The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, the Kosovo bombing went into its 14th day. We have a summary report; a discussion among Former Defense Secretaries Carlucci, Schlesinger, and Brown; a refugees update; and a front-line look at the information skirmish between the Pentagon and the press, with Defense Department Spokesman Ken Bacon and George Wilson of the "Washington Post." Then, after the other news of this day, essayist Roger Rosenblatt talks of justice in the case of the Italian ski gondola tragedy.

FOCUS - OPERATION ALLIED FORCE

JIM LEHRER: Yugoslavia began a unilateral cease-fire in Kosovo today. The United States and NATO quickly rejected the idea. Tom Bearden again has our opening summary report.

TOM BEARDEN: The cease-fire announcement came after a night of what NATO described as the most intensive bombing since Operation Allied Force began. Yugoslavia said the cease-fire was intended to mark the Orthodox Easter holiday. It was unclear if it would be continued beyond the weekend. President Clinton, speaking at a previously scheduled event in support of proposed domestic hate crime legislation, said Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has the power to stop NATO bombing.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: If you think about the brave men and women who are working with our NATO allies today in Kosovo, and you remember that this basically all started 12 years ago when Mr. Milosevic decided to rally the support of his ethnic Serbian group by turning their hatred against the Kosovar Albanians, and later the Bosnian Muslims and the Croatian Catholics and the others, it is very important that we deal with these challenges here at home even as we continue to support the work of our people in uniform in the Balkans. I want to say again the United States would never choose force as anything other than a last option. And Mr. Milosevic could end it now by withdrawing his military police and paramilitary forces by accepting the difficult employment of an international security force to protect not only the Kosovar Albanians, most but not all of whom are Muslims, but also the Serbian minority in Kosovo. Everybody -- we're not for anybody's hate crimes -- and by making it possible for all the refugees to return, and to move toward a political framework based on the accords reached in France.

TOM BEARDEN: The Serbian foreign ministry pledged to work with the United Nations for the return of ethnic Albanian refugees, but the NATO allies said all indications were Serbian forces were still forcing more people out of Kosovo. Thousands continue to arrive at border crossings in Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro and now Bosnia. NATO has mobilized a massive air relief effort; food, water, medicine and tents began arriving yesterday. Even Russia announced it would send a million dollars worth of relief material even as it called the NATO air strikes acts of barbarity. But large quantities of aid haven't arrived yet and tens of thousands of people are still caught in desperate circumstances. Conditions are particularly bad in Blace, Macedonia. Estimates are that 65,000 people have been trapped for days without shelter in a hellish no-man's-land between the borders of Macedonia and Kosovo. They are living in makeshift plastic shelters held up by sticks. The mud is ankle deep and pathways are running sewers. Health authorities are concerned about a potential outbreak of dysentery and many people are dehydrated because of a shortage of fresh water. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees now estimates 400,000 ethnic Albanians have fled or been expelled from Kosovo since the bombing began March 24th; 700,000 more displaced but still inside Kosovo. Several NATO countries have volunteered to take in more than 100,000 of these people. The Turkish government has agreed to accept 26,000 refugees and the first wave of some 6,000 began to settle into a camp in Western Turkey today.

SPOKESMAN: We are doing what we can to the limit and we take pride in being able to contribute to bring some relief to the suffering of the refugees. Having said all this, we very much hope that this would be an interim arrangement and that once the situation goes back to normal in Kosovo, all these refugees, not the refugees in turkey only but all the refugees wherever they are, will be able to return to their land.

TOM BEARDEN: The effort to airlift refugees away from the war zone has resulted in something of a rift in the NATO alliance. Some countries, including Albania, France and Finland are concerned the relocation might become permanent. The US announced plans today to begin moving up to 20,000 people to the naval Base at Guantanamo Cuba and insists this is a purely temporary measure to relieve pressure on the refugee camps. Hundreds of refugees have told reporters chilling stories of being forced to leave their homes at gun point. Some have accused the Serbian army and paramilitary army of atrocities and one even smuggled out videotape of a mass execution. In an interview with ABC News this morning, Serb paramilitary leader and accused war criminal Zelko Raznatovic, also known as Arkan, dismissed those accounts as western propaganda.

SPOKESMAN: What you don't see is that the Serbs that we have 60,000 refugees in Serbia, the Serbs which are running away from Kosovo. We have in Montenegro, about 70,000 refugees running away from Kosovo. We have in Macedonia, all the Serbs and Turks and Albanians and gypsies and Macedonian people, they are running away from the bombing, NATO bombing. Why don't you tell to your people in United States that the people, the refugees are running away there NATO bombing. You're bombing civilian targets. You're bombing factories, you're bombing everything you can.

TOM BEARDEN: Yugoslav television showed pictures of an air strike on a town southeast of Belgrade it said killed several civilians. Today is the 58th anniversary of the World War II German attack on Yugoslavia and the government compared this attack to Nazi atrocities. NATO admitted the attack was a mistake and said it might have been due to a technical fault or that the missile might have been damaged by ground fire.

