The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer; September 11, 2003

. . . . .. .. . .

. . . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . . . .. .. .. .. .. Good evening, I'm Jim Lara. On the news hour, this September 11, 2003, the news of the day, then a debate over the proposal to expand the anti-terrorist Patriot Act, an update report on a victim of the 9-11 attack at the Pentagon, and how are we different two years later, as seen by John Ridley,

Luis Cortez Jr., Michael Novak, Robert Putnam, Gail Shihi, and Martin Marty. Major funding for the news hour with Jim Lara has been provided by. .. Can you paint something beautiful with sunflowers? Drive, ever on corn? If you ask the right questions, may to answer. ADM, the nature of what's to come. And by SBC communications, committed to providing Americans more choices in high speed Internet access, and working to widen opportunities in broadband technology, as providers, as people. We're SBC communications. This program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. America marked the second anniversary of 9-11.

Today, there were solemn ceremonies in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, where the suicide hijackers crashed airliners. And across the country, bells told, and people stood silently in remembrance. Kwame Holman has our report. After attending an early morning prayer service, President Bush reflected on the terror attacks that killed more than 3,000 people. Today, our nation remembers, and we remember a sad and terrible day, September 11, 2001. We remember lives lost. We remember the heroic deeds. We remember the compassion, the decency of our fellow citizens on that terrible day. At the World Trade Center site in New York, a drummer and two bagpipers escorted the American flag that flew over the ruins of the Twin Towers two years ago.

Moments of silence were observed in New York, Washington, and elsewhere across the nation at 8.46 a.m. the time when the first hijacked plane slammed into one of the towers. And my father-in-law. Two hundred children who lost relatives at the World Trade Center read aloud the names of nearly 2,800 victims. I love you, Daddy. I miss you a lot. Richard, Anthony, a shadow. My loving father, Patrick Adams. We love you. I miss you. At Arlington National Cemetery, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers laid a wreath to remember those who died at the Pentagon. Just behind me and to my right, you can see through the trees. The western wall of the building that was attacked two years ago this day. And in our mind's eye, we can see the arsenal of democracy that it represents.

The men and women who died there that day were part of that arsenal, defending democracy, as surely as any patriot on the front line. Give them a strength for this day. A small crowd of mourners gathered in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the fourth hijacked plane plunged into a field, killing 40 passengers and crew. This afternoon, Secretary of the Interior, Gail Norton swore in a commission that will recommend a design for a permanent memorial there. Memorials will be constructed in New York and at the Pentagon as well. At sunset today, twin beams of light were to be switched on over the World Trade Center site, just as they were during a month-long memorial in March 2002. Americans overseas were on the alert for new attacks today. The State Department issued a statement yesterday that said, we are seeing increasing indications that al-Qaeda is preparing to strike U.S. interests abroad. It said locations in Europe and Asia could be targets, but it gave no further details.

Inside the United States, the nationwide alert status remained at yellow for elevated risk. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge said there was no need to raise it. He said a new videotape of Osama bin Laden did not change things. The Al Jazeera satellite television channel released that video yesterday. It came with a separate audio message that threatened new attacks. The Israeli security cabinet decided, in principle, today, to expel Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, but it took no immediate action. A government statement said recent days' events have proven again that Yasser Arafat is a complete obstacle to peace. For months, Israeli forces have confined Arafat to his headquarters and Ramallah on the West Bank. Today, he said, this is Terra Sancta. No one can kick me out. In Washington, the State Department spokesman rejected the growing talk in Israel of expelling Arafat or even killing him.

Our view of Mr. Arafat and his status has not changed at all. We don't have a brief for him, but at the same time, we don't believe that dealing with Mr. Arafat and that fashion or through expulsion is going to be helpful at all to the situation. Late in the day, hundreds of Palestinians rushed to Arafat's headquarters and chanted their support. He flashed the crowd a victory sign and urged him to remain steadfast. U.S. soldiers got into a fierce fight with Iraqi government today, about 60 miles west of Baghdad. The attackers fired grenades at a convoy and left several vehicles and flames. Tanks and machine guns then returned fire. U.S. military did not immediately confirm reports of casualties. French President Shirak ruled out sending troops to Arafat today, at least for now. He said the focus must be on a swift transfer of political power to the Iraqis. He said France would maintain a spirit of openness on a U.S. proposal at the U.N.

