The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

RAY SUAREZ: Good evening. I'm Ray Suarez. Jim Lehrer is on vacation. On the NewsHour tonight: The news of the day; the flap over what the president said about Iraq's nuclear ambitions; a report from Massachusetts on a move to legalize gay marriage; a really old planet shakes up the world of astronomy; the story of the Evansville, Indiana, Muslims rounded up after 9/11; and our regular Friday discussion with Mark Shields and David Brooks.

NEWS SUMMARY

RAY SUAREZ: President Bush faced new questions today over a false claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa. It was included in his state of the union address last January. The administration now acknowledges it was based on faulty intelligence. In Uganda today, Mr. Bush was asked how mistaken information wound up in the address.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services. And it was a speech that detailed to the American people the dangers posed by the Saddam Hussein regime. And my government took the appropriate response to those dangers. And as a result, the world is going to be more secure and more peaceful.

REPORTER: But sir, how did it get into your speech if it was erroneous.

SPOKESMAN: Thank you very much.

RAY SUAREZ: Earlier today, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the CIA Vetted all the intelligence in the state of the union address. She said: "If the CIA, The director of central intelligence, had said, "Take this out of the speech,' it would have been gone." Today's Washington Post reported the CIA urged the British to delete the uranium angle from an intelligence paper last fall. But this week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he stands by the claim. Blair is set to visit Washington next week. We'll have more on all this in a moment. In Iraq, three U.S. Soldiers were wounded in Asmara, north of Baghdad, in a mortar attack last night. And the U.S. Senate urged President Bush last night to seek NATO's help in Iraq. The vote was 97-0. The nonbinding resolution also said the president should consider asking the U.N. for military assistance. Spain's cabinet approved plans today to send 1,300 soldiers to Iraq. They'll be deployed initially for six months. President Bush praised Uganda today for its efforts to fight AIDS. The central African nation has cut infection rates dramatically by promoting condom use and abstinence. Today, Mr. Bush visited a clinic in Entebbe. He said Ugandans are leading the way against the epidemic that's ravaged parts of Africa. He ends his Africa trip tomorrow, after a stop in Nigeria, the continent's most populous nation. The main rebel group in Liberia warned today against sending in peacekeepers while President Charles Taylor remains in power. The rebels said that would only prop up his government. They went on to say: "Any troops deployed before the departure of Taylor must be prepared for a firefight." More than 15,000 people gathered today in Bosnia, to bury more victims of the massacre at Srebrenica. In 1995, Bosnian Serb soldiers slaughtered up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys. Today, survivors and relatives attended a service near the site on the eighth anniversary of the killings. They laid to rest 282 victims who were recently identified through DNA testing. The World Trade Organization ruled against heavy U.S. tariffs on imported steel today. The body said there was no proof U.S. Steel makers had been harmed by cheaper imports. The European Union hailed the ruling, while American steel companies condemned it.

PASCAL LAMY, Trade Commissioner, European Union: We need more discipline worldwide. It's a globalized market. It's a worldwide market, and it needs global rules.

TERERENCE STRAUB: U.S. Steel Corporation: It's another in a string of deplorable decisions from the W.T.O from our point of view. The organization itself has an inherent bias against safeguard action.

RAY SUAREZ: The Bush administration imposed the duties in March of last year. The Bush administration said it would appeal the ruling. Enron filed a plan today to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Under the plan, the company's 20,000 creditors would receive less than 20 cents on the dollar. It's estimated Enron actually owes them $67 billion. The energy trading giant collapsed in 2001, in a huge accounting scandal. The reorganization plan is subject to approval by a federal bankruptcy judge. Wholesale prices increased in June, after dropping for two months. The Labor Department reported today the Producer Price Index was up 0.5 percent, led by higher energy costs. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained more than 83 points to close above 9119. The NASDAQ rose 18 points to close at nearly 1734. For the week, the Dow gained 0.5 percent. The NASDAQ rose 4 percent. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to prewar claims about Iraq, gay marriages, the oldest planet, "flashpoints USA", and Shields and Brooks.

UPDATE - DEFENDING CLAIMS

RAY SUAREZ: Now to who knew what and when about Iraq's potential weapons of mass destruction. We start with some background from Kwame Holman.

KWAME HOLMAN: This was the week President Bush was supposed to be focused on Africa. Instead, he and other top administration officials have spent a lot of time defending the accuracy of statements they used to help justify war in Iraq. On Monday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer acknowledged that this statement in the president's state of the union speech claiming Iraq sought nuclear material in Africa was incorrect.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

KWAME HOLMAN: But five weeks later, the head of the united nation's nuclear watchdog agency disputed that claim.

MOHAMED ElBARADEI: There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.

KWAME HOLMAN: On Tuesday of this week, the "New York Times" quoted White House officials as confirming the information about Iraq "might in fact be wrong." Two days earlier, the Times published an account on its opinion page the man sent to Africa by the CIA to investigate the possibility Iraq sought weapons material from the nation of Niger. Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador to another African nation, wrote that some of the intelligence was, "twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Of the suspected uranium purchase by Iraq, Wilson wrote: "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had taken place" On Wednesday, at a press conference with south African President Thabo Mbeki, Mr. Bush was asked if he regretted his January statement.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world peace. And there's no doubt in my mind that the United States, along with allies and friends, did the right thing in removing him from power. And there's no doubt in my mind, when it's all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind. And so there's going to be a lot of attempts to try to rewrite history, and I can understand that. But I am absolutely confident in the decision I made.

