The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the News this Tuesday, we update the bloody standoff of members of a religious cult in Texas, and a White House official and a refugee's lawyer disagree about what the Supreme Court should decide about the Haitians. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: The standoff between a heavily armed religious cult and hundreds of law enforcement officers continues this evening, despite a promise to surrender by the group's leader. The bloody siege began Sunday when officers attempted to make arrests for firearm violations at the group's fortified compound near Waco, Texas. Four agents and at least two cult members were killed in the ensuing gun battle. This afternoon, the cult's 33-year-old leader, David Koresh, said he and his followers would give up peacefully, but so far that hasn't happened. Koresh's comments were made in a message broadcast on localradio stations at the request of the FBI. We'll have more on the story after the News Summary. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: The investigation into the World Trade Center bombing focused today on a brown van. FBI agents in New York said eyewitnesses saw such a van in the garage roadway before the explosion. Agents began pulling cars from the garage to search them for clues today. The bomb site, itself, is still not safe enough for investigators to search. A video tape was retrieved from a garage entrance yesterday, but its contents have not been disclosed. FBI officials said other cameras were buried in the rubble. They said finding them would be a real breakthrough. Local officials today offered to pay $200,000 for information leading to an arrest in the case.

MR. MacNeil: A lawyer for Haitian refugees asked the Supreme Court today to strike down the U.S. policy of returning Haitians intercepted at sea. The policy was put in place by the Bush administration. It was continued by President Clinton, although he opposed it during the election campaign. At a photo session today with NATO's Secretary General, reporters asked Mr. Clinton if he now believes he was too critical of the Bush policy.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Maybe I was too harsh in my criticism of him, but I still think there's a big difference between what we're doing in Haiti and what they were doing in Haiti. And there's a big difference between the kinds of problems that are created by the Haitian circumstance. I mean, you know, something that was never brought up before but is now painfully apparent is that if we did what the plaintiffs in the court case want, we would be consigning a very large number of Haitians in all probability to some sort of death warrant given the kinds of, the means they have to get here, the kinds of boats they have, and all of that. We have now cut from two months down to one week the amount of time it takes to process people who want to be considered to be refugees in Haiti. When we bring people back, we meet them there now. We don't just let them get dispersed into the country. We're going out into the country and doing the refugee handling, so it's a very different set of circumstances than it was.

MR. MacNeil: We'll have more on this story later in the program.

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton talked to the opposition today about his economic plan. He met with Minority Leader Bob Michel and other House GOP leaders in the morning and presented Michel with a 70th birthday cake. Then Mr. Clinton attended a Senate Republican lunch hosted by Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole. They ordered out for McDonald's Big Mac value meals. Sen. Dole gave Mr. Clinton a giant pen to express Republican support for the line item veto and a $250 contribution toward construction of a White House jogging track which is being built with private contributions.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I want to thank you for this check. This is probably the most extreme step ever taken by a member of either party to cut the fat out of the federal government.

MR. LEHRER: Republican leaders have been critical of the economic plan the President presented to Congress two weeks ago. They complain that it is too heavy on taxes and too light on spending cuts. Mr. Clinton has challenged them to propose specific cuts. After today's meeting, Congressman Michel had this to say.

REP. BOB MICHEL, Minority Leader: He would have preferred, quite frankly, to do all the spending cuts, and then when we got to that point where he didn't think that would sell, I got the distinct impression that he's got a constituency up here on the Hill on his side of the aisle that can't take as deep a cuts as we can on our Republican side and, therefore, demurred from that and went more toward, toward taxes to make up the difference.

MR. LEHRER: Ross Perot was also on Capitol Hill today. He testified before a committee examining the organization of Congress. He gave them some tips on how to fix it.

ROSS PEROT: We, the American people, cannot be expected to sacrifice, and if my instincts are right in listening to them all the time, they are not going to be willing to take a tax increase while their elected servants continue to live lives of far, far, far greater opulence than they. In this period of sacrifice the strong feeling of grassroots America is the first rule of leadership. All sacrifice must start at the top. Our elected officials must eliminate the perks and practices that have caused the people to lose confidence in Congress, and the White House is loaded with the same sort of perks and practices.

MR. MacNeil: In economic news today, the government's main forecasting gauge edged up in January. The Commerce Department said the Index of Leading Indicators rose .1 percent. That followed a December gain of 1.7 percent, the biggest in almost 10 years. In a separate report, the Commerce Department said new home sales dropped 13.8 percent in January, the steepest plunge since 1982. New home sales had risen 4.7 percent in December. The United Mine Workers today ended their monthlong strike against the Peabody Coal Company in West Virginia. They agreed to extend an expired contract for 60 days. The strike had expanded to other companies yesterday, raising the total number of strikers to 9200.

