CHERYL CORLEY, host:
This is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Cheryl Corley, in for Farai Chideya.
On today's Roundtable, FBI Director Robert Mueller returns to Capitol Hill to explain why the agency needs special powers under the Patriot Act. And Ray Nagin says New Orleans still needs the National Guard.
Joining us on the panel are: E.R. Shipp, professor in journalism at Hofstra University School of Communication, John McWhorter, Manhattan Institute senior fellow in Public Policy, and Jeff Obafemi Carr, host of the radio show Freestyle. Thank you all for joining me today.
Mr. JEFF OBAFEMI CARR (Host, Freestyle): Thank you.
Mr. JOHN MCWHORTER (Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow and Public Policy): Thank you.
CORLEY: Well, FBI Director Robert Mueller is on Capitol Hill again today, speaking before the House Intelligence Committee. He's defending the agency's use of the Patriot Act to justify gathering telephone, e-mail and financial records without a judge's approval. And he told the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday that a problem with implementation of the act created the abuses -not the statute itself.
Now last week, Mueller took responsibility for the agency's misuse of the act. He said the FBI fell short in its obligation to tell Congress how often it used the act to gather information.
Folks, it appears a member - a lot of members of Congress appear skeptical. So what about his strategy, continuing to acknowledge that the FBI made mistakes, accepting the blame for the misuse of National Security letters to gather information? How likely is all of that to get Congress to keep the Patriot Act intact? Anyone?
Professor E.R. SHIPP (Journalism, Hofstra University School of Communication): Well, it seems likely that Congress will try to reign in some of the authority that the Justice Department has that the FBI has been using. As one senator said, the FBI has bungled this process very badly and has not wisely used the extra powers that was given as part of this post-9/11 rush to look for terrorists.
The FBI director, however, says that having the use of the National Security letters which does not require any oversight from a judge, for example, before wiretapping or checking to see which books you've checked out of the library or any of those things. He says that this is the bread and butter of their investigations, but I think that Congress is a bit skeptical.
Mr. MCWHORTER: And, of course, once something is said, it can be very hard to roll it back and it takes on some certain symbolic significances for any kind of repeal of the Patriot Act. A lawmaker would have to put themselves on the line. And I think for the same reason that the Democrats can only muster so much of a push towards, for example, cutting off funding for the war and making sure that it really has teeth.
Nobody would be - want to be responsible for taking away something called the Patriot Act with all of its responsible implications, and that would include Democrats. But obviously, the issue is how it's been implemented. And mistakes have been made, and that's not a surprise with this administration that the mistakes have been grievous.
But, I always at a certain amount of room in me for wondering whether just perhaps there are things that we don't know that will turn out to be things that motivated at least some of this secrecy. If those things never turn up, then I'm even more disappointed than I am now.
CORLEY: Mm-hmm. Jeff - go ahead, Jeff.
Mr. MCWHORTER: Just let - yeah, go ahead.
Mr. OBAFEMI CARR: What I was just going to say that it all comes down to an issue, I guess, of quality standards. And I think if you look at this like we're driving a car, it's kind of like getting a water pump put in and somebody telling you there, your car doesn't work. But you say, well, hey man, it wasn't the wrong water pump. It was the mechanic that just didn't attach it right.
Well, when your car doesn't work, it doesn't matter about that. You just want your car to run. And I think that this is one of those issues. They're saying that it's not necessarily of the system itself. It's just the people in the system.
But when you do an audit and you find it four out of 56 offices that you look at have 48 violations amongst themselves, and you could have possibly over 3,000 violations in all of the other offices, then I think that you need to look at the system itself.
Sometimes in situations - especially when we're talking about the Patriot Act and the National Security Letters - it's almost as if there is almost a chemotherapy approach to it. And that is that you just kind of blast everything with radiation, and you do kill some of the bad cells, but you end up killing the good fair - a fair share of the good cells, too.
So I think there's definitely going to have to be something fixed about this system, because there's something horribly wrong with it.
CORLEY: Well, when we talk about fixing the system, you have Robert Mueller, who is accepting responsibility. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has apologized as well. At this point, neither of them stepping down, although lawmakers have called for Gonzales to go. Is there going to be some kind of fall guy in this, or are we going to see heads going to roll?
Prof. SHIPP: Well, Gonzales is a most likely candidate, of course, and that's because of other things. It's because of the questionable firing of eight U.S. attorneys around the country, some of whom appeared to have been dismissed because of politics. So, and he also bungled - to use that word again - the investigation, and he gave misleading testimony when he went before Congress.
So, if anybody goes, it's more than likely to be Mr. Gonzales.
Mr. MCWHORTER: And he's present at every single mess up - I will put it as, instead of another word I'd like to use - that this administration gets caught in. But one little thing to toss in about the Patriot Act is this. When it first began, I think there was a certain skepticism among many of us smart people about it just because it was called the Patriot Act, and then, there's the Homeland Security Act. And I don't know about that.
