The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Friday, we have a conversation with George Kennan about what's happening in Russia, an update from the Gaza Strip, political analysis by Mark Shields joined tonight by former Reagan and Bush official Richard Burt, and an Elizabeth Brackett report on a town moved by a flood. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: A $500 million grant to America's public schools was announced today by philanthropist Walter Annenberg. It was the largest single gift ever given to public education. The money will be dispersed to projects which show positive results in improving the quality of education and in reducing violence in the schools. President Clinton called it a remarkable and truly wonderful thing that couldn't have come at a better time. At a White House ceremony, Annenberg explained his reasons for doing it.

WALTER ANNENBERG, Philanthropist: I am deeply troubled by the violence in some grade schools and high schools. And if this continues, it will not only erode the educational system but will destroy our way of life in the United States. Now, that's a pretty strong statement but I believe it. We have got to reverse what is going on in our country. It's obligatory. We must ask ourselves whether improving education will halt the violence. If anyone can think of a better way, we may have to try that. But the way I see this tragedy, education is the most wholesome and effective approach.

MR. LEHRER: Grant recipients must raise matching contributions. Annenberg called for individuals, corporations, and foundations to join his effort. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: An agreement on cleaning up pollution in the Florida Everglades has collapsed. Federal officials said five months of talks with the sugar industry reached an impasse yesterday. Last July, Interior Sec. Bruce Babbitt announced an accord under which sugar growers would pay more than $340 million to clean up waste from their farming. But federal officials said the growers had imposed a new condition which could block for two decades any plans to restore the natural flow of water to the 1.4 million acre park. Growers said the park -- the plan would flood farmers off their land. The dispute is now expected to return to the courts. The Commerce Department reported construction of new homes and apartments hit its highest level in four years last month. Housing starts were up nearly 4 percent over the previous month. Advances in the Northeast and South offset small declines in the Midwest and West.

MR. LEHRER: Suicide Dr. Jack Kevorkian was released from jail today on $100 bail. It followed his promise to a judge not to assist in any more suicides until a Michigan appeals court ruled on the constitutionality of a law against them. Kevorkian, who has been on an 18-day hunger strike, was brought to court in a wheelchair. The former sergeant at arms at the House of Representatives was sentenced today to two years in prison for his role in the House Bank scandal. Jack Russ pleaded guilty in October to embezzling more than $75,000 in public funds as well as other charges.

MR. MacNeil: The U.S. today began withdrawing its combat troops from Somalia. About 450 infantrymen left Mogadishu for their home base at Fort Drum, New York. President Clinton has ordered a total U.S. withdrawal by March 31st. More than 8,000 U.S. soldiers are in the country. They're leading a multinational U.N. force which arrived last December to protect relief shipments to victims of Somalia's famine and civil war. About 2500 U.S. troops are expected to leave before Christmas.

MR. LEHRER: Bosnian's Muslims and Croats have announced a holiday cease-fire. It is to begin Christmas Eve and last through January 3rd. The commander of the Serb forces said he would also respect the truce provided his side was not attacked. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to George Kennan, a report from Gaza, our Friday political analysis, and a move to higher ground. FOCUS - AFTERSHOCK

MR. MacNeil: We start tonight wrapping up another momentous week in Russian history with a discussion with this country's premiere observer of the Russian scene, George Kennan. On Sunday, Russian voters sent a shock through their own political system and around the world. The single biggest vote getter appeared to be the ultra- nationalist party of Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Five days later, the outcome looked more like a split decision among ultra-nationalists, pro-reformers, and various blocs of independents. For President Boris Yeltsin trying to deal with a new parliament, the word "gridlock" may assume a new dimension. Members of the lower House of Parliament, or the Duma, were elected both by national party slates and single member, local districts. Here's how the new Duma appears to be shaping up. The two major pro-reform parties so far have won 122 seats. The three major anti-reform parties, Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democrats, the Communists, and Agrarians, have won 197 seats. The rest will be divided among eight other parties with various degrees of support or opposition for Yeltsin's reforms. Sec. of State Christopher said on the NewsHour last night that Yeltsin will have to learn a new kind of coalition building politics.

WARREN CHRISTOPHER, Secretary of State: In order to sustain the progress that's already been made and to further it, he's going to have to build coalitions within the parliament. He got a good start in doing that now. The results are improving. I've been urging people to keep their powder dry for some days. Let's wait until the counts are really in, and I think some people who made earlier judgments about reform having gone down the drain are now having to revise their judgment.

MR. MacNeil: Now to our interview with George Kennan whose diplomatic career in Russia and Central Europe began in the years after World War I and continued through the Kennedy administration. He's perhaps best known as the author of the policy of containment of the Soviet Union after World War II. Mr. Kennan, now 90, is the author of many books about Russia and Europe, as well as his memoirs. Two of his books have won Pulitzer Prizes. I talked with him earlier today.

