The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Friday, Czechoslovakia's entire Communist leadership resigned after a week of mass protests, a federal judge threw out the Iran-Contra case against a former CIA man, saying the government undermined his defense, Lebanon elected a president to replace assassinated Rene Mouawad. We'll have details in the News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff is in Washington tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: After the News Summary, the shake-up in Czechoslovakia is our lead focus. Following a report from Prague, we hear from two expert analysts, Madeleine Albright of the Center for National Policy, and Milan Svec, a former Czech diplomat, then the collapse of an Iran-Contra case after classified documents are withheld. Correspondent Nina Totenberg gives an inside view and we debate the case with defendant Joseph Fernandez's attorney, Thomas Wilson, and Scott Armstrong of the National Security Archive. Next we discuss that and other developments of the week with our regular Friday political analysis team of Gergen & Shields, and finally Essayist Susan Shreve shares her thoughts on grandparents.NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: In another momentous day in Eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia's entire Communist leadership resigned after a week of mass protests. Party Chief Milos Yakis said they had seriously under estimated the effect of the pro-democracy movement sweeping Eastern Europe. Yakis was replaced by Karl Urbanek, a Politburo member. Czech television broke into its regular programming to announce the shake-up. The big changes were made during a special session of the Communist Party's ruling Central Committee. Word spread quickly and Czech TV viewers were shown the jubilant reaction in the streets. Across town at Prague's main square, the man who was thrown out of office in 1968 for trying to reform the country made a triumphant return. Alexander Dubcek addressed 300,000 demonstrators. It was his first appearance in the capital since his ouster. He called for unity and using the catch from his time in office said, "The ideal of socialism with a human face is living in the minds of a new generation." We'll have more on the Czech story just after the News Summary. East Germany's Communist Leader Egon Krenz says ge agrees with the calls by reformers to end his party's guaranteed leading role, but in hardline Romania no sign of reform. The Communist Party Congress unanimously re-elected Nikolai Ceausescu the East Bloc's longest reining leader, to another five years as party chief. We have a report narrated by Louise Bates of Worldwide Television News.

MS. BATES: The announcement of Ceausescu's re-election as Communist Party leader came as no surprise. He was after all the only candidate. The response was equally predictable. Eastern Europe's most steadfast non-reformers become used to these well rehearsed displays, Ceausescu rules with a firm grip on the party and society. Dissenting voices find no room for debate. In his closing address, Ceausescu, with 24 years at the helm of Romania, assured the delegates he had no intention of stepping down. Outside Bucharest's palace hall, a similar but larger crowd was waiting. Their leader dutifully appeared both to wave and reassure them that despite events elsewhere, Romania is not about to deviate from his socialist golden path.

MS. WOODRUFF: Poland's new prime minister was in Moscow today where he reaffirmed his country's commitments to the Warsaw Pact military alliance. It was the first trip to the Soviet capital for Tadeusz Maziowecki, who met with Pres. Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet officials. Gorbachev told the head of the East Bloc's only non-Communist led government that relations between the two countries had changed for the better and that he wished Poland success. Changes in the East Bloc were at the top of the agenda today for Pres. Bush and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The two leaders met at the President's Camp David retreat in the Maryland Mountains and a spokesman said later they had agreed on the need for European stability as NATO faces the rapid changes in Eastern Europe. Their meeting comes just one week before Mr. Bush is scheduled to hold a summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in Malta. At a news conference this afternoon, Mrs. Thatcher warned against rapid military reductions by the West.

MARGARET THATCHER, Prime Minister, Great Britain: Don't disarm too fast. Every single step on disarmament has to be agreed with the Soviet Union so that neither their security nor our security is in jeopardy, and that is absolutely vital and at the Paris discussions last Saturday night we agreed that the security arrangement should continue to be made through NATO and the Warsaw Pact. We must keep that structure.

MS. WOODRUFF: Pres. Bush was quoted today as saying he's prepared to take another look at reducing U.S. troop levels abroad because of the changes in the East Bloc. But in the interview with foreign journalists made public today, Mr. Bush said he would not take action without the agreement of America's allies.

MR. MacNeil: The Lebanese parliament today elected another president to replace Rene Mouawad, who was assassinated 2 days ago after only 17 days in office. The successor is Elius Rawe, like Mouawad a Marinite Christian and pledged to follow the plan for political reforms aimed at ending Lebanon's 14 year civil war.

MS. WOODRUFF: A federal judge today threw out the Iran-Contra case against a former CIA station chief two days after Attorney Gen. Dick Thornburgh said classified material crucial to the case could not be brought up in court. U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton said criminal charges against Joseph Fernandez focusing on his help to Oliver North's secret Contra resupply network must be dropped. Within hours prosecutors filed notice that they plan to appeal. We'll hear more on these Iran-Contra developments from Joseph Fernandez's lawyer, John Wilson, and others a little later on the Newshour.

MR. MacNeil: A new study in birth defects has discovered that vitamin supplements can help prevent a certain type of defect. The study involving 23,000 women was published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It found that the women who took over the counter multi vitamins containing folic acid early in their pregnancy significantly reduced the chance of their babies being born with neural tube defects like spina bifida. Those defects strike about 4000 babies a year.

