captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> ifill: good evening. i'm gwen ifill. the latest on the investigation into the failed bombing of a u.s. plane from authorities here and overseas. >> brown: and i'm jeffrey brown. on the "newshour" tonight, dutch officials called the preparation of the plot "fairly professional, "but its execution, "amateurish." >> ifill: why didn't anyone connect the dots and can anything be done to foil future attacks? we'll explore that with members

of the 9-11 commission. >> brown: and we'll get the views of two representatives on what congress did and did not do in the past and should do now to prevent more terrorist incidents. >> ifill: also tonight, from san francisco, spencer michels reports on a battle about putting literature online. >> google is in the process of digitizing 40 million brookes. not everyone believes one company should control that much knowledge. >> brown: and margaret warner talks to author kati marton about her parents-- hungarian journalists targeted by the secret police in the 1950s. >> i think it's really important for us in our country to understand the human cost of the cold war before all the witnesses to it disappear. >> ifill: that's all ahead on tonight's "pbs newshour." major funding for the pbs newshour is provided by:

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>> and by the bill and melinda gates foundation. dedicated to the idea that all people deserve the chance to live a healthy productive life. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> ifill: officials from washington to amsterdam shed more light today on the plot to destroy northwest flight 253. ray suarez begins our coverage. >> reporter: there was new information from the dutch concerning umar farouk abdul mutallab and his alleged bombing attempt.

flight 253 originated in amsterdam, and the dutch interior minister said initial findings appear to confirm al- qaeda's claim of responsibility. >> ( translated ): the first conclusions of the investigation are that the preparations for the failed attack were fairly professional, but that the execution was amateurish. secondly, the explosives used were neither easy to handle nor risk-free to prepare. the way it was used and the explosives compare to those used in previous attacks. the suspect had a valid visa for the united states. the passenger list presented prior to the flight did not give the us a reason to ask for additional security measures. >> reporter: the bomb-- made of the chemical p.e.t.n.-- was hidden in abdulmutallab's clothing, and failed to go off.

that left the airliner intact on the tarmac, but it also left continuing questions about what u.s. intelligence knew ahead of time. it was widely reported today there had been al-qaeda "chatter" about a "nigerian" being prepared for an unspecified attack. that information has surfaced in a review that president obama ordered. and he made clear yesterday, he's not happy with what he's hearing. >> when our government has information on a known extremist and that information is not shared and acted upon as it should have been so that this extremist boards a plane with dangerous explosives that could have cost nearly 300 lives, a systemic failure has occurred, and i consider that totally unacceptable. >> reporter: as a result, various u.s. intelligence agencies are trying to figure out what went wrong. and they're piecing together a timetable of abdulmutallab's activities going back more than a year. in june of last year, he is granted a tourist visa to the u.s., good for multiple entries until june 12 of 2010. it's issued by the american embassy in london, where abdulmutallab attended college. in may of this year, he is refused another british visa, because the school listed on his application is not government- approved. and, he is barred from re- entering britain. three months later, he begins

taking arabic classes at this school in sana'a, yemen-- his second visit there in recent years. on november 19, abdulmutallab's father tells the u.s. embassy in nigeria he's concerned about his son's increasingly radical talk. the embassy relays the information to all u.s. diplomatic missions and the state department in washington. abdulmutallab's name is now entered into a terror watch list of 550,000 names. the name is not added to the much smaller "no-fly" list, and the visa granted in june 2008 is not revoked. then, on december 16, a round trip ticket from lagos, nigeria to detroit is purchased in ghana, for $2,800 in cash. nigerian officials say abdulmutallab returns to lagos for one day, on christmas eve, to board the flight. he checks no bags, and passes through security. he arrives in amsterdam on

