The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight a report and three perspectives on the case against Oklahoma City bombing defendant Timothy McVeigh; excerpts from an exchange on the Flinn case between a U.S. Senator and the Air Force chief of staff; a debate about government-sponsored trade trips, also known as economic diplomacy; and a look at Peoria's take on the new television program rating system. It all follows our summary of the news this Wednesday.NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The prosecution rested its case in the Oklahoma City bombing trial today. Before doing so, they showed jurors dramatic slides of the rescue effort following the 1995 blast. A fire chief narrated the pictures and described his search for survivors. Jurors have listened to 137 prosecution witnesses over 18 days. The defense is expected to begin its case tomorrow. McVeigh could get the death penalty if convicted of murder and conspiracy for the blast in which 168 people died. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. In Washington today the Senate continued debate on the balanced budget agreement. The proposal would balance the federal budget by the year 2002, provide $85 billion in next tax cuts, and reduce Medicare spending by $115 billion. Senators took up the amendment to increase the cigarette tax by 43 cents a pack to help fund health insurance for needy children. Republicans, as well as Democrats, were divided on that issue.

SEN. ORRIN HATCH, [R] Utah: And I think we ought to wake up and do what's right here. And, look, it is an issue. And it's a fair characterization to say that this is a choice between Joe Camel and Joey. And I'm not just saying that because it's cute and gimmicky. It's because it's true. I think the industry that causes an awful lot of these health care problems has an obligation to help here.

SEN. TRENT LOTT, Majority Leader: I signed in on the deal, and I've taken criticism for it. The President signed on the deal, and he's going to take some criticism for it. He already has, but this is clearly a deal buster. If this amendment should be adopted right out the gate, the wheels will come off of this thing. It will come off.

JIM LEHRER: The amendment was defeated, and the Senate was expected to pass the budget resolution tomorrow or Friday. On the House side it passed earlier this morning by a vote of 333 to 99. At the White House today President Clinton hosted an anti-drug policy meeting for the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The mayors suggested more funds for treatment facilities and recreational and job opportunities for young people. In his remarks, Mr. Clinton criticized the fashion industry for using ads depicting drug abuse.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: American fashion has been an enormous source of creativity and beauty and art, and frankly economic prosperity for the United States. And we should all value and respect that. But the glorification of heroin is not creative; it's destructive. It's not beautiful; it is ugly. And this is not about art; it's about life and death. And glorifying death is not good for any society.

JIM LEHRER: The President did praise those advertisers who have stopped using images that glamorize heroin addiction. The shuttle "Atlantis" and the Russian space station "Mir" prepared to uncouple tonight. The hatches were closed this morning five days after Atlantis arrived with supplies and a replacement for American astronaut Jerry Linenger. He has spent the last four months aboard Mir with two Russian cosmonauts. A British foreign American, Michael Foal, will spend the next four months there. Linenger gave a video tour of Mir before he left and described a serious fire that broke out on February 23rd.

JERRY LINENGER, NASA Astronaut: Visibility in here was basically no visibility, and where Charlie is with a camera right now, it was--you could sort of see your finger if you looked hard, so it was very, very dense smoke, and an interesting experience, something you don't want to repeat, of course, but fire in space is a different sort of entity than fire down on the Earth is what I learned through that experience.

JIM LEHRER: Linenger and the Atlantis crew return to Earth on Saturday. Air Force Chief of Staff Ronald Fogleman today defended court martial charges against First Lt. Kelly Flinn. She asked Monday for an honorable discharge to avoid a military trial on charges of adultery, disobeying orders, and lying. That request is in the hands of Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall. She and Fogleman testified before a Senate hearing on defense appropriations. Later in the program we'll have excerpts from an exchange between Fogleman and Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin on the Flinn matter. Flinn and her lawyer awaited Widnall's decision today at Minot, North Dakota Air Force Base. He said Flinn was prepared to accept the punishment normally handed out to male officers for similar offenses.

FRANK SPINNER, Flinn's Lawyer: All along, Flinn has said, I'm sorry, I made a mistake, but look at these mitigating factors and then just give me the same punishment you've given in hundreds, if not thousands, of other cases in the Air Force over the last number of years. So Lt. Flinn is prepared to be held accountable for what she did. She's just saying look at all the facts, make a just decision, treat me fairly, treat me like you've treated hundreds of male pilots.

JIM LEHRER: Overseas today Laurent Kabila met with his top advisers to discuss plans for governing the newly named Democratic Republic of Congo. Kabila's foreign ministry said the country, the former Zaire, would be a democracy. Kabila proclaimed himself the country's president after his rebel forces took over the capital Saturday. Residents continued to celebrate his victory today, cheering soldiers as they patrol the streets. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Oklahoma City bombing trial, the Lt. Flinn case, government-sponsored trade trips, and the TV rating system goes to Peoria. FOCUS - BOMBING TRIAL