MS. WOODRUFF: That's it for our News Summary. Just ahead on the Newshour, the latest events in Czechoslovakia, an Iran-Contra case is dropped, Gergen & Shields, and Essayist Susan Shreve with some thoughts about grandparents. FOCUS - PRAGUE FALL

MR. MacNeil: We begin with the climatic political saga gripping Czechoslovakia tonight. After eight days of mass demonstrations for democracy, Communist Party Chief Milos Yakish and the rest of is hardline government resigned. He was replaced by Politburo member Karl Urbanek during an emergency meeting of the party's Central Committee. Yakish was the third Eastern European Party leader to step down from power in little more than a month. In a moment we'll analyze today's developments with two specialists in Czech affairs, but first this report from Nik Gowing of Independent Television News on the events leading up to the resignation announcement.

MR. GOWING: All day there had been a mood of expectation. Alexander Dubcek had sent a message he would come soon to Wensleses Square. Word spread it would be tonight. But at dusk as demonstrators gathered once again in their tens of thousands, no one could be sure. The former party leader had been detained in Prague last weekend. Mr. Dubcek had appeared before a massive rally in Bratislava last night but sources said he was still making sure he avoided the clutches of the secret police. Then just after 5 o'clock, Alexander Dubcek stepped onto the balcony. Mr. Dubcek embraced more than 1/4 million people and Wensleses Square filled with a wave of emotion and tears. He moved to the microphone to say he was raising his voice in order to help rebuild a new Czechoslovakia. Mr. Dubcek told the crowd there must be no confrontation if the nation seeks to build socialism with a human face.

ALEXANDER DUBCEK, Former Czechoslovakian Leader: (Speaking through Interpreter) The initiated former party members appealed to all workers, farmers, the security forces, people militia just like 21 years ago, we must stand on the side of the movement just as we remembered it. I declare that I am here and I am giving here to you all people and people of Prague my vote.

MR. GOWING: For 21 years, Mr. Dubcek had been a disgraced non- person. Now he was once again galvanizing the Czechoslovak people in a way guaranteed to further deepen the crisis for a Communist Party leadership meeting in emergency session elsewhere in Prague. And as the Central Committee assembled at the party's political college this morning, we had a sense of the beleaguered hardliner's feelings when Gen. Vatslavic, himself, taken aback by what he faced, told assembled Western cameramen to go to hell. From at least two party figures, there had already been calls for unspecified personnel changes. The mood of the other 150 members of the Central Committee themselves appointees of the hardline leadership was unclear, but after several days of growing tension and fears of the security clampdown, the Politburo members arriving in their zills, were now known to be under direct pressure from Mr. Gorbachev, the Kremlin making clear publicly there was no a crisis of trust in the leadership here because it was failing to understand the urgency of the need for reform.

MR. MacNeil: As we saw on the News Summary, shortly after that report was filed, the government resigned. Now two perspectives on the upheaval in Prague. Milan Svec was Czechoslovakia's deputy ambassador to the United States from 1982 until '85, when he defected to the U.S. He is currently a fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a government financed think tank. Madeleine Albright is President of the Center for National Policy, also a Washington think tank and a professor of international relations at Georgetown University. She served on Pres. Carter's National Security Council staff. Ms. Albright was born in Czechoslovakia. Mr. Svec, what did you feel seeing those pictures just now?

MILAN SVEC, Former Czech Diplomat: I think it is definitely very exciting and so exciting is also the response of the Communist leadership. On the one hand, they are basically conservatives who were put into the power by Soviet tanks in August '68 or later, and their instinct is to give to the people as little as possible. On the other hand, people just looking around them, seeing what is happening in the Soviet Union, Hungary, Poland, East Germany, now went to the streets and demand more. So I think that the new leader is the expression of this compromise, somewhere in- between. Some were in-between.

MR. MacNeil: Madeleine Albright, it's like entire armies suddenly surrendering at the end of a war. What do you feel watching this?

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, Pres., Center For National Policy: Well, it's very exciting to see Dubcek up there on the balcony and to see primarily the faces of so many young people. What I think has been exciting about following the events in Czechoslovakia is the fact that this is a revolution being caused by a new generation. The generation of reformers in '68 was arrested or purged. And here's a whole new group of people. Some of the young Czechs that I've spoken to have said that they didn't realize how patriotic they really were and how much they felt a need to really do something about a very stultifying system.

MR. MacNeil: What can you tell us about the new party leader, Mr. Urbanek, either of you?

MS. ALBRIGHT: What we know about him is that he has been a party aparachic. He is someone who was in party affairs in Czechoslovakia, he's in his late 40s. Before he became a party member, he was a train dispatcher, so maybe he's going to make the trains run on time in Czechoslovakia. But I think he's a compromise candidate as Mr. Svec said. I also think he's a transitional character the way Krenz is and we're going to be watching to see what compromises he makes and who the next person will be who follows him.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Svec, do you expect the Communist Party as the party in East Germany is doing to try and keep control of all this itself?

MR. SVEC: I think that the party will try to do exactly that. That's why we have to be very cautious passing judgment about Urbanek. On the one hand he's definitely, and I agree, the product of the old leadership, he survived among them; he grew up among them. On the other hand, he understands the pressure from below, the pressure from Moscow is going in another direction, and basically maybe reluctantly, maybe step by step, but the Czech Communists will have to retreat in face of their people, as the other Communists are doing in the region.

MR. MacNeil: So you think that the crowds in Czechoslovakia like the crowds in East Germany will start demanding a multi party system and free elections very soon now that they've got the resignation of the party?

