The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, the First Lady is to go before a grand jury. Margaret Warner talks to Stuart Taylor about process and procedures. A State of the Union preview with Mark Shields & Paul Gigot, the new foreign minister of Israel, Charlayne Hunter-Gault has a Newsmaker interview. What's new on the planet Jupiter? Jeffrey Kaye talks to a NASA scientist. And Phil Donahue is retiring; Elizabeth Farnsworth asks him why. It all follows our summary of the news this Tuesday. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton makes his third State of the Union address tonight. White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta said Mr. Clinton will be upbeat about his standoff with the Republican Congress over government spending issues. Panetta said the President would urge Republicans to extend the national debt limit and pass a temporary spending bill.

LEON PANETTA, White House Chief of Staff: This is not a time to look at our divisions. This is not a time to look at where we disagree. This is a time to try to pull together if we're going to try to solve these problems. I mean, the American people, I think all of us have to recognize we're in a period when the American people are, are increasingly cynical about the ability of a President and a Congress to work together to try to solve problems because there are these dramatic differences. What he's basically saying to them is look, the time has come to put some of these differences aside.

MR. LEHRER: Earlier in the day, Republican congressional leaders agreed the national debt limit had to be raised. Treasury Sec. Robert Rubin warned yesterday the government would not be able to pay its bills as of March 1st unless Congress extends the debt ceiling. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole said he did not think Rubin's warning should be disregarded.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Majority Leader: I think he's, you know, he suffers a little from a credibility gap up here because he, it's like the old wolf story, he cried "wolf" maybe once too often, but my view is he probably is correct, and we need to act by March 1st.

MR. LEHRER: House Republicans said they were also working on a temporary spending bill to keep the government running beyond Friday. But they said the bill would contain provisions that would implement Republican spending priorities.

REP. JOHN BOEHNER, [R] Ohio: What we want to do is to show the American people that as we pass these temporary funding measures that are going to last thirty to forty-five days, we think for the balance of the year, that with each one of them, we expect to put out a piece of our plan to balance the budget on these, these bills.

REPORTER: Is this public relations, or is this--

REP. JOHN BOEHNER: No, what this is, this is trained to move our agenda in the face of a President who wants to protect the status quo here in Washington.

MR. LEHRER: We'll preview the State of the Union Address with Shields & Gigot later in the program. White House Spokesman Mike McCurry said today the President was confident about his wife's testimony before a Whitewater grand jury. Mrs. Clinton was subpoenaed to testify Friday before a federal grand jury in Washington. The investigation relates to missing legal documents recently discovered in the White House. We'll have more on the First Lady's summons right after this News Summary. In the Senate today, the Senate Whitewater Committee heard testimony from a former Arkansas bank regulator William Lyon. He said he was pressured to move over to the state's savings & loan regulatory board. The pressure came from James McDougal, then president of the failed Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, and a partner with the Clintons in the Whitewater land deal. Lyon said he refused McDougal's request.

WILLIAM LYON, Former Arkansas Bank Regulator: The reason that I answered like I did was the fact that he thought that I would do his bidding.

MICHAEL CHERTOFF, Republican Counsel: When you told Mr. McDougal you would not agree to do what he wanted, you would not transfer from the Bank Board to the savings & loan board, what did he say to you?

WILLIAM LYON: He asked me to resign.

MICHAEL CHERTOFF: From the Bank Board?

WILLIAM LYON: Right.

MICHAEL CHERTOFF: And did he tell you why he wanted you to resign from the Bank Board?

WILLIAM LYON: I told him, you know, it surprised me, and I said, Jim, I said, you can't ask me to resign, I'm--you're not with the state anymore. And he said, well, I'll have Bill ask you to resign.

MICHAEL CHERTOFF: What happened?

WILLIAM LYON: He called and asked me to resign.

MICHAEL CHERTOFF: When you say he called and asked you to resign, you mean the governor called and asked you to resign?

WILLIAM LYON: Correct.

MR. LEHRER: Republicans on the committee want more time and money to continue their investigation. Democrats said they were opposed. In foreign news today, two former presidents of South Korea were charged with sedition. The charges are connected to a 1980 army massacre of pro-democracy activists. Roh Tay Woo and Chun Du Wan have already been indicted for mutiny. Those charges came from the 1979 coup that put them in power. They also face corruption charges for amassing slush funds totalling hundreds of millions of dollars. In Israel, the trial of the confessed assassin of Prime Minister Rabin began today. We have more in this report from Robert Moore of Independent Television News.

ROBERT MOORE, ITN: Finally, nearly three months after he pulled the trigger, the killer of Yitzhak Rabin was brought to court for the start of his trial. For once, Yigal Amir's smiles and laughter were no longer apparent. He faces a certain life sentence, though once again he declared he had no regrets, saying, "I acted in the name of God." He told the three judges that as he waited to strike on that Saturday night in November his intention was to paralyze but not to kill Rabin. He said he shot the prime minister in the back but that he could easily have aimed for Rabin's head. But his lawyers have already fallen out over whether to argue that Amir was provoked by Rabin's peace policies and whether their client thought he was acting in the best interests of the Jewish state. Yigal Amir told the court his intention was to kill the peace process, not the prime minister. Of Rabin, Amir simply said, "It was nothing personal."

MR. LEHRER: We'll have a Newsmaker interview with the Israeli foreign minister later in the program. In economic news today, Americans earned more but spent more last November. The Commerce Department reported personal incomes for the month increased by .2 percent, while consumer spending rose .9 percent. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to grand juries, Shields & Gigot, the Israeli foreign minister, more on Jupiter, and Phil Donahue. FOCUS - LEGAL ISSUES

MR. LEHRER: We go first tonight to the First Lady's upcoming appearance before a federal grand jury. Margaret Warner is in charge.

