The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, Gwen Ifill updates the EgyptAir investigation; Susan Dentzer tells the story of Internet drugstores; our regional commentators observe the coming of a Washington budget deal; and David Gergen has a dialogue about Lady Bird Johnson. It all follows our summary of the news this Wednesday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The EgyptAir crash investigation centered today on a relief pilot. Flight 990's data and voice recordings indicate Gameel Al-Battouti made a religious utterance moments after he took over the controls. Then the autopilot was switched off and the plane began its descent into the Atlantic. Egypt won a delay in U.S. plans to have the FBI launch a criminal inquiry. Egypt's top aviation official flew to Washington with Arabic language experts to take part in the investigation. In Cairo, Al-Battouti's nephew said he thinks American officials are looking for a scapegoat.

WALID EL-BATOUTY, Nephew of Relief Pilot: If they want to suffer (blame) my uncle, we're never going to accept this and we're going to come back after them. I have a question: The TWA plane took off of JFK in the same place had an accident and was Boeing 767. The Swissair airplane, it was the same thing and EgyptAir. Why they're trying to divert now and say it is the captain? Why? They're trying to cover up for something.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have more on the story right after this News Summary. Hurricane Lenny gained strength today. It was just short of being rated a Category 5 hurricane, the most powerful. Its winds reached 150 miles an hour. Lenny blasted St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and continued on a northeasterly course. The governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands declared a state of emergency. Residents rushed to buy supplies and board up windows. The storm has already knocked out water and power to thousands of people in Puerto Rico. A new across-the-board federal spending cut was in play today. The roughly 0.4 percent reduction was advanced by House Republicans. GOP leaders had wanted a 1 percent decrease, but President Clinton vetoed it. House Speaker Hastert said today Mr. Clinton agreed to the smaller cut last night. But Senate Minority Leader Daschle said Mr. Clinton did not have such an understanding. Daschle stated the Democrats' position.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: We are not prepared to support an across-the-board cut any more today than we were two weeks ago or five weeks ago. We think it's mindless. We do... we are willing to look at whether we couldn't make some reductions, if the President has the discretion to make the decision as to where those reductions would take place.

JIM LEHRER: The president is in Turkey. He has not commented publicly. Senate Majority Leader Lott told reporters it was time to act.

SEN. TRENT LOTT: I think that it's time to complete the negotiations and have a vote. And we either have the votes to pass it or we don't. The President vetoes or he doesn't. I think we've made a lot of good progress on all sides, and it's time... you know, I've noticed in Washington over the years-- and I've been involved in a lot of negotiations up and down and good and bad-- but at some point you've got to have a closer and a closing. And at some point you say, "this is not perfect, but it's good enough."

JIM LEHRER: We'll have more on this story later in the program tonight. The United States has spent about $100 billion since 1995 to prevent Y2K computer glitches. Commerce Secretary Daley made that announcement today. He said the potential cost of doing nothing would have been far greater. He also said spending will go on for a couple of years past the date change as companies continue to deal with its effects. Federal agencies and consumer groups launched a campaign against telemarketing fraud today. The scams rob Americans of about $40 billion a year, according to government estimates. Most victims are over age 50. Attorney General Reno and others spoke at a news conference at the Justice Department.

JANET RENO: If someone calls you offering an investment, loan or credit opportunity, take the time to do some research before you commit your hard-earned funds. Be very suspicious if the caller insists that you have to invest right away. If this is a valid offer, it will still be around tomorrow. Remember, in a get-rich-quick telemarketing scheme, there is only one person who gets rich and that's the dishonest telemarketer.

JIM LEHRER: Overseas today, Russian aircraft and artillery continued the campaign against Chechnya, despite renewed calls from world leaders to stop. President Yeltsin said Russia was engaged in a legitimate fight against terrorism. He spoke to reporters upon his arrival in Istanbul, Turkey. He'll attend tomorrow's meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. President Clinton is expected to bring up Chechnya in bilateral talks with Yeltsin. Hundreds of rich Pakistanis were arrested today. They were charged with defaulting on favorable loans from the nationalized banking system. Pakistan's new military government began enforcing the law after a repayment deadline expired. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to more on EgyptAir Flight 990, online pharmacies, our regional commentators on the budget, and a David Gergen dialogue on Lady Bird Johnson.

UPDATE - FINAL WORDS

JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill has tonight's EgyptAir update.

GWEN IFILL: As investigators try to decipher information in the recorders recovered from the wreckage of EgyptAir 990, they appear to be focusing on human action, not mechanical problems. National Transportation Safety Board officials have suggested they will turn the investigation over to the FBI, treating it not as an accident, but as a crime.

JIM HALL, Chairman, NTSB: Based on the evidence we have seen thus far-- the flight data recorder, the cockpit voice recorder, radar data, and small bits of wreckage that have been recovered-- we have found so far no sign of a mechanical or weather-related event that could have caused the crash.

