The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, Kwame Holman reports on the House vote to cut taxes; U.N. Official Sadaka Ogata updates the Kosovo refugee situation; Susan Dentzer examines schizophrenia; David Gergen talks about the corruption of American politics; and essayist Roger Rosenblatt mourns the summer tragedies. It all follows our summary of the news this Thursday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The ashes of John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, were buried at sea today. Terence Smith has our report.

TERENCE SMITH: The Kennedy and Bessette families gathered this morning to bid a final farewell. Among the relatives were John Kennedy's sister, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, his uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, and cousin Maria Shriver. Shortly before 9:00 AM, a Coast Guard cutter ferried the mourners from Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to the Navy destroyer U.S.S. "Briscoe." The ship carried them to a point four and half miles off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. There, John Kennedy's ashes, as well as those of his wife and her sister, were scattered into the Atlantic Ocean. The ceremony took place not far from the site where Kennedy's single-engine plane went down last Friday night. Navy divers recovered the three bodies yesterday from the aircraft's submerged wreckage. The autopsy report concluded that the three victims died on impact. In New York, crowds of mourners continued to line the sidewalk outside the loft apartment that Kennedy shared with his wife. People laid flowers and signed cards to the couple. This evening, New York's Irish American community held a public memorial Mass at Old St. Patrick's Cathedral in lower Manhattan. Kennedy family members and friends will gather for a private memorial service to be held tomorrow at St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church in New York City. Another memorial has been scheduled by the Bessette family on Saturday in Greenwich, Connecticut.

JIM LEHRER: Navy divers spent the day working to recover more of the plane's wreckage from the ocean floor. National Transportation Safety Board Chairman James Hall said it may be six to nine months before investigators know what caused the crash. The House passed the big Republican tax cut today. Republicans had a victory rally after the 223-to-208 vote. The legislation provides a ten-year, $800 billion reduction. Speaker Hastert commented.

REP. DENNIS HASTERT: We believe that the American people believe and deserve a tax relief program. This is our movement forward. We understand that anything that goes to the President, and we're going to have reality, you know, will have to be signed by the President. But, you know, the President started out with no tax relief. He's moved up our way. We have passed this bill through the House on a bipartisan basis if you look at that vote. The Senate will pass a bill through on a bipartisan basis. And then we're going to have to work with the President.

JIM LEHRER: A Democratic substitute offering a $250 billion reduction failed 258 to 137. It was in line with President Clinton's wishes. He said again today he'd veto the Republican plan. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. The House also passed a $256 billion defense spending bill. It funds pay and benefits, military readiness and things such as cleanup of former military sites. Not included was money for buying F-22 fighter jets, something the Air Force had requested and the Senate approved in its version of the bill. Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan also commented on the tax cut proposal today. He said paying down the national debt was the better choice because it would lead to lower interest rates. He also said the Fed would move quickly to fight inflation, and the combination of low unemployment and strong consumer spending demanded that the Fed be alert to risks. Greenspan said it all in his midyear report to Congress.

ALAN GREENSPAN: If new data suggests it is likely that the pace of cost and price increases will be picking up, the Federal Reserve will have to act promptly and forcefully so as to preclude imbalances from arising that would only require a more disruptive adjustment later, one that could impair the expansion and bring into question whether the many gains already made can be sustained.

JIM LEHRER: Wall Street reacted to Greenspan's comments. The NASDAQ Index fell 77 points to close at 2684. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 33 points at 10,969. CIA Director George Tenet spoke today about why NATO planes bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo air campaign. He told the House Intelligence Committee maps used to pick the target were inaccurate. He said some intelligence officers were aware of that. But they were not part of the planning process.

GEORGE TENET: Our ability to locate fixed targets is no better than databases and the databases in this case were wrong. Further, it is difficult, actually it is impossible, to keep current databases for cities around the globe. The databases are constructed to catalogue targets, not non-targets. In general, diplomatic facilities, our own being an exception because of the need to plan for an evacuation, are given relatively little attention in our databases because such facilities are not targets.

JIM LEHRER: The war of words between China and Taiwan continued. Taiwan's President Lee said China had to gradually accept Taiwanese statehood. Official Chinese media denounced Lee. China views Taiwan as a province to be rejoined with the mainland, by force if necessary. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the House votes for tax cuts, a refugee update, schizophrenia, a David Gergen dialogue, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay.

UPDATE - TAXING DEBATE

JIM LEHRER: Kwame Holman has our tax story.

KWAME HOLMAN: Republican leaders spent much of last evening begging and cajoling about a dozen party moderates, stressing the importance of party loyalty and the Speaker's credibility, and even twisting a few arms. The leaders finally succeeded in convincing a handful of those moderates to support nearly $800 billion in tax cuts, just enough to ensure the cuts would survive a vote on the floor of the House today.

SPOKESMAN: The House will be in order.

KWAME HOLMAN: The House Republican tax bill includes: A 10 percent across-the-board cut in tax rates on individuals over the next ten years; a reduction in the so-called marriage penalty tax; a cut in the capital gains tax; phase-out of estate taxes; and a cut in the alternative minimum tax. The money to pay for the tax cuts would come from the $3 trillion budget surplus projected over the next ten years.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, (R) Connecticut: Two trillion of those dollars, we're setting aside for Social Security, Medicare, and we are going to pay down debt. $1 trillion you might call the true surplus outside the trust funds, and that's what we're debating.

