The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MS. FARNSWORTH: Good evening. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth in Washington.

MR. MAC NEIL: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After tonight's News Summary, Defense Sec. Perry and three analysts discuss the cease-fire hopes in Bosnia. Legal Affairs Reporter Stuart Taylor covers the gay rights case argued today before the Supreme Court, Paul Solman looks at the work of America'snewest Nobel Prize- winning economist, and essayist Roger Rosenblatt considers the attraction of people accused of crime. NEWS SUMMARY

MS. FARNSWORTH: Investigators searched the Arizona desert crash site today for clues to what caused yesterday's derailment of Amtrak's Sunset Limited train. The train jumped the tracks early Monday morning 55 miles Southwest of Phoenix. We have a report from Betty Ann Bowser.

MS. BOWSER: From a hot and dusty staging area in the Arizona desert, officials from seven federal and local agencies huddled together today to begin investigating what happened. Nine miles South and West of here two locomotives and eight railroad cars are still lying on a trestle and in a ravine, remnants of the Amtrak Sunset Limited, the passenger train that was derailed two nights ago with 248 passengers and 20 crew members on board. Notes written by a group claiming to be Sons of the Gestapo were reportedly found at the scene. Throughout the day, heavy equipment was trucked into a large and existing road alongside the track right of way. This will make access to the site easier so that huge cranes can be used to clear the wreckage. Federal investigators say this remains a criminal investigation, that a person or persons deliberately tampered with Southern Pacific Railroad tracks, causing the accident. At the White House, the President was cautious when asked if he thought the derailment was engineered by terrorists, but he was outraged.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We believe it was a case of sabotage, and I am profoundly outraged by it. I want to make it clear that we will do everything we can with the federal government to catch whoever is responsible. I am determined that we will make sure that in the United States we will have the tools, the means we need, to keep the American people safe.

MS. BOWSER: Late today, officials for the major agencies involved in the investigation held a news conference.

LARRY McCORMICK, FBI, Phoenix: Clearly, we have approximately 90 agents from Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., out on the scene conducting an extensive crime scene investigation, probably as big a one as we've ever done, excluding, I think, the Ok bomb, the Oklahoma City bombing. The public has already participated in providing us leads, and we have an investigation ongoing throughout the entire United States on the leads that we have received to date. We are very confident and very sure that we will solve this crime.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Amtrak President Thomas Downs said yesterday sabotaging the track would have taken about 10 minutes for someone with a basic knowledge of railroads. Derailing or wrecking a train in interstate commerce is a federal crime, punishable by death if someone is killed.

MR. MAC NEIL: U.N., Serb, and Bosnian negotiators are meeting this evening at the Sarajevo Airport to decide if the conditions for a cease-fire have been met. The truce had originally been scheduled to begin yesterday but was postponed because several preconditions were still pending. We have more in this report from Saira Shaw of Independent Television News.

SAIRA SHAW, ITN: Gas finally flowed into at least half the homes in Sarajevo for the first time in six months today. Reconnecting the city's amenities was a major Bosnian government condition for a cease-fire. Failure to do so delayed last night's truce.

LT. COL. CHRIS VERNON, UN SPOKESMAN: Electricity was switched back on into Sarajevo last night, and it's now in the domestic residences and all the buildings within Sarajevo, and gas has come through from Russia, Hungary, Serbia, into Sarajevo this afternoon.

MS. SHAW: But, even as the Bosnian government admitted that this condition had been met, it appeared to raise another.

HARIS SILAJDZIC, Prime Minister, Bosnia: There is a checkpoint near Sarajevo, the Serbs--Serb terrorists want to maintain, and that is in my mind something that we cannot overlook. So there should be no cease-fire until they remove that checkpoint. If they do it, and if the gas flow is restored today, then we can have cease-fire at midnight today.

MS. SHAW: Both sides are still fighting to gain ground before a truce comes into effect. These Serbs in Central Bosnia have continued to try to retake the town of Kljuc from Bosnian government forces which seized it from them three weeks ago. And the UN this morning confirmed that Bosnian government troops near Tuzla have launched an offensive too, following heavy Serb shelling. The people of Sarajevo tonight are left hoping that midnight will finally bring the promised cease-fire and that this time it may be a token of a more durable peace.

MR. MAC NEIL: Balkan peace talks are scheduled to take place in the United States on October 31st. We'll have much more on Bosnia right after the News Summary.

MS. FARNSWORTH: President Clinton today praised Mexico's President Ernesto Zedillo for stabilizing his country's economy. President Zedillo visited the White House for a one-day summit meeting. He was accorded the official state visit ceremony on the South lawn of the White House. He brought a $700 million check, partial repayment of last year's $12 1/2 billion U.S. loan to help Mexico out of a severe economic crisis. At a news conference, Presidents Clinton and Zedillo talked about Mexico's improving economy.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: When the peso collapsed just 10 months ago, America's deepest interests were affected. The crisis threatened 700,000 Americans whose jobs depend on exports to Mexico. It raised a specter of severe dislocation along our 2,000-mile border and in emerging markets throughout Latin America and, indeed, throughout the entire world. By making tough decisions together, we steered through those days of uncertainty and averted far graver consequences.

PRESIDENT ERNESTO ZEDILLO, Mexico: [speaking through interpreter] The recovery in economic growth will prove that the economic program put in practice by Mexico and the decisions reached have been the appropriate decisions. The vigorous economic growth and the creation of more and better jobs will be the best response to the migration of Mexicans to the United States

MS. FARNSWORTH: Rescue workers in Mexico today sifted through rubble left by the most powerful earthquake to hit the country in 10 years. The 7.6 magnitude tremor shook Mexico's Pacific Coast yesterday, killing at least 56 people and injuring 90. Hotels in the resort town of Manzanillo toppled and dozens of houses and buildings were destroyed. The area is still without power and phone services. In 1985, a quake measuring 8.1 on the Richter Scale hit Mexico City, killing at least 10,000 people. Hurricane Roxanne is brewing off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The storm is centered about 75 miles Southeast of Cozumel, and is moving Northwest at nine miles an hour. Forecasters expect the storm to hit Mexico's Gulf Coast by midnight. The National Weather Service said maximum sustained winds have been clocked at 115 miles an hour, making Roxanne a Category 3 hurricane. Hurricane Opal came ashore in the same area last week. Ten people were killed in that storm.

