The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: The news of this Thursday; then, the latest on the still growing earthquake tragedy in Pakistan; a report on the levees of New Orleans; a look at how the world is preparing for the coming of bird flu; and a conversation with Robert MacNeil, about what he had in mind when he started this program 30 years ago tonight.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Hurricane Wilma became a major threat to the Mexican coast today. The monster storm slowed overnight, but still has winds of up to 145 miles an hour. It's expected to hit the Yucatan Peninsula tonight, and then turn towards the Florida coast. Today, rain from the storm's outer bands pounded Cancun. Officials ordered some 20,000 tourists to leave. In Cuba, more than 200,000 people fled their homes. The director of the National Hurricane Center said the next few hours are critical.

MAX MAYFIELD: It has weakened some. It's a Category Four hurricane at this time, but we're also getting indications that larger eye wall is now starting to contract, so we really think that there's a good chance it will go to another strengthening phase, and observe it gets close to the Yucatan Peninsula, and it could very well become a Category Five hurricane again, sometime on Friday.

JIM LEHRER: Florida residents heeded warnings, despite the storm's slowed path. People boarded up houses and stocked up on water, canned goods and other supplies. A mandatory evacuation remains in effect for tourists on the Florida Keys. The storm is blamed for at least 13 deaths in the Caribbean.

President Bush said today prospects for a Palestinian state are better now than when he first took office. He spoke at a joint Rose Garden news conference with Palestinian President Abbas. He said there was more to be done.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: This is a very hopeful period. I'm very upbeat about being able to achieve this vision. I understand it's hard. Things don't happen overnight. Old feuds aren't settled immediately. And it takes a while. The key thing, as far as I'm concerned, is that there are partners in peace. Prime Minister Sharon wants there to be peace. President Abbas wants there to be peace.

JIM LEHRER: The president also called on Abbas to confront armed groups that threaten the democratic process. There were more American troop deaths in Iraq today. A suicide bomber killed a U.S. Marine near the Syrian border, and the U.S. military announced four other soldiers were killed in roadside bombings in the North. Also attacks across Iraq today killed at least a dozen Iraqis, half of them police. The deadliest happened in Baqouba. A suicide car bomber targeted a government building; 14 were wounded in the explosion. In Baghdad today, the lawyer for one of Saddam Hussein's co- defendants was kidnapped. Masked gunman broke into the office of an attorney whose client is the former head of Saddam's revolutionary court.

The U.S military announced an investigation today of allegations against some U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Australian Television broadcast video that allegedly showed the soldiers burning the bodies of two Taliban fighters. The location was outside the village of Gonbaz, near the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. Afghan President Hamid Kharzai said his government will also conduct an investigation.

The top U.N. relief official said not enough is being done to help victims of the Pakistan earthquake. Relief coordinator Jan Egeland warned the death toll will rise unless more aid is sent. In Geneva, Egeland said tens of thousands of lives are at stake. He appealed to NATO to organize airlifts to evacuate thousands of refugees trapped in the Himalayas.

JAN EGELAND: What we need is something like no other emergency relief effort. We need to think differently. We need to think bigger. We need a second Berlin air bridge. If they could do it in the 1940s set up in no time, a lifeline to millions of our people, we should be able to do that in 2005.

JIM LEHRER: At least 79,000 people were killed in the quake, which struck 12 days ago. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary.

A 48-year-old Thai farmer has died of bird flu. Authorities in Thailand said today the man had slaughtered and eaten an infected chicken. He is the 67th person known to have been killed by the virus. In Washington today, the Swiss drug company Roche agreed to work with generic drug manufacturers to increase production of Tamiflu, the most effective drug against bird flu. We'll have more on this story later in the program.

President Bush again defended Harriet Miers today. He said she would bring "a fresh outlook" to the U.S. Supreme Court because she had never been a judge. He said she would answer all questions from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Her confirmation hearings are now set to begin Nov. 7.

A key measurement of economic activity fell a third straight month in September, due to a rise in energy costs from Hurricane Katrina. The Conference Board, a business research group, reported that today its index of leading economic indicators was down 0.7 percent. Also today, the Labor Department reported more jobs losses from Katrina. The storm accounted for another 40,000 jobless claims last week. That makes a total of 478,000 jobs lost to Katrina so far.

On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 133 points to close at 10,281. The NASDAQ fell 23 points to close at 2068. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the still grim news from Pakistan, the New Orleans levees, bird flu preparations, and an anniversary chat with Robert MacNeil.

UPDATE GRIM FORECAST

JIM LEHRER: Our Pakistan earthquake update. We start with a report from Emily Reuben of Independent Television News.

