The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MacNeil/LEHRER NEWSHOUR SHOW #4274 THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1992

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MS. WOODRUFF: And I'm Judy Woodruff in Washington. After our News Summary tonight, Elizabeth Brackett reports on today's recommendations about silicone breast implants. Then we focus on hate crimes. We have a report on the cross burning case now with the Supreme Court and a discussion on whether hate groups are growing. Finally, we return to the subject of breast implants with an Anne Taylor Fleming essay.NEWS SUMMARY

MS. WOODRUFF: A Food & Drug Administration advisory panel today recommended that silicone gel breast implants be put back on the market, but only with restrictions. They suggested that women wanting the implants for either breast reconstruction or enlargement should be allowed to do so only in careful clinical trials. If adopted, the restrictions would mean that implants for purely cosmetic reasons would be unlikely. The panel said no clear cause and effect relationship had been established between ruptured implants and immune disorders but said more studies needed to be done. Last month, the FDA called for a voluntary moratorium on the use of implants until health concerns could be examined. This week, the panel heard three days of testimony on the matter. The FDA will consider the recommendations and make a final determination by April 20th. We'll have highlights from those hearings later in the program. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Israeli troops and tanks smashedthrough United Nations barricades in South Lebanon today in a hunt for Shiite Muslim guerrillas. They raided two Shiite villages inside the U.N. peacekeeping zone. Two Israelis and four Shiites were reported killed. U.N. forces tried unsuccessfully to block the Israeli advance. Four U.N. peacekeepers were wounded when they were caught in the crossfire of the Arab-Israeli clashes. Israeli officials said their troops were after terrorists responsible for rocket attacks on Israel. Today's push by Israel North of its self- declared security zone raised fears it was seeking to expand its control of South Lebanon. Robert Moore of Independent Television News reports from the Israeli border.

MR. MOORE: For five days there has been an intense exchange of artillery and rocket fire. And today Israel's guns were still targeting strongholds in Southern Lebanon being used by pro-Iranian Hezbollah guerrillas. This morning though with helicopter gunships flying overhead Israel changed the scope and intensity of the operation. The artillery jewel had become a search and destroy mission. Tanks and armored personnel carriers were brought up to the border region as reinforcements, and in addition hundreds of ground troops have been committed into Lebanon to hunt down Hezbollah fighters and to demolish their rocket launchers. The damage done by these rockets on Northern Israel has not been great, but Israel's prime minister inspecting the damage has vowed to avenge all such attacks. But the Israeli military has stressed this is not the beginning of a full scale invasion.

MOSHE FOGEL, Israeli Military Spokesman: We believe that if we had not operated against those terrorist strongholds that we would be facing more severe attacks against Israeli civilian targets.

MR. MOORE: Israel is taking a significant political and military risk, hoping to strike quickly and not become bogged down in lengthy ground fighting.

MR. MacNeil: Today's fighting in South Lebanon drew a quick and angry reaction from the United Nations. A U.N. spokesman read a statement by Sec. General Butras Gali this afternoon.

FRANCOIS GIULIANI, United Nations Spokesman: The Secretary General views these developments with grave concern and calls on Israel to withdraw its forces immediately. He wishes to recall that only yesterday the Security Council in the Presidential statement reaffirmed, "their commitment to the full sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity of Lebanon with an internationally recognized bond rate as set out in Resolution 425 of 1978."

MR. MacNeil: At the White House this afternoon during a photo session with the Swedish prime minister, President Bush refused to answer reporters' questions on why he had not condemned the Israeli offensive. The violence in Lebanon is not expected to delay the next stage of Mideast peace talks. A State Department spokesman today said all parties have sent word they will be in Washington next week for the talks. Israel's opposition Labor Party has a new leader. Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin defeated Shimon Peres in Israel's first ever party primary yesterday. Prime Minister Shamir's Lekud Party voted for its candidate today. Shamir easily defeated Housing Minister Ariel Sharon. The victory will pit Shamir against Rabin in Israel's general elections in June.

MS. WOODRUFF: The nation's trade deficit improved dramatically in 1991 despite ending the year on a sour note. The Commerce Department reported today the surplus amount of exports over imports shrank 35 percent to $66 billion, the smallest deficit since 1983. Record U.S. exports were a major factor and the recession helped reduce demand for imports, however, the monthly deficit for December grew 42 percent over the month before the nearly $6 billion. Also today the Labor Department reported new unemployment claims rose by 18,000 in the first week of February. That followed two weeks of modest decline. In total, 452,000 Americans filed first-time claims. The news was far less gloomy on Wall Street today. The Dow Jones Average set another record, closing with a gain of more than 50 points.

MR. MacNeil: South African President DeKlerk said today he will hold a referendum to let white voters decide the issue of apartheid. DeKlerk's announcement came a day after his ruling party lost a special parliamentary election to pro-apartheid conservatives. That defeat could influence the government's power sharing talks with the African National Congress and other black groups. Kevin Dunn of Independent Television News reports from Johannesburg.

MR. DUNN: Gambling his and his ruling party's future, President DeKlerk told parliament he will resign if he loses the "whites only" referendum on reform. He later said why he would test the opposition's claim to speak for most white voters.

PRESIDENT F.W. DE KLERK: Their claim that they represent a majority refers specifically to the voters of the House of Assembly. It is that plank on which those voters must now give a verdict.

