The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, a summary of what happened today, a Newsmaker interview about the latest anthrax death with CDC head Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, a battle report from Afghanistan, a battle assessment from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, a look at the plight and future of the women in Afghanistan, and a conversation with outgoing NASA administrator Daniel Goldin.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: A Connecticut woman died today after testing positive for the inhalation form of anthrax. Ottilie Lundgren was 94 years old. She had been in critical condition at a hospital near Hartford, where she'd checked in on Saturday. The regional postal facility closest to her home tested negative for anthrax. The FBI and state police are investigating. Authorities said, thus far, they had found no connections to the other anthrax cases in Washington or New York. The Taliban today vowed to defend those parts of Afghanistan still in their control. Opposition forces have them surrounded in their home base of Kandahar and in the northern city of Kunduz. The U.S. commander of the military campaign, General Tommy Franks, said the coalition would keep the pressure on until both cities fell. And Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld confirmed the U.S. was incrementally increasing its presence on the ground. Rumsfeld and President Bush both paid pre-Thanksgiving visits at U.S. military bases today. Rumsfeld called on the Special Forces troops at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. President Bush addressed more than 10,000 soldiers at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, home of the 101st Airborne Division. He expressed his gratitude to them and soldiers overseas. And he vowed Afghanistan was just the beginning of the war on terrorism.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We fight now. This great nation fights now to save ourselves and our children from living in a world of fear. We fight now because we will not permit the terrorists, these vicious and evil men, to hijack a peaceful religion and to impose their will on America and the world. We fight now and we will keep on fighting until our victory is complete. (Cheers and applause) We cannot know every turn this war will take, but I am confident of the outcome. The most difficult steps in this mission still lie ahead. Our enemies hide in sophisticated cave complexes located in some of the most mountainous and rugged territory. Unlike efforts to liberate a town or destroy Taliban equipment, success against these cells may come more slowly. But we'll prevail. Afghanistan is just the beginning on the war against terror. There are other terrorists who threaten America and our friends, and there are other nations willing to sponsor them. We will not be secure as a nation until all these threats are defeated. Across the world and across the years, we will fight these evil ones and we will win. (Cheers and applause) Every one of you is dedicated to something greater than yourself. You put your country ahead of your comfort. You live by a code, and you fight for a cause. And I'm honored to be your commander in chief. (Cheers and applause)

JIM LEHRER: Bus, auto, and train traffic were heavy today as travelers began their Thanksgiving trips. Greyhound Bus lines reported a 20% increase in advance bookings over last year. But airline travel was down from previous years. Chicago's O'Hare and Midway Airports said passenger volume was about 20% lower than last year. Passenger traffic was especially light at Washington's Reagan National Airport, which was closed for three weeks after the September 11 attack on the pentagon. It has been on a restricted schedule since reopening on October 4.

NEWSMAKER - ANTHRAX THREAT

JIM LEHRER: The anthrax story, our health correspondent Susan Dentzer begins.

SUSAN DENTZER: Early this afternoon, officials at Griffin Hospital in Derby, Connecticut, announced the death of 94-year-old Ottilie Lundgren.

PATRICK SHARMEL, President, Griffin Hospital: ...we've been treating at Griffin Hospital for inhalation anthrax has expired. Of course our condolences go to her family, her friends and neighbors who have expressed concern for her well being.

SUSAN DENTZER: Lundgren's is the fifth U.S. Death from inhalational anthrax in the past two months. Doctors who treated her said her illness bore strong similarities to the earlier cases that stemmed from bio-terrorist attacks.

DR. LYDIA BARAKAT, Griffin Hospital: The patient was admitted on Friday afternoon for upper respiratory symptoms. And within hours, her blood culture turned out to be positive for gram-positive rod, and there is few bacteria that can present like this, including bacillus anthrax, so I was called the following morning because of this positive culture. By Sunday, she started showing respiratory deterioration as far as X-ray findings and so forth, and we were able to isolate this bacteria as a bacillus species.

SUSAN DENTZER: The doctors also said that they were as puzzled as anyone over how Lundgren, who lived in nearby Oxford, Connecticut, could have contracted anthrax in this rural part of the state.

DR. HOWARD QUENTZEL, Griffin Hospital: This is the first case of anthrax that we've had here, and the first case of inhalational anthrax as far as we know.

SUSAN DENTZER: Federal health officials said today that environmental testing of Lundgren's home has begun. Meanwhile, Connecticut Governor John Rowland and other officials also ordered testing of nearby Connecticut postal facilities, and urged workers there to begin taking antibiotics.

JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill takes it from there.

GWEN IFILL: And joining me now is the director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Jeffrey Koplan.

Dr. Koplan, the mystery seems to deepen. What should we make of this latest Connecticut case? What do you make of it?

DR. JEFFREY KOPLAN: We don't know yet. We're looking to see what the possible source of exposure was, working with the Connecticut state health department, and at the moment we're not taking for granted any conclusion on that.

