The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MS. WOODRUFF: And I'm Judy Woodruff in Washington. After our summary of the news, we turn first to the attorney general's rebuff of a congressional call for an investigation of U.S. pre-war policy toward Iraq. Then Elizabeth Brackett reports on voter reaction to the Clinton-Gore Midwestern road show. And Charlayne Hunter-Gault talks with former President Jimmy Carter in another of her "Can We All Get Along" conversations. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Attorney General William Barr today refused to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of misconduct in U.S. policy toward Iraq. Among other things, a House Committee wanted a prosecutor to determine whether Bush administration officials violated the law in giving Iraq assistance before the Gulf War. In a letter to the committee, Mr. Barr said the allegations were too vague and general to warrant such an investigation. We'll have more on the story right after the News Summary. Meanwhile, in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors completed a second day of searches, apparently without incident. Iraq last week declared government ministries off limits to the inspectors. The team's leader would not say where the inspectors have gone, or what, if anything, they found so far. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: The U.S., Britain, and France reached agreement today on a United Nations resolution permitting the use of military force in Bosnia to ensure the delivery of relief supplies. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said the resolution was being circulated to other Security Council members. A vote is expected by Wednesday. Meanwhile, heavy fighting shook the Bosnian capital. Louise Bates of Worldwide Television News narrates this report.

MS. BATES: With pressure mounting for some kind of direct intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the people of Sarajevo continue to dodge the snipers to search for dwindling supplies. Faced with a prospect of military action, the Serbian leadership has been working on its public relations. Prime Minister Milan Panic was in Athens trying to reassure Greece it has nothing to fear from what's left of Yugoslavia. But that could take more than Panic can offer. The fate of Kosova, with its volatile Albanian minority, and Macedonia in the South are issues which threaten to bring war right to Greece's doorstep. Faced with severe shortages in Sarajevo's hospitals, world leaders are being compelled to consider using force to ensure humanitarian aid gets through to the innocent victims of the civil war. The doctor said he couldn't guarantee this baby would live after the last bottle of oxygen runs out. Sarajevo's become accustomed to suffering. During a brief lull in fighting, three soldiers and two young girls just ten and eleven-years-old were buried.

MS. WOODRUFF: Yugoslav premiere Panic today warned against western military intervention in Bosnia. He said it could lead to a second Vietnam. His warning came as the first U.S. troops reportedly landed in Yugoslavia. The Associated Press said 12 cargo handling specialists arrived in Zagreb, Croatia, to assist in relief shipments to Bosnia. Also today, the U.S. and its NATO allies formally authorized the alliance to draw up a military contingency plan. NATO could send thousands of troops to protect Bosnian relief convoys if the U.N. requests its assistance.

MR. MacNeil: The next round of Middle East peace talks will be held in Washington on August 24th. President Bush made that announcement today at his Kennebunkport, Maine vacation home during the first of two days of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Mr. Bush said he hoped the Rabin visit would strengthen an already strong relationship between their countries. Rabin had this to say during a picture taking session at the beginning of the meeting.

YITZHAK RABIN, Prime Minister, Israel: We would like to make sure that there is better and more incremental relationship between our two countries of the peoples and our two governments, and let's hope that this visit will give the chance to at least make clear where we stand, what we can do together, but to achieve these goals.

MR. MacNeil: President Bush did not make any campaign appearances today. Instead, White House adviser Clayton Yeutter held a news conference and claimed that Bill Clinton would raise taxes by a hundred and fifty billion dollars over the next four years. Clinton disputed the charge. Campaigning in Philadelphia, he said, "Voters can expect such attacks before the Republican Convention, including the contention that we're going to tax and spend to death."

MS. WOODRUFF: In Afghanistan, bombs pounded the capital of Kabul today. The fighting was between the rival Moslem groups that overthrew the former Soviet-backed government in April. The new government's defense ministry said more than 1,000 people were killed or wounded in the assault. It said government troops repulsed the offensive. That's it for the News Summary. Just ahead, the Justice Department says no to investigating pre-war Bush aid to Iraq, the Clinton-Gore bus tour, and former President Jimmy Carter considers relations between blacks and whites in America. FOCUS - LINGERING QUESTIONS

MS. WOODRUFF: We do lead tonight with the Justice Department's decision to reject calls for an independent counsel on Iraq. Today's announcement is the latest development in a heated controversy. At the center is a failed administration policy of giving Iraq billions of dollars in aid prior to the Gulf War. The aid was intended to bring Saddam Hussein into line with U.S. Mideast policy. But many House Democrats say that in the process, the administration misled Congress. We start with this backgrounder from Correspondent Kwame Holman.

MR. HOLMAN: Well before the start of the Gulf war, the United States and some of its allies had been fueling the Iraqi military machine they ultimately defeated. The West openly sold food, technology and weapons to Iraq during its eight-year war with Iran. The U.S. hoped its trade with Iraq would encourage Saddam Hussein to be a moderate force to counter balance the Moslem fundamentalist regime of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. On Capitol Hill, Deputy Sec. of State Lawrence Eagleburger recounted the administration's hopes for Iraq.

LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER, Deputy Secretary of State: [May 21, 1992] It appeared that Iraq had made a conscious decision to moderate its behavior since we had normalized relations in 1984. Iraq had, for example, reduced its support for terrorist groups and had, in fact, expelled the Abu Nidal organization from its soil. Iraq also appeared seriously interested in economic reconstruction and in expanding commercial ties with the West.

MR. HOLMAN: Eagleburger said the Iraq policy had been carefully thought out and executed, but members of Congress are charging that the administration continued those policies despite evidence that Iraq was abusing the aid. That charge has been led by House Banking Committee Chairman Henry Gonzalez. He began a one-man crusade, often speaking to an empty House chamber about his suspicions of abuse of Iraqi aid. In particular, he focused on a federal export loan program under what's called the Commodity Credit Corporation.

