The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After the summary of the news this Monday, four conservatives debate the growing "Bush must go" movement. Jeffrey Kaye updates riot aftermaths in Los Angeles, and Charles Krause reports on the failed Soviet nuclear program. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: There was fallout today from yesterday's press release issued by the deputy manager of the Bush-Quayle campaign. Mary Matalin wrote it in the form of a question and answer game. She titled it "Sniveling, hypocritical Democrats: Stand up and be counted -- on second thought, shut up and sit down." One question asked, "Which campaign had to spend thousands of taxpayer dollars on private investigators to fend off bimbo eruptions?" The answer she gave was "the Clinton campaign." Today Matalin issued a statement in which she said, "It would appear to some that I might have violated, at least in spirit, the President's dictate to the campaign that we avoid references to Governor Clinton's personal life. I regret if the tone of my statement left the wrong impression in that regard." Clinton was asked about the flap at a news conference this afternoon outside the governor's mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas.

BILL CLINTON: If you don't have a record to run on and you don't have a vision to offer the American people, if you can't lift people's spirits and improve their conditions and you desperately, desperately, desperately want to stay in power, what else do you have to do? I have no comment on the specifics. Look, I want this election to be about the American people, about their problems and their future, and about our common efforts to restore this country to its rightful position and to give a future back to our children. And I can't afford to be preoccupied by that sort of nickel and dime stuff. You know, I just can't do it. I just blow it off.

MR. MacNeil: President Bush today continued to take on his Democratic opponent, while disdaining to mention Bill Clinton by name. The President spoke at a factory in Dalton, Georgia.

PRESIDENT BUSH: I heard a certain Southern governor say the other day that this country was being ridiculed around the world. Well, I suspect -- and I'm not going to name names quite yet -- I suspect that he hasn't been around much. I'd like to have him walk the streets of Warsaw as I did a few days ago, or Moscow, or maybe sit down with Boris Yeltsin or Helmut Kohl or Miyazawa or a myriad of leaders South of our border, and they'd tell him what you and I already know. The United States is the undisputed leader of the world and that did not happen by accident. It happened by leadership and by the sons and daughters of America doing what they had to do from Iraq all the way across a major spectrum of other places.

MR. MacNeil: The Bush administration today rejected an Oregon plan to expand health services for the poor through rationing. The state would have provided Medicaid coverage for an additional 120,000 people, but it would have done so by limiting services they receive. Health & Human Services Sec. Louis Sullivan said those limits would violate a federal law that protects the disabled. He invited the state to work out the legal problems with its plan and reapply for federal approval. Oregon's Republican Senator, Bob Packwood, said he was outraged and disappointed by the administration's decision. He said it was motivated by politics. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Millions of black South Africans took part in a nationwide strike today. At least 12 people were killed in violence related to that walkout. Mike Hannah of Independent Television News reports from Johannesburg.

MR. HANNAH: Within hours of the beginning of the strike, five people had been killed, three in a gun battle with police in Soweto. But empty train stations throughout the country were evidence of the strike's success and the ANC's adamance that each striking worker is endorsing the demand the organization has made on the Pretoria government.

CYRIL RAMAPHOSA, African National Congress: It would have sent a very clear signal to the government that our people are determined to be free and they are determined to have democracy installed in this country.

MR. HANNAH: For the first time in South Africa, members of the United Nations monitoring group. They observed proceedings from the air as well as on the ground with the blessing of both the ANC and the government. And both sides appeared aware of the independent international presence. Unlike in previous years, there were no clashes between security forces and demonstrators. And most of the mass protests were carried out peacefully. The question now is whether the strike action has served its purpose, whether faced with evidence of mass opposition the government will make concessions and allow all parties to return to the negotiating table.

MR. LEHRER: Two journalists were shot in South Africa today. Paul Taylor of the Washington Post and Toronto Globe & Mail reporter Philip Van Nikirk were in a black township when their car was attacked. They were hospitalized and reported in stable condition.

MR. MacNeil: The U.S. today confirmed reports that civilians have been tortured and murdered by Serbian forces in Bosnia. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said Serbs were carrying out what's become known as "ethnic cleansing," a policy of using brutal means to establish ethnically pure Serbian regions. Boucher spoke to reporters in Washington.

RICHARD BOUCHER, State Department Spokesman: We're deeply concerned about the reports that are coming out that -- continuing reports that Serbian forces are holding Croatian and Muslim non- competents in what are called detention centers. We've received continuing reports of abuses, torture, and killings in these Serbian camps. We have made absolutely clear our condemnation of this practice of ethnic cleansing and I would make absolutely clear our condemnation of these kinds of abuses that are being reported in these camps. It's just horrible.

MR. MacNeil: Boucher refused to say whether the U.S. would consider military action to stop the abuses. British Prime Minister John Major today ruled out the use of NATO forces in Bosnia. He said in a letter to a British opposition leader, "We are not dealing with an orthodox war, a single enemy, a front line, or clearly identifiable targets." In Bosnia today, a refugee caravan tried for a second day to evacuate nearly 40 orphans. A bus carrying the children, many just babies, was stopped by sniper bullets yesterday. Two of the children were killed. Serb police later removed nine children from the bus in what appeared to be another example of "ethnic cleansing." The police believe the children to be Serbs. One orphan has made it to safety in Britain. She was brought there by Independent Television News reporter Michael Nicholson. Carolyn Kerr of ITN reports from London.

