The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Wednesday, Sec. of Defense William Perry will be here for a Newsmaker interview. We have a report on DNA use in the courtroom, Charlayne Hunter-Gault conducts her second conversation about teenage violence, and essayist Roger Rosenblatt considers nature's hidden beauty. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MAC NEIL: The U.S. government today tightened security at Israeli diplomatic offices in the United States following a second car bombing at Jewish sites in London. Today's blast occurred outside a fund-raising organization. There was a similar attack at the Israeli embassy there yesterday. Kevin Dunn of Independent Television News reports on the latest incident.

KEVIN DUNN, ITN: The car bomb which exploded outside a Jewish charity center was, police say, of the same magnitude as the device which wrecked part of the Israeli embassy. Five people, including the occupants of a passing car, were injured. It was pure good fortune no one was killed. The building was an obvious target for anti-Israeli terrorists, and Jewish leaders say there should have been tighter security around it. Police say they have increased patrols past the building but have not prevented parking outside it.

SIR PAUL CONDON, Police Commissioner: A parking code or a yellow line does not deter a suicidal bomber. If we are to combat that sort of threat, then the response has to be far more robust and sophisticated than yellow lines or a parking code.

KEVIN DUNN: Police say it is 10 years since Middle East terrorism was seen on British streets, but since the bombing in Buenos Aires earlier this month of a Jewish center in which 96 people were killed, Jewish leaders have been demanding extra security. They and police blame the attacks on fundamentalists opposed to the Middle East peace process. Police say they have now drawn up a list of up to a hundred Jewish targets which will be guarded by armed police 24 hours a day.

MR. MAC NEIL: In this country, there was increased security at Israeli facilities in many cities. In New York, police parked 10 garbage trucks around the Israeli consulate to prevent vehicles from parking nearby. Those trucks were later replaced with cement barriers. In Washington, there was a marked increase in police presence at the Israeli embassy. Workers also were seen adjusting security cameras on the gates. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: There was a claim today that North Korea has developed five nuclear warheads and will have five more by the end of the year. It came from a defector, reportedly the son-in-law of North Korea's prime minister. Speaking to reporters in Seoul, South Korea, he said the North is developing missiles to carry those warheads. A State Department spokesman said in Washington the man's claims exceeded U.S. intelligence estimates of the North's nuclear program. North Korea and the United States are scheduled to resume talks on the nuclear issue August 5th.

MR. MAC NEIL: Defense Sec. Perry said today the U.S. will send up to 4,000 troops to Zaire and Uganda to help relief efforts for Rwanda's refugees. The U.S. currently has 750 troops involved in the aid effort. More troops and equipment were being readied in Germany for the mission code named Operation Support Hope. At the Pentagon this afternoon, Sec. Perry said no decision had been made on sending a large U.S. force to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, itself, but he said the U.S. was considering it.

WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense: We already have, of course, a survey team into Kigali. There are real advantages to having that -- to having Kigali as a hub for the airport operations, and so if the engineering logistical assessments turn out to be promising, and if the government continues their cooperation, then it's entirely possible that we will want to establish Kigali as a hub being closer to the areas that are affected, and it would just make practical logistic sense.

MR. MAC NEIL: Perry said he will travel to Zaire and Uganda this weekend to inspect international aid efforts there.

MR. LEHRER: The Secretary also said today the United States might push for tougher international sanctions against the Bosnian Serbs if they continue to reject a peace plan, and he said NATO warplanes were prepared to launch air strikes against the Serbs after their attack on a UN convoy in Sarajevo today. One British peacekeeper was killed in that attack. A Bosnian-Serb official said his forces carried out the attack but it was an accident. The Serbs closed down the main road into the capital, Sarajevo. The convoy was approaching that road when it came under fire. We'll have a Newsmaker interview with Sec. Perry right after this News Summary.

MR. MAC NEIL: In economic news, the Commerce Department reported today that orders for durable goods rose 1.3 percent in June, the fourth straight increase. Durables are big ticket items built to last three years or more. Ford Motor Company reported today it earned $1.7 billion in the second quarter. That's up 121 percent from the same period last year. In Russia today, thousands of people were attempting to sell back their shares in the country's largest investment company. More than 20,000 people camped outside the company's offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The selling panic began last week when the government warned it could not guarantee shareholder investments. A spokesman for President Yeltsin said, "These things happen in a market economy."

MR. LEHRER: Major League baseball owners today rejected the players' latest contract proposal. The Players Union is refusing a management demand for a salary cap. They could set a strike date tomorrow. There have been seven work stoppages since 1972.

MR. MAC NEIL: The State Department today demanded the release of two U.S. fishing boats seized by Canadian warships. The boats were in international waters yesterday when they were escorted into the port of St. John's Newfoundland. Their captains were charged with illegal scallop fishing. The U.S. disputes the claim. That's our News Summary. Now it's on to Defense Sec. Perry, DNA fingerprints, breaking the cycle of teenage violence, and essayist Roger Rosenblatt. NEWSMAKER

MR. LEHRER: We begin tonight with the Secretary of Defense, William Perry, who is with us now for a Newsmaker interview. Mr. Secretary, welcome.

