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Life & Times Transcript

1/19/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

A Pasadena company won the contract to rebuild Iraq, but are they keeping their end of the bargain?

James McNulty>> We had no idea going in that it would be this dangerous. We've had our Iraqi employees pulled out of cars and shot point-blank.

Rep. Henry Waxman>> I don't think anybody ought to get paid and be able to keep the money if they didn't do what they were supposed to do.

Val Zavala>> And then, to some people, it's synonymous with the Ghetto. To others, it's home. A look at how a century has changed South Central.

These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val Zavala>> The United States spends about two hundred billion dollars a year in Iraq and how much is that an hour? Nearly twenty-three million dollars every sixty minutes. And how many of those millions are doing what they're supposed to? Well, the answer to that is pretty discouraging. As NewsHour correspondent, Jeffrey Kaye, tells us, some of the worst construction projects in Iraq have been overseen by a company based in Pasadena.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Amid pomp and circumstance, hundreds of cadets graduated this summer from the newly rebuilt Baghdad Police Academy. The seventy-three million dollar project was supposed to be a showpiece of America's Iraq Reconstruction Program, but to critics, it's an icon of incompetence. To others, it shows the challenge of rebuilding in a war zone.

Pictures taken by investigators two months after the graduation showed human waste dripping from ceilings in the eight dormitories. One leaky room was nicknamed "the rain forest". The photos and descriptions are contained in a report issued by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The company responsible for the Baghdad Police Academy is Parsons Corporation, the global engineering and construction giant headquartered in Pasadena, California.

James McNulty>> The dormitories where the plumbing failures occurred are certainly regrettable and it's not up to our standards.

Jeffrey Kaye>> James McNulty, Parsons' Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, blames Iraqi subcontractors for the problems at the Police Academy.

James McNulty>> When we found out about the difficulties, we sent in the Iraqi plumbing contractor who did the work and they have repaired the facilities under the warranty terms of their contract at no cost to the government or to the Iraqis.

Jeffrey Kaye>> But the Inspector General's office expects there will be additional costs to fix up the academy, in fact just one of the many controversies enveloping Stuart Bowen, Jr., chief watchdog of America's twenty-two billion dollar Iraq Rebuilding Program. Bowen's inspectors examined fourteen of Parsons' Iraq projects and Bowen says all but one was substandard.

Stuart Bowen, Jr.>> Thirteen of them did not meet contract expectations and the one that did, a prison which I visited last spring, was ultimately cancelled because it was over budget and significantly reduced in scope.

Jeffrey Kaye>> In fact, the United States government cancelled two Parsons prison contracts worth more than a hundred million dollars. With hundreds of projects worth $1.7 billion dollars, Parsons has assumed a lion-sized role in the Iraq Rebuilding Program. It's worked on oil operations, schools, water systems, munitions disposal and one of the most photographed buildings in recent Iraq history, the courthouse where Saddam Hussein has stood trial.

Parsons was supposed to renovate twenty hospitals, but completed just twelve. Among them was the Diwaniya Maternity and Pediatric Hospital a hundred miles south of Baghdad. In January, Iraqi physician, Ali Fadhil, filmed at the hospital for a British documentary.

Dr. Ali Fadhil>> "Everywhere, the standard of work is terrible. New light fittings have melted. Pipes have not been connected. In the operating theater changing room, you can smell raw sewage."

Jeffrey Kaye>> Parsons received nearly $4.2 million dollars to renovate this hospital, but instead of new equipment, Fadhil found old incubators held together with wires and tape, oxygen tubes that weren't properly connected, and leaky plumbing.

James McNulty>> Our contract was to renovate the hospital, which we did, and we turned it over to our government and the Iraqis accepted it. What happens after acceptance is beyond our control.

Jeffrey Kaye>> McNulty says that three factors are responsible for Parsons' difficulties. Unreasonable United States government expectations, problems with Iraqi subcontractors and, most of all, unexpected levels of chaos and violence.

James McNulty>> We had no idea going in that it would be this dangerous. We have had senior Iraqi contractor representatives on site murdered. We've had our Iraqi employees pulled out of cars and shot point-blank. We've had Iraqis that worked for us kidnapped. We have had truck drivers blown up by explosive devices while they've been driving down roads.

Jeffrey Kaye>> But the difficulties of building in a war zone did seem apparent from the beginning. By early 2004 when Parsons signed its first reconstruction agreements, more than two dozen civilians working for private contractors had already been killed in Iraq.

>> "Our project managers are prudent enough to know that, if the coalition forces say it's not safe, it's not safe."

