The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight the Senate campaign finance hearings so far, with highlights from two reporters, plus the analysis of Mark Shields and Paul Gigot; Richard Ostling tells the story of the Mormon church; and David Gergen talks about private matters. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday. NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The Army's top enlisted man was charged with more sexual misbehavior today. Sgt. Major Gene McKinney was accused of assaulting a female Army captain and soliciting adultery. He already faced sexual misconduct charges involving four other servicewomen. He has denied all the charges. A military investigation was already at work to determine if McKinney should be court-martialed. The new charges will be added to that investigation. McKinney offered to resign, rather than face a court-martial, but the Army refused. Assaulting a commissioned officer carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a dishonorable discharge, among other penalties. Russian space officials said today they would decide Monday when and how to fix Mir. They said needed repairs to the space station might be made by the current crew, which includes an American astronaut, or a fresh team scheduled to arrive August 5th. A spokesman said NASA could support either option. We have more on Mir from Julian Manyon of Independent Television News.

JULIAN MANYON, ITN: Mir is now stable, and the lights are back on. On board, the crew has finally had a little time to rest. Engineer Alexander LaZutkin has won special praise for working non- stop through the night. The crew has once again brought Mir back from the brink of disaster, but yesterday's crisis has thrown the plans and hopes of Russia's space agency into confusion. Their mission director, Vladimir Solovyov, today admitted that the present crew may not now be able to carry out the planned repair operation.

VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV, Mission Director: [speaking through interpreter] It seems the space walk is unlikely to happen on the planned day, and it's possible the next crew will have to do it.

JULIAN MANYON: The reason is fatigue and the increasing likelihood of human error. The present crew, including Michael Foale, may now become caretakers until the next crew arrive. The new team--two Russians and a Frenchman--are training at Star City, but there is now uncertainty over their mission as well. The planned launch in early August may have to be postponed, and the Frenchman may not go at all. The lack of power on Mir would make it impossible for him to carry out his planned experiments.

JIM LEHRER: The U.S. trade deficit jumped to more than $10 billion in May the Commerce Department reported today. Secretary William Daley said the 17 percent increase was triggered by rising imports of cars and fuel. He blamed it on the strong dollar, making U.S. goods too expensive abroad. Daley said that situation would correct itself.

WILLIAM DALEY, Secretary of Commerce: The bottom line, though, is our economy is strong. Another positive sign that's coming forward this year is the fact that other economies around the world are improving, compared to where they were in 1996. And that will give opportunities for American businesses that may not have existed in the past couple of years, as those economies were not quite as strong as ours.

JIM LEHRER: Today's trade news helped send the stock market into a fall. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 130 points at 7890.46. A hurricane churned toward coastal Mississippi and Alabama today. Early this morning high seas, wind, and rain inundated the barrier island South of Louisiana. The storm downed power lines and left washed up boats and debris everywhere. No injuries were reported. The hurricane, named Danny, is headed East along the Gulf Coast and is expected to hit land tomorrow sometime between-- someplace between Gulf Port, Mississippi, and Mobile, Alabama. Tourists and residents evacuated the area. There was a memorial Mass for Gianni Versace in Miami today. The Italian fashion designer's ashes were taken to his villa on Lake Como, Italy, by his brother and sister. Meanwhile, police and federal agents in South Florida continued their manhunt today for Andrew Cunanan, the suspected serial killer wanted in the death of Versace and four others. Overseas today, there was another bombing in the former Yugoslavia. A hand grenade went off outside the home of a United Nations police officer in Bosnian Serb territory. He was not hurt. It was the fifth such bombing in five days, seen as retaliation for the raid last week by NATO troops to apprehend Bosnian Serb war crime suspects. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the money hearings, Shields & Gigot, the Mormons, and a David Gergen dialogue. SERIES - THE MONEY CHASE

JIM LEHRER: Where are the Senate campaign fund-raising hearings after two weeks? Kwame Holman begins our look.

KWAME HOLMAN: As the first congressional panel to investigate alleged fund-raising abuses in the last election, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee was the center of the political universe on its opening day, July 8th. Perhaps appropriately, Committee Chairman Fred Thompson began with a bombshell.

SEN. FRED THOMPSON, Chairman, Governmental Affairs Committee: The committee believes that high-level Chinese government officials crafted a plan to increase China's influence over the U.S. political process. The committee has identified specific steps taken in furtherance of the plan. Implementation of the plan has been handled by Chinese government officials and individuals enlisted toassist in the effort.

KWAME HOLMAN: But the committee's ranking Democrat, John Glenn, immediately signaled the committee's work might be viewed through a partisan prism, saying FBI briefings on Chinese influence were far from conclusive.

SEN. JOHN GLENN, [D] Ohio: I've heard language like infiltration, foreign spies, foreigners, as we're jeopardizing our national security. Well, on this issue the committee should go just as far as the facts take us, recognizing that it's the FBI that's in a much better position to--than a congressional committee--to do an espionage investigation.

KWAME HOLMAN: The central figure in the hearings thus far is 52- year-old John Huang, who was born in China and raised in Taiwan. Huang was a Democratic Party contributor in the early 1990's, while an executive in California for the Indonesia-based Lippo Group. In 1994, Huang went to work for the Commerce Department, then was hired by the Democratic National Committee at the urging of senior administration officials and the President, himself. There, Huang raised $3.4 million for the 1996 campaign. Almost half that money was returned by the DNC because of questions about its origin. Committee Republicans suggest Huang, while at Commerce, may have shared classified information with the financial and construction conglomerate Lippo, which is heavily involved in joint ventures with the government of China. The committee's first witness last week was a fund-raiser who worked at the DNC with Huang.