SEC. PERRY: Thank you, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: First -- many things to go through -- but first, Rwanda. You are going to Rwanda this weekend. Give us the scope of your mission. What are you going there to find out?

SEC. PERRY: I want to point out first of all, Jim, that this is a tragedy of truly enormous proportions and that the humanitarian operation that is required there is of unprecedented scope. It's of a difficulty greater than any one that anybody has ever attempted before because of the very great distance from the relief supplies, because of the millions of refugees involved, and because of the timeliness necessary to deal with the cholera problem, among others, that are affecting those refugees.

MR. LEHRER: Now, I read today that there's something like 2.4 million refugees in all of not Zaire, 1.8 million in Zaire alone. Do those figures add up to you? Does that sound about right?

SEC. PERRY: The figures I've seen, Jim, are higher than that. There may be actually more than 4 million refugees if you consider the whole area Zaire and Rwanda, but in the Goma and Bukavu area alone --

MR. LEHRER: In Zaire.

SEC. PERRY: In Zaire, there are close to 2 million.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Yeah. All right, but you're going over there to do what?

SEC. PERRY: Well, because this operation is so complex. I point out first of all that the United States military is the only, has the only capability anywhere in the world to apply that complex of logistics support, airlift support, over those distances over this quick a time. That's why the President directed this to do that operation, and it's a very difficult one to manage. He further directed me to go with the commander, Gen. Jowyn, and the two field commanders, Gen. Schroeder and Gen. Knicks, to the site to personally assess the extent of the operation to determine how well they're going in terms of whether we should be taking any corrective actions in the particular approach we're taking now. This is -- this operation is huge in scope, and it's already well underway. It's moving in a full head of steam now.

MR. LEHRER: The emphasis now was on water purification, is that right, and getting medicine and supplies in there to these camps?

SEC. PERRY: There many things going on in parallel but certainly a top priority and one which is dominating our activity right now is the water purification. The people are dying from drinking the impure water. You've got more than a million people at this one camp, at this one camp site in Goma, drinking impure water from the lake, and they're dying from the cholera as a result from that. So we have to get that water purified right away. We have -- as of right now, we're purifying about a hundred thousand gallons a day.

MR. LEHRER: That's with five units, I understand, is that right?

SEC. PERRY: Yes, that's with five units. We have sent other units in since then which will be connected and operating in the next day or two. We expect to drive that number to about a million gallons a day.

MR. LEHRER: How much is needed?

SEC. PERRY: A million gallons a day would be sufficient for the Goma area. Now, we still have to turn our attention to the situation at Bukavu if that turns out to be a situation requiring water purification as well. But we're focused at Goma, and we will be in terms of the water, we will be -- have that problem in hand within a day or two.

MR. LEHRER: Now what about getting food and medicine to these, to these folks, not only to this million in Goma, but the others in the area as well, how is that operation going?

SEC. PERRY: That's going -- I think that's going well also. We have -- let me back up to say that the biggest problem in delivering this relief has been the unavailability, the relative unavailability of large scale airports. We're trying to fly into the Goma Airport, and when we started that last week, we could only land 10 airplanes a day there. And that was a very substantial limitation. So one of the -- in parallel with these relief efforts, we had an engineering operation underway to improve the capacity of that airport. We're now up to something over 20 airplanes a day landing at Goma, so we've more than doubled the capacity in just a few days doing such things as allowing for night operations, bringing in provisions for night operations, a fairly routine activity. We brought in a whole cargo load full of forklifts, and the forklifts greatly accelerate the loading and unloading and therefore, we can get more airplanes in and out.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Now, the development in the last 24 hours or so, I guess, it's the last 24 hours, is the emphasis for possibly taking U.S. troops into Rwanda, itself, moving part of the operation into Rwanda. What's the -- what's the state of the decision making process on that right now?

SEC. PERRY: We have -- as we speak -- a small team, about four people, in Kigali, and their job is --

MR. LEHRER: Which is the capital of Rwanda.

SEC. PERRY: The Capital of Rwanda. And they have a large airport there. And it would facilitate our operations if we develop that as a hub for our relief humanitarian planes flying in and then go from there to the various places in both Zaire and Rwanda, where the relief is needed. So the survey team is there to assess what we have to do for that airport to get it ready for that kind of a use. Assuming that the survey is positive and assuming that we continue to get the cooperation from the Rwanda government, it's possible then that we will move our hub in Entebbe into Kigali, and that's under consideration right now but no decision has been taken yet. We don't have the survey report in yet.

MR. LEHRER: Are you going to go to Kigali and look at that yourself?

SEC. PERRY: I'm planning at this time to go only to Entebbe, which is where our present hub is, and to Goma. But between now and Sunday, that plan could change.

MR. LEHRER: The rebel government, the government who won this war apparently and is now running things, do they want the United States in their country?

SEC. PERRY: They have cooperated with requests for the survey of the airport. We have a lot to learn about that government yet. It's a very new government, and we don't have that much background on what their attitudes are going to be on a whole set of issues we're concerned with. Our primary concern with that government though is not so much tied to the U.S. being in there at the airport, it's tied to what they are going to do about the refugees coming back in this country. Whatever we do in these camps like Goma and Bukavu, the medium-term solution probably has to be getting the refugees back to their farms and to their homes in Rwanda.

