The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

INTRO

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Here are the main stories of this first of May. Polish police broke up May Day demonstrations by the outlawed Solidarity union. British police searching the Libyan Embassy say they found guns and ammunition. The FBI's sting operations were criticized in Congress. There were presidential primaries today in Tennessee and the District of Columbia, Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Two of those stories get special treatment here tonight. We hear the pros and cons on the way the FBI conducts its undercover operations, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault reports on the reasons blacks vote for Jesse Jackson in the District of Columbia and elsewhere. Also tonight, a report on bad doctors who hop from state to state to stay in business, and the devotion of a California family to the magic of the carousel.

MacNEIL: Tens of thousands of Soviet citizens marched today in the traditional Communist salute to workers on May Day, but in Poland official May Day celebrations were marred by clashes between police and members of the outlawed Solidarity union. In Gdansk, where Solidarity was founded, Lech Walesa and hundreds of supporters infiltrated the official processions.They unfurled Solidarity banners and flashed victory signs at surprised Communist officials. Riot police swinging truncheons charged into the parade and chased the Walesa group out. Back at his apartment, Walesa said, "This has been the most successful May Day of my life. We said straight to their faces what we feel." In at least five other Polish cities police used water cannon, clubs and tear gas to break up Solidarity demonstrations. Western reporters saw several dozen arrests, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.There was no visible disruption of the main parade in Warsaw, as we see in this combined report from Visnews and the BBC on May Day observances in Warsaw and in Moscow.

REPORTER, (Visnews/BBC) [voice-over]: Leaflets circulating in Warsaw called on sympathizers to boycott official marches. The main march of the day was led by General Jaruzelski. It was carried live on Polish television, but viewers didn't see the scenes of violence as police broke up Solidarity demonstrations elsewhere in Warsaw and in Lech Walesa's hometown, Gdansk.

Moscow put its workers on parade, its police on alert and its leaders on show, a full-scale ceremonial occasion designed to underline the unity of the state. The workers had been invited in their thousands, their slogans carefully chosen in advance. The elderly leadership was headed by Konstantin Chernenko, just three months in office and visibly in control. On one side of him the chiefs of staff; on the other, the senior party figures who voted him into power and will replace him when he goes. The ceremony was traditional and so was the political message -- attacks on American foreign policy and calls for the world's proletariat to unite. In Moscow that line spells continuity, no zigzags from this administration. The march of Communism, slow and orthodox. Among those who did not feature were the ambassadors of most NATO countries; they've boycotted the ceremonies since the invasion of Aghanistan. It's doubtful anyone noticed their absence.

MacNEIL: Pope John Paul delivered a May Day message to the crowds in St. Peter's Square. He spoke in support of workers' rights, saying unemployment was the most serious problem, and warning modern man not to become a slave to robots and computers. Jim?

LEHRER: President Reagan is in Alaska tonight easing back into U.S. time zones and taking it relatively easy before returning to Washington tomorrow night. He made two appearances at the University of Alaska today, and said his trip to China had been a breathtaking experience, in some ways a ground-breaking experience. He concluded his six-day visit to mainland China in Shanghai, perhaps the most westernized of China's major cities. Before his departure the President got a call from Premier Zhao Ziyang thanking Mr. Reagan for his visit and the improved relations between the two countries. Then the President bid farewell to his Shanghai hosts and boarded Air Force 1 for the 8 1/2-hour flight to Fairbanks, Alaska. On his flight the President met for about 20 minutes with reporters. He was upbeat about his visit, and he took no offense at Chinese censorship of his speeches, in which references to God, capitalism and the Soviet Union were deleted.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN: I feel that was their right to do, whatever their reasons may have been, just as it was my right to say what I wanted to say. Frankly, I think that it had -- I think it had something to do with the very favorable outcome. I think they believe in me, and they have confidence in me they might not have had if I had kind of tried to pretend I was something I wasn't.

LEHRER: Mr. Reagan will remain in Alaska until tomorrow when he will have a brief airport meeting in Fairbanks with Pope John Paul II, who is on his way from Rome to South Korea. Last night, for reasons unexplainable, I said the papal-presidential meeting was today. I was wrong. Robin?

MacNEIL: British police said today they had found positive proof that shots which killed a British policewoman came from inside the former Libyan Embassy. For the second day the British continued their inch-by-inch search of the 70-room embassy evacuated last week after an 11-day siege. The police said they found two loaded pistols and two magazines for submachine guns. Commander William Hucklesby, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, said, "We have found evidence that totally refutes Colonel Qaddafi's version of events," which is that the British armed police fired on the building.Here's a report from Michael Cole of the BBC.

MICHAEL COLE, BBC [voice-over]: The last blue sheets were removed at 20 past 10 this morning, two weeks to the minute since the shots were fired which began the siege of St. James's Square. Simultaneously, specialist police teams were arriving to gather the evidence to prove beyond doubt that Number Five had been used as a well-stocked arsenal by the men Colonel Qaddafi had sent here to silence his opponents. On the first-floor windows fingerprints, possibly those of the man who fired into the crowd of demonstrators, wounding 11 of them, and murdering W.P.C. Fletcher. The windows themselves were later taken away for further forensic tests. And the police began measuring the trajectory of the 9mm bullet which hit her in the back and killed her. Police believe it came from the first-floor window on the extreme left. A spent 9mm round was found in the corner of the room. It's of the type fired from a Sterling submachine gun, the likely murder weapon.Traces of powder were found on the carpet, proof positive, say the police, if only they could bring their case to court. The other guns and ammunition were found in various rooms in the building. Together they add up to a formidable arsenal.

