The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MS. WARNER: Good evening. I'm Margaret Warner in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Thursday, we have two focus discussions on the state of Clinton foreign policy and Somalia, Haiti, and elsewhere, and on the state of attitudes about sexual harassment in the workplace. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: U.S. helicopter pilot Michael Durant was released today in Mogadishu by warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. Durant was carried to waiting Red Cross officials on a stretcher partially covered by a floral, printed cloth. He was captured 11 days ago after his helicopter was shot down by Aidid forces. He suffered a broken leg, back, and cheekbone, and bullet wounds to the arm and shoulder. A doctor said he would make a full recovery. A Nigerian hostage held for a month also was freed. President Clinton spoke about Durant's release at the White House.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We made no deals to secure the release of chief foreign officer Durant. We had strong resolve and showed that we were willing to support the resumption of the peace process, and we showed that we were determined to protect our soldiers and to react, when appropriate, by strengthening our position there. I think the policy was no deal.

MR. LEHRER: Aidid held a news conference at a hideout in Mogadishu today. It was his first since he became a wanted man for the June killing of 24 peacekeepers. He said the release of Durant and the Nigerian was a gesture toward peace with the United Nations. Aidid's capture is no longer a priority of U.S. forces, and he was asked if he expected to remain a fugitive.

REPORTER: Are you going to stay in hiding, or will you now get to come out into the open?

MOHAMED FARRAH AIDID: Well, there are some contradictory declarations by the U.S. and U.N.

REPORTER: How do you expect them to be --

MOHAMED FARRAH AIDID: Therefore, I will wait until official communication.

REPORTER: So for now you will stay in hiding?

MOHAMED FARRAH AIDID: Yeah.

MR. LEHRER: Pentagon spokeswoman Kathleen Dulaski confirmed today the United States is sending another 1,000 troops to Somalia in addition to the 1700 announced last week by President Clinton. He said the new forces would include tanks and artillery. On Capitol Hill, Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia brought plans to introduce legislation to cut off funding for U.S. troops in Somalia after February 1st. He reached agreement with the Democratic and Republican leaderships to let the President stay with his March 31st pull-out date. Margaret.

MS. WARNER: There was new violence in Haiti today. Gunmen assassinated the justice minister appointed by ousted President Jean Bertrande-Aristide. Early reports said Gee Mallory was shot and killed when his car was ambushed in Port-au-Prince. Two of his bodyguards and his driver were also killed. Earlier in the day at his news conference, President Clinton said the U.S. and the world community had not lost their resolve to restore Aristide to power. He also warned the military rulers who deposed the President against harming the members of Aristide's government.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: In addition to President Aristide there is a government that has been struggling mightily to function in Haiti, headed by Prime Minister Malvalle, a business person, a person who basically did not ask for the responsibility that he has undertaken. I want to send a clear signal today too that the United States is very concerned about his ability to function and his personal safety and the safety of his government. That is very important to us. Malvalle is key to making this whole thing work. He is recognized as a stabilizing figure, as a person who will work with all sides, as a person who will be fair to everybody, and it would be, again, a grave error to underestimate the extent to which this country regards him as an important part of the ultimate solution.

MS. WARNER: The President also said he strongly supports the renewed U.N. sanctions in Haiti, and he suggested that the United States might take additional unilateral steps to intensify the pressure on Haiti's military rulers. Meanwhile, today, 51 Canadian mounties left Haiti. They were the last members of a U.N. force that was to retrain the Haitian police for the transition to democracy.

MR. LEHRER: In U.S. economic news today, the Labor Department reported inflation at the wholesale level rose .2 percent in September. The Commerce Department said retail sales grew by .1 percent in September. And the Chrysler Corporation reported a record profit of $423 million in the third quarter, more than double the same quarter last year.

MS. WARNER: Liftoff for the space shuttle Columbia was scrubbed this afternoon when a tracking computer failed. Rain had already forced a two-hour delay. The shuttle is scheduled for a two-week mission to study how the human body reacts to long periods without gravity. NASA officials said they would try again tomorrow morning.

MR. LEHRER: Two white men were convicted in South Africa today for the murder of black political leader Chris Hani. Caroline Kerr of Independent Television News reports from Johannesburg.

CAROLINE KERR, ITN: The ANC supporters outside Johannesburg's supreme court have not gathered in a spirit of compromise. Chris Hani had been their hero, and they wanted revenge. In the event the dead man's widow arrived at court to hear two men pronounced of her husband's murder. The judge condemned both the man who pulled the trigger and the politician who'd conspired with him. He was satisfied, he says, that the Polish immigrant Tianis Wallace had shot Hani and that the former conservative MP Clive Darby Lewis had supplied the gun. The third defendant, Gay Darby Lewis, was acquitted. Outside the court, ANC leaders welcomed the convictions of the two men but were bitterly disappointed that Mrs. Darby Lewis had gone free.

TOKYO SEXWALE, African National Congress: A viper, a snake is out. That is Gay Darby Lewis herself.

