage. Authorities said at least one disc contained classified information.

Another translator -- Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi was arrested in July at a Navy base in Florida; he allegedly tried to pass information to Syria, including maps of the camp and messages from prisoners. And a Muslim chaplain -- Army Captain James Yee, also known as Yousef Yee -- was arrested last month. Officials said Yee also had maps of prison areas and notes about prisoner interviews. Yee has not been charged and is being held in the navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina.

The Guantanamo Bay facility --known as Camp Delta -- houses about 650 prisoners from 42 countries. Most were captured during the war in Afghanistan.

For more on the Guantanamo Bay espionage probe, we turn to Neil Lewis of the New York Times.

And Neil, welcome. What have you been able to find out about Ahmed Mehalba, the man most recently arrested?

NEIL LEWIS: Well, he was -- he had an interesting background that he had hoped at one time to be a military interrogator and underwent the training course for that at an intelligence school in Arizona and flunked out not once but twice. So how did he get to Guantanamo, even though he was rejected by the military? Well, he was a contract translator, that is, he worked for a private company that the military makes a contract with to get translators. And since September 11, the military -- and the rest of the government -- has acknowledged that it's been woefully short of qualified translators.

RAY SUAREZ: We know he was a naturalized U.S. citizen. Was he the target of an investigation or was he found almost by accident?

NEIL LEWIS: He was found completely by accident although he was not under suspicion. He was not under surveillance, which may have been the case with at least one of the other people who are under suspicion. The Customs officers at Boston's Logan Airport noticed his badge, his I.D. badge, which identified him as a contract employee translator at Guantanamo. They went through his baggage and called in an FBI counterterrorist agent. They found this, as you mentioned before, Ray, the one disk which was marked as a duplicate back-up files for music files. And it actually had on it, according to the affidavit filed in federal court, secret government documents and one other document that seems to have been classified. Mr. Mehalba denied any knowledge of it and his interaction with the agent, as told in this affidavit, is quite interesting. He also denied initially knowing a woman who was his girlfriend at the army counterintelligence school, and she was washed out because she had taken classified documents.

RAY SUAREZ: Now with the case of Captain James Yee, this is somebody who before he was arrested you actually met and interviewed, right?

NEIL LEWIS: Yes. He was a very valuable, talkative fellow at Guantanamo. Often the people there had arranged for him to be interviewed by the press. He had a very active role. One thing I would say that's in common between the translators and the chaplain is that they had a opportunity other than the military to meet in effect solo with some of the detainees, that is, Captain Yee could meet with the Muslim detainees by himself. There was usually a two-person rule that an official had to be accompanied by someone else. And the translator would be with an interrogator, of course but presumably the interrogator couldn't speak the language. Captain Yee described himself as being very dedicated to showing that Islam is a peaceful religion and that he saw his principal mission at Guantanamo as reducing tensions and misunderstandings between the inmates and the administration. He arranged for the Muslim call of prayer to be played over the loud speaker five times a day. Once I recall that when the equipment was broken, he sang it himself.

RAY SUAREZ: Now how does the American-born son of Chinese immigrants, a West Point graduate, end up so conversant in Arabic and a Muslim chaplain in the United States Army?

NEIL LEWIS: It is apparently a great puzzle. It's a great puzzle to the investigators. It's a puzzle to some of those who knew him at West Point. Further, he did not meet all the requirements for being a chaplain but they were so taken with the idea that this former West Point fellow wanted to come back into the military as a chaplain, he was certified for that. And the army and the military in general is sort of very leery about the vexing issue of choosing who should be a chaplain and who is qualified so in essence they have franchised this out to some American Islamic groups and some people in Congress, notably Senator Schumer contend that these are mostly radical Islam groups.

RAY SUAREZ: Is there a difference in military law that makes it possible for Captain Yee to be in custody and not charged with anything?

NEIL LEWIS: Yes, there is. He can be detained, as he has been, without being charged for up to 120 days. At that point the military is obliged to let him out or bring charges against him for a court martial.

RAY SUAREZ: The third man arrested is also on active duty, Ahmad Halabi. Tell us about him.

NEIL LEWIS: Well, the charges against him seem the most serious or at least I should say the most detailed. In his case, the military through a funny procedure found itself having to publicize what the charges were. And he's charged with more than 30 counts of collecting information from the inmates with the intent to bring the information to an agent of Syria. He is of Syrian heritage. He is now being held at air force base in Vandenberg, California. As I say, his is the most serious of all three so far.

