The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight three perspectives on what the Espy acquittal does to the debate over independent counsels; Spencer Michels reports on importing farm workers; Margaret Warner updates the Bosnia war crimes story; and Elizabeth Farnsworth notes the anniversary of the Kronos Quartet. It all follows our summary of the news this Thursday.% ? NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Clinton's campaign fund-raising will not be included in articles of impeachment. That was the word today from House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde. He made that decision after investigators reviewed one secret Justice Department memoranda on the '96 Clinton campaign. The soon-to-be Speaker of the House, Bob Livingston, spoke today about the impeachment process. He held a joint news conference on the agenda for the 106th Congress with Senate Majority Leader Lott. Livingston was asked if he'd allow a vote on a resolution censoring Mr. Clinton.

REP. BOB LIVINGSTON: Right now, we don't know when the Judiciary Committee is going to complete its work; we don't know what's going to be in their report. We anticipate that it's possible that they could finish this year. It's my hope that they would finish this year. But I'm not going to make any decisions about procedure until we see the report and have a chance to digest it and understand exactly what Henry Hyde and the Judiciary Committee are recommending.

JIM LEHRER: Senator Lott said the Senate was not yet preparing for a trial of the President.

SEN. TRENT LOTT: No, I don't think you're required to, no. But I think that it would be very hard not to if the House, in fact, acted. But I think to speculate beyond that would be totally inappropriate. I don't want to prejudge in any way the work that's being done by the Judiciary Committee.

JIM LEHRER: The ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary panel, Congressman John Conyers, issued a statement today criticizing the Republican effort to broaden the inquiry. He described the entire proceeding as "very strange." The Federal Election Commission today began a review of the '96 Clinton and Dole presidential campaigns. They're examining an auditor's report that charged both candidates benefited from issue advertising paid for by their political parties. It recommended both campaigns repay millions of dollars in federal matching funds - Dole's nearly $18 million, Clinton $7 million. An agreement was reached today on art stolen by the Nazis during World War II. Representatives of 44 nations at a Washington conference endorsed guidelines under which confiscated artwork could be returned to their pre-war owners or their heirs. If neither existed, the art would be auctioned to benefit Holocaust survivors. Wall Street at another bad day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down nearly 185 points, or 2 percent, at 8879. On foreign markets today Brazil's took a big dive. It fell almost 9 percent, the equivalent of 800 Dow Jones points. The launch of space shuttle "Endeavour" was scrubbed today. NASA made the decision after a master alarm showed a brief dip in hydraulic pressure. "Endeavour" is to rendezvous with the Russian part of the international space station already in orbit. The launch was rescheduled for tomorrow morning. In the Netherlands, a Bosnian-Serb military commander was taken to the UN war crimes tribunal at the Hague. General Radislav Kristic is accused of ordering and participating in the murders of some 6,000 Bosnian Muslims in 1995. He was arrested in Bosnia Wednesday by US NATO troops. UN prosecutors secretly indicted him in October. We'll have more on this story later in the program. In the Philippines today twenty-three children and five adults were killed in a fire at an orphanage in Manila. A padlocked gate and security grills reportedly hampered rescue efforts. Most of the victims were trapped on the upper floor of the two-story main building. The fire also consumed two cottages. Investigators said faulty wiring in the 70-year-old building may have sparked the blaze. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the independent counsel debate, a farm workers' story, a Bosnia war crimes update, and an unusual string quartet.% ? FOCUS - CONTINUING THE COUNSEL?

JIM LEHRER: Kwame Holman begins our coverage of the independent counsel story.

KWAME HOLMAN: Former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy walked out of the federal district court in Washington yesterday afternoon cleared of all corruption charges brought against him by Independent Counsel Donald Smaltz.

MIKE ESPY: Stand up to the schoolyard bullies whether they are in the playground, or whether they are in the public courtroom -- whether they have 5 cents or whether they have $20 million. If you are not guilty, you should say so and you should not quit.

KWAME HOLMAN: Donald Smaltz, a Los Angeles defense attorney, spent four years and $17 million investigating charges Espy illegally accepted more than $30,000 in gifts from businesses and lie to investigators.

DONALD SMALTZ: With my appointment as independent counsel on September 9, 1994, this office was charged with a duty of investigating and prosecuting allegations of gratuities given to Mr. Espy, as well as other federal criminal offenses related to that investigation. To date, this office has brought a number of prosecutions. Those prosecutions have resulted in 15 convictions, and we have collected over $11 million in fines and penalties.

KWAME HOLMAN: Espy is one of five members of President Clinton's cabinet who have come under investigation by independent counsels. Former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros goes on trial in February. An investigation of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown ended with his death in 1996. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt remains under investigation, as does Labor Secretary Alexis Hermann, and of course, the four-year investigation of President Clinton by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr continues. The independent counsel statute is triggered when the attorney general concludes that a prominent government official, including the President, Vice President, White House aides, and cabinet members may have committed a crime. The attorney general then must request an independent counsel be appointed by a special three-judge panel. But the law Congress passed authorizing the work of independent counsels Donald Smaltz, Kenneth Starr, and 18 others over the last 20 years expires in June. And both supporters and critics of the statute agree changes should be made in the law before Congress reauthorizes it. During his remarks yesterday, Mike Espy said he's more than willing to testify at a congressional hearing concerning a new independent counsel law.

