The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I`m Jim Lehrer.

On the NewsHour tonight, the news of this Monday. Then the latest on the politics and the violence in Iraq, as reported by John Burns of the ?New York Times;? the first in a three-part Paul Solman series on the economics of global warming; an update of the terrorism story from Canada; a media unit look at the settlement reached in the Wen Ho Lee lawsuit against the U.S. government; and some perspective on the election-year politics of the same-sex marriage issue.

(BREAK)

JIM LEHRER: Gunmen kidnapped at least 50 people today at bus stations in Baghdad. They wore Iraqi police uniforms and used police cars, and they drove the victims away without explanation. Later, the interior ministry denied the kidnappers were police.

On Sunday, masked gunmen killed 21 Shiite students north of Baghdad.

We?ll have more on Iraq right after this news summary.

More arrests may be coming in a possible plot to blow up buildings in Ontario, Canada. Canadian police said today they?re checking ties to suspects in the United States and several other nations.

On Saturday, police arrested 17 suspected Islamic militants just outside Toronto. Five were younger than 18; most were Canadian citizens. Investigators said the foiled plot was inspired by al Qaeda.

We?ll have more on this story later in the program.

In Somalia today, fighters for an Islamic militia claimed they seized the capital, Mogadishu, after battling secular warlords for weeks. The city appeared relatively calm.

The warlords have said the Islamic groups are linked to al Qaeda.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack offered this assessment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN MCCORMACK, U.S. State Department Spokesman: We?re very interested in seeing that the Somali people start to build up institutions that are responsive to the Somali people, that at some point have the hope of being democratic institutions that respect the rights of all individuals there.

At the same time, we don?t want to see Somalia turn into a safe haven for foreign terrorists. We do have very real concerns about that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIM LEHRER: It?s been widely reported the U.S. backed the Somali warlords to keep al Qaeda from gaining control.

The U.S. Supreme Court accepted cases today that could lead to a major ruling on affirmative action. They agreed to hear cases from Seattle, Washington, and the Louisville, Kentucky, area. Both deal with the issue of public schools using race in assigning students to schools.

The court has already allowed colleges and universities to consider race in their admissions. Arguments in these new cases are expected in November.

The U.S. Senate today began debating a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. It defines marriage as solely between a man and a woman. But it lacks the needed two-thirds majority in the Senate or the House.

President Bush endorsed the proposal again today. His press secretary, Tony Snow, insisted it?s not just about election year politics.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY SNOW, White House Press Secretary: Of course there?s a political dimension to it. There?s going to be a Senate vote on it, for heaven?s sakes. There?s naturally -- there are political dimensions on both sides.

This is an issue -- and we talked about this this morning -- that I think is of keen interest to a lot of people. But the president feels strongly that marriage as an institution has a fixed meaning that ought to be honored in American law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIM LEHRER: Nearly all Senate Democrats and some moderate Republicans oppose the amendment. We?ll have more on the story later in the program tonight.

A major sell-off in Wall Street today over comments from the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Ben Bernanke today called recent increases in inflation unwelcome. He said the Fed will be vigilant in keeping inflation in check, even as the economy begins to slow down.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 199 points to close at 11,048. The NASDAQ fell 49 points -- more than two percent -- to close at 2,169.

And that?s it for the news summary tonight.

Now John Burns in Baghdad, Paul Solman on the business of global warming, terrorist arrests in Canada, the Wen Ho Lee case and same-sex marriage as politics.

(BREAK)

JIM LEHRER: Our Iraq update, it comes from John Burns, the Baghdad bureau chief of ?The New York Times.? Ray Suarez spoke with him earlier this evening.

RAY SUAREZ, NewsHour Correspondent: John Burns, welcome.

Why hasn?t Prime Minister Maliki been able to seat the final and very important posts in his cabinet?

JOHN BURNS, Baghdad Bureau Chief, ?The New York Times?: Well, it?s really, I think, a problem that?s embedded in the nature of the government itself.

Under American prodding, they?ve constructed a national unity government, which, as you know, involves all the principal political factions -- the Sunni Arabs, the Shiites and the Kurds -- in order to try and construct a government that will draw on broad national support and draw down the insurgency.

The countervailing fact is, of course, that that gives overlapping veto to each side. And after I don?t know how many rounds now of negotiations, but running back many weeks, what happened is that every time that the horse has come to the fence, it hasn?t jumped.

The most recent occasion being on Sunday when the parliament was called into session to approve nominees by the prime minister. But the prime minister had to withdraw his nominees at the last moment, because the Sunni Arabs had a nominee for minister of defense, who the Shiites vetoed, because of what they alleged was a Baathist past.

And then bizarrely, the Shiite nominee for minister of the interior -- and he, like the Sunni nominee for minister of defense is a former Saddam general -- could not win universal approval from within the ruling Shiite bloc, and was vetoed, in effect, within his own political bloc.

So, it looks like they?re back to the beginning again. And every day that passes it becomes a more serious problem, because this is the heart of the matter. Can they get control -- or begin to get control -- over the deteriorating security situation?

RAY SUAREZ: Well, defense and the interior means the army and the national police force.

Are those things still managing to run effectively, even without leadership at the top?

JOHN BURNS: Well, they are, of course, at a certain level. And the bottom line here is that you have 130,000 -- or nearly, now, 140,000 -- American troops under capable American commanders who have, of course, a still decisive say in all matters of security here.

