The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Monday, Defense Sec. Cheney and Philippine officials failed to resolve a growing dispute over U.S. bases there, police clashed with demonstrators protesting his visit. Romania's leader threatened to severely punish those responsible for yesterday's anti-government attacks. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: After the News Summary, we look at what protesters [FOCUS - SECOND REVOLUTION?] say is the coming of the second revolution in Romania with analysts Daniel Nelson and Vladimir Tismaneanu. Then comes a report [FOCUS - GETTING SLAPPED] from California about the costs of speaking out, Charlayne Hunter- Gault's Black History Month conversation [SERIES - BLACK HISTORY MONTH] about Malcolm X and the [FOCUS - ELDERLY SUICIDE] faces behind the facts of suicide by the elderly.NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Defense Sec. Dick Cheney went to the Philippines today to discuss a dispute over U.S. bases there, but nothing was resolved. Pres. Corazon Aquino refused to meet with Cheney because the U.S. Congress has proposed cutting payments for the bases. Instead, Cheney met with Philippines Defense Chief Fidele Ramos and other officials. Cheney reaffirmed ties between the two countries but he warned that the U.S. will stay only as long as the Philippine people wish it to stay and only if the terms negotiated are acceptable to both. Later Sec. Cheney flew to Sibic Bay Naval Base to inspect a U.S. helicopter carrier and to speak with a group of Marines and sailors. There were several anti-U.S. demonstrations during Cheney's visit, including this one at the U.S. embassy in Manila, where police used tear gas to break up the crowd of about 500 protesters. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: The party that has ruled Japan for 34 years has won again. The Liberal Democratic Party did so by a wide margin despite the fact that some of its top leaders have lost their jobs over corruption charges. We have a report on yesterday's election narrated by Roderick Pratt of Worldwide Television News.

MR. PRATT: The ruling Liberal Democrats may have lost have seats, but they still attract loyal support. Despite last year's scandals, they retained a strong majority, winning 275 of the 512 seats in the lower house. Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu keeps his post and when it was clear the LDP had won enough seats to control key house committees, he painted a duramadol, a traditional sign to show a wish has been fulfilled. The financial community was relieved the pro business party had won but after an early rise, the stock exchange's leading index fell amidst concern about higher interest rates. Socialist Party Leader Takoko Dori strengthened her position with the GASP increasing its number of seats from 83 to 136. Other opposition parties lost ground, leading to concern that Japan might be returning to an old style two party structure. The Socialist success is due largely to Dori's own appeal, which has drawn many women into active politics for the first time. But Dori conceded the failure of the opposition's main campaign pledge demanding abolition of an unpopular sales tax.

MR. LEHRER: Prime Minister Kaifu spoke about the United States at a news conference after the election. He said he would like to meet with Pres. Bush as soon as possible to discuss economic problems between the two nations. Romania's President, Ian Iliescu, today threatened to severely punish the leaders of yesterday's violent anti-government demonstration. Several hundred people stormed and ransacked government headquarters today. There was another anti-government rally this evening, but thousands of coal miners marched through Romania's capital in support of the government. This afternoon there was heavy security around government headquarters when Romania's leaders met to discuss what to do about the demonstration. Iliescu called the demonstrators "counter revolutionaries interested in de-stabilizing the country." East German Premier Hans Modrow said today, "I will not go down on my knees to beg for economic aid from West Germany." He made the comment during a briefing on his meeting last week with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in which the two talked about German reunification. Kohl refused an immediate aid request for $9 billion, saying his government would wait until after next month's East German elections.

MR. LEHRER: Back in this country, rain and snow are causing problems in the South and West this Presidents Day Holiday. Heavy storms dumped snow from Southern California to Washington State. In Arizona, 17 inches of snow were reported on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. In the Southeast, flooding has caused six deaths in Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, and North Carolina. Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus declared a state of emergency for all 82 counties. Officials there said flood waters damaged at least 400 homes. Hundreds of people were forced from their homes throughout the region.

MR. MacNeil: In South Africa today, Pres. F.W. DeKlerk said he will accept an invitation to a summit of African leaders in Zayre this Saturday. The invitation is seen as a reward for freeing Nelson Mandela. And finally in the news, two Soviet Cosmonauts returned to earth after nearly six months in the space station Mire. They touched down safely in Soviet Central Asia. The two had conducted several medical and scientific experiments, including the first American experiment on board a Soviet station. Last week they were replaced by another crew that would also spend six months on the space station.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the new troubles in Romania, the high cost of speaking out, Malcolm X and suicide by the elderly. FOCUS - SECOND REVOLUTION?

MR. LEHRER: The new violence in Romania is our lead story tonight. Yesterday 100s of demonstrators took over the Bucharest Headquarters of the provisional National Salvation Front Government. They demanded that its Communist Leader Ion Iliescu step down and the Governments secret police, the Securitate, be completely disbanded. It was the most violent protest since former dictator Nikoli Ceausescu was ousted last December. We have two views of what is happening from Gabby Rado of Independent Television News.