MIKE ESPY: I would like to be the first witness. I would like to tell the senators and the congressmen of my ordeal. I'd like to talk about the independent counsel statute, and I'd like to talk about this particular independent counsel, Mr. Smaltz, in particular.

KWAME HOLMAN: Independent Counsel Smaltz said he was disappointed by the jury's verdicts in the Espy case but believed the case was worthy of prosecution.

DONALD SMALTZ: If our investigation and prosecutions dissuade corporations from giving gifts to their regulators, and the regulators from accepting gifts from those who are regulated, I believe that the costs we have incurred are worth the price.

JIM LEHRER: Now the perspectives of three former independent counsels. Lawrence Walsh investigated the Iran-Contra matter; James Brosnahan was one of his deputies; James McKay investigated alleged ethics violations against former Reagan administration officials Edwin Meese and Lynn Nofsiger.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Brosnahan, just picking up on the point that Mr. Smaltz just made that regardless of what the end result was - an acquittal in his case - it was worth the money and worth the time because of the message it sent - would you buy that as a premise for an independent counsel investigation?

JAMES BROSNAHAN, Former Deputy Independent Counsel: Well, I don't think it's a very good premise. I'm sure that there were convictions and that some good will come out of it, but the issue really boils down to four main points: who's doing the prosecuting, how long do they do it, what are the crimes, and who's being prosecuted. And I think that it takes too long, there are too many people being prosecuted, and my - the heart of my concern is that the people doing the prosecuting aren't always people that are right at the heart of prosecutorial judgment. Mr. Starr is probably the most visible example of that at the moment. He has never rendered a judgment at the trial court level on a criminal level before he sent his report. So I reluctantly concluded - even though my time with Judge Walsh was most enjoyable, and we fought together, and I have great respect for Judge Walsh, but even though that is true, I finally concluded some months ago that this statute should be abolished.

JIM LEHRER: Why?

JAMES BROSNAHAN: Because for 170 years the country survived quite well without it, because the special prosecutors are not accountable to anybody, because the investigations take too long, cost too much, and there is no proof that the courage or independence or lack of political partisanship on the part of an independent prosecutor is greater than the professionals, some of whom I know who are in the Department of Justice in Washington, and almost all of whom have tremendous integrity.

JIM LEHRER: Judge Walsh, what do you think? Do you think it should be scrapped? Do you agree with your former colleague?

LAWRENCE WALSH, Former Independent Counsel: I understand his view very clearly, but I think it should be saved with radical changes. I think it applies mandatorily to too many officials. It should be limited to the President, Vice President, and attorney general.

JIM LEHRER: Excuse me. Not members of the cabinet -

LAWRENCE WALSH: No.

JIM LEHRER: -- beyond the attorney general?

LAWRENCE WALSH: That's right. I think the - the intimacy among cabinet members and sub cabinet members has diluted by the size of our government. And I think the attorney general should make the decision whether or not she thinks she has a conflict of interest. I also think that the statute should be limited to misconduct involving the power of office. In Iran-Contra that Jim and I were on we were dealing with the misuse of power by the President and by some of his very high subordinates. It should not include misconduct of a personal nature. It should not include misconduct before a person went into office, before election, or before appointment. These matters should be dealt with by the suspension of the statute of limitations and then handled by a regular prosecutor after the term of office is over. This is not to protect the individual involved but to protect the United States from the abuse of it's presidency and from - which I think we're - we've been witnessing.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Mr. McKay, where do you come down, scrap it or change it?

JAMES McKAY, Former Independent Counsel: Well, I come down certainly not to scrap it. I don't think because you've had perhaps a bad experience with this statute you should throw the baby out with the bath water. I think that, practically speaking, the statute is here to stay. I think the reasons for wanting to have the statute in the first place still exist. I believe it's a matter of appearance. I don't think it's a practical matter. A member of the Department of Justice can, for example, investigate the attorney general, such as I had to do. And it's worthy of -

JIM LEHRER: You were an independent counsel and Ed Meese - Edwin Meese was the attorney general when you investigated him.

JAMES McKAY: That's correct. Prior to that, we had Mr. Nofsiger. But the fact is that Mr. Meese, himself, asked that an independent counsel be appointed. And we determined that we would not recommend the prosecution of Mr. Meese. And I'm confident that had that decision been made by a high official in the Department of Justice, the public would not have accepted it. The fact of the matter is the public did accept it. I think the statute has a place. I agree with Judge Walsh that we need to limit the coverage, we need to do other things - a number of things to improve the statute. It ought not to be so easy to trigger an investigation, for example. And I think that it ought not to be so easy for an independent counsel to expand his or her jurisdiction. I think the time comes when you've got to stick to your guns, and independent counsel should learn to say no, in my opinion.

