The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

GWEN IFILL: Good evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Jim Lehrer is off. On the NewsHour tonight, our summary of the news; then, a report on the firestorm that left at least 54 dead in Samarra, Iraq; the latest on the world AIDS crisis: The debate over treatment, prevention, and funding; the struggle to protect computers from destructive worms and viruses; and a conversation with Studs Terkel about his new book.

NEWS SUMMARY.

GWEN IFILL: The U.S. Military and Iraqi civilians disagreed sharply today over a major firefight that occurred Sunday. The U.S. side reported killing dozens of insurgents in Samarra after convoys hauling money were ambushed there. Local residents claimed the soldiers fired at civilians. We have a report on the incident from Julian Manyon of Independent Television News.

JULIAN MANYON: Shots were fired in the air as the people of Samarra drove to the cemetery to bury their dead. The first to be buried were a man and a woman caught in the blizzard of American gunfire, which devastated several parts of this city north of Baghdad. Wrecked cars sit riddled with bullets or crushed by tanks. A fire engine washed away the blood in front of a factory, where several people were shot. The Americans say they killed some 50 insurgents, but the facts of what really happened here are being bitterly disputed. What is clear is that the insurgents fired first, ambushing an American convoy. And it's also clear that there were running battles in various parts of town, in which the Americans discharged considerable quantities of ammunition into civilian areas. There are claims that numbers of innocent people were killed and injured. (Groaning) In the hospital, some young men of military age were being treated. But there were also old people and a young boy among the wounded. Iraqi estimates of the casualty toll are lower than the American figure, ranging from 20 dead to just six. But the city is boiling with anger. "Is this freedom? Is this democracy?" This woman asked me. "Is this what America has brought us?" But the U.S. Commander has defended the actions of his men.

LT. COL. RYAN GONSALVES, U.S. Army: When my forces go into town, or when we go into town, and we engage the terrorists that are engaging us, we take proper aim fire at those firing at us.

GWEN IFILL: We'll have more on the battle in Samarra in a moment. Also over the weekend, ambushes across Iraq killed seven Spanish intelligence agents, two Japanese diplomats, and three contractors from Colombia and South Korea. In addition, two more U.S. soldiers died over the weekend. Another was killed today west of Baghdad. The U.S. is ready to release more than 100 detainees from the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "Time" Magazine first reported that on Sunday. Most of the detainees were picked up during the war in Afghanistan. It was unclear if they'd be prosecuted in their own countries. Also today, the Department of Homeland Security announced it will end another program created after 9/11, in which thousands of foreign men and boys were required to register with the U.S. Government. Most were from the Middle East. Israeli and Palestinian activists launched an unofficial peace plan today in Geneva, Switzerland. It was negotiated by former cabinet members from both sides. It calls for Israel to give the Palestinians almost all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and part of Jerusalem. It does not resolve the issue of letting Palestinian refugees return. At the ceremonies, former President Jimmy Carter charged the Bush administration and Israel have mishandled dealings with the Palestinians.

JIMMY CARTER: No matter what leaders the Palestinians might choose, no matter how fervent American interests might be, or how great the hatred and bloodshed might become, there remains one basic choice for the Israelis: Do we want permanent peace with all our neighbors? Or do we want to retain our settlements throughout the occupied territories? And it is of equal importance that the Palestinians renounce violence against Israeli citizens in exchange for the commitment of this Geneva initiative.

GWEN IFILL: U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has voiced support for the new peace initiative, so have 58 former world leaders. But it faces strong opposition from Israeli Prime Minister Sharon. Meanwhile, there was new violence in the West Bank today. Israeli troops killed a nine- year-old boy and three gunmen from Hamas. They also blew up an apartment building. Activists and health workers marked today as World AIDS Day. The World Health Organization announced new efforts to get cheaper drugs to three million infected people by the end of 2005. An estimated 40 million people worldwide are infected with the AIDS virus. We'll have more on this later in the program. President Bush may lift heavy tariffs on steel imports later this week, citing industry and congressional sources, the Washington Post and others reported that today. But aWhite House spokesman said the president has not yet been made a final decision. The World Trade Organization has ruled the steel tariffs are illegal. The European Union and Japan have threatened to retaliate against U.S. products. The chairman of Boeing is stepping down in an ongoing shakeup. The aerospace giant announced today that Phil Condit resigned, effective immediately. Last week, two other high-level executives were fired. Boeing faces questions about alleged unethical conduct to gain a major military contract. The Defense Department is investigating the matter. Two new reports today pointed to a stronger economy. The Commerce Department reported spending on construction jumped nearly a percentage point in October, and factory activity increased again in November. The private Institute for Supply Management said it was the best showing in 20 years. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained more than 115 points to close at 9899. The NASDA rose more than 29 points to close well above 1989. The Colorado Supreme Court rejected the state's new congressional districts today. Majority Republicans in the state legislature redrew the maps earlier this year. But today's ruling found that plan unconstitutional. It said the legislature is supposed to redistrict only once a decade-- in this case, not until after the 2010 census. A similar challenge is under way in Texas. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the latest fighting in Iraq; World AIDS Day; computer security; and author Studs Terkel.

