The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight we have the latest on the tainted strawberries story; plus a Tom Bearden report on managed care in Colorado; a look at the case of Webster Hubbell, Clinton friend and former Justice Department official; a debate about providing free television time for political candidates; and a conversation with Robert Pinsky, the new poet laureate of the United States. It all follows our summary of the news this Wednesday. NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Federal officials said today schools in six states may have received strawberries contaminated with the Hepatitis A virus. Nine other states and the District of Columbia received berries from the same processor, but it is not known if they were tainted. Last week 128 cases of Hepatitis A were reported in Michigan. That number is now up to 151. The outbreak was traced to strawberries, possibly grown in Mexico and processed in California. Yesterday California officials said some 9,000 children and adults in the city may have been exposed through frozen packaged strawberries issued with school lunches. Clinics are being set up to innoculate anyone who came in contact with the berries. In Washington the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified the symptoms of the virus.

DR.

DAVID SATCHER. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention: Hepatitis A, among the various Hepatitis diseases that we have, is a very mild disease, generally causing fever and malaise, nausea, anorexia, and jaundice.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. President Clinton was expected to raise $50 million for his re-election campaign last year, Vice President Gore $10 million. That was according to some 800 pages of documents released today from the files of former Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes. White House officials also disclosed yesterday that two close aids to the President helped in a job search for former Justice Department official Webster Hubbell. Hubbell quit his number three job after being charged with bilking funds from his former Arkansas law firm and its clients. The President's former chief of staff, Mack McLarty, and the current chief, Erskine Bowles, said they made calls on Hubbell's behalf. Bowles was then head of the Small Business Administration. White House Spokesman Mike McCurry was asked today if such calls were proper.

MIKE McCURRY, White House Spokesman: It's not a practice that's conducted in the course of one's official business, but it is probably a common practice that people try to help friends that have some need. In this case a friend is going to lose prospects for gainful employment and call people, you reach out to people that you know who you think might be helpful.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have more on the Hubbell story later in the program. There was more violence in the Middle East today. The Israeli army reported a fire bomb smashed the front windshield of a bus carrying soldiers, sending the truck down a hill. It landed on its side near a Palestinian refugee camp north of Jerusalem. Thirteen people were injured. Israeli-Palestinian relations have deteriorated since construction began on a Jewish housing project in East Jerusalem almost two weeks ago. President Clinton is scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Washington Monday. Israel's ambassador to the United States said today Netanyahu would offer a fast track proposal to resolve the future of Jerusalem and other issues within nine months. Secretary of State Albright met with King Hussein of Jordan about the situation today. She has also talked by telephone with Netanyahu and Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat. After her meeting with the king, Albright went to Baltimore and threw out the first pitch of the Orioles baseball season. And in economic news today a report that orders for manufactured goods had reached a record high heightened inflation fears on Wall Street. The result was the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing down 94 points to 6517.01. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the bad strawberries, health care cutbacks, the Hubbell matter, free air time for candidates, and poet Robert Pinsky. FOCUS - BAD BERRIES

JIM LEHRER: We go first tonight to the Hepatitis scare and to Charles Krause.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Federal officials are now attempting to determine how many people may have been exposed nationwide to the Hepatitis A virus and how to respond. One of the lead agencies is the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention in Atlanta. Its director, Dr. David Satcher, is here with us now. Dr. Satcher, welcome.

DR. DAVID SATCHER. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention: Thank you.

CHARLES KRAUSE: You've reported about 150 cases from this batch of tainted strawberries so far. Tell me, how many children and adults are potentially at risk nationwide?

DR. DAVID SATCHER: It's still very difficult. Let me say that we have determined that there were 13 lots of strawberries implicated in this outbreak, and so far six states have received those lots. Only one state has been able to give us definitive figures in terms of the numbers of children served these frozen strawberries, and that was Los Angeles County. And there they're estimating that 9,000 children were served. The other states are still looking at their figures. Some of them, of course, the students have been on spring break, and they have not been able to get accurate figures, but clearly thousands of children could have been exposed to the frozen strawberries that were contaminated.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Now, California and Michigan were two of the states. What are the other four states where you know that these lots were sent?

DR. DAVID SATCHER: The other four states are Arizona, Georgia, Tennessee, and Iowa, where we know that these lots were distributed.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Now, should children in those states, in those six states anyway, should they all be immunized because they may have been--may have eaten some of these strawberries?

DR. DAVID SATCHER: We think that the best approach to this problem is to identify specifically those children who ate the frozen strawberries. In the cases where children consumed the frozen strawberries we're recommending that they be given immune globulin. We know that if within 14 days after consuming the infected strawberries the children are given immune globulin, then we can protect them from the disease. I do want to point out, however, that we're talking about a form of Hepatitis that is relatively mild.

CHARLES KRAUSE: All right. But if I'm a parent and I'm sitting at home right now, and I live in one of these states, how am I going to know whether the strawberries that you're talking about were eaten by my child in school?

DR. DAVID SATCHER: I think we can only know that by working with the school districts, and that's what we're doing. In each state we're tracing or tracking the lots of strawberries that were contaminated to find out which schools actually served their students the contaminated strawberries. And, again, I think we will be able to determine that fairly well. We have been able to do so in Los Angeles. Tennessee is working on their school district. Other schools will probably wait until people return from spring break.

CHARLES KRAUSE: But people should not run right out right now, people with children, and have their kids immunized?