MS. KERR: Today's decision may not delight conservative whites or radical blacks, but it does allow a temporary truce, and at least has not inflamed the situation. At the time of Chris Hani's murder it appeared that his death alone could plunge South Africa into civil war, but the combination of prompt police action and today's even-handed verdict appear for the moment at least to have averted a crisis.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Clinton foreign policy and to defining sexual harassment. FOCUS - GLOBAL VISION

MR. LEHRER: News and questions and dilemmas about Somalia, about Haiti, about Bosnia. They all came together this morning for President Clinton in the White House briefing room. He came there to formally announce the release in Somalia of captured U.S. Army pilot Michael Durant. He stayed to discuss, explain, and defend his conduct of foreign affairs. We will have a four-way analysis of what he said and has done following this extended excerpt from that news conference.

RITA BRAVER, CBS News: Despite your success, there's been a lot of criticism that U.S. foreign policy has been running naive and a somewhat disorganized way. What's your response there?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I can tell you first of all I've had people who were involved in the two previous administrations say that our national security decision making process was at least as good as, as the two in the previous month, perhaps better. Secondly, I think on the things that really, the biggest issues affecting the future and the security of the United States, we have a good record. We have done very well with Russia, the most important issue. We have set up a system that did not exist before we came to office to deal with the other republics of the former Soviet Union and to work on nuclear issues and other issues. I think we have done quite well with the Middle East peace process and with its aftermath. I think we have done well to establish the groundwork of a new basis of the relationship with Japan and with Asia generally. We have certainly put nonproliferation on a higher plane than it was there before. I think we did very well. We had the most successful, the United States had the most successful meeting of the G-7 in over a decade. That was clear. The first time in 10 years we were complimented instead of criticized, making real progress there, so I think that, that the people who say that because of what happened in Somalia last week have a pretty weak reed to stand on, and in terms of Haiti, and maybe we can get to that, there was when I took office, what we had was everybody in Haiti thinking about whether they could leave and come to the United States because they thought there was no way that anybody would ever stick up for the democratic process in Haiti, and the fact that two-thirds of the people voted for somebody to lead their country that was then ousted by the old regime, at least we have made an effort to try to change that, and I, I assure you that my determination there is as strong as ever. So I think that, you know, it's easy to second guess when you get into something like Somalia. I think anybody who really thought about it at the time the decision was made, I supported it, I think itwas the right thing to do. I think we went there for the right motives, but you had to know when we went there that there was, that [a] there was no way America was going to get out in January, and because there was no political process in place there that could have given the Somalis a chance to survive, and [b] that there was every chance that someone for their own reasons at some point during this mission might kill some peacekeepers which would complicate the mission. We are living in a new world. It's easy for people who don't have these responsibilities to use words like "naive" or this, that or the other thing, and the truth is we're living in a new and different world, and we've got to try to chart a course that is the right course for the United States to lead while avoiding things that we cannot do, or things that impose costs in human and financial terms that are unacceptable for us. But I think that in this new world we've made a pretty good beginning and clearly on the things that affect us most. Yes.

BRIT HUME, ABC News: You were very clear last week in saying that you did not want your reaction to events in Somalia to be the wrong signal to the world's thugs and bullies. I wonder, sir, if it occurs to you that the events in Haiti may indicate that that signal was sent anyway?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: The problem we had in Haiti with the boat was that we sent 200 CB's over there who were commissioned specifically to train military officers to do more work to rebuild the country. They were lightly armed. They were not in any way -- they were not peacekeepers or peacemakers. I would remind you that the Governors Island Agreement basically was an agreement among all the major parties in Haiti which clearly set forth the fact that they did not want other countries' forces or a U.N. force coming in there to provide law and order. They wanted French speaking forces to come in and retrain the police force. They wanted French speaking Canadians and the United States to come in and retrain the army to rebuild the country. So those people were simply not able or ever authorized to pursue any mission other than that. And when it -- I was not about to put 200 American CB's into a potentially dangerous situation for which they were neither trained nor armed to deal with at that moment. And I did not want to leave the boat in the harbor so that that became the symbol of debate. I pulled the boat out of the harbor to emphasize that the Haitian parties, themselves, who are still there in Haiti are responsible for violating the Governors Island Agreement. We moved immediately to reimpose sanctions to include oil. We are going to do some more things unilaterally in the next day or two, and, and I think that we still have a chance to get this done, because the people who are there, who don't want to give up power, agreed to the Governors Island Agreement. We're going to do our best to hold them to it. Yes.

SUSAN PAGE, Newsday: Mr. President, would your experiences this month in Somalia and Haiti make you more cautious about sending American peacekeepers to Bosnia?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, my experiences in Somalia would make me more cautious about having any Americans in a peacekeeping role where there was any ambiguity at all about what the range of decisions were which could be made by a command other than an American command with direct accountability to the United States here. And what, what I made clear all along, the reason I have said that I thought that any Bosnian operation would have to be operated through NATO, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe is an American general that talks every day to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that works in very clear cooperation with the other NATO forces. They have drilled together. They have trained together. They have worked together. They are -- it is a much more coherent military operation. And I would have a far higher level of confidence about not only the safety of our troops but our ability to deal with that as a NATO operation. It's a whole different issue, Bosnia, but I would have a much higher level of confidence there. With the U.N. -- let me just say -- go back to the U.N. -- I still believe that U.N. peacekeeping is important, and I still believe that America can play a role in that, but when you're talking about resolving longstanding political disputes, the United States as the world's only superpower is no more able to do that for other people than we were 30 years ago, or 20 years ago.

