The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight full coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing trial's countdown to a verdict; a Paul Solman report on the big musical named for a city named "Chicago;" political analysis by Mark Shields & Paul Gigot; a look at Hong Kong's impact on mainland China; and some perspective on the latest bones discovery about our beginnings. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday.NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Jury deliberations began today at the Oklahoma City bombing trial in Denver. U.S. District Judge Matsch instructed jurors on the law and urged them not to be influenced by public opinion in judging Timothy McVeigh. He's charged with the April 1995 federal building bombing that killed 168 people. Matsch also told jurors not to let their verdict beinfluenced by the fact that the 29 year old McVeigh could be sentenced to death if convicted. Deliberations will proceed through the weekend, or until a verdict is reached. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. In Trenton, New Jersey, today Timmendequas, Jesse Timmendequas was found guilty of the 1994 kidnaping, rape, and murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka. Her death sparked a nationwide push for a so-called Megan's law, requiring authorities to notify communities when convicted sex offenders move in. Timmendequas had twice been convicted of sex crimes before he rented a house across the street from the little girl's family. A jury must now decide whether he should be executed. At the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland today Sgt. Vernell Robinson was sentenced to six months in prison and given a dishonorable discharge from the Army. The 32-year-old drill instructor was convicted yesterday of having sex with five female trainees and disobeying orders, among other things. At the sentencing hearing Robinson apologized to the military, the trainees, and his family. He's the third staff member at Aberdeen this year to be convicted of having sexual relations with female trainees. In Sierra Leone today the United States closed its embassy in the capital of Freetown. U.S. Marines airlifted more than 900 people, including about 300 Americans, to a Navy helicopter carrier anchored offshore. The West African nation has been overrun by fighting and looting since the democratic government was ousted in a military coup over the weekend. In Washington, State Department Spokesman John Dinger spoke about the situation.

JOHN DINGER, State Department Spokesman: It's very difficult to anticipate what will happen. We determined that the situation was so unstable, so potentially volatile, that it was the time to, one, urge all American citizens to depart immediately, and, two, to suspend our official American presence there. We did not feel confident that we could ensure the safety of certainly not private American citizens but not even our American staff in the embassy.

JIM LEHRER: In spite of the warnings, about 100 Americans have elected to stay in Sierra Leone. In economic news today the Commerce Department reported the Gross Domestic Product rose at an annual rate of 5.8 percent in the first three months of this year. That was the strongest rate of growth in 10 years. The GDP is the sum of all goods and services produced in the United States. In a separate report the Commerce Department said new home sales fell 7.7 percent in April, the sharpest decline in six months. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the bombing trial, the musical "Chicago," Shields & Gigot, the Hong Kong connection, and some very old new bones. UPDATE - BOMBING TRIAL

JIM LEHRER: The Oklahoma City bombing trial is our lead story tonight. A Denver jury began deliberations this morning in the case against Timothy McVeigh. We look at the closing phase of the trial now with Tim Sullivan, senior correspondent for Court TV; Jim Fleissner, a former federal prosecutor, who's worked with two of the prosecutors in the McVeigh case, he's now a professor at the Mercer University School of Law in Macon, Georgia; and Dan Recht, president of the board of directors of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar and a practicing attorney in Denver. Tim, first, on the closing events, the final arguments, both the prosecution and the defense pretty much stayed with their overriding themes, did they not?

TIM SULLIVAN, Court TV: Yes, they did, Jim. Larry Mackey, on behalf of the prosecution, took the jury through almost all the evidence step by step. He talked for about three hours, and he urged them to consider the circumstantial evidence in this case just as strongly as they consider the direct evidence. He also urged them to believe the testimony of Michael and Lorie Fortier because he said yes, they've lied in the past but they admitted that, and in this case their testimony was corroborated by other evidence. And Stephen Jones, on behalf of the defendant, argued that the FBI lab evidence can't be trusted; that there's a possibility that there was contamination of McVeigh's clothing, and that would explain the explosives residue on those clothes, and also he attacked the identification of Tim McVeigh as the man who rented the Ryder truck. He pointed out to the jury that only one witness identified McVeigh as the man who rented the truck and no witnesses said they saw McVeigh either building a bomb in that truck, or even driving that truck in Oklahoma City on the day of the bombing.

JIM LEHRER: Did either side in their closing arguments go the emotional route, or was it mostly the recitation of what had already been heard in the courtroom?

TIM SULLIVAN: Well, Larry Mackey, for the prosecutors, did raise a lot of emotion. He talked about the victims. He talked about the survivors who came in here and testified. He reminded the jurors of Helena Garrett, a young woman who testified very early in the case, and when she testified, she brought the whole courtroom to tears talking about the dead babies in that building. And Mr. Mackey said her son, 16 months old, who was killed, barely lived as long as Tim McVeigh's conspiracy was in existence. And by the time Mr. Mackey finished his closing argument at least three jurors appeared to be crying, and many people in the gallery were crying.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Mr. Fleissner, as a matter of practice, how important do you think closing arguments are?

JIM FLEISSNER, Former Federal Prosecutor: I think they can be very important, very important, indeed. When the prosecution puts in its case with lots of little bits and pieces like phone records and evidence like that, in the closing argument, the prosecution- -Larry Mackey did a very nice job--was able to show how all of this fits together. And sometimes for the jury it's going to be almost a revelation. They knew there was this phone record, but they didn't see the significance of it. And I'm of the school of thought that closing arguments can have a real influence on a verdict in a criminal case.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Recht, are you from that same school of thought?

