The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: A summary of today's news; a report on the latest deadly bombing in Israel, with analysis; one reporter's look from deep inside ground zero in New York; a report on the coming of foreign doctors to rural America; and the third of Elizabeth Farnsworth's reports from Venezuela-- this one on an artist living and drawing through a political crisis.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: A Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus in Jerusalem today. 19 people were killed, 55 were wounded. It happened during morning rush hour, as the bus was loaded with high school students and office workers. The Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility. In Washington, a White House spokesman said President Bush still planned a major statement on the Middle East in the coming days. It could involve Palestinian statehood. The spokesman said today's bombing would have no effect on U.S. policy.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: White House Spokesman: There is no relation or connection. The President has been working if you go back to April 4 in the Rose Garden, the President laid out his vision for moving forward in the Middle East, a framework for that. And last week again he indicated that he would soon have more to say about how we would move forward to two states living side by side in peace and security. That is our goal and that is where we continue to keep our focus.

JIM LEHRER: There were reports today the President might send Secretary of State Powell to the Middle East next week, but a State Department spokesman would not comment. We'll have more on the Middle East in a moment. Saudi Arabia today announced its first arrests of terror suspects since September 11. The official Saudi press agency said 11 Saudis, an Iraqi, and a Sudanese were being held. The report said they were linked to al-Qaida, and planned to attack unspecified "vital" targets in the kingdom. Followers of Osama bin Laden have countered U.S. moves to strangle their funding. The "Washington Post" reported today al-Qaida had placed most of its assets into untraceable commodities, such as gold and gems, long before September 11. As a result, those funds have largely avoided a worldwide freeze on al-Qaida bank accounts. At least 20 wildfires burned in 11 states across the western U.S. today. In Colorado, a huge fire near Denver flared out of control again. And in California, federal officials investigated the crash of an air tanker plane that killed three crewmen. Betty Ann Bowser has our report.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: For the second day in a row, it was hot and dry in Colorado, a setback for firefighters who made some progress digging containment lines over the weekend. The largest blaze, a 112,000- acre inferno known as the Hayman Fire, has now jumped many of those lines.

JOE COLWELL, U.S. Forest Service: You've got a dragon sleeping out in the woods. Well, yesterday, the dragon woke up and he's breathing fire.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The fire has grown 10% in acreage since Sunday, mostly along its southern flank. Just beyond its northern edge is the Denver metro area, where residents awoke upto this smoky haze, as well as the worst air quality index of the year. In southern Colorado, a smaller wildfire near the town of Durango is also taking advantage of Mother Nature. It has grown 20% to almost 40,000 acres. Another problem for firefighters is that the government today grounded all air tankers, planes that had been dropping water and fire retardant across the west. The decision came after this C-130 tanker crashed yesterday, fighting a fire near Yosemite in northern California. The accident killed three crewmembers. Its cause is still unknown.

MAN: He just came from out of the sky and into the ground. There's body parts all over the place.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: A separate fire is blazing in southern California, about 50 miles east of Los Angeles in the San Bernardino Mountains. While only a fraction of the fire is under control, firefighters are now using flares to start backfires in an effort to contain it.

JIM LEHRER: In economic news today, the Labor Department reported the Consumer Price Index was unchanged in may. It was the best showing in five months for inflation at the retail level. Lower prices for gasoline, clothing, and cars balanced out higher costs for medical care and air fares. Governor Jesse Ventura of Minnesota said today he will not run for reelection. He told Minnesota Public Radio his heart was no longer in it. The former professional wrestler scored an upset win in 1998 as the Reform Party candidate. Later, he joined the Independence Party. At one point, he had been mentioned as a possible Presidential candidate. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Jerusalem bombing and U.S. Middle East policy, ground zero from the inside, foreign aid for American medicine, and Elizabeth Farnsworth's third report from Venezuela.

FOCUS - MIDEAST MAELSTROM

JIM LEHRER: The Israel bombing story. We start with a report from John Irvine of Independent Television News.

JOHN IRVINE: The latest Jerusalem death trap. It had been packed with ordinary people starting what they thought would be a normal day. Now all of them are either dead or injured. The bus was heading for the city center from the southern suburbs when suddenly a lone Palestinian who had positioned himself at the front of the vehicle detonated a bag full of explosives. The emergency services came across a scene of slaughter. 19 Israelis were beyond help. Dozens more were rushed away, but the rescue effort was hampered by an alert over stolen ambulances. There was the fear that one could be used to carry a second bomb. This was a backpack belonging to one of the many teenagers onboard on their way to school. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arrived here and was shown a row of dead bodies before commenting on the atrocity.

ARIEL SHARON, Prime Minister, Israel (Translated): What we are seeing is the continuation of the Palestinian terror. And we must fight and struggle against this terror. This is what we will do. The terrible pictures we see here are stronger than any words. It's interesting to speculate what kind of Palestinian state they want. What sort of Palestinian state? What are they talking about?