MR. LEHRER: Now to our analysis. It comes from Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, Republican of Kansas, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Congressman Donald Payne, Democrat of New Jersey, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Carter, now counselor at the Center for Strategic & International Studies; and Jim Hoagland, associate editor and foreign affairs columnist for the Washington Post. First, Jim Hoagland, how would you rate the President's defense this morning of what he's done in foreign affairs?

MR. HOAGLAND: Well, I thought he protested a little too much. I thought he sounded very much on the defensive this morning. He cited several things that had very little to do with the most recent problems and the real criticisms that have been leveled at his foreign policy making. The G-7 summit last July in Tokyo was a great success. It shows a tendency on the part of this administration and the President to consider foreign policy as a series of events or really a series of speeches that the President gives or the Secretary of State gives, and then they consider that as the foreign policy. There are two big problems there: Foreign policy needs connective tissue. You have to go from one event to another in a very clear and considered way. Secondly, you need to explain to the American public, particularly in this time of a very gray situation, a very messy world situation.

MR. LEHRER: The new world he talked about.

MR. HOAGLAND: That's right. You need to explain things in bold strokes and very bold colors, and by and large this is an administration of people who speak with irony and nuance and don't really get the message across.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Brzezinski, your overview of how did the President express what he's up to today.

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Well, if we're talking specifically about his performance today, I thought it was pretty good on its own terms insofar as addressing specific issues. He clearly is a very intelligent person. He articulates well. He obviously observed this week quite well and was expressing the case that on the surface was quite persuasive. The problem that I see, however, with his approach to foreign policy goes further than that. It's partially what Jim was talking about, the absence of any what you might call strategic connectivity. But beyond that, I have a feeling that American foreign policy more generally ran out of steam about two years ago after the conclusion of the Cold War, and we haven't had any concept or focus or generally sense of direction which would justify to the American people the needed engagement in world affairs, and I emphasize the words "a needed engagement by the United States in world affairs."

MR. LEHRER: The U.S. interest has not been articulated.

MR. BRZEZINSKI: The U.S. interest and the U.S. principle, and I don't think the President has so far articulated that. This morning didn't really lend itself to it. It was a press conference. But he hasn't presented a persuasive case to the affect that today America has a foreign policy that addresses the problems of the post Cold War era, and in all fairness to him, he did inherit from the previous administration a series of problems that beset him. Bosnia is not entirely Clinton's fault. There was a lot of things not done prior. Somalia he inherited a problem. The Middle East is a continuing problem. I'd even say our policy with Russia is still not clearly defined, and that is also an inheritance from the previous administration.

MR. LEHRER: Are each one of those things something that he, Clinton, or he or she, any president could have affected and done anything differently about?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: I think if the President conveyed less the impression that foreign policy takes very much a back seat to his domestic concerns, which are justified, but I think he has more or less unbalanced the relationship between the two. If he had given a little more attention earlier on to the importance of action following words, then perhaps he'd be doing better. I am concerned by the fact that America which the world has to project under the Lloyd principle an America whose power has to be credible, has been defied in the last few months by Milosevic, in spite of what he said repeatedly, has been --

MR. LEHRER: That's in Bosnia, correct?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: That's in Bosnia -- has been defied very successfully by Aidid, and today's liberation of the American prisoner is no American victory. It follows in the wake of an American capitulation. And we have been defied by Briggins in Haiti. And this is devastating to American power.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Payne, do you share Mr. Brzezinski and Jim Hoagland's kind of glum overview of the U.S. foreign policy as we speak?

REP. PAYNE: No, I do not. I'd like to say that you have a new administration where for 20 of the last 24 years the policy has been driven by the other party. I think that what we are looking at now, as the President so ably pointed out, is a new world order that has to be defined. For 40 years since World War II, there was a, a war against the Cold War. There was the iron curtain. There was the fight against Communism. And all resources for the last 10 years we put 3 1/2 trillion dollars into military defense and military operations, so it's been a very big thing. Now we come to a point where there's only one world power. We have now the opportunity to redefine where a world power stands. I say that we have a responsibility to attempt to keep the world moving, for example, the aid to Russia, aid to Poland, these things have been done. I think by the other token there have been places that the Cold War has been fought, particularly in some parts of Latin America and, indeed, in Africa. I think that for us to just disengage ourselves, that would be like giving no financial aid to Russia as we've done, or to Poland, and to simply drop the 10 years that we supplied Varez in Somalia with arms as we did in other parts, in Angola, for example with Svavimby, we can't just stop. I think there has to be some way to gradually move out of these - - the 40 years that we've been dealing with the old policy.

MR. LEHRER: What about Mr. Brzezinski's point, Congressman, that what is missing at this point is an articulation to the American people and the world as to what the U.S. interest is in -- and the various things that you just mentioned, all the things that are on the plate right now -- why, for instance, we should have troops in Somalia, why we should be so concerned about Haiti, just to use two, why we should be -- be considering even sending a peacekeeping, part of a peacekeeping force in Bosnia -- what is the U.S. interest? What is the problem there from your perspective?

