The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: The news of this Friday; then, perspective on today's surprise resignation of CIA Director Porter Goss; a snapshot of the state of the U.S. economy as seen by two economists; the weekly analysis of Mark Shields and David Brooks; and a conversation with an Iranian dissident who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: CIA Director Porter Goss resigned today. He gave no reason. He'd only had the job since September of 2004. Wire service reports said it was a "mutual understanding" with President Bush and Goss's direct superior, John Negroponte, director of national intelligence. The president made the announcement today in the Oval Office, with Negroponte looking on.

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PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I appreciate his integrity. I appreciate the honor in which, that he brought to the job. Porter's tenure at the CIA was one of transition, which helped this agency become integrated into the intelligence community. And that was a tough job. He's led ably.

PORTER GOSS: I would like to report back to you that I believe the agency is on a very even keel, sailing well. I honestly believe that we have improved dramatically your goals for our nation's intelligence capabilities, which are, in fact, the things that I think are keeping us very safe.

JIM LEHRER: Goss was a CIA intelligence officer for ten years and, later, a Republican congressman. He chaired the House Intelligence Committee. There was no word on a possible successor at the CIA. We'll have more on the story right after this News Summary.

The growth of new jobs slowed last month. The Labor Department reported today employers added 138,000 positions. That was the smallest increase in six months. The overall unemployment rate held steady at 4.7 percent. On Wall Street, the job growth news meant the Federal Reserve might stop raising interest rates. So the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained more than 138 points to close at 11,577. The NASDAQ rose more than 18 points to close at 2,342. For the week, the Dow gained nearly 2 percent; the NASDAQ rose nearly 1 percent. We'll have more on the economy later in the program tonight.

The government of Sudan and the largest rebel group from Darfur reached a peace agreement today. Negotiators for both sides signed the pact in Nigeria, where they held talks. The agreement declared a cease-fire after three years of intense violence. Two smaller rebel factions rejected the deal, though. And in Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said there's still a long way to go.

SEAN McCORMACK: It's going to require as much if not more work on the part of the parties involved in the international community to see an agreement implemented. And we will be right there to work with members of the international committee to see that it is implemented.

JIM LEHRER: This is not the first agreement to end fighting in Darfur. A cease-fire was signed in 2004, but later collapsed.

In Iraq today, three U.S. soldiers died in a roadside bombing south of Baghdad, and in Samarra, U.S. and Iraqi forces killed three insurgents as they searched homes looking for militants. That city is where a major Shiite shrine was bombed in February. That attack triggered a wave of sectarian violence across Iraq.

Two Italian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan today. They died in a roadside bombing near Kabul. Four other Italians were wounded. The soldiers were part of the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. British Prime Minister Blair named a new foreign secretary today in a sweeping cabinet shuffle. British reports said Jack Straw privately raised doubts about the Iraq war. He also said military action against Iran was "inconceivable". Today, Straw was moved to a less prestigious job: Leader of the House of Commons. The new foreign secretary is Margaret Beckett, the first woman in that job. Blair acted a day after his ruling Labor Party did poorly in local elections.

U.S. Congressman Patrick Kennedy announced today he will enter the Mayo Clinic for addiction to pain medication. The Rhode Island Democrat crashed his car into a barrier near the U.S. Capitol early yesterday morning. Kennedy has a history of addiction and depression. Today, he blamed the accident on a combination of prescribed drugs.

REP. PATRICK KENNEYD: I simply do not remember getting out of bed, being pulled over by the police, or being cited for three driving infractions. That's not how I want to live my life. And it's not how I want to represent the people of Rhode Island. I am deeply concerned about my reaction to the medication, and my lack of knowledge of the accident that evening. But I do know enough that I know that I need help.

JIM LEHRER: Earlier, Kennedy denied he was drinking before the crash. The police report listed alcohol as a contributing factor, but there was no sobriety test after the accident. Instead, the head of the Washington Police Union said a higher-ranking official ordered Kennedy taken home. The congressman denied asking for special treatment. He also said today he will not resign.

And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now: The abrupt resignation of Porter Goss; the state of the U.S. economy; Shields and Brooks; and an Iranian dissident view.

FOCUS STEPPING DOWN

JIM LEHRER: Jeffrey Brown has our "Going of Goss" story.

JEFFREY BROWN: More turmoil at the CIA, which has seen a lot of it since 9/11. We get two perspectives on the Goss resignation. Mark Lowenthal was an assistant director of central intelligence for analysis from 2002 to 2005, and served on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee, where Porter Goss was chairman. He's now president of the Intelligence and Security Academy, which provides training in analysis for the government. James Bamford has written widely on U.S. intelligence. His most recent book is called "A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the abuse of America's intelligence agencies". And welcome to both of you.

Mr. Lowenthal, starting with you, how much of a surprise was this resignation?

MARK LOWENTHAL: Actually in the last week there were a lot of rumors going around that this was going to happen. So I would say for some people it was not a surprise.