JOHN IRVINE: These were the scenes at one hospital. They had just been told that a friend had died. The Israeli security forces have a good success rate when it comes to thwarting suicide bombings, but even though they knew an attack was imminent, they couldn't intercept today's perpetrator. They did try desperately hard to prevent this. There were security checkpoints all over Jerusalem last night because the Israeli police knew a Palestinian suicide bomber was loose in the city. But against such an unpredictable enemy, good intelligence only means so much.

JIM LEHRER: More from Ray Suarez, who talked this evening with Matt Rees, "Time" Magazine's bureau chief in Jerusalem.

RAY SUAREZ: And Matt, has there so far been a credible claim of responsibility for this attack?

MATT REES: Hamas has claimed it, and they've actually released the name of a student of 22 years of age from An Najah, which is the university in Nablus, as being responsible.

RAY SUAREZ: And what kind of reaction has there been, either military or political, from Israel?

MATT REES: Well, on the one hand, the Israeli tanks have moved into Jenin this evening, which is a town in the north of the West Bank where there's been a lot of devastation and a number of incursions already, so there is a military response. But politically there's a certain degree of frustration on the Israeli side, and the important thing is the fact that today, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met with some of his senior ministers, his security cabinet, and they decided that they're not going to take action specifically against Yasser Arafat. They've had advice over the last several months that he'd be more dangerous outside the borders of the West Bank and Gaza, if he was expelled, than he is here, where he's kind of under the thumb of the Israeli military at any given moment. So they didn't change that, and that's very frustrating to them, but there's really nothing much they can do about it at the moment.

RAY SUAREZ: Has Arafat had anything to say?

MATT REES: His authority has condemned this, but that doesn't help when it comes to the Israelis. They don't... they don't think he's actually doing anything at all. And essentially in terms of arresting Hamas people or Israeli Jihad, he's not. He would claim that he can't. And in any case, even if he did, the Israelis would always want more. They, for example, claimed to have arrested 250 people from their list of wanted men just in may alone in the course of their sweeps through the West Bank. Arafat's not going to have arrested that many even if he was doing his utmost.

RAY SUAREZ: The Israelis have also killed individual Palestinians in the past few days, haven't they, that they've targeted?

MATT REES: Well, there was another one today from Islamic Jihad that was killed. There are an awful lot of what the Israelis call hot alerts at the moment. There's one right now in Jerusalem, even though there was this big attack earlier in the day. So the Israelis are doing everything they can to stop those who they still believe are on their way to do these attacks.

RAY SUAREZ: And with the incursion into Jenin, it's been said that Jenin is a hotbed of this kind of terrorist organizing and activity. Why is it said to be that?

MATT REES: Well, there's a refugee camp there that's been a big base for Israeli Jihad, for one thing. Another thing is the fact that its proximity to Israel makes it horribly convenient for these bombers. First of all, it's not the mountains. Much of the West Bank is quite mountainous. It's on the plain just in the north of the West Bank, so it's relatively easy to get across the West Bank, which of course, is one of the reasons the Israelis are starting to build the security fence of theirs.

RAY SUAREZ: And does that fence cut Jenin off from major Israeli cities like Jerusalem that are close by to the West Bank?

MATT REES: Well, it starts in the north of the West Bank near Jenin, and it goes all the way down about halfway down the northern portion of the West Bank. It's about 120 kilometers. And that portion of it is intended to stop the bombers who come from Jenin and Tulkarm and Kalkilya, the three main towns up there, and also, of course, Nablus, and go to Tel Aviv and Haifa and the coastal area. Jerusalem is going to be a separate question. There are going to be fences built starting within the next month or so inside Jerusalem's eastern Arab neighborhoods, so they're going to take a separate approach to that. Of course in a year-and-a-half or so, the Israelis reckon they're going to build a fence around the entire West Bank.

RAY SUAREZ: Will that fence really stop cross-border incursions, or will it more likely tend to at least channel the traffic toward places that can be more easily monitored?

MATT REES: It's going to be quite an obstacle. It's not just going to be a single fence. It's going to be something akin to what they have now on the border with Jordan, right down the Jordan Valley. So it's not simply a fence with a motion detector, but it's a complex of fence, several mountains of razor wire with motion detectors in them, ditches, and tracts that are brushed smooth with sand so you can see when someone comes across. So it's going to be quite an obstacle. The unfortunate fact is that terrorists are going to find a way around it or perhaps over it. One of the things that a lot of Israelis are fearing is that it will mean similar missile attacks to the ones that come from Lebanon into northern Israel.

RAY SUAREZ: Matt Rees in Jerusalem, thanks for being with us.

MATT REES: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill takes the story from there.

GWEN IFILL: For more on where today's bombing leaves the diplomatic process, we turn to Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, and Raymond Tanter, a senior National Security Council staffer on the Middle East during the Reagan administration.

Welcome, gentlemen.

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: Pleasure.

GWEN IFILL: We were expecting the President to give a big speech this week outlining what the U.S. policy would be in the Middle East. Does today's suicide bombing -- this morning's suicide bombing change what he has to say or what he can say?

