The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MR. MUDD: And I'm Roger Mudd in New York. After the News Summary our first focus looks at adoption. Does the current system work? Then we get an update on the Mississippi River's high water mark at St. Louis. Next, Charlayne Hunter-Gault talks with a Bosnian- held captive by the Serbs, and we close with essayist Clarence Page. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: House and Senate negotiators arrived close to a budget agreement today. A final obstacle was removed when they agreed to cut $56 billion in Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals. House Speaker Tom Foley gave a progress report late this afternoon.

REP. THOMAS FOLEY, Speaker of the House: For all practical purposes this conference is over. And we expect the announcement to be made tomorrow in detail, which will allow us to indicate that the largest deficit reduction program in history has been concluded, one that provides in the neighborhood of the budget resolution figure of $496 billion of deficit reduction and that provides significantly more spending reductions and revenue increases.

MR. LEHRER: Both Speaker Foley and Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell predicted they would have enough votes to pass the package later this week. Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole continued his criticism of the budget package.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Minority Leader: Well, I know we don't have the details, but Congressman Michel and I'd at least like to respond to what we think is coming in the largest tax increase in the history of the world. We know it's not one to one spending. It's about two to one taxes over spending. But they've injected one provision I think that will make history too, and that's a retroactive tax provision which means that some taxpayers are going to be paying an effective 67 percent tax increase for the remainder of the year, and there's going to be a lot of small businessmen and businesswomen -- that's middle class America out there -- that they keep forgetting about. And I think retroactive taxation is one that's really going to trip 'em up.

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton plans to address the nation on the budget plan tomorrow night. Roger.

MR. MUDD: This was the day St. Louis was to face a new record crest of the Mississippi River, but forecasters this morning said it had already passed. They said the river had fallen more than a foot since yesterday when it rose to a record 49.94 feet. Part of the reason was a levee break which caused the flooding of the town of Valmire, Illinois, and 60,000 acres of farmland downstream. In South St. Louis, more than 50 floating propane tanks forced the evacuation of about 8,000 people. The tanks have broken away from their moorings, and some were leaking, causing concern they might explode. We'll have more on the floods later in the program.

MR. LEHRER: A long court battle ended today with the turnover of a two-year-old girl to her biological parents. The transfer took place at the Anne Harbor, Michigan, home of the couple who have had custody of the girl whose name is "Jessica." She had lived there since shortly after birth when the child's biological mother put her up for adoption. The biological mother and father won custody in a series of court decisions, the latest one by the U.S. Supreme Court. We'll have more on the story later in the program.

MR. MUDD: President Clinton today tried to minimize reports that U.S. warplanes would be used against Serbs in Bosnia even if the Europeans did not go along. A State Department spokesman yesterday said the U.S. planned to act alone if its European partners remained opposed to the plan. At the White House this morning, President Clinton said the stories on that comment exaggerated the U.S. position.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Our position is we're working with the allies. We're going to try to work through the common position. We believe will be able to work through to a common position, and I don't think it serves much of a purpose to speculate right now on what's happened. I don't believe that the allies will permit Sarajevo to either fall or to starve. I just don't believe that will happen. So I think we'll have a common position. There are some concerns. There always have been. There are those who have forces on the ground there, particularly those in the exposed positions. But I think we'll work it through, and I want the talks to continue. It's -- my goal has always been to work with them and to, to proceed together. And I think we'll be able to do that.

MR. MUDD: The Bosnian peace talks continued today in Geneva. Bosnia's Muslim president boycotted the negotiations for several hours until the Serbs agreed to withdraw from a strategic mountain outside Sarajevo. The three sides had agreed Friday on the framework of a plan to split Bosnia, but they still have many details to work out, including how the territory will be partitioned. Meanwhile, Serbian gunners destroyed a vital bridge in Croatia today. Croat forces reneged on a promise to transfer control of the bridge to the U.N. on Saturday. Croats and Serbs fought a six-month war in 1991 and have clashed periodically since then.

MR. LEHRER: Lebanon ordered its army to take over control of south Lebanon from Muslim guerrillas today. It was the consequence of a weekend cease-fire deal between Israel and the guerrillas. Sec. of State Christopher was in the Middle East today on a mission to revive the peace process. We have a report narrated by Richard Vaughan of Worldwide Television News.

RICHARD VAUGHAN, WTN: The first stop on U.S. Sec. of State Warren Christopher's Middle East shuttle was Alexandra Laxera's presidential palace. There Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met Christopher in an effort to revive the Middle East peace process which is now bogged down by the fighting in Southern Lebanon. But the two men gave few details of their discussion. Instead, they urged the Arabs and Israelis to put their recent battle in Lebanon behind them. Mubarak called for the talks to resume quickly, saying the violence was a delaying tactic, while Christopher said the decision time was rapidly approaching for the peace process. But as the two leaders tried to patch up the Middle East negotiations, in South Lebanon, those people driven out by the Israeli bombardment returned to patch up their homes and their lives. At checkpoints, Lebanese soldiers are now searching for guns and Katusha rockets. The Lebanese army moved into Southern Lebanon on Monday in what Israel hopes will be an operation to curb the activities of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. But in Gaza, there was more confrontation. A Muslim militant from the military wing of Islamic Jihad hijacked a bus and drove it into two other vehicles. An Israeli military administrator was killed, and two members of the security forces were seriously injured.

