The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: The news of this Wednesday; then the state of the National Guard as the president sends them to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border; a preview of tomorrow's confirmation hearings for Michael Hayden as CIA director; an update of the Enron trial as the case goes to the jury; a NewsHour report about makeshift medical care in Mississippi nearly nine months after Katrina; and a Roger Rosenblatt essay on dreaming impossible dreams on television and in real life.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Senate conservatives pushed today to make the immigration bill tougher. They won votes on two key amendments. One would deny citizenship to illegal immigrants convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors; the other called for adding 370 miles of triple-layered border fence, plus 500 miles of vehicle barriers. At the same time, senators kept provisions that offer a chance for citizenship, but that sparked new debate over amnesty.

SEN. DAVID VITTER (R), Louisiana: Over and over and over again, Americans make very clear a huge majority want enforcement. There is a legitimate debate about a temporary worker program, but a huge majority have fundamental problems with these provisions, which they know, using common sense, particularly when they understand the details of the bill, amount to absolute amnesty.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), Arizona: Now, I understand why the opponents of what we are trying to do here would call it amnesty. That's a great idea: Call it amnesty. Call it a banana, if you want to.

But the fact is that it is earned citizenship, and the reason why the opponents of this legislation keep calling it amnesty, because they know that poll after poll after poll that the majority of the American people say: Let them earn their citizenship.

JIM LEHRER: There was also more discussion today of using the National Guard to back up the Border Patrol. Top Pentagon officials said the Guard can do that duty and still handle its other missions. We'll have more on the National Guard right after this News Summary.

It was a rough day on Wall Street, triggered by new numbers on inflation. The Commerce Department reported consumer prices rose .6 percent in April. Not counting energy, the core rate still went up .3 for the second month in a row. That sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 214 points, the most in three years, to close at 11,205. The NASDAQ lost 33 points to close below 2,196, wiping out all of its gains for the year.

Iraqi officials announced plans today to install a unity government this weekend. The deputy speaker of parliament said incoming Prime Minister al-Maliki will present his cabinet on Saturday. That's two days before the deadline. Parliament will then vote on the nominees.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld told a Senate hearing it's not clear all the posts have been decided.

DONALD RUMSFELD, U.S. Secretary of Defense: My understanding, as of this morning, is that he has made a decision with respect to the ministry of defense, that there are two open ministries. I think one is the ministry of interior and the other may be finance or oil -- do you recall?

UNIDENTIFIED SENATE WITNESS: Finance, sir.

DONALD RUMSFELD: Finance, that are still being debated and that the hope or expectation is that, by the deadline, they will make an announcement.

JIM LEHRER: Rumsfeld also said he was hopeful about starting to pull out U.S. troops by year's end, but he said he could not promise.

In response, House Democrat John Murtha of Pennsylvania called again for withdrawing now. He said things have gotten worse since he first spoke out six months ago.

REP. JOHN MURTHA (D), Pennsylvania: What happens if we leave today? What happened if we left six months ago? They have to settle this themselves. There's no plan to make things better, and so it's time for us to leave, to redeploy. And I say that, in Iraq, success of Iraq is up to the Iraqis.

JIM LEHRER: The U.S. now has about 132,000 troops in Iraq.

President Bush signed a tax cut package worth $70 billion today. He did so at a ceremony outside the White House. The bill extends a cut in capital gains taxes, among other things. Republicans said the measure will help the economy; Democrats said it mostly benefits the rich.

A federal jury in Houston began deliberations today in the Enron fraud trial. The defendants are the company's former top executives, Kenneth Lay, the founder of Enron, and Jeffrey Skilling, once the chief executive. They're accused of lying to investors before the company collapsed in 2001. Defense lawyers said today they're optimistic after 14 weeks of testimony, and Skilling agreed.

JEFFREY Skilling, Former CEO, Enron: I feel the same way. I think the jury was attentive. I mean, they took a lot of notes. It's a complicated case. There was a lot in front of them. And I think they got it; t think they understood what was going on and understood what the issues were, and so we'll see.

JIM LEHRER: Lay said little as he left court. He said he'd have plenty to say at another time. We'll have more on this story later in the program tonight. Also coming, looking ahead to the Hayden hearings, rebuilding what Katrina destroyed, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay.

FOCUS STATE OF THE GUARD

First, is the National Guard ready?

JIM LEHRER: The National Guard as it goes on border duty. Judy Woodruff has our story.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Members of Congress peppered the Pentagon 's top brass today with questions about President Bush's plan to use 6,000 National Guard troops to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border.

During a hearing, West Virginia Senator Democrat Robert Byrd pressed Lieutenant General Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard bureau, for more details.

SEN. ROBERT BYRD: Let me ask you, how do we know that these deployments won't detract from the ability of guardsmen to respond to emergencies in their home states?

LT. GEN. STEVEN BLUM: We have sufficient soldiers to do the overseas war fight, prepare for the upcoming hurricane season, still have the forces that we need to respond for terrorism in this country or a WMD event. And as the secretary said, at the high end limit of 6,000, that only represents a little less than 2 percent of our available force.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Currently, there are more than 440,000 civilian-soldiers serving part-time in the Army and Air National Guard. Guardsmen and women usually drill one weekend a month and two weeks a year under the command of state governors. But during war or emergencies, the president can press them into federal service. Most deployments are limited to 24-months.

