The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Monday, President Bush began a campaign for what he called his sensible ideas budget, the Oliver North trial was on hold for more talk about rules governing official secrets, five Central American Presidents opened a summit to discuss peace in their region. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: After the News Summary, we open a week's look at the Bush budget with an examination of his proposal to freeze defense spending. The guests are former Navy Secretary Jim Webb, former Pentagon Arms Control Official Frank Gaffney and Gordon Adams of the Defense Budget Project. Then comes a News Maker Interview with the new National Chairman of the Democratic Party, Ron Brown, a report from Dallas about a fight over animals, and a Penny Stallings Essay about the Beatles. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President Bush made his first budget sales stop today. It was in Manchester, New Hampshire, before a group of business leaders. He told them his $1.16 trillion budget proposal was a realistic one.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Mine is a business plan that will work, but not with business as usual. It will require a partnership with the Congress, and as I said on Thursday night, my team and I are prepared to work with the Congress to negotiate in good faith with the leadership, to work day and night, if that's what it takes, to meet budget targets and to produce a budget on time.

MR. LEHRER: And back in Washington, Mr. Bush's Budget Chief, Richard Darman, went to Capitol Hill to discuss the plan. He met with key Congressional budget negotiators. The main topic according to reports was setting the ground rules for future talks. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: The judge in the Oliver North trial sent the jury home today and scheduled a hearing tomorrow on how to protect national security secrets. The Bush administration wants the trial stopped unless Judge Gerhard Gesal accepts tighter controls on the disclosure of official secrets that North might use in his defense. The Justice Department and Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh worked out a compromise agreement which Gesal will hear argued in court tomorrow. But North's lawyer, Brendon Sullivan, said that the proposed agreement would make it impossible for him to defend his client. In court papers released today, Sullivan said at the heart of his defense were secret efforts made by the Reagan administration to send military aid to the Nicaraguan Contras.

MR. LEHRER: Presidents of the five Central American countries met today to resuscitate their peace plan. The summit was in El Salvador's capital City of San Salvador. El Salvador President Jose Napoleon Duarte opened it with words of optimism, saying they had gathered to search for ways to promote peace and progress in Central America. The meetings are to last two days, the Associated Press said Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is expected to receive much pressure from the other four Presidents to proceed with the Democratic reforms promised in their peace plan signed originally in 1987.

MR. MacNeil: In South Africa, a prominent anti-apartheid leader has joined the hunger strike. The Rev. Allen Boesak says he's joining the fast to help make the government understand the evil of its ways. About 300 anti-apartheid activists have been in on the hunger strike, some for as long as three weeks, to protest being held in jail without charge.

MR. LEHRER: Moslem's demonstrated in several Pakistan cities today against a book. The targets were installations of the United States which has allowed the publication of the Satanic verses by Solomon Rushti, an India born novelist who now lives in Great Britain. Moslems considered the novel blasphemous. Yesterday 3,000 demonstrators stormed the U.S. Information Center in Islamamabad. Five were killed in clashes with Pakistan police, another eighty were injured. In Washington today, State Department Spokesman Charles Redman said this about the violence.

CHARLES REDMAN, State Department: We express our deep regret for the loss of life which resulted from this incident. It had been our hope that the demonstration would be peaceful. The government and the people of the United States have full respect for the religious beliefs of the Pakistani people. Because of this respect, as we mentioned, we had agreed to receive a petition of protest from the demonstrators. This respect is based on the same constitutionally protected rights to freedom of worship and to freedom of speech which also guaranteed the expression or publication of a wide range of works, not all of which will be acceptable in every society. We have full confidence in and satisfaction with the actions taken by Pakistani authorities taken during this incident.

MR. MacNeil: The Soviet Union says its last soldiers left the Afghan capital of Kabul today two days before the UN mediated deadline for their withdrawal. Paul Davies of Independent Television News reports.

PAUL DAVIES: The Soviet Army's crack 103rd Airborne guards are the last to leave Afghanistan. Today a small unit of the paratroopers was marched onto the runway of Kabul Airport. The world's press had been invited onto the apron to see what we were told was the final phase of this Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. We were told 450 paratroopers left yesterday. This was the last unit to go, two full days before the deadline. It was the Airborne guards who spearheaded the invasion. They told us today they were happy to be going home. This final phase of the Russian withdrawal was an efficient, disciplined affair played out before the world's cameras. But the Russians leave behind a city surrounded by enemies, so short of basic supplies that today hundreds of hungry women practically stormed a clinic where they'd heard food was being distributed. The United Nations Children's Fund was handing out supplies flown into the city as part of the UN mercy mission. Pregnant women, mothers with large families, or sick children to support had been targeted for this handout. But even armed guards were unable to control the rush as the desperate women tried to force their way in. Eventually, some form of order was restored, the women allowed into the clinic one at a time to be given a sack flour, tinned food and a blanket.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Bush proposals on defense, Democratic Chairman Ron Brown, animal wars in Texas, and the Beatles. SERIES - BUSH BUDGET - 1989

MR. LEHRER: First tonight Part 1 of a week long look of how President Bush wants to spend the $1.16 trillion of next year's federal budget. He offered his plan last Thursday night in his speech to a joint session of Congress. We start with his ideas for the defense budget and with the views of two former Pentagon officials and a defense budget analyst. Judy Woodruff sets up the discussion with this background report.

MS. WOODRUFF: In his address to the Congress last week, the new President offered his own plan for defense spending.

PRESIDENT BUSH: I support a one year freeze in the military budget, something I proposed last fall in my flexible freeze plan, and this freeze will apply for only one year, and after that, increases above inflation will be required. I will not sacrifice American preparedness and I will not compromise American strength.

