The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening, I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, Ray Suarez explains the new law that permits electronic signatures, Margaret Warner examines the press crackdown in Russia, Paul Solman talks to Phil Jackson, pro basketball's Zen coach, Mark Shields and Paul Gigot analyze the week of politics, and Robert Pinsky recites a poem for fathers. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday.

NEWSHOUR

JIM LEHRER: The Energy Department announced it has found two computer hard drives containing nuclear weapons secrets. They disappeared six weeks ago at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Energy Secretary Richardson said they turned up today within the lab's secure area. He said they are being evaluated to make sure they are authentic. The Senate today gave official status to electronic signatures. It unanimously approved a bill giving them the same legal status as a pen-and-paper document. Businesses and consumers would be able to finalize deals on- line with keystrokes or the click of a mouse. The House has already approved the bill, and President Clinton has endorsed it. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. Overseas today, Serbia's best- known opposition leader, Vuk Draskovic, was shot and wounded at a vacation home. He said Yugoslav President Milosevic was behind it. We have a report from Richard Vaughan of Associated Press Television News.

RICHARD VAUGHAN: The opposition leader was watching TV when gunmen fired at him through a window. After the first bullet grazed his temple, another hit his ear lobe. Draskovic described how he fell on his knees. When more shots were fired, he hid behind a wall. He went onto say that Serbia was a terrorist country, which had been turned into a concentration camp. This is a country of anarchy, he said, with no judicial system. Serbia is the cancer of the Balkans. Russia's foreigner minister sent a letter to Draskovic condemning the shooting as a terrorist attack. The letter was held up at a news conference given by Draskovic's renewal movement. A spokesman for the party said he had no doubt who was behind the shooting. The movement suspects the secret service of Milosevic is behind the attack. Draskovic survived a road crash last November in which three party members died. The circumstances were also suspicious.

JIM LEHRER: The shooting took place in Montenegro, also part of Yugoslavia. Police there said they detained the gunmen and knew who ordered the shooting. They did not provide details. Russia's only independent media owner was formally charged today with embezzling state funds. Later, the Interfax News Agency said Vladimir Gusinsky had been released, but told to stay in Moscow. His media outlets are known for criticizing the government. Russian President Putin has said the arrest was excessive, but not politically motivated. We'll have more on this story later in the program tonight. Back in this country today, federal regulators gave final approval to the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE. The new company, Verizon Communications, will be the largest local phone company and wireless provider in the nation. The deal was announced almost two years ago. President Clinton said today he's frustrated about rising gas prices in the Midwest. Drivers there are paying over $2 a gallon, about 40 cents more than the rest of the country. The President said it's not clear if there's been price- gouging.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We know that the prices were affected by the shutdown of a refinery, which is coming back up -- a leak in a pipeline, which is the cheapest way to transport gas -- and an unusual increase in demand in the Chicago Milwaukee area. And all that affected it. Also they used the cleaner gasoline, which is more expensive to produce. But that's only about five or six cents a gallon.

JIM LEHRER: Administration officials discussed the problem with oil company representatives earlier this week. They'll meet again next week. That's it for the News Summary tonight; now it's on to electronic signatures, the media baron arrest in Russia, Coach Jackson of the Lakers, Shields and Gigot, and some Father's Day poetry.

FOCUS - SIGN HERE

JIM LEHRER: Signing on the dotted line, on-line, and to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: Can an electronic signature sent over the Internet have the same legal status as the scrawl we all do with pen and paper? Yes, it can, according to legislation passed today by the Senate, and previously by the House. And that means businesses and consumers could sign contracts online, including applying for a loan or closing a mortgage. The bill also allows businesses to send disclosures or notices, such as billing statements, to consumers via e-mail, and financial institutions such as banks or insurance companies to keep records like checks or copies of contracts in electronic rather than paper form. President Clinton has already said he'll sign the bill. To explain its implications, we're joined by Frank Torres, legislative counsel for Consumers Union, a consumer advocacy organization, and Scott Cooper, manager of technology policy for Hewlett-Packard, one of the companies that lobbied for this legislation.

Well, Frank, let's start with you. What is an electronic signature?

FRANK TORRES, Consumers Union: An electronic signature is simply an electronic form of your regular signature. But in the electronic form that means it's a code or some sort of signal that you'll send out over the Internet when you want to sign a document.

RAY SUAREZ: How is this different from punching in a credit card number, something that millions of people are already doing to buy household items or plane tickets?

FRANK TORRES: It's something similar to that. But a consumer will have to go out and actually obtain one of these digital certificates that they'll be able to use when they sign. It's more than just making a purchase now. It signing onto a mortgage contract, not just applying for the mortgage contract, but actually affixing essentially your John Hancock to it.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Scott Cooper, who was for this? And what will it allow that's so important that wasn't possible before this bill was signed?

SCOTT COOPER, Hewlett- Packard: I think we won't know the answer to that for a couple years. I mean, there are some easy things that you can do now, as Frank said, that you couldn't do before -- that you can have contracts that you can download, perhaps even make changes on them, send them back to the company say this is what I will agree to. So you can empower consumers to do more than you could with a credit card in sort of an either/or kind of situation. So I think that we'll find a lot of uses where we now have either credit cards or you would have to go to a bank, you would have to go to an insurance company and actually physically undertake the settling of the contract. You can now do that on line. What I think is going to be very interesting, though, is what people may think about next week or the week after or two years from now about new ideas that work very well on line that we just didn't think about until we had actually the ability to do an electronic signature and electronic contracts. And that's going to be interesting.