One of the issues, of course, did any of these men know each other? Investigators are at present puzzled, whether they knew each other, or of course on the larger question, whether there's some wider conspiracy to infiltrate the base. But I can tell you from being there, it's highly likely that all three of them encountered each other because there are a couple of mess halls where everyone goes and people who serve at Guantanamo can choose where they go. So I'm sure they've encountered each other. It's unclear whether they knew each other in any other way.

RAY SUAREZ: Well the bases... the camp has been open for about two years now. Has it been established that they were all serving there at the same time at least?

NEIL LEWIS: At least two of them. Captain Yee was serving up until recently when he was arrested. Mr. Mehalba was on and off and would have gone back. And the dates the Air Force has given for the airmen, they all coincide. They were all there at one time together.

RAY SUAREZ: Has the military said anything about other targets of this investigation?

NEIL LEWIS: There is at least one other military man who is being kept under surveillance and has not been arrested so that would make four, if you're sort of adding them up cumulatively. Investigators are, as I say, puzzled and troubled as to this accumulation of evidence.

Now, behind all of this is the great question, whether... are these people guilty or not? Did they conspire together or is this an example of overeager investigators, which would be the kind of justification for the criticisms of civil liberties groups?

RAY SUAREZ: Ahmed Mehalba as a U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil, it seems like he could go one of two ways. There's the case of Jose Padilla who is declared an enemy combatant after being arrested at O'Hare Airport and then there's Zaccarias Moussaoui who was also arrested on U.S. soil but is going through the normal courts.

NEIL LEWIS: But if you're a standing member of the military, you are first subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So he would face a court martial, if anything.

RAY SUAREZ: Mehalba is a civilian.

NEIL LEWIS: I'm sorry I thought you said the other fellow. Mehalba is a citizen. A citizen arrested on soil here he will be prosecuted -- if at all -- in a federal court, civilian court.

RAY SUAREZ: Thanks a lot, Neil Lewis.

NEIL LEWIS: Thank you, Ray.

FOCUS - THE COST OF PEACE

JIM LEHRER: Now Kwame Holman reports on the U.S. Senate's action on the Iraq money bill.

KWAME HOLMAN: Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee followed through on the president's request, and yesterday sent the $87 billion emergency spending bill to the Senate floor, but approval came only after hours of heated debate behind closed doors as to why Iraq's reconstruction should be paid for by American taxpayers. Those arguments were aired again today. Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin:

SEN. DICK DURBIN: Though the administration and the military may have had an excellent plan for the military conquest of Iraq, they did not have a plan to rebuild that nation, they had no idea what it would cost, and they come to the American people today asking for more money than was ever imagined even six months ago by the leaders of this same administration.

KWAME HOLMAN: Montana Republican Conrad Burns:

SEN. CONRAD BURNS: Sure, it's a lot of money, but money's a tool. Money's a tool that can bring good or it can bring evil, and we have chosen to use ours in the name of good.

KWAME HOLMAN: Included in the president's $87 billion request are nearly $66 billion to pay for continued military operations both in Iraq and Afghanistan; the remaining $21 billion would be earmarked for reconstruction efforts, almost all of it to be spent in Iraq. For instance: Upgrading the electric power infrastructure, $5.7 billion; equipping Iraqi police and military personnel, $4.2 billion; upgrading water and sewer systems, $3.7 billion; improving the oil industry, $2.1 billion. But Democratic leader Tom Daschle also cited what he called substantial hidden costs.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: The American taxpayer, for example, is being asked to pick up the cost of 600 radios and telephones at a cost of $6,000 apiece; pickup trucks at $33,000 apiece; Iraqi prisoners will be incarcerated at $50,000 per year, more than twice the cost than American prisons; and Iraqi entrepreneurs will receive business training costing $10,000 per month, more than two and a half times the cost of an education at Harvard Business School.

KWAME HOLMAN: North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan, a critic as well, proposed paying for Iraq's rebuilding through loans that eventually would be repaid using Iraqi oil revenues. Dorgan called the Bush administration's plan a $21 billion grant.

SEN. BYRON DORGAN: The result would be perverse if what we constructed here was a series of grants to the tune of nearly $21 billion to the government of Iraq, and the American taxpayer would bear the burden of that $21 billion in expenditure, and then Iraq would pump its oil, sell it on the open market, and use its resources then from selling its oil to ship cash to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and, yes, Russia and France and Germany. I just don't understand how anyone thinks that is in our interests.

