The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Friday, the Yugoslav army launched an attack on the breakaway republic of Croatia. Yugoslav's President said the action represented a military coup and called on federal soldiers to desert. Sec. of State Baker ended his Middle East mission without reaching agreement on an October peace conference. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff's in Washington tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: On the NewsHour tonight, the crisis in Yugoslavia is our lead focus [Focus - Torn Apart]. Three analysts join us to consider the roots of the conflict and the prospects for peace. Then testimony last night and today [Focus - What Did He Know?] at the confirmation hearings for Robert Gates to head the CIA, our regular Friday political analysis team of Gergen & Shields [Focus - Gergen & Shields], and the last in a series of conversations about the end of Communism, The Light That Failed, tonight Paul Robeson, Jr.NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Yugoslavia's federal army launched an offensive today against the separatist republic of Croatia. A large column of tanks and artillery which left Belgrade yesterday attacked towns in the Eastern portion of the republic and appeared to be heading deeper into Croatian territory. The federal president, a Croat himself, said the army was out of control, and he called on federal soldiers to dessert. Michael Nicholson of Independent Television News was with the convoy today as it crossed from Serbia to Croatia. He filed this report.

MR. NICHOLSON: Yesterday's enormous armored column is still being added to. On the Zagreb Highway, we saw hundreds more supply trucks moving West, 10 miles of them bumper to bumper, among them commercial lorries commandeered to take fuel, food, and ammunition forward. The federal army has established its garrison at Sid on the Serbian-Croatian border. Going by yesterday's count of tanks, armored personnel carriers and field guns, and we saw over 600 of them, about a third were. The rest have been split into three columns moving deeper into Croatia, West and Northwest, bombarding villages and towns ahead of them. We could see clearly enough where the damage was and then what it was, but Owesello, on the outskirts of Bukeva, where the Croats have tried to stop the tanks with mines, it's stopped none of them. The Serbian irregular forces were slowly clearing the way forward of those Croats who had tried to resist the advance. They did not. Passing back through Sid, we saw a trainload of light tanks arrive, over 50 of them, and with them came their crews who shouted, "We are going to bloody the Croats' nose!" Now it seems the generals are stopping at nothing to show that they can. If there are some politicians inside and outside of Yugoslavia who consider this country to be dead, then the generals here think otherwise. After all, the federation was a creation of one of their own, whose portrait and whose legend is big in every barracks, Marshall Tito. The generals have watched the politicians here pull this country apart. They now are waiting to impose their own solution. And under Tito's picture, Gen. Veljko Kadijenic, who gave the order for the tanks to go in, denied that that implied a war on Croatia. "I did it," he said, "on the orders of the president. I am not acting on my own by my patience has run out."

MR. NICHOLSON: General, can we expect to see tanks on the streets of the big Croatian cities?

GENERAL VELJKO KADIJENIC, Officer, Commanding Federal Forces: [Speaking through Interpreter] Our people must be free. There are many ways, but there is one which is quite simple -- that what we signed at Tigula be abided by, and that's it. And the other way is very bloody.

MR. NICHOLSON: And those newly arrived tanks waiting at Chief Station is proof enough that Gen. Kadijenic will use that option if necessary.

MR. MacNeil: The Croatian government's representative in Washington told the NewsHour today he believes thousands will be killed in the next few days. Dr. Victor Golan said it was time for the U.S. and the European Community to call for the Yugoslav army to turn back. At the daily U.S. State Department briefing, Spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States was gravely concerned by the actions of the Yugoslav military. He called on all sides to cease and desist and enforce the cease-fire agreement they signed earlier this week. The United Nations Security Council held consultations on Yugoslavia this afternoon. UN Sec.-Gen. Javier Perez DeCuellar said the situation there was extremely dangerous. He also said the UN could decide to send an armed peacekeeping force to the country. We'll have more on the story after the News Summary. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Sec. of State Baker held a surprise meeting with a Palestinian representative in Amman, Jordan, today, but failed to resolve differences over a Mideast peace conference. The meeting came after Palestinians initially refused to see Baker reportedly because of pressure from the Palestine Liberation Organization. Baker later wrapped up his 11 day Mideast mission by returning to Damascus for another meeting with Syrian President Asad. Neither Baker nor Asad spoke to reporters after the meeting, but Asad has said he would not attend a peace conference if the Palestinians did not. Israel today disclosed plans for a housing development in Arab East Jerusalem. The Bush administration opposes Jewish settlements in occupied Arab lands. But Defense Minister Moshe Arens said Israel had no plans to freeze settlements, regardless of international criticism. Arens also had tough word for the holders of Western hostages in Lebanon today. He dismissed their demands that Israel release more Lebanese prisoners. A Shiite Muslim faction in Beirut yesterday said that it would not release any Westerners unless Israel freed 20 more Arab prisoners.

MR. MacNeil: A team of U.N. inspectors arrived in Baghdad today to search for biological weapons. Another team of inspectors looking for nuclear weapons facilities will arrive tomorrow. Iraq has not yet responded to U.N. Security Council demands that the inspectors be allowed to operate with complete freedom. Iraq has tried to impose conditions on the U.N. teams' use of helicopters to make surprise inspections. Earlier this week, President Bush said the U.S. might use military force if Iraq didn't accede to U.N. demands. Iraq was condemned today for its attempts to produce weapons grade nuclear materials. Delegates to a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Organization in Vienna voted 77 to 1 to censure Iraq. Only Iraq voted against the resolution.

