The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: A summary of today's news; the sex abuse meeting at the Vatican, as seen by two participants, the Archbishops of Los Angeles and Chicago; an interview about the new world for women in Afghanistan; a report from central California on sending welfare recipients to where the jobs are; and a conversation with Laura Blumenfeld, author of "Revenge: A Story of Hope."

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: U.S. Cardinals and leading Catholic Bishops agreed today on measures to stop sexual abuse by priests. The announcement came at the close of a two-day summit at the Vatican in Rome. The Church leaders called for a faster process for dismissing priests who repeatedly molest children. They stopped short of endorsing a policy of "one strike and you're out." That issue and others will be taken up when U.S. Bishops meet in Dallas this June. We'll have more on this story in a few minutes. Israel insisted on changes today in a UN team that will investigate the assault on Jenin. Palestinians accuse the Israelis of atrocities there during the West Bank offensive. The Israelis deny it. Today they said the UN group might be biased. They said it should add military experts and investigate Palestinian terrorism as well.

DORE GOLD: Israel was ready for smooth cooperation with the UN With respect to this investigative team. Israel has absolutely nothing to hide. But there has to be a clear mandate about what this investigative team is doing. It has to reflect the decision of the UN Security Council. It cannot be an open-ended mission, which begins with Jenin and ends up who knows where.

JIM LEHRER: UN Secretary General Annan said he would consider adding new members to the mission, but would not delay its scheduled start this weekend. The Palestinians charged Israel was trying to sabotage the effort.

YADDER ABED RABBO: We are wondering what the Israeli government is trying to hide. The previous crimes they have committed or the ongoing crime, which is a crime of establishing an apartheid system in the Palestinian land.

JIM LEHRER: In Washington, Secretary of State Powell told a Senate hearing it was in Israel's best interest to allow the UN Mission. He also said an American envoy visited Jenin and found "a great deal of destruction," but nothing to confirm large-scale killing.

COLIN POWELL: Clearly people died in Jenin. People who were terrorists died in Jenin, and in the prosecution of that battle, innocent lives may well have been lost. But I don't know the right answer. I don't know the real answer, neither did Assistant Secretary Burns. He just had three-and-a-half hours to look at it. But right now I've seen no evidence of mass graves. I've seen no evidence of... I've seen no evidence that would suggest a massacre took place.

JIM LEHRER: In Bethlehem today, Israeli troops killed one Palestinian gunman and wounded another at the Church of the Nativity. Two others surrendered. More than 200 armed Palestinians have been holed up in the church for three weeks. Late today, the Israeli army said the gunmen agreed to release ten to fifteen young people under the age of 18 early tomorrow. A British judge today stopped the effort to extradite an Algerian pilot to the United States. The judge said there was no evidence the man trained the September 11 hijackers. He was arrested in London ten days after the attacks, and freed on bail in February. He remains under investigation in the United States. A Massachusetts man was convicted today of killing seven co-workers in December 2000. Michael McDermott claimed he was insane during his rampage at a software company outside Boston. He said he thought he was on a divine mission to kill Adolph Hitler and his top generals. Prosecutors said, in fact, he was angry about having wages withheld for back taxes. McDermott faces life in prison without parole. The House today passed a Republican bill to increase supervision of the accounting industry. It comes in the wake of the Enron bankruptcy. Among other things, it would create a new oversight body to punish malpractice by auditors, ban accounting firms from consulting for companies they audit, and require records be kept seven years. Republicans said it would restore investor confidence. Some Democrats argued it did not go far enough. The bill now goes to the Senate. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the meeting of the Cardinals, the women of Afghanistan, following the jobs, and a revenge conversation.

UPDATE - CHURCH IN CRISIS

JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill updates the story from the Vatican.

GWEN IFILL: Pope John Paul II appeared in public today at St. Peter's Square in Rome for his regular weekly audience, speaking to the faithful, but making no mention of the sex abuse scandal that has taken up so much of his time this week. After meeting with the pope for two days at the Vatican a group of U.S. Cardinals and other Church leaders hammered out a carefully worded official communiqu . Late today in Rome, the U.S. Church leaders spoke about their just-concluded meeting. Bishop Wilton Gregory is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

BISHOP WILTON GREGORY, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: The question of the reassignment of those who have harmed children is certainly uppermost in our minds. There is a growing consensus, certainly among the faithful, among the Bishops, that it is too great a risk to assign a priest who has abused a child to another ministry.

GWEN IFILL: The Cardinals' communiqu states: "The sexual abuse of minors is rightly considered a crime by society and is an appalling sin. Together with the fact that a link between celibacy and pedophilia cannot be scientifically maintained, the meeting, reaffirmed the value of priestly celibacy." In a separate letter to American priests, the Cardinals wrote: "We know the heavy burden of sorrow and shame that you are bearing because some have betrayed the grace of Ordination by abusing those entrusted to their care. We regret that Episcopal oversight has not been able to preserve the Church from this scandal."

GWEN IFILL: Bishop Gregory emphasized the importance of classifying the sin of pedophilia as a societal crime.

BISHOP WILTON GREGORY: The implication of calling it a crime is the Church's realization that the civil authorities are the proper arena where criminal activity and criminal behavior should be judged. I think that's a significant change. I think it is a change, however, that a number of dioceses again have been following for years that they have reported to the proper authorities the information that they have received involving sexual molestation of children on the part of a cleric.