MacNEIL: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher today rejected an opposition demand for an independent inquiry into the Libyan Embassy siege, but she did order an internal review of intelligence reports which had allegedly warned Britain of possible violence at the embassy. The warnings reportedly came from U.S. intelligence.

The fate of the new cabinet appointed to reconcile Lebanon's warring religious factions was unclear tonight. The cabinet was announced by Christian President Gemayel and his Syrian-backed Muslim prime minister, Rashid Karami, last night. It appointed most of the feuding warlords to cabinet posts. Shiite Muslim leader Nabih Berri immediately rejected the post he was offered, but late today the Syrians were reportedly trying to persuade him to accept, and Karami said his rejections appeared negotiable. In Beirut Muslims and Christian forces went on shooting at each other.

Some 1,800 Marines who formed the U.S. contingent of the peacekeeping force in Beirut returned to the U.S. today. The members of the 22nd Marine Amphibious Unit, who had also invaded Grenada, returned to their base at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

In Colombia, President Betancourt imposed a state of siege and declared war on drug traffickers after gunmen killed his justice minister. The 39-year-old minister, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, a key figure in the war on the booming narcotics trade, was hit by 11 bullets in an ambush at his home.

Jim? FBI "Stings"

LEHRER: Democrats on a House subcommittee came down hard today on the FBI and its conduct of undercover operations. They charged in a 100-page report such operations should be put under judicial control because they pose a threat to constitutional rights. The House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights started looking into the FBI's undercover methods four years ago as a result of Abscam, the FBI's operation which nailed seven members of Congress. One senator and six House members were convicted on charges of taking bribes. Abscam's highlight was the use of videotape cameras in filming the transactions between undercover FBI operatives and the errant congressmen.

The subcommittee which issued today's report has eight members. But only the five Democrats signed it. The three Republicans issued a counterstatement calling the report a slanted and biased document that is aimed at closing down an effective and almost indispensible law enforcement tool. An FBI spokesman said today the Bureau was studying the subcommittee report, but said undercover operations are indispensable in combatting the kinds of crime that other more traditional law enforcement methods can't handle. But the report said most of the dangers inherent in undercover methods had been realized, and urged a new procedure whereby a judge would have to approve all undercover operations in advance. Robin?

MacNEIL: For a reaction to today's report, we turn first to a man who has had firsthand experience in working with FBI undercover operations. He is Edward Korman, former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. Mr. Korman represented the Justice Department in court in the appeals of the Abscame convictions. He is now a private attorney in New York City.

Mr. Korman, this report says these undercover operations pose a very real threat to liberties. What do you think?

EDWARD KORMAN: I think unless one is prepared to assume that there is a constitutional right to take a bribe and to corrupt one's office that there is no real threat to civil liberties or to constitutional rights.

MacNEIL: No real threat? Or --

Mr. KORMAN: No real threat.

MacNEIL: Meaning absolutely no threat?

Mr. KORMAN: Well, I think no threat at all since the congressmen or the public official has it in his power to adhere to his oath and say no to a bribe.

MacNEIL: That leads me to give you another quote from the report which says -- let me read it -- that "the FBI has not hesitated to intefere with political, judicial and financial institutions across the nation. They have initiated and continued broadbased investigations on the merest of suspicions of unspecified criminal activities." The merest of suspicions?

Mr. KORMAN: Well, you know, it depends on what we're talking about. In many, many instances in which there is misconduct in this kind of -- in the area that we're dealing with by public officials, that's all one really has, the merest of suspicions or suspicion. In 1972, for example, the House Ethics Committee concluded that the Korean government had implemented a plan to give cash gifts to members of Congress, and they concluded, however, that they were not able to name any member of Congress because, they said, that no one was present when the Republica of Korea official paid the bribe. The members of Congress who received the gifts, assuming that some did, did not admit to the receipt of such gifts. The foreign personnel involved refused to cooperate, and the committee concluded, "We therefore have no direct testimony from anyone with first-hand knowledge of a payment." So, as a predicate for Abscam, you had a situation which was almost comparable in which a foreign government apparently adopted successfully a scheme to bribe members of Congress and no one was caught. Now, how much more should one require when we're really dealing here with a practice that's inimicable to our free system of government?

MacNEIL: Are you saying without these operations you'd never be able to catch such offenders?

Mr. KORMAN: That's right.And there's one other thing that's very important that the existence and the availability of these operations provide aside from bringing people to justice, and that's a deterrent effect.. The very fact that these activities exist, I think, provide a considerable amount of -- would give even someone with corrupt tendencies a considerable amount of pause before they engaged in activities with someone attempting to represent a foreign government, for example, who would be offering a bribe.

MacNEIL: More likely to act as a deterrent on people who are not criminals, because these undercover operations are used against professional criminals a lot, are they not?

Mr. KORMAN: They are. Well, it's used against professional criminals, oddly enough, in instances where they're rarely ever criticized. For example, in the narcotics area these practices have been common for years and never really been criticized. It's only -- the criticism has only come when they've dealt with people who are not thought of as narcotics dealers are or organized crime figures are.