MS. WOODRUFF: Boris Yeltsin today made his first public appearance since he came down with an unspecified heart ailment on Wednesday. He left for a trip to the republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia to mediate their longstanding and often bloody dispute over territory. Meanwhile, the Russian parliament moved to challenge Yeltsin's power. It passed a resolution calling on Yeltsin to fire government officials who have performed poorly. It also voted no confidence in his government's handling of the economy. The deputies rejected a call for a no confidence vote in the Yeltsin government, itself. A top Soviet official arrived in Cuba today for talks on the proposed Soviet troop withdrawal. The envoy is also expected to review trade and economic ties between the two countries. Meanwhile, in this country, President Bush predicted Communist Cuba would soon become a democracy. He made his remarks at the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Convention in Chicago.

PRES. BUSH: Today we hear the creaking and crumbling of that Castro dictatorship. And the day is coming -- I'm absolutely convinced of this -- sooner than Castro dares to believe -- when the people of Cuba will reclaim their destiny and rejoin the Western Hemisphere's family of free nations.

MR. MacNeil: The confirmation hearings of Robert Gates to be CIA director continued today on Capitol Hill. How much Gates knew about the Iran-Contra affair was again the main issue. Retired Adm. Bobby Inman, former Central Intelligence officer, said it's probable that Gates was not briefed about the operation. Inman said that under the late director, William Casey, the agency was highly compartmentalized, keeping sensitive information from many officers. We'll have excerpts from the hearing later in the program. The confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Nominee Clarence Thomas ended today. Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Biden said his committee could vote on the confirmation as early as next week.

MS. WOODRUFF: The New York investment banking firm of Salomon Brothers today disclosed two more violations in Treasury auction bidding. The firm admitted last month violating government rules by making illegal bids in several auctions. Salomon's chairman, several top executives, and traders resigned or were fired. Today's statements said the latest violations were committed by the same people who were already implicated and the company said it expected to find more wrongdoing in the process of investigations that are underway. That's it for our News Summary. Just ahead on the NewsHour, the crisis in Yugoslavia, the Gates confirmation hearing, Gergen & Shields, and Paul Robeson, Jr., on why Communism failed. FOCUS - TORN APART

MR. MacNeil: We begin tonight with Yugoslavia and the fading hopes for a peaceful resolution of Europe's most sustained armed conflict since World War II. At least 500 people in the Balkan nation have died in fighting since June. Three republics of the Yugoslav federation are seeking independence, but the worst fighting has been between Croatia and the neighboring republic of Serbia. Serbians dominate the federal army and thousands live within Croatia's borders. Yesterday the European Community declined to send peacekeeping forces to Yugoslavia to keep the Serbs and Croats apart. Today the fighting and the potential for even more violence took another turn for the worse. Federal forces crossed the Serbo-Croat border at the town of Sid and headed North. Terry Lloyd of Independent Television News reports from Zagreb, the Croatian capital.

TERRY LLOYD, Zagreb: Zagreb television revealed to the Croatian people tonight that enemy tanks were rolling through their country. At the same time the President, Franjo Tudgman, visited frontline troops whose task it is to hold the main highway linking Zagreb and Belgrade. Dressed in battle fatigues, himself, he told them the war had started and they must defend their land.

FRANJO TUDGMAN, Croatian President: We shall fight and defend Croatia. And I hope that Europe would wake up.

MR. LLOYD: His defense department, meantime, was dismissing reports that the armored convoys had entered Croatia to liberate federal army troops. "They were here," said a spokesman, "to take the republics step by step." In Osijek, those claims will be put to the test. Earlier today, the town's oil refinery and power plant was bombed. Tonight it reported that the tanks are just four miles away. To add to the confusion, Federal President's Stepe Message, a Croatian, has called on the federal soldiers to desert. Speaking in Zagreb, he warned the generals were out of control and were waging a dirty war. Earlier, the capital had its taste of war as three separate air raid alarms were sounded. Shoppers herded together and ran to find shelter. One special place was already reserved for dozens of babies who were hastily transferred from wards of the city maternity hospital to underground rooms, where they were packed side by side. Nearby, their anxious mothers gathered, waiting to be reunited when eventually the all clear came. The Croatians claim tonight that 48 enemy planes set off on bombing raids today, but as yet, this city remains unscathed. Meanwhile, there are reports that a fresh column of tanks and armored personnel carriers set off for Montenegro and is traveling through Bosnia towards Croatia's Southern borders.

MR. MacNeil: Tonight leaders in Bosnia ordered a mobilization of the republic's reserves and demanded that federal troops headed their way turn back. We get three views now on the roots of the conflict and how to stop the fighting. John Baker was director of East European Affairs at the State Department and spent two years as an official at the American embassy in Belgrade. He's now with the Atlantic Council in Washington. Walter Russell Mead is a senior fellow at the World Policy Center in New York and writes on foreign policy issues. He just returned from the Balkans. He joins us from New Orleans. And Robert Kaplan is the author of "Balkan Ghosts" and has written on Eastern European ethnic groups for the Atlantic and New Republic. Mr. Baker, let's just get some background, first of all. Give us your views on why the Serbs and Croats hate each other so much, the legacy of World War II and before that.