SPOKESMAN: Last night we struck a military facility at Alexanatch, home of the 203rd mixed artillery brigade. It possible that one of our weapons fell short of the target. We have not been able to complete a full investigation into last night's incident, but it is possible that such a rare fault may have occurred. Whatever the reason, any unintended damage to civilian property or loss of life is very much regretted.

TOM BEARDEN: NATO said improving weather conditions have allowed pilots to carry out the largest number of strikes since the campaign began.

SPOKESMAN: To illustrate some success of our attacks on his fuel supplies this is a before -- you can see in red the targets we were going for, the aim points. And here is an after shot. And you can see the extent of the damage. Incidentally, the building with the chimneys bordered in blue is the heating plant that the FREI authorities accused us of targeting. You can see that this facility was not targeted, but it may have been partially damaged by the fires that raged in the fuel depot. This second image is of a storage depot that has virtually been destroyed. This once again is a before and after shot. And I think the pictures will tell their own story. I can show you cockpit video of one of yesterday's attacks. As you will see, the clip shows a very successful strike on an ammunition storage area, ammunition that now will never be used again in Kosovo. Watch for four bombs coming in from the left of the screen. Start to look now just to the left of the screen. Yesterday I think it is fair to say that despite good weather, although our attacks have restricted the units from combat duties, we had not achieved the level of damage on these forces that we would have liked. However, we are continually adapting our tactics to resolve this frustrating situation.

TOM BEARDEN: NATO continues to beef up its military resources in the region. The aircraft carrier USS Roosevelt arrived last night and immediately began launching air strikes. The carrier battle group also contains additional ships and submarines capable of launching cruise missiles. Critics of US and NATO policy continue to insist the crisis cannot be brought to a conclusion without the introduction of ground combat forces, an option Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, again firmly rejected.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: As we have repeated over and over again, the President has no plans or intentions for ground forces in a non-permissive environment. And we believe that a sustained air campaign can accomplish the objectives that we have laid out and also to severely degrade, damage, and make it increasingly difficult if those particular conditions are not met, for Milosevic do listen to loosen his grip and be prevented from this kind of butchery.

JIM LEHRER: We get the views now of three Former Secretaries of Defense: Frank Carlucci, who held that job under President Reagan; Harold Brown, who served under President Carter; and James Schlesinger, who was Defense Secretary to Presidents Nixon and Ford. Mr. Carlucci, are NATO ground troops going to be required to bring this to a conclusion in your opinion?

FRANK CARLUCCI: Well, if the goal, the most recent goal seems to be to expel the Serbian troops from Kosovo and allow the refugees to come back in -- by the way, standard formula in warfare is that have you clear goals and obscure the means so the adversary is kept guessing. We seem to have turned that on its head. But if we want to expel the Serbian troops, that may well require ground troops. We don't know at this point. We certainly should not have ruled the option out. And if we put ground troops in, we ought to go in and do the job right.

JIM LEHRER: But as we just saw, the Secretary of State is saying again today that ground troops are not anticipated. Based on what you know of the situation, do you think it can be accomplished without ground troops?

FRANK CARLUCCI: I think we would have to be very fortunate indeed to have air power change Milosevic's mind at this point, particularly-- it's one thing to degrade his military capability. You can call a halt to that any time you want.

JIM LEHRER: Just declare it.

FRANK CARLUCCI: You just declare it. But if, as I understand it, is to allow the refugees to go back in, they are certainly going to want some security. And it's very difficult to see how you're going to get a permissive environment unless you really fight your way back in.

JIM LEHRER: Secretary Brown, do you agree, we'll have to fight our way in, in order to accomplish this?

HAROLD BROWN: It depends what this is. If we are trying to make Milosevic uncomfortable, you can do that with air power. Can you get refugees back with air power alone? I don't think so. But there are other ways besides ground invasion of trying to do that. The combination of air power to degrade Milosevic's capabilities to hurt him and diplomacy and negotiation may be a way to do it. My own view is that refugees are unlikely to go back to where they were. They have not, by and large, in Bosnia, whether they're Serb refugees, Croat refugees or Bosnian Muslim refugees, and there you have a relatively permissive environment. So we should step back and think again about what it is we're trying to accomplish here.

JIM LEHRER: Do you not -- in other words, you don't buy into the idea that that should be our policy, to let these refugees back -- or insist or make it possible for the refugees to go back?

HAROLD BROWN: No, if they want to go back, we should try to help that happen. But I think for that to be "the" policy or "the" goal, it seems to me, is to be to me both too narrow in our goal and perhaps make it have too difficult a goal. I think we need some sort of comprehensive reexamination of the whole Balkans. That would take, it seems to me, an international conference. It would have to include the Russians who are more believable to the Serbs than we are and might involve redrawing of boundaries.

JIM LEHRER: Secretary Schlesinger, where do you come down on this? First of all let's go just on the refugee issue alone. Do you believe that that should be -- I mean obviously that wasn't a stated policy to begin with because nobody knew there were going to be 400,000 refugees.

JAMES SCHLESINGER: Well, we should have known. We should have known that there were going to be refugees. We -- at Rambouillet we developed an option that we tried to press on Milosevic. It was a proposal that was not acceptable to him, so we turned to giving him an offer that he couldn't refuse. And we decided that we were prepared to bomb. And the consequence of that was inevitably, almost inevitably that he would use the time available to drive out the Kosovars.

