gwen:he loss of a liberal lion plus the justice partment versus the c.i.a. anthe good news-bad new conomy. tonight, "washington week." thousands of morners paid reects today to a man who lived the past d looked to the futre. >> this november, the torch wilbe passed againto a new generation ofamericans. >> ideas anideals are tamped on sores of laws and millions lives. gwen: ted kennedy's assing was not unexpect but it leaves a void. on domestiissues like heah ca. >> my ho is that this will maybe cause people to ke a

eath, step back and start talking with eachother again inore civil tones about wha needs to be do. en: and on biprtisanship. >> he was ner small. and in the process of hi doing, he made everybody he worked with igger. gw: asmassachusett and the tionmourns, what omes next? in other news, atorney genera eric hoder goes toeto-toe withc.i.a. director leeon panetta or detainee interrogation >> treatening a prisoner wit electricrill isn't torture i'm not se what is. gwen: howfar will the inestigation go? and as fed chairman bn rnanke wins re-apointment, stocks gn but defici proctions have slowed. is thre a silver linin anywhere? coverg the week, david broder of "he washington po," karen tumulty of time"magazine,

pete williams of nbc news, and dad wessel of "the wal street journal >> celebrating 40 years of journalistic excellenc ve from ournation's capal, this is "wasington week wit gwen ifill" produced i sociation with naonal journal. rporate funding for "washingtoweek" is provided by -- it createshalf the electricity that fls our dreams. we have more of than anyplace on earth. d we're working on cleaner ys to use oal every d. there's re information at nmarg. >>orporate funding for "washinon week" is provided by bing, majr unding for "shington week" is also prided by the annenberg foundation,he compragse for public broadcasting -- he corporation for publ broadcasting and by ntributions to your pbs station from viewerslike you.

thank you. once again, ve fom washington, moderor gwen ifill. gwen:good eveni. edward m. kenedy's passing this week unleshed a torent f mournin and analysis. scorse oredemption, accomplishme, legacy and inritance have dminated the trbts all ooted in the --the tributes all rooed in the 77 years onean spent on earth, 46 of hem in the united states senate. kennedy's caes were fiercely liberal suchs his opposition to a law forbdding gay marria. >> inthe constitution the united states, ang with the bill of rights, e have no ever writte prejudice and we ha never written bgotry int theconstitution an we should no do it now in te nited statesenate. gwen: and many of hisstands enraged republicans as whenhe opposed conservave judicial appointments of repuican appointees. >> the ameran people deserve

better. hey deserve competency nd th deserve thefacts. in baeball, it's tee strikes, you're ou. what is it for the sect tear of defse? -- for thesecretary of defense? gwen: no matter whih side o the dividene occupied there was little questn the senior setor from massachusetts was a consequential lmaker. david brer, you first met him in the springof 1960. so you get to star by telli us over time, what kin of legislator d ted kennedy become? >>e was 28 years ld in beckl west viginia, campaigning for his bi brother. an mobile handsome. -- and possibly hadsome. an he as not very preposseing. he didn'know a lot at that poi. he was a chamer and talked wonderfully well wth the fols that he et. t he didn't have a ot to

say. as time went on, he scholed himself and becameone of the great legislators i tink of o time. gwen: he waalso one of the eat legislators who dealt wi some of the great setcks that would have killed another career. one of them of ourse being chappaquiddick. and the her setbacks, he had decades in which he was not really that well regarded. that is right. his pressional life was very disciplined. he haa great staff a he worked them very well. t his private plife -- prite life was anything but sciplined. he was wild. he was t of control much of the time. until he foun his wife, vickie, ansettled don. en: ted kennedy bviously got the ver of "time" magazine s his passing not justabout this man buabout the great work ich he not jst on health care but ealth care was his big unfinished work

where does tha stand? >> ell, it wa as he hd said, the great causof his life ted kennedy introducd his first universal coverage bil all the way ack in 1970. that is how lo he had been rking on this isse. and he -- hi dram of universal cerage died in 1994 wh the clinton health are plan. but you know what? he was back theery next year trying to o incementally wha he couldn't do inone piece of legislation. and he had great, geat hopes for the ama health reform bill. what does his passing mean? it's really hard to sa. the most immediate impact is the fact that no the sente does n have 60 dmocrats. if the caucus hangs together, it doesn't have eough votes to ercome a filibuer. and we hear people like senor dodd coming into the program saying, well, may in will engder in the enate a new sirit and everybody will put aside tir ideological

