The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

GWEN IFILL: Good evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Jim Lehrer is off. On the NewsHour tonight, the news of this Tuesday. Then, the rising body count in Iraq, as reported by Ellen Knickmeyer of the Washington Post; prosecutorial missteps in the Moussaoui trial endanger the government's death penalty case; Kwame Holman reports on the quid pro quo of Washington lobbying-- can Congress regulate itself? And, from our occasional poetry series, the rhymes and the recitations of cowboy poets.

NEWS SUMMARY

GWEN IFILL: A federal judge today allowed the sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui to go forward. The judge in Alexandria, Virginia, ruled the government may continue seeking the death penalty. But she banned several witnesses because government lawyers improperly coached them. Moussaoui has admitted plotting with al-Qaida to hijack airplanes. We'll have more on this story later in the program.

Israeli forces stormed a Palestinian jail in the west bank today, triggering a ten-hour standoff. The raid in Jericho focused on inmates accused of killing an Israeli cabinet minister in 2001. We have a report narrated by Jonathan Miller of Independent Television News.

JONATHAN MILLER: They got him in the end; tonight, Israel announcing the Palestinian militant Ahmed Saadat had been arrested. He's somewhere in amongst this group which gave up tonight, having been holed up in the prison all day, vowing no surrender, the jail is now a smoldering wreck. The British and American prison monitors, there to ensure that inmates didn't escape, had pulled out. They'd felt too unsafe after recent riots at the prison. Israel pounced to preempt Saadat's threatened release. The Palestinian president said he was prepared to free him. It's been a dramatic day. This is the way the walls came down in Jericho this morning, all this within minutes of the monitors' withdrawal. A Palestinian security guard and a prisoner reported killed, 18 wounded, as gunfire and explosions echoed across this normally peaceful desert outpost; 150 inmates surrender; they'd been ordered to strip down to their underwear, a standard Israel security procedure but still no sign of the prisoners the Israelis had come for; chief among them, Saadat, the head of the popular front for the liberation of Palestine, which claimed responsibility for the assassination of the Israeli tourism minister five years ago. News of the Israeli raid on the West Bank reached Gaza in no time, things unraveling quickly now. Two British council offices set ablaze-- this one in Gaza, another in Ramallah. Within hours, Palestinian gunmen had kidnapped at least seven foreigners: Two Australians, this American, two French, one South Korean and a Swiss employee of the International Committee for the Red Cross.

DOUGLAS JOHNSON: I have nothing against the people who took me today and, whatever happens to me, I understand.

JONATHAN MILLER: Some hostages were quickly released; none, it seems, has been harmed. A Palestinian security official said tonight, all foreigners have now left Gaza.

GWEN IFILL: The militant leader Ahmed Saadat was put in the Jericho prison in 2002. In return, Israel ended an assault on Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah that year. Today, the Israelis said Saadat and others captured in Jericho will be put on trial. Britain and the United States denied any complicity in the raid. In Iraq today, police reported finding the bodies of 87 Iraqis, shot execution-style, within the last 24 hours. All were apparent victims of revenge killings by Shiites and Sunnis. Most were found around Baghdad. Iraqi officials also said hundreds of Shiite families have fled Baghdad and gone south to the Shiite heartland. Many were driven from Sunni areas at gunpoint. Authorities in Iraq today told the Associated Press they have foiled an al-Qaida plot to attack the United States and British embassies. The interior minister said the plot involved having more than 400 al-Qaida fighters infiltrate the Iraqi army. They would have manned crucial points around Baghdad's heavily guarded green zone. It's home to foreign embassies and Iraqi government buildings. We'll have more on Iraq right after this News Summary.

The son of Slobodan Milosevic insisted today his father was murdered. Marko Milosevic traveled to the Netherlands to collect the body. The former Yugoslav dictator was found dead Saturday in his jail cell in The Hague. Milosevic was on trial for war crimes in the Balkans. Dutch doctors said he died of a heart attack, but also found evidence of unprescribed medications in his blood system.

The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council were deadlocked today on Iran's nuclear program. The U.S., Britain and France urged strong action, which could include sanctions. Russia and China resisted that move. Later, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said it's important for the five countries to show unity.

JOHN BOLTON: We do have a responsibility as permanent members and we'd like to try and reach agreement. We're certainly still in agreement on the long-term strategic question of the importance of maintaining Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons.

GWEN IFILL: The talks are set to resume tomorrow.