When on active duty guard members get paid the same as regular forces and are eligible for pensions, but only receive limited benefits. The Pentagon has resisted efforts by guard leaders and governors to include a guard general as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. More than 80,000 Army guard and reserve troops are on active duty now, the busiest time in what has been a busy decade and a half for the guard -- from the call-up of the first Gulf War, for peacekeeping operations in the Balkans, to guard airports and other facilities after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and in keeping the peace in Afghanistan and fighting in Iraq, two conflicts that have left 398 guard dead.

In 2005, more than half of the army's combat brigades in Iraq were pulled from the National Guard-- the biggest use of part-time troops in an overseas conflict since World War II. Currently, some 22,000 guard troops are on duty in Iraq, down from about 40,000 several months ago. Five thousand guard troops are serving in Afghanistan.

In addition to overseas combat assignments, the National Guard is often called to respond to natural disasters at home. This week, the Massachusetts and New Hampshire governors dispatched their National Guards to help respond to record flooding.

In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, 50,000 guard troops from across the nation were deployed to the ravaged Gulf Coast, while portions of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard were on duty in Iraq.

Despite the personal hardships, and after two years of recruitment shortfalls, the National Guard this year says it is exceeding its recruiting goals.

JUDY WOODRUFF: For more, we go to: Brigadier General David McGinnis—he is a 29- year veteran of the Army and National Guard. He has served as director of strategic plans and analysis for reserve affairs at the Pentagon.

Lawrence Korb, assistant secretary of defense for manpower and reserve affairs during the Reagan administration. He's now a senior fellow at the Center for American progress, a public policy research group in Washington.

And Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations; he has served as a consultant to the Pentagon. Gentlemen, thank you all for being with us.

Let's start with the mission that the president wants the guard to fulfill. And, General McGinnis, let me begin with you. Are you confident that the gather can fulfill this mission the president has laid out?

BRIG. GEN. DAVID McGINNIS: Very much so, Judy. The guard has a lot of capability left now that Iraq is over. It's a suitable mission for the guard. The guard should be the choice of force for this mission because the guard has more roles than just the reserve or the Army and the Air Force. This is deploying the guard under its constitutional role as the organized militia to enforce the laws of the union. It's a very appropriate job. The numbers that we're talking about are easily within the guard's capability to accomplish.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Lawrence Korb, easily within the guards' capability?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, I think it's going to have long-term impact on the guard. People talk about the fact, they say, well 460,000. That includes the Air National Guard, not just the Army National Guard. And as General Blum was testifying, these are soldiers so it's primarily that.

The Army National Guard does not have its full strength. It's supposed to have 350,000. It only has 330,000. And you can't deploy at all. There are specific units that you have to deploy. You want the right capability, so it's really a small pool from which you're drawing.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So you're saying it's not as big as it appears--

LAWRENCE KORB: That's right. I mean, people make these statements like Secretary Rumsfeld who says gee, we can keep 130,000 troops in the Army. We have got 2.4 million people in the service. That counts the other services. It's mainly Army and Marines that you have here. So I think that's the first thing you have to take a look at, and a lot of these people have been deployed a couple of times since September 11.

This will just be one more disruption, and they're not going to be doing their primary mission. They're going -- in lieu of their normal training, they're going to be doing this, and so if we need them again in Iraq and Afghanistan, they may not be as ready.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Stephen Biddle, to you, what's your sense of whether the guard is capable of doing this job?

STEPHEN BIDDLE: Well, I think the guard's capable of doing it, in large part because it's been designed to be a program whose impact is so modest that the guard can do it with limited impact on its other responsibilities. And they're deliberately using the two-week normally summer training period that the guard units normally go through anyway as the basis for their deployment on the border.

So I think the criticism of the program has in some ways been overdrawn, but I think it's also been dramatically undersold as a result. If we're really going to have a major impact on the permeability of the southern border, it's going to require a major effort in order to do it. This is not a major effort, and I don't think it's likely to have a major impact.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I want to get to that point in just a minute, but with General McGinnis, I want to get back to something that Larry Korb said, and that is that really when you look at how the guard is being deployed, it really is not as large a pool as it appears.

BRIG. GEN. DAVID McGINNIS: I would disagree with Dr. Korb. There's a large pool of air National Guard members who can perform this type of duty. Security police makes up a big part of the Air National Guard. Engineers also make up a big part of the National Guard. And even though the guard had recruiting problems during Iraq because when you deploy guardsmen, they don't recruit, and guardsmen recruit for themselves -- they don't have a professional recruiting force, such as the Army does. So I don't think that numbers are an issue.

The other point that Steve just brought up is that we've been sustaining forces using this system in South and Central America since the mid-80s on operations for nation building, during the Reagan administration. So I don't think -- I don't think it's an issue.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Let's come back on the numbers point, quickly, to Larry Korb.

LAWRENCE KORB: As I say -- I'm just going with what General Blum said. He used the term "soldiers," and to me that's not the Air National Guard. And the other thing is they haven't been very clear what units they're going to have and how it's going to work.