RICHARD SULLIVAN, Former DNC Finance Director: [July 10] If I had--let me tell you--if I had had any inclination that John Huang would raise foreign money, I would have personally walked him to the elevator and walked him out of the building.

KWAME HOLMAN: But this week brought the hearing's first hard evidence of an illegal foreign campaign contribution. Juliana Utomo, who worked with Huang at a Lippo Group subsidiary in California, testified Huang sought and received reimbursement for a $50,000 DNC donation he made in 1992.

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN, [D] Connecticut: There's a pretty clear document here requesting a reimbursement for a $50,000 donation to the DNC Victory Fund, which certainly looks like the movement of foreign money into an American campaign in 1992.

JULIANA UTOMO: If I may add, actually the DNC exactly meant--I didn't know until recently.

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN: Could you say that again? The DNC--I didn't hear the second word.

SPOKESMAN: She didn't know what the DNC stood for until recently.

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN: Oh, didn't know what it was. This was literally a blank check that you signed. I mean, who asked you to sign the check?

JULIANA UTOMO: I cannot remember.

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN: You don't know--well, who might have--

JULIANA UTOMO: But usually Mr. Agustian or Mr. Huang.

KWAME HOLMAN: On Wednesday, Former Commerce Undersecretary Jeffrey Garten was asked what he meant when he testified he ordered then Commerce Administrative Assistant Huang walled off from matters pertaining to China.

JEFFREY GARTEN, Former Commerce Undersecretary: [Wednesday] We could only entrust a certain number of people, and Mr. Huang didn't make the cut. A lot of people didn't make the cut. I don't want to say he was the only one who didn't. Most of the people didn't make the cut.

KWAME HOLMAN: But Committee Republicans noted despite such instructions, Huang at Commerce received classified briefings from CIA officials on China, visited the Chinese embassy, and temporarily kept possession of a dozen intelligence reports.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER, [R] Pennsylvania: And obviously you don't know what he did with those 12 finished intelligence reports, which he had in his possession at that time?

JOHN DICKERSON, CIA: He had a need to know, and he had a certified safe for storage of those classified documents. My assumption is that he kept them there, and that he used them properly. I have no reason to believe otherwise. I'm assuming that he used the information properly and that he kept them locked up in the safe.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER: Well, then I repeat my question. You had no way of knowing whether he--

JOHN DICKERSON: But I had no way of knowing.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER: --did that or not.

JOHN DICKERSON: I have no way of knowing, no.

KWAME HOLMAN: Yesterday, Republicans suggested one thing Huang might have done with classified material is to take it across the street from the Commerce Department to a spare office at an investment firm, where Huang frequently used the telephone and received packages.

SPOKESPERSON: Was there any particular individual who used the spare office the most frequently?

PAULA GREENE, Former Office Manager: [Thursday] Yes. John Huang would use it the most.

KWAME HOLMAN: Later in the day yesterday, Democrats became exasperated with the Republican staff lawyer as he laid out a lengthy record of John Huang's phone calls, messages, and other contacts. A sharp partisan exchange ensued.

SEN. ROBERT TORRICELLI, [D] New Jersey: I am somewhat confused by your presence, though grateful for your testimony. I, nevertheless, believe that the charts have been misleading, and we are, as I have suggested, I believe we are doing a disservice to a serious inquiry by attempting to overstate the case, misrepresent facts, and continuing to place ourselves in a prosecutorial or a defense mode.

SEN. BOB SMITH, [R] New Hampshire: I want to compliment you, Mr. Cobb, because you took a lot of abuse here and you kept your composure and your dignity. Terms such as "dishonesty" and "misrepresentation" were used directly at you. I think it's uncalled for. It doesn't take a lot of courage--with all due respect to some on the other side--for a Senator to sit here and beat up on a staff person who has to maintain that dignity and respect.

KWAME HOLMAN: The committee adjourned yesterday to take up such matters of how to encourage the testimony of reluctant witnesses who, like John Huang, have declined thus far to appear.

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner takes it from there.

MARGARET WARNER: With me are two reporters who've been at the hearings each day: Marc Lacey of the "Los Angeles Times" and James Barnes of the "National Journal." Mark, if you had to sum it up after two weeks, what is the fundamental premise that the Republicans are trying to develop here?

MARC LACEY, Los Angeles Times: The Republicans believe that a great deal of foreign money went into the DNC during the last campaign. They also believe that John Huang may have been--been in a position to pass classified information to his former bosses at Lippo, which has ties to the Chinese government, so Senator Thompson, the Republicans, are--they believe that the Chinese government may have been involved in a grand plan to try to influence U.S. elections. And that's basically the--

MARGARET WARNER: And why is John Huang--I mean, of all the people who raised money for the DNC in '96, why is John Huang so central to this inquiry?

JAMES BARNES, National Journal: Well, for starters, Richard Sullivan this week said that one of the reasons--

MARGARET WARNER: The DNC fund-raising--

JAMES BARNES: The DNC fund-raising director said this week that one of the reasons why Huang's role as fund-raiser was downgraded slightly was because of concern over the appearance of having foreign nationals at fund-raisers that Huang had organized. And, of course, it's Huang's longstanding ties with both the Lippo Group, being a former executive of that company, and that company, of course, now has a lot of business dealings in--with the People's Republic of China.

