The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Thursday, three mayors and two police chiefs talk about reducing violent crime in America, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault has a conversation with a biographer of Alfred Nobel, the man who created the Nobel Prizes. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton said today he believed Americans were ready as never before to do something about violent crime. He said fighting crime will require the rebuilding of values like work, family, and community, and it won't happen overnight. He spoke to a group of mayors and police chiefs at the White House.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think we can do something. I think the American people are tired of hurting and are tired of feeling insecure and tired of, of the violence, and it makes such a huge gap between what we say and what we do and how we want to live and how we're forced to live, and it's affected now so many more people beyond the immediate victims of crime. It's changing everyone's life in ways that are quite destructive. We have to move, and I think we're prepared to move.

MR. LEHRER: The makers of video games today announced plans to create an industrywide rating system based on violent content. They made the announcement shortly before testifying at a Senate hearing on the subject. They said they would prefer to regulate themselves than have the government to do it. We'll hear much more on violence and crime right after this News Summary. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: The shuttle "Endeavour" astronauts completed their repair job on the Hubble Space Telescope this morning. They did so during the fifth and final space walk of the mission. Astronauts Story Musgrave and Jeffrey Hoffman had to force two solar panel arms into place after motors failed to work. Musgrave applied some muscle and cranked the arms down with a ratchet wrench. The walk took seven hours and twenty-one minutes, ending with the 40-foot panels completely unfurled and ready to generate electricity for the telescope. Earlier in the mission, astronauts replaced the Hubble's faulty camera and lenses. They're scheduled to set the telescope in its working orbit tomorrow.

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton will meet Syrian President Assad next month to try to jumpstart serious peace talks with Israel. Sec. of State Christopher made the announcement today after meeting with Assad in Damascus. In Spain, PLO Chief Yasser Arafat met with Israel's foreign minister to work on problems with their peace agreement. Foreign Minister Peres had this to say after their meeting.

SHIMON PERES, Foreign Minister, Israel: In our meeting this meeting, Chairman Arafat has agreed fully and completely that all sides will do whatever they can to stop violence, killing, blood, suffering, and opening a new future for our people, for our children, for the whole of the region. On that, we are serious.

MR. LEHRER: The United Nations formally lifted its oil embargo against South Africa today. Two days ago, an interim council began work in South Africa, giving blacks their first real role in governing. The U.N. lifted other trade sanctions in October. Only an arms embargo now remains in effect.

MR. MacNeil: The Labor Department today reported prices at the wholesale level were unchanged in November. A drop in gas prices offset steep increases for food and new cars. The report was the sixth in the last seven months to show no rise in prices at the producer level. Former banker Christopher Drogoul was sentenced today to 37 months in prison for helping to arrange more than $4 billion in illegal loans to Iraq. Some of the money was used by Iraq to build up its military before it invaded Kuwait. Drogoul was the Atlanta branch manager for an Italian bank which made the loans. His attorneys had argued that he played only a minor role in the scheme which allegedly involved the Bush administration and the Italian government. Drogoul has already served 20 months of the sentence while awaiting trial. That's it for the News Summary. Now it's on to fighting crime and the Nobel Prizes. FOCUS - FIGHTING CRIME

MR. LEHRER: What todo about violent crime took Washington center stage today, and it takes ours tonight. A group of mayors and police chiefs went to the White House this morning and told President Clinton the violence has reached epidemic proportions. We'll hear from some of those local officials who were there after this setup report by Kwame Holman.

MR. HOLMAN: No doubt mindful of Tuesday's commuter train shootings in New York, the Clinton administration and others devoted much of the day today to seeking solutions to gun violence. This morning, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala weighed in on the implications of violence.

DONNA SHALALA, Secretary, Health & Human Services: We have to start thinking about violence as a public health crisis that requires public health solutions, just as we thought of polio in the 1950s and just as we think of AIDS today.

MR. HOLMAN: Across town, Attorney General Janet Reno forcefully advocated national gun licensing.

JANET RENO, Attorney General: Before a person possesses a weapon they ought to demonstrate that they know how to safely and lawfully use it through a reasonable and non-arbitrary licensing procedure. It ought to be at least as hard to get a gun as it is to get a driver's license.

