The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

RAY SUAREZ: Good evening. I'm Ray Suarez. Jim Lehrer is off. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; then, the State Department's concerns about nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea; the Pentagon secrets that were shared with pro-Israel lobbyists; free tutoring for failing students, and British Prime Minister Blair's tough election campaign.

NEWS SUMMARY

RAY SUAREZ: A new round of attacks by insurgents in Baghdad killed at least 26 people today. It's the latest in a spate of violence that's erupted since Iraq's new government was named last week. Nearly 200 people, mostly Iraqi security forces, have been killed. We have a report narrated by Mark Webster of Independent Television News.

MARK WEBSTER: These are dark days for the fledgling Iraqi government as the insurgents continue their bloody onslaught. More than 20 people were thought to have died in a series of incidents around the capital Baghdad. Here a man queuing with others at an Iraqi recruitment center set off a devastating explosion. Bodies of victims were stacked up at Baghdad's Yarmuk Hospital, as it was clear the main targets were fresh recruits for the security forces. These men lost their lives seeking a job which pays less than $100 a month. But in a country with 70 percent unemployment, there's no shortage of young men desperate for any work. (Sirens) Yesterday's attack in the town of Irbil was the most bloody for months. A suicide bomber waiting with others for a job in the police blew himself up killing 60 Iraqis and wounding more than 150.

RAY SUAREZ: Elsewhere in Iraq today, a car bomb exploded near a police patrol in Mosul. Four policemen were killed, five more were wounded. And backed by U.S. troops, Iraqi security forces rounded up 13 suspected insurgents in a series of raids north of Baghdad. Weapons and ammunition were also seized. The U.S. Marine Corps said it will not file charges against a Marine accused of shooting to death a wounded Iraqi. The unidentified corporal was captured on camera shooting the man at a Fallujah mosque last November. The Marine claimed it was self defense. The commanding general of the First Marine Division said the corporal actions were: "consistent with the established rules of engagement and the law of armed conflict." Today's decision means the Marine will not face a court- martial. Iran has agreed to keep talking with the European Union about the future of its nuclear program. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi today said, "We'll continue negotiations with the European side provided it will lead us somewhere tangible in a matter of time." Iran insists its nuclear program is geared only to produce fuel for power plants. But last fall it agreed to stop production while it negotiated a long-term solution that includes economic incentives. However, four days of talks at the United Nations this week have produced no results. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. Broadcast networks in Britain have projected that Tony Blair has secured a third term as prime minister but that his Labour Party lost a sizable portion of its majority in parliament. Blair faced a stiff challenge during general elections today from opponents in the war in Iraq. We'll have more on this story as well later in the program. Two makeshift bombs went off outside the British consulate in New York early this morning. Police cautioned against connecting the blasts to the British elections. The crude devices were planted in cement flower pots outside the building, which also houses other foreign offices. The damage was slight and there were no injures. The New York blast led to beefed up security at potential British targets throughout the U.S. The British consulate in Chicago was temporarily closed for security checks, and there was a heavy police presence at the British embassy in Washington. Other diplomatic buildings were blocked off as well. In Colombia today, two U.S. Army soldiers accused of arms trafficking were handed over to American officials. The soldiers were arrested and held in a mountain town southwest of Bogota Tuesday, for allegedly plotting to sell ammunition to outlawed paramilitary groups. The Pentagon said the soldiers are now in custody at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. The House of Representatives today overwhelmingly approved an $82 billion emergency spending bill. Most of the money is for continued military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. It also includes increased benefits for soldiers injured or killed in the field. And $4 billion goes to counterterrorism efforts worldwide and foreign aid, specifically for the Palestinian territories and countries affected by the tsunami. House Republicans praised the bill for provisions curbing illegal immigration, including one known as the Real ID Act that would require states to verify driver's license applicants are American citizens or legal immigrants.

REP. J.D. HAYWORTH: This supplementary conference report includes the Real ID Act. And at long last, the Congress of the United States gets real and understands that border security and national security are one and the same.

RAY SUAREZ: While most Democrats voted for the bill, many also called it just another blank check for President Bush.

REP. JIM McDERMOTT: Today, what we're doing is continuing to pursue the Bush war of folly in Iraq. He has spent $200 billion of our money so far. He says, please give me another 80, I don't know what I'm going to do with it but I'm going to keep spending it over there.