MARGARET WARNER: First Lady Hillary Clinton has been subpoenaed by Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr to appear before a federal grand jury here in Washington this Friday. For more on this unprecedented event we hear from Stuart Taylor, correspondent for the "American Lawyer" and "Legal Times" and a regular on the NewsHour. Welcome back, Stuart. All first, first give us the context for this. Which grand jury exactly is it that the First Lady's been asked to appear before?

STUART TAYLOR, The American Lawyer: The grand jury in Washington. There's also a grand jury in Little Rock being run by the same Independent Counsel, Kenneth Starr, investigating Whitewater and related matters. And the two grand juries are dividing their work up roughly with the Washington grand jury investigating the things that happened in Washington since President Clinton took office, the Arkansas grand jury investigating things that happened in Arkansas earlier, but there's great overlap between the investigations. And they share information with each other.

MS. WARNER: All right. And what do we know from the subpoena or from what's come out about what she's going to be asked to testify about?

MR. TAYLOR: Well, the subpoena and the fact that about six or seven other people were subpoenaed seems to indicate that the Independent Counsel is particularly interested in how these Rose Law Firm billing records for Hillary Clinton appeared mysteriously in the White House living quarters some two years after they had been subpoenaed and whether someone was hiding them or obstructing justice. However, the White House statement that was put out yesterday also indicated that the First Lady was prepared to discuss the content of the billing records which suggest that some of the questions may get into looking at particular entries and how do you explain this and how do you reconcile it with your testimony on that and so forth.

MS. WARNER: Now in this whole Whitewater inquiry, the First Lady has already given three sworn depositions. At what point does a prosecutor say, sworn depositions aren't enough, I want this person in the grand jury room? Can you deduce anything, in other words, from that?

MR. TAYLOR: I think the one thing you can deduce is that the level of seriousness here has racheted up. Now, most prosecutors never taken sworn depositions of witnesses. It goes straight to the grand jury. This, the fact that they did sworn depositions before was an accommodation to the First Lady. Also, remember, the President was also present at those depositions. And I think at a minimum they're telling the White House we're sort of taking the kid gloves off in dealing with this question of these billing records. I think the prosecutors are clearly somewhat annoyed and have pressing questions on why they didn't get these records sooner. Beyond that, it gets to be rather speculative. For example, I've heard it suggested that since the First Lady last week was making noises as though she might be willing to testify before Sen. D'Amato's committee on this matter, perhaps Independent Counsel Starr wanted to make sure he got her testimony first. And this is one way to do it.

MS. WARNER: Okay. Take us to Friday, when this happens. First of all, you know the U.S. District Court Building. Is there a way she can get in and out of the building without facing that throng of reporters that we always see when people go to testify?

MR. TAYLOR: Yes. There's an underground garage. They could drive her in there in a car, they could have tinted windows, if they wanted, to keep her from being photographed, and whisk her up to the courtroom, and all that could be done perfectly plausibly under the rubric of security.

MS. WARNER: Mm-hmm. And then once she gets in this grand jury room, what's it like? Is it like a regular courtroom?

MR. TAYLOR: I haven't been in one, but I heard it described by prosecutors. They say it looks a little bit like a classroom with the grand jurors sitting around on benches, not so much like a regular courtroom, but maybe a kind of a classroom you go into to take a test that you really don't want to take. The foreman of the grand jury or forewoman and the secretary and some prosecutors will be there, as well as the grand jurors. There will be a court reporter taking notes. The atmosphere is rather informal, at least so it appears to the--all the participants except the witness. It can be quite intimidating to the witness because the witness is not accompanied by a lawyer, is all by him- or herself, with this large group of people who are not there to be her friends.

MS. WARNER: And there--is there no judge there?

MR. TAYLOR: There's no judge.

MS. WARNER: So once the questioning and answering begins, the prosecutor asks all the questions?

MR. TAYLOR: The prosecutor typically asks all the questions and typically invites questions from the grand jurors after the prosecutor's finished. The grand jurors don't often seize that opportunity. Sometimes the prosecutor might ask them to filter their questions through the prosecutor, or ask them individually, and in a case like this maybe some grand jurors will want to exercise that prerogative. In the typical case, they don't.

MS. WARNER: And is--does the witness have to answer every question? Are there any privileges or protections that the First Lady might have here?

MR. TAYLOR: There are some privileges. The usual testimonial privileges theoretically apply. The Fifth Amendment privilege in itself, incrimination, which the White House has already said she will not invoke; attorney-client privilege, which might be a possibility in some aspects of this; executive privilege, I think the White House has indicated she is not going to claim. But what you cannot do, and, therefore, there are no privileges that she seems likely to invoke, there's no basis for objecting on grounds of relevancy, improper question, leading, all of the types of procedural objections that you see at trials cannot be made in a grand jury. In fact, a lawyer is not there to make them.

MS. WARNER: Okay. Now, so if you're the witness and suddenly a question comes at you that you're very uncomfortable answering and don't know how to answer, is there a way to confer with your lawyer?

MR. TAYLOR: Yes. You can request an opportunity to go outside and talk to your lawyer. The lawyer is sitting outside and clearly will be in this case, and have a reasonable amount of time to get the lawyer's advice on how to respond. Then you walk back into the room alone, and you have to respond.

MS. WARNER: And if a potential witness has been told that the scope of this questioning is going to involve A, B, and C, is that any protection against one of the grand jurors or the prosecutors bringing in some totally other topic, for instance, in this case, going back into the nuts and bolts of the Whitewater case, itself, or Vince Foster's death, or any number of other areas?

MR. TAYLOR: If--there isn't any legal protection. If the prosecutors are professionals, which we assume these are, they will keep their word in their own questioning; however, they can't stop a grand juror from asking any question the grand juror may want to ask, because, although theoretically, grand jurors--well, although in practice grand jurors usually act as rather passive rubber stamps for prosecutors, in theory they're in charge; it's their investigation. The prosecutor is there to help them.