KWAME HOLMAN: Dorgan's loan idea has gained the support of several Republicans in recent days, but Arizona's John McCain is not one of them. He argued committing Iraq's oil reserves for repayment would undermine U.S. credibility in the region.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: We would make our immediate task of reconstructing and securing Iraq much more difficult because collateralizing Iraqi oil revenues would encourage more Iraqis to believe the message of the Baathists and terrorists who oppose us, that we are in Iraq not to help the Iraqi people build a better future, but to serve our own narrow ends at their expense. Ironically, we would also make it more difficult for American forces to leave Iraq, by handicapping Iraqis' ability to reconstruct their country and govern themselves.

KWAME HOLMAN: That's the point Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage made yesterday while answering questions before the House Appropriations Committee.

REP. JIM KOLBE: Everybody says lots of oil revenues. Why not do this as a loan instead of giving it as assistance?

RICHARD ARMITAGE: First is one that was well discussed up here; that is, when the total of debts that Iraq owes, plus reparation debts, both brought about by Saddam Hussein, there's a pretty crushing debt burden on the people of Iraq, and one I don't think we would want to add to it.

KWAME HOLMAN: And this is what Adnan Pachachi, a member of the Iraq governing council, said during a visit to the Capitol yesterday:

ADNAN PACHACHI: We hope it will be a grant, not a loan, because Iraq is already burdened with very heavy loans, and if there is going to be a change, after all the publicity given, from a grant to a loan, it will have very adverse effects, both in Iraq and in the region, I think.

KWAME HOLMAN: But on the Senate floor today, West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, one of the administration's harshest critics on Iraq, said whether it's a loan or a grant, the president's funding request is of biblical proportions.

SEN. ROBERT BYRD: $87 billion. That is $87 for every minute since Jesus Christ was born: $87 for every minute since the water was changed into wine.

KWAME HOLMAN: Byrd later suggested the Senate divide the spending bill, immediately approve the money for the military, and devote greater scrutiny to the reconstruction request. Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens did not agree.

SEN. TED STEVENS: I do believe that the plan the president has presented is one that could work. Now, I'm not here to say I know it will work. It could work.

KWAME HOLMAN: Late this afternoon, the Senate voted to keep the military and reconstruction money together in one bill. However, several Republicans endorsed Democrat Byron Dorgan's idea, and filed an amendment that would convert half of the $20 billion in reconstruction money into loans and loan guarantees. A vote on that could come tomorrow.

UPDATE -RECOVERING HISTORY

JIM LEHRER: Next, an update on the search for the lost antiquities of Iraq. Arts correspondent

Jeffrey Brown reports.

JEFFREY BROWN: In recent days, authorities in Baghdad announced the recovery of a 5,000-year-old Sumerian mask. Made of alabaster, it is known as "The Lady of Warka," one of the earliest known representations of the human face. The mask was widely considered one of the most important objects still missing after the looting of the Iraqi museum last April. Investigators have now issued a final report of their work, documenting the recovery of thousands of items. They say about 10,000 objects are still missing, including 29 major pieces considered irreplaceable.

I'm joined now by the man who has headed the investigation, Marine Reserve Colonel Mathew Bogdanos. Later this month he returns to civilian life, where he's an assistant district attorney in New York. Colonel, welcome back to the United States and back to this program.

MARINE COL. MATTHEW BOGDANOS: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

JEFFREY BROWN: As you near the end of your part of the work, give us an overview assessment of where things stand.

MARINE COL. MATTHEW BOGDANOS: Certainly, and with a nod to Mr. Churchill, we are not at the end of the investigation or even at the beginning of the end. We are perhaps, though, at the end of the beginning. The first phase is complete, and that first phase consisted of identifying primarily what was taken, and then recovering those items that we could do so locally in and around Baghdad. We're transitioning now to the next phase, which is the international component to the investigation, which will take far longer than the six months that the first phase did.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, there are some remarkable stories I've heard about how you've gotten back some of these things. Tell us, for example, about the "Lady of Warka" that I just mentioned.