JIM LEHRER: But your point boils down to that it's an appearance problem, rather than a reality problem, in terms of investigating high government officials.

JAMES McKAY: Well, it's more than appearance. I think if the Justice Department had investigated Mr. Meese, the whole department would have been in turmoil, whereas, with us we had a very good working relation to the Justice Department; things went very smoothly. I just don't think things would have gone so smoothly had this investigation been conducted by the Department of Justice.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Brosnahan, how about that, that the independent counsel has a purpose?

JAMES BROSNAHAN: He certainly has a purpose, and Mr. McKay served with great distinction in that office, and he discharged the hardest part of prosecuting, which is prosecutorial judgment. So in that particular case and in Judge Walsh's case, it was fine. But there's no responsibility on the part of the independent prosecutor. They're not responsible to anyone; they're not elected officials, number one; and they're not appointed by elected officials. And I think we've seen, especially over the last year and a half, that the attorney general is not responsible for this. If Janet Reno was responsible, there could be a much more meaningful bringing to bear of the public attitudes about this whole thing than what we have seen in the case of Mr. Starr. So that's the - the biggest problem is the lack of responsibility.

JIM LEHRER: What would you replace it with? In other words, forget the President and the Kenneth Starr issue for one, but let's say you had a member of the cabinet, the Espy case, like - that just came to a conclusion yesterday. How would you handle that then without an independent counsel?

JAMES BROSNAHAN: Well, I think the Espy case is a very good example. Sherman Adams - you go back to the Eisenhower days and to the Truman days where there were some problems. The attorney general would have to conduct an investigation to determine whether there were really, really real crimes against Espy. And I would have a lot of confidence in the judgment of the attorney general and the public responsibility for that determination would be clearly with the attorney general, who is responsive to the president. If it became - and the press always needs to be mentioned affirmatively in this analysis, because the press is not known to underestimate the presence of crime, and they are the great watchdog. And so the administration would be responsible for either covering something up, or proceeding with a real case, but it would be done by full-time, professional prosecutors exercising their judgment.

JIM LEHRER: Judge Walsh, what about that question? That is the number one criticism that's made of independent counsels. It was made of you when you were operating in Iran-Contra. It was, of course, made of Kenneth Starr now. Is that - you're answerable to nobody - and nobody is responsible, you're an independent form of government, in fact - that's the big criticism.

LAWRENCE WALSH: I agree with what Jim has just said about the Espy matter. But now coming to your question, I think that the fact that the independent - you can't have an independent counsel and have him responsible to somebody. You have to choose what you want. If you want independence, you'll get it. And that means you're going to have a person in office with whom the public may at times disagree. But I think that the precaution that should be taken is, for heaven sake, to put in that office someone who has had prosecutorial experience, someone who has had to review cases and has even had to stand up before a jury and sustain an acquittal. Then he knows what it's like. But to put someone in that office who's never even tried a case is where the problem comes.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. McKay, what about in your case - in the Meese case - you recommended against prosecution. What is the attitude that goes with being an independent counsel? That's another part of the criticism, is that when you're an independent counsel, you feel like you've got to come up with something.

JAMES McKAY: That is such a bunch of baloney. The first 18 independent counsels that were appointed - and I don't know what's happened since - 11 of them did not recommend prosecution. And I, for one, never, never felt that I had to come up with these - a prosecution. And I don't think that anyone - as Judge Walsh has suggested - who's had prosecutorial experience and who is - I was in the US attorney and I had handled the number of cases for defendants - anyone who's had experience in this line is not going to take that point of view. We were under - we were required to follow the guidelines of the Department of Justice, and I had many meetings with the people in the criminal division of the Justice Department, and I don't believe anyone who takes this job seriously takes that attitude. And I don't think you can really point to any independent counsel. They say that, but it's never been proven, and I just don't think it's true at all.

JIM LEHRER: Did you feel truly independent as you went about your business?

JAMES McKAY: I didn't feel truly independent. I had the public - I had Judge McKenna to report to.

JIM LEHRER: Who was Judge McKenna?

JAMES McKAY: He was the head of the independent counsel panel.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

JAMES McKAY: I felt very much responsible to the public. I felt that was in a fishbowl being watched by Congress. We had to report to Congress. We had to give audits, and I - I did not feel independent in the sense that I was just rushing off and doing anything that I wanted to do willy nilly - not at all.

JIM LEHRER: Judge - yes. Yes, sir.

LAWRENCE WALSH: A big difference between independent and irresponsible; that's the point Jim is making.

JIM LEHRER: Well, starting with you, Mr. Brosnahan, Mr. McKay said a moment ago that he thought that despite all of the problems, all of the controversy that has arisen about independent counsels, the Espy case being the latest event to happen that raises the issue, that the independent counsel is going to remain; it may be changed, but it's going to stay. How do you read that?

