The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After tonight's News Summary we lead with Charlayne Hunter-Gault's report from South Africa, previewing the historic talks on sharing power between whites and blacks. Then Judy Woodruff talks to Democratic Presidential Candidate Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder. Next, another conversation marking the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights. Tonight, North Carolina lawyer Manlin Maureen Chee. And we close with an Anne Taylor Fleming essay about racism in America. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: The scandal plagued bank of Credit & Commerce International has agreed to plead guilty to racketeering charges and forfeit $550 million. The Justice Department announced the plea bargain today in Washington. Attorney Gen. William Barr said the deal represented the largest single criminal forfeiture in U.S. history. Five hundred and fifty million represents all of the bank's U.S. assets. The attorney general talked about the agreement at a news conference this morning.

WILLIAM BARR, Attorney General: The plea agreement requires BCCI liquidators to provide full cooperation to American enforcement agencies in our continuing efforts to bring to justice the individuals responsible for BCCI's wrongdoing as well as those who are using BCCI to further their own illegal activities, including drug and arms traffickers and money launderers. This cooperation specifically includes access to documents and witnesses and the waiving of applicable privileges. This could take years off the time it would otherwise take to investigate and prosecute individual wrongdoers. We also believe it may well permit us to make cases we otherwise might not be able to make in the absence of cooperation.

MR. MacNeil: The forfeited money will be used to reimburse depositors and others who lost money when the bank closed. It will also be used to ensure the solvency of two U.S. banks which BCCI secretly controlled, Independence Bank of Encino, California, and First American Bankshares of Washington, D.C. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: New claims for unemployment compensation rose in the first week in December. The Labor Department said today nearly 1/2 million Americans filed for benefits. That was 79,000 more than the week before. It was the second highest number of claims in more than eight years. President Bush talked about jobs and trade with a group of business executives at the White House this morning. They will accompany Mr. Bush on his trip to the Far East later this month. After the meeting, several spoke to reporters.

SPOKESMAN: All we're doing is trying to sit down government to government now, and business to business, and say there's something basically unfair because we're doing so well in Europe and the trade balance there is getting in balance more every day. But in Japan, it doesn't seem to move at all, so we have to discuss what are the fundamental structural issues keeping us from getting a fair shake.

SPOKESMAN: We ought to be sure to be firm on our convictions. And I think that's one of the things that has been brought out, that we get promises, promises, but no action. So we'd like to see some action.

MR. LEHRER: President Bush also talked about the trip at a news conference for foreign journalists later in the day. He said exports were this country's strong suit during tough economic times. But he said the Asia market was largely untapped.

PRES. BUSH: What I expect to do is try to be assisting the American, making clear what's at stake in terms of the American market, what's at stake in terms of jobs for the American people, and I would say that the trip is to break down intransigence where we find it and have freer and fairer trade. and that message I will carry very very forcefully. We have shown a lot of forbearance and we, I want to see fair play.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Bush leaves on his Far East trip December 30th. The Commerce Department released the latest trade figures today. The merchandise trade deficit narrowed 3 percent in October to $6.7 billion, but at the same time the trade deficit with Japan grew by 11 percent.

MR. MacNeil: There was an overall decrease in drug use in America this year, according to an annual government survey. Much of the improvement was attributed to less drug abuse by adolescents. By the survey showed cocaine use was up, particularly among minorities, the unemployed and people over 35. Bush administration drug czar Bob Martinez commented on the results at a Washington news conference.

MR. MARTINEZ: But as drug use goes down, it becomes harder to make progress because what is left are those who are most resistant to anti-drug messages. Progress against hard core users becomes more difficult. The data released today strongly suggests that the second front in the drug war, the hard core front, is hardening among our inner-city and minority individuals. Current use of any illicit drug increased for those 35 and older, especially for marijuana and cocaine. This is an increase in the current use. This dramatically points out one of the sad lessons of the drug war. Once you start to use drugs, it's very hard to get off and stay off.

MR. MacNeil: A federal advisory panel recommended today that a major overhaul of the nation's health care system be temporarily put off. Instead, the committee proposed a series of incremental changes. It said various ideas should be tested in demonstration projects before more sweeping reforms are recommended. The 13 member panel was appointed in 1989. Four members dissented from today's report, saying the panel had failed in its mission. But Chairwoman Deborah Steelman said comprehensive reforms were rejected for now because there was no public consensus on what to do.

MR. LEHRER: Russian President Boris Yeltsin took over the Kremlin today. He did it with a series of decrees that transferred almost all Soviet central government operations to Russian control. Tim Ewart of Independent Television News reports from Moscow.