DR. DAVID SATCHER: Definitely not. And, again, in dealing with Hepatitis A, we do not use vaccines for post exposure or treatment. We actually use immune globulin, and we strongly recommend that the immune globulin be reserved for those children who consumed the frozen strawberries. So I would not recommend that parents run out and have their children immunized.

CHARLES KRAUSE: All right. How does Hepatitis A spread? How do people get it?

DR. DAVID SATCHER: Well, there are various ways. It's what we call fecal to oral contamination. And that's in contrast to Hepatitis B and C, where primarily it's spread through the blood and through sexual intercourse, with Hepatitis A we're talking about generally hand-to-mouth contamination. So we also have a case where a food handler has the infection, and that food handler contaminates the food and it's spread to people who eat at a given restaurant. In this case we believe that it was related to either the growing of the strawberries and harvesting of them, or the processing of the strawberries, because based on our case control studies we see no evidence that the handling of the strawberries at the particular schools in Michigan were responsible for the contamination.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Is there any curious, or from your perspective important or significant about the fact that only children in Michigan have come down with the disease?

DR. DAVID SATCHER: Well, I think it's still very early, but the incubation period for this disease averages about 28 days. And we have determined that the children in Michigan were probably served the strawberries in February. And so it's consistent with the incubation period. Hopefully, as it relates to California, the children who have been served the strawberries were actually served within the last two weeks, if not within the last week, which means that we have time to provide them with immune globulin and to protect them from infection.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Now, from what you know, the strawberries that were contaminated apparently were processed in San Diego. Did all of them go into the school lunch program, or were some of them sold to the public?

DR. DAVID SATCHER: Now, the Food & Drug Administration estimates that probably half, over half of the strawberries were sold privately, as opposed to going into the school lunch program. They also believe that most of them were used much earlier than the ones that are being used in the schools which means that it's highly likely that most of those strawberries were consumed in the past but because of the way they were processed, in some cases pasteurized, or because of the fact that they were served to people who hadimmune, who were immune to Hepatitis A, we have not seen any major outbreaks of this disease.

CHARLES KRAUSE: But at the same time since you're not quite sure where they went, should the general public stop buying frozen strawberries at this point? I mean, is this a concern that the public should have?

DR. DAVID SATCHER: Well, I think we should all have some concern, and what we have asked is for the distributors of the strawberries to have a general recall if they distributed any recently. So what we're doing nationwide is making sure that there's a recall of any contaminated strawberries. As far as the general public is concerned, if there's any concern about frozen strawberries that they may have that they have acquired within the last several months, they should call their state health departments, or go back to the store where they consumed them to find out if these were part of the contaminated lot.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Very quickly, there's some question about if these strawberries came from Mexico, were grown in the United States. Where did they come from? Do you know?

DR. DAVID SATCHER: It was reported earlier that they came from Mexico, but because there is an investigation taking place, and I understand from the United States Department of Agriculture that there are some laws about using strawberries from outside of the country in the school food program, so their inspectors are investigating this, and, therefore, I don't want to comment on it while it's being investigated.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Dr. Satcher, thank you very much for joining us.

DR. DAVID SATCHER: You're quite welcome. FOCUS - CHARITY CARE

JIM LEHRER: Now managed health care and the poor, how hospitals and their patients are coping. Tom Bearden reports from Denver.

TOM BEARDEN: Dean Coleman has epilepsy he's trying to control, a job he's trying to keep, and no health insurance to help him do either. His employer of eight years doesn't offer the coverage, and his hourly wage of $8.75 is too much to qualify him for the government's Medicaid program and too little to pay for private insurance.

DOCTOR: [examining Coleman] Can I get you just to sit up--

TOM BEARDEN: Like millions of uninsured Americans Coleman must rely on what are known as safety net hospitals, hospitals that provide charity care. He's one of 12,000 people a year who get help at the University of Colorado Hospital's free clinic in Denver.

DOCTOR: [talking to Coleman] Where's your stomach bothering you?

TOM BEARDEN: Lately, Coleman's health has been failing, and he's been missing work. In one recent month he suffered 14 seizures. Doctors have started him on a different set of drugs.

DEAN COLEMAN: It's an ever-changing process of trying to find medications that'll treat me and get my seizures under control, which really hasn't worked very well. So it's an ongoing type thing. It's not like you can treat a cut or a wound and go away and it's gone.

TOM BEARDEN: But now Coleman has a new problem. At the beginning of this year the University of Colorado announced it must cut $8 million from its budget, forcing the free clinic to cut patient visits by half. Kelly Coyle is Coleman's social worker.

KELLY COYLE, Social Worker: The cuts are very scary for patients like Dean, because Dean is followed so closely here in our clinic. He's not going to be able to get a monthly follow-up appointment. It may take him two to three months to get a follow-up appointment, which means his seizures may get worse; he may go without medication or whatever, if we can't get him in here to be seen.

DEAN COLEMAN: It sent a shiver up my spine. If I couldn't come here, I'm sure my seizures would not be treated properly. It would cost quite a bit of money just to, just to keep going. I couldn't afford it.

TOM BEARDEN: Doctors are worried too. Dr. Bennett Parnes is a primary care physician.

DR. BENNETT PARNES: As a physician I feel I can't really tell people you stay, you go. That can be a form of abandonment, which is probably legally and definitely ethically undoable.

TOM BEARDEN: University hospital officials blame the deep cuts on increased competition from managed care companies. Under the managed care concept health insurance companies use their market clout to negotiate discounts with hospitals, both public and private. Traditionally the public safety net hospitals were able to pass along the cost of treating the uninsured to their paying customers. But now that subsidy is fast disappearing. Dennis Brimhall is president of the University of Colorado Hospital.