RAY SUAREZ: But for anyone who has ever signed a contract, there's a certain ritual about it, there are seals, sometimes a stamp from a notary public, witnesses to signatures. Are we now in the process of creating electronic forms of these things that will add that extra stamp of verifiability to it?

SCOTT COOPER: I think we are. I think that you'll find a whole continuum of security, that at the high end when you're buying your home, you will have a lot of security, we'll have a lot of steps that you'll have to go through. If what you're doing is making a transaction with perhaps somebody you don't know but you, you know, it's of a minor amount of money, under $100, you may need a lot less security because of the price of the object. It doesn't really matter that much. So whether you need the version of the seal or the notary will depend on the product or the service, just as it does today.

RAY SUAREZ: Frank Torres, did this bill have to undergo some change till it passed consumers' unions sniff test?

FRANK TORRES: Absolutely. There are two different versions of the bill, one that passed out of the House and one that passed out of the Senate. And the debate really came when the two bills had to be reconciled. And one of the big questions was, how do we deal with consumers concerns about the fraud issue, or how do we address the consumers concerns if you've ever received an e-mail and had a tough time opening up the attachment? What happens if the important disclosure of the contract itself was sent to a consumer and it gets lost in the Internet ether, and the consumer either never receives it or has a difficult time opening it? And that's what a lot of people spend a lot of time trying to figure out. Senator Leahy and Widen and Senator McCain's office, as well as Congressman Bliley and Senator Sarbanes worked really hard to figure out how to address some of these concerns that consumer groups had.

RAY SUAREZ: Will consumers who are taking advantage of these new services now made possible also have to take on a certain level of responsibility, a certain level of perhaps risk to save these things in forms that they can retrieve, to make sure that they can get it to hand when they need it?

FRANK TORRES: Consumers need to exercise some caution. If you're not comfortable with being on line, if you have no idea what your hardware or software requirements are, hold off from doing these on line contracts -- and wait and see how they work and wait until you have a better understanding. If you agree to receive on line disclosures, keep a copy of it, either print it up or obtain a printed copy from whoever you're doing business with. So you've got a backup. Systems crash, you could lose what you have online if that's where you kept it. The last thing is to really keep a list of whom you've decided to do business with on line, because if you change your e-mail address, you've got the burden to notify that company of that particular change. Or if you're not getting disclosures, you need to have a resource, a list to rely on so that you can go back and get that type of information.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Scott Cooper, in the news in the last couple month have been attacks on databases owned by major commercial enterprises, worms that get into people's home computers coming in through e-mail that destroy data and -- in effect -- destroy property. Does this worry you as we embark on this new set of possibilities?

SCOTT COOPER: Well, I think everything that Frank said is what consumers should do, they should be very careful of the data that they keep. The other side of that, the data that the banks or insurance companies will have, is not going to be nearly as susceptible to any kind of risk. They will have their data held in a very careful manner. So you always have that backup of information available to them -- just as the way that the IRS or Social Security or the government agencies keep most of that information already on line. So there's already that move from a paper world to a digital world going on as we speak. So I think there's a lot of precautions that you need to take. But I don't think it's any different than precautions you take in the paper world about making sure that you always have access to the data.

RAY SUAREZ: Except that when I sign a piece of paper with someone I'm making a transaction with, I take a copy home, they may retain a copy for their records, but I have a pretty good idea of where the chain of possession leads the information on this document. I don't always have that pretty good idea in the electronic world.

SCOTT COOPER: Well, that's why I think it's important that you do have, as Frank said, that you have an insurance that when you receive that information that you are sure that you got what you think you did, and maybe even print it. As a computer company that makes a lot of printer We're very happy that that may be part of the solution here. But the thing for so many people is that where is your VCR warranty, where is your insurance, your latest insurance version of your life insurance? A lot of people may not know readily what those answers are either. The fact that you have a place where you can go for those, even if you can't find your copy, that there will exist that other copy readily accessible to you as well, I think is a very important step we've take then this bill. So you can go back to the company -- you can get another copy of those bills that will be just the same as your original.

RAY SUAREZ: What about privacy, Frank Torres?

FRANK TORRES: Privacy is absolutely an issue. And this bill really doesn't address it. But eventually we'll need Congress to take a look at that issue. Consumers are very concerned about their privacy in the on- line environment especially. But in addition, there's some other things that I think still need to be addressed here. One is how do we resolve disputes that might arise - now that people are buying CD's and books on line, but now perhaps signing for mortgages and insurance products, how do we resolve some of those disputes and will any savings that come about from this efficiency that the Internet will create, will these savings actually be passed onto the consumer who decides to shop and get a mortgage on line?

RAY SUAREZ: And should we worry about verifiability, that someone who is telling you they're contracting with you really is who they say they are?

SCOTT COOPER: Just as if somebody came to your door or went to a mall or you did something on line or through a catalog, I think that those are still concerns that consumers need to have. I think, though, that with a system that you have of verifiability through that digital signature though, through the certification process, most of that can be addressed already. I think with the work of groups like the Consumers Union, the FTC, the Better Business Bureau, that problems that already exist in the real word will not go away in the digital world, but I think they're addressable. They're still part of a reasonable system of back and forth between consumers and businesses.

RAY SUAREZ: Scott Cooper, Frank Torres, thanks a lot.

FOCUS - CRACKDOWN

JIM LEHRER: The crackdown on a media empire in Russia, Kwame Holman begins.