CAROLYN KERR: It's hard to believe that three weeks ago nine- year-old Natasha was cowering under sniper fire in the cellar of a Sarajevo orphanage. Today, thanks to the intervention of ITN Correspondent Mike Nicholson, she's living in the safety of the Surry countryside. Mike was filming at her orphanage when he first spotted Natasha and became impassioned about the plight of all the children stranded there.

MIKE NICHOLSON, ITN: it is extraordinary, is it not, that here we have upwards of 200 children in one hostel that comes frequently under bombardment who could be flown out to safety, to new homes, at least until this war is over. And yet, someone, somewhere along the line is saying no.

CAROLYN KERR: When a convoy set off for Zagreb, he'd already decided to take her out with him. He illegally added her name to his passport. On the journey to England, she traveled with him as his daughter. They flew together from Zagreb to Heathrowe two weeks ago. Mike says it just seemed the right thing to do in the circumstances.

MIKE NICHOLSON: You get totally caught up in it. And, as I said, you can't stand back and sit impartial. I saw these kids living in those conditions. I saw her living in those conditions and I thought, well, here I am asking everybody else to help; I can help, if only in a small way, with one person, and I'll do it. So I did it.

CAROLYN KERR: Now Natasha is learning to play cricket and to lead an normal life once again. Her father is dead and her mother is missing. Mike and his wife intend to look after her at least until it's safe for her to go home, but perhaps for much longer.

MR. LEHRER: The leaders of Russia and Ukraine solved their dispute over the Black Sea fleet today. They agreed to put it under a joint command until 1995. Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk struck the deal at Kravchuk's vacation home in the Crimea. He said the three-year agreement would calm tensions and provide time to work out the details of a permanent solution. Control of the 300 ship fleet has been a major source of friction since the break-up of the Soviet Union. An advance team of U.S. Marines arrived in Kuwait today. Nineteen hundred more will come tomorrow. It was the beginning of two weeks of joint U.S.-Kuwaiti military exercises. A battery of Patriot Missiles was sent last week. Bush administration officials have said the operation is a demonstration of its commitment to defend against new Iraqi aggression. In the past few days, Iraq has restated its claims to some Kuwaiti territory.

MR. MacNeil: That's our News Summary. Ahead on the NewsHour, the challenge to George Bush on the right, the roots of violence in Los Angeles, and the fallout from Soviet nuclear tests. FOCUS - CHALLENGE FROM THE RIGHT

MR. LEHRER: President Bush had something terrible to read this morning. Conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot said, "Mr. Bush's own place in history, as well as his party's future, would be more secure if he turned the nomination over to another standard-bearer." Yesterday, similar conservative sentiments were heard on "This Week with David Brinkley" and in an editorial in the Orange County Register in Southern California. Last week, leading conservative columnist, A.M. Rosenthal of the New York Times and George Will in the Washington Post suggested Mr. Bush also step aside. Said Will, "If he runs, he almost certainly will lose, perhaps in a landslide that does considerable damage to his party. If he wins, his second term almost certainly will be even worse than most second terms, worse even than his first." We have four conservatives, two against two, to debate this growing "Bush go" message. Richard Viguerie is a longtime activist, author of a new book "Lip Service, George Bush's 30 Year Battle With the Conservatives." Adam Meyerson is editor of the "Policy Review Magazine" published by the Heritage Foundation. Congressman Vin Weber, Republican of Minnesota, is a member of the House leadership. Midge Decter is a fellow at the Institute on Religion and Public Life in New York. Mr. Meyerson, how do you add up the case for Mr. Bush to step aside?

MR. MEYERSON: I don't think George Bush is going to step aside. He won the primaries, but conservatives are very disillusioned with him and he's going to have to do several things to win back more than just their lukewarm support. First, he has to apologize sincerely and convincingly to the American people for breaking his promise on new taxes. Second, he's got to show he's committed to restoring the job creation and economic growth that Americans enjoyed under Ronald Reagan; and third, he's got to seize the initiative again on family values, an initiative that he had and that's he's abandoned to Bill Clinton right now.

MR. LEHRER: And if he does all of that, everything's all right?

MR. MEYERSON: I think if he does that, conservatives will be much more enthusiastic about President Bush. They supported him, more or less, in 1988, when he ran on Reagan economic policies. If he were to return to those policies, they would be much more enthusiastic in 1992.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Weber, is it that simple?

REP. WEBER: Well, I think that the President obviously has some problems going into this fall's election, but all this pre- convention bickering is not helping the cause in one slight detail. President Bush is going to be re-nominated by the Republican National Convention. He ultimately is going to get the votes of my friend, Richard Viguerie and Adam Meyerson, and Midge Decter, and all these other conservatives who may have some legitimate criticisms to make of the White House. But our job right now has to be to put George Bush up against Bill Clinton and understand there is really no choice for conservatives. This is a very clear choice. This President, after all, has done a lot of things we believe in very strongly on the abortion issue. He has an agenda which if it had been implemented would make him a hero with conservatives -- capital gains tax reduction, choice in education, enterprise zones -- but he couldn't get them past a Democrat- dominated Congress, and that's the problem that he's faced.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Viguerie, others have suggested the only reason you and others are on Bush's case right now is because he's in trouble. If he wasn't in trouble, he would be right in line right behind it.