MS. WARNER: And the witness could not object and say that wasn't what I came here to talk about?

MR. TAYLOR: The witness probably could, and at least try it, but in the end, he or she could be compelled to answer unless the question trenched on some privilege. And I think here that's not going to happen.

MS. WARNER: And finally, does this testimony remain secret? It's supposed to be secret.

MR. TAYLOR: It's secret by law. It would be a crime for anyone other than the witness, he or the First Lady, to disclose it publicly. The First Lady would be perfectly free to discuss anything she was asked, anything she chose to respond.

MS. WARNER: And does it ever become public as part of any kind of court record, or anything?

MR. TAYLOR: Sometimes it might. For example, if there's a trial and inconsistent testimony is given, one side might make a motion to make it public, but routinely, it does not.

MS. WARNER: Well, thanks, Stuart, very much.

MR. TAYLOR: Thank you. FOCUS - STATE OF THE UNION PREVIEW

MR. LEHRER: Now a preview to tonight's State of the Union Address. We get it from Shields & Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, "Wall Street Journal" columnist Paul Gigot. First, Mark, how important is this speech to President Clinton?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: It's an important speech, Jim. The State of the Union Address at any time is an important moment, a ceremonial moment, but in a presidential year, it's central. Ronald Reagan gave in 1984, he stood at 48 percent approval, just like Bill Clinton does. Tonight he was going on to win 59 percent. That November he stood up and said America's back, we're standing tall. That became the theme of the year; it became the theme of the Reagan reelection. So it, it's a defining campaign document of the year.

MR. LEHRER: Is it particularly important this time for Bill Clinton, Paul?

PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: I think, I think Mark uses the right analogy with Ronald Reagan. It is probably less important than it was at a comparable stage for George Bush, whose last State of the Union Address was really one of recovery. It was kind of how can I make up for what's already happened? This President is like Reagan trying to redefine things for him but he stands at, you know, roughly 50 percent or so in the polls. George Bush was saying, here's my domestic agenda that I didn't have before, Bill Clinton is trying to do something a little different, but it's still very important.

MR. LEHRER: Well, on the big thing that's going on here in Washington, which is the confrontation between the President and the Republican Congress now, we ran our News Summary a while ago and all of the background briefings that the press has been giving all day, that said that the President is going to be upbeat about all of that. What does that mean, Mark?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, the President has to be upbeat. He has to be optimistic. I think the best way to view the country right now, Jim, the mood of America, like the passages on a subway car that is stalled between two stops, and all of a sudden the lights are out and the power is out and there's that sense of anxiety. And what the President--

MR. LEHRER: And they're coming at you from both ends of the car?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, there's the sense of what you're looking for then is the voice of authority that says this is where we are, this is what happened, this is how we're going to get out of it, this is what we're doing to get out of it, and if you do the following, we'll be out of it, and we'll be on our way and, and heading in the right direction. And I think that's what the President's task is. He has to be upbeat. The last President who was really downbeat was Jimmy Carter, who stood at 58 percent approval in the polls when he gave his State of the Union Address in 1980, got 40 percent that November. It is, it is a time Bill Clinton has to stand up there and say unemployment is down, inflation is down, record lows, jobs, 8 million new jobs, and whether I deserve credit for it or not, it's happened on my watch, and if you're going to blame me for the things that haven't happened.

MR. GIGOT: But he'll probably take credit.

MR. LEHRER: He might, but as a practical matter, Paul, can, can he say--is it potentially possible for him to say something tonight that could break the impasse, in other words he could say something in a dramatic way or say it in a forceful way, or at a tone or something that could just resolve the problems between them and the Republicans?

MR. GIGOT: No. He would have to do something, and that he--well, I thought he was there for a while. No, he has to change on certain policy issues. Otherwise, the deal is just not going to happen, though I think you'll see the President today sound a little bit like Ronald Reagan claiming to be for a balanced budget. He's going to try to say I've gone all of this way, he's going to try to grab the center. He's going to say, big government, not me, those days are over, we're all for small government now, I'm just for strategic uses of it, you know, here and there to help individuals get ahead.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. But it was also clear from the Panetta briefing and some of the other briefings today that he's going to really make his mark--he's going to throw the--what do they call--what do they throw in the sand--a line, I guess.

MR. SHIELDS: Either that or a gauntlet, sometimes.

MR. LEHRER: Sometimes they throw a gauntlet in the sand. On this national debt thing, I mean, lifting the debt limit, what kind of mileage could he get out of that?

MR. GIGOT: Well, I think it's shrewd on their part. He's going to stand up and say, I am the President, and I am going to defend the faith and good credit and the sovereign credit of the United States of America, and that's something that is going to make it very difficult for the Republicans who wanted to use the debt limit as a tool to leverage some of their policies. It's going to make it more difficult for them to do that. And Republicans, remember, when they were in the outs, they never voted to extend the debt limit. The Democrats always did. So they hate the idea of having to vote for a greater debt limit, but if they don't the President is saying to them, I'm going to blame you, just like we did--

MR. LEHRER: Starting right now. Starting right now, yeah.

MR. GIGOT: --with the government shutdown.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. SHIELDS: One of the responsibilities of government--Paul is absolutely right--I can remember debt ceiling vote after debt ceiling vote, and every Republican marched up there and said, absolutely irresponsible to raise that debt limit and cut a TV spot for it. And the Democrats said, oh, my God, we got to do it, we're the party of government, we're the party of the majority, it's our responsibility. But I think what the President is going to do, Jim, is to use a Washington term, triangulate. I mean, what he's going to do is say, yes, big government is over, which means I'm not like those Democrats you didn't like who are for big government, and yet, I'm not a social Darwin exponent who says, everyone for himself and the government doesn't matter, and we don't care, those people who opposed anything the government does, including the mandates de-icing of airline--airplane wings in sub-zero temperatures.

