The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After tonight's News Summary, columnist William F. Buckley and Congressman Charles Rangel debate the surgeon general's suggestion that legalizing drugs would reduce crime. We have a report on the case heard today by the Supreme Court using organized crime law. We have a report on the case heard today by the Supreme Court using organized crime law to fight abortion clinic violence. And we have a conversation with the new president of the Public Broadcasting Service, Ervin Duggan.NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Police said today that racial hatred is apparently behind last night's deadly shooting rampage aboard a packed New York commuter train. Five people were killed and eighteen wounded in the attack. All of the victims were white or Asian. The gunman was identified as 35-year-old Colin Ferguson of Brooklyn, New York. Police said he was a native of Jamaica who was unemployed and had no criminal record. He was charged with murder this afternoon and held without bond in the Long Island town of Hempstead. According to the authorities, Ferguson began methodically shooting passengers between stops on the rush hour train carrying commuters from New York City to the Long Island suburbs. Police said Ferguson carried notes expressing hatred for whites, Asians, and what he called "Uncle Tom negroes." The weapon used was a nine millimeter, semiautomatic pistol which carries 15 rounds. Ferguson reloaded at least once before he was tackled by passengers. This afternoon, President Clinton commented on the shooting.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: First of all, it's a terrible human tragedy, and my sympathies go out to all the families involved. I would say I think we have to note that the gun that was used contained apparently two 15-round clips that were expended while this man in a manic state was walking down the subway aisle. And one of the reasons we ought to pass the crime bill is that Sen. Feinstein's amendment to limit assault weapons would make those 15-round clips illegal. They are not necessary for hunting or sports purposes, and it simply allows you to shoot and wound more people more quickly. So I hope that, that this will give some more impetus to the need to act urgently to deal with the unnecessary problems of gun violence in the country.

MR. MacNeil: The President said he'd asked the attorney general to study to require gun buyers to pass a proficiency test. Mayor Richard Reardon of Los Angeles and Mayor-elect Rudolph Giuliani have both asked Mr. Clinton to consider it. The suspect in the Long Islandshooting is reported to have purchased the gun legally in California last May after the required 15-day waiting period. On Capitol Hill, Democratic Congressman Charles Schumer said he will introduce new gun control legislation when Congress returns in January. He said it would include licensing of gun owners nationwide and a ban on all semiautomatic assault weapons. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: The Supreme Court heard an abortion argument today. Abortion rights activists asked the court to overturn a lower court ruling against using a federal anti-racketeering law on anti- abortion protesters. We'll have more on that story later in the program. White House Spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers today challenged the American Medical Association to come up with a better way to achieve universal health insurance coverage. The AMA yesterday voted not to endorse the Clinton plan for mandatory employer-paid insurance. The AMA had previously supported such a proposal.

MR. MacNeil: President Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement today. With ratification by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, now complete, the agreement will take effect January 1st. Mr. Clinton spoke to hundreds of NAFTA supporters at a government auditorium in Washington. He used the occasion to call for completion of the so-called GATT Agreement now being negotiated with 112 nations.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Already, the confidence we've displayed by ratifying NAFTA has begun to bear fruit. We're now making real progress toward a worldwide trade agreement so significant that it could make the material gains of NAFTA for our country look small by comparison. We must not squander this opportunity. I call on all the nations of the world to seize this moment and close the deal on a strong GATT agreement within the next week.

MR. MacNeil: Xerox Corporation announced today it will eliminate more than 10,000 jobs worldwide, or about 10 percent of its work force. The copier company said it was taking the action to cut costs and improve productivity. About 5,000 jobs will be eliminated in 1994, the remainder over the next two to three years. The Labor Department reported productivity of American workers shot up at an annual rate of 4.3 percent in the third quarter. It was the first rise in six months, and the largest in over six years. And the Federal Reserve released its monthly survey of regional economic activity. It said consumer spending picked up during the holiday season but few businesses reported new hiring.

MR. LEHRER: Astronauts from the space shuttle "Endeavour" finished a fourth space walking repair job on the Hubble Telescope early today. This time crew members Kathy Thornton and Tom Akers installed a 600-pound box fitted with special lenses to correct the telescope's blurry vision. They also installed a processor to upgrade the Hubble's main computer. Final repairs will be done in one last space walk scheduled for later tonight. If all goes according to plan, the astronauts will place the $2 billion telescope back into orbit Friday. Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas was re-indicted on state ethics charges today. She is accused of using state employees to perform personal and political work while she was Texas state treasurer. She was first indicted in September but the charges were dropped in October on a technicality. Hutchison has denied any wrongdoing.

