The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: A summary of today's news; a preview of tonight's Sate of the Union address, with some historical perspective from Edmund Morris, Roger Wilkins, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Haynes Johnson, and analysis by Mark Shields and David Brooks; then an update report on the burn victims from the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon; a look at the kidnapping of an American reporter in Pakistan; and an essay on a new America by Clarence Page.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Bush will deliver the State of the Union address tonight. He's expected to update the war on terror overseas and here at home, call for more spending on domestic security and passage of an economic stimulus bill, and offer a new prescription drug benefit under Medicare. He is not expected to mention Enron by name, but will urge corporations to disclose more financial data, and he'll support greater security for pension plans. House Minority Leader Gephardt will offer the Democratic response. We'll have the speech and the response on most PBS stations later this evening. The collapse of Enron has not damaged the nation's energy markets or energy supplies. The head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said that today. Pat Wood testified at a Senate hearing. He urged Congress to be careful about imposing new rules on the energy business.

PAT WOOD, Chairman, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission: The issue so far has not been that energy, markets had anything to do with it. In fact, I would say energy markets are what saved the country from the collapse of this company being so dramatic and it's a large player. It's a big company. For it to have been digested so efficiently through the market is quite a testimony to the efficiency of the markets that that company and many, many others have advocated for the better part of decade.

JIM LEHRER: The committee's Democratic chairman, Senator Bingaman of New Mexico, said there needs to be increased public disclosure of energy trading activities. The board of Enron chose an interim Chief Executive Officer today. He's Stephen Cooper, a corporate restructuring expert. He'll try to steer Enron out of the largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in history. He succeeds Kenneth Lay, who resigned last week as CEO and chairman, but remains on the board. There's been another major corporate bankruptcy. The telecommunications firm Global Crossing filed for Chapter 11 protection Monday. It was the fourth largest corporate failure in U.S. History. The company was launched in 1997. It spent billions of dollars to build a worldwide fiber optic network, but it never turned a profit. On Wall Street today, stocks fell amid fears that more companies have suspect accounting practices. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 247 points, or 2.5%, to close at 9,618. The NASDAQ Index dropped 50 points to close at 1,892, for a loss of 2.6%. In other economic news, consumer confidence rose in December for the second straight month. The private Conference Board reported that today. It said Americans were more optimistic about job prospects and the overall business outlook. In Nigeria today, the number of dead climbed sharply in a mass drowning in Lagos. The country's President said more than 600 had died. Other estimates ran even higher. We have a report from Louise Bates of Associated Press Television News.

LOUISE BATES: As the bodies pile up in the official and makeshift morgues in Lagos, one Nigerian newspaper, Lagos' "Daily Vanguard," estimated more than 2,000 people had been killed. State television cited unnamed witnesses as saying between 750 and 1,000 bodies had been recovered in various parts of the city. The reports couldn't be independently confirmed. Hundreds of bodies were pulled out of the canal on Monday after people drowned while fleeing the explosions on Sunday night at an Army weapons depot. An Army spokesman said the explosions began when a fire spread to the military base. State and military officials have assured that the fire was accidental and not an indication of military unrest.

JIM LEHRER: And the Nigerian defense minister announced today the Army would relocate the munitions depot to a safer location. Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia reaffirmed his country's ties to the United States today. He spoke in interviews with the "New York Times" and the "Washington Post." He rejected reports the Saudis want U.S. troops withdrawn from their soil. But he did complain that U.S. support for Israel had angered many Arabs. He said, "We find it very difficult to defend America, and so we keep our silence." Police in Pakistan said today they'd made progress in the search for Daniel Pearl, a "Wall Street Journal" reporter. They did not give details. Pearl vanished last Wednesday. He'd been in Karachi, trying to contact Islamic militants linked to Osama bin Laden. On Sunday, a militant group released a photo of Pearl with a gun to his head. The group said it was protesting U.S. treatment of Afghan war captives. We'll have more on the story later in the program. Also coming: Some State of the Union history, Shields and Brooks, 9/11's burn victims at the Pentagon, the kidnapped reporter in Pakistan, and a Clarence Page essay.

FOCUS - HISTORICAL VIEWS

JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill begins our State of the Union preview.

GWEN IFILL: President Bush will deliver his State of the Union message tonight at a time when public support for the President and for his party are at historic levels. According to a "Washington Post" poll 83% of Americans approve of the way he is handling his job as President and 44% trust Congressional Republicans over Democrats to handle the nation's biggest problems. History may provide a useful guide to what those numbers mean. Here to take us on that walk are "NewsHour" regulars, Presidential Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Journalist and Author Haynes Johnson, and Roger Wilkins, Professor of History at George Mason University, and Presidential Biographer Edmund Morris, author of "Theodore Rex," the second volume in his planned trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt. Welcome, everybody.

GWEN IFILL: Haynes Johnson, what are the challenges for a wartime President delivering a State of the Union message?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Well, he's got the greatest opportunity, because, particularly in the age of television, it presents the perfect stage. All America, all the world watches; the members of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Diplomatic Corps, and two television. Everybody is a part of this vehicle. So if you want to build support for your policies, this is the golden opportunity. They don't always rise to that, though. Lyndon Johnson talked about guns and butter, too, in Vietnam. Harry Truman had guns and butter, too, during Korea. And it may that be that powerful popularity that is so high now often may not lead. Lyndon Johnson was out a couple of years after he gave that guns and butter speech, so there's a peril as well as an opportunity for our Presidents.