JAMES BROSNAHAN: I read it that when this Congress, as presently constituted, takes it up in June of '99, they will not renew it. That has happened before. It doesn't mean it's the end of it, but it means that I forecast for the benefit of you that it's - that it's not going to be renewed in 1999. I don't think that's going to happen. But secondly, we should focus and I'd like to raise the fact that it's between abolition and cutting way back. But one of the things that has to be cut back is the removal of the judges from the appointment process. There's been great controversy about that, and it does not benefit the federal judiciary to be part of this political problem. And that is one thing that would have to be amended, if it's to be continued.

JIM LEHRER: Who should do it then?

JAMES BROSNAHAN: Well, it would - you could have a permanent office. There are defects with that plan, but you could have a permanent office; you could have the attorney general make the appointment.

JIM LEHRER: You mean - excuse me - a permanent office of independent counsel who -

JAMES BROSNAHAN: You could do that.

JIM LEHRER: Let's say a case would come to them, and they might -

JAMES BROSNAHAN: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: -- pick Jim McKay to do it, or they might pick Lawrence Walsh, or they might pick you, right?

JAMES BROSNAHAN: Yes. But you could do that - I'm not proposing that but in the literature there's a lot of talk about that. I don't think that would work very well. I think the attorney general could make an appointment of an independent prosecutor but my point is - I suppose a negative point - that the federal judges are the last people in this world that should be drawn into a political situation. And the appointment of Mr. Starr is an example of that problem.

JIM LEHRER: Judge Walsh, what do you think about getting the judges out of this?

LAWRENCE WALSH: I mentioned a suggestion of Lloyd Cutler, a former counsel to President Carter. He suggests that at the beginning of a presidential administration 25 persons be appointed and confirmed by the Senate as potential independent counsel to be selected then by the person with the power of selection, so that at least you're going to have a panel of qualified people from whom to select. Now, once that's done there's less danger, I think, in leaving the appointing power where it is with judges. The problem with leaving ordinarily it would be the attorney general who would make the appointment, but I'm impressed with Jim McKay's point, that for credible - credibly exculpating a person, an appointee of an attorney general may have less credibility than a person appointed by a judicial panel.

JIM LEHRER: Judge Walsh, where do you come down on the question of whether or not the controversy surrounding particularly Kenneth Starr is going to result in the abolition of the independent counsel?

LAWRENCE WALSH: It certainly has endangered it, but I hope that the statute can survive with radical changes that we've indicated.

JIM LEHRER: All right, gentlemen, thank you all three very much.% ? FOCUS - HARVEST BLUES

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, importing farm workers, a Bosnia war crimes update, and the Kronos Quartet.

JIM LEHRER: Spencer Michels has the farm story.

SPENCER MICHELS: It is sunrise near Visalia in California's vast agricultural Central Valley. Aden Hester is checking whether enough farm workers have shown up to pick the olives on the 300-acre DeJong Farm. Hester is president of the state's Olive Growers Council.

ADEN HESTER, California Olive Growers Council: You're seeing black olives on some of these trees, and that's an indication that he hasn't been able to get the people to get in there to get them off on a timely basis because, you know, actually black olives are picked green and then turned, turned black in process.

SPENCER MICHELS: All harvest season farmers all around the country - many in areas with low unemployment - have been complaining that they haven't been able to hire enough workers to harvest their crops.

ADEN HESTER: As the labor pool begins to shrink, a lot of the farm workers go into other professions that are easier, not as dirty, and then they got more benefits. The pool continues to shrink, and who do you replace it with?

SPENCER MICHELS: The growers thought large numbers of those replacements could come from foreign countries like Mexico. Currently, there is a guest worker program on the books known as H2A, which allows farmers to recruit foreign workers when a shortage of domestic workers exists. But few farmers use it. They claim it's cumbersome and overly bureaucratic and makes too many demands on the employer. They want a new program that would ease the flow of temporary workers into the US. Opponents say such a law would be reminiscent of the policy that preceded the current H2A program, the discredited Bracero program, which means "strong arm" in Spanish. The old Bracero program brought 4.6 million Mexican workers into American fields from 1942 until 1964. The program ended amid well-publicized charges that the workers had been exploited by growers. The treatment of farm workers was a major reason for the rise of the United Farm Workers Union, co-founded by the late Caesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, who today is the union's secretary-treasurer.

DOLORES HUERTA, United Farm Workers Union: The Bracero program was a terrible program. It was bad for the families of the people that lived in Mexico, and when they were here, they were earning very little wages. There were - I saw paychecks for $15 for a two-week period of time. There was a tremendous amount of abuse.

SPENCER MICHELS: Huerta thinks a new Bracero program, as she calls it, would be just as bad.

DOLORES HUERTA: One would think that as we go into the 21st century that somehow the attention would be placed on how do we make life better for the farm workers, you know, how do we make it better for them, instead of making it worse for them, and this, of course, would make it worse for them.