differenceand do this as a trute to senator kennedy. that's not really the sene i know. politicians don usually cut their dea and cast their votes with someby else's lecy in mind. >> can i as a question about that? i've beenpuzzled kowing this was going toappen massachuses didn't change its law soonr. the one -- they changed a couple of years ago sohat mitt romney, the governor, couldn't appoina successor to a vacant senat seat and now u can't have a succeor until there's an elecion. y didn't they change ts sooner and are they ing to do it now? >> well, i thnk, pete, because the didn't want to seem tbe brushing kennedy off the scene. and they wanted to wait ntil it was almost th en. a then he sent hat letter asking them, pleae make the change back. and you think that ill happen n? >> i think it's likelyo haen now. yougot a democratic legislature. and a demcratic governor. and they would li to fi

at seat. karen, when kenned passes, the mmittee chairmanship opens up on the seate health committee. is chris dd going to take that? d how does that make halth care more likely a how does it me financial reform mor or lessikely? >> it's interting. chris dodd is -- s in an intereing position because he did take ver in ed kennedy's stead the health, education and labor and pensions committee. but he's also the chairman as you said of the bankin committee. and this is gog to be a big decision for him. and on top o this, he is facing wha could the most difficult re-eleion battle in the country next yr. so i think at this oint, it's impoible to predict precisey what he's going o do. but there's -- there's certainlalways been a lot of nse in the senate that there's nothing that d kennedy would likeo have seen more than to se his dear frnd, chris dod, take his life's work to the inish lne. >> unableto do thekind of compromising that teddy s able to do.

is there anybody in t senate who comes closeto being te legislatorhat ted kennedy was? >> not in the same way. there are people o can mak a deal on very specific subject. bu kennedy who had the knack of dealing with republican democrats, on a whole ariety of isses. i an, we think of him as a legislator on ealth care. but his touch was on so many other subjes, immigration and law reform. and youcan't keep uwith all the things at he was invlved with. gw: when you think about civil rights, or instance, we know that he was involved in voting rights act. but sism rights tohim ws lso -- but civil rights to him was also title ne for women sports andpposing the efense of marrge amendment and immigrati. and even minimum wageto him

seemed a sism rght issue nd talked about health careas a right, not a privige. and ren mentioned this idea of incrementalism nd how hard has been working at it ove the years. does that apply also to these other ssues, these other billslaws, whichnow havehis name on them? yes. and he was alwys one who kep his eye on the ultate objective. but was willinto advance it to hatever extenhe could do. >> and i think partly that's becse of the 10 presidents that he seed under as the senato five of them were republans. so ted kennedy had to learnto get ings done in environmen that were not necessary friendly teitory. certainlduring the reagan years. were very producve years for t kennedy. but it was always by going across the aisle d findng that replican vote, that repuican co-sponsor that could get the bill one. gwen: thlegacy of the kendys is so huge. and it'snow becom that they

arthis incredibly stauchly liberal familythat-- big l, liberal faily, that said as ck kemp used to say, would set out to actually transform the rld toward the lft. is that what it alys was the case? >> no. i mean, the ather, je keedy, was a vey conservative democrat who broke th f.d.r. in spectacular faion. jo kennedy, much loved, ut was t a very lberal snator. heas very cautious. and really had to be pushed into civil rights action, for example. robert kennedy mo so. and ihink in retrospet, my guess is that te kenedy took his inspiration mre fro robert kennedy an from his older brohers. >> chris dodd said at the wake fo ted kennedy th one of the reasons he was so sucessful is

that people iked hm. w that the key to h ability to workith members of other parties? cause certainly other senators tried to dothat. other senatorsave served s long orlonger and otr nators are knowledgeable. was the kennedy name or what was it hat made him so ae to work with her senators and carry them along? >> onltwo other senators in history serv longer thanted kennedy. strom thmond and robert byrd. part of it was ongevity. he came from an era in the senate where people did t alon where people wee iends. they coud be adversaes on legislation but they ultately cod put those kinds of tings aside. a man known for mallgestures foremembering your children's nam and for gifts a small kindnesses that i think meanta lot to his olleagues. >> i have no idea how in that busy life that he led that he managed to carve ut time to do so many acts persal

nerosity for so ma people. i wrote bout this when -- a the outset f his llness. and i was just flooded with more examples of things that d kennedy hd done himse. not sending sobody else to o it. for other people. >> -- gwen: who lds that torch he was uique in his liberalism and abilitto reach across the aisle, who ds it? he said when he enorsed barck obama that was passing the torch to hi, but it's not really quite the se, is it? >> it' interestingbecause i wasackstage at the endorsement when ted kennedy diendorsebarack obama in january. and i askedhim, i said, so your enorsement, what does it mean? it to help himget elected or are u thinking beyond that? anhe said no, i'm thnking beyondthis.