MR. HOLMAN: But the main event today was President Clinton's ceremonial acceptance of a report on curbing violence from a task force of big and small city mayors and chiefs of police. The President said the time is right to act against violence.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I believe that this nation is really prepared in a way that it has not been before, at least in my experience, to do something about violent crime, to do something about all of its causes, and to try to come together across the lines of region and party and the size of the units in which we live that deal with these things that are tearing the heart out of our country. I think the rapid change of opinion and movement on the Brady Bill at the end of the last session is an example of that. I was glad to see you advocating this paper, just in skimming it over, that we ought to give attention to drug treatment as well as drug enforcement, that we needed to deal with the supply and demand in an even-handed way. We need some more investment to do that. The last point I want to make is that this is the first step, but only the first step we have to take in restoring the conditions of civilized life to a lot of our cities. The reason a lot of these things are happening is that there has been a simultaneous decline of work, family, and community, of the things that really organize life for all the rest of us, and we are going to have to rebuild them all, and it is not going to happen overnight because these deteriorations have happened over a period of decades, but people can sense whether you're going in the right direction or the wrong direction, and I think we have to work together to change the direction. I am confident that we can.

MR. HOLMAN: Denver Mayor Wellington Webb spoke for the task force.

MAYOR WELLINGTON WEBB, Denver: It's our belief that people are not dying by drive by knife throwing or rock throwing, they're dying because of shootings, because of guns, and that in order to eliminate the excessive need that people have of having access to so many guns in our country, we're calling for the expansion, the Brady Bill should be expanded. All newly purchased transfer ownership of guns should be registered, and that registration fee should be significant. We call for the immediate elimination and manufacture and sale of all automatic -- semiautomatic assault weapons.

MR. HOLMAN: The mayor's task force also called for registering all new gun purchases, outlawing gun possession by minors, funding for overtime and hiring of more police officers, expanding drug control and education efforts, and increasing job development and family support to get at the roots of crime. Police Chief Ruben Ortega of Salt Lake City said the federal government also should help localities improve their handling of juvenile offenders responsible for a large percentage of violent crime.

RUBEN ORTEGA, Chief of Police, Salt Lake City: The system must be restructured so those offenders who can be rehabilitated will be adjudicated to counsel and treatment but those that commit violent crimes should be swiftly tried and then found guilty, punished to the extent of the law as if they were adults.

MR. HOLMAN: The administration promised to review the task force's recommendations, and they got one firm commitment that the President will press Congress to complete the pending crime bill in January.

MR. LEHRER: Now three mayors, Wellington Webb of Denver who chaired the task force that presented recommendations to the President this morning: Rita Mullins of Palatine, Illinois, a town of 40,000 northwest of Chicago, and Shark James of Newark, New York, and two police chiefs: Bill Keith of Knoxville, Tennessee, and Elvin Bell of Atlanta, Georgia. First, beginning with you, Mayor Webb, do you agree with the President that the people are ready for something drastic to be done about violent crime?

MAYOR WEBB: I think the top issue in this country today is addressing the issue of crime and the issue of violence. And what we found during our task force meetings is regardless to big cities, medium size cities, small town, urban, rural, Republican, and Democrat, that the common thread running through all of our local communities is that people want something done about crime and violence in their communities. And people do not feel safe, and they want to see leadership on this level. And what is happening is local governments have been addressing the issue. But we need leadership at the federal level, and I'm very happy about what happened today because I heard the President say that he's going to move it to the top of his agenda which is one of our goals.

MR. LEHRER: People in Palatine agree with that?

MAYOR MULLINS: Absolutely. That is the reason the mayors and the chief across the United States are here to work with the President. It is a partnership and it's a partnership with the people. The people want to be part of stopping crime and violence in America.

MR. LEHRER: Mayor James, there's been an awful lot of talk about this through the years. Is this different? Is it real this time?