JEFFREY BROWN: Not at all. What do you think, Mr. Bamford?

JAMES BAMFORD: Well, it was a surprise to me. I think it was a surprise to a lot of people. However, there was a lot of rumors going around for some time that John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, wanted to start exercising some muscle and putting some of his own people in. He inherited Porter Goss, so this was an opportunity to start putting his own team in place.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, as Jim said in the News Summary, Mr. Lowenthal, there were reports about an agreement with Mr. Negroponte. What does that mean, what do you think?

MARK LOWENTHAL: Well, I think as Jim said, we're still working out what the relationship looks like between the new DNI, Negroponte's job and now the person who only runs the CIA. And these are the first two men to have this job, and so we are still working that out and so it is not that surprising that after this transitional part of a year that Negroponte's been the DNI that you would have a change coming on.

JEFFREY BROWN: Explain to us a little bit more about what this transition entails. What is the new role of the CIA and of the director?

MARK LOWENTHAL: Well, Porter Goss was the 19th and last director of Central Intelligence, which meant that he ran the CIA, and he also had overall responsibility for the entire intelligence community.

He came into office in September 2004 when Congress was already debating whether or not to create what became the DNI, which would have removed the community job from the DCI and given it to somebody separate, separating him from the agency, and leaving the CIA job as separate. And that is what happened to Porter Goss. So he ended up, he had this very difficult transition from one job to the other, from running the entire community, running an agency.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now Mr. Bamford, what did he accomplish in this tenure?

JAMES BAMFORD: Well, there are a number of things. One of the areas that he focused on, I think, was analysis. There was a big problem with weapons of mass destruction, obviously, in the lead-up to the war in Iraq. And one of the areas that he focused on was finding new ways, better ways to evaluate sources so that before when you had people that came forward with information, there wasn't much way to evaluate how credible that information was. And you had sources like Curve Ball,' which had, who have very bad information. And I think one of the ways he tried to do that was to create an evaluation system to give a better evaluation of who these sources are, what their backgrounds are, and get that information widely distributed throughout the intelligence community.

The people were actually going to be using the information to show them how credible these people are before they begin using their information.

JEFFREY BROWN: How do you assess his accomplishments?

MARK LOWENTHAL: Well, I think the president had it right when he said that Porter is going to be remembered as a transitional figure, which I don't mean as a knock. But you have to remember the context in which he took over the agency. He was following George Tenet, who had been director for seven years and was a very formidable figure in his own right. And that was going to be difficult no matter what. As Jim just said, the agency more than -- CIA more than any other agency was being held responsible for 9/11 and for Iraq WMD. And moral had suffered because of that, and then there was this difficult period when he wasn't sure would he the DIC, would there be a DNI, would he be the DNI, and that lasted from September to April. So that is a third of his tenure right there. And then suddenly he is not the DNI; he is the DCIA.

And the fourth thing that happened on his watch, was this -- what Jim referred to, this massive building up of the community again after ten years of severe losses. 50 percent of the analysts in the intelligence community have less than five years' experience. And so all

JEFFREY BROWN: Less than five years.

MARK LOWENTHAL: Less than five years. So all this happening when he takes over. And that's just a huge array of issues to face. I don't care who you are. And so I think that's why the president said what he said in the Oval Office today.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, what about the problems that occurred that perhaps have lead to this resignation? I mean, one thing that got a lot of attention was the shakeup at the top. And I think I read almost, it said almost all of the senior leadership at the agency has turned over since the departure of George Tenet. Tell us about that.

JAMES BAMFORD: It was a very traumatic time. And I think Porter Goss got off right from the very start on the wrong foot by immediately bringing over a number of his staffers who worked for him in the House, House Intelligence Committee. And what he should have done was, you know, if he wanted to bring him over, bring him over a few months later or whatever. The first thing he should have brought in was a very senior person to be his deputy, a General Hayden type of a person, as opposed to bringing his staffers over. So immediately they began getting a reputation, one of the terms was Hitler youth' that they used to call these people.

JEFFREY BROWN: Hitler youth' within the agency?

JAMES BAMFORD: Within the agency, right, for these people because they came in and like bulls in a china shop, they started breaking the china and making people very angry that these people were outsiders coming in, telling them what to do, firing people, changing people's positions and so forth. So that was a very bad start.

As a matter of fact, one of the people who we brought over from the Senate, from the House Intelligence Committee had previously worked at the CIA about ten years earlier and then been fired for, of all things, getting caught stealing some bacon from a Safeway I think it was. So it was a very bad stumble when he first got there. And I don't know if he ever really recovered totally from that.

JEFFREY BROWN: And yet, Mr. Lowenthal, part of the mandate that you are talking with about was to shake up the agency.

