The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, a campaign 96 issue and debate on foreign policy, two views declaring two million acres of Utah a national monument, a "Where They Stand" speech by Ross Perot, and Spiro Agnew as remembered by Haynes Johnson and David Keene. It all follows our summary of the news this Wednesday. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: Several hundred U.S. Army troops left Fort Hood, Texas, for the Persian Gulf today. They are the first of the 3500 that will be sent to Kuwait by the end of the week. They will join some 1200 already there. President Clinton said yesterday their mission is to keep Iraqi Leader Saddam Hussein from expanding his territory. At a congressional hearing today, Defense Secretary Perry said they would defend American interests, including oil and the Middle East peace process. Perry was responding to Republican charges that the administration's Iraq policy was confused. The hearing had been called to explore the Pentagon report on the terrorist bombing that killed 19 airmen in Saudi Arabia last June. Perry said he accepted full responsibility for any failure of leadership that contributed to that tragedy.

WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense: Many in Congress and many in the media are asking who is to blame. I will not participate in the game of passing the buck. I will not seek to delegate the responsibility for this tragedy on any of my military commanders. They have served our country with enormous distinction and considerable sacrifice, and they deserve our gratitude, not our blame. To the extent this tragedy resulted in the failure of leadership, that responsibility is mine and mine alone.

MR. LEHRER: The report, issued Monday by a special commission, said the military had failed to make counter terrorism a high enough priority to protect soldiers in the Middle East. In Bosnia today, Bosnian President Izetbegovic won the most votes in last weekend's national elections. That means he'll be the first chairman of the country's new three-many presidency. A Serb and a Croat will share the position. Muslims celebrated Izetbegovic's victory today in the streets of Sarajevo. He's the only one of the three winners to favor a unified Bosnia. Secretary of State Christopher today praised the Bosnian election process, saying it means NATO troops can be withdrawn from Bosnia by the year's end as planned. On a western campaign swing today, President Clinton designated 1.7 million acres of Southern Utah wilderness to be a national monument. He did so in an appearance with Vice President Gore at the Grand Canyon in Arizona. We'll have more on the Utah action later in the program. Bob Dole campaigned in California today. He announced his anti-drug motto, "Just don't do it," to high school students in West Hills, outside Los Angeles. He blamed President Clinton for losing ground in the war against drugs after what he described as the success of Nancy Reagan's "Just say no" campaign. He also urged the entertainment industry to send and anti-drug message.

SEN. BOB DOLE, Republican Presidential Candidate: And I have a message to the fashion and the music and the film industries. Take your influence seriously. You have a lot of it. Respect your talent and power. Stop the commercialization of drug abuse. Stop the glorification of slow suicide. Stop the glorification of slow suicide--let me repeat it--not because you're frightened of public outrage, but because you are responsible adults with duties and standards.

MR. LEHRER: Dole said if elected President, he would reduce teenage drug use by 50 percent by the year 2000. The Republican majority of a House committee adopted a report today criticizing the Clinton administration for the White House Travel Office affair. Itsaid the 1993 firings of seven Travel Office employees were politically motivated and investigations into the matter were obstructed at all levels.

REP. WILLIAM CLINGER, Chair, Government Oversight Committee: President Clinton has engaged in an unprecedented misuse of the executive power, abuse of executive privilege, and obstruction of numerous investigations into the Travel Office matter. We have spent a very long time investigating not just who fired these individuals and why but also the wrongdoing that followed. And the resulting mosaic pieced together from the facts reveals the answers the White House refused to disclose.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN, [D] California: Mr. Chairman, it gives me no pleasure to conclude that the report you bring before us today is an embarrassment to you, to this committee, and to this Congress. Your investigation has sacrificed fairness to political expediency and unsubstantiated character attack. What should have been an objective inquiry into the events surrounding the White House Travel Office has degenerated into a shameful and crassly partisan smear campaign against President Clinton, Mrs. Clinton, and this administration.

MR. LEHRER: The Democrats boycotted the vote on the report of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. The Food & Drug Administration today gave preliminary approval of the abortion drug RU-486. In a letter to the Population Council, the FDA said final approval will depend on further information on manufacturing and labeling. The private New York group holds the American rights to the French drug. It would provide women with an alternative to surgical abortion during the first seven weeks of pregnancy. In South Korea today, 11 North Koreans were found dead after they abandoned their aground submarine on South Korea's Eastern coast. A 12th was arrested nearby. A South Korean government spokesman said it was unclear what the submarine was doing in South Korean territory. The North Korean government had no immediate reaction. Spiro Agnew died yesterday at a Maryland hospital. He suffered from leukemia. Agnew served as Richard Nixon's Vice President until he was forced to resign in 1973, after pleading no contest to a charge of income tax evasion. He had been governor of Maryland before running with Nixon in 1968. Agnew was known for his comments about the press, among other things, most particularly for calling them "nattering nabobs of negativism." He was 77 years old. We'll have more on Spiro Agnew at the end of the program tonight. Between now and then, the foreign policy issue, a monument in Utah, and "Where They Stand." FOCUS - ISSUE & DEBATE

MR. LEHRER: We go first tonight to another of our issue and debate discussions geared to the 96 presidential campaign. The issue tonight is foreign policy. Margaret Warner is in charge.

