The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: 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 Thursday, we examine anti-police rap music with a Clarence Page set-up and a discussion among actor Charlton Heston, two police officers, and a record company executive. Then Charlayne Hunter-Gault continues her "Can We All Get Along" conversations, this time with editorial cartoonist Doug Marlette.NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: The U.S. today turned up the heat on Iraq for its continued defiance of United Nations resolutions. The Bush administration has threatened military action to force Iraq to meet its obligations under the Gulf War cease-fire agreement. Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell went to the White House to brief the President. Also at the meeting were Defense Sec. Cheney and National Security Adviser Scowcroft. The U.S. has about three dozen warships in the Mediterranean in relatively close proximity to Iraq. Pentagon officials today cancelled port calls for four of them, including the aircraft carrier Saratoga. The officials refused to say whether the ships had been put on alert. White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said the message Saddam Hussein should get from the ship movements was that he should get in compliance with the U.N. The latest stand-off began when Iraq refused to let U.N. weapons inspectors search a government building in Baghdad. Diplomats at the United Nations today said no further Security Council authorization would be needed for a military strike on Iraq. But the President of the Council said this afternoon it had offered Iraq a compromise to break the impasse. Democratic Presidential candidate Bill Clinton lent his support to military action. He issued a statement saying, "Let Saddam Hussein make no mistake: Even during an election campaign, Americans are united on this issue. We will not tolerate his defiance of UN resolutions." Iraq's deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz responded defiantly today to threats of force. He said, "Iraq will never abandon its sovereignty, will never accept any insult, and will never allow a U.N. inspection team to threaten its internal security. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Israel today announced a cut in new housing in the occupied territories. The Housing minister said 6600 units would not be built. But he said more than 10,000 others would. Most of those are already under construction. The announcement drew criticism from Palestinians who want a freeze on all settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Syria's foreign minister also dismissed any Arab concessions to Israel because of the settlement cuts. Sec. of State Baker was in Syria today. He also made a surprise visit to Lebanon. We have a report narrated by Richard Vaughan of Worldwide Television News.

MR. VAUGHAN: James Baker's trip to Lebanon came out of the blue. Nine years after so many American troops were killed in a suicide car bomb attack, the Secretary of State was flouting an American ban on visits to the country in an ongoing bid to bump start the faltering Middle East peace talks. The timing was not ideal. Only hours earlier, Israeli warplanes had attacked Shiite guerrilla hideouts in Southern Lebanon, injuring at least four people. It would have brought home to all present the fundamental need for progress. President Elias Hirawe has long been rejecting American demands for him to meet James Baker in a third country. Now it was a case of taking the mountain from Mohamed, but the Secretary of State was not unwelcome. After two hours of what are always described as frank discussions, both Baker and Hirawe emerged content with the accord which seemed to have been struck, and with the American Secretary openly optimistic that his six-day peace mission to the Middle East might now have a real chance of success. His talks in Damascus on Wednesday with President Hafez Assad of Syria had been equally cordially and constructive. The next and last port on his whistle stop tour is to be Saudi Arabia on Friday.

MR. MacNeil: The Bush administration today predicted the nation's unemployment rate would drop nearly 1 percent by the end of the year to 6.9 percent. The forecast was part of the administration's mid year economic report released today. It foresees slightly better economic growth and a much smaller budget deficit than estimated by the White House in January. But Budget Director Richard Darman said the economy would be in better shape if Congress had passed the President's economic proposals. He spoke at a White House briefing this afternoon.

RICHARD DARMAN: In a single sentence, the Congress has failed to deliver. There is much posturing about interests in economic growth, investment in the future, crime reduction, health reform, and deficit control, but when it comes to constructive congressional action, on a scale of zero to ten, the total is closer to zero.

MR. MacNeil: House Democrats were quick to criticize the economic review. House Budget Committee Chairman Leon Panetta called it more of a political document than an accurate analysis of where the economy is going. The number of people applying for first-time unemployment benefits rose by 19,000 during the second week of July. The Labor Department reported that 422,000 people filed claims, up 4.7 percent from the previous week.

MR. LEHRER: Vice President Quayle took political centerstage again today. Last night on CNN he said he would support his daughter if she became pregnant and decided to have an abortion. He said he hoped that that was a choice she would not make. Quayle's daughter, Karine, is 13-years-old. This morning, Marilyn Quayle said there was no question their daughter would take the child to term if such a situation arose. The Vice President later tried to clarify his remarks at campaign stop in Indiana. He said he would not allow her to have an abortion if she were still a minor.

VICE PRESIDENT QUAYLE: If under current circumstances in a hypothetical situation if she had become pregnant, she would have the child. The question last night was if she is a grown-up. That is an entirely different situation.

REPORTER: You said a minute ago --

VICE PRESIDENT QUAYLE: I would support her decision, if she -- when she becomes an adult -- I would counsel her and encourage her not to have the abortion, but to bring the child to life.

MR. LEHRER: Democratic Presidential Candidate Bill Clinton said Quayle's remarks were a personal matter, but he said it reinforced the Democrats' position that abortion should not be made a crime. Clinton traveled to Houston today to talk about his plans for fighting crime. He criticized President Bush for opposing gun control legislation known as the Brady Bill. He did so before a crowd of police officers and supporters at City Hall.

