The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: The news of this Tuesday; then audio excerpts of today's Supreme Court argument about military recruiting on college campuses with Jan Crawford Greenburg of the Chicago Tribune; a report on the race to develop and import natural gas around the world; the modern-day detective work that solved the mystery of Beethoven's death; and a Clarence Page essay about race and sports.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Alleged victims took center stage at the trial of Saddam Hussein today in Baghdad. The court session was punctuated by Saddam's angry insistence he would not return to court tomorrow. NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michels narrates our report.

SPENCER MICHELS: The distorted sounds of a weeping woman reverberated through the courtroom. Her voice disguised and identity concealed behind a curtain, Witness A recounted a story of atrocities at the hands of Saddam Hussein's agents. It happened in the village of Dujail in 1982 after an assassination attempt against Saddam. He's accused of ordering a crackdown that led to the deaths of more than 140 Shiite villagers. Witness A was one of three to testify at today's session, all of them anonymously.

WITNESS A (Translated): They started stripping and then they forced themselves on me. They took off my clothes and put my legs up and started giving me an electric shock and beating me and asking me to talk. There was more than one, maybe more than five of them. Then they took me to the red room. It was horrific. There were some women tied with their legs up and they were shot with electricity. What is that? At Dujail there were women with broken ribs, broken legs and broken backs.

SPENCER MICHELS: The woman accused Saddam of the crimes, saying no one else could have ordered so many jailed and tortured. In contrast to yesterday's outbursts, Saddam and the other seven co-defendants sat silently during much of today's testimony. Some took notes and one fell asleep. But at one point Saddam did speak out about the jail where he's kept.

SADDAM HUSSEIN (Translated): The witnesses have been complaining about the conditions where they were held. Saddam Hussein is kept in an iron cage this big covered by a tent. That is the American democracy.

SPENCER MICHELS: Later just before the trial recessed for the day, Saddam shouted he would not return to an unjust court. He told the judge to go to hell.

JIM LEHRER: Also in Iraq today, suicide bombers killed at least 43 people and wounded 73 others at Baghdad's police academy. The first bomber blew himself up outside a classroom. A second targeted students who ran to a shelter.

President Bush today rejected a new attack on his Iraq policy. On Monday, Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean said Mr. Bush has "a permanent commitment to a failed strategy." He told a Texas radio station: "The idea that the United Sates is going to win the war in Iraq is just plain wrong."

Today the president was asked about that, after a White House meeting with a UN health official.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I know we're going to win, and our troops need to hear not only are they supported but that we have got a strategy that will win. Oh, there's pessimists, you know, and politicians who try to score points; but our strategy is one that is -- will lead us to victory.

JIM LEHRER: The president also said he'll work to free American hostages in Iraq, but will not pay ransom. He spoke after kidnappers released video that appeared to show another American captive. The kidnappers said he worked as a security consultant. Last week, an American peace activist, Tom Fox, was abducted by another group.

An air disaster in Iran killed at least 115 people today. A military transport plane smashed into a residential building in the capital, Tehran. Some of the dead were in the building. We have a report narrated by Roz Upton of Independent Television News.

ROZ UPTON: The wreckage of the C-130 Hercules at the foot of the apartment block it had crashed into. All ten crew and eighty-four passengers onboard were killed, most of them Iranian journalists and cameramen heading off to cover military exercises in the region.

The plane crashed into the top of the ten story building setting it on fire. Azadi is a densely populated suburb of Tehran. More than 150 people lived in the building. Survivors are being treated at a number of hospitals throughout the capital. Those left badly hurt were able to describe their escape.

WOMAN (Translated): We were sitting at home when all the windows shattered and the flames burst through.

WOMAN ( Translated ): There was a huge fire, and as we came out the building we saw that the plane had blown everything out.

ROZ UPTON: This is the same type of aircraft as the crashed plane. It had just taken off from Mehrabad Airport en route to southern Iran. The pilot had reported engine trouble and requested an emergency landing. But he didn't make it to the runway, and slammed into the apartment block which is in the airport's flight path.