But the Americans had wanted a strong initiative by the new government of its own, particularly in relationship to security in Baghdad, which has deteriorated very significantly this year. And for that they need an Iraqi -- authentic Iraqi -- political leadership.

And Prime Minister Maliki, who has been talking about the iron fist, is not going to be able to apply that iron fist unless he has ministers. It?s not just having ministers; it?s having the kind of command that being able to appoint those ministers will represent. And it?s clear that at the moment, he doesn?t have that kind of authority.

RAY SUAREZ: Speaking of security in Baghdad, what?s the latest on the mass kidnappings right off the streets of the city?

JOHN BURNS: Well, today was a bad day. The agencies reported 50 people picked up from what, in effect, is a kind of bus terminal on the city?s western side. It turned out from ?The New York Times? reporting to be more like 24 -- still serious.

And particularly troubling about this is that, this is one of a number of incidents in recent days which seem to us to have no reason.

Sectarian killing, regretful as it may be, or regrettable as it may be, has its purposes in the minds of the killers. But much of the killing now seems to be beyond purpose.

Example: the people who were taken off the street in Baghdad today, disappeared, were from all sections of the community. Yesterday, two minibuses and a car, about 50 miles north of Baghdad on their way to Baqubah. Aboard seven students on their way to their final exams, at least one woman student, are hauled off the minibus and executed -- 20 of them.

Who were they? They were Shiites, they were Sunnis, they were Kurds. And they were Turkmen.

The pattern now seems to be increasingly one of random and completely incomprehensible violence, to which there does not appear to be an available solution.

RAY SUAREZ: Heading south from the troubled area around Baghdad, one place Americans haven?t been hearing about a lot is Basra -- British administered, and for a long time relatively peaceful. Is that changing?

JOHN BURNS: It is. It is. And that?s a very troubling thing, too.

The British, with some 7,200 troops now, are, as you know, the second largest component, if much smaller than the American component in the coalition forces, which are gradually disintegrated in the sense that many of the other players are withdrawing. The Italians are going. Many of the other contingents are vestigial.

The British are important. They have run, in effect, southern Iraq -- the four deep south provinces, including Basra -- since April ?03, at the time of the invasion.

And they have had, as they themselves would have been quick to admit, the quietest patch that the coalition forces have had until relatively recently.

Now they are a beleaguered force. They lost a helicopter to what appears to have been an Iranian-supplied missile three weekends ago. They don?t fly their helicopters during the day anymore. That?s an almost paralyzing thing to have happen, since this is a helicopter war.

It?s Shiite-on-Shiite violence down there, and it?s getting worse.

And American commanders who had had the feeling that this strategic area to the south -- strategic in part, of course, because the largest amount of Iraq?s oil is in the south and about -- very close to 100 percent of its oil exports, present oil exports, come from the south.

That is now prejudiced by these events, and the British force is really not large enough to contain it.

RAY SUAREZ: The investigation into the killing of civilians in Haditha continues.

How much of a splash is that making in the domestic media in Iraq?

JOHN BURNS: Well, puzzling as this might seem to Americans who have seen this marching across their evening newscasts and the front pages of the principal newspapers now for two or three weeks, it really hasn?t made that kind of impact here.

Why? Because killing is all about.

There was a cartoon in one of the Iraqi newspapers over the weekend of a father leaving for home, and the family sobbing as he says, ?I?m off to work.? ?Farewell, farewell,? say the family.

Iraqis are absolutely surrounded by and battered by violence. That 24 people -- as we believe, 24 civilians -- died in Haditha in very troubling circumstances at the hands of the United States Marine Corps, which, as we know, may lead in time to court martial -- is oddly, as it may seem to Americans, just another in a series of events that have overwhelmed them.

And it doesn?t seem particularly surprising to many Iraqis who have been battered by relentless violence now, not just since the invasion of 2003, but going back through the 24 years of Saddam. They think that?s what people with guns do.

RAY SUAREZ: John Burns joining us from Baghdad. John, good to talk to you.

JOHN BURNS: It?s a pleasure.

(BREAK)

JIM LEHRER: Coming up, terror in Canada, the Wen Ho Lee case and marriage politics.

But first, our economics correspondent, Paul Solman, begins a three- part series on the business response to global warming.

ANDREW CASTALDI, Swiss Re: Caribbean waters were warmer than normal, and the warmth went deeper than normal.

PAUL SOLMAN, NewsHour Economics Correspondent: And that`s what that red shows.

ANDREW CASTALDI: That`s right.

PAUL SOLMAN: Andy Castaldi heads up the Catastrophe and Perils Division at Swiss Re, one of the world`s top insurance firms. This time- lapse footage of last August in the Gulf is for his clients.

ANDREW CASTALDI: And hurricanes are so sensitive, even the half-a- degree difference above average is going to cause greater potential for more intense hurricanes.

PAUL SOLMAN: There`s Katrina forming, right off of Florida.

ANDREW CASTALDI: It?s a Category 2. Then all of a sudden, it hits the warmer waters of the Gulf, and it grew to a Category 5.

PAUL SOLMAN: The storm cost insurance companies a fortune. Property losses twice those of September 11th.

Warmer waters, global warming -- seems connected, but maybe it isn`t. If it is, however, insurance firms could face a flood of future claims.

And glaciers are melting, sea levels rising.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AL GORE, Former Presidential Candidate: This is what would happen in Florida.

