The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, the Whitewater trial verdicts, Elizabeth Farnsworth talks to the jury forewoman, Mark Shields & Paul Gigot and Rex Nelson of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette explore the fallout; election day in Israel, Charles Krause tells the story; problems for the Norplant birth control method, Elizabeth Brackett reports from Chicago; the Alsop Brothers, David Gergen has a dialogue with author Robert Merry; and collecting a memory as done by essayist Clarence Page. It all follows our summary of the news this Wednesday.NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: This was election day in Israel. Early exit polls showed the race for prime minister too close to call but with Prime Minister Shimon Peres running ahead of opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Turnout was high, over 79 percent. We'll have more on the story later in the program. On the Whitewater story today, the Little Rock jurors in various press interviews said it was the paper trail that caused them to return guilty verdicts yesterday. The defendants were Jim McDougal, his former wife, Susan, and Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker. All were found guilty of fraud in securing $3 million in small business loans. The McDougals had been business partners of then Governor and Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Clinton testified via video tape as a defense witness in the trial. Tucker said he would resign as governor effective July 15th while he pursued an appeal. We'll have more on this story right after this News Summary. On Cuba today, a State Department spokesman said a handful of Canadian, Mexican, and Italian companies may be penalized for investing in confiscated American properties in Cuba. He said letters have been sent out warning the companies they were in violation of the recently enacted Helms-Burton Law.

NICHOLAS BURNS, State Department Spokesman: We are talking about situations not of companies that invest in Cuba but of companies that invest in assets and who own assets that were once American property and that were illegally and unfairly taken from American citizens when they were nationalized by the Castro government in the early years of the Cuban revolution and for which those Americans did not receive compensation. Let me just also point out if a company wanted to divest itself of property which has been expropriated from an American citizen, it can certainly do so, and if it did so, then it would not fall under the purview of this act. The sanctions would bar executives of companies involved from entering the United States. The space shuttle "Endeavour" and its six astronauts returned to earth at Cape Canaveral, Florida, this morning. They were gone for 10 days. Two major experiments were completed. An inflatable antenna and a small, self-stabilizing satellite were released and tested. Two tornadoes hit in the southern suburbs of Louisville, Kentucky, last night. More than 1,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, but there were no deaths or major injuries reported. The tornadoes were part of a storm system making its way across the Midwest and Indiana. A man was struck andkilled by lightning as heavy rain and strong winds moved through the state. More thunderstorms are predicted tonight throughout the region. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the day after the Whitewater verdicts, election day in Israel, the problems of Norplant, a David Gergen dialogue, and a Clarence Page essay. FOCUS - GUILTY FALLOUT

MR. LEHRER: Fallout from yesterday's verdicts in the Whitewater trial is first tonight. We begin with a view from inside the Little Rock jury room. Elizabeth Farnsworth has that story.

MS. FARNSWORTH: The nine women and three men that sat in judgment of James and Susan McDougal and Governor Jim Guy Tucker sifted through more than 600 exhibits in coming to a verdict. The charges were complicated. James McDougal, for example, was convicted of 18 criminal counts, among them conspiring with Governor Tucker to arrange nearly $3 million in loans from two federally-backed banks via fraudulent real estate appraisals. The government also said McDougal helped a friend get a $65,000 loan and then used the proceeds to pay off his own debts. Susan McDougal was convicted on four counts related to obtaining a $300,000 federally-backed loan and then using it illegally for personal and some business expenses. The jury spent more than a week sifting through the evidence on these and other charges, and that jury's forewoman was Sandy Wood, a small business owner. She joins us now. Thank you for being with us, Ms. Wood.

SANDY WOOD, Whitewater Jury Forewoman: [Russellville, AR] You're welcome.

MS. FARNSWORTH: You had all these arguments and many counts to consider. How did the jury do its work? Take us step by step through your process.

MS. WOOD: The jury went in a very systematic process. The first thing that we did when we went to the deliberation room after electing a foreperson was to review the testimony and create a timeline, and we felt that that was very instrumental to us in being able to organize the data that we had received over the course of the testimony, umm, and just kind of get it in perspective for us, umm, and then we got individual copies of the indictment and the jury instructions, umm, for each juror, and we took each defendant separately and went count by count, umm, discussing, reading the indictment, uh, reading then the jury instructions, and discussing it until each of us felt comfortable with the verdict that we came up with. And we completed that before we moved on to the next count.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Were you mostly looking at documents at this point, real estate appraisals, for example, loan applications, that kind of thing?

MS. WOOD: We looked heavily at the documents. Umm, we also considered the testimony of the witnesses in conjunction with that to help us understand, umm, how important the documents were and how the documents were used in the normal course of business. Umm, but the documents weighed very heavily for us.

MS. FARNSWORTH: How important was the President's testimony? We should remind people that he was brought as a defense witness by the McDougals. He was subpoenaed to testify because he--it had been charged that he had been there when the conspiracy was hatched to, to get these loans, although he was not in any way charged with being part of that conspiracy. How, how important was his testimony?

MS. WOOD: Well, his testimony really did not shed any light for us on the individual transactions. Umm, his testimony seemed very credible to me personally. I didn't have a problem with that. He just did not have any information and, therefore, we did not utilize it very heavily at all in our deliberations.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Well, he was there to impugn the testimony of David Hale, who was an important witness but that did not end up being a big part of your deliberation?

MS. WOOD: No. Because the areas in which they differed really turned out to be irrelevant. We had documents that showed us that the transactions took place, umm, and we proceeded from there.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What did you consider in weighing the other testimony? There were other people that testified, Jim McDougal and others. What did you consider in looking at their testimony?

