The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; then the latest on the discovery of the deadly poison ricin in a Senate Office Building; choice day for Democrats in seven states-- a candidates round-up, and the analysis of Mark Shields and David Brooks; a report on Pakistan's nuclear secrets scandal; and a look at intelligence failures by Michael Beschloss, Ted Gup and Roy Godson.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The U.S. Senate had to cancel much of its business today, after a potentially deadly discovery. A white power was found in the mail room for Majority Leader Bill Frist. It tested positive as ricin, a poison that attacks the lungs. A number of Senate staffers were decontaminated, and all three Senate office buildings were closed today. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. In Connecticut today, postal inspectors investigated an unidentified powder found last night in Wallingford. It was the same postal facility where anthrax was discovered in 2001. In this new incident, gray, sandy material leaked from an envelope addressed to the Republican National Committee. Initial tests were inconclusive. This was another showdown day for the democratic presidential candidates. Five states held primaries-- Arizona, Delaware, Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. Two other states, North Dakota, and New Mexico, held caucuses. In the late polls, the front- runner, John Kerry, was ahead in most of those states. But Wesley Clark was hoping to win Oklahoma, and John Edwards said he would win South Carolina. We'll have more on the democratic race later in the program tonight. Secretary of State Powell today defended the decision to go to war in Iraq, after he appeared to question it. In the "Washington Post," Powell said he did not know if he would have recommended war if he had known Iraq had no stockpiles of illegal weapons. He said: "The absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus. It changes the answer you get." But later, Powell said there was no doubt about the decision.

COLIN POWELL: The right thing was done. Other information that might have been available earlier wouldn't have changed the outcome nor did I say it would have changed the outcome. I think it was clear that this was a regime with intent, capability and it was a risk the president felt strongly we could not take. It was something we all agreed to and we'd probably agree to it again under any other set of circumstances.

JIM LEHRER: Democrats called today for Congress to name the commission to review intelligence failures on Iraq. They said that was the only way to insure its independence. Yesterday, President Bush said he would appoint the commission, and Republicans said today it's wrong to question the president's motives. Both sides spoke on the floor of the Senate.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: The way the president or this administration is proposing that this investigation be done flies in the face of past precedent, and that cloud that hangs over any investigation that could not be as open, honest and ultimately successful as it needs to be.

SEN. JON KYL: I just urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in conducting this debate to try to do it from the higher plain not of suspicion that the president of the United States is deliberately misleading the people but to acknowledge that maybe there was something wrong with part of our intelligence, and that's worth looking into.

JIM LEHRER: And in Britain today, Prime Minister Blair named a commission to investigate intelligence failures there before the war. He explained his decision to a parliamentary committee in London.

TONY BLAIR: What we should have is a proper inquiry into the intelligence not just about the intelligence services, the government and any discrepancies that there are between what is there and what has been found by the Iraq survey group we do not need in my view an inquiry into the political decision to go to war; that's a matter for the parliament and government and country in the end but it is important that we learn the intelligence lessons.

JIM LEHRER: Just last week, another inquiry cleared the British government of allegations it distorted the pre-war intelligence. This new commission is due to report before parliament breaks for the summer in July. Another U.S. soldier was killed in Iraq today, in a roadside bombing. And the Associated Press reported at least 45 Americans were killed there during all of January. That's five more than December's count. Also today, the death toll rose to 101 in Sunday's twin suicide bombings in northern Iraq. The attacks targeted the offices of two Kurdish political parties. North Korea agreed today to resume six-nation talks on its nuclear arms program. They'll be hosted by China on Feb. 25. The United States, Japan, Russia, and South Korea will also participate. North Korea has offered to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for energy assistance and other concessions. The U.S. wants North Korea to dismantle its program. Israeli Prime Minister Sharon said today he will dismantle 17 Jewish settlements in Gaza, and three in the West Bank. He said: "It pains me a lot but I've reached a decision and I'm going to carry it out." Two political parties in his governing coalition have said they would quit if he goes ahead with the plan. Today, Sharon said he'd try to form a new government if need be. International health officials convened an emergency meeting in Rome today, on ways to battle the bird flu. As they met, the death toll in Asia rose to 13. Ten countries have reported outbreaks, and millions of chickens and ducks have been destroyed to contain the disease. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained six points to close at 10505. The NASDAQ rose three points to close at 2066. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the poison story, candidates on another primaries/caucus day, Shields and Brooks, Pakistan's nuclear market, and wrong intelligence.

FOCUS - POISON POWDER

JIM LEHRER: The deadly powder at the capitol. Gwen Ifill has the story.

GWEN IFILL: Capitol Hill's latest terror scare surfaced Monday. Shortly after 3:00 P.M., Authorities were alerted that a suspicious white powder was found in the mailroom near Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's Senate Building Office. Preliminary tests identified the substance as the potentially deadly toxin, ricin. Capitol Hill employees were quarantined and decontaminated briefly last night. At a news conference today, Frist, a medical doctor, provided an update on the situation.

