The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Monday, the space shuttle Discovery was successfully launched into orbit, a settlement was reached in the government lawsuit to take over the Teamsters Union, and President Bush discussed the occupied territories' problem with the Israeli foreign minister. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Charlayne Hunter- Gault is in New York tonight. Charlayne.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: After the News Summary, we get the details of today's Teamsters settlement from a reporter covering the case. Then we'll look at RICO, the controversial law behind the government's unprecedented suit against the union and two lawyers will debate it, and finally we have a report on one man's crusade to get drug addicts to use clean needles. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: The shuttle Discovery is back in space. It was launched this morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida, after being delayed for nearly two hours by a heavy fog. The lift-off looked like this. [Video Segment of Lift-off]

MR. LEHRER: Once in space, the five man crew completed their major objective. They deployed a $100 million communications satellite. It will allow future shuttle flights to stay in almost constant communication with Mission Control in Houston. Discovery will return to earth Saturday at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Charlayne.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Federal prosecutors trying to rid the Teamsters of alleged mob influence reached a tentative settlement with the union earlier today. The agreement would allow the union's leaders to remain in office and would also permit new leadership to be selected by secret ballot in 1991. The agreement was announced just hours before 11 members of the Teamsters were to go on trial in federal court in New York. At a Washington news conference this afternoon, Attorney General Richard Thornburgh had this comment about the settlement.

RICHARD THORNBURGH, Attorney General: This settlement which union leaders agreed to early today culminates 30 years of efforts by the Department of Justice to remove the influence of organized crime within the Teamsters Union. It provides for the court to appoint a union administrator, an investigations officer, and an elections officer. With this agreement, the government has the tools to clean up this union and return control to rank and file membership.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The case represented the first time the government had ever tired to seize an entire union.

MR. LEHRER: President Bush talked Middle East peace today with the Foreign Minister of Israel. Mr. Bush and Moshe Arens met for 30 minutes at the White House. A major topic was how to stop the violent confrontation between Israeli troops and Arab demonstrators in the occupied territories. After an earlier meeting with Secretary of State James Baker, Arens had this comment.

MOSHE ARENS, Foreign Minister, Israel: We share common ideals and values, common interests, and certainly the common objective of advancing the peace process. I think that our talk today contributed to building a basis of understanding between us on how to proceed in order to advance as expeditiously as possible in the search for peace in the Middle East.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane testified today that he never told Oliver North to lie to Congress about his activities on behalf of the Nicaraguan Contras. McFarlane said, instead, he told North that the executive branch did not always tell the Congress everything on its agenda. Taking the stand for the second time, McFarlane also said that North assured him that at no time did he break the law on fund- raising for the Contras.

MR. LEHRER: Fifteen military personnel were killed in the crash of a helicopter in the Arizona desert. The accident occurred last night during a training exercise 25 miles from Davis Monthon Air Force Base. The victims were four Air Force crew members and 11 Army troops from Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. Authorities said there was no word on the cause of the crash.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Still ahead, the Teamsters settlement, the controversial law behind the case, and one man's campaign to get drug addicts to use clean needles. FOCUS - LET'S MAKE A DEAL

MR. LEHRER: The Teamsters settlement is our lead story tonight. The deal announced today settles an unprecedented suit to seize control of an entire union, the 1.6 million member International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The settlement was reached just hours before the case was to go to trial in New York City. The suit charged the Teamsters were dominated by organized crime through a campaign of fear, extortion, theft and murder. U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani said this when the suit was filed last June.

RUDOLPH GIULIANI, U.S. Attorney: [June 28, 1988] Organized crime's use of the Teamsters Union as a weapon in its arsenal is a fact well known to many, if not most, Americans. In this lawsuit, the United States Government intends not only to prove that fact, but to finally remedy it. The Mafia's use of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as a racketeering enterprise is a perversion of the noble and laudable goals of trade unionism in America. Today the United States Government is bringing a lawsuit to attack and to reverse once and for all a major American scandal, organized crime's alliance with the Teamsters.

MR. LEHRER: The Teamsters and others saw the Justice Department's suit as an all out assault on their independence and the independence of organized labor. A full page Teamsters ad in this Sunday's New York Times was captioned "The First Time In the History Of our Nation And Our Constitution That The Government Is Attempting To Seize an International Labor Union." It went on to charge that the Teamsters were facing its greatest challenge, one that threatened its existence as a free labor organization and set a danger precedent for the entire American labor movement. Here with us tonight to explain today's settlement of this case is Ken Crowe, who has been covering this story for the Long Island newspaper Newsday. Ken, the government sought control of the union in its lawsuit? Did it get it in the settlement?

KENNETH CROWE, Newsday: No, it certainly didn't get control of the union, but it opened a window into the union in the form of three persons who were appointed for the next two years to investigate any allegations of corruption in the union to hear those charges and to set up a system of the secret ballot election of delegates to the next union convention, something that the reformers in the Teamsters Union have sought for years.

MR. LEHRER: All right, now all of the things that the government alleged going in, fraud, extortion, murder, theft, all of those things, how does this settlement stop that?