christmas day. the dutch interior minister says nothing seems amiss before he boards northwest flight 253 for detroit. >> ( translated ): the suspect did not leave the customs area at schiphol during his transfer. he spent the usual transfer time, a couple of hours as per the norm, in the airport's international lounge. as per protocol, he had to pass a security gate within the customs area at schiphol, a metal detector, and this presented no irregularities. >> reporter: hours later, abdulmutallab's flight was on final approach to detroit, when he allegedly tried to set off the bomb and was overpowered. now, as he sits in a federal prison in michigan, his ties to yemen and its growing al-qaeda presence have come under intense new scrutiny. today, security forces stormed an al-qaida hide-out along yemen's western coast, and arrested at least one suspect. and the deputy interior minister

declared his government "will continue its strikes against the group until it is totally eliminated." and officials in somalia reported a somali national tried to board a commercial airliner there last month with a bomb that closely resembled the one on the northwest flight. that's added to the urgency in the u.s. and other countries to improve screening. today, the dutch announced they will begin using full-body scanners on all flights to the u.s. >> ( translated ): however, security gates currently used only detect metal, which is why body searches are carried out sporadically. this combination is, of course, not watertight which is why the decision has been made to introduce full body scanners at schiphol for flights to the united states. >> reporter: and nigeria said it will purchase the 3d scanners as well. back in the u.s., the preliminary findings from the investigations ordered by the president are due tomorrow. >> brown: ray's recounting of the timetable of events raises

questions that investigators and officials are now asking: where were the gaps in information and action? why weren't various dots connected? and what's to be done going forward? these are, of course, similar questions to those raised after september 11, 2001. and we ask them now of members of the 9/11 commission. richard ben-veniste, now an attorney in washington and formerly one of the lead prosecutors in the watergate case. james thompson, former republican governor of illinois and chairman of president george h.w. bush's intelligence oversight board. and susan ginsburg, who served on the commission's staff, focusing on how the hijackers entered the u.s. >> jeffrey: richard, you look at the chain of events what jumps out at you as to what you you want to know. >> i would like to know what this man's father told the c.i.a. agent in nigeria. what concerned him about the radicalization of his

son. did he have intention to strike against the united states. why did he go to the u.s. embassy and c.i.a. if we had preexisting information that "a nigerian" was identified as a nigerian to be ememployed in a plot against the united states over christmas why these two facts of a nigerian young man in yemen that his father saw as a radical threat to notify the united states why his status was not changed and why he wasn't selected for secondary. >> what jumps out at you as a key part of the chain of events. >> two things we're awaiting a report from president obama on what did we know, when did we know it, who knew it.

who was responsible for the decision on the no fly list and the revocasion of the sraoes. >>anthony: secondly, this bears a eerie resemblance of what happened before 9-11 in minneapolis when the local fbi agent questions a man who was taking flight lessons and appeared to represent some kind of threat to the united states and the local fbi agent tried his best to get his superiors in washington to authorize a foreign intelligence search warrant of moussauoi's possessions, could not get national fbi to cooperate. nobody told the cia and we will never know whether the information that could of been obtained for moussauoi before september 11th could of prevented the attack. so it's happened again.

>> jeffrey: susan, let's go to that issue. there was inte intelligence on s young man. it wasn't shared or decisions were made not to follow-up. >> i think we need to try to understand the nuts and bolts, reverse en near what happened. >> the first question i would ask apart from the questions of the actual interview is when the group met to discuss this in the embassy. what information, what additional information were they able to obtain by going back to their agencies to learn to, bring to bear on that discussion. yes, if there was information that was not shared at that time, that is troubling. we would want to look at why. whether when the request went back, assuming there was a request that went back, it reached the people who actually were concerning themselves if there were such people. >> jeffrey: richard,

the president referred to this as systemic failure. it's above what was investigated last time around. >> one of the things that most troubled us was the stove piping of sharing information, from various industries. let's see what develops from the investigation on who was told what. now there is characteristic finger pointing going on. here is what we have. we have a ticket bought with cash, red flag. we have it bought in a remote location, red flag. we have a individual checks no baggage, red flag. no questioning. no secondary screening. we know he has been to yemen. we know he has been radicalized. these are all red flags. if he was subjected to secondary screening at the airport there is a likelihood given the