DAN RECHT, Criminal Defense Attorney: Generally, Jim, although, you know, the research shows us that most jurors have made up their mind after the opening statement and before they've even heard the evidence. So it doesn't mean that closings aren't important. I think they're very important, and I spent tons of time on them. But interestingly, there's this rule of primacy that people make up their minds very early in the trial.

JIM LEHRER: Do you know of a case, Mr. Recht, where an outcome of a trial was determined by a closing argument? Are there any famous cases that you lawyers cite?

DAN RECHT: Can't. And the mostly--the reason for that is what goes on in a jury room you usually don't know. Nobody's recording it. Nobody knows about it, and so we can't document those things.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Fleissner, do you know any examples?

JIM FLEISSNER: No. I don't know of any clear examples, but I can tell you this; that sometimes the closing arguments have a bigger effect than even a jury later can acknowledge. I had a friend who told me once that the jury barely remembered that he gave a closing argument. But when he started asking him about the reasoning, he was hearing the kinds of things he'd done in his argument. And that's what the argument's for; to help the jury in a thinking process. I think the jurors do look to the lawyers, but they help them in that process of sorting through the evidence and analyzing the case.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Now, Tim, the other thing was the judge's charge to the jury laying out the law in the case and the instructions to them. Anything noteworthy or unexpected in that charge?

TIM SULLIVAN: Well, the interesting thing about the way Judge Matsch gives the charge, Jim, is that he's very good at reducing all this legalism to simple language that lay people on the jury can understand. He talks, for example, about the presumption of innocence. And he said all that presumption of innocence means is this: that if after listening to all the evidence you have any doubt, any reasonable doubt about the evidence, you're willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant. And that's what it means. If you presume him innocent, it means you're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. And then he defined reasonable doubt. And he said a reasonable doubt is a doubt which would cause a reasonable person to hesitate to act on a decision. And that's as simple as that. So I think it was also sort of a pro defense charge and that he also threw in there some instructions about how to consider identification testimony, and that was pretty good for the defense because he said you have to consider the description, how close is it to the real person, how long did the subject see the suspect, et cetera. So I think the defense is probably pretty happy with the instructions.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Recht, this is an important matter, is it not?

DAN RECHT: Absolutely. You know, let's talk about what Judge Matsch said when he closed even after the instructions. He said two things that mimicked, in essence, what the attorney Jones said for the defense. One, don't pay attention to the public's perception of what's going on; and two, don't let your emotions rule. Those are two things that Mr. Jones emphasized in his closing, and then Judge Matsch, in essence, echoed it and supported what Jones had to say. So I think it's very important.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Fleissner, what's the record on the ability of jurors to follow the charge of a judge, even a good one and an effective one like Judge Matsch?

JIM FLEISSNER: Well, jury charges are notoriously filled with legalese. A good judge like Judge Matsch can present the legalese but help the jury with an understanding of it. My knowledge of the instructions in this case is they're not indecipherable. They're relatively straightforward. These are basically murder charges and conspiracy charges. The charges are not so complicated that the jury's going to have a difficult time understanding the charges in the case. I don't think this is one of those cases with an almost indecipherable instruction. I think it's pretty clear.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Recht, do you agree that the law on this is fairly simple?

DAN RECHT: I do. I do. I think it's a factual issue. This jury has to decide if there's any reasonable doubts left in their mind about whether Mr. McVeigh did this. And, you know, Mr. Jones tried his hardest to establish some kind of reasonable doubt in that jury's mind, and so I don't think it's goingto be lots of worrying about what the instructions say. I think the jury's going to be sitting in that jury room talking about the facts and whether they have any doubts.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Tim Sullivan, beginning with you, all three of you when you were on this program a couple of weeks ago said that this was a model trial, at least at the time we talked before; the prosecution had just finished putting on its case. Do you still feel that same way?

TIM SULLIVAN: Jim, I do feel that way, with one exception though that could become important later. Last week, Judge Matsch ruled that the defense would not be permitted to call a woman named Carol Howell. She was an informant for the ATF at a right-wing militia commune in Eastern Oklahoma. And she told the ATF several months before the Oklahoma City bombing that people at that commune were planning to blow up federal buildings in Oklahoma. And she told them that some of those people--she named names--had gone to Oklahoma City to look at some federal buildings down there, and they were talking about blowing up buildings. Well, the defense was not permitted to call her. And that limited very severely the defense that they could put on. They wanted to put on a bigger conspiracy defense to show that if McVeigh was involved, he had a minor role. They weren't permitted to do that. So that could be a blemish on this trial later, especially on appeal. The defense will argue that they were not allowed to put in the case they wanted to put in to defend their client.

JIM LEHRER: Do you see a potential blemish there, Mr. Fleissner?

JIM FLEISSNER: Not a serious one. Not a serious one at all. If the purpose of putting on that evidence was to show that McVeigh was not the lead player in this whole plot, that evidence is really irrelevant to whether he is criminally responsible. And I think that was the basis of the judge keeping it out. As for the trial as a whole, I think it is a model trial in many respects. It was very well run. Both sides did a great job, but I still continue to think that this case is far more representative of what's going on in courtrooms around the country than the O. J. Simpson case, which got so much notoriety. I really think that the lawyers in this case, although they did a great job, it was very representative of the kinds of work that you're going to see in courtrooms all across the country.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Recht, you said when you were with us before that it was too bad this one couldn't be on television for the people to see, rather than the O. J. Simpson trial. Do you still feel the same way?