MR. LEHRER: Last week's fighting in south Lebanon was the worst in the region in 11 years. More than 130 people were killed and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes.

MR. MUDD: Trading in European currencies was relatively calm today, following a weekend agreement that essentially suspended the mechanism tying the currencies together. That mechanism is a forerunner of a planned single European currency. The decision to suspend was criticized by officials of several European Community nations as a major setback to EC plans for the closer economic and monetary union. That's it for the News Summary. Just ahead on the NewsHour, a bitter custody battle, and update on the floods, bearing witness in Bosnia, and essayist Clarence Page. UPDATE - CLOSE CALL

MR. LEHRER: First tonight, a flood update. The Mississippi River continued to rage at St. Louis today where a record crest came yesterday. The waters have fallen now to just over 48 feet, down from a record 49.4 foot crest. So far, the flood wall that runs for 11 miles along the river bank of St. Louis has held, but it continues to leak in weak spots from the pressure of all that water. And levees outside the city did break over the last 24 hours, flooding more homes and farmland. Once again, we turn for information on all of this to the head of the Army Corps of Engineers in the St. Louis region, Col. James Craig. Colonel, welcome again.

COL. CRAIG: Thank you.

MR. LEHRER: Sir, the river is going down in St. Louis as we speak, is that right?

COL. CRAIG: It's gone down a little bit. It, as you mentioned, was 49.4 feet yesterday, a record stage. It's down today at about 48.3 to 4.5 feet, so it's dropped a little bit. And if, if the weather cooperates, it will continue to drop slowly for the next several days. But it's not going to be a significant drop for a while.

MR. LEHRER: When you say slowly, what do you mean?

COL. CRAIG: The prediction is that by Thursday of this week it will drop and drop less than a foot. So it'll still be at about 47 1/2 to 48 feet.

MR. LEHRER: What's causing it to go so slowly? Is there no place for the water to go?

COL. CRAIG: No. The water is going faster. It's going very rapidly as a matter of fact. The velocity in back of me is about five to six miles per hour, so it's a very fast moving current. It's got places to go. The problem is all that rain that occurred north and west of us is now stored behind all those breached levees. So there's a lot of storage that has to come through here.

MR. LEHRER: When you say it's five or six miles an hour, how does that compare to the normal rate of flow?

COL. CRAIG: It's about twice the normal rate.

MR. LEHRER: I see. All right. Tell us what happened yesterday. The crest came and then it went down, but it wasn't good news for everybody, is that right?

COL. CRAIG: Yes. There is a very specific reason the crest went down. We had two significant levee systems in the south of St. Louis that failed during that time period, and those two covered about 60,000 acres of farmland. So that's, that's bad news for those folks, and they, they've lost a substantial amount. But on the other hand, that provides some temporary storage for the river so it goes down. And that's, that's good news for other communities like St. Genevieve, Missouri.

MR. LEHRER: So if the levee has not broken down there, down river, it's likely that the water where you are there in St. Louis would have been even higher, is that right?

COL. CRAIG: Yes, it probably would and a foot or so higher.

MR. LEHRER: Now, what's your -- what's the status of the wall there that -- that 11-mile wall that I, that I spoke of there on the river bank in St. Louis? What's the status of that now?

COL. CRAIG: That wall is holding. There are no significant problems with it. We've had some, some problems with it. We had a problem in the northern end at an area called Riverview, where we, we had some material moving underneath it, but there's a void that was created under it. That void has been patched. We've had some problems with, with one of the pumping stations, but that's under control now. So, so we have confidence that that system's going to hold. But we're continuing to watch it. Of course, the longer the water stays up, the more localized the problems that will occur, so, so we may be doing some more repair work as we go along.

MR. LEHRER: Why is that? What does the water do to that wall as it stays there?

COL. CRAIG: Well, the water continues to pass by it, and dirt is going to get moved by moving water, and those walls and the earthen levees were only built to hold back that water on some temporary basis, a matter of weeks and months. It's not made to hold it back forever.

MR. LEHRER: Do you have a regular process for testing the strength of this wall?

COL. CRAIG: No, we don't. The way the system is set up is that the Corps of Engineers constructed the wall, but the operations and maintenance of that wall is turned over to a local sponsor, in this case the metropolitan sewer district.

MR. LEHRER: I see. But they're looking at it all the time, is that right?

COL. CRAIG: Yes, they are, absolutely.

MR. LEHRER: Now, there was a problem in south St. Louis yesterday. Tell us what happened there.

COL. CRAIG: Yes. That's an area called the River De Pere area. There are a number of propane tanks down there I believe that belong to Phillips 66, and those are, are anchored down on some saddles, and when the river got too high, those broke loose from their saddles. The, the city and the metropolitan sewer district have been working on that problem since yesterday, but there is some small chance that that system could ignite, so they have evacuated a one-mile area around that.