MR. BAKER: Well, it goes back a ways. Obviously, the history of the Balkan area where the Turks controlled the area which the Serbian population now lives in and the Austro-Hungarian empire controlled, the part where the Croats and Slovenes live, divided those two peoples, in other words, one people, but two cultures, into two different historical experiences and two different religious experiences. And those differences were accentuated by the events of the 20th century, particularly the events of World War II, when Croatia became a protectorate of the Nazis and had a fascist regime, a Ustashi regime, which permitted atrocities against the Serbian minority population there. That's really the background to the hostility which we're now seeing expressed now that the strong hand of the Tito regime has dissipated 10 years after his death.

MR. MacNeil: Yeah. Robert Kaplan, what can you add to that?

MR. KAPLAN: I can add that the fighting that's now taking place is occurring precisely in those areas where the worst World War II atrocities took place. The Serbian victims of the Croatian Ustashi during World War II were not so much Serbs in Serbia proper, but the order area Serbs in the Criena region and Serbian minority within Croatia. And it is their descendants who are now forming much of those guerrilla armies. This is a hatred that's born of the collapse of empires, the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman empires. It was detonated by the World War II Nazi occupation and then it was all swept under the rug by Tito's police state mechanism. And now that that mechanism has disintegrated it's all unleashing again.

MR. MacNeil: So Walter Russell Mead, how is -- is this history of the Second World War actively in the minds of these younger people today who are actually -- who are doing the fighting?

MR. MEAD: Absolutely. These people live in a kind of a historical continuum where what happened yesterday is still going on today and will be happening tomorrow.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Baker, give us what you understand the aims of the present fighting -- obviously, Croatia wants to be an independent state -- but how do you view the aims of the Serbs?

MR. BAKER: Well, the aims of the Serbian minority in Croatia is not to be part of an independent Croatian state which they do not consider to be a state which would guarantee their rights and their traditions. So they want to make clear that they do not wish to be part of that independent Croatian state. And they have, of course, the strong support and encouragement of Serbs in Serbia proper, and also it appears of the Serbian government of Maleosivich. So that, I think, gives you basically the essence of that conflict that's going on right now.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Kaplan, it's also reported that -- at least and believed by Croats, is it not, that it isn't just Cerbs within Croatia who want to be protected, but that there is a Serbian plot, if that's the word, or scheme, to enlarge their territory and, in fact, take over?

MR. KAPLAN: Yes. You see, the problem is that Serbia as a demographic entity stretches beyond the borders of the present republic of Serbia. There is a strong Serbian population not only in Croatia, in Bosnia, Hertsegovina, Macedonia, and Kossov, so what the Croats see is a creation of a greater Serbia which would threaten not just them but also Macedonia and other regions as well.

MR. MacNeil: Why do you suppose, Mr. Kaplan, that the efforts of the European Community to come in and stop the fighting and arrive at -- there have been a whole series of cease-fires -- have failed?

MR. KAPLAN: Because the Europeans have ignored this region for 40 years. They thought that because it is contiguous to central Europe that its problems would be easier to solve, but, in fact, the Yugoslavs have had the same historical experience in the last half century as the peoples of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazahkstan, but they happen to be right next door to Europe, and that doesn't help them. The problems are the same. It is as if the Second World War ended yesterday, the Nazi troops withdrew a few weeks ago, and the Serbs now want revenge against Croatian crimes.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Mead, why do you think the efforts of the European Community led by Lord Carrington have not worked?

MR. MEAD: Well, the Europeans have so many different interests that it's hard for them to agree on a basic policy here. The Europeans are divided. The Germans have a kind of a historic affinity for the Serbs. The French, to some degree the Russians, have a historic affinity for the Croats and the Slovenes -- sorry - - for the Serbs and the Germans, with the Croats. The Croats and the Slovenes accommodated themselves in the past to the German Hapsburg empire. The Serbs were kind of a Balkan nationalist opposition to the Germans. The Russians, who were orthodox in religion like the Serbs, sided with the Serbs against the Germans in this part of the world. The French because they opposed German power and again today are afraid of what a reunited and suddenly very powerful Germany means for Europe are also much more hesitant than the Germans to, for example, recognize Croatia. So the Yugoslav crisis is revealing that Western Europe, which we're all used to thinking as a unified, harmonious part of the world, actually also still has serious divisions left over from the past.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Baker, what is your idea on what it will take to stop this now? Is it going to take the Serbian-dominated army to actually conquer the country to achieve stability and peace? What do you think can stop this?

MR. BAKER: I'm not sure it can be stopped. What I do think -- that every effort should be made to stop it. What's facing the Yugoslav people right now is a tragedy. It has implications beyond Yugoslavia. The peoples in the former Soviet Union are watching it because it has lessons for the disintegration of their country, their state. So I think it is of the utmost importance to make every effort to stop it. The Europeans, obviously, should have the lead. Their effort with the European Community has not borne fruit for some of the reasons that Mr. Mead has stated. Now the issue is before the United Nations Security Council and I don't think it can walk away from it.

MR. MacNeil: Well, what can the United Nations Security Council do when Yugoslavia is still technically one nation represented by one delegate in the United Nations, and is this not an internal affair?

MR. BAKER: It is an internal affair, but it's not clear to me that the representatives of Yugoslavia would necessarily impede the Council from taking it up. And the Council could add its moral weight to a strong cease-fire appeal, and it could frame that in some of the issues that lie behind the conflict in order to indicate the political way out of this thing. I'm not saying that will work, but I think that it has to be tried.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Kaplan, what are your ideas on what will stop this and prevent full scale civil war?