MR. GIGOT: Who are those guys?

MR. SHIELDS: You know, those people who want to dismantle government and all the rest of it, and, you know, the trace of botulism in a can of tuna fish. Hey, that's part of the market system. He's got to try and paint the Republicans, the extreme, over there, and the Democrats are going to say, look, I'm the guy, common ground, middle, common sense. I think that'll be his theme.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree?

MR. GIGOT: I think that's what he's going to try to do rhetorically, there's no question about it. I'd add a little something. I think on the question of values, you probably, he's going to sound a little bit like Dan Quayle in 1992, he's going to try again to talk about the culture, talk about how he can revive it. He might see a phrase like civil society, which means not political society but that's been popular among conservatives and some liberals lately.

MR. LEHRER: And I understand that he may call for a meeting of all of the network presidents and all of the big media folks to come to the White House and talk about cleaning up what goes over the screens and over the airwaves, as well. What does Bob Dole-- Bob Dole is going to give the Republican response--what is his mission?

MR. GIGOT: I think he's probably got two main jobs. One is to try to lift the Republican message out of where it's been for a month or so, two months, which is down in the weeds of accountancy, down in the numbers, get the green eye shade off and say, here's our broader purpose for what we've been trying to do, here is our moral purpose for what we've been trying to do, and I think that'll be a big part of what he's going to attempt. The second thing is I think he's probably going to try not in a very partisan way but he's going to try to cast some doubt on the President's credibility. He's going to say the President--

MR. LEHRER: That's not partisan?

MR. GIGOT: What I mean is he's not going to sound harshly partisan.

MR. LEHRER: I got you.

MR. GIGOT: He's not going to say this President lies. He's not going to do the Bill Safire thing--

MR. LEHRER: All right.

MR. GIGOT: --but he's going to say, look, the President always gives great speeches but look, and now he's given a great one, but let's talk about what he's actually going to do and begin to erode that sense that maybe he's not being straight with you on where he stands.

MR. LEHRER: How do you see Dole's mission?

MR. SHIELDS: I think Dole's mission is even more complicated. Bob Dole has to give--this is a defining moment for him. This is the first time in history, I think, where the front runner, the odds on front runner for the out party's nomination gives the rebuttal to the President. And I think in that sense, Bob Dole has another mandate other than just party leader. He has to give a sense of vision. If he uses the phrase "scored by CBO" in this speech, it doesn't work. I mean, it's got to be--there's got to be some eloquence, some sense of vision as to where Bob Dole thinks the Republicans want to take the country.

MR. LEHRER: To contrast himself with Bill Clinton as much as contrast the Republicans from the Democrats, you mean.

MR. SHIELDS: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: Because I'm running against that guy you were just talking about.

MR. SHIELDS: Exactly.

MR. LEHRER: And you were just listening to.

MR. SHIELDS: That's right, and that the Republicans do have some poetry in their soul. He's going to tell us that.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Okay. Thank you both. We'll see how right you all are. Thank you very much. NEWSMAKER

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the new foreign minister of Israel, a Jupiter update, and a conversation with Phil Donahue. Israel's foreign minister is first. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has a Newsmaker interview.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Ehud Barak is the latest in a tradition of Israelis moving from military posts to jobs in politics and diplomacy. Barak, a general, is a former army chief of staff. He was named foreign minister in the new government formed after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Barak is visiting Washington, and I talked with him yesterday afternoon. I asked him about possible stumbling blocks in the Israel-Syria talks resuming tomorrow at the Y Plantation in Maryland.

EHUD BARAK, Prime Minister, Israel: I see a kind of obstacle on any given aspect of it. But I think that most important are the security arrangements, especially the kind of arrangements against a surprise attack. We need a surprise attack to become practically impossible, and I think the problem is of importance, terror, Lebanon, and, of course, the depths of normalization and the ability to bring about not only Syria but ultimately the Gulf States and other states.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In terms of the security, do you believe that, that Israel can live without the Golan?

EHUD BARAK: I believe that we should stick to the formula made by the assassinated prime minister--Rabin said the depths of withdrawal will commensurate with the depths of peace, namely, if we can get a full normalization, full open peace with open trade, open transportation, open free flow of goods, services, and people over the borders, and if we get it comprehensively, namely including Lebanon and other states, if we get into regional economic project and if attention will be given to our security needs, then we would be able to consider what is the depth of withdrawal that we can afford.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You know President Assad well. I mean, do you have a sense that his perception of what is needed and the Israeli perception is anywhere close?

EHUD BARAK: No, it is not close at the present, but we are advancing gradually in quite a stable, even if not very fast, way. And it is for the first time in this Y Plantation dialogue that all the subjects are put on the table without preconditions and the positions are compared to each other and we exchange notes and maybe identify the domain of flexibility. I sat for two days, fifteen months ago, with the No. 2 in the Syrian hierarchy, chief of staff Mushiabi and the Blair House here and we could not at that time reach that level of openness that now is so- -is coming so easily.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why is it coming so easily?

EHUD BARAK: I don't know the reason. Maybe the Syrians realized after the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin that their resistance that the peace process inside Israel is very serious, the whole peace process is very fragile. Secondly, maybe they realized that after we reach agreement with the Palestinians on Gaza plus Jericho and then the interim agreement that we are running right now and the election, maybe we'll enter within few months, the permanent state of negotiations, and they will find themselves left at the station, the train already left. And maybe they will--some other reason, maybe they notice the elections in Israel and in the United States, and they, they might be worried that a change of administration, a change of government might throw them back to square one.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you believe at this point that President Assad is ready for a contractual deal with Israel?