MR. MacNeil: Prof. Kennan, thank you very much for joining us. On the Russian elections, some commentators have reacted with alarm. Do you?

GEORGE KENNAN: I would say with disquiet, but not with alarm. I think the, the unhappy elements of what has happened have been somewhat blown up and overdramatized in these last days. I think that's not surprising. Some of the things that Mr. Zhirinovsky has said are really quite shocking and appalling, but I don't -- I think one has to keep this too within measure. As I understand it, as things now stand, among his own direct supporters, they will amount to about 12 1/2 percent of the membership of the lower house in the new parliament. That may seem very little. Of course, it is -- there's more to it than that. He has supporters among other parties and altogether that is not a, not a situation that one can be complacent about what is happening in the parliament. But I think that as -- for itself what has happened here is not so terrible. Mr. Zhirinovsky, obviously, is a very unstable and strange person. The statements he has made about what Russia ought to do, what he'd like to be done, have been not only vague but conflicting. He said one thing at one time, one thing at another time, and they have been of such absolutely weird inapplicability to reality that if he were to be put into a position of real responsibility, I think he would make a fool of himself in no time at all.

MR. MacNeil: Do you think those who see some comparison with Germany in the 1930s and the rise of Hitler, is that a reasonable comparison to be making at this time?

PROF. KENNAN: No, I think not, and I think it's a dangerous one. There are very meaningful differences between the situation that existed in Germany in 1933 and the one that is confronted now in Russia, but in addition to that, in general, I think it is not a very good idea to reach back into the past to get parallels for things that are happening now. History never fully repeats itself and usually less than people think. I could go into the elements of the Nazi phenomenon and cite the ones that are entirely different here. Among other things, I might just mention the fact that Hitler took over a country in a very good financial and economic situation. Bruening had done all the dirty work for him in getting rid of inflation and all this, so he had it easy. Anybody who attempts to take over this situation in Russia today faces a much, much more difficult and complex problem, a complex - - a problem so complex that I don't know anyone, including myself, who is really confident that he could come up with the right answer to it.

MR. MacNeil: I suppose one of the parallels people see is of a populous frustrated and angered by inflation and, and embittered over that to the extent that President Clinton, for one, among others, sees it as a protest vote over the harsh impact of economic reform. Do you, do you agree with the President, that that's what - -

PROF. KENNAN: I agree very strongly with the President. I could have put it even in stronger terms, I think. It's been in some ways a desperation vote on the part of people who have since the breakdown of the Soviet system, they've waited now five years for something hopeful to happen to them. Nothing of that sort has happened, or very little that they can see, and I think a large part of those who voted for Mr. Zhirinovsky were old people and pensioners, and they really are in great trouble. The inflation has undermined the tiny, little pensions that they get. The people around Mr. Yeltsin don't seem to have paid much heed to that. It reminds me of something that Tocqueville once said about the French revolutionaries, I believe it was. He said that they are so fascinated with the behavior of people en masse that they forget the individual who lay at the bottom of it. Well, this is the approach that could be given to him.

MR. MacNeil: If Yeltsin and his reformers cannot soften the impact of the capitalist reforms, may not Zhirinovsky or other extremists gain support, more support? I mean, for instance, Zhirinovsky clearly intends to run for President in 1996.

PROF. KENNAN: Well, of course, that's a real danger, and I do think that the, the reformers have to do much better than they have done. They have ignored this problem that I just mentioned. They've ignored it, and they've ignored the discomfort of a great many other people in Russia. You may ask what could be done about this without increasing the inflation, and that is the great problem of -- I found myself wondering really whether for the worst sufferers in Russia, and are those are the pensioners and other people who can't get new work, perhaps for some of those in the great industrial establishments that are being broken up but where there's the real concealed unemployment with them, I wondered whether they couldn't mount a food stamp program similar to what we have done. Something of this sort has to be done to relieve the suffering of these people. And, of course, this was a protest. I don't attach much importance to the -- all the nonsense he talked about, recovering the empire, and I don't think that was in the minds of the people who voted for them. These were -- they were impoverished, unhappy people who could see no way out of their situation. And they wanted to send a message which they did send to Yeltsin and the people around him that this has just got to stop.

MR. MacNeil: Do you -- are you disturbed by the fact it wasn't just the Zhirinovsky's party, the so-called super-nationalists, but also a lot of Communists, Communists got a lot of votes, and so did the Agrarian Party, which is the party of the collective farms, and also against reform. Does it disturb you that so much of the protest was channeled towards, to put a blanket term on it, totalitarian ideas?