DAN RECHT: I do, Jim, even more strongly. I mean, I think the O. J. case was an aberration, and this case would have been a good case for the country to see. I mean, when we look at famous cases that we've seen over the last few years normally justice is done. The Tyson case, the Susan Smith case, the Menendez case, and probably this case, those people are found guilty, and, and, you know, this was a nicely-run courtroom and a nicely-run case, and it's too bad the people didn't see it.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think, Mr. Recht, of the judge's decision to sequester the jury now? The jury was not sequestered during the trial, itself, but is now sequestered in for deliberations, and he's told 'em to deliberate over the weekend. What do you think of that?

DAN RECHT: I think the judge has been very good and very fair to this jury. You know, normally or often juries in high publicity cases like this are sequestered the whole time, and he didn't do that to them. And he simply said to them, look, now that there's deliberations, now that you're actually meeting privately I want you to be segregated and by yourself. And that seems fine to me, appropriate to me, and I bet appropriate to the jury as well.

JIM LEHRER: Fine and appropriate to you, Mr. Fleissner?

JIM FLEISSNER: Yes, indeed, Jim. I think that sequestering them at this point is a very, very good move. And if I could make a quick remark about the television aspect--

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

JIM FLEISSNER: I think that not having this case on television is one of the reasons why the case went so smoothly. You know, there's that theory in particle physics that just by observing the particles you can sometimes change them, just by observing. And I think that's true in trials too. I think that had this been on television--although Judge Matsch, I'm sure, would have ruled with an iron hand--it would have changed the perception of the lawyers, the perception of the witnesses, the perception of the jurors, and I don't think it would have gone as smoothly. I'm against televising trials, obviously.

JIM LEHRER: Now, Tim Sullivan, you're in the business of televising trials. What do you think the lack of television did, good or bad, to this trial?

TIM SULLIVAN: Well, Jim, I don't agree that if a camera had been in that courtroom the trial would have proceeded much differently. Judge Matsch is the man who decides how that trial's going to go. The lawyers in that courtroom don't even change seats at the table without asking his permission first. That would not have changed. I think the difference--one difference is, however, that maybe there's more pressure on the attorneys, more personal pressure on the attorneys, when there's a camera in there, and it might make them a little bit more uptight. I don't believe it makes them perform much differently, but it might have put a little added pressure on them that I think they would probably say they didn't need in this case.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Recht, it's also been suggested that the lack of television has prevented the creation of a whole new class of celebrity lawyers coming out of this, no movie deals, no book contracts, as there were in these other trials. Do you agree there- -with that?

DAN RECHT: In part, but, you know, another interesting piece of that is these attorneys for Mr. McVeigh weren't paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. They were court-appointed attorneys getting court-appointed rates, whereas, O. J.'s attorneys got, who knows what they got, so these--you know, they were representing an indigent man, and they took this on--as I understand it--because of their strong belief in the fifth amendment and that people have a right to an attorney even if they are indigent. So there's a big difference there between the attorneys in the two cases.

JIM LEHRER: What about the celebrity prosecutors, Mr. Fleissner, any going to emerge from this trial?

JIM FLEISSNER: Well, the prosecution team did an excellent job. Obviously, Joe Hartzler has had the highest profile of anyone on the team. But I'll tell you, Joe Hartzler is not a headline grabber. Joe Hartzler is not going to be going on the interview circuit when this trial is over. He got involved with it just like some of the defense attorneys because he believes in the cause. And I think he's carried himself very well. And I think that if he gets--if he ends up being appointed a judge or something like that down the line, that'll be his reward. But I don't think he's in this for celebrity.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Quickly, Tim, before we go, what's the betting odds out there on how fast the verdict is going to come in?

KATHLEEN SULLIVAN: Well, Jim, of course, there's no way to know. The only indication we do have is that the jurors told the court this afternoon that they need--if they need to come back here tomorrow, they want to start at 8 AM tomorrow. The judge has told them they can set their own hours, and they said they want to get cracking at 8 AM tomorrow, so it looks like they are interested in putting in a long day and getting this thing done maybe as soon as they can.

JIM LEHRER: So stay by the phone, Sullivan.

TIM SULLIVAN: Right.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Thank you all three very much again. FOCUS - ALL THAT JAZZ

JIM LEHRER: Now, "Chicago," the Broadway musical that is expected to score well as Sunday's Tony Award ceremony. Paul Solman of WGBH- Boston reports.

PAUL SOLMAN: It's the proverbial hottest ticket on Broadway. Nominated for eight Tony Awards, the revival of legendary choreographer Bob Fosse's dark 1975 musical "Chicago," and to some the "Chicago" revival represents the rival of musical comedy, itself.

ACTRESS SINGING: Come on babe, why don't we paint the town, and all that jazz.

PAUL SOLMAN: The songs are cynical, the dancing sinuous, the humor black. The story begins with murderous Velma Kelly, played here by Bebe Neuwirth. She had a Vaudeville act until she shot and killed her co-star, her sister, and manager, her husband, when she found them in bed together. The original production was overshadowed by rival shows. The revival, brainchild of director Walter Bobbie, is a smash. So why?

WALTER BOBBIE, Director: It was the year of "Chorus Line." And it was a year of the "feel good, find out who I am, share it with the world" musical, and there was this dark, nasty thing about, you know, the justice system in America in Chicago, about the abuse of celebrity.

PAUL SOLMAN: Was cynicism too hard to take maybe in the 1970's, where it's a lot easier now?

WALTER BOBBIE: We've watched incredible celebrity trials in our living rooms for the past five years. We've seen them the Menendez Brothers; we've seen O.J. So that we've absorbed that cynicism into our consciousness in some way that we're not stunned by it, but we are provoked by examining the difference between truth and justice and the law, which are clearly very different issues.