MR. LEHRER: All right. The weather forecasts, I understand it, are for no more heavy rain, is that right?

COL. CRAIG: That's correct, yes.

MR. LEHRER: So let's assume that the forecasts were right, and there's no more rain in the area either above you or right where you are in the St. Louis area. Does that mean that the worst is pretty much over, assuming again that the levees and the walls hold?

COL. CRAIG: Assuming that the levees and walls hold, then as long as the weather forecast is accurate, I think the worst is over. But the water's going to fall very slowly, and we're going to have to continue to watch the flood walls and the levees, because they're not made to hold water back forever.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. All right. Now, beyond, further down river, around Kayro, Illinois, that's where things start getting easier, is that right?

COL. CRAIG: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: No matter how much water -- explain to us why.

COL. CRAIG: Sure. Around Kayro, Illinois, is the confluence of the Mississippi River and the Ohio River. The Ohio River right now is actually below its normal stage for this time of the year, and the flow through there in measurement is less than 100,000 cubic feet per second. The Mississippi River at this point in time is 1 million cubic feet per second through that area.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

COL. CRAIG: But the capacity of the river below Kayro is such that there is not a significant problem unless that reaches 2 million cubic feet per second. So as long as the Ohio doesn't flood -- and there's no expectation that it's going to -- there is no problem below Kayro.

MR. LEHRER: So the idea world would be to get that water down the Mississippi faster than it's going, is that right?

COL. CRAIG: Well, if you could do that, but I think it's moving down about as fast as it can.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Okay, well, Colonel, again, thank you very much for being with us and keeping us up to date on what's going on. And, again, good luck to you and all your colleagues out there in the Midwest flood area. Thank you, sir.

COL. CRAIG: Thank you. CONVERSATION - BEARING WITNESS

MR. MUDD: A year ago this week the world learned through press reports about the existence of the Serbian-run detention camps in Bosnia where tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims were kept in makeshift prisons. Recently, Charlayne Hunter-Gault talked with a survivor of those camps, and here is his story.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Today Kareem Jakubovic is trying to start his life over in the United States. Most of the detention camps where he and many of his fellow Bosnian Muslims were confined for months on end are now closed. But the brutal memories of those days and nights live on. Until May of 1992, Jakubovic, who was 28, lived a quiet life, running a grocery store in the town of Jakubovic, situated in northwest Bosnia.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Tell me where your family comes from in Bosnia.

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC, Detention Camp Survivor: It's village. Most of them are Muslims, 99 percent, about 30,000 people that lived there and my parents are born there, grandparents and parents of grandparents, they were born there. And all citizens had, we still have the same last name, Jakubovic, and the name of village was Jakubovic, because of last name. And now no one must live there. It's completely cleansed, that area. All houses are destroyed, and people are, some in Europe, some of them are in Croatia still in refugee camps or somewhere. Some of us are now in America.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Did you grow up side by side with Croats and Serbs?

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: Yes. We grew up together, and in my village, my, my village was primary school, and we went to that school together with Serbs. Didn't feel anything against them, and they didn't feel anything against us at that time. And even at that time didn't recognize who's Serb, who's Croatian, who's Muslim. Last years we had our private shop, and we had private shop, and it was a bus station in my house, and they used to come to shop. Half of my cousins, they're Serbs, and they used to come because of bus station and, and --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In late May of last year, Jakubovic's world and life changed forever when Serb forces encircled his small village and began taking the men away to detention camps. He was taken to a nearby camp, Keratern.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What went on at this camp?

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: Every day during the day these soldiers who were fighting came to camp and fight some people with whom they had before some conflicts, conflicts or look for them, and of course beat them till some of them were beaten till death.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Did they beat you personally?

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: Yes, they did. It was night, and I was, I slept, and I heard my name. It was about midnight, and I had to leave, of course, and I couldn't find -- it was dark. There is no electricity there -- I couldn't find my shoes, and I asked the soldier who called me, please, let me find my shoes, and he said, okay, fine. I couldn't find mine, so I find the other's shoes, and that moment I knew that I had a chance to, to come back alive, because he gave me time to find shoes, because before I, I know what's happened to the others who had to leave immediately the room and with no shoes, and they didn't come back. So I knew at that moment that I had a chance, and they said me come in and kneel down. So I did, and one of them came behind me and started beating a truncheon all the time. I spend there about half an hour and all the time I was beaten by truncheon behind me. The other one kneeled down in front of my face and asked me questions again about mosque, and I been in mosque. I said, no, since the last time when I was six years old, and he asked me some names, do I know some people. Some of them I knew. Some of them I didn't know, and I was kicked a couple of times on my side, and --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you know what they were trying to find out?

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: No. There was no reason, you know. They decided to beat me.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Was this the camp that I read about where the inmates like yourself were forced to take the bodies away?

