The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, a summary of today's news; some further perspectives on the pre- 9/11 hijack warnings story; analysis by Mark Shields and David Brooks; and the post-White House life of Jimmy Carter as seen by Michael Beschloss, Haynes Johnson, Roger Wilkins, Richard Norton Smith, and Jack Nelson.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Bush today defended his handling of pre- 9/11 terrorist information. The CIA told him last August Osama bin Laden's network might hijack U.S. airliners or attempt other attacks. Leading Democrats and some Republicans have suggested Mr. Bush could have done more with the information. The President responded at a Rose Garden ceremony honoring the Air Force Academy football team.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: You know what's interesting about Washington, it's a town, unfortunately, it's a kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature. The American people know this about me and my national security team and my administration: Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people.

JIM LEHRER: In response, Senate Majority Leader Daschle said no one is second-guessing. He said Congress needs answers to ensure that nothing like September 11 ever happens again. We'll have more on this story in a few minutes. Hundreds of coalition troops launched a new campaign today in eastern Afghanistan. It was named Operation Condor. We have a report from Gaby Rado of Independent Television News.

GABY RADO: Early today, Royal Marines based at Baghram Airport near Kabul, set off by helicopter on a mission which could for the first time bring them face-to-face with al-Qaida or the Taliban. It's a multinational mission, but British forces are making up the largest contingent. Yesterday afternoon, a group of Australian soldiers on patrol north of the city of Khost were fired at. In a gun battle, one suspected enemy fighter was killed. A few hours later, reinforcements inthe shape of a second Australian special air services group were also attacked. As they fought their way through, they were given support by American AC-130 gunships.

BRIG. ROGER LANE, Royal Marines: I can confirm that the coalition has made contact with the enemy and that some have been killed. A number of attacks by air have been conducted. Clearly, the situation is very fluid. However, as before, the success of this operation will not be measured solely in the terms of dead terrorists.

GABY RADO: Today, a 1,000- strong British-led coalition force was deployed in the area, backed by AC-130s, Chinooks, and apache attack helicopters. In some ways, it appears like a textbook battle: Americans providing the air cover, with special forces from their closest allies waging the ground war, using field guns designed to hit an enemy hiding in mountain terrain.

JIM LEHRER: A U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan said some 100 al-Qaida or Taliban fighters could be in the target area. Police in Karachi, Pakistan, dug up parts of a body today, but it was unclear if the remains were Daniel Pearl's. The "Wall Street Journal" reporter was kidnapped and killed in Karachi earlier this year. Police today found a severed head and other body parts in a grave outside the city. They were led there by three suspects in the killing. The police chief said it would take DNA tests to identify the remains. In the Middle East today, Yasser Arafat insisted on a full Israeli withdrawal before any Palestinian elections. He said the Israeli forces must return to positions held before the current fighting began, in September 2000. On Thursday, his aides said Presidential and parliamentary elections would take place within six months. An Israeli spokesman said today the army would withdraw once Arafat reins in terror groups. Former President Jimmy Carter ended his six-day visit to Cuba today. Cuban President Fidel Castro saw him off at the Havana Airport. He wore a military uniform for the first time during the visit. Earlier, Carter again urged closer ties between the United States and Cuba. He also said Castro should help prevent bioterrorism, and should allow political freedoms.

JIMMY CARTER: It would be a true demonstration to foreigners, very critical foreigners, that Cubans are not afraid within their own system of government to consider dissident views in an open and positive and legal way. That's though a decision to be made by Cuban leaders, not by me.

JIM LEHRER: Later, Carter told CNN he doubted the Cuban government would let dissident views flourish. He said Castro wants to keep complete control. Carter said he'll send a report on his trip to the White House. President Bush is scheduled to address U.S. Policy toward Cuba in a speech Monday in Miami. We'll have more on Jimmy Carter later in the program tonight. Also coming, more perspective on the hijack warnings and Shields and Brooks.

FOCUS - CONNECTING THE DOTS

JIM LEHRER: The continuing turmoil over the hijack warnings; Spencer Michels begins.

SPENCER MICHELS: The political fallout over the CIA hijack alert continues to mushroom. At a fund-raiser last night, Vice President Cheney responded to Congressional Democrats who had criticized the Administration for not reacting to the CIA Warning to President Bush in August that al-Qaida might be planning a hijack operation.

DICK CHENEY: What I want to say to my Democratic friends in the Congress is they need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions as were made by some today that the White House hadadvance information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9/11. (Applause) Such commentary is thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war.

SPENCER MICHELS: This morning on the "CBS Early Show," House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt was asked if critics in the Democratic camp were behaving irresponsibly.

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT: We have a duty and a responsibility to keep the American people safe. Obviously that didn't happen on September the 11th. We've got to do better in the future. And with this information, finding out what happened at the CIA, at the FBI, in the White House, maybe we can do a better job in the future.

SPENCER MICHELS: At the center of the political and media storm is a series of clues that arose in the spring and summer of 2001. In April and may, U.S. Intelligence reported growing threats from Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. The FAA issued the first of four general security alerts about the danger of hijackings. On July 5, the coordinator for counter terrorism at the National Security Council told dozens of federal agency officials, "something really spectacular is going to happen here soon." In the same month, an FBI counter terrorism agent in Phoenix sent a memo to FBI headquarters warning that Islamic militants were trying to gain access to U.S. flight schools. On August 6, President Bush received a classified CIA Briefing that bin Laden's network might try to hijack U.S. planes. Nine days later, Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota after raising suspicion at a flight school. At the White House today, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer fielded questions for an hour. Fleischer was asked about a 1999 Library of Congress report prepared for the National Intelligence Council.