MS. WARNER: Bill Clinton is the first President in nearly 50 years who hasn't been engaged in a Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union. But he has had to react to many disconnected conflicts and crises around the world.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I have spent so much of your time that you gave me these last four years to be your President worrying about the problems of Bosnia, the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Burundi. What do these places have in common? People are killing each other and butchering children because they are different from one another.

MS. WARNER: Republicans have criticized the President's handling of many of these conflicts. They also accuse him of failing to develop an overall strategic vision for this new post-Cold War age.

SEN. BOB DOLE, Republican Presidential Candidate: With the end of the Cold War, we should be building firm foundations for a century of peace, fulfilling the promise of a new future for Europe. Instead, Bill Clinton's policy of indecision and vacillation and weakness is making the world, in my view, a more dangerous place.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Clinton has overseen the use of American force in several parts of the world. He inherited the first troop engagement in Somalia. President Bush had sent troops there to end widespread hunger and restore civil order. But on Mr. Clinton's watch, U.S. troops got involved in trying to hunt down one particular warlord. Somali gunmen ambushed a group of U.S. soldiers, killed them, and dragged their bodies through the streets of Mogadishu. The President faced harsh criticism of his decisions and those of Defense Secretary Les Aspin.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I asked Sec. Aspin why the extra armaments weren't sent to Somalia, and he said to me that when they were asked for, there was [a] no consensus among the Joint Chiefs that it should be done and he normally relied on their reaching a consensus recommendation on an issue like that, a military question.

MS. WARNER: Within months, U.S. troops were withdrawn and Aspin was forced to resign. In Haiti, it was President Clinton who sent in troops in September of 1994 to force the country's military government to leave and to reinstate elected President Jean- Bertrand Aristide. Haiti has since held a new round of peaceful elections, but some U.S. troops still remain. The third troop engagement has been in Bosnia. The bloody conflict there has preoccupied the President since his very first days in office. Early in 1993, he called for bombing the Serbs and ending the arms embargo against the Bosnian Muslims, but he backed down in the face of resistance from the European allies. Two years later, the Clinton administration managed to bring all sides to Dayton, Ohio, and to negotiate an end to the fighting. The President sent 20,000 troops to Bosnia as part of a NATO force to keep the peace. Many Republicans have been critical.

SEN. JESSE HELMS, Chair, Foreign Relations Committee: [1995] I certainly agree that the President has the constitutional right to send the troops there. There's no question about that. He also has the constitutional right to make other mistakes.

MS. WARNER: The President avoided a potential military confrontation in Asia over North Korea's nuclear weapons program. In 1994, the administration got North Korea to agree to end its nuclear weapons development in return for international help with its civilian nuclear program.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Through all appropriate means I will keep working to ensure the security of South Korea, the safety of our troops, the stability of the Asian Pacific, and the protection of our nation, our friends, and our allies from the spread of nuclear weapons.

MS. WARNER: But that agreement too has been criticized by Bob Dole.

SEN. BOB DOLE: Now the President's policy toward North Korea seems to be a dialogue for the sake of dialogue, not strategic vision, no operational plan, and no tactical coordination. He is following an old adage: If you don't know where you're going, all roads lead there.

MS. WARNER: In China, President Clinton has adopted policies he initially criticized in President Bush. After threatening to use trade sanctions to pressure Chinese leaders on human rights, the Clinton administration de-linked the two issues and moved ahead on trade.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I have decided to extend unconditional Most Favored Nation trade status to China.

MS. WARNER: As part of America's ongoing effort to sponsor a lasting peace in the Middle East, President Clinton hosted the signing of the historic 1993 accord between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chief Yasser Arafat. But the implementation of that accord suffered a setback recently with Rabin's assassination and the election of a new Israeli prime minister who had opposed the agreement. Relations with Russia and its president, Boris Yeltsin, have also been at the top of Mr. Clinton's agenda. He has enthusiastically supported the Russian president in his struggle against Communists and nationalists in his parliament, and while President Clinton has criticized Yeltsin's handling of the conflict in Chechnya, he has stood by his Russian counterpart nonetheless. Currently, Iraq is preoccupying the Clinton administration. For the first time in his presidency, Mr. Clinton has used military force to contain Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Republicans have been critical of the President here too.

JAMES BAKER, Former Secretary of State: I think we should have made greater efforts to monitor and, if possible, to shape developments in the North. Consistent, intensive, and creative diplomacy might have prevented the factionalism that split the Kurds into two warring groups, and I think this represents a defeat for U.S. policy that like the demise of the coalition is attributable at least in part to a failure of leadership.

MS. WARNER: This latest crisis has given foreign policy more prominence in the presidential campaign than either side initially expected.

MS. WARNER: Now to our discussion. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Democratic of Connecticut, is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He's here representing the Clinton campaign. Paul Wolfowitz is a foreign policy adviser to the Dole campaign. He was Undersecretary of Defense for President Bush. Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, was on the National Security Council staff in the Clinton administration's first year. And Robert Zoellick was State Department counselor and a top adviser to Sec. Baker in the Bush administration. Welcome, all of you. Paul Wolfowitz, how well would you say President Clinton has done in advancing U.S. interests abroad?