FOCUS BATTLE IN SAMARRA

GWEN IFILL: The battle in Iraq: It began as a bank heist in the city of Samarra. U.S. Military units were delivering local currency to two banks there when they came under attack. Dexter Filkins of the New York Times was in Samarra today. Margaret Warner talked with him this afternoon.

MARGARET WARNER: Dexter Filkins, welcome. We're hearing conflicting reports about what happened in Samarra yesterday. I know you were up there today. What have you learned about how the whole thing unfolded?

DEXTER FILKINS: Well, it was a pretty amazing turn of events. Really what happened was the ambushed became the ambushers. The Americans had... well, the Iraqis were waiting for the Americans to come up the road and to come down the street, and in great numbers and with pretty amazing intelligence and sophistication. And the Americans were expecting it; at least were prepared for it. And so, when the Iraqis started shooting, the Americans had brought in extra troops and a lot of firepower, and it became a huge gun battle, and it looked like... from what I could gather, it looks like a lot of Iraqi guerrillas were killed yesterday.

MARGARET WARNER: You said that obviously the Iraqis knew the Americans were coming. We've also heard that the whole town was absolutely quiet when the Americans came in. Do the Americans think that the Iraqis are successfully essentially infiltrating American plans and operations before they occur?

DEXTER FILKINS: Well, that certainly is a danger. There's no evidence of that. I think you could look back to a month ago, a month ago to the day, I believe. The Americans had sent two trucks full of currency to these same banks, and so it was regarded as a monthly delivery of money. And a month ago the Americans were attacked, the same trucks were attacked, and it was an unsuccessful attack, it wasn't as sophisticated. But... so it may have just been that the Iraqis were waiting and they were making a bet, and it was a good bet, that the Americans were going to come up the road.

MARGARET WARNER: We're also hearing conflicting versions about how many people were killed and whether they were mostly fighters or whether they were mostly civilians. What were you able to ascertain on that question?

DEXTER FILKINS: That's very confusing. I didn't see a body of a single person today who appeared to be a guerrilla. I did see the bodies of people who looked to be civilians, you know, an old man, a middle-aged woman. There were other reports. But I think it's very, very confusing, but the Americans make a pretty good case. And when you talk to the individual soldiers they give very detailed accounts of the people that they believe they killed. And I think their explanation-- and I think it's a pretty good one-- is that most of the guerillas that they killed were carted off in the middle of the night. But I think, unfortunately, there were some civilians killed. There's no question about that.

MARGARET WARNER: So the bodies you saw were where, at the hospital?

DEXTER FILKINS: At the morgue.

MARGARET WARNER: And I gather that the Iraqis are saying that even if fighters originally attacked the Americans, then the Americans started to fire at random? What is the U.S. Military saying to that?

DEXTER FILKINS: The U.S. Military denies it. And I have to say, I mean, I think they brought a lot of fire power, and there was a lot of bullets and a lot of shells that were flying around the other night. But I think the military, the American military is a very disciplined force, above all else it's disciplined, and they've got very strict rules of engagement. And they... by and large, they don't shoot until they're either shot at or somebody picks up a gun and demonstrates some kind of hostile intent. I think in the confusion and the chaos of urban fighting, I mean, this was a battle that was going on right in the middle of the city -- and when it started there were civilians walking around all over the place -- and in that kind of chaotic and confusing situation innocent people died. And that's unfortunate, but I don't think the firing was random. It may have been, but I'd be surprised.