MR. MacNeil: The cycle of violence continued in Israeli-occupied territories today. A Palestinian shot a Jewish settler in the West Bank. Orthodox Jews also protested the Israeli-PLO peace agreement in Jerusalem.Unrest has steadily increased with the approach of the December 13th target for Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho.

MR. LEHRER: NATO defense ministers agreed today to allow Eastern European countries to join their alliance at some future date. U.S. Defense Secretary Les Aspin defended the ministers meeting in Brussels, Belgium. He proposed joint military exercises between NATO and some former Warsaw Pact adversaries by the end of next year. Boris Yeltsin was also in Brussels today to sign an agreement outlining trade and political cooperation with the European Community. A final trade agreement awaits resolution of a number of issues. Russia and the EC have been negotiating for several months.

MR. MacNeil: That's our summary of the news. Now it's on to a debate over legalizing drugs, abortion clinic violence, and the president of PBS. FOCUS - DRUG SALE?

MR. MacNeil: First up tonight, would legalizing drugs reduce crime and violence? The nation's top health officer says it's an issue worth studying. Dr. Joycelyn Elders, the U.S. Surgeon General, made her remarks during an appearance at the National Press Club in Washington yesterday. She was asked whether legalization was an option in fighting violence.

DR. JOYCELYN ELDERS, Surgeon General: 60 percent of most of our violent crimes are associated with alcohol or drug use, so we know that there is a marked increase in drug use or alcohol use associated with crime. Whether -- and you know, many times they're robbing, stealing, and all of these things to get money to buy drugs. And I do feel that we would markedly reduce our crime rate if drugs were legalized, but I don't know, I don't know all of the ramifications of this, and I do feel that we do need to do some studies. And some of the countries that have legalized drugs and made it legal, they certainly have shown that there has been a reduction in their crime rate, and there has been no increase in the drug use rate.

MR. MacNeil: Dr. Elders' office later released a statement saying her comments were her personal observations. The White House was quick to take issue with the surgeon general. Today the President said the cost of legalizing drugs would far outweigh the benefits. We join the debate now with William F. Buckley, editor and chief of the National Review and author. His latest book is entitled Happy Days Were Here Again. And Democratic Charles Rangel of New York, Congressman Rangel was chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics. Mr. Buckley, you think Dr. Elders is right? If you do, how would it reduce crime to legalize drugs?

MR. BUCKLEY: It would reduce crime because there would be no incentive for the drug peddler. If the, if the drug were available at, roughly speaking, the cost of production, then why would it make any sense for anybody to try to make money off the sale either. So I think, I think she is quite correct in respect to that, and I'd be surprised if Mr. Rangel argued about that.

REP. RANGEL: I'm always reluctant to argue with you, Mr. Buckley but it just doesn't make any sense to me that it would be wipe out crime. I agree with Mr. Buckley, and I agree with the surgeon general, even though it's ironic that she's supposed to be dealing with health and not crime, and the attorney general is supposed to be one dealing with how do we reduce the crime, but yes, it would be reduction, but it still would mean you'd have an elicit market. I am certain that Mr. Buckley would not even suggest that drugs be made available to everybody or we give them asmuch as they would want to have. And as long as you're going to have people who want the drug and they cannot get it legally or they cannot get enough legally, then naturally they're going to go the criminal activities. But having said that, what the President has said, which I think may have been his only statement on drugs because I haven't heard anything about what plan they're going to have to deal with this, is that what are the other costs? My God, if Bill can see a baby being born addicted to drugs, and a cost that's $600,000 a day, if you could really see the tragedies that occur on our streets with kids that have no hope, no job training, and drugs is the only way out, I don't think that this is a substitute for providing what is necessary and to avoid people from going here. We have not had any education programs, prevention programs, any foreign policy of eradication, so out of frustration, some people say, well, why not legalize it? There are a lot of reasons why we shouldn't.

MR. MacNeil: Well, let's separate those two points and take them one at a time, first of all, that it wouldn't kill the illicit market because presumably Mr. Rangel believes under legalization people who are addicts wouldn't get enough.

MR. BUCKLEY: I wouldn't put a limit on the suicidal appetites of anybody. He's quite correct. If you said, you can have half as much as you want, then you're going to have a black market again, but under the scheme that I endorse and a lot of other people endorse, this would not be permitted because of the availability of the stuff.

MR. MacNeil: You mean, like alcohol, it would be regulated but legally available?