MR. LEHRER: Russia announced it would join the humanitarian airdrops into Eastern Bosnia. The foreign minister said today he expected Russian planes to take off from NATO airfields. There were more U.S. flights to the mainly Muslim region today. Defense Sec. Les Aspin said they may be the last ones for a while since more land convoys have gotten into the area. Early today planes dropped medicine and food for 21,000 meals over a town called Zepa. It is still unclear how much of the aid has gotten to the Muslims it is intended for. U.N. officials said yesterday's airdrop target, Sarska, was being overrun by Serb militia. Serbs continued to delay land convoys headed for Eastern Bosnian towns. UN officials said they also were preventing the evacuation of 1500 critically wounded Muslims.

MR. MacNeil: NBC News President Michael Gartner resigned today. He will relinquish the day-to-day operation of the news division immediately but will not officially leave the network until August. The move came after NBC News admitted rigging a crash test for a report on General Motors pickup tricks. That's it for our News Summary. Still ahead on the NewsHour, the cult story in Waco and the fate of the Haitian refugees. UPDATE - CULT OF VIOLENCE

MR. LEHRER: The continuing war between a cult and the law is our lead story tonight. Members of the Branch Davidian cult were to have surrendered at their compound near Waco, Texas, late today, but it did not happen. The cult had been in a standoff with federal authorities following a shootout Sunday that left six people dead. This afternoon's surrender was to have followed a local radio station's airing of an hourlong message from the group's leader, David Koresh. He promised in the message to surrender peacefully once the message was aired, but three hours afterward, Koresh and his followers remain hold up in their heavily fortified compound. We go now to a reporter who is there at the scene. She is Ginny Carroll, the Houston Bureau Chief for Newsweek Magazine. She is joined by Gordon Melton, a professor of religious studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is director of the University's Institute for the Study of American Religions. Ginny Carroll, where does it all stand right now?

MS. CARROLL: Well, Jim, it stands pretty much as it stood since the shootout. It stands in limbo. There was some frantic activity this morning. It almost reminded me of what people sometimes complain of in the military, hurry up and wait, because they were bringing in a lot of equipment, six ambulances, a couple of Hum V's, carried out some garbage. There was a clear feeling that something was about to happen, especially after the agreement was struck that if this 58-minute tape were played, then the followers would come out by the leader's definition immediately, and that did not happen. The federal police are still apparently in contact with him. They profess not to be anxious to end this, but it's again nearing sundown, another day, and it's still unresolved.

MR. LEHRER: There is no, no, there is no way to know what happened, right, why Koresh and his people changed their minds or anything like that?

MS. CARROLL: Well, in some of the earlier negotiations I would have to say that he did not completely fulfill his promise. There have been other incidents where if an abbreviated tape would be played on the radio station, then he would promise to send out children two by two. That happened, but not every time the tape was played, for example. So they could simply be in some sort of meditation. They could, there could be another timetable worked out. We don't have any way of knowing. We don't have any window inside that compound whatsoever. There's been a virtual news blackout all day, and the media's been kept at more than arm's length. Without a telephoto lens, it's pretty tough to see anything at all.

MR. LEHRER: But it's your understanding that the authorities are still in contact with Koresh, is that correct?

MS. CARROLL: That is my understanding, and I couldn't imagine that it would be any other way.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, bringing in Prof. Melton, tell us what, Prof. Melton, what should we know, what do we need to know about these people? Who are they? Who is David Koresh, and what is this cult all about?

PROF. MELTON: This is a group that's been around for quite a long time. They were actually founded back in the 1930s, but have picked up part of the perspective of survivalism that became so popular during the late '70s and all through the 1980s, and having kind of given up on the structures of society, they have armed themselves to really protect themselves from the very kind of thing that happened to them beginning on Sunday. What we are watching is kind of the fallout from almost a self-fulfilling prophecy that they have brought upon themselves.

MR. LEHRER: And is that prophecy part of their, their belief that they will die in this kind of tragic circumstance? Is this part of their, this is what they've accepted?

PROF. MELTON: It doesn't seem to be that. It's that there is a period of transition between this present world that is kind of degenerating around them and the establishment of a new millennial kingdom, those kind of events that are described in the middle part of the book of Revelations, and seemingly, what they have armed themselves for is to protect themselves and allow themselves to survive through what they would see as a period of tribulation before Jesus actually comes and sets up his millennial kingdom, and they are given their due and the new order of things.

MR. LEHRER: Ginny Carroll, what is known about where the followers, themselves, come from? Are they indigenous Texans, are they people from the Waco area? Did they come from around the country, around the world, or do we know?

MS. CARROLL: Some of them are from the Waco area. Some of them are from other parts of Texas. There is supposed to be at least a few Australians in there whom Koresh recruited when he was on a trip down there a couple of years ago. Some of the people actually live out in the Waco community, but most of the core of the group does live within what we have been calling the compound, which is near a small town, Elk, outside Waco.

MR. LEHRER: Is there, in terms of ages, are they, do people join this cult as families or do they join as individuals, or is it a little bit of both, or what can you tell us about that, Ginny?