MAYOR JAMES: I think it's real. People say, what about Long Islanders, and we say we live death every day, every night in our inner cities, and I think the people are ready for change. I think the President has a timely message. The question will be: Will Congress and the President be able to respond timely? We had a stimulus package talk about jobs. We thought that was easy. We didn't get it passed. Now with the incidence of crime, the hue and cry, will we be able to pass a crime bill? Will we be able to act timely? We have a flood, you bring the money in, and then you find out later how to deal with it. I would hope we call this Hurricane Violence and put the money up front, and then -- because otherwise appropriation, authorization, application will put us into 1995. How many more lives will be lost?

MR. LEHRER: Chief Keith, should this be looked upon as a hurricane, as a disaster alive in the country?

CHIEF KEITH: Well, we've been seeing the deaths and mayhem that take place in our streets, and for a long time at the local level we've know about crime. It is an epidemic. It's something that needs to be addressed immediately, dealing with the chronic offender through drug issues. So it's taken every city like Mayor Webb said, no matter what size it is, large or small.

MR. LEHRER: Why didn't anybody pay attention before now?

CHIEF KEITH: Well, I think the unification of the mayors, certainly taking a leadership role. The police of chiefs in this country have been aware of this for some time, and we're together now. We've got a president supporting us, and I think it's come to everybody's forefront. They're just tired of the lack of accountability of criminal, lack of accountability in the criminal justice system, and they want a sense of control and a sense of reasonableness in our society returned.

MR. LEHRER: People in Atlanta agree with that Chief Bell?

CHIEF BELL: Indeed.

MR. LEHRER: Are they ready?

CHIEF BELL: I think the people of Atlanta have been ready. They've said that to us at the local level. Crime has been a local phenomenon. People have been ready. We've wondered why is that Congress and the rest of America hadn't been ready to do something about it, why all of the extraordinary regulations put upon the people in getting the dollars and getting them on the street, restrictions on police, and so we asked for the notion of flexibility, and because cities are strapped, we're asking for waivers, and allow us who --

MR. LEHRER: Waivers, what kind of waivers? Give us an example of what you mean.

CHIEF BELL: I'll give you an example of a waiver, is there's a required match of much of this money, cities to put up dollars in order to get the federal moneys, and there are a number of cities who don't have the money. So we ask for flexibility to offer any kind of matches and the likes, and even it is possible to have no restriction at all, specifically on small cities,and in Georgia, some police chiefs have cars that are ten years of age, and they charge us as they did in the 60's for wanting to buy bells and whistles, but computers and -- and multipliers in technology cannot be seen as bells and whistles. They're added measures for us to become more efficient in fighting crime. And we want them in Washington to know that. The President assured us today that he would continue this partnership with the mayors and chiefs, and I'm encouraged by that.

MR. LEHRER: Mayor Mullins, two of the mayors already mentioned the Long Island train tragedy the day before yesterday, and you, your city had a similar kind of, of episode, and it -- everybody said, well it's brought in a dramatic way crime home. As you said, four people die in Newark or in Washington, various areas, every day, and it doesn't get this kind of attention, and the same thing happened in your city. What do you think these things do, these kinds of dramatic incidents? How important are they?

MAYOR MULLINS: They are very important. We have in America a dream that we should be able to have a house and a family and a job. And what has happened lately, you had the people in my community were at work when they were murdered.

MR. LEHRER: Tell us that story.

MAYOR MULLINS: January 8th of this year there were seven people at a Brown's Chicken fast food restaurant that were murdered at their workplace. The -- that was the incident. It dramatically shook -- our community is 40,000. It is a suburban community. It happens to be in a very Republican area of the country. It is also an area where we have a motto, a hometown community, we grow great kids. This kind of thing should never have happened, would never have happened, but because it did, if it happened there in Palatine, it can happen anywhere in the United States. And the incident in New York were people coming home from work. You had Polly Klaas, who was asleep in her bed. Now the whole --

MR. LEHRER: That's the young girl who was killed out in California.

MAYOR MULLINS: In California, yes. She was asleep in her bed. So this whole dream of America, if you cannot be safe -- Dantrell davis in Chicago was on his way to school. Where we can have the American dream if we are not safe with it?