EMILY REUBEN: The refugees from this disaster are now fighting for their survival. Here in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, 20 miles from the capital, they're desperate for food, for blankets, for anything. This man said he'd been waiting three days for aid. If anything, the need is greater now and as winter approaches it's growing day by day. This was once the capital Muzaffarabad's football stadium. Today it's what the desperate are calling home -- 2,000 refugees without running water, without electricity.

They are living under whatever they can find. But what they desperately need are winter tents to keep them warm. "We cannot survive without shelter," said this mother. "How will the children live without a tent?"

It's the sheer size of this disaster that has taken aid agencies by surprise. Today UN's emergency relief coordinator said today it demanded a response like no other. He called for an airlift hundreds of thousands stranded in the mountains of Kashmir

JAN EGELAND: Think bold, think big, think creatively. We're humanitarians. We don't know how you evacuate hundreds of thousands of people out in the Himalayas, but the most effective military alliance in the world should be able to know that. And in a way that's what I say to NATO member states: Imagine if it was your citizens, what would you do?

EMILY REUBEN: NATO has been dropping food to remote areas since Tuesday, but humanitarian expertise has been dwarfed here by this impossible terrain. It's so inaccessible, a quarter of people still haven't been reached. But using NATO helicopters to evacuate people is a far more radical move that some say just won't work.

PAUL ANTACONI, British Red Cross: And those 25 percent are not all waiting on a football pitch with a nice landing strip saying, "I'm ready to come out. Come and get me." They are up in the mountains. They're cold. They're injured. They're unhappy. They're angry.

EMILY REUBEN: The political struggle that has ripped Kashmir in two for more than 50 years looks for now to have been put aside -- the Mujahadeen Kashmiri Islamic militant group, offering food and shelter.

JIM LEHRER: And to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: For an update on the relief effort we turn to Afshan Khan, deputy director of emergency operations at UNICEF, and Michael Hess, assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, the federal government's lead humanitarian assistance agency.

Afshan Khan, we just saw that report on the desperate nature of this relief, but is anything getting better? Can we point to some areas of improvement where there had been some real desperate suffering earlier that's now being relieved?

AFSHAN KHAN: Thank you, Mr. Lehrer. Yes, there's been some improvement. We can say water has been restored to half of the citizens in Muzaffarabad. But I think as you saw the logistical challenges in this crisis are huge. The number of children we have been not able to reach in the mountains is estimated at 120,000. The next three weeks will be critical to survival of those children. And we anticipate that at least half a million children, or close to half a million children will be in remote mountain villages that we still have not managed to reach. The challenges there are huge.

RAY SUAREZ: Michael Hess, it's said one of the pinch points, one of the bottlenecks is the supply of helicopters. Why is it so hard to get helicopters to a specific country on the globe?

MICHAEL HESS: That's a good question, Ray, and, obviously, if you've got helicopters in the region, you want them there quickly. We were able to get helicopters over from Afghanistan, fly them in directly into Islamabad, where they have started ferrying. We now have 21 helicopters on the ground. There are 19 more en route but they have to be flown in by big airplanes to Afghanistan to Bagram Airport where they'll be reassembled and then flown into Islamabad.

RAY SUAREZ: When you look at a map of Asia, this is the confluence of several countries that have pretty big militaries, countries where a lot of the GDP every year is devoted to military spending. So why are there so few helicopters even in that region to begin with?

MICHAEL HESS: Well, obviously, you need helicopters that are the dual rotor ones, the heavy ones that you see there, because you can't use the other light ones. When you get up in the mountains to that elevation you can no longer have the lift that we need to get into those high altitudes, and that really cuts down on the numbers of helicopters you really can use. When you use a Blackhawk or a Huey or some of the other ones the nations have, they're not effective in delivering supplies into these high altitudes in these regions.

RAY SUAREZ: Ms. Khan, reports are starting to come out of people who have frankly gotten tired of waiting for help to reach them and have begun to pour out of these villages to the nearest relief point, towns that already have plenty of homeless people. Are any of these places prepared to receive evacuees?

AFSHAN KHAN: Well, there have been some camps set up actually by UNHCR. We're seeing three to four thousand families in nine different locations now. It will be a huge challenge to get water and sanitation, latrines, immunization to these groups and we have to be really coordinated in our efforts in order to do that. Some camps have started to be dug. Latrines are a real issue. We've immunized more than 3,000 children but we hope to immunize 800,000 within the next 21 days to prevent the spread of disease. Diarrhea and acute respiratory infections are real risks as well.

RAY SUAREZ: Is there a way to map that affected part of the earthquake zone and know, yes, we've reached these villages; no, we haven't reached these, and start to triage?

AFSHAN KHAN: There is a humanitarian information center that's just been set up. Some mapping will start, but it's very clear that some of these mountain villages are so remote, so difficult to reach, that this is an operation like no other. In the tsunami, most of the population was in coastal areas. We could each them easily. The challenges in terms of logistics here are huge.