MS. CARROLL: It's a little bit of both. At one point in this, some women were required to renounce their husbands before coming into it, but there clearly are some families, although we have to remember that David has acknowledged being a polygamist. He claims that as many as 18 children perhaps are his biologically, and then there are apparently, as far as we have been able to determine, some children who have other biological fathers who have been in the compound and who may now have been released, with a total of 18 children being released yesterday and today.

MR. LEHRER: What about the, the cultural or educational level of these people, do we know anything about that?

MS. CARROLL: Well, he's a ninth grade dropout who is somewhat self-educated. He is a guitar player. One member of the sect from the community is a lawyer, well respected in Waco, educated at Harvard. The people inside have said they're being treated by a member of the sect who is a registered nurse. I don't think that everybody in this group is what might be portrayed as waco fringe nut cases. I think that probably the extreme rhetoric of the leader may have led, and some of the people obviously who were willing to pick up automatic weapons and fire on the police, I have a feeling that we have a patchwork in there.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Is it a multi-racial patchwork, or they all of one race, all white?

MS. CARROLL: I see no indication that there's anything but white race.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Prof. Melton, are there similarities between this guy, Koresh, and Jim Jones of Jonestown faith, fame, infamous, I should say, and infamy, and Charles Manson?

PROF. MELTON: Well, there's just a mere similarity that they were all three leaders of groups. As far as we can tell, this particular instance, the violence, seems to be a defensive kind of action much more than the offensive kind of action that we see with Manson or the kind of action where the group turned in on itself with Jones. So we have a much different kind of situation, with the violence being provoked by the attack of the government agents.

MR. LEHRER: Prof. Melton, after one of these things happens, I know it happened after Jonestown, and I'm sure it's going to happen after this thing is resolved one way or another, people, the big question is going to be: Why would people follow somebody like David Koresh? I mean, what is there about, what do we know about David Koresh? He's charismatic? What is the source of his power?

PROF. MELTON: Well, one of the sources of power, you have to remember, is that this is not a fresh group. This is a group that's been around for 60 years. So for a number of the people in the group this is what they have grown up in, and that's, it's kind of the only thing they ever have known, and he is just the current leader of a movement that's had several leaders probably during their lifetime. We don't know yet why, why Koresh rose to the top of the leadership pact. He wrestled leadership away from another person some five, six, seven years ago. And what it is about him that allowed him to do that I think still waits to be seen as we are able to get more information.

MR. LEHRER: It's been, been written that there is a connection between these people and the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Can you explain what that connection is?

PROF. MELTON: Well, the original founders of this group were all Seventh Day Adventists. They left the church basically in the '30s. The formal break came in 1942 during the war. The Seventh Day Adventist Church had become rather lenient on its traditional pacifist stand and if we can believe it, this group was an ultra pacifist group who left the Seventh Day Adventist Church, at least occasioned by their allowing people to join the army.

MR. LEHRER: I see. Where does the name, Branch Davidian, come from?

PROF. MELTON: Well, it comes in part from the early book that the founder wrote called The Shepherds Ride, and it refers to King David, who is a branch out of the linage of David, and the whole name Branch Davidian, they all refer to David and to Jesus, who comes out of that linage.

MR. LEHRER: Now the word is that there are about 70 people -- we don't know -- some of them still may be children, they may be children, I don't know how many adults there are, but say roughly 70 people are still in that compound. There were, of course, more than that when all this thing, when this thing began. How many followers of the Branch Davidian are there, not only in this compound but throughout the country? Do we know?

PROF. MELTON: Throughout the country there is an estimated thousand, maybe as many as twelve hundred. There seems to be that many more overseas in various locations. They have reported eight congregations, one of them here in Southern California, which is the original congregation, the group was founded in Los Angeles, and that's the best estimate we have at the moment. They have been rather reluctant to give out data, and they pretty much stopped printing material during the 1980's.

MR. LEHRER: When you first heard about this incident in Waco, and the shooting and everything on Sunday and the death of the, of the four agents and the wounding of sixteen others, and then of course at least two people killed who were from the cult, itself, did that surprise you, or was that a natural thing that you would have identified with these folks?

PROF. MELTON: It was somewhat surprising. Surprising probably is not the best word to use. Upsetting would be a more proper term, I guess. There was a very similar incident to this in Arkansas, Missouri, a little group called the Covenant Sword in the Arm of the Lord back in the 1980's in which they were not only stockpiling weapons, they were actually manufacturing them. The FBI was in charge of that particular raid, and they were able to pull it off and to make their arrests and to confiscate the weapons without any loss of life. And to me, it was rather upsetting that this incident had turned into a shootout.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Ginny Carroll, we had lost you there for a moment but I understand you're back, right?

MS. CARROLL: I'mback.

MR. LEHRER: Back in the cornfield?

MS. CARROLL: Back in the cow patch.

MR. LEHRER: Cow patch, right. That's not corn. I know better than that. I'm sorry, behind you.

MS. CARROLL: You've been away too long.

MR. LEHRER: Right. I know. I know. But, Ginny, is there, at this stage of the game, can a possible armed attack be ruled out? Is it very unlikely that those federal officers and their police campadres heavily armed are going to try another attack? In other words, they're going to stay until this thing is resolved peacefully or forget it?