MR. CROWE: Well, the laws on the books really were designed to stop that and they have been fairly effective through the years. There have been hundreds of convictions of Teamster leaders and they have been removed from office when convicted. This takes it one step further perhaps, and no one is certain about this yet, but perhaps that the various organized crime figures, they're actually crime soldiers who are officials of local Teamsters Unions in the New York area, perhaps these new governments, combination government/Teamster appointees will be able to do something about them. That remains to be seen, however.

MR. LEHRER: Okay, the leadership of the, the existing leadership of the Teamsters Union, what happens to them under this agreement?

MR. CROWE: Well, under this agreement at the next convention, the delegates will nominate all of the national officers to be elected by the rank and file at their local unions, so conceivably, all of those officials could be re-elected, but we have something else going on in the Teamsters now, which is very healthy from the Democratic point of view. You have two factions, one led by, the majority faction led by Teamsters President William McCarthy, and a minority faction led by Secretary/Treasurer Weldon Mathis of the Teamsters, so presumably they'll be fighting for control of the union, and that will lend a new era of democracy and openness to the elections.

MR. LEHRER: And one of the key parts of the settlement is to make sure that the Democratic processes are followed, is that right?

MR. CROWE: That's right. That's one of the three persons appointed to, in effect, oversee the union, is to certify that the election is honest and is followed. And after the convention, there will be a three member review board. One review board member will be appointed by the Teamsters, one by the government, and those two appointees will then appoint the third person. And their role will be to ferret corruption and expose it both to the Teamsters hierarchy and to the public.

MR. LEHRER: But there's nothing in here that would prevent the rank and file from electing or re-electing any official no matter what their record was, is that right?

MR. CROWE: That's correct. The Teamster reform is the Teamsters for a Democratic Union. They've been around for about 12 years and have been the reform movement. They greeted us with joy because they feel that the answer to cleaning up the Teamsters is democracy, is the electoral process.

MR. LEHRER: All right now, as a practical matter under this arrangement, who will actually run the union from this day forward? Will that change any?

MR. CROWE: No. It won't change at all. It will ill be run by William McCarthy, the President of the union, and the other 17 members on the Teamsters' general executive board.

MR. LEHRER: So the control of the union does not change?

MR. CROWE: It doesn't change at this moment, although you'll have those three, one of those three appointees will be an investigator and he'll be investigating allegations of corruption and leads provided by union members and the public.

MR. LEHRER: And so if he should come up with something, what are the options he has? He can prosecute these people through the normal course of human events, or is there a special procedure?

MR. CROWE: The process is that one of the other two appointees is called an administrative officer and he will hear the charges against an individual, and that administrative officer will have the power to remove an official charged and convicted from office and that official then will have recourse to Judge David Edelstein, the district court judge who sat on this case.

MR. LEHRER: I've thrown around the term unprecedented already in connection with this story. This truly is an unprecedented thing, is it not?

MR. CROWE: It certainly is. No one has ever attempted to take over a major national union before, and this is the second largest, not the largest, the second largest union in the United States. The largest is the National Association Education.

MR. LEHRER: All right. What caused the government and the Teamsters too...it takes two to tango or to settle as it does to tango...what happened this morning or last night or in the last few days that it became obvious to both sides that there was a need to settle?

MR. CROWE: Well, perhaps it was the thoughts of a seven month trial and the government uncertainty of winning this case. They tried to bring a similar case against the union that covers the Fulton Street Fish Market and they lost dramatically. And Joe Teratola, who's better known as Joe "T", who's the most powerful Teamsters Union official on the East Coast and in New York City, he told me that the reason he was agreed to settle was to save millions upon millions of dollars that a seven month trial would entail, and he felt that the government settled, because the government while it freely threw around allegations didn't have the evidence to prove the case.

MR. LEHRER: How do you feel about it?

MR. CROWE: Well, I think it was a toss up, I really do. I think it could have gone either way. There certainly has been a lot of corruption in the Teamsters over the years, but the men who sit on the board, the general executive board of the Teamsters today, have very little background in corruption or any unsavory practices or charges against them.

MR. LEHRER: So for the Teamsters, I don't know how to put this any other way than the way I'm going to put it, but for the Teamsters who are clean, they have nothing to fear from this settlement, is that right?

MR. CROWE: Certainly not. It's a boon to the union.

MR. LEHRER: The ones who are not clean, the process is now in the works so these people could be eliminated, but that's not even for sure.

MR. CROWE: That's not even for sure.

MR. LEHRER: And the government, it got, it didn't get the whole loaf, but it got what, half a loaf, 2/3 loaf?

MR. CROWE: I'd say it got about 25 percent of a loaf. They wanted, the government wanted to remove five or six of the international vice presidents of the Teamsters, this suit remains silent on that. They're not being removed, they're certainly not being removed, I know that, and the government wanted to impose a government, a court-appointed watchdog who would really, in effect, control the union and they failed in that.

MR. LEHRER: Finally, this thing has, a settlement has a process that's supposed to take how long, three years, is that right, where everything is supposed to be then all clean and move on without all of this supervision?