DENNIS BRIMHALL, President, University Hospital: We're having to give much deeper discounts for--to get the business that we--where we get paid by commercial insurers. That's just what's going on in health care today, just part of the business.

TOM BEARDEN: Brimhall says that while managed care may have saved society millions in medical costs, it tends to exclude those who can't afford insurance--the indigent. But Dr. William Roper, who worked in Denver's public hospital and is senior vice president of Prudential Health Care, says managed care did what it was asked to do.

DR. WILLIAM ROPER, Vice President, Prudential Health Care: I don't think managed care is the appropriate person to blame for the changes that are happening in America's health care system. We stepped up to the plate when the country said we have to have a way of providing health care more cost effectively than we have in the past, and we have met that challenge very successfully.

TOM BEARDEN: Since managed care providers have a responsibility to their customers to provide the least expensive, best quality of care, the question remains: Whose responsibility is it to provide for the indigent?

DOCTOR: I think we'll stay the course. We'll have you stay on that.

TOM BEARDEN: If Dean Coleman and others don't get the preventive care they need, they're liable to wind up in emergency rooms, where care is much more costly. CU's emergency room is seeing record numbers of uninsured patients. Dr. Jean Abbott has worked in the emergency room for the past 12 years. She thinks the increase may be due to dumping.

DR. JEAN ABBOTT, University Hospital: [talking to patient] When did this start?

TOM BEARDEN: She thinks that other hospitals in the area, trying desperately to contain their costs to meet managed care discounts, are dumping people that can't pay on the charity hospitals to avoid having to pay for their follow-up care. Dr. Abbott has been compiling a list of patients and their conditions that she suspects have been dumped.

DR. JEAN ABBOTT: Mandible fracture told to come and have her jaw wired here. Somebody who had extensor tendon lacerations, which could be very disabling and make your hand non-functional, who had the skin sutured but the extensor tendons referred here for later repair at University Hospital about a week later. Fetal demise, meaning that the pregnancy had gone wrong, and was sent here to have the fetus removed. It's a hard problem to get a handle on. It's very tragic for the patients. It's not legally wrong, but I certainly can't find it morally defensible.

TOM BEARDEN: Last year University Hospital provided $33 million in medical care for the indigent.

DENNIS BRIMHALL: There does come a point, which is unusual for us and counter-culture, where we have to say there's a limit to how much we can do. That's where the pain is today.

DOCTOR: [examining patient] I'm just going to gently press, and you tell me if it bothers you at all.

TOM BEARDEN: The CU hospital isn't the only safety net hospital in a jam. Diane Rowland, with the Kaiser Family Foundation, is a national expert on medical coverage for the poor.

DIANE ROWLAND, Kaiser Family Foundation: The social safety net is really shrinking. We've had a system that has allowed hidden costs to be covered for the uninsured, and that coverage is now eroding as those costs become squeezed by managed care. We're moving the system in a direction where if there isn't a crisis today, there's going to be a crisis tomorrow.

TOM BEARDEN: That crisis may come sooner, rather than later. The number of uninsured Americans is growing steadily, with 40 million across the nation and nearly 500,000 in Colorado. Experts attribute the rise to an increase in service jobs and small businesses that offer no employee benefits.

DENNIS BRIMHALL: It's an insatiable demand. If we open the door completely, we could fill up all the beds, all the clinic appointments, and provide care almost around the clock. And so the real question is you just have to draw a line somewhere.

DOCTOR: [talking to patient] So when you were in your car accident on the 9th--

TOM BEARDEN: Despite all their problems, safety net hospitals have had one steady source of income--people insured by Medicaid, the federally supported health insurance plan for the poor. Denver Health Medical Center provides the bulk of charity care in the city. Half of its cash flow comes from Medicaid patients, but now that funding source is in jeopardy. That's because managed care companies, which once shied away from these patients because the reimbursement rate was considered low, now see them as a steady source of income. Patricia Gabow is the CEO of Denver Health.

DR. PATRICIA GABOW, CEO, Denver Health: Five, ten years ago no one wanted Medicaid patients. So there was no competition for that funding stream which the safety net relied on very heavily. Now there's competition for those patients, so they're being pulled out of the safety net to other for-profit and not-for-profit HMO's.

TOM BEARDEN: Gabow is trying to convince Colorado legislators to assign the Medicaid population to hospitals which are currently providing the majority of charity care.

DR. PATRICIA GABOW: It sounds wonderful in America, which is a competitive, capitalistic, entrepreneurial society, to say let's put Medicaid business out to bid; let's get more competition in the Medicaid marketplace. But what happens is if you put the Medicaid piece out to bid and those patients get their care in a for-profit system when they have Medicaid, the minute they get off, they go back to the safety net. Then the safety net has lost the funding stream when they had a funding stream with them, and now they only have them when they have no funding stream. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see where that's going to get you in a year or two.

TOM BEARDEN: At the annual convention of the American Association of Health Plans Dr. Mark Smith, an expert in managed care, said public health and managed care have to work together.

DR. MARK SMITH, CEO, California Healthcare Foundation: Each one now needs the other. You are now entering new markets: Medicaid, Medicare, to some extent the indigent. These are markets different from the ones you know.

TOM BEARDEN: But he says people must be realistic about what managed care can do to solve the problems of the uninsured.