GWEN IFILL: Is it reasonable to assume that mail could be the source, since this is a woman who apparently didn't leave her house very often, didn't travel to any of the circle we've seen this kind of infection turn up in before?

DR. JEFFREY KOPLAN: Well, as we've seen earlier in this bio-terrorism event that we've been having for several weeks, mail has been a vehicle for infection and exposure, and that is high on our list of concerns in this particular case.

GWEN IFILL: So this woman was 94 years old. When she first was admitted to the hospital they thought she had pneumonia. Is her age a factor in either the diagnosis of what she was suffering from or the fact that she succumbed?

DR. JEFFREY KOPLAN: I think the age is certainly a factor in her clinical course and the fact that she's passed away. Certainly her immunologic defenses, her resistance to infection is diminished at this age.

GWEN IFILL: Does that also mean that it would not take as much anthrax, for instance, to kill someone who had a weakened immune system like an older person might?

DR. JEFFREY KOPLAN: We don't know that. I mean, it's a reasonable hypothesis, but it's not something that we have data on.

GWEN IFILL: What do we know now after all these cases that we didn't know say two months ago when we first started hearing about anthrax or a month ago?

DR. JEFFREY KOPLAN: Well, many things. We know that recent cases of anthrax that we've been looking at have been criminally caused, purposeful by a terrorist threat. We know that there's been a mixture of both cutaneous and inhalation cases, and that the inhalation cases can present in ways that weren't typical, that weren't typical for the scientific literature that we had looked at earlier. We know that the organisms that are being used, the spores that are being used are such that they can pose a threat even when they're sealed in an envelope. We found that certain occupations are particularly at risk and in this case it's been directed almost occupationally by people in the media, at people in government, and possibly unintentional victims have been postal workers.

GWEN IFILL: And perhaps this woman in Connecticut and another mystery case, the woman in New York, could have been unintentional victims as well. What do we know with the woman in New York, the other mystery case?

DR. JEFFREY KOPLAN: We have yet to be able to identify a source of exposure for the woman in New York, despite very intensive study by a number of investigators and repeated looking. We're not done with that investigation; the New York City Health Department as well as our CDC staff are still working hard at trying to identify a possible cause, a place and time and basis for exposure for that woman, but we don't have the information yet.

GWEN IFILL: When you say very intensive searching looking for the source of this, how do scientists begin to sort out this kind of a puzzle?

DR. JEFFREY KOPLAN: Well, for one, accept all the possible causes. We don't assume that because something happens one way last time that it's the same this time. We bring in a range of different scientists, people with expertise in infectious diseases, laboratory work, epidemiology, environmental issues. And we methodically go through how a person has spent their days in the period of time before they began to develop symptoms. So, for example, in the woman in Connecticut, our teams, the public health teams in general will be looking at a day by day recall of what went on, where she was, what she did, what came into the house, and what might have been a source of exposure to anthrax spores.

GWEN IFILL: Now here in Washington on Friday they discovered what they had long suspected, which was a second anthrax laced letter, addressed to a Senator on Capitol Hill, in a bag full of other letters that had been quarantined I guess since the first one was discovered. Does the discovery of that second letter to Senator Leahy help the investigation of the source of the other, the Daschle letter, the Brokaw letter, the other letters we know about?

DR. JEFFREY KOPLAN: Well, I think it will provide both law enforcement in particular with potentially useful information. From our end and the public health investigation, it may have some benefits, but it is probably less useful than to the criminal investigation.

GWEN IFILL: Apparently there was quite a great quantity of an spores in this letter and surrounding area. Does that affect the health investigation at all? Does that help it?

DR. JEFFREY KOPLAN: Only in the sense that it's good to have confirmation that it is biologically the same material that we've seen in these other parts of this criminal investigation.

GWEN IFILL: As you continue your investigation about the source of this for health purposes, does it help you at all to be able to determine whether this is a domestic investigation, a domestic source that you're looking for or a foreign source?

DR. JEFFREY KOPLAN: It doesn't really help that much in the public health investigation part of it. Whatever the source is or whatever the type of bacteria is, it is a lethal bacteria. We know that from the first case, this is a serious organism. It's killed people. It continues to kill people, as we saw today. And its mechanism of causing disease and its epidemiology, which we're studying, probably don't make much difference as to where its origin is. That's of course crucial to the criminal investigation. But in terms of our ability to investigate these cases from a public health end, its origin is less important.

GWEN IFILL: Today seeing a woman who died, who lived in a home by herself, was fairly elderly, who was not in any of the at risk professions that you identified earlier, does that mean we should be expanding our definition of who is at risk?

