The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening, I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; then a report from Baghdad; some perspective on the leadership of the CIA, past and future, with Stansfield Turner and Bobby Inman; a report on testing for AIDS; a look at the athletes doping scandal; and a Clarence Page essay on hating.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The interim government of Iraq is set to offer amnesty to insurgents. That word came today from Ghazi al-Yawer, the country's interim president. He told the Financial Times the formal offer would come within a few days. He said it would be for "people who have not committed too many atrocities, everybody except murderers, rapists and kidnappers." Later, in Baghdad, al-Yawer threatened to use "a very sharp sword" against insurgents who refuse to give up. He said, "To those who are saying, 'we are resisting the occupation,' we say to them, the occupation is over." Seven more American troops were killed in Iraq over the weekend. On Sunday, two U.S. Army soldiers died in Samarra, in a roadside bombing. Another soldier died in an ambush on a U.S. convoy in Beiji. And on Saturday, four U.S. Marines were killed in a vehicle accident in western Iraq. We'll have more on the situation in Iraq right after this News Summary. On the diplomatic front, France and Iraq restored diplomatic ties today. They were severed in 1991 during the first Gulf War.The French ministry said the two countries would exchange ambassadors as soon as possible. President Bush today defended the war in Iraq and the war on terror. He acknowledged the Senate Intelligence Committee has severely criticized the pre-war intelligence on Iraqi weapons. But in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, he insisted his policies had indeed made the U.S. safer.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq. We removed a declared enemy of America, who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Bush also pointed to Libya's decision to give up its nuclear weapons program. The weapons parts and machinery are now stored at oak ridge. But in Boston, Democratic challenger John Kerry criticized the president's policies. He said, "the facts speak for themselves."

SEN. JOHN KERRY: North Korea is more dangerous today than it was before this administration came into power. I have proposed a major new initiative to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism, to reduce nuclear materials falling into the hands of terrorists. And I will appoint a national director of intelligence who will change our ability to be able to gather intelligence that is real, to be accountable, and to make America safe. That's what Americans want, real results, not speeches.

JIM LEHRER: On Sunday, George Tenet officially stepped down as director of the CIA and leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee urged the president to name a new director soon. We'll have more on that story later in the program tonight. Israeli Prime Minister Sharon invited the opposition Labor Party to join his coalition government today. The move would bolster his plan to remove Jewish settlements from Gaza. Many in Sharon's Likud Party oppose that step. Today, he warned his opponents he'd call early elections if they try to keep labor out of the government. A power blackout hit Athens, Greece, today just one month before the summer Olympic Games are scheduled to start there. The outage swept through much of southern Greece, snarling traffic, trapping people in elevators and subways, and cutting off air conditioners in 104-degree heat. Electricity was fully restored to Athens within three hours. Government ministers insisted the Olympics would not face such blackouts. The Bush administration laid out a plan today to allow more logging in national forests. It replaces a Clinton-era rule that blocked road-building in about one-third of all national forests. The roads would be needed for logging. The new rule allows the road construction, unless governors petition to block it. The Wall Street brokerage firm Morgan Stanley settled a sex discrimination suit today, for $54 million. The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged the firm discriminated against women. It allegedly denied them promotions and paid them less than it paid men, among other things. The case had been set to go to trial in New York City today. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 25 points to close at 10238. The NASDAQ fell nine points to close below 1937. That's it for the News Summary tonight, now it's on to: An Iraq update; leading the CIA; testing for AIDS; the latest on doping athletes; and a Clarence Page essay.

UPDATE - TRANSFER OF POWER

JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill has our Iraq story.

GWEN IFILL: Two weeks have passed since Iraq's interim government formally took the reins from the U.S.-led occupation authority. So how's it going? For an update we turn to Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the Washington Post bureau chief in Baghdad. Rajiv, welcome.

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Good to talk to you.

GWEN IFILL: It's been two weeks, as I was saying, and it seems awfully quiet. But are appearances as

deceiving?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: I think that's the case here. You know, in these past two weeks, we haven't had any of the spectacular car bomb type attacks as these big assaults against Iraqi or U.S. targets. But U.S. Military officials tell me that all is not really quiet, that the average number of daily attacks is still hovering around 40. And that's sort of where it was earlier in the month of June. And as the daily casualty reports come in, it still seems clear that the western province of Anbar, home to the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, still is incredibly active. There are almost daily reports of marine casualties out there. And certainly kidnappings continue apace. We're still wondering what the fate of this poor Filipino truck driver, who was abducted, and his captors are saying now that unless the Philippine military withdraws by the 20th of July, he'll be executed. So many of the same dynamics continue here.