RAY SUAREZ: Michael Hess, when the Agency for International Development starts sending supplies toward an affected area is there somebody waiting there who says, okay, this stuff should go here and we need this stuff that you've brought to send it over here? Is there sort of a controlling system in place?

MICHAEL HESS: Right, exactly. When he set up these disaster assistance response teams and we send them to the area, we always make sure that there are operations people and logistics people on those teams to make sure they can sort out and help the Pakistani government as the air flights come in. We also work with the joint logistic centers that are set up by WFP, and UNDEC, which comes from the UN OCHA. So we work together as a team to make sure that when the goods arrive on the ground, we work with those who are going to send them on so it's a coordinated effort, and we can make sure that we get the right supplies to the right area.

RAY SUAREZ: Does it also mean, though, that AID is one of many agencies there at the airport, there at the drop site, and you suddenly have to figure some things out as far as who is going to go first, who is going to wait, and those sorts of issues?

MICHAEL HESS: Exactly. And it's important that we have been working this region for a long time, so we have implementing partners already that we've worked with in the past. So that when goods arrived and we already know how to work with them, that we can get it out much more quickly to he affected areas.

And to go back to your question on the people and getting them into camps, we've also been working with the Pakistani government on setting up a voucher system for host families so that if a family is going to take in some of these people who need to get out of these desperate areas, that we can give them money and food as a supplement to their income so that they can take these people in.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, UNICEF's special mission, Ms. Khan, has always been children. It looks like there are a lot of injured, unescorted, orphaned children. Is it tough keeping track of them? Is it tough finding next of kin? Is it tough even knowing where they end up once you evacuate them from a heavily affected area?

AFSHAN KHAN: Oh, yeah, we're really seeing a crisis within a crisis here. We know a lot of children have lost lives, but they've also lost limbs. It's -- the number of injured children is huge. We've seen evacuations to hospitals. We've now started working with the Pakistani government, the Ministry of Social Welfare, the Save the Children Alliance, and The International Committee of the Red Cross to start tracing those children who are in hospitals, to make sure they're appropriately registered, to make sure they don't leave the hospitals, either without some kind of record and setting up facilities to know where they're going.

But in terms of the number of orphaned children, at this point, we still do not have a clear idea of numbers. So this operation in terms of being able to help reunify children who may have been separated from their parents is going to take a few months to come.

RAY SUAREZ: And do you ever the money you need?

AFSHAN KHAN: Well, we've already appealed for $64 million. We're only funded at about a third of what we need. Compared to the tsunami, we were almost 80 percent funded by this time. The rest of the UN system is only 12 percent funded, and there's a huge need for additional resources: Money, cash, but also, I think, as Mr. Egeland pointed out, a clear need for more relief items particularly shelter for children. They're going to be extremely vulnerable in the cold weather, and also additionally, medical teams to deal with the injured. We're going to have a huge problem in Pakistan of disabled children in this zone that's going to take years to solve.

RAY SUAREZ: What's the U.S. Government's commitment so far, Michael Hess?

MICHAEL HESS: The commitment right now is $50 million. And we have assessment teams on the ground who are looking at that because we realize this is going to be a relief operation that continues much longer than a normal earthquake -- one because of the onset of winter. We have obligated already $17.4 million and are reviewing proposals from our implementing partners for another $18 million tonight. So we're trying to get the funds out to those partners as quickly as possible. We've already airlifted six flights of supplies in, in addition to what the Department of Defense has already sent in. That's just the USAID contribution.

RAY SUAREZ: Does the pressure of the calendar mean that you're doing some things differently to make them happen faster?

MICHAEL HESS: Oh, absolutely, you have to. I mean, we don't have the time and luxury. It's already down to 20 degrees at night there, so it's freezing. We don't have the luxury of time in this instance.

RAY SUAREZ: Michael Hess, Afshan Khan, thank you both.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the levees of New Orleans, preparing for bird flu, and a conversation with Robert MacNeil.

FOCUS LEVEE FAILURES

JIM LEHRER: Our update of the New Orleans levee story. NewsHour correspondent Betty Ann Bowser has our science unit report.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: It's one of the great American engineering mysteries, and these two investigators are plodding through the muck in New Orleans looking for clues.

SPOKESMAN: We can do it on this side of the sheet pile, and then walk up the slope --

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Civil engineers Robert Kayen and Brian Collins are using computer mapping technology to help them understand why parts of the city's 350 miles of levees failed, leaving thousands of people homeless and hundreds of people dead.

ROBERT KAYEN: This device is a laser imager. It can hit upwards of 60 million targets in a sweep of under ten minutes, and with that we can make a three dimensional model of the damaged area. Then we can look into the levee failure from any orientation on a computer.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The two are part of a group brought in by the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct an unprecedented investigation sponsored by The National Science Foundation and The American Society of Civil Engineers. Paul Mlakar heads the team from the Corps.