REP. PAYNE: Well, I think that ever since man has been on earth there had to be the whole question of order. You have to have order in your cities and in your states. You have to have order in your country. You must have order in the world. If this order is allowed to prevail in countries around the world, believe me, it will come back to haunt us. You cannot live in isolation here moving into the 21st century.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Kassebaum, is that really the key to it? I mean, is this new world that President Clinton spoke of today that we all have to adjust to, is that really what it's about, as the Congressman says, is that there must be a way to preserve order outside the Cold War which did it for us up till now?

SEN. KASSEBAUM: I think we have to approach it trouble spot by trouble spot to a certain extent. It isn't an easy time to define a policy that will fit every situation. On the other hand, there are clearly sign points that we must observe. I think the administrations have been very uncertain in direction. They've frittered away a lot of time in defining Somalia, and as a result, in the last month, Congress has taken the initiative. I think by the, by the actions that have been taken recently, foreign policy has been successfully taken over by Congress. Congress was going to set a deadline in Somalia if the President didn't. I happen to believe it was really very wrong to set a deadline, but I think given the broader scope of what you're addressing, the administration has been divided among itself. And I think this sends a message that we're uncertain. I agree with Mr. Brzezinski. It's, it has been Aidid who's been able to dictate policy. We shouldn't really consider it any victory in the long-term ramifications of how Somalia has been handled that will affect policy elsewhere.

MR. LEHRER: But it -- use the Somalia example. Isn't that really just a case of when the United States is prepared to use force, when it is prepared to put the lives of young Americans on the line, isn't that really the question?

SEN. KASSEBAUM: It is. And I suppose it goes back, should we have been there in the first place? I agree with Congressman Payne. Three hundred thousand Somalis have died. We made a decision, President Bush did and supported by Congress, to send our forces in to provide humanitarian relief, and we should be very proud of a mission that has succeeded perhaps in saving a million lives. It was done with great courage and with great skill. It has -- it was as we were downsizing and withdrawing, leaving logistical support there, which had been agreed to, that we got caught by attacks and not to go in and outline all of that again.

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

SEN. KASSEBAUM: But I think it is a question. I find there is growing in the country a belief that we shouldn't be there, should come home immediately, and our sole interest is protecting our own shores, our own people, our own food supply. And this is a growing voice that's being heard. And if we are to address it in a way, to explain interests that we might have elsewhere, then it has to be the President that leads in providing that direction. And he has not done so. Nor has the administration provided, I think, a clear direction where they wish to go.

MR. LEHRER: Jim Hoagland, you used the term "connecting tissue which was missing." Is it conceivable that there is a connecting tissue that would connect -- let's just go through -- Somalia to Haiti to Bosnia to Russia to the Middle East to Asia to Japan to G-7, all the things that the President talked about today? Is that conceivable that there is such a thing?

MR. HOAGLAND: Well, there's clearly no single line that connects all those different dots. They are different cases, and you have to take the particularity of each case into consideration. But at the same time, there are some common features in many of them. If you're looking at Somalia and Bosnia, Haiti, you're looking at efforts by the United Nations and other multilateral organizations to curb crises that in the past you could depend on the middle level clients, if you will, of the superpowers to take care of.

MR. LEHRER: The order issue that Congressman Payne raised in other words?

MR. HOAGLAND: That's right. You've got to find a new way. Perhaps it is the United Nations. Perhaps it's something else. I think the administration hasn't clearly defined in its own mind and certainly not to the public what that something else is to replace the structures of the Cold War. Congressman Payne said that this is a new administration but, in fact, it's been in office almost a year now. These crises have taken on their own life under the Clinton administration, and the Clinton administration is now responsible for beginning to develop approaches. I think one of the mistakes that Somalia illustrates so clearly is that it will take a great deal to change the United Nations. You've got to make the United Nations both a more effective organization, an organization with some kind of core values that it does not have today that would be close to what Americans see as the core values of our society. That's a big job. That's a huge job. The administration, if it really wants to use the United Nations that way, has to begin on that job.

MR. LEHRER: But to begin on that job, Mr. Brzezinski, doesn't there have to be a peacemaking force before there is a peacekeeping force? Isn't that what's been missing in this new U.N. role, the new multilateral role?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Well, I'm not sure that we're yet at a stage in world history in which we are ready for a U.N. peacemaking force. I don't think there is sufficient international consensus for it. I don't think there is adequate domestic popular support for such an undertaking. I don't think there is the command, control, and logistical structure to permit it. It still has to be largely an undertaking in which some power or collection of powers takes the lead. And that has to be the United States.