GWEN IFILL: Doris, which Presidents can you think of have used this opportunity well, a especially in a time war or at a time of national crisis?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Well, I think one of the most memorable ones was in 1941, when Roosevelt spoke. Even though we were not officially in the war at that point, Europe was engulfed in war, and he called upon the Congress and the country to support the Lend Lease program to help England. And during the fall before that State of the Union message, the majority of the country was still very uncertain about whether they wanted us to be involved in Europe's war, and he thought the Lend Lease passage was absolutely central. As a result in part of those words and that strong speech, later that spring, when it went before the Congress, it passed, and turned out to be of vital importance. I think that's one of the most important ones. It's interesting to think back on 1991, when Mr. Bush Senior spoke to the country in the midst of the Gulf War. It wasn't that he really needed to ask the country for anything, but the transition that he had to make is the same one that Mr. Bush has to make now, to be a leader not just of war, but a national leader on the economy as well. And when he came before the country a year later when the war was over, and all these expectations were built up about what would he do for the economy-- and he himself said they've been built up so much that I think I should've had Barbara here to deliver for me so I could meet those expectations-- he didn't make that transformation. That's the challenge, I think, for President Bush tonight. We're still in the midst of the war. He's popular as a war leader, but he has to become a national leader on the home front as well. And that's a great opportunity for him. Everybody is looking tonight.

GWEN IFILL: Roger, are there Presidents who have handled it will, better than others?

ROGER WILKINS: Well, I think Roosevelt was the master of everything. He turned radio into television with this fireside chats. The talk that Doris was talking about in 1941 was preceded by a fireside chat, which... He was rolled into the map room and he said, "I'm not going to make a fireside chat tonight. I'm going to talk about national security." And he went on to talk about how Hitler hated democracies, and was the enemy of democracy. Now, America was not ready to go into the war. But Roosevelt wants to help the democracy, so he sets it up, and then he uses a wonderful phrase, "We must become the arsenal of democracy." He then goes into his State of the Union speech about a week later, and he talks about the world that we want to see when we get through. He calls for an economic bill of rights for Americans. He talked about the four freedoms for the world, so that he set the context for the struggle that was just phenomenal. People could understand it.

GWEN IFILL: Edmund Morris, how do Presidents use this unique opportunity, this incredible platform to help them in the long run?

EDMUND MORRIS: Well, the name "Roosevelt" seems to be dropped with embarrassing frequency this evening. I would remind Mr. Wilkins there are other Roosevelts to talk about.

GWEN IFILL: Well, go for it, why don't you?

EDMUND MORRIS: Theodore Roosevelt, in his time, faced challenges just as extreme as Mr. Bush has had to face. He became President through an act of terrorism, the assassination of President McKinley, and the American people were as traumatized by that assassination as indeed we were by the World Trade Center exactly 100 years later. And for the next few months, exactly as President Bush has had to do in the last few months, he had to reassure the American people, with his positivity and his personal force and the self-certainty that he seemed to exude, that all is right in the State of the United States, and that the President is strong, that our institutions are indestructible-- even though they are permeable, being free institutions-- and that after taking care of crisis to our securities, and President Bush is done, other challenges have to be faced. In TR's case, and also in the case of President Bush tonight, the next big challenge is corporate regulation.

GWEN IFILL: Haynes, we are going to hear the phrase a lot tonight, "guns versus butter," domestic priorities versus foreign policy priorities democracy at a time of war and a time of economic recession. What have we seen about the way that Presidents have been able to balance this out in the past?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Well, again, Edmund is right. We can pass around the name Roosevelt. It does resonate through our history-- both Roosevelts, as a matter of fact. But the great phrase-making-- Roger talked about the "arsenal of democracy" phrase-- and it was Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, who talked about making that wonderful transition from "Doctor New Deal" to "Doctor Win-the-War." And that was the way a President could position himself to summon the country to follow him in the next phase of the leadership.

GWEN IFILL: But the next phase, as you and Doris have mentioned, for some Presidents have not turned out to be a successful phase. I guess I'm wondering have do Presidents, how have Presidents been able to build on this incredible platform, to take it to the next level successfully?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Well, Roosevelt was successful. Often Presidents aren't successful. After all, Harry Truman in Korea, that was an unpopular war. Lyndon was driven out by the war. George Bush, Sr., George Herbert Walker Bush, one year he was at 91% in the polls, and one year later, he was defeated. So this is treacherous terrain for a President. You've got to instill confidence, you've got to have a vision that says this is where I'm going to take the country, and people have to buy into it.

GWEN IFILL: Doris, I want to ask you this, and also Roger, because you both have worked in White Houses. How important is it to the White House to take a long historical look at how one presents a message like this, what priorities one puts in the speech, how one pulls it together?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Oh, I think there's no question that the speechwriters go back and look at other speeches in other State of the Unions. In fact, I remember one time a funny column where the columnist was able to show similar phrases in about three different Presidential State of the Unions, because you look back and you get that sense of history. And I think that's important for the country as well, to be able to see itself not just this moment in time, as if we've never been somewhere else before, but, for example, when Roosevelt would talk, he would talk not just about that moment in World War II, but to give us confidence and courage, he would talk about the pioneers going over the Rocky Mountains; George Washington at Valley Forge having the courage and the resolution to stay on; the industrialists getting us through the Industrial Revolution. We've done it before; we can do it again. I think history provides something larger, a sense that the moment is not being lived alone, and a sense of the incredible ritual and pageantry of this country, and what it can bring in the future.