PAUL MLAKAR: What's on the line and what we owe the American public is to rationally figure out exactly what happened here and the Corps is determined to do that.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But just one week into the investigation into why the levees broke, a more immediate problem emerged. One of the independent investigators wrote a blistering letter to the corps, critical of levee repair work in New Orleans.

Dr. Raymond Seed, a world famous civil engineer who heads a team of investigators for the University of California at Berkley, quickly says the corps's work at the 17th Street Canal breach, "did not appear to have improved the situation." "Indeed," he said, "it had likely made it more dangerous."

Seed sited the row of big sandbags placed "like flower pots" on top of the damaged levee saying they "did not block the likely points of water ingress." Dr. Seed said open stone also placed on top would not be "effective in mitigating erosion of the underlying embankment."

And he wrote: "Dauntingly similar short comings" exist at the other four breach sites, which flooded massive sections of the city.

The American Society of Civil Engineers voiced similar concerns about the 17th Street Canal saying, "stability in the repaired areas may be deteriorating."

Responding to the criticism this week, the Army Corps said it had already implemented the majority of the interim recommendations that pertained to strengthening the breach sites.

But Dr. Seed worries about a bigger problem: That years of budget cuts may have eroded the Corps' ability to protect public safety.

RAYMOND SEED: If you're dealing with highly complex systems and your manpower gets stretched thin enough, your ability to consistently and reliably catch all potential errors and flaws diminishes. Another way of saying this: If we under fund oversight and safety, we will eventually lose.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Is that what happened in New Orleans?

RAYMOND SEED: It's certainly one of the issues on the table right now.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Donald Basham, the Corps' chief engineer, strongly disagrees.

DONALD BASHAM: The Corps of Engineers is not going to allow to anything get built which is not built in a safe and efficient manner to protect the public and American people. It may be a matter you won't build as much of it, but that's not a health and safety issue. What will get built, though, I'm confident we have the expertise, both within our organization and working with architect and engineer firms and construction companies to build infrastructure to protect the American people.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Early on, the Army Corps said the levees failed not because of design, but because the powerful storm surge pushed water up over the concrete levee walls, undermining the structural foundation and causing them to give way. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock is commander of the Army Corps of Engineers.

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: The area where the levee breaks occurred was at its final design configuration, so that was as good as it was going to get. And what does that mean? Actually we knew that it would protect from a Category Three hurricane. In fact it has been through a number of Category Three hurricanes. The intensity of this storm simply exceeded the design capacity of this levee.

SPOKESMAN: Ten, three, five.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Investigator Paul Kemp of Louisiana state's hurricane center wasn't so sure about that. While most of the levees were over topped, his computer models told him that water did not that at the 17th Street or the London Canals, which would mean there was another reason for the flooding. So Kemp and his researchers went out into the field. They measured how high the water went with flood lines that became visible as the water subsided. What they found there contradicted the Corps' early assessments.

PAUL KEMP: We're close to the 17th Street Canal. If this mark was in fact higher than the levees, we would know that there was a very good chance that the levees -- or that the sea walls that eventually failed had experienced overtopping, that the water had actually gone over the top of those levees. In fact, what we see is that the mark is somewhat below the top of those levees.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: With Kemps' findings, the Army Corps and its independent investigators are now focusing on soil under the levee.

PAUL MLAKAR: Soil that was part of the levee is now 35 feet into someone's backyard.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Just as important as the design of concrete walls and sheet pilings that support them, the strength of the soil layers below the levee play a critical role. Investigator Dr. Peter Nicholson is a civil engineer from the University of Hawaii.

PETER NICHOLSON: In this case it's pretty clear that we had soil movement so that we know. How it failed, the mechanisms of that failure, what the loads were and ultimately what the details of that failure are, we don't know, and that's why we need to do further investigations of the soil profiles and collect construction documents to try and put the pieces of the puzzle together.

PAUL MLAKAR: It could be that... the design was okay. But what was executed in the field was not the intent of the design, and for that reason, in addition to design documents we're also capturing the construction records.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Those records will be important because for years the Corps has been outsourcing its construction projects to private contractors, something Dr. Seed thinks could compromise quality control.

RAYMOND SEED: What you lose is consistency. And the problem with the levee system is if you have a number of segments which all have to make a single unit, you don't get credit for ninety-nine of those segments being of extra high quality if one of them is somehow weaker or less capable, and when you lose control and you do a lot of outside contracting with multiple firms, you run the risk of losing consistency so the overall risk of the system is increased.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But the Corps says the contracting is one of its strengths.

DONALD BASHAM: I would disagree that it's caused inconsistency, and more importantly the term "lost control." I don't believe we've lost control at all. We for more than 20 years have contracted out 100 percent of our construction work, so we have staff -- the staff to have appropriate oversight of those construction contractors.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Although there has been criticism of both repairs in New Orleans and over all performance, Dr. Seed says in the end, the blame should not fall entirely on the Army Corps of Engineers.