Around Shanghai, home to 40 million people...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL SOLMAN: If Al Gore`s new film is right, the waters could, as in Noah`s day, prevail exceedingly upon the Earth, inundate cities, bankrupt the insurance industry.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AL GORE: Think of the impact of a couple hundred thousand refugees -- and then imagine a hundred million.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL SOLMAN: Small wonder, then, that insurance companies are taking action.

Moreover, it`s not just to protect themselves, because global warming is also becoming a business opportunity.

ANDREW CASTALDI: After every mega event, there will be some type of economic loss that has to be recovered somewhere.

PAUL SOLMAN: In other words, the threat of global warming is a way to sell more insurance.

ANDREW CASTALDI: Insurance is the best way for people to sustain themselves and rebuild their lives thereafter.

PAUL SOLMAN: So I watch your presentation, and I say, "Hmm, I`d better buy more insurance than I`d thought, because the likelihood that something bad is going to happen is higher than I might have realized."

ANDREW CASTALDI: That`s one way of looking at it.

PAUL SOLMAN: Another way of looking at it, that insurance is actually a metaphor for the global warming problem as a whole.

VINOD KHOSLA, Venture Capitalist: I won`t contend that I can prove with 100 percent certainty, but 98 percent of the scientists -- maybe more -- believe that we have a serious climate problem.

PAUL SOLMAN: Vinod Khosla is a Silicon Valley mogul.

VINOD KHOSLA: You can`t prove that your house is going to burn down.

PAUL SOLMAN: No, I don`t think my house is going to burn down.

VINOD KHOSLA: No, you don`t. But you still pay every year, year after year, your insurance premiums to make sure, just in case.

Are we willing to take that kind of risk at the planetary level for Earth, and not buy any insurance?

PAUL SOLMAN: The insurance Khosla`s pushing?

Biofuels. He`s betting that consumers will pay a little bit more for greener, cleaner products.

A business a lot bigger than Khosla`s, or even Swiss Re`s, is making a similar bet.

United Technologies, UTC, is one of America`s top 50 companies. Its products -- Pratt & Whitney jet engines, Carrier air conditioners, Otis elevators -- may emit as much as two percent of the world`s total of greenhouse gases.

So the company has plenty of room to make and sell cleaner products.

LOUIS CHENEVERT, President, United Technologies Corp.: You?ve got 98,000 pounds of thrust basically flowing through the back of the engine. That`s the equivalent of like 200,000 horsepower.

PAUL SOLMAN: This Pratt & Whitney engine is 11 percent more efficient than its predecessor, boasts UTC president Louis Chenevert -- emits 11 percent less carbon.

Worldwide, that means millions of fewer tons of greenhouse gas in the air.

The Carrier Division is also in the vanguard. Here`s the hip-hop hype of its corporate video.

Here?s its ever greener machines.

LOUIS CHENEVERT: Carrier just came out with a new line of product -- 40 percent less energy consumption for the same level of cooling.

PAUL SOLMAN: Same goes for Otis Elevators, developed in a Connecticut building that`s basically one tall shaft. Globally, 1.8 million Otis elevators carry up and back...

LOUIS CHENEVERT: ... the equivalent of the world`s population every nine days.

So how do we make elevators even better? Well, we`ve invented the Gen 2 elevators, which basically are smaller, lighter, much more energy efficient.

PAUL SOLMAN: Fifty percent more efficient. And its movement generates electricity for the building, like your car generator feeds the battery.

LOUIS CHENEVERT: United Technologies has made environment a priority, because we believe that it makes good business sense.

PAUL SOLMAN: Especially good sense when fuel prices jump.

It`s like this experimental Wal-Mart we visited last year.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So we`re using tires that have been recycled as the sidewalk itself.

PAUL SOLMAN: Plus signs powered entirely by solar cells, the store heated with the help of reused frying oil, cooled with recycled air -- using UTC technology.

There are even low energy lights that shoppers trigger on and off when they walk by. A P.R. stunt to some, it`s an appeal to environmentally conscious customers -- and good economics in an era of high fuel prices.

Our tour guide put it bluntly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ultimately, many of these things are cheaper.

FRANK PRELI, Vice President, UTC Fuel Cells, United Technologies Corp.: We`re buying less. We`re using more. We`re doing it more efficiently. We`re saving money.

PAUL SOLMAN: Meanwhile, back in Connecticut...

FRANK PRELI: And this is the area where we develop and work on fuel cells for space applications...

PAUL SOLMAN: We`re not quite finished with UTC, because the longest term environmental bet it`s made is its biggest: fuel cell technology.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE, NASA: Forty seconds away from the Apollo 11 liftoff.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL SOLMAN: Ever since the Apollo missions to the moon, UTC has been making cells for NASA -- portable power plants that chemically combine hydrogen and oxygen into water, and in the process generate electricity.

It takes more than being a member of the blue man group, it turns out, to understand just how it works, but the effect is clear enough.

FRANK PRELI: By combining these fuel cells in a stack, you can increase the voltage and the current that you can get out of them.

PAUL SOLMAN: Combine enough of them, and you can power a hydrogen car.

FRANK PRELI: So what we`ve done in this vehicle is package the fuel cell power plant under the hood, along with all of the other electronics.

PAUL SOLMAN: UTC has spent 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars to develop fuel cell technology here.

So this is -- it`s kind of like a very fast golf cart.