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: Well it certainly changes the timing a bit. No question the President was not about to give a speech to be followed by some operations by Sharon to respond to this attack that will then get a different kind of reaction in the region, and also would have been sort of in bad taste to give a speech on a day when so many people have lost their lives. So it was certainly the timing is an issue, but I think there's more to it than that. I think the administration clearly is reconsidering some of the issues it's been thinking about to include in that speech. They've been hearing a lot of criticism from across the political spectrum including in Congress about the ideas that were floated. And I think they have not yet fully decided on what should be included in that speech. It's still under consideration to this minute. So there is more to it than just the issue of the bombing today. There is truly still a debate within the administration about the nature of the policy.

GWEN IFILL: Does this bombing change what the administration has to do now?

RAYMOND TANTER: Well, clearly the bombing changes the timing, as Professor Telhami suggests, but I think eventually the President will put forth his vision, sort of a road map, of where he would like the Middle East to be in the next few years. And in this respect an interim Palestinian state will be a part of that road map. This is not the time to put it forth, as the Professor suggests, but eventually that idea is going to be floated again.

GWEN IFILL: So you say all that will change as a result of today's events is timing not content?

RAYMOND TANTER: I think the timing, not the content, but the timetables will be put forth at some point later as well. The Mitchell and Zinni and Tenet proposals all had built within some kind... built within themselves some kinds of sequence. Mitchell, for example, said it's very important to have a cease-fire and then confidence- building measures followed by political negotiations.

GWEN IFILL: Ariel Sharon today at the sight of this bombing said Palestinian state, what Palestinian state, looking at the bodies of the victims of the suicide bomber. But yet you're suggesting that there is still room for Israel to accept an interim Palestinian state as the trial balloon that's been floated?

RAYMOND TANTER: I think that Ariel Sharon right now doesn't want to talk about a Palestinian state at all. So I think that eventually the timing will be ready... he will be ready to talk about a Palestinian state.

GWEN IFILL: Professor Telhami?

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: Well, you know, there's no question that in the moments like this where you have so many people who are killed who are innocent it's hard to contemplate ideas for peace. But frankly anybody who looks at it and understands that there is one possible solution ultimately and that is a two- state solution, one for the Palestinians, one for the Israelis. The question is how to get there and how to draw the boundaries. This hasn't changed. This is the American position. It is really the position that is articulated by vast majorities of Palestinians and Israelis to this day even despite all of this violence. The problem that we have now for the United States is how do you get a process that would have the confidence of the parties particularly if it's not a process that is going to lead to immediate results?

GWEN IFILL: But let me ask you again about today's events. We are holding our breath expecting an Israeli response. Do you think there will be one?

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: There is one already as we speak. I expect that it's going to be possibly reoccupying parts of the West Bank. And I don't think it's going to be a one- or two-day operation. And that clearly has to go to the think of the President in terms of timing.

GWEN IFILL: What about the potential for deporting Yasser Arafat?

RAYMOND TANTER: I think Arafat outside of the box is much more of a danger to Israel than within the box. That is to say Arafat in Ramallah is less of a danger to Israel. So he could wind up being like the flying Dutchman going from port to port to port creating diplomatic havoc. So I would say don't exile Arafat - don't destroy the Palestinian Authority yet.

GWEN IFILL: But the President's National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was quoted this week as describing Arafat as corrupt and saying that he cavorts with terror. That's pretty tough language if you want to do business with them.

RAYMOND TANTER: Well, in fact Arafat is corrupt and he does cavort with terror. And ink she's right. But in fact what I would suggest is that Arafat is in a position where he could do much more damage if he's cavorting with the Iranians, with the Iraqis and other terror- sponsoring states if he's outside of Ramallah.

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: Look, I mean there's no question the Palestinian Authority needs reform. The Palestinians recognize it on the inside. Arabs recognize it broadly. The Europeans recognize it broadly. The question is whether it happens from the outside or from within. It has to happen from within. The second thing is I think the institution of the Palestinian state should be built on a sounder basis than the Palestinian Authority was built. These are things that resonate with the Palestinians, that resonate with the United States. That should not be an issue that is a pre-condition for negotiations. It should be an issue that's built into the negotiation. I think is the... the intent is to have a timetable in which we... progress is made both on reform and on implementing the creation of a Palestinian state and Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.

GWEN IFILL: There was a suggestion today that Colin Powell would be the next broker to go back to the Middle East on this. Is it worthwhile for him to go and is he a credible broker in the eyes of all parties at this point?

RAYMOND TANTER: I think that Secretary Powell has to go back. The President wants to keep the ball in play. The President is going to kick the ball down the field and Secretary Powell is going to continue to move the ball down the field. So I would say that magic... that momentum is the magic of diplomacy. I would recommend that Powell go back to the region, but I would also caution that he might be welcomed by another suicide bombing attack because every time Powell goes, or Zinni or Tenet, every time they go there's some kind of a violent reaction.