MAYOR WEBB: It's my view that's what the Congress is going to hear when they go home during this recess. When they go home, what they're going to hear from their constituents is, we want you to do something. And as mayors and police chiefs, what we're saying to the Congress, when we come back in session, don't give us a rhetorical bill. We don't want an authorization that doesn't give us funding. We don't want an authorization that is not going to give us police on the street. We don't want giving us an authorization that is going to cut the existing programs like Head Start and others to beef up the number of police which is then going to increase the problems that we have in our city. We want something real and something meaningful, and we're saying that the people on the front line are mayors and police chiefs, and that we want to be a part of a partnership with the federal government to assist in this problem. And I think that the issue is that people are unsettled because before it could be you lived your life a certain way and you stay out of harm's way. Now --

MR. LEHRER: And all that was happening to everybody else, right.

MAYOR WEBB: It was happening to everyone else. And now, as the examples, people are unsettled because they don't know when it may happen to them. And we need the resources to maintain the confidence in the system.

MR. LEHRER: Chief Keith, let me ask you this. There were many things that were in the task force that you all -- the task force report that you all presented today. Many of you have already mentioned a few things. If you had to pick one thing from your perspective as the chief of police of Nashville, Tennessee, that you would like done to combat this problem of violent crime, what would it be?

CHIEF KEITH: Well, in some cases, we just literally take to the hills, so I think control and containment, incapacitation of the chronic offender, whether he be an adult or juvenile. We've got to get control of our neighborhoods where people have some freedom to move about --

MR. LEHRER: That means putting people in there and putting cops in there, is that what you mean?

CHIEF KEITH: If that's what it takes.

MR. LEHRER: More people.

CHIEF KEITH: We have to work as a neighborhood, and we have to work as a community and as a city to get those chronic offenders, but we need help across the board.

MR. LEHRER: Do you have neighborhoods in Knoxville where you do not have control of them?

CHIEF KEITH: Not today as we did a year ago. We just had an unprecedented crime reduction of over 11 percent in the first six months of this year, which we haven't seen that kind of change in over twenty years. So that's dramatic, and it's because we've got presence in the communities. We've got communities working together,and we're targeting chronic criminals, both adult and juveniles.

MR. LEHRER: What would head your list, Chief Bell?

CHIEF BELL: Education, believe it or not. I think that we have to have a value-driven education system because too many of my children who are reading at seventh and eighth grade level and dropping out of school and not even finishing high school are the ones that wind up in my jail, a value-driven education system --

MR. LEHRER: You can't do anything about that as a policeman?

CHIEF BELL: Yes, I can, in partnership with the educational institution, in partnership with America, we can do something about it because as the mayor said, we are on the front line. We've got to rebuild families. We cannot have our children be safe until they're saved. And we've got to save them in many, many ways before they get to be problems for us in the institution.

MR. LEHRER: Mayor James, some people are suggesting that this problem of violent crime comes out of a violent culture, and that there's not a thing in the world that you as the mayor and they as police chiefs can really do about this, it goes much deeper than that, that all you can do is put bandaids on it.

MAYOR JAMES: Well, I think we have to recognize that, and that's a good question because it's a short-term solution, not long-term. Long-term deals with jobs. It deals with opportunity. It deals with the movie, the rap song, the stability of the family. And we would be wrong not to suggest that. But in the interim, you can't say because I'm black or Hispanic and poor, I can kill, rob, carjack, and do those things. And so the short-term is to take control of our community.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree with Chief Keith?

MAYOR JAMES: You've got to do that. That's the short-term solution, but in the long-term solution, we do have to recognize job opportunities have to be there, education has to be there. If we're dropping out 50 percent of our students in school, we can put a cop on every corner, we still don't close the gap, and so education, job opportunities, skill training, the family. Everyone talks about what the police and the mayor should do. I haven't heard anyone say about the parents yet.

MR. LEHRER: Well, Mayor Webb, while there's been a lot of talk in Washington before you all got here about the connection between what kids are watching on television and in the movies and hearing in rap songs and playing on video games, the connection between that and what they're doing on the streets, do you think it's a real, real concern? How important is it?

MAYOR WEBB: Well, I think it's important, but, you know, I just wholeheartedly agree with my friend, Sharpe James, the mayor of Newark. I mean, this is an epidemic, and you have to address it the same way you address an epidemic. You stabilize the patient first. And the way you do that --

MR. LEHRER: Take him to the emergency room first.