MR. EWART: Mikhail Gorbachev was in his Kremlin office today, meeting West German officials to discuss aid shipments. But as the Soviet President attempted to conduct business as normal, Boris Yeltsin was dramatically pulling the rug from under him. Mr. Yeltsin set off for a visit to Rome, leaving in his wake a set of decrees stripping Mr. Gorbachev's central government of its assets and handing them to his on Russian republic, the Kremlin for more than 70 years the seat of Soviet power now Russian, the foreign ministry, bastion of Soviet might abroad, now Russian, along with the interior ministry which controls the police and its own army. It throws into doubt the future of Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, rumored tonight to be considering his resignation. Mr. Yeltsin's seizure of power now seems complete, his victory over his old rival, Mikhail Gorbachev, final.

MR. LEHRER: Yeltsin spent the first of two days in Rome. He got the VIP treatment from Italian officials and $1.3 billion in credits to buy food. In Brussels, NATO offered to coordinate aid to the Soviet Union. The offer came at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers. It would be the first humanitarian mission ever for the 16 nation defense alliance. Sec. of State Baker was there and he spoke to reporters.

SEC. BAKER: We must divide our labors and collectively engage the Soviet peoples in this season of need to bring them hope, hope that life can get better, hope that their experiments with democracy and free markets can work, hope that they too can join the democratic commonwealth of nations.

MR. LEHRER: In Yugoslavia, European Community peace efforts continued without progress. The top EC negotiator, Lord Carrington,h the federal defense minister. Afterwards, he said the situation is grim. Heavy federal army shelling was reported in at least one Eastern town.

MR. MacNeil: Sec. of State Baker said today the next stage of Mideast peace talks will be held in Moscow as planned. He said he didn't expect Soviet political turmoil to interfere with the talks. They're expected to resume in late January. The second round of talks ended yesterday in Washington with no progress. A French government spokesman today confirmed that the U.S., Britain and France are planning sanctions against Libya for the bombings of Pan Am Flight 103 and a French airliners. A New York Times report said, "The sanctions would include, at minimum, a ban on all commercial air traffic to Libya. The three nations have accused Libya of a major role in the two bombings which killed a total of 440 people.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to South Africa, Douglas Wilder, the Bill of Rights, and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay. FOCUS - A COUNTRY'S CROSSROADS

MR. MacNeil: First tonight a historic development in South Africa. Tomorrow the government and most of the opposition groups will sit together in a constitutional convention and begin writing the final chapter on apartheid. The official name of this process is Convention For a Democratic South Africa, or as it's often called there CODESA. We get the story from Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who is in Johannesburg.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: It's been 43 years since the National Party came to power, bringing with it one of the most drastic and crushing programs of social engineering the world has ever known. It was called apartheid and it spawned a complex legal system specifically designed to ensure white minority rule over the country's black majority. It denied blacks their most basic freedoms, including the right to vote, own land, or move about freely. It also spawned decades of dissent which was met with brutal suppression, violence, and death, and it drew the condemnation of the international community which imposed a broad program of sanctions. Two years ago, with the South African economy in shambles and black protest unabated, F.W. DeKlerk took over leadership of the Nationalist Party and began dismantling legal apartheid and opening channels of communication to blacks. His most dramatic gesture came in February 1990. He freed South Africa's most widely known political prisoner, Nelson Mandela, who had served 27 years of a life sentence stemming from armed struggle against the state. Mandela then helped pave the way to negotiations between the government and black opposition groups. Tomorrow's meeting is largely the result of demands by those groups which are calling for the transfer of power from the white minority regime as soon as possible. In attendance will be the government and most of the country's political forces, although there are some hold- outs among radical blacks and white conservatives. Earlier today, I spoke with Zach Debeer, leader of the Democratic Party and chairperson of the steering committee for the convention. How would you describe this particular element in South African history?

ZACH DEBEER, Democratic Party: It's cataclysmic. It's an extraordinary change in the whole character of the society. Of all the countries in the world, this is the one which has gone on the longest maintaining white minority domination. And right up to this moment in a strictly legal sense this country is run by whites for whites. But that's now ceasing and it's ceasing in a very dramatic way. And we're moving to a universal franchise with all that that implies to an open society with all that that means. We're moving to become a normal democracy such as one finds in North America or Western Europe.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What exactly is CODESA and what is the role it's playing now?

MR. DEBEER: CODESA will have to set up the machinery and the procedures for the writing of a new constitution for South Africa and for the governing of South Africa during the period that that is being done. The bill of rights is there. The universal franchise is there, the regular elections, a bicameral parliament, all these things in general terms we connect ourselves to in the declaration of intent.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What's unusual about it?

MR. DEBEER: That it is democratic. Now that's not unusual in world terms, but it's highly unusual in South Africa.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Because it commits --

MR. DEBEER: Because there is no more race discrimination. Many countries in the world have never experienced this kind of transition because they didn't have a black-white problem, but let's look at the countries that have, perhaps some of the ones closest to us. In Mozambique, there was a war. In Angola, there was a war. In Rhodesia, there was a war eight years before they finally came to a conference table in London. In the United States of America there was formerly a great deal of race discrimination and that was overcome as a result of the civil rights struggle and other mechanisms. But over a long period, and by piecemeal adjustments, here we are coming together to try to do within a period like a year or two everything that could be argued took the best part of a hundred years in the states.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Can this process succeed without all of your political parties participating?

