The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, a summary of today's news; a look at the decision to free Burmese Nobel Laureate dissident Aung San Suu Kyi; a report on a Mississippi newspaper's efforts to right its and others' past wrongs; a "Tom's Journal": "New York Times" columnist Tom Friedman's account of his trip to the Middle East and Indonesia; and a Clarence Page essay on the new faces of poverty.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Israel and the Palestinians appeared closer today to ending the standoff in Bethlehem. More than 130 Palestinians, including gunmen and others, have been inside the Church of the Nativity for 35 days, surrounded by Israeli forces. It was widely reported today the two sides were trying to work out how many of the gunmen would go into exile. Israeli Prime Minister Sharon was in Washington today. He'll meet with President Bush Tomorrow. Israeli officials said he brought a 100-page report that details Yasser Arafat's alleged links to terror. Among other things, it charges the Palestinian leader used millions of dollars in U.S. and European aid to finance attacks on Israel. The Palestinians denied that. The United States today formally withdrew from a treaty creating the first permanent international tribunal on war crimes. It did so in a letter to UN Secretary-General Annan. President Clinton signed the treaty, but never submitted it to the senate for ratification. President Bush has voiced concern that U.S. soldiers and officials could be subject to frivolous prosecutions. In Southeast Asia today, the military rulers of Myanmar, also known as Burma, freed a famed pro-democracy leader. Aung San Suu Kyi had been under house arrest for 19 months. The Nobel Peace laureate promised to do her utmost to restore democratic rule to the country also known as Burma. We'll have more on this story in a few minutes. French President Jacques Chirac began working today to capitalize on his landslide reelection. In Sunday's runoff, he defeated Jean-Marie le Pen. The far right leader had stunned the country by getting into the runoff on a platform opposed to immigration and the European Union. We have a report from Juliet Bremner of Independent Television News.

JULIET BREMNER: It was a powerful victory. French voters absorbed Jacques Chirac's record-breaking majority with relief. "Whew," proclaimed one paper, echoing the sense that they had escaped le Pen as President. Chirac claimed his 82% was a vote for him and for the future of the republic. But even in the midst of the celebrations, many questioned what he could really achieve with his massive mandate. Followers of Jean Marie le Pen and his National Front Party may have been decisively beaten, but supporters see their 18% as a solid platform on which to capitalize in next month's elections to the National Assembly. The Socialist leader who lost in the first round of the elections today resigned as prime minister. Chirac knows he must gain the confidence of the left if the extreme right is to be kept out of French politics.

JIM LEHRER: Chirac today named a new interim prime minister to serve at least until the June elections. He's a little known moderate from western France. He said the French are deeply angry, and he promised a new way of governing. In the Netherlands today, a gunman killed a leading anti- immigrant politician near Amsterdam. He was hit six times, in the head, neck, and chest. His party was expected to make a strong showing in national elections nine days from now. The gunman got away. There was no word on a motive. Jury selection began today in the federal criminal trial of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm. The Houston trial is on charges Andersen obstructed justice by shredding documents related to Enron. If convicted, Andersen could be fined $500,000 and given five years' probation. It might also have to pay double any damages it caused. Jury selection also began today in Birmingham, Alabama, in the murder trial of Bobby Frank Cherry. The former Ku Klux Klansman is accused in the church bombing that killed four young black girls in 1963. Cherry is now 71, and is the only living suspect not in jail. If convicted, he could get life in prison. We'll have more on this story later in the program. The FBI said today a single person is likely behind a series of mailbox bombs across the Midwest. 15 pipe bombs have turned up in eastern Nebraska, Western Iowa, and northeastern Illinois since last Friday. Six exploded, wounding six people. An FBI spokesman said the bombs had nearly identical anti- government messages attached. Today mail delivery resumed in the affected areas. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to free at last; old crimes and a new newspaper; Tom Friedman's Journal; and a Clarence Page essay.

FOCUS - FREE AGAIN

JIM LEHRER: The freeing of one of the world's most celebrated political dissidents: Ray Suarez has the story.

RAY SUAREZ: Thousands of Burmese turned out today to cheer on Aung San Suu Kyi, the 56-year- old politician who's been fighting her country's military government for 14 years. Upon her release from house arrest, the military leaders of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, said Suu Kyi was free to go anywhere and say anything.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: This is certainly what all the Burmese have been wanting to hear for a very long time. We only hope that the dawn will move us over very quickly into full morning.

RAY SUAREZ: Suu Kyi's political goals include the release of hundreds of democracy activists now in jail.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: I and my party have been disappointed at the slow rate of release of political prisoners. We hope that whatever obstacles are in the way of their release will be overcome very soon, because their release is important, not merely in humanitarian terms, but also in political terms.