BILL CLINTON: I don't see how a President can ask men and women to put on uniforms and risk their lives to keep the rest of us safe if he won't risk a little political capital and take a little heat to ask people to wait five or six days to take their criminal record or their mental health history before they get a gun which can kill a policeman. And it is crazy to believe that we shouldn't at least try to give our police officers a fair fight in the fight to keep our streets safe. That's why I believe we ought to be for the Brady Bill and we ought to take the AK-47s and Uzies off the streets in America!

MR. LEHRER: Clinton promised not to use the crime issue as a divisive campaign tool but as a theme to unify America.

MR. MacNeil: In Bosnia, Serbian forces today continued their offensive against several government strongholds in the North of the republic. In the capital, what had been a relatively quiet day turned deadly when a mortar attack killed at least five people. Two members of a CNN crew were also wounded in a separate attack. The head of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Cambodia today accused the Khmer Rouge of conducting a deliberate policy of terror against civilians. The Khmer Rouge is one of the four factions that signed a peace accord last October, ending 13 years of civil war. The Khmer Rouge was responsible for killing as many as a million Cambodians in the 1970s. UN diplomat Yashusi Akashi today charged the Khmer Rouge with continued cease-fire violations, including the laying of new land mines and artillery attacks.

MR. LEHRER: Peru's Shining Path rebels continued their wave of terror today with more bombings in Lima, the capital. The car bomb exploded on a busy avenue, injuring 10 people. It was one of several attacks during a second day of a general strike called by the Maoist rebels. They have threatened to kill anyone trying to get to work. The search continued today in Colombia for drug baron Pablo Escobar. He escaped yesterday from his hacienda-like jail near Medillin. Twenty-six guards at the jail reportedly were arrested for taking orders from Escobar.

MR. MacNeil: That's our News Summary tonight. Now, it's on to violent rap lyrics and humor to ease racial tensions. FOCUS - MUSIC OR MAYHEM?

MR. LEHRER: A piece of rap music called "Cop Killer" is our lead story tonight. Performed by a singer named Ice-T, distributed on an album by the Time Warner Company, it has become the center of a storm over corporate responsibility and the First Amendment. Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune starts us out with some thoughts about the conflict and its causes.

MR. PAGE: Urban unrest, how do you feel about it? Where you stand depends a lot on where you live. George Bush, who lives in the White House, says the Los Angeles riots resulted from the shock black Los Angeleans felt when the Rodney King verdict let them down.

[RAP SEGMENT]

MR. PAGE: But listen to rap musicians, like former Los Angeles street gang member Ice-T. You hear a different message. It wasn't shock; it was confirmation. It was also the last straw.

[RAP SONG]

MR. PAGE: No, Ice-T says, he doesn't want to go out and kill a cop. The lyric is theater, he says, a representation of the frustration felt by many young black males who have been hassled by the cops.

ICE-T, Rap Musician: [June 18] The enemies on that album are racist people, the KKK, parents, no matter what race you are if you teach racism to your kids, and brutal police. And if those are my enemies, so be it.

MR. PAGE: Another Los Angeles rapper, Ice-Cube, stirred up a different controversy for a rap song called "Black Korea." Addressed to Korean shop owners, it warned --

RAP SEGMENT: -- So pay respect to the black fist, or we'll burn your store right down to a crisp, a crisp. And then we'll sink ya - -

MR. PAGE: Again, Ice-Cube said his lyric was theater, a representation of anger felt by many black Los Angeleans after a Korean merchant fatally shot a black teen-ager in the back of the head and received no jail time. It's easy to criticize such angry rappers, especially if you're a politician. Dan Quayle and 60 members of Congress, most of them Republican, called on Time Warner to stop selling Ice-T's "Cop Killer" and President Bush called the lyrics "sick."

PRESIDENT BUSH: I stand against those who use films, or records or television or video games to glorify killing law enforcement officers. It is sick.

MR. PAGE: Their comments followed Bill Clinton's criticism of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition for giving a forum to Sister Souljah, famous for making statements like this --

SPOKESMAN: Do you believe there are any good white people?

SISTER SOULJAH: If there aren't, I haven't met 'em. Where are they?

MR. PAGE: Most rap music is intended only to entertain like disco in the '70s. Since 1982, when Grand Master Flash released "The Message," rap has given us vivid and often terrifying snap shots of life in the inner city.

[RAP SEGMENT]

MR. PAGE: Like the protest songs of the '60s, rap music has a compelling message. It also may be an early warning system. Rapper Chuck Dee, of the New York group Public Enemy calls rap "black America's CNN." They have a point, but I wouldn't call it news. Rap is commentary, biting social commentary, that gives a voice to the ghetto voiceless. And it's not just black America that's listening to it. Go to any Public Enemy concert, for example, and look around. This proud black group that made Sister Souljah famous draws a very white audience. Are they curiosity seekers, or does rap, as a voice of rebellion, cross racial lines? Does it have a special appeal to a '90s generation of rebels without a cause, or as Tom Petty sings, without a clue? Rap fills the need all teens feel to upset their parents. It also offers middle class whites a tiny but safe little peek into the ghetto, a fantasy ghetto that absolves them from having to deal with the real thing. These Watergate babies are different from their boomer parents, who knew the hope and sacrifice of the '60s. Today's teens and twenty- somethings know only the scandals and cynicism of the '70s and '80s. They've tuned in many cases, gotten turned off, and dropped out, which brings up another irony. For all the complaints about radicalism, racism, and misogyny in rap, most rap themes promote conservative values, pro family, anti-drug, self-help. New York rapper KRS1 calls it "edutainment," educational entertainment.