GWEN IFILL: Roger?

ROGER WILKINS: See, there was Doris working in the White House at the heights. When I was in the government, I was down in the grungies in the Justice Department, and there it's really ugly, because you're asked to provide material for the speech. Well, you want to get in that speech, so you write your stuff. (Clearing throat) You sell it to the Attorney General. You want his memo to include your things. And then you watch the speech, and somewhere buried down in the speech, there is one phrase that relates to your program. And you live... It's like the old thing "I mention, therefore I am." (Laughter) And of course, you brandish that about as you go in your inter- agency fights to get your program moved ahead.

GWEN IFILL: So, Edmund Morris, assuming that these Presidents all have an eye on how their speeches will be viewed in history, whether or not they are memorable, how do they balance out their different priorities, so that the speech says what he really wants it to say, not only for tonight, but for the ages?

EDMUND MORRIS: Well, back in Theodore Roosevelt's time, what the President said was usually what a President wrote. TR wrote all his own speeches. And when it came to phrase making, I'll put my Roosevelt against your Roosevelts any time. For example, one of the most potent phrases he came out with in 1902, when he started talking about the necessity for the government scrutinizing the workings of large corporations, was that the "malefactors of great wealth," as he called them, "were going to have to submit to more publicity if they wanted to continue to prosper in the free enterprise system." He said in his first message to Congress-- which was the equivalent in those days of the State of the Union now, exactly 100 years ago-- that the public interest requires the government should have the right to inspect and examine the workings of great corporations. What you've been seeing with Enron's secretive dealings in recent years is a casebook study in TR's passionate belief that all great corporations should have the light to publicity shone upon their innermost work.

GWEN IFILL: You know, as you're comparing today's speech making and speech giving to Teddy Roosevelt's days, you also have written famously about Ronald Reagan. How that does that compare?

EDMUND MORRIS: Ronald Reagan, you know, was a very good speechwriter. He wrote his own stuff for many years before he came to the White House, and during his first term, he still wrote consider numbers of speeches. For example, the Korean Airlines speech was drafted entirely by Ronald Reagan sitting on a damp beach towel in the White House solarium. He did not have the gift of epigram, though, as Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt both had. Reagan was an eloquent man, but most of his eloquence came in his delivery. His actual language was not particularly inspired.

GWEN IFILL: Roger?

ROGER WILKINS: Well, I wanted to see what the first State of the Union was like, so I went and consulted Douglas Southhall Freeman on George Washington's speech on January 8, 1790, the first State of the Union. And it said that "He presented himself with superlative care before the Senate." And then he read a paper consisting mainly of a congratulatory paragraph on the present favorable prospects of our public affairs, and a series of unexciting proposals for common defense, protection of the frontiers, naturalization laws, uniform weights and measures, the grant of patents, the extension of the post, and the promotion of science and literature. But then, he was elected unanimously.

GWEN IFILL: That goes to show, Doris, the speeches weren't always that great a pageant, were they?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Well, you know what's so interesting is that George Washington and John Adams did deliver the State of the Union in person, but then, when Thomas Jefferson came long, he thought it was too much like the king, because the whole process was, in a certain sense, you know, the king and queen speaking to parliament. So he just sent a written message to the Congress, undid that whole idea of going up in person. It really wasn't revived until Woodrow Wilson, who decided to make a dramatic, bold thing by actually going in person, which of course gives it so much more pageantry and meaning. And he was accused at that time of reintroducing the kingship into the Presidency. For a few Presidents after Wilson, they went back to the annual message. But then, of course, old Franklin Roosevelt came back to actually delivering it in person. And television just makes that so much more powerful. You see those people together. There's a feeling of electricity and meaning by everybody being in the same room that you could never get by a written message.

GWEN IFILL: Well, we started with Franklin Roosevelt, and we're going to have to end with Franklin Roosevelt, because we're all out of time. We have to retreat to our caves and actually watch the speech. Thank you all very much for joining us.

FOCUS - STATE OF THE UNION

JIM LEHRER: And that brings us to Shields and Brooks: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields, and the "Weekly Standard's" David Brooks.

JIM LEHRER: David, How you would set stage for tonight's State of the Union message?

DAVID BROOKS: Let's see -- we're four months after a great national tragedy -- national Sabbath -- the country has changed - great military victory but time passes and suddenly Mariah Carrie's record contract gets on people's radar screen, the hockey dad who killed. We have become more of a normal country and we have developed a habit somehow that we regard foreign policy crises as sort of as interruptions; we solve the crisis and then we go back to what we regard the as the meat and potatoes of economics and pension reform and all the things like that, but that's wrong now. And what Bush has to say is foreign policy matters. It's not the economy stupid; it's survival stupid; it's national honor stupid. And so he has this challenge of saying this remarkable moment still matters, and that we still have to any foreign policy terms and he also has to seize that moment in a way that hasn't been seized yet, that self-confidence, that desire for sacrifice and he also has to somehow say, I recognize there is a changed moment and we are going to move together in some way; it's not going to be a give me speech with 100 goodies from the government; it's going to be some sort of call that's worthy of what happened.