MARK LOWENTHAL: Absolutely. I think -- I think that's what the president told him to do in part. Relations between the community and the White House have gotten very bad in 2004. There were lots of news articles saying that the White House perceived the CIA to be at war with the agency, which struck a lot of us as very odd. So I think there was a sense that he had to sort of get control of the situation very, very fast. And the intelligence community and the CIA is a very hard place to get control of. It treats most people as outsiders. And it treats most outsiders as bacilli -- as something -- just wrap them up and put swaddling around them and keep the place safe. So it's difficult, it's a hard place to get control of.

And again, part of the problem, you know, as you were talking about, all the seniors leaving, this in part had to do, again, with the fact that George Tenet had been there so long that you had a lot of people who knew they were going to retire and they were just waiting for him to go. So a lot of people sort of left in his wake. And so it was part of this interesting transition.

JAMES BAMFORD: I think there was also a cultural change too. George Tenet was a very personable person, back slapping, walked down the hallways with an unlit cigar in his mouth and waved to people -- bang on somebody's door and go in to see him.

And Porter Goss was more of a laid back, sit in his office and let his staff go out and deal with the personnel. So I think that affected personnel moral also.

JEFFREY BROWN: Bottom line question here is, is the CIA a better place now for what it's supposed to be doing than it was a couple years ago in the midst of all the criticism? What do you think, Mr. Bamford?

JAMES BAMFORD: Well, I think it's better because they've made some positive changes, as I mentioned, on the analysis, for example. However, the other side of the coin is that morale is, you know, going down the tubes at this point because of a lot of the criticisms over the changes that Porter Goss made, and now another transition, you've had two directors now who are resigning within a few years time. So there are two ways of looking at it I think there have been positive changes but, on the other hand, there have been some morale problems.

JEFFREY BROWN: How do you see it?

MARK LOWENTHAL: I think they are still in the middle of a difficult transition, that this young workforce is a problem. They're missing years of analysts who never showed up, were never hired because of their budgets. I think the morale after 9/11 and Iraq was problematic. I don't think they're over that yet. And I think there a sense in the CIA that they have lost a lot of status because of the creation of John Negroponte's office, that they really were central, that their boss ran the community and now their boss is just the head of another agency. And I think they are still dealing with this perceived loss of status in the building.

JEFFREY BROWN: There was no mention of a possible successor today. What kind of person should take that role?

MARK LOWENTHAL: Well, I used to say that the DCI, the job that Porter first had, had an audience of one and that was the president. The DCIA has an audience of two -- it is the president and John Negroponte. So the main issue is you have to have somebody in there that knows something about intelligence preferably, who can manage a large organization and who has the confidence of the DNI and the president. Beyond that, it's a very individualized job. It's also a very difficult job. Porter was the 19th director. Nine of them had tenures of two years or less, including Porter. That is sort of interesting that, almost half of them did not survive two years in the job.

JAMES BAMFORD: The only guarantee is that the new director is not going to come from Capitol Hill.

JEFFREY BROWN: Not coming from Capitol Hill, you mean after Porter Goss.

JAMES BAMFORD: After Porter Goss, right; sort of been there, done that. It's time to find somebody someplace else in the intelligence community or outside the intelligence community, but not from the House or the Senate.

JEFFREY BROWN: Also, James Bamford, Mark Lowenthal, thank you both very much.

MARK LOWENTHAL: Thank you.

JAMES BAMFORD: My pleasure.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: The latest on the U.S. economy; the latest from Shields and Brooks; and a dissident's view of the Iranian nuclear dispute.

FOCUS ECONOMIC SNAPSHOT

JIM LEHRER: Ray Suarez looks at the economy.

RAY SUAREZ: People often look to the government monthly jobs report for a sense of how things are going in the economy, and today's report sent some mixed signals. There were fewer new jobs than expected, but wages over the last year grew by 3.8 percent, the fastest pace since 2001. Other indicators in the last few weeks suggest the economy has been steadily improving. Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, grew by just under 5 percent in the first quarter of the year. Consumer spending and business investment were also up in the first three months of year.

But there are some caution signs, too. Interest rates are rising, some segments of the housing market are getting weaker along with consumer confidence, and oil and gas prices remain high.

For more on what this all means I'm joined by William Spriggs, chairman of the department of economics at Howard University; and Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for global insight, an economic forecasting firm.

And, Nariman Behravesh, let me start with you, with slow job creation but steady unemployment low consumer confidence but strong consumer spending, how do you take some sort of overall trend out of such a mixed bag of numbers?

NARIMAN BEHRAVESH: As you were saying, the economy is giving off some very mixed signals but when you put it all together, there still a fair amount of good momentum in the economy. I tend to discount today's jobs' growth numbers, there were some fluky parts to it and so I think probably the number was closer to 200,000 when you sort of adjust for those statistical flukes. So all in all, we're looking at an economy that is doing fairly well.

The worrisome part of today's report really was on the inflation front, as you were saying, which is that wage inflation looks like it's picking up. That sort of confirms other data from the CPI and the GNP numbers that suggest, in fact, that inflation may be sort of moving upward a little bit, and that's a source of concern not just to us economists but also to the Federal Reserve, more importantly to the Federal Reserve.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor Spriggs, what do you think?