MacNEIL: You say it acts a deterrent. What about this sentence from the report, or this thought from the report, that these techniques "engender an atmosphere of fear, suspicion and paranoia that are anathema to the values protected and cherised in the constitution"?

Mr. KORMAN: You know, I don't know the context in which they're talking about it, but it seems to me that if someone, a public official -- a judge, a member of Congress or of city council -- is prepared to say no when a corrupt proposition is put to him. I'm not quite sure what he has to be afraid of or be paranoid about.

MacNEIL: I see. And --

Mr. KORMAN: I certainly, as a public official, felt no sense of paranoia in the four years that I was United States attorney because of a concern that someone would come in offering me a bribe --

MacNEIL: And try and trip you up.

Mr. KORMAN: Yes.

MacNEIL: Well, do you think that there is adequate supervision or oversight or control of these operations, or is more needed, say, from the Congress?

Mr. KORMAN: I don't think that more is needed from the Congress. I think the Department of Justice has a fairly substantial -- makes a fairly substantial effort to monitor these programs. The people in the department who do the monitoring are largely career Justice Department officials who are, by their nature, conservative and not likely to authorize anything that would be improper. I think you have to keep in mind that there are -- you're dealing with human beings and often you're dealing with informers and middle men who are shady characters, and the supervision, really, has to be over them, not so much the Bureau agents, for example.And no occasion, when you're dealing with people like that, things will happen that shouldn't happen, just as when you're dealing with certain drugs that are necessary to one's health; they occasionally have side effects that are undesirable. You try to deal with the side effects, but you don't stop using the drug.

MacNEIL: Mr. Korman, thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: A different view of it now from Jerry Berman, chief legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. Mr. Berman, as a general premise, do you agree that undercover operations like the one the FBI operates in Abscam and elsewhere jeopardize constitutional rights?

JERRY BERMAN: Well, let me say it's another view. I believe that undercover operations play an important law enforcement role. Our concern, and I think the concerns raised in the report issued today, is that in too many instances persons who are innocent of any wrongdoing have been targeted by undercover operations.

LEHRER: Like what?

Mr. BERMAN: For example, in Abscam, while the gentleman talks about you can turn down a bribe, there were a number of congressmen and senators, including Larry Pressler from South Dakota and William Hughes from New Jersey, who were brought into the Abscam scheme based on the sayings of middlemen who were totally unreliable. Senator Pressler was exposed to television cameras, videotaping and a testing of his virtue.

LEHRER: What's wrong with that?

Mr. BERMAN: I think that before you are subjected to an intrusive governmental technique or the target of an investigation or testing your virtue that the government should have a reasonable suspicion that you're engaged in criminal activity. That's the standard for any intrusive investigative technique short of a wiretap. We think it should be applied here. The FBI agrees that that should be the normal standard, and it's in their guidelines. It's in the Justice Department guidelines, except they didn't follow it in Abscam. And what Mr. Edward's report points out --

LEHRER: This is Congressman Edwards of California who is chairman of the subcommittee which issued the report today. Right, okay.

Mr. BERMAN: Congressman Edwards of California, chairman of the subcommittee. His report is that after Abscam when the Bureau said, "Geez. Reasonable suspicion is important," they conducted a whole operation in Cleveland focused at municipal court judges to see whether they were fixing cases. And if you look at the evidentiary pattern of what the Bureau was operating on when they started that investigation, they had no evidence that judges were involved. Maybe low clerks in the court may have been involved in a few fixing cases, but the investigation spread to where they were conducting intrusive investigations of judges, offering bribes to judges, trying to set up meetings, and they eventually got scammed by their own informant who set up two phony judges, and the Bureau was giving them bribe offers.

LEHRER: Well, of course the FBI itself admitted that that whole thing was wrong.

Mr. BERMAN: Well, we think that these are --

LEHRER: It's symptomatic.

Mr. BERMAN: -- avoidable mistakes, and they ought to be avoidable because, first of all, it's an invasion of privacy to target a judge where there's no reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. Second of all, those judges -- their reputations, I think, are damaged in the city of Cleveland because there's always the sense that the FBI must have had something. It happened with Larry Pressler from South Dakota while he was exonerated and was totally innocent when he was brought before the -- he said, "It's like radiation. I'll never get away from it." Congressman Hughes said, "Why are they targeting me?"

LEHRER: That's Congressman Hughes from New Jersey, right?

Mr. BERMAN: New Jersey. And I think that what --

LEHRER: Who also was completely exonerated, etc., right?

Mr. BERMAN: Right. The Senate select committees also study undercover operations, and while they came out and said that the prosecutions were valid in Abscam, they noted that 40% of the persons who were brought into the trap were innocent and were not involved. And they made similar recommendations to the Edwards committee -- statutes, rules and the possibility of judicial warrant to control the technique.

LEHRER: Well, I want to talk about the judicial warrant in a moment, but in terms of review, all the convictions of these congressmen -- the senator and the six House members -- have gone through complete judicial review now, all the way to the Supreme Court, and all of their convictions have been upheld. Does that not mean that this technique has been approved?

