The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight today's Senate flare-up over campaign finance reforms as seen by two leaders, Senators Daschle and Nickles; a report from California on militarizing the policing; and a Newsmaker interview with National Security Adviser Samuel Berger. It all follows our summary of the news this Tuesday. NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Clinton and Senate Democrats confronted Republicans today over campaign finance reform. The President sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott threatening to keep the Senate in session until there is full debate and a vote on reform. Lott said he would not be intimidated but agreed to schedule it before adjournment. He said he would not set a specific date because of other issues on the Senate calendar. Minority Leader Tom Daschle, meanwhile, used parliamentary rules to halt committee work and other proceedings to protest Senate inaction on reform and other matters. Daschle said the President's threat assured him that campaign reform would get due consideration.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE, Minority Leader: The concern we had, as I said, is that the bill would be offered at the very last day or in the last week, leaving us virtually no opportunity to debate campaign finance reform in a meaningful way. With the assurance that we now have in this letter where the President is willing to invoke his authority under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, that fear is no longer a real one.

JIM LEHRER: The assistant Republican Leader, Sen. Don Nickles of Oklahoma, said Daschle's tactics were unnecessary.

SEN. DON NICKLES, Assistant Majority Leader: To me, it's just not the right way to get people's attention. I think it was a mistake by Sen. Daschle. Hopefully, it won't be repeated. We need to work together. We've got a lot of challenges. Still, we've got a lot of work to do. We're going to be in session several weeks. And it's very easy to obstruct. It's very easy to object to committees meeting, but that's not very constructive if you want to get the Senate's work done.

JIM LEHRER: We'll hear from Senators Nickles and Daschle right after this News Summary. Before Senate business was interrupted hearings began on the problems and faults of the Internal Revenue Service and the committee investigating 1996 campaign fund-raising started its new course today. It began consideration of changes in the current campaign finance system. National Security Adviser Samuel Berger said today the military mission in Bosnia will end on time in June 1998. That mission is called a stabilization force, or S-FOR. Berger spoke at Georgeown University in Washington.

SAMUEL BERGER, National Security Adviser: In June 1998, S-FOR's mission will end, as the President has said. But the international community's engagement will continue. Whether an international security presence is part of that engagement and what role the United States might play remains to be decided. In part, that decision depends on where things stand as we approach the time of S-FOR's departure.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have an interview with Berger later in the program. In Moscow today Vice President Gore and President Yeltsin agreed on the conversion of three Russian nuclear weapons plants to civilian use. Gore was there for regular biennial talks with Russian leaders. The deal calls for the conversions to begin in the year 2000. The U.S. will pay $80 million to the project, slightly more than half the cost. Gore and Yeltsin also discussed U.S. opposition to Russia's helping Iran build a nuclear power plant. In the Middle East today Israel announced it had identified three of the five men responsible for recent suicide bombings in Jerusalem. Officials said they were from the West Bank village of Asirah outside Nablus. The suspects were identified through DNA tests. A fourth person was named as a possible bomber. All of them were linked to the Muslim militant group Hamas. Palestinian Leader Arafat had said the attackers were from abroad. The Northern Ireland peace talks continued today in Belfast and the most avid leaders of the opposing pro-Irish Catholic and pro-British Protestant sides were there. It was the first time in seventy-five years that they talked together about Northern Ireland's future, but the Protestant Unionists immediately called for the expulsion of the Catholic Sinn Fein representatives on grounds they still supported the terrorist attacks of the Irish Republican Army. A Sinn Fein leader said his party was not the IRA. A heavy haze grew worse today over parts of Asia. It was triggered days ago by widespread forests and scrub fires in Indonesia. Health concerns spread with it to Malaysia, Singapore, Brunai, and the Southern Philippines. Mark Austin of Independent Television News reports from the city of Kuching in Borneo.

MARK AUSTIN: Kuching is a city that's suffocating, a city covered in a blanket of pollution, pollution so dangerous that the authorities here have had no choice but to declare a state of emergency. For the 600,000 people of Kuching trying to go about their lives, with every breath they take they inhale a dangerous concoction of poisons. Experts say a single day's exposure to the air here is the equivalent of smoking more than 40 cigarettes. They try to protect themselves as best they can, but the people believe the children in particular are suffering long- term damage. It should be a time of sunny days and blue skies here in Kuching. We've only been here a couple of hours, and already our eyes are irritated, and it's increasingly uncomfortable to breathe. For the people who live here it's been going on for two weeks, and it could go on for many more. This, their only defense in what's rapidly become the most polluted city in the world. The Malaysians are victims of their own economic boom, but the real problem are these fires burning out of control hundreds of miles away in neighboring Indonesia.

JIM LEHRER: The fires have been caused by slashing and burn land clearing and by a drought brought on by the weather condition called El Nino that is delaying monsoon rains. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to commotion in the Senate, militarizing the police, and National Security Adviser Berger. FOCUS - STOP ACTION

JIM LEHRER: The business of the United States Senate slowed to a crawl today. The cause was some wrangling over campaign financing, among other things. Kwame Holman begins our coverage.

KWAME HOLMAN: It began like a normal legislative day on Capitol Hill. The Senate convened at 9:30 to debate a Food & Drug Administration reform bill. Seven Senate committee hearings began more or less on time, including the Finance Committee hearing on complaints against the IRS.

GOLDSTEIN: The independent board they suggest should--

KWAME HOLMAN: But exactly two hours after the hearing began, Committee Chairman William Roth was forced to end it.