KWAME HOLMAN: That same day, during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Michigan Democrat Carl Levin questioned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld closely about the intelligence.

SEN. CARL LEVIN: I'm just curious as to whether or not you've determined, as a policymaker, how the facts of falsity of that claim of a uranium sale to Iraq from Africa remained in the bowels of the agency for nine months, after you made your statement on the 29th. Did somebody come to you, the intelligence community come to you and say, "my gosh, we got facts that show that just simply is inaccurate?"

DONALD RUMSFELD: The fact that the facts change from time to time with respect to specifics does not surprise me or shock me at all; it's to be expected. It's part of the intelligence world that we live with, is uncertainty and less than perfect knowledge. I must say, however, that as we've gone through this period, I think the intelligence has been quite good, and I don't think that the fact that there is an instance where something was inaccurate ought to in any way paint a broad brush on the intelligence that we get and suggest that that's a pattern or something; it's just not.

KWAME HOLMAN: Democrats on the committee have called for a formal investigation of prewar intelligence about Iraq's weapons. Yesterday, Secretary of State Colin Powell revealed that he had dropped a reference to Iraq's quest for uranium from his presentation to the United Nations Security Council, which came a week after the president's speech. Speaking in South Africa, Powell gave an explanation of how the erroneous statement got into the president's address.

COLIN POWELL: At the time it was put into the state of the union, my best understanding of this is that it had been seen by the intelligence community and vetted. But on subsequent examination, it didn't hold up, and we have acknowledged that.

KWAME HOLMAN: Today, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters aboard Air Force One that: "the CIA cleared the president's speech in its entirety." The controversy has provided fodder this week for several of the Democratic presidential candidates.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: We now know that the state of the union message, well after the vote on the Iraq resolution, contained information that was wrong, and at least some in the administration knew it.

HOWARD DEAN: This is a serious credibility problem for the U.S. And needs to be resolved publicly and now.

KWAME HOLMAN: But in Uganda today, President Bush again repeated his assertion that the Iraq war was more than justified.

RAY SUAREZ: For more on the story, we turn to Walter Pincus who has been covering it for the "Washington Post." Walter, welcome. How long has this story been in circulation; stories of Iraq's uranium shopping in Africa?

WALTER PINCUS: Well, the original idea, the rumors and some reports started in late 2001 about Niger and the possibility that Iraq, which 20 years earlier or ten years earlier, had bought some uranium from Niger, and there were reports into early 2002.

RAY SUAREZ: And how old are the doubts about the story? Were the skeptics floating around early on?

WALTER PINCUS: As you said in the beginning, Ambassador Wilson went to Niger in February 2002, reported back in March, talked to some of the people that were supposed to have been involved in this attempt to buy uranium, the Iraqi attempt from the Niger side, and they denied it.

RAY SUAREZ: Well this week, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice said the CIA Had signed off on this reference in the bush speech. And you've reported that as early as last fall, that same agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, was pressuring the British to back off that same idea in a report. Can both things be true? Are they mutually contradictory?

WALTER PINCUS: No, in fact, they both can be true because if you read closely what Condoleezza Rice said today she said the CIA signed off after changes were made that the CIA had asked for.

RAY SUAREZ: And what might those changes have been? A reference to a specific country, for example?

WALTER PINCUS: The reference to Niger was taken out, also a reference to the so-called amount that they were looking to buy. Also added, although it wasn't attributed to the agency peep, people, was that the information was attributed to the British, and not to the U.S.. although, within the same speech there are eight other references to intelligence, and they're all referred to as U.S. Intelligence.

RAY SUAREZ: As of today, the British are standing by their original story.

WALTER PINCUS: The British are standing by their original story. I heard today that in fact Prime Minister Blair said their information is about Niger, but it comes from a different source.

RAY SUAREZ: So what has your reporting turned up about how this ended up in the speech after all, when there were so many questions about it beforehand?

WALTER PINCUS: Well, it's been coming up in different places, different times. It actually turned up on the State Department web site in their fact sheet about Niger on the 19th of December. But the next day, when the cable went out with the same fact sheet, Niger was gone and Africa was replaced-- replaced it. And it was done really because the intelligence branch of State Department and the CIA, Which had been asked to clear the original document, both had objected to it.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, the reference did make it into the president's speech, and was heard around the world. But there's a long time between early July and late January. As doubts built about the Iraqi shopping expedition for uranium, why did it take so long for the administration to finally concede that this might have been false?

WALTER PINCUS: Well, we don't know the answer to that. Somebody in the White House, in the preliminary discussions to putting that speech together, brought Niger up again with the CIA and in those discussions, the CIA made it clear of its doubts. But the doubts are also in the national intelligence estimate that was done in October because it's that particular transaction is not included in the judgments that led the intelligence community to believe that Saddam Hussein has reconstituted his nuclear program.