MR. VIGUERIE: Well, conservatives have never been happy with George Bush. I'm a fellow Houstonian with the President and followed his career very carefully over the years and he has had, as you said, the subtitle of my book, a "30 year running battle with conservatives." Jim, in the 1980s, this President traveled the length and breadth of the country, communicating to every conservative group that he could address saying, trust me, I am a conservative, and I promise you that if I'm elected, I will govern as a conservative, and then set about campaigning as a conservative. He asked for a conservative platform, much in the mold of the '80 and '84 platform. And then as soon as he became President, he purged his administration of the vast majority of conservatives, also out of the Republican National Committees. He set about surrounding himself with corporate types, big business, Wall Street, country club Republicans, and basically just totally abandoned the Reagan agenda of government is the problem, we need lower taxes; we need less regulation; we need less spending. And he began to govern as if he were Nelson Rockefeller. And it's going to take a lot more than rhetoric. I mean, I agree with what Adam said, but I would add that words are just not going to do it. The man has almost no credibility. Then you say a liberal Congress has kept him from all this. Last year he had 91 percent job approval, 91 percent job approval. He went to the American people and said, I want two things; I want a highway bill and I want a crime bill. Why wasn't -- Congress would have given him anything he asked for - - he did not do it. Congress has been proposing 10 percent increases the first three years he was president, proposed 10 percent increases.

MR. LEHRER: Let's go to Midge Decter in New York. What do you think -- how do you respond to that rather blanket serious charge against President Bush?

MS. DECTER: Well, I agree with Vin Weber that we're all going to vote for him because all you have to do is consider the alternative. It's interesting that Bill Clinton has been campaigning as a moderate. On the other hand, if you, for instance, look at his foreign policy team, they are all old retread Carterites, and, therefore, it's very clear that we're going to vote for George Bush, however, it makes a very big difference -- and I would say this to Congressman Weber -- it makes a very big difference whether you vote with tears streaming down your cheeks and holding your nose, or whether you can't wait to get to the poll. And let's not kid ourselves. That is the way conservatives are going to be voting for him --

MR. LEHRER: Now why?

MS. DECTER: -- with tears streaming down their cheeks.

MR. LEHRER: Why?

MS. DECTER: Because he has, of course, flunked on all his promises, but I think there's something deeper than that. There is a serious cultural battle going on in this country. It is the battle that the President of the United States must join at this point. Clinton understands this well enough to pay lip service to it. I don't think that -- I'm not going to speak about George Bush the man. I don't know the man. But I don't think that his administration has given any sign, aside from platform planks, but those aren't anything and everybody in America knows that, they haven't given any sign of understanding what's really moving in this country. If they did, then Bush's response to say the Los Angeles riot would have been very different. They're -- people inthis country are demoralized and they're frightened and there are lots of other problems going on, beside the economy. I'm sure that he is sitting in the White House with his advisers and they are blaming all their difficulties on the economy and they're saying to one another, if it picks up, we'll be doing better. And it's not so. This is not simply a problem of the economy. It's a problem of the general demoralization of the American people to which he has contributed mightily.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Weber, another serious indictment.

REP. WEBER: I think -- these are all my friends, wonderful people -- I think that they are overlooking some of the important things this president has done for conservatives. First of all, I was in Congress during the entire Reagan administration and during the Bush administration. There is no more important moral issue to conservatives than abortion and this president has been a hero. He has taken far tougher stands than Ronald Reagan was ever forced to take by the circumstances that existed when he was president, and he's never let us down. Second of all, he appointed Clarence Thomas to the United States Supreme Court. There are very few things that will help the conservative movement more over the course of my lifetime than to have an intelligent, articulate, black conservative sitting on the United States Supreme Court. Third, we are in a period of a build-down of our nation's defenses in the wake of the Cold War. That could be done very irresponsibly. Nobody's going to talk a lot about it because it's been a hot issue. This administration has managed our national defenses, which used to be, and still should be, a top conservative priority, masterfully over the objections of just about everybody in the Congress, including some Republicans. Now, I don't say that there are no places where conservatives have a right to have some -- to launch some criticism, but these are not small matters. And they ought to be taken into account before people like Midge and Richard go to the polls with tears streaming down their faces.

MR. LEHRER: What is your analysis, Congressman Weber? What's going on? What caused all these folks to do all of this, these editorials, and these columns, and for everybody to come out of the woodwork suddenly and start bashing the president, people of their own party?

REP. WEBER: Clinton has a big lead. We're all nervous about that. I'm nervous about that. We're not exactly sure in the middle of the summer what to do about it. And so some people are saying dump Bush, dump Quayle, bring in Jim Baker. None of those things are going to address some of the core problems we have which are real, but the election isn't held till the fall. Conservatives need to get behind this president. And let me say, yeah, after this election is over, we need to do some good, hard thinking. There is not today a grassroots movement that exists on behalf of capital gains tax reduction, on behalf of educational choice, on behalf of urban enterprise zones, on behalf of the whole dramatic change in society that I want to see, that Richard Viguerie wants to see, that Adam Meyerson and Midge Decter want to see, and we ought to go about the business of organizing that. But between now and November we've got to fight off Bill Clinton and re-elect George Bush.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Meyerson, let me ask Mr. Meyerson, what's your analysis of why you and others are suddenly, come out so strongly and so publicly and so vehemently in this against President Bush? In other words, where have you been before -- where were you before he got in trouble in the polls, is what I'm actually asking, I guess.

