The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: The news of this Wednesday; then, looks at the latest dramatic move by Ariel Sharon; the legal battle over Jose Padilla; the new popularity of Christian news; and the ups and downs of the airlines.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The president of Israel dissolved parliament today and set March 28 for early elections. Also, Prime Minister Sharon registered his new centrist party today, naming it"National Responsibility." On Monday, Sharon announced he was leaving the Likud Party he helped found. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary.

Plans for possible troop reductions in Iraq were revealed today. The Washington Post reported the Pentagon could call three of its 18 combat brigades out of Iraq by early next year; one of the brigades would stay on call in Kuwait. And yesterday, Secretary of State Rice told Fox News: "I do not think that American forces need to be there in the numbers that they are now." Last week Democratic Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania proposed pulling the troops out within six months.

In Iraq today, insurgents killed a top Sunni leader and three of his sons at their home outside Baghdad. The gunmen wore Iraqi army uniforms and killed the family as they slept. Also today, a U.S. official announced Saddam Hussein's trial resumes on Monday. The defense team boycotted it after two members of their team were assassinated in the past month.

Uzbekistan announced today it will not let NATO keep using its airspace. Peacekeepers use the country to support missions in nearby Afghanistan. All NATO troops must leave and over flights stop by Jan. 1. The United States flew its last plane out of Uzbekistan on Monday.

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was placed under house arrest today in Santiago, Chile. He's charged with tax evasion and accused of hiding $27 million in overseas banks under fake names. Earlier this year, a U.S. judge fined Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C. $16 million for helping Pinochet and others set up secret accounts.

Millions of holiday travelers were on the go today. The day before Thanksgiving is traditionally the nation's busiest travel day of the year. At airports across the country, airline passengers waited in long lines. And motorists in the Midwest braved wintry conditions that snarled traffic. Travel officials warned people to be prepared for delays.

MANTILL WILLIAMS: The number one destination is small towns followed closely by cities. So that means any major highway that's going in and out of cities, that's where you're going to have your major trouble spots. And what's going to happen is people are going to be getting off of work and people are going to be going on vacation at the same time. So if you can plan alternate routes or plan travel in non-peak travel times, that's probably your best bet.

JIM LEHRER: AAA estimated 37 million Americans will travel this week, with nearly two thirds of them flying. We'll have more on the airline industry later in the program tonight.

The Labor Department reported more job losses today from the hurricanes. The storms accounted for another 21,000 jobless claims last week. That makes a total of more than 580,000 jobs lost to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained more than 44 points to close at 10,916. The NASDAQ rose six points to close at nearly 2260.

And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to moving on with Sharon, the Padilla case, Christian news, and airline traveling.

FOCUS - WARRIOR'S NEXT BATTLE

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner has our Sharon story.

MARGARET WARNER: Once again, as he has so often in the past quarter- century, Ariel Sharon has caused an earthquake in Israeli politics.

On Monday, Sharon bolted from the right-wing Likud Party he co-founded, and announced he would form a new one. That forced today's announcement of new elections in March.

ARIEL SHARON (Translated): After much soul searching, I decided today to quit the Likud. The Likud in its present configuration cannot lead the nation to its national goals. I founded the Likud over 30 years ago to serve the nation and give hope to the people of Israel. Unfortunately, it is no longer there.

MARGARET WARNER: Sharon's move culminated months of tension within his party, particularly over his decision to withdraw from Gaza and four West Bank settlements.

The 77-year-old Sharon first made his mark as a warrior. He fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War after the creation of the Jewish state, and as a soldier he developed a reputation for daring but sometimes reckless maneuvers.

In the 1956 Sinai War, Sharon parachuted behind Egyptian lines then disobeyed orders to retreat. While winning the battle, he lost 41 of his troops.

Sharon had become a general by the 1967 Six Day War, in which Israel captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Sinai and the Golan Heights.

His most celebrated victory came in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He launched a daring counterattack behind enemy lines to pin down the Egyptian army along the Suez Canal.

His status as a polarizing figure was cemented in 1982, when he was defense minister. To try to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization, Sharon masterminded an invasion of southern Lebanon. An Israeli commission later held him indirectly responsible for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees by Lebanese militias.

Unbowed, Sharon continued to press hard-line policies in several other cabinet and parliamentary posts. As housing minister in the early 1990s, Sharon vastly expanded Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

As an opposition member of parliament, he sharply criticized the 1993 Oslo Accords and the labor government's negotiations with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians. Then in the fall of 2000, in what was widely seen as a provocative act, he visited the plaza in front of the Al Aqsa Mosque on the disputed Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Within days, the so-called second intifada, or uprising, broke out with multiple Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. In that political climate, Sharon won an overwhelming election victory to become prime minister in 2001.

The new prime minister refused to negotiate with Arafat, isolating him in Ramallah as Israel launched anti-terror military raids in the West Bank.

ARIEL SHARON: Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are returning to the belief that they can defeat Israel by means of armed struggle. They feel that violence will produce further Israeli concessions.

MARGARET WARNER: Sharon also pushed ahead with building a security fence to divide Israel and many settlements from the rest of the West Bank. And though Sharon has met with Arafat's successor, his decision to leave Gaza this summer was taken unilaterally.