MR. LEHRER: Well, let me be very specific on Somalia, using Congressman Payne's point and also Sen. Kassebaum. Sen. Kassebaum recounted correctly that everybody who appeared on this program, at least, and all the polls, everybody supported the sending of U.S. troops to Somalia at the beginning. This was to save people's lives. This was to restore order enough to where these people could be fed. And then the people with the guns started shooting at Americans, and suddenly it's no longer the thing to do. And that, the policy wasn't articulated once the -- or something wasn't justified once the bullets started flying. How do you, how do you articulate a policy that can do both?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Well, first of all, you have to decide what you're going to do with your power when you go in, and I think one of the original sins of our policy was that we did not exploit the enormous credibility that American power enjoyed at the time. Don't forget, this was the first military mission by the United States after the Gulf War. And American power was really respected. When we went in, we should have disarmed the parties involved because at that time we had the psychological military momentum, and they probably would have permitted us to disarm them, or they would have left Mogadishu. We, instead, simply sat there, and after a while the friction with the local authorities or the local power groups was inevitable. So, first of all, I think that was a mistake. Beyond that, I think the mistake was also in the way the mission was articulated, and for this we cannot blame Clinton. This happened under Bush. The problem with Clinton I think is of a more general nature, and I think goes beyond Somalia, and that is that he has not yet structured a convincing case of the American people for a policy of sustained engagement in world affairs in which that engagement involves American leadership. And that engagement can then have different facets. It should involve consolidation of our victory in the Cold War by helping Russia and Central Europe. It should involve centralization of areas that portend violence, Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti. It should involve enhancement of democracy as a goal among others. But a package of this sort, based on the premise that this stage of history a turbulent world needs an engaged America has not been articulated. And this I find missing.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree? Do you find that also missing, Congressman Payne? You support what the President has done, but do you see that missing as well?

REP. PAYNE: Yes. I think that it's been ably pointed out that when the U.S. went in, I think even the Somali warlords were surprised that we overlooked the weapons. As a matter of fact, at one point we just said we're parking outside of the city limits, and sort of when we leave, you can pick them back up. And that was a very serious mistake. Boutros Boutros-Ghali pleaded with the United States to disarm. It was felt by the Bush administration that that was not going to be the policy, and that, I agree, was the biggest mistake. I think though to expect a policy to be forged in ten months that have been in process for forty years I think is, is unrealistic. What I think the President needs to do is to engage this nation as he did with health care. I think there has to be a townhall meeting. I think he's got to stand up and say, this is the situation. When there was a problem in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union went in. When we had problems that we felt were important, the U.S. went in. There is no more Soviet Union. And I disagree, it should not be the United States solely that have to go around the world to maintain order. And I believe that the President, as soon as possible, should call a town meeting and have this whole discussion with the American people, a dialogue, what is the United Nations, how do we -- you know -- twenty-four Pakistanis were killed before the Americans, five Moroccans, three Nigerians, three Italians, then eighteen American soldiers. And that was tragic. But you see the reaction when the 18 soldiers because they were ours, and rightfully so; I think the question has to be: How do we deal with this new world order?

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Kassebaum, do you agree that that is what is missing, that the case for engagement in the world needs to be made?

SEN. KASSEBAUM: Yes, indeed. The public doesn't understand, and as I say, Congress is going to take the bit in its mouth and run with it. We'll dictate actually what happens with foreign policy unless the President is going to be able to put together a direction on his part.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Well, Senator, gentlemen, thank you very much. FOCUS - DEFINING LIMITS

MS. WARNER: Next tonight, sexual harassment on the job. Two years ago, the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings propelled the issue to the center of public debate. Two years later, the debate still wages. This week, the Supreme Court was asked to define what constitutes sexual harassment in the workplace. We'll hear three views on the subject, but first a backgrounder from Elizabeth Brackett.

MS. BRACKETT: What is sexual harassment? A question often asked into today's workplace. Forty-one year old Teresa Harris now works as a nurse. She was sure she had been sexually harassed by her former employer when she filed a claim against him in 1987.

TERESA HARRIS, Nurse: He would throw the coin on the floor, and he'd say, Teresa, pick up that coin for me. That would, that would be it. He would make comments about my behind. He told me that it was sexy but that it was big and if I wore a thong bikini then I would cause an eclipse on the beach in Florida, and that I shouldn't purchase one of those swimsuits.

MS. BRACKETT: Her employer's lawyers said such remarks were only office jokes.

STANLEY CHERNAU, Defense Lawyer: He, himself, and various witnesses explained that the comments were either jokes and recognized by everyone, including Teresa Harris, to be jokes, or they were based on in-house events, in-house funny things that happened, that occurred.

MS. BRACKETT: Harris worked for Charles Hardy, president of Forklift Systems, Inc., in Nashville, Tennessee. She says he never touched her but his comments did create a hostile work environment. She confronted him about his behavior.

TERESA HARRIS: I told him everything that had offended me and that had upset me. And he told me that he was sorry and that he did not realize that I was upset by it or offended. So for a couple of weeks, he did pretty good, until the answer that -- regarding, regarding one of our, one of my accounts, and I had gotten a fairly large order from Aladdin Industries. And I told Charles that I had gotten this order, and he said, well, Teresa, what did you do, promise the guy at Aladdin bugger for Saturday night? And he said this to me in the middle of the lobby, in front of everybody. And he walked out the door.

MS. BRACKETT: In essence, he was saying to you that you --

TERESA HARRIS: I had sex, asked me if I'd had sex with a customer to obtain business, and that, that was pretty devastating. That's when I knew that it wasn't going to change.

STANLEY CHERNAU: I think every morning when she gets up all she thinks about is getting Charles.

MS. BRACKETT: Getting Charles Hardy?

STANLEY CHERNAU: I really do. I really believe it.

MS. BRACKETT: Stanley Chernau, Charles Hardy's lawyer, says Harris filed her suit out of anger after Hardy cancelled a business contract with her husband. He says the sexual harassment case was only a vehicle for getting back at her boss.

