The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening on this President's Day Holiday. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, our summary of the news; a look at the violent uprising in Haiti; a report on the National Institutes of Health drive to change medical research; the last debate, and the latest news on tomorrow's Democratic primary in Wisconsin; and a conversation with the author of "The Man Who Walked Between the Towers," an award-winning children's book.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Roadside bombs killed two U.S. soldiers in Iraq today, one in Baqouba, the other in Baghdad. Elsewhere in the capital, a grenade explosion killed an Iraqi child playing near a school. Also today, a U.S. Army general said Iraqis, not foreign fighters, were most likely behind attacks Saturday on security compounds in Falluja; 20 people died in the assaults. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt spoke today at a briefing in Baghdad.

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT: There were initial reports that some of the people either wounded or killed were of foreign nationality. I think that probably was some of the initial reports that came in. I can tell you that the reports we've gotten from the 82nd indicates that they were all Iraqi citizens. That may turn out not to be the case after the investigation but right now the sensing of the commander on the ground was that these were Iraqi citizens.

JIM LEHRER: Kimmitt said investigators believed the raid may have been staged to free four Iraqis being held in connection with an earlier bus attack. Dozens of prisoners were freed during the battle. In Haiti today, former paramilitary troops were sighted among insurgents trying to oust President Aristide. Local residents told reporters they'd seen two well-known exiled leaders in the northern town where the rebellion began ten days ago. One was a former police chief accused of plotting a coup in 2002. The other was the former head of the army's death squad, who fled the country in the mid 1990s. Up to 50 people have been killed in clashes between the rebels and pro-government forces. We'll have more on the Haiti story right after this News Summary. President Bush made the case for his economic record today in Florida, while Democratic presidential contenders campaigned against it in Wisconsin. The Democrats crisscrossed Wisconsin today, on the eve of its primary. Kwame Holman has our campaign report.

KWAME HOLMAN: President Bush visited a window factory in Florida to highlight what he says are the favorable impact of his tax policies on small business. Flanked by business owners and an employee, the president renewed his call for Congress to extend his tax cuts, and he tried to cast the Democrats as tax hikers.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: You hear people in Washington saying, "oh, let's not make the tax cuts permanent." When you hear somebody say that, they're saying we're going to tax you. We're going toraise your taxes. You'll hear some discussion about what that means for a family when their taxes go up. But from an economic perspective I'm telling you, now is not the time to raise the taxes on the American people. ( Applause )

KWAME HOLMAN: Mean while Democratic frontrunner John Kerry took on the president's economic policies today. He kicked off a four-day jobs tour around the country in Wisconsin.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: Deficits going up a billion dollars a day. Two jobs lost every minute in the United States and this president's top priority is to give the wealthiest people in the country yet another tax cut at the expense of almost every other choice that we ought to be making.

KWAME HOLMAN: In Milwaukee John Edwards also criticized the president's record on the economy.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS: We cannot continue to have this trade policy, this shipping millions of jobs overseas. I don't know how many of you saw this but just a few days ago I guess about a week, week-and-a-half ago, the White House came out with their economic report. You know? They're talking about how great the economy is doing. They're talking about Wall Street. They're talking about CEO's. They're not talking about real people. They're not talking about main street. They don't have a clue.

KWAME HOLMAN: And Howard Dean focused his fire on president bush today. He appealed to Arab-American voters in Milwaukee.

HOWARD DEAN: We think that politics has nothing to do with us, but it has everything to do with us. This president's economic policies have been ruinous for America. He's cut taxes but most ordinary Americans hardly got a tax cut. They saw their costs go up.

KWAME HOLMAN: Dean is winless after 16 state contests but insists he'll keep running. His national campaign chairman left the team today after urging Dean to quit the race if he loses in Wisconsin tomorrow.

JIM LEHRER: Dennis Kucinich also campaigned across Wisconsin today, Al Sharpton had no public events scheduled. He did participate in last night's Democratic debates, which we'll have excerpts of later in the program. Dozens of same sex couples waited in pouring rain to be married in San Francisco's city hall today. Despite the government holiday, municipal offices opened an hour early to accommodate the demand. 1,700 marriage licenses have been issued to gay and lesbian couples since Thursday, when Mayor Gavin Newsom authorized city officials to grant them. Two state courts will hear arguments tomorrow from opposition groups suing to stop the same sex unions. "Spirit," the robotic Mars Rover, was on a roll today, covering 88 feet on the planet's rocky terrain. It is en route to a crater called "Bonneville," where it will search for signs of water. The "Spirit" has another 800 feet to travel to reach the crater. On the other side of mars, the rover "opportunity" was also looking for evidence of water. It was digging in a deposit of hematite, the iron-bearing mineral which typically forms where water is present. India and Pakistan opened their first formal peace talks in nearly three years today. The nuclear-armed neighbors hope to lay the groundwork for discussions on the disputed province of Kashmir, and preventing nuclear accidents, among other things. Pakistani President Musharraf and Indian prime minister Vajpayee agreed to the talks last month, when they held a sidebar meeting at a regional summit in Pakistan. The world health organization and the united nations said today it could take months, even years, to eliminate the deadly bird flu in Asia. Officials from both organizations were in India attending an emergency meeting of southeast Asian nations about the disease. Also today, Thailand found the virus in eight new regions, and two new cases were diagnosed in humans. That's it for the news summary tonight. Now it's on to the violence in Haiti; medical research reform; the Democratic primary in Wisconsin; and a winning children's book.

