The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, the 81 questions sent to President Clinton about the Lewinsky matter; commentary on that and related subjects by Mark Shields and Paul Gigot; a report from Texas on school vouchers, followed by a discussion; and some thankful poetry read by Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday.% ? NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Clinton again denied today that he lied to or misled the federal grand jury investigating the Monica Lewinsky matter. He did so in answers submitted to the House Judiciary Committee conducting the impeachment inquiry. Mr. Clinton responded to 81 questions from the committee. He said in his letter, "I hope these answers will contribute to a speedy and fair resolution to this matter." We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. Overseas, Chile's foreign minister flew to London today to press for the release of former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet. Britain's highest court ruled Wednesday Pinochet is not immune from prosecution for human rights abuses during his 17-year rule. He was arrested on a Spanish warrant last month on charges of torture and genocide while being treated in a London hospital. Exxon and Mobil confirmed today they were involved in merger talks. The nation's two largest oil and gas companies said in a joint statement they were "in discussions concerning a possible combination but no final agreement had been reached." The deal would create the world's largest oil and gas group valued at more than $230 billion. Wall Street had a good day. The NASDAQ Composite Index, which includes many high-tech and Internet stocks, reached a new high. It closed up 31 points at 2106. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also closed up nearly 19 points at 9333. Today, the Friday after Thanksgiving, was the traditional start of the holiday shopping season. And it lived up to its role also as one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Consumers packed malls and stores across the country. Many retailers opened before dawn. Most merchants said they were optimistic about sales because of the strong economy and the recent sharp gains in the stock market. And that's it for the News Summary. Now it's on to the 81 questions, Shields & Gigot, school vouchers, and some poetry read by Robert Pinsky.% ? FOCUS - 81 QUESTIONS

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner begins the 81 questions story.

MARGARET WARNER: President Clinton was still at Camp David this afternoon when the White House released his long-awaited answers to a questionnaire from the House Judiciary Committee. The questions asked the President to admit or deny 81 finds drawn from independent counsel Kenneth Starr's report on the President's relationship with Monica Lewinsky. House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde sent the questionnaire three weeks and asked the President to respond to the questions under oath.

REP. HENRY HYDE: I'm sending a letter to the President asking him to admit or deny certain facts that appear to be established by the record now before us. No one should take these requests as establishing our final conclusions. Rather, they will simply help us to establish what facts are in dispute and what facts are not.

MARGARET WARNER: Committee staffers have begun drawing up three possible articles of impeachment against the President -- on perjury, obstruction of justice and witness tampering and abuse of presidential power. Some of the 81 questions ask the President to admit to conduct that would be tantamount to admitting the truth of these potential impeachment counts. Several go to the heart of the perjury allegations, for example, like question number 20: "Do you admit or deny that you gave false and misleading testimony under oath when you stated during your deposition in the case of Jones v. Clinton on January 17, 1998, that you did not know if Monica Lewinsky had been subpoenaed to testify in that case?"One of the last questions asks the President to admit or deny that his now famous public declaration on January 26th was a lie.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: But I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with woman, Ms. Lewinsky.

MARGARET WARNER: Two days ago Hyde sent a letter to the President saying that if the White House didn't submit the answers by next Monday, November 30th, he'd have no choice but to subpoena them.