Now Sharon is seeking a third term prime minister as head of new centrist party called National Responsibility.

MARGARET WARNER: So what drove Ariel Sharon's latest bold and surprising move? To explore that, we're joined by Martin Indyk, who dealt with Sharon frequently while serving as assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, and twice the U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration. He's now director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington. And Abraham Ben-zvi, an Israeli who is the Goldman visiting professor of government at Georgetown University, and professor of political science at Tel Aviv University in Israel. Welcome to you both.

Explain how this happened, why this happened, Martin Indyk. Here is this warrior politician who abandons the very successful and dominant right-wing party he founded to form a new one at the age of 77.

MARTIN INDYK: Well, I think that there is the immediate cause and the longer-term cause. The immediate cause is the fact that the Likud Party had become an impossible arena for him where he couldn't even get the appointment of his own ministers passed through the Knesset because there was such a strong opposition to him based on the fact that he had given up territory in Gaza. And that was the immediate cause.

The longer-term cause is that Sharon, coming to the end of his life, coming to the end of his political time, wants to, I think, fulfill what he sees as his historic responsibility to firm up, if not finalize, the borders of the Jewish state of Israel.

MARGARET WARNER: But does he think that forming a centralist party is more in tune with the public now than the Likud, which he led for all those years?

MARTIN INDYK: Both in tune with the public sentiment, which is to separate from the Palestinians, and in tune with what he considers necessary to do, which is to give up significant parts of the West Bank, something which the right-wing coalition that he had originally formed will not go along with.

MARGARET WARNER: Beyond the political calculations, Professor, what would you point to in Sharon the man in a sort of deeper sense that might explain this?

ABRAHAM BEN-ZVI: Well, I think his current strategy is predicated very closely or is patterned closely on his modus operandi, both as a political leader and as a military leader. Basically Sharon is a man of action. And he's determined to preempt to, take the initiative in the same way that he was determined to take the initiative during the Yom Kippur War - to initiate --

MARGARET WARNER: So in other words, militarily, he wants to do the same politically?

ABRAHAM BEN-ZVI: To outflank the opposition, ultimately to destroy the opposition -- outmaneuver, encircle the opposition. Here, I guess, first of all he was motivated in initiating the whole disengagement scheme by a desire to preempt a vacuum, a dangerous void and to perhaps preempt or abort an initiative by the quartet, by Europe, et cetera, which would have been detrimental to Israel to establish new facts on the ground.

Ultimately the tactic became a strategy, and became a legitimate figure worldwide, was, of course, accepted by Chirac and by the UN, and I think, again, his final plan, his game plan right now, to take the initiative, after the election, to forge a coalition with the labor and to move, to delineate to, shape the parameters of permanent settlement. He will probably approach the Rubicon; he will not cross it.

MARGARET WARNER: But here is a man, Martin Indyk, who has been incredibly tough with the Palestinians politically and militarily all of these years. He now says he's forming a centrist party. Centrist in what sense, I mean, has he changed or has the center of gravity changed?

MARTIN INDYK: No he hasn't changed, as Abraham says. He's tactically very agile. So politically he's the most astute Israeli politician in terms of moving left or right with elegance in a way that enables him to go ahead with his purpose. And that hasn't changed.

I think people in Israel often say he's all tactics, no strategy. I don't think that's true of Sharon at all. He's always had a strategic vision. The strategic vision has changed a little bit as a result of the intifada and his understanding that the demographic threat to the Jewish state of Israel is at least as important as the conventional military threat and perhaps more so.

MARGARET WARNER: Meaning, in other words, that if they had held on to Gaza, essentially, --

MARTIN INDYK: And the West Bank.

MARGARET WARNER: -- and the West Bank in Toto, Israeli Jews would be completely outnumbered shortly by Palestinians.

MARTIN INDYK: Right. Exactly, within this decade; and he's come to understand that and understood politically that most Israelis have left not only Gaza but the West Bank in terms of their mental map. They want to separate from the Palestinians. They don't want to rule over them anymore. They want to get on with their lives. Sharon didn't want a fence, but that public sentiment led him as politician with his finger on the pulse of the people to build the fence, but where does he build the fence? Around the borders of what he would like to see as a robust Jewish state with Jerusalem in Israel's hands.

MARGARET WARNER: Undivided.

MARTIN INDYK: Undivided.

MARGARET WARNER: Have you seen an evolution in him?

ABRAHAM BEN-ZVI: Well, first of all, Sharon, there is no evolution in the sense that Sharon was never motivated exclusively or quintessentially by ideological considerations. He started his political career by forming a party which tilted to the left. He offered Yosi Sarid the number-two position in his party. But basically he was motivated by instrumental considerations, but I think there were reinforcements --

MARGARET WARNER: Let me just explain for the American audience. When you say he was not ideological, you mean he's not really of the camp that thinks Israel must reclaim the entire biblical land of Israel?

ABRAHAM BEN-ZVI: Unlike Menachem Begin or Tak Shamile, he was more instrumental. Of course, the fact that he basically constrained them from the right --

MARGARET WARNER: Another Likud member.