MR. SVEC: They will probably give the new leader one, two, three days, maybe one week, and they will watch very carefully and press on. And I only hope that the new leaders will be wiser than the old ones and they will understand and they will try to march ahead of the people like Krenz today I heard in East Germany, he promised that probably the Communists are ready to be an opposition party if they lose the elections. So I hope that the Czechs understand that that's the call of a time and it's unavoidable.

MR. MacNeil: You say you hope. Do you have some anxiety that they might still try to entrench themselves and resist?

MR. SVEC: I do, because unlike the other leaders in the whole region, all this group by and large was brought as I have mentioned by the Russians in '68. They are more homogenous group than some other Politburos in the region. The have a -- the instincts are very similar so it's in a way an open contest.

MR. MacNeil: Do you share those anxieties, Ms. Albright?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, I think on the contrary that the Czechs are likely to move pretty fast. After all, what we've seen is a build- up from each country to the other, each country that as the Communist leaders are toppled, it moves faster, and I think also we have to remember that Czechs had a democratic tradition in the inter-war period. They had a fairly free period in 1968. There is this sense among the leaders of the Civic Forum that they want to move forward in dialogue, and all the borders are open now, there is freedom of information to a great extent and one country is infecting another. And I think the role of Dubcek cannot be underestimated. You know, bringing Dubcek back is the Czech equivalent of tearing down the Berlin Wall. It is admitting a mistake. And the question will be is what Dubcek's role might be in a future set-up.

MR. MacNeil: What kind of role might there be for him?

MS. ALBRIGHT: A possibility, and this is a very faraway possibility I think is that he might become the president. Gustav Husak is currently the president. He certainly is not a popular person. Dubcek has played it very carefully. He has stayed in the background until the last few months. He's given some interviews now. I was very moved by the emotion that he generated and his kind of loving way that he embraced the people. I think he is going to be quite a popular figure.

MR. MacNeil: Do you see a role for Mr. Dubcek, Mr. Svec?

MILAN SVEC, Former Czech Diplomat: Probably in the position of a president, I can see that role. I would be more cautious if we spoke about him as the chief of the party in the future, because that would divide the party and I don't think that the party's ready for that or as prime minister where I don't think that he is a technocrat as today's times demand, so probably president as an expression of the fact that the Czechs started Perestroika and Glasnost and that he was the symbol of it, and he deserved that position definitely.

MR. MacNeil: How is the Czech economy situated as compared the East German or the Polish or the Hungarian economies in terms of needing assistance, needing loans, its readiness to move into a market based economy?

MR. SVEC: Basically the Czech economy is better off than other economies in the region, including the East German economy. So on the one hand, it will probably make it easier for the new leadership to correct things to put things in order. On the other hand, that economy is also going down and it has more and more problems As of now it has increasing problems to trade with its neighbors, with the Soviet Union, with Poland, with Hungary, with East Germany, so the pressure is on and again I think that what we will need is a sort of technocratic leadership that will be willing to forget Communist dogma and look for pragmatic ways out.

MR. MacNeil: Is there a need for a Western assistance role there, Madeleine Albright?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, I think there is in terms of kind of technical assistance in market economies and really teaching people who have been kept in the dark for 40 years how to do it a Western way. I think also there's going to be assistance needed in trying to develop parties in institution building and generally a Western role. And I think as Mr. Svec said, it's very important for the West to help the countries of Eastern Europe become integrated into a Western economic system, and that's where we have to spend a lot of time and a lot of energy to try to get these countries that have been, in effect, in the dark ages.

MR. MacNeil: Let's discuss the summit for a moment. How does Czechoslovakia coming into line with the other reform countries affect the dynamics of the summit, the Gorbachev-Bush summit, Mr. Svec?

MR. SVEC: Very much, I would say, that it might be a sort of a catalyst in a way. Czechoslovakia was there sitting in the middle of Europe and pretending that it is possible to ignore what is going on in Moscow, it is probably possible to out wait Gorbachev. It was a symbol of probable return to former times one day. Now I think that myth or hopes or whatever you can call it, it's out, so also for the West, it's time to address the question that Communism got another blow when all these thousands and thousands and thousands of people went into streets in Prague, and we have to address the situation anew, and I think that the Summit is wonderfully timed and has every chance, an opportunity to do so.

MR. MacNeil: Madeleine Albright, was it important to Mr. Gorbachev, important enough as we've heard reported, even to push a little bit to have the Czech situation somewhat resolved before the summit?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I think it was. I think he did not want to see any kind of outrages and riots in the streets while he was meeting in Malta. We have every indication that behind the scenes the Soviets let the message out that they wanted the events handled in Czechoslovakia without any violence. And I think that he did want to go to Malta with the idea that he was on the side of change. I think the question now will be is what the two leaders are going to talk about. It's very important that it not be like Yalta, where deals were made over the heads of the people about whose fates the decisions were being made, and therefore, it's very important for our president to be very closely in touch with the allies. It's not enough for him to meet with Maggie Thatcher at Camp David. I think he should send Sec. Baker to Europe before he, himself, goes to Malta to talk with the allies and have consultations and try to figure out how the West will deal with these very important structural changes in Central Europe.

MR. MacNeil: Although they announced this summit as having no agenda, does Czechoslovakia falling so quickly after East Germany now mean, in effect, there really is only one agenda and that is Eastern Europe, or one main agenda item?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I think there has to be this main agenda item. We have often talked about regional disputes, Eastern Europe, Central Europe was the first regional dispute, and it is one that has to be dealt with and I think it will be the main agenda point in Malta.