MR. BUCKLEY: Right. I would not permit the sale of it to people under 18 for the obvious reasons. I don't need to elaborate. Remember this, that if you -- first of all let me disassociate myself from people who think that drugs should be legalized because we have no business telling people what they want to do. If the war on drugs were successful, I would say, okay, wait it out. If every consumption went down by 5 percent, okay in 20 years, you have no more drugs. But that's not happening. The price of cocaine is less expensive now than when the war on drugs began. And, meanwhile, we're spending 20, 25 million dollars a year on a program that doesn't work. It's exhausting the jurisprudential system, is, is choking up the activity of the police, and is leaving us with a criminal subculture that is getting a hundred, hundred and ten, hundred and twenty billion dollars out of this. It's a lousy thing. It's not working. My approach is entirely empirical.

REP. RANGEL: Could I drop the Buckley program just for a minute?

MR. MacNeil: Yeah, but let me just get you to answer his point for a moment, and then I'll come back to your other point. In his point, that -- I mean, the President referred to the cost of legalizing. The costs of not legalizing are surely as Mr. Buckley stated, are they not, all these billions of dollars and the effect on the, on the criminal justice system, police time, and money, and so on?

REP. RANGEL: Yes. We did a study during the Bush administration. We found that the drug problem when you take into account the lost productivity -- because I assume that we'll have drug breaks and that if you feel down and depressed, you go to your doctor and one way or the other he would be able under privatization because you can't have the federal government just --

MR. BUCKLEY: You're making fun of this position.

REP. RANGEL: No. The doctors would say, have you tried crack, because, youknow, you've been on heroin now for a week and it doesn't seen to bring you up. We'll have the advertisers competing, they could give you samples.

MR. BUCKLEY: No, no, no.

REP. RANGEL: As a matter of fact, knowing his compassion for the poor, I'm certain if he could not pay the price of going to a doctor, we'd have drug stamps so that youngsters -- I mean, over 18 of course -- and if you're under 18, I assume that you just have to wait to become of age no matter what your addiction is, so I know the private sector, and, and the federal, local governments would do a better job, but when you take -- when you see what we're losing with drugs, I mean, I don't see how many parent would want to say that, that we have given up. First of all, we haven't even begun to fight, so I don't know what war he's talking about. It's so bad that I miss Nancy Reagan now. But assuming that there was a fight and we have lost it, then you surrender. We haven't done anything in our schools. We haven't done a darned thing with Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico. We went into agreement, and 70 percent comes from there, so we haven't done anything.

MR. MacNeil: How about that? It failed because we haven't tried hard enough, Mr. Rangel's saying.

MR. BUCKLEY: Under Bush, we spent $400 million. We're spending 10,000 times -- 10,000 percent more -- every single year, it goes up and up and up, and the price of cocaine goes down.

REP. RANGEL: Bill, tell me --

MR. BUCKLEY: Which means that availability -- if I had --

REP. RANGEL: Tell me what we've done, not just how much money - -

MR. BUCKLEY: -- caricature also -- but the answer is --

REP. RANGEL: Tell me what we've done, Bill, not how much money we've spent. You know much more about the economy than I, so don't tell me we've spent billions of dollars.

MR. BUCKLEY: A junior at Harvard told me a week ago that it was easier to get marijuana in Cambridge than beer because if somebody sells the beer illegally, they stand to lose the capital plant there, their license. You don't need a license to get to buy marijuana. You just buy it from the street peddler.

REP. RANGEL: You know, that's very interesting. Where did this occur?

MR. BUCKLEY: In Cambridge.

REP. RANGEL: Well, you can bet your life that they may be restricted to marijuana in Cambridge, and for all practical purposes it's legal, but I know where this crack cocaine is going to go. It's going to go to the people who don't have the hopes that the people do have in Cambridge. It's going to go to the people that don't have the alternatives. It's going to go where it is right now in the poorer communities. And instead of trying to do something like we're trying to do in Mexico, like we're trying to do in the Soviet -- to give people training and jobs and hope -- what we're saying is that if we can't stop the violence and you're going to insist on doing it, then the people in Cambridge would say, well, we'll have our marijuana and you can have your heroin and your cocaine and your crack. And that's giving up on a lot on a lot of potential that this great country has.

MR. BUCKLEY: Incidentally, it's an incorrect assumption that if you can have crack or marijuana, you automatically are going to be attracted by crack. You can buy 200 percent proof booze if you want to, but people don't, and not only in Park Avenue, in Harlem, they don't. They buy beer and wine and --

REP. RANGEL: Well, most users agree that this is a higher, you know --

MR. MacNeil: Speaking of Park Avenue and Harlem, what do you say, Congressman, to the argument of Father Joseph Kane, who's a Jesuit, who's lived in the Bronx for 20 years, and he was a chaplain at Rikers Island where many people are held says the present system discriminates against exactly the poor minorities because the rich can afford to buy it and when they want to end their addiction, they can afford treatment, whereas, the poor can't afford to buy it, and, therefore, resort to crime if they're addicts, and then they become criminals and instead of treatment, they go to jail.