REP. HENRY B. GONZALEZ, [D] Texas: [March 30, 1992] From the beginning of the U.S.-Iraq relationship in 1982/83, until the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, this program known as the Commodity Credit Corporation program was a cornerstone of the U.S.-Iraq relations and the food, supposedly food, financed by the program was used as a political tool to improve relations with Iraq.

MR. HOLMAN: The Commodity Credit Corporation is part of the Federal Department of Agriculture. It promotes foreign sales of American farm goods. The CCC gives credit-strapped nations loan guarantees which allow them to borrow money to purchase U.S. agricultural products. If the countries don't repay the loans, the U.S. government must. According to Gonzalez, Iraq through much of the 1980s and with the encouragement of administration officials obtained nearly $5 billion from U.S. banks, money guaranteed by the U.S. government. Iraq has since defaulted on almost $2 billion of those U.S.-backed loans.

REP. HENRY GONZALEZ, [D] Texas: There were kickbacks on the part of the Iraqi to persons doing business with them in America. And despite the fact that Iraq was in such dire financial trouble that it could not repay its debts even to the United States Export- Import Bank this systematic deception cost the U.S. taxpayer about $2 billion because Iraq defaulted on all its CC debt when it invaded Kuwait.

MR. HOLMAN: Congressman Gonzalez and several news organizations had detailed a cozy relationship between Iraq and one bank in particular, the Atlanta branch of Banco Nacionale De Levarro, a bank owned by the Italian Government. Between 1985 and 1990, BNL supplied almost a billion dollars to Iraq in loans guaranteed by the U.S. government's CCC program. Iraq reportedly borrowed more than it needed and used the surplus to buy weapons. BNL also allegedly supplied Iraq with an additional $3 billion in secret, illegal loans. Gonzalez charges that money also was used to buy weapons. In 1989, the FBI raided BNL and charged bank director Christopher Drogul with failing to report the $3 billion the bank loaned to Iraq. Gonzalez says the Justice Department delayed Drogul's indictment for at least a year.

REP. HENRY GONZALEZ: But it had been that like other U.S. programs that benefited Iraq, the indictment was delayed to ensure cozy relations with Iraq. Several Justice Department spokesmen have denied foreign policy considerations played a role in delaying the BNL indictment.

MR. HOLMAN: The State Department's Eagleburger denied the administration had dragged its feet in the BNL investigation or on other allegations relation to aid to Iraq.

LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER, Deputy Secretary of State: [May 21, 1992] The selective disclosure out of context of classified documents has led knowingly or otherwise to distortions of the record, half truths and outright falsehoods all combined into spurious conspiracy theories and charges of a cover-up. Neither the Agriculture Department's investigation of the Commodity Credit Corporation program nor the U.S. attorney's investigation of BNL Atlanta has to date established diversion to third countries of commodities sold to Iraq, or Iraqi misuse of the CCC program to purchase military weapons.

MR. HOLMAN: But Gonzalez charges a concerted attempt by the administration to prevent his committee from getting information on all aspects of Iraq's policy.

REP. GONZALEZ: in order to minimize public exposure to the embarrassing, failed U.S. policy towards Iraq just after the fighting in the Gulf ended, the White House formed a group of high level agency attorneys headed by the National Security's General Counsel to frustrate, evade, and stifle congressional investigation. It was a gang. And Just like street gangs are out there for their own purposes of evading this, that and the other, and mugging, this gang was there for the purpose of mugging the Congress.

MR. HOLMAN: Gonzalez urged the House Judiciary Committee to recommend that the Justice Department appoint an independent counsel to investigate whether any laws were broken in relation to the various allegations surrounding Iraqi policy and BNL.

REP. GONZALEZ: The Banking Committee is not a prosecutorial nor a judicial body and the appointment of an independent counsel seems to be the only alternative in determining whether or not any crimes have been committed and whether or not any U.S. government officials or those outside the government aided or abetted in violating U.S. laws. Only an independent counsel could perform a disinterested review of the matters raised in this extraordinary case.

MS. WOODRUFF: The House Judiciary Committee formally asked for an independent investigation in a letter to Attorney General Barr last month. Today, the Justice Department rejected that call and said the allegations were vague and general. A written statement by Attorney General William Barr said the Judiciary Committee request "Contains no specific information or allegation concerning any person. It also does not specify any conduct that is alleged to constitute a crime." We take up the debate over today's decision with two members of the Judiciary Committee. Charles Schumer is a Democrat from New York. Bill McCollum is a Republican of Florida. Congressman McCollum, why is it that the attorney general turned down an investigation of this array of allegations?

REP. McCOLLUM: Well, first of all, the attorney general did not turn down an investigation. He has an ongoing investigation of all of the allegations that could possibly be on the table. In fact, he's sent accompanying the letter to Chairman Brooks of the Judiciary Committee a hundred page report detailing what's going on and what his department is doing in regard to this. But what he said was that a statute was not complied with, in other words that to appoint a special prosecutor is a very particular and peculiar thing that we do under a statute, a very unusual circumstance. he said, first of all, and I think it's quite true, that in Chairman Brooks' letter to the Justice Department there was no indication, no naming of any senior executive official that would require the appointment of an independent counsel. And there was a second provision where the attorney general had discretion in appointing an independent counsel. That second provision of the law says that there has to be specific information from a credible source naming a person and a particular criminal act, and there has to be a conflict of interest within the Justice Department before a special prosecutor is appointed to investigate the non-covered, non-senior executive officials of the government who might be involved. And what the attorney general has said -- and it's very true in looking at Chairman Brooks's letter -- there was no naming of any particular individual or any particular criminal act associated with an individual. And so there was no basis upon which to bring a claim, bring a special prosecutor into this, and last but not least, if I might finish, the attorney general said, well, we've looked at this, we found two possible allegations that might warrant so far with credible evidence us looking at them, but they're routine things, things we normally prosecute, routinely through our system here, and we're looking at that real hard, and here's the details on it and if we need to go forward and indict somebody, we'll do it.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Congressman Schumer, you understand what the others said, what the attorney general and Congressman McCollum are saying. How do you respond to that?