ABRAHAM BEN-ZVI: It was part of his tactic. Basically outmaneuvering his opposition, outflanking his opposition, but it did not reflect a commitment to the greater land of Israel. And, of course, now when he gained legitimacy and public opinion except for hard-core Likud supporters, support overwhelmingly a massive withdrawal from the West Bank and 65 percent -- 68 percent of the Israeli population, public opinion supported disengagement. As a result, I think this is his legacy, his future commitment to try and accomplish perhaps another interim agreement.

MARGARET WARNER: Martin Indyk, you know this man. I mean, you've met with him many times. You've dealt with him. I think many people would say, you know, I'm 77 years old. I have had an incredible career. I have pulled off Gaza disengagement. There are another couple generations behind me. Maybe it's just time to go back to my farm. Why wouldn't he do that?

MARTIN INDYK: Because Sharon is very suspicious of the next generation, of the generation of baby Netanyahus and Ehud Baraks. He considers that he --

MARGARET WARNER: Two former prime ministers you just named.

MARTIN INDYK: To former prime ministers. He considers them highly irresponsible in the terms of the way they dealt with the Arabs and the issue of territory; he considers Shimon Peres, a leftist on the political spectrum, and Yitzhak Rabin, a centrist as part of his generation, the warriors who fought for the independence of the state and who carry on their shoulders the responsibility for the future of the state. That generation, he said it at Rabin's tenth anniversary, at the cemetery last week, that that generation were the warriorswho could, who understood what the Jewish state needed to survive.

So his last job, he sees I believe, is to ensure a robust Jewish state, which means to separate from the Palestinians with Jerusalem the spiritual religious center of Jewish life as the capital undivided, as you said. That's what he is trying to achievement; that's what he sees as his responsibility before he leaves office.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you agree that, for instance, the Palestinian, professor, should not be looking at, this Ariel Sharon forming a centrist party, with great elation. I mean, many Palestinians absolutely loathe this man, as we know; that he is not there to make peace in traditional terms.

ABRAHAM BEN-ZVI: That's an excellent point. But still I would say with guarded --

MARGARET WARNER: Would you agree with that?

ABRAHAM BEN-ZVI: Yes, but with guarded optimism, yes, not with elation definitely, but I think Sharon will continue in a very Kissingeran tactic, namely piecemeal way, incremental change. I think he envisions after the election, hopefully he will form a coalition government with the labor. Another interim major Israeli withdrawal, perhaps seventeen, eighteen settlements from the West Bank and again shaping the future, delineated.

MARGARET WARNER: You're saying he could do this -- if he manages to win and head the government, he will be able to do it as head of this new party in a way he couldn't as head of Likud?

ABRAHAM BEN-ZVI: Because he could have definitely remained leader of Likud; he would have won probably the forthcoming primaries within Likud; he would have led his party to perhaps another four years of stagnation because the Likud Party would not permit Sharon to move. It would continue to humiliate, embarrass, constrain him.

And, as a result, the only way, and this is an indication, the fact that Sharon decide to defect to, break away from the Likud Party, which he formed 30 years ago, that's an indication that he's basically envisioning and he's planning, he's planning, not improvising, a coalition with the labor election.

Of course, no single party would be able to rule exclusively with the coalition, jointly with the labor, to delineate the future. And the Palestinians have a reason for very guarded optimism perhaps.

MARGARET WARNER: Very briefly, based on your knowledge of this man, were you surprised by this move?

MARTIN INDYK: I was surprised because I thought that he would not leave the Likud, having built it up. It was an institutional base. He knew how important it was, as in effect the majority party in Israel -- that he would not easily walk away from it. He didn't easily walk away from it, but I think the critical point here is that he saw it now as a constraint on him that he could not achieve his life's purpose with the Likud, and he needed a new coalition. And to do it with the left is not unusual for Ariel Sharon -- in terms of joining with whatever force is necessary to achieve his vision.

Just on the Palestinians, they have reason to be concerned because he doesn't believe in the final agreement. He doesn't believe in peace. He believes in interim agreements negotiated with the United States, not with the Palestinians.

MARGARET WARNER: And creating facts on the ground. Thank you both.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the Padilla case, Christian news and airline woes.

FOCUS - CHARGED

JIM LEHRER: Ray Suarez has our Padilla story.

RAY SUAREZ: Jose Padilla was dubbed "the dirty bomber" after his arrest in 2002. He was accused of plotting attacks on apartment buildings and hotels in the United States. Then Attorney General John Ashcroft made the announcement, accusing Padilla, an American citizen, of waging war against the U.S.

JOHN ASHCROFT: We have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb.

RAY SUAREZ: President Bush labeled Padilla an "enemy combatant", allowing the U.S. military to detain him indefinitely with limited access to attorneys. Padilla then sat in a Navy brig in South Carolina for more than three years without ever being formally charged with a crime, until yesterday, when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced the U.S. Government was indicting Padilla for supporting terror campaigns in Afghanistan and elsewhere between 1993 and 2001.

ALBERTO GONZALES: The indictment alleges that Padilla traveled overseas to train as a terrorist with the intention of fighting a violent jihad.