KWAME HOLMAN: But Republicans hold only a slim 11-vote majority in the House. Democrats were expected to reject the GOP tax plan overwhelmingly, if not unanimously. So Republican leaders believed they needed a near-unanimous vote among Republicans as well, including those moderates who complained the tax cut was too large.

SPOKESMAN: Mr. Speaker, I yield a minute and a half.

KWAME HOLMAN: In hopes of attracting their votes, Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer added a provision to the legislation that conditions implementation of the 10 percent tax cut on annual progress in reducing the national debt. Archer got the idea for the enforcement mechanism from Michigan Republican Vernon Ehlers.

REP. VERNON EHLERS, (R) Michigan: I am grateful that the chairman has agreed to insert my debt reduction amendment into this bill. With my amendment in place, we will accomplish both of our goals: Tax refunds and debt reduction. The language of my amendment sets this Congress on a course to reduce the amount of publicly held debt from $3.6 trillion in fiscal year 1999 to $1.6 trillion in fiscal year 2009, a reduction of over 55 percent in ten years.

KWAME HOLMAN: New Jersey's Marge Roukema was one of the moderates who needed convincing. And this morning an exchange she had with Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan just minutes before at a Banking Committee Hearing had convinced her.

REP. MARGE ROUKEMA, (R) New Jersey: I asked him specifically about the provision on the trigger that is related to the debt reduction. I don't want to go into every bit of the tax cut question, and I know there's going to be a lot of questions on both sides here, but we shouldn't be having the tax cut, some portions of the tax cut if we're not able to demonstrate a reduction in the debt; therefore, we had integrated into the tax bill a proposal that anything for the first, I think it's six or seven years -- and it's defined in the language - the -- it would trigger a delay or a postponement of the across-the-board tax cut.

ALAN GREENSPAN: A trigger is a very useful device in this particular problem, which I must admit is really sort of a highly favorable type of problem to be confronted with considering all the years we've been trying to confront a deficit.

REP. MARGE ROUKEMA: The Federal Reserve Board Chairman agrees the trigger is a very good idea.

KWAME HOLMAN: Democrats, who yesterday stood by and watched as the Republican drama played out, today criticized Republican leaders for their desperate efforts to persuade their membership.

REP. RICHARD NEAL, (D) Massachusetts: The Republican slogan today is clear: Extremism in the pursuit of a tax cut is no vice. This priority is a reckless tax bill based upon certain economic projections and based on unlikely assumptions about draconian cuts in the future of government spending -- programs like law enforcement, farm aid, education, veteran's programs, to name just a few. They almost couldn't even get this tax bill to the floor because the moderates in their own party are suspicious of where this legislation will take us.

REP. JOHN LEWIS, (D) Georgia: Most working Americans will receive little or nothing under the Republican tax bill. It does nothing, not one thing to protect Social Security and Medicare, nothing, but nothing to reduce the national debt! Thousands for the rich, pocket change for working Americans!

KWAME HOLMAN: Iowa Republican Jim Nussel tried to break down the debate into simple terms.

REP. JIM NUSSLE, (R) Iowa: Number one, whose money is this? Whose money are we talking about? It's not yours, and it's not mine. It's not the Democrats. It's not the Republicans. It's not the Ways and Means Committee, it's not the House of Representatives. This is not the government's money. These people who work so hard in your district, in my district, to send that money to Washington it's their money, number one. Number two, we're not giving the money back. We're saying keep it.

KWAME HOLMAN: New York's Charles Rangel offered a package on behalf of House Democrats that totaled $250 billion. House Minority Whip Tom DeLay said that plan actually raised taxes.

REP. TOM DeLAY, Majority Whip: The joint tax committee has determined that this do-nothing Democrat amendment would actually increase taxes by $4 million -- amazing.

KWAME HOLMAN: Rangel was quick to respond.

SPOKESMAN: The gentleman from New York.

REP. CHARLES RANGEL: I was just waiting, Mr. Speaker, for somebody to point out that this revenue raises in our bill. I didn't think it would be the distinguished majority whip. He says we that raise $4 million. Oh, no, it's $4 billion is the figure that he's looking for. And how did we do it? We did it by closing the Republican loophole for those corporate tax shelters that we're talking about.

KWAME HOLMAN: However, the Democratic plan was rejected by a wide margin. The vote on the Republican plan was much closer. Four Republican moderates, Ganske of Iowa, Morella of Maryland, Castle of Delaware, and Quinn of New York cast their votes against it. But six Democrats voted for the Republican plan, giving GOP leaders a cushioned margin of victory. Most likely, it's a temporary victory. President Clinton has vowed to veto any bill that contains tax cuts as large as in the Republican plan.

NEWSMAKER

JIM LEHRER: And now to a NewsMaker interview with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata.

Madam Commissioner, welcome. Good to see you again.

SADAKO OGATA: Thank you very much. Nice to be here.

JIM LEHRER: The Kosovo refugees, how many of them remain outside Kosovo at this point?

SADAKO OGATA: In the neighboring countries, the number would be something less than 100,000 now.