because see in barack oama meone who i believe can bring people togethe and he sad i really thin that if we're going to get aything done, we ne somebody who can bring peopleogether. gwen: is that wha you think barack obama following rough on so far? see the issuethat he is facing right now. is he th-- the challen the administrations facing especily on health care. daede. >> i think his gestures t the begiing were sincere. to try to deal wih people across the aisle. but he has enountered an almo complely hostile republin party. and at this point, he's under great pressure from the democratic left t jus go ahead and tr to ram things through with democratic votes wen: we're going to alk a little bit more about someof the challenges faing the president. 's ending his vacation a day rly to deliver th eulogy t satuday's funeral. but hile he was away this week, weegan to see signsof

the first public rist to devop within the obama administration. the spute is over an issue the whithouse vowed to leave behind whether he bush administrati overstepped when ci.a. operatives grilled suspected terroristsor information. attorneyeneral eric holder has appointed a prosecutor to investigate legations of abuse. c.a. director leon panetta objected and in the d, evybody seemed to unhappy, pete. >> they did. beuse something some said he went too far and this has been explored. something he didn't far enough. what he's do here is asked a care federal prosecutor to look at what we're tol is about10 case. whe it appears thatc.i.a. operativ went way beyond the rules for what thec.i.a. lled enhanced interrogation chniques. and seral of these cases were revead this week in aeport from thec.i.a.'s inspector general tht was partly declassified. the groups that represent th detaineesay this was way too limited. th it should look not just the fie operatives but the pele at eadquarters ad the

white housand others involved in the interrogati methods. others say it's wrong to subjec c.i.a. opratives to investigatn and prosecution when they were tryg to get informati which the c.i.a. said was valuable learning more about a qaeda and preventing future attacks. an all these allegations hve been looed at before by other career federal prosecutors just across thriver from washingtonnd alexandria, virginia, where thy have perienced terrorism prosecutors. and they decided eitr the cases were too ld or you couldn't find witnees or the evidence was ambiguous ad that theyouldn't bring them into court. so they aked why did the attorney genera push this when it'sbeen loked at bfore? i'veeen told by the people in the justice departnt that number one, holder believes havi looked at these things, having heard bout them and n seeinghe details, that he felt you just coldn't walk awayrom this and seondly, he thinks that ere are other avenues that could be purued these cases that for one reason or other were not looked at. gwenhe sought detai of

which we obviously did n see. i have never seen a docunt as heavily redact as this repo was. so do we have ay sense at all about how ire these -- this overstepping w? >> well, yes. we have someense of it. we kw some of these cses, you ke a reference to it n the binning about a detainee who was blindfolded and haa hood on. and he was naked and tey were running an eleric drill at hiear to make it soundike theyere going to attackhim with that. and wee also told that some the redcations invoved detainees who died. in c.i.a. ustody. onof those cases was prosecuted. but it's -- it's the otality it that holder says drlled him to do this. >> gwe mentioned at the beginning there's a rift inside the admnistration. is lee on panetta, the c.i.a. director, imtent now? has he lost his batle and now it's all up o holder? >> he mae his case that he thoughthis was the wrong thing to do. it would send a wrong message to c.i.a. eople, tht these thingsere investigated before

and it wasn' fair. thehite house basical said to eric hoder, this is your call. you need to cide this. you'rehe attorney general. we can't et involve in making this decisi for you. is your decision. having made the decision n, they made it very cle that it was his and s alone. >> what about all hese documents that we w prts of at east this wek? did they ever did they take very far toward anwering the basic queson of the argument thapeople like dick cheney have been makg which is that ese techniqu, torture, are necessary to elicit the ind of informatio we need to prevent another -- gwen: it did wrd off action. >> there's no qestion. at everyone agrees whathese documents tell us is th the c.i.a.'s nterrogation prram gave the government, for example, more thanalf of what it learned about l qaeda in the mont after 9-1. identified new alqaeda operatives. leto their arrests. forestalled potential attks.

stopped people from comi into the u. who were going to come in here or gt them arrested once they were here no question. the difficul of what we saw this wee is nowhere oes it delineat, thiswe learn from normal interrogatio this we learned from enhanced terrogatio so both sides arlooking at these newly declassified docunts and say this prove our point. >>pete, whogs the prosecutor andwhat -- who is the prosecutor a what are the guidelines that he got to stay witn? >> he's a career proscutor in connecticut. john duram. he's already lookingt some c.i. activities and one looking whether any laws were broken when c.i.a. destroyed video ofthese intergationings. that's one of the asons why he was chosen. he is not an indpendent counsel or special psecutor so he caonly do what the ern tone hasold him to -- wha the attory general has told him to do. ll he stay wthin the guidelines of holde or go lieder? >> and whether ti -- and whether it's libbyor lune y.