JIM LEHRER: Okay, but that aside, where we are today -- we are where we are today. Now, what do we do about those refugees?

JAMES SCHLESINGER: Well, I would think about what Harold Brown has just said and that is an international conference. I don't think that the administration is prepared for that type of negotiation at this time. Without ground forces or the threat of ground forces, I think that the probability of our being able to bomb the Serbs into submission is modest to zero.

JIM LEHRER: So you would agree with Frank Carlucci then that at least it ought to be on the table. We should be planning for it?

JAMES SCHLESINGER: We should never tell an opponent what we are not going to do. That should remain something that he worries about.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Where do you come down on this question that Secretary Brown raised that maybe this is the wrong objective anyhow to try to guarantee the return of refugees to Kosovo?

FRANK CARLUCCI: Well, it's a little late to start revisiting objectives. The President and NATO have said that the objective is to allow the refugees back in. And they are certainly not going to go in under current conditions or under the cease-fire Milosevic has just announced. They are only going to go back in if there is some kind of protection. If after that you want to have a conference to determine what the make-up of the Balkans should be, then fine, but right now we're locked into an objective, as I understand it, as best as I can understand it. And they keep changing. But if we're locked into that objective, we've got to see it through.

JAMES SCHLESINGER: We may be locked into the objective, but we do not have the means of achieving that objective.

HAROLD BROWN: Not now.

JIM LEHRER: You mean we don't have enough troops on the ground to do it if we wanted to do it.

JAMES SCHLESINGER: It would require, I believe, the threat of a ground invasion, and at the moment, we do not have that capacity and it would probably take us six weeks to develop it.

JIM LEHRER: All right. I want to come back to the specifications of that in a moment, but Secretary Brown, what about this point? It's all well and good to have a conference and talk about the Balkans - in the meanwhile, what do we do about the 400,000 refugees, what do we do about the continuing ethnic cleansing; what do we do about the bombing?

HAROLD BROWN: Well, we try to take care of those who have fled Kosovo as best we can. It seems to me that that humanitarian objective is shared by everybody -- by all of us. With respect to getting --stopping more from coming out, it seems to me that the bombing campaign has shown, so far, that it's not going to be able to do that. And if we say the bombing campaign is going to continue for a month -- and I anticipate -- or months -- and I anticipate it will continue, I would expect that will you have a continuing flow of refugees from Kosovo. As to ground troops, I tend to agree that we should not limit our means in our rhetoric, at any rate, beforehand. And starting to move ground troops in as an additional threat, without being clear as to whether we'll use them or not, might make sense. It's also, it seems to me, rather dangerous because once you have them there, there will be strong pressure to use them and move them in. And it's not clear to me how that would play out either.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Well, let's take these things one at a time. Mr. Carlucci, you said last week it would take a minimum of 200,000 ground troops to accomplish this. Why would it take that many?

FRANK CARLUCCI: Well, what I said was that that was a figure that had come out of the Pentagon or NATO. My own judgment is that it would take somewhat less. And you've got about 40,000 Serb troops and their paramilitary forces in country. As a rule of thumb, you need three times that number to deal with them. So you're talking in the neighborhood of a hundred and maybe slightly over a hundred thousand troops. And you probably have to bring in some heavy divisions. The 82nd Airborne couldn't do it alone, it's quite clear. It's difficult terrain; the access roads are difficult; it's not an easy struggle. We shouldn't go in expecting that it be done overnight. I'm certain we could prevail, but we should have no illusions on the difficulty.

JIM LEHRER: Now, do you agree with - you said six weeks it would take - do you agree it would take over a hundred thousand -

JAMES SCHLESINGER: A minimum of six weeks, and I think it's probably well over two months, but -

FRANK CARLUCCI: At least.

JAMES SCHLESINGER: -- there have been estimates as low as six weeks.

HAROLD BROWN: Remember, you'd be dealing in other countries, not NATO countries, except for Hungary, which is not contiguous for the rest of NATO.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Let me see if I can get a point of agreement here just for discussion purposes. Do you agree with Harold Brown, Dr. Schlesinger, that whether we're going to use them or not, we ought to get ready to use them, that that, in fact, could be a tool that might lead to something good?

JAMES SCHLESINGER: I think that that could be helpful. I add to his caveat that if you have the forces there, there will be strong political pressures in this country and at least in the UK to use those forces. And until we have forces that can do the job, we ought not to start ground action.

JIM LEHRER: How do you feel about that, Mr. Carlucci?

FRANK CARLUCCI: I believe we ought to start to prepare. And in fact the Apaches and MLRS are a step in the right direction.

JIM LEHRER: These are the Apache attack helicopters - 24 of them - that are going in there to Albania.

FRANK CARLUCCI: That's right.

JAMES SCHLESINGER: And rocket artillery.

JIM LEHRER: Rocket artillery. And that's kind of -- explain that, for those of us who don't understand this very much, what that -- why is that a step toward ground warfare, Mr. Carlucci?

FRANK CARLUCCI: Well, what we're doing -- what NATO tried to do at the outset was to achieve its goals through strategic bombing, B-52's, B-2's, F-117's.

JIM LEHRER: That's way high up.