MS. WOOD: Well, Judge Howard gave us some very explicit instructions in, in how we should weigh testimony, and we used those written instructions, but some of the things that were included in those instructions were, umm, the demeanor of the person when they were on the stand, umm, we were allowed to examine their motives for testifying in one fashion or another, umm, and any prior inconsistent statements that they had made. So there were a number of criteria that we used to weigh those, those testimonies.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Were those the same criteria you used in looking at the President's testimony?

MS. WOOD: Yes.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And so you did discuss his testimony as part of your deliberations?

MS. WOOD: We did briefly. I remember one time that we discussed it briefly but it was not a--it just did not come into issue because, umm, it was not shedding any light on, on what we needed to know about those transactions.

MS. FARNSWORTH: How well did the jury work together?

MS. WOOD: Oh, the jury worked very well together. I have never worked with a finer group of people in my entire life.

MS. FARNSWORTH: How do you explain your cooperation?

MS. WOOD: Well, part--part of it was that, umm, we had three months to get to know one another, umm, and develop relationships and trust, umm, and so when we went in to deliberate, uh, we did so knowing each other very well and with a commitment that we would hang in there together until everyone felt comfortable with a verdict.

MS. FARNSWORTH: You had this, this trial and you all have had a lot of spotlight all through this process. Did that affect you? Did it make you more stressful, more stressed? Did it make you think much more deeply about what you were doing, or what was the effect?

MS. WOOD: I think if it did anything, it made us even more committed that we wanted to remain a jury that was above reproach, that we would follow the judge's instructions to the very best of our ability, umm, and that we would--because we knew the eyes of the world were--was upon us--that we would try our very hardest, umm, to end up with doing a job that we could be proud of.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Did you discuss this tension, the fact that this could influence this electoral year, that kind of thing?

MS. WOOD: No. That, that portion of it we left outside of the jury room. We, we could not key in on that during the trial. We didn't listen to any media publicity, news reports, and the like, so we really didn't know what was going on outside our courtroom.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Wasn't it hard not to listen? You weren't sequestered. Wasn't it hard not to be affected by the media at all?

MS. WOOD: No, not really. I mean, by the time you got home at night you were exhausted and you had things that you needed to do with your family. And for me, it was not difficult.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Had you been told not to listen to any media, or just not to listen to media involving the trial?

MS. WOOD: Just involving the trial.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Anything else you want to add?

MS. WOOD: No.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Thank you for being with us.

MS. WOOD: You're welcome.

MR. LEHRER: Now the political fallout from all of this in Arkansas and nationally. Rex Nelson is the political editor of the "Arkansas Democrat Gazette." He joins NewsHour regulars Shields & Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, "Wall Street Journal" columnist Paul Gigot. Rex Nelson, the eyes of Arkansas were certainly on that jury and what it did. How did they do what they did yesterday? REX NELSON, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: [Little Rock] I think there's probably a sense of relief here more than anything, Jim. I mean, not only that jury but all Arkansans have been living with this trial for weeks now. The prosecution took about nine and a half weeks to present its case. It's one of the longest federal trials in Arkansas history, and there was that sense of uncertainty now that is removed. We know Governor Tucker is leaving office, that Republican Mike Huckabee will be moving in, so I think more than anything it was a sense of relief this morning that it's just over here in Arkansas.

MR. LEHRER: A sense that justice was done?

MR. NELSON: I think there probably is. In fact, we did a statewide poll about a month ago that showed that only 19 percent of registered voters in the state believe that Governor Tucker was telling the truth when he said that he was innocent of the charges against him. More than 50 percent said they thought the governor was lying. So the governor's attempt to portray this as outside Republican carpetbaggers coming in to prosecute Arkansans I don't think played. I think the governor had run out of political capital long before this trial even started, and I think the sense around the state, however, was we think he's probably guilty, but you'll never find a jury to convict him. Well, this jury and--that we just heard from proved them differently. And I think most Arkansans probably do think that justice was done yesterday.

MR. LEHRER: Now outside Arkansas--I won't speak for everybody outside of Arkansas, but this trial was portrayed as being about the Clintons even though it wasn't about the Clintons. I mean, the Clintons were not charged with anything, however, there was a lot- -the Clintons had a lot riding on this. Is that the way it was viewed in Arkansas as well?

MR. NELSON: No, I don't think so. And I talked to some national radio shows today have tried to portray it that way. I think that Arkansans clearly knew than this was about Jim McDougal, Susan McDougal, and Jim Guy Tucker. Indeed, Bill and Hillary Clinton were business partners with the McDougals and Whitewater Development Corporation from 1978 to '92. But Whitewater was not an issue. Whitewater Development was not a part of this trial, and people here in Arkansas knew that rather than being close associates, Jim Guy Tucker was actually a political enemy of Bill Clinton. Those two gentlemen came of age politically about the same time. They were bound to square off at one time or another, and they did square off in 1982 in the Democratic primary won by Bill Clinton here in Arkansas, and that gubernatorial primary was one of the most bitter, one of the most heated--

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. NELSON: --contests we've seen in this state--

MR. LEHRER: They didn't like each other.

MR. NELSON: --in the last couple of decades. Oh, no, not at all.

MR. LEHRER: They didn't like each other at all, did they?

MR. NELSON: Not at all, and I, again, I think that people here in Arkansas were able to make that distinction, and they knew that this was not about Bill Clinton.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. And it was not seen as the jury had to believe either David Hale or President Clinton in determining which way they would decide?