Mr. BERMAN: Well, the technique has been approved in the sense that you've taken cases where the issue was not the investigation. The fact that the congressmen took a bribe -- and when you start there, the law is quite clear that entrapment is a subjective judgment, and it's very easy to prove, that many judges said that the law is on the side of the FBI, but called on the Congress to do something about setting up stricter guidelines to ensure that innocent persons weren't in the trap. And, remember, it's -- the innocent persons never went to trial. It's like saying that all of the searches are always legal if you look at convictions. But we're trying to look at the searches that were thrown out, or should have been thrown out.

LEHRER: Well, let's go back to you, Mr. KORMAN, ON THE QUESTION OF JUDICIAL REVIEW. Mr. Berman just mentioned it, and the subcommittee report today recommends that approach, that a judge literally, by almost like a warrant, a search warrant, approve an undercover operation. Would you go along with that?

Mr. KORMAN: No. I think I would not, for two reasons. First of all, I don't know that a judge has any more expertise to make the kind of subjective judgments that are involved in determining what constitutes reasonable suspicion. I think that that is a determination that ought to be left to the discretion of the executive branch. I mean, all through the criminal process, prosecutors have the kind of discretion that can cause potential injury. And yet the Supreme Court has recognized that this is a prosecutorial decision. Number two, we're not talking here -- Mr. Berman keeps talking about intrusions and intrusive searches. I mean, in the search and seizure context, when the government bugs your telephone or breaks into your house, that's an intrusion on your right of privacy. I think it's a confusion of thought to say that it's an invasion of your privacy when you voluntarily attend a meeting at which someone offers you a bribe in which you are entirely free to say yes or no to.

LEHRER: Mr. Berman?

Mr. KORMAN: And, finally, just one -- there's one more point. Even if there is a warrant, I think that it depends on what the standard is. As I understand the committee report, they said that there ought to be probable cause or reasonable suspicion that a crime is about to be committed in the absence of an undercover operation. Which to me is a kind of a roundabout way of ruling out operations like Abscam in which you suspect possibly that there is corruption, that certain people may or may not be corrupt, in which the government then provides a scenario which resembles real life and makes a determination as to whether the information is accurate.

LEHRER: In other words, without an undercover operation you're saying they would never know ahead of time that a crime is about to be committed?

Mr. KORMAN: That's particularly crimes like this --

LEHRER: This kind of crime, I see.

Mr. KORMAN: -- which are committed in secret by people who are very, very careful about what they do and what they say. As a matter of fact, in one of the tapes -- I think it was in Congressman Murphy's case -- you had to actually see. He assumed that he was being recorded, but didn't assume that there was a camera. And so you had motions like this to the undercover agent to stop at the appropriate time, or a wink of the eye.

LEHRER: I see. Mr. Berman, what do you say to that?

Mr. BERMAN: Well, I think first of all let't talk about intrusiveness again. I think that citizens have a right to be free of corrupt offer or being confronted by an undercover operation under false pretenses unless they are engaged in criminal activity or reasonably suspected of engaging in criminal activity. They have a right to privacy. Second of all, we're not saying that when the court applies an analysis to intrusive techniques -- and I admit the Supreme Court has not ruled that this is like a wiretap, but the law does progress and change -- they apply the standard that we're looking for an independent judgment. It's an independent judgment, something other than a prosecutor and the FBI agents involved saying, "We think he's guilty or potentially guilty. Let's target that person." It's someone to review the evidence.

LEHRER: What's wrong with a prosecutor or the FBI making that decision?

Mr. BERMAN: They can make a judgment. I think that the technique is so intrusive that there ought to be some independent scrutiny of it. We have, for example, recommended -- Congress may not go along with a warrant, but, for example, the Edwards report and the Senate select committee and our own recommendation were for an independent board within the Justice Department, which would have maybe members from the Civil Rights Division -- a broader representation than simply law enforcement officials -- to look at the facts in these cases and say, "Hey, do we have a reasonable suspicion to target Senator Pressler?"

LEHRER: What's wrong with that, Mr. Korman?

Mr. KORMAN: Well, I think that the notion of including people, for example, from the Civil Rights Division or the civil division of the Department of Justice just adds two more people who have no experience into the process that it seems to me requires people with experience. I mean, I must say, given some of the things that have been said about the Civil Rights Division, I would think that the Committee would have recommended someone from the criminal division to sit with the Civil Rights chief.

LEHRER: Mr. Korman, do you believe that some of what went into this congressional report was congressional sour grapes because members of Congress were nabbed by Abscam?

Mr. KORMAN: I don't know that that's true. I think there is a point to be made in the sense that where people who are innocent and saying no were targeted, there is a suggestion that can be made that perhaps the government really believed that there was something wrong and there is a potential injury. I don't think that that injury was significant to any of the 40% who were so-called innocent and said no to bribes or didn't take any, and I don't think that there was any serious injury done to them.

LEHRER: But you think there was, Mr. Berman?

Mr. BERMAN: I think there was injury to those congressmen. I think that they have said that there was injury to them. Certainly there was injury to the municipal judges in Cleveland. There was no prosecution, and there was no clear evidence linking those judges to corruption, yet they were repeatedly approached by FBI agents for bribe opportunities.Certainly the elections board in North Carolina thought there was injury when the FBI came in and paid people in the city to fix an election and thereby manipulated and influenced the political process in order to get at corruption. They had to throw out that election. That, I think, are tactics which should not be permitted, no matter how valuable undercover operations are. So the report points out that there are problems and controls are possible, and I don't see why reasonable controls should be resisted.