FRANK CARLUCCI: Way high up. They weren't prepared for tactical air operations. Now they're moving to tactical air operations which can deal with the armor on the ground in Kosovo. And that will have much more effect on the ethnic cleansing and on the troops in the field themselves. The Apache can fly low, it could hit tanks from a good distance. MLRS is a very accurate weapon. So that ought to begin to change the character of the engagement.

HAROLD BROWN: We have to remember -

JAMES SCHLESINGER: They won't be there for ten days.

JIM LEHRER: That's true. The Apaches.

JAMES SCHLESINGER: The Apaches will not be -- presumably the MLRS will go in at the same time. That means that much of this ethnic cleansing will be a dead issue by that time.

HAROLD BROWN: And it's not being done by tanks. It's being done by paramilitary forces and military-style police. Air power is not terribly effective against that sort of formation. And even your rocket artillery and your helicopters, I think, will have limited capability, although more.

JIM LEHRER: Let me start with you, Mr. Brown, and go back on this issue. There was a story in the "Washington Post" today that said American public opinion, as well as Washington opinion, has been moving in the last few days toward ground troops, which was something that nobody supported as of before the bombing began, and it's been attributed to those kinds of pictures that we ran again here tonight and have been running every night, as has everybody else. All three of you have been in the cockpit seat before in these kinds of operations, give us cause and effect on that.

HAROLD BROWN: Well, It seems to me that the humanitarian catastrophe does drive public opinion. It makes public opinion, and journalistic opinion want to get it over with. I think there's a mistaken belief, perhaps a mistaken faith as to what various kinds of military action can do to get it over with. But the more such a humanitarian catastrophe and -- is portrayed, the more people are going to want to do that. Now, of course, it's been portrayed elsewhere as well, although not recently, perhaps. And the argument that we hear there is, well, this is the heart of Europe, which it seems to me is either a geographical or anatomical mistake. But that intensifies the public concern. I think we need to think through what we're going to do before we react with escalation to such pictures.

JAMES SCHLESINGER: Harold is absolutely right. In the first place, there have been lots of these humanitarian tragedies, some -- one in particular, in the Balkans which we supported, to wit, the expulsion of the Krajina Serbs three years ago. Those pictures did not appear on television and as a consequence, they had no impact on public opinion in the United States. These pictures appear on television and they have had a considerable impact. But thing ahead two months from now when you have ground forces in place. It is not clear after some months of bombing, possibly the loss of some helicopters, some search and rescue operations of the helicopter pilots, whether the taste for ground warfare will still be there.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Carlucci, talking about policy decisions, et cetera, whatever anybody else thinks -- about anything else anybody else thinks about Milosevic, did he not make a classic miscalculation to continue the ethnic cleansing to make these pictures possible while the bombing was going on?

FRANK CARLUCCI: Well, only time will tell the answer to that one, Jim. If his goal is to forcibly expel the Kosovar Albanians, he's very close to reaching that goal. He's within a couple of weeks of reaching that goal. He may not view it as a mistake. As somebody said, he'd rather preside over a rubble of a country than give in on this issue. So hopefully he will recognize that he has made a mistake. But it's not clear, at least to me, that he sees it that way at this point.

JIM LEHRER: Now, do you see it the same way though, on the way it's been rousing public opinion, not only here but also in Europe as well? Public opinion in Europe is very much supporting the bombing and all of that right now.

FRANK CARLUCCI: I thoroughly agree with my colleagues. It's a very serious matter to put in ground troops. You have to look ahead. You have to recognize that there will be casualties, and that American public opinion could swing once again. That's where presidential leadership has to come in. And it's good that some of our congress people are going over there now. They're stepping in to a leadership role.

JIM LEHRER: They are going over there today in fact with Secretary Cohen on an inspection trip to -- they are going to Brussels and then possibly into the area. Well, thank you all three very much for being with us.

UPDATE - EXODUS OF AGONY

JIM LEHRER: More now on the refugee crisis. We have two Independent Television News reports, by Tom Bradby in Albania, and Tim Ewart on the Macedonian border.

TIM EWART: A people who have lost everything were today being stripped of the last vestiges of their dignity. Macedonian soldiers were surgical masks and kolashnikovs began herding Albanian Kosovars away from the border and on to buses that will eventually deposit them at the airport: Destination unknown.

REFUGEE: My life, I don't know where I'm going now, I don't know.

TIM EWART: This is the Rashiti family expelled from Pristina. They see the airlift as little more than deportation.

REFUGEE: There's no better place than our home. I don't know what the world means by this. All the other countries are taking you, that's not life, for God's sake. How would somebody feel himself if they left his home and everything there? What's -- what about life there? This is not life. This is crazy. This is misery. I don't know, have you seen the people there -- where are they living?

TIM EWART: The majority of refugees, upwards of a hundred thousand, have been trapped on the border for more than a week. Their makeshift camp sprawls back into Kosovo. What's happening there can only be imagined, and even here in Macedonia, prying eyes are increasingly unwelcome.

TIM EWART: Is it possible -

MAN: Get out of here this moment.

TIM EWART: Where are we allowed to go with the camera?