DR. JEFFREY KOPLAN: Well, we don't know yet, because, for one, we've got some intensive study to do as to what was the exposure here, and it may turn out that the nature of the exposure is similar to ones we've seen before, it may be different, this may give us a real clue as to, in some way, as to how these crimes have been committed. By the same token, we may end up as we did in New York with very little information to go on. So there's a potential here for some more information, but there's also the potential for a dead end and more frustration in knowing how this woman was specifically exposed.

GWEN IFILL: Does the CDC -- after all of these cases now entered into the annals one after the other -- does it feel more confident now that it has a handle on what would happen with new outbreaks than it did last time?

DR. JEFFREY KOPLAN: Well, we learn a little bit with each one of these, there's no question about it. And our folks become more experienced and we can become more efficient and more adept -- laboratory work, the epidemiology, et cetera. But, nevertheless, ultimately, the person has got to be apprehended who's doing this. We can get more efficient and more adept, but we're still reacting to a purposeful criminal act.

GWEN IFILL: Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, thank you for joining us.

DR. JEFFREY KOPLAN: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a report from Afghanistan, words from Secretary Rumsfeld, the women of Afghanistan, and Goldin of NASA.

UPDATE - UPDATE - AFGHAN BATTLES

JIM LEHRER: Now, an update on the Afghan campaign. We start with a report from Paul Davies of Independent Television News.

PAUL DAVIES: Surrounded by heavily armed fighters, the Taliban spokesman refused to contemplate surrender as he addressed foreign journalists in one of the few provinces still under Taliban control. "Kandahar may be surrounded by opposing forces," he said, "but the Taliban would fight on in their spiritual stronghold."

SYED TAYYAB AGHA, Taliban Spokesman: We will defend our nation and we will defend our religion until we are alive, and we will not give any chance to anybody to interrupt... Or to disturb our Islamic rule in Kandahar and other surrounding provinces.

PAUL DAVIES: Asked about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, he claimed the Taliban had lost contact with their guest and ally.

SYED TAYYAB AGHA: We have no idea where he is. Because you see that our areas, they are limited now to three or four provinces. So now we don't know where he is. So there is no relation right now. There is no communication.

PAUL DAVIES: In the north of the country, the bitter struggle for Kunduz continued today with Northern Alliance forces laying siege to the town where several hundred Taliban fighters and 30,000 civilians are trapped. It's because of increasing concern for the civilian population that America has offered to temporarily halt the bombing to allow surrender talks to take place. The commander of American forces in Afghanistan, General Tommy Franks, says the Taliban can choose between surrender or military defeat.

GEN. TOMMY FRANKS: I don't know how long that battle will continue, but at the end of the day, we will prevail in the vicinity of Kunduz.

PAUL DAVIES: Britain's Foreign Secretary says the international coalition is now close to achieving the targets it set before launching military action in Afghanistan.

JACK STRAW, Foreign Secretary, United Kingdom: We can see that from the fact that the Taliban are fighting for their survival, but only in a limited number of places in Afghanistan. The al-Qaida organization had largely been broken up, and what remains of them are on the run.

PAUL DAVIES: The British government believes with the swift removal of the Taliban, the first step has been taken towards the stable representative government, replacing gun law in cities like Herat here, where people are starting to get used to life without their Taliban rulers. A priority now is getting sufficient aid into the country to help a vulnerable civilian population through the winter. And although that process has started, its difficulties and dangers were underlined today, when a UN aid convoy was hijacked by unknown gunmen near Kandahar.

JIM LEHRER: Back in this country, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld described the immediate goals of the Afghan campaign. He talked with reporters on his plane on the way to Fort Bragg. Here's some of what he said:

DONALD RUMSFELD: What's going on is that we continue to work toward our three goals of dealing with the al-Qaida completely, dealing with the leadership of Taliban, and seeing that Afghanistan is not a haven for terrorists. Now, the way you have to do that, obviously, is to pursue those individuals and organizations and forces wherever they are in that country. They're in a couple of enclaves right now, large enclaves, in Kunduz and in Kandahar.

REPORTER: Mr. Secretary, what about the negotiations for Kunduz? What are your thoughts about that?

DONALD RUMSFELD: My thoughts are very simple about negotiations anywhere in the country, and that is that the people either surrender or they ought to be fought. And the Northern Alliance forces are fighting them. And until they surrender, I suspect they will fight them.

REPORTER: There are increasing reports there that on the ground is pretty chaotic and that these different warlords are kind of setting up territory and that they're acting autonomously of any kind of united effort. Is that a concern now, especially when you hear the Northern Alliance people saying that they don't want any foreign troops on the ground at all?

