The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MR. MUDD: And I'm Roger Mudd in Washington. After the News Summary, we take a closer look at Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Egyptian cleric whose followers are linked to terrorist attacks of the U.S. Then a report on tax breaks and promises, and finally the Supreme Court's big decisions this year and what's ahead with Judge Ginsburg. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: A U.S. jet attacked an Iraqi anti-aircraft site in Southern Iraq today. U.S. officials said the attack was provoked when Iraqi radar locked on to the plane. President Clinton told reporters at the White House not to read too much into the incident. He said it was standard rules of engagement for U.S. planes to take action when illuminated by Iraqi radar. The F4G attack jet was flying with another air force plane over the no-fly zone in Southern Iraq. Both returned safely to base. An Iraqi government statement said the plane had targeted an inactive anti- aircraft battery and one soldier was wounded. Three days ago, the U.S. attacked Iraq's intelligence headquarters in Baghdad to retaliate for an alleged plot to assassinate former President Bush during his April visit to Kuwait. At a White House news conference today, President Clinton was asked whether he believed Saddam Hussein approved that plan.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We believe the evidence clearly indicates that the, the bombing operation was authorized by the Iraqi government, and it is highly unusual in the experience of our people -- let me recast that. Our analysts have no experience of such a, an operation of that magnitude being authorized other than at the highest levels.

MR. MacNeil: The President also said given Iraq's conduct, it would be difficult to conceive of ever having normal relations with the regime of Saddam Hussein. Before he took office, Mr. Clinton had indicated normal ties might one day be possible. The U.S. sent an aircraft carrier through the Suez Canal today on its way to the Red Sea. The USS Theodore Roosevelt was dispatched after the U.S. attack on Iraq to beef up naval power in the region. The ship's warplanes are also expected to take part in enforcement of the no- fly zones over Iraq. A report prepared by the staff of a congressional committee says Iraq has reconstructed 80 percent of its military manufacturing capability since the Gulf War. Congressman Tom Lantos of California who chairs the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee said monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency and a U.N. special commission had not been able to stop Iraq's rearmament. He spoke about the report at a hearing this morning.

REP. TOM LANTOS, [D] California: Despite the U.N. embargo, Iraq has succeeded in reinvigorating its clandestine procurement effort, relying on known front companies in Jordan, France, and Germany, to purchase critical items and spare parts for its weapons industry. Despite the U.S. Trade embargo, Iraq continues to ship oil to Jordan and to Iran using this money to feed its procurement effort and to rebuild its weapons plant.

MR. MacNeil: At the same hearing, Assistant Sec. of State Robert Galucci, who was a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, said Iraq still poses a nuclear threat. He said Saddam Hussein is committed to rebuilding a nuclear weapons program and has the basic industrial capability to do so. Roger.

MR. MUDD: An air force general told Congress today that neither he nor other air force officials had lied about the effectiveness of various weapons systems. A recent report from the General Accounting Office claimed the air force misled Congress during the 1980s by exaggerating the capability of the B-1B as well as other bombers and missile systems. Gen. John Loh of the Air Combat Command testified today he was only simplifying a complicated issue when he told Sen. John Glenn that the B-1B was 100 times harder to detect on radar than the old B-52 bomber. Glenn said the figure was clearly false. Gen. Loh defended the air force at a hearing before Sen. Glenn's committee today.

GEN. JOHN LOH, U.S. Air Force: It is not our style to deceive the Congress or the GAO or anybody else. When I find that happening, we stop it. That's not the way we do business. I'm not aware of any deliberate attempts either in this time frame or later to deliberately deceive the Congress or the GAO about the status of programs, and in the case of the B 1.

MR. MUDD: Sen. Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio said today he will not seek re-election next year. The three-term Democrat who is 76 said he's in good health and wants to spend some more time with his wife, children, and grandchildren. Metzenbaum is a millionaire, a liberal, a champion of labor, minorities, and the disadvantaged, and was particularly skilled at irritating the Republicans.

MR. MacNeil: The Mississippi River continued to rise today, spilling over its banks and damaging homes and low lying farmland in five states. Heavy rains have pushed the river to near record levels, halting commercial shipping from St. Paul, Minnesota, to St. Louis, Missouri. One death has been attributed to the flooding. Forecasters are predicting more rain for the region tomorrow. National Guardsmen were called out in Iowa and Wisconsin to help residents pile sandbags along the river banks in an attempt to hold back the flood waters. Bad weather also forced NASA to keep the space shuttle Endeavor in space an extra day. The shuttle and its crew of six astronauts was scheduled to land this morning at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Low clouds over the landing strip and the threat of storms prompted the delay. NASA has rescheduled the landing for tomorrow morning.

