The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight a look at the low unemployment rate and other things economic, a Tom Bearden report on the dangers computer hackers bring to the Pentagon, a Kwame Holman summary of the week's partisan fights over the Hubbell tapes, followed by commentary about that and other matters by Mark Shields & Paul Gigot, an Anne Taylor Fleming essay about violent sports figures, and Mother's Day poetry read by Robert Pinsky, the Poet Laureate of the United States. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday. NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The nation's unemployment fell to its lowest rate in 28 years last month, the Labor Department reported today. It was 4.3 percent, down from 4.7 in March. Two hundred and sixty-two thousand jobs were added to business payrolls. On Wall Street the Dow Jones Industrial Average went up 78 points, to close at 9055.15. We'll have more on the unemployment story right after this News Summary. Minnesota's lawsuit against the tobacco industry was settled today. The $6.5 billion deal came just hours before the 16-week trial was to go to the jury. The state and Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Minnesota will get some of the money up front, but most of it over 25 years. State Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III spoke to reporters.

HUBERT HUMPHREY III, Attorney General, Minnesota: They have surrendered, and they have surrendered on our terms. And I want to outline that to you. These are--these are truly groundbreaking terms that will expose the full truth to the public, recover record amounts for taxpayers, impose tough reforms on the industry, and, most important, protect the future generations of our children.

JIM LEHRER: The Minnesota case was the first of forty state suits to go to trial. They seek to reclaim the public health costs of treating smoking-related illness, among other things. A nationwide umbrella settlement reached last June stalled in Congress. The industry now expects to litigate with each state, according to a lawyer for the tobacco industry.

SCOTT WILLIAMS, Tobacco Industry Lawyer: This is, I think, a sharp example of why a national resolution was in the best interest of the country, and this stands as a striking example of what we're going to have to do now. We have to have individual cases, a state. You know, Washington has continued on a path of taxation and enlarging the size of government under the guise of comprehensive legislation. They complain that politics for a long time. The June 20th agreement was a remarkable accomplishment, and that was destroyed by the politics of Washington.

JIM LEHRER: The states of Mississippi, Florida, and Texas settled without trial for a total of $30 billion. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will not attend Middle East peace talks in Washington on Monday. That's what his director of communications said today. He said it after a 90-minute meeting Netanyahu had with U.S. Envoy Dennis Ross in Israel. Ross was there to persuade Netanyahu to accept the U.S. proposal of a further troop withdrawal from the West Bank. Netanyahu's aide said there was not enough time for Israel to agreed to the plan by Monday. However, a White House spokesman said Ross and Netanyahu might meet again on Sunday. Webster Hubbell, his wife, and two associates pleaded "not guilty" today to tax evasion charges. They entered their pleas before a federal district judge in Washington. They were indicted last week by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's grand jury. The new charges came about a year after Hubbell was released from prison. The former deputy attorney general and friend of President and Mrs. Clinton served 21 months for defrauding the Arkansas law firm where he and Mrs. Clinton used to work. Severe weather battered parts of the South overnight. Tornadoes, hail, and heavy rain swept from Georgia through Virginia, killing two people. At least 20 people were injured. A commercial airliner had to make an emergency landing in Tennessee. A violent hailstorm knocked off the nose cone and shattered a cockpit window. Critical instruments were damaged. The pilot landed the plane safely. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to unemployment and other matters of the economy, computer hackers, a report, and Shields & Gigot on the Hubbell tapes controversy, an Anne Taylor Fleming essay, and some Mother's Day poetry. FOCUS - BUBBLE ECONOMY

JIM LEHRER: Phil Ponce has the economy story.

PHIL PONCE: The U.S. economy isn't just humming--it's singing, that, according to U.S. labor secretary, whose department this morning announced the nation's lowest unemployment rate since 1970, an unemployment rate of just 4.3 percent in April. Today President Clinton had this to say:

PRESIDENT CLINTON: No one can claim full responsibility for it. There was not a totally coordinated strategy, but it did not happen by accident. America has been on the same page from our strategy in Washington to balance the budget, invest in our people, and expand trade, to the entrepreneurs, to the scientists, technicians, to the teachers in our schools, and the people who run our businesses, and the folks who work in our factories.

PHIL PONCE: The Department of Labor said there were 262,000 new non-farm sector jobs, mainly in the service industry. Today's numbers also showed hourly wages increased by 4 cents an hour to $12.67. But such increases don't seem to be translating into higher inflation. In March, consumer prices were unchanged from February. And there are other healthy signs: Consumer confidence is at a 29-year high, and retailers are reporting their best sales in more than a decade. In the first quarter of 1998, major retailers reported a 6 percent increase from last year. And Wall Street continues to surge. The market is up 15 percent this year and 65 percent over the last two. With today's employment news, the market gained almost 80 points, again finishing above 9000. Many analysts believe these higher stock prices have helped spark a record year of mergers and acquisitions. So far this year the Federal Reserve has left interest rates alone, and current low rates have spurred new home and car sales across the country. But Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has reservations. He's repeatedly worried aloud that higher wages can eventually kindle inflation. And some economists have begun to refer to the economy as a bubble, which could burst on the first signs of bad economic news. President Clinton was asked about that at a news conference last week.

REPORTER: Now, do you think that this stock market bubble is going top burst?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We have a very productive economy with high growth and low interest rates. Also, the fact that there is a downturn in many Asian economies I think has created some investment capital that normally might have gone somewhere else that may be coming back into our country. I'm encouraged by the underlying fundamentals, and what I hope will happen is that we can avoid any kind of big swings in the market one way or the other by just steady, slow--maybe not so slow, but at least steady growth.

