coming up -- assessing the role of religion in the future of egypt. also, the ethical debate over wikileaks -- the government's responsibility for national security versus the people's right to know. also, gospel singer george beverly shea, who is receiving a lifetime achievement award at the grammy's at the age of 102.

welcome. i'm bob abernethy. it's good to have you with us. there was jubilation in the streets of egypt friday, after president hosni mubarak finally decided to step down. he handed power to the military's supreme council. the council pledged to meet protestors' demands for a peaceful transfer of authority that will lead to a free democracy. menwhile, batcontinues over the role religion could play in a new government. kim lawton and i examine the week's dramatic developments in egypt with geneive abdo. she's a longtime middle east reporter and author of the book "no god but god: egypt and the triumph of islam."

she's a fellow and analyst at the century foundation. and national security network. welcome. >> thank you very much. >> geneive, one way or another, there's going to be a new gornment ingypt what can we say about the degree of religious influence that we can expect in that government? >> well, that, of course, bob, is the question everyone's been asking. and i think that there's no doubt, i mean, as everyone has been reading about this big organization, the muslim brotherhood, that they will have a role in the government. i mean, there's no doubt about that. >> and that's different, right? i mean, they've been not having an influence, and so this would be a change? >> yes. i mean, they've been a banned party, so this is a huge, huge change in egyptian history. and hey've bee in gyptince the 1920s, so this will be their first time to actually enter government. >> there was a poll that came

out this week taken by phone in cairo and alexandria asking questions about these things. and a very low percentage, 15%, said they approved of the muslim brotherhood. has there been a change since years ago in that as a new generation has come up? >> we, i think that the astic that people that have used is 20%, generally, that if there were free elections today, 20% of egyptians would vote for brotherhood candidates, but i think that could be sort of an underestimation. >> but so what? who would that mean in a government if the muslim brotherhood or any strongly islamist group had influence? >> well, there are a lot of parties in egypt. there are a lot of political parties, as we all know. some of them are secular, some are nationalist. the brotherhood is only one of them. hower, the brotherhood iver well-organized, and they've been around for a long time. they're a social organization.

they run hospitals. they do a lot of sort of social work in egypt. so they are very, very influential. >> but in terms of policies, what would it mean -- a policy, for instance, of egypt toward israel or toward the united states? >> the brotherhood's position today, and actually one of their leaders has been on television answering that question and he's been reluctant to answer, he says, we don't know yet, let's not talk about foreign policy. but historically, the position ofhe movement has been against the peace agreement with israel. >> one of the issues i've been interested to watch is different representatives from the muslim brotherhood this week were sort of doing a western "pr" campaign, and many of them said we want to have democracy but we don't want it to look like american democracy per se. and they said they do want to see islamic values somehow incorporated into a new government. but i think that's what has people wondering, well, what does that mean in terms of everyday life in egypt? >> yes, and i think that this is something.

i mean, if you can imagine, even for the brotherhood, i don't know how they could answer this question because they've never been in power. but i think that what they want, and they've been very clear, they are for democracy, but as you say, not a western-style democracy, and they want, whatever government the new government comes to be in egypt, they want it to reflect the values of the society. >> what does that mean, "the values of society"? does that mean the same as strongly islamic values? >> well, i'll just give you an example, okay? when the brotherhood wrote a draft party platform three years ago, they said that they wanted a group of scholars to vet laws passed by the parliament to make sure that they conformed with islamic values. >> for instance, relating to women? >> relating to women, relating maybe even to, you know, what students learn in school,

relating to whether women wear headscarves. they have said they won't make veiling mandatory. they have said this. >> would an islamist gornment or a government with strong influence from the muslim brotherhood, would it be different as far as attitudes towards the united states are concerned? >> i do think so. i think that we have to be very careful not to be alarmists at this point, but i do think that not only the brotherhood but many egyptians actually believe that they should be sort of not so reliant on the aid that they receive from the united states. they want to be more in charge of their own stin >> there's been a lot of different countries that have tried to incorporate islamic values and democracy. what are the challenges? you know, some people say, is democracy compatible with islam? is this a new experimental point? >> i think it really is.