JIM LEHRER: We begin tonight with the Oklahoma City bombing trial. The prosecution rested its case today after 18 days, having presented 137 witnesses. Betty Ann Bowser begins our coverage with this report on what they said.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The government ended its case the way it began, dramatically with the testimony of a survivor. Florence Rogers was in a meeting in the credit union on the third floor when she and her fellow workers felt a tornado-like force. "When I was able to stand up," she said, "all the girls in the office with me had totally disappeared." The prosecution opened its case on April 25th, by playing an audio tape of a public hearing that was taking place across the street from the Murrah Building when the bomb went off. [sounds of explosion] Then the prosecution brought on a parade of witnesses who either lost loved ones or survived the blast. Lawyers on both sides, members of the jury and spectators in the courtroom had tears in their eyes, as Helena Garrett described her frantic search for her 16-month-old son, Tevin, who was killed in the daycare center on the second floor. Although no witness could place McVeigh in Oklahoma City on the morning of April 19th, state trooper Charles Hanger told the jury he pulled the defendant over about 75 miles North of the city in this car just an hour and a half after the bombing. Hanger said the car had no license plate, and he arrested McVeigh for having an automatic weapon in his possession. Anti-government literature was also found in the car, Hanger said, along with a business card with the handwritten notation, "TNT at $5 a stick. Need more." FBI chemist Steven Burmeister told the jury traces of high explosives were found on the clothing McVeigh was wearing at the time he was arrested but under cross-examination, Burmeister admitted the clothing was sent to the FBI lab in a paper bag, instead of the standard sealed plastic envelope. Other witnesses testified in the months before the bombing that McVeigh contacted them looking for bomb components, and Eldon Elliott, who owns an auto body shop in Junction City, Kansas, said he had no doubt that a man who identified himself as Robert Kling and rented a Ryder truck several days before the bombing was, in fact, Timothy McVeigh. His sister, Jennifer, said six months before the bombing her brother had told her that he was taking his hatred of the government for its role at Waco from the propaganda stage to the action stage. The government's two star witnesses were a married couple, Laurie and Michael Fortier, close friends of McVeigh's. Laurie Fortier told the jury that McVeigh showed her how he intended to build a bomb to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City. Testifying under immunity from prosecution, she described how McVeigh got out soup cans and arranged them the way the barrels would be in the truck, but when defense attorney Stephen Jones cross-examined her for three hours, she admitted she was a drug user and said she had repeatedly lied about McVeigh until she faced legal action from the FBI. Jones asked, "All you had to do to prevent death for these 168 people was to pick up the telephone?". Fortier: "Yes." Jones: "And you did not do that, did you?". Fortier: "No." Michael Fortier, a former army buddy and friend of McVeigh's for nine years, described how he and the defendant drove to Oklahoma City and surveyed the Murrah Building four months before the bombing. Fortier said McVeigh showed him where he planned to park his getaway car. And he said McVeigh justified killing innocent people because they were storm troopers for the federal government, guilty by association for the deaths at Waco. Like his wife, Fortier said under cross-examination that he had lied about McVeigh because he was scared and he admitted he had used drugs. The defense suggested the couple made up their stories in order to get reduced sentences. Michael Fortier faces up to 23 years in prison, but the government can reduce his sentence for his cooperation. The defense will begin its case tomorrow and is expected to call some 40 witnesses.

JIM LEHRER: For more now on where the trial stands we go to Tim Sullivan, senior correspondent for Court TV, Jim Fleissner, a former federal prosecutor who has worked with two of the prosecutors in the McVeigh case. He's now a professor at the Mercer University School of Law in Macon, Georgia, and Dan Recht, president of the board of directors at the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar and a practicing lawyer in Denver. Tim Sullivan, an emotional ending, it was an emotional beginning too, was it not, for the prosecution's case?

TIM SULLIVAN, Court TV: Very emotional, Jim. We saw several people crying again in the gallery today, visitors from Oklahoma, mainly, as Florence Rogers described losing her co-workers, six people, as Betty Ann said, who were in a meeting with her, just disappeared, she said, when that bomb went off. She also talked about 12 other co-workers of hers in the federal credit union who were killed, and then a fire captain--a fire chief came on and talked about the rescue effort, how he crawled through the rubble in that building for hours, pulling people out, trying to dig people out, and talk emotionally about how difficult it was that the whole building had collapsed and that people were crushed under the floors, and he said there was actually bodily fluids from people dripping down on the firefighters as they dug through that rubble, looking for survivors. It was very dramatic testimony.

JIM LEHRER: Eighteen days in this considered very--to have gone much quicker than expected, did it go more dramatically than expected. Can you characterize what it was like in that courtroom these last 18 days?

TIM SULLIVAN: Well, Jim, it was a very fine-tuned presentation by the prosecution. There was very rarely a dull moment. I mean, there were a couple of slow days when they had to go through phone records and go through some forensic evidence and some dry testimony explaining ammonium nitrate and all that, but they broke it up by bringing in the survivors and the victims at the appropriate times. It seemed like a day didn't go by that we didn't hear a very dramatic story, if not from a survivor, than from one of the Fortiers talking about Tim McVeigh explaining what he was going to do with Jennifer McVeigh, talking about her brother's hatred for the government and his desire to start a revolution. It was just very well put together by the prosecution. It didn't seem even like it took the 18 days that it did.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Fleissner, would you agree a very well put together case for the prosecution?

JIM FLEISSNER, Former Federal Prosecutor: Very well put together. They put on a strong case in a compelling and efficient manner. But one thing I think it's important to realize. While they did a sterling job in this case of selecting witnesses from the long witness list and putting on the best that they had and putting on an excellent order of proof, this was not that unusual in terms of the quality of presentation, and I think the public needs to understand that. And I'm not just talking about the federal court but state trials at all. This was a first class job but not that unusual, in my estimation.

JIM LEHRER: Explain what you mean. I mean, people, for instance, who watch Court TV, Tim's channel, and others who are now coming- -in other words, the O. J. case and all of that, you don't think this stands out as an outstanding presentation by a prosecution?