MARGARET WARNER: But, I mean, is Huang's--were more of his contributions had to be returned--does he stand out among all fund- raisers?

MARC LACEY: Even before the hearings opened, we knew that 1.6 million dollars of money that John Huang raised was returned. So he--more money has been returned from John Huang than any other DNC fund-raiser.

MARGARET WARNER: Okay. So what has emerged in the testimony? What's actually been said about his fund-raising activities that get to this premise? What do you think is most significant?

MARC LACEY: Well, there is one instance where the committee showed very clearly that some money that John Huang was involved in arranging clearly came from Indonesia and went into the Democratic National Committee, and how this happened was an enterprise called Hip Hing Holdings. That's a subsidiary of Lippo, where Huang used to work. They gave some money to the DNC, $50,000 in 1992. Then John Huang sent a memo to Indonesia, to the Lippo headquarters there, asking for reimbursement for that money. So it seems that that is a clear-cut case of reimbursement of money so the money can be tied from Indonesia to Los Angeles, where Hip Hing is based and right from the DNC.

MARGARET WARNER: Where he was still working then.

MARC LACEY: Right. Exactly.

MARGARET WARNER: Has there been any other testimony that established either a definite or a possible foreign connection to money he arised?

JAMES BARNES: Yes. We had testimony this week that showed that when two contributors--two other contributors that Huang had brought in to contribute to the Democratic Party--Chinese-American entrepreneur Johnny Chung and Jogish Gandhi that after they had- -around the time that they were taking their contributions to the DNC--they were receiving large transfers of money from overseas banks, one the Bank of China, and the other CitiBank in Tokyo, and so that's also raised some questions.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, what about on the other front, or the other part of the premise, which has to do with whether John Huang was passing information back to either Lippo or Chinese-connected-- government-connected entities, what has specifically been said or testified to this week that gets to that?

JAMES BARNES: Well, nothing really specific, but there is some- -was a lot of rich detail this week about the opportunity that John Huang may have had to pass along information. We got detailed records of a number of phone calls that he made while he was a Commerce Department official to the Lippo Bank in California, 237. A lot of Republicans thought that's more than just picking up your old messages. We also discovered that during his lunch hour he would occasionally walk across the street to an Arkansas firm, Stevens Group, which also has ties to Lippo. He would use that office. He would receive packages there. He would receive and make- -and use the fax machine there. So that strongly suggested to the Republicans, at least, that here he had the opportunity to pass on information that he might not have wanted to have done while he was actually sitting in his office at the Commerce Department.

MARGARET WARNER: That, of course, raises the question of what information was he privy to. We saw in Kwame's tape that--the CIA guy behind the screen testifying--I assume you all couldn't see his face--but what did he say about what was the nature of these briefings? I mean, what is the kind of information that Lippo or the Chinese government would be interested in?

MARC LACEY: These--first of all, this was top secret information that John Dickerson, a CIA agent, passed along to John Huang, when he was Deputy Assistant Secretary at Commerce. We don't know exactly what he passed along, but Sen. Specter in his questioning did elicit some information. The sort of information that he was briefing Huang on was economic information in Asia, in China, in particular, in Vietnam, Hong Kong, business opportunities, the sorts of things Republicans say that the Lippo Group might be interested in.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, how have the Democrats countered all of this?

JAMES BARNES: Well, one of the things that they've countered is simply by saying this is old news, we've heard parts of these charges in newspaper accounts that have been coming out really since before the last election. And the other thing that they have raised is that there's still no hard connection that any money-- that any information went to the Lippo Group or to the government of China. That was something that the intelligence people said in open session; that there was no evidence that intelligence assets had been compromised, that sort of thing. And also, there's really no evidence--hard evidence--that money from the government of China actually got into the President's reelection campaign.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, of course, as you mentioned earlier, they're also trying to establish that John Huang didn't just act alone. What specifically has been said or testified to about what DNC officials knew about the nature of his fund-raising and their involvement in it?

MARC LACEY: Okay. He was--at the DNC he was a fund-raiser.

MARGARET WARNER: We should say January '96 he goes to the DNC.

MARC LACEY: Exactly.

MARGARET WARNER: Leave Commerce, goes to the DNC.

MARC LACEY: Exactly. Richard Sullivan, the opening witness, said that--in the tape there--if he had any idea that John Huang was raising overseas money, he would have walked him to the elevator, taken him out. There isn't any evidence that John Huang was raising foreign money and that DNC officials were winking and nodding and they knew about it. There hasn't been firm evidence of that. We don't really have much information there.

MARGARET WARNER: Are there--does it paint the opposite picture of him as a loose cannon?

JAMES BARNES: Well, not entirely. I mean, it's pretty clear that he was working in coordination with the--with his superiors. I think there was also some evidence that came out this week that suggested that officials at the DNC may have taken--may have been taken an askance of--not looked the right way--concerning another contributor, controversial contributor, Roger Tamraz, an oil financier. Sullivan had received a memorandum from a National Security Adviser to the Vice President saying Tamraz is a shady operator; we shouldn't have anything to do with him. And yet, even after Sullivan got that memo, share dit with his superiors at the DNC like Marvin Rosen and Don Fowler, the chairman, Tamraz was still invited to fund-raisers with the President and, indeed, on one--in one of these fund-raisers he talked to the President about getting some U.S. backing for an oil pipeline that he's tryingto build in Armenia.

MARGARET WARNER: And finally what is ahead for next week?