KWAME HOLMAN: Vladimir Gusinsky, one of Russia's most influential media tycoons, was arrested by agents of the Russian government Tuesday and taken to Moscow's notorious Butyrskaya Prison. At the time, he was not told why he was being held. Today, Gusinsky was formally charged with embezzlement and this evening he was released upon signing a pledge not to leave the country. The arrest came just weeks after the offices of Gusinsky's principle holding, Media Most, were raided by masked government agents searching for evidence of various crimes. International reaction to this week's arrest was swift:

LOCKHART: We do have a concern about press freedom in Russia, and that concern was expressed directly to President Putin in his meeting with President Clinton. We're going to want to take a look at this and understand the details, but we are quite concerned about some of the steps that have been taken against a free media.

KWAME HOLMAN: Gusinsky and his various media outlets, which include television, radio, newspapers and magazines, have all been outspoken in their criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin -- particularly his prosecution of the war in Chechnya. A popular puppet show on Gusinsky's NTV mocks Putin's leadership. Gusinsky's lawyer and other critics charge the arrest shows the anti-democratic nature of Putin's 2-month old presidency.

GENRY REZNIK, lawyer for Vladimir Gusinsky: (speaking through interpreter): I can say quite frankly and firmly that on one of the levels of work of our security forces a police regime is being formed or has been formed already.

KWAME HOLMAN: President Putin, who has been abroad this week in Spain and Germany, found questions about the arrest overshadowing his diplomatic efforts to expand Russian economic ties with Western Europe. He initially denied any involvement in the decision to arrest Gusinsky and yesterday, in Berlin, criticized the arrest as "excessive." Putin's denial caused former Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev and others in Russia to speculate that Putin's chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin, had ordered the arrest behind the President's back -- an ominous sign says Gorbachev:

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, Former Leader of USSR (speaking through interpreter): I can tell you this is the worst kind of situation. It's better if you've made a mistake to correct it. But if some kind of forces start acting behind your back, and the President knows that, then that is an alarming situation.

KWAME HOLMAN: Today, President Putin repeated his criticism of the arrest saying: "I don't think the prosecutors should necessarily have used such a measure as arrest. But I don't have reason to believe that they broke the law." Putin also speculated that Gusinksy may be eligible for amnesty as a recipient of a state medal, an honor he received during the Soviet era.

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner takes it from there.

MARGARET WARNER: For more on this arrest-- and what it says about the new Russian president-- we turn to Michael McFaul, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Assistant Political Science Professor at Stanford University. He travels frequently to Russia; Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center and author of "After the Collapse: Russia Seeks its Place as a Great Power." He was born in Russia and is now a U.S. citizen. And Ellen Mickiewicz, director of the Dewitt Wallace Center for Communications & Journalism at Duke, and author of "Changing Channels-- Television and the Struggle for Power in Russia." Welcome all of you.

Michael McFaul, what do you make of all these twists and turns in this case? How do you explain what's going on?

MICHAEL McFAUL: Well the day Mr. Gusinski was arrested I think was one of the darkest moments for Russian democracy that I can remember in several years. It meant that state was intervening against society, and against independent media to achieve political ends. It also meant, secondly, a very ominous time that Mr. Putin it appears was not in charge in the Kremlin. But then there's a third message here. Civil society rallied through his cause, the other oligarchs, the so-called oligarchs rallied to his cause, and the western international community rallied to his cause. It means that democracy is not over in Russia. I score this one -- one side for the authoritarians and one side for the democrats.

MARGARET WARNER: Ellen Mickiewicz, tell us more about Gusinski. Do you regard him as a great champion of the independent press?

ELLEN MICKIEWICZ: Yes. Gusinski is no Boy Scout. Nobody who is a major businessman in Russia has achieved that position very easily. It's an area that is shot through with corruption and illegality. So that's simply to be understood. It's a nasty business. But what Gusinski has done is to create for Russia and for almost the whole country an alternative commercially based media system that has outstanding news gathering and news production record -- one that has won really the credibility among Russian viewers. And that is a very, very important, because it's the only nationally powerful counter weight to state sources of information. I think that is an extraordinary kind of achievement and one that makes you wonder why Gusinski -- who is not one of the biggest of oligarchs, was chosen.

MARGARET WARNER: So, Dmitri Simes, is this what Vladimir Putin found threatening - that he had this independent media voice - a very powerful one, criticizing him?

DIMITRI SIMES: I'm sure that that was a factor. I also have to say that Vladimir Gusinski is not Andrei Sakarov.

MARGARET WARNER: He is not Andrei Sakarov, no.

DIMITRI SIMES: He's closer to Mayor Lansky than to a real democrat. He has a very vicious security service led by senior KGB generals who came from the political side of the KGB. He used his media ruthlessly to promote his business and political objectives. He attacked his critics on many occasions. And I have a mixed feeling about his arrest. He was singled out because of his free media connection. But I also think that he rather seized the media tycoon... and we should put this arrest in perspective and we should carefully examine charges against him before dismissing them prematurely.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Where do you come down on this difference here?

MICHAEL McFAUL: Well, I agree, Mr. Gusinski is no boy scout, and none of the oligarchs are. The charges however that were brought against him, as I understand them, and there's a lot of - we haven't seen the facts just yet -- by those same standards, every single businessman in Russia and every single oligarch also has to go to jail. People got oil companies in Russia for a song -- people that are close to Mr. Putin now. So what troubles me is not that they're cracking down on having a rule of lost faith but that rule of lost faith means equal law for everyone, not just for your critics.

