The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: Excerpts from a Republican presidential debate, followed by political analysis by Mark Shields and Paul Gigot, then, Betty Ann Bowser reports on the aftermath of the Amadou Diallo verdict, Ray Suarez talks with writer V.S. Naipaul, and essayist Roger Rosenblatt has a few words about wanting to marry a multi-millionaire. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: This was a big day on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 202 points at 10,367. That was a gain of 2%. The NASDAQ Index rose 160 to finish at 4914, a gain of more than 3%. The trigger was the Labor Department's report on unemployment in February. It edged higher to 4.1%, and there were fewer new jobs than expected. Analysts said the numbers calmed fears the Federal Reserve might raise rates again to slow the economy and prevent inflation. Overseas today, more aid arrived in Mozambique as the race to rescue flood survivors continued. So far, more than 12,000 people have been saved. But they're dependent now on outside help. We have a report from Jon Snow of Independent Television News.

JON SNOW: Maputo Airport is at last jammed with helicopters and fixed wing planes shuttling food out. There is no north-south link in this country. That's been washed away in 100 places. Anything that will fly is being made to. The weather they fly through veers from the threatening to the hopeful, as do the forecasts of cyclone and further floods. Where the roads are in one piece, they have become runways, narrow, but serviceable, and room to disgorge food for helicopters to take onward. The helicopters are landing anywhere that's dry; a dozen times today, this one has dropped sacks of flour, a gift of Germany for the World Food Program. Aid agency workers are already in place on the ground to move them to the displaced people. Camps are growing up on any ground that is a meter or two higher than the floods, often within a few hundred yards of where homes are still inundated. Much bigger camps have been established, closer to the Limpopo River itself. This one at Cech Walami has 25,000 people. Flying on, this is the only north-south road link in Mozambique, breached three times in the space of just a few hundred yards, but today for the first time evidence of a real attempt to start patching it. It will take months before it is all done.

JIM LEHRER: The International Red Cross and Red Crescent said today they need nearly $7 million to help with the flood crisis. That's more than double their initial request. Augusto Pinochet arrived back in Chile today. The former dictator's plane was greeted in Santiago by cheering supporters. He'd been detained in Britain for 16 months while Spain tried to extradite him for human rights abuses. Yesterday, the British ruled the 84-year-old general was medically unfit to stand trial. A Bosnian Croat general was sentenced to 45 years in prison today. Tichomir Blaskic was the first senior military officer convicted of atrocities in the Bosnian War. The UN War Crimes Tribunal in the Netherlands said he ordered mass killings of more than 100 Muslim men, women and children in 1993. In Washington, a State Department official welcomed the verdict.

STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: If we're going to ever have reconciliation in that part of the world and ever going to have opportunity for people in that part of the world to enter Europe, to integrate fully with European institutions, then we have to have individual responsibility assigned so that collective guilt can fall away. And so long as people challenge that principle, they're relegating their peoples and their countries to a not so terrific future.

JIM LEHRER: The sentence was the longest handed down so far. Croatia's government said it was too harsh, and a defense lawyer promised an appeal. Back in this country today, Ronald Taylor was charged with a third death in Wednesday's shootings outside Pittsburgh. He was arraigned for a second time after a man died last night of his wounds. Two more people were critically wounded in the attacks. Taylor is also charged with committing a hate crime. He's black. His victims were white. Police said they found anti- white statements he had written at his apartment. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Republican debate, Shields & Gigot, the Amadou Diallo case, writer V.S. Naipaul, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay.

FOCUS - DEBATE

JIM LEHRER: The presidential nomination races: Thursday night we had excerpts from a Democratic debate, tonight it's the Republicans. George W. Bush and Alan Keyes were in Los Angeles, John McCain was in a television studio in St. Louis for the event last night. McCain was asked if his attacks on Pat Robertson and other Christian conservative leaders could hurt him in the general election.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: They've led our party in the wrong direction. We've lost the last two presidential elections. We've lost the last two congressional elections. The message of intolerance and exclusion rather than inclusion is directly in contradiction to the message that I've been trying to send around America. And that is, come to our proud conservative banner, we will reform the government, we'll give it back to you. But ours is a message of inclusion, and I'm positive that Christian conservatives all over America will flock to that banner. They will desert, I hope, the intolerant and wrong-headedness of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Senator, up until the South Carolina primary, there's no record that I can find of your criticizing either Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell or the religious right. In fact, you appeared on "The 700 Club" back in 1995, you've been consistently supportive of most of their agenda. Isn't your denunciation three days ago, more politically motivated, and does it speak in a more political connotation than the support that you've given these groups for so many years?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, first of all, I share their values and their goals of the rank and file of the so- called Christian right. As I have said, I am a proud conservative with a strong conservative record in the tradition of Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. I am proud of that record. I am proud that I have been one that has supported many of the issues that have to do with family values. Where I have differed in the past and continue to differ with Mr. Falwell and Mr. Robertson is on issues such as the issue of President Clinton. I voted to impeach President Clinton, I don't believe he's a murderer. Mr. Falwell believes that he's a murderer. Mr. Robertson has espoused some cockamamie theories about the Free Masons. I believe that they have lead some very good and wonderful people in a message of intolerance. We share the same values, but their practice of politics is exclusionary and not inclusionary.

JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, the next question for Governor Bush. You have apologized this week to Cardinal O'Connor of New York for not taking on the anti- Catholicism at Bob Jones University when you were there. And yet there is, as you know, a long standing anti-Catholic strain among southern fundamentalists and evangelists, evangelicals, I'm sorry. My question is, were you unaware of this history when you made the decision to go to Bob Jones?

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: You know when I went to Bob Jones, I followed a long tradition of both Republican and Democrat candidates that went to lay out their vision. Ronald Reagan went to Bob Jones, my dad went to Bob Jones, Bob Dole, the Democraticgovernor from South Carolina the week before. I talked about bringing people together so America can achieve its greatness. I talked about lifting the spirit and the soul of this country. I regret I did not speak out against that school's anti- Catholic bias. I missed an opportunity. I make no excuses. I make no excuses. What I regret is somebody ascribing to me, opinions and views that are not my views. Calling me an anti-Catholic bigot is not right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But you don't regret having gone there?

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: What I regret is the politics of smearing somebody's reputation, that's what I regret. And I don't appreciate it one bit. And the good news is Catholics from all around the country are coming my defense and I'm grateful for that.

QUESTIONER: Senator McCain on a related and more specific matter, I guess, you had about a week or so ago, repeatedly denied that your campaign was the source of these calls from the so-called Catholic Voter Alert, and then said, well you thought you were being asked about calls that were about anti-Catholic bigotry, and that's not what those calls said. But is there any reason why your campaign didn't say this is the McCain campaign calling instead of a nonexistent group, was that straight talk?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I think it was straight talk, because we wanted to tell people exactly what Governor Bush had done. It did not accuse him of being an anti-Catholic bigot, it did not say anything except that he was there and waited three weeks before he repudiated it. But the fact is that that was a factual and fair statement and one that I stand by -- unlike many of the phone calls that are being made as we speak and the negative ads that are being broadcast all over television.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: If you don't think those phone calls labeled me an anti-Catholic bigot then you weren't paying attention to what your campaign was putting out, I guess, because the clear message was I was an anti-Catholic bigot, that's why people all over the country were wondering about my heart for awhile. The good news is that America rejects that kind of politics. The good news is we put that behind us in 1960 with John Fitzgerald Kennedy. And Catholic leaders all across the country are coming to my defense.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Governor Bush, now the Supreme Court recently again upheld limits on campaign contributions, and yet you have suggested that any such limits violate free speech. Do you think there should be no contribution limits at all, that people who are wealthy should be able to give as much as they want to you or any other candidate?

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: Well, it'd be a little hard for me to argue against that simply because in my state, that's the way it is. People can give; individuals can give to a candidate the amount they want to give, so long as there's disclosure. I believe the best reform policy is to say individuals can give, and we ought to have instant disclosure on the Internet. We ought to let everybody know who's giving to whom. And we ought to do it on a real time basis, so that nobody has anything to hide.

QUESTIONER: Ambassador Keyes, to borrow a phrase from my friend Jeff Greenfield here, there's an elephant in this room that we haven't talked about, but it's the limited success of your campaign in attracting votes. And I'd like to ask you about that, what does that mean, what has gone wrong? Is the Republican electorate-- it is Republicans you're appealing to-- are they rejecting your message, or are they rejecting the messenger?

ALAN KEYES: A great many of them have no idea that I'm running because of the media blackout on this campaign. I always find it interesting, you guys play the game, put the mask over the eyes of the people, and then ask why they don't see me. And I refuse to dignify that little tactic with any more of response than that other people in the country know what you are like and what your colleagues are doing.

QUESTIONER: Senator McCain, whenever you're asked why so many congressional Republicans, your colleagues, people you've worked with have supported Governor Bush, the answer is that you say is because you're trying to break the iron triangle -- the aura of soft money. More than 40 House Republicans who support Governor Bush voted for the most sweeping campaign finance reform bills in years, if they're not standing with you, if they're going with Governor Bush, how come?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, I think many of them respect and admire him more than me. But the major reason and the majority reason why most of them obviously in my view are very concerned about my candidacy, including being frightened, is because I'm taking on the establishment and the iron triangle and everybody knows that. And campaign finance reform is a key element of that. And Governor Bush just said that he wants unlimited contributions from individuals. Maybe that explains why there have been the sleep-overs in Austin at the governor's mansion by the Pioneers. Maybe that's why it's being set up, the apparatus, right now of the so-called Pioneers and other apparatus to raise unlimited amounts of money to funnel into this political campaign coming up in the same way that Clinton and Gore did. That's a matter of published reports.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Governor Bush, you have a 30- second comment.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: Thank you. You talk about people staying with me at the governor's mansion. These are my friends, John.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Good.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: These are my relatives. You talk a lot about the iron triangle and you're ringing it like a dinner bell with all those fund raisers with lobbyists in Washington, DC. (Laughter)

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: If I'm ringing it like a dinner bell, you've got both feet in the trough, because you've raised five times the amount of money in Washington than I have.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We are now at the point where we would like all three of you to give your closing statements. Ambassador Keyes goes first.