SEN. WILLIAM ROTH, Chairman, Finance Committee: Mr. Goldstein, your time is up. And I do have to announce--our time is up as well. The Democrats have objected to any committee continuing hearings at this time.

KWAME HOLMAN: Senate rules allow any Senator to stop any and all committee meetings if the Senate has been in session for more than two hours. It's a seldom-used rule but it was exercised today by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.

SEN. PHIL GRAMM, [R] Texas: Could we finish this round? I--very seldom happens to me, but I've had an idea. And I would like to have an opportunity to ask some questions and make a comment. Could we at least finish this round before the brown shirts come and shut us down?

SPOKESMAN: You can continue. We'll leave.

SEN. WILLIAM ROTH: Well, the--

KWAME HOLMAN: The answer was no, and so this committee and eventually all other Senate committees were forced to adjourn. Sen. Daschle shut down committee action today because he said he's frustrated by the Republicans' lack of cooperation on three separate issues. One is the Republicans' continued investigation of Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu's election last fall. The second is the slow pace at which the Senate has confirmed federal judges, and third is the Republicans' refusal to schedule a vote on campaign finance reform legislation.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE, Minority Leader: We can play games on schedule, and we can position ourselves and talk about how much we're in favor of campaign finance reform. The bottom line is it's going to be more than rhetoric. We're going to get this job done.

KWAME HOLMAN: It was last Friday that a visibly angry Senator Daschle rejected Majority Leader Trent Lott's request that the Senate agree to debate campaign finance reform without setting a specific date to do so.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Obviously, if he has no intention of bringing it up until the last day, this isn't a meaningful request.

KWAME HOLMAN: This afternoon, President Clinton weighed in on the debate, threatening to call Congress into special session to consider campaign finance reform, in particular the bill he supports sponsored by Senators McCain and Feingold. In a letter to congressional leaders the President wrote, "If any attempt is made to bring this bill up in a manner that would preclude sufficient time for debate, I will call on Congress to stay in session until all of the critical elements are fully considered." Soon after receiving the letter, Majority Leader Lott came to the Senate floor to reassure members there would be adequate time to debate the McCain-Feingold bill.

SEN. TRENT LOTT, Majority Leader: We will work now to try to determine a time to bring up consideration and debate of this issue in a way that will allow us to have time to discuss it freely; however, I--you know, we do not intend to be threatened or intimidated on this or any other issue.

KWAME HOLMAN: Ironically, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee was analyzing the McCain- Feingold bill when it too was forced to adjourn today; however, Chairman Fred Thompson managed to squeeze in a couple of hours of testimony on the issue, having shifted the committee's focus away from its seven-week-long investigative phase.

SEN. FRED THOMPSON, Chairman, Governmental Affairs Committee: We are taking these next three weeks, two to three weeks, to consider the--some of the broader issues. And this is coming at a time when we're considering legislation--apparently we're going to be considering legislation on the floor of the Senate that's relative to all of this. So we came up with a novel ideal that would probably be appropriate to consider some of these things before they became moot, and then we will go back and see where we are at that time, and if we have-- the investigation will continue, the investigation will continue until December 31st.

KWAME HOLMAN: The McCain-Feingold bill would ban soft money and encourage candidates to limit their spending voluntarily. Ranking Committee Democrat John Glenn said the primary problem he's seen during the investigation is so-called soft money.

SEN. JOHN GLENN, [D] Ohio: Anyone can give soft money to a political party, and there are no limits, no limits on how much they can give. Individuals and companies have sometimes donated hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars to the major parties. Why is soft money pernicious? Well, when an individual donor can give vast amounts of money to a campaign, the potential for corruption is enormous.

KWAME HOLMAN: Nevertheless, most Republicans, such committee member Robert Bennett opposed the McCain-Feingold bill.

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT, [R] Utah: The most chilling words I have heard in this whole debate have not come from Roger Tamraz; they've come from the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives when he said we can either have fair elections or we can have freedom of speech, we can't have both. Mr. Chairman, I'm on the side of freedom of speech. I'm opposed to McCain-Feingold. I think it restricts freedom of speech. I think it's clearly unconstitutional.

KWAME HOLMAN: The two expert witnesses called by the committee today to discuss their plans for campaign finance reform said Congress faces a choice. Thomas Mann directs government studies at the public policy organization, the Brookings Institution. THOMAS MANN, Brookings Institution: The entire Congress needs to ask the question of whether we want to allow public officials to retain the power which they exercised with gusto in 1996 to seek aggressively, if not demand, unlimited campaign contributions from private citizens, corporations, and unions. The problem of money in politics in this country is endemic to our system. It rests with the reality of a market economy, a free speech guarantee, and the quest for political equality. We will never solve this problem, but we can manage it better than it's managed now.

KWAME HOLMAN: Norman Ornstein is resident scholar at the Washington think tank the American Enterprise Institute.

NORMAN ORNSTEIN, American Enterprise Institute: Whatever we do now chances are we're going to be back at this in five years or ten years. And what we know now is that as the communications world is changing so dramatically, the ability of people to communicate, the ways in which we communicate are going to change. Any regulatory mechanism we've put in place now we've got very smart people, consultants making huge sums of money out there, whose job is to find ways around the system. We can't be naive here. We can have a very beneficial and positive effect on the system without kidding ourselves that we're going to solve the problems once and for all.

KWAME HOLMAN: Senator Thompson will reconvene his hearings tomorrow, but even with the President's letter in hand, Sen. Daschle says he can't promise not to interrupt any more Senate hearings.