RAY SUAREZ: The Senate is likely to approve the spending bill next week, raising the total spent on fighting terrorism since 2001 to more than $300 billion. The Bush administration today reversed a Clinton-era decision and removed nearly 56 million acres of remote national forests from federal protection. That could open the land to road building, logging and other commercial projects. Governors of states with the protected forests, mostly in Alaska and the West, will be allowed to submit plans for how the land should be developed, if at all. Pharmaceutical giant Merck is under new leadership today. Revenues have been down and lawsuits up since the company had to recall its blockbuster drug Vioxx last fall. Raymond Gilmartin will relinquish the position of president and CEO immediately, but stay on as an adviser. Richard Clark will be the new chief executive. He had served as president of Merck's manufacturing division. In economic news, worker productivity was better than expected in the first quarter of the year. The Labor Department reported today it increased at an annual rate of 2.6 percent, the best showing in nine months. Also today, Standard & Poor's cut the debt ratings of General Motors and Ford to junk status. That lower credit rating will increase borrowing costs and limit fund-raising options for the two automakers. On Wall Street, the news sent shares of GM and Ford tumbling, and lowered stocks in general. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 44 points to close at 10,340. The NASDAQ fell less than a point to close at 1961. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: Nuclear concerns; Pentagon secrets; free tutoring; and British elections.

FOCUS - NUCLEAR TENSIONS

RAY SUAREZ: Nuclear tensions come to a head at United Nations conference. Margaret Warner has that story.

MARGARET WARNER: As delegates from 188 countries meet at the U.N. this week on stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, concern over Iran and North Korea has held center stage.

Last weekend, Iran threatened to resume its uranium enrichment programs as early as this week -- because talks with the Europeans were going nowhere. But today the Iranian foreign minister said Tehran was prepared to continue talking.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il declared last weekend he'd never resume negotiations with the U.S. and others because President Bush was a "philistine." North Korea withdrew from the treaty two years ago.

But a White House spokesman said today that President Bush --- after talking with Chinese President Hu Jintao by phone -- was determined to try to get North Korea back to the bargaining table.

At the conference itself, debate between the U.S. and Iran has been anything but diplomatic.

The top U.S. official there said Monday the international community should cut Iran and North Korea off from any nuclear energy technology...because they had cheated on the treaty. He also demanded that Iran dismantle all the nuclear facilities it had built over two decades.

RADEMAKER: Iran persists in not cooperating fully. Iran has made clear its determination to retain the nuclear infrastructure it secretly built in violation of its NPT safeguards obligations.

MARGARET WARNER: But the next day, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi declared Iran had an "inalienable right" to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes --

KAMAL KHARRAZI: I is unacceptable that some tend to limit the access to peaceful nuclear technology to an exclusively -- to an exclusive club of technologically advanced states, under the pretext of non- proliferation. This attitude is in clear violation of the letter and spirit of the treaty, and destroys the common fundamental balance which exists between the rights and obligations in the treaty.

MARGARET WARNER: The rhetoric at the conference is matched by a debate here at home about the Bush administration's approach.

Long time arms control advocates like Joe Cirincione do share the administration's worry over Iran's threat to resume uranium enrichment.

JOE CIRINCIONE: If we let Iran and Brazil and these other countries get this technology, many more countries might want it. And then you have a world where many countries are on the very brink of nuclear weapons capability. That's too risky a situation to be able to tolerate. We've got to stop it here; we've got to stop it now.

MARGARET WARNER: How short is the step between getting to full enrichment capability for peaceful purposes and being able to manufacture weapons?

JOE CIRINCIONE: Once you have a large functioning enrichment capability it's just a matter of retooling it to turn it into a nuclear bomb factory. It's observable. The inspectors would see it happening but they couldn't do anything to stop it. That's the problem.

MARGARET WARNER: But Cirincione says the Bush administration is standing in the way of solving that and other proliferation problems because it hasn't lived up to pledges the U.S. made at past NPT conferences on missile defenses, nuclear testing.... and cuts to U.S. nuclear weapons stockpiles.

JOE CIRINCIONE: The United States is coming into this conference with the view that it's basically a problem of compliance, and what they mean by that is other people's compliance, particularly Iran and North Korea. For most of the countries in this conference they see the problem of Iran and North Korea but they also see it as a problem of compliance on the part of the U.S. and those other countries with the nuclear weapons for hanging on to these Cold War arsenals.

MARGARET WARNER: The NPT conference in New York runs until May 27. Whether it will agree on anything to contain the spread of nuclear technology remains a very open question.

MARGARET WARNER: Joining me now to discuss the administration position and expectations for this conference is Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs. Ambassador -- Undersecretary Burns, welcome.

NICHOLAS BURNS: Thank you very much, Margaret. Nice to be with you.

MARGARET WARNER: Thanks for being with us. Let's start with today's news. How significant or how did you read what the Iranian foreign minister said today about the fact that Iran really is willing to continue talks with the Europeans?

NICHOLAS BURNS: Well, it's good to hear the statement by the Iranian foreign minister, but I must say that we're a little bit skeptical. Iran for 18 years withheld the truth about its nuclear weapons activities and enrichment programs from the IAEA. The United States is fully supportive of the efforts of the European governments to try to negotiate an agreement with Iran but that negotiation is very specific. Iran must cease and dismantle all of its nuclear fuel cycle activities and it must end forever its attempt to build a nuclear weapons program behind the guise of what it says is a peaceful nuclear energy program. So while it is good the Iranians want to continue the negotiations, we would certainly like to see some degree of seriousness by Iran in those negotiations itself.