PAUL SOLMAN: The show's not just topical. It also features the late Bob Fosse's distinct style and one of his favorite stars, Ann Reinking. Reinking, the revival's choreographer, is Roxie Hart, a chorus girl who's killed her boyfriend, thus eclipsing Velma Kelly. Here she plays the dummy while Chicago's best lawyer, portrayed by James Naughton, ventriloquizes a teary tale of self defense for tabloid reporters eagerly taking notes at a razzle dazzle press conference.

LAWYER: [singing] Oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes, we both reached for the gun, the gun, the gun. Oh, yes, we both reached for the gun.

PAUL SOLMAN: In Fosse's original production the fabled Gwen Verdon played Roxie Hart. Verdon preceded Reinking as Fosse's first lady, the one and only Sweet Charity, the Lola of his "Damn Yankees," with whom Fosse is dancing here. All in all, Bob Fosse choreographed and directed some of the biggest Broadway musicals of the 50's, 60's, and 70's, from "Pajama Game" to "Pippin" to "Dancin'". He also directed films, including "Cabaret," for which he won an Oscar. We asked Ann Reinking and Gwen Verdon to explain Fosse's style.

GWEN VERDON: This is a part of your body that could move but not all at once. I mean, it would be ashoulder, a finger. I still remember at the end of "Lola," after dancing, you'd have to go back into the song, and my hair would stick out like that, and he choreographed doing that so that you'd look okay. I mean, he choreographed what you did with the second joint of our little finger.

PAUL SOLMAN: No, you don't mean that seriously.

GWEN VERDON: Yes, I do.

PAUL SOLMAN: What do you do with the second joint of your finger?

ANN REINKING: Oh, in "Sweet Charity" ya-dun--[demonstrating]- -and I mean, over and over--

GWEN VERDON: Soft boiled egg hands.

ANN REINKING: Yes. Soft boiled egg hands.

GWEN VERDON: And they couldn't just open up, bam, like that. They had to flare, and that's in the show--

ANN REINKING: Going to be Roxie, over and over.

GWEN VERDON: But they had to flare.

ANN REINKING: So that it looked like a little firecracker.

GWEN VERDON: But it couldn't be a fist. It had to be a soft holding--a soft boiled egg.

ANN REINKING: A soft boiled egg.

PAUL SOLMAN: Is that his phrase?

GWEN VERDON: That's his phrase.

ANN REINKING: Yes.

GWEN VERDON: Teacup fingers. [laughing]

ANN REINKING: Teacup fingers. [laughing]

PAUL SOLMAN: Behind Fosse's meticulous craft was increasing cynicism about the American scene, as suggested in his semi- autobiography, the film, "All That Jazz." In "Chicago," Fosse's vision was at its darkest.

ANN REINKING: Bob was very angry at that point, and from my point of view--Gwen may have a different opinion--Bob was more focused on the anger and the cynicism than he was on the entertainment. And I think he was disillusioned by the entertainment world by that time too, so--[laughing]--when it came to, you know, how can they see with sequins in their eyes, you really understood the lyric, and also personified it.

GWEN VERDON: I think the actual story and the depth of the story was covered up by all the razzle dazzle of costumes, sets, in my opinion, Bob will strike me dead, but this is a better production of that show because it really hit right between the eyes with what it's about, instead of what they're wearing. And your vision of the show is not diffused by sequins.

PAUL SOLMAN: Sequins--s-e-q-u-i-n-s, sequins.

ANNE REINKING: The sparkly things that you wear.

PAUL SOLMAN: Flashy costumes, flashier sets, both hallmarks of Broadway, especially in recent decades, but in 1997, "Chicago" is all sleek black costumes and minimalist sets, which underscore the show's cynicism typified by Bebe Neuwirth's biggest number, her pitch to Roxie to team up in Vaudeville.

BEBE NEUWIRTH: But I simply cannot do it alone.

BEBE NEUWIRTH: I'm showing her what the act was that my sister and I did together and I lost my 15 seconds of celebrity to Roxie Hart, so I think I get Roxie to do the act with me because, as it turns out, I killed my partner and my sister. I'll get her to do the act with me, and then we'll use her headlines and my-- JOEL GRAY: And she'll kill her later.

BEBE NEUWIRTH: Maybe.

PAUL SOLMAN: Joel Gray plays Roxie Hart's cuckolded husband, Amos.

JOEL GRAY: Celebrity is nuts today with the advent of television and what we do to celebrities and how we deify them I just love that this show really shows it for what it is.

BEBE NEUWIRTH: What I get from the audience is that they're thrilled to have some--something so deftly throw arrows where they have been dying to have arrows shot.

JOEL GRAY: And it's palatable because it's so goddamned entertaining.

PAUL SOLMAN: In other words, this musical in a way makes both the revulsion and the indulgence in this kind of behavior palatable, you could argue, right?

JOEL GRAY: Yes. And I don't think that it, in fact, glorifies it. I think it kind of redresses it and puts it in a wonderfully entertaining atmosphere, but--and also people will come--I remember that the Nazis would take the people off of the end of the stage and I would be actually the ringmaster in "Cabaret," taking all these people to death camps. [actor singing] And there would be people outside who said, had such a good time; you were so fun; you're so fun. I was Hitler. You're so fun.

PAUL SOLMAN: So some people just don't get it?

JOEL GRAY: People don't want to get it, and they don't. They take what they will.

