The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth in New York. After our summary of the news this Tuesday, we look at the latest developments in the politics of abortion, then Tom Bearden measures the growth of anti-government sentiment in the West. Next, we get reaction to the Supreme Court decision about drug testing for student athletes, and we close with a Richard Rodriguez essay about the people of California. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: Trade talks between the United States and Japan moved down to the wire today. U.S. Trade Rep. Mickey Kantor met with his Japanese counterpart in Geneva to try to further open Japan's auto market. The U.S. has threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on Japanese luxury cars if no agreement is reached by tomorrow. President Clinton said in Oregon today he will not back down from that threat. He spoke at a West Coast economic development conference. The President denied the U.S. was engaging in protectionism.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I am not trying to launch a new era of protectionism, but we have tried now for two or three decades to open this market, and this is the last major block to developing a sensible global economic policy. If the United States is going to lower its deficit in ways that promote growth and raise incomes, then the rest of the world has to also make their economic adjustments because we can't deficit spend the world into prosperity anymore. The bottom line is we want to open the markets for American products, and we will take action, if necessary, in the form of sanctions. We hope it will not be necessary.

MR. LEHRER: U.S. tariffs would be imposed on $5.9 billion worth of Japanese autos. Japanese officials said they would ask the World Trade Organization to declare such sanctions unfair. Elizabeth.

MS. FARNSWORTH: President Clinton has again defended his policy of returning boat people to Cuba. He did so in a recorded speech to Cuban-Americans. Mr. Clinton said he understood many Cuban- Americans opposed his position but he said, "We simply cannot admit all Cubans who seek to come here." He said the U.S. has admitted 15,000 legal Cuban immigrants since last September, many more than previous years. The U.S. Coast Guard today intercepted 41 Haitian refugees at sea and returned them to Haiti. A Coast Guard spokesman said the refugees were trying to reach Miami. He said their boat was taking on water and in danger of sinking. It was the first interception of Haitian boat people since April.

MR. LEHRER: The space shuttle Atlantis was launched into space this afternoon from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It had been delayed several days by bad weather. The seven-member crew will dock with the Russian space station Mir, the first such mission in 20 years. Atlantis will drop off two Russian cosmonauts and return with an American and two Russians who have been aboard Mir for the past three years. The Smithsonian Institution's Enola Gay exhibit opens tomorrow in Washington. It contains portions of the B-29 bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima 50 years ago. The display was scaled back following criticism from veterans' groups and members of Congress. The exhibit drew protesters today, claiming it was now too bland.

MS. FARNSWORTH: That concludes our summary of today's news. Now it's on to the politics of abortion, anti-government anger, drug tests for student athletes, and a Richard Rodriguez essay. FOCUS - ABORTION POLITICS

MR. LEHRER: We go first tonight to the politics of abortion. The Republican takeover of the House and Senate has given new leverage to anti-abortion supporters. Since January, Republicans have been working on a variety of legislative fronts to limit abortions. Our coverage begins with this backgrounder by Kwame Holman.

SEN. ROBERT SMITH, [R] New Hampshire: [June 22] Let me focus my remarks this afternoon on just how extreme -- I emphasize the word extreme -- Dr. Foster's abortion policy views are.

KWAME HOLMAN: During the debate on Dr. Henry Foster's nomination to be surgeon general, the focus frequently turned from his qualifications to the issue of abortion. On the Senate floor, New Hampshire Republican Bob Smith outraged some Foster supporters with a dramatic presentation about late-term abortion procedure.

SEN. ROBERT SMITH: This is a child. Now, Dr. Foster said he never performed a late-term abortion, and I have no reason to doubt that. I don't know. That's the statement that he made, and I'm not accusing him of performing late-term abortions, but he's not blocking them either. So whether you commit a murder, if you're not a murderer but you don't stop one from committing a murder, I think you can draw the conclusion.

SEN. CAROL MOSLEY-BRAUN, [D] Illinois: To bring that kind of graphic depiction of ugliness on this floor I think only, only serves the purpose of inflaming people around an issue that really inflames and divides the American people and frankly that does go to the heart of the opposition's extreme agenda here.

MR. HOLMAN: Just two weeks before the Foster debate, a House Judiciary Subcommittee had wrangled over abortion as lawmakers took up legislation that would outlaw the late-term procedure called partial birth abortion by opponents.

REP. HENRY HYDE, [R] Illinois: [June 15] I believe there is a use for the government, sometimes a unique use, and when a pregnant woman, who should be the natural protector of her child in the womb becomes her child's deadly adversary, the government ought to intercede to protect the weak. And there's nothing weaker than a defenseless pre-born child.

REP. BARNEY FRANK, [D] Massachusetts: The gentleman from Illinois has given with his usual eloquence his objection to any form of abortion whatsoever, and that's relevant because this is the first step in a sincere effort by some people who believe all abortion should be outlawed, and they cannot be allowed because the Supreme Court will not be made to change its position, they should be made as unavailable as possible.

MR. HOLMAN: That same day on the House floor members were finishing debate on defense spending, but the most heated fight wasn't over Stealth bombers or nuclear submarines. It was over abortion. Many Republicans called for reinstating a ban on abortion services at U.S. military hospitals abroad.

REP. RON LEWIS, [R] Kentucky: [June 15] Military medical personnel are there to keep soldier, sailors, airmen, and Marines, and their families alive and well. They did not join the military to advance a liberal social agenda. The military sometimes has to take a life in defense of our country; they should not have to take the life of an innocent baby.

MR. HOLMAN: During the debate, dissenters, mostly Democrats, tried to kill the anti-abortion language.