Fire crews made some progress today in the Texas panhandle region as winds dropped. Since Sunday, wildfires there have burned across 1,000 square miles and killed 11 people. Eight towns have been evacuated. The broadest measure of the U.S. trade deficit hit an all-time high in 2005. The Commerce Department reported today on the so-called current account. It tracks goods and services, plus investments. Last year, it rose to nearly $805 billion. That's up 20 percent from the previous record in 2004. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 75 points to close at 11,151. The NASDAQ rose more than 28 points to close just under 2,296. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now, the mounting death toll in Iraq, twists and turns in the Moussaoui trial, lobbying lawmakers, and cowboy wordsmiths.

FOCUS BODY COUNT

GWEN IFILL: Almost every day, there are new reports of slain Iraqis, found singly and in groups, killed execution-style. Is this a new and troubling turn in the war? Earlier today, Ray Suarez got the details from Washington Post Baghdad bureau chief Ellen Knickmeyer.

RAY SUAREZ: Ellen Knickmeyer, welcome. Have the last two days in Iraq been particularly lethal?

ELLEN KNICKMEYER: Today has been an extraordinary chain of bodies being found around Baghdad. The most marked was 27 bodies found in a mass grave on the eastern edge of Baghdad. It was 27 men who had been killed from what police said was maybe two days to ten days ago and lots of their hands were bound. They were apparently found by children playing soccer in the field. And all over Baghdad today there were discoveries of large numbers of bodies. There are two mini buses that were found; they had a total of 18 bodies. And the killers had shot or strangled and in one of the mini buses they had tied their hands and handcuffed everyone before they killed them. There were more bodies just all over Baghdad and lots of it was Sunni neighborhoods, but lots of them were mixed neighborhood too, Sunni and Shia.

RAY SUAREZ: What's the best cause as to what's caused this up-tick in these kinds of killings?

ELLEN KNICKMEYER: The killings like this have been very markedly on the rise since the Feb. 22 bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra. That was seen as like an attempt to provoke lots of sectarian violence and sectarian violence, in fact, did follow in large scale. It was like hundreds of hundreds of being killed. On Sunday there was an attack on Sadr City, which is the Baghdad heart of Shiite clerics and militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, and that killed 58 people. And there had been fears that that would set off a new cycle of sectarian killing.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, when you talk about a new cycle, are there patterns to these killings, where they're happening, who the victims are, how they're being carried out?

ELLEN KNICKMEYER: You know, one thing is that this number of killings is new. Since the middle of last year there's been a surge in execution-style killings, but now it's really climbing, especially after the mosque bombing. The first wave of violence after the mosque bombing all the victims, all the families of the victims who I talked to and who I knew of were Sunni families who had had Sunni men taken away by what they said were black-clad men with guns, and Sadr's militia, the Mahdi army, they typically wear black uniforms although Sadr denies any involvement in these killing.

RAY SUAREZ: Are there leaders, people have who have the ear of unemployed and underemployed, young men who have the ear of armed gangs or even in the targeted communities who are keeping a lid on this or making it worse?

ELLEN KNICKMEYER: Leaders involved would deny they're making it worse but especially in the Shia parts of Iraq and Baghdad, Muqtada al-Sadr and other Shiite religious parties have thousands of very loyal and armed followers and I saw them the afternoon of the mosque bombing when there were hundreds of men on foot just reporting the Sadr's headquarters to get any orders that he was going to give out. I mean, he can command a very disciplined force of gunmen.

RAY SUAREZ: Are there signs that the security forces, both the police, other national Iraqi militia, have been infiltrated by people who are carrying out these killings?

ELLEN KNICKMEYER: They deny that, both the police and the army are overwhelmingly Shiite and there's observations that Shiite militia fighters with links to the Shiite religious parties are involved in death squads within the interior ministry.

RAY SUAREZ: Is there a form of ethnic cleansing going on now, either voluntarily or just out of fear?

ELLEN KNICKMEYER: I've started to hear some international officials start to say that but privately, that it's at least small-scale ethnic cleansing. And, yeah, I think fear is a big part of this in Iraq because every side has guns and when there's so much lawlessness to such an extent it becomes a fight to the death. Each wave of killing on one side sets off killings on the other side.

RAY SUAREZ: Who controls the streets day-to-day and is there any attempt to cut down on these killings by just locking neighborhoods down?

ELLEN KNICKMEYER: Who controls the streets is a good question. There's so many armed guys in pickups who go through the city and sometimes they're government security figures and sometimes you don't know who they are. I guess there's more or less a government because people want to retain law and order as much as they can.