SPENCER MICHELS: When the farmers took their proposal to Congress this year, they promised it would be good for the workers. Its key provisions would be preferential hiring for American citizens, vouchers for housing, and transportation assistance. The farmers also claimed that the program would reduce illegal immigration and make them less dependent on illegal aliens, who now make up about half their workers. But growers, like Rick Shellenberg, who raises Thompson grapes near Fresno, believes a new law would clarify the murky immigration status of his work force by making any future workers he hires temporary but legal. This fall, however, Shellenberg's main concern was getting his crop off the vine.

RICK SHELLENBERG, Farmer: When I grew this crop this year, my intention was to make raisins. I get paid more money for raisins than I do wine grapes or juice grapes.

SPENCER MICHELS: But he couldn't get workers. Without enough workers, he couldn't pick at the optimum time for raisins, so he had to sell his grapes a little later for jug wine.

RICK SHELLENBERG: The price that I got for the grapes versus what I could have gotten for raisins is about $30,000 difference, so it's a lot of money. And -

SPENCER MICHELS: You blame that on the labor situation?

RICK SHELLENBERG: I blame that absolutely on the labor situation.

SPENCER MICHELS: The labor unions don't accept that there is a shortage. Leaders say it's just an excuse farmers have invented to get cheaper workers.

DOLORES HUERTA: We have double-digit unemployment in every single rural country in California. There's a lot of people that are without work, but obviously they're not going to work where they're going to be abused, where they're not going to have sanitary facilities in the field, and when they're not even making the minimum wage.

SPENCER MICHELS: Grape grower Shellenberg says that he was paying good wages but still he could find only a few workers. He said the state Employment Development Department, EDD, couldn't help. Opponents of the program say that growers should first look to the ranks of the unemployed for workers, but EDD division chief Diego Haro says that while Fresno County has an unemployment rate above 10 percent, only a tenth of those have agricultural experience. He says using others for farm work is unrealistic.

DIEGO HARO, Employment Development Department: Because, I mean, they have to guarantee minimum wage, so someone who cannot pick enough crop at the wage in order to justify their own wages, that farmer is going to lose money on them, so they have to be skilled enough to - and fast enough and work hard enough to be able to earn at least that much.

SPENCER MICHELS: The workers, themselves, at least those in the EDD office, say they often can't find enough work. We talked to several through a translator.

INTERPRETER: He says that he did find work, but the work that was supposed to last a month long only lasted a week or two. If they would make the wages more attractive, they wouldn't have to go anyplace else.

SPENCER MICHELS: By law, farm workers are supposed to earn at least minimum wage, $5.75 an hour in California. Most of the workers we met said they were not making much over the minimum, depending on the crop. But growers in the olive industry, for example, say that to pay much more makes farming uncompetitive in the global marketplace. Olive Council President Aden Hester.

ADEN HESTER: California is competing head on with Spain and Morocco. They have started making black ripe olives in those countries, and they have focused on the food service industry in the United States. And they're selling them very cheap.

SPENCER MICHELS: So if you want to pay one of your workers $10 an hour, what happens?

ADEN HESTER: Pay them $10 an hour you'll be out of business tomorrow.

SPENCER MICHELS: Wages are higher in the premium wine industry. At the Hoot Owl Creek Vineyards in Sonoma County, where they produce fine cabernets and Merlots, management found that higher wages weren't the solution. Workers there average $125 a day, with some making up to $200 during the peak harvest season, which lasts a few weeks, but still, giving enough help has been a struggle. So, manager Pete Opatz bought a $100,000 mechanical picker from New Zealand. Now, with five men, he can pick 15 acres a day. In contrast, a crew of 30 farm workers harvesting by hand picked just five acres.

PETE OPATZ, Hoot Owl Creek Vineyards: We've reduced our dependency by about 2/3 on seasonal farm workers.

SPENCER MICHELS: So if you have mechanized and you don't need so many workers, why do you favor the Bracero program?

PETE OPATZ: Because in our business if we were to get six inches of rain tomorrow, we have machines that would not access these fields; they would - it would have to be done by hand.

SPENCER MICHELS: As part of the enticement to get and keep workers, Hoot Owl Creek provides housing for its laborers, some of whom live here year-round. Housing for migrant workers has long been a contentious issue. Union leaders point to camps like this one in the town of Huron that was actually built during the Bracero era and is still in use today. Paul Chavez of the Farm Workers Union toured it with the mayor of Huron, Ramon Domingez.

SPOKESMAN: This is the latrine, huh?

SPENCER MICHELS: Under a new guest worker program a tight housing market for farm laborers would become even tighter, according to Chavez.

PAUL CHAVEZ, National Farm Workers Service Center: The problem is, is there is inadequate housing. The bottom line, there isn't places for people to live. And so, yes, there's talk about a voucher program, and we were laughing and saying they're probably going to have to build tents out of those paper vouchers and live under them. There is no housing here.

SPENCER MICHELS: The guest worker program easily passed through the Senate and moved directly to a House-Senate Conference with the White House. But the President, pushed by labor, got the measure dropped. Growers are certain to revive the proposal in the new Congress and labor is just as certain to fight it once again.% ? UPDATE - WAR CRIMES

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner updates the Bosnia war crimes story.