MR. MacNeil: I just have one final question, Mr. Svec. Following up on something you said, is this a blow for Gorbachev's opponents back home, one other place they can't hide or hope for a reversion to?

MR. SVEC: Definitely. Definitely. Czechoslovakia was the only, the last once stronghold to which the Soviet conservatives could have looked, as probably I have said, some survivor and potentially the place where they can learn things. We have to remember that last summer Ligachev went to Czechoslovakia, and when he was there, he stated that there is no need for vast reforms in Soviet agriculture because by and large allegedly Czechoslovak agriculture works, so they wanted to keep Czechoslovakia in that position and it's out.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Milan Svec and Madeleine Albright, thank you both. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Still ahead on the Newshour are the Iran-Contra prosecutions unraveling, Gergen & Shields, and Essayist Susan Shreve. FOCUS - CASE DISMISSED

MS. WOODRUFF: Next tonight the latest development in the Iran- Contra trial. The federal judge today dismissed the prosecutor's case against the former CIA station chief in Costa Rica, Joseph Fernandez. This comes two days after Attorney Gen. Dick Thornburgh said the government would not permit the use in court of what he called classified information. We'll be talking to two peoplewho see the issues very differently, and with Nina Totenberg, Legal Affairs Correspondent for National Public Radio. She's been following these cases closely. But first here is some of what Joseph Fernandez had to say after the judge dropped the case against him today.

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ, Former CIA Official: What troubles me is that this indictment has consequences which go far beyond me. My fear is that this indictment communicates to the men and women of CIA's clandestine service the message that the performance of their legitimate duties as America's intelligence officers could subject them to politically motivated prosecutions. That is a chilling message to send to people who put their lives on the line for our country every day.

MS. WOODRUFF: For some explanation we turn now to Nina Totenberg. Nina, first of all refresh our memories. Who exactly is Joseph Fernandez? Why was he so important in these cases?

NINA TOTENBERG, National Public Radio: Well, he was the CIA station chief in Costa Rica. He's the highest ranking CIA officer ever indicted, and he was important in these prosecutions for two reasons. First of all, I think that Independent Counsel, Lawrence Walsh, thought that if he could convict Joseph Fernandez that Fernandez in an effort to get himself more lenient treatment in sentencing might provide information that would implicate higher ups in the intelligence community, and secondly and perhaps even more importantly Fernandez was viewed within the Independent Counsel's office as a person who represented what could go wrong with the system in that if he did what he was accused of doing, and what he was accused of doing was lying to the CIA Inspector General and to the Tower Commission, if he did that, what he did was to misinform his own superiors about what he did in Iran-Contra. That's what he was accused of doing. There's not going to be a trial on that.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, exactly what was the information that the Justice Department did not want to come out in court?

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, there are two categories of information. First of all, the first category was the location, the identity of two CIA stations in Latin America, in Central America. Now everybody knows, everybody and his uncle in Washington knows and probably in the international world what the location of those stations is. It is the United States Embassies. Everybody knows that to the point when one of the station chiefs died, the location of the CIA station was printed in his obituary in the Washington Post. The second category of information is CIA programs that were conducted in Central America and those could not be disclosed as well. At one point, Independent Counsel Walsh offered to drop those indictments, those charges that involved the programs, but not the ones that involved the stations and that was refused.

MS. WOODRUFF: The programs had to do with the contras' supply.

MS. TOTENBERG: We don't know precisely. We can only assume they had to do with the contras supply in Central America, but because this is classified information, we don't know exactly what that is.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why did the judge do what he did? Why did he drop this case just because he couldn't have --

MS. TOTENBERG: The judge said that this information was necessary for the defendant, Joseph Fernandez, to put on an adequate defense and in the United States and under our Constitution, if you can't have what's needed for an adequate defense, then the prosecutor doesn't get to prosecute you, period.

MS. WOODRUFF: There was no way to work out what you just mentioned, some sort of compromise whereby --

MS. TOTENBERG: The intelligence communities and the Bush administration were not willing to make that kind of a deal. They were not even willing to let simply the location of the stations be used at this trial. And I am told by administration sources that this went to the President. The President knew of this decision and this was their decision. They wanted it all and they got it all and now the charges have been dismissed.

MS. WOODRUFF: And now that they have been, what are the implications for the next case down the line? What does this mean?

MS. TOTENBERG: Just briefly, of course, there can be and will be an appeal. The implications for the next case are pretty serious, the next case of course again being the case against former National Security Adviser John Poindexter. His case is scheduled to go to trial in January and if in a case involving a relatively low level official, the Bush administration is not willing to be flexible enough to meet the needs of the Independent Counsel, and I am told by both administration and Independent Counsel sources that the position of the administration has changed since the North trial when there was more flexibility, but if they're not willing to be flexible in the Fernandez case, they certainly are not going to be willing to be flexible in a more serious case involving greater secrets, the former National Security Adviser, and secondly, Walsh now faces a really grave problem. I wanted to read you one quote from Associate Independent Counsel Lawrence Stasel said today, "We are troubled by the actions of the intelligence agencies and the Attorney General who have made bringing this case to trial extremely difficult." What they have begun to think in the Independent Counsel's office is that there is a cover-up. And they could, I'm told, among the options they're discussing is convening a grand jury to investigate the decision making process that led to this, or another option is to write a report for the public and the Congress that would accuse the intelligence community of a cover-up.