MR. MAC NEIL: Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners were freed today as part of the latest PLO-Israeli accord, but hundreds more refused to leave jail because the Israeli government would not pardon five Arab women convicted of murder. The West Bank autonomy agreement signed two weeks ago called for many of the male and all female prisoners to be freed. The PLO has petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court for the release of the women. In France today, more than 5 million public workers walked off their jobs in schools, post offices, airports, and transit facilities. The one- day strike was called to protest the government-imposed pay freeze. Demonstrations took place in more than 80 towns across France. Twenty thousand marched in Paris. Union leaders said the strike would be extended unless the government changed its policy or opened talks.

MS. FARNSWORTH: The Supreme Court heard arguments today in a high-profile gay rights case. At issue is an amendment to Colorado's state constitution. Adopted by a ballot initiative three years ago, the amendment bans state and local laws protecting homosexuals against discrimination in areas like housing and employment. Backers of the amendment say homosexuals are not a special class in need of such protection. The Colorado supreme court struck down the amendment. The state is appealing that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. We'll have more on the Colorado gay rights case later on in the program.

MR. MAC NEIL: University of Chicago Professor Robert Lucas was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics today. The Nobel committee cited him for his work on how people's expectations of the future affect economies. He is the eighth University of Chicago economist to win the Nobel in the last twenty years. We'll have more about Professor Lucas and his economic theories later in the program, along with a Newsmaker interview with Defense Sec. Perry, analysis of the cease-fire in Bosnia, the Colorado gay rights law, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS - CEASE-FIRE?

MS. FARNSWORTH: We lead tonight with Bosnia and the efforts to finally achieve a cease-fire in a nation ravaged by more than three years of war. We start with a Newsmaker interview with Secretary of Defense William Perry. Thank you for being with us, Mr. Secretary.

WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense: Thank you, Elizabeth.

MS. FARNSWORTH: We have reports today of fighting, of vicious ethnic cleansing, at least reports of it, and a new demand by the Bosnian Muslim government and yet, there's supposed to be a cease- fire announced in about an hour in Sarajevo. What is the latest on the cease-fire? Will it be announced?

SEC. PERRY: I met this afternoon with the foreign minister of Bosnia, Sacirbey, discussed this in considerable detail with him, and he had conversations back to his government. He believed that within 24 hours, there would be a cease-fire. I, of course, urged him to get moving with that, because people were being killed every hour while we're waiting for this cease-fire.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And what happens next? I understand that there will be a meeting of the NATO Council of Ambassadors tomorrow, is that right? And then would you sort of describe the timetable of what would happen next.

SEC. PERRY: The--

MS. FARNSWORTH: If the cease-fire is--in fact, goes into effect.

SEC. PERRY: If we get the cease-fire, there are several events going on in parallel. First of all, the--there will be a peace conference in the peace talks in the United States beginning October 31st. Those are very important, because it brings together in one room the presidents that are driving us towards this peace settlement. While all of this is going on, NATO is meeting.

MS. FARNSWORTH: There you're talking about the president of the Muslim--the Muslim Bosnians and--

SEC. PERRY: Croatia.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Croatia, and--

SEC. PERRY: And Bosnia and, of course, Serbia, so it's Milosevic, Izetbegovic, and Tudjman will all be meeting on the 31st.

MS. FARNSWORTH: President Milosevic is representing the Bosnian Serbs.

SEC. PERRY: He represents the Bosnian Serbs in this. They have signed a document authorizing him to act in their case. In parallel with that, NATO is continuing very--beginning very detailed planning for the peace implementation force. That will take two or three weeks to put in its final one, so that plan will be ready about the same time that the peace talks will get underway in the United States.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And at this point, how many U.S. troops do you anticipate going?

SEC. PERRY: We don't have the plan yet from NATO. We met Thursday and Friday with the NATO defense ministers. Gen. Jalin briefed us on the status of the planning. They're looking for a significant- -they're planning for a significant force, I would imagine on the order of about three divisions, which is pretty sizeable force.

MS. FARNSWORTH: A division is ten to fifteen thousand?

SEC. PERRY: A division is perhaps 15,000, American divisions are about 15,000. And there would be support forces as well. The United States is doing its planning based on an assumption that we will be providing about one division, about fifteen, perhaps as many as twenty thousand with the support troops involved with that. These numbers, though, are very tentative at this point.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And I understand that all this planning has to be done, but could you just give us a sense of how at this point it is envisioned they would enter. Would they be in different key points in Bosnia?

SEC. PERRY: Yes. That planning is already done, that is, we are assuming full cooperation from all of the parties and from the neighbors. And so we would--many of our forces would come in from the forces we have deployed now in Germany, and they come in on trains through Serbia, through Croatia, through Slovenia. Some of our forces would come in from Italy by ship, but that is the way we're planning. We believe it could be done very rapidly. From the time we get the authorization to send the forces in, we expect to have a significant controlling force in-country in just a few days.

MS. FARNSWORTH: If there were a cease-fire violation by any of the parties--let's say the Bosnian Serbs, for example, wanting to take one little extra bit of territory once our troops were there, what is it they're supposed to do? What will be their mandate?

SEC. PERRY: Between now and the time we get a peace settlement- -

MS. FARNSWORTH: No. I understand that this happens after the peace settlement.