FRANK PRELI: Well, we prefer to describe it as a very fast automobile.

PAUL SOLMAN: It`ll take more R&D and mass production before hydrogen cars become affordable. This experimental model will set you back a few hundred thousand dollars.

However, says Preli...

FRANK PRELI: Anything you make onesie-twosie, it`s going to be expensive. You start talking about making millions, up to 60 million a year, our costs come down very, very dramatically.

PAUL SOLMAN: Now, some skeptics wonder where the hydrogen is going to come from, how safe it will be.

Others might charge that UTC isn`t out to clean up the planet for the rest of us, so much as clean up for itself -- make hay while the sun scorches, if you will.

But then, that`s the nub of the private sector approach to global warming -- selling green -- the approach President Bush favors, says his environment chief, Jim Connaughton.

JAMES CONNAUGHTON, Chairman, President`s Council On Environmental Quality: The most powerful incentive is profits. And there`s enormous investments that can be made, that not only will help us address greenhouse gases long term, but will help us reduce harmful air pollution that affects human health today, as well as address our energy security objectives.

PAUL SOLMAN: The administration thinks rising energy prices -- plus, perhaps, a subsidized nudge to promising technology -- should slow greenhouse gas emissions without regulation.

But many businesses themselves are now saying that`s not enough.

John Stowell of the utility company, Duke Energy.

JOHN STOWELL, Duke Energy: So, we need to build. But unfortunately, we`re about to enter this era of massive capital investment under a cloud of regulatory uncertainty.

The uncertainty that we face is, when will there be regulation, and what form will it take?

PAUL SOLMAN: There already is regulation elsewhere in the world, of course -- the Kyoto protocol, a treaty that commits its signers to cutting back carbon emissions. The U.S., however, has yet to sign it.

So, states have begun to take the initiative, and more than half of them now have climate action plans, or emissions targets.

Shell Oil`s David Hone.

DAVID HONE, Shell International Ltd.: A federal initiative along these lines is something that would be preferable from a business standpoint to the multiplicity of state regulations that we`re starting to see.

PAUL SOLMAN: So if global warming regulation is revving up, better to get on with it, to give big business a more accurate sense of how high profits can go if it cuts greenhouse gasses, and how much it will cost big business -- and us -- to insure against a potentially calamitous future.

(BREAK)

JIM LEHRER: Now the Canada terrorism story. We begin with some background narrated by NewsHour correspondent, Spencer Michels.

SPENCER MICHELS, NewsHour Correspondent: Canadian authorities today were sharing few details about the 17 alleged terror suspects they arrested over the weekend.

After a year-long probe, 12 men and five juveniles were taken into custody late Friday and early Saturday by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP.

MIKE MCDONELL, Royal Canadian Mounted Police: The RCMP, in cooperation with our partners, through our integrated National Security Enforcement Team, or NSET, in Toronto, have arrested individuals who were planning to commit a series of terrorist attacks against solely Canadian targets in southern Ontario.

SPENCER MICHELS: Police said the group -- all Canadian residents, and most citizens of South Asian descent -- had trained together and amassed bomb-making materials, including three tons of the fertilizer ammonium nitrate, that can be used to create a powerful explosive.

MIKE MCDONELL: This group posed a real and serious threat. It had the capacity and intent to carry out these acts.

SPENCER MICHELS: Two tons of the same material were used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.

FBI officials said they were investigating whether some of the Canadians in custody may have had limited contact with two terror suspects arrested in Georgia last spring. Several of the suspects attended the same mosque and lived in Mississauga, a well-manicured, middle class suburb of Toronto, Canada?s largest city.

UNIDENTIFIED MISSISSAUGA RESIDENT: I didn?t expect something like this just here, you know, just in my neighborhood across the street.

SPENCER MICHELS: On Saturday, vandals smashed the windows of Toronto?s largest mosque. Muslims make up an estimated two percent of Canada?s population of 33 million.

JIM LEHRER: For more, we go to Doug Struck, the Canadian bureau chief of the ?Washington Post? in Toronto.

Doug, welcome.

DOUG STRUCK, Canadian Bureau Chief, ?Washington Post?: Thank you very much.

JIM LEHRER: What about this report that more arrests are still expected? Is that still a live idea at this point?

DOUG STRUCK: The authorities are saying that that?s entirely possible. They?ve made very clear that the investigation still has miles to go, that they?ve got other leads they want to follow and that, indeed, more arrests might be expected.

But so far, all of the indications are that this still remains pretty much a homegrown event and confined to Canada.

JIM LEHRER: Now, these 17 who have been arrested, is there any other connection that has been discerned thus far, beyond the fact that most of them went to the same mosque?

DOUG STRUCK: Not quite yet. Although it appears that the connection may have been over the Internet, or it may have been over any sort of connection that one uses these days to spread the kind of virulent ideology that all of these men and some of the teenagers were said to have subscribed to.

We know that that kind of communication -- that is, basically, going on to chat rooms -- drew the attention of Canadian investigators as long as two years ago.

This whole conspiracy, it?s turning out, even though we don?t know a lot of the details, was not a very well kept secret. Investigators started looking at some of these people, because of some of the things they were saying, as long as two years ago.

A year ago, one of the principals who was arrested on Friday drew the attention and concern of others in his mosque, to the point that apparently some of them went to authorities.