STANLEY CHERNAU: I just think this case is frivolous because I think the real reason that she was furious with Mr. Hardy is because of a soured business relationship with her husband. So when I got into the proof in this case, I felt that I was right. Maybe not -- the court didn't hold that it was frivolous, but I won it. I won it in every court because she couldn't establish the facts.

MS. BRACKETT: Teresa Harris did lose her case. The court said while Charles Hardy's comments were crude and insensitive, they were not enough to create a hostile work environment and, therefore, sexual harassment did not take place. That leaves the question open of: What does it take to create a hostile work environment? Harris's attorney, Irwin Venick, says the process of defining sexual harassment in the workplace began after sexual harassment was first recognized as a claim under Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act in 1986.

IRWIN VENICK, Plaintiff's Lawyer: At that time, it said generally that sexual harassment is behavior that is severe or pervasive enough to detrimentally affect someone's work environment. So what this case is going to address is whether the plaintiff has to show that he or she has been subjectively harmed, seriously psychologically harmed, subjectively, in order to win.

MS. BRACKETT: In the lower court cases, Harris and her lawyer tried to prove that she had suffered psychological damage as a result of Charles Hardy's comments. When she lost, they decided to appeal to the Supreme Court, using the argument that having to prove psychological damage was too hard to do.

IRWIN VENICK: We don't believe that it should be a matter of Title 7 that serious psychological injury has to be proved.

MS. BRACKETT: Why not?

IRWIN VENICK: It's the same reason why we don't have to prove that a black person suffers serious psychological injury through either a result of racial epithets, or the same reason we don't have to require that Catholics or Jews have to suffer serious psychological injury because of epithets related to their, their religion.

MS. BRACKETT: Chernau says as in any lawsuit, some sort of injury must be found if damages are to be awarded, and damage awards can be made now in sexual harassment cases. His hope, he says, is that the case will clarify what is and is not sexual harassment.

STANLEY CHERNAU: I think it's important so that those people, which is almost all of us, who can be charged with sexual harassment will understand in clear terms what it is they can do and what it is they can't do, what's permissible and what's impermissible.

MS. WARNER: We now hear three views on how sexual harassment should be defined and how relations between the sexes in the workplace have been affected by this ongoing debate. Dorothy Rabinowitz is a writer for the Wall Street Journal. Erica Jong is the author of Fear of Flying and other novels. She's currently writing a book about how relations between the sexes have changed in recent years. Ellen Bravo is the executive director of the organization "9 to 5," an advocacy group for working women. Welcome to all of you. Ellen Bravo, let me start with you. Do you think the Supreme Court is the place to decide once and for all what constitutes sexual harassment in the workplace?

MS. BRAVO: Well, actually I think the EEOC defined it back 13 years ago in 1980, and what they said was pretty simple. Behavior in the workplace --

MS. WARNER: I'm sorry -- could you say -- who -- who defined this just for our --

MS. BRAVO: The EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

MS. WARNER: Opportunity Commission.

MS. BRAVO: When they gave a definition in 1980, and they said, it's unwelcomed sexual behavior, counts as sexual harassment if one or two things is true: Either if it's made a condition of employment that you go along with it, or if it creates an offensive, hostile, intimidating work environment.

MS. WARNER: But this case is really about then defining, is it not, what is a hostile working environment? Do you think the court is the place to decide that?

MS. BRAVO: Well, unfortunately, some of the lower courts, the 6th circuit and some other courts, have misunderstood the EEOC definition and what the Supreme Court, itself, said earlier. They added this construct that never was existing before, mainly that you have to suffer a severe psychological injury. There was no dispute about the facts. There was no dispute that his remarks were offensive and unwelcome to her. The issue was that she was merely offended and not psychologically scarred. Our view is that you don't have to fall apart before someone says it's enough. You don't have to be incapacitated in order to be injured, for us to say discrimination should stop. Damages is another issue. How much you've been affected certainly is a legitimate question for determining the level of damages but not to determine whether or not discrimination has taken place.

MS. WARNER: Well, Dorothy Rabinowitz, in yesterday's court hearing, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested that sexual harassment was "If one sex has to put up with something that the other sex doesn't have to put up with, it makes it more difficult for that person to do their job well." Do you think that's a good definition?

MS. RABINOWITZ: Oh, no, I don't, actually. I wonder if someone might put the question: How many men are harassed in the workplace? I mean, don't you think that anybody listening to this litany of details of what befell this woman, which let me stipulate were offensive and they were crude, can anyone in a sane and common sense world sit back and say, yes, I was emotionally and psychologically devastated? What has happened with all of these cases in all of this judicial proceeding is that both humor and common sense have been thrown out of the window in the effort to make women let me say an afflicted minority. Women, who are what, 52 percent of the population, and whom you even heard now equated with blacks and with Jews.

MS. WARNER: So I gather you don't think the Supreme Court is the place --

MS. RABINOWITZ: That is correct.

MS. WARNER: -- to settle this?

MS. RABINOWITZ: Hardly.

MS. WARNER: Erica Jong, what is your view? Does this belong in the court?

MS. JONG: Well, it's unfortunate that it has to go to the court, but let's just say that we're living in a period when there is so much real puzzlement between sexes that unfortunately some things that used to be decided in social intercourse are now decided in the court. I can only say to you that when I saw Ruth Bader Ginsburg quoted in the New York Times this morning, I shouted, "Hurrah!" I thought at last we have a leader who is defining the issue as it should be defined. I wanted to go and throw my arms around her and President Clinton, who appointed her. I feel that the term "sexual harassment" is perhaps an unfortunate term.