SEN. BILL FRIST: First and foremost, I know everybody is very concerned, especially here in the senate family. There were staff members involved in this mail room. And I'm happy to report everybody's doing fine, and that is very positive news, and that to date, nobody has been injured. Ricin-- we'll say a little bit more about it-- is a toxin. It is a poison. It is not contagious. It has no antidote or specific treatment, which makes it an agent that is challenging to manage if there is exposure and if injury begins to occur. The fact that we are now a full day, almost 24 hours, after the time of exposure, and based on what we know in terms of the patho-physiology of this toxin, usually injury occurs in the first four to eight hours, and so that, too, is very, very good news.

GWEN IFILL: Today, investigators continued to search the Dirksen Building, where the powder was discovered. All three Senate office buildings were shut down and authorities cancelled capitol tours, and suspended mail service. U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer:

CHIEF TERRANCE GAINER: We anticipate that over the next several days that we will send hundreds of individuals into those buildings to reclaim any mail that hadn't been opened. So mail that was bundled and sitting on desk, or envelopes that might be there, that we'll be taking those and getting those out of the various office buildings in the capitol.

GWEN IFILL: All Senate votes were delayed until Wednesday. The capitol building itself remained open, as lawmakers moved ahead with floor debate. Senator Tom Daschle, whose office was targeted in the 2001 deadly anthrax attacks, said investigators had learned a lot since then.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: I believe that it is an act of terrorism. The question is who is responsible, how widespread is this act, and to what extent will be the repercussions of another act such as this? It certainly is criminal, and I don't draw a distinction between the two frankly.

GWEN IFILL: Two years ago, the anthrax-laden letters shut down Congress briefly, and closed the Hart Senate Office Building for months. Five people were killed, and 17 fell ill, after they came in contact with the contaminated mail. No one was ever arrested in the incidents. Further tests are being conducted at theCenters for Disease Control.

GWEN IFILL: For more on ricin and what we can understand about it, I'm joined by Julie Fischer. She studies biological and chemical weapons for the Henry L. Stimson Center, a non profit research center dedicated to issues of national and international security. Welcome, Ms. Fischer.

JULIE FISCHER: Thank you.

GWEN IFILL: We just heard Dr. -- Senator Frist tell us a little bit about what ricin is. Give us an understanding. This is not anthrax. What is ricin?

JULIE FISCHER: Ricin, unlike anthrax, is not a live agent. Anthrax is the spore of a bacteria that is alive and replicates and it's not contagious but is infectious. Ricin instead is a toxin. That means it's a chemical that produced by a live being -- in this case a plant. It comes from the castor bean. So the amount of ricin that's there does not replicate anymore. The dose that was there yesterday is all the ricin that will be in the lungs or near the people who were exposed.

GWEN IFILL: The castor bean. Is that anything like castor oil that our parents used to force on us when we were small?

JULIE FISCHER: It's in fact the source of castor oil.

GWEN IFILL: Castor oil itself obviously isn't lethal. But what is it about the way this castor bean is processed to make it into ricin that makes it lethal, poisonous?

JULIE FISCHER: The ricin comes from the mashed up castor bean. In this case when castor beans are processed to make oil what's left over is a big mush of water and solids. The water, the aqueous part, contains ricin which is a very, very small molecule that has the ability to bind to cells in the body of an organism -- a human or an animal that is exposed. And it cripples them. It keeps them from making protein, and that causes those cells to die. So when enough cells die, it can cause damage and eventually enough damage could kill an infected person or an exposed person.

GWEN IFILL: We can't help when you talk about exposed persons but think back to what we went through during the anthrax scare. Now at that time, we were... we learned that anybody who was in the room, anybody who had been any place in breathing distance of this powder was in danger. That is not the same case apparently with ricin.

JULIE FISCHER: Well, the ricin actually has a much larger amount gram for gram that is required to be lethal than the anthrax spores. So not that there's a good thing about finding ricin in your office and it's clearly a threat that has to be taken seriously but it is a much less dangerous toxin.

GWEN IFILL: If you just touch it, it doesn't necessarily infect you.

JULIE FISCHER: No, and that's a very good contrast. Anthrax can infect the skin. In the case of ricin it actually doesn't pass through the skin very easily at all so it has to be pushed through the skin or breathed in or eaten by accident.

GWEN IFILL: As people start this investigation they're going to have to figure out who manufactured it and how it was manufactured. You described a process that doesn't sound like someone can do it so easily or is it easy?

JULIE FISCHER: It's actually relatively simple with some basic knowledge of chemistry. And the difficult thing about ricin is that it comes from a plant that's very common. In fact, castor bean oil is still made throughout the world and castor plants are used as ornamentals in the U.S., so unlike anthrax or other agents that should be in the hands of only a very few people, castor beans are fairly ubiquitous.

GWEN IFILL: For some reason you are infected with ricin, how do you know?

JULIE FISCHER: Well, that's what makes this case actually a little bit easier to deal with. The fact that staff apparently saw the powder and took steps and notified authorities and that ricin was identified means that now it's a matter of watching for symptoms and trying to prevent damage should those symptoms occur, which they have not so far. If we were not aware of the powder, we would have to wait for symptoms to occur, people to present to their physicians and then try and backtrack, to go backwards and say we have this set of symptoms, what can we rule out? Identifying the powder first actually means that action can be taken quickly and the symptoms can be watched for carefully.

GWEN IFILL: It's been more than 24 hours now since we first heard the first or since the authorities were first notified about the first reports of this ricin sighting. If no one has turned up sick yet, is that fairly good news?