GWEN IFILL: We have heard a lot about these kidnappings of foreign visitors, military people, contractors, we've heard less about what's happening involving targeted kidnappings of Iraqis themselves, which you've written about before. Is that still going on?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Well, there's a healthy business going on here in kidnap-for-ransom among Iraqis. It certainly get a lot less prominence, and in most cases, the people who are kidnapped are released, generally after being held for a week, two weeks. They're beaten up, they're treated very badly, and a lot of ransom is paid here. That's certainly a big component of the crime problem that both the U.S. Military and the new Iraqi security forces are trying to deal with here.

GWEN IFILL: Iyad Allawi, the new interim prime minister, has talked about the security situation, an about taking efforts to impose a sort of... almost martial law. Has that been imposed, is it as strict as it initially sounded, and how is it going?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Well, there was a lot of rhetoric last week when this was announced, a lot of tough talk, and that's certainly been Prime Minister Allawi's strategy here. He really wants to be seen as being Mr. Tough on terrorism, tough on the insurgency. But there hasn't been a whole lot of tangible actions as yet. He is not declared a state of emergency anywhere in the country. And even if he were to, it still remains unclear just what he would use to enforce it with. The Iraqi army still only has about 4,000 soldiers. The bulk of Iraq's policemen still have not gone through any academy training. The National Guard forces are still largely under the control of various U.S. Military units around the country. So this seems to be more of a symbolic move, a move to project power and authority by the government, and perhaps having a little less sort of practical import.

GWEN IFILL: So when you see... when you go through the streets of Baghdad or around the country and you see the military patrols sill on the streets, are they Iraqi military patrols? Are they still mostly Americans?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Well, the one change that really has taken place is there are lot more joint patrols. As I drive through the streets of Baghdad, I still see a healthy number of U.S. Military vehicles around, military convoys, other sorts of traffic. So for the ordinary Iraqi, there's still a very obvious U.S. Military presence. But now most military units, when they go out on patrol, aren't going out alone. They're taking Iraqi police and Iraqi national guard units with them, trying to show the people of Baghdad and people in other parts of this country that there's now a partnership. But we haven't yet moved to what U.S. officials hope will be sort of the final phase here, whereby the soldiers, American soldiers are largely quartered in their bases, and much of the day-to- day work is relegated to the Iraqi police and the National Guard units, and the soldiers sort of function as a backup unit to be called in case of emergency. We haven't gotten to that point yet, largely because the police and the National Guard still aren't adequately trained, they're not adequately equipped, many of them don't have weapons, they don't have flak vests, vehicles are still in short supply for the police. A lot of that has to be taken care of here in the next couple months before they can be given additional responsibility.

GWEN IFILL: There has also been a proposal that's been floating around to provide amnesty for some people in order to, I guess, help put down some of the insurgency. Where does that stand?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Yes, today I was actually interviewing the new president of Iraq, Ghazi Yawar, and he outlined his plan to me. What they envision-- and they plan to announce this, he said, by the end of this week-- is a very broad amnesty that would cover most Iraqis who have participated in the insurgency, so long as they are not accused, he said, of either rape or kidnapping or a murder in which there were actual witnesses present. But that still leaves open a very broad swath of people who could qualify for this, and their effort here is really to sort of extend, as he put it, a carrot to people who have been participating in the insurgency. And he said if people don't accept, then we'll come down not just with a stick, but with a sword. And there is talk within the interim government to pretty quickly reinstate the death penalty. They want to be seen as moving very aggressive against the insurgents. Now, whether this will work is a big question. It's not like the interim government has a very lengthy list of insurgents that it's trying to capture, people who are sort of fugitives who now can sort of turn themselves in and be assured of their safety. Just on the contrary, the security forces really don't know who many of these people are. So again this may be far more symbolic. What the government is trying to do is trying to drive a wedge between the whole world of insurgents, trying to sort of lure back into the fold, if you will, Iraqis who have been picking up arms, people who have been fighting for more nationalistic reasons, and get them to sort of separate out from the Islamic extremists and the foreign terrorists, who they really want to focus their energies in combating.

GWEN IFILL: And speaking of these insurgents, what is the status right now of Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric we've heard so much about in the weeks leading up to the handover?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Sure, and he's been surprisingly quiet these days. Now, there's been a little bit of talk about is he really going to hold with his cease-fire. If you'll remember in late June, he declared a cease-fire, and since then his militia men have not really been attacking U.S. forces, either in Baghdad or in some of those southern cities where they have concentrations of people. And the new government here has really tried to take some advantage of this, and trying to make some discreet overtures to him. They see the solution here being a very different one from what the U.S. Military was trying to accomplish. Instead of killing or capturing him, they'd like to bring at least some of his supporters into the political process, figuring that the best way to deal with him really might be to co-opt him and to find a political accommodation here, instead of a confrontational posture that really characterized those months leading up to the handover of power.