DONALD RUMSFELD: The question is, is it chaotic? And my answer is, no, it's not chaotic. In fact, it's really amazingly orderly. I suspect there has not been a change of power in that country in decades that has been as orderly and with the very limited loss of life. What we've seen is a great many Taliban changing sides. We've seen a number of other Taliban and al-Qaida fleeing. We've seen a few very serious battles, some of which are still taking place. And then once the battles are over, there, to be sure, has seen some... At least reports that Taliban killed people as they left and looted as they left various cities, and that they have prevented some... That the al-Qaida has prevented some Taliban from surrendering, in some cases killing them. Now, in terms of anything else going on, for example in Mazar-e Sharif, it's orderly at the present time. The same thing's true in Kabul, to my information. Most of the other towns that have changed hands are quite orderly and people are behaving in a reasonably responsible way.

REPORTER: The Pentagon people like to talk about centers of gravity, hitting centers of gravity. What was the center of gravity that you think gave us a military hit that sort of changed the direction of this campaign? What was the key?

DONALD RUMSFELD: That's a tough question, and I'm not sure we'll know with any precision for months, when people can be interviewed and talked to. I think one of the critical, to use a different phrase, I think one of the critical aspects of this, thus far-- and it is far from over, let there be no doubt; I mean, this has got a good distance to run-- but one of the critical elements is the fact that the Taliban are so repressive, and that there was in the Afghan population a distaste for the repressiveness of the Taliban and the al-Qaida. I think, second, among the Afghan people there was a dislike for the foreigners. That is to say, the al-Qaida and the... Whether it's Pakistanis or Middle Easterners or Chinese or Chechens, whoever comprise the cluster of foreign elements that's been really running that country in a major sense...I think there was a distaste for those people and a preference that they not be there. So...

REPORTER: And how did this military campaign take advantage of those things?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, at that... I think one thing the United States has had and has going for us is that it is very clear we do not intend to occupy Afghanistan. We have no interest in that real estate at all. We want the Afghan people to have that country, and that aspect of it, it seems to me, coupled with the humanitarian effort, the willingness to work with the various elements in the country, even though they don't work with each other, the single-mindedness of... on the part of the United States to deal with the al-Qaida and to replace the Taliban, provided a lot of incentives for the forces to take steps to oppose Taliban and al-Qaida. You couple that with very effective air support, because of the folks we've had on the ground, providing that improved targeting, and then couple that with the fact that the Afghan people generally want their lives improved-- they're starving, they've been repressed, and they want those folks out of there-- it seems to me that combination is what's created the advances that have occurred thus far.

JIM LEHRER: In an interview with CBS News released today, Rumsfeld said he would prefer that Osama bin Laden be killed rather than captured alive. But he said the U.S. might not have much choice in the outcome.

FOCUS - WOMEN & POWER

JIM LEHRER: Now, another part of the Afghan story: The women of Afghanistan. Margaret Warner reports.

MARGARET WARNER: When the Northern Alliance took Kabul last week, a great many local men shaved their Taliban-enforced beards. Some, though not nearly as many women, shed their head-to-foot, Taliban-enforced burqas. Within days, the Bush Administration began a campaign to remind the world of the Taliban regime's oppression of women, and to call for a change.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The Taliban is the most repressive, backward group of people we have seen on the face of the earth in a long period of time, including.... (Applause) ...And particularly how they treat women. (Applause)

MARGARET WARNER: When the Taliban came to power in 1996, they imposed tight controls on what women could do, justifying the restrictions under what they said was a strict interpretation of Islamic religious laws. Women were required to cover themselves completely in public. They could not leave the house unaccompanied, they couldn't speak to men-- except relatives, and most of them were banned from working. Widows, including the 50,000 who'd lost their husbands during the country's wars, had to beg in the streets to provide for their families. Girls older than eight were no longer allowed to go to school, and all the women's universities were shut down. And for women caught breaking the rules, there were beatings and sometimes executions.

WOMAN (Translated): Under the Taliban we were abused, restricted to our homes. Several times when I went out, I was beaten by the Taliban.

MARGARET WARNER: All of this was a far cry from the life women, or at least urban women, led in Afghanistan in the 1960s and '70s. According to a State Department report released last weekend, in 1977, women made up more than 15% of Afghanistan's highest legislative body. By the early 1990s, women were 70% of Afghanistan's schoolteachers, half of its government workers, half of its university students, and 40% of its doctors. First Lady Laura Bush formally launched the new U.S. campaign when she delivered the weekly presidential radio address last Saturday.

LAURA BUSH: Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment. Yet the terrorists who helped rule that country now plot and plan in many countries, and they must be stopped. The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.

MARGARET WARNER: On Monday, Secretary of State Powell held a meeting with Afghan and Muslim women to talk about ensuring a role for women in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

COLIN POWELL: President Bush and this entire administration cannot imagine a stable post-Taliban Afghanistan without the involvement of women in all aspects of the humanitarian, reconstruction, and development efforts that will be undertaken. (Applause) The recovery of Afghanistan must entail the restoration of the rights of Afghan women. Indeed, it will not be possible without them. The rights of the women of Afghanistan will not be negotiable. (Applause)

MARGARET WARNER: In Afghanistan, some women have gone back to work. Female staffers returned to this medical center in Kabul when it reopened over the weekend. And when state-run Afghan Radio and TV returned to the air, there were women hosting some of the broadcasts. But gaining a political voice may be harder. Hundreds of women assembled in Kabul yesterday to demonstrate for education for their daughters, and political power for themselves.