GWEN IFILL: Several press accounts attributed to investigators piecing together the last 90 seconds of the doomed flight have laid out this theoretical sequence of events: Shortly after the plane reached 33,000 feet, a cockpit door opened and closed. This suggested Pilot Ahmed Al-Habashi left. A short time later, another voice-- investigators say it belonged to relief pilot Gameel Al-Battouti-- was heard saying a short Muslim prayer. Rough translation: "I made my decision now. I put my faith in God's hands." Then the Boeing 767's autopilot was shut off. The plane then began a very high speed dive, dropping several thousand feet. After the plane began the dive, the pilot reentered the cabin, asking, in Arabic, "What's going on?" About 25 seconds later, the plane's engines were shut off. Also, its left and right elevators, the rear wing flaps that direct the plane up or down, were moved in opposite directions; they usually operate in tandem. Investigators say this suggests the pilots were struggling over the controls. After rising to 24,000 feet, the plane apparently stalled, then crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. In Egypt, government officials objected to the FBI taking over the investigation. U.S. officials, they argued, are moving too quickly to lay the blame on employees of the government-owned airline. And a nephew of the relief pilot now at the center of the investigation said his uncle had no reason to commit suicide.

WALID ELIJAH ANDERSON: BATOUTY, Nephew of Relief Pilot: I think that people are jumping into things and trying to make another thing to divert the accusation from another big company. That's our feeling over here. My uncle has to come back because he had medicine for his daughter, which he had his life, and he adored that little girl, ten years old. We are the ones who need answers.

GWEN IFILL: Egyptian officials were headed to Washington today to review the flight recorder tapes for themselves. For the latest on EgyptAir, we're joined by Pat Milton, a correspondent for the Associated Press who is covering the crash investigation-- she is also the author of "In the Blink of an Eye: The FBI Investigation of TWA Flight 800"-- and Mamoun Fandy, Professor of Middle East Politics at Georgetown University, and executive director of the Council on Egyptian-American Relations, which seeks to promote better understanding between the two countries.

Pat Milton, you reported today that, according to a single government official, that there was a struggle in the cockpit, that when the pilot entered, saw the co-pilot doing whatever he was doing, that he said, "pull with me, help me, pull with me," to try to pull the plane back up. Can you give us any more detail about what may have actually happened in that cockpit?

PAT MILTON, Associated Press: Well, that's exactly right. Investigators have been able to synchronize the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, and this is how they're getting a preliminary picture as to just what happened inside that cockpit. We know that the pilot left, for whatever reason, to go to the men's room, after this relief pilot had taken over. The relief pilot was not supposed to take over for another hour or so, and he had come in and asked the co-pilot and the pilot if it was okay if he flew. There was no argument, no disagreement, and he was given the controls of the co-pilot. After the pilot came back in and the plane was in a dive, he jumped into the seat and we know that there was a struggle, and we know that because, as you mentioned, the elevators were in opposite directions, showing us that one was pushing while the other was pulling. We know from investigators, because they've listened to the dialogue on the cockpit voice recorder, that the pilot was struggling desperately to get that plane afloat and was yelling to the co-pilot to help him.

GWEN IFILL: How much significance should be attributed to this apparently religious utterance?

PAT MILTON: Well, I think it's mostly the placement of the religious utterance that they're looking at, and I know they're trying for interpretation and meaning to what this meant, given the cultural differences. But the prayer was uttered just before the autopilot was disengaged, and that was significant because there was no reason that they know of that the plane should have been disengaged and should have gone into a dive. In the first beginning days of this, they had thought, well, maybe there was a problem with the thrust reverser, maybe there was a decompression problem. There was very precise problems why a pilot would put a plane into a dive.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Fandy, what are the possible meanings for the words, for this phrase that was uttered by the co-pilot, we think?

MAMOUN FANDY, Georgetown University: I think, first of all, this is something that one cannot say... comment on without hearing it because I've read two statements, one that I put my fate in the hands of God and the second is that pronouncing the Shah Hadaegh, which is the first article of Islamic faith, basically there is only one God and Muhammad is his messenger. So these are things that are said in different circumstances. I mean the Shah Hadaegh itself basically when somebody is at a moment of distress and seeking God's help, then you pronounce that, also, it is said at time of death, when somebody wants to die in the faith of Islam itself, you pronounce the Shah Hadaegh basically repeating that there's only one God and Muhammad is his messenger.

GWEN IFILL: So he could have been saying this because he was struggling to keep the plane upright, or he could have been saying it because he was on the point of death?

MAMOUN FANDY: That's absolutely right. I mean it could be just seeking God's help, to help him out, out of this situation or because somebody felt an eminent death and that he wants to die as a Muslim within the confines of the faith...

GWEN IFILL: There has been much discussion about that very point, which was that a devout Muslim would not commit suicide. How unusual would that be?

MAMOUN FANDY: It's absolutely unusual. Within the faith itself, suicide is something that's not sanctioned by Islam. And the moment you commit suicide, are you outside the bounds of the faith itself. So I think it is highly unlikely and also given the culture of Egypt itself, if you look at statistics, I mean the suicide rate in Egypt is something that's just... does not come very near to any western country. It's something that's just culturally not condoned whatsoever.

GWEN IFILL: Pat Milton, there's been so much focus now on this relief co-pilot. What would a relief pilot have been doing there? And under what... how unusual would it have been for him to come in and take over the controls?

PAT MILTON: Well, you know, this was a lengthy flight. It was 11 hours, and they had a co-pilot and a pilot relief that were in the cabin supposedly sleeping and relaxing and would have been taking over about two hours later than this man did. I don't know how unusual it would be. The experts told me that he shouldn't have come in there at that time, but there didn't seem to be a problem. I think that there were also two other pilots that were in there, and our investigators have told us, too, that they're questioning now whether, when the plane was in a dive, whether the other pilots did rush to the cock pit-- cockpit door and also ask what was going on.

GWEN IFILL: Was there any evidence... is there any evidence to support the notion which is popular among Egyptian officials, that U.S. investigators are just ruling out mechanical failure too quickly?