JIM LEHRER: And are they there by choice or is there no place yet for them -

SADAKO OGATA: No, no. I think many of them are still planning to go back. And it's just a question of choosing when to go back. I think some are going to stay a little longer to see how things develop.

JIM LEHRER: But it's up to them.

SADAKO OGATA: Oh, yes.

JIM LEHRER: There isn't a situation that makes it impossible for them to go back right now.

SADAKO OGATA: No, it's open.

JIM LEHRER: Open. They could go back if they wanted to.

SADAKO OGATA: Certainly. But it's the fastest return I have seen. Some 800,000 people left American starting end of March in about two months and a half. And after the Serb forces withdrew, they started going back. We were a little bit afraid that the security situation in the country may not be quite up to it but they all wanted to go back. And out of 800,000, 710,000 have gone back as of yesterday.

JIM LEHRER: That's astonishing, is it not?

SADAKO OGATA: Yes, they all said they wanted to go back. But their desire, I think, it's because they think they can go back to a place they can call their home and their country.

JIM LEHRER: Now there's still some who are not in the neighboring countries but are in other countries.

SADAKO OGATA: Yes, about 90,000 who were evacuated out of Macedonia.

JIM LEHRER: Including here.

SADAKO OGATA: Including here. But some are beginning to go back, too.

JIM LEHRER: So it was widely said at the time when the bombing began that the overwhelming majority of these folks did want to go back home when the bombing ended and it turned out to be correct, did it not?

SADAKO OGATA: It turned out to be correct.

JIM LEHRER: How does that compare with other refugee situations through history?

SADAKO OGATA: Well, first of all I think this one is a majority of the people going back. In Bosnia, the situation changed so drastically that many of the people who were out of the country had to go back to a country that was divided into two sectors. This time it's all mostly Albanians going back to a place that are going to be really for the Albanians.

JIM LEHRER: Now, what has happened to those refugee camps that we all saw on television, this program and elsewhere, on Macedonia and Albania. What has happened to them?

SADAKO OGATA: We are putting -- cleaning them. I think we have to restore the camp sites so that the environment is no longer destroyed. Many of the camps have been closed. There's only one camp left in Macedonia, and in Albania, too, we are consolidating and cleaning them.

JIM LEHRER: Now, what is the situation for the returned refugees back in Kosovo?

SADAKO OGATA: Well, I was there about two weeks ago, and they are all in their villages or in friends' houses. Some are camping. We have given camps for them to camp in their garden or in their field while they are trying to clean up and maybe get a room or two to live in. And we're also giving them a lot of sort of emergency shelter repair kits.

JIM LEHRER: But basically it's working, do you think, from your point of view?

SADAKO OGATA: I think it's working in most places. At the same time there are cities in Western Kosovo, Pec and Jakovica, which is very, very heavily destroyed, and there I think a lot more emergency reconstruction work will have to start soon.

JIM LEHRER: And is it underway? Is it coming?

SADAKO OGATA: Well, the big reconstruction is not quite there yet.

JIM LEHRER: Now how is the relationship going between your effort, the refugee effort, and the military peacekeeping force?

SADAKO OGATA: Oh, very closely because the military are there to help the law and order, also the security, looking after the mines also, so they are - we liaise with them constantly.

JIM LEHRER: Are you uncomfortable about that at all, working with the military?

SADAKO OGATA: Well, we have worked with the military in many ways. During the Kosovo crisis, in the neighboring countries, they helped us set up the camps, build them, sometimes transporting people and goods. We needed their services because it was such a big outflow over such a short time.

JIM LEHRER: And there hasn't - usually -- I won't say usually. Sometimes in these situations there's a cross purpose, sometimes -

SADAKO OGATA: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: -- in mission and in orders and who's in charge. That hasn't happened this time?

SADAKO OGATA: Well, we want to keep the camps civilian in character. That means that the refugees should not be armed, should be disarmed. But the military helped us maintain the camps as civilian as possible. They did help us in giving food but they were not doing military action. And they -- I think there was a coordination that was quite good.

JIM LEHRER: There were a lot of people who said when the bombing -- as the bombing was beginning to wind down, while it was going on and even when it ended, this was going to be a monumental task, getting these 800,000 people back into that country and back into a real, some kind of real life. Was it as monumental in implementation as it appeared it was going to be?

SADAKO OGATA: Many of them went back on their own self-organized return. And what we have done is help those who did not have cars, means of transportation. The weak and the poor, vulnerable people we helped with the buses and bringing -- transporting them. So the distances are very short, too. They all -- from Macedonia to Skopje, it's about an hour and a half to get back to Pristina, so that helped, too. So the return itself is not monumental. But I think that what happens from now is going to be a monumental task.

JIM LEHRER: What is that? Describe that.

SADAKO OGATA: Well, because the United Nations has been given the task to set up something of an interim administration. There's no courts, no laws exactly to apply, no police. Some are coming from the UN, and reconstruction starts from now: The schools, all the public hospitals, they are not really functioning fully. So it's going to set up a society with all the characters of government that has to be brought in, it has to go in now. And the reconstruction and eventually there has to be elections and government set up.

JIM LEHRER: So the hard work is still to come.

SADAKO OGATA: Oh, very much so.

JIM LEHRER: Are there resources being made available to you and your colleagues?