MS. WOODRUFF: The President is requesting just short of $300 billion for defense. His freeze is actually a freeze plus the rate of inflation. In dollars, it's 9 billion more than approved for the previous fiscal year, and it's a cut below what President Reagan had proposed, some 6.3 billion less. Whatever it's called, it does mean that Pentagon officials will be stretching money further than they had expected, not only this year, but for several years into the future. The reason, much of the hardware, weapon systems, and troop units Pentagon planners had been counting on were based on projections from several years ago and the Reagan military build-up was in full swing. Mr. Bush said next year and beyond, he will be asking Congress for increases in the Pentagon budget above inflation. Even if he gets some of that extra money from the Democratic Congress, it still will fall short of the projections made during the Reagan years, somewhere between 45 and 60 billion dollars. That could force choices among several major big ticket items, maintaining a near 600 ship Navy, keeping 300,000 soldiers in Europe, going ahead with either the MX or Midgetman missile, going ahead with strategic defense, and keeping both the B-1 and Stealth bombers. How to deal with that potential shortfall was an issue in last year's Presidential election, debated here on this program by spokesmen for the Bush and Dukakis campaigns.

SEN. CARL LEVIN, [D] Michigan: What George Bush won't do is tell you what tough choiceshe'll make. He was asked specifically as a matter of fact in the last debate what three systems would you cut in order to make it possible to live within a sensible defense budget, and Bush named three systems which had already been cut.

FORMER

SEN. JOHN TOWER, [R] Texas: I think what's misleading is to suggest that you save money in defense by cutting systems alone. Anybody who knows anything about defense knows that systems are a minority percentage of the budget. Operation, maintenance and personnel are the largest percentage of the budget. In addition, you have research and development. It's a matter of prioritizing systems on the basis of very careful analysis rather than just picking up a checklist of systems and say we'll cut them out.

MS. WOODRUFF: Now Bush's defense surrogate is his choice to become Secretary of Defense, the man in charge of figuring out Pentagon priorities.

SEN. JOHN TOWER, Defense Secretary-Designate: I am not such a mindless hawk that I would come to you and ask for a substantial increase in defense expenditure when I know that it's not going to happen.

MS. WOODRUFF: But John Tower's confirmation now is in jeopardy and it could be weeks before a new management is in place at the Pentagon and ready to face crucial budget decisions.

MR. LEHRER: And now to the discussion and to an outside analyst critic of Pentagon budgeting practices and two former Pentagon officials who used to deal with those practices from the inside. The outsider is Gordon Adams, Director of the Washington-based defense budget project. The former officials are James Webb, who served in the Pentagon as an Assistant Defense Secretary for Reserve Affairs, and then Navy Secretary from '87 to '88, and Frank Gaffney who was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for most of the Reagan administration. He's now Director of the Center For Security Policy in Washington.

MR. LEHRER: First, Mr. Adams, in general terms, what do you think of the freeze except for inflation idea?

GORDON ADAMS, Defense Budget Project: Well, I suspect my sense of it is the administration saw the opportunity for hard choices and ducked. What we've basically got is a top line number with some out year promises of growth, 1 percent, 1 percent, 2 percent, 2 percent, through 1994. The problem is they're not going to get that. Now from the Joint Chief's point of view those look like reasonable numbers because you can plan most of your program into it. From the Congressional side, however, defense fits in the deficit equation. Under the Bush budget it would contribute less than 1/2 billion to deficit reduction, while domestic programs are contributing $21 billion to deficit reduction. In other words, the Bush proposal is just not going to fly on the Hill. The question is, where are the hard choices going to be when it stops flying?

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Webb.

JAMES WEBB, Former Navy Secretary: In general, I would agree with that, that this is a transitional measure perhaps to get us into the new administration with a new team in the Pentagon and hopefully, what I would like to see is an immediate look at all programs across the board once Secretary to be Tower assembles his team. That's what's going to have to happen before you can get into a realistic look at the budget.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Gaffney, what do you think of the freeze idea?

FRANK GAFFNEY, Former Pentagon Official: Well, I'm struck by the fact that the administration has at the same time it's taken this measure to reduce the defense program also undertaken a comprehensive strategic reassessment which is presumably intended to figure out whether among other things we can safely make cuts in our budget.

MR. LEHRER: The thing you're talking about, Mr. Webb, too, to look at the overall strategy?

MR. WEBB: It's going to have to happen, yeah.

MR. GAFFNEY: If that's a meaningful exercise though, you have to I think ensure that all of the options are available. You know, George Bush was the man who when he was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency invited a team in from outside the bureaucracy, a Team B, to assess the Soviet threat. They came up with very different judgments than did the insiders, the bureaucrats and others. That kind of effort seems to me to be in order today in this strategic reassessment, but I'm really chagrined and somewhat uneasy about the fact that before it's even gotten underway a decision has been made that we can do with less defense spending.

MR. LEHRER: And that was, in your opinion, just a real world political decision that the President made?

MR. GAFFNEY: I think so. I'm afraid that it may also have reflected some preconclusions, if you will, about the Soviet threat, about the nature of our strategic requirements, that make a mockery of this whole strategic reassessment.

MR. LEHRER: Before we go any further, let's clarify some terms. You use the term cuts. Let's make sure we understand. They're freezing it, but inflation goes in first, so actually in terms of what they got last year, the Pentagon will get about $1.8 billion more. So do we all agree on that? What are we talking about?