MR. DEBEER: The essential actors are the National Party, the present government, and the African National Congress, which unless every public opinion poll is wildly wrong, is by far the largest organization outside parliament.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How much support in the country do you think there is for the CODESA process?

MR. DEBEER: The country as a whole, I would state CODESA probably represents something approaching 70 percent of the people. It's more than half the black people. It's virtually the whole of the brown communities, the colored and Indian ones, and it's about half the whites.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Among the largest parties attending the meeting is the Inkatha Freedom Party. Its leader, Chief Gocha Buthelezi, announced yesterday that he would not attend the convention because of dispute over representation from his Qua Zulu homeland. But his Inkatha Freedom Party delegation stayed. Musa Myeni is a member of the party's central committee.

MUSA MYENI, Inkatha Freedom Party: The path is not going to be very smooth. We expect posturing. We expect people walking out, but we also expect people to come back. Furthermore, we expect that in the final analysis people will begin to understand that they have a duty to salvage this country and they have no choice but to reach a settlement that will be negotiated.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Can itsucceed without all of the parties participating?

MR. MYENI: A lot of things, yes, can be achieved without some parties participating, but we are hoping that along the way they will also reconsider their own positions.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What do you think is the most serious threat to the process once it gets launched?

MR. MYENI: The serious threat is not a new threat. It has always been there, that is an open civil war between the various parties. If, for instance, some parties think that there is a need to sabotage the whole process and then resort to violence, then that is the biggest threat I can think of. But one is hoping that people are big enough and intelligent enough to realize that we either sit down and negotiate, and, therefore, share the whole country together, or go to war and run the risk of losing everything.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Another black group, the Pan African Congress, or PAC, refused to join the talks. Dikgang Moseneke is deputy president.

DIKGANG MOSENEKE, Pan African Congress: It's a pre-pact for them, pre-pact with paupers, with Uncle Toms, who would inevitably respond to pretoria's demands. Remember, we were the preparatory meeting. We were there the first session and we went through the crisis. We made a whole range of proposals and this pre-pact voted on by and large responded in a fairly standard way as in when the government signified its support for a proposition they would support it.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So you think that the problem is that the government has too much influence.

MR. MOSENEKE: This pre-pact process, there's too much influence. You see, the whole problem is that they seek to control the process and I can you give you examples.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But for what reason?

MR. MOSENEKE: To ensure that the status quo remains in place.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So you think that the ANC and Inkatha, which has had some problems but still remains in the process, that they are just wrong to stay in, they don't understand what's happening?

MR. MOSENEKE: I don't say they're wrong to stay in. I'm saying that their judgment differs substantially from ours.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The right Conservative Party also refused to join the talks. Daniel Van Der Merwe is a member of parliament and Conservative Party spokesman.

DANIEL VAN DER MERWE, Conservative Party: We see CODESA as a transgression to the future of my people, the Afrikaaner people, and we are not willing to go and sit down and discuss the right to be a people and to govern ourself and to have our own self- determination. The other thing is that President DeKlerk, when he won the election in 1989, he told the white electorate that he will not even speak to the ANC, and once he got into power, the first thing what he did is he let Mandela free and today he is actually willing to hand over the power to the ANC and to Mr. Mandela. So President DeKlerk has not got the majority of support of the white electorate in South Africa anymore.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The head of the Conservative Party predicted earlier this week that if the CODESA process results ultimately in a new constitution, democratic constitution for South Africa, there will be civil war and bloodshed. Is that what he said exactly?

DANIEL VAN DER MERWE: There will be conflict in South Africa. I've got no doubt in my mind on that, not only conflict between what people popularly think is between black and white, it will not be that kind of conflict. It will be a conflict between those people who pursue an ideology like DeKlerk and Mandela, and those people who are sensitive for the survival of their specific ethnic group. So it will be a conflict between ideology, on the one side, and ethnicity on the other side. And it will be, also be a conflict between white and white, Afrikaaner and Afrikaaner. I can't tell you the, what people, Afrikaaners think about DeKlerk. It is not describable.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Despite the rejection of CODESA by such groups, conveners believe or hope that if this convention is well received by the people of South Africa, sooner or later most of those on the outside now will eventually want in.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Wilder of Virginia, a conversation about the Bill of Rights, and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay. NEWSMAKER

MR. LEHRER: Now another of our conversations with those who would be President of the United States. Tonight, Democratic Nomination Candidate Douglas Wilder, the governor of Virginia. The conversation follows this backgrounder by Kwame Holman.

MR. HOLMAN: Last April, Douglas Wilder was the honored speaker at one of the mainstay events of Virginia politics, the annual fish fry. He joined the crowds feasting on plank shad and knocking back bourbon. It was a return engagement for Wilder. Fifteen years earlier, he became the first black person ever invited to this required appearance for statewide politicians. The 60-year-old Wilder has broken many such traditions in his political career. In 1969, the first black in this century elected to the Virginia State Senate, 1989, the first black since reconstruction to be elected lieutenant governor in Virginia.