LEHRER: Mr. Berman, thank you; Mr. Korman in New York, thank, you. Robin?

MacNEIL: The government released more economic statistics today. Spending for new construction went up 1.2% in March, much less than in the preceding months. Orders to U.S. factories in manufactured goods rose 2.2% in March, but the increase would have been negligible but for massive increases in military orders. Wall Street took all this positively today, and the Dow Jones average of 30 industrial stocks closed up more than 12 points.

[Video postcard -- Polk County, Georgia]

MacNEIL: Democrats in Tennessee and the District of Columbia voted in presidential primaries today, with Mondale and Jackson favored. The two primaries open a week in which the Democratic presidential contest opens a crucial stretch. With more than 770 delegates at stake in the next week, Walter Mondale could come close to wrapping up the race. But Gary Hart has vowed to keep up his challenge. Today in Ohio Hart continued to hammer away at his new theme -- that Mondale's share in the Carter administration marked him as a man of failed policies. Mondale was at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. In a Law Day speech to students he accused President Reagan of failing to observe standards of domestic and international law. In Washington, Jesse Jackson had an hour-and-a-half meeting with AFL-CIO leader Lane Kirkland and his top lieutenants in another effort to unite the Democratic Party. Afterwards, Jackson told reporters there would be other meetings.

Rev. JESSE JACKSON, Democratic presidential candidate: We have several areas of concern; one, that our youth have access to apprenticeship training and be equipped to end the slums and rebuild our country; that, in the South, there are too many workers unorganized who need their collective bargaining rights protected. Together we must fight to end the right-to-work laws across the South. Concern about the role of blacks and hispanics and women within the labor movement, and the full implementation of the Voting Rights Act. It was not a meeting to deal with promises and to deal with signing of contracts, but to get a better rapport.

MacNEIL: Jackson was strongly favored today to win his first presidential primary in the District of Columbia, and win by the kind of wide margin from blacks that has marked his whole campaign. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has more on that. Charlayne? Sweeping the Black Vote

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: The odds on Jackson winning in Washington, D.C. have a lot to do with the fact that Jackson has the active support of most of the city's political leaders, including its black mayor, Marion Barry. And Washington is a city that is 70% black. A massive voter registration campaign that has signed up some 31,000 new voters since January is also believed to help. But the kind of black support that Jackson is probably going to get in the District didn't start there. In all of the primary elections to date, the only race in which either Mondale or Hart came close to Jackson was the very first one in Alabama. There Jackson's share of the black vote was 50%, compared with 47% for Mondale and 1% for Hart. After that the results were far from close. In the South Georgia was typical, with Jackson getting 61% of the black vote, compared with Mondale's 30% and Hart's 6%. The same was true in the North, where Jackson peaked in New York; 87% of the vote went to Jackson, compared with eight for Mondale and three for Hart.

Although a Newsweek poll out this week reported that 51% of black adults picked Mondale as their first choice, with only 38% for Jackson, there were others who questioned the sample. Among them was Tom Cavanaugh, research associate for the Washington-based Joint Center for Political Studies, a non-profit group that conducts studies on public policy issues of special concern to blacks. Mr. Cavanaugh said that since Super Tuesday Jackson's campaign has developed all the signs of a phenomenon in terms of its across-the-board appeal to blacks.

TOM CAVANAUGH, Joint Center for Political Studies: Since then what we've been seeing is that there seems to be a consensus developing in the black community to support Jesse Jackson for president, so in addition to that initial strength he had among younger blacks, he's picking up more and more strength among older blacks as well. We've seen this for many years now that once a certain constituency begins to fall in behind a candidate, it snowballs and it moves from state to state. And I think that's what's happening with the black vote now.

HUNTER-GAULT: To get some idea about why Jackson's strength among black voters is growing, we went to Washington, D.C., to sample the opinions of blacks from widely different backgrounds.

[voice-over] Carmen Coustaut is an English instructor at Howard University, one of the capstones of black education. Dwight Terrell, a 33-year-old Vietnam-era veteran, lives in one of Washington's most impoverished neighborhoods, the Anacostia section. Stanley Boucree, a dentist and Democratic Party activist, and his wife Catherine, a lawyer, live in the fashionable section of Washington known as the Gold Coast. And finally, in the Adams-Morgan section, one of Washington's most integrated areas socially, ethnically and economically, three women whose lives touch one another: Gwen Garnes, a school aide; Ruth Long, a community worker, and Maxine Page, who is unemployed.

There are at least two things that they all have in common. They're black, and they're for Jesse Jackson for president. In fact, it was only because of Jackson that Maxine Page and Gwen Garnes were persuaded to register to vote for the first time in their lives. I asked how they felt about that and why.

GWEN GARNES: Great.Great. I don't know. I can't really explain it, and it's in my heart and I feel good about working for him.I feel good that I did register to vote. Great.

HUNTER-GAULT: Why did you never register in the past?

Ms. GARNES: Well, I really didn't have anyone special that I wanted to vote for other than Kennedy at the time. He was saying a lot, but it really didn't hit me to really vote.