GWEN IFILL: Rajiv Chandrasekaran, thank you so much.

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: A pleasure to talk to you, Gwen.

FOCUS - SEARCH FOR DIRECTION

JIM LEHRER: Now, leadership at the CIA, Kwame Holman begins.

KWAME HOLMAN: George Tenet's seven- year tenure as director of the CIA officially ended yesterday,

just as the agency is undergoing one of the most critical reviews in its nearly 60-year history. During his farewell speech last week at CIA headquarters, Tenet suggested that reforming the intelligence agency should not be done hastily.

GEORGE TENET: My only wish is that those whose job it is to help us do better show the same balance and care in recognizing how far we have come, in recognizing how bold we have been, in recognizing what the full balance sheet says.

KWAME HOLMAN: But on Friday, the need for change was the message delivered by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which released its report on the CIA's pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Committee Chairman Pat Roberts.

SEN. PAT ROBERTS: Well, today we know these assessments were wrong, and as our inquiry will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence.

KWAME HOLMAN: The committee concluded that the intelligence community offered no explanations for the uncertainties that accompanied the information it gave to Congress and the Bush administration: That intelligence collectors and analysts suffered from group think, they presumed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and interpreted evidence that way; and that intelligence analysts weren't encouraged to challenge their assumptions or consider contradictory evidence. Chairman Roberts said the findings cried out for broad reform of the CIA.

SEN. PAT ROBERTS: Most if not all of these problems stem from a broken corporate culture and poor management, and cannot be solved by simply adding funding and also personnel.

KWAME HOLMAN: In response, John McLaughlin, who succeeds George Tenet as "acting director", said the agency recognized the mistakes it made and already had made changes.

JOHN McLAUGHLIN: My first message to you is a very simple one: We get it.

KWAME HOLMAN: But McLaughlin disputed Roberts' claim that the agency's "corporate culture" was broken.

JOHN McLAUGHLIN: I don't think we have a broken corporate culture at all. This is a community that comes together physically and virtually practically every day of the week. This is a community where every success I have cited from capture of terrorists to the takedown of the AQ Kahn network to the work we've done on Iran, North Korea and any number of other things involves work from all aspects of the community, people pulling together.

KWAME HOLMAN: The acting director also warned against making excessive reforms at the agency during such a dangerous time globally. But on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday, Roberts and committee vice chairman Jay Rockefeller agreed specific reforms are needed, and that President Bush should choose a new CIA director quickly.

SEN. PAT ROBERTS: It'll have to be an extraordinary nominee. And if that's the case, we will go full-time into the hearings to get him or her confirmed.

MR. RUSSERT: Will there be a new director soon?

SEN. JAY ROCKEFELLER: I agree with Pat Roberts there should be. You cannot leave in an acting director for six or seven months while you wait for the next inauguration, regardless of who's elected.

KWAME HOLMAN: The Bush administration has set no public timetable for when a new CIA director might be nominated.

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner takes it from there.

MARGARET WARNER: What kinds of reforms does the CIA need? And should the president name a brand-new director, immediately, to carry them out? To explore those questions, we turn to: Admiral Stansfield Turner, director of the CIA during the Carter administration; and Admiral Bobby Inman, deputy director of the CIA during the Reagan administration. He previously served as director of the National Security Agency, America's top electronic eavesdropping agency.

Welcome to you both. Let's pick up where Senators Rockefeller and Roberts left us yesterday.

Adm. Turner, do you think the president needs to move quickly in light of the report last week, to name a new director now?

STANSFIELD TURNER: I think it would be irresponsible to appoint a new director now. You can't have anything but an acting director, because if the uncertainty is there about whether he or she will survive the next election, the intelligence professionals are not going to respond, they're going to wait out this person to see who is going to be the real director. In the meantime, you have hobbled John McLaughlin who has knowledge of what's gone wrong, of the personalities and can take action to try to get things started back on the right track. I think a number of people have got to be fired and it's better for John McLaughlin to do that in the next three to six months than to put that onus on a new director when he comes or she comes in.

MARGARET WARNER: Adm. Inman, how do you see it? Do you think it would be responsible or irresponsible, as Adm. Turner has said, to go ahead and appoint a new director now?