MARGARET WARNER: Tell me more about the Iraqis' response to this, and tell us a little about Samarra. Is this an area, is this a town pretty hostile to the American occupation?

DEXTER FILKINS: I think by and large Samarra is a very hostile town. I mean, I could feel it when I went there. I had been hearing stories about it, I'd been there before. It's just down the road from Tikrit, which is Saddam Hussein's hometown. Most of the people there were direct beneficiaries of Saddam's regime. It's majority Sunni Arab. It's right in the heart of the Sunni Triangle. So it's been very hostile, and the Americans have had a very difficult job and a very difficult time there trying to construct a government that's friendly and is kind of relatively democratic.

MARGARET WARNER: There were also, as we know, the killings of a number of foreign civilians, Spanish soldiers and others this weekend. Does it appear to you-- you've been there quite a while-- that the insurgents' tactics are changing?

DEXTER FILKINS: They're absolutely changing. I think... I've been here most of the time since the war started, and I think what I've seen, what most of the people here have seen, is that the guerrillas are just looking... they're looking for soft targets, they're looking for easy targets. They started with American soldiers, it's become very difficult to kill American soldiers now. Then they went to relief workers. They drove most of those out of town. Then they went to Iraqi police. It's very difficult to get near an Iraqi police station now. And so what you saw over the weekend was Korean civilian relief workers, contractors, a Colombian, you had a couple of Japanese diplomats. Those are the soft targets now.

MARGARET WARNER: Secretary Rumsfeld in Brussels today, when asked about this incident and what had happened over the weekend, said that still a majority of the country he said was in a relatively stable circumstance. How would you describe it in terms of how wide or how large is the area in which this violence still is occurring?

DEXTER FILKINS: Well, that's an interesting question. The overwhelming majority of the violence is still confined to a relatively small area, which is commonly known as the Sunni Triangle, which is the area that sweeps west and north of Baghdad. But what I found that's troubling, very troubling in the last few weeks even, things are changing very fast here, is that the violence and the instability seems to be spreading. It may not be definitive yet, but I went, for example, last week to the city of Mosul, which is the third-largest Iraqi city, it's the North. Three months ago that place was a success story, it was calm, everybody was happy, everything was moving forward. That's the place where two Americans were shot in the head a few days back; people thought that their throats had been cut. Helicopters had been shot down. When I went there, I found a population that was extremely hostile, and which was very different from what I had seen before. And so I think on one hand the violence is still confined to a relatively small area, but I think that there's some very troubling signs that the violence is starting to spread outside of the Sunni Triangle.

MARGARET WARNER: Dexter Filkins, thanks again.

DEXTER FILKINS: Thank you.

FOCUS WORLD AIDS DAY

GWEN IFILL: Now, a look, this World AIDS Day, at the global response to the pandemic. We begin with background from health correspondent Susan Dentzer.

SUSAN DENTZER: In China on this World AIDS Day, viewers of government-run television saw an unprecedented sight. Premier Wen Jiabao was shaking hands and chatting with three AIDS patients at a Beijing hospital. China has at least 840,000 people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The World Health Organization predicts the number could be ten million by 2010. Until recently, the Chinese government had for the most part denied the scope of its AIDS problem. Meanwhile, in South Africa, the government has also undergone a major policy shift. It announced earlier this year that it would begin to pay for anti-retroviral drug treatments for many of its five million citizens infected with HIV. These and other actions have come as the global AIDS pandemic grows worse. Last week the United Nation's umbrella AIDS organization, UNAIDS, estimated that roughly 40 million people around the world are infected with HIV. Today the World Health Organization announced details of a major new initiative; it would provide antiretroviral drugs to at least three million people by 2005. That's just over half the number of people whom the WHO estimates need the drugs. The WHO says the goal is achievable now that the annual cost of the drugs has fallen to as low as $ 300 per person per year. It says the total cost of the initiative, dubbed "Three by Five," will be about $ 5.5 billion. The WHO says most of the money will come from funds already pledged to combat HIV and AIDS. That includes the U.N.'s global fund on HIV, AIDS, and malaria, and the $ 15 billion five-year global HIV initiative proposed by President Bush and approved by Congress earlier this year. The heightened resolve to combat AIDS can't come too soon, experts said today. They estimate that three million around the world will die from AIDS in 2003, the highest annual AIDS death toll ever.