SPOKESMAN: Join me in welcoming the next governor of Virginia, Douglas Wilder.

MR. HOLMAN: Then, last year, Wilder became Virginia's and the nation's first elected black governor. As governor, Wilder faced Virginia's worst budget crisis since World War II. He instituted a massive cost cutting program, fired 500 workers and closed a $2.2 billion budget gap without raising taxes. It was Wilder's first step toward his now well established reputation as a fiscal conservative. In September, Wilder became the second Democrat to declare a candidacy.

GOV. WILDER: As someone who has fought for positive change and the American dream for all these years, I cannot stand on the sidelines while the country I love stumbles further backwards.

MR. HOLMAN: Wilder says he is the underdog in the race for the nomination.

GOV. WILDER: I recognize that I am the longest of long shots. I may not win. I may get but a few votes.

MR. HOLMAN: Candidate Wilder is divorced, the father of three grown children. Practicing criminal law for 31 years helped make him a millionaire. Since his announcement in September, Wilder has been campaigning actively in New Hampshire. He was there again this morning to file for the state's first in the nation Presidential primary.

MR. LEHRER: Judy Woodruff spoke to the Governor in Richmond yesterday.

MS. WOODRUFF: Governor, thank you for joining us.

GOV. WILDER: My pleasure, Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why do you want to be President?

GOV. WILDER: I feel the time is right. I looked at this nation. I looked at what I inherited, for instance, as governor, and saw the problems, and I heard people say to me, oh, you can't do this without raising taxes, you can't do this without massive layoffs, you can't streamline government because it's not been done, and this isn't going to be done, you can't do it. And so I saw what was happening in Washington. I saw a lack of direction, lack of leadership, almost forgetting we're American people. So I decided if I can do this in Virginia, being hit earlier with a recession, and the largest of any state of its kind, and satisfying those requirements and still delivering services, that ought to be done at the federal level, because I was being hurt from the federal level.

MS. WOODRUFF: Your deficit though was $2.2 billion.

GOV. WILDER: It was.

MS. WOODRUFF: The federal deficit 350 -- I mean, what makes you think that something you did as Governor of Virginia in any way translates to that much bigger problem at the federal level?

GOV. WILDER: It's a philosophy of streamlining government and I did that by eliminating bureaucracy, and I've done that, by reducing the things that government should be involved in when they shouldn't be, and I've done that, and I have not raised taxes. And we have ended wasteful spending. That's something that's foreign I know to Washington because they haven't heard of that.

MS. WOODRUFF: But, again, doing it in Virginia is different, would you not agree, than doing it at the federal level?

GOV. WILDER: Oh, I agree. Yes. I've got a 2.2, plus it's an additional billion coming on board, but it's a mentality, a process. For instance, I didn't give teachers and people who were expecting raises in the state government their raises because they understood, they tightened their belt. Washington didn't do that. They gave themselves raises.

MS. WOODRUFF: So you're talking about a $50 billion cut in federal spending. Where? You have not been specific until now about where you would cut.

GOV. WILDER: Well, first of all, I would take that money from defense. I would take --

MS. WOODRUFF: Where in defense?

GOV. WILDER: Well, I could very easily take some from the B-2 bombers. I could take B-2. That would be 4.8 billion. I could reduce SDI 3.6 billion, cancel purchases of the F-14, F-15, 16 and 18. I could get a total defense reduction of over $20 billion. I could then have foreign policy or foreign investment of 14 percent, which would give me an additional $2 billion. If we were talking about other priorities, we have $350 billion that is being spent on contracted out services by Congress. So if you reduce that by just 5 percent, you're talking about 17.5 billion dollars there, sole source contract.

MS. WOODRUFF: What kind of contracts are you talking about, to do what?

GOV. WILDER: Nobody knows because when you ask the Congress, what is this for, they say, oh, well, we're getting to it. When the Congress with the Congressional Budget Office put out a paper that says they estimate that they're wasting $10 billion annually in administrative costs, they say that, now they're saying that they can account for 70 to 100 billion dollars' worth of waste. My point is that you've got to draw the line from appropriations, so, no, I could detail it on and find the 50 billion with ease. No one, no one, mind you, contradicts that.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. You also say that you would spend, what, 35 billion of that --

GOV. WILDER: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: -- in tax cuts.

GOV. WILDER: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: Now, as you know, there are a number of expert economists who say that's a one shot deal, it doesn't do anything to stimulate the economy.

GOV. WILDER: The President now --

MS. WOODRUFF: What would it accomplish? I'm just asking, what would it accomplish?

GOV. WILDER: It is a one shot deal but it jumpstarts the economy, but it's a permanent $50 billion reduction every year. It doesn't balance the budget and you'd be silly to talk about balancing the budget.