PHIL PONCE: Joining us now to debate the issue, Zanny Minton Beddoes covers the American economy for The Economist, the London-based magazine that recently ran a cover story called "America's Bubble Economy." And Vernon Winters, chief investment officer for Mellon Private Asset Management, the private client division of Mellon Bank. And welcome both of you.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Winters, the lowest unemployment rate in almost three decades, what does that tell you?

H. VERNON WINTERS, Investment Strategist: Well, it tells us the economy's still doing well, and everything is on track.

PHIL PONCE: Your reaction to that, an equally rosy reaction?

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES, The Economist: I think--actually, I think it's rather worrying, frankly because it tells us that the economy is booming. We know that because output was rising very fast at the beginning of this year, but it tells us that it's doing that because we're using more and more work. Unemployment is at these historic lows. It's way below levels that are traditionally associated with rising wage pressure. We have seen rising wage pressure. One of the other things we've found from the numbers that came this morning is that wages are, in fact, rising, and ultimately, as Chairman Greenspan says, there's a risk that that pushes through to higher inflation.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Winters, how do you react to that, the fact that low unemployment means that employers have to pay higher wages, that could lead to higher production costs, and, therefore, inflation?

H. VERNON WINTERS, Investment Strategist: Well, so far it's not showing up in inflation because companies have been able to increase productivity such that they can afford to give workers a higher wage and not pass through the prices. In fact, they can't raise prices because of competitive conditions worldwide. So they're doing everything they can to improve productivity. And so far that's been working.

PHIL PONCE: Ms. Minton Beddoes, your magazine talked about the United States having a bubble economy. What is a bubble economy?

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: When we talk about a bubble, we talk about rising asset prices, stock prices, particularly, that are going up, further than the economic fundamentals would warrant, and they're going up because of some kind of speculative frenzy, to use a phrase, again, that Chairman Greenspan used, some kind of irrational exuberance. We're all feeling good. We're buying shares. Prices are going up not because of fundamental changes or not only because of fundamental changes, more because there's a kind of frenzied buying. And that's what we mean by a bubble, and we worry about it for two reasons. We worry about it because bubbles tend to burst. Financial markets have had bubbles ever since finance started. But the problem is that they burst suddenly and when they burst, share prices can collapse very quickly, and that can actually have real detrimental economic consequences; it can push the economy into a recession. The other problem is that if they--if the bubble continues, then this kind of inflation in asset prices--because that's really what it is--can spill over into broader inflation. And we can begin to see--

PHIL PONCE: By inflation and asset prices, you mean inflation and stock prices and--

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Yes. Stock prices rising above that which you would expect from the real corporate performance of the company. When I talk about inflation, I mean kind of unnecessarily large rises in stock prices.

PHIL PONCE: And you believe the U.S. economy is in a bubble mode?

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: I think there is plenty of evidence that would support that, and I think the 15 percent rise in stock prices this year, 65 percent rise over the last two years that you mentioned earlier in the program is a powerful evidence of that, particularly as now we see rising labor costs beginning to put pressure on the profitability of companies. Yet, stock prices keep on inexorably rising upward. And that's the main reason but it's not the only reason for a bubble. There are other signs. One is the merger mania that we're seeing now. It's often at the end of bull markets when we get into bubble mode, people get into merger mania, these huge, huge stock--these huge mergers of companies take place, and they are often a signal of the beginning of the end.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Winters, that's a long list of evidence that the economy might be in bubble mode. How do you evaluate that evidence?

H. VERNON WINTERS: I don't think what's happening to asset prices, particularly stock prices, is irrational at all. It's justified by the fundamentals. After all, if you look at our economy in 15 years of expansion interrupted only by seven months of recession since 1982, so we've been in recession in our economy 4 percent of the time over the last 15 years. In the prior years after World War II we were in recession 25 percent of the time. So it seems to me the stability in the economy justifies higher prices. Also, we're in a technology revolution, a revolution where productivity enhancements are coming in a rapid pace. We have the Internet, which is probably the most--the biggest development of our lifetimes, really, and it's deflationary in the nature. We have a global economy with a couple of billion people around the world now operating in the market economy and wanting to increase their standard of living and our companies have a chance to sell into those markets. I think the stock market is looking ahead. It's seeing these opportunities in terms of technology, in terms of globalization, and the prices are on a rational basis reflecting that opportunity in the future. I think it'll be--if it's a bubble--I think it'll be a balloon before long.

PHIL PONCE: So you're saying that there are economic realities in place now that weren't in place in the past and therefore, what, the rules of the past don't necessarily apply now?

H. VERNON WINTERS: I think the reason economists have really been so mistaken in terms of projecting inflation and budget deficits and growth in the economy is they basically straight-lined or taken a ruler to some of the past friends and rules in the economy of the 60's and 70's. And they aren't applying now because the economy has really fundamentally changed. Now, I don't think it's going to be like this forever. The world changes, and it'll change again, but I think we still have a long way to go because these are very much structural changes. They may be interrupted from time to time by cyclical problems in the economy, but I think we're going to work our way through that.

PHIL PONCE: New structural changes, new rules?