EHUD BARAK: I--yeah, he is, of course, ready for a kind of contract that we had with Egypt some 17 years ago, namely full withdrawal to the last square meter, a full dismantling of all the settlements, no limitation of his, on his armed forces, and even supporting him financially and then normalizing a long, a very long period, but it might not be enough for us. We need the kind of peace that is implemented at the very early stages and that is much warmer at much earlier stage and with much heavier security--we don't have the desert of 150 miles that we have with Egypt.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Foreign Minister, let me turn briefly to the Palestinian elections over the weekend. What do you think was achieved by those?

EHUD BARAK: First of all, a landslide victory that no American President or Israeli Prime Minister could expect by the chairman. It legitimizes and consolidates his control of his people, strengthened him in the Arab arena, and even with the Israel. But at the same time, it makes him a more appropriate address to demand from him to live up fully to his commitments in the agreements signed between us. Central to them is the commitment to a fight effectively against terrorism and the second one is to write off the covenant, Palestinian covenant, within 60 days after the establishment of the country.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The covenant that called for Israel to be driven into the sea.

EHUD BARAK: Yeah. The covenant that called for the destruction of Israel.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You've met with President Clinton, Sec. of State, members of Congress, and others. What role do you see the U.S. playing now in the peace process?

EHUD BARAK: I believe that the United States plays a major role in providing the atmosphere, the overall direction, providing that it facilitates the negotiation and tried to communicate between the leaders, themselves, the President until now did not meet with President Assad, and it's still impossible to meet, and I believe that the Americans will have a role when the whole thing becomes, if and when it becomes more rightfully, fully fledged negotiations to come with either ideas or even kind of helping to, to master the political energies of the rest of the world to keep the whole thing together.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But have you asked for resources, for example, on the security, or resources in any other

EHUD BARAK: Not at this stage, and you know, we are taking quite high risk, and we are strongly relied upon our qualitative edge in defending our country. We never asked anyone to come to our help. We asked to in the past to give us the tools, and we'll do the job, and really meant it, but we are very sensitive to the atmosphere here, and we need to bear in mind that anything that we provide suggests or request would not burden too much the American budget.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The developments in the Palestinian--with the Palestinian elections, the Syrian talks, how are they going to affect the call for an early election, if at all?

EHUD BARAK: My judgment is that government should govern until the last day of its mandate. I think that we do not fully control the negotiation with the Syrians. It takes two to tango and so at least 50 percent is in the Syrian hands, and we do not control fully the timing of election in Israel if we won't like to be tricky.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What would determine whether or not there would be early elections?

EHUD BARAK: I believe that only that we should not create any linkage between the Syrian track and the election in Israel; if we will try to create it, we will find ourselves facing a deadline, and might be manipulated by the Syrians when the deadline comes closer. Moreover, I don't think that politically it will help us.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But if there is an early election, wouldn't that kill the talks, wouldn't that kill the peace talks, because of the preoccupation with things inside Israel?

EHUD BARAK: If a breakthrough is not achieved, we will start for a while to run the election. We will turn back just after the election, back to the business of going ahead, ahead with the Syrian track and with the Palestinian permanent state of negotiation.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Foreign Minister, how is Israel dealing with the death of Prime Minister Rabin, the assassination?

EHUD BARAK: I believe there is certain permanent imprint upon the collective memory of the Israeli nation. We have observed two interesting phenomenas. One is the youth becoming much more committed to political activity, and the whole nation I believe both left and right will be more united in its intention to crack on the extreme right elements that do not accept the state and the law and they would like to take weapons in order to decide the future of the state of Israel.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What about politicians like the leader of the Likud opposition, Benjamin Netanjahu, whom Mrs. Rabin at the time accused, among others, of rhetoric contributing to the atmosphere that led to the assassination. has that all cooled down a bit and the political rhetoric has changed any?

EHUD BARAK: I believe that on the political level the most important subject in the next elections will be the peace process with Syria and the continuation of peace forces with the Palestinians, and I don't think that the Likud leaders are directly connected to the assassination of Rabin, but they contributed clearly to the deterioration of the style of political debate in Israel, having demonstrations, bearing posters, colleague Rabin, traitor, Rabin murderer, something that we cannot afford and would not repeat.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Mr. Foreign Minister, thank you for joining us.

EHUD BARAK: Thank you. UPDATE - SEARCHING FOR CLUES

MR. LEHRER: Now, new information from and about Jupiter. Jeffrey Kaye of KCET-Los Angeles reports.

JEFFREY KAYE: For 58 minutes last month, a space capsule packed with scientific instruments penetrated the atmosphere of Jupiter, looking for data on water, temperature, and chemical elements that scientists could only guess at before. The measures sent back to Earth have many scientists reevaluating their assumptions about how Jupiter and the solar system were formed.

WILLIAM O'NEIL, Galileo Project Manager: The probe performed a marvelous succ--marvelously successful mission at Jupiter, providing our first ever direct measurements of an outer planet atmosphere.

MR. KAYE: At a press conference, scientists discussed some of their findings. The release of information had been delayed because of the government shutdown. The capsule, which recorded the data, was launched last July from the spacecraft Galileo, which is now in orbit around Jupiter. It descended by a parachute, reaching speeds up to 106,000 miles an hour. As it plunged, it turned up information that surprised and puzzled scientists. Among its findings was an intense radiation belt researchers hadn't expected. There was also less lightning than anticipated, and stronger winds, up to 330 miles an hour. The largest planet in our solar system appears to be much drier than anticipated. There was no evidence of any significant water clouds, to the surprise of researchers. They surmised that Jupiter has an internal heat source, something they hadn't known about before. The team of about 50 scientists from around the world has been analyzing the data and promises more in the months to come. The scientist in charge of the Galileo probe is NASA's Dr. Richard Young.