JULIE FISCHER: It bodes very well, yes. We don't actually have a lot of human cases of ricin inhalation to go from, but we do know from animal models that seem to be pretty accurate that signs would be likely to show up in the first four to eight to twenty-four hours after exposure. And the fact that no one has developed symptoms yet seems to bode pretty well for the outcome.

GWEN IFILL: What are symptoms?

JULIE FISCHER: In the case of inhaled ricin, it would be problems breathing that would eventually progress probably if it were severe enough to a pneumonia which would make it very difficult to breathe and perhaps even be lethal.

GWEN IFILL: So you could have pneumonia and it could be brought on by the ricin not just garden variety pneumonia but there's no way to look at that and say these are the symptoms -- this is ricin poisoning?

JULIE FISCHER: Well. unfortunately there's no biological test for ricin, there's no blood test that you could take. And in the case of a covert attack, that's an attack that no one noticed, it would be a matter of ruling out other symptoms, other causes.

GWEN IFILL: We just heard Senator Frist say there is no antidote for it. Does that mean there is no cure?

JULIE FISCHER: That does mean there is no cure. The only treatment for ricin exposure, whether it's ingestion, that is eating or drinking, or inhalation is supportive care, helping the person who is exposed continue to breathe, keeping them hydrated with fluids, to try and get them past the worst part of the cell damage but there is no specific treatment.

GWEN IFILL: And how about the timing of the discovery, does that make a difference in this case?

JULIE FISCHER: Well, it does. In that because staff were sensitized-- and that was clearly a change from the attack with anthrax in 2001, which contained a letter that said this is anthrax. In this case staff were sensitized, noted the powder and took steps to notify authorities. That clearly makes a difference. The medical professionals and emergency responders are looking for the effects and looking to protect the people who might have been exposed, rather than having to do detective work later and go backwards and find from people with symptoms whether or not an exposure had happened.

GWEN IFILL: You said a moment ago that there have not been documented cases of inhaled ricin poisoning among humans. Is there or are there any examples at all that investigators can draw from where they have seen this and where they know the way it plays itself out.

JULIE FISCHER: There are cases of ingested ricin and castor bean poisoning. And there are some inferences made from that to the animal models. We've looked at the animal models for ricin inhalation and said well the animal model for ingesting ricin looks a lot like what we know about from the human cases of ingested ricin. Let's assume the animal models of inhaled ricin also look a lot like human inhaled ricin would.

GWEN IFILL: We've heard the elected officials say today they're pretty certain this was terrorism. Are there examples that have been discovered that have been definitively proven that ricin poisoning or ingestion or inhalation was caused by terrorist activity?

JULIE FISCHER: There are a few small cases of intentional poisonings with ricin. They usually fall into the class of bio crimes, that is, a husband poisoning a wife for a case that you'd recognize as a simple crime, simple assault. But there has been a fear that ricin would be used as a biological weapon. There have been rumors it was used in the Iran-Iraq War in the early '80s. There have been stories that it was found in Afghanistan. And really the threat of ricin is that it's fairly easy to make from a source that is fairly common in nature, and it's also heat stable which makes a difference. So although we don't have a lot of examples from history of its use, we know that the U.S. Looked at it in the early days between World War I and World War II, and that it's possible to make into a weapon pretty cheaply and easily which makes it a serious threat to be considered.

GWEN IFILL: Julie Fischer, thank you very much.

JULIE FISCHER: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the day of choice for Democrats in seven states, Shields and Brooks, Pakistan's nuclear secrets, and intelligence failures history.

UPDATE - CAMPAIGN 2004

JIM LEHRER: Kwame Holman has our candidate round up on this day of seven more states choosing a Democratic Presidential nominee.

KWAME HOLMAN: Even with the latest polls showing North Carolina Senator John Edwards leading the pack for today's South Carolina primary, he continued to campaign vigorously across the state. Rallying supporters in several towns, including Greenville, and Clinton, and at a polling place in Columbia, the state capital. Edwards is predicting voters here will choose him over Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, winner in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Still Edwards insists his campaign has the resources to continue even if he loses South Carolina.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS: I think actually our campaign is in as good a financial shape as any campaign. We may be in the best financial shape; if we're not, we're tied with one of the campaigns for being in the best financial shape. We're in very good shape financially.

KWAME HOLMAN: With 55 delegates at stake in South Carolina, it's a crucial battleground in the race for the Democratic nomination. But not the largest in terms of delegates being chosen today. That distinction belongs to Missouri, with 88 delegates. Arizona will pick 64; Oklahoma, 47; New Mexico, 37; Delaware, 23; and North Dakota, 22. Pre-election polls show Kerry leading in five of those states, and in a dead heat with retired General Wesley Clark and John Edwards in the sixth, Oklahoma. Clark has campaigned almost exclusively in Oklahoma, and was there today, telling veterans that those who have served their country will be taken care of during his presidency.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: We will take care of the men and women who are committed to serving this country in uniform, their families, and our veterans, that is my solemn pledge to you. Thank you.