REP. RICHARD DURBIN, [D] Illinois: Mr. Chairman, let me tell you what this debate is really all about. Some of the most radical leaders in the new Republican majority are determined to end the right to choose for American women and their first target is women in the military. Today they oppose the right of American women in the military to be treated with the same rights and dignity as every other American woman.

MR. HOLMAN: In the end, the House voted to go along with the abortion ban at overseas military hospitals, and the congressional battle over abortion is just beginning. The House could vote tonight on a bill that would bar U.S. funding of international organizations that promote or perform abortions. Tomorrow a group of liberal House members will introduce a measure that reasserts the current legal protections for abortion.

MR. LEHRER: Now, four views of this. Congresswoman Pat Schroeder, Democrat of Colorado, is a key sponsor of the abortion rights legislation that will be introduced tomorrow. Congressman Tom Coburn is a freshman, a Republican from Oklahoma. He's an obstetrician and gynecologist by profession. Ann Lewis is a vice president at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. And Helen Alvare is the director of pro life activities at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Congresswoman Schroeder, what's going on from your perspective? Why do you think this new legislation that you're introducing is needed?

REP. PATRICIA SCHROEDER, [D] Colorado: [Capitol Hill] Well, because every single day there seems to be a tremendous erosion in women's rights. They seem to be coming at it from all angles, and the real bottom line is they want to do away with a woman's right to choose. It becomes government as nanny. Government wants to come in and dictate how OB-GYN's are going to run their practice, how hospitals are going to do procedures, what's going to happen here, what's going to happen there, and we really see this in a massive reverse. I fear women are going to wake up and find out they were just road kill in this whole new Republican takeover of the Congress. And we're trying to say wake up now, draw a line in the sand, and say, these are our rights, and we don't want the Congress playing with them.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Coburn, what is happening from your perspective? Is she right? Is this a part of a drive to stop a woman's right to choice from your perspective?

REP. TOM COBURN, [R] Oklahoma: [Capitol Hill] Well, my personal perspective, I don't think that's the case. I think the very specific issues that we talked about and what we were sent here as freshman congressmen, myself, one of them, is to raise the level of debate about the issue, and for example, the partial birth abortion. You know, there are a lot of other ways to terminate a pregnancy than that method, and that is a typically heinous method that lends itself to the convenience of an abortionist but not necessarily to the safety of the mother. So there are a lot of issues, that what we want to do is draw attention to the fact that in my opinion as a medical physician this is life, and although abortion may be legal, what we want to do is draw attention to the fact that maybe it is legal but in this instance it is cruel, cruel methods of terminating life which we can't stand.

MR. LEHRER: But is Congresswoman Schroeder right that the overall goal here is to restrict the use of abortions, period, is that correct?

REP. COBURN: No, I wouldn't agree with that either. I think that what the real issue is, is for us to change the abortion debate to one where the debate really needs to be, and that's -- the problem in this country is unintended pregnancy. And as long as we fail to focus on that issue, then we're going to continue to be caught up in the abortion debate and, and not solve the problem. The problem is, is if we didn't have unintended pregnancies, we wouldn't be having this debate on your show right now.

MR. LEHRER: Congresswoman Schroeder, what's wrong with that?

REP. SCHROEDER: Listen, I am all for family planning. I think that that really is a very important part of it, and I wish we could all move onto that whole front. But Tom, I believe you went over and testified against Dr. Foster, who was really out trying to lead the whole fight about teen pregnancies and different things that were going on. I mean, people are saying one thing but they're doing another. I think it's very critical that we realize that this right, this right to choose and family planning too are all getting chipped away at. That's really what's happening, no matter what they say. It's incrementalism, and it's chop, chop, chop, and suddenly you're going to find out the right has fallen like a big massive tree.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Coburn, do you feel that you were sent here by your voters in Oklahoma to, on this issue, I mean, to do something about this issue? Is this part of your mandate?

REP. COBURN: No, not necessarily part of my mandate, but I -- you know, I can't in good conscience -- this is a moral issue with me that I discussed with the voters before I ever ran, and they knew my stands on this, and I would, you know, I would like to address what the -- Rep. Schroeder had to say. The fact is, is Henry Foster's nomination, if you look at his program and the inconsistencies and also outright untruths in his testimony, when it's measured against, did it promote lessening of pregnancies among teenagers, it doesn't stand the test of the one study that was done on it. No. 2 is, is in fact what we want to teach and what we want the "family planning" to be is abstinence-based education, because that's the only sound policy that, in fact, will save our children. We have an epidemic that is unheard of in this country's history ever before in terms of sexually transmitted disease. We have -- in all the family planning funds that have been allocated since 1970, there is not one study to show that, in fact, it has lessened abortion, lessened teenage pregnancy, lessened sexually transmitted disease, and as a matter of fact, the studies that have been done show that they've increased 'em, so the point being is, is where is the medical expertise, and those of us who truly have experience in dealing with children and want to talk about the abstinence issue and offer something that's not only healthy physically for the adolescents that we're going to be encountering but also healthy for them spiritually and emotionally as well, and I think that is one issue that is oftentimes not discussed and not brought out in the "family planning" discussion.

MR. LEHRER: Are you saying then that the Democrats will not engage on that issue?

REP. COBURN: Well, I think when they engage on it, they engage on it abstinence but, and abstinence but is a failed policy, and we have all the statistics to show that.

MR. LEHRER: Congresswoman Schroeder.