MR. MUDD: The government's main gauge of future economic activity fell .3 of 1 percent in May. The index of leading indicators is used to predict economic conditions over the next six to nine months. The government also reported new home sales plunged 21 percent in May. The decline essentially erased a big surge in sales the month before. A private research group today reported consumer confidence in the economy fell in June for the second straight month. The latest survey by the Conference Board found consumers more negative about current economic conditions and in their expectations for the months ahead. That's it for the News Summary. Now it's on to who is Sheik Rahman and what should the U.S. do about him, broken promises in a company town, and the Supreme Court wraps up another session. FOCUS - IT'S A WRAP

MR. MUDD: The Supreme Court is on tonight. Yesterday the court ruled that a legislative district designed to help minorities may be unconstitutional if it violates the rights of white voters. The court voted 5 to 4 to give a group of white North Carolina voters a chance to prove that the newly created 12th Congressional District, 170 miles long, and at points not much wider than an interstate highway, amounts to gerrymandering. The decision came on the court's last day of the session. This was also the final day on the court for Associate Justice Byron White, appointed by President Kennedy in 1962. Described by the New York Times as one of the more remarkable people to serve, White was a tough questioner but an enigmatic judge. His judicial philosophy defied tracing. On some issues, mainly social ones, most notably abortion, White voted with the conservative bloc, currently composed of Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Scalia and Thomas, but in many cases he voted with the moderates on the court, Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter. And frequently he was with the liberals, Justices Harry Blackmun and John Paul Stevens. One student of the court said, "The toughest assignment you could give me would be to write a judicial biography of Byron White." With us this evening to discuss the retirement of Justice White, the nomination of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to replace him, and the just completed term are two experts on the court. Mary Cheh is a professor of law at George Washington University. Charles Fried is former solicitor general in the Reagan administration and is a professor of law at Harvard. Prof. Cheh, will you tell me what the effect of the -- on the court will be of Byron White's retirement.

PROF. CHEH: Well, there could be a number of effects. First of all, I'm sure the court, all the members of the court will personally miss him. He's been on the court for over 30 years. And he's been a strong institutional force on the court. In terms of his judicial philosophy, he is often put in the category of being a conservative justice, though as your introduction mentioned, there are pockets of moderation and liberalism. I think he's most notable in the current times in terms of his conservative stance with respect to matters of abortion and reading in new rights into the Constitution. He's always held fast. He's very steeped in history, and the sort of common law and custom, and has been unwilling to extend and find new rights in the Constitution when they're not fairly able to be discerned there from that sort of historical sweep. And I think that is true both in the case of Bowers vs. Hardwick involving a Georgia statute some years ago saying that Georgia could criminalize sodomy and in his approach from the very beginning in Roe vs. Wade opposed to that decision and remained opposed to it throughout. So I think rather clearly his sort of anchor on that side, on that issue, is the most notable change that will come given that Judge Ginsburg, who's been named, nominated to replace him, has indicated though she may follow a different path, she certainly supports abortion rights.

MR. MUDD: Prof. Fried, will Ruth Ginsburg then be roughly a match for Byron White? How closely will they be together?

PROF. FRIED: I think they'll be pretty closely together, except in the areas just mentioned by Prof. Cheh, and that is abortion and sodomy. I think it's not so mysterious to describe Justice White's judicial philosophy. He is a traditional, New Deal liberal. He believes in Congress. He believes in the legislature. I think in those terms he just doesn't like the idea of the Supreme Court coming in and doing the job of politics. So in that respect, Justice Ginsburg will make a difference. But in a number of the other areas, I think it's going to be an even trade and for instance, in the big cases this term where Justice White was in the dissent on the liberal side, Justice Ginsburg, as she will soon be, will simply replace him.

MR. MUDD: So you, you don't see then the arrival of Judge Ginsburg as in any way threatening the conservative majority on the court?

PROF. FRIED: No, except in the areas of abortion and sodomy and actually on abortion in the Casey case we see that abortion rights are really pretty secure now anyway. And that leaves homosexual sodomy, and I think that is a precedent which is doomed to go anyway, and good riddance.

MR. MUDD: Prof. Cheh, tell me about what direction you think the court will now move in. Will it remain basically conservative but activist?

PROF. CHEH: Well, I think, you know, in certainly the last term and certainly the terms prior to that indicate that despite all the report in the press about, you know, a move to the center and moderation that in the main this remains a very conservative court. And I think one indicator of that would be Justice Rehnquist, himself, who is a good weather vane to determine where the court stands. And in most of the opinions, practically all of them, he was in the majority. He was very rarely in dissent. So that indicates that the court remains largely a conservative institution. And by conservative I mean conservative in the sense that they don't decide things wholesale, incremental, change is more their style, there's great deference to the legislature and choices made by the political branches, and I think that that is likely to continue. I do think as we were talking about the prospect of Judge Ginsburg assuming a role that her role will not be a sea change. There will be incremental changes even so in various areas, and she'll have an influence. For example, in the First Amendment area, she may have an influence. She may have an influence in opening up to a greater degree the federal courts for litigation both in habeas suits involving criminals and just generally in terms of standing of individuals to seek redress in the federal courts. But I think that the conservative approach will still be the main stay of much of what the court does.

MR. MacNeil: Do you agree with that, Prof. Fried?

PROF. FRIED: Well, the most important, most startling decision of this term was the racial gerrymander case which you mentioned at the beginning of this segment, and that was an important decision, because it reaffirmed a 1989 decision of Justice O'Connor which said that whenever the government classifies in terms of race, whether it does it to help the minority or in a bad way, with bad motives, then the government has to jump through very, very high hoops. And it wasn't clear whether that position would stand. And today, we see that it not only stands, but that it was applied to an entirely new area, that is to say redistricting. So that is a very strong indication of what I would describe as the conservative view. And, of course, Justice White was in the dissent in that case so that his departure will make no difference.

MR. MacNeil: Prof. Cheh, you, I think, have some indication that, that the redistricting case that Prof. Fried mentioned is a precursor to race becoming a dominant issue on the court up ahead.