MR. KAYE: Dr. Young, thank you very much for joining us.

DR. RICHARD YOUNG, Galileo Probe Scientist: It's my pleasure.

MR. KAYE: It sounds as if what you got back from the Galileo probe was a big surprise all the way around.

DR. RICHARD YOUNG: There were a lot of surprises. Basically, the thing that we wanted to go to Jupiter for was to understand the composition because we thought it could tell us important things about the way all the planets formed. And we found that some things were more or less what we expected but other things were quite different, and that's probably going to have--cause us to have to reevaluate some of the ways that we think about the way the planets form.

MR. KAYE: We'll come to that in a minute, but what were some of the big surprises for you?

DR. RICHARD YOUNG: Well, the big surprises for me were based on previous spacecraft data, we expected to find a certain amount of water at Jupiter. The Voyager spacecraft, which flew by Jupiter in 1979, the analysis of that data that we'd obtained from those fly- bys, which is remote sensing, indicated that we would find about roughly two times or more the amount of water on Jupiter that we had expected to find based on the composition of the sun. We expect Jupiter to have basically the same composition as the sun.

MR. KAYE: So the planet is drier than you'd expect?

DR. RICHARD YOUNG: A little bit drier than expected.

MR. KAYE: It's much winder than you expected.

DR. RICHARD YOUNG: It is much windier than we expected, and that's an important finding because the meteorology of Jupiter has always been one of the major science goals for Galileo. If you look at a picture of Jupiter, you see this banded structure, these alternating regions of light and dark that run basically East-West. Associated with that banded structure is a system of winds that blows East-West on Jupiter. At the equator, they're blowing in the same direction as Jupiter rotates, and from cloud-tracking features with Voyager and from the ground, we measured winds of about 200 miles an hour. The probe encountered winds of over 300 miles an hour, and these winds extended well below the visible cloud tops that we could see. That's a very significant finding because it says that the energy source that's available to drive these winds probably comes from the deep interior of Jupiter. It's not due to sunlight. Sunlight is what drives the winds on the Earth. It's not probably what drives the winds on Jupiter.

MR. KAYE: Other findings. You found a radiation belt that you didn't expect to find.

DR. RICHARD YOUNG: We found an inner radiation belt very close to the planet that we did not expect to find. It was a totally new discovery. It's in a region where we had never sampled before by any previous spacecraft. Let me explain what I mean by radiation belt. It's analogous to the Van Allen radiation belts that we know we have on the Earth. And it's a system of protons and electrons that are trapped in the planetary magnetic field, and they basically might grate along the planetary magnetic field lines from North to South, and that's what we have on the Earth. In the case of Jupiter, these radiation belts are about 10 times more energetic than they are for the Earth. And, in fact, we have to avoid them with the spacecraft because they will fry the electronics, and so the probe was coming in so fast that we could fly through them, the exposure time was small, so we could make the measurements and still get through them safely.

MR. KAYE: Another finding was it was less cloudy than you expected.

DR. RICHARD YOUNG: It was less cloudy, and there sort of lies a little bit of a, of a troublesome problem. We went into a region that might have been somewhat anomalous with regard to clouds on Jupiter. When you take a picture of Jupiter, you see what are called these five micron hot spots. And basically what that means is that there are holes in the clouds and radiation can escape from deeper in the atmosphere of Jupiter than it can when you see a cloudy region. When you look at a cloudy region, you're seeing the radiation that Jupiter emits in the form of infrared radiation coming from the clouds. In these holes you're seeing radiation emitted deeper in the atmosphere. Those are relatively cloud-free. We may have gotten in right at the boundary of one of these relatively cloud-free regions.

MR. KAYE: So that may or may not be typical of the rest of the planet.

DR. RICHARD YOUNG: It may or may not be. We're going to have to do more analyses. And these is where the Orbiter will come in, you know, very handy, because the Orbiter we can keep viewing the probe entry site, taking pictures, and also viewing the rest of Jupiter, so we can place the probe measures in a global context, so the data we're going to get from the Orbiter is still very important for understanding the probe results.

MR. KAYE: What does it mean to you now as a scientist if most of the stuff you'd expected to find just wasn't there, you have to toss out assumptions about how Jupiter was formed completely, start from scratch?

DR. RICHARD YOUNG: We have to be careful. It's not true to say that most of the stuff we expected to find wasn't there. We expected to find water there; we found it. We expected to find methane there; we found it. And the significance of methane gas is that that's where the carbon is tied up with the hydrogen, so methane is the principal constituent where carbon is combined with hydrogen. We did find that. We found ammonia. We expected to find ammonia. We found hydrogen sulfide. We also expected to find that. So it's not like we didn't find things that we expected to see. They might have been in a little different abundance than we expected. This was certainly true of the helium. Apart from hydrogen, helium is the most abundant element on Jupiter. And it tells us some very important things about the way Jupiter evolved since it's been formed.

MR. KAYE: Are we closer now to understanding how our own Earth formed and the solar system formed?

DR. RICHARD YOUNG: I think so. Every little piece of information we get like this is an important step forward, and the reason that we wanted to go to Jupiter is that Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, has over twice the amount of mass of all the other planets combined. You could fit a thousand Earths into Jupiter. In some sense, besides the Sun, Jupiter is the solar system. So if you want to understand how the solar system formed, you'd better understand Jupiter.

MR. KAYE: What's next for Galileo?

DR. RICHARD YOUNG: The next for Galileo is that the Orbiter has now gone into orbit about Jupiter. It's in its first orbit, which is a very elongated orbit, and in a little while from now, I believe it's in March, they do the burn that circulizes the orbit about Jupiter, and that will begin a series of orbit each and every which there will be a post fly-by of one of the large moons of Jupiter, so we will have very close-up pictures of all the Galilean moons of Jupiter. There are four. Eo and Europa, which are the innermost two, they're the size of the Earth's Moon, Ganameta and Callisto, which are the outer two, are the size of the planet Mercury. So in some sense, Jupiter, together with these four large Moons, forms a mini solar system. And by studying that mini solar system, you begin to get clues as to the larger solar system. And the reason that we call them Galilean satellites is they were the first Moons that were discovered by Galileo after he built his telescope.

