The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: A summary of the day's news; a look at two parts of the scares over nuclear terrorism-- the one in Pakistan, the other in Russia and the other former Soviet states; some words in and about the secret tapes from John F. Kennedy's presidency under crisis; and a chat with John Feinstein about the unbelievably magnificent World Series between the New York Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: U.S. planes staged heavy raids in Afghanistan again today amid efforts to intensify the military campaign. Kwame Holman reports.

KWAME HOLMAN: A day after perhaps the most intense attacks of the four week campaign, U.S. bombers continued blasting Taliban targets today. Several targets were familiar: Near Kandahar, Kabul, and Mazar-e Sharif. Warplanes also sought out new targets in Afghanistan's northeast corner near the border with Tajikistan. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was in that former Soviet republic on Saturday. Today, Pentagon officials confirmed an assessment team is in Tajikistan, but would not say specifically the U.S. plans to use Tajik air bases.

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN STUFFLEBEEM: Closer accessto Afghanistan-- and I'll speak generically-- closer access to Afghanistan is good for a lot of reasons. Release... Or relief from requirements for a lot of tanking, shorter times for response, faster abilities to turn aircraft around to do resupply missions, et cetera.

KWAME HOLMAN: On the ground, more U.S. Special Forces landed in Afghanistan over the weekend. Today, the Pentagon again denied an account in the "New Yorker" Magazine about difficulties during a Special Forces mission two weeks ago. The magazine's Seymour Hersh said members of the Army Delta Force "had been counterattacked by the Taliban... And some of the Americans had had to fight their way to safety. Twelve Delta members were wounded, three of them seriously. In Afghanistan over the weekend, Northern Alliance leaders complained again they need more U.S. help before they can attack on the Taliban. At today's briefing, reporters asked if the Pentagon would withdraw its support for the alliance, if they continue to hold back.

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN STUFFLEBEEM: There is not a threshold that would say continue or stop. There's not a threshold that I'm aware of that would say withdraw or support. We're pleased with the responses that they have offered, I guess, or have been able to take advantage of with the support we have provided. We would intend to support them to meet their objectives. As long as we stay on our campaign objectives and meet ours.

KWAME HOLMAN: The Northern Alliance continues to be outnumbered by the Taliban, and over the weekend, thousands of Taliban reinforcements reportedly joined the militia from neighboring Pakistan.

JIM LEHRER: The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan appealed to the United Nations today for humanitarian aid for refugees inside Afghanistan. A UN spokeswoman said a "lack of law and order and harassment of staff" made that impossible for now. Osama bin Laden drew sharp criticism today from the head of the UN. Bin Laden's latest videotaped message aired Saturday on an Arab satellite TV channel. In it, he charged the UN was guilty of a "long chain of plots" against Islam. Today, UN Secretary-General Annan said bin Laden had scorned democracy and human rights, and insulted the people of the third world. On the anthrax story today, a postal worker with inhaled anthrax was released from a hospital in New Jersey, in good condition. She's one of 17 cases confirmed so far. Four people have died. There was a funeral today for one of the victims, a hospital worker in New York City. Hers is the only case with no obvious link to the mail service. In Washington the last House office building reopened to lawmakers but one Senate office building remained closed. And two mailboxes at the Pentagon tested positive, but mailrooms for the Food and Drug Administration turned out not to be contaminated. In Nicaragua today, Sandinista Leader Daniel Ortega conceded defeat in Sunday's Presidential election. The ruling party's candidate was the projected winner. Ortega and the Sandinistas ruled Nicaragua for 11 years as Marxist revolutionaries, until losing power in 1990. He campaigned this time as a convert to free-market economics. Hurricane Michelle bore down on the Bahamas today. Rain and winds of 85 miles an hour whipped Nassau flooding homes and cutting power. The storm weakened Sunday after blasting Cuba with winds of 135 miles an hour. It killed at least five people, damaged buildings and destroyed crops. South Florida took only a glancing blow. The superlatives flowed along with the tears and champagne today, following the Arizona Diamondbacks defeat of the New York Yankees last night. They rallied in the ninth inning to beat the Yankees 3-2 in the seventh and deciding game of the World Series. The Yankees had won three straight World Series titles. We'll have some highlights and some superlatives talk at the end of the program tonight.

FOCUS - RISK ASSESSMENT

JIM LEHRER: The war on terrorism has raised the scary issue of terrorists getting their hands on the ultimate weapon, a nuclear bomb. We have a two-part assessment of nuclear weapons risks outside the United States in Pakistan and Russia. Gwen Ifill has the Pakistan story.

GWEN IFILL: When secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld arrived in Pakistan this weekend, part of his mission was to stiffen the resolve of one of America's most critical allies. Pakistan shares a border with Afghanistan and a large Islamic population skeptical of the United States. It also has its own nuclear stockpile. No outsiders know how many nuclear weapons Pakistan may have or precisely where they are. But Rumsfeld, speaking in India today, said he believes they will not fall into the wrong hands.

DONALD RUMSFELD: I do not personally believe that there is a risk with respect to the nuclear weapons of countries that have those weapons. I think those countries are careful and respectful of the dangers that they pose and manage their safe handling effectively.