PAT MILTON: Well, I think the National Transportation Safety Board are experts at aviation, and they wouldn't be looking to turn over something to the FBI unless they had a clear picture that there was a suspect, suspicious nature of this. You know, they've looked at everything. They know what happens with airplanes and they've looked at everything, they've looked at the flight data recorder and they said, as Jim Hall, the chairman said, "there is absolutely no reason that they see that this plane mechanically should have gone into a dive and crashed."

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Fandy, unlike American-owned airlines, EgyptAir is a government-owned airline. How much is at stake for the government of Egypt as this investigation continues?

MAMOUN FANDY: I think there is a great deal at stake. But I am very, very surprised, given the strategic cooperation between Egypt and the United States and the level of contact between the FBI and the Egyptians and all of that -- I'm very surprised that, from what I heard because there is a great deal of communication between the Egyptian government. But it is not known, it's not publicly known; it's mostly under the table. But the Egyptians would like to have... the United States would take the lead in this investigation, they would follow, they will provide resources, they will provide translators and other things.

GWEN IFILL: In fact Egypt asked the United States to take the lead in this investigation.

MAMOUN FANDY: Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a very high level of cooperation between Egypt and the United States that is not known very much to even the Egyptians, the Egyptian public themselves, and they don't want that to be really something as part of a carnival media thing. They like to have the investigation follow just the technical side of things and go methodically and very slowly because the political price could be very high back home.

GWEN IFILL: And there's a potentially legal cost, as well.

MAMOUN FANDY: Certainly, because it's a government-owned thing, and the moment we move the whole investigation from the Safety Board to the FBI, we are moving into a criminal investigation with a great deal of ramifications.

GWEN IFILL: Pat Milton, how is it that the FBI is responsible for a foreign carrier like this? Is it just because Egypt asked the FBI to get involved, or the NTSB to get involved? How is it that the U.S. is taking the lead in this at all?

PAT MILTON: Well, I think you have to remember that three quarters of the people on this airplane were Americans, and the FBI has jurisdiction, a crime aboard an aircraft and also description of an aye aircraft if one American was on that plane, whether it was a foreign carrier or not and whether it was flying overseas or flying domestically. I think, that you know, the FBI obviously, no one has reached any conclusions here. They're looking to investigate it because the NTSB has told them that they have a suspicious scenario here. That's why the FBI was called in by NTSB, who is in charge of investigating accidents in this country. The FBI necessarily needs the Egypt government's approval to go to their country and interview, whether it's airport employees or friends and relatives of the crew members. They need the approval of the host country to go in and talk to them. So they're looking to keep to what Egypt is looking for now.

GWEN IFILL: Ms. Milton, thank you very much, and Mr. Fandy, as well.

MAMOUN FANDY: Thank you.

FOCUS - INTERNET DRUGSTORES

JIM LEHRER: Promise and problems in the new world of on-line pharmacies. Our report is by Susan Dentzer of our health unit, a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

SPOKESPERSON: Just a half a teaspoon, twice daily.

SUSAN DENTZER: Getting a prescription filled at your local pharmacy usually looks

a lot like this...

SPOKESPERSON: And who's the doctor?

SUSAN DENTZER: ...but increasingly, it's apt to look more like this.

(Typing on Keyboard)

SUSAN DENTZER: First there was e-mail, then budding e-commerce -- and now, there's e-pharmacy. Just this year alone, dozens of major pharmacy sites have sprung up on the Internet, with names like Drugstore.com, Soma.com and PlanetRx. They're trying to prove to consumers that getting a prescription filled on-line is more convenient than waiting in line at the local drugstore.

TOM PIGGOTT: I saw it as an exciting opportunity to create essentially a new type of pharmacy.

SUSAN DENTZER: Just under a year ago, thirty-one year-old Tom Piggott founded Seattle-based Soma.com. Recently acquired by the drugstore giant CVS, it's since been renamed CVS.com. As Piggot explains, the site gives consumers Internet access to the same products they could obtain in CVS pharmacies across the U.S.. Consumers simply call up the site, answer questions about their medical history, then enter their prescription and physician's name and phone number.

TOM PIGGOTT: After it is submitted, the pharmacists at CVS.com will verify the information that you have entered, contact your physician if it is a new prescription.

SPOKESMAN: Let me follow up with the doctor and I need to find out

who called this prescription in today.

SUSAN DENTZER: At the customer's behest, the prescription order is then routed to one of two places -- either the customer's local CVS pharmacy, or to CVS.com's own state-of-the-art dispensing facility in Westminster, Ohio. The order is then packed and shipped directly from the warehouse to the consumer's home. E-pharmacy is still just a fraction of overall pharmacy sales. But it's expected to grab an increasing share of the nation's drugstore business. In fact, Piggott says, since CVS took over Soma and relaunched the web site as CVS.com in August, sales have been growing about 25 percent a week.

TOM PIGGOTT: The estimates regarding the size of the e-pharmacy industry

by the year 2005, we've heard from leading analysts quote up to $6 billion in annual sales. So it's a tremendous opportunity.

SUSAN DENTZER: Besides being a boon for the drugstore business, the convenience of

ordering medications over the Internet can be a real plus for consumers. Dr. Jane Henney is commissioner of the federal Food and Drug Administration.

DR. JANE HENNEY: Ordering over the Internet for your refill or your prescription drug that you need I think is very beneficial, particularly for people who have difficulty getting to the drugstore, people who are disabled, who are home-bound, who are elderly, who live in rural communities.