REP. SCHROEDER: Well, obviously, every parent hopes that children are going to engage in abstinence, but I think you have to also say that if they decide that they're going to go ahead with sex, and they're probably not going to come ask you about it, you've got to tell them the risk, you've got to tell them about sexually transmitted disease, you should tell them about how to protect themselves. You not only ought to be telling young women but you ought to be telling young men about the responsibility they should be assuming for bringing a child into this world, but you also should be assuring women, women who at the turn of the century, when this century first began, there were more women dying in child birth than we had soldiers dying in World War I. Now why was that? Pregnancy was very risky then, and we've moved a long way to saying we also take into account the life of the mother and her condition in the future. And I've been very proud of how OB-GYN's have moved in that direction, and we've gotten family planning, safe and adequate family planning for married couples and many others. And I think we ought to be putting all of that out there, and we as members of Congress should not be looking over doctors' shoulders. We should be assuming that they've been doing a good job in this area and trying to micromanage their practice. And I think that's what we're starting to do. I really question after Dr. Foster's nomination being turned down if we can have anybody that will pass the, the litmus test they put in there unless maybe it's a podiatrist, a foot doctor, or something.

MR. LEHRER: Let me bring Ms. Alvare and Ms. Lewis into this. Ms. Alvare, from your perspective, just politically, do you feel like the, that your side, the anti-abortion side, is, has really come into the driver's seat in Congress right now?

HELEN ALVARE, National Conference of Catholic Bishops: In some ways, yes. What you're seeing is a response to two phenomena. One is the fact that the Clinton administration took the government beginning say at the beginning of his term so forcefully into siding with abortion, wanting to put abortion as a mandated part of federal health care, pledging to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, making Medicaid pay for all kinds of abortions, federal funding for embryo research, fetal tissue research, I could go on, he pushed the government, and, therefore, the people, the taxpayers so dramatically into the abortion arena. What you're seeing now is a corrective, in some ways at least making the government neutral on abortion, like not having military hospitals involved. What you're also seeing is a response to decades of a discussion of abortion as if the only thing that mattered was preserving choice; human life wasn't as high a stake; as if the only thing that mattered were the circumstances of a woman who wanted to have an abortion. What you saw missing from that debate was a reflection on the moral question: What value do you we ascribe to the unborn?

MR. LEHRER: And you think that's now in the debate in Congress as a result of the --

MS. ALVARE: Very much in the debate.

MR. LEHRER: -- '94 elections?

MS. ALVARE: Well, we did have a gain, a net gain of 45 pro-life votes. No pro-life incumbent lost, and pro-life candidates coming in gave us a net gain of 45. And I want to point out that it's a bipartisan phenomena. We had 43 Democratic votes on the ban on abortions in military hospitals, which surprises me when I hear the President then calling people of his own party radical and extremists on the same day that Mother Theresa was with his wife. So what we're seeing now is a corrective of these past extremisms, I would say.

MR. LEHRER: Ann Lewis, is it a corrective of past extremism? ANN LEWIS, Planned Parenthood: No, unfortunately, and let me associate myself here with Congresswoman Schroeder and with Congressman Barney Frank, who we heard earlier, who is my brother, so it's always a pleasure to be able to come along and agree with him, but what we clearly see here are people whose agenda, and it is Helen's agenda as well, is that all abortions should be illegal, and because they know that is politically unpopular, what they're now trying to do is to achieve it step by step. If you go back and listen to what we just heard about the legislation that Kwame Holman talked about, you think of these things: One, each of these bill's targets are a particularly vulnerable group of women, but it's not an overt attack. This is not an attempt to pass a constitutional amendment that would affect everybody.

MR. LEHRER: Give me an example of what you mean.

MS. LEWIS: Family planning overseas, who could be more vulnerable than the women of Bangladesh, than women who die every day, who are sickened, because they don't have access to safe maternal care and to birth control, family planning? We know that, again, in nations around the world making family planning available, accessible, has meant a great step forward for women's health.

MR. LEHRER: So the point being if legislation was offered to ban family planning in the United States, it would never pass, but it would if it affects Bangladesh?

MS. LEWIS: And that's what we're saying.

MS. ALVARE: Could I --

MR. LEHRER: Just a second, please.

MS. LEWIS: I just want to repeat that we do not use federal funds overseas for abortion, so that's already in the law. What this legislation would do would punish providers of family planning services that also even tell patients they have the option of an abortion, so it's taking the gag rule which people saw here in this country and taking it overseas. And I just want to go on and say that while we are seeing step by step vulnerable women, women who choose to serve their country in the military and are now being told that if they are overseas serving all of us and have to have an abortion, they're going to have to fly back to this country. So, again, step by step vulnerable women, not everyone, and the net effect is to diminish women's health, whether they are in the military, whether they are federal employees, whether potentially they are women who are the victims of rape or incest, and, again, I can't think of women who would be much more vulnerable, who may lose their ability to terminate their pregnancy. That's really what's at stake here.

MR. LEHRER: Is Ann Lewis right, Ms. Alvare, that what you're -- that what your side is -- wants to do is to eventually make it impossible to have an abortion, and you're doing it step by step? Is she right about that?

MS. ALVARE: It's been the preeminent strategy of groups like Planned Parenthood, Rep. Schroeder, and others to avoid the bills at issue in order to try and tell people that what we're after is some cataclysmic hypothetical future. The strategy here is to avoid people's reflection on the partial birth abortion, to avoid people's reflection on forcing medical schools to do abortion. I have not yet heard from my opponents a response as to why a partial birth abortion would be humane for --

MR. LEHRER: I was asking you what your strategy was.

MS. ALVARE: It is to ban the partial birth abortion, because we saw that arguments being made for abortion were beginning to be advanced to justify infanticide, and the partial birth abortion comes close to that, if it is not that, because the child is mostly delivered when killed, and so we really are right here in this bill attempting to do what the bill says, which is to prevent abortion arguments from slipping further over into making arguments for infanticide.