MARC LACEY: Okay. Next week is going to be quite interesting because we're going to turn to the Republican Party and the Democrats are going to look at wrongdoing in the Democratic Party.

MARGARET WARNER: They get to lay out their--

MARC LACEY: Exactly. So tomorrow, Haley Barbour, the former Chairman of the RNC, is going to be deposed by the Democrats and the Republican attorney, and he's expected to testify next week.

MARGARET WARNER: There's also some lingering immunity issues.

JAMES BARNES: We're going to have a vote--the committee is going to hear from Justice Department officials as to why they oppose granting immunity to some Asian monks, who were involved in the fund-raiser out there with the Vice President, and then we'll probably have a vote on that by the committee on Tuesday. And if these monks get immunity, the Republicans think that they are going to provide an awful lot of powerful information about how John Huang laundered money through a fund-raiser.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, great. Thank you both very much. Mark, Jim, thanks. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

JIM LEHRER: Now, Shields & Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Paul, these hearings seem to be more partisan than most hearings like this. Is that just an appearance, or is that real?

PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: I don't think I agree necessarily. I think it is an appearance. I think this is not that dissimilar in the partisanship to an Iran-Contra hearing, or to, well, your average hearing. I mean, there is some partisanship, there's no question about it, but Joe Lieberman on the Democratic side has emerged as somebody interested in getting the facts, sort of the Howard Baker role that he played in Watergate. Bob Torriccelli for the Democrats playing is playing the Charles Sandman role, as you remember, 25 years ago in Watergate.

JIM LEHRER: Charles Sandman, right.

PAUL GIGOT: He was one of Richard Nixon's greatest defenders. He lost his seat over it, but he was a real defender right down to the--and the Republicans are making a case. I think this week there was some partisan bickering, but they also got a lot of facts on the table.

JIM LEHRER: What's the most important fact they got on the table, from your point of view?

PAUL GIGOT: No one single fact, Jim, but a whole case of circumstantial evidence that argued that John Huang was--seems to have raised an awful lot of foreign money that he wasn't supposed to be raising, and he was engaged in I think some suspicious, strange behavior, that makes you wonder about his motives and about his activities, in particular having an office outside of the Commerce Department to which he repaired, affiliated with the Lippo Group, to which he repaired to make phone calls and get faxes and it's strange. Why would you do something like that?

JIM LEHRER: How do you read 'em so far, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Well, I was up there this week at the hearings, Jim, and I'll say this; that I think there was one very important piece of information, and that was that $50,000 from Jakarta was wired to Hip Hing Holdings, a company in Los Angeles, where John Huang was the principal operating force, to reimburse that company, which had no money of its own, for a $50,000 contribution to the Democratic National Committee victory fund in August of 1992. Foreign money? You'd better believe it. That's the elephant in the livingroom. I don't think the case on the spies--I don't understand--I don't understand why the Republicans are doing that because I don't think the spy case is nearly as strong on John Huang. They were trying to get him a job anyway. They were trying to get a job at HUD, at Education. They would have given him a job at the Small Business Office in Rutland, Vermont. I mean, he was trying to get a job anywhere in the administration. That's what happens when people come to work in the administration. I don't know how a job at HUD would have helped the Lippo folks as they put their conglomerate together around the world. But I do think that the money story is there. I think that it's a big story, as Joe Lieberman said this morning, at a breakfast meeting with some reporters, which I attended, he said, if we don't out of these hearings change the way we finance our elections, you can be sure that the presidential election of the year 2000 will be a national auction.

JIM LEHRER: Paul, one of the things that's emerged so far in these hearings is that the networks, in particular, and the rest of the press generally isn't really covering them. And that's the reason the public isn't reacting to them and doesn't know what's going on. Do you have an opinion about that?

PAUL GIGOT: I think that this had something to do with the public's lack of interest. They are not dramatic hearings, though, Jim. They--

JIM LEHRER: But are they important?

PAUL GIGOT: I think they're very important. I think that when your government policy may have been for sale, when the foreign policy of the United States, when those decisions may have been for sale for influence, not necessarily on the spying one, by the way, with John Huang, but just influence peddling, trying to change the Most Favored Nation status policy, for example, trying to change a trade, get an Ex-Im Bank loan, that sort of thing--I think it's very important.

JIM LEHRER: You were up there, Mark. Did you have a feeling that- -whether they were dramatic or not--that this was important business for the United States government going on here?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, I think it is, Jim. Chairman Fred Thompson, when he opened up the hearing, he made a statement which said, these hearings are not soap operas; they are not there to titillate; they're not an athletic contest with winners and losers; they're not a trial, where somebody is prosecuted. They are an attempt to pull back the curtain on how our government and our politics operate. And this week we saw the curtain pulled back.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. But they're not being broadcast. A lot of people pointed out, oh, well, CNN and others broadcast the O.J. Simpson trial gavel to gavel--

MARK SHIELDS: That's right.

JIM LEHRER: --but they can't find room on the air for these-- for these hearings.

PAUL GIGOT: It's really an opportunity for print journalism and talk radio. Unfortunately, it shows how few people still read us ink-stained wretches.

MARK SHIELDS: Haley Barbour this week--the Republican National Chairman--the Democratic National Chairman will follow, and I think with more identifiable people testifying, I think it'll probably get more coverage.

JIM LEHRER: Another big political story of the week was the attempted coup by some leading House Republicans to displace Speaker Gingrich. What happened?