MR. NELSON: No, Jim, again, I think that's something that was presented by the national media. I mean, everybody that I talked to wanted to present this as a case of David Hale versus Bill Clinton. What it actually was, was the U.S. Government versus Jim McDougal and Susan McDougal and Jim Guy Tucker. I think that's how Arkansans saw it, and I think that's how this jury saw it. Now, interestingly enough, as you know, we have another trial coming up, a couple of bankers that did business with the 1990 Clinton gubernatorial campaign, and it's kind of ironic. I think that trial will receive a lot less national media attention, but I think it strikes much closer to home as far as the President is concerned and is a much larger potential land mine--

MR. LEHRER: Why is that?

MR. NELSON: --for the President.

MR. LEHRER: Why is that?

MR. NELSON: Well, again, now you have the President's campaign doing hands-on dealing with a small bank--

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

MR. NELSON: --West of Little Rock called the Prairie County Bank. I mean, money was taken out of this bank. Cash transactions were taken there that were used for street money. Again, you had no direct connection to the President to these charges. I think certainly we'll see the President testify again in this upcoming trial of Herby Branscom and Robert Heel, probably again by video tape from the White House.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. You mentioned the national media. We have two key members of the national media with us whom we'll bring in now, Paul Gigot and Mark Shields. Uh, Mark, umm, what has this done for the President? You heard what, what Rex just said about how it was viewed in Arkansas. How was it viewed by all the rest of us? MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Well, I thought Lars Eric Nelson of the "New York Daily News," a respected columnist, put it well. He said, "In theory, the President was not on trial in Little Rock yesterday but in practice of politics he was." There's no question about it. And I think Rex makes a good case that this was not about Bill Clinton but these are the only two business partners that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton ever had when he was governor, Jim and Susan McDougal, uh, and he makes a very good case that they were--he and Jim Guy Tucker were, were rivals all the way through their entire political careers. I mean, Jim Guy Tucker was in many respects the real Bill Clinton, uh--

MR. LEHRER: Explain that.

MR. SHIELDS: Well, he was--Jim Guy Tucker was three years older- -is three years older than Bill Clinton, went to Harvard, did the Marine Corps Reserves, came back, got elected attorney general of the state, took Wilbur Mills' place in the Congress in 1976 as the former chairman of the Ways & Means Committee, and in 1978, squared off in the battle of titans for the Senate seat held by John McCollom for so many years in Arkansas against David Pryor, the governor. Ray Thornton went on to be president of the University of Arkansas, a member of Congress at the time, and Jim Guy Tucker, a real, a real Pier Six brawl won by David Pryor, and then in '82, as Rex mentioned, Bill Clinton and Jim Guy Tucker squared off in a really bitter gubernatorial primary, so, uh, they are not close. They've never been close, but there's been a certain, you know, shotgun marriage of convenience over the years. I don't think there's any question that for people outside of Arkansas it's, if they'd gotten the verdicts they'd hoped for, Jim, the White House, the innocent verdicts, they would have said, boy, that's the end of it, this has been a witch hunt, it's a dead end, and all the rest of it, and you can't make that--this is a day in which the White House spin doctors have more than earned their pay. There is nothing to say.

MR. LEHRER: Paul.

PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: They all want Oscars, the Irving Fallberg Award for lifetime achievement after today. I--it wasn't just the national media, much maligned as we are, which tried to put the President into this case. It was the defense. I mean, the defense brought him down, in essence, as a character witness for--brought down a former governor of Arkansas, now President, from Arkansas, to testify as a character witness for the current governor of Arkansas, and it didn't work. It was a bad defense strategy. Obviously there were only two defense witnesses, in fact, Jim McDougal, which was a catastrophe probably for the defense, and then the President. So it's hard to take him out of this--

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

MR. GIGOT: --in any broader sense.

MR. LEHRER: But how does it--how does this play now as far as the Presidential election is concerned? Is this--what's your reading on that, Paul?

MR. GIGOT: I talked to a Democrat today who said that this was not, as the White House expected, the end of Whitewater. Yesterday was the beginning of Whitewater, because what it did was it gave new energy to Ken Starr's probe. What it did was it said that the essential, the White House has had two defenses really. One was the sort of Gertrude Stein defense that what she once said about Oakland, there's no there there. Now you have something that was there--a crime, fraud, and conspiracy. So they can't say this is- -there's nothing to it. And the other one was that it's all political, that this is just an Al D'Amato witch hunt, and Ken Starr is part of the team. Well, in fact, 12 Arkansans said there's something to it, and it's very hard to dismiss it all as partisan politics.

MR. SHIELDS: I think it is hard to dismiss it as partisan politics. Anybody who listened to Ms. Wood on our broadcast with Elizabeth or heard the interviews of the other jurors, uh, I'll tell you this--it goes a long way toward restoring public confidence after O.J. Simpson in Los Angeles. I mean, these were people who were thoughtful, conscientious, they heeded the judge's instructions. They went through it with deliberation. I mean, that was impressive, it truly was. And I have to say the other thing. I thought Jim McDougal, uh, handled, handled the verdict yesterday quite manfully. He did not whine. He said the jury and the judge had been fair and open, and I thought, I thought the President handled it well last night as well, but it remains, Jim. It is a very serious political problem.

MR. LEHRER: But what--in what way does it remain--if, if, if you take what all of you have said, that, that at this stage--nothing has yet been proved on the Clintons.

MR. SHIELDS: No.

MR. LEHRER: That they did anything wrong.

MR. SHIELDS: No.

MR. LEHRER: Or improper--

MR. SHIELDS: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: --or whatever. How does it continue to hurt them--

MR. SHIELDS: Okay.

MR. LEHRER: --if it doesn't go any further than this?