PROF. CHEH: Well, I think the largest chunk of unfinished business that the court has, and maybe we can broaden it, the entire nation has is exactly how to handle racial preferences, because although the court has, I think, rather solidly again reaffirmed, although in a new area, reaffirmed its notion that if you're going to have racial preferences, whether to aid the minority or against the minority, that you have to have a strong, a compelling reason to have these kinds of preferences. And I think what it signals is that the court, at least the majority of the court at the moment, and that majority will stick, as Prof. Fried has indicated, because Justice White was in dissent, the majority of the court remains profoundly skeptical of the idea of using race as a way of getting beyond race. They believe that the use of race and classifying people on the basis of race is, is odious and needs a rather strong justification. The situation that we face today, the reference to an earlier case involving setaside of government contracts for minority-owned firms, the court there said you have to have a strong justification and a narrowly tailored law. We have racial preferences that permeate our society. And I think it will be a long time working out in terms of hiring, you know, admissions, setasides, and now this new area of voting exactly how far we're willing to go, because the danger is, the danger is that in trying to use race in what is called the benign or helpful way that really the flip side of that -- it's a two- edged sword, and the flip side of that may be far more dangerous. We may permanently enshrine racial preferences in race politics in our system. And I think it was the issue of this voting rights case and others like it that almost got a full airing in the Lani Guinier nomination which was still borne by the withdrawal of her nomination. But it's something that we as a nation still have to grapple with, and it will return to the court in different guises.

MR. MUDD: Prof. Fried. Yes, go ahead.

PROF. FRIED: The strength of the court on this position, its strong opposition to racial preferences, is underlined by the fact that another member of the court who was in the dissent here, Justice Souter, was only in the dissent because he didn't think that the court's precedence could be applied in this very special area, but he gave no indication that he didn't think that the general direction of the court was correct. So I count really six votes solidly in that camp.

MR. MUDD: Prof. Fried, so you both agree, I gather, that the redistricting was a major decision. What about, there were two church-state cases this year, perhaps three, what do you think the significance of those was?

PROF. FRIED: Well, the church-state cases were all easy cases, and the only interesting thing about them is the difference in approach of the justices. I was rather startled that in the case where the government paid for a deaf student's interpreter there were four justices, including Justice White in the dissent, who thought that that violated the separation of church and state, because after all, if the government had bought that student a hearing aid, it would be absurd to say that that violated church and state. And the interpreter is really just a living hearing aid. But Justice Ginsburg I think is very strong on the separation of church and state. The other two cases, the free exercise cases which were the Lambs Chapel case and then the animal sacrifice case, those were, those were easy cases, and I would not expect any great changes.

MR. MUDD: But do you think that the separation between church and state remains about as muddled as it's been for the last 10 years?

PROF. FRIED: Every bit as muddled, and I think that Justice White was a strong separationist because of what I would call his New Deal traditional background, and Justice Ginsburg will be another. So I think there again we've just replaced a person with one set of views by another with rather similar views.

MR. MUDD: And in the time we have left, let me ask about the Haitian case in which the court ruled that there is no such thing as asylum, political asylum when you're on international waters. Is that -- let me ask Prof. Cheh that -- is that a case of the court following the flag?

PROF. CHEH: Well, yeah, that's a case that also was no surprise. You know, I suppose if you had a look at this term, just to sort of generalize it and step back for one moment, if you look at this term, the cases and the decisions weren't exactly bland but they certainly weren't blockbusters, and there weren't a lot of surprises. What was surprising, I suppose, was some of the reasoning in some of the cases. But on this one I think the clear consensus was that the change was to be, if there were to be any in the political process, because the court would go along with the executive branch in terms of its interpretation of the treaty and the applicable immigration law about whether Haitians had this right of a hearing when they were interdicted on the high seas. And that's why the case was overwhelmingly in favor of upholding the government's position. I don't think that case was a surprise either. The deference shown to the President and to Congress in terms of applicable law was quite expected.

MR. MUDD: Do you have a final comment on the Haitian case, Prof. Fried?

PROF. FRIED: Yes, I do. The Haitian case is a response to the abuse which is experienced all over the world of the very humane and wonderful idea of asylum. We all know that people who come for economic reasons are taught to say political asylum. And once they say those words, they're here forever, because the system is so blocked and so jammed that it can never process the claim. And so this is an abusive system, and the court understands that. Your Sheik Abdel-Rahman story is, in fact, an aspect of that same abuse.

MR. MUDD: Well, thank you both. Thank you, Prof. Fried at Harvard and Prof. Cheh at George Washington University. FOCUS - GM POWERTRAIN - BROKEN PROMISES?

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight a legal battle over whether tax breaks morally bind a company to stay in a community that granted them. Over the years, Ypsilanti, Michigan, lowered its local taxes on General Motors so it would keep its Willow Run plants open, but now GM wants to close one of the plants, and the battle has reached the Michigan Court of Appeals. Correspondent Fred De Sam Lazaro reports.

MR. LAZARO: In corporate America, experts say it's become almost a birthright. Build a factory, get a tax break. For a typical local community anxious to add new jobs or to preserve old ones, there's little choice but to grant the tax abatements, according to Wesley Prater. He's the supervisor, essentially mayor of Ypsilanti Township, Michigan.