And then last March, you had two Muslim Americans who came up from Georgia to Toronto to talk to what the FBI calls ?like-minded terrorists,? in which they apparently, according to the FBI, discussed bombing targets.

So, it appears that the investigators were all over this from a long time ago.

JIM LEHRER: And they had them under physical surveillance as well as electronic surveillance?

DOUG STRUCK: We don?t know that yet. But certainly, there were elements of both of those. We don?t know how long they were under surveillance, but certainly, they were under some sort of both physical and electronic surveillance.

What we don?t know yet is exactly at what point the rhetoric and the talk among these men was turned into action.

The authorities say that they ordered, as your report indicated, some three tons of this fertilizer that can be quite explosive.

There were reports in the Toronto papers today that the police had actually intercepted this material and substituted a harmless powder for it. The police are not confirming that. In fact, they stand by their declaration that the men took delivery of the ammonium nitrate and were capable of setting off a bomb.

We also don?t know exactly what their targets were yet. There is talk that one of the targets was the headquarters of the Canadian spy agency, which is in a large office building next to the CN Tower in Toronto. There?s talk that the office buildings of the parliament in Canada?s capital, Ottawa, were also targets.

But again, police have not confirmed any of that yet.

JIM LEHRER: Is anything known, Doug, about what prompted the police to make their move over this particular weekend? Were they -- were the suspects about to do something? Or what do we know about that, if anything?

DOUG STRUCK: Well, that was -- that?s one of the key questions. And it was certainly one of the implications that was allowed by the police, the RCMP, and the Canadian intelligence service when they announced on Saturday that they had made these sweeps.

They indicated that they had concluded their investigation and moved when they thought the public safety was in danger.

So, they left the impression that this bombing, if there was to be one, was imminent.

Now, whether or not that?s borne out in the court appearances that will go on for some time, remains to be seen.

JIM LEHRER: What about motive? Beyond being Islamic terrorists -- whatever that means -- is anything else known about what these guys were up to, and why they were up to it?

DOUG STRUCK: You know, as far as anyone knows, these are individuals who were born or came here to Canada at a fairly early age. Most or all of them have not been out of the country since.

It?s not as though they have direct connections with Iraq or Afghanistan or any of the places where that may be happening, that might provide a motive for this.

It appears, from what we know now, that the motive is simply one of ideology.

One of the key figures of this, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, who was a regular and the oldest of those arrested, preached that there was a war going on between the West and Muslims. He stood up in his mosque, according to those who heard him, and said that Canadian troops in Afghanistan are raping Muslim women.

And this is the kind of stuff that, at least we are told, captured the imagination, indignation and, eventually, anger of some of the younger men who attended that mosque, some of the younger men who knew him and others, and led them to believe that, indeed, we?re speaking of a war between civilizations.

JIM LEHRER: Our setup piece said there were roughly two million Muslims in Canada. Were they -- is the community known as a radicalized group of Muslims? Or what was its reputation before this?

DOUG STRUCK: I think the report said two percent. It?s about 700,000 Muslims.

For the most part, they are not a radical population here. In fact, Canada?s immigration laws, while much more liberal than most countries, nevertheless does encourage immigrants who are mostly middle class, professionals.

As one of the Muslim community leaders told me, described to me this weekend, he said, ?Most of us are pretty well-heeled.? In fact, those arrested were in, I think your report said ?well-manicured neighborhoods.? That?s a pretty good description of them. Many of them college graduates.

So, for the most part, it has not been a politicized group.

On the other hand, I think these arrests have been a wakeup call to Canada, that, indeed, within these communities there are passions that may not be evident to authorities or to other Canadians. And there are certainly people who have come here from war-torn or from difficult places of the world, who bring their own politics and their own ideologies.

In Canada, there is a family -- they?re called the Khadr family -- that is sort of a center of this debate. They?re -- the patriarch of the family was a close associate of Osama bin Laden. One of his sons is in Guantanamo.

So, there is, certainly, those who want to carry on this debate within the population here.

JIM LEHRER: So when the authorities said over the weekend, Doug, that, while there was no direct al Qaeda link, there was an al Qaeda influence here.

What are they talking about?

DOUG STRUCK: Yes, they said ?inspired by?...

JIM LEHRER: Inspired. You?re right. That?s the word. Not influenced by.

DOUG STRUCK: Inspired by the violent ideology of al Qaeda.

Well, what does that mean? Does that mean people on the Internet talking about how Muslims are mistreated by the West? Or does that mean something with a more direct connection to al Qaeda?

It?s beginning to look more like the former than the latter. Although, as we?ve learned, investigators are certainly looking to see whether there are any connections, any links, any communication with others in other countries.

JIM LEHRER: But they haven?t found anything that we know of yet. Is that right? A direct connection...

DOUG STRUCK: That we know of...

JIM LEHRER: ... between these 17 and some terrorists in the United States or elsewhere?

DOUG STRUCK: Well, the only connection that we know of yet is with these two Georgia men, who have now -- are now in prison on charges relating to terrorism, who did come up to Toronto, and, according to the FBI affidavit, did talk about bomb plots.

That?s the only connection we know of, of any connection they had outside of Canada.

JIM LEHRER: Quickly, before we go. These 17 are referred to as having South Asian ancestry.

What countries are we talking about?

DOUG STRUCK: Well, that?s -- there is certainly a mix there. There were people from Egypt, which, of course, is not South Asia.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

DOUG STRUCK: There were people from Pakistan. There were people from Sudan. There were some that we don?t know their background yet.