KWAME HOLMAN: John Kerry spent this biggest primary day thus far in Washington State,anticipating its primary on Saturday. He addressed supporters in Spokane.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: And if you will join me in this fight, I pledge to you that every day as president I will stand up for common sense and mainstream American values. And together, on November 2nd, we can send George Bush back to Texas -

KWAME HOLMAN: Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean also was in Spokane, where he took questions from an audience of supporters. One brought up the much- publicized, animated speech he gave after the Iowa caucus, and pointed to the media for blowing it out of proportion.

WOMAN: I was in Iowa. I was at that speech that he gave after the caucuses that night. I'm here to tell you there was nothing unpresidential about this man. It was nothing other than a massive amount of energy and love and appreciation - (cheers) --

HOWARD DEAN: All I can say is yahoo.

KWAME HOLMAN: Dean has said he does not expect to win any of today's contests, having campaigned very little in the seven states. But pledged his campaign will move on. Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman is looking for his first victory in Delaware, where he campaigned this morning.

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN: Seven states are voting, but I've got a dream that the people of the first state are going to make Joe Lieberman first, and it's going to kick this campaign into high gear on the road to the White House. But it's up to the voters now.

KWAME HOLMAN: Lieberman says he's not considering dropping out of the race, even if he fails to win any of today's contests. Congressman Dennis Kucinich spent the past few days campaigning in New Mexico. And the Reverend Al Sharpton continued to concentrate on South Carolina, which has the largest black voting bloc of today's primary states.

JIM LEHRER: There has been an ongoing campaign in the seven states, also, through political advertising. Media correspondent Terence Smith chronicles that. ( Cheers and applause )

TERENCE SMITH: The focus of the Democratic nominating race has shifted from one-on-one retail politicking-- a staple in Iowa and New Hampshire-- to the wholesale politics of a national campaign, with its greater emphasis on television and advertising. So far, the striking characteristic of the candidate ads showing in states from South Carolina to Missouri, to Arizona and Michigan, is their tone: Positive, rather than negative, as they often have been in past presidential sweepstakes. That may be partly the result of the televised attacks in Iowa-- call it "mutually advertised destruction"-- between former Vermont Governor Howard Dean...

HOWARD DEAN: I opposed the war in Iraq and I'm against spending another $87 billion there.

TERENCE SMITH:...And Missouri congressman Richard Gephardt.

RICHARD GEPHARDT: Did you know Howard Dean called Medicare one of the worst federal programs ever?

TERENCE SMITH: Exit polls showed that many Iowa voters were turned off by the highly negative tenor. Dean placed a weak third and Gephardt, a distant and ultimately disqualifying fourth. Instead of spending time and money attacking each other, the Democrats have so far been content to criticize President Bush and talk mostly about themselves.

SPOKESMAN: The bullets began to hit the side of the boat-- the boom, the pow, pow, pow.

TERENCE SMITH: The front-runner, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, is emphasizing his service in Vietnam, featuring testimonials from comrades-in-arms in two different versions of the same spot. In South Carolina and Missouri, with large African American populations, the Reverend David Alston attests to Kerry's heroics.

SPOKESMAN: He wants better for America.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: I'm John Kerry and I approve this message.

SPOKESMAN: This man would make a great president.

TERENCE SMITH: But in Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma, a white veteran, Del Sandusky, carries that same message.

DEL SANDUSKY: He had unfailing instinct and unchallengeable leadership.

TERENCE SMITH: Retired General Wesley Clark, the former supreme allied commander, is also selling his years of service. The political newcomer has also been talking about domestic issues, as in this ad that has been airing in Arizona, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and South Carolina.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Everyone talks about families, but what's Washington done? My tax reform plan will make millionaires pay their fair share and it will put $1,500 back into the pockets of a typical American family. That's real. I'm Wes Clark, and I approve this message because it's time we had a president who worried less about his future and more about yours.

SPOKESMAN: I was born 50 years ago and this was my first home.

TERENCE SMITH: North Carolina senator John Edwards uses his boyhood home in South Carolina as a backdrop.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS: I'm John Edwards, and I approve this message because I believe that when you remember where you came from you'll always know where you're going and what you need to fight for-- real change that will give today's families a chance to give their kids a better life. As president that's what I'll fight for every day-- an America that works for all of us.

TERENCE SMITH: The former front- runner Howard Dean, whose once- flush campaign is struggling amid financial problems, has pulled his advertising off the air for now. The Reverend Al Sharpton is not advertising on television at this point in the campaign. Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who trails the leaders by a wide margin, has been airing this ad in Oklahoma, New Mexico and Maine.

SPOKESPERSON: With your vote, Kucinich will lead the world to peace.

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: I'm Dennis Kucinich and running for president. Do I approve this commercial? You bet.

SPOKESMAN: Only one candidate was clear. We are safer with Saddam Hussein in prison, not in power.

TERENCE SMITH: That's Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman taking indirect aim at Howard Dean, who said Saddam Hussein's capture had not made America safer.

SPOKESMAN: Only one candidate has refused to cut off funding for our troops-- Joe Lieberman. He's a national leader in the fight against terrorism.

TERENCE SMITH: And that line may remind voters that Kerry and Edwards both voted against the president's $87 billion Iraq supplemental package.

JIM LEHRER: And to Shields and Brooks: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields, and "New York Times" columnist David Brooks.

