The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MS. WOODRUFF: And I'm Judy Woodruff in Washington. After our summary of the day's news, we turn first to the leaders of the NAACP, including its new executive director, the Rev. Benjamin Chavis, then a documentary report on the plague of political and criminal scandals in Italy, finally a Charlayne Hunter-Gault conversation with the commander of U.S. troops in Somalia. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: There were new developments in the siege at a maximum security prison in Lucasville, Ohio, about 80 miles South of Columbus. A sixth inmate was found dead after his body was thrown from a cell block door. All six were believed to have been beaten to death by other prisoners. Authorities said the uprising began as a fight during a recreation period Sunday afternoon. Nineteen people have been injured and eight guards are still being held hostage. The area involved houses almost 500 of the 1800 inmates at the prison. Authorities have sealed off that section and cut power in water. The inmates have listed 19 demands, mostly related to changes in prison rules. In Jackson, Michigan, at another maximum security prison 70 miles West of Detroit, four guards were stabbed by inmates today. Authorities said the attack appeared to be planned. There was no word on the guards' condition. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: United Nations officials said today that food supplies for refugees in Bosnia are running desperately low. They said some areas have less than a week's reserves. The head of U.N. refugee operations is appealing to foreign governments for emergency supplies. The U.N. also reported new Serb shelling killed 35 people today in the besieged town of Srebrenica. That attack came as NATO warplanes began enforcement of the no-fly zone over the country. We have a report narrated by David Symonds of Worldwide Television News.

MR. SYMONDS: Operation Deny Flight began when the first of more than fifty fighters from America, France, and Holland, left Aviano in Italy. They'll take turns to fly combat patrols over Bosnia, scanning the skies for aircraft infringing the U.N. ban on combat flight by any of the Bosnian factions. The force will be backed up by U.S. fighter bombers flying from the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt stationed in the Adriatic. The aircraft will be directed at possible targets by surveillance planes operating under NATO control.

ADMIRAL MIKE BOORDA, NATO: This will involve NATO for the first time in its history in an operation which has the potential for combat in an out-of-area location. This is truly different and truly historic for us.

MS. WOODRUFF: A French warplane taking part in the no-fly effort went down over the Adriatic today. NATO officials said the crash was due to mechanical difficulties, not to hostile fire. The pilot bailed out and was rescued by a helicopter. The U.N. Security Council delayed a vote today on tightening economic sanctions aimed at Serbia. They are intended to get Serbia to press its Bosnian Serb allies to sign an international peace plan. Russia's foreign minister said that his country requested the delay to give the Serbs once last chance. The vote has been rescheduled for April 26th, one day after the Russian referendum on Boris Yeltsin's leadership.

MR. MacNeil: There were several violent attacks in South Africa today apparently in response to the weekend killing of a popular African National Congress leader Kris Hani. However, most black groups urged their followers to keep their protests peaceful. Jeremy Thompson of Independent Television News reports from Johannesburg.

MR. THOMPSON: The tensions simmering in the black townships erupted in sporadic outbreaks of violence. Vehicles were stoned and set ablaze. Police reinforcements sent in to quell the trouble came under fire from demonstrators. A white cameraman's car was hit by a bullet.

DAVID SPIRO: I don't know what they thought exactly but it was obvious that it was because we were white.

MR. THOMPSON: With black youths calling for arms to be taken up against all whites, ANC leaders were clearly struggling to control their angry supporters.

PETER KOKABA, ANC: [addressing crowd] But we are going to deliver a blow that will assure that Comrade Hani did not die invain! We must make them to regret this action!

MR. THOMPSON: Passions further aroused by the ANC's latest charge that the government may have been involved in Hani's assassination.

TOKYO SEXWALE, ANC: There is an apparent, very clear link between the government and the murderers.

MR. THOMPSON: Nationwide mass action is planned by the ANC starting with a demonstration tomorrow at the first court appearance of Yan Valoose, the man charged with Hani's murder. Today the leader of the right wing world apartheid movement told me he'd offered to pay for Valoose's legal costs because he sympathized with his action.

KOOS VERMEULEN, World Apartheid Movement: Hani asked for it. Hani asked for it.

MR. THOMPSON: And the man who killed him you would congratulate.

KOOS VERMEULEN: Yes.

MR. THOMPSON: And you will now support him.

KOOS VERMEULEN: We will support him.

MR. MacNeil: Police said they found several guns and a hit list in the home of the man arrested for Hani's killing. He's due to appear in court tomorrow on murder charges. White House Spokesman Dee Dee Myers, Spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers confirmed that the U.S. was reviewing a document suggesting Vietnam lied about the number of American prisoners of war it held. The Vietnamese document was found in Soviet Communist Party archives in Moscow. It indicates Vietnam was holding 1205 Americans in 1972, triple the number it admitted to at the time. Meyers reiterated there would be no progress toward normalization of relations until the U.S. was assured Vietnam was doing all it could to account for missing Americans.