JIM LEHRER: OK. All right.

Doug Struck, thank you very much for filling us in.

DOUG STRUCK: My pleasure.

(BREAK)

JIM LEHRER: Now news organizations and the Wen Ho Lee case. Jeffrey Brown has our media unit report.

JEFFREY BROWN, NewsHour Correspondent: Wen Ho Lee, the former nuclear weapons scientist once suspected of being a spy, settled his 6.5-year-old privacy lawsuit Friday, and will receive $1.6 million -- from the government and from five news organizations -- in a very unusual agreement.

Lee had accused the Energy and Justice Departments of violating his privacy rights by leaking information that he was under investigation as a spy for China.

Lee was fired from his job at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, but never charged with espionage. He was held in solitary confinement for nine months, then released in 2000, after pleading guilty to mishandling computer files.

His lawsuit against the government had turned into a fight over a reporter?s use of confidential sources.

The Associate Press, the ?New York Times,? the ?Los Angeles Times,? the ?Washington Post? and ABC News agreed to pay Lee $750,000 as part of the settlement, ending contempt of court proceedings against their reporters, who had refused to disclose the sources of their stories about the espionage investigation.

And we get more on this case and the issues raised from Bruce Sanford, an attorney in private practice, who specializes in First Amendment media cases. He?s not involved with any parties in the Wen Ho Lee case.

Welcome to you.

BRUCE SANFORD, First Amendment Attorney: Thank you.

JEFFREY BROWN: This, as we said, was a case against the government. Why did reporters become so important?

BRUCE SANFORD: Jeff, reporters got embroiled in this case when Wen Ho Lee tried to subpoena them in order to find out who had leaked information to them from the government about him and about the investigation against him.

JEFFREY BROWN: And what was he trying to get from them that would help in his case?

BRUCE SANFORD: Well, he was filing a Privacy Act claim against the government, which essentially says, the government has improperly disclosed information about me, or about the investigation against me.

Linda Tripp, you?ll remember, in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, also filed a Privacy Act claim against the government a few years back, and that case was settled.

So, Privacy Act claims usually are filed by government employees against the government, trying to find out who leaked information about them.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, in this case, the reporters and their news organizations refused to reveal their sources. What was their argument, and what happened?

BRUCE SANFORD: Their principal argument was that they had a constitutionally based privilege to protect the identity of their confidential sources, that they?d promised confidentiality to those sources and they wanted to honor that promise.

JEFFREY BROWN: And what happened? Did they -- what kind of punishment did they face?

BRUCE SANFORD: Well, the federal courts -- particularly the federal court here in Washington -- was incredibly unsympathetic to their argument. And they said that Wen Ho Lee had essentially exhausted other ways of finding out who had leaked the information in government; and therefore, the reporters did have to disclose.

And when the reporters refused to do that, the district judge in Washington sentenced them to contempt. And that was appealed all the way up. And the media, the reporters lost -- conclusively lost, decisively -- all the way up.

So, they didn?t have the protection of any legal protection afforded them. And that?s somewhat different than federal law has been in the past.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, that led to last Friday?s settlement.

BRUCE SANFORD: Right, exactly.

JEFFREY BROWN: Why did they say that they were settling?

BRUCE SANFORD: Well, they said they were settling to protect their reporters, because their reporters were facing huge fines and jail time, possibly, and also to protect the sources. Where essentially, the media companies were saying, as they were putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to saying, we honor the promises made to sources.

So the good news, I suppose, here for sources is that media companies are willing to put out money to protect their confidentiality.

The public also, I think, wins in that sense, because there are many stories, including stories about investigations in government, that just don?t get published or broadcast unless confidential sources are used.

JEFFREY BROWN: Of course, the bad news, as some people saw it for the news organizations, was that they had to pay.

BRUCE SANFORD: Yes. But they were, as I say, either facing -- the reporters were facing and the organizations were facing -- huge fines and possibly jail time. So, they were in a hard place.

The companies said, look, this is not a great place to be. We either try to participate and contribute to this settlement with Wen Ho Lee, or our reporters are going to face jail time.

That?s a tough place to be. You can see why they did it.

JEFFREY BROWN: Several of the news reports said that this was unusual, if not unprecedented.

BRUCE SANFORD: I think that?s right. Time will tell whether this case is aberrational or not. It isn?t clear to me that you?re going to see that many cases like this.

I think a lot of people felt that the -- it?s not only unprecedented, that it?s a dangerous precedent, or that it?s ghastly to have the media companies contributing money to a government settlement.

I think all those things are true superficially. Analytically, I think you can see why the media companies did it.

JEFFREY BROWN: One company, CNN, did not go along. Pierre Thomas has been their reporter before he went to ABC. And they said they had a philosophical difference here. So there was clearly some debate about whether to go forward.

BRUCE SANFORD: Oh, I think reasonable people can differ on this. CNN did have the luxury of not having a reporter currently on their payroll who was facing jail time. Pierre Thomas had gone to ABC during the pendency of the lawsuit.

JEFFREY BROWN: And in the meantime, I noticed today the Supreme Court rejected the appeal by the reporters in this case. And I gather they could have just dismissed it, based on the settlement.

BRUCE SANFORD: They could have. They could have just waited for the case to have been withdrawn from them and said, well, it?s settled. It?s gone. It?s moot.