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: Well, Mr. Powell is a respected leader in the international community broadly and certainly in the Middle East he's probably more trusted than almost anyone else from the United States. However, at the same time, people don't know often whether he is speaking for the President or not. Clearly he has to make sure that he has a mandate when he speaks. Two, I think no matter what, it is not going to matter unless there are ideas to discuss. It's not the visit as such. I mean visits in and of themselves don't do much. They hold hands. I mean, people want to see results. If there is a specific mission particularly in this case I think the idea was that the Secretary would go to help arrange for the conference that is proposed by the President. Then it's that idea that would have to be implemented and he would have to take that with him.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Tanter just suggested, however, that sometimes events outpace diplomatic efforts. For instance, if Powell were to go or Zinni were to go or tenet were to go, all of the emissaries who have been on the ground for the United States, and they are greeted with another suicide bombing or act of violence, that this could continue to derail the process. What would be different this time?

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: Well, there are two things. One is that, first of all, we have to understand know... that if we don't move forward in the Middle East political process we move backwards because groups will preempt; they always preempt; And, therefore you have to have something on the table. Second you can't assume that violence can end through violence. We have to have a political... there's a catch-22. Therefore you're just going to have to find a way, despite the violence, to move forward, because you can't make every act that happens something that would stop you from moving forward.

RAYMOND TANTER: Excuse me. There was a political process that President Clinton put forth and he was greeted with violence. So I would disagree that a political process is necessary condition for ending the violencebecause the violence often occurs irrespective of that process. I've read your research on this.

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: But aggregately, though, aggregately at the level of the total incidence of violence during the entire Oslo Accords they went down every single year. Yes they were going on occasionally but they went down every single year and the -- by the year 2000, the year of the Camp David negotiations that failed, the incidence of terrorism in the Middle East was the lowest of any incidence of any other region around the world so clearly while there were ups and downs you have to look at the big picture. Today we have more terrorism since the collapse of negotiations than we've had throughout the entire period of the Oslo agreements.

GWEN IFILL: Let me ask you another question about something happening right now, which is the building of this fence on the West Bank. To what degree is that going to provide a spark or could that provide a spark to the conflict?

RAYMOND TANTER: I think what the fence will do is to force people to go through checkpoints. One of the things that in effect electronic sensors do along Gaza is to force would-be terrorists to go through check points and they are intercepted.

GWEN IFILL: You think it will successfully stop infiltration.

RAYMOND TANTER: The 215 or 220-mile long line between the West Bank and Israel proper is a place where a fence could do some good in conjunction with electronic sensors and checkpoints.

GWEN IFILL: That's all we have time for today. Thank you very much for joining us.

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: Pleasure.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: An unusual view from ground zero, foreign doctors in the country, and drawing politics in Venezuela.

FOCUS - FROM GROUND ZERO

JIM LEHRER: Media correspondent Terence Smith has the ground zero story.

TERENCE SMITH: Beginning just days after the attacks on the World Trade Center Towers on September 11, correspondent William Langeweische was given exclusive round-the-clock access to the massive recovery and digging-out process. His 70,000 word book-length account of life at ground zero during that process is the cover story in the July/August issue of the "Atlantic Monthly," on news stands today. William Langeweische, welcome.

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE, The Atlantic Monthly: Thank you.

TERENCE SMITH: We should note that this is described, this article, this is the first of three parts, as the longest piece of original reporting that this magazine has done in its 150- year history. So it's remarkable in that respect as well. How did you get the special access to the site and to its people?

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: I went to the Trade Center site a few days after the buildings came down, as soon as the airlines started flying, and looked at it quickly on my own and saw that the really effective movement there was the movement of heavy equipment coming in.

TERENCE SMITH: Mm-hmm.

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: I knew that as an "Atlantic" writer, that standard press credentials weren't going to help me; that I needed better access than that. So I, and my people at the "Atlantic," contacted the man who seemed to be moving the equipment. We heard about this man. His name was Kenneth Holden, a very obscure... the head of an obscure bureaucracy, basically, in Queens, who was unexpectedly moving in equipment. We contacted him. He turned out to be a reader of ours, and he understood the nature of the work we do, and he made it happen.

TERENCE SMITH: So you asked and he said yes.

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: That's what it was.

TERENCE SMITH: You describe the "pile," as it's called in your work here, as incredibly isolated, its own world, isolated even from Manhattan.

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: In some ways it seems like it was even maybe more isolated from Manhattan than from the rest of the country.

TERENCE SMITH: How so?

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: Manhattan is a very rich place, and it's a very special place, high income to say the least, very white collar. Inside the perimeter of the World Trade Center, it was a blue collar scene. Now, it was very New York. Mostly it was outer-borough New York. But the connection to Manhattan was cut, in a sense, by almost, you could say, by class differences, also by the simple difficulty of getting through the perimeter. It was very hard for people to get in, and by the way, the press was systematically excluded except for short tours.

TERENCE SMITH: But not you.

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: That's right.

TERENCE SMITH: You were in there and were permitted to stay in there and to talk to people.

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: I lived and breathed it.

TERENCE SMITH: Right. You describe this in your article as "a uniquely American exercise." What do you mean?