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: Actually I think that it shows that the market, the labor market is still fairly weak. And hopefully what the Fed will do is look at these numbers. While it's true that the average wage numbers reported today were up there are probably only up as much as inflation. Inflation numbers is have been running pretty close to this. If you look over this recovery over the last five years, productivity has been up tremendously. And typically we expect to see wages increased with productivity and we've seen wages be flat over this four, five year period. So I think it shows some weakness.

Today we saw a mix in jobs change. So fortunately, the economy was generating some jobs that are higher wage jobs. There were losses reported in retail sales but gains in manufacturing, and gains in professional services. Those are higher wage sectors. If you look at the employment cost index, which controls for how things shift, then you see that wages were weak in the latest report. So I don't think we're seeing inflationary pressures from what we've seen from wages. This is five years into a recovery. And at this point we should actually see more jobs and we should have seen wages actually recover by now from where they were in 2001.

So I think we are in a very tenuous position and hopefully the Fed will think about the downside risk, namely that all of this consumption has been taking place through debt, and that consumers are carrying a very heavy amount of debt.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, you just heard your colleague say that perhaps this jobs number was kind of an outlier or statistical fluke. But he shared your concern about inflation. Now recently the new Fed chairman, Dr. Bernanke, said that inflation is not necessarily under control, that interest rates may have to rise again. Is that a risk?

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: I don't think inflation is a risk at this point. I think that the bigger risk is the downside risk of a weak labor market and the risk of what happens if we don't actually see wages and median incomes start to rise because people have to find a way out of the debt that they are in. The preferable way is that we see their incomes get back to trend. In the 1990s we finally saw wages responding to the tight labor markets. And now we need to get back to that trend.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, respond to the Professor Nariman, you heard him say that wage growth should have been stronger by this point in the recovery. If GDP growth has been so strong and if every worker who has been at it for an hour creates more value per hour that they work, why hasn't wage growth been stronger?

NARIMAN BEHRAVESH: Well, that a very good point. And I basically agree that up until now wage growth has lagged the recovery. But that's in the process of changing. The labor markets are beginning to tighten. And we are beginning to see some of that pressure. Up until now, most of the benefits of the economy growing so rapidly went into corporate profits. Corporate profits are at record lefts, so there is no debate that up until recently, wages have lagged. I guess my point is already we're starting to see that.

The professor's made reference to the employment cost index but there is another piece of data that came out this week on productivity. Now productivity was strong but compensation, which is wages plus benefits, went up 5.7 percent. That's a little scary. So my sense right now is that wages are beginning to kick in. They're beginning to catch up, and that something that we have to keep an eye on.

RAY SUAREZ: And to keep in that vein, how do those trends that you just identified visit themselves on an actual household if you are looking for a job. if you already have a job?

NARIMAN BEHRAVESH: Well, the good news is that jobs are available. I mean this number as I said was a little weak prior to that jobs growth had been very good. And I suspect in the next few months, jobs growth will continue to be very good. So you got good jobs growth. Wages starting to pick up and all of a sudden I think household incomes are starting to look better in terms of their growth than they have in a while so from that perspective I think looking forward, that side of the economy is finally kicking in.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor, why do people tell public opinion researches they are so pessimistic about the economy if there is so much upside in these numbers?

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: Well, the numbers are good if you look at very recent history the last two years. But households are experiencing what has gone on for the last five years. If you look at the share of people holding a job we are still well below where we were at the peak back in 2001. And so when folks look at their household, they look at their younger workers, their kids, and they see that they aren't getting employed at the same rate as maybe the older siblings did five years ago, you get some of the concern.

And the fact that last year we as a nation actually instead of saving, actually spent more than what we earned. So we had a negative savings rate, so all of these things make people nervous. The slowing down of the housing market in a number of cities makes them nervous because many people either take interest-only loans betting that the housing market would remain hot. And so they look at their debt structure, their pension fund, their thrift savings plans, took big hits in 2001. Those funds are only just getting back to where they were in 2001. So when they look where they are positioned, looking forward in terms of their savings going into retirement, looking at their kids with their job market difficulty, looking at their wages being flat, people are very concerned. This is not that rosy.

It's good for the last two years but over five years, an expansion which just does not generate or which has been typical of previous expansions, people don't get that enthused.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Nariman Behravesh, how does that pessimism that Professor Spriggs described square with the strong consumer spending? How do people tell researchers they are pessimistic and then go out and spend, spend, spend?

NARIMAN BEHRAVESH: It is what I call the headline effect. And I don't think it is so much what the professor is discussing but the headlines as showing high gasoline prices, we go to the pumps once a week or however often we go, and the prices climb. I think people are a little worried but the reality is their take-home pay is pretty good. They've got a job. Their neighbors have a job. So in terms of what is actually happening it's good. But the headlines are a little scary so you get this dichotomy between the consumer confidence numbers and what people are actually spending. As you said, they seem to be spending just fine, but they are a little bit worried.