But they did not do that.

I think the Supreme Court is sending a signal there that says, we?re not interested in creating a First Amendment-based privilege for reporters to protect sources. If you want that, you?d better go to Congress. And that?s what the reporters are doing.

JEFFREY BROWN: And you work with news organizations. Is there a lot of rethinking now about what promises can be offered, and with what kept?

BRUCE SANFORD: I think there is. I think journalism based on confidential sources is going to be done more carefully, more surgically -- certainly more thoughtfully -- than ever before, because this settlement raises, potentially, the cost of publishing or broadcasting a story based on confidential sources.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. Bruce Sanford, thanks a lot.

BRUCE SANFORD: You?re welcome.

(BREAK)

JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, the politics of same-sex marriage. Gwen Ifill has our story.

(BEGIN VIDEO)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president of the United States...

GWEN IFILL, NewsHour Correspondent (voice-over): Over the weekend, and again today, President Bush turned the nation`s attention to an issue that energizes many social conservatives: using the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States: You are here because you strongly support a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman. And I am proud to stand with you.

GWEN IFILL: During his re-election campaign, the president pledged to push for such an amendment, a promise some of his supporters say he has made little effort to keep.

Today, Mr. Bush said activist judges are undermining the will of the people in states that have acted on the issue.

GEORGE W. BUSH: Decisions about a fundamental social institution as marriage should be made by the people.

GWEN IFILL: White House officials said the president is speaking up now, because the Senate is launching its own marriage debate.

SAM BROWNBACK, U.S. Senator (R-KS): It`s about who is going to define marriage in America. It`s not whether marriage is going to be defined, it`s about who is going to define marriage in America.

GWEN IFILL: The amendment, which would require a two-thirds vote of the Senate and House and ratification by the states, would bar judges from granting same-sex couples the same legal rights as married couples, and it would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Today, advocates and opponents of the amendment held dueling protests and press conferences.

MATT DANIELS, Alliance For Marriage: Americans are committed to seeing our laws send a positive message about marriage to children -- to their children, to their grandchildren.

They believe it`s common sense that marriage is a man and a woman, and they want that reinforced under our laws.

But as we stand here today, courts in nine states are actively seeking to strike down our marriage laws. Some of those court cases -- in New Jersey, New York and Washington state -- are poised to lead to the end of marriage as we have known it in this country for hundreds of years.

LAWANA SLACK-MAYFIELD, Human Rights Campaign: And if you open the door to putting discrimination against gay people in the Constitution, what`s to say we won`t discriminate against another group down the line?

Who will be next? Women? African Americans?

This amendment is a cynical political ploy, and we won`t be bamboozled or lose focus on what`s truly important.

GWEN IFILL: The Senate has scheduled a vote on the amendment for Wednesday.

(on camera) Democrats argued today that the timing of this latest marriage debate is being driven by politics. Republicans say the debate is long overdue. Who`s right?

For that, we turn to two pollsters who have been following the issue. Geoff Garin is the president of Peter Hart Research Associates -- he polls mostly for Democrats; and Kellyanne Conway, CEO and president of the Polling Company, works mostly for Republicans.

Geoff Garin, is this a political debate we`re seeing here unfold, or a policy debate?

GEOFFREY GARIN, Peter Hart Research Associates: Well, ultimately, both. I think the motivations are political.

But the fact of the matter is, Americans are not sitting at home tonight waiting with baited breath for the Congress to take this up. They think that there are lots of really important and pressing issues facing the country -- Iraq, the economy, gas prices.

And, frankly, when they hear about or read about the Senate debating this issue now, it confirms their worst views of the Senate, that it`s all about politics, it`s not about getting real things done, it`s not about taking on the priorities of the American people.

I think this ends up being a black eye for the Republican leadership.

GWEN IFILL: Kellyanne Conway, if Geoff Garin is even a little bit right, why now?

KELLYANNE CONWAY, The Polling Group: Well, if Geoff`s right, then I don`t know what he`s afraid of. In other words, then I can see him and his candidates using this against the president and his Republican Party majority this fall in ads.

In other words, why were your priorities so askew?

I think what Geoff, very wisely, and his party fear, is that they have to run Democratic candidates this year who also support traditional marriage, and that those people are going to have a very difficult time staring down the folks at home who ultimately decide whether they keep their jobs.

Seventy-one percent of the people in the 19 states who have voted on protecting traditional marriage have voted for protecting traditional marriage. So we know this is a very popular issue when put to the people.

And I must say that this move is actually fraught with tremendous political risks for the president, because there are at least three constituencies with whom he performed very well in 2004 -- Catholics, Hispanics and women -- who are not necessarily so enthused about the issue.

Hispanics are a bit more enthused than Caucasians. And African Americans, traditionally, are very against homosexual marriage in defense of regular marriage.

But there are constituencies, like these women and these independents, that President Bush performed well with in 2004 -- he`s not doing well with them now in the polls -- who can very well be angry about this.

So, I`m not sure that this is a great political move for the president. I think it`s one based on policy.

GWEN IFILL: But Geoff Garin, is it a move which is driven by -- or are these results you`re seeing in people you talk to, people you poll -- is it driven by people who think that marriage is threatened, or people who think that a constitutional amendment is the solution to the problem?

GEOFFREY GARIN: Well, really, I think this is driven by internal Republican politics, frankly. The base of the Republican Party is unhappy right now.