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Well, I agree that there have been changes in the world economy, and there have been changes in the U.S. economy. The question is how big have these changes been and do they justify today's prices, and I think one argument that is frequently made by the people who believe in this new economy or a new era is that we have much higher productivity. Now, the productivity figures are, indeed, were beginning to rise, but although yesterday the productivity figures came out for the first quarter this year, and they showed a marked slowdown. But I am a great believer in the traditional rules of economics. And if you look at what's happened in the last two years in the U.S. economy, we've grown far faster than the trend growth, and we--than economies normally think the economy can grow--and that is because we've used more people. Unemployment has come down. It's not that the rules have fundamentally changed. The one thing that does seem to be different is that as wages are rising, there isn't this immediate transfer into higher inflation. Now, there are--that could be because of some new rules. It could also be because there are a lot of temporary factors which have actually influenced. One is that benefits have been rising much more slowly than they used to. The HMO revolution has meant that its employers have been able to cut costs in areas that they traditionally weren't able to cut costs. Secondly, the dollar is very strong. Now, the strength of the dollar also dampens inflation. Thirdly, commodity prices are weak. They're weak in part because of the problems in Asia, but they're not--those are not structural changes. They're temporary things that could change, and when they change, I think we'll see the old rules coming back into play.

PHIL PONCE: How about Mr. Winters' position that when there is a slowdown, that it's going to be gradual, that it's not going to be a dramatic burst?

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Well, the issue is how much have today's stock prices factored in a rosy scenario forever more? And if you look at what happened in the markets today, where they rose despite the fact that we had this incredibly low unemployment figure, which might make market participants worry about a fed rise more than they did before they knew this information, so you could think these numbers would make you worry about stock prices, nothing of the sort. The market shrugged that off completely. Now, that makes me think that the market is on a bit more of an irrational binge, rather than a kind of straight laced look at the figures.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Winters, how about the issue of what the Fed should do? The IMF said recently--the head of the IMF recently said that the Fed should do something to cool things down so that there isn't a dramatic burst?

H. VERNON WINTERS: Well, the Fed has a dilemma. World growth isn't all that great outside of this country. We're the engine of growth in the world. Our growth is needed to prop up some other economies right now. Interest rates on a short-term basis have remained steady for quite some time, while inflation has been dropping. So, in effect, the real cost of short-term money for borrowers in this country has been going up. So I think the Fed, in effect, has been doing some tightening, and it's a balancing act, and it's hard to say which way they're going to go.

PHIL PONCE: Ms. Minton Beddoes, very quickly, what is the danger sign that people should look for that things are about to change dramatically?

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: I would still stick with stock prices. I think that that's the one and what the Fed does, obviously. Those are my two.

PHIL PONCE: Well, Ms. Minton Beddoes, Mr. Winters, thank you both very much.

H. VERNON WINTERS: Thank you.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight computer hackers, the Hubbell tapes fight, Shields & Gigot, an Anne Taylor Fleming essay, and some Mother's Day poetry. FOCUS - HACKING AROUND

JIM LEHRER: Defending against computer hackers at the Pentagon and other government agencies. Tom Bearden has our report.

MOVIE SEGMENT:

COMPUTER: Shall we play a game?

ACTOR: Love to. How about global thermonuclear war?

TOM BEARDEN: That was Hollywood's nightmare back in 1983: A hacker breaks into a Pentagon computer and nearly starts a nuclear war.

MOVIE SEGMENT:

ACTOR: Donnelly, take us off full alert. Somebody's playing a game with us.

TOM BEARDEN: This is the 1998 reality.

JOHN HAMRE, Deputy Secretary of Defense: Back in the first part of February we started seeing unusual activity, where it was more systematic, and it--and it appeared to be more sophisticated.

TOM BEARDEN: Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre was worried about hackers who were attacking 11 unclassified computer systems at U.S. military bases and at a nuclear weapons research lab. The Defense Department said no classified systems were compromised, and the movie fantasy was never in danger of happening for real. Even so, the Pentagon was preparing to launch an attack on Saddam Hussein, and Hamre and others wondered if the computer attacks were connected to Iraq.

JOHN HAMRE: It's not immediately obvious where it's coming from. And these routes can go oversees multiple times, and so it gets very confusing initially. We--it took us a good deal of effort to try to track down.

TOM BEARDEN: On February 25th, as Hamre went public with his concerns, FBI agents conducted a highly publicized raid on the homes of two California teenagers alleged to be responsible for the Pentagon attacks and later followed the trail all the way to Israel, where three more teenagers were put under House arrest. A week after the Pentagon announced the attack on its computers thousands of university users across the country were tormented by a hacker assault that caused their machines to crash. Jeff Schiller is head of network security at MIT.

JEFF SCHILLER, MIT Network Manager: Although this particular attack was an inconvenience, it represented the ability. You know, it was like almost to say we can take you out anytime we want.

TOM BEARDEN: The hacker community found all the hoopla pretty amusing. This is the loft--L0pht in Internet terms and a real loft in an industrial building in Boston. Seven young men rent the space, which is crowded with discarded computers they retrieve from dumsters at MIT and put back into working order. They spend their working days as computer professionals, then gather at night to push the envelope.

LOPHT HACKER: We all basically do the exact thing 9 to 5 or 8 to 6 or whatever.

TOM BEARDEN: So what do you do at 6 to midnight?

STEFAN VON NEUMANN, L0pht HACKER: It's the off hours. It's the time spent here that we can push what we stumbled upon to a limit, to the extreme.

TOM BEARDEN: They've been described as a hacker think tank, brilliant crypto crackers and much worse. They do it mostly for the challenge, and what they've ferreted out is sometimes startling. They are proudest of creating software that exposes security flaws and Lotus software and Microsoft's most sophisticated operating system. They can also read private pager messages and intercept supposedly secure police communications, systems that are assumed to be encrypted. As for the Defense Department's computers, L0pht says the Pentagon knew about the vulnerability of its systems months before the attack.