MR. MEYERSON: Well, we've been criticizing the budget agreement of 1990 since it started, even before it was -- when it was being negotiated. We think that the budget agreement is -- it was stalled on the premise that this would reduce the deficit. What happened was we had higher taxes and a doubling of the budget deficit. We think this was disastrous.

MR. LEHRER: Do you think it was the president's fault?

MR. MEYERSON: The president was all behind it. He certainly -- I think he's been misled by his budget director, Dick Darman, and by his treasury secretary, Nicholas Brady. I know there's been a lot of talk about dumping Quayle from the ticket, but if anybody should be dumped from the Bush administration, it would be the economic policy makers who misled him about what effects raising taxes would have on the American people.

REP. WEBER: The president has conceded, however, that that was a serious mistake. I was against it when it happened and the president has conceded it was a mistake. It was a mistake that he made with good intentions. He thought he was getting a good agreement to reduce spending. It wasn't a good deal. We got higher taxes, and it hurt the economy, and he's recognized that.

MR. LEHRER: Richard Viguerie.

MR. VIGUERIE: Vin, let me say that he did say, I'm sorry I did it, because look at all the political problems it's caused him. He really did not look at the TV cameras and say, I'm sorry I did it, it was wrong to raises on an overtaxed American public.

MR. LEHRER: Let me ask a question. Are you doing what you're doing because you are trying to get President Bush to actually say I won't run again, or is this, are you trying to give him a message?

MR. VIGUERIE: I really think that this president should seriously consider doing, Jim, what three of the last eight U.S. presidents have done. Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon stood down, rather than take their party and their country through a traumatic election and constitutional crises. I think that this president needs to have a serious talk with himself, just like Bill Bennett suggested recently, and deal with the fact, why do I want to be president a second term. The man apparently has no plan, no vision, no goals that he wants to achieve. John Sununu two years into this administration told a conservative gathering, we have now accomplished all of the things that we came to town to accomplish. He certainly doesn't need a second term.

MR. LEHRER: Midge Decter.

MS. DECTER: But, Richard, you know perfectly well he's not going to stand down. You know that, right?

MR. VIGUERIE: We know that today --

MS. DECTER: Therefore we have to --

MR. VIGUERIE: -- but we don't know. From small acorns, big trees grow.

REP. WEBER: This tree would have to grow pretty fast. The Republican Convention is two weeks away. What are we going to do?

MS. DECTER: He's not going to do that.

MR. LEHRER: So what's the point? What's the point, Midge Decter, if he isn't going to do it?

MS. DECTER: I think -- Vin Weber, you should ask yourself, why is it that conservatives were happy with Ronald Reagan, who basically didn't do all that much more than George Bush and are very unhappy with George Bush? And I maintain that there is a critical cultural difference, that not only conservatives, but all those voters, those people called Reagan Democrats, felt assured that there was somebody at home who had some notion of what was going on with them, and they don't feel that way about this man for a very good reason. Now, foreign policy happens to be my particular interest, special interest. And one can't say that George Bush has had a brilliant record, although this is the particular record he's claiming triumph in. He prosecuted a war which he left hanging. He neither concluded it, nor figured out and had any real serious policy about it. His policy in the Middle East in general I think is really disastrous. He was forced into recognizing the radical alteration going on in the Soviet Union. There were no volunteers to join Yeltsin's train. They had to be forced into it. They were all still playing footsie with Gorbachev long after the Russians were trying to tell them that he was of no importance to them. So there's no great record here. The only thing that I would say to Richard Viguerie is that at least under a Bush presidency you have the sense that some resistance will be offered to the rot and with a Clinton presidency, you have no assurance that there will be even resistance.

MR. LEHRER: Yes, Congressman.

REP. WEBER: Well, I just -- first of all, in terms of foreign policy, I have to take issue with that. I understand now in retrospect everybody thinks we should have charged into Baghdad, regardless of how many Americans came home dead, and a lot would have. This president conducted the war successfully with a minimum American loss of life, and in terms of one of my personal greatest objectives, which is our partnership with Israel in the Mideast, which I know Midge cares a great deal about, we broke up the Arab coalition against Israel. We now have implacable foes of Israel sitting down at the table, ready to talk with them. We've isolated Saddam Hussein even though we have not eliminated him. And there is not a united radical Arab block dominating the politics of the Arab world. Would I like to have seen more? Sure. I'd like to see Hussein replaced. For that matter, I'd like to see Asad replaced. But this policy was a success with a minimum loss of American life and Israel is more secure today because of it. And I think that's a success.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Meyerson, as the Congressman said, the Republican Convention is only two weeks away now, a little over two weeks away. Is any of this going to matter?

MR. MEYERSON: I think George Bush will be the nominee, but he should look at the conservative criticism as a kind of wake-up call to him.

MR. LEHRER: Why? Why should he? In other words, what does he face if he does not listen to what you all are telling him in terms of electorally what does he face?

MR. MEYERSON: Well, to begin with, he needs people who are excited about his campaign. Now, Bill Clinton does have people excited by his campaign. The president needs the same. And right now, conservatives are I would say lukewarm supporters of President Bush.