Jeffrey Kaye>> And by June 2004 when we first visited Parsons for a story about Iraq reconstruction, company executives assured themselves and us that they could handle the dangers.

James McNulty>> "We feel very comfortable doing this work and we think we can manage the risks. I mean, if we didn't think we could manage those physical risks and the financial risks, we would have chosen not to bid."

Jeffrey Kaye>> Looking back on that statement, were you being realistic?

James McNulty>> At the time, I was being realistic because I didn't think that the security situation would deteriorate to the extent that it did.

Jeffrey Kaye>> The war also affects the watchdogs. Concerned for their safety, analysts with the Inspector General's office often examined satellite images instead of visiting projects in person. The violence has also made oversight work difficult for the United States Army Corps of Engineers which manages the Iraq reconstruction work and inspects projects. But, says Major General William McCoy, the former commander of the Corps in Iraq, the war is not the only reason for Parsons' difficulties.

The Army Corps found that Parsons also lost control of projects because of its heavy use of subcontractors, Iraqi companies which in turn farmed out work to other layers of subcontractors. McNulty says the United States government required Parsons to use Iraqi firms, but Parsons had difficulty finding companies with expertise.

James McNulty>> The Iraqi contractors had never built anything to United States standards before. In fact, many of the Iraqi contractors were never in business until after the war, so we were supervising Iraqi contractors and trying to get them to build to United States standards when they had never done so before and had no experience doing that.

Jeffrey Kaye>> McNulty complains that the United States government didn't pay what Parsons needed to hire enough supervisors. To make matters worse, he says, after Parsons agreed to build a hundred forty-one clinics in two years, the Army Corps of Engineers decided Parsons should do the job in half the time.

Major General William McCoy>> There were clearly some issues with some of the decisions the government made, but at the end, they signed the contract to accomplish the task that we asked them to do.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman agrees. He says that Parsons promised more than they could deliver.

Rep. Henry Waxman>> I don't think anybody ought to get paid and be able to keep the money if they didn't do what they were supposed to do. Then they found that the Iraqi subcontractors didn't do the work, so why should the United States taxpayers pay for that? We should get our money back.

Jeffrey Kaye>> But Parsons' chief says the company made an honest profit of two to three percent and has no intention of repaying it.

James McNulty>> There is nothing wrong with our firm having made a profit on that work that we did over there in Iraq. It was legitimately earned. It was honestly earned and none of our employees nor our firm should feel the least bit bad about that.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Congress recently voted to disband the Inspector General's office next October, but that decision is expected to be reversed. Stuart Bowen says he'll expand his investigation of Parsons as part of a widening probe of how United States funds have been used in Iraq. I'm Jeffrey Kaye for Life and Times.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> All I have to say are three words and you'll know who I'm talking about: billions and billions. Yes, that's Carl Sagan. Although he died ten years ago, in many ways this remarkable astronomer is still with us.

His latest incarnation, you could say, comes in the form of a book, "The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God". It is edited by his widow, Ann Druyan, who collaborated closely with her husband. Druyan is an author in her own right and a board member of the Planetary Society which was founded by her late husband, Carl Sagan.

You've had an amazing life having been so close to Carl Sagan. And now you've taken his lecture series and turned it into a book called "The Varieties of Scientific Experience". But it's really a very spiritual book, yes?

Ann Druyan>> It really is. It's called that because, of course, William James wrote a book called "The Varieties of Religious Experience" in 1900 based on his own different lectures. These are Carl's 1985 different lectures, so I thought it was a way to, you know, sort of doff the hat to the great tradition of the different lectures of William James, but also to say that science is a way to have a spiritual experience that's so close to us in other ways.

Val Zavala>> Now, of course, we think of him as this preeminent scientist and communicator and we often think, well, scientists can't believe in God, but did Carl Sagan believe in God?

Ann Druyan>> Carl was a scientist through and through, so he didn't believe in God. He didn't believe anything for which he couldn't point to solid evidence. So in the absence of direct evidence, he withheld his judgment. But that didn't keep him from being one of the most spiritual people I've ever known.

Val Zavala>> So there's distinction between believing in God and being spiritual and having a spiritual life.

Ann Druyan>> Yes, yes. You can have a spiritual life and be filled with questions and be engaged in the kind of sacred search that science really is without telling yourself that you know the answers. I think there's a form of humility in being honest and saying I don't know, but being open to what could be.

Val Zavala>> Now there are so many provocative chapters in this book, but one of them is "The Retreat from Copernicus, A Modern Loss of Nerve". What does that mean?

Ann Druyan>> Well, of course, it was Copernicus who displaced us from the center of the solar system and the revelations of science ever since have further displaced us from any notion that the universe was made for us. So the loss of nerve comes when you see this kind of resurgence of the need to be central, the need to believe that the universe was created for us, which comes out of things like intelligent design.