It calls for other nations to help stabilize Iraq with troops and money. A British Parliament committee gave the Blair government mixed marks today over pre-war intelligence about Iraq. We have a report from Gary Gibbon of Independent Television News. The committee uses cautious language throughout its report. It says mistakes were made in the unprecedented experiment of publishing intelligence material, but nothing improper was done, just lessons to be learned. But it's now clear that the Intelligence Services collectively thought that a central plank of the Prime Minister's reasoning for going to war was mistaken. The Parliamentary Committee, which has seen the Intelligence Chiefs report, reveals that a month before the war began, they warned Mr Blair. Any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents, finding their way into the hands of terrorists. The report challenged a key part of the rationale behind the war on Iraq.

The Joint Intelligence Committee assessed that al-Qaeda and associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest terrorist threat to Western interests, and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq. I think those of us who over a long period of time consistently challenged and questioned the Prime Minister and the House of Commons were always rebutted or responded to by saying we must base our decisions on the intelligence. What we didn't know at the time was that the Prime Minister had a clear steer from the Intelligence Community, which he chose to overwrite. Mr Blair was holding talks with the French Prime Minister today. In an earlier evidence session with the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, he had admitted he had overruled the Intelligence Community. He said it was his personal judgment and only time would tell if he was right. On the central BBC allegation that the government slammed up the dossier, the committee acquitted the government. The committee did criticize some of the wording in the dossier.

He said the dossier sometimes seemed emphatic when there were doubts about Saddam's real military strength, and the committee believed that the claim that Saddam Hussein could fire weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes flat was presented unhelpfully without sufficient context. The Blair government said today had found the report balanced and constructed. The Foreign Minister of Sweden died today of multiple stab wounds and a Lynn was attacked yesterday in a Stockholm Department store. Her assailant remained at large, was not clear if the attack was linked to a referendum this Sunday on adopting the Euro as Sweden's currency. Lynn was a leading advocate of the currency change and was viewed as a future Prime Minister. She was 46 years old. Libya signed a tentative compensation deal today in the bombing of a French airliner. The plane exploded over the Sahara Desert in September 1989 killing 170 people. A French court convicted six Libyans in absentia. Today's announcement paves the way for the UN Security Council to vote tomorrow on lifting sanctions against Libya.

They were imposed after the Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie Scotland in 1988. In U.S. economic news today, the Labor Department reported new claims for jobless benefits rose last week to a two-month high. And on Wall Street today, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 39 points to close above 94.59, the Nasdaq rose 22 points to close at 1846. And that's it for the news summary tonight. Now it's on to expanding the Patriot Act, a 9-11 burn victim update, and our How was America changed discussion. Brace Juarez has our Patriot Act story. Within 45 days of the 9-11 attack, President Bush signed a law expanding the government surveillance team, saying that it would help the war on terror at home. The Patriot Act makes it easier for investigators to obtain individuals' private records from libraries and doctor's offices, conduct searches without advance notice, and monitor phone and internet activity.

But from the beginning, civil liberties groups, as well as librarians, pride found. In recent days, opponents have targeted Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was traveling the country promoting the law. Before hand-picked audiences, Ashcroft defended the Patriot Act.

First, it closes gaping holes that existed in our ability to investigate terrorists. Second, the Patriot Act updates our anti-terrorism laws to meet the challenges of new technology, new technology that has spawned new threats. Yesterday, at the FBI Academy, President Bush proposed new expansions to the law in order to, quote, untie the hands of law enforcement. The plan would expand the government's powers to demand sensitive papers in terrorism cases without court approval, hold suspects without bail, and broaden the death penalty. Fabricizing a defense installation or a nuclear facility in a way that takes innocent life does not carry the federal death penalty. This kind of technicality should never protect terrorists from the ultimate justice. Congressional action is unclear this summer the House voted to cut off funds for parts of the First Patriot Act,

and key Republican leaders say they're reluctant to introduce expansions. More on the debate now surrounding the Patriot Act and the latest proposals. John Yu is a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He recently worked at the Justice Department where he participated in drafting the Patriot Act. Patricia Williams is a professor of law at the Columbia Law School. She's also a regular columnist for the nation in Professor Williams. You heard the president referring to his desire to untie the hands of law enforcement by extending and refining the Patriot Act. What's the problem with that? I think the problem has to do with a general tendency of this administration to have expanded the powers of the executive at the expense of a balance of powers, particularly at the expense of the judiciary. That's troublesome. In addition, there's a continued shift from the very notion of a presumption of innocence toward a presumption of guilt or we can detain or hold until the defendant proves that he's not guilty. And thirdly, I think with these expanded policies there has been a great deal of secrecy about the standards used to enforce them, to apply them.