MR. RADO: The Headquarters of the National Salvation Front, the Romanian Foreign Ministry Building, was under heavy guard this morning after the biggest challenge so far to the Fronts authority. There was plenty of evidence of the violence of yesterday's demonstration. Inside President Iliescu broadcast a message to the nation warning those responsible for the anti government protest that they would be severely punished. With members of the opposition parties looking on Iliescu said the demonstrators were remnants of a dictatorial regime which left a deep sickness in Romanian society. Yesterday was just the culmination of a series of protests by those disillusioned since the Romanian revolution. About 500 of them slipped inside the building manhandling MInisters and ransacking offices. Finding among other things books inscribed with the hammer and sickle supporting popular suspicions that old guard Communists were still in power. The crowd demanded a complete change. Professor Rosvan Maguriano is a personal friend of both President Iliescue and the Prime Minister Fatroman. But today in London he admitted that the leadership hadn't rid the country of the Securitate's influence.

PROFESSOR MAGURIANO: Some was found two months in the Securitate's cells. They visited the head of the Securitate Office and they told me that last week that some of the people which they met two months ago are still there in the office.

MR. RADO: The exact scale of the Army's involvement in the bloodshed of the revolution is perhaps the most hotly debated issue in Romania today. Immediately after Ceausescu's fall the army were hailed unconditionally as the nations saviors. Now it is clear at least in part guilty. The Defense Minister General Militari was forced to resign last Friday because of his reluctance to carry out the purge.

SPOKESMAN: If you realize that at the very beginning it was a kind of cover up. People wanted to present that the Army wasn't involved in the suppression of the revolution. Actually the Army was involved in the very beginning. So now that perhaps the truth will appear.

MR. RADO: There seems to be little doubt that the National Salvation front has lost support in recent weeks because of public unease about its closeness to the remnants of the old authoritarian regime. That popular dissatisfaction may cost the Front the election due to be held in late May.

MR. LEHRER: Two perspectives now on the anti government violence in Romania. They are those of Daniel Nelson and Analysts of Central European Politics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the Author of Romanian Politics in the Causescue era. And Vladimir Tismaneanu an exile from Romania since 1981. Now a Fellow at the Ford Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and a Lecturer on European Politics at the University of Pennsylvania. First who are the people doing the demonstrating this time.

MR. TISMANEANU: First of all the demonstrations in Bucharest yesterday as much as I could understand from conversations with the people from BBC and other sources. Everything started as a peaceful demonstration in front of the Securitate, the secret police headquarters. A demonstration organized by a group of intellectuals called a Group for Social Dialogue. One week ago they sent a memorandum to the National Salvation Front Council calling for the disbandment of the Securitate and they have been waiting and waiting for an answer and no answer came from Mr. Iliesue or other leaders. So they organized a peaceful demonstration. There was no violence there. But later they were joined by other people apparently. The demonstrators moved from the building where the Securitate Headquarters are to the Governments headquarters. I think the most striking characteristic of that demonstrations I just watched the film you showed us as almost an archaic nature of the gathering. I mean it was almost a mob scene. And following what I heard reactions not only on the part of the Nationals Salvation Council, which isthe provisional Government. For the time being it tends to be a permanent provisional government and that is a danger but also the opposition parties which are under this umbrella called the Coalition for National Unity. They all said that violence should not be the answer to the problems created by the Fronts policy of procrastination because the problem is not dismantling the police creates a state of frustration and discontent among Romanians, the secret police I mean.

MR. LEHRER: That is the problem.

MR. TISMANEANU: This is the major problem, I think.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree with that Mr. Nelson that the Securitate still being there as a symbol and also as a reality is what is causing all of this?

MR. NELSON: That is certainly part of the problem. Obviously the Iliescu Government did not move forthrightly enough and quickly enough to complete dismantle the Securitate, the secret police.

MR. LEHRER: Now why what is the problem?

MR. NELSON: Well part of it is their own insecurity of power. Moving against the Securitate would have taken a lot of political clout in and of themselves and I think that they were concerned, well they knew that they didn't have that political clout. That is one of the problems.

MR. LEHRER: Now wait a minute, I mean, they just had a revolution that was a reaction to the secret police, if they weren't going to have political clout then when in the World would they have political clout?

MR. NELSON: Well certainly in a sense they had to develop in a sense a constituency. This Front that took over that waltzed in to power in December in a sense did not have a clear cut constituency. As a matter of fact quite the contrary. It was burdened by its own lack of legitimacy from the outset.

MR. LEHRER: So it is a kind of an un organized revolution?

MR. NELSON: Unorganized revolution, unprepared revolution. Really not a revolution at least from the sense from being lead by a core leadership. This was a popular uprising against a hated dictator. And so they didn't have this constituency and so they were going to try and build it and they have done a pretty poor job of doing that.

MR. LEHRER: So what is your view of why they have not moved against the secret police?

MR. TISMANEANU: I think that they don't have the motivation to move because I think that the people who are running Romania right now are not exactly those who made the revolution in Romania. So it is a kind of a gap between the rulers and the revolutionaries.

MR. LEHRER: The people made the revolution and then there was a vacuum so?

MR. TISMANEANU: Yes it was a spontaneous uprising from below against a hated dictatorship and its hated secret police and then there were those who happened to be perhaps the only political people in town who really took over power. There was a vacuum of power at that moment and these people appeared.

MR. LEHRER: Make sure I understand this. These were not the people who lead the revolution. It was not like the Havel's like in Czechoslovakia or Solidarity in Poland.

MR. TISMANEANU: Let's face Ilescue is neither Lech Walsesa not Vaslov Hoval. We deal with a very skilled and very respectable a charismatic aparachic. He is a fellow whose career was in the party. He may have had a lot of problems with Causescue indeed as say Gorbachev despised Breznev's period of stagnation or Stalin's period of terror but at the same time I think Iliescu thinks the system the socialist system can be humanized.