MR. DUNN: It was the dramatic victory the pro-apartheid Conservative Party in a white bi-election which stunned President DeKlerk and the National Party government. His chief political opponent claimed the results left DeKlerk without a mandate.

ANDRIES TREURNICHT, Conservative Party: The results in this bi- election has a very very clear message to the white nation, and that is, don't despair, the future is ours.

MR. DUNN: But the African National Congress said DeKlerk should ignore a racist minority.

SAKI MACOZONA, African National Congress: It is a tiny minority. Our appeal to the Nationalist Party has been that they should look to a broader South African constituency.

MR. DUNN: But the future of negotiations with Nelson Mandela and the black majority will now be effectively subject to a white minority veto.

MR. MacNeil: A special U.N. investigator today called Iraq's human rights record the worst since Nazi, Germany. He said Saddam Hussein is directly responsible. Former Dutch Foreign Minister Max Vanderstohl said Baghdad is systematically abusing hundreds of thousands of its own people with chemical attacks, mass executions and torture. He called for full-time U.N. monitors in Iraq to end the brutality. Iraq dismissed the charges as a political smear from the West. The U.N. Secretary General today formally proposed sending 20,000 peacekeeping troops and monitors to Cambodia. The operation would be the largest and most expensive in U.N. history. It's part of an October peace treaty which ended a dozen years of war in that country

MS. WOODRUFF: That's it for the News Summary. Just ahead on the NewsHour, the recommendation on silicone breast implants, the rising concern over hate crimes in America, and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay. UPDATE - BREAST IMPLANTS

MS. WOODRUFF: First, we do turn to the status of silicone gel breast implants. As we reported earlier, an expert advisory panel to the Food & Drug Administration voted unanimously today to permit further use of the implants only under certain restrictions. Now, FDA Commissioner David Kessler has 60 days to make a final decision based on thepanel's advice. Traditionally, the Commissioner abides by such advisory panel suggestions. Today's vote came after three days of complex and emotional hearings. Elizabeth Brackett brings us the story of the deliberations in today's vote.

MS. BRACKETT: During the first two days of hearings the panel struggled with two basic questions: How often do silicone gel breast implants break or leak? And if silicone is then found in the body, does it cause disease? Panelists wanted to know if safety studies done by manufacturers could answer those questions and if they had the studies, had they fairly resulted their results?

MARC LAPPE, FDA Consultant: If there is anything that scientists will agree on is that there is something about the silicon material that at least in some people provokes a profound reaction. They can produce the kinds of symptoms that several of these patients have reported, namely the flu-like symptoms. This is serious stuff.

ROBERT LEVIER, Dow Corning Scientist: There are always questions. I know that. I would agree with you about that. We do need to do and are prepared to do more studies. I think we made that commitment this morning.

MS. BRACKETT: Dow Corning's response indicated a new willingness of manufacturers to cooperate with the FDA. The company promised to pay for and carry out 30 new safety studies. Despite this offer, Dow Corning and other manufacturers continued to insist that there was no hard scientific data to warrant taking the implants off the market.

TIMOTHY LONG, Bioplasty, Inc.: I urge you to look at the science and the real evidence presented. The weight of the evidence is not there to justify overturning the recommendations for continued availability.

MS. BRACKETT: The panel also heard from physicians with clinical experience in treating patients with diseases that they believed were related to the silicone-filled implants.

DR. HARRY SPIERA, Rheumatologist: This is a woman who had gone through two medical centers and had even asked them at the time, could my scleredema be related to implants and they said, no and they offered her penicillamine. When she came to me, she said she didn't want to take penicillamine, and I said you might want to take the breast implants out. She had them removed and the follow up now is about four years and she's had a definite improvement in terms of decreased skin involvement, increased in amount of defusing capacity and lack of a need for anti-inflammatory medicines.

DR. FRANK VASEY, Rheumatologist: My opinion is that we're at this point similar to the, in a similar situation to the mothers along the Connecticut River who saw an epidemic of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and thought it was unusual and it ended up evolving into Lyme Disease, similar to the physicians in Los Angeles with homosexual males whose immune system was collapsing in an unusual fashion. We have some suspicious findings at this point. We don't know the outline, don't know the size of the problem. We don't know the full clinical definition of the syndrome, but at this point we're, we're suspicious, and believe it's probable that there is a connective tissue disease link to silicone.

MS. BRACKETT: Not all doctors agreed. Some of the most vocal supporters of silicone implants were plastic surgeons who had used the implants for the past 30 years.

DR. CHARLES BALCH, M.D. anderson Cancer Center: At the Memorial Sloane Kettering Cancer Center in New York City surgeons have implanted over 1,100 silicone gel-filled prosthesis after mastectomy in the past 15 years. These patients also have been followed on a long-term basis, including mammography. According to a recent survey by Dr. David Kimming, Chief of the Breast Surgery Service, and Dr. Ted Chiglacian, Chief of the Reconstructive Oncology Service, neither they nor their entire surgical staff know of a single patient they have personally treated who has subsequently developed an autoimmune disease, including scleroderma.

MS. BRACKETT: Just as physicians were split, many woman who had grappled with the issue of breast implants were also deeply divided.