TIM EWART: The camp is a place of appalling squalor. People huddle under plastic sheets and live in constant fear of disease. Water from a river awash with refuse is all that's available for washing. A couple of weeks ago the people here lived in houses and apartments, they drove cars; they had jobs to go to and families to raise and university studies to complete. Now they're trapped in a muddy field, caught in a no-man's-land between two countries, neither of which wants them. And worse, few have passports or identity documents. The Serbs confiscated their papers as they threw them out, making it all the more difficult ever to go back.

TIM EWART: Where will you go now?

ALBINA JELADINI: I don't know. The mostly that I would like is to come back at my home and to live normal like all Europeans do because we are a part of Europe. And you are seeing here that we are living here like animals.

TIM EWART: At another checkpoint further along the border, the refugees are being refused entry into Macedonia. Thousands of them can only wait in a queue that stretches back into Serb territory. And so the agony goes on and on for the Kosovo Albanians. They are a people ethnically cleansed, dispossessed and humiliated.

TOM BRADBY: On every street in every town in northern Albania, there are now just so many people, and hidden beneath the sea of faces are ever more horrifying eyewitness accounts of Serb massacres. The aid agencies say they are dealing with a steady stream of deeply traumatized children who have, like Hekuran, been exiled and orphaned at a stroke. He is 13. He says his mother and father were shot in front of him.

HEKURAN: [speaking through interpreter] When we were coming downstairs, my mother was trying to protect the children. They shot her with a bullet in the front of her head. They killed her. They said to us, "Go to Albania."

TOM BRADBY: One of the children Hekuran's mother was trying to protect was Drena, her granddaughter. The little girl was in her arms as she died. She was picked up by Herukan's father, who was shot, then by another male relative, who was also killed. Hekuran saw it all. Drena plays happily in the day now, but at night she screams. Hekuran has Drena's mother to look after him. She says he tells her every day, "You're my mother now." Hekuran is far from alone in his plight. Dren is ten, and was hiding in the cellar of his home on the night of the second of April with his family and others, 19 in all. The Serbs set fire to the house, then, he says, shot them one by one. He was hit in the arm and left for dead. Dren was treated by a French charity, and aid is beginning to flood in, but then, so too are the people, still thousands and thousands -- today, many who had queued for up to four days to cross the border. What's changed since last week is, above all, the nature of the stories, the number of first-person accounts of massacres that change from village to village.

LAURA BOLDRINI, UNHCR: It seems that they are emptying all the hospitals, which is, I mean something really terrible. I mean how can you push out sick people? I don't know.

TOM BRADBY: Tent camps were being built here today, but the refugees who will fill them want more than a safe haven. They want their future back. They want the individuals who've done this punished.

JIM LEHRER: The refugee crisis is having a political impact on another Kosovo neighbor, Montenegro, Serbia's sister republic. ITN's Gaby Rado reports from the capital, Podgorica.

GABY RADO, ITN: The nightly TV Montenegro news bulletin. The lead story is naturally the damage caused in Serbia by NATO bombing. But there are items here you wouldn't see on Serbian TV. Tonight, for example, a western leader allowed to put his case.

TONY BLAIR, Prime Minister, Great Britain: I say to any of your people listening to this, believe me. We have nothing but goodwill towards you. We've nothing but goodwill towards the ordinary people in Serbia. But we cannot allow this brutal bloody dictator to get away with the policy of ethnic cleansing once more. We have to stop him.

GABY RADO: Moderate Montenegrins get a wider picture from their yet unmuzzled present TV but say the West's policy toward Belgrade is backfiring.

MARINA FILIPOVIC, Association of Independent Media: There is no independent media now in Serbia. Milosevic is stronger than ever, so it's a complete disaster. That was because of NATO air strikes in Belgrade, especially.

GABY RADO: The kind of students whose every instinct is to oppose Slobodan Mlosevic are now out in the square protesting against NATO aggression. The feeling that all Yugoslavs, Montenegrins and Serbians alike face a common enemy overrides everything. A web site calling for an end to bombing has been organized by pro-democracy students.

STUDENT: The person whom NATO is trying to make -- to punish for this situation is going to be much more stronger than ever. We are all afraid what the army, which is led by the Serbian President Milosevic would do here, and that is a danger for the democratically-elected regime here.

GABY RADO: Those dangers are visible in the flak jackets and machine guns of the special police on the streets of Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital. They are out not just to keep the lid on popular feelings but as a warning to the Yugoslav army, they were firmly put under control of a pro-Milosevic general last week. The nightmare is a coup d'etats with police and army on the opposite sides.

DRAGISA BURZAN, Deputy Prime Minister, Montenegro: We know that Milosevic has been attempting a coup d'etats on a couple of occasions here, once quite openly and -- but we have proved we can handle those things. We've be able to handle those things and to repel those attacks on democratically-elected government.

GABY RADO: The 40,000 or so Kosovo Albanian refugees who fled to Montenegro in the past week have been registering and trying to find shelter. Their misery is a constant reminder to Montenegrins of the policies of their own Yugoslav president. That just adds to the political and ethnic tensions which already existed here before the tragedy in neighboring Kosovo began in earnest.