The rescue efforts continue tonight. Emergency services are trying to ensure no one is trapped inside the damaged building. The pilot had initially refused to fly the plane because of a technical fault. It's the fourth fatal accident involving an Iranian air force Hercules in the last decade.

JIM LEHRER: Israel clamped down today on Palestinian movements from the West Bank and Gaza. That's after a suicide bomb attack killed five Israelis on Monday. The army arrested 15 suspected members of Islamic Jihad, the group that claimed it organized the bombing. The Israelis also said they will target Islamic Jihad leaders.

A Palestinian professor in Florida won a partial victory today on terror charges. Sami al-Arian was accused of helping direct suicide bombings against Israel. A federal jury acquitted him on eight counts and deadlocked on nine others.

Secretary of State Rice promised today to correct mistakes involving terror suspects. She spoke in Berlin after meeting German Chancellor Merkel. They discussed Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen. He claims the CIA took him to Afghanistan and held him five months, then released him.

Later, Merkel said Rice admitted that was wrong. Rice did not directly address that case, but she did say this:

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I could not agree more with the chancellor that the challenges that we face in the new war, the war on terrorism, are indeed challenges that challenge us to make certain that we are doing all that we can to protect our populations from the threats of those who would wantonly kill innocents, but we must do this within the context of laws and our international obligations.

JIM LEHRER: Later, Rice signed a deal to open U.S. military bases in Romania. One is at an airfield where the CIA allegedly had a secret jail for terror detainees. Today, leaders of Romania's parliament demanded an inquiry into those allegations.

The U.S. Supreme Court today heard a case on gays in the military, recruiting, and federal money. Law schools argued they want to bar military recruiters, but keep federal funds. They objected to the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy against gays. The government argued the schools must give up the money. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary.

The City of York, Pennsylvania, agreed today to pay $2 million in a racial killing from 1969. Lillie Belle Allen was shot when a white mob confronted her during ten days of rioting. Her family accused police of inciting the violence. Today's settlement also calls for a memorial to Allen and to a white policeman killed during the riots.

On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained more than 21 points to close above 10,856. The NASDAQ rose three points to close above 2260.

And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" before the Supreme Court; the demand for natural gas; a Beethoven mystery; and a Clarence page essay.

FOCUS - HEARING THE ARGUMENTS

JIM LEHRER: Now, the Supreme Court arguments over the military's right to recruit on campus. Ray Suarez our story.

RAY SUAREZ: The case was Rumsfeld versus Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, or FAIR. And to bring us inside the courtroom is NewsHour regular Jan Crawford Greenburg of the "Chicago Tribune."

And, Jan, let's begin with learning how this case came to court and how it had fared in the earlier cases.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Oh, sure. This case came about when a group of colleges and law schools and their faculties challenged a federal law that requiredthem to allow military recruiters on to their campuses if those schools accepted federal money and if they allow private employers to also come on and recruit students and talk to students.

So this group of colleges and law schools and their faculties joined together to say the law was unconstitutional. And they prevailed in a lower court and that's the dispute that ended up in the Supreme Court today.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, a lot of the debate that surrounded this case has had to do with the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of the military. But Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the university rules against discrimination against gays weren't involved in this case, were they?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: No, not at all, although the law that was at the heart of this case was in a direct response to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy which, as you know, was adopted by the military in 1993. It was a compromise between the Clinton White House and the Pentagon to allow homosexuals into the military.

But these schools, the colleges and the law schools, say that that law conflicts with some of their policies on discrimination based on people's sexual orientation because it doesn't allow openly gay members into the military. Congress saw that as a problem. They were worried that the colleges would ban these military recruiters from college campuses so that's why it stepped in and passed this law in 1994 originally, called the Solomon amendment after its main sponsor, to ensure that the military could continue recruiting on college campuses.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, of course, the Rumsfeld in Rumsfeld versus FAIR is the secretary of defense and arguing on behalf of the United States Government was the solicitor general, Paul Clement. What was the thrust of his argument?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Well, he strongly argued that there's no constitutional problem with this law, that first of all the colleges and universities, if they don't want the military to come on to campus, they don't have to take the federal money. The law only says if you take federal money, money from the government, then you've got to let the military come on and talk to your students. So he saw no problem at all with the constitutionality of the law.