GWEN IFILL: And Joining me now to discuss the World Health Organization plan and other efforts to fight HIV/AIDS are Debrework Zewdie; she's the director of the global HIV/AIDS program at the World Bank. Josh Ruxin, a professor of public health at Columbia University, and a coordinator for the U.N. Millennial Task Force focused on HIV/AIDS. And Stephen Lewis, the U.N. Secretary-General's Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Welcome to you all.

Stephen Lewis, we just heard Susan Dentzer report that three million people will have died of AIDS just this year, at least that's probably a conservative estimate. Yet this plan, this WHO Plan hopes to reach three million people, put them on these drugs by 2005. Is it an achievable objective?

STEPHEN LEWIS: Well, there are tremendous numbers of skeptics, necessarily, because it's a huge task. But on balance, I have never seen a U. N. agency so determined and so committed, and they have broken through the inertia which afflicts a large part of the world, and I think if we give the WHO the support it deserves, then they may indeed achieve almost all of it or at least a significant enough part of it to drive the momentum.

GWEN IFILL: We'll talk more about the kind of support you think it deserves. First I want to ask the same question to Debrework Zewdie. Do you think the WHO plan is achievable, is realistic?

DEBREWORK ZEWDIE: It is an ambitious plan, but it is a plan that the world has needed for a very long time, and as Stephen Lewis said, if all of us put our efforts together, there's no reason why we shouldn't achieve it, and the people who are infected by this disease expect this from us.

GWEN IFILL: Josh Ruxin, what is your sense of this, that this is something that can be achieved, this ambitious plan?

JOSH RUXIN: I'm hopeful that it can be achieved and I share Ambassador Lewis' optimism that it is, in fact, achievable. I think what's most important is that we really stay focused on what needs to be done out in the field and how to keep countries accountable for their actions, as well as the U. N. agencies themselves. And in particular, I think we have to focus on the equity issue, we need to make sure that the poorest and most vulnerable people are the ones who are receiving this much needed treatment.

GWEN IFILL: Now that's a lot that you just laid out there. You're talking about accountability on the part of these countries; you're talking about make sure the poorest people receive the treatment. How does this or any other plan, I'll start with you since you raised it, Mr. Ruxin, how do you begin to achieve that, what are the first steps? Is it money; it is prevention programs; is it treatment programs?

JOSH RUXIN: Well, I think you really have to begin at the country level and make sure that the political accountability is there. Leaders in many of these countries have recommitted themselves just in the past couple weeks, we've seen it in India and in China and South Africa, and I think this is promising news. But up to date, I think the past year suggests that it's been a year of enormous setbacks as well as great progress, when it comes to that type of political accountability. And many countries are still far behind.

GWEN IFILL: Stephen Lewis, I want to direct that to you. What is the first thing that this plan has to address? Is it the accountability on the part of countries as Josh Ruxin says, or is it something else?

STEPHEN LEWIS: You know, I don't think there can be a first, second and third. I think in this instance everything has to work simultaneously. The countries have to come on board, you have to repair the fractured infrastructures in so many of these countries, so that the health systems can deliver the anti-retroviral treatment. You have to train and refurbish human capacity, which has been so deeply wrenched and decimated in the course of the pandemic, and you have to find the resources, the World Health Organization talks about 5.5 billion dollars, they don't talk about it with facile and gratuitous ease, but they know that we don't have that money. We need billions of additional dollars in order to drive this through, so everything must work simultaneously in order for those people to be reached, to achieve Josh's equity goal.

GWEN IFILL: You know, it's difficult to get things to work simultaneously, even in a developed nation like the United States, and its own health care plan. Let me ask you to follow up on how that would, how you would do that, Mr. Lewis, how would you get everything to work simultaneously in something so complicated?

STEPHEN LEWIS: Oh, yeah, and I agree. And I don't want to be silly about it. It's tough and it's going to take a lot of time. I think that the World Health Organization idea of training 100,000 people at country level to deliver the goods, I think the idea of having monitors and community health workers to make sure that those who receive the drugs comply and adhere to the regimen, I think that the money that has been promised but never delivered to the global fund, others of us in the U. N. system have to make sure that money is rounded up. What we haven't had, let me put it this way, in the midst of this desperate unprecedented calamity is the resolve at the political level to drive it through. And if there isn't the resolve, then the World Health Organization will not succeed.