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: Inside that perimeter, inside the secret world there, there was, first of all, chaos. It was an unplanable situation, or terrain, or problem, so the standard solutions weren't going to apply. Improvisation was what was necessary, and it was allowed to run at the World Trade Center. The genius of the American system, the thing we all believe in-- creativity, improvisation-- was brought forth inside the World Trade Center site, again out of sight, and maybe the hidden aspect of it was necessary to keep the political forces down. But people were allowed to take enormous risks, physical and intellectual risks, and they were given a lot of responsibility. There was a new form of democracy at play, where lowly workers and people without rank were suddenly rising high, gaining power on the basis of what they could provide the operation. There was a sort of an all- American chaos, and I don't believe that we would have seen that sort of response in most other countries.

TERENCE SMITH: And you say that some natural leaders from these ranks sort of arose of the moment. Is that right?

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: Starting with Kenneth Holden himself, the commissioner of the department of design and construction. And these people in Queens were in charge of building municipal buildings in New York City, basically, sidewalks and sewers and municipal buildings. They were not emergency responders. So starting with Ken Holden, an unexpected man who with Mike Burton, the man who became known as the czar of the World Trade Center, responded within a few hours very effectively, and others, too. There were firemen, lowly firemen, who were not playing the role of hero but were engaged actively in concrete and material solutions on the ground, and who, as a result of their effectiveness, rose to power. There was one man, for instance, another fireman, Sam Alise, who played another role, which was not so much practical, but political internally. He kept... he acted as a mediator between the warring factions within the site, and he kept the process going through his natural skills of sympathy with all sides.

TERENCE SMITH: So as you say, you had this little democracy, this little community that built up and was there day and night for months.

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: In which people were defining themselves for the first time in their lives, often learning things about themselves and being accepted as something different by other people within the site.

TERENCE SMITH: You describe a harrowing trip down to the "big chiller", as you call it, the air conditioning unit down deep in the wreckage. And there was a danger there, the freon, what was that?

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: In very simple terms the freon could have served as sort of a poisonous gas. It's a little bit more complicated than that, but it was a threat to the site. The possibility that freon was sitting in these enormous tanks at the center of the ruins underneath the pile, it was finally necessary as the equipment came in from above, it was finally necessary to know what was the condition of the pile around those tanks. Did they perhaps have freon in them? And that expedition I described in the piece.

TERENCE SMITH: And you went along.

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: I went along, as I went along on many of them, many of them.

TERENCE SMITH: Yeah. I mean, just extraordinarily dramatic as you went down and found that in fact the freon had been released.

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: We knew it had been released because of the extent of the ruins.

TERENCE SMITH: Right.

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: We found ourselves in conditions of horrific ruin underneath the pile. And it was very clear from that that no tank containing freon could have survived; nothing survived. We were in little cracks.

TERENCE SMITH: You describe some poignant scenes here, including one involving an older fireman looking for his son who was buried in the debris. Tell me about that.

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: This was an extreme of emotion there. For the most part, the people who were working at the site were not family members. That is obviously the way it needed to be.

TERENCE SMITH: Right.

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: So there was some emotional distance. I would say that everyone working there knew, always remembered that 3,000 or nearly 3,000 people had died here, that this has been a very serious attack against the United States, and that what they were doing was a response directly to that. There were people, there were some people, and they were in the fire department because of the connections that the fire department had at the site, who were allowed in to look for their own children. This was one of those people. And it was a very, very sad sight. I described it with reluctance, but out of a desire to be as honest as possible in this piece.

TERENCE SMITH: He was concerned that the bulldozers were going to cover over where his son might be.

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: That's right. And of course he did not know where his son was. I mean, the son could have been anywhere in the pile, in fact, but he was down on his knees in the rubble with a spade and he was actually smelling the debris for the remains of his son. It was a very rough sight. And again, I was reluctant to put it in. I did put it in because I feel that a piece like this requires absolute frank honesty.

TERENCE SMITH: At times you say, even given all that happened, the site was strangely beautiful. And there are some photographs in here that are remarkable because there is a kind of beauty. Tell us about it.

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: Joe Morowitz, the man who took the pictures, a great photographer, well known, was there also on and off. Quite often he was there. And he captured much of that beauty. He was aware of the beauty from the start. And I think he was reluctant, as he said to me at times, even to express that, but there was no denying it. And within the site, people acknowledged that right away. People often said, "this is so beautiful." "Look at these colors." "Look at these surreal forms." "Look at this smoke rising into the sky at night."

TERENCE SMITH: All right. And finally, as the project came to an end, what were the emotions then?

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: In order to understand the emotions then, you have to understand what the emotions were before that. And that is the emotions were largely a vitalization, this was for many people, though, very sad. It was enormous tragedy for many people there. There was also a liberation from normal life. There was a sense of enormous creation going on, of pride, of the specialness of the mission. And all of those things somewhat related the feelings that soldiers may have in war, but without someone shooting at them. Those very positive things were going on at the World Trade Center. And when the end came in sight, the last few months as things began to become more and more organized and normalized and predictable, the schedule was very clear -- people, what they really felt was regret.