MR. CROWE: Well, it only moves to the next convention in 1991, with those first three appointees, and after that there is a continued review board that will be built into the Teamsters' constitution and continue ad infinitum.

MR. LEHRER: I see. Okay. Well, look, thank you very much for being with us and explaining this to us.

MR. CROWE: Thank you.

MR. LEHRER: Charlayne.

MR. CROWE: Today's Teamsters case raises questions over the use and possible abuse of the racket, of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Known as RICO, the law was established to give the government power to go after mobsters. But the law has been applied far more broadly and has touched off a rising tide of criticism among defense lawyers and civil libertarians. We'll take up that controversy in a moment, but first Kwame Holman has a background report.

KWAME HOLMAN: Congress passed the Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organizations Act, RICO, in 1970, after several years of investigating organized crime. At these 1963 Senate hearings chaired by Sen. John McClellan, Mobster Joseph Valaci shocked the Congress with an insider's perspective on organized crimes, loan sharking, extortion, kidnapping and murder.

SEN. McCLELLAN: You honestly believe they were under orders from Genevese to kill you there in prison?

JOSEPH VALACI: Yes, 100 percent, Senator.

MR. HOLMAN: Four years after the hearings, a Presidential Commission called for legislation to stop racketeers from infiltrating legitimate businesses. Under the old laws, the government could only prosecute individuals for their individual crimes. The Commission recommended a law that would allow the government to prosecute organizations for a pattern of criminal activities. Congress responded with RICO. Those who drafted RICO did not limit it to organized crime, nor did they spell out how far prosecutors could go in applying it. Robert Blakey was counsel to Sen. McClellan's committee and helped draft the law.

G. ROBERT BLAKEY, RICO Expert: Congress debated specifically whether the statute should be limited to organized crime, for example, in the Mafia sense, and decided since the problems were characteristic of all similar prosecutions, the statute should be written to fit all similar prosecutions, not limited to organized crime, for example, in the sense of the Mafia.

MR. HOLMAN: RICO could be used to prosecute any individual or organization if certain conditions were met. First, those charged had to be engaged in racketeering activity, such as murder, kidnapping, extortion or mail, wire, or securities fraud. Second, they had to have committed at least two racketeering acts within 10 years. Conviction met stiff penalties, fines of up to $250,000 for an individual, up to 500,000 for an organization, or double the profits from the racketeering activity, sentences of up to life in prison, and forfeiture of all profits and monetary interests in the racketeering organization. Since 1983, the Justice Department has averaged more than a hundred RICO prosecutions a year, among them the successful prosecution of this white supremacist group charged with setting fire to a Jewish center and a gay church. Some of the most important RICO prosecutions were brought in New York City by U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani.

RUDOLPH GIULIANI, U.S. Attorney: [June 28, 1988] The government's complaint alleges that organized crime has deprived union members of their rights through a pattern of racketeering...

MR. HOLMAN: Giuliani used RICO to battle organized crime. Anthony Salerno, boss of the Genevese crime family and four other crime family heads were convicted as members of the commission, a ruling council that regulated mob activities.

WILLIAM WEBSTER, Director, FBI: [Feb. 26, 1985] The ability to bring the entire commission under the RICO statute means now that the major muscle for organized criminal enterprises in the United States has now been brought to the bar of justice.

MR. HOLMAN: Giuliani also used RICO to go after corrupt officials. Former Congressman Mario Biaggi was convicted for using the Wedtech Corporation to bribe government officials to win military contract. Former Bronx Democratic Party Leader Stanley Freedman was convicted of turning the New York Parking Violations Bureau into a racketeering enterprise for personal profit. When Giuliani used RICO to prosecute corrupt politicians and gangsters, no one thought about it twice. It was another matter when he aimed RICO and its powerful forfeiture provision at legitimate Wall Street firms. RICO stirred controversy because it allowed prosecutors before trial to freeze assets allegedly derived from criminal activities. Last year, Drexel Burnham Lambert, a New York securities firm, agreed to plead guilty to securities fraud and to accept a $650 million settlement rather than face a RICO indictment. Princeton-Newport, an investment banking firm, actually was indicted. Company lawyers say the threat of forfeiting millions of dollars of profits caused creditor confidence to erode and force them to go out of business before they could go on trial. The two Wall Street cases prompted charges that Giuliani had taken RICO prosecutions too far.

GARY NAFTALIS, Criminal Defense Lawyer: That's too draconian a weapon to be utilized in what are normal garden variety criminal securities prosecutions. I think they should be treated the way they've historically been treated. People should be indicted for violating securities laws and either they win or they lose and then the punishment meted out as opposed to a form of quasi punishment before trial.

MR. HOLMAN: Robert Blakey disagrees.

G. ROBERT BLAKEY, RICO Expert: I see, for example, nothing inappropriate with a serious forfeiture being imposed on a major securities firm where the underlying set of facts indicate that the firm has stolen anything. Hundreds of millions of dollars from people, a forfeiture in that amount seems to me not to be draconian but poetic and wholly appropriate.