MR. KAYE: All right. Dr. Young, thank you very much.

DR. RICHARD YOUNG: It was my pleasure. CONVERSATION - DONAHUE - MOVING ON

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, Donahue on the end of Donahue. Elizabeth Farnsworth has that.

MS. ELIZABETH: After almost 30 years and over 6,000 shows, the creator of the daytime talk TV show is retiring.

PHIL DONAHUE: [on program] We're coming to the cheap seats, so stay awake back there. We want you in this.

MS. ELIZABETH: The Phil Donahue Show began on November 6, 1967, in Dayton, Ohio. His trademark style developed when he realized people in the audience asked better questions than he did. He says that's why he left his chair and started roaming the aisles.

WOMAN: We're from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and we've never seen anything like this in the state of Wisconsin.

MS. ELIZABETH: He quickly established a reputation for dealing with provocative subjects, like sex, child abuse, and nudity. He often said his aim was to be outrageous.

PHIL DONAHUE: You hate this.

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: I hate it.

PHIL DONAHUE: You hate it. Why do you hate it?

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: I don't know. You looked odd.

PHIL DONAHUE: You were artificially inseminated with the sperm of your brother.

PHIL DONAHUE: You're the Johnny Carson of evangelism.

ORAL ROBERTS: I'd rather thing of myself as the Phil Donahue of evangelism.

MS. ELIZABETH: But his flamboyance was complimented by his willingness to deal with serious and difficult issues. In the early 80's, Donahue was the first national talk show to address the spread of AIDS.

MALE GUEST: Mr. Donahue, there is no, no, you are in no danger being here with me.

PHIL DONAHUE: I agree. I agree. I agree there is no danger.

MS. ELIZABETH: His topics have ranged from racism in South Africa to Louis Farrakhan in this country, to Bill Clinton and the question of presidential character.

PHIL DONAHUE: [1992] Governor, I was told that you would come here prepared to talk about your character.

BILL CLINTON: [1992] How would you like it if I spent $1/2 million looking into your life and asked you questions like this.

MS. ELIZABETH: Donahue was the top-rated daytime talk show host until Oprah Winfrey unseated him in 1986. The competition exploded in the early 90's as talk shows with ever-more explicit subject matter flooded the airwaves.

WOMAN: [shouting] I'm trying to change. Damn it, I'm so mad!

RICKI LAKE: Did you know that she went both ways? I don't know how else to say it.

MS. ELIZABETH: The new shows have also galvanized opposition. Last month, former Education Sec. William Bennett, joined by Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman and others, launched a campaign to get companies to stop sponsoring the more explicit programs, the ones hosted by Jenny Jones and Sally Jesse Raphael, for instance.

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN, [D] Connecticut: [December 7, 1995] No to this cultural right, no to the exploitation of personal tragedies and embarrassments, no to the peddling of perversion to 8 million children watching talk TV every day.

MS. ELIZABETH: But these newer shows have appealed to the younger audience preferred by advertisers. Just two seasons ago, Donahue had the third most popular daytime talk show. But by this season, it had fallen to thirteenth. Last August, WNBC in New York dropped the show. And last week, Donahue said he would call it quits in May. I talked to Phil Donahue yesterday.

MS. ELIZABETH: Mr. Donahue, thank you very much for being with us.

PHIL DONAHUE: [New York] Thank you, Elizabeth.

MS. ELIZABETH: Why are you retiring?

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, I can no longer draw the crowd it takes to remain a commercially viable product in the daytime talk arena. Beyond that, after 29 years and 6,000 shows, I think maybe I've had more daytime exposure than is good for the average man. And it also has to be said that most of the people with whom I now compete are much, much younger than I am.

MS. ELIZABETH: So do you think it's mostly age that's made a difference, or do you think the nature of the talk shows has changed and you're not willing to be quite as sexy or sleazy as some of the other shows are?

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, it's funny, you know, for the 29 years we've been on the air, Donald Wildman came after us 20 years ago, so I'm familiar--

MS. ELIZABETH: A representative of the religious conservatives.

PHIL DONAHUE: Yes. Who believes that the world is going to hell and talk shows like mine are leading it there. This was the early 70's. So Bill Bennett and others are late to this protest. I do think--I do think that probably we weren't as--we didn't reach as far as some of the other shows have reached in what you would call tabloid journalism, but I bring no judgment to them. I think, if anything, television could use more revolutionary aggressive and yes, sometimes controversial reaching out than it, that it has done before these illegitimate children came before us in the daytime schedule.

MS. ELIZABETH: I want to get back to that, but first, tell us about your first talk show. How did this all get started?

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, our first guest was in 1967, in Dayton, Ohio. We were a local television program. We aired at 10:30 in the morning. It was an hour show, and we had one guest, and people got to call up and say, what for. It was a very hot idea in radio, and we brought it to--two-way radio we brought to television. Our first guest was Madeleine Murray O'Hare, in Dayton, Ohio, a local show, at 10:30 in the morning, she said that there is no God, there's no angels, there's no heaven, when you die, you go to the ground and you biodegrade, and of course, the whole town fell down. And they certainly knew that the Donahue Show had arrived. We knew that we had to be outrageous then because we were so different, without a band or a desk or a couch. And we continued with this kind of controversy until 10 years later, lo and behold, we were on the air in New York City.

MS. ELIZABETH: And what's changed since then? You said that it's harder to keep people interested now; it's harder to keep the feather afloat, I think is the way you put it. What did you mean?