ALAN KEYES: One question that came up tonight is worth answering: Why am I here? (Laughter) You know what, the reason that I'm honestly here is because with the majority of people in the Republican Party, I'm the sentimental favorite. I'm the one you all listen to, you know I'm saying what's in your heart, you know that I speak the truth, the true bedrock conservatism, and do it better than anybody who has appeared in these debates. How come it doesn't inspire you to get out there in the voting booth and stand with the same integrity for what you believe that I stand with here in this arena? Unless, you the voters of the Republican Party start to be willing to show that kind of integrity, our cause will be lost. These gentlemen won't win in the fall, because they don't have the courage of our convictions, and they will not effectively communicate that to the heart of the American people, and that's what we desperately need.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I am very proud of this campaign. I'm very proud of the fact that we have tried to build America up and tear no one down. I ask for your support and your vote next Tuesday and I thank you for having me on this program.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: I want to usher in a responsibility era in America that calls upon the best of our country. It begins by a President who understands that the responsibility is to bring honor and dignity to the office, and that's exactly what I will do.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Governor Bush, Senator McCain, Ambassador Keyes, thank you all.

FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

JIM LEHRER: And that brings us to Shields and Gigot, and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: For analysis of the debate and the rest of this political week, we turn to syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. So who got the better of last night's debate, Paul?

PAUL GIGOT: I don't think either one did, Margaret. I think they both looked pretty good. John McCain looked as he usually does, dignified, presidential...didn't help him that he wasn't in that room, that he was by satellite. He probably should have stayed in LA and had... it's easier to confront someone when you're in a room. It's much harder when you're down the line and you come in when you're called on really as sometimes happens on this show. And it's just easier to interact that way. I think he should have done that. And Bush is a much improved candidate in my view from two months ago. I mean the... one of the largest mistakes the Bush campaign made was not getting him into those debates earlier. It was clear by the time he first got in, he needed practice. Now he feels a little more comfortable. And I think he is a little more composed and looks more presidential himself.

MARGARET WARNER: How would you score it?

MARK SHIELDS: I think Governor Bush probably went in ahead and came out ahead, so far that reason, it worked for him. I agree with Paul that it was a mistake for John McCain not to be in the same room. The one thing -- if you noticed at one point George Bush last night, as one of the other speakers was commenting upon him, gestured to the panelist, to Judy Woodruff, I think, and said "I want time." You can't do that if you're down line here in St. Louis or something of the sort. I thought the education difference was fascinating. Paul and I probably disagree. I agree with George Bush and you would probably agree with John McCain. I mean, Bush has a far more activist that government has a role. If you are going to have federal money going into to low income schools, they better be tested, they've got to respond and the money is attached to that; whereas, McCain took sort of the orthodox conservative position that no federal bureaucrat is going to determine us what the school board does in Palukaville. But the other thing was, I thought that McCain was very much on the defensive because of the character charge. Character has been his calling card in this campaign, candor. And he was on the defensive about that, about the calls, the calls in Michigan. And Bush was incredibly cute and clever. What Bush has done on the charge about Bob Jones, which he has apologized for going there and being mute, which was the charge against him -- the charge was he went there and was mute. It's an anti-catholic haven and all the rest of it. And he said you accused me of being an anti-Catholic bigot. That is not the charge. The charge is - the charge against him is that he lacked moral -- he was a moral coward when he went there. I mean, he lacked the courage to speak truth to power while there and to say what you people do is wrong. But he has transformed this into you're accusing me of being an anti-Catholic bigot and he has done it very cleverly.

PAUL GIGOT: What was he going to do, flagellate himself? I mean, he did say I missed an opportunity, I should have spoken up. I mean, I don't know what else he can do.

MARK SHIELDS: It's not a charge of his being an anti-Catholic bigot. It's a charge of his lacking moral -

PAUL GIGOT: No, but the charge -

MARK SHIELDS: And not knowing.

PAUL GIGOT: -- of those phone calls - the McCain phone calls run pretty close to the line on that. They are pretty tough. And they imply that he... if he doesn't agree with it, he was at least willing to... he kind of agreed by not saying something.

MARK SHIELDS: That's the implication.

PAUL GIGOT: And that's not fair.

MARK SHIELDS: Oh, I think it is fair.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you agree with Mark that in dealing with these controversies they've each had to, that Bush has done it more effectively than McCain?

PAUL GIGOT: I would say so. Yeah, I would think that -- in part because of what McCain is running on. When you're running on character, when you're running on biography and the signature line "I will always tell you the truth no matter what" -- the press is going to look for occasions when that doesn't quite add up. And that's what's happened. He has been on the defensive on that the last couple of weeks.

MARGARET WARNER: Now he has not backed down -- as we heard last night and heard him again today at the rally on Wall Street -- he will not back down on his attacks on Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. What is that doing to his campaign?