MARGARET WARNER: But as you know, I mean, Iran says that under the treaty, it has an inalienable right to continue pursuing this technology for civilian purposes.

NICHOLAS BURNS: But the agreement that Iran entered into November of last year with Paris, Britain, France and Germany, is that it will not just suspend its nuclear fuel cycle activities. It will actually lead to cessation and dismantling. That means that Iran would not be able to have the possibility to enrich or produce fissile material which, as you know, is the essential ingredient in the capacity to build a nuclear device. Given Iran's track record over the last 18 years or so and given the fact that it is a state that's been highly irresponsible in the way it's interacted with all of its neighbors we cannot afford, the world cannot afford to see Iran acquire this type of capability.

MARGARET WARNER: But I mean, the U.S. acknowledging that under the treaty it has the right to pursue this technology but that it somehow - are you saying it has forfeited it because it cheated?

NICHOLAS BURNS: Iran did cheat for a very long time. That is not just the opinion of the United States; it's the opinion of the international community and of the International Atomic Energy Association, which is the world watchdog on all the nuclear powers and states that wish to become nuclear powers. Right now in New York at the United Nations we are debating the non-proliferation treaty and what we should do to strengthen it. And I think the clear will of the international community is that a state like Iran should not become a nuclear power. It is not a responsible state; it's a state that has supported terrorist groups in the Middle East; it's a state that has not been consistent with the more positive moves of the Israelis and Palestinians to seek peace or certainly hasn't been a positive player in what is happening inside Iraq. So given this track record, we can't at all support the possibility of Iran acquiring this type of capability.

MARGARET WARNER: Now in New York, you have support for what, at least some delegates have said was a discriminatory policy that it is perfectly all right for Brazil to continue pursuing this technology but not for Iran.

NICHOLAS BURNS: There are many states around the world that have peaceful nuclear energy programs that run nuclear reactors, many states in Europe and beyond, but those states have -- are signatories for the non-proliferation treaty; they abided by the restrictions in that treaty. But here we have in the case of Iran, a country that has not done that, a country that has not told the truth in the past, so we would be a little bit naive if we took these promises at face value. And so that's why we remain skeptical about what it is doing.

MARGARET WARNER: Now there are many delegates in New York that have been quoted this week, Kofi Annan, delegates from friendly countries like New Zealand and Luxembourg, who have said the U.S. is undercutting its own position because it has not lived up to all of its pledges. It hasn't reduced its arsenals as much as it should, and now -- the Pentagon is now talking about developing a new kind of bunker buster nuclear weapon.

NICHOLAS BURNS: The United States, Margaret, is an original signatory of the non-proliferation treaty. We are one of the leaders in protecting that treaty and trying to strengthen it. As you know, three years ago we signed a landmark treaty with the Russian Federation to reduce the level of nuclear warheads on both sides to historically low levels. Before that, in the administrations of both President Clinton and President George H.W. Bush, we took further measures to try to ensure nuclear stability between the United States and the Russian Federation. So I have to say I don't know what specific statements you're referring to but the United States, I think, had an unassailable position as a leader in the movement to try to stem the spread of nuclear technology and particularly of fissile material and keep it out of the hands of irresponsible nations like Iran who should not be entrusted with it.

MARGARET WARNER: So you're saying that, your read of the conference is that the U.S. hasn't been undercut, Bush administration, by the fact that it has, for instance, not done, as it said in 2000, which was push to ratify the test ban treaty, and walked away from the ABM Treaty - this new treaty in Moscow you have with the Russians is not verifiable - you don't think that really plays into the negotiating and the bargaining that is going on in New York?

NICHOLAS BURNS: I don't think so at all. I think the story this week is that there is a new international spotlight on both Iran and North Korea, two states that all of us have to ensure do not require nuclear weapons capability. And I'd just like to say, on the historical record, the United States did not walk away from the ABM Treaty. We decided with the Russian Federation to negotiate a new treaty to take its place. And that treaty holds the promise of bringing us down to levels of nuclear warheads, low levels that we haven't seen since the dawn of the nuclear age when there was this tremendous buildup of the nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., way back in the beginning of the Cold War. So we think that we have been a highly responsible adherent to this treaty and the focus has to be on those countries, frankly, whose track records are very poor, and Iran and North Korea lead that pack.

MARGARET WARNER: So what specifically does the U.S. want to get out of this conference? Is there something you're specifically proposing that would be concrete?

NICHOLAS BURNS: President Bush made a statement at the beginning of this week; Secretary Rice has spoken out of course this week about the non-proliferation treaty. We want to see a renewed and strengthen international effort to took at those states that seek to violate the non-proliferation treaty, that seek to create nuclear weapons capabilities when they clearly should not and we would like the international community to apply pressure to them to cease and desist. And that's why President Bush decided to support the efforts of Britain, France, and Germany to achieve a peaceful, diplomatic solution to the problem that Iran has posed. That is the track we're on. Secretary Rice reaffirmed that this week, earlier this week, and we hope to see a European success and we hope that Iran will live you up to that agreement if it is reached.