WESLEY PRATER, Ypsilanti Township Supervisor: The companies that are making the request are simply telling you if we don't have the abatement, then we're going to leave your community. It's a nice form of blackmail.

MR. LAZARO: Ypsilanti Township signed several tax abatement agreements with General Motors when the company renovated and expanded the historic Willow Run factory here in the '70s and '80s.

ROGER STEMPEL, Former GM Chairman: [December, 1991] It's obvious we've got to take care of the health of the corporation for the long-term.

MR. LAZARO: By the early '90s, however, a loss-plagued GM announced plans to shed carmaking capacity. Among the casualties was Willow Run. The company decided to consolidate production of its full-sized Caprice Sedans into a factory in Arlington, Texas.

WESLEY PRATER: We had two choices: After the announcement was made February 24, 1992, either to be a willing victim or an unwilling victim.

MR. LAZARO: The township took GM to court. Prater says the company broke a promise it made when it sought special tax breaks. Prater brandishes transcripts from meetings with the company which were introduced in the court case. They show GM gave verbal assurances the factory would remain open for the duration of the tax breaks until the year 2000.

WESLEY PRATER: It would allow Willow Run to continue production and maintain continuous employment for our employees.

MR. LAZARO: General Motors declined our invitation for an on- camera interview, but the company maintains that its application for tax abatements in no way obligated it to keep the Willow Run plant open. It's an assertion the county judge here in the Ypsilanti case largely agreed with.

DONALD SHELTON, County Judge: [WDIV-TV, February, 1993] The local governments in this state are placed in a position where they feel that they have no choice but to give taxpayers' resources away under a statute which does not mandate that they receive anything in return for those foregone taxes.

MR. LAZARO: However, Washinaw County Judge Donald Shelton still ruled GM had a responsibility to live up to its verbal promises to keep the Willow Run plant open. Shelton ordered the company to suspend its shutdown.

DONALD SHELTON, County Judge: My conscience will not allow this injustice to happen. General Motors -- [applause in courtroom] - - General Motors is hereby enjoined from transferring the production of its Caprice sedan and Buick -- [applause and shouts in courtroom] -- station wagon from the Willow Run plant.

WESLEY PRATER: The moment that Judge Shelton said, I hereby enjoin General Motors it was a surprise, it was a very pleasant surprise, but you know, we had achieved what, our goals of what we had wanted to do.

MR. LAZARO: However, others in the community say that goal is short-sighted. They fear the township's lawsuit, even if it holds up on appeal, could sour relations with the company and mean even more local job losses. University of Michigan analyst David Cole is the son of a former GM president with close professional ties to the car industry.

DAVID COLE, Auto Industry Analyst: The negative reaction that we have heard from people that make decisions in the auto companies with regard to a township that will take a company to court when the company is trying to survive is extraordinarily negative and I think jeopardizes many more jobs than is the case for just the Willow Run plant.

MR. LAZARO: In other words, Cole says General Motors could become embittered, feeling kicked when it's down. He fears the company could decide to also close a separate transmission factory in the Willow Run complex, along with its 4500 jobs. Cole says GM officials shake at what they see as interference in a crucial business decision.

DAVID COLE: And the fact that now the court's taken over the company, telling the company how they're going to run their business, in GM's case this could be applied to every one of the other plants that they want to close, and if the courts say, you have an obligation to your community, it's important that you operate all of these plants, frankly, GM would fail. GM's No. 1 problem, by far, is its level of excess capacity. And unless that problem is taken care of quickly, General Motors is not a viable company.

WESLEY PRATER: Well, we're not really trying to tell 'em how they conduct their commerce. What General Motors promised was to build a Caprice sedan at Willow Run. During the course of our dealings with General Motors there was no talk of Arlington.

MR. LAZARO: For his part, supervisor Prater criticizes GM's process in choosing which plants to operate and which to close. He says it pitted communities like Ypsilanti and Arlington against each other in a bidding war. In the case of where to assemble the Caprice, Prater suspects General Motors favored Texas because it would shorten supply lines from Mexico where GM as well as Ford and Chrysler have several component factories.

WESLEY PRATER: You know, it is very competitive out there, but it's not like that they haven't been made aware in advance that we can't continue to export all of the jobs out of this country and expect us to be healthy as a society. These companies such as General Motors, Ford, they're all product-driven, and at some point in time I think the, the social responsibility as well as profit has got to come into bearing.

MR. LAZARO: Trying to enforce what the township sees as social responsibility on an unwilling company carries risks, according to Larry Molnar. He's a consultant to communities affected by GM closings. Besides hurting a community's business climate, Molnar says lawsuits like Ypsilanti's are an exercise in futility.

LARRY MOLNAR, Consultant: Communities that are seeing plant closures, whether they're General Motors plant closures, whether they're military base closures or military defense contractor downsizing, all have to realize that these may be forces that they aren't going to be able to control even through litigation. Litigation will merely, in some cases, extend the process, but usually inevitably it's a sound business decision. It's one that needs to be made, or at least the corporation feels that way. And that's what's going to happen. It's incumbent upon the community to begin to control its destiny beyond the point of economic dislocation, plant closure.

MR. LAZARO: In going after new industries, Molnar and other experts advise against tax breaks and similar incentives, despite their apparent popularity. University of Michigan urban planning professor Margaret Dewar says these abatements rarely work to lure companies.