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: Yes, it was that camp. Yeah. It was in that room for which they took four men to help load those people, those bodies into truck, big truck.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What happened? I mean --

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: That -- I can't remember exactly -- June, I think -- or July -- middle of July when they started cleansing that area of people which they killed, and during that cleansing, one of these soldiers were killed and they wanted revenge, and that day they brought big lights and put it in front of that room and they also brought big machine gun, and we didn't know why they are doing that. You know, and at night it was about midnight we could only hear screams, crying, shots, and we -- at that moment we couldn't, of course, we couldn't sleep. We all were shaking, waiting till we are the next one to be killed. And we thought they are going to clean that camp, they are going to kill all of us, but we didn't know what's happened, what will happen, and one of the soldiers come to the gate in our room and said, don't move, we are not going to kill you. Then they ask for some people to help to load those people, those bodies into truck. One of them came back, prisoners, he feel sick, and they took the other one, and -- but they were just smiling all this time. I mean, jokes. And I really can't understand those people.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: After being confined for more than two months at Keratern, Jakubovic was transferred to another detection camp, Trnopolje. There, he was reunited with his father, who had been taken to another camp.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In the Trnopolje camp, how, how did that compare with the Keratern camp?

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: Paradise. It was paradise.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And that's where you were reunited with your family?

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: Yes. My mother and brother and his family, they were waiting for, for him. But he was in bad condition. I said he lost 20 kilos. He couldn't move, couldn't talk.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: When you saw your father in that condition, what, what did you think?

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: I can't remember. You are only happy that he's alive and he's even that but he's alive, still alive, and we are all alive. No one of our close members wasn't killed, and that moment, we, we feel happy.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And it had been a long time --

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: Yes.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: -- since you had seen each other.

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: Yes.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Could you believe it? Could you believe you were reunited?

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: Yes, but I said we were happy, but, you know, it's not the end. There is -- the story continues. It's not the end of the story. We are still in their hands.

CORRESPONDENT: [File Segment - Detention Camp] Here too they simply had been rounded up, whole villages emptied of their men, and they were afraid.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Near the end of our conversation we screened for Jakubovic some television footage of the camp. He immediately recognized a woman, a Serb official who was helping run the Omarska Camp where Jakubovic's father was confined. It turns out she was the woman who taught Jakubovic English in the school he attended years ago before the hostilities broke out.

WOMAN: [File Segment] No, it is not a camp. This is a center, a center.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Now you know this person?

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: Yeah. She was my English teacher.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: She's a Serb.

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: She's a Serb. Her name is Nada Belaban. And I saw her name in the list of war crimes. I didn't believe.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Are you surprised to see her there?

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: I saw her one time in Trnopolje camp. And she was there, but I thought as a translator, but she's more than translator. She lies.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But this is what you were telling me before. These are people who taught you, people you went to school with, people you played football with.

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: They, yeah, changed overnight, forus overnight. I don't know --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You saw things like yourself?

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: I was this condition too.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Did they provide a doctor for you ever?

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: No, no.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You just had to heal on your --

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: In the beginning when I came to Keratern, one of prisoners was killed by beating till death and then came the doctor, and he made decision that he died because he caught a cold. But none after came again. They are so complicated.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Jakubovic was in and out of the Trnopolje camp for several months. In early January, he was taken by convoy to a refugee center in Croatia. He and his family remained there until last week when the International Rescue Committee flew Kareem to the United States. His parents and brother remain in Croatia. Another brother is in Muslim-held Bosnia, and his sister is in Switzerland. For Jakubovic, the failure of the United States and other western nations to come to Bosnia's aid remains one of the biggest frustrations.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you think that if America --

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: Yes.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: -- had come in --

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: Yes.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: -- militarily, or had armed the Bosnians to fight back, it would have made a difference?

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: Yeah. It's -- now it's too late for that. Maybe one year before it was good time for that, but now it's too late. It's completely mess there, and --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What about when you were a prisoner in the camps?

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: Yeah. At that time expected Americans. They could do that. They could stop at beginning this, what's happened to us, not only Americans, only, the whole world could stop it. But nothing, nothing has happened. Nothing. Nobody did anything to stop this. Why? It's the answer -- it's the question. Why?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Kareem Jakubovic, it's been quite an ordeal for you, and I thank you for sharing this with us.