GWEN IFILL: But some experts worry that if Islamic militants were to seize power in Pakistan, the nuclear stockpile could become a dangerous new part of an anti-U.S. arsenal. And Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf angered many of his own citizens who support Afghanistan's Taliban government by endorsing the U.S. bombing campaign. Pakistan and India have both had nuclear programs since the 1970s, and the two historic enemies began dueling nuclear weapons tests in 1998. Pakistan and India have fought each other in three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, twice over the Himalayan territory they both claim in the Kashmir region. Tensions over the disputed region have risen again in recent weeks. The United States has sought to walk a fine line diplomatically, maintaining friendly relations all around, while keeping an eye on the nuclear capacities of both nations. Sensitivities are close to the surface. Last week, the Pakistan government arrested three scientists, including this nuclear engineer. The men were questioned about suspected ties to the Taliban, and later released. The topic of nuclear weaponry is likely to be on the agenda at the United Nations, when Presidents Musharraf and Bush meet for the first time.

GWEN IFILL: We get three views now, two Pakistani and one American. The Pakistanis are Zia Mian, a physicist with the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton; and Samina Ahmed, a political scientist at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. The American is Michael Krepon, founding President of the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank. He has written extensively about nuclear proliferation. Zia Mian, let's start with you. What do we know about the extent of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal if there is such a thing?

ZIA MIAN, Princeton University: We know very little about the program itself. Most people estimate that perhaps there are only a couple of dozen nuclear weapons at most and that they are certainly Pakistan's security crown jewels after two decades of huge investment of scientific and economic resources, Pakistan has succeeded in making and testing nuclear weapons, and we all believe that it will use either the U.S.-made F-16 fighters that were sold to Pakistan in the1980s as a delivery system or perhaps in a crisis the ballistic missiles that Pakistan has been testing.

GWEN IFILL: Samina Ahmed, is that your understanding as well? We've heard anything from 24 to 36 to 50 missiles, warheads?

SAMINA AHMED, Harvard University: Well, there are estimates and they have to be estimates because there is no knowledge of the exact production of fissile material but the estimates range from between 20 to 40, enough fissile material for between 20 to 40 warheads.

GWEN IFILL: These are warheads, which are deployable or are they in pieces? How do you measure that?

SAMINA AHMED: They are currently unassembled, which means that they are cores, but the explosives are kept aside from the cores and they are not deployed, and neither are they in the same place as the delivery systems. At least this is what the Pakistan government says. And this is also the assessment of Pentagon.

GWEN IFILL: Michael Krepon, how about the facilities? Are there factories where these nuclear warheads are being put together, where they're being manufactured? How is that?

MICHAEL KREPON, Stimson Center: Well, there's a large infrastructure of nuclear- related facilities in the country. Most of them are in the heartland, the Punjab. There are production facilities for highly enriched uranium, and there are production facilities for plutonium.

GWEN IFILL: Now, is this extensive in our understanding of the amount of plutonium and uranium that there is around the world in different countries or is it fairly limited?

MICHAEL KREPON: Well, the best guess of the outside world is that Pakistan has sufficient fissionable material, highly enriched or plutonium, to make the warheads that Samina and Zia have told you about. Perhaps two, three, maybe even four dozen.

GWEN IFILL: Zia Mian, how much of a wild card is the existence of this nuclear material in this current situation we find ourselves in trying to remain friends and establish a strong ally relationship with Pakistan?

ZIA MIAN: I think that what is actually happening is that all our concerns about proliferation of nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons material and nuke laugh weapons knowledge from the collapse of the Soviet Union ten years ago is now being pushed into this present crisis. There's really no comparison. The Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, as the U.S. has, had many tens of thousands of nuclear scientists and huge facilities where material that was lost in the bookkeeping far exceeds everything that Pakistan, we believe, has even been able to make. So in terms of the possible risks of nuclear material being transferred into the hands of other people or nuclear scientists sharing technology or, God forbid, even a nuclear weapon going astray, the risks have always been much greater from the former Soviet Union's complex than from Pakistan. But I think that the concerns we've had for ten years about that are now being pushed into this particular crisis. I'm not sure that it actually merits the concern that we're giving it. The longer-term concern is actually much more important, and that is, that we've had nuclear crises between Pakistan and India before threatening a nuclear war between the two.

GWEN IFILL: We'll be hearing more about that issue about warheads in Russia or material in Russia in our next report. Samina Ahmed, I am curious, if you can pick up on that last point which is how much are our concerns about Pakistan's nuclear capability fueled by our great concern about instability along the Pakistani-Indian border?

SAMINA AHMED: We hear a lot more about it after September 11th. That's for obvious reasons. This concern that al-Qaida could possibly be trying to acquire fissile material or possibly even acquire warheads. Seeing that Pakistan is right next door and it has a nuclear weapons program and because there are elements within Pakistan who are pro Taliban. It's like putting two and two together and making four. That really doesn't quite merit, as Zia said, the kind of attention that's being given to the dangers of loose nukes in the Pakistani context. This is still -- relatively speaking a nuclear weapons program. There isn't that much fissile material. And they aren't assembled and deployed nuclear weapons.

GWEN IFILL: Even though sanctions have been lifted as a result of what happened September 11th against Pakistan because of its involvement in developing nuclear weapons and even though we are now in this position where Pakistan is so vital to this coalition you don't think that September 11th has changed in any way our concern about the existence of nuclear weaponry in Pakistan?