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, Dole Foreign Policy Adviser: I think we're doing very badly. And if you take the problem of the week, which is Iraq, it also is an area of enormous vital interest to the United States. We have a serious problem not just because Saddam Hussein has gained control of Northern Iraq, because people can't trust the

CHARLES KUPCHAN, Council on Foreign Relations: I think that the Clinton administration has increasingly over time found its bearings in foreign policy and the last two years have really been one solid success after another. And I would disagree with Bob Zoellick. I think there are core values and a core vision that's in forming policy today, and one component of it is prosperity through GATT, through linking up together the regional groupings portrayed. Another is to try to create a, a world community, not just in the sense of American power unadorned, but community in the same way as Hillary Clinton says it takes a village--well, it also takes a village globally to try to build community values, and finally on the use of force--and here I would disagree with Paul Wolfowitz--I think that President Clinton has followed through with the policy that Mr. Wolfowitz put in place under Bush, and that is to rein in Saddam Hussein. And when he steps over the limits put in place, he gets slapped back, and that's exactly what happened in the last two weeks. So I think the policy in Iraq has been a smashing success.

MS. WARNER: Very briefly, Sen. Lieberman, I want to now look at this question of whether there is an overall vision. If you had to sum up very succinctly, maybe not a bumper stick, but pretty close, what is the Clinton administration's overall strategic vision?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Well, the first point of it, and sometimes we take this for granted, is that President Clinton has rejected the appeals from those on the left and those on the right to become an isolationist leader, make America isolationist again. He has been aggressively and appropriately internationalist, both diplomatically, militarily, and, in fact, economically to the benefit of our security and our, our well-being, millions of jobs created as a result of trade. I'd say that internationalism is the first part of it. The second part of it in a world that is not as simple as it was during the Cold War, when we may not be at a point where we can find an overarching, easy formula to describe foreign policy, he has projected America's principles, which is mostly democracy, supporting the spread of democracy, places like Haiti and Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and he has been willing to protect American interest in a muscular way and Iraq is the best example of that. When Saddam moved toward the Kuwaiti border, the President pushed him back with our troops; when we found that plot on President Bush, we sent missiles into Baghdad. So I think the President has protected American interests and advanced American principles throughout the world.

MS. WARNER: Paul Wolfowitz, weigh in on this question about a strategic vision. Does the Senator have a point when he says essentially now with the Cold War over, there is no single threat, it's pretty hard to have a single strategic vision.

MR. WOLFOWITZ: But I think the words may sound good but it's terribly important for people to believe that when the President says something, it can be counted on that when he makes a promise, it can be counted on, and I think these claims of success in Iraq are a joke. Saddam controls the ground. We control additional 60 miles of Iraqi air space. That isn't what matters. People who trusted in us have been killed, wiped out. He continues with his nuclear weapons program and his biological and chemical programs, which are a serious threat to us, and we're not doing anything about enforcement.

MR. KUPCHAN: But we left Saddam Hussein on the ground during the Bush administration, and the fact that he is there is an explicit choice, and we are now reining him in. That is successfully being carried out.

MR. ZOELLICK: If you think that he's being reined in in the region, I think you ought to really take a close look at how people in the Gulf look at this because what this is about is power, pure and simple. And in this one the view in the region is that Saddam Hussein wanted hands down. So you can describe this as some big complex formula, and that's how they've tried to approach it in the Clinton administration, but don't fool oneself. We're going to- -

MS. WARNER: I don't want let this just turn into a discussion of Iraq. Let me just get back to you, Paul Wolfowitz. Give me what Bob Dole simply--what Bob Dole's alternative strategic vision would be. How different would it be in its overall concept?

MR. WOLFOWITZ: I think the most important thing is to concentrate on those areas that are of major vital interest to the United States, making sure--

MS. WARNER: And you don't think President Clinton has done that?

MR. WOLFOWITZ: I think we've tended to take things randomly, case by case, to do a little bit here and not enough in another place, but to understand what's going on in Asia, what's going on in Europe is of major importance to the United States, the Persian Gulf with its vital oil resources is critical to us, and that we have got to be a leader, and the leader's got to be somebody that people can count on. That's absolutely central to constructing the kind of world that will be safer in the next century.

MS. WARNER: All right. Sen. Lieberman, address this question which now both Mr. Wolfowitz and Zoellick have raised a couple of times about credibility. They're essentially saying that the President does not have credibility internationally.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Well, I don't know what the basis for that is. It seems to me that he is not only well liked, as either Paul or Bob said, he is respected. I mean, the truth is that our critical alliances with our allies in Western Europe and Asia, particularly Japan and South Korea, are better than they've been in a long time, that he has managed our relationship with Russia to a point that we have much better relations with Russia than most people imagined we would after the Cold War was over, and in the most difficult conflict areas, most difficult other countries such as China, uh, where everyone has a problem knowing exactly what to do. I think we're back on track in building a relationship that is a combination of engagement, uh, and pressure on them to respect human rights, and, and to not spread weapons of mass destruction, so I, I find in the Middle East our allies are with us very strongly there in the Arab world and, and throughout that region. So I think the President has great credibility and it is part of why America is stronger and safer than we've been in quite a while.