WOMAN (Translated): We're here to insist we get our rights and our liberties.

MARGARET WARNER: But their march was cut short by Northern Alliance security forces. Speaking to troops at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, today, President Bush urged opposition leaders to include women in forming a post-Taliban government. The UN is sponsoring talks among them in Germany next week.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The Afghan people deserve a just and stable government, and we will work with the United Nations to help them build it. Our diplomats in the region, in Europe, in New York, and in Washington are in communications with all parties. We're urging them to move quickly toward a government that is broadly based, multi-ethnic, and protects the rights and dignity of all Afghan citizens, including women.

MARGARET WARNER: The last time opposition leaders held such a meeting-- in Pakistan, last month-- there wasn't a woman in the room.

MARGARET WARNER: For more on the prospects for women in Afghanistan, we're joined by: Rina Amiri, a senior research associate at the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard University's Kennedy School. She left Afghanistan in 1973. Nafissa Mahmood Ghorwal, head of the International Federation of Afghan Women. She also produces a weekly public TV show in Fairfax, Virginia, for Afghan immigrants. She left Afghanistan in 1975. Azar Nafisi, visiting scholar at the Sais Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University. A former professor in Iran, she's written widely on cultural conflicts in parts of the Islamic world. And Tahmeena Faryal, a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, or RAWA. RAWA has helped women in Afghanistan operate secret schools for girls and other forbidden activities. She asked us to obscure her face for security reasons. Welcome to you all.

Miss Faryal, beginning with you, tell us about, based on your work or RAWA's work inside Afghanistan, how have women coped, the women who have remained there, coped with life under the Taliban?

TAHMEENA FARYAL, RAWA: Well, the point that I want to make clear is the tragedy, the real tragedy for the women of Afghanistan begin in fact in 1992, when the other fundamentalists known as the Jihadists took power, and obviously the situation got worse when Taliban took the power. Before the Taliban also there were a lot of restrictions on women. But they were not official restrictions. But there were a lot of other cases of atrocities towards women, such as rape, forced marriages, or women's abduction -- besides the other atrocities that those different warlords or fundamentalists committed to humanity. But Taliban made all those restrictions officially on women. But it never means that there was never any resistance by the women in Afghanistan. Women themselves conducted, as individuals, they conducted secret home-based classes in different parts in Afghanistan, and the work of RAWA is very visible in a mobilized form of resistance, which was not only after the other Taliban or after the other fundamentalists, RAWA - before the Soviet invasion - with its many different projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me just interrupt you there. What about the women who always had worked, couldn't work any more, was there a way to resist that, or did a lot of those women leave?

TAHMEENA FARYAL: Well, after the fundamentalists, obviously the migration started with the Soviet invasion, but after the fundamentalists, a lot of Afghan population had to leave the country. Most of them were women because they did not feel safe to stay in Afghanistan longer. And we had thousands and hundreds of women, some of them professional, who had to go to beggary or prostitution as the only way to survive -- or just to experience a gradual death or see their children dying in front of their eyes or commit suicide. These have been the only options for most of the women who have lost their jobs and who did not have any male breadwinner in the family.

MARGARET WARNER: Rina Amiri, explain for us and for western viewers why women were so oppressed under the Taliban regime.

RINA AMIRI, Harvard University: Well, there were several different reasons. As my colleague said, the women were under threat of there was raping, there were significant threats, and violations against women's human rights.

MARGARET WARNER: Pre-Taliban?

RINA AMIRI: Pre-Taliban. So when Taliban came in, they claimed they were going to protect women and in fact were able to come into Afghanistan and be accepted because they promised that they would create safety for Afghan women. In addition, I think the fact that there is so much instability allowed a force that claimed they had some form of legitimacy in terms of religion to come into Afghanistan.

MARGARET WARNER: But Ms. Ghorwrwal, why were the Taliban, why did they want to be this repressive toward women? I mean, explain that.

NAFISSA MAHMOOD GHORWRWAL, International Federation of Afghan Women: I cannot explain that. That's, I think Taliban would be the better group to explain, why did they want to oppress women. Why they came, Islam came to earth or was introduced to the people as protector of women, in fact, at that time. And to see this oppression on women during the history, it's amazing. I think it's nothing but less knowledge about Islam.

MARGARET WARNER: Professor Nafisi?

AZAR NAFISI, Johns Hopkins University: I think it's the issue of democracy, in fact, and --

MARGARET WARNER: Explain what it was within the Taliban that led to this.