BOBBY INMAN: I do have a somewhat different view. I don't know John McLaughlin; I hear great things about him. But after the extremely strong stand taken by the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee, my own view is that the president does need to move swiftly to appoint a new director, but with some provisions. It can't be a political appointee; it has to be somebody who really understands the organizations. Rep. Goff, Adm. Bill Studeman, there are two or three others you could think about, who have been there, who still have a lot of energy - they are not as old as Stan and I -- who could move in and immediately bring the focus, notonly organizing but on the challenges in front of us. This is a very perilous time. And we don't need the leadership looking back over its shoulder on what criticism is going to come tomorrow, what we need to defend. Are they pursuing every shred of potential evidence about the next terrorist attack -- either inside our country or elsewhere, against us or our allies -

MARGARET WARNER: What about the -

BOBBY INMAN: -- or are we focusing on the military support ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan? So I think John McLaughlin is now so beleaguered simply because he was there, that I think somebody else, if they already had knowledge of the community, would have a better shot of focusing on the immediate problems.

MARGARET WARNER: What about that idea, Adm. Turner, get somebody who is really a veteran of the intelligence community?

STANSFIELD TURNER: The point is, you don't have authority if you're coming in as what might be a short-timer. And if you stir the pot between now and November, and then John Kerry is elected, because none of the nominees or very few of the nominees that I hear booted about would survive into a Democratic administration, why, you haven't accomplished anything, you've just churned the leadership. McLaughlin can give it good leadership for these next six months.

MARGARET WARNER: What about that point, Adm. Inman, that Adm. Turner makes that whoever comes in will be seen as a lame duck no matter what?

BOBBY INMAN: The director of central intelligence named George H. W. Bush proposed in 1977, after he had served as DCI for 14 months, that the job should not be seen as a political one but as a professional. He volunteered to stay on for a few months. I suspect his advice was very much part of a picture when George Tenet was kept on, after President Clinton ended his term. So I don't think someone being appointed should be seen as a certain short-term lame duck. That whether President Bush is reelected or whether it's President-elect Kerry, they should view this job as a place where they need stability while they carefully plan clearly summary organization efforts that need to be undertaken.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, let's talk about some of the reforms that are needed and I'll begin with you, Adm. Turner. Do you agree with this assessment that there is a broken corporate culture at the CIA, and what does that mean what does that term really mean?

STANSFIELD TURNER: Well, what has broken has been broken since 1947 when this whole arrangement was set up by law; that is we created a director of central intelligence whose responsibility was to coordinate 15 separate semiautonomous intelligence agencies. But the law did not give that director any real authority to do that. President Bush, the incumbent President Bush, before 9/11 appointed Gen. Brent Scowcroft, a Republican, to do a study of this, and the Scowcroft Commission, we're told, it's still being held classified, came up with a recommendation to strengthen the role of the director of central intelligence to give him or her more authority to bring about this coordination to make sure the FBI and the CIA are talking to each other and such forth. President Bush has done nothing about that, and it doesn't take legislation to do this. The president can do most of all that I believe is needed to correct this situation by the stroke of a pen of an executive order. President Carter gave me more authority by an executive order than any director has ever had. That's all evaporated since then, but it can be done, and it's urgent that it be done. We've now been three years since the Scowcroft report came out.

MARGARET WARNER: Bobby Inman what do you think of that idea, an idea that's been around of having a super DCI, and tell us one, if you agree with that, how it would address some of the problems of analysis that the report identifies -- for instance, this group think problem, the unwillingness to take into account contradictory evidence?

BOBBY INMAN: Margaret, may I make two points quickly. First, none of those who referred to this director of central intelligence believe you need, that should separate director of national intelligence from running the CIA. Many of us who have not had those responsibilities have a different view. But at least one needs to understand -- whether they've been under Republican or Democratic administrations, every one of them feel pretty strongly that you ought not separate the jobs. We need to understand why that view is there better, before you accept some of the views of some of us who have been preaching revolution for ten years now.

MARGARET WARNER: But tell us what that revolution is. I'm sorry, go ahead, make your second point.

BOBBY INMAN: The second point is, we've gone through 12 years of reduction of resources, all across the intelligence agencies, particularly harmful for the collection activities, human intelligence side. That's turned around the last couple years, but it's going to take a long time for that to have effect. I don't see any sharing of criticism over the ten years while we were missing why we didn't have assets in Iraq or elsewhere, we didn't detect terrorist threat -- who was adding resources as opposed to shuffling chairs on a sinking ship?

MARGARET WARNER: But, Adm. Turner, the two senators in the committee found that the real problem wasn't one of brief sources, it's really was of the quality of analysis. And what I'm asking you is, what will it take to change that?