MR. ZOELLICK: I just wanted to follow up on a point that Charlie's made, because I think it's an important observation. I think that Bill Clinton actually did pretty well when he followed up on the momentum of some of the things that he was handed off-- the NAFTA, the Uruguay Round, the Mideast process. Where I think we've seen a real gap is that when events change, when something is new, the elections of a totally different government in Israel with Likud, uh, trying to deal with the ongoing problem in Bosnia, when Russia starts to move more towards authoritarianism, he doesn't have the groundings, and I think part of it is he's still not really comfortable with foreign policy. We know he's been involved with domestic policy for a long time, but this is not a field where he really feels he has his groundings, and that is observed abroad because when you see the sort of things you see in the United States where people say, well, he takes different positions on different issues, so on and so forth, that plays out in our domestic politics. But internationally, the word of the United States President is critical. He has to recognize that.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Again, I'd challenge anybody to give me a case where, where you can cite that he has broken his word. I think he is--his extraordinary personal skills have helped him build very strong relationships with the key leaders of the world, particularly among our allies, and in Eastern and Central Europe and, you know, he's got--he's already made some threats to Saddam, and he's followed up on them, and he's kept his word to our allies, including the controversial decision to send the 20,000 troops to be part of the peacekeeping in Bosnia.

MR. WOLFOWITZ: Look, one of the reasons we have a problem in Bosnia is because he never kept the promise he made that he was going to arm the Bosnians, and Sen. Lieberman joined with Sen. Dole in getting 2/3 of the Senate to vote to force him to do it, and that's why we've ended up having to protect people who had relied on promises that couldn't be kept. The people in Srebrenica and Zeppa are dead because those safe havens weren't protected.

MR. ZOELLICK: Or the case in China.

MR. WOLFOWITZ: But it's dangerous. In the case of China, we just had the worst crisis in the Taiwan Strait in almost 30 years, and I think it's clear, it's because the Chinese didn't think we would do anything serious.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Yeah, but, Paul, look what he did. He sent the fleet there, and it was a very, very strong show of force, which I think had the right effect on the Chinese and on the Taiwanese, our allies there, because they went ahead and held a very free election.

MR. WOLFOWITZ: But the point is he should never have been tested in the first place. If people took him seriously, that wouldn't have happened at all.

MS. WARNER: You've been trying to get in here.

MR. KUPCHAN: I think that on the Bosnian case, the simple fact is that in the last week Bosnians went to the polls and put pieces of paper in the ballot box, rather than killing each other, and that is because NATO went up, finally stood up to the plate under American leadership and stopped the fighting. And on the broader issue of, of whether American forces have been squandered, I have to agree with Sen. Lieberman here, in the three critical areas, I think that things are going very well. One is the economy, which is the basis of America's strength abroad. Two, key allies; we have a stronger relationship with Japan now than ever before. The President's recent trip was very strong with Germany, with France, with key European allies, and finally the military is not only strong but I think President Clinton has moved us away from this notion of overwhelming force and has helped us adapt to a world in which threats are no longer black and white and which we need to apply limited force to limited threats, as he's done both in Bosnia and in Iraq recently.

MR. WOLFOWITZ: Well, in Iraq, we had a pin prick, and that's why no one wanted to join us. In Bosnia, we have another make-believe success, a pretense that this election, which you just said in both Serbia and Croatian areas, elected the most nationalistic leaders, that this was somehow a move forward. This fighting will start as soon as our troops leave and Sec. Christopher has said they'll leave at the end of the year.

MR. KUPCHAN: But the killing has stopped, and we are now buying time for Bosnia to try to rebuild itself as a multi--

MS. WARNER: All right. Bob Zoellick's been trying to get in here.

MR. ZOELLICK: I just wanted to say, I mean, in a way, the whole issue of the coalition in Iraq is a striking example of what Paul and I were talking about. I mean, we had a situation where Kuwait, of all countries, basically didn't back us. I mean, that's a far cry from where we were four or five years ago, and I think we're paying the price for a President who people may like but they don't know whether they can rely on his world, and people around America have seen that too.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Well, I really have to respond to that. I mean, the coalition we had in 1990 and 91, which I strongly supported in the Senate, supported President Bush, was not a coalition to defend the Kurds. In fact, we probably care more about the plight of the Kurds than any of the nations and peoples around the Middle East, and it was this--the situation here was that a political leader of the Kurds invited Saddam in. I don't know what anybody has to offer, other than what President Clinton did, that would have changed that reality unless we were prepared to send in another 500,000 troops on the ground and get em out of there, and no one wanted to do that. So I think the President has sent a clear message to Saddam not to misunderstand what happened in the North, not to move South, not to threaten Kuwait. Kuwait's with us. They took about--there was a miscommunication but never a doubt that Kuwait would want those 5,000 American troops there. The Saudis are letting us fly from their territory to enforce the no-fly zone. I think our alliances are in strong--

MR. KUPCHAN: The coalition would be even weaker if the U.S. had done nothing. Some--the French, the Russians grumbled, but at least the United States has, has kept together the, the force on Saddam Hussein, rather than doing nothing--

MS. WARNER: We're just about out of time, and I just want to ask Paul Wolfowitz this question. Given everything that's been said here, still if you look at polls, it now shows that the American people trust actually Bill Clinton more than Bob Dole, despite all his experience in foreign affairs, to conduct, I think the phrase is wise conduct of foreign policy. How do you explain that?

MR. WOLFOWITZ: Well, I think we have a lot of make-believe successes, and I think we have a lot of pretense that the elections in Bosnia were a great success. I don't think people in Bosnia believe that they've changed the situation on the ground at all. They're just--

MS. WARNER: But you're saying the American people are--

MR. WOLFOWITZ: They believe it until six months from now after our elections when our troops come home and the fighting starts all over again. They believe it until they find that Saddam is breaking out with serious nuclear weapons programs or biological programs.