RAYMOND SEED: This is very closely analogous to FEMA. FEMA has been attrited and under funded, their capabilities have been reduced, and now we're all angry because they didn't do a good job responding in the first week or so after Katrina.

The Corps of Engineers have been attrited and their capabilities have been reduced, and I don't think it's appropriate for us to be making scapegoats out of organizations which, against their own will, have had their supports and capabilities reduced. I think what we need to think about is perhaps refurbishing these organizations and getting them back up to the kind of strength that perhaps would be a better investment for the country.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The investigation into what went wrong in New Orleans comes at a time when the Corps has said it will try to rebuild the levees back to what they were before Katrina, a system supposedly capable of withstanding a Category Three hurricane. But the findings of the investigation could affect what the Corps does in the future.

DONALD BASHAM: At the end of the day, I can tell you whatever the failures were whatever the cause of the failures were there this chief engineer will be very open with American people. If we've done something wrong that need to be corrected and we will stand behind it and make sure it gets corrected.

SPOKESMAN: You want to try to get this on this end.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Results of the investigation are expected in a few weeks. Meanwhile any plans to rebuild the levees above a Category Three hurricane threat level must be approved by Congress.

JIM LEHRER: And yesterday Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said he'll ask an independent panel from the National Academies of Science to review the work of these investigators. It will also conduct "a forensic investigation" of the Corps' performance during Hurricane Katrina. Their report will come out in eight months.

FOCUS BIRD FLU CRISIS

JIM LEHRER: Now, the international response to growing concerns about bird flu. We begin with an update from Thailand, John Irvine of Independent Television News reports.

JOHN IRVINE: The sense of urgency is such that culling took place overnight in part of northern Thailand. Today the government here confirmed the death of a farmer who had slaughtered infected chickens. He is one of just 60 or so people killed by the virus worldwide, and yet a huge campaign is underway to alert the public to the threat posed by bird flu, which is feared not for what it is but for what it might become. It could adapt itself into a highly contagious human flu. I asked one of the experts here what the likelihood is of the dreaded mutation taking place.

JOHN IRVINE: Do you personally think it will happen?

DR. WILLIAM ALDIS: I give them 50-50 or greater within the next couple of years, that the emerging virus will appear.

JOHN IRVINE: Reporter: The few people in Southeast Asia unlucky enough to have caught bird flu have done so because they live in close proximity to poultry. So far there have been no human cases in Europe. Scientists from around the world have been coming to Southeast Asia to investigate bird flu. A top British team is due in the region next week.

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner has more.

MARGARET WARNER: The Europeans have new reason to be concerned because for the first time over the past month, the deadly virus has been confirmed in birds in the outer reaches of Europe. Authorities have culled, i.e. killed, infected migratory birds and domestic fowl in Turkey and Romania. And on Monday, Greece said bird flu had been detected on one of its islands.

Yesterday, EU ministers met and adopted fresh measures to try to combat further spread of the disease. Earlier, the EU banned imports of live birds from Turkey. Also yesterday, Russia told the European Union that bird flu had spread from domestic fowl in Siberia, to birds just 150 miles south of Moscow. And in Asia, China reported a fresh outbreak among birds in its northern provinces. In Australia, officials ordered imported pigeons destroyed.

Since 2003, more than 60 people have died from the H5N1 virus. The deaths have been confined to East Asia so far -- Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.

To discuss what countries can and are doing to combat the spread of avian flu, we turn to Robert Webster, a renowned virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, and Dr. William Schaffner, head of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Welcome to you both.

Mr. Webster, what does this pattern tell you, that after roughly two years of being confined to East and Southeast Asia, it has now moved to Russia Romania, and Turkey?

ROBERT WEBSTER: It tells me that the virus has transmitted to the wild migratory birds of Asia and is now on the wing, as it were, into Turkey and that region, and it can be expected to spread further into Europe.

MARGARET WARNER: And what can governments do to prevent infection of, say, their domestic flocks from migratory birds?

ROBERT WEBSTER: They have to separate their domestic flocks. The flocks raised in the open are going to be a problem. Last month, the Dutch took in their outdoor poultry to reduce the contact. And the greatest risk are the ducks on ponds and backyard poultry that are not brought in. So any of that kind of poultry that has fairly direct contact with migratory birds are the intermediates that could bring the virus close to the domestic poultry.

MARGARET WARNER: Dr. Schaffner, give us a sense of how -- how effective most countries are at these kinds ever measures to protect their domestic flocks from the migratory birds.

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER: Well, Margaret, it's a very large and very complex task. I think many of the countries in Southeast Asia have geared up over the past year, year and a half, and are now very assertively culling flocks and trying to shield the flocks from the migratory waterfowl. It's a very, very tough job.