REPORTER: There's a very clear sentence here, where it talks about al-Qaida's retaliation to cruise missile attacks against training camps in Afghanistan, and says, "suicide bombers belonging to al-Qaida's martyrdom battalion could crash-land in aircraft packed with high explosives into the pentagon, CIA Headquarters, or the White House."

ARI FLEISCHER: This document was described... it is not a piece of intelligence information suggesting that we have information about a specific plan or that they are going to. It describes... the title of report, if I recall, is "the psychology and the sociology of terrorists."

REPORTER: This is pre-9/11 material. Nobody, either in the President's CIA briefings or in a principal committee, said, "you know what? These lunatics have talked about flying planes into buildings."

ARI FLEISCHER: This report from 1999 about the thinking, the psychology of terrorism; was available in 1999 to members of Congress, the previous administration. It existed in some form, which did not come to the attention of this administration when we took office on January 20.

SPENCER MICHELS: Asked about the President's mood, Fleischer said Mr. Bush understood that second- guessing is second nature to a lot of politicians.

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner takes it from there.

MARGARET WARNER: Why didn't anyone in the U.S. Government connect the clues in the months leading up to 9/11? For insight into how America's counter terrorism agencies collect and deal with information, we turn to Don Clark, a 25-year veteran of the FBI. He headed the criminal division in the FBI's New York office in the 1990's, where he managed all counter terrorism investigations. He was also special agent in charge of both the San Antonio and Houston field offices. Kris Kolesnik, former director of investigations for a Senate Judiciary subcommittee with FBI oversight. He's now executive director of the national Whistleblower Center here in Washington. And Michael Sheehan, former coordinator for counter terrorism at the State Department. He also served on the National Security Council in the first Bush and Clinton administrations. And earlier he was with the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's intelligence arm.

Welcome to you all, and Michael Sheehan, beginning with you. Knowing what you do about how this whole system works, were you surprised that no one assimilated and analyzed and basically connected all these clues in those months leading up to 9/11?

MICHAEL SHEEHAN: First of all I'm not surprised because in retrospect, it's easier to put together dots that make a picture that bring events of 9/11 into clearer focus. I think even with the dots as they were known ahead of time would have been difficult to predict the exact events of 9/11. I can say the counter terrorism community was very concerned about the delivery of all kinds of bombs against U.S. targets -- car bombs, boat bombs and even aircraft were considered. So, this was not a great surprise in terms of the use of aircraft but the use of a civilian airliner filled with fuel did surprise the community.

MARGARET WARNER: Kris Kolesnik, though, what is it about the way these different agencies interact that made it impossible or at least it didn't happen that the information was coordinated?

KRIS KOLESNIK: Well, a lot of it has to do with the missions. The CIA has a mission of putting together information and disseminating it. The FBI, on the other hand, has a mission to crack down on crime. And they don't like to share information because of that, because they have ongoing cases. So they keep a close hold. And so the very culture of that organization is inimical to providing that information to other organizations.

MARGARET WARNER: Don Clark then, what about within the FBI itself? For instance, Director Mueller said last week that essentially the information from the Phoenix field office, the sort of alert about flight schools, wasn't ever even coordinated with the suspicions about Moussaoui in Minnesota. Is there not much interaction even within the agency?

DON CLARK: There's a significant amount of interaction within the agencies, and what we're talking about here is a process and, yes, the FBI does have a criminal responsibility but that's separate and apart from the intelligence responsibility. And there's a significant amount of sharing in that intelligence responsibility. As to why that one did not exactly get to Minneapolis, which is the division that handles that, I think time will tell as to what reasons may have been for it not to get there but it wasn't because that there's a break or a disconnect in the process because clearly the agencies do coordinate together frequently especially when there's a mutual interest to them in an investigations, whether it's an intelligence investigation or a criminal investigation.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Sheehan, how would you rate the coordination?

MICHAEL SHEEHAN: I think the CIA and the FBI do coordinate fairly well. Several years ago, they exchanged deputies at the counter terrorism center at CIA and the counter terrorism center of the FBI in Washington. They sit in each other's offices and have clear pipelines and flow of information across agency. That works pretty well. What I think needs to be looked at is how inside the domestic law enforcement agency reports are written and assimilated and put in the computer systems and then can be read by analysts across lines. I think in the international intelligence community that's a far more mature and developed system. I think in the domestic side not just within the FBI but in all the other federal law enforcement agencies there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

MARGARET WARNER: So you mean that within the FBI, a report such as the Phoenix memo... well, let me ask Mr. Clark about that. Mr. Clark, since you were in several field offices, if you'd had information and suspicions such as this unnamed agent had in phoenix, how would you have gone about sharing that with someone? Who would you have wanted to get that information to, and how would you have gone about it?