MR. LEHRER: Now, are you -- is the United States government prepared to facilitate that by sending U.S. troops in there? There have been reports that, that the U.S. -- that you all are considering sending 4,000 troops in there to help that process, to make it safer, to -- tell us what's going on.

SEC. PERRY: That report is not correct. We are focusing our efforts on the humanitarian which is at the moment is concentrated in Zaire but could extend into Rwanda, but the peacekeeping operation is being handled now by the French and by the United Nations. We believe we should focus our effort on the things we have unique capabilities to do, and certainly this logistics operation, this mass airlift we're undertaking, this unique capability of the United States, but providing the peacekeeping forces for the ground, that can be done by the African nations in that area, and that's what we're encouraging to happen.

MR. LEHRER: So the United States is not contemplating sending several thousand troops in there to make sure that it's safe for the refugees to come home?

SEC. PERRY: We are not contemplating that as the United States' unilateral action. We're encouraging the United Nations to move in that direction. We're supporting that through our support of the United Nations.

MR. LEHRER: But is it possible that U.S. troops could be part of this force?

SEC. PERRY: That's not, that's not planned or considered at this time, Jim. I don't -- I don't think that's the best use of U.S. capabilities to apply to this, this tragic situation we're dealing with here.

MR. LEHRER: One of the commanders, the U.S. commanders involved in this quoted today as saying it would take two to three thousand U.S. forces, U.S. personnel at least six months to do the job that he foresees. Is he, is he right on about that?

SEC. PERRY: We estimate now that in the humanitarian operation we're conducting now, which we have just under a thousand people in the theater right now, that number could go up to as many as four thousand just to perform the humanitarian operations. We see that as relatively short --

MR. LEHRER: So that's where this four thousand figure came from?

SEC. PERRY: That's where the four thousand --

MR. LEHRER: But these are not troops with rifles that go in there.

SEC. PERRY: No.

MR. LEHRER: These are what?

SEC. PERRY: These are medics, they're engineers, they're people who are operating the water purification system, they're people who are developing the transportation and distribution system to get the water and the food out to the refugees. Now it does include some security forces because we have a responsibility to protect our forces that are there. We don't see a military danger to them now, but it is a dangerous situation, and so we have to be sure to protect them. But this is a humanitarian operation, not a peacekeeping operation, and certainly not a combat operation.

MR. LEHRER: What if it turns combat, if for some reason -- I mean, we've got to remember that, what, is it over a half a million people were slaughtered in this country, and suddenly it turns -- it turns terrible again -- the U.S. forces are prepared to fight if they have to?

SEC. PERRY: U.S. forces are prepared to defend the humanitarian operation which we are conducting there. That's what our forces are there -- when I met with Gen. Jowyn last week and we laid out the plan doing this, the one thing that I directed him as a first priority is any U.S. troops that were in there to provide this humanitarian operation ought to have adequate security. That means we have security forces going in to provide that protection. It also means we keep a very close watch on the intelligence situation so we know what it is we're likely to be confronting.

MR. LEHRER: But as a practical matter, if somebody fires at a U.S. service person, the U.S. troops can fire back, is that right? It's not, it's not a civil action completely.

SEC. PERRY: Our troops have the authority and our commanders have the direction to protect our troops by whatever means necessary.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Secretary, this may be an unfair question, but there are always -- when there's an operation of any kind -- there's always, people are always looking for a frame of reference. I mean, is this like Somalia when it began? Is it like Grenada? Is it like -- what of recent history, of U.S. military operations, what is it most like?

SEC. PERRY: It's not like either of those. The only analogy in recent history is the relief we provided to the Kurds in Northern Iraq after Desert Storm. This is an operation comparable to that in many respects. It's more complex and more difficult because we're providing, we're not as close toward it with a logistics stream, we have -- we have to project the logistics stream more than 3,000 miles from Europe, whereas, we had a large and complex set of forces right in the area of Iraq at the time we were providing this to the Kurds in Northern Iraq. But it involves almost as many people. There were well over a million Kurd refugees who were being cared -- and incidentally, some of the same people involved in planning this operation were the ones that directed that operation.

MR. LEHRER: Gen. Shalikashvili, he was on here, on the program last week, had made that very point, that he had run that operation before he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But, Mr. Secretary, is there -- is there any way to assure anybody who may be listening here tonight that this is not -- this operation in Rwanda is not going to grow into a massive U.S. military operation as -- I mean, the roots are not in the ground for such a thing?

SEC. PERRY: This is a humanitarian operation. It's a humanitarian operation that we are providing our unique capabilities to it. As this operation continues, we expect to be able to pass the continuation of it on to the U.N. forces,to the international -- the international relief organizations are doing the main part of the job over there today. We're just providing the logistic support and capability that they don't have. As soon as we provide our unique capability, we can start withdrawing from it.

MR. LEHRER: All right. On to Bosnia, the firing on the convoy, the reports are that the U.N. commanders on the ground have asked for close air support. Is the U.S. prepared to provide that?