TERENCE SMITH: Regret?

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: Regret to be leaving in a way. I mean a mixed feeling, because of course it was nonsensical. But no one really would have wished for this, therefore how could you regret to leave it? But people felt regret that this experience would never again be duplicated in their lives.

TERENCE SMITH: Well, it's a remarkable story. William Langeweische, thanks so much for being with us.

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE: Thank you.

FOCUS - (FOREIGN) COUNTRY DOCTORS

JIM LEHRER: Now, a group of country doctors from other countries. Fred de Sam Lazaro of Twin Cities Public Television reports.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Eutaw, Alabama, is one of the poorest places in the United States, with a per capita income of just $15,000 a year, about half the U.S. average. Its once-reliable cash crop, cotton, is long gone. Despite a history of civil rights struggles, blacks and whites still lead very separate lives in the old days, the area could depend on homegrown talent, but the names on the shingles at the doctors office here say a lot about how the face and name of the country doctor has changed in America.

SPOKESMAN: Try to quit smoking, you know.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Doctors Adnan Seljuki, Mohammad Siddiqve, Salahuddin Faroooui, all from Pakistan, and Lourdes Ada, from the Philippines, now form the backbone of Eutaw's medical care they came to the rescue of a town that was at one point fearful of attracting enough doctors to keep its small hospital open. Sandrall Hullet was a doctor in Eutaw for 30 years, now she just works part-time in the local nursing home. She knows how life can be in a small town with too few physicians.

DR. SANDRALL HULLETT, Physician: I've worked periods of time when I had no one but me seeing over 50 patients a day. That's very, very hard work if you're doing that and delivering babies at the same time.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It's hard to attract American doctors to rural areas like Eutaw because of the poverty and isolation. But compared to the state of medicine in his home country, Adnan Seljuki finds the situation in Eutaw satisfying.

DR. ADNAN SELJUKI, Greene County Physicians Clinic: One thing which I really liked about this system here, the healthcare, is that although the poverty is there, but the healthcare is almost first-class healthcare for all people here. Any patient who comes to the emergency room here gets everything, which is supposed to be given to them.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Foreign doctors used to be criticized for having inferior training, but these days, they wave to pass rigorous exams on a par with their U.S. counterparts, according to Dr. Fitzhugh Mullan who practices in inner-city Washington.

DR. FITZHUGH MULLAN: In the last couple of years, the U.S. Medical Licensure Exam has included a portion for international medical graduates where individuals are measured on their ability to interact appropriately in a clinical setting. The effort is to make sure that people passing exams are not just paper whizzes, but in fact are clinically and interpersonally able as well.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: However, Dr. Mullan, who headed the National Health Service Corps under President Carter, says cultural and language concern remain.

DR. FITZHUGH MULLAN: It is very, very important to be as knowledgeable about, and as comfortable with the culture of the folks that you're treating as a physician as possible. And front and center, of course, is language, but there's a lot else that comes with it in terms of cultural understanding as well.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The doctors in Eutaw have tried hard to get around the language barrier

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Do you ever have difficulty understanding your patients?

DR. LOURDES ADA, Greene County Physicians Clinic: Yes, sometimes.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: What do you do in those situations?

DR. LOURDES ADA: I ask somebody from the staff to help me listen closely what the patient means. You know, it takes a lot of patience, keep repeating what they just said; "may I hear it again?"

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Muslims in a mostly Christian town, foreign born in the town where most people's families go back generations, the doctors also have tried hard to fit in to the town life.

PARADE: Jingle bells jingle bells jingle all the way

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Sandrall Hullett knows about the difficulty of fitting in. She was the town's first female and African American doctor.

DR. SANDRALL HULLETT : Learning to do the small talk, and that's what really... in small towns, that's what really helps a lot.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: What sort of small talk?

DR. SANDRALL HULLETT: You know, we talk about the garden, kids, politics. Big thing: Football games, Alabama, you can't tell someone you don't know who is playing football; that you don't know whether Auburn or Alabama won the game or not.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: But Dr. Hullett, who's recruited most of the foreign doctors to town, acknowledges problems with earlier hires, in what she calls cultural competency -- like the one physician who refused to examine pregnant patients unless a husband or male relative brought them in.

DR. SANDRALL HULLETT: His philosophy was that if a woman was pregnant, then the father of the child, thinking everybody was married, should be there every time this lady came for her visit. And so, we tried to explain to him that you don't do that. And he did not want to work with us, so we had to fire him. We actually fired him.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: But she gives high marks to Eutaw's current crop of doctors. Most, like Dr Siddique, say they adjust to new cultural norms, on teen pregnancy, for example.

DR. MOHAMMAD SIDDIQUE, Greene County Physicians Clinic: It gives me lot of pain when I see young girls getting pregnant, and then they are out of their way for their future. And their path has so many problems. Really, it gives me a lot of pain.

DR. MOHAMMAD SIDDIQUE: Can you breath in?