MARGARET DEWAR, Urban Planning Professor: The research finds that with tax abatements, they have little or no effect on location and expansion decisions to businesses. The only kinds of cases where they do have an effect is when there are two similar sites close together so that all costs are pretty much the same, all revenues are pretty much the same for the business, except the taxes, and that occurs say on one side of the state border and the other side, or between one suburb and another suburb. Other considerations are overwhelming in making a location decision. Things like labor costs, transportation costs change so much over space that the size of an incentive package isn't enough to overcome those.

MR. LAZARO: Supervisor Prater agrees tax abatements have little effect, but he says every state and municipality competing for businesses offers them, making it had to be the first to stop.

WESLEY PRATER: I think it's absolutely essentially that our federal legislators and the President take a hard, long look at incentives that have been developed on a state tostate basis. I think the playing field needs to be leveled and the only way that that can occur is on a federal level.

MR. LAZARO: Legal experts say such a federal law is unlikely, so municipalities and states will continue to fight tooth and nail to lure and keep plants like Willow Run. Analysts say the stakes are high. Each auto worker job generates an estimated $100,000 a year in economic impact and factories like this are the biggest trophies for local politicians. For its part, GM seems determined to fight for what it sees as its right to make and act on business decisions. GM has already served layoff notices to Willow Run workers, hoping that a green light from Michigan's appellate court will dovetail with its timetable to shut down the plant. FOCUS - UNDER SCRUTINY

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight, a look at Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the radical Muslim cleric suspected of inciting terrorism on two continents. His name has been associated with many of those accused in last week's plot to bomb the United Nations and other New York targets. Sheik Rahman also has ties to the men charged with bombing the World Trade Center in February and, indeed, law enforcement officials say the blind Sheik is himself under suspicion. Tonight we examine what role the Sheik is playing and how the United States should treat him. -- [network audio difficulty] Sheik Rahman was charged in connection with the murder of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Egyptian officials set Rahman provided the inspiration and the order to kill Sadat as part of his call for Islamic revolution. But he was acquitted, although a number of his followers charged in that case were convicted and executed. That encounter with the law followed by acquittal would set a pattern for the years that followed. The Sheik was later charged with inciting a series of riots in Egypt that left hundreds dead but in each case was acquitted. Rahman is still officially wanted in Egypt on related charges and is now being tried in absentia. In 1990, despite being named by the State Department as a suspected terrorist, the 55 year old Sheik traveled to the U.S. on a visa granted by the Sudanese government. He settled in Jersey City, New Jersey. While here, Rahman established a mosque and also preached in several Brooklyn mosques. As a religious worker, he was able to obtain a green card from the Immigration & Naturalization Service. When the INS later tried to revoke his card, he applied for asylum, and that case is pending. He continued to call for Islamic revolution, extending the targets of his preachings to the U.S. One of his followers, El Said Nosar, was convicted on charges relating to the 1990 killing of Rabbi Meir Kahani, founder of the Militant Jewish Defense League. Five of the seven suspects in the World Trade Center bombing are believed to have worshiped Rahman's mosque, so are seven of the eight men accused last week of planning to bomb the United Nations. Two of New York's major tunnels and the Manhattan Federal Office Building. The man identified as the informer in that case, Amad Salem, has been a translator and bodyguard for the Sheik. We have five views from Sheik Rahman. Peg Tyre is a reporter from New York Newsday who's been covering the story. Fouad Ajami is a professor at Johns Hopkins Strategic & International Studies. Graham Fuller is political scientist at the Rand Corporation. He's the former chief Middle East analyst for the CIA. Judith Miller has covered the Middle East for the New York Times for the past 15 years. He's currently on live, working on her second book about the region. Ghaz Khankan is president of the National Council on Islamic Affairs. He's the producer of a radio show called Voice of Islam. I'd like to ask each of you, starting with you, Mr. Khankan, what do you believe Sheik Rahman is trying to do now? What is his goal?

MR. KHANKAN: Like any religious people he's preaching what he learned in school and by the way you mentioned something that he established the mosque. He did not establish that mosque. That mosque was there when he came to justice, preached in it and liked and he said he wouldn't preach anywhere else, and the word shet if I may say is an Arabic term which means an elder person who is respected for his knowledge. In this case he is a graduate of Alazahira University with a Ph.D. in Islamic law and so on, and what he is doing, he is enjoying the freedom that America gives to anybody using the First Amendment, freedom of speech. That's exactly what we are all doing here.

MR. MacNeil: Fouad Ajami, what do you think Sheik Rahman's goal is, what is his purpose?

MR. AJAMI: Well, the goal Sheik Rahman wants to preach is, in effect, to say that well actually some ruler was just a regular man, man of the church. Abdel Rahman is a rebel. Abdel Rahman is a man who genuinely believes in his own cause, and my interest in him really is not so much in American incarnation. I didn't follow that trail. My interest in him began when I was looking at the Sadat assassination. And this is really a look at his trail. This is a man who has a talent for walking away from the scene of the accident. I mean, you can't really pin anything on him, because he doesn't pull the trigger. What he ends up doing, in effect, is giving a justification for younger men to take it upon themselves to do all kinds of daring deeds, and so in 1981, when Sadat was assassinated, Sheik Abdel-Rahman provided, if you will, the writ for tyrannicide. He, in effect, declared Sadat a tyrant. He declared him an unbeliever, and then he let other people draw their own conclusion. So even though the state in Egypt wanted to nail him for the murder of Sadat and even though he was a chief defendant of 300 people who were, in effect, singled out by the prosecutor, the prosecutor couldn't really nail him. And the prosecutor didn't, and that's my thesis, because, in effect, the Egyptian state didn't really want to do it, because Hosni Mubarak was there on the reviewing stand where Sadat was killed, and he wanted to bring the matter to an end. So then Omar Abdel-Rahman walked away from it, and he reincarnates again in America in the 1990s, and it's ironic that he ends up in America in the very same state, but he knows that he, in effect, which is a subject of many of his sermons.