SEC. PERRY: Let me back up a little, if I may, on that. I just got back from a visit to the eight countries of the neighbors of Bosnia. I spent last week in the Balkans on that very interesting visit, and in each of those countries, I met with the leaders, from the presidents down to the defense ministers, got their assessment of the situation on the ground, got their advice as to what the United States should do not only about the specific problems we've been seeing in the last week or two but about more generally to get into a peace agreement in that troubled country. There was, of course, some diversity in the opinion of a set of nations that diverse, but there also was some commonality. And the first very important point was they all believed that the United States had a critical role to play, that we could not get to a peace settlement there without the direct engagement involving the United States. And second was that the contact group, the so-called contact group, was --

MR. LEHRER: The five nations.

SEC. PERRY: These are five nations, Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, Germany representing the whole European Union really, but those five nations they said it's critically important to maintain the unity of that group. Now, as you know, that group had prepared a peace plan. They presented that peace plan, which was accepted by the Bosnian government, has been rejected by the Bosnian Serbs, and the foreign ministers in that group, including Sec. Christopher, will meet in Geneva on Saturday and consider the next course of action. In particular, if the Serbs have not accepted the peace plan by then, they're going to have to consider the consequences of what they're going to do. I do point out that the Russians -- including Gen. Grachev, my counterpart in the Russian government -- have been meeting yesterday and today with both the Serbian government and with the Bosnian Serbs to try to persuade them to accept that peace plan. So we may have some better news by the time of that meeting, but if we don't have better news by the time of the meeting, then the function of the foreign ministers will be to decide what consequent action needs to be taken.

MR. LEHRER: You're not that concerned about this, what the Serbs consider to be an accidental firing on the convoy?

SEC. PERRY: I'm concerned about it, because it wasn't just that one accidental firing. There are a series of publications that the Serbs have undertaken in the last week, and I think there's a pattern to that, and I am concerned about it, but I want to look at them in the context of getting to this larger peace plan.

MR. LEHRER: Finally, Mr. Secretary, this defector from North Korea saying that North Korea has already constructed five nuclear warheads, five more by the end of the year, is that a legitimate report? Did you believe that?

SEC. PERRY: We've read his report very carefully. We've also looked at a vast amount of data that we have on the North Korean nuclear subject. I continue to believe that our estimate of one to two nuclear bombs is a much better estimate thanan estimate of five. There has to be some uncertainty in your ability to estimate those based on incomplete information, but I still have a lot of confidence in the one to two estimate, not five.

MR. LEHRER: Did you all know about this defector before today? Supposedly he had been there since May?

SEC. PERRY: We've heard of his existence, yes. This is the first time we've seen this detailed report from him.

MR. LEHRER: All right. But if it is five, is that a huge, grim escalation of the situation?

SEC. PERRY: Yes, it is. I don't -- I say, again, I don't believe, you know, five, but if you recall, the reason we were getting so much focus on this spent fuel that was coming out of the reactor a few months ago was because we thought that there was enough plutonium in that spent fuel to make perhaps five bombs. So five is a number which is of much more consequence than one or two. Even one is an issue of consequence to it, even one.

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

SEC. PERRY: But as the numbers increase, you now have the potential of not only posing a threat to the Korean peninsula, but you have the potential of a proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world, the concern that they might sell either their bombs or their technology to other rogue nations in the world.

MR. LEHRER: So this August 5th meeting, the new negotiations become very important.

SEC. PERRY: It's crucially important because that is the meeting in which we're set off on a course to get that nuclear weapons program stopped. And we will find out, I should believe, very quickly at that meeting whether the new leadership in North Korea are still prepared to proceed on this program of stopping the nuclear weapons program.

MR. LEHRER: All right. We'll see what happens. Mr. Secretary, thank you very much.

SEC. PERRY: Thank you, Jim. It's good to talk to you.

MR. MAC NEIL: Still ahead on the NewsHour, DNA's new role in the courtroom, curbing teenage violence, and exploring the mind's secrets. FOCUS - FOOLPROOF?

MR. MAC NEIL: Next tonight, DNA fingerprinting. This afternoon, an emergency pre-trial hearing was held in the O.J. Simpson murder case. It centered around how DNA tests will be carried out tomorrow on blood samples gathered in the investigation of the murderer of Simpson's wife and a friend. The results of those tests could play a crucial role in the outcome of this case. DNA is the genetic material that is found in every human cell. Anthony Burden of public station KUHT-Houston reports on DNA's new role in criminal cases.

MR. BURDEN: The town of Humble, Texas, is small enough that murder is still front page news. The brutal stabbing deaths of twenty-seven-year-old Melody Flowers and her two-year-old son dominated the local headlines in the fall of 1991. A story unfolded of a young woman who lived in fear of the man next door, twenty- five-year old Derrick Sonnier. For two years after Flowers had rejected his advances, he had stalked her. On several occasions, she had come home to find him hiding in her apartment. When the mother and child were found murdered in their blood-spattered apartment, homicide detectives quickly focused their investigation on Sonnier.

DET. C.W. SMITH, Humble, Texas Police Department: From the blood patterns that were inside the home, it looked to be at least three, or three to four different areas of attack. The blood in the kitchen and the area that it was spaced out was inconsistent with the other points of attack inside the home.