MARLEE WALSH: I am the evidence. I am the experiment that everyone is watching. A year and a half ago, my rheumatologist recommended that my implants be removed. At that time, I was given a 50 percent chance of recovery. I was on Medicale Insurance. I had no other options and no money. My only source to get the surgery done was through UCLA. It took two letters from my rheumatologist, two letters from the staff plastic surgeon to approve that surgery for explantation. Nine months later, a year to the date, February 7, 1991, I had those implants removed. At the time of removal, I was so full of edema, you could see three chins. You could not see my wrists or my ankles. Within two days, you could see, visibly see, all of my body. Within two months, my liver enzymes had reduced significantly There is not anecdotal evidence. You're looking at it.

ELAINE SAMPSON: Silicone gel breast implants saved my life. Nine months after my mother's agonizing death from breast cancer, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was July of 1990, and at that time in my life I was a 45-year-old widow with two daughters, ten and twelve years old, to raise. I chose to have bilateral mastectomies with immediate reconstruction because silicone gel breast implants were available and offered me a good cosmetic result.

JANET SCHOUD, Mother of Implant Recipient: My daughter was, had no major documented health problems prior to the implant surgery. The symptoms, including headaches and systematic, started around nine months after the silicone breast implant surgery. The symptoms increased during the second nine-month period post surgery and up to the time of her untimely death. I do believe that the implants were a contributing factor in the cause of her death. I am angry. I am angry that more information was not given to her prior to surgery. I believe that her death could have been prevented.

REP. MARILYN LLOYD, [D] Tennessee: Silicone gel implants were to be my choice. And to me they marked the final stage in my recovery from breast cancer, restoring the disfiguring effects of my surgery through restoration. And now, I find that my choice has been denied. And I can't tell you really how frustrating it is and how strongly I feel to know that a federal agency can restrict my access to a product that my personal physician and I agree on is right and a necessary one for me.

MS. BRACKETT: When the panel met again this morning, they began the process of trying to sift through 36 hours of testimony from the last two days to try and come up with concrete advice for women on what to do about their implants. But that was not easy. The first question the panel tackled, how long do the implants last.

DR. GENEVIEVE MATANOSKI, Epidemiologist: There is really no data on the lifetime of implants, so we're sort of stuck with zero there. You can make some guesses that the implants that were being taken out that seemed to have ruptured were probably in the age group of ten or more years. But that's just hearsay information, so it doesn't give us any idea how long an implant actually lasts and whether a half lasts for seven years or what, we don't really know.

DR. MARY McGRATH, Plastic Surgeon: I think we do have some information on breakage rates. When Dr. Matnowski opened this with her first comment she pointed out that we have to say we don't know. I think that the manufacturers have numbers. I think we should present those numbers in our answer when we give it. We can state that the, you know, that the breakage, reported rupture rates back to manufacturers for Dow Corning is about 1 percent, again, less than 1 percent, whatever it is.

MARC LAPPE, FDA Consultant: You can go out and buy a tire for a car and know whether it's a 40,000 mile tire or an 80,000 mile tire, but a woman cannot buy an implant and know whether it's going to last a week or ten years.

MS. BRACKETT: There was more disagreement on the critical question, should women be told that implants cause disease.

DR. NATHAN ZVAIFLER, FDA Consultant: Certainly we've been given no evidence that there's either an increase in autoimmune diseases or that, indeed, there are autoimmune mechanisms that are induced by silicone.

DR. NORMAN ANDERSON, Surgeon: I would raise the issue that silicone may be causal and I believe the laboratory data is compelling that it produces sustained, many decade chronic inflammation with tissue destructive effects. In what percentage of women this occurs I don't know. I believe from my own limited clinical experience this is a real problem in a woman with a rupture.

DR. JOHN SERGENT, FDA Consultant: I have believed that this was a real phenomenon, and I've been looking for it in every patient that I've seen since the early '80s, I've asked every female if she had breast implants, and I simply haven't seen what has been described, except for the two cases that I mentioned to you. I think that it's hard to argue against good studies. I'm all in favor of good studies, but I think the data that we've been presented is what we have to make a decision on and I think we're doing a disservice to the American people and to the women who have these implants if we imply at the end of our discussions today that there's really something to this. I just simply don't believe that the information that we have to deal with states that.

MARY KATHLEEN ANNEKEN, FDA Consultant: You know, I really would like to see more questions come out from this panel than trying to attempt to answer questions vaguely. There's a range of answers. There's a range of patients. There is no one and there is not two and there is not three answers for these questions. You can't answer these questions for the general public because when you get a patient, you're only dealing with one person.

MS. BRACKETT: Finally, late this afternoon, the panel took on the question that had brought them altogether: Should silicone gel implants be allowed on the market?

DR. MARY McGRATH, Plastic Surgeon: If we remove the implants from general usage at this point in time because we feel that the, the data is immature, and if we do this on the grounds of theoretical considerations, it's going to be giving the wrong message to our patients. They're going to be interpreting this as more meaningful data than we've got right now.