MS. WOODRUFF: You're talking about the tax cut?

GOV. WILDER: Yes. That tax cut would enable middle, working class families to have money, some $500 more per year, that they would not have.

MS. WOODRUFF: That's $1.30 a day.

GOV. WILDER: I don't care what it is. I can tell you what I know, that $500 a year means to someone who needs it and I, you ask the American people if they would not much rather have $500 more per year than an additional 500 tax load per year is what they got out of Washington. And, moreover, when I say that, the President now is coming out with a $30 billion tax cut.

MS. WOODRUFF: Tax cut.

GOV. WILDER: He calls it a tax cut, which is $300 only per person, everybody. That means Michael Jackson gets his, Jose Penseco gets his, Donald Trump gets his. You call that a tax cut to help people who are working and need it? Absolutely not.

MS. WOODRUFF: The surveys I've seen though, Governor, say that of what people get they would spend only about 1/6 to 1/5 of that money. The rest of it, I guess, they would put aside. But my question is: How does that stimulate the economy? We are in a serious recession.

GOV. WILDER: It stimulates it because it shows, first of all, and this is another thing that we disagreed with on the debate last Sunday, 2/3 of our economy is consumer-oriented. Surely, people have to have the jobs, but unless they spend they don't see, you don't see that economy moving up. So your question is well put. You show that government is doing it not by going into some shopping mall and buying a pair of sweat socks and to say this is the way to do it, as the President did, but you say government is providing $50 billion, and I might add $15 billion of that is going to the cities.

MS. WOODRUFF: Several of the things that you've talked about we're now hearing from other candidates. You talked about put America first.

GOV. WILDER: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: We're now hearing that theme from Pat Buchanan.

GOV. WILDER: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: In the other party.

GOV. WILDER: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: You talked about yourself as an outsider in the Democratic Party.

GOV. WILDER: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: We hear that theme over and over again from former California Governor Jerry Brown.

GOV. WILDER: Brown.

MS. WOODRUFF: You've talked about tax cuts, Democrats, Republicans, and now the White House. What is there that's the essence of the Wilder campaign is what I'm asking.

GOV. WILDER: The essence is that I've talked about these things and you're absolutely right, now they are following. The essence is that I have touched the spirit of the American people by going. The essence is that I knew that George Bush, when others were writhing around, the pundits and the news media were saying, oh, George Bush couldn't be beaten, he's a mythical colossus bestriding the American scene, and Democrats are fools to even challenge him, I was saying he could be challenged and should be challenged because I was listening to the American people. And they were saying to me the things that we are talking about, we want jobs, we want an understanding that before we concern ourselves with every nation in the world what about education for Americans, what about health care for Americans, what about opportunities for Americans? And that's what I mean when I say put America first, not isolationism that only some Americans, as some of our friends are speaking of today.

MS. WOODRUFF: But my point is that the themes that you raise have been picked up and carried and identified with other people.

GOV. WILDER: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: And you're not given attribution or credit.

GOV. WILDER: The credit.

MS. WOODRUFF: What good does it do you?

GOV. WILDER: I think the message then has to get out more from me. The problem is that I have not gotten out on the hustings as much as the other candidates. I have to work. I am a sitting governor. My job now is to say but I was there first and I'll continue to be ahead.

MS. WOODRUFF: As we sit here right now, as you know, the Soviet Union is about, as we know it, is about to disappear. We are talking about a world that is far different, some say far more unpredictable than the world that we live in now.

GOV. WILDER: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: What is there, do you believe, that's out there as a driving force, a driving force for American foreign policy to take the place of this big enemy the Soviet Union that won't be there anymore?

GOV. WILDER: Well, first of all, I've been to the Soviet Union three times. I went there once in the seventies and twice in the eighties, late eighties. And I saw changes each time. They are defense-oriented. They were. They can produce big things, not little things. But if you notice some things are happening around the globe, not only in the Soviet Union, but in Eastern Europe. People are getting together. We saw what happened in Holland just a week or so ago. These European nations are coming together. The commonwealth nations and the Soviet Union are now coming together. That's why it is so important for Americans to come together. We can't afford the division, region against region, race against race, class against class. And in the absence of us coming together, we won't be that homogeny, we won't be that force, we won't be that entity that you've just described as to take the place of that entity that has been standing for good, for right, and for progress.

MS. WOODRUFF: But force for what? Without the Soviet Union, what is there --

GOV. WILDER: Force for good.

MS. WOODRUFF: -- that is the mission of the United States in the world?

GOV. WILDER: To provide opportunities for peace to work, to be certain that health care is something that's realized, not spoken of, to understand that the four freedoms that Franklin Roosevelt envisioned in the thirties were things that we should continue to speak of, freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom from hunger, the kinds of things that made the American dream possible. The land of opportunity can continue to be the land of opportunity, to continue to marshal military force and might against an enemy, as you've described, already sinking. That money could be used to finding cures for cancer, finding cures for AIDS, providing opportunities for youngsters already condemned to a life of health denial, putting people to work, bettering our educational system. That's what we need to be spending our tax dollars for.