He also argued that if the government doesn't prevail in this case and the law schools and the universities can ban the military because they disagree with this specific policy, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," they could also ban the military for other reasons, say, because they didn't agree with the war in Iraq or they might disagree with the military's policy on women or other areas that they may see problems with how the military approaches things.

So he said there's no constitutional problem and furthermore, a ruling against the government could have even more broad effects than this specific policy at issue.

RAY SUAREZ: Arguing for the colleges and universities was Joshua Rosenkranz. How did he sum up the school's position?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Of course, he said, no, that's exactly the wrong way to look at it. This message, this policy by the government is one that the schools disagree with very strongly.

I mean, it's completely at odds with their policies against discrimination based on sexual orientation, and so if the military comes on campus with this message that they're not going to allow openly gay people into the military, it looks like that's the university's message, that the university would support that message.

So he argued that that's directly unconstitutional. It's an unconstitutional burden on the universities and it violates their free speech rights because it forces them to disseminate this message. They've got to send emails out, telling people that the military is on campus. They have got to help the military set up their recruiting efforts with students. So he argues that that's unconstitutional because they're required to help disseminate this message that they disagree with.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, once again, we had an argument that was available to the public immediately on audiotape. So let's hear from some of the argument: First, an encounter between Justice Ginsburg and Solicitor General Clement. Tell us about it.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Well, this is an exchange in which we're kind of seeing these arguments come together, that the solicitor general is concerned that this law could be applied in a very broad way but then we're seeing some concern from the justices about the university's position as well.

RAY SUAREZ: Let's listen.

JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG: That would be rather far fetched. The pitch that's being made is an equality pitch that we are teaching our students equality, the equal stature of all people. So I think that your example does not fit.

PAUL CLEMENT: Well, with respect, Justice Ginsburg, I'm not sure I understand why not. It's the same idea. In order to teach equality that there should be no discrimination against homosexuals, we're going to exclude, (a), military recruiters, and while we're at it, the former military as well, because they voluntarily joined the forces knowing that they had a discriminatory practice.

It's no stretch of the imagination to think that the principle that's being articulated by respondents would stretch well beyond simply a direct anti-discrimination motive. The free speech interests that are articulated on the other side would extend to any basis for criticizing the military, whether it was not liking the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, or the discriminatory hiring policies.

I also think with respect to the issue of discrimination it's worth pointing out here that there's more than one way to understand whether or not the military's policy is discriminatory.

JUSTICE DAVID SOUTER: Okay. But even if you do that, you're still left, it seems to me, with a problem. Whether you characterize the problem as discriminatory and anti-discriminatory university policy or not, you're still left with a speech problem that they raise, that in effect you are forcing them, in effect, to underwrite your speech up to a point. And you are forcing them to change their own message.

You're forcing them into hypocrisy, in one alternative. And those arguments don't depend upon the sort of the discriminatory character of what may be at stake.

PAUL CLEMENT: I think that's exactly right, Justice Souter. And I think those arguments would be the same even if what was going on here was a concern about the military's other policies. You would still have a concern that the military is being forced onto campus to make its own speech, and you would still have the concern that that interferes with the message of the university.

RAY SUAREZ: Now when she retired she probably never expected to be hearing this case but we heard a lot from Justice Sandra Day O'Connor today, didn't we?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: We did although we don't know if she will be able to participate in this case because, as you know, if she's not sitting on the bench when her successor is confirmed, her vote won't count.

But she was very active at the argument today.

