The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MR. MAC NEIL: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After our summary of the day's top stories, we focus first on today's Whitewater hearings with extended excerpts and analysis by Mark Shields and Paul Gigot. Then Charlayne Hunter-Gault begins a new series of conversations on how to break the cycle of violence among young people. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: The House Banking Committee opened its public hearings on Whitewater today. The focus was contacts between White House aides and federal regulators investigating a failed Arkansas savings & loan. The S&L was run by a former business associate of President and Mrs. Clinton. The first order of business today was a vote on a motion by Committee Chairman Henry Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas, to ban questioning about the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster. The motion passed by a partisan vote of 39 to 19. The Committee's first and only witness was White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler. He offered this assessment of the contacts between President Clinton's aides and banking regulators.

LLOYD CUTLER, White House Counsel: I have concluded there was no violation of any ethical standard but that it would have been better if some of the issues that arose had been handled differently than they were. I have also recommended measures to assure that future contacts between the White House and Executive Branch agencies with law enforcement responsibilities will be beyond any reasonable challenge.

MR. LEHRER: The Committee's ranking Republican, Jim Leach of Iowa, criticized the administration's handling of the affair.

REP. JIM LEACH, [R] Iowa: Whitewater is about the arrogance of power. It is a metaphor for privilege, for a government run by a new political class which takes short cuts to power, with end runs of the law.

MR. LEHRER: We'll have extended excerpts from and analysis of today's hearing right after this News Summary. Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: Jordan's King Hussein and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin made a historic joint address to the U.S. Congress today. It is a follow-up to the accords signed yesterday that ended a 46-year state of war between the two countries. The leaders agreed to cooperate on many fronts, including trade, tourism, and other economic issues. Today King Hussein spoke about the possibility of an Israeli peace with other Arab countries.

KING HUSSEIN, Jordan: I come before you today totally confident that progress will be made on the Syrian-Israeli and Lebanese- Israeli tracks of the peace process, and towards the achievement of comprehensive peace. Mr. Speaker, the state of war between Israel and Jordan is over.

MR. MAC NEIL: King Hussein included an appeal for U.S. aid in his speech. He said the healing hand of the international community is now essential. Israeli Prime Minister Rabin spoke next. He said it was important not to miss this great opportunity for peace.

YITZHAK RABIN: There is much word before us. We face psychological barriers. We face genuine practical problems. All sorts of hostilities have been built on the River Jordan which runs between us. You in Oman and we in Jerusalem must bring down those barriers and walls, must solve those concrete problems, and I'm sure that we'll do it.

MR. MAC NEIL: A car bomb exploded outside the Israeli embassy in London today. At least 14 people were injured in the blast. The explosion also knocked out windows at nearby Kensington Palace, home of the Royal Family. No one claimed responsibility for the attack but Israeli Prime Minister Rabin blamed Islamic extremists. The death toll from last week's bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, has now risen to 95. Rescue workers said at least 10 bodies are believed to be still in the rubble of the Jewish Community Center that was hit by the truck bomb. But it's not known who is responsible for the attack. Israeli and Argentine officials suspect Middle East terrorists with possible links to Iran. This afternoon, Prime Minister Rabin said those extremists were now engaged in an all out war to stop the drive for peace. He made the remarks at a joint news conference at the White House with President Clinton and King Hussein. Rabin was asked if the radical group Hezbollah was involved and who was backing them.

YITZHAK RABIN, Prime Minister Israel: If you'll ask me who is the boss of Hezbollah, I would say Iran. If you'll ask me Syria can put limitations on these activities, my answer will be yes.

MR. MAC NEIL: Both President Clinton and King Hussein condemned the latest terrorist attacks. Hussein said the radicals wore blinders and had no vision. He said they were extremists who did not represent the religion of Islam.

MR. LEHRER: A United Nations official said today some 40,000 Rwandan refugees have returned home from camps in Zaire. But many thousands still remain in those camps. A U.S. military spokesman said 2,000 U.S. troops will soon go to Rwanda and Eastern Zaire. They will set up a relief operation to lure more refugees back to Rwanda. Some of those who remain in the camps are now getting clean water after U.S. soldiers set up a water purification system. We have a report from Robert Moore of Independent Television News.

ROBERT MOORE, ITN: Clean, drinkable water has always been the overwhelming priority here. Lake Kivu, the main source of water is badly polluted. This morning, the Americans arrived at the lake side with their purification units so desperately needed to combat the dehydration to counter the spreading cholera epidemic. The soldiers know what a difference it will make.

UNIDENTIFIED AMERICAN: It's heart wrenching, and I'm glad we're here hoping them stay alive.

ROBERT MOORE: There are other signs of international aid. The Israeli military have brought in a 120-bed field hospital to help treat the refugees, just as well, because the local hospital in Goma has simply been swamped. There are piles of dead lying at the entrance. In the grounds, the diseased and the dying receive minimal treatment. Even now, with all the aid flowing in, there are not enough drips, not enough facilities to rehydrate those in the grip of the epidemic. So bad are the overall conditions that this morning some refugees, though still only small numbers, were continuing to cross the border back into Rwanda. The problem is that in the major camps the Hutu extremists are still urging their people not to return to a country under the rule of their enemies, the Tutsi-dominated Rwanda Patriotic Front.

RAY WILKINSON, UN Aid Agency: There are a lot of people in the camps, in fact, who still tell us that they would prefer to face cholera than the bayonets of the army back home because they believe that they will be killed when they go back home.