But if you look at the units, they're talking about intelligence and surveillance, and those are units that have been used an awful lot already in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the military -- the Pentagon has a term for it, you know, high-density, or low-density, high use. And that's the problem I worry about because if you overuse those people, they are the ones that are not going to stay.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you want to come right back on that, General?

BRIG. GEN. DAVID McGINNIS: Yes. I think when we talk about these functions a lot of them can be accomplished by generalists. There's a lot of these type of specialties buried in every guard combat organization. Every guard brigade has a lot of people who can do this. And there are 30-odd guard brigades out there. So I don't think it's -- and it hasn't been in the past. We've used similar numbers for shorter periods of time, granted not two years, and we've been able to sustain those numbers fairly well. My guess is a lot will be done by volunteers.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Stephen Biddle, let me turn to the question of equipment. It seems we hear from a number of people who know the guard and whether they support this new mission or not they're worried because, what, $3 billion worth of guard equipment, something like 64,000 vehicles have been left behind in Iraq.

STEPHEN BIDDLE: Yeah, only something like a third of the guard's actual equipment nationwide is in the United States at the moment. Equipment wear and tear has been a huge problem. And the guard was in many ways undercapitalized even before the wars. So wear and tear has been on top of a capital set that many people didn't think was up to the job to begin with.

I think this whole question, though, with respect to equipment and everything else turns on just what it is that you want these people to do. I mean, what sort of impact do you think they're actually going to have in securing the border? The part of the guard that could have the greatest impact on securing the border is also the part of the guard and the part of the guard's equipment set that's in the most demand in Iraq -- unmanned aerial vehicles, remote sensors, the kinds of intelligence and surveillance capabilities that could leverage a small force to make it more useful on the border are also exactly the sorts of things that we need the most in Iraq at the moment, and thus we have the least ability to swing to the southern border in the kind of numbers that would be required to make a difference.

JUDY WOODRUFF: General McGinnis.

BRIG. GEN. DAVID McGINNIS: I would underwrite what Stephen said. In the last 15 years, the guard and the Arm reserve have been undercapitalized, over $65 billion. And $12 billion of that has been Army guard aviation alone -- some of the items he's talking about. And, as an example, just to send the enhanced readiness brigades to Iraq cost the Army $4.5 billion in emergency procurement. So the equipment is a bigger issue to me than people.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You're worried about it.

BRIG. GEN. DAVID McGINNIS: I'm worried about the equipment. I don't think the guard's properly equipped, whether it's the border, Korea, or Iran. The Army is -- the equipment that the Army has on hand today is totally committed in the Middle East. And for the forces in the Middle East, and that's my major issue.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Lawrence Korb, another set of issues that have been raised, recruitment and retention. A year ago, we were being told there were serious shortfalls in the guard. Now we're told that those have caught up, and they're in pretty good shape. What's your sense?

LAWRENCE KORB: Not really, because the guards -- the Army guard is supposed to have 350,000 people. The Pentagon this year when they went up to the Congress said that we're not going to ask you for funds for 350,000 because we can't get that many people. The governors complained, the Congress complained, so they put the money in there.

But as we speak now, they're nowhere near the 350,000 that they're supposed to have. Last year, in 2005, they only recruited 80 percent of the people that they needed. They've done better this year so far, but last month, they didn't meet their quota and the big recruiting season is coming up now, and we'll see.

JUDY WOODRUFF: General McGinnis, I want to come back to you.

BRIG. GEN. DAVID McGINNIS: Judy, the Army guard is ahead of its annual requirement this year, not only to replace its losses but to catch up with the deficit that Dr. Korb mentioned.

The problem the guard has is when you take guardsmen away and send them to Iraq they don't recruit. And there's no organization like the Army recruiting command to fall back and pick up that load.

So as they get back, as they get home and get their momentum going, which they are and we're seeing the momentum build, those numbers should take care of themselves fairly easily -- over time -- over the next year to eighteen months.

The other issue is the people that were forecasted to cut and run when they came back because of deployments from Bosnia to Kosovo to Afghanistan are staying, and the people that were deployed are staying in better numbers than those people who than the retention rates before 9/11.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Stephen Biddle, are you comfortable as the general is on this retention point?

STEPHEN BIDDLE: Well, I think the jury is still out. I think a lot of people had expected that there would be a recruiting crisis developing, especially for the guard, but also for the active forces as a result of kind of chronic, long-term commitments in Afghanistan and especially in Iraq. I think so far people have generally been surprised that the crisis hasn't come.

On the other hand, I think a lot of people are worried that if we continue with the model that we have now of the kind of guard rotations that we have and a continued heavy reliance on a guard force that is largely citizen, part-time soldiers, eventually you're just going to break the camel's back with this, and sooner or later these chickens are going to come home to roost. They haven't so far. Whether they will eventually, I think we don't yet know.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Let's come back to that question the general has posed at least twice in this conversation, Lawrence Korb, and that is whether this force that the president is calling for, some 6,000 -- and we're talking about doing it starting next month -- is that sufficient to make a difference in border security?