reports of his demeanor and so forth that perhaps he would of cracked or perhaps they would of probed further to determine the purpose of his visit and whether in fact he had been in yemen what he was doing there, and the questions that trained professionals know to ask to rays suspicion. >> jeffrey: governor, some of these things were suppose to have been fixed after 9-11 because of the requests you all made. especially sharing information. does this mean the system has not been fixed and it's still flawed? what does it mean? >> congress adapted many of the recommendations we made about a director of national intelligence, making the director of cia work with that director and sharing information. congress can't make sure that

the humans in the bureaucracy, no matter how good they are as intelligent professionals carry out the sharing of intelligence. that's the problem. the bias of sharing intelligence and acting together still exists today. one of the most disappointing failures was the complete disregard of our urgent recommendation that some way be found to determine whether passengers are carrying explosives on their body. that was a explicit recommendation of the 9-11 commission more than five years ago. what we have had in the interim is an attempt to use the body scanners that could determine whether explosives are being carried and yet the congress, the administration, and the news media have been spooked by the privacy extremists to say no, no, no. we can't have body scanners.

even though the technology exists to ghost the phapbl, the phapbl is a knowledge tpheus, it can't be stored, the person using the screen doesn't know who it is. you can fix the technology not to know if it's a man or a woman, yet we will ex utility the tourist privileges of this guy from nigeria and ex halt those who say we can't have the slightest -- privacy for those coming to this country. >> jeffrey: alright, susan, you want to jump in here. >> yes i would like to go back to what point could decisions of been made differently. certainly one is to ask the question whether there could of been a secondary inspection in skippel.

that depends on who is there to do that and what tools they have to acquire that information. the united states has a program. dhs has a program that places cdp and custom border protection offices in foreign airports in a resip owe cal basis. there was such a ficer at the airport. however the individual by the time he reached that point had been through physical screening, ha already gone through the first round of checks and nothing was found problematic. you there have to go back and say what information could of been brought to bear. to do that you go back to the national targeting center that looks like the names of the lists two hours before flight. the national targeting center

receives information on who is going to fly and have opportunity to do some searches. again we have to look at what was available in the system. the cash payment from nigeria would not necessarily be considered a indicater. many airlines require cash payments in africa. because of the amount of fraud. so, cash payment in and of itself a lot of people fly without baggage because of the hassle. the trip was short. he had a round trip ticket. again we need to look closely at what was available to whom at what point. point. >> jeffrey: you know we talked last night on the program about privacy concerns governor thompson raised. you can weight in on that. i also want to ask you will the list questions. do those need to be fixed? >> yes.

one thing we recommended is the tsa to take charge and integrate it on the list. no fly list is a exclusive list of 4000. there is a shrebt list of 14,000 to 15,000. >> jeffrey: then a bigger list. >> half a million individuals with some connection to terrorism. now, i think, this review may increase the list for selecty or secondary screening. for individuals who pop up. this man's name was added to the larger 5000 list we are told. the technology should exist to match those names quickly even though there are problems in terms of spelling and so forth. turning to privacy. there has to be a balance of civil liberties, privacy and security. here i think the position is

extreme in terms of the puritancal view of the human body. people go to doctors. doctors look at their bodies. people skr- to balance on the one hand what individuals are trying to do to kill them while they go through the mundane process of going from one place to another by airplane, and certain kinds of technologies as jim has mentioned that enable screeners t to detect things hidden on the human body. >> jeffrey: just in the short time left i want to ask governor thompson, starting with you. is it possible if these things were done there are still cases like this. we talked today to paul pillar, a long time intelligence professional. he said we're seeing a demonstration. no matter how hard we try to fix

things we have inherent challenges and likely to have incidents like. this what do you think? >> sure. that reminds me of the argument of people who say because cancer screenings only save two or three out of a hundred people and promote false positives we should eliminate or down play screenings. if i'm going to be saved by a cancer screening i want the screening no matter what the statistics say. look we're a wide open country. anyone who wants to hurt us can do it they don't skr- to get on an airplane and set off a bomb. they could park four or five trucks around the united states and there will be mass panic. they can poison foods and have has manic, financial panic, they can blow up railroad lines. we have to