SADAKO OGATA: We've been appealing very strongly for cash to be coming in weekly because we're trying to do emergency shelter assistance, some of the infrastructure assistance which needs cash, we cannot do these things on credit cards or things like that, so we're appealing --

JIM LEHRER: You have to go buy things.

SADAKO OGATA: Yes. You have to buy things ahead of time. Before the winter comes.

JIM LEHRER: Ms. Ogata, help us understand -- put this in a worldwide context. You're in charge not just of Kosovo; you're in charge of refugees all over the world.

SADAKO OGATA: All over the world. Exactly.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Help us understand, compared, for instance with specific situations in Africa, like Sierra Leone, any context you want to use. How us understand how big this one is.

SADAKO OGATA: This was one was big, with an enormous impact on Europe, because the Balkans is part of Europe, and there is a strategic interest. And the fact that the NATO forces came and there was the air activities, the bombing, which made it very, very tense, and in security terms, it was a very serious one. But in terms of the size of refugees and the need to keep them in camps and so on, there are many, many large operations we're doing in Africa, for example.

JIM LEHRER: Like where?

SADAKO OGATA: Well, Congo, Sierra Leone, The Horn of Africa. Even today in the Congo where I was just a few weeks ago, too, there are still about 700,000 -- 750,000 people who are displaced.

JIM LEHRER: 750,000 -

SADAKO OGATA: 750,000 people who are displaced and the conflict is going on. Many of the Rwandees who were in the camps in Goma and so on in what used to be called Zaire have gone back but there are still some who are left. And even today just in the last few days there were some Congolese who are taking refuge in the neighboring countries so there are quite a lot of problems still going on. So there was not that neat end of a conflict that we've seen. But in Kosovo, too, I have to remind one thing -- that there are the Serbs and the Romas, these people are fleeing Kosovo today because they do not think that as minority they can survive the ill feelings that predominate.

JIM LEHRER: Now the difference between, like the situations you mentioned in Africa and the situation in Kosovo is what? Because NATO was involved, the sponsoring countries were larger or more heavily involved and all the media attention, it's hard to get media attention in some of these other situations?

SADAKO OGATA: That's exactly the problem because when there is no media attention, no political determination to solve the problems, the conflict and the misery of the refugees tend to drag on. And we have seen situations of long-term protracted refugee problems. Sierra Leone refugees, half a million are in the neighboring countries of Guinea. I went there earlier this year. It has been going on for quite a long time.

JIM LEHRER: You've been doing this work for eight years.

SADAKO OGATA: I have been High Commissioner for a little over eight years.

JIM LEHRER: Rewarding, satisfying?

SADAKO OGATA: Well, it's an enormous challenge, yes. And when we can make a little difference, especially when I'm going to go and close the refugee camps of Guatemalans in Mexico next week, it is enormously satisfying but the road to satisfaction is a difficult one many times.

JIM LEHRER: Thank you very much. Good to see you again.

ENCORE SCHIZOPHRENIA

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, explaining schizophrenia, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. A year ago this week, two policeman were killed at the U.S. Capitol. After the shooting, Susan Dentzer of our health care unit reported on the disease that afflicted the alleged gunman. Here is an encore report.

SUSAN DENTZER: Aftershocks of horror still flow from the July 24th shooting rampage at the U.S. Capitol that killed two Capitol policemen. Since then, attention has also focused on the tragedy behind that tragedy: Schizophrenia -- the devastating brain disorder that counts 41 year-old Russell Weston Jr., the Capitol Hill shooter, among its many victims. Weston's mother described some of his delusional symptoms.

RUSSELL WESTON, JR.'S MOTHER: He belonged to the FBI, or the CIA, a dentist had put something in his teeth that he received, that they could send down; they were watching him with a satellite; the TV, when it was on, they could talk to him through the TV and they would watch him through the TV.

SUSAN DENTZER: In the wake of the shooting Weston almost certainly faces murder charges. Despite his illness, tough federal standards would make it difficult for him to plead not guilty by reason of insanity if his lawyers chose that route. As a result, Weston could well be convicted and sentenced for his alleged crime. The dire illness Weston suffers from affects more than two million Americans, including 21 year-old Kareem, whose last name is being withheld to protect his privacy. Just days before the shooting at the Capitol, Kareem was admitted to the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in his home town of Philadelphia after suffering his latest psychotic breakdown. The hospital and Kareem granted the NewsHour permission to tell his story. That story is typical. Kareem's disease was misdiagnosed for years after his first breakdown at age 15. Because he has been on and off medication, the roller coaster ride that has become his life has landed him in the hospital more than 10 times and nearly destroyed his family.

DR. RICHARD PETTY: Schizophrenia is arguably the most terrible illness that has ever affected humanity.

SUSAN DENTZER: Kareem's physician, Dr. Richard Petty heads the psychiatric inpatient unit at the university hospital.

DR. RICHARD PETTY: What other illness strips away the core of what makes you a human being. It takes away your understanding of where your limits are as a person. It interferes with your ability to rationalize, to socialize, to be a member of society. But the good thing is that if the patients can get and stay in treatment, we can put it all back together again.