SAMINA AHMED: I think it's really led to this concern about nuclear terrorism, and that in a way that's how Pakistan's nuclear weapons program is seen. I mean, you heard Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld saying that he doesn't think that safety and security are problems, but at the same time there is this underlying fear: Could it happen? Could it possibly happen?

GWEN IFILL: Michael Krepon, how about that? Both Secretary Rumsfeld and as Samina Ahmed just mentioned a moment ago, Pervez Musharraf the President of Pakistan have said not to worry, we are fine, we have great command and control over these materials, do we have any reason to doubt that?

MICHAEL KREPON: Well, first, we have to look at the current strategic context for Pakistan. Number one, the war in Afghanistan is stressing out the country. The religious party leaders have in effect declared war on the government of Pakistan. They've called on the overthrow of this government and they are in detention. Sedition charges are being prepared against them. The situation along this dividing line in Kashmir that we've talked about is also tense. This is the time of year when people tend to go across -- Jihadis tend to go across, before the winter snows come. We are looking forward to a time when there will be high level diplomacy, the President of Pakistan, the prime minister of India will be coming to the United States; and when high-level diplomacy happens, acts of terror also usually happen. To add salt on these wounds, this is also the time when military exercises take place. So the situation is a little rough around the edges. On the other hand, as Samina and Zia have suggested, the army leadership has shown itself to be cohesive. The chain of command is intact, and the army leadership takes its custodial responsibilities very, very seriously.

GWEN IFILL: Zia Mian, is there any reason to worry about President Musharraf's stability, his ability to hold on to office at a time when so many of his own folks are so unhappy with his alliance with the United States; and if there is reason to worry, which I know you'll answer that question first, if there is reason to worry, does that have any connection to the nuclear question?

ZIA MIAN: I think that there is reason to worry. But it's almost as if what has happened is that General Musharraf is now losing control not to the Islamic fundamentalists but actually to U.S. war planning. What happens is that as the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan continues, radical Islamic groups in Pakistan are starting to learn how to mobilize public opinion against the government really for the first time. They've always previously called on the Army to step in to take over because they've opposed democratically elected leaders. For the first time, Pakistan's Islamic leaders and Islamic political parties are challenging the army directly. This is new politics for them. It will take them time to learn how to do it, how to mobilize public opinion but the longer the U.S. bombing goes on, the more severe the U.S. bombing is, the greater the number of civilian casualties, the greater the number of refugees the suffering that they see the people in Afghanistan facing, the more success they will have at mobilizing public opinion and, therefore, weakening General Musharraf, but it's important to remember that General Musharraf sits in charge of an army of 800,000 soldiers. He is able to stay in charge. But what may happen is that General Musharraf may win this battle but lose the war in that several years from now the political opportunity that radical Islam is now being given may actually lead to Pakistan succumbing to radical Islam and a radical Islamic government taking power. Then of course the nuclear weapons will be in the hands of the legitimate although radical Islamic government of Pakistan. And what happens between Pakistan and India then over Kashmir and over issues becomes a hugely difficult question. That's really where I think attention needs to be focused, not on the short term but on the long term.

GWEN IFILL: Samina Ahmed, what is your response to that? Do you think that the long-term internal problem-you're shaking your head so perhaps I already know the answer to this question-but do you believe that a long-term internal battles are really what we should be girding ourselves for in relations to the nuclear situation in Pakistan?

SAMINA AHMED: I really think that this is such an exaggerated threat, Islamic radicals taking over the government of Pakistan and controlling Pakistan's nuclear assets. One isn't likely to see that happen. Instability, yes but then Pakistan has always been not in a very stable state -- radical Islam, it's been there for a very long time -- in fact from the first round of afghan fighting since the 1980s. That's when radical Islam started to take root. A doomsday scenario of this sort I don't see happening.

GWEN IFILL: How about the potential for escalation between India and Pakistan leading to use of nuclear weapons?

SAMINA AHMED: There I think is where the attention needs to be focused. Yes, I think attention needs to be focused on domestic Pakistani politics. The U.S. needs to tell the military, "return to representative rule." That's the only way of gaining the support of the mainstream political parties, et cetera. But as far as the tensions between India and Pakistan are concerned, now there I think I agree with mike and I agree with Zia, that should be a matter of major concern for the United States.

GWEN IFILL: I just wanted to get one more question to Michael Krepon. Do you believe that there is any evidence that al-Qaida is on the way to attempting to acquire some nuclear capability and if there's any evidence of that, what should the United States be doing to guard against this?

MICHAEL KREPON: Well, many people, myself included, presume that al-Qaida would love to get its hands on fissionable material or other deadly weapons. There is no evidence as yet, according to our Secretary of Defense, that this has happened. What we need to do in my judgment is to continue to offer the government of Pakistan assistance -- not because it's doing a bad job, a nuclear safety and custodial arrangements. They're working hard at it. A lot of people give them credit for doing a good job. But as we all know, after September 11th, it's not sufficient to do a good job. We all have to do a better job. Every country that holds on to nuclear materials has to do a better job. We're offering Pakistan assistance that is consistent with our obligations under the non-proliferation treaty. We're offering Pakistan, according to our Secretary of State, help with personnel reliability programs to provide best practices. Are lessons learned? We've had more time in the company of nuclear weapons than Pakistan has. I'm hopeful that General Musharraf will be able to say yes, not because he's doing a bad job but because he knows, as do we all, that we all need to do a better job.