STANSFIELD TURNER: There were some very disturbing parts of that report with regard to analysis. For instance, a manager of analysts rejected some evidence that their so-called mobile biological warfare labs were not for biological warfare, on the grounds that, well, the president has probably made up his mind already to go to war. That's totally unacceptable. The ethic of intelligence is you tell it as you see it. And you don't worry about what the boss wants to hear, and it's very clear that the CIA caved in to the intense political pressure, such as ten visits by the vice president to the CIA.

MARGARET WARNER: So what does it take to fix --

BOBBY INMAN: May I give a slightly different view, Margaret, quickly --

MARGARET WARNER: Let me just find out what Adm. Turner thinks it takes to fix that quickly and then I'll go to you, Adm. Inman.

STANSFIELD TURNER: It takes a vigorous action right now to get rid of some of these people who have really abandoned the ethic of intelligence, and then it takes strong leadership to say we're going to have dissenting opinions, we're going to listen to them and take them into account.

MARGARET WARNER: Adm. Inman?

BOBBY INMAN: Margaret, in "91, the estimate was that Saddam Hussein was three to four years from having a nuclear weapon. It turned out once the inspectors got on country, he was within nine months to a year, not using modern centrifuge technology but going back to the old technology we used to develop the weapon dropped at Hiroshima. Having been wrong before, having underestimated, all of the pressures were there not to underestimate this time, overestimate. And I think you have to look at the pressures inside looking for worst case, almost a replica of the Team B episode we had back in the 70s -- for the pressures, what's the worst case, not what's the most likely case.

MARGARET WARNER: Are you saying that you believe there should be some institutional way, though, though to bring in contrary views? Is that what you're saying, a Team B approach, or not?

BOBBY INMAN: I think you do need contrary views, but the contrary views shouldn't always be the worst case. They should also be looking at what are other potential answers for the evidence that you're looking at -- or the shallowness of the evidence.

STANSFIELD TURNER: One of the damning things in the report here was that apparently George Tenet was not listening to the rest of the intelligence communities, only to the CIA. His job, as we've talked is two-fold: to run the whole community, and to run the one agency of the 15. And we have to have a system whereby all of the agencies get a voice in. Now, they won't all show up in the final report necessarily, that's up to the director of central intelligence to adjudicate how much dissent he feels is necessary to put in. But that's really the key to what we're talking about here.

MARGARET WARNER: And very briefly, Adm. Inman?

BOBBY INMAN: I strongly support that view.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Thank you both very much.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: Testing for AIDS, for athletes; and a Clarence Page essay.

FOCUS - A TEST FOR AIDS

JIM LEHRER: AIDS in the developing world. This week, thousands of delegates are meeting in Bangkok for the international AIDS conference. One of the main themes is the need to improve access and treatment. Fred de Sam Lazaro of Twin Cities Public Television has a look at another part of that problem, testing for AIDS. A version of this segment first aired on PBS's Religion and Ethics.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In much of the developing world, an AIDS test, if one is available, is a dreaded event. That's because in poor countries where there's no treatment, being HIV positive result is tantamount to a death sentence. Here in southern Sudan, this 28- year-old woman came in after suffering skin rashes and fever. Sudan is just emerging from decades of civil war. Its poverty and displaced populations are a recipe for an outbreak of HIV, which currently affects an estimated 3 percent of the population. At one of the few clinics offering care, Counselor Grace Kadayi, with American Refugee Committee, a U.S-based agency, prevailed on her client to be tested: A tough decision, and in this case, a tough outcome. The woman was HIV positive.

This client is a typical case, a woman infected by a spouse who had many other sex partners. He's not part of her life anymore, she said, but he is part of perhaps the grimmest AIDS statistic: More than 90 percent of those who are positive don't know it, and continue to infect others for years before they finally become ill. Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Richard Holbrooke heads a business association that is calling for expanded testing. He says it's the only way to stop the spread of AIDS.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: In no other health crisis in modern history would testing not have been a massive central factor. As a doctor said to me once, they threw out the whole rule book on epidemics when AIDS hit. And yet AIDS is the worst health crisis in history. That was because of the stigma. That was because of the battle over the way it's spread. And as a result, a public health crisis was turned into a political issue, and testing became voluntarybecause they were afraid that confidentiality otherwise would be violated, and they would be stigmatized. But it should have always been encouraged testing-- not mandatory, but encouraged testing.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: He says the early association of AIDS with gay men in the U.S. fed fears that patients would face stigma and discrimination, a fear well- founded in many conservative societies in the developing world. It's one reason many activists are leery of moves that could coerce people into taking tests. Mechai Viravaidya has long led the AIDS prevention effort in Thailand.