PROF. KENNAN: Well, I don't that these are necessarily totalitarian ideas, but they are very conservative ones, and what bothers me is that they do show a sufficient proportion of public opinion opposed to the, to the reform program which the regime is now trying to implement. And that wouldn't bother me so much except that I can see no alternative to it. I haven't seen any of the other parties, the ones you mentioned, have come up with anything resembling a program for the transition of Russia from her previous Communist state to a free enterprise economy. Now this one that the, the people around Yeltsin have is by no means perfect, and it does need to be improved. Perhaps it could be usefully slowed down a bit, but since it is the only thing that we can see over there that has any chance of working and because there was just on the eve of these recent events, there were signs, people tell me, of a certain stabilization of -- in other words, the program was beginning to show some results. There are over 80,000 privatized enterprises now in Russia. Yeltsin had, I understand, just signed a new decree. I haven't seen any text of it. I'm not sure it's been published, but one which would authorize the establishment of private property and agricultural properties, agricultural lands. I think that is of immense importance, because Russia still is very largely an agrarian country. Now these things were just beginning to take, and I think it would be a catastrophe if that whole problem were to be knocked into a cocked path, and we had nothing with which to replace it.

MR. MacNeil: Should Washington now adjust, change, alter its post Cold War strategy vis-a-vis Russia because of these elections?

PROF. KENNAN: I think that they should be a little cautious until they see more of what is really going on there, but in general I would say no. I think the things that our government is doing are, by and large -- well, some of them come too late; there are other things they could have done that they didn't a year ago -- but I don't see any reason for any great change of policy toward this present situation in Russia.

MR. MacNeil: So you don't see a need, after several years of breathing easy, to start having to think again militarily about a threat from Moscow?

PROF. KENNAN: Oh, no, not at all. I think this involves an immense misunderstanding on the part of these people who have broken off from Russia and who are all demanding now that we guarantee their independence forevermore. They -- people don't realize that the Russian people, the great bulk of them, they have had it. They have been through all sorts of things. They're emerging from three, from three generations, seven decades of Communism. They are bewildered. They are confused. They have a great sense of national humiliation. Even though they were not Communists, they did derive national pride from their, what they were able to do in a military sense against the Nazis, and they deserved -- this was well deserved. They could well have it. They see all this shattered and nothing before them. They were unprepared for democracy. A great many of them don't know what it means. They were unprepared for free enterprise. I'm not sure that they will ever have a free enterprise comparable to ours here. You can't expect too much from those people, but the one thing that I don't expect from them is any desire to have any more military adventures or foreign policy adventures, not that people.

MR. MacNeil: So you as the author of the concept don't -- wouldn't see a need to reconsider containment of the Soviet Union again?

PROF. KENNAN: Oh, no. I think that passed really with the passing of the old -- of the Soviet regime. I don't see that we have any reason, unless it were to come to the aid of other people, but I don't really see that any of these other people have any very good reason to fear any military action by Russia against them.

MR. MacNeil: Of course, they have used it, some of them, the election, to argue even more forcefully --

PROF. KENNAN: Yes.

MR. MacNeil: -- for membership in NATO. And the U.S. answer at the moment is, not now, maybe later. Is that the correct answer?

PROF. KENNAN: No. In my opinion, it's not, because it's too encouraging and I don't think that NATO should expand that far. NATO began really as an organization for the defense of the, of the central powers of Europe, of continental Europe. And I think it would be getting itself in great trouble if it moves thousands and thousands of miles away from there. In my opinion, there should be no question of taking into NATO any country which is not -- has not achieved stability both in its internal life, or in its relations with its neighbors. And there is hardly one of these countries around, around this present Russia unless it be the Baltic, the three Baltic countries of which that could be said. And even in cases of three Baltic countries, there are still unsolved problems.

MR. MacNeil: Do you, do you feel that -- do you have doubts that Russia can grow into a stable democracy?

PROF. KENNAN: I think it would -- I'm not sure that it would be what we would call a democracy. It will certainly be not like, will not be a replica of our system of government here. I think, however, that the idea of self-government is now deeply planted among the Russians. I don't think you could go back to anything like the Stalinist dictatorship. And I think it will take hold. You will not be able to reverse even these 80,000 privatized enterprises which I mentioned to you. It will take hold but it will take hold in its own way, and the more Russia is permitted to fight this thing through by herself and given time to do it, the better it will be. I don't think we should, we should be the ones to push them or to encumber them either with our anxieties or with our unreasonable hopes.

MR. MacNeil: Prof. Kennan, thank you very much for joining us.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, news from the Gaza Strip, Shields and Burt, and leaving the floodwaters behind. UPDATE - LIMITED PARTNERSHIP

MR. LEHRER: Next, making peace in the Middle East. Disputes between Israel and the Palestinians have delayed implementation of the September peace accord. The plan calls for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank town of Jericho and the Gaza Strip, and for the implementation of limited Palestinian self-rule. But after the withdrawal is completed, Palestinians may still find themselves economically dependent on Israel for many years to come. Nik Gowing of Independent Television News reports from Gaza.