PAUL GIGOT: Jim, I spent a lot of years of my career covering politics in Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Thailand. Marcos is in the Philippines have nothing. And the House Republicans, when it comes to intrigue and just crazy behavior, I've never seen anything like it. Newt Gingrich has so lost the support within his caucus, his own leadership, really was in discussions about whether to throw him over the side in league with a bunch of junior members who were willing to go to the floor and offer an amendment to vacate the chair, a motion to vacate the chair, and throw the Republican conference in the House into what would have been chaos. It's very damaging. It means that the leadership has basically stopped to function. They're not talking to one another. They're maligning one another. They don't trust one another. And I think it really throws serious doubt on whether this group of leaders can continue to lead this Republican Party through the '98 elections.

JIM LEHRER: Mark, do you agree? That serious?

MARK SHIELDS: I think it is serious, Jim. Jimmy Breslin wrote a book a few years ago about an inept, feckless group of small monsters called the gang that shouldn't shoot straight, and this really is the gang that couldn't shoot straight. I mean, what you had was unprecedented in American political history. You had a five-member leadership team of the House of Representatives.

JIM LEHRER: Let's go through, remind people who they are. Dick Armey--

MARK SHIELDS: Dick Armey, the Majority Leader; Tom Delay, the Whip; Bill Paxon, who's the--has the title of what?

PAUL GIGOT: Chairman of the House Leadership.

MARK SHIELDS: Chairman of the House Leadership. And John Boehner, Republican Conference Chairman of Ohio. And four of the five, other than the speaker, either knew of, participated in, depending upon the evidence, were aware of, did not discourage this effort that Paul has just described. And what they end up--ironically I think is with Newt Gingrich looking stronger. Yes, Newt Gingrich's leadership is in jeopardy and all the rest of it, but he looks stronger because the four guys who tried to put it together on him all look with serious, serious liabilities. I don't think there's any question Tom Delay will never be elected Speaker of the House. I don't think there's any--I don't think anybody thinks that. I don't think Tom Delay probably thinks that. Dick Armey, who had a reputation of being a very--whatever you thought about him--he's a rough and ready, straight shooter, level with you, lay it on the line--it's gone. I mean--

JIM LEHRER: Why? What happened? What happened to him?

MARK SHIELDS: He gets confronted, a young kid named Sandy Hume, all right, writes a piece, a very well reported piece, for the Hill newspaper, which is a tabloid on Capitol Hill, covers Capitol Hill, and in which he lays out this whole story about what's going on and the meetings that have taken place that Dick Armey has been there and the other leaders have been there, and all the rest of it, and at the House Republican Caucus, Dick Armey's asked about this. No. You know, this thing is absolutely wrong. It's absolutely wrong. It's trash, tabloid journalism and all the rest of it. People who were at the meetings, including Graham from--

PAUL GIGOT: Lindsey Graham.

MARK SHIELDS: --Lindsey Graham from South Carolina.

PAUL GIGOT: From South Carolina.

MARK SHIELDS: Gets up and he wants the microphone. This is Lindsey Graham, a very, very serious, kind of conscientious, religious fellow.

JIM LEHRER: So there's nobody to take Gingrich's place, even if they could get rid of him. Is that what the end result of this is?

PAUL GIGOT: I don't think we've seen the end result, Jim. That's the short-term result of this. There's nobody who seems a logical successor right now because--

JIM LEHRER: Because Armey really did--you agree with Mark--Armey really did damage himself?

PAUL GIGOT: They all damaged themselves, including the Speaker. I don't--I will say this about Dick Armey. He has never lied to me once. And I can't say that about a lot of politicians. So when he says I didn't know about this, I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt; not that the didn't know about it, but that he wasn't a planner.

JIM LEHRER: Wasn't part of it.

PAUL GIGOT: That he, in fact, deterred it. I don't know the full story. That's "his" story. I will say this: None of these four right now, except for maybe Bill Paxon, who resigned--

JIM LEHRER: Yes. We forgot to say that. He's the one guy who stepped aside.

PAUL GIGOT: He was fired.

JIM LEHRER: By Gingrich. Right.

PAUL GIGOT: Resigned before he was fired.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

PAUL GIGOT: He now has separated himself from the leadership and could be--could be a rallying point for other people sometime down the line, but he probably will not challenge Speaker Gingrich. So in the short-term, Newt Gingrich does emerge somewhat stronger, but the problem he has is that the whole world has seen what the Republicans eternally knew, which is that they don't trust him; they don't have faith in his leadership. And the real question is- -

JIM LEHRER: How do they function?

PAUL GIGOT: --how do they function? That's correct, between now and '98.

MARK SHIELDS: One small point of correction, and that is Bill Paxon's letter of resignation was accepted by Newt Gingrich before it was sent. I think--I think that the larger political question immediately is how do the Republicans negotiate on the tax and budget bills. I mean--

JIM LEHRER: Or anything else?

MARK SHIELDS: Republicans don't have confidence in Newt. The three figures who their voice is loudest in Newt Gingrich's defense were: Jim Walsh of New York, a moderate; Jerry Lewis of California, a moderate; and Sherry Bollit, of New York, a moderate. So the extreme moderates in the Republican Party, he's now become sort of the institutional candidate of--for leadership, and it--

JIM LEHRER: Because all these guys who were involved in the coup that didn't come off were all very conservative.

MARK SHIELDS: That's true, and I think that Bill Clinton--I think Bill Clinton holds all--all the cards, Jim, politically as far as these tax negotiations.