SEC. PERRY: Oh, after the peace settlement.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Yes. Once the NATO-commanded troops are there.

SEC. PERRY: The mandate will be specified in the peace settlement which we don't have yet, but we can imagine what that will say, and they will ask the NATO forces, first of all, to enforce the separation to enforce the boundaries that are agreed upon and to enforce the cease-fire. We will have a very sizeable military force there to do that. They will be the most formidable military force in the area. They will--they will gain respect. Nevertheless, this is a country which has had passions and hatreds built up over three and a half years of war, and the government doesn't have control, I believe, of all of the paramilitary units to this, so we have to be prepared for some, some military action, and we will be prepared for that. We'll be prepared for it by having a very strong military force.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Which we would counter--we would counter that military action with our own military action.

SEC. PERRY: We would, indeed, yes.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Unlike, for example, Cambodia, where that didn't happen. I understand that was a UN operation.

SEC. PERRY: This will be a peace enforcement operation, and it will be responsible for enforcing the peace.

MS. FARNSWORTH: How do you answer the critics who say--I'm summarizing many kinds of criticism here--that this will be a quagmire, this is a place where peace can't hold, that a cease- fire, there have been other cease-fires, they can't hold, and that U.S. troops will be sucked into this quagmire?

SEC. PERRY: We have, because of our fear of a quagmire, we have refused to send our forces in until we got a peace agreement that was, first of all, a good peace agreement and one which is signed by all of the warring parties. So that is the first insurance in that point, and then secondly, we're going to send a very strong military force in there. We do not--we're taking every precaution against this being a quagmire, every action we know how to take to make this be an effective peace enforcement which does its job and then leaves the country.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Does the President plan to go to Congress for authorization for this force?

SEC. PERRY: The President has said that he would welcome authorization from the Congress. This will be because it's a big force, it'll be an expensive operation. We will have to get funding from the Congress.

MS. FARNSWORTH: How expensive? Excuse me for interrupting, but just briefly, how expensive?

SEC. PERRY: It depends on the size of the force, but a division, if it turns out to be a division of size, that will be somewhere between a billion and two billion dollars for one year.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Okay. Excuse me, so you have to get authorization?

SEC. PERRY: We would have to get the Congress to, to appropriate those funds for it.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And if they didn't, would you go ahead anyway? I mean, they have to appropriate the funds, but if you did not get the congressional authorization that the President would like to- -

SEC. PERRY: I'm very confident, Elizabeth, we're going to get the support from the Congress and get that authorization.

MS. FARNSWORTH: If a settlement is reached, will the U.S. help arm and train the Bosnian Muslim troops?

SEC. PERRY: The settlement, in order for this not to be a quagmire, in order for us to be able to pull out in some reasonable time, let's say one year, there has to be some stability in the area. That stability will not be achieved if there is a vast difference in the correlation of forces there, so we seek to have a balance of forces there. Our objective is to get this through an arms control agreement where we have the forces build down. And that's what we hope the peace process will allow for that building down to take place. We'll send in the arms control process. Nevertheless, the United States is prepared if the build-down is not effective, it is prepared to provide the resources to train and, if necessary, provide some arms for the Bosnian federation of forces. This would not be a part of the peace implementation force. This would be a separate activity done by the United States in correlation with other governments.

MS. FARNSWORTH: You met with your Russian counterpart, Pavel Grachev, in Geneva over the weekend, and tell me if I'm wrong, I understand that there is a bit of an impasse here, that the Russians want to contribute troops to this peacekeeping force but don't want to be under the command and control of NATO. How--

SEC. PERRY: I met with Minister Grachev Sunday in Geneva, and I met with the NATO defense ministers Thursday and Friday in Williamsburg. Out of those two sets of meetings, I think it's clear that Russia wants to participate in this force, and the NATO defense ministers want Russia to participate. At my meeting with Minister Grachev, we agreed on many conditions and how the Russian participation will take place, but we still have one very major disconnect, and that is that the Russians believe that the political approval of the--once the UN mandates is set, which we both agree on--the political approval of the ongoing peace implementation must come from an international political committee of which they would be a member. In effect, we have a veto power on what happens. We believe that the political authorization, the political approval of the ongoing force must come from the North Atlantic Council, which is the standard body which directs NATO. This is a very important disagreement. We discussed that at some length. We did not come to an agreement on that point, so we will discuss it further. It will be discussed in further meetings of the contact group and quite possibly will be discussed by President Yeltsin and President Clinton in their meeting in two weeks.

MS. FARNSWORTH: How important is Russian participation in this force?

SEC. PERRY: It's important in my mind, Elizabeth. It's important not so much because we need the extra forces for the peace implementation force in Bosnia, but that this is the first real test of whether NATO and Russia can work together on a common objective, which is establishing security and peace in Europe. And so for that reason, for that symbolic reason, I believe it's important.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Do you really think that this peace can hold, or that a cease-fire can hold? Just today, there's fighting and ethnic cleansing of the sort that was forbidden in the September 28th agreement among the warring parties. What makes you think this can work?

SEC. PERRY: We're going in with this peace implementation force with the belief, with the understanding, with the belief that this will be difficult, that there will be violations, that there will be problems. That is why we are so insistent that this be a very strong military force. It'll be the biggest and toughest and meanest dog in town. And it'll gain the respect of everybody that is involved in it.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Well, Mr. Secretary, thank you for being with us.

SEC. PERRY: Thank you, Elizabeth.

MR. MAC NEIL: We turn now to three views on the Bosnian cease- fire. Edward Joseph was a political and humanitarian affairs officer for the United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia. He's now the communications director for the Council on Foreign Relations. Walter Russell Mead is an author and fellow at the World Policy Institute, and Anthony Lewis is a columnist for the "New York Times." Mr. Joseph do you have the feeling this is the turning point for Bosnia, this can be a cease-fire that will hold, the negotiations will bring peace?