RAY SUAREZ: Suu Kyi is the daughter of the man who engineered the country's independence from Great Britain in the late 1940s, General Aung San. He was assassinated by a political rival in 1947. Since the early 60s, the military has been in charge of the country, under a regime it calls the "Burmese way to socialism." But in 1988, in the midst of an economic disaster, student activists rose up against the autocratic regime. In a violent crackdown, the army killed thousands of protesters. Around the same time, Aung San Suu Kyi returned home after decades of studying and living abroad in England. She quickly became a leader of the nonviolent struggle for democracy. In 1989, a new generation of military leaders changed the country's name from Burma to Myanmar, and placed Suu Kyi under house arrest for inciting unrest in the country. A year later, with Suu Kyi still under confinement, her opposition party won 80% of the seats in parliament. The military nullified that election. Also during her house arrest, Suu Kyi won the 1991 won Nobel Peace Prize, a prize her two sons claimed in her absence. Throughout her detention, Suu Kyi kept her contacts with the democracy movement, and after her release in 1995, she remained outspoken.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: We should renew our resolve to democracy, and to build up a system in which people are not shot down simply because they have asked for something.

RAY SUAREZ: In 1999, Suu Kyi's husband was dying of cancer in London, but she refused to leave Myanmar, fearing the government would deny her return. Two years ago, she was placed under house arrest again, this time for violating government restrictions on her travel. Her release today followed months of political talks, initially secret, hosted by Razali Ismail, the UN's Special Envoy to Myanmar. In addition to Suu Kyi's release, the UN has sought greater political freedoms in Myanmar. In return, the government has asked for greater foreign investment, and an end to widespread trade sanctions. The economic appeals come at a dire time for this country of 48 million people. Once relatively wealthy, and a food exporter, the country is now on a UN list of the least developed countries. Inflation is 25% and rising. The opium-producing country has half a million heroin addicts, whose needle-sharing habits have triggered an HIV/AIDS crisis. There are also more than 100,000 refugees who have fled to neighboring countries, many of them Muslims trying to escape religious persecution.

RAY SUAREZ: For more on the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, we get two perspectives. Mike Jendrzejczyk is the Washington director of Human Rights Watch Asia. And Thomas Vallely is a political analyst in the Asia program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. For the past ten years, he has been a consultant to the United Nations focusing on Myanmar.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Mike Jendrzejczyk, why'd they let her go?

MIKE JENDRZEJCZYK: Well, first of all, it's a tribute to her courage and determination that she is free today. I think as your piece suggested, Ray, the Burmese government is looking now not just for legitimacy but for resumption of at least some forms of international aid that has been largely cut off since 1988. The economy is in a state of collapse. Many of Burma's close neighbors in Southeast Asia and Japan are increasingly unhappy with their economic mismanagement and the outflow of tens of thousands of refugees. So I think the step today was a deliberate, calculated step but it's not clear what it's going to lead to. And this is I think the remaining question we're left with: Is the Burmese government willing to take additional steps, far more reaching steps than freeing Aung San Suu Kyi, as welcome as that is, that would put the government on an irreversible course towards democracy and the resumption of civilian government and basic human rights?

RAY SUAREZ: Thomas Vallely, not only why did they let her out in your view but why now?

THOMAS VALLELY: Well I think that first I share Mike's overview there and your piece's overview. I think her tactics finally outmaneuvered and overwhelmed the ignorance of the military regime that could not create a viable alternative. And their ignorance actually, I think, strengthened her tactics, and I think that what has happened today is probably not reversible but I don't see that it will... I don't smell speed here. I think it will take some time to move ahead. I think both her comments today were very positive, but Mr. Razali's comments were also positive in the sense that he alludes to that there's a lot of things that haven't been made public yet, Ray. We don't know what they are. He also says that it will probably take a couple of years before there is democracy in Burma. And I think it will probably take 20 more years before we solve the economic problems. But certainly it's a great victory for the intervention of the UN, a great victory for the people of Burma and Mr. Razali and...should be very proud of himself.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, it sounds like you're not entirely confident that this is the break that Myanmar's friends around the world have been waiting for. We've seen this cycle of being released and then being re-jailed or re-confined again. Could this lead -- if Aung San Suu Kyi is not quiet enough -- to another cycle of suppression of her voice?

THOMAS VALLELY: I don't think that will happen because I think this is so much different than the last time that the military is weaker than they were half a dozen years ago when they released her the first time. I think they did this for their own survival. I think they did it because they fear the new world. The last time they let her out, you know, Suharto was still in power in Indonesia and they thought they could have a regime like he had. They see these things crumbling all around them. And I think what Mr. Razali did was he painted a picture for the military of reality. He also painted a picture for Aung San Suu Kyi of what continued steal mate would bring to Burma. And in crafting these two paintings, I think he broke the stalemate. I don't think it's reversible. I don't know if the world knows what medicine to give Burma to get it to move forward. They certainly are going to focus first on the governance. Will they honor the elections -- what the constitution will be -- what the power sharing arrangements will be. They can't forget the economy, which I don't think the world knows how to fix yet.