JIM LEHRER: Now, to Senator Daschle, the Democratic Minority Leader. Sen. Daschle, welcome.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE, Minority Leader: Thank you, Jim.

JIM LEHRER: At the end of the day, were you pleased with what you accomplished?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: I was very pleased on two fronts. We were able to get the agreement to move ahead on campaign finance reform at a time certain, sometime in the next month. And then secondly, we were able to move also on the Landrieu matter. Sen. Landrieu has been languishing for eight or nine months. And I'm extremely pleased with the results of our negotiations on that today. So we have no intention of holding up any committee meetings tomorrow.

JIM LEHRER: Now, back to the campaign finance. What exactly are the terms of the agreement? When will it come up and how much debate will there be, et cetera?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Well, there is no understanding as to the degree to which we will have a length of time yet on the debate for campaign finance reform. It will come off at some point prior to the time we recess. My concern was that we would be bringing the bill up just days prior to the time we adjourn, not leaving adequate time to go through all of the issues that your excellent report has just discussed. We need a good amount of time to make that happen. So what the President has committed to is to ensure that we stay here, or to call us back, if needs to, to allow that kind of time. Based upon that assurance, he has a constitutional prerogative to do that, to call us back. We are prepared now to enter into the agreement, which we did this afternoon.

JIM LEHRER: Now, is it your understanding that Sen. Lott is going to do what you asked him to do? In other words, is this going to be scheduled and at a time so there can be a long debate?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: He has given us that commitment today and reiterated it this afternoon. He has not been specific as to what day it may be, but he has indicated that it's his desire to bring it up sometime in October and to have a good debate, a good discussion about this for whatever length of time it may take. So I'm very pleased with the assurances he's given, and now with the kind of commitment we have from the President to call us back, if that may be required. I don't think it will be. But at least we have the assurance that we'll have to stay here so long as it takes to ensure that we have a good debate and hopefully finish this in a productive way.

JIM LEHRER: Do you personally support McCain-Feingold?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: I do. I support the original draft, and there is now, as you know, a slimmed down version of McCain-Feingold, which our caucus supports, as well. All 45 of us--only three Republicans so far have indicated their support for it. But all 45 Democrats have said they support it. So we have 48 votes as we speak tonight committed to McCain-Feingold, and we hope we can pick up two more Republicans.

JIM LEHRER: But isn't there also the threat of a filibuster by Sen. McConnell and others, who have--other Republicans who oppose this--don't you need 60 votes to really make this thing work?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Well, Senators McCain and Feingold believe that we can achieve that 60-vote threshold if it is required. Apparently, there a number of Senators who are not willing to publicly commit, but in those circumstances would be supportive of an effort to get closer, that is to stop the filibuster. If we fail that, obviously, we retain the right to come back in the form of amendments to other bills for whatever length of time it takes to get the job done the harder way.

JIM LEHRER: On the substance of McCain-Feingold you saw in our clip what Sen. Bennett said, that it restricts freedom of speech. How do you answer that?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Well, I don't believe it does restrict the freedom of speech. Obviously, you can equate money with speech but candidates have the opportunity to speak as clearly as they wish. People who participate in the election process have as much opportunity to speak out as they want to. The question is whether or not in the year 2025 we're prepared to spend $145 million per Senate race. Each candidates spending $145 million, at the rate of inflation, that's what the cost of a Senate campaign will be in the year 2025. We can't afford that, Jim. There is no way that anybody other than rich people or people who are totally subject to pressures of lobbyists and others with money, are prepared at that point to enter into the political scene. We think that it's important to get some kind of opportunity to give everybody a chance to participate in the political process. And that's truly freedom of speech.

JIM LEHRER: And McCain-Feingold would do that?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: McCain-Feingold would certainly do that.

JIM LEHRER: And do you believe that if you were to press this thing even further and go beyond just closing down soft money, that you would then begin to infringe on the people's right to participate in elections by contributing to the candidates and the causes of their choice?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Not at all. In fact, we strongly endorse the opportunity for people to participate and to contribute. The question is, is too much of this money, too much of the access that you purchase through money appropriate in our political system today? We think it is. We think that some sort of constraints ought to be developed. We've seen sordid stories about what soft money has done now for the last year. We see an increasing reliance on the part of many groups to buy independent campaigns, to bring about extraordinary pressures on candidates and on Senators through their ability to distort media by the purchase of large sums of media through commercials. There is no doubt in our minds that that distorting influence, that extraordinary productive power that people have in terms of their ability to weigh in in commercials, as well as in politics, itself, has an influence that we think has caused us to come to the point where we want to address it in a meaningful way.

JIM LEHRER: How do you reduce the demand for the money? Through McCain-Feingold and other tactics you can--or techniques you can reduce the ability of people to collect the money and spend it, but how do you reduce the demand to run--in a political campaign for a whole lot of money?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Well, there are no certain ways of which to reduce the demand. The demand will always be there, but there are ways with which to put parameters on the demand, to ensure the candidates, themselves, aren't asking for the kinds of sums of money that they're asking for today. If we can limit soft money, if we can limit the independent expenditure campaigns, in essence, you then limit the demand because by limiting the amount of money a candidates has to spend you're in essence limiting the ability that he or she has to produce and then buy the television time that creates the problem in the first place.