JIM FLEISSNER: Oh, it does stand out as an excellent presentation, and it's much, much better than the Simpson case as an example of how the system works. And while I give high marks to the prosecutor, high marks to the judge, high marks to the defense counsel in the case, I think if you go back and look at former trials that Judge Matsch ran, former trials that Joe Hartzler tried, you're going to see the same--

JIM LEHRER: He's the federal prosecutor, and the judge, of course, is the judge in the case. I see.

JIM FLEISSNER: That's correct.

JIM LEHRER: I see. Mr. Recht, how do you--where would you rate the prosecution's case in this--in this particular case and the way they presented it?

DANIEL RECHT, Criminal Defense Attorney: Jim, I'd have to rate it high as well. I completely agree with what the other two said, and the interesting thing is it's--it's a shame actually that this trial wasn't televised, because I think the criminal justice system took a beating after the--or during the O. J. case, and the public would have seen if this case was televised how well a courtroom can be run and how much control a judge can have because Judge Matsch is amazing in that way, and frankly how well a prosecutor can put on a case because Hartzler was amazing in that way. So--

JIM LEHRER: Amazing, amazing. I mean, what an amazing job and an amazing prosecutor.

DANIEL RECHT: Well, that's my view of it.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. What did they do that makes them amazing, that makes them different than say the O. J. case or any other case that we're familiar with?

DANIEL RECHT: Well, you know, they had literally tons of evidence and hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and spent years on this thing and could have put on evidence for years literally, I suppose, and instead, they had to distill it down to 18 days. And that takes a whole lot of work to do it right and choreograph it right, and I say that in a positive sense. And they did just that. And so I think a lot of work went into--hundreds of hours went into the 18 days that we saw.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Tim Sullivan, you've been in a lot of courtrooms, how would you rate this on the scale of--of superiority in terms of the way--just the way the case was presented and the way the judge presided, et cetera, up till now?

TIM SULLIVAN: Jim, this is probably the best--the best put on prosecution case I've ever seen, and Judge Matsch is certainly one of the finest judges I've seen. I'll give you a comparison. In the World Trade Center bombing trial a couple of years ago, which I covered for Court TV, the prosecution took six months to put that case in, and Judge Duffy, Kevin Duffy in that case, another good judge, but he let it go on and on and let them do what they wanted to do. He threatened to stop it several times to limit them, but he never carried out his threats. That's the difference with Judge Matsch. He doesn't make hollow threats. He stops things when he wants them stopped. He doesn't hold side bars even. Yesterday he held a side bar for about 10 minutes.

JIM LEHRER: Explain what a side bar is.

TIM SULLIVAN: That's a private conference among the attorneys at the judge's bench, and of course, the gallery and the jury cannot hear what's going on there. Well, he held one yesterday for about 10 minutes after the jury left. He then apologized to the gallery for holding a side bar. He said, I don't like to do this, I don't like to slow things down and do things in secret. Now, he's done a lot in secret in his chambers, but he doesn't keep a jury waiting while he's doing that. And he doesn't keep the gallery waiting while he's doing that.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Mr. Recht, how did the defense import itself in fighting this--this good case that the prosecution put on?

DANIEL RECHT: Well, Jim, in answering that I think that we have to keep in mind that this is a death penalty case and the prosecution, the government wants to execute Mr. McVeigh. And I say that because from the very moment Mr. Jones got involved in this case--I've never talked to him--but I know with certainty he had in mind the death penalty. I've done these kind of cases. You have to know it from the beginning. So from the beginning he's thinking to himself he needs to save the life of or try to save the life of his client, and it's been a difficult task up until now. Now he hasn't put on his case, and I don't want to second-guess what's going to happen but up till now they've had a tough run of it.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Would you agree with that, Mr. Fleissner, that the mountain that faces the defense is rather high?

JIM FLEISSNER: Yes. As was just pointed out, the fact that this is a death penalty case is critical because what's different in a death penalty case is the same 12 jurors are going to decide the death penalty phase. And in deciding how to defend the case, the defense has to be careful not to alienate the jury, to put on elaborate conspiracy theories that the jury rejects and thereby destroy their credibility. Mr. Jones said before this trial that the prosecution's case was like the Titanic, and I'll tell you, I don't see any icebergs; I'm not even sure there are any ice cubes.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Do you see--based on your experience, Mr. Recht, where would you--where would you expect the defense to put its main guns in trying to knock this case down?

DANIEL RECHT: I think what we've got to do--I have to agree with what just was said--they can't come up with any grandiose conspiracy theory because they're going to lose credibility. What they have to do is take shots at the prosecution's case. There are lots of places where the prosecution's case is a little bit weak. I mean, there's somebody that says they see McVeigh in a Ryder truck before he supposedly renting the Ryder truck, and of course, the Fortiers are admitted liars, and, you know, it goes on and on with little things that they can--they can take pot shots at, and that's what they have to do, and hope that this jury even if they convict Mr. McVeigh, as it looks like they probably will, of first degree murder, will have some residual doubt and choose not to execute him because it's a circumstantial case, and they have some remaining doubt.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Tim Sullivan, based on your reporting, is that kind of the approach that you understand that the defense is going to take?