MR. KAPLAN: I don't know that full scale civil war can be stopped by any outside power at this point. I think the Balkan Peninsula, particularly the Western half, is facing now several years, perhaps a decade of messy political reformulation and on again/off again violence at the minimum. And one thing I'm particularly perturbed about is that the Vatican's policy in this has been too muted, too subtle. I would have thought that the Pope would have been speaking out louder, more forcefully, and more clearly about this. Remember, Croatia is a very intensely Catholic state just like Poland, next door to Italy, an hour's flying distance from the Vatican. This is a Pope who has been to the four corners of the earth but has yet to visit Croatia.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Mead, what's your view on what will stop it?

MR. MEAD: I'm afraid the pessimism of your other guests is fully justified. We really haven't seen the start of the Yugoslav civil war in one sense. This is just the prologue. Kossovo, where there's a 90 percent Albanian majority which is being very heavily repressed by the Serbs, is boiling. Macedonia is the third Yugoslav republic to declare its independence. Both Bulgaria and Greece think Macedonia is in a sense rightfully theirs. Macedonia, itself, has a 20 percent minority of Albanians. Meanwhile, the news today is that the Serbian army is moving up from Montenegro, which is a republic of Yugoslavia allied with the Serbs, through Bosnia, where the population is divided among Muslims and Croats and Serbs The possibility of a three way civil war in Bosnia, of a generalized disintegration in Yugoslavia, has never been more real than it is at this moment.

MR. MacNeil: Do you agree with Mr. Kaplan, that the Pope could be influential in this?

MR. MEAD: Well, I would like to think that the Pope and a lot of other people of good will could have some influence here, but I'm afraid it's a little bit like shouting into a hurricane right now.

MR. MacNeil: Yeah. Mr. Baker, what do you think about the potential influence of the Pope?

MR. BAKER: Well, I think the Pope has tremendous moral influence, but in a case of this kind, where part of the cultural background is Catholic versus Orthodox, it's difficult for him to step into the center of that struggle. So I wouldn't put a lot of hope on the impact of what he might be able to say.

MR. MacNeil: You mentioned a moment ago, Mr. Baker -- I'd like to hear your reaction to this, Mr. Kaplan -- that this is -- to what degree is suppressing the violence and stopping this fighting important for those other republics, for instance, Georgia, which is splitting apart at the moment, and where the resort to violence may be the next step? What do you -- how important is it to stop it in Yugoslavia before it spreads elsewhere, Mr. Kaplan?

MR. KAPLAN: Yeah. If I may, Yugoslavia is a wonderful metaphor and symbol for what's going on in the Soviet Union, but I'm not sure that there's any synergy between the two situations. It's easy to put them together when you're here in Washington. But when you're actually in Zagreb, when you're actually in Belgrade, you're so caught up in the intensity of the situation, that is, it is as if the entire world is made up of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union is so far out of sight, it is out of mind.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Baker.

MR. BAKER: Well, I wouldn't contest that because I think that passions are high in Yugoslavia. My point was that other nations and peoples watching this situation can draw warning lessons from it. And I would hope that that would be the case and that the people in the newly independent republics, the former Soviet Union, would gain a sense of caution from what they see unfolding in Yugoslavia, even though that is a different place and a different set of histories.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Mr. Baker, Mr. Kaplan, and Mr. Mead, thank you all for joining us. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Still ahead on the NewsHour, the Robert Gates confirmation hearing, Gergen & Shields, and why Communist failed. FOCUS - WHAT DID HE KNOW?

MS. WOODRUFF: Next tonight, testimony about Robert Gates, President Bush's choice to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Correspondent Roger Mudd continues our coverage of the Gates confirmation hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

MR. MUDD: The harshest words about Robert Gates came last night from a highly decorated, former CIA official, Thomas Polgar. Polgar, who retired in 1981, but worked as an investigator for the Senate's Iran-Contra Committee in 1987, insisted Robert Gates was part of the cover-up.

THOMAS POLGAR, Former CIA Official: The fact is that like all deputy directors, Mr. Gates was part of CIA's top management team. He was not only aware of Iran-contra developments, but, in fact, had involvement all these over several years, dating back to his duties as deputy director for Intelligence. In Robert Gates, I see an official closely associated with the errors and misjudgment of the past, a man who has failed to live up to the solemn commitments he made when he was confirmed as deputy director of Central Intelligence in April 1986, and one who participated in concealment and cover-up during Iran-contra. It is up to you, Senators, what kind of message you will send to American Intelligence.

MR. MUDD: But the committee arranged to have Polgar rebutted and the rebuttal came from the committee's former vice chairman, Republican William Cohen of Maine, who had also served on the Iran-Contra Committee.

SEN. WILLIAM COHEN, [R] Maine: I must say I have enormous respect for Mr. Polgar. He has a record of service to the agency and to the country which I think has been outstandingand his contribution as one of the senior staff members of the Iran-Contra Committees was very important. But I must respectfully say that whenever a person, whatever his or her status or stature is, undertakes to impoverish another by robbing him of his good name, and I would put in that category accusing someone of giving false testimony or committing perjury, then I think we have a special obligation to take care to separate out fact from opinion and valid conclusions from, I think, heated contentions. I point out there has been a Tower Board, the preliminary report we've filed, the Iran-Contra Committee's report, a copy of which I have here, and I am sure that Mr. Polgar played a key role in putting that together, as well as an investigation by the Independent Council. And I would point out that during the past five years, not one of these investigative groups suggested that Bob Gates lied, that he misrepresented the facts or committed perjury. And yet, that is precisely what Mr. Polgar purports to establish. And I say purport, because much of what is contained in Mr. Polgar's prepared testimony I think reflects his passionate opinions that have been rarified at least into controvertible fact.