MR. ADAMS: Yeah, that's certainly true. From the Congressional perspective, which is where this ball is going to bounce now, it looks kind of like a mixed message about freezes, domestic programs basically put it at zero, last year's level, and then some of them jiggered around, defense given inflation, and Congress is going to look at that judgment and judge very harshly I think and come in with some other programs and some other choices in defense. The problem with the budget, as it's been laid down by the Bush administration, is that they haven't given the Congress right now any precise guidelines at all about program and as long as John Tower is not confirmed and there is not some clear sense of direction and a team in the Defense Department, it's going to be very hard to know whether this is going to be a strategic budget cut, whether it's going to be a force structure cut, whether it's going to be a readiness and sustainability cut. Where those choices are going to have to be made is not clear and they're going to have to be made.

MR. LEHRER: I'm going to give all three of you a chance to tell us what you would do if you were God in this particular case but I want to first of all understand some things from your perspective. Secretary Webb, do you see this as a cut budget, in other words, that the National Defense is going to suffer in some way, in any kind of major way at least, as a result of freezing plus inflation?

MR. WEBB: I tell you, I am a little leery, to be honest with you, of the idea of a strategic reassessment, that there will really be the kind of comprehensive, and that's why I started off with what I said. I see this budget as simply a device to get through the requirement to present a budget in a department that has no leader right now and everything is sort of up for grabs. But the thing that concerns me, having been on the inside looking out for four years, is that we have never been able to make an honest strategic assessment of where we are around the world and why we are there. When you present a budget like this with the guarantee that we're still going to keep all our forces in Europe and that our worldwide posture is really not going to change, then you fall back onto basically the backwards way that we have done our budgeting for the last 25 years, and that is we go after one program at a time rather than developing a budget rather than developing a budget that can look long-term under the umbrella of where we need to be around the world.

MR. LEHRER: Take the money amount and work backward rather than taking the needs and looking forward?

MR. WEBB: If I were to be doing it, I would take the money as a top line guarantee and then see what you could do in terms of efficiencies with repositioning where we are around the world, and the problem with that is it's very difficult to do one year at a time which is the way we debate these budgets. For instance, if we were to alter our structure around the world, you may not see the benefit of that in the first year, but you would see dramatic benefits in terms of balance of payments, and defense costs inside DOD and military efficiency, if you're able to do it.

MR. LEHRER: Give me one example --

MR. ADAMS: I think that's fundamentally right, Jim, because the problem is you've got to be able to track out a policy probably over a 10 year period.

MR. LEHRER: A 10 year period?

MR. ADAMS: A 10 year period, and lay out a budget --

MR. LEHRER: That's two Presidential administrations, not necessarily under the same President.

MR. ADAMS: That's right. It's even harder for the Congress because the House works on a two year cycle and that means they're really only taking it a year at a time and the problem is doing the kind of planning that let's you make those choices carefully over a longer period of time.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Let's go back to the real world then.

MR. GAFFNEY: Could I just address whether this is a cut? I don't know how you can describe it as other than a cut, because the Defense Department, if it is has to have any ability to operate efficiently, has to be programming against certain expected milestones. You have to develop your program, whether it's for an aircraft carrier or whether it's for the troops in the field, or anything else, against certain expected plans and programs over the life of the systems. And what the Defense Department has been doing, rightly or wrongly, has been trying as best it can, to build a sensible program out of the wild vacillations that have been given to them from the Reagan budgets, on the one hand, and what gets left of them after Congress finishes and the Bush program now and what will get left after Congress -- but the program that they have been working on most recently is a 2 percent real growth profile that they inherited from Frank Carlucci and that now has been cut by George Bush.

MR. LEHRER: Okay, but it wasn't cut from last year, it was cut from what they expected to get this year.

MR. GAFFNEY: That's right, Jim.

MR. ADAMS: The reduction was something on the order over the five years, but just under $60 billion from the Carlucci projection over the five years. It remains growth over the five year period, however.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Let's go to some specifics. Secretary Webb, give me an example of something based on your experience that you could, that you believe could be cut, if that's the word, or trimmed or adjusted or changed in some way to lower cost to the Defense Department.

MR. WEBB: The place to start again, on the one hand, Frank is talking about the wild fluctuations which are always a problem and make you deal with these things year by year. Maxwell Taylor said 25 years ago that budget drives strategy unfortunately in this process that we have. If we were too -- on the other side of that, and I think it needs to fairly be said, is that in terms of developing a strategy for the 1990s, there is paralysis inside the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and in the Congress, because of pet programs, the ecumenical environment in which the Joint Chiefs have to work, somebody's rice bowl is going to get broken if you really make these hard decisions. We have, in terms of national strategy, we call it, in military portion of national strategy, we call it deterrence, it's a vague term, and it basically derives from events that occurred 40 years ago. It's very difficult to shape our positioning around the world toward the responsibilities that we now have and to take into account the improvements economically and in terms of national will that most of our allies have been able to go over that period. These large static defensive positions that are dedicated to local defense of certain countries eat our budgets alive.

MR. LEHRER: Like Western Europe?

MR. WEBB: NATO Europe is a classic example. In 1963, Gen. Eisenhower, President Eisenhower, who formerly had been supreme allied commander of Europe, recommended that me make a sizable reduction of our troops in Europe. He worried that it would affect our balance of payments and also that it would affect the will power of our allies to defend themselves. And we're seeing the fruition of that right now. Just think, a year ago when we had to cut $30 billion out of the defense budget and which I fell on my sword, if the President had announced that we were going to withdraw --

MR. LEHRER: Better explain that but go ahead.