MS. WOODRUFF: President Clinton renewed his attacks today on Senate Republicans who are filibustering against his economic stimulus package. The $16 billion plan is designed to create 500,000 jobs, but Republicans complained it is filled with pork barrel projects that will do little to improve the nation's employment situation. Mr. Clinton spoke at an Oval Office photo opportunity this morning after signing a proclamation declaring the last week of April National Preschool Immunization Week. Part of the President's immunization program is tied up in Congress as part of the economic stimulus package.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I just want to say that, you know today we're having the Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn. Look out there at those kids. They are the hostages of the Senate filibuster on the program. They are the hostages of the Senate filibuster on the stimulus program. All this hot air rhetoric about how this money is being wasted and that money is being wasted, these people, most of them have been here for the last 12 years while we have run immunization into the ground, while we developed the third worst rate in the hemisphere. And they've always got some excuse, some of them, for not doing anything.

MS. WOODRUFF: White House officials said the President plans to continue his public campaign against the Republicans, but conceded that changes would have to be made to get the package through the Senate. The President and the First Lady joined the throngs of children and parents on the White House South Lawn for the annual Easter Egg Roll. Mr. Clinton blew a whistle to start a round of races. He and Mrs. Clinton then made a campaign style swing through the crowd, shaking hands with hundreds of holiday visitors.

MR. MacNeil: That's our summary of the top stories of the news. Now it's on to the new leadership of the NAACP, Italy's political scandals, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault in Somalia. FOCUS - AT A CROSSROADS

MS. WOODRUFF: Up first tonight the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Last Friday, the civil rights organization elected a new executive director. We will talk with him and with the chairman of the board of directors about the future of the NAACP but first Correspondent Elizabeth Brackett has this report.

MS. BRACKETT: The NAACP settled on a new executive director who promised to rejuvenate the organization. The new leader, 45-year- old Rev. Benjamin Chavis, a longtime civil rights activist, a member of the Clinton transition team who once spent four years in jail in the 1970s as part of the Wilmington Ten, a group of activists who were jailed on charges of arson that were later found to be false. Chavis won the top spot over two other candidates, Jewel Jackson McKaid and Earl Shinhoster. But much of the controversy over who should lead the organization swirled around the candidate who dropped out, the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Jackson's supporters said the high profile civil rights leader could have revitalized the organization at a time when many are calling it "irrelevant" and "ineffective." New York State NAACP Chairman, Hazel Dukes, a Jackson supporter, said the public squabble further hurt the organization.

HAZEL DUKES, Chairman, New York State NAACP: I think the organization's been hurt by Rev. Jackson, is a public figure, and to some parts of the community he's theirs, he's theirs, and so Rev. Jackson is not hurt. I think our organization on the credibility level is hurt.

MS. BRACKETT: Jackson, one of the nation's most visible civil rights leaders, was the No. 1 choice of the search committee, but he dropped out after saying rules changes would have lessened the power of the executive director. Angry board members in an unusual public rebuke of Jackson said he lost support because members were afraid he would put his own agenda above the organization's, and he dropped out because he didn't have the votes to win. Jackson said he would always support the NAACP but urged it to go in new directions.

REV. JESSE JACKSON: Well, at a time like this, the NAA, if you were looking at a record company, it would be kind of like Motown. It has a known label and a great distribution system. It needs a hit record. The hit record is to address critical social issues of our day with some real intensity. For example, the crisis in LA right now is for the organization an opportunity to show real leadership.

MS. BRACKETT: There was a time when the NAACP's leadership was unquestioned. It was founded in 1909 after a wave of lynchings nationwide. One of its finest moments came in 1954 in the Brown versus Board of Education Case. Thurgood Marshall representing the NAACP before the Supreme Court won the case which ended legal school segregation even though Marshall knew enforcement would become the new challenge.

THURGOOD MARSHALL, Lawyer, NAACP: [1954] But we recognize that there is a terrific problem, and we believe that the people I represent have been very considerate about this. They've taken it for seventy or eighty years, and we believe that now is the time to get around to having our Constitution apply to all sections of the country equally and with the same effect in a more or less uniform fashion.

MS. BRACKETT: After Brown Vs. the Board of Education, the influence of the NAACP grew. Chicago real estate developer and author Dempsey Travis was president of the Chicago NAACP in 1959 and '60 and counted 50,000 members.

DEMPSEY TRAVIS, Former President, Chicago NAACP: I mean you just wasn't nobody if you weren't part of the NAACP movement. And itwas a social organization. It was a civic organization. It was all the things that you need to be a good citizen.

MS. BRACKETT: As the battle for racial equality continued, particularly in the South, the NAACP remained in the forefront, organizing the famous march on Washington in 1963, and was highly influential in pushing through the Civil Rights Acts of 1960, 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless.

MS. BRACKETT: In the 1960s, other civil rights organizations began to appear on the scene, organizations that were more militant and more committed to direct action on the street. The NAACP continued its legislative agenda but lost many of the youths to the more activist organizations. Chicago disc jockey Frank Jones says many young blacks today have hardly heard of the NAACP. He says kids know rap stars, not civil rights leaders.

FRANK JONES, Disc Jockey, WGCI: In the '60s you had a variety of black leaders, you know obviously Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. Now the youth, the people that they look to are people like Chuck D, lead rapper for Public Enemy, Ice Cube, Ice-T. These are people who are in their lives every day through their tape recorders, through their cars, through their home stereos.