take those risks. we're lucky since 9-11 there haven't been domestic incidents on our soil. god knows how many incidents have been stopped by our agencies. they do a good job, professional job. somebody made mistakes. we have to find out who and why. >> jeffrey: do you think this will galvanize? >> yes the president has taken this very seriously. he has taken mediate charge of the situation. he has determined there will be accountable. if there are systemic problems they need to be addressed. if there has been human error we need to find out why and who. this is a serious incident. nearly 300 lives may of been lost because of. this we got lucky. they were incompetent in certain reguards here. in 9-11 we didn't take ad skrapbtage of the mistakes al qaeda made.

we need to be smarter. >> jeffrey: we have to leave it. there thank you, all, very much. >> thank you. >> thank you. thank you. >> ifill: and still to come on the "newshour": the political fallout of the christmas day bomb plot; the debate over google's project to digitize books; and author kati marton chronicles her family's cold war story. but first, with the other news of the day-- here's hari sreenivasan in our newsroom. hari? >> sreenivasan: at least eight american civilians were killed in a suicide bombing today in afghanistan. the bomb exploded at a military base in khost province, near the pakistani border. the base supports reconstruction and other civilian programs. hard-line government supporters turned out in force in iran today. and, graphic video footage emerged from sunday's anti-government protests. >> the video could not be independently verified but they show two police trucks with large bars on the front plowing into groups of protesters.

the screams of bystanders grow louder as one runs over a person lying over the street. one of the trucks had been taken from police. >> about the car that ran over the rioters both of skraoebg and owner have been identified and interrogated. it's clear the car was stolen from him. he was hit by a stolen car. >> at the same time the chief warned protesters they will show no mercy if there are new demonstrations. >> the time of moderateness is over. thi said that before, they thout i was joking. from now on if anyone participates in such demonstrations and gets involved in such actions will see no leniency. >> to counter the protest the

iranian government gave all employees off to attend mass protests today. thousands chanted "tkraegt to americans." they accused western nations of accounting unrest. >> they imagine they can set a stage, celebrate and have exaggerated news and high person and more. the nation is faithful, united, a zealistic, integrated and unified living it's life. they should fear the day this ocean turns into a boyling and roaring ocean. >> the protestsers gained support in paris and london today where tkpwroudz rallied outside of iran's embassies . >> sreenivasan: in western iraq, at least 23 people died in twin

bombings in ramadi, in the worst violence there in months. thick plumes of smoke could be seen moments after the attack, as emergency vehicles rushed to the scene. 13 policemen were among those killed. the provincial governor was one of the wounded. a british man held hostage in iraq for more than two years was released today. peter moore was working as an information technology consultant when iraqi militants seized him in may of 2007. british foreign secretary david miliband spoke with him by phone, after his release. >> peter is in good health, despite many months of captivity. he's undergoing careful medical checks and he's going to be reunited with his family as soon as possible back in the u.k. he's obviously, to put it mildly, absolutely delighted at his release. >> sreenivasan: the militants gave no reason for moore's release. four of his bodyguards were abducted with him. three were killed. the fourth is presumed dead. leaders in western australia declared a natural disaster today as a pair of massive wildfires raged. the fires broke out tuesday in a wheat and sheep farming district, north of the coastal

city of perth. since then, flames have scorched more than 33,000 acres of forest and farmland, and destroyed roughly 40 homes. the u.s. government has injected more aid into the auto financing giant, g.m.a.c. the new assistance will total around nearly $4 billion. the company already received more than $12 billion. it was a slow day on wall street. the dow jones industrial average gained three points to close at 10,548. the nasdaq rose more than two points to close at 2,291. those are some of the day's main stories. i'll be back at the end of the program with a preview of what you'll find tonight on the "newshour's" web site. but for now, back to gwen. >> ifill: and now, to the politics of national security, especially the role congress plays. for that, we are joined by new jersey democrat bill pascrell, jr.-- a member of the house homeland security committee. and utah republican jason chaffetz, who serves on the house committee on oversight and government reform. >> gwen: congressman, i want to start with you.

you were the sponsor of the bill in congress that forbade the use of the whole body scanners. you heard governor thompson that said you and others were spooked by privacy extremists. do agree with him on that? >> you have to understand the actual bill. the bill was not a ban on the use of the machines. they said they couldn't use it as a primary screening but use it on secondary screening. this case on the 25th. this guy was a poster child of who should of gone through the secondary screening. absolutely the machines could be deployed nation wide, internationally. we have reason to use them, absolutely use them. 99% of of americans you don't have to use on every person. govenorperson.