MR. GOWING: Gaza, a seething, overcrowded strip of land whose estimated 800,000 Palestinians live a miserable existence for the most part in squalor and destitution. [man speaking Arabic] Penned in behind wire and watch towers, Gaza is a place of unimaginable Palestinian hate for Israel and its occupying forces, a hate that pervades everyday life here. That hate breeds extremism in an environment where only one adult in thirty has full-time work and half the population is under fourteen. The embittered young have little to strive for except the fight against Israel. So the hate breeds confrontation with a daily and predictable routine. Israeli military patrols under orders to impose law and order, the young determined to take demand regardless of the price many Palestinians have already paid. The center of Gaza City, Palestine Square, with a teeming market a few moments earlier, is suddenly a battlefield. But watch both sides at work in Gaza and you realize it is urban warfare neither side can ever win. Young, edgy Israeli conscripts and reservists fulfill the political orders from Jerusalem, but by their actions and their nervous behavior, here, for example, arresting a street trader, they merely further inflame the Palestinian heat. Palestinians claim the Israelis only let the trader go because of our presence. A few minutes later, an Israeli officer appeared carrying a military order, instructing us to leave the area.

UNIDENTIFIED ISRAELI OFFICER: It's a closed area.

MR. GOWING: And it was just declared a moment ago because of the demonstration, was it?

UNIDENTIFIED ISRAELI OFFICER: Uh, exactly.

MR. GOWING: But the terrifying enormity of transforming this densely packed mix of refugee camps and slightly better off Palestinian neighborhoods to a self-supporting economic system under Palestinian self-rule cannot be hidden. The infrastructure of public services remains as inadequate as when the Israelis took control a quarter of a century ago as their tanks rolled west towards Egypt. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat has just appointed his new mayor who with World Bank agreement is working to secure immediately $2 billion from the outside world.

MANSOUR SHAWA, Mayor, Gaza City: Gaza City has been without a municipal council for the past 12 years. Our total, our infrastructure of the town is in total shambles, broken down. You could have epidemic any time now that would kill thousands of people. We need to build up the town.

MR. GOWING: Much as the Palestinians yearn for self-rule, without Israel, Gaza is economically dead. Before dawn each morning, 80,000 Palestinians arrive at the main crossing point from Gaza into Israel on their way to jobs. Each has his movements recorded on Israeli computers. Their wages are 1/3 of an Israeli worker's but better than the virtually non-existent job opportunities in Gaza.

PALESTINIAN WORKER: I work in factory.

MR. GOWING: And without that work, can you find work here in Gaza?

PALESTINIAN WORKER: Now there is no work in Gaza.

MR. GOWING: Without Israel, therefore, Gaza's cash flow would be at barely subsistence levels. But there is also a billion dollars of pension contributions taken by Israeli employers which the Palestinians want released. Because of this great reliance on Israel for employment, independent economic analysts have concluded and the Palestinians reluctantly accept that this will continue for many years to come. It is now what the Palestinians want. It is though the harsh economic reality for Gaza's future.

DR. SALAH ABDEL SHAFI, Economic Development Group: I can't imagine a sudden divorce and disengagement of the Gaza economy from the Israeli economy because this would lead to a drastic decrease in the levels of income. That's why I think in the short-term there is no way but to maintain this relation with Israel, but to do our best to make the best out of this relationship.

MR. GOWING: But the great uncertainty in Gaza revolves around the intentions of Hamas, the radical and increasingly popular alternative to Yasser Arafat's PLO and Fatah. This week, the Hamas leadership is celebrating six years of the organization's existence. Attacks by its secret military wing whose leader addressed this really with a recorded message are causing great concern, concern to the PLO, in particular, because of Hamas's apparent ability to attract the many young Palestinians disaffected with Yasser Arafat's moderation.

MOHSEN ALI ABU HAMZAH, Director, Hamas: We are against PLO because Mr. Arafat put his hand on Rabin's hand. Rabin's the big imperialism -- imperialist who killed our people.

[DEMONSTRATION]

MR. GOWING: Israel too remains deeply concerned because of Hamas's declared aim to continue attacking Israeli targets.

[DEMONSTRATION]

MR. GOWING: Hence, the Rabin government's determination to nip in the bud any open support for Hamas. The way in which the Israeli forces felt it necessary to put down post rally high emotions with live ammunition may not though be an accurate pointer to Hamas's true, long-term political intentions, especially when it comes to eventually sitting on the same Gaza City council as the PLO.

UNIDENTIFIED ISRAELI SOLDIER: This area is closed for now.

MANSOUR SHAWA: I'm not pessimistic. I have indications already that they are willing to try or they may try. It may not happen next week. I did not set a date. I'm not going to be committed by a date, but without the help of all these factions, I'm afraid I may have to give up.

MR. GOWING: There may be no future for Gaza?

MANSOUR SHAWA: We'll exist. We'll exist.

