The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Tuesday, Moscow stepped up its pressure on Lithuania by closing its border with Poland, and the jury in the John Poindexter was sequestered after contacts with the press. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff is in Washington tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: After the News Summary, we turn first to developments in Lithuania [FOCUS - YOUR MOVE] and an interview with its chief diplomatic representative in the U.S., Stasys Lozoraitis. Then a profile of one of Washington's most powerful people, White House Chief of Staff John Sununu [PROFILE], next a success story for some would-be high school drop-outs [FOCUS - ART TREASURES]. Arts Correspondent Joanna Simon visits the Bronx. And finally Essayist Anne Taylor Fleming on the American obsession with death and dying [ESSAY - MORTAL MATTERS].NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: The Soviet Union stepped up the pressure again on Lithuania today. Soviet authorities ordered the closing of the Baltic republic's border crossing with Poland, the only foreign country that borders Lithuania. At the same time, one house of the Soviet parliament today approved a bill establishing rules for secession. It would require a republic to hold a referendum, which Lithuania did not conduct. It would also require a five year transition period. Also in Moscow, one of President Gorbachev's top aides met with a Lithuanian delegation. It was the first high level meeting between the two sides since Lithuania declared independence last month. Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze arrived in Washington today to discuss the upcoming U.S.-Soviet summit. According to a State Department spokesman, Lithuania will top the agenda when he meets with Secretary of State Baker tomorrow. Shevardnadze told reporters at Andrews Air Base the Lithuanian situation would be resolved within the framework of the Soviet constitution.

EDUARD SHEVARDNADZE, Foreign Minister, Soviet Union: [Speaking through Interpreter] Our main weapon in resolving any issue, both domestically and also in our relations with other countries is dialogue, honest dialogue, and this is the dialogue that we are looking forward to with the Lithuanian people and with the Lithuanian leadership.

MR. MacNeil: We'll have an interview with Lithuania's representative to the United States right after this News Summary. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: The jury in the Iran-Contra trial of John Poindexter has been sequestered. Federal Judge Harold Green issued the order after two jurors were telephoned at home by reporters yesterday afternoon. In both cases, the jurors refused to answer questions. The judge said the calls constituted irresponsible behavior by the press. He said they could have led to a mistrial. The jury will now be escorted to and from the courthouse by the U.S. marshall and will stay in a hotel until a verdict is reached.

MR. MacNeil: The Pentagon today unveiled one of its top secrets. It released video of the Stealth Fighter aircraft and revealed more details about the classified project. The air force is currently testing 54 of the one seater planes in Nevada. The Defense Department claims the fighter's design allows it to operate undetected by enemy radar. It'll be used primarily at night, but its exact mission and weaponry were not revealed. During the U.S. invasion of Panama, the aircraft was used to drop bombs. The Pentagon also said today that three of the planes have crashed during test flights, killing two pilots. The entire program begun in 1978 will cost more than $6 1/2 billion.

MS. WOODRUFF: The fuel spill on the Allegheny River near Pittsburgh continued to threaten local water supplies today. Pittsburgh water appeared safe by nearby Harrison Township was forced to shut down its intake valves, leaving 20,000 people without water. The gelatin-like combination of gasoline, diesel and kerosene was discharged into the river on Friday when a landslide caused a pipeline to rupture 35 miles North of Pittsburgh.

MR. MacNeil: In economic news, the government's main forecasting gauge took its biggest drop in nine months. The Index of Leading Economic Indicators went down 1 percent in February after three consecutive increases. The decline was caused primarily by a drop in building permits. An investigation of child labor violations has turned up thousands more cases than were originally found. Federal investigators had found 7,000 cases of child labor violations during a sweep of the country last month. Today the Labor Department said it uncovered an additional 4,000 cases after a review of its files. Most violations involved teen-agers working too late during the school week or working too many hours, but many involved jobs with dangerous machinery.

MS. WOODRUFF: In South Africa, black leader Nelson Mandela spent a second day in Natal Province appealing for an end to fighting between rival black factions. This follows yesterday's decision by Pres. F.W. DeKlerk to send more troops to the area. We have a report narrated by Roderick Pratt of Worldwide Television News.

MR. PRATT: South African combat units are now keeping a high profile in the Natal townships where over 50 people have been killed in the recent violence. Nelson Mandela showed no concern for his personal safety as he visited Embale. It was Walter Sisulu's second trip to the troubled province. ANC supporters turned out in large numbers to see Mandela and Sisulu, but members of the rival Incata movement were there too. One was shot at when he threw stones at the ANC motorcade. Mandela expressed concern about the destruction he had seen in the townships, but he also took heart from what he'd heard.

NELSON MANDELA: And I was alarmed by the extent to which many people have lost their beloved. I was, however, impressed by the high morale amongst the people and the hope that we will be successful in the end in our search for peace.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mandela also said it was encouraging to see Pres. DeKlerk as concerned about the violence in Natal, but he criticized DeKlerk for sending in extra troops without consulting black leaders. DeKlerk and Mandela are scheduled to meet on Thursday.