MECHAI VIRAVAIDYA: Anything, when it comes to matters between the navel and the knee, history of mankind has proven that force doesn't work. There are ways where people have been coerced into doing it. I think we have to respect... have respect for the humans. And humans are humans, and we need to educate and convince them and get them to agree. That's my only way that I think it's going to work.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: He and others say voluntary testing can work, particularly now that antiretroviral, or ARV drugs are becoming affordable in more developing nations. These life-extending drugs have long been available in rich countries like the U.S.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Isn't it better to find out who is infected, and even more importantly perhaps, who isn't infected? And anyway, if you don't know who has the disease, how do you know who to treat?

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: That's exactly the question Botswana began to ask two years ago. This southern African nation is politically stable and rich in natural resources, especially diamonds. But it has a staggering infection rate: Four of every ten adults is HIV positive. Funerals are the most common social event. Two years ago, Botswana began to offer ARV drugs to all who needed them. But it still had trouble coaxing people to come in for tests, so last October, the government introduced routine testing for everyone entering the health care system for any reason. President Festus Mogae says steps had to be taken to safeguard medical privacy before the policy was put in place.

PRESIDENT FESTUS MOGAE: My concern was the possibility that it might be perceived as being a very discriminatory practice. But in fact, routine testing in health facilities was precisely meant to make it look normal, to circumvent stigma. The hope is that when more people will have tested, people will begin to talk about it as a routine matter, and thereby the remaining ones, they'll go for testing.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Today in Botswana, patients are urged to take the test, but they're also told they can refuse. So far, doctors say, very few do. Dr. Ernest Darkoh heads Botswana's antiretroviral drug program.

DR. ERNES DARKOH, Director, Botswana Anti Retroviral Program: What we did was, we took away all the value judgments associated with testing, you know? If you go to hospital and come back and tell your partner, "look, I had a blood pressure test," I mean, it doesn't evoke any kind of, "why did you have to have a blood pressure test?" But if you had an HIV test, we can imagine... I mean, your partner will say, well, why did you feel, in the middle of our happy marriage, you had to go now and get an HIV test? -- and all we're saying is, by making it routine, we've given people an excuse to be tested, because you'll say, well, everybody gets tested.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. Banu Khan heads the government's AIDS program.

DR. BANU KHAN: What we found is that maybe there was more fear and anxiety by providers and policymakers than was actually there amongst the people who test. People are coming out in large numbers. They are saying, why have you waited so long?

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: For their part, patients like Anna Ditaro, who's been on ARV drugs for a year, say HIV infection is no longer a death sentence. And she says as priests and political leaders set the example by taking the test, AIDS is beginning to carry far less stigma.

ANNA DITARO: I know a lot of people who have got higher positions who have tested, who are not positive and who are positive. They are like some priests in the churches, some counselors, some chiefs. They really encourage people to do it, and it's a good thing to do.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: That political and religious leadership is considered critical in campaigns to reduce the stigma of AIDS. President Mogae, who used to say his country faced extinction from AIDS, now says Botswana may be turning the corner. Mogae himself took an AIDS test. It was negative.

PRESIDENT FESTUS MOGAE: The fact that more people are... people are testing and many of them are proving negative, it's going to be easier to encourage them to stay negative. The fact that we're able to prevent mother-to-child transmission, these expectant mothers or new mothers, and even other parents with small children, who may be positive and whose children are not positive, they are... they are living longer. They are going to live longer.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Experts say Botswana will be closely watched as the first developing country that is trying to give its You AIDS patients not only the right of confidentiality, but the right of access to AIDS drugs.

JIM LEHRER: Extended coverage of the AIDS conference and interviews with experts can be found on our website at pbs.Org.

FOCUS - ATHLETES ON TRIAL

JIM LEHRER: Now, athletes under scrutiny on and off the track, and to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: The U.S. Olympic track and field trials began over the weekend under the shadow of a drug and doping scandal, there were surprises, some athletes under the heaviest scrutiny for alleged doping violations ended up not making the cut for the Olympic team at all, among them, Tim Montgomery. He was accused by the U.S. anti-doping agency, the USADA, for using steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. He failed to qualify for the Athens games. Montgomery is the 100-meters reigning world record holder placed seventh in the final race, far behind winner Maurice Greene. He blamed the furor over the drug scandal for his poor performance saying: "This is the reason I didn't win: I've got y'all on my back. I have to deal with y'all every day." Montgomery is one of six U.S. track and field athletes competing in trials this week accused by USADA of using banned drugs. If found guilty, Montgomery, Chrystie Gaines, Alvin Harrison and Michelle Collins face lifetime bans from the sport. Regina Jacobs could face a four- year ban and Calvin Harrison could face a two-year ban. Star of women's track and field Marion Jones, who is Montgomery's girlfriend, is also under investigation for doping but not formally charged. On Saturday, Jones missed her bid to defend her gold medal in Athens when she placed fifth in the women's 100 final. Jones won five medals in the 2000 Olympics in Sidney, and still has the chance to make the U.S. Team in the 200-meter and the long jump. The track and field doping scandal grew out of a federal investigation into a company called BALCO, the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative. BALCO's owner and several others were charged with conspiring to supply athletes with a new steroid THG, which was touted as being undetectable. Meanwhile, more track and field trials were scheduled today and throughout the week.