JIM LEHRER: That's quite a menu, Mark.

MARK SHIELDS: It is quite a menu, Jim.

JIM LEHRER: What you would add or subtract?

MARK SHIELDS: I would say we're in a unique political moment and I think a political moment for the President and everybody else in the country to understand. Jim, by a margin of two to one, Americans believe that we're in recession -- that the worst of it lies head; that at the same time we're in war, Americans acknowledge that, and that the worst of the war lies ahead and they fully expect we'll suffer another attack. And yet by a margin of three to one Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction. Now that doesn't jibe. I asked Peter Hart, your old friend, the Wall Street Journal pollster, NBC News and appears on the NewsHour from time to time why, and Peter said because September 11 changed the way we feel about ourselves, and I said, why and he said, because prior to September 11 all we heard about was the greatest generation and how noble they were and how ignoble we were, and Americans got their perception of themselves Jim from the freaks they saw on television whether it was Jerry Springer or Ricki Lake and misfits and all of the rest of it. All of a sudden you had firefighters, you had fighting men and women; you had police officers; you had emergency workers showing themselves to be heroic, to be self-less, to be as truly great as any greatest generation. So that is the moment. It's really a remarkable moment for the President. I could not emphasize more David is right. I mean he's got to reach out and it's got to be beyond national service; it's got to be say this is what we're all in together.

JIM LEHRER: I was at one of those background briefings today at the White House, and a high administration official said almost exactly what you two have just said: That the President first of all feels very strongly that we're not out of the woods, that there could still be another severe attack, and that he wants to get that message over to the American people; he wants to shake them out - just the way. Is that possible to do in this environment?

DAVID BROOKS: It's tough because the conventional view is that you lose elections on domestic policy and all of the savants will tell him you have got to talk about bread and butter issues but if he feels, as he said, and I'm sure he does feel, that this is his mission and moment, that his great task is to make a secure world for Americans, then he has got to persevere in that, and he's right. He has talked and his administration consistently about an aggressive long-term campaign. We learned in the Washington Post this week that the entire cabinet believes that the war on terror will not be over if Saddam Hussein is in power that. That means that somewhere along the line - maybe far - maybe near - there's going to be another traumatic, very aggressive, ambitious move, and that dwarfs anything on the domestic agenda.

JIM LEHRER: JIM LEHRER: But does national service... He's expected at the end of his speech tonight-- and I'm not telling anything out of school, but it's already been projected on the wires and all of that-- that he is going to expand a form of Americorps and all of that and urge Americans, particularly young Americans, to do national service. You don't think that's enough? Do you need more than that?

MARK SHIELDS: I think it's an important first step, Jim. It's certainly a program that was castigated and condemned by most Republicans as Bill Clinton's bad idea and now embraced. I think it is. John McCain certainly has given it enormous legitimacy and enormous momentum. But, Jim, we just heard the historians talk about Franklin Roosevelt in 1942, and he stood there and he said that is what we're going in for; this is what it's about, two months after Pearl Harbor, but he said we're talking about taxes and bonds, taxes and bonds. It's going to be cost. It's not going to be ouchless and painless and free. Up to now, it's been ouchless and painless and free. We're going to spend that much more on defense, and, boy, that top 1%, they're going to get their tax cut too. There is no dislocation; there's no sense of commitment.

JIM LEHRER: One thing, David, I noticed that neither of you have spoken about any kind of low expectations for George W. Bush. Are those now behind us?

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah. The expectations issue is something he can't do. I can't imagine a White House speechwriter going to a President and saying, "Mr. President, this is the first major speech you're going to give where half the country doesn't regard you as a moron." What are we going to do? There's nothing they can do. They give the best speech they can give; they always do. Expectations are out of their control. I do think the whole country is rooting for him in the way they were September 20th when he gave that first speech, and that first speech, that September 20th speech, was such an important speech because it set the pattern where he's up at 85 percent approval; you know, he's more popular than sunshine, and that really did set the tone and created this national revival we're talking about.

JIM LEHRER: And a national expectation that he will deliver a terrific speech tonight, which would not have happened a year ago.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right. I mean he's the unchallenged heavyweight champion of American politics. I mean David's right. He's been at the stratospheric numbers going on five months, and everybody on both sides -- Republicans are trying to rub a little off on themselves and see if we can get closer -- and the Democrats are saying they don't want him to come after me. But he's almost like an "Ike" figure, an Eisenhower. It isn't tied to policy; it isn't tied to anything -- his mastery of information or anything of the sort. It's the sense that people like him and I think that's what he has going for him more than anything else.

JIM LEHRER: We'll continue this conversation later tonight after the President's speech for the lucky viewers of PBS who will tune in. Thank you both.

UPDATE - HEALING HEROES

JIM LEHRER: And still to come on the NewsHour tonight: Healing burn victims, the missing reporter in Pakistan, and a Clarence Page essay.