MR. NELSON: Just a little interjection. It is probably true that Iliescu would have made a very good leader for Romania 10 years ago. That is to say ten years ago we might have equated him with something that is more akin to Hoval in the sense that he had that potential but now it is too little and too late.

MR. LEHRER: Alright too late but what happens now? He said today that these people who were demonstrating were counter revolutionaries. he said that they were going to be severely punished. What is going to happen?

MR. NELSON: That was a mistake. I think he will rue the day that he called them counter revolutionaries because these people that were out on the street are among those who were shot at and in a sense brought Iliescu to power. So that was probably a mistake and he may recant that.

MR. LEHRER: Then what happens?

MR. NELSON: Well you know the Front and Iliescu have a made a series of blunders here. First packing the Executive Committee of the Front with people with past connections with the Ceausescu regime. That was a mistake. A mistake to try to continue to mobilize support by bussing in and trucking in as we saw in the film clip miners and so on. That reeks of past procedures as well and of course not opening up the media to alternative political voices. These mistakes one after the other have been a bad omen for a smooth transition to a democratic regime. So I am not sanguine actually about the clear and smooth approach to the elections.

MR. LEHRER: And so when some of the students said yesterday that this is the beginning of the second revolution in Romania. Is there some truth to that?

MR. TISMANEANU: I think that at this point Romania is moving quite abruptly from the pace of revolutionary euphoria to the pace of popular rage. I think that at this moment people are really unhappy and I agree with Dan with Iliescus blunder. I mean he did just the opposite of what East German Prime Minister Hans Modrow did. At the moment that the pressure from below was coming for the disbandment of the secret police after he tried to keep the secret police going.

MR. LEHRER: You mean Modrow did in East Germany?

MR. TISMANEANU: Yes he just backed off.

MR. LEHRER: Yes. same thing.

MR. TISMANEANU: When the pressure came Iliescu takes this challenging almost provoking attitude and uses these terms like counter revolutionary. This term had been used in 56 by a Hungarian Prime Minister and he deeply regretted that. Causescues last speech, televised speech on December 21, 1989 used the term about counter revolutionary hooligans. So they had the same language.

MR. LEHRER: Same thing. Alright, Mr. Nelson what about the role of the Army in all of this. Our little intro piece the ITN piece mentioned that the Army has got some problems. How are they going to manifest themselves if this new revolution continues to gather steam?

MR. NELSON: Well the Romanian Army has had a lot of problems for a long period of time. It had considerable difficulty with Caeusescue. It was distant from that regime. And so when a popular revolt began to take place I think the Army particularly its senior officers considered which side to come down on. They were reluctant go on the side of the people. As a matter of fact I think that was a mistake in the Western world to think that they had initially.

MR. LEHRER: Right it was reported on this program and elsewhere that the Army had gone to the side of the revolution.

MR. NELSON: They went on the side of the establishment politicians who had stepped to the floor namely the Front Iliescu and others.

MR. LEHRER: You mean they came first and said okay Army it is alright.

MR. NELSON: Well the chronology I think was that the Caeusescu regime was clearly not be able to hold off, to stay the course sort of speak.

MR. LEHRER: Okay.

MR. NELSON: Then the Army had a choice to either continue shooting the population and to continue to fulfill the orders of Caeusescu himself.

MR. LEHRER: What are they likely to do now?

MR. NELSON: Well I think for the moment they are going to try to back the Front as long as the street violence does not escalate. I think there is clearly a point where the military would throw in the towel sort of speak and say that this is not what we can abide by and they would effect in a sense a military hunta for a period of time. Bear in mind that the Army is not unified either. last week there were demonstrations of younger officers demanding more democracy and one thing that would constrain the Army from doing anything is its own disunity.

MR. LEHRER: Do the people trust the Army?

MR. TISMANEANU: Oh I think so.

MR. LEHRER: Because they have been independent and have made some independent decisions?

MR. TISMANEANU: Because it was one of the institutions the most discriminated against under Caeusescu. Caeusescu clearly favored the Securitate against the Army. The Army was assigned kind of menial and humiliating jobs like harvesting crops and things like that and working for Ceausescu's projects. So for the Army the first thing they need is professionalization and they want to be a real professional Army. The Army is perceived a guarantor of the political order. At the same time I would say there is very little if any militarist tradition in the Romanian political culture. So I would have doubts about a coup attempt.

MR. LEHRER: Well we have to leave it there. Gentlemen thank you both very much.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the Newshour the price of free speech, remembering Malcomb X and elderly suicide. FOCUS - GETTING SLAPPED

MR. MacNeil: Next, the cost of free speech in this country. It's part of the American tradition for people to feel free to speak out on public issues, to write letters to government officials, and to talk at public hearings without fear of intimidation, but now two University of Denver researchers say more Americans are ending up in serious and expensive legal trouble because they speak out. We have a report from Lee McEachern of public station KQED in San Francisco.

MR. MC EACHERN: Arnie Allen has been driving a snow plow in Squaw Valley, California, for 14 winters. In summer, he runs a bulldozer, grading land for local developers. He's never been much involved in public controversies. He doesn't consider himself an activist, but when Allen heard a large developer was planning to build a large resort and golf course directly atop the community's underground drinking supply, he got worried.