RAY SUAREZ: And a quick read on how the gas prices might filter through economic growth and affect the market?

NARIMAN BEHRAVESH: Well, I think gas prices, and the higher they go, of course, the more the pain. But it will have an effect. And it is already having an effect on some discretionary spending in eating at restaurants, taking trips and so forth. So it is not that it has no impact. But so far, it has had a fairly small impact because gasoline spending as a percent of total household budgets is still only about 3, 3 1/2 percent so. It is still a fairly small portion of the household's budget so even if it has risen, it's not that bad. Now having said that, let me qualify and say that for lower income people obviously gasoline spending is a bigger share of their budgets. So you have to factor that in.

RAY SUAREZ: And finally, Professor, how do you see gas prices affecting the job market and the economy in general?

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: I think they are going to put pressures on companies. Transportation cost, though they are small compared to what companies spend everything on, they still are important to the companies that are trying to get their margin down, try to be as competitive as possible. And so I think this will continue to create pressure on wages and create pressure on whether we see continued job creation as companies try to respond to absorbing higher energy costs.

RAY SUAREZ: William Spriggs, Nari Behravesh, thank you both.

NARIMAN BEHRAVESH: Thank you.

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: Thank you.

FOCUS SHIELDS & BROOKS

JIM LEHRER: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks-- syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks.

JIM LEHRER: The going of Porter Goss this afternoon, any thoughts on why he left?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I don't have any inside story. The scoop around town has been first of all he has been unpopular for a while, unpopular in the building, even unpopular among his former colleagues on Capitol Hill and then there is a sense that the job is shrinking. The CIA, as some of the analysts mentioned earlier on the program, is a less important agency.

JIM LEHRER: Very different job than it used to be.

MARK SHIELDS: He used to be the guy sitting in the White House every morning briefing the president. Now John Negroponte is on top of him. And, not only that, some of the best analysts, apparently, have been going to the director of national intelligence, migrating to that agency, as people do; people migrate to power in this town. And as the power has gone to Negroponte, some of the analysts overseeing terror groups and other things have migrated and Goss's job has been downgraded.

JIM LEHRER: But, still, he was only there for 18 months.

MARK SHIELDS: Only there for 18 months, David gives the high road; I will give the less than high road. No explanation for his leaving, abruptly, hastily arranged ceremony in the Oval Office. And --

JIM LEHRER: There still may be, somebody may be talking as we're talking but, as of now, there has been no explanation.

MARK SHIELDS: There's been no explanation for it, and not the usual I want to spend more time with the little Gosses or whatever else. And in addition to that, Jim, you know, the Republicans have not had a good news day in a month. And they had one today. I mean, Patrick Kennedy, the Democratic congressman from Rhode Island, police preference in treatment at 3:00 in the morning in a car accident. So you know, they got Bill Jefferson, congressman from Louisiana facing charges.

JIM LEHRER: He hasn't been charged yet, the guy who said he said he bribed him has been charged, right.

MARK SHIELDS: And his chief of staff has gone state's witness.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

MARK SHIELDS: Those were good stories and all of a sudden this comes up. Now the place was in turmoil. David was right. The other element in this is that the number three man at the agency, a man named Dusty Fogel, who does contracts, among other things, is the ---

JIM LEHRER: Does contracts with the CIA?

MARK SHIELDS: Right closest lifelong friend of Mr. Wilkes. Mr. Wilkes is the defense contract contractor who was involved in the bribing of Duke Cunningham, the Republican congressman from California, who just admitted to taking $2 million and has been sentenced to nine years in jail. One of the things that Mr. Wilkes did, according to newspaper reports, according to the investigators, is he sponsored parties, rather lavish parties in hotel suites.

JIM LEHRER: Here in Washington.

MARK SHIELDS: With limos and with ladies of the night. Mr. Fogel said he did go to some of these hotels, apparently, and but just to play cards. And there is a question of whether this is a problem. He was appointed under Goss's direction the number three job there. So there is a lot of stuff buzzing around right now but nothing has landed. But still no explanation as to why he is leaving.

JIM LEHRER: Have you heard anything about that, David?

DAVID BROOKS: No, I'm shocked that somebody was playing cards.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

DAVID BROOKS: The only thing, you know, it is all speculation at this point. And some of the speculation has been if there was a brewing scandal and if they knew about it would the president really have personally appeared at the farewell event. But that's all rumor at this point. To me, it is not terribly hard to understand a guy who said a year ago that he found the job overwhelming. You know --

JIM LEHRER: He made -- we ought to explain. He made a speech and he said, my goodness, this is five jobs I'm trying to do with one person.

DAVID BROOKS: And I can't do telephone. And some of the analysts mentioned people don't last long at this job. It has been miserable at all corners. So it doesn't require a scandal to explain.