RAY SUAREZ: Ellen Knickmeyer of the Washington Post, thanks for joining us.

ELLEN KNICKMEYER: You're welcome.

FOCUS TRIAL & ERROR

FOCUS TRIAL & ERROR

GWEN IFILL: Now, today's dramatic turn in the government's death penalty case against confessed terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui.

The government's bid to have Zacarias Moussaoui sentenced to death hit a stumbling block today after the presiding judge banned key witnesses from testifying. But Judge Leonie Brinkema, angered yesterday after discovering some witnesses may have been coached, allowed the death penalty phase of the trial to continue. Judge Brinkema sent the jury home yesterday when she learned a lawyer working on the prosecution team contacted witnesses in the case. Carla Martin, an attorney for the Transportation Security Administration, sent emails to seven witnesses, even though the judge had forbidden such contact. The disclosure caused Judge Brinkema to declare from the bench yesterday, "In all the years I've been on the bench, I've never seen such an egregious violation of the court's rule on witnesses." Relatives of 9/11 victims said the government's actions had harmed the case against Moussaoui.

ROSEMARY DILLARD: I am concerned she is taking aviation out of it. Each of the weapons that were used on 9/11 were airplanes. And we are taking six people out of the trial automatically, they will not be included, and we sit there and we see one woman has made this entire case a laughing stock.

GWEN IFILL: Moussaoui -- dubbed the 20th hijacker -- is the only person to be charged in the United States in connection with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He's pled guilty to six counts of conspiracy. Moussaoui was arrested on immigration charges shortly before 9/11, after arousing suspicion at a flight school in Minnesota. Prosecutors say Moussaoui withheld information after his arrest that would have allowed them to uncover the al-Qaida plot. The trial has been a raucous one. Moussaoui has erupted into frequent outbursts, tried to fire his court-appointed lawyers, and argued that he should be able to interview other suspected terrorists. He also declared his loyalty to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.

GWEN IFILL: For more on today's court action we are joined by Deborah Charles, who is covering the Moussaoui trial for the Reuters news agency -- she is outside the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia; and by Andrew McBride, a former federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Deborah Charles, you were in the courtroom today. Tell us why did Judge Brinkema decide to ban those witnesses who were going to testify to the aviation part of the case?

DEBORAH CHARLES: Well, she said there was too much taint that involved the whole thing. She couldn't tell how much the witnesses could have possibly been coached, could have been affected by what Ms. Martin said in her emails and she was also concerned about the evidence. Ms. Martin was involved with almost every part of the aviation-related evidence, and she was concerned that that also could have possibly been slanted or not as complete as possible.

GWEN IFILL: You have seen those emails. What did she say to them?

DEBORAH CHARLES: She said things like -- what she did was she summarized -- she took excerpts from the opening statements of the government and she criticized the government's opening statements saying that it left a huge hole for the defense just to ram a truck into it, I think is what she said; she said there's too much room for them to show that there were lapses that the FAA couldn't have solved the problems that -- there were too many lapses and so she kind of coached them in these emails saying you need to make sure you focus on this, you need to make sure you have them have you say this and things kind of saying try to get this out in direct questioning, rather than have it coming out in cross-examination.

GWEN IFILL: So what did the government -- this is obviously a setback for the government prosecutors; what did they say about it today?

DEBORAH CHARLES: They didn't say much. I mean, they were just at first at least they were you know -- they just listened to what she said. After court recessed, they had a telephone conference with the judge and got a delay in the hearing -- in the trial at least until Monday. They're considering right now what it is they need to do, whether or not they will try and -- if they're going to try and appeal in some way or anything.

GWEN IFILL: Was there some possibility that the judge was simply going to throw this death penalty phase out and he was going to serve life in prison?

DEBORAH CHARLES: Yes. Exactly. That's what the defense had asked for. They said it was an unfair trial and that Moussaoui was not going to get his -- his constitutional rights were being violated so they said -- they were requesting complete dismissal of the death penalty portion of the trial, which is basically what this whole trial is about. She said she wasn't going to do that but she did move -- take a big -- it's a pretty big step to exclude not just the witnesses but every all aviation-related evidence.

GWEN IFILL: And, Deborah, up until yesterday, how had this part, this phase of the trial been going?