RAY SUAREZ: Just in the past few moments, it's moved on the wires that CIA Director Tenet has now said publicly, his agency made a mistake in letting President Bush make the allegation. What do you read into that statement publicly from the CIA Director?

WALTER PINCUS: Well, I think he is coming to grips with what's been said, which is although the agency had its doubts about the information in the final judgment, they allowed it to go through attributed to the British, and they should have forcefully tried to get it taken out.

RAY SUAREZ: Walter Pincus, thanks for being with us.

WALTER PINCUS: You're welcome.

RAY SUAREZ: Shields and Brooks take it from there. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and David Brooks of the "Weekly Standard."

RAY SUAREZ: There are people around Washington, Mark, trying to describe this as a tempest in a tea pot. One sentence in one speech? How important is this?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, first of all, it was not one sentence in one speech obviously. I mean, it was relied upon by Condoleezza Rice in her op-ed piece in the state of the union, in the "New York Times" why we knew Iraq was lying was the title of it used by Donald Rumsfeld in his press conference the same week with General Myers. So it was the most serious charge that the administration made that the nuclear capability as far as nuclear potential as far as Saddam Hussein. So it was a serious charge. And I think, Ray, what has hurt the administration most of all this week is that George W. Bush Bush's reputation and strength politically relies not upon his mastery of policy detail or his command of facts and information or even his eloquence, his ability to galvanize a nation. It's been -- he is a straight shooter and a strong leader especially after his performance after September 11. This is a guy that says what he means, means what he says, may not always be grammatical but you know what he is talking and there is in parsing of words like his predecessor was accused. And I think this hurts because it doesn't appear to be, up to now, any assertiveness on the president's part, no sense of anger or irritation or outrage that he was misled or that he misled the American people in any way. He's unnaturally uncurious about how this all happened and not eager, apparently, to assess accountability about it. And I think that's, for the first time, this iron disciplined administration, which has always spoken with one voice, is very heavily into finger pointing and blame shifting.

RAY SUAREZ: David.

DAVID BROOKS: What happened today was a volley, was tossed by the White House to the CIA. Condoleezza Rice and the president said we vetted speech. The CIA said it was okay. There was no deceit involved. We made a mistake, we made a mistake but there was no deceit involved. We didn't, you know, try to trick anybody. Then the question for me all day was how does the CIA respond to this? Does George Tenet resign? The statement you referred to suggests he will not resign. If there are no leaks from the CIA in the next few days saying no, we did warn them, when the vetting process was going through, we did say something, if there are no leaks to that effect, then what we have here is an honest mistake and the American people, who have supported the president, continue by 70 percent to think he did the right thing, continue by 75 percent to think things are going reasonably well. Important to stay there, they'll stay with the president. But if there are leaks, then we have a scandal. Up to now, the democrats have gone rabid, the Democratic National Committee running an ad saying that he intentionally deceived the American public. There is absolutely no evidence to support that.

RAY SUAREZ: And, just to reiterate, in your view George Tenet coming forward and saying it was our fault is a sign that he intends to stick it out, not that he is part of being set up to go.

DAVID BROOKS: It does not answer whether however unnamed agents or intelligence officers will then go to the Washington Post, the New York Times, and say something different.

MARK SHIELDS: I'd just add, first of all, I disagree with David's numbers. We've seen a precipitous drop in support for the president's policy. Now to the point where a plurality of Americans question the loss of American lives is worth it in Iraq. And so I mean the support has just dropped --

DAVID BROOKS: Gallup Poll, Pew Poll, 75 percent say Iraq is going fairly or very well. 70 percent say it is important to stay there. 67 percent say Bush did the right thing.

MARK SHIELDS: I can show you CNN-USA Today where there is a different result and the New York Times as well. I'd simply say this: The problem is, Ray, this is not isolated. This is I think what the administration has to be concerned about is there is a certain pattern here. You've got the Cheney task force stonewalling. You've got the 9/11 Commission being stonewalled by the administration, and non-partisan figures, John McCain raising that very question. You have, in addition to that, the excess about weapons of mass destruction and whether in fact as Donald Rumsfeld said on April 30, we know where they are. We know exactly where they are in Iraq. So I think, you know, you've got a problem. And for them to, not admit this problem is a serious mistake.

RAY SUAREZ: A quick response.

DAVID BROOKS: There are sort of two crucial political issues how is this judged? Is the debate in " 04 were we right to remove Saddam Hussein or were we not? If that's the debate, then I think the administration is okay. If the debate is did they do it competently enough, then we're getting into a gray area, and there I do agree with you, that there have been signs that they didn't expect what's happened.

RAY SUAREZ: Stay with us. We'll talk to you later in the program. Thanks, Mark and David.

DAVID BROOKS: Will you miss us?

FOCUS - GAY MARRIAGES

RAY SUAREZ: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: Gay marriage in Massachusetts; an ancient planet discovered; the Evansville, Indiana eight; and more Shields and Brooks. Betty Ann Bowser has the gay marriage story.