DIMITRI SIMES: You have to start somewhere, and you cannot go everywhere, and it just is a fact of life like with American intervention - you cannot go everywhere -- but it doesn't mean you should not try to do what is right.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me get Ellen in here.

DIMITRI SIMES: We want to have a level playing field.

MARGARET WARNER: Just a minute, Ellen, I'll go right back to you.

DIMITRI SIMES: We cannot have level playing field in Russia as long as oligarchs are in power.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Ellen Mickiewicz.

ELLEN MICKIEWICZ: Let me just add that this is not an isolated issue with respect to freedom of the press. Therehas been a very disquieting statement on the part of the minister of the press that newspapers will have to be licensed. This is clearly a cloud on the horizon, and there are other aspects too. There are possibilities of yanking licenses of television stations because of warnings. The warnings are very vaguely defined. So I would say that we are really talking about an attitude toward the press in general that actually views press as either with us or against us. And I think this is not the best way to approach press freedom. The government people have said that NTV, the commercial television station of Gusinski's, has attacked the government or is oppositionist. Well, that's what the press is supposed to do. And that is a principle that has not been accepted.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. So Michael McFaul, what does this whole incident tell us about Vladimir Putin and how he's going to exercise power?

MICHAEL McFAUL: Well, we don't know exactly who ordered the arrest when. There are two scenarios: Either he was behind it all and then walked away from it, or he wasn't and now has to clean it up. Either scenario though I think is a bad mark for Mr. Putin. It shows either that he does not respect the rule of law, and Dmitri, if I believe he really did respect that rule of law and he had credentials on that, I might think there's a good first step. But let's not forget that Babitski, Chechnya, many other leaders who have been harassed. His credentials aren't very strong on the rule of law.

MARGARET WARNER: But what about Simes' point that also the West has been asking him to crack down on the corrupt oligarchs?

MICHAEL McFAUL: Well, I really believe that that's what he was doing and that - that was what this was about. And he wanted to be credible. He needs to crack down on those that are his allies, because we know that there are people close to the Kremlin who have broken the same laws. One other thing, though. I think it shows his inexperience with these things. I think we have to remember this guy is new to this game, he's not quite figuring it out, he was terribly embarrassed when he was in Europe. This is not a guy fully in control of his administration.

DIMITRI SIMES: I completely agree with Michael. The problem is that it was a selective negotiation of justice for political reasons -- that Putin has a very bad record as far as freedom of the press is concerned. And accordingly, when he moved against Gusinski, he had no credibility whatsoever. I hope, however, he would not learn the wrong lesson. Maybe is it now the oligarch who've enjoyed immunity.

MARGARET WARNER: I'm sorry, say that again.

DIMITRI SIMES: I hope Putin will not learn the wrong lesson that the oligarchs now should enjoy political immunity --

MARGARET WARNER: You mean because of the outcry?

DIMITRI SIMES: Because of the outcry and because he was forced to retreat.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Ellen Mickiewicz, what impact do you think all of this is going to have now on the media in Russia and on Gusinski? I mean, he's free today but he's under essentially Moscow arrest; he's not allowed to leave the country.

ELLEN MICKIEWICZ: Right, he's released on his own recognizance, essentially, and there are plans to interrogate other people in his company - Malechenko - Dubrojayev, who used to be head of the company is going to be interrogated - at least that's the plan. It seems to me that one benefit of this issue has been brought up is in fact the solidarity that has taken place among journalists who are speaking out. Even the figure of Sergei Derenko,who has been -

MARGARET WARNER: Explain who he is.

ELLEN MICKIEWICZ: He's a vicious journalist attacking government opponents for channel one, which is associated with Boris Birizhovsky, who is Gusinski's opponent. Even that journalist has spoken out against this arrest, surprisingly. So one benefit is really to mobilize the community and that's good, because they will keep close tabs on what's happening. Mobilizing national communities is important, but I think not as important as what happens inside the country. And that's a different atmosphere that Putin will face. I think that's very important. I do not think that Gusinski's properties, media properties are going to moderate their message out of fear. I think not at all. I don't think that's going to happen.

MARGARET WARNER: Dimitri Simes, what do you think is the likely impact, not only on media and Gusinski, but on the business establishment in Russia and on Putin?

DIMITRI SIMES: I think Putin has suffered a very considerable political setback. Second, he is incompetent; he moved at first against regionally - now almost immediately - that was too much -- he was defeated. I hope he will stay on course in terms of trying to consolidate his powers and establish the rule of law. But I completely again agree with Ellen and Michael. He's not a champion of free speech. His instinct seems to be authoritarian whenever possible and to be a democrat only when absolutely necessary.

MARGARET WARNER: Michael McFaul, he has seemed to lead a charmed life politically. Do you think this is the first serious misstep?

MICHAEL McFAUL: Well, there's been a few other missteps, but this is a big one. And we haven't heard the end of it yet. After all, Mr. Gusinski's just been released, but now let's see if the rule of law takes place, and let's see what happens before his next meeting with the G7 in Japan next month. He had expected this to be a kind of coronation on now joining the team. Now there's a lot more uncertainty about that.

MARGARET WARNER: What impact do you think it's going to have on his media and on the business community, that whole balance of power in Russia?

MICHAEL McFAUL: Just doesn't get it. The irony was he sat before investors in Spain saying come invest your money in my country. On the same day, he was arresting not just a media mogul, but a businessman. There's a relationship between the rule of law and democracy, the rule of law and the economy. There's a relationship between democracy and capitalism. And so far, in my opinion, he just doesn't get it. If he doesn't, it's going to be bad for Russia.