MR. MacNeil: But what is his purpose now? What is his goal now?

MR. AJAMI: Well, I think, my own sense is that Abdel-Rahman again is committed, and he has made no secrets. He would like to bring the Egyptian state down, and he sees himself, I really believe in this, he sees himself as a kind of Egyptian Khomeini. And just, just as Khomeini sat in Paris in a suburb and brought down the Shah, Omar Abdel-Rahman has fantasies along this line, so a fight for Egypt is being played out and it's being played out in Jersey City, in Yonkers, in New York, and Omar Abdel-Rahman is a major participant in this, and he thinks what he wants to do is to snap the link between the U.S. and the Egyptians. The Egyptian regime is our client. We are committed to Egypt's security. $2 billion a year of our aid goes to Egypt, and he believes that it's from here that you can wage a good fight against the Egyptian regime of Hosni Mubarak.

MR. MacNeil: Do you agree with that, Judith Miller?

MS. MILLER: I totally agree with that, and I also think to call Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman representative of Islam is to really do an injustice to one of the world's great religions. A man who says to his acolytes, strike hard, destroy the descendants of apes and monkeys, destroy the Zionists, the Communists, and the imperialists who feed at the trough. I mean, I think this man is a fanatic. I think he has a political agenda, and I think in part that it was the incompetence of the Immigration Service that permitted him to come in here and perhaps Egypt's reluctance as Fouad pointed out to bring him back to Egypt to make him stand trial. Egypt didn't want him to be a martyr. Much better to let the Americans watch him. I think at this point he's a very dangerous man and certainly not representative of Islam.

MR. MacNeil: Do you think he's a dangerous man, Graham Fuller?

MR. FULLER: I think he's forming a very negative role in staying in the United States. Definitely the majority of American Muslims I think would be strongly opposed to his message, to his style. I think American Muslims generally see him as smearing the community, damaging the community's own image with goals that by and large I would guess 99 percent of them do not share. The question is: What can be done with him? If he is in this country as, in some legal form or status and has not technically violated the law, I think it's going to be, it's going to be very difficult to remove him, but his position here, his role in the United States, I think is quite different than it would be in Egypt where he would be in a position to talk to a very broad, unhappy, in many ways alienated a mass of the population that is far more responsive to this kind of a message than any American Muslim community would be here.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Khankan, did you, do you agree that that is what Sheik Rahman's goal is, is basically to, to overthrow the Egyptian state and create a more fundamentalist Islamic state there?

MR. KHANKAN: I believe we should really go into some background. The Muslim people in the Middle East and all over the world have really been frustrated. They have been defeated. They have been occupied by colonialism. They have been occupied by Zionism. They have been killed and are being killed in Bosnia and Somalia, and their government don't seem to be able to do a thing about it, and what he is really saying is just expressing the frustration of many people, although it is against Islamic principles what he is preaching, but there are single people who have been hurt by whether it's British or French colonialism or French or Israeli occupation of Palestine, or by the scene that Bosnians being killed by a Christian or a Serb government, and yet, they see the West knew nothing about it. They punish Somali leader. They punish an Iraqi leader. They punish, yet there are U.N. resolutions against Israel and the U.S. does nothing about it. There are resolutions against Serbs, and the U.S. does nothing about it, so there is a frustration that is growing and brewing, and he gets ears that will listen.

MR. MacNeil: But you, so you do not think that he is deliberately fomenting revolution by force in Egypt or terrorism in this country. He's not deliberately inciting other people to violence?

MR. KHANKAN: He's saying what is, he's definitely inciting people, yes, but he is saying it in such a way that he's playing into the frustration of the majority of the people. But, look, we have been defeated, we have been killed, we have been massacred, women are being raped in Bosnia, and the West is doing nothing about it, and yet, when it comes to Iraq or to Somalia and so on, boom, boom, boom, we go in and attack and double standard, people are frustrated, they don't know what to do.

MR. MacNeil: Fouad Ajami mentioned, Judith Miller, Fouad Ajami mentioned the Khomeini analogy which the Sheik, you said, may fantasize about. How importantly does Rahman rank as a religious leader, and are his, is it total fantasy for him to think of himself as another Khomeini?

MS. MILLER: I think it's total fantasy. I mean, the comparisons are just ludicrous. Khomeini, no matter what one thinks of what he did as the leader of Iran, was a great scholar, was a leading Islamic thinker for many, many years, with all due respect to what Ghaz said, really Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman was kind of a second rater. He taught out in the sticks. He didn't represent anybody. He never wrote a book that was of importance. I mean, Fouad, do you agree with that idea? I just think that the man has delusions, and moreover, my sense of what's happening in Egypt is that these bombings that have now been targeting ordinary Egyptians have really turned a lot of Egyptian people against the kind of tactics that Omar Abdel-Rahman has been preaching. I think they --

MR. MacNeil: So he does not have -- the soil is not ripe the way it was for Khomeini in Iran?