MS. BRACKETT: After his election, Rev. Benjamin Chavis promised to reach out and embrace young people. NAACP members say whether he can break through the headsets and the tape recorders to re-engage young people may well determine the future of the nation's oldest civil rights organization.

MS. BRACKETT: Joining us now are the Rev. Benjamin Chavis, the newly elected executive director of the NAACP, and William Gibson, the chairman of its board of directors. Gentlemen, thank you for being with us.

REV. CHAVIS: Thank you for having us on.

MS. WOODRUFF: Dr. Chavis, you just heard the report, you've seen the stories that have been throughout the newspapers and in the news over the last weeks or so. Is this an organization that's out of touch with a whole generation of black Americans?

REV. CHAVIS: No. I think the NAACP has a tremendous potential. It has not lost touch but the question is: Can we expand our base? Can we reach out to younger people? The answer is yes, and we have that opportunity. So, you know, there have been many organizations, I watched your clip. The NAACP has been around since 1909. There are a lot of organizations that have come and gone. The NAACP has stood the test of time, and so now in 1993, as we face the 21st century, certainly we're going to have to reach out to the young people, certainly also though I believe that the struggle's going to have to be inter-generational. It's going to have to reach out to the young people. It's going to have to reach out to middle aged people, and we still should hold on to the wisdom of our elders. I think there's a role in the NAACP for every generation.

MS. WOODRUFF: But by implication aren't you saying that you've lost -- you're acknowledging that touch is lost with some in the younger generation, aren't you?

REV. CHAVIS: Well, each generation has to rise to the occasion in terms of the challenges that are laid before it, and secondly, if we look at the challenges of racial injustice, of economic injustice in our society, there are formidable challenges. When I finish your program tonight I'm headed to Los Angeles, and I will be going to stand with not only the young people in South Central Los Angeles, but the whole community's that's caught in this very severe racial injustice.

MS. WOODRUFF: Speaking of that, Dr. Gibson, Los Angeles, was an issue following the Rodney King verdict last year and the disturbances out there. The NAACP has been criticized for not being more involved in that last year. Is it your sense that that's a legitimate criticism?

DR. GIBSON: Well, I think that as you view it from hind sight possibly. Some people may think that it is. I think that under the circumstance of what we did was we convened a summit to begin to develop solutions to that particular problem. We've alerted our branches in that particular area to be involved, to be more aggressively involved in it. Could we do more? Yes, unquestionably. And I think that what we're bringing together now is a new team of leadership in the NAACP that does not tend to disparage the past but intend to improve it, intend to make things better, and that's why we're here today. That's why Dr. Chavis with the blessing of me as chairman of the board, the position I established today by the constitutional party that I have, that he'll be going up with the full support of the NAACP board of directors, the whole association, to do more this time than we did before.

MS. WOODRUFF: Are you saying that that wasn't the case under the leadership of Dr. Benjamin Hooks?

REV. CHAVIS: No. I'm saying that the nature of the struggle for racial justice is an evolutionary thing. It changes from year to year, from generation to generation. And what we want to do is not just look at the past, but look at this present moment. And the NAACP is in a unique strategic position. We have 2200 units. We are in every state and in every congressional district. We have over 500,000 members and certainly an overwhelming majority of those 500,000 members are over 30, so what we have to do now is not to discard the 500,000 members we have but bring in new members and hit the ground running and attacking the issues of racism and economic injustice.

MS. WOODRUFF: How do you respond to Rev. Jesse Jackson's comments that he felt that the next executive director couldn't be as strong and effective and independent as he felt he needed to be because of these new constitutional powers moved to the board? This is what you, Dr. Gibson, were just referring to. Is that an issue at all?

REV. CHAVIS: It's not an issue for me. You know, Dr. Gibson is a strong chairperson. I'm a strong executive director, and we work together. We're on this program together. We have a team, and when I go out to Los Angeles tonight, I'm glad I have the support of the chairperson of the organization. I will be meeting with our local branch presidents throughout the region in Southern California but I'm not going to stay in a hotel tonight in downtown LA. I'm going to stay in the hood. I'm going to stay in the housing projects. I'm going to stay in Imperial Courts. I'm going to be with those young brothers and sisters while they're being encircled right now. Quite frankly, I'm very concerned about the almost Desert Storm mentality that's hovering LA at this moment.

MS. WOODRUFF: So when the Rev. Jackson, Dr. Gibson, talks about his worry that the leadership of the NAACP can't be strong and effective because it's tied to a board that represents the ways of the past, what do you say to that?

DR. GIBSON: Well, I say No. 1 is that it's regrettable that these accusations were made by Rev. Jackson in that heat of battle, but I say that the board of directors association at this time is younger than it's ever been in the history of the association. It is a board that has youth members. It has people who are recently graduated from college. It has young business persons, and there's a broad perspective, and the number of years I've been on it's the youngest. The perspective that we're coming from in talking about change is not change from the structure of the management of the NAACP, but we're talking about change in regards to operational policies and addressing issues. We're talking about addressing new issues, such as crime, violence, teen- age pregnancy, the kinds of circumstances, infrastructural problems that have resulted in a case of hopelessness that generates the kind of despair that you have in Los Angeles, in many other major cities across the nation. We're talking about addressing aggressively economic enhancement for African-Americans. These are the kind of changes that I'm talking about, not changing from the relationship of leadership of the NAACP.