>> bard on the administration. would you vote for it today. >> i voted for the amendment and legislation that did pass, an authorization not an appropriation. since the time we have had the vote in the congress i've learned a lot more about what machines we're talking about, the very expensive machines. i think we can find a way to protect peoples privacy either by putting another observer in the room, number one. having gender orientated machinery, and obviously destroying the image afterwards. whatever we need to do to protect american citizens is very critical, gwen. i would revisit this particular amendment. i think it was offered in good faith and i have every reason to reexamine. it passed with overwhelming

support. >> gwen: fingers are being pointd in every which way in the wake of this attempted terrorist attack. who would you say needs to be first up on explaining what happened and didn't happen? >> well, i would like to bring in the secretary of home land security. i think she needs to explain why initially everything worked and then khaeubgd her mind. there are many risk factors. how was the gentleman able to get to the airport. imagine a father coming into an embassy and explain to the case officer the problem he has had with his son and why the information was not pass ad long. i think the secretary more than anyone should come before congress sooner than later and explain where the breakdown occurred. >> gwen: congressman, there is an out fit called the counter terrorism center. do you have questions for them? >> yes, what i responded to is the fact everyone in home land

security should be under the glass, nobody escapes here. remember secretary does not have control over all of the intelligent agencies. they are lucky to talk to one another. we have tried to force the issue in home land security, i have been on the committee, in the committee since it's inception. if you don't have cooperation you don't have anything. if can have all the apparatus in the world. we don't have control over the screening in other parts of the country. there is no question this character from nigeria should been allowed on an airplane. he should of been on a no fly list. we're trying to find out as we speak why he was allowed to get on an airplane, the visa he. we will have a hearing in home home land security the last week of january and bring people before the committee. i think our chairman from mississippi is on course of doing this.

we have bipartisan support of home land security since 9-11. what i have heard is i remember reprehensible. you have a senator from south carolina who stood in the way of the tsa director being appointed for political reasons. that's not right at all. there are plenty of fingers and plenty of blame. the point is we should be on that and defending american people together and support american people. that's what i'm about. govenor: >> gwen: congressman i want to ask you what you think about the intelligence piece of this being a problem. particularly the central intelligent agencies being alertd in august about a unspecified nigerian they were keeping an eye on. now the pieces show the cia is under the magnifying glass as well.

>> well we're going to need to lower the bar on who gets on the list to identified people who need secondary screening. i think the secondary screening would have caught these guys. there were whole body imaging machines in nigeria and amsterdam. we have to ask why those were not used. we need more from our international partners on screening. make sure they're communicating. of the 550,000 people on the watch list who is watching the people on the watch list it seems we maybe a little too politically correct on the way and we need to trar get the tar reufts. we're at war, they want to kill us. >> gwen: you think profiling should be as at base. >> we have to be careful. we don't want profiling on race, ethnicity or religion. but we can profile potential terrorists and go through a

rigorous screening. i don't see any other way around it. >> gwen: congressman, do you think the administration is acting quickly enough and thoroughly enough to address what is turning into a bigger and bigger problem. >> the president son this case. no question in my mind. i talk to people on intelligence with the president in hawaii now. he doesn't have to be in washington to be on top of. this we need quick answers. the president will get answers tomorrow on who dropped the ball. i support our intelligence agencies but we haven't gone over the bump or the hurdle to get them to talk with one another. obviously someone dropped the ball here. to point fingers at the secretary i think is short change. if she blew this i would be the first to ask for her resignation. we can not have second chances. i'm glad jason said what he said about profiling.