DEBORAH CHARLES: Not you know, interesting, right now it's still the government phase, so we've heard testimony from F.B.I. agents. There were a few areas where Ms. Martin, in fact, in her emails said that the government kind of slipped up in letting an F.B.I. agent say something that they didn't want him to say. So I guess in her mind, at least, it wasn't going so well for the government. They -- there were some witnesses from flight schools talking about what a bad pilot Moussaoui was and that sort of thing helps the defense as well. The defense is trying to prove that he was a bad pilot; he couldn't have ever carried out these hijackings anyway. So, you know, it was really early on in the trial. It's just one week.

GWEN IFILL: Andrew McBride, Judge Brinkema said today that there has never in the annals of criminal law ever been a case with this many significant problems. Would you agree with that?

ANDREW McBRIDE: Well, I'd like to make two points, Gwen, that first of all, Ms. Martin, the TSA lawyer, is not part of the prosecution team. She's a lawyer in the counsel's office at TSA. The three Department of Justice prosecutors who are in front of Judge Brinkema are professionals. I know those gentlemen, and they're the ones who brought Ms. Martin's error to the attention of the court. So this is not a case of intentional prosecutorial misconduct.

GWEN IFILL: Isn't that what they're supposed to do, though?

ANDREW McBRIDE: And they did indeed do it. My second point is I take it that Ms. Martin must not have been aware of the rule on witnesses. The rule on witnesses says that one witness should not hear the testimony of another, that we want witnesses to testify without understanding what the other witnesses have said so there's no cross-pollination, that they tell the truth; that they aren't coached by the attorneys or that they don't tailor their testimony to the testimony of other witnesses.

Obviously what Ms. Martin did violates that rule. No prosecutor or trial attorney worth their salt would ever do what Ms. Martin did. I have to assume she did it innocently in the sense that who would send this email to seven witnesses -- as I understand it, two of whom were government witnesses and five of whom were potential defense witnesses -- if they understood anything about the rule against this kind of tainting of witness testimony?

GWEN IFILL: You have appeared before Judge Brinkema before. Is she given to hyperbole? Yesterday she was clearly not happy, today not happy and she was using strong language to declare her displeasure.

ANDREW McBRIDE: I -- had I been the trial judge in the case, I would be displeased as well. I think the government having asked for the trial to be set back to Monday, Gwen, signals to us, I think, that the government will seek an emergency appeal, which is its right in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and I do think the government may argue that Judge Brinkema might have overreacted a little bit in excluding the whole aviation case based on this error by this TSA lawyer.

GWEN IFILL: I think for laypeople we are surprised that lawyers are not allowed to talk to their own witnesses. Why not?

ANDREW McBRIDE: Well, during the trial -- once trial starts, it's an important principle to say that the witnesses will give statements of fact based on their memory and that there would be a natural tendency if I were to go to a witness and say, "Well, Witness A testified this way and the defense attorney cross-examined him about this" to tailor the testimony in a way positive to one side or the other. You don't want the witnesses to know what the other witnesses have said or to know what the attorneys have cross-examined on. And that was the error here.

In addition, evidently, Ms. Martin did something that was very improper. The defense wished to examine prior to trial some of these government officers to -- who they wished to call and Ms. Martin evidently said to Mr. Novak, the prosecutor, none of these people wish to talk to the defense. Today examined by Judge Brinkema they indicated they had never been approached about whether or not they would talk to the defense. I would have to say overall it appears to me and Ms. Martin, Judge Brinkema said, You need a lawyer' today. Ms. Martin may be in a great deal of trouble, but I would emphasize that I don't think the Moussaoui prosecutors themselves are responsible for this particular glitch, and it looks to me like the government might appeal here.

GWEN IFILL: It should be said that Moussaoui, of course, is already found guilty; this is all about sentencing. So what is it about these witnesses that the government needs to establish the need for the death penalty?

ANDREW McBRIDE: And this is why, Gwen, I think the government will appeal. These witnesses are central to the government's case that something would have been different if Moussaoui had told the truth. The government's theory is that Moussaoui lied in August of 2001 in a way that set the F.B.I. on the wrong course. The aviation witnesses are there to say, If we had been on the right course, we would have stopped the hijacking of one of those four planes because we would have undertaken under FAA procedure existing in September of 2001 procedures that would have stopped at least one of those four flights from being hijacked. And that means Moussaoui is responsible for some of the deaths on 9/11.' Without that testimony, it's unclear the government can make the link.

GWEN IFILL: Deborah Charles, when the court comes back on Monday, what's supposed to happen next?