EDWARD JOSEPH, Council on Foreign Relations: Yes. I think it's not irrational to take that view, despite the troublesome history in the region. First, with respect to the cease-fire, we should remember that actually there havebeen functioning cease-fires in the past; both Secretary of State Vance in Croatia and former President Carter in Bosnia negotiated cease-fires in the past that lasted. The difference this time is that we have a viable peace process for the first time discussing the key fundamental issues that are part and parcel to conflict. And so that's why I think really there is reason for some optimism.

MR. MAC NEIL: Tony Lewis, do you agree with that, this can be the turning point?

ANTHONY LEWIS, New York Times: [Boston] I think it can. It's a turning point with features that I regret greatly, and I think all of us would regret, because it does really reward ethnic cleansing by creating an ethnically divided Bosnia or really ratifying an ethnically divided Bosnia. But here, as elsewhere, the best is the enemy of the good. We can't at this stage do what we should have done long ago, stand up for a united Bosnia. And when you see, as we just did with Saira Shaw's report, the people of Sarajevo welcoming the prospect of peace and having electricity for the first time in six months, I don't think it's for us to say that we insist they fight on for some other objective.

MR. MAC NEIL: And, Mr. Mead, are you--do you have confidence, new confidence, that this can be the turning point, this cease-fire can hold?

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD, World Policy Institute: Well, I've got a lot of hope. This is I think what Tony Lewis just said, that this is not in all respects a good peace or even an honorable peace, but it's a possible peace. And I think for the first time you've got people going all the way from the sort of very strong pro-Bosnians who want to see a united Bosnia. They're now ready to settle for these facts on the ground. And then on the other side, you've had--the Serbs have had a bloody nose, and so they may be more willing to settle. And the Croats have had a big success, military success, and gotten almost everything they wanted, so they may be prepared to settle.

MR. MAC NEIL: Tony Lewis, what do you think the forces are that will work against this agreement?

MR. LEWIS: I think the most dangerous element is the leadership of the Bosnian Serbs. To be frank, Gen. Mladic, the most powerful figure, the commander of the Bosnian Serb forces, he and Dr. Karadzic, the self-styled president, have been accused, have been charged with war crimes by the International War Crimes Tribunal, and we have reason to believe that Gen. Mladic ordered the massacre, the cold-blooded killing of prisoners taken, civilians that is, taken at Srebrenica, and he's probably involved in the brutal ethnic cleansing now going on in Northern Bosnia. So to make peace with those kinds of people and expect them to obey the rules is, I think, chancy, but it's the best chance we have.

MR. MAC NEIL: What do you think about that dynamic, that these people might be so desperate--other people have suggested this-- might be so desperate? What incentive do they have to, to give up now and then face prosecution at a war crimes tribunal?

MR. JOSEPH: Well, it's not just a question of incentives. It's also a question of the pressures that they're under, and the Bosnian Serb leadership is under significant pressure both from Belgrade and in terms of the combined Croat-Bosnian military, and plus, with the, with the dramatic developments of NATO, so it's not only a question of incentive, it's also a question of pressure. And the other thing, in terms of implementation of the agreement, it's critical for NATO, as Sec. Perry mentioned, that it goes in with significant force and achieve, really set the tone from the first, especially in the first 30 days that this is not business as usual, that this will not be another UNPROFOR, but that the sides will be expected to comply to a pretty high standard.

MR. MAC NEIL: What do you see as the dynamic working on the Bosnian Serbs to, to abide by this agreement?

MR. MEAD: Well, I think we've got kind of a de facto agreement in the West that we're not really talking about much, which says, well, maybe these people are war crimes, maybe they murdered a lot of innocent men, women, and children, but let's get a peace settled, and then see where we go from there. There has--there's always been a big question--I mentioned before on this show that it's not entirely clear, is the U.S. trying to make peace with the leadership of the Bosnian Serbs, or is it trying to put them in jail, or execute them for war crimes, and there's still, I think, some unresolved tension about that on the U.S. side.

MR. MAC NEIL: Or creative ambiguity.

MR. MEAD: Creative ambiguity that maybe--maybe the idea is to lull them into a sense of security and then arrest them. Who knows what we're really trying to do?

MR. MAC NEIL: How vital--the Republicans in Congress have already challenged or said they're at least going to strongly question the sending of U.S. troops to enforce this peace--how vital are U.S. troops as a component of this force, do you think?

MR. MEAD: Well, given that U.S. diplomacy has been the absolute center of everything that's happened positive in the last couple of weeks, if you suddenly cut the troops away from President Clinton, our diplomatic efforts would, more or less, collapse, and we'd be back to another round of the war, I think. It's--even some moderate Republicans are now starting to say, well, we don't--this isn't a pretty policy that we've got in Bosnia, it doesn't make us happy, and nobody, myself included, likes the idea of U.S. troops in harm's way.

MR. MAC NEIL: You mean, a lot of Republicans are sounding like Tony Lewis?

MR. MEAD: You see, that's--the administration right now has got everybody from Tony Lewis to moderate Republicans agreed on a policy that nobody likes but everybody thinks may be better than the alternatives. That's good, I think.

MR. MAC NEIL: Tony, do you think the U.S. troops are vital to this?

MR. LEWIS: I do for the reason just very well stated. Nothing good has happened diplomatically or militarily over these years while the United States government sat on the sidelines in what I thought was effectless policy. It's only since we have taken the leadership that something good has happened. And you can't do without American leadership, and that here requires the troops, though nobody is very enthusiastic about sending them.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you have any difference of opinion on that?

MR. JOSEPH: No, none at all. I agree that it's essential that American troops--the only thing--are part of an implementation force. The only thing I would add is that it's not only essential in terms of our U.S.-European relationship but also in terms with respect to the parties on the ground themselves, that without American troops on the ground, the credibility of the force would be in question. That is I think good reason for all the parties to question the European fortitude, and I think American troops are, are really essential.