MARGARET WARNER: Yesterday, US NATO troops arrested Bosnian Serb General Radislav Kristic in the American-patrolled sector of Bosnia. The arrest came on a secret indictment issued October 30th by the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague. The indictment charges Kristic with having committed genocide during the Bosnian-Serb siege of the town of Srebrenica in the summer and fall of 1995. We have an update on today's developments from Paul Davies of Independent Television News.

PAUL DAVIES: Cameras were kept well away as the military transport plane carrying the Bosnian-Serb general arrived in the Netherlands. General Kristic was driven under armed escort to the Hague, where he'll stand trial. Radislav Kristic is the most senior member of the Bosnian-Serb army arrested for alleged war crimes. He commanded Serb forces besieging the so-called Muslim safe haven of Srebrenica, and he's said in the tribunal's indictment to have been a key figure in planning and executing the slaughter of its Muslim inhabitants. The general answered only to the Bosnian-Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, who remains on the tribunal's wanted list. General Kristic faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. He's also accused of obstructing investigators trying to hide the masquerades where the bodies of Srebrenica's victims were buried.

MARGARET WARNER: For more now we're joined by Roy Gutman, international security reporter for Newsday. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his coverage of wartime atrocities in Bosnia; and Ivo Daalder, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, from 1995 to '96 he oversaw US-Bosnia policy as director for European affairs on the National Security Council.Roy, tell us a little bit more about Kristic. How significant a figure is he within the Bosnian military?

ROY GUTMAN, Newsday: Kristic is actually and still a serving officer in the Bosnian-Serb army. He's - the payroll, of course, is that of Yugoslavia. He's paid by Slobodan Milosevic's government. He is the - probably the most high-ranking of all of the indictees who have been arrested so far. He commanded a corps, the Drina River Corps, of the Bosnian-Serb army, which makes him, I suppose, one of the top half dozen military officials - officers in the Bosnian-Serb army.

MARGARET WARNER: And are his fingers all over Srebrenica?

ROY GUTMAN: In a very major way. He was promoted to major general just on the eve of the assault on Srebrenica, and so he took over the command. He was the field commander. I - in 1996 - came across some intercepts that the Bosnian government - army had made, which had - actually link Kristic directly to the killing, in fact.

MARGARET WARNER: By intercepts, what do you mean?

ROY GUTMAN: Well, the Bosnian army was monitoring by radio the short wave and walkie talkie communications. It wasn't very far away in Srebrenica while the assault was going on. In fact, I could read you one that I took down at the time. This was on the 14th of July, 1995. Major General Ogrenovic had reported in to General Kristic that his troops had captured a group of refugees, stopped a group of refugees three kilometers long, which is two miles in length, in the area of Glojanje, and reported this to Kristic. Kristic replied - these were his orders - you must kill everybody; we don't need anyone alive. And that was what happened.

MARGARET WARNER: Even in a war noted for some real atrocities, Srebrenica did stand out, didn't it?

IVO DAALDER, Brookings Institution: Srebrenica is the turning point in the war, both in terms of the large scale of atrocities in a space of about six, seven days, 7,000 men from young boys to old men were slaughtered in the most horrible fashion. And at that point the West finally said, enough is enough, so it was a major, major event. It came three years into the war, which has already seen many thousands die, but this short massacre, the worst kind of massacre we've seen in Europe since 1945, became the galvanizing force for the West to finally act.

MARGARET WARNER: How significant is his arrest? In other words, he is - as Roy was saying - the highest-ranking officer so far to be arrested, but there have been others. Is this - is the timing of this significant, or the fact that he's been arrested particularly significant?

IVO DAALDER: Well, it's significant in the fact that he was only indicted about a month ago, and within that spate of a month we found him - we presumably already knew where he was - and we picked him up. And picking up probably the number four or five person in the Bosnian-Serb army when the NATO troops who are now in Bosnia also would like to cooperate with that army in the sense that they're not at war with the Bosnian-Serb army and they would like to continue to cooperate, picking up a major figure is gutsy, and tells you how much it is - how much this man has done, how responsible he is personally for the genocide that happened in Srebrenica.

MARGARET WARNER: What do you want to add to that, in terms of the significance of the decision to arrest him and arresting him?

IVO DAALDER: You know, if - just give it a historical context - it's 50 years since the genocide convention was signed and drafted. This is the first time really in history that people are being arrested who are, you know, top-serving officers charged with genocide. So that's one significance. Secondly, there is a kind of - in the more immediate sense - a kind of a warning that's attached to this, which is that NATO troops are going to be more active, and I think the Americans are going to be more active. And there's been other signs of the same increased attention and really determination to get these indictees before the tribunal. In the last few days I've heard that the administration has decided - they've had congressional support - to offer a kind of bounty for some of the top missing or at large war criminals, up to $5 million for Radovan Karadzic, who was the civilian leader, or Ratko - the same amount probably for Ratko Mladic - who was the military commander. So you have - you know - a whole variety of different ways of going at the same issue. And it seems that there's a much more intense effort now to do this. It may be that they're even beginning to develop a policy - a strategy - that's going to lead to a change in the whole region. But these are - you know - beginning signs. I don't want to draw any conclusions.