And in this next exchange we saw Justice O'Connor doing what she so often does when she's on the bench: Looking at the practical implications of the case. In this exchange she's wondering what the universities could do and what the law would allow to distance themselves from this message that they disagree with.

She's saying could they put up signs or could they do something else to disassociate themselves with the message going to the practical implications and seeing how it would actually work in the real world.

RAY SUAREZ: And, again, she's questioning the government's lawyers, the solicitor general.

JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR: Does this Solomon amendment pose any restrictions on the extent to which the law schools can distance themselves from the military views?

Can there be signs up at every recruitment office, saying, "Our law school doesn't agree with any discrimination against gays?" I mean, can they come forward with their position on this in every recruitment office without violation of the amendment?

PAUL CLEMENT: Yes, they can, Justice O'Connor. I think there would be -- in fairness, I want to be clear, I think there might be a line where there would be -- the recruitment office could conduct itself in a way that would effectively deny access.

But I think with that caveat, there is nothing in the act that prevents the universities from explaining -

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Let me ask you this question --

JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG: Gen. Clement, can you be affirmative? Now what can the law faculty do to disassociate itself from -- to say that we don't tolerate discrimination of any kind? What can the law school do concretely while the recruiter is in the room?

PAUL CLEMENT: Concretely, they could put signs on the bulletin board next to the door, they could engage in speech, they could help organize student protests. I would draw the line, though, at saying that they have to go to the undergraduate campus, because I think as a practical matter --

JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY: You mean they could organize a student protest at the hiring interview room so that everybody jeers when the applicant comes in the door, and the school could organize that?

PAUL CLEMENT: The school could organize -

JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY: When it's, say, a job fair and all the employers are there, but then they jeer just the -- and the school organizes a line jeering both the recruiters and the applicants? That's equal access?

PAUL CLEMENT: I think that would be equal access. I think you have to draw a practical line here between --

JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY: I'm surprised --

PAUL CLEMENT: -- between access and allowing the speech. But I think you have to --

UIDENTIFIED VOICE: You're not going to be an Army recruiter, are you? (Laughter)

PAUL CLEMENT: Well, I don't think the military and the Army recruiters, and I won't be one of them, but I think the Army recruiters are not worried about being confronted with speech.

RAY SUAREZ: And arguing for the schools, Joshua Rosenkranz was confronted with skeptical questioning from the new chief.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: That's right, Chief Justice Roberts was questioning Mr. Rosenkranz' contention that people could be confused that they would think that the school could be embracing this message by the military.

RAY SUAREZ: Let's hear that.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Nobody thinks that this law school is speaking through those employers who come onto its campus for recruitment. Everybody knows that those are the employers. Nobody thinks the law school believes everything that the employers are doing or saying.

JOSHUA ROSENKRANZ: That's correct,Your Honor. But again, endorsement is also not an element of a compelled speech claim. But let me bring those two questions together on a factual point. The law schools are disseminating a message that they believe it is immoral to abet discrimination when they -

JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR: But they can say that to every student who enters the room.

JOSHUA ROSENKRANZ: And when they do it, Your Honor, the answer of the students is, "We don't believe you. We read your message as being that there are two tiers." There is a double...

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: The reason they don't believe you is because you're willing to take the money. What you're saying is this is a message we believe in strongly, but we don't believe in it to the detriment of $100 million.

RAY SUAREZ: And, Jan, here we have another argument with audiotapes available almost immediately. Why is this happening frequently now?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Well, this is in response to requests by media organizations for some of these big, significant cases with tremendous importance to everyday Americans. It's the middle ground.

I mean obviously we don't have cameras in the courtroom but this is a way of trying to get some technology and some audio into the courtroom so people can hear and listen to these justices for themselves.

RAY SUAREZ: Does it signal a different attitude on the part of the new chief?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: I don't think so. The court had been in recent years allowing this audiotape to be released very quickly for some of these big cases but obviously these first two that we've seen since the new chief justice has come on the court does indicate that he's willing to continue this practice. Cameras in the courtroom though, that's another matter entirely.