JIM LEHRER: In New York City today, 49-year-old Elaine Duch was released from the hospital. She had worked on the 88th floor in the World Trade Center's North Tower, and was severely burned in the September 11 attack. Here are excerpts from the news conference held with her doctor.

DR. PALMER BESSY, New York Weill Cornell Medical Center: She was critically ill on the ventilator and other many other forms of life support. She had burns over 77% of her body, and she also had a severe injury of her lungs. Eventually we were able to start to treat the extensive burns. She had her first operation on September 18, and her seventh and last operation on December 11. She was on the ventilator all that time, many bouts of pneumonia and bacteria in her bloodstream. But she weathered all of that, and about 12 days ago, finally came off the ventilator and was able to start so talk.

ELAINE DUCH: I thank God that I'm here today, because when I got hurt on 88, I said, "God, save me," and he did. I have my ups and downs, but I think that I want to get better and will push very hard to get better.

REPORTER: Can you share with us your hopes and plans?

ELAINE DUCH: Well, I want to... I want to just go back to the way I was. As far as plans, I don't know what I plan on doing-- maybe take a nice long vacation. Oh, yeah, definitely Atlantic City. (Laughter)

JIM LEHRER: In Washington today another event honored burn victims injured at the Pentagon. Susan Dentzer of our health unit has been looking into that part of the story. The unit is a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

SUSAN DENTZER: Former Navy Lieutenant Kevin Shaeffer was undergoing physical therapy for burns recently at a Washington, D.C., Hospital.

KEVIN SHAEFFER: I've started working down here about four weeks ago on a daily basis, here in the gym, sometimes twice a day, but at least once a day, including the weekends.

SUSAN DENTZER: Shaeffer, who's 29, used to be on the staff of the chief of Naval Operations, helping to chart strategy for the U.S. Navy. He was at his old job at the Pentagon when the attack came on September 11. As fire roared through the building, he suffered serious burns over 40% of his body, especially on his hands and arms.

KEVIN SHAEFFER: It was quite... Quite terrifying. It was black. I was knocked down. I knew I was on fire. I had to roll to put myself out, and then find out if anyone else was around, which, unfortunately, no one else was, where I was.

SUSAN DENTZER: Shaeffer managed to make his way out of the Pentagon to rescue crews, and was taken here to the burn unit at Washington Hospital Center. He doesn't recall much about those first few hours, except struggling to get his wedding ring and his Naval Academy class ring off of his badly burned fingers.

KEVIN SHAEFFER: I had heard someone say that they were going to have to cut the rings off, and so I basically stopped, made them stop what they were doing, and I was able to rip off both of my rings and give them to them so they wouldn't have to cut them off.

SUSAN DENTZER: James Jeng is one of the doctors at Washington hospital center. He says the fact that Shaeffer remembers so little of those first hours and days is typical of victims who suffer painful and debilitating burns.

DR. JAMES JENG, Washington Hospital Center: They go through hell. And my only comfort comes from the fact that, almost to a man and a woman, they don't recall their intensive care unit stay where the worst of it is. But even now, when they're going through rehabilitation, they're having a lot of pain, they're having a lot of suffering. And it's not just physical, it's emotional, too.

SUSAN DENTZER: Shaeffer agrees.

KEVIN SHAEFFER: Fortunately, I was on some medication, but even all the medication they can give you doesn't even keep the pain from breaking through. So it was very, very painful, both to my body, and trying to deal with it mentally was really difficult, especially early on.

SUSAN DENTZER: Besides the burns, Shaeffer also had devastating damage to his respiratory tract, thought to have been caused when he inhaled jet fuel. Hospitalized until mid December-- and in intensive care for weeks-- Shaeffer was twice on the verge of death, says his physician, Dr. Marion Jordan.

DR. MARION JORDAN, Director, Burn Center, Washington Hospital Center: I did five operations in five days when the infection was at its worst, because we kept going back to try to get the infected burn tissue off of his arms.

SUSAN DENTZER: Shaeffer and nine other patients from the Pentagon who were brought here to Washington Hospital Center benefited from new burn research and treatments. These advances have improved survival rates for the estimated 50,000 Americans seriously burned each year. But even with new burn treatment and technology, about 5,000 U.S. burn victims still die annually, and Jordan says that's in large part because serious burns are possibly the worst traumas the human body can suffer.

DR. MARION JORDAN: The burn injury is more than just a surface injury. It's a total body injury, and has the potential for disrupting major bodily functions, including the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, and other body processes.

SUSAN DENTZER: It's clear that the first thing a burn does is damage the skin. In what's called a first-degree burn-- for example, a sunburn-- only the outermost layer, the epidermis, is harmed. That type of burn usually heals itself without incident. By contrast, a second-degree burn, such as the kind that may take place in a kitchen accident, destroys the epidermis and exposes the second layer of skin, the dermis. Then there are third-degree burns, like those suffered by most of the Pentagon victims.

DR. MARION JORDAN: Both the epidermis and the dermal layers are destroyed, and so you have nothing from which epidermal cells can migrate or can regenerate. Those burns go into the fat. The nerve endings are destroyed, and those are painful.