MARGARET WARNER: Thank you all three very much.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Coach Jackson of the Lakers, Shields and Gigot, and a Father's Day poem.

FOCUS - COURT ZEN

JIM LEHRER: The Zen master of the basketball court. Our Paul Solman of WGBH-Boston explains.

PAUL SOLMAN: It's finals time for the National Basketball Association, and this year the Indiana Pacers coached by a legend, Larry Bird, are pitted against the Los Angeles Lakers, coached by a curiosity, Phil Jackson. Bird was the master player, winning three world titles in the 1980's. But this is his first trip to the finals as a coach. Phil Jackson, by contrast, was a 6'8" backup teammate of Bill Bradley in the 60's and 70's who specialized in defense -- his arms so long, he could open both front doors of a car-- from the back seat-- at once. Mainly, he was known as the hippie maverick. These days, however, Jackson, is the most successful hippie in the history of NBA coaching, anew-age Philosopher of sorts who won six championships in the 90's with the Chicago Bulls, and is now bidding to become only the second coach ever to win a ring with two different NBA teams. Jackson has had the talent: Michael Jordan in Chicago, now Shaquille O'Neal in L.A. But Jordan never won a crown till Jackson took over, and this, Jackson's first year with the Lakers, is O'Neal's first real shot . So what makes Phil Jackson so successful well, say some, his innovations, like selecting books for his players. This year, he gave Frederick Nietzsche to Shaquille O'Neal.

SHAQUILLE O'NEAL, Los Angeles Lakers: Nietzsche was a difficult book to read. But from what I gather, Nietzsche was so unique, they thought he was crazy, so they put him in a mental home. I guess Phil thinks I'm very unique to a point where I may be crazy. (Laughter)

PAUL SOLMAN: Jackson's messages can be as enigmatic as his methods. The use of native American rituals in the locker room baffled 21-year-old star Kobe Bryant at first.

KOBE BRYANT, Los Angeles Lakers: Well, he used to do things like cleanse the room, you know, he used to get, like, evil spirits out of the room, like, lighting incense and all this other stuff.

PAUL SOLMAN: But Bryant bought in quickly, if not spiritually.

KOBE BRYANT: Some of it's funny, as far as cleansing the room or whatever, aromatherapy. It's nice. It keeps the team relaxed, it keeps it fun.

PAUL SOLMAN: O'Neal sounds like more of a convert: In using new age techniques to get position near the basket, for instance.

SHAQUILLE O'NEAL: Karate. Motions. Dancing. Breathing. See, like, when I try to get on position and they take that away, I just... (Breathing deeply) rub off and get another position.

PAUL SOLMAN: Not everyone follows Jackson's path, of course. Larry Bird has been compared to him, in that both feature a more consensual, less dictatorial approach than most coaches. So we asked Bird:

PAUL SOLMAN: Do you share any of Phil Jackson's so-called spiritual approach to coaching? There seem to be sort of similarities in the way you guys approach.

LARRY BIRD: Hey, I pray on every shot. (Laughter) that's as close as it gets.

PAUL SOLMAN: But despite what at times sounds like disdain from his colleagues, Jackson keeps marching to his own tom-tom, and will try almost anything. He splices scenes from movies into game footage his players study, recently, the menacing "American History X." Veteran backup John Sally, who won two championship rings with the bad-boy Detroit pistons in the late 80's, another with the Bulls under Jackson, is a Phil Jackson devotee: From yoga practice and meditation to lessons from the Lakota Sioux tribe.

JOHN SALLEY, Los Angeles Lakers: You want to learn from a chief like that so you can be a chief one day. And if you don't pay attention, you're an idiot.

PAUL SOLMAN: But don't guys tune out if "American history X" is spliced into a game film?

JOHN SALLEY: No, I think that would make you tune in.

PAUL SOLMAN: And so, on Tuesday, the Lakers up 2-1 in the series and, as it happened, on the verge of their third win, we tried to tune in to coach Jackson as well. He began by explaining what has shaped him: His coaches in the pros and high school; his fundamentalist Christian background, growing up in North Dakota,

PHIL JACKSON, Coach, Los Angeles Lakers: The fact that I wasn't really from a family that participated in athletics. It was a religious community that I lived in, a strict one. My parents were both ministers. This is kind of an aberration. I mean, it's not something that I was supposed to doing, but here I am doing this, and that I've spent a lot of my life g it is kind of a strange thing.

PAUL SOLMAN: What do you try to do, spiritually with your team? I mean, that seems different than what most other coaches say they're doing.

PHIL JACKSON: Everybody is trying to do the same thing. You know, when you develop a community, you're developing a spirit, esprit de corps, whatever you what to call it. And that's I think, you know, what every coach wants to do. Some of them do it from a standpoint of working out of anger, working out of fighting, working out of the challenge, working out of self-promotion. Some of the coaches get teams to dislike them, play and show them that I can... "I'll show this coach I can do this," or the challenging kind.

PAUL SOLMAN: Fear?

PHIL JACKSON: Fear is a great motivator. Fear and greed are two things that my former boss said everybody works hard under. And I was one to say love is something that-- or that community feeling is also something that I think drives people. And that's one of the places I go to.

PAUL SOLMAN: The way you try to teach spirituality is meditation, yoga, things that many of us think of as very personal kinds of roads to spiritual development, not necessarily as communal.