ARNIE ALLEN: My main concern is my drinking water. What's going to happen to the drinking water, if there's a golf course above my wells.

MR. MC EACHERN: What would the golf course do?

MR. ALLEN: Well, golf courses need herbicides, and pesticides, and all kinds of chemicals to make them green, to get rid of the rodents, to make them grow faster, and I didn't want to have polluted drinking water.

MR. MC EACHERN: Allen agreed to join with several of his neighbors in opposing the development. But when their opposition persisted, the developer sued Allen and several of the others for $75 million. That developer, the Perini Land and Development Company, wants to transform this site on Squaw Valley Meadow into this 400 room condominium resort complex. Under pressure from local citizens, the Perini Company eventually agreed to restrict chemical use on the proposed golf course, but in exchange, Perini demanded a written commitment that those concerned citizens would never again speak out against the project before any government agency.

MR. ALLEN: I call it the gag portion that you could not go out and oppose directly or indirectly the project, but I didn't know it was in there anyway. I never read the agreement. I didn't know I was really a part of the agreement anyway.

MR. MC EACHERN: Allen admits to being unschooled in the ways of the legal world. He did stay out of the resort controversy for nearly two years and concentrated on running his business. One day though he simply wrote a letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers again opposing the Perini project. That's when developer Perini hit him with a lawsuit.

MR. ALLEN: I didn't know what the heck this was all about. It was a big package and I was getting sued for what did I do, and then there was the letter I had written to the Corps of Engineers asking for a public hearing and I said, this is it?

MR. MC EACHERN: Five people in this small skiing village received identical packages of legal documents. All five had written letters either to the Corps of Engineers or to the local newspaper opposing the Perini project. All five were sued by Perini. The Squaw Valley case is just one of many examples where citizens who get involved get sued for millions of dollars. Pediatrician John Bolton of Mill Valley, California, has spoken out for several years about the hazards of drinking raw, unpasteurized milk, a product sold mostly in California health food stores. Four years ago, when Dr. Bolton told a congressional subcommittee about deadly bacteria which raw milk which sometimes contains, he was sued for $110 million by a raw milk producer. It was the second time the dairy had sued him.

DR. JOHN BOLTON, Pediatrician: And my opinion as to why those suits were filed is that they were to try to shut me up. They were harassment suits. It's hard to go to sleep at night when you've got a lawsuit for $110 million hanging over your head.

MR. MC EACHERN: Both suits against Bolton were dismissed, but he now pays $1900 a year in libel insurance to protect his right to speak out. Last year, an outspoken California conservation group was even sued by a state agency, the California Department of Fish and Game. The Department had scheduled a hunting season on mountain lions, but the Mountain Lion Preservation Foundation thwarted those plans with petition drives, demonstrations and legal challenges. In apparent frustration, Fish & Game filed a lawsuit against the Preservation Foundation. Only after a public outcry was the lawsuit dropped. In San Francisco, two citizens who accused police officers of brutality were themselves sued by the policemen for libel. In one of those cases, the citizen was presented with a lawsuit just moments before she was scheduled to testify against an officer. Her attorney described that as an effort at intimidation. In Northern California, members of the Sierra Club went before a federal agency to oppose a proposed timber cutting permit. In response, the timber company sued the Sierra Club and other defendants, asking $11 million in damages. Each of these cases is a SLAPP according to researchers who have studied them and scores of similar cases. SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, suits designed to use the courts to stifle public debate. Many SLAPP suits may not even be intended to win in court. It is enough that they intimidate, that they frighten their targets into silence or inaction. In that way, researchers who have studied the SLAPP phenomenon say lawsuits are used as an instrument of political power.

JANICE FLANAGAN: To see these people throttled, so to speak, is too bad.

MR. MC EACHERN: Janice Flanagan is a neighbor of Arnie Allen and Vice President of the Squaw Valley Property Owners Association. Her home overlooks the meadow where the Perini Company wants to build its resort. Flanagan says by the time the Army Corps of Engineers convened a public hearing about the project, some people were afraid to speak out.

JANICE FLANAGAN, Squaw Valley Resident: In fact, I went to some of these people who said, I'm not going to speak, and I said, would you let me take your name as being someone who was afraid to speak, and they said no way. I feel sorry for them, I really do.

MR. MC EACHERN: And they said they were afraid of being sued?

MS. FLANAGAN: They are afraid of being sued. They don't have the money to defend themselves.

MR. MC EACHERN: In a remarkable public notice, the Corps of Engineers acknowledging the fear generated by the Perini lawsuit was forced to accept anonymous comments for its public hear.

GEORGE PRING, University of Denver: That seems to me a bizarre result to have happen in an open democratic society, where people ought to be able to go in and duke it out face to face and let the chips fall where they may.

MR. MC EACHERN: Professors George Pring and Penelope Canan of the University of Denver are conducting a nationwide study of SLAPPs, funded by the National Science Foundation. They say such lawsuits seem to be on the increase across the country. Canan, a sociologist, and Pring, a lawyer, have compiled a study list of more than 160 SLAPP cases.

PROF. CANAN: We assume we have just really been looking at the tip of the iceberg. We have never found a jurisdiction that we've looked in that we didn't find one.

PR0F. PRING: These are not extremists by and large from either the right or left or professional activists who are getting sued, so it's basically the folks that don't want, oh, a supermarket going in down the corner or don't want a shopping center being built behind their house or are upset about things that are happening in their schools, perfectly normal middle class America.