REP. SCHUMER: Well, when you read the attorney general's response, it doesn't seem like someone who's interested in getting to the bottom of a very messy and murky situation, but rather a lawyer's brief saying, well, I might have found this technical place that doesn't require me to appoint an independent counsel to get to the bottom of it. The fact of the matter is that the letter from the Judiciary Committee to the attorney general outlined numerous possible criminal violations. What the attorney general - -

MS. WOODRUFF: Such as --

REP. SCHUMER: Well, I can read them. 18 USC371 -- that's conspiracy to defraud the United States; 18 USC1001, making a false statement; 18 USC1505, obstruction of justice, and it goes on and on.

MS. WOODRUFF: You're saying the specifics are there.

REP. SCHUMER: Yeah. And what I'm saying is what the attorney general seems to be saying is that you have to name for me name, date, place, motive. In other words, you have to have all the facts ready so that we'd be able to indict the person. That's now what the independent counsel is about. What he's saying in a sense is if you're the victim of a mugging, you have to have a videotape of the mugging and the perpetrator in handcuffs in order for them to look -- to prosecute. It's ridiculous.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is that what you're saying, Congressman McCollum?

REP. McCOLLUM: I disagree with Chuck on that altogether. There's no requirement that you have to have every detail wrapped up, but you've got to name some people and you've got to name some allegations. You don't have to prove the case, but you've got to point the finger in some direction. And the attorney general's saying technically you didn't comply, but we went ahead and looked at this anyway. We looked at it and we looked at all possible violations we could find and we only found two instances where we thought and we were revealing all of this too because he gave a long detailed report, and we're looking at that. We routinely do this in our public integrity section. We have alleged criminal violations every day with regard to the kind of petty things that are brought up here. This is pure politics, and I really believe that, because if we allow this to continue to happen with a special prosecutor, brought up with this kind of vague allegation that Chairman Brooks sent down there, you know, we're going to have Judge Walsh cases running out our ears. And that's why the independent counsel statute's being allowed to expire right now on December 15th.

MS. WOODRUFF: Pure politics, is that what it is?

REP. SCHUMER: Well, look, first, two allegations are hardly routine: One, that someone in the White House, high level, called up the assistant U.S. attorney down in Atlanta and said the case would be embarrassing. Now, we don't know what else was said. That's hardly routine. If that's happening every day in the Justice Department, then we have real trouble.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is there a name associated with that?

REP. McCOLLUM: Well, first of all --

REP. SCHUMER: There were --

MS. WOODRUFF: Just a moment, Congressman McCollum.

REP. SCHUMER: There were -- in the report that the Judiciary Committee sent, the assistant U.S. attorney, who talked about this said, gave a few people who might be named. We don't know the specific name. That's the job of the independent counsel to find out. We don't need a specific name. You need some serious, credible, and specific allegations. That is a specific allegation. It didn't say they're covering up everything. It said there were calls from the White House to Atlanta. Second allegation --

REP. McCOLLUM: Well, let me --

MS. WOODRUFF: Just a moment. Let's let him respond to this one - -

REP. SCHUMER: Okay.

MS. WOODRUFF: -- and we'll come back to the second one.

REP. McCOLLUM: Yeah. Let me just say that the problem is here that the attorney general said he looked into that, and he didn't find any evidence of any criminal act at all. You might question a call down there, but it was only a status call. He said we didn't find anything there, and you didn't name anybody for us to find it for. So I mean that's the bottom line.

MS. WOODRUFF: But there was an indictment delayed and a plea bargain arranged that the judge involved said that he thought that was suspicious.

REP. SCHUMER: Exactly. The judge, who has a lifetime appointment, said there ought to be an independent counsel.

MS. WOODRUFF: And this was in connection with the Levarro Bank.

REP. SCHUMER: Right.

MS. WOODRUFF: Congressman McCollum, what are you saying the attorney general is saying about all that activity, the Justice Department getting involved in that case?

REP. McCOLLUM: Well, first of all, the Justice Department is very much involved in the BNL case. the Justice Department's had an investigation and it looks like it's doing quite a fine job with it. I have reviewed some of the things that they have done that at least is public enough for me to look at. It's a very complicated white collar, criminal case. And they're into it big time, so I don't see a problem with that part of it. And for an individual judge to conclude we need a special prosecutor on what basis, I just don't see it right now. I don't see where there's any evidence it's here and quite frankly, again, we're looking at Judge Walsh spent over $30 million for five years running up the tab in Iran- Contra, hasn't gotten any of the criminal convictions he got upheld and what he did was, you know, relatively minor. I think the American taxpayers are fed up with special prosecutors understandably. We all need to go back and look at --

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, is that what you're saying was the real reason behind this, is because the amount of money spent on Iran- Contra was --

REP. McCOLLUM: Well, I think the reason behind the whole letter that went down in the first place is politics. I think it's an election year. I think if we all look back to this coolly and collectively, we'd understand. You don't want to subject people to this sort of thing. It's ridiculous.

REP. SCHUMER: You can bring up the charge of politics all the time. I understand that. And just as you feel that Democrats sending a letter would be politics, Democrats feel Republican administration investigating the charge would be politics. The one fair way to deal with this is not have a Democratic Congress investigate or a Republican Justice Department on some very serious charges that could affect the President, who's appointed the attorney general, his whole career is to have an independent --

REP. McCOLLUM: There is no shred of evidence --

REP. SCHUMER: Wait, if I could finish.