MR. MUDD: Today's session had a totally different tone and it was set by retired Admiral Bobby Inman, who appears to be held in awe by the committee. Inman, who was not only the CIA's deputy director in 1981 and '82, but also ran the National Security Agency was an early patron of Robert Gates at the agency.

ADM. BOBBY INMAN, Former CIA Official: In looking at the career people I saw inside, Bob Gates was the one individual that I thought had the capacity already demonstrated to grow to be a professional director of Central Intelligence. And Bill Casey and I had a lot of dialogue about the desirability, ultimately, if one could do it, of having a professional again. My proposal to accelerate that process was to make Gates the assistant deputy director for Intelligence in the new structure, even though he had not yet had a management job run in any significant operation, and we debated the, the other prospective candidates and then he surprised me by coming into my office one morning and saying, if you really believe Gates is that good, and that this is the way to get him to ultimately being ready to be a director of Central Intelligence, then why not put him in the job now, the top job? And I bought off quickly. I believe even if we weren't in the troubled world that we're going to be in that he is the best candidate for the job and that he is now ready to provide the leadership and the management not only for CIA, but for the Intelligence community, that the country needs and that CIA needs.

MR. MUDD: But Inman said he was not blind to Gates' limitations.

MR. INMAN: There has never been to this point in time a director who primarily spent his career in the analytical side of the business. We've had a number of directors and some very good ones who came about it, the DDUSI. And I'd have to be honest to tell you that if I thought the world in the next 10 years was going to be one in which the primary responsibility for the director of Central Intelligence was running covert operations, I'm not sure Bob Gates would be the individual I'd be recommending to you today. That isn't the world I see at all. The world I see is one where covert operations is likely to be a very small part, hopefully a very small part, of U.S. policy. I've been doing some sampling, Sen. Boren, of youngsters I know and middle level managers I know, and a couple of senior ones. The very bright younger ones are very eager to see him return. There is substantial apprehension at other levels that he will move too fast, too swiftly and too brutally for their careers. I've counseled Bob Gates that I think the biggest problem he's going to have as a DCI isn't going to be redeploying assets, challenging what -- he's going to be keeping his mouth shut about telling the administration what they ought to do. When you've been on the side of shaping what the policies are, it's going to be hard to go back, but he understands that, he's committed to do it, and I'm very comfortable that he will play the proper role of the DCI to tell you what's happening in the outside world and not try to drive what the U.S. policies are.

MR. MUDD: The committee spent the afternoon in closed session. It will reconvene Tuesday and will probably hear from Robert Gates once more next Thursday. FOCUS - GERGEN & SHIELDS

MS. WOODRUFF: This week also saw words of praise and criticism for another major Bush administration appointment, Judge Clarence Thomas, the President's choice to serve on the Supreme Court. We look at how these two sets of hearings have unfolded and the rest the week's political events now with our regular Friday team of political analysts, David Gergen, editor at large, U.S. News & World Report, and Mark Shields, columnist with the Washington Post. Well, gentlemen, a month ago, everybody was predicting that Robert Gates -- maybe it wasn't a month ago but it seems like a month ago -- was a very difficult time getting confirmed, but it doesn't look that way anymore. David, what happened?

MR. GERGEN: Washington rushes to judgment before it has the evidence in front of it. There's a tendency in this town right now to believe that if any rumor or hint of scandal comes up about an individual that he's automatically guilty. The whole thing about the Gates hearings has been to give this man a chance to testify and to give the committee a chance to look over all the evidence. They've had a very thorough hearing, a very fair hearing, he acquitted himself well, he helped himself an awful lot with his opening statement's mea culpa, when he essentially said, I should have done more than I did, I should have been more vigilant than I was. That swayed some votes. But the other thing was that the evidence wasn't there to convict him. And I think at the moment -- a Democratic Senator called me this afternoon, a member of the committee, said this afternoon if the vote were taken today, the committee would vote by thirteen to two in favor of his nomination.

MS. WOODRUFF: Even though, Mark, you had Alan Fiers, the former head of -- with the Latin Central American division at the CIA saying that this man, Gates, had what he called base line knowledge of the whole Iran thing?

MR. SHIELDS: Base line knowledge. I think there are a couple of things missing. I mean, in order for a nominee to be defeated, there has to be a smoking gun, which there really wasn't. There was the Fiers testimony, but it wasn't the bomb shell that it was expected to be. There wasn't a star witness for the prosecution; Alan Fiers didn't turn out to be that. And you have to have a break in the minority. The Republicans came into this. John Chaffe of Rhode Island is probably the lynch pin, the key, a moderate, liberal Republican, if there was going to be any break with the administration, and he was solid behind, and of course, the chairman, who is a Democrat, David Boren of Oklahoma, was certainly more than kindly disposed toward the nominationof Robert Gates. I mean, he was an advocate.

MS. WOODRUFF: So --

MR. SHIELDS: I think the other thing, Judy, that can't be overlooked, and I'd just add to David, is that George Bush bet that Iran-contra was behind this and I think his bet was well placed.