MR. MC EACHERN: Canan and Pring say the lawsuits which they're studying are usually filed by people who are more comfortable with conflict in a courtroom than conflict in the arena of public opinion.

PENELOPE CANAN, University of Denver: They use the key to the courtroom of a lawsuit and they change the nature of what they're fighting about. Whether it was zoning over here, it's now libel. Whether it was environmental pollution, it's now an interference with my economic advantage.

PROF. PRING: When I'm representing a developer, I would expect citizen opposition, I would expect even public lawsuits as part of my costs of doing business. On the other hand, when you as a citizen reads something in the paper that says United States Government hearings are going to be held on whether to give up this valley for development or keep it in wilderness and you elect to go down to that hearing and speak your mind, pro development or anti-development, were you contemplating as the cost of your doing business as a citizen the fact that you would the next day face a $15 million lawsuit? I don't think so.

MR. MC EACHERN: Back in Squaw Valley, some local citizens say that by now almost no one is willing to stand up and publicly oppose the Perini resort project, but Perini Vice President Phil Brubaker denies that his firm is engaged in a SLAPP lawsuit.

MR. MC EACHERN: Was it coincidental that you laid lawsuits on these folks just before a hearing before a federal agency.

PHILIP BRUBAKER, Perini Land and Development Co.: We felt it responsible on our part to put them on notice that we would regard any further opposition in addition to what had already been done as exacerbating a breach of contract.

MR. MC EACHERN: You put them on notice? You filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against them.

MR. BRUBAKER: That's right.

MR. MC EACHERN: That's what you call putting them on notice?

MR. BRUBAKER: That's right.

MR. MC EACHERN: And so you truly did intend to let them know if you speak out at this Corps of Engineers meeting, you're in trouble?

MR. BRUBAKER: That's right, that's right, because of agreements previously reached.

MR. MC EACHERN: But in the case of Rick Sylvester, a defendant in the Perini suit, there was no previous agreement. Sylvester and at least one other co-defendant never promised not to speak out. In fact, Sylvester made a point of opposing the Perini project in several long letters to the local newspaper.

RICK SYLVESTER, Squaw Valley Resident: We never signed the settlement. I kept writing my letters to the editor. Lo and behold, I get sued for breach of contract, a contract that I definitely didn't want to sign and didn't sign. How can you breach a contract you're not a party to?

MR. MC EACHERN: Although Sylvester adamantly refused to sign a "no opposition" agreement with Perini, an environmental group that he belongs to did sign. Brubaker argues that Sylvester and every individual member of that group is bound by the contract. Perini's lawsuit, he says, is not intended to intimidate anyone else.

MR. BRUBAKER: Those who are not associated with one of our settlement agreements have spoken out with impunity and we applaud their right to do so.

MR. MC EACHERN: Can you give me the names of three local Squaw Valley residents who have opposed you in a substantial way whom you have not sued?

MR. BRUBAKER: The -- yes, I'm sure there were. I can't recall specifically, and I don't know if it'd be fair to individuals to bring up names now, but certainly, certainly there were some, not a great many.

MR. SYLVESTER: This whole thing is an indictment of the legal system. I mean, just the costs of it are prohibitive. People who have a good case often can't afford to pursue it in case they lose it. Even if you win it, it could ruin your life.

MR. MC EACHERN: Research supports much of what Rick Sylvester says. The fact is most people who are hit by SLAPP suits do win in court, or have the suits against them dismissed, but the emotional and financial burdens of the fight are so great that many SLAPP targets drop out of civic affairs. In that way, their opponents win the real battle.

PROF. CANAN: We've had people tell us about thinking about committing suicide, we've had people tell us about the fear of losing their homes, of divorce.

PROF. PRING: However, there's a significant backlash now occurring as more and more targets once they win that lawsuit and prove to a judge that their constitutional rights have been violated are now turning around and suing the filers.

MR. MC EACHERN: In fact, in Bakersfield, California, three small farmers counter sued after they were hit by a SLAPP. They had been sued by J.G. Boswell, the world's largest farming company, for placing this political newspaper ad which criticized Boswell. The jury decided that Boswell's SLAPP suit against the farmers was a serious violation of their constitutional rights and awarded the three farmers $13 1/2 million in damages. Things didn't work out so well for Arnie Allen. He eventually settled the lawsuit which Perini filed against him, but it cost him $22,000 in legal fees which he's now paying off at $1,000 a month.

MR. LEHRER: And the Perini Land and Development Company recently began construction on the resort complex in Squaw Valley. SERIES - BLACK HISTORY MONTH

MR. MacNeil: Next, another in our series of Black History Month conversations. This week marks the 25th anniversary of the death of Malcolm X, a black leader of the sixties. Malcolm X wrote in his autobiography that his whole life had been a chronology of changes. He was born Malcolm Little in 1925, a dropout who became a streetwise hustler known as "Big Red". In 1946, he was convicted of burglary and sent to prison. There he converted to the Islamic religion. Upon release, he began speaking out on the teachings of its leader, Elizia Muhammad, who espoused black pride and separateness.

MALCOLM X: We call Mr. Muhammad a black -- because he teaches you and me not only that we're as good as the white man, but better than the white man.

MR. MacNeil: Malcolm X, as he was renamed, became the voice of the black Muslim movement. He publicly expressed rage and contempt for white America's racist attitudes.