and if we, even though this has been written about so much this week, i think if we take the two models we know of right now, iran and turkey, i think that we are looking at a future egypt that resembles turkey much more than it resembles iran. and turkey, let's face it, i mean turkey's be very successful. they have a vibrant economy, and they have so far been able to walk this tightrope. and i know that that's something -- >> so we would not be looking at a theocracy. >> definitely not. i don't think -- that is definitely not coming to egypt. >> what about the other religions in egypt -- the copts, for instance, 10 million of them? what's the outlook for them in a new kind of government? >> the copts, as we all know from reading the papers, have been the target of a lot of violence iegyp and think that we know also that some of this violence has come from the state security services and the forces. so if there is a new state, presumably there will more religious tolerance.

i mean, we can only hope so. just today, for example, there was a report that the current interior minister may have been involved in the attack on a church in alexandria. >> we have to leave it there. geneive abdo, many thanks. >> thank you, nice to be here. we he a speciareport today on the ethics of wikileaks, especially last year's publication of hundreds of thousands of classified government communications. on the one side, the government's responsibility to protect national security. on the other, the public's right to know. do some leaks do good? or, when confidential reports are published, can lives be put at risk, or lost, and trusts broken? and how can anyone deciding what to publish be sure no serious damage will result? lucky severson reports.

>> come on, fire! >> roger. >> it was the disclosure of this classified video in 2010 of a u.s. military helicopter shooting civilians and journalists in baghdad that drew the world's attention to the anti-secrecy organization called wikileaks. it was an embarrassment for the pentagon, followed by the leak of thousand of cables about the wars in iraq and afghanistan. then there was the release of u.s. diplomatic cables amounting to 250,000 documents containing 240 million words. the reaction in washington echoed the view of former ambassador ed rowell. >> horror, horror. and i can tell you a lot of my colleagues -- i'm retired -- but currently colleagues in the state department felt the same sense of horror. and it was a feeling that was shared from the top to the bottom. >> the general feeling was that national security interests

outweighed the public's right to know and that what wikileaks did was morally and ethically wrong, and maybe illegal. the attorney general launched an investigation, one that deeply troubles stephen kohn, executive director of the national whistleblowers center. >> i think the prosecution of wikileaks under the espionage act would be completely irresponsible and a violation of first amendment rights. >> reporter: kohn says it would be unethical for government employees to keep some things secret, that it's their duty to report wrongdoing. >> if you're looking at, say, the name of a confidential nformant, ere's real no public need to know that. if you're looking at, say, the military's shooting down a journalist, well, there's tremendous public need to know about that. >> reporter: one of the questions is, who is going decide what ought to be released? is it somebody who is familiar with all the arguments back and forth about how this relationship is going to play out, or is it somebody who is a

self-appointed observer sitting in some remote place? >> reporter: steven aftergood heads the project on government secrecy at the federation of american cientists. >> if there is a problem with wikileaks, in my mind, it's that they are not sufficiently responsible in what they put out, and they do not distinguish between what serves the public interest and what does not. >> reporter: "the new york times" officials say they felt an enormous ethical obligation to report the wikileaks cables responsibly. david sanger is the chief washington correspondent for the paper. he was one of as many as 30 staffers who sifted through the wikileaks documentbefore "the times" plished excpts. >> we made judgments about which ones of those we thought were legitimate and which ones were not. for example, we were perfectly willing, and thought it was very important, that we remove from the cables the name of dissidents, the name of sources,

the name of mid-level officials who had talked to the united states and who might suffer some punishment in their home countries for that. >> reporter: steven aftergood says, even though his mission is to promote transparency in government, he thinks wikileaks has gone too far. >> there is no certain knowledge that anyone has been physically harmed by the leaks. at the same time, if you or i were one of those individuals named in the documents, i think we would be looking over our shoulder for many years to come. >> the issue is, are there things which are justifiably secret and ought to be kept secret? and there are. >> reporter: rowell has served as ambassadoto bolivia, portul and luxembourg. he says one danger is that the consequences of leaks are often difficult to predict. >> in south africa, when f.w. deklerk declared the end of apartheid, mandela was released and everything changed.