GWEN IFILL: Ms. Zewdie, you're at the World Bank. Let's talk about money: $ 5 1/2 billion optimistically in this plan, $ 10 billion people say is the minimum to really break through. How does that gap get closed?

DEBREWORK ZEWDIE: The gap gets closed in a number of ways. As Stephen said, the resources that have been pledged have to be realized. And the world has to realize that the cost is going to be much more if we don't act now. As far as the World Bank is concerned, currently we have the largest resources and their implementation on the ground. These are resources which could immediately be mobilized. But the most important thing is not only leaving it to the countries. We the donor agencies and other countries have to get our acts together so that we don't throw these countries in ten different directions, we need to get our acts together so that the countries will be mobilized to achieve this goal.

GWEN IFILL: What about the part that Mr. Ruxin was talking about earlier, about the countries themselves getting their acts together and being able to contribute to the cause, is that something that you can see happening?

DEBREWORK ZEWDIE: It will happen and it has happened, in many of the African countries now we see a lot of political mobilization. Some of the countries have a long way to go, but even we have seen what happened in China, for example. Along with that, the northern governments and donor agencies need to come together. What is a big problem now, with limited capacity is that we try to draw this countries in different directions as we go with our own plans and with our own rules and regulations. So we need one strategic plan, one national mobilizing body, and one monetary and evaluation system so that the countries would be mobilized, and we reach this goal. Otherwise it will be very difficult.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Ruxin, let's talk about priorities, which transcend the money question, I suppose, which is where the money should go. Should it go to AIDS prevention or AIDS treatment? It seems that AIDS treatment is what much of this WHO plan is talking about, getting the anti-retroviral drugs to people. How about stopping the infection in the first place?

JOSH RUXIN: Well, I think the focus of their plan is certainly on treatment, but all of us today recognize that treatment goes hand in hand with prevention and with care. You simply cannot initiate a program to deliver anti-retroviral drugs without doing a number of other activities which meet other preventive needs such as conducting voluntary counseling and testing, providing rapid test kits, for example, for people who desire them and certainly getting condoms to populations that otherwise don't have access to them.

GWEN IFILL: And who are the people who are going to be empowered, I guess, to bring that information to people? Are there enough trained individuals to deliver the drugs, to pass out the prevention pamphlets, to actually be on the ground?

JOSH RUXIN: There are growing teams that are on the ground in all the countries that we're discussing who are learning how to give out the drugs, and no longer do we have to talk about simply medical doctors giving out drugs, but we can start to talk about other health workers and nurses, and even community health workers who are involved in the distribution of those essential anti-retroviral drugs. And luckily the global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which received half a billion dollars this year from the U.S. and hopefully if the Bush administration lives up to its promises will receive a billion dollars from this administration next year, is financing those types of training initiatives on the ground.

GWEN IFILL: Is the U.S. living up to its promises right now?

JOSH RUXIN: So far, the U.S. has certainly expanded its promises, and a lot of us are still waiting to see the money. And we're hopeful that in the coming year, the Bush administration will expand its appropriations to the global fund and it will also start to see some of this $ 10 billion in incremental financing that was promised by the administration during the state of the union address.

GWEN IFILL: Certainly, Mr. Lewis.

STEPHEN LEWIS: May I just say that the global fund is really central to all of this. The global fund is the best multilateral financial instrument we've had in years, and it is extremely disappointing that the rich countries of the world have failed to fund it adequately, and indeed that the United States has not lived up to the expectations. That has dashed a lot of hope.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Lewis, you're laying on a fairly steep mountain to climb here, there is not enough money, the people who promised the money apparently around delivering it, at least not immediately, this goal of three million people getting drugs by 2005 seems difficult to achieve. Give me an idea of how or what optimism you find in all of these numbers.

STEPHEN LEWIS: I find a glimpse of optimism in this miasma of despair by the mere fact that we're talking about millions of people in treatment, we're talking about getting additional resources, we're talking about strengthening the delivery of these drugs. I don't know how to balance these things. We are losing three million lives unnecessarily every single year. And what other motivation do you need to galvanize this world?

GWEN IFILL: Debrework Zewdie, do you see any optimism in all of this?