KAREEM JAKUBOVIC: Okay. Thank you. FOCUS - FAMILY AFFAIR

MR. MUDD: Next tonight, we look at the DeBoer-Schmidt adoption dispute. With all the publicity over the battle, we explore whether or not the adoption system in the United States needs fixing. Today the DeBoers returned the two and a half year old girl they named Jessica to her biological parents, the Schmidts, after more than two years of legal battles. The case began on February 8, 1991, when the baby girl was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. About 40 hours later, the baby's mother, 28 year old Cara Clausen, gave her daughter up for adoption. On February 14th, a Michigan couple, Jan and Roberta DeBoer, drove to Iowa to pick up the baby and bring her home to Anne Arbor, Michigan. On February 25th, the DeBoers were told a court hearing had officially terminated Cara Clausen's parental rights and the child's biological father had signed away his parental rights. Under normal circumstances, the adoption would have become official six months later. But on February 27th, Cara Clausen told Dan Schmidt, a former boyfriend, that he, not the man who signed the papers, was the baby's father. On March 6th, Miss Clausen told the same thing to an Iowa District Court and asked the court to restore her parental rights. In December 1991, an Iowa court ruled that Jessica should be returned to her biological parents, who were married a few months later. But the DeBoers decided to fight to keep Jessica. They won a legal stay which allowed them to keep her on appeal. Their appeals ended finally last week when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case. We have four views on the DeBoer case and what, if anything, it says about adoptions in the United States. Annette Baran is a social worker who co-authored the book The Adoption Triangle which advocates the opening of sealed records in adoption cases. Ms. Baran is the former director of the Vista Del Mar Adoption Service, a non-profit community agency in Los Angeles. Steven Kirsh is an adoption attorney in Indianapolis and is involved in about 140 adoptions per year. He's also the former president of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys based in Washington. Elizabeth Bartholet is a professor of law at Harvard University and is the author of the book Family Bonds, Adoption and the Politics of Parenting. And Lorraine Dusky writes as a freelance writer and is the author of the book Birth Right.

MS. DUSKY: Mark.

MR. MUDD: Beg your pardon. Birth Mark, I'm sorry to mis-state the name of your book. Let me ask you, Prof. Bartholet, what are the lessons that we should learn from the DeBoer case?

PROF. BARTHOLET: Well, you started with the question whether adoption needs fixing. And I think it, it does in this case help show why. I think we value biology much too much in the way we define parenting, and we do too much to drive people who would like to give kids who need homes away from adoption. My fear about this case is that if social policy makers don't do something to fix the law at this point that this case is going to create yet another cloud over adoption and put people who might think about adoption as a way of parenting, put them in fear of doing that, fear that their child would be taken away from them.

MR. MUDD: Ms. Dusky.

MS. DUSKY: Well, you make it sound as if there aren't enough parents for babies who need to be adopted, when really what you're advocating is a speed-up system so that we can grab those babies and give them to couples who can't have them. I mean, I agree that adoption in this country needs to be fixed, but not in such a way that the babies are, you know, sort of given birth to by women who can't keep them because there aren't systems in place to help them. They give them up, and you seem to be advocating take 'em quick, grab it, you know, no, no turning back ever because parents want babies. Adoption is for babies who need parents, and especially in the DeBoer case you have a baby who has parents already who want her and who have wanted her since she was a couple of weeks old. And it's the DeBoers in this case who are really the bad guys. If they had truly loved this baby, they would have turned the child over at a very young age and not let this go on for so long.

MR. MUDD: We'll come -- we'll let you respond, but I want first to have our other guests. How about you, Mr. Kirsh, in Indianapolis, what, what's the lesson from the DeBoer case?

MR. KIRSH: I think the lesson here is that people who are adopting need to be dealing with, with reputable and experienced adoption agencies or adoption attorneys. They, they need to be very careful about, about working with people that don't fully understand the law. The mistake that was made in this case was made early on. There were two mistakes. The first is that when the birth father, Schmidt, came forward, there should have been a blood test immediately to determine whether or not he was the father. That test did not occur until almost nine months later. The second mistake was as soon as they realized that Mr. Schmidt was the father of the child, they should have been counseled to relinquish custody of Jessica at that time. Under Iowa law,and this is under Iowa law, this is not national law, but under Iowa law, the consent of the birth father is required. They did not have the consent of the birth father, and they were never going to win this case.

MR. MUDD: But, but in the case, in the DeBoer case, they didn't go to an agency because, I gather, the wait would have been too long, so they went not underground but they went through the private route, so the mistake was not hiring an attorney?

MR. KIRSH: Well, the -- you know, I don't know the attorney that represented the DeBoers, but an experienced adoption attorney should have told them or would have told them I believe that when they did not have the consent of the birth father that they needed to relinquish custody of the child at that time. It's, it's just not an issue under Iowa law whether or not they can proceed with an adoption without the father's consent. They cannot proceed with an adoption without the father's consent.

MR. MUDD: In San Francisco, Ms. Baran, how about your opinion on the DeBoer case?

MS. BARAN: I've been listening with great interest to all the people, and I think we all agree we need change. I think we all agree that the various states have different laws which can cause difficulty. Certainly, everybody in this case was a victim. The DeBoers were badly counseled. The birth parents could not have the law work for them. The child certainly is the greatest victim of all. We need federal regulation which we don't have. State laws need to be brought more into compliance with one another, and birth parents need to have counseling. You know, you need counseling while you're pregnant, and you need counseling directly afterward. If a birth mother has any ambivalence, the child should never be placed. There needs to be a time to look at this and to decide, because children can stay with root families a lot more. This is one case with a lot of publicity, but you know there are hundreds of cases just like this in courts in every state of the United States right now, and they're all causing great suffering and harm to everyone.