SPOKESPERSON: Are you ready?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Hillary and Julie Goodridge have been together 16 years. The lesbian couple wanted to share the same last name so several years ago they legally changed it. In 1995, Julie was artificially inseminated and delivered their daughter Annie, now seven. So the Goodridges are a family in most all traditional ways except one: They are unable to legally marry, which they say is unfair.

JULIE GOODRIDGE: Because if I drop dead in the living room for example, Hillary has no right to have my body removed, regardless of the fact that she's my power of attorney and durable power of attorney. She has no right over my body.

HILLARY GOODRIDGE: For example, we are not considered kin to each other. We are not consider spouses. If either of us dies, becomes disabled, all things mostly that happen when you're older or things none of us want to think about, disability, death, bad things, accidents. It's in those times that you realize, I have no relationship to this person. If Julie were to die, it is possible would I have to sell the house because I would have to pay tax on the inheritance, which most spouses would not have to do and we have a child. So certainly raising Annie has brought to this the fore in a protective way that I never considered before.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Last year, the Goodridges joined six other gay or lesbian couples and sued the state of Massachusetts. They claimed they were being discriminated against, being denied equal protection guaranteed under the state's constitution because the state did not allow them to get a marriage license. A decision in their case is expected any day. This comes on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court decision just weeks ago that invalidated a Texas law that made sodomy a crime. Harvard Law Professor Martha Minow says that doesn't automatically mean the next step is to legalize gay marriage, but she says courts are starting to show more acceptance of gay rights issues.

MARTHA MINOW, Harvard Law School: When the United States Supreme Court struck down the sodomy law this past month and said this violates liberty, that is a recognition that we must tolerate practices that are preformed privately by free individuals who are consenting. That, I think, is a first step in a free country toward what is equality. It is true, as some commentators indicate, there is a difference between tolerance and equality, equal treatment. But I think the next step, once people start to realize these are people just like us. They're our neighbors, sending their kids to school. We are not allowed by law to discriminate against them, and in fact we see that they deserve the same kind of treatment in the country as everybody else.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: That's just what worries Ron Crews. He's a former minister and director of the Massachusetts Family Institute, a Christian conservative interest group. Crews says if gay marriage is permitted, it could lead to other more disturbing types of relationships.

RON CREWS, Massachusetts Family Institute: A word means a what it means. Marriage means the union of a man and a woman, and if that definition was changed, it's no longer marriage as far as I'm concerned. If they are successful in redefining marriage between a male and a female, then is the next step to redefine marriage to three people or four or what? What is the ultimate goal, and by what standard do either judges or legislators decide this word is going to be defined? How are they going to define this word?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The Catholic Church has joined Crews' group in opposition to the Goodridge case. It filed a brief maintaining that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. Catholic Conference Associate Policy Director Dan Avila also argues that gay and lesbian couples are not being denied equal protection under the law.

DAN AVILA, Massachusetts Catholic Conference: When we talk of people who are not able to be married, we don't normally think of them as being demeaned. For example, a brother and a sister cannot get married. A grandparent and a grandchild cannot get married. Does that mean that we are sending the message that they are less than equal? That they are somehow as individuals not human beings with dignity? No, we don't normally make that equation.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Claire Humphrey and Vickie Henry aren't waiting for arguments like that to be settled in the United States. The Boston couple has been together for nine years. In 1998 on the 4rth of July, they had a religious marriage ceremony in Wellesley, complete with a minister and bridesmaids. But they have been unable to be legally married. After being artificially inseminated, Vickie gave birth to their daughter Lucy, 22 months ago. Now they are expecting a son, and in two weeks they're going to Canada. That's because last month, the province of Ontario threw out a law that banned gay marriage. The province of British Columbia quickly followed suit. So Humphrey and Henry are getting married again, this time legally.

VICKIE HENRY: We are going to have a baby in two months and we want to put there are always risks, although we hope everything will turn out. We want to put as many protections in place as we feel like we can.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And if they say if they were married, Humphrey would not have to go through a complicated adoption process like she did after Lucy was born.

CLAIRE HUMPHREY: I had to wait five months before I had any legal relationship to her, even though I'm her primary caretaker, until it came up on the court calendar. And that got pretty frightening because there was a time when Vicki was 3,000 miles away on a business trip, and as infants do Lucy came down out of nowhere, with a 103 fever. She was tiny. And I'm racing around the house trying to get to the pediatrician. And I had to go back and hope that the paperwork that I had was enough that I would be able to help her. I have never felt so helpless in my life, so inadequate in my life.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But it's not clear whether a Canadian marriage license would be recognized in the United States. Still, conservatives are worried that courts are now engaging in judicial activism with gay marriage, and they want to curtail some of that authority.

RON CREWS: I do believe that there's going to be a great movement of folks that says, "Wait a minute. We didn't elect these judges to make laws." Our system says that they're to interpret, not make laws. And these actions have been exceeding the bounds that we believe they may have the constitutional responsibility for.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Crews and others are trying to get the Massachusetts legislature to pass an amendment to the state's constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. It would be similar to so-called "Defense of Marriage Acts" passed by 37 other states. But whether that happens or not, Harvard's Minow says the issue of gay marriage will likely become the next major civil rights battleground facing America.