They think the party is failing them on fiscal responsibility. Lots of conservative Republicans are as angry as everybody else about gas prices.

So I think this is really about trying to reassure the base, but this time, I think, doing it at some cost compared to two years ago, or previously, when the Republicans have brought this up. It seems more transparent to the American people, that this is really about politics.

And it comes at a moment when we`re really dealing with -- Americans feel that we`re dealing with really big things in the country. And they don`t think that we need a constitutional amendment to solve this problem to the extent that it`s a problem.

If you ask people, "Would you prefer to do this through the Constitution or leave it up to the states," a majority of Americans would prefer to leave it up to the states.

And you know, in terms of the election, I`d like senators like Rick Santorum to say why this is so pressing right now that it`s more important than voting on the minimum wage or voting on taking back the tax breaks for the oil companies or voting on a host of other things.

I think in a post-Terri Schiavo world, I think Americans are much more sensitive to this kind of intrusive politics by the Republican Party, and I think it`s out of step with where people are at in terms of their priorities.

GWEN IFILL: Kellyanne Conway, Matt Dowd, the president`s pollster from 2004 and 2000, who`s now working for Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, was quoted in ?Newsweek? this weekend saying, the idea that gay marriage amendments brought people to the polls in these last couple of elections is an urban myth, that it actually doesn`t stir up the base.

What`s your response to that? What do you think?

KELLYANNE CONWAY: Well, he`s correct, in that you certainly have higher turnout in some of the states.

But the fact is that you have higher turnout in states where there is more political activity. And as we all know, those are the swing states, the seven, eight key states -- when you really get down to it, three or four towards the end.

To the extent those states also had marriage initiatives, it`s tough to say it`s causation or coincidence. But even in states like Oregon, which was not a very politically contested state -- it went for John Kerry handily -- they passed defense of marriage.

Oregon was a state in this country that passed the first assisted suicide law. So you`re talking about some pretty loyal blue states defending marriage.

But Matt is correct on that. And even the polls today, Gwen, show that -- as Geoffrey has said -- even though a majority supports traditional marriage as between one man and one woman, majorities oppose a constitutional amendment as the correct prescription.

And even more importantly, especially among younger voters, they are not saying that a particular candidate`s position on this issue is going to be wrought with any type of political currency.

That statistic actually breaks with senior voters. Voters aged 55- plus say that they are more likely to vote for a candidate this fall based on his or her issue on defense of marriage than not. But that`s really the only age group where it see it spike.

GWEN IFILL: Well you both agree, Geoff Garin, that there is not a clear political benefit necessarily in pushing for a constitutional amendment.

But the president said several times in his remarks today, that his goal was to get activist judges to get out of interfering with the will of the people.

Is that something that presses buttons, talking about judges replacing their judgment for individuals?

GEOFFREY GARIN: It really doesn`t -- or at least not right now.

You know, Kellyanne talked about all the referenda that were held in the states. People all across America feel that they have the ability to deal with this problem in their state legislatures, in their state constitutions.

They don`t really feel like they need Congress butting in to these kinds of questions, and that if you go through a list of priorities, that is, when you talk about people`s buttons, people`s buttons are pushed by trying to keep up with the cost of living and this terrible situation we have in Iraq and by what`s happening with energy prices. And those are what matter to people.

They wish like crazy that Congress would deal with those kinds of issues in a serious way.

People know that this amendment has no chance of passing in the Congress. I mean, it won`t even get a majority to proceed to the debate.

And so, it`s just political gamesmanship. It really is what have led so many Americans to be so disdainful of the current Congress, and it`s why people are looking for a change.

GWEN IFILL: So, Kellyanne Conway, what is the point of bringing this up if, indeed, it`s not going to pass the House or the Senate, get the two- thirds vote that`s necessary? If it is in some cases angering some of the president`s conservative base, who don`t think he`s gone far enough, why have this debate now at all?

KELLYANNE CONWAY: Well, first of all, judicial activism is seen as a clear and present danger to many conservatives inside and outside of the president`s base. I would say that is the one phrase that really connects the fiscal conservatives, the social conservatives and the moral conservatives.

And when you started to rip God out of the Pledge of Allegiance, when there have been suggestions to take God out of our nation`s currency, that`s the kind of excessive overreach that really does bind many in the base together.

Whereas, there`s disagreement on immigration within the base, there`s disagreement on spending within the base, there`s disagreement on some of these other moral issues like abortion and stem cell research within the base.

This is the one phrase -- judicial activism -- that gets everybody on their hind legs. And I will say that, because of judicial activism, the base and the president had a pretty nice time of getting two of his more conservative United States Supreme Court justices confirmed with very little opposition, in Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito.

And much of that stemmed from the Republicans, but really the conservative base being able to connect themselves together and put aside these differences of some other major issues, and rally behind these two nominees to the bench.

So this is the one theme -- not really an issue, Gwen, so much as a theme -- judicial activism, that does get the base moving.

GWEN IFILL: OK. Well, we`ll be watching for all of that.

Kellyanne Conway, Geoff Garin, thank you very much.

GEOFFREY GARIN: Thank you, Gwen.

(BREAK)

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day.

Gunmen kidnapped at least 50 people at bus stations in Baghdad. Canadian police indicated more arrests were on the way in a terror plot hatched outside Toronto. And the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear cases on the role of affirmative action in the public schools.

We?ll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I?m Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.