TIM SULLIVAN: I think it is, Jim. I think they're going to mount an all out assault on the identification witnesses. Only one witness, Eldon Elliot, came in here and said Tim McVeigh is the man who rented the Ryder truck. Only one witness said that. Now others saw him in a Ryder truck but of course saw him in a Ryder truck too soon, the day before it was rented. Mr. Jones will call witnesses who will back that up. He'll call other witnesses who say, yeah, I saw McVeigh in a truck but it was before the bomb truck was rented. And Mr. Jones is also expected to call witnesses who will say they saw other people in that truck who do not resemble Timothy McVeigh at all. He's going to try to raise the specter of John Doe 2 and John Doe 3. In fact, he has said in his opening that he will introduce evidence that there was another Ryder truck; that maybe the truck McVeigh was seen in wasn't the one that blew up the building. And of course, he'll attack the credibility of the FBI lab and try to knock down that explosives residue found on his client's clothing.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Mr. Fleissner, what is the job of the prosecution now, as the defense puts on its defense? They can't rest on their laurels, can they?

JIM FLEISSNER: No, they sure can't. They're going to, you know, go after the witnesses that are brought forward and test what they have. I don't think there will be the extent of cross-examination that you saw in the defense case, but I think the government will bring out the good information from the witnesses that they can, limit whatever damage is there, but I think they're essentially resting on the strength of the case that they brought. And if the defense chips away a little, I think they can live with that. If they fight too hard during the defense case, they can send the message that they think they're in some trouble based on the defense case.

JIM LEHRER: So they have the same problem that the defense has. You agree with Mr. Recht--well, it's actually your point--that they go into too big a conspiracy thing--if the defense does that--the prosecution has a similar problem; they can't run too scared, is that it?

JIM FLEISSNER: No, that's exactly right. I mean, the prosecution pared down the case. There are a number of eyewitnesses who were prepared to identify McVeigh, but there was good material for the defense to cross-examine them with. The prosecution chose not to call some of those eyewitnesses. If the defense takes the gamble of calling a few of those to raise some of the inconsistencies, the prosecution is going to get some good benefit out of those witnesses because they'll identify McVeigh in court. One such witness is Tom Kessinger, the Elliot's auto body employee who was not called in the government's case in chief.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Tim Sullivan, the word is thirty to forty witnesses, that's what the defense plans to call?

TIM SULLIVAN: Yeah. I think that's about right, Jim. Stephen Jones has indicated it shouldn't take any more than a week or two. I think there will be, you know, some conspiracy evidence might come in. He wants to point to other people. He can't just say it wasn't McVeigh and not come up with anybody else. He is trying to get in here a form of government informant who says that she warned the ATF that people out in Eastern Oklahoma in a white separatist compound were plotting to bomb buildings in Oklahoma during that period of time, and he may be able to get her in there. I think he has to raise the specter of other people having done this if it wasn't Tim McVeigh.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Mr. Recht, back to your point a while ago, this trial is moving so much faster than anybody anticipated and as all three of you have said, much faster than most similar trials have- -have moved. Is this mostly attributable to the judge?

DANIEL RECHT: No. I think it's attributable to three things. I think Hartzler also--the prosecutor--has done a good job of considering that juries get bored, and the jury got bored in O. J. and I don't know about--I mean, the case in New York that was referred to, but a six month trial, people get bored. It's much better to do, as Hartzler did, and that is to keep it sharp and to keep it emotional. And so I give a lot of the credit, frankly, to the prosecutor with the judge also.

JIM LEHRER: And the defense has to follow the same tone now, they also have to keep it short?

DANIEL RECHT: Well, I think that they do, but they would anyway. They just don't have the volume of evidence to put on that the prosecution could have put on. The other point to keep in mind, I think, and see if your other guests agree, that I think the prosecution's saving some good stuff, and we're going to see either in rebuttal or in the death penalty phase some strong evidence out of the prosecution that they didn't do in their case in chief.

JIM LEHRER: Is that possible, Mr. Fleissner?

JIM FLEISSNER: It certainly is. Joe Hartzler showed a tendency during the case to hold things back. A great example was, as your lead-in piece says, Michael Fortier identified the alley where Timothy McVeigh told Fortier he was going to leave his getaway car. Immediately after Fortier went off the stand, Hartzler called in and made the first public revelation that they had found the key to the Ryder truck in that very alley, so he's shown a propensity to do that sort of thing in the case.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Well, we'll see what happens. Thank you all three very much. UPDATE - CONDUCT UNBECOMING?

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight the Kelly Flinn case, economic diplomacy, and television program ratings. On the Flinn case, it came up today at a Senate hearing. The witnesses were Air Force Sec. Sheila Widnall, who is deciding whether to grant Lt. Flinn an honorable discharge, and Gen. Ronald Fogleman, the Air Force chief of staff. Here's part of an exchange between Fogleman and Sen. Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa.

SEN. TOM HARKIN, [D] Iowa: How many attorneys do you have in the Air Force running around, trying to find out how many people are committing adultery?

GENERAL RONALD FOGLEMAN, Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force: Senator, I don't think we have very many people in the Air Force, running around, trying to figure out who's committing adultery. In most of these cases what you discover is adultery is an incidental thing. To start with adultery is a crime under the uniform code of military justice. That's a set of laws that was enacted by the Congress for the military to abide by. So when--when--what we are interested in in the United States Air Force is not trying to regulate the sexual mores of America. We've got plenty of important things to do.

SEN. TOM HARKIN: I agree with you.

GENERAL RONALD FOGLEMAN: We are very much interested in a thing called the improper relationships that end up undermining the morale and discipline of an organization. And so the Lt. Kelly Flinn case, I would really like to see people not comment so much on it until they have all the facts. And we cannot get the facts out until you either have a court martial, or you have a resolution of the affair so that you can put the facts out, and the facts have not come out. Some of them are starting to come out. And I think that in the end this is not an issue of adultery. This is an issue about an officer who is entrusted to fly nuclear weapons, who disobeyed an order, who lied. That's what this is about. The adultery thing is the--that's the thing that has been spun up in the press. That's not what the Air Force is interested in.