MS. WOODRUFF: Do you -- you've seen the same stories I have over the last few days. I read them again today, but the criticism that was coming again and again is that this was an organization that was once powerful. We saw it again on Elizabeth Brackett's report and in touch, but now it isn't as in touch as it should be, not just with the younger generation but with the constituents who you are designed to serve --

REV. CHAVIS: You know, that's very interesting.

MS. WOODRUFF: -- single parents -- go ahead.

REV. CHAVIS: That's very interesting. When people are discriminated against, what's the organization that they first call? NAACP. When something happens that's devastating our community, the NAACP is the first organization that's called. And the reason is that that is the organization that not only has the historic legacy. It is the only organization that we have that is organized throughout the United States to even have the capability of responding. So it's a question of maximizing the potential of the organization, and what Dr. Gibson and I are now doing, we are managing and directing the organization in a way that it can maximize its true potential.

MS. WOODRUFF: There was an article that I guess ran a couple of weeks ago that said you were the preferred candidate of President Clinton. Is there anything to that? Are you a friend of the President's, or do you know of a reason -- the suggestion in the article was that --

REV. CHAVIS: I consider President Clinton to be a friend. To my knowledge, I don't think the President contacted the search committee.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is that the case?

REV. CHAVIS: Vice President Gore --

MS. WOODRUFF: Or anybody in his behalf?

DR. GIBSON: No.

REV. CHAVIS: Vice President Gore is a personal friend of mine. But the fact that the President and Vice President can be friends, that had nothing to do with the selection. In fact, I have a responsibility now as executive director of NAACP to put pressure on the White House to ensure that justice, equal justice is in this country, to put pressure on the Congress of the United States, to put pressure on the Supreme Court, to put pressure on the governments, to put pressure on the mayors. You're going to hear a lot from the NAACP this day and all the days to come. Wherever there's racial injustice in the United States, we intend to challenge it and we intend to change it.

MS. WOODRUFF: I asked because the implication of the piece was that the White House didn't expect as much -- I don't know, for lack of a better term -- pressure points, a threatening position or whatever from Dr. Chavis.

REV. CHAVIS: We shall see.

DR. GIBSON: I'd like to say this. A real civil rights leader, and that's what I consider Dr. Chavis, I also like to consider myself that too, does not yield to political friendships or relations. You address the actions of that particular politician. Real civil rights leaders do not get coopted in there because of the fact that they know an individual who is political or in political office. They have the responsibility to duty, and if they are to retain integrity, they must address the actions of these particular politicians in the same vein that they would supposedly address an enemy, and I have the highest regard for Dr. Chavis's integrity which to me is the prime criteria for leadership in civil rights.

MS. WOODRUFF: How do you get to those young people we heard the disc jockey describing here at the end of Elizabeth Brackett's report, the kids, you know --

REV. CHAVIS: You get to 'em not so much by talking about them but by talking with them and being with them. Tonight, again, I'm going to be staying with young people in South Central Los Angeles. I'm going to stay in the housing projects with them until the verdict comes in. They know, and this is not a new thing for me to do. We have a rapport.

MS. WOODRUFF: What do you think -- why are you doing that? What do you think may happen?

REV. CHAVIS: Well, I'm going there as a common influence, but I'm also going to demand justice. Keep in mind the reason why we have a tense situation in Los Angeles right now is because of the absence of justice, the absence of racial justice, the absence of economic justice, the disenfranchisement of thousands of people in South Central Los Angeles, and other parts of Los Angeles County. Hopefully, the jury this time will bring justice. If it does not, there's going to be a very, very tense situation. And we're the NAACP, and we don't want to see a recurrence of violence. At the same time we're not going to soften our demand that justice be done.

MS. WOODRUFF: Beyond Los Angeles, how do you -- you said you want to sit down with these people. Do you have a plan?

REV. CHAVIS: First of all, I have children myself. I know rap artists. The young man who earlier talked about reaching people through music, we will do some of that, but our reaching young people has to go beyond sentimentality. It has to go beyond a sort of a casual relationship. We not only want to address the issues affecting young people, we want them to come and join the NAACP, participate in the life of the organization so that we can transform the quality of life of the African-American community and in other people of colored communities in the United States. That's our charge.

MS. WOODRUFF: What do you, when you talk to young black Americans, Dr. Gibson, what do you hear them saying that they want from your organization or any organization that speaks to civil rights? Because, as we know, it's not just in today's discussion but in the last few years the discussion has been about what's happened to the civil rights leadership in this country.