MS. WOODRUFF: And you also had, of course, the North, the entire Northeast, being dismissed or just given up upon by the press.

MR. GERGEN: Although I don't think that had much to do with this in terms of the outcome of the case. I really think the problem was that there was -- you know, we've had the ghosts of the past haunting both the Thomas hearings and the Gates hearings, and in the case of the Gates hearings, it's the ghost of Watergate. And it's the search for the smoking gun, as Mark says. And when the committee couldn't it, essentially, the case, the potential case against Robert Gates, began to disappear and he emerged victorious.

MR. SHIELDS: I would look at it just a little bit differently. I think the past was the focus in both cases. The Republicans wanted to focus on the past of Judge Thomas. All they wanted to talk about was his past, Pinpoint, Georgia, and growing up barefoot and without indoor plumbing and all the rest of it. They didn't want to talk about anything that had happened in the past 15 years to Judge Thomas, because, in the words of Sen. Danforth, his principal champion, his judicial philosophy is evolving, which is a nice way of saying he's changed opinion on a lot of things. And the Democrats wanted to emphasize the past in the case of Robert Gates and Iran-contra. The past worked in the case of Judge Thomas for the Republicans. It didn't work in the case of the Democrats with Gates.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, you both said last week that Thomas was looking pretty good. There are committee members who have been considered swing votes, were moving his way, after one more week of the Thomas hearings, they now announce they are concluded. Is there anything more to say? This man is home free at this point. Is that --

MR. GERGEN: I think, yes, I think the -- what we saw this week was anti-climax. The hearings basically ended, in my judgment, the first day he testified. Like Gates, he came forward with a powerful opening statement that helped his cause enormously. But I do think this -- I do think the chairman, Joe Biden, is right to be troubled about the whole process of these hearings. We've gotten into political theory with these hearings. We had when Clarence Thomas was up on the stand a lot of fairly non-probing questions, and a lot of non-responsive answers. And now this week, after he's left the stand, we've had a very rich discussion, pro and con, about Thomas. I think, frankly, they've demonized him more than was legitimate. But at least there was a discussion and now --

MS. WOODRUFF: These are witnesses that --

MR. GERGEN: -- the witnesses have --

MS. WOODRUFF: -- come --

MR. GERGEN: And they really discussed the issues that people hoped to hear more about last week, affirmative action, abortion. It's almost as if it would be better to have the nominee come up for a couple of days, then have all these other people, and then have the nominee come back --

MS. WOODRUFF: Come back.

MR. GERGEN: -- and talk some more, because there's a dissatisfaction with this process.

MR. SHIELDS: David's right. The tension and the confrontation occurred after the audience had left and the audience -- I mean it was a spirited discussion. It's good to see that many citizens on both sides still interested and active in the process at a time of cynicism and indifference, but basically the hearings, themselves, ended last week. Joe Biden, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, made a very compelling point, and that is that a conservative President makes conservative nominations, and they basically get confirmed. The Democrats and the critics of Judge Robert Bork went through an enormous fight under President Reagan to defeat his nomination and they ended up with Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, who was probably not the legal judicial giant that Bob Bork was or would have but is just as conservative. So I think there's a certain sense of futility. The biggest problem with these hearings, to me, Judy, is we know less about Clarence Thomas now than we did before they began. I mean, I don't think we've learned anything about him. I think we've learned less.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, David, is that the way hearings are going to be from now on?

MR. GERGEN: I worry that they are and I think they've been that - - of course, this is a familiar complaint, but the fact is that I think the hearing process, particularly for Supreme Court nominees, but for other nominees as well, with the exception of Robert Gates -- I thought that was a good hearing -- the hearing process on these controversial nominations have become a matter of theater. Both sides try to get -- you know, gin up all those supporters. I mean, the White House brings people up to organize and orchestrate the press side of this that rush to the cameras. The other side rushes to the cameras to get their lines out. One side demonizes a candidate; the other side makes him a saint. And you don't have sort of what I think is an intelligent discussion.

MS. WOODRUFF: I want to move you all to another story this week, and that is the Pentagon, the White House, President Bush making noises about Saddam Hussein, the Iraqis not complying with the U.N. requirements that they disclose everything on their nuclear weapons program, talking about sending troops back over to the Persian Gulf. What's going on, Mark? I mean, are we really prepared -- is the United States really prepared to send troops back?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, we were and then we're not. I mean, from the latest, I mean, there was -- it appeared to be a backing off from the original strong statement. Brent Scowcroft, the President's national security adviser, appears to be -- his name identified now as the person who is pushing it. I think politically this works for George Bush, no doubt about it. It works for George Bush in the sense that just as the Gates hearings worked for George Bush and the Clarence Thomas hearings, as long as those are on the front page, and the unemployment story isn't and the fact that the economy is not growing and it's the worst post war record of any President, then it works for George Bush. It really does. And so I think Iraq works for George Bush. It's a source of his greatest triumph.

MS. WOODRUFF: But you're saying it's not -- it wasn't serious that we were going to --

MR. SHIELDS: I don't think, Judy, that it is. I think that Saddam Hussein is a perfect foil, he is an ideal foil for this administration.

MS. WOODRUFF: So you're saying -- are you saying they pumped it up?

MR. SHIELDS: I think there was a certain pumping up of it. I don't think there's any question about.