MARINE COL. MATTHEW BOGDANOS: The mask itself... in many ways the manner in which it was recovered is very typical of the manner in which we recovered many items. An informant, an individual, an Iraqi, walked into the museum with a tip that he knew where antiquities were being held or hidden, without identifying the mask. Acting on that information, members of the investigation who are still in Baghdad then went to that location, conducted a reconnaissance of the location, and then conducted a raid. Initially they didn't find the mask, but they found the owner of the farm-- it's a farm in northern Baghdad-- and after interviewing the farmer, he admitted that he did in fact have an antiquity, in this case the mask, buried in the back of his farm. The investigators went behind the farm and uncovered the mask exactly where he had placed it, and it is intact and undamaged. The one thing I want to point out here as well is that the farmer indicated that this mask had changed hands many times in the last several months, and would have been out of the country already but for the publicity that the theft and the recovery investigation has been receiving. So for fear of being intercepted in transit, they kept the mask in and around Baghdad.

JEFFREY BROWN: So a lot of your work has been classic investigative type of work. You're gathering information from sources, you're conducting raids, getting back what you can.

MARINE COL. MATTHEW BOGDANOS: Yes. In many ways what I was doing and what the team was doing in Baghdad was exactly what I would do in conducting a search warrant in Manhattan, in my civilian job. The difference is, you're doing it in a combat environment, and you have to factor in the possibility that when an informant brings you information, that that informant might be leading you into an ambush.

JEFFREY BROWN: It's still a very dangerous place to work.

MARINE COL. MATTHEW BOGDANOS: It's still a very dangerous place to work, but the rewards are so worthwhile that we were willing to take the chance.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, there are some remarkable pieces that are still missing. We have some photos of a few of them. We could show them now. This is the statue.

MARINE COL. MATTHEW BOGDANOS: It's a wonderful piece, an Acadian piece, weighs about 160 kilos, and it is the base of the statue itself. That was taken during the looting period, and indeed, the individuals who took that damaged the floor, not realizing how heavy it was. It dropped to the floor, and they actually scraped the floor as they dragged it out of one of the doors.

JEFFREY BROWN: We have another one. It's the "Nubian Boy with a Lion." Can we see that one?

MARINE COL. MATTHEW BOGDANOS: Wonderful ivory. This is much smaller, a very small piece, and it is, in fact, a lion with a Nubian boy. We consider this one of the most significant pieces that is still missing.

JEFFREY BROWN: So what is going on now to recover these and other objects?

MARINE COL. MATTHEW BOGDANOS: Well, when we spoke last, we spoke about the fact that the methodology for the investigation itself is divided into three separate components. The looters, or the items that were looted, those have been the items that have been recovered locally in Baghdad through informants, through the amnesty program, through seizures and raids. Virtually all of the looted items, about 2,700 altogether, have been recovered, but what remains are the items that were taken by insiders or with insider information, and then those high-quality or high-end items, and the only way we're going to recover those is through good, classic law- enforcement techniques that cut across national borders. We have got to do this internationally or we can't be successful.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, you've created a wanted poster?

MARINE COL. MATTHEW BOGDANOS: We have.

JEFFREY BROWN: We have an image of that. Tell us about the idea behind that.

MARINE COL. MATTHEW BOGDANOS: Well, the idea behind that was a bunch of us sitting in Baghdad, talking about what we can do to educate the world, educate law-enforcement officers, to educate civilians, to educate art dealer employees throughout the world on the most important items, much like a wanted poster for a criminal. "Have you seen this person? If you've seen this person, contact the authorities." Well, we simply decided to put, instead of "person," to put the antiquities in there, and the goal is to distribute these posters throughout the international art and law- enforcement communities throughout the world in order to get people to provide us information for items they may have seen, either in transit or in their bosses' gallery.

JEFFREY BROWN: Publicity has made a real difference in this, hasn't it?

MARINE COL. MATTHEW BOGDANOS: Publicity has been what I would call, in marine terminology, a force multiplier. It has been one of our biggest assets, the fact that you and your colleagues are continuing to keep this, the looting and the recovery, in the public eye has helped us immeasurably.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, as you finish your work here, are the resources in place? Is the personnel there? Is the will there to continue the investigative work?

MARINE COL. MATTHEW BOGDANOS: You've hit on the greatest challenge we have. We live in a world of finite resources, everybody-- the UK, the U.S., Jordan, Italy, Iraq-- and in a world of finite resources, you have to make tough decisions, tough decisions based on priorities. We have received, the investigation has received enormous assistance from Scotland Yard, for example, or from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, from Jordanian officials from the Italian Carabinieri, but we need more, and what we need are agencies like Interpol to assist us, to take an active part in the investigation so that when a seizure is made anywhere, everyone knows it. If there's a seizure made in Newark, it's crucial that we immediately... the customs inspectors who make that seizure notify the originating customs officials. If it's London, then London needs to be notified immediately so they can conduct a simultaneous investigation on their end as we conduct one in the U.S. on our end, and there's no other way to conduct this investigation properly but through seamless cooperation and integration.