MS. MILLER: Not at all.

MR. MacNeil: In Egypt.

MS. MILLER: These are two very different countries, one in which the Egyptian state is enormously powerful. Egyptians are very religious, but I don't believe they're fanatical, and they're not particularly militant, and I don't think that they would ever follow a man like Omar Abdel-Rahman. I don't think that's the real choice. That's a straw issue.

MR. MacNeil: Graham Fuller, from what you said before, do you think the reason the Sheik is being kept here or is being permitted to stay here apart from the legal steps which we'll come to in a moment that he's going through is because there's some understanding between the U.S. government and Mubarak's government, it is better to have him here than there?

MR. FULLER: No, I find it very difficult to think that there would be that kind of a compact between the two governments. And basically the law takes its own course here. He has a legal case either to make. It will be made or not made. I, I find it difficult to think of any kind of collusion, but the problem is, you see, in the Middle East, itself, there is a great degree of paranoia about what this man means and why he is in the United States. There's tremendous respect for the United States capabilities, its intelligence, its ability to do things are far in excess of reality, so that when a guy like this gets a visa, when he comes to the United States, when he stays here, when he seems to preach against the Egyptian government, when he appears on CNN or when he's the subject of, indeed, a program like this at great length, which is then shown in Egypt, lots and lots of Egyptians feel that somehow this is an effort by the United States to cultivate a new Khomeini but this time somebody who is in our pockets. There have even been stories suggesting that because he played ball that he may be playing ball with the United States and supporting the Afghan Mujihadeen and therefore, the U.S. government owes him one and is, is trying to help him out and pay him back as a result of all of this. These kinds of ideas are feeding --

MR. MacNeil: I read somewhere that Mubarak, himself, had suspicions that he was a CIA employee --

MR. FULLER: Yes, he did.

MR. MacNeil: -- or on the payroll.

MR. FULLER: Mubarak said that explicitly, although the very next day the, the Egyptian government withdrew, said that he was misunderstood.

MR. MacNeil: Do you -- do you -- do you agree with Graham Fuller there is probably no deal between the United States and Egypt to keep him, to keep the Sheik here?

MR. AJAMI: Absolutely not. I mean, I don't think there's any. I think it was a case of total bureaucratic bungling and incompetence. Here is a man who has a long rap sheet on him in Cairo. He goes right next door to Khartoum in Sudan. He lives in the Sudan. He finds life in the Sudan intolerable. Why? Well, because the phones don't work. He can't call his followers in Egypt. He comes to Jersey City, and you launch the revolution, you fight the good fight from afar, so I think it's really basically, it was a case of bureaucratic bungling on the part of the U.S. government.

MR. MacNeil: Let's come now to the events here recently, the World Trade Center bombing, and then the plot that was uncovered last week to bomb the United Nations and so on. Peg Tyre, how closely can the authorities link Sheik Rahman to those events?

MS. TYRE: Well, I've been told that, one, there is a taped conversation between the Omar and one of the conspirators, the alleged conspirators, in which he's speaking about an event. What the event is is a little unclear. So I think that they believe that they have one of his closest associates who is their informant. I think that they have him very tightly but not enough to, it would seem, not enough to arrest him.

MR. MacNeil: And what is the, what are the steps now in the deportation proceedings in the appeals against that? Describe where we are in that process and what might happen to him.

MS. TYRE: Well, he's been, as far as I understand, been denied political asylum. He has been ruled deportable. He even has, is appealing to I think it's called the Board of Immigration Appeals. They'll make a ruling within, between four months and a year. The U.S. government has asked that that process be speeded up. At that point he can take it to a district court if it's a decision that goes against him. He can take it into the district court, again to the court of appeals. It can take four years, three years, four years, according to lawyers who I've talked to, immigration lawyers.

MR. MacNeil: What do you understand of the, of the Sheik's legal status here, and the prospects of his being deported or his being permitted to stay?

MR. KHANKAN: I think he's like any other person who claims asylum, will have his day in court and really the media should not play up to this man and make him like a Khomeini. As Fouad said, he's not really that type. The media seems to have become the judge and jury and the prosecutor at the same time. Let's give the man his day in court. I wish he would be here so you can question him directly.

MR. MacNeil: We've asked him.

MR. KHANKAN: I appeal to him in Arabic -- [speaking Arabic] - - Mr. Lehrer, because it is really important and --

MR. MacNeil: Whichever.

MR. KHANKAN: MacNeil -- because it is important for his -- so many stories have been told about him. Let's listen to him speak directly.

MS. MILLER: Hasn't he had enough chance to get his point of view across? I mean, he goes on CNN and he calls for the overthrow of the Egyptian government on CNN. And I think we've heard a fair amount of his --

MR. KHANKAN: Bites here and there, but not -- a fully questioning period I think is necessary.

MR. MacNeil: Let me come back to his, his status here now and what, if anything, the U.S. government should do to on grounds that as Mr. Fuller said he may be dangerous, what should the U.S. government do, the Clinton administration do? Let the legal proceedings on his appeal from deportation take its course or say he's dangerous and we have to do something about it?