MARGARET WARNER: How about in Europe or the United States, where there are certainly large poultry industries here in the U.S., it's huge. We're in fact an exporter of poultry. Are birds raised in the open or are they confined?

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER: Well, it's yes, but most of them here in the United States, large, commercial operations, are under cover, and so they'll be protected from the over flying waterfowl, should this virus ever get to the western hemisphere, which of course it hasn't yet, but that we're worried about. Europe is mixed. They have a commercial poultry industry.

A lot of it can, as Bob Webster said, be brought under cover, but they do also have, particularly in Eastern Europe, a barnyard activity where lots of families have their chickens and their ducks and their geese out, and they're vulnerable.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Webster, as you know, today the first reported human death occurred in Thailand -- or was reported in Thailand, and this was a man who had both slaughtered and eaten, actually, I think a neighbor's chicken. What are the risks from poultry?

ROBERT WEBSTER: This is a most unfortunate incident in Thailand. There have been deaths in Thailand previously, but in the past year, the Thais have taken many, many steps to reduce the risks. They've culled most of the positive flocks in Thailand, and reduced the number ever infected flocks down to a very small number, and just two weeks ago, I was in Thailand, and they hope to be able to announce that they were free of the virus.

MARGARET WARNER: I think what--

ROBERT WEBSTER: Unfortunately --.

MARGARET WARNER: What people are wondering, and I heard different reports say on the radio today about whether eating an infected -- a cooked and infected bird could give you this avian flu. Can you possibly conclude that from this case in Thailand?

ROBERT WEBSTER: No. It's having contact with infected poultry. All cooked poultry, reasonably cooked, is safe. The virus is very easily destroyed by cooking.

Unfortunately, there are practices in Asia, some specialty dishes where fresh duck blood or blood pudding is eaten, and that's one of the risks. That's one of the risks.

The other big risk are fighting cocks that are often hidden from authorities. And the owners of the fighting cocks will frequently suck the blood from wounds or from the respiratory tract, and some of these practices continue and those put humans at great risk of contacting the virus.

MARGARET WARNER: Dr. Schaffner, if you look at the world-wide market, the trade market in poultry, I mean, are there any countries that are just banning all imports of poultry, whether they're from a country that's had infected flocks or not? Would you recommend that as a preventive measure?

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER: I certainly haven't heard of any country categorically blocking the importation of all poultry. Perhaps Bob is better acquainted with that. But clearly countries that have infected flocks have had their exports curtailed. That's part of the worldwide strategy to try and keep poultry flocks separate and uninfected, of course.

MARGARET WARNER: And Dr. Schaffner, how do countries know if their flocks are infected, whether you take Western Europe or take here in the U.S. -- is there aggressive testing, at least of the commercial poultry -- you don't call them manufacturers, but poultry companies? Or do they just wait until dead birds appear?

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER: Well, in the poultry industry there are always birds that are going to die, and so you do surveillance to make sure that the number of birds that are dying doesn't increase, and so they're very, very attuned to this now, and quickly get testing of dead birds.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Webster, back to you. Given the migratory pattern of birds -- I know you're not really a bird expert, but I hope you can answer this question -- where is at least the avian flu in birds likely to migrate next?

ROBERT WEBSTER: The migratory patterns of birds in the world mainly run from north to south, and the -- but the flyways overlap, and there are three major flyways in Asia, and they overlap with the flyways in North America, in Alaska, and so the risk is that the birds in the flyways that are moving further and further west will eventually move eastwards and eventually into North America.

MARGARET WARNER: And there were also reports today that the Middle East and East Africa may be at risk. Are their migratory patterns that would put them at risk?

ROBERT WEBSTER: The migratory patterns of birds, again, from north to south, run down through Turkey and the Middle Eastern countries into Africa, and, yes, they are all -- all of that area is at risk. In fact, at this time, the whole globe is at risk of being infected with bird flu.

MARGARET WARNER: And, Dr. Schaffner, finally, just to put this in context, is it fair to say, though, that the risk of a human pandemic will not come -- comes less from whether birds -- whether avian flu moves around the globe, and more on whether the strain that existed now mutates into one that can be transmitted from human to human?

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER: Of course, Margaret, that's the issue. Will the influenza virus, the bird flu virus, obtain the genetic intelligence, if you will, to be able to leave the birds and get into humans and then be transmitted from human to human with real efficiency? It hasn't done that yet, but the wider the distribution from this bird flu virus, the more likely, most of us think, that something like that will happen, particularly the chance simultaneous occurrence of an infection of a bird flu and a human flu virus in either the same animal or the same human being. Then they can exchange genetic information and that bird flu virus can, perhaps, pick up the genetic capacity then to go from person to person to person.