MS. WARNER: Sen. Lieberman.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Well, I think the President, you know, came in as a governor but he's an extraordinarily worker and learner, and he has been a great international leader, and as a result, people in this country trust him; they feel safer; and they feel better off economically as a result of the policies and leadership that he's given internationally.

MS. WARNER: Bob Zoellick, do you think foreign policy though-- polls also show most people don't care that much about it, it's not much of a political issue. How do you explain that?

MR. ZOELLICK: Well, I mean, I think that obviously people are always preoccupied on pocket book issues, but I think the question we've been debating here about whether you really can trust him with these serious life and death issues is one that people will think about long and hard before they step in the ballot booth, and that's something you just don't know from polls. That's what you know on voting day.

MR. KUPCHAN: One comment follow-up, and that's that I think the most interesting poll of the last few years was the one that said that Americans disapprove of sending troops to Bosnia but they approve of Clinton's handling of the crisis in Bosnia. Why? Because I think they began to feel that he had the stuff that it takes to be a President and to lead. And where some of your criticisms may have been justified one or two years ago, I think at this point, they're not because the last two years have really shown a very impressive learning curve and a very strong leading President.

MS. WARNER: Okay, gentlemen, we have to leave it there. Thank you all very much. Senator and three of you.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the national monument in Utah, "Where They Stand," and remembering Spiro Agnew. FOCUS - MONUMENTAL DECISION

MR. LEHRER: Now the storm over a monumental decision and to Elizabeth Farnsworth.

MS. FARNSWORTH: The area set aside as a national monument today is as big as the state of Delaware and contains some of the West's most spectacular scenery--orange and red plateaus, badlands, and rock formations exposed by erosion over millions of years. The canyon lands of Southern Utah have been in dispute before. Earlier this year, pro-development and environmental forces battled over how much of this area--all of it owned by the federal government- -should be designated as wilderness. The Utah congressional delegation in particular has resisted attempts to restrict commercial activities on some of these lands. Now the President has acted on his own, declaring 1.7 million acres near Escalante, Utah, a national monument. It's a designation often used in the past to preserve public lands without congressional consent. Nearby Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, for example, were first protected as national monument's. The battle over the Escalante area has been especially sharp because it contains some of the nation's largest coal reserves. Today in a speech at the Grand Canyon, President Clinton said the new monument would be open to multiple uses, including hunting and grazing, but perhaps not mining.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: While the Grand Staircase Escalante will be open for many activities, I am concerned about a large coal mine proposed for the area. Mining jobs are good jobs, and mining is important to our national economy and to our national security. But we can't have mines everywhere, and we shouldn't have mines that threaten our national treasures. this area, and the President stands up and says, oh, I'm not going to worry about that, I'll take care of those schoolchildren. You just noticed he talked about coal. This is the largest coal reserve known to man under the Kaparowic Plateau. They say there's a trillion dollars worth of low sulfur coal in there. He says we'll give em other sulfur. What a joke. There is no other known coal reserve like that. He says, now, if that doesn't work, we'll pay it. What are we going to pay, a billion and a half dollars, or a billion dollars? Now, secondly, let's go up to Congress--

MS. FARNSWORTH: Okay.

REP. HANSEN: --and say we're going to pay it. Where are you going to get it out of this Congress? Who's going to give a billion dollars to that? That's a joke.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mr. Leshy, what about, first of all, why no consultation?

MR. LESHY: The future of these lands have been debated in and out of Congress for the last fifteen or twenty years. It's been very contentious. The issue that really--the thing that really put this on the national agenda and the President's attention was the attempt by the Utah congressional delegation to open many of these areas up for development in a bill that made it partly through Congress this year, that and the proposed coal mine that the President mentioned in your introduction. So those two things really galvanized attention, but there has been a great and long debate about how these lands should be managed.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Explain how it will be managed now. The President said that there will be some uses, grazing, for example. Who will decide and when?

MR. LESHY: The area will remain under the management of the Bureau of Land Management, as it is now. The President made it very clear that grazing, hunting, fishing, and the other kinds of recreational and other uses that are taking place there now will continue valid, existing, rights will be protected, and the coal mine will be the remaining large issue.

MS. FARNSWORTH: But valid, existing rights, does that not include the company--there's a Dutch company that has the lease rights going back 10 years.

MR. LESHY: There is a company with coal leases there. There have been many other companies who have had coal leases there, and they have all left. The marketplace has spoken pretty loudly on the value of this coal. I mean, their trillions of dollars of coal numbers is like saying there are trillions of dollars of gold in sea water. The marketplace simply won't allow and the technology won't allow that to be developed, and so we just had in the last few weeks--the other major lease holder in this area made a business decision that they would never be able to mine the coal there because of the costs and other factors, and they have agreed with us on a process to trade out for federal resources of equivalent value elsewhere. And we're happy to do that with the one remaining lease holder that is there.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Let me get one thing clear, Rep. Hansen. The monument designation does allow more use than if this were designated a wilderness, right? And that was the debate that's been going on all year, whether some of this land should be a wilderness, is that--am I right about that, or not?