GWEN IFILL: Left unresolved, a formal policy on zero tolerance, how and when priests found guilty of sexual abuse would be punished and removed.

GWEN IFILL: Now to Rome where two leaders from the Catholic Church join us, Cardinal Roger Mahony, the Archbishop of Los Angeles and Cardinal Francis George, the archbishop of Chicago. Welcome.

GWEN IFILL: Cardinal Mahony, let's start with you.

CARDINAL ROGER MAHONY: Good to be with you.

GWEN IFILL: Let's start with you. Could you tell us what the Cardinals decided today after these two days of meetings what you came up with.

CARDINAL ROGER MAHONY: Well, we had obviously very wide-range discussion on a number of issues dealing with the problem of sexual abuse, but we came up with basically six recommendations that we are taking back to the United States, and we'll be sending those to the Bishops of the United States in June, in Dallas. And the six are basically this: Number one, to develop a uniform set of standards and guidelines that we can offer to all of our diocese to make sure we really protect children and young people for the future; secondly, to come up with some type of accountability in order that all of us are implementing these properly and probably with a great use of our lay people. Thirdly, we are asking the Holy See to assist us with some special canonical processes so that we might more readily and quickly dismiss from the clerical state those who are guilty of very notorious crimes of sexual abuse. And so those will be canonical issues. Number four, we decided to ask for a new apostolic visitation of our seminaries and institutes of religious life -- that is to go to our seminaries and make certain that we are having good screening, good application processes, good, sound doctrine -- that all of our programs are sound. And fifth, we are calling on ourselves as the Holy Father did in his message to be people of prayer -- Bishops, priests, church, faithful, all of us to embrace holiness in a special way. And finally, number six, we're proposing to the Bishops that we have a special day, or many special days, devoted to penance and prayer for reconciliation and healing in the Church. So those really are the six fruits of our time together, and those will be brought back to the United States by us.

GWEN IFILL: Cardinal George, could you elaborate for us on the special canonical processes that Cardinal Mahony was just talking about in which you would dismiss people from, I assume dismiss people from the priesthood is what you mean?

CARDINAL FRANCIS GEORGE: Yes, return them to the lay state, technically. Right now a laicization as it's still called in popular language, is always done at the request of the priest. So it's a favor of the Church to permit a man who finds the priesthood a great burden to continue his life and therefore find his salvation in another vocation. In this case, we're talking about a laicization, which is not a favor because it's involuntary. And so the present process is a judicial process, which is quite cumbersome and can take several years, the reason being that the Pope is very sensitive to the misuse of administrative process, because he lived in Communist Poland where the government misused administrative processes. It was legal but there were no protections of human rights. And he wants to be sure that the Church isn't guilty of that kind of justice. So he wants to, nonetheless, to look at a special process, which would be not totally, not totally judicial, all the rights would be respected, but it could happen very quickly, because people don't understand sometimes when someone is notoriously guilty of all kinds of crimes why we can't move more quickly than we can right now.

GWEN IFILL: Cardinal George, let's continue on that point, because there's been much discussion here in the United States about the notion about whether and how priests should be disconnected from the priesthood if they are found guilty, or even alleged to be involved in these kinds of sexual abuse acts. Did the statement that you put up today address that directly?

CARDINAL FRANCIS GEORGE: It addresses it, but not in so many words in that statement. There's still more work to be done. First of all, it's important to prove that the allegations are in fact the case. There are false allegations, although in my experience I found most of the allegations against priests in this very shameful matter turn out to have some foundation in fact. Beyond that, just as you can't take away a person's baptism, you can't take away the fact that he's ordained, it's a sacrament. You can take away any rites to minister and, furthermore, any rites to be considered a priest in the Church, and that's what we're talking about.

GWEN IFILL: Cardinal Mahony, what do you do about priests who have in the past alleged or proven to have engaged in these activities? Do you go backward and look back on the priests who you know have already been found guilty of these things or is this strictly future oriented?

CARDINAL ROGER MAHONY: Well, actually keep in mind that in early 1990s, at least the last ten or twelve years, most of the diocese in the United States have already been taking these men out of ministry. Most of the cases you're hearing about today predate that. They're old cases like we have in Los Angeles. Many of these men are retired. So this process we're looking at now is really prospective, that is, to help us from now forward. I have a couple of cases, for example, in Los Angeles of priests who were found guilty in criminal courts, served in state prison, but refuse to petition to be returned to the lay state. That is a scandal for our people. So I need a way to return them to the lay state so that in no way they can be considered priests, and this will help us greatly.

GWEN IFILL: And, Cardinal Mahony, you mentioned accountability and uniform guidelines that will be established by the Church to try to enforce these things. You talk about who would be accountable, how would they be held accountable, who is the enforcer?

CARDINAL ROGER MAHONY: Well, you've got to remember back in 1993, the Bishops' Conference issued its first set of proposed guidelines, and most dioceses began to build on those then. I know we did. And I know Chicago and everyone else did. And so what we're going to do is to look at all of those now, review them, involve our lay leaders in that process to make sure they're all up to date and adequate, and then secondly, to make sure through some way of accountability, which has not been determined, we will make sure those are constantly reviewed. For example, both Cardinal George and I, we have lay boards in our archdiocese that not only help us with these cases, and review them, make recommendations, but also review regularly and constantly the guidelines themselves. This proposal is to make sure that all the dioceses are doing the same thing.