SUSAN DENTZER: There is no cure -- but staying in treatment with medication, psychotherapy, and other assistance can produce at least some semblance of a normal life, as Kareem's case shows. He had already spent time in another Philadelphia hospital earlier in July after a previous psychotic attack. Discharged, Kareem ended up at the university hospital just two days later, apparently off his medication and in a nosedive. Psychiatric nurse manager Susan Weisser was on duty that day.

SUSAN WEISSER: We got a call the police were bringing him in. He was involuntarily being brought to us. And he came in, he was in four-point restraints.

SUSAN DENTZER: Weisser learned that Kareem's boss at a nearby Home Depot had sent him to the hospital after he had threatened customers.

SUSAN WEISSER: They had noticed a change in his behavior in the past few days, and that he had been wearing winter clothing to work, heavy, heavy winter clothing. Of course, this is in July. He was obviously hallucinating because he would laugh inappropriately in the middle of a conversation. I did get him to answer me that he was -- Are you hearing voices besides mine, because I was the only one in the room with him, and he said, "Yes, and I can't make them stop."

SUSAN DENTZER: Weisser called Kareem's mother, who recounted what had happened between her and her son the day before.

BESSIE, Kareem's Mother: He reached over and he had a knife in his hand and he just hit me in my chest with it - you know just hit my breast bone - but it didn't bleed or nothing but that's when I started saying I can't do it you know he needed help and he started crying saying Mommy "I didn't mean to do it" and stuff like that and he just ran out of the house.

SUSAN DENTZER: Even though disoriented, Kareem, himself, was shocked at this behavior.

KAREEM: She done washed the knife off and put it back on the dish thing. I'm like, Am I really crazy now? Am I doing things, am I really doing things and not knowing it. And I was like man, I'm walking to the police station because I don't know what's going on.

SUSAN DENTZER: Two weeks later, the psychiatric care team at the university hospital gathered to discuss Kareem's case. Dr. Sarah Hicks, a medical resident in training, told the rest of the team about Kareem's treatment, including the shot of long-acting medication that he had received.

DR. SARAH HICKS: We gave him a Decanoid shot of Haldol and he really reconstituted really remarkably. And over the course of about the first week, he really was able to, his thought became much more organized and his hallucinations have really basically tapered off in a consistent manner.

SUSAN WEISSER: I think there is an education deficit with the mother and the family and they are just like coming to grips now with the fact that their son has an illness that is going to last a lifetime.

DR. RICHARD PETTY: If we can do the family education components of this, that is important. It just emphasizes again the importance of not just treating patients and giving them a pill and hoping they will get better, because they won't. They need to have the psychological and social and even spiritual components of their illness all dealt with.

SUSAN DENTZER: In fact, a recent study showed that fewer than half of schizophrenia patients in the U.S. get appropriate medical treatment for the disease -- let alone adequate counseling or other help for the social aspects of their illness. This time around, though, Kareem seemed to stabilize at least for awhile.

KAREEM: The medication was - it's got to be working, because I have more - I have better thoughts in here than I have any hospital so far.

SUSAN DENTZER: Thanks to advances in medical research and technology, doctors are now better equipped than ever to help patients like Kareem. They now know that, rather than one single disease, schizophrenia is probably a collection of separate diseases that manifest themselves differently in patients. And although they don't fully understand what's behind schizophrenia, they do know what schizophrenia is not.

DR. RICHARD PETTY: Despite the name, despite what people say, it is not a split personality.

SUSAN DENTZER: The root of the word schizophrenia is a German word meaning "to split." But this refers to the fact that patients afflicted with the disease become split off from society -- a syndrome that all starts with a diseased brain.

DR. RICHARD PETTY: Schizophrenia doesn't occur because your parents treated you badly, or because of some other insult. It is an organic brain syndrome.

SUSAN DENTZER: The causes seem to be complex. First come genetic factors: For example, individuals have a markedly higher chance of developing schizophrenia if one or both parents has it. But faulty genes alone don't seem to

be enough to cause schizophrenia. Research shows that some environmental trigger may interact with genetic factors to kick it off - probably when an individual is still in the womb.

DR. RICHARD PETTY: Any kind of damage that occurs to the fetus, particularly in the second trimester, seems to be associated with an increased chance of getting it, so viral infections, starvation, lots of different types of obstetric injuries seem to be associated with an increased risk.

SUSAN DENTZER: As a result, evidence of schizophrenia can be seen in the brains of patients from infancy. First, their brains are smaller than those of healthy people and remain that way into adulthood. And there are other noticeable abnormalities, such as enlarged brain ventricles that carry the fluid that maintains uniform pressure throughout the brain. Dr. Ruben Gur and his wife and co- researcher, Dr. Raquel Gur, are two of the nation's top specialists in the brain function of schizophrenia patients. They have been retained as expert witnesses for the defense in the case of Russell Weston Jr. The Gurs have examined brain scans of people attempting to perform certain tasks. The images on the left are of healthy people; the scans on the right are of patients with schizophrenia.

DR. RUBEN GUR: We see abnormalities in patients in the activation of the brain regions in response to those challenges, in the same way that if you drive the car, you see that the engine doesn't respond the same way that the engine should -

DR. RAQUEL GUR: The lights flash on. The brake systems go on. All kinds of things happen.