-- lewinsky. we had the pesident's long-anticipated decisi to reappoint ben bernankto another term as chairman o the feral reserve and the other was the unancipated news that the federal deficit isow heading toward $9 trillion. over 10 years. ich of these two developmentsdavid, is the more significant to the long-term or dir i supose? well, good. >> can i say bh? gwen: su. >> for one thing t was no accident that the president decided to announce this high-profile appointment on his vacation on the same day that theeficit numbers ame out. me newspapers put iton the front page anyway. but it diddrown out some of the interest. i think in he long trm, the bigger issue ishe deficit. the presidensays by his own figures tt we face $9 triion of deficits overthe xt 10 years. with some favorable assmptions like he's going to mke a lot of mey on selling prmits fo carbonhich congress has already rejected. d he has told s that hi

healthare plan, even if he gets what he asks for, wll do nothing reduce that. his promise ihealth care will pay for itself over 10 years. he is putting himelf in a position to come waupbusiness plan because we owe a lot of money to a lot of pele in the world d won't stand for tse deficitss far as the eye can e. peter orszag hs a plan o redu the deficit but only next year. on t short term the bernanke appntment is more impornt. we are in afragile stag of the recovy. it looks likthe recessiohas ended but iwill take skill and politicanorte attitude r the federal reserve to mov just right here. if they tigten too soon, we uld have a renewed ecession. if thy wait too long wecould haven outbreak of infltion. the president decided toput some-- a guy wth a lot of practiceo make that decision but illustrated o more thing d relates to the teddy kennedy situation. weometimes think of the rld as being alsorts of impersonal foces of good and evil and ecomic forces.

but sometimes it ds really seem to matter hothe individual pple who are in charge. and i think in this stance, ben bernanke is no teddy kenny but kennedy was unusual partly becau of the person he was. ani think some of that goes for bernanke as ll. something's got togive on the deficit front atome int. is that somethingikely to be the president's promi that he ll not raise taxes on people who make ls than $250,00 a year? >> i tink so. i on't see how it's aringt meticay possible for the president to pursueboth parts of his spding agenda whch are popular with the eople and with the coress without raising taxes on thebulk of americans. there'just not enough money the over $250,000 year crd to pay for what he wants to do. >> the sus involved are unfaomable. w does this reallimpact people who areiving normal lives? >> that's a gre question. i think one of their

difficulties is theshort answer is it doesn't. right now, we are getting byon very lo interesrates because othecountries, the hinese in particar, are willing to len us endss amounts of money. as long as it goes on, were ne and people shouldn't worry about it. the problem is it's t going to go on forever. and if we are t prepared and we han't done things to rece our reliance onforeign borrowinand at some point they decide they have lent enough money it ll be a wrenching adstment. i assume these foreign countrielend us monday beuse it's -- led us money because 's something in for them. why do theyhink so? >> because there are not ery ma alternatives. ifhe world economy looks like it's really goingo be a basket case, people would raer have money in dollars an absolutely anythin else. but as the economies of the rest of e world begin to recovery, eveually people are going to say we'e lent enough money tohe u.s. soit's one of those ings ere you can't quite say wt is going to be the precipating event but it seems unwis for us to cntinue

toely on thechinese a otrs lending us even more money each yar forever >> how was en benanke's reapintment received on the hill? i saw chris ddd put out a statement wherhe said this is probably the righthoice. which dosn't sound like e was holding him tigh. >> ben bernankeseems to be very popular on wall treet right now. the wall strt crowd really wanted him reapointed. the senate i more ambvalent d some members of the house are downght hostile. i think that reflcts the high-profile thabernanke and the d have taken in this rescuend become alightning rod for bailg out wall street. theyill be -- he wll be put undethe ringer but little chance he will t turned down. >> someworry the fed may e o powerful? >> they d but if thy were worrieabout it then what would they be saying if president obamhad replaced him with something- someone ofis hone party and choong? en: it would be a whole otr conversati. we'll come back to that one next week we'll bing you "washington ek's" back-tschool edition. erything you need to know

abouwhat to expect in the nation's capital whenverybody gets back to work ter labor day. nd us your questions to washingtonweek@pbs.g. ep up with daly deelopments on t newshour wit jim lehrer and we'll see you again nex week on "washingt week." good night. everythursday, get a preview of our topic and panel th our "washingtoweek" email alert ailable t washingtonweekonline@pbs.o. >> "washington week" was produced by weta which i lely responsible forts content.

corrate fundingfor "washington week" isprovided by -- >> we know why we'r here. design the fture of fight inside and out. >> tobuild tomorr's technology in amazing ways. >> and reshape thesize of rospace forever. >> around the glbe, the people of boeing e working toether r the dreams of generations .meco >> that's why e're here. >> aditial corporate funding is provided b the national mining associatn. majofunding for "wahington week" also provided bthe annenberg foundatn, the cororation for publi broadcasng and by contritions to your pbs station fr viewers like yo thk u.