DR. RITA FREEMAN: I believe there should be restriction of silicone implants across-the-board, except for those women in whom reconstruction is necessary and cannot be accomplished in any other way, or other victims of congenital deformity or accidents. And that is because I think that the benefit to women who request augmentation is mitigated by certain risks that they experience that are not experienced by the breast cancer victim looking for reconstruction, namely augmentation of the breast threatens its primary functions, its functions of lactation and its function of sexual sensitivity and of bonding with an infant. Those primary functions for which the augmented young woman is at risk typically do not apply in the case of reconstruction. I'm left very concerned. I'm concerned with the amount of energy, time and money that has been invested over the past 30 years and over the past 12 months and over the past 3 days on an issue that initially was generated with a concern to reshape the female breast and to make it more pleasing to herself and others. During that same period of time the incidence of breast cancer has gone up and there has been very little new progress in finding a cure. I can only wonder what might have occurred had the amount of money spent on breast recontouring been spent instead on attempts to find a cure for breast cancer. Hopefully, the trend toward lumpectomy will help to conserve a number of breasts. And I would leave you with this thought, that a woman without breasts is a total woman, just as a man who has gone bald and is without hair is still a total man.

MS. BRACKETT: In a series of votes at the end of the day the advisory panel first unanimously rejected an outright ban on silicone gel breast implants, and then voted to allow implants for both augmentation and reconstruction but only under strict clinical evaluation. The Food & Drug Administration now has 60 days to act on the panel's recommendations and make a final decision.

MS. WOODRUFF: Still ahead on the NewsHour, hate crimes and more thoughts on breast implants from Anne Taylor Fleming. FOCUS - HATE CRIMES

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, we focus on hate crimes, crimes against race, religion or sexual orientation, crimes against specific groups of people. Today an Arab group issued a report saying that crimes against Arab-Americans increased dramatically in 1991 as a result of the Gulf War. Earlier this month the Anti- defamation League, N'Brith, released its annual report, which found a record number of anti-semitic incidents during the year, and a report out earlier this week said the number of white supremacist groups increased last year from 273 to 346, a 27 percent increase. That report was by a group called "Klan Watch." We'll discuss hate crimes and efforts to stop them in a moment. First, we look at one hate crime in a case now before the Supreme Court. Correspondent Fred De Sam Lazaro of public station KCTA-St. Paul, Minnesota, has this backgrounder.

MR. LAZARO: The case began its journey to the High Court in this working class, mostly white neighborhood, on St. Paul's East side. Russell and Laura Jones moved here with their five children in March 1989. They were greeted with a steadily increasing barrage of vandalism. It climaxed with a cross burning late one night.

RUSSELL JONES: I looked out my, the rear window of the house and I saw this glow. The first thing that came to my mind was, well, what now did they do to my car, did they set it on fire, so I kind of jumped out of bed and went to the window and looked out and I was quite shocked and surprised to see what I did see.

WILLIAM McCUTCHEON, Police Chief, St. Paul: It was a culmination of a night of unsupervised activity which involved LSD, marijuana, and alcohol.

MR. LAZARO: St. Paul police charged two juvenile suspects soon after the incident. Chief William McCutcheon said his department had been watching them.

CHIEF McCUTCHEON: It was a loosely-knit group of young white males who hang around Malls Park who do some graffiti and who on occasion seem to spontaneously do these things.

MR. LAZARO: One juvenile pled no contest, but the second suspect challenged the city ordinance he was charged with violating. That law passed here in St. Paul is aimed at so-called "bias motivated" crimes. St. Paul's ordinance, 292.02, makes it a misdemeanor to place on public or private property any symbol, object, characterization or graffiti which the perpetrator knows or has reasonable grounds to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others based on race, color, creed, religion or gender.

EDWARD CLEARY, Defense Lawyer: The true interest of this ordinance is to stifle displays of unpopular political conduct.

MR. LAZARO: Defense lawyers argue the law is similar to measures that once made it a crime to burn the American flag. Last year, the Supreme Court threw out those statutes, ruling that flag burning is a form of political expression. In the St. Paul cross burning case, Defense Attorney Edward Cleary argued successfully at the juvenile trial court level. On appeal here before Minnesota's Supreme Court, he called the city ordinance far too sweeping.

EDWARD CLEARY, Defense Lawyer: 292.02 begins, "Whoever places on public or private property," anywhere in the City of St. Paul, public, private property. This includes the actor's own property, this includes someone else's property with their permission, and perhaps most importantly, and what cannot be forgotten, is it includes public forums, the steps of the capitol.

MR. LAZARO: Cleary said the frequent demonstrations here over abortion technically violate the city ordinance. These and many other forms of political expression, he feels, could arouse anger, alarm or resentment.

EDWARD CLEARY: There are lot of shopping malls, among other places right now, that are banning colors and symbols of various sports groups, such as the LA Raiders, which is viewed as gang colors now. Technically, that can be prosecuted as a symbol that upsets a white person on the basis of race. So it's, there's all kinds of possibilities. You really have to let your imagination go.

TOM FOLEY, Prosecutor: I don't agree at all.

MR. LAZARO: Tom Foley is Ramsey County Attorney, the chief prosecutor in St. Paul. He says there's clear line between offensive conduct that is and isn't protected by the First Amendment.

TOM FOLEY, Prosecutor: Certainly, you analyze the facts, you analyze the context, you analyze all the total circumstances, and you reach a decision whether or not you think a crime has been committed.

JUDGE: So even if this ordinance were limited just specifically to the cross and the swastika, you would say it was unconstitutional?