DR. GIBSON: The first thing that most young people I talk to want is a good job. They want the opportunity to earn a livelihood, not to be on welfare, not to be homeless, not to be in the streets. The next thing I think they want from an economic perspective is that we have a lot of young blacks today with ideas, entrepreneurship, many who are not in the entertainment industry, who want to have the opportunity to own their own businesses. They want the opportunity to get a loan without being refused because of the fact that they are black. They want to own a home, not be a renter for the rest of their lives and be denied an opportunity for a home mortgage because they've been red-lined or they have been denied a statistical loan because of the fact that they are black. They want basic, the fundamental things that are supposed to be a part of the American dream, and we in the NAACP intend to begin to work more forcefully. Oh, yeah, as I said earlier, we could do better and we're going to do better. We have a group of individuals now that are prepared to address those issues and hopefully to solve some of those concerns that these young black Americans have.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, Dr. Gibson, Dr. Chavis, we thank you both for being with us.

REV. CHAVIS: Thank you.

MS. WOODRUFF: Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead, the scandal shaking Italy's political system and Charlayne Hunter-Gault in Somalia. FOCUS - SCANDAL ITALIAN STYLE

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, we turn to Italy, where daily revelations of corruption have produced the kind of political upheaval not seen since the post World War II republic was created nearly 50 years ago. On Sunday, Italians will vote in a referendum on changing some of their political institutions. Jillian Findley of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's "Primetime" News Program has a report.

MS. FINDLEY: Mozart would have loved the irony, Don Giovanni, the story of an unrepentant sinner playing to the rich and powerful in Milan. The opera attracts a crowd but these days in Italy, you don't have to come to Luscala to see sinners being dragged down to hell. Just go to the streets. For over a year now Italy has been reeling from a bribery scandal, the biggest ever in Europe. As accusations have reached higher, people have become angrier, furious that what they used to joke about has now proven true. It's not that Italians are opposed to a little bribery. After all, favors have kept the system running for years. What this is though is corruption on a major scale, collusion between politicians and businessmen, some suspect even the mafia. It's become known as Tangentopoly, "Kickback City," and it's struck a latent nerve in Italy. What's happening now is nothing short of a revolution, the destruction of a political order, the fall of a ruling class. There's no opera these days for the inmates of San Vitori Prison. The guest list reads like a who's who of Milanese society. To understand the scope of the scandal and why so many will likely end up in jail, imagine it in Canadian terms. Two former prime ministers, more than 100 MPs, cabinet ministers, top bureaucrats, the presidents of all political parties, plus many of the country's top industrialists, all of a sudden under investigation for giving and taking billions of dollars in bribes. This revolution doesn't have a guillotine. Publicity is killing the elite. The televised trial of this Milan city official was watched by a record 9 million people and made a national hero of the interrogator, Antonio DePiatro.

ANTONIO DePIATRO: [speaking through interpreter] Two hundred and fifty million lira, you make for the sake of it -- when you walk in the street, do you ever see two hundred and fifty million lira handed over for no apparent reason?

MS. FINDLEY: His operation Clean Hands may anger the privileged but the Italian people are proud. DePiatro is now so popular he's become a symbol for justice and for Italy's hottest new board came. Forget Monopoly. Italians now pay Tangentopoly, a simple games, says inventor Lelo Garado, to test a player's knowledge of the scandal.

SPOKESMAN: It's six players and the judge.

MS. FINDLEY: The goal is to pay the least amount of tangenti or bribes, but as Italians are learning, that's not how it was in real life. Huge kickbacks were paid on almost all public works projects, like Milan's soccer stadium, politicians are thought to have raked off up to $20 million. The still unfinished Piccolo Theater, $3 1/2 million, the extension to Milan's subway, as much as 250 million may have gone in bribes, but it wasn't just big projects. This senior citizens home has become famous in Milan because it was here that the whole Tangentopoly Affair began to unravel. For two years, Lucia Mani's family had the cleaning contract at the home. For two years he paid 10 percent in bribes. But then he had a crisis of conscience.

SPOKESMAN: [speaking through interpreter] The moment I left my office with my briefcase of money, my sister and my aunt looked at me as if I was on my way to enjoy myself gambling in Monte Carlo. It was as if I was responsible. I felt badly about, because they were right.

MS. FINDLEY: After consulting his mother, Mani went to the police who set up a sting. People began to confess. The house of cards began to collapse, and players like Roberto Mongini decided to come clean. He used to be vice president of the Milan's Airport Authority, and for 10 years he used his post to pressure companies into making donations to his party, the Christian Democrats. He says he had no choice.

ROBERTO MONGINI: [speaking through interpreter] The alternative was to stop being a politician. Each of us was well aware he was doing something illegal. Being in politics, and wanting to remain was enough to justify the illegal sides of it. Today we feel a bit ashamed of what we did.

MS. FINDLEY: Mongini spent 17 days in jail. He still has to go to trial. But notoriety hasn't hurt his career. He's written a book. He's continued to practice law, and now he's host of a new TV program called "The Untouched." Despite all that's happened, he says he doesn't feel guilty.

ROBERTO MONGINI: [speaking through interpreter] I don't think of myself as a repentant, I'd rather call myself a realist. I realized the system was over, and the judiciary is aware of all that happened, and I think others should do the same.