MARGARET WARNER: The US troops did nab this guy - as I think we all remember - back at the negotiation of the Dayton peace accords. The US military was very wary of being put in a position of having to confront and arrest people like this. Is this a change?

IVO DAALDER: It's an evolution from where we were in the beginning. In the beginning - when NATO troops went in - the US military and all the other NATO troops said we don't know the situation we're going in - if we were to arrest immediately major war criminals or even minor war criminals. We don't know what the Bosnian-Serb reaction is. But we're now three years into this. We have been with troops on the ground almost for three years. December 20th is the anniversary. And we know the situation. We now can take greater risks. And starting in July 1997, NATO troops - first British, then Dutch - now Americans - have started to nab those guys that we can find. And as Roy said, with the possibility of putting bounties on the top of the - on the heads of the most major war criminals, there seems to be an effort here to move from an opportunistic - an opportunistic means to arrest war criminals to a strategy to get the real big guys.

MARGARET WARNER: So if you were Karadzic or Mladic, should you feel more nervous now?

IVO DAALDER: Yes, I would feel very nervous. It's clear again showing that NATO is willing to take action. If I were somebody who had committed atrocities but was notyet indicted, I would also feel very nervous, but because this was an indictment that was not publicized, Mr. Karadzic did not know that he was about to be named and anybody who has a bad conscience now must feel, well, wait a minute, can I travel this road, maybe I meet a NATO road block, which will get me to the Hague, because I don't know whether I'm indicted or not. And it is that kind of caution that starts to move the bad guys out of Bosnia and allows a new reconciliation to emerge.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you think, Roy, that this will make it - I notice that the Bosnian-Serbs were very outraged at this - and their president called it a terrorist act - and they were going to cooperate as much with the NATO troops. Do you think this could even in the short term undermine the peacekeeping operation?

ROY GUTMAN: I think that it's well enough established. I think they've got - they know who everybody is in the Bosnian-Serb leadership. They know everybody who's capable of making trouble, and they know how to deal with it. They've done it very effectively, General Jacques Klein, in particular, knows how to deal with -

MARGARET WARNER: He's running the -

ROY GUTMAN: He's sort of the deputy in charge of the entire Bosnia international operation there. And I think they can manage. For the longest time they had great support from Serbia, itself, from the old - what's left of Yugoslavia from Milosevic. The top officers are still being paid. But that has attenuated over time because simply Serbia is going downhill very quickly, and the Bosnian-Serb Republic has to sort of make it - if it's going to survive at all, it's got to find a way with the rest of Bosnia. So I think that sooner or later, even though there's now a very radical man who's the president of - Mr. Ploplasin - who's made some of these threats - there's no future in that, and I'm sure the Americans and the others will make that very clear if he doesn't understand it.

MARGARET WARNER: Now also we've heard a few new words this week from the State Department about Milosevic, himself. Jamie Rubin, the State Department spokesman, said earlier this week, well, he's not just part of the problem; he is the problem. That's new, isn't it?

IVO DAALDER: It's new for the State Department. It's not new for some of us who have been arguing that for quite a long time. But it is gratifying that the State Department at least is now moving to look at Milosevic not as part of the solution, as the man you go to, to negotiate the peace deal, but as the man who, in fact, underlies the problem that we have. In essence, I think the State Department has come to the conclusion that Mr. Milosevic is weak, and that from this weakness it is now possible that by rhetoric and other kinds of actions, one can push him in order to force a democratization of Serbia, if not his actual departure from power. I don't think you can have democratization of Serbia with him in power. And the next couple of months with the Kosovo deal in its implementation and the confrontation that is now emerging between Montenegro, one of the republics of the former Yugoslavia, that would like to have a more independent economically liberal and politically liberal course, and has opposed Mr. Milosevic for the last year or so, that kind of confrontation is starting to call the power base of Mr. Milosevic into question.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, thank you very much, Ivo Daalder and Roy Gutman.% ? FINALLY - STILL PLAYING

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight an unusual string quartet called Kronos celebrates 25 years of music making. Elizabeth Farnsworth reports.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In the years since the group began in 1973 Kronos has redefined what it means to be a string quartet. [music playing in background] They respect and sometimes play the more traditional string quartet repertoire - music by Haydn and Mozart, for example - but new music, often from Africa or Asia, is the group's passion. It's a passion audiences apparently share. Kronos is one of the classical world's biggest draws in CD and in live concert. At this sold-out concert November 1st in San Francisco, Kronos premiered an opera by Vietnamese-American composer P. Q. Phan, an opera without voices. Each instrument took on a particular role throughout the work. [music playing in background] The quartet also played "Waterwheel," a signature piece which they commissioned from Sudanese composer Hamza El Din. It's a tribute to his village, lost to flooding when the Aswan Dam was built. He accompanied them on drum and lute. [music playing in background] One reviewer wrote that Kronos has blown the whole concept of chamber music off the shelves and onto the charts. Their clothes and style set them apart from most other string quartets and help attract younger fans. They finished every one of the last ten years with a CD on Billboard's Top Ten Classical Chart. In 1994, the magazine "CD Review" named Kronos one of the top ten performers of the previous decade, along with the three tenors and Madonna. During intermission in San Francisco fans were enthusiastic.