BILL CLINTON: You had a rap singer here last night named Sister Souljah. I defend her right to express herself through music, but her comments before and after Los Angeles were filled with the kind of hatred that you do not honor today and tonight.

MR. PAGE: Though Bill Clinton was right to criticize Sister Souljah for imprudent comments, but maybe he was unfair to the Rainbow Coalition for giving her a forum. She was not a major speaker at the event. She was one member of a fifteen-member panel. Her views were questioned, argued and challenged by many, including Jesse Jackson.

[RAP SEGMENT]

MR. PAGE: The coalition only turned to Sister Souljah in an attempt to reach out to the new angry and turned-off generation. It was looking for voices who could help channel the energy, anger and frustration of young America into peaceful change. And why not? It may shock you, but rap wasn't created to make you feel comfortable. Listen closely, America; your children are talking to you. I'm Clarence Page.

MR. MacNeil: Concern over violent rap lyrics has crystallized in demands that Time Warner pull Ice-T's "Cop Killer" disc from the market. Actor Charlton Heston made that demand at a recent Time Warner shareholders meeting. David Harleston doesn't agree. He's the president of DEF Jam Records, a New York-based record production company whose rap singers include, Chuck Dee and Public Enemy. Charlton Heston, why should Time Warner pull the record?

MR. HESTON: I urged that action on Time Warner and Mr. Gerald Levin, its CEO, at the shareholders meeting because I think I blame them more than the Ice-T group. They are capitalizing out of greed, in my opinion, and publishing a dangerous record. Now, when I attacked them and when Gerald Levin defended his company, he perhaps sincerely felt that Ice-T, the rap musician responsible for the lyrics, was honest when he said that he was not speaking for himself, he was not voicing his own views, he was acting out a fantasy expressing what Mr. Levin called a "fringe opinion." And a lot of people believe that. I just today on the NBC Today Show we heard his statement to the contrary in another video, a videotaped interview he did. On the Arsenio Hall Show he said, "Don't go out and kill no police; it's just a record. There's a lot of good cops out there. I know a lot of police officers that try to do the right thing. All this controversy about me, trying to say I'm doing a prejudiced record, prejudge every cop, that's wrong." Okay, this is what he said on videotape in the other interview. "Police ain't" -- bleep -- I'm going to bleep this -- it loses a lot in the translation. Believe me. Use your imagination. "The police ain't" -- bleep -- "to me. They never will be. They're a gestapo organization till you start takin' them cops down out there in the street. Then you all are really still" -- bleeping -- " in the wind. When brothers get ready to do that, I'll be right in the front. You know what I'm sayin'? But niggers ain't ready to smoke no pig. I personally would like to blow some" -- bleeping -- "police stations apart. If it was up to me, I would burn the White House down. You know, I'm an anarchist. I'm ready to do this" -- bleep. "Some people gotta die though. If you ain't ready to spill no blood, then go on outta here. You know what I'm sayin'?" I think Mr. Levin now has to abandon his defense of that as an artistic commentary. I think there are, in fact, federal laws against advocating, let alone undertaking, assault on a federal or state officer.

MR. MacNeil: Let me ask David Harleston, as the president of a record company which deals with many of these artists, why do you disagree with Mr. Heston? Why should Time Warner not pull this record?

MR. HARLESTON: There are several reasons. For Time Warner to submit to public pressure, pressure that is clearly opposed to an artistic expression.

MR. HESTON: Do you call that an artistic expression, sir?

MR. HARLESTON: An expression --

MR. HESTON: What I read.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Heston, just let him make his case --

MR. HESTON: I'm sorry.

MR. MacNeil: -- and then I'll come back to you.

MR. HESTON: Yeah.

MR. HARLESTON: An expression that is born of anger, that is born of frustration, and contrary to what I think Mr. Heston was suggesting does not call for the murder of cops. I think is really the end of free expression in this country as we know it. I think you've got to distinguish, Mr. Heston, between what you've reported to have heard Ice-T -- Ice-T state on I think you said the Arsenio Hall Show and on -- and the lyrics of the song, itself.

MR. HESTON: No, on NBC Today Show.

MR. HARLESTON: The question -- I'm sorry -- NBC. The question I think that -- or the issue that you and others who support the boycott have put on the table is Time Warner or any record company I think you're suggesting ought not to distribute records which call for the killing of cops. Not only, in my view, does this record, which for the record is not a rap record, it's a heavy metal record, not only does it not call for the killing of cops; it is quite clear and Ice-T has expounded on this in numerous other interviews, it's quite clear it's a song about anger. It's a song about frustration. There is some clear cathartic benefit to the song and the notion that by not getting or not letting the song get to the public, get to music listeners, get to an audience, somehow that frustration or anger can be ignored or will go away I think is ludicrous. And I think because that is where this boycott is coming from, it is an extraordinarily misplaced intention.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Heston.

MR. HESTON: You dismiss then the quote of the rap singer on the NBC show today? You say that didn't happen?

MR. HARLESTON: I don't dismiss it.