MARGARET WARNER: So you're not talking about a consensus that stands behind the talks. Let me ask you about North Korea. North Korea, of course, is not at the conference. They walked away from the treaty. Is there practically anything this conference can do to - to rein in North Korea?

NICHOLAS BURNS: Well, I think there is a lot that that the international community can do. President Bush had a conversation with President Hu of China today by telephone, and they both agree that it is time for North Korea to return to the six-party talks. It has been 11 months since North Korea walked away from those talks. North Korea clearly has to abide by the wishes of China, of the Russian Federation, Japan, South Korea, and the United States, rejoin these talks and walk back the developments of the last few years which the North claims have led to its own nuclear weapons capability; that's another regime that sensible people around the world can agree should never possess nuclear weapons. And we've got to stem that tide as well.

MARGARET WARNER: I guess - what I'm having a hard time figuring out here what is new here - I mean, that has been has been the U.S. position - the U.S. and China have agreed on this before and the fact is, as you've said, it's been 11 months. And then North Koreans say they're continuing to produce nuclear weapons.

NICHOLAS BURNS: I do think there is an increasing level of frustration in Asia, certainly, and certainly in the United States about the refusal of the North Koreans to even talk to the rest of the world about what they claim is the constitution of a nuclear weapons program. If you look at the regime in Pyongyang and look at its erratic behavior, it is clearly not a responsible state, and so President Bush and Secretary Rice believe one of the great problems of our generation is to assure that nuclear weapons technology be kept out of the hands of states that are irresponsible.

MARGARET WARNER: A final brief question just following up on that, Mohammed -

NICHOLAS BURNS: -- they shouldn't have these weapons -

MARGARET WARNER: Excuse me. I'm sorry for interrupt you. Mohammed elBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Agency, is saying, okay, one solution would be let's put all enriched fuel under international control; give everyone access but everyone abides to the same rules from the U.S. to North Korea. Would the United States support that proposal?

NICHOLAS BURNS: You know, I think we understand the proposal has been made, but it's not in a sense a realistic proposal at this time because you have these major proliferators of nuclear energy technology and nuclear weapons technology at large in the world today. And the job of the nuclear proliferation treaty and all the states debating this in New York this week is to lasso those states and corral them and make sure that responsible countries like the United States can entrust what these countries are saying and doing. And the only way we can achieve that is to have open and verifiable agreements. That's what we're trying to do with Iran right now. And that's clearly what the effort of the European Union countries is and we support that. With North Korea, it's a little bit more difficult; they refuse to even show up at the talks. So I think the most realism way forward is to proceed with the six-party talks in North Korea, and also try to seek a diplomatic solution with Iran. The Iranians know that if they break the agreement with the European countries, the alternative is to have the United Nations Security Council have the issue referred to them and look at the issue of sanctions. We hope very much that the Iranians will choose the first course, which is a negotiated agreement to cease and dismantle all of their activities.

MARGARET WARNER: Undersecretary Nicholas Burns, thank you so much.

NICHOLAS BURNS: Margaret, thank you very much.

FOCUS - BRITAIN VOTES

RAY SUAREZ: President Bush's strongest ally faces a test at the ballot box. (Bell rings) London's Big Ben chimed 7:00 this morning, signaling the official start to voting across Britain. It was a family affair in northern England. British Prime Minister Tony Blair went to the polls in one last bid to lead his Labour Party to victory. Joined by his wife and two eldest sons-- both of them first time voters-- Blair set out to achieve a third term in office. It would be a first for a Labour Party prime minister. Polls show Labour in the lead. Can the party hold its huge 161- seat majority in the House of Commons? Leading the opposition conservative party is Michael Howard. He has campaigned on the theme that Mr. Blair is a liar.

MICHAEL HOWARD, Leader, Conservative Party: If you can't trust Mr. Blair on the decision to take the country to war, the most important decision a prime minister can take, how can you trust Mr. Blair on anything else ever again?

RAY SUAREZ: Many Britons, including Labour voters, have echoed the charges that Blair can't be trusted; that he misled the country into the Iraq War in 2003. But the prime minister said he was not a liar.

TONY BLAIR: Well, I've never told a lie, no. I don't intend to go telling lies to people. I did not lie over Iraq. I've made that very clear to people.

RAY SUAREZ: Charles Kennedy leads the number-three party in the House of Commons, the Liberal Democrats. Against the Iraq war from the beginning, he wants disenchanted Labour voters to switch to his party.

CHARLES KENNEDY: Vote for us if, like us, you say never again to an episode like Iraq.

RAY SUAREZ: Turnout, especially among traditional Labour supporters, could be crucial. At the last general election in 2001, 59 percent came to the polls, high by American standards, but the lowest in Britain since 1918, right after World War I.

RAY SUAREZ: For more now on today's election I'm joined by Dan Balz, political reporter for the Washington Post" Dan, welcome. The polls have been closed just a short time. Has an outline of a result begun to emerge?