RAY SUAREZ: Jan Crawford Greenburg, thanks for being with us.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: You're welcome.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: importing natural gas, what killed Beethoven, and a Clarence Page essay.

FOCUS - IMPORTING GAS

JIM LEHRER: Now, developing and importing natural gas. NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Kaye of KCET-Los Angeles has our story.

JEFFREY KAYE: Bolivia: 2003. Riots left more than 70 people dead, and toppled a government. The president resigned and fled to the United States. The crisis was dubbed "the natural gas war."

Protesters complained the government was selling the country's gas too cheaply to a consortium of multinational corporations. The gas was destined for a terminal in Mexico, now being built by an American company, Sempra Energy.

The Bolivia deal -- since cancelled, and the subsequent unrest -- were just brief chapters in the unfolding global saga of Liquefied Natural Gas, LNG. On an unprecedented scale, multinational companies are racing to develop and expand LNG facilities throughout the world.

SPOKESMAN: The United States has a large and growing demand for natural gas.

JEFFREY KAYE: Bill Cooper is executive director of an industry trade group.

BILL COOPER: Once the demand far exceeded our ability to find natural gas and move it to the market by pipeline, something else had to be developed. And the technology that developed allowed us to liquefy natural gas, which shrinks it to 1/600th of its size. Now it's in a liquid form, and can be transportable by ships.

JEFFREY KAYE: Liquefied Natural Gas is super-cooled. At receiving terminals, it's reheated back into a gas and sent out through pipelines. Currently in North America, there are five LNG import terminals in operation. Another 40 have been proposed or are in various stages of development around the continent.

A constellation of factors is driving the LNG surge. There's increased demand for natural gas, a relatively clean-burning fuel. It currently accounts for 24 percent of America's energy needs. Changes in natural gas prices -- the opportunity to buy low and sell high-- have also driven LNG investment decisions.

In addition, energy companies are turning away from U.S. gas fields, where gas is harder and costlier to reach in favor of foreign sources.

BILL COOPER: A lot of integrated major oil companies have had producing properties for years. And once those properties reach a stage in which they're not getting the maximum return in the investment that they want, they're selling those assets.

JEFFREY KAYE: But global expansion of the LNG industry has brought global protests. Among exporting nations, Bolivia was the most dramatic and bloodiest example of anti-LNG demonstrations in Russia and Nigeria.

In Peru and Indonesia, protesters have complained that shipping and storing millions of gallons of LNG would jeopardize the environment and risk lives.

REP. LOIS CAPPS: LNG is unsafe. It's a danger to our neighborhoods. Any explosion would threaten our homes, our neighborhoods, businesses, school and churches.

JEFFREY KAYE: In North America, LNG opponents make similar arguments. In the Southwest, critics are fighting plans to site two offshore LNG terminals in California and one in Mexico. And in the city of Long Beach, California, controversy is swirling around a proposal by a Mitsubishi-ConocoPhillips partnership to construct a half- billion dollar LNG plant at the port.

SPOKESMAN: Not here, here, in our home port, in our backyard of our city of Long Beach.

JEFFREY KAYE: Long Beach City Councilman Frank Colonna is making his anti-LNG stance a centerpiece of his campaign for mayor.

CONCILMAN FRANK COLONNA: If there is a terrorist attack or some hostile action or accidental plane crash or a collision at sea or an accidental spillage, we would basically put well over five -- actually, it is close to 500,000 people's lives at stake.

JEFFREY KAYE: The last major LNG accident in the U.S. took place in 1944, in Cleveland. Gas leaking from a storage tank resulted in fires that killed 131 people.

While LNG critics say that episode demonstrates the potential for disaster, LNG proponents counter tank construction has improved drastically in the last 61 years.

Another accident occurred more recently in Algeria. In 2004, 27 people died when an LNG processing plant exploded. Industry advocates argue that compared to oil and gasoline, LNG is safer to ship. They also contend that a fire at a terminal could be contained.