SUSAN DENTZER: With the body's protective coating of skin gone, these so-called "full thickness" burns pave the way for massive fluid loss and death from bacterial infection. At the same time, for reasons experts don't understand, burns also unleash a flood of chemicals in the body, in what's known as an inflammatory response. That, too, can kill a patient swiftly in the absence of proper care. So nowadays, doctors and nurses move immediately to stabilize burn patients and counteract those harmful body responses. Then, in a procedure known as debridement, the burned dead skin is thoroughly shaved off.

DR. MARION JORDAN: We put the patient completely to sleep. The patient has no sensation and no feeling as this is taking place. And we take a variety of instruments with very, very sharp blades, and we take off thin layers at a time about two millimeters thick. And as each layer is peeled off, we look again to see if there is an evident surface that is still injured, or if there is a surface that is now healthy-looking.

SUSAN DENTZER: Normally this surgery is performed two to three days after the burn takes place, when a patient is stable enough to withstand the considerable blood loss of the operation. But in the case of the Pentagon victims, doctors moved up that schedule by about a day. Dr. Jeng says that decision stemmed from new scientific insight about what actually happens when skin burns.

DR. JAMES JENG: Most people at first glance would think that the injury occurs as long as there's that heat source adjacent to the skin, and once the burning of the cloth is done, or the removal of the heat is effected, the injury stops. And that's really not the case. In my own laboratory recently we've published work that shows that the burn wound continues to evolve and indeed worsen over time, even after the burning material has been removed.

SUSAN DENTZER: So by operating on patients earlier, Jeng says, doctors were able to keep already bad burns from becoming far worse, and to speed the recovery process. Once the patients' own burned skin was removed in surgery, the doctors in some cases replaced it temporarily with donated skin from human cadavers. But given the relatively large number of patients they had to treat, they also made use of several innovative biosynthetic skin substitutes. One is called Integra. It's made from the unlikely combination of cow protein and powdered shark cartilage.

DR. MARION JORDAN: You shave the burn wound off, you apply the Integra, and then you have to do a good deal of care and feeding of that material to keep the patient from shearing it off and getting infection under it.

SUSAN DENTZER: After two weeks, new blood vessels grow up through the Integra patch, in effect creating a new live dermal skin layer. Then doctors apply a very thin layer of the patient's own skin over that, to create a new epidermis. Kevin Shaeffer underwent several such procedures, as patches of Integra were covered with thin transplants of skin taken from his legs.

KEVIN SHAEFFER: It's pretty amazing, the amount of coverage that you can get from a relatively small piece of healthy skin. It can be stretched out to cover and protect a large wounded area. And that's what they took to put on my arms and some smaller pieces on my back to cover up my burns.

SUSAN DENTZER: All told, Shaeffer and the other Pentagon burn victims underwent more than 100 operations. All but one patient, who died shortly after the attack in September, have now left the hospital. Pentagon officials visited Shaeffer there recently, on the day he went home.

OFFICIAL: How do you feel?

KEVIN SHAEFFER: I'm feeling great.

OFFICIAL: Thank God.

KEVIN SHAEFFER: So today is the day I've been anxiously awaiting.

SUSAN DENTZER: Shaeffer has received a medical discharge from the Navy, and says he'll spend the coming year figuring out what to do next.

KEVIN SHAEFFER: My main focus right now is on healing and getting better, and being at home.

SUSAN DENTZER: For at least a year, Shaeffer will have to wear these pressure bandages on his hands and arms to minimize formation of scar tissue. He'll also continue to undergo physical therapy to stretch the grafted skin and restore movement.

KEVIN SHAEFFER: You're never the same the day after an injury like this as you were before. So you need to realize that, accept that you can't change it, and try to work as hard as you can to get back to that point and make the best out of the situation.

SUSAN DENTZER: Shaeffer says he's looking forward to the day when his hands and fingers have healed enough so that he can wear his rings again. Until that time comes, his wife, Blanca, will continue to wear them on a chain around her neck.

FOCUS - MISSING

JIM LEHRER: Now, the kidnapped reporter in Pakistan. Media correspondent Terence Smith has our story.

TERENCE SMITH: Last Wednesday in Karachi, an American journalist was headed for this restaurant when he disappeared. Daniel Pearl, the 38-year-old South Asia Bureau chief for the "Wall Street Journal," was scheduled to meet a local source for an article on Richard Reid, the alleged shoe bomber. Then, over the weekend, these photos of Pearl were released to news organizations by a previously unknown group called the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty. The group charged that Pearl was a CIA Agent. The message complained about the American government's treatment of Pakistanis captured in the Afghan War, and now held in Cuba. The group said it was holding Pearl "in very inhumane circumstances. If the Americans keep our countrymen in better conditions, we will better the conditions of Mr. Pearl and all the other Americans that we capture." Yesterday, in an unusual step, the CIA publicly denied that Pearl ever worked there. Dow Jones, the "Journal's" parent company, and the State Department have issued similar denials.

RICHARD BOUCHER, State Department Spokesman: We want to reiterate our view that he should be released immediately and unconditionally. He is a respected journalist, and he has no connection with the United States government.

TERENCE SMITH: The Pearl case has been raised at the highest levels. On Monday, Secretary of State Colin Powell urged Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to do everything possible to win the reporter's release. Investigators in Karachi suspect Pearl was kidnapped by the militant group Harakat ul- Mujahedeen. It has kidnapped foreigners in the past, and is linked to the al-Qaida network.