MR. WEBB: If the President had announced that we were going to withdraw a division, an army division, and some tactical air assets out of Europe, we would have been able to affect the balance of payments, we would not have markedly affected our ability to defend ourselves in Europe, we would have been able to preempt Sec. Gorbachev's peace offensive, and we would have brought some relief to the Germans. They have a country the size of Oregon with 400,000 foreign troops still on their soil with their families. I had made that recommendation four years ago when I was Assistant Secretary of Defense.

MR. LEHRER: Of course, it didn't happen, Mr. Adams.

MR. ADAMS: No.

MR. LEHRER: Is it going to happen now?

MR. ADAMS: I'm not sure that it's going to happen now, Jim. If you ask me where are the areas where you could really begin to look carefully about the relationship between budgets and planning, I would suggest two. One is I don't think at this point given the Reagan build-up and its weapons concentration and concentration in hardware, I don't think the services have taken a very close look at the number of new programs they plan to start, and part of our problem now in budgetary terms is whatever the funding profile in the out years, it's not going to accommodate the projected buy of new bombers, new missiles, new aircraft, new tanks, and the like. So one thing is to take a careful look at new starts and see how many of those you could defer or hold off.

MR. LEHRER: Like what?

MR. ADAMS: Well, for example, the B-2 bomber, classic example of something. We're probably starting too early. We're starting to exercise it and starting to test it. At the same time, we've basically got one aircraft and we don't knowwhether the thing is going to work and we're going to start the production program this budget year. That to my mind is not a sensible budget decision. In the long run though, if you want to make force structure choices, if you want to know if you need the B-2 bomber, or if you need MX real garrison or if you need the Midgetman, or if you need the new advanced Cruise Missile, or the new submarines for the Navy, or if you need the new V-22 for the Marine Corps, whatever the program --

MR. LEHRER: What's a V-22?

MR. ADAMS: It's a passenger and cargo, light passenger/cargo plane for the Marine Corps that will start production next year as well. You can only really make those decisions now in the frame work of the kind of strategic and policy review that we're talking about. Depending on where you think you're going to concentrate your forces and what you think your principal mission is for those forces, you can then roll back and decide about those new starts in a sensible frame work of some policy. Right now, what we're doing is what the new starts and the bow wave, if you will, the coming --

MR. LEHRER: Bow wave, what's a bow wave?

MR. ADAMS: Bow wave is a kind of concept that tells you there's an awful lot of things hitting the front end of the boat simultaneously as the defense budget boat goes through the ocean. We're all starting a lot of new hardware programs right on top of each other with major fiscal commitments off into the next five to ten year period. If the budges are flat, we're going to have to do something either with respect to force structure, cut it back, or with respect to readiness, cut it back, or cut some of the hard choices out of the bow wave.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Mr. Gaffney, you're not in favor of cutting much of anything, are you?

MR. GAFFNEY: Well, you promised to ask me if I were God what I would do.

MR. LEHRER: Okay.

MR. GAFFNEY: The first thing is that I would fix this idea that we have to cut the defense budget to meet some notional and abstract budgetary target. I think the reason we have defense, and Jim's right to say in some sense it's an abstract proposition, but it is to provide defense for our country and our allies, and I think frankly that this is a very dangerous and unstable time, particularly with the internal workings of our adversary being - -

MR. LEHRER: You're talking about the Soviet Union?

MR. GAFFNEY: Yeah. The principal adversary being the Soviet Union -- being as difficult to read -- God knows how many hours you've spent on this show trying to read the tea leaves there. I don't think anybody knows what's likely to come out of Gorbachev's efforts and the very real turbulence that he is either setting in train or in any event experienced, but I think not the least of the probabilities is that we face a more aggressive adversary, possibly one we have helped with tremendous economic aid and technology in the interval, to become a more formidable and dangerous foe down the road. Under those circumstances -- and I'm not saying that we can tell that I'm wrong yet -- I'm just saying that we can't tell that others are right, and at this time, I think a strategic reassessment that looks hard at decisions that were made by the Reagan administration in its closing days to let technology flow to the Soviets, to assist our allies in trade and financial credits and others, to the Soviet Bloc, needs to be reappraised, and I think if it is reappraised, and if we can stay, our allies' head long rush to do more, that could, in fact, impose new burdens on us, defense burdens, not reduce the burdens or share the burdens, that would be a very sensible place to start in thinking about what our defense budget should be and can safely be down the road.

MR. LEHRER: In other words, if you, if we were to do, if somebody were to do what Webb and Adams are suggesting, you think that would be a mistake to do that now, you think that right now, our defense should not only remain what it is, it should be increased, because the threats are there, is that right?

MR. GAFFNEY: I think the modernization programs that Gordon has talked about are not the result of some sort of impulse on the part of the defense establishment or some sort of inertia, bureaucratic or otherwise, they're the result of, as Jim Webb knows, having served over two of those services with distinction in my view, they are the function of a long research and development cycle, which is expensive, aimed at inserting into the military new equipment that is appropriate to deter the threat down the road. If you insist upon deciding that the budget must drive programs, the budget must drive defense capability, I think you run the risk of not having what you need when you find you need it.

MR. ADAMS: But, Jim, I think what we're talking about here is realism, that's the problem. It's budgetary realism. And the fact is that as Gen. Eisenhower said several years ago, resources are part of the constraints on defense planning, and part of the problem --

MR. WEBB: The worst mistake you can make --

MR. ADAMS: -- you do have to make choices.