MS. WARNER: Why?

MS. JONG: Because it, it seems to imply that it is touching. That's why I think it's unfortunate. I think we should call this "verbal gender discrimination," and we should understand that when we verbally disempower someone in the workplace by making them feel like a harlot, like a whore, like a tart, we are disempowering them, and it is a disempowerment even though it is verbal. I did not feel this way two years ago. I have -- my consciousness has been raised. In fact, I wrote an article for the Washington Post about Sen. Packwood about a year ago in which I said, "Are we afraid of flirtation, no more fear of flirting? Let's be funny. Let's flirt. Let's have fun. Men and women like each other." Yes, I believe that. I believe we need a sense of humor, but I think that when a woman is disempowered on the workplace purely because of her gender, it is an offense, and yes, we are 52 percent of the population but we are only 15 percent of the Congress, let's remember. We are only 15 percent of the top levels of media according to a report I read the other day about power in the media. Yes, there are many women reporters, but how many women are there who are the heads of media conglomerates? Not many. So let's remember that we may be 52 percent of the population but we do not still have our equal share of the power, and when somebody says to me, as was said to me as a college girl, what does a pretty girl like you want a Ph.D. for, you are being disempowered verbally, and it is a form of harassment. I wish we didn't have to call it sexual harassment because I think it would be better understood.

MS. WARNER: Let me turn to Ellen Bravo on the subject. As I recall during the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas debate that we all engaged in, this issue kind of came out, that it was really about power, not as Erica Jong says, about sex. Why do you think two years after that case and all that debate, there is still such confusion about what constitutes sexual harassment?

MS. BRAVO: Well, because if that, if those hearings were a national teach-in on sexual harassment, they were a teach-in led by some of the most ignorant people in the country on the subject. And, unfortunately, a lot of confusion was spread, and it's been perpetrated by talk show, certain talk show hosts and other people who want to trivialize the issue or, as Mr. Chernau, the attorney for the company said, this is about all of us. This isn't about women against men. The majority of people, including the majority of men, are not sexual harassers. They do not say vulgar, abusive, degrading things to people. Common sense and courtesy prevail. Like Erica Jong said, and I'm delighted to hear that she's changed her views, we're not talking about flirting, we're not talking about innocent jokes, or consensual behavior. We're talking about offensive, unwelcome, repeated behavior of the sexual nature at work.

MS. JONG: Most men have never experienced it. In truth, most men have never experienced this kind of degradation, including the lawyer we saw just now in this segment. They don't know what it's like. There is no parallel. Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out that there is no parallel for men. And she's right, and I agree with her.

MS. WARNER: Ms. Rabinowitz.

MS. RABINOWITZ: I think that men are now facing some harassment. It's a word which should go away but so should empowerment, I might suggest, and disempowerment. Men now are placed in a position where they can be charged with crimes for which there is no evidence required. I feel, I feel that the atmosphere is hostile to me. How does one deal in a world like this, especially in the world where the call for victimization in which now two generations of young women are growing up being told that they have been oppressed since the beginning of time? How can you stop the kind of racist charges and the proliferation of accusations?

MS. JONG: But we have to understand that we live in an environment in which women are second class citizens, and in that environment in which most of the judges are men, in which even today, though we have two women Supreme Court Justices, thank the goddess, we still have a majority of men who haven't experienced these things sitting on the Supreme Court, not to mention all the other courts. How is a woman to prove how she feels when she is treated in this way, when she's made to blush, to feel off balance? I'm sorry --

MS. RABINOWITZ: Who is making her blush?

MS. WARNER: Let me ask Ellen Bravo about this point that Mrs. Rabinowitz is making that --

MS. RABINOWITZ: Ms.

MS. WARNER: Ms., excuse me, Ms. Rabinowitz is making, that all this focus on sexual harassment is perpetrating this image of women as victim, an oppressed minority. There's a down side to all of this.

MS. BRAVO: The down side for whom? The down side is for people who have been harassed with impunity for years and because the harassers have been getting away with it. I do a lot of training for people in sexual harassment awareness. The majority of people understand completely. It's not difficult for them. Once it's made clear to them what we're talking about and what we're not talking about, they say, wow, that would be awful, I'd hate for that to happen to me or someone I care about, I'd certainly hate for that to happen to my daughter. There are some men who have been sexually harassed, and they understand the feeling of being out of control and not being able to get it to stop, but let's face it, men and women's experience are different. Most men, if they're asked, how do you feel about uninvited sexual advances, say, I'd be flattered. Most women say, I'd be offended and even scared because the fear of rape is something very real for women in a different way than it is for men. The fact that you are seen as a slut, a whore, a tramp, if you have sexual, lots of sexual experience, as opposed to a stud, is very real. We have a double standard whether we like it or not. So people understand there's a gender gap perhaps in our experience and in our understanding of how prevalent this is. But when there's opportunity for education and real discussion, men can understand this. It's just that those few relatively small in number who've been getting away with harassment, they're the ones who benefit when people say you have to have a nervous breakdown before anybody will listen to you. You know what that means? It means that the women who are out there every day, doing everything they can to say, sucker, I'm not going to let you know how much you're hurting me, they will not be able to get the behavior to stop precisely because they were strong enough to keep on functioning. It's like only if they fall apart - -

MS. RABINOWITZ: This is going -- this is now a world --

MS. JONG: Why do they have to do this? Why do they have to prove they're having a nervous breakdown?