FOCUS - NEWS FROM THE FRONT

JIM LEHRER: Meanwhile, back in Washington there's a daily skirmish at the Pentagon over the news from the front. Media Correspondent Terence Smith has that story.

TERENCE SMITH: This is as close as the western press has come to the fighting over Kosovo - grainy footage of bombing runs provided by NATO, allied aircraft taking off and landing; Serbian television pictures of Belgrade bomb damage - and today aerial photographs of more bomb damage. Information that does find its way out is strictly controlled by the Pentagon and by NATO.

SPOKESMAN: Well, I'm not in a position to tell you at this point.

SPOKESMAN: I'm not going to be able to discuss any specifics.

SPOKESMAN: This is an unusual type of warfare.

TERENCE SMITH: One of the few examples of direct coverage of the military operation appeared last week on ABC's "Nightline." Producer LeRoy Sebris was aboard a B-52 during a bombing run over Yugoslavia. The push and pull between the Pentagon and the press has gone on for years. But the past correspondents have sometimes been able to cover the fighting from the front.

EDWARD MURROW: This is Edward Murrow speaking from London.

TERENCE SMITH: Edward R. Murrow filed radio dispatches from London during the blitz in 1940. Twenty-five years later, during Vietnam, reporters were free to accompany troops into the field. But the daily military briefings in Saigon, famous for their lack of information, were dismissed as the Five O'Clock Follies. Vietnam was a benchmark in military coverage. For the first time television brought the fighting into the nation's living room. In 1991, the Persian Gulf War became the first conflict covered in real time. CNN's correspondents reported live from Baghdad as the first air attacks were launched. But back at headquarters, military commanders kept a tight grip on hard information. The amphibious landing in Somalia in 1992 presented another spectacle: Bewildered Navy Seals landing at night met not with hostile fire but by a detachment of network reporters. But today the Pentagon and NATO seem to be observing the old War Department adage: "Loose lips sink ships."

TERENCE SMITH: Now, we get two perspectives on the frequently adversarial relationship between the Pentagon and the press. Kenneth Bacon, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs is the Pentagon's chief spokesman; he was previously an editor and reporter for the "Wall Street Journal." George Wilson, the chief military correspondent for the "Washington Post" for 20 years, is the author of several books on the military; he is currently the defense reporter for "Legislate," a "Washington Post" on-line service. Gentlemen, welcome to you both.

George, have you been getting the picture, full and accurate, that you and through you the public needs on this operation?

GEORGE WILSON: The short answer is no. And the reason is that it's kind of a stretch a stretch sock rationale. The military objective has been stated by Ken several times as degrading the Serbian military. Well, degrading could mean breaking the window of a barracks. We don't have any specifics on bomb tonnage. We have very vague numbers on sorties, and I think it's much more restrictive than other wars I've covered.

TERENCE SMITH: And this makes it hard, in your view, to give an accurate picture?

GEORGE WILSON: Well, if the American public is to make a judgment as to whether it's a success or failure, whether we should be there or not be there, it seems to me there's no substitute for the facts. And the bad guys know whether the bombs have hit and where they've hit, so who are we hiding information from?

TERENCE SMITH: Well, Ken, is it more restrictive than in the past?

KENNETH BACON: Yes.

TERENCE SMITH: And, if so, why?

KENNETH BACON: Well, we have adopted a more restrictive policy than in the past. And I think I should be very clear about that. The reason is that this battle in particular and I think modern times in general have changed the dynamics of information released for warfare. Let me tell you why. First of all, this is an alliance war. It is not something that involves in the US alone, so we are trying to work as part of a 19-member alliance. It is led by an American general but still we want to be sensitive to the decision-making of the alliance and also to the fact that as information becomes widely dispersed throughout the alliance, of course, operational security becomes harder and harder to maintain. Second, technology is much different today than it was before. We now live in an era where information is made available instantly to the enemy. We know that they watch television. We know that they are on the Internet. We know that they have cell phones. They are watching planes take off from airports all across Europe, and they can calculate the time it takes them to get to their targets, and they can calibrate their air defenses. So we want to give the enemy as little information as we can in order to help them with their own defenses against the attacks. Third, we live in an incredibly competitive media age. We now have three, twenty-four-hour-a-day cable networks all competing for scoops, all competing to get on the air as soon as possible with new details. And I think the fourth reason is that the press is much less restrained in the use of operational information today than they used to be. Let me give you an example. Last week, the "Washington Post" published on the front page two targets in downtown Belgrade. Both those targets were struck this week. But you can imagine that when this was read by the Serbs, they took various action to reduce the impact of those, those strikes.

TERENCE SMITH: The targets you speak of were the Interior Ministry and one other?

KENNETH BACON: And the Ministry of Defense.

TERENCE SMITH: Right. George, well, do those sound like reasonable and justifiable limits?

GEORGE WILSON: I think it would be justifiable if we're talking about information released in advance of an operation, but a post-audit on what we did -- and the bad guys know where the bombs hit and where they did not hit, and who was involved, and how many sorties were flown -- this was after the fact-- I don't see how that compromises security.

TERENCE SMITH: Does the public deserve a post-audit, as George calls it?