GWEN IFILL: Okay. Well, thank you all very much.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: Part two of our look at nuclear risks, the Kennedy presidency in crisis, and an unbelievably magnificent World Series.

FOCUS - RISK ASSESSMENT

JIM LEHRER: Now the nuclear risks in Russia and other former Soviet republics, where there was a much bigger weapons program. Betty Ann Bowser reports.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the newly independent republics had the largest arsenal of nuclear warheads, enriched uranium, and plutonium in the world. Today, ten years after the end of Cold War, that is still the case: At least 1,500 metric tons of uranium and plutonium that could be used to make nuclear weapons remain scattered at locations all over the former Soviet Union, and much of it is unsecured. Experts worry what would happen if it fell into the wrong hands.

ROSE GOTTEMOELLER, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: We're concerned, for example, that a small nuclear warhead, even smaller than the Hiroshima bomb, could take out lower Manhattan completely, cause much more devastation than the devastation of the Twin Towers.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Rose Gottemoeller was the Clinton administration's top non-proliferation official at the Department of Energy. Now she's a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment.

ROSE GOTTEMOELLER: Frankly, I think it's more likely, is the possibility of a radiological attack, that somebody would get a hold of either a warhead or some material and just break it apart over a geographic area, and that would cause a great deal of contamination-- not immediate deaths from blast effects, but perhaps longer-term contamination and deaths from nuclear materials.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Last year Gottemoeller visited a plutonium reprocessing plant in Russia.

ROSE GOTTEMOELLER: They didn't have any bars on its windows, just had a big wooden door with a huge key, like a medieval-size key, that they turned to open the door, and when you walked in there, basically down on the floor there were hundreds of buckets of plutonium. When I went into the facility one day, one of the, one of the technicians pulled one of them out of the floor and handed it to me and said, "feel it-- it feels warm. It's full of plutonium." So it's the kind of situation where, if somebody was an insider, particularly, who needed some extra money, maybe hadn't been paid for a while, we were very concerned and had been very concerned that those buckets of plutonium could go missing.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Kenneth Luongo, who preceded Gottemoeller in the same job in the Clinton Administration, has also been a frequent visitor to Russian nuclear facilities.

KENNETH LUONGO, Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council: I've seen highly enriched uranium in a tube that would fit in a briefcase inside the equivalent of a gym locker with two strings and a wax seal.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Is that enough to make a bomb?

KENNETH LUONGO: It's enough to do serious damage, just sitting there behind a huge vault door that had a lock that could be opened with a skeleton key.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Attempts have been made to increase security. In the early '90s, Congress funded a Department of Energy program to help the Russians make it harder for their nuclear materials to get into the hands of terrorists. Examples of what's been done can be seen in these DOE photographs: Removing an old wooden door at one Russian facility and replacing it with a steel secured door; at another, cutting the grass, paving over mud, and installing a heavy steel gate. The Bush Administration's newly sworn-in DOE official in charge of the program, Linton Brooks, describes what else has been done.

LINTON BROOKS, Department of Energy, Nuclear Security Official: Secondly, we work with the Russians to try and consolidate the materials so there are fewer places to take highly enriched uranium which is weapons-usable, and blend it down into a form that's not. Third, in another part of our organization we are working with the Russians to actually eliminate plutonium.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But former Senator Sam Nunn, who co-sponsored legislation that created the DOE Program, says it's not enough.

SAM NUNN, Nuclear Threat Initiative: There's very little protection for about 60% of the weapons material in Russia. That doesn't mean there's no protection; it means there's very poor protection, and not the kind of security standards that we would even think about tolerating here. We have helped them on about 40% of those vulnerable materials-- that's the good news; the bad news is that at the rate we're going, if we don't accelerate it, it's going to take us 20, 25 years at the rate we're going now to have the Russian weapons material under the proper kind of safeguard.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Nunn and other non- proliferation advocates are concerned about reports in the past few days from the International Atomic Energy Agency that indicate there have been 175 cases of trafficking in nuclear material in the past few years, and some evidence that suggests bin Laden's al-Qaida network has tried to buy nuclear materials.

SAM NUNN: Based on all the reports, we've seen that if they do have the ability to kill a major number, a massive number of people, they'll do it, and it seems to me that that should tell us, if they get control of those nuclear weapons or nuclear materials from which they could make either an explosive nuclear device or a radiological device, that they would not hesitate to use it against America or against other people in the world.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: When he ran for office, President Bush said securing the nuclear material would be a priority.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The next President must press for an accurate inventory of all this material. And we must do more. I will ask the Congress to increase substantially our insistence to dismantle as many of Russia's weapons as possible as quickly as possible.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But one of the things the new Bush Administration cut in its budget was the $100 million allocated for the DOE program. Then last week Congress restored $70 million of that.

LINTON BROOKS: This program is not a charity program. This program is in the direct personal interest of the safety of every American. This is national security at its finest, where we prevent problems from happening, and so I don't think there's any dispute about the importance of this program in the administration.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Critics still complain that no money from the emergency homeland security appropriation was set aside, and more resources are needed.