MR. MUDD: All right. Let me go back now to Prof. Bartholet and ask you to respond to, to Ms. Dusky's comments. She said that you're in favor of quick adoption, to move children as fast as they can be moved. What, what's your answer to that?

PROF. BARTHOLET: Well, I am in favor of expediting adoption, but mainly for the sake of all the hundreds of thousands of kids who need homes. I mean, I do believe that people who want to adopt have rights, but my main concern is that I think children have rights to homes. And if you look at the foster care system in this country, we have close to 1/2 million children sitting in foster care, and a lot of them are sitting there because we value birth ties, birth links so highly that although we'll remove these children or let their parents surrender them to the foster care system, we won't free them up. I mean --

MR. MUDD: But isn't that logical to -- for the courts to lean on the side of, of the theory that, that nature over nurture?

PROF. BARTHOLET: I don't think it's logical --

MR. MUDD: You don't. You don't.

PROF. BARTHOLET: -- to lean on the side of nature as much as we do. I don't think it's logical to take a two and a half year old child and say she has to be transferred now, without any consideration whatsoever of what I could call relationship rights, which I think both she has and the DeBoer has, and I think it's natural to keep children in foster care, insist that they stay there for two, three, five and ten years,which is what we're doing in this country, and refuse to free them up from birth parents when in many cases we know we're not going to put those kids back with the birth parents.

MR. MUDD: Do you --

MS. BARAN: May I interrupt out here in San Francisco?

MR. MUDD: Sure. Go ahead, Ms. Baran.

MS. BARAN: I think it needs to be said that the cutting edge of adoption are these older children, sibling groups, these handicapped kids, these kids who need real permanency planning. There are many, many of these children already free for adoption. The problem here is that there are too few newborn babies and too many infertile couples desperate to get newborn babies. These are the cases that cause this kind of problem. And that's what we need to be addressing. Our federal government should be on the side of family preservation, but also on the side of working toward getting parents to take on these children.

MR. MUDD: Now, Ms. Dusky, do you believe, for instance, that children do have rights?

MS. DUSKY: Oh, of course, they have rights.

MR. MUDD: And are they superior to those of the, of this unwed father who came, who showed up?

MS. DUSKY: This case is sort of in a sense out of left field. I, but my question is to Ms. Bartholet, have you looked at any of the studies that show the trouble that adopted individuals have later on in their life? You can take every instance from children and adults in therapy, people in mental institutions, alcoholics, you can go right up to mass murderers of women, including one we're familiar with in New York called Joel Rifkin, and you can look at Son of Sam, you can look at the Philadelphia Shoemakers. I mean, people who study mass murderers find that that's one of the indexes of who the profile is likely to be is an adopted individual. So if you take all of that information and say, well, you know, the child has no rights here, the relationship rights are greater than the birth right, how do you answer the fact that, yes, it's going to be traumatic because the DeBoers have made it that way, but what do you do with the rest of the person's life? She won't grow up with somebody she looks like. She won't -- there'll never be any, you know, you're just like an uncle or aunt.

MR. MUDD: All right. Let her answer.

PROF. BARTHOLET: Actually, I've looked at all those studies, and I'm so glad you asked that question, because the kind of claims you're making are the classic claims of the search movement, that adoptees --

MR. MUDD: Which movement?

PROF. BARTHOLET: Search movement.

MR. MUDD: Explain that.

PROF. BARTHOLET: There's a search movement which Concerned United Birth Parents, CUB, the group that Cara Clausen here went and met with before she changed her mind and decided to --

MS. DUSKY: You think Cara Clausen --

PROF. BARTHOLET: -- claim her child.

MR. MUDD: Let her finish.

PROF. BARTHOLET: CUB is part of the search movement. CUB is part of what helped Cara Clausen decide that she was going to claim her child. Both these women are parts of this search movement. The search movement puts out this literature that claims that all adoptees are damaged for life. All people who've adopted, who've had infertility, suffer life long pain, and all birth mothers suffer life long pain. I have looked at the stuff they call evidence, and frankly, I believe it is garbage, all of it. I have looked at the only empirical studies that exist, and I have read them, and I think those studies show absolutely that children adopted in infancy do every bit as well as children raised with their birth parents and that adoption works for both adoptees, for adoptive parents, and for birth mothers if you compare it to the existing alternatives. The only damage that you see showing up in adopted children, I believe, shows up in the children who are adopted not in infancy but after lengthy delays, the kind of delays the adoption system causes. And that's when you see damage. If kids are adopted early, if we don't prevent their adoption, the way we do systematically in this country, they do not suffer from this severance of the birth parents.

MR. MUDD: Mr. Kirsh in Indianapolis, what side do you come down on? Do you believe that the statistics show a rise of, a higher incidence of mass murderers among adopted -- I mean, you said you do 140 or so adoptions a year.

MR. KIRSH: Yes.

MR. MUDD: What's your experience?