WELD POND, L0pht Hacker: The thing that happened at the Pentagon, I mean, this thing was discovered by a hacker, was put up on a hacker web site called Root Shell. Everyone in the world could download it. And it still, months later, the Pentagon didn't fix the problem.

HACKER: It's not tough. There are so many machines out there that are just wide open on the network.

TOM BEARDEN: Apparently, it's not too tough to commit crimes on those wide open networks either. The crimes range from simple mischief, like crashing operating systems, to credit card heists, to disabling airport control towers. Hackers in Russia even managed to steal $10 billion from Citibank.

JANET RENO, Attorney General: Because of its technological advancements, today's criminals can be more nimble and more elusive than ever before. If you can sit in a kitchen in St. Petersburg, Russia, and steal from a bank in New York, you understand the dimensions of the problem.

TOM BEARDEN: Until recently, there was no coherent federal strategy to deal with violations of computer security. Each agency acted independently. The government is now beginning to organize a response. Attorney General Janet Reno recently announced the creation of the National Infrastructure Protection Center, or NIPC, housed at FBI headquarters. Its mission is to protect the computers that control the nation's critical infrastructures, like transportation, banking and finance, telecommunications, power plants, and vital human services, systems that are expected to come under constant and increasingly sophisticated attack. Michael Vatis is the new center's director.

MICHAEL VATIS, FBI National Infrastructure Protection Center: We've seen many, many instances of people getting into the various computer systems that control a critical infrastructure, such as the telecommunications node, or a banking system. We have not really seen the use by terrorist groups or hostile nation states, at least that we know about, where they've gotten into a system and sought to destroy it. But the potential is clearly there, because once you're inside a system, and you acquire root access, you can do anything you want.

TOM BEARDEN: A key part of the new FBI center's mission will be to act as a national clearinghouse for tracking and responding to security violations in both the government and private industry. A presidential commission wants to go even further. It recommends the establishment of a White House office to oversee an unprecedented government industry collaboration to shield critical computers from outside interference. Commission Chairman and Retired General Robert Marsh says the problem deserves that level of attention, because an attack in one area could quickly ripple through interconnected systems across the country.

ROBERT T. MARSH, President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection: We were not attuned to the growing interdependencies of the infrastructures. The information technology networks have been linked together in such a fashion that you can contemplate cascading failures from one system into another. And, in fact, a well-engineered effort to do serious harm would, in fact, try to exploit those interdependencies

TOM BEARDEN: But is the government overreacting? The hackers at L0pht think the government's highly public alarm may be deliberate; that the Pentagon and the other agencies are pursuing a different agenda.

L0PHT HACKER: I look at it as the Pentagon trying to get money from Congress. And the only way they can get money from Congress is to scare 'em.

TOM BEARDEN: Can hackers working from persona computers at home really pose a serious threat to national and commercial security? L0pht thinks it's possible. They've encountered perhaps twelve genius-level hackers in the on-line world and say six of them should be feared. MIT's Schiller says that another group of people called "crackers" are responsible for much of the recent computer mischief. He says crackers are the bottom feeders of the computer underground, people who don't have a deep understanding of computers and networks like real hackers. Crackers attack computers using software written by other people to break into networks mostly for bragging rights.

JEFF SCHILLER: The problem we have with crackers is for the most part they're young, they're almost always male, between the ages of maybe fifteen and twenty- five. They're usually socially maladjusted. They're people who have discovered they can hide behind the apparent anonymity of a computer screen and take on a whole new life. You know, the short frail kid can be he-man on the Internet. And that's very different from the very intellectually focused, almost geniuses that helped build the Internet.

TOM BEARDEN: One of the places that crackers are able to find attack software is L0pht's own Internet site. L0pht publishes their software there not to make it easy for the less technically capable to attack other people's computers but to force software vendors and network operators to close the holes in their security.

L0pht HACKER: It's almost like, you know, groups like us are sort of a defacto, sort of "Consumer Reports," these kinds of things.

TOM BEARDEN: They say when the vulnerabilities become public, people react and fix the problem. Otherwise, they have a tendency to ignore.

WELD POND, L0pht Hacker: It should be full disclosure, and we just let the world know when we find a vulnerability. And we found that by doing that the vulnerability gets fixed pretty quickly.

TOM BEARDEN: Big software vendors and even the Pentagon increasingly are consulting with hackers to find out where their security can be breached. Microsoft even invited L0pht to dinner last year. But not everyone agrees that letting the whole world know which systems can be penetrated is a good policy. These are the offices of CERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. It was established in 1988 to help private industry and government deal with the then new problem of Internet security. It's the precursor of the new FBI center. Tom Longstaff heads research and development at CERT. He says L0pht's disclosure method too often ends up as a "how to" manual for crackers to break into a site.

TOM LONGSTAFF, Computer Emergency Response Team: There are many people who have a lot of technical expertise out there, and some of them use the technical expertise to develop fixes and work-arounds and understand better and contribute better to the computer security community. There are other folks out there who, no matter what they call themselves, are writing attack scripts. The attack scripts, if they're given out and automate difficult attacks, really benefit the lowest common denominator of the intruder community.

TOM BEARDEN: CERT's policy has been to solicit confidential reports from companies whose systems have been breached and to work behind the scenes to develop fixes, which are then published. CERT says confidentiality is key because many companies are very hesitant to admit their systems have been compromised, for fear of making their customers nervous. If the new FBI center is to work industry would have to be willing to disclose those security breaches to the government, something many are very reluctant to do. But L0pht says the whole idea of a central clearinghouse for computer security simply won't work, that information moves much too quickly and much too freely for any one agency to have any real effect.