MS. WARNER: I think actually in the court case even, even the defendant's lawyer has dropped it now. I don't think that's even going to be an issue. The court is simply going to try to decide what constitutes sexual harassment.

MS. RABINOWITZ: If we postulate an entire world in which there are only a few people who are suffering from this, from this growing and galloping madness of sexual accusations, we have an entire university system, a whole world, in which young women come out believing that they are victims, armed to the teeth, who now believe that absolutely the worst thing that can happen to them is to walk down sidewalks and have some construction workers look at them, and their response is, I was violated.

MS. WARNER: Ms. Rabinowitz, let me ask you, what -- as you said, we've all had this experience. What do you think a woman should do in that situation if, for instance, the person is her boss?

MS. RABINOWITZ: Well, women have always been -- who of us has not had your experience in mind where our bosses were in the universities and said, what's a pretty good like you want a Ph.D. for? You responded to it. Did they break your pencil? Did they say, I have to take your typewriter away? Did they disempower you?

MS. JONG: Seriously, Dorothy, let me just tell you --

MS. RABINOWITZ: I might have been --

MS. JONG: -- they took you very unseriously.

MS. RABINOWITZ: -- taken seriously -- now, look, this is the way you handle the world. This is a very serious way of learning how to deal with --

MS. WARNER: But why should a woman have to handle, why should a woman have to handle it?

MS. JONG: Why do we have to prove we're smart?

MS. RABINOWITZ: Men have got to deal with the world in different ways. It's this question of, of unique victimization that women believe that they are suffering when men have all kinds of victimization. What has been selected here is this peculiar crime, sex harassment, which has now made the crime of the decade.

MS. WARNER: Let me ask you, Erica Jong, one thing because we don't have a man here, let me represent that point of view. A lot of men say to me, I don't know how to act at my job anymore toward women.

MS. JONG: It's true. We're living in a period where men are terribly confused and women are terribly confused. What is flirtation? What -- how do I approach someone if I like them or love them? We're living in a transitional period between two states of being. We're in the midst of a revolution between the sectors. Both sectors are distinctly uncomfortable, but when the Supreme Court with a woman on it comes down and says and defines -- too bad that the Supreme Court has to, too bad we can't decide it among ourselves, it would be wonderful if we could -- when the Supreme Court comes down and says, this is something that throws somebody off balance, this is something that makes an obstacle for her in moving forward, I believe that women all over America cheer. They are not saying we don't want to flirt. They are not saying, we don't want lovers, we don't want husbands. They are not saying, we are through with sex. They are just saying, please treat us with dignity in the workplace.

MS. WARNER: What's wrong with that perspective?

MS. RABINOWITZ: Erica speaks with a sane voice when she says, no, we are not saying we don't want lovers. But I have to tell you that the leaders of this movement are fanatics and ideologues and the produce of their wisdom can be summed up in the sorts of things that are being taught in the university.

MS. WARNER: But do you think Ms. Harris is an ideologue? Do you think that's what motivated her, the defendant -- the plaintiff in this case?

MS. RABINOWITZ: I am in no position to know. I can tell you that very few -- there is not an aspect of her charge that I think seemed valid to me.

MS. JONG: I would just like to comment a little bit on --

MS. WARNER: We're just about out of time, and I want to give Ellen Bravo a chance to come back in here. Do you think we're in danger of creating a situation in the workplace which, after all, is also a social place of, of a sterile environment in which people don't know how to relate to one another, and so they just stop relating?

MS. BRAVO: There is confusion but there is a solution for that, education. Get people talking. I think it's very much an injustice to say that young women are leaving universities saying I'm the victim. What they're saying is, I'm important and I have the right not to be degraded, not to be trampled on, and that's when I'm going to assert for myself. I wish that what you could do is sit on the job hotline that "9 to 5" has and hear the kind of calls we get, the abusive treatment. It wasn't some construction worker whistling at them. It was a professor who made them change their major and their whole life course because basically he said, sleep with me or else. And this is what's going on for lots of people. The majority -- I again want to say this -- of harassments are not -- I mean, the majority of men are not harassers. They're not about men being the enemy, and it's not what most of us who are actively fighting sexual harassment are saying. What we are saying is that women need to be treated with respect and dignity at work and that those people who have been benefiting from treating them otherwise have got to be made to stop, there have to be consequences for their behavior.

MS. WARNER: Well, thank you very much, Ellen Bravo, Dorothy Rabinowitz, Erica Jong. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, army pilot Michael Durant and a Nigerian peacekeeper were released by their captors in Somalia. President Clinton said their release involved no deal. Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid appeared at a news conference in Mogadishu, his first public appearance since he became the subject of a manhunt four months ago. There was no movement made today to capture him. And gunmen assassinated Haiti's justice minister who was appointed by exiled President Aristide. Good night, Margaret.

MS. WARNER: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night with our Friday political analysis, including presidential counsellor David Gergen. I'm Margaret Warner. Good night.