RAY SUAREZ: Gonzales would not explain to reporters why Padilla's alleged plans to attack the U.S. were not included in the indictment, or whether he is still considered an enemy combatant.

ALBERTO GONZALES: Mr. Padilla's designation as an enemy combatant has no legal relevance whatsoever with respect to the charges that we're announcing this morning.

RAY SUAREZ: The indictment of Jose Padilla comes just days before the Bush administration was due to respond to his appeal to the Supreme Court of his lengthy detention.

RAY SUAREZ: For more on the Padilla indictment and its larger impact on prosecuting terror suspects, we're joined by Brad Berenson. He was associate counsel to President Bush from 2001 to 2003, and helped shape administration policy for the litigation of detainees; he is now in private practice. And Jenny Martinez, a member of Jose Padilla's legal team, she argued his case before the Supreme Court in 2004, and is now a professor at Stanford Law School.

And, Professor Martinez, all along your side has said it wants the government to either indict Jose Padilla or release him. Isn't this progress of a kind?

JENNY MARTINEZ: It's a tremendous victory for Mr. Padilla and for the Constitution. This is what we've been asking for, for the past three-and-a-half years, that the constitutional process of criminal charges be brought against him. So in that sense, it's a tremendous victory.

It doesn't mean the enemy combatant issue is over, and in some sense it's very disappointing because the government is trying to evade Supreme Court review. The Supreme Court could still hear the case.

RAY SUAREZ: Brad Berenson, you heard that, trying evade Supreme Court review. Monday was a looming deadline for the administration to file its briefs as this case made its way to the Supreme Court. Why do you think they charged him now after the president had spent so much time insisting that he has the right to hold people like Jose Padilla indefinitely?

BRAD BERENSON: Well, I think it's a simple situation of now having enough evidence that would be admissible in federal court under the normal standards to bring a criminal case against Mr. Padilla without implicating the kinds of sensitive sources and methods of intelligence that would turn a trial into a travesty.

In short, I think they've indicted him now, taken him out of the military system, and put him into the civilian justice system because they have a case that they believe can stand up in that system without unduly jeopardizing the national security interests of the United States.

RAY SUAREZ: So you disagree with Professor Martinez this was an attempt to keep it from going before the court?

BRAD BERENSON: Well, she's correct that this won't necessarily keep it from coming before the court. I mean, the administration is going to take the position that this moots the Supreme Court case and that the court should therefore not hear it, but Professor Martinez is quite correct that the mootness doctrine contains some escape valves that would allow the Supreme Court to review this case nonetheless.

So that can't have been the driving force behind this decision, although it may have been one among many factors.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Professor, you have called this a big victory, but what about Brad Berenson's point that given the kind of information that is necessary to bring a terror prosecution, there are probably things governments don't want to bring into open court while they may feel that they know something is true, they can't necessarily meet the evidence standard that would be prevailing in a domestic court?

JENNY MARTINEZ: What's really interesting about the charges that have actually been brought against Mr. Padilla, aside from the fact that they're completely unrelated to the grounds on which the government has detained him for the past three-and-a-half years, is that the indictment against the other individuals in Florida was made public more than a year ago. So in terms of when they got the evidence that they might add him to this indictment, from the public indictment, they could have done that more than a year ago.

And so I think that the timing really isn't coincidental when you look at the likelihood of Supreme Court review and the general defensive posture that the Bush administration finds itself in now with respect to detainee issues.

Once the Supreme Court agreed a few weeks ago to hear the Military Commission's case, the Hamdan case, with the McCain amendment and things like that, I think that there is a link between those things and the indictment being handed down this week.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Professor, the attorney general wouldn't speak directly to the question. Is he still, as far as you know, an enemy combatant?

JENNY MARTINEZ: The president's order certainly doesn't say he's not an enemy combatant. And there is nothing the government has said that would lead us to believe that they no longer consider him an enemy combatant or that they couldn't just return him to the military brig any time their want.

They don't like how the criminal trial is going, if they lose some motions in the trial, if he gets acquitted, there's nothing in what the government has said to indicate that they wouldn't just take him right back to the brig. In fact, that's either what they've done or threatened in other cases.

So Mr. Almari, one of the other enemy combatants held in the United States, was already in criminal proceedings. The government lost some pre-trial motions in that case and then declared him an enemy combatant and took him out of the criminal system.

In other cases, in guilty-plea negotiations, reportedly, according to news accounts, the government has told defendants in criminal cases that if they don't plead guilty they might just be deemed enemy combatants and detained indefinitely without charge.

So that's one of the reasons why it's so important we think for the Supreme Court to still hear this case because it is a live issue for Mr. Padilla in terms of the threat of him being returned to the brig, and it's a live issue for everyone else in the United States who also faces the risk of being detained as an enemy combatant without charge as long as the lower court's decision in this case is still on the books.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Brad Berenson, given what the professor just said and given what lower courts have said, both in favor and against the enemy combatant ruling, are you confident that the idea that a U.S. citizen could be arrested in the United States and held indefinitely on the say-so of the executive branch would stand up to high court review now?