REP. RANGEL: I'm sorry. Besides being a priest, what was his qualifications?

MR. MacNeil: He is, he is a man who has spent 20 years --

REP. RANGEL: In jail.

MR. MacNeil: Not in jail. As a --

REP. RANGEL: I mean, helping those that are criminals.

MR. MacNeil: Right. He says it makes criminals out of the poor.

REP. RANGEL: Let me say this, that everyone knows that using drugs, especially crack, is really, you know, death on the installment plan. It is not a healthy thing. It is life threatening, and so we all accept that, both heroin and what not. The question is, if you're telling someone not to do this because of your health, it has to be that you feel threatened and intelligent people know what it is, they stop doing it if they see it's going to interrupt, it's going to interfere with what they want, not just life expectancy, but I see people every day in Harlem, they congratulate me for what I'm doing in fighting against drugs, and I say, buy, my friend, you've been on drugs for years, he said, oh, no, not for me, because I have too much pain. I'm unemployable, I'm a veteran, they've given up on me, I can't get a job, and it's kind of hard to see why a guy like that, you know, would be straight. But if you find somebody that's using recreational drugs, that -- and they do use them in the board room -- and it reaches a point that through education they find out that they can't function, they're not productive, then I think education and prevention works.

MR. BUCKLEY: One point. The people who would suffer if this reform were undertaken would be inflicting that suffering on themselves. Who are suffering now are people who are victimized by people who rob them and steal and maim the entire court system. Three hundred and eighty thousand people were arrested last year for taking marijuana. The consumption of police energy going into an effort that is utterly bootless is, is a travesty, would be deemed here with a superstition. If you want to go after killers seriously, you stop cigarettes. I mean, that's --

MR. MacNeil: I was just going to ask you, should cocaine and heroin, even crack, be no more feared than alcohol and tobacco, or is the -- is the taboo based on medical scientific evidence, or just on emotion?

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, the addiction rate on tobacco is about 36 percent. On booze, it's about 14 percent. On crack cocaine, it's between 6 and 8 percent. In marijuana --

MR. MacNeil: In the population?

MR. BUCKLEY: The population, people who try it. Ninety-two million Americans have tried illegal drugs. Dr. Greensville of Harvard says that if he had a child who was going to go alcohol or marijuana, he said he would prefer that he went in the direction of marijuana. I have no position. I think anybody who takes marijuana is crazy. But I do think this, that in terms of suffering, there would be less of it, and this is I think an authentic, conservative concern empirically. The war against drugs calls for a white flag, not some caricature from Congressman Rangel.

REP. RANGEL: Do you not deny that there would be a dramatic increase in health care as a result of the illnesses that now are directly connected with the abuse of heroin and cocaine?

MR. BUCKLEY: Ira Glass of the American Civil Liberties Union says that he and his people have studied. They don't know. They just plain don't know. There is a temptation to do something that's illegal, which we all recognize.

REP. RANGEL: You know, I don't mind discussing this at cocktail parties but it really bothers me when the surgeon general raises this argument. Bill Buckley always does this. One, he likes to pick on me; and two, he's using all of my material to write a book.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Bill Buckley isn't the only one, he isn't the only one. I mean, there's George Shultz, the former secretary of state, there is Milton Friedman, Charles Fried, U.S. --

REP. RANGEL: Judge -- Sec. Shultz really was discussing this at a cocktail party when it was reported, but really you have to take in consideration all of the people that we have taught to fight and die in Colombia for this war against drugs, all of the treaties that were negotiated, if we legalize it, and we will then have to either import the drug into the United States, or start growing it ourselves, and then we'll start subsidizing opium growers, the coca leaf growers, and that we'll have it now in every store, and everything's available, and this is really cutting down the productivity of our country.

MR. MacNeil: Briefly --

MR. BUCKLEY: There should be a federal drugstore and it should receive shipments of that which is sold according to the demand always at a price that vitiates the black market.

REP. RANGEL: And if you don't have the price, would the government give you drug stamps?

MR. BUCKLEY: No --

MR. MacNeil: Congressman Rangel, William Buckley, thank you both. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, an abortion story and the new president of PBS. FOCUS - LEGAL TEST

MR. LEHRER: An abortion argument before the Supreme Court is next. Can organized crime laws be used against anti-abortion protesters who disrupt clinics where abortions are performed? That question went before the Supreme Court today. Elizabeth Brackett has our report.