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Rural areas are not the only places, which have become dependent on foreign doctors. They are also prominent as residents in large urban hospitals, where they fill a void in the doctor supplypipeline, according to Dr mullah.

DR. FITZHUGH MULLAN: We graduate 16,000 or 17,000 students as physicians each year, and yet we offer about 22,000 first-year residency positions, internship positions. So there's a mismatch of 5,000 or 6,000 people and there's no place to go, essentially, but abroad. And that's become a very stable part of our system.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: About half of those foreign students are actually U.S. citizens who have studied abroad. The rest are foreign nationals, most from developing countries. At Tomasson Hospital in El Paso, Texas, Dr. Abraham Verghese says he had a much easier time when he came to America two decades ago, than his foreign students do now. Verghese, who has written two best selling books about his experiences as a doctor, came from Ethiopia and India.

DR. ABRAHAM VERGHESE: There's a whole new set of hurdles which, 20 years ago, were relatively simple. You could most likely stay on if you wanted to. These days, the kind of visa that many of us came on simply doesn't exist.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Today, foreign medical graduates enter the U.S. on J-1 visas, which require return that they return home after completing their residency, generally three to four years

DR. ABRAHAM VERGHESE: I think that most people who take the trouble to go through all the different hurdles you have to go through to come to America are under no illusions that they're going to go back after just three years of training. I think they're very determined to stay, they're just as determined as they were when they were trying to get here. They remain just as determined to stay.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: One of the few options for extending or waiving J-1 visas is to agree to serve in a federally designated physician shortage area, such as Eutaw, typically for two to four years. The doctors then get permanent work visas, and at that point, Dr. Mullan says, their aspirations are no different from American colleagues.

DR. FITZHUGH MULLAN: You have people starting their practice in areas that are less sought-after by American graduates. When you look, however, at the overall distribution of international graduates, many, if not most, return to practice settings in suburban or urban areas that are indistinguishable from U.S. graduates. And the data shows that many migrate back to more middle-class kinds of settings.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In fact, the biggest complaint in Eutaw is that foreign doctors usually leave almost as soon as their obligation is completed.

SUZETTE QUINNIE: You get a lot of them that come. They don't stay. They do their training or whatever. By the time you get used to them and they're a real good doctor, they move on to somewhere else.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Three of Eutaw's four doctors who decided to remain did so even though they are now past their visa obligations, and they hope this brings new patients. Even though a clinic from a town 30 miles away opened a satellite facility in Utah, the immigrant doctors say they have the hometown affection. For the Pakistani families, devout Muslims, that's meant a lot post September 11.

MRS. KHOWLA SELJUKI: Right after September 11, initially, I was a little scared to go out because of my scarf and my Muslim outlook. But when I went out, people were more friendly to me here in Eutaw. In the grocery stores and everywhere, they were more friendly, and the people I barely knew, they were coming to me and they were, like, talking to me and asking me that, "if you need any help, if somebody gives you any trouble just call us and tell us," but nobody gave us any trouble.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: But there may be other trouble on the horizon for rural communities now looking for doctors. Citing security concerns, the federal government recently announced it will no longer issue the waivers that extend the temporary stays of international medical graduates. Past attempts to limit foreign doctors have failed, and that's because they fulfill a need, according to Dr. Verghese.

DR. ABRAHAM VERGHESE: I think America is really in denial about the degree to which residents, particularly foreign medical graduates, man the county hospitals of this country and but for their services, I'm not sure how exactly we could manage.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Citing a desperate need for doctors in their home states, many members of Congress are hoping to overturn the anti- J-1 waiver decision, either through persuasion or legislation.

FINALLY - CARTOONS & CRISIS

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, the third of Elizabeth Farnsworth's reports from Venezuela. This one's a portrait of an artist in a political crisis. (Chanting)

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, stands at the center of a political upheaval. He returned triumphantly to power after a 48-hour coup in April, but his opponents remain determined to get rid of him, and the country is almost evenly divided between the two sides. It's all providing rich material for the pen of Pedro Leon Zapata. His cartoons have appeared six days a week for almost 40 years in the country's most popular newspaper, "El Nacional." I asked Zapata how he would explain to Americans this moment in Venezuela's history.

PEDRO LEON ZAPATA, Cartoonist (Translated): How can you explain what is happening in Venezuela if even we Venezuelans can't understand it? What is happening in Venezuela doesn't have a logical explanation.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Who is Hugo Chavez? Where did he come from in Venezuela?

PEDRO LEON ZAPATA (Translated): In astronomical terms, El Comandante Chavez is a black hole.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The answers are vintage Zapata, a man with a strong appreciation for black humor and the absurd. And because Zapata finds Hugo Chavez and his opponents almost equally absurd, the cartoonist is having a field day now.

PEDRO LEON ZAPATA (Translated): Since my thinking is pessimistic, which is true of a lot of humorists, I feel happy that all the bad things I think of are becoming reality. I consider myself, because of my pessimism, to be a kind of oracle.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Zapata's worldview was formed partly during his early years as a painter, when dadaism and surrealism, especially their exaltation of the strange and absurd, influenced his work. He studied painting in Mexico, where he knew the Mexican greats Diego Rivera and Frieda Khalo. And Zapata still paints and sells his work in galleries around the world. But he said this isn't the time for painting in Venezuela.