MR. MacNeil: There was ethnic violence in India today. A bomb exploded in a crowded market in the Northern state of Punjab, killing at least 32 people and injuring about 70. The bomb went off during a march by thousands of Hindus celebrating a religious holiday. Police blamed militant Sikhs who have been fighting to secede from India. After the bombing, Hindu mobs attacked a police station in a nearby Sikh city.

MS. WOODRUFF: That's it for our summary of the day's news. Just ahead on the Newshour, a Lithuania update, a profile of John Sununu, some potential high school drop-outs discover art, and thoughts about mortality in the '90s. FOCUS - YOUR MOVE

MR. MacNeil: We focus first tonight on the Lithuania story. Although the rhetoric has turned more diplomatic the Soviet's kept up their pressure tactics today closing the Lithuanian Border with Poland. Also the Soviet Parliament, one House of the Soviet Parliament approved the first draft of specific rules for secession. With us to discuss the status of Lithuania's independence campaign is Stasys Lozoraitis, he is the Senior Diplomate to the Lithuanian Delegation to the United States and now represents the pro independence government here. Mr. Lozoraitis thank you for joining us. When you were on this program three weeks ago you said you expected Moscow would not let you go with out putting up obstacles. Have the obstacles been greater than you expected?

MR. LOZORAITIS: Absolutely, I think they were greater and I really don't understand one thing. Mr. Shevardnadze today in Washington told us he wanted dialogue but what kind of dialogue does he want? Is sending paratroopers or sending armored cars up and down the streets or attacking hospitals to closing borders. Is that a dialogue. We have been waiting for a dialogue since March 11, since the day when declaration of independence was made and we are ready today to talk and we are waiting for something to come from Moscow. I think the meeting between Yakovlif and Mr. Ozzolas one of the members of the Lithuanian delegation is or could mean a good beginning but now when know that the Border with Poland was closed I don't understand. And at this point I am inclined to think that Gorbachev is not in control of the situation.

MR. MacNeil: So Gorbachev and Shevardnadze maybe saying they want dialogue but someone else the Army, the KGB, who Russian nations or ethic Russians inside Lithuania. Who would be in control.

MR. LOZORAITIS: No I don't think the Russians in Lithuania are in control. I think may be the Army. Some generals who are pre occupied worried about Military bases, about communication systems and so on. What they don't understand that in the 20th century three or four bases in Lithuania will not defend the huge territory of the Soviet Union which has about 22 million square kilometers. And they don't understand that you can not solve problems now a days by send para troopers to a country that doesn't want to stay with you. I also want to remind one thing. We made a declaration of independence it was not against the Soviet Constitution which allows such a thing. It allows in principal. It permits the secession of a country. We don't think that we were a part of the Soviet Union.

MR. MacNeil: Do you think that you would not consider yourselves bound by new legislation if the Supreme Soviet passes it that you would not feel bound by the legislation?

MR. LOZORAITIS: No I think we can't be bound by the new legislation. First of all because we were never a part of the Soviet Union and we were internationally recognized as an independent occupied state. But there is another thing. This draft of the law is very dangerous for Lithuania may be but very dangerous for Latvia and Estonia where the Latvian and Estonian population constituted only 50 percent of the totality of the inhabitants.

MR. MacNeil: You mean the requirement that a 2/3 majority in a referendum approve secession?

MR. LOZORAITIS: Exactly you must have 2/3 of a majority. Then you have to wait five years and then the Congress of the People have to discuss you secession again and again you have got to have 2/3 majority.

MR. MacNeil: How would you expect to proceed with secession with need of those powers for economically reasons and so on are pressuring us not to apply force and to let the Baltic countries go.

MR. MacNeil: But Ms. Thatcher said the other day that Gorbachev is in an extremely difficult position. She said that no leader anywhere is in as difficult position as he is and her words she said he should not be provoked?

MR. LOZORAITIS: Mr. Gorbachev is in a very difficult position but not because of the Baltic countries. He is in very difficult position of the tragic economic situation in the Soviet Union which has not been improved in any way in any sector in the last three or four years of perestroika. But you see sometimes a man in a difficult position in the Kremlin can be helped by pressuring him. It is a very subtle tactic but I am sure that if the West would pressure Mr. Gorbachev it would be much easier for him to do something for the democracy for the liberty of all the nations. We are convinced that sooner or later all these nations will try to win independence.

MR. MacNeil: Can I ask you very quickly. You are also the envoy to the Vatican and you have just returned from there. Is the Pope going to put some pressure on Gorbachev?

MR. LOZORAITIS: I think the Pope can put only a moral pressure on Gorbachev. The Pope understands the Lithuanian situation. And he emphasizes one fact that the conflict between Lithuania and the Soviet Union is an international conflict. That is what we are trying to explain to everybody.

MR. MacNeil: Sorry we have to cut it off there. Mr. Lozoraitis thank you very much for joining us.