DEBREWORK ZEWDIE: I do, because we have to look at the initiative of the WHO, which was announced today as if we are starting from scratch. We have excellent examples in Haiti, in Uganda, in Senegal where treatment has been delivered in resource poor settings. The capacity issue is something which comes up over and over again. We haven't done enough in tapping existing capacity. If we do that, as we build long term capacity, there is enough on the ground to start on this, provided we come up with the resources and we have global solidarity to respond to this global epidemic.

GWEN IFILL: Ms. Zewdie, Mr. Lewis, and Mr. Ruxin, thank you very much.

GWEN IFILL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, computer worms and viruses, and author Studs Terkel.

FOCUS WORMS AND VIRUSES

GWEN IFILL: Now, a report from our science unit on research into stopping computer viruses and worms. The reporter is Tom Bearden.

TOM BEARDEN: There are some nasty critters out there in cyberspace: Creepy, crawly things called viruses and worms. Computer bugs with names like "Sobig," "Blaster," and "Slammer" have already wreaked havoc, and it's only expected to get worse.

CORRESPONDENT: (Aug. 12, 2003) In Europe, Asia, and some parts of the U.S. today, computers mysteriously restarted, kicking...

TOM BEARDEN: Damage includes interruption to business operations, lost productivity and revenue, costs associated with restoring or replacing networks and systems, and damage to, or loss, of stored data. Vulnerability specialist Shawn Hernan says it's an expensive problem as well.

SHAWN HERNAN: Certainly, the threat to the United States economic health is serious. A disruption to our communications networks can cost billions upon billions of dollars and do real damage to the economy and to individuals' livelihoods and to individual companies.

TOM BEARDEN: So far this year, these "bugs" cost businesses and consumers more than $ 140 billion in damages globally, almost three times as much as in 2002. It happens quickly, too. This summer's MSblast worm was so advanced it infected almost 90 percent of the Internet within ten minutes. Beyond the damage that's already been done, computer security experts fear viruses could disrupt electric utilities, air traffic control systems, telephone networks, banking systems-- anything that relies on interconnected computers. That's the escalating security challenge facing the people at CERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. CERT was formed in 1988 as a center of Internet security expertise, a federally funded research and development center. Just this year, CERT formed a partnership with the Department of Homeland Security to combat cyber-attacks across the Internet. CERT is just one of hundreds of businesses, universities, and scientists worldwide trying to find ways to stop the global problem of viruses and worms. Larry Rogers is a senior member of CERT's technical staff.

LARRY ROGERS: A virus is just like a biological virus: It requires someone to transmit it. If you have a cold and you come in contact with somebody else, your contact with them can transmit the virus. A computer virus is usually e-mail borne and requires you to read an e-mail, open an attachment. And by opening that attachment, in most cases that attachment is a program written by someone to do something malicious. In many cases, it opens up your address book and sends itself to all of the people that you know. This takes advantage of social engineering. I got mail from somebody I already knew, and so I'm going to trust them more than I would otherwise; I'm going to open that attachment.

TOM BEARDEN: Rogers says computer worms are even more dangerous.

LARRY ROGERS: Worms, in contrast, are just like worms in the ground. They drill through the earth and are self-propagating. They move from one place to another all by themselves.

TOM BEARDEN: And worms can propagate, or copy themselves, without the computer user doing anything. Indeed, most are unaware that they've been infected. Worms can then move from computer to computer via networks, the biggest network of all being the Internet. Any unprotected computer unwittingly spreads the worm to any other computer on the network. While there are many variations of viruses and worms, computer security experts like CERT's Shawn Hernan say the reason they're successful is sloppy programming.

SHAWN HERNAN: Most of it comes from simple programming mistakes, the kinds of things that you learn to avoid in your first programming course and then never remember to avoid again. Most vulnerabilities don't arise from complex interactions of big hard-to-understand programs. They're not subtle defects that no one could have predicted. The vast majority of them are things that are foreseeable and well understood.

TOM BEARDEN: Hernan says software manufacturers are not focusing on the basics anymore. Instead, they put their energy into glitzy new features. Unless that changes, computer users will continue to be as vulnerable to the same kinds of attacks that they have been for decades. Pradeep Khosla heads research at Carnegie Mellon's Cyber Lab, which partners with CERT on research issues. He says one of the primary goals of research is to make sure computer systems are always available to users.

PRADEEP KHOSLA, Cyber Lab: We are not going to stop attacks. We don't believe we can stop attacks. But what we can do is stop systems from dying when they are attacked. And we want to understand and develop technologies to find vulnerabilities in existing code, and to create methods of producing new software with fewer vulnerabilities.