ROSE GOTTEMOELLER: Well, Frankly, I wish that both governments were taking it a little more seriously than they have. I haven't noticed in either Washington or Moscow a particular intensification of efforts since September 11. Clearly everybody's got other fish to fry. There are lots of active military issues to resolve. We're fighting a war.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: There is one thing both sides do agree on: They hope the program to secure Russian nuclear material will be on the agenda when Presidents Bush and Putin meet next week.

CONVERSATION - A PRESIDENCY IN CRISIS

JIM LEHRER: A presidency in time of crisis. The secret recordings of John F. Kennedy, and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: What's it like to be President of the United States in a time of military crisis, when you and your advisors face decisions that could have literally life-and-death consequences? Some of the answers can be found in the secret tape recordings made by President John F. Kennedy. Transcripts of those recordings are available to the public in full for the first time in a new three-volume work entitled "The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy." Between its covers are the fully transcribed tapes of three months of Kennedy's Oval Office and cabinet room conversations, from July 30, 1962, when the system was first activated, to October 28 of that same year. That period saw the most dangerous foreign policy dilemma of Kennedy's presidency, the Cuban missile crisis. The set comes with a multimedia CD-Rom with an audio track synchronized to the transcripts, a video tour of the rooms where meetings were taped, and links to companion documents and photographs. All this is the work of the Presidential Recordings Project at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. The center has teams of scholars working on White House tapes from six administrations, from Franklin Roosevelt's through Richard Nixon's. Some 70 volumes are expected in all, and the Kennedy collection alone will ultimately fill 12 volumes. For more insight into the Kennedy tapes and what they tell us about a presidency in a time of crisis we're joined by one of the co-editors, Philip Zelikow. He's also director of the Miller Center, and he served on the National Security Council during the first Bush Administration. Welcome, Mr. Zelikow.

PHILIP ZELIKOW, Co-Editor, "The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy:" Good evening.

MARGARET WARNER: Scores of book have been written about the Kennedy presidency. Some scholars have actually listened to some of these tapes. What do you think it adds to our understanding and the public's understanding to see them, to read them, or hear them in toto?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: A couple of things. First, you start from the fact that we've never had evidence of this scale about any government in all of recorded history. So you have a kind of evidence that's almost like Pompeii, the volcano that covered ancient Rome and allowed us to rediscover a Roman city, but with two differences: It's not about ancient Rome in the year 79, it's about your United States in our generation; and second, instead of mummified casts of people whose lives we try to imagine, these shadows live and speak, and you can be there as if you're like a child going through a time machine to be in the past. What you see is the whole situation of a President's day. It's not just this crisis or this fragment. You see him turning from the international economy to missiles in Cuba, to a dilemma over Berlin, to a civil rights crisis in Mississippi, and you see how things come together and interact with each other as he tries to fashion a policy for the whole country.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, how did he happen to install this taping system, and why did he activate it not until 18 months into his presidency?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: As best we can tell, he installed the taping system because he wanted to use it as a kind of an electronic diary to use in writing the memoirs that he planned on preparing when he left office, still a young man. Remember, Kennedy was an amateur historian-- he'd won a Pulitzer for history a few years before becoming President -- and this was the way he was planning to keep track for his own private use of what he thought were his most important meetings.

MARGARET WARNER: And then now he controlled the on-off switch, and who else knew about the system?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: No one else knew about the system except two Secret Service agents who installed and maintained it, his private secretary, and perhaps his brother and possibly Kenny O'Donnell.

MARGARET WARNER: His chief of staff.

PHILIP ZELIKOW: Yes.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, against the backdrop of what's going on now, what do these tapes tell us about how the Kennedy presidency operated in a time of crisis?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: They show that the presidency in some ways was a high-wire act: Disorganized, fluid in many ways, but at its center it relied on John F. Kennedy to use his formidable talents to pull things together and ask the right questions. In the missile crisis, Kennedy was at his best: He did succeed in pulling things together; he did figure out how to ask the right questions.

MARGARET WARNER: But how good... For instance, how good was the information that he got?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: The information he got was in general very good, but what's surprising in many ways is that that information wasn't digested for him with the sophistication that information is digested for Presidents today. So a lot of what you hear on the tapes is the advisors at the table trying to sort out the information, and "What does it mean, what's the significance of this?" and wondering aloud how to interpret some fragment.

MARGARET WARNER: And how well did he work with his advisors?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: He worked really well with his advisors, but more in the sense of challenging them, almost clinically, questioning premises -- somewhat distant and remote. He's a person who will never say ten words when he thinks he can be understood in eight, and his advisors are always chasing to hold his attention and to keep up with what he's saying.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Now, we have one excerpt that shows some of these crosscurrents, and I'll just set the scene briefly. It's October 26. It's the second week of the missile crisis. The U.S. has already blockaded Cuba, but set it up further. What are the choices he's facing now?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: The blockade is reaching its climax. Khrushchev isn't pulling the missiles out. Is Kennedy now going to attack the island? And there's a diplomatic idea coming from the United Nations. The American representative there is Adlai Stevenson. He says, "Let's accept a standstill, a freeze on the situation: Okay, the missiles will stay in Cuba, but we'll put in international inspectors, and it will buy us some time to sort this out diplomatically." So he supports a standstill, a freeze, the way things are. Other advisors say, "If you let that situation stay in place, it's a fait accompli; the missiles will never go out." But when you listen to the transcript, listen to the way Kennedy tries to push past that very important argument to deeper choices underneath.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, and the other voice we're going to hear is John McCone.