ROBERT MOORE: For now though, and controversially so, the UN is still giving priority to the humanitarian aid rather than to the more political question of repatriation.

MR. MAC NEIL: The presidents of Russia and Estonia signed an agreement today for the withdrawal of all Russian troops from the Baltic Sea. The accord includes pension guarantees for retired Russian soldiers living in the country. Estonia is the last of the three Baltic republics to reach a troop withdrawal pact with Moscow. The 2,000 troops will leave by the end of August. Bosnian Serbs announced today they will close vital roads leading into Sarajevo. The roads are currently being used by the United Nations to carry food into the city. In a letter to the U.N., Serb Leader Radovan Karadzic accused the Muslims of using the roads to smuggle arms.

MR. LEHRER: That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Whitewater hearings and to teenage violence. FOCUS - OPENING DAY

MR. LEHRER: The Whitewater hearings: They began this morning before the House Banking Committee. The Committee is investigating contacts between White House aides and Treasury Department officials over a failed savings & loan in Arkansas. We'll have analysis from Shields & Gigot after excerpts from what happened today. Kwame Holman reports.

REP. HENRY GONZALEZ, Chairman, House Banking Committee: The committee meets pursuant to notice.

MR. HOLMAN: The first matter of business for the Banking Committee this morning was to consider a motion by Chairman Henry Gonzalez of Texas to exclude from the hearings any discussion of the death of Vincent Foster, President Clinton's Deputy Counsel.

REP. HENRY GONZALEZ, Chairman, House Banking Committee: I submit that neither we nor any other committee in the Congress has the expertise to determine such a question. And I submit that absolutely no public good would come or would be served by a public hearing on a subject that is clearly closed and whose airing would further torment Mr. Foster's innocent family. All in favor signify by saying aye. [numerous ayes] All opposed no. [no's] Call the roll.

MR. HOLMAN: The ongoing investigation into the Whitewater affair by Special Counsel Robert Fiske already has concluded that Foster's death was, indeed, a suicide as was originally reported. But Republicans on the committee wanted to probe any connection between Foster's death and his knowledge of any connection President Clinton may have had to Madison Savings & Loan, the failed Arkansas S&L owned by Clinton's Whitewater partner, James McDougal.

[VOTING]

MR. HOLMAN: The Committee voted straight along party lines, 31 to 19, and Democrats won approval of the motion to exclude the matter of Foster's death. Chairman Gonzalez then laid down some additional ground rules and added his own hopes that the hearings would finally put an end to partisan sniping over the Whitewater issue.

REP. HENRY GONZALEZ: During these past months there have been innumerable inflammatory, even scurrilous, and absolutely false claims about one aspect or another of this matter. One by one, these claims have proved to be outright lies, and they have fallen by the wayside in the open glare of the good open American tradition in our news disseminating system. And they have turned out to be either outright lies or distortions or exaggerations. And yet, not even the thorough and dispassionate work of the independent counsel has satisfied or silenced the more extreme critics, some of whom continue to make violent, untrue statements in the House and elsewhere. The independent counsel has reached some important conclusions, and we're -- and as we begin those hearings, those conclusions that sober even the most passionate of the political bounty hunters.

MR. HOLMAN: But Jim Leach, the Committee's ranking Republican and chief Whitewater critic, has long called for the hearings and defended them.

REP. JIM LEACH, [R] Iowa: On the landscape of political scandals, Whitewater may be a bump, but it speaks mountains about "me generation" public ethics as well as single party control of certain states, cities, and the United States Congress. Whitewater is about the arrogance of power. It is a metaphor for privilege for a government run by a new political classwhich takes short cuts to power with end runs of the law.

REP. HENRY GONZALEZ: That the testimony you're about to give before this Committee is the whole truth, the truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God.

LLOYD CUTLER, White House Counsel: I do.

MR. HOLMAN: White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler was the Committee's lead off witness. Cutler was charged with looking into meeting members of the White House staff and with Treasury officials to discuss the ongoing investigation of Madison Savings & Loan. Cutler described the meetings and said he found no unethical conduct among the White House staff.

LLOYD CUTLER: The first set of contacts occurred in the fall of 1993. They began on September 29th, when Treasury General Counsel Jean Hanson took White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum aside at the end of the meeting on another subject and told him that the President and Mrs. Clinton were mentioned incidentally in an RTC criminal referral concerning Madison Guaranty. Miss Hanson indicated to Mr. Nussbaum that the referral was likely to be the subject of press leaks and inquiries. She said she was informing Mr. Nussbaum so that the White House would not be taken by surprise. Mr. Nussbaum asked Miss Hanson to be in touch with his staff if there were further press developments. Over the next few weeks, Miss Hanson spoke on a couple of occasions to lawyers in the office of the White House counsel to report the details of continuing press inquiries. The second set of contacts occurred because of the then impending exploration on February 28, 1994, of the statute of limitations for the RTC to file certain potential civil claims arising out of the failure of Madison Guaranty. As you may recall, Sen. D'Amato was reminding the Senate daily of the shrinking period during which certain possible civil claims related to the Madison Guaranty failure could be pursued by the RTC. And RTC officials had already provided a briefing on this subject to members of Sen. D'Amato's staff on January 24th. Mr. Roger Altman, the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and the acting CEO of the RTC at that time, sought a meeting with White House officials on February 2nd to provide a similar briefing to the White House. At the same meeting, Mr. Altman also raised the issue of his possible recusal from decisions about how to proceed with respect to possible Madison-related claims potentially involving President and Mrs. Clinton. The third set of contacts relates to the RTC Oversight Board hearing before the Senate Banking Committee on February 24th. At the hearing in response to questions about contacts with the White House related to the Madison matter, Mr. Altman did not mention that he had raised the question of his possible recusal at the February 2 meeting. Mr. Altman also did not mention the September 29 and October 14 meeting regarding press inquiries about criminal referrals. Mr. Chairman, I have said that while the various Treasury White House contacts violated no ethical standard, in my judgment, it would have been better if some of these contacts had never occurred and if fewer White House staff members had participated. When I reviewed these incidents in their totality, I found that there were too many people having too many discussions about too many sensitive matters, matters which were properly the province of the office of the White House counsel.