MR. LEHRER: And without you all, he has no potential for getting people excited, do you think?

MR. MEYERSON: Conservatives are his natural base in terms of the people who are going to go out and stuff envelopes and ring doorbells and he does not have them excited, no.

MR. VIGUERIE: 35 percent of self-identified conservatives, Jim, are now saying they're going to vote for Bill Clinton. Clinton is leading in Orange County, hasn't gone Democrat since 1936, hasn't gone Republican -- hasn't gone Democrat -- I'll get it right, Jim - - hasn't gone Democrat since 1936. Clinton is leading 18 percent in Orange County. There are Democrats, as Adam indicated, who probably left New York, who have hardly slept with their enthusiasm and their commitment to elect Bill Clinton. I do not know the name literally of one enthusiastic Bush supporter. And it has to do with what you were talking about earlier. The genesis of this is that the Bush people came into office where the attitude is conservatives have no place else to go and they treated us as country cousins and told us to sit in the back of the bus and be quiet. Those chickens are coming home to roost now.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Weber, as a practical matter, what in the world could President Bush do about these people?

REP. WEBER: Not a whole lot right now. I mean, the economy is stagnant. He's not doing very well in the polls. This is going to turn around by the time we get to the fall. The president has already started to do what in the end is going to make my friend, Richard Viguerie, and everybody else you're talking to tonight very excited. He's taking on Bill Clinton on the issues. He took him on on welfare in California. He took him on on health care over the weekend, a very important issue where Clinton has a plan which would traumatically raise taxes for self-employed people and put a lot of people out of work. As we delineate the issues between George Bush and Bill Clinton, his conservative critics are going to come home. All I'm saying is, do it now before you've done damage to this president's re-election effort, because by the time we get to November, everybody's going to understand we have to re- elect George Bush.

MR. LEHRER: All right.

MS. DECTER: Could I --

MR. LEHRER: We have --

MS. DECTER: I would like to say --

MR. LEHRER: Very quickly.

MS. DECTER: -- one thing more about the conservatives. It's not only that they would be ringing doorbells. It's that we learned in the 1980s that they're the ones with the connection into the average American voter.

MR. LEHRER: We have to leave it there. Ms. Decter, gentlemen, thank you.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the NewsHour, behind the LA violence and the legacy of Soviet nuclear power. FOCUS - ROOTS OF VIOLENCE

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, an update on the violence in Los Angeles that mesmerized the nation last spring. The legal aftermath of the riots continued this week with the trial of three men accused of beating and robbing motorists. Correspondent Jeffrey Kaye of public station KCET reports on the community's reaction to their case.

MR. KAYE: On April 29th, TV cameras recorded a series of brutal attacks at the intersection of Florence and Normandy Avenues in South Central Los Angeles. Starting soon after the verdict in the Rodney King beating case, black youths pelted motorists with rocks and bottles. Some drivers were even pulled from their cars, beaten, and robbed. Police were nowhere in sight. It was mob rule. The viciousness of the attack on white truck driver Reginald Denny broadcast on live TV quickly became a symbol of out-of-control racial violence. Two weeks after the Denny beating, police made high profile arrests of four men in connection with the case. Prosecutors asked they be held without bail and charged them with attempted murder, robbery, mayhem, and torture.

SPOKESMAN: The complaint sets forth the following special allegations: As to Damian Williams, gang association in the commission of the alleged defenses.

MR. KAYE: Police say the violence at Florence and Normandy was orchestrated by gangs and that three of the four defendants are violent gang members. The defendants deny gang affiliations and many in the black community are rallying to the defense of men they call the "LA Four."

REV. EDGAR BOYD, Bethel AME Church: We're going to make certain that justice is available to them as justice has been available to anyone else.

MR. KAYE: The Rev. Edgar Boyd is pastor of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. He and other leaders are afraid that the men accused of assaulting Reginald Denny will not be treated fairly by the same justice system that acquitted the white officers who beat Rodney King.

REV. EDGAR BOYD: Give these four young men the same level of consideration. Let them remain innocent until a justice system proves them guilty.

MR. KAYE: The four men, Antoine Miller, Damian Williams, Gary Williams, and Henry Watson, have pleaded "not guilty" to charges. A fifth, Anthony Brown, has pleaded innocent to a charge of spitting on Denny as Denny lay on the ground. The bail on the men ranges up to $580,000. Three of those charged in the Denny attack are also accused of assaulting a dozen other people at the intersection. Today, gutted buildings at Florence and Normandy are reminders of the chilling violence which occurred there. Tom's Liquor Store, one of the first looted in the riots, has reopened, and there is a new business on the corner, a stand selling T-shirts reading "Justice for the LA Four" raises money for the defendants. A block away, supporters of the men recently held a bake sale. Some neighbors sported yellow ribbons to demonstrate their support. Friends and family were quick to disavow the violence that occurred at Florence and Normandy. They say they're speaking out because they feel the bail is excessive and the charges overstated. Georgina Williams, a nurse, said she's only seeking fair treatment for her son, Damian, charged with beating Denny and nine other people.

GEORGINA WILLIAMS, Defendant's Mother: I'm saying if the boys did this, they should be arrested, but treat them like you treat other people; that justice should be the same for me as it is for you. You got the same law books.