MR. BURDEN: From the size and shape of the blood drops on the kitchen floor, DetectiveSmith surmised that the killer had cut himself, a fairly common occurrence in a violent knife attack.

DET. C.W. SMITH: A witness gave us a description and the name of an individual that he saw a few moments after this offense, walking across the apartment complex with a bloody towel on his hand.

MR. BURDEN: The witness had identified Derrick Sonnier.

DET. C.W. SMITH: Our officers went down to this man's apartment, knocked on his door, saw that he had a cut hand.

MR. BURDEN: Sonnier denied being at the victim's apartment, and despite the cut and other circumstantial evidence, Smith had nothing to absolutely place the suspect at the scene of the crime.

CAROL DAVIES, Assistant District Attorney: That was strictly circumstantial. Without DNA testing, we would not have had a case there at all.

MR. BURDEN: Harris County Assistant District Attorney Carol Davies decided to build their case on DNA fingerprinting, which had just been accepted by Texas courts. They contacted Dr. Thomas Caskey, director of the Center for Human Genetics at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Caskey's genetic fingerprinting found a definite match between the suspect Sonnier's DNA and the DNA from the drops of blood in the victim's kitchen. In his evaluation of the findings, Dr. Caskey calculated the odds of another human being having Sonnier's same DNA fingerprint as greater than a million to one.

DET. C.W. SMITH: The DNA was the rock solid item that got him. When they can get up and say there is -- for his DNA typing in a black male is, you know, one million, three hundred thousand to one, that's pretty good odds that it's your blood. And he just happens to live two doors down.

MR. BURDEN: In February of 1993, a jury found Derrick Sonnier guilty of the murders of Melody Flowers and her son, Patrick. Sonnier is now awaiting execution by lethal injection.

CAROL DAVIES: We would never have been successful in prosecuting that without DNA. When you get down to the statistical analysis that the experts reach in their conclusions, it has a visible dramatic -- you can see -- practically see the juries gasp when they, they realize how strong this evidence can be. I think it's the deciding factor in many cases.

MR. BURDEN: DNA evidence is now used with such frequency that genetic fingerprinting has become routine.

JAMES BOLDING, Director, Houston Police DNA Lab: It indicates that --

MR. BURDEN: Jim Bolding's DNA lab is now running about 1500 samples a year for the Houston police. It's one of two genetic laboratories in the city devoted entirely to forensic analysis.

JAMES BOLDING: The first thing you do is to do a preliminary type on the, on the blood. If they, indeed, don't match the crime scene evidence, we say so very quickly, within five or ten minutes. Let's assume that they do because blood types are very common. If the next thing that we are likely to do, is to run through a system called PCR DNA analysis.

MR. BURDEN: PCR is a test that compares a number of genetic traits, unique chemical combinations at specific points on the DNA molecule. It's relatively fast, five to ten working days, and it can be accurate with even minuscule samples. But PCR is not definitive. The chances of an accidental match are about one out of a hundred. Police labs use the PCR basically as an exclusionary device. Whenever possible, a positive result is then subjected to a more elaborate genetic test known as RFLP. With this procedure, a match can be as specific as one in a billion. RFLP compares thousands of DNA traits which show up as enlarged bands on X-ray film. When these swollen bands correspond, the two samples are considered a match. But RFLP has limitations. It requires larger samples that are in good condition, and the tests take considerably longer, usually several months. A DNA match is pretty straightforward science but it's only one half of the evidence. An expert then has to testify as to the significance of that match, the statistical probability that another person could have the same DNA fingerprint. Since this amounts to probability and not absolute fact, many state courts have been slow to embrace genetic evidence. But as of today, all state courts except one, Wyoming, do allow genetic fingerprinting. Until just recently, another holdout was Minnesota.

NEIL McCABE, Professor, South Texas College of Law: Minnesota rejected essentially DNA proof until April of this year.

MR. BURDEN: Neil McCabe is a defense attorney and a professor at the South Texas College of Law.

NEIL McCABE: The Minnesota court says now there is a new method for making something of DNA, a new method for explaining to the jury what DNA matching means statistically. The court said we're going to allow DNA matching and DNA statistical analysis using that new method which was recommended, more or less, by the National Research Council.

MR. BURDEN: Thomas Caskey was one of the members of the National Research Council committee that recommended the new method of calculating the reliability of a DNA match.

DR. C. THOMAS CASKEY, Baylor College of Medicine: If I reported only to the police that the only thing I was certain of was the last number on the license plate, that's all I could be sure of, then you would say, well, that's one out of ten. But suppose I'm really observant and I get the entire six codes, those are not random associations, they have a great precision to them, and now the accuracy of my observation has gone up tremendously. The same is true in DNA. If I look at one place in the human genome and I say, ah ha, there's a match here and that's all I have, then the significance of that match may not be very high. But now I go to a second place in the genome, and I measure my fingerprint there, and now I have a multiple power of the value of the observation. And so it's very easy with these highly informative DNA probes to easily run the significance of the match into the multiple millions.