MR. HOLMAN: Predictably, Democrats welcomed Cutler's findings which for the most part exonerated Altman and the White House staff.

REP. CHARLES SCHUMER, [D] New York: I think this is a good day for the President, a good day for the administration, and a good day for the American people, because as far as the Washington end of this matter goes, this is the day and the hour to put up or shut up. The time for sly leaks, smug innuendo, and unsubstantiated charges is over. Starting today, everything is out in the light of day and on the record.

MR. HOLMAN: But some Republicans used Cutler's remarks as an opening to launch attacks against the President, forcing Cutler to respond.

REP. BILL McCOLLUM, [R] Florida: One of the things I see differently is the lack of appreciation on the part of the President and seemingly a number of White House staff members about avoiding even the appearance of impropriety when you're a President or when you're in the White House, and when you have that responsibility. We saw it in Travelgate, which apparently led to some of the actions we'll hear in the next few days, some of these White House folks took or didn't take. Key staffers in that case ignored the ethics code in firing Travel Office folks. They removed documents. They made improper contacts with the FBI and so on. It sounds very similar to what we saw here, even though maybe slightly more subdued in this particular case. In the health care area, there was a tendency to stretch the truth, to say the least about the composition of the White House's health care task force at the beginning to the public. And there's certainly been a misleading of the public about the First Family's financial records, the security status of White House employees, the removal of documents from Mr. Foster's office that we aren't going to get into here today. I'm also concerned about your giving a propriety to the heads up issue here in this case. The President had the proper right to know that at least for the counsel involved. I dare say that the mayor of a major city named in a criminal reference from RTC or the Environmental Protection Agency or some other government agency would not get a heads up with regard to their being involved potentially in this before the matter was ever considered any further than it has been here. The problem is, there is this cozy relationship -- part of it is natural -- that deals with the presidency, but that makes it all the more important that the President and his staff do more even than you have indicated you believe is necessary.

LLOYD CUTLER: You refer to the appearance of impropriety in this administration. Remember that this administration adopted a five- year contractual rule for post-employment contacts as compared to the two-year rule, the one- and two-year rules on the statute books. This administration favored the extension of the independent counsel law which I have no doubt you perhaps, Mr. McCollum, and certainly most of the Republicans opposed, you prevented the independent counsel law from being continued at the end of 1992.

REP. BILL McCOLLUM: Mr. Chairman, a point of order. Mr. Cutler, I did not oppose continuing the independent counsel law.

LLOYD CUTLER: Well, most of your party did, I believe.

REP. BILL McCOLLUM: I don't believe that's true either, Mr. Cutler.

LLOYD CUTLER: Finally, I am not here as a special pleader for the President of the United States. I am here to report to you about a factual investigation that I conducted. I didn't ask for this job. I came in and I took it, and I reported frankly to the best of my ability as a lawyer and a person of integrity.

REP. MARGE ROUKEMA, [R] New Jersey: I reluctantly have come to the opinion that the administration must move immediately to re- establish its credibility and the integrity both of the White House staff and of the Treasury Department and particularly in the light of the disclosures today, if true, concerning Mr. Altman's interference with the, with the Navy Secretary Dalton and RTC's contacts with them. I think that he should be asked to resign. Now, I don't know how you feel about that.

LLOYD CUTLER: I never saw Mr. Altman try to exert any pressure directly or indirectly with respect to this matter. And let me say with respect to Mr. Altman that I believe to the extent my opinion is of any value or relevant on this, along with the President and Sec. Bentsen, whom he works for, that he has been a very effective Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, and I personally hope he continues in that job.

REP. TOBY ROTH, [R] Wisconsin: We have an S&L in Arkansas that went bankrupt and cost the American taxpayer $60 million. Federal regulators suspect that criminal acts contributed to the failure. The S&L is linked to a land development company called Whitewater, and the Clintons. Hundreds of thousands of dollars missing from the S&L, and the investigation begins, and lo and behold, the Clintons' name shows up in the investigator's report. Back in Washington, all hell breaks low. White House and Treasury officials move and more than 20 meetings on this one S&L are held. The news leaks out. Everybody hires lawyers. An independent prosecutor is named. The President even hires Mr. Cutler. Some of us in Congress push for our own investigation because, to put it simply, this smells to high heaven. We've seen it all before. Now we have this hearing, but the Democrats set the ground rules to prevent us from asking the big questions. If these ground rules applied to O.J. Simpson's trial, you couldn't ask him about the knife, you couldn't ask him about the glove, you couldn't ask him about the blood. All under these ground rules you could ask is: So, O.J., how was your flight to Chicago? [laughter in room]

MR. HOLMAN: Other Republicans tried to ask specific questions about Whitewater, itself, but they were ruled out of order.

REP. ALFRED McCANDLESS, [R] California: Mr. McDougal and President and Mrs. Clinton were equal partners in this investment.