Mark, in general what do you think of the quality of these commercials we just saw?

MARK SHIELDS: They're fine, Jim. I guess what bothers me is that we have a race now with one clear frontrunner. And everybody else, this is probably his best chance to take a shot at him. They passed it up in the debate and the television spots, I think they're all of scorched and seared by the Iowa experience that terry smith has talked about where Gephardt and dean both paid dearly at the polls apparently for their negative commercials against each other in Iowa. So they've just kind of gone, each one... there's no consistent narrative that's emerging that says I'm better than John Kerry for this reason. The only person that's making a consistent case against him is Howard Dean who is not in the races today and is essentially charging that John Kerry is a....

JIM LEHRER: It's not in commercials.

MARK SHIELDS: It's not in commercials. It's in his speeches and his statements.

JIM LEHRER: Too positive, David?

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah. I think so. In part for the reason Mark mentioned - they're seared by Iowa. I think in part of campaign finance reform. At the end of the ads they have to come on, the candidates to come on and say I approve of this message.

JIM LEHRER: I'm glad you mentioned that because everybody wonders why they do that. They have to.

DAVID BROOKS: They have to. They're not volunteering for this.

JIM LEHRER: The reason is they used to be able to run these commercials and then kind of say, well, I didn't know about that.

DAVID BROOKS: I disapproved about that.

JIM LEHRER: Did my people do that behind my back, take my money and put it on television. I'm glad you brought that up. But go ahead.

DAVID BROOKS: Ad so it reduces it to pabulum, that they don't want to be associated with anything slightly nasty. The other thing about the ads is how I think relatively unimportant they've been to the race. Howard Dean spent $31 million in Iowa and New Hampshire -- most of it on TV ads -- and did terribly. Wes Clark has spent I think four times more than anybody else in the past week. Maybe he'll do great tonight but I'd say that the ads have just not been an important part of the campaign.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree that, they haven't really mattered that much?

MARK SHIELDS: Not nearly as much in the first two states which were retail. But it's interesting, Jim, that Terry is right. The race is now a wholesale in the sense of television advertising but we have retail theories being developed. Joe Lieberman is running a retail campaign in Delaware. He's camped out in Delaware. John Edwards is running a retail campaign in South Carolina and so is Al Sharpton and Wes Clark has -- basically hasn't left Oklahoma. I mean John Kerry is the only person that's campaigning in all these states, and so it's kind of an interesting test I think. I guess the thing that I found interesting about Kerry's is that Kerry is using in his television advertising -- it's an introduction and inoculation at the same time. They're emphasizing his character and his leadership rather than his record. It's probably in all likelihood his record would be less popular, his voting record in the Senate in South Carolina than would be his leadership.

JIM LEHRER: And his resume.

DAVID BROOKS: I spent a week... a night in a hotel room watching TV.

JIM LEHRER: It seemed like a week.

DAVID BROOKS: It seemed like a week. That's the kind of aggressive reporter I am. I'm willing to watch TV, watching the ads. They were boring, they were conventional ads. There was no hint of humor in any of them. They were very clich d political ads that you've seen in a million Senate races. There was no interesting direction. It was not the Super Bowl ads, a little less vulgar, a little less creative. I just don't think there was much going on there.

JIM LEHRER: David, give us your scenario for what you think might happen tonight. I don't mean a prediction but a probable scenario.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, the one possibility is John Kerry sweeps the field and I think we can all go home. We have got seven months of Kerry V. Bush. Another possibility I think is that Edwards would be the most likely to survive. I think we would have said that six months ago that Kerry and Edwards were the strongest two. If Edwards goes on and wins South Carolina, that's okay, and Oklahoma, then I think Kerry and Edwards will battle it out with John Dean waiting....

JIM LEHRER: Howard Dean.

DAVID BROOKS: Howard Dean. I thought they were named John. Waiting for Wisconsin which is a couple weeks away.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think?

MARK SHIELDS: It's interesting. It's John Kerry, this clearly established front runner, with no clear rival. I mean, he has a lot of little competitors.

JIM LEHRER: Because you said in each one of these states running against him --

MARK SHIELDS: Running against him, and so I think tonight there's almost a subset here. It's Clark versus Edwards -- to see who does emerge. I mean if Edwards wins a couple or Edwards South Carolina - Clark doesn't win any or Clark wins and Edwards doesn't - then they've got some bona fides -- I mean John Kerry hasn't lost a primary yet. Who is going to beat him tonight in a primary? John Edwards beat him in South Carolina. I think that's important. I think John Edwards is running nativity trumping inevitability. I was born here. I was born in South Carolina. His message is it's from your roots that I come. It's on your side that I stand. I mean it's sort of a very, you know, strong populist message and the question is, would that be effective if all the candidates would become populist.

DAN BRIODY: He's young. He's not that young. He's not swaddling in a little crib there.

JIM LEHRER: You don't smell any element of surprise anywhere tonight.

DAVID BROOKS: I don't smell it. And even if Edwards or Clark does very well tonight, I don't see how you beat Kerry from here because it's not as if there are a lot of people in anti-Kerry in the party right now. Some people may not be thrilled with him but there's nobody hostile to him. There's no part of the party he's alienated.

JIM LEHRER: Is there even an anti-Kerry or stop Kerry movement?