Carl, in 1985, in talking about intelligent design, gives the very best argument that a proponent of intelligent design might give and then proceeds to really tear it apart. The loss of nerve is that it's very courageous of us to accept that we're not the center of the universe. That is what happens when you grow up.

You know, when you're a little baby, you have to be the center. And when you become an adult, you realize that you're not a center, but you're a part of a great fabric of life. So what we've been seeing lately since Carl's death in the last ten years is a further retreat from that, a retreat into to some old ideas that are comforting, but are not borne out by the evidence.

Val Zavala>> In other words, it takes guts to admit that we aren't the center of the universe, that we might be floating out there without --

Ann Druyan>> -- that's right. On a pale blue dot.

Val Zavala>> No guardrails.

Ann Druyan>> No guardrails.

Val Zavala>> But free-falling.

Ann Druyan>> (Laughter) free-falling.

Val Zavala>> Yes. So when we retreat to the fact that we're the center, that means we've gotten scared and we're going backwards.

Ann Druyan>> I think it's a mark of insecurity. Just like anyone who would be willing to hurt another person in the name of God. If you really believe in God, God doesn't need your help in inflicting pain on another human being or anyone else. So it's a mark of insecurity. I feel that, in a way, what we're seeing is thousands of fundamentalisms that afflict us. It's in part, you know, a retreat, a loss of nerve.

Val Zavala>> Carl was very involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the study and so forth. What did he have to say? Have we made progress? What's his view on that?

Ann Druyan>> Well, when Carl started out with his colleagues, Frank Trague and Philip Morrison, great scientists and pioneers really, it was very courageous of them to even take a scientific approach to this question because it was considered beneath the dignity of science for science to be engaged in something so interesting and so full of passion. Now we haven't made any progress in the sense that we haven't found any evidence for extraterrestrial life, but since these men started out, astrobiology has become a huge field in science and a reputable one.

Val Zavala>> Really?

Ann Druyan>> Yes, it's a whole new science and, to say that these men began this science, a great contribution it is. Just last week, we dedicated the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute in California, which is fifty full-time research scientists working on this question. So the answer is, we don't know much more than we knew then, but we're asking better questions, I think.

Val Zavala>> You have a lot more smart people working there (laughter).

Ann Druyan>> Yes, and a lot more people who are working on it, exactly.

Val Zavala>> There are many people these days who are seeing a convergence, a kind of intersection that is happening between science and religion, whether it be, for example, the impact of prayer on healing or on a variety of things. Would Carl Sagan be encouraged and enthused? Would he believe that?

Ann Druyan>> I wouldn't speak for Carl because he was such a genius and I wouldn't presume to say what he would have said.

Val Zavala>> (Laughter) You're not a genius?

Ann Druyan>> Well, I'm in awe of his greatness really. But the thing is that science and religion were once one. It wasn't until the modern scientific revolution which was led by a group of very religious people, all of them, Copernicus, Newton, Keplar. They were all wanting to read the mind of God, but chose science as the most effective way to do so. For Carl, I think it was the same way. I mean, he was a student of religions. He was fascinated by it, but for him, the best way to worship nature was to do science.

Val Zavala>> Now, Carl was the ultimate questioner himself, so it's only right that the final chapter should be Q & A and some of the questions he answered from the people at the lectures. You were there. What was it like?

Ann Druyan>> It was wonderful because there are so many people who didn't share Carl's orientation or point of view. Some of these question and answer sessions with individuals would go on for pages and pages as the two minds working together try to get to an answer.

I think it's exemplary of the best of Carl Sagan because his respect, tenderness and understanding, a compassion that you can feel even just reading it on the page, that he felt towards all of his fellow searchers. Instead of the kind of, you know, "I'm smart and you're stupid", there was a wonderful sort of swimming through a cave to finally get to an answer. I found that was really great. It was one of my favorite parts in the book.

Val Zavala>> Well, Ann Druyan, thank you so much for bringing us the book and keeping Carl alive in many ways for us all these years.

Ann Druyan>> It was my pleasure, Val. Thank you so much.

Val Zavala>> Again, the name of the book is "The Varieties of Scientific Experience" edited by Carl Sagan's widow, Ann Druyan.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
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You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val Zavala>> Few places in Los Angeles have undergone such dramatic changes as South Central Los Angeles and now that change can be seen in the work of seven prominent black photographers who've turned their cameras on churches, parks, street corners and more. It's a major exhibit at the California African American Museum. It's called "Intersections of South Central". Vicki Curry takes us there.