AZAR NAFISI: Well, I think with Taliban they used religion as an ideology, it was an issue of power, and an issue that went against the democratic and struggles of Afghan people for modernity. And women become focal. If you notice the right for political and social participation, the right of individuals, the right to freedom of worship, all of these are in a very central way related to women. By oppressing women, they would be able to implement their power and their ideology. I think that is the central question.

MARGARET WARNER: Miss Amiri, would you agree that oppressing women was a way of holding back modernity?

RINA AMIRI: I absolutely agree. If you look back in Afghan history, women have always been used as symbols between the traditionalists and the modernists when they try to define their place in society and their leadership. I believe the Taliban - they did not have much ideology, but they were trying to create some sort of image for themselves vis- -vis the Muslim world as well as the western world and used women to create that image of themselves.

MARGARET WARNER: So Miss Faryal, how would you rate the prospects for change in this under a new post-Taliban government?

TAHMEENA FARYAL: Well, it has been struggling for years for a democratic government in Afghanistan, and we believe that only a democratic government can be the answer for a stable and peaceful Afghanistan, where people can have the rights as human beings and women can have the rights as human beings and as women. We believe that people in Afghanistan need democracy as people in any other nation in the world. But unfortunately if, right now we see that the Northern Alliance has once again included in the future government of Afghanistan, and one there also fundamentalists -- what they proved in 1996, they are misogynous, and we think that with their involvement we cannot be hopeful for a bright future for the people in Afghanistan in general and women in particular.

MARGARET WARNER: How do you see it, Miss Ghorwrwal?

NAFISSA MAHMOOD GHORWRWAL: I see the same link. If there's not a democratic solution, if women and men are not given equal right to participate in the free election, and right to vote, nothing will change in this country, because if the Northern Alliance claim that we are here instead of the Taliban, they haven't done that much themselves to begin with, when they had the power to rule the country. We were, everybody was witnessing their time of ruling the country. They issued so many decrees. One of them was, the women should not be wearing white socks because it attracts attention.

MARGARET WARNER: This is pre-Taliban - the same people in the Northern Alliance?

NAFISSA MAHMOOD GHORWRWAL: That is correct. The Islamic state of Afghanistan so-called. And the other decree was women should not wear high heels because when they are walking the sound of their shoes will attract attention. And the other big example of it was they denied the women of Afghanistan to participate in international women's conference in Beijing in 1996, and because they were requiring, required for the women of Afghanistan to take one of the close relatives like husband or brother or father with them to accompany them.

MARGARET WARNER: Professor, do you think this is something that the West can -- I mean do you think it makes a difference now that the United States and Europe is calling on the opposition leaders to change their tune this way? Or could that incite a backlash?

AZAR NAFISI: Well, you know, I think that any real change should come from within a society, and it would depend upon the people and the forces who are active within the Afghan society to bring about change. But I think that the international world is involved. Our world today is a portable world. I mean, the repression in streets of Kabul had its resonance in the streets of New York and Washington and vice versa. So I think that the international community by choosing and supporting those who really believe in democracy, would sort of, I mean, this is a question of accountability. We all are implicated in this tragic story, and it is about time to think that our enemy's enemies are not necessarily our friends. Our true friends are the democratic forces.

MARGARET WARNER: Rina Amiri, Secretary Powell has said several times that he believes there are many women Afghan women who want to participate, and yet there has been definitely a brain drain of women from Afghanistan, predating the Taliban era. Where did all those women go? How many would go back, would you go back?

RINA AMIRI: I believe that the majority of Afghan women who are activists in this country would go back. We've been working for several years and highlighting the situation of Afghan women, and have been invested in making a change. Now is that time for all of us. And every Afghan woman that I talk to who is mobilized in the last several years is ready to go back and make the changes that need to happen. But we also have to bear in mind that we have distinct roles that we can play. I look to the women in Afghanistan and in Pakistan in particular to play the leadership roles. The role of Afghan women in the Diaspora in the West and in Europe and the United States is providing the tools, the resources and the support to strengthen the women in Afghanistan right now.

MARGARET WARNER: Miss Faryal, you're working with those women, you in particular are working in the refugee camps along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Are the women there ready to go back? What do they want to go back to?

TAHMEENA FARYAL: Well, obviously the refugees in Pakistan as well as most of the refugees in Iran, definitely want to go back to Afghanistan. But they want to go back to a democratic country, not in a country under the domination of the fundamentalists. Most of the refugees in Afghanistan and Iran did not go back after the Soviets left Afghanistan, because the fundamentalists regime seized the power. And although some people went back to Afghanistan, but they had to return back to Pakistan, because they found the situation more difficult, more scary and dangerous and more restrictive for women, that they preferred the very difficult life and conditions in refugee camps than living under such a brutal and misogynous fundamentalist regime in Afghanistan.

MARGARET WARNER: Miss Ghorwrwal, what do you see as the prospects for a lot of women going back?