MARK SHIELDS: He did say at that time, at the Reagan Library that the job was overwhelming, he spent five hours a day preparing for the presidential briefing when he doesn't do the presidential briefing any more.

JIM LEHRER: Negroponte now does it.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right. So I don't know if he was losing it, losing the job that was impossible.

JIM LEHRER: All right. The vote in the Senate to defy the president's threat of a veto on this emergency spending thing, what is going on there?

MARK SHIELDS: A little kabuki dance. The Senate leadership had gotten the promise out of the president to veto, pledge to veto. So the senators knew it wasn't going to be in. So it's a good chance to stick a lot of stuff in, show the folks back home that we are really fighting for you and for all the good things.

JIM LEHRER: And it will come out in conference.

MARK SHIELDS: It will come out, I mean the House is pretty adamant. I mean, Jim, today's poll, Associated Press poll the president has a 45 percent disapproval rating among conservatives. Congress has --.

JIM LEHRER: 33 percent overall.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right. This is -- conservatives are the cornerstone of the Republican movement -- 65 percent for the Republican Congress in part because of spending. And that -- they'll knock this out.

JIM LEHRER: Spending is reemerging as a big deal, is it not?

DAVID BROOKS: You know, as I travel around the country, the thing I hear most is Republicans upset about immigration, but also about the spending. And then from moderates and independents I always hear this, whatever happened to the party, the Republicans being the party of fiscal responsibility. Whatever happened to those days? I probably hear that a couple times a day. And so this is just a --

JIM LEHRER: What do you tell them?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I don't know. David Stockman left town and that was it. So I think there are two things though. The other thing is that as the party panics, they still want to spend to buy votes. That is what majority parties do. I don't care what your ideology is. And as it's often said, there are three parties in this town, there are Democrats, there's Republicans and there are appropriators, and some of these committee chairmen, who are appropriators in the Senate, want to spend money; that is what they do. And they believe it; they are not particularly ideological, so they want to pass these bills with some --

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with Mark that this is all a game?

DAVID BROOKS: Absolutely.

JIM LEHRER: They know they will not get their $109 billion, or $95 billion -- that is what the president said, that is in the House thing; that's what's going to happen.

DAVID BROOKS: They may hope their particular provision gets through but I'm sure they expect it to be whittled down.

MARK SHIELDS: The House even, less than the president, 91.9. There were 21 votes against this. Remember this was emergency spending for our troops. And there were conservative --

JIM LEHRER: In Afghanistan, Iraq and also hurricane relief but there was all this other stuff.

MARK SHIELDS: There were conservative Republicans who voted against it of the 21 in the Senate, so they knew that they were insulated from not supporting the troops, that became such an issue in the 2004 campaign when John Kerry opposed the appropriation. The thing about the spending, Jim, we have just gone to, are you ready for this, $439 billion according to the congressional reference service, the Library of Congress, on the cost of the war. The cost of the war as of this moment is $439 billion with this appropriation. I mean, we are looking at a trillion dollar cost, whatever happens in Iraq from this point.

JIM LEHRER: No matter how long.

DAVID BROOKS: The larger issue and I will be interested to see how it plays in '06 and '08 is deficits have always been an elite concern but they never actually contributed --.

JIM LEHRER: Think tank.

DAVID BROOKS: Red ink. But they've never actually driven elections. Are we at a point where they actually do begin to drive elections? I'm a little skeptical at the end of the day.

MARK SHIELDS: I would point out that Ross Perot in 1992 drove the election with that issue. He put it squarely.

JIM LEHRER: He was the first one whoever who popularized it as a political issue.

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah.

MARK SHIELDS: Every penny of income tax paid by every American living west of the Mississippi wasn't enough to cover the interest on the national debt in one year. And, I mean, people's eyes were wow!

DAVID BROOKS: And, by the way, the thing that actually cured the deficit in the Clinton years was establishing rules that mandated that you reduce the deficit.

JIM LEHRER: You didn't have to have a vote and you couldn't play these games.

DAVID BROOKS: It was those rules that did it.

MARK SHIELDS: I would say I was on the Hill today and hi a meeting with the Democratic House leader, Nancy Pelosi. That is going to be the cornerstone, pay as you go. It was the pay as you go' of 1992 originally pushed by George Miller which Bill Clinton finally accepted that led to the balanced budget. That you cannot, whether is a tax cut, whether it is an expenditure, you've got to say where the money is coming from. That has to come at the same time. Not simply voting for, you know -- but where is the money coming from?

DAVID BROOKS: Hillary Clinton gave a speech in Chicago, that was the center of it.

JIM LEHRER: Is that right? So you think that could come back here?

DAVID BROOKS: It's coming.

JIM LEHRER: As an issue. David, the vote in the Senate to or what do you make of the fact of how quickly the $100 -- there has been no vote yet, the $100 rebate oil plan on the Republicans offered.