MR. HOLMAN: When Congress designed RICO, it armed the law with stiff civil as well as criminal penalties to encourage individuals victimized by organized crime to sue the racketeers. If the victim wins, the award is triple the normal damages, lawyers fees and court costs, but civil RICO did not work the way Congress envisioned. Private attorneys began filing RICO suits in all sorts of commercial disputes having nothing to do with criminal organizations. IBM, for example, sued Hitachi for theft of computer secrets and won a settlement of more than $200 million. Suffolk County, New York, won a $23 million suit against the Long Island Lighting Company for fraudulent rate increases, but a federal judge recently dismissed the case, saying it didn't belong in federal court.

BARRY DIRENFELD, Business Condition For RICO Reform: The range of misuse of civil RICO runs from the absurdity of the FBI in conducting a sting operation was labeled a racketeer and force to defend itself, to Cadillac dealers who have failed to honor their warranties, to laser printer manufacturers who have been labeled racketeer because the printer didn't print as fast as it ought to, to Hesitic Jews arguing over the succession of who the rabbi should be in a synagogue.

MR. HOLMAN: The American Bar Association estimates that only 9 percent of RICO civil suits involve the kind of professional criminal activity that caused Congress to write the law. Lower courts have tried to throw out frivolous RICO suits, but in 1985, the Supreme Court ruled that only Congress could restrict RICO.

BARRY DIRENFELD: In practical terms, it meant that civil plaintiffs had a green light to go to the federal courts with generally ordinary civil disputes and know that they were not going to be thrown out on that basis, and, therefore, civil litigation was going to increase, and it has.

MR. HOLMAN: An American Bar Association survey shows that private attorneys used RICO in only nine civil cases prior to 1980. In the past 2 1/2 years, the number of cases has jumped to more than 2700. Congress has tried to pass legislation amending the statute but without success.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Joining us now to take up this issue is the head of the New York State Task Force on Organized Crime, Ron Goldstock. Mr. Goldstock also teaches a course in the uses of RICO at Cornell University where he joins us from tonight. Alan Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard University. He joins us from public station GBH in Boston, Massachusetts.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And starting with you, Alan Dershowitz, do you think that RICO is out of control?

ALAN DERSHOWITZ, Harvard University: Oh, I think it's been out of control for a half dozen years at least now. What happened is Congress gave prosecutors a weapon that was suited to going after one particular crime, that is, racketeer influence in legitimate businesses. It was a very very important weapon and nobody disputes that. The problems of organized crime getting into legitimate businesses was not capable of really being solved through the usual laws, although the conspiracy laws gave them plenty of weapons to do it. But today it's being used against abortion protesters, it's being used against bookstores. It proves the old adage if you give the prosecutor a weapon, he will use it to the limits of his ability, to plea bargain.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But what's wrong with that? I mean, what's wrong with using it against abortion protesters, stockbrokers, bookstores, as you indicated?

PROF. DERSHOWITZ: Well, the primary thing is that it's false advertising, it's mislabeling. These are not racketeers. Call them what you want. A group of well intentioned men and women who are trying to close down an abortion clinic are not racketeers. People who run a bookstore are not racketeers. People who try to use the mail to defraud in stock cases, they're bad, they're criminals, but they're not racketeers. What it does is it undercuts the important work of going after real racketeers. The use of the phrase racketeer has become so diluted that today it's meaningless and it ought not to be meaningless. We know a real racketeer when we see him. We know what organized crime is. We know what extortion and murder is, but to use these RICO statutes as they've been used over the last few year primarily against plain, ordinary, garden variety criminals who've had the bad fortune to do it twice over the past 10 years, then to use the incredibly vindictive civil remedies against them and to prevent them from getting lawyers by seizing their property in advance, to deny them really the right to a trial, because when you get a RICO prosecution, it's likely to go on weeks and months, you get a record you can't appeal from, the jury doesn't understand it. It's confusing. They've heard the prosecutor call them a racketeer. That's the end of the case.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Okay. Before we get too confused, and with too long a laundry list, which I hope to get back to in just a moment, let me go to Mr. Goldstock. Is RICO false advertising and undercutting the whole ability of law enforcement to go after the mob?

RON GOLDSTOCK, Cornell University: No. I think the history of RICO has shown that it's been incredibly effective against the mob, against the mob in legitimate industries, against the mob running their own syndicates. It has also been effective in a wide variety of cases as Prof. Dershowitz points out.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But what about his argument that it's been misapplied in more cases than not?

MR. GOLDSTOCK: Well, it may be misapplied in some cases, but that's true with any statute. Whether it be a criminal statute or whether it be a statute which provides for civil relief, there are always going to be abuses, but the problem there is for the court to fashion remedies to those abuses, not to get rid of RICO.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Dershowitz.

PROF. DERSHOWITZ: Well, I think we have to go back to the drawing board. I don't want to get rid of RICO. I just want to apply it only to organized crime. The government should have to prove this is an organized crime real racketeering activity, because you know what happens otherwise, if you get a case against Drexel Burnham, and Drexel Burnham is accused of being a racketeer, people out there really think that there's organized crime involvement in Drexel Burnham. They're just misled...