FOCUS - FRACTURED NATION

JIM LEHRER: Ray Suarez has our Haiti story.

RAY SUAREZ: Once again, the impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti is caught up in political bloodshed. For two weeks, rebel groups have been attacking and sometimes capturing cities and towns. The rebels say they want to oust President Jean Bertrand Aristide, accusing him of betraying promises to run a Democratic government. The threat to Aristide is the strongest and most violent since he was returned to power nearly a decade ago by the United States. Haiti's fourth largest city, Gonaives, is under rebel control. Fighting has spread since early February to 11 other towns. The death toll has reached at least 50. So far, the capital, Port au Prince, has remained relatively calm, with displays of opposition in the form of mostly peaceful protests. The rebels have looted and torched police stations and erected flaming roadblocks. One of their self-proclaimed leaders said Haitians are losing patience with their economic condition. Some 80 percent of the country's eight million people live in poverty, and the country is the poorest in the hemisphere, and among the poorest in the world.

TIWILL: We are here to secure the population and help feed the people. We can't feed everyone, but we are trying. The people are suffering because there is no transport to bring food in. The people must wait until President Jean-Bertrand Aristide leaves.

RAY SUAREZ: Fighting back are pro-Aristide gangs, called Chimeres, and the country's 5,000-member police, the only national force since Aristide disbanded the army. They claim to have regained control of several towns, including the northern port of Caphatien.

JOSEPH PIERRE: The situation is good for us. We don't want to see the opposition. Whenever we see anybody from the opposition, we want to cut off their heads and burn their houses down.

RAY SUAREZ: Aid agencies have warned the fighting has hampered the delivery of fuel and food to many Haitians. International donors, including the U.S. and European Union, suspended aid after flawed parliamentary elections four years ago. The country has been functioning without a parliament since last year, and the main political opposition has refused to participate in new elections until Aristide resigns. But he has said he will serve out his term, which ends in 2006.

PRES. JEAN BERTRAND ARISTIDE: I call on my brothers who are in the opposition to stop that violence, to start dialogue, realizing that we don't have any other way to solve the political crisis. If we don't want to have dialogue, consensus, compromise is a Democratic and peaceful way to move ahead.

RAY SUAREZ: Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest. He was first elected in 1990, winning a landslide with massive support from the poor. But that brief experiment in democracy after three decades of dictatorship and military rule ended in another coup. But in September 1994, as a U.S. invasion fleet awaited off- shore, a U.S. delegation appointed by President Clinton and that included Jimmy Carter and Colin Powell persuaded the military leaders to leave and Aristide to return as president. And it was Secretary of State Powell, on Friday, who asserted that the UnitedStates would not tolerate a coup in Haiti. His comments followed a meeting with Caribbean officials.

COLIN POWELL: We all have a commitment to the Democratic process in Haiti, and we will accept no outcome that is not consistent with the constitution. We will accept no outcome that, in any way, illegally attempts to remove the elected president of Haiti.

RAY SUAREZ: Powell's comments followed assertions earlier in the week from administration officials indicating the U.S. would not play a military role in this latest Haitian crisis.

DONALD RUMSFELD: Needless to say, everyone is hopeful that the situation, which tends to ebb and flow down there, will stay below a certain threshold, and that there's... we have no plans to do anything. By that, I don't mean we have no plans. Obviously, we have plans to do everything in the world that we can think of. But we... there's no intention at the present time, or no reason to believe, that any of the thinking that goes into these things year in and year out would have to be utilized.

RAY SUAREZ: Meanwhile, the rebels insist they'll only stop their fight when Aristide steps down.

RAY SUAREZ: For more now on the developments in Haiti, we get two views. Alex Dupuy is a professor of sociology at Wesleyan University specializing in development, the Caribbean, and Haiti. Born in Haiti, he's now an American citizen. Robert Maguire is director of the Haiti program at Trinity College in Washington, D.C. He has consulted on Haiti and Caribbean issues for both government agencies and non- governmental organizations.

Professor Dupuy, the last time Haiti was regularly in the news in the United States and featured large in our foreign policy might have been almost ten years ago now when with the help of American troops President Aristide was restored to power. What happened between that optimistic time in the mid '90s and now to lead Haiti back to where it is again?