LAWRENCE KORB: Oh, not at all. I mean, it's more symbolic than anything else. If you really wanted to do this you would have to, you know, put -- and I think I've seen figures, 50,000 to 60,000 people there if you really wanted to do it right. So you are going to, in my view, get the worst of all possible worlds. You're going to send people down there in lieu of their regular training. You're not going to solve the problem, and you are raising the potential for something happening like years ago when the Marines ended up shooting, you know, somebody trying to come across the border.

BRIG. GEN. DAVID McGINNIS: I would disagree with Dr. Korb on that as well. First of all, I think if you gave the guard the mission to help the Border Patrol on the border it would done entirely differently than the president plans to do it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you mean by that?

BRIG. GEN. DAVID McGINNIS: Well, I think if you ask the guard to help the Border Patrol come up with a solution, the guard would work with the Border Patrol, and they could come up with a solution using sensors, using aircraft officially, using reaction forces like we do with the air defense of America.

I sat down and did an analysis that showed we could do it for substantially less money and with substantially less people. You're rotating people through the normal guard system, just as we do with our fighter pilots to guard America's skies.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But that's not the president's plan.

BRIG. GEN. DAVID McGINNIS: That's not the president's plan. As Stephen said, we really don't know what the president's plan is yet. Six thousand people is doable. Anything he's going to ask the guard to do I'm sure they're capable of doing. But I think it can be done smarter, and it can be done better if the Border Patrol and the guard were allowed to collaborate on this, just as we did with issues like this previously and the drug war. So there's a long history here been -- a good positive history between the guard and the border patrol.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Quick comment.

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, again, we don't know what it is. It was made up on the fly. You are going to have them under the control of the governors, paid for by the federal authorities. What happens if they're crossing between states? Who is going to be in charge? I mean, I think if you look at it in terms of whether you think it's right or not, the thing has not been well thought out, and the potential for it not achieving its objective is very high.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we're going to have to leave it there. We appreciate all three of you being with us: Stephen Biddle, joining us from Harrisburg, Lawrence Korb here, and General David McGinnis, thank you all three; we appreciate it.

LAWRENCE KORB: Thank you, Judy.

BRIG. GEN. DAVID McGINNIS: Thanks for having me.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the Enron trial goes to the jury, post-Katrina health care in Mississippi, a Rosenblatt essay. Next, a Hayden hearings preview.

FOCUS CONFIRMATION PREVIEW

JIM LEHRER: NewsHour Congressional Correspondent Kwame Holman has our Hayden report.

KWAME HOLMAN: 61-year-old Air Force General Michael Hayden is no stranger to the Senate Intelligence Committee, having testified there dozens of times during his six-year tenure as director of the National Security Agency, and more recently in his current role as deputy to national intelligence director John Negroponte.

SPOKESMAN: The committee will come to order.

KWAME HOLMAN: But last week's USA Today report that the NSA, under Hayden's direction, built a database of millions of domestic telephone records has prompted some committee members from both parties to cast a skeptical eye at his nomination to be director of central intelligence.

Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel.

SEN. CHUCK HAGEL, (R) Intelligence Committee: There's no question that his confirmation is going to depend upon the answers he gives regarding activities of NSA

KWAME HOLMAN: California Democrat Dianne Feinstein.

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, (D) California: I think this is going to be a growing impediment to General Hayden, and I think that is very regretted.

KWAME HOLMAN: Hayden was nominated by President Bush to replace Porter Goss, who was forced from the CIA post after 19 tumultuous months marked by an exodus of top officials and reports of low morale. The general was making courtesy calls at the capitol when the USA Today story broke, putting him on the defensive.

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN, CIA Director-Designate: Let me say once again, though, that everything that the agency has done has been lawful. It's been briefed to the appropriate members of Congress, that the only purpose of the agency's activities is to preserve the security and the liberty of the American people, and I think we've done that.

KWAME HOLMAN: It wasn't the first time Hayden had to defend his work at the NSA Late last year, the New York Times revealed that President Bush had approved spying by the NSA on suspected terrorists' phone calls to and from the U.S. without court approval. It was a report Hayden tried to dissuade the Times from printing. Once it was public, Hayden gave a vigorous defense of the program, asserting that one end of any intercepted call always was on foreign soil, never purely domestic surveillance.

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: The intrusion into privacy is also limited: Only international calls and only those we have a reasonable basis to believe involve al-Qaida or one of its affiliates.

KWAME HOLMAN: But Intelligence Committee Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon said he's been unable to reconcile the general's previous statements on the narrow scope of the eavesdropping with the latest reports about the mass collection of domestic telephone records.

SEN. RON WYDEN, (D) Oregon: I have substantial questions about his credibility at this point. You look at the fact that he said on a number of occasions that this program involved calls that came from overseas to the United States. That was the focus of the program. No mention of any kind of domestic database.

KWAME HOLMAN: On Wyden's mind and others' tomorrow will be the fact that General Hayden was the principal architect of the administration's plan to intercept calls, implemented in the weeks after 9/11. President Bush has recounted publicly a conversation with Hayden at the time.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: After September 11, I spoke to a variety of folks on the front line of protecting us, and I said, "Is there anything more we could be doing, given the current laws?" And General Mike Hayden of the NSA said there is.