MS. BRACKETT: Are these militant, anti-abortion activists exercising their First Amendment rights, or are they part of a criminal enterprise conspiring to commit illegal acts. That's the issue at stake before the Supreme Court today. Can some anti- abortion leaders be likened to mafia chief John Gati, S&L villain Charles Keating, corrupt Wall Street traders, all of whom were prosecuted under the Federal Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations or RICO Act? Absolutely, says National Organization for Women President Patricia Ireland.

PATRICIA IRELAND, President, NOW: When you look at the anti- abortion extremists and the clinic bombings, the arson attacks, the clinic invasions where people have been injured, it occurred to us that it was indeed very much an organized criminal effort that fit very well with this law which was designed to get the organizers of criminal activity, those who often insulate themselves from the day-to-day implementation but who are really the ones who design and connect with a strategy and carry it out.

JOE SCHEIDLER, Pro-Life Action League: Me, a racketeer? An ex- Monk, a former seminarian, a father of seven children.

MS. BRACKETT: Longtime abortion foe, Joe Scheidler, head of the Pro-Life Action League, who is the named defendant in the case, says he and Randall Terry, head of Operation Rescue, find the case laughable.

MS. BRACKETT: What does that picture symbolize in terms of how the pro-life movement looks at this suit?

JOE SCHEIDLER: It's a tactic of desperation. They know that we're going to stop abortions. They know we're going to talk people out of abortion. They know we're going to convert the abortionists. So they file a racketeering suit, a total nonsense suit, a frivolous suit, and they take it seriously.

MS. BRACKETT: They take it very seriously. They say you've committed an illegal act.

JOE SCHEIDLER: That's right. And we haven't.

MS. BRACKETT: Joe Scheidler has been out on the picket lines ever since abortion became legal in 1973.

JOE SCHEIDLER: [talking to other protesters outside abortion clinic] We'll line the march to the dumpster where they throw the babies, undoubtedly, back around here to that pole. Life, yes! Abortion, no!

MS. BRACKETT: The tactics have gotten more aggressive. It was Scheidler who first called for blocking access to the doors of abortion clinics.

PRO-LIFE DEMONSTRATION LEADER: [speaking to other protesters] Every minute it takes every one of us to be arrested, that's one more minute this place cannot open.

MS. BRACKETT: Tactics that were adopted and expanded by Operation Rescue's Randall Terry.

RANDALL TERRY, Operation Rescue: [1989] The judges, the politicians, they're getting the signal as is Planned Parenthood, NOW, ACLU, et cetera. Legalized child killing's days are numbered. We will win.

DEMONSTRATION

MS. BRACKETT: Violence against abortion clinics has escalated along with the protests. According to the Feminists Majority Foundation half of the nation's abortion clinics have reported acts of violence this year, including 36 bombings, 128 acts of arson and attempted arson, and 91 death threats. Last spring, Dr. David Gunn was killed outside one of the two Pensacola, Florida, clinics where he worked. The other clinic had been targeted earlier by Joe Scheidler. And at this Wichita, Kansas, clinic, the scene two years ago of a major Operation Rescue effort, Dr. George Tiller was wounded by gunfire last August. But Joe Scheidler vehemently denies any connection with these violent acts.

JOE SCHEIDLER: I don't bomb clinics. I don't burn clinics. I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you. I'd be in jail somewhere, if I'm masterminding all of this nonsense that's going on. I write against that. I speak against that. I don't think violence is good. That's why we're fighting abortion. It's the ultimate violence.

MS. BRACKETT: Scheidler says he's just exercising his right to protest under the First Amendment. But NOW alleges Scheidler is part of an enterprise conspiring in a pattern of racketeering, defined by the RICO statute as two or more illegal acts such as murder, arson, or extortion. The Justice Department has joined now in the suit in alleging that Scheidler is conspiring to shut down abortion clinics by illegal means.

MS. BRACKETT: Is there an overall group that conspires to put together a national plan to carry out your objective?

JOE SCHEIDLER: Well, there is a group called plan, Pro-Life Action Network, which meets once a year to discuss how effective our activities have been and to continue working together so that we do have a networking of motives and, and programs and ideas, we speak to each other.

MS. BRACKETT: Are illegal acts ever discussed?

JOE SCHEIDLER: No. See, you have to understand there are laws and there are laws. A fireman may trespass to go in and save somebody. A police officer may. A citizen may trespass. I don't believe that I have broken any laws. We don't believe we're breaking laws when we're following a higher law and even a law that's on the statutes of necessity to save a life.