MR. SHIELDS: First of all, it diverts attention, energy, and effort at the White House. I mean, people are concerned about it. They're trying to figure out how to handle it and all the rest of it. That's the first thing. But the second thing is Bob Squire, who's the Democratic media consultant working for the President, very veteran guy with a lot of, a lot of campaigns under his belt, whenever he's been asked about the Republicans raising the character issue in 1996, said, hey, we had an election about that in 1992, didn't you see it? Bill Clinton won. What this does is it re-energizes and re-cycles the character question problem for the Democrats and for the President.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree, Paul?

MR. GIGOT: Think, think of it this way. Imagine what the election would have--what would have changed in 1992 had we known then what we know now, had we known that the President's business partners were engaged in looting an S&L, had we known that a sitting governor of Arkansas, who was then lieutenant governor, was partners with them in a way that was really troubling and would have to resign his office. Imagine if all the questions about the billing records would suddenly appear, all the questions about the testimony and the contradictions, if we had known that, it probably would have made a difference, and that's what--the point Mark is making, I think, which is this is not a question of women, which we had back in '92, but this is a question that was not considered in '92 and is going to be front and center in '96.

MR. LEHRER: Rex, does that add up to you?

MR. NELSON: Oh, absolutely. I think Mark and Paul are right in that it gives impetus to the investigation, not only what Al D'Amato is doing over in the Senate, but the important part, which is the legal part, which is what Ken Starr is doing, and Ken Starr is still rolling forward. He has an investigation here in Little Rock. He also has a Washington phase. Don't forget that we still have grand juries impaneled both here in Little Rock and there in Washington. I certainly expect we'll see more indictments before this year is over.

MR. LEHRER: Rex, let me ask you this question. Is it--do people in Arkansas believe that there would ever--that the McDougals or Jim Guy Tucker would ever have been charged with anything or ever even been investigated if it had not been for involvement of the Clintons? In other words, did the Clintons, the fact of the Clintons bring them on them?

MR. NELSON: Oh, absolutely. I think we all know that. I mean, I don't think there would have ever been charges brought against any of the three if Bill Clinton had not become President of the United States. But as I told people all along, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're not guilty and certainly this jury decided yesterday that they are guilty, and, uh, I don't see a legal problem for either the President or the First Lady at this point, but everybody is right in saying it is going to be a continuing political problem at, at the very best for the President and does give some impetus to Ken Starr, and it could become a legal problem for some in the administration before November rolls around.

MR. LEHRER: Mark, Mrs. Clinton in an interview last night on the NewsHour said that all of this is being driven and has been driven from the very beginning by people who do not want her husband to be President of the United States, and that's where all of this began. Is she right about that?

MR. SHIELDS: She's right that people who don't want her husband to be President of the United States have endorsed, uh, helped, assisted, but I mean, we just had a case--we just had a jury verdict yesterday, Jim, in Arkansas, and, uh, to return to Ms. Wood and her fellow jurists, I mean, they were, they were thoughtful, conscientious citizens who had no vendetta, who liked the fact that Bill Clinton is a fellow Arkansan who's President of the United States. I think it's--it's hard to say today, uh, that it's a political--it's a political escapade, but I, I do think, uh, that there's no question that the Republicans--I mean, let's be frank about it--the Republicans didn't have much going for them. I mean, they, they were cut off at every pass. They had a candidate they were trying to get rid of. They were bad-mouthing him every time they turned around. Now all of a sudden they're energized. It's a little bit like the Democrats were in Iran-Contra. Uh, you know what I mean? They couldn't be the gipper, they couldn't lay a hand on him, but boy, oh, boy, jeez, we got Ollie North, isn't this good, and any time, any time you're reduced to scandal politics, it, it really is an admission that what--your game plan isn't working, and I think even Republicans in their sort of euphoric or the anti-Clinton forces in their euphoric moment tonight, which is understandable euphoria, ought to think about that. Uh, you know, what's the case?

MR. GIGOT: Well, if Republicans only run on, on Whitewater, they'll lose. I mean, that's not the only thing this election will be about, so Mark's right in that sense. Umm, there's a--there's a real irony in the First Lady saying that politics is being played here. Of course, she's right, a lot of her husband's enemies are taking advantage of this, and waving the flag around, but she earned her political spurs on the other side of the fence, and the committee that investigated Richard Nixon, and the way our system works is that accountability is political. The other side says, all right, what can we smoke out and what can we stir up, and that's when those sides clash, you often get more facts and you, you at least come to some kind of accountability, and that's what--what happened in Watergate, and that's to some extent what's happening now.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. We'll we'll see what--we know what's happened up till now. We'll see what happens next, as they say in our business. Rex Nelson, thank you very much for being with us from Little Rock tonight. Thank you, gentlemen. UPDATE - REFERENDUM ON THE FUTURE

MR. LEHRER: The important elections in Israel are over but the results are not expected until sometime later tonight or tomorrow. We have an election day report from Israel by Charles Krause.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Today's election took place against a backdrop of unprecedented security as thousands of soldiers and policemen were deployed across Israel to guard against a terrorist attack. In Tel Aviv, the city's most fashionable shopping street was cleared due to a bomb scare while soldiers and policemen guarded public buildings, buses, and polling places elsewhere in Tel Aviv and throughout the country. The heightened security was apparently successful. Turnout was heavy and there were no reports of major incidents as Israel's nearly 4 million voters cast their ballots to elect a new government. Israel's incumbent prime minister, Shimon Peres, cast his ballot this morning, then spoke to reporters.

SHIMON PERES, Prime Minister, Israel: I think it is a historic decision. I don't look upon it as a personal competition, neither as a confrontation between two parties, but really a choice of the future. One road leads to peace, the other leads to settlement, and these are in full contradiction. I hope the nation will decide for peace.