MIKE JENDRZEJCZYK: Actually I think Ambassador Razali wanted more out of this visit. I think he wanted the release of all 1,000 or more political prisoners - many of them activists -- at least 17 of them elected members of parliament from 1990. What he got was something less than that. But I think what he's counting on is that both Aung San Suu Kyi and the military government are committed to continuing their secret talks, committed to continuing the dialogue. This is where we're going see some testing on both sides. If Aung San Suu Kyi starts traveling around the country rallying her supporters, trying to reopen many of the townships offices of the NLD that are still closed, this could be considered very threatening by the government; they may not arrest her, but they might start rounding up and detaining her supporters again. But I think what they're counting on is they know she has a stake in continuing these secret talks that have been underway for nearly two years. What she said today interestingly is it's time to move the talks beyond the confidence-building stage to talk about the core issues like a transition to democracy - perhaps new elections, which is what I think Ambassador Razali was hinting at. But interestingly the Burmese government today didn't say anything about the talks moving to this next stage, so I think there still is a lot of maneuvering going on behind the scenes and I think without continued international pressure, it's not clear what's going to happen in the next coming weeks and months. So I think, for example, a decision by the U.S. or the EU to lift any of the existing sanctions against Burma would now be counterproductive. I think there has to be new opportunities for dialogue and engagement, absolutely, but I think to in any way lift some of the sanctions now in place would be premature. At the same time some governments including the European Union and Japan and even the U.S., have said they are interested in providing humanitarian assistance, especially for the very desperate problem of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. Clearly I think there is room for providing such assistance. Aung San Suu Kyi herself has said that would be welcome primarily through non-governmental organizations and UN agencies. And I think that could be a confidence-building step in itself if the government and the democratic opposition could start working together on specific urgent humanitarian problems like HIV/AIDS.

RAY SUAREZ: Thomas Vallely, why don't you speak to Mike Jendrzejczyk's point about lifting the sanctions, because tonight in the view of some people who cheered the sanctions when they were laid on, this might pointed to as a... an example of sanctions that worked where in many other countries they didn't. She's free tonight.

THOMAS VALLELY: Certainly in... I don't think anyone is... and certainly not Aung San Suu Kyi and certainly not the U.S. Government is going to take her strongest card away in the middle of negotiations so I don't think there's any question that immediately sanctions are not going to be... are not going to be taken off. I think a lot of the sanctions in strengthening her... I think the whole argument -- do sanctions work? Sanctions worked here because after the financial crisis of a few years ago, no money went to Burma in any way. And it was a double hit. Her strategy and their failure came together to make the sanctions work here. And sanctions did work here. I don't think there's anyone going to take those away until there's more progress. And I think that there will have to be progress on some form of a road map for sanctions to be lifted.

MIKE JENDRZEJCZYK: Japan is playing a key role here. Japan has offered -- actually decided to provide 29 million dollars in a bilateral aid program to help refurbish a hydroelectric power plant but the decision was made last April and the money has not yet been expended. I was just in Tokyo a couple weeks ago-I think Japanese policy makers understand this very clearly -- that it's important to offer the possibility of resumption of some aid as an incentive but not give it out too soon. It's also clear, too, from talking to business people in Japan and elsewhere in the region that the possibility of going and investing there is just not very attractive now to private investors. The level of corruption is very high. The role of the military in controlling the economy of course is a serious problem, and one the government is not yet ready to con front. I think the Burmese rulers today in this decision are once again taking a calculated risk that by releasing Aung San Suu Kyi, hoping that she won't stir up too much trouble, perhaps, just perhaps, they can convince some investment to come back in and eventually perhaps for some sanctions to be lifted -- but only in a gradual and incremental way.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Thomas Vallely, maybe you could talk a little bit about why Americans should spend a couple of minutes thinking about Myanmar tonight. The regime there spent much of the last 40 years trying to seal off the country from the rest of the world and in many ways it appears they've succeeded. What's in it for the United States and for other democracies around the world to see this country succeed?

THOMAS VALLELY: There is no, Ray, there's no great strategic interest of the United States in Vietnam... I mean in Burma in any sense. It's not a very important place. Its economy is tiny. What's important is that this action today, this breaking of a stalemate today, has the potential of alleviating what might have been a major humanitarian crisis. And I think part of that... what was looming, this complete failed state, people too hungry, no electricity, no cooking oil, I think the breaking of this stalemate gives more hope to these people so that they can avoid a disaster, a famine or something we don't want to even think about. So I think that's why Americans should think about it because Americans transcend nationalism and look towards - you know -- the human race. We're trying to get these people fed and back on their feet. It's going to take a great deal.

RAY SUAREZ: Quick add to Thomas Vallely's view?

MIKE JENDRZEJCZYK: One thing the U.S. does have an interest is controlling the narcotics and the trafficking of narcotics from Burma. The State Department said this year they cannot certify that Burma is doing enough to control narcotics. I also think the U.S. can take a very important symbolic step in the coming months. We don't have an ambassador in Rangoon. The U.S. only has a charges de affairs. One way we might be able to support this continuing process is to at least consider sending a full-scale ambassador. That's something I would hope the Congress and the administration would consider doing.

RAY SUAREZ: Mike Jendrzejczyk, Thomas Vallely. Thank you both.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: A new trial about old crimes; the travels of Tom Friedman and a Clarence Page essay.

FOCUS - WRITING OLD WRONGS

JIM LEHRER: A very long road to today's trial of a former Klansman, and the work of one newspaper to reopen chapters of civil rights history. Media Correspondent Terence Smith reports.

MYRLIE EVERS-WILLIAMS, Founder, Medgar Evers Institute: This newspaper, as I said earlier, has certainly changed drastically!

TERENCE SMITH: That's Myrlie Evers-Williams, chairman emeritus of the NAACP, and widow of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, addressing the editorial board of the "Clarion Ledger" newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi.

MYRLIE EVERS-WILLIAMS: And here I am sitting here with you now. I look at your board. I look at your staff. It's so different than what was. And I am so pleased to see it.