MS. BRACKETT: Not only does Scheidler deny that he's masterminding a criminal plot, he says he can't be prosecuted using RICO since he doesn't have an economic motive for his actions, and that is the only question the Supreme Court is being asked to decide right now, is an economic motive necessary to prove RICO?

G. ROBERT BLAKEY, Defendant's Attorney: If it has no economic dimension, if it's merely political and social, it's not in RICO.

MS. BRACKETT: Robert Blakey, a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School, is representing Scheidler before the Supreme Court. Blakey drafted the RICO statute in 1970 when he was a U.S. Senate staff member. He says Congress designed the law to go after the Mafia or others engaged in commercial criminal activity.

G. ROBERT BLAKEY: Racketeering means -- go look it up in the dictionary -- to engage in extortion or fraud. Corrupt means venal. Venal means to buy or sell. So you can go through each aspect of the statute that way, indeed, there are no less than eight aspects of the statue in which you can look to and see and infer and then generalize that the intent was aimed at commercial transactions, not political or social transactions.

FAY CLAYTON, Plaintiff's Attorney: Congress spent more than a year drafting that statute, and there's not one word in that statute that suggests economic motive.

MS. BRACKETT: According to NOW attorney Fay Clayton, RICO crimes need not have an economic motive, just an economic impact. She says the anti-abortion campaign has caused serious economic harm to the clinics, justifying the RICO charge of extortion.

FAY CLAYTON: Extortion means using force, violence, or fear to make someone give up a property right, and a property right is defined broadly as any kind of a valuable right. It doesn't have to be a tangible thing. The right to do business is a classic property right. These folks use force, violence, and fear.

MS. BRACKETT: One of those accused of extortion by NOW is Monica Migliorino, a defendant in the case along with Scheidler. Migliorino is a Ph.D. theology teacher at Marquette University in Milwaukee. Currently serving a nine-month jail sentence for disturbing conduct outside a Milwaukee abortion clinic, she does get time off every day to care for her two young children.

MONICA MIGLIORINO, Milwaukee Citizens for Life: [talking to children] Heat it up a few seconds, and then it's all yours.

MS. BRACKETT: Five years ago, Migliorino and several other activists took five thousand fetuses from a Chicago pathology laboratory. She says she saved the fetuses from the garbage heap in order to give them a proper burial.

MONICA MIGLIORINO: I think they were just there for the purposes of being burned with trash.

MS. BRACKETT: The fetuses were stored in Migliorino's home and in Joe Scheidler's backyard playhouse. NOW contends Migliorino stole the fetuses and orchestrated negative publicity in order to disrupt the business of the clinics where the abortions occurred. One of those clinics was the Summit Women's Health Organization in Milwaukee, a plaintiff in the case. Migliorino has organized protests here for years, including the successful effort to block the clinic from leasing space in another building.

MONICA MIGLIORINO: By going down to the building that they wanted to move into, we were exercising our right to freedom of speech, to tell the tenants who were going to have to live side by side with this abortion center,hey, this is the kind of business that's going to move in here, is this what you want?

MS. BRACKETT: In a letter to the building's tenants, Migliorino promised weekly pickets and demonstrations and said, "Local activists have been known to chain doors shut and even block doors with cars." That's what NOW calls extortion, punishable under RICO.

MONICA MIGLIORINO: No, because RICO is aimed at people who are involved in extorting other people's money. That is not what we were doing. The abortion clinics don't give us money if we don't go there. We don't go down to abortion clinics and say, give us money, and we won't stand in front of your doors and protect the unborn children that you're going to kill today.

SUSAN HILL, National Women's Health Organization: I think they're playing word games about social protest.

MS. BRACKETT: Susan Hill is executive director of the Summit Clinic's parent company.

SUSAN HILL: This is really not a First Amendment peaceful protest issue. Again, the threat of things in this case, the extortion of landlords and of business contracts goes way beyond peaceful protest.

MS. BRACKETT: How much monetary damage would you say your clinics, our clients have suffered?

SUSAN HILL: Hundreds of thousands of dollars between legal fees and just the loss of business, loss of leases, loss of other contracts with businesses, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

MS. BRACKETT: Now if the Supreme Court rules in favor of NOW, the case will go back to the 7th Circuit in Illinois, where it will be tried using RICO, and that, says Prof. Blakey, means RICO would be used for a purpose for which it was never intended.

G. ROBERT BLAKEY: The intention had nothing to do with abortion demonstrations. Abortion demonstrations were not a characteristic feature of legal landscape in 1970. On the other hand, anti-war demonstrations were.