HUNTER-GAULT: Why are you supporting Jesse Jackson for president?

Dr. STANLEY BOUCREE: We as a people were denied the basic right to vote. We were not enfranchised at all. I also am a professional, and I was denied the right to attend professional school in Louisiana. Not because I wasn't qualified or capable, but because in fact I am black. And so his candidacy brings to front and center stage all of these issues.

HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Terrell, why are you supporting Jesse Jackson?

DWIGHT TERRELL: I'm supporting Jesse Jackson in the hopes of making Jesse Jackson the next president of the United States. He seems to be giving the younger generation a new sense of pride and a new sense of direction, you know? As long as I can remember I have been told that I could be president of the United States simply by being born here and by not committing atrocities that's going to alienate me from the society. But yet, consciously, I know that it was not true, but now I find that it is true, and it reawakens me, you know, to the idea of America.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: I asked Carmen Coustaut about her vote.

CARMEN COUSTAUT: I am not an active supporter of his campaign. I think, though, that I would opt for Jesse Jackson in Comparison to what is available.

HUNTER-GAULT: Why are you supporting Jesse Jackson for president?

CATHERINE BOUCREE: First of all, I consider Jesse Jackson's candidacy as an extension of the civil rights movement. I think that he has the moral commitment, he has the intelligence, he has the ability to ignite and motivate people as none of the other Democratic candidates has. So that I think very definitely that but for the color of his skin he would be another John Kennedy.

Mr. TERRELL: Not all of the leaders of America has come out of the Senate or out of governorships, you know. They were soldiers and idealistic thinking people. So Jesse Jackson, by not being entwined within that political process as it has begun to be more and more communicated -- the corruption within it -- I think even qualifies him higher in terms of being more honest and forthright.

RUTH LONG: For the first time I've voted for someone that had a platform that I could really vote for. I do volunteer work in the community, and I work with young people that are welfare recipients. Most of the time they have about a ninth-grade education, some of them below. And trying to manage that small an amount of money, you know, to me is just heart-breaking.

HUNTER-GAULT: You don't hear any of the other candidates addressing the issues that are important to you?

Ms. GARNES: Not really. Mondale talks a little bit about jobs, relating to the poor people, butnot that extensively. And, as Ms. Long said, it's mostly foreign policies and nuclear wars and things like that, you know. I don't have anything against it, to a point, but I'm living for now and not later, you know? And nuclear war is far from my eyes at this moment.

Ms. COUSTAUT: He's the only candidate that I have heard so far really address the issue of South Africa and the United States' relationship with South Africa. I think that is a grave issue that needs to be addressed, because I think that the United States' posture towards South Africa is really going to be indicative of the United States' posture towards its own black citizens. And I know that there are quite a few people who are not enthusiastic about his candidacy because of reasons of the overall objective of getting Reagan out of office. I share that concern, but at the same time I think that the black vote should not be taken for granted.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: What about the perception that Jackson is solely a candidate for blacks?

Mr. TERRELL: The press seem to be polarizing, as you say, per se -- making him a black candidate when he's neither a black or a white candidate. he's a Democratic candidate for president.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: I also talked to the Jackson voters about how they felt about the Hymie incident.

Ms. BOUCREE: I don't think it was the derogatory terms that I have so frequently heard blacks referred to.

Mr. TERRELL: I can't condone it because he should know, and he probably understands that more now himself, because we grow, you know. But, as he said, he didn't really mean it in a derogative manner, and I accept that.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Like the others, Carmen Coustaut had ideas about why the issue was not laid to rest after the apology.

Ms. COUSTAUT: I think that it has to do with the fact that it's very nice for the larger society to look at a minority and find him or her guilty of, in this case, a racial slur, for which they have been guilty ever since. And I think that in some way sort of absolves them or assuages the conscience of their own guilt.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: I asked whether there was any justification for white fear of black political growth. Terrell said blacks were angry, but he explained it this way.

Mr. TERRELL: I don't think it's a violent anger. I think more or less the white society -- whites in this society here in America have created that myth themselves that the black man, if he gains any status in this country, he will hold a vindictive backlash for white America, but it's not so. My feelings, you know, on the subject of being enslaved -- my ancestors enslaved, me technically still -- is not one of vengeance, but one of wanting to be free of it.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: What happens if Jesse Jackson does not become president? Do blacks like these drop out of the political process? Dwight Terrell thinks he'd be disillusioned.

Mr. TERRELL: Once when you're a veteran that means that you have stepped across the line and have signed your name to the paper saying that, "I will defend this country at all costs -- my life for this." And for you to tell me that simply because this man is black, of the same race that I am, he could not be president irregardless of his qualifications, simply because he's black, then the party that I'm affiliated with, I must take a good hard look at it.

HUNTER-GAULT: If the Democrats do not embrace the platform or the demands that Jesse Jackson comes forth with, what are people like you going to do?

Dr. BOUCREE: Whoever the candidate is, we can't afford to stay home, but we can concentrate our monies and our time on those candidates who will address the issues. Traditionally blacks have not really benefited from their political participation, allegedly because they have not contributed financially to the political process.

HUNTER-GAULT: Will you be disappointed if Jesse Jackson doesn't win the nomination? Will you turn off to politics?

MAXINE PAGE: No, because if he doesn't win this time, maybe the next four years he will.