KENNETH BACON: I think the thing the public deserves most is a set of conditions that allows its military, its men and women in uniform, to succeed at what they do, and as I said, we have different operational security restraints today than we used to have. I also think that a sophisticated government, such as the military in Yugoslavia, is very good at analyzing information -- at figuring out what sorts of weapons we use on what sorts of targets; whether we think the weapons performed well or badly - and they take that information and use it to recalibrate their defenses. We see that happening. So we've just decided to give them as little information as possible. That does mean being more tight with information we give to the press, but we've done this purely for operational reasons.

GEORGE WILSON: Well, how does the American public, who sees the country in a half-pregnant war, where we're using air power, but not ground forces, how do they make a judgment when the record of the briefings during the Persian Gulf War accused the Pentagon of being "overstated, misleading, inconsistent." In other words, if you restrict the information, if the press says nobody on the ground in Kosovo, how do you -- how do you counter? How do you make sure you're giving the truth out?

TERENCE SMITH: Well, that's a good question. I think no one has accused us of being overstated.

GEORGE WILSON: We don't know.

KENNETH BACON: No one has accused us of being too -- of spinning the information about this operation. We have been very restrained. One of the reasons we've done that is that I don't think that the score keeping, the body counting, the percentage-of-success formulations that have been used in the past give a very accurate picture of what's going on. They frequently lead to, I believe, misleading proxies for what's really happening. So rather than get into that sort of misleading "we're 30 percent of the way there, we're 50 percent of the way there," when we don't know, we've decided just to describe what we're doing, describe our goals, and we do that every day.

TERENCE SMITH: But you know, you are asserting -- you, the administration, NATO -- is asserting that Milosevic is carrying on an offensive in Kosovo, an offensive that the western press can't see. Don't you need to document that?

KENNETH BACON: Well, we have -- we're beginning to document it. We have had bad weather for more than a week, which has very much interfered with our ability to collect pictorial information and to show it, but I don't think there's any doubt that this offensive is going on. The evidence is 300,000 refugees. Any reporter can go there and talk to those refugees, and every -- news organizations have reporters now in Kukas, Albania, or in Skopja, Macedonia, talking to refugees. There's no doubt about this ethnic cleansing.

TERENCE SMITH: George, when you listen to Ken talk about this, does that sound like a fundamental shift in Pentagon strategy to you, something different than past conflicts?

GEORGE WILSON: I think it's a sea change, and I think the sea change started, in my experience, with the bombing last August of the alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan and the pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, and if you remember, I asked you about whether we had killed any innocent Pakistanis, and you said, flatly, "I refuse to discuss this." And Secretary Cohen has said that his biggest fear is the terrorist threat. Now, is your restrictive policy about military operations -- you're quoted as having said you're out to change the culture of the pentagon. Is that connected to the terrorist threat? In other words, would you admit that you're much more restrictive about the bombing of Khartoum and the terrorist camps than any other previous secretary about any bombing raid?

KENNETH BACON: Well, first, I think what I was quoted as saying was that Secretary Cohen and General Shelton are out to change the culture of the Pentagon, and that's the culture -

TERENCE SMITH: What does that mean, to change the culture, information culture, I think you mean.

KENNETH BACON: Yes, I think that after the -- one of the reasons that the press is able to get information about prospective targets, for instance, is because people in the building are generally less concerned about secret or secure information today than they used to be. I think that generals are -

TERENCE SMITH: In the Pentagon building, you're referring to.

KENNETH BACON: I won't say generals, but I think people are more willing to discuss this than they used to be. The Cold War is over. They don't see a unilateral, a uniform threat as we used to when the Soviet Union faced us, and I think there's generally been a relaxation. I think General Shelton and Secretary Cohen are concerned about that, and they think that there ought to be less operational detail discussed in public and less operational detail printed in public, and they have set out to try to make that happen. This happens to be the biggest example of the new policy. Going back to what happened last August, the attacks against terrorist operations, I think that's separable from what we're going through today. That was a counterattack against terrorism in response to the killing of hundreds of Americans in Kenya and Tanzania.

TERENCE SMITH: In the bombing of the embassies.

KENNETH BACON: In the bombing of the embassies. We believe that terrorists will strike back at the troops who actually launch those attacks, if they have a chance to do it, as well as against other Americans. So purely for protective reasons, we decided to release as little about that as possible, and indeed, there was quite a lot of confusion in the days following the attacks as to exactly how we had, how we had launched those attacks. That's exactly what we want in a war against terrorism. We don't want them to know where we're coming from.

GEORGE WILSON: But the bad guys know if the bombs hit the targets or not, and I don't see why the American people can't share in that, and back to your earlier point that the "Washington Post" listed a prospective target-- well, as General Powell usedto tell General Schwarzkoff, "Hey, the press has all kinds of targets on their laundry list, and don't get upset about it." Now, can you cite any reason that the -- was there more anti-aircraft defense? In other words, did that disclosure hurt anything operational?

KENNETH BACON: Well, I can cite one that did. Back in 1995, a television network reported that we were about to launch a cruise missile against a surface-to-air missile site in Banja Luka, Bosnia, and as a result of that disclosure, the surface-to-air missile was moved. That was one missile that we might have hit, but we did not hit because it was moved, and as a result, we couldn't find it, and couldn't attack it. It was one missile that was left to shoot at American planes that might not have shot at American planes if that disclosure might hadn't been made. Now, this is anecdotal, but I think it's important to realize that disclosures do have consequences.