MS. BRACKETT: And because they were, Blakey says Congress intended to exempt protests like anti-war and civil rights demonstrations from prosecution under RICO.

G. ROBERT BLAKEY: When Martin Luther King talked about a philosophy of direct action, he meant simply to draw people's attention to injustice in hope that through the crucible of focusing on injustice, the injustice would be eliminated. That's what the First Amendment is all about.

PATRICIA IRELAND: It is an abomination to invoke the name of Martin Luther King in the same context with people who bomb, who harass, who threaten, who use force and violence to impose their will. There is no organization that is more conscious of the right to protest, to petition the government, to demonstrate than the National Organization for Women. We are known for our mass marches and demonstrations and zap actions. I think what Joe Scheidler, Randy Terry, et all, are doing is not legitimate protest, is not non-violent, civil disobedience. It's non-civil violent disobedience. And that has to stop.

MS. BRACKETT: Both sides will have to wait a few months to learn the results of the decision. The Supreme Court is not expected to issue an opinion until just before the session ends in the spring.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the NewsHour, the new president of PBS. CONVERSATION - PBS

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, a conversation with Ervin Duggan, chosen last week to be president of the Public Broadcasting Service. PBS is the national programming organization of the nation's public television stations. This program, the NewsHour, is one of the programs it distributes. Ervin Duggan is a novelist, former newspaper reporter, and Johnson White Houseaide who has been a member of the Federal Communications Commission for the past four years. He will take over at PBS February the 1st.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Duggan, welcome.

MR. DUGGAN: Thank you. It's nice to be here.

MR. LEHRER: There have been several recent suggestions that public television has lost its way in the new multi-outlook world that we now live in. What's your analysis of that?

MR. DUGGAN: I do not think that Public Broadcasting has lost its way. I think it has reached a crossroads, and it must choose and renew itself. But every enterprise faces change, faces challenge, faces new conditions, and Public Broadcasting is no different. So I would describe it as a crossroads or a fork in the road but not a losing of one's way.

MR. LEHRER: What would you say to those who say that it's no longer relevant, that it's no longer necessary, that now with all of the multitude of cable channels and everything else, who needs a federally funded or partially federally funded Public Broadcasting Service anymore?

MR. DUGGAN: I would say first of all that the other delivery systems like cable only reach 60 percent of the population. The other 40 percent are likely to be the less affluent and more remote 40 percent who most need what public television can offer. I would say, second, that the educational and instructional part of the iceberg of public television, it is not as visible perhaps as a prime time schedule, but is a vital part of delivering instruction and educational materials to schools by satellite. The on-line computer service to teachers of math, services like this are terribly relevant to a country that is in a crisis about education. And we would make a terrible mistake to pull the plug on this great institution after 25 years of building it up at a moment when we most need a way of reflecting on our national life, and when we most need educational and cultural service, especially for that 40 percent who don't have the alternative delivery system.

MR. LEHRER: All right. You said public television is at a crossroads and there is a fork, several forks in the road, I guess, to choose. Which fork do you think should be chosen? What are the options?

MR. DUGGAN: Well, I'm not prepared to impose a blueprint from above. I'm not going to go to PBS until February 1st. And the first thing I'm going to do is talk to people in the system, visit the stations, and try to elicit a vision from the grassroots, rather than impose it from above. So let me speak generally --

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

MR. DUGGAN: -- rather than specifically about that question. I think that the great challenge for Public Broadcasting at this moment is to learn to do more with less. Buckminster Fuller used to say about architecture that successive epics in architecture have been learning to enclose more space and do more with less material. And the geodesic dome was his great contribution that, that did more with less. I think we need to become more efficient in using the resources that we have. And every fiber of my being is going to be devoted to that effort to use imagination and originality to accomplish more with less.

MR. LEHRER: But what is your analysis of what the problem is?

MR. DUGGAN: Well, I think one problem is that there is at least a perception abroad that Public Broadcasting has become the preserve of one ideological camp. I think that Public Broadcasting in order to deal --

MTNALEHRER: Meaning the criticism from some conservatives that, that the documentaries and other things have a liberal slant to it --

MR. DUGGAN: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: -- that's what you're referring to?

MR. DUGGAN: Yes. Now, I am not about to start my career as the leader of PBS by attacking the institution I am called upon to lead, but I will say with respect to the future, that if there is such a perception we need to deal with it. The ownership of the system should be public if it is a public system. The feeling of ownership and investment should come from both conservatives and liberals. I think we should create a kind of public square in which everyone is welcome and in which we reflect about our national life in an intelligent and civil way. And I think conservatives should feel welcome in that public square and liberals should also. And we should celebrate our differences and debate those differences, but I don't think that we should have an issue of ownership that divides us.