MR. GOWING: Israel now wants to shut out the ghastliness of Gaza for good but in doing so it's likely to shut in a battle for power between Hamas and the PLO. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

MR. LEHRER: Now our Friday night political analysis with our regular syndicated columnist Mark Shields, here tonight with Richard Burt, former New York Times reporter, who served in both the Reagan and Bush administrations as a state department official, arms negotiator and U.S. Ambassador to Germany. He's now a partner in a management consulting firm in Washington. Mark, the going of Defense Sec. Les Aspin, some are suggesting that his days were numbered from day one. Is that true?

MR. SHIELDS: I guess every secretary of defense's days are numbered from day one. But I think Les Aspin had the toughest assignment in the entire administration, toughest because, Jim, Bill Clinton is the first commander in chief since Franklin Roosevelt not to have worn the uniform as an anti-war protester, he came as a Democratic Party standard bearer, a party that had been certainly not enthusiastic about defense spending, and at a painful time for the American military, cutting back in size, ending careers, all manner of difficult assignments. Les Aspin in many respects brought enormous intellectual fire power but not the credibility and confidence to the uniform military that I think a Clinton secretary of defense needs.

MR. LEHRER: Rick, do you agree with that, and also the additional thing that people have said now that Les Aspin quit, well, whether they've been -- the suggestion has been, well, he was too smart actually to be secretary of defense. In other words, he knew to much about the military.

MR. BURT: Well, it's true that Les Aspin ran the longest running seminar on defense policy and nuclear deterrence and arms control in Washington history. I mean, ever since he came to the Congress, actually serving in the Pentagon in the 60's and then in the Congress in the early 70's, he was interested in these issues, but I thought he was going to be a terrific secretary of defense. I think a lot of people did. But I think in retrospect, he probably was doomed. Mark is right. You had a President that needed somebody in the Pentagon who could bond with the military, and Les Aspin really wasn't that guy. Les was very much a civilian defense intellectual. He wanted to replace civilian intelligentsia with, with military judgment. He wanted, he wanted the Pentagon to be run by defense intellectuals from Harvard. He was not a buttoned up, disciplined guy. With Mel Laird, for instance, when he came from the Congress to the Pentagon, he protected the military during the Vietnam War, during a very difficult period for the military. Dick Cheney bonded with Colin Powell and the Joint Chiefs.

MR. LEHRER: But they became real combo, didn't they?

MR. BURT: Exactly. That didn't happen with Les Aspin, and Les Aspin in his early days was a critic of the military. I think the military remembered that, but also I think Les didn't understand that it's mainly a management job. It's an operations job. Les was always interested in the policy but not the running of the department.

MR. LEHRER: Not an intellectual job?

MR. SHIELDS: Oh, I think it's an intellectual job. I think that Les, Les Aspin brought to it certain qualities and certain experiences which left him with really no constituency. He was very much of an independent thinker. Rick is right.

MR. LEHRER: So when he got in trouble, there was nobody there to say, hey, don't let our man Aspin down?

MR. SHIELDS: That's right. I mean, he's not unlike Zoe Baird in one sense when she was nominated for attorney general. There was no constituency out there that really was ready to stick with it. And there really wasn't with Les either. I mean, Les had been as the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, he had been caught been and managed to survive under precarious circumstances a very hawkish Armed Services Committee and a dovish Democratic Caucus in the House. He had been a -- you're right -- a whiz kid in the Pentagon. He left the Pentagon to run Lyndon Johnson's ill- fated 1968 primary campaign against Gene McCarthy in Wisconsin, then stayed there to, to run for Congress.

MR. LEHRER: I forgot about that.

MR. SHIELDS: And jumped, jumped to Robert Kennedy. So I mean, he was a guy that was, was anti-Pentagon spending but he was never anti-military as an awful lot of Democrats were in the House, or at least sounded as though they were. So he was -- he never really had the full trust of either side. I think he had the respect of just about everybody he dealt with for his ability.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Well, let's go to Bobby Ray Inman, Adm. Inman, Burt -- Rick, the words have been used to describe, independent, candidate, smart, are those right?

MR. BURT: I think they are right. I worked with Bobby Inman. He is an enormously intelligent guy. I think he's more organized and disciplined than Les Aspin was. He has deep experience in government, but I think there are still some very big question marks. For one thing, even though he was a four-star admiral, he really came out of the intelligence establishment, not the military establishment. He became the first four-star person out of the intelligence establishment, and that's different than the military.

MR. LEHRER: In what way? Explain that.