MARGARET WARNER: But, briefly, why is that risk greater if it's spread all over the world versus, say, being in Southeast Asia?

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER: Surely. The more that virus is out there the more it multiplies all by itself, and the more likely then a chance mutation will take place so it can do it on its own, and of course the more widely spread it is, the more widely it's -- or I should say, the more likely it is to encounter a human influenza virus.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, William Schaffner, Robert Webster, thank you both.

CONVERSATION 30TH ANNIVERSARY

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, 30 years of the NewsHour. We began life in October 1975, as the "Robert MacNeil Report," and a year later, "The MacNeil/Lehrer Report."

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Three quarters of the voters still think it's going to be a horse race.

Jim.

JIM LEHRER: Robin, in the ideal world, issues are supposed to separate....

JIM LEHRER: In those days, we dealt with one story for a half hour.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: When we return on Monday night, it will be in our new format, expanded from the present half hour to a comprehensive one-hour program of news and analysis. It is called the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.

JIM LEHRER: That transition happened in 1983; 12 years later, Robert MacNeil retired.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Thanks and good night.

JIM LEHRER: And we became the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," the program you see today. Over the years, the program has seen its share of changes, some different looks and faces, and told many stories about the news of our world. But 30 years later, we're still here and have the same mission.

JIM LEHRER: I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.

JIM LEHRER: And this afternoon Robert MacNeil returned for a conversation.

JIM LEHRER: So, Robin, is the program today about what you had in mind 30 years ago?

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Oh, sure.

JIM LEHRER: The vision was all

ROBERT MAC NEIL: I think, in all modesty, both of us would have been astonished to think that 30 years from then it would have become a national institution, which it has been, I think it's fair to say.

But I also want to say something else. Last night in promoing this event tonight you called me the founder of the program.

JIM LEHRER: You are.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: In fact, you and I were coequally the founders. By a little political accident my name was on it because it was started in New York, but it soon became the MacNeil/Lehrer Report, and all the ideas that went into it were equally yours.

JIM LEHRER: But the basic idea at the beginning, which was one story a night for thirty minutes, which was what the Robert MacNeil Report and then the MacNeil/Lehrer Report, that was your idea.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Yeah, yeah, it was. It was a way to do something that seemed to be needed journalistically and yet was different from what the commercial network news were doing.

Remember, this was a time when in each city there were only three or four television channels.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: It was easy to be relatively easy, or

JIM LEHRER: There wasn't a cable news or anything of that sort of stuff.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Nothing of that. And we even had the temerity to take out a couple of ads down the line and say, watch John Chancellor, then watch us; watch Walter Cronkite and then watch us.

And the irony is that as long as he lived, John Chancellor watched this program every night, and Walter Cronkite still does.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah, yeah.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: I'm pleased to say which means that all the sort of original intent that we had has been carried through and hasn't altered in 30 years.

JIM LEHRER: Is there what's the story behind the story about how you were able to start the program in 1975?

ROBERT MAC NEIL: I think the genesis was you and I did the Senate Watergate hearings --

JIM LEHRER: Right.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: -- for 49 days and nights

JIM LEHRER: And actually in this very studio.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: In this very studio.

JIM LEHRER: That we're talking in right now, which is in a place called Shirlington, which is in a suburb of Washington just beyond the Pentagon.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: That's where we're sitting right now.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Right. And it convinced a lot of people that public television could do news and public affairs honorably and fairly and responsibly and not get the public television stations into trouble, which a lot of them were worried about.

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Anyway, by a narrow vote, the system decided to do it, and you and I got a lot of exposure then, and people began talking about us as a team, and then we did a nightly program.

JIM LEHRER: Because, remember, we did it not only during the day in the hearings, they were taped and they were re-broadcast during prime time

ROBERT MAC NEIL: And, anyway, it took two years after that to get it going, and it was the New York station with Jay Iselin and Bob Kotlowitz

JIM LEHRER: WNET.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: WNET who provided the kind of venue and the money originally to start it with you in Washington, and then quickly it became the MacNeil/Lehrer Report.

JIM LEHRER: I've always joked about that where did the title come from I said, well, the normal politics of public broadcasting, they formed a committee with Robin's mother and my mother, and they came up with the title MacNeil/Lehrer Report well, pretty much the case.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: What I'm so pleased about now as you're here every night is that what we intended in the beginning, that there should be a place for civil treatment and in-depth treatment of the news, a place on television where it's taken quietly and seriously and not sensationally and with no gimmicks is essentially what it still does. And it's fair, and it's balanced, as was intended then, and it still is.