DON CLARK: Well, the first objective would have been to determine if there was any real immediacy that was determined at the field level for that information to get out. And had that been the case, then the information probably would have been transferred through a security telecommunications means. Nonetheless, if it's just general information that agents who are the backbone of the FBI, who work on the street to collect this intelligence information, it would have been massaged at the field level and it would have been processed up through that chain and sometimes even maybe come into the head of division, myself included, and it would have been relayed to the FBI headquarters. Now, there's a system back at the FBI headquarters for the intelligence information on various groups that one may be interested in, and there are analysts who are there looking at that information and reviewing it for pertinency and for where it might be sent to in the future. I can't sit here and say someone should have picked this up and automatically knew it should have been sent to some other location. But I know that those mechanisms are in place. Are they perfect? Absolutely not. They're not perfect. Are we a little bit behind on technology? It was when I left and I'm sure it probably is, but. I think there are gains being made to try to smooth out those imperfections.

MARGARET WARNER: Pick up on that, Kris Kolesnik. What would happen to a memo like this?

KRIS KOLESNIK: Well, in my experience I've seen this happen a lot of times. I know there's a process for the way it's supposed to work but usually or sometimes I should say it does not work that way. And I've seen that in so many cases that I've investigated. What happens is you get the information from the Arizona office and it goes to headquarters and there's some people there working at headquarters who are working on a case. That's the U.S.S. Cole case....

MARGARET WARNER: The bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

KRIS KOLESNIK: Right. They have an ongoing case there. And the FBI is a reactive organization, and they react to a particular incident. They follow up on that. They spend a lot of time on that particular case and they don't see the significance of the piece of information that comes in that has to do with preventing a case. So they put it aside. Then you get the information from the Moussaoui case. That goes into somebody at headquarters, and the information is not put together for that individual making a decision on a FISA warrant.

MARGARET WARNER: The warrant to what? Examine his computer?

KRIS KOLESNIK: Well, to examine the computer but also to put him under surveillance so that they could see what he's up to. So there are two disconnects. One is the analysis is not... where you put the dots together is not being done for the person approving the FISA warrant and so that the person, the FBI agent out in Minnesota does not have the benefit of all the information that the FBI has.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Now, Michael Sheehan, let's bring in another report that we heard about today, something prepared for the National Intelligence Council, which, as I understand it, advises the director of Central Intelligence. A report like that-- and we heard Ari Fleischer say that was just a psychological profile of terrorists, but it did specifically say al-Qaida might take a plane and crash it into the pentagon or the CIA. How does that get into the information stream and flow and get coordinated with other bits of information?

KRIS KOLESNIK: Well the National Intelligence Council does strategic far thinking types of analysis for the intelligence community. And those reports are very well disseminated throughout the intelligence and the policy community. And I remember that report well. I think it was well understood in the counter terrorism community that al-Qaida was looking for various ways to strike at the U.S., including car bombs and truck bombs and boat bombs, and it was no surprise that he was going to try to use aviation as another means so I think that was understood.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me interrupt you for a second. When you said it went throughout the agencies, would it have, for instance, gone to the FBI?

KRIS KOLESNIK: Certainly. That report is distributed in Washington to the FBI offices directly as well as the CIA offices, and even if it wasn't done directly to the FBI, the deputy for the CIA's counter terrorism center is an FBI person. If he saw a report that might not have gotten to the FBI, he would certainly be able to forward it. So there is a process to disseminate it and there's checks and counterchecks to make sure the information flows.

MARGARET WARNER: One other question for you, from your years at the NSC, is this then... then there's this group at the NSC, the counter terrorism security group -- does that have essentially authority over the CIA and the FBI? I mean, do they in any way have to answer it, or is it just a coordination mechanism? In other words, whose job is it to put all of this together?

KRIS KOLESNIK: The NSC is a coordinating body. Obviously since 9/11 there's been a great review on how the U.S. Government organizes itself for domestic threats because it wasn't that clear before. Internationally it was always very clear. The delineation of responsibilities between CIA, Defense, State and the NSC, but domestically there were some gray areas. I think the Bush Administration has moved quickly on that to try to organize a homeland defense office and other agencies into a coherent structure that can pull together the appropriate pieces in an effective manner.

MARGARET WARNER: So Don Clark, what do you think... first of all from your understanding of what has been done and what needs to be done to ensure that signals aren't missed in the future, as must as can be guaranteed anyway?

DON CLARK: Well, I think what the first thing we need to be clear on is that the FBI is not just a reactive organization. Sure, it reacts to bank robberies but not to a lot of other things. There is on record a significant number of terrorist attacks that's been thwarted to prevent them from happening because of the activities that's taken place in their collection efforts. I think they need to make sure that the process is as airtight as we possibly can make it. There is coordination with the other intelligence agencies.

MARGARET WARNER: But I mean, see, let me interrupt you. You said for instance needs better technology. What do you mean? A whole new database? What are you talking about specifically?

DON CLARK: Well, the technology needs to be improved. We were always behind, lagging behind, in terms of technology. I think that's probably relatively true for most of the other government entities that we just did not keep up faster. We're not able to keep up fast enough so that we could make sure that it's even more efficient than it is. It has come a long ways in terms of being efficient. Can it be more? Of course it can, but I think we can work towards that. But I think the process is in place for that information to be moved from where it's initially collected up to the end user. And it does get there to the end user. In this case, I think somebody will tell us in due course why this particular memo didn't get to where it was, but it's not because the process is not there. But it does... it could stand some tweaking.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Briefly, Kris Kolesnik, what do you think has to be done?