LLOYD CUTLER: The two McDougals and the two Clintons, that's correct.

REP. AFLRED McCANDLESS: Yet, they did not suffer equal losses. How do we explain that?

LLOYD CUTLER: Well, I don't know whether we're straying beyond the subject of this inquiry but I would be glad to explain it anyway.

REP. HENRY GONZALEZ: The witness does not have to reply to the question.

REP. DEBORAH PRYCE, [R] Ohio: If the President or his wife were to have access to funds from the trust fund left over after payment of the legal fees, this would perhaps constitute an illegal augmentation of their salary. The fact that according to the trust document, the President and his wife can remove the trustees at any time and that gives them day-to-day operational control over a trust and, therefore, in my mind, it is not a trust at all, the fact that lobbyists are permitted to contribute to this legal defense fund, and the fact that the Clintons are --

LLOYD CUTLER: Mr. Chairman, please --

REP. DEBORAH PRYCE: -- not subject to additional tax liability as a result.

LLOYD CUTLER: -- I believe this question is well beyond the scope of this inquiry, but I would like the privilege of at least correcting one point that Ms. Pryce --

REP. DEBORAH PRYCE: Excuse me, sir, but I wasn't finished with my question, and so I don't know that you know the imminent--

LLOYD CUTLER: Well, Ms. Pryce, you're making --

REP. DEBORAH PRYCE: -- task of the question.

LLOYD CUTLER: -- a speech about a subject which is not within the scope of this committee.

REP. DEBORAH PRYCE: Excuse me, sir, but I don't think you're in control of this hearing.

LLOYD CUTLER: That's why I'm appealing to the chairman.

MR. HOLMAN: And as the hearing wore on into the afternoon, some Democrats complained the proceeding was long on partisan attack and short of new information.

REP. KWEISI MFUME, [D] Maryland: Mr. Chairman, I don't mean to suggest that impropriety should not be addressed and readily dealt with when the public domain appears to be less than honorable, but let me say to the members of this committee and remind myself that this is not another Watergate. This is not another Iran-Contra. And with all due respect, I hope that we use the next hours and the remaining hearings so that members can ask the questions that they feel strongly about. And then at some point in time we have to move on, we really do.

REP. MAXINE WATERS, [D] California: Today we learned nothing. As a matter of fact, everything that has been said here today I knew before I came here not because I studied it, because I simply read it in the press. I find this hearing to be boring, uninteresting, and uninformative. And I'm sorry that we must spend our time here.

MR. HOLMAN: Nonetheless, the House Banking Committee hearings on Whitewater will continue Thursday, when the major witness will be former White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

MR. LEHRER: Now to Shields & Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Mark, was there a winner today?

MR. SHIELDS: Jim, in a hearing like this you -- the White House is playing defense, and you really can't score politically on defense. But I don't think that a -- any points were scored by the opposition today either. I mean, this was the one area where, in fact, the President was vulnerable in terms of misfeasance, malfeasance, bad actions, while he's been in office. Everything else pre-dates his election, and I didn't -- no smoke, no gun today.

MR. LEHRER: Paul.

MR. GIGOT: It wasn't a day when you expect there to be a smoking gun. If there was a winner, I thought it was Lloyd Cutler, the President's general counsel, who came in and who said -- he gave the brief to the defense. He's a very good advocate that way. He knew his stuff. He tried to put the best face possible on a lot of these facts. He made a good witness for the President, no question about it. On the loser side though, Mark, I think that Henry Gonzalez, the chairman of the committee, did not exactly make the best case the Democrats could have made for being forthcoming, for trying to get to the truth. I had to conclude he might have been a Republican mole at some point. I mean, he -- you want the committee parameters to be set as if you're trying to get to the truth. That's what the average person I think wants to get out of this, and instead, he came across as irascible, decrying the partisanship. He didn't really get to the heart of the matter.

MR. LEHRER: The whole thing seemed unusually partisan, did it not?

MR. SHIELDS: It was intensely partisan.

MR. LEHRER: Should we be surprised?

MR. SHIELDS: No. I mean, the Congress is a very partisan place. I mean, this is a President who has been in office, who got an economic package through without a single Republican supporter. If he gets a health bill through, it's going to be without a single Republican vote. He's got a tax increase bill through without a single Republican. It is -- it's a place that is quite partisan right now and quite polarized.

MR. LEHRER: What I was thinking about -- Paul, maybe my memory is bad, but having watched so many of these kinds of hearings through the years, there was always at least one Republican or two Republicans on one side or one or two Democrats on the other who seemed to be really interested in getting that thing. And here, it seemed to me now, I'm just keeping score, I saw most of it today, correct me here, was all the Democrats saw absolutely no evil, anything wrong, and all the of the Republicans saw nothing but evil, and there didn't seem to be anybody in-between.

MR. GIGOT: The closest I thought who came -- who might have come to asking questions for facts on the Democratic side was Spencer Baucus, a Florida congressman. But the House, in particular, is a very partisan place these days. It's an election year. I think the Senate may be a little less so when it begins hearings on Friday.

MR. LEHRER: Is there anything new today?

MR. SHIELDS: If there was, Jim, I mean, I saw most of the hearings. I missed it if there were anything. Congressional hearings have, you know, historically provided a great opportunity for every manner of American political leader, from Harry Truman - - that's how he got the vice presidency were his hearings on more misspending from Richard Nixon and Alger Hiss to Joe McCarthy -- Estes Kefar, who got on the national ticket for his hearings on crime.

MR. LEHRER: Howard Baker.