TERENCE SMITH: What makes her words and her presence in the publishers' suite all the more striking is the history of this newspaper, which for years assailed both her late husband and the movement he helped lead. Before and during the civil rights era, the "Clarion Ledger" and its now-defunct afternoon sibling, the "Jackson Daily News," were family-owned papers, the largest in Mississippi. They not only helped perpetuate segregation; many in Mississippi say they helped inflame it.

BILL MINOR: They were probably one of the very worst newspapers in the country. They were segregationists at heart.

TERENCE SMITH: Newspaperman Bill Minor chronicled the civil rights struggle from Jackson for the "New Orleans Times- Picayune." His reporting won him awards, but few friends in the Mississippi establishment. He still writes a syndicated column today that appears in 30 regional papers, including the "Clarion Ledger." Minor said the Jackson papers, then owned by the Hederman Family, were attacked as "seg-- or segregationist-- rags." Some critics branded the morning paper the "Clarion Liar."

BILL MINOR: Bigotry would be at the soul of it, in my estimation, although I would say 90% of them would go to church on Sunday and be in the "amen" pew, so to speak.

TERENCE SMITH: Editorials in both Hederman papers railed against integration, the "Jackson Daily News" decrying "race mixing agitators," and a front page warning against "the mongrelization of the human race." And this front page headline appeared after the 1963 march on Washington: "Washington Is Clean Again With Negro Trash Removed."

BILL MINOR: They really promoted segregation through their paper in different ways. And of course, we learned in later years, and suspected back then, that they were being fed these reports from the state Sovereignty Commission. And I used to call it the KGB of the cotton patches.

TERENCE SMITH: Native Mississippian John Hammack has worked at the paper on and off since 1962. He, too, remembers the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, the secret, state- sanctioned agency founded in 1956 to undermine federal desegregation efforts and the budding civil rights movement. Hammack says the "Clarion Ledger" acted as a political arm of the white power structure, largely forbidding its reporters from covering the civil rights movement.

JOHN HAMMACK: So what we reporters did was go out and cover the stories, come back, and feed the information to the associated press, who would put it out under an A.P. Carat, and the stories would be published in the paper. And if a question were ever raised about it, the official word was "that's that liberal A.P. That's turning out those stories. Those are not our guys writing that."

TERENCE SMITH: Hammack vividly recalls another example of the paper's coverage during that era. An Associated Press story about the arrest of Byron de la Beckwith for the killing of Medgar Evers said Beckwith-- seen here on the right being booked -- had moved to Mississippi as an infant, but had been born in California.

JOHN HAMMACK: And Mr. Hewitt said, "oh, oh, we have to make use of that." And they turned the story around, and the headline on the story was... and they rewrote the story to get it higher. I just remember the "California Man Arrested."

TERENCE SMITH: And except for a small weekly section called "colored news," Jackson's black community did not exist in the pages of the Hederman's papers. Myrlie Evers-Williams.

MYRLIE EVERS-WILLIAMS: None of the news of what my people were doing in our community was available to us. Medgar often said, you know, we live behind the cotton curtain as far as the media was concerned.

TERENCE SMITH: But by the 1970s, the "Clarion Ledger" began to change. A young Hederman, Ray, the first in the family to have studied journalism, took over.

JOHN HAMMACK: Integration is more than just opening doors. It's equal opportunity and equal rights, and Ray embraced that wholeheartedly.

TERENCE SMITH: The younger Hederman instituted the first obituaries for blacks, and had his staff actively cover Jackson's large black community. Many at the paper credit Ray Hederman with setting the stage for today's "Clarion Ledger." Now owned by Gannett, the nation's largest newspaper chain, the paper has published ground-breaking reporting that has led to the reopening of old civil rights-era murder cases. "Clarion Ledger" investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell has been digging into this story for 13 years.

JERRY MITCHELL: What's amazing to me is to be able to find out new things about things that we thought we already knew everything about.

TERENCE SMITH: However, as a child growing up in Texas, Mitchell says he knew little about the civil rights movement.

JERRY MITCHELL: It's almost like it happened on Pluto or something. About all I really remember from the civil rights movement is when Martin Luther King was assassinated. That was the only event that really resonated.

TERENCE SMITH: But decades after King's death, Mitchell's dogged reporting, combined with a new generation of aggressive federal and local prosecutors, has led to the reinvestigation of 20 civil rights-era killings. To date, a total of 23 people have been arrested, leading to seven manslaughter and murder convictions, one mistrial, and one acquittal. Atlanta-based jury consultant Andrew Sheldon has assisted prosecutors on five of the trials.

ANDREW SHELDON: I call these the reconciliation cases. To me, we have a huge wound as a culture because of the way we have treated an entire race of people. Jerry's part is seminal. I mean, it's just... without him, who knows? It may never have happened.

TERENCE SMITH: In 1989, Mitchell gained access to sealed files from the state Sovereignty Commission that showed that the agency hindered the prosecution of the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers outside his Jackson home. Thanks to his reporting and the tireless efforts of Myrlie Evers-Williams and local prosecutor Bobby Delaughter, the case was reopened in 1989. White supremacist Byron de la Beckwith, whose two tainted trials for the murder resulted in hung juries in 1964, was reindicted in 1990. Shortly before that, Mitchell interviewed Beckwith outside Chattanooga.