There are unstated policies to which the executive, the police, the prosecutorial power located in the executive must be held accountable. And we have very little information about that through John Ashcroft's office or through any other administrative office. Any specific objections to the extensions to the Patriot Act that have been proposed in the past couple of days deny bail to terrorist suspects, widening death penalties, bypass grand juries for administrative subpoenas. I think certainly the most troublesome, the deservedly the most controversial of those, is the attempt to bypass the judiciary in favor of so-called administrative subpoenas. I think the president referred to the fact that there are certain medical investigations that you can have an administrative subpoena. And that's sort of fast because those administrative subpoenas are usually associated with administrative sanctions, not criminal sanctions with life and death. And again, when one has the police power, when has the prosecutorial power, our system of government depends upon a balance of powers that the judiciary holds, the application of due process, the input of the community,

through the judge or through the grand jury, certainly as well. The power to deny bail, shifting the presumption essentially, so that in all cases for these so-called, for this laundry list of terror-related crimes, this new expanded list of terror-related crimes, the defendant would have to prove, rather than the state would have to prove the expansion of the tendency to fight. This is unnecessary. And when one looks at the list of crimes that would be included in this, it includes many which one does not think of as international terrorism, and the possibility of drawing, of essentially holding people with no good reason for extended periods of time, so that it begins to resemble the kind of detention we have that has been so controversial in other areas.

I think that that's what this new bail proceeding risks. Professor Yu, you've heard Professor Williams bemoaning the added powers to the prosecution, what she perceives as power being drained away from the judiciary as a referee in some of these proceedings. How do you respond? Well, I think the concern that this is unbalancing of the separation of powers, I don't think that's quite right. Look at the First Patriot Act. That was passed by overwhelming majorities of Congress. It's not that the executive said we're going to start doing this by ourselves. It was passed by Congress after proposal by the president, and the heart of the Patriot Act, which is issuing warrants to get voicemails to listen on telephone calls, emails, the records that the librarians are complaining about. Those are all issued by a judge. The executive branch has to go to a judge and say, this is why we think this person is linked to terrorism, and we want you to judge to look at the evidence and issue a warrant to allow us to get that information. So, in the Patriot Act, all three branches participate in the expansion of law enforcement powers under the Patriot Act.

As to the specific proposals that the president made yesterday, those are, I think, evolutionary. There's no radical change in the way the government's going to do business. For example, the denial of bail is already something that can be done to drug kingpins and embezzlers. This would just be adding terrorist linked suspects to that kind of treatment by the court system. Additionally, it's not that they're being held without charge without any kind of judicial review at all. When someone is arrested and arraigned, they're presented before a judge. The decision to make bail is something that Congress grants as a right and it can take it away. But it's not that the executive could go see someone off the street, throw them in detention, and they're never seeing a judge. They do see a judge. The other proposal about administrative subpoenas. Right now, under the Patriot Act, you can get a lot of this information, either through a grand jury, without a judicial review at all, or through a warrant where you go to a judge under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, ask for a warrant for a judge because a team can get it. This is an effort to make that simpler procedure.

It does exist in other areas of the law, for example, environmental law, and a number of other regulatory schemes you can use administrative subpoenas. Look, it won't be the end of the world if the administration doesn't get it, but it would be helpful. It would be an administrative convenience for the executive branch to get that kind of information through the simpler procedure. Are you troubled at all by the fact that it's kind of difficult to assess the impact of the original Patriot Act, even without these amendments, because it's so hard to gain the information about which cases it's been used and which cases the extended powers have been found to be useful? I understand why people like Professor Williams or other civil liberties advocates might be concerned, but there's a good reason for it, which is this is an area where we're trying to fight terrorists in a place where they act covertly and they can learn things from the way we conduct activities. So, for example, suppose we had to release information about all the secret warrants that the government was getting, and suppose they said 500 warrants were issued for telephone taps in San Diego. That's helpful to Al Qaeda, isn't it?

To know that we're concentrating efforts in San Diego, they would respond to their very sophisticated organization. They would respond to the information they see from our government releasing publicly. But it's not that it's not without oversight. Congress gets classified reports on the use of the Patriot Act under the use of the foreign intelligence surveillance act. All that information is given to the intelligence committees. The second thing is it all is reviewed by the independent federal judiciary, who we trust to make decisions about all kinds of other things in our society, like free speech and abortion. We can trust them, I think, to oversee how the Patriot Act works. And then the third thing is, if the government ever uses it in a criminal prosecution, ever uses the information gathered from these warrants, they will have to produce it in public and show how the warrant was received and used. The thing that might be a concern is people aren't really sure how it's used in these non-criminal prosecution cases. On the other hand, people should be less worried because they're not being put on prosecution and trial in those kinds of cases either. Professor Williams, you heard Professor Yu, he says the controls are still there, the separation of powers has been maintained and sort of the stopgap measures and abilities to intercede, to stop prosecutorial overreach.