MS. WOODRUFF: But you said, you're suggesting that right now we're not together. You talked about region against region.

GOV. WILDER: That's correct.

MS. WOODRUFF: Race against race.

GOV. WILDER: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: You told a group of editors or columnists a few weeks ago that this climate that exists in the United States right now you didn't think -- I think the term you used -- bode well --

GOV. WILDER: That's correct.

MS. WOODRUFF: -- for your candidacy. What did you mean by that?

GOV. WILDER: I meant that when I ran for the governorship of Virginia, I saw people wanting to reach out and to move and measure individuals based on qualifications and merit. I still see that in Virginia, and yet, I've seen the David Dukes who come up. I went to the Duke Iowa where the cross was burned. I had been in Des Moines. I was the only candidate that went out there. I went there before the governor of Iowa went there because I was concerned. Iowans don't deserve that kind of image. I'm going to go to New Hampshire later, a cross being burned in Manchester. That's not the New Hampshire that I know. These are reemergences of people who express putting other people down, whether it's religious, whether it's racial, whether it has to do with anything else, and that is not what America is. And we can't tolerate that.

MS. WOODRUFF: But what I'm asking you is David Duke was able to tap into a real resentment on the part of many whites.

GOV. WILDER: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: Apparently towards other groups.

GOV. WILDER: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: Other racist people.

GOV. WILDER: And that's still --

MS. WOODRUFF: Pat Buchanan talks about the United States having a hard time assimilating people of other color.

GOV. WILDER: Bringing them to Virginia even he said.

MS. WOODRUFF: In other cultures.

GOV. WILDER: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: How, how does your candidacy do well? How does it thrive when other candidates are, are prospering off that sort of talk?

GOV. WILDER: Because I don't believe that the American people should be consigned to or assigned to being bigots or racist. I don't believe that. I think they will continue to measure the candidates based on their qualifications, their merits and their experience. That's why I've put my record up against any of those persons who are seeking office and that's why I want to be measured only on those qualifications. Oh, you'll have blips on the screen like the Dukes and others, but that's not the American people. You'll have people who will even appeal to racist elements on either side. That's not the American people. My candidacy will not be appealing to any special interest groups or special groups, but to all of the American people. And to the extent that I'm measured in that regard, I will rest by their verdict.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, Gov. Wilder, we thank you for being with us.

GOV. WILDER: Thank you. CONVERSATION - FIRST FREEDOMS

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, we continue our series of conversations on the Bill of Rights 200 years after their ratification. All week we've asked how well they've stood the passage of time. Tonight we hear from Manlin Maureen Chee, an immigration lawyer from Greensboro, North Carolina. Ms Chee received the American Bar Association award for her public service work on behalf of immigrants who could not afford legal advice. Ms. Chee was born in Singapore and came to the United States when she was 17. I spoke with her earlier this week. Ms. Chee, thank you for joining us. You developed your admiration for the American Bill of Rights before you came to this country. Tell me that story. How did that happen?

MS. CHEE: Well, when I was a child, we did not study anything about American history in schools. We learned about America mostly from television programs and from music, from records and from movies. So my perception of America came from the media. And we would hear Americans in the media would say, I have my rights, and it's my right to do so. We always wondered what they talk about, their rights. And my dad and several adults that were in my life, teachers and such like, would talk about America being a very free country, America can develop different things in Americans that other countries cannot develop and it was because the way the laws in America made it so. And they never verbalized it was the Bill of Rights. It was only since I got to the United States that I realized that the guarantees in the Bill of Rights make it so. But I do remember one conversation with my dad that the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carte in England were not too different, but there's something different about the Bill of Rights because the American public was much, much more lively about standing up for their rights than the British. The British tend to be more stoic and they'll suffer things out, but the American public would complain. And since I studied in actually in undergraduate school, I was very impressed with a petition to the grievances, the right to petition their grievances, and remember the professor was saying that we all have a right to just say we don't like this to the government in a proper way and then, of course, there's the civil rights movement, that was great too. But when I was a child and the civil rights movement was going on, we never knew what caused it. But it's the Bill of Rights.

MR. MacNeil: Since you have been here and studied and gone into legal practice, yourself, have you found yourself, have your expectations about the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights been, has it lived up to your expectations in practice?

MS. CHEE: Oh, yes, and more. I mean, there were things in the Bill of Rights that I did not realize were there. The 9th Amendment, since I became a lawyer, I am just overwhelmed that our forefathers were so wise to put that in. Nobody ever really knows what the 9th Amendment is, and some lawyers won't even know what the 9th Amendment is. But I remember a case that I did years ago had to do with termination of parental rights and a friend of mine said put in the 9th Amendment, that's a freedom that you have, the right to control your family for the next generation and the generation after that. And it may not be spelled out by the free speech and free press, but certainly the 9th Amendment would cover it. So since I became a lawyer, the impact of the Bill of Rights has really been more important to me, because it just touches on everybody's lives in every different part.