PAUL SOLMAN: Now it's time for a seeming digression about the really rosy lighting scheme for these interviews and the oddly tilted lampshades in the wide shots. You see, we shot in the basement of the show's theater, the Shubert, where just to plug in our TV lights would have cost thousands in union required electricians, engineers, and so on. We settled, instead, for the Shubert's lamps, angling the shades to light our interviewees. Union rules like this are among the many factors that have driven up costs on Broadway. "Chicago's" producers Barry and Fran Weissler.

PAUL SOLMAN: How much more of an economic risk is it to put on a show today than say it was in the 70's?

FRAN WEISSLER, Co-Producer: I think it's more risky today. Everything costs more. Theater tickets are more; the cost of ushers are more; the cost of all the stuff that goes on inside the theater, other than the actors, themselves, is more. But when you win, there's nothing like it. I mean, if you do well, like in any business, you really do well.

PAUL SOLMAN: I want to get to a reality level here. Let's say I'm coming to you and I'm pitching--I'm saying here's the kind of show I have in mind and I want this mega star and that mega star and so forth. What's the dialogue like?

BARRY WEISSLER, Co-Producer: Let me give you an example of an investor who came to us and said, I'd like to put money into "Chicago," but if you do it with a bandstand inside a black box, you'll fail. The people won't buy that. The public won't pay for that. There's not enough here. And I want you to give me a set for each scene depicted in the production. And we said that would be the worst mistake we possibly could make. This has to be a very simple production. It has to seduce the audience into its own environment, and then it takes it on a journey. It's a wonderful journey. And we refused, and we gave that person--it happened to be a corporation, so we gave that corporation their choice of putting money in or not. And they did. We're very convincing.

FRAN WEISSLER: And they're happy now--best thing that ever happened.

BARRY WEISSLER: This production--I don't mind telling you that this production paid back in 16 weeks. That might be an historic record for the modern theater.

PAUL SOLMAN: Sixteen weeks, so everything after that--what percentage after that is gravy?

BARRY WEISSLER: 100 percent.

FRAN WEISSLER: 100 percent, because it's all paid back.

PAUL SOLMAN: Oh, you mean to the investors?

FRAN WEISSLER: To the investors.

PAUL SOLMAN: So in the end, the investors of the 90's, unlike those of the 70's, make a bundle doing almost as well as Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, murderesses who beat their respective raps and go on to play Vaudeville's top venue, the Palace Theater. So topicality helps explain the revival's runaway success and perhaps a circuit of mega productions like "Cats," "Les Miserables,""Phantom of the Opera," staged for the big financial score, that are at once astonishing, extravagant, and perhaps an aberration from what's always made musical comedy work on Broadway.

WALTER BOBBIE, Director: If there's been any shift, we've sort of--since I've been here, it's that we've gone from the great director/choreographers to the standstill British musicals where the set dances, to perhaps a reawakening of dance as a form of storytelling in the American musical. I think we love that.

PAUL SOLMAN: In the final analysis then "Chicago's" triumph might signal a revival of more than just a show from the 70's or even of the Bob Fosse style but of something more fundamental to Broadway, singing and dancing a distinctly American story.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Shields & Gigot, the Hong Kong connection, and some very old bones. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

JIM LEHRER: Now, political analysis by Shields & Gigot and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: And that's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and "Wall Street Journal" columnist Paul Gigot. Mark, let's start with the Supreme Court decision in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case this week saying that, in fact, it can go ahead. What are the political ramifications of that, do you think, for the President?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Bad.

MARGARET WARNER: In a word?

MARK SHIELDS: Bad. It's a shadow that hangs over his presidency right now. It will be there. It's not going to go away. As an example of that, Margaret, look at this week. The President goes to Europe; what can only be called a triumphal visit, NATO expansion, the cooperation with Russia on European security, the visit to Great Britain where the labor leader welcomes him as his model, having taken power after 18 years of Tory rule in that country, welcomes Bill Clinton as sort of his inspiration. The Marshall Plan, 50 years American success celebrated in rescuing Europe, plans for helping Eastern Europe, and it's all eclipsed; it's all back in the truss ads and the "I will not be responsibles," and the personal notices because of the story. And I just think that is symptomatic of the problem that this represents.

MARGARET WARNER: How do you read it?

PAUL GIGOT: I guess I don't think it's potentially as bad. I mean, obviously, it is not good news but I think it's containable with one caveat--if the President settles. The one thing that he can't allow to happen, I think, is to have what the lawyers call discovery in this case, which is the case goes ahead of the lawyers for Paula Jones, get to interview the troopers who say, yes, I did invite her up tot he room at the behest of the governor, the women she told at the time about this, that would be a disaster because all that would be public, and if it weren't public, it would be-- that they have to avoid. So the--all the politics, it seemed to me, argue for settlement. The problem is the price of settlement just went up with the Supreme Court decision. They could have settled last year, but they wanted to kick it out beyond the election. They did that successfully but now it troops back in the second term, but all of the logic seems to me that they have to come to some settlement even if it means some qualified apology and admission by the President.

MARGARET WARNER: But you don't think that just having this kind of case with the President of the United States does political damage to him?

PAUL GIGOT: Not by itself, because I think that a lot of the voters--I mean, knew what they were getting in Bill Clinton. They knew his reputation. They knew some of the troubles he had had-- the stories had been out. They still voted for him twice, and, in particular this last time almost 50 percent of the public did. I don't know that this case brings up a lot of new information that would tell voters they don't know about the President.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you agree with, Paul, Mark, on what the President needs to do to contain this, to go ahead and try to settle it?

MARK SHIELDS: I don't think it can be done that easily, Margaret. I think this is damaging in a way, first of all, that none of the other stories is because the other stories suggested straying, flirting, seduction, a brief dalliance or whatever. The story, as described to us here, Stuart Taylor's piece in the "American Lawyer," suggests something a lot cruder, a lot more base, the powerful versus the powerless, a lot of elements.