the only thing we should do with profiling is behave i don't behavior profiling. i believe behavior profiling is acceptd and should be followed in every sense of the term. >> gwen: congressman, i'm curious what you think about what the administration is doing. you maybe aware of former vice vice president cheney's criticism that the administration was inform slow. >> the day after the event the home land director of security said everything worked okay. >> gwen: what about now. >> have a questions. i don't want to take a cheap shot at them. i want them to come to capitol hill and answer the questions and i think that's the proper political way to do it without

just throwing political barbes at each other. >> gwen: thank you all for joining us. >> thank you. >> thank you, jason. >> brown: next, putting all the world's books on the internet. "newshour" correspondent spencer michels looks at the controversial plans of online giant, google. >> reporter: just before 9:00 most mornings, a truck belonging to google pulls up at the stanford university library. it's loaded with books that google checked out and is now returning after having scanned them, so they can be read by a computer. no overdue fines here. as soon as the truck is empty, library workers load it up again, with more books to digitize-- part of an ambitious program that so far has scanned 12 million books. at many libraries, the goal is to scan up to 40 million.

google said our mission is to that's a tall order for daniel clancy, an engineer and the director of google books. >> google said our mission is to organize all the world's information. >> reporter: he says the primary purpose of all the digitizing is to makes books searchable. >> the repository of our cultural and societal and history is really embodied in books. but when you search the web, you're not searching books-- many of these books were not, are not digitally available. >> reporter: clancy showed me how books are now appearing ever more frequently on google searches. >> every time you search google, you're searching 12 million books. they were looking for this arcane, it's called-- "court of admiralty." so this is a very obscure you know... you can see how many

>> reporter: stanford, the university of california berkeley, and the university of michigan have signed agreements with google-- authorizing the firm to scan their books. michael keller, the stanford librarian, says its a valuable program. >> the indexing of every word in every one of the books would allow us to get more out of the books. another goal was to make more accessible the contents of these libraries to others around the united states and indeed around the world. >> reporter: while stanford digitizes some books on its own, for special projects, using a fairly slow and complicated swiss-made scanner, google uses its own proprietary system, which it wouldn't allow us to film. >> reporter: the google project has provoked loud criticism among some academics, authors and rival high tech companies, some of whom have sued to halt or at least modify it. gary reback is a silicon valley

attorney who represents the open book alliance, whose members include microsoft and amazon.com. he predicts that google will start without charging for what it digitizes, but eventually will impose hefty fees. >> what google is proposing here is not like any library you've ever been to. it's not a public library, it's a private library. and it's being run for profit. big profits. google is going to charge university scholars, ordinary people, even school children to get access to books that google copied without the permission of the publisher or the author. >> reporter: current books, whose copyrights are in tact, and the copyright holders are known are not in dispute. publishers must give permission for those books, or portions of them, to be put on line. books in the public domain, whose copyrights have expired,

are fair game for any digitizer, and currently you can download many of them for free. the problems arise over so- called "orphan books"-- out of print, but still in copyright, where the current holder of that copyright is unknown. while there are a lot of them, they don't get read very often. >> what happens when you digitize these books and make them accessible on the net is that they get a lot more use. people can find the stuff, 10 times more use than formerly was recorded. >> reporter: selling digital copies of those books then could become profitable, and the fight is over who gets the money. but google insists its plans-- and its investment, which it won't disclose--are not based on profits. >> google hopes to benefit from it by improving our search and we expect that we will make some money as we sell the books, but the motivation is not the money we're going to make from selling books, because if you look at what were investing, it's far greater than that. >> reporter: attorney reback doesn't buy that at all.

he says google reached a tentative exclusive settlement with authors and publishers-- giving them part of the profits -- that gives google a lucrative monopoly. >> the problem is the way google has gone about this, to make themselves the exclusive supplier. we have proposed that we take google's set of digital copies and we have them licensed to four or five other companies and that would mean there'd be competition. >> reporter: google's alleged monopoly also disturbs pam samuelson, a law professor at the university of california berkeley, who teaches copyright law. she contends that the agreement reached last october between google and publishers and authors doesn't protect the public or universities who use those books. >> there really are not checks and balances in the agreement about, about pricing strategies and it seems like more books that google scans, the higher the prices can be.