MR. KRAUSE: Opposition candidate Benjamin Netanyahu went into the election narrowly behind Peres in the opinion polls. He responded to reporters' questions this morning in Jerusalem.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, Opposition Leader: I think the political future of the state of Israel is what counts, and I think it has a brilliant future, and I think that future will begin tonight.

REPORTER: And what do you feel about your own future?

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: I think it's going to be a good future. I'm going to do my best to bring this country the hope, the peace, and the security that it deserves.

MR. KRAUSE: Today's vote was as much a referendum on the Middle East peace process as it was a vote for or against Peres or Netanyahu. At the polls, those who said they were voting for the Labor Party and Peres said they supported his promise to continue negotiations toward a comprehensive peace agreement with Israel's Arab neighbors.

BATYA MEISLER, Peres Voter: The option of peace should be pursued because we've tried other avenues before and lost a lot of lives, and, uh, we have to be brave to face up to the dangers of peace.

MR. KRAUSE: Netanyahu and his Likud Party offered a sharply different vision, emphasizing Israel's need for security. On the campaign trail, he criticized Peres for taking unnecessary risks. Netanyahu said that he would slow down the peace process if he were elected. The emotions and fears Netanyahu inspired were evident today among his supporters.

ELI NATIV RAHAMIN, Netanyahu Voter: We have no security in the street, something like seven or eight bus bombs in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and all of Israel. And now I think that the government, the Likud government can make peace and very carefully peace, peace with security to the other people in Israel.

MR. KRAUSE: Today's election was the first in which Israeli voters voted directly for prime minister as well as for members of the Israel's parliament called the Knesset. There was evident confusion among some voters. Shortly after the polls closed this evening, Israeli Television announced that its exit polls showed Peres with 50.7 percent of the vote to Netanyahu's 49.3. The crowd at Labor Party headquarters cheered and Labor Party leaders expressed cautious optimism.

EFRAIM SNE, Health Minister: The outcome is that Mr. Peres is the next prime minister of Israel and he has a coalition for peace in the Israeli parliament in the Knesset.

MR. KRAUSE: Are you satisfied that the exit polls are accurate?

EFRAIM SNE: You know, it's just exit polls. It maybe change in this way or another, but I think that the edge is quite distinct, quite clear, and I hope it will remain as such.

MR. KRAUSE: You don't think that there's any chance it could turn the other way?

EFRAIM SNE: I hope not, but, you know, it's--we have to, to wait a little bit.

MR. KRAUSE: Even if the exit polls prove to be correct, Peres may be faced with some hard bargaining as he tries to put together a working majority in the Knesset in the weeks ahead.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, problems for Norplant, a Gergen dialogue, and a Clarence Page essay. FOCUS - CONTROVERSIAL CONTRACEPTIVE

MR. LEHRER: Now, legal problems for a birth control method. Elizabeth Brackett of WTTW-Chicago reports.

MS. BRACKETT: There's a small room in a Chicago law office that's crammed from floor to ceiling with file folders. Inside each one is a story of suffering, a story of a woman who says she's had problems or worse with this. It's called Norplant, and it's a birth control system that was hailed as a breakthrough when it was approved by the Food & Drug Administration five years ago. Now it's in deep legal trouble and may disappear from the American market. Some say it's a good product unfairly hounded by overzealous lawyers. Not this woman--she's one of the plaintiffs.

PAM SKOWRONSKI: I wouldn't do it again if I had, you know, the chance. I think I would, uh, either abstain from having sex till I decided to have another child or, umm, probably just be sick and be on the pill and deal with those complications because that was nothing compared to what I went through when I had the Norplant put in.

MS. BRACKETT: But as Pamela Skowronski really a victim of Norplant? For every user like Pamela, there are others like Terry Stoica.

TERRY STOICA: I'm still very happy that I chose the method. It's been, umm, good birth control for me. I think the side effects for me have been an irritation, rather than something serious.

MS. BRACKETT: No one thought Norplant would be this controversial when it was still in the lab. Population control groups had spent years searching for a new and more effective contraceptive, and Norplant seemed to fill the bill. It had been extensively tested both inside and outside the United States. The U.S. distributor, Wyeth-Ayerst, even produced patient videos explaining how Norplant worked. Six small capsules containing the synthetic hormone levonorgestrel are inserted under the skin in a minor surgical procedure. As long as the capsules are in, the hormone continues to enter the body preventing pregnancy. They can be removed surgically any time a woman wants, but left alone, they work unattended for five years. Small wonder that real patients praised Norplant in the company's videos.

WOMAN: [Wyeth-Ayerst Video] Once I heard about the Norplant and what it can do for you, I said, gee, that sounds great.

SECOND WOMAN: [Wyeth-Ayerst Video] It's a peace of mind that I've never experienced with any other kind of birth control.

MS. BRACKETT: But Jewel Klein's clients tell a different story. She represents Skowronski and thousands of other plaintiffs who tell tales of difficult removals which left ugly bruises and scars, along with serious side effects, ranging from lengthy, painful menstrual periods to excessive weight gains.

JEWEL KLEIN, Plaintiff Lawyer: We're suing because they put out this product, they said it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, they marketed it that way, and our clients were fooled. They didn't get what they bargained for, and many of our clients have really lost a year or two out of their life until they got the poison out of their system.

DR. MARC DEITCH, Medical Director, Wyeth-Ayerst: I'm the senior most person, senior person in the company responsible for drug safety. I have not seen anything that is unexpected that is related to Norplant.

MS. BRACKETT: Wyeth-Ayerst is convinced it's being targeted by litigators looking for new products to attack after the silicone breast implant controversy. The company points out that many lawyers actively advertised for clients. Dr. Marc Deitch, medical director at Wyeth-Ayerst, says women were clearly warned of well known side effects from using any progestin-only drug.