JIM LEHRER: I have all these cards, and I'm pulling them off the table. Bye-bye. FOCUS - FAITH IN TRANSITION

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight today's Mormons and a David Gergen dialogue. Richard Ostling, Time Magazine's religion correspondent, has the Mormon story.

RICHARD OSTLING: Hundreds of Latter Day Saints, also known as Mormons, have been wending their way across the Midwest these past weeks, reliving the arduous migration of their ancestors 150 years ago. The original pioneers, facing persecution for their unusual beliefs and stunned by the murder of their founding prophet, Joseph Smith, fled Illinois. Heading West, they created a new spiritual kingdom at Salt Lake City. Today, that city is the heart of a religious empire that is spread throughout the United States, and Mormonism is one of the fastest growing faiths overseas. Over half its 10 million members now live outside this country. [music in background] The current president of the church, Gordon Hinckley, is ever present at Salt Lake City events like this pioneer celebration. But he's just as likely to be in China or one of the other nations where Mormons do missionary work.

PRESIDENT GORDON HINCKLEY, Church of Latter-day Saints: We give them an assurance of who they are, sons and daughters of God. People find comfort. They find peace. They find strength in that. And in the organization they find sociability. They find friends. We're a very friendly church. We're a very happy church. We're a happy, go-ahead people. And others like it.

RICHARD OSTLING: Unlike religions that have existed since ancient times, Mormonism is a uniquely American faith founded in the 1820's. Joseph Smith said God and Jesus appeared to him and told him that Christianity was corrupt. Later, he was instructed by an angel to dig up and translate buried scriptures, which became the Book of Mormon. Smith was told to restore the true religion. From Smith on down to Gordon Hinckley, Mormon presidents have claimed a unique authority to reveal define truth. Historian Jan Shipps says the church has Christian roots but is a new religion.

JAN SHIPPS, Historian: In the early years the Christians thought they had found the best way to be Jewish, and 300 years later, they realized they were not Jews. The Mormons started out thinking they had found the very best way to be Christians; that they are the restoration; they are the restored church; they are the restored priesthood.

RICHARD OSTLING: From the start, they've had a rocky road. Mormons were persecuted for their practice of polygamy, which was dropped in 1890, and they were criticized for barring blacks from church offices. That policy changed in 1978. Since then, the church has more than doubled, and past conflicts no longer hamper Mormon growth. A huge missionary force, currently numbering 55,000 people, volunteers to spread the message, not just of Mormon doctrines, but family values and clean, healthy living. [people singing in background] The short-term missions serves not only to expand the religion but to solidify the faith of the missionaries, themselves. Salt Lake city businessman Jim Kimball says when he went on his mission as a young man, he was a skeptic, with little knowledge of the faith.

JIM KIMBALL: An uncle of mine wrote in his diary that the gospel must be true because missionaries like me would have ruined it a long time ago, and that's the way I felt. I--he said that he was under the impression, as I was I, that Epistles were wives of the apostles when he left to enter the missionary work. And so I went out, blissfully ignorant.

RICHARD OSTLING: Working in Australian, he was persuaded by the effect the religion had on people.

JIM KIMBALL: I saw men who were abusing their wives and children and who were in a drunken state most of the time after work--and their homes were unkept and their lives were a mess, and I--I saw a manifest change in those people. The revelations to Joseph Smith from God just rang so true to me and made such enormous sense, and it took months--I was out there months before it finally hit me that the church was true. As a friend of mine wrote, "I'd be cosmically orphaned without it." [people singing in background]

RICHARD OSTLING: People said his congregation in Salt Lake City gives him a sense of small town community. Like all members, he's assigned to a neighborhood ward, where volunteers lead worships since there's no ordained clergy. That sense of community was evident when the men met after worship.

SPOKESMAN: Sister Makiko Tonda is moving this Thursday. So are there any brothers here that have some trucks that could help out with that? Dave, Joe, Ti.

JIM KIMBALL: We're involved in each other's lives. We care and love for one another. If my wife is sick, the Relief Society shows up at my front door with their famous green Jell-O salad and potatoes au gratin and ham, shredded carrot, green salad, and you know, that's great. I've been called to go help people recover from a flooded basement, tear out all the old carpet, or a burned down house, and I really think--as I view life--that's what it's all about is involvement with others.

RICHARD OSTLING: Secret and distinct rituals in temples help solidify Mormon identity.

JIM KIMBALL: Is there anyone that has a problem with those kinds of obligations you take on yourself?

RICHARD OSTLING: Once a month Kimball teaches a class for young adults preparing for temple ceremonies. Only those who give 10 percent of their income to the church and follow such health requirements as abstaining from coffee, alcohol, and tobacco are allowed in. The temple rituals range from sealing marriage for eternity, as new brides and grooms do daily, to performing proxy baptisms, to offer salvation to dead ancestors. In this way, the Latter Day Saints extend their family emphasis to creating eternal families in heaven. Though Mormons insist they're followers of Jesus Christ and feature Him prominently in their visitors' center and in their prostheletyzing, others think the church misrepresents Christianity. Thomas Taylor is a Presbyterian minister in Salt Lake. Two years ago, his denomination declared that Mormons are not Christians in the traditional sense.

REV. THOMAS TAYLOR, First Presbyterian Church: Have I ever known any Mormons who, after speaking with them, have I come to believe that they know Jesus Christ in the same way that I do; that they are real true disciples of Jesus, my answer would be, yes. But if you're asking me, do I think that Mormonism as a system of belief and practice is the same as what we ordinarily mean by Christianity, I think my answer would be no.