JEFFREY BROWN: A brief final personal question: What makes you so passionate about this? We were talking earlier about the fact that you have a master's in classical studies, so I know you've been at this for a long time as an interest. But we're talking about stone, we're talking about old clay, we're talking about objects, but you clearly have a passion for it.

MARINE COL. MATTHEW BOGDANOS: Since the age of 12, classical history has absolutely mesmerized me, more so because it is not my chosen profession, more so because I'm not smart enough or talented enough in that field to really have made that a career. I mean, we're talking about our history, our heritage, our cultural beginnings. I mean, those who do not remember the past are destined to repeat its mistakes. The past is what we have. It's what we bring with us into the future. I can't imagine a more important undertaking.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, good luck to you in your return to civilian life, and thanks again for joining us.

MARINE COL. MATTHEW BOGDANOS: Well, thank you very much, and again, thank you for having me.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: Hurricane forecasting; and Lynne Cheney on "A is for Abigail."

FOCUS - TRACKING HURRICANES

JIM LEHRER: Now, the debut of our science unit, funded by a grant from the national science foundation. Segments from this unit will air regularly, and reflect important ongoing scientific research. Tonight, Betty Ann Bowser reports on the science of hurricane forecasting.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: This is the eye of Hurricane Isabel as it moved toward the Atlantic coast last month, packing winds of over 100 miles per hour.

ERIC CHRISTENSEN, National Weather Service: That was very dark, very turbulent, rough ride right in the eye wall.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Eric Christensen is one of the meteorologists who flew through the eye of the storm.

ERIC CHRISTENSEN: That all of sudden turned into the eye, and the skies cleared and we were in sunshine with blue sky above us. And Isabel had a very beautiful eye. It had what we call "the stadium effect," where it looks like you're standing on the 50-yard line of a football field in a very large stadium, and you can see the cloud formations look like the stands, like the seating in a stadium.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: It wasn't just hurricane voyeurism. It gave scientists important information to make weather forecasts for millions of people along the Atlantic seaboard, forecasts that resulted in life- and-death decisions: When to board up houses; when to evacuate. Those forecasts were so accurate that the death toll from Isabel was low. Modern hurricane science really got started in the 1960s, with the advent of satellites that could beam pictures of the atmosphere back to earth for meteorologists to use to predict weather. Since then, there have been great advances, newer, more sophisticated satellites that are propelled into space, like NASA's shuttle, high-tech ocean buoys that can record ocean currents and conditions. Computers and airplanes are all helping the National Hurricane Center in Miami produce more accurate and more long-range forecasts.

MAX MAYFIELD, National Hurricane Center: You've got to let me know how I can help you.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: In fact, in the past ten years, hurricane center director Max Mayfield, and his colleagues, have improved their record on predicting hurricane tracks by 20 percent.

MAX MAYFIELD: This is the first year that the National Hurricane Center has issued a five-day forecast on tropical storms and hurricanes. And we issue a five-day forecast every six hours, and we've looked at the verifications already, and they're on the track on Isabel. There were actually very good. And I think the fact that we did have such a good five-day helped people have some extra time to prepare, and then as it got closer, to go ahead and make all their preparations to protect life and property.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Reconnaissance and surveillance airplane flights were crucial in making those accurate Isabel forecasts. The planes carry banks of computers able to take in data from the visual observations of the meteorologists on the plane. They also send these tubular- shaped objects, called dropsondes, into the storm.

SPOKESPERSON: Three, two, one, launch.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: They're so-named because they are literally shot and dropped out of the belly of the plane.

MAX MAYFIELD: This is released from the aircraft at what ever flight what level the plane is and then drops down to the surface and sends back pressure, temperature, humidity and wind every half a second. So the jet, the NOAA jet aircraft flying in the environment around the hurricane, will release maybe 30 of these on a typical mission.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Data from the drops are relayed by computers on board to NOAA's super computers in Maryland, where they are analyzed.

SPOKESMAN: Was the GFTL model showing intensification?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Naomi Surgi is a hurricane project leader.