BRAD BERENSON: Well, the Supreme Court in recent years has been quite unpredictable in how it has dealt with some of these war-on-terror issues.

For example, the Supreme Court's decision to allow enemy alien combatants held overseas at Guantanamo to come into our courts and sue the president in habeas corpus was something that would have been nearly impossible to anticipate based on the existing law on the books.

So I can't say in trying to handicap the outcome of Supreme Court cases that I'm absolutely confident that that power would have been upheld or would be upheld if Padilla's case is reviewed. I think it would be a close thing in our current Supreme Court.

What I can say is that that power is far from unprecedented. I'm confident that the administration still does very much regard Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant. This was a member of al-Qaida who traveled to Afghanistan, received terrorism training at the notorious al-Farouq camp, had meetings with senior al-Qaida leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaida and returned on orders from them to the United States to commit serious acts of domestic terrorism here.

If we are indeed at war, and I certainly believe we are, that is a classic enemy combatant who can be dealt with by the president under the president's commander-in-chief military war powers and not just under the president's law enforcement powers.

RAY SUAREZ: Do you agree with Professor Martinez that if he was to be found not guilty of the current charges contained in the indictment that he could be sent back to the brig in Charleston still as an enemy combatant?

BRAD BERENSON: I think that would be legally possible. There would be other constraints, political and diplomatic, that might make that very difficult for the administration to do, but the administration clearly regards this as a very, very dangerous individual, and they've shown that they're willing to do what they need to do within the limits of the law to try to keep him out of our streets and people like him out of our skies as well.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Professor Martinez, given what you know about the case now, do you think it's legally and constitutionally possible to craft a law that protects the United States against people it knows or believes to be dangerous but can't necessarily bring the evidence into an open court to say so?

JENNY MARTINEZ: Well, the Constitution is not a suicide pact, but it has only one emergency provision, which is the habeas suspension clause, which allows the Congress, not the president, in case of rebellion or invasion, to suspend the right to habeas corpus, that is the right of individuals to go to a court and seek review of their detention.

And we believe that unless and until Congress suspends the writ of habeas corpus because of rebellion or invasion, there is no constitutional mechanism for simply picking up American citizens here in the United States and holding them without criminal charge or trial.

If you look at what other countries like the United Kingdom or Israel or Spain have done, as well, you can see that they've made some modification to their criminal procedure laws to allow a slightly longer period of pre-trial or pre-charging detention in terrorism cases but it's by a matter of weeks or days, not by months and years.

So, for example, the British parliament was recently debating whether to extend the time that they could hold terrorism suspects without bringing charges up to 28 days. That's a far cry from three-and-a-half years.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Brad Berenson, right now, as I understand it, there is one other man arrested on U.S. soil and declared an enemy combatant. He's not an American citizen. Ali Saleh Kaleb Almari was arrested in Illinois, and he's been in one kind of confinement or another since 2001. How does his case hinge on or not hinge on what happens to Jose Padilla?

BRAD BERENSON: Well, I think at this point it does not hinge much on what happens to Jose Padilla in the criminal courtroom. The charges against Padilla in Miami are peculiar to him, and he'll either be found guilty or not guilty of those charges. And that won't have much impact on any other enemy combatant citizen or not. If Padilla's case is nonetheless reviewed by the Supreme Court, then what the Supreme Court has to say in its decision could have an impact on people like Almari.

Now there's a big difference in the law and in the way the justices have indicated that they regard these issues of presidential war power between how one treats a U.S. citizen and how one treats an alien who is entitled to a much lower level of protection under our Constitution.

So it's difficult to predict with any certainty how a ruling in the case of a U.S. citizen combatant, like Padilla, would translate into that of a non-citizen. But it's only in the event that the Supreme Court reviews Padilla's case that there's any chance that what happens here will impact guys like Almari.

RAY SUAREZ: Brad Berenson, Professor Martinez, thank you both.

BRAD BERENSON: Thank you.

FOCUS - CHRISTIAN NEWS

JIM LEHRER: Now, the rise in popularity of Christian news. Special correspondent Terence Smith has our media unit report.

TERENCE SMITH: It's just before 6:00 AM in Austin, Texas, and Ed Sossen is getting ready for another morning's drive time at KIXL Radio. He's checking sports scores and looking for talk show topics. News director Jim Phillips is readying his newscast. But before they hit the air:

ED SOSSEN: Use us to minister to one person or make one person feel a little less alone, make one person smile, leave one person a little bit closer to you. This is all we ask, in Jesus's name, amen.

SPOKESMAN: Thirteen thousand foreclosures in June.

TERENCE SMITH: KIXL Radio is a leading Christian radio station in the Texas capital, and part of one of the fastest-growing sectors in the nation's media.

ED SOSSEN: Morning, everybody. This is the KIXL Morning Magazine. I'm Ed Sossen. Blessings on you, hope you had a great Wednesday.

TERENCE SMITH: In the last seven years alone, the number of Christian-format radio stations has doubled to over 2,000.

SPOKESMAN: How's my levels there, Jeffrey?

JEFFREY: You're okay.

SPOKESMAN: Good deal. Good deal.

SPOKESMAN: How's your peace that passes understanding?