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Let's ask Mr. Goldstock to respond to that.

MR. GOLDSTOCK: I think that's such a naive position. If, in fact, what Prof. Dershowitz is complaining about is the use of the term "racketeer", I'd be perfectly willing to get rid of that term. If you want to call it a pattern of criminal activity, rather than racketeering activity, if you want to call the crime enterprise corruption rather than racketeering, that's fine, but the basis of the crime, to look at organizations rather than individuals, to look at remedial aspects rather than just putting people in prison, seems to me to be the important part and the part that works quite well.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And you say that the application to Drexel Burnham is appropriate under the circumstances?

MR. GOLDSTOCK: If you want to call three people who are collecting bets on the street corner racketeers and not a major corporation which according to the allegations has fleeced hundreds and thousands of people of millions of dollars, it seems to me that that is inappropriate. If they act like racketeers, they ought to be called racketeers, and the remedies ought to be appropriate.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: A rose by any other name, Mr. Dershowitz?

PROF. DERSHOWITZ: No, no, but they're not acting like racketeers. By a racketeer, we mean somebody who uses the threat of violence and extortion, the threat of murder to achieve their goals. That's why three people collecting bets on a corner if they're backed by organized crime are, indeed, racketeers because if you don't pay your bet, you're going to get your knees broken. Drexel Burnham doesn't break people's knees. I agree with you. Let's start by getting rid of the phrase racketeering. The next step should be let's draft new statutes for each individual problem. Let's get a statute passed for commercial...

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What's wrong with that, Mr. Goldstock?

PROF. DERSHOWITZ: ...activity, a statute passed for the kind of activities that Drexel Burnham was involved in, and another statute passed for protesters against abortion clinics and and bookstores.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Goldstock, what would be wrong with that?

MR. GOLDSTOCK: Well, the fact is that this statute works perfectly well in all of those cases. If what is the major problem is the name of the statute and the use or pattern of racketeering activity, we can eliminate that, but I haven't seen any argument which suggests that the statute, itself, the use of the enterprise for committing the crimes, forming the basis of the complaint, the use of triple damages, the use of forfeiture is inappropriate. In all those cases it does seem to me to be appropriate and where there are minor abuses, and there may be some particular cases, then the courts can handle that quite easily.

PROF. DERSHOWITZ: No, but the courts have said they won't handle that. The courts have said we're throwing the ball back to Congress. The Supreme Court of the United States has said we won't do it.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Hasn't the Congress, in the first instance, the Congress, itself, didn't limit RICO, and in the second instance, the courts have refused to limit RICO, saying that if there is a, what did it call, a loophole or a defect in the statute, Congress should fix it? How do you respond...

PROF. DERSHOWITZ: And Congress doesn't have the guts to take on a statute that uses the phrase "racketeering". That's the problem and in fact, it's getting worse. States all over the country are now passing baby RICO laws which are applying well beyond what Congress had in mind. Let me give you the one example of bookstore. I think it was in Virginia. Two bookstores which sold primarily constitutionally protected material, somebody walked into the two bookstores on the same day and bought one magazine on one store, one magazine in another store. That made them into a racketeer influence and corrupt organization because there were two, that is the pattern of one activity. Although it was done on one day, it doesn't matter. That brought the statute of limitations back ten years instead of five years, it accused them of being racketeers. It allowed the government to seize all of the material in the bookstores. The Supreme Court said that was going too far, you can only seize all of the material in the bookstore after you prove that there are racketeers. It's just fighting a fly with a nuclear weapon and we shouldn't be doing that in the society. The fact that it works effectively is not the only issue in a democratic society. It is overkill.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Goldstock, fighting a fly?

MR. GOLDSTOCK: No, it's not fighting a fly. I think it's inappropriately used in the bookstore context, but the fact is that I think all statutes directed towards obscenity and pornography are misapplied. Without the use of RICO, a prosecutor could use those statutes to take books out of a bookstore and to forfeit the property. It's not just RICO that does it. I mean, the fact is...

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Goldstock, let me ask you on the specific point that Mr. Dershowitz raised earlier, and it was raised in the tape piece, this issue of the triple damages being applied to people found guilty under the RICO statute. I mean, do you feel that that's excessive?

MR. GOLDSTOCK: These are in private rights of action. It's the same triple damages that are applied in anti-trust cases, and if it's appropriate there, if punitive damages are appropriate in cases in which are involved with criminal acts, with intentional tortes, then it seems to be to be appropriate in this case. This is essentially liquidating punitive damages to twice actual damages. I don't think that is the major problem. The fact is that crime has gotten much more complex and law is government's response to these social problems, and it designed RICO with the complexity of crime in mind. And it is useful not only in dealing with racketeers, but in all these other cases, and the reason that the courts, the reason that the legislature has not changed is because they haven't been misapplied to any great extent and no one can point to any great travesties of justice. I can find great travesties with respect to most criminal acts. I can find them with a great number of private courses of action. We see abuses all the time.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Just briefly, what's your response to the other criticism raised by Mr. Dershowitz, and also in the tape piece that the law tramples on the rights of individuals by seizing their property before they've been indicted or at least before they've gone to trial?