KRIS KOLESNIK: First of all I think the director would agree with me that the FBI is reactive. He said as much last week. What I think has to be done is to take the steps that Mr. Mueller has taken with respect to beefing up intelligence analysis, but I think you're going to have a real problem if the field offices think that the headquarters is in control now of counter terrorism cases.

MARGARET WARNER: This is Mueller's new idea -

KRIS KOLESNIK: Right.

MARGARET WARNER: -- of a super terror task force or whatever?

KRIS KOLESNIK: Right. And that they don't have to support headquarters on counter terrorism cases because there's a real potential that that could happen. We don't want to see that.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Gentlemen, we have to leave it there. Thank you all.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Shields and Brooks, and the second life of Jimmy Carter.

FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

JIM LEHRER: The analysis of Shields and Brooks; syndicated columnist Mark Shields and the "Weekly Standard's" David Brooks. Mark, how do you read the uproar over this hijack warning story?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, Jim, it's the first time that the White House really and the President have been on the defensive politically since September 11. Briefly you recall when the President didn't immediately return to Washington there were questions about it. Vice President Cheney answered them by saying I told him not to come back. But, since then, the President and the Administration have been cast in almost a heroic mold. This time what happened was there's a great rule in policy. You got bad news, get it out and get it out yourself. It's the only chance you have really to influence, to shape the coverage. The fact that they didn't get it out, Jim, and that it was picked up by CBS News immediately and title... not only entitled but forced every other news organization to follow the story -- and to ask the questions. I think Senator John McCain spoke for everybody. He said nobody, nobody believes that President Bush intentionally ignored information about an attack on the United States. That isn't it. But there are questions and real questions and not only from Democrats, from the press but from Republicans like Richard Shelby, the Senator from Alabama, just about the lack of... just the discussion with Margaret of a central intelligence database, the fact that agencies don't talk to each other, that there wasn't anybody there responsible for connecting all these dots that were out there.

JIM LEHRER: How do you read... I mean, Mark says it's bad news. What is the bad news here? Why would you analyze what it is that we know now that is driving this concern?

DAVID BROOKS: I guess the central flaw or the central problem the Administration made was in pretending that nobody could have foreseen September 11, that the system works, that we don't need a crackdown, we don't need to fire people. We don't need a big investigation and a big radical transformation and when they stuck.

JIM LEHRER: The story of the intelligence community.

DAVID BROOKS: That nobody could... that the system didn't work, or when they stuck to the story the system did work and people basically did their job and they weren't going to fire people in large numbers, then they were in an untenable position because when documents came out, when this Library of Congress report comes out suggesting that people could have predicted it, that people did predict it, not that this information ever made it to the White House, but that it was predictable, then they were stuck. That is the essential problem they're facing.

JIM LEHRER: What about this issue that Mark raised that they knew about all of this, should enough released it before now? Should they have waited for eight months later for it to have leaked? What should they have done?

DAVID BROOKS: The fact that the President was briefed on August 6 was a prime example they could have said, listen, this system is broken. We got these vague reports that we didn't know what to do with, but we should have gotten better reports. We should have connected the dots a lot better and we are going to clean house here. They could have said that in the months following September 11. And they could have said we're going to get George Shultz up here, we're going to get Sam Nunn up here, some elder statesmen and we're going to have an independent commission to really investigate this. But they decided not to do it. The reason I think they decided not to do it is sort of team loyalty. They've got Mueller; they have got Tenet. They're our guys. We've got good people. We can do it within the executive branch. We don't need outsiders coming in to look at us. So they were loyal to the people around them. But they really hurt themselves by not admitting they might need fundamental reform.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree there, Mark, that their big failure here was not to get it out and it was through possible loyalty to Tenet and whatever just to show a solid front here?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think the pattern is there, Jim. It's the Bush modus operandi. I mean, in a very minor way it was the drunk driving charge of years back that was pulled out the weekend before the election in 2000 that almost, probably cost him the state of Maine and may very well have made the election that much closer -- that idea of you've got unpleasant information, get it out. I think there was a circling of the wagons. I think David is absolutely right. It's our side. It's us against the world. It's us against them. And I think that there was initially -- the Democrats initially responded by not wanting any detail light between themselves and the White House. They recognized the President held all the political cards on this. And there was a natural bonding in the country, a natural healing process. There wasn't a sense of let's not investigate at that point. But then the curiosity that David mentions, I mean, the questions unanswered they come up and I think that it's only natural that there's going to be an inquiry. And they had a chance to shape this investigation and I don't think they're going to be able to do it now.

JIM LEHRER: What about this point that the President made today? I mean, clearly we saw the clip a while ago in the News Summary. He's clearly upset about what's going on. He's upset about people he said second-guessing. That's the act here in Washington. Has he got a legitimate complaint?

DAVID BROOKS: There are two things going on here. One there's a serious debate, which is the investigation, which is our intelligence community. Why didn't they connect the Phoenix, the FBI to this to the Moussaoui case. Why didn't they connect all that? That's the serious side of the story. Then there's kindergarten lands in Washington, which is you've got this adrenal frenzy, you've got Democrats or some Democrats that it's Watergate all over again. What did the President know? Who did they know? That was the language Dick Gephardt used. You have a lot of Republicans going into a scandal crouch saying anybody who questions us is sort of trampling on the flag. Then you have got the media in its usual, you know, biting dog adrenal frenzy chasing after parked cars. That is all distracting attention from the real story, which is in the FBI and in the CIA, and the intelligence community, and it's distracting it to the most inconsequential part of the story, which is the Oval Office. I mean, if you take a look at the documents that actually made it to the Oval Office, you could take Sherlock Holmes and not, you know, you wouldn't be able to figure out what was going to happen on September 11 because what got up to the Oval Office was so scanty.