MS. CARROLL: Well, I think it's clear that they're trying to resolve it peacefully. At the same time, you have four federal officers who have been killed, and I don't think that they're going to let this straggle on for months or even perhaps weeks at a time, but I do think that they are placing the emphasis on trying to get the people to come out. We don't know for sure, in fact, that there are no children, for example, left in there, who must in all of this be regarded, whatever, however anybody else is regarded as innocents, and so I think that they're going to try to bring it to a head as quickly as possible. I mean, he's already made a commitment that he would come out, they've honored their end of the bargain, and I suspect there's some pretty heavy pressure being applied at the moment. Certainly they have moved the resources into place to take the place militarily if they should deem that that is absolutely necessary. But I'm sure that they will try everything before that final solution.

MR. LEHRER: Is there any fresh information on the physical condition of Koresh? It was reported, in fact, he said it, himself, that he had been wounded in those early interviews that he did on CNN and elsewhere, that he had been shot. Do we know anything about that now?

MS. CARROLL: Well, if as he said, he was able to make that tape today, his voice did not sound as a man who is in great pain. He was said yesterday by some people in the compound to have been up and walking around. So perhaps it has been that Mr. Koresh has been exaggerating a bit the extent of his injuries.

MR. LEHRER: But we should assume, or everybody should assume at this point that he's still calling the shots in that building, right?

MS. CARROLL: I find no reason to believe anything otherwise. There have been some other people in communication, but we certainly have no, it was his voice clearly on the tape today, the tape purported to have been made today, and so I think that he clearly is still in charge.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Ginny Carroll, Prof. Melton, thank you both very much. FOCUS - PERSONA NON GRATA

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, is it legal for the government to intercept Haitian refugees on the high seas and return them to Haiti? That was the question before the Supreme Court today. We'll hear arguments from both sides after this backgrounder by Correspondent Charles Krause.

MR. KRAUSE: The arguments heard today by the Supreme Court stem from the height of the Haitian refugee crisis last May. During that one month alone U.S. Coast Guard cutters picked up a record 13,000 Haitians, most of them aboard tiny wooden fishing boats, risking their lives to reach the United States. The Coast Guard had orders to rescue the Haitians. Those with credible stories of political persecution were taken to a U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

SPOKESMAN: We're simply providing the humanitarian needs that, that they require while they're here.

MR. KRAUSE: They were held there until the validity of their claims for political asylum could be evaluated. But by mid May, with more than 12,000 Haitians already there, Guantanamo was becoming dangerously overcrowded. Still, the torrent of refugees continued. Finally, President Bush moved to contain the growing crisis. On May 24th, the administration announced it would no longer offer refuge to the Haitians, even temporarily. The President ordered the Coast Guard to intercept all Haitian boat people at sea, then return them directly to Haiti without a hearing on their claims for political asylum. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher.

RICHARD BOUCHER, State Department Spokesman: The United States has rescued over 34,000 Haitians at sea. No other nation has done that. We've set up a service at our embassy to allow Haitians to apply for refugee status. As of this morning, there were 38 people who'd been picked up at sea who have been repatriated. They were taken back this morning. I understand a consular officer from our embassy went on board the ship, told the people who were being repatriated that there was the possibility for in-country processing, and that 17 of those 38 decided that they wanted to make applications, and they were then taken to the embassy.

MR. KRAUSE: But lawyers for the Haitians immediately challenged the new policy. The principal legal argument was based on the Refugee Act of 1980. The law states specifically that "The Attorney General shall not deport or return any alien to a country if the Attorney General determines that such alien's life or freedom would be threatened on account of political opinion." In court, the Bush administration argued the law of 1980 did not apply to refugees seized at sea outside U.S. territorial waters. President Bush added that, in his view, most Haitians were fleeing poverty in Haiti, not political repression.

PRESIDENT BUSH: [May 28, 1992] We cannot and as long as the laws are on the book, I will not, because I've sworn to uphold the Constitution, open the doors to economic refugees all over the world.

MR. KRAUSE: But lawyers for the Haitians have argued otherwise, both on legal and political grounds. They contend the 1980 law does apply to aliens intercepted at sea. And they say most Haitians have legitimate cause to feel threatened since the army seized power in Haiti 18 months ago. It was in September 1991 that Haiti's first democratically-elected president, Father Jean Bertrande Aristide, was overthrown and forced into exile after a bloody military coup. In response, the United States and its allies imposed an economic embargo on Haiti designed to pressure the military to give up power. But, instead, the embargo had the unintended effect of making things even worse for Aristide's supporters who began to flee in record numbers. Most of them came from slums like Citee Solee in Port Au Prince, where Aristide is still immensely popular. Many of these young men tried to leave Haiti last year. They became the boat people President Bush ordered back without a hearing. The Haitians also became an issue in the presidential campaign. Then Candidate Clinton called the Bush administration's policy "cruel," and said, if elected, he would change it.