KWAME HOLMAN: Hayden reportedly told the president, vice president and others that the NSA's enormous technological capabilities could be enhanced by loosening restrictions on the agency's operations inside the United States.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: And so he designed a program that will enable us to listen from a known al-Qaida, or suspected al-Qaida person and/or affiliate from making any phone call outside the United States in, or inside the United States out, with the idea of being able to pick up quickly information from which to be able to respond in this environment that we're in.

KWAME HOLMAN: And so, for the first time since 1978, when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act began requiring court approval for all domestic eavesdropping, the NSA began doing it without a warrant. Members of Congress from both parties expressed their concern that spying on callers within the United States without a warrant violated their constitutional rights.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER, (R) Pennsylvania: On this date of the record, we do not know whether it's constitutional or not.

KWAME HOLMAN: But the Intelligence Committee will have to grapple with the fact that by its nature, intelligence-gathering often isn't necessarily constitutional or legal, according to former CIA analyst Mark Lowenthal.

MARK LOWENTHAL, Former CIA Analyst: In the intelligence community, you do things overseas that are blatantly illegal where you're doing them. Sending spies into another country is illegal. Plotting to destabilize an unfriendly regime is illegal. Listening to other people's communications overseas is illegal. And so by the nature of what they do in operations, they're already transgressing somebody's legal limits. We have fairly firm legal limits about what they can do in this country.

Now, several, you know, lawyers from various agencies looked over this program, defined the program in a way that they felt it comported with legality. Now, there's going to be disagreements as to whether or not they're interpreting the law right. But that's... that's part of the... somebody once said the Constitution is an invitation to struggle. This is part of the invitation to struggle, interpreting the law.

KWAME HOLMAN: Democrat Wyden said he will question Hayden about his interpretation of the law, and why the Qwest phone company, one of four reportedly approached, deemed the NSA's surveillance program unlawful and refused to participate.

SEN. RON WYDEN: A number of people in the administration will say that the general's not a lawyer. He was advised by lawyers to handle it in a specific sort of way, and I will say, for example, if on the phone database issue people at Qwest found this so troubling, what did the general do about it?

KWAME HOLMAN: But some Republicans already have dismissed those concerns. Alabama's Jeff Sessions.

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS, (R) Alabama: And I don't think this action is as nearly troublesome as it is being made out here because they are not taping our phones and getting our conversations. They are merely maintaining these numbers from which they have some system apparently to utilize those to match up with international calls connected to al-Qaida.

KWAME HOLMAN: Beyond the surveillance issue, some members question whether this is the right time for an active duty military officer to lead the government's civilian intelligence operation.

Since just after 9/11, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has been expanding the military's intelligence gathering operations into territory that traditionally has fallen under the CIA's jurisdiction.

House leaders, including Speaker Dennis Hastert and Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss in the Senate, fear a military man at the CIA would further that trend and damage the agency's credibility.

SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS, (R) Georgia: I think the fact that he is part of the military today would be the major problem. Now, just resigning commission and moving on, putting on a pinstriped suit versus an Air Force uniform, I don't think makes much difference.

KWAME HOLMAN: But throughout his 30-year intelligence career, General Michael Hayden has proved to be a reformer and an independent thinker willing to buck the military brass, according to analyst Mark Lowenthal.

MARK LOWENTHAL: In Mike Hayden's case, there's a couple of things that you have to look at: Number one, he's a four-star general. He's not bucking for another promotion. This is it. He doesn't...he's not worried about, you know, padding his career or safeguarding his career. He understands where he is and why he's being asked to take over this job. It's not DOD, and also we know from his past record that when he's had a position at variance with Secretary Rumsfeld, he has stated it. This was an issue in the hearings creating the DNI legislation and he said -- he took a position that Rumsfeld wasn't happy with. So he is willing to stand up. So I just... I just don't think it's an issue in this case.

KWAME HOLMAN: Hayden's many trips to Capitol Hill and his highly regarded intelligence briefings have made him a popular figure to members from both parties.

SEN. MITCH McCONNELL, (R) Kentucky: I'm thoroughly impressed by this nomination and have every intention of supporting it.

SEN. HARRY REID, Minority Leader: General Hayden has always proven to be person of intellect and a person that's independent. We realize that he's been nominated for this job by the president, but he understands the intelligence world very well.

KWAME HOLMAN: But many Republicans still predict that Democrats, regardless of their personal feelings toward Hayden, will use tomorrow's forum to attack the administration's counterterrorism policies.

JIM LEHRER: Our live coverage of the Hayden hearings with David Brooks and Tom Oliphant starts at 9:30 AM Eastern Time tomorrow on many PBS stations. And we'll have excerpts and analysis on the NewsHour tomorrow evening.

FOCUS TO THE JURY

JIM LEHRER: Now, the fate of Enron's founder and former chief executives is in the hands of the jury. Jeffrey Brown has our update.

JEFFREY BROWN: After 16 weeks, and 56 witnesses, lawyers in the trial of former Enron executives Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay finished their closing arguments today, and the jury began deliberations. Jeffrey Skilling faces 28 charges of fraud, conspiracy and insider trading. Ken Lay faces six charges of fraud and conspiracy. Thomas Mulligan of the Los Angeles Times has been covering the trial in Houston and joins us now.