MARTHA MINOW: Family law has many functions, but the most important function is to reflect and guide the way people actually live. And if the law has no relationship to the way people are actually living, it will be ignored. This is a worldwide phenomenon. There is a growth of freedom and an exercise of freedom by people to choose how to live and with whom to be intimate, and if people are in an intimate relationship, the law has to eventually come to recognize that.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But couples like the Goodridges are concerned. They know conservative lawmakers in Washington have started a movement to pass a constitutional amendment that would make heterosexual marriage the law of the land.

FOCUS - ANCIENT PLANET

RAY SUAREZ: Now a new discovery of a very old planet. Jeffrey Brown has that.

JEFFREY BROWN: "Old" in this case means 13 billion years, and that's at least eight billion years older than any previously detected planet. Scientists say the discovery challenges what we know about how planets are formed, how early after the big bang they appeared, and how many planets might exist in the universe. The work was done by a team of astronomers and published in today's issue of the journal Science. Here to talk about it is Alan Boss, an astrophysicist with the Carnegie Institution. Welcome to you.

ALAN BOSS: It's a pleasure being here, Jeffrey.

JEFFREY BROWN: One of the members of the observation team said we think we found an example of the first generation of planets formed in the universe. What exactly did they find?

ALAN BOSS: What has been found is evidence for a roughly two and a half Jupiter mass object in orbit around a rather peculiar binary star system in a globular cluster system; this binary star system consists of a pulsar, which is a rapidly rotating neutron star, and a white dwarf star, and the system is believed to be about 13 billion years old, which makes it the oldest known planetary system found so far.

JEFFREY BROWN: So very large, larger, twice the size of Jupiter, much larger than Earth.

ALAN BOSS: Two and a half times the mass of Jupiter and Jupiter is about 318 times the mass of Earth so it's something a thousand times the mass of Earth; it's a very large planet, and it's orbiting the system in an orbit like Uranus's orbit, about 23 times the distance of the Earth from the Sun.

JEFFREY BROWN: And it's about 5600 light years from Earth in a star cluster called M-4. What is M-4?

ALAN BOSS: M-4 is a globular cluster; it's also known as Messier 4. It's the fourth object in a list that was chosen to help comet hunters not confuse other objects with comets. So it's an object that could have been confused with a comet a globular. It's a globular cluster that's about 13 billion years old.

JEFFREY BROWN: Globular means -

ALAN BOSS: It has a rather round shape; if you look at it, it's a perfect sort of sphere of about 100,000 stars, and it's presumed to have formed very early on in the formation of our galaxy and of our universe.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now we have some tape of animation made by NASA, which sort of sets the scene. Why don't we roll tape and you can narrate it for us.

ALAN BOSS: Yes. As you look at this, you actually see the location of the Scorpios Constellation in the southern hemisphere and Antares is the star to the left and to the right you'll see the M-4 globular cluster there. The binary star system is on the outskirts of this globular cluster. As we come in, the HST, the Hubble Space Telescope, was able to take an exquisitely precise image of this region and actually take a picture of the white dwarf star. At that point we're stopping from the HST imagery and going into artist's conception of what it might look like if we could actually travel to the system and look at it up close. Here comes the white dwarf star, which maybe has a mass of one-third the mass of the Sun. Here comes the pulsar, neutron star, and then finally here comes the planet itself, which in this rendition looks blue but, goodness knows, we don't really know exactly what it looks like.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now 13 billion years is just one billion younger than the theorized big bang. Why is it important to find a planet so old?

ALAN BOSS: Well, we have evidence for well over 100 extra solar planets, planets outside of our solar system, but essentially all of the planets are no more older than our own solar system, perhaps a few billion to perhaps five billion years old. So, as far as we know, planetary systems might have just formed say within the last five billion years in our galaxy. With this new discovery, we are immediately thrust into a different point of view, namely, that planets could have formed as early as a billion years after the big bang. This is a phase where normally we are talking in cosmological terms about dark energy and missing matter. And, instead, here we are one billion years after the big bang talking about rather prosaic, sort of Newtonian concepts, planets in orbits around stars, sort of common ground. And it implies that we might very well have had planetary systems forming much earlier than they would have otherwise and in regions where would not have thought them to have been able to have formed.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, that suggests that there was a lot more time, we are sort of expanding the planetary lifespan -- that suggests a lot more time for things to happen.

ALAN BOSS: Exactly. There is no reason why a planetary system perhaps formed early on in the universe could not have evolved life - perhaps life similar to life of our own, that life would have gone through its own cycle of evolution and perhaps died out long ago -- and so while other phases of life picked up elsewhere in the galaxy. So in some sense, here we are perhaps eight billion years later, rather late comers to the galactic party, you might say.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now this also, I understand, changes or presents a challenge to the way we think of how planets are formed.

ALAN BOSS: Exactly.

JEFFREY BROWN: What's different about this planet?