PAUL GIGOT: I think it's been an enormous blunder for him. What it has done,... What it has done, instead of campaigning against Bill Clinton and Al Gore -- which is what most Republicans want to hear -- he has been campaigning against Pat Robertson. It has taken him off the message, which is reform, and somebody who is strong enough to beat Al Gore. Instead, he's picking fights with elements of his own... the coalition he would need to win. And maybe on Tuesday there will be some great backlash against this backlash and this week the statements, all kinds of moderates and others will turn out and it will prove to be smart but so far it really looks like a mistake.

MARGARET WARNER: It does seem to be drowning out almost everything else he is saying, don't you think, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. For 14 months, Margaret, John McCain has been the best candidate in the race. He went from 58% to 2% margin. That's where he stood last summer behind towering figures in the party like Pat Buchanan - who won the New Hampshire primary -- Elizabeth Dole, Dan Quayle - I mean, Steve Forbes with deep pockets - he went by them all. He is still standing, one of the serious candidates for the race. He had the worst weeks of his campaign and it was self-inflicted. He went down there and he made a speech, a challenged speech, a bold speech, but he made it on the eve of an election he's about to lose. ... and it's one thing if you make a speech like that and you're going to win, and you can say, hey, what did I tell you, I had the guts to do it, and we won. He didn't, and so immediately, all the post mortems, all the analysis goes, McCain did the wrong thing, McCain was stupid, McCain -- self-inflicted wound. At the same time it was. It didn't make sense politically because he already had the people who didn't like Pat Robertson and the others -- I mean moderates and independents and so forth. So the followership of Robertson and of the religious conservative... I don't mean Robertson alone, feel besieged. They feel that the elite press and the dominant culture looks down upon them. So an attack upon Pat Robertson, if anything, makes them feel more defensive and I think separates them from John McCain, which they might have been available as voters.

PAUL GIGOT: You know, ideologically there is not that much difference between John McCain and George Bush. But one of the great ironies of this race is that John McCain has pushed George Bush and a lot of the conservatives, economic and social, into each other's arms almost despite themselves. I mean two months ago Republicans were voting for George Bush because they said he could win. Now a lot of them are voting for him because of conservative values.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let's look ahead to next week and to Super Tuesday...13 states for the Republicans. What do you think McCain has to do, Mark, to remain a viable candidate after Tuesday? And how do you think things look? You were in California. Tell us about that.

MARK SHIELDS: I'd say California he has got a shot in the beauty contest -- where everybody votes. I think George Bush carries the delegates. I don't think there is any expectation that he is going to be threatened where only Republicans vote. I think McCain -- McCain to stay alive and viable and vital and vibrant -- the three "Vs" -- has to win New York, I think Vermont, I think he wins Rhode Island, I think he wins Connecticut and I think that - but the New York victory would be a big victory. And I think it's probably become more plausible because what I consider to be a self-inflicted wound by the Bush campaign -- which is the idea of spending $2 million in "independent expenditures" paid for by a major Bush backer -- charging John McCain of having a bad environmental record -- he's not the Sierra Club's pin-up boy -- but praising George Bush's -- which nobody has had the nerve to do in a state where Houston has become the dirtiest city in the country under his governorship.

MARGARET WARNER: Just to explain - there's a new ad that's gone up in New York and a couple of other states - by a group called "Republicans for Clean Air."

MARK SHIELDS: A phony group, and a group that has no web site, no post office box, no existence prior to this ad.

PAUL GIGOT: There is no evidence that there has been illegal coordination but I do agree... there isn't. There just isn't. But I do agree with Mark that it probably is stupid. Why give the McCain campaign a talking point like this -- this close to an election when you've already been gaining, when McCain has had a self-inflicted wound because he has been picking fights with other Republicans -- so we'll see if it's a mistake. It looks to me like it might be.

MARK SHIELDS: Just one thing and that is - you know, in a week, Margaret, where Maria Hsia, principal fund-raiser and friend of Vice President al Gore is convicted of violation of election laws, George Bush, disables himself to use this issue by coming out for unlimited soft money expenditures.

MARGARET WARNER: Which he did last night.

MARK SHIELDS: Which he did last night in the debate - and using these very, very questionable, sketchy and probably illegal tactics.

PAUL GIGOT: Maria Hsia broke laws that already exist. There's no evidence that -

MARK SHIELDS: This is the same -- "Wall Street Journal" editorial wrote beautifully about that.

MARK SHIELDS: Before we go, the Democrats next Tuesday - now they had a debate this week, too, and it was incredibly civil. How do you explain the change in tone?

PAUL GIGOT: I think Bill Bradley was mailing it in. The most poignant moment in politics is not when you lose or win. It's that moment when everybody else knows you're going to win and you're the candidate...

MARGARET WARNER: You're going to win or lose?

PAUL GIGOT: You're going to lose rather -- if you're going to lose, and you're still fighting, you're still slogging onward - and that's kind of where Bill Bradley finds himself this week. And I think he wants to go out with some grace, he wants to go out putting up high-minded principles and say this is what I stood for -- and hope that the numbers are not embarrassing on Tuesday.