MAYOR MULLINS: This is an emergency.

MR. LEHRER: You've got it.

MAYOR WEBB: You address that by putting more police on the street to, to increase the level of comfort that people have in the community. You take away the excess guns. People say that, well, they say, well, guns are not the problem. I'm not saying anybody in America die by a drive by knifing. I'm not saying anybody in America die by a drive by rock throwing. People die in drive by shootings, and you need a gun to do that, so we need to address those issues, and then we need to deal with the long-term issues of the music, of the movies, of the repetition of people getting killed 240 times on, you know, inRobo Cop, or Die Hard 2, and those kinds of issues. But you got to tell with the parental responsibility. You got to deal with values. You got to deal with all those other issues, but you got to stabilize the patient first.

MR. LEHRER: Yes, Mayor Mullins.

MAYOR MULLINS: I was at a conference, and something very poignant to the media topic was said, recapping all of the violence with children as of late, and when they were asked why they did it, they said because it was fun. The answer to that, and maybe the crux of all of this was, when entertainment became violent, violence became entertainment. And we've got to put a stop to that. You know, our young people today have got to have people to look up to and do positive things, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, things of that nature.

MR. LEHRER: How important is that to you and your fellow police officers, Chief Keith, when you look at the causes of what's happening on your streets?

CHIEF KEITH: Well, we see crime in so many different ways much like an article that came out in Businessweek this week about the cost of crime, $450 billion, and this is a $22 billion crime bill, to try to hit at a lot of different issues, values, role models, much like the chiefs and the mayors have mentioned here tonight. We're very interested in education because we know that's the root cause. We've literally got a fire that needs to be suppressed. When you have 22,000 killings a year, there's an epidemic, and there is an epidemic in this country. When the Mississippi overflowed this summer, we had a problem. We had a disaster. We responded as c country. We're rebuilding communities. We've had 22,000 people killed in this country in one year. It's time to start rebuilding, and we have to do it across-the-board. It can't be a police function or a mayors function. It has to be parents, it has to be accountability, and most importantly, I think, is commitment.

MR. LEHRER: You know, the figures -- the figure that is being used in terms of the number of police officers that are needed in addition to ones already on is a hundred thousand. Does that figure make sense to you, Chief Bell?

CHIEF BELL: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: I'm talking nationally.

CHIEF BELL: Yes, it does, because once you break that out in terms of numbers of police in various cities across the city -- across the nation, it's not that many in numbers for each city individually. But if you properly -- even ten, fifteen, twenty can help us do some of the things that we need to do right now, and we need to have flexibility to put those on the streets now, rather than a year and a half later when all of this has lost all its steam. We need the flexibility of paying overtime to experienced police officers who are problem solvers, not a young police officer who feels that he can come out and arrest everyone in the community and make the difference, but an experienced police officer who knows how to work with families, who knows how to work with the justice system, and --

MR. LEHRER: And put them to work on an emergency basis, you mean?

CHIEF BELL: Yes, emergency, right now.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

CHIEF BELL: And I said the education piece and got it out of the way. I think that was important to put it on the table, but what we need in the police departments in America is some help right now and I would add hastily that we spent billions of dollars to fight a war. Maybe we only lost two or three hundred people there, but that same year we lost more than fifteen thousand, five hundred and ninety-nine African-American males on the streets in our cities. I wonder while those solders were over there fighting in fox holes, were they truly worried more about their families back home? And so I think America needs to belly up to the bar, put some money into the cities, not at the expense of other programs that we have, and, and get this job done. We cannot afford to put billions of dollars into foreign aid and put too little money on the table for American cities.

MR. LEHRER: Did you say what you just said to the President today? Did somebody say it just like that?

CHIEF BELL: We were pretty poignant.

MAYOR MULLINS: We did say it, yes.

MAYOR JAMES: But I think we've got to give the President credit though.

MAYOR MULLINS: Yes.

MAYOR JAMES: This President, why did we go to the President -- what was his response? This is a President whose leadership passed a Brady Bill when no one gave it a chance.

MR. LEHRER: Is that going to make a difference in your world?

MAYOR JAMES: It's a beginning.