PEDRO LEON ZAPATA (Translated): In this moment that we're living in Venezuela, to be a painter-- and I say this as a painter-- doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to be a painter in this moment. And it makes much less sense when you can draw cartoons. And for me, cartoons are the perfect form for expressing fully all that happens to me inside as a consequence of what is going on outside.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: On the morning we visited his studio, Zapata was drawing a cartoon with a person wearing the beret of a Chavez supporter saying, "death to the cupulas," the elites. Chavez calls his opponents cupulas podridas-- rotten elites.

PEDRO LEON ZAPATA (Translated):And here I put, "long live the crapulas"-- drunks or dissolutes-- and that's something rotten too. It's a play on words. Now we don't have cupulas, we have crapulas. Crapula is a concept worse than cupula, so the idea is-- to say it as simply as possible-- nothing has changed.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Zapata has touched people in more ways than through his editorial page cartoons. He has worked in radio, television, universities, and the theater as political commentator, art historian, actor, and even as a musician. On this day, he was a guest on a radio program talking about the use of images of the bullfight in music and painting. Over the years, Zapata has been a man of the left. He was sympathetic to the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, for example, and critical of U.S. involvement there and elsewhere in Latin America. President Chavez also considers himself a man of the left, but that hasn't impressed a skeptical Zapata.

PEDRO LEON ZAPATA (Translated): Here they want to make a peaceful revolution, a revolution without violence. If to make a revolution with violence you have to be a genius, what would you have to be to do it without violence? Much more than a genius. They don't have the slightest idea how to do it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And so Zapata has documented what he sees as the failures of the Chavez revolution. In this cartoon, Karl Marx, supposedly a key influence on the President, is complaining, "when I said society was divided into classes, I didn't mean those with me and those against me," pointing up what Zapata sees as Chavez's tendency to divide the world into those for and against him. It all delights the pessimist Zapata.

PEDRO LEON ZAPATA (Translated): No one is more happy or optimistic than a pessimist when what he believes is going to happen, happens. More happiness than this is impossible to conceive. (Laughter)

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: A high point for Zapata came two years ago, when one of his cartoons was the subject of President Chavez's weekly television program. In the drawing, Zapata suggested that Chavez, a military man-- hence the sword-- likes civil society only when it will follow orders. "Civil society" is a term the President's opponents use to describe themselves.

PEDRO LEON ZAPATA (Translated): I'd like Zapata to clarify this before the country. I ask you, Zapata. Do you believe this, or did they tell you do it for publishing in "El Nacional"? Did you take money, Zapata, or do you believe this? I await your answer. I'm obliged, as head of state and commander in chief of the national armed forces, to ask you this, because this here doesn't correspond to reality.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: People reacted to the President's remarks by running out to buy the newspaper, and then in a public meeting that wasn't videotaped, Zapata responded in typical fashion, asking Chavez how much he had been paid to give the cartoonist so much publicity. Zapata said that at times like that, he's glad he became a cartoonist, though it wasn't his first choice.

PEDRO LEON ZAPATA (Translated): I think one doesn't choose cartooning, which is a form of humor, but that it chooses you. If it were otherwise-- for example, in a different field-- it would be like asking a beauty queen, "why did you choose beauty?" I'd like to have chosen painting. Maybe painting didn't want me, but cartooning did.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In recent years, Zapata has used the style of his cartoons in very large projects, like this mural alongside a highway in the capital city, Caracas, which is Zapata's home. He said he found the project daunting-- the mural is about one-eighth of a mile long-- until he realized he could do it as if it were a large cartoon.

PEDRO LEON ZAPATA (Translated): It's the same artistic language I've been using to express myself for years in my cartoons, which everybody in this country knows.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: He also realized he should make use of the fact the mural was by a highway.

PEDRO LEON ZAPATA (Translated): This gave me the idea of entitling the mural "Conductores de Venezuela," "Drivers of Venezuela," and it refers not only to the drivers who pass daily in all directions by the mural, which is 160 meters long, but it also refers to the great men and women who have produced and driven our country, led of, course, by the most important conductor, the liberator Simon Bolivar, who appears driving a truck in the central part of the mural.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Zapata said he believes that Venezuela's current problems can be explained partly by a lack of good leaders of the sort portrayed in the mural. And he said it's hard to know where Venezuela is being led now.

PEDRO LEON ZAPATA (Translated): We don't know for sure, as a people, where we're being taken, and the suspicion exists that those who are taking us also don't know where they're going. So how can we explain what's happening in Venezuela?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: It's a question that gives Pedro Leon Zapata a reason to go happily to his drawing table each day.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: And again the major developments of this day: A Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus in Jerusalem. 19 people were killed; 55 wounded. Saudi Arabia announced its first arrests of terror suspects since September 11. And at least 20 wildfires burned in 11 states across the western United States. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.