L0PHT HACKER: The net doesn't work that way and information doesn't flow through one centralized point. You know, if that one centralized point disappears or if it hits a bottleneck, it'll go around it.

TOM BEARDEN: For now, though, there is no centralized point. The FBI center is just getting off the ground. And the Presidential Commission's proposal for a White House office is stalled, leaving the government's efforts to respond to computer security threats still fragmented. FOCUS - HUBBELL TAPES

JIM LEHRER: Now some Washington commentary by Shields & Gigot. Their first subject is the week of partisan charge, counter charge, and audio tapes at the capital. Kwame Holman sets that up.

KWAME HOLMAN: The House Government Reform and Oversight Committee room took on a chaotic look on Monday. Committee staff members summoned the news media and gave out audio cassettes containing hours of conversations involving imprisoned former associate attorney general Webster Hubbell, his wife, and others. The Committee's Chairman, Dan Burton of Indiana, decided to release the extensive recordings after giving out transcripts containing snippets of such conversations a few days earlier. In the transcripts Hubbell discussed with his wife how his conviction for cheating clients at the Rose Law firm might impact Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was a partner at the Arkansas firm. Democrats charged Burton selected the transcripts to portray Hubbell and the First Family in the worst possible light. Burton denied those charges Monday on the CNN program "Inside Politics."

JUDY WOODRUFF: [Inside Politics] Did you or your staff, again as Mr. Waxman charges, intentionally alter the transcripts?

REP. DAN BURTON, [R] Government Reform & Oversight Chairman: [Inside Politics - May 4] Of course not. But when you've got 150 hours of taped conversation and you condense it down to one hour, obviously, you're going to do some things that people will be concerned about. They'll say you left too much in, or took too much out. But I'll tell you this: Anybody who came in and wanted to listen to those tapes, along with the transcripts, we wereallowing them to listen to those tapes.

KWAME HOLMAN: And Burton vowed to stay on as chairman of the committee investigating alleged Democratic fund-raising abuses.

JUDY WOODRUFF: [Inside Politics] Do you plan to stay on in that position?

REP. DAN BURTON: [Inside Politics] Of course. You know, you don't stop an investigation like this right in the middle of it. And when you hear the other side squealing like a bunch of pigs, then you understand that you're getting somewhere near the truth. And they're all screaming to high heaven they want me out of there because they're feeling the pressure. Mr Hubbell's comments themselves are pretty doggone revealing, and they don't want that sort of thing out in the public because they don't want the people to know what's going on.

KWAME HOLMAN: On Tuesday, House Speaker Newt Gingrich publicly defended Burton.

REP. NEWT GINGRICH, Speaker of the House: Chairman Burton was in a difficult position. They had tried to issue an edited set of tapes that they felt were directly relevant to the question of whether or not, for example, Mrs. Hubbell thought she was being squeezed by the White House, to use her words, or whether or not Mr. Hubbell thought he was going to roll over one more time, to use his words. They offered one version. The Democrats, partly, I think, coordinated by the White House, decided to come back and instead of being concerned about the top Clinton appointee at Justice being squeezed, instead of being concerned about the interior department employee being squeezed, instead of being concerned about somebody who had gotten $720,000 rolling over one more time, the Democrats have desperately tried to make Dan Burton the issue. So I would say Dan Burton has entered a very tough arena, where those who are covering up the crimes and those who participated in the crimes are doing all they can to smear anybody who seeks the truth.

KWAME HOLMAN: However, the very next day Burton sent a letter of apology to hisHouse Republican colleagues, saying: "Although the vast majority of the material was completelyaccurate, some mistakes and omissions were made. I take full responsibility for those mistakes." And, reportedly under pressure from Gingrich, Burton called for and got the resignation of his chief investigator, David Bossie, who supervised the release of the Hubbell transcripts. But House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt said the departure of Burton's top aide wasn't enough.

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT: We intend to bring a resolution to the floor next week for the purpose of getting Mr. Burton to step aside because he has clearly disqualified himself. It does no good to fire a staff member. The staff member did not say that he was out to get the president. The staff member didn't release the edited tapes. The staff member didn't decide to issue over 500 subpoenas without a vote of the committee, for the first time in the history of any congressional committee.

KWAME HOLMAN: And House Democrats followed their leader, taking the floor with strongattacks of their own.

REP. THOMAS BARRETT, [D] Wisconsin: It's not the Republicans that deserve an apology. It's the American people because the American people are the ones that have paid the million dollar bill for this circus. The American people want one thing from this committee. They want fairness. And time and time again Chairman Burton and his staff have showed that the last thing they're interested in this committee is fairness.

REP. FRANK PALLONE, [D] New Jersey: At aminimum Burton should be removed from any further role in this investigation. He clearly cannot operate as chairman in a fair manner. And not he or any other member of this house is above the law.

KWAME HOLMAN: Republicans fired back.

REP. JOSEPH PITTS, [R] Pennsylvania: The same White House that hired private investigators to look into the private lives of Judge Starr and his deputies now is offended that the privacy rights of his convict friend, Webb Hubbell, has been violated. The same White House that releases documents, subpoenaed documents no less, one drip at a time, now is complaining that the Oversight Committee is not being forthcoming in release of documents. The same White House which collected 900 FBI files, just all happened to be Republicans, is a defender now of privacy rights.

REP. DAVID WELDON, [R] Florida: Webster Hubbell, who plea-bargained with Judge Starr and then refused to cooperate with Judge Starr and who then took the Fifth Amendment before Chairman Burton's government Reform and Oversight Committee. Now the Democrats are trying to portray him as the victim.