NAOMI SURGI, Environmental Modeling Center: Those flights dropping those instruments in the environment of the storm, the analysis it produces then is used to forecast the future motion of the hurricane. Those flights are fundamentally important to predicting the future tracks of hurricanes.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The super computers send hurricane information down to Miami, to the National Hurricane Center where it's read by a meteorologist, like Bob Korose.

BOB KOROSE: In this case, they had 128 knots of wind, and then it tells you an item here -- 942 millibars. That's the information that the dropsonde determines by falling into the center of the storm at the surface that's the sea level pressure. And the lower the sea level pressure, the stronger the storm.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Much of the data that winds up at the hurricane center in Miami is put into numerical computer models, the newest technology making forecasts more accurate. Simply put, a numerical computer model is a mathematical expression of what's going on in the atmosphere. But they are some of the most complicated computer programs on the planet.

FRANK MARKS, Hurricane Research Division: If you think Microsoft operating systems are complicated, think about a model that's trying to represent the atmosphere globally with all these processes. You know, you've got the rain, you've got the evaporation and condensation, you've got the thermal structure, you've got land surfaces, you've got water surfaces, you've got to have all the exchange of energy, you've got to have evaporation over land, evaporation over water, it's a very complicated process. This program is very complicated. They run on the biggest, fastest computers in the world.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And it takes a scientist like Rick Knabb, in charge of science operations at the hurricane center, to explain how a mathematical model can help forecast weather.

RICHARD KNABB, National Hurricane Center: What we are looking at is a graphical representation of a grid of data in three dimensions produced by a computerized representation of the atmosphere that's run on a super computer. What looked like little nails here on the map are actually wind barbs that show you the direction from which the wind is blowing at any given location, and the more barbs you get at the end of the stick there tell you what the wind speed is.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: In the end, all this data from satellites, airplanes, and numerical computer models, goes to the meteorologist on duty at the hurricane to make a forecast. It goes out to television stations, radio outlets, and other media around the country.

CHUCK BELL: Check it out in motion here over the last couple of hours, the storm had been traveling north-northwest for quite a while...

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But even with all of the technological advances, hurricane scientists still don't know how to predict the most dangerous product of a hurricane: Its intensity.

FARNK MARKS: The reason intensity's critical is because the wind damage, the storm surge, and the waves, the run-up, are all driven by the wind, the wind strength, and that's driven by intensity. In the Isabel case, we had a very good track forecast. We knew where the storm was going almost four or five days ahead of time. But we couldn't tell you what its strength was going to be there.

MAX MAYFIELD: We still need to work on intensity forecasting. I'm not even sure we even know exactly what we need. But one thing, we think we need better observations in the core of the hurricane itself in three dimensions. We need to get that information into high resolution computer models, and then we'll have a chance of getting a better intensity forecast.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And Mayfield says until they can do that, he worries about the worst-case scenario.

MAX MAYFIELD: My worst nightmare would be people going to bed with a Category-1 hurricane and waking up the next morning to, say, a Category-4 hurricane. If people had responded to that Cat-1 and we don't catch the intensification, it can be an absolute disaster. We could have people stuck in cars and make no mistake about it. We know what will happen. There will be loss of life and there are some areas of the U.S. coastline the loss of life would bear into the hundreds, if not a few thousands.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: NOAA's computer modeling expert Surgi says the answer will come from the constantly improving data NOAA's aircraft get

NAOMI SURGI: That information is vital to be able to model future forecasts of the actual storm circulation. We're not there yet. But we're getting there, and the ability to be able to do that is really what's going to help us improve intensity forecasts.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Reporter: There is urgency in finding an answer. Climatologists say the ocean and atmospheric conditions over the next 20 years will produce powerful hurricanes with high winds and storm surges that haven't been seen in three decades. One theory to explain that projection is a one degree temperature increase in the water of the Atlantic Ocean.

FRANK MARKS: Now, what I challenge my people who came up with this signal is, "why?" Tell me why if the Atlantic on average is just one degree warmer do we get twice as many hurricanes? I mean, it just doesn't make sense to me as a scientist that a one-degree change in the temperature, which is usually warm enough for a hurricane anyway to form, would mean that there's so many more.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: What's the answer?

FRANK MARKS: Well, the answer is we've got to find out. I mean, we don't know.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Not only are scientists expecting more hurricanes, more people are moving each year to coastal areas where they hit. And with each new big storm damage figures escalate. Isabel caused more than $10 billion in destruction.