And welcome to you.

THOMAS MULLIGAN: Thanks, Jeff.

JEFFREY BROWN: As always, at the end of a trial, we're offered two conflicting visions or stories. Why don't you start with the defense which went yesterday: What was its key argument?

THOMAS MULLIGAN: The basic defense argument is, aside from the relatively small-scale thievery of the former chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow, there was no crime at Enron. Enron was also healthy in the months before it collapsed, and, in fact, just gave way to what defense attorneys referred to as a crisis of confidence brought on by negative newspaper articles and the machinations, they say, of short sellers who profit by betting against a stock such as Enron's.

JEFFREY BROWN: I read that defense attorney Daniel Petrocelli kept harping on this idea: Bankruptcy is not a crime; failure is not a crime. So he's saying, things go bad, but that doesn't necessarily mean that somebody committed some felony.

THOMAS MULLIGAN: That's right. The biggest philosophical argument the defense is trying to bring out here is in their opinion, there is a move towards criminalization of what are standard business practices. They believe that the government had an object in mind, the prosecution -- or rather the conviction of Lay and Skilling, the top people at Enron, and that in Petrocelli's words, they reverse engineered their case after picking their targets.

JEFFREY BROWN: So in making their case, I gather things got rather theatrical at times including one defense attorney named Chip Lewis. Tell us about that.

THOMAS MULLIGAN: Chip Lewis is one of fours who spoke to the jury on behalf of Ken Lay Tuesday afternoon. Chip is also the largest guy in the room. He is well over six feet, well put together, looks like a linebacker, and has a black goatee. He stepped up to the prosecution table and leaned over towards John Huston, the prosecutor who cross-examined Mr. Lay, and said, "Don't come to Houston, Texas, and lie to us."

JEFFREY BROWN: So I guess that got a lot of attention.

THOMAS MULLIGAN: It certainly did. The jurors couldn't -- it was hard to read the jurors. They were certainly paying attention, but they didn't seem to react, at least to me.

On the other hand, Ken Lay's wife, Linda, and her daughter, Robin, briefly burst into applause.

JEFFREY BROWN: Today, the prosecutors had their chance to respond, so what was their main argument?

THOMAS MULLIGAN: Sean Berkowitz, who has taken the lead role in the prosecution, had just two hours to work with, and he really sped through the case this morning. He tried to hit on every point the defense raised, but predominantly he worked to rebut their argument that the government was trying to tarnish people with things that weren't listed in the indictment.

For instance, there was a lot of questioning of Jeff Skilling because of his investment in a company run by a former girlfriend of his, a company that did most of its business with Enron.

What Sean Berkowitz tried to emphasize today is that although not listed in the indictment, those charges had a lot of bearing on the credibility of the two defendants. Against Mr. Lay, he pointed out that Ken Lay had sold quietly $70 million worth of Enron stock back to the company during the year 2001, and that at the same time, he was letting people believe that he was a buyer of Enron stock and was encouraging people to do the same.

JEFFREY BROWN: So what are the experts there saying about how complicated all of this is now? What exactly does the jury have to decide?

THOMAS MULLIGAN: Well, the jury -- if you listen to the -- to the defense, the jury has a rather tough task because a conspiracy is supposed to be a difficult thing to prove. They have to work through thousands of pages of documents. It's up to them how much or little of that they read, but there were 15 weeks of testimony more than four dozen witnesses, so that's a lot to consider. And both defenses and prosecutors were estimating that this at least will take them some days to ponder.

JEFFREY BROWN: And remind us the stakes here. How much potential prison time are they looking at?

THOMAS MULLIGAN: Many decades, technically speaking, but I think if convicted of all charges, Lay and Skilling would probably be do something more than 20 years in prison.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, in the meantime, I understand there's another Enron-related case starting tomorrow involving Mr. Lay. What's that about?

THOMAS MULLIGAN: That was a part of the original indictment but got split off during the back-and-forth before the trial. And it's an unusual little rump session. The judge himself will hear the case and act as jury by agreement of all the parties.

This is a bank fraud case. It involves violations of the terms under which Mr. Lay borrowed money from some banks. It was a part of the original indictment. There are legal experts in this town who believe that had these charges been the only things the government had against Mr. Lay, they might have not pursued the case.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Thomas Mulligan of the Los Angeles Times, thanks very much.

THOMAS MULLIGAN: My pleasure.

FOCUS MAKESHIFT CARE

JIM LEHRER: Now, rebuilding the health care system destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. NewsHour correspondent Tom Bearden reports from Mississippi's Gulf Coast.

TOM BEARDEN: For the uninsured, finding health care is a challenge anywhere in the country. It's an even bigger challenge in rural Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

In the little town of Moss Point, on the eastern edge of the hurricane's damage footprint, the only viable option is a small clinic temporarily operating in a converted classroom in the back of a public school. It's run by Coastal Family Healthcare, a non-profit that specializes in treating people who don't have health insurance or who rely on Medicare and Medicaid. It's crowded and cramped, but Regina Johnson says it's a godsend, because she has to refill her prescriptions often.

REGINA JOHNSON: My sister told me that they had reopened, so I immediately started coming back here. I mean like I said they are good people.