DEBORAH CHARLES: It's the cross-examination of the F.B.I. agent who arrested Moussaoui, Harry Samit. And it was expected to be a pretty volatile cross-examination. The defense lawyer, Edward McMahon had said he was ready to cross-examine him and ask the kind of questions about what he -- what the F.B.I. agent didn't get and what -- you know, did he really know that there were lies and could he really have stopped 9/11 if he had gotten the right information from Moussaoui?

GWEN IFILL: Have you gotten any signs from what Andrew McBride is speculating on here tonight that perhaps there may be an appeal in the offing?

DEBORAH CHARLES: Well, that's the impression we got from the court's -- both the court put out a statement and the Justice Department put out a statement. The court's statement said that the delay was while the prosecutors decide whether or not they're going to do some sort of appeal. I mean, I would think -- it was hard to tell at that point you know, when we left the courtroom everyone was kind of shocked at what happened. I don't think people expected a decision so quickly and hard to tell right away. Obviously they had a phone conversation later.

GWEN IFILL: We'll see what happens next. Deborah Charles from Reuters, Andrew McBride, thank you both very much.

ANDREW McBRIDE: Thank you, Gwen.

GWEN IFILL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, limiting lobbying in Washington, and crafting verses on the range.

UPDATE LOBBY LAWS

GWEN IFILL: Next tonight, limits on lobbying. Are lawmakers following their tough words with action? NewsHour Congressional correspondent Kwame Holman has the update.

KWAME HOLMAN: Joel Wood lobbies the federal government on behalf of the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers, one of Washington's most powerful trade groups.

JOEL WOOD, Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers: How much do people know about what a guy like me does in terms of interacting with members of Congress and with their staffs? And I think on that front it would be disingenuous to suggest that the system has worked perfectly. I think that there's lots of room for disclosure.

KWAME HOLMAN: How much lobbyists and politicians should disclose about their activities, and whether they should be limited is what members of the Senate have been grappling with for the last few weeks.

SPOKESMAN: I believe our reputations are at stake.

KWAME HOLMAN: Fresh in minds are two scandals that recently have rocked Capitol Hill. There was former lobbyist Jack Abramoff's admitted scheme to bribe members of Congress and former Congressman Duke Cunningham's sentencing to eight years in prison on bribery charges.

SEN. BILL FRIST, Majority Leader: It is time for us to reexamine the rules so that bad apples are exposed before they spoil the whole lot.

KWAME HOLMAN: And so two committees' worth of senators reviewed those rules and came up with a list of changes and reforms. In crafting new legislation, they all agreed that lobbyists' gifts to members, including free meals, must be restricted. Abramoff himself recently was quoted as saying one senator, Montana's Conrad Burns and his staff, used his Washington restaurant called Signatures as their cafeteria. Lobbyists paid meals would have to be report within 15 days under one committee's bill. But the full Senate went even further, banning all gifts including meals. Connecticut's Chris Dodd was a co-sponsor of the measure.

SEN. CHRISTOPHER DODD: There's nothing inherently corrupt about it but the meal is paid for and the perception is that there is an undue advantage given to those who are able to take a member or a senior staff member out for a meal to then ask for them to support a particular provision or oppose something.

KWAME HOLMAN: Rules Committee Chairman Trent Lott opposed the all out ban but went along with it. He warned it could cause problems every time a lawmaker attended a reception where food was available.

SEN. TRENT LOTT: Are we going to stop eating? It might be a good idea for some of us but, you know, I've been going to meals where you talked about issues since I was in elementary school. Having said that, it's clear that in a bipartisan way the Senate wants to do this, so, so be it. I'll be eating with my wife and so will a lot more senators after we pass this one.

KWAME HOLMAN: Among several other provisions members agreed to: Increase from one year to two the amount of time a retired member must wait before he or she may lobby former colleagues; bar a lawmaker's relatives from lobbying that member; and stop the practice of members urging firms to hire people based on their political affiliation. That, a reaction to the sew called K-Street Project, a GOP effort to encourage the hiring of Republicans, including former congressional staff members at lobbying firms along Washington's K Street corridor. Expectedly, it was Democrats who pushed for the new rule. Illinois's Dick Durbin cited an example of the project's work.

SEN. DICK DURBIN: I can recall my former colleague from Oklahoma, Dave McCurdy who was being considered for an electronics industry association position after he left Congress, and Congressman DeLay, a leader in the House, openly opposed his selection because he was a Democrat. This became so standard around here that people no longer questioned it. The meetings went on, on a regular basis. And now we know that one of the early participants in this meeting was none other than Jack Abramoff.

KWAME HOLMAN: Utah Republican Bob Bennett saw nothing improper about the effort to get members of his party hired as lobbyists.