MR. BURT: Well, running the Defense Department is an enormously public and political job. You're dealing with hundreds of billions of dollars and you're doing it very publicly. Running the CIA or the National Security Agency is still a very private job, and you're working with a small number of Congressmen. You're working with a small number of people in government, and most importantly, it is not a policy job. You are not asked by the President or by the Congress to take the position on a controversial issue. The real issue, as far as I'm concerned, with Bobby Inman is whether he can make this transition from being a disciplined analyst to take tough decisions and taking them under, under intense scrutiny. It's not clear whether he has the background or experience to do that. My view very much is, is that the Defense Department job is a very political job. We are in the process of downsizing the defense budget. We're withdrawing forces from around the world. We're closing bases nationwide. You really need, I think, a very skilled political operator who can do it in public. I'm not saying Bobby Ray Inman can't do it, but it's going to be a very new challenge for him.

MR. SHIELDS: Uh, I don't disagree with that. I do want to say one thing about Les Aspin. His exit I thought was handled well.

MR. LEHRER: But he was pushed, wasn't it?

MR. SHIELDS: The President -- sure he was -- no question about it. I mean, this conversation had been going on. I mean, I -- I didn't know my wife was leaving but, I'm interviewing substitutes for her, and that was sort of the explanation. But the administration did move quickly. They moved forcefully. They moved, I thought, with a minimum of pain to try to protect his dignity. But there's one very bad down side about it right now. Now, Les Aspin is quickly becoming in this administration the "one size fits all" scapegoat for everything that --

MR. LEHRER: For everything that went wrong.

MR. SHIELDS: And it really is unfair. I mean, gays in the military was not Les Aspin. That was Bill Clinton. It was a campaign promise, one that he found out once in office, once elected, he couldn't deliver on, and so now they're blaming that on him.

MR. LEHRER: So he turns to Aspin and says, all right, fix it.

MR. SHIELDS: You fix it. I mean, so it just seems that everything up until the Kristoff haircut for 200 bucks on the LAX tarmac was going to be blamed on Les Aspin.

MR. BURT: And, Jim, we've seen a little bit of this before in the foreign policy area when Cliff Wharton, the deputy secretary of state, had nothing to do with the problems in Somalia and nothing to do with the problems in Haiti was also asked to resign. I mean, one of the real problems in this administration is -- and it's a difficult problem -- it's a complex issue -- but in a post Cold War period, we don't have a new national security design. We tried multilateralism with the United Nations. We tried economic security, and that works with NAFTA, but it doesn't deal with very complicated problems like the one that George Kennan was talking about earlier tonight. It doesn't work with North Korea. It doesn't work with the complexity of dealing with China. You can't blame Les Aspin, you can't blame him alone for not having a coherent national security policy. You have to have a President who's interested in these issues, and so far, Bill Clinton hasn't demonstrated that interest.

MR. LEHRER: But do you find it interesting that when he had to replace Les Aspin as secretary of defense, you say it's a political job, he chooses a guy who is non-political or is even if he's political at all he's more a Republican than he is a Democrat?

MR. SHIELDS: Absolutely, but I think that the credibility of the military was paramount in the considerations. I mean, they needed somebody, [a] who had Washington experience, [b] who was going to be well received. I thought that the introduction in which Adm. Inman put it that he had not voted for the President, that he had not sought the job, that he, in fact, interviewed the President as to whether the President was going to be an appropriate commander in chief, you know, certainly suggested an independent coming in which I think is going to serve him well at the Pentagon. You know, I don't know the comfort level of the President in that particular exchange.

MR. LEHRER: What about the idea, the whole basis for the secretary of defense's job and as the civilian rule of the military, in other words, that goes back to our founding fathers, that the military would never run the country, that's supposed to be a civilian job. Now, it's going to be put in the hands for the first time in 40 years, in the hands of a professional military man?

MR. SHIELDS: Two factors. Democrats have been out of power for twenty of the past twenty-four years. They don't have a good bench, a good farm system of people in the whole defense experience. They didn't have people coming out of the uniformed services who identified with the Democratic Party. People who come out of the uniformed services and go political usually identify with the party of the commander in chief under which they've served. So many came out of World War II as Democrats. If Bobby Ray Inman is 1/5 the man that George Catlet Marshall was, the last military secretary of defense, this country is blessed.

MR. BURT: Jim, also Mark made the point earlier this is a President that needs credibility in that job. This is a President who doesn't have the credentials, himself. He doesn't have people around him who have the credentials. He needs somebody who has served in the military, who knows the issues, who can give him that important credibility. The real question is, is though is what is Bill Clinton going to do the first time that Bobby Ray Inman says, hey, I've looked at these figures and Les Aspin is right, we can't cut this budget $50 billion? Particularly in view of what's happening in Russia and elsewhere, we need to slow down this defense cut. What is then, what is the President going to do?

MR. LEHRER: And Bobby Ray Inman laid it out pretty clear yesterday, that, hey, if I don't like things --

MR. BURT: He will speak up.

MR. LEHRER: He will speak up. And that -- I mean, he will -- what does that say about Bill Clinton, that he went to Bobby Ray Inman?