the entire thing transformed itself into a commercial enterprise. it's basically turning this project into a bookstore rather than a library. >> reporter: google argues it has no monopoly; it welcomes competition: microsoft, amazon and others could be doing the same thing, but have decided not to. >> microsoft used to have an initiative and they decided not continue pursuing it. there's nothing we're doing that prevents anyone from doing the exact same thing. the one thing that i strongly think is the wrong answer is that we should, you know, lock all this stuff up so that nobody can discover and nobody can... can use these books. >> reporter: google's insistence it is acting altruistically, its reliance on its "don't be evil" motto drew scoffs from attorney reback. >> people no longer see any big difference between google and google's competitors. they're in it for money. and we need to depend on the competitive system to protect us.

>> reporter: does that go for people in your association, including amazon and microsoft? >> oh, it absolutely does. it absolutely does. in this case for example, amazon was digitizing books long before google was. microsoft wanted to digitize books. neither of them got the same deal that google got... got secretly, but if they had we'd be all be better off because of it. >> reporter: questions like those are being debated around the world. at stanford, top librarians met recently to wrestle with how to adapt to the new on-line book resources, and whether to cooperate with digitizations of their collections. and bookstores like berkeley's pegasus-- already in competition with discount booksellers-- have to adapt as well. this store now sells digital books through its web site. besides the competition from on- line books, store owner amy thomas also worries about privacy of digital book buyers. >> they have a right to read without being having their

reading records subpoenaed for whatever reason. they have a right to this privacy and we will hope that google will maintain, zealously maintain, defend those rights. >> reporter: pam samuelson is equally skeptical of google's privacy policies. she puts her trust in libraries. for its part, google says it has been a huge advocate for user privacy. anti-trust concerns, copyright law, competition and privacy are all at issue in a flurry of lawsuits, friend of the court briefs and interest from the department of justice. they will come to a head in february, when a federal judge holds a hearing on the google case in new york. >> ifill: finally tonight, a conversation about a book you can hold in your hands-- this one on the human cost of the cold war. margaret warner has our story. >> reporter: not long after world war ii, andre and ilona marton were leading glamorous lives as journalists in budapest, working for "the associated press" and other

western news outlets. but in the 1950s-- as the soviet-backed communists tightened their control-- the martons became the objects of surveillance. they were tried as spies and imprisoned. freed in 1956, they were allowed to emigrate to the united states a year later. now their daughter author and journalist kati marton has written their story, much of it based on hungarian secret police archives. we talked recently with marton about her new book-- "enemies of the people: my family's journey to america." >> kati marton thank you for doing this. you paint a very sreufed picture in this book of your parents. there were correspondents for two american news organizations but there is more that made them targets. >> they were almost recklessly pro western. in their appearance. they drove english clothes.

they drove a white staoud a baker convertible. they were a major thorn in the side of the regime. there was something almost, you know, see if we can't do this and get away with it, about them. which is still hard for me to understand why, why they at a time when most hungarians crossed to the opposite side of the street to avoid americans my parents went to the american embassy weekly and walked in the front door as if. they lived in an "as if" world as if it was perfectly aobg septemberrable for two american journal i was to cover the bad news, call it as they saw it and rook and act as if they were americans, which they were not.