MR. HESTON: That's his own opinion. That's what he said, himself.

MR. HARLESTON: And that's precisely my point; that if you're talking about the song, then let's talk about the song. And let's talk about --

MR. HESTON: I wasn't talking about the song.

MR. HARLESTON: -- Time Warner ought to be --

MR. HESTON: I was talking about what he said.

MR. HARLESTON: -- ought to cease distribution of the record embodying the song. What Ice-T says on a television program or a radio interview, or writes in an article of his own I don't thinkhas anything to do with the Time Warner boycott or the argument that you seem to be making about distribution of this song.

MR. MacNeil: Let me ask this. Mr. Heston said earlier that there are laws against incitement to killing state or federal officials. Do you think this record is an incitement to excitable young people, black, white, anything else, who might hear it and because of their rage or whatever go and a kill a cop? Do you think it's an incitement to kill cops?

MR. HARLESTON: Absolutely not. And moreover, to suggest that it is, I think is insulting to listeners of Ice-T and music listeners generally. There is, in my mind, no more likelihood that a music listener of the song "Cop Killer" is going to go out and kill a cop than there is the likelihood that singing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is going to lead to international war. It demeans the listeners of music, of rap music and of pop music --

MR. MacNeil: And Mr. Heston --

MR. HARLESTON: -- to conclude that they are unable to distinguish between art and action.

MR. MacNeil: And, Mr. Heston, you clearly think that they can't distinguish between art and action in this case, and that it is an incitement?

MR. HESTON: Let me shift the argument a bit, sir. If you're comfortable with the lyrics about killing cops, which are quite specific, if we had time I would read them, but I can't --

MR. MacNeil: We showed them in our piece. We had them on the screen earlier in our piece.

MR. HESTON: Let me suggest another thing. Homosexuals and Jews are targets of violence as well, sometimes murderous violence, although not as frequently as police officers. Let me ask you, sir, if the title of this song, "Cop Killer" in the album were "Fag Killer" and the lyrics said, "Die, die, die Kike, die," would you be as comfortable about Time Warner distributing the record?

MR. MacNeil: Would you?

MR. HARLESTON: If you're asking would I --

MR. HESTON: Yes, that's what I'm asking.

MR. HARLESTON: -- support distribution of the record, notwithstanding those lyrics, the answer is yes. Let's not forget that Jews and homosexuals and blacks and a whole host of other insular minorities in America have historically been the target of defamatory and negative lyrics and so on. Curiously, curiously, no one has called for a boycott of those kinds of artists or those kinds of lyrics. My answer is yes, and I encourage everyone to remember history as it is.

MR. MacNeil: Let me ask you, Mr. Harleston, what kind of scrutiny or monitoring do record companies like yours, and in this case the Time Warner, the company that Time Warner owns that publishes Ice-T, what kind of scrutiny of lyrics -- would you just pass anything that the musician hands in? Do you have any criteria for eliminating some lyrics and passing others?

MR. HARLESTON: We don't have a criteria, a content-based criteria for eliminating some lyrics or permitting others and again, I can only --

MR. MacNeil: You do screen them? Do you have a procedure for screening them?

MR. HARLESTON: No, we don't have a procedure for screening lyrics at all. We evaluate the development of an artist's music from the moment they walk into the studio until the album is finished. The judgments that are made by our A&R department, by the owner of the company, by anyone else involved in the process is, is this good music, is the artist being true to the artist's vision as we understood that vision when we signed the artist.

MR. MacNeil: So do I understand you correctly, you would never say to a rap artist, or a rock artist, you can't use this -- publish this lyric on our -- by a recording company -- we object to this line or that -- you would never say that?

MR. HARLESTON: That's correct.

MR. MacNeil: Yeah. What do you think about that, Mr. Heston?

MR. HESTON: Well, I know that, in fact, Time Warner, despite their protestations of their determination to defend created freedom pre-censored the cover of "Cop Killer," which originally showed Ice-T standing with a gun over a prostrate police officer and insisted, Time Warner insisted on changing the original title of the whole album, which was "Cop Killer," to "Body Bag." And let me shift to another argument. I'm interested --

MR. MacNeil: Do you think that record companies should censor, if that's the word, or edit the lyrics they publish?

MR. HESTON: Censorship is -- if you refuse to publish something, you're not saying the artist cannot do it.

MR. MacNeil: No.

MR. HESTON: You're saying, I don't want to market this. Now, if this gentleman is saying that he exercises no choice whatever, I find that specious. Every company rejects, alters, amends the content of every record, every -- I've been doing this all my life. I know very well the degree to which every company takes a hand in the creative content of the projects they do.

MR. MacNeil: What do you say -- since that isn't the case here - - what do you say, Mr. Heston, about Mr. Harleston's argument -- and Clarence Page referred to it in his piece setting this up -- that there is actually a value in these violent, seeming rap lyrics because they're an expression, culture expression of the anger and the frustration of people in the ghettos?

MR. HESTON: There's a great deal of carryings on in the university about what they call a "hate speech" and that seems to be directed in the other avenue. Let me try another thing.

MR. MacNeil: So you don't see a valuable therapeutic quality to this? I'd just like to get your response to that.