NAFISSA MAHMOOD GHORWRWAL: I think there are a lot of women in Afghanistan suffering and thousands and hundreds of them outside Afghanistan just suffering as well. Just by hearing and looking at what's going on in Afghanistan, there is a tremendous feeling of going back and serving the country the way that they supposed to be. And if the opportunity exists there and if there is support, the international community supports them, and first of all when they are going what are we going to offer them? There's nothing left in that country. There's no economical stability in that country, it has no economy -- economical basis in Afghanistan. Everything is destroyed. There is no social life. There is no job for them, for nobody, for men or women of Afghanistan. To me the women and men of Afghanistan -- all of them are suffering right now.

MARGARET WARNER: Rina Amiri, I know you're not on the ground there, but explain either when we look at the pictures of Kabul being at least liberated from the Taliban, a great many women didn't take off their burqas, in fact in that video you couldn't see it, but of the demonstration they had yesterday for political power, there were women in the demonstration who were still covered. How do you explain that?

RINA AMIRI: I think there's still a lot of fear, that's one reason. In the West there has been an equation of the Taliban as the oppressors and the Northern Alliance as the liberators. Back in Afghanistan, people see that the lines between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance are much more blurred. The Northern Alliance does not necessarily have a better, significantly better human right record than the Taliban, and I think there is a lot of fear. We've seen reason for that fear yesterday and today in Afghanistan. In addition, there are some women who will continue to wear the burqa because they believe that that is what Islam expects of them. So you will see different expectations, different practices in Afghanistan; you will see that ten years from now. But I think that overwhelmingly what you still see in the streets of Afghanistan is fear, and a concern for what is to come, because, as my colleague said, the situation is not secure right now, and any day the situation could turn and become devastating again for women. We must not forget that.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, Miss Amiri and the other three, thank you all very much.

CONVERSATION

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, the end of NASA's Goldin era. Spencer Michels begins.

SPENCER MICHELS: In ten years as head of NASA, Daniel Goldin served as engineer, administrator, salesman, and, most visibly, dreamer about the future to anyone who'd listen.

DANIEL GOLDIN: And maybe somebody in this room will be the first person to set foot on Mars, because you're the right age.

SPENCER MICHELS: NASA was a troubled agency when the first Bush Administration hired Goldin in 1992. Some said it had no mission. Its biggest project, the space station, was facing cancellation. Goldin came aboard as a hard- charging, abrasive manager. He made drastic cuts in the workforce, and pushed those who remained toward more risk- taking, but he got results. Before he came to NASA, scientists had spent years and billions of dollars on a few huge spacecraft carrying multiple scientific missions. Goldin commissioned smaller missions, but more of them. His motto: "Faster, better, cheaper."

DANIEL GOLDIN: Design a little, build a little, fly a little, and crash a little-- it's going to be acceptable.

SPENCER MICHELS: And crash some of them did. Goldin's philosophy yielded successes, such as 1997 Mars Pathfinder that explored the Martian surface with a miniature ground vehicle. But in 1999 there were two highly publicized losses of other Mars vehicles: The Polar Lander and the Climate Orbiter. Outside investigators later said the Polar Lander's engineering was compromised by its low budget. Goldin accepted his share of the blame.

DANIEL GOLDIN: I pushed too hard, and in doing so stretched the system too thin.

SPENCER MICHELS: Goldin persevered. He fought congressional efforts to cut NASA's budget. He scored a success with the repair in orbit of the Hubble space telescope. Under his direction, NASA turned the operations of the space shuttle over to a private contractor. Studies said cuts in the shuttle work force had eroded safety margins; in response, NASA hired additional workers. But Goldin's most visible and expensive legacy is probably the space station. He forced a redesign of the long-postponed project, convinced a skeptical Congress to continue funding it, and brought Russia in as a partner. Goldin's successor will have to deal with an outside task force, which recently said the station's budget isn't credible and called for major changes in how the station is managed.

JIM LEHRER: Ray Suarez spoke to Daniel Goldin earlier today.

RAY SUAREZ: Dan Goldin, you came into an agency that was still laboring in the shadows of the "Challenger" disaster. Now that you leave, how would you describe the last ten years?

DANIEL GOLDIN, Former NASA Administrator: Oh, it's been fabulous. The people at NASA aren't afraid of failure. They're dreaming. The space frontier is tough, it is sometimes overwhelming, and if you're afraid and you set mediocre goals, you always have success, and you keep the critics at bay. You want to keep the critics really on edge, you want to keep them coming after you, because it is the American spirit that pushes forward, and I think the people at NASA have done a fabulous job.

RAY SUAREZ: You know, in the profiles that have been written about you upon your departure, the ideas that keep popping up are "visionary" and "cheapskate," which don't often live in the same package. Can you live with it?