MALCOLM X: The white man is the oppressor.

MR. MacNeil: And when he urged black Americans to stand up and fight force with force, it created a backlash in white America. In 1964, he split with the black Muslim movement to form his own group dedicated to black nationalism. After a pilgrimage to Mecca and travels throughout Africa, Malcolm X moved away from his rigid black separatist ideology and upon his return, he pushed for greater unity between black Americans and Africans struggling for freedom. On February 21, 1965, as he was about to address a rally in Harlem, he was gunned down. He was 39 years old. Recently, Charlayne Hunter-Gault spoke to Paul Lee, who has spent 16 years studying Malcolm X.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In its current issue, Emerge Magazine writes, "Two decades ago Malcolm X was feared by most white America and misunderstood by a large segment of black Americans." Why was that?

MR. LEE: That's largely because before 1963, the predominant image of the movement was Southern, non-violent, and conciliatory. The dominant image that most Americans had of black Americans' struggle for freedom and for rights was that of Martin Luther King, and then in 1963, Malcolm exploded, and at that time, Malcolm was advocating the philosophy of Elizia Muhammad, and they declared that not only did they not want to integrate with the white man, but that he was a devil and deserved to be separated from. And you can imagine how that went down. You remember, this was the period of the march on Washington and people were talking about brotherhood. The white man as a devil was really never that important of a feature of the nation of Islam's philosophy. What was more important was Malcolm's historical indictment of what he saw as the wrongs of the white race against the colored race throughout history.

MALCOLM X: [June 1963] Now the honorable Elizia Muhammad begins to, comes along and begins to list the historic deeds, the historic attitude, the historic behavior of the white man in this country toward the black people in this country, again, the white people are so guilty that, and they can't stop doing these things to make Mr. Muhammad appear wrong, so they, they hide their wrong by saying that he is teaching hatred. History is not hatred.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And the other part that he was misunderstood by black Americans, what light can you shed on that?

PAUL LEE: That's largely because most black Americans got their news through the white controlled press and so they shared many of the same perceptions that white people did. Unless they got a chance to see Malcolm on television or hear him on the radio or hear him speak, usually their impressions would have been colored by what the white press projected and the white press was quite hostile.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What image was it projecting and how different was that from what you perceive to be the reality?

MR. LEE: There were three dominant images. The first was that Malcolm and Islam preach hate. The second was that they advocated indiscriminate violence against whites, and the third was that they were opposed to the civil rights movement. White people tended to focus on the indictment, and to infer that that meant that black Americans, that is the nation of Islams and Muslims, hated them and wanted to do them hard, but, in fact, white people would have been hard pressed to find black people more courteous than the Muslims. They would typically call you "sir" or "ma'am" and they scrupulously obeyed the law.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But there was a time when there was a lot of fear on the part of blacks and whites. I remember people feared the stolid Food of Islam, which was the paramilitary guards in the nation of Islam, they feared the whole idea of separateness that black Muslims were preaching because the civil rights movement was about integration.

MR. LEE: The emphasis of the movement was pro black and it was more pro black than it could be considered anti-white, but a lot of white people found that hard to stomach, that there were black people -- now historically black people had been rejected by white people and now it was reversed -- we had black people rejecting them.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Part of it, as I remember, was fear of the rhetoric. I mean, when Malcolm X talked about freedom by any means necessary.

MR. LEE: Malcolm believed in the philosophy of the cocked fist and sometimes in order to be able to get white people to move, he felt that you had to put forth a threat. He thought, for instance, that non-violence, the tactic of non-violence and the philosophy of non-violence gave those who wanted to oppress black people a blank check on our lives and on our property. You could attack us and destroy our property with impunity, and so Malcolm's advocacy of self-defense and at times even retaliatory violence were designed to let them know that if you want to try to do that, there's a price that has to be paid.

MALCOLM X: [Feb. 1965] I've never at any time made any statement that anybody can even interpret to indicate that I believe in initiating acts of aggression or violence indiscriminately against people. But I do believe when people are being oppressed and are the victims of brutality that they are within their rights to defend themselves and when they defend themselves, in my opinion, this is not violence. This is self- defense.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What was his relationship to the civil rights movement, to Martin Luther King and that whole era?

MR. LEE: There are deep philosophical disagreements. Initially when the civil rights movements began to rise in earnest in the mid and late 1950s, the nation of Islam was then very small, but they did try to initiate united front efforts at an early stage. Once they began to be vocal and the stigma of hate and violence was attached to them, the civil rights movement moved back. When they moved back, they moved back with a vengeance and began to attack the nation of Islam. It was only a relative short period, however, that Malcolm did respond tit for tat with the attacks that had come from the mainstream civil rights leaders. But that has been the image that has been burned into the minds of most people who remember that era. After Malcolm X was expelled from the nation of Islam, however, he made a number of concerted efforts to unify the movement again, but this time on a broader level. He did not try to say for instance that you had to be Muslim or that you had to have this particular political approach. He thought that the problems of our people were so vast that it would take the concerted efforts of everyone. He used to joke about somebody has first base and somebody has second base. He said if a bear attacks me and a dog grabs one leg and a cat or a fox grabs the other leg, I'm not going to disagree with the particular animals, anything that will help get this bear off of me is okay.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: One of the things that I've read is that there was a strategy, I don't know if it actually existed, but that Malcolm X used to say that he deliberately was as radical as he was in order to help Martin Luther King get his programs advanced.