MR. CLEARY: I would say that considering the range of the ordinance, public or private property, it is so broad --

MR. LAZARO: After hearing the arguments, the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the St. Paul ordinance. Although allowing that the law may be too broadly worded, the Court construed the measure narrowly, saying it could be applied in the cross burning case. "The burning cross is a symbol of violence and hatred based on notions of racial supremacy," one Justice wrote, "and diverse communities have the responsibility, even obligation, to confront such notions in whatever form they appear." In St. Paul, Attorney Cleary argues such laws are unnecessary. Along with the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union and others, he says they're alreadyare adequate criminal laws that don't raise First Amendment questions.

MR. CLEARY: If you burned leaves or garbage on someone's front lawn, you could charge them with open burning law violation or trespass or maybe even criminal damage to property. If you burn a cross on someone's front lawn, depending on the circumstances, they're an African-American family, et cetera, you can charge them with terroristic threats.

MR. LAZARO: But supporters of hate crime laws say they are essential because bias-motivated conduct affects both the individuals targeted and the larger community or group, all black residents in East St. Paul, for example.

KAREN CLARK, Minnesota State Representative: People move out of neighborhoods when this sort of thing happens.

MR. LAZARO: Minnesota State Representative Karen Clark coauthored here state's hate crime statute. She worries about the message its invalidation would send.

KAREN CLARK: You take it to court and you can overturn them and you can get off scott free. I think that's a very dangerous message right now, considering the rising tide of racism and bigotry and homophobia and violence against women.

MR. LAZARO: Meanwhile, Russell and Laura Jones say they've encountered no problems since the cross burning incident, perhaps even because of it.

LAURA RUSSELL: Well, there was lots of p coming by and calling and sending cards and letters to let us know that not everybody feels this way and even for most people that might have some kind of prejudice or racist attitudes in themselves, they would never resort to doing such a thing.

MR. LAZARO: Among other things, the Jones' neighbors have worked closely with police to set up crime watches since the cross burning incident. If the U.S. Supreme Court decides the St. Paul ordinance is too broad, many legal experts say the High Court is not likely to salvage a narrower interpretation, as the State Court did. So the entire ordinance could be thrown out, potentially affecting dozens of similar bias motivation laws across the country.

MR. MacNeil: We turn now to a look at how state and local officials are coping with hate crimes. The FBI has been collecting data on these incidents, as well as its establishing bias crime training procedures nationwide. Jack McDevitt is working with the FBI on that report, which is due out later this year. He's the associate director of the Center For Applied Social Research at the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston. He's joined by three people with different views on the causes and the cures of the problem. Richard Samp is the chief counsel of the Washington Legal Foundation. Deborah Glick is a New York State assemblywoman from New York City. She co-sponsored a bias crime bill now before the state assembly. Denton Watson is a former spokesman for the NAACP. Mr. Watson is the author of "Lyin' in the Lobby," a biography of civil rights activist Clarence Mitchell and his fight to pass civil rights laws. Let's see if we agree first of all on the facts and premises in this. Ms. Glick, the Anti-defamation League and the American-Arab Anti- discrimination Committee, as we've said at the beginning, both say hate crimes are increasing. Do you agree?

MS. GLICK: I think there's a great deal of evidence from around the country that that is, in fact, the case, and it is shocking in some communities to what extent it has increased, and in all different categories, race, religion, sexual orientation.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. McDevitt, you're collecting some of this data, Mr. McDevitt in Boston. Do you agree that hate crimes are on the increase?

MR. McDEVITT: It appears that they are. As you know, the data is coming in. We have an issue of people being more aware, so they're reporting these crimes more, but in addition to that, there seems to be what some people describe as an ugliness out there that hasn't been seen for awhile, and I think that that is promoting some additional hate motivated behavior.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Kamp, in Washington, do you agree?

MR. SAMP: It seems to me that what's really happening is that people are becoming more aware of this subject. They are going out of their way to report these sort of incidents. I don't think we can really say one way or the other whether there is more hate crime than there was before.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Samp, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to call you Mr. Kamp. Mr. Samp, beg your pardon. And Mr. Watson, do you think hate crimes are increasing?

MR. WATSON: Yes, I do think hate crimes are increasing. That is as a result of the climate in which we now live.

MR. MacNeil: It is not just that we're more sensitive or more aware in reporting them.

MR. WATSON: Definitely not, because there is now a climate of reaction, it's a very reactionary climate in which we are now living and passing through. And as a result, we find that many people feel free to express themselves in these very negative ways and are continuing to do so and to threaten those who are different from them, to threaten various groups.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Samp, let me, and I'll go around on this, let me put this another way. Leaving aside whether these are crimes at the moment, would you agree with the State Representative from Minnesota, Karen Clark, whom we saw in that report, who sees "a rising tide of racism and bigotry and homophobia and violence against women," would you agree with that statement?

MR. SAMP: I don't think that's an accurate depiction. I do think that race relations in this country have deteriorated in recent years, but I think that that can be attributed to a large number of different causes. I think one of them has perhaps been the heightened sensitivity by all groups looking perhaps for special entitlements for themselves with the result that resentment built up among all groups.

MR. MacNeil: How do you, do you agree with the State Representative in Minnesota? Is there this rising tide of racism?

MS. GLICK: I believe that there are --

MR. MacNeil: I mean those are very strong words, "a rising tide."