MARK SHIELDS: I was with Bill Bradley at UCLA -- at a rally of 3,000 people, Margaret, in the dusk, a crowd brimming with affection and admiration - not much passion. There is very little passion in Bradley crowds. But his message was the same. I mean, it was -- in the midst of this incredible prosperity, we have an obligation to each other, to the future. He talks about the voice for the voiceless. I mean, it's the same message he began with. It's a campaign he can be proud of. But I agree with Paul, it was his valedictory and he wants to be able to look at his grandchildren and say this is why I ran for President.

MARGARET WARNER: You see no scenario for him being able to continue after Tuesday?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, unless the pollsters have been interviewing Martians, I mean, there's just - he's lost ground. I mean, he's showing up near Alan Keyes in some of these polls, unfortunately.

MARK SHIELDS: The "Los Angeles Times" poll showed him running behind John McCain among Democratic voters in California, which is really hurtful.

MARGARET WARNER: Before we go, Mark, you were also out with the Republicans in California...

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, one of the most poignant moments, there is Bradley and McCain who did note have a very good week. He was in Little Saigon in Orange County where the Vietnamese refugees came and built a remarkable community. And a nighttime rally at 9:00 at night, it was one of those rare emotional moments in American politics. I mean, we've all been to Greek-American or Israeli American or Irish American rallies. This was... I mean the passion and the intensity and the feeling and the sense of gratitude toward McCain I think lifted him up after a couple of very bad days.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, thank you both very much. See you Tuesday.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: The Diallo verdict aftermath, writer V.S. Naipaul, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay.

FOCUS - POLICE COMMUNITY

JIM LEHRER: Betty Ann Bowser has the Diallo story.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: There's a shrine now at 1157 Wheeler Avenue in the Bronx. That's where Amadou Diallo lived... and died in a hail of police bullets last February. Today people come from all over to pay their respects. They look closely to find the bullet holes left from the 41 shots that were fired at the unarmed West African immigrant as he stood in the doorway of his apartment building. They leave flowers...candles...and angry notes. Some condemn the four white policemen who said they thought Diallo was a serial rapist suspect about to pull a gun on them when they fired. A wallet and a key chain were the only items later found on Diallo's body. Transit Authority bus driver Frank Hawkins brought his two daughters to the scene the other day. He wonders if what happened to Diallo could also happen to him. FRANK HAWKINS: It's not a matter of your economic standing but I think just basically the color of your skin sometimes they treat you in a different way. You know, I'm a law abiding citizen, a deacon in my church. So I can put on some long overalls and a jacket and run to my car and be mistaken also. That's how I felt personally...I took that personally. BETTY ANN BOWSER: It was just a week ago that an upstate jury of eight whites and four blacks acquitted the four police officers of any criminal wrongdoing in the Diallo case. The decision set off a series of demonstrations led by New York City civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton. AL SHARPTON: You're talking about 41 shots...four different cops...and the jury says nothing is wrong. And it almost sends the signal that whatever a policeman says is enough and that police have the right based on their own imagined fears...no matter how unfounded they may be...to kill us...excessively kill us, and that there's nothing criminal about it. I think that that is what made the verdict so appalling to us because it's almost like you become the sitting duck to the whims of any police person. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Yesterday Sharpton moved his protests to Washington... demanding the four policemen be tried in federal court for violating Diallo's civil rights. AL SHARPTON: If this nation could expect for George Bush - the Justice Department to come back with indictments on Rodney King...we expect the Bill Clinton White House and the Justice Department to hear Amadou Diallo. BETTY ANN BOWSER: The U.S. Justice Department isn't the only arm of government feeling the heat. The Bronx district attorney's office is also under fire. Statewide poling shows only 30 percent of New Yorkers approve of the not guilty verdict. DA Robert Johnson has been criticized for doing a poor job of prosecuting the four police officers.... some people have called for his resignation....but at a news conference on Monday Johnson said the four cops are the ones who should resign. ROBERT JOHNSON: Their mistakes - their mis-judgments - their preconceptions led to the violent and horrible death of an innocent person. They should resign. I think that's where the calls for resignation should be.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: A group of dissident police officers...with a long history of criticizing the department for racial profiling...has come to Johnson's defense. Police Lt. Eric Adams says the problem wasn't Johnson; it was moving the trial to Albany, New York and seating a jury with little knowledge of urban life. ERIC ADAMS: This jury stated from the onset that they didn't believe race had anything to do with it; they did not discuss race in the jury room...so regardless of what evidence was presented to not acknowledge that Amadou Diallo was shot and killed because he was a black man -- that is clearly not looking at all the evidence. BETTY ANN BOWSER: The new president of the powerful police union...the PBA...says the jury did weigh all the evidence and came to the right conclusion.

PATRICK LYNCH: It's what I expected.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: At 36, Patrick Lynch is the youngest officer ever elected president of the union. He's made reforms in his organization since taking over last year...and the PBA paid for part of the four officers' defense. PARTICK LYNCH: What we tried to do in this case was put those 12 jurors in the shoes of those four police officers that night knowing what they knew then ...not what the jurors knew later. And, again, you have to bring in the human factors.... the other issues...the city life that going on around you...the fear for your life you have...your adrenalin is pumping. You have an obligation to save yourself...save the other four police officers...the citizens that might be behind you...this all comes into play. When we're in the quiet of the courtroom where you can hear a pin drop its easy to second guess. But when you're standing on that stoop and everything is breaking loose, that's what the police officer is dealing with.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: What do you say to the critics who complain that if Diallo had been a white man he'd be alive today?