RICHARD OSTLING: The major doctrinal difference centers on the nature of God.

REV. THOMAS TAYLOR: The Bible says in the Book of John, Chapter 4, God is spirit. But the Mormons say that God is flesh and bone. You get a picture of God that is progressing. So you see that man is made of the same stuff, as it were, as God is; and that man is progressing toward deityhood, and God once was like man. So this is a very different picture of Christianity.

RICHARD OSTLING: President Gordon Hinckley says the concept of God having been a man is not stressed any longer, but he does believe that human beings can become gods in the afterlife.

PRESIDENT GORDON HINCKLEY: Well, they can achieve to a godly status, yes, of course they can, eternal progression. We believe in the progression of the human soul. Ours is a forward-looking religion. It's an upward-looking religion. We believe in the eternity and the infinity of the human soul, and its great possibilities.

RICHARD OSTLING: A different debate about God got Gail Houston fired from Brigham Young University, a Mormon-run school. Many Mormons believe God the Father is married to a mother in Heaven, but Houston advocated praying directly to the Heavenly Mother. Houston spoke with producer Kate Olson.

GAIL HOUSTON: The language that God has spoken to me through has been through an incredibly loving Father, who is married to an incredibly loving Mother. If you've had a sacred experience, you cannot deny it. When I first really felt her presence was after my own mother had passed away. And at the time, I was really affected by my mother's passing away, and I couldn't imagine that anyone would ever want me to forget my mother, my earthly mother, and I couldn't imagine that anyone would ever want me to forget my Heavenly Mother. And I say that in all love and kindness towards President Hinckley. I just have to--I cannot deny what God has told me.

RICHARD OSTLING: President Hinckley says the Mother in Heaven cannot be the object of prayer.

PRESIDENT GORDON HINCKLEY: The fact of the matter is that in every instance of record, where deity is addressed, the address is to the Father. Now, that's where we stand, and it's simply that; no more, no less.

RICHARD OSTLING: Brigham Young's President, Merrill Bateman, says the university's close ties to the church meant Houston had to go.

MERRILL BATEMAN, President, Brigham Young University: Although we want to ensure that every faculty member has the right to discuss and analyze as broadly and widely as possible any topic, including religious topics, including fundamental doctrine of the church, we do not believe they have--they should be able to publicly endorse positions contrary to doctrine, or to attack the doctrine.

RICHARD OSTLING: During the 1990's, there have been many cases like Houston's in which teachers at Brigham Young and others in the church have been disciplined for various infractions. Dissent is growing, especially among younger women, who want to expand beyond their traditional roles and have a greater voice in the church.

MERRILL BATEMAN: Anybody who persists in opposing the church-- public opposition--speaking out against it--I think may receive some discipline from the church. It's just that simple. But those cases are so very, very, very few.

RICHARD OSTLING: Elbert Peck, whose independent "Sunstone Magazine" publishes dissenting views, says that rapid expansion is causing the church to limit the questioning so as not to confuse new members. But he fears clamping down comes at a price.

ELBERT PECK, Sunstone Magazine: If you are members of a family, then unless you can speak the truth as you see it--and you need to speak the truth in love because you're connected in a covenantal relationship--then you end up with the same dysfunctions in your church organization as you do within a family when secrets are kept. And individuals are not being to speak the truth that they see. They're not able to say when we do this to the family, it really hurts me. You know, their great pain comes out. And you hear that pain when you listen to the dissidents in the church.

RICHARD OSTLING: For Houston, asking questions is essential to spiritual development.

GAIL HOUSTON: If our only principle in the church is obedience, then we remain children. And our church says we can be gods. The relationship with my God is I can ask them anything, anything. I can even say, well, what if this church isn't true, what if this is all nothing, and funny thing, that enlarges my testimony. It doesn't limit it. [singing in background]

RICHARD OSTLING: The Latter Day Saints remarkable test story is part of a broader pattern in religion today. Faiths that offer doctrinal certainty and clear directives on how to live are steadily gaining ground. But Mormons also have a tradition of open inquiry. The challenge ahead is how to balance that principle with an increasing demand for obedience. [singing in background] DIALOGUE

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, a Gergen dialogue. David Gergen, editor-at-large of "U.S. News & World Report," engages Janna Malamud Smith, a pscyotherapist, author of Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life.

DAVID GERGEN: Janna, at a time when many Americans are worried about losing their privacy, one of the main themes of your book is that we, by historical standards, we actually have a lot more privacy today than we have had in the past.

JANNA MALAMUD SMITH, Author, Private Matters: That was one of the things that really sort of surprised me in writing the book. When I set out, I didn't know that, and I realized as I was looking at the material that, in fact, until the 18th century--I think it is--Phil Barrios says- -no one ever thought about spending time alone. It wasn't that they had "no" privacy. They could pull into themselves. They could decide not to speak, but they didn't expect to be alone to spend time reading, to spend time writing letters, to spend time alone with a friend. These were experiences that really we've developed in the last couple of hundred years.

DAVID GERGEN: It was striking that in some of the colonies it was forbidden to live alone, or you could be heavily fined if you lived alone.

JANNA MALAMUD SMITH: That's right. And I think in 17th century Connecticut you were absolutely forbidden to live alone. It was just considered a bad idea.

DAVID GERGEN: It was striking in this book how you saw privacy through the eyes of artists and how much this expanded privacy met to their personal development one way.