MR. KAYE: Los Angeles District Attorney Ira Reiner maintains the justice system is fair.

IRA REINER, District Attorney, Los Angeles: There is only a single standard of justice, and that standard is that where a crime has been committed it will be investigated and that it will be prosecuted. It was prosecuted in the King case. It is going to be prosecuted in this case right here.

MR. KAYE: But many in this predominantly black community say there are different standards in their neighborhood. Young men complain that police too often assume they are gang members. Auto mechanic Cerman Cunningham is charged with throwing rocks at police just prior to the violence at Florence and Normandy. He says the Rodney King verdict ignited an anger about what many in the community feel is constant police harassment.

CERMAN CUNNINGHAM: It's not the Rodney King verdict that has everyone upset. It's the years of police officers treating blacks like this. I've never got a ticket sitting in my car. I've always got to get out, put your hands up, you know what I mean?

MR. KAYE: Some residents say police action may have triggered the violence at Florence and Normandy on April 29th. Police first responded to reports of rocks and bottles being thrown a few blocks away. They arrested three people. One of them was let go without charges filed against him. That young man, who asked us not to identify him, said his arrest and treatment by the police enraged an angry crowd.

YOUNG MAN: The police, they, you know, had started after me and I hadn't done nothin'. They had thought I had throw a rock, and all my friends, they were standin' around and they knew I hadn't threw no rocks.

JAY KAKAWANA, Business Owner: The officers had handcuffed the young man and threw him over the fence like he was a piece of garbage.

MR. KAYE: Jay Kakawana, owner of a nearby car wash, said the police should have handled matters differently.

JAY KAKAWANA: When you seen something like this, first came to your mind after hearing that verdict on television that it wouldn't be another Rodney King incident.

YOUNG MAN: I was on the ground and they was trying to handcuff me and the officer said to me, "Don't make this another Rodney King."

MR. KAYE: The crowd taunted police officers who were ordered to leave. After the police retreated, a group of men attacked a photographer. A crowd then gathered at Florence and Normandy. The attacks on mostly non-black passers-by went on for at least two hours.

BLACK MAN SHOUTING AT PASSER-BY: That's how Rodney King felt, white boy!

MR. KAYE: Among the victims were construction worker Fidel Lopez, who still doesn't understand why he was beaten or why the police weren't there to help him.

FIDEL LOPEZ: I almost lost my life for nothing, because I know those people at that bad moment, they are angry with -- I don't care who -- but I'm the victim. I don't know why they do that to me and they say they hit more people before me. And I say, where's the police?

MR. KAYE: With no police around, several good Samaritans risked their lives to save victims. A pastor helped Lopez to safety. Others eventually rescued Reginald Denny, who according to his doctor was left near death as he lay next to his truck. Barbara and James Henry rescued a Latino motorist who was beaten unconscious in front of their home.

JAMES HENRY: Me and another guy just kind of lifted him up, just took over to the side, and laid him right where you see that red mark.

MR. KAYE: The Henry family has lived in this home for 10 years. James Henry, an aerospace worker, says he was angered by the violence, but he understands it.

JAMES HENRY: Oh, I was very angry because it wasn't a way to go about making a change. You know, I sympathize with how they felt but I didn't agree with how they were going about trying to make a change.

MR. KAYE: The Henrys are sympathetic because they've seen the neighborhood deteriorate. They've witnessed rising unemployment and crime and are planning to move because they want their son, Jacques, to live in a community without gangs.

BARBARA HENRY: And I don't really want Jacques to have to make a choice about Bloods or Crips. Republican or Democrat, Independent, yes, but not -- I don't want him to have to make that type of choice, and if we stayed here, it's almost imperative that he's going to have to make a choice.

MR. KAYE: The residential area around Florence and Normandy appears to be a typical middle class neighborhood, but it's not. Some 21 percent of the residents live below the poverty level. The poverty rate is even higher than it was during the 1965 Watts riot. Back then, residents were able to use the income from relatively well-paying factory jobs to buy these single family homes. But those jobs have largely dried up.

JAMES HENRY: So you have more poverty and joblessness because the jobs are just not available. You know, there's not I don't think a single factory type of organization that's within a three-mile radius here.

MR. KAYE: After the recent riots, the federal government expanded its summer employment program. Young applicants waited in line for hours for mostly minimum wage jobs.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Have you been in jail before?

MR. KAYE: But the jobs offered here are only temporary. Many in the community, such as family physician Accie Mitchell, would like to see long lasting solutions to the area's deep-seated problems. Mitchell has worked in the community for 20 years and has also seen its slow decline.

DR. ACCIE MITCHELL: I see people walking up and down the streets who used to ride in cars. I see children who used to be well dressed walking up and down the street not quite so well dressed. So this tells me that what I'm looking at is a deteriorating neighborhood.

MR. KAYE: Mitchell feels the riots were an expression of frustration.

DR. ACCIE MITCHELL: These kids are trying to express themselves. And they're frustrated. They're rebelling against the system; you cannot do this to me forever and get away with it.

REV. EDGAR BOYD: We must embrace each other as we stand up and speak out for justice and for what's right.

MR. KAYE: The Rev. Edgar Boyd is helping to raise money for the defendants accused in the Florence and Normandy violence. He rejects the use of the word "riot."