SUSAN DENTZER: But for all the benefits, there's also a serious, and even dangerous, downside. Buying already-prescribed drugs over the Internet doesn't appear to pose any safety problems. But health officials are concerned that drugs are also being prescribed over the Internet. Sometimes, legitimate doctors affiliated with the sites are doing the prescribing -- but sometimes not. A recent report published in the New England Journal of Medicine highlighted the problem. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania

Medical School examined 4000 Internet sites. They found 86 that were selling Viagra outright -- without requiring any visit to a physician or, in many instances, even a perfunctory on-line medical evaluation. Congressman Ron Klink, a Pennsylvania Democrat, is alarmed.

REP. RON KLINK: We've talked to people where family pets, or people who had died 20 years ago were given prescriptions for various drugs. And they didn't lie about the information. When it said, 'What's your status?', well, family pet. Sex, neutered. And yet they were able to get Viagra.

SUSAN DENTZER: At a recent Congressional hearing,Klink showed this news report

gathered by a Michigan television station to make the point.

NEWSCAST CORRESPONDENT: Believe it or not, Tom Cat got his pills...and - you know what else - this cat can get more. He has three refills left on his prescription.

SUSAN DENTZER: Phony prescriptions for pets are one thing, says Klink, but the

risks to humans are far greater -- and growing. One reason is a rising number of foreign drug-selling sites, many of which operate out of places like Southeast Asia or Mexico. The sites are selling drugs unlawfully into the U.S., violating a number of federal and state laws in the process. What's more, the medications they sell may not be tailored to U.S.-approved specifications.

REP. RON KLINK: There was just a story out a couple of days ago of the discovery of vast amounts of Viagra that were not Viagra. They had been counterfeited in India, and in fact, there was a possibility that they are lethal.

SUSAN DENTZER: Although no recent injuries or deaths have been documented from

counterfeit drugs, officials fear some may lie ahead. And they worry that this is just one way patients appear to be getting drugs that they shouldn't be getting without a prescription. For example, the FDA's Henney says some U.S.-based sites are routinely selling potentially addictive "controlled substances," and they're doing it without real physician oversight. Still other sites are selling drugs that are unapproved for use by the

FDA. One is the drug GBL, advertised to help with body-building. In fact, once ingested, GBL is converted by the body into another substance, GHB.

DR. JANE HENNEY: The consequences of taking this product can result in coma, can result in seizure, can result in death. This is a drug that has been sold over the Internet. It has many claims. The claims, I believe, are bogus.

SUSAN DENTZER: Congressman Klink says that just underscores the risks to the public's health.

REP. RON KLINK: If we do not do something about this problem, we may as well just dismantle the FDA. Everything that they do, every process for approving a drug, for inspecting where drugs are made, for determining how drugs are going to be distributed is undermined by what's going on with these illegitimate sites.

SUSAN DENTZER: State officials are also concerned. In Kansas, the attorney general, Carla Stovall, is cracking down on sites that are selling prescription drugs to Kansas citizens -- almost always from outside the state's borders. So far, her office has sued six sites for breaking state consumer-protection laws and for violating licensing requirements for out-of-state pharmacies and physicians.

CARLA STOVALL, Kansas Attorney General: We don't let people today write their own prescription and walk into a pharmacy on Main Street and get that prescription filled. You have to go through your physician. And because we have Internet and it makes things more accessible, doesn't mean that those rules should change and that I should be able to write my own prescription basically for a drug that I want to have that my own physician won't give to me.

SUSAN DENTZER: To ensnare some of the sites that were operating unlawfully, Stovall set up an in-house sting operation. Recruited to help was the 16 year-old son of an employee in the attorney general's office. Under his mother's watchful eye, Stovall says, he went on the Net to the site operated by Confimed, a tiny Seattle-based firm that was advertising Viagra. He ordered the drug with his mother's credit card after clearly

stating that he was only 16.

CARLA STOVALL: What he said was that he wasn't able to have sex and that was sufficient apparently because even though his age was 16 they sent him the drug and he received it. There is no reason to think that someone younger couldn't have been able to get these drugs too. I think it is a tremendous concern.

SUSAN DENTZER: Last June, Stovall sued Confimed, including its founder, a physician, Dr. Howard Levine. Levine would not appear on camera, so we interviewed Confimed's senior vice president, Eric Thom, at the website's small office in Seattle; he told us Confimed had seriously erred in selling Viagra to the 16 year-old.

ERIC THOM: It was a mistake. We acknowledge that mistake and we respect Kansas's jurisdiction.

SUSAN DENTZER: So what was it, the doctor just didn't notice that he was sixteen?

ERIC THOM: He didn't see it. He literally didn't see it. He made a mistake.

SUSAN DENTZER: Thom says Confimed, which does the lion's share of its business in

selling Viagra, has since taken steps to make sure such errors don't recur. And in reality, Thom says, about one in five patients who try to get Viagra from Confimed are turned down. For the patients who are approved he argues that the site meets a real need.

ERIC THOM: Viagra is a patient-driven lifestyle drug, that if someone feels they need it, they're the judge. And I would venture to say that the information that we make available for our patients to read is much more thorough than what you may receive in a 30-second or a 15-second counsel at your HMO pharmacy.