JANNA MALAMUD SMITH: Right. Artists are sort of wonderful people to look at when you want to understand privacy because it turns out it's very hard to make art--perhaps not the stained glass windows of Shartre, but the art that we live with today, to write a book, to paint the kinds of paints we love, to compose, without being able to have a lot of privacy. And when I started looking at the lives of these artists, it struck me that they really embodied the issue. For example, Henry James was fanatical about his privacy. When a friend of his died, he traveled across two countries to go burn some letters he was afraid that she might have of his. And I think that he felt that if he could keep his life unobserved, he could make it safe to expose himself a lot in his writing. And I have a feeling that that's almost a template for the way a lot of artists feel, or maybe all of us on some level feel.

DAVID GERGEN: But with Emerson, for example, you would argue that it's that veil of privacy behind which an artist can really grow and develop in ways they might not otherwise reach.

JANNA MALAMUD SMITH: Right. And what's wonderful about Emerson's stories that we think now about Emerson as some aloof man who was sort of remote--and, in fact, he was a very passionate man who had deep, close friendships--and what I learned looking at his life is that it was only through these friendships, having the audience of a friend on whom he could try out a new idea, that gave him the courage to then go public with his ideas. And what that allowed him to do in the course of his life was to take some pretty important, unpopular positions to be against slavery and the Fugitive Slave Act before that was really acceptable in his community, to raise money for John Brown, to do different things that required an enormous amount of self-reliance. His idea of self-reliance was that it meant you listened to your own voice; not that you didn't have close friends; not that you tried to live alone. And it turns out that you can only listen to your own voice well if you've had periods of privacy and intimacy and friendship, being part of what privacy shields, where you can learn to trust that voice, where somebody could say, yes, I like that idea; that's a good one.

DAVID GERGEN: Recognizing then how important privacy is to freedom and to dignity, how serious are the threats to privacy today?

JANNA MALAMUD SMITH: I think they're very serious. And maybe the most serious one is how little we think about some of the changes that we make to protect people against the downside of our culture. And what I mean by that is that as we get more isolated from each other and we can't watch each other personally, we're more and more kind of in an anxiety, turning to means of surveillance as a way of watching each other, whether it's through cameras at the office place or urine tests, or--one of my favorite examples are teddy bears with video cameras in them so that you can watch the person taking care of your child. And so, in a way, in an effort to get on top of some of our fears about contemporary life, we are too quickly sacrificing privacy. And I think we're going to lose something very important--

DAVID GERGEN: So at the very time we have this expanded freedom, this expanded privacy, in some ways it can be an illusion.

JANNA MALAMUD SMITH: That's right. And I think it's funny because what we're giving with one hand--for instance, a gay couple might have the right to a relationship--a private relationship if the culture will leave them alone--which is an important part of privacy, I think--we're taking away with the other, which is that the minute anybody goes to work now in many, many corporations, they agree to a kind of surveillance from the day they're hired.

DAVID GERGEN: How then should we think about the lines that--how to draw the lines, so that we protect people's privacy, but we don't, in effect, allow them license to do things that we might find socially intolerable?

JANNA MALAMUD SMITH: Right. I think that in a sense that's the question we're struggling with now as a culture, though I'm not sure we framed it accurately as that question. And I think when we look at sending people who've abused children home to a neighborhood and wonder whether we should inform the neighbors, that's a wonderful contemporary issue of how much privacy do these people deserve. And I think that our rule of thumb needs to be much more based in respecting the kind of level of humanness and human dignity that can't exist unless we have some privacy. So we always have to trade off the harm of the way that privacy can be turned into a kind of corrupted secrecy, so that some people use privacy to carry out secret acts that are harmful. They sort of corrupt it from that side. So we have to balance that concern that the privacy will be corrupted into secrecy, where things will happen that are harmful to people and to the common good, with the other concern, which is if we up our surveillance in the kind of impersonal bureaucratic surveillance that we tend to have now, without thinking that we're upping it, we will harm privacy from the other side.

DAVID GERGEN: You had to think about this a great deal as the daughter of Bernard Malamud, the novelist, how much the public had a right to know about his life. I've thought about this working for public figures. How much should the public know about these personalities that loom so large in our culture?

JANNA MALAMUD SMITH: It's a hard question to answer categorically. I think that there are situations--for example, Paul Tsongas's cancer in a candidate, where probably the public had more right to know than the knowledge they were given--but then what worries me are the situations where the public doesn't want to know--for reasons to help make informed decisions but wants to know for reasons of either harming that person gratuitously, or justout of sort a purient voyeurism, and how you balance these two things is a really tricky question.

DAVID GERGEN: It's also true that some political figures do put their private lives into play. They try to get votes by talking about their private lives.

JANNA MALAMUD SMITH: Right. And I wrote about that in the book. And I think that what's been difficult lately in sort of what we might call the post Woodstock nation era is that people, in part, want to represent themselves as having sort of these touchy-feely private lives. You know, I'm a good father; I'm a good husband, or a good wife, or whatever it is. On the other hand, they don't want the press to look closely. And I think that's a terrible double bind for them.

DAVID GERGEN: Well, Janna Smith, thank you very much for your insights.

JANNA MALAMUD SMITH: Thank you. RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Friday, the Sergeant Major of the U.S. Army was charged with assaulting a female captain and soliciting adultery; Russian officials said they would decide Monday if repairs to the Mir space station would be made by the current crew, or a new team; and the Commerce Department said imports exceeded exports by $10 billion in May, a 17 percent increase. We'll see you online and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.