SEN. BOB BENNETT: I've sat in on these conversations and I don't recall any member of the Senate ever saying "If this person is not hired, we will take an official act in retaliation against whatever group's involved."

KWAME HOLMAN: Nonetheless, Bennett joined all members of the Rules Committee in voting to stop the practice, that included Pennsylvania Republican Rick Santorum who widely was reported to have served as the K Street Project's liaison in the Senate. The bill also tackles another controversial subject, the special spending projects known as earmarks.' They're often inserted into legislation without the knowledge or vote of other members. Arizona Republican John McCain has made it his mission to rein them in, noting they've exploded in recent years.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: It's got to be stopped, it's completely out of control, and we are not going to reform a system as far as lobbying is concerned if we have a process that lends itself to one influential lobbyist, relationship with one member, which is exactly what happened to Duke Cunningham, and criminal activity results.

KWAME HOLMAN: Although there is broad bipartisan support in the Senate for most of the lobbying reforms, congressional watchdog groups and some lawmakers say the proposed changes, the first in 11 years, mainly are cosmetic.

SEN. TED STEVENS: We want to put some teeth in existing law, not create more law.

KWAME HOLMAN: That argument by Alaska's Ted Stevens against rushing through new reforms was echoed by several of his colleagues. And it proved prescient as members of the Governmental Affairs Committee voted down a plan to create an independent Office of Public Integrity to monitor the activities of representatives and senators. The office would have had investigative and subpoena powers and assisted the work of the House and Senate ethics committees, both of which have been faulted for weak enforcement. Proposed by Senate Chairman Susan Collins and ranking Democrat Joe Lieberman, the integrity office widely was viewed as the best chance to overall ethics enforcement.

SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN: We have a responsibility to hold ourselves and be held to a higher standard.

KWAME HOLMAN: But the plan met enormous resistance from committee members, especially those who also sit on the Ethics Committee.

SEN. GEORGE VOINOVICH: The Ethics Committee is active and hard at work.

KWAME HOLMAN: Ethics Chairman George Voinovich of Ohio balked at ceding even limited oversight to the outside agencies.

SEN. GEORGE VOINOVICH: The Ethics Committee is already doing these things and in my opinion there's no need to reinvent the wheel.

KWAME HOLMAN: And Minnesota Democrat Mark Dayton added having an independent monitor watch Congress would send the wrong message to the public.

SEN. MARK DAYTON: …that this body of 100 senators is so institutionally and individually corrupt that it cannot be trusted to police its own.

KWAME HOLMAN: Public Citizen's Joan Claybrook, who lobbies for more Congressional transparency, says she was not surprised that ethics committee members fought to retain the current system.

JOAN CLAYBROOK: The underlying issue is control, that is, that they know their colleagues, they have faith that the colleagues are going to be very gentle in their judgments because they all face the same kind of pressures politically and so they're comfortable with an Ethics Committee. I think if this bill in the end does not have an enforcement office that's independent it will be a crippled bill.

KWAME HOLMAN: But even Minority Leader Harry Reid, who constantly blames the recent lobbying scandals on a Republican culture of corruption, endorsed the bill before the Senate.

SEN. HARRY REID: There may be some outside groups who think we haven't done enough. We've done a lot.

KWAME HOLMAN: Thanks in part to the uproar over trips such as Tom DeLay's Abramoff-funded golf outing to Scotland in which he was accompanied by lobbyists, such privately funded travel would be subject to stricter standards under the proposed law. Details would have to be revealed within 30 days.

JOEL WOOD: I've been on trips in the past, I haven't sponsored any in a long time, they tend to be expensive.

KWAME HOLMAN: Insurance industry lobbyist Joel Wood said travel is critical to an understanding of issues though he admitted trips can cross the line.

JOEL WOOD: Are some of these trips with some of their lavishness over the top? Yeah. Has there been a lot of scrutiny on it? No.

KWAME HOLMAN: Claybrook said all privately subsidized travel should be banned.

JOAN CLAYBROOK: When you take them on an airplane, they're on the airplane for at least an hour, probably two or three, maybe four. And so you get to chat with them, it's casual, people are more relaxed. You take them a fancy resort. You have dinner with them. You play golf with them. You get lots of face time, as it's called. And so you really get to educate the member of Congress about why your issue is so important, they can ask you lots of question and your persuade them.

KWAME HOLMAN: More disclosure would be required of lobbyists themselves as well, including quarterly rather than biannual reports about which bills they're trying to influence and to whose campaigns they're contributing.