MAYOR MULLINS: Yes. There's Brady Bill 2 coming along.

MAYOR JAMES: One, let's go back to assault weapons and semi -- and then if you want Sharp James, let's go to banning all manufactured weapons, assault weapons, and we don't have to go duck hunting with an uzi, but let's go even further. This President when they said NAFTA couldn't be passed, his leadership, and so I think what we're saying, we have a President who has demonstrated when he's committed to a task, he can get it done, and we're asking this President to work with us to get this violence and crime out of our society.

MR. LEHRER: You're a Republican.

MAYOR MULLINS: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: What are the politics of this?

MAYOR MULLINS: We are looking for bipartisan support. We have asked that, and we think the President is going to put it together for us, to have a meeting with leadership from both sides. This is an issue -- when someone is killed with a bullet, it does not have a Republican or Democratic name on it. I mean, death is death. And that's the, that's the issue here. That's why we're here.

MR. LEHRER: Is the Brady Bill going to make a difference in Knoxville, Tennessee, Chief?

CHIEF KEITH: Well, I think you can look at it having an impact like it would if we had more officers on the street. Certainly it's a minor inconvenience. As the attorney general mentioned, you have to have a license to get a car.

MR. LEHRER: You support licensing, you support going further?

CHIEF KEITH: Yes.

MAYOR JAMES: Oh, yes.

MR. LEHRER: Do you?

CHIEF BELL: Oh, yes, indeed.

CHIEF KEITH: If you look at a recent poll, we were talking about it earlier, that came out of Los Angeles today, 64 percent of those polled felt that stronger gun control legislation should be passed.

MR. LEHRER: Are people in Denver going to ever go for that though?

MAYOR WEBB: Yes. As a matter of fact, the Colorado legislature, we're a western state, heavy NRA membership within our state, passed a law prohibiting minors from having handguns. If we can do that in Colorado, I don't understand why there's a feeling in this town, the nation's capital, that these problems are insurmountable. It's my sense that Congress is not doing enough listening to what the people on the front line are hearing, which are mayors and police chiefs, and their constituents. I think they're going to hear it this recess. I think they're going to hear it because people are tired. They are afraid and they want to see some action, and they don't want authorization. They don't want an authorization bill that's not going to be meaningful because mayors and police chiefs are going to be saying this is not going to help us.

MR. LEHRER: So you're hopeful though, you're hopeful, Mayor James, that something is going to happen this time.

MAYOR JAMES: We failed with the stimulus package. Job opportunities, we didn't go the right way. Now we're seeing escalation of crime and just feelings of hopelessness and despair. Crime is everyone's problem, as the mayors said, black, white, rich, poor, small or large. Sleeping in a home, riding public transportation, anywhere you're not safe today, and we have to address that.

MR. LEHRER: Yes.

CHIEF BELL: I think that a further point, that those of us who ran to the suburbs from crime understand now that the crime is going up in the suburbs by 30 percent. Even we are not safe in this studio anymore because just as those people riding home to the suburbs on that train, they were Democrats, they were Republicans, they were Americans, being shot down on the streets, we, the police chiefs, want an opportunity to prevent that.

MR. LEHRER: Chief Keith, you and your fellow professional police officers have been saying this for several years now, and I think all of you would agree that not much has happened as a result. You've come to Washington. You obviously felt it was important to come here today, go to the White House, come on this program, do your thing. Do you feel -- are you going to go home to Knoxville feeling better than you did when you got here?

CHIEF KEITH: I was committed when I got here because I feel like that regardless of where the fingerpointing goes to about crime, we've got to pull it altogether because all it's going to do is just simply tear us further apart if we don't. It's going to demoralize the families even further but I think the President meeting with us today accepted the challenge when he moved it up to the top of the agenda. I know in that room he lifted everybody's heart.

MR. LEHRER: He did. Did you feel it?

CHIEF BELL: Yes.

MAYOR MULLINS: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: Why? What was it that he said particularly, Chief Keith, that turned you on?

CHIEF KEITH: Well, he heard from chiefs and mayors. He heard chiefs talking about education, treatment, rehabilitation. He heard mayors talking about crime suppression activities. I think it was an upheaval. He feels and senses that we're sincere. And hearing us talk about care for children, rehabilitation, treatment.