SUSAN DENTZER: Stovall disagrees. She argues that Confimed and other sites aren't making patients sufficiently aware of the dangers that Viagra poses especially for people who have heart disease or who are taking certain heart medications. Kansas is now demanding that Confimed pay tens of thousands of dollars in penalties for violating state laws. Meanwhile, the Confimed site has posted warnings that it cannot lawfully prescribe drugs to anyone in Kansas. But Stovall and other state attorneys general say they also want Congress to allow them to obtain federal injunctions against the site's operations. That would all them to shut down the sites nationwide.

CARLA STOVALL: It has been very difficult because of the shells involved, the layers of businesses, of corporations that have been developed to try basically I think to protect the individuals involved. And I think that would suggest that they are fly-by-night or they

are here today to make some money fast and then disappear before perhaps the heat gets turned up too much.

SUSAN DENTZER: That's one reason Henney wants consumers to be on guard when using the Internet.

DR. JANE HENNEY: You're putting your own health, which is really fragile, at risk and that's the issue here.

SUSAN DENTZER: Henney urges consumers to look for sites that post a special new seal-of-approval known as VIPPS. That's an acronym for Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Site. The seal demonstrates that an on-line pharmacy has registered with a national pharmacy group and is complying with relevant federal and state laws. For his part, Congressman Klink is also sponsoring a bill that would require Internet sites to show clearly who operates them and where they are licensed to do business. Federal agencies recently formed a working group to look further into unlawful activity by Internet sites and to try to enforce all existing laws.

FOCUS - BUDGET RESOLUTIONS

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the regional commentators in the budget deal and a David Gergen dialogue. Terence Smith has the budget story.

TERENCE SMITH: The White House and the Republican- controlled Congress are close to a final agreement on a $385 billion budget deal. There are still some sticking points, including a small, less than 1/2 of 1 percent across-the-board spending cut and a rollback of the dairy pricing plan. Both President Clinton and congressional Republicans claim some victory in the final package. Among other things, the President got the funds to hire more teachers and police officers, to acquire environmentally fragile western lands, and to underwrite the Middle East peace process and international debt relief efforts. For their part, Republicans point to boosting the defense budget, curtailing the President's spending requests, and after years of wrangling getting the administration to agree to abortion restrictions overseas in return for the payment of back dues at the United Nations. For more on the budget battle and its impact, we're joined by our regional commentators: Patrick McGuigan of the Daily Oklahoman; Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Constitution; Robert Kittle of the San Diego Union Tribune; and Lee Cullum of the Dallas Morning News.

Welcome to all of you.

Bob Kittle, we're in the closing hours of that annual fall classic, the budget battle. What do you think of the deal that is taking shape as we speak?

ROBERT KITTLE: Well, to be quite candid, Terry, the goings-on in a slaughterhouse are more appetizing to watch than watching the enactment of the federal budget. I mean, it's a very messy process. And the real sad thing about this budget is, in my view, is that it is a business as usual budget. It's a monument to lost opportunities. We've done nothing in this budget to reform Social Security or Medicare, or to provide tax relief for the American people. Beyond that, we've also spent - this budget spends the surplus, the surplus that we're counting on to do big things, such as reforming Social Security or - in the eyes of Al Gore and Bill Bradley - create a new entitlement to extend health care to Americans. None of that will be possible if we continue to spend the surplus. And what this budget does is not only spend the surplus but dips into Social Security reserves by at least $17 billion, which is something that both the White House and the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill say they would not do. So I'm sorry, this is just a business as usual budget, and with an election year coming up next year, I think we're going to have more of the same, and more spending in excess of the spending caps, and, therefore, again, squandering the opportunity to do something significant with the surplus.

TERENCE SMITH: Lee Cullum, when you look at this, do you see winners or losers?

LEE CULLUM: Well, Terry, I guess you have to say that the family planning agencies are certainly feeling a sense of loss because of the deal that was made to get the U.N. dues paid. I have to say that I'm glad that the President and Congress came to that understanding. We do need to pay the U.N. dues. I'm sorry that the price is having to be paid by family planning organizations, but I hope it will turn out to be slight, and that there - the situation will be reversed in a year. It's only for a year. And it simply had to be done; it was necessary. So there is one loser. The winner is the U.N. and our relationship with the U.N., and that's certainly welcomed.

TERENCE SMITH: Cynthia Tucker, do you think that President Clinton got what he needs for his last year in office?

CYNTHIA TUCKER: I think he did better than I would have predicted a year ago today. I thinkthat Republicans have largely conceded that President Clinton was going to win this budget battle, at least in its broader outline. Lee Cullum is absolutely right; the President had to make a very major compromise, and an unfortunate compromise, to get payment of U.N. dues. Other than that, however, he got much of what he wanted. Let's remember it wasn't but a few years ago in 1994 when Republicans were elected a majority in Congress; they came in pledging that they would abolish the Department of Education. Well, in fact, they ended up giving additional millions of dollars to the Department of Education to help hire more teachers; that was something President Clinton wanted. He got the proposal to have more police officers; he got more in environmental spending. So in shaping the budget priorities I have to say that the President came out more of a winner here, although I think that it's true that the GOP is going to go back and claim that they won on some important issues as well.

TERENCE SMITH: Okay. Pat McGuigan, here in Washington with us tonight, how do you see the overall deal here?