MR. BURDEN: DNA evidence, backed up by the testimony of an expert, is proving to have an unprecedented impact on juries, overwhelming all other evidence.

DICK DeGUERIN, Defense Lawyer: It's very sexy, and it garners all the attention when usually it's only a piece of the evidence.

MR. BURDEN: Dick DeGuerin is one of the country's most sought after criminal defense attorneys and a critic of the increasing use of genetic evidence.

DICK DeGUERIN: If a DNA test is run correctly, then it can be conclusive as to the comparison of the samples. But so many questions are raised about the gathering of the samples or the gathering of the trace evidence, the actual testing of it, itself, so that often those questions are lost in the final result of the DNA.

MR. BURDEN: Forensic scientists agree, genetic evidence is not foolproof. Even if the tests are accurate, there is always the potential for human error, especially in a long, tedious, and complicated procedure. Period spot checks have indicated that DNA labs make an error in slightly more than one out of every hundred samples tested. Part of the reason is that there are no standards for these labs and no regulation. Congress is now considering the DNA Identification Act which would earmark $30 million for the FBI to establish national guidelines. But the measure has all but disappeared after being attached to a national crime bill. Still, DNA evidence is being used in a rapidly increasing number of cases, and some see its potential to radically change our system of trial by jury.

NEIL McCABE: We have juries there to have a human element and not just human, because judges are human for that matter, but we have the jury there to have some input from the community on the decision making about whether a person goes to prison or loses his life. Juries will still be doing that, but juries tend to be so impressed by scientific evidence given to them in a dispassionate way by some expert who seems not to be an advocate for any particular position that the human element provided by the jury can seem to be reduced so that the jury is nothing more than another part of the machine that winds up convicting a person.

DICK DeGUERIN: I have a philosophical difficulty with relegating a question as important as guilt or innocence to a machine, and I have a problem with putting too much emphasis on a simple scientific test, regardless of how popular it might be at any given moment. Unless we're going to change our entire criminal justice system, our entire system of justice, of determining the overall question of guilt, which involves the determining of many smaller questions of fact, unless we're going to overhaul that and change it completely, then we need to stay the course of careful consideration of all the evidence and not emphasize one piece of evidence over all others.

MR. BURDEN: But DNA has already changed our criminal justice system. One very positive change is the increasing number of serious felonies that aren't going to trial when the prosecution has a genetic fingerprint. Faced with DNA evidence, the guilty tend to plead guilty.

NEIL McCABE: It's the greatest thing since fingerprinting and probably greater than that in the end because it does more than fingerprinting. It will exonerate a lot of people who have been wrongly accused but probably as important as that, we are going to be able to more conclusively show the guilt of people when fingerprints are not available or other evidence is not available. It's going to have a huge impact, as it's already started to do, almost an incalculable impact on the criminal justice system, and largely to the good, as long as we're careful with it.

MR. BURDEN: Twenty-five states are now in the process of building databases of DNA information on residents. Some are requiring a DNA fingerprint on prison inmates as a condition of parole. The FBI is building a national DNA database and during the Gulf War, the armed forces began taking genetic fingerprints of all personnel. There are predictions that in the not too distant future, we will all have our DNA pattern on some type of national identity card, each of us with our own genetic bar code. SERIES - BREAKING THE CYCLE

MR. LEHRER: Next tonight, the second of Charlayne Hunter-Gault's conversations about the growing problem of youth violence. Her focus is on solutions and on people who believe the cycle of violence can be broken.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Last night, we talked with a group of students in a program in Massachusetts. They are called "peer leaders," young people who work with kids their own age to help them learn non-violent ways of dealing with conflict.

JOSE PAGAN: I broke up a few fights, you know, downtown. I just seen people startin' to fight and I was shoppin',just put my bags down and walked over and tried to hold them back and talk to them.

RON PTASZENSKI: We just let them talk, and they get everything off their chest, what they want to say.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: One expert who gives peer leadership programs high marks is Dr. Barry Krisberg, a sociologist and president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. We spoke with him recently about peer leadership programs and the overall problem of youth violence. Barry Krisberg, thank you for joining us. What do you think accounts for the up surge in violence among young people?

BARRY KRISBERG, National Council on Crime & Delinquency: Well, first of all, we have to be very careful and realize that there isn't a major up surge in violence. In fact, juvenile violence in this country is actually down from 10 years ago. Juveniles represent a smaller share of the violence problem in this country than they did 10 years ago. What is up are juveniles involved in homicide, both as victims and offenders. And the most direct connection to that is guns.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You say that the new element is guns. Is there anything new in the approach of programs aimed at dealing with this problem?

BARRY KRISBERG: We're moving away from a pure reaction of the last ten, fifteen years -- our approach has been to strictly punish lawbreakers and to assume that that was going to solve the problem, and we very efficiently have pursued that policy. We've arrested unprecedented numbers of kids. We've locked them up in numbers larger than ever before in American history. But the violence problem continues unabated. So I think from police chiefs to judges to correction officers, we're looking towards preventive strategies and early intervention strategies. The new direction in the field is towards getting involved earlier when kids break the law, not waiting until they accumulate a long list of offenses and then treating them harshly but beginning to respond as early as we can.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: One of the programs that's started in schools is something called peer leadership. And we've talked to some of the young people involved in programs like that. Tell me what your analysis of the impact of those programs shows.