MR. HESTON: No, I don't think -- I don't think society has any responsibility to allow this kind of expression of opinion. This is not -- this has nothing to do with creative expression. We've already established that this is, in fact, his opinion. This is his wish. He has said as much.

MR. MacNeil: Why do you feel it is valuable and therapeutic?

MR. HARLESTON: It's valuable for a whole host of reasons not the least of which being that we are here on television discussing a very important issue. And that is rage and anger in a community that has been ignored and disenfranchised since the beginning of this country. Ice-T is singing -- is rapping in this particular song, or has written lyrics --

MR. MacNeil: He says it isn't rap incidentally. He says people only call it rap because it's black. It's actually rock.

MR. HARLESTON: It's hard rock. It's heavy metal. He's absolutely correct. And the --

MR. HESTON: Somebody defined rap as music for people who can't sing.

MR. MacNeil: Okay. Anyway --

MR. HARLESTON: The point that I'm trying to make that Ice-T is conveying to this country whether we want to hear it or not that we are in trouble, our cities are in trouble, our citizens are in trouble. Anybody who has been subject to something like police brutality, brutality brought about on account of the victim's race knows about that anger. And for those of us who have not been subject to it, we need to know about it, because it is hurting people. It is -- it is diminishing the values of their lives, and it's something that at the very least we need to talk about, and at most, do something about.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Heston.

MR. HESTON: I think you perhaps revealed your opinion; whether or not it's Mr. Levin's I can't say. You seem to be saying that you approve of this, that you advocate it, that you think it is a position that should be supported and encouraged. I think America does not agree with you, sir.

MR. HARLESTON: Let me be very clear. You've completely misstated and I believe missed the point of my statement. What I said was it is crucial that this country understand here, recognize what is wrong with this country. That's what Ice-T's record is all about. Now your suggestion that -- I'm not sure what you suggested that I advocated -- I have stated that to my mind there's nothing in this song that advocates cop killing so I object to your suggestion that I believe that.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Heston, let me ask you something. Ice-T said in another interview -- he's given a lot of interviews -- he said in another interview, and this goes to your business, the movies, Arnold Schwarzeneger blew away dozens of cops as the terminator, but I don't hear anybody complaining about that. Do you think there's something different in the two forms?

MR. HESTON: Arnold Schwarzeneger was playing a robot and he has never supported the idea that he should go around, or that anyone should go around killing policemen as Ice-T just did in the interview I read, as aired on NBC today. Let me shift to another cut --

MR. MacNeil: I'm afraid we've come to the end of our time. I'd like to hear your other idea --

MR. HESTON: I thank you for your time.

MR. MacNeil: -- but that is the end of our time.

MR. HESTON: I appreciate the opportunity --

MR. MacNeil: Do you have a final comment on that?

MR. HARLESTON: Only --

MR. MacNeil: The difference between movies and the rap records.

MR. HARLESTON: I'm not sure what the difference is. I must say I'm somewhat surprised to hear Mr. Heston speak in support of contraction of the mix of ideas in this country, being an individual who is an artist, himself.

MR. MacNeil: Okay. We have to leave it there. Mr. Harleston and Charlton Heston, thank you very much for joining us. FOCUS - PATH OF DESTRUCTION

MR. LEHRER: Next tonight, the strangle hold drugs and guerrillas have on Peru. Fatal bombings and a two-day general strike called by Maoist Shining Path guerrillas have brought a reign of terror to the country and the hardline government of Alberto Fujimori can't seem to stop them. The rebels feed off Peru's vast illicit drug trade. It's estimated the country produces 2/3 of the world's supply of cocaine. Much of the raw coca is grown in the Huallaga Valley. Correspondent Elizabeth Farnsworth visited the area and filed this report.

MS. FARNSWORTH: East of the high peaks of the Andes lies the Huallaga River Valley, a vast, sparsely populated area five times larger than the country of El Salvador. The Huallaga's great expansive green is broken by small villages like Shanow or Lamas that look peaceful and lovely in the afternoon sunshine. But just beyond, are the bushes that provide the leaf for 2/3 of the world's crack and cocaine. In recent years, this valley has become a war zone, where drug traffickers, the military, the police and two leftist guerrilla groups fight for power. Ten thousand people have died here since the mid 1980s. The Maoist Shining Path, Peru's largest, most weakest guerrilla organization, controls much of the Southern part of the valley. It even dominates the area around the U.S.-funded Santa Lucia base, which houses a unit of special counter narcotics police and about 30 advisers from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. A second guerrilla group, the Tupakamatu Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA, is fighting for control of the Northern half of the valley around the city of Tarapoto. A local cameraman filmed this confrontation between guerrillas and the army along a key stretch of highway outside Tarapoto. The MRTA was showing its strength and harassing the military. After a few hours of combat, soldiers moved in, and the guerrillas faded back into the hills. As we arrived in Tarapoto, soldiers were patrolling the streets because the guerrillas had called a general strike. They were threatening to kill anyone who defied them. A few shops closed, but most vendors refused to be intimidated. This man was about to open his stall in the central market.

MAN ON STREET: [speaking through interpreter] We can't go along with something that's called by army guerrillas. We don't agree with them. We're always looking for peace and a way for our families to survive.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Survival is tough in Tarapoto. People here are often caught between the military, the guerrillas and the drug traffickers.