MS. GLICK: And I think they're accurate, and I think that the dismissive attitude that Mr. Samp has displayed we've seen before in areas like rape. As rape was increasing, there were people who said, oh, well, women are just reporting it more. But, in fact, there were more rapes committed. And I think that if you are in a group that is usually not the target of those kinds of crimes, you could very easily miss the reality.

MR. MacNeil: And, Mr. McDevitt, as the man with the data, do you think we are justified in saying there's a rising tide of racism, bigotry, homophobia, violence against women?

MR. McDEVITT: Well, I don't think that the numbers can be the source. I don't think we can rely exclusively on the numbers. We have to take the numbers which are increasing, as you said in the beginning of your piece, the ADL's numbers are increasing, Klan Watchers numbers are increasing, a number of local cities, departments are increasing, in several states are increasing, but that can be partly a reporting effect. But also different human rights groups around the country are experiencing this, different police, quasi police agencies are experiencing it. So I think that we're seeing it from a variety of different sources, and that's what makes me feel that, yes, it is increasing.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Samp, enlarge for a moment on your explanation of whatever the phenomenon is, why it is, you said a moment ago you thought it's because civil rights groups have led us into, led minority groups into expecting or demanding entitlements and that has angered people who feel hurt by that.

MR. SAMP: Well, I think what we need to look at is, who is it that is finding, for example, more discrimination against Arabs, it's the Arab groups. It is every special interest group that is not surprisingly finding that they are being more victimized and the result, of course, is that they would like to have more protections, more rights given to their particular group to remedy this supposed rising tide. It seems to me that all that's going to do is to get people feeling defensive, saying, wait a second, I'm not racist, I'm not doing this, and it sours racial relations in this country. What we need to be doing is identifying what it is that we consider a crime, for example, intimidating a homeowner to move out of a neighborhood. That's a crime prosecuted as an assault, and not worry so much as to what the motivation for the crime was.

MR. MacNeil: What do you, how do you explain what you see as a, whether it's a rising tide or just an increase in crimes or behavior of this sort?

MR. WATSON: I think Mr. Samp's explanation of the problem is very misleading and naive and myopic, because we have to go back. We have to have a better understanding of the historical nature of racism, of discrimination. And when we do that, we see patterns that are evident now going all the way back through history, and sure, Arabs and other groups, apart from blacks, are complaining more, are protesting more about discrimination against them, but that is as a result of the learning experience that they had from the civil rights movement. They saw what blacks had experienced throughout history and now they too are able to identify patterns of discrimination and those, they are very very clear patterns of discrimination.

MR. MacNeil: And you're including Jewish-Americans and homosexuals and things in that same consciousness raising, in that same phenomenon?

MR. WATSON: Yes. I most certainly do. It's not just blacks. And that's why we have so many others who are now involved and protesting, organizing to combat what they see as discrimination.

MR. MacNeil: How do you answer that, Mr. Samp?

MR. SAMP: I think he's exactly right. People are organizing and protesting discrimination and that's why we're getting this increased focus. I don't think it's the result of any changes. I agree, historically there has been a great deal of discrimination in this country. I think we've had a great deal of improvement over the years, however, so that we don't have the large number of lynchings, for example, that were commonplace forty and fifty years ago. But I think what has changed is that there is a much more heightened sensitivity.

MR. MacNeil: Ms. Glick.

MS. GLICK: I think that it's very dangerous to be dismissive of this, this reality, because what we saw in Nazi Germany were people because of economic situations saying that there was a Jewish banking conspiracy. Because they were suffering economically, they were frightened, it was easy to scapegoat a group. And while at first throwing some stones through shopkeepers' windows might have been dismissed, as Mr. Samp might be dismissing certain kinds of activities that are occurring now, that led to people being emboldened and empowered to do more dangerous and damaging things. And I think that's what we're seeing now. And I think it's important for us to address this problem now aggressively and sharply.

MR. MacNeil: Do you see a parallel with economic difficulties today in this country?

MS. GLICK: Absolutely, absolutely. The civil rights bill, that national policy from the very top of the Republican administration was to call it a quota bill, and to try and pit people against one another, and to say if you're going to lose your job it's not because there's been a failure of management, it's because somebody else is taking your job away from you. And that has led to a great deal of friction and I think misplaced friction, and tension because people are afraid and, in fact, people are losing their jobs, but not because somebody of a different race or a different religion is getting that job. Nobody's getting the job, but that has been what has been used by the administration to deflect attention to the real problems.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. McDevitt, do you see an economic factor in what you call the ugly, the new ugliness?

MR. McDEVITT: Absolutely. The Census Bureau just yesterday came out with a report that said that the middle class in our society is shrinking, that we're getting larger numbers of wealthy people and larger numbers of poor people. I think that's one of the factors that's involved. There are more poor people. And the second thing is that the polling data that's coming out of this election, and started with the last election, says that people feel they've lost control. For the first time in America's history, the majority of Americans don't believe that their children are going to have a better life than they had. That's a big deal. That's something that's different. That was part of our dream and if we feel we can't guarantee that, we can't do something, we can't work hard to make our life better for our children --

MR. MacNeil: And that is actually translating, you believe, into violence against racial groups or homosexuals or Jews?

MR. McDEVITT: It's translating into scapegoating and stereotyping and blaming other people. And that blame for most people is just something they carry around with them, but for a small group of people, it's for something that they act on and they act out in violent ways.