MS. WOODRUFF: Cover-up on whose part?

MS. TOTENBERG: On the part of the intelligence communities. The notion is and I stress that this is a notion or a suspicion in the Independent Counsel's Office, that the very people who are saying you can't have this evidence at trial because it compromises national security are the very people who could conceivably be implicated as this case unravels further. So there is a growing suspicion that there is a wall being erected there so that the truth will never be known. That is what's going through the minds of the folks in the Independent Counsel's Office and they're trying to figure out a way to either find out the truth as they see it or to at least call attention to that they're being had.

MS. WOODRUFF: But they've made no decision yet on what direction?

MS. TOTENBERG: No, they're just looking at their options.

MS. WOODRUFF: Thank you, Nina. Stay with us. For two different perspectives now on the dismissal of charges against Joseph Fernandez, we have Mr. Fernandez's lawyer, Thomas Wilson, and Scott Armstrong, president of the National Security Archive and author of a detailed chronology on the Iran-Contra affair. Gentlemen, and let me come to you first, Milson, what was your reaction today? We assume you were pleased by what the judge did. Were you surprised?

THOMAS WILSON, Joseph Fernandez's Lawyer: No, in light of the information that was issue, we were not terribly surprised. Obviously we're enormously pleased at the outcome. Mr. Fernandez is now for the first time in three years, he's able to rest easy because he doesn't have the full weight of the federal government bearing down on him.

MS. WOODRUFF: Scott Armstrong.

SCOTT ARMSTRONG, National Security Archive: Well, I was a little shaken. It wasn't surprising what happened today. I think the judge probably did what he had to given what the Attorney General did, but the Attorney General's decision of two days ago made one feel like you were suddenly in one of those science fiction comedies Back to the Future", that we'd been taken back two decades, and we were back in the era of the cover-up. People may have forgotten it but Richard Nixon when he finally had an order from the Supreme Court to turn over those tapes, what turned out to be the smoking gun in Watergate was Richard Nixon's statement on tape that he wanted Haldeman to order the CIA to take a fall and to say that the Watergate burglars were involved in something for the CIA.

MS. WOODRUFF: So what's the connection to this?

MR. ARMSTRONG: The history here I think invokes a lot of cynicism. There is a CIA agent who is being prosecuted in the normal pattern of working your way up the ladder from one stage to the next, hoping to get a conviction, as Nina pointed out, and hoping to turn that agent on others, hoping to clear up what happened. The Independent Counsel's role in this case is more than simply convicting individuals. It's lancing the boil, it's restoring public confidence. It's bringing more information out. And what the attorney general's done here is he's avoided that process. He's essentially said for relatively trivial reasons, it would seem, including the disclosure of the fact that stations in Honduras and in El Salvador, I mean, just to name two of the things that are supposedly classified, which every citizen has followed the Iran-Contra affair knows that those cannot be real at trial, is subject to the most cynical of interpretations.

MS. WOODRUFF: Were these trivial reasons, Mr. Wilson?

MR. WILSON: They were absolutely not trivial, Judy. Let me just tell you that the attorney general's affidavit is supported by over 40 pages of three affidavits from three of the most senior people in the intelligence community stating that the revelation of this information would cause extremely grave injury to the interests of the United States. The reason that everybody passes over the programs is because nobody knows what these programs are and they are enormously sensitive. And I frankly have for sometime now been at a loss as to why it is that Mr. Walsh seems so enthusiastic about propagating this myth that the secrets that are at issue here really aren't secrets. He has had access to those affidavits and these are expert opinions from three individuals who have a combined experience in government of some 75 years and they have --

MS. WOODRUFF: Who are these individuals?

MR. WILSON: I can't reveal who they are. It's not up to me to reveal --

MS. WOODRUFF: Are they the intelligence community?

MR. WILSON: They were in the intelligence community and men of unquestioned integrity and Mr. Walsh knows this and for him to continue to say that what is at issue here is phony secrets and that somebody is trying to kill a case that ought to go to trial for reasons that are trivial is frankly to me irresponsible.

MS. WOODRUFF: But how is one who is on the outside looking in able to judge when no one has access to that information other than Mr. Walsh, himself, and of course, the people in the administration and the attorney for the defendant and a few others?

MR. WILSON: Ultimately, Judy, we have to just face the facts that we are going to at some point have to trust our elected officials. Mr. Thornburgh, Attorney General Thornburgh was under enormous pressure to let this case go to trial and he did the only thing in light of what the intelligence experts were telling him that he reasonably could do. For him to have let this information be revealed in the face of those affidavits would have been irresponsible and it took frankly in this climate no small amount of courage for the attorney general just to say, no, we're not going to do it and filing the affidavit.

MS. WOODRUFF: Scott Armstrong, why can't we just trust the public officials, trust our government officials?

MR. ARMSTRONG: Well, the elected official here is George Bush. I mean, he's the President of the United States who appointed the attorney general and I think the question of confidence, of trust, is exactly what we're talking about. The attorney general had to weigh the question of that public confidence against the damage that this would do to the national security. Now I've talked to a number of people who have had an opportunity to see those affidavits who know what the programs are. I'm not precisely sure what they are, but I'm told that I wouldn't learn much, in other words, that all that material is in the public domain to some degree already.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, how does that square with what Mr. Wilson just said? Mr. Wilson, I mean, Scott Armstrong is saying it's not much new, you're saying it's terribly critical and --

MR. WILSON: I'd suggest that maybe Mr. Armstrong needs some new sources because I have all of you at a disadvantage. I know what this information is and I'm telling you that it is not publicly known and neither should it be known.