MS. LEWIS: I'm a bit stunned. Maybe my microphone isn't working, but I thought what I talked about was a very specific bill, Department of Defense, women who are overseas being denied the right to -- with their own money -- to have a medical procedure that is safe, that is legal, that is constitutionally protected, and by, for example, forcing women in that position to fly back to this country for their health care, delaying the process, again, a diminution of women's health, international family planning, again, at the expense of some of the most vulnerable women, federal employees, women who have been the victims of rape and incest who might in this Congress be victimized again. All of those are very specific. I'll be happy to take the last one, but could we at least talk about what I did mention?

MR. LEHRER: What about those two specifics?

MS. ALVARE: I'm happy to address them, and again I'd love to hear a response on the partial birth, since that's rarely forthcoming. On the grounds of not involving the federal government, not having the federal government represent that somehow abortion and live births are morally equivalent, that is why we choose to have the federal government not have abortions at military hospitals. And Ann knows as well as I do that the government flies them back on the first available basis on a military plane if they really want an abortion. With regard --

MS. LEWIS: But isn't that government involvement? It's okay if the government flies them back, or do you think that the federal plane shouldn't be involved?

MS. ALVARE: They'll fly them back for anything, whether it's an abortion or something else. The woman doesn't even have to tell them why they're going back. But having military hospitals do it has the government represent that healing and killing are morally equivalent. With regard to the family planning bill, again, she knows as well as I do on this that money that is taken from one family planning clinic under this amendment on the grounds that it is sort of freeing up some more of their money to get involved in abortion will simply be given to another family planning clinic for family planning, and it won't really diminish the amount of funds that are going. It will mean that her organization won't get as much however.

MR. LEHRER: Let's go back to the Hill, to the two members of Congress. Congresswoman Schroeder, I mean, are you, are you going to lose this one? I mean, is what happened as a result of the '94 elections, do you feel that, that your side, the pro-choice side is, is going to, is going to lose?

REP. SCHROEDER: Yes, sir. We have lost every single one that has come to the floor. We really do feel like road kill. And that's why it's so serious, and that's why we're introducing a bill tomorrow.

MR. LEHRER: But if -- are the votes -- are the votes there for your bill?

REP. SCHROEDER: I don't think the votes are here for the bill. What we're saying is we want to see which members of Congress are going to stand up for a woman's right to choose; they're going to stand up to stay we don't want the gag rule coming back; they're going to stand up and say people who are on the armed services overseas ought to have the same rights that they're defending overseas. We're trying to put that all down to say this is it and this is wrong, and let people then at home find out where their members of Congress really are.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Coburn, is abortion now going to become a major issue in the '96 elections, do you believe?

REP. COBURN: Well, I think it's already an issue in the country if you look at the most recent polls. If you look at 'em in kind of a way that says who thinks abortion ought to be accessible at all times for any reason, it's less than a third of the people in this country believe that, so what -- I think what you're seeing in Congress is a shift and an awakening of the American public in terms of not to confuse health care with the right to choose for an abortion. One is the taking of a life and the other is health care, and those are not the same issue, and I think it's -- the American public has awakened to that, and I think, in fact, in '96, you'll see more pro-life candidates that run and are elected to continue to change this.

MR. LEHRER: You agree, Ann Lewis, that abortion is going to be a big deal in '96, particularly at the presidential level, if not, at the congressional level?

MS. LEWIS: I think it is. Clearly, the Foster nomination succeeded in moving this on to the front pages. Let me be clear that I think what happened in 1994 was not that the issue of right to choose, the right to make your own decisions, lost support at the polls, but it had lost salience. An awful lot of Americans thought, oh, good, we put that one behind us, now let's think about other issues. And what's happened with the extremism of the bills we've seen right now is that people do understand that something very valuable is at risk. You know, the word abortion never appeared in the Contract With America. Some of us thought we found it by reference and were told, oh, no, that was a mistake, that was not what this one is about. So now that the -- it can be -- the extent of this agenda has been made available I think it's going to be very much a matter for the election.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman.

REP. COBURN: Well, I think it's interesting when you talk about partial birth abortions, and what we're talking about is myself as a physician, if I deliver spontaneously a 24-week baby and don't do everything in the world to save its life, then I can be held accountable for that by my peers for malpractice. But, in fact, it occurs every day in this country that a 26-week baby, gestational age babies, babies that are viable outside of the womb, are being terminated by this procedure. And so -- and that's the facts as we know them. There's a lot of rhetoric that goes with statistics other than that, but when you talk to the people that invented this procedure, Dr. Haskell and Dr. McMahon, they readily admit to perform those procedures at those times. So, in fact, we're taking viable female and viable male children and terminating their lives through a partial birth abortion.

MR. LEHRER: Let me just ask Ms. Alvare just finally, you -- are you all prepared for '96 as a big -- as a big election issue?

MS. ALVARE: We don't take stands on candidates, but we know abortion has been an election issue in every election. We also know, and that's why it's surprising to see President Clinton thinking that it's a winning issue on the side he's taking -- we know that pro-life voters, two to one, out-vote those who vote on abortion on the other side of this issue. It is always on average a 45 percent advantage to be pro-life. And we're very surprised, and that's independent surveys for the last four or five elections. With the Foster nomination process really we felt that there was a tremendous gain made by the pro-life movement, and it probably will influence the election, because here you had a doctor having to apologize for abortions, having to say he performed a few, having to call them abhorrent, and we think that was a big victory.

MR. LEHRER: Yes, Congresswoman Schroeder.

REP. SCHROEDER: It's hard for me to sit in my seat and listen to all of this. Look, what he was doing was perfectly legal. What he was doing was something to help his patient, a woman, a woman whose life could have been in jeopardy. I find it pretty amazing that people are saying that women are such witches that they will go in, they'll wait till the last minute, they'll try and have these terrible procedures done, and the doctors will accommodate them. The doctors I know do this very rarely and do this only when the woman's life is in jeopardy too, or the fetus can't possibly live because of such severe deformities and to go further, it would be a real problem. We have all sorts of testimony on this, and so trying to demonize this and almost bring back the whole idea of women as witches I think strongly, if you're going to talk about life, let's talk about the life of the mother too, let's talk about the medical profession, who has some very serious ethical standards, and we should salute them.