DR. RUBEN GUR: One wheel may go forward and another wheel may go back.

SUSAN DENTZER: In turn, these abnormal brain functions manifest themselves in a range of symptoms from hallucinations and delusions to disorganized speech. These are called "positive symptoms" because people with schizophrenia have them and healthy people don't.

DR. RICHARD PETTY: The most common is hearing voices. Imagine what it is like to constantly, constantly hear these voices talking to you, saying things, 'You smell, you're bad, you're evil, you should die'. And then other voices will tell them things, they will tell them what to do. Command them. 'You must go and jump off a bridge. You should go and shoot somebody'.

KAREEM: Commands like 'Get up, go over there, I don't care what y'all want me to do, just leave'. It's

like having a real bad twin that's always wanting to do something bad. And the voices was like demonic, and I couldn't control it, you know. And I would try to run to church on every Sunday to get them little spirits away from me and all that.

SUSAN DENTZER: Other symptoms are termed "negative" because they represent an absence of normal human behavior.

DR. RICHARD PETTY: It is the lack of will, a lack of ability to initiate actions. People lose the ability to socialize. People lose the ability to produce language, and in particular, lose the ability to have any pleasure. Imagine never again being able to enjoy pleasure, in anything. Anything you eat, anything you see, anything you read. Nothing.

SUSAN DENTZER: In most patients with schizophrenia, this constellation of symptoms does not lead to behavior that is more violent on average than the rest of the population. But there is an increased risk among some patients such as those diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, as was Russell Weston Jr. Many do commit crimes -- and that is why a number of people with schizophrenia are among the estimated 200,000 with severe mental illness who populate the nation's prisons.

DR. RUBEN GUR: There are some forms of schizophrenia, particularly paranoid schizophrenia, where the patient develops a delusional system, and they do things that seem senseless to us, but make perfect sense within their system. And what we see as a wanton assault on innocent people, they basically may be seeing as a fight for their own survival.

SUSAN DENTZER: For the Gurs and the hospital team, the special tragedy of Weston's case is that his rampage probably could have been prevented with the correct medication and other treatment. This has largely been true since the 1950s, with the introduction of the first effective anti-psychotic drugs including Thorazine. The drug curbed patients' positive symptoms, and it led to waves of patients being released from the nation's overcrowded and degrading mental institutions.

DR. RICHARD PETTY: Thorazine was introduced in 1952. It was an absolute breakthrough and it started really making a dent in these huge populations that were in the old state hospitals.

SUSAN DENTZER: But the medication also had pronounced side effects in patients, including serious motor disturbances such as shaking and shuffling, as well as impotence in men. A desire to avoid these side effects reinforced many patients' tendency to not take their medication because they didn't believe they were ill. In the last decade, a new generation of drugs has revolutionized treatment for many patients. These include Clozapine, Olanzapine, Risperidone and Quetiapine. Researchers don't fully understand how these drugs work, although the medications may influence the chemical neurotransmitters that send nerve impulses throughout the brain. But these newer drugs don't produce the uncomfortable side effects of earlier medications, and they are especially effective at treating patients' negative symptoms, such as apathy and social withdrawal. As a result, patients may be more likely to keep taking their medication.

DR. SARAH HICKS: You take someone who basically would have been 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and 100 years ago, you know, completely marginalized and live in an institution their entire life and make them be able to have a life and get married.

SUSAN DENTZER: Yet there are thorny issues surrounding the use of both the older and newer drugs. A recent study shows about a third of patients end up overmedicated and another third are undermedicated, leaving them barely functional. Another issue is cost. Taking the correct dose of the newer drugs can cost $200 to $500 a month. That can discourage their use by patients whose disease has forced them out of work or onto public assistance.

DR. SARAH HICKS: I just had a patient come back to the unit who I discharged, furious with me, waving a prescription in her hand saying, "Dr. Hicks, this medicine was $500 for one month," and this was a woman who had no income, and it was just impossible for her to get her medicine.

SUSAN DENTZER: But in the end, drugs are just one of many needed tools in the treatment of schizophrenia. The rest include lifestyle changes and coping strategies such as stress reduction. The last days of Kareem's stay at the university hospital were devoted to equipping him with these survival skills, including tips on managing his anger.

KAREEM: When your anger feels intense as if you want to explode try nondestructive physical activity to blow off some steam first.

LISA CLARK, Occupational Therapist: You can hurt yourself or you can hurt somebody else, right? You could really impair a relationship.

SUSAN DENTZER: Two and a half weeks after Kareem was admitted to the hospital, the managed care company monitoring his treatment is pressuring his doctors to discharge him. Although Kareem is feeling much better, he admits to his mother and doctor he 's ambivalent about getting out.

KAREEM: I'm not all excited about leaving because I've done gone through this many times.

DR. SARAH HICKS: Well, you've done it before. Why don't we just go over it together, and this is what Kareem came up with, just what he'll do if things get bad again.

SUSAN DENTZER: Kareem then listed the symptoms he would be on guard against.

KAREEM: There's disturbing thoughts, this is when I just lose track of where I'm at. And extreme paranoia that's when I'm questioning everybody, and I'm real uncomfortable where I'm at. It's like I'm worried about what's going on outside when I'm in the house.