BARRY KRISBERG: Peer leadership programs are very effective. The most important issue that we face is reaching young people. Adolescence is a period of time in which young people are trying to assert their individuality. It's at a point where they'd rather not listen to the messages by adults but form their own messages, and so they're tremendously vulnerable and impressed by messages of their -- of their counterparts. And whether we talk about smoking or sexual behavior or drug taking or violence, the most significant person is going to be somebody who that young person can identify with who can say I have been there, I have done this. Preaching by adults is about as ineffective as you can imagine. I was in a meeting in Atlanta. There must have been 500 people in the room talking about youth violence. And a young person came up to the microphone and said, "I have a 45 with me, but I'm very frightened. I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't want to break the law, but I am so frightened I have gotten this gun, and I don't know what to do." The adults in that audience sat immobilized, and one of the peer counselors got up, talked to that young person, said, "I'm on your side. I want to be your friend. I understand your fear." And the young person with the gun came over and handed that gun to the teen.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But what about the objective reality that led that kid to be so frightened, because the environment outside is such that that's why he's scared?

BARRY KRISBERG: I think if we want to reduce violence, we have to -- we have to have a two-pronged strategy. We have to address the environmental issues, but also we need to deal with individual. The peer strategy works very effectively with individuals. Of course, we need to change the environment as well. We've got to get the guns out of the communities. We have to figure out how to slow down the drug dealers. But at the individual level, these strategies are very effective.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The example you gave, when you've looked at programs in other places, do any other examples come to mind?

BARRY KRISBERG: We did a study of a program in St. Petersburg.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: St. Petersburg, Florida.

BARRY KRISBERG: Florida -- which addressed the issue of racial violence in the schools. And this was a program in which a cross- section of students were selected and then given extensive training by the National Conference of Christians & Jews in conflict resolution and mediation. And they became a sort of new leadership structure in the schools. It was a multiracial group that reached out to the other students. So then when there was, for example, an outrageous rumor that went on, like a rumor that there had been lynching in town that was covered up by the media, these kids could come in, deal with the rumor, sort it out, and credibly say to the other youngsters this was not, this didn't happen, this is just something that's stirring emotion. Another instance occurred in which a hate group was passing out pamphlets attempting to stir the kids up to fight with one another. And again, these peer leaders jumped into that situation, identified the source of the problem, and were effectively able to communicate to other youngsters and stave off the potential racial violence that might have occurred among the youngsters. And I would submit to you that that's an approach which is far more effective than lectures on brotherhood, watching movies, or the kinds of things that sometimes we adults think about that are really outside the range of young people. If there's one thing I would get across is we have to listen to young people. Most of the programs that we launch that fail are programs thought up by adults that might work for us but are unlikely to work for young people. Most --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Give me an example of some of the ones that don't work.

BARRY KRISBERG: Well, I always think it's kind of comical that adults believe that by passing laws or stiffening penalties that that's likely to deter young people on the street corners from the behavior they engage in. Why is it that legislators believe that because they pass laws, that this gets translated down? The messages they think they are sending are not being received, because the nature of adolescents are adolescents are people who act impulsively, who don't think through the consequences of their behavior, who are driven by boredom, and, and one of the nice things about adolescence is you get out of it. At least most of us get out of it. But to think that adolescents are going to think just like thirty-year-old middle class elected officials is a very naive idea. So most of the times we go wrong in thinking about that. It's the same thing when we send athletes or celebrities into low income areas and assume that because the celebrity in the Rolls Royce tells kids not to use drugs that that's going to have any impact. In fact, it -- in my opinion, it has the opposite impact, because low income kids look at the fancy car and say to themselves, well, I'm not Michael Jordan, I can't make the money he makes playing basketball, how could I get that car? Well, the answer for most kids in low income areas is sell drugs. A smarter approach would be to introduce a young person who has been locked up because of a drug problem, who can talk about what happened to them and how they feel and what it's meant to go through this.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But if part of the problem is the need for material things or the perceived need for material things and drug money is the root to that, how do you deal with that?

BARRY KRISBERG: Well, I think we have --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Excuse me. There are no jobs that are alternatives to the drug dealing.

BARRY KRISBERG: There is no way to effectively cut violence in this country without a job strategy. What I often say is the problem with a crime bill is it creates lots of jobs but for the wrong people. The crime bill creates jobs for middle class adults who live in rural and suburban areas, because, after all, they're going to be prison guards and the police we're going to hire. What we need are jobs targeted toward principally young men who are mostly involved in violence who live in the hard crime inner-city areas. There has to be a jobs are. I go around the country, and at every meeting I go to, I ask people, what if this city has sustained, full employment for five to ten years, what do you think the impact of that would be on juvenile crime, domestic violence, you name the problem, and invariably, the professionals say, it wouldn't make it go away but it would reduce it dramatically. And then my question is: Well, why aren't we talking about that? I continue to be frustrated that the politicians are locked into a very narrow debate on who is going to be more macho on the subject of crime, who is tougher, who is the legitimate crime fighter? What holds a society together, families, community, churches, community institution, that's what holds a society together. I know no society that is held together by police or prisons except for a short period of time. All we have to do is look at the former Soviet Union or look at South Africa, at examples of places that were held together for a time by police and prisons but not for long and certainly not in a constructive way.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Are you at all optimistic about anything being able to reverse this pattern of tragedy that flows from this kind of youth violence?