MR. AJAMI: Well, I'm not really a man of the law. I mean, I think my interest --

MR. MacNeil: But you must have an opinion, right?

MR. AJAMI: My sense of it, look, this is very dangerous territory, and I mean to hark back to his, to his old trail, this is a man who in 1981 was found with gold that was taken from captive jewelers who were killed and raided in Egypt and so on. I think that -- but you know, this is, here we are and we are here in 1993, this is a liberal society, this man knows the rules and knows the ropes of it. He has an appeal pending, and I'm afraid we will have to just wait till the tail end of this.

MR. MacNeil: Graham Fuller, what is your opinion on this?

MR. FULLER: Well, the difficulty is really what this is going to mean to the Egyptian government if he goes back. I agree that this man is not a Khomeini. He does not have a fine vision of or indeed a vision, a true vision at all of any political sophistication. The problem is that Egypt, itself, is in relatively moving towards an explosive situation I would say over the longer run, and it's where you have a government and a society in which there is really no opposition left now due to the polarization of the situation. There's no opposition left except the Islamic fundamentalists, and this leaves really very little alternative to the public either going with the government or going with the fundamentalists that I would say a majority doesn't like. But it's a very unhealthy situation, and the return of a man like this, although no Khomeini, he will not come back in and triumph or anything like that, it's yet just another headache to a government that I fear is not handling it deftly as it could. The opportunity to play off a broad gauge of opposition, one against another, to, to deflate the Islamists, themselves.

MR. MacNeil: Would, therefore, Judith Miller, is it in the United States' interest to keep him here?

MS. MILLER: Well, just a point of fact, I think the last place in the world Omar Abdel-Rahman is going to go is Egypt. No. 1, Egypt hasn't asked for his extradition. No. 2, Omar Abdel-Rahman gets to choose under our proceedings where he goes, because we are not deporting him. We are attempting to exclude him, which means tomorrow he can get on a play and get into Sudan. So I think that if there is some question about whether or not he is a danger to the public, or poses a danger to the public while the law is being given a chance to judge his suitability here, that perhaps we ought to consider Sen. D'Amato's plea to at least ensure public safety by incarcerating him which can be done under the law. I guess that's up to Janet Reno to decide, but I think if there's any question at all and now he's been connected with two terrorist attempts, one successful, one not, perhaps that ought to be considered.

MR. MacNeil: Connected but still in an abstract sense.

MS. MILLER: Right. He has not been charged with anything.

MR. MacNeil: We just heard that there is no, there is no provable link between him and these, these things. What has, what has Sen. D'Amato, who was claimed to be, reported to be one of the targets of the assassination attempts plotted by these people who were arrested last week, what is his he seeking to do?

MS. TYRE: Well, as I understand it, under the law, he can be incarcerated while he's, his appeals are being, he's seeking an appeal, and D'Amato has actually called for him to be put in prison while this is going on. And it's not an uncommon thing. There's jails full of people who are waiting for their immigration status to be cleared up. I guess the question is: What are the repercussions here in New York if he is put in jail?

MR. MacNeil: Repercussions like what?

MS. TYRE: Well, certainly he has people who he's influencing in such a way that they feel comfortable enough to make a gigantic bomb and blow up the Holland Tunnel, or that's their plan. I guess there's some question as to whether putting him in jail would make him more of a martyr figure to those followers.

MR. MacNeil: What would be the reaction among the Islamic community in the New York area if he were incarcerated?

MR. KHANKAN: We are really blowing the thing up more than what it is. Let's give the man a chance in his court and see whether he is guilty or not. The first amendment, the republic is so strong that the speech of one single man is not going to create, the republic is going to stay here, we're going to stay for many, many years after he's gone, but we should not be afraid of a single man. Let him speak. So what?

MR. MacNeil: You think we shouldn't be afraid of this single man?

MR. AJAMI: No. We shouldn't be afraid of prosecuting him. Of course this man is linked to a bomb that killed several people. This man is linked to a conspiracy that, that we intercepted. This man is linked to subverting an allied government that we care about. In effect, you know, we have, there is enough evidence on him. See, we don't know, you're exactly right. It's really Janet Reno's call. We're not lawyers, but it is, it is somewhat, I mean, you do have on display I think in the Omar Abdel-Rahman case the vulnerability of a great liberal society that even its enemies are welcomed and even its enemies can abuse its rules and can abuse its hospitality, when here is this man who was preaching, preaching violence, and the evidence on him there in Egypt is overwhelming. I mean, read the transcripts of the Egyptian police. The Egyptian government is amazingly proficient in the production of documents. I've read these documents. They're incredible. There is no doubt in my mind as to the kind of man Omar Abdel-Rahman is and the kind of thing he's been doing.

MR. FULLER: If I could --

MR. MacNeil: I'm awfully sorry to cut you off, Mr. Fuller, but that is the end of our time, so I'll thank you and all the rest here for joining us. RECAP

MR. MUDD: Again, the main stories of this Tuesday, a U.S. warplane attacked an Iraqi radar site after it locked on to the American jet. President Clinton said the U.S. has evidence the Iraqi officials at the highest level hatched the plot to kill former President Bush. A congressional report said Iraq has regained most of its conventional weapons capability destroyed in the Gulf War. And flooding along the Mississippi River disrupted life and commerce in five states. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Roger. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.