MR. GERGEN: I just disagree with that.

MR. SHIELDS: Okay.

MR. GERGEN: The Washington Post, which is no great bastion of support for George Bush, Jim Hoagland, a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the Washington Post, both were writing a few weeks ago why isn't George Bush being tougher on Saddam Hussein, why isn't he moving in on him, Saddam is taking advantage of the peace, we ought to be much tougher. The President is now being tougher. This isn't manufactured. I do think there are elements in the administration who see the political benefit of it; I would not disagree with it. And I do think --

MR. SHIELDS: Not in the Oval Office.

MR. GERGEN: Well, but I think there are legitimate reasons why we're pushing Saddam. He is being tough on the Kurds again. He is not allowing the U.N. people to come in there, and I think we ought to be tough on him but I also think there are people in the administration who want whack this guy before the election. I think they wouldn't mind having an opportunity to really whack him because a lot of people in this country are dissatisfied that the war seemed to stop before --

MR. SHIELDS: There is growing dissatisfaction. I mean, if you look at Kuwait, it's an outrage. It's an outrage on human rights. It's an outrage. It's further from democracy than it ever was. If, in fact, the peace process in the Middle East is stalled and Saddam is still in power, then it can become a political liability, make no mistake about it, but he is the perfect nemesis for George Bush. I mean, he really is.

MS. WOODRUFF: Saddam Hussein.

MR. SHIELDS: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: And we didn't even mention the Israeli loan guarantees, which I have a feeling we are going to get back to next week. What does all of this -- what's been happening with the hearings in Washington, the back and forth of Saddam Hussein -- where does it leave somebody like Tom Harkin, Iowa Senator, Democrat, who announced that he wants to run for President?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, I think --

MS. WOODRUFF: Is running for President.

MR. SHIELDS: I think Tom Harkin, you know, like everybody else, is an amateur at running for President, we don't know how good he'll be at it. He may very well be a flawed messenger. I think his message is one that gets under the skin of a lot of Republicans, especially in the Bush administration, and that is that the Republicans are the party of special privilege, the party that has, under whom the rich have benefited and prospered over 11 years of Reagan-Bush policies, and I think Harkin has a message there that appeals to Reagan Democrats and appeals to disaffected Democrats in general.

MS. WOODRUFF: Does that get under your skin, David?

MR. GERGEN: Well, Mark has several things tonight, I think they're flat wrong, and the worst record -- I don't know where he was going off on that. I think he had too much sugar before he went on the show.

MR. SHIELDS: 1 percent economic growth, David, in the first 12 months, which is the lowest of any President in the nine post war - -

MR. GERGEN: But --

MR. SHIELDS: Economic growth.

MR. GERGEN: I don't want to -- we've had nine years of fairly good economic growth under Republican leadership. Let me just say one last thing. Harkin stirs the hearts of a lot of Democrats, but I will tell you right now Bob Kerrey is a candidate to watch. He's the one coming out of the gate the fastest; he's getting organized the most rapidly; and he's doing better than Harkin at the moment.

MS. WOODRUFF: David Gergen, Mark Shields, thank you both.

MR. GERGEN: Thank you.

MR. SHIELDS: Thank you. SERIES - THE LIGHT THAT FAILED

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight, another look at the failure of Communism in the Soviet Union as understood and explained by an observer with a special perspective. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has tonight's conversation.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Paul Robeson Jr. is a journalist, consultant, and translator specializing in Soviet and black affairs. He is the son of the late Paul Robeson Sr., the singer, actor, and college football start whose espouser of leftist causes, particularly his sympathy towards the Soviet Union, made him a controversial figure in the United States. The family lived in the Soviet Union for a number of years and continued visiting into the sixties. Mr. Robeson, thank you for joining us. Why do you think Communism failed?

MR. ROBESON: Well, my view is that what failed is neither Communism nor even Socialism but a kind of modified Stalinism which I think Marx would have defined as a special kind of state capitalism, not Socialism at all. What caused it -- and I would define it as the Bolshevik experiment -- to fail was that its ends were not Marxist, that is, they misinterpreted Marx. Two, the methods they used were certainly not Marxist or Communism. And three, they tried to impose a model on society which is certainly not Marxist. So the basic problem they had was trying to say that this was a Marxist government, that they were doing things in the tradition of Communism and Socialism, and they weren't. And over time, the difference between the ideology and what people saw and were living through was simply too much too bare. Whatever you call it, people began to say it's not what we want. So I think that's what caused it to fail basically.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why did it take so long?

MR. ROBESON: That's a fascinating question and No. 1, the World War II was in one sense a watershed. The Soviet Union sacrificed so many lives -- I mean over 20 million, which is a staggering number, to defend their country, that Stalinism, Communism, everything rolled into the ideological bag, got hooked onto the defense of the country and the war, and it gave what the system was called, a kind of new lease on life, because people having invested that much couldn't renounce it. The other thing that kept it going was, interestingly enough, the cold war. Russian nationalism was what that evoked. Nobody from the outside is going to tell us what to do. And that's what Stalinism and Brezhnevism traded on. We're a great Russian nation. None of these other people are going to tell us what to do. And that was what kept them going.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What was the appeal to people like your father who really paid a heavy price for his sympathy toward the Soviet Union and, and yourself? What was the appeal?