GWEN IFILL: Cardinal George, one of the other points that Cardinal Mahony made was this idea of going back to seminaries and revisiting them and trying to get to the root cause of some of these concerns. Is that a correct interpretation? And also when we talk about root causes, are we talking about the debate that there has been in this country over celibacy and homosexuality?

CARDINAL FRANCIS GEORGE: The answer is yes to all of those, Gwen. The selection process is considerably more sophisticated now than it was when I was a seminarian, and we didn't have quite the kind of psychological screening that is in place now. We were given psychological tests, but they were standard. Now they have interviews and it's much more sophisticated in most of the seminaries. We want to be sure that the motivation is correct, that's a spiritual question; we want to be sure that the personality is normal. And so we are asking that not only the selection process but, also, as Cardinal Mahony said, the teaching of the Church, the doctrine of the Church is done in a way that upholds the Church's teaching on the gift of human sexuality. Vis- -vis that gift, people who are of a more liberal tendency dislike celibacy; people of a more conservative tendency have problems about homosexuals being ordained priests. And we talked naturally about both those areas -- concerned that the gift of sexuality be properly understood and therefore the gift of celibacy, which is an evangelical value, also be understood in the light of our deeper understanding of what it means to be a human being today. And that is a discussion where the Roman Curia, for its part, and the American Bishops have to continue to mull over this subject. So it's the initiation of a process, which will bring in the seminary formation people, and finally, I think, result in clearer guidelines for the selection of candidates.

GWEN IFILL: So it would be unclear still whether, for instance, a homosexual priest who is practicing a celibate life would still be an acceptable person to be a priest.

CARDINAL FRANCIS GEORGE: That's discussed back and forth. The important thing is that, because a priest is called "Father," and he is always an elder in the Church-- he's not an ecclesiastical bachelor, he's married to Christ's spouse, which is the Church-- that he be able to understand himself as a father and a spouse, and bring forth new children spirituality. If that sense of identity isn't there, then he doesn't understand the nature of the priesthood and isn't an apt candidate. So I think we'll go at it that way, rather than start with the psychology; start with the sacrament.

GWEN IFILL: Cardinal Mahony, was there discussion about whether it is acceptable for a priest who has been found guilty of these kinds of offenses to continue to practice as a priest, but not oversee children, for instance?

CARDINAL ROGER MAHONY: Well, there was discussion about that. And I think there is a little variance across the country on some old cases -- not with new cases, but some old cases where there are certain circumstances in some diocese where there may be a priest who had one unfortunate incident occur maybe twenty-five/thirty years ago, and has been involved ever since in some well-protected environment in ministry, not involving young people. There are some dioceses that are still doing that. We in Los Angeles decided not to do that. But I think for the future, the Holy Father is encouraging us to not keep in ministry anyone who has been found guilty of the abuse of a minor. But there are across the country I think a few old cases where there still may be some protective service.

CARDINAL FRANCIS GEORGE: A bottom line, Gwen is, are the children protected? I just said the bottom line is, are children protected? One obvious way to protect them is to take out anyone who is ever guilty of anything that even looks like this. Another way is to monitor, but that is a disputed point right now, as Cardinal Mahony said.

GWEN IFILL: Was there any discussion, Cardinal George, about not only whether priests who are found guilty should be removed, but Cardinals, people of your number who have overseen those priests who perhaps have looked the other way, should also be removed?

CARDINAL FRANCIS GEORGE: Well, Cardinals have priests, but I think the accusation isn't of sexual abuse of minors, but rather that we've been derelict, in some cases, in our oversight of the priests. That came up, but it wasn't decided or even discussed at great length, not enough to enter into the six proposals that are the fruit of this meeting. But it was noted.

GWEN IFILL: Well, Cardinal Mahony, let me ask you the same question to you. Was that an oversight? Was that something that should have been part of this document that you're coming up with today, that Cardinals or Church leaders should be held accountable as well?

CARDINAL ROGER MAHONY: Well, no, I don't think we had mentioned that specifically. I think the second point of the document calls for accountability at the local level. And that accountability, while it ends up in the bishops' desk, is a shared accountability, and in our case and in Chicago's case, involves a lot of lay people and other experts in these decisions. But in terms of who stays as a Bishop or not, that's up to the Pope and the Holy Father, and not up to us.

GWEN IFILL: Cardinal Mahony, you spent... you two both have spent the last two days in a place that most of us will never go. What was the tone like in these meetings? Were they anxious? Were they calm, tense?

CARDINAL ROGER MAHONY: Well, I'll give my impression. I thought they were very, very good meetings. They were focused. Cardinal Sodano, the Secretary of State, was the President of our sessions. They were carried out in a very, very fraternal form. We had a chance to update and educate people in the Curia about our reality in our pastoral situation, the special crisis we're dealing with, and to ask for their help. The Holy Father responded, I think, magnificently with the message he gave us yesterday. Then today we had lunch with him, and once again he offered us encouragement and hope, and, you know, in his document he said the house of the successor of Peter is open to all. And he extended that invitation to us, and especially to everyone in the Church who is hurting. He went out of his way in that message to reach out to victims who are hurting, and who we are working with to also bring about healing and reconciliation. So I would characterize the days as very, very pastoral, very fraternal, and certainly very friendly.