They're all there, they're all safe. Well, I think it's extraordinarily fast to say that under the first Patriot Act, there is the provision of judicial oversight. And by the same token, to be defending yesterday's announcement, which is a proposal to remove precisely that judicial oversight. Administrative subpoenas mean that a police officer, an FBI agent, a prosecutor, can, without ever going to a court, demand papers go directly to your door or to a business and demand to be able to command witnesses to produce papers. And I think it does violate our sense of the Fourth Amendment. Trust, I think we trust our government because it does contain a balance of power. I think that it would be foolish to say that one trusts exclusively the executive power. We are talking about a balance between, we all want security, but there are too many examples of mistakes that have been made by the executive.

Without that crucial oversight and accountability that the Justice Department, rather the judiciary provides, the minimal guarantees of due process. Again, we've seen, to give the benefit of the doubt, good faith errors from the McCarthy era through Cohen to help pro forward. To more sinister kinds of mistakes that are enabled by the sloppiness of bad policing, malicious prosecution. These are not unknown. And I think that we have good reason to be concerned as to the bail provision. And the specific law requires a violation of state or federal law in the commission of some sort of dangerous act with intent to intimidate or coerce either the government or civil population. That covers very broad range of potential crimes that one might not think of as international terrorism.

For example, the young man who did the computer hacking, there is potentially danger involved in that. Let me have the best of you respond to that point that the definition of terrorism is over broad and the way these laws have been drafted means you can fit a lot of things under their umbrella. I think it's quite fair to be worried about whether the bail provision might be expended outside specific terrorism cases in the statute, although we haven't actually seen the formal proposal yet or hasn't been strictly introduced yet. But it, you know, it does sound like it is a little broader than what you need for international terrorism. But the point is, this is not an innovation. It already exists with domestic crimes. I would think, you know, having heard the definition from Professor Williams, this would be something most people would say, we don't want these folks out running around in the community. And we don't think we need to have judges making a case by case determination as to that specific person when their charge were doing this kind of crime. A judge still looks at whether they actually, there is sufficient minimal kind of evidence to show that they are properly charged with that kind of crime.

So there is still a court reviewing it. It's just a question of whether we should have a policy approved by Congress, a generous policy to allow people to be released even when their charge was serious crimes like that. And there must be serious crimes that the community feels aren't really benefit from bail. Professor, thank you both. Thank you. Still to come all the news are tonight, a personal 9-11 story and a two years later conversation. The hard road back for one victim of 9-11 reported by Susan Denser of our health unit, a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. This was Navy Lieutenant Kevin Schafer just weeks after he was injured at the Pentagon on 9-11. This is Kevin Schafer today with his newborn baby.

This is a little Sophia Bella. She turned three weeks old this past Sunday. She was born on August 17th. She came a little bit early, but she's healthy as can be and she's our little angel. The road to physical and emotional recovery has been lengthy for Schafer now 31 and is wife, Blanca. It's been such a long struggle back, but we've made it and really today feels stronger and have reached a state of new normal that we never really imagined was possible. Looking back to those days getting out of the hospital in 2001. Having Sophia here is the best thing that has happened to us. She is everything that is good, that is innocent, that's beautiful in our lives. Schafer was at his old job at the Pentagon on 9-11, helping to chart strategy for the Chief of Naval Operations.

He and his colleagues in the Navy Command Center were watching coverage of the New York attacks when the plane hit. 29 people in the same office were killed instantly, some just a few feet from Schafer. Miraculously he survived. When the explosion struck, I think I kind of knew it wasn't my time and I had to keep moving and I had to find a way out. And then once I did and once I was on ambulance and heading towards the hospital and at the hospital, I kept saying I'm alive. Schafer suffered second and third degree burns over 40% of his body, mostly on his head and arms. He later underwent nearly 20 operations to shave off his badly burned skin. It was replaced with skin grafts from elsewhere on his body. Schafer also had severe lung damage from inhaling jet fuel. Three weeks after the attack, he suffered two cardiac arrests in one day and almost died. After he left the hospital, a full year of regular physical therapy followed.