REV. EDGAR BOYD: It was rebellion. It was a group of people who have been isolated, who have been ostracized, who have been just pushed out, disallowed, to participate in the institutions that make differences, institutions that make decisions, institutions that really govern the welfare of the people who make up the community, and they then lashed out at the institutions, not particularly at Reginald Denny because they didn't know Reginald Denny from anybody else. He just happened to be a white American who represented the institution and they responded, they reacted.

MR. KAYE: And you can understand that?

REV. EDGAR BOYD: I can understand that. I'm not condoning anything that's immoral. I'm not condoning anything that's irresponsible, nor anything that's unlawful, but I can understand the trauma, the social and emotional trauma through which they went because I went through it too.

MR. KAYE: Riot or rebellion, all sides, community activists, police and prosecutors agree, the neighborhood has significant social and economic problems. But for the short-term those in law enforcement are treating the violence at Florence and Normandy as a series of street crimes. The prosecutor in charge of the cases is Lawrence Morrison.

LAWRENCE MORRISON, Prosecutor: For whatever reason, it was an outbreak of violence and characterizes the civil unrest and uprising and rebellion, or even a riot. We're treating this as a series of crimes that individuals committed. We're investigating and prosecuting them. We expect to prosecute more. In the videotapes we've seen there in excess of fifty to seventy-five individuals committing attacks. We have an additional number of citizens who have reported crimes that we don't know who did them yet.

MR. KAYE: Fifty to seventy-five individuals committing crimes on how many people?

LAWRENCE MORRISON: Probably in excess of 100.

MR. KAYE: Morrison is part of a 20-member federal local task force, inspecting hours of videotape shot at Florence and Normandy during the riots. Once again, videotape will be key evidence in a highly charged beating case where questions of justice will be paramount. FINALLY - FALLOUT

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight we have an American look at a tragic legacy of nuclear testing in the cold war arms race. This testing took place at a top secret site in what used to be the Soviet Union. Today, the site, near the town of Semipalatinsk, is in the republic of Kazakhstan. For almost 40 years, the Soviet government tested its nuclear devices there. Recently, Correspondent Charles Krause talked with an American photographer who visited Kazakhstan and produced a graphic record of what happened there before testing was halted last year.

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MR. KRAUSE: The Semipalatinsk polygon was the Soviet Union's principal nuclear test site for more than 40 years. Some 500 nuclear devices, including hydrogen bombs of enormous destructive power, were detonated here in what was Soviet Kazakhstan. Today, the test site is a vast radioactive wasteland, closed by the Russians last year as a first step toward their goal of a permanent worldwide ban on nuclear testing.

JAMES LERAGER, Photographer: The very large towers that you see here were instrumentation towers for the atmospheric nuclear tests. You can see the shattering effect though from the explosion in many of these towers.

MR. KRAUSE: James Lerager is a photo journalist from California who's traveled widely reporting on nuclear issues. Last fall, he was present at the official closing of the Semipalatinsk site. It was, he says, an historic occasion.

JAMES LERAGER: I was able to, on fairly short notice, to make arrangements to get there. I thought it was very critical to be able to go into villages and document the history and the people of the test site.

MR. KRAUSE: Were the military who control Semipalatinsk reluctant to allow you, an American, to visit?

JAMES LERAGER: They were very reluctant. The commander of Kruchatav City was very upset about not only my presence but the presence of several other Americans and Europeans and in particular, the presence of a number of people from Kazakhstan the first time that they had ever had an opportunity to go into the test grounds, themselves. They were forced into it from pressure from Moscow and the government of Kazakhstan.

MR. KRAUSE: What Lerager found and documented in Kazakhstan last fall was yet another long suppressed human and environmental tragedy from the Cold War that's only now coming to light. It turns out, the Soviets were testing nuclear weapons in some cases just a few miles from populated villages. Three generations of Kazakhstan peasants were exposed to massive quantities of nuclear radiation.

JAMES LERAGER: The Semipalatinsk polygon test site is ringed by large collective farms of about 500,000 acres each, each with about 700 families. And the people from these farms are primarily herders, sheep and horses. And they routinely, to this day, and throughout the testing period, entered the test site, grazed their animals on the test site grounds, and even collected the hay from the test site. When the Soviet Union went to underground nuclear testing in 1963, after the signing of the partial test ban treaty, they did not have the technology -- at least this is how it was reported to me -- to do deep testing so that they did very shallow nuclear explosions, which basically broke the earth and released a great deal of radioactive material directly into the atmosphere. They created craters that have now filled in as lakes. And this is one of the lakes, very close to Serjal, the village of Serjal, only about 10 miles away.

MR. KRAUSE: The fact that these lakes were created, what does this say about the precautions and the general safety of the tests that the Soviets conducted?

JAMES LERAGER: I would imagine that officially that they will report that they took every precaution in order to ensure safety of the nuclear tests. I would also say that just from looking at the results of nuclear explosions on the outside of villages that they were very cavalier in their attitude towards health and safety. I would say that also because I've spoke with military personnel who routinely go to lakes such as this and have been told by military and scientific sources that they're perfectly safe. And yet, I was able to take radiation readings at some of the lakes that indicated radiation levels of 150/180/200 times normal background, even 20 years, 30 years after the time of detonation.

MR. KRAUSE: No one yet knows exactly how many people have suffered as a result of the radiation, but especially in villages down wind of the test site, Lerager found compelling evidence that beginning with Stalin Soviet authorities simply ignored the human cost of their nuclear program.