RICH KAUFMAN: It does impact families, family members very strongly. And one of the things that I think we could recommend as well is for you to think through a support plan for yourself. .

BESSIE: They're right because I have to know how to deal with him, or how to talk to him, or how not to get too upset when certain situations come up -- and it's hard when he's fighting my help and the anger is showing and it's not like he's little and I can control him anymore like that and I have to know how to control myself.

SUSAN DENTZER: As Kareem prepares to leave the hospital, his anxious physicians reflect on his treatment and his prospects.

DR. SARAH HICKS: He looks really good, and he looks better than what we expected. But he's somebody who's had more than ten hospitalizations over the last five years, and people's track records often reflect most of what's going to happen to them in the future. I mean, there's no cure for schizophrenia right now. He's not on anything - the medicine he is getting is the same as many of these older people have always gotten. So I would like to think that things are going to go well for him, but I'm cautious.

SUSAN DENTZER: (to Kareem) What do you think is the most important thing for people to understand about people like you who have this disease?

KAREEM: I'm considered not normal, but I'm still a person. People have just got to understand that it's not like it's going to affect them if I touch them, or if I talk to them.

SUSAN DENTZER: Since he left the university hospital that day in August, Kareem has been rehospitalized twice amid signs that he was again acting strangely. Now stabilized, he is waiting to be discharged as soon as an appropriate residential treatment program can be found.

JIM LEHRER: That report first aired last September. To update the Weston story, Russell Weston was charged with murder for killing the two Capitol policemen. A federal judge ruled in May he was incompetent to stand trial. He is being held in a prison medical center. Prosecutors have asked that he be forced to take drugs. They say that would make him competent to be tried.

DIALOGUE

JIM LEHRER: Now, a Gergen dialogue. David Gergen engages journalist Elizabeth Drew, the author of "The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why."

DAVID GERGEN: Elizabeth, you've been covering politics in Washington now for over 25 years. What are the big changes that have come that have prompted you to write such a scathing indictment?

ELIZABETH DREW, Author, "The Corruption of American Politics:" Well, two things, David. One is I was thinking about the fact that so much of the public is so unhappy with the state of our politics. And I must say I thought up this book and was writing it before anybody heard of Monica Lewinsky. I mean, the problems have been more long-standing and deeper than that. And the others, I started reflecting on how this place has changed so dramatically over the last 25 years. And I thought, well, I'd like to look at that, report about it, talk to a lot of people about it, and see if I can explain what happened.

DAVID GERGEN: So what are the big changes?

ELIZABETH DREW: Well, there are a number of them. You know, a lot of people complain, talk about the partisanship and lack of civility. Those are really surface manifestations of things that are much deeper, and have been coming on for a long time. I would say, first and frankly, the quality of the politicians has gone down. Now I'm not nostalgic for the old days, because in some ways it was too cozy, it was less open, there was much less opportunity for minorities and women. But you had more people who were grounded on issues, thought aboutnational issues. Now it's a lot of very short- term thinking. And you don't really need much in the way of a qualification to run for, be in Congress. If you can get enough money, you can hire a good pollster, you don't have to have thought about very much, you can get in. Once you get in, there's now a careerism going on in politics as in other parts of society, I suppose. Once they're in the House, whether they've accomplished anything or not, again enough money, a pollster, they go for the Senate because it's a next step, not because they are so much more ready for that. And, of course, then some decide, "why not the presidency for me?"

DAVID GERGEN: Your book suggests that the quality issue, the decline in quality is accelerating. And this is not partisan; it's on both sides.

ELIZABETH DREW: That's right. You hear the complaints on both sides. Some say, well, it started with Gingrich and the revolution, the class of 1994, when the Republicans retook the Congress. It was much longer in coming than that, and it was on both sides. And one form the complaint takes on both sides is in the Senate and some Senators complaining about the increasing number of House members who have come to the Senate. By definition, the culture of the House and the Senate are different. The House is much more scrappier, much less given to -- or given to thoughtful debate. The Senate's not too much that way either, because nearly half the Senators came from the House. And I've had Senators in both parties say to me, "you know, there are just too many House members around here." They think more tactically, more short-term, more partisan, how do you score a point -- not what's in the national interest. In general, there is just less thinking about the whole. Somebody said to me, a Senate aide said to me, "you know, we hardly ever have great debates on the big issues of our time anymore. It's skirmish after skirmish until we get to the next election."

DAVID GERGEN: You write in the book that seems to have come in part because the pollsters and consultants that people turn to to get elected, they now have brought to Capitol Hill and then to the executive branch. There has been an invasion of the legislative process by people who take polls and are political consultants telling the congressmen how to win the next election.

ELIZABETH DREW: That's right. We're quite familiar with it now on the presidential side, and that had been growing for some presidencies. But less familiar is the fact that this has invaded the legislative branch as well. The pollsters and the consultants are in the meetings with the leaderships on both sides in both chambers. They will attend party conferences. An individual member or Senator will be consulting his pollster and consultant every bit as much as he or she is their own staff on "what's in it for me, what's the right position to take?" And pollsters and consultants by definition are trying to help their client win the next election. So that has contributed to the fact that debates are less thoughtful, there's less view of the whole, there's less long- term thinking. And it's these combats that go on and on, but no big issues get resolved.