DAN BALZ: Well, the first exit poll projections have been issued, Ray. They suggest two things: One, that Tony Blair will win a third term for the Labour Party, which would be historic, as was mentioned in the piece. But the projections are for a significantly reduced majority. Under 100, the first polls said it could be 66 seats. We in the United States know that we have to be wary of exit polls, particularly the first ones that come out. So I don't think we want to project too far ahead, but it looks like this could be a more disappointing night for Labour than it appeared to be a couple days ago.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, during this final week of the campaign, people were talking about just how big that majority would be. What is the significance attached to it if Labour will continue to have working control of the House of Commons?

DAN BALZ: Well, a couple of things. They would have working control with 66- or 70-vote majority, but there are back benchers in the Labour Party who have been very much against Prime Minister Blair on the war and who might rebel. As you know, the prime minister has already said that he is not going to stand for a fourth term in office. Standing in the wings is Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer. There's some feeling here that if the majority they end up with tonight is smaller than anticipated, there will be more pressure for Prime Minister Blair to step down earlier rather than later in the third term.

RAY SUAREZ: And stepping down, there doesn't have to be to be another election. He can, in effect, hand off power to the leader of whoever the party chooses?

DAN BALZ: That's exactly right. He can step down at any time and with the majority they have, they would elect a new leader and the new leader would become the prime minister. He has said he wants to serve a full third term, indicating that he would like to serve actually longer than Margaret Thatcher did, which was well more than 11 years. He would have to serve three- plus years to do that. Depending on the size of the majority, he could be seen within his own party as a lame duck. As you know, Ray, there is a lot of dissatisfaction with him within his own party. That's the problem he has been facing in this election, is to try to stir up the Labour loyalists to continue to stand by him in order to do some things particularly on the domestic side he has not been able to get done in the first eight years. So he wants more time, in essence, to create a legacy that goes beyond the Iraq War. And we won't know obviously until we actually see real results, how much of a working majority he's going to have. They have said today that if he came out of this with a majority of over 100 seats, he might have a pretty free hand for a while. So we are in kind of a nether-nether world here at this hour of the night as we wait the results of the actual constituencies or districts.

RAY SUAREZ: In the final days of the active campaign and as the polls opened this morning, what were the big issues, the dominating issues?

DAN BALZ: Well, obviously as we suggested, Iraq is a very big issue, particularly within the Labour Party. But the economy is a big issue as well, and one that has worked very well for Mr. Blair. He and Gordon Brown have managed to keep the economy on an even keel for eight years with low unemployment, low inflation. And there are a lot of people in Britain who feel that they are better off today than they were eight years ago, and they are not necessarily inclined to vote out the Labour government. The other thing that is important always here is the national health service. The Labour Government has moved to increase spending significantly on the health service here. It is beginning to show some results, but there are still complaints about it. Education obviously is an issue, and another big issue is immigration. The Conservative Party, which has an advantage on that issue, has struck very hard on it, arguing that the Labour Government has allowed the borders to become out of control. Tony Blair gave a speech a couple weeks ago hitting back saying that they were beginning to move, they were taking action. But that has certainly caused Labour a problem in this election.

RAY SUAREZ: You mention that the exit polls have shown a reduced majority for Labour. But we don't know yet who the prime beneficiary of those lost seats has been, right?

DAN BALZ: No, we don't. There are some suggestions that it is likely to be the Conservative Party, but if you look at the national share of their vote, they are still within the 33 percent range, which is about where they have been the last couple of elections. This is a party that basically ruled Great Britain for the last century. They were the dominant party. They got walloped in 1997; they had a very bad election again in2001. They are projected to pick up seats. But if they are still in the low 30s in terms of their percentage, there will be people questioning whether they have really rebounded as much as they had hoped.

RAY SUAREZ: Dan Balz of the Washington Post, thanks for being with us.

DAN BALZ: Thank you, Ray.

FOCUS - FREE TUTORING

RAY SUAREZ: Now, an education business story. John Merrow, our special correspondent for education, looks at an unlikely competition for failing students.

GROUP: One, two, three. Yay!

JOHN MERROW: It's the grand opening of a new business: A tutoring company, part of a booming industry serving 216,000 public school students nationwide, the result of the No Child Left Behind Act.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: There is a triggering event in the bill and it says that if schools are not meeting expectations, then parents should be given different options.

JOHN MERROW: Free tutoring is an option for students in chronically failing schools. The government makes $2 billion available to pay for it and lets parents pick from three kinds of programs. Tutoring provided by school districts, by community groups or by private companies like the one headed by Joe Lockavitich.

JOSEPH LOCKAVITICH: I've focused on I'm pulling my hair out at the roots; I don't know what to do with this kid, driving me crazy kid.

JOSEPH LOCKAVITICH: All right. Let's see what it means.

JOHN MERROW: Lockavitich founded a company several years ago to help struggling readers; he called it Struggle Free Reading. Today it's a choice under No Child Left Behind in 40 states.