MR. LEHRER: Well, as you know, there are those on the left who make just the opposite charge, saying quite the contrary, not only is it not a conservative operation, it -- I mean, is it not a liberal operation, it is dominated by corporate underwriters, it is bland, and it is just the opposite of what, what you said it should be, a marketplace of strong opinion.

MR. DUGGAN: I don't find public television bland but I certainly don't want it to be bland, and I will be fighting for bite and relevance, and an interesting way of attacking national problems in the way that we discuss them. So I don't have any worries at all about the future lying in the direction of blandness. I think that there's a great opportunity to have a clash of ideas on public television --

MR. LEHRER: What about --

MR. DUGGAN: -- and to attract people who love that clash of ideas and want to be a part of it.

MR. LEHRER: What about those critics who say that in a desperate attempt to survive, Public Broadcasting is making deals to make politically correct sitcoms, including Lawrence Welk repeats on the air, doing all the things that it should not be doing, just the opposite of what you just said?

MR. DUGGAN: My personal view is that Public Broadcasting will not find its future by becoming a warmed over version of network television, or commercial television, that we will survive and succeed in the future by doing what we've done best in the past, which is becoming a sort of test bed, or well spring of new ideas for broadcasting and for television. And so my feeling about the future is that we should be doing those things that commercial television does not do well or does not want to do or does not have the courage or imagination to do.

MR. LEHRER: Richard Carlson, who is president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is the funding organization that takes the federal money and then dispenses it to Public Broadcasting, not only television but also radio, suggested that public television may be too hung up on hardware, facilities and distribution systems and not putting -- has not been putting enough emphasis on programs. Is that a valid criticism, or do you know at this point?

MR. DUGGAN: I think that a consensus is emerging in the world of public television that we have to be a programming brand name that exports itself and is relevant to varying delivery systems. And if you become stranded on the island of one delivery system, you lose your relevance. So I would like to see a public television system that presents itself on cable, and Horizon, the great new venture of PBS, is going to do that. The --

MR. LEHRER: What is that? Explain that.

MR. DUGGAN: Well, Horizon with Larry Grossman, a former president ofPBS, it will be a cable service sponsored by PBS that will bring the greatest academic discussions, it will be a way of reflecting on cable. And it has not yet been fully invented, but it certainly is a way of planting a technological flag on cable, a new delivery system, and I think that the future lies in that way. I don't want to deserve the basehon broadcasting, because we've built a wonderful system as a broadcast delivery, but I think in the future we have to plant those flags on new technologies.

MR. LEHRER: You said that you did not come in with a personal agenda at this point, but you must have some very strong personal reasons for taking the job. What are they?

MR. DUGGAN: I am a public service junkie, and I have loved being at the Federal Communications Commission. Whatever else I have tried to do in life, I've always been pulled back into jobs that connect me with a feeling of public service. And this was a wonderful opportunity to do something for a private corporation, a public-private partnership that gives one a feeling of serving the public in a great educational and cultural institution. You know, we think sometimes of public television as a kind of faded patch on the uniform of commercial broadcasting. In fact, what it is is a crown jewel of American education and culture .It is, I think, as vibrant and vital as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery, Brown University, or Harvard, and we should think of it in that way, as an educational institution, a cultural institution that happens to deliver its subject matter over broadcast technology.

MR. LEHRER: You say that, and yet, federal funding for Public Broadcasting is -- gets more difficult each authorization time in Congress, corporate underwriting is down. There are all kinds of signs that point to the fact that maybe everybody doesn't agree with you.

MR. DUGGAN: Well, that's why I talked about a crossroads earlier. Let me say two things about that. First of all, tell me the cultural or educational institution that isn't always feeling the pinch and rattling the tin cup. I think that we are akin to other educational and cultural institutions in that constant need to get adequate funding. But the second thing I would say is that this crossroads public television needs to deserve the support that it gets. It needs to behave in a way that is so efficient and so brilliant that it justifies greater support.

MR. LEHRER: And you're going to see to that?

MR. DUGGAN: I'm going to certainly try.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Mr. Duggan, again, welcome. Welcome to Public Broadcasting, and thank you very much for tonight. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, police said racial hatred was the apparent motive for yesterday's shooting rampage aboard a suburban New York commuter train. The Supreme Court heard arguments on whether an organized crime law can be used to ensure access to abortion clinics. President Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico into law, and Xerox Corporation said it was cutting 10,000 jobs. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.