MAN ON STREET: [speaking through interpreter] Every day the violence grows. We are living in a very insecure situation. It seems untrue, a lie. There is no security. There is no tranquility.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mario Gonzalez came to the Huallaga as a school teacher 18 years ago. He has watched the valley change as coca became the main crop. One of his schools was in Lamas, a village just outside Tarapoto.

MARIO GONZALEZ, Teacher: [speaking through interpreter] Five years ago I worked here in Lamas as the director of a teachers college. It was the first institute of higher education in this village. I was founder and director and in that period, Lamas was one of the most tranquil villages in the state, but then the indiscriminate planting of coca began and the first guerrilla groups arrived. Behind these little hills there used to be corn; there used to be beans, corn, beans and pineapple. Now, it's all coca. Everyone knows it, but it's not against the law to plant coca in Peru, so they just leave it alone. And today we have a Lamas abandoned by the forces of the state and won over by subversion. The tranquility is only on the surface.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Lamas is a key stronghold at the MRTA and as we walked through the village, Mario lamented the fact that many of his best students have become either guerrillas or coca farmers.

MARIO GONZALEZ: [speaking through interpreter] The young will join the MRTA because they have nowhere to work. There are no jobs. There are no agricultural credits for alternate crops. One alternative is to be a teacher, but in the countryside a teacher makes very little money, so even teachers are planting coca with the help of their students' fathers.

MS. FARNSWORTH: En route to other villages, where Mario had taught school, our car was the only vehicle on the road. Because of the strike, travelers stayed home to avoid the wrath of the guerrillas. We had planned to hike into the coca fields, but with the army and the guerrillas out in force, it was impossible. We found coca farmers in their villages, also trying to avoid trouble. In Shinow, a coca farmer told us he would prefer to grow corn but there is no market and the price is too low. Price supports for alternate crops would be one solution, Mario said. But the government of President Alberto Fujimori, in its embrace of the free market, has dropped prices supports for corn and other crops. This video shot for Peruvian television shows how farmers grow the coca leaf and process it into paste using their feet to mix the leaves with kerosene and other chemicals. Traffickers ship the paste from clandestine landing strips to Colombia, for processing into crack or cocaine. When President Alberto Fujimori suspended the constitution and disbanded congress on April 5th, he argued that the extreme measures were necessary to combat the drug traffickers and guerrillas. But so far, not much has changed in the Huallaga. Peruvian police and their U.S. advisers from the DEA continue to dynamite landing strips and to burn remote laboratories. But within days of uprooting plants, destroying a landing strip or burning a lab, new ones appear deeper in the jungle.

MARIO GONZALEZ: [speaking through interpreter] The acts of war, the destruction of the plants, the attempts to eliminate the bands of drug traffickers and the guerrillas have failed to produce any results. After five or six years of applying this policy, the cultivation of coca has increased not decreased.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Gen. Eduard Bellido commands all the forces which are fighting the drug and guerrilla wars in the Huallaga. He said the Shining Path and the MRTA are formidable enemies because they get millions of dollars a year from the drug traffic.

GEN. EDUARDO BELLIDO, Huallaga, Military Commander: [speaking through interpreter] For each flight of coca paste from here, they get between 12,000 and 15,000 dollars. And this finances their food and pays them an average of 400 to 500 dollars a month, as if they were mercenaries of the revolution. A functionary with many years of working for the state doesn't earn that much. The mercenary of the guerrillas earns much more than the general of the army, as in my case. The guerrillas have better pay, better equipment, good radio, and they can buy good arms.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Peruvian conscripts, on the other hand, are poorly paid and equipped. And for the entire Huallaga, the military has fewer than 10 helicopters. Gen. Bellido admitted that the lack of resources leaves the military and police open to corruption. But even with all the difficulties, he said he was having some success. He let us speak with a Shining Path guerrilla who had given herself up and was providing useful intelligence to the army. She was nervous and insisted on wearing a mask for the interview. In private, she told us she was not being mistreated. She is only 15-years-old.

YOUNG GIRL: [speaking through interpreter] I joined up and I spent five months with the Shining Path. After two months, they gave them the rank of military companiere, company military commander. Thirty men were under me. A company is led by three commanders, military, political and logistical. I had children from seven years up under my command. They were combatants. They are the children of people organized by the party and they have to join the guerrilla army. They can't rebel. They can't flee to an army base and tell all because of their family. If the children tell anything, their families suffer.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Both sides in this war caused their share of suffering. The army is accused of taking prisoners and then making them disappear. As we left the base, our car was surrounded by people whose relatives had been taken from their homes at night by the army.

WOMAN: [speaking through interpreter] We're in the state of emergency here and there are no innocent. It's lucky we found you. You need to know what's happening. My brother isn't guilty so why are they keeping him at the base so long? We can't say anything. We know prisoners are treated badly. Everyone knows it, but we can't scream to the world. The army's coming.

MS. FARNSWORTH: If the army refuses to release its prisoners, their families can turn to help to a Peace Commission organized by the local Catholic Church. Psychologist Humberto Rodriguez works with the Commission.

HUMBERTO RODRIGUEZ, Catholic Peace Commission: [speaking through interpreter] There is a loss of rationality here because of the war. Fantasies grow tremendously. We begin to be afraid of our own shadows and there is a silence in the face of all this. People prefer to remain silent, thinking it will save their lives. Our office helps people break their silence. For example, our lawyer responds to the desperate cries of families of people who have been detained or who have disappeared.