SEN. TOM HARKIN: So the Air Force is not court-martialing her for adultery?

GENERAL RONALD FOGLEMAN: There is a specification of the charge of adultery because that starts the chain of events here where she ends up being charged with lying and--

SEN. TOM HARKIN: Isn't lying and disobeying orders also punishable under the UCMJ?

GENERAL RONALD FOGLEMAN: Yes.

SEN. TOM HARKIN: Then why wasn't she charged with that?

GENERAL RONALD FOGLEMAN: She is.

SEN. TOM HARKIN: But what I'm understanding of this case is that hundreds--seventy--court martial for adultery--it seemed to me that there are other reasons. I think the Air Force is looking ridiculous on this, and I think the military is too. Now you say- -you told me, and you used the word "incidental." You said it was incidental to what happened there. Why was she even charged with it? Why not charge her with the more egregious crimes, which I consider to be much more detrimental to the service--lying and disobeying orders?

GENERAL RONALD FOGLEMAN: Sir, if we did that, somebody would drop a quarter on us and ask us why we weren't charging this person for violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The wife of the young man involved in this has already written the Secretary a letter on this asking this question. There's more than one victim, as you get into these things, and so when you start to talk about- -discipline--

SEN. TOM HARKIN: No, but when it comes to things that get to things like adultery or fornication and things like that, it seems to me the best thing is to refer him to the chaplain.

GENERAL RONALD FOGLEMAN: And, sir, that's what we do.

SEN. TOM HARKIN: You know. That's the proper people to handle something like that. You can note it in their record, if you can do the Article 15, but to spend time and money--

GENERAL RONALD FOGLEMAN: Sir, that's what we do.

SEN. TOM HARKIN: --to prosecute people for this, I think it's making us look ridiculous.

GENERAL RONALD FOGLEMAN: And, unfortunately, I agree that it makes us look ridiculous because people don't have the facts. You start out--you take this person who does this, and you say, look, this is wrong, cease and desist.

SEN. TOM HARKIN: But you see, a lot of states still have blue laws. That's what I was referring to, Madame Secretary.

GENERAL RONALD FOGLEMAN: I grew up in a state that had blue laws.

SEN. TOM HARKIN: Yeah, they do, and I'm sure in some states it's still a crime to commit adultery, but they don't enforce it because they've got better things to do with their time. I'm saying if you've got adequate charges against someone of disobeying an order and lying, then that's what you go after, not the adultery. Forget about the adultery. I don't know--

GENERAL RONALD FOGLEMAN: Once the chain of events starts and you call someone in and you say cease and desist, and instead of ceasing and desisting they continue--

SEN. TOM HARKIN: That's a violation of an order.

GENERAL RONALD FOGLEMAN: Exactly.

SEN. TOM HARKIN: So you put 'em down for violating an order.

GENERAL RONALD FOGLEMAN: You do that.

SEN. TOM HARKIN: You court-martial 'em on it too, or Article 15 or whatever you want to.

GENERAL RONALD FOGLEMAN: And you also--because somebody has been aggrieved by the original act, that becomes part of the specifications. You have to look at the totality of the thing. That's the important thing. We're not interested in that.

SEN. TOM HARKIN: Any time you're involved in anything like adultery, there's always going to be some aggrieved party. I understand that. I certainly don't condone adultery or fornication or anything else, but I'm just saying that with all of the things that you have to do, you've got things like rape and sexual harassment and all the other things, disobeying orders, the things that really have to do with the form and structure and discipline of a military organization, to throw in this adultery thing, it just seems to me, just makes us look ridiculous, and I'll just end on that and to whatever extent we can send directions through the Appropriations Committee, as to the expenditure of taxpayers' dollars in this regard, I'd like to look at that because I guess I can't--there are plenty of other things. I'm glad you've enlightened me on the other aspects of this case, but it seems to me that--if that had been done and that had been the charges, I don't think you'd have any of this stuff happening in the press.

GENERAL RONALD FOGLEMAN: Sir, those have been part and parcel to these charges since the very first day.

SEN. TOM HARKIN: But I say, should they have been part and parcel? Should you have a re-examination of how your lawyers and your investigators are spending their time, if, in fact, hundreds, how many hundreds I don't know, were punished for the same crime. I'm beginning to wonder who's running around doing what.

JIM LEHRER: Air Force Secretary Widnall is expected to decide by Friday whether to grant Lt. Flinn an honorable discharge, or allow the court martial to go ahead. Flinn is charged with disobeying an order, lying, as well as adultery. FOCUS - FAIR EXCHANGE?

JIM LEHRER: Now, the government official as international salesman and to Elizabeth Farnsworth.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: This morning Commerce Sec. William Daley returned to Washington from a 10-day trade mission to Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, seeking telecommunications and energy markets for U.S. companies. Traveling with him were 31 corporate executives representing those interests, including Motorola, Raytheon, and Bell South. From day one the Clinton administration pushed economics and trade as crucial to U.S. foreign policy. The President made his close friend and former head of the Democratic National Committee, the late Ron Brown, Secretary of Commerce. Brown took the lead in promoting U.S. business abroad, even creating a war room at the Commerce Department, where more than 150 major contracts around the world were tracked daily. And Brown traveled continuously, often taking groups of business leaders with him. In China and elsewhere he met personally with foreign officials on behalf of American companies.