REP. HANSEN: There's a lot of designations to the land, and in this particular one, a monument, he went back to the 1906 Act. He does have the right to do that under that Act, but the spirit of the Act is for some historic significance, like where the two trains met in Utah, the Golden Spike Monument, and they put that in. I have a list of all of them right here. There are 73 national monuments. The biggest one at this point is 650,000 acres in Alaska, and most of them in the lower 48 are under 30,000 acres. So you can see this is with precedence he came on to take this--

MS. FARNSWORTH: But isn't it true that the Grand Canyon and Bryce and Zion were first national monuments?

REP. HANSEN: Not entirely. That's kind of a misnomer. Parts of them started that way but not entirely if you do the research on it, but that's what--if you've got to have something to hang onto, I guess that's what you come up with. So we find ourselves in a position, yes, we have debated. It hasn't been anywhere near as contentious as John pointed out, except for some little, small group or two, maybe 2 percent of Utah, that most of them are imports anyway, have felt that way, they've got a lot of press on it. Basically, we're trying to follow in the wilderness bill in 1964, the definition of wilderness. Now if we want to put Temple Square and BYU and a few things in wilderness, I guess we could follow what they say. The contention hasn't been there. The people in that particular area have the right to do these things. I think the environmental community who seemed to impress upon this administration their thinking and their thoughts have thought of a way to circumvent it and try to slow this up. However, a national monument is to be seen. There should be visitors centers; there should be roads. The Burr Trail should be paved. All the things that John and his group come up and talk against I think they've opened up the door.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What about that? Will there be roads? Will there be national visitors' centers?

MR. LESHY: The President specifically directed the Secretary of the Interior, my boss, to prepare a management plan for this area over the next few years in full consultation with the congressional delegation, the governor, local officials, and, and members of the public, so there will be a very large public process that will actually decide the on-the-ground management of this area.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Is it--

MR. LESHY: Consistent with the purposes of it, protecting the resources the President identified.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Is it possible that now the consultation could take place and multiple uses could be developed that would please both the delegation and the administration?

REP. HANSEN: I think the obvious thing is it should have been done before the announcement. All of these bills I worked on for 16 long years and we did it before, we sat down and said here's the criteria we work on. We don't all of a sudden in an election year to stand up and please a few people say--the same thing in Yellowstone--he stood up there and said, well, we're going to take care of this new world of mine, we're going to give em 65 million dollars, but it's got to come out of Montana. If it doesn't come out of Montana, it comes to my committee. I doubt if that's going to occur. The people in Montana say we haven't got that area; it's not there. He goes to the head waters in California and said, oh, we'll take care of this old growth forest. And he says how are we going to do it--by trade. So all this thing is we're going to take care of it, these hollow promises keep coming out, but we don't see anything happening. It's what I say and what I do, and that's the problem we have with this President. We hear these things. He gives great talks, makes a great appearance; he's a great campaigner, but we don't see anything follow up, and I'm afraid you're going to see that here because there's a dozen things we're looking at--hunting- -the--the Indian tribes--water rights, the list goes on and on--no answers, just big generalities. Why didn't we wait and do this in January when we could all sit down coolly and work this out?

MS. FARNSWORTH: Just very briefly because we're almost out of time, is there a remedy you can pursue?

REP. HANSEN: I think there's a number of remedies that Congress can look at. I think in Alaska when he did that, the state of Alaska sued him. I think the children under this area of, of the trust--I think the children of Utah will be suing the President. And I think--

MS. FARNSWORTH: This is--

REP. HANSEN: --they've got to hold the things--

MS. FARNSWORTH: --some of this land was supposed to be--

REP. HANSEN: --and say, you're taking away our heritage, where are we going to be taught now? You know, in Utah, we have big families, and we like to teach our children and this way he's just taken the children of Utah out of about a billion dollars.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Just a few minutes--few seconds left, Mr. Leshy.

MR. LESHY: On the school issue, this area has contained some state lands that the income from which would go to the school system. This area has never really produced any income for schools because it's never really been developed. The coal proposals that have been made in the past have never come to fruition. We are willing and, in fact, this President, again, directed the Secretary to work with the state to trade out their resources in this area for lands andresources of equivalent value elsewhere. It's a process that's common, that we follow in a lot of western states, and we would be happy to do that here.

REP. HANSEN: Which is--

MS. FARNSWORTH: That's all the time we've got.

REP. HANSEN: Which is impossible.

MS. FARNSWORTH: I'm sorry. Thank you both for being with us. SERIES - WHERE THEY STAND

MR. LEHRER: Now, "Where They Stand," our series of speeches by presidential candidates. Tonight it's Ross Perot, the Reform Party candidate, speaking today in San Francisco. He spoke about yesterday's recommendation by the Presidential Debate Commission to exclude him from the debates.