MR. LEHRER: And hearing police officers talk that way about education?

CHIEF BELL: Yes, about education.

MAYOR JAMES: Jim, a very powerful message that we care, after he just welcomed the report from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the press left, and for close to one hour, a President sat and listened, heartfelt to the problems of America.

MR. LEHRER: I didn't realize that.

MAYOR MULLINS: Yes, yes.

CHIEF BELL: Indeed, these recommendations we spent months putting this together, poring through it, task forces, leaving our jobs, running all over America, following this agenda, and we think that we put together a good package, a good strategy. He said so, and we believe as partners, we are powerful allies and the congress with him to get things that he's hearing from the public every day.

MR. LEHRER: I'm hearing now that we have to go. Mayors, chiefs, thank you for being with us. Good luck.

MR. MacNeil: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the man behind the Nobel Prizes. CONVERSATION

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, the man behind the Nobel Prizes which will be awarded tomorrow in Stockholm. They were established 92 years as a cash award for people who had given the greatest service to mankind. The winners of tomorrow's awards will get $830,000. But more than the cash, a Nobel Prize has come to be the most prestigious award in the world. The man responsible, Alfred Nobel, is the subject of a new biography by Kenne Fant. The author spoke recently with Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: This is the man who gave the world the Nobel Prize, Alfred Nobel. He was born in Stockholm in 1833 and was determined to escape the poverty of his childhood. Educated in St. Petersburg, in the United States, he turned from engineering to chemistry. Working in laboratories like these in the early 1860s, Nobel invented a product that would not only ensure his escape from poverty but would change the world. It was called dynamite. Within a few years, Nobel had become one of the world's richest and most powerful men, industrialist, pacifist, arms manufacturer, and poet. Yet, the world knows little about him other than his prize. Now, one of his countrymen is trying to change all that. We caught up with Kenne Fant in the library of the Swedish embassy in Washington. There, he introduced us to his new book on Alfred Nobel, guiding us through pages and pictures that fill out the very sketchy portrait of one of Sweden's most famous names but one of its most enigmatic characters.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Kenne Fant, thank you for joining us.

KENNE FANT: I am happy to be here.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In writing the biography of Alfred Nobel, you've undertaken a project that seeks to shed some light on the dual nature of the man who both created the Nobel Prizes, but who also was known as the "king of dynamite." Some people have even referred to him as the "merchant of death" who built a fortune by finding new ways to kill and mutilate. Was it to assuage his conscience that he created the Nobel Prizes, or was that about something else?

KENNE FANT: He was sitting in his laboratory in Paris, April 12, 1888, when he opened the French newspaper "Le Figaro" and he read an obituary about himself. In reality, it was his brother, Ludwig, who has died, but the journalist was very confused. He thought it was Alfred Nobel, and he wrote in the newspaper, "Alfred Nobel, this salesman of death, has invented many new means to kill people." Alfred Nobel was horrified, terrified. And he said to himself, shall people in the future remember me like a salesman or merchant, as he said, of death? And in that very moment, April 12, 1888, he created the Nobel Foundation and the Nobel Prizes.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Had he always been an idealist, or was it that -- was that the sort of critical moment where something changed?

KENNE FANT: I can say he has always been an idealist, and for me that is the character which fascinated me most, was that he was at the same time an idealist in the boarding room and at the same time he was the creator and at the same time he was the creator for this dynamite imperium with 93 factories spread all over the globe, and how he tried to care about his employees all the time. He introduced free medical care, pensions, and schooling for the employees' children, and his colleagues in the industrial life hated him for that because he was loyal. But he said you see well satisfied employees produced more, therefore, it is a good and profitable policy in the long run, and I think that is wonderful. You can hear that today.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Was "merchant of death" too harsh a judgment?

KENNE FANT: The 90 percent of his explosives were used for peaceful process, to create buildings and roads and havens and so on, and only 10 percent for the war, and he hated war. He said war is the most terrible crime and he hated all, hated all kinds of violence. But it is very interesting because he never tried to, to defend himself because he said I don't want to defend myself, I'm an inventor, and also he said, it is the politicians and the generals who started the war, not the scientists.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: My reading of the work that we have done on this man suggests that he was tormented, he was morose, he was gloomy, he was even cruel.