MR. MAC NEIL: Now, taking the long history of all Presidents who in recent decades have initiated military action with or without congressional approval, in this particular climate, how necessary is congressional approval of the President sending troops?

MR. MEAD: I would say that if I were President of the United States, I would not want to have troops in harms way, in something controversial, thousands of miles overseas, without congressional approval. It's my view that you need the same kind of national debate and discussion that you had over the Gulf War, where in our very cumbersome democratic system, with all of its--

MR. MAC NEIL: Even though this is a much smaller proposition.

MR. MEAD: Potentially, but, you know, there--I think even supporters of the policy are going to tell you that there is the possibility that you get drawn into a quagmire, you get a Beirut situation where suddenly somebody kills 200 of your Marines. Do you then cut and run, or do you stay and, and take what casualties are coming? I think the President needs to have the United States of America behind him on this, and I think he deserves that support, and my guess is he'll get it.

MR. MAC NEIL: Is Sec. Perry justified in his confidence that they'll get it, Tony Lewis, do you think?

MR. LEWIS: I think so. I think so because it's so clear to everybody that American leadership is making the difference here, and in the end, I do not think that members of Congress will say, no, we want to retreat and end American leadership. I have one thing to add to the point about the need for congressional authorization. I entirely agree that it's in the President's interest and the country's interest to discuss these things. I think it's also a constitutional requirement which has been too much neglected, and for legitimacy, we really need to have that requirement fulfilled.

MR. MAC NEIL: Yeah. What is your view on that, Mr. Joseph?

MR. JOSEPH: Well, I agree. I think that it is important to have the congressional approval, and I think that they will get it, but the important question is, it's not just a question of getting the approval to go in, it's the congressional support during the implementation of, of the agreement. And when there are bumps in the road, my hope is, is that passionate defenders of Bosnia will stick with the administration and not, especially in an election year, let politics intercede.

MR. MAC NEIL: If you were a skeptical congressman who agreed on the need for U.S. troops, Mr. Mead, but wanted to have the worst possibilities on the record, what, what would you ask, or what-- what is the worst you could envision happening in something like this?

MR. MEAD: Well, the worst I could envision would be a series where first say the Bosnian Serbs start violating the cease-fire and the peace in some way and committing some atrocities and maybe pushing a little bit harder, then--so you're involved militarily and you start--you know, you start fighting back against this, but then now suppose the Croats, who are really no boy scouts, start doing the same things, and then the Bosnian Muslims start pushing again, you could end up in the middle of a three-way system in which none of the three sides were exactly your allies or supported you in what you were trying to do. That's--to me, that's a worst case.

MR. MAC NEIL: Tony Lewis, Sec. Perry said this would be a very large, strong force and the meanest dog in town, but the largest figure I've seen mentioned is 60,000 troops, which would not be, by any means, the largest force. I mean, the Bosnian army is bigger than that.

MR. LEWIS: I took it that Sec. Perry, when he used that wonderful phrase, the meanest dog in town, was talking about the fire power more than the numbers, and I'm sure the fire power will be very large--

MR. MAC NEIL: Including air power.

MR. LEWIS: And that's what I was going to say. The key thing here is air power. The troops, we hope--of course, if the worst-case scenario that we've just heard happens, that won't be so--but we hope the troops on the ground will not be much involved in military action. But the real strength we have is air power, as has just been shown. The reason that there are peace negotiations about to begin and the reason there's hope for a cease-fire is because of the NATO air attacks, and they resulted from an American decision. That's what's going to really keep the peace.

MR. MAC NEIL: This country, Mr. Joseph, has not shown much appetite for getting involved in Bosnia up till now, and I just wonder what you think about the, the willingness or the will of the national will to be involved now in this thing. It registers almost, you know, like five to six percent on those measures of how interested the American people are in various new stories. Bosnia comes way, way down the list.

MR. JOSEPH: Right. Well, it's a fair question, and that will always be a concern to have to convince the American people that our national interests and strategic interests are engaged where- -in a situation like Bosnia, and where relationships with our allies are at stake, and in the future of NATO and Russia, and so it's important to make an effective case. But it's also important that we achieve the right result on the ground and make sure that- -keep casualties to a minimum and achieve results quickly. And I think the point about Croatia is very important and tends to get overlooked in this, that this not just a question of getting the Serbs to sign up to something with the Bosnians, but it's also important that the other side of the pillar, the federation between the Croats and the Bosnians, is working.

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, gentlemen, we have to leave it there. Thank you all very much.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Still ahead, the gay rights case in the Supreme Court, America's newest Nobel economist, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS - GAY RIGHTS

MS. FARNSWORTH: Now, gay rights before the Supreme Court. The high court today heard arguments in a case that tests the constitutionality of a 1992 Colorado ballot initiative known as Amendment Two. It would invalidate state or local laws that prohibit discrimination against gays, lesbians, or bisexuals. Attorneys from both sides claim the Justices' questioning bolstered their arguments.

GALE NORTON, Colorado Attorney General: Our position has been that Amendment Two preserves the status quo, that it allows the people of Colorado as a whole to make the decision about the issue of sexual orientation, and the Justices, through their questioning, saw that issue as being one of the primary concerns.

SUZANNE GOLDBERG, Lambda Legal Defense: The Constitution forbids the singling out of one group of people for different political rules, and today, through our briefs and argument, we made that clear. Amendment Two is a patent of the Constitution for all of the reasons we've discussed, but it's also absurd. And I think that many of the questions today pointed that out.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Now, legal analysis of today's case. Stuart Taylor, senior writer at "American Lawyer" and "Legal Times," is with Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Stuart, thank you for joining us. What is at issue in this case?