GWEN IFILL: And Cardinal George, what were your impressions having been in the room as well?

CARDINAL FRANCIS GEORGE: I would share what Cardinal Mahony said, and there's not much to add. It's an atmosphere of faith first of all, which is the reason why we have hope, knowing that the Lord is also part of our discussions and the Lord guides his church. But it was a very European style meeting. Americans would find it quite formal. That is you start out with a statement of purpose, and then each individual in the meeting who has a right to talk gives his own impressions, and only at the end you get into the kind of style that Americans are used to: A more process-oriented style. This is sometimes, for Americans, a very difficult process. We have to contain our own desire to enter into the discussion immediately, but in the end it pays off. And we have something definite, but in the end also what we have is the beginning of a process, which, I think, americans can adjust to well, and which will involve the Roman Curia in new ways. It's the beginning of an important conversation not exactly the beginning, because the initiative started last February when the Holy See, the Cardinals in Rome asked for a clarification of what was going on in the U.S. Church.

GWEN IFILL: But a continuation. Cardinal Francis George and Cardinal Roger Mahony, thank you both very much for joining us.

CARDINAL ROGER MAHONY: Thank you, Gwen, very much.

CARDINAL FRANCIS GEORGE: Thank you. God bless.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the new world for Afghan women, going for the jobs, and a conversation about revenge.

FOCUS - WOMEN IN AFGHANISTAN

JIM LEHRER: Ray Suarez has the women in Afghanistan story.

RAY SUAREZ: With me is Doctor Sima Samar, vice chair of Afghanistan's interim administration and Minister of women's Affairs. She has been in Washington meeting with government officials.

DR. SIMA SAMAR: Yeah, I did. He promised he would not leave Afghanistan alone. They will stay for a longer term.

RAY SUAREZ: What form will that presence take? What does Afghanistan need prosecute the United States at this point?

DR. SIMA SAMAR: For the moment actually unfortunately our country is dependent on aid. I mean, we don't have resources ourselves yet. And it was not only the question of

financial support, actually, it was a question of security and expansion of multinational troop, or international troop in Afghanistan. I did ask for that. And I asked for financial support. He said he's just going to the Senate asking for more financial support for Afghanistan.

RAY SUAREZ: So, you and the other ministers of the Karzai government would like the United States and the world community to increase, for instance, the size of the security force that's now in Kabul?

DR. SIMA SAMAR: Yes. We don't want only in Kabul actually, we want all over the country because there are some tensions. There's a pocket of instability in the country. As far as we are proceeding to the Loya Jirga, closer to the Loya Jirga, it's more tension. We want the Loya Jirga to be held properly. And we want the international community to support us on bringing stability and security in different parts of the country also.

RAY SUAREZ: And that Loya Jirga will move you on to a more permanent footing, a more permanent Afghan government, that Council?

DR. SIMA SAMAR: Yes. This is a Grand Council that the people... the representatives come from all over the country. And they'll decide about the future of the government. It will be a transitional government for one-and-a-half years.

RAY SUAREZ: Let's talk about the government that you serve with right now. Can it be said to be a functioning government in all parts of the country?

DR. SIMA SAMAR: Not really yet. We are trying ourselves because we went in a country where there were no systems. We started from scratch. And it was 23 years of war and different groups came and just destroyed the country instead of construct the country. So it was really difficult. And we are in a process to build up some of the system. But we don't have really control all over in every small portion of the country, because we built the system after 23 years of war and not one problem -- different problems, difficulties and lack of communication, lack of facilities, lack of roads. These are all the reasons. And we cannot really change for months. But we have been quite successful on doing some of the work.

RAY SUAREZ: You are an ethnic Hazara, one of the ethnic groups inside your country. We are often told in the United States that there is still remaining conflict between the various ethnic groups inside Afghanistan. On your cabinet, in your government, there are people from many groups. Have you been accepted?

DR. SIMA SAMAR: Well, I think yes, I am personally accepted in the cabinet. We have more Hazaras in the cabinet. We are a five-member -- of the cabinet. There are five members of the cabinet are belong to this ethnicity and this ethnic group. I think we are accepted in the cabinet but we have to... a long way to go because there were problems between the Pashtuns and during Taliban and the Hazaras between the other ethnic groups. I think it takes time to bring and to build the trust, and it should be, I think, in all aspects, in all parts of the government and even, for example, in different ministries, it should be equally distributed among the difference ethnic groups, although we are focusing mainly on qualifications. But there is quite a qualified number of people in every ethnic group.

RAY SUAREZ: What about as a woman?

DR. SIMA SAMAR: Well, as a woman, yes, we do have a lot of women. They are going to different jobs. Me, also as a woman, I already had a space in the cabinet so I made the space in the cabinet. I think that...

RAYSUAREZ: But are you respected as a person of authority? Are you listened to in cabinet meetings?

DR. SIMA SAMAR: Yes, I think so. Yes, I tried my best and they really... at least they do respect my presence in the cabinet and they do listen to what I'm saying.

RAY SUAREZ: What do the women and the girls of Afghanistan need right away? We're told that their needs are great. What do you have to do first?