JERRY MITCHELL: Signal Mountain is a beautiful place when the sun is going down, but not if you happen to be with Byron de la Beckwith. And so he walks me to the car and he said, "If you write positive things about white Caucasian Christians, God will bless you. If you write negative things about white Caucasian Christians, God will punish you. If God does not punish you directly, several individuals will do it for him."

TERENCE SMITH: Myrlie Evers-Williams reacted to Beckwith's 1994 conviction, which came almost 30 years to the day after his first trial.

MYRLIE EVERS-WILLIAMS: All I want to do is say yeah! Medgar, yeah!

MYRLIE EVERS-WILLIAMS: I know the third trial, along with the work of the "Clarion Ledger," led by Jerry, said 1,000 words to the national public as a whole: That even though these murders, these lynchings, these assassinations took place years ago, that there's still time to right those wrongs.

TERENCE SMITH: While serving a life sentence, Byron de la Beckwith died last year. And starting today in Birmingham, Alabama, the trial of former Klansman Bobby Frank Cherry will open for one of the most horrific crimes of the civil rights era: The September 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four little girls. Another man, Thomas Blanton, was convicted last year. Mitchell's reporting destroyed Cherry's alibi.

JERRY MITCHELL: The FBI had already been investigating the case, and actually, he asked me to come interview him.

TERENCE SMITH: He asked you to interview him?

JERRY MITCHELL: Yes, he did. And I was kind of surprised by that. I mean, I wouldn't exactly be at the top of the list of people to pick, I would think. So I spent about six hours with him, talking with him, and he said, "Well, I didn't have anything to do with that bombing. I left that sign shop," and the sign shop is about two and a half blocks from where the church blew up. He said, "I left that sign shop at quarter to 10:00 because I had to get home and watch wrestling."

TERENCE SMITH: Mitchell checked the television listings. There was no wrestling broadcast the night the bomb was planted, or for years thereafter. Cherry's alibi, which had gone unchallenged for three and a half decades, was in ruins.

MAYOR HARVEY JOHNSON, JR., (D) Jackson, Mississippi: I think that in some cases the best way to heal an old wound is to open it up.

TERENCE SMITH: Jackson's mayor, Harvey Johnson, Jr., Says the successful reopening of the civil rights cases has helped bring painful but necessary change.

MAYOR HARVEY JONSHON, JR.: The old days are no more here in Mississippi, and I think that again this is reflective of the current attitude and the level of progress, social progress that we've reached here in the state, and I think that the paper should be commended for what it's doing.

TERENCE SMITH: Mississippi has changed dramatically since the bad old days when, as one author put it, the scent of the magnolias mixed with the smell of burning crosses. But attitudes change slowly here. When a proposal to remove the confederate symbol to the state flag was put to a referendum not long ago, a solid majority voted to keep the flag and its tradition intact. Mack Hales, a hardware salesman and regular reader of the "Clarion Ledger," has mixed feelings about the impact of the paper's reporting.

MACK HALES: Everybody's not a redneck here. We're good people, we work hard, and we want things to be right.

TERENCE SMITH: Has it made a difference? When some of these things are settled?

MACK HALES: I think so. I think it satisfied the people of the other race and it satisfied the people of my race to get the truth out and get it over with.

TERENCE SMITH: Just up the street at Brent's Drugs, Jean Jeffries says she fears dredging up the past may bring more negative press to Mississippi.

JEAN JEFFRIES: We have made so much progress here that it's a shame that we can't go in a positive way instead of a negative way.

TERENCE SMITH: And how will she view the Bobby Frank Cherry trial?

JEAN JEFFRIES: I hope I can be objective.

TERENCE SMITH: Do you think you can?

JEAN JEFFRIES: I hope I can. I don't know that I can, but I hope I can.

TERENCE SMITH: There are those who are not objective. The "Clarion Ledger" regularly receives angry letters to the editor about its coverage, and threats have been leveled against Mitchell and his family.

JERRY MITCHELL: Some people have been pretty upset about it. I've had friends tell me, you know, "what are you doing digging up this stuff? You know, why don't you leave it alone?"

TERENCE SMITH: But Mitchell thinks that that would be a mistake, for himself and Mississippi.

JERRY MITCHELL: I think there is redemption in doing the right thing, whether it is me or whether it is Mississippi or the South or the nation or any of us.

TERENCE SMITH: That redemptive journey continues this week in a Birmingham courtroom, when Bobby Frank Cherry stands trial for the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.

SERIES - TOM'S JOURNAL

JIM LEHRER: Now, "Tom's Journal," our occasional series with "New York Times" foreign affairs columnist Tom Friedman. He has just returned from travels to the Middle East and Indonesia.

And welcome home, Tom.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Good to be here, Jim.

JIM LEHRER: Quickly, where did you go in the Middle East?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: I went to Israel, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the West Bank, Jordan, Amman, Aqaba in Jordan as well, and then to Dubai in the Persian Gulf, and there from to Jakarta and then Tokyo and then home.

JIM LEHRER: Was there anything new or that was a revelation in this current situation that you picked up while you were in Israel?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: In Israel I think the thing that was new to me, Jim, was I felt like I was in a strange place. I've been there...