PATRICK LYNCH: I strongly disagree. If it was a white person that ran into a dark alley and turned like they had a weapon, I'm going to save my life, I'm going to save my partner's life...regardless of who's trying to kill me. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Joyce Purnick has followed the Diallo case closely. She writes a twice weekly column about life in New York City for the New York Times. JOYCE PURNICK: I think it leaves the average New Yorker -- as well as the average citizen -- baffled. I think most people do not understand how somebody could have been shot at 41 times and 19 of those bullets could have entered his body, killed him, a totally innocent, unarmed man, and nobody is found guilty. And how do people understand that? It doesn't compute. It doesn't make sense to people. Somebody's dead, somebody should be held accountable. BETTY ANN BOWSER: No one is more baffled by all of this than retired, disabled police detective Felix Mendez. Last week...three days before the Diallo verdict...Mendez cut short a shopping trip with his family...after hearing his burglar alarm had gone off at home....in the Soundview section of the Bronx...the same area where Diallo was killed. FELIX MENDEZ: I hear some commotion outside so I look out the window and I say great the cops are here. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Mendez says 30 to 40 police officers...some in riot gear... responded to the alarm. He says, they began to surround him. FELIX MENDEZ: So I got my hands up -- I say I'm on this job -- I'm a police officer...

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And you're walking down the steps now?

FELIX MENDEZ: Yes, walking down the steps ...I got two guns in my pocket...

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Mendez says he repeatedly stated he was a retired cop with department ID and two loaded guns in his pockets but says the police ignored him . FELIX MENDEZ: At this time somebody hit me on the head..

BETTY ANN BOWSER: They hit your head on the fence?

FELIX MENDEZ: No, no. They hit me with an object or - I don't know what it was - it could have been a flashlight -- it could have been - I don't know --

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Is that how you got this black eye?

FELIX MENDEZ: Oh, not yet! BETTY ANN BOWSER: Mendez says he was continually beaten, sprayed with mace and wrestled to the ground as his two children looked on screaming from the doorway. He says several cops pointed guns at them. FELIX MENDEZ: I see my kids in the doorway and then it came to my head, "oh, my God. Another Diallo incident." Just take one round, everybody is going to shoot.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: These Polaroids show the extent of Mendez's injuries. Now...ten days after the incident...this 12 year police veteran thinks it proves anyone could be the victim of police brutality. FELIX MENDEZ: Yes. It could happen to anyone....no matter who you are, what you are... BETTY ANN BOWSER: His wife Lucy no longer trusts the men in blue. LUCY MENDEZ: We do have friends who are officers and I know there are good and bad but if someone would stop me and I don't know who they are -- I don't trust them anymore. I'm afraid. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Neither the police department nor the union would comment on Mendez's allegations pending an internal investigation. Instead, they point to statistics that show the New York City police fire their weapons less than any big city police department and have fewer Diallo type wrongful death incidents than other large cities.

PATRICK LYNCH: And not one of us ever gets up in the morning to commit murder. We go out there to do our job. It's a difficult job. There were many dangerous neighborhoods in this great city just five short years ago. The neighborhood I worked in...Williamsburg Brooklyn....you could not safely walk down the streets. Now my members can't even afford to live in that neighborhood. It's because the cops went out there and did a thankless job and did it for the right reasons...to be on the side of truth and the neighborhoods are safer. The average person knows that. BETTY ANN BOWSER: But recently the murder rate started creeping up...so city hall will reportedly spend 20 million dollars to put 400 additional officers on the streets. Columnist Purnick says that raises a larger question. JOYCE PURNICK: Do you want to people to give up liberty in order to keep crime down ...

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And what's the answer?

JOYCE PURNICK: I think that for now society has decided yes, that it would rather put up with the kinds of violations of civil liberties that we see now as compared to a few years ago when we had drive-by shootings because of drug deals going on everywhere. People have made implicitly - I don't think it's been conscious - but I think implicitly people have made that choice.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But activist Sharpton says that may be true for most white Americans, but if you're poor and a minority it's a different story AL SHARPTON: It's an unenviable position to be in, when you have to be afraid of the cops and the robbers in your own community. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Sharpton and other police critics have called for reforms...including residency requirements for New York City police officers, diversity training and the establishment of a truly independent civilian complaint board. The police union says what's needed are higher salaries and better training for young recruits. Meanwhile two nights ago....just three blocks from 1157 Wheeler Avenue... another police officer shot and killed an unarmed black man...this time the victim was a known drug dealer on parole who had a long history of criminal offenses....he was shot during a scuffle with a cop over his gun. The incident set off protests in the neighborhood. Ironically the dead man's last arrest was one week ago in another neighborhood protest against the jury's verdict in the case of Amadou Diallo.