DR. MARC DEITCH: Well, you have one of the best studied progestins and best studied methods of contraception that we have. Prior to introducing Norplant, um, we, we certainly knew what the side effects were, and one thing we knew was really important when we introduced the product was that counseling would be very important. Not every contraceptive method is the right choice for every woman, and that way women would understand that--what they could expect and when physicians and other health care providers spent the time to explain to women what the side effects were and what they could expect, they could make a good choice. When you look at the over--almost 1 million women that have used Norplant, you find an extremely high level of satisfaction.

MS. BRACKETT: The company's promotional literature was clear about the side effects, and so were the videos.

WOMAN: [Wyeth-Ayerst Video] Changes in menstruation are to be expected with this system. They may include prolonged menstrual bleeding, bleeding or spotting between periods, no bleeding for several months, or any combination of these. As you just heard, the pattern differs from woman to woman. It's impossible to predict what you might experience.

MS. BRACKETT: But no warning prepared Skowronski for what she experienced--severe abdominal pain, a painfully bruised arm when the Norplant was removed, continuous heavy menstrual bleeding after removal, and eight months later a hysterectomy.

MS. BRACKETT: And do you think that hysterectomy was from the Norplant?

PAM SKOWRONSKI: Umm, I'm not a doctor but from all the, from the time it was--Norplant was put in my arm till I had that hysterectomy nothing but trouble. So I--and women in my family don't have those kind of problems, so--

MS. BRACKETT: How much did Norplant change your life?

PAM SKOWRONSKI: Real--a lot, a whole lot, just, you know, not being able to have your own choice of having a child again, it's, it's done.

MS. BRACKETT: But a doctor who was an early supporter of Norplant and has placed it in hundreds of women says there is no evidence linking Norplant to abnormal bleeding or hysterectomies after it has been removed.

DR. KEITH BROWN: Once the implant is removed from the body, that chemical is out of the woman's system within 72 hours, so if bleeding and side effects continue after that period of time and you know that that substance is no longer in that person's body, you tend to think there's another reason for the irregular bleeding.

MS. BRACKETT: As doctors, lawyers, and users continue to battle over the side effects of Norplant, clinicians and researchers continue to study the effect of Norplant after it has been implanted in millions of women and perhaps more significantly after it has been removed. Dr. Alan Hirsch's patients complained of severe headache, dizziness, and other problems both before and after using Norplant. This led Dr. Hirsch, a psychiatrist and neurologist, to launch a pilot study on the neurological side effects from Norplant. Though the study only involved five women, what he found in their patterns of brain activity was disturbing.

DR. ALAN HIRSCH: What we saw was clear evidence of brain damage, of peripheral nerve damage. Realize that the substance that's in Norplant, levonorgestrel, has been known in the past to induce a variety of different neurological findings, including those things that we found, as well as it appears something that tends to induce formation of meningiomas, which is a form of brain tumor, that can take twenty, thirty years for it to present. So even after the Norplant's removed, this brain tumor has already been induced to form, and it can continue to gradually build up for decades onward.

DR. MARC DEITCH: Well, let me tell you my opinion of Dr. Hirsch's paper. First, I wouldn't call it a study. Uh, characterizing data on five patients is not a study. In reading through this report, which is really just a recitation of some very bizarre tests that he's done that I don't think are very well substantiated, some of which I've never heard of, apparently what this really is, is what the Supreme Court recently called junk science. This is not good science.

DR. ALAN HIRSCH: Five is a very small number, and we really need to do a much larger study, but even so, you know, we see women all day long, and these are very significant findings. If I saw these five women that worked in a single work site all with these problems, I would be calling the Department of Health. These are very significant findings for an otherwise young, healthy woman. You don't expect it.

MS. BRACKETT: Last August, the FDA renewed its support of Norplant, calling it a safe and effective contraceptive. But Norplant sales have decreased by 90 percent in the last year. Amy Cohen of Planned Parenthood, an organization that has worked hard to expand birth control options, says she fears Norplant could go the way of most intrauterine devices, the contraceptive sponge, or RU-486, methods easily available in other countries but driven or kept off the U.S. market by fear of lawsuits and protests.

AMY COHEN, Planned Parenthood: I am very, very concerned. I think there will be a chilling effect on research and development as lawsuits escalate and as companies see not only their margin, the profit margin disappearing, but seeing their profits disappearing in supporting themselves. And my big fear is that if we continue to see an escalation in the legal battles around this that what the consequences for us, the American public, is going to be is that we're not going to have many choices around family planning at all.

MS. BRACKETT: American women already have so few options that the most common method of birth control in this country is sterilization. So the drug's future is uncertain as Pamela Skowronski's case and hundreds of others inch their way through the legal system. The only thing that's certain is that they'll have a long time to wait. Wyeth-Ayerst has promised to stand behind Norplant and vigorously contest each and every case. DIALOGUE

MR. LEHRER: Now a Gergen dialogue. David Gergen, editor at large of "U.S. News & World Report," engages Robert Merry, executive editor of the "Congressional Quarterly," author of Taking on the World: Joseph and Stewart Alsop, Guardians of the American Century.

DAVID GERGEN, U.S. News & World Report: Joe Alsop and Stewart Alsop, brothers, journalists, legends, they're part of a time and a class that now seems long ago and far away, and yet, there's a great deal of nostalgia for that time. Tell us first who the Alsops were and why they're significant.

ROBERT MERRY, Author, Taking on the World: Well, the Alsop Brothers were journalists, gentlemen journalists of the Washington genre and from--for about 40 years, David, from 1935 to 1975, they were at the center of events, both as journalists and as combatants during World War II, and they managed during that period to get themselves to the center of events, No. 1, and No. 2, to express themselves in very strong and very opinionated ways so that people knew who they were and where they were coming from, and they were, they personified an era of, of Washington. It was the--what I call the New Deal Cold War era.