TERENCE SMITH: Nationwide the Christian radio audience is up 33 percent in the last five years. Tens of millions of Americans tune in to Christian radio on a weekly basis.

SPOKESMAN: Celebrating the love and care of Jesus. We're KIXL 970.

ED SOSSEN: We do the same kinds of things-- traffic, news, weather, sports-- that another radio station would give, we just do it from a Christian perspective and hopefully people find that comforting.

TERENCE SMITH: How do you do the traffic from a Christian perspective?

ED SOSSEN: (Laughs) It's what you wrap it around.

TERENCE SMITH: And in many cases, the Christianity comes wrapped around politics.

ED SOSSEN: Those of us who are to right of center don't want fair hope for a fair, impartial Supreme Court justice. We want somebody who agrees with us.

TERENCE SMITH: But Sossen says his first allegiance is to a higher power, not a party.

ED SOSSEN: God, the last time I checked, is still spelled G-o-d, not G-O- P. If I have to pledge allegiance to their platform, I don't want a part of it because I believe it's contrary to my faith.

TERENCE SMITH: Half a continent away in Virginia Beach, Virginia, politics and faith have been the twin calling cards of Pat Robertson, the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network. CBN was founded by Robertson in 1961.

The controversial evangelical leader and one-time Republican presidential candidate has built the network into an international powerhouse, available in 71 languages in over 200 countries. CBN is a not-for-profit institution; its 2004 revenues were over $186 million.

The flagship program is the Robertson-hosted "700 Club," an hour-long mix of information, interviews and what its producers call "inspiration."

PAT ROBERTSON: Bless the people, meet their needs.

TERENCE SMITH: It's also one of the longest-running shows in television history, available in 90 million homes in the United States with an average daily viewership of around one million. CBN also has a small but growing news division, with 40 staffers and daily and weekly 30-minute news broadcasts.

SPOKESMAN: Go to our web site at cbn.com.

TERENCE SMITH: Lee Webb is its lead anchor.

TERENCE SMITH: If you had to try to define Christian news, Christian broadcasting, Christian journalism, how would you?

LEE WEBB: Well, I'll only speak to what we do here, and that is to try to report on a daily basis news with a redemptive light. And I say that because, you know, we're not out to just reporting on the negative stories. I think we're trying to find good that comes from stories.

TERENCE SMITH: Webb points to a story he reported recently from the hurricane zone outside New Orleans, in Slidell, Louisiana.

LEE WEBB: I went to worship at a local church expecting maybe two weeks after the storm to find a lot of long faces. I found something totally different. They testified to God's goodness, despite the fact that many of these folks lost everything they own.

TERENCE SMITH: Might you have done that story largely the same way for mainstream media?

LEE WEBB: I hope I would have been allowed to do that story. I suspect that my producers would probably have directed to me do more of a story on how residents are cleaning up after the storm.

TERENCE SMITH: Webb's executive producer is Rob Allman, a veteran of 20-plus years in local news. He says he came to CBN one year ago to get away from car chases and drive-by shootings.

ROB ALLMAN: We try to look for people helping people, Christians who are showing the love of Jesus Christ in a meaningful way, not just necessarily in an evangelical trying to "spread the gospel," but getting involved in either missionary work or volunteer work.

TERENCE SMITH: CBN is the most- watched of six national television networks that now broadcast exclusively Christian programming. And come December, there will be a seventh, operated by the National Religious Broadcasters, an industry association. CBN will produce a nightly newscast for the new network.

There are print equivalents, as well. Marvin Olasky is editor-in-chief of World magazine, which proclaims to report from "a perspective committed to the bible as the inerrant word of God." The magazine has a weekly circulation of about 130,000.

MARVIN OLASKY: Christians know that there is truth in the world even with a capital "t," where you get the best sense of what that truth is from the bible.

TERENCE SMITH: Olasky, who advised the George W. Bush presidential campaign in 2000, holds a workshop for Christian journalists at his home in Austin, separate from his duties as a professor of journalism at the publicly-funded University of Texas.

Jill Nelson and Lynde Langdon are two of his students, both with backgrounds in secular journalism: Langdon in newspaper reporting and nelson in television. But in Christian journalism they have found something different.

JILL NELSON: You see in this element of Christian journalism a real desire to investigate and to really dig deeper into stories rather than have this kind of stand-offish approach of trying to be nonbiased and just presenting both sides and throwing them out there and letting people decide what they think.

LYNDE LANGDON: I'm always interested in kind of coming at things from the angles, from the angle of the truth presented in the bible. The bible says that a loving God created the entire universe and has a plan and a purpose for it. And I'm looking for things that reflect that and for things that don't, and then asking the questions why.

TERENCE SMITH: Olasky denies that what he teaches is advocacy journalism, saying God does not need "public relations help." Nevertheless:

MARVIN OLASKY: We are very clearly and directly and forthrightly advocates in one sense. We are advocates for the bible as God's word.

TERENCE SMITH: But is that journalism or evangelism? Sanford Ungar is president of Goucher College outside Baltimore and was a journalist and a journalism educator for nearly 40 years.