JIM LEHRER: So the failure was that more didn't get to the Oval Office, not what happened in the Oval Office. That's what you're saying.

DAVID BROOKS: There were two failures. One why don't we have people penetrating al-Qaida to get the actual sources and once we did have some bits of information, why doesn't the Arizona information go to the Minnesota information where Moussaoui is, why doesn't the FBI Information go to anybody else? So there are real failures there.

JIM LEHRER: Mark, what about the second part of the story -- are the Democrats overdoing this?

MARK SHIELDS: I think the Republicans have constructed a straw man here. I don't think anybody is accusing the President of anything, any dereliction of duty or indifference. I think the questions go to preventing something like this ever happening again. I just point out, Jim, that after September 11, there was a rush, an absolute chorus of conservative politicians and pundits who pointed their finger immediately at Bill Clinton - that it was Bill Clinton's fault. Everything that happened at the World Trade Center was Bill Clinton's fault. There were no hearings; there was no evidence; there was no testimony. There was a rush to judgment. I don't hear President Bush say that's unfair. I didn't hear Dick Cheney say that's unfair. I heard very few voices raised in Bill Clinton's defense. So the idea that this is political now and it wasn't political then, maybe I missed it. Maybe I just didn't hear their call for fairness and even handedness.

JIM LEHRER: Sure. Did you read that sound bite of President Clinton the same way - I mean President Bush the same way I did? He's annoyed about the people questioning him and this thing and you heard what... and also what Vice President Cheney said last night. This thing is... has taken on a political life has it not?

MARK SHIELDS: Jim, it's political when the democrats raise questions. It's patriotic when Dick Cheney stands up and says, "this is... I sign a letter, a fund raising letter, here's a picture of the President on Air Force One on September 11, you want to be a patriot and send it in $150 to the Republican House campaign? That's patriotism. It's patriotism, I guess, when Don Rumsfeld goes on Rush Limbaugh, who's accused the Democrats of everything from ring worm to declining Sunday school attendance -- when Karl Rove goes before the Republican National Committee and says boy this is going to be a great issue for us this fall in the House and Senate elections because Republicans are seen as better on protecting America's military might; when Democrats raise a question it's a cheap political shot and when Republicans do it, it's nothing but unsullied patriotism.

JIM LEHRER: David Brooks, how would you like to respond?

DAVID BROOKS: I see the other half of it. Listen, I'm all for all of this. You know, to me we elect leaders to respond to September 11. If they do a good job, they should be able to use that politically. If they do a bad job, they should be able to use that politically. You know, there was this picture --

JIM LEHRER: That's what's it's all about.

DAVID BROOKS: That's why we elect people to react to either good or bad to September 11. If George Bush, he had this little picture of himself on the phone, which was given out at an RNC fund-raiser - I mean I wish he had been on the phone telling George Tenet he's fired. But that's another story. You know, I think it's utterly fair to use September 11 pictures for political reasons because it shows Republicans that Bush did a good job.

JIM LEHRER: That's why you elect people to do this kind of thing.

DAVID BROOKS: That's exactly right. I don't blame the Democrats for raising this politically. What I blame them for, and not all Democrats -- mostly Dick Gephardt and some others who are blaming, who are just focusing attention on the exact wrong thing, the most trivial political thing, which was getting Bush, and not the substantive thing, which is the intelligence community.

MARK SHIELDS: I don't think Dick Gephardt is trained on getting Bush. I mean, George W. Bush is 75% favorable in the polls, Jim. I mean, Dick Gephardt is a savvy enough politician after he's been in the House for 26 years from St. Louis to and to being a leader of his party to know you're not going to take on the President on this. I think the questions he raises are legitimate ones about the very points that David raised, and that is, Jim, we don't have the CIA and the FBI talking together. They don't talk together. The FBI does not have a database that the field offices can report to the central office and they can go back and forth when there's information. I mean, where was somebody when we do have this allegation or the report about Osama bin Laden's associates and hijacking planes and all of a sudden you get an FBI report in Phoenix about these middle eastern folks being in flight school, you've got Moussaoui up in Minneapolis as Margaret pointed out, being arrested. I mean, you know, is somebody sitting there saying wait a minute. What is Tom Ridge doing? What is homeland security all about? Those are real questions.

DAVID BROOKS: Some democrats are raising those issues. John Edwards was on this show talking to Margaret last night. And I thought he showed a lot of class because he could have gone after the administration. He kept emphasizing it's the substance that matters, not the Watergate, what did he know and when did he know it? I was really impressed by Edwards stepping out of the frenzy, which is really surrounding us in this town and really getting a substantive voice.

JIM LEHRER: How do you read the frenzy? I mean, is this frenzy has got about three days and it's going to go away, or is it the first part, the serious part that's going to drive this and keep it alive and it should keep it alive?