JIM LEHRER: For more on hurricane prediction, including a forum with two experts in the field, visit the online NewsHour, where additional material on all science unit segments will be available.

CONVERSATION

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight a conversation with Lynne Cheney about her new children's book "A is for Abigail," an almanac of amazing American women. It tells the story of women's contributions to American history. I talked to Mrs. Cheney about the book and her writing a few days ago.

JIM LEHRER: Mrs. Cheney, welcome.

LYNNE CHENEY: Pleasure to be here.

JIM LEHRER: "A is for Abigail, Abigail as in Abigail Adams." Why did you choose her to begin with?

LYNNE CHENEY: Because she really starts the story of the country as well as the story of the amazing transformation that women's lives have undergone during our history. When Abigail was alive, women couldn't vote. They couldn't own property in their own names. They couldn't go to college. They certainly weren't expected to have careers. Indeed, it was even thought girls shouldn't be educated, and women weren't supposed to complain about any of these things. They weren't supposed to speak in public. Now, Abigail accomplished amazing things under these circumstances. She really made John's life possible, by keeping the family farm going, deciding when to plant and when to bring in the crops. She acquired property in his name. She educated her children, including her daughter, and she also spoke out, which is a pretty good way to start. She said, "Remember the ladies."

JIM LEHRER: But she was a pretty good writer, particularly of letters to her husband when he was president. He was the second president of the United States, et cetera.

LYNNE CHENEY: The letters are such a source of historical knowledge, the letters from Abigail, and John's letters back to her, too. It's really wonderful reading.

JIM LEHRER: Now, you start with her. How many amazing women are in the book altogether? I didn't count them all.

LYNNE CHENEY: I didn't count them either.

JIM LEHRER: There are at least two or three hundred by the time you count all the names, are there not?

LYNNE CHENEY: Or even more perhaps, but they're gathered together in themes so that altogether I think it does tell, not only the story of the amazing progress women have made-- and it's really one of our great national narratives, a very positive story-- but it also talks about the accomplishments of women even in days when their rights weren't fully recognized.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. How did you go about selecting the women? What was the process?

LYNNE CHENEY: Well, you know, we read a lot. I read a lot. There's a wonderful resource called "Notable American Women" that was gathered together maybe a decade... no, it's been 25 years now since it was gathered together. In the early years of the feminist movement this compilation was put together. It's many volumes, and so I spent many a night reading through there, but of course some of the names I've known forever. One of the first stories I ever wrote was about Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor. So "B is for Elizabeth Blackwell and Others Who Wanted to Heal." I wrote that story when my kids were little, and it appeared in one of their fifth-grade volumes, and they were so impressed.

JIM LEHRER: What would... what do you want young people who read this book to take away from it? Is there a message in these stories of these women?

LYNNE CHENEY: Well, it's one of my goals, to tell the story of our nation in as positive a way as I think it deserves to be told, and so I want to show this progress-- you know, women who had none of their rights recognized to today, when I am so lucky to have little granddaughters who can look forward to being moms or they might want to be president or they might want to be dentists or veterinarian seems to be pretty universal when they're the age they are right now. But it's just such a remarkable story of what's happened in this country. So that positive tale is what I'm interested in -- also, the story of these women who truly were heroic in overcoming challenges and in expressing themselves and their talents even in long ago days when it was not thought quite right they should.

JIM LEHRER: Before you became the second lady of the land, and you were very active in politics and your own writing as an adult, you were not known as somebody who would be considered a "feminist" or somebody who was considered "politically correct." In fact, you spoke out against that in some ways, and yet your book is full of what you would call feminist attitudes, in a way, and it's also full of people from all walks of life, all minorities, et cetera. What happened?

LYNNE CHENEY: Well, I'm not sure that I've changed. I do think that something happened to the feminist movement somewhere along the line so that, you know, there's a certain political correctness about it. If you want to be a feminist, you're not supposed to be a Republican, for example. Well, I am a Republican. I happen very much to believe in telling the story of women's achievements and encouraging little girls to do everything they can to achieve the kind of greatness that the women in this book have.

JIM LEHRER: This is your second children's book, correct?

LYNNE CHENEY: It is.

JIM LEHRER: And why are you writing children's books? You've written several adult books, novels as well as non- fiction. Why children's books now?