JIM LEHRER: A strange place?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: I've been there so many times over the years. Strange because all the doors were closed. That's my sense of Israel when I was there. Everyone had locked their door or been locked into their home. You really can't appreciate, or I couldn't, until I went there the impact of 30, 40 suicide bombs on a small society over a period of three months. I went to a restaurant in Jerusalem, a neighborhood I've been to so many times, went to pull open the door and it was locked. I realized there's a camera on me and the owner is checking me out. You press a button like you would in an apartment house. "Who are you here for? What's your reservation? What's your name?" When they're sure you're not carrying anything, the buzzer, you know, loosens the door and you go in. So Israelis have basically sealed themselves in. At the same time I went to Bethlehem, a town I've visited hundreds of times over the years. And there, you know, all the shops have bluish green doors. They're all shut. They were under curfew. They were sealed into their homes by Israelis. And I went into Manger Square, near the Church of the Nativity. There was a huge tank there pointed at the Church of the Nativity. So you go to places you've been to so many times over the years, and you realize everything is shut in. One side has shut itself in out of fear of the other, and has at the same time shut the other side in out of fear of them.

JIM LEHRER: You have written, and many people have written and we've all known that until this latest flare-up, most Israelis and most Palestinians had a daily life and they got along together. On a personal level, did you feel fear and hatred that you've never seen before?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Oh, yeah, absolutely. The thing that really struck me... someone said to me about the Israeli army... you know, the Israeli army is really an everyman's army. It's made up of a cross-section of the Israeli population. It's a very pragmatic and very straightforward institution. In the 1980s, the Israeli army was sent out to put down the Intifada that erupted in the 1980s. And it came back and reported to Israeli society, "folks, we have to get out of the West Bank. We have to end the occupation." That was the birth of the Madrid peace process, and ultimately Oslo. The Israeli arm army has gone out again, Jim-- this is what I was told -- to the West Bank, and it's reported back also to the Israeli republic. What it's reported back -- whether you agree with it or not-- what it's reported back is, "folks we've been up against a Trojan Horse. Yasser Arafat is a Trojan Horse. We have let him into our home and he is here to destroy us." That's the message basically that Israeli soldiers, I think, for the most part have brought back. On the Palestinian side, you really find devastation. Walk through the old city of Jerusalem, again, a place I've walked through so many times. One shopkeeper literally pulled us into his shop and he said, you are the first person to cross this threshold in five days. Then he yanked us out into the streets and he counted nine shops around him that have been closed. We were leaving there about 7:00 in the evening walking back to our hotel, and one shopkeeper said to us wryly, "Please come into my shop and be my first and last customer of the day." Economically they've been devastated. I think in some ways the news really... the news reports haven't fully captured this. You see Arafat coming out "V" for victory, and everyone is reporting that Arafat is more popular than ever. I don't buy it. I don't buy it at all, because I think Palestinians now that this main siege of Ramallah is over have come out, they have surveyed the damage. They have taken the toll. They realize that they've paid a huge price for this. And for what? You know, the Intifada, I've always believed, made sense for about two weeks. It made sense when it first erupted as a signal to Israel and America that Palestinians would not accept a deal forced down their throats at Camp David that was less than 100%. But many Palestinians will tell you privately that after those two weeks, this thing never made sense. It never had a strategy. And the street was speaking. And when the street speaks, Jim, it never speaks clearly.

JIM LEHRER: Were they speaking because of those tanks on the street? How do they feel about the tanks, what the Israelis have done, and Sharon?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: I think they're deeply angry. They're deeply angry at Israel, no question about it. They feel Sharon is someone who is out to destroy not just the Palestinian Authority, but also the Palestinian national movement. That is deeply and widely believed. My heart really goes out to them, because I feel like the Palestinians are twice orphaned. They're not only orphaned by Israeli's leadership but by their own. And you know the same thing of these suicide bombs. You know, we see so many reports -- I went to the house of the suicide bomber, and the mother said, "Please, you've taken one of my sons. I've got 11 more." I don't buy it.

JIM LEHRER: You don't?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: When the camera is gone, I'll tell you something, Jim, that mother is weeping that a child she gave birth to from her womb just blew himself into shreds. I don't buy it. I think there's a lot more percolating, particularly under the surface in the Palestinian community that is going to be a big problem over time for Yasser Arafat's ability to continue to lead the Palestinian movement. I don't know how or where it's going to reflect itself. I think there's enormous anger at Israel, but I think there's enormous anger at him, as well.

JIM LEHRER: Back to Israel for a moment, Israeli public opinion. You talked about people being afraid and what is their attitude now about... Sharon,about where the Sharon strategy has led and is leading?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Two-thirds of Israel are for everything, Jim. They are for reoccupying the West Bank and for getting out of the West Bank. They're in support of what Sharon did, and they're in support of the Saudi peace plan. You have a public that is truly, truly divided. That is, the Israeli public felt that really there was a fantasy taking root among the Palestinians, and the fantasy was that Israel, like the Lebanese Hezbollah militia drove Israel out of Lebanon, that Israel was just a big dumb Silicon Valley where everyone just wants their BMW and their stock options. And if you push them hard enough with suicide bombs and guerrilla action you can actually drive them not only out of the West Bank, but maybe farther. And that myth, I believe, had taken hold. Ariel Sharon punctured that myth. He did it with the help of every Israeli. They got 110% volunteerism for people to sign up for this mission-- believe me. And the theme of the fighting, the war... we went into Nablus, they said. We went into Jenin where everything happened there. We didn't drop bombs from the air. This wasn't like you Americans in Afghanistan. We fought house-to-house. And the message of that house- to-house fighting we were trying to send, if you think we're just a soft, dumb Silicon Valley, well, think again. South Lebanon is one thing. South Tel Aviv is another.