MR. GOLDSTOCK: Any time an individual is suing somebody else and seeking damages, they want to make sure that ultimately if they prevail, they can attach the assets, have the assets available, and so they go through a legal device called attachment or freezing the assets, and they have to show in order to do that, that they're likely to prevail at trial, that otherwise the assets would be dissipated and that they're in a balancing test, that there is not an undue burden on the defendant, and that's precisely the tests that are used in the RICO context. It is no different in RICO than any other civil action. Indeed, in the Marcos case, where all of the Marcos assets were frozen, they were done not under the RICO statute with which he was being accused, but also under a pendant state claim, so it's not that RICO does this, it is that is the way the law operates and we may have problems with law in complex cases and mega trials, but it's not the RICO problem.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Dershowitz, what do you think needs to be done at this point and do you think it's doable?

PROF. DERSHOWITZ: I think it's doable. I think we have to understand that one statute can't cover all the evils of this country. This statute was passed many years ago before crime became as complicated as we now hear it, has become incorrectly so. We need new statutes. We need a statute for investment banking if that's perceived as a problem. We need a new statute and a separate statute for protest activities. We need another one for bookstores. Every statute has to be tailor made to the particular problem. Alexander Hamilton once said that civilization is measured by how thick its criminal code is, not how thin. These people are being very lazy, taking an old statute, applying it to every new problem that's come up. It's now being applied to environmental polluters; it's being applied to people who use the mails. We need different statutes for different evils.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Goldstock, you don't agree with that and do you think that it's not doable to change it, you think RICO will prevail?

MR. GOLDSTOCK: I think Congress may change it. I hope they don't. I think it has been used very effectively in a wide variety of cases, but I have no objectionwith Prof. Dershowitz. If he would like to develop new statutes aimed at particular types of problems and find that that works better than RICO, I have no problem in those particular areas of recalling RICO and allowing the other statutes to work, but in terms of laziness, it is people who have not developed those statutes to deal with those areas who have not been able to deal with corruption in labor unions for 40 years without RICO, and it seems to me that now having RICO working, the burden is on the other foot to show that something is better.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Well, we have a little bit of agreement here, so on that note, we'll end it. Mr. Goldstock and Mr. Dershowitz, thank you both for being with us.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the Newshour, a report from Seattle about free needles to stop AIDS, but first, this is pledge week on public television. We are taking a short break now so your public television station can ask for your support. That support helps keeps programs like this on the air.

MR. LEHRER: For those stations not taking a pledge break, the Newshour continues now with excerpts from the confirmation testimony of William Bennett. He was Secretary of Education in the Reagan administration. President Bush chose him to be in charge of the government's fight against drugs. Bennett testified on March 1st before the Senate Judiciary Committee and talked about his new assignment. CONFIRMATION TESTIMONY EXCERPTS

WILLIAM BENNETT, Drug Policy Coordinator: [March 1, 1989] I've been struck, Mr. Chairman, these last few weeks as I've met with people inside government and out by the pessimism, even fatalism that many have about our mission in the war on drugs. Some have told me that they wouldn't wish this job on their worst enemy. Others have made clear that they think the war is already lost. I think we must disagree. There are things that can be done. A realistic and responsible national strategy, if implemented, will make things better. Its overall goal is one we all share, a steady reduction in the flow of drugs through our streets and our communities and our children and the corresponding reduction in the deadly hold they now have over so many of our friends and families and neighbors. Our tactics must be refined and intensified, but the need for a full blown attack on both sides of the drug equation, demand and supply, will not disappear overnight. It's taken us more than a generation to come to the paths we find ourselves in now. It will take more than 180 days, the due date for my strategy, to turn the tide around.

SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN, [D] Delaware: There seems to be some confusion within the executive branch, and I might add other places, about the authorities you will have as a drug director. One transition official said that Congress gave the director so much power that he could be a cowboy, it was a quote, and run riot over other agencies, that's also a quote. Other officials have commented that your position is only advisory with little real authority. Now I'd like you to give me some sense of what you think, what authority you think this language would give you to develop a comprehensive anti-drug strategy.

WILLIAM BENNETT: I didn't volunteer for this job, which I did, to the President in order to hide. That wasn't my intention. Nor would it be interesting enough to pull me out of the private sector, which was very interesting and rewarding for my wife and me for at least a couple of months, in order for me to advise. And we certainly do not need in the war against drugs cowboys. What we need is a comprehensive thought through strategy. I am to develop an assessment evaluation of the problem, consult with the Congress, consult with the relevant agencies, consult with the experts, and then too to have this very independent evaluative responsibility vis-a-vis budget, it makes it clear that this is a serious matter of direction and coordination.

SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN: Dr. Bennett, while you were at the Department of Education, you frequently spoke out on issues that had nothing directly to do with your responsibilities as the Secretary of Education. Do you anticipate continuing to speak out on extremely controversial issues that are outside the mission of the drug director while you are drug director?