PHIL JACKSON: Yeah, I understand what you're saying. It does smack of that. But the real idea is that we call it conspiring together, breathing together, with breath, to conspire. And we sit in this attitude of, you know, being able to focus and hold our attention. So it's very important that they have that kind of sense of reading each other, and their level of alertness and awareness and being able to read what's going on on the court causes each of them to react in a certain way. And that's the beauty of basketball, that's the beauty of coaching.

PAUL SOLMAN: For you is that the point of coaching?

PHIL JACKSON: Yeah, definitely. I mean...

PAUL SOLMAN: You don't need another title. You've got six of them already, right?

PHIL JACKSON: Well, that's how you measure it. I mean, you measure by winning, you measure by titles, really what your expertise is. But the fun of this all goes on behind the scenes. And teaching the players, and getting them in a position where they can be retentive and then see them burst forth in this flowering kind of thing during a game is very rewarding.

PAUL SOLMAN: In his 1995 book "Sacred Hoops," Jackson speaks of group mind, the Tao of leadership, the mystic warrior. But do the players get his spiritual teachings? Do they even read the books he gives them? Ron Harper, relaxing before practice, has been with Jackson for years, and a frequent recipient of his literary gifts.

RON HARPER, Los Angeles Lakers: I didn't read none of them. I got six books now. Let me see. Yeah, six books. So, in my older age, I got something to read.

PAUL SOLMAN: Does it frustrate you at all to think that many of your players say, "well, we don't read the books?"

PHIL JACKSON: Not at all. They can't avoid it, these moments that we have together. I mean, they can't check out. The books themselves, I know a lot of them, maybe 25%, maybe 50% of them read the books. Some of them give them a shot and can't get through. But I know it's going to go somewhere that's going to be beneficial, whether it's on their library, and even if they pick it up 20 years from now, it's still going to be meaningful because it's a gift, and it's a meaningful thing.

PAUL SOLMAN: You gave Shaquille O'Neal Nietzsche.

PHIL JACKSON: Yeah. Actually, when Nietzsche wrote that book, hewas 27, maybe 28, had a very, very pompous opinion about himself and wanted to tell the world, you know, "here I am," you know? And so I thought that, you know, Nietzsche was definitely appropriate for him because here's a guy who's 28 and hasn't won a championship yet. You know, Shaq didn't get all of these connections, I'm sure. But he knew that something very... there was something very subtle that I was sending him a message about, you know. He's a superman, man of steel, that sort of thing. But the books basically say, you know, is this something that corresponds to where you're at in your life, and can I connect with you at this intellectual level. And what I tell them is it's nice to have a companion besides the TV when you're on the road, something that you can, you know, turn that TV off, and you know, open a book and read it before you go to bed at night and understand that there is another world that can open up to you in your intellectual imagination.

PAUL SOLMAN: Any ideas that you've tried that simply were cuckoo, in retrospect, nutty, didn't work?

PHIL JACKSON: Yeah, there was one. There's a therapist that I was friends with and the team we were playing against, the Detroit Pistons, at the time, had a certain stranglehold on the Chicago Bulls. And he kept after me, "I've got something that you can try with these guys." And we got knocked out a lot in these playoffs by physical force, by the force of their physique, so this therapist had this clue. His clue was, you placed, you know, like a Popsicle stick between your molars, you grit your teeth, you eye contact with your companion, your other teammate, and you jump up and down and roar like a gorilla or like a bear or like an animal.

PAUL SOLMAN: You literally put a Popsicle stick in?

PHIL JACKSON: Literally. Grind teeth together, a you make... (Growling) -- So I said, I'm going to try this with these guys. First of all, clenching the jaw, you know, releasing this form of anger, you know, activating yourself by jumping, all of these things made kind of sense to me. I did it with the team, they fell on the floor laughing. I never tried it again.

PAUL SOLMAN: Well, you know, we were watching practice today, and have one drill where people are kind of, like, skipping and raising their hand in the air, and a couple of guys looked a little sheepish while they were doing that.

PHIL JACKSON: Uh-huh. Well, yeah, there's a variety of things like that. But you know, in coordinating your body, things that you do in basketball, you know, just your take-off or changing hand when you shoot lay-ups, and you know, spinning around in the air or just a variety of physical directions, those are all things that I incorporated a lot of times without a ball, that I think are necessary for the body to kind of accommodate and just to get used to doing.

PAUL SOLMAN: A number of your players said that what they took away from your splicing crazy films into the game films or even some of your Lakota Sioux ceremonies, that they were, like, at least different. They weren't boring.

PHIL JACKSON: Right. It's entertaining.

PAUL SOLMAN: Yeah.

PHIL JACKSON: Yeah, that's part of me, that you just change things up, you know -- and I don't know, make the world mysterious -- make it mystical at some level.

PAUL SOLMAN: You define yourself as a Zen Christian. What is that?

PHIL JACKSON: Zen is a particular way of looking at life. It's the moment or, you know, being in the present, you know. Buddhism is compassionate, a compassionate Buddha. Christianity is based on love. So those two things I think coordinate very well together.

PAUL SOLMAN: Loving in the moment.

PHIL JACKSON: Yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: How can a person who's out to lose his ego, such as yourself, be so competitive that your wife is quoted as saying she won't play board games with you because she can't stand how competitive are in them?

PHIL JACKSON: Yeah, that's something entirely that I've worked on for a while. Yeah. I mean, what is it? What gives you satisfaction? You know, the next challenge? Yeah, that's what it is for a competitive person. Someday I'm going to let that go, and that's probably the day I'm going to walk away from coaching basketball.

PAUL SOLMAN: So are those your demons, is that what you're struggling with? Because it seems like an opposition, trying to be egoist, trying to be champion of the whole world.