DAVID BROOKS: I think there's more to it. The President was briefed on August 6 about a hijacking. That document briefing him didn't just appear in the Oval Office. Somebody had to write a bunch of memos saying we should brief the President about that -- somebody in the White House -- somebody somewhere up the-line. Those documents exist. They have a rationale that we have some evidence to believe we should brief the President about this. So those documents are going to come out. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Joint Committee, says there's more out there so I have to believe there's more.

JIM LEHRER: Is it a serious matter, Mark? Should it go on?

MARK SHIELDS: I think it's a serious matter, Jim. We do this. It's something that America does. We did it after the Challenger. If you look at the Challenger tragedy, the space shot. We did it have the Warren Commission. I mean this was a national tragedy and a national calamity. We want to be absolutely sure like the collapse of a bridge that it doesn't happen again. And to make those structural connections that... corrections that are necessary.

JIM LEHRER: So you're both saying let's everybody calm down and let's do a serious look back, and that's a legitimate part of government?

DAVID BROOKS: I notice our voices have been up. That's our message.

JIM LEHRER: I need to interpret for our audience what you guys mean.

MARK SHIELDS: It looks better in print than it sounds.

JIM LEHRER: Thank you both very much.

FOCUS - MAN OF THE WORLD

JIM LEHRER: And now, the post- White House works of Jimmy Carter, and to Terence Smith.

TERENCE SMITH: For Jimmy Carter, it has been a busy post-presidency. The nation's 39th President may indeed be the world's foremost eyewitness to emerging democracies. He has seen history made on the smallest scale, at these unprecedented party elections in rural China, and on the largest. Two years ago in Mexico, he was on hand when the Pri Party was toppled after seven decades in power. In 1999, the former President flew to Indonesia when the country held open elections for the first time.

JIMMY CARTER: (1999) I think that this departure from 45 years without free and fair and transparent peaceful election, sends a signal to all of us who might be contemplating democracy that it is worth their effort to attempt to achieve this same goal.

TERENCE SMITH: But Mr. Carter has been more than just an automatic seal of approval. In places like Nigeria and Peru, he publicly questioned whether their elections were legitimate. Conflict resolution has been another specialty of the former President. In 1994, he helped two countries avoid threatened U.S. military attack. In Haiti, he convinced military leaders to step aside in favor of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide. And in North Korea he successfully urged leaders to freeze their nuclear missile program. That same year in Bosnia, he managed to bring Muslims and Serbs to the peace table.

JIMMY CARTER: (1995) Both sides have agreed that the forces within the demilitarized zone just adjacent to Sarajevo airport will be withdrawn.

TERENCE SMITH: In 1995, in Central Africa, he helped negotiate the return of refugees to their homes in Rwanda and Burundi.

JIMMY CARTER: There will be an intense observation of the activities of the governments of Rwanda and Burundi concerning the safety of the refugees who return.

TERENCE SMITH: And most recently in Cuba, President Carter conducted baseball diplomacy, calling for a thaw in relations between Havana and Washington. In all, according to the Carter Library and Museum, the former President has personally observed elections in at least 15 countries across three continents. His other missions, which focused on human rights, peace talks, humanitarian aid, and global disease, have taken him to more than 30 additional countries. The former President has not relaxed on the home front, either. He has pitched in to help build homes for the poor with Habitat for Humanity and been active on everything from urban renewal to Native American elections.

TERENCE SMITH: Now some perspective on Carter's post Presidential years from NewsHour regulars: Presidential historian Michael Beschloss; journalist and author Haynes Johnson; and Roger Wilkins, professor of history at George Mason University. Joining them tonight is jack nelson, former Washington bureau chief for the "Los Angeles Times." He's covered Jimmy Carter since the 1960s when he was a Georgia State Senator. We had hoped to be join by Richard Norton Smith, director of the Dole Institute at the University of Kansas. He could not make it because of transportation problems. Gentlemen, welcome to you all.

Jack Nelson, having covered Jimmy Carter all these years, are you surprised by his approach to his post presidency?

JACK NELSON: Not really because I think he's always been sort of a man on a mission. He showed that when he was President and as soon as he got out of the office he could hardly wait to t busy doing all of the things you've just seen on this program. In addition to all of that he's written 13 best selling books. He's writing his 14th one right now, "George's Part in the Revolutionary War." That's a novel. He's written about poetry. He's written poetry, written about religion, he's written about politics. If you call down to plains and try to reach Jimmy Carter he may be draining his pond, fixing his roof; he may be making furniture. I mean, the guy's a real renaissance man. And I think he's perpetual motion.

TERENCE SMITH: Very active indeed.

Michael, what are some of the historical parallels that spring to mind when you think about ex-Presidents.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: They usually don't get as active as Carter did. For instance when Eisenhower left the presidency he was 70, Ronald Reagan was almost 80 when he became an ex-President. In 1989. So usually you see these people retired. For every John Quincy Adams who went back to the House of Representatives you see a rather fallow period. That's why Carter is so arresting because he left office at the age of 56, very young 56. He wanted to do something with this period in his life. And also I think as Jack said, it shows a lot about Carter because he had social values that always went beyond the presidency. One fascinating thing that Carter says nowadays, if you ask him what was the most exciting period in his life, most former Presidents say the White House. Carter says his former presidency.

TERENCE SMITH: That is telling. Roger, what comes to your mind when you think of past -- ex-Presidents?