JOSEPH LOCKAVITICH: Thanks to Congress and the president, what they're saying is we are going to give parents, lowest income parents of lowest performing schools the opportunity that middle and upper middle-income parents have which is what thief always had, after hours tutorial students for their kids.

JOHN MERROW: Lockavitich took that message to school districts across the country. But in many places, he said he has been shut out.

JOSEPH LOCKAVITICH: In many certain school districts, you are not allowed to contact the principals or the building. It's extremely frustrating. Many times we are seeing the seen as the enemy rather than the helper.

JOHN MERROW: Pauline Richards has felt like the enemy at times. She owns a company called Club Z In-Home Tutoring Services; it's part of a national chain that offers one-on-one help to students in 26 states.

PAULINE RICHARDS: It's really the best you can get. A group situation is not good for every child. We would like to improve the situation; we would like to make a difference.

JOHN MERROW: Elizabeth, New Jersey, seemed like a good place for her to start. Thousands of students here qualified for tutoring. Richards and five other companies wanted to help. But this district is one of hundreds that runs its own tutoring program, and the companies would have to compete against it for students. Julia Stapleton runs the district's program.

JULIA STAPLETON: Elizabeth has a really solid program that has been well received. And we are getting benefits already. We built our own curriculum. We put a lot of our own resources into making this a valuable program.

JOHN MERROW: Money was also at stake. More than a million dollars from the district's federal funding would go to programs the parents chose. By law, school districts must inform parents of all the tutoring options available.

PAULINE RICHARDS: That's what it's all about, whether it's me they're choosing or another company, they should have a choice.

JOHN MERROW: The school sent parents letters, informing them about the seven tutoring programs they could choose from: Six run by companies, one run by the district itself. All 2,520 parents signed with the district's program.

JOHN MERROW: Did Elizabeth provide choice?

JULIA STAPLETON: We provided a list to the parents.

JOHN MERROW: Did you give complete information about the other programs?

JULIA STAPLETON: Yes, we did. We met all the criteria that the law requires.

JOHN MERROW: The district said it sent this chart outlining the tutoring programs. But we obtained copies of a different chart from three different schools that officials confirmed was mailed to parents. It describes the seven programs, among them Pauline Richards described as Club Z Tutoring Service.

JOHN MERROW: What is the full name?

PAULINE RICHARDS: The full name is Club Z In-Home Tutoring Services.

JOHN MERROW: They left out "In Home." Is that essential to say as part of the title?

PAULINE RICHARDS: I would think so. That's what it's called.

JOHN MERROW: It says location: Permanent site not determined.

PAULINE RICHARDS: Not determined.

JOHN MERROW: Is that accurate?

PAULINE RICHARDS: No -- very easily determined - in their homes.

JOHN MERROW: About Elizabeth's own program, there were full paragraphs mentioning high quality materials, small group instructions and opportunities for acceleration. There was nothing about the six company programs, except contact provider.

JOHN MERROW: Is the school district playing by the rules when it does this?

DIANA AUTIN: I don't think so. I don't think this is a fair way to give information to families.

JOHN MERROW: Diana Autin is director of the state-wide Parent Advocacy Network.

DIANA AUTIN: But I have to tell you, as a parent advocacy organization we see inadequate and inaccurate information being given to families all the time.

JOSEPH LOCKAVITICH: This is typical of what we see if a school district chooses to be obstinate.

JOHN MERROW: It's happened, Lockavitich says, in about one of every four districts he has approached across the country.

JOSEPH LOCKAVITICH: In one Midwestern state, we were told we had to do a financial audit to the tune of $20,000 or $30,000 before we could even come there. In addition to that, we were told that we had to have a $4 million umbrella policy that would have cost $20,000-25,000. And so it's almost is $40,000, $50,000 in up front fee and then we go in there and they won't give us access to the parents to recruit.

EUGENE WADE: The districts themselves are both the players and the referee, and I think that can be difficult. If you are asking somebody to do something that is a pretty unnatural act, on a level playing field and oh, by the way, I'm going to compete in it.

JOHN MERROW: Gene Wade heads Platform Learning, another tutoring company that says its path has been blocked at times. Platform operates in major cities in 17 states.

EUGENE WADE: The politics of this are that if districts don't spend the money, they get to keep it. So there is an incentive oftentimes to not notify parents, not to let them know of their rights, to oftentimes shut companies out.

JOHN MERROW: School districts say there is another side of the story, that it's not about holding the money; it's about providing quality education.

JULIA STAPLETON: We felt the outside provider didn't have the information we had that would help our children succeed academically.

JOHN MERROW: Local districts know exactly what lessons are taught during the day. They can custom build their tutoring programs to match. Compare that to what most outside companies offer.

JOHN MERROW: Can a company use the same curriculum here, there, and everywhere?

DIANA AUTIN: They can use the same curriculum no matter where they are, and they can use the same materials no matter where they are, and it doesn't have to have any relationship to the information the children are expected to know when they take the test or the things they're struggling with in the classroom.