PHIL JACKSON: Yeah, that's it. Part of it's there. But my theory is you've got to remember the journey. The journey is really where the joy is and that's really the fun of it. The games aren't that much fun; it's the things in between.

PAUL SOLMAN: Phil Jackson, thank y very much.

PHIL JACKSON: Thanks.

FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

JIM LEHRER: And now, before we go, some end of the week political analysis by Shields and Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Mark, there's a lot of wisdom that applies to politics in what Phil Jackson just said, is it not?

MARK SHIELDS: There certainly is, Jim. It was a great piece. But beyond that, nobody is saying that Phil Jackson a to leave the Lakers. They're three games to one lead right now, one game away from the world championship. Only time that coaching changes are made are when things aren't going good with the ball club. That's what we saw this week with the Democrats.

PAUL GIGOT: I give Mark a little Nietzsche from time to time to instruct him ...

JIM LEHRER: Essentially what he said - that the game is not as much fun as all the stuff - that if you were to make the parallel, the election isn't as much fun as the campaign?

PAUL GIGOT: I don't know a single candidate who actually would say that.

JIM LEHRER: Speaking of campaigns, the big news this week was Daley in for Coelho in the Gore campaign. Do you read anything more - just for the record - anything more into that, other than the fact that Tony Coelho was sick and he had to take a break?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, I do, and Tony Coelho was sick, is sick, Tony's an epileptic, has been for a long time, he's had three seizures this year; he's been hospitalized for an inflamed colon. But there's something else, Jim. I mean, the Los Angeles Times poll today shows Al Gore ten points behind George Bush. He's been consistently behind since the close of the primaries. And what's most unsettling to Democrats who follow this closely is this -- that Al Gore, this is his fourth national campaign -- he ran for President in '88, and ran for Vice President in '92 and '96, ran for President in 2000. And they're a little concerned that during that four times out, he's never developed sort of that trusted cadre of close advisors - I mean, now the story that comes out that he and Coelho didn't know each other that well; they weren't that close. He doesn't know Bill Daley that well - even though Bill Daley's a remarkably talented guy. So there's a sense of, gee, I mean, what's he been doing in these four run-throughs, these four national campaigns if, in fact, he didn't develop a trusted team.

JIM LEHRER: In fact, did Coelho do good service for Gore?

PAUL GIGOT: In some sense he did. I think hepared back on expenses early on in this session before the primaries back in the autumn, when he was bleeding money, Bradley was coming on -- pared back the expenses, helped make the move to Nashville, helped consolidate support within the Democratic ranks. And that's what Coelho is an expert at. I mean, he's a legislative tactician, a creature of Congress, a creature of Democratic partisans. He did those things well. What he didn't do is give the Vice President a kind of broader conceptual identity, a strategic cohesion, a focus. These are the themes, these are the things we're going to stick with. Instead it was - as we've seen -- two weeks this, two weeks that, another month of this, a month of that.

JIM LEHRER: So, Mark, you know Bill Daley.

MARK SHIELDS: I do.

JIM LEHRER: And you know - you just laid out - what you believe, at least, is Al Gore's problem. Is Bill Daley the man to fix it?

MARK SHIELDS: Bill Daley is for a very simple reason, Jim. Bill Daley is it; there will not be anybody after Bill Daley. Al Gore cannot go to a fourth campaign manager without really imploding at some point and losing the trust and confidence of other Democratic candidates. I mean, Bill Daley, not that he would, but he could lay down a list of nonnegotiable demands tonight and, which Al Gore would have to agree to.

JIM LEHRER: What are his strengths? What does he bring to this job?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, Bill Daley first of all is trusted and liked by the press. He's a guy who is straight, he's direct, he's honest, he's -- most of all he's a grownup. There's an old line about sports doesn't build character, it reveals character; it reveals character. I was thinking that as I was watching Phil Jackson. But there's nothing more reveals character, in my experience, than a losing political campaign -- how people conduct themselves when they know their candidate is going down. We've seen -

JIM LEHRER: It's easy to win, isn't it?

MARK SHIELDS: It really is. I mean, but in 1992 when George Bush was losing, Dan Quayle was more loyal to George Bush than George Bush was to his own campaign - Mary Madalene, Terry Clark -- I remember watching those people and having admiration for them because they knew they were going to lose. Bill Daley in 1984 made his bones nationally, politically in the Mondale campaign. And he was a grownup. I mean, he was loyal, he was tough, formidable, he was able and he's that kind of a guy. He took over. He took an awful hit in the teeth from Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was going to name him transportation secretary, the night before he pulled the rug out and put Federico Pena in. And then came back and NAFTA was dead in the water, nobody wanted to go near him. Bill Daley took it over in 1993 and had to persuade people in the White House, and brought it through. So he's considered an effective, able guy.

JIM LEHRER: What do you want to add about Bill Daley?

PAUL GIGOT: There might be one other thing you can do to help. I agree with much of what Mark said. But I think he might be able to bridge the gap within the campaign between some of the new Democratic policy advisors and the consultants who are carving up the political tactics and wanting to attack Bush. And those ideas and then that strategy never has meshed very well. People in campaign have been at odds, and I think he might be able to bridge that gap and say, all right, this is what we're going to do, and let's do it, and I don't want to hear any carping, let's get on with it.

JIM LEHRER: Mark mentioned in the LA Times poll and the other polls are showing bush doing really well, riding all the time. Why? Beyond Gore and his problems, why does George W. Bush doing right now that is so correct and paying off for him?