DR. SIMA SAMAR: I think the priority for us is education. Of course for the moment we really focus on participation of women in Loya Jirga, advocating for that and really lobbying for that, more women to be part of Loya Jirga. But I think education is really necessary and basic for us because we lost a lot of time without education. I think, too, education can change a lot of things in the society.

RAY SUAREZ: And do you have any funds to build the schools, buy the textbooks, the pencils, the crayons?

DR. SIMA SAMAR: Not much. Not enough. There were all promises but it's not... there are many platforms but it's not really on the ground.

RAY SUAREZ: What about the safety of the daily lives of women and girls in Afghanistan?

DR. SIMA SAMAR: Well, as I said, most part of the country is safe but there are pockets of resistance and problems in the country. And I think that's why we ask for expanding troops because the women will be victims of lack of security in any country. I mean, especially in Afghanistan. We have the experience that whenever there was lack of security, the women were most victims and there were more restrictions on them by the family.

RAY SUAREZ: Can you point to changes that really mean progress, that constitute an advance since the Taliban was overthrown? We were told here in America that they were terrible for women. Afghanistan has paid a tremendous price to get rid of them. Now they're gone. Is it better to be a woman in Afghanistan today than it was a year ago?

DR. SIMA SAMAR: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

RAY SUAREZ: How so?

DR. SIMA SAMAR: Now, for example, the women we have two women in the cabinet. Since ten years, there were no women in the cabinet.

RAY SUAREZ: What about women who will never be in a cabinet position, will never be in a Loya Jirga Council deciding the future of the country, but women who are doing laundry, who are raising children, who are trying to farm with their husbands?

DR. SIMA SAMAR: Well, I think they have the rights to go to the work, and most of them have gone back to their work. There's no restriction on them to really travel and work with their male relatives. I mean, nobody will beat them if they don't have a burqua on. And I think they have access to education. Their daughters are willing to go and they're allowed to go and they're already going to the schools, which is quite progress. And the girls are going to university, back to study. This was not the case five years ago.

RAY SUAREZ: Have these bits of progress been made more in some places than others?

DR. SIMA SAMAR: Yes, yes, it is because culturally we understand our country. Some parts of the country is really conservative. And some of the big cities are really progressive. There are people going to... there are women going to the... back to the schools in most of the areas, in most of the big cities, but there are some pockets that actually there are no good schools so we have to build good schools for them. And the idea is that we really don't impose everything on the people. We give the people a chance, what they want and what they choose until we have a proper government and law and order in the country.

RAY SUAREZ: Dr. Sima Samar, thanks for joining us.

DR. SIMA SAMAR: Thank you for having me.

FOCUS - MOVING ON

JIM LEHRER: Now, paying welfare recipients to move where the jobs are. Spencer Michels reports from central California.

SPENCER MICHELS: Even before the current recession, the agricultural communities in California's vast central valley had some of the highest unemployment rates in the nation-- at least 15%. Towns like Fresno, Visalia, and Tulare, continue to be plagued by poverty, which bad economic times only exacerbate. Part of the problem is the agricultural economy, where workers with limited skills or education work part of the year and swell the unemployment ranks to 30% or more the rest of the time. The Reverend Walt Perry heads the Fresno metro ministry, which works with and for the poor.

REV. WALT PERRY, Fresno Metro Ministry: Two of the major job sectors in the county are agriculture and services that are low- paying. Many of those jobs are minimum wage, no health benefits, no sick leave, and if people miss very much work they're out of a job.

SPENCER MICHELS: About a third of the people in Fresno and two nearby counties, Kings and Tulare, all north of Los Angeles, get welfare or other public assistance. But what makes these counties different from other poor areas is that here officials have begun offering welfare recipients money so they can move away.

WORKER: Would you like to apply for the job in Florida?

MAN: Mm-hmm.

WORKER: Okay. Wonderful.

WORKER: How are we doing?

SPENCER MICHELS: The program began when Lorene Valentino, an educational administrator in Tulare County, realized that while there are few jobs in the central valley, there was plenty of work elsewhere.

LORENE VALENTINO, MOVE Administrator: Here I am sitting here in Visalia, California, thinking, "gee, we have all these people here in Tulare County and they have all the jobs in another location, so wouldn't it be nice if we could just move them?"

SPENCER MICHELS: Valentino says it's an American tradition to move to where the jobs are.

LORENE VALENTINO: My folks came here from Oklahoma during the dust bowl. They thought there was gold on the trees, they were going to come pick the gold off the trees. So people have been moving for, you know, years. It's how we all got here in the first place.

SPENCER MICHELS: Four years ago, Valentino and Tulare County started MOVE -- More Opportunities for Viable Employment. The county offered to pay moving expenses and a little rent, $2,000 or $3,000 total, for welfare recipients who would leave the area. Since 1998, in Tulare County alone, more than 700 have pulled up stakes, out of a total of 9,000 on the welfare rolls. Last July, a St. Petersburg, Florida, resort that couldn't find enough workers nearby, came to Fresno to recruit. The staff at MOVE publicized and facilitated the recruiting and even set up a video touting the good life in Florida.

VIDEO: Palm trees calm me, that's the place I want to be...

SPENCER MICHELS: David Kinney was one of those who applied for a Florida job. He lived in Fresno for ten years, but he was laid off as a mail sorter, and went on welfare. Kinney, along with his wife and three children, planned to take advantage of the MOVE program.