RON BROWN, Former Commerce Secretary: [October 1995] The United States truly believes that we have the best technology; that we have the highest quality products; and that they are priced competitively. But we also feel clearly that it's good for the United States; that competing at winning here in China helps the United States economy grow and helps create high wage, high quality jobs for the American people.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In all, Brown, who was killed last year during a mission to the former Yugoslavia, took at least 23 trips to 30 countries, including South Africa, Russia, and Indonesia. Executives from more than 200 companies traveled with him. Some critics argue taxpayer dollars shouldn't be used to promote business deals for corporations. And last year, the Center for Public Integrity and other public interest groups alleged invitations to participate in trade missions were direct payoffs for corporations contributing to President Clinton's re-election effort. The Commerce Department denied the allegations. At his confirmation hearings last January, William Daley said he would reform the way trade missions were organized.

WILLIAM DALEY, Commerce Secretary: There is a place for politics in our public life, but there is no place for politics in the Department of Commerce. If confirmed, I plan to take two immediate steps to address the concerns members of this committee and others have raised. First, I will defer all overseas trade missions and within 30 days conduct a top to bottom review of the procedures, rules, and criteria used to govern them. The second step I will take, if confirmed, is to vastly reduce the number of political appointees within the Department of Commerce.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In March, Daley held a press conference outlining new trade mission regulations, but he began by stressing the importance of the mission.

SEC. WILLIAM DALEY: The trade mission was continue to be productive and useful parts of our export efforts. To do less is tantamount to unilateral withdrawal from the global economic competition.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The new regulations include: business delegations will be chosen by a panel of mostly career Commerce Department officials, instead of mostly political appointees, as in the past; companies will be selected on the basis of relevance to the mission; business activity in the area to be visited; and diversity of the company's size, type, location, and demographics. A business's partisan political activities will be irrelevant to the selection process, and companies now must submit a formal application to be part of a trade mission, instead of being invited, as in the past.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now, two views of government trade trips. Jeffrey Garten worked under Ron Brown as Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade. He is now dean of the Yale School of Management and author of the new book " The Big Ten: The Big Emerging Markets and How They will Change Our Lives." And Claude Barfield is coordinator of trade policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He wrote the trade policy statement for the Reagan administration and is the author of several books on the subject. Thank you both for being with us. Mr. Garten, why are these trade missions necessary? What do they accomplish?

JEFFREY GARTEN, Dean, Yale School of Management: Well, I think in the broadest sense these trade missions are a symbol of changing American interests in the world economy. I believe that the centerpiece of our foreign policy in the future is going to have to revolve around closer commercial ties with emerging markets, in particular, like China, like India, like Brazil, and these trade missions are one component of really carrying that policy out.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Why would they be necessary, though? One could imagine a government, our government and our businesses having ties with those markets and not having trade missions. What did they do particularly well?

JEFFREY GARTEN: Well, the trade missions symbolize in the first instance American interest in linking our companies to the rest of the global economy, but secondly, we have an even narrower self- interest in that the growth of the American economy now is very dependent on exports. In fact, exports are about a third, account for about a third of our economic growth. And these trade missions say that the American government and American companies are working together to penetrate global markets, to sell American goods and services, and to create those jobs at home.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you think that's important too, or do you think it's that they don't work properly? CLAUDE BARFIELD, American Enterprise Institute: Well, I think--I have no problem with trade missions, but I think we have to go back and look at the first four years of the Clinton administration. And I do not doubt that Mr. Daley is reforming the system because he's in the spotlight. My problem--there are several problems I think with the way it's been explained. No. 1, the hype in the first four years was that somehow the trade missions are key, and Mr. Garten just reflected a little bit, a key to U.S. export growth, and that's just nonsense. And we are the world's No. 1 exporter. The trade missions probably affect maybe 1 or 2 percent. They're just not necessary, and there was the--what's really--what's really increasing our exports are the slogging of day to day details of price and quality that U.S. corporations have. The second thing is, as we've seen, and I, again, do not doubt that Mr. Daley is trying to reform this, there is a--there was a political connection here. You cannot ignore the fact that you did have money going to the Commerce Department for trade missions. I mean, you mentioned in your introduction, I think, one of the Nader groups. Common Cause has also raised the same question, with direct memos saying that if you pay $100,000, you get to go on a trade mission. Now--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You said money going to the Commerce Department.

CLAUDE BARFIELD: Excuse me. To the Democratic National Committee- -forgive me for that--not to the Commerce Department. In other words, political money in which you expected a kind of payoff. Now, I don't doubt that Mr. Daley, as I say, will be very careful about this, but the problem is that as long as we have a system in which people contribute money to parties and expect a quid pro quo, we're going to have a problem here.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. Mr. Garten, respond to both of those points, one, that they're not really necessary to prevent exports, and two, that there's the potential for corruption.

JEFFREY GARTEN: Well, I don't think anybody would say that trade missions are the major force of American exports, but I think we have to look at what's happening in the world economy, the competition, the fact that the presidents of countries like France, or the chancellor of Germany, or the prime minister of England, they're all leading trade missions; they're all helping their companies break into markets where there are huge government barriers. And I think if we're absent from that over time we will suffer. It isn't the principal export generation but it is part of a much broader policy which says the world economy is very important; the success of the American companies are very important; and the American government is going to be behind it. Now, when it comes to the corruption angle, I think that this is totally misrepresented. If you look at who was on the trade missions in the first Clinton administration, there was a huge number of major Republican contributors as well. I don't--I don't argue with the fact that we ought to be very rigorous in picking who goes on the missions and we ought to be very rigorous in terms of what kinds of projects the American government lends support to, but if something happened that was untoward, it was such a small part of what is a--really the shifting American interest in the world--and I think it's been blown tremendously out of proportion.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What about the argument that if we don't do it, we'll be left out? I mean, just last week, Jacques Chirac, the president of France, was in China signing a huge Airbus deal.