MR. SHIELDS: Howard Baker.

MR. LEHRER: Right.

MR. SHIELDS: And so it -- you know, you kind of look for that. I mean, Bill Cohen of Maine emerged just in that role that you described when he was a House Republican at the House impeachment hearings in 1974, now an enormously popular Senator from that state, Peter Radino, Barbara Jordan. I mean, I didn't see the emergence today of anybody. Henry Gonzalez is not a chairman in the sense of a Sam Ervin. If you're going to pick a chairman, Henry Gonzalez is by Constitution and by experience and by his entire career an outsider. This is a guy who 36 years ago was the liberal candidate for governor of Texas, 1958. I mean, Texas has been -- San Antonio has been a city since 1718. It was 1961 before they even elected a Hispanic, the state didn't even have a Hispanic in the House of Representatives. Henry Gonzalez is sort of an irascible, volatile, mercurial outsider. He's not a avuncular, collegial figure, and you won't see that in these hearings.

MR. LEHRER: But didn't -- even the rules under which these members had to operate under, they were very constrained. If there was a star, a star would have trouble getting through there today, wouldn't they?

MR. GIGOT: It's hard with a five minute rule, with Chairman Gonzalez banging down the gavel saying you're time is up and saying, well, you can maybe that question with another sentence or two. I think that the Republican strategy here -- they knew this was not going to be a hearing that delivered a lot of new information because Lloyd Cutler was the only witness -- but I think what they tried to do, and I think they were effective and helped by Henry Gonzalez a little bit, is that they were trying to show that the administration and the Democrats have not been cooperative and there were list after list after list, and Henry Gonzalez, you know, played right into their hands at first when he said, he came out of the blocks and said, look, we're going to have a vote, you can't ask questions about Vincent Foster. The Republicans didn't want to ask questions about Vincent Foster's suicide. He played right into their hands with that. Then he said - - he accused them of lies and distortions. I mean, it just didn't work for them. Republicans aren't going to be able to play off of that.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. SHIELDS: I just think as an audience builder it didn't work today. I can't imagine that there are going to be a lot of people saying, gee, I can't wait for that second day of hearings.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. SHIELDS: And it was a little bit like Geraldo Rivera's Al Capone's vault. Remember, when -- [laughter] I haven't seen much -- maybe there is something coming.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah, but what about just on the substance of this for a moment, Jim Leach said in his opening which we ran, his opening statement, that what Whitewater is about is arrogance of power. Is that -- is that going to resonate, Paul? Has he got something there? Is this case going to add up, do you believe, obviously not after one day -- I mean, there are still many other things in there. Also we need to point out that this was narrowly defined, because of the Fiske investigation, they can only go with this, and eventually they will get to what happened in, in Arkansas, and all the rest.

MR. GIGOT: Well, if you look at what, kind of the background that Mr. Leach has laid out, there is some suggestion that that is what it is about. I mean, Mr. Fiske, who looked into this element of the Whitewater stuff so far, said there was insufficient evidence to indict anyone. That's a criminal standard. But there's another standard which is political accountability and public efforts. How did someone behave? Should so and so have talked to so and so? Those kinds of things do sometimes represent an arrogance that can sometimes develop when you have a one-party government. And there's an important issue here, which is when one party controls the White House, the Executive Branch, the agencies, and Capitol Hill, how do we find out -- how do we have accountability - - how do we have some kind of oversight? And that's what Jim Leach is getting at.

MR. SHIELDS: I guess the same -- what do you do when you have Iran-Contra, and one party --

MR. GIGOT: But there were hearings.

MR. SHIELDS: There are hearings. There are hearings now, and there will be, and I think that everybody is going to get his or her chance in the sun. I guess, Jim, I think the point you made is a salient one, that there wasn't -- there wasn't a figure or willingness to emerge in pursuit of anything. I mean, I thought the rehearsed questions, the five-minute statements by everybody, were pretty obvious and pretty transparent and did not seem to be on a mission of particular truth seeking today. And I, I think that the most interesting thing from a political point of view is that there is a civil war in the leper colony going on on the Democrat side and that since --

MR. LEHRER: I think they're going to have to exclude that.

MR. SHIELDS: Well, they tried it as a fear and apprehension that somebody's head was going to roll.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. SHIELDS: And Roger Altman, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, appeared to be the White House's nominee to be that, that sacrificial offering. It -- and the -- Lloyd Cutler --

MR. LEHRER: Justified or not, you mean?

MR. SHIELDS: Justified -- Lloyd -- in the summer of 1993, how quickly things happen -- in the summer of 1993, Roger Altman, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, heir apparent to Lloyd Bentsen, when Lloyd Bentsen eventually leftthat post, was the guy who spearheaded the war room, that got Bill Clinton's economic package through. They called him. He was sort of this buccaneer figure, a Carville with cuff links, they called him, this millionaire populist who put it through, but there was a sense in the White House, among some people in the White House, that he was trying to figure George Stephanopoulos and others when the first story of this investigation came out, and Lloyd Cutler went so far on national television Sunday morning to say he would have to rebuild the confidence and trust of congressional committees, and looked like that they were getting ready to throw somebody off that dog sled as the, as the wolves were in pursuit, that Lloyd Cutler was at least nominating Roger Altman, and he had some support in that nomination.

MR. LEHRER: How do you feel about that? Did you think that the White House either consciously or otherwise is prepared to throw Altman over the side?