HUNTER-GAULT: If Jesse Jackson doesn't get to be the president, are you going to feel that you went through all of this exercise of registering and voting -- are you going to feel that it was for nothing?

Ms. GARNES: No, I am not. I'm going to feel very good about it, first of all, because he will go down in history, and that will be one thing that our black people or all races can read in history books.

LEHRER: And, in another political note, President Reagan today formally disassociated himself from the Ku Klux Klan and its endorsement of his re-election. In a letter released while he was on his way back from China, Mr. Reagan said he not only had nothing at all to do with the Klan and their beliefs, he resented the use of his name. A Klan leader endorsed Mr. Reagan two weeks ago, but White House spokesman Larry Speakes and a Reagan campaign spokesman had declined to comment on it or formally disavow it.

[Video postcard -- Stove Pipe Wells, California] Policing Doctors

LEHRER: The government had some really bad news about American doctors today. Every year about 500 of them, for reasons of incompetence or criminal activity, are stripped of their medical licenses. But -- and this is the really bad news -- that does not always mean they actually stop practicing medicine. The General Accounting Office said many of them just pick up and move to other states where they continue to be doctors and even collect fees from Medicare and Medicaid. Today's report was released at a hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Aging. The committee's chairman, Republican Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania, said incompetent doctors profit off of poor and elderly patients, and they constitute a serious and shocking problem.

Sen. JOHN HEINZ, (R) Pennsylvania: On of the examples -- we will call him Dr. S -- is a surgeon who performed a series of extensive and dangerous back surgeries on a number of patients. As the direct result of his gross negligence and gross incompetence -- and I quote from the report -- one woman, as a result of his operations in the operating room, died. When he lost his license in California, he took up practice in Michigan, and continued to receive federal reimbursement under Medicare and Medicaid. It took the state of Michigan four years to finally revoke this doctor's license. Today, this man, Dr. S, practices medicine in New York state and is still eligible to bill the taxpayer under Medicare and Medicaid. What is disturbing about all of this is that if any of these practitioners had lost their driver's license for drunk driving, their names would have gone on the national driver register, and they probably would not have been given a driver's license in any other state. The point here is that the government has no power at all to prevent incompetent practitioners from enriching themselves at the expense of the American taxpayer.

LEHRER: The GAO said the federal government should have more power to withhold Medicare and Medicaid dollars from doctors who have lost their licenses in any state. Right now those decisions are made solely at the state level by 50 separate state licensing boards. Robin?

MacNEIL: To look at how well the states protect the public from unfit doctors, we have Dr. Robert Derbyshire, past president of the Federation of State Medical Boards. Dr. Derbyshire is a retired surgeon from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and he recently did a study of this problem.

Dr. Derbyshire, why is it so easy for doctors who lose their license in one state to move to another and practice?

Dr. ROBERT DERBYSHIRE: Well, in the first place there are a number of doctors who we call license collectors. They obtain licenses in many states for various reasons, and this constitutes a real problem, mainly because of lack of communication. In other words, this is a state responsibility to report these doctors who have had actions taken against them. Unfortunately, the reporting system is anything but ideal at present.

MacNEIL: Does this mean that doctors who are deemed incompetent in one state don't go and get a new license in another state; they already have got it?

Dr. DERBYSHIRE: They've already got their license.

MacNEIL: I see. And so they don't need to go through any checking procedure when they move to another state since they've already got that license?

Dr. DERBYSHIRE: No. For instance, there was one doctor whose license was revoked for gross incompetence. He was licensed in four other states. He went to one where he practiced two years, and for some reason or other he became dissatisfied with his practice there; no action was taken against him at all, in spite of the fact the state knew about him. And he moved to a third state, where he established a thriving practice and worked for 11 months before the second state even had a hearing.

MacNEIL: Has anybody tried to set up a central reporting system? You heard Senator Heinz just there liken it to losing an automobile license in one state for drunk driving. That would be reported certrally, and you wouldn't be able to get a license in another state. Has anybody tried to set up a central reporting system?

Dr. DERBYSHIRE: The Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States is trying very hard to set up such a system. However, the system is no better than they reported, and some states report to this central agency, some do not. It is entirely voluntary. And also the American Medical Association has extensive files on all doctors in the United States, and until only recently they did not give out any derogatory information that they might have had in their files. I think that was done because they did not welcome any more lawsuits. They have enough already. And now they have relaxed the procedure to the extent that they, if there is an inquiry about derogatory information in their files, they will refer the inquirer to the state in which the action occurred, and then the onus is on the state.

MacNEIL: Is the some 500 cases of doctors losing licenses a year in some states for incompetence, is that the extent of the incompetence problem?

Dr. DERBYSHIRE: No, sir, by no means. There are many other reasons. Incompetence is just one of them. And of course there are problems with drugs, felonies -- they lead the list.

MacNEIL: How many American doctors, in your view, are incompetent?

Dr. DERBYSHIRE: Ten percent.

MacNEIL: How do you know that?

Dr. DERBYSHIRE: I don't know it, but it's an educated estimate. Formerly I'd said 5%, and I was quoted correctly by The New York Times. And after the furorhad died down, because it was claimed that I was washing dirty linen in public, the profession became more concerned about this problem, and even the AMA now has come around to saying that the figure is from eight to 10 percent.