ROGER WILKINS: You know, people say does Jimmy Carter upset the current President by doing the things that he's doing? And the answer has to be yes because he's a truth-teller. And the art of politics is the art of the possible. The art of idealists is showing how things might be. Well the politician doesn't want to get there right now. Maybe the day after tomorrow. That's Carter.

TERENCE SMITH: So there's a built-in conflict you're saying.

ROGER WILKINS: Sure. Just think how Martin Van Buren must have felt with John Quincy Adams sitting there saying we shouldn't have slavery anymore. It must have just driven him nuts.

TERENCE SMITH: Herbert Hoover is another example, Haynes, that people talk about as someone who was sent on a mission.

HAYNES JOHNSON: There are very few former Presidents as we've just said here who really get in the history books. John Quincy Adams who leaves the White House disgraced really by the people. He wasn't a popular President. Brilliant man. Great Secretary of State -- he goes on and runs for the Congress and dies on the floor giving a great speech in favor of abolition. You can't go higher than that. That was a mark of honor and distinction in our history. Herbert Hoover defeated by the Great Depression. It wasn't his fault. He did wonderful things, the civil service in the United States and so forth. I would say William Howard Taft. Here he leaves office. He's defeated by Theodore Roosevelt who ran and broke the Bull Moose Party. He goes in and he become the chief justice of the United States. There aren't many like that. Harry Truman going back to his hometown and being Mr. Citizen. But Carter of all of them I think particularly in our age this is a modest guy who knows exactly what he's doing. His presidency was not successful. He was defeated overwhelmingly by Ronald Reagan. He is I think our favored former President.

TERENCE SMITH: Jack Nelson, isn't there something of a continuation of President Carter's approach to Cuba? Wasn't he....

JACK NELSON: Absolutely.

TERENCE SMITH: Moving towards a softening.

JACK NELSON: Absolutely. To begin with when he was President he was relaxing our relations with Cuba. He lifted the ban on tourist travel. He established a process whereby we have a Cuban intersection here or a U.S.... Cubans have a U.S. intersection here and we have a Cuban intersection down there. The fact is I went to Cuba in 1978 with a group of businessmen on a... that had been set up because of his loosening the travel restrictions, and I interviewed Carter... Castro, and Castro said, you know, that they saw Carter as a positive figure from the standpoint of Cuban relations even before he was elected. He referred to him as a man of high ethics and that sort of thing. But the fact is that Carter and Castro kind of hit it off. I mean they've had a lot of telephone conversations together. Two years ago in Montreal at the funeral of Prime Minister Trudeau, the two of them were honorary pall bearers. They had a conversation, a private conversation of several hours. So they hit it off. There's no question of it.

TERENCE SMITH: This is of the peace.

JACK NELSON: Absolutely. I think had there been a second Carter term there might have been a really chance to normalize relations. I know Castro thought that and said that.

TERENCE SMITH: Will it make any difference to U.S. policy towards Cuba, President Bush is supposed to make a speech on this on Monday. So he's got it under review.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: And I think on Monday he might actually take a harder line if than if Carter had not been there just to get his back up and demonstrate especially to Miami Cuban Americans that he has not changed his position. But you know Terry, I'd be will to go bet, you know, that the thing in Jimmy Carter's mind when he goes back to his presidency, he seesthe highlight of that period as the Camp David Accord between Begin and Sadat on the Middle East. I just wonder whether in Carter's mind he thinks of himself sort of like Sadat going to Jerusalem, the fact that that was able to able to break the log jam that the highest ranking American in history at least since 1959 goes to Havana and begins to get things moving, whether it will or not I think is highly questionable, but I wonder if that's to some extent driving him.

ROGER WILKINS: I think this is just part of a pattern. I don't think we ought to take this out of the pattern. This is an extension of who Jimmy Carter always was. I mean, if you look back at his inaugural address, he said what we need to do is get rid of all nuclear weapons. Well, he just kind of....

TERENCE SMITH: A sweeping proposal.

ROGER WILKINS: Right. He becomes President. He thinks there's too much frou-frou around the President. He and Mrs. Carter walk up Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol. He wants to humanize the presidency so he starts wearing... remember he wore blue jeans, cardigan sweaters. Jimmy Carter, I think, has always had kind of an inner drum. He still teaches Sunday school. He thinks that he needs to use his persona and what it... what comes with it to help change the world.

TERENCE SMITH: Haynes, does it set a pattern for ex-Presidents?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Well, his life and what he's done and being involved and having an issue and making a difference in this... I think Michael is exactly right. To be the emissary to the world, to solve conflict resolutions that's who Jimmy Carter is. But I don't think we ought to put bronze on him yet. I mean he's doing fine. He's a wonderful, admirable human being with great moral values. He was not a successful President. But what he's doing is devoting his life to things that really count. Building Habitat for Humanity -- this is a modest, hard-working guy sticking to his principles. We should celebrate him for that. But I don't think we should all of a sudden his presidency wasn't raving with success necessarily. It was a hard and difficult time.

ROGER WILKINS: I don't think we ever said that.

HAYNES JOHNSON: I know that.