REP. McCOLLUM: -- Chuck, the President's implicated in this at all --

REP. SCHUMER: If I could finish --

REP. McCOLLUM: -- no shred of evidence, not even --

REP. SCHUMER: No, but I said it could affect the President --

REP. McCOLLUM: -- one hint of high level or senior executives involved.

REP. SCHUMER: -- if it was that high level people in the administration either aided and abetted, or covered up the sale of military weapons to Iraq. And Iraq is the President's leading piece on his center plate -- it could certainly affect the election.

REP. McCOLLUM: Where's the criminal activity? Where's the idea they covered it up? You haven't named anybody. You've got vague allegations out there --

REP. SCHUMER: No.

REP. McCOLLUM: -- no names, no specific crimes. That's the whole point.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is there a suspicion of --

REP. McCOLLUM: You're raising stuff without getting specific.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is there a suspicion of an individual high ranking official?

REP. SCHUMER: Yes, in the report certain names were named.

REP. McCOLLUM: Who?

REP. SCHUMER: Boyden Gray was named.

REP. McCOLLUM: Nobody was named.

REP. SCHUMER: Brent Scowcroft was named. On the second allegation, Mosbacher was named. Now, are these people guilty of crimes? We don't know. The issue now is a simple one.

REP. McCOLLUM: You didn't allege they did anything specific --

REP. SCHUMER: And the issue was that there was enough evidence to appoint an independent counsel to give this a clear going over. And as for the charge of politics, Bill, you know it's coming up before an election year, is what you folks are saying.

REP. McCOLLUM: It certainly is and it's certainly incidental that it's happening right now.

REP. SCHUMER: People like -- people like myself and certainly Gonzalez and Charlie Rose started these investigations as early as 1986, before George Bush was even President, Judy. And the reason that this has come to the fore now is simply that the administration finally came forward with a whole bunch of documents which Chairman Gonzalez put in the record which tightened the noose around their necks, at least on a policy basis, and possibly on a criminal basis.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is that the case, Congressman?

REP. McCOLLUM: No criticism on my part, no criticism on my part about bringing this up. I mean, that's fine. That's fair game. There may have been bad judgment involved. It's a perfectly frank thing to talk about. But as far as criminal activity is concerned and using a special prosecutor, that's going way beyond the call. That's a very unique statute with very specific purposes, and frankly, Chairman Brooks didn't even come close to comply with his own statutory terms. I think that's hypocritical as well as political.

MS. WOODRUFF: There was another allegation you were going to outline.

REP. SCHUMER: Right.

MS. WOODRUFF: That you said there was more --

REP. SCHUMER: The second allegation, unrefuted, is that in documents that were sent to Congress, Congressman Barnard and his subcommittee -- this has popped up in not one subcommittee, not just Chairman Gonzalez, who they like to paint as way over, but Chairman Barnard, a respected Southern conservative, and Chairman Rose, another Southern moderate, in Chairman Barnard's investigations, he wanted to know what military equipment was illegally sent to Iraq. In the Commerce Department letters that came back, it is unrefuted that the records were altered, that some military equipment was sent and it wasn't sent in the records. Now --

MS. WOODRUFF: The finger points at who, because of that? The finger points at whom?

REP. SCHUMER: There was a man who was assistant secretary of congress named Closkey, who testified unrefuted that the records were altered. He said that he was told to alter the records in a phone conversation where he sat in the room with his superior, a Mr. Wilkey, who was on the phone with "the State Department and the White House." We don't know who. We're saying that that is why we need an independent counsel, to find out who, and there are no specifics in the statute that say you must name the name. If we knew the name, we might not need an independent counsel. It's sort of a Catch-22 here.

MS. WOODRUFF: Congressman McCollum.

REP. McCOLLUM: Let me say, if I can respond, that particular point, that particular individual and that particular incident is something the attorney general said in his letter today to Chairman Brooks, we say we're looking into that, we know that that is a potential problem of criminal law, and that maybe there is a crime that has been committed here. We're investigating it, but it doesn't rise to the level of needing a special prosecutor to do it. We may very well indict somebody here. We might find that, but it is very routine for us to do it and there's no conflict of interest down here in the Justice Department. That's all I said.

REP. SCHUMER: In all due deference, Bill --

MS. WOODRUFF: Why can't you --

REP. SCHUMER: -- it is not routine, the documents that are sent to Congress, particularly on a sensitive matter as this that could involve national security in American lives to be altered. It is hardly routine.

MS. WOODRUFF: And why can't you trust the Justice Department to investigate it?

REP. SCHUMER: That is the issue. I think Bill hit the nail on the head.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, why can't you?

REP. SCHUMER: Bill hit the nail on the head on that issue. He's saying, yes, a crime was committed, yes --

REP. McCOLLUM: We think there might have been. I'm not saying there is one.

REP. SCHUMER: -- or possibly. There may have been a crime committed.

REP. McCOLLUM: I'm saying they're investigating it.

REP. SCHUMER: I'm sorry, you're right. There may have been a crime committed, yes. Secondly, that this is a very sensitive issue. Now you tell me, ask people. Should the attorney general, appointed by the President, look into this kind of sensitive issue, or should you get someone independent? The purpose of the independent counsel statute was not to be as willy nilly. It's been used 11 times since 1978, when it happened. And, in fact, for people who say that I want to use it willy nilly, which -- when George Bush's son was up, there was a move in Congress to have him put before an independent counsel, and I got some criticism for stopping it, because I didn't think it rose to the level of a criminal charge. But in this case, it clearly does. And if you ever wanted to do a political one, George Bush's son would be far more bait than this kind of thing.

MS. WOODRUFF: Just quickly, Congressman McCollum.