MR. WEBB: The worst mistake you can make is to take off the development of your technology, take away your cutting edge in order to preserve an obsolescent force structure around the world. That's what I worry about. The program money is up front and it's today. The other is a very hard decision to make. There's nothing that Frank said that I disagree with, but I think we need to add one other ingredient, even into the diplomatic side of that, and that is there are on some occasions diplomatic benefits from removing military forces, and Germany is a classic example of that. We could have preempted a lot of the negative public opinion that we now are receiving from the German people. At the same time, the Japanese, we always ignore them, they need to understand that here is a diplomatic cost in terms of using military forces and they should be with us a lot more in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

MR. LEHRER: And before we go, we need to, as I've said, we will clear up for the audience that doesn't know the story about your falling on your sword, that was when you were Secretary of the Navy, you resigned because you didn't agree with the policy that kept the ships in the Persian Gulf, or --

MR. WEBB: I resigned basically on this issue. It was supposedly on the reduction of 16 ships out of the Navy's force structure, but the question that I continued to ask through the process was is there a strategy, and if there is a strategy, then there are priorities that you have to look at in terms of making reductions in program and in forces, you don't just say okay, Navy, you get 1/3, Air Force you get 1/3, and Army, you get 1/3 --

MR. LEHRER: But that grew out, grew out of having the fleet in the Persian Gulf?

MR. WEBB: Actually it began -- it began more than four years ago when I did a memorandum on this very issue when I was Assistant Secretary of Defense.

MR. LEHRER: I remember that as well. Okay. Gentlemen, thank you all three very much. We've just skimmed the surface but we'll be back.

MR. MacNeil: Still to come on the Newshour, the Democrat's new party chief, a Texas dog fight and a look back at Liverpool's fab four. NEWS MAKER

MR. MacNeil: Next we have a News Maker Interview with the newly elected Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Judy Woodruff has more. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Few contests for Chairman of a political party have received as much publicity as did the one that ended last Friday. From the day he announced he was running, Washington attorney and Democratic political activist Ron Brown created controversy partly because he was the first black to seek the job, partly because he was Jesse Jackson's convention manager, and top campaign aide last year, and partly because of his longtime devotion to liberal causes, including working in the 1980 Presidential campaign of Sen. Edward Kennedy. Over the past few weeks, the four other candidates for Chairman of the Democratic Party all dropped out, leaving Brown alone to claim the job. Ron Brown, congratulations and thanks for being with us.

RON BROWN: Thank you very much. My pleasure.

MS. WOODRUFF: During your campaign, there were several complaints that were raised about you, that you were too close to Jesse Jackson, too close to Teddy Kennedy, to liberal. Let's take them one by one, No. 1, that you're too close to Jesse Jackson. How close are you to Jesse Jackson?

RON BROWN, Democratic National Committee: Well, I'm proud of my relationship with Jesse Jackson. He's a friend, we worked closely at the convention, but I think people who make that point act as if I was born in May of 1988 when I joined the Jackson campaign effort. In fact, I worked in Democratic politics for a long time and close to many Democrats, Democratic leaders around this country, both at the national and state level.

MS. WOODRUFF: Would you support him if he ran for President again in 1992?

MR. BROWN: I'll not be supporting anybody that runs for President as a Democratic candidate. I'm going to be absolutely neutral in the race. I think a party chairman cannot be a credible party chairman unless he is neutral, treats all the candidates in a fair-handed, even-handed way, and that's certainly the way I'm going to treat them. It's my record in Democratic politics over the years.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, we can assume that he's qualified to be President, or you wouldn't have been working for him last year - - is that the fair --

MR. BROWN: I think he's a very competent, capable national leader, extraordinarily bright. I thought last year's campaign had tremendous historic importance not only for the African American community, but for the entire community. I thought it was an important race and I'm involved in it. I'm proud of my involvement in it.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right, but when I say we assume you think he's qualified, you don't deny that you think he's qualified for President, or you wouldn't have worked --

MR. BROWN: I don't deny that at all.

MS. WOODRUFF: He and you together worked to persuade Mike Dukakis and his people last year at the convention to come up with some changes in party rules that will make it easier down the road for an outsider like Jesse Jackson to win the nomination. Are you comfortable with those changes, or will you seek, as some would like, to see those changes overturned?

MR. BROWN: No, I'm not going to seek any major rules changes. I think it would be a mistake for our party to spend the next two years in a divisive and potentially bloody rules fight. It would not be high on my agenda. Frankly, I think the American people would laugh at a party that spends a lot of time on something that really isn't crucially important to electing Democrats. We know several things. We know that we don't win or lose elections because of rules. We know that those rules fights inevitably become candidate driven, that is, people who are appointed to rules commissions always tell you that they're going to be impartial, but they end up wanting rules that favor the candidate they're going to be for in 1992 and not rules that are best for the party, and for many reasons, to open up that rules can of worms, really doesn't make a lot of sense to me as party chairman.

MS. WOODRUFF: Another criticism of Ron Brown, too close to Teddy Kennedy. How close are you to Teddy Kennedy, Sen. Kennedy?

MR. BROWN: Very close. We're close personal friends. I work for Sen. Kennedy. I have a great deal of respect for him and his integrity and his leadership and his tough stand on a number of issues, so we are close, but I'm close to a lot of Democrats. I'm close to Bill Bradley. I'm close to Bruce Babbitt. I'm close to Mario Cuomo. You know, I've had long conversations with Sen. Sam Nunn, with Sen. John Brough, with Gov. Belisles in Virginia, so I've got a lot of Democratic relationships around this country.

MS. WOODRUFF: Something that was said during your campaign, the state chairman of the Democratic Party in Alabama said if you were elected, it would represent a victory for the ultra liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Is that what you represent?