JIM LEHRER: The decision to go to an hour in 1983, that was my recollection of that was a tough decision, a very difficult time to get through

ROBERT MAC NEIL: It was a very difficult thing. It was jointly it came from several sources from Larry Grossman, who was then running PBS, and from Jay Iselin. And my only anxiety was that the public system showed that it really wanted it to go to an hour

JIM LEHRER: Right.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: -- that we weren't ramming something down their throat, and also that we would have enough money to do it reasonably well and not look kind of amateurish trying to fill up an hour. Some people in public television said we thought you already were an hour.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: But, anyway, we got over those hurdles, and then we began the hour, and the hour was a mess at first

JIM LEHRER: Yeah.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: -- due principally to a lot of silly ideas that I had.

JIM LEHRER: That I had we matched

ROBERT MAC NEIL: But, anyway

JIM LEHRER: We tried everything.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: And then you got ill and you had three months off and you watched the program, fortunately, and said when you came back full of vim and vinegar, we've got to change this and put the news back on the top of the program where it belongs.

JIM LEHRER: And we still do it that way, of course, with the News Summary and all of that, but people who weren't watching then how silly you and I were at the time remember we took the news and spread it all through the hour. So you never knew

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Sprinkled.

JIM LEHRER: Sprinkled it through the hour. The other thing that changed of course which was really the significant change is our whole idea, our whole contract, our whole concept changed, that rather than just say, watch Cronkite or John Chancellor and then watch us, we were saying, you only had to watch us.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Yeah. We started as a complement

JIM LEHRER: Right.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: -- because we couldn't be much more than that --

JIM LEHRER: Right.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: -- and we ended up starting in 1983 as an alternative. And given the dozens of channels now that are doing something called news,' from the serious to the comic, this is the one that has stayed absolutely gimmick-free and, therefore, its uniqueness is more apparent now I think than it was when we started 30 years ago, and the audience thinks that.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Somebody said that to me the other day, in fact, that when you all started 30 years ago, you weren't that unique; you're more unique now.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Indeed.

JIM LEHRER: You obviously agree.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Yeah. Well, I think it stands the uniqueness stands out. It's thrown into relief but because there are so many channels competing for viewers' eyeballs to make money

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: -- that they have to do more and more gimmicky things or in the words of Les Moonves of CBS, who's now looking for a new way to do the same as CBS News, We have to make it more entertaining.' That is not something you and I have ever thought you should try to make the news.

JIM LEHRER: We have always said if you want to be entertained, don't watch us; go to the circus. (laughter)

All right. A personal question I'm asked all the time: What has happened to Robert MacNeil? What's Robert MacNeil up to? Tell us what you're doing; bring us up to date.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Well, apart from being mistaken for you sometimes

JIM LEHRER: Right. The same thing happens to me. They say, hey, how are you enjoying retirement, Mr. MacNeil? They think

ROBERT MAC NEIL: A lot of people think there's a MacLehrer' out there somewhere.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: But, anyway, I have written a number of books since I left, a couple of novels, and a memoir, and a book that went with the PBS series Do you Speak American,' which was on this year

JIM LEHRER: We ran an excerpt on the NewsHour. We promoed

ROBERT MAC NEIL: It ran in January; it's running again this month. And I've been working on a play. I'm the chairman have been for 13 years of the McDowell Colony, which is the oldest artists' colony in the country and the biggest. It's going to be 100 years old in a couple of years. And I'm on the board of the Freedom Forum Committee that is building the Museum of Journalism on Pennsylvania Avenue. I was just over there, and that's going to be a big deal.

JIM LEHRER: Finally, I know the answer to this question myself, obviously, because you and I stay in daily contact almost, but you were in daily journalism for how many years?

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Well, if you include this show, more than 40.

JIM LEHRER: More than 40 years. The daily journalism part of it, did you, have there been any times since you left the NewsHour in 1996 that you really missed it?

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Well, in 2001, as you know, I felt after Sept. 11 stunned by the television for a couple of days I felt so useless like a lot of people

JIM LEHRER: And you lived in New York

ROBERT MAC NEIL: I lived in New York right there and I called you and said, can I help out, can I do something, and you very graciously said, yes, come back and do some things, and I did some things. I didn't think they were very good.

JIM LEHRER: I did. I thought they were terrific. Remember the piece you did of the New York Times reporters and editors

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Who had done the obit.

JIM LEHRER: Exactly people who died.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Yeah, yeah, very moving. But I also discovered, not having done it for, by then five, six years, how hard it is, how hard it is to do before-guest discussions, which is the hardest thing this program does and does them unlike any other program.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Well, Happy Anniversary, and thanks.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Thank you.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: Hurricane Wilma became a major threat to the Mexican coast. The storm slowed overnight, but still has winds of up to 145 miles an hour. And the U.S. military is investigating allegations that some U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan burned the bodies of two Taliban fighters.

JIM LEHRER: And again, to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq. Here, in silence, are eight more.

JIM LEHRER: We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening with David Brooks and Tom Oliphant, plus an interview with Palestinian President Abbas. Until then, I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.