MR. LEE: Most of the focus on Malcolm and Dr. King has been on their personal opinion of each other and their personal relationship. They only, in fact, met one time. What they have missed is what you're alluding to. That is they worked almost hand in glove on a tactical level. Dr. King would, for instance, create these crisis scenarios in Birmingham or St. Augustine and Selma, and Malcolm would use the injustices created by these scenarios to help push for his indictment of America. At the same time, Dr. King was able to use Malcolm's extremist image to say, look, unless you give me concessions, this man is waiting in the wing.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: There are others who have studied both the life of Martin Luther King and the life of Malcolm X who say that they represented different demographic polls that Martin Luther King was the man of the Deep South, that Malcolm X was the man of the urban North. Is that a correct analysis of where they were in their time?

MR. LEE: I think you're right. I think that they did represent different constituencies. As much as they spoke to different constituencies, I think your point is well taken, they represented them. Malcolm sprung from the urban, Northern urban experience, and represented it well. Dr. King likewise sprung from the Southern more rural experience and represented it as well as spoke for that. They did represent different aspects of black American culture in the same way that Malcolm was misunderstood by many white Americans because of the cultural differences. In Malcolm's case, however, the problem of understanding him properly was exacerbated by one of Malcolm's unique qualities, and that was the ability to grow radically and rapidly. After Malcolm began to travel especially, he revised his view of religion, that is Islam, and the Islam that he came to understand taught that you don't judge a person by the color of their skin but by their deeds. It is during this period, that is Malcolm's last year, that the greatest changes took place. Fundamentally, Malcolm felt that African-Americans needed to become an international people. He felt that the world was getting too small for us to be parochial in our concerns, as he used to say, "Waves that are set forth in one part of the world will eventually affect conditions in another part of the world."

MALCOLM X: [Feb. 1965] Negroes in this country are beginning to realize that we're not a minority. We're only a minority in the American context. But in the worldwide context, we are part of the majority of oppressed people who are struggling against their oppressor or oppression. And this is what changes the thinking and also the tactics of even American Negroes in their struggle for freedom.

MR. LEE: One of the areas he became most strongly concerned with was Africa. He saw South Africa as the last bastion of white supremacy and felt that the protracted battle for liberation in Africa would take place there.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You were five years old when Malcolm died. I mean, where did this driving passion to find out all about him, where did that come from?

MR. LEE: It started as a search for identity. When I was about fourteen or fifteen, the world began to change in relationship to me in anticipation of becoming a man and one of the most pronounced changes I noticed was on the part of white people and they would step back from me in elevators and treat me more bruskly or even rudely. And I was absolutely puzzled by this. They did not know me, and I was trying to understand on what basis have you judged me, and what I understood the basis was that I was black, so my historical researches began in trying to understand that racial category that I had been lumped in. What Malcolm gave me was history as a tool to explain the world. He allowed me to be able to draw lines and at least be able to give tentative explanations to why the world is as it is and why people are as they are. My interests eventually grew beyond him and took on a life of their own but Malcolm has always remained the core.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Paul Lee, thank you.

MR. LEE: Thank you. FOCUS - ELDERLY SUICIDE

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight we look at one of the most overlooked problems of the aged, suicide. John Roszak of public station KQED in San Francisco has our report.

MR. ROSZAK: Sixty-nine year Joseph Goeke was depressed and in failing health. Three years ago the retired New Jersey businessman got out of bed, went into the den and shot himself in the head. He had become nearly one of seven thousand seniors each year who commit suicide.

GRECIAN GOEKE: He was extremely unhappy, both with his physical condition, I think with his marriage, with what was left of the relationship in the marriage, which had always had trouble ever since I can remember.

MR. ROSZAK: A recovering alcoholic who'd talked of suicide, Goeke ended his pain, but his daughter has to cope with the consequences.

MS. GOEKE: I just wish we could talk. I'm, you know, a fatherless daughter and I don't like it. You know, I wish I had a dad and I'm really envious of people who do. You know, it really makes me mad that I don't have a dad.

MR. ROSZAK: Suicide among the elderly is on the rise, up 25 percent since 1981. Their suicide rate is twice that of the general population, with older white males having a rate four times the national average and ten times that of older women. Six months ago Ed Wright came dangerously close to taking his own life. He planned to do it with an overdose of pills or gassing himself with carbon monoxide from his car.

MR. WRIGHT: Closed the windows and then taped the, put tape on the inside on all four windows.

MR. ROSZAK: And then hose from the back.

MR. WRIGHT: Hose from the back.

MR. ROSZAK: Wright had to retire after an immune system disorder left him weak and chronically depressed. Once active outdoors, Wright who's 60, had to curtail all activities. Suicide seemed a way out, just as it was for his stepfather.

ED WRIGHT: My stepdad shot himself. He had advanced emphysema. I think if you're in that much pain, if you're older, life really has lost its meaning, perhaps you might contemplate suicide, you know.

MR. ROSZAK: Wright's dilemma is not unique nor easily solved. Suicide among the elderly has received relatively little attention. Only a few cities have services that try to attack the problem and although seniors compromise one of the fastest growing segments of the population, there only a handful of psychiatrists who specialize in the problem. One of them is Dr. Alan Cole of the in- patient geriatric unit at San Francisco's Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center.