JIM LEHRER: Now, there were two other issues that caused you to do what you did today. One of them is you mentioned with Sen. Landrieu. Now, what kind of deal have you made on that?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Well, I think Sen. Warner ought to speak from the perspective of the committee itself. I don't want to speak for Sen. Warner. I will simply say that this has been a very difficult process. It's been one that, in my view, has gone on way too long and certainly in the view of our caucus, longer than any other circumstances of this kind--we found in the history of the Senate. So the time has come to bring this to an end. And I will let Sen. Warner speak for himself. We believe that we've now negotiated a reasonable agreement that will do that.

JIM LEHRER: In short-hand, her victory has been under challenge by her Republican opponent, and that is now--the Senate must now decide whether to--she's been seated, but now, that challenge remains, and there's a deal that you have struck today that will resolve this challenge?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Well, we believe that there is an understanding. I don't know if I'd call it a deal, but there is an understanding about how the committee will proceed that is totally satisfactory to me, and we're hopeful that this can put this sad and sordid chapter behind us.

JIM LEHRER: All right. And the Senate operates full gear tomorrow, as far as you're concerned, right?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: That's correct.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Sen. Daschle, thank you very much.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: You're welcome.

JIM LEHRER: Now, a response to this from Oklahoma Senator Don Nickles, the Assistant Republican Majority Leader. Do you know anything, Senator, that would cause you to say otherwise, the Senate is fully functioning tomorrow?

SEN. DON NICKLES, Asst. Majority Leader: Well, I should hope so. I was disappointed that there's objections to the committee's meeting today. I don't think that was really very helpful. But we've got a lot of work to do, one of which you showed little clips on, showed the oversight hearings that we're having in the Finance Committee dealing with the IRS. These are very important hearings. We had guests, you know, come in from different areas across the country as a real inconvenience to them, to a lot of other committees. So I think it's unfortunate they weren't able to finish their committee work today, but I'm sure that most the committees will pick up where they left off today and go on for the rest of the week.

JIM LEHRER: What is your understanding, Sen. Nickles, of what Sen. Lott has agreed to on McCain- Feingold?

SEN. DON NICKLES: Well, he basically agreed to the same thing he offered on Friday. As a matter of fact, the unanimous consent request that was agreed upon today was identical to the one that he submitted on Friday, but unfortunately, the Democrats objected to it. But basically he agreed to say we'll bring it up. And there's objections raised to it by my friend and colleague, Sen. Daschle on Friday. They agreed to it today. I think that's appropriate. Sen. Lott has conferred with me and other people and said, hey, we're going to have to face this, why don't we come up to a certain time, and we still haven't decided when to schedule it. We have other important legislative items before us. We've got the appropriation bills. We have a highway bill. So we're trying to figure out when, but we have said we'll bring it to the floor. We'll let people consider it. You had the McCain-Feingold approach, but that's not the only approach. As a matter of fact, they have a substitute that has a lot of substantive differences than their original proposal. And so we'll consider those. I think we'll have a couple of other alternatives to vote on as well that will have real substantive reform, real positive things. Just to give you an example, Jim, it shocks people to find this out, but in this day and age you have a lot of Americans who are compelled to contribute to political campaigns against their will. I have an amendment or I'm going to try and make part of this package--I'm going to try and make sure that no one is forced to contribute to a political campaign or a political party against their will. I think that's a basic fundamental freedom, and it's very much my expectation to have that be part of any campaign reform that passes the Senate.

JIM LEHRER: You're referring specifically to members of labor unions, right?

SEN. DON NICKLES: That's right. Right now, organized labor compels people, frankly, to contribute to campaigns. They take money away from them and spend it as the leaders of organized labor wish without consulting their members, and many times in direct opposition to the way their members want to vote. Again, I just don't think any employee--whether it's an employee of a company, employee of a union,member of a union, no one should be compelled to contribute to a political campaign. They may not want to contribute. It may not be, wait a minute, I like the Republicans better than the Democrats. They may say, I don't want to contribute to anybody; they should have that right. And right now, they don't. Right now, that money is taken from them, significant sums, used for political purposes. Under the law they can file for a refund, but frankly, the administration does not enforce that. That's called the bank decision. And so the next result is you have a lot of people, mostly members of unions, who have significant sums taken from them against their will and spent in ways that they don't desire. I just think that's un-American and we're going to change it.

JIM LEHRER: And that's going to be a separate vote from McCain-Feingold, an amendment to McCain- Feingold? How are you going to go about that?

SEN. DON NICKLES: Probably as an amendment. We may--we haven't totally decided. I will tell you right now that there's no real consensus yet either for McCain-Feingold or the substitute McCain-Feingold. It's a big difference. Just give you an example--the difference--most of your discussion with Sen. Daschle talked about spending limits and so on. The revised McCain-Feingold doesn't have spending limits. So if you're running for Senate you can spend any amounts you want. So there's a big difference between the proposal, the revised proposal, than the original one.

JIM LEHRER: And the revised proposal still eliminates soft money. That's the key to it, right?

SEN. DON NICKLES: Well, it still eliminates soft money, and that's questionable whether or not that's constitutional or not, but that's just one piece of it. But they did say, we'll take the spending caps off. Now, frankly, I think that's a step in the right direction. So I compliment Sen. McCain, Sen. Feingold. I think they're moving in the right direction, but I still think their proposal needs some more work. And so we'll come up with either amendments to it or try and make some improvements on it to make some real reform, some reform that we think can get passed and hopefully have support, bipartisan support to get it done this year.

JIM LEHRER: What's the latest on Sen. McConnell's plans to filibuster McCain-Feingold?