TERENCE SMITH: All right, gentlemen, thank you both very much.

GEORGE WILSON: Thank you.

KENNETH BACON: Thank you.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: In the other news of this day, the premier of China began his nine-day visit to the United States. Zhu Ronji arrived in Los Angeles. He will meet with President Clinton in Washington Thursday. They are expected to discuss trade issues and allegations of Chinese nuclear spying, among other things. In a speech after his arrival, Zhu said China would lift its ban on US wheat and citrus fruits, clearing possible obstacles to China's entry into the World Trade Organization. Zhu is the first Chinese premier to visit this country in 15 years. The only television interview he is giving while he is here, by the way, will be to the "NewsHour" on Friday. At the White House event today where President Clinton spoke of Kosovo, he also endorsed expanded federal hate crimes legislation; it would permit prosecutions of offenses based on a victim's sex, sexual orientation, or disability. The law now applies to those based on race, color, religion, or national origin. Mr. Clinton said this:

PRESIDENT CLINTON: It is very easy to get into a social system where you always get to think a little better of yourself because you've always got someone that you can dehumanize. And that's really what this whole issue with gays is today in America. We're not talking about everybody agreeing with everybody else on every political issue. We're talking about whether people have a right to pursue their lives and dignity and without fear of being abused.

JIM LEHRER: The US economy is healthy and thriving, according to the Conference Board. The New York research group said today its Index of Leading Economic Indicators rose for a fifth straight month in February. Those indicators anticipate economic performance in the next six to nine months.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: And to recap our major story, the air war over Kosovo, now in its 14th day, Yugoslavia began a unilateral cease-fire in the province to last through the six-day Orthodox Christian Easter. And US, NATO, and Kosovar rebels quickly rejected that idea. President Clinton repeated that Yugoslav leader Milosevic could make the bombing stop only by complying with peace proposals. And before we go tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt shares some thoughts on justice and the Italian cable car tragedy.

ESSAY - JUSTICE WITHOUT JUSTICE

SPOKESMAN: Captain Richard Ashby still faces additional charges, but a Marine Corps jury cleared of the worst offenses, which could have sent the pilot to a military jail for 200 years.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Even for those who were not directly affected by the terrible event, the court's decision was unsettling. At issue was the acquittal of Captain Richard J. Ashby, an American Marine Corps pilot who last year, flying too low and too fast on a training exercise, sheared the cables of a ski lift in the Italian Alps, and sent 20 tourists down to their deaths. When the American military court acquitted Ashby, the reaction in Italy was understandably enraged.

SPOKESMAN: [speaking through interpreter] I conveyed to the President of the United States that I was personally shocked, and so is Italian public opinion.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: But it didn't settle all that well here, either, and it was not because anybody knows the details of the inquiry, or thinks that the trial was rigged and unfair. The discomfort with the verdict comes from a feeling of helplessness in the face of events to which blame and punishment are not readily applied. Accidents happen, sometimes disastrous accidents, and they often happen because people are going too fast, or flying too low, or behaving as people behave when they are tired or careless or recklessly stupid. For some of these things, there is punishment, but little justice. A drunk driver can go to jail for vehicular homicide. A construction company can be found guilty of criminal negligence. But there is a category of disaster for which no instruments of justice are available, and even when justice is done, it does not serve. Helplessness in the face of calamity is, in fact, the rule of society, more than the exception. We create courts and laws in an optimistic effort to make punishments fit crimes, but they rarely do. What satisfaction does the family of a victim of a drive-by shooting get from a successful civil suit against a gun manufacturer? These days, tobacco companies are paying out millions for their lethal business, but ask the victims or their heirs, standing with money in hand, if they feel compensated for their loss. German, Austrian, and Swiss banks are negotiating with the survivors of the Holocaust on reparations. Deutsche Bank, the biggest bank in Germany, has recently disclosed that it loaned the money for the building of Auschwitz, so they toss that admission into the deal. How much exactly should one pay for the ovens and the showers of the extermination camps, for the mass murder of children, the decimation of an entire population? Descendants of murderers, descendants of victims sit across from each other at tables in board rooms and attempt to arrive at a proper number, perhaps one that corresponds with the number burned into the arms of the survivors. Even when the coin of the realm is not money, it is hard to find reparations. When Adolph Eichmann was executed in Israel, who felt that justice had been done? At the Nuremberg Trials, who believed that the score had finally been settled? When it comes to a monstrosity like the Holocaust, there is no justice. Injustice prevails, and one is left with the unbearable truth that there are some wrongs that can never be righted. We complain that we live in a litigious society, but there are many circumstances where we would like to see more laws, and more precise laws, applied. Either by accident or by evil design, people find ways to circumvent the law, commit crimes that will never be punished, and leave others staring into space with a benumbed and pitiless vacancy. We grope for equivalencies that will never be realized. Think of the families of the ski lift victims. Had that military court found Captain Ashby guilty as charged, who would say to those people, are you satisfied now? I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

JIM LEHRER: We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.