MR. LOZORAITIS: Thank you.

MR. MacNeil: Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Still ahead on the Newshour George Bush's right hand man. Some struggling students in the Bronx discover the arts and an essay by Ann Taylor Fleming. PROFILE

MS. WOODRUFF: Next tonight, one of the handful of most powerful people in Washington, White House Chief of Staff John Sununu. Tonight the Senate votes on a controversial clean air bill which environmentalists have charged Sununu helped to weaken. His involvement in that and other environmental issues thrust him into the headlines recently after a year of staying mostly out of the public eye. We decided to take a closer look at this man at the President's side. Wherever President Bush goes in public, the odds are that this man won't be far away. Like a shadow, John Sununu stays close to George Bush, at news conferences, at speeches, in meetings, wherever important information is being announced or discussed. Behind the scenes, however, there's nothing shadowlike about Sununu's presence. As one high ranking Republican put it, John Sununu is No. 1, 2, 3 and 4 on the White House staff. Democrats are equally aware of how powerful he is.

SEN. DAVID BOREN, [D] Oklahoma: Well, if the President's a ten, I would say that John Sununu is a nine. I think he's very very influential.

MS. WOODRUFF: Unlike his predecessors in the Reagan administration, Sununu works for a President who is hands on, involved to one degree or another in every decision that comes out of the White House, from major foreign policy and domestic initiatives to political and press strategy, to who gets invited to dinner with the First Family. One senior administration official said George Bush is in some ways his own chief of staff, but even this President can't know everything. And in John Sununu, he chose a partner who close associates say completes a formidable team at the top. It's a team that had its origin in the Presidential campaign of 1988.

GEORGE BUSH: [February 9, 1988] Iowa is Iowa. New Hampshire is New Hampshire.

MS. WOODRUFF: George Bush surprised the political world in February of that year when eight days after a stunning defeat in Iowa, the first battleground of the campaign, he bounced back to win in New Hampshire. It was the most critical turnaround of his political career.

GEORGE BUSH: [Addressing Crowd in 1988] Thank you, New Hampshire. Thank you, New Hampshire.

MS. WOODRUFF: The man who labored at Bush's side during that pivotal week was his campaign chairman, the then Governor of New Hampshire, John Sununu.

JOHN SUNUNU: [Feb. 17, 1988] Well, we had a hangover date coming out of Iowa. It was a tough day for anybody to campaign after that.

MS. WOODRUFF: Many political experts were writing Bush off after Iowa, making Sununu's efforts in New Hampshire all the more remarkable. Republican Consultant Charles Black.

CHARLES BLACK, Republican Political Consultant: Gov. Sununu had put all of his own political capital on the line for George Bush. I think when you go through a tough time like that and sort of go through the valley of the shadow of political death and then come back out of it and emerge victorious, the people who go through that together have a bond that is much different than just routine government business.

MS. WOODRUFF: The bond was a tight one and Sununu continued to oversee the successful Bush campaign. After Bush nailed down the Republican nomination, Sununu hoped that he would be rewarded with an invitation to fill the Vice Presidential slot. But as it turned out, he landed a far more powerful job.

JOHN SUNUNU, White House Chief of Staff: The past chiefs of staff have been gatekeepers in the sense of keeping people out. My job is to make sure that in the time we have available for the President he gets everybody in there that he wants to get in there, so I'm a door opener, not a door closer.

MS. WOODRUFF: Sununu's own modest description of himself leaves out the colorful detail others provide. They describe the memorable style that's been with him since his early days as Governor of New Hampshire.

ROD PAUL, Political Reporter: The first day he came into office, he literally ran into the State House, body guards sort of huffing and puffing after him, ran upstairs, ran into hallways, would negotiate with people, slap them on the back.

MS. WOODRUFF: Sununu came to the governor's office with the background of a mechanical engineer. He had taught at Boston's Tuft University throughout the 1970s while serving a two year term in the New Hampshire State Legislature and running for but losing several other political races, including the Republican primary for U.S. Senator in 1980. Friends say he also campaigned hard for the job of Ronald Reagan's energy secretary and was devastated when someone else was chosen. When Sununu finally moved into the governor's post in 1982, he was ready to shake things up. Everyone who knows Sununu says he is brilliant. Tom Rath is an attorney who has been active in New Hampshire's Republican Party for several years.

TOM RATH, Republican Activist: He is a very aggressive intellectual who sort of runs head long at problems as opposing to sort of rounding the corners. He stays up very late and watches TV and he'll call you at 11:30, 12 o'clock at night with some idea that he's just bursting to talk about.

MS. WOODRUFF: Ned Helms, chairman of the state's Democratic Party, was also commissioner of health and welfare for the first year Sununu was in office.

NED HELMS, N.H. Democratic Chairman: His capacity to understand something and come to a conclusion quite quickly sometimes allows him to push himself into the middle of a situation without an appreciation of other people that have to move along as a part of the solution.