SEN. DON NICKLES: Well, you'd have to ask him. I'm in the process of working with several Senators, Democrats and Republicans, trying to see if we can't come up with what I would call a good substitute or a bipartisan substitute to the McCain-Feingold proposal. Most people still consider that basically a Democrat proposal. You heard Sen. Daschle say, hey, it has forty-five Democrats; it has three Republicans. A lot of us don't think that's really a very balanced proposal. It doesn't protect, as I mentioned, doesn't make all contributions voluntary. It doesn't do some other things. I mean, just giving another example, the White House right now is saying, wait a minute, we think everything we did in raising all this money--they had 103 coffees in the White House--raised $26.4 million--we think that that's legal. We think you can make phone calls out of the White House, out of Congress, and as long as you're not calling somebody in the federal building, I don't think the statute is that ambiguous, I don't think it's that confusing. I think they're taking a very liberal interpretation of the statute, but we're going to write it--I will tell you this--we're going to write it very clearly, that it will be prohibited, those will be prohibited actions. The statute right now says, "It shall be unlawful for any person to solicit or receive in a federal building." I think they violated that statute, but frankly they're saying, well, we don't think--there's no controlling legal authority, as Al Gore would say several times. We're going to try and make it very clear that's illegal, it's prohibited activity, and maybe put some significant penalties. You don't just have to return the illegal contributions. Maybe we'll have the illegal contributions donated to the Treasury. Maybe we'll have some fines and penalties for some of these illegal contributions as well.

JIM LEHRER: But going back to where we began, there will be a full debate on campaign finance reform in the Senate before the November recess, is that right?

SEN. DON NICKLES: We plan on bringing it up. We plan on having a consideration there be McCain- Feingold. We--under the unanimous consent agreement, Sen. McCain has a right to offer a modification. So that will be pending, and we may well come up with a total substitute, or maybe just a couple of amendments to the proposal.

JIM LEHRER: How important was the President's letter to Sen. Lott saying, you all, do not do what you just said; I will call you back into session, or keep you in session?

SEN. DON NICKLES: Absolutely nothing. I mean, Sen. Lott agreed to do this on Friday. It didn't change today. So the President's letter might have given somebody cover or something to say, well, now, I have opposed it on Friday, now I'll do it on Tuesday, but frankly it was the same unanimous consent request. The President's letter meant nothing. You know, he's not going to call us back in for this, or at least I don't think so. We're going to bring it up on the floor. That's what we said we'd do last week. We're going to let Senators have a chance, have a crack at it. Let's find out what happens, where the votes are. Right now, I don't think any one proposal has a majority vote in Congress. Maybe in the next two or three weeks we can put something together that will. But, no, I don't think the threat of the President calling a special session had anything to do with our actions in the Senate today, at least actions on the Republican side. We basically gave them the same deal that we gave them last Friday.

JIM LEHRER: What's your understanding, finally, Senator, on the Louisiana Senate race challenge?

SEN. DON NICKLES: Probably, we ought to let Senator Warner make any announcement. I know that he was concerned about, you know, Mary Landrieu won the election by 5800 votes. There was lots of allegations of improprieties. That was never thoroughly investigated by the Senate. We had a couple of investigators and then it took months to get down there. They only spent about six weeks down there, I think, and never asked questions of people that really should have been asked. Sen. Warner personally, with a couple of investigators, went down and continued that investigation. I think he's getting closer to making recommendations to the Senate and we'll let him make those recommendations.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Sen. Nickles, thank you very much.

SEN. DON NICKLES: Thank you, Jim. FOCUS - LAYING DOWN THE LAW

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight military training for police and National Security Adviser Berger. Jeffrey Kaye of KCET-Los Angeles has the police story.

JEFFREY KAYE: They looked like commandos on a military operation, heavily armed, dressed in combat gear. Actually, they were members of the Fresno, California SWAT unit on a recent mission to arrest parole violators.

POLICEMAN YELLING: Fresno Police Department! Come to the door.

JEFFREY KAYE: In Fresno, the SWAT team is part of the violent crimes suppression unit, the VCSU.

COMMANDER: VCSU and parole agents will be looking for wanted people and also hitting areas that have been identified by the Southwest personnel as being high gang and drug activities areas.

JEFFREY KAYE: Periodically, the Fresno SWAT unit joins other area law enforcement agencies to saturate high crime areas. The squad is assigned to high risk, as well as to routine arrest warrants. On the day we accompanied them, they stopped a homeless man who resembled a parole violator. He wasn't. And they arrested another man wanted on drug charges.

SGT. HENRY JACOBA, Fresno Police Department: We came here, searched his trailer. He was in there.

JEFFREY KAYE: Sgt. Henry Jacoba says SWAT has become a key part of Fresno policing.

SGT. HENRY JACOBA: We're just part of community-based policing. That's the way I see it. And we have a function, because in any police work you're going to have crime, violent crime. And that's for us to deal with. We have the tactics. We have--working together as a team, we have the team concept.

CHIEF ED WINCHESTER, Fresno Police Department: Crime members and crime stats sometimes mean a great deal to us--

JEFFREY KAYE: Fresno Police Chief Ed Winchester says his goal is to create a highly visible deterrent force.

CHIEF ED WINCHESTER: We do not detain a person without a reason to detain them. But when a car is stopped, or a person is detained, they are overwhelmed, not only with officers, but with weapons. Most often the gang members or the crack dealers--they're used to facing our individual patrol officers--are overwhelmed when a team of well-trained, well-equipped officers arrive at an area.