DR. MARK SMITH: I think the managed care companies have a role to play in paying for the uninsured, but I think it's probably as unrealistic to think that they're going to do that as to think that Safeway is going to solve the problem of hunger. That's not the business they're in. That's the business that the government is in, if not doing it, at least arranging for it to be done.

DR. WILLIAM ROPER: One of the solutions to the problem of the uninsured could well be saying, all managed care plans or all health insurers or all healthcare providers have to provide a portion of their services at a free or subsidized basis. That would be our participating in the solution to the problem.

TOM BEARDEN: The states have been actively seeking other solutions. Consideration is being given to everything from direct reimbursement to hospitals to finding new sources of funding for uninsured care. In Colorado, the legislature is considering a bill to provide health care to 40,000 of the state's 150,000 uninsured children. Nationally, President Clinton has pledged to provide insurance for poor children. For Dean Coleman, who is trying hard to keep his job, the government's role in providing health coverage only makes sense.

DEAN COLEMAN: In order to have a healthy nation, in order to have a healthy society, working at its best and doing its best, we all have to be healthy. I mean, what good am I going to be if I'm on my back and can't work? The federal government loves me to work and pay taxes and to be a supporting individual. I can't do that if I'm--if I'm sick.

TOM BEARDEN: But government's role in health care coverage remains controversial as taxpayers continue to pressure politicians to reduce spending.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight the Hubbell matter, free air time for candidates, and the poet laureate. FOCUS - A FRIEND IN NEED

JIM LEHRER: Now the Webster Hubbell story and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: Webster Hubbell was one of a handful of Arkansans who came to Washington with newly elected President and Mrs. Clinton. The President once called Hubbell his closest friend. Hubbell and First Lady Hillary Clinton had been friends and partners at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock where they both involved in a project that would later come under scrutiny in the Whitewater investigation.

MARGARET WARNER: The President so valued Webster Hubbell that he named him to the Justice Department's No. 3 post, associate attorney general. Even before Hubbell was confirmed he was overseeing the Justice Department for the White House in an unofficial capacity. Then in March 1994, just 10 months after taking the job, Hubbell announced he was resigning. He said he needed time to sort out a billing dispute with his former Rose Law Firm partners in Arkansas. Even though he was also being pressed for information in the Whitewater probe Hubbell insisted that his resignation had "nothing to do with Whitewater." In December of that year Hubbell pleaded "guilty" to tax evasion and mail fraud in the Rose Law Firm affair. Prosecutors said he had bilked his former clients and the law firm out of more than $480,000. Hubbell spent 16 months in prison. Now, more than two years later, news stories have appeared reporting that in the months after Hubbell left the Justice Department a network of Clinton friends and associates, including several top administration officials, took steps to assist him financially. Some tried to help him get legal business, and others helped family members with jobs and donations. Among those who pitched in were Mack McLarty who was then White House chief of staff; Erskine Bowles, then head of the Small Business Administration, now White House chief of staff; Mickey Kantor, then U.S. Trade Representative; and Washington lawyer Vernon Jordan, a close Clinton friend and adviser. Some of their efforts to get Hubbell business panned out. In the nine months between his resignation and his guilty plea Hubbell earned more than $400,000 in legal retainers and other business. Some of the payments came from major donors to the Democratic Party and the President, including $100,000 from an affiliate of the Lippo Group, and Indonesian conglomerate controlled by longtime Clinton supporter James Riady; $18,000 from American Income Life Insurance Company, headed by Texas insurance magnate and Clinton financial backer Bernard Rapoport; and an undisclosed amount from Truman Arnold, a Texas oil executive and longtime Clinton supporter.

MARGARET WARNER: Now for the latest on the Webster Hubbell story and its implications we have two reporters who've been covering it: Glenn Simpson of the "Wall Street Journal" and David Willman of the "Los Angeles Times." Welcome, both of you. David, the White House finally came out yesterday and publicly dealt with this matter. What did they add that was new?

DAVID WILLMAN, Los Angeles Times: What they added that was new was that the then chief of staff to the President in 1994, Mack McLarty, and Erskine Bowles, who is the current chief of staff, made phone calls seeking to arrange employment engagements for Mr. Hubbell at about the time he was leaving the Justice Department and was facing a criminal investigation from the Whitewater special counsel.

MARGARET WARNER: And was there also some--there was also something about that at least Mack McLarty had mentioned this to the First Lady.

DAVID WILLMAN: Yes. There was a meeting in the residence at the executive mansion on March 13, 1994, that was related to a stream of developments in the Whitewater affair that were besieging the administration, and at the conclusion of that meeting according to what Mr. McLarty recalls, he informed the First Lady that he, Mr. McLarty, was going to be seeking to provide assistance of some form for Mr. Hubbell.

MARGARET WARNER: What's significant about the White House disclosed or acknowledged yesterday in terms of this whole story?

GLENN SIMPSON, Wall Street Journal: Well, the legal significance potentially is that Ken Starr, the independent counsel on the Whitewater affair, is pursuing the possibility that there was an orchestrated attempt to get financial assistance to Mr. Hubbell to discourage him from providing information to Mr. Starr. So this potentially would be new, powerful information to support that possibility.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, what does the White House say is the reason these various officials tried to help?

GLENN SIMPSON: Because they're old friends of Hubbell's, and for the most part that's true. Mack McLarty and Web Hubbell do go back 20 years. The exception would be Mr. Bowles, who as far as I know didn't know Mr. Hubbell prior to coming into the Clinton campaign in 1992.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, even if they were old friends, would it have been, I mean, legally would there be a problem if they also knew that he was talking to, or that the Whitewater special counsel was trying to talk to them? In other words, what did the White House say about what these officials knew about the status of the Whitewater probe?