DAVID KINNEY: They'll pay for the truck to move down there, gas, lodging and maybe first month's rent.

SPENCER MICHELS: And you're getting a certain amount of money on welfare now?

DAVID KINNEY: Right.

SPENCER MICHELS: Are you going to make more money, you think?

DAVID KINNEY: Working, yes.

SPENCER MICHELS: They offered you a job, what kind of a job?

DAVID KINNEY: Kitchen helper.

SPENCER MICHELS: After September 11, tourism declined. That, plus the general downturn in the economy, caused the Florida resort to stop its recruiting program. For those reasons, and some personal ones, Kinney decided not to move. Many others did leave.

WOMAN: We need to go ahead and figure what we need for groceries this next week.

SPENCER MICHELS: 55-year-old Julie Laws, who had survived an abusive relationship, was working in a dead-end job as an apartment house manager, earning so little she was on welfare.

JULIE LAWS: I got very used to that check coming in the mail every two weeks. It was really hard to break free from. And I needed to have more income coming in; I needed to be able to set a better example for my daughter.

SPENCER MICHELS: Laws, along with Michanne, the youngest of her seven children, considered the Florida resort, but instead chose a job just 100 miles up the freeway, in Stockton, California, closer to relatives. She became an assistant manager in a large, low-cost apartment complex. MOVE helped them arrange it all.

JULIE LAWS: They were very helpful. They helped us organize the move. We went to a class on what we do from this day until the day we leave. We had enough to get started on. It wasn't a lot of money, but it was more than we had in a lump sum for a while. You know? It was enough to go and buy all the things that you need to buy when you move into a new place.

JULIE LAWS: I've already had you sign some of the paperwork.

SPENCER MICHELS: In her new job, laws earns about $8 an hour, working with residents, and helping run the apartment complex. It has been a dramatic shift for the better in her life. She no longer is on welfare.

JULIE LAWS: It's given us an opportunity to kind of back up and refocus. You know, my daughter is kind of refocusing on what her goals are. And it's easier for us to set goals; we don't have a lot of outside influence.

SPENCER MICHELS: How do you feel about that?

JULIE LAWS: It feels good. Feels really good. I feel... it's a freeing-up thing.

SPENCER MICHELS: MOVE administrators say the program is still going strong, and with welfare reform's five-year lifetime limit on benefits, moving to an area where jobs are available is still appealing. David Crawford is Tulare County manager of the CAL Works program, the state's welfare plan. He says that using money to finance moving expenses is justified under welfare rules.

DAVID CRAWFORD, Tulare Co. Welfare Manager: The federal and state law do allow for payment of supportive services, and we consider relocation expenses to be supportive services.

SPENCER MICHELS: Crawford says it costs $1.2 million a year to administer the MOVE program. But it saves a bit more than that in welfare payments the county doesn't have to make.

DAVID CRAWFORD: There's also the additional benefit of having the family themselves making some efforts to become self-sufficient. And that's what we think is the real reward, not just the monetary value.

SPENCER MICHELS: While local political leaders heartily endorse the plan, Fresno's chief economic advisor and former business school dean, Joseph Penbera, has reservations.

JOSEPH PENBERA, Economist: It makes sense if you want to put a band-aid on a large wound, and you're going to abandon essentially the reasons why they're unemployed. They're unemployed because they lack skills, and the economy's not generating jobs sufficiently to afford them an opportunity.

SPENCER MICHELS: Penberasays the county should focus on job creation and training, and not on exporting the problem.

JOSEPH PENBERA: Really what it does is takes our eye off the ball. It takes our focus away from the region and why we do have the problem.

SPENCER MICHELS: County officials point to numerous job-training programs they and private companies have initiated, and to local efforts to attract industry to the area. Still, those efforts have fallen short. This manufacturing firm attracted to the area a few years ago by cheap plentiful labor closed down two plants and laid off 800 workers. Reverend Perry agrees on the need to create a stronger economy with better jobs. But he also thinks the MOVE program sends the wrong message.

REV. WALT PERRY, Fresno Metro Ministry: It tells people, "you do not belong here, there is no place for you, go someplace else," and that can take on racist tones. It can take on the tones "we don't want low income people here, go away."

SPENCER MICHELS: Such criticism disturbs Lorene Valentino, the MOVE administrator, who says everybody wins.

LORENE VALENTINO: The participant certainly wins, because they move to a new location, they start a new life, they're making money. And the taxpayer wins. We've saved millions of dollars for this county.

WORKER: Address, telephone number, how you heard about us today.

SPENCER MICHELS: As employment supervisor of MOVE, Karen Davidson has tracked MOVE participants for the past nine months. She says about 90% of the more than 700 people who have moved so far have found jobs and stayed.

KAREN DAVIDSON, MOVE Employment Supervisor: If they get somewhere and the job doesn't work out for whatever reason, either they're fired or they quit, they don't like it, there are so many other opportunities that are available to them. We don't prohibit anybody from coming back. We cannot pay for them to come back; they have to do that on their own.

SPENCER MICHELS: Despite the controversy over moving poor people away, the MOVE program was recently expanded to an adjacent county, and national publicity has sparked interest elsewhere in the country.