JEFFREY KAYE: Critics say Fresno should cut crime by spending less on police and more on job creation. But, by and large, there's community support for the SWAT team's operations. One appreciative Fresno resident met the team when they went to arrest her grandson. He wasn't home. But the grandmother loaned the officers a camera, so she'd have a memento of the visit. The mystique of the SWAT team has become a cultural phenomenon. TV shows and the Internet reflect the growing military approach to crime. Policing in this city of 360,000 reflects a national trend: the militarizing of American law enforcement. That's according to Peter Kraska, a police science professor and co-author of a study on the increased use of SWAT or special weapons and tactics teams.

PETER KRASKA, Eastern Kentucky University: Previously, they were seen, as most people know, as a reactive type of unit that only handled the rare barricaded hostage sniper situation. And they were peripherally part of a police organization. And what we found is that now these units are being normalized into the police organization. They're now carrying on normal, everyday police functions, such as serving search warrants, doing patrol work, serving arrest warrants.

JEFFREY KAYE: According to Kraska, 80 percent of American cities have what he calls police paramilitary units. And he says the SWAT teams are coming to resemble elite military teams. They're using military equipment, training with the military, and using military tactics. In Orlando, Florida, the SWAT team not only looks militaristic, it also has strong ties to the military, in particular to the naval air warfare training center where the team has begun to train on equipment developed by the Navy.

TRAINER: As soon as you hear the grenade, that's your cue. Kill.

JEFFREY KAYE: Commando teams shoot at screens depicting hostage dramas. The scenes change depending on the accuracy of the simulated shots. Afterwards, the trainees study their movements.

JUAN: There you go! Bingo! That's a lethal round!

JEFFREY KAYE: This equipment was developed by the Navy at a cost of one million dollars. Its shared use now with civilian law enforcement is a result of a 1994 agreement between the U.S. Departments of Defense and Justice. The $60 million partnership program is funding weaponry, much of it non-lethal, as well as high tech equipment for field us of training. Janet Weisenford is a program manager with the Naval Air Warfare Center. She and Deputy Program Manager Jeff Horey say the police and military are learning from each other.

JANET WEISENFORD, Naval Air Warfare Center: Where I see, I guess, the natural synergy is in a couple of different areas. One is in the operations other than war on the military side, as we see an increase in peacekeeping missions. I think there's a synergistic relationship there with law enforcement because you have more of a convergence of the kinds of operations.

JEFF HOREY, Naval Air Warfare Center: The military typically has been the leader in technology development. That's where the money in this country has been invested. So certainly the law enforcement community can capitalize on those investments, look at training strategies, look at training environments, and try to share in that.

JEFFREY KAYE: In addition to the new technology, hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of surplus military equipment is being transferred to local police as a result of military downsizing. Army helicopters that once did service in Vietnam are now used for surveillance in American cities. Police departments are refurbishing armored personnel carriers acquired from the military and are building their weapons inventories with military firearms.

OFFICER JUAN McDERMOTT, Orlando Police Department: These are, I guess, the M-14 that we received, and, I guess, in a package deal.

JEFFREY KAYE: Orlando police have received six M-14 rifles from the military, and Los Angeles police recently obtained 600 army surplus M-16 rifles.

VOICE: They're heavily armored.

JEFFREY KAYE: Police say the need for the heavy weaponry became apparent after a Los Angeles shootout in February. Two bank robbers wearing full body armor wounded 13 people before they were killed.

VOICE: I've been hit!

JEFFREY KAYE: The men shot armor-piercing bullets from submachine guns and Los Angeles police were literally outgunned. Commander Rick Dinse says the new M-16's will make the LAPD better prepared.

COMMANDER RICK DINSE, Los Angeles Police Department: The actual usefulness of the weapon is really in the firepower that this weapon brings. This kind of weapon will fire a round that can defeat the body armor, which was a serious problem at the scene. We didn't have that kind of weapon out there. And it appears in society today that we're seeing more and more of this kind of weaponry in the field and more and more inclination on the part of suspects to use it. And our officers need that kind of capability.

JEFFREY KAYE: In addition to law enforcement using military equipment, joint training with the military is also becoming more common.

PETER KRASKA: There's a lot of cross-training going on, training going on with the Navy Seals and the police, training going on with military special operations experts and the police. Our research showed, in fact, that almost 50 percent ofpolice departments today are engaged in some kind of training with military special operations experts currently.

JEFFREY KAYE: Many in law enforcement and the military are reluctant to discuss joint training. But Lt. Sid Heal, a SWAT instructor with the LA Sheriff's Department, says military training for police has arisen out need.

LT. SID HEAL, Los Angeles Sheriff's Department: All we have to do is go to our memorial and you can see the number of people that we lost before we started realizing it.

JEFFREY KAYE: You were telling me before about training with Marines, training with SEALS. Could you explain what you've done?

LT. SID HEAL: Now, some of this stuff I'm going to have to dance around on, because it's classified, just so you know. In fact, I'm starting to get nervous even just thinking about it. But, no, we've trained with most of the special operations units in the military.

JEFFREY KAYE: What kind of training?

LT. SID HEAL: A lot of urban movement, maritime interdiction operations, hostage rescue, a long of long rifle training, sniper training.

JEFFREY KAYE: To many police officers the threat from well-armed criminals justifies a military-style approach to law enforcement. Juan McDermott is an Orlando SWAT officer, as well as a reserve Marine.

OFFICER JUAN McDERMOTT: There's a lot of things that the military can do on a regular basis as far as training and actual combat we all learn from. And a lot of people don't realize that; that when we give to a call out for lack of a better description, we are in combat.