BILL CLINTON: [June 9, 1992] I wouldn't return the Haitian boat people, the immigrants, until some shred of democracy was restored there.

MR. KRAUSE: In Haiti, Clinton's promise was heard and not forgotten. Within days of his victory, at least several hundred boats were reportedly under construction. Both the incoming Clinton and outing Bush administrations were fearful of another mass exodus from Haiti. They worked furiously before inauguration day in January to broker a political settlement, but the effort to negotiate Aristide's return to power proved unsuccessful. Faced with the prospect of thousands of Haitian boat people invading Florida on Inauguration Day, Clinton then reversed course. Citing humanitarian concerns, he ordered the Coast Guard to continue intercepting Haitians, returning them to Haiti without a hearing.

BILL CLINTON: [Radio Address to Haiti] I've been deeply concerned by reports that many of you are preparing to travel by boat to the United States, and I fear that boat departures in the near future would result in further tragic losses of life. For this reason, the practice of returning those who feel Haiti by boat will continue for the time being after I become President. Those who do leave Haiti for the United States by boat will be stopped and directly returned by the United States Coast Guard.

MR. KRAUSE: Sunday Sec. of State Warren Christopher defended the President's decision, saying the new administration will request $5 million to set up refugee processing centers in Haiti.

WARREN CHRISTOPHER, Secretary of State: [NBC, "Meet The Press"] And I think the responsible thing to do is to take the action that is in the interest of most of the people after you get into office that'll save the most lives or risk the fewest lives. I think our Haitian policy is the one that's soundest at the present time, and I don't suppose you'd want anybody to keep a campaign promise if it was a very unsound policy.

MR. KRAUSE: But after today's Supreme Court hearing, Herald Koh, the lawyer for the Haitians, and Congressman Charles Rangel of New York roundly condemned administration policy.

HAROLD KOH, Haitian Refugees' Lawyer: Rescuing them is one thing but returning them to their persecutors is not rescue. And the idea that somehow that's humane and safer to return them to the people that they're fleeing from, targeting them as political refugees, is throwing them out of the frying pan and into the fire, and so what we've done is, there's a fire in Haiti. People are fleeing, and we've pushed them back into the barn and shut the door and act like the refugees are the problem. They're not the problem. The regime is the problem.

REP. CHARLES RANGEL, [D] New York: I don't doubt the President's intent, but a violation of the law under Bush is still the same violation of the law under President Clinton. It's not just a question of a racist double policy for the Haitians. It's a question of: What does America stand for, what does our Constitution stand for, and what does that beautiful Statue of Liberty stand for? If we are to stain our Constitution because of racism in these United States, then it would mean for all people who flee persecutions that we would evaluate their wealth, the color of their skin, and then determine what our national policy should be.

MR. KRAUSE: The Supreme Court's decision is not expected for several months.

MR. MacNeil: Now we get the Clinton administration position. This afternoon I talked with Samuel Berger, the deputy national security adviser to the President, who was at the Executive Office Building.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Berger, thank you for joining us. Many have written that the position taken today is an embarrassment to President Clinton, who opposed it so strongly during the campaign. Is it?

MR. BERGER: No, I don't believe that's the case, Robin. Before taking office, President Clinton faced a very difficult situation. As your piece, introductorypiece indicated, literally thousands of boats were being prepared in Haiti to make a very dangerous journey into very treacherous waters to the United States. Under those circumstances, where thousands would have capsized and perhaps tens of thousands would have died, under those circumstances, the President, then President-elect, basically made three decisions: No. 1, his administration would make a serious and sustained effort to restore democracy to Haiti and to bring President Aristide back to Haiti. Working through the U.N., we have now launched a process of negotiations. We intend to pursue that process vigorously. Second of all, the President decided that we needed to do everything that we possibly could to allow Haitians to credibly and safely assert their refugee status in Haiti without getting on boats and taking that hazardous ride. And we have, and we can talk in more detail about the steps that we have taken and are committed to take during this interim period so that in-country processing in Haiti can be a serious and credible way of asserting refugee status. In that context, the President made the humanitarian decision that the practice of direct return should be continued under these exceptional circumstances because more lives will be cost by not returning the Haitians under these circumstances.

MR. MacNeil: You were one of Mr. Clinton's two foreign policy, top foreign policy advisers, during the campaign. How does it hear now to have the Secretary of State call the policy that Mr. Clinton espoused then unsound?

MR. BERGER: Well, I think the policy that the Clinton administration has undertaken with Haiti is different than the Bush administration policy. Certainly under the circumstances the President determined that the policy of direct return, the practice of direct return, notwithstanding what he had said in the campaign, had to be continued because there were lives involved and thousands of lives that could be lost.

MR. MacNeil: Well, was it --

MR. BERGER: If I could just --

MR. MacNeil: Sure.

MR. BERGER: -- put it in context, Robin, there are two other very important elements to what we're doing. Ultimately, the solution to this problem is not a refugee solution. The solution to this problem is to restore democracy to Haiti, be able to lift the embargo, to be able to restore economic flows into Haiti, and deal with the very, very dire economic conditions in that country. So the emphasis and the focus here needs to be on as expeditious a restoration of democracy to Haiti as is possible.