MR. BROWN: No, that's nonsense. First of all, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee does not determine the ideological direction or thrust of the Democratic Party. That's going to be determined principally in the Congress of the United States. My job is to elect Democrats at all levels, to put together a mechanism to bring together the strongest, most capable, most competent, smartest professional team of political activists and knowledgeable political people in order to be able to compete effectively in this arena and that's what I intend to do.

MS. WOODRUFF: But having said that, you do come from a tradition of supporting what is broadly known, what are broadly known, as liberal causes, liberal views?

MR. BROWN: That might be but that's irrelevant to the kind of chairman I'm going to be and evidently I was able to convince not only members of the Democratic National Committee but Democratic leaders around the country that I was going to be a common sense chairman that would be pragmatic that was interested in winning elections. I proved that to an overwhelming majority of the members of the Democratic National Committee and had strong support from all sections of this country and from all sectors of the party.

MS. WOODRUFF: But what do you say to those who say that because of your background it sends not the sort of signal that the Democrats ought to be sending at this moment?

MR. BROWN: I think my background sends just the right signal, that I'm a unified, that I'm someone who knows how to work with a wide and diverse spectrum of people, that I bring people together in the party, that I've proven it time and time again, and I'll prove it again as chairman.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is it the right signal at a time when the Democratic Party is trying to bring back voters who have left it in recent years to vote Republican?

MR. BROWN: I think the signal is going to be clearly determined by what kind of message the party sends and I'm going to help to craft that message. It's going to be a message that builds on traditional values of the Democratic Party, that is, we're a party of hope and opportunity, a party concerned about the needs and aspirations and working men and women, and working families in our nation, but it's also going to show that there is nobody tougher than the Democratic Party when it comes to protecting our children against drugs, protecting our citizens against crime, and protecting our nation against aggression and terrorism, and I think that's the piece that's been missing from the Democratic message, and one that I think we need to make sure is in the message -- we're going to reach out to the American people and have them identify with us, give them a reason for voting for Democratic candidates. I think that's what we have to do. For too long we've been allowing our adversaries, our opponents, our enemies, to define us as a party. That day is done. We've got to define ourselves, we've got to be proud of who we are, and we've got to say once and for all that one Republican Party in this country is plenty enough. We are Democrats. We are different than Republicans. We have a different vision, a different view of the world.

MS. WOODRUFF: But with all due respect, Mr. Brown, the Democrats have been saying something similar to that in the last three Presidential elections, have they not, and they've lost?

MR. BROWN: We haven't been saying much similar to that, because we've been beaten around the head and shoulders on issues of national defense and security, on issues of crime, and I think quite unfairly so. But nonetheless, we have been and I think we have to recognize that. I mean, we have a winning formula at the state and local level. We continue and elect Democrats in large numbers to the United States Senate, to the House of Representatives, to state houses, to county courthouses, to Mayor's offices, and I think we have to translate that winning formula to national elections, and I intend to help us do that.

MS. WOODRUFF: But isn't that job all the tougher when you've got a newly elected Republican President who goes out and makes a speech like the one President Bush did last Thursday night which many commentators sounded more like Hubert Humphrey than it did Ronald Reagan?

MR. BROWN: Well, that should make us ask some questions. You know, we were saying where was George Bush at the convention, I think we need to be saying, who is George Bush now? I mean, it just doesn't comport with reality now. George Bush has a record as a very prominent member of the Reagan/Bush administration to live on that record, and one speech and a couple of days of rhetoric is not going to change that record. The record does not comport with either the budget message or the things that he's saying now. I think we've got some tough questions to ask and I think it's time we start asking them.

MS. WOODRUFF: Are you saying that he was disingenuous in what he said in his speech about child care, about --

MR. BROWN: I wouldn't accuse the President of the United States of being disingenuous. What I am saying is we need to look at how he's going to do the things that he says he's going to do. There's nothing in the budget that indicates he can do that. There's a $16 billion asterisk there. Nobody knows what it is; nobody knows where the money's coming from. And then he has another proposal that sounds like what he was calling voodoo economics just a few years ago that you're going to somehow going to decrease capital gains taxes and by so doing increase revenue. Now that doesn't make sense to most economists.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, what are you saying the President should have done to pay for these programs that he raised in his budget?

MR. BROWN: There should be some kind of legitimate, credible approach to doing the things that he says he's going to do. I think we have not seen that credible approach yet and just saying kinder and gentler I don't think is enough when you have a record of the past eight years. It certainly has not been very kind or very gentle.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is that approach -- can he have an approach that doesn't include new revenues, in your opinion?

MR. BROWN: I think it's going to be very difficult. I think he's got to be very creative to do it, and we haven't yet seen that creativity. We ought to be watching very closely.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, what sort of revenues are we talking about, I mean, that you think --

MR. BROWN: Well, that's up to -- the President puts forward the budget. I mean, we're waiting to see what he does. He's done it. Now we have to see what the nuts and bolts of it are and I think the Democrats and other Americans who are concerned about fiscal responsibility which we have to be concerned about, how we are going to meet the needs of this country with limited resources, how we are going to get the most out of our dollars, I think we need to take a good hard look at this budget and see if it makes sense, and see if the numbers add up. I have some doubt about whether the numbers add up.

MS. WOODRUFF: You know, some people sitting out there might listen to you and say, well that all sounds well and good but this nation just elected Mr. Bush by a fairly impressive popular margin and certainly a much bigger electoral margin last November. Shouldn't we give him a chance, see what he's going --

MR. BROWN: Obviously, and he's getting a chance. He's going through the normal honeymoon period that Presidents go through. I expect that will continue for a while, but I expect that our Congressional leadership will be speaking out in short order when they have differences with the President as they should.