DAVID WILLMAN: The statement from White House officials and the lead spokesman, of course, on this matter is Lannie Davis, who's special counsel to the White House, is that those within the administration who were acting on Mr. Hubbell's behalf accepted Mr. Hubbell's representation that this was merely a billing dispute between Mr. Hubbell and his former partners at the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas. There are certainly--there's reason to question whether everyone in the administration would have accepted that on its face. There were news reports at the time, in mid March of 1994, that Mr. Hubbell's billing "dispute" was being referred by the Rose Law Firm to the Arkansas supreme court for possible disciplinary action, and immediately the then Whitewater special counsel, Robert Fiske, made it clear that he was putting Mr. Hubbell's conduct under investigation.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Explain briefly, if you can, why is Hubbell--you wrote in your story today, Glenn, that prosecutors still think--I think you said--that Mr. Hubbell may hold the key to their Whitewater probe. Why? Why is he a central figure for them?

GLENN SIMPSON: Well, it's my understanding they think he have important knowledge with respect to several matters that they have focused on. One that you referenced in the lead-in is land deal known as Castle Grande that Mrs. Clinton worked on when she was at the Rose Law Firm, there's part of that transaction was an option agreement with Mr. Hubbell's father-in-law that Mrs. Clinton worked on, and they think that Mr. Hubbell may know some things about that option agreement which it has been suggested was potentially fraudulent. He also played a role in some of the documents. He got ahold of some of the Rose Law Firm documents related to Mrs. Clinton.

MARGARET WARNER: These are the famous billing records--

GLENN SIMPSON: Right.

MARGARET WARNER: --that were missing and then showed up again.

GLENN SIMPSON: Right. It's murky how involved he was in all of that, but that's another area where they think he may have knowledge. And then finally there is the issue of how much he knows about the President's relationship with the Lippo Group and James Riady, which is of course, you know, the controversy right now.

MARGARET WARNER: And explain, David, the connection here now really through the Lippo Group between the Whitewater Affair and the more recent probe involving campaign money raising.

DAVID WILLMAN: Sure. Well, unwittingly, Mr. Hubbell describes both the Whitewater Affair and the current controversy concerning campaign donations to the Democratic National Committee, and the suspicion that perhaps foreign interests were unduly seeking to influence United States policy, and that's because, as Glenn has just explained, Mr. Hubbell's involvement with dealings that concerned a failed savings & loan, that it's at the heart of the Whitewater prosecutions and convictions, and then Mr. Hubbell, shortly after leaving the Justice Department on April 8th of 1994 is hired in mid '94 by what he has described as an affiliate of the Lippo Group to perform services that he has declined under oath to describe, and we are led to believe that it was a significant sum of money that he's received. There's no document out there that verifies the amount of money, but to think that it's $100,000 or more I don't think is unreasonable speculation.

GLENN SIMPSON: And what needs to be pointed out is that John Huang, who is at the very center of the illegal foreign money controversy, was an executive of the Lippo Group.

MARGARET WARNER: He was the once Commerce Department official who became the chief DNC fund-raiser, who then was involved in raising all this money from Asian-Americans?

GLENN SIMPSON: Correct. And he was in constant contact with the Riadys while he was at the Commerce Department with the Lippo Group, so all of this suddenly becomes a big web.

MARGARET WARNER: No pun intended. And so is Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel, focusing, from your understanding, on both of these, on both the Whitewater angle and then also the campaign fund-raising angle?

DAVID WILLMAN: Well, clearly, Mr. Starr has been intensifying his efforts with subpoenas that are raining down, if you will, on current and former members of the administration trying to get at the heart of why Mr. Hubbell was retained by the Lippo Group at this crucial period of time. What he's doing with campaign donations that is not within his original charge, and I'm not aware of his going after campaign donations per se.

MARGARET WARNER: And briefly, Glenn, what has the President said, or what has been said about what the President knew about these efforts to get Web Hubbell work?

GLENN SIMPSON: When he was originally asked about it, he was asked only about the Lippo job, and he said he didn't know anything about it in advance; he learned about it from the papers. He suggested that it was inappropriate and that whoever did it was doing something wrong. He never mentioned the fact at that time that he did know around the same time that Mr. Hubbell got these jobs that his friends were helping Mr. Hubbell in other ways, that Truman Arnold had hired Mr. Hubbell.

MARGARET WARNER: This came out subsequently. All right. Well, thank you both very much. FOCUS - FREE TV

JIM LEHRER: Now, another focus in our continuing look at campaign finance reform. Tonight: free TV time for political candidates. It has become part of the reform debate because the cost of TV advertising has become the most expensive part of running for political office. Political candidates spent $400 million on TV ads last year alone. That compares with $25 million in 1972. We get two perspectives now on free air time as a solution. Paul Taylor, former political reporter for the "Washington Post," is now director of the Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition. Mike Cavender is chairman of the Radio Television News Directors Association and vice president for news at WTSP-TV in Tampa, Florida. Paul Taylor, how would a system of free air time change things for the better?

PAUL TAYLOR, Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition: Two ways. First, it is the biggest cost item in modern political campaigns, and I think it's the engine that drives the obsessive money chase that has produced the scandals that we've been reading about and reporting about for the last few months now. I also think--

JIM LEHRER: In other words, if you cut out the need to buy television time, you cut out the need to raise so much money and cut out the temptations that go with that.