DAVID BROOKS: In the media there's a little. There's a strong lobby in the media. There are some anti-Kerry people but I really think he's got the whole breadth of the party.

MARK SHIELDS: Well, one major criticism I've heard of Kerry this week and I think it makes some sense. Here he is out front and he hasn't really developed a case for his campaign against George W. Bush. He hasn't used this week well in that sense. I mean he's really been running out the clock to use a sports expression.

JIM LEHRER: Knowing he's ahead. He's taking the snap and going to the ground.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right. On one knee. The four corners offensive basketball.

JIM LEHRER: We know our stuff here.

MARK SHIELDS: Very bad sports metaphor.

JIM LEHRER: Three polls this week showed him defeating George Bush in November.

MARK SHIELDS: That strengthens... I mean if you're an undecided Democratic voter in Oklahoma today and you're trying to decide between Kerry and Clark or Edwards and you say I really want to beat George W. Bush, 53 percent -46 percent in the CNN/Gallup certainly gives Kerry a little push, a lift.

JIM LEHRER: But a poll at this stage of the game means nothing.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, there are two ways to vote, either vote strategically who can win or on principle who do I agree with? And in most places people are voting strategically -- which may not be intelligent but that's the way they're voting.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Thank you both very much.

FOCUS - NUCLEAR BAZAAR

JIM LEHRER: Now, the growing scandal over Pakistan's help for other countries trying to build nuclear arsenals. We have a report from Pakistan by Ian Williams of Independent Television News.

IAN WILLIAMS: Well throughout this city, there are monuments to the work of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, hero of the nation, father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb. Reports, quoting official courses, say he's confessed to passing on nuclear know-how to Libya, Iran, and North Korea. The official inquiry into proliferation is now almost complete. At his last public appearance, the pressure was beginning to show.

REPORTER: Have you been debriefed?

SPOKESMAN: No comment. No comment.

IAN WILLIAMS: It was at a conference of Islamic scientists in Islamabad in late December, and Dr. Khan was still being treated as a celebrity. Today, he's effectively under house arrest. (Explosion) It was after Pakistan successfully tested a nuclear device in May 1998, that Dr. Khan, the head of the program, "Father of Pakistan's Bomb," became a national hero. The evidence that he passed on nuclear know-how was handed to the Pakistan government by the International Atomic Energy Agency, who had obtained it from Iran and Libya. In addition, Washington has alleged that Pakistan swapped nuclear know-how for North Korean missile technology. Yet as the crisis has unfolded, the Pakistan government is insisting the scientists were acting alone, out of greed, without the knowledge of the military, even though the men in uniform were in charge of the nuclear program.

SPOKESMAN: They were not answerable to the army chief at any stage, not then and not now.

IAN WILLIAMS: General Aslam Beg was army chief during the time when most of the alleged proliferation was taking place. He insists that because of the clandestine nature of their work, the nuclear scientists had to be given a great deal of autonomy.

GENERAL ASLAM BEG: A lot of freedom had to be given. Funds had to be placed at their disposal because you can't ask them where they went, how they got it, and you don't ask for a check or a receipt from them. So that's what happened, right from the day it started in 1976. They were just helping friends, operating in the same environment of the underworld, looking for technology and know-how.

IAN WILLIAMS: In other words, greedy Pakistani scientists became sellers in the same black market in which they'd bought their technology. But for many, the claim that the army was kept in the dark simply doesn't wash, especially among the families and lawyers of six scientists and staff who've been detained from Dr. Khan's research center. Mr. Ikram says the military was in tight control.

MOHAMMAD IKRAM: It was not only the physical security of the research or other research labs relatable to the nuclear program, but even regarding the internal affairs as to what was being done, how it was being done, how it was being managed, what was being produced, and to what extent certain areas were being really brought up for the purpose accomplishment of the nuclear project.

IAN WILLIAMS: He says that by scapegoating scientists, the government will open a Pandora's Box. And the public may find it hard to swallow, too. Parts of the city are named after Dr. Khan. Downtown Islamabad even boasts a fiberglass model of the mountain where the nuclear test took place. Now the authorities are leaking details of the lavish lifestyles, the secret bank accounts and front companies in Dubai through which the men-- once built up as national icons-- allegedly conducted their illegal nuclear trade. There have already been protests, mostly from the religious parties. The evidence of proliferation handed to Pakistan's government seems to have been too damning to ignore, as has pressure from America, more concerned than ever about nuclear know-how getting into the wrong hands. Under intense American pressure, President Musharraf says he'll come clean on proliferation and he'll address the nation, giving the results of the inquiry after the Eid holidays later this week, which is when the religious parties say they'll step up their protests-- protests against the humiliation, as they see it, of a national hero.

FOCUS - LESSONS FROM THE PAST

JIM LEHRER: Now, as the current U.S. Government wrestles with intelligence failures about Iraq, a look back at previous lapses, and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: From Pearl Harbor to the Bay of Pigs to 9/11 and now Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction. The last 60 years have seen a number of big-time U.S. intelligence failures. Is there a common thread? And how successful have investigating commissions been in figuring that out? To explore all this, we're joined by presidential historian Michael Beschloss. He's written widely on the Cold War, including a book on the downing of the American U-2 spy plane in 1960. Ted Gup, a long-time investigative journalist and author of "The Book of Honor: The Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives." And Roy Godson, a Georgetown University professor who runs a think tank called the Consortium for the study of intelligence. He's also been a consultant to the U.S. and other governments on intelligence matters.