DAVID BROOKS: If you are going to do crass, stupid bribery, make it a thousand bucks. Don't offer a little 100 buck bribery because people are going to laugh at you.

JIM LEHRER: You said that last week.

DAVID BROOKS: And the House Republican agreed with me on instinct. It started as actually a Democratic idea, give them $500. Then Bill Frist picked it up. And this is really goes to the heart of what has been a lot of the problem with Bill Frist and why he will not be a serious presidential candidate. If you are raised in Republican conservative movements with certain ideas of what government should do and not do, handing out $100 checks is just something you throw off the table in a back room. But Frist without really telling many other Republicans said, oh, this is a good idea, with some of his staffers. And it was announced without telling other Republicans. And a lot of the other Republicans thought it was incredibly stupid along with most of the country.

JIM LEHRER: I was stunned, Mark, that Boehner, John Boehner, the House majority leader, immediately called this rebate idea stupid and insulting. Now, he is talking about a plan from the Senate majority leader of his own party; that kind of thing doesn't normally happen.

MARK SHIELDS: John Boehner is a guy who is given to candor, and I think he is still feeling his way, he wasn't speaking as majority leader. He was just giving you his reaction, which was David's reaction. I mean, he wasn't thinking about gee, I'm the House majority leader, how is this going to play out? He was not aware of the fact, at least as he later explained, that it came from Bill Frist. He was presented with the idea, and he said that is the stupidest idea I ever heard it was Bill Frist. Oh, well, in that case. So --

DAVID BROOKS: It is a brilliant idea.

MARK SHIELDS: He did not say that; he did not back down, to his credit.

JIM LEHRER: The other thing this week was the big immigration boycott protest effort on Monday, how do you think it went down politically?

DAVID BROOKS: Badly for the immigrant groups. My lesson from the '60s is never look at the rallies. Look at the people who are quietly reacting to the rallies. In the 1960s, Woodstock, peace marches, if you looked at the rally you would have thought big liberal era. It was a big conservative era because there were people like George Bush and Dick Cheney looking at that and saying I don't like those people. And so I think there is going to be a counter reaction to the immigrants, in part not because of the immigrants but because I thought in some of the rallies and some of the speakers A, a sense of entitlement, no sense that it is a complex matter that we are searching for a center ground.

And second, and I certainly felt this, you know, a lot of the people have been taking the risks on this issue have been moderate Republicans like John McCain and Chuck Hagel. These rallies were very Ted Kennedy, very union-oriented. It was almost a slap in the face that some of the moderate Republicans who have been really up front on this. It gave it a partisan edge that it didn't have before. So I think that will be a counter reaction.

MARK SHIELDS: I think the central question is what George W. Bush does because when you look at the numbers they're facing right now, Jim, the -- turned off of the conservative white Republican voters. And whites in this country, 30 percent of whites want to build a wall tomorrow and they want to deport the 12 million. And if are you going to energize them in the campaign of 2006, that's the issue, immigration is the gay marriage issue of 2006 to get those folks out. George W. Bush's entire career has been against that point of view. He has stood against it.

JIM LEHRER: As governor of Texas he was just the opposite.

MARK SHIELDS: Exactly. And as president he, as well. He is going to get into this with McCain and Kennedy and everybody else. He's got to get legislation passed. He's got to get a law written. So it is not an issue in the campaign in 2006. Otherwise I mean, it going to be so ugly, and he -- the Republican Party, you won't recognize it from what George Bush's compassionate conservatism allegedly was in --

DAVID BROOKS: I think he will try and Democrats know is in their interest to block anything, which is why I think they will block it.

JIM LEHRER: David, Margaret, thank you both. (Laughter)

MARK SHIELDS: Thank you Gwen.

CONVERSATION

JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, the real Margaret Warner talks with a prominent Iranian dissident.

MARGARET WARNER: The glittering Nobel Award ceremony in Oslo's palatial city hall was a long way from a gritty Iranian prison. In 2003 Shirin Ebadi was the first Muslim woman and first Iranian to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She was honored for her fight for women's rights and human rights and Iran's repressive clerical regime.

Just three years earlier in the summer of 2000, the Iranian dissident and democracy activist had found herself behind bars in the notorious Avin prison in Tehran. She was imprisoned for nearly a month for videotaping evidence to prove that Iran's hard-line mullahs were behind a string of violent attacks on Iranian reformists.

Trained as a lawyer in the days of the shah, in 1969 she became Iran's first woman judge. But she was removed from the bench after the Islamic revolution of 1979. The clerics said Islam forbids women to serve as judges. She turned instead to writing and using the legal system to defend individuals, particularly dissidents and women against the state and the clerics that ran it.

Her activities earned her the enmity of the regime. Now she has written an account of her life of activism, her book Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope' has been published here but not in Iran. I spoke to Ebadi recently in Washington.

MARGARET WARNER: Shirin Ebadi welcome.