ROSS PEROT, Reform Party Presidential Candidate: Yesterday, democracy and the rights of the voters in our country had a major setback as a result of the commission's ruling on the presidential debates. I expect that probably we should bring in Bosnia and Haiti to send poll watchers to help us clean up the election process in the United States. [applause] It is important that the American people understand. See, we don't even know anything about the Debate Commission. The Debate Commission's decisions about who gets to participate in the debates were made by commissioners chosen by Democrats and Republicans. Half the commissioners are Democrats. Half of them are Republicans. It is funded by corporations and foundations who have a lot at stake here. Its chairman, believe it or not, is a registered lobbyist for the gambling industry. Okay. Independent candidates or third party candidates have no voice on the Debate Commission. The League of Women Voters was so disgusted with this process a few years ago that they removed themselves from the Debate Commission. Most importantly, the American voters don't have a voice. Their views are ignored by the Debate Commission. How do we know that? 76 percent of the voters made it crystal clear that they wanted me included in these debates. That's a recent poll, but their views were ignored by the Debate Commission. President Clinton, the Democratic Party, and 40 Republican congressmen wanted me included in the debates, but they were ignored. And don't you find it interesting that no one ever printed once that 40 Republican congressmen broke with Sen. Dole and wanted us in the debates? You'd think that that would be a footnote story in the obituary page somewhere, wouldn't you? [laughter among audience] Okay. The presidential debates are important because 80 million people watch them. Any candidate who is excluded from these debates cannot present his views to the 80 million voters under any other method. Until you understand that politics is acting in a game, and this particular game is pool, and what they did yesterday was a three-pocket drop, then you're missing what's happening here. It has nothing to do with producing results for your country. I was included in the 1992 debates even though my standing in the polls in 1992 was lower than they are now, but they roared up after the debates. Now, do you start to understand why they don't want this kerr dog back in the debates again? Just two registered puppies, right? Okay. And here is part of their logic. They said, well the last time he was an independent so we put him in, but now he's part of a third party, and we won't. I would like for somebody to explain the logic behind that to me. The far more compelling reason to be in is because people in all 50 states set up a party, and we're just being held out for one simple reason, 76 percent of the people want us, and there are some other interesting factorstoo. We can't buy the prime time program that's essential but we'll keep on trying. We have less than a third of the money that the other two have, but we know how to spend money, and they don't, so we'll be fine there. They think they are forcing us to our only recourse being to buy on-minute television ads, and this does not permit in-depth discussion of the issues, and that's what they want. They don't want you to understand these problems in detail. We are determined that you will understand these problems in detail. I don't think this is democracy as the framers of the Constitution intended it. Do you? So what can we do about it? We're filing a lawsuit in federal court to determine whether 76 percent of the voters should decide who gets to debate, or should it be left up to the two political parties and the political writers that they called over the phone to get their opinion? I don't think there's much of a decision to be made there. I mean, surely, the voters who own this country will ask the court to issue a restraining order to delay the debates until a decision is made. The Debate Commission decision makes it impossible--[applause]--for a new political party to be successful, and surely that violates the voters' constitutional rights, and we're going straight to the heart of that issue.

MR. LEHRER: Ross Perot speaking today in San Francisco. FINALLY - IN MEMORIAM

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, remembering Spiro Agnew. The 77 year old former Vice President died yesterday afternoon. For five years, from 1969 until he resigned in 1973, he was Richard Nixon's outspoken point man against the media and liberals. He said things like this.

SPIRO AGNEW: Ultra-liberalism today translates into a whimpering isolationism in foreign policy, a mulish obstructionism in domestic policy, and a pusillanimous pussyfooting on the critical issue of law and order.

SPIRO AGNEW: In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.

MR. LEHRER: Now some reflections on Spiro Agnew from David Keene who was Agnew's political assistant at the White House, he is now chairman of the American Conservative Union, and NewsHour regular Haynes Johnson, who was an assistant managing editor of the "Washington Post" during the Nixon-Agnew years. David Keene, how will you remember Spiro Agnew?

DAVID KEENE, Former Agnew Aide: I came to town to work for Spiro Agnew and I've been here ever since. Most of what you're going to see in the next few days is going to--is going to concentrate on how he left office or what those speeches were like, but I'm going to remember him as a man who, who was close to the people that, that he worked with, who really was a politician who sort of bonded with the family of people that, that he was with. I think that most of the people that worked with Spiro Agnew over the years considered him to be one of the best people that they've ever bene associated with.

MR. LEHRER: Did you like him personally?

MR. KEENE: I liked him immensely. He was a politician who was interested in ideas. That's rare, as you know. He was inquisitive. When I worked for him, he was in the process of sort of defining himself intellectually and philosophically. He wanted to talk not to State Party chairmen but to writers and intellectuals, and he did. He stood by his people. It was very much I think the trade of an immigrant, an ethnic who was there. He was loyal to his people, that's right, and the people who worked with him and knew him I think returned that loyalty.

MR. LEHRER: How will you remember him, Haynes?

HAYNES JOHNSON, Author/Journalist: Not that way personally because I didn't know him that way. I traveled with him; wrote about him, and so forth, but I never had the personal relationship that David did. But I will remember him as someone who sowed cynicism and disillusionment and betrayal in the political process, a beginning of a time in our history which is a dark period. You have to remember, Jim, just think back--in April of 1973, when the revelations were beginning about Nixon, forcing the resignation of his chief aides, and the impeachment process was then beginning, were still a year and a half away, at that moment in the spring of 73, Spiro Agnew was 35 percent among all Republican voters to be the next Republican nominee for President of the United States. The next person at that point, close on the Gallup Poll, was a fellow named Ronald Reagan. Nobody else measured on the whole poll, and here was a man who almost became the President of the United States. I think he was forced out because he betrayed his trust in a fundamental way. The indictment that he pleaded to--nolo contendere--no contest and he didn't go to jail, but then they released these incredible damning documents of payoffs and someone said I've been paying off the Vice President in his office in cash. It's that kind of thing that came at a time particularly against the message of law and order, patriotic America, and all of the things you just saw on the screen about the nattering nabobs of negativism and the rest. I think it was one of the reasons that people felt very cynical about our politics, and I think it left a very bad legacy. But it's not the personal side that David is talking about.