PHILIP ZELIKOW: You'll hear John McCone, the director of the CIA, a stubborn, opinionated man, but a man who had been prescient about the Soviet decision to deploy the missiles, and a Republican, by the way, in the Kennedy cabinet.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, let's listen.

STEVENSON: ...I want to conclude by making it very clear that the intention here was a standstill, not positive acts. And the standstill was to include the discontinuance of construction, discontinuance of shipping, discontinuance of the quarantine which we, we'd have to agree how to do that in 48 hours. After that, we'd negotiate a final settlement, which would relate to the withdrawal of the weapons, or the inoperability of weapons already operable. I would think inoperable becomes meaningless, because during the long-term negotiations we're concerned with the withdrawal of the weapons from the hemisphere.

McCONE: That threat must be removed before we can drop the quarantine. If we drop that quarantine once, we're never to be able to put into effect again...And I feel that we must say that the quarantine goes on until we are satisfied that things are inoperable.

KENNEDY: Well, now the quarantine itself won't remove the weapons. So we've only got two ways of removing the weapons. One is to negotiate them out - in other words, trade them out. Or the other is to go in and take them out. I don't see any other way you're going to get the weapons out.

McCONE: I say that we have to send inspections down there to see at what stage they are. I feel that if we lose that...But this is the security of the United States! I believe the strategic situation has greatly changed with the presence of these weapons in Cuba.

KENNEDY: That's right. The only thing that I am saying is, that we're not going to get them out with the quarantine. I'm not saying we should lift the quarantine or what we should do about the quarantine. But we have to all now realize that we're not going to get them out. We're either going to trade them out, or we're going to have to go in and get them out ourselves. I don't know of any other way to do it.

MARGARET WARNER: So you can see McCone and Stevenson are both talking about the process, and he's trying to look ahead, the President is, to what the end result is.

PHILIP ZELIKOW: Right. They're arguing about what's our diplomatic position for the standstill, and Kennedy's saying, "Okay, but bottom line it comes down to trade 'em out or attack Cuba and blow them out--" "take them out," as he puts it. "That's the fundamental choice I have to make." And that's the choice that he's urging his advisors to face with him.

MARGARET WARNER: But you're saying that, when it's presented to him, that it isn't presented as a clear-cut choice; he sort of has to find that clear-cut choice.

PHILIP ZELIKOW: Exactly, and that's why, listening to these tapes, experiencing the real west wing, is so different from watching the television the show "The West Wing." In the television show, you have a narrative that presents a dilemma, and the advisors argue about the dilemma. Presidents or senior officials see this show and say, "if only life were so easy as it is on 'The West Wing,'" because the dilemma is rarely so clear. The President is presented with a string of choices about a bill or something like that, and he has to sift through that jungle of detail and all those choices. "What's the real choice here? What's the fundamental choice that lies beneath all this clutter that's going to determine how people will see my presidency a month, a year, a generation from now?"

MARGARET WARNER: Now, back to the Cuban missile crisis. Throughout this, also, when I've read the parts I read, he's... The President's also very, very conscious of the risk of a much larger... The much larger risks that are involved here-- I mean, the risk of nuclear war.

PHILIP ZELIKOW: Right, and he's trying to get both sides to face up to that. He says, "either I'm going to trade these things out or I'm going to have a military attack on Cuba, and a military attack on Cuba lights a fuse that can lead to global thermonuclear war. Are you prepared to step up to that risk?"

MARGARET WARNER: And part of what he's also trying to do, and I imagine any President in a situation has to, is psyche out his foreign adversary.

PHILIP ZELIKOW: Yes.

MARGARET WARNER: There's a lot of that in here, isn't there?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: Because he firmly believes that if Khrushchev thinks he's not ready to go to the brink of nuclear war, Khrushchev will push him all the way. In fact, some of the evidence from the Soviet side indicates that Kennedy had Khrushchev read exactly right. Every time Khrushchev thinks the Americans are weakening, Khrushchev ups the ante. So Kennedy does not want to go to war, but he has to convince Khrushchev that he's ready to do it. It's a tightrope Kennedy's trying to walk.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, we have another excerpt that goes to that, and this is when he calls former President Eisenhower-- actually before the excerpt we just heard-- and sort of-- how would you describe it-- sounds him out on this issue?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: Yes, 'cause Eisenhower... The choice of "are you willing to risk thermonuclear war?", There's one man in the country who understands that choice as well as Kennedy does, and that's Dwight Eisenhower, 'cause Eisenhower was there. He was behind the Oval Office desk. He had that choice, too. In all the tape recordings during this crisis, there's only one time where we actually hear Kennedy asking flat out to another man, "would you take that risk?", And that other man was Dwight Eisenhower, and it occurred during this tape excerpt you're about to hear.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let's listen.

KENNEDY: ...General, what about if the Soviet Union - Khrushchev - announces tomorrow, which I think he will, that if we attack Cuba that it's going to be nuclear war? And what's your judgment as to the chances they'll fire these things off if we invade Cuba?

EISENHOWER: Oh, I don't believe that they will.

KENNEDY: You don't think they will?

EISENHOWER: No.

KENNEDY: In other words, you would take that risk if the situation seemed desirable?