ALAN BOSS: There are a number of peculiar things about the planet. First of all, it's in orbit around a binary star system. None of the planets that have been found so far have been found in orbit around the binary star system, but more to the point, this particular system, since it's in the globular cluster, is formed out of presumably primarily hydrogen and helium gas, the very simplest elements possible. Our own sun is formed out of gas but it also has perhaps 2 percent by weight of other elements, such as carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, all the elements that you need to mix solid planets. In this globular cluster system we believe that these other elements are 30 times less abundant than they are in our Sun, 30 times less. That means you have 30 times less rock and ice available to make a planet. And so this I think presents a very serious problem for our conventional way of understanding how gastrin planets like Jupiter are formed. It is believed by most people that our Jupiter formed by first having rocks and ice balls smashed together and build themselves together through self-gravity and building something perhaps the size of five to ten Earth masses, and once it got to that size, gas from the disk, which was forming the planetary system, fell on to the object and formed the final planet. Well, in this case of the M-4 planet, it is unclear if it would be possible to even build an object as massive as five to ten Earth masses because you only have 30 times less rock and ice available. So it really throws sort of a monkey wrench into the typical way of trying to explain how a gastrin planet forms.

JEFFREY BROWN: And if planets can be created this way, does it suggest that planets might be more common than we once thought? In other words, there might be many more planets out there hidden away in corners of the universe?

ALAN BOSS: Well, we certainly know that this globular cluster has at least one planet and the question is also how can we explain how it formed? As I pointed out, the typical mechanism for making planets probably doesn't work. But there is another way where we can conceive of making gastrin planets that doesn't require gas or any rocks in particular. Mainly, there could be a self-gravitating clump of gas in the disk of gas and dust which rotates as round the star, and this clump could have become self-gravitating and formed a planet directly without having the metals around. If that process worked, it probably worked well around other stars as well. And for all we know, many of the stars in the cluster harbor gastrin planets. And, given that just a few years ago people thought that globular clusters did not have any planets whatsoever, we suddenly have opened up a lot more territory, some new regimes where we expect planets to exist. It certainly widens tremendously the possibilities for having other planets in our galaxy.

JEFFREY BROWN: Alan Boss, thank you for joining us.

ALAN BOSS: Thank you, Jeffrey.

FOCUS - FLASHPOINTS

RAY SUAREZ: Next, a preview of a new PBS program featuring the NewsHour's Gwen Ifill and her former NBC colleague, Bryant Gumbel. "Flashpoints U.S.A." will examine how the quest for homeland security intersects with Americans' civil liberties. In this excerpt, Gwen looks at the Evansville Eight-- a group of Muslims detained in Indiana after 9/11.

GWEN IFILL: Carolyn Bah is part of a small Islamic community in Evansville, Indiana. Just days after September 11, the FBI interviewed her husband, Tarek al-Basti, a naturalized American citizen born in Egypt. They own The Crazy Tomato, an Italian restaurant along a retail strip in town. One October night, Tarek called Carolyn at home. The FBI was back.

CAROLYN BAUGH: It was around 8:00, 7:30. He said they were there, "they" were there. They wanted to ask him a few more questions so maybe he would be a little late coming home. Then around maybe 10:30 that evening, he called and said he wasn't coming home.

TAREK AL-BASTI: The supervisor of the FBI, he called all of us, that's when I saw the rest of the guys in another room, and they just told us that the good news that everybody has been really great and everything, but the bad news that there is a warrant for our arrest as a material witness.

CAROLYN BAUGH: Up until then I assumed that, you know, it was all a mistake and it would just be undone as easily as it had been done. But with that, it got far more scary.

GWEN IFILL: Evansville had become a focal point in the war against terror. The FBI was tipped that al- Basti and eight others-- all of them Muslims, all from Egypt-- were part of a plot to fly a plane into the Sears Tower in Chicago. As it turns out, Tarek al-Basti had been taking flying lessons but they were a gift from his father-in-law, a pilot.

PATRICK FITZGERALD, U.S. Attorney, Chicago: When the Evansville matter first came to light, a concern that there was a terrorist plot involving Chicago, the most important thing was to get to the bottom of it quickly.

GWEN IFILL: Prosecutors got a court order to arrest eight of the nine as material witnesses. Wearing striped prison jumpsuits, shackled hand and foot, they were taken to Chicago to the federal detention center. No one could find them-- not their lawyers, not their wives. Tarek al-Basti was terrified.

CAROLYN BAUGH: He was banging on the inside of his cell saying "Please, somebody talk to me." And his lawyer couldn't even find him. They told him that he wasn't there. So being an American citizen then means nothing, means nothing.

GWEN IFILL: The Chicago lockup is a long way from Egypt where Carolyn, an Arabic studies graduate from Duke, met Tarek, who was on the rowing team at the American University of Cairo. They fell in love and got married twice-- once in Cairo, and again with Carolyn's family in attendance when they moved to the United States. Eventually they wound up in Evansville at the restaurant. Tarek brought friends from the rowing team to work there. The couple started a new family in the house where Carolyn grew up. But Tarek's American citizenship cut no ice in Chicago. Ken Cunniff, his attorney, was not allowed to see him for four days.