But to assuage fears, avoid urban opposition and get the go-ahead from the Mexican government, Sempra Energy is building its billion-dollar LNG facility, the first receiving terminal on the West Coast of North America, on a remote stretch of Baja, California, coastline, 50 miles south of the U.S./Mexico border.

DON FELSINGER: You want to have these away from population centers, and this is one that is very much removed from the population center.

JEFFREY KAYE: Why is that important?

DON FELSINGER: Well, for safety issues. Just the issue of noise, visual impact.

JEFFREY KAYE: Sempra intends to bring natural gas here from Russia and Indonesia, then pipe it to end-users in Mexico and the Southwest United States. The company, which operates power plants, pipelines and utilities, and is a leading energy trader, is investing heavily in LNG. It plans to build two more LNGterminals in Louisiana and Texas.

Company executives say natural gas market trends convinced them LNG is smart business. They can buy natural gas overseas where prices have been relatively stable and cheap, and sell it in North America where prices have tripled in five years.

DON FELSINGER: And I am convinced now that most people around the world that own gas and would like to move it to the marketplace are convinced that for the long-term North America will have prices that will support making the upstream investments to make these projects worthwhile.

BILL POWERS: Everybody in the whole chain on the producer and distribution side is making a killing. The only people that are losing are the 250 million people on the other side of the line that are ponying up the money for that commodity.

JEFFREY KAYE: Industry critic Bill Powers, an environmental engineer, worries Sempra will use its clout to unfairly manipulate gas prices and supply. He points out regulators have accused Sempra of market manipulation in past deals, charges the company denies. And Powers has another concern. He says it's as much a mistake to rely on foreign natural gas imports as it is to depend on foreign oil.

BILL POWERS: The same structural and strategic issues are there with LNG, as well, that this is money that we send out to buy a product that is overseas and we become dependent on a product that has some variables that we can't completely control. Who runs that country? Is that supply secure?

DON FELSINGER: Many of the countries in the world are third-world nations that are viewed as "unstable" are going to become very good trading partners with the U.S. They need a source of income for their country to grow and develop, and natural gas is the one thing they have where there is a worldwide market for them.

JEFFREY KAYE: Sempra's LNG terminal, rising on the cliffs of Baja, California, in Northern Mexico is scheduled to start operating in 2008. In the U.S., experts agree that for business, environmental and political reasons of the dozens of proposed LNG facilities, ten might be built over the next decade.

According to some analysts, within five years LNG imports to the United States could provide the country with as much as 16 percent of its natural gas, up from about 3 percent today.

FOCUS - DETECTIVE STORY

JIM LEHRER: Now, a science unit detective story on the life and death of Beethoven, and to Jeffrey Brown.

JEFFREY BROWN: What we've long known about Ludwig van Beethoven: He made incredible music and he suffered through illness for much of his adult life. What hasn't been known is the nature of his illness, and what eventually killed him in 1827.

Today, through an unusual experiment done at the Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory a team of scientists confirmed that Beethoven suffered from lead poisoning.

Here to tell us about it is the director of that project. William Walsh is an expert in forensic analysis and director of research at the Pfeiffer Treatment Center in Warrenville, Illinois.

And welcome to you. You used hair and bone samples, I understand, to do this work. How did they lead you to the findings about lead poisoning?

WILLIAM WALSH: Well, we had the major relics of Beethoven that still exist in the world, both the fragments his skull and hair samples. And we really didn't know what to expect going in.

But after we did very careful chemical analysis, we found that both samples which had come from different sources, they both were the only unusual thing was that they were both extraordinarily high in leadconcentration.

JEFFREY BROWN: And these samples, is there a way to authenticate them? Are you sure that these are actually from Beethoven?

WILLIAM WALSH: Well, we did this work a few years ago actually and didn't report the bone results because they were not sure that it was authentically Beethoven's skull.