REP. McCOLLUM: Well, let me say there is no indication at all of a connection between the whatever this guy did or didn't do with anybody higher up. There's no indication of that. There was nothing in Chairman Brooks's letter to indicate that. He didn't even name this fellow, let alone anyone else tied to him. And the fact remains that the investigation is ongoing and the fact remains the independent counsel law is flawed. And you and I both know that, Chuck. We both know that we --

REP. SCHUMER: I don't believe that.

REP. McCOLLUM: -- hearings coming up. I think there's witnesses on it tomorrow. And we know the fact of the matter is that it probably is going to expire in December, because we're not going to have time to fiddle with it again this year --

REP. SCHUMER: Because the President will --

REP. McCOLLUM: -- to get into that --

MS. WOODRUFF: Let me just ask --

REP. McCOLLUM: -- type of investigation is ridiculous.

MS. WOODRUFF: Let me just ask Congressman Schumer, what now for the Judiciary Committee? Does this matter rest now that you've gotten a "no" from the attorney general? Does it rest here?

REP. SCHUMER: Unfortunately, the decision of the attorney general is not appealable in any legal sense. He makes a decision and that's that. There are three choices. One, Congress could do its own investigation. We're not prosecutors. I think that's a bad way to go. The second, and the most -- the better way to do this -- is what we could -- the second is to go back to the attorney general. That's like a pig in a poke. No matter what you show him, he's not going to do it. The third is the court of public opinion. I think when the public hears about all this, it will be an issue in the election campaign. The pressure will mount and there will have to be some kind of independent investigation.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right, gentlemen. We're going to have to leave it --

REP. McCOLLUM: Well, there's the rub. And it will be an issue in the campaign and that's the purpose I really believe of all of this coming up right now.

REP. SCHUMER: You know, you can't always cry politics --

MS. WOODRUFF: We'll have to leave it there.

REP. McCOLLUM: Well, you can't always, but I can in this case.

REP. SCHUMER: Got to judge the merits.

MS. WOODRUFF: Gentlemen, Congressman McCollum, Congressman Schumer, thank you both. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the NewsHour, the Clinton-Gore bus tour and Jimmy Carter on race relations. FOCUS - CLINTON/GORE - BUS STOP

MR. MacNeil: Next, the Clinton-Gore bus trip as seen by people along the way. Last week, the Democratic nominees spent three days traveling up the Mississippi from St. Louis to the twin cities. Correspondent Elizabeth Brackett reports on how some voters from two river towns reacted to the candidates and their message.

MS. BRACKETT: The Clinton-Gore bus caravan made its way slowly through the heartland last week, slowly because Bill Clinton couldn't resist the crowds that gathered along the way. Even ten or twelve people waiting along the road side brought the candidate out of the bus. The result, 18 hours days and blown schedules, but thousands of voters got to see the candidate up close. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Clinton brought out the crowds at a rally at the Quaker Oats Plant.

BILL CLINTON: We could solve the problems of this country.

MS. BRACKETT: In an impromptu stop in Central City, Iowa, Clinton reacted to problems on the farm.

BILL CLINTON: The average farmer in America today is 58-years- old. There are almost no young people who are in farming.

MS. BRACKETT: Even in small towns like Strawberry Point, Iowa, several thousand people waited for hours to catch a glimpse of the candidate. As the buses headed North along the Iowa-Wisconsin border, frantic preparations were being made at each of the upcoming stops. In National, Iowa, a five men Clinton advance team had been in town for a week working to make their stop a spontaneous success.

PHIL SPECHT, Clayton County Democratic Chairman: These guys, the advance team here is a bunch of real professionals.

MS. BRACKETT: The first decision, pick the backdrop, where would the candidate look good for the cameras as he talked to the crowd? The advance team thought they had the perfect spot. Build the platform in front of acres of Iowa corn glinting in the sunshine. The Democratic County Chairman had another concern. He wanted to make sure Clinton would talk about farm policy standing in front of all that corn.

PHIL SPECHT: As soon as I knew that I was in contact with people that were going to actually come and address farm policy --

MS. BRACKETT: What did you tell them?

PHIL SPECHT: That this is important, it hasn't been done, that there was concern at the convention that the platform didn't address agriculture sufficiently, and that the administration hasn't done it, and this is an opportunity for them politically and a necessity for the country to get some leadership on agriculture policy.

MS. BRACKETT: So you've got a lot riding on this visit tomorrow.

PHIL SPECHT: You betcha.

MS. BRACKETT: The corn, scheduled to provide the dramatic rural backdrop, belongs to farmer Gary Burrack, ironically a registered Republican.

MS. BRACKETT: Is that Republican corn or Democratic corn?

GARY BURRACK, Farmer: Oh, Republican.

MS. BRACKETT: Burrack said he might listen to Clinton anyway, primarily because of his concern about the area's farm economy.

GARY BURRACK: I need a decent price for our product so we can survive, keep farming, and I guess that would be the main thing. If we'd get a good price for our product, everybody would be happy.

MS. BRACKETT: People here in the little river towns and farm lands along the Mississippi in Iowa and Wisconsin pay a lot of attention to national politics. In the last Presidential election, voter turnout here in Clayton County, Iowa, was 83 percent. Michael Dukakis won the county, but just barely. When asked to identify their party preference, voters here split evenly between Republicans, Democrats and independents. It is those Republican and independent voters that the Clinton campaign hoped would respond to the message of change. And for those planning to hear him at the Clinton County Fairgrounds, that message did have some impact. Mary Jo Pirc and her family have run the hardware store in Marquette, Iowa, for the past 50 years. She's voted Republican the past seven Presidential elections, but she is now considering Clinton and Gore.

MS. BRACKETT: Does it surprise you about yourself, that your considering a Democrat so strongly now?