ALEX DUPUY: Well, basically the problem stems from the crisis in 2000 brought about by the parliamentary elections of May 2000 and the November presidential elections of November of that same year where the OAS had observed the balloting of May 2000 and found that seven seats were wrongly assigned to the ruling party or to the party of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the OAS demanded a rerun of the seven seats in the second round. But the then independent election council refused and the government of President Preval also refused to reverse the ruling of the CEP and as a result the OAS boycotted the second round of the parliamentary elections and also the presidential elections of November. The opposition parties coalesced into the Democratic convergence and later into the civil society group of 184, refused to recognize the legitimacy of the entire elections and not just the seven seats and also because they boycotted both the second round and the presidential elections they refused to recognize Aristide's re-election as president of Haiti. Since then, they have been calling for Aristide's resignation from office and basically have been unable or unwilling rather to enter into a serious negotiation with him to resolve the crisis peacefully. Aristide, for his part, where I think he went wrong, was to have recourse to his armed gangs, the supporters known as the Chimeres to basically intimidate the opposition, and the fact that he used violence led to a spiraling crisis basically of violence met by more violence on the opposition side and more violence on the part of Aristide supporters and despite efforts by the OAS to mediatethe crisis from 2000 on, they have not been able to bring the two parties to the table. The opposition parties, for their part, were supported by the United States in mainly the International Republican Institute and the USAID which supported them and also they received some funding for the European Union. As a result of that they saw no need to really enter into negotiations with Aristide because the U.S. made it clear to them that there would... they would not recognize an outcome to the conflict that did not include the opposition parties. So in that sense even though they represented, if you will, at the time a minority of the population, they really had no incentives to enter into a serious negotiations with air teed so the impasse....

RAY SUAREZ: Let me turn to Bob Maguire at this point.

ALEX DUPUY: Okay.

RAY SUAREZ: You've got Aristide's national police force and as Professor Dupuy mentioned his irregular gangs on the street. Now the rebel side of the equation is attracting new armed men and growing larger in some of these provincial cities. Is this a country on the verge of all out civil war.?

ROBERT MAGUIRE: There's regional areas for the potential of a civil war. These gangs that are now fighting against the government at one time some of their members were alive... aligned with the government. But Mr. Aristide I think under some international pressure had begun in the last summer to try to reel in some of these gangs. One of the... the brother of one of the gang leaders in Go naive was murdered allegedly at the hands of Mr. Aristide's government. In this sense some of those gangs that had been loyal are now against him. Joining those gangs now is the peace demonstrated that we showed before our interview is the fact that you have some nefarious characters coming over from the Dominican Republic who are well armed and have military experience. This could change the calculus of the situation.

RAY SUAREZ: Is Aristide someone who is able to regain control of the situation, run a Haitian government that has effective day-to-day civil control of the country?

ROBERT MAGUIRE: At this point, Ray, I think that's questionable. The country is so deeply polarized, so deeply split, I think that maybe Mr. Aristide has to take some very dramatic action to indicate that he can have the credibility that he needs for others to engage him and to move forward. You know, the opposition, as Alex mentioned, has not really engaged Mr. Aristide in trying to resolve this crisis that emanated out of elections in 2000. But then again, Mr. Aristide has not fully lived up to some of the things that he said. So I think he does have a bit of a credibility problem with the opposition and it seems to me that there is an onus on Mr. Aristide to make some dramatic action now. He has pledged some action to the group of commonwealth Caribbean nations, the Caricom Group. On February 1 he met with representatives of Caricom in Jamaica and coming out of that is something that's being called the Kingston Plan, which is where Mr. Aristide would reel in the gangs, he would support the resumption of negotiations with his opponents to create an interim governing council that could name a prime minister and that could lead the country to some kind of elections with Mr. Aristide maintaining his role as president and that the national police would be supported, the police would be built up again. I think that it's now somewhat the responsibility of the opposition to respond to this as well. Mr. Aristide has agreed with Caricom that he will do these things. It might be very helpful however if Mr. Aristide would demonstrate some action to do something to give confidence to every one else that he will move forward.

RAY SUAREZ: You noted in your opening remarks, Professor Dupuy, that the United States has begun to pull back on its support for the Aristide government yet at the same time in the last couple of days Secretary of State Powell said the United States will accept no outcome that attempts to remove the elected president of Haiti. So while they don't support him, they also don't support him being removed?

ALEX DUPUY: Well that's correct. This is the first clear policy we've heard from the Clinton... from the Bush administration on the situation in Haiti. Up to Friday's statement by Secretary of State Powell, the Bush administration had in fact been sending very mixed signals to both the opposition and to President Aristide. As I said before, throughout the negotiations the U.S. always blamed President Aristide for the breakdown in negotiations when, in fact, the opposition also had a role to play in that. As Bob Maguire mentioned, Aristide does suffer from a credibility problem with the opposition and that's justifiable because of the violence that his supporters have meted out to the opposition members. But nonetheless the opposition also has refused to negotiate seriously with Aristide. As a result both sides have been locked into a sort of a dialogue, if you will, of the deaf. They're talking past each other. No one wants to listen to the other side. That said, it is a welcome statement by Secretary of State Powell to suggest that the resolution of the crisis must be done through a peaceful negotiations and rather than through violence because, as you mentioned in your opening statement, President Aristide has said that he will not resign. He will carry out his... the remaining of his five-year term and the opposition needs to be pressured by its supporters, principally in this case the United States to also come to the negotiating table. Otherwise the violence will continue to spiral and indeed bring Haiti on the break of a civil war. So there is no viable alternative to negotiations, and at this point I believe that even though President Aristide was certainly wrong to have recourse to the violent gangs who support him, it is difficult to imagine that he would seriously crack down on those gangs when, in fact, he's now facing an uprising not only by a former gang members who supported him at one point, as Bob mentioned, but now joined by former members of the Haitian... the army and the paramilitary death squads that were allowed with the military during the three years of Aristide's... of the coup d'etat against Aristide. So the only way to resolve the crisis is for the U.S. not only to bring pressure on President Aristide to make good will gestures towards the opposition, which he must do, but they also need to put pressure on the opposition to realize once and for all that only a negotiated solution can bring an end to the crisis.