TOM BEARDEN: Dawn Song is looking at ways of stopping computer worms. She says worms can spread so quickly that they act much like tsunamis, huge tidal waves that can come ashore in seconds, with catastrophic effects. She says that right now a smart programmer can write worms that infect the entire Internet within 30 seconds. To fight these attacks, Song is developing the Internet tsunami warning system. She monitors Internet traffic patterns for significant change, change which might indicate a worm is starting to propagate. She says early detection of an attack is key to solving the problem.

DAWN SONG, Carnegie Mellon University: That will give us time to put in countermeasures to counteract these attacks. For example, now we could develop patches and distribute the patches to the vulnerable hosts to help them defend against these worm attacks.

TOM BEARDEN: Patches are small programs that insert new computer code into existing software to block vulnerabilities that hackers exploit. Associate Computer Engineering Professor Greg Ganger is researching a layered defense, an approach that he likens to a medieval castle.

GREG GANGER, Carnegie Mellon University: They worked really, really well for a couple of reasons. One was you had to get past tiers of defenses in order to get to the inside where presumably the king and the treasurer was. The difficult part is looking for the places where you're going to find tiers and the places where you're going to find towers, right? Well, if you looked inside of your PC, right, open up a PC, you'll find a bunch of things that can be your tiers and your towers. And what they are is all the different little computers that are inside of the thing that you think of as a computer.

TOM BEARDEN: Ganger points out there are many microprocessors inside every computer, from the disk drive controller to the network interface card, and that each one has its own operating system software.

GREG GANGER: Each one of them can do its own security functionality, so each one of them can do things like watch for misbehavior on the other components of the system. And so we get our tiers of defenses from things like network cards before you get to the main processor. We get our towers from things like disk drives and disk controllers that can check parts of what the system is doing, even though they can't check everything that the system is doing. So we can do things like have the system run intrusion detection on itself. We can do things like when the system is observed to be misbehaving, we can throttle its access to the network, right? And it works inside of a box, and it also works with the other components in your environment.

TOM BEARDEN: Until research yields more effective large- scale solutions to computer security, Rogers says it's up to individual computer users to protect their own systems.

LARRY ROGERS: You need to be aware of what's going on. An intelligent consumer is a good consumer in understanding what information is at risk, how it's at risk, and what's really going on.

TOM BEARDEN: Security experts first recommend installing antivirus protection software. Individuals and network administrators also need to regularly download the latest software updates from their operating system manufacturers. Users should delete attachments to e-mail, unless they have been alerted by the sender of an incoming downloadable file. Finally, firewalls, which are software and hardware barriers to intruders who try to seize control of computers, should be installed.

LARRY ROGERS: Unfortunately, the technology that we're being sold today requires an awful lot of care and feeding. To do it properly requires spending time; learning how to do it.

TOM BEARDEN: Time, effort and money. But when weighed against the losses caused by a total system failure, computer owners may find the investment to be modest indeed.

GWEN IFILL: More information on how to keep your computer safe, and a forum with cyber security experts is available on our website at pbs.Org.

CONVERSATION

GWEN IFILL: Finally tonight, a conversation with an author of a new book, and to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: The book is "Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times." The author is Studs Terkel. He's written 11 books of oral history, allowing ordinary Americans from all walks of life to tell their own stories through him. This latest book looks at how people survive difficult times in situations, and hold onto hopes.

Studs, it's great to see you.

STUDS TERKEL: Seeing you is wonderful, brings back memories of Chicago.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, this isn't quite an array of personalities and people from a bewildering set of walks of life. What's the connective thread that connects them all...

STUDS TERKEL: The connective thread is simply they are people brave, who are active, who are citizens in an open society called the United States of America. In short, they are activists, which is why we were born to begin with. "Hope Dies Last," the title I got from an old Mexican farm worker. She helped Caesar Chavez organize the farm workers. Her name was Jesse Delacruz. She was retired at the time from Fresno, California, and she said to me once, "When times are troubled and we're bewildering, we have a saying in Spanish: Esparanza muera al ultimo, "Hope Dies Last." And in a sense, these people represent that idea. These people are those to whom I pay tribute, activists they're called. And they've done stuff over and beyond their call of duty, which is something to be born, to live, to die. They're more than that. They want to have a meaning in the world. And as a result of their hope, the rest of us are imbued with a little hope. And they're a prophetic minority. See, the people I've talked about are those who have been a minority, and you've been egged and tomatoed and beaten up, and later on that which they have worked for have come to pass.