RAY SUAREZ: For more on the events in Sacramento, I'm joined by Elliott Almond. He's the Olympics reporter for the San Jose Mercury News and has been covering the doping investigation. Elliott Almond, the Olympic trials are one of the premiere events in America, maybe even world athletics. Has the atmosphere been poisoned by drug scandal?

ELLIOTT ALMOND: It absolutely has, I've never seen anything like this. The tension is so great between the media and the athletes, this is a time that usually of celebration, of the great stories of the newcomers and the old comers, coming back for the Olympics and track for once being in the lime light in the United States. So it's been a tough four days so far.

RAY SUAREZ: Do the athletes in this atmosphere view each other with suspicion, if someone's build has changed, if someone has trimmed down or bulked up or even not come to the competition at all, saying they've been injured?

ELLIOTT ALMOND: I believe the athletes know, from talking to some of them, I believe they know who and perhaps who doesn't. Nobody ever knows who doesn't take drugs or really does take them. But the suspicions are great and there's a lot of back biting, it's just natural with the sport. But throughout the BALCO investigation it's really opened the door to some of these athletes, just expressing frustration over the fact, gosh, we're not getting medals, these other people are taking medals, they're taking prize money, endorsement money away from them. And it's been just wild out here.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, you mentioned that word, BALCO. What is BALCO, and why is it at the center of so many stories now about drugs and athletics?

ELLIOTT ALMOND: Well, it's a small Burlingame nutrition company, it's actually two companies, one BALCO just did testing of trace minerals for, you know, for, to find out what's deficient in the body, and it was probably a very legitimate company when it started, really helping people and athletes put the right things in their body to help them perform better. And then they decided to form another organization, which would help promote their supplements such as ZMA, it's a really popular legal supplement that's on the market. It purports to help build testosterone in the body or increase testosterone, I should say. And he started dabbling with ways to help athletes to circumvent the drug testing system, at least that's the allegations. And through that, more and more athletes started seeking him out.

RAY SUAREZ: So athletes who are currently under suspicion, like the roster we ran down during the report, have any of them failed a drug test?

ELLIOTT ALMOND: Well, some of these people have failed a drug test for sleeping disorder medication, Modafonil, which drug testing officials claim athletes were using to help with getting a boost, if you will, like a stimulant. And we also have nine athletes who have tested positive for THG, which is the previously undetectable designer steroid.

RAY SUAREZ: So previously undetectable, but once you knew what you were looking for, you could find it in a sample?

ELLIOTT ALMOND: Absolutely. And that's an interesting story in this whole story, if you will. It started, we reported at the Mercury News that it started because a track coach having a rivalry with Victor Conte just a feud over who is the better group of sprinters, turned in a syringe filled with this substance to the anti-doping agency, and the drug tester at the UCLA Laboratory was able to find a new assay and figure out what it was.

RAY SUAREZ: What is it that THG is supposed to help an athlete do or do better?

ELLIOTT ALMOND: Well, it's probably a garden variety kind of steroid. Maybe that's making too fine a point on it. But it's a steroid, anabolic steroid that would promote muscle mass. And there's no tests that are done on humans to see exactly what these things really do as far as promoting muscle mass, I mean at the amounts they may take. So it's difficult to know. But anecdotally, I think people believe the work because a lot were using it.

RAY SUAREZ: A lot of athletes who are under suspicion are still competing in the trials. Are any still up for spots on the team, and will this be sorted out by the time the U.S. team goes to Athens?

ELLIOTT ALMOND: I don't expect it to be sorted out by that time, just because the nature of the story just, it's a ten-headed monster, if you will but there are still people there, as you said in the intro, Marion Jones is competing, she's going a couple hours in the long jump qualifying tonight. She certainly seems she'll make the team, we are not strong in the women's long jump this year, so one would expect her to be able to make the team there. She also has the 200 meters to go and could make the theme, although after her performance over the weekend I think there's a lot of doubts being cast.