PAUL TAYLOR: Understood this is not a perfect solution.

JIM LEHRER: Got you.

PAUL TAYLOR: But it moves you--it moves you in a happier direction on all those fronts. And secondly, if you gave the air time free to candidates, either in law or in sort of public stigma, it seems to me you would be in a position to say to the candidates with this free time we want to hear directly from you; we, the public, are pretty sick and tired of these negative attack ads that drive the turnout down, and I think is a large part of the disgust with politics. There was a little bit of an experiment with free air time in the presidential campaign last year, not nearly enough. Not that many people saw them. Not that many were on the air, but what the scholars found who study them, these are Dole and Clinton presentations of a minute or two minutes apiece, is that--

JIM LEHRER: They're on what, three commercial networks, four commercial networks on PBS?

PAUL TAYLOR: That's right.

JIM LEHRER: And where else?

PAUL TAYLOR: That was CNN also.

JIM LEHRER: Okay.

PAUL TAYLOR: There are a total of about 50 of these segments, as compared to, believe it or not, 120,000 political ads. So it's no great surprise that not many people saw them, but of those who did see them, the viewers said, hey, we like this. We did a national survey of viewers, and of those who saw 'em, you know what, we sounded useful, we sounded substantive, we got good information here and the scholars who sort of pour over the discourse say when the candidate is on camera you get better argumentation; you get more accuracy. You obviously get more accountability. So, again, I'm not saying that this is a perfect solution or a perfect cure to all that ails our political system, but these are steps in the right direction.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Mr. Cavender, let's take those two main points one at a time. First of all, Paul Taylor's point that it just reduces the need for so much political money. Do you buy that?

MIKE CAVENDER, Radio-Television News Directors Association: [Denver] I really don't. The fact of the matter is that if free time is provided in whatever the amount is, the candidates will continue to spend significant amounts of money on additional advertising, the goal being for many candidates to outspend their competitor. I don't think this is the answer in any way, shape, or form.

JIM LEHRER: What about the second point, that it just adds to the discourse, it's cleaner than, than advertising?

MIKE CAVENDER: Well, absolutely. Any type of political programming will add to the discourse. As Paul mentioned, we provided free time before. Broadcasters traditionally have provided free time in the form of debate and public service programs for 50 years, for as long as television has been around. And I think the vast majority of broadcasters in this country operate responsibly. They understand their obligation to the public, and I think serve it quite well. And I think to legislate this is simply ill-advised.

JIM LEHRER: And that's your complaint? In other words, you don't think this should be part of running a television station or a network or a cable system in America today, that you be required to do this?

MIKE CAVENDER: Absolutely not. Look at where we're at already. We have new regulations in place to require three hours of children's programming every week. The President is talking about redefining public service and having guidelines for that. We have a content rating systems in place. More and more legislation seems to be cropping up. And I don't think that's the way we need to go. As I said, I think the industry is responsible as a whole and can serve its public voluntarily, as we've done in the past.

JIM LEHRER: What would be the harm in doing so?

MIKE CAVENDER: Well, the harm in doing so is a couple of things. One, it's basically unfair. This is a group of individuals, politicians, who through legislative action have been given the right to say to the broadcasters you've got to carry our commercials for free. Nobody else gets that opportunity to, to come to a broadcaster and say you've got to carry my commercial for free. And I think that that's patently unfair.

JIM LEHRER: Patently unfair?

PAUL TAYLOR: Well, this is really not for the politicians so much as it is for the citizens. What Mr. Cavender doesn't point out is that the airwaves don't belong to the broadcasters; the airwaves belong to America. And we've been doing it this way for 60 some years. And the deal with broadcasters is you can--we'll license you to broadcast over the air--over the public airwaves, but you are a public trustee, and you have public interest obligations. And Mr. Cavender complains about three hours of children's TV. The truth of the matter is those public interest obligations have been whittled away at for the last 60 years. We're the only country in the world that doesn't require broadcasters to give their time during campaigns to candidates and parties to appeal to citizens for votes. This is the bedrock transaction in our democracy. I think a lot of people feel that their citizens aren't getting good information. They certainly don't like the money chase that is fueled by the need to raise money. The other point I would make is that the broadcasters are literally on the eve. Tomorrow they are scheduled to get new licenses to what it's called for digital television. If they had been forced to pay for these on the open market, as other commercial users of the nation's airwaves are forced to pay now, it would have cost them by some estimates $70 billion. The broadcasters are not paying a penny. Contrary to what Mr. Cavender says, Congress doesn't want to lean on the broadcasters. Congress is frightened by the broadcasters. They're frightened by GE and Disney and Westinghouse. A Common Cause report just out today said they're pouring millions of dollars into the system to buy influence. They're frightened by the local news director and the station manager. If you're a member of Congress--

JIM LEHRER: He's talking about you, Mr. Cavender.

PAUL TAYLOR: That's their gateway onto the 6 o'clock news.

MIKE CAVENDER: I absolutely disagree. Congress is not afraid of the broadcaster. We don't buy influence, and let me just clarify one thing. I'm not complaining about, about requirements for, for children's television or anything else. All I'm saying is that we keep moving back to this issue of regulation and regulation and regulation and requirement and requirement. If broadcasters in this country were not acting responsibly by and large, then I think Mr. Taylor might have a better argument, but we are.

JIM LEHRER: What about Mr. Taylor's central point, that the license that you operate under is--actually belongs to the public and that you have public responsibility to go with that?