EISENHOWER: Well, as a matter of fact, what can you do? If this thing is such a serious thing, here on our flank, that we're going to be uneasy and we know what thing is happening now. All right, you've got to use something.

KENNEDY: Yeah.

EISENHOWER: Something may make these people shoot them off. I just don't believe this will.

KENNEDY: Yeah, right.

EISENHOWER: In any event, of course, I'll say this: I'd want to keep my own people very alert.

KENNEDY: Yeah. Well, we'll hang on tight.

EISENHOWER: Yes, sir.

KENNEDY: Thanks a lot, General.

EISENHOWER: All right. Thank you.

MARGARET WARNER: The laughter's kind of chilling, isn't it?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: Yes, it is, because, I mean, of course they don't think it's funny.

MARGARET WARNER: Yeah.

PHILIP ZELIKOW: It's... that grim chuckling, it's like, "well, we'll hang on tight; we're going to be very alert; oh, yes, indeed, we will." They understand each other, and they're sort of chuckling to each other, and it's a solemn moment, it's a stoic moment. They know that these are the calls they have to make.

MARGARET WARNER: Finally, you've listened to all these tapes. What do you think, in balance, they teach us that's instructive for the current situation and the current President?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: They teach us that the surface detail is something that's very hard for outsiders to understand. We see caricatures of White House decision-making. The reality, the context and circumstance and mix of personality and the way all the issues from different sets of problems converge on the President's desk, you can't see that, A.; B., What's hard for the President to see is, what are the real choices he faces underneath all that clutter, all those choices he has to make to get through that day's press deadlines?

MARGARET WARNER: Philip Zelikow, thank you very much.

PHILIP ZELIKOW: You're welcome.

FINALLY - ONE FOR THE AGES

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, a truly magnificent world series. "Unbelievable" is the word sportscasters and fans used to describe what took place over the last week between the New York Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks. Last night, it ended in an unbelievably magnificent game seven. Here are some highlights. ( Cheers and applause )

SPORTSCASTER: Another strikeout for Clemens. Eight on the night. One away. Strikeout number seven for curt Schilling. Into right center field. That ball is going to get down. That ball is going to put Arizona on top. Danny Bautista delivers again. Going for third. Out, but it's 1-0 Arizona. Runners at the corners, one out. Martinez with a base hit to right. The Yankees have tied it. Soriano into deep left field. At the wall. Yankees on top, 2-1.

SPORTSCASTER: The right-hander has the best chance.

SPORTSCASTER: The bunt by Miller. Throw to second. Into center field. Dellucci will stay and it's two on with nobody out. Two on, one out and Womack into right field, a hit. Here comes Cummings, it's tied. Going to third is bell. Tony Womack delivers, it's 2-2. Floater... Center field. The Diamondbacks are world champions! (Cheers and applause)

JIM LEHRER: And with me now is sports commentator and author John Feinstein.

John, what would you add to describe that finish last night?

JOHN FEINSTEIN, Sports Author: I'd start with unique because it really was one of a kind. You just don't see endings like that to any sporting event. Mariana Rivera is arguably the greatest relief.

JIM LEHRER: For those who don't follow baseball, let's set the stage. The guy who was pitching for the Yankees, the last of the 9th -- Rivera.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Arguably the greatest relief pitcher of all times -- certainly right up there. He had almost never failed in the last six years during this Yankee run of championships. When the Yankees get the ball to him in the 8th inning, generally the game is over and the Diamondbacks had fallen behind 2-1 in spite of the incredibly courageous pitching by their starter Curt Schilling. They come in inthe bottom of the 9th beings fox television is set up in the Yankee clubhouse waiting to interview the champions again because Rivera is that automatic. Somehow they produce this rally that we just saw. My heart is beating fast again seeing it again.

JIM LEHRER: Me too. I was having the same thing just now.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: It just... It was... It gave you chills. It was great baseball on both teams... On the part of both teams. Gallant... The gallant Yankees who probably weren't as good as any of the three teams they played in post season playing with the back drop of what happened September 11th in New York and the Diamondbacks, this fourth-year franchise staying right with them and coming back after two extraordinary losses in New York where they were one out away from winning in game 4 and game 5 and lost both games on two-run homers in the bottom of the 9th inning that tied the game that the Yankees won in extra innings and they somehow come back and win.

JIM LEHRER: But those events in themselves would have been enough to make them an historic World Series let alone what happened last night. You mentioned Rivera. There were three other big pitchers involved. We saw two of them in action, Roger Clemens who is the Yankee pitcher who pitched... He pitched, what? Seven innings.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: He pitched 6.1 innings last night.

JIM LEHRER: 6.1 last night and then Curt Schilling who started and then randy Johnson. Tell us about Schilling and Johnson. These two big men.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Well, the interesting thing about Curt Schilling is he was having a very ordinary career until about five or six years ago. After a game one night Roger Clemens, who was an opponent, Schilling was with the Philadelphia Phillies at the time, sat him down and basically told him you're wasting your talent. You're much better than this. Why don't you bear down and use this talent you have to be a great pitcher. Schilling took it to heart.

JIM LEHRER: He said throw the ball harder.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Throw the ball harder and work harder. Work ethic. Schilling was out of shape. He couldn't go deep into games. Now you can't get the ball out of his hand basically once he's got it in his hand during a game. Randy Johnson is this freak of nature. 6'10", the tallest pitcher in history. He probably pitched himself into the Hall of Fame with this post season because he needed a great post season....