MR. ROBESON: I think it had very little to do with Communist ideology as practiced in the Soviet Union, that is, certainly my father was a very sophisticated man, and a great scholar, he knew very well the difference between what was also happening in the Soviet Union and what Marx and Engles wrote, even there's a difference between what Lenin wrote and Marx wrote, that is, the ideology Marxism-Leninism is nonsense. Marx and Lenin are quite different. They're different ideas of society. But rolling it into one was a kind of propaganda thing that Stalin used to fasten this model on the country. The reason my father and I and many others, including Kruma and most of the leaders of the Nehru, many other leaders of the third world, so called, the Soviet Union as a world power was a counter-weight to what they saw as Western Imperialism. And between these two great powers, everybody else could come up through the cracks. And Dad felt that looking at the world, a counter-weight to some American manifest destiny was important both not only for the third world but for black Americans. If you -- and one way of putting it is if you didn't have any Communists, you'd have to invent them, something to balance off the West. So I think that was the concept, rather than some kind of infatuation with Marxist theory. Everybody can read Marx on their own, and Dad could read him in German, so --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: At what point did you begin to feel that this couldn't last?

MR. ROBESON: I think it was clear that in the long run it had to either reform or perish during Kruschev's time. I think the father of perestroika is really Nikita Kruschev, whose 10 years of reform produced the Gorbachev generation. Umm, I think in '56, I think people like my father, myself, many people, knew that well, either it reforms itself or it has to go. The interesting thing is what caused the present collapse is Gorbachev, who I would call a Marxist reformer, who did all the things that a Marxist would do, which is to go back, take the country back to the popular revolution of February 1917, before the Bolshevik experiment which went wrong, and the logic of his Marxism caused him to demolish the Stalinist and then certainly the Leninist Party, because he believed he could reform the Leninist Party, but the lesson is that you can't reform the Leninist Party, so you have to go back to something before that. And I think that's the broad lesson.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You came to know the Soviet people well during the years you spent there. How deep in their psyche do you think Communism lay and how do you think they will handle the transition and where are they transitioning to?

MR. ROBESON: That's from what to what, yes. That's the ballgame. I think that what's deep in their psyche is what I would call the notion of popular democracy. The key word in the Soviet Union is Soviet, which is really a town council, town meeting rule, direct rule. Without all these parliamentary checks and balances in- between the people in actual power, it means economic democracy as well as political democracy. You run the parliament, you decide the distribution of wealth. That's been the traditional Russian mass psychological thing; we want power directly, not through all these fancy folk. And I think what's coming out of this is a return to the quest for popular democracy or we would call it social democracy, as opposed to liberal democracy, that that now is the world contest, rather than between Socialism and capitalism. And by popular democracy versus liberal democracy, I mean, economic and political democracy merged. And that is what is happening throughout Eastern Europe, and especially in the Soviet Union, that is, there is no infrastructure, economic infrastructure, that can saddle people with all this fancy way of diverting wealth. Once the people are in power, they decide what to do with the wealth.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Where does all this leave Socialism?

MR. ROBESON: Again an interesting question, if one reads Marx, he speaks only of capitalism and Communism, with a political transition. And the way I read his political transition, it's people power, that is, direct people power which he says and Engles says can only occur in the framework of a democratic republic. So you might say according to Marx, the only road to Communism is capitalist social democracy. And the minute you destroy either democracy or even capitalism arbitrarily by just grabbing everything and giving it to the state, you go backwards, not forwards. And I think that has an enormous impact worldwide. I think that's why you're seeing a regeneration and a reorganization of every Communist Party in the world, because the ideology is gradually becoming clear, as Marx and Engles finally come to the floor a hundred years later, Stalin and Lenin, their time is over, and --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So you say there's something still viable here?

MR. ROBESON: Oh, I think it's the birth of real Socialism and Communism and the death of Stalinism and most of Leninism. It's interesting that Gorbachev in talking to Shevardnadze, responding to him, when Shevardnadze left the government, he said, remember when in 1980, we talked and we realized that the whole society had to be changed, in other words, you just have to demolish what we got and start anew, 1980 is exactly when the Solidarity uprising in Poland began, that's the first real Marxist revolution in the 20th century, and they would denounce Communism, but that's a workers' revolution. That's what Marx meant.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Where does the collapse of Soviet Communism leave the United States as it defines or redefines its place in the so-called new world order?

MR. ROBESON: A very difficult one ideologically. We have no enemy and supply side capitalism, which is Reaganomics, clearly hasn't worked. And the adversary now is producer side capitalism, producer side controlled economy, rather than supply side economy, which makes sense, all over Europe and even in Japan.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Meaning?

MR. ROBESON: Well, meaning that the producers control the economy rather than the suppliers and the distributors. That's essentially Marx who really talked about rule by the association of producers. The dictatorship of the proletariat was just a phrase used in an argument. Basically, it meant the producers should control the world, not the people who distribute it. That's where we're, I think, arriving at in this country backwards, in that when we call for inclusion, inclusive politics, economic justice, et cetera, that really means social democracy and popular democracy as opposed to our system of liberal democracy, which filters the wealth down from the top, rather than distributing it more evenly from the bottom.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Paul Robeson Jr., thank you.

MR. ROBESON: Thank you. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Once again, the main stories of this Friday, Yugoslavia's federal army launched a major offensive against the republic of Croatia, and Sec. of State Baker left the Middle East without an agreement on a peace conference. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Judy. That's the NewsHour tonight. We'll see you on Monday night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.