TERENCE SMITH: For more on the kidnapping, we go to Nafisa Hoodbhoy, who from 1984 to 2000 was a reporter for Pakistan's leading newspaper, "Dawn," based in Karachi. She is an informal consultant to the Committee to Protect Journalists. And to Mansoor Ijaz, an investment banker and frequent op-ed columnist for international publications. His parents emigrated to the United States in 1960 from Pakistan shortly before he was born.

TERENCE SMITH: Welcome to you both. Mansoor Ijaz, you've been in touch, I understand, with Daniel Pearl, and even provide him with some contacts for sources among militant Islamic groups in Pakistan. Tell us about that.

MANSOOR IJAZ, Investment Banker: Shortly after the tragic events of September 11, Mr. Pearl called me from Bombay and said he had been made aware that I had some contacts with some of the either former associates of Osama bin Laden or some of the more radical Islamic groups in Pakistan, which I did from other things that I had done in that region. And he wanted to know whether or not I would introduce him to them. And I spent about an hour with him in that first telephone call essentially trying to understand what story he wanted to pursue to make sure I wasn't unnecessarily putting him in harm's way, because these are not people who understand mistakes very well. And I was absolutely convinced of his integrity, honesty, and approach, and I made those contacts available to him. And one of those contacts was the one who sent me an e-mail message last Friday morning, very early in the morning, essentially saying that Daniel was missing for the last 48 hours, was I aware of it, and what needed to be done. And that's when I started to proceed to get involved in this process.

TERENCE SMITH: And from these contacts that you had with him, did you have any sense of where he was going when he disappeared?

MANSOOR IJAZ: Well, I certainly can't say I've been in touch with him since the beginning of the year. I think the last conversation we had was just before Christmas, in which he was essentially iterating his story and he was definitely on to some very important and very sensitive items in that part of world. It's a very complex set of problems he was trying to untangle. But I thought he was doing a pretty good job of it, and encouraged him while I got the chance.

TERENCE SMITH: And he was trying to portray the groups and what they are and who they are, and their relationship, we understand, with Richard Reid.

MANSOOR IJAZ: Yes, I think in this particular case he essentially came to a point where he was trying to understand where Richard Reid had gotten his basis in Islamic radicalism. And that brought him into contact with people, one of whom was a man by the name of Sheik Mubarak ali Gilani, who we have been watching here in the United States for a number of years. He started a mosque in Brooklyn back in 1986, and this man is known to be one of the most viral radical Islamists anywhere in the world. And apparently, Richard Reid was one of his disciples, and I think that's the cornerstone that Daniel was working on when he went into this thing. And I think he may have uncovered the tip of an iceberg that may yet have many deep ramifications.

TERENCE SMITH: Nafisa Hoodbhoy, tell us a little about Karachi for an environment for journalists to work in. I gather you have been a target yourself?

NAFISA HOODBHOY, Pakistani Journalist: Well, Karachi has been really a very dangerous place for journalists, and kidnappings for ransom were common in the 80s and the 90s; they came to an end when the army stepped in in 1992. So it is rather remarkable this sort of environment should exist today when there is a military government in power.

TERENCE SMITH: Is there anything that you've read that leads you, about this kidnapping, that you draw any conclusions from, anything about who might have done it or what the circumstances might be?

NAFISA HOODBHOY: I suspect it would be the Islamic militant groups. You know, a number of groups have been wiped out by the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, and many of these groups have taken shelter inside Pakistan. I suspect that Daniel was probably looked at as a westerner. They say he was a CIA agent, and so really the militants are getting back at the U.S. for what the U.S. has done in Afghanistan.

TERENCE SMITH: Mansoor Ijaz, do you have any sense of this group that has claimed responsibility? Do you know of it? Do you know anything about them?

NAFISA HOODBHOY: Yes, Harakat ul-Mujahedeen is first of all the name, technical name, though the group that claimed responsibility is sort of irrelevant. These guys spin new names almost every day. But the Harakat ul-Mujahedeen group is essentially a Kashmiri militant organization, a more viral strain. It has been abused by al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden's training and fighters. These are very, very dangerous people. They will not hesitate for a moment to kidnap people or even kill them if they thought they could get something out of it. The key thing we have to keep in mind, Daniel didn't just represent a reporter who may have uncovered the tip of the iceberg. He was also the symbol of American power, because he worked for one of the most important and well-respected journalistic organizations anywhere in the world. And the second thing that we have to keep in mind, is that this all happened in terms of timing just in advance of Pervez Musharraf visit to the United States. And if this thing rages on for the next two weeks, it all of a sudden takes the entire spotlight away from the real work that needs to be done during the working visit coming up.

TERENCE SMITH: Nafisa Hoodbhoy, the demands made by the kidnappers are interesting. They specify they wanted the release of some 177 Pakistanis detained in the United States, the repatriation of the Pakistanis at Guantanamo Bay, and also the delivery of F-16s promised to Pakistan a decade ago, an issue that was supposedly resolved legally by the Clinton administration. What do those demands tell you about the kidnappers?