FAN: They have a distinct style. They have a distinct quality. And they've also got - there's sort of a rock star thing about them too.

FAN: Well, I think these people have been great for years and years and years. They've been doing wonderful stuff. They've committed maybe 400 works, I find out, they commissioned. And I thought there was brilliant stuff in there.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Last month, in honor of their 25th anniversary, the group released a 10-CD retrospective featuring, among other early works, "Black Angels." [music playing in background] It's a searing, anti-Vietnam War quartet written in the early 1970s by composer George Crumb for amplified strings and percussion. The music inspired violinist David Harrington to found Kronos.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What was it about the George Crumb piece, "Black Angels," that show - that hit you so hard, made you want to start a string quartet?

DAVID HARRINGTON, Kronos: Well, in 1973, I heard this piece by accident late one night. And I would advise anybody that has a chance to hear "Black Angels" to hear it late at night by accident and turn it up really loud too, because it's scary, and it's wild, and it's beautiful. And it challenges your ideas about life and music and everything. And that's what happened to me. And this was at a time when the world didn't make any sense to me. And I couldn't find any music that felt right. All of a sudden there was this music, and I felt like I had a voice, and I had to play that piece. And in order to do that, there had to be a group that would practice every day and would really devote itself, because it's a very complex undertaking to realize that music. [music in background]

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You had long loved the music of string quartets, right?

DAVID HARRINGTON: Yes, since I was 12 years old, when I first heard the Budapest quartet on record. Some kids play in garage bands and some kids play in polka bands, and some kids play in string quartets. And that's what I did. And for me, the sound of the string quartet has become the sound that I think with, I think, and so for me, it's become a very personal form of expression.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: From the beginning, Harrington commissioned new works. He and the other members of the quartet, Joan Jeanrenaud on cello, Hank Dudd on viola, and John Sherba on second violin, work closely with each composer, as they did with P. Q. Phan on his opera.

SPOKESMAN: It would be a lot easier to hit the "B", just the "B."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Since 1973, the group has commissioned and premiered 400 string quartets from composers spanning six continents and four generations, more than twice the number by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms combined.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Describe the genesis of the P. Q. Phan piece.

DAVID HARRINGTON: It was about four years ago in Iowa City. We were playing there, and Phan came to one of our concerts, and we started talking afterwards, and it became really clear to me that I should hear this guy's music. And so he sent some tapes. And immediately it seemed to me that here was a composer with just an amazing amount of skill and ability, and later he and I met again, and we began to talk about personal things. And it became quite clear to me at that point that he was trying to avoid his past. He had basically tried to forget about his earlier life, and I think I remember saying to him that the only way we're really going to grow through experiences is to use them and confront them and somehow deal with them.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You edit - in a sense - you get music from a composer and then you and the other musicians kind of work with the composer and edit, is that how it works?

DAVID HARRINGTON: For us, musical notation is not an exact form of communication, we value the voice, the body language, the experiences of composers to help broaden our own ideas of life and music. And so for us what we do is assemble evidence, human evidence that is expressed in music, and try to examine some of the mysteries. [music in background]

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What about your sound, how is it different from the sound that you would have made playing in a string quartet, playing Haydn in a string quartet in 1971?

DAVID HARRINGTON: Well, you know, I think if Haydn would have come in contact with African music and tangos and Asian opera music, and I think that he would have had a very much different sound than he had in his quartets.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You have a certain sound. It's very difficult for some listeners, as you know. Partly the music is - some of the music is very modern in ways that they're not used to.

DAVID HARRINGTON: If our sound needs to be uneasy and brash and rough, then it will be as brash and rough as we can make it. If it needs to be soothing and comforting, it will be as soothing and comforting as we're capable of doing. [music in background] For me, music exists in notes, and a note - it's possible to put your entire life's experience and knowledge into notes with a great deal of focus and concentration. And it doesn't happen very often. In fact, for me, it's maybe happened three or four times in my whole career when I felt that "a" note was getting close to a certain real essence of expression. [music in background] It's those moments, those real high moments of focus that we look for, I think.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Kronos is celebrating its 25th anniversary through the end of the year with performances in Germany, France, and Poland.% ? RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, President Clinton's campaign fund-raising will not be included in articles of impeachment, according to House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde. The soon-to-be-Speaker of the House Bob Livingston said he hoped the impeachment matter would be resolved before the next session of Congress in January, and the launch of space shuttle "Endeavour" was scrubbed when an alarm went off. The launch was rescheduled for tomorrow. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening with Shields & Gigot, among others. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.