TOM BEARDEN: And it's affordable care?

REGINA JOHNSON: Oh yes, very affordable, very affordable, they don't... they ask you what you can afford to pay at the time of your visit. You know, they don't just... I was going to a doctor where if I didn't have the money to pay for my visit, I didn't get my medication. So that's why I started coming here.

TOM BEARDEN: Kristin Cahill is a nurse practitioner who came from Boston to volunteer in clinics like these. She says it's always busy.

KRISTIN CAHILL: The hours are long; most people lost their primary care physician or their nurse practitioner in the hurricane, so now we see more and more patients without health insurance. It's either this or the ER and sitting in the ER for four hours for a cold is not a good option for people, and Coastal is the only option.

TOM BEARDEN: Before the storm, Coastal operated a string of clinics all along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Executive director Joe Dawsey says the storm took almost half of them out.

JOE DAWSEY: We were flooded and we lost four of the nine clinics were completely destroyed. We have been doing temporaries in school houses, tents, lawn mobiles. There is one thing, whatever we can operate out of is what we have been trying to do.

TOM BEARDEN: Coastal is now operating 15 makeshift replacement clinics in every thing from doublewide trailers to Winnebagos. Dawsey says Coastal had to do all this on its own, because federal disaster assistance officials repeatedly broke promises to help.

JOE DAWSEY: They were supposed to bring, or put a mobile unit here that the person that was sent in. Originally the group that was sent said it would take 12 days to put a modular health clinic in. We were going in with the local mental health and local public health that Coastal was going to have a joint clinic, and they had it would take twelve to eighteen days. That was in September, and it's still not here, and it's not coming.

TOM BEARDEN: Things will improve in Moss Point later this month when a new, permanent clinic opens. Volunteers from a organization called Hands-On USA are in the final stages of converting five donated office trailers to house the new facilities. Coastal hopes to eventually restore all of the damaged or destroyed clinics, but it's been a major financial struggle so far. They got $400,000 in cash from Project Hope, an international health charity, and $600,000 worth of donated pharmaceuticals.

But Dawsey says Medicaid still hasn't paid the company $800,000 in reimbursements for work done before the storm, and also hasn't paid for any of Coastal's work for the last three months.

A Medicaid spokesman says while payments have been delayed, they are working to solve the problem.

DR. WILLIAM ROSS: We had 3500 square feet that was lost to the flood.

TOM BEARDEN: Dr. William Ross will be one of the doctors in Coastal's new Moss Point clinic when it's finished.

DR. WILLIAM ROSS: This is a dual Dexter. It's about a $65,000 machine. I had just finished paying for it.

TOM BEARDEN: Of course.

DR. WILLIAM ROSS: And the insurance says it's not covered.

TOM BEARDEN: His ruined medical building is just across the street. He also lost his home in the storm. Ross says he thought about giving up and moving away. He says he got a lot of offers to relocate, but decided to stay because the need is so great.

DR. WILLIAM ROSS: We have lost other physicians in this area, and in fact, if you survey the coast, I think you have a significant percentage of primary providers leaving. That's not just from the storm; it's from the financial uncertainty of primary medicine.

We have many workers in Moss Point that have no insurance, but do not qualify for the state assistance and those are the ones I have been seeing quite a few of.

TOM BEARDEN: Dawsey says it's been a real struggle to keep medical professionals of all kinds in the area.

JOE DAWSEY: We've lost 66 staff members that didn't come back, so we had to try to replace them and do work around that. When you operate a mobile clinic or a small clinic, it is harder to do because you have to have a provider, or a doctor in there, and sometimes we only have one exam table and it's just hard to do, especially with a short staff. We lost over half of our nurses and right now we are having a real problem trying to hire clerical personal because a lot of people in the community left.

SPOKESPERSON: Mr. Henry, five feet and a half.

TOM BEARDEN: Finding enough nurses has been an even bigger struggle than keeping doctors.

SPOKESPERSON: One more time.

TOM BEARDEN: Out-of-state volunteers have been filling in the gaps at sites like Coastal's clinic in Gulfport, one of the few medical facilities to escape major damage. Project Hope has been coordinating a steady flow of volunteer nurses in and out of the area. Jack Blanks supervises the program.

JACK BLANKS: So they came to us and said, you know, we have this huge problem: We just don't have enough nurses to run the facilities that were as they're coming back online. So we did a national sort of distribution of information saying that call for nurses if you will and we have been recruiting volunteer nurses since February.

TOM BEARDEN: Volunteer Susan Cambria is a long way from her normal job as a nurse anesthetist in Connecticut. She's living in a tent city with other volunteers. Cambria says many people here have serious health care needs.

SUSAN CAMBRIA: They need help in so many ways and so many of them were living marginally in that they were just barely getting the health care that they needed through their employer, and they would pay for what they could and now many of them have lost their jobs, this clinic is extraordinarily important to them.

TOM BEARDEN: Do you think these clinics are literally saving lives?

SUSAN CAMBRIA: Absolutely. There is no question.

TOM BEARDEN: Sabina Exner is a volunteer nurse from Boulder, Colorado. She says the whole coastal region is facing long-term health problems as a result of the storm.