MR. LEHRER: And we have to leave it there. Thank you all four very much.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Still to come, fear of federal agents, drug tests for student athletes, and a Richard Rodriguez essay. FOCUS - FED UP!

MS. FARNSWORTH: Next, a look at why so many people are angry about the way federal agents do their jobs. It's an anger that burst upon the national radar screen after the bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City. Tom Bearden went to Idaho to find out what's behind it.

GENE HUSSEY, Rancher: [talking to horse] Come on here. Come on.

TOM BEARDEN: Gene Hussey has lived in Idaho all of his life, except for a stint in the army in World War II.

GENE HUSSEY: [talking to his horse] Yeah. How about that -- huh -- what do you say?

MR. BEARDEN: These days he sometimes feels like he's at war again with his own government. In March, he had a confrontation with three agents of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service who were looking for the bullet that had killed an endangered wolf that had been shot on his property. He says he spotted them from across a creek as they were climbing over his gate. He told them to stop.

GENE HUSSEY: So anyway, they just kept a comin', so I just, I just tossed that rock over there easy, and it hit the edge of the hill, and he said, "Did you throw a rock at me?" And I says, "Did it hit you?" And he says, "No," but he just charged across that creek and stood right there, and I was about three feet on the bank, you know, and I started to tip his hat in, and I pushed it back on his head, and I said, "You come any closer," I said, "we'll both be in that creek," and I says, "then you can drown me." "Oh, I wouldn't drown you, Mr. Hussey," he says. And I says, "Well, what if I wound up drowning you?" Well, then his sidekick over here started. He says, "Oh, you subsidized farmers," and then I, I mean, I just went off my gourd, and then spouted a little bit, and then he calmed down, he says, "Well, if you don't like the way we're doin' this, why don't you go to another country?" There's where they really got in trouble. Well, then I says, "Listen, buddy," I says, "I went through World War II through five major battles, I'm a silver star man," and I said, "what in the hell did you do for the country?"

MR. BEARDEN: Government agents hotly dispute Hussey's account, but stories like this are being told and re-told across the West as people vent their anger with the federal government and its representatives in the field: The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. In the little town of Clayton, about 50 miles from Hussey's ranch, people gather at the Mercantile after work for a beer and conversation. Most are miners and loggers who work on the public land. They're angry because they believe their jobs are threatened by changing federal policies designed to protect the land and endangered species.

ALLEN ANDERSON, Logger: The environmentalists have rode in on the back of the owl and the back of the fish which they didn't care nothing about. This was merely a pawn. These people have their own agenda, and we are used, we're used.

DAVE BERGEY, Mine Forester: We're being told that the pristine nature of the area is worth more to the nation than our -- than what we produce, and we're not buyin' into that at all. We've taken good care of this country, we're proud of it, and we resent the fact that they're comin' in here and squeezin' us out. That's what they're tryin' to do to provide leisure time for people from urban areas.

MR. BEARDEN: Theyalso believe the government doesn't respect their views.

MARILYN BROWER: I think what's the most aggravating thing is that people in other places look at the West like we're all ignorant, rubes, is that what we were called?

BOB LOUCKS, County Agent, Lemhi County: [talking to rancher] Should be plenty.

MR. BEARDEN: Bob Loucks is a county agent. He spends most of his time helping ranchers cope with new federal policy. He says people were terrified earlier this year when two environmental organizations filed a lawsuit that resulted in a federal injunction that would have suspended all grazing, mining, and logging activity on Forest Service land. Loucks says the town of Salmon is so utterly dependent on the use of that land that it just about dried up as a result.

BOB LOUCKS: All of a sudden, people quit spending money. You talked to the businessmen in town and they said the town just died, because the uncertainty about what the future holds for people, and so there was a lot of tension at the time.

MR. BEARDEN: Salmon's economy is back to normal now. The injunction was dismissed, but the tension remains. While the people at the Clayton Merc were complaining, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt was touring Rocky Mountain National Park after a spring snowstorm. More than any other federal official, Babbitt seems to be a lightning rod for a lot of rural anger. A westerner, himself, he has been bitterly attacked for trying to raise grazing fees. Babbitt thinks western discontent is more complicated than unhappiness with land policy.

BRUCE BABBITT, Secretary of the Interior: Most westerners are, you know, a little kind of angry about bureaucracy and the deficit and about the perception that our living standards are declining and that it's a less secure world now that we're out in an international marketplace. Now, those kinds of frustrations are shared widely across the United States, but I don't think they're rooted in public land policy, and I think that, in my experience, it is just a really tiny fraction of radicals and malcontents, in some cases being subsidized by mining and timber companies who are purporting to speak for people, but I really don't think that in the grassroots you're going to find that's a major factor.

MR. BEARDEN: Bob Piva says he's no radical or malcontent. His family has ranched on this land near Challis for three generations. In his dealings with the government over the environmental effects of grazing his cattle on public land, he has often found officials to be capricious.

BOB PIVA, Rancher: In discussion with the rain specialist for the Forest Service, it was obvious that he didn't have any answers. He contradicted himself several times, but in the end, with 50 people standing around watching, his final reply was to stomp his feet and say because we say so. Federal agencies have gotten out of the land management business, and they're in the land control business now.

MR. BEARDEN: The people at the Clayton Mercantile think the government wants to exert more control over them too. They think land use agencies are arming more and more of their personnel.

MARILYN BROWER: Fish cops, we always joked about it. Now, the Forest Service has armed federal agents, oh, the tree cops, okay. Now we have --

MAN: Sagebrush cops.