JIM LEHRER: Tell people what he did.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Well, what he did was he won game number two as a starter, he won game number 6 as a starter. He pitched Saturday night. He threw over 100 pitches. He came back in last night, he's 38 years old, he's no spring chicken. He came back in in relief when Schilling gave up that home run to Alfonso Soriano and pitched the last inning and a third which is very, very hard to do because your arm is ready to fall off after you throw more than a hundred pitches. He came back the next night in game 7 of the World Series and get the last four outs. Schilling and Johnson together.

JIM LEHRER: Three out of the four.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Three out of the four and Schilling and Johnson in post season won nine of the 11 games, the Diamond backs won.

JIM LEHRER: Schilling started three games out of the seven games.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Right, started 1, 4 and 7. Once upon a time that wasn't uncommon. Pitchers would pitch on three days' rest. Sandy Kofax won game 7 of the 1965 World Series with a two-hit shutout on two days' rest. But nowadays pitchers never pitch on less than four days' rest. For him to do it twice in a week is remarkable.

JIM LEHRER: A lot of people have said, John, that what this series also did was it showed the best of what baseball as a game is. Do you agree with that?

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Absolutely, Jim. Baseball is the best game. It's the best game because there's no clock. You have to get that 27th out to win, no matter what time of day or night it is, no matter how long it's takes - and it's not scripted. Football everything is scripted. Basketball the coaches want to control everything. You go there, you go there. Once the ball leaves the pitcher's hand, nothing is scripted. There's an old clich in baseball that if you go to the ballpark no matter how many years you've been going you're going to see something you've never seen before. In this post season-- I've been watching baseball since I was five years old. I saw Derek Jeter makes two plays that I have never seen anything close to.

JIM LEHRER: The shortstop for the Yankees.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: The shortstop for the Yankees in the Oakland series made a play you can't make running across the first baseline to pick up a ball know had been overthrown and make an out at the plate with a backhand throw. Then we saw the replay of that throw... Relay throws he made catching the ball and turning in midair and throw to go the third baseman to get the Arizona runner out.

JIM LEHRER: He was trying to stretch a double into a triple and normally would have been made if not for Derek Jeter.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: If Derek Jeter lands and throws he's safe but he caught the ball and his baseball instinct told him he must release this ball in midair. He did and threw him out by that much.

JIM LEHRER: You mentioned September 11th and the effect it had on the Yankees. A lot has been said about that. Put that in context for us because everybody, hey, wait a minute, it's only a game. So what has... What have sports, the World Series, the Yankees, sports generally shown us about it's only a game post September 11th?

JOHN FEINSTEIN: I think at times like this you need something that's "only" -- something that doesn't... That you know deep down doesn't really matter in terms of the result -- something that gets you away from these things that matter so horribly. That's what sports in general has done for us, I think, since September 11th. But in New York, the Yankees, who are so much a symbol of this city, they're the team that has been in New York for the longest time, they were there as the New York Highlanders in 1903, Babe Ruth and Yankee Stadium are so symbolic of what baseball became. For them to make this run, the way they made it in such dramatic fashion throughout this whole month of October was something the city needed because you can't sit there every day and look at those pictures and know what's going on and realize what's behind and what's ahead without having somewhere to go to escape from it.

JIM LEHRER: They were actually playing better than they were.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: They played over their heads this whole post season. I would make the case that if they had won they would have done so by beating three teams that were better than they were.

JIM LEHRER: Including the Diamond Backs.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Because the Diamond Backs outplayed them; the Diamond Backs outscored them 37-15. In the seven games. Yet the Yankees were two outs from winning.

JIM LEHRER: What about Joe Torre? People who come new to baseball only during the World Series or when the play-offs and they keep... They're always going to the managers. Joe Torre becomes a figure because the Yankees have been in somany post-game, post- season games. Tell us about Joe Torre. What do you think about him?

JOHN FEINSTEIN: I grew up in New York City. People always say to me Met fan --Yankee fan. That's the first question you get. I was a Met fan as a kid. But I've known Joe Torre since he was the manager of the Braves in the '80s and the Cardinals in the '90s. There's no better person in sports. He has a sense of what's important in life. I remember when I was sitting with him one day in his office and his older brother came in and Joe jumped up to his feet....

JIM LEHRER: Frank, right?

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Right... And hugged him and kissed him. I'm a stranger. I'm sitting there. He's a man in a macho world. This is what you do when your older brother comes into the room. He's an extraordinary person having nothing to do with the fact that he's a hall of fame manager. Because he's managing the Yankees I'm a met fan I'm supposed to root against the Yankees. I can't root against the Yankees because Joe Torre is such a unique... To go back to the original word... Figure in sports because he gets it. He knows it's a game but it's also competition and you want to win. But he always keeps the whole thing in perspective.

JIM LEHRER: John, thank you.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Thank you, Jim.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of the day. U.S. planes kept pounding Taliban targets in Afghanistan amid efforts to intensify the military campaign. The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan appealed to the United Nations for humanitarian aid for refugees inside Afghanistan. And a postal worker with inhaled anthrax was released from a hospital in New Jersey in good condition. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.