RAY SUAREZ: Is the United States indispensable in intervening in this at this point? Do you share this?

ROBERT MAGUIRE: Absolutely, Ray. The U.S. Is an indispensable actor. I would very much agree with Alex that the political calculus that changed in Washington in 1994 really did hurt the Clinton administration initiatives that restored Mr. Aristide. There were constraints put up against those initiatives almost immediately after the Republicans took the House of Representatives in '94 and it was in part perhaps to undermine Clinton policy but itended up undermining Haiti. Mr. Aristide and the Haitians were pretty much left to their own devices as the U.S. had a policy of no mission creep, no nation building and a quick exit strategy. We're seeing that particularly those chickens coming home to roost when it comes to the Haitian national police. That began as a very, very positive initiative in bringing police under civilian control, strengthening the police force and getting some good people in there. I still think there are remnants of those good people in there, but that force is beleaguered, it's corrupt, and it might be outmatched by some of these commandos that have come in.

RAY SUAREZ: Bob Maguire, Professor Dupuy, thank you both.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, changing the ways of medical research; the Democratic presidential race in Wisconsin; and an award-winning children's book.

FOCUS - STIMULATING SCIENCE

JIM LEHRER: The medical research story, it's reported by Susan Dentzer of our health unit, a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

MAN IN COMMERCIAL: Well?

WOMAN IN COMMERCIAL: Lipitor did it. My cholesterol numbers are way down.

SUSAN DENTZER: Cholesterol- lowering drugs like lipitor are a key weapon in the war on heart disease, the leading cause of death among Americans. But this advance in medical care was a long time in coming. In 1973, two scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Drs. David Brown and Joseph Goldstein, first unlocked the secret of how cells obtain and use cholesterol. 12 years later, they won the Nobel Prize for their work. But it wasn't until 1987 that the first cholesterol-lowering drug came on the market. And it took 14 more years before government guidelines recommended that as many as 36 million Americans should be taking these drugs. That's too long, says Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health.

DR. ELIAS ZERHOUNI: We have to have accelerated strategies and find ways where the benefits of the laboratory research get translated much more quickly from the laboratory to our patients.

SUSAN DENTZER: So Zerhouni has spearheaded an effort to speed up the process, starting at NIH

DR. ELIAS ZERHOUNI: I thought it was very important for us to be open and be completely willing to self- examine NIH and say, "what is it that we should do better?"

SUSAN DENTZER: Under Zerhouni's leadership, NIH officials recently consulted with more than 300 of the nation's top researchers in academia, government and the private sector. The result of their deliberations is a new NIH plan called "The Roadmap." It's a proposal to reengineer the way much science is done, not just at NIH, But also at thousands of university and other labs across the United States. The NIH, based here in Bethesda, Maryland, is a division of the federal Department of Health and Human Services. It's the nation's and the world's largest biomedical research agency, with a mission to protect and improve human health. In reality, the NIH isn't one entity, but rather a collection of 27 institutes and centers.

DR. ELIAS ZERHOUNI: Some of them are dedicated to fight cancer, heart disease, and some are dedicated to find out about different life stages of life, like aging. We have a national institute for aging, we have a national institute for child health and human development, and some are dedicated to basic research.

SUSAN DENTZER: NIH's budget comes entirely from the government, and will total $28 billion this fiscal year. A small slice pays for research within the institutes themselves. The vast majority is given out in grants and contracts to roughly 220,000 scientists working at universities or other labs in the U.S. Zerhouni says it's time for NIH to help propel the entire scientific establishment into seizing new research opportunities. Many of those opportunities stem from the sequencing of the human genome, a largely NIH-funded project that was completed this year.

DR. ELIAS ZERHOUNI: We know now that there are 33,000 genes in the human genome. Those 33,000 genes code for a million different molecules, different proteins. In each cell of our body we have over a million different proteins interacting with each other.

SUSAN DENTZER: And that means potentially billions of gene or protein malfunctions may be found to cause or contribute to disease. So Zerhouni says scientists need new tools to help them understand these processes and devise potential treatments. One example is a proposed new "molecular library" at NIH; at a cost of $125 million, it's designed to aid scientists who are experimenting with drug treatments.

SPOKESMAN: Each of these plates at...

SUSAN DENTZER: Dr. Chris Austin of NIH Is overseeing efforts to build the library. He says it will be a database of information about how more than a half million different chemical compounds interact with human proteins and diseased cells.