MS. FARNSWORTH: The leaders of the Catholic Commission are convinced there can be no peace in the Huallaga until other crops replace coca.

HUMBERTO RODRIGUEZ: [speaking through interpreter] We could produce alternative crops. The Catholic Church has an organization, an itinerant missionary team that's working now with support from other countries to help farmers develop alternative products. But there is no policy of support for this work from the government, from international organizations, and from other countries who can't escape this crisis that's suffocating our country.

MS. FARNSWORTH: There are only a few isolated programs in the Huallaga promoting alternate crops. Most of the Peruvian government's meager resources and almost all U.S. counter narcotics aid have gone to the police and the military. Meanwhile, coca production continues to spread.

MARIO GONZALEZ: [speaking through interpreter] We're precisely in the place that's the future of coca. Because of the repression of the army as well as the guerrillas, all the people in the upper Huallaga have come to plant coca here. And from here, the great Valley of Gennesse begins, an unexplored virgin valley where there are thousands of acres newly planted in coca.

MS. FARNSWORTH: As we left the Huallaga, the general strike was over and trucks traveled the highway again. We stopped above San Miguel Del Rio Mio, a village where 400 people, half the population, had been arrested during the strike. The army was looking for guerrilla leaders. Most of the 400 were released and now children played peacefully on the river bank. But there's a saying here that the river is hungry. It's a death threat used by traffickers and guerrillas. And children like these often stop during their play to watch as the victims of the violence float by. CONVERSATION - CAN WE ALL GET ALONG?

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, another answer to Rodney King's question, "Can we all get along?" He raised it after a California jury acquitted four police officers charged with his beating. Since then, Charlayne Hunter-Gault has used King's point as a test for an ongoing series of conversations. Tonight's takes a slightly different form. Pulitzer Prize Winning cartoonist Doug Marlette thinks the way to deal with relations between the races is with humor. And he uses his own Southern background to exploit the stereotypes and to turn them on their heads.

DOUG MARLETTE: Being a white male Southerner, you know, I represent and grew up representing everything wrong with the 20th century. I mean --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Enter Marlette's Kudzu, guilt-ridden about being white and now politically incorrect, he sings, "Even white boys get the blues."

DOUG MARLETTE: My people are the only people who it's okay to make fun of and the Southern white, especially male, straight -- in this age, we're politically incorrect, and so in my strip I make fun of my people. That's what I know, the reason I do that. And I like playing with this cultural stereotype.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Enter Marlette's Maurice, black, a skilled athlete, and Marlette says about as comfortable with himself as Kudzu is awkward.

DOUG MARLETTE: One of the things I kind of am proud of in the strip is that from the beginning I've had blacks and whites interacting. But it's very natural. It's just not a big deal. It's part of the backdrop. It's not a self-conscious liberalism. It's just in the South that was our experience.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Take the interaction between Maurice and Nasal T. Lardbottom, voted the whitest white boy at Bypass High School. He wants to be black like Maurice. Says Nasal, "I don't understand, Maurice!...The brothers still don't accept me! I got my jive dialect down, my high fives, my jam box, my 'Air Jordans'! What's missing?" Says Maurice, "Four hundred years of oppression." Says Nasal, "Can't I take a weekend seminar or something?" And what are you saying there, with Nasal?

DOUG MARLETTE: Nasal was this little tight, obsessive compulsive little white boy, you know, who wishes, aspires he was free, wishes he was -- and he projects onto blacks that all of those traits he projects onto Maurice that he seems cool, he seems natural, and if he thinks if he can learn to speak jive, if he can just -- all of the white is making fun of and playing with the white assumptions about blacks.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Nasal wants to be an athlete by Maurice. Says Nasal, "As an aspiring brother I'd better practice my vertical jump! I've got all my equipment: My knee pads, my crash helmet, my 'Air Jordans,' my altimeter!" "Watch this Maurice," says Nasal, "I've been practicing my vertical leap!" Says Maurice, "Go ahead - - jump." "I did," says Nasal.

DOUG MARLETTE: You know, if he can just develop a vertical leap and have hang time, you know, he feels that -- and if he wears the sheekies and wears a high top fade, I mean, he thinks this is going to take care of -- he went so far as to have a race change operation in Sweden. Now, to me this is --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But then he came out and he was still white.

DOUG MARLETTE: That's right. And what was interesting is he came back with bandages from Sweden and he was slamming and jamming, running and gunning, he had great hang time, and he had all these attributes that he thinks -- but it turned out that it had not taken, the race thing -- he was still white. And in mid flight he realized this and he revenued with gravity, I think the way I put it in the strip, but in other words, it's in our -- it's in our psyche, you know. These are all metaphors and similes. You know, as an artist you're dealing with these things, but what race, you know, when you get down to it, what it's about is there are people who are different from us and we project onto them those aspects of ourselves that we worry about or that we love or that we -- but we can't tolerate within us.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Then there's Uncle Dub, the quintessential Bubba. Says Kudzu, "Uncle Dub, why do you suppose we were put here on this planet?" Says Uncle Dub, "Oh, shut up, Kudzu!" Says Kudzu, "Dub is not given to philosophical speculation."