Welcome to you all. In that roster of intelligence failures, usually, Ted Gup, the problem has been the U.S. underestimating a threat. Is the Iraq case the first time we've overestimated a threat to the degree that it's been used as a rationale for war?

TED GUP: It certainly is unusual and a case apart. I think that it's interesting to refer to the recent history of some slip-ups in intelligence because they may shed light on how we got there. I'm thinking of the attack on a pharmaceutical plant in al Shafah in Sudan as well as the underestimating the missing of the Pakistan bomb, the underestimating of Korea's development, North Korea's development of the bomb. I think that the agency was hypersensitive to underestimating, to coming up with false negatives, and I think that that might have... they were smarting from criticism from missing those and I think that might have predisposed them to being willing to take the risk with a false positive, which Iraq would represent as the mother of all false positives, potentially, when it comes to WMD's.

MARGARET WARNER: Would you say, Professor Godson, that this is a stand-out case?

ROY GODSON: It's unusual because of the implications for war. I mean, I don't think this was the only premise for the war, the missing WMD. But I think I'd say another time that strikes me that one would say intelligence was a contributing factor would have been in the War in Vietnam and the whole notion that the Communist Party of Indochina was not only strong, but it was an imperialist in the peninsula and would have set in train other events into China. So I would say that was a contributing factor. So I think there are other examples, but on the whole, I do think it's an unusual case.

MARGARET WARNER: Michael?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Even more basically in Vietnam, look at the way we got into it deeply '64 and '65, the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Lyndon Johnson went on TV one night in August of 1964 saying an American ship has been attacked by North Vietnamese; we're striking back. We now know what had happened was, earlier that day, Johnson had gotten ambiguous intelligence. Maybe there was an attack. He had said go on and find out what you can find out. Late in the day, he got a call. There's a press leak, there's been an attack and you're not doing anything about it. You're running against Barry Goldwater this fall. You know, his advisors said don't make yourself politically vulnerable; you'd better do something. So Johnson gave a speech saying there was an attack, retaliated. That led to the big escalation. The problem there was... was that that was the basic for our escalation. He went to Congress, got a Gulf of Tonkin resolution-- which Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon used as the entire basis of fighting that war for the next nine years.

MARGARET WARNER: So Ted Gup, that would be a case of...

TED GUP: Margaret...

MARGARET WARNER: Yes, go ahead.

TED GUP: If I might just jump in here. There's another analogy or comparison with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution from 1964 and the current situation. And that is the near unanimity in which both situations were dealt with by Congress. In the Gulf of Tonkin, I believe there were just a couple of lone dissenting votes. In the authorization of the use of force against terrorism, post 9/11, there was one lone vote cast against, and in the going to war with Iraq there was a very, very strong consensus. Sometimes the conventional wisdom based on faulty intelligence can be wrong.

MARGARET WARNER: But in this case that Michael just gave us, Professor, he's saying that intelligence wasn't faulty. The intelligence was accurate, which was that it was ambiguous and it was manipulated by the political leadership.

ROY GODSON: In the case of Iraq there was a clear-cut consensus on the....

MARGARET WARNER: Sorry, I was talking about Gulf of Tonkin.

ROY GODSON: On the Gulf of Tonkin. Right, fair enough. On the Gulf of Tonkin. But, as we're making the analogy here to this particular case, it should be sort of clear that this time there was ten or more years of intelligence pointing in the same direction -- that there was the production of these weapons, that there had been these weapons, they hadn't been destroyed. They were there. They had the delivery system, et cetera. That kind of consensus didn't really exist in the past, I would agree.

MARGARET WARNER: Ted Gup, the question I was going to ask you is if you broaden it out now and you look at both overestimations and underestimations, where has the fault tended to lie? Has it been in the intelligence gathering, or has it been in the analysis of that raw data, or has it been in the political... the use to which the political masters or consumers of the intelligence put it?

TED GUP: I think that there is a real danger of looking for a single cause, a single problem, a single culpable person or agency. I think that it's the integration of all the elements that you asked about. I mean, intelligence really would fall into four stages: There's the collection of intelligence, the gathering of it is one; the second is the analysis; the third is the application by those in power; and the fourth, which you left out, is oversight. And I think that massive intelligence failures, oftentimes, involve failures of all four stages.

MARGARET WARNER: You want to give us an example?

TED GUP: Well, I mean, if we look at the current situation, we don't have the facts yet and that's the problem. But if you look, for example, at the Bay of Pigs in '61, there were... there was bad intelligence in terms of the estimates of what sort of support troops landing at the Bay of Pigs could expect in helping them topple Castro. That was at the intelligence- gathering level. There were errors in analysis that were provided then. The political application there were problems because Kennedy withdrew air support at the last moment which left them largely defenseless. The oversight tended to aim at the CIA's failings and not at the Oval Office because of political considerations. So there you have, you know, a package of failings that crosses the entire arc of intelligence.