BARRY KRISBERG: Well, I'm guardedly optimistic. I think that the community level we're beginning to see a much broader range of people understanding that this is their problem. The most significant thing that's happened in the last year has been the medical community coming forward and seeing violence as a public health issue. It's not just a law enforcement problem. At the police level, we're beginning to hear that policemen, in effect, should become quasi social workers, because riding around in squad cars, locking up people, is not the sole answer or even the major answer to the crime problem. So that is a very constructive development. What I sense is the optimism is at the local level. At the community, at the grassroots level, we're beginning to hear people say that the police alone, the courts alone, the correction system alone are not going to solve this problem. Obviously, we need police; we need prisons; we need all of those things. But we also, and probably more so, need to deal with the fundamental forces that get peopleinto trouble in the first place. And this starts with the 13-year-old who has the unwanted child, who doesn't know the first thing about raising a child, who begins neglecting and abusing that child, and then down the road, we end up with an abused, neglected child who bumps around the child welfare system and maybe spends a better part of their adolescence in and out of one foster home or one institution. And they graduate into the juvenile justice system. And by and large, we warehouse them in places which provide very little help. And then we're shocked when at eighteen, nineteen years of age, we look at somebody and we say, oh, gee, they're a thug. A huge percentage of the young people who end up the violent, threatening individuals that we see on the evening news every night could have been identified earlier and could have, with far less expenditure of public money, been diverted in another direction.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Barry Krisberg, thank you. ESSAY - WINGED ENCHANTMENT

MR. MAC NEIL: Finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt finds enchantment in a butterfly's wing.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Marianne Moore wrote a poem about the human mind that begins with the idea that "The mind is an enchanting thing, is an enchanted thing, iridescent like the glaze on a Katydid wing." Her emphasis is on enchantment. The mind and the Katydid wing derive their variegated beauty from something mysterious, probably divine. No questions need be asked on how they got the way they got. But science, nosy as ever, asks questions all the time. And sure enough, in a current issue of "Science Magazine," there's an article about how a butterfly's wing, it might as well be a Katydid, gets to be as beautiful as it is. The analysis tells of how a few clever, artistic genes, secretly planted in the right position even when a butterfly is still a caterpillar drearily dragging itself along, start to sketch out the future pattern of the future wing. Like invisible Picassos, these genes draw and color their embryonic circles, triangles, spots, and crosses. When the caterpillar becomes airborne, the wing emerges as a painting. How do we know? The scientists tell us so. Undoubtedly, the scientists will soon tell us exactly how the human mind is made as well. They've begun to do so already, and it can't be long before we pick up some article in a science magazine that tells us precisely which gene accounts for our joy turning to melancholy at the bat of a Katydid wing, or why our sense of wonder suddenly becomes veiled with a sense of dread, or why we smile at the sight of puppies or the sight of babies, or why we smile at all. Laughter -- what's that noise all about? Delirious one moment, laughter sounds terrifying the next. Who knows what mischief, lust, inventiveness, explosiveness, love lurks in the minds of everyone? The scientists knows, or soon will. So thanks to this article about butterfly wings, the old question fills our continuously de- mystifying minds. Is it better to probe certain mysteries or not? Does one lose something in learning precisely that the ethereal appearance of the butterfly's aerial device is perfectly explicable biologically? Same question applies to the mind. Deep tragedies have been written because the mind has been thought impossible to gauge. You see, if Hamlet had only been given a little less "X" and a little more "Y," he wouldn't have wondered "what to be or not to be." A good part of our enchantment and disenchantment with our species has relied on the unquantifiable nature of that mass inside our heads. To know ornot to know. Of course, the question is a fake. We will know how everything works whether we want to or not. That's the way we're made. Like Marianne Moore, we will praise the enchantment of enchantment but when it comes down to it, everybody's a private detective. We will snoop into butterfly wings, and we will snoop into the human mind. We would snoop into God if He or She would allow it. The most enchanting part of our makeup is that we like to take things apart to see what ticks. The trouble only comes when we take things apart that cannot be put back together. So from now on, is one to be as enchanted with the knowledge of the butterfly wing as we were by its undecodable beauty? The same shift applies to the mind. It may be easier with the mind when one finally knows how it works, because it has built into itself the need to discover things, the need to change. What a clever gizmo it is, a machine that changes its structure in the process of discovering its structure. How does that work? I'm Roger Rosenblatt. RECAP

MR. MAC NEIL: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, security was tightened around Israeli facilities in this country after a second car bombing at a Jewish site in London. On the NewsHour tonight, Defense Sec. Perry said the number of U.S. troops aiding the refugees from Rwanda could rise to 4,000. He said the critical water shortage problem in the camps could be in hand within a day or two. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night with coverage of and reaction to the second day of congressional Whitewater hearings. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.