KEN CUNNIFF, Defense Attorney: The bottom line of all of it was that this man who had done everything right in his life was put in a position where he didn't even know... he had no clue as to what the final part of his existence was. And what I did, when I did talk to him and inform him the government said it was a potential capital case, he was truly destroyed.

GWEN IFILL: Did you think they were just going to lock you up and throw away the key?

TAREK AL-BASTI: To be honest with you, when we were in Chicago we thought they were going to just kill us - we were just going to be just... just hanged or something for something. We didn't know even what we did.

GWEN IFILL: Eight men, all from Egypt, all connected to Tarek, Tarek taking flying lessons.

CAROLYN BAUGH: I think a lot of my time with the investigators in Chicago had to do with dispelling some of those coincidences.

KEN CUNNIFF: He had not been allowed to contact his family. He didn't really know why he was there.

CAROLYN BAUGH: They needed to arrest somebody, didn't they, you know? So if we've got that many fishy looking things, then there must be some stink in the fish.

GWEN IFILL: But Tarek's lawyer knew the prosecutor and trusted him.

KEN CUFFIFF: If it were any other prosecutor, I probably would not have allowed my client to talk to them; my client still might be in custody.

DEAN POLALES, Asst. U.S. Attorney, Chicago: We all jointly agreed that we would conduct the investigation with the FBI and we would do it by interviews. They made their clients available. We interviewed family members and relatives. We sought information from foreign countries.

GWEN IFILL: Eventually, all the men were released. The tip was bogus.

DEAN POLALES: These individuals did not have any information related to a terrorist plot directed at Chicago.

GWEN IFILL: But the story didn't end there for Tarek. When he returned from a visit to Cairo last year, his name popped up on a warning list at Kennedy International Airport. He was delayed by Immigration officials for five hours. So a year and a half after their release, Thomas Fuentes, the chief FBI agent in Indiana, took the extraordinary step of apologizing to the men.

THOMAS FUENTES, FBI Special Agent: That apology was that they had to endure what happened and that they had been put through that.

CAROLYN BAUGH: Certainly, Tom Fuentes did an incredibly human thing in going to the lengths that he did to make the apology public.

GWEN IFILL: And last month, Tarek and Carolyn got word the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago had taken the highly unusual additional step of asking a federal judge to expunge or completely wipe out the records of the Evansville arrest.

SPOKESMAN: If I were a state trooper somewhere and it came up on the computer and I saw that, that would make me treat somebody I pulled over for speeding a bit differently.

GWEN IFILL: Tarek and Carolyn are grateful for the apologies.

TAREK AL-BASTI: There is lots of stuff worse happening to lots of people, so would I say that we were just lucky that we got out of this whole thing just fine.

CAROLYN BAUGH: I didn't have my orifices searched and I wasn't shackled, and, you know, I didn't go through that. I'm very eager to just put it to rest, and to thank the men who got it done quickly and to urge Godspeed to those in positions of power who have the lives of innocent men in their hands.

RAY SUAREZ: That was an excerpt from the new PBS program "Flashpoints U.S.A." that airs Tuesday, July 15. Please check your local listings for the time.

FOCUS - SHIELDS AND BROOKS

RAY SUAREZ: And now we return to, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and David Brooks of the Weekly Standard. Well, as the world was going on with its problems, California looked all but certain to hold a recall vote. Both parties have conceded that this thing looks like an inevitability. What do you think, David?

DAVID BROOKS: I think it's the future of American politics. I'll tell you why. I think there is this thing about the French government, that France is governed by dictatorship interrupted by riots. And California is governed by apathy interrupted by petitions. You've got this out of touch electorate that really doesn't pay attention 95 percent of the time. You've got a very insular political class, Democrats and Republicans up there in Sacramento serving their own little interests and most of the time nothing happens, but then there is an eruption and suddenly the whole place spasmodically changes and they have got a petition; they've got a referendum. And to me, this is the problem, when you have a disengaged electorate. You have got these populous upsurges, which then shake everything up and that's what California is doing much to the detriment of honest, normal, you know, procedural government in California.

RAY SUAREZ: Does this upset the apple cart in a way that is not good for Californians? I mean, this guy was not just reelected five years ago. This was just the other day.

DAVID BROOKS: This is not democracy. Democracy is not the majority gets to change its mind every two years; democracy is about protection of minorities, it's about understanding how process works, how governments work. There are some times when elected leaders should take unpopular positions. I'm not sure Gray Davis is worth defending here, but the procedure of elections every four-years, or however many, is worth defending and this is a mockery of it.

MARK SHIELDS: David has just laid out the case that the Gray Davis people will use, which is that this is a rupture, an overthrow of the normal legal, constitutional, legislative and political processes, that it is a right-wing coup to impose their agenda through the use of money and the election of the next governor by 18 or 20 percent of the vote. Gray Davis has never been, David's right, a candidate who said, let me tell you who I am, what I hope and dream and what together we can do to make this a better California. Gray Davis has always been basically, I may be no day at the beach but the other guy is no month in the country. That has been his constant theme. I'm not saying he won't prevail in this. But more serious I think of all this, that California has really ... California had the two greatest governors, I think this nation has had the 20th century, Earl Warren, a Republic and Pat Brown a Democrat.