MARGARET WARNER: Give us another example, Michael, that you think illustrates where the failures have tended to lie in these different levels.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, you know, the greatest sin, I think, is when you have a president misrepresenting intelligence, as Johnson did with the Gulf of Tonkin, or go all the way back to 1898-- the American ship "The Maine" was sunk in Havana Harbor. President McKinley and others said this was sunk by the Spanish; we have to go to war. Only later on did we find out it was actually sunk by a boiler accident that didn't have too much to do with the Spanish. A war waged under false pretenses, that's where the greatest sin... but the other thing, I think, you have to say is these other layers... it's not easy, when you're trying to estimate, for instance, in 1962, what Nikita Khrushchev is going to do. Will he put missiles secretly into Cuba or not? You're trying to get into a human being's mind. It's not like putting it into a Univac computer. And at the same time, oftentimes, it is technology. In the early 1950's, many people were saying-- Nikita Khrushchev and others in the Soviet Union-- "we soviets are cranking out bombers like sausages," he said, a lot of bombers. They used to fly these things around Red Square on military days and we were really very afraid of that. We later on found out that it was oftentimes the same bombers going around and around. The point is, only later on do we get technology like u-2 planes and satellites that allowed us to get beyond that. So, the point I'm making is that, you know, you think of an intelligence failure and it is always, you know, a great leap to say someone has behaved wrongly here, but I think you have to, at the same time, say that it's not an easy business.

MARGARET WARNER: What would you say are the common themes or blind spots, weaknesses?

ROY GODSON: Well, it would be nice if there was one cause. But I share the view that it's multi-causal. We can, sort of, look at... sometimes, there's the problem of collection failures. I think, by the way, what appears to be so about Iraq, and we should really, sort of, make a caution here, which is, on the basis of the information that we have now, it appears that there was a serious miscalculation or failure and on so on. One of the causes is the lack of collection -- that we didn't have enough people close in to be able to tell us whether the pictures and other images that we have and other sources of information were accurate. So there is a failure of collection. There has been a failure of collection sometimes. Sometimes the collection has been pretty good.

MARGARET WARNER: And are other... and let me just... are other countries better at that collection, in terms of penetrating closed societies, penetrating other governments?

ROY GODSON: Some have been, particularly where their survival is at stake, I would say that they have been able to penetrate. But the Israelis, for example, penetrated the system that led to the Egyptians attacking them in '73. They had actually the plan of the attack. They just... their analysis was faulty. In this case, too, I think this is not only a problem of collection, but it's also a problem, apparently, of our analysis, the mindset of the analysts-- not in any one agency, in a number of agencies. But this was true in many other countries, as well. So it's a very interesting question whether anybody could have really understood this problem, based on the information that was available. Is it possible to have shaken the mindset sufficiently, and that really is the question that we want to see come out of the congressional investigation.

MARGARET WARNER: And just briefly, have there been other cases in which U.S. intelligence actually came up with the data and it was even analyzed correctly, but the political leadership didn't act, just thought it couldn't happen?

ROY GODSON: I would say there have been times where the intelligence has gone in one direction and the political leadership goes in another. Usually it's the analysis will be ambiguous, like the example that was given earlier. But, in general, where the there's a consensus amongst the intelligence community and there's a consensus of long duration, even though they sometimes warn they don't have all the information, then, in fact, the political leadership tends to go along.

MARGARET WARNER: Ted Gup, how successful... as we know the president says he's going to appoint this commission. Just briefly, one: How often has there been a sort of penetrating analysis of the failure; and two: How successful has that investigation been in either identifying the failure or making changes?

TED GUP: Well, there have been several major investigative commissions or committees. The mid '70s on the Hill, that was probably the best known -- the Church Committee and such. They can be very successful, in terms of educating the public. They can be reactive or over reactive. These things tend to go in cycles, the history of the agency. And one point that I would make is that the oversight is usually only as good as the public's desire to keep abreast of what's happening in the intelligence community. If the public divests itself from an interest in the intelligence community, then the lawmakers are not as robust in oversight and the intelligence community tends to interpret that as greater license. And that can create commissions and committees that investigate that produce very reactive legislation and constraints on the intelligence community.

MARGARET WARNER: Michael, your view on that.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: There are always going to be political because this is just about, in this case, about the hottest issue that we can imagine this year, although the report of this commission presumably will be after Election Day. At the same time, you don't have access to enough information in hindsight as historians do later on. For instance, the Warren Commission investigating John Kennedy's assassination was deprived of a piece of information that the CIA was trying to kill Fidel Castro, something they had to have known. So when you're trying to have an investigation with this little time between the event and the time of the report, it's never going to be as thorough as you really need but you need these things so that we can make decisions as citizens and voters.

MARGARET WARNER: Michael Beschloss, Roy Godson and Ted Gup, thank you all.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: The U.S. Senate cancelled much of its business after a white power was found in the majority leader's mail room. It tested positive as the poison ricin. Late today a federal law enforcement source told the NewsHour officials intercepted another letter containing ricin last November it was addressed to the White House. And this was another important day for the democratic presidential candidates. Seven states held primaries or caucuses. And again to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq. Here, in silence, are five more.

JIM LEHRER: We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening, with full coverage and analysis of today's democratic voting. I'm Jim Lehrer . Thank you and good night.