MIKE CAVENDER: Absolutely. And I don't think there's a broadcaster in this country that would argue with the fact that we have significant responsibility to the publics that we serve, but my point, very simply, is that we are serving those audiences and those publics, and we're acting and doing it in a responsible fashion.

JIM LEHRER: What about Mr. Taylor's point, Mr. Cavender, beyond the argument about broadcasting, what effect it would have in your argument you just made, do you think it would help the system, that it would help the politics of this country if we had less political advertising on television and more of this kind of thing that Paul Taylor's talking about?

MIKE CAVENDER: Oh, I go back to the point that I made a few moments ago. I'm not at all convinced that we would have less political advertising. I think there would still be a move on the part of candidate A to outspend candidate B in an effort to, again, maximize exposure to the voting public. So I don't think you would see an end to any of this.

JIM LEHRER: Well, Paul Taylor, are you suggesting that there be a ban on political advertising?

PAUL TAYLOR: No. I'm not. I'm for as much political speech as we can get. I think political speech is good. There is the main bipartisan campaign finance reform bill currently in Congress is the McCain-Feingold bill, and it suggests an exchange, voluntary spending limits in exchange for free air time. That's one way to go. There are those who raise constitutional and other questions with that. I like an idea of a time bank. I won't go into the details, but you would move free air time into the system that way. But I think in either of these approaches you would have free air time, which I hope you would get this better kind of discourse, and candidates, Mr. Cavender is absolutely right, would still have the ability to raise money. They wouldn't have to raise so much. And if you put enough free air time in, you would relieve the burden. Again, I'm not suggesting this is a perfect solution. There's another very important point here which we began to see in the last campaign and we're going to see a whole lot more in the next campaign, which is outside groups are now coming in. And they have become very, very big political advertisers, and they are not subject to any disclosure requirements, are not subject to any--

JIM LEHRER: Give me an example of what you're talking about.

PAUL TAYLOR: The AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club, of the National Rifle Association. They come in and they say, we don't like Congressman X; he's lousy, he's no good. It looks exactly like a campaign ad, but it's an outside group. And while I'm all for roadblocks, political communication, one of the troubles there is that the only people that voters can hold accountable on election day are the candidates, themselves. So to me it makes all the sense. Let's give free air time to candidates. They are the most important communicators during the election season, and otherwise, we're going to see the candidates' voices getting drowned out by special interest groups.

JIM LEHRER: Do you see that as a potential problem, Mr. Cavender?

MIKE CAVENDER: I really don't. Another issue that is raised here is: Where does it stop? We're talking about congressional candidates, but there are all kinds of local and state elections too. At what point does the government step in and say, all right, for the state legislature, you know, we're under a mandate that you provide free time for city council, for the mayor, for races frankly that in many communities may be more significant in some voters' minds than, than congressional elections. And I think that this can go on and on and on. And soon we'll be providing so much free time there won't be time for paid commercials of any kind.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think that's a possibility?

PAUL TAYLOR: No, no, obviously not. The market will only bear so much political communication. What we suggest is, look, about $500 million was spent on political advertising in 1996. That's the $500 million. That's the dirtiest money that was raised. In raising that money we had lots of scandals. It's a big deal in the political system. It's less than 1 percent of the broadcaster's revenue. If you were paid $500 million for free air time, you gave it mostly to political parties, they make their decision. Are we going to spend it on the dog catcher race because that's most important to us, or we'll spend it on the presidential race, and everything in- between--we have a limited amount of free resources; we'll spend it where it makes the most sense. We're not going to saturate the market because at some point the market will rebel.

MIKE CAVENDER: Well, many of those races are no-partisan, so I'm not sure what commission or organization would be responsible for administering this, but again it's additional regulation that's simply not warranted, given the history of the broadcaster.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Mr. Cavender, Mr. Taylor, thank you both. CONVERSATION

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight a conversation with the next poet laureate of the United States and to Elizabeth Farnsworth.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The next poet laureate is Robert Pinsky. His appointment was announced last week by the Librarian of Congress. He joins a select group, which includes Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Pen Warren, and current laureate, Robert Hass, whose second year in the post ends in May. Pinsky has published five books of poetry, including "The Figured Wheel," which came out last year and brings together 30 years of his work. In 1994 his translation of Dante's "Inferno" became a selection of the Book of the Month Club and a bestseller. Pinsky is also poetry editor of the weekly Internet magazine "Slate," and teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University. He joins us now. Thank you for being with us.

ROBERT PINSKY, Poet: My pleasure.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Did you welcome this appointment, or did you have some hesitations because it'll take away time that you usually need for writing?

ROBERT PINSKY: All of the above.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: [laughing] Do you think it will cut into your writing a lot, or are you able to write even when you're on airplanes and working in other things?

ROBERT PINSKY: Well, fortunately, I grew up in a rather noisy, disorganized household, and I'm accustomed to writing with noise around. And I have been known to write in airplanes and airports, and from what I hear I'll have to try it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: As I understand it, the poet laureate is supposed to promote poetry in the United States, in schools and other places. Is that necessary now? Does the United States need to have poetry promoted, or is it doing okay?

ROBERT PINSKY: We are a culture that compared to more homogeneous ones is very mixed. Our impurity is part of our glory, and that means when you take our prized possessions like jazz or movies or poetry, they're things that probably will live thousands of years, but they also need caretaking, and I think the Library of Congress, itself, and the laureate position are part of the caretaking of poetry.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you have special goals that you want to achieve?