DR. CHRIS AUSTIN: So if we're interested in cancer, for instance, we'll go to a library and we'll pull all those... all those books down one at a time, all those compounds, 500,000, and we'll test them for activity in a certain kind of cancer. And we'll learn that there are maybe five or ten which work for that application, for that particular disease.

SUSAN DENTZER: Information about how all these compounds interact with different proteins and cell types will be gathered with the help of high-tech robots. Zerhouni says both the data and the chemical compounds themselves will be available for free to scientists around the world.

DR. ELIAS ZERHOUNI: What we want is a library that every scientist could have access to easily so they don't have to spend years trying to do the research and accelerate the cure that way.

SUSAN DENTZER: Ideally, scientists will then be able to isolate more promising new candidates for drugs; those can then be developed by private pharmaceutical companies. Once new drugs are identified, they must be tested on thousands of patients in so-called clinical trials. So another part of NIH's roadmap would dramatically accelerate the pace and scope of these tests. Dr. John Gallin heads NIH's clinical center.

DR. JOHN GALLIN: We can do better, and that's what the roadmap is all about, is to make it go faster, enable us to do studies in large numbers of patients, and to translate that quickly into something that can be used as a drug.

SUSAN DENTZER: Gallin says a major problem facing biomedical research is that too few patients are willing to participate in clinical trials. So NIH's new roadmap calls for an unprecedented effort to recruit thousands of community physicians and their patients into clinical research.

DR. JOHN GALLIN: That means that doctors out in the field will get some special training on how to do clinical research. And yes, they will become part of the team that will enable us to broaden our access to the patient populations in the country. My goal is that 90 percent of all the patients who have diseases will be participating in clinical research as part of their care.

SUSAN DENTZER: The last major thrust of the roadmap is designed to change the way much scientific research is carried out. The old model is that of solitary scientists working alone in their labs. The new model is this research team working in the magnetic resonance imaging lab at NIH.

SPOKESMAN: So here we're looking at pictures of our patient's heart, and you can see all four heart chambers.

SUSAN DENTZER: The team is attempting to better understand the heart's mechanics. It's a multidisciplinary one, composed of a cardiologist, a physiologist, a computer scientist and an engineer. On the day we visited, Zerhouni, a radiologist by training, joined in as well. The team has demonstrated that these advanced MRI techniques work better than traditional methods in diagnosing heart attacks quickly. They say those results have only been possible because they work together.

DR. ROBERT BALABAN: You live together, you live the problem together, and you bring the different approaches, the engineering approaches, the mathematical approaches, the clinical problem, which may be the focus of a lot of our attention. And having those people living and working together, I think, is really the key to solving the problems.

SUSAN DENTZER: Zerhouni says the roadmap will now pave the way for much more team science like this in the future.

DR. ELIAS ZERHOUNI: What we want to do is stimulate scientists from different fields to come together in different ways. So we're going to fund interdisciplinary research centers and ask every university out there and every scientific group to come up with new ways of exploring science.

SUSAN DENTZER: So far NIH'S roadmap has received generally good reviews from scientists, federal policymakers and members of Congress. But a recent report from the National Academy of Sciences warns that the roadmap initiatives will need far more funding in 2005 and beyond. And the warning comes at a time when President Bush has proposed a slim 2.6 percent increase in NIH's budget for fiscal 2005. Zerhouni acknowledges the challenges, but says drawing up the roadmap was the crucial first step. He says it's now time to test whether it can help spark dazzling new findings in science, and then translate them into new treatments for patients.

FOCUS - CAMPAIGN 2004

JIM LEHRER: Now, the Democrats in Wisconsin. First, their debate last night, which aired on WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee, not Madison, as I said in the News Summary, by the way.

Kwame Holman reports.

KWAME HOLMAN: The first subject addressed at the Milwaukee debate was President Bush's Vietnam-era record of service in the National Guard. The first question went to the front-running Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, a Vietnam combat veteran.

MIKE GOUSHA, WTMJ-TV: The White House released the president's full military records late Friday night, and a fellow guard officer from Alabama has now stepped forward to say he distinctly recalls the president reporting for duty in Alabama. Does that end the issue of whether the president fully served out his National Guard requirements?

SEN. JOHN KERRY: That's not something that I'm qualified to comment on. I have not looked at the records, I haven't seen the records, I'm not reading the records. It's not for me to make that judgment. I think that all of us today are very proud of those who serve in the National Guard.

MIKE GOUSHA: Do you think your party and certain members of your party should drop this as an issue?

SEN. JOHN KERRY: I have suggested to some people who are my advocates, who've gone that line of attack, it's not one that I plan to do, it's not one I have. I don't plan to do that, and I've asked them notto. But the president has to speak for his own military record. And those of you in the news media, obviously, have asked questions about it, and that's where I'll let it sit.

KWAME HOLMAN: North Carolina Senator John Edwards was asked whether the president's honesty is a legitimate campaign issue.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS: Yes, it is. Absolutely it is, because this president has said one of the most critical things, not only for a candidate for president, but for the president of the United States, is his integrity, whether he can be trusted. We are in the middle, as you know, of investigating... starting an investigation, an independent investigation about why there is a disconnect between what the American people were told by the president and others and what's actually been found in Iraq. Now, I think integrity and character are critical issues in any presidential campaign.