MR. MacNeil: You mentioned the British. The British and lots of other countries since the American Bill of Rights was adopted 200 years ago have guarantees of individual rights and freedoms. Some are tradition, as in the British case, and some are spelled out in other constitutions. What makes the American Bill of Rights special or unique, in your view?

MS. CHEE: I think the tradition of the Bill of Rights and the tradition of America trying to limit government, one of the reasons why they had the Bill of Rights was that some states like North Carolina, where I live, refused to ratify the Constitution unless the individual rights were spelled out and the rights of the states were included and there's a tradition in the American spirit I guess that we don't want big government, we don't want government intrusion in our lives, and any time that government starts to be intrusive, we're going to stand up. And the people have this tradition. And it's been that way. And it's a little bit different from other countries where you respect the government and what the government says. It's okay. And we'll just bear with it, because it's a necessary evil, whereas, the American people just will not accept that. I guess it came from overthrowing one government to start our own government to feel that way.

MR. MacNeil: So the Bill of Rights isn't to give people rights. The Bill of Rights is to protect rights they have from government.

MS. CHEE: Yes. They say that these are rights that we already have and we're spelling it out to make it very clear that we have these rights and you don't intrude into it. And I've got the 9th and a 10th Amendment. They said even the rights that are not spelled out are still retained by the people and the states.

MR. MacNeil: Does it matter, as the surveys show, and another survey has just been published, that only about one American in three really knows about or understands the Bill of Rights? Does that matter?

MS. CHEE: No.

MR. MacNeil: It doesn't matter.

MS. CHEE: No. People come into my office every day and they, they know that something is wrong and they know that some right has been taken away and they can't verbalize it because they don't know that it's guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. But they have the sense of something has happened to them that government has done and they don't like it. And, and it is protected and they see a lawyer and a lawyer can say, well, this is one of your constitutional rights that is being taken away. Most Americans understand things like free speech and religious freedom. They understand that and it's very much a part of American character I think from young, you're told you have certain rights. Children know that they have rights.

MR. MacNeil: So all the hand wringing at present over the fact that the surveys show that Americans don't know which is which and remember them now, it doesn't really matter because it's in the national spirit, you think? You observe it imbedded in the national psyche, do you?

MS. CHEE: That's right. And even if it's one in three, so what? I mean, if you think about people in China, they don't know that they have certain rights spelled out. I mean, I would say maybe one in a hundred really know that they have rights spelled out and one in a hundred that know that they have right spelled out are even afraid to exercise it and so even if we have one in three, that is, that is pretty high number of people knowing it.

MR. MacNeil: Tell me how as an immigration lawyer, a lot of the law you do, as I understand it, pro bono, for people who can't pay you or can't pay you immediately, how does the Bill of Rights translate into everyday experience for you and for the people you represent?

MS. CHEE: Oh, the people I represent, they are like the way I was when I came here. They come here and they are all starry-eyed and they know that there's something in American experience they want. They know there's something in American character that if they could just become an American and live here they can accomplish something. They're like the pioneers of old. And they don't know that a lot of it comes from the Bill of Rights. But they know that they can come here and they can live free and they can achieve certain dreams that they have, if not for themselves, for their children and their children's children. So many times they'll say things to me regarding the kind of life that they led back home, be it in Kampuchea or Communist China, or even in some countries that we would think of as being free countries, but there's a lot of restrictions and government intrusion on their lives, that they come here and it's, they can't verbalize -- the Bill of Rights is why they come here. Nobody says that. Sometimes they say the Statue of Liberty is why they come here and they think that. But the Bill of Rights guarantees, makes all these guarantees for them so that they like me, they see it happening when they're overseas and they know that this is an experience that they want and they can't drive in and they come here and almost all of them do well because they, they just, it's like shackles are taken off them. It's really nice to see. I mean, I've been doing it long enough. I can see that way. They come and at first they're still afraid of the government because they think of government as being something that would take away different freedoms from them, and as they come into the realization and they start being bolder and they start doing more things for themselves.

MR. MacNeil: These 10 Amendments in the Bill of Rights are, along with the other parts of the Constitution, are constantly being challenged and reinterpreted by the Supreme Court. What trend do you sense observing this, a trend to amplifying rights, or a trend to shrinking rights?

MS. CHEE: Well, I see the trend to shrink rights. We have a joke among lawyers that I work with that the 4th Amendment is being written now because that's the Amendment with search and seizures. But I see the trend to shrink the rights and interpret it more strictly, and there's a trend also to imagine what the forefathers intended and this is what they really intended, but my response is that if that's what they really intended, then it's not for women, it's not for blacks, it's not for people who didn't own land, I mean, the land at Gentry were the only ones that were protected in the original Constitution.