MR. MacNeil: What do you think of that, Mr. Samp, that there's an economic component in this?

MR. SAMP: I think that's probably right. I think what needs to be understood though is that we shouldn't be equating people who have principle opposition to the quota bill passed this past year to people who are out engaged in racial violence. I think that the answer is to look at the violence, treat it seriously, don't dismiss people who break windows or burn crosses, charge them with assault, but you don't get anywhere by calling it a racial crime rather than just a crime. All that does is end up being divisive and fingerpointing.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Watson.

MR. WATSON: I think there is, it's very misleading really to try to separate the climate that is established when the national administration or the President or other political leaders, for example, attack quota bill because there is a coded message that is inherent in such attacks, and we all know that those attacks are coded. They are directed against particular groups who are the ostensible beneficiaries of those programs. And it is those quotas or quotes are used to divide us, to divide the society more and so as to deflect --

MR. MacNeil: You think it's deliberate.

MR. WATSON: It's deliberate to deflect pressure from the politicians, themselves, who are very incapable or do not really care to provide the type of responses and to bring that would benefit the victims of historical discrimination.

MR. MacNeil: You don't believe that, Mr. Samp?

MR. SAMP: I think that my point is being proved by what is being said here. The argument over hate crimes is being advanced as part of an overall social agenda to get social legislation adopted. In my mind, the two subjects have nothing to do with each other. We ought to be addressing a problem, a very serious problem, of crime that we have in this country, stamp it out, but don't muddle it up by bringing race into the question.

MS. GLICK: I think it has been muddled up already and I think that it's been very intentional. We have very difficult budgetary times not only nationally but in many of the states, and certainly here in New York State there's an attempt in Michigan and New Jersey to say that the reason we're going broke is welfare. And there's a great deal of welfare bashing. Certainly in New York State the image of somebody on welfare is somebody who is a person of color, usually a woman with children. And the reality is that more white people are on welfare than people of color. But there is a coded message, and I think that it's, while it's unfortunate that we're trying to deal with the result of the muddling of --

MR. MacNeil: Well, let's try and unmuddle it here for a moment, as Mr. Samp suggests. He says that you don't need to make a special category, hate crime. You prosecute whatever violence or, what am I talking about, breaking existing laws, there is, and then you go to the other political questions. I mean, one way of dealing with what you're talking about is to persuade the politicians to change the social and economic policies.

MS. GLICK: I think you have to do both but I think --

MR. MacNeil: Why do you need -- you sponsored a hate crimes bill in the New York State Assembly. Why do you think you need it?

MS. GLICK: I think people have to understand what a hate crime is. It is an attack that is intended to demean, degrade, and to terrorize an individual or a group of individuals and the motivation for it is prejudice and hatred of a particular characteristic of that person over which they have no control. So if you're going to pick on somebody because of their race or religion, or their sexual orientation, you are doing so not because you don't like where they're living necessarily or that might be the immediate reason, but you are attacking a person, or group of people and we are not a homogenous society. We are a pluralistic society and there are many different kinds of people, and this society must send a message that motivated hatred, attacks motivated by hatred, cannot be accepted by this society because we are so diverse.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. McDevitt, there is a federal law now requiring the reporting, and you're working on the first report that will be the result of that, of hate crimes. Do you feel that state laws and local laws are necessary in this separate category of hate crimes?

MR. McDEVITT: I do. The federal law, as you know, isn't a law that criminalizes a behavior. It's a law that requires the government to collect data so we better understand this. But to get back to the points that were made, I agree completely. I think these crimes are qualitatively different. As a criminologist, I think we understand that these crimes are more serious. Some of the data indicates that. And I think there's two primary reasons. The first is that they're meant to send a message that they're directed at a whole class of individuals. It's not just the person who moved in. It's all blacks, and I would argue all minorities, who are being told to stay out of the neighborhood. And the second is that victims of these crimes are incredibly vulnerable. We don't understand how vulnerable it is. If I give you an example, if I go to a park near my office and I get mugged in that park, I can say to myself, well, I'm going to do some things different to reduce the likelihood that this happens to me again. I won't go through the park. I may not carry money. I can do things to make myself feel safer and less likely to be victimized. But if I'm victimized because I'm black or because I'm Asian or because I'm perceived to be gay or lesbian, there's nothing I can do to reduce the likelihood of that victimization. And even when I get home, I get home and I lock the door, if I've been mugged, I get home, I lock the door, I say I'm safe. For the black victim who goes home and locks the door, then the rocks come through the window, so these are different crimes. They are more serious crimes, and they tear at the fabric of society.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Samp, that doesn't persuade you?

MR. SAMP: It seems to me that a crime is a crime. If somebody is intimidating somebody else or somebody is assaulting somebody else, we ought to treat that very seriously. The difficulty is the moment you pass a hate crimes law, you begin getting into political correctness problems, you begin going after people who say things that are offensive to people, and all of a sudden they're being branded criminals for what they say and not for any threats that they actually convey.

MR. MacNeil: So you would be, do I take it correctly that you would be in favor of the Supreme Court rejecting the Minnesota, the St. Paul, Minnesota law that we just heard described earlier?