PATRICK McGUIGAN: Well, I look at it a little differently than everybody who has spoken so far. I think there's a lot of merit in what Bob had to offer, in particular. I think that it's not quite as bad as business as usual, and what I mean by that is simply to compare the numbers, I think it was something like $18 billion that the President managed to balloon the budget agreement last year; this time it's only $6 billion. I might be a little bit off on those figures. But the amount of inflation, if you will, in the process of negotiations wasn't quite as bad. And I think the Republicans did score some victories. I certainly applaud the outcome on the U.N. funding agreement, because what we're agreeing to pay is much less than what the U.N. was claiming that was owed. That's the first part. And the second part, the agreement on abortion funding, restores an understanding on that part of the budget that existed in the Reagan and Bush era, and it was an understanding that personally I applauded, and I think that the Republicans did a good job hanging tough on that, and they're at least partially getting their way, and that's how government works. So in that I'd give them some plus points. I take a different view than Cynthia on the education question and think it's unfortunate that the Republicans gave in, not so much on the money issue. There's probably room for some continued government - federal government - role in the funding of education, but it needs to be turned more and more into block grants, which Republicans have made modest progress towards doing to get that money back to the states and localities to decide issues like student/teacher ratio at the local level where it belongs.

TERENCE SMITH: Bob Kittle, you made a passing reference there to a tax cut, or the lack thereof. Months ago, I recall you arguing strongly for one. Do you see it as a missed opportunity?

ROBERT KITTLE: I certainly do, Terry. I think with the surpluses that we now have we - if we have fiscal restraint and with a limit on spending, there is plenty of room to have a tax cut. I think a tax cut is warranted, we raised taxes in 1992 in order to retire the deficit. The deficit more or less has been taken care of now. I think tax relief is in order. And quite frankly, I think there's a lot of blame that goes around on both sides here. The Republicans passed a tax cut of almost $800 billion over ten years, and the President vetoed it. At that point, the President said he was willing to agree to a smaller tax cut, maybe one of about half that size. And the Republicans at that stage, I think, dropped the ball when they decided, no, we're not going to bargain, we're going to use this as a campaign issue in the year 2000. So it's a missed opportunity. We could have had a tax cut of some sort. And again, in the year 2000, with the congressional and presidential elections -- election campaigns going on, we're not going to have progress on anything. Things will be at a standstill. We'll, you know, just continue things as they are they are. There won't be a tax cut next year, there won't be think progress toward reforming Social Security or Medicare. There really won't be any big decision made on what to do with the budget surplus, and, in fact, we'll only have that surplus if Congress shows some more fiscal restraint than it has shown this year.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. Lee Cullum, speaking of the year 2000 and the election coming up, which of these issues do you think is likely to play in that campaign?

LEE CULLUM: Well, Terry, I think the defense spending issue may very well play. I was glad to see that defense spending was increased. I think it's necessary. I was certainly glad to see a pay increase for our people in the military. It's outrageous that we have 13,000 military families on food stamps. It's unacceptable. So I think we may see this becoming an issue, and I hope it does. I think we need a national debate on our defense posture.

TERENCE SMITH: Cynthia Tucker, what do you think, as far as the politics of this goes?

CYNTHIA TUCKER: Well, Terry, I think that if in fact the Republicans try to use a tax cut in the 2000 elections, they will be playing to a very small audience. I think one of the reasons they gave up on that was because they saw that the American public did not view that as the... as a priority. Americans were much more interested in shoring up Social Security, for instance. But one of the things that I think may play in the 2000 campaign very strongly is something we haven't mentioned so far because it is not a budget issue per se, but that's the debate over patients' bill of rights. I think that that continues to be a strong point for the Democrats, and you talk about lost opportunities, I believe that the Republicans are going to come to regret on the campaign trail that they could not bring themselves to agree to a broad patients' bill of rights.

TERENCE SMITH: Do you think, Pat McGuigan, do you think the Republicans will pay a price for that?

PATRICK McGUIGAN: I think there is a potential for there to be a downside for the Republicans on that issue, even though essentially they're doing the right thing, they're fighting to continue having a marketplace in health care, rather than the slow-motion shift towards Clinton care that the President and some of his allies want. So they're doing the right thing, perhaps they're not doing the right thing in every particular vote. Personally I think the Republican position probably should be a little closer to that of Tom Coburn from Oklahoma, who has conceded some points on the criticisms of HMO's and other health organizations, but not gone as far as the Democrats. So politically, he might have a more palatable position for the Republicans.

TERENCE SMITH: I saw you nodding your head when Bob Kittle was speaking of the tax cut. You're a chorus there?

PATRICK McGUIGAN: Oh, yes, absolutely. I think that that was a missed opportunity, and I would probably agree with Bob -- it's like now we're having this argument over a relatively small budget reduction across the board, and that's the flip side of the very argument that Bob made about tax cuts. Let's take some of that surplus, whether it's apparent or real, I'm not completely convinced yet, but take some of that surplus and begin to have tax cuts for taxpayers.

TERENCE SMITH: Well, Lee Cullum, that argument over now less than 1/2 of 1 percent is across-the-board tax cut -- spending cut, rather, excuse me -- is the sticking point right now. What's your view of that?

LEE CULLUM: Well, Terry, you know, it's hard to argue. I think it amounts to about $1 billion or something like that. It's minor. And yet I was reading about Peter Drucker today in the "New York Times," whom I admire enormously-- he's now 90 years old and still brilliant-- and he was saying that it's better to cut out an activity, that is the best way to cut spending in any enterprise. It's silly to put less money into something that shouldn't be done at all in the first place. So I would actually rather see specific programs addressed and eliminated where they really aren't contributing. But I have to say that a 0.4 percent cut across the board is not going to be catastrophic at all.