MARILYN BROWER: -- the BLM -- and why are these people armed?

MR. BEARDEN: In fact, the number of armed officers in the Land Management Agency grew steadily through the early 90's, before dropping back somewhat due to budget cuts. People also feel threatened when any federal agency uses weapons. There's been a lot of conversation about the confrontation between federal law enforcement agencies and white supremacist Randy Weaver in August of 1992. A federal marshal, Weaver's 13-year-old son, and his wife were killed during an 11-day siege at a cabin on Ruby Ridge in remote Northern Idaho. The government had been seeking Weaver's arrest on charges of selling two sawed-off shotguns to undercover agents.

ALLEN ANDERSON: When the SWAT teams show up and the guns come out, when you start doing that, it cause violence. These people come unraveled. The sheriff could have went up there with a bullhorn, talked to them people, they could have talked it out, and nobody would have been killed. And as a result, innocent people were killed in both cases, and there was absolutely no excuse for it. And the people that done the killing should have went to jail. Instead, they got promoted.

MR. BEARDEN: The arming of land use agencies also troubles Idaho Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth.

REP. HELEN CHENOWETH, [R] Idaho: Our founding fathers wrote very often about the fact that it would be an onerous thing to see our nation have a federal police force. And, you know, that's what's beginning to happen, because we're arming our land management agencies and our fish and wildlife agencies.

MR. BEARDEN: Special agent Paul Weyland was one of the federal officers involved in the confrontation on rancher Gene Hussey's property. In two decades of service, he has never had to draw his pistol in the line of duty, but he says he frequently must confront drunken hunters armed with shotguns and rifles.

PAUL WEYLAND, U.S. Fish & Wildlife: We don't carry side arms to write fishing game tickets, just like the state police, they don't carry side arms to write speeding tickets. We carry them to protect ourselves. I feel like my personal safety is, is more in jeopardy than it used to be.

MR. BEARDEN: Rep. Chenoweth held hearings on the arming of federal agents.

REP. HELEN CHENOWETH: [March 1995] Our goal here today is to separate fact from rumor on the issue of excessive use of force by federal agencies.

MR. BEARDEN: Chenoweth has written legislation that would require federal agents to obtain permission from the county sheriff before undertaking law enforcement action. Weyland thinks that would be utterly impractical.

PAUL WEYLAND: That means every time I had to go do an interview about someone who shot an eagle or killed an over limit of ducks I'd have to go contact the local sheriff. That's ridiculous.

MR. BEARDEN: In fact, when federal agents conducted their initial investigation on Gene Hussey's property five weeks before the confrontation, Hussey had asked them to bring Lemhi County Sheriff Brett Barsalou along if they ever returned. But it was Hussey who ended up calling the sheriff. He arrived shortly after the argument began.

BRETT BARSALOU, Sheriff, Lemhi County: First of all, I don't think it takes three federal officers to talk to Mr. Hussey about an animal death on his property that occurred five weeks previously to that, and I -- I don't know. Maybe, maybe I'm a little old- fashioned, but I don't believe that the way to approach someone if you want to get cooperation out of them is just to walk up to them and give off the attitude that you're here under the color of authority, you're going to do this whether anyone likes it or not, and there's nothing anybody can do about it. That's just not good manners.

PAUL WEYLAND: The sheriff is absolutely wrong. We were very professional. If anyone behaved with bad manners, it was Mr. Hussey and the sheriff.

MR. BEARDEN: He says the sheriff's presence actually escalated the confrontation. Meanwhile, some federal agencies are taking extra precautions. The Bureau of Land Management has ordered its employees to travel in pairs, stay in radio contact, and has issued them wallet-sized cards with instructions on what to do if arrested by local authorities. But biologist Scott Feldhausen isn't sure all that's necessary in his area.

SCOTT FELDHAUSEN, Bureau of Land Management: I certainly don't feel personally threatened. I mean, a lot of the people that I deal with express some concern or anger over the way the government is doing business but it is generally qualified, well, we're not directing this at you, it's just, you know, we don't like the way things are happening, we like you, we're doing good with you.

MR. BEARDEN: There are signs that more cooperation is in the offing.

SPOKESMAN: This really helps us coordinate and share data and share information and share biologists and be more efficient.

MR. BEARDEN: Since last August, federal, state, and local officials and residents in Salmon have been trying to thrash out a conservation agreement which would give locals more clout in the way nearby federal lands are managed. If completed, it would likely reduce conflicts and bad feelings. People on both sides of the argument here say the ultimate solution is mostly a matter of trust, that Washington and the ranchers, loggers, and miners ultimately must stop looking on each other as the enemy. FOCUS - REACTION

MS. FARNSWORTH: Drug testing in schools is next. Yesterday the Supreme Court said that public schools can require drug tests for any student participating in teen sports. In a six to three ruling, the Justices said an Oregon school could test all students who want to play sports, whether or not they are suspected of taking drugs. We get a reaction to the ruling now. Norman Siegel is the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. Gwendolyn Gregory is the deputy general counsel for the National School Boards Association. Thank you both for being with us. Ms. Gregory, let's start with you. Would you refresh us a bit on the facts of this case and then tell me what you think of the Supreme Court decision.