MacNEIL: How many American doctors are practicing now?

Dr. DERBYSHIRE: About 450,000.

MacNEIL: So 10% would be 45,000.

Dr. DERBYSHIRE: Forty-five thousand, and you, if you say that a doctor, an average busy doctor sees 800 patients a year, that means, if my arithmetic is correct, that over two million people are being treated by incompetent doctors.

MacNEIL: Does that mean that, apart from the state-hopping problem we were talking about earlier, that within the states state medical boards are not strict enough in looking into the qualifications of doctors?

Dr. DERBYSHIRE: Well, there's a great variation among the boards. Some of them are very strict, some are not so strict.

LEHRER: But is it that that leads to the prevalence of so many incompetent doctors?

Dr. DERBYSHIRE: I don't think so. They're very complicated problems. For instance, drug addiction throughout -- violations of the narcotics laws have led throughout the years -- 40 to 60 percent of the actions have been taken because of violations of the narcotics act, either addiction, selling narcotics on the streets or at least making them available on the streets. And then I mentioned, of course, felonies. And there are many other problems. There's a long list of things for which doctors can be penalized.

MacNEIL: Well, what's the solution to all this, do you think?

Dr. DERBYSHIRE: The solution in the first place, I think, is to have better communication.I agree with Senator Heinz that we should be able to press a button the way you can in the case of a drunken driver, and immediately this would become available to the other state. And I do not believe that we're going to accomplish much until we get all this on the computer.

MacNEIL: Do you think a doctor, once declared incompetent in one state, should never practice anywhere again, should not be able to rehabilitate himself?

Dr. DERBYSHIRE: Oh, we believe in rehabilitation whenever possible, whenever it can be done. We think it can be done without danger to the public. And we make every effort to rehabilitate doctors. However, our percentage is rather low -- 28%. And that's not a record to be proud of. We put these doctors on probation; if they violate the terms of probation, their licenses are revoked.

MacNEIL: Well, Dr. Derbyshire, thank you for joining us this evening.

Dr. DERBYSHIRE: Thank you.

MacNEIL: Jim?

LEHRER: Again, before we go, the major stories of the day. Lech Walesa and other Solidarity demonstrators fouled up government May Day parades in Poland. The British said they have proof the shots which killed a policewoman were fired from inside the Libyan Embassy in London. Democrats on a House subcommittee criticized FBI undercover operations like Abscam, and Walter Mondale was favored to win today's Democratic primary in Tennessee. Jesse Jackson was expected to do the same in the District of Columbia.

Also before we go, a story that is a perfect way to end this first day of May. It's about a California family with a love for carousels and the finely carved wooden animals that go round and round on them. Spencer Michels of public station KQED-San Francisco reports.

SPENCER MICHELS, KQED [voice- over]: In the hills above Berkeley, the Tilden Park merry-go-round whirls children and would-be children round and round, just like it did when the Hershel Spillman Company crafted it in 1911. Five years ago, after a community drive to save the carousel, the animals were restored and made to look old by a woman and her family whose roots were deep in the world of amusement parks -- Nina Fraley.

NINA FRALEY, carousel restorer: Getting into restoration was easy for me because I grew up in an amusement park. So I was painting on animals when I was about 10 years old. The park closed in 1960, and I inherited the carousel. My husband and I had a little art gallery in Berkeley, California, at the time and were suddenly inundated with about 50 carousel animals. When I was refinishing mine, a woman came in and said, "Would you refinish one for me?" And I told my husband, "My goodness, what do I do now? What do I charge her? How do I do it?" I charged $75. My prices now are between $1,500 and about $3,000, depending on the animal. If I have to spot or stripe, then it goes up. The dramatic ones, the ones that look like pieces of sculpture, I think were really built for the adults even then. Some of them are so fierce that they would frighten a child.

MICHELS [voice-over]: Restoration of the carousel animals is a family affair for the Fraleys. A valuable skill as American collectors become increasingly fascinated with the creatures. At a restoration shop in an Oakland warehouse, the effects of time on the animals and of economics on merry-go-rounds have become obvious to Nina's son, Tobin.

TOBIN FRALEY, carousel restorer: They almost disappeared completely, the wooden ones, in the '50s and '60s, when amusement parks started putting in faster rides. They were put into storage and they sit there, and moisture starts creeping into them, and that's when the rot starts to really get at them -- bugs, whatever.

MICHELS [voice-over]: Fraley's animal painter, who incidentally has a university degree in carousel art, takes the middle ground in the controversy over whether the animals should remain functional or become antiques.

WOMAN, carousel restorer: I'd like to see the animals preserved, too, because, you know, if they operate as a ride a lot of the time the parks don't have the money for proper maintenance. And so the animals will just decay and rot, and in 20 years there'll be nothing left anyway. Most of the time, though, for collectors they like me to match their draperies and their carpet and their upholstery, so they bring me in the colors that they want the animals to match.

Mr. FRALEY: My feeling is they really are a piece of Americana, something that can't be created again. These were master carvers. They were exceptionally skilled. They started carving when they were five years old and apprenticed until they were 18, and they did it every single day of their lives. People don't do that any more.

Ms. FRALEY: There's a romance to them. There's that part of us that's never grown up. It's our perennial childhood. We think we can get on a horse and go back to our childhood dreams.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.