TERENCE SMITH: All right, Cynthia Tucker, a final word on that from you?

CYNTHIA TUCKER: Well, I think it is important to remember the politics here. The reason the Republicans are insisting on this across-the-board cut, which I agree is foolish because it is arbitrary, is because they want to be able to say that they have not dipped into Social Security reserves. And there has been fiscal profligacy on both sides here and that is Republicans, too, have violated the spending caps that they agreed to in 1997, so they want this agreement so that they can be able to say that they were fiscal conservatives.

TERENCE SMITH: All right, we have to go. Thank you all very much.

DIALOGUE

JIM LEHRER: Now, a Gergen dialogue. David Gergen talks to Jan Jarboe Russell, author of "Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson."

DAVID GERGEN: Jan, this book is really a biography of a marriage, a marriage between Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson. And the beginning of the relationship and the day they got married seemed to capture so much for you.

JAN JARBOE RUSSELL: It did. It is a biography of a marriage, because that's when Mrs. Johnson becomes a public person. That's why I started it there. And I also think their wedding day tells so much about their relationship. They had only known each other ten weeks, and Lyndon Johnson essentially gave her the Johnson treatment and said, "Either marry me today or forget it." And she was afraid that he meant it, and so she said, "Okay." And they were at Karnack, at her hometown, and they decided they would drive to San Antonio to be married, a distance of about 425 miles. So Johnson called up an old courthouse crony of his and said, "Fix this up, because we're going to be in San Antonio tonight to get married." So they drove that long distance across the bare and muddy roads of Texas, and they arrived in San Antonio and got to the church. And they had the marriage license, they had everything, the preacher, they had everything there, except they realized that they did not have a wedding ring. And so President Johnson barks at this guy, "Go across the street to the Sears and Roebuck and buy Bird a wedding ring." The guy was flabbergasted. He said, "You mean to tell me that you've driven all across Texas today and you didn't think to buy this woman a wedding ring?" And Johnson said, "No." So the guy goes across the street, he brings back a stack of wedding rings, and Mrs. Johnson carefully tries each one on. And finally she finds one that fits, and Johnson pays $2.58. And that's Mrs. Johnson's wedding ring. But the point is that from the beginning, the focus was always on him. There she was on her wedding day with no music, no invitations, no flowers, no family.

DAVID GERGEN: And a ring straight from Sears and Roebuck.

JAN JARBOE RUSSELL: And a ring straight from Sears and Roebuck that she did not have one thing to say about. And I really think it sets the stage for this marriage. And from the beginning, the focus was on Lyndon Johnson, and it stays on Lyndon Johnson even to this day.

DAVID GERGEN: Mm-hmm. They were married in 1934.

JAN JARBOE RUSSELL: Right.

DAVID GERGEN: He was not yet in Congress.

JAN JARBOE RUSSELL: No.

DAVID GERGEN: She was... they were both still young at that point. He was getting ready to run.

JAN JARBOE RUSSELL: He was a congressional secretary for Richard Clayburg, but soon afterwards... she said... in one of her love letters, she said, "Oh, Lyndon, tell me what the deal is. Please don't let it be politics." And then as history knows, it was politics. And three years after they were married, he ran for Congress, and Mrs. Johnson financed that campaign with $10,000 from her mother's inheritance. And so from the beginning, the pattern of the marriage was there. She was going to be his financial support, she was going to be his emotional support, and she was going to get behind him and push for his sake, not for her sake. Even though she was... was and is a very smart woman, graduated from the University of Texas with not one, but two degrees, highest honors that there were ...a very smart woman, but her ambition was for her husband. And I think that's different than some of the other First Ladies that we've looked at in history.

DAVID GERGEN: When you interviewed Katherine Graham from the "Washington Post" about Mrs. Johnson, she told you, "It was very clear to me what kind of team they were. He could not have been Lyndon Johnson without Lady Bird." Do you agree with that?

JAN JARBOE RUSSELL: I completely agree with it. I think that what Ms. Graham was trying to get was he would never have even lasted in politics. At every important political campaign, there came a moment where he wanted to give up. It happened in '60, it happened in '48, and each time Mrs. Johnson would go to him and essentially say, "Buck up. Do your job. A lot of people are depending on you. You can be a great man." But she did...she held him together emotionally so that he could run. As many of Johnson's biographers have written, and as you probably know, he was a man of extreme emotion, really highs and really lows. Mrs. Johnson told me that there were times he was so depressed, you know, he would stare at the ceiling. And she became that emotional center for him and held him together. Also, she held the staff together, she held the family together, she built the business that helped support them all. So she really is their...a team, a part of this team. But the focus was on him.

DAVID GERGEN: Sometimes she had to put up with a lot.

JAN JARBOE RUSSELL: She had to put up with a lot. The most difficult parts of this book were in fact trying to get down on page how President Johnson would, in her own words, bully her, ridicule her, push her to be more than she thought she could be. She said to me in our first interview, "Lyndon loved to play the Pygmalion. And one of the things I had to cope with was the darker aspects of that because, on one hand, it's great to be dressed and taken care of, on the other hand, you lose your identity in that." Then also there was the infidelity, that it wasn't once, it wasn't twice, it was a continual pattern in the marriage, often with women that Mrs. Johnson knew. And the way she dealt with it, as John Connolly said, was to pretend that there was nothing to deal with.

DAVID GERGEN: I know there are elements of this book which have caused pain to her.

JAN JARBOE RUSSELL: There are.