MS. FINDLEY: For many politicians and businessmen, the road to reform starts here at Milan's Palace of Justice. Instead of waiting for the policeman's knock, many are coming in on their own accord, running the gauntlet of cameras and reporters who have taken up residence outside the investigator's office. What the investigators are finding is that the system of kickbacks on construction projects spread further than anyone suspected. The cost of the ripoff is now put at $14 billion a year, almost equal to Italy's annual deficit. But how was the system allowed to flourish and why is it only being discovered now? The political scientist's answer is the Cold War. Professor and Former Senator Jean Frankel Pasquino says ever since Italy became a republic politics have been dominated by fear.

PROF. PASQUINO: One should not forget for a moment that the challenger was the Communist Party, and very many Italians would have not liked Communist Party in the government, and so the competition was tough and governmental parties decided to resort to corruption in order to buttress their declining fortunes. They were discovered, first of all, because there was no longer a Communist Party, the Berlin Wall collapsed, and the Communist Party in Italy disappeared, so there is no Communist threat anymore.

MS. FINDLEY: But psychiatrists have a simpler answer, greed. Dr. Piero Rocinni's couch has been graced by more than 200 politicians. He used to be a consultant to the House of Deputies. Last year, he conducted a survey to find out why his patients got into politics.

DR. ROCINNI: They explained that they met, they looked into politics only for money, and they explained this very clearly, I want money, I want money, I want money, and I think in this way it's easily understandable why we have so layers of problem of corruption.

MS. FINDLEY: Tangentopoly has shocked Italians not least because it was first revealed in the influential North. Here in the poorer South, corruption has been suspected and tolerated for years, but not until now has there been much resolve to do anything about it. The political house cleaning that started in Milan is sweeping South. Old closets are being opened, old skeletons are coming out. 1980, the mountains of Rapinia erupted in an earthquake. In just two minutes, 3,000 people were dead, 300,000 were homeless. Thirteen years later, the reconstruction still continues. The Italian government poured in more than $13 billion, but it's now clear a lot of it went missing. If you belonged to the right political party and had the right connections, reconstruction was a quick way to get rich. Take this highway, eight kilometers leading nowhere. The constructors got more than $100 million. The owners of this factory got moneys after promising they would process potatoes. $15 million later they have yet to produce a french fry. Meanwhile, hundreds of families still live in temporary housing. In the town of Cabuseli, people have spent 13 years in castoff ski huts donated by the German Red Cross. Revelations about Tangentopoly are especially painful here.

WOMAN: [speaking through interpreter] I'm furious, really furious. We live on one salary, we're honest people. They steal billions and don't even pay taxes. We who are honest pay all of our taxes. I'm angry. We're all angry. We didn't expect Italy to end up like that.

MR. ROMANO: We're all involved in this. We have very mixed feelings. I mean --

MS. FINDLEY: Certio Romano is a former diplomat and editorialist. He argues Italy's complex system of patronage is collapsing because it simply got too expensive.

MR. ROMANO: The system was entirely designed to allow political parties to maintain their powers, pensions in the South and money for the earthquake areas after the earthquake in the South, the health system which was also designed to provide jobs with the political clientele of parties, well, all of these factors put together just managed to exact from the country a disproportionate amount of money which ended up by making the budget deficit so large as to make the country uncompetitive on a European scale.

MS. FINDLEY: The further South you go, the more insidious the patronage becomes. Naples is mafia country, and last week's round- up of local politicians and officials heralded a new chapter in the Tangentopoly Affair. Today it's Southern courthouses that are besieged by journalists and cameras, here to catch a glimpse of nervous officials summoned to tell what they know about contracts and the mob. This dragnet has reached right to the very top. Among those now being investigated, the man said to be the country's most powerful, Julio Andriati, seven times prime minister, more than anyone the symbol of Italy's post war prosperity. If he's found guilty, it would be the final proof that Italian public life is corrupt to its very core. Five years ago, Carlo Maria Martini, cardinal of Milan, made a speech in which he warned that a plague of corruption was sweeping the land. No one listened.

CARDINAL MARTINI: I don't think that we could have done more than what we did.

MS. FINDLEY: Today he feels vindicated but also hopeful that through crisis will come a solution.

CARDINAL MARTINI: We are disturbed. We are very sorry about what happened, and the fact we can change now is really a great occasion for change.

MS. FINDLEY: There's a lot of talk of change in Italy these days, change the politician, change the political system. But the cardinal warns it will take more than that. To a rally of schoolchildren celebrating the first day of spring, he pleads not to let the scandal discourage them from entering public life.

[RALLY]

MS. FINDLEY: And in the end, as 50 years of political order crumbles around them, it may be all Italians can hope for, that the hands of the next generation will be cleaner than the last. CONVERSATION - RETURN TO SOMALIA

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight, a conversation with the top U.S. military commander in Somalia, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Robert Johnston. He's soon to finish a four-month tour of duty, along with most of the 26,000 American service members deployed last year in Operation Restore Hope. Seven thousand Americans will stay on as part of a United Nations force of soldiers from all over the world. Charlayne Hunter-Gault interviewed Gen. Johnston on her return trip to Somalia.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: It's been four months since Marine Gen. Robert Johnston established Operation Restore Hope. Under his command an international force of some 38,000 troops. Known to his forces by code name "Sea Wolf," the 55-year-old veteran of Beirut and Desert Storm is about to turn over responsibility for Somalia's security to a United Nations force. At one of General Johnston's valedictory visits to his troops at a Marine outpost in Mogadishu, he outlined what the Marines have accomplished in Somalia.