PAUL GIGOT: The one thing I think he has, he's run a superior campaign. There are people who think that campaigns don't matter. But in two senses, he has a more cohesive team than Gore has had. He's got that cadre. When they were challenged by McCain, they turned around on a dime, there was no back biting. You didn't hear anybody saying it his fault we got beat in New Hampshire. They came away with an alternative and moved ahead. He's had the same strategic vision all along. If you look at a George W. Bush speech now and a George W. Bush speech last September, their pretty darn similar. He's filled in the gaps on certain policies here and there, but the design of the campaign, the themes, are almost identical.

JIM LEHRER: Mark, what do you think?

MARK SHIELDS: Two things I add to that. First of all, American politics is about optimism. Americans are the most optimistic people on the planet. If you think about just American political history, the last half century, Franklin Roosevelt, I mean, the embodiment of optimism, Jack Kennedy over Richard Nixon in 1961, saying, we're going to do it, we can do it, we're -- Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter in 1980, Bill Clinton over George Bush and Bob Dole. There's no question George W. Bush is the more optimistic, the more upbeat of the two candidates, and I think that is -- the other thing he's done and Paul is right about sort of the issues thing. He's recognized or his campaign has recognized very adroitly that we are in a print period of this campaign. There's no television coverage really. There's nothing television happening. And the print period is people looking in the Times, the Post, the Journal, others are reporting on substantive speeches, and it's made for substantive speeches, and it's worked for Bush.

JIM LEHRER: Now, on the optimism thing, though, Paul, Al Gore has come back this week with progress and prosperity. Somebody said hey --

PAUL GIGOT: There's a bit of the cheerleader in there. Some of the polling is showing that the public's mood is not as cheerful as it's been, that wrong track right track number which is so decisive in a campaign, the mood of the country, is the country moving in the right directly, it has moved a little bit more on the wrong track and that obviously hurts the Vice President. So you could see him getting out there and saying things are better than you thought! And he's announcing the surplus numbers which are going to be the budget surplus numbers three weeks in advance this week is really what he did. The other thing is he's not getting credit for the economic good times, and no Democrat since 1960 has won the White House unless they had a significant 14 or 15-point advantage over the other Republican candidate on who would be the better steward of the economy. The Vice President now is about two to five points behind George W. Bush on that measure. He can't afford to let that stay.

MARK SHIELDS: I thought two things that worked for him. One was he borrowed a page right out of Ronald Reagan's 1984 playbook, which is "Morning in America" - contrasting where they were in 1992, where the country was, deplorable economic shape when the Clinton-Gore folks came in, where they are today, reminding people of that. You're better off than you were. Appearing with Bob Rubin, who is the one person that even my conservative friends acknowledge was one of the architects -- they give Alan Greenspan -- can say that. But the other thing, Jim, that shouldn't be overlooked - is I remember -- maybe Paul is too young, but I remember on the day of New Hampshire primary in 1980 when Ronald Reagan beat George Bush and lost Iowa on his way to the nomination the first time - on that day Ronald Reagan shook up his campaign and fired the top three people in his campaign and fired the top three people in his campaign -- and went on and put Bill Casey - not a particularly established campaign manager, later CIA head, in as his chief. So people do not vote for a campaign manager. In spite of -- former campaign managers like myself like to think they didn't vote for James Cargill in 1993 - they voted for Bill Clinton - they didn't vote for Lee Atwater in 1988, they voted for George Bush. And so the final analysis - Bill Daley can do a great job, but it's going to be the Al Gore or George Bush when they pick.

JIM LEHRER: Is capital punishment going to become an issue as a result of these new reports on the states - what do you think?

PAUL GIGOT: I don't think so, Jim. There's a lot of press pressure on both candidates to change their minds on this. I don't think there's anything in it for George W. Bush to change his mind at this stage, and let me defend Al Gore on this. A lot of liberal columnists out there have been saying on everything else they are criticizing the Vice President, he's too flexible, he's too pliable, he changes too often, Elian Gonzalez -- he can't make up his mind. And then yet they're beating up because he won't change his mind on capital punishment.

JIM LEHRER: I interviewed the Vice President last night and he didn't change his position at all; he hung in there on that.

PAUL GIGOT: And since the two men, the two candidates, really don't disagree on this, I don't think this is going to be a big issue.

JIM LEHRER: In a word?

MARK SHIELDS: Only if there's a big bad mistake in Texas.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Thank you all very much.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Friday. Two classified computer hard drives were found at Los Alamos National Lab. They'd been missing for six weeks. And the Senate gave electronic signatures the same legal status as a pen and paper document. the bill now goes to President Clinton.

FATHER'S DAY

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, some words of poetry for fathers, on Father's Day. Here is NewsHour contributor Robert Pinsky, the poet laureate of the United States.

ROBERT PINSKY: From Polonius to Homer Simpson, fatherhood has sometimes been associated with comedy. Like all notions of dignity, fatherhood, in its dignity, invites the banana peel fall of satire. And let's face it, fellow dads, sometimes there is a sitcom absurdity, if not to the role, then to the way we fill that role. William Carlos Williams' poem "Danse Russe" captures the preposterous, even absurd side of being the man who is father in a household. Here is the poem: Danse Russe: "If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame- white disc in silken mists above shining trees,-- if I in my North room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt around my head and singing softly to myself: 'I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so! If I admire my arms, my face my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?" I wish you laughter and affection on Father's Day.

JIM LEHRER: And we'll see you on-line, and again here Monday evening. Have a nice Father's Day weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.