It always rankled me a little bit, because what other country do we belong to? Why is that we smart people are so wary of the notion that somebody might be a patriot and we might legislate about it? That said, the way it's been implemented in this case is one of the lesser sides of the way our homeland -which is the only homeland we will ever have - does things.
CORLEY: I want to talk a little bit about a Southern part of our homeland, then. Down in New Orleans, where crime continues to be a problem, the city's had 40 killings this year and by some accounts, that's the highest homicide rate in the country.
Mayor Ray Nagin wants the National Guard and state police to stay in New Orleans through the end of this summer. But in order to do that, he'll need a new commitment from Governor Kathleen Blanco to make that happen. And a spokesperson for the governor says there hasn't been a decision about extending the stay of the National Guard, and that assessment will come closer to the end of June.
CORLEY: Should the security force stay? Should New Orleans continue to have state troopers and National Guards there?
Prof. SHIPP: Well, Nagin is in a position to know that better than we are. He knows how decimated the New Orleans Police Department was after the hurricanes. And he knows their capability of keeping up with the crime that's increased since the hurricanes, apparently.
So he's in a better position to judge. But it seems very strange that the government seems so tepid about whether she will commit 60 state troopers and 300 National Guards members to remain there. So there's something going on between the governor and the mayor.
Mr. MCWHORTER: The police (unintelligible)…
Mr. OBAFEMI CARR: There's been something going on between the governor and the mayor for a long time, going back to the beginning of the crisis itself. But, I think that it only makes sense to keep the force in place there for security purposes and just stabilization purposes.
It's interesting, they'll say closer to that time the governor is going to re-evaluate the situation. I don't think that you have to wait. If Nagin determines that that is needed now, then I think we need to - they need to go with that in the state - in New Orleans.
It's also interested to point out that if we need 22,000 more troops to help stabilize Iraq, then I think 360 people to help stabilize the city that was devastated in our own country is not an unreasonable request to make.
CORLEY: How can they said - go ahead, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Mr. MCWHORTER: I was just going to say, I think that we also have to keep in mind that the career criminals that we're talking about - many of whom have returned to New Orleans from other places after the dispersal.
The kinds of people were, for no fault to their own, they really do need external control. There's an increasing literature about these sorts of lost men who dropped out of high school. And if you talk to them, you'd find that they really don't have any sense of future or purpose beyond what they're doing right now for all sorts of reasons.
And it's a quite foreign way of thinking to we smart people again. But these are people who really - in this situation, where there's a kind of wild West frontier atmosphere - they really are going to keep doing the sorts of things they're doing, and obviously, local forces can't contain them. So the National Guard is the only real option.
CORLEY: You are listening to NPR's NEWS & NOTES. I'm Cheryl Corley, and with me on today's Roundtable: E.R. Shipp, professor in journalism at Hofstra University School of Communication, John McWhorter is the Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow in Public Policy, and Jeff Obafemi-Carr is the host of the radio show Freestyle.
Well, in South Carolina, some state lawmakers are debating a controversial bill that would reduce an inmate's prison term by as much as 180 days if they donate an organ or bone marrow. A state Senate subcommittee supports the creation of a organ and tissue donation program for inmates, but lawmakers, as you might imagine, are a little divided over this proposal.
Now, more than 90,000 Americans need an organ transplant, but what do you guys think about this type of exchange?
Prof. SHIPP: They need quality transplants.
Mr. MCWHORTER: I think this is…
Mr. OBAFEMI CARR: There is quality transplants in prison, I'm sure.
CORLEY: Who thinks this is a wonderful idea?
Mr. MCWHORTER: Oh, very important, because it's a kind of check on an unpleasant reality which is so very many people who are in prison for a long time are there for reasons that I suspect that all four of us decry, which is low-level drug offenses.
If we can have a band-aid at this point which would allow a significant number of those people to not spend so much time in prison away from their children and learning how to become prisoners again, then I think it's great until we have a larger effort to reduce these draconian sentencing measures across the country.
Prof. SHIPP: Well, I think that's not the way to do it. These guys are some of the same kind of guys you just said were coming back to New Orleans. They're going to be lost and probably aren't going to take care of their children, so that isn't a good argument, I don't think.
But I would be worried about the coercive nature of this policy, that people might do anything if they're desperate enough to get out of prison. And I'd also be worried about the quality of the organs and the bone marrow where you have a population with a high incidence of HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis and other diseases.
Mr. OBAFEMI CARR: I'm kind of in the middle on that because I would agree that, of course, you're going to have to have - if this were to somehow find its way into law past the issue of valuable consideration in the Transplant Act, I think that you'll definitely have screenings that would allow you to determine just as you would if you were in a regular hospital environment, if you had a normal organ donor, which organs were usable, et cetera.