JEFFREY KAYE: Equating crime control to war bothers Patience Milrod. She's a Fresno lawyer who says the military approach to crime is wrong.

PATIENCE MILROD: This militarization of the police function shifts our expectations of what the police will do. And we're no longer back in the days when the police--cop is walking a beat, or there's a policeman on a bicycle, and there's a certain range of behavior that we expect from a police officer that's got a relationship with the community in which he or she is functioning. And that is an entirely different expectation than we have of a police officer who operates as if he or she were in a war. I mean, the idea of war is that there is an enemy, the enemy is as anonymous as humanly possible, and you do everything you can to obliterate that enemy.

OFFICER: Everybody who thinks that we're maybe the excess of the department or a waste of money are the same individuals that can't wait for us to get there if they're in that situation. So for a lot of reasons it all depends on what side of the fence you're on. If you've ever had to be escorted by the SWAT team or you have been in close proximity to a critical incident where the SWAT team had to come and maybe remove you from that situation, you can appreciate why we're there.

JEFFREY KAYE: Even SWAT critics agree police paramilitary units are needed in extreme situations, but they say there's no evidence to suggest their use in routine police work reduces crime. SWAT advocates argue these days routine policing too often involves unexpected violence. NEWSMAKER

JIM LEHRER: Now, National Security Adviser Samuel Berger and to Phil Ponce.

PHIL PONCE: Bosnia was a subject of Samuel Berger's address at Georgetown University this afternoon. We take up that and other issues with him now. Mr. Berger, welcome. In your speech, you said that next June the stabilization force's mission will end, but that the international community's engagement will continue. Just what is the international community going tobe doing after June?

SAMUEL BERGER, National Security Adviser: Well, I think the international community has to stay involved in Bosnia over the long-term in a number of ways. We have enormous effort going on to assist in economic reconstruction. We have effort going on to try to train and professionalize the police to assist in the standing up of national institutions. All of those enterprises need to continue and the international community has an obligation to stay the course on those civilian implementation activities.

PHIL PONCE: More specifically, you said that the role of the United States after next June remains to be decided. What is going to decide that role?

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, I think at the very least we will be involved in the civil implementation task, trying to build a more stable and durable peace in Bosnia that will be self-sustaining. The question is whether there will be an international community--NATO will decide--that there needs to be a security presence after June--is yet to be determined, and what, if any, role we would play on that has not been decided. I think first one of the most important factors here is how much progress we continue to make. There's been over the past six or seven months an intensification of momentum and progress toward building a more stable peace. There continue to be serious problems in Bosnia, daunting challenges. But we can't also deny the fact that there's also not only peace and the absence of war but there is beginning to be a more stable peace and people's lives are improving.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Berger, right now there are what, slightly more than 8,000 U.S. troops still in Bosnia? Is it likely, I mean realistically, that after June, there will still be some U.S. troops there?

SAMUEL BERGER: I don't know the answer to that question. The President has indicated that the--and NATO has indicated that the S-FOR mission that is currently there will end on schedule in June 1968 1998 .

PHIL PONCE: S-FOR stabilization force?

SAMUEL BERGER: That's correct. That's the NATO force. I think the international community will be there. We will be there helping on the economic side. We will be there helping on the political side. Whether there needs to be a security presence I think remains to be seen.

PHIL PONCE: But is the bottom line--I mean, many people look at the U.S. troops' presence in NATO and think that the bottom line is that U.S. troops are going to be there as long as they're necessary to maintain the peace.

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, I think it's premature to say that. This is obviously the--we have an enormous stake in the success of Dayton and in peace in Bosnia. We went into Bosnia to help build that--to help create that peace at Dayton and then into the NATO force for a very important reason. The largest war in Europe since the end of World War II was raging in the center of Europe with enormous risks of spreading beyond the contours of Bosnia and engulfing a larger region. We have a stake in maintaining that stability. There's been significant progress over the past two years, I think in the last several months on the civilian side, there's been considerable progress, the military side had shown a great deal of progress, the forces that stood down, the armies have been demobilized. Essentially, there is much more freedom of movement in Bosnia today than there was two years ago. And we'll just work at this as hard as we can every day between now and June.

PHIL PONCE: Is it possible to have the kind of state that you're talking about without also having a commitment of troops?

SAMUEL BERGER: I think--as I say, the international community has to stay involved in Bosnia and for the foreseeable future to help the Bosnians build their peace and take advantage of this opportunity. Whether that involves any kind of security, international security presence, remains to be seen.

PHIL PONCE: And how much work does the administration have to do to keep that option open with Congress?

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, again, as I say, the President has indicated that in June this mission will be over. So we're operating on that assumption. I think we work very closely with the Congress, who obviously has to support any funds, American funds that are spent in Bosnia, as we try to secure this peace. But if you're a 15-year-old, as I said today in my speech, if you're a 15-year-old girl in Bosnia today, your life is much different than it was two years ago. You're not dodging bullets and avoiding shells and hiding in your basement and wondering whether you'll freeze this winter. Water's been restored. Heat's been restored. Electricity has been restored. And there is essentially a safety to walk down the street. That's a very major accomplishment of the international community.

PHIL PONCE: So for people who look at Bosnia and associate it with all the negative things of the past, you're saying what, in certain respects the glass is half full?