KWAME HOLMAN: The House Government Reform and Oversight Committee is scheduledto hold a vote on immunity for witnesses next week. A two-thirds majority is needed. And if, as expected, Democrats don't cooperate, Speaker Gingrich has said he may move jurisdiction over the campaign finance investigation to another committee--where Republicans hold a two-thirds majority. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

JIM LEHRER: And to Shields & Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot.Paul, your basic view of the Burton-Hubbell tapes flap, sir.

PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: Well, I think this was the week that the--that Dan Burton imploded. He's the committee chairman. He is--that's a very responsible position. It's the national football league of politics. And I think he's shown that he isn't--he hasn't been ready to handle the kind of rough and tumble politics that that involves. And he took an opportunity for the Republicans, which was evidence. The tapes, indications of frankly some incriminating statements by Webb Hubbell, and instead of having the focus be on that, he gave the Democrats an opportunity to make the entire focus on him. It's a form of political malpractice, and the Democrats took advantage of it, and that's what your opposition does.

JIM LEHRER: Mark.

MARK SHIELDS, Wall Street Journal: I think it makes a mistake to just criticize Dan Burton. I mean, Dan Burton is a creation of the speaker and the speaker knew what he was doing when he chose Dan Burton. And the speaker reminds us that he's a history professor. Well, he'd do well to study the works of another history professor. Mike Mansfield of Montana, who was the longest serving Senate Majority leader in the history of the nation--in 1973 faced a very similar problem. He could have sent the Watergate investigation to Ted Kennedy's subcommittee, which is the logical place in judiciary. There were all kinds of senators vying for it. Instead, Mike Mansfield said, no, what I'm going to do is I'm going to appoint Sam Ervin, a nonpartisan judge from North Carolina, and put only on that committee people without national political ambitions. He got the charter and the mandate of the committee approved unanimously by the Senate, so they knew what they were doing and what they were up to. And, you know, Newt Gingrich showed great courage in 1995 by jumping over more senior members to appoint the chairman of commerce and the chairman of appropriation, but he knew that when he was choosing Dan Burton, he was choosing a guy in the words of one of his Republican colleagues to me today said Dan, he's not the brightest bulb on the tree. And Newt knew it going in, and so did all of his colleagues.

PAUL GIGOT: I got to respond to that because the discussion over naming Dan Burton was very hot and heavy within the Republican caucus at the time this congress started. Remember the circumstances of this. It wasn't 1995 when Newt Gingrich, flush with power, was coming in and able within the caucus to name the chairman. He came within two votes, I think, or a couple of votes of being deposed as speaker. He was not in a position to be able to dictate to committee chairmen. He needed all those committee chairmen on his side. And there was a lot of debate; there was some doubt about Burton, but what they said was let's give him an opportunity. Gingrich wasn't in a position to do much about it, so right now what's going to happen is they're acting.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Let's go through some specifics. I mean, just to ask what each of you think, should Burton be--either one way or another step aside as chairman?

MARK SHIELDS: I don't know that you can let Democrats dictate who's chairman if you're the speaker at this stage, but I think what's happening is he's going to have his power stripped. Parts of the investigation are moving over to Bill Thomas's committee, where there's a two to one majority--

JIM LEHRER: So he's toast no matter--no matter--

PAUL GIGOT: I think he's going to be a figurehead and not have substantial control over the investigation, is moving elsewhere.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree that he's gone?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. He's absolutely neutered.

JIM LEHRER: What about the basic--

MARK SHIELDS: No pun intended.

JIM LEHRER: I got you. What about the basic point of whether or not these tapes should have been made public in the first place, how do you feel about that?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, it bothered me. I mean, I felt a little bit uneasy, like a voyeur, as I found myself listening to them, watching them. There's no question about it. But I think, Jim, just stepping over that for just a second, they were a gift for the Republicans. But I mean, understand--

JIM LEHRER: In other words, that's Paul's point a while ago.

MARK SHIELDS: You understand the stupidity of this man, you really do. They've got sentences using words like roll over and squeeze, and in the middle of it, in the middle of the paragraph, they delete sentences that are remotely favorable to the Clintons. Now, I mean, if they don't know at that point they're slitting their wrists, they're making the party look stupid, the Republicans are the stupid party right now in the judgment of most American people, they're the gang that couldn't shoot straight. Now, they've got to do something to straighten this out. I mean, he was overmatched against Henry Waxman going in. Paul knows that. And everybody else --

JIM LEHRER: Waxman is the ranking minority member of the committee.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, he is. Yes. And I just--I mean, to me, you know, it's a very, very serious setback to Republicans. The White House has had three bad stories in the past 10 days. I mean, the loss of immunity, Monica Lewinsky, the loss of executive privilege, the Judge ruled against him on that, the release of the tapes, and what's happened? The story is now all Dan Burton and Newt Gingrich and all the rest of it.

JIM LEHRER: Do you see this as a serious matter?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think actually it's a temporary thunderstorm. I think it's going to pass. I don't think the Burton committee was frankly turning up all that much information anyway. The real action is still in Starr's investigation, and Starr had access to the tapes all along. And I think that it's perfectly justified in releasing the tapes, given the fact that Webb Hubbell was certainly aware of the conversations that they were being taped, and he had declined to testify before the committee, taken the Fifth Amendment. When you have statements that suggest his mental state, what was going on, I think it's fair to release it, but then you should release it all and let the press decide what they want to print.