MR. GERGEN: And they were very much shaping opinion about, especially about American foreign policy and supported active American leadership around the world, from not only the Second World War but thereafter in Korea, Vietnam, and the like, and they were right there at the center, pushing as these internationalists, as liberal internationalists.

ROBERT MERRY: Well, they were the cheerleaders really, the journalistic cheerleaders of the old anglo-saxon elite that emerged at the end of World War II to take America into the world. My book is called Taking on the World. And they took on the world and they wanted their country to take on the world. And, and so as the, as the Harrimans and the Nitzas and the Bolans and the Kennans all emerged to, to take America into a major world role, they were there to lead the cheers journalistically for that role for America.

MR. GERGEN: And to tell them what to do.

ROBERT MERRY: Often. Often, and sometimes they would actually listen. But they got a lot of good stories from those people because those were people who were their friends. They grew up with them. They were part of the old elite, themselves, and they grew up with them, they went to Groton and Harvard and Yale with them. Their families were interconnected in Connecticut and other parts of New England, and so they were right there at the center of things.

MR. GERGEN: It appears to me that like Walter Lipman they had far more influence than leading journalists do today. Why is that true?

ROBERT MERRY: Oh, I think journalism has totally changed today, and in those days, uh, print was really the, the aristocracy of journalism and the columnists, the major columnists were the monarchy, and--

MR. GERGEN: And these two fellows were both columnists.

ROBERT MERRY: They were columnists with a huge reach. They were in 200 newspapers with a combined circulation of 25 million, and they wrote insistently for the "Saturday Evening Post," which was a major magazine at the time with six million subscribers and twenty million readers. So they had an immense reach in a country that had 170 million people, maybe 180 million people. So combined with that reach and their journalistic acumen and the fact that they stood for something, they, they managed to cut a pretty wide swathe.

MR. GERGEN: I think a lot of people that you talk to today, who knew the Alsop Brothers were impressed by their courage, not only their physical courage, as they volunteered in World War II and went on to cover Korea and Vietnam actually out on the field with the troops, but the kind of courage which Joe Alsop showed that day in Russia.

ROBERT MERRY: It was an amazing time. He was--it was the only time he ever went to the Soviet Union. He was in Moscow. He had traveled all throughout Siberia, but he got back to Moscow and was waiting for an interview with, with Kruschev. Uh, Joe was a homosexual. He lived in the closet of a secret life, and, umm, on his trips, he frequently would seek out homosexual companionship. On this particular occasion in his hotel room, he did just that, not a very wise or prudent thing to do in Moscow, especially given the fact that he was a stone-cold warrior, and the Soviets didn't care for him very much. Well, they had his room rigged. It was all set up, and they captured him on film. A day or so later--

MR. GERGEN: In a homosexual relationship.

ROBERT MERRY: That's correct. In, in the midst of it. And we're improvising here a little bit, but I think we have a pretty much clear sense of what happened. The KGB--KGB forerunners, then KBD operatives came to his room. They spread out these photographs, very incriminating, on his bed, umm, and they tried to blackmail him, turn him into an agent of influence so that they could control him. Uh, he realized immediately that he had gotten himself into a very embarrassing and unfortunate situation and his only way out was the good, old-fashioned Alsop arrogance. He, uh, totally dismissed these people. He said that if they thought that he was going to turn on his country and become a traitor, they had the wrong man. He sarcastically inquired as to whether he could get some, some extra copies for his private collection, and he stormed out and went immediately to the U.S. embassy, where, not surprisingly, the ambassador who was his old friend, Chip Bolan, and between Chip Bolan and some of his friends in the CIA, they worked rather assiduously to convince the Soviets that this wasn't going to pay off for them and that they might as just well let it go, but they got him out of the country rather rapidly, and, of course, he had to be seriously de-briefed by the CIA.

MR. GERGEN: But he put it behind him. It was a gutsy move, and it was a patriotic move, I might say.

ROBERT MERRY: It was a very gutsy move, and it could have destroyed him, umm, and he was prepared to have that happen.

MR. GERGEN: Yeah. What--let's go back to the establishment, itself. These people were so representative of it, and you write about this in some detail. It's so striking that what distinguished them was not just their schooling, not just the Groton, Harvard, Yale kind of background, not just the country squire kind of background, but a belief system that, that many of the folks who belong to this group, you know, were anglophiles, and Groton, one took four years of English history, no years of--no years of Britain--American history.

ROBERT MERRY: What Stewart wrote, yeah, it's amazing.

MR. GERGEN: Unbelievable, isn't it?

ROBERT MERRY: Yes, it is.

MR. GERGEN: And they saw--but they saw America as picking up the leadership that Britain lost at the middle of the century, that America became the guardian of Western Civilization, in effect.

ROBERT MERRY: Absolutely. I posit the view in the book that the Alsop Brothers and their class viewed themselves as an adjunct essentially of the old British empire, and at the end of World War II, their hope had been that there could be this wonderful anglo- American alliance, partnership. In fact, Winston Churchill--he mentions in the book that Winston Churchill even suggested at one point that maybe we could have dual citizenship at which point Joe said, if we ever had that, Winston would probably run for President. In any case, they viewed themselves as part and parcel of the old British empire. And it's not really surprising, because that's what--that's what they had been conditioned to think. Umm, when, when that partnership after the war didn't work out, and-- because Britain couldn't hold up its end of the bargain and then fell apart totally with Suez in 1956, it was, as, as British Prime Minister McMillan said to his old friend, Eisenhower in a very short telegraph, over to you, it was over to us. We had to pick up, umm, that, that challenge, and the challenge essentially was to establish and maintain stability and peace in the world, and preserve, umm, Western--not hegemony exactly but the Western interests, wherever they might be.