CONVERSATION

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, a conversation about a new book, and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: The book is "Revenge: A Story of Hope." The author is Laura Blumenfeld a reporter at is "Washington Post." It recounts his personal journey into the psychology of revenge. As a brief excerpt on the book's cover puts it, "my father was shot by a terrorist; a decade later, I went looking for him." Laura Blumenfeld welcome.

LAURA BLUMENFELD: Thank you. Good to be here.

MARGARET WARNER: You were a student at Harvard in 1986. Your father, a rabbi, was in Jerusalem on business, and he was shot. Explain to us the connection between that event and this project of yours.

LAURA BLUMENFELD: Well, I realized that these attacks didn't begin or end with my father. They were really part of a mindset, which said it was okay to target innocent civilians to make a political point. And that really bothered me. That sort of shook up my sense of the world. I was a college student at the time, and I was just about to step out into the world. It wasn't just a shot at my father, it was a shot at my innocence and my sense of security. I thought, "if people can think and act this way, then none of us are safe." And I need to find a way take that bullet, to track it down to its source, and challenge that mindset in some way.

MARGARET WARNER: And we should point out, your father lived in fact. He wasn't even seriously wounded. But did he have the same urge to explore this the way you did?

LAURA BLUMENFELD: Well, my father got lucky, but other tourists who were shot were killed. And so I felt like it was important to look at... this man, this gunman was more than just someone who shot my father. He was a symbol of a way of approaching the world.

MARGARET WARNER: So tell us how you proceeded. You got yourself to Jerusalem.

LAURA BLUMENFELD: Right. I got myself to Jerusalem, and it took about six months to find the actual gunman. I dug around in police records and newspaper archives, and turned out there were a list of 25 suspects who had been rounded up for shooting and killing various foreign tourists. I didn't have any addresses or phone numbers. I just went to the West Bank and kind of went door to door to try to find these families, until I knocked on the right door and his mother welcomed me inside with a glass of orange soda to drink.

MARGARET WARNER: That must have been very difficult. I mean, because I gather you didn't tell them who you were?

LAURA BLUMENFELD: I introduced myself simply as Laura, "I'm a journalist write a book about revenge," which was true. I just didn't mention my last name, which was the same as the victim's, my father. And they were quite open about it. They said, "yes, my son tried to kill a man, he shot him one time in the head." When I asked, "who was he?" They said, they sort of shrugged and laughed a little bit, and said it was some Jew; they said it was public relations, it was a way to get people to look at us, was how they explained the shooting.

MARGARET WARNER: Now you write at one point, you said, "I wanted the make the shooter realize he had done something wrong." When did you decide that was the form your revenge would take, that that's what you wanted to do?

LAURA BLUMENFELD: There were two competing impulses all the way through. Part of me was just this angry daughter. Someone had tried to hurt a member of my family, to kill a member of my family. And we all have these dark fantasies about grabbing that person who hurts our child and shaking them up or smacking them around. But I had to be realistic. I don't have an army, I don't have arm muscles, I'm not Sylvester Stallone. So I had other idea of a different kind of shaking up, a sort of reaching inside of this person and shaking him up from the inside.

MARGARET WARNER: So you began writing to him in prison. And what were you trying to find out from him?

LAURA BLUMENFELD: I was trying to find out who he was, why he had done it, and more important, I wanted him to slowly discover who his victim was. The first time he wrote to me he described shooting a, "chosen military target," and I just thought about a radar station. I couldn't even picture a human being the way he described it. And so I told him in my letters that, as a reporter, I also had interviewed his victim, David Blumenfeld, and he wasn't a military target. In fact, he was an American, and he was just visiting Jerusalem for a week.

MARGARET WARNER: And from reading it, it appears that his... the shooter, Omar Katib, is that his name?

LAURA BLUMENFELD: That's right.

MARGARET WARNER: That his communications with you evolved over time. They were very sort of nationalistic, polemical at first. Tell us a little bit about that.

LAURA BLUMENFELD: The first letter was eight pages of just ideological screen. My husband said, "it sounds like a stereotype of a crazed terrorist espousing ideology." But as he relaxed, and I guess he grew more comfortable with me, he started to talk about details from his childhood. He became more human to me as well, about hiding under his bed during the 1967 War, hearing the foot falls of Israeli soldiers, and being afraid.

MARGARET WARNER: So the big moment in the book, the big dramatic moment, is the confrontation that you have with him when he go to his parole hearing. Tell us about that.

LAURA BLUMENFELD: Well, as I traveled the world and listened to other people's stories of revenge, it seems that there was a stark choice of turn the other cheek or an eye for an eye. And what I had discovered really was a third way, which is transformation, which basically says that you don't have to destroy your enemy, you can transform your enemy instead. That's a new way of getting revenge. I decided it was something risky and definitely optimistic, but I had to try it. I decided if I performed some kind of act of generosity toward him, maybe that would turn him around. Maybe I could restore my father's humanity that had been denied at the time.

MARGARET WARNER: And so?