the preamble to that was more than two years of negotiations between the anc and representatives of the president's office, and if those negotiations had ever become known publicly, the whole thing would have collapsed. >> reporter: but "times" correspondent sanger says some leaks may have beneficial results. >> the publication of those cables, nolargelin "the times" but elsewhere, helped, by the accounting of some american diplomats, spark the uprisings in tunisia, which have then led to others around the middle east. >> reporter: he says wikileaks disclosures have shed light on china's attitude toward the u.s., on north korea's secret exportation of missile technology, and on arab leaders' views of iran. >> in our coverage, you read about the king of saudi arabia telling the united states to cut off the head of the snake when it came to dealing with iran and its nuclear program.

by getting that information out about iran, you've now seen the arab press become more willing to write about the iranian nuclear program, which previously they wouldn't do. >> i think leaks in general, and wikileaks in particular, are a response to a real problem. the problem is that the government keeps too much information secret without a valid reason. >> since 9/11 and even before, they have grossly abused secrecy, first off by making many employees and contractors have clearances when they really don't need it, and second, by stamping anything and everything classified as secret, top secret, whatever. it's very simple for any agency just to stamp something confidential or secret and prevent public disclosure. >> not only is there all that classified information, there

are now approximately 2.5 million people who have security clearances to access to those secret documents, including thousands of new private contractors hired by the government. add it all together and it is very difficult to keep a secret in washington. >> the policy lesson i would like to see drawn from the whole episode is that we need to be more much discriminating. only those things that are genuinely sensitive ought to be protected as such, and everything else should more or less be out there. >> stephen kohn says there is no protection for national security whistleblowers, and there needs to be. he questions the morality of the government's focus on the messenger while seemingly ignoring the message. >> there were no prosecutions for the people who lied about the intelligence that caused the war in iraq. they just gave them a pass. the people who did torture, they gave a pass. but people who want to blow the whistle on those incidents, they're coming down hard on and throwing the book.

>> the individual suspected of pilfering classified information and passing it on to wikileaks is private first-class bradley manning, who has been held apparently in solitary confinement for several months in pre-trial detention. >> at the end of the day, when the hysteria calms down, they must apply the first amendment to their investigation or prosecution of mr. manning or their investigation and prosecution of wikileaks itself. >> many agree it will be very difficult to prosecute wikileaks if it acted only as a publisher. few expect that organizations like wikileaks are going away. >> there is a void that has formed as a result of the downsizing, so to speak, of journalism. where there were relationships between government officials and beat reporters, there is now a vacuum. wikileaks is one of the things that has stepped in to fill that

vacuum. >> the person who founded wikileaks, julian assange, says his goal is to expose unethical behavior by governments and organizations. others question his motives. >> he believed that the publication of this material wou embarrass the uted states and make public a huge gap between what america says it is doing and what it is doing around the world. in fact, i think it had the opposite effect. i think that we learned from this that american diplomats by and large are doing what they say they are doing. >> reporter: for now, the investigation of wikileaks continues, and so do the leaks. for "religion and ethics newsweekly," i'm lucky severson in washington. in other news, president obama named 12 prominent religious and community leaders to be part of his advisory council on faith-based and

neighborhood partnerships. of those whose religious affiliations were identified, all were christians or jews. the white house says more names may be forthcoming. the term of the previous 25-member council expired almost a year ago. the group advises the administration on issues of particular interest to the faith community. house republicans unveiled their proposals for deep new cuts in the federal budget, and religious groups had mixed reactions. the proposed package includes scaling back on many domestic and foreign aid programs. several faith-based groups raised concerns about the impact on poor people both in the u.s. and around the world. religious groups were divided over the push to eliminate funding for family planning programs. also in washington, relatives of seven iranian baha'i leaders currently in prison in iran lobbied for the