MR. KEENE: A lot of it, you know, during that period we looked at things differently. Many of us saw Spiro Agnew as someone who in a time of chaos was willing to stand up and speak the truth to conservatives and many Republicans and to many in what we then called the silent majority in this country, later the Reagan Democrats, whatever we want to call them, Spiro Agnew was a hero. I'll tell you, when you look at the way it all ended, I had lunch shortly after his resignation with Jerry Landauer, you remember, with the "Wall Street Journal," was--

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

MR. KEENE: --the reporter who originally broke the story.

MR. LEHRER: The story about the Maryland payoffs--

MR. KEENE: About the Maryland thing.

MR. LEHRER: --the Maryland bribes.

MR. KEENE: Jerry had covered Maryland for a lot of years and he said, you know, he might have been the most honest governor they had, but the was the only one who came to Washington, his point being that--well, there being two points--that the two points are that you come out of a political culture, some of which Bill Clinton is learning today because the political culture of Maryland then or Arkansas later was different from the national culture. Secondly, Spiro Agnew got caught at a time when our political rules and mores were changing. That's not to say he didn't do some of the things he was charged with. I didn't--I don't think he did all of them. He denied doing many of them and didn't plead guilty after all to them and they weren't proven. But, nevertheless, he came out of a time when were done differently and when the standards were changing and fairly or unfairly was caught.

MR. LEHRER: Two other points: Haynes, these words that we just quoted--it's been widely reported that he didn't write any of those words, those were not his words at all, that Bill Safire wrote some of them, Pat Buchanan wrote some of them.

MR. JOHNSON: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: Did he believe these words?

MR. JOHNSON: I don't know if he did or not. I traveled with him. I spent weeks doing a profile on him. I remember in 69 I guess before you went over to work for him and he would read the texts that he had delivered. Now whether he did it himself, I don't know, uh, but, but he certainly stood by them, and the point about it, though, he was tapping into--and the reason I think there's such a bitter aftertaste of this, as there was with Lyndon Johnson to be fair in the betrayal of the war going North into Vietnam and when Lyndon Johnson expanded the war after saying he wasn't, there was this sense of a man who was talking about moral values and I remember David Broder, my dear friend and colleague, we spent a long time in 69 traveling all over the country talking to voters, and we would talk to voters and they would say you bring up the name of Spiro Agnew and people would say, they'd laugh and they'd be a little embarrassed, boy, but they liked him. He tells it like it is. They, they believed him. That was the point. They believed the moral man about immorality, about drugs and promiscuousness, family values and he was the exponent of this kind of thing in our politics and I think that was--

MR. LEHRER: Then they found out he was on the take.

MR. JOHNSON: Right.

MR. KEENE: He spoke to those people and wasn't just able to speak to them as other politicians have done but came from--he grew up in Baltimore; he went to night school; he did all of these things. But I will say this about--I wasn't there in 69 but by the time I got there, uh, as I said earlier, Spiro Agnew was in the process of defining himself and other people wrote those words in the 1970 campaign but Spiro Agnew didn't give speech that didn't have his mark on it or that he didn't believe in and wasn't willing to defend.

MR. LEHRER: Let me ask you this, David. It's common now for people to rehabilitate themselves after some shameful experience. Richard Nixon did it himself and there's been a lot of cases. Why did Spiro Agnew--no op ed page pieces, not talk show appearances- -

MR. KEENE: Never gave an interview.

MR. LEHRER: --no lecture circuit--no interviews, why?

MR. KEENE: Never talked to a reporter after he left office.

MR. LEHRER: Why? What happened?

MR. KEENE: You know, I think in part one of the difficulties in working for him he was truly a Greek with the fatalistic views and the--that things weren't always--

MR. LEHRER: He read a lot of Greek tragedy.

MR. KEENE: Well, I think he in a sense lived it, but he in working with him, sometimes you'd say, you know, Mr. Vice President, you have to do this, this, and this to make that happen, and his reaction would be, I'll say what I think and if it's supposed to happen, it will. That's sort of the down side of that, but it also is a peculiar strength when things go wrong because you say, well, it wasn't fated to be, and he just put the curtain down, turned his back on it, and went and lived a private life.

MR. LEHRER: What do you think of that?

MR. JOHNSON: Well, that may well be the case. You knew him in a way that I didn't, but I, I keep going back to the public imprint he left. And that was one of disillusionment and cynicism.

MR. LEHRER: And he left it there? In other words, that's my point.

MR. JOHNSON: And he totally left it there, and he let it linger for 23 years, Jim. I went back to reread some of it--it's amazing- -the same echos now but his legacy I think in that sense was very negative.

MR. KEENE: If we talk about that--

MR. LEHRER: I'm sorry, David, we've got to go. Thank you both very much. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, several hundred U.S. Army troops left Fort Hood, Texas, for duty in Kuwait. Secretary of Defense Perry accepted full responsibility for not doing more to prevent the bombing of a U.S. air base in Saudi Arabia, and President Clinton conferred monument status on nearly 2 million acres of land in Southern Utah. We'll see you on line and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.