SANFORD UNGAR: They're influenced by a higher calling, by another mission and they say that themselves. It's a special kind of advocacy journalism.

TERENCE SMITH: Ungar says that journalism, as he practiced it and taught it, is devoutly neutral. He has had to explain that position in the past.

SANFORD UNGAR: I had an encounter with a columnist, a rather well known columnist at one point and he publicly asked me "Do you have a bible on your desk?" And I said, "no, I don't," because that was truth. He said, "How can you possibly do your job?"

TERENCE SMITH: What was your answer to the question?

SANFORD UNGAR: My answer was that it has nothing to do -- nothing to do with writing about events in the country, in the world.

TERENCE SMITH: But for Christian news organizations, the bible is central to their reporting. Olasky says that leads to a journalism that is required to be fair, but not necessarily balanced. Case in point: Reporting on the incendiary issue of abortion.

MARVIN OLASKY: When we report a story, we start from that premise: That unborn children should not be killed, and that's very different. We won't try to balance a story between the abortionists and a pro-life person.

TERENCE SMITH: CBN's Lee Webb says there are other issues central to who they are as Christian journalists.

LEE WEBB: I think you could probably make the case that we're probably going to be a bit pro -- more pro-Israel than other media outlets.

TERENCE SMITH: Why?

LEE WEBB: Well, I think that by and large, the production staff and the editorial staff have here believes, from a biblical point of view, that Israel has a right to the land.

TERENCE SMITH: So, well, that gets to the essence, doesn't it, that your beliefs on a given subject filter or affect the coverage?

LEE WEBB: Yeah. And I'm not sure -- I'm not going to apologize for that, either.

TERENCE SMITH: Sanford Ungar worries how that will affect news consumers.

SANFORD UNGAR: The practitioners of Christian journalism would like to influence people, would like to convince them of a reality as they see it and they seem to be fairly direct and candid about that. And it does concern me if we are attempting to have a public dialogue on matters of policy, on events in this country and in the world.

LEE WEBB: We are grateful for the opportunity to be here today and report the news.

TERENCE SMITH: Meanwhile, Christian news organizations are reaching more and more people, and though they may be preaching to the choir, it is a choir that is growing larger every day.

FOCUS - TRAVEL TURBULENCE

JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, Jeffrey Brown has our Thanksgiving Eve look at the airline industry's troubles.

JEFFREY BROWN: If turkey is a Thanksgiving tradition millions look forward to... (baby crying) ...travel is the tradition they dread.

At the nation's airports today, the lines were long. An estimated 21 million people will be flying American carriers this holiday weekend. That's good news for the airlines, who could use some as they try to fly through a difficult year.

The industry was particularly hard hit by high jet fuel costs in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. United, in bankruptcy since 2002, remains there.

In September, two more of the nation's largest seven airlines joined it, as Delta and Northwest filed for Chapter 11 protection on the same day. Delta decided to shut down Song, its low fare carrier. Northwest has been battling with its employees to cut labor costs.

The airlines permanently replaced members of its mechanics union, who'd walked off the job in August over proposed wage and benefit cuts. Northwest also wants to outsource international flight attendant jobs.

Earlier this month, low-fare carrier, Independence Air, also sought bankruptcy protection. One large company, USAirways, came out of bankruptcy this year and merged with America West.

JEFFREY BROWN: Two long-time observers give us a snapshot of the airline industry now. Darryl Jenkins is a visiting professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and vice chairman of Portals to the World, an online booking agency. Michael Levine has served as an executive with three airlines in government on aviation matters, and is now at the New York University School of Law. And welcome to both of you.

Mr. Levine, starting with you, we have talked with you over the years about the changing airline industry. Broadly speaking, where do things stand now?

MICHAEL E. LEVINE: Well, we're at the point which Churchill called in a dark day of World War II, the end of the beginning, I think. Airlines that were shaped by regulation and by very restrictive work rules and so on have come up against competitors who aren't so constrained. They've been forced to change. Most of the airlines are being forced to change with the help of the bankruptcy laws. I think that those that haven't yet used them are likely to use them or will use them again in some cases.

And so we are only beginning to see what competition would look like between historic airlines, which are now free to compete, and new entrant airlines, which are free to compete and take them on.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mr. Jenkins, I wonder, does it even make sense to talk about the airline industry, or should we talk about, as Mr. Levine says, the legacy, so-called legacy, older airlines and then these newer ones that are eager to take them on?

DARRYL JENKINS: Certainly I agree with most of what Mike just said. This is a new era that we're just getting into. The encouraging things that are going on in the industry right now - it's in the last year we were able to see fares rise. As a matter of fact, we saw --

JEFFREY BROWN: Encouraging for airlines if not for the rest of us.

DARRYL JENKINS: We saw fares rise more than we've ever seen them do in one year. We're at a very good revenue level right now. If we can maintain this revenue, I think things are going to get better. The bad news last year certainly was the increases in jet fuel. And as the prices of jet fuel went up and up, it really pretty much eradicated all of the give-backs the pilots and all the other employees had given to the airlines.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mr. Levine, did you see the jet fuel increase as a big factor, is that the sort of blip that plays into the big changes you're talking about?