DAVID GERGEN: Are you suggesting they actually manufacture issues to gain political points and without regard to the substance?

ELIZABETH DREW: Well, one word used by someone who was talking about this said the consultants come in and they foment issues that they think would be to the advantage of their client or their party.

DAVID GERGEN: Another big change you write about is the arrival of a money culture, so much so, you say, that money is more important than power as a goal in politics.

ELIZABETH DREW: Well, in politics and in Washington. I was talking really about the whole culture of Washington has changed. I was here during the Kennedy administration. And one of Kennedy's great contributions was making public service a noble cause. I used to know much more people who joined presidential campaigns because they really believed in that candidate. Now it's so much more, "how can I position myself? And if I can get in the White House, and then I can package myself and be a very big deal, public figure." Not everybody, but I just hear much more the calculation in terms of who is going to win, not, "that's a guy I'm ready to go out and die for."

DAVID GERGEN: It's the old phrase of people coming to Washington to do good and stay to do well.

ELIZABETH DREW: That's right. And it didn't start 25 years ago, but it certainly has grown. There are so many federal contracts now, and so one of the interesting sides is hearing the contractors complain about being hit up for money. So it works both ways. And everybody's busy sort of purchasing access to the people with power. It's just a very different place. I'm not saying it is all together worse, but there is a permeation now of money in people's goals and decisions and ambitions for life that there really didn't used to be.

DAVID GERGEN: Final question, let me ask you about the citizens' role in this, because many people listening to you talk might say it just reinforces my point: What we believe out here, in the hinterlands, just doesn't matter anymore in Washington.

ELIZABETH DREW: That's incorrect, even taking the example, the pollsters being in there. Sometimes I think if the members of Congress had their ears bent to the ground anymore, they'd all look like pretzels. They are far more reactive than people think. I mean, I've heard members of Congress come back and say, "you should hear what happened in my town meeting last Saturday. Three people got up and said 'X,'" or they'll say, "You know, I was talking to Joe and what happened in his town meeting." So they know that these are the more interested people, and they do respond. I was on a panel with a Senator last year, and he said, "you know if I get 300 calls on a subject, that's a lot of calls." Well, it isn't a lot of calls. They know how to separate, of course, the organized calling and faxing and E-mailing from people who really seem to be expressing their opinion. And they do pay attention.

DAVID GERGEN: Elizabeth Drew, thank you.

ELIZABETH DREW: Thank you.

ESSAY - SUMMER GRIEF

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt has some thoughts about summer tragedies.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: When John Kennedy, Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and her sister Lauren were lost in a plane crash, television covered the event from the appropriate places.

CORRESPONDENT: There's a surreal atmosphere -

ROGER ROSENBLATT: One saw reporters standing in front of gray and white summer houses with weathered shingles on Martha's Vineyard and Hyannis Port on Cape Cod. There were scenes of Coast Guard ships foaming up the water in search of the missing plane, and shots of recreational vessels-- power boats, fishing boats, sailboats-- cutting white roads into the sea. There were scenes of beaches, sand dunes, docks, starry, starry nights. All of summer was in mid-July bloom in the background, while in the foreground, one contemplated the Kennedys in grief once again. It might have seemed that grief is their season; they have known it so often. But, in fact, summer is the Kennedy family season. And when one of them dies in summer, something happens to summer itself. It grows dim. A time of action and celebration grows uncelebrative and still. This has happened to American summers before in recent memory. Three years ago to the day that John Kennedy's plane went down, TWA Flight 800 crashed into the ocean off East Moriches on Long Island's South shore, and all at once that summer went away. (Taps) One saw the ocean differently. As happened with the Kennedy crash, the Atlantic suddenly didn't look so bright and playful anymore; it became what the ocean often is, a pitiless, dangerous place. One discovered sadness in it. When Flight 800 went down, people in that area of Long Island refused to go in swimming for days, out of respect for the dead. One saw beaches differently as well. No long strips of sandboxes, they became the repositories of the remains of a disaster, a place to view small fragments of fellow human beings washed up in evidence of lives that had been vital a short while before. This, too, is what one saw after the Kennedy crash-- people coming off the beaches as if they had emerged from police stations, having identified exhibits of evidence on a table. The playfulness, the bounce, the light and freedom of the season vanished in a shot three years ago. It did so again this summer and with a special sort of pain and sorrow, because one was reminded that the Kennedys took to summer especially well. They liked summer, thrived in summer. So many images one has of them are summer images: Jack Kennedy walking on a beach; Caroline and John, Jr. holding hands on the beach. Play in the water. Life on a sailboat. Open, breezy, good things ahead. Summer has darkened this year because it darkened for the summer family, who, whatever one's politics or personal feelings about them, have become everyone's family in the summertime. America itself came to life in the summer, in July. We, too, take to the season in which we believe, perhaps are lulled into believing, that what is good in life and hopeful and bright as sunrise on the water will go on forever. It doesn't. I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: The ashes of John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife and his sister-in- law were buried at sea off the coast of Martha's Vineyard today. The other major stories of this Thursday: The House passed the big Republican tax-cut plan, and Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan said paying down the national debt would be a better use of budget surpluses. We'll see you on-line, and again here tomorrow evening with Shields and Gigot, among others. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.