LT. GEN. ROBERT JOHNSTON, Commander, Joint Task Force: We have always had an ideology that everybody is a rifleman, and I can't think of any better testimony to the things that the artillery, the kind that's done in Mogadishu, in the heart of town, in the worst part of town and the most challenging mission has been given to the cannon cockers, and you have done absolutely superbly. And it goes to tell you something about our corps, that you should never change that. We should never try to tamper with boot camp or officers candidate school and the kind of training we put every Marine through. The way you've performed in a very, very delicate mission I believe that this is a more challenging mission for Marines than Desert Storm was.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: We spoke with Gen. Johnston at his office at the American embassy.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Gen. Johnston, thank you for joining us. It seems as if you are in the process of giving valedictory disengaging is that right?

GEN. JOHNSTON: We are preparing to disengage certainly with respect to turning over to the United Nations, yes. We're preparing for a very smooth hand-off.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But you, yourself, are going around and addressing the troops, as it were, and seeing your last --

GEN. JOHNSTON: I don't think it's going to be my last trip to the troops, but it's good to do it from time to time. The uncertainty of when they might be withdrawing is always in their mind, and they just need to be reminded what a great job they're doing.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you have a date certain yet when you will be leaving and when the rest of the U.S. forces will be pulling out?

GEN. JOHNSTON: No, there is no absolutely concrete date. There are some pre-conditions. Obviously one is that Gen. Beir will be comfortable that his staff is ready to take over operationally.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: That's the new Turkish general who will succeed you.

GEN. JOHNSTON: Yes, it is. And then there are some additional forces coming in, Pakistani specifically, that will allow the Marines to turn over Mogadishu to another force, the Pakistanis in this case. And when that's done, those two preconditions, then the U.S. forces would be in a position to withdraw, except for the logistics command, which will stay here through UNISOM, and a quick reaction force of army troops who will again stay into Phase II UNISOM.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: UNISOM being the United Nations Somalia. There were many critics of the United Nations bureaucracy and slowness in this whole process from the very beginning. Is this another example of that?

GEN. JOHNSTON: I can't talk to perhaps the track record of the United Nations, but I believe that it's been rather slow this time, that it seems to have been slower than we would like to have seen it because certainly part of the U.N. mission that requires refugee resettlement, standing up a governmental structure and standing up a police force, is a mission that now needs to be executed and so it's important that the U.N. quickly get in place and take up those three major missions.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the U.N. Secretary General, has been for, had been for some time publicly opposed to the U.S. withdrawing until the entire country was secure and there was some debate about what the goal and mission was. Is this a part of that in any way? I mean, is this in any way perhaps a deliberate attempt to prolong the U.S. presence?

GEN. JOHNSTON: I'd be speculating, but quite candidly it was a very successful mission, and I suspect there was no great sense of urgency to have us replaced since we were performing very nicely. And I believe that while Sec. Gen. Boutros Boutros-Ghali would liked to have had the U.S. go north, it was never part of the mission that President, then President Bush committed the U.S. forces to. It was very limited, a humanitarian mission, established a secure environment so that we could reverse the famine, which we have done, and establish an adequately secure environment for UNISOM to come in and become the next part of the mission. So we've done that.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: As you have just done, others as well have expressed confidence in handing off this mission to other forces, and yet, even you this morning, when you were traveling around, heard local Somalis, police and others, say that the other countries simply cannot do it, a small country, the United States must stay for a long period of time in order to make progress in the country. What's your reaction to that?

GEN. JOHNSTON: People put a lot of confidence in the United States presence, but I really feel that the forces that Gen. Beir will take over, if he took over tomorrow, he would have 70 percent of the troops that I have today so that in terms of what happens on the ground, what is seen by the Somalis, will be relatively unchanged, and I think that the United Nations will create this confidence level by their performance. They're superb troops. I will give you some examples: the Italians, the French, the Botswanis, Zimbabwans, the Pakistanis, and many other countries will remain in place. And their performance is not going to change because they're under somebody else's command, so I'm very confident that the U.N. can do it.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Some have argued that this is a very fragile political and environmental ecosystem, that the Siad Bari regime kept the lid on for all those years and once he was gone, that lid exploded and everything boiled over, that since December now, the forces have kept the lid on, which has, in effect, given other strong arm leaders time to regroup. What is your sense of that, and what is happening to those forces in this interim period? Are they off somewhere rearming and regrouping, just waiting for you to leave?

GEN. JOHNSTON: I don't think they have that kind of capability. I mean, clearly, some of the heavier equipment still exists in the central part of Somalia. In terms of the kind of military capability we have, the faction leaders simply could not mount any kind of a significant military trap to our force, so their power base as it relates to fire power and a gun is eroding, and I believe an increasing recognition on their parts that really the future is not in the end of a gun, I think it's going to have to be in a legitimate government. So I'm, my sensing is that the factional leaders understand that and that we have the Somalis now trying to point Somalia in the direction of reconciliation, disarmament, disengagement, the things that the Somalis are doing in Mogadishu to take back their own city I think is some indication that the Somalis are part of the solution. And if they're not part of the solution, there is no long-term success.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you feel that the environment will, in fact, be secure enough for that?