CLAUDE BARFIELD: Mr. Chirac--the necessity for Mr. Chirac to go- -and I think probably for France it is necessary for him to go-- says something about the weakness of French companies, not about the fact that this is necessary. As I keep coming back to, this is- -whether--I might agree or disagree with the number of trade missions--but this is a minor negligible part of the reason that we're a major exporter. We are a major exporter, and in China in sector after sector, because of the--of our internal economic strength. And this is just frost on the cake. It allows Sec. Brown or Sec. Mosbacher or whoever, to run around the world and say that this number of deals came from us. The other thing, if you look back at the Commerce Department, a lot of it in the first administration, as some of Jeffrey Garten's colleagues have said, since they left the government, had to do with--they would pick people who were going to sign deals and then claim the deal for themselves, or at times, as the "Wall Street Journal" or "New York Times," I forget, one or the other, did a survey after the--after a trade mission to see actually what was signed, and it was just a lot of hype that allows political leaders to take credit for things that I think the private sector is actually doing anyway.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Garten, can you give us an example of where it might not be hype, where it was really important to have this partnership and these trade missions?

JEFFREY GARTEN: Well, I think, if you look at the actual projects that the Clinton administration has supported, in most of the instances, it was heated competition with companies that were supported by their governments. I'll give you an example. In China, when Sec. Brown pressed the case for McDonnell-Douglas, it was a heated competition with Airbus and McDonnell-Douglas won. There was a big project in Brazil where Raytheon, Merck & Company, was competing with Thompson, which was a French company subsidized by the French government. There are quite a few very big projects which generate substantial jobs at home where if the American government hadn't been in support of our companies, I don't think we would have won, but I don't want to hinge this on any one company or any one project. The point is that if you look at where all the growth in demand is going to come from, as I've written in my new book, "The Big Ten," it's in big emerging markets like Brazil, like India, like China, where their governments are playing a very, very active role in awarding contracts. And if the American government doesn't show up in one form or another, we won't win the contracts because those governments expect--they expect our government to show up in the same way that France or England or Germany or Japan did.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What about that?

CLAUDE BARFIELD: I think it's a totally false picture of the way the world works. Our government can only show up in one or two contracts, let's say a month or a year, and there are hundreds of thousands of contracts being made. The other thing that I think down the road will haunt us, and I keep coming back to the point about where U.S. firms are and competitively now, is absent politicization of the process U.S. firms will do very well. And I don't think that foreign governments expect routinely that our Commerce Department or whoever intervenes in each contract, because they can't, but we have actually in the first four years of the administration, I think they're being more careful now, we didn't say that we're doing this defensively. Ron Brown and even the President said this is the way the world is going to work. I think ultimately that will hurt our firms because our firms could win without this, and all it does is give the excuse to the Chiracs of the world and the Kohls, who have weaker companies potentially, I think, in the future, to intervene and say we're only doing it because the Americans are doing it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, I think that's all we have time for, but we'll come back to this sometime later. Thank you both very much.

CLAUDE BARFIELD: Thank you. FINALLY - RATING TV RATINGS

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, how the new TV ratings system is playing in Peoria. Kwame Holman reports.

KWAME HOLMAN: Spurred by last year's telecommunications reform law, the broadcast, cable, and motion picture industries introduced a new system to rate the content of TV movies and television shows. The industry put its system in place last February. It created six age-based categories to be assigned to all programs, except news and sports: TV-Y--suitable for all children; TV-Y7--suitable for children age seven and older; TV-G--for general audiences, the program contains little or no violence or sexual situations; TV-PG encourages parental guidance, since the program may contain limited violence and some sexually suggestive situations; TV-14 appropriate only for children over 14 because of strong language and sexual content; and TV-M for mature adults, unsuitable for children under 17 because of graphic violence and/or explicit sexual content. TV producers, networks, and movie makers rate their own programs, while local TV stations, but local stations may override a show's original rating and give it another. The ratings eventually will work in conjunction with the so-called V-chip--an electronic device being installed in new television sets over the next two years that will allow parents to block out programs they feel are inappropriate for their children. But the ratings system has been controversial since its birth, drawing criticism from parents' groups and scrutiny from Congress. On Monday, the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications held an unusual field hearing in Peoria, Illinois, to see how the television industry's new guidelines were playing in middle America. Republican and Democratic pollsters selected 300 families to participate. To qualify, they had to have a child under 18 living in the home and had to have viewed at least an hour of television a night in the week before the hearing. Chairman Billy Tauzin of Louisiana invited his subcommittee members and three representatives of the TV industry to listen to what parents had to say.

SPOKESMAN: This meeting of the field hearing of the Subcommittee of Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection will please come to order.

KWAME HOLMAN: The town meeting style hearing was moderated by former NBC Correspondent Sander Vanocer.

MODERATOR: I'm honored to be here. I can't imagine--excuse me-- why I was selected, other than the fact I did live here during the war.

KWAME HOLMAN: Audience members were encouraged to ask questions.

PATTI STERLING: I don't normally watch TV more than an hour a week. I specifically did this because I wanted to see what my 15 year old son was watching. For me to watch "Seinfeld" and they talk about orgasms, I don't want my 15-year-old son knowing that--I am horrified at what I watched the last week on television. And I don't consider myself a conservative person, but I could not believe some of the things that I saw on television and the ratings that they were given.