NAFISA HOODBHOY: Well, it seems that the kidnappers are trying to represent themselves as nationalist groups. They call themselves the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty. This is a group no one has really heard about. I suspect that it's just a term that they have taken on, that these are really Islamic fundamentalist groups who have a different agenda. And I suspect that the demand for the release of the Pakistanis who were rounded up, that is very different from the demand for those who have been held in Guantanamo Bay, becausethe latter were, of course, confirmed terrorists. And the former, who had been rounded up in New York, et cetera, are really economic refugees. They are people who came to the U.S. to earn a living. So it's kind of ridiculous to lump the two together.

TERENCE SMITH: Mansoor Ijaz, I wonder what you think those terms and the fact that at least to this hour, there has been no demand for ransom money or anything of the kind.

MANSOOR IJAZ: And there won't be. Miss Hoodbhoy is right about one thing: These are essentially nationalist people trying to portray themselves as the ultimate defenders of Pakistan's faith. Let's not forget that one of the motivations of this entire kidnapping episode has been to try and embarrass the government, and this is exactly what is in al-Qaida's interest, for Osama bin Laden to be thought of as being on Pakistani soil for something to happen that would embarrass the relationship between the United States and Pakistan. These are all objectives of whatever is left of the al-Qaida network over there. And more importantly, if the tip of the iceberg is the one that I've been working on the last five or six months myself, we may in fact be on the verge of uncovering the sleeper cells here in the United States, because the organization that Shaik Mubarak, who me. Pearl was trying to interview, he is the leader of an organization here that sent African Americans went to Pakistan. They trained there militarily. They got their religious indoctrination there and then they came back. In fact, people don't know this, but Sheik Mubarak is married. He has four wives, and two of them are African American. So I think we have to keep very clearly in mind that Mr. Pearl not only represented American power because of the "Wall Street Journal," but he also may have uncovered something that may be much, much more important for us to pay attention to.

TERENCE SMITH: Perhaps that will come clear in the coming days. Thank you both for helping us tonight.

ESSAY - NEW ATTITUDE

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight essayist Clarence Page of the "Chicago Tribune" presents his view of the State of the Union.

CLARENCE PAGE: There's a phrase I used to hear a lot that I haven't heard much lately: "Get over it." Bush voters said it to Gore voters after the Supreme Court ended the long Florida vote recount. ( Applause) Ex-mayor and ex-convict Marion Barry shouted it to his critics on his last victory night. ( Cheering ) But I didn't hear anyone telling Yankee fans to get over it after their team's big World Series loss. Even the Yankee haters I know-- and I know quite a few-- restrained themselves. I think it is because of September 11-- you know, the day that changed all of our lives. Getting over it went out of style real fast. The terrorists committed acts too monstrous for us to get over. Yet months later, wounds are beginning to heal. Slowly and cautiously we are getting back to normal, even as we try to figure out what "normal" is. Three months after the attacks, a "Washington Post" poll found that almost two-thirds of Americans thought the country has "permanently changed for the better." My friends are telling me the same. Relentless American optimism is showing itself once again. In the face of a common threat, we pull together with startling unity, trivializing many issues that previously divided us. Sales of Confederate flags went down. American flags went up. Red-state and blue-state America became red, white, and blue again. If we didn't put aside these differences, we told ourselves, the terrorists win. We said that a lot. Every simple move toward the normal became an act of defiance. We clutched our evidence of what the terrorists have not won like little trophies. We put aside our differences with our leaders, like President Bush and former Mayor Giuliani, and saw them transform into strong, reassuring wartime statesmen. We suppressed panic or mob action against Arabic or Muslim Americans. A few acts of bigotry were quickly overshadowed by many acts of kindness. "There are no bigots in foxholes," an old wartime saying goes. We became one big foxhole, and watched each other's backs. In our personal lives, we gained, like all survivors do, a new appreciation of our lives and the people in it. We traveled less and stayed closer to home.

SPOKESPERSON: Alleluia...

CLARENCE PAGE: We looked upon faith and family with more appreciative eyes. While restaurants that attracted tourists lost business, many neighborhood restaurants and pubs stayed busy. There we could talk about Kabul and Kandahar the way we usually debate the Yankees or the Cubs. People wanted to be with people. And a lot of us hugged our kids a lot closer. An unsuccessful terror attack illustrated our new national mood. When the airline passenger known as Richard Reid tried to light his explosive sneakers, the flight attendant was alert; the passengers sprang into action; disaster was foiled; the suspect went to jail. Here, then, was the new normalcy: Stay alert, but go on about your business. Otherwise, we remind ourselves, the terrorists win. "When tragedy strikes your neighborhood again and again," one Washington, D.C., mother told me, "you can't run from it. You learn to live through it." America is learning. 9/11 was a defining moment for this generation. We don't want to get over it. Instead, we're learning how to live through it. Out of our sorrows for the precious lives we lost, we gained a new appreciation for the precious lives we still have with us. To paraphrase Nietzsche, that which did not kill us as a nation made us stronger as a people. We are sending a new message back to the terrorists: If you thought you would divide us, you blew it; try to get over it. I'm Clarence Page.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of the day: President Bush will deliver his State of the Union Address tonight. Among other things, he's expected to update the war on terror and urge passage of an economic stimulus plan. And a top federal regulator said the collapse of Enron has not damaged the nation's energy markets or supplies. We'll be back at 9:00 P.M. Eastern Time on most PBS stations with full coverage and analysis of the President's speech, and the Democratic response. And we'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.