MR. SHIELDS: I think a perceived need on his part -- I mean, I think that you can look at the positive side. You could say, cut his losses. He realized it wasn't working, that the original choice made on the basis of intellect and a guy who got all A's and, and did conduct the longest running, most well attended policy seminar on national defense issues in Washington, may not have been the best choice. But at the same time, I think what's clear from that exchange yesterday, that public exchange yesterday, is that Bobby Ray Inman is here -- he's renting -- he's not buying. I mean, if he wants to -- I mean, this is up -- the President came after him. He didn't come hat in hand. He wasn't sending resumes or Form 57s and letters of reference in to Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton hired him, begged him, importuned him actually to take the job.

MR. BURT: But I think there's another political factor here. I think one of the problems with Les Aspin is that Les Aspin was a politician, and there was concern in the White House sometimes about whether Les Aspin's agenda was his or the President's. I think the President did not want to get the high profile politician. He didn't want to get somebody off the Hill who might have been more helpful to him. I think he's much more comfortable - - somebody who's a technician, somebody who's a good operational person -- and the President will make the important political decisions.

MR. LEHRER: Mark, Rick, thank you both very much.

MR. BURT: Thank you. FINALLY - ON THE MOVE

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight, the story of a town on the move. The town is Valmeyer, Illinois. Until the rains came last summer, it was a Mississippi River town. Now it's heading for higher ground. Correspondent Elizabeth Brackett reports.

MS. BRACKETT: The freight trains still roll through Valmeyer but not much else does. Winter winds whistle through the deserted streets and battered houses. This is a town that fought the Mississippi River last summer, and like so many other Midwestern towns, it lost.

LEE MELLIERE: Just about when we thought we had it close to the end, it broke, and that was a whole new set of circumstances then. It seemed to get worse instead of better.

MS. BRACKETT: Valmeyer's fate was sealed on August 1, when this levee broke at Columbia, just North of Valmeyer. Millions of gallons of roiling river water swept away farm buildings, inundated fields, and surged toward the town. By the next day, Valmeyer belonged to the river, the churches, the schools, the homes. By fall, when the river was back in its banks, it was clear that Valmeyer would lever be the same. As people returned and saw the extensive damage here, it didn't take long to realize how hard it would be to rebuild. People began immediately thinking of a new town. The major requirements were that it be out of the flood plain but that it be close to the old Valmeyer and at least half the town would agree to go. The idea was sparked by the town's mayor, Dennis Knobloch.

MAYOR DENNIS KNOBLOCH, Valmeyer, Illinois: The first thing we had to do was find a place for the town. We had to find an area that was big enough that was suitable to house the, all the aspects of the community, the public buildings, the business and commercial areas, the residential areas, and we were lucky enough to find that area within about a mile and a half of our existing town.

MS. BRACKETT: The new site for the town of 1,000 was a cornfield but a cornfield on top of the bluffs that had been the river's banks centuries ago. The farmer agreed to sell his 500 acres for $3 million. The new Valmeyer was born.

MAYOR DENNIS KNOBLOCH: The main downtown area is off to our North from here. It's in the cornfield area that you see. To the right of this, on the very East end of the cornfield there is going to be the school complex which is 28 acres. Then directly West of the school complex will be the downtown area with the, the commercial business district, senior citizen area, townhouses, apartments, things like that, and then the actual apartment buildings for the general public.

MS. BRACKETT: Now can you see all this as you look at the cornfield?

MAYOR DENNIS KNOBLOCH: Oh, you better believe I can. I can see it there right now.

MS. BRACKETT: But before those buildings could rise out of the cornfield, there was an enormous amount of work to be done.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: [town meeting] There are a number of different obviously concepts that one can have. I mean, there is no right or wrong way of designing it. It's just I think we had some general concepts and general limitations that really force the layout that we've seen here. You know, one is a large enough site of almost 30 acres for the school site, a fairly level site. You're not going to find much of a better site on the entire property for that.

MS. BRACKETT: For the last two months, residents of Valmeyer have spent about 1600 man hours in this basement planning for the new town. With the help of only two or three professionals from the Regional Planning Commission, they've had to tackle everything from where the new sewer lines should go to what the signs should look like in their new town. In the next room, the Social Services Committee is trying to figure out how to bring in a doctor for their new town.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: You're looking basically for someone who is in sole practice, and as I mentioned before, doctors coming out of training now don't want to do a sole practice; they want to be involved with a group so that they have coverage, so that they don't get involved in being on call every night of the week.

MS. BRACKETT: As the committees grappled with the complexities of building a town from scratch, individuals were struggling with whether or not they should move to the Valmeyer. Debbie Melliere was already tired of living with her husband and two daughters in the trailer provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA. She had loved her house in Valmeyer before the flood hit.

DEBBIE MELLIERE: We just bought it a year and a half ago and we got everything in the world you wanted in it and then the waters came and took it. We had dead fish, dead turtles, and everything was lying around.