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, I used to be--we've had Bob Dole on the Donahue Show in the 70's.

MS. ELIZABETH: You've done shows from the Soviet Union. You've done all kinds of shows.

PHIL DONAHUE: Yes. We've done--we're very proud of our library. We'd be pleased to have anybody review our work. But I used to be able to say, we'll be back in a moment, and the people would wait for the commercial and sure enough, two minutes later, I'd be back talking--you can't do that anymore. We have a tremendously fickle television audience, and everybody in my business is tap dancing a hundred miles an hour to try to figure out what they will watch.

MS. ELIZABETH: So you can't just say we'll be back in a minute?

PHIL DONAHUE: You can't.

MS. ELIZABETH: You have to tease something.

PHIL DONAHUE: You have to say that Elizabeth Farnsworth will jump off a high wire into a glass of water when we come back, and please don't use that clicker because we want you to watch us. It's almost begging.

MS. ELIZABETH: Now, let's talk now about the criticism of the daytime talk shows. You've even been called, I believe somebody said, you could have been, or you were the godfather of "trash TV." You find these terms like "trash" and "tabloid" very loaded, don't you?

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, not only loaded, Elizabeth, but I find them very imprecise. What do we mean? What do we mean? The "Washington Post" on its front page has referred to the sexual status of Steve Forbes's father. It is out there. It is not only out there, it's in "Newsweek" and it's on the front page of the "Washington Post." Is that trash journalism? Is that tabloid journalism? There's a lot of pretense, I think. I think many of the people who look down their noses at us and claim to be the news while we're not are often doing the same thing. And I think that our problem is that we're a much, our pictures move and we're a bigger target.

MS. ELIZABETH: But looking at your show, in the last couple of weeks, you've done something on midwives, on elderly entrepreneurs, and on the crime rate, and in the same period, Sally Jesse Raphael dealt with over-sexed teens, clinging former lovers, and cheating honeymooners. So there is something of a difference. And, and what- -you have defended what Sally Jesse Raphael and others do. What is good about what they're doing?

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, first of all, I think these programs often feature domestic personal grievances that are I think very important to people involved in them. In 1967, we didn't talk about drug abuse, going into rehab and coming out. Now, Betty Ford talks about that. Numbers of people come up to me and say, thank you, because of your program I got out of an abusive marriage; thank you, because of your program I came out to my parents, I'm out of the closet and free. And yet, there are our critics who never watch our programs, never watch them. Can you imagine Joe Lieberman sitting and watching Ricki Lake?

MS. ELIZABETH: He being one of the people who are critical--the Senator from Connecticut.

PHIL DONAHUE: Lieberman, yes, and Bill Bennett--

MS. ELIZABETH: Who was critical of the daytime--

PHIL DONAHUE: Held a press conference. They also have an 800 number and a television spot that you can join their crusade against the cultural rot in daytime television. I just think there's a lot of heavy breathing for very little--these programs that go too far too often or too vulgar will fall of their own weight. We're already seeing some evidence of that. I should also tell you, Elizabeth, that the programs you referenced, midwifery and other issues like that, did not do well. It's one of the, one of the things I guess you can do when you're in the 11th hour of your daytime television program. But I would never do those programs if I were starting a television, daytime television program today.

MS. ELIZABETH: They didn't do well because they weren't exciting enough, sensational enough?

PHIL DONAHUE: I just don't think the audience is out there in the daytime in large enough numbers to support shows on Gaza or the Balkan War even, although we've done both of those issues. It is a--you're not immediately rewarded for doing them.

MS. ELIZABETH: What do you think about William Bennett's theory? He's one of the main critics, as you well know, and the former Secretary of Education. He believes in what he calls "constructive hypocrisy," and by that, he says that civilization depends on keeping much that should be private under wraps, that it shouldn't be out in the open. What's your response to that?

PHIL DONAHUE: I think he wants to sanitize the news. I think you should see the pain. I believe a Pulitzer Prize should be awarded to a photographer who takes a picture of a naked child running from an Napalm blast in the Vietnam War, as a prize was awarded. I think we should--I think the--in many ways you could argue that the daytime talk shows have less pretense. They're closer to the street and I think reflect in many ways the audience that's out there. There is a significant section of our culture that involves young people, many of whom wear their baseball caps backwards, who are having trouble with their girlfriends, their mothers, their fathers, their marriages, their divorces, their children, and this is on daytime television. It is true there are some shows that push people and so produce them that what you get is a rather harsh and not very real review of, of what's happening in someone's life. It is also true that you have a number of people out there, I would say women especially, who come to realize that they are in an abusive domestic situation, and these programs empower them to get out. What's wrong with that? Do all of these programs deserve a Nobel Prize? I'm not saying that. But I'm impressed with how the Republicans will not let the marketplace work in this area. Let's see what happens. Those that go too far too often won't last very long.

MS. ELIZABETH: And finally, Mr. Donahue, what do you plan to do next? I should say, by the way, you're not retiring until May, is that right?

PHIL DONAHUE: That's right.

MS. ELIZABETH: What happens next?

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, I don't know. I'm 60, too young to retire, and I have a whole plate of options before me, including perhaps doing a program that doesn't make the kinds of demands that daytime competition does, that might allow me to do more thoughtful programs at a time when we don't have to worry about having twenty or twenty-five other programs of similar kinds competing with us.

MS. ELIZABETH: Well, good luck to you, and thank you for being with us.

PHIL DONAHUE: Thank you, Elizabeth. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, President Clinton will give his State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress tonight. Republican congressional leaders agreed the national debt limit had to be raised by March 1st and House Republicans said they were working on a temporary spending bill to keep the government running beyond Friday. We'll see you tomorrow night with full analysis of the State of the Union, among other things. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.