MR. MacNeil: Do you agree with the Secretary of State that what Mr. Clinton did during the campaign to score points off the Bush administration was, as now appears, unsound?

MR. BERGER: I think the judgment during the campaign that the policy of, practice of direct return was not a sound policy was incorrect during the campaign, and as we looked at the circumstances that we faced, the very real human circumstances, the President made I think the only decision that in good conscience a President of the United States could make.

MR. MacNeil: The, the other point about it is, of course, that the pro Haitian people argue, it was argued today in the court and their lawyer will argue it in the interview, I'm sure, that follows this one, is that whether it was unsound or not, or unsafe for the refugees that the position Mr. Bush took and that you've taken is simply illegal. You heard Congressman Rangel say the same order which was a violation of the law under Bush is a violation of existing law under Clinton.

MR. BERGER: I think it --

MR. MacNeil: The position taken by the appeals court, incidentally.

MR. BERGER: I think the position that was taken by the Solicitor General today was that under exceptional circumstances the President of the United States has this authority to, to interdict and return people on the high seas that are not in U.S. waters. These clearly are exceptional circumstances. I guess, Robin, let me just take issue with one characterization in terms of the pro Haitian people. I think what the President is seeking to do here in a very serious and committed way is to work as effectively as the United States can in the context of the United Nations to achieve what is an enduring solution to the situation in Haiti, and that is a political solution that involves a restoration of democracy so that we can begin to rebuild Haiti instead of having this terrible situation in which people are prepared to take these horrible risks obviously because their lives are worse if they don't take these risks.

MR. MacNeil: Do you, does the President accept the widely reported evidence that many of those returned to Haiti will be imprisoned or tortured or killed or have their lives, their houses destroyed?

MR. BERGER: We want to have in place in Haiti as effective a process as we could possibly create during this period so that people in Haiti can assert their refugee claims without leaving by boat. Let me just tell you a few of the things that we have done. We've added the number of Immigration & Naturalization people on the island with the view of reducing the time that it takes to process a refugee claim from months, which is what it was when we came into office, to seven days. Second of all, we are, the President over the weekend has authorized another $5 million to open refugee processing centers outside Port Au Prince so that people do not have to make that journey to Port Au Prince to assert their refugee claims. And there are things that we hope to do in terms of people who return into the port to make sure that they have easy and safe access to the refugee processing centers. So we are doing what we can to assure that people in Haiti can assert their claim to refugee status without getting on boats. And I would note, Robin, that this is not a policy that is unique to Haiti. We have had for years Soviet Jews in the Soviet Union asserting their refugee claims in Moscow. We've had Vietnamese asserting their refugee claims in Vietnam, so this is a practice that is not unique to Haiti.

MR. MacNeil: It's reported today that the administration has agreed to set a date for Aristide's return. Is that true? A couple of members of his cabinet have told that to the AP.

MR. BERGER: Well, I don't think that there is any particular date or setting a date that is the objective here. The objective here is to have a negotiating process which can lead to a restoration of democracy and a return of President Aristide under circumstances of peace and stability so that he can govern, so that democracy can continue to take root in Haiti, so this is something that we, working with the United Nations, working with Amb. Kaputo, who has been designated as the negotiator by the Secretary General, so that we can accomplish this as expeditiously as possible, but I think it is simply impractical to say there's some magical date. We want to try to accomplish this as soon as possible.

MR. MacNeil: Well, so far the military rulers of Haiti have just flatly turned down any efforts to get him back, is that not so? And the sanctions that are supposed to force them to do it are just causing more people to want to leave for economic reasons.

MR. BERGER: There is a process that was begun under Dante Kaputo which has already in the last few weeks led to the entry into Haiti of outside human rights observers from the U.N. and the OAS. There are forty to fifty there now. We hope that number will expand greatly so that there is an outside presence within Haiti monitoring that situation in terms of the human right conditions, Mr. Kaputo, I believe, plans to go back to Haiti soon to try to continue and intensify a negotiating process which will lead to a restoration of democracy in Haiti. That is the solution ultimately to the refugee problem, that is democracy in Haiti, and circumstances under which we and others in our hemisphere and around the world can contribute to the rebuilding of Haiti.

MR. MacNeil: Do you have any reason to be optimistic that can happen within a few months, within this year?

MR. BERGER: I know that President Clinton is committed to making a strong effort to support the Kaputo negotiations and to lend American help to that objective.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Mr. Berger, thank you very much for joining us.

MR. BERGER: Thank you, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: And now the lawyer who argued against the administration position before the Supreme Court today. Harold Koh is a professor of law at Yale University. Prof. Koh, thank you for joining us.

PROF. KOH: Thank you.

MR. MacNeil: The President says that people making your argument would consign thousands of people to small boats and put them at risk of drowning and that the humanitarian thing is to do what they're doing.