DOUG MARLETTE: Uncle Dub, you know, is the last of the good 'ol boys and he talks -- we talk about that as the Bubba side, we're getting rid of all the Bubbas, and so he's holding out. He's like that -- the one remaining. It's fun to play with that, except that's a part of -- I grew up with -- I had uncles who ran service stations and were always hovering over car engines and have a kind of -- there's a kind of integrity there. We usually get into popular culture the police chiefs and the Southern, you know, guy, you know, the sheriff, who's fat and chewing tobacco, and has an IQ of 10, you know, and he is not influenced or impressed with the passing fads. And there's something impressive about him. And it's fun. That runs against the proper stereotype. You know, my people, the Bubbas, are really products, and I think this is part of the reason I had some sympathy, because they were brought here as indentured servants. You know, they are not powerful. They are not people who are -- they are not animal.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You're talking about poor whites.

DOUG MARLETTE: They're poor whites.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: From Mississippi.

DOUG MARLETTE: Yeah, but the Bubbas, the red necks, the crack row Americans, as Roy Blond calls them, and they are exploited and victimized in ways that makes their experience akin to that of blacks in America. I grew up with people who held hideous notions, obscene, abstract notions about race, about politics, and yet, they were very kind, decent with people of other colors and beliefs, in the concrete, in the reality. I go to New York and I'm around people who have all the correct notions, all the perfect political beliefs, the liberal views, the humanitarian, and yet, they are horrible and hideous and obscene in the way that they interact sometimes with people of different races or people of, you know, minorities. And so, you know, as a Southerner I kind of prefer -- I don't care what somebody thinks or they think -- you know, I'd rather -- I want to know how they interact concretely. You know, and that's one of the advantages or gifts that we have as the, I think as Southerners, is that we rub up against each other. We see each other. And so, you know, there's something that happens in that, you know, marinade that is healing, I think.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You've been dealing with race in your comic strip. Why did you decide to deal with it in that way, with humor?

DOUG MARLETTE: Well, it's just kind of natural. I mean, for one thing, it's something that's on everybody's mind and that's what I do. And also as a Southerner, you know, I deal with race. You can't be a Southerner and not deal with race and religion and all this.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why not?

DOUG MARLETTE: Because it was such a part of our history and you know, slavery, and then the civil rights movement. But the battlegrounds were -- of the civil rights movement where I grew up -- I grew up on this -- those things to me as a Southerner, these issues are more concrete than they are. They're not abstract. You know, when I grew up, people were dying in the neighborhood, I mean -- in, you know, Mississippi and those places. I lived there when I was a teen-ager, so it was not -- and it affected our lives. It was something we talked about over dinner and you went to the demonstration. You know, I had friends -- friends of my family who were suspected of being a klan activity and there was, you know, at school, these are white boys in Mississippi, parents arrested for the murder of Shorner, Goodman, Cheney. And so it was much more concrete.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: These were three civil rights workers who were killed in Mississippi?

DOUG MARLETTE: Right, the civil rights workers who died in Philadelphia.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Philadelphia, Mississippi.

DOUG MARLETTE: Philadelphia, Mississippi. So it was much more concrete. That's one of the things I think that's part of the Southern experiences. You know, we're kind of the testing grounds for all of America's ideals in the South. That's where we played it out. You know, that's where we fought the battles. That's where, you know, America came into itself, you know, the civil war, was, you know, fought.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why humor though? Because for so many people this is a very volatile, very frightening thing.

DOUG MARLETTE: Yeah. It's natural to me and the -- that seems to me to be appropriate, you know. These are -- these are human things and all that's human is funny, is amusing. It also kind of helps defuse things. I think, you know, it humanizes us to be able to laugh at things. But it is -- it is -- these are areas that we all kind of get up tight about.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But what you're doing is not just entertainment, not just fun.

DOUG MARLETTE: For me, it's always -- it's always -- it has to mean something. For me, my drawings have to mean something, mean to -- yeah, I think there's some wanting to shake things up. I like to be shaked up. I always learn from being shaked up. You know, I always -- I like learning and I like being disturbed by things, so I like drawings that make my hair fly back and choke on my coffee. I like drawings like that.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So here again, do you think that humor is the key to narrowing the divide?

DOUG MARLETTE: It's like a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. I mean, you can get truths in, but it needs to come in a way that people can accept and you know, I think a sense of humor is a sign of emotional maturity, that when you're able not to -- I'm not talking about the humor that -- where we're laughing at other people and deriding and putting people down, but I'm talking about laughing at ourselves. That's the sign. When we can laugh at ourselves, you know, be amused by our posturing and our pretense and our strutting and boasting and our humanness, when we can see it, accept it and have -- find it amusing -- you know, I think -- that's the role -- that's our role, is to kind of encourage that.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Doug Marlette, thank you.

DOUG MARLETTE: Thanks. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Again, the main stories of this Thursday, President Bush met with his top military advisers over Iraq's refusal to comply with Gulf War cease-fire terms. Syria ruled out any concessions to Israel for the curtailment of Jewish settlements in the occupied areas. The Bush administration predicted the unemployment rate would drop to 6.9 percent by the end of the year. It now stands at 7.8. And tonight, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar offered to surrender if the government would guarantee his safety. He made the offer in a call to a radio station a day after he escaped from a jail near Medillin. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night with Gergen & Shields, among other persons and things. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.