SAMUEL BERGER: I think that's a fair way to put it. The way I said today is that we should not look at Bosnia through rose-colored glasses, but neither should we look through a glass darkly. I think there's been a tendency to be over-pessimistic about and overly defeatist about Bosnia to give--to say, for example, we should just partition Bosnia along ethnic lines. I think that would be a terrible defeat for the West to validate the ethnic cleansing and validate the aggression by doing that.

PHIL PONCE: Expand on that a little bit. Some of the critics are saying--Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, for example, that is unrealistic to expect a unified Bosnia, but your point is--

SAMUEL BERGER: My point is that I think that she's wrong, respectfully. The fact is that history is prologue, but history is not destiny. One is not preordained by one's history. There have been long periods, for example, from World War II until the war began in Bosnia in 1991, where Bosnians, Muslims, Serbs, and Croats lived side by side, inter-married quite liberally. That's hardly the sign of vicious hatred. Obviously, there are ethnic hostilities there, but there is a capacity for people to overcome that if they have the hope of a better future. And I tink that's what the international community is trying to help the Bosnian people achieve.

PHIL PONCE: How do you respond to people who look at the continuing--some would say growing, sort of resentment on the part of Bosnian Serbs towards the NATO presence?

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, there's something quite extraordinary going on in Serbska, which is the Serbian section of Bosnia, which has been the recalcitrant obstructionist part of Bosnia. What's happened is the emergence of indigenous movement around President Plavsic that really is going after the Serbs in Pale, the old-line rejectionists like Karadzic and his cronies, and saying we don't want to live in a corrupt place, where people like a small handful of politicians profiteer and the rest of the people are poor. And so Mrs. Plavsic continues to be quite chauvinistic in her views. She does see Serbska--Serbska's future as tied to the whole and not viable as an isolated--self-isolated entity. And we--that's a rather remarkable development. And she's gained a good deal of ground in recent weeks.

PHIL PONCE: Sir, we could move on to other topics, today the United States signed a new defense treaty with Japan, anticipating the possibility of Japan being attacked or other areas around Japan being attacked. What would Japan be called upon to do exactly?

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, these defense guidelines, which are amplification of our security arrangement, modernize the nature of our relationship that goes back many years. If there were a contingency in the region, for example, in Korea, the most unstable and dangerous area in the region, what these guidelines do is essentially help define the new roles and missions that the Japanese military would perform for the United States or with the United States in conjunction with a contingency such as Korea.

PHIL PONCE: Specifically, what would those roles and missions entail?

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, they might be logistic; they might be transit. They might involve pre-positioning. All of these things would be part of modernizing this security relationship, which is extraordinarily important to America as a Pacific power, for a new era. It's not directed at any country. It is not--does not seek to isolate any country, but it seeks to bring into the 21st century, so to speak, and consistent with the Japanese constitution, a working relationship with Japanese military in the case of these kinds of regional contingencies.

PHIL PONCE: Under this defense theory, what happens if United States troops are tapped by the North, Japan is supplying them, and a Japanese ship is attacked directly?

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, under our security treaty we have a security obligation to Japan. We had it before, and we have it now. And so Japan is a security ally of ours, and we would consider an attack on Japan to be a violation of our solemn security obligation to Japan.

PHIL PONCE: But do the Japanese, themselves, have an additional option under this treaty to take a more aggressive stance say?

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, the Japanese have a constitution, a peace constitution, which constrain what they could do within the context of that constitution. But obviously, if Japan, itself, were attacked, which is quite an improbable scenario in the range of things today, I'm sure that Japan would defend itself very vigorously.

PHIL PONCE: What do you say to those people who look at this defense agreement and say this is certainly going to make the Chinese very nervous?

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, I will say what I said to the Chinese when I was there in August and met with them about this and other things; that this is not directed at China. This is--we have an important security relationship with Japan. We have had it for many years. It needs to be modernized so that we can deal with the contingencies of the future, but this is not directed at China. We are in the course of trying to build a stronger relationship with China. We don't seek to contain China. We seek to bring China more actively into the international community, so that it's more a part of the economic rules like the WTO, so that it's more part of the--

PHIL PONCE: The World Trade Organization?

SAMUEL BERGER: Right. I'm sorry. And so it's more part of the non-proliferation regimes, and it's more part of the respect for human rights that's embodied in the universal declaration of human rights. So our hope and the reason that President Clinton is going to be meeting with President Jiang in October is to--not to contain China--quite the opposite--is tointegrate China into the international system and to build a more constructive relationship with China.

PHIL PONCE: Sir, very quickly, in the time we have left, something domestic, and that is campaign finance, are you comfortable that the setup in the National Security Council now is Tamraz-proof, so to speak?

SAMUEL BERGER: We have made a number of changes in the procedures. We now are responsible for vetting any foreign visitor that meets with the President or the Vice President or the First Lady or Mrs. Gore. We have procedures to do that. We have procedures to follow up to make sure that our advice is taken, and I feel very confident that we will--we've taken strong measures, and I'm pretty vigilant to make sure that they are abided by.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Berger, thank you for being here.

SAMUEL BERGER: Thank you. RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, President Clinton said he would keep the Senate in session until there is full debate and a vote on campaign finance reform; Senate Majority Leader Lott said he would schedule it but would not say exactly when. And in Moscow, Vice President Gore and President Yeltsin agreed on a deal to convert three Russian nuclear weapons plants to civilian use. Before we go tonight, a follow-up to our coverage of the big chess matches last May. IBM announced today the retirement of Deep Blue, the super computer that defeated chess Grandmaster Gary Kasparov. A company spokeswoman said there would be no re- match, as Kasparov has demanded. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.