SEN. DICK DURBIN: Let's be honest about it. We all have to raise millions of dollars.

KWAME HOLMAN: The fact that lobbyists direct and raise money for members' Political Action Committees or PACs came up repeatedly during reform discussions. California Democrat Dianne Feinstein said increasing disclosure would not suffice. She proposed prohibiting lobbyists from running a senator's PAC, noting that 74 PACs were headed by lobbyists last year, up from just 15 in 1998.

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEN: We really need to establish a wall between the lobbyists and the members.

KWAME HOLMAN: But Feinstein's colleagues were not receptive to the idea.

SEN. CHRISTOPHER DODD: I really want to keep these matters separate if we can.

SENATOR: We really ought to avoid trying to do campaign finance today.

KWAME HOLMAN: Public Citizen's Claybrook had hoped to see movement on the issue claiming the give-and-take between lobbyists and politicians is fleecing the public without their knowledge.

JOAN CLAYBROOK: Well, when a member has a lobbyist as their campaign treasurer or their campaign manager, their PAC director, who goes out and raises money for them, that endears the lobbyist to the member of Congress and they always ask for payback -- always.

KWAME HOLMAN: Lobbyist Joel Wood admitted raising money for members is a critical part of the job.

JOEL WOOD: Are we heavily engaged in the political fund-raising process? Yeah, we're a part of the system in that way.

KWAME HOLMAN: Wood directs his firm's Political Action Committee but he stressed that the average American's power to vote is superior to any lobbyist powers.

JOEL WOOD: At the end of the day, the lobbyists aren't the ones that vote and I will say having worked on Capitol Hill that a heart felt hand-written letter from any constituent always beats the slickest lobbyist with his Gucci loafers walking into that office. And shame on any member of Congress for whom that standard doesn't apply.

KWAME HOLMAN: But reformers hoping for a quick fix to lobbying laws suffered a setback last week when political infighting over port security temporarily knocked the bill off the Senate schedule. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives will have to pass its own rules changes but reformers there have been slower to generate momentum.

FINALLY RHYME ON THE RANGE

GWEN IFILL: Next, another in our occasional series on poetry. This time, Jeffrey Brown heads out West.

JEFFREY BROWN: Poetry might not be the first thing you think of when you conjure up the image of the cowboy, but the range has been a home to verse for a long time. And in recent years, the words are reaching a wider audience.

WALLACE MCRAE: They'd no need for ease of comfort. They took life as it came. They worked with livestock using skills that every Scot knows best.

First as rovers.

Then as owners.

They played the cattle game.

JEFFREY BROWN: More than 20 years ago, a bunch of cowboys came together and realized they had all written the same poem about their favorite horse. That at least is the lighthearted description by one who was there. In fact, that event and others have led to a renaissance of verse, by and about people who still live a western life of ranching and rodeo. And the center of it all is the annual cowboy poetry gathering, here in Elko, Nevada.

Part of this, says Wallace McRae, Montana rancher, poet and veteran of the gatherings, is about preserving a way of life that's become more difficult to maintain.

WALLACE MC RAE: When you realize that your culture is threatened, you become much stronger and much more involved in being an advocate for that culture that is so very important.

JEFFREY BROWN: And the poetry then becomes part of that?

WALLACE MC RAE: Becomes part of that because it's a way of telling who we are and what our story is and that we have a culture that is worth, that has value, that is worth something.

JEFFREY BROWN: Another reason for the poetry is to give these famously taciturn men and women a way to talk about difficult things.

WALLACE MC RAE: I don't think that I would be comfortable outside the confines of poetry to talk about love, you know. I mean, that's very private. That's a very private thing and, but I think I can put that in a poem, and it's safe.

JEFFREY BROWN: The gatherings, put on by the Western Folklife Center, have been held since 1984. For a week at the beginning of February -- a time when ranch life is quiet -- Elko's population of 18,000 swells by 5,000 lovers of western poetry and folkways.

VIRGINIA BENNETT: He wondered how it happens that he tends another man's

cows.

Is the one who owns the outfit somehow brighter

Or somehow better that he should be the lofty one

Who should pay the hired hand?

JEFFREY BROWN: Virginia Bennett has herself been a hired hand on ranches throughout the West. An experienced horse trainer, she knows how hard this life can be. Two years ago, she was thrown from her horse and broke her neck. We asked her, then, why so much of the poetry we heard was played for laughs.