MARY CHAMBERS: Many of the legislators were intimidated by him.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mary Chambers, the Democratic leader in New Hampshire's state house, says Sununu's insensitivity to people went deeper.

MARY CHAMBERS, State Representative [D]: And he would get very impatient and I have seen him get angry with people that he was talking to when he was trying to talk about an issue and he just expected them to do what he wanted.

MS. WOODRUFF: For example, what would he do or what would he say?

MS. CHAMBERS: Actually, he could be very cruel to people. He could belittle their intelligence and their capacity. He could treat them as if they had no idea what they were talking about. He could be very petty and vindictive.

MS. WOODRUFF: Democrats in the New Hampshire legislature recall that when Sununu's predecessor died, Sununu refused to agree to anything more than a token pension for his widow, arguing that it was a misuse of taxpayers' money. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, a Democrat who worked closely with Sununu and the National Governors Association, says Sununu came to Washington with a low regard for members of Congress.

GOV. BILL CLINTON, [D] Arkansas: He sees it in terms of people that have been there a long time that have divided it up into committees and subcommittees and split party problems in 15 places instead of working through it.

MS. WOODRUFF: That attitude got Sununu in trouble early in the Bush administration. It was he who insisted that President Bush stick with a nominee for defense secretary, John Tower, whose confirmation in the Senate was headed for defeat after a bruising struggle with the Senate Armed Services Committee.

SEN. WARREN RUDMAN, [R] New Hampshire: I think that he probably misjudged as many people misjudge the power of some committees of Congress and some people within the Congress, and I think that came as a bit of a surprise to him as frankly it does to many.

MS. WOODRUFF: New Hampshire Republican, Sen. Warren Rudman says Sununu learned from that experience, but last November, Sununu insisted that Congressional Republicans support a capital gains tax cut that was doomed to failure in that session of Congress. House Republican Leader Bob Michel told reporters Sununu needed to remember that he was not dealing with the state legislature. Sununu phoned Michel after the remark was reported and according to a Michel staff member, reamed the Congressman out. In a recent interview, Michel suggested Sununu still has a hard time understanding why the President doesn't get constant unanimous support from his own party.

REP. BOB MICHEL, House Minority Leader: There's been, you know, some controversial issues out there that have had to be dealt with and some differences have come in even in our own party. And it was a little bit difficult I think at that stage for the governor to get the feeling like -- I think maybe it stems from where he dealt with the legislature, and this is a more independent, thinking body down here from time to time.

MS. WOODRUFF: Michel says Sununu didn't understand when a veteran Republican Congressman, Henry Hyde of Illinois, offered a savings & loan bailout proposal different from the administration's.

REP. MICHEL: I still thought he was deserving as a significant member and of our own party to have a little better hearing than to be dismissed short, hey, you're at odds with the President, therefore, we're not even going to listen to what your proposal is. I thought that was a bit discourteous to one who on every other issue has been right on the mark and been a good supporter of the administration.

MS. WOODRUFF: Other members have had run-ins with Sununu. He got into a shouting match with California Republican Senator Pete Wilson after Wilson voted against the White House on the FSX fighter plane deal with Japan. As a result, President Bush delayed attending a fund-raiser for Wilson who was in a tough raise for governor. Sununu, himself, says Republicans shouldn't expect special treatment.

JOHN SUNUNU, White House Chief of Staff: I want the to argue about their position, discuss their position. They've got to rationalize it, they've got to explain it, they've got to defend it, just as well as a Democrat. And just because someone happens to be a Republican doesn't make what they say absolutely correct.

MS. WOODRUFF: As for the Democrats in Congress, we couldn't find any who were willing to go on camera to talk about their problems with Sununu, though several referred privately to his condescending attitude toward them, what some termed his "arrogance". On the other hand, Sununu's defenders, including Oklahoma Democratic Senator David Boren, say those who describe Sununu that way don't really know him.

SEN. DAVID BOREN, [D] Oklahoma: I think that sometimes people are intimidated because he's such a strong personality and I tend to think that those people who enjoy give and take, who are not threatened by intellectual challenges, by the fact that this is a very bright man who's chief of staff who's advising the President, I tend to think that those people like Gov. Sununu.

MS. WOODRUFF: Sununu says he has a good working relationship with a number of leading Democrats. As for those who call him arrogant, Sununu says they are just not willing to debate him.

GOV. SUNUNU: Look, I come from an academic environment, where you debate, where you discuss, where you argue to take good ideas and make better ideas out of them and in this city there are people who are in my opinion so unprepared that they consider any time you want to have that kind of a debate or an exchange or a discussion with them in private as something that they feel very uncomfortable with.

MS. WOODRUFF: Almost everyone we talked with said Sununu doesn't suffer fools gladly. He agrees.

GOV. SUNUNU: I mean, I didn't realize that one should suffer fools gladly. I mean, I've heard that phrase used as if there's something wrong with it. And I am impatient and I think it's important to get things done. But the one thing I find intolerable in people who have a responsibility with the public and to make public policy is that they come in unprepared.