GWENDOLYN GREGORY, National School Boards Association: Yes. This small district is in a logging community in Oregon, as you mentioned. They did not have any problems with drugs at all in the schools until about the mid 80's to late 80's, and then it started to get very, very severe, both in the general student body and in the athletic program, where they were having a lot of -- experiencing a lot of injuries. And there seemed to be a bit of a drug culture in the athletic -- among athletes. They tried education programs; they had drug sniffing dogs; and voluntary drug testing. And nothing seemed to help. So they instituted a random drug testing program under which students who wished to go into athletics must consent to submit to the random drug testing. And it was -- I won't go into great detail on the program, but it was a good program in the sense that it was well managed. The protocol was adequate and so forth. And students who were tested positive were given a chance to go into a drug assistance program, rather than losing their opportunities to participate in athletics. And after the institution of this program, the use of drugs and discipline problems and so forth went back to normal. I mean, they seem to have conquered the problem so it worked.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Andthe Supreme Court's decision basically endorsed this program. The court of appeals had thrown it out and said it violated --

MS. GREGORY: That's right.

MS. FARNSWORTH: -- the 4th Amendment. The Supreme Court said that it does not violate the 4th Amendment. What do you think of the decision?

MS. GREGORY: I think it's a good decision.

MS. FARNSWORTH: You filed an Amicus brief, a friend of the court brief.

MS. GREGORY: We did. We filed a friend of the court brief in support of the school district, because we felt in this case because athletes do have a lesser expectation of privacy than other students do and there is a duty by the school district to protect these students, they're already going, going through rather severe viewing, if you will, from the standpoint of having to go through doctors' certification, and they have to certify that they have insurance, their weight is watched, so they're used to having a certain amount of rules that other students are not subjected to. So I think it's a reasonable approach.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mr. Siegel, what do you think?

NORMAN SIEGEL, New York Civil Liberties Union: I think it's a devastating blow to students and in particular student athletes in public schools throughout this country. I think it sends two horrible messages to our young people. No. 1, it says that with regard to 4th Amendment rights, student athletes are second class citizens. They have a limited right of privacy in the public school. And second, it sends the wrong civics, civics lesson. It teaches young people that the presumption of innocence is turned upside down. No longer will these young people be innocent until proven guilty. They're now suspects, and they have to prove their innocence by peeing in a cup. And I think that I would hope that school boards all across this country will read the dissent by Sandra O'Connor and will not institute a program like this. And one other thing, for your viewers, I don't think this issue is over. I think in states all across this country, for example, in New York, where we have a very good and strong protective state constitution, if any of the school boards in the New York State or New York City area tried to institute a similar program that they did in Oregon, we would go to court under the state constitution. So it might be outcome determinative in Oregon, but it's not a slam dunk in the rest of the country.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What about that, Ms. Gregory, the case involved a student who was 12 at the time? He was in seventh grade when he was asked to submit to drug testing.

MS. GREGORY: There was a problem in the schools at that age.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Even in 12-year-olds. But what about this -- in this case now, it -- the court has endorsed testing even when there's no specific suspicion in a student's case that he or she was taking drugs, that doesn't seem a little strict to you?

MS. GREGORY: Let me address two, two issues that were just raised. First of all, this is not a punitive measure. This isn't the cops versus the robbers. I mean, the teachers, the school personnel, and the students are on the same side. The purpose of this is to protect the students, not to punish them.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Well, let me just interrupt one minute. And yet they can't play sports if -- there is a punishment involved, unlike if they're tested for, you know, when they have to have a medical test because they're an athlete, right?

MS. GREGORY: Well, they're punished -- I suppose you could call it punishment, but, in fact, it's in their best interest. They should not be participating in athletics if they're using drugs, and if they test positive, the presumption is that they are. I mean, they go through a very good protocol. Apparently, according to experts, it's about 95 percent accurate in the testing. Now, on the next issue of the reasonable suspicion, prior to this time courts had held that if you don't suspect the individual searched that you can't search basically, and this, this has changed that a bit, but I think in the case of drug testing that this is a little different than other types of testing, because in this case, if the only time that you can test is when you have a suspicion, then it does send a stigma, where a child is tested, and all the kids say, oh, wow, he's suspected of using drugs, or he wouldn't be tested. But in this case, it's random, so his only test is because he's No. 10 on the list, whatever the random system of picking the child to be tested.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What about that, Mr. Siegel, is random testing somehow better?

MR. SIEGEL: No. Random evenhandedness is not going to make the system fair. And let me respond to Ms. Gregory's point, because I fundamentally disagree not only as a lawyer with the ACLU but I actually volunteer and teach in the high school that I went to in Brooklyn, in Bensonhurst, once a week for the last six years. I think this is going to be tremendously divisive. I talked to one of the former coaches of the football team at the school today, and he, who's not necessarily a liberal, said to me, this will be divisive in team sports. The whole objective is to bring the team together. You're going to have some students going along with this, some students deciding that they're not going to go along with it. It's going to be very divisive. It's going to be very costly for the schools. They don't have money for reading and writing, and now we're going to be using and spending millions of dollars across this country for this kind of program. Also, Ms. Gregory, when you say it's not punitive, I play high school JV basketball. I would know how punitive this would be if I couldn't play on that team when I was 17 years old because that was my whole world at that point. And to take young people and stigmatize all of them through a random suspicionless testing I think is very unfair, and we're going to have lots of consequences and problems that you haven't even thought of yet.

MS. FARNSWORTH: I wanted to ask you, Ms. Gregory, do you think in talking to school boards around the country that this is something school boards are likely to want to do? Will there be a lot of drug testing in school districts, or do you think it will be fairly rare?

MS. GREGORY: I think it would be fairly rare. I think that the point raised is a good one. And of course, the Supreme Court isn't mandating drug testing. They're only saying, where you have a problem, you have the discretion.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What are you hearing from people though? Are people saying we really need it in our schools, or do most people say we don't need to do this?

MS. GREGORY: Where it's a problem, like it was in Vernonia, yes, they're saying, we need it, we're willing to, to pay the cost, and it's expensive.

MR. SIEGEL: How many drug tests were positive, Ms. Gregory, from Vernonia: When they instituted the program, how many positive tests came out after this program went into effect?