MARY JO PIRC, Store Owner: Yes, it does, because I'm a registered Republican, but I may vote the Democratic ticket this time. I'm still on the fence and I've really fallen off the fence a little bit and tonight's going to be a deciding issue. I'm kind of excited about going to the meeting tomorrow night and seeing what comes up.

MS. BRACKETT: For Brenda Meyer, a nurse at the hospital in Prairie Duchenne, Wisconsin, health care is the primary issue.

BRENDA MEYER, Nurse: I know that Clinton is going for national health care and I'm not real sure that's an answer. But I'll listen to him with an open mind and see what he has to say and then, you know, just be stronger on the issues that he doesn't want to touch on, he has to be stronger on and possibly will be what I want to hear.

MS. BRACKETT: Fellow nurse Judy Bebow is also concerned about health care, but she is more concerned about where her son will find a job.

JUDY BEBOW, Nurse: I have a son who's a college graduate and is laid off right now and having a hard time finding a position. He's a business major. There are many of them around. But he's looking for a job and that's a problem. I don't know how much it is Bush's problem, but I think there should be some way that they can find positions for these young people. Maybe they should just have them work for the country for a couple of years.

MS. BRACKETT: Virgil Wessel's family has owned this land just West of the Mississippi since his grandfather came from Germany in the 1860s. Wessel knows farming and he wanted Bill Clinton to understand that.

VIRGIL WESSEL, Farmer: Bill Clinton should say now I'm not a farmer, you guys are the farmers, I want you to tell me what's best, take that attitude. Don't come out and say, I know the answers, here's what I'm going to do. Say, I want to listen to you.

MS. BRACKETT: It wasn't so much what Bill Clinton said that had excited car dealer Fred Huebsch. It was just the idea that he was coming to town.

FRED HUEBSCH, Auto Dealer: I think it's tremendous. That is really something. I guess that is one of the reasons that I like that ticket, because they're youthful and they've got the energy and stamina to do this type of thing. And it's really tremendous to see them in the small towns.

SCOTT GORDON, Teacher: I'm kind of caught up in the excitement of a candidate coming. Certainly I'm going to be listening to what he has to say. What I'm most interested in seeing is the debate, the Presidential debate. That to me is the key, not the campaign literature and even the speeches, the campaign speeches. I'm more interested in the debate to see how that goes.

MS. BRACKETT: Teacher Scott Gordon says what he wanted to hear in the debate is what Clinton will do about education, but he did plan to get in on the hoopla when Clinton came to town that night. The crowd at the fairgrounds began to build an hour and a half before the scheduled 6:20 PM arrival. But the motorcade was still making unscheduled stops as the sun began to fade from view. Back at the fairgrounds, the advance team's frustration grew as their carefully choreographed shot was disappearing, along with the sun. Finally, three hours late and in the pitch black, Clinton/Gore met the voters at the Clayton County fairgrounds. Clinton did apologize for being late.

BILL CLINTON: In some of these little places, there were more people waiting for us than lived in the town and I thought we ought to stop and shake their hand and tell them we were proud to be in Iowa. [applause] I'm telling you, we can make a lot more money out of agriculture in this country, and keep a lot more family farmers on the farm if you've got somebody who believes you ought to have a fair return on your effort, somebody that thinks there ought to be fair trade and expanded trade, someone who thinks there ought to be value added to agricultural products, and somebody who won't put the farmers in rural America in the back seat in America, and I won't. It means if you're a farmer, I'll give you a secretary for agriculture and I won't let agriculture policy be run by the State Department and the Office of Management & Budget. It means that we won't fool around for nine months to wait to lift the pork embargo on the Soviet Union. It means that we will try to add value to agricultural products here at home. I want so badly to do that. I want to see ethanol developed. I want to see soy bean ink. I come from a big soybean growing state, myself.

MS. BRACKETT: This was promoted as a major ag speech. Did you feel like he met that expectation?

VIRGIL WESSEL: I do feel that he missed pinpointing on what, on what could be done, or what his plans were for improving the image of agriculture and the prosperity of agriculture. And I don't know what his plans could have been to improve them, because I don't know what I'd do if I was in his -- it all depends on so many factors that are really uncontrollable back here. It's a worldwide market and that's what he's going to have to deal with.

BILL CLINTON: I want you to give us a chance to do some real specific things. I want you to give us a chance to end trickle down economics and substitute for it people first economics. And let me tell you what that means. It means that we ought to give our business people more incentives to start new businesses, more incentives to invest in new plant, new equipment to put Americans here to work at home, but no more incentives to shut our plants down and move 'em overseas or to cut quick deals and make a fast buck, incentives for jobs in America.

MS. BRACKETT: What about the economy? Now he had some pretty specific suggestions about the economy. What do you think about that? Judy.

JUDY BEBOW: Well, he again was rather vague. I think that he needs to tell us exactly how he's going to develop all these jobs. Is he going to go in like Roosevelt did and create a lot of jobs to help America, or is he -- he really was just so vague that I can't imagine that -- well, he just wasn't specific.

SCOTT GORDON: I wasn't concerned at all with his lack of specifics. I mean, that's just the nature of a campaign speech. I was just really impressed. What impresses me the most and I think brings him close to the Iowa people is his background, from Arkansas, a rural state, agricultural. And I think he will be a friend of the farmer when he gets to the White House.

BILL CLINTON: If you will vote for Al Gore and Bill Clinton and if you will give us the support we need in the Congress, we will join these other countries, we will control health care costs and provide a basic package of health care to all Americans. Every serious doctor you talk to says we spent enough money on health care, we're spending it on the wrong thing. It is scandalous how much we're wasting and how many people don't have the health care we need.