KENNE FANT: First of all, we must remember that in his private life he was so sad and disappointed because he was a very lonely man, and it was only one woman in his life that he really loved, and that was Berta Kinski, then Berta Potsetner, the future -- after his death and the author of Lay Down Your Arms. That woman he just loved, he had a high esteem for, the only woman of the world he has a high esteem. He wanted to marry her. She was so embarrassed when he looked at her and she said, you see, and she tried to do it as tactfully as possible, she said, you see, Dr. Nobel, I am engaged, and that was a terrible disappointment to him.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You describe a man who seemed very despondent about life. Can you tell me about that aspect of his personality.

KENNE FANT: You see, if I understood him right, he was only happy in his work, because he was what we call today a workaholic. He was working 15, 16 hours a day, very often without rest, without food, because he started in the boarding room with the directors and then he went to his laboratory, and there he stayed until three, four, even five o'clock in the morning with his experiments, and there he was happy. There was a full life that he was living, but in the boarding room, he hated all these protocols and contracts and discussions with financial people. He just did it because he had to earn money to make experiments.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How much direction did he give to how the prize should be handled?

KENNE FANT: Yes. He wrote three testaments, three wills in Paris, and the last was he signed at the Swedish Club in Paris just one year before he died, 1895. And there he said a very important thing, I think, because he said, my prizes shall be given to the most worthy, being Scandinavian or not, because he was a real internationalist, and that is reflected in his instructions for the Nobel Prizes. He was a world citizen, and he wanted that the Nobel Prizes should be prizes of the world citizen.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: If he were alive today, would he be your good friend?

KENNE FANT: That's a rather interesting question because I have enormous sympathy for Dr. Nobel. I really like him. I am feeling sad for him because he was childless and without woman and so on, but I think he is to me an archetype for all people, especially in the financial worlds, and the financial markets, because he never cheated, he never, ever cheated, he never lied.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So you're saying he was a man who had it all and had nothing?

KENNE FANT: Exactly. Instead of being active in his life's drama, he was a spectator. That is the key.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Kenne Fant, thank you for joining us.

KENNE FANT: Thank you. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, President Clinton said the American people were tired of violent crime and ready to do something about it. He promised to consider a six-point plan proposed by a task force of mayors and police chiefs, and the shuttle "Endeavour" astronauts completed repairs on the Hubble Space Telescope.

MR. MacNeil: We close tonight with President Clinton's official welcome to the holiday season. Today the President continued a longstanding tradition of lighting the national Christmas tree, and yesterday he marked the start of the Jewish holiday, Chanukah. Students from the Washington Jewish community brought him a homemade menorah that holds holiday candles. The ceremony was the first official lighting of a menorah at the White House.

[LIGHTING OF MENORAH CEREMONY AT WHITE HOUSE]

MR. MacNeil: Late this afternoon, the holiday center of attention in Washington shifted to the lighting of the national Christmas tree on the ellipse across from the White House. It began with some Christmas music. [NATIONAL CHRISTMAS TREE LIGHTING CEREMONY]

PRESIDENT CLINTON: In this pageant of peace we come together in the spirit of our better selves, wishing that somehow, some way we could feel the way we feel tonight and in this Christmas season every day, all year long. Because of all the difficulties we have had in the United States in these last couple of years, with violence in our land, affecting not only adults but more and more of our children, I ask tonight at this pageant of peace that we pray in this Christmas season that we be given the wisdom and the courage, the heart, the renewed sense of common humanity to do what we can to bring more peace to the streets, the homes, and the hearts of our own people and especially our children. That is something that would be perfectly consistent with the faith and the life we celebrate tonight, something we could take out of this Christmas season that would be the greatest gift we could ever give to ourselves, to our children, and to our beloved land. Thank you. God bless you all, and now I'd like to ask my family to come up and help me to light the Christmas tree.

[LIGHTING OF NATIONAL CHRISTMAS TREE -- JOY TO THE WORLD PLAYING]

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night with Mark Shields and some political talk, among other things. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.