EUGENE WADE: It's not true. We've got something like 22 variations of our curriculum. Anybody who works in our program will tell you they don't -- usually they are not having a problem with the program materials; they're having a problem with the instruction; they're having a problem with the politics or all around the stuff.

JOHN MERROW: But in some companies, tutoring companies have received poor marks. This recent letter from school officials in Chicago notified Platform that it was in default from its contracts there, saying that on numerous occasions, tutors failed to show up to many locations. In March, Chicago fired Platform from seven schools.

EUGENE WADE: I will tell you there are schools where we've had some problems, but you are not going to find that across the board that we have like a systematic problem of some of these issues.

JOHN MERROW: But across the industry, there are few regulations. Tutoring companies can teach however they like and hire whomever they like including uncertified teachers.

JOSEPH LOCKAVITICH: The reality is that there are some providers, quite frankly, who do not have experience with my particular population and in many cases, are doing nothing but warehousing kids.

DIANA AUTIN: There isn't enough oversight. I frankly thin it's a frightening and sad thing when we are spending so much money on them.

JOHN MERROW: Back in Elizabeth where not one student signed up for private company tutoring, school officials talk about having a better program which they say is also the better buy. The biggest issue of all is cost

JULIA STAPLETON: A provider charges more than we charge. We can give them a full blown year long program that matches what they are learning during the day.

JOHN MERROW: Many tutoring companies charge the maximum allowed, about $2,000 per student for some 50 hours of tutoring. Many school districts run their programs at half that price and provide more hours of instruction. For what companies charge to tutor one student, Elizabeth on its own can tutor four.

JULIA STAPLETON: We knew we could provide for more students, that could do a much better program this way than if we did it the other way, we were limited to how much we could pay per student. We would only beable to serve maybe 500 of our neediest. We are serving 4,000 of them. We can't beat that.

JOHN MERROW: That's a great tutoring program. What's wrong with that?

PAULINE RICHARDS: If it works but it didn't work before.

JOSEPH LOCKAVITICH: If you are a low- performing districts with low-performing schools, how do you have the audacity to say you can be a high performing after hours tutorial.

JOHN MERROW: So asking Elizabeth to tutor the kids who didn't make it under Elizabeth's control makes sense?

JULIA STAPLETON: We will prove it.

JOHN MERROW: Whether it's local school districts, Pauline Richards' company, Joe Lockavitich's, or Gene Wade's that does the tutoring in the end, the president's education law makes it difficult to prove whether tutoring works. The act that demands testing and accountability for schools exempts tutoring programs from similar tough scrutiny.

FOCUS - CRIMINAL CHARGES

RAY SUAREZ: An arrest in Washington that may ripple all the way to the Middle East. Terence Smith has more.

TERENCE SMITH: A day after the arrest of a Pentagon analyst charged with divulging classified information, federal authorities today continued to try to determine whether any of that information reached Israel. The analyst is Lawrence Franklin. He's suspected of passing information to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington. Franklin faces up to ten years in prison if convicted. For more on the case, and its implications, we're joined by David Johnston of the New York Times.

David, welcome. Tell us: Who is Lawrence Franklin and what was his role at the time in the Pentagon?

DAVID JOHNSTON: Lawrence Franklin was a mid-level analyst at the Pentagon and he was particularly concerned about the Middle East on countries like Iran and Iraq. And he had worked there since 1979. He worked with -in -- within an interesting group within the Pentagon of conservative Republicans who had been influential in the administration, particularly in the first Bush term, and who were also close to AIPAC.

TERENCE SMITH: And what was that information that he is now accused of divulging?

DAVID JOHNSTON: Well, according to a government affidavit that was filed in the case yesterday, the information he disclosed related to potential attacks on Americans forces in Iraq. And this related to the charge against him yesterday, which was the illegal disclosure of national defense information.

TERENCE SMITH: And is there any evidence that this information was passed on to Israel or to any other foreign power?

DAVID JOHNSTON: Well, the government was careful in its papers yesterday not to disclose the identities of those to whom he passed this information or whether they passed it on to anyone else. But for a long time, it has been clear from intelligence officials that they believe that Franklin had dealt with two senior policy aides at AIPAC, and that they had regular discussions with Israeli authorities and possibly Israeli intelligence officials.

TERENCE SMITH: Tell us a little about AIPAC and the role it plays in Washington particularly today.

DAVID JOHNSTON: AIPAC is a pro-Israel lobbying group that has been increasingly influential in the Bush administration. They take positions on a number of issues in the Middle East and have wide-ranging concerns, throughout the region.

TERENCE SMITH: You wrote this morning in the New York Times that AIPAC has close relations with some of these people in the Bush administration. You mentioned Franklin's former boss, Pentagon Undersecretary Doug Feith; youalso mentioned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

DAVID JOHNSTON: Who has been supportive of the group and who was expected to speak at their annual meeting. President Bush has been supportive and the group, I should add, is itself not under suspicion here and in fact, two weeks ago, announced that it had dismissed the two AIPAC analysts who are thought to be the recipients of Franklin's information.