MS. WOODRUFF: Do you think people see the differences adequately, understand the differences between the Democratic and the Republican Party right now?

MR. BROWN: Probably not as clearly as they should, and I think we have to help define those differences, and that's one of the roles that I think the Chairman of the Party can play, it's one that I look forward to playing. I think it's important to define ourselves as I indicated, to send a clear and concisive, cohesive message to the American people to give them a reason to connect with Democratic candidates, to give them a reason to understand what the difference between the two parties is.

MS. WOODRUFF: But how do you do that when it's been tough for the Democrats in the last three Presidential elections?

MR. BROWN: Well, it might have been tough, but it's certainly something that we can do. We know that we have a winning formula at all levels other than the Presidential level and frankly we are not miles away from achieving that success. We are only centimeters away. I think there were some very good signs in this last election. I think the progress we made in the Midwest and the progress we made in the West just very very encouraging so we are not a despondent party, we are not a party in shambles. We're a party that's built on a strong foundation, we're strong and vibrant, we're optimistic about the future, we're optimistic about not only winning at the state and local level, but we're optimistic about recapturing the White House in 1992.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Well, Ron Brown, I'm sure we will follow your chairmanship with great interest. Thank you for being with us.

MR. BROWN: Thank you. FOCUS - HOUNDING THE POUND

MR. LEHRER: Next, the continuing fight over using animals for scientific research. One of the latest battlegrounds is Dallas, Texas, where animal advocates want to keep the city pound from selling animals to local researchers for medical experiments. We have a report from Terry Fitzpatrick of public station KERA in Dallas.

BURT WHITE: 90 percent of the dogs will take you right straight to their location and where they call home. The owner may, the person at the house may not say this is my dog, but this is where the dog calls home.

TERRY FITZPATRICK: The controversy over the use of pets and strays in research begins in the littered alleys of neighborhoods where dogs and cats are caught by animal control officers like Burt White. [Burt White Catching Dogs]

MR. FITZPATRICK: The city pound is death row for lost or abandoned animals. If they aren't claimed or adopted in three days, they are killed by lethal injection. A couple of times a week, the first thing in the morning, a technician from the University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine comes here to buy dogs and cats that would otherwise die that day. Dogs from the Dallas pound are used in cardiovascular experiments at Southwestern. Surgeons have removed one kidney from each dog and are studying the effects of high blood pressure by restricting the blood flow to the remaining kidney. The dogs live like this for 10 weeks.

STEVEN PAKES, Southwestern University: We don't relish in having to use animals, but we have a societal responsibility to advance medicine and to do that, animal research is absolutely essential.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Veterinarian Steven Pakes is Director of the University's Animal Resources Center.

STEVEN PAKES: If it is of real value that that information will extend life for man and for animals and that's the only way we can get that information, then we think that we should continue to use the dogs for that purpose.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Carol Cobb is a Director of the Dallas Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She won't sell the dogs or cats in her private shelter to medical labs and she wants the city to adopt a similar policy.

CAROL COBB, Director, Dallas S.P.C.A.: You think of an animal being picked up, in this case by the city, as, I mean, it's good for the animal, it's better than living a life in the streets, getting hit by a car, trying to eat garbage, this kind of thing, but that's where it should end. He's had a traumatic enough life. He doesn't really need to be turned over to a lab. If it were my pet, I would much rather he be humanely euthanized in a shelter if I did not find him and he were not adopted.

MR. FITZPATRICK: People who turn in animals at the city pound can prevent their use in research by filling out a card at the counter. About 15 percent of the people do. The pound started using these cards four years ago when animal rights groups first asked the city to ban the sale of animals for research. But animals caught in the street don't get the same protection. Cile Holloway helped bring together six animal rights organizations to try to change that.

CILE HOLLOWAY, Animal Connection of Texas: The animal was in the wrong place at the wrong time, he got out at the wrong time. He got lost at the wrong time. The people were gone on the vacation at the wrong time. Does it make it right because he happened to be in a facility and he wasn't adopted that he can be taken to a research facility, exposed to any type of experiment so chooses because "that's being put to good use"? No, I don't think, the coalition I think would definitely say that's not right, no. [Doctor Discussing Dog's Case With Another Dog]

MR. FITZPATRICK: Pound animals are also used at the Baylor College of Dentistry. This Doberman had four pre-molars removed and an experimental bridge will be put in their place. Loy Frazier is Chairman of Baylor's Physiology Department.

LOY FRAZIER, Baylor College of Dentistry: The animals we use for experimental purposes and get from the City of Dallas are marked and destined to die anyway by euthanasia at the city pound. We simply obtain these animals and use them in research. That means if we didn't have those animals, not only would those animals be put to death, but in addition, we'd have to raise 200 more animals to supply our research needs each year and buy them from professional breeders.

CILE HOLLOWAY: The difference is is that you have a purpose bred animal that was bred and raised in captivity, not even so much in captivity, but in a sterile environment where he did not know companionship. He's used to being caged. He did not know being taken out on the grass and going for a long walk with his owner. He did not know love from say family members, children, or whatever. You have the entire different extreme with a pet. I think most of us would like to see all animals out of the research facilities eventually, but we're also realistic enough to realize that that's going to be in the far future. Our argument here is, is that pets don't belong there.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Many of the dogs that Burt White catches and brings to the pound are wild strays that don't like people. But others are pets that have wandered away and then scampered back home when White chased them?

WOMAN: Is this for him not having a tag on him or what?