Schafer wore pressure bandages on his hands and arms to help stretch his grafted skin. Anyone who suffered critical burns really has a period that they get out of the hospital and it's not done yet. The battle is not done and requires you to work through a lot of pain to regain the range of motion and work through some of the scarring issues. So, given the Kevin Shaper of September 10th, 2001 and the Kevin Shaper today, physically, what's the difference? I like to say that I was one person then and I'm quite a different person now. I look at my skin today and of course it's so different than I was before 9-11, but I've become more accepting of it. The scarring has healed beautifully. He looked at his face and you know that he's gone through something, but she never guessed that he was actually burned as bad as he was. Schafer lost part of one year and a tracheostomy scar is still visible on his neck. The legacy of weeks on a ventilator, but the frequent bleeding from his elbows and hands has finally stopped.

Schafer says these and other small triumphs have meant a lot. And I was in very avid golfer before 9-11 and so the golf grip on the club is a very important part of your game. When I got home from the hospital, in fact, I spent many weeks on the couch watching public television and see span and things like that. Always next to my side was a four-iron or a golf club where at first I couldn't get a full grip. But nowadays when Schafer plays golf, he can. But as the weeks and months passed, I was able to get that grip back and for that I'm very thankful. Another highlight came last December when Schafer was able to put on his wedding band and naval academy class ring for the first time since the attack. Blanca, a Navy lieutenant and fellow midshipmen had been wearing them on a chain around her neck. On the day I was able to take off my burn garment, I was able to slip those rings back on my fingers where they probably belonged. That was a huge milestone.

As his physical recovery progressed slowly, his emotional recovery took even longer. Schafer suffered through a period of debilitating nightmares. He would wake up in the middle of a night sobbing, absolutely sobbing uncontrollably like I had never seen him do before. And it was night after night after night. I really did hit bottom probably in August of 2002. My wife and I were traveling in D.C. I was taking her to work one day. And I dropped her off and I was driving through the city alone really for the first time since 9-11. I had a moment that I could only describe as a panic attack where I just felt entirely out of control emotionally and physically. I began crying and sobbing. Schafer says he felt better after several long talks with a counselor. The nightmares became less frequent. By last fall, he was well enough to start a new job. Medically retired from the Navy in 2001, Schafer is now a professional staff member of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States.

In formally, it's the 9-11 Commission. We asked him why he took this job of all jobs. No one has suffered the pain that I suffered at the hands of terrorists to survive that. It's something that allows me to go forward with a very strong message and whatever passions and motivations or lessons that I stand for and that I can bring to the commission and bring forward in the future. Those are things that I want to convey and convey not only now but for the rest of my life. We also asked Schafer what lessons he's learned from his recovery. Never give up when things get so tough that you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. Never give up when you feel that you're at such a bottom point that you want to quit. And at the same time, Schafer says, never forget. Now how the country itself has changed in the two years since the attacks.

We get six perspectives. Those of Robert Putnam, my professor of public policy at Harvard University, author of Better Together, Restoring the American Community. Gail Shihi, the author of the new book, looking at the impact of the 9-11 tragedy called Middletown America, One Town's Passage from Trauma to Hope. The Reverend Louise Cortez Jr., the founder and president of Nueva Esperanza, a leading faith-based group running social service programs in Philadelphia. John Ridley, novelist and screenwriter of movies, including Three Kings and Undercover Brother. Michael Novak, a scholar in religion and philosophy and public policy at the American Enterprise Institute. And Martin Marty, a professor emeritus of history of modern Christianity at the University of Chicago. Martin Marty, beginning with you, many have said America was changed forever by what happened two years ago today. Do you agree?

I think America changes in two ways. In one way, the earthquake rocks you, and the other, the way a glacier moves. We change the way an earthquake hits us in that we will never again feel so secure, never protected by two oceans, by a constitution, by a military, because the enemy is a different character, and we know it, and it can happen at the airport or the mall. The glacial movement is the movement of the spirit, and that's what people in my business are trying to record. And that's much more subtle. Much more subtle. We have to watch that carefully to see. What do you think? What's the early evidence about the spiritual move? On one level, not much has changed. The people who are mad at each other in the name of God remain mad at each other. The churches are torn and fighting over issues, homosexuality and issues of that sort, and they're going to keep doing that just as they were doing before. I think there's a series of purpose among the citizenry and a lot of the religious leadership. People are looking for deeper things, but the momentary spike in church attendance didn't last more than that moment,