But what we found was that after doing DNA analysis of both the bone and the hair, we found that with the amount of DNA material that we were able to harvest from this very old -- these very old samples, we were able to find that we do have a match and that we are now certain that these were authentically from Ludwig van Beethoven the composer.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now I saw this technology at the Argonne Lab described as the most powerful x-ray beam in the western hemisphere. Can you describe in layman's terms for us how it works and what it did?

WILLIAM WALSH: Well, it's really a big physics machine, and it has a number of physics machines in tandem but what it amounts to is there's a large ring that produces electrons that are very close to the speed of light, really 99.999 times the speed of light, extraordinarily fast electrons.

And when these things change direction, they produce extremely bright light. And these little tiny beams of light that are produced are what we used for the analysis.

The light is the brightest light in the solar system. It's 100 times brighter than the surface of the Sun, and everything that little beam of light touches you get a very accurate chemical analysis. It's really a remarkable facility. I consider it is the seventh wonder of the scientific world really.

JEFFREY BROWN: And another layman's question: Why do you need such a high-tech such high-tech equipment to do this kind of work?

WILLIAM WALSH: Well, when I first received Beethoven's relics about five years ago, I searched the world really to find out where the greatest technology was because we had very, very small samples.

We also wanted to do non-destructive testing. The owners of the samples had asked me to return these samples to them in exactly the same condition that they were -- that they were received. And that was a real technical challenge.

I searched Europe and all of the United States and eventually found that the highest technology was 20 minutes from my house at the Argonne National Laboratory, what's known as the advanced photon source.

JEFFREY BROWN: You mean because other x-ray technology tends to destroy the sample?

WILLIAM WALSH: Well there's that but also them don't have the ability to accurately analyze extraordinarily tiny samples.

JEFFREY BROWN: So what does this add to our knowledge of Beethoven, of the life that he led and the way that he died?

WILLIAM WALSH: Well, I believe that this solves the medical mystery. Beethoven was a fairly normal teenager. He was a very well known prodigy and they thought perhaps the greatest pianist in all of Europe by the time he was 19.

However, something terrible happened to him physically between the ages of 20 and 24. He became extraordinarily ill. And he had tremendous abdominal pain and misery. He went to many doctors and basically suffered with that condition through the rest of his life.

It was so serious and so severe that by the time he was 29, he wrote a letter to his brother indicating that he had contemplated suicide and that he eventually had decided to -- that he believed that God had created him for this great music and that he was going to endure this terrible suffering and produce good music.

JEFFREY BROWN: We don't know still how he would have gotten lead poisoning. Are there some leading theories?

WILLIAM WALSH: Yes, there are some leading theories. The one thing we do know is that the very clear symptoms of lead poisoning started before the age of 24.

So Beethoven historians -- now that we've got this information that he was truly lead poisoned decisively -- they're now starting to study what's known about his life then, trying to find out what the source is.

However, at the clinic that I work at and some of the work we've done, we've studied a lot of behavior disordered and autistic and mentally ill people.

We find that about 5 percent of the human population has a metal metabolism disorder that makes them extraordinarily sensitive to toxic metals like lead and so Beethoven may not have had an unusual exposure to lead; he may have simply had a medical condition that prevented him from excreting the lead so the lead wouldn't leave and just built up in his body. We've seen hundreds of people with that condition here in the United States.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, I had to wonder in reading about this today why the U.S. Energy Department's lab would be doing this kind of work. It surely was not out to look for what happened to Beethoven.

I mean, are there other practical aspects to this research that might have applications for the rest of us?

WILLIAM WALSH: Well, there certainly are. When we first did this work, this facility had only been in operation for a year or so. And, for example, the -- my chief collaborator at Argonne was Dr. Ken Kemner. And his work is in biological sciences. He used this sort of miniaturized chemical analysis of Beethoven's hair.

He took it a step 100 times more nano, more tiny analysis bacteria. And he's studying how bacteria can actually take lead and other toxics out of the environment.