WILLIAM BENNETT: I won't foreswear ever doing so, but I think there is plenty to keep me busy on this beat. I don't go into this job with any sense that this is going to be something that we can handle in six months, a year, eighteen months, twenty-four months, and there will be lots of time left over to issue advisory opinions about other things. This will be a full-time position and I plan to focus on it.

SEN. PAUL SIMON, [D] Illinois: What kind of assurances do we have that you're going to come up here and be candid and saying this is what needs to be done to move this nation ahead on this drug problem?

WILLIAM BENNETT: Why take this job if you're just going to be a bureaucrat? I read one magazine that said that consensus is that Bennett will be a figurehead. I will not be a figurehead. I will win or I will lose, but I will not be a figurehead. Why would you take this job to be a figurehead? You know, the pay's not so good, as we know, the hours are horrible. The subject is depressing...unless...depressing as well, unless you thought you were going to make some positive difference. FOCUS - AND NEEDLES

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Before he was sworn in today as the so-called "drug czar", William Bennett underscored a sharp difference he's having with another Bush cabinet secretary, Lewis Sullivan of Health & Human Services. Their disagreement is over programs that provide clean needles to IV drug abusers to help stop the spread of AIDS. Last week, Sullivan told reporters his department would support community efforts to establish such programs and would provide personnel and assistance. Bennett's department labeled Sullivan's comments pernicious to the fight against drug abuse, saying there isn't much evidence out there that it, in fact, reduces transmission rates for AIDS. While that debate goes on, a private citizen in Tacoma, Washington, has decided to take matters into his own hands. Lee Hochberg of public station KCTS in Seattle, has this report.

LEE HOCHBERG: Dave Purchase comes four days a week to this bleak, drug infested neighborhood, boarded up and crumbling buildings in downtown Tacoma. The 49 year old shows up with a tray table and a satchel bag full of sterile hypodermic needles. Purchase hands out 100 of these needles each day to drug users who use them to shoot illegal heroin or cocaine into their bodies. Many of them are regular customers who know him, like him, and above all, are thankful for him. It's a desperate ploy for desperate times in a desperate place. Commerce Street in Tacoma is a drug supermarket. Longtime addicts stalk back and forth dodging police. AIDS has now made it more desperate than ever. The disease is spreading quickly among IV drug users who share needles with others and contract the AIDS virus.

DAVE PURCHASE, Needle Exchange Advocate: People are dying. I mean, it's as simple as that. People are dying. You know, it's just because the unusual nature of the virus they don't drop dead like the black plague in three months, it takes people who are being diagnosed with AIDS now got it on average 7 1/2 years ago.

LEE HOCHBERG: It was in August that Purchase began a one man effort to fight AIDS among Tacoma's IV drug users. He told local addicts to bring him their used needles, that he'd give them clean ones in return. Since then he's swapped more than 12,000 needles in a highly controversial program that may violate state law and some critics say promotes drug use.

GREG MYKLAND, Tacoma City Council: How can you fight a very severe drug problem in your community, while at the same time you're giving new needles to people to continue their drug habit.

MR. HOCHBERG: The bearded Purchase might seem an unlikely character to be fashioning the nation's largest needle exchange. A career drug abuse counselor, he was an avid motorcyclist until he severely shattered his leg in an accident in 1983. He was forced to retire and lived since then off an insurance settlement. Last summer though he moved to get back on the streets after an argument with a city official who seemed not to care about IV drug users and AIDS.

MR. PURCHASE: I spent almost two hours in a discussion with a bureaucrat who was, very early on into the conversation, I could tell was not going to do a damn thing about it, was going to let them die. The next morning I began to think about what I could. I just went down there, I borrowed a TV tray from a traditional jazz singer friend of mine and a folding chair from my doctor and bought some syringes. I went to a medical supply house and showed up on the street.

MR. HOCHBERG: What Dave Purchase tried that day, passing drug paraphernalia out on the street, is against state law.

MR. PURCHASE: So I was as prepared to be arrested as I was to come back and do it the next day.

MR. HOCHBERG: But with AIDS beginning to cut its way through this community, Tacoma police did not arrest him. Instead, they decided to let the needle exchange flourish. Parked in a squad car across Commerce Street, patrol officer Mark Mann says in the age of AIDS, the rules are different.

LT. MARK MANN, Tacoma Police Dept.: He's down here to help. He's down here to try to diminish some of the health hazards that go along with intravenous drug use, and the conclusion was we're not going to enforce a misdemeanor law against somebody who's attempting to help the big picture, the big picture of AIDS.

MR. HOCHBERG: Police kept a presence on Commerce Street, but they let Dave Purchase do his work. With easy and street savvy developed over 19 years of working with drug abusers, Purchase earned the confidence of many addicts and they began bringing their needles to him for exchange. He also offered them bleach and alcohol wipes to disinfect their needles, as well as condoms.

SPOKESMAN: Dave Purchase, who is Dave Purchase? That kind of hippie looking dropout from the sixties. He is clearly one of this nation's citizens of courage.