DR. ALAN COLE, Psychiatrist: Isolation, the loss of a very significant other, husband or wife, physical illness contributes to not only lethargy and fatigue and depression even, but also to a sense that things will not get better if the illness is chronic, that things may only get worse.

MR. ROSZAK: Some elders fear for their future, worried that cuts in public assistance programs will mean less money and in times of illness an inability to care for themselves. Some abuse alcohol and drugs and many find the losses of old age, of one's spouse, health or job, too much too bear.

SENIOR CITIZEN: Well, I feel that I am not needed any more at all and there's nothing left for me.

MR. ROSZAK: 75 year old Iya Lapshinoff is a retired accountant with Parkinson's Disease who recently had a stroke and admits she is suicidal.

IYA LAPSHINOFF: Well, I was looking for the way to kill myself. I thought I will swallow the bottle of sleeping pills, but then one girl told me she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and nothing happened, but she was vomiting and that's it. And then I thought that maybe I cut my wrists, but I didn't have enough courage to do that.

MR. ROSZAK: Mrs. Lapshinoff's medicines include tranquilizers and anti-depressants. Because her husband died a year ago, experts would say her suicide risk is high. Non-married persons of all ages are more likely to commit suicide than are married persons.

MR. ROSZAK: When his wife died of heart disease, Benny Ponce claims he had only one thought.

BENNY PONCE: Just open this window and jump out, jump out of the window. That's about it, and just commit suicide.

MR. ROSZAK: Before seeking help, Ponce says the loneliness after 41 years of marriage was agonizing.

MR. PONCE: If you love somebody and you live with her for that length of time and you -- do it yourself. That's the way I felt.

MR. ROSZAK: Many believe suicide is immoral. A 1989 poll by the National Opinion Research Center asked, "Do you believe people have a right to end their lives when they're tired of living and ready to die?" 85 percent of the respondents said no. Only 13 percent said yes. 2 percent were undecided. But advocates of euthanasia or mercy killing contend the elderly have a right to take their own lives when faced with extreme pain or incurable illness. Susan Stowens is president of the board of directors of the San Francisco Hemlock Society.

SUSAN STOWENS, Euthanasia Supporter: I personally support euthanasia because I believe very strongly in personal autonomy and freedom, that an individual should have the right to decide what happens to his or her own body, and I can't imagine a more private, personal right than the right to choose your manor of death.

DR. COLE: I believe that people have a natural autonomy and right to make that decision and I don't think that that's something that we can or should try to take away from them, but I also don't think it's something that you just buy into right away and say, well, if you say life's not worth living anymore and you want to kill yourself, then maybe you should go ahead and do it. I think you need to be real careful about that and you need to ask yourself what can I do to make this person see things differently.

MR. ROSZAK: Seniors who try suicide will try again. Workers in suicide prevention know they must reach the suicidal elderly before they act. In San Francisco, it's led to the Friendship Line.

VOLUNTEER ON HOTLINE PHONE: How old is your mother? Uh huh. She lives in the city, San Francisco, alone, and you --

VOLUNTEER ON HOTLINE PHONE: That's all right. Are you sitting?

MR. ROSZAK: The San Francisco program is unique. When suicidal elders call in, volunteers get their phone numbers and call them back on a regular basis. They also make house calls. There's only one other program like it in Dayton, Ohio. The idea is to stay in touch with seniors until their crisis passes. Benny Ponce says the San Francisco program helped him when all he wanted to do was isolate.

MR. PONCE: I don't have that feeling anymore to kill myself. Let nature takes its course, that's what I am trying to say.

MR. ROSZAK: Experts say outreach like this is crucial because most suicide lines focus on teen-agers and young adults and the elderly typically don't seek out help on their own. Nationwide, only 3 percent of the calls to crisis lines are from elders. Yet people over 65 account for 20 percent of all suicides.

PATRICK ARBORE, Suicide Counselor: They don't feel that anybody can respond in a way that they need, and that's why when you look at the statistics, older people are far more likely once they attempt suicide to complete the act. There's more an issue of pride involved, I don't want people to know that I'm not coping well, and suicide that that ties in to why they don't use the crisis line, because they don't believe anybody can help them.

JOHN ROSZAK, KQED: They may not ask for help but suicidal elders leave clues to their thinking. More than half discuss suicide with their doctor before a suicide attempt. But medical schools don't train doctors in elderly suicide. So experts say doctors often fail to know when talk of suicide may turn to action.

DR. COLE: The medical profession and everyone in society has been guilty of that, of just not looking carefully at what's going on and asking ourselves the hard questions about what we need to do to better aid these people and what are the limits on what we can do.

MR. ROSZAK: Some Western states like California and Nevada experience the highest rates of elderly suicide. People move here seeking peace in retirement. Instead, they find themselves ghettoized in a culture that celebrates youth while shunning old age.

MR. ARBORE: Older people just like younger people who are born into this ageist society adopt those same values and they wind up also internalizing that negativity, thus at the age of 75 or 80, they believe that they are not worthwhile either and thus a suicidal situation can develop based upon their own self- negativity.

MR. ROSZAK: Until now, scant attention has been paid to the rising number of elder suicides, but experts say that unless concern turns to action, society will pay for its indifference with the lives of suicidal elders. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again the major stories of this Monday, Defense Sec. Cheney and Philippine officials fail to resolve a dispute over U.S. bases in the Philippines and the Premier of Romania threatened to severely punish the leaders of anti-government protests. Good night, Robin.

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