MS. WOODRUFF: What --

MR. ARMSTRONG: If it's connected, and the suspicion here is that a judge has determined it's connected with the prosecution of Fernandez, he needs it to defend himself, then it's part of the Iran-Contra affair, it's part of something that has undermined public confidence in the intelligence community, public confidence in the last administration, and to some degree public confidence in this administration. Isn't it a pretty high threshold to say that none of this is known and still say that it wouldn't restore confidence to release it in some way. Judge Gesell in the North Trial found many ways to deal with these questions short of embarrassing the intelligence community or revealing national secrets.

MS. WOODRUFF: Couldn't there have been -- I mean just to follow up on that question that Mr. Armstrong -- couldn't there have been some compromise worked out where some of this information could have been used in some disguised form perhaps?

MR. WILSON: There were great efforts undertaken by the administration and by the Office of Independent Counsel to work up such a compromise. The judge, who has no vested interest in any of this, determined that those compromises were absolutely unacceptable in light of the constitutional right of Mr. Fernandez to receive a fair trial, and let me just tell you one of the great ironies in all of this is that the sin that Mr. Walsh is supposedly in office to redress is that somehow the United States government officials were circumventing the Boland Amendment in a way that was unlawful. Mr. Walsh after an extensive investigation and multiple millions of dollars invested in that investigation has apparently himself concluded that there was no official in the United States Government who extended a single farthing of the coin of the realm in derogation of the Boland Amendment.

MS. WOODRUFF: How does that relate to what we're discussing here?

MR. WILSON: The irony is that with the assumption it seems to me when everybody talks about this, it seems to me that the CIA, Mr. Fernandez and others, were off their statutory reservation. That isn't true. That has not been established in all these investigations that anybody in CIA violated the Boland Amendment.

MS. WOODRUFF: But what about what we heard Nina Totenberg say a few moments ago, that she has information that there are growing suspicions within the office of the Independent Counsel that there may be a cover-up of some sort at work in the intelligence community?

MR. WILSON: I am at a loss as to how it is that people that Ms. Totenberg is talking to would say such a thing from the Office of Independent Counsel. They have seen the information that we have seen. They know what is in the 100,000 pages of documents that we have reviewed in this case. And believe me they do not establish what it is that people assume the CIA was doing or want to assume.

MS. WOODRUFF: Nina, how does that square with what you've been told?

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, with all deference to you, Mr. Wilson, this is your first case involving the CIA. I think you had to get new clearances for it. I'm a little -- I wonder about the "boy who cried wolf" syndrome. We saw a lot of this in the North trial. In one case, for example, there were intelligence agency people coming in every day saying you can't take, this cannot become public. Then it turned out it had all been part of depositions in a civil trial and was out there on the public record and had been for over a year.

MS. WOODRUFF: Are you saying that's what they're saying?

MS. TOTENBERG: I don't know what this information is. I only know that there is, these are very experienced trial lawyers in the Independent Counsel's Office, and as this public statement made today made very clear they're beginning to wonder and to be very suspicious. I just want to bring you back to one thing, Tom, Mr. Fernandez is not charged after all with violating the Boland Amendment. He's charged with lying to his superiors and obstructing an official investigation by the Reagan administration.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. Wilson.

MR. WILSON: Well, I understand that that's what he was charged with. I would point out as we revealed in a recent court filing that for example of the things that Mr. Fernandez is alleged to have said to Tower Commission investigators that he, Mr. Fernandez, did not know for a fact that Oliver North was involved in the contra re-supply operation. The notes of the investigators who questioned him during that interview where he's supposed to have said that state that he did know that Oliver North was involved with the suppliers of arms to the contras. Now why it is that Mr. Walsh did that, charged him with that, is just hard to know. Somebody will have to ask him.

MS. WOODRUFF: Scott Armstrong, do you want to comment on that? Then I want to ask you something else.

MR. ARMSTRONG: I suspect that it's precisely what Mr. Fernandez does know or what he could talk about, what he might well have to talk about in trial that people are attempting to suppress here. It may be for national security reasons. I think that there is certainly arguable color to that. One has to note though that in the North at least two of the possible programs that we could be talking about here that came out, one dealing with El Salvador was a program in which the Vice President's staff was involved heavily in recruiting some of the people, then Vice Pres. George Bush, now President of the United States. The second program was in Honduras, where the quid pro quo arrangements were actually worked out despite his denials, the admissions by the government, and the facts contained within the documents make it quite clear that the President was deeply involved in working out those arrangements.

MS. WOODRUFF: Scott Armstrong, what does all this say, this particular case and what's happened to it, say about the prosecution of all these cases? I mean, what does it say about the Poindexter case and about the effectiveness frankly of the Independent Counsel?