MARGARET WARNER: Because she was a temporary state employee.

MARK SHIELDS: A temporary state employee. He's the governor.

MARGARET WARNER: He's the governor.

MARK SHIELDS: This is--there are class overtones since Evan Thomas of "Newsweek," the "Newsweek" bureau chief, having done a very disparaging piece of her earlier, did a mea culpa afterwards, class terms and so she's become a sympathetic figure. I think that's a problem. The other problem is that this--this is not like a land deal or a joint venture or an Arkansas real estate thing. This is laying where people's eyes glaze over.

MARGARET WARNER: Whitewater.

MARK SHIELDS: Right. I mean, this is something that people understand, and words like proposition and expose and words like that, that are really, I think, terribly, terribly harmful. I think that there's going to be a tension point, and it's probably been reached already, on the part of the people who are backing and supporting Paula Jones, who have bankrolled the case, who don't want a settlement. And I think Paul Corbin Jones may have been very interested earlier in a settlement that included an apology; that she conducted herself in a ladylike way, that the rumors are totally unfounded against her. Remember how this originally came up. But I think that those people who are-who have been behind her now are not going to be satisfied with that and they're going to put a lot of pressure on her.

PAUL GIGOT: I would say--let me add one thing--I think there are a couple of people here who have not served the President well in the way they've handled this. Whether they did it on their own or at White House instructions; one of those is the President's and that's the way they described Paula Jones. I'm talking about Bob Bennett, the president's lawyers said it was tabloid trash, and James Carville, who's sort of the all-purpose presidential defender who said, you know, we could drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park and who knows what we'll find. Those kinds of statements make it--increase the incentive of Paula Jones to want to stick this thing out because it damaged her reputation and what she wants is to get some of her reputation back, and by doing that, they really hurt the President.

MARGARET WARNER: Which we heard her lawyer say this very week. All right. Mark, let's turn to the problems that the President's having with his own party and Dick Gephardt, minority leader. Now, you all and Jim talked about this last week in connection with the budget deal for which they split. This week was over trade relations with China. But is there something larger going on here? Is this--are we seeing emerging some kind of real battle for theheart and soul of the Democratic Party?

MARK SHIELDS: It's not the heart and soul of the Democratic--I think Dick Gephardt is the Democratic leader, he'd like to be Speaker of the House. You'll usually find that most minority leaders in a legislative forum would like to be in the majority, and he's looking at 1998, and he's looking at--it's within--within possibility, mathematically, arithmetically. History is against them, but arithmetic is very much in their favor as they look in 1998. And he's looking, how do we run against Republicans, and what the President is doing is the President is going after that elusive place in history and saying, Trent, Newt, the three of us together, we'll bring in a balanced budget for this country; aren't we something? We're kind of co-captains of American prosperity. And this really unnerves, unsettles, and ultimately undermines the Democrats' case as they run against Republicans for 1998. They think that is at the core of it, rather than 2000. Dick Gephardt's position on China goes back a lot further than Bill Clinton's does.

MARGARET WARNER: And he discounted the 2000 last night in an interview with him.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right. Here on this broadcast.

MARGARET WARNER: But is there an ideological fault line that's reemerging, or--

PAUL GIGOT: I think there really is. Mark's right about the motives. There is 1998, but there's also something bigger going on here. Bill Clinton--before Bill Clinton came to office and became the first Democratic president reelected since FDR, Democrats have lost five out of six elections. They had a congress, congressional bastion, which was increasingly unpopular. Bill Clinton has come and really saved the Democratic Party in some fundamental respect from a unified Republican takeover. He has won the argument in many ways, and to redefine the Democratic Party, to try to strip the "tax and spend" label, to redefine the values issues, to turn gun control from a kind of liberal hobby horse into an anti-crime issue with the police back there, saying this is important, he's helped the Democrats enormously. He's won the argument in the country. He hasn't won it in the party. A large part of the party wants to-- likes the fact that Bill Clinton wins but doesn't like where he's taking them on substantive policy. And that's what you see not just in Dick Gephardt but Paul Wellstone is out there stumbling and trying to revive the great society notion.

MARGARET WARNER: Senator.

PAUL GIGOT: John Kerry voted against the budget agreement, the Massachusetts Senator. He's thinking of running. There is a fundamental split on government spending, on trade, increasingly on the environment. These issues have not been settled in the Democratic Party, and I think they're going to be fought out over the next four years.

MARGARET WARNER: The President was asked this this week on his trip, Mark. Who does he think really speaks for people in the country who call themselves Democrats? Is it themself or Dick Gephardt? What do you think the answer to that question is? Who's really closer to the soul of people who say, yeah, I'm a Democrat?