STUART TAYLOR, The American Lawyer: Basically, the state's voters by initiative adopted what almost comes down to a right of the people to discriminate against homosexuals. It's more complicated than that. What had happened is that some of the cities in Colorado, Boulder, Denver, and Aspen, had passed gay rights laws. You can't be fired for being a homosexual. You can't be denied housing for being a homosexual. The voters of the state basically wiped out those laws with this referendum and said, localities cannot adopt gay rights laws, cannot adopt laws banning discrimination against gays, and nor can the state legislature. So if homosexual people want to get relief from discrimination in Colorado, they have to pass a constitutional amendment getting rid of this one, which apparently doesn't seem politically likely.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: That's Amendment Two, and then something like 57 percent of the voters of Colorado voted for it.

MR. TAYLOR: It was 57/43 after a very heated debate, and a lot of the rhetoric of that debate sort of showed up in a different form in the Supreme Court today.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Okay. I want to get to that in a minute, but the state's position basically is--

MR. TAYLOR: The state's position is that this is about the state's right of popular sovereignty; this is about the right of the voters of the states to decide what the state's laws are going to be and how they're going to be formed, at what level they're going to be formed; that if we're going to have a gay rights law, it has to be in the Constitution, and, and we can say in the Constitution there will not be. Also, the state says it's about the rights of religious people, for example, who think homosexuality is immoral, who may be employers, who may be landlords, or whatever, to associate or not to associate with whom they choose. That's how the state characterizes it.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And the other side?

MR. TAYLOR: The other side, the gay rights side says this law is unique in American history, this constitutional amendment, because it takes one group, gay people, homosexual people, and it singles them out and says, you don't have quite the same right to participate in the political process that everyone else does. Yes, you can lobby the state legislature, or your city council to pass laws protecting you, but they can't pass such laws. If you want to get a law protecting you, you have to go all the way to the state constitutional amendment process, which is very difficult to do.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And what's at stake here exactly?

MR. TAYLOR: What's at stake is the--in the largest sense, there are other states that have attempted--where there have been attempts to pass laws like this, Idaho, I believe, and Oregon, which were narrowly unsuccessful, but they may be tried again. And there are lots of cities all over the country that have gay rights laws, meaning protection against discrimination, and the big issue for the court in this case is whether a state's voters through a constitutional amendment can just basically wipe all that out, or whether they have to deal more discreetly issue by issue with, with issues of discrimination against gay people.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And if the ban is upheld?

MR. TAYLOR: If the ban is upheld, then it will be a big setback to the gay rights cause, but the way the issue is formulated in the court is a little peculiar. The gay rights groups aren't coming in and saying, we want you, the Supreme Court, to say that state discrimination against gays should be treated just like racial discrimination; they're not saying that because I think they know the votes aren't there for that. So they're making this more complicated argument that there is a right to equal political participation that homosexuals share with everyone else, and that that's what's implicated here.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why did the Supreme Court take this case? I mean, this is--they had a gay rights case, what, nine years ago?

MR. TAYLOR: Right.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why did they take this one? Did they want to send a message, you think, or--

MR. TAYLOR: I don't think--

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: --correct the other one? And explain those two.

MR. TAYLOR: Well, it's important to understand that of the nine Justices of the Supreme Court, you only need four votes to take a case. So you don't need a majority to take a case. And I can count four votes on this court, the four more liberal members, who sounded today an awful lot like they were all going to vote to strike this down. My guess is they voted to take this case in the hope that they could pull one more vote over and that they could begin to unravel that 1986 precedent, Bowers Vs. Hardwick, which was, as you know, said that laws barring homosexual conduct are constitutional.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: That was a Georgia case.

MR. TAYLOR: Yes. Now, that case--they're not going to overrule that case in this case, that case is not directly at issue, but I think the more liberal members of the court want to start chipping away at that and want to start weaving some constitutional protections against discrimination against gay people into the U.S. constitutional doctrine.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What was it like in the--because you heard lawyers on both sides claiming that the Justices were speaking to issues that would vindicate their position. How did you read what was going on?

MR. TAYLOR: They were both right, depending on which Justice you were listening to. It was very interesting. It was one of the liveliest and most animated arguments I've heard in the court in a while. Eight of the nine Justices jumped in and were very active, and sometimes they were very animated. And they completely took over the argument from the lawyers. The assistant attorney general- -the solicitor general, I should say, of Colorado barely got in a word edgewise, because he'd start saying why the amendment should be upheld and Justice Scalia would jump in and say, well, what you really want to say is X, Y, Z, isn't it, and so it was a very lively argument. You could tell very clearly where most of the Justices were going to be in terms of their voting, and as usual, it looks like it's going to come down to the two Justices in the center, Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor, in terms of who will win this case.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And they would--so where do you see it coming out?

MR. TAYLOR: Going into the argument I would have thought the state's going to win, the gay rights cause is going to lose. The first two questions out of the box when the state was making its argument were very--rather hostile questions for the state, the first from Justice Kennedy, saying, I've never seen a law like this; it takes one group and fences them out of the usual ability to use the political process and he basically said, he didn't find the state's argument persuasive. Then Justice O'Connor jumped in, and she said, "Does this mean that a public library could refuse to lend books to homosexual people?" She said, "What does this thing mean? I don't understand what this thing means." Now, you can't always read a Justice from a question like that, but it--it seemed clear to me that Justice O'Connor and Justice Kennedy both have some discomfort with this law. Whether it's going to carry them all the way to striking it down as unconstitutional is a closer question.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But could this case end up establishing gay people as a class, like blacks, or like--well, blacks are the only protected class--well, I guess, perhaps women.