MR. KIRSH: I have to agree completely with Prof. Bartholet. I'm, I don't know the other woman that commented, and unfortunately I'm in a studio where I can't even see who she is, but she's talking from another planet. This, the families that I work with, both the birth families and the adoptive parents, pursue an adoption because they are trying to do what's best for the children. The birth parents proceed with adoptions because they find themselves in the position not to be able to care for the children the way they want to. They're not giving away the baby. They're not giving up the baby. They're making a plan for the child's future, to care for the child, if not by themselves, by an adoptive family. Children that are adopted are just like everybody else. They don't have horns. They're not mass murderers. It's just ridiculous! The real problem with this case is that it's drawing too much attention on one circumstance. And what happened to, to Jessica and the birth family and adoptive parents in this case is horrendous, but it's an isolated case. It does not foretell anything about adoption in this country. It was a bad circumstance.

MR. MUDD: But isn't it true that over half the adoption cases involve unknown fathers?

MR. KIRSH: Well, that --

MR. MUDD: Who now might very easily identify themselves -- as I understand it, it's put a fairly chilling effect on adoption --

MR. KIRSH: I don't think so.

MR. MUDD: -- because of the danger of the unknown fathers coming forth.

MR. KIRSH: I don't think so. In many states, Indiana included, there is a procedure to deal with that. And, you know, the other thing, from a birth father's perspective, you hear about these unknown birth fathers that are not notified about the child until after the baby is placed, the birth fathers were there at the time of conception. My feeling is that if a man has sex with a woman, he has some obligation to see if she's pregnant and if she is pregnant to help her through with the pregnancy. I don't think these birth fathers can just sit back and say, well, gosh, I didn't, I didn't know she was pregnant, I didn't know that. When he had sex with her, there was a natural, certainly a possibility that she would become pregnant, and he had an obligation to check at that point.

MR. MUDD: Ms. Baran in San Francisco, why, why has adoption become such a big business?

MS. BARAN: Well, it's become a big business because there are fewer babies available and more couples wanting to adopt those fewer babies. And we've got this great creative merchandising. We advertise for babies next to Volvos in the newspaper columns. We set up systems where we go and try to buy babies from poor married couples in Appalachia. We recruit teenagers in high schools and tell them that they can have their cake and eat it too. They can know their baby but have no responsibility to raise it. And you know, it's time we got out of the big business, we took the greed and the profit out of adoption. Adoption is not responsible for our foster home system, not in the least. What's responsible is our child welfare system in this country which doesn't help support single parents to keep their children, parents who plan all along to keep their children but find that down the road, they can't. And you can't mix apples and oranges in this discussion. These newborn baby adoptions come out of a whole different piece of cloth.

MR. MUDD: All right. Now, where --

PROF. BARTHOLET: Can I just make one specific factual point?

MR. MUDD: Sure.

PROF. BARTHOLET: Is that if you look at the statistics on single birth mothers, 98 percent of them are keeping their children.

MS. BARAN: Right.

PROF. BARTHOLET: I believe we live in a society that far from coercing these women into surrendering to these greedy, infertile couples, we live in a society in which we shame birth mothers into feeling that they absolutely have to keep their children, it's unnatural to give them away. I think that reproductive rights for women ought to include the right to surrender as well as the right to adopt a child who needs a home.

MR. MUDD: Now, our time is getting short. Let me ask each one of you in turn, if you would, please, to tell me how you think the adoption system ought to be fixed in the United States. May I ask you to go first.

MS. DUSKY: Well, one of the things that should be done is that for the women, the young women, or anybody who wants to keep a child, there should be more systems in place. Society still today has a tendency to think of the women who are even thinking of giving about giving up their children for adoption as women who should be punished, as women who are bad women. I don't think there's been such a sea change in attitude from the '50s and even on before that, even though people keep the baby. So someone like Cara Clausen gets, you know, branded immediately, oh, she signed the baby away, which, by the way, she had already been convinced to waive her rights, and she did in 40 hours, rather than 72, with a lawyer she thought was her lawyer when it was, in fact, the DeBoer lawyer. But that's the kind of thing that should stop. The second thing that should change a lot in this country if adoption was not a system whereby we anticipated that the child could be sort of whisked away from one set of parents or one parent, whatever, and put, dropped into a new setting, where there was no connection with the past. There are always going to be babies who need to be adopted, who need homes, infants and older children, but we, we should stop pretending here in America, one of the few places in the world that does it, that the rest of the, the past, the heritage doesn't matter at all. Adoptees and adoptive parents would have a better time getting along and forming the bonds they need if there wasn't this kind of secrecy that still prevails in this country. The secrecy, most of the laws in all the states, except Kansas and Alaska, have these laws, only in those two states do adoptees have the unchallenged right. There's other systems in place. Most of those laws, they were put in place under the aegis of powerful legislators who were adoptive fathers.

MR. MUDD: Let me get some other view. Mr Kirsh in Indianapolis. You've got less than a minute to do it. I bet you can though.