For myself, I've now -- I'm now studying tiny brain cells and brain tissue for trying to understand the causes of autism and Alzheimer's Disease so there are a lot of very practical applications.

Now, the Department of Energy -- the reason why this is something good for them is it adds to the capability of researchers and the other thing it really was only six hours throughout -- a six-hour experiment which really was only a tiny fraction of the time involved.

JEFFREY BROWN: William Walsh, thanks for explaining to us.

WILLIAM WALSH: Well, thank you very much.

ESSAY - TEAM COLORS

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune tackles race and sports.

CLARENCE PAGE: At my college we used to say we had three types of students: Black students, white students and athletes. The real world is like that too. Jocks occupy a special place. An entertainment industry called sports: A level playing field on which everyone is judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their scoring average. A fantasy? Sure. But we punish anyone who disturbs it.

Air Force Academy football coach Fisher de Barry found that out the hard way. After a big loss to Texas Christian, he reflected that his football team needed more black players so it could have more speed on the field. He may have meant no harm but his remarks ignited one of the biggest eruptions in sports since commentator Jimmy the Greek Snyder attributed the speed of black football players to the slave breeding practices of plantation days.

JIMMY THE GREEK SNYDER: The slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid, see?

CLARENCE PAGE: Both men violated a racial etiquette that neither of them seemed to understand until they broke its unwritten rules. They approached sports as a level playing field, a fantasy field to be sure, only to be tripped up on the contours of race.

Football fans accept that black players have dominated the speed positions in football for many years, but genetic theories don't explain why.

While black-Americans are great running backs and Olympic sprinters, the best marathon runners tend to come from Kenya.

A lot of factors determine why certain groups gravitate to certain sports: Culture, money, geography and taste, any of which can change in a generation or less.

Look at baseball. In the days of segregation, black Americans produced a Negro league with historic skills. And after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, black baseball players flooded the major leagues but the sports popularity among black folks has dropped in recent decades like a bad pitch.

Today's Major League ball players are three times more likely to be Caribbean or Latin American than black Americans. This year the Houston Astros went to the World Aeries with lots of Hispanics on the field but not a single black American.

While baseball's popularity decline, young black players and fans embrace basketball and reinvented the game with a fiesta of individual spectacle: Hook shots, finger rolls, kick-and-rolls and artful gravity-defying walk on air slam dunk.

MAN: Give me your number and I'll call --

CLARENCE PAGE: But it was black fashion style that became a racial issue this season when the NBA issued a court side dress code. It banned do-rags, baggy pants, jerseys, baseball caps turned sideways and bling, heavy jewelry, the tripped-out look favored by Alan Ivanson and others of the hip hop generation.

ACTOR: I'm not a gangster, I'm not a thug --

CLARENCE PAGE: Racism , some annoyed black players said, a diss to black culture. It certainly was a flap in hip hop culture at a time when the NBA is trying to polish its image.

But there's more to black life than hip hop. One need look no further than the dapper Michael Jordan or Shaquille O'Neal to see that.

Charles Barkley, who used to have a bad boy NBA image himself, came right to the point. If a well dressed white kid and a black kid wearing a do-rag and throw-back jersey came to me in a job interview, he told the Los Angeles Times, I'd hire the white kid.

That's reality. That's the real world: A world of resilient color codes. It's a world in which business casual is valued more than bling. You never get a second chance to make a first impression no matter how great your jump shot. I'm Clarence Page.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: Alleged victims of Saddam Hussein took center stage at his trial in Baghdad. But Saddam insisted he would not return to court tomorrow. Two suicide bombings in Baghdad killed at least 43 people and wounded 73. An air disaster in Iran killed at least 115 people. And the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on cutting federal funds to law schools that bar military recruiters. The schools object to the military's policy on gays.

JIM LEHRER: And once again, to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq. We add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. Here, in silence, are nine more.

For the record that last photograph showed a Marine who later joined the Army to serve in Iraq. He was a staff sergeant in the Army when he was killed.

We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.