MR. TAYLOR: Under current doctrine of the equal protection clause, which is the right to equal protection of the laws, blacks are protected, specially protected, women are a little bit less specially protected, illegitimate people, and not just blacks, racial--racial groups basically. It is almost certain that gays will not in this case get into the category of specially protected classes. In fact, the gay advocates in this case very explicitly said to the court that's not what we're asking for. And the reason they did is a strategic judgment. I think they figure that if they come in here and say, okay, now's the case where we want you to make us a suspect classification, they'll lose, whereas, maybe if you get another appointment or two for President Clinton in a few years, maybe that question will come out better for them.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Okay. Well, we're out of time, so I didn't get to ask you why the Clinton administration didn't file an amicus brief, but maybe we'll get to that another time. Thank you, Stuart Taylor.

MR. TAYLOR: Sorry, I talked too long.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: That's all right. Thank you for joining us.

MR. TAYLOR: Thank you. FOCUS - NOBEL THEORY

MR. MAC NEIL: Next tonight, the Nobel Prize in Economics. The committee that awards the prize called University of Chicago Professor Robert Lucas "the economist who has had the greatest influence on macroeconomic research since 1970. As commentators today have pointed out, his work has also had an important influence on public policy. To discuss both the work and its impact, Business Correspondent Paul Solman sat down this afternoon with "Boston Globe" economics columnist David Warsh.

MR. SOLMAN: David Warsh, thank you for joining us. If Nobel Prizes are given to people who make a major difference in the thinking within their profession, then what's the big idea? I mean, that is, what's the big idea here that got Robert Lucas his Nobel Prize in economics today?

DAVID WARSH, Boston Globe: The big idea is that, is that people learn, Paul. It's as simple as that. They cotton onto the ideas that economists are using to, to inform their actions, and they-- and they internalize those things and begin to act as if they knew what the economist's model was.

MR. SOLMAN: So this is what we call rational expectations?

MR. WARSH: In contrast to something we called for a long time "adaptive expectations." There were lots of different expectations, but the big difference is a kind of forward-looking, try to anticipate the--all the knowledge around, versus a kind of mechanical, rote, backward-looking tit for tat kind of learning that economists for the sake of convenience assumed up until Lucas wrote in '71 or '72.

MR. SOLMAN: So, now what is a rational expectation? I mean, if I--if you and I have a rational expectation about some government economic policy, what would it be?

MR. WARSH: Well, if--if you were in the habit of hitting me with a paddle, it would be rational of me to see that happen a couple of times and the third time to duck.

MR. SOLMAN: Yes, it would be.

MR. WARSH: With respect to an economic decision, suppose I made widgets, I observed that the Federal Reserve Board in order to combat unemployment increased the money supply a percent every time that unemployment went up a percent, I saw the unemployment rate was up apercent, I'd put my prices up 2 percent and try to keep my output steady.

MR. SOLMAN: Because you know that the Federal Reserve is going to do that, or you anticipate--that's your rational expectation that they're going to do that, therefore, you move in advance, and that's not what the Federal Reserve Board is trying to accomplish?

MR. WARSH: It's more complicated, but my rationality might lead me to subscribe to a newsletter that studied the fad and told me what to expect, but I would--I would try to learn what was going on.

MR. SOLMAN: And so then it's like a giant chess game, I mean, where government can't really do all that much, because when government has a policy, people are expecting the policy, people anticipate the policy, government can't take into account all the things that people would do in those expectations, and it's a wash?

MR. WARSH: Yes.

MR. SOLMAN: And that's the key idea. That's the big idea. Let's talk about it in context. I mean, as we both know only too well, economics is kind of this gross oversimplification about how people behave, right? They're rational maximizers trying to maximize their self-interest.

MR. WARSH: Very useful.

MR. SOLMAN: Very useful. It's a caricature but it really works to explain lots and lots of stuff. Does Lucas's addition of this notion of rational expectations, is that a big deal? Was that a big deal?

MR. WARSH: Yeah, it turned out to be a very big deal. It subverted all the gospel of the 60's, the dogma of the 50's and 60's about the possibility of, of very accurate and precisely calibrated government intervention.

MR. SOLMAN: What we used to call--what they used to call--I was a little--we were a little young--fine tuning.

MR. WARSH: Fine tuning, exactly.

MR. SOLMAN: Fine tuning, and that was that the Federal Reserve or the government would do these, these policy interventions.

MR. WARSH: Exactly.

MR. SOLMAN: A tax cut, for example, if the government did it, or the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates, and doing it in very fine ways, that would make the economy run on an even keel, yeah?

MR. WARSH: On a smoother basis, exactly. Now a lot of these rules for the conduct of policy were, were old and well tested by clinical practice, taking away the punch bowl just when the party got good, leaning against the wind.

MR. SOLMAN: These are all the things people said about the Fed so that if the economy was going too well, you took away the punch bowl, people wouldn't get drunk on it, the economists--

MR. WARSH: Precisely, and that meant you just wouldn't--

MR. SOLMAN: Lots of inflation and stuff.

MR. WARSH: Swings of big amplitude.

MR. SOLMAN: Right. You wouldn't have these big swings of inflation, then the recession, and so forth.

MR. WARSH: But high economics, technical Keynesian scientific economics, was a lot more ambitious than those kinds of rules of thumb, Kentucky windage rules of central bankers, and it led to things like the income surcharge in '68 that was going to stop runaway inflation at the heighth of the Vietnam War, which couldn't be politically passed anyway. But even if it had, I think the conclusion of a rational expectations model would be that it wouldn't work nearly as well as people expected it to work.

MR. SOLMAN: So in the old days--I mean, again 50's, 60's, there was a certain hubris in the profession of economics as to what you could, you could do, that fair?

MR. WARSH: A lot of us thought so, yes.

MR. SOLMAN: And then a number of people I talked to today said that Lucas basically made the profession more humble.

MR. WARSH: Yeah.

MR. SOLMAN: I mean, he said, wait a second, we don't really know- -

MR. WARSH: Yeah.

MR. SOLMAN: --if people can anticipate what government's going to do, then maybe government can't do that much.