MS. BRACKETT: At first, Melliere hoped they could return. They began the cleanup and took the house down to the wall studs. But then she learned of the new FEMA rule for homes in the flood plain.

DEBBIE MELLIERE: I would like to come back but then they had a stipulation that we had to put it on 16-foot stilts. Well, this is a full brick house. You can't put it on 16-foot stilts. So that kind of burst our bubble coming back, and then they were throwing around the idea of moving the whole town, and we thought that would be very good for the town and for us.

MS. BRACKETT: Her husband, Lee Melliere, had been trying to get his stilt-covered, still damp fields in shape to plant a later winter crop since the summer crop had been destroyed. When the government announced funds would be available to buy out houses, he began to seriously consider moving to the new town, though he would still continue to farm in the flood plain.

LEE MELLIERE: The buyout, if that goes through, then we at least get more compensation, more of your value out of your house, which is going to give you some extra money to be able to start over. Most people, if they had insurance, were probably underinsured.

MS. BRACKETT: Like you were?

LEE MELLIERE: Right. So the buyout is going to make the difference for some people whether they're going to be able to rebuild and start over.

MS. BRACKETT: The new town doesn't interest everyone. There was one house in this block of empty homes where the sounds of rebuilding were heard. Working late into the night to try and move his family back before the holidays, Kevin Dickneite says even the possibility of a government buyout couldn't persuade him to leave old Valmeyer.

MS. BRACKETT: But, Kevin, you're going to be down here all by yourself.

KEVIN DICKNEITE: Mm hm.

MS. BRACKETT: Why are you staying?

KEVIN DICKNEITE: I used to live in the middle of 200 acres, and I kind of liked it. I'm not ready to give this up yet. And I like this town. It's a peaceful town. My opinion is I think that it could be -- some of the people could come back.

MS. BRACKETT: And what about every time it rains? Will you be nervous for a while?

KEVIN DICKNEITE: Well, I hope they get their butt in gear and get them levees back together, at least this one down here. It's got, I think I've heard two holes and I don't know how many gashes in it, but --

MS. BRACKETT: But you're staying on the flood plain?

KEVIN DICKNEITE: I'm going to stay.

MS. BRACKETT: Beverly Richards wants the best of both worlds. She wants to take her old home with her to the new town. The big, brick two-story home had been one of Valmeyer's showplaces.

BEVERLY RICHARDS: How magnificent she looked, even in the water. She was just standing there like a beach as beautiful as she ever was.

MS. BRACKETT: This is a big house. How possible do you think it is that it can be moved?

BEVERLY RICHARDS: Well, when I talked to the man last week, he said, lady, he said, we've done this for four generations, and he said, we can just about move anything.

MS. BRACKETT: But Richards isn't sure if FEMA buyout funds will cover moving her house. If not, she has two options; repair the house and move the living quarters to the second floor above the flood level, or leave the house as a wrecking ball, take the buyout money, and put a mobile home on a lot in the new town.

MAYOR KNOBLOCH: We're hoping to be able to help everybody in the lower bottom area put their lives back together and we --

MS. BRACKETT: In early November, close to 1,000 people packed the meeting hall in a nearby town to listen to the results of the planning committee's efforts. They liked what they heard from the mayor.

MAYOR KNOBLOCH: The recommendations came to the village board, which was unanimously approved at the village board level, was to sell residential lots for $50 cents per square foot.

MS. BRACKETT: The cost of the town was pegged at $25 million, its financing coming from federal, state, and private sources. Excited knots of people stayed long after the meeting officially ended. Lee and Debbie Melliere liked what they saw. When the biggest employer in Valmeyer, Mar Business Forms, agreed to move their printing presses, the new town's future was immediately more secure.

RICK ROEVER, Mar Business Forms: I think any time there's an anchor business such as us, and if we were to make the decision to move out, I think that a lot of people would have said, oh, you know, why do we want to go back, they're getting out too.

MS. BRACKETT: One month later it was time for residents to check out the lots available in the new town. Beverly Richards was still agonizing. She had learned that it would cost $78,000 to move her house to the new town. FEMA had not told her whether they would get any help for the move.

BEVERLY RICHARDS: This looks like what we want. This is our first choice.

MS. BRACKETT: Why is it so important to you to move the old house up here?

BEVERLY RICHARDS: I think she will add so much character to the new town, being the beautiful thing that she is, and we want to do the bed and breakfast. It will be a part of the old town that we can bring to the new and show people that, you know, this is what it was really like.

MS. BRACKETT: The next night, Richards was there to take part in the lottery, a drawing to determine the order for picking residential lots in the new town.

BEVERLY RICHARDS: [speaking to neighbor] Doesn't look good, does it?

MS. BRACKETT: Twenty-five names were called before Richards heard her husband's name.

LOTTERY ANNOUNCER: Claudis Adams and Beverly Richards.

MS. BRACKETT: That left her close to the bottom for quarter acre lots.