Vicki Curry>> Most people have never been to South Central, but they've heard of it, and not in a good way.

Lester Sloan>> Well, South Central is synonymous with a dysfunctional society all over the world, you know. Anywhere you happen to see black people having to live and work, that was South Central, you know. So Inglewood became South Central. The Crenshaw District became a part of South Central. It became an expression you use for distribution or the places where people of color live. It's presented in one way to the public, but there's much more to it.

Vicki Curry>> This exhibit is trying to take on the misconceptions about South Central and show the real people and places. "Intersections of South Central" pairs historical photos with images of the same location as it appears today.

Lester Sloan>> It's our responsibility to reinterpret this community because it wasn't always like that.

Vicki Curry>> Lester Sloan is one of seven photographers who set out to reinterpret South Central for this exhibition. The project started with the Automobile Club of Southern California and its archive of historical photographs.

Matt Roth>> The Auto Club engineers went everywhere in Los Angeles looking for traffic problems, so the collection doesn't just have the famous places of Los Angeles. It's got places like you've seen on the walls, 68th and Hoover, 112th and Central.

And we wanted to reflect on these landscapes because we're talking about basically a working class neighborhood. It grew up around railroad tracks and factories and it has this reputation of being this horrible place. Without denying that horrible things occur, the reality of the community is not represented.

Vicki Curry>> The Auto Club teamed up with the California African American Museum and a number of other local photograph archives. They then asked photographers to use the historic images as a jumping off point to look at South Central today.

Chris West>> They'd either grown up there or worked there as a professional and we knew that we wanted to tether the contemporary photography to the historic. We wanted to give them some license to really be creative and be artistic and do something different.

Matt Roth>> We got to see these visual thinkers respond not only as far as images, but to the contemporary landscape. We were actually asking them to go with an open mind and open eyes and bring impressions back based on this background research that we had done about the history of the place.

Vicki Curry>> Lester Sloan jumped at the chance to be creative, a rare treat after twenty-five years of photojournalism at Newsweek.

Lester Sloan>> I covered this South Central usually in times of crisis, you know. I mean, when there was a riot or what have you, I came here as a photographer. But there was never any context. There was never any history. It was just the event, you know. I knew nothing about the community, but as I got involved in the program and the project, I started to see the whole picture.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Lester, this is one of the places you were asked to photograph?

Lester Sloan>> Right, right, right. Wrigley Field. I think it went out of business in the late 1960s or early 1970s, something like that. It was the first field for the Los Angeles Angels. Now the only part of Wrigley Field that's left is what they call Little Wrigley where the youngsters play. I think it's the southwest corner of 43rd and Avalon. There's a senior citizen center which is why that image is there. This is like a field of dreams. This is the future right here, not only reading the headlines in the Los Angeles Times.

[Film Clip]

Lester Sloan>> This is an example of a photograph we were given from the archives. We were told to go back to this location and photograph what's there now.

Vicki Curry>> And this is the intersection of Central and 32nd.

Lester Sloan>> Central and 32nd, yeah.

Vicki Curry>> And it's always been little businesses?

Lester Sloan>> It's always been little businesses. In the day, they were black businesses. Now they're Latino businesses, but they're businesses. And, you know, you have people of all colors going to these stores. I mean, the black now support the merchants who are Latino and it's business as usual. I wanted to have all the people represented photographically just showing the difference and how the neighborhood is changed and who's occupying these stores now.

[Film Clip]

Lester Sloan>> I was getting that photograph of a shot on Central and 43rd Streets. It showed the Dunbar Hotel in the background and just the community as it existed in the 1960s. That neighborhood now which is, like I said, one block from the Dunbar, is now mostly Latino. There are no black businesses there today. What I was trying to show was how it's changed. I was trying to find a man who looked like he would be the age of that young man out there in that photograph and grown up.

This is just a guy hanging out. I picked up a newspaper. The paper in the community used to be the Sentinel and now it's a newspaper called Hoy, I believe. He's holding up a headline of Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about the border. I thought, what better way to illustrate the transition in this community?

Vicki Curry>> Transition is a common theme in the exhibition. South Central has changed a lot over the years. It might still have a certain reputation, but these days, an increasingly diverse group of people call it home.

Lester Sloan>> There are very proud people in this community, you know, who, for good or bad, it's where they live. I guess this exhibition, this project, was a way of sort of bringing things back into focus. I mean, what is South Central? What was it then and what is it now? It's a way of putting South Central on the map as a part of all of Los Angeles.

Val Zavala>> "Intersections of South Central" will be up through April 28. For more information, you can go to their website at caamuseum.org. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Sponsored in part by:


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