KWAME HOLMAN: The Reverend Al Sharpton and Congressman Dennis Kucinich agreed, also asserting the president was not honest about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

REV. AL SHARPTON: Clearly, he lied. Now, if he is an unconscious liar, and doesn't realize when he's lying, then we're really in trouble, because absolutely it was a lie. They said they knew the weapons were there. He had members of the administration say they knew where the weapons were. So we're not just talking about something passing here. We're talking about 500 lives.

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: The president lied to the American people.

SPOKESPERSON: And why would he do that?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, you know what, I can't speak for the president. But I can speak as the next president of the United States to say that I intend to bring those troops home by going to the U.N. and giving up control of the oil, letting the U.N. Handle that on an interim basis on behalf of the Iraqi people, letting the U.N. Handle the contracts. The United States must renounce privatization.

KWAME HOLMAN: Kerry again was challenged on his vote to authorize President Bush to go to war against Iraq.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: This is one of the reasons why I am so intent on beating George Bush, and why I believe I will beat George Bush. I said specifically on the floor of the Senate that what I was voting for was the process the president promised.

KWAME HOLMAN: Kerry's answer went on for minutes...

SEN. JOHN KERRY: The process was to build a legitimate international coalition, go through the inspections process, and go to war as a last resort.

KWAME HOLMAN: The answer prompted this from Edwards.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS: That's the longest answer I ever heard to a "yes or no" question. The answer to your question is of course we all accept responsibility for what we did. I did what I believed was right. I took it very, very seriously. I also said at the same time that it was critical when we got to this stage that America not be doing this alone.

KWAME HOLMAN: And Edwards reminded Kerry he hasn't yet won the Democratic nomination.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS: And by the way, Senator Kerry just said he will beat George Bush. Not so fast, john Kerry. We're going to have an election here in Wisconsin this Tuesday, and we've got a whole group of primaries coming up. And I, for one, intend to fight with everything I've got for every one of those votes.

KWAME HOLMAN: Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who in the past has criticized Kerry for having ties to Washington lobbyists, last night passed on the opportunity.

SPOKESPERSON: The Bush-Cheney campaign now has an anti-john Kerry ad on its web site about john Kerry and special interests. It is entitled "Unprincipled." Are you and the Bush campaign sounding the same theme about john Kerry?

GOV. HOWARD DEAN: I think George Bush has some nerve attacking anybody about special interests. Not only has he funded his campaign through special interests, but George Bush is systematically looting the American treasury and giving it to his friends: The pharmaceutical companies, the HMO's, and the insurance companies.

KWAME HOLMAN: There were also several questions about jobs-- Wisconsin has lost thousands of them-- and the role of trade policies.

CRAIG GILBERT: You voted for all of these... a lot of these trade deals: NAFTA with mexico and permanent trade relations with china. Given all of the jobs that have fled to China and Mexico, would you vote the same way today?

SEN. JOHN KERRY: There's been a dramatic shift in the world and what has happened to jobs over the course of the last few years. Perhaps three or four years ago, I began talking about how it is critical that in any trade agreement, we now need to negotiate labor and trade, labor and environment standards. I will order a 120-day review of all of our trade agreements.

CRAIG GILBERT: But no regrets about those votes?

SEN. JOHN KERRY: I regret the way that they haven't been enforced, sure.

KWAME HOLMAN: Edwards used the trade issue to separate himself from Kerry and Dean.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS: You know, Senator Kerry is entitled, as is Governor Dean, to support free trade, as they always have. The problem is that what we see happening-- and it's NAFTA, which I opposed, plus a whole series of other trade agreements-- have been devastating here in Wisconsin. Nobody has to tell me what the effect is of some of these bad trade agreements.

KWAME HOLMAN: On the eve of the Wisconsin vote, polls show Kerry well ahead of his Democratic rivals.

JIM LEHRER: And to Katherine Skiba of the "Milwaukee journal sentinel" for more on tomorrow's Wisconsin primary. Katherine Skiba, welcome.

KATHERINE SKIBA: Good evening.

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. First, give us a quick profile of a Wisconsin Democrat.

KATHERINE SKIBA: Well, Madison is sometimes called the state capital is sometimes called the last liberal boutique left in America, but I think outside of Madison you would find a Wisconsin Democrat looks much like a Democrat elsewhere. Perhaps instructive is looking at our two Democratic U.S. Senators. Herb Kohl is a centrist, Russ Feingold of course is a much more liberal senator. Those are the two gentlemen that Wisconsin sent in to represent them in the Senate. What's interesting....

JIM LEHRER: Excuse me. In the primary tomorrow, it's an open primary, is it not? A Republican or an independent can vote as well, right?

KATHERINE SKIBA: It's an extremely open primary. One not need declare whether there's a Democrat, independent or Republican. And we also he same-day registration to encourage turnout so you can show up tomorrow morning with a driver's license or the last four digits of your Social Security number and you can vote. If you're a Republican, you can vote Democratic and vice versa. Turnout is....