and the people have struggled back to where they were. I think there's a little growth of tolerance among the vast majority of people. They've learned, for example, if they're non-muslim, that they have Muslim neighbors, they want to get acquainted with, and learn about the numbers of anti-Muslim incidents, have been quite small, given the erasiveness and even the language of a few noted evangelists. So overall, I think we're struggling to make sense of each other, and I hope of our ways with God. Michael, you agree? We're struggling to make sense with each other? Yes, and I agree with the Marty too, that there's a new sense of vulnerability, in that way I think we're changed forever. We know we can be struck. And we didn't know that before. I don't think not in this way, not in this way. I mean, so much so that at least I find when I go to an airport, when I'm on an airplane, I like to look around and see like those numbers of like 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania,

whose else on this plane is going to be willing to fight, because you might as well fight. That's different. And when I'm in a tall building, I think I want to know where exits are, because you don't know. And I think a lot of other people must think a little differently. We don't forget to pick up the theme of the last segment. But then I think we also became aware that we're in a war, a worldwide dimension. I remember I was in Europe when the plane struck. And I wasn't sure of when the first plane struck in New York, whether it was an accident. But when the second one struck, I said, oh my, we're in a war. And I think that's only become clearer and clearer as we found out more about who was responsible and how it happened and so forth. It's a worldwide dimension. It's not like World War II, because it's not against states, per se. It's against a political movement, not a religion, and I think not a civilization. But a political movement based on resentment and envy and kind of despair because of lack of opportunity and lack of liberty,

of members of a once great civilization. You tell me that's the people who were behind the attacks and not. Yeah, yeah, I'm talking about the political movement, which some of the referred to as this lamice is to distinguish it from Islam. Not a religious movement, because many of them are very anti-Islam. But they do spring from a civilization, which was once proud. There was marble and tiled in Damascus and Baghdad when Paris was still a cow town and London still had muddy streets. And they remember that point of superiority and they lost it. And there's, how could that happen? And the search for resilience. Not a sense to make things better, which is odd, of this political movement. No movement for human rights, no movement for prosperity, but to tear down the others. Even the Buddhist monuments in Afghanistan. Luis Cortez, what would you, when you look at to what has happened to us as a people since 9, 11, 2 years ago? What do you see?

I see that the changes are dramatic, and in many cases they're still undefined. But our understanding of public space, whether it's a museum or a federal building, is different. The issues of the monument or the Liberty Bell access to them, Pennsylvania, having you being closed, people think of safety when they're going to public buildings. And that's different. Our foreign policy is quite different. We are, well, we can now attack two nations in the Middle East in a matter of a year. And that would not have been possible prior to 9, 11. Our civil liberties and our protection issues are different, and you've highlighted that already. And those are the areas where we know they are defined that there's some undefined areas. Our economic cost to this change. We don't know what if it's going to happen in our country regarding our state and federal budgets. Both the war and the security costs. And finally, there's a post-traumatic stress issue.

We don't know what it's going to do to the American psyche over the long haul. What has happened in 9, 11? What do you think has happened? Just based on your experience. The people you are in contact with every day, in terms of the psyche, the post-traumatic psyche cost. Well, my feeling on that is that we, as a people, are trying to figure out how to deal with it without changing our everyday way of life. Is it fear we're trying to deal with or being accepted as enemies of other people that's a new thing? What is it? I think it's fear. I believe that we don't know why we're being attacked. Many of us don't know why we were attacked. And on the other hand, even though this day still don't know, that's correct. Because it's such a different culture. It's such a different mindset. And we don't not live in these people's situations. So we can't really understand why someone would do what they have done and why they would kill themselves in an act of aggression. Yeah.

John, really, what do you think we have done? What has happened to us in two years? Well, I think the infrastructure of our lives has changed. I mean, when you talk about the security that we live under and new laws, those things have changed. But I think as people, I don't think our lives have really changed that much. When you fly these days, you look at the sheer number of weapons that they still take off of passengers. It's if people have no idea why you can't carry a knife or a hammer or somebody that looks like a hand grenade on an airplane. I mean, they don't make the connection between that and 9-11? I don't think they could make that connection. I don't think they make the connection between what really happened and why our lives have to change. We want our lives to change, but not at the cost of inconvenience to ourselves. We don't like to take off our shoes at the airports. We don't like to go through the extra security. We want that sense of security, but we don't want the inconvenience that goes with it. I think part of the reason that we're asking all these questions now about why we're in Iraq and about the Patriot Act is because after 9-11, we said, look, protect us. Do what you have to do, but make sure this never happens again.