BRENDA MEYER: He says he wants a basic health plan. Who's going to implement that? Is the U.S. government going to control it, you know, and say this and this person can have this and this, or is it still going to stay with the private insurance agents, and they're going to implement it and control it?

FRED HUEBSCH: We've all talked about the fact he didn't get into specifics, but I thought he did a very dynamic job of presenting his ideas and it was very -- he got a lot of crowd enthusiasm and a lot of crowd reaction, and it was very well done as a speech, I thought.

MS. BRACKETT: I don't think any of you voted for the Democratic candidate in the last election. So how much will this campaign appearance tonight have an effect when you vote in November?

BRENDA MEYER: I'll give him a chance and listen, but right now, yes, I'm still swayed towards Bush.

WOMAN: I'm still on that teeter totter and I'm waiting to see what Bush and Quayle have got to come up with, but they're going to have to come up with something and these men are standing for change and I think we definitely need a change in this country somehow, somewhere, because the last four years have not been good.

BILL CLINTON: Give us a chance --

MS. BRACKETT: So the Clinton/Gore message of change did resonate with some of the voters here. The candidate could claim a few new supporters, while others were sticking resolutely to their Republican roots. Still, the Clinton advance team could consider the fairgrounds stop asuccess. But it would have been better with the shots of the corn. CONVERSATION - CAN WE ALL GET ALONG?

MR. MacNeil: After the Los Angeles riots, Rodney King asked the question: Can we all get along? In a series of conversations since then, Charlayne Hunter-Gault has pursued that question and tonight she does so with former President Jimmy Carter. Since leaving office in 1980, President Carter's been actively seeking solutions to many of the nation's social problems. Most recently, he's initiated the Atlanta Project, a volunteer effort to address the problems afflicting that city's poor, and hopes to make it a model for other cities. Charlayne spoke to President Carter last week at the Carter Center in Atlanta.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: President Carter, thank you for joining us. How wide do you think the racial divide in America is today?

PRESIDENT CARTER: Well, it's quite wide, not necessarily based on strictly racial delineation, but it's based it's based on a division between rich and powerful people who make decisions, on the one hand, and poor and helpless, hopeless people on the other hand. And that divide is very seldom crossed. I think wealthier people and powerful people, no matter what race they are, get along quite well and protect each other's interest, but a poverty stricken family that doesn't have housing, no prospect for a job, inadequate education and health opportunities, living in a community that's stricken with crime or drug sales or who don't believe that the police or the court system, justice system is on their side, these are the ones who feel the impact of discrimination and quite often because of just the societal make- up, it is a racial delineation, but it's not just one race against another. It's just the fact that people who are suffering are quite often ignored.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And yet, there is a perception though that the hostilities between black and white, the kind of eruptions and rage that we saw when people attacked one another in Los Angeles, that that kind of thing is getting worse, that the interpersonal divide is wider.

PRESIDENT CARTER: Well, I think even -- you know, we don't expect the mayor of Los Angeles to lash out in hopelessness and in despair and in violence. It's a matter of the ones who don't feel that in the societal structure they can meet their own personal needs, or realize ambitions or to see their hopes and dreams come into reality.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But how does that account for white attitudes, whites who feel that -- you know, who have their own perceptions of blacks that are negative and that were in some cases reinforced by the kinds of behavior that we saw in Los Angeles? I interviewed a man earlier who talked about the fact that there's an awful lot of resentment among whites. And that stirs the pot.

PRESIDENT CARTER: Well, I think among ignorant people, not necessarily the people who lack intelligence, but those who don't have that interracial relationship as part of their lives, there is a stigma that develops against people who are different. And many white people, who happen to be most of our leaders are white in the federal government and so forth and in the corporate world too, feel that there's more of a danger from people with a Latin or African extraction than from a white neighbor whom they know well. It's a matter of ignorance. There also is a very subtle element of racism in the political world. This is a very serious problem because there is an inclination on the part of us who have everything that we want to in life to assume that folks that are different from us are not as worthy of protection of what we have, that people are poor because they are lazy, that their family values are different from ours because they don't love their children as much, that they really don't mind living in an inadequate house; they would prefer to have welfare instead of having a decent job.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is that because of political expediency, a lack of contact, mean-spiritedness? What is the reason for that?

PRESIDENT CARTER: Well, I think in some ways this subtle racism that still is very prevalent in our country is exacerbated by political leaders who build on it to get votes from a predominantly white constituency. And this is unfortunately done in such a subtle way that code words, you know, are used effectively. We saw this happen in a very effective fashion in 1988 in the Presidential election, which was a low point I think in politics. But I think when you start talking about -- say from the White House -- talking about welfare mothers, this is a phrase that's a code word for racism, and that deprived people in our society quite often can be self-supporting and self-confident, people filled with pride and achievement if they're just given a chance, but when we fail to correct the problems say in the cities, it's natural for us to rationalize our own failures by saying two things, either these people don't exist, or we don't have a problem in Los Angeles or Atlanta or New York, and, therefore, let's don't waste that time addressing it, or we say it's hopeless, no matter what we do, we're not going to correct the problems of juvenile delinquency or unemployment or homelessness or drug addiction, or we say those people are naturally inferior. No matter what we do, they're going to take care of their own needs. All those things are fallacious but they are prevalent.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In an article recently in the Wall Street Journal reporting on a conference that's held by the American Enterprise Institute in which it said, it reported that the idea of America, a nation of shared values, was curdling like sour milk into racial, ethnic groupings, what author Peter Drucker calls an "up surge of tribalism" threatening to tear down the - - dissolve the shared values that we once held as a nation. What has happened to this society? I mean, do you agree with Drucker that there's a waning that -- to the notion that if you change society, you change the human being?