PROF. KOH: Well, Mr. Berger in the interview you just had used the term "humanitarian practice of direct return." We think that's a contradiction in terms. The one question Mr. Berger did not answer is the one that you put to him as to whether there is real danger to people who are being returned. In recent days, the violence has increased. Our clients in our case were brought back to Haiti. They were forced off the boats with fire hoses. They were fingerprinted by Haitian military and beaten. And the question is: It's fine to pick them up at sea so that they won't drown, but what do you do with them then? Why don't you take them to a safe haven site? It doesn't have to be in the United States. Why do you take them back to the people they're fleeing from? In our view, that's illegal because it amounts to aiding and abetting their persecutors.

MR. MacNeil: What is your own practical solution? I mean, I know you're arguing a legal point here that this policy breaks both the U.N. policy, I've forgotten the term for it -- is it a U.N. --

PROF. KOH: Refugee Convention.

MR. MacNeil: Convention, I beg your pardon, and the 1980 United States Refugee Act, but what is your own practical solution to the situation that President Clinton, President-to-be-Clinton found himself faced with, with all those boats being built, the prospect of a huge wave of people coming here and putting themselves at great risk?

PROF. KOH: Well, let me just say first, Robin, that the numbers, the large numbers that were being quoted were never substantiated. After Operation Able Manner, as it's called, the floating Berlin Wall around Haiti was put in place just before the inauguration, the Coast Guard spokesman in Haiti, himself, conceded that the actual numbers were quite small, the number of boats had been over counted and there was no accounting made for fishing boats and freight boats. But even assuming that people would come, I think the real question is not what he must do but what he may not do. The law says he can't return people to their persecutors. What options did he have? He could have gone back to the Bush policy of ten years which was simply to ask people, are you a political refugee or are you an economic migrant, and to return those people who really are economic migrants. I should note that under the policy we have in place right now, if President Aristide were coming on a boat, he would be returned directly to the Haitian military. And I guess the question is: Why don't you ask? President Clinton recognizes there is a distinction but he doesn't ask.

MR. MacNeil: He says on the legal side of this that under exceptional circumstances the President has the authority to, to disregard those laws and introduce this policy for a short period.

PROF. KOH: Robin, that way leads to the Iran-contra affair, the bombing of Cambodia, and all kinds of other things. I think the real question is whether a President who is sworn to uphold the rule of law can just disregard it because of supposedly exceptional circumstances. Let's put this into perspective. The number of people coming is much smaller than the refugee outflows from many other parts of the world and particularly for the United States. Nine hundred thousand Cubans have come over the last period, and the number that came last year over eight months with uncontrolled migration and essentially no progress on restoring democracy in Haiti was only thirty-eight thousand. Now I think the rule of law question is a very serious one because the President has no power to disregard the law just because it's inconvenient.

MR. MacNeil: The President also says, and we just heard Mr. Berger repeat the same argument, that his new position is substantially different from the Bush policy. You heard the reasons they gave. They're speeding up the processing time in Haiti, they're going to put more resources into more processing officials, they're going to go outside Port Au Prince to provide processing stations there, and they're going to protect the people when they get off the boats.

PROF. KOH: Well, we applaud the decision to try to make a serious effort to restore President Aristide, and I think we agree with Mr. Berger that the ultimate solution is to get democracy and Aristide back. The question is: What do you do in the meantime? I think that it's a mistake to believe that increasing the number of immigration officials from three to seven or increasing the number of private refugee processors from fifteen to twenty-nine when you have a backlog of some fifteen thousand applications is really going to make that much of a difference. If you're going to do it, do it right, and keep people safe while the process is going on. Just to give an example, if Cubans were coming and the idea was we should send them back to Castro while we're trying to get the situation resolved there, I think everyone would think that that's absurd. And that's not that much different from what's going on here.

MR. MacNeil: He also says the administration is actively pressing the restoration of democracy, you heard his argument, through the negotiations led by Dante Kaputo. Do you accept that?

PROF. KOH: I think that serious good faith efforts are being made. I think that 60 U.N. monitors at this point in a country of several million people is not enough to restore safety, and if it's not safe for political refugees, then the question is: Why do you return them directly to the people that they're fleeing from? I think this has broader political consequences. If the government's legal position is true, then what would stop the Germans from going out on the high seas to intercept Bosnians to return them to Serbian death camps? What would stop the Jews from being returned by simply sending boats out to stop them on the high seas? The government's position says that no law binds them on the high seas, and that has very broad implications around the world for refugee outflows.

MR. MacNeil: That, of course, was the position contradicted by the appeals court decision which you would like the Supreme Court to adopt today. Did you, from your colloquy with the members of the court, from the bench, get any sense of the court's reaction to your case? I know you can never predict outcomes, but I read that there were a number of questions by some of the Justices.

PROF. KOH: Well, in law, like in baseball, you don't know nothin', and I would be the last person to predict what happens. I do think that the Justices took very seriously the legal argument that we were making. The law is very clear on its face. You shall not return aliens to conditions of persecution. And I think the whole point is these are laws that are supposed to protect refugees, and if you could gut your obligation to protect refugees by sending boats out on the high seas to intercept them before they get here, there's not much protection left.