SHIRIN EBADI, 2003 Nobel Peace Laureate: Thank you.

MARGARET WARNER: You have spent a lifetime fighting for human rights and democracy in Iran. Is that agenda moving forward or backward under the new President Ahmadinejad?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter): Democracy in Iran is not moving forward because censorship is being applied in Iran more seriously.

MARGARET WARNER: And are other intellectuals and activists being jailed as you were?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter):Yes. A number of the political activists and human rights defenders are in prison.

MARGARET WARNER: Is it worse than it was before Ahmadinejad came to power?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter): Yes, as I explained earlier, the situation has gotten worse in Iran. For example, Mr. Abdul Fatah Sultani, a human rights defender and attorney, spent seven months in prison.

MARGARET WARNER: Your book has incredible examples of the harassment you were subjected to not only being in prison, the fact that you discovered that you had been targeted for assassination. How difficult is it for you to continue to do your work inside Iran today?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter): It is in these bad situations that people like me have to work. If Iran was a democracy or an advanced democracy, people like me do not have to be active.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you feel in danger?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter): Human rights activists, regardless of where they are in our world, will feel danger.

MARGARET WARNER: The Bush administration has launched a $75 million program to try to assist democracy advocates in Iran and promote democracy in Iran. Is something, is a program like that useful to you and your colleagues who are engaged in this fight from the inside?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter): No, I don't think that it benefits me or people like me because whoever speaks about democracy in Iran will be accused of having been paid by the United States.

MARGARET WARNER: And how do feel about President Bush's wider call for more democracy in the Muslim world throughout?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter): Can democracy be brought to a people by bombs? Democracy is a culture. It has to come from within a society -- not to be brought by America to a society.

MARGARET WARNER: What gives you confidence that you can succeed fighting from within on your own without help from the outside?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter): I do count on the help of the people of the world but not on the help of the government.

On the other hand, America's approach on democracy is not a correct approach. As I told you, you cannot bring a democracy through bombing people. The countries in the region that are allies of the United States do not enjoy an advanced democracy like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Kuwait.

MARGARET WARNER: Now you've also been critical of the international pressure that's being applied right now on the Iranian government to prevent it from acquiring the technology that could be used for nuclear weapons. Why?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter): What I have said has not been interpreted correctly. I'm going to tell you what I mean right now. The government of Iran claims that it has peaceful purposes for nuclear energy. But the world does not buy that claim.

The resolution to this problem is bringing an advanced democracy in Iran. In a democracy, people have a say in the government, and they will not permit the government to abuse its power.

For example, France has a nuclear bomb. But the world is not scared of France because France is a democracy, and people supervise what their government is doing. And if the government of Iran wants the world to buy its claim and accept its word, it has to move towards an advanced democracy in Iran.

MARGARET WARNER: What should the world do now if Iran does not -- it is not a full democracy now -- and if it does not move quite immediately to that?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter): Instead of putting pressure on Iran to terminate its nuclear program, the pressure must be put by the government of Iran to bring democracy to Iran.

This is what I say too: America and the world have forgotten about the human right situation in Iran. Now that they feel that they are in danger, they are bringing up the issue of human rights in Iran.

And we should not accept that there is only one police for the whole world, and that police can decide on everything.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you believe the regime when it says it only wants the nuclear technology for only peaceful purposes?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter): I'm not a member of the government. And the decisions are made behind closed doors in the Iranian government. So I cannot tell you what goes on in there.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you think a majority of Iranians believes that Iran should have a nuclear weapon?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter): No, they don't think so.

MARGARET WARNER: There have been reports here in Washington denied by the president that the administration is at least making contingency plans for the possibility of military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. What impact would that have if it came to that?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter): An attack on Iran can have bad implications on the whole region and can cause riots in the region.

MARGARET WARNER: How would the Iranian people react to any kind of military action?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter): The people of Iran criticize their government -- political criticism; however, notwithstanding the criticism, the people of Iran will defend their country and will not let the aliens prevail.

MARGARET WARNER: And so at home your struggle continues?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter): That's correct. I fight for democracy and for peace.

MARGARET WARNER: And do you think will you see full democracy in Iran in your lifetime?

SHIRIN EBADI (Speaking through interpreter): Yes, I think so. And I hope so.

MARGARET WARNER: Shirin Ebadi, thank you.

SHIRIN EBADI: Welcome.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: And, again, the major developments of this day: CIA Director Porter Goss resigned after less than two years on the job. He gave no reason. The Labor Department reported the economy added 138,000 jobs in April, the smallest increase in six months. And the government of Sudan and the largest rebel group of Darfur signed a peace agreement, but leaders of two smaller rebel factions refused to sign.

JIM LEHRER: And once again, to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. We add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. Here, in silence, are 16 more.

JIM LEHRER: Washington Week can be seen on most PBS stations later this evening. We'll see you online and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.