RAY SUAREZ: There are many people in this book who have tremendous reserves of patience, good humor, and a kind of peace, some of them at the end of long lives of these struggles that you mentioned.

STUDS TERKEL: Yeah.

RAY SUAREZ: Very little anger, very little rancor, very little willingness to get back at anybody.

STUDS TERKEL: Well, I think... see, I think that's always a bit of bitterness in everybody to some extent. But they have something else, that hope, the idea that we are thinking people. See, who was one of the first guys we know to have hope when this country was being born? It was Thomas Paine, who wrote "Common Sense." And Thomas Paine spoke of a new society, the United States of America where a cat can look at a king, a commoner can tell the king to "bugger off," or a guy can tell the president to "bugger off-- if you're wrong, you're wrong." And that's what this country was about. The nature of dissent being part of the nature of a person's being, if you feel the guy who is your chieftain is wrong. And so Tom Paine was one of the first. He's the one who was saying-- I'll try and paraphrase something he said in "Common Sense"-- fear was pursued around the world, people were afraid to think, reason was equated with rebellion, until sometime people finally could find themselves, and find themselves and find that they are kindred to the rest of the world. And that was an inhuman idea that the rest of the world is the enemy that was surrounded by axes of evil rather than rather than axis. And so this is what the country was about. We have to change the whole world to raise the world. And that's what these people in our time do. There were the abolitionists back during the slavery days. They took beatings. They were a hopeful people, too.

RAY SUAREZ: What keeps you at this? You've won many of the greatest awards and recognitions of men of letters and women of letters in this country, including the Pulitzer Prize, the humanities medal. You could kick back and just enjoy the compliments that I'm sure come your way every day as you make your way around Chicago by bus. Why keep at it?

STUDS TERKEL: If I did, I would check out tomorrow. When someone says, "When are you going to retire?" I say, "When you say that, smile." No, I check out while I'm working. For example, wouldn't it be dramatic if I were to check out... I'm 91 years old, right, I've had a pretty good run of it. If I were to check out right now, pretty good headlines tomorrow, it could make the show.

RAY SUAREZ: Definitely. You'd be the lead, I think.

STUDS TERKEL: But the point is, I have an epitaph all set for me: "Curiosity did not kill this cat." And basically that's what it is, I'm curious. Do I have diminished hopes to some extent? Yes, I do. My hopes diminish. But I'm quoting an old English journalist friend of mine, Jimmy Cameron, who said, "My hopes have diminished but my curiosity remains." And so my curiosity... my hope, by the way, is not diminished, but at the moment it's taken a whacking or two.

RAY SUAREZ: Are there some people who you think would really stick with the people who are watching this program if they got to know them, their stories that you'd want people to know out of this book?

STUDS TERKEL: I think out of this book would come... out of this book would come hope to a great many people, because they have it. Almost ten million protested the preemptive strike, February 15 of year 2003. That was a moment of hope. And those people who feel that are imbued with it, you see. This is the aspect of... what I'm worried about is a national Alzheimer's Disease. That is, there weren't no yesterday. There was a Depression years ago, and the same ones who say there's too much regulation, too much big government, are the ones whose daddies' and granddaddies' butts were saved by government regulation after the crash of 1929. They prayed to the government of Franklin D. and the New Deal, "save us," and it did. And so we have seemed to have forgotten that, or being not taught that. That's the part that gets me, this national Alzheimer's Disease. So all my books, certainly this one, tries to recreate a memory of what was, and what is, and what can be. Basically, that's what it's about.

RAY SUAREZ: The book is "Hope Dies Last." Louis Studs Terkel, always good to talk to you.

STUDS TERKEL: Thank you very much, Ray. Great seeing you again.

RECAP

GWEN IFILL: Again, the major developments of the day: the U.S. Military and Iraqi civilians disagreed sharply over a major firefight on Sunday. The U.S. side reported killing dozens of insurgents. Iraqis said the soldiers fired at civilians. And Israeli and Palestinian activists launched an unofficial peace plan, in Geneva, Switzerland. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Thank you, and good night.