RAY SUAREZ: For athletes who are under suspicion but do make the team, if they haven't failed a drug test, can they still be knocked off by an international body, or will they go to Athens and compete?

ELLIOTT ALMOND: Well, the latest we're hearing, the international officials seem to be backing away from actually trying to suspend anybody based on what is known, now known as an analytical, non-analytical positive test. This would be a test in which the U.S. anti-doping agency is trying to use evidence that they've obtained from the BALCO Laboratories criminal case to convince an arbitration panel that these athletes do not belong in competition.

RAY SUAREZ: So they may not fail according to the rules as they exist, but if their names are on documents, if there's documentary evidence that they took something, that may be enough to get them off the team?

ELLIOTT ALMOND: Well, that's what the U.S. anti-doping agency is trying to do, and believes it can and will do. And to answer your question specifically, I think the international officials are uncomfortable with this new area in drug testing or drug adjudication, if you will, and it's uncharted territory. So we're all making it up as they go along.

RAY SUAREZ: Elliott Almond, thanks for being with us.

ELLIOTT ALMOND: Thank you so of much, Ray.

ESSAY - HATING

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Clarence Page wonders if criticism is the same as hate.

CLARENCE PAGE: Lying, Mark Twain lamented, is a high art recently degraded by amateurs. In my view, a similar fate has happened to hate. Where I grew up in the Midwest, hating was nothing to be trifled with. You simply weren't supposed to do it. "There's a little bit of good in the worst of us," mother used to say, "a little bad in the best. Look for the good," she would say. Give to the world your best, and the best will come back to you. Hating was something associated with hate groups, like the Ku Klux Klan, who hated others because they really hated themselves. "Don't be a hater," we were told by Martin Luther King and others, "or you will drag yourself down to their level." We reserved hating for those who were truly beyond redemption. Like Hitler. Or the communists. Or whoever convinced the Dodgers to leave Brooklyn.

SINGING: One way or another I'm going to find you.

CLARENCE PAGE: Yes, in the world of sports, hating has taken on a comic tone, except perhaps between the Boston Red Sox and the Yankees. Yankee hating sometimes feels like national sport all its own. And Detroit basketball fans openly display "official Laker hater" t-shirts as if being an un-official run-of-the-mill critic of Los Angeles basketball team were not enough. But it was in the hip-hop world of my teen-aged son's generation that I first heard hating downgraded into the truly banal: "Don't be hatin," they say, meaning, please, be tolerant. Or, "don't hate the player," they say on the streets, "hate the game;" meaning, don't blame the street hustler for the world in which he is caught up, as if he has no personal responsibility for his own condition.

I always thought everybody had some personal responsibility for their own condition, born low, try to lift yourself up. But these days on the streets, the mere act of being judgmental is regarded as hating by those who have been judged. For those who have no defense for what they do, playing the "hater" card is a good way to go on the offense. Don't like what I do? Hey, you must be a hater.

It was about mid-term in the Bush administration that I began to hear "hater" take on a similar meaning in politics. In the run-up to the war in Iraq, the post-9/11 feelings of national unity had worn thin. Protesters began to show up at Bush appearances and there was the beginning of an anti-war movement. Pundits and politicians became more outspoken in their criticism of Bush foreign policy. Ferocious new Bush-bashing books appeared with titles like "The Lies of George Bush," "The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told us About Iraq," and "Lies and the Lying Liars Who tell Them." Bush defenders came up with a new label for these new attackers: "The Bush haters." As in this new book, "Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry, and the Bush Haters" -- which leads to an interesting question of our time: Are the Bush haters any more sinister than the Clinton bashers of the last decade, who turned out titles like "Treason," "Slander," "Final Days," and "Dereliction of Duty." Mark Twain had another point, if every politician's spin, fudging, exaggeration or broken promise from a politician is to be branded an out- and-out lie, what word do we have left to call the really big whoppers? The same is true of hating. If every critique of or disagreement with a president makes you a full-blown hater, what labels are left in the language to identify the real bigots. Back in the Midwest where I come from, a man named Abraham Lincoln once said that in his experience "Folks who have no vices have very few virtues." Or as I say, "hating is bad. Healthy criticism is good." It might even be the sincerest form of love.

I'm Clarence Page.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: The president of Iraq said the interim government is set to offer amnesty to insurgents. But he warned those who refuse to stop fighting would face "a very sharp sword." And President Bush said the war in Iraq and the war on terror had made America safer. But Democrat John Kerry challenged the president's policies. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.