LYNNE CHENEY: You know, I wrote for children when my own children were small. That's when I first wrote the story of Elizabeth Blackwell, and I wrote for children's publications. When you have little kids around to talk to, it just seems a natural thing to talk to them through stories, and now I have grandchildren, and so it just seems the most natural thing in the world to tell them the story of this amazing country of ours.

JIM LEHRER: Did the fact that you are now in the spotlight as the wife of the vice president have anything to do with your not writing an adult book now?

LYNNE CHENEY: I'm not sure it would have occurredto me to do the children's books if I had just gone on the course I was on. I'm at the American Enterprise Institute, where typically scholars aren't writing children's books.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

LYNNE CHENEY: But when we were traveling around the country during the 2000 campaign, one of the things that struck me is just what an astonishing diversity of landscape and people, and this is such an amazing country, and I wanted to tell that story to little kids. We also had our grandchildren on the plane much of the time, on the campaign plane with us. This may be regarded as cruel and unusual punishment, but they seemed to like it, and I wanted them to know that story better.

JIM LEHRER: Now, you're a professional, you consider yourself a professional writer, do you not?

LYNNE CHENEY: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. So you're always going to write from this point on. Are you ever going to ever write, do you think, about your life as the wife of the vice president of the United States?

LYNNE CHENEY: I might. You know, sometime. I'm also interested in talking about what it was like writing about, someday maybe, what it was like to grow up in a small town. I think...

JIM LEHRER: In Wyoming?

LYNNE CHENEY: Yes, yes. I've been, you know, going back and visiting old sites and talking with friends, and growing up in a small town in the 1940s and '50s was, I think, a remarkably privileged experience.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. When did the writing bug get you? How long have you been writing? When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

LYNNE CHENEY: Well, I started out to be an academic, and so I wrote a doctoral dissertation that is unreadable.

JIM LEHRER: What was the subject?

LYNNE CHENEY: Let's see. It was "Matthew Arnold's Possible Perfection: A Kantian Analysis of his Poetry." Do you like it?

JIM LEHRER: I think you have to work on the title, if nothing else.

LYNNE CHENEY: Well, you know, you know, I then couldn't get a job. I got my Ph.D. in the height of the Ph.D. glut, so I couldn't get a job, and I had to figure out something else to do. Having gotten a Ph.D. in English, I had some misconception that I could write. As you know I'd been doing academic writing. It's not the same thing. So I spent a lot of time figuring out how it is you write for a larger audience, a general audience, and I'm so glad that happened because I think writing is... well, it's frustrating. You know, it's hard, but at the end of the day, when you've created something, when you've made something orderly out of what were sort of chaotic thoughts in the beginning, it is true satisfaction.

JIM LEHRER: And how do you feel about this book?

LYNNE CHENEY: I love it. I just think that Robin and I have created a...

JIM LEHRER: Robin is the illustrator.

LYNNE CHENEY: Robin is the illustrator.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

LYNNE CHENEY: And grandchildren happen to approve of it very much, and I think that not only telling what these women have done, but talking about how important their parents were, and in the introduction I do that. Mothers were important. One of the tales I tell is in Zora Neale Hurston, who was a writer in the Harlem Renaissance, and she told her children to "jump at the sun." Isn't that wonderful? You know, aspire mightily. But then I also tell the story of Maria Mitchell's father. She was a famed astronomer, and she would never have become that had her father not taken her to look at the moon. So isn't that wonderful? You know, jump for the sun, look at the moon. Moms and dads have so much to do with whether children have lives of fulfillment and achievement.

JIM LEHRER: Are you going to do more of these?

LYNNE CHENEY: Robin and I have at least one more in mind. I think trilogies-- that sort of has a nice ring to it, a trilogy.

JIM LEHRER: For the record, the net proceeds of these books go to charity, is that correct?

LYNNE CHENEY: That's correct.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. All right. Well, thank you, and good luck on "A is for Abigail" and all others to come.

LYNNE CHENEY: Thank you very much.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: A correction I should have said in the news summary that California Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante is at 32 percent in the latest poll not 35. And again, the major developments of this day. The U.S. Senate opened debate on spending $87 billion, mostly in Iraq. White House officials were listening to arguments that Iraq repay part of the money. Two more U.S. Soldiers were killed in Iraq. The Israeli cabinet approved another section of a security barrier on the West Bank and the Federal Communications Commission began trying to enforce a "do not call" list for U.S. telemarketers despite court rulings against it.

And, once again, to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq. Here, in silence, are five more.

We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer, thank you and good night.