MS. GREGORY: I don't know the answer to that, but of course this is not -- they didn't test everybody. They only tested 10 percent. It was a deterrent.

MR. SIEGEL: Well, my understanding is only in two instances were there positives, so this whole idea that there was an epidemic of disorder out there and drug abuse I think has to be questioned, and I don't think that was in the record in the case.

MS. GREGORY: Well, as I recall, there was about -- they tested about 10 percent, so if they get some positives out of that 10 percent, that still shows a lot of drug use. The purpose of it was not to catch the kids that are doing it as much as to prevent them from taking the drugs in the first place, and it worked.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Ms. Gregory, what about the cost? Mr. Siegel raised the question of cost. Is this going to be very difficult for school boards that are already strapped for funds?

MS. GREGORY: It is expensive. There's no question about it. And if you test for steroids, it's even more expensive. They didn't in this case. That's why I don't see that school boards are going to be authorizing this in their schools unless they have a very serious problem. And in that case, as in this case, they're going to try other means of getting to the problem first, education, voluntary testing, use of drug-sniffing dogs, whatever. And if that doesn't work, then they might resort to this, but I don't see it as changing the way most school boards operate.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And what are the -- if a student has taken cough syrup -- do you know the answer to this question -- will it show up as a positive in the drug test?

MR. SIEGEL: I think it's very possible, depending on the drug test, and I think that that's going to create other problems with people who are taking medication by a doctor's prescription will now have to let the school know prior to what their medical condition is. These are areas of privacy that parents and students might not want to let the faculty or principal or coach know. I also am concerned about the fact that they focused in on student athletes. In the decision, it talks about student athletes as being role models, as the cream of the crop so-called. Well, with a kind of inverse logic, we're now going to take our role models, and we're going to punish them. This is not a program for all students, and I think that puts a stigma on student athletes as well, and I think that we really have to, even though the Supreme Court said you can do this under the 4th Amendment, I would hope that people on school boards and parents all across this country vigorously oppose any kind of implementation of this program on a wide scale throughout America.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Sorry, that's all the time we have. Mr. Siegel, Ms. Gregory, thank you very much for being with us. ESSAY - ABOUT FACES

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Richard Rodriguez, editor of the "Pacific News Service," observes the changing face of California.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: The other day I saw the future on the back pages of a newspaper. "More Asians than whites will enter the University of California by 2005." Elsewhere in America, it may still be possible to imagine the future through the antique lens of the Kerner Commission Report of the 1960's -- two Americas: one white, one black. Here in California, where mixed race Hispanics are becoming the majority population of the state, where my nieces and nephews carry German and Scottish surnames, where three years ago in Los Angeles, a vast urban riot pitted Korean shopkeepers and black looters, here in California, the future does not reduce to black and white. About 150 miles from the Berkeley campus of the University of California in Merced, a town of around 100,000, roughly a third of the population is white or black. Another third is Mexican. The final third is Cambodian. The future of Merced, California, will depend on a new Cambodian-Mexican dialectic. To Americans who arrived in California from points East, this Pacific Coast was the end of the line. Perhaps that is why many in California never lived easily with the Asian horizon; the end of us was the beginning of them. In the 19th century, Chinese laborers came to America, built the railroads, but the Chinese were otherwise excluded, persecuted, mocked, treated as foreigners, relegated to Chinatowns or the outskirts of town. Immigration laws enforced are anti-Asian bias. After Pearl Harbor, up and down the West Coast, Americans of Japanese descent were sent to detention camps. Tourist San Francisco is famous for Chinatown, but the real San Francisco is becoming a Chinese city, also Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese, also Central American. The future is foretold on fluttering red ribbons at new Chinese restaurants and at restaurants which feature tofu burritos or Italian-Chinese cooking. New York publishers thousands of miles away are selling bleak versions of the future. Last season, we were told in a book called The Bell Curve [on screen: The Bell Curve, Intelligence and Class Structure in America by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray] that academic success is genetic; whites are smarter than blacks; the Japanese superior to the Guatemalans. This season, a book called Alien Nation [on screen: Alien Nation By Peter Brimelow] argues that America is a white country and must remain so. Some Californians are busy collecting signatures on an anti-affirmative action initiative which they hope to put on the ballot next year. It is not clear, however, what affirmative action will mean in a state where Asians outperform whites. Last year, a majority of Californians voted to deny welfare benefits to illegal immigrants, but immigrants are not coming to California for welfare. This state, famous for leisure, is being transformed by immigrants into a place of work. This morning, from Los Angeles to San Francisco, planes have landed from Asia. Many Americans would tell the Asians, "Sorry, we have run out of land. The West Coast is the end of America." Asians, of course, see America in reverse, West to East. Through Asian eyes, California is where America begins. They de- plane, bringing with them a Confucian optimism that sounds like a Calvinist work ethic. Ten years from now, it will not seem news. Instead of blond California, images of surfers and palm trees, we will more quickly imagine a state of racial and ethnic complexity, greater even than Hawaii. By 2005, when Asians become the predominant population at the nine campuses of the University of California, we will not be talking about black and white America. We will be talking, instead, about the future of blacks in a Chinese city -- my Chinese city -- San Francisco, this city of Chinese bankers and accountants and doctors and short order cooks, will re-make me. They will re-make my Hispanic nieces and nephews with their German and Scottish surnames, restoring us all to an American optimism we thought was lost. I'm Richard Rodriguez. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, U.S.- Japanese trade talks went down to the wire, with no reports of progress. The United States has threatened to place tariffs on Japanese luxury cars if there is no agreement by tomorrow. And the space shuttle Atlantis was launched from Cape Canaveral. It's headed for a rendezvous with an orbiting Russian space station. Good night, Elizabeth.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour for tonight. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Good evening.