MR. HOCHBERG: And as he was earning the confidence of street junkies, he cultivated support of local government. In January, in what looked more like a love-in than a board meeting, the Health Department voted to spend $43,000 to buy Purchase his needles. But all is not roses for Tacoma's needle programs. Some citizens and local businesses are fighting the exchange now that tax dollars are supporting it.

CITIZEN: I don't like it at all. That's not what I want to pay taxes for.

CITIZEN: When Iget off the bus down here and I see syringes laying out in the street and what not, and to me that's scary.

COUNCILMAN MIKLAND: I don't believe it's going to stop the spread of AIDS in that community by giving them clean needles.

MR. HOCHBERG: Tacoma City Councilman Greg Mikland argued strongly that addicts will continue sharing needles, even with a city supported needle exchange.

COUNCILMAN MIKLAND: I don't think that we should be promoting the use of drugs. I think that's what it does. Most of the burglaries, robberies and so forth and murders that are committed in our community are committed by drug users.

MR. HOCHBERG: And some state legislators are working to shut down the needle program, arguing that it tells teenagers that drug use is acceptable.

CHARLES WOLFE: There'd be no reason why a 10 year old couldn't go up and exchange a needle.

MR. HOCHBERG: Are you saying that's what's going to happen?

CHARLES WOLFE, Washington State Representative: Oh, it's a distinct possibility. We know that the drugs are finding their way down into the upper grades now.

DAVE PURCHASE, Needle Exchange Advocate: It doesn't happen for all...that where the station wagon stops that because the teenage kids in the back seat see Dave Purchase on the street, force mom and dad to stop the station wagon and jump out, yell good-bye to mom and dad and say hey, there's a needle exchange program, we're going to start a life of heroin addiction now.

MAYOR DOUG SUTHERLAND, Tacoma, Washington: I'm not giving them needles. I'm exchanging needles, so what you're saying is they've already got the needle and the question is not not whether or not they have a needle or not, the question is is the needle that they have clean or dirty.

MR. HOCHBERG: Tacoma Mayor Doug Sutherland who was leery of the program at first now supports it.

MAYOR SUTHERLAND: Drug addiction is a severe problem and it's taking a lot of resources and so is AIDS. Do you turn your face the other way and deny that it's there? I don't think you do.

MR. HOCHBERG: If politicians are uneasy with the needle exchange, there's no such split in Tacoma's so-called "shooting galleries", the places like this patch of sticker bushes on an empty lot downtown where many addicts go to shoot up their drug.

MR. HOCHBERG: Usually when people shoot heroin, are they, they have one needle and a bunch of people and they're sharing it, is that it, they're all using the same needle?

DRUG USER: We're talking here in Tacoma?

MR. HOCHBERG: Yeah.

DRUG USER: No. Everybody's got a needle.

MR. HOCHBERG: Everybody's got their own needle?

DRUG USER: Everybody's got their own needle, yeah, yeah.

MR. HOCHBERG: How about before the needle exchange program came along?

DRUG USER: Quite honestly, before the needle exchange came along, you would have two or three people using the same needle. I've seen some people before the needle exchange get into fights as to who goes first, who goes second, and I mean, literally fist to fist. It's really changed a lot since this summer, since this summer when he started it and now if it's an off day that Dave's not down there or for whatever reason, they're using the bleach. God knows how many people's lives he's saved. I mean, I can't say enough about the guy.

MR. HOCHBERG: What are you going to do with your needle now?

DRUG USER: I'll go downtown and see Dave and exchange it for a new one.

MR. HOCHBERG: And for the people with AIDS in Tacoma's hospitals, there is, again, no debate whether Dave Purchase's needle exchange is good or bad for the City of Tacoma. There's only regret that it wasn't there earlier. Dave Mortensen is developing lesions on his brain and is partially paralyzed. He says he got AIDS from using a contaminated needle several years ago. Though the needle exchange is too late for him, he wanted to meet the man who started it.

DAVE MORTENSEN, AIDS Patient: I know. Look at how many people I infected probably. I didn't know it, because...

DAVE PURCHASE: Did you used to share? Excuse me, but did you used to share?

DAVE MORTENSEN: Oh, yes. You always do it. You're running out of needles. All you're worried about is getting the money for the drug. Boy, that thought scares me to think that I probably, there's people going to come with AIDS from sharing the needle with me. I never knew that there was anything wrong with me. That's a scary thought.

MR. HOCHBERG: It's the scary thought that will send Dave Purchase back on to Tacoma's cold streets tomorrow. Purchase knows state legislators will be watching him warily in his first year on Commerce Street. He knows that health authorities will be watching him as well, wondering if Purchase and the City of Tacoma have come upon a partial solution to the AIDS crisis. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major story of this Monday, Space Shuttle Discovery was successfully launched into space from Cape Canaveral, the five man crew deployed a communications satellite. They will return to earth on Saturday. Good night, Charlayne.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Good night, Jim. That's our News Hour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow. I'm Charlayne Hunter-Gault. Thank you and good night.