>> your father's reporting was honest about the oppression going on. >> yes they covered every manger show trial until their own, which they couldn't cover. they covered every piece of bad news behind the iron curtain. they were the last remaining source for americans of news of the other world now captive to moscow. >> you begin the book the night before you read the secret police files. you were scared of what you would discover. you did discovery information about those who worked with the secret police. >> watching clerks in white coats wheeling in supermarket carts of marton family files i was panicked. the head archivers looked at me and said yours is one of the biggest files. terrifying.

what the files contained were shocking at times. everyone from our inner circle, even our baby sitter, the most treacherous of all. >> you never liked her. >> no she always liked my sister better. i was right, she was wrong. she was a full time agent reporting on our every move using me. i was 6 years old at the time and my older sister as her chief sources. everyone, all of our cleaning ladies, our dentist, the guy at the grocery store, everybody was informing on my parents. >> and there was someone in the american embassy. that was shocking. >> that was -- i think for parents this must of been the most painful thing. when they were finally arrested the evidence was pr provided by someone in the embassy. someone whom himself was blackmailed by the communist, secret police. >> you also learned some things

in the course of this, things they didn't want you to know about your family background. >> there were regions of my history walled off by my parents. when they reached safety in american they decided they were done with europe. they never talked about the fact my father was active in the anti-nazi underground. they never talked about my grand parents parishing in otuwitz. i never knew we had a jewish background. i was raised as a roman catholic. i never knew they tried desperate means to get out of hungary failing every time. they were desperate people. i was ob liveious to their did he hav desperation and also their marriage was very much on the brink.

>> in prison they did finally break your father in a certain way. >> yes, yes. this was hard reading. my father was interrogating for weeks on end in what i have to describe as abbukpwraeufb style interrogation. he had to stand against a wall with endless obscene ities yelled at him and more. he koon feed to being an american agent which he was not. it's proof everyone has a breaking point. i think, margaret, more painful for me than that which was horrible to read was to discover that he frie tried not once but twice to commit suicide. he tried to myth oddly collect

the sleeping pills which were -- >> in the lining of his coat. >> yes. here it was his cell mate also informing on my father who actually saved my father's life. three of the pills fell out of the lining of his pocket. the agent, cell mate immediately reported that. if he carried that out he would have never seen me or my sister grow up to see who we have become. he would of missed out on our whole life after that. it's a heartbreaking prospect. >> then when they got to the u.s. and your father actually became a diplomatic correspondent. discovered the state department, the surveillance resumed you learned? >> yes. >> very b bizarre. >> this was another shock the files held. once my father made a biline for him to the united states the

hungarians decided this guy could be useful for us. the watchers resumed their watching. total surveillance while me as a little american girl living in suburban maryland pitched headlong into my americanization we were surrounded by communist agents who tried to figure out who would be a better agtd my mother or father and how to blackmail them. the watchers took up their watching. >> finally, to what degree, this is a particular story about you and your family, a universal story of what life was like for central europeans after world war ii, liberated from the nazis but fell on the wrong side of the iron curtain. >> as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the end of communism and fall of the berlin

wall i think it's important to hear not only from the historian perspective what the cold war was all about but the human perspective. what it en tailed for thousands, millions of people who live under that system of total fear, total terror, and how it can make the whole population part of the dirty business. i think it's really important for us in this country to understand the human cost of, of the cold war before all the witnesses to it disappear, and that's why i moved as fast as i did to find as many of the people who played either a negative or a positive role in my own family's saug. >>anthony: margaret, this isn't just about my family. this is how people were forced to live. it's important for us remember that. >> kati marton, thank you. >> thank you, margaret.

>> brown: again, the major developments of the day: dutch officials announced a probe of the airliner bombing plot appears to confirm al- qaeda's involvement. the accused bomber boarded the plane in amsterdam. at least eight americans were killed in a suicide bombing in afghanistan. the "newshour" is always online. hari sreenivasan, in our newsroom, previews what's there. hari? >> sreenivasan: we have a conversation with presidential historian michael beschloss, who dropped by the rundown to talk about obama's first year. you can watch more of margaret's interview with kati marton. that's also on the rundown. finally, on "art beat," a remembrance of illustrator david levine. see a slideshow of his work and hear an interview with the editor of "the new york review" of books. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. gwen? >> ifill: and that's the "newshour" for tonight. i'm gwen ifill. >> brown: and i'm jeffrey brown. we'll see you on-line. and again here tomorrow evening. thank you and good night. major funding for the pbs newshour is provided by:

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