MARK SHIELDS: Sure. I think there are visions of the Democratic Party, just as there are the Republican Party. I wish Paul loved moderates in the Republican Party as apparently he loves them in the Democratic Party. When you--the action in both our parties is on the wings of the party. That's the people who go door to door. Those are the people who ring doorbells. Those are the people who work the polls on election day. It's the conservatives, social cultural conservatives, less than economic conservatives on the Republican side, and on the Democratic side it's the passionate environmentalist. It's labor union people. It's women's groups. That's where the action is. And I just--I really think that what the President--I mean the President has done a superb job on neutralizing those issues. The Cold War--the end of the Cold War helped enormously--Communism--anti-Communism had been the Republicans' trump card; they lost that. But I think in the final analysis the President was benefitted from the Republicans' excesses on gun control. The Republicans became the NRA Party. They became an annex of the NRA, especially on assault weapons. The police had no place to go, and the President was shrewd enough with a hundred thousand cops on the street and smart enough and wise enough to grab that issue. But I think in the final analysis the President is counting--he has lost under his leadership--the Democrats lost the House, lost the Senate, and lost nine of the ten big governorships. And that is a problem going into 1998. And so I think that is really the fight. The problem is that you can win a presidency in the middle; you can't govern the nation from the middle because each party, the Republicans have become a more conservative party in the Congress; the Democrats have become a more liberal party. There are fewer Northeast moderate Republicans; there are fewer Southern Democrat conservatives. And the two parties--I think--have really gone farther apart, rather than in the middle.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. We have to leave it there. I'm sorry. Have a good weekend. FOCUS - GOING HOME

JIM LEHRER: Now, going home Hong Kong style. Many residents of the British colony were originally from the neighboring province of Guangdong. The island reverts to Chinese control on July 1st, but some have already made the return trip. Ian Williams of Independent Television News reports.

IAN WILLIAMS, ITN: The border between China and Hong Kong, where farmland meets a bustling metropolis, only the farms are on the American side and the modern skyline is the new Chinese city of Singan. It's the gateway to Guangdong Province, China's richest, where an economic revolution has taken place, thanks largely to Hong Kong entrepreneurs, men like textile tycoon Su Wy Yam. Like hundreds of thousands of other Hong Kong Chinese, he was born in Southern China but fled from the Communists. He made himself rich in the British colony but when China opened its door to outside investment in the late 70's, he was one of the first to walk back through it, building a factory in Dongguan, the very town in which he was born and the home of 700,000 other Hong Kong people. Sentiment aside, cheap and plentiful labor made his hometown a much more profitable place for manufacturing than increasingly costly Hong Kong, where he maintains his home and headquarters. But like other Hong Kong businessmen, Mr. Yam has plowed some profit into social services. He and two others built a local school. A health clinic is funded by Mr. Yam, and later this year it will be joined by a new hospital, also paid for by the textile tycoon. Mr. Yam's ancestral village is still largely as he left it in 1958. As a boy, he learned how to sew in his father's textile workshop, which was closed down by the Communists in 1955. His father was forced to work on the land, and the poverty of his family and village encouraged him to leave his home.

IAN WILLIAMS: And this was your house?

MR. YAM: Yes. This was my house. I bought here.

NEWSREEL SPOKESMAN: Starvation is rampant in China.

IAN WILLIAMS: His departure was soon followed by a mass exodus. Thousands of people, including half Mr. Yam's village, fled into Hong Kong to escape the hardship and famine caused by Mao's disastrous great leap forward. And those desperate refugees provided the labor and skills for the industrialization of the British colony, building a manufacturing powerhouse, producing everything from textiles to electronics and children's toys. Among them, Mr. Yam. He started as a janitor in a clothes shop, but by the late 60's was a rich man owning his own factory. And the wealth of Hong Kong businessmen like Mr. Yam has produced a similarly rapid economic miracle across the border in Southern China.

HENRY TANG, Hong Kong Business Group: At the height of Hong Kong's manufacturing industry in 1981 we had 900,000 manufacturing workers in Hong Kong. In 1995, the number of manufacturing--in 1996, the number of manufacturing workers in Hong Kong has shrunk from the 900,000 peak to about 300,000 odd. But we employ about 3 + million workers in Guangdong Province alone.

IAN WILLIAMS: Hong Kong entrepreneurs have transformed the economy of Southern China. They've been a driving force behind the development frenzy that's changed beyond recognition the towns and villages from which they fled. And now it's not only in the field of economics that Hong Kong influence is being felt. Talk back radio Hong Kong style is the most popular program in the provincial capital of Guanjo and the first of its type in China. Every evening hundreds of listeners call in to comment on the day's hot issue, which ranges from crime to consumer affairs. Guanjo has also been a pioneer in the field of consumer rights in China; a consumer affairs council modeled on Hong Kong has dealt with more than 50,000 complaints about shoddy or fake goods since new laws were introduced three years ago. In China, challenging authority can be a risky exercise, but if the council's caseload is anything to go by, the people of Guanjo appear increasingly willing to exercise their rights, at least as consumers. Hong Kong Television is widely received and watched in Guangdong Province, which shares the same Cantonese language as Hong Kong and has the highest number of televisions per head in China. But it also shows the sensitivities of the authorities towards some aspects of Hong Kong influence. News items about China are frequently blocked. In Mr. Yam's ancestral village, the houses, long deserted by those who fled to Hong Kong, have been taken over by migrant workers. While Mr. Yam found his fortune in Hong Kong, they're among millions seeking theirs in a Guangdong built with Hong Kong money. The handover is certainly not a reunion of two strangers. Hong Kong's contribution to the modernization of China has been enormous and will continue to grow. FINALLY - FAMILY TIES

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, the new old bones story and to Elizabeth Farnsworth.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: A boy who lived in Spain almost 800,000 years ago offers clues to how we humans came to be. That's the conclusion of a new study by Spanish paleontologists who have been analyzing fossils from a cave near Burgos in Northern Spain. The findings were published today in the American journal "Science." The fossils are the remains of the earliest known Europeans, and the Spanish scientists say the boy is a missing piece in the human evolutionary puzzle. To tell us more we're joined by Rick Potts, director of the human origins program at the Smithsonian Institution. Thanks for being with us.

RICK POTTS, Smithsonian Institution: Thanks for inviting me.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What's the most important thing about this find?