MICHAEL E. LEVINE: I think it's just a riff, it's the kind of thing that pushes -- accelerates these changes. I disagree with Darryl in one important respect. I don't think we're going to see sustained rising air fares. We have an enormous amount of capacity coming online to the new entrance airlines. The LCC's all have capacity they could bring back online. Every time it shows any sign of getting a little bit better yourself, going to see more flying, and I think that we'll go through an extended period of an inflation-adjusted and fuel-cost adjusted terms very low fares.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, let's break this down a little bit. When we look at, for example, Delta and Northwest entered bankruptcy fairly recently, what are the issues there? Is it the labor costs? Is it the fuel costs? We'll start with you, Mr. Jenkins?

DARRYL JENKINS: It's certainly all of the above. When the airlines were deregulated, the legacy airlines -- Delta, American, and United -- all had very restrictive labor agreements in place, which really became worse over time. Now really first we've seen of them loosen up. And I think this will be much better for everyone, including the employees, as well. So these things are an important first step in reorganizing airlines.

In terms of Mike's comment about pricing though, the legacy airlines still have 70 percent of the capacity. With that much capacity, they control an awful lot of the pricing. We've seen even the low-cost airlines out there increasing prices in the last year.

So I think these prices are here. They're going to stick. Nobody's going to reduce price right now. Even Southwest Airlines in the last two months has raised its fares four or five times.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mr. Levine?

MICHAEL E. LEVINE: Well, you're going to see fares go up as fuel costs go up and come down when fuel costs come down again, but the trend is going to be downward, and the reason the trend is going to be downward is that the new entrant airlines have 30 percent of the market now. They had 5 percent of the market in 1995.

Who knows what percentage they will have in 1998 or "9. They have enough equipment on order to keep expanding their share of the market. The legacy airlines, in my opinion, don't have the option of just letting them expand and giving them a fare umbrella.

Sure they'll raise their fares when they're forced to by cost, the low-cost airlines will, but they're not going to raise them enough to help the legacy airlines who even now, after all this pain and suffering by employees, by everybody, still have costs that are way above what they need to be to compete.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mr. Levine, explain something to us that seems counterintuitive, at least to me, because we read about these airlines that -- planes are going up and they seem more filled than they did in recent years. The seats have bodies. Yet we hear about these airlines losing money. Why is that?

MICHAEL E. LEVINE: Well, you know, if everyone on the plane paid five bucks apiece, you could fill it and not even pay for enough gas to taxi to the end of the runway. The people who are on the planes are filling seats, but they are not together providing enough money to keep the airline going. And that's the nub of the problem. It's as old as Dickens and older than that. If your income exceeds your expenses, you're in good shape. And if your expenses exceed your income, you're in trouble.

JEFFREY BROWN: That's what it is, you have the bodies, but you need them to pay for more each seat to get your costs down?

MICHAEL E. LEVINE: My point is that you're not going to get the bodies to pay more than they have to pay the low-cost airlines. They have no particular tenderness toward any particular -- toward any airline. What they want is they want to fly, and they want to fly safely and they want to pay the lowest price they can to do it.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mr. Jenkins?

DARRYL JENKINS: We've seen revenue levels and fare levels pretty much where they were in 1999. And that was a very good year. We didn't have all of the excess costs with jet fuel price increases; I think we'd be having a reasonable year for the airlines right now.

The illusion of a low fare is better than a low fare. And many of the low-fare carriers depend on business travelers in order to make money. And those fares are at a very good level right now. There is not a low-fare airline out there that's going to lower their prices over the next year or so.

So for the next year at least, I think we're going to see fares at this level. As a matter of fact, next spring we'll probably see four or five more small air price increases.

JEFFREY BROWN: We just have a minute. So let me just let both of you, very briefly, what's your advice to consumers as we start this holiday season, starting with you, Mr. Levine?

MICHAEL E. LEVINE: Well, I think they should shop carefully. I think Darryl's right. Fares will be up this holiday season. They may stay up a bit into the spring. Once airlines find that the fares are staying up you're going to see more capacity come online and there will be more buying opportunities available.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mr. Jenkins?

DARRYL JENKINS: Well, for this holiday season I think many travelers are going to experience one or two Prozac moments, so when you go to the airport, go with a very good sense of humor and a lot of time.

JEFFREY BROWN: You mean, because of security lines as well?

DARRYL JENKINS: Security lines and as, you know, the airlines have tried to push price up; they've reduced the number of planes in the air. So planes that are flying now have more passengers on than they historically have.

In the last year, an airline like Northwest Airlines had 80 percent of its seats sold at any one time. So planes are going to be full. So go early; go with a very good sense of humor.

JEFFREY BROWN: And be very patient. All right. Darryl Jenkins and Michael Levine, thank you both very much.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: The president of Israel set March 28as the date for early elections. Also, Prime Minister Sharon registered his new centrist party, naming it National Responsibility. Possible plans to shrink the U.S. troop presence in Iraq were revealed. They would move three of eighteen combat brigades out of Iraq. And AAA said more than 37 million people will travel over this long holiday weekend.

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 eight more.

JIM LEHRER: We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. Have a nice Thanksgiving holiday. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.