ROBERT PINSKY: One notion I have is to add to the wonderful archives the Library has of poets reading their poems, an archive of Americans of many kinds reading favorite poems. I might ask you. I might ask policemen, high school principals. We might ask government officials: "Do you have a favorite poem, and would you mind adding to an archive, a record of Americans and their poetry at the end of the 20th century?".

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Tell us how you got started. When did you first recognize that you loved words?

ROBERT PINSKY: I can remember as a child loving things I didn't understand. What it meant for the priest to be shaven and shorn and the man tattered and torn and the maiden all forlorn, I didn't know, but I knew I liked the way it sounded.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: When did you start writing?

ROBERT PINSKY: When I was in high school I was ambitious to be a musician, and probably the first things I wrote were songs.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Read for us something, please.

ROBERT PINSKY: Well, I have a relatively recent poem called "To Television," and that seems maybe appropriate: "To Television, not a window on the world, but as we call you, a box, a tube, terrarium of dreams and wonders, coffer of shades, ordained cotillion of phosphors or liquid crystal. Homey miracle. Tub of acquiescence, vein of defiance. Your patron in the Pantheon would be Hermes, Rasterdance, quick one, little thief, escort of the dying, and comfort of the sick. In a blue glow my father and little sisters sat snuggled in one chair watching you. Their wife and mother was sick in the head. I scorned you and them, as I scorned so much. Now I like you best in a hotel room, maybe minutes before I have to face an audience. Behind the doors of the armoire, box within a box, Tom and Jerry, or also brilliant and reassuring Oprah Winfrey. Thank you. For I watch. I've watched Sid Caesar speaking French and Japanese not through knowledge but imagination, his quickness, and thank you. I watched live Jackie Robinson stealing home, that image, o, strung shell, enduring, fleeter than light, like these words we remember in, they too are winged at the helmet and ankles."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I love the mixture of the mundane and myth here, and the reference to Hermes. Hermes is, as I remember, the god of--he's a messenger god, the god of science and invention, but he also leads people to Hades, and wasn't he the god of trickery too and cunning? Which one are you referring to?

ROBERT PINSKY: Speed. You tell me which one's a part of television. And he was also the comforter of the sick and he escorted the dying, and as we all, many of us, know if you go into a hostel, a hospice, or a place where very sick people are cared for, there's often a television on and human voices and emotion are a comfort.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Some people might find modern technology antithetical to poetry, even dangerous to the very personal art that poetry is, but you don't, do you?

ROBERT PINSKY: Well, that's the conventional idea, but poetry is, itself, a technology. Verse is a very ancient technology designed for memory and that also achieves a lot of speed. It's a technology of the voice, of the grunts that a very resourceful primate makes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You were poetry editor of the "New Republic" for a long time, and now you're poetry editor of an on- line magazine, "Slate." Is it quite different? What do you find being editor of an on-line, a magazine in cyberspace, instead of in front of you on paper?

ROBERT PINSKY: A wonderful aspect of "Slate" and the poems in "Slate" that may seem contradictory in relation to that technology versus poetry idea is that you can hear the poems on "Slate" if you have a sound card in your computer; you can click on the palm and hear the poet read it, so that in a way in "Slate" the poems are more embodied, are more physical than in a text magazine.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How do you write? What do you write with?

ROBERT PINSKY: Everything I can. I use a pen. I use a pencil. I often type a rough draft onto the computer. Then I print out immediately and I write all over the rough draft, and then I type from that palimpsest again.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And what inspires you? Give us a sense. For example, what inspired "To Television?"

ROBERT PINSKY: My favorite quotation on inspiration is from Dexter Gordon, the saxophone player. In the interview I heard they said, "Dexter, where do you get your inspiration," and the first two words out of Dexter's mouth were, "Lester Young." I'm inspired by reading things I love. I think art comes from art.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So "To Television," how did that poem come to mind?

ROBERT PINSKY: I think I was probably thinking about Sid Caesar and the amazing thing he does. It's such a wonderful work of imagination when he sounds as though he's speaking Japanese or French or Italian and it's just his quickness, his wit, his ear, and some sound to do with Sid Caesar, maybe even his name, would get it going, but I can't remember. I was interested in the idea of an ode--writing a poem to springtime or to something.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. Finally to end this, would you read "December Blues?"You've had more than two feet of snow up there. It's not December, but I thought this poem captured better than anything I've ever read the strange feeling of blues that many of us get in December around the holidays.

ROBERT PINSKY: Here goes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I love the words that you use to do this.

ROBERT PINSKY: "December Blues. At the bad times nothing betrays outwardly the harsh findings, the studies, and hospital records. Carols play. Sitting upright in the transit system the widow-like women wait, hands folded in their laps, as monumental as bread. In the shopping center lots, lights mounted on cold standards, power and stir, condensing the blue vapor of the stars. Between the rows of cars people in coats walk bundling packages in their arms, or holding the hands of children. Across the highway, where a town thickens by the tracks with stores open late and creches in front of the churches, even in the bars, a businesslike set of the face keeps off the nostalgic pitfall of the carols tugging. In bed how low and still the people lie, some awake, holding the carols consciously at bay. Oh, little town enveloped in unease."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, Robert Pinsky, congratulations again and thank you very much for being with us.

ROBERT PINSKY: Thank you, Elizabeth. RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, Agriculture Department officials said schools in six states have received strawberries that could contain the Hepatitis A virus. And Wall Street another down day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed off 94 points at 6517.01. We'll see you on-line and again tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.