MR. KIRSH: Okay. I bet I can. The, the only problem I think in, in this country in adoption is that not enough states take into account what's in the best interests of children. I don't believe that there should be federal law governing adoptions. I think each of the states is capable of doing that. And I think a lot of state legislatures will look at this issue, the Clausen case, and write into their law a requirement that the best interests of the child always be considered in, in granting an adoption or changing custody of a child. As far as the other comments about mass murderers and, and opening records and all of those things, those are, those are side issues that are being presented by, by people who have their own agenda to advance. They have nothing to do with what's in the best interest of adoption or of children.

MR. MUDD: Well, let me, let me close the discussion there by thanking all of you. Ms. Baran in San Francisco, Mr. Kirsh in Indianapolis, Ms. Dusky, and Prof. Bartholet. ESSAY - PLAUSIBLE PREJUDICE

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune has some thoughts about the hate preachers.

CLARENCE PAGE: A federal jury has decided Afro-centric Professor Leonard Jeffreys should get his old job back. He can again be chairman of black studies at the City University of New York, where teaches unusual lessons about skin pigment, lessons that say white skin is the mark of ice people, not nice people, ice people, demonic, warlike people. Black skin, on the other hand, identifies the sun people, serene, peace loving, and forever victimized by those evil "ice people." Jeffreys also teaches that Jews bankrolled the slave trade and conspired with Italians to exploit blacks in Hollywood, with movies that degraded the black image. Jeffreys has been widely denounced for saying these things, but he also has been widely praised. He often is surrounding by adoring students, many of whom serve as his body guards. Does Jeffreys have the right to say these things? Of course he does. Maybe the more important questions is this: Why does anyone listen?

MARTIN LUTHER KING: I have a dream.

CLARENCE PAGE: An odd political and social tragedy has occurred in the black freedom movement since the 1960s. A coalition that brought blacks, Jews, Catholics, and Protestants together for civil rights gains and political empowerment broke apart into fragments of identity politics, Black Power, Black Panthers, Afro-centrism. Much of this was natural and constructive. After centuries of degradation by white racism, black Americans needed to rediscover themselves and learn to love themselves all over again. But much of it also was destructive. It gave rise to black demagogues, the Al Sharptons and Louis Farrakhans, among others --

SPOKESMAN: Don't I have a right to criticize Jewish behavior if I think it is incorrect!

CLARENCE PAGE: -- who exploited historic fault lines of ethnic identity and conned others into burning bridges legitimate black leaders had built to other communities, to feminists, Asians, liberal Jews, Hispanics, and just about everybody else who would have worked with blacks to build a workable, pluralistic society. Most of us know better, I think, but we don't speak out much, especially in public, especially in front of the white folks. It violates black community etiquette to speak out in a way that airs our dirty laundry in public. We don't want to bring disunity to the community. Most of all, we don't want to give aid and comfort to white demagogues, like David Duke, the former Klan leader who almost became governor of Louisiana last year by playing the same old demagogue con job. Why do we listen? Hitler, the Lord high demon of demagogues, believed in the big lie as a route to power, a lie so big it used up your enemy's energies just knocking it down. But Hitler also knew the value of the truth. He got the attention of embattled Germans by telling them what they wanted to hear about their own government's corruption and ineptitude. People won't listen to lies all the time. You must get their attention with some truth. Jeffreys tells the truth too, for example, when he says Jews bankrolled the slave trade. He's partly right. Safartic Jews in the sugar industry brought many black slaves to the West Indies, but they were hardly alone. The slave trade was a rainbow coalition of exploitation, invented largely by Arab Muslims, brought to the west and operated mostly by Christians, and eagerly embraced by black Africans who sold their own brethren into slavery. Looking for blame? There's plenty to go around. Those who exaggerate the role of Jews have some other agenda, closer to home, in mind. A good demagogue needs someone to demonize. No need to let facts get in the way. David Duke learned this lesson well too. Most of his voters would not vote for the old Duke dressed up in his neo Nazi outfit or Klan hood, but they will vote for the new Duke, dressed up in a suit and tie, speaking the new code of racial politics, welfare mothers, quotas, liberal elites, and high taxes. Legitimate issues turned cleverly into rhetoric of polarization, of "them," not "us." It's not just black Americans who are vulnerable to the demagogue's message. It's everyone who feels surrounded and under siege. It's everyone who desperately wants to blame their problems on some outsider, a scapegoat, an "other." It's not the demagogues outside as much as our own demons inside that we should fear. It is our freedom that unravels, unless we find the inner strength to stand up against the madness and say, that's enough, no more lies, only truth can set us free. I'm Clarence Page. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Monday, House and Senate negotiators reached agreement on a budget deal. Democratic leaders said details of the plan would be announced tomorrow. The Mississippi River dropped at St. Louis, but towns down river had more flooding after levees gave way. A two year old girl was returned to her natural parents, ending a custody battle with a couple who had raised her, and President Clinton downplayed reports of unilateral air strikes by the United States in Bosnia. Good night, Roger.

MR. MUDD: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour. We'll be back tomorrow night with coverage of the budget deal from Capitol Hill. I'm Roger Mudd. Thank you, and good night.