JIM LEHRER: What about the general point that Gephardt has made? We didn't have it in the clip, but he made it earlier in the week, that--that Burton, as well as Gingrich, have disqualified themselves to sit in judgment if they should ever have to of President Clinton because they've said all these terrible things about the president--what-- going in--

PAUL GIGOT: The context for this whole tape flap was a week ago Dan Burton was, you know, with an Indianapolis newspaper, editorial board, and he allowed a reporter to maneuver him into saying the president was a scumbag. If you're running a committee and you're playing major league politics and you let a reporter maneuver you into that situation, you're not ready to be in that league. That's amateur hour. And in that sense, he has destroyed what credibility--helped destroy what credibility he has, which somebody like Henry Hyde still retains. Now I will say this: Dick Gephardt is going to say if St. Francis of Assisi were running this committee, Dick Gephardt is going to say that's a partisan attack dog, and I would give you the example of the Senate. Fred Thompson, running the Senate Finance Committee, or investigation, tried to be bipartisan. He went out of his way, and he was rewarded with a lot of elbows in the back and in the sides by John Glenn and the Democrats.

MARK SHIELDS: That wouldn't really be bipartisan if St. Francis Assisi were because he is a registered Democrat--

PAUL GIGOT: [laughing] I concede that.

MARK SHIELDS: Paul, you know, mentioned Dan Burton, but let's look at the speaker. The speaker is the high SAT guys, he's the Ph.D. in history. This is a man now who has turned up the rhetorical thermostat, Jim, to the point where it isn't allegations, it isn't a scandal. He has issued a directive that you're only to refer to them as crimes, crimes.

JIM LEHRER: You saw that in the Republican caucus.

MARK SHIELDS: Right. He referred to crimes. He's become in one fell swoop--he's judge--he's jury--he's prosecutor--he's made the indictment--he's delivered the verdict. Now, I mean, do you think he sacrificed the right to sit there in judgment? I mean, he's prejudged.

JIM LEHRER: If it should come to that.

MARK SHIELDS: He's prejudged.

PAUL GIGOT: I think he's gone too far when he has gotten into the specifics of the Webb Hubbell example. He was on much stronger ground when he said look, we're going to stick to cooperating with the institutions of congress and the judiciary, Ken Starr, which the White House has not. Massive resistance has been their policy. And this--we have to abide by the rule of law. So I think that when he goes beyond that, he begins to get into delicate political territory.

JIM LEHRER: Mark, you mentioned the executive privilege decision. It went against the president as it relates to Bruce Lindsey and Sidney Blumenthal, two of his aides. Is that a major setback?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, it is a major setback, and I thought the Washington Post editorial made sense when they said anybody who talks about executive privilege as the president has weakens any claim for it by offering frivolous and flimsy arguments behind it. And I don't think there's any question, it was intended as a delay tactic. They have kept the political people out of the decision--and their appeal. And they're keeping it on just sort of legalistic grounds, and the political people have told them very bluntly don't, don't--

JIM LEHRER: Don't appeal, stop it right?

PAUL GIGOT: John Hugh of the University of Berkeley Law School counted up privilege claims by this White House before Congress and the courts, compared to the Bush, Reagan, Ford, and Carter presidencies combined, and there are as many. This White House files privilege claims at the drop of the hat. And the president, and this is the thing that in some respects is the most irritating about it, he says, I don't know anything about that. That's those lawyers over there. The Supreme Court has clearly judged that only a president can file a claim of privilege, so he knows exactly what's going on.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with Mark, that delay is probably what's behind this?

PAUL GIGOT: Sure. I mean, if they can push this thing off, beyond November, they can turn 12 House seats, they can get Newt Gingrich out of the speaker's chair and Henry Hyde out of the judiciary chair, man, the political vulnerability sure changes.

MARK SHIELDS: It is absolutely remarkable--I mean--every Republican I've talked to this week that's involved in campaigns is melancholy about November. Now, we're in the sixth year of a presidential term, where historically presidents have suffered massive defeats in House races, across the board. Ronald Reagan lost the Senate in his sixth year; Dwight Eisenhower got wiped out in the Senate in his sixth year, lost the House and continued to lose the House. And I got to tell you, right now there is a strange sort of giddy optimism among Democrats, which history does not justify. They're under siege, short of three people, believe the president had an illicit sexual relationship with a White House intern and lied about it under oath, and yet he's soaring in the polls and Democrats are ahead of Republicans. So, Jim, it is an absolutely uncharted political time.

JIM LEHRER: Before we go, the Middle East, Newt Gingrich and some Democrats--not just Republicans-- criticized the president for pressuring Israel. How do you read the politics on that?

PAUL GIGOT: I think that Congresses have always meddled in foreign policy like this, and what they're doing is they're trying to counter balance what they think is unjustifiable pressure on the Israeli government.

JIM LEHRER: This is to accept a U.S. proposal for 13 percent withdrawal from the West Bank before they come here on Monday for these peace talks, which may or may not come off?

PAUL GIGOT: Yes. Prime Minister Netanyahu, you'd better not come here unless you agree to that proposal.

JIM LEHRER: That's right.

PAUL GIGOT: And I talked to Howard Berman, a California Democrat, about that today, and he said that's a horrible precedent to do to an ally because it gives the--it gives the Arabs the impression that they don't need to make any concessions because the United States will deliver, and then you have the First Lady practicing foreign policy without a license, saying, well, I'm for a Palestinian state, which is something that has--you know, in foreign policy circles is taboo and probably complicates the job of the president getting an agreement.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think of this?

MARK SHIELDS: What do--

JIM LEHRER: Both of them.