LISA JOHNSON: I appreciate with what you are trying to do with the TV rating systems, I appreciate it very much. I do believe that a lot of the television shows are mis-rated. A lot of them should be mature audiences only. I'm a little nervous. But one thing that I do want to say is that I am ultimately responsible for the raising of a child. I do not like TV in general because it's a negative impact on my son, and I've chosen and I've decided within myself that if it's not appropriate for him, I will not watch it until the private industry changes.

KWAME HOLMAN: Industry representatives, including Jack Valenti of the Motion Picture Association of America, defended the ratings system, but acknowledged it had some problems early on.

JACK VALENTI, Motion Picture Association of America: I think that a number of the shows that are on the air now are mis-rated. We have only been on the air about four months. And we are just getting the hang of this. It takes time; we have never done this before. This is brand new, and when you think about how you put a rating on, it's very subjective. As I told you, 2000 hours a day, we couldn't have a panel of parents doing that because logistically it's totally impossible.

KWAME HOLMAN: Eddie Fritts is president of the National Association of Broadcasters.

EDDIE FRITTS, National Association of Broadcasters: When the V- chip technically is in place and this parent doesn't want that programming in her home, certainly all she has to do is hit that one button, and the V-chip--you won't have to look in your TV Guide, you won't have to look--if you block out that type of programming, it will be blocked out all the way through the process.

KWAME HOLMAN: But most parents lining up at the microphones were disappointed, both with both the programming and the ratings that accompany it.

WOMAN: I sat and watched with my child an episode of Daffy Duck I thought was pretty safe. I watched Daffy Duck talk a bull down in his self-esteem, hand him a handgun, and convince him to commit suicide. The bull was this close when he realized what he was doing. Children can't even watch cartoons anymore. What are you going to do? Why have we let TV get so far?

KELLY FIDDES: You can't have "Friends," on at 7 o'clock, rated PG, and the first comment is: "Has that girl slept with every man in every state in the country," and have the theme of that whole show be sexual and say that it is appropriate for kids under 14-- it is not appropriate. And V-chip or not--

JACK VALENTI: One of the problems the people of Peoria are telling us, and one that I certainly can understand, is not so much being critical of the rating system itself but of the programs which the ratings system rates. Big difference. I am as utterly flabbergasted as you are by some of the programs that I see and some of the movies that I see. I wouldn't defend some of these movies if my life and job depended it, but wee are not censors. Please understand that. We are not censors. We are trying only to rate what is on that screen.

KWAME HOLMAN: But there also were parents who praised the ratings system.

PARENT: I am sure I am in the minority here tonight, but I love the TV ratings system; I love TV. I'm not ashamed to say that we watch a lot of TV at our house. I think it provides another tool for me as a parent. It is not just me saying, no, you can't watch this. It's that, no, that has that rating and we are definitely not going to watch it.

ROBERT WEIBAL: What I might suggest to the panel is that you sell it from the perspective of what is it intended to do; it is not intended to clean up television programming. It is not intended to alter anything that is currently shown on TV. It is intended to be used as a tool so that I, as a parent, can evaluate what my children are watching.

KWAME HOLMAN: Throughout the hearing the committee showed clips, including this one from the Fox network's new series "Millennium," showing a man burying a human body in a pile of leaves. The show was assigned a TV-14 rating. Eleven year old Katie Lambert said the rating doesn't reflect the content of the show.

KATIE LAMBERT: About the rating, it's PG-14. I think that's like too low of rating because that shows people killing people and hiding them in the leaves. I mean, that's not something like that a 14-year-old should be watching.

KWAME HOLMAN: That point was picked up by Democrat Ed Markey of Massachusetts, a longtime critic of the industry and its ratings system. .

ED MARKEY: Every single poll, 70, 80, 90 percent of parents want more content-based information. How much violence, how much sex, how bad is the language; I will decide for my children; I don't want the Hollywood executives to play the experts and to make the decisions for me. Let me make the decision in Peoria or any other community in the United States.

KWAME HOLMAN: A Peoria parent agreed with Markey.

TONY DE CEANNE: You just put forth a very substandard product hoping to buy yourself more time to continue peddling the trash that is on TV today. And I don't see how you can put that forward with an honest face and say that you gave this your best shot, when Mr. Markey has right before you a perfect solution to your problems. It tells the content. It's still broad based and vague, and it would be very easy to implement, and yet, you're still hiding behind this umbrella of, well, we're only four months into our infancy.

SPOKESMAN: Mr. Valenti, recognizing the people in this city never speak their mind, would you answer this question.

JACK VALENTI: I have no comment.

KWAME HOLMAN: Three hours of discussion yielded some suggestions from the Peoria families. They said the ratings should remain on the TV screen longer and that the industry should provide more information on why a program received a particular rating. Afterward, two participants who originally called the ratings worthless, said the dialogue had changed their view.

SUSAN CARTER: I changed my opinion on how I felt about the television ratings. I now think that they are valuable.

ANN GRAY: I'm sure I will use it as somewhat of a guidelines, especially if they improve the rating system. I'll be able to use it a little bit more.

KWAME HOLMAN: The entire hearing was carried live by local PBS station WTVP. The Federal Communications Commission is expected to pass final judgment on the TV ratings system perhaps by the end of the summer. As part of its review the FCC will hold its own public hearing next month in Washington. RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, the prosecution rested in the Oklahoma City bombing trial. The defense begins its case tomorrow and President Clinton criticized the fashion industry for using ads that glamorize drug abuse. We'll you see on-line and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.