MR. KRAUSE: Tell me about this man. Why are his feet swollen?

JAMES LERAGER: He was a herder. He's from one of the collective farms near the test site. He routinely went on the test grounds. His extremities, of course, would be more exposed to radiation than other parts of his body, his hands and his feet. He's dying of cancer now. He's a man in his 50s. As a young man, he would have experienced nuclear testing directly. The woman in the center was born in 1954. You can see that she is very short and her musculature is extremely distorted.

MR. KRAUSE: Is this woman able to walk?

JAMES LERAGER: Yes, she is.

MR. KRAUSE: Is she married?

JAMES LERAGER: No, she's not. Actually, that is a problem for many young Kazakhs. They're afraid to have children, or many young men think that they may be sterile. And there's a high rate of suicide among young adults at this time. That's a young girl and she has central nervous system damage. She's very, very spastic. She can't speak. When you look inside of her mouth, all of the musculature, the bone structure, is extremely distorted. Many of the physicians that I spoke to in the village hospitals and in Semipalatinsk said that the rate of birth defects ranges from 20/40 percent. And the closer you get to the test site, the higher the rate of birth defects. This is a healthy child, and in a situation where there is radiation exposure not everybody gets sick. And any one particular illness cannot be directly traced to radiation. This school is in a village called Islamaka. It's right on the edge of the nuclear test site. These children do look healthy and vibrant. And I believe that they probably are. My experience though in going into different villages in Kazakhstan both farther away from the test site and bordering the test site was that you could clearly see evidence of illness. The physicians in the villages reported evidences of illness on massive scales.

MR. KRAUSE: Unlike the United States, which tested its most powerful weapons in the South Pacific, the Soviet Union conducted almost all its nuclear tests on land. In Kazakhstan, those tests included hydrogen bombs a hundred times more powerful than the A- bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to Lerager, peasants living near the test site may well have received more radiation over a longer period of time than any other people on earth.

JAMES LERAGER: The oncology clinic and hospital in Semipalatinsk has seen a lot of people with skin cancers similar to this woman's problems. Dr. Coker, the director of the oncology clinic, believes that at least 60,000 people in the region of the test site have died of cancers that were induced by exposure to radiation.

MR. KRAUSE: Sometimes human beings and animals living along the perimeter of the test site were evacuated; sometimes they were not. Carimack Kuyikov is an artist who paints with his mouth and with his feet because he has no arms. Now 24, Kuyikov vividly remembers his parents' accounts of the underground tests they lived through, beginning in 1963.

CARIMACK KUYIKOV: [speaking through interpreter] And they were told by the military that the earthquake was coming, for them not to be in their houses during the earthquakes, because all their houses were in very bad shape and they could have collapsed. And so they were leaving their houses, were into the hill, and they were looking, seeing all these flashes and the earth was shaking, and all the cattle was shaken and so they run back to their houses because they were really afraid that they could have seen fire in their house, whatever.

MR. KRAUSE: People living near the test site never connected the tests with the sickness and the children who were born without arms and legs. They never made that connection?

CARIMACK KUYIKOV: [speaking through interpreter] In old days, all this information was very classified and probably someone that could have guessed, but they're forbidden from talking about it. People were just living -- and the children were dying. They were burying their children or they were diagnosed, but the diagnoses were wrong because the doctors were forbidden from talking about it.

MR. KRAUSE: Many of those silent doctors worked at Hospital No. 4 in the city of Semipalatinsk about 60 miles from the test site. Here, Lerager says he learned that during the fifties and sixties some peasants were forced to stay in their villages during the tests. They were used by Soviet authorities to study the impact of radiation on human beings.

JAMES LERAGER: They brought people in for examinations into the hospital from the villages, particularly those people that had been left in villages that were evacuated, you know, the thirty or forty people that were left in a number of the villages during tests. They also sent researchers into the field to conduct blood analysis and physical exams on some 19,000 people over time.

MR. KRAUSE: Were these people treated or were they simply observed?

JAMES LERAGER: Primarily they were observed. They did not tell them what the diagnosis was, or even tell them that they might expect certain illnesses because they've been exposed to radiation.

MR. KRAUSE: So, in effect, these were human guinea pigs really?

JAMES LERAGER: I think you would have to call it an experimental population, yes, human guinea pigs.

MR. KRAUSE: The Russians were forced to stop testing last year in large part because of an anti-nuclear movement in Kazakhstan called Nevada Semipalatinsk, its goal, to stop nuclear testing both here in the old Soviet Union, and at the Nevada test grounds in the United States. The one-year Russian moratorium on nuclear testing ends this October and Boris Yeltsin has already said that if the United States does not reciprocate, Russia will resume testing later this year.

MR. MacNeil: Here today, the U.S. Senate headed toward a vote on banning all underground nuclear tests in this country for the next nine months. The Senate measure would then allow five tests per year until 1996, when all testing would end. The House has already passed a bill calling for a one-year moratorium on testing which the Bush administration has threatened to veto. The administration says it needs a few tests each year to improve the safety of the nuclear arsenal. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Monday, millions of South African blacks began a two-day strike against the government and the U.S. State Department confirmed reports of Serbian detention camps in which Bosnian and Croatian civilians have been tortured and murdered. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.