PRESIDENT CARTER: Well, we've gone through a cycle, you know. Obviously, you can't equate the present situation with slavery. It's obviously better than slavery. You can't equate the present situation with the pre-civil rights days when official and legal discrimination deprived a large portion of our citizens of equal rights. And following the successful civil rights effort, successful in many ways, there was an up surge of hope and anticipation and sharing and willingness to correct longstanding deprivations with corrective programs. That high point has now gone down.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What happened?

PRESIDENT CARTER: Well, I think part of it is political. You know, there's an abandonment of these kind of commitments. I'll just give you one example. In housing, where I've been personally involved, my wife and I build a few homes for poor people every year, and we --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: With your own hands.

PRESIDENT CARTER: With our own hands, sure. But since I left office, there's been a 92 percent reduction in federal funding for homes, constructions for lower and middle income families. And we had 1200 homeless people in Atlanta at that time. We have over 12,000 homeless people in Atlanta. That's a government policy that has added to the affliction of poor people. And many of these poor people happen to be in minority groups. Obviously, there are whites as well. But there's a sense that the great society program, which I think was very effective in many ways, Head Start and others, have not been completely effective, therefore, let's abandon them. And the abandonment of these programs at the presidential level has sent a signal to the rest of the country it's not our problem; let them deal with their own plight. They are not worthy of our attention or our cooperation or our partnership.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, it gets to the Rodney King question in the final few minutes of this conversation, can we all get along and what's it going to take?

PRESIDENT CARTER: I think so. Most of my work since I left the White House has been in international affairs, in negotiating peace and dealing with human rights and planting corn in Africa and immunizing children, things of that kind. We've now turned our attention at the Carter Center to try and prove in Atlanta -- we call it just simply the Atlanta Project -- that these problems are not insoluble, that we can get along, that we can act as equals, that we can share the future, that we can acknowledge the plight of one another, that we can accept the difference in racial characteristics or heritage or the way of life or even family structures, and I think that this -- it will be a successful project. If it does turn out to be successful to a major degree, which I don't intend to fail, then we want to share it with other communities. But here you have to have almost the total empowerment of the deprived people whom we want to see have a better life. On the other hand, you've got to have a marshalling of all the existing resources and federal, state, and local governments, and the private business sector, financial sector, universities, churches, synagogues, mosques. Those kinds of things are there, but there's been a chasm between the families of communities or blocks in need, on the one hand, and all of the resources that are there available, many of which are guided by benevolent people. But I've found -- I'm not criticizing any particular people -- but even when you have an African American say who does become successful and who goes into a prominence or power, there's just as much of a gap between that person -- at least the second generation -- and African Americans who are still poverty stricken as there is between rich white people and African Americans and others who are poverty stricken. It's not just a race division. It's a division based upon a difference in stature in the community or power or authority or wealth.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Has there been any one thing that's been totally revealing, some surprising thing or lesson that you've learned since you started?

PRESIDENT CARTER: Yeah. I've been a state senator in Atlanta. I've been the governor of Atlanta. I've been the president, you might say, of Atlanta. But I've learned a lot more about the people in Atlanta since we have had these few months in the Atlanta Project than I ever knew before. I go out into the neighborhoods of the most poverty stricken and I actually meet with and talk to and inquire about the lives of people there. And I've learned, you know, things that I never dreamed before.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Like --

PRESIDENT CARTER: Well, for instance, I learned by 30 percent of the women that go to Grady Hospital to have babies don't have any prenatal care. They don't understand the system well enough to fill out the complicated forms required for Medicaid and sometimes they're deliberately complicated. Also, if they have taken drugs, they feel that if they go to Grady Hospital to get prenatal care, they might be put in jail because they've taken drugs. About 16 percent of the babies born there are addicted to crack cocaine at birth. And I had a young girl ask me, why do old people lose Social Security, and I said, honey, I've been President, I know the Social Security laws, but old people once they qualify for Social Security don't lose it. She said, my granddaddy did. I said, I don't think that's possible unless his income went up so high that he didn't qualify. And she said, no, he doesn't have any income. I said, why did he lose his Social Security? She said, he lives under a bridge and he lost his Social Security because he doesn't have a mailing address. That's the kind of life that exists in Atlanta. I talked to a high school principal about the biggest problem she had in her school. It was a middle school. She said the boys feel that their status in life depends on their acquisition of a semiautomatic weapon. That's their highest ambition, a lot of them. And the girls, the biggest problem is pregnancy. And the younger girls in the middle school -- these are only 12-years-old - - are most heavily afflicted with pregnancy. I said, why? She said, well, the pimps and drug dealers prefer the little girls for sex. Secondly, they are cheaper. Third, they are not able to defend themselves. And fourth, they're not as likely to have AIDS. Yet, this is not Bangladesh. You know, it's not Adis Ababa. It's not Thailand. It's Atlanta, Georgia. And I would say that Atlanta is one of the better communities as far as race relations go and prosperity and hope for the future and ambition and success, but these are people for whom I have personally been responsible as a governor and as a president in writing laws, and so forth. I'm learning things about my neighbors I never knew before. And I think that in this learning process, in the sharing of the future, between me and people like me, and the poor families and people like them, that we can have a better Atlanta and a better America.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, President Carter, thank you.

PRESIDENT CARTER: Thank you, Charlayne. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Again, the main stories of this Monday, Attorney General William Barr refused to order an independent counsel investigation into alleged misconduct in administration policy toward Iraq. Congressional Democrats accused Barr of a coverup aimed at protecting the President in an election year. The U.S., Britain and France agreed on the text of U.N. resolutions authorizing force to protect relief convoys in Bosnia and to gain access to prison camps. President Bush said all parties had agreed to reconvene Mideast peace talks in Washington two weeks from today. Good night, Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Good night, Robin. That's our NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night with a report on the abortion plank in the Republican Party platform and the pros and cons of intervening in Bosnia. I'm Judy Woodruff. Thank you and good night.