GEN. JOHNSTON: To use Mogadishu as an example, it's already secure enough to begin to see a commerce beginning. And keep in mind that Somalia has never been a hi-tech country anyway, that 70 percent of the population has made a living through livestock and growing oranges and bananas. So it won't take an awful lot to, to jumpstart the economy. It doesn't require a lot of hi-tech and a good deal of infrastructure, so I see that happening, and I think it could be literally matters of months before the economy is beginning to employ Somalis again.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: There were reports that you had been involved in planning such a mission even as much as a year in advance of, of the mission. How has that mission changed from when you first conceived it in that planning stage until now in terms of the use of the force?

GEN. JOHNSTON: The planning that we were talking about was a fairly limited operation that we would conceive in Somalia. It was humanitarian. But it didn't go into the level of detail and planning that allowed us to execute this particular mission, small number of troops. It did not deal with the political complexities of the clan factions, the true limitations of the airport, the port, all of the logistics constraints that we dealt with really were not explored in enormous detail. So while it helped us focus on Somalia, look at the geography, et cetera, the temperatures, the climate, it was useful but it certainly did not guarantee that we knew everything we needed to know when we hit the ground.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And so what changed? I mean, how did the mission change once you encountered the realities of the situation?

GEN. JOHNSTON: Right. At the time we were exercising it, we did not, we were not looking at a famine of quite the magnitude that we faced when we finally came in in December.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Really?

GEN. JOHNSTON: Right. We were not trying to replicate many many months ago the famine that really began to build and become much more the subject of public interest, and so we didn't really fully contemplate the number of thousands of Somalis that were actually dying of hunger, and the hundreds that were dying every day. So it was, again, this was many months ago, and then as we approached the operation in December, things change dramatically. The death rate was very, very high. The civil war was at the point which it was irreversible. The United Nations had come in, as you recall, some 600 Pakistanis, and were simply not, they were just undergunned and undermanned and could not handle the mission. So the mission really and the problems in Somalia worsened as time went by.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you see this kind of expanded humanitarian role for U.S. forces as a role of the future, and do you see it as an appropriate one for U.S. forces?

GEN. JOHNSTON: Charlayne, it's hard for me to speak to really. I'm sure that President Clinton will have to make those kind of decisions down the road. I think it's an appropriate mission. I mean, it's not, it's not the mission for which we train and are equipped and outfitted for, but it's one that we can do if it's short duration. And it has to be, it has to satisfy some preconditions; one, that it is doable, that it is a mission to start with. This one was. Even though it's humanitarian, the problem was the civil war in Somalia. It had to have a military force to be able to reverse that so that we could then provide the humanitarian aid, and I think in addition to it being an appropriate mission, we have to know about how long it's going to last, and it has to be one for which there's an end game. You have to know where you're going before you get into the operations. And I think we knew where we were going. It was a point of time of which would reverse a famine and stop a civil war.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So many of the conflicts that are looming on the horizon even in force now are in a way similar. That, surely you've thought about this.

GEN. JOHNSTON: I think with all of these operations there's human tragedy present. I mean, Bosnia is a classic example where the innocent civilians are always those that suffer. So you could say that there's always a humanitarian mission in every conflict. This one was driven more by famine, by, you know, the inability to get food to starving Somalians.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: We don't know exactly when you will leave but we know it will be soon. What is the one thought that you, is there any one thought that you leave with and any feeling of as you look about to the future of Somalia?

GEN. JOHNSTON: I think the word I would pass to my successor is that you have to be patient, that it does take a while for the Somalis to come to an agreement. They will reach an agreement at their pace, not ours, that we tend to see things in our own eyes, in our own experience, and I think that Americans are traditionally somewhat impatient for results. We like things to happen, and that's true of military men. Things will not happen that quickly here, and I would believe that that's the, that's the underlying message I would give to anybody here. It can be successful. We have to be patient, and there may be some reversals down the road. We can deal with all of those, and I believe there's every expectation that this mission in the long haul will be a successful one.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Gen. Johnston, thank you for joining us.

GEN. JOHNSTON: Thank you. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Again, the major stories of this Monday, the prison uprising in Southern Ohio continued. A sixth inmate was confirmed dead when his body was thrown from the cell block. Eight prison guards are being held hostage. United Nations officials said food supplies in Bosnia are dangerously low. They called for emergency help from foreign governments. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Judy. Wait. There's one more story to report before we go. Judy Woodruff has decided to accept a challenging new position at the Cable News Network later this spring. While we're very sad to be losing an outstanding member of the NewsHour team, someone who's given us 10 years of hard work and dedication, Judy, we're all delighted for you and wish you much success.

MS. WOODRUFF: Thanks, Robin. This is a special place, and it'll be hard to leave.

MR. MacNeil: That's the NewsHour tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night with more from Charlayne Hunter-Gault in Somalia, among other things. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.