MR. MacNeil: Some people see a need for further Amendments to expand the Bill of Rights in some way. Do you? Do you see a need for another right to be spelled out and defended, made explicit? The right to privacy is one example give, you know, that that has only been sort of inferred from the Constitution, from the Bill of Rights, it's not explicit. Some say there should be an Amendment to spell out a right to privacy.

MS. CHEE: Well, there are so many rights that we have now that were not originally spelled out and many of those come from an interpretation of the 9th Amendment, as I said earlier, and I use it some in my practice.

MR. MacNeil: And you get away with it, obviously?

MS. CHEE: Yes, I have.

MR. MacNeil: I mean, the courts support you.

MS. CHEE: I have, especially when it comes to parental rights.

MR. MacNeil: So you think that as it stands now, it's enough, do you?

MS. CHEE: Well, it, it's been expanded through case law and that's part of the American jurisprudence, the courts can interpret and decide what rights you have. Some people want it spelled out and there are others that feel like if you spell it out, then maybe then you can say this is not intended because it's spelled out specifically, so I'm not a legal brain. I don't know which one would be the best.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Ms. Chee, thank you very much for joining us. ESSAY - RUNNING ON RACE

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, an essay. Los Angeles writer Anne Taylor Fleming has some political thoughts.

DAVID DUKE: Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a long campaign and a hard fought battle.

MS. FLEMING: No doubt a lot of people breathed a moral sigh of relief when David Duke went down to decisive defeat in Louisiana. Thank God is the refrain that reverberated around the country. We're not that bad. We didn't sink so low as to put an old Ku Klux Klan wizard as the head of one of our states.

DAVID DUKE: We're going to get to the point where white people in this country are going to be masters of our own destiny again!

MS. FLEMING: We do have our standards still and weren't about to be fooled by the revamped racist who had only recently hung up sheet and swastika. But now David Duke is actually running for the Presidency of the United States. There is no ducking this time, no pretending this boyish politician is but a crackpot from a depressed Southern state. No, he's out among us now, once again shrewdly stirring up white resentments against welfare moms and drug pushers, code phrases for blacks. And we're going to have to look at him and reckon with the side of this country he represents. It's one thing to see young neo Nazis surface in Germany and all through Eastern Europe now that the lid's off, one thing to tut tut from afar as many of us do. But look at these faces. These are our boys, working class kids from Dubuque, Iowa, who have gotten together to form a National Association for the Advancement of White People. Here they are, Duke's boys, up close and personal. Look in their faces and you see that unruly balance of fear and hate that leads to cross burnings. Remember, this is the heartland, a town and a place with few black people and no personal memory or history of slavery and segregation. In fairness, this is not strictly a class issue. Campuses have themselves been ripe with racial episodes in the last five years. So where does it come from, the anger, the bone deep, skin color anger that's now playing itself out across the country? Even on a closer to home, less overt level, most of us continue to live completely segregated lives. Studies show that the country's 30 million blacks live as segregated now as 25 years ago. Hispanics and Asians have been better able to blend in but not blacks, no matter their wealth, and over 1 million black households now make $50,000 or more a year. My own life here in Los Angeles is as cut off as any. Oh, I know about the ghetto gangs, the boys in the hood. I can take you down the freeway and show you where they live, a half hour ride that's like going to the moon, and I don't interact on a daily basis with middle class blacks either, nor does anyone else I know. We just don't. Welcome to America circa 1991, that feels more like America circa 1961. And you ask yourself why, how did we go so far to get back here? All those beatings and boycotts.

MARTIN LUTHER KING: I have a dream!

MS. FLEMING: Those speeches and meetings and marches that sent shivers down your spine, are they long gone news, old stuff? In some ways, yes. That's the message, that moral fervor lasts only a while, spends its moment and settles back down, but without it, the fears and hatreds have reappeared, stirred up directly or indirectly by our own political leaders. And so we find ourselves in a time when it's become okay to run for political office on a racist platform and to fly confederate flags and organize white supremacist groups and to beat up, even kill people because of their color.

PRES. BUSH: From Day One I've told the American people that I wanted a civil rights bill.

MS. FLEMING: We're not talking about liberals or conservatives, or arguing the merits or demerits of affirmative action, or welfare versus work fare. Those are just side shows, whose effect has been to obscure the real issue. What we're talking about is something simpler, a kind of evil, our own homespun American racial hatred that unopposed has reappeared in the boyish faces of a would-be President and angry young men. I'm Anne Taylor Fleming. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, the Bank of Credit & Commerce International agreed to plea guilty to racketeering charges and to forfeit $550 million. New claims for unemployment compensation rose in the first week of December to nearly half a million people. It was the second highest number of claims in more than eight years. Russian President Boris Yeltsin took over the Kremlin. He issued a series of decrees transferring almost all Soviet government operations to Russian control. And in Brussels, NATO offered to coordinate humanitarian aid to the Soviet Union. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night with our Friday night political analysts, Gergen & Shields, and our essayist Jim Fisher who talks about the Bill of Rights with a group in Kansas. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.