MR. GERGEN: You say that that anglo-saxon establishment from the East sort of held sway from essentially the Second World War on to Vietnam.

ROBERT MERRY: The turning point for the country was a turning point for the old elite. It was a turning point for Joe Alsop's career. Uh, the anglo-saxon elite had pretty much run the country and certainly its foreign policy since the beginning, and it was only natural that they would emerge then to take America into the world and become the, the primary architects, if you will, of, of the structure of world stability. But with Vietnam, all that fell apart, which was one of the reasons why Joe Alsop was such an unreconstructed and rabid hawk because he knew that if Vietnam didn't work, this whole structure was going to come crumbling down, and it was the structure that he believed in, that he revered, and that he loved, and he couldn't bear to think that that could happen.

MR. GERGEN: Yeah. Now, Bob, you write at the end of your book that Joe Alsop wrote actually in a very positive way about changing of the guard the fall of one elite, the rise of another, and yet, Stewart looked back upon the loss, the decline of the Waspish elite with some regret. I got the impression reading between the lines that you look back on that loss of that elite with some regret as well.

ROBERT MERRY: I happen to believe that just about everything that happens in history, um, American history no exception, happens for both good and ill. There's no white hats or black hats really. I think that we lose something when we lose an elite that has a sense of where to take the country and an elite that the country looks to for that sense of where to take the country. Right now, umm, whereas the elite was stuffy and it was self-preserving, it could be arrogant at times, it could miss a lot of significant currents in American politics, but, nevertheless, it brought a certain coherence to the nation. I think that we've lost that coherence. I think that something is going to replace the old elite because something will have to, but in the meantime, the country is much more adrift. There's a lot more internal animosities and internal, um, fights and frictions than there was during that earlier time. So as I say, it's all a trade-off. I think everything in politics and history is trade-off.

MR. GERGEN: Well, if the Alsops had lived, they could have certainly though have celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall. That would have been their culmination.

ROBERT MERRY: They would have loved that.

MR. GERGEN: Thanks very much.

ROBERT MERRY: Thank you, David. ESSAY - COLLECTING MEMORY

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Clarence Page of the "Chicago Tribune" on collecting memory.

CLARENCE PAGE: Talk about politically incorrect, I bought this sign $ COLORED WAITING ROOM$ about 20 years ago in a Chicago memorabilia shop. It cost me $75. I've since been offered several hundred dollars for it. But I have no intention to part with it. In our family, this symbol of our past subjugation has become something of a trophy of triumph in our struggle of memory against forgetting. In recent years, I've found I'm not alone. Blacks like me have fueled a vigorous market in racist memorabilia--mammy dolls, Pickaninny postcards, Sambo art of all times is being trafficked by collectors at premium prices today, whether through antique shops, flea markets, newsletters, or word of mouth. The more vile the stereotyping, the more outrageous the bug eyes and fat lips and big hips, the more the item finds itself cherished by some black collectors today. It's a black thing, particularly among middle class blacks, the only people who in many cases can afford them. In a Southern suburb of Chicago, a store called Martha's Crib has a lively business in black memorabilia, including stereotypical memories of our painful past. At 32, the shop's owner, Marchelle Barber, is too young to remember legal segregation firsthand. The market for memories is so great, says Barber, that she sells replicas of colored waiting room signs and other hallmarks of segregation for $15 apiece. There simply is not enough supply of the real thing, she says, to meet the demands of African-American consumers eager to capture artifacts. Another collector, Philip Merrill of Baltimore, isn't old enough to remember the days of Jim Crow segregation either, yet, he too became fascinated by its relics and has since become a leading expert of them. Part of his collection was put on display here at Manhattan's Hudson Guild Theater to carry on the theme of the play inside, "We Are Your Sisters," a dramatized oral history of black women who survived slavery.

ACTRESS: My grandmothers were strong. They followed plows and bent to toil. They moved through fields sowing seed. They touched earth and grain grew. They were full of sturdiness and singing--

CLARENCE PAGE: Inspired by his great grandmother, Merrill says, he has collected hundreds of items as haunting as these slave shackles or this letter of manumission that freed a slave woman named Sarah. His items are as degrading as this Sambo cap pistol with a hammer smashing into an open mouth or as disturbing as this antique hood and documents from the Ku Klux Klan. Looking at these demeaning images, one wonders at what they reveal. It was not enough to show blacks as laughable. They had to be reduced to something sub-human, non-threatening, and compliant, like a pet that must never be allowed to turn in any way against its master. "The medium is the message," Marshall McLuhan once said. The messages of this vulgar art seemed to change sharply and abruptly with its new ownership by the people who were its original victims. The Czech author, Milan Kundera, once wrote that the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. He was writing about Communist repression. Our efforts as African- Americans to own racist memorabilia is another struggle against power and forgetting, a reminder of the images that lie just beneath the nervous surface civility of today's race relations. Designed to enforce white supremacy, these old relics possessed by new owners now expose its folly. I'm Clarence Page. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, in the Israeli elections early exit polls said the race for prime minister was too close to call but Prime Minister Peres was running slightly ahead of opposition candidate Benjamin Netanyahu. On Whitewater, Little Rock jurors said it was the paper trail that mostly led them to return guilty verdicts yesterday, and a State Department spokesman said some foreign companies may be penalized for investing in confiscated American properties in Cuba. We'll see you tomorrow night with full analysis of the Israeli elections among other things. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.