MR. MacNeil: Is it your own position that Mr. Clinton's promise during the campaign to change the policy created a new situation late in the year to which he had to react perhaps differently than he might have wanted to during the campaign or created new reality in other words?

PROF. KOH: Well, I think a lot of people have suggested that President Clinton was wrong before and he's right now. I would say the opposite. He was right before, and he's wrong now. When we won our decision at the court of appeals, he said that the court of appeals made the right decision in overturning the cruel Bush policy of returning people to the Haitian dictatorship without an asylum hearing. I think that was a very wise and profound statement. This was a moment for principle, not political expediency, and I think that principle should have carried the day.

MR. MacNeil: Could your case before the Supreme Court be mooted if there were real progress in the negotiations with the Haitians?

PROF. KOH: Well, you have to remember that the Clinton administration is the one who's pushing the case. We've won below, and it's up to them to decide whether they want to carry forward. If they decide that they want to leave the decision that we won below alone, we'd be perfectly happy.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Prof. Koh, thank you very much for joining us.

PROF. KOH: Thank you. ESSAY - RIGHTS & WRONGS

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, Essayist Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune has some thoughts about today's values.

[OLD FOOTAGE OF PEOPLE SINGING "WE SHALL OVERCOME"]

CLARENCE PAGE: When we look at the progress of liberation movements around the world and back here at home, the momentum of history appears to be carrying us resolutely forward, toward more liberty, more rights, more tolerance, live and let live. Yet, a new battle is growing along the front lines of what may be the final frontier of rights, the rights, protections and opportunities of homosexuals. After two decades of steady gains, a backlash against bay rights in America is gaining strength and breadth. We can see it in a recent vote by Colorado to overturn and bay gay rights laws, already passed in some local municipalities.The new argument here was that gay rights are special rights.

DEMONSTRATORS: [chanting] Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Amendment 2 has got to go!

MR. PAGE: But to gay and lesbian leaders it was a blow as devastating as the end of Reconstruction was to black Americans. It was a shove backwards into the closet, you might say, and it seems to be gaining ground nationwide. You can see it in Oregon, where an even stronger anti-gay measure was defeated in November. Organizers vowed to submit another one modeled after the one that won in Colorado. Also in November, Tampa, Florida, voters repealed that city's gay rights ordinance.

WOMAN: The little ones that are not even sexually active, this is what they're going to teach my kids? They're going to make them sexually active!

MR. PAGE: And you can see it in a slightly different form in liberal New York City. A school board in a middle class part of Queens flatly rejected a program that encourages tolerance because it recommended that homosexual parenting be taught as a normal, acceptable lifestyle to children as young as first graders. A new voice is being heard in the anti-gay debate, and it's saying something like this, tolerance for gays is fine, live and let live, but there's a difference, the argument goes, between tolerance and outright support, advocacy, promotion. Don't expect us, they say, to promote homosexuality to our children as a lifestyle no different from heterosexual lifestyles. Parents are entitled to want our children to believe there's a difference. For many, children warrant special consideration not because of irrational fears that homosexuals will recruit or seduce them but because of a simple truth: The origins of homosexuality remain ambiguous. The best experts can't agree on whether it originates at birth or in the conditioning and values one learns from life, from one's peers, from one's community, from one's parents, whether it's voluntary or involuntary or a little bit of everything. Until we know for sure, the argument goes, shouldn't we surround our children with as many one-sided signals as possible, to steer them toward traditional heterosexual, mommy and daddy married life. It's a fair question. You don't have to be a gay basher to ask it. So if the debate boils down to who is best equipped, parents or schools, to teach important values to our children, it's no contest. Parents win. Or at least they should. Unfortunately, when we look at some of the things happening to homosexuals on the street today, we have to wonder what kinds of values some parents are teaching. Today, all across our land of liberty and tolerance, gays and lesbians are getting harassed, beaten up, burned out and even killed because they are or somebody thinks they are homosexual. And there's the terrible tragedy of teen suicide, the biggest killer of teenagers except for auto accidents. All too often we find the victims were homosexuals, and the fear of living with persecution and ostracism was just too much for them to handle alone. Homosexuals under attack pay a special price for being what they are. No, they don't deserve special rights. No one deserves special rights. But they may need special protection. Those who fight to take away those protections, no matter how noble their arguments are, may do little more than help those who throw the rocks. So, yes, values are the parent's job. But sometimes we have to wonder what kind of job some parents are doing, or whether some of them could use some help. I'm Clarence Page. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, the standoff near Waco, Texas, between a heavily armed religious cult and hundreds of law enforcement officers continued, despite a promise by the group's leader to surrender. And the investigation of the World Trade Center bombing focused on a brown van, which was seen in the building before the explosion. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night with another conversation about President Clinton's economic program, this time with former presidential candidate H. Ross Perot. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.