SABINA EXNER: I think it is way more stress now. It's increased in pressure because now on top of everything else, you're adding tremendous post-traumatic stress. You're adding the stress of their lifestyle, which, of course, compounds the disease process. They are not getting good nutrition, I mean, it's just a vicious circle. And so with everything that's going on there has escalated and in intensity.

SPOKESPERSON: All right!

TOM BEARDEN: Dawsey says for now, Coastal is hanging on, but just barely. The agency has applied for a $7 million federal block grant to continue rebuilding, and is still pursuing $300,000 in pending Medicaid reimbursements. But he says they can't wait forever.

JOE DAWSEY: The only choice we have if we don't get the funding from the block grant or from other sources we will have to just not have a clinic. For instance, here in Biloxi we have... we will just not have a clinic here. We'll consolidate over in Gulfport and that's one side. That's the only choice we have.

TOM BEARDEN: What's the impact on your patients if you have to do that?

JOE DAWSEY: It will be a major impact because they'll have to get transportation to get to the clinic. We don't have any patient transportation and there is very little public transportation down here.

TOM BEARDEN: Dawsey says the last thing the devastated Mississippi Gulf Coast needs is even fewer options for people to find health care.

ESSAY REALITY CHECK

JIM LEHRER: And, finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt considers the odds of winning on "American Idol."

ANNOUNCER: This is "American Idol"!

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Say what you will about "American Idol," it has changed America, or in the very least, has crystallized a cultural change long in the making. The show is about instant fame, fame of galactic proportions.

SINGING OFF KEY: Oh, say can see

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Tens of thousands compete, most with little talent except for self humiliation.

SINGING: Like a virgin

ROGER ROSENBLATT: A dozen or so are eventually chosen. The many become two. And then there is one—

(SINGING)

ROGER ROSENBLATT: As the song in a chorus line puts it, one singular sensation. What happens to that one? National attention for a year or two, and then a likely fade to a little above zero.

Of the hundreds of thousands who have yearned to be the next "American Idol," only Kelly Clarkson has really made it big. Compared to odds like that, the chances offered on the latest and most mindless TV show, "Deal or No Deal," look pretty good. Yet these two programs are linked thematically as they are to all the so-called reality shows--

SPOKESMAN: Survivors ready? Go!

ROGER ROSENBLATT: "Survivor," the makeovers of house and face, and many others because ordinarily obscure folks are converted to people who are suddenly seen.

SPOKESPERSON: It is a cult. They use brainwashing, it's -- they use terror to control these kids.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: And these shows, in turn, are connected to phenomena outside show biz, such as the relatives of crime victims appearing for TV interviews immediately after the crime and films of the crimes themselves-- from a surveillance camera pointed at a thief in a store to camera mounted on police cars to a camera present, even at the house where the Duke University lacrosse team made the news.

In the 21st century, every life is public. From publicity to fame, one small step. The lesson seems to be that nothing is required of personal achievement but simply hanging around-- no training, no natural gift, no work certainly.

The kid foresees status and riches leading from playground basketball to the NBA, though if he thinks about it he knows the odds there as well. "But if I'm good enough, and if they notice me," -- in some ways, we're living the modern version of Lana Turner being discovered on a stool in Schwab's Drugstore. Surely someone out there will make us a star, don't you think? Just keep that camcorder running. Harmless?

I'm not sure. The trouble with believing in the big impossible dream is that it diminishes the importance of the small and possible ones-- education, a trade, a skill, a job. Such things don't come with stretch limos and groupies, but they are the stuff of satisfying and useful lives.

SIMON COWELL: Houston, we have a problem.

YOUNG MAN: Is there anything I could improve on or anything?

SIMON COWELL: Yes. Don't sing again.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Simon Cowell is known as the meanie' judge on "American Idol" because he tells most of the contestants to go home.

SIMON COWELL: There is only so much punishment a human being can take.

YOUNG WOMAN: No, I can take a lot more.

SIMON COWELL: I can't.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Of course, he has it both ways, debunking the illusion he profits from. But he's right, which is why the audience boos him.

SIMON COWELL: I mean, everything about it, it was grotesque.

PAULA ABDUL: Oh, stop it!

RANDY JACKSON: Not grotesque.

SIMON COWELL: It was!

ROGER ROSENBLATT: "Some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this," sang Kelly Clarkson when she became the first American idol. A lifetime? You mean deep into your teens? Had Ms. Clarkson been the last American idol, that story could be sweet. But the beat goes on and millions-- millions-- awaken every day actually believing that life is luck and consists of the noise of eternal applause. Could this be your day?

SINGING: Some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this (cheers and applause)

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Not a chance. I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: The Senate voted to deny citizenship to illegal immigrants convicted of a felony. It kept provisions that offer a chance for citizenship. And stocks fell sharply over inflation fears. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 200 points. The NASDAQ lost 33, wiping out its gains for the year.

And I'm sure you noticed our new look tonight. There's nothing going on but a desire to refresh things a bit. Feel free to let us know what you think about it. You can do so by going to our Online NewsHour web site at pbs.org. There's a new look there, too.

And we'll see you here tomorrow evening, as well as tomorrow morning with our Hayden hearing coverage. For now, I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.