BURT WHITE: No, ma'am. This is for him running on and off your property. Once they find out they're going to get a citation on the dog, then all of a sudden, you know, they don't want the dog any longer, because they say, I don't want the dog, I can't afford a citation that high. It turned out not to be her dog.

MR. FITZPATRICK: When the researchers come looking for animals to buy, they pick friendly ones that weigh twenty to fifty pounds.

CAROL COBB: Having a shelter become a resource, a clearinghouse for lab animals, undermines the whole sheltering system. It's not fair to an animal that has been a bet.

STEVEN PAKES, Southwestern University: We don't know what animals have been so-called "pets". We don't know that. We never know that. We know that the majority of the animals that are used are not pets and have never been pets. I mean, we see animals that have had some people contact, although they have not been pets.

LOY FRAZIER: Most of the animals it seems that we get from the pound are dogs that have been let go by their owners and are running around on the street, okay, with no home.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Animals like Alpha, a four year old foxhound from a kennel in Kansas, costs a lot more than dogs from the pound. Alpha runs this treadmill every day in a study of muscle development. He cost $160. The pound sells animals to researchers for $35 apiece.

CILE HOLLOWAY: They are literally a warehouse supplier to researchers. They're cheap animals. They can purchase them for approximately 30 to 35 dollars a head, versus a purpose bred animal, two to three hundred dollars.

MR. FITZPATRICK: You're saying that the way research is conducted would change if these animals weren't made available?

CILE HOLLOWAY, Animal Connection of Texas: I definitely think it would. I think because the source is so easy there for them and it's so readily available, then why even take the time or the funds to investigate alternatives.

LOY FRAZIER: We've looked at all the possible alternatives and we're looking all the time at new ways and new methods of doing things that would not involve the animal. We look at computer modeling, cell cultures, and various other devices that can be used but there comes a point in time in any experimental procedure that the drug or the technique that's being developed must be tried on an intact living animal system.

STEVEN PAKES, Southwestern University: We're still going to have to go out and get dogs because the research that we use dogs for we can't use rats for, we can't use rabbits for. We have to have dogs for the research. I mean, that choice has already been made. It isn't based on the fact that the dogs are available to us or that they're $35 apiece.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Dallas City Council members will be thinking about money when they consider ending the sale of pound animals. The city collected $57,000 last fiscal year by selling 1600 dogs and cats to federally approved medical institutions and a product testing lab. That's about 5 percent of the 34,000 animals caught on the street or brought in by residents. ESSAY - YESTERDAY

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight an essay. An anniversary went by last week. Twenty-five years ago the Beatles appeared on American television for the first time. They changed the world of pop culture and the sixties came into its own. Essayist Penny Stallings remembers it well.

PENNY STALLINGS: It was a bleak time, that winter of 1964. Christmas had done little to cheer a nation still mourning a young President cut down by an assassin's bullet just two months earlier. Americans moved dreamlike through life's rituals, anxious, apprehensive, low. But for a few minutes on a particular Sunday night in February, the pall would lift as Americans gathered in front of their television sets to witness what would become a historic event on the Ed Sullivan Show. By then, watching Ed Sullivan on Sunday night had itself become one of life's rituals. Sullivan was a showman of the old school. His taste was a kitchy mix of Vaudeville and class. But as a former newspaper man, he also had a nose for the earth shaking event. Sullivan's new find, a pop group from Liverpool, the Beatles, they were called, were complete unknowns in this country when his scouts first booked them, but by the week they arrived at the newly renamed Kennedy Airport, the Beatles had the No. 1 record. [Beatles Song]

PENNY STALLINGS: The music saturated the air waves and everywhere you looked, there were Beatles stickers, T-shirts, and wigs. Still most people didn't know who they were or what they looked like. So no one, least of all them, expected the reception they got when they arrived. The next few days thousands of teenagers poured into Manhattan to camp outside their hotel. They screamed, they fainted. They had a rollicking good time. By the time Sunday rolled around there was no one who hadn't heard of the Beatles, except the deaf and the dead. That night 73 million people watched as John, Paul, George and Ringo were introduced to America for the first time. [Beatles Song]

PENNY STALLINGS: Everything about them was new and exotic, the way they stood, the way they moved, their clothes, and most of all, their hair. In that brief, sweet moment, everyone on your block, in your town, everyone in America, it seemed, was riveted to their small screens. The next day no one, certainly no one under the age of 18, could talk of anything else. [Beatles Song]

PENNY STALLINGS: To teenagers, all things British became unutterably cool, Carnaby style gear, Beatle boots, Beatle bangs. School boys in the Midwest began speaking with British accents. A few American record groups even managed to score hits by masquerading as Brits. For a time, it really did seem as if the world turned around the fab four. All the while the baby boom generation was getting a look at itself, at its size, at its power, its impact. In a way, the pop up people of the sixties started right here with the Beatles, not because they created it, but because they provided it with a symbolic focus, a rallying point. More and more young people began channeling their passion for fallen leaders into rock stars, investing them with heroic stature, ordaining them as grassroots politicians. Their sense of group identity grew so profound that they actually began to think they could change the world. Beatlemania with its delirious mobs of teenagers in the streets was a dress rehearsal for the mass demonstrations to come. Many of that generation's dreams would shatter just as the Beatles' ecstatic collaboration would end in bitterness and recriminations. But along the way, they made a nation smile again, if only for a moment. Somehow that changed everything. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Monday, President Bush launched his public effort to get his budget proposals enacted. He told a business group in New Hampshire, the plan will realistic and it will work, and the trial judge in the Oliver North case set a hearing for tomorrow on whether to accept a system for handling classified information during the trial. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the Newshour tonight. And we'll be back tomorrow. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.