release of their family members. the seven baha'i men and women were arrested in 2008. they were accused of espionage and spreading propaganda against islam. baha'i representatives say the charges are false. in august of last year, each of the seven was sentenced to 20 years in prison, although some reports say the sentences were reduced to ten years. baha'is say they are frequently persecuted in iran, where their religion was founded. in india, a huge gathering at the narmada river for a three-day event described as a homecoming for hindus. it was organized by an indian nationalist political party and created some controversy as opponents accused the organizers of using the rally to try to convert local christians and others to hinduism. the palestinian authority has asked the united nations to add the church of the nativity in bethlehem to its list of the world's most important cultural

sites. the nearly 1,700-year-old church located at the traditional birthplace of jesus could become the first place in the palestinian territories to be included on the u.n.'s world heritage list. no other historic sites in the area has been added because the u.n. does not currently recognize an independent palestinian state. on our calendar this week, monday is valentine's day, named for two st. valentines who were martyred in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. . valentine's day was not associated with romantic love until the middle ages when geoffrey chaucer and others popularized stories about st. valentine. also this week, buddhists will celebrate nirvana day on tuesday. it marks the death of the buddha at the age of 80, about 2,500 years ago. and on wednesday, some muslims will celebrate mawlid an nabi, or the birthday of the prophet mohammed.

at this weekend's 53rd annual grammy awards, the recording academy honors the best in the music indust. among this year's recipients is legendary gospel singer george beverly shea, who is receiving a lifetime achievement award. beginning in 1947, shea was the featured soloist at billy graham crusades. last week, he turned 102. kim lawton spoke with him. >> reporter: at 102, george beverly shea still sings as often as he ca he ys sinng ian impornt part of his spiritual practice. >> you know, you keep tuned up with the lord when you love the songs that are written about him. >> reporter: shea and his wife, karlene,

live in montreat, north carolina, near their long-time friend, billy graham. a canadian pastor's son, shea says music was always part of his life. he was working at a christian radio station in chicago in the 1940s when his baritone voice caught graham's attention. ♪ i see the stars i hear the rolling thunder♪ mr. graham phoned me, and then wrote me and asked me in 1947 to become a part of his team. "sing a little quiet song before i speak." ♪ it is jesus >> reporter: that began a relationship that has lasted more than 60 years. shea sang at almost every graham crusade. >> please welcome with me a young man, 97 years young,

george beverly shea. ♪ it goes beyond the highest star and reaches to♪ >> reporter: shea says it was a privilege to be on the graham team. he says his favorite part of the crusades was watching all the people stream forward after graham gave the altar call. >> your head is supposed to be bowed in prayer, but i like to say i peeked a little bit, and i saw those thousands of people all during those 63 years coming forward. >> reporter: according to guinness world records, shea has sung before more people than anyone else, an estimated combined live audience of 220 million people. >> they didn't come to hear me. they came to hear billy graham. ♪ >> reporter: during his 80-year career, shea recorded more than 70 albums and wrote several popular worship songs. he was nominated ten times for a grammy, and won in 1965. he'll accept the lifetime achievement award along with

several other music greats, including julie andrews, dolly parton, and the ramones. >> someone said, "why have you been doing this all these years?" i put my thumb up to the air toward heaven, and i said i've been doing it for him. >> reporter: shea says his faith keeps him going, and he sees every day as a gift. >> i don't know when heaven will loom upfor , but we he to look forward to it. i hope there will be an organ up there to play. oh, boy, i love organ music. >> i'm kim lawton reporting. >> george beverly shea at 102. finally, need some help figuring out what sins you may need to confess? well, now there's an app for that. a new mobile web application for iphones and ipads is designed to

prepare catholics for confession. penints can download guideto help them examine their consciences and, for example, determine if they have violated any of the ten commandants. vatican officials stressed the app should not be considered a substitute for actual, in-person confession to a priest, just preparation. that's our program for now. i'm bob abernethy. there's more on our website, including more of kim lawton's interview with grammy winner george beverly shea. you can comment on all of our stories and share them. audio and video podcasts are also available. you can follow us on facebook and twitter, find us on youtube, and watch us anytime, anywhere on smartphones and iphones with our mobile web app. join us at pbs.org. as we leave you, george beverly shea singing one of his favorite

hymns, "the old rugged cross." ♪ i will cling to your rugged cross and exchange it someday for a cross♪ major funding for "religion and ethics newsweekly" --