MS. WOODRUFF: There are virtually no policy decisions made in the Bush White House that Sununu doesn't weigh in on. Whether it's the budget, child care, trade with Japan, or relations with Soviet President Gorbachev, top administration officials say Sununu expresses an opinion and his opinions, according to friends like Tom Rath, are clearly conservative.

MR. RATH: He is very Republican. He views the world in that terms, as black and white. Either you're Republican or you're not.

GOV. CLINTON: He's very motivated by the idea that people have to take 99 percent of the responsibility for what happens to them and their families. He thinks that's what he's done and that's what works and I think he's really skeptical about government intervention making anything better. He cares a lot about limiting the role of federal government where he doesn't think it's right.

MS. WOODRUFF: But New Hampshire Republican Sen. Warren Rudman says for Sununu the bottom line is not ideology.

SEN. RUDMAN: John Sununu is results-oriented. He is not a far right or certainly far left. He is somewhere to the left or far right and very pragmatic.

MS. WOODRUFF: That view is flatly rejected by some, especially the environmentalists who are angry about several recent decisions from the Bush White House. Eight leading environmental groups got together last month to complain that Sununu was personally undermining the President's commitments on the environment. At a news conference, they charged that he had a direct hand in weakening language on a speech on global warming, a proposal on clean air, and a government directive on protecting wetlands, marshy areas preserved for wildlife.

JAY HAIR, National Wildlife Federation: I personally was involved at the White House for a meeting over an hour and a half shortly before it came out. There was no questions in our minds that John Sununu, through very active and aggressive discussions with EPA Administrator Reilly, was going to control the action on that and he did it. He did exactly what the oil and gas industry wanted him to do. John Sununu is not doing what the President said he would do and the question is, is John Sununu listening to President Bush on environmental matters, or is he going off on his own preconceived notion of what's right for the country? The American people did not elect John Sununu.

MS. WOODRUFF: Sununu says anyone who thinks he's having too much influence on policy simply didn't agree with the outcome of a decision.

GOV. SUNUNU: Some folks in Washington that may have different viewpoints than the people around the country may think that I'm not being as honest a broker as they would like. Their definition would be one that only lets them into the President and nobody else.

MICHAEL McCLOSKY, Sierra Club: We certainly don't have someone here who views himself as a mechanic. We have someone who views himself as a prime spokesman, a protagonist for the strongest view in the whole administration on this question of the environment and the most anti-environmental position.

MS. WOODRUFF: Sierra Club Chairman Michael McClosky says on the global warming speech given by President Bush in February, Sununu overrode not just the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, William Reilly, but several other top cabinet officials who agreed with Reilly.

MR. McCLOSKY: It was really a case of almost the whole cabinet against Sununu, John Sununu, where supposedly he plays the role of being honest broker between contending views in the administration and the cabinet, but really it was him against the whole cabinet virtually.

MS. WOODRUFF: On ABC, Sununu described his role in the global warming affair as simply an attempt to put concerns about the environment in perspective.

GOV. SUNUNU: There's a little tendency by some of the faceless bureaucrats on the environmental side to try and create a policy in this country that cuts off our use of coal, oil and natural gas. I don't think that's what this country wants. I don't think America wants not to be able to use their automobiles.

MS. WOODRUFF: Those who knew Sununu in New Hampshire say his hard line on environmental issues is entirely consistent with his past. Although he helped pass acid rain legislation and consolidated all state agencies involved in environmental regulation, they say the environment ranked low on his list of priorities.

MS. CHAMBERS: He talked a good game but it sort of got to be a joke around here. People would come in and say, outsiders would come in and say, well, I've come up, I understand you can buy New Hampshire. They were saying that as a joke, but I think there was some concern on many of us that live here that perhaps business interests superseded everything else and that environmental concerns were not given the attention they should have been given, and he hasn't seen a wetland he doesn't want to sell.

MS. WOODRUFF: But it's his environmental critics in Washington who really irritates Sununu.

GOV. SUNUNU: Most of the folks that have taken positions on environmental issues in Washington are really not necessarily establishing a position that's pro environment. It's really an anti-growth position, and I'm convinced you can take care of your responsibilities to the environment without being anti-growth, anti-jobs, anti-America. I'll give you an example. One of the issues that was in contention as we worked with the Senate to try and come up with a compromise was an issue associated with automobile tailpipes. The proposal that the extremists on the environmental side were proposing would have had about a 2 percent improvement over the administration's proposal and cost America another $8 billion. That 2 percent is negligible on the large scale of things and it's not appropriate to go to a more punitive peace of legislation, therefore, just so that you can say it's $8 billion more expensive.

MR. HELMS: John Sununu is a scientist. He's got an engineering degree out of MIT, and you know, if it has angles and squares and phases and numbers in it, you know, he can get down, work the formula through and he knows the answer at the bottom. I mean, there it is, right down there at the bottom, and he's right and the other guys are wrong.