JIM LEHRER: I was going to ask you what the interest has been and what you expect the turnout to be.

KATHERINE SKIBA: Turnout is expected to be 1.6 million. That's about 45 percent of the eligible voters. I should note the Republicans are having a primary too. George Bush is the only candidate on that side.

JIM LEHRER: A Republican can come into the polling place and vote on the Democratic side. That's what you're saying, right?

KATHERINE SKIBA: Absolutely.

JIM LEHRER: When you say 45 percent, you're talking about 45 percent of the total eligible electorate not just 45 percent of the Democrats.

KATHERINE SKIBA: That's right. Total. What's driving these figures are it's also a primary day for very key races in the state. The mayor of Milwaukee, the largest city in the state -- Milwaukee County executive. There's a primary in that race. There's a hot referenda for example a gambling issue in Madison. Those issues and races will be bringing people to the polls.

JIM LEHRER: In the Democratic presidential race what have been the driving issues in Wisconsin?

KATHERINE SKIBA: Voters here tell us they're very concerned about the economy. Wisconsin's job base is disproportionately high in terms of manufacturing jobs, maybe about up to 19 percent of the state work force. People are very concerned about post war Iraq. Even though we don't have a heavy presence of military bases, the figure I saw was that we have approximately 1,000 guardsmen and reservists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, the post war Iraq situation is troubling to all Americans or many Americans, I should say. And people are....

JIM LEHRER: Just one second. Has there been any polling on the war itself and the way President Bush and the administration has handled the war and the post war as far as polling in Wisconsin?

KATHERINE SKIBA: One survey I saw was at the end of December-- however, it was done just before Saddam Hussein's capture-- showed that for the first time in many, many months Bush's approval rating had dropped below 50 percent to 48 percent. So there is concern about the president's handling of the economy and Iraq and other issues.

JIM LEHRER: Which of the Democrats have spent the most energy, time and resources in Wisconsin?

KATHERINE SKIBA: Well, if you look at TV ad spending it's the person who is no longer in the race, General Clark who spent the most in terms of air time -- $370,000. Edwards has spent $316,000. Next is Kerry at $263,000. And Dean, despite this huge last-ditch Internet appeal that he needed so much money to make a stand and try to get a win in Wisconsin has spent about $227,000. The ground war in the last week since voters in Tennessee and Virginia spoke has been very active. They've been campaigning up and down and all across the state, the four corners of the state. We've had the debate certainly drew interest and a number of candidates appeared Saturday at a Democratic Party, Jefferson Jackson Day, about a thousand showed up. It was an event I would note that Howard Dean skipped to attend his son's last hockey game as a senior.

JIM LEHRER: Is there a Howard Dean movement in Wisconsin and was there ever one?

KATHERINE SKIBA: I think Howard Dean was hoping against hope, sad to say. Certainly it's true Wisconsin has sent mavericks to Washington. Bill Proxmire comes to mind. One of the pioneers Bob Lafolatte at the turn of the last century comes to mind. They're the exception not the rule. I guess if you'd like to work in the White House you have to be confident or display confidence but let's face it, he's been winless in 16 primaries and caucuses. Winning begets winning. You need only go to Lambeau Field in the fall to show that Wisconsin likes winners too.

JIM LEHRER: That's where the Green Bay Packers play.

KATHERINE SKIBA: The home of our beloved Green Bay Packers.

JIM LEHRER: Kerry's big lead, any reason to question that in the polls?

KATHERINE SKIBA: Well, what the political observers have been saying absent a major gaffe or scandal he's the winner tomorrow. I see no reason that won't happen. The numbers are very strong. He has brought about 40 full-time staffers to the state, campaigning vigorously. He didn't write Wisconsin off. He says he's fighting state by state and then made himself available for Wisconsin voters to take a look at.

JIM LEHRER: Why Kerry? Why has Kerry done so well? Once they saw him, what was it they liked about him?

KATHERINE SKIBA: Again I don't know that Wisconsin is any different than the rest of the country. I will say that as in other places, the ABB Movement is alive here: Anybody but Bush. In a polite way our governor Jim Doyle, a Democrat, said that to me before the debate. He is not endorsing. He said I have known many of these men for quite a while. I would like our party to be united and unseat the president. I think....

JIM LEHRER: So they just think that Kerry has the best chance of beating Bush in November?

KATHERINE SKIBA: That's what the voters in the polls have shown.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Katherine Skiba, thank you very much.

KATHERINE SKIBA: Thank you.

CONVERSATION

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, a conversation about an award- winning book for children, and to arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown.

MAN: "Once there were two towers, side by side."

JEFFREY BROWN: The two towers at the World Trade Center are no more, but a new book for children by Mordicai Gerstein brings them to life by evoking a fantastic and actual moment in their history. "The man who walked between the towers" tells of the day in 1974 when a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit, aided by friends, disguised himself as a construction worker, used a bow and arrow to send a strong cord across the expanse of the two towers, and then walked a quarter of a mile up in the sky for almost an hour. Petit was arrested, but a judge sentenced him to perform in parks for children. The book has been awarded the 2004 Caldecott medal, given by the American Library Association for the most distinguished American picture book for children.