MR. ARMSTRONG: I think we're ending on a sad note here. And I think the Poindexter case, we have yet to see how it'll be handled, and a lot of that has to do with the individual judge involved in that case, Harold Green, but in the case that we're involved in now, and I think the lesson that the Independent Counsel has given us to date, is that this particular Independent Counsel, Lawrence Walsh, has misunderstood the role of the office. I happened to work for the Watergate Committee when we wrote the law that created the Independent Counsel, and part of the frustration that the Watergate Committee felt at the time despite the public myth that then Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox did such a great job, there was a real feeling on the part of the Watergate Committee that they had not done a good job and they would need to be bolstered in the future, be able to reports and what not. There was also a feeling that Congress would itself not be able to follow up in the future. So I think that Mr. Walsh may have misunderstood his constituency and his role in this particular case.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. We'd like to go on but we are out of time. We thank you all three for joining us, Scott Armstrong, Tom Wilson, thank you, Nina Totenberg. Thank you all three. FOCUS - GERGEN & SHIELDS

MR. MacNeil: Next our regular Friday look at the political with David Gergen, Editor at Large of the U.S. News & World Report and from Public Television Station WGBH in Boston Mark Shields, Columnist Mark Shields with the Washington Post. Mark is there going to be any political fall out left from the Iran Contra stories and particularly the dismissal of this case?

MR. SHIELDS: I don't see it immediately Robin. I think that the passion for details on that barring evidence of a cover up, barring the Independent Council going public with a real sense of outrage and some supporting material, I think the public lost interest in that very early and I think they lost interest quite frankly when the Congress and the Committee specifically concentrated its efforts and attention on the Contras which were no surprise. The outrage of the American people about that discloser was that Ronald Reagan's Administration having called the Ayatollah the greatest menace to human kind was selling arms to him, and I always felt that that was the avenue that the public was most interested in.

MR. MacNeil: Do you have any view on that, David?

MR. GERGEN: Well there have been so many crisis and ethical lapses since the Iran Contra affair I think that much of the heat has gone out of the issue. I would just caution that we have one more trial remaining, the Poindexter Trial, and it is possible that information could come forward in that trial that would renew the passions. But for the moment I think the Fernandez case probably is going to get a lot less attention than it would have a year ago.

MR. MacNeil: David, on the events in Czechoslovakia today how does that effect Mr. Bush as he heads toward the Summit?

MR. GERGEN: Robin, in my view, the President of the United States is going in to this meeting with Mr. Gorbachev in the strongest position of any President in the post war period. You could perhaps recall other President's had a stronger hand, but the Soviet Union now is in a profound crisis. It's a society that is practically coming apart. The scarcity of food is so severe as you know that the diets of the average Soviet citizen are at a lower level than people were eating in 1915. During the days of the Czars. The nationality problems and strike and now we see the empire on its borders falling apart so rapidly that I think that with the fall of the Government of Czechoslovakia it's one more additional piece of strength that Mr. Bush carries with him. I think that he is in a commanding position and in a position to ask things of Mr. Gorbachev or begin laying markers down for future negotiations over conventional arms, future negotiations over regional strife say in Nicaragua or even Cuba that no President has enjoyed in years.

MR. MacNeil: What do you think about that, Mark?

MR. SHIELDS: I think that the events in Czechoslovakia are to spectacular. I mean one thinks of the visual memories of the cold war second only to the Berlin Wall is probably Prague Spring of 1968 and the Soviet tanks repressing that Prague Spring and in the Dubcek movement, so today is very very important. I think it's in Gorbachev's interest and obviously I think that is apparent that he passed the word that he didn't want as Madeleine Albright said earlier on this broadcast, that he didn't want outrage, chaos or carnage in the streets . I think that David is right in the sense that the President is in a strong position. But I think Mr. Gorbachev position as the supplicant which he will be to some degree looking for assistance, help, aid however one wants to put it at Malta, that his position is strengthened in the sense of having that problem removed.

MR. MacNeil: Does this latest development vindicate Mr. Bush's approach? Does it scare away all the people a few weeks who were calling him timid in his reactions.

MR. GERGEN: I think that George Bush has been very much like a poker player with a strong hand. You know the cards are being played out and he's holding all the high cards. I don't think it totally vindicates him in one sense. I think that containment has worked. I think the Bush approach standing fast has worked. The one remaining issue here is how much we in the West will do to assist Poland, Hungary now Czechoslovakia perhaps on day East Germany to get themselves back on their feet and it seems to me on that score there is much left to be done.

MR. MacNeil: What did you think Mark of the President's Thanksgiving Eve address which was mostly about Eastern Europe?

MR. SHIELDS: I think he was certainly magnanimous and generous on his text to Mr. Gorbachev. But George Bush has yet to find his public voice, Robin. I don't think that he has a comfortable format yet and increasingly he is compared to Ronald Reagan who was quite comfortable in speaking to the nation and in expressing the national voice on subjects and George Bush has yet to do that. I agree with you and I want to underline one thing he did say. He's been dealt a wonderful hand, I think, to use the football parlance with we can't seem to resist that metaphor. He's had several turnovers in a sense now the question is canhe can convert. What can he do? he's had breaks while there are fumbles and interceptions on the other side. Certainly as the Soviet Empire crumbles and the Eastern Bloc comes apart and now the question is what is our leadership role. We have a privileged observer to these changes.

MR. GERGEN: Robin may I add a footnote on perhaps. It seems to me that Bush has taken a lot of criticism for his rhetoric and my impression is in the last couple of weeks there's been a greater effort and eloquence in the White House. That was particularly notable in the event when Mr. Bush welcomed Walesa to the White House for the medal of Freedom. He gave a really superb talk and I thought that the speech this week was moving in that direction. It's a welcome development on the part of the President.