JIM LEHRER: Has that message been received by the Palestinians?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: I believe it has been received. But I also believe something else, Jim. Their message to Israelis has also been received, which is, if you think this occupation can go on merrily or be realigned, you know, with a few things here or there on your own terms, you're really wrong. And that's why I compare this moment, as violent as it is, to actually the 1973 War. First, Anwar Sadat crosses the Suez Canal and pierces Israel's sense of invulnerability at that time.

JIM LEHRER: They never thought he could do that.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Never, never thought he could do that, and who? Ariel Sharon coming back the other way with the left hook, traps the Egyptian third army and pierces Egypt's sense of victory. And so you had an equilibrium where both sides felt they were bleeding, both sides felt they had sent a message to the other side, and a very creative diplomat called Henry Kissinger understood that in this equilibrium was a moment of enormous opportunity for diplomacy. I believe the same kind of equilibrium exists right now. The Israelis feel they've sent Palestinians a message. But at the same time you tell them, "please, no more suicide bombs." The Palestinians have been sent a message by Ariel Sharon, okay, but at the same time they don't want this fight to resume. It's a great opportunity, I believe, for diplomacy. If you ignore what people are saying and just listen to what they're feeling, you will see this opportunity.

JIM LEHRER: How in the world do you do that? I mean, you've written about this. I mean, the Arab television and then the Internet where the message is going to the Arab side and also, as you say, 110% on the Israeli side, how can you ignore what's being said?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Well, sometimes you just have to, because if you understand how deep, deep down people... the vast majority so want this over.

JIM LEHRER: What side?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Both sides. I really, really believe that. What I think has been missing from the American side is an appreciation of this moment. That what's needed now is not some cockamamie conference of foreign ministers where we stir around the issues again. What's needed is an American plan, the Clinton plan, that says very clearly, this is what we believe is the basis of a fair solution.

JIM LEHRER: But a real solution.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Not an interim solution.

JIM LEHRER: Go the whole route.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Go the whole route and what we think is the basis of a fair solution. My problem with the Bush Administration is that, you know, when you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. Because they themselves are not fully committed, you know, to an idea of what the final status agreement should look like, and they're torn between them quite clearly, I don't think they can fully seize this moment. That's a real tragedy. What we miss, Jim in some ways, what drove Henry Kissinger was the Cold War. There was a big strategic issue out there that he knew he had to respond to. That's missing now.

JIM LEHRER: If we don't do it, the Russians might do it.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: If we don't do it, maybe it won't get done. But who's going to come in -- the Europeans?

JIM LEHRER: Do I mischaracterize what you've been saying that you came back from this trip to the Middle East at least with some optimism, in other words, some encouragement that this thing could actually... there are ways to solve this...

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Absolutely.

JIM LEHRER: Stop the killing...and get this thing on...

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: There's a poll when I was in Israel. 52% of Israelis support King Abdullah's peace plan. In the middle of all of this, all this suicide bombing, here's a peace plan calling for full withdrawal, for full normalization.

JIM LEHRER: The last thing you would ever...

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Exactly. 52%, and it wasn't presented to them by Abdullah directly, let alone approved by any Israeli government. It tells what is there in terms of the raw material. But you alluded to something else, which is more on the bad news side that I really felt on this trip. I was in Dubai. I got in late at night -- 2:00 in the morning. I was watching the television there. It was one of the Arab satellite television station. These are new, privately owned TVs and they're widely watched - called Arab News Network. And it was 2:00 in the morning, and I was watching, and on it was just streaming video of Israelis bashing, shooting, dragging, punching Palestinians. Now, I would like to tell you that it was out of context, but there was no context. In fact, there were no words. It was just streaming pictures and martial music. Now, this is what is being beamed basically into Arab homes 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So a lot of people say the Arab street doesn't matter. Well, the Arab street, and particularly Arab youth, have been deeply influenced by these videos by what's going out on the Internet in the Arab world. If I've drawn one conclusion from this trip, not just to the Arab world but to Indonesia as well, it's that we are being connected technologically to each other much faster than we are socially, culturally, and politically. I was in Indonesia just to jump in for a second because it's relevant here. I was at a dinner with an Indonesia journalist, and one journalist started railing against the Fox Network and Bill O'Reilly. I'm thinking, "what the heck is this about?" She went off on O'Reilly and the spin room. I said, "what's the deal."

JIM LEHRER: Where did she see it?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: It's in her local cable package in Jakarta.