MR. GIGOT: I thought so on Sunday when I heard Lloyd Cutler say that it was up to Mr. Altman to re-establish his credibility with the Congress. I thought that was a clear signal to toss him out. The President came back very quickly on Monday and said, "No, I stand by him." The question was sort of a sense of I'm with a thousand percent and after this hearing is over maybe no, so I don't know. But this is one of the good things about hearings like this, is you have people testify under oath, and they tell the truth, I think. People now begin to -- they don't spin it politically because there are -- you are taking an oath, and I think that's why these things are useful.

MR. LEHRER: And also Roger Altman and Mr. Steiner also worked at the Treasury Department, kept diaries, and so they're going to have an opportunity. I mean, how many people are keeping diaries in Washington anymore?

MR. SHIELDS: I'll tell you there's too few. But I'll say this. If they don't tell the truth before such hearings, then they can probably run for the Senate.

MR. LEHRER: Oh, Mark.

MR. GIGOT: Oh, Mark, that's --

MR. SHIELDS: That's true.

MR. LEHRER: But just finally, just going back to the original point that if you take just today and you wanted -- if you tuned it in cold, said, okay, now, what's Whitewater, what have we got? What is this? Is there an ominous thing? Would the critics of the President, the people who are really on to Whitewater, were they able to create that kind of ominous tone for the next day and the next revelation?

MR. SHIELDS: I don't think so. I think the Democrats did something rather shrewd and maybe not totally fairly. What they did is they examined that chronologically which is the least explosive part of it. There's no money involved. This is just the part since the President has been in office. It has nothing to do with condominiums on the riverbanks and money and campaigns and who's putting in whose contribution in Arkansas in the good old days. They kind of got this out front, this boring part, and Lloyd Cutler -- you're right -- I mean, he has a bedside manner that most doctors should envy. I mean, he's just sort of reassuring, not to worry about a thing. I mean, so I think -- I think in that sense it is worth for the Democrats to have this part of the hearing up front.

MR. GIGOT: This isn't sex, drugs, and rock'n roll, that's absolutely true, but on the other hand, I think the Republicans did succeed in raising some doubts about whether or not the Democrats and the administration have been forthcoming. And I think there are going to be some contradictions that are going to be exposed in this part of Whitewater. Remember, this isn't the Arkansas section. This is, as Jim Leach said, about 2 or 3 percent of the whole pie, so I think there's some room to move here. Unfortunately, with forty, fifty people asking the question, it's hard to get any coherence.

MR. LEHRER: Did you both find it unusual that they would -- that they would begin with the White House counsel, rather than the Altman and all of the parties -- all of the principals -- I mean, that was clearly a Democratic strategy that worked too.

MR. GIGOT: It really did, and that's exactly why they did it. It was like having a trial in reverse. You have the defense summation before you hear from the prosecution. And it worked pretty well because Cutler is such a good witness, as Mark said. But on the other hand, later we're going to get who said what to whom.

MR. LEHRER: Still much more to come.

MR. SHIELDS: And there will be, there will be inconsistencies and discrepancies. Andy Warhol once said, everyone's going to be famous for fifteen minutes, and Henry Gonzalez cut that to five.

MR. GIGOT: This is the first President he hasn't tried to impeach.

MR. LEHRER: Thank you all very much. SERIES - BREAKING THE CYCLE

MR. MAC NEIL: Next tonight, we begin a new series of conversations about a frightening problem that seems to resist solution, teen violence. Adolescent homicide rates have reached the highest levels in history. At the same time, some one million adolescents between the ages of 12 and 19 were victims of violent crimes last year. For the next four weeks, Charlayne Hunter-Gault will talk with people who believe the cycle of violence can be broken but not by conventional methods. They each offer a different solution. She begins by talking with young people, themselves.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: This is art, in a manner of speaking, a made-for-television movie about young people caught up in the vicious and inescapable cycle of violence. This is reality, a three-year-old struck in the head and killed after teenagers fired eighteen shots through his family's front door, an eleven-year-old boy abducted, beaten, and set on fire by a thirteen-year-old police say tried to force him to smoke crack, a fifteen-year-old girl shot in the head while walking to school with friends, a sixteen-year- old was charged. These particular acts of violence occurred in New York City, but experts on juvenile violence say similar scenes are being played out in cities, suburbs, and even tiny towns all over the country. And all are struggling with the same dilemma, what to do about the small but growing number of violent young people. Stronger punishment is one rallying cry, an option that would see juveniles tried as young as thirteen in adult courts. In a recent nationwide poll, 40 percent between the ages of 13 and 17 said they knew someone who had been shot in the past five years and that both the victim and the attacker were teenagers.

THERESA: [Young Girl] I'm Theresa, and I'm just going to take you through the exercise that we're going to be doing.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Some young people are fighting back but not violently. Instead, they are confronting their fears and their emotions and training others to do the same. They're called "peer leaders." As part of their summer vacations, about 200 of them met outside Boston for a series of violence prevention workshops. The 10-year-old peer leadership program is sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. The program uses techniques like role playing to help teenagers find ways to avoid the pitfalls of such problems as drug abuse, teen pregnancy, and violence.

YOUNG GIRL: [role playing, talking to another girl] Excuse me, who's this?

SECOND YOUNG GIRL: What do you mean? Who are you?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The teenagers, most of whom have been touched by violence in one way or another, say acting out real life situations teaches them how to avoid confrontations that could quickly escalate into life threatening situations. During a break, we talked with four of them: Theresa Job and Taneeka Freeman, both 17-years-old, 18-year-old Ron Ptaszenski, and 15-year-old Jose Pagan.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Thank you all for joining us. Each of you has been in one way or another dealing with violence in your lives either as counselors or personally involved in some way in incidents. Can you just start by telling me briefly how violence has touched your life personally.