FOCUS - CONVERSATION

JIM LEHRER: Now another in our series of conversations about new books, and to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in the West Indies and educated at Oxford University in England. His work has often explored the enduring tensions between rich and poor, colonizers and the colonized in a rapidly-changing world. He's a winner of the prestigious Booker Prize and has written more than 20 books in the last 45 years, fiction such as "A House for Mr. Biswas," "A Bend in the River," and "Away in the World," and nonfiction, including "The Middle Passage," on the West Indies, "Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey," and "A Turn in the South," on the changing American South. Now his letters to and from family from half a century ago have been collected in a revealing new volume, "Between Father and Son: Family Letters." V.S. Naipaul joins us now. Good to have you here.

Now, your editor notes in the introduction to the book that it's expected that you will never read this book. Why not?

V.S. NAIPAUL: Well, I had no hand in the book, actually. The idea was suggested to me by people who went to look at the letters in the archive where they were deposited. I never read them through. There are certain things that are too painful for people to even write about sometimes, and there are certain things that are too hard to read about again. One doesn't want to be reminded of those difficult years. They were very hard years. They didn't last... when you speak about people having hard times, it sounds "hard times," but hard times go on and on and on and I didn't want to live again and face all that pain, and if there are other things in that period where I'm glad, but I wish to stay away from the time being, from the pain.

RAY SUAREZ: The world that you have put between the covers of books, both in nonfiction and in fiction, is a world that we quite often talk about here on this program.

V.S. NAIPAUL: Yes.

RAY SUAREZ: But a world that isn't very much visited by Americans.

V.S. NAIPAUL: What world are you thinking of?

RAY SUAREZ: Places like Southeast Asia, Africa in the post-colonial era, the Caribbean and the small struggling nations there. They fill up our news pages but are very distant. But you've had a chance to see them up close and I wonder what you would want Americans to understand when they pick up their morning paper and see a story about Africa today.

V.S. NAIPAUL: I would not think in that big way. I would not tell people what they should find. It's for other people to, you know, to pick their way through the news. But, I've been taking snapshots of cultures in difficult stages, or civilizations in difficult stages. I'm doing it purely in human terms, seeing the pressures worked out in people's lives. That's what I've been doing a lot of since I began traveling, especially those Islamic books and the books about India, exploring that side of one's inheritance, because although I come from the Caribbean-- Trinidad-- I'm of Indian origin, and the Indian experience has always been interesting to me and necessary for me to explore and to come to terms with. You see, my interest begins with my community and my place of birth. My community commits me to an exploration of India and the Islamic world. My place of birth commits me to an understanding of the new world, the Spanish invasion, slavery, revolution in the new world. It also commits me to an attempt to understand Africa. So from that starting point, I have looked at the world, or tried to look at the world, and this is the venture I've been engaged in. It's lasted a long time.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, let's talk a little bit about the novel, a form that you've worked in...

V.S. NAIPAUL: Yes.

RAY SUAREZ: But you've also done a great deal of journalism and first- person reporting.

V.S. NAIPAUL: Yes, yes.

RAY SUAREZ: Is there a difference in approach to the two, and do you still want to continue to write novels?

V.S. NAIPAUL: The thing about the novel is that you carry only so much experience in yourself, so you quickly come to an end of the material because to write imaginatively, you do a kind of intimate processing of your own experience, if you're a serious writer. There are other kinds of novelists who do, in fact, what are situation-tragedies or situation-comedies. But the person who, as it were, converts experience into imaginative adventure, he can only do a limited amount of work. I did my own background. I did about people moving around the world. Then I was interested in the world. I have a great interest in the world and I had to find ways of expressing my interest in the world, so that's why I turned to doing these travel books. It didn't... they were not strictly about me traveling. They were about the people I was among. And they weren't about great characters, they were about cultures, civilizations.

RAY SUAREZ: Are you suggesting that after a certain number of novels, and it may vary from writer to writer, you're mined out...

V.S. NAIPAUL: Yes.

RAY SUAREZ: And if you're still compelled to write, you should turn to nonfiction?

V.S. NAIPAUL: I think... Well, no one's -- never recommending to other people. I speak only of my own experience. I would have been dead if I had tried just to keep on manufacturing narratives. Shaw used a phrase about that years ago, out of one's entrails, out of one's unfurnished entrails, trying to pull out inventions and stories. It didn't mean that I lost a feeling for narrative. And the other thing is that I got more and more convinced that, in this century, we are just carrying out and repeating the programs that were laid down by the great novelists in the last century, when the novel was new. And I think that, therefore, a lot of the novels being written in our own time, how intelligent and amusing, do not have any lasting power. They do not have that tension, that convincingness of what is absolutely new. They are novels written by people who have too many models, and possibly the same thing is true of the cinema, which is a fair comparison. The first 50 years of the cinema were absolutely great years. Original minds were at work establishing the ways to tell a story. And what is happening now is a copying, a pastiche-ing of what was done by great men.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, you've been a writer for about 50 years now...

V.S. NAIPAUL: Yes, yes.

RAY SUAREZ: ...Does it still energize you to sit at the keyboard? Are there still things that you really feel you must write or is there sometimes, maybe if you have a little bit of a grippe or it's raining outside and a very gray day where you just think "let me just let people compliment me for a couple of days and I'll take it easy?"