MR. MacNeil: Let's talk about, just for a moment about El Salvador the President's handling of the situation there and the fact that evidently the Administration had hoped that all of that would remain calm and now the issue is right back in their laps again. David, what do you feel, about that?

MR. GERGEN: It is very much back in their laps. And, you know, if I may use this analogy, going back to Vietnam, the Tete offensive that was launched against the South Vietnamese and the American interest, our side, in effect, won the battle but lost the psychological edge and the war turned at that point and it seems to me there is a resemblance is here in what's happened the last couple of weeks. The government forces essentially have vanquished the rebels, but the government is now very much on the defensive. And unless the President puts pressure on the El Salvadoran government to find who killed those priests and to get serious about negotiations, there are stronger and stronger forces among the Democrats in Congress to pull the plug on El Salvador, to reduce American aid substantially next year.

MR. MacNeil: What do you think about that, Mark, and about the way the President sent the Delta Force in, although it turned out not to be needed?

MR. SHIELDS: The Delta Force liberated the Green Berets and nobody has fully explained what the Green Berets were doing in a luxury hotel, I don't know. It's hard to think of that fighting group calling a concierge for room service, But that aside, I think David has addressed it, but the real crunch is that this is a moral dilemma for the United States. I mean, we are continuing to support a government which seems either unwilling or incapable of controlling death squads who mete out death sentences in the most barbarous of all fashions. And I just, I really don't think the American people are going to continue to underwrite and to support that party unless, in fact, the Cristiani government which had made real strides can come up with the guilty parties and show that this wasn't done with any complicity on the part of their own military. I really, I think that the other factor is that absent the East- West equation, I mean, in part the rebels were motivated it is reported by fear that -- the FMLN -- by fear that the Soviets were not going to be around to subsidize any more insurgencies and that they had to move. If their motive was to provoke an act of outrage on the right, they've certainly done that, and taken the focus off their own unwillingness to participate in the democratic process.

MR. MacNeil: Excuse me, Mark. I've led you guys down the garden path away from the Congress which was your chief concern this week. Very quickly, Mark Shields, your report card on this session of the Congress.

MR. SHIELDS: I 'm a notoriously easy grader on the Congress, but I'd give them a C minus which is up from a D minus. I thought that they got better toward the end and I think Tom Foley's stewardship and George Mitchell's emergence were impressive, especially in the last 30 days.

MR. MacNeil: And David, are we going to see this continued kind of stalemate in the next session between the White House and the Congress?

MR. GERGEN: Both the White House and the Democratic leaders of Congress say we're not, but let's wait and see. You know, these people promised us we'd have a great 1989; it never developed. This was a minimalist year in Washington, a year of missed opportunities and half measures. If both parties can deliver next year, terrific, but there is one thing that's going for them and that is Mr. Gorbachev. He may help get Mr. Bush off the hook on new taxes, enable him to come forward with a budget program, which is more reasonable than was expected. That could help next year.

MR. MacNeil: David Gergen, Mark Shields, thank you. See you next week. ESSAY - AREN'T THEY GRAND?

MS. WOODRUFF: We close this holiday week with a few thoughts from Washington writer Susan Shreve about the grandparents in our lives.

SUSAN SHREVE: In our Norman Rockwell memory of childhood, the word which calls up the safety of our imagined perfect time is grandparents. Strong and gentle is how we remember them, even frail as they might have been or are, even ill. They were the steady figures of unequivocal love whose approval of us was uncomplicated by expectations, for whom we were the perfect realization of their hopes and dreams, a table full of warm familiar food, a nest where we could be exactly who we were at the moment. They had time and time and time for us. No wonder we're nostalgic. Where have all the grandparents gone? Who will our children go to for refuge when we're harassed or angry, overworked and over tired, when our perfect plans for them have failed? For one thing grandma has divorced grandpa and is married to Joe, with whom she travels to China or down the Nile, or in a recreational vehicle across the United States and grandpa is living with Mary Ann near her children who we have hardly met. Sometimes grandma comes with Joe for Thanksgiving and sometimes grandpa comes with Mary Ann for Christmas. But it's not the same. The sense of the family as a whole with grandma and grandpa at the heart's center has shattered all over America. And so many of us live or will live cut off from roots, almost in the way the ocean separated the families of immigrants. There is no one house, no one place in the trees from which we can try our wings. The sense of loss is enormous. Perhaps this accounts for the great sense of sentiment and security we have when we see that often repeated photograph of the President and his vast family gathered on the rocks overlooking the ocean in Maine. There are our national grandparents. She is strong and maternal, straight spoken and natural, unrevised in her demeanor by the youth cult, and he is the leader of the country whose grandchildren sit on his lap while he reads them a story. It seems familiar, ordinary, like home, and if we are investing them with the mythic responsibility of grandparents, whether they are what we think they are or not doesn't matter. They are filling a void in our lives. We need the center of gravity which grandparents have given our families, so our lives don't feel dispensable like collapsible furniture, disconnected with the past. We want that safe harbor they have always provided us. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Again, the main news stories of the days, Czechoslovakia's entire Communist leaderships resigned after a week of pro-democracy protests, a federal judge threw out the Iran- Contra case against former CIA official Joseph Fernandez and Lebanon's parliament elected a new president to replace Rene Mouawad, who was assassinated two days ago. Good night, Robin.

MS. WOODRUFF: Good night, Judy. That's the Newshour for tonight and we'll be back on Monday night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.