TANEEKA FREEMAN: Well, umm, I just lost a friend in February, and I knew him in the first grade. We met in the first grade, and like over the years, we kind of separated. He went to Southeastern, and I went to Brockton High, and I didn't really -- I didn't really know him know him, but when he got murdered, it kind of, you know, it finally hit me. And the thing that bothered me the most was he wasn't bad at all, it was his friends.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And do you know many young people who have been victims of violence in your circles, a lot?

TANEEKA FREEMAN: A lot, around 20, yeah, since -- between 1993 and this year so far I'd say.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Twenty people --

TANEEKA FREEMAN: Not dead, but, you know, have been victims of violence.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Ron.

RON PTASZENSKI: Umm, one teenager got stabbed in the high school in Dartmouth. A nurse got shot in Acushnet, and then there were the drive-by shootings not too far from my house, and I knew two of them.

THERESA JOB: Umm, there was like a couple of stabbing incidents in my school and I haven't been personally affected in the sense that -- you know, I haven't lost any of my close friends, but I hear about it, and you know, my friend, her friend getting shot or things like that.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Jose.

JOSE PAGAN: Well, I lost two friends in the past year. One was my record producer. He was trying to cut an album, and he got stabbed and died. I was almost shot about three months ago. Somebody tried to kill me, and that's what like really kind of straightened me out, you know. I was doin' bad stuff, you know, and I decided, you know, to change my life, because I didn't want to die.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What do we know about the kids that you come in contact with who are involved in violence?

RON PTASZENSKI: They all like, they all joined whatever they're doing to try and get more friends, to try and get respect. They all want respect, but the thing is they don't really got the respect. The weapon they got is the respect. They got a gun. The gun -- the bullet come out of the gun -- that's respect. It's swinging a bat at somebody, that got the respect. It ain't you that got the respect, it ain't you that people are scared of, it's the gun, it's the knife.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is respect the main reason why kids --

TANEEKA FREEMAN: Sometimes, but in a lot of cases they're kind of forced into the stream. Maybe they're havin' problems at home, financial problems at home, and selling drugs may be the only way that they feel they can take care of that problem, and selling drugs brings on the violence. So it doesn't always have to deal with respect.

JOSE PAGAN: Today most of the violence deals with respect. Most of it is props, you want to get your props. You don't want to be a sucker because once you get labeled a sucker, there's no turning back from it.

TANEEKA FREEMAN: There's money, definitely money. It's all about money nowadays.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is it money because the young people are -- come from poverty or from poor homes?

JOSE PAGAN: Like my cousin, he was really poor, and I used to rob people with him.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You used to rob people with your cousin?

JOSE PAGAN: When we little, yeah, we was little kids, we used to rob people, with him, because we was poor, we didn't have nothin', and he wanted -- when we wanted somethin', we would just take it. We was like twelve, thirteen back then. We used to rob people usually at night. We used to rob people. We never stabbed anyone but we just, we just scared people up, and took their stuff.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But did your parents -- you live with your mother and father?

JOSE PAGAN: I live with my mother and my stepfather.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And did they in the home try to teach you right from wrong?

JOSE PAGAN: See, what it is, is people say it's not your mother's fault, it's not your father's fault, it's you, it's you, it's you. It is your parents' fault in somewhat -- in some areas, because the only reason you got that bad is because they weren't firm enough with you. If they had told you to stay in, if they had checked on you in your room to make sure you was in your room and you didn't sneak out, if they had whipped your butt every time that you got out of line, if they had, you know, told you you can't go out for the next three weeks because you did so and so. My father, I think, if he, if he didn't have the problems in the beginning with drugs and alcohol and being a drug dealer, I think that he would have been an all right guy because he was the firmest with me. I mean, whenever I went to visit him for a week or somethin', I mean, he used to tell me to do somethin' and I didn't do it, and he would, you know, bust my tail, you know, 'cause he didn't play that, you know. I did what he said when he said it.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you all -- you all followed that case in Singapore of Michael Fay? What do you think about that?

RON PTASZENSKI: I think that's right, to tell you the truth.

JOSE PAGAN: You know, 'cause that's like me going in your house, right, and goin' up in your kitchen and start graffitiing your kitchen. That's what it's exactly like. He went up in somebody else's country and just went up and did that. He knew what he was doing. I think he deserved twice as many lashes as he got.

THERESA JOB: Look at the crime rate there and the crime rate in America. I mean, that just shows you, I mean, I mean, we don't do anything to kids that do crimes and, you know, graffiti, that's like an example, and they do something about it, and they get good results, and I think we should have learned from them.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, in that connection, more and more adults are pushing to have violent kids locked up and put into adult courts where the punishment is, is harder. What do you think about that? I mean, have you -- do you think that's a good idea?

JOSE PAGAN: I don't think kids -- I don't think anyone under 17 should be, umm -- unless it was like -- if somebody was like 16 and they murdered like 15 people -- I mean, I can understand that, putting 'em with grownups, but I don't think any kid, even if it's one murder, I think they should get maybe a maximum security juvenile jail because you know how many people -- see people say that's not true, right, but I've been to a prison, and I know what goes on there, and three out of every five people have AIDS, and you think that when you lock somebody up, they're going to go in there and they're going to come out fine. That's not right. They're probably going to get raped. That's the same thing if I put you in there with a bunch of men, chances are you would be raped a few times.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So this is not a place for young people you think no matter what crime?