DANIEL GOLDIN: Absolutely. NASA in the decade before I came had a budget that doubled. People were sitting at the campfires, feasting. The issue became, how do we increase the capacity at the ten campfires around the country, ten centers? The issue is, how do you provide the American people hope and inspiration at the lowest cost? We took $40 billion out of the planned budget from fiscal '93 till the day I walked out the door, tripled the number of spacecraft, one-third the cost, 40% less time, and instead of having a few large ones, we now have 60 spacecraft under development right now. It changes everything. And it is not bad, because when people have too much, they say, "What's the problem?" When people have to live with less, it gets their hearts and mind focused. You can be a visionary and use prospective technology, not be afraid of things and use retrospective technology. It's an oxymoron: Vision and low cost go together.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, the number of spacecraft may be large, but are they doing the same kind of big things that we were looking forward to doing ten years ago?

DANIEL GOLDIN: Even more. Even more! And the beauty of it is, you don't have to wait a decade for the last ship to leave port. If something goes wrong, we can fix it. You know, in that video we saw before, we lost two spacecraft on Mars in '99. There were some very significant navigation errors that we didn't realize. Within two years-- we just orbited Mars last month-- we improved the navigation error by a factor of 300. We cut it by a factor of 300. So when you build things in small pieces, you could react and adapt and react and adapt. So you design failure into the system. Without failure you don't learn.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, you brought a lot of excitement to your job, and you were clearly fired up by the idea of the United States continuing to work in space. Yet NASA has twice as many engineers over 60 than under 30. Why is that?

DANIEL GOLDIN: In the period of the most productive time of our economy, enrollment in engineering and science has gone down over 25%. I was just with the Council of Scientific Society presidents on Monday. People in America are walking away from Science and Math and Technology, yet it is the fuel in the furnace of our economy. It's hard to explain. But you know what? We're going to reignite. We're going to come back. You know, don't get me wrong, we need lawyers, we need accountants, but in the limits, we can't do the books for the world, and we can't do legal battles for the world, and we just can't have people managing people. Weneed value-added base. There is a technological tsunami that's going to be hitting us in the next five or ten years that's going to change everything. So for our young people who don't go into Math and Science and Technology, where's the future of the country? And this is where the battlefield for the hopes and dreams of America is going to be.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, we just saw you a few moments ago telling young people that they could be the first person on Mars. Given the sort of almost out-of- fashion nature of manned space travel, or human...

DANIEL GOLDIN: I'm glad you said "human."

RAY SUAREZ: Is that likely, and given the expense, in this faster, better, but cheaper era?

DANIEL GOLDIN: Mark my words: In no less than ten and no more than 20 years, we're going to see a spacecraft land on Mars, an astronaut's going to get out, and she is going to set her foot in the red dust of Mars. It's going to happen. It'll be some combination -- maybe not just the government. There may be some opportunity to go in the private sector. The American people have a very big load ahead of them, especially with this war on terrorism. There are some ideas, and maybe you'll be hearing from me in the future about them. We are going to Mars. My life won't be complete until that event happens. The first job I had when I came to NASA in 1962 was to work on a mission to go to Mars. We were thinking about 1979, ten years after we landed on the Moon. In '67 I left NASA because I knew it wasn't going to happen. I knew Apollo was going to end. I came back in '92 hoping it would happen, and we made a great start. We have a reconnaissance program with robots at Mars over the next decade that'll help us really understand the fundamentals. We will land on Mars with an astronaut in the next ten to twenty years.

RAY SUAREZ: And are you heading into that commercial space world now?

DANIEL GOLDIN: I'm heading into the commercial world, and I'm also going to head into the policy world. I am very, very concerned about where our society is going. If you take a look, the enrollment in science and engineering is going down. It's going down even faster for minority Americans and women. They make up such a small fraction of the workforce. If our economy is to grow over the next decade, we're going to have to have two million additional scientists and engineers; yet if you take a look at the statistics, it isn't going to happen. White males are disproportionately represented. If we could just bring parity to how America is made up, we will solve this problem. Every American needs to worry about this. Nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology: It's going to have revolutions that's going to change everything. And if you look back some decades, the threshold for entering new markets was measured in billions; now you get a bunch of smart kids and some tens of thousands of dollars. So the threshold is not going to protect American markets that want to make small, evolutionary changes. We've got to prepare our society for the next decade because that's where the action's going to be.

RAY SUAREZ: Dan Goldin, good luck, and thanks for coming by.

DANIEL GOLDIN: Oh, it's been my honor. This is a wonderful day, and I'd like to end by saying I went to have a meal in a Chinese restaurant and my fortune cookie said the following: "You are full of hopes about the future." That's how I entered into this job, and that's how I'm leaving.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of today. A 94-year-old Connecticut woman has died of inhalation anthrax. Opposition forces continued their siege of Kunduz and Kandahar. And President Bush said the Afghan campaign was just the beginning of the war against terror. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. Have a pleasant Thanksgiving holiday. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.