MS. WOODRUFF: Some who have worked closely with Sununu like Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton say his overwhelming certainty about issues can be as much a liability as it is an asset.

GOV. CLINTON: He'll just try to beat your brains out, you know. He doesn't have a casual conversation and you think X and he thinks Y. I mean, he'll, if it's a big deal to him, he will absolutely try to run over you on the issue, and if he has the authority to do it, he may not even debate you. He may just say this is the way it's going to be, slam dunk, especially in the areas where he thinks he knows a lot, he can really slam the door down, and it may or may not cause the President some trouble. It's just something that I think he's aware of it and I think it's just something he's going to have to watch.

MS. WOODRUFF: On the other hand, many say Sununu's toughness is one of the main reasons George Bush chose him.

SEN. RUDMAN: I don't think President Bush anymore than President Reagan before him, although he's far different, particularly would enjoy firing people or telling people no or telling people they're getting off the reservation and get back on. I just don't think he enjoys that. But I don't think John has a problem with that. I don't think John has any hesitation at all to tell anybody within the administration that they're not serving the President well and I don't think he has any problem telling members of Congress that they don't think -- that he doesn't think they're dealing very well in behalf of the President.

MS. WOODRUFF: Word is that Sununu has no problem handing the same message to certain members of the President's cabinet, some of whom are said to resent Sununu's power. Sununu insists he's not trying to overshadow anybody, but he adds that if he has offended a few people along the way, so be it.

GOV. SUNUNU: I make a hundred decisions a day, get involved in a hundred things a day, if all I do is bat 98 percent, I'm going to end up with one or two that might have been done slightly differently. I've got to work in such a way that I help this President get the information, see the people he needs in order to get things done, and that's what I try and do.

MS. WOODRUFF: In fact, it probably doesn't matter how many toes Sununu steps on for now. As long as the President's popularity ratings remain as high as they are, everybody agrees Sununu's job is secure.

MR. RATH: He thrives on success. I mean, he relishes in the poll numbers, even though he'll tell you they don't mean anything. He loves to see that, that manifestation they're doing the right thing, and he kind of loves to prove people wrong and that he can do it.

MS. WOODRUFF: The real test of course will come when times get tough for George Bush as they do for every President. That's when Washington will measure whether Sununu's style has been on balance an asset or a liability. FOCUS - ART TREASURES

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight our arts correspondent Joanna Simon reports on a former high school teacher and a group of potential school drop-outs who are making a name for themselves in the world of art.

TIM ROLLINS, Artist: Fundamentally, I'm an angry person. I'm angry at how this country wastes its youth, miseducates its youth, educates the youth really for the wrong reasons, and instead of just ranting and raving about the situation, I wanted to take this anger and create a constructive alternative.

MS. SIMON: And that's exactly what he did. Three years ago, Tim Rollins set up an art work shop for learning disabled and troubled kids in New York City's South Bronx. The group has 10 students ages 15 to 21. They call themselves Kids Of Survival, KOS for short.

CARLOS RIVERA: Right now I feel good and happy and proud of myself for being in KOS, but if I would have not been here, I don't know, I would not have survived, first of all, in school or outside. I think I would have been doing things I should not be doing, or I would have been locked up or something.

MS. SIMON: Carlos Rivera has been Tim Rollins' student for eight years, ever since Rollins taught him art at a New York City junior high. Frustrated by official curriculum and large classes, Rollins worked individually with Carlos and other talented students after school. When the kids began to flourish, Rollins quit classroom teaching altogether to form KOS. Annie Rosado has been working with a group after school for seven years.

ANNIE ROSADO: I got to open my eyes and say, hey, this is really what I want to do in life because he had so many art books and so many pictures and I liked it. And also I used to be like the quiet one in classrooms so someone will sit next to me and say, talk, talk, do something.

MS. SIMON: Since their discovery in 1986 by a New York art dealer, Rollins and KOS have done a lot of things, most noteworthy this series of paintings at Nw York City's Dia Art Foundation. Their work has been shown at galleries and museums throughout the United States and Europe. You can always tell a Rollins KOS art work because its images are painted on the pages of a book. In this case, Fronz Kofca's America. The mutated instruments were inspired by the book's story.

MR. ROLLINS: Books were the enemy for the kids and I thought, well, here's a way to use it, here's a way to get the kids engaged with the book, not intellectually at first, but physically, the tearing, the careful layering of the pages onto the Belgian linen. We make the book come alive again with the language that we have the best command of, which are visual images.

MS. SIMON: The best of those images have sold for as much as $100,000. Rollins and KOS split the proceeds with their dealer. Their half goes to pay Rollins' salary, $50,000 a year, the kids' salaries, 7 to 12 dollars an hour, studio expenses, and foreign travel. Old timers like Carlos have been abroad four times for KOS openings. Rollins welcomes the commercial success but says that's not his goal, nor is his goal to produce young artists. His real purpose, he says, is to make sure the kids, all potential drop- outs, get an education. Enrollment in a school program is a prerequisite for joining KOS.