JIM LEHRER: Call 1-800 and you get it.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: You got it. Part of the local package.We're all now in each other's face technologically, but it's a total mismatch, because socially, culturally, and politically we don't have the frameworks at all to appreciate what we're seeing. And the Internet, alas, is even making it worse. Again in Indonesia, an American diplomat told me he was in Jogyakarta talking to some Muslim fundamentalists there and hearing about how Muslims didn't do 9/11, how 4,000 Jews were warned to get out of the World Trade Center-- a smorgasbord of myths about this. She asked him, where do you get this? He gets it either from the Internet, or if he's not on it, from people who are on it. One of the problems with the Internet, I've discovered that people don't understand it. The Internet is an open sewer, it's untreated, unfiltered information. But because it comes with this technological package, I read it on the Internet, you know, it's science.

JIM LEHRER: That's it. The Internet told me.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: The Internet told me. Sometimes it's believed even more. If I learned one thing on this trip, this is a problem, and it's going to be an increasing problem as more people get on the Internet. I fear not that there's going to be more understanding; there may be less understanding.

JIM LEHRER: You wrote your column about talking to some of these kids in Indonesia. They had all the myths, right?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: I went to an Indonesia version of a Madrassah, an Islamic school, kids from kindergarten right through high school and even college kids -- lovely kids -- really articulate. They got a group together who spoke English. But from the mouths of babes, it just breaks your heart. I mean, to hear them telling you that America is the enemy of the Muslim world, that no Muslims were involved in 9/11, that they understood that actually Americans did that, that Al Gore was Jewish -- the whole kind of full conspiracy theory. And what I see coming together, congealing in the mind of Muslim youths from the Middle East all the way to Indonesia, the biggest Muslim country in the world, is three things are conflating, Jim: America, Israel, and Jews, okay, are controlling the media, are out to undermine Islam, and basically are our enemies. And that is so dangerous. That is so sad to see, but it is there.

JIM LEHRER: Welcome home, Tom. Thank you.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Thanks.

ESSAY - POVERTY'S CHILDREN

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Clarence Page of the "Chicago Tribune" notes the changing face of poverty.

CLARENCE PAGE: When author Claude Brown died, it brought distinct images to my mind, images of poverty etched in the faces of children in the dark canyons of Harlem. Each decade changes the face on poverty in the public eye and mind.

ACTRESS: I remember when those families took off on the road. Never had to lose everything I had in life.

CLARENCE PAGE: John Steinbeck gave us the Joad family: Migrant farm workers knocked down in the Oklahoma dust bowl, yet trying mightily to reach California's golden dream. Walker Evans and other photographers sent out by the Farm Security Administration brought back lasting images of real-life Joads, migrants with weary eyes and weather-beaten skin. In the early 1960s, Michael Harrington's book "The Other America" would alert the media and the Kennedy Administration to those he called "the invisible poor." Poverty still had a mostly white face in the TV reports of those days-- usually an Appalachian face. In 1965, Claude Brown gave poverty another face, a big city face, with his autobiographical novel "Manchild in the Promised Land." Vivid, violent, andunsentimental, Brown called it a novel, but it was his story, beginning with him getting shot, and running from the cops. "I ran. There was a bullet in me trying to take my life, all 13 years of it." He ran and the readers ran with him. The book has sold more than four million copies. (Applause) The '60s were a turbulent decade. By 1965, the civil rights bill had been passed. Yet a new calamity of crime and riots was erupting in America's cities. Young black males were becoming a new urban menace in the public eye. Brown painted a new American archetype: An urban Huck Finn with a black face fighting and hustling his way through dark, trash-filled canyons of American dreams. Brown's Harlem was so brutal that his buddies could throw another kid off a roof and run away before the body hit the ground. His journey is marked by cold steel-- guns, knives, needles-- and vehicles that take him, not once, but several times to reform schools. Yet, despite his violent life, Brown's Manchild found redemption. He straightened out, went to college, attended law school, and wrote a best-seller. He dedicated his book to Eleanor Roosevelt, who founded the Wiltwyck School for boys in upstate New York, and to the Wiltwyck School, "which is still finding Claude Browns," he said. If Claude Brown could be redeemed, he was trying to say, so could others. All they needed, it appeared, was someone who cared. Claude Brown's story seemed to both define and defy the culture of poverty argument that Oscar Lewis made popular in the 1960s and 1970s with his studies of poor Latino families. Poverty creates a debilitating culture, Lewis argued, one that the poor cannot lose even if they ceased to be poor. By the 1980s, the culture of poverty image seemed to prevail. Ronald Reagan advanced welfare reform to break the "cycle of poverty," they said, for the "urban underclass," a new label for the long-term poor, particularly black Americans left behind by the civil rights revolution. Even Claude Brown grew dismayed with the worsening condition of the young gangsters and delinquents he came to know in the new hip-hop generation. His generation had it bad, he said, but this new one, in an era of drive-by shootings and crack cocaine, seemed worse off, even more tragically devoid of hope. Claude Brown died in February of a lung condition. He was 64. He never wrote another best- seller, and poverty seems to have a new face in the age of welfare reform: The working poor, trying to make ends meet, trying to raise their kids with wages too low to lift them out of poverty. Others have fallen between the cracks, off the welfare rolls, but not onto anyone's payrolls. The poor, it seems, are becoming invisible again. Yet, as Brown wrote, there are more Claude Browns out there, still trying to reach the promised land. I'm Clarence Page.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of the day: Israel and the Palestinians appeared closer to ending the standoff in Bethlehem. And the United States formally withdrew from a treaty creating the first permanent international tribunal on war crimes. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.