DAVID BROOKS: I thought you were going to say Ronald Reagan.

MARK SHIELDS: I wasn't going to say Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was not a great governor. He was a popular governor. He wasn't a great governor. California built the America of the future. Highway system, the freeways, California built the greatest, the greatest higher education system - public -- in the nation, at low or no cost, available to everybody in the state. They provided water. I mean it was just a state that provided opportunity and there was the home office of American optimism. Over the past 25 years, because of what David has outlined beginning with Proposition 13, California's public education has plummeted to the point where the envy of the nation 40 years ago, Ray, is now in the bottom half on per capita spending on students. They're studying in overcrowded buildings and there's nothing about this election that is going to change it, because whoever is elected, there is pain and there's suffering and there's shortages that are going to be required.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, David, talk a little bit about the politics, because both sides have a lot to lose on this, don't they?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. The Republicans have potentially something to gain because they had no shot of getting the governorship. It has become a Democratic state. It started out as a Republican thing, Republican congressman, starting the petition - but I think it's spread beyond that. I've had so many Democrats tell me with we voted for this guy, we didn't like him. People just didn't like Gray Davis. Then you get the budget shortfall and it becomes poisonous. To me, the upset is there's a two-stage ballot. First you vote should we recall the guy. And then there's another set of who do we want to replace him. The person who wins the second ballot, assuming the first part passes, could win with a very small percentage of the vote. Therefore a Republican could do very well when a Republican could not win the governorship under normal circumstances.

RAY SUAREZ: Let's move on to gay marriage because we've got the Supreme Court in Massachusetts about to rule, various courts in Canada opening the doors there, and the United States Supreme Court overturning the Texas sodomy law, which is seen as a great opening by a great civil rights campaigners for gray rights. Has America really changed that much on this score?

MARK SHIELDS: I don't think it has changed to the point where a court judgment is going to be acceptable in defining gay marriage. As we saw in the earlier piece, and a good one it was, Betty Ann's piece, that there is a greater tolerance in the country than there was. Americans do not want to return to an America where gay people were persecuted, where they were bullied, and where they were made to feel unwelcomed and uncomfortable. I think a civil union is probably doable and acceptable. But when you say marriage, immediately it raises -- every religion has its own standards, its own values as to who can be married in its church or who cannot be married. I think that changes the debate and changes the dimension. But a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, that is what is known in the trade as a wedge issue. That's the flag burning constitutional amendment, going nowhere but it may be that we can throw it out there, sort of raw meat to the real animals and they'll go for it.

RAY SUAREZ: How does a compassionate conservative handle this one, David?

DAVID BROOKS: It depends on your age. More than any other issue, age really determines how you feel about gay marriage. By two to one, people over 65 disapprove of acceptance of homosexuality. By almost two to one, people under 30 approve of it and say homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle. I see it in my own conservative insular world like many conservatives and people in the Bush White House, when I wake up in the morning, I log on to Andrew Sullivan.Com, a gay conservative web logger writing from Provincetown. All these Republicans, their first human contact in the morning is with a gay Catholic. That's just typical of the way the whole issue is changing. So there is another saying that intellectual history moves forward in a hearse. And I think there will be a gradual move as this young generation goes through the age groups of a greater and greater acceptance of gay marriage. But after this ruling there was a sense from the pro gay activists and the anti gay activists that somehow things had dramatically changed and there were going to be marriages in St Paul and Ru Paul is going to be the Rose Bowl Queen or something. It's not going to be that dramatic.

RAY SUAREZ: Do you agree with Mark that the constitutional amendment is a non-starter.

DAVID BROOKS: Definitely. Flag burning amendment which 90 percent of the American people could not get passed.

RAY SUAREZ: Quickly let's look at unemployment claims being up this week and in the same week, Bush's numbers on confidence and handling the economy down. How does it look to you?

MARK SHIELDS: I think what it has meant more than anything else is that Democrats, perception is reality in American politics. And a lot of Democrats almost consigned this election was over in 2004. George Bush was going to get reelected. I think really the economic numbers -- the tax cuts aren't producing jobs, the president coming back to earth on his handling of the economy was as well as his handling of foreign policy, all of a sudden Democrats are saying, gee, maybe we have a chance.

DAVID BROOKS: I think a slight chance. Interesting question to me is say the economy stagnates what do we do? Nobody has any policies, right or left. We've used them all up.

RAY SUAREZ: Does this have the potential for being a real Achilles Heel as we move into the fall.

DAVID BROOKS: We have all productivity on all things except job growth and what's what people vote on.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, fellahs, thanks a lot.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of the day: This evening CIA Director Tenet said his agency was wrong to let the president claim in the state of the union speech that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa. And Liberian rebels warned peacekeepers to stay out until President Charles Taylor leaves.

RAY SUAREZ: And again, to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq. We add names when the deaths are official, and photographs become available. Here, in silence, is one more.

RAY SUAREZ: We'll see you on-line, and again here Monday evening. I'm Ray Suarez. Thanks for watching and good night.