MR. SAMP: I think it might be possible to construe the law narrowly enough to save it, but I do believe that there's a danger in those types of laws that they could be applied purely to speech, yes.

MR. MacNeil: What would be the effect of the Supreme Court overturning that law do you think?

MR. WATSON: I think it would send the wrong message to society.

MR. MacNeil: Even though the law may be too broadly drawn?

MR. WATSON: Well, if the court makes it clear that law, you know, was too clearly drawn and that it would consider a narrower type of law, then that might be helpful, but just coming back to something else that Mr. Samp said, and that involves the whole purpose behind the law, and I think, or I'm reminded very much of the struggle for the passage of various types of civil rights laws, and I see a similar parallel between Mr. Samp's arguments in opposition to that type of hate crime law that was used earlier against various types of civil rights laws. And another thing too we must remember that prior to the Supreme Court's Brown Vs. Board of Education decision, there was that type of reasoning that seemed to defend discrimination, but afterwards now when there was an effort to develop laws or to create laws, there were again, we had the same types of arguments that Mr. Samp is now using here.

MR. MacNeil: What would be the effect of the Supreme Court overturning the Minnesota law?

MS. GLICK: Well, I agree that it would send a very bad message at a difficult time.

MR. MacNeil: Would you agree that it may be too broadlydrawn and may infringe --

MS. GLICK: No, I'm not at all certain that it is too broadly drawn. I think that there are certainly concerns about speech but we are not talking about simply saying something. These hate crimes, this is an attempt to minimize the reality. A hate crime is directed at the psyche of an individual or a group. And I think that we need to send the message that from the very earliest point in a person's life that they really ought to embrace all people as their brothers and sisters. But by sending a message that says that this, that hate crime statutes are unconstitutional, we are really opening up the door to say that any kind of assault on people that is harassing and is threatening based on their race, religion, sexual orientation, whatever, is really okay, is really very American. And I think that is a very dangerous message to send.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Samp, you're in a minority here on this question. Let me just give you the last word briefly.

MR. SAMP: It seems to me that people ought to learn that speech rarely is going to hurt them. Obviously, physical, intimidating threats can be criminal activity and ought to be prosecuted. But it seems to me that in this country we've had a long tradition of allowing people to say freely what's on their mind without any danger of prosecution and I would hate to see that change.

MR. MacNeil: We have to leave there. Thank you all very much for joining us. ESSAY - BEAUTY AND THE BREAST

MS. WOODRUFF: We close tonight with some final thoughts about breast implants from Los Angeles writer Anne Taylor Fleming.

MS. FLEMING: In 1975, in this club, I interviewed the then famous or infamous topless dancer Carol Dota. I was very young and very green and she was tired and very jaded and very, very full and firm-breasted. She was a pioneer of sorts, the original silicone queen, the woman who had upped her endowment with injections. Many women followed suit and there are now some 2 million American females with surgically added frontage, 80 percent of those procedures done for what are called non-medical reasons, i.e., that women just want to be bigger. Mind you, these women did not have injections, but the allegedly safer silicone implants. It's a bad business, these implants, because they speak to the heart of something else, the emptiness in the soul. Make that the emptiness in the American female soul. Never in the history of the world have so many spent so much to rearrange their flesh. The vehement authors of these books [The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf and Backlash: The Undeclared War Against America Women by Susan Faludi] say we're being tyrannized by some male media conspiracy intended to keep us in our place, and it's hard to disagree. Call it the new traditionalism. Call it the redomestication of the American female. Call it part of the backlash. Whatever you call it, you can see the results in any magazine or fashion spread. WE're back to the punishing hour glass shape popular through most of the 19th century and again in the mid 20th when Marilyn and others cast their full-figured shadows across the pop culture landscape. Only this time there's an even more punishing part. You're supposed to be thin and buxom all at the same time, a real living, breathing Barbie Doll with her flowing mane, endless legs, tiny tummy and of course, big breasts. This country has a $3 billion cosmetic surgery industry and fully one-half of the world's plastic surgeons are here in America. One-third of those are in my home state of California, most, it's a safe bet, right here in L.A. In the beach and beauty culture in which I was raised and for which I continue to have a perverse pre-feminist fondness, even as I can rail against the beauty tyranny, this place continues to inflict on all of us. Local magazines are always chock a block with get in shape spreads and the attendant ads for the plastic surgery that will help you do that. On the very day my local newspaper, the LA Times, had a front page piece on the FDA implant ban, a few sections later on these ads ran, one for exercise videos, the other for the so-called "breast enhancement medical center." What's a woman to do, ignore the dictate, rest easy in her body and soul no matter the shape of the former? I wish we all could, especially if, indeed, some of these surgeries are potentially so maiming or so harmful. Part of it makes me want to weep, literally, for my gender, for our willingness to be trussed up in the name of youth and beauty and male pleasure, even at risk of our own health. And part of me, I regret to admit, does understand it. I'm Anne Taylor Fleming. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, an advisory panel recommended that the Food & Drug Administration allow silicone gel breast implants only under careful clinical monitoring. The restrictions would make breast augmentation for poorly cosmetic reasons unlikely. Israeli troops and tanks pushed into South Lebanon in a hunt for Shiite Muslim guerrillas. And the U.S. trade deficit improved dramatically in 1991 for its best showing since 1983. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Judy. That's the NewsHour tonight and we'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.