RICK POTTS: Well, it shows a combination of features of modern features, that is, those features seen in modern humans, and also features found in earlier fossils. So this is a mixture of traits that one would expect in an evolutionary sequence. And indeed--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So you're talking about the pieces of the boy's skull.

RICK POTTS: The pieces of the boy's skull. Exactly. And the other point is that the Spanish researchers have given it a new name, a new species name, and believe it is the link between modern humans, on the one hand, and the famed group of early humans known as the neanderthals on the other.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And what's the name they've given it?

RICK POTTS: They've given the name homo antecessor, and that means the human that came before.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. You've brought some skulls to help us understand this. Show them to us.

RICK POTTS: Well, what we have here is a modern human. This is what you and I and everyone on the face of the planet today looks like. And the middle part of the face is the part that is of interest. The part around the nose, as you can see in a modern human, has a depression on the side, and where the cheekbone--you follow your own cheekbone, in fact, where it joins the front of the face, it comes in at a fairly flat angle. In archaic humans, such as we see here with this neanderthal--and this is a replica--an exact replica of a neanderthal--you see that the middle part of the face is very swollen and that the angle where the cheekbone joins the front of the face is much more angled and almost vertical. What we see in the modern--in the new find from Spain is--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Which we don't have a replica of because they just have little pieces of it, right?

RICK POTTS: They just have little pieces of it, but they've put it together, and they haven't allowed casts or replicas of it out yet, but we're very much looking forward to getting them. But the new find--the boy--shows a modern-looking mid face, in that area, a long width, very archaic or primitive-looking features like a brow ridge, a heavy jaw, and primitive teeth.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So what does that add up to? What does that lead them to conclude about--about our origins?

RICK POTTS: Well, what's so interesting about this is that in Western Europe at the site in Spain they suggest that they have the root of the two lines, the two branches leading to modern humans and neanderthals, and it opens up a lot of interesting questions. For example, it's certainly--the neanderthals are known in Europe, but modern humans are thought by many scientists to have originated in Africa. And so what's going on in Africa at this same time range--around 800,000 years ago--there are very few fossils--fossil humans from that time range in Africa, and we need to find more.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: But the idea would be that this homo antecessor is the common link out of which one line became neanderthal and the other line became us.

RICK POTTS: That's correct.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And then neanderthal became extinct.

RICK POTTS: Then neanderthal became extinct, and they became extinct about 30,000 years ago. It seems like a long time ago, but it's a relatively short period of time.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So what does this change? Why is this revolutionary, or why is this new?

RICK POTTS: Well, for one thing, it adds another species to our family tree. And that is a process--a scientific process--that has been going on, especially over the last 10 years. Most of the new branches, the new species to our human family tree have been added in the early time frame millions of years ago, and this particular one that deals directly with us and our ancestor.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now, some questions have been raised about this, that it's, indeed, these are the remains of the oldest known Europeans but not a new species, is that right?

RICK POTTS: That's right. A number of scientists believe that it's part of the range of variation of other species that are known, such as the neanderthals or even species earlier than the neanderthals.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And would it make any difference that it's a boy's skull, that perhaps it wasn't fully developed?

RICK POTTS: Yeah. It's an immature individual. We all know that the bones of the face grow as you go to adulthood, and so it would be very interesting to have a more complete set of adult remains. They have part of six different skeletons but the pieces are pretty fragmentary of the adults, and so I think scientists will wait to see what else they find from this cave in Spain.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How did they find the cave in the first place? How did they find this layer of remnants, of people that lived 780,000 years ago?

RICK POTTS: As I understand the story, that there was someone looking for cave bear fossils, bear fossils, and found, in fact, these humans, and so the Spanish authorities and scientists went into the cave, and they have found actually over 80 fossil humans. But most of them have to do with a time range slightly later than what the new finds deal with.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What else do they know about the boy? What can they say about that period? This is the ice age, right?

RICK POTTS: This is the ice age, and, of course, the ice age is not a single time of cold but, rather, was a time of great fluctuation. And so one of the great questions is: How were these early humans behaving? How were they acting and interacting with their environments, especially times when they were warm, when the environment was warm and very cold? And this is one of the key questions in human origins.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You said that we'd need to find--or you all would need to find these kinds of people in Africa to be able to learn more. Is that what you're looking for?

RICK POTTS: Yes, yes, indeed. In fact, a few weeks from now I'm leading a Smithsonian expedition to East Africa to a site there in the Rift Valley of Kenya that falls right in the same time range, from about one million years ago to six hundred thousand years ago. And the place is absolutely littered with stone tools, the business cards, if you will, of the early humans. But we haven't yet found any fossil humans. I think I have an idea why that's the case, but they were beginning to live--the early humans were beginning to live up in the highlands, and so we're going to be looking at new sites this time.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And just briefly, what else has to happen to sort of nail down this--let's say you--for the Spanish paleontologists, what do they have to do to make this more acceptable?

RICK POTTS: Sure. Well, they need to find I think more in the same time range, around this 800,000 year layer, and the more that they find, the more we'll be able to understand what the population was like, the range of variation in the face, for example, extend into the range of neanderthals, and so this population may actually be like the neanderthal, or do they range separate and, thus, a new species of early human?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, Rick Potts, thanks for being with us.

RICK POTTS: My pleasure. RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Friday, the fate of Timothy McVeigh is in the hands of the jury of the Oklahoma City bombing trial in Denver; a new Jersey man was found guilty of raping and murdering seven-year-old Megan Kanka. Her case sparked a legislation known as "Megan's Law." And in Sierra Leone U.S. Marines completed the evacuation of Americans and foreigners from the capital city of Freetown. We'll see you on-line and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.