And now we're like, calm a victim's waking up going, what time is it, and where am I? Yeah. Well, what would you say, John, really, to those who said, oh, my goodness, we will never, ever be the same people that we were two years ago. Wrong? Well, I think it's wrong. I think that we go through our lives all the time. Forget about 9-11. You could be driving down the street. You're almost hit by a car. And you say, look, I'm going to go home. I'm going to be a great father or wife or whatever. And you have this moment of great change. But I think that we, as people, have a settling point, human nature is a constant. We are going to be more of the people that we always were. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think in some ways, it's a sign of resilience. It's a sign that we are going to go on and be a terrific nation and go back to dealing with things that we have to deal with. So I'm going to say, before, race and homosexuality and taxes and those kinds of things, the worst thing that would be happening is if we're in a permanent state where this is so devastating that we can't go back to being America, for better or for worse. Okay, okay. Well, how would you describe our state of being right now?

Well, I think 9-11 was both a shared national trauma and a very unique private tragedy. Thousands of families, I followed 50 of those families who lost their loved ones in the trade center in Middletown or Jersey. An American suburb like many others where there really is no middle, where people hadn't been pulling together or didn't necessarily know their neighbors because there was no particular need to as long as times were good. So they've learned through hardship and need to pull together in many ways and the resilience and the nobility that they discovered in themselves. I think it's the best antidote to the constant anxieties we have under this threat environment. Do you, is it your feeling that this is a permanent thing or it's still kind of temporary and still based on the tragedy of two years ago because it's still relatively fresh? I'll tell you the people who lost loved ones are still climbing back from trauma and they are not going to forget. There is no such thing as closure and they're struggling, many of them with their spiritual beliefs.

Many are struggling with that nice innocent little container that they carried along from childhood, which promised if you're a good person, God will look after you. Even their religious leaders couldn't answer those questions in the first weeks and only when they crossed denominational lines and got together to give each other support and strategies, when they able to continue the struggle to redefine faith under these new conditions in this new face of evil. Did you, after your experience, been with these folks as long as you were and you decided to write a book about it, tell their story, did you want to shout from the rooftops as well to the rest of America, something? What did you want to shout to? Oh, yes. Wake up. Stay away. We have to pull together, walk across the law, walk across the street, meet that neighbor that you've never spoken to before, because we must the only survival here is to pull together on a community level and a national and multinational level. And the other thing I'd like to shout is don't succumb to politically inspired fear messages, such as the idea that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11.

Because that 75% of Americans believe that when there's no evidence, we can't, if we can't operate from the same foundation of basic truth and facts given to us by our government, then what we need is this 9-11 commission that you're Kevin Draper is on. Put them, do you have anything you wouldn't feel like you want to shout to the American people two years later? It's a very important opportunity because we all learned from that experience the importance of connections with one another. We learned we could count on one another. We learned that we were in a certain sense all in this together. It was not just one class of people or one color of people who were involved in these various victims of these various attacks. It's very clearly in people's behavior and in we do a lot of surveying about how people feel about their neighbors and so on. There was a huge spike in trust in government, a trust in neighbors.

The thing that surprised me most actually was that there was a huge spike in interracial trust. Black people tested white folks more after than they had before in Latinos, trusted Asians, more and so on. That's the good news. It was a moment of national solidarity. The bad news is there's always a spike like that after every local calamity, after a flood or earthquake or a snowstorm. And we knew that they're from that peak of a sense of national solidarity. There would have to be some kind of slump and there has been. And we Martin Marty referred to this earlier. There's been a decline away from those peaks. But it was the kind of opportunity. It was in the educational education business we call a teachable moment. We learned something about ourselves. It was the kind of opportunity for social and civic renewal that comes along to a country once or twice a century.

But words aren't alone talking about connection is not enough. We have to have embodied that indeed in action. I mean both us individually and our national institutions. Have we done it? No, I don't think we have actually. I think we've talked a pretty good game. But we have not done the kinds of things that would have been necessary to make full use of this. And Marty would blow the opportunity. Is it the moment coming gone? I think that on the local level there are a lot of good signs of the type that Robert just explained. Our real problem I think is national and I don't want to make this a political statement so much because I don't see either of the parties coming forth with the kind of leadership that is rallying people to some more positives. Yes, fighting a war, yes, surviving, yes, beating off terrorism are urgent. If we don't survive we don't do anything else either.