LAURA BLUMENFELD: And so he was sick. This was a medical hearing. And I had a medical report from his doctor saying that he was gravely ill, and I asked my father how he felt about him being released on medical grounds. My father was very pragmatic. He said, "I don't want revenge. I'm not here for forgiveness. If he's sorry and if he's sick, let him go home." So I managed to argue my way up to the front of the courtroom and speak at this hearing. I spoke in Hebrew. All along I had spoken only in Arabic or English with the family, because I didn't want them to know I was Jewish. And when I started talking in Hebrew, of course, they got very concerned. Omar himself jumped up and said, "What is going on here? Who is this journalist, this woman? She's clearly not the person she pretended to be." I was introduced as anonymous in front of the courtroom. I said, "My name is Laura, I come from the United States, and I have gotten to know the family and through the family Omar, and I don't know all the facts of the case, but I do believe that he would not repeat his violence. There would be no more violence if he were freed. And I spoke to the victim, David Blumenfeld, and he also thinks if he's truly ill, 12 years in prison is enough ,and it's time for him to go home. This is what David Blumenfeld said." And the judges yelled at me and told me to sit down, and of course, the prosecutor was seething and saying this is classic hearsay. There was a storm really in the courtroom. And I kept insisting I do have a right to speak. I do have a right to speak. They said, "Why?" And I said, "Because I'm his daughter." And there was just a silence in the courtroom, and I said, "I'm Laura Blumenfeld." And I heard one woman crying behind me, it was Omar's sister. And then everybody broke down in tears. It was only then that I turned around to face Omar for the first time and really look him in the eyes, and I said to him, "And you made a promise, this is on your honor between the Katib family and the Bloomenfeld family that you'll never hurt anybody ever again." He was flabbergasted.

MARGARET WARNER: And so, the denouement? They didn't let him out.

LAURA BLUMENFELD: They didn't let him out. He wrote me a letter and he said, haven't slept for days, you know, trying to reassemble this puzzle of your letters and our whole relationship, but he said, "You made me feel so stupid that I ever caused you or your kind mother any pain. Sorry." More important he wrote my father a letter. And he said, "Laura was a mirror held up to your face to see you as a human being deserved to be admired and respected, and I'm sorry I missed her message from the beginning." And for me that was a very sweet kind of revenge. It was what I had been looking for all along really.

MARGARET WARNER: And based on your own story and then all the travels you did-- I mean, you were in Albania, Sicily, Iran-- what have you concluded about the psychology of revenge, and why some people need revenge and others don't?

LAURA BLUMENFELD: It's very interesting. Sometimes it's not even the offense, it's not even how much somebody hurts you, but whether they humiliate you or not, whether you've been shamed. If you think into your own life, whether it was a friend or a boss or a colleague, it's the sense of powerlessness and humiliation. That's on a personal level, but also on a national level when you think about some of our international conflicts. I also think memory is really important. Memory is the fuel that keeps revenge going. And countries and cultures and individuals who are steeped in memory and tend to remember dates and history, often carry through at least revenge fantasies, if not actual revenge. Cultures and people that are forward looking, like America frankly, tend to be more resilient. It's also people who have a group identity or some kind of tribal identity. I think that, also, it's people who have a very simple view of justice, where it's us versus them, who can easily externalize their hate and are able to separate things in very simple terms. Those are also the kind of people who seek revenge.

MARGARET WARNER: Given what's been happening the last few months in that region-- the suicide attacks, the reprisals-- do you still consider this story what you call it in your title, "a story of hope?"

LAURA BLUMENFELD: I think more than ever it's a story of hope, but it's a story we need to hold on to, because there's a saying in the Middle East, "when you seek revenge you should dig two graves: One for your enemy and one for yourself." And we see that being played out every single day. There's no question that in the Middle East and, also, in our country after 9/11, these are very, very dark times. There is a spark of hope in my story, because it says that the more we can see each other as individuals, the more likely the violence will decline. If we can step way back from the... from the daily hatred and if you can look someone in the eye, it's hard to shoot him in the head.

MARGARET WARNER: Laura Blumenfeld, thank you.

LAURA BLUMENFELD: Thank you.

FINALLY - SPRING

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, former Poet Laureate and NewsHour regular Robert Pinsky considers the downside of spring.

ROBERT PINSKY: In springtime, some people grow misty-eyed with allergies to pollen. The poet Lynne McMahon greets the season gladly, but with the recognition of the hay fever sufferer's fate at this coming time of year. Here is Lynne McMahon's poem "Spring." "We begin now our interior life, the life of the mind I'm tempted to say but really we're driven in by the flowering plum, the lilac, the early April greens sending their brilliant toxins to flame and stagger over the delicate sclera of the eye, to sheet like tearing silk down the throat swaned in an arch to clear a breathing space, now that breathing's a conscious thing. We swell and dwindle on a histamine tide. The bone bowl around a sea that hesitates to finally overtake us, though it drives out or subsumes nearly everything, obligations and errands, the small, spiny creatures of the day. Not that we're ungrateful for these walled-in glooms and filtering machines, the pharmacopoeia of everyday life that allows us some measure of perception. We can see, in fact, that our debility is minor, perhaps even a privilege, a God's eye, warding off tuberculosis, a seasonal and temporary strangulation whose recurrence we can count on as on little else in the world. A little luck choking and stinging its way into our heads where the welcome lies, disguised as tears."

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of the day. U.S. Cardinals and Bishops agreed on measures to stop sexual abuse by Catholic priests, closing a Vatican summit. And Israel demanded changes in a UN team that will investigate the assault on Jenin. UN Secretary-General Annan said he would consider adding members, but would not delay the mission. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer, thank you and good night.