DAVID GERGEN: And yet there is also here a profile of a woman of enormous personal courage and who really helped him on issues such as civil rights.

JAN JARBOE RUSSELL: Right. In 1964, after President Johnson forced through the Civil Rights Act, Mrs. Johnson was talking to people, and they were really giving up on the Democratic Party in the South. And she turned to the group of advisors and said, "we can't give up on the South. And I want to go and give this message." At the time that she said that, it was too dangerous for Johnson to go into some of these areas to campaign, it was Goldwater and Johnson. And so she went, the very first, first lady to campaign on her own without her husband. Not even Eleanor Roosevelt had done that.

DAVID GERGEN: A whistle stop?

JAN JARBOE RUSSELL: A whistle stop. For four days in 1964, she made 47 speeches. She went straight to white southerners and said, "either the whites-only signs go down, or the South goes down, because economically, if we keep this up, we're segregating ourselves from the modern world." Her message was very practical. She said, "I love the South, I love its ways. The Democratic Party has been good to the South, and now it's time for the South to be good to the Democratic Party." And there were bomb threats. The FBI had to send a train in front of hers to sweep the tracks, and there were placards that said, "Black Bird, Go Home." And George Wallace wouldn't meet her train. On and on it went. But she stood firm, and she stood firm on behalf of civil rights.

DAVID GERGEN: Let me ask you a final question-because we could go on a long time-- I know she comes... it almost sounds like another age when we talk about some of this, but are there lessons here for women today?

JAN JARBOE RUSSELL: Well, I think she is from another era, but I think she's a reminder of the fact that, you know, not all of us do have to achieve our ambition on our own, and there... and marriage itself can be fulfilling. And I think one reason that she's such a well-loved First Lady is that she stands for the pleasures of the soil and for natural things and for sort of not... maybe she's not the most beautiful woman in the world, but she's honest and down to earth. And she was faithful, not only to her husband, but to her country at a very difficult time. And I don't think that's such a bad prescription for life.

DAVID GERGEN: Jan Jarboe Russell, thank you.

JAN JARBOE RUSSELL: Thank you.

FINALLY - URBAN ELEPHANTS

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, a tale of urban elephants in Thailand. Ian Williams of Independent Television News reports from Bangkok.

IAN WILLIAMS: A scrub down before a night on the town. 42-year-old Tongdee looks in pretty good shape, but the three-ton elephant is facing a mid-life crisis. She's out of a job. So her owner, her Mahout, has brought her from the lush jungle of Northeast Thailand to the concrete jungle of Bangkok looking for work. Home is now a grim piece of wasteland in the city's center, which she shares with aspiring local footballers. As evening approaches, she's loaded up with bananas, her diminutive Mahout taking the driver's seat. Then she launches off down the treacherous streets of one of the world's most congested and polluted cities. Tongdee has become a beggar. Her Mahout and his friends sell bags of bananas for 20 baht, about 30 pence each, and there are plenty of takers among the curious urban onlookers.

MAHOUT: (speaking through interpreter) There is nothing to eat at home. Bangkok is a big city, a gold rush town. This isn't cruel, not as cruel as letting them do logging.

IAN WILLIAMS: It's the decline of the logging industry that's thrown scores of elephants out of work and into Bangkok. As many as 70 are roaming the city streets, and more are arriving all the time. Roger Lohanan wants to drive them all out.

ROGER LOHANAN: Yeah, that's the one, that's the one we... That's one of the baby elephants.

IAN WILLIAMS: The animal rights activist scours the city's wasteland and rubbish tips looking for new arrivals.

ROGER LOHANAN: This is a rubbish dump. There are a lot of places like this in Bangkok that a lot of elephants can hide.

IAN WILLIAMS: He tries to reason with the mahouts, but few will listen. So he phones the local police, pleading for them to truck the elephants out of town. Bangkok, he says, is no place for an elephant.

ROGER LOHANAN: They shouldn't walk the elephant on the road because they can easily get hit by the car. And once an elephant is crippled, especially the leg, they are waiting for... waiting to die.

IAN WILLIAMS: Traffic is the biggest danger. But elephants have also fallen victim to potholes, fumes and noise. A medical team is now on permanent standby to rush out and treat the city's latest residents. Ronnachit Rungsri is one such medic. He's been called out to deal with this group of newly arrived elephants, but his hypodermic doesn't contain drugs but a microchip, so he can keep tabs on where the elephant goes. He says you can't simply kick them out.

RONNACHIT RUNGSRI: (speaking through interpreter) We have to try and understand them, not just push them back. We should provide elephants with jobs and incomes for their mahouts. After all, elephants are the most important animals in Thailand.

IAN WILLIAMS: Whichever way you look at them, a is amen as in the city or in a rather more sympathetic light, elephants have become a fact of life on the streets of Bangkok. And they're likely to keep coming just as long as the mahouts here reckon there's money to be made. Tongdee continues to work the streets until the early hours of the morning. One sympathetic charity has given her a bicycle light fixed on her basket so she can be better seen in the dark. Sharing a quiet drink under the watchful eye of an elephant may be some people's idea of fun, but this invasion is proving a nightmare for the city authorities. For them, Bangkok's got enough problems even without the presence of a herd of elephants.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday: The EgyptAir crash investigation centered on a relief pilot who took over the controls moments before the plane began its plunge into the sea, killing all 217 aboard. And Hurricane Lenny's winds reached 150 miles an hour as it pounded the Virgin Islands. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.