VIRGINIA BENNETT: People that get up in the cold and go feed hay and they're freezing and there's a dead calf out there, or there's calf out there that you have to bring in and bring back to life, or there's irrigating or some ranchers have to raise the hay to feed the cattle it's a very rugged life. And I have found that the way everyone seems to deal with it for the most part is with humor.

(Music)

JEFFREY BROWN: Cowboy music was also featured at Elko. Listening to Don Edwards sing traditional songs, you could hear the Irish and English ballad style that's one source—

(Music)

JEFFREY BROWN: -- along with Spanish words and rhythms-- for both cowboy music and poetry.

Poetry, in fact, has long been a part of cowboy life, according to folklorist and English professor Dave Stanley.

DAVE STANLEY: There was apparently a tradition when a tobacco manufacturer placed little coupons in the sacks of tobacco that they sold and the cowboys could send the coupons in and get a little miniature abridged volume of Shakespeare, for example, or of Swinburne or Tennyson or other poets who were popular at that time. And those little books were passed from hand to hand and left in bunkhouses all over the West. And so though the average cowboy was certainly not formally educated beyond possibly beyond elementary school, they were great readers.

JEFFREY BROWN: Today Cowboy poets come from a variety of backgrounds.

PAUL ZARZYSKI: I pinch myself every year I'm here and we're celebrating words because I grew up without books, but I didn't grow up without language.

JEFFREY BROWN: Paul Zarzyski grew up in northern Wisconsin, the son of an iron-ore miner, before finding his two callings in Montana.

PAUL ZARZYSKI: I studied with the world renowned poet Richard Hugo, who professed again and again in the classroom and kept it real simple: If you want to become a poet, it's real simple. I suggest the only thing you do is fall in love with the sounds of words.' And I had already done that as a young man and I moved to Montana and discovered rodeo. Two very lucrative passions: poetry and rodeo

JEFFREY BROWN: They both bring a lot of pain but in different ways.

PAUL ZARZYSKI: Right. They both hurt in different ways. They both break you in different ways, break you.

SPOKESPERSON (introducing Zarzyski onstage): The impossible, the impeccable, the unimaginable, implosive, explosive Paul Zarzyski!

JEFFREY BROWN: Zarzyski is an Elko star and a master performer.

PAUL ZARZYSKI: The real cowboy is as rare as hen's teeth,

As watermelons vine-ripened in Alaska.

Extinct as brontosaurus on the plains or in the forest.

But these purebloods, they'll just brashly up and ask you,

Ever seen a genuine, authentic, real cowboy,

Who rides a real rank, real Mustang, to head and heel,

A true Waddy, a ranahan, a leather-pounding calvey man?

Well, maybe not, but I have seen a cowboy real.

JEFFREY BROWN: His love for words is infectious. He told us how he once connected with a group of non-English-speaking Mongolian horsemen who'd been brought to Elko to share and compare traditions with the cowboys.

PAUL ZARZYSKI: I want to connect with them but we don't speak the same language, so I tell their interpreter, Can you have them come out on stage behind me. I'm going to do a poem called ‘Why I like Butte.' Butte, Montana. And the refrain is ‘Butte.'' And so I turn around and I say, Every time I turn around I'm going to draw my imaginary six guns and when I do that we're all going to 'Butte!' together.' And so I turned around to draw my to draw my imaginary six guns, and they had already all outdrawn me and we went Butte' together and we did Butte' through this poem about six or seven times, and for the rest of the night you see them across the casino or across the Folklife Center and they're, they're not real tall people and they're up on their tiptoes and they're going Butte! Butte!' And they know one little word but that one little word in this one little stage in this little Western microcosm brought people together. And I suggest to you that it could have been a synonym for love or peace or hope. Butte!'

JEFFREY BROWN: Today's cowboy poets, of course, are used to being mocked. They've all heard the "get along, little doggerel" jokes. But, as you might expect, they're a tough lot.

WALLACE MC RAE: I think a lot of academic poets resent the popularity of cowboy poetry because a lot of our stuff really isn't very good. Of course, a lot of their stuff is awful!

JEFFREY BROWN: For now, with gatherings taking place throughout the West, Wally McRae's biggest worry seems to be that cowboy poetry may be too popular: every bunkhouse bard', he's written, wants to write a funny poem, go to Elko and be a star.'

RECAP

GWEN IFILL: Again, the major developments of the day: A federal judge banned key government witnesses from testifying in the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. And police in Iraq reported finding the bodies of 87 Iraqis, shot execution-style, within the last 24 hours. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Thank you and good night.