TERENCE SMITH: Is there any, in all this material, any suggestion of motive or purpose in passing this information along? Was it in any way related to the ongoing debate in the administration about how to deal with Iran and its nuclear ambitions?

DAVID JOHNSTON: Well, the curious thing about the government's affidavit was that it related to Iraq and not Iran, which had long been thought to be the central issue that Franklin was concerned with. The conversation that occurred that is cited as the primary illegal activity here did relate to Iraq. But it occurred at a lunch not far from the Pentagon in June 2003, where the primary subject matter we have been talking about is Iran. And that Franklin's motivation for discussing this issue may well have been that he hoped the AIPAC employees would use their influence to get these issues a wider hearing within the White House.

TERENCE SMITH: In other words, to push an argument or a point of view anyway that he supported?

DAVID JOHNSTON: Franklin was thought to advocate a tough approach to Iran, and his fear was that his views may not have gotten a quality hearing at the White House.

TERENCE SMITH: And is there any suggestion that the AIPAC officials, the now dismissed AIPAC officials, did that?

DAVID JOHNSTON: Unclear. We don't know. I mean, there was certainly a relationship here but the extent to which they worked in this way, we don't know yet.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. And finally, do you expect more charges here? I mean, the charge at the moment is divulging sensitive classified information.

DAVID JOHNSTON: That charge is against Franklin again. The government was very clear yesterday in saying that the investigation was continuing and the focus appears now to be largely on the two former AIPAC officials.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. So clearly then there is more to come on this.

DAVID JOHNSTON: I would think there is.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. David Johnston of the New York Times, thank you very much.

DAVID JOHNSTON: Thank you.

ESSAY - MAKING FACES

RAY SUAREZ: We close tonight with a story of two portrait artists from essayist Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune.

CLARENCE PAGE: Gilbert Stewart used to say that he made his bread by making faces. That's like Fred Astaire saying that he did a little dancing. To make faces is to open windows and hold up mirrors. The great American portrait painter's awesome talents, currently on display at the museum of art in Washington, DC, as well as the dollar bill, gives us more than faces; it brings new life to a long past era: The world of America's founders: George Washington, John and Abigail Adams; Thomas Jefferson. James Madison, James Monroe. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words can we find in these faces? A perceptive portrait artist offers more than a mug shot, more than a mechanically captured moment in the life of its subject. The artist wants more than the facts, ma'am. The artist wants truth. That never ending search for truth, along with a touch of class, helps to explain why the old-fashioned art of portrait painting endures, even in an era of digital photographer, high- res TV and other new technologies. That's why out in suburban Washington, a few miles from the National Gallery's display, you can find the most recent presidential portrait painter, Simmie Knox, the first African American to have the honor. His clients have included Hank Aaron, Mohammad Ali, Bill and Camille Cosby and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Icons as significant to today's America as Stewart's subjects were to his.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Now will you join me on the stage for the presentation?

CLARENCE PAGE: But Knox's best-known work was unveiled last year by President Bush. After spending some time with Bill Clinton, Knox chose to capture the enigmatic ex-president in a dramatic pose, standing square shouldered and strong, facing the viewer full on, his eyes weary and defiant as if to say, take me as I am; let history be my judge. Separated by two centuries and the color line, Gilbert Stewart and Simmie Knox have something important in common. Each set out to do more than make faces. They wanted to tell a visual story. Gilbert sometimes refused to finish faces that ceased to interest him. Those he did finish were not always the most flattering. His portraits of Washington famously reveal in the retired general's lips a serious discomfort with his ill-fitting false teeth. Dickens said there were only two kinds of portrait: The serious and the smirk. Levity seldom finds its way into presidential portraits, yet, Knox did coax a warm and engaging face out of the ailing Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. His friends and family loved it; yet, at its unveiling, Marshal expressed an objection. "I've always wanted to be remembered as a hanging judge," he said. The artist had a different idea and the painting is better for it.

SPOKESMAN: I believe that the eyes are mirrors to the soul.

SPOKESMAN: Absolutely.

SPOKESMAN: I think it's all in the eyes.

CLARENCE PAGE: Every portrait that is painted with feeling," Oscar Wilde once wrote," is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter." Gilbert Stewart and Simmie Knox have that much in common, too. In the course of making faces, the great portrait artists often reveal their own. I'm Clarence Page.

RECAP

RAY SUAREZ: Again, the major developments of this day: Violent attacks in Iraq killed at least 30 people. Iran agreed to keep talking with the European Union about the future of its nuclear program. And in Atlanta, a grand jury indicted Brian Nichols on murder and kidnapping charges stemming from a courthouse shooting rampage in March.

RAY SUAREZ: And 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 four more.

RAY SUAREZ: We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening with Mark Shields and David Brooks, among others. I'm Ray Suarez. Thanks and good night.