But I think that I would agree with John in that most of the offenders that we talk about today are very, very low-level guys. They're not people who are putting bullets in people's brains all the time. They are people who were caught with a vial or two of drugs in their pockets, and with a three-strike law or something like that they're locked up for a long time and just taking up space.
But I think that it's innovative, and everything in America to be very frank is for sale or barter. If you have a needed commodity, you can make a deal. The real issue here, though, is that if people donated more organs and people stepped up and signed their driver license and did that kind of thing, we wouldn't even be having this conversation because we wouldn't be in a place where so many people are dying every year, 6,500 or more dying every year while waiting on a transplant.
So if you have an opportunity perhaps this could be part of true rehabilitation, teaching people to give to keep other people alive. And yes, sure, you're going to get something out it, but why don't most of us do something in America? Because of self-interest.
CORLEY: Well…
Prof. SHIPP: Altruistic.
CORLEY: Well, the sponsor of this bill says he believes prisoners would be pleased knowing that they've saved a life, but there are critics who say that the federal law may not allow the state to shave 180 days off a prison term. So what do you think about it in conjunction with that? I know you say that - some of you agree that selling organs might be the way to go, but prison term as opposed to…
Mr. MCWHORTER: Well, it's obviously - it's probably not going to happen. I don't think there's enough muscle behind it especially if it's one state. But it's something that's worth getting out into the discussion for the simple reason that there are too many people in prison for small reasons.
And as for what they're going to do when they come out, and I certainly take E.R.'s point, we also need more prisoner reentry programs to address that part. Now, whether that's going to happen, that's another question.
CORLEY: Well, on a bittersweet note, we have Life magazine, the publication that introduced us to the likes of photographer Gordon Parks. And the magazine will print its final issue on April 20th. Parent company Time Incorporated announced it's going to stop publishing the magazine that's been a weekly newspaper insert since 2004, and instead it's going to feature images from Life on the Internet.
You all - I grew up reading Life magazine. How much of a loss is this?
Mr. MCWHORTER: Not a loss…
Prof. SHIPP: Not a loss.
Mr. MCWHORTER: I mean, I remember looking at Life magazine…
Mr. OBAFEMI CARR: Not anymore.
Mr. MCWHORTER: …when I was young and you looked at those beautiful pictures…
CORLEY: Yeah.
Mr. MCWHORTER: …and it was a time when we didn't have any computers. Now we open up our computers and we see the same beautiful pictures and it's no longer something that has to be put on a page anymore. We get the same experience, and so naturally that physical object is no longer as important.
I'm having a very hard time getting used to the fact the printed page is less and less important in all areas of our lives because I like books, the page, I like smelling paper. But it's a different era. Technology has made a lot of it obsolete.
Prof. SHIPP: And, you know, I've not even felt the desire to read Life since it became an insert in Sunday newspapers. It's just not that valuable a commodity anymore. We do have that nostalgic feel for what it used to represent, but that's no longer the case. And as John is saying, we can still find some of these images on the Internet. We can still go to the library and look at all copies of Life and look and some other magazines. But I think this is probably a wise business decision.
CORLEY: Well, this is the latest of several magazines that have ceased printing issues as people do go to the Internet. So is this just typically a sign of the times or what do you make of this?
Mr. OBAFEMI CARR: I think it's a sign of the times, definitely. Publishing is a tough business. I published a newspaper for 11 years, and when I had to make the decision to not do that anymore it really, really hurt. You hate it because people lose jobs. The population loses a voice in many ways. We know that we're transferring now. We're transitioning into an Internet-based society now, so we will miss some things in that transition. And I too am very much a fan of the written word and the page itself.
But I'm also - in that - with that knowledge, I'm kind of excited that there will be a lot more online, especially access to photos and the work of Gordon Parks, another great photographer from Life, that we'll be able to now access on a whole new level. So you take some and you lose some.
CORLEY: Yeah. I was going to ask you that. E.R., you talked about how you had kind of stopped reading it since it had become an insert; will you visit it while it's online?
Prof. SHIPP: Oh, I would love to see some of these images because we're told that most of them were never published. So for someone who's interested not only in journalism but in history, I would love to be able to have access to some of these images and the stories behind them. How lovely.
CORLEY: All right. Well, thank you so much. E.R. Shipp is professor in journalism at Hofstra University School of Communication, John McWhorter is the Manhattan Institute senior fellow in public policy, and Jeff Obafemi Carr is host of the radio show "Freestyle." He was in Nashville, Tennessee, at Spotland Productions.
Thank you all so much.
Mr. OBAFEMI CARR: Thank you.
Mr. MCWHORTER: Thank you.
Prof. SHIPP: Thank you.
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CORLEY: And as always, if you'd like to comment on any of the topics you've heard on our Roundtable, you can call us at 202-408-3330.
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CORLEY: Next up on NEWS & NOTES, New Jersey legislation helped one lesbian couple take a big step in their relationship.
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