MR. ROLLINS: You've got to be in a program. That's one of the rules, because I'm not in a position in the few hours a day that I see the kids to provide them with a total comprehensive education. Also, I just don't want to be the single mentor in their life. They're going to have to work with other people and relate to them and get other points of view on the world.

MS. SIMON: The creation of a Rollins KOS art work begins with the group reading and discussing a book. In this case, Franz Kofka's Metamorphosis. [GROUP DISCUSSING BOOK]

MS. SIMON: The kids then produce hundreds of preliminary studies leading to a finished canvas. This is Tim Rollins' KOS Metamorphosis, a real apple embedded in the pages of the Kofka story. The painting captures the moment when Greg Orsamsa, a young boy transformed into a large bug, tries to escape from his father who is pelting him with apples. An apple sticks in his back, causing him excruciating pain. Rollins' students saw the story as a metaphor for child abuse. It also reminded each of his own personal metamorphosis.

JOSE PARISSI: It relates to me in a way that one morning, one night I went to sleep, I didn't know whatI was going to do the next day, but then the next day that I got up, I was here. It was like a dream come true. I always wanted to be someone, not only be someone, but do something with my life, because if I would not have done anything with my life, I just would have been a loser, walking on the streets, thinking of what I'm going to do in the future.

MS. SIMON: Rollins and KOS have also drawn inspiration from the pages of George Orwell's Animal Farm, Steven Crain's "The Red Badge of Courage" and Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter", the story of Hester Prin, a woman forced by a hypocritical society to wear a scarlet A on her garments as a sign of her adultery. A talented seamstress, Hester transformed the "A" into a symbol of pride.

MR. ROLLINS: The chapter "Hester at Her Needle", it had to be most the beautiful thing to defy the community with beauty and I asked the kids if you were Hester and you had to wear an "A" on your chest, what would that look like.

MS. SIMON: At an opening of a Tim Rollins KOS exhibit in Hartford, Connecticut, Rollins talked about their work.

MR. ROLLINS: And I loved Hester because she had to wear this scarlet letter, right, to remind the whole community of their sins. In a way it's very much like how a dominant culture treats the South Bronx. Sometimes I think the Bronx exists just to make everyone feel better about their situation.

MS. SIMON: Rollins knows firsthand what he's talking about. He was raised in a small town in Maine, but it is the South Bronx where he has chosen to work. He identifies with these streets and the kids who grew up here.

MR. ROLLINS: I think the one common connection that even I have with them is that we all grew up quite poor and in this country it's quite obvious, if you grow up poor, you're injured from a very very early age, the fact, I'm not good enough, or I wasn't smart enough, or my parents aren't good enough, or they're not smart enough, why are we in the situation we're in.

MS. SIMON: Like Hester in "The Scarlet Letter", Rollins has turned a stigma, the poverty of the South Bronx, into an advantage.

MR. ROLLINS: There's a magic here. There's definitely an indisputable magic and the energy that's in the work had to have its roots here in the community. There's no doubt about it.

MS. SIMON: For Rollins and his kids of survival, that indisputable magic has led to indisputable celebrity. Rollins and the kids have been profiled in numerous magazines and television programs. Everyone agrees that Rollins is helping the kids but he does have his detractors who question his motives. They suggest he's really out to make a name for himself. What is your response?

MR. ROLLINS: It just makes me laugh, because I mean there are far easier ways to become an artist and to go on an ego trip than to bust your butt for eight years working with these kids in the South Bronx. I mean, it just doesn't make sense. This is not how one tries to become a star in the United States, being a teacher. It's mind boggling, mind boggling.

MS. SIMON: Do you get mad?

MR. ROLLINS: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, but you know, again, I said the project's fueled by anger and the angrier I get, the better the work is, so keep it up. You know, keep it up, detractors.

MS. SIMON: Rollins' anger also fuels his ambition. Recently he and his kids took over a whole floor in a South Bronx factory. Rollins hopes one day it will house the South Bronx Academy of Art, a workshop for artistically gifted students who are having difficulty making it in school.

MR. ROLLINS: I see us having one of the most exciting, innovative, private academies of fine art in the world. I have a vision of the school being a place where kids from other boroughs would want to come to the South Bronx to study in one of the most excellent educational institutions in the world.

MS. SIMON: Rollins seems to thrive on challenges and as a teacher, he would like nothing better than to have his pupils learn from his example.

NELSON SAVINON: Tim always says, you know, don't say you can't do this and you can't do that. That's the most thing that Tim hates when a KOS student says, when Tim asks them to do something, they say I can't. He hates that, you know, and I've learned from that that I can do anything that I can set my mind on. That's what Tim always tells us.

MS. SIMON: That's what he always says, but even Rollins admits he can't work miracles. Your story is a success story. But there have got to have been failures along the way. Tell me about those.