MAN: You know, when you make a mark on a piece of paper, one line, you create a whole new world.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mordicai Gerstein, age 68, lives and works in Northampton, Massachusetts, and travels often to schools-- here, Stonybrook School in Kinnelon, New Jersey. He's written and illustrated more than 30 books for children.

Mordecai Gerstein, welcome, and congratulations.

MORDECAI GERSTEIN: Thank you very much.

JEFFREY BROWN: This is a book about a magical moment in the history of the world towers. Why, after 9/11, did you want to write this for children?

MORDECAI GERSTEIN: Well, 9/11 made me think about the towers, and the fact that I lived in New York for a long time, while they were being built. In fact, I had a studio that was ripped out, along with the whole neighborhood, to put the towers in. I saw them go up. I lived with them, running past them in the morning. And they were like part of my furniture. And when they went down, I started to think about the towers, and I remembered Philippe Petit's walk, and remembered that I used to see him perform on the street back in the '70s at that time, and that he was a brilliant street performer, great juggler, great unicylcist. He did amazing things. And when the towers went down, I remembered Philippe's walk. I found an old "New Yorker" with a profile of him in it, and I started to write the story.

JEFFREY BROWN: Did you feel it was important to address children on this particular subject, somehow?

MORDECAI GERSTEIN: Writing for children is my... that's my medium, you know, and the medium is the picture book, which is a very particular kind of book. I try to give children what I would give anybody, you know. I become interested in something. I find something fascinating. It has to fascinate me, and then I want to give it to them.

JEFFREY BROWN: You really play up the whimsy and the sense of play and the sense of freedom.

MORDECAI GERSTEIN: I love this aspect of what Philippe does. I mean, he's a trickster. He defies a kind of reality. He defies the possible. He does the impossible. He does the amazing. And when he does that, it's an act of such optimism. You know, you walk out there, that's very optimistic, you know, that you're going to make it to the other side. And he does.

JEFFREY BROWN: But at the same time, this sense of mischief which is in the children's book is balanced against this tragedy in the background that we all know about.

MORDECAI GERSTEIN: Right. Well, I wanted... I mean, another aspect of doing the book is celebrating the towers and doing something about them for kids that show what they were like, that showed what it was like to live with them, you know, and what they felt like and how big they were, because the image that we're left with now, when you think of the towers, you know, it's the image of them burning, you know, the image of the smoke coming out of them. And you don't see them otherwise, you know. The kids haven't seen them that way, you know, as they were. And so this book celebrates that, too. So it celebrates the towers, I think, and also this remarkable event and this remarkable man.

JEFFREY BROWN: Why don't you read a little bit for us so we get a sense of this walk in the sky that you've written about?

MORDECAI GERSTEIN: Great, I'd love to. "Philippe put on his black shirt and tights. He picked up his 28-foot balancing pole. All his life he had worked to be here, to do this. As the rising sun lit up the towers, he stepped out onto the wire. Out to the very middle he walked, as if he were walking on the air itself. Many winds whirled up from between the towers, and he swayed with them. He could feel the towers breathing. He was not afraid. He felt alone and happy and absolutely free. A woman coming from the subway might have been the first to see him: "Look, someone walking on a wire between the towers." Everyone stopped and looked up. They gasped and stared. It was astonishing. It was terrifying and beautiful. A quarter of a mile up in the sky, someone was dancing.

JEFFREY BROWN: Someone was dancing in the sky.

MORDECAI GERSTEIN: Yeah. I just think that's wonderful.

JEFFREY BROWN: The other day you read this to children in school. What was their reaction?

MORDECAI GERSTEIN: They sat there open-mouthed and with delight and amazement. And the question always is, is this really true? Did this really happen?

JEFFREY BROWN: It's a little hard to believe, huh?

MORDECAI GERSTEIN: Yes. Yeah, it is. But they just drink it in.

JEFFREY BROWN: But how do you reach younger children? What do the words have to do? What do the pictures have to do?

MORDECAI GERSTEIN: I think the words have to be clear and direct. I think the pictures have to be engaging and full of feeling. And I think everybody's going to be able to relate to it, children and... I want older people, too, you know, to be able to connect with what I do.

JEFFREY BROWN: But aside from the fact that it is illustrated, you don't see a big difference between writing for adults and writing for children?

MORDECAI GERSTEIN: Essentially, no. I want to do something beautiful. I want to dosomething amazing, and that's full of wonderment and that's going to provoke good questions.

JEFFREY BROWN: The book is "The Man Who Walked Between the Towers." Mordicai Gerstein, thank you. And again, congratulations.

MORDECAI GERSTEIN: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure being here.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments on this President's Day: Separate roadside bombs killed two U.S. Soldiers in Iraq. An army general said weekend attacks initially attributed to foreigners appeared to be the work of Iraqi insurgents. In Haiti, exiled former paramilitary leaders were seen joining insurgents intent on ousting President Aristide. And dozens of same sex couples were married at San Francisco's city hall. Opposition groups go to court tomorrow to stop them. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. Have a nice holiday evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.