V.S. NAIPAUL: No, no, no. I don't work... I mean, writing isn't like that, sitting at the keyboard. No, no, it isn't done like that. It's... If you... Your mind is always at work. And a lot of the writing is done away from the keyboard. One hardly is at the keyboard, in fact. A lot of it occurs in the mind.

RAY SUAREZ: So it's composed?

V.S. NAIPAUL: Already in my mind. A lot of it's in my... A lot of the ideas, and then the difficult thing of fitting words to ideas, all of that occurs when one is walking or taking a bath, so...

RAY SUAREZ: Because I've just recently read the letters where you report your first couple of sales, and there's a joy in that, an excitement in that that any young writer, I think, would recognize, and I was wondering as I read that whether you still had the joy.

V.S. NAIPAUL: Oh, goodness. No, I don't think of it like "joy." No, I don't think of joy any longer. I think one is simply doing one's work, you understand. One is doing one's work and trying to do it well, and work is not complete until it has been received, until it's found someone to read it, you know. It isn't something you just do for yourself. So it's a rather serious matter, really, not the writing and joy and sitting at the keyboard and success. No, I don't think of it like that at all.

RAY SUAREZ: But you do need the reader? They complete the circuit?

V.S. NAIPAUL: You need a reader. You need someone to see what you've done, to read it and to understand it and to appreciate what's gone into it.

RAY SUAREZ: Thank you very much for being here.

ESSAY - SHORT ORDER LOVE

RAY SUAREZ: And finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt asks on second thought, who really does want to marry a multi-millionaire?

ANNOUNCER: Who wants to marry a multi- millionaire?

ROGER ROSENBLATT: At first, one was smug. This was simply a freak show, ridiculous and tasteless and wholly removed from normal experience.

WOMAN: Hi, originally from Santa Monica, California. I'm an emergency room nurse.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: By the time the unholy mess was over, one was not so sure. The mess in question, of course, was television's most recent show of shows, "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" 20 million of us watched as the now-famous Darva Tonger was to the now-famous Rick Rockwell, the rich real-estate developer and standup comic, not an illogical combination of professions. Along with telling jokes and selling real estate, Rockwell, it turns out, had a record of abusing at least one woman. But Rick didn't appeal to Darva anyway. It was the blind date from hell. She said so on "Good Morning, America." Rick appeared on "Good Morning, America," too, and on "Today," and on "Dateline." He said he regretted the whole thing. She felt stupid. He felt awful. And everyone else rushed to call "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" the low point in American popular culture, along with making predictable laments about women as chattel and a money-addicted society. And yet something interesting happened as this dumb little tale began to play itself out: Darva and Rick, instead of becoming less sympathetic-- as if that isn't possible-- began to show themselves as characters one could recognize. They were less freakish and more human. Why? Because the more one thought about it, they were only doing in a ludicrous context what everybody does in everything else: They were circumventing process. They weren't merely accelerating process, they doing away with it. Here before our very superior eyes was love's version of the 30-second dinner: Instant courtship, instant mage, instant life. The reprehensible TV show cut to the chase by cutting out the chase. Goodbye, Cyrano de Bergerac, with your oh-so-careful, tender, modest pleas to your beloved. Hello, Rick Rockwell, here's Darva!

QUESTIONER: Get to the moment where he is walking out and you're going to see him for the first time.

DARVA: (Sighs)

QUESTIONER: What are you thinking?

ROGER ROSENBLATT: The more recognizable these two appeared in their interviews, the closer their story came to reality. It was hardly a new story, after all. A rich man is sought as a husband, dignity be damned. We run Barbara Stanwyck tripping up Henry Fonda. We run "Some Like It Hot." And to put it as bluntly as the Fox Network, "How to Marry a Millionaire."

ACTOR: You like that suit?

ACTOR: Comme ci, comme ca.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Rick and Darva and the networks simply speeded up the reels. In two heady hours, life was truncated-- stupidly, sordidly, but not all that differently from, say, Christmas shopping on the Internet, book shopping on Amazon.Com. Why go to the trouble of browsing for a book? Why go to the trouble of looking around for a toy? Make it quick and make it complete. Give me those killer abs in eight days, please. Give me that diet pill. Give me that candidate-- don't tell me how his mind works, don't tell me process. Tell me where he stands. Stand and deliver. Here, then, was love in the microwave. Lurking behind the show's blatant desire to make a buck was a truth about the times. One wants everything fast and ready to use.

SPOKESPERSON: I pronounce you husband and wife.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: The pathetic thing is not that Darva and Rick sought love in the microwave, it was that millions of viewers believed it was possible. Oh, we can say that the show was so horrific it was like watching a car wreck or a fire, but the catastrophe was closer to home than we care to admit. Buried in millions of minds no less stupid than Darva's and Rick's was hope in the 21st century. We want happiness brought to the door. We want to cook up a short-order life. I'll have love and marriage and money please, to go. I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Friday: Stocks gained as the latest unemployment report eased fears of higher interest rates. The Jones Industrial Average gained 2%, and the NASDAQ 3%. And more aid arrived in Mozambique to help flood victims. Rescuers said they had saved more than 12,000 people so far. We'll see you on-line, and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.