MARK SHIELDS: Both of them. I think the First Lady spread the ugly truth and did it at exactly the wrong time. I mean, most people, thoughtful people, acknowledge that the Palestinians will eventually have their own state where they can educate their own children, maintain their own law. But this certainly was a complicating time in which to raise that issue. As far as Israel, Jim, there's still a broad based American popular support for Israel, there's no doubt about it, but the relationship has changed. Israel was the embattled underdog. It was David against the Arab Goliath, and the relationship with the Palestinians is different. And I'll tell you this: Israeli leaders have been almost revered in this country, most recently Yitzhak Rabin, whether it's David Ben-Gurion, or Golda Meir, or even Menachem Begin, when he met with Anwar Sadat--Netanyahu does not fit that. Netanyahu does not command widespread either respect or affection in this country, and I think it hurts Israel's cause.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. We have to leave it there. Gentlemen, thank you both very much. ESSAY - CULTURE OF CELEBRITY

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Anne Taylor Fleming considers some fallen heroes.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: When Golden State Warriors basketball star Latrell Sprewll was fired and suspended for a year after attacking his coach, a kind of quiet cheer was heard. There were some disgruntled fans, but there was also a sense that justice had at last been served. It was getting to the point of embarrassing absurdity--the violence of our national athletic heroes. Where do you start: Mike Tyson taking a bite out of Evander Holyfield's ear--Chicago Bull's cross dresser, Dennis Rodman, butting a referee and kicking a cameraman--Baltimore Oriole Roberto Alomar spitting on an umpire? Alomar was allowed to play through his supposed suspension. Tyson was booted out of boxing, but only for a year. And Rodman was fined and sidelined for a few games. Somehow the punishments don't live up to the crimes. Had they been committed by civilians instead of athletes, there might have been assault and battery charges, maybe even prison. But these are sweat-suited golden boys, the dream team of modern America and Madison Avenue. And nobody--it seems--certainly nobody in charge--wants to see them punished, pulled out of the game, or down off their mega buck pedestals. Within months, in fact, Latrell Sprewell was ordered reinstated and his suspension overturned. We tolerate violent behavior from our athletes no one else could get away from, and that includes a whole lot of domestic violence as well. The relationship between big time sports and domestic violence has been one of America's dirty little secrets. It exploded into the open with O. J. Simpson, who became the poster boy for abusive athletic superstars--his wife's bruised face and anguished cries ringing through the conscience of the country.

[911 Call Excerpt]

DISPATCHER: What does he look like?

NICOLE: He's O. J. Simpson. I think you know his record.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: But there were others before and after. The Golden High School jocks in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, for example, who sexually assaulted a mentally retarded girl. In fact, between 1986 and 1996, over 425 professional and college athletes were publicly reported for violent crimes against women, but few missed a game or lost any salary. During one five-year span seven members of the Denver Broncos were charged with crimes ranging from assault to rape. Most pleaded guilty to reduced charges, and all played on. And let us not forget the ear-biting Mike Tyson, who also served time for rape. This winter New York Giants defensive back, Tito Wooten, was charged with beating and choking his girlfriend. The charges were dropped, and Wooten was given an $8 million long-term contract. The girlfriend? She committed suicide. So what's the conclusion here--that hard core sports foster violence? Obviously, there's some of that. The ferocity of competition; the desire to win at all costs; to overwhelm physically and mentally any opponent leaks off the field and into the bedroom. But cautions Jeff Benedict in his book "Public Heroes, Private Felons," that's just the headline. Underneath are big, eager, raw kids, predominantly African-American, who latch onto sports as their way up and out, kids who are then lavished with adulation, money beyond their wildest dreams, and goodies, from gold chains to groupies. It's not about race but poverty, boys raised on the street, boys who slam into the big time without preparation, chips on their shoulders, ready to take what they want, when they want, including women. Even more, it's about the culture of celebrity, particularly sports celebrities, which cuts across all racial and economic boundaries. It's about how we and men in particular take vicarious pleasure in the feats of other men, granting them immunity from normal behavior, idolizing and identifying with their prowess in a world where chances for public adulation are slight and women can be seen as threats. So among us walk these magnificent ruffians, biting, choking, spitting, hitting, raping, and earning millions, and some would say even getting away with murder, while we line up to see them play or get their autographs--our heroes .I'm Anne Taylor Fleming. RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Friday, the Labor Department reported the unemployment rate fell to 4.3 percent last month, the lowest in 28 years. Minnesota settled its lawsuit against the tobacco industry for about $6.5 billion. And a spokesman said Israeli Prime Netanyahu would probably not attend Monday's planned Middle East peace talks in Washington. FINALLY - MOTHER'S DAY

JIM LEHRER: And before we go tonight, some Mother's Day poetry, presented by Robert Pinsky, the Poet Laureate of the United States.

ROBERT PINSKY, Poet Laureate: For Mother's Day here are two poems in which the poet writes as a mother. First, Sylvia Plath, regarding her infant child tenderly and with the contrasting sense of Plath's own adult worries and her darknesses. "Child." "Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing. I want to fill it with color and ducks, the zoo of the new, whose names you meditate--April Snowdrop, Indian Pipe, Little Stalk without Wrinkle, pool in which images should be grand and classical, not this troublous wringing of hands, this dark ceiling without a star." And here is Louise Glick, also writing as a mother looking at a child: "The Gift." "Lord, you may not recognize me speaking for someone else. I have a son. He is so little, so ignorant. He likes to stand at the screen door calling, 'Oggie, Oggie,' entering language, and sometimes a dog will stop and come up the walk, perhaps accidentally. May he believe that this is not an accident at the screen, welcoming each beast in love's name. Your emissary." And a very happy Sunday to Sylvia Pinsky.

JIM LEHRER: We'll see you on-line and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.