MR. ROLLINS: This is like the educational Messiah that could just touch the shoulder of a mentally disabled or disturbed kid and all of a sudden they become, you know, great artists. That isn't the way it is. We've won a lot of victories, but we've lost a lot of kids too. I have to compete daily with another school, and that's a school of the streets, that's the school of drug abuse, you know, self-destruction, and as long as we win more than we lose, I'll feel great, but it isn't as if I haven't felt the tragedies of kids that were given opportunities and didn't know what to do with them.

MS. SIMON: For those that could taken advantage of the opportunities, it has meant recognition from an artistic community they never would have known. But at some point they will have to move out of the nurturing environment of KOS and into the real world. For many, it's a scary thought, especially Jose, who got a taste of the real world when Tim kicked him out temporarily for not doing his work.

JOSE PARISSI: Tim give me a little lesson that telling me, well, if you think you're so hot shot, then go out into the real world, into reality, and try to batter against it, and I did. I went outside and I saw myself surrounded by things that I had to really fight for and it was pretty tough. It was real tough because KOS wasn't there and it's really hard to get a job out there, really a good good job and to get good money.

MS. SIMON: If moving on is tough on the students, it's also tough on Rollins. He's been more than just a teacher. He has been their mentor and father figure.

MR. ROLLINS: A good teacher knows they're really good when ironically your kid doesn't need you anymore. You teach them and they grow out of the workshop and function on their own. This is the tragedy of being a teacher, you know. The more you invest in a kid, the more you're going to lose them. ESSAY - MORTAL MATTERS

MS. WOODRUFF: Finally tonight our regular Tuesday night essay. Anne Taylor Fleming has some thoughts about why we seem to be so obsessed with the subject of death.

MS. FLEMING: Pick up any newspaper or magazine these days and you're more than likely to see this or this ["Death in the Family"], or this [holding up other magazines with "death" in the main story] and you can only come to one conclusion, that death is suddenly a very hot topic, perhaps "the" topic for the '90s, how to die, when to die, whether to die, who can help, who can't. All the big questions are suddenly commonplace newspaper grist. Death has come out of the closet. Death, dying, who would have thought it a matter to ingest with your morning coffee and high fiber cereal? Of course, that's what the coffee, make that decaffeinated coffee, and fiber are about anyway, isn't it, death, trying to forestall it. [DIET COMMERCIAL]

MS. FLEMING: We tend to put a happy face on all the recent diet mania, colluding with the advertisers who promise their products will guarantee us a long, healthy run at life. [CEREAL COMMERCIAL]

MS. FLEMING: But it's death they're really talking about it, and we all know it. It is that towards which all these radiant, gray haired folk are inevitably jogging. It's everywhere these days. There's concern with death and dying, in large part because we're simply living a lot longer and lingering longer at the end. It's an expensive, soul searching business, this new longevity. There are now 31 million Americans over the age of 65 and the fastest growing segment of this population is over 85. They're the ones who really require a lot of costly, end of life care. Meanwhile, in their narcissicistic bulk, the baby boomers are having a mid life reckoning with their own mortality, and certainly with that of their parents. AIDS has helped too, giving death a big new public forum. There have been AIDS plays and quilts and fund- raisers and dirges, as a queasy sense of mourning has settled over the land. So that people everywhere are talking openly about their own dying and how they wish to do it, about euthanasia, and wills and living wills, those documents that specify what medical treatments you do or do not want in your terminal days. What we're getting now is a flood of moving if somewhat mockish accounts by middle aged children who waited their parents to die in the sterile high tech mall of big city hospitals. It is there in those impersonal plastic waiting rooms we gather to keep vigil now, family after family of us, waiting, bunked in for the long haul, while all that adamantly life sustaining technology whirs around us, trying to keep everyone alive, the old and the young, the dying and the defective and premature newborns, the accident victims and the AIDS patients. That's the bizarre, even ironic state in which we find ourselves, victimized by all this sophisticated medical technology, all of it determined to defy death, even when death is clearly coming. We are often hostages, unable to go gently or let our loved ones go gently into that good night without wrestling with ethics boards and even courts of law, much less our own consciences. In closer knit times, in closer knit families, death was a more natural part of life and the old family doctor was a comforting counselor. That's when the medical profession could do relatively little in the way of forestalling death so we were happy to let them try. Now that they can do so much more, we are feeling the need to try to take death back. That's what this is all about. This is hardly a cheerful topic to kick off the new decade, but the debate about death and dying will only heat up in the '90s. As a far flung tribe daunted by its own technology, we are now forced to wrestle very publicly with a once very private issue. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Once again, Tuesday's main stories, the Soviet Union stepped up the pressure on Lithuania by closing its border with Poland, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze arrived in Washington for talks that are expected to be dominated by Lithuania, the jury in the John Poindexter trial was sequestered after contacts with the press, and this evening the House overwhelmingly approved a $720 million aid package for Nicaragua and Panama, two countries that had enjoyed U.S. sanctions before their recent transition to democracy. The bill now goes to the Senate. Good night, Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Good night, Robin. That's our Newshour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Judy Woodruff. Thank you and good night.