TANEEKA FREEMAN: I disagree. I firmly disagree. I feel you do the crime, you take the time. I don't care how old you are. I mean, if you are -- when you are 16, a lot of people are mature enough -- I know I was 13 when I was a freshman, and I was mature enough. These people are mature enough to make the decision to take a gun and kill somebody, they're mature enough to be put in a prison.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you think that people who kill people with guns, young people, are mature, they know what they're doing?

RON PTASZENSKI: They know what they're doing. They really know what they're doin'. They know that the gun -- all they got to do is pull the trigger. The -- most of the time -- well, not most of the time, some of the time the know exactly who they are going after.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You all talk to young people and you try to intervene, you try to get them to not be violent, to resolve issues in a different way. Tell me a little bit about that and how do you get them to listen to you as you try to -- you know, without coming off as goody goody?

RON PTASZENSKI: Well, basically from my standpoint, I was with two groups. I was an adviser of one and I was a peer leader of another. And what we did was we'd go to the thing, we'd start a discussion, and we would listen to them. You know, they'd come up with what they think is the problem with this teenager, why they's doing the violence and stuff, and then we'd just facilitate it, and if somebody, if somebody was to start, let's say crying or something, we'd go out of the room, one of us would go out, talk to him, so it's basically like, we're kind of like, you can say kind of like counseling but we're not, because we're not, you know, certified to do it.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But you just let them talk?

RON PTASZENSKI: We just let them talk, and they get everything off their chest, what they want to say.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is it easier to talk to younger kids, or do the people who are your same age, will they listen to you? I mean --

TANEEKA FREEMAN: I think that if you are the same age group they're more so apt to listen to you because you know, they feel that you know more so where they're coming from. Umm, I think that they need a sense of hope and to be strong, a lot of times they feel that they can't say no or they can't get themselves out of certain situations.

THERESA JOB: I think in my experience it's definitely easier to talk to younger kids because I feel like they look up to me, and it's easier for them to talk to me, and just to let them know that I'm out there, and people are out there, and we actually care, and we want to listen to you. That's been my experience. I mean, it's harder for me to talk to kids my own age because they feel like, you know, I'm not out there, I'm from a different, different situation, and I'm not, you know, I don't carry guns, or I'm not a violent person.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Can you give me any specific example that you can think of where you intervened in the way that you talk about, you know, pointing out this isn't cool or whatever, however you do it that's made a difference?

JOSE PAGAN: I break up a lot of fights 'cause I'm always walkin' around places, and if I see a fight start to break out, even if I don't know the people, sometimes it's embarrassing, but, umm, I just walk up --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And dangerous too probably.

JOSE PAGAN: Yeah. You can get stabbed in the middle of somethin'. I broke up a few fights downtown, and I seen people started to fight, and I was shopping, just put my bags down and walked over and tried to hold them back, not looking like a nerd or nothin' like that, can't we all just get along and you know, I go up and I speak to 'em like a normal -- I mean, we're not goody two shoes, we're not nerds. We go clubbing. We do everything a normal teen does. We just don't choose to get in trouble, do drugs or anything.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What do young people want from adults? What kind of help can society provide to, to help this problem of violence?

RON PTASZENSKI: Just support us, you know, get involved, and --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Get involved? What do you mean, get involved?

RON PTASZENSKI: Get involved in what we do. You know, if a youth group has a rally, we would like to see the adults there supporting us, what we're for.

JOSE PAGAN: Have fun with your kids at their age because they grow up so -- I mean, we grow up so fast. I mean, I wish when I was little my mother took me, you know, out to the zoo and did all the little -- even it's like every Sunday afternoon, you know, you all do something together.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Taneeka.

TANEEKA FREEMAN: I think they should volunteer. A lot of places have to close down because they're short staffed, and it's just important for them to show support, kill all the stereotypes, you know, just --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What do you mean kill the stereotypes?

TANEEKA FREEMAN: A lot of -- I feel that a lot of adults, they look towards certain kinds of youth, I'm going to say African-American youth because that's more so what I identify with -- they look to them as, you know, like the lost generation, umm, extinct species, but yet, can you have a little hope, because when the adults start thinkin' that way, the youth start thinkin' that way. And it's because, you know, adults, a lot of youths look up to adults as role models, and if your role model is sayin', you know, well, the young, black males, they're dying every day, yeah, they're dying every day, but what can you do to, umm, to keep them from dying?

RON PTASZENSKI: What she said about the lost generation, I heard it said yesterday, when we -- we teenagers were saying we ain't the lost generation, we're actually the new generation, we are the generation that's going to keep this world going. We're going to be the generation that's going to lift this, lift the world up, lift the United States up to where it should be, you know. There's a lot of crime and stuff, but now everything's gettin' better. There's a lot of groups out there like us, for example, a lot of us are -- all of us are in peer leader groups. There's a lot of those groups that are buildin' up.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Theresa, Ron, Taneeka, and Jose, thank you all for joining us.

GROUP: Thank you.

MR. MAC NEIL: Tomorrow night, Charlayne will talk with Barry Krisberg, a sociologist who evaluates the effectiveness of programs like the one we just heard about. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major story of this Tuesday, Congress began public hearings into the so-called Whitewater affair. White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler told the House Banking Committee no ethical rules were violated in contacts between White House and Treasury Department officials but the Committee's ranking Republican accused the administration of an abuse of power. Good night, Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night with a NewsMaker interview with Defense Secretary William Perry. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.