TERENCE SMITH: Let me ask this. Is there a danger in any of this, of ex-Presidents free lancing in foreign policy around the globe? Surely it makes life difficult for the administrations.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: It does. That's been pretty rare in history. Richard Norton Smith, if he were here, I'll bet he would have told us something he wrote really wonderfully about which was to as a former President Herbert Hoover went to Germany during the Hitler time and caused a lot of problems because people abroad didn't understand that Hoover had not been sent by the American President. But one reason why Carter is unusual is that especially in recent times and especially during the Cold war time and afterwards, former Presidents generally try to do things that are not out of concert with the President of the... in the White House. Carter sees himself much more as a global figure and I think that's driving this.

TERENCE SMITH: Right. But he's getting out ahead, is it not, certainly of this President?

JACK NELSON: He is but the fact that he has very good relations with President Bush. Better relations with....

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: He may not anymore, Jack.

JACK NELSON: Well, he's had better relations with President Bush though than he had with President Clinton, for example. My guess is he's going to come out of all right with his relations with Bush. I mean Bush may be a little bitupset. After all he had to approve the visit though.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: My feeling was that after this trip, Bill Clinton is a man that has just become George W. Bush's favorite Democratic President.

TERENCE SMITH: Does this establish a pattern for Bill Clinton? Here's another very young ex-President.

HAYNES JOHNSON: Yeah, he would love to be in this role of being sent on missions. If George Bush would make him the roving ambassador to solve the Middle East problems which I think would be a good idea as a matter of fact but it's not going to happen politically. No way that's going to happen right now. The role of former Presidents is a very tricky one. I mean, look at Richard Nixon when he left office and the people were so... sort of looking at Richard Nixon as this great, gloomy, dark figure. People ran against him. He never got along with the other Presidents. It's been that way. Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt fought each other bitterly. It's a hard thing to establish this relationship. I think Carter has done very well in that respect.

JACK NELSON: However, Terry, back to your question about does it set a pattern, President Clinton is trying to set his ex-presidency very much in the mold of Carter. He's setting up his library as an international learning center very much like the Carter Center. The Carter Center motto: waging peace, fighting disease, building hope. My feeling is that in Cuba, maybe that's all he's done is build some hope. But that's not bad. That's not a bad accomplishment if he's built some hope down there.

TERENCE SMITH: He was very sober in fact, in describing, Roger, his limited achievements and maybe even limited expectations. He said he did not believe that Fidel Castro was going to welcome dissidents.

ROGER WILKINS: Right. I think that's one of the reasons that we won't see Bill Clinton in the model of Jimmy Carter. Because there is... there is a drive in Jimmy Carter but there's also a discipline. He mean he may do things that annoy occupants of the White House, but you never get the sense that Jimmy Carter is out of control, that he's... I think that future occupants of the White House and even this one will not feel that Bill Clinton will not get out of control. By that I mean Clinton is so talky and he's so smart and he's so full of energy and he's so spontaneous that it is really hard to envision him in this kind of role.

TERENCE SMITH: Of course he's heading off to East Timor so there is a role even for this ex-President. Go ahead.

HAYNES JOHNSON: I was just thinking about Cuba though. What eve seen here, this former President did something extraordinary. When he spoke to the Cuban people, Castro let him do it over television -- Castro sitting right in front of him, the first President, ten American Presidents and he's the first one to have gone down there to Cuba and talks' human rights, criticizes their records, names the dissidents and so forth.

ROGER WILKINS: In Spanish.

HAYNES JOHNSON: Hey, bravo. That's pretty good.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: And he's betting on the possibility that that may lead to a softening of the tough policies of Castro and a better world in Cuba. If that happens historians will look very well on this trip but as always, time will tell.

TERENCE SMITH: And the Middle East? There is another area. Is that ripe for an ex-President or is that too hot?

JACK NELSON: Well, you know, there was some talk about President Bush sending over his father and sending over Bill Clinton and sending over Jimmy Carter. Carter was very interested. I don't know about he other two. I don't know about the other two. My guess is they might have been. But, as Haynes says, that will never happen.

HAYNES JOHNSON: Well, I think with Carter, I must say he's got the background certainly, the expertise. The Camp David accords, and so forth.

JACK NELSON: Don't expect him to send him over.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I don't expect to see Carter because has made himself almost like a Secretary General of an international organization.

HAYNES JOHNSON: That's right.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: The Carter Center, it's very hard for him to pry himself from the limited role of being essentially an American emissary.

HAYNES JOHNSON: You have to be someone who is particularly for the President not only for your own organization.

TERENCE SMITH: Finally, roger, it sounds like we're struggling to find a role for ex-Presidents, and they're finding it for themselves.

ROGER WILKINS: Well, I think that they do find it for themselves. Lyndon Johnson left office and he was low and he was unhappy. And I saw him in New York about six months before he died. And we had a chat. And I said, "Why don't you speak out on civil rights?" He said, "Do you think anybody would listen to me?" I said, "sure." He said, "I'll think about that." Well, in a few months, at the LBJ Library dedication, he stood up -- and he was very ill -- and he made a stem-winding, brilliant civil rights speech. So there is, in most of these men, a desire to do something good and to change things. Johnson did it. I think most of them... and we're living longer and so many... we'll see much more of this in the future I think.

TERENCE SMITH: Gentlemen, thank you all very much.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the other major developments of this day. President Bush defended his handling of terrorist information before September 11. He said he would have done everything possible to prevent the attacks if he had known they were coming. And hundreds of coalition troops launched a new campaign in eastern Afghanistan. A reminder that "Washington Week" can be seen on most PBS stations later this evening. We'll see you online, and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.