MR. WARSH: What was your line from the '72 paper, as an advice giving--

MR. SOLMAN: As an advice giving--oh, I got it here, "As an advice giving profession," Lucas said or wrote, "we economists are in away over our heads."

MR. WARSH: A nice line, and that certainly has carried the day in the profession ever since. That was published in '72. It was a difficult paper to publish at the time. It was turned down by the, the flagship journals in the profession. It was finally published in something called the "Journal of Economic Theory."

MR. SOLMAN: Which is not that hot a journal?

MR. WARSH: Which is not a hot place, and it's become a much hotter place since then, but it was really the beginning--it was a shot that started the revolution, as you say, hubris or optimism, it depends on which side you were on.

MR. SOLMAN: The other thing that I was told today is that when he was asked what he would do as head of the Fed, Robert Lucas once said, "I'd resign."

MR. WARSH: Yeah.

MR. SOLMAN: But we don't actually do that. Now, I mean, people do--all right, they don't fine tune--let's say we gross tune the economy, we do on this program month after month. We have people who say, why did the Fed lower or not lower interest rates this month, why did they raise them?

MR. WARSH: Let's let our expectations be rational about this Nobel Prize, as well as all the others. They have a tendency to run to one side of the boat and cheer and then after a certain period of time run to the other side and cheer.

MR. SOLMAN: You mean, the Keynesian side, the fine tuning side, and now--

MR. WARSH: And the Lucas position that as head of the Fed he'd do nothing is as preposterous as the old Keynesian position that as head of the Fed you could cure all the ills. We should take it with a grain of salt.

MR. SOLMAN: But the economics profession has taken this as last sort of point very seriously, hasn't it?

MR. WARSH: Yeah, I'd say so, but so has the political arena. I mean, we--long before the economists came to these conclusions, we had the stirrings of a kind of a popular revolt against economic pretension in this country, and I think economists take the stuff very seriously. Certainly nobody takes it more seriously than Lucas, who's a very deep, very thoughtful, utterly serious guy about this stuff, and it's provoked a wonderful discussion about what can a central bank do. Should it pursue just rules that it announces beforehand, or should it be allowed to exercise its discretion whenever it thinks it can do some good?

MR. SOLMAN: And the whole world now, I guess is the final point, is much more--doesn't think that economics can do as much as the world thought it could, and so he was kind of the right idea at the right time.

MR. WARSH: Exactly. Diminished expectations.

MR. SOLMAN: Diminished expectations. Great. Thank you very much, David Warsh. ESSAY - FASCINATION

MS. FARNSWORTH: Finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt has some thoughts about people who are accused of crimes.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: If you have the right eye for such things, you can see that accused men are often attractive. Franz Kafka wrote that, which is not surprising, since Kafka made accused men attractive himself. Attractive how? In what way are accused men and women attractive, especially those known to be guilty of the crimes of which they are accused? Was Susan Smith attractive? There she sat in the courtroom, admittedly guilty of murdering her two children, looking as blank and ordinary as any shopper in the supermarket. Yet, because one knew the terrible thing she did, the unspeakable crime she had roused herself to commit, there was, indeed, the attraction Kafka wrote of. The public searched that unrevealing face, for what, the mark of Mrs Cain, some sign of the banality of evil? We could not take our eyes off her. [protesters] Sen. Robert Packwood, another of the recently accused, has drawn similar rapt attention. He has been accused of everything but murder. As the months passed and the accusations arrived from eery quarter, there was Bob Packwood, not standing in the dock but out in the open, making speeches in public. He protested his innocence, cited manipulations of the law, said things had been distorted; he was misunderstood. We studied that opaque Senatorial face for the strain in it, for the glance that would expose him, or the twitch that would suggest that he knew he was lying. When would that mask and polish melt? When would those fine bones crack and crumble? We could not take our eyes off him.

SEN. BOB PACKWOOD: So I now announce that I will resign from the Senate.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Oddly, the attractiveness of accused people is due only in part to whether they are judged or pre-judged guilty. The accused "not guilty" are as attractive as the criminals, something to do with the mere condition of being accused, of being called to explain oneself under the inspection of society, to explain not only one's actions but one's self. The attraction is deep. Behold the one to receive blame. Behold the man accused of rape in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Everyone knew that he didn't do it. Yet, who would not identify with his desperation at being accused? Behold the man accused of murder in "Witness for the Prosecution." Everyone strongly suspected he did it. The attractiveness was equal. If you have the right eye for these things, you can see that accused men are often attractive. I wonder if the reason is that everybody is guilty of something. You are not Susan Smith or Sen. Packwood. You are the one who cheated on your taxes, or on your final exams, or on your spouse. You are the one who told the lie. The accused lie at the center of the heart. They are attractive in spite of themselves, projections in some general way of everybody's terror of being accused. For a year of the O.J. Simpson trial, the country and much of the world stared at the accused, even though he was not always on camera. The defense lawyers seized much of the public's attention; so did the prosecutors. The witnesses were interesting. The judge became a character of popular culture. Visitors to the courtroom, including the relatives of the principals, were worth watching. The experts called to testify, the same. But every once in a while, we would see the accused, and there was no attraction like him. He may have been instructed not to show emotion, but he showed it. What did he not show, what knowledge, what memories, what soul? I'm Roger Rosenblatt. RECAP

MR. MAC NEIL: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday: 90 FBI agents and other investigators searched the scene of yesterday's train wreck in the Arizona desert. They're looking for clues to the sabotage that killed one person and injured seventy-eight others. There will be no cease-fire in Bosnia tonight. United Nations officials met with both sides at the Sarajevo Airport. A spokesman said the Bosnian government was ready for a truce, but the rebel Serb representatives said they did not have the authority to accept the cease-fire. Good night, Elizabeth.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Good night, Robin. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Thank you and good night.