But what else are we doing? As I see what happened on 9.11 we joined the rest of the human race in vulnerability Michael Novak's word insecurity. Most people in most cultures and most people in the world have not ever known the security we knew till 9.11. And the prosperity as well? The prosperity as well. Yeah, go ahead, I'm sorry. Yeah, in a feudal culture the feudal lord up on the hill against the rates of Biden opening night of marriage and nothing that doesn't could do. People are marched out by knights and crusades against their will. People are enslaved. Most people are still living on very low income tens and tens and tens and tens of millions dollar or two a day. That's not security. There's no social security, any of that sort. And I say on the local level I think I could document many signs of people sensing that about each other. So we haven't learned how to make that truly a national move and reconnect and take lessons from how people have endured, prevailed, shown hope, shown faith, shown love around the world.

Quickly, let's run that by everyone else. Michael Novak, do you know what you're thinking about whether we've grown the opportunity we've missed it? No, we haven't blown it yet. I'll never forget really many weeks, maybe months I didn't time it exactly, of the sense of unity in the country and not just unity amongst those of us who are living. There was also a connection with who we are as a nation and as a past. It was shown I think in the fact that some well over 50% of Americans attended prayer service, public prayer service in that first week. Some 90% prayed for those poor folks caught in the claps building and so forth. But that doesn't just private prayers, those were prayers in the American tradition. That's what Americans do. I remember this thing of God bless America everywhere. I was overseas as I said, but it was so touching to hear that echo coming up from the city canyon to elsewhere. What do you think we've done nationally to seize the moment? Well, I believe we've done quite a bit. First of all, I think we have a national consciousness of being a people. And though we are disagreeing with each other, I think we're disagreeing in a way that's a little different.

We're disagreeing on issues that are greater than the past. Secondly, I think there is a spiritual development among our folks and the one of tolerance, which we didn't have. And I'm very happy with one outcome of this of 911. We did not scapegoat Muslim people in this country. We were able to separate things that in one sense I thought we wouldn't do. So overall, I think we've progressed and I believe we will progress even more as time comes as time is coming forward. Generally, are you as optimistic? No, I'm not. I think we have blown it and not just on a national level, but on a global level. I agree with Martin that we had an opportunity to be part of the world community like never before for people to really understand and sympathize with the United States of America, probably in a way not since the Second World War. But I think since the tragedy we've been arrogant and we haven't been as open to other countries and really trying to involve everyone in this war on terrorism and also just a global unison and coming together.

So I think we had a lot of stock that we could have used to really change the world and be a world leader in a superpower beyond just warmongers. I was totally behind the war in Afghanistan. I have so many questions about the war in Iraq right now and I think the world does. Yeah. Gelsie, where do you, how do you feel? What's your sense of optimism at this moment? People here, you shout. I hope so, but let me just give you a couple of local examples from Middletown. There's a mosque in Middletown and most of the other residents who aren't non-Muslims had no idea until 9-11. And the week after the war in Iraq began, the district attorney of Monmouth County made a pilgrimage to that mosque and took law enforcement officials from every level to reassure the people of Middletown of Muslim faith that there would be, if there were any reprisals they'd be right there. And then they encouraged the Muslims to get involved, to send their children to the public schools so people would become educated about their way of praying and their way of being.

So that was positive. Another positive one was the community we talk about it is so loosely it's lost its meaning. I've learned that community doesn't have to be sharing geography. The people of Oklahoma City who endured the first terrorist bombing on our soil have banded together with the caregivers and officials of Middletown. And they now have a bond and they call each other up and they protect each other and the people from Oklahoma, the caregivers came to Middletown to help prepare them for getting through their second remembrance because it is the toughest one. We're putting them into such a thing as a national community. There is in some moments I have to say I agree with what some people have said about their being interesting new experiments and shoots of community growing it in places all over the country. I mean in this new book of ours better together we look at 12 different cases in which people are at the grassroots level making connections and making a difference. My concern is that there was also a national opportunity here to create a new greatest generation, a chance to create a new sort of culture of service.

I've talked about that but in fact in turn to a specific example that I'm talking about what the Congress is now doing with respect to funding of America or this program that provides support for people to be involved in their communities to create a new greatest generation. It's obscene that they're defunding this program because it's absolutely totally inconsistent with what we say we want to do and what we're now actually doing. We now meeting the national authorities. I hear all six of you and thank you very much for being with us. And again the other major developments of this day Americans overseas were on the alert for new attacks after the State Department issued a warning and the Israeli security cabinet decided in principle to expel Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat but it took no immediate action. And once again to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq here in silence are three more.

We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening with Mark Shields and William Sapphire among others. I'm Jim Lara. Thank you and good night. Major funding for the news hour with Jim Lara has been provided by what if we looked at the world as one giant farm field when crops grow where they grow best we improve agriculture efficiency make food more affordable and feed a hungry world. This program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.