MARGARET WARNER: The President began his 24-page response today by stating that, "My conduct was wrong," and "It was also wrong to mislead people about what happened." But he didn't give much quarter on the specific impeachment counts, for example, on a key perjury-related question that we cited earlier, whether he'd misled Paula Jones's lawyers during his deposition by saying he didn't know Lewinsky had been subpoenaed, the President gave the following response: "It is evident from my testimony that I did know on January 17, 1998, that Ms. Lewinsky had been subpoenaed in the Jones v. Clinton case. Ms. Jones's lawyers' question, 'Did you talk to Mr. Lindsay about what action, if any, should be taken as a result of her being served with the subpoena,' and my response, 'No,' reflected my understanding that Ms. Lewinsky had been subpoenaed. That testimony was not false and misleading." Committee staffers have pointed to a different answer in the deposition that they think does show the President was trying to mislead Jones's lawyers on that point. On possible obstruction of justice, the committee asked several questions dealing with whether the President had encouraged Lewinsky to mislead Jones's attorneys. For example, question number 18: "Do you admit or deny that on or about December 17, 1997, you suggested to Monica Lewinsky that the submission of an affidavit in the case of Jones v. Clinton might suffice to prevent her from having to testify personally in that case?" In his response, the President acknowledged that when Lewinsky spoke to him about her desire to avoid testifying, "I told her I believed other witnesses had executed affidavits, and there was a chance they would never have to testify." But he went on to say, "I never asked or encouraged Mr. Lewinsky to lie in her affidavit, as Ms. Lewinsky, herself, has confirmed." The President flatly denied other assertions that he'd suggested Lewinsky move to New York to avoid being deposed by Jones's lawyers, for example, or that he'd suggested to her that Vernon Jordan could help her find a job in New York. On another possible obstruction issue, the committee asked in question number 27: "Do you admit or deny that on or about December 28, 1998, you requested, instructed, suggested to, or otherwise discussed with Bettie Currie that she take possession of gifts previously given to Monica Lewinsky by you?" The President's answer was: "I never told Ms. Currie to take possession of gifts I had given Ms. Lewinsky. I understand Ms. Currie has stated thatMs. Lewinsky called Ms. Currie to ask her to hold a box." The President also insisted that his January 1998 conversations with Ms. Currie, his secretary, about her recollections about the relationship with Ms. Lewinsky took place before he had any knowledge that she had or might be called as a witness in any case. On another point, the President freely acknowledged lying to his aides about the relationship, saying: "I misled people about this relationship. I have repeatedly apologized for doing so." Finally, when asked if he had misled the American public when he denied "having sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky," the President today responded: "In referring to 'sexual relations,' I was referring to sexual intercourse. Answers like this misled people about this relationship, for which I have apologized."

MARGARET WARNER: Now reaction from two members of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Democrat Jerrold Nadler of New York.Congressman Hutchinson, your reaction to the President's answers to your questions.

REP. ASA HUTCHINSON, [R] Arkansas: First of all, I'm glad that he answered the questions, rather than having to --

MARGARET WARNER: I'm sorry. I don't know if our audience is hearing you. I'm not able to hear you. Just a minute. I think we're having a little audio problem. Okay. Start again with your answer, Congressman.

REP. ASA HUTCHINSON: Well, I'm glad that he answered the questions, rather than having to have them subpoenaed. But of 81 requests to admit or deny facts, none of the 81 were admitted. You had to read through and answer to figure out what the President was saying. I think that some of it is helpful in determining what's an issue. It's important to note that the President has not admitted any legal wrongdoing. And that's a responsibility of the committee to determine the facts of this case and whether there's been any wrongdoing. And he's insisted that he did not lie under oath in the Paula Jones deposition, nor did he lie under oath in the grand jury testimony. And so that is still a factual issue, a legal issue that we have to determine, and he has denied that wrongdoing. People think that he's admitted wrongdoing, and he - these 81 answers makes it clear that he persists in that denial.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Hutchinson, staying with you for a minute, there are many questions dealing with whether he lied to the - in the Paula Jones deposition, but I didn't actually see any questions that specifically asked him, "Did you lie, or did you mislead?" in something that took place during the grand jury testimony. Maybe I missed something, but what is it that the committee believes or believes he may have lied about in the grand jury?

REP. ASA HUTCHINSON: Well, in the grand jury testimony it would be pertaining to, if I remember the facts correctly, his explanations in the Paula Jones case, when he contacted Vernon Jordan, when he knew about the subpoena of Monica Lewinsky, some very specific questions relating to that in his grand jury testimony. The most clear allegations of perjury occurred during the civil deposition. But the grand jury testimony he reaffirms his previous testimony, and he's asked some specific questions that he gives what is alleged to be false and misleading answers. And he persists in that denial in these answers.

MARGARET WARNER: Congressman Nadler, how do you read his answers to those questions today?

REP. JERROLD NADLER, [D] New York: Well, I think Congressman Hutchinson is quite correct. Today's answers yield nothing new, and none of us really expected anything new. He continues to deny that he perjured himself or suborned perjury, obstructed justice, or did anything illegal. He admits misleading his aides and the American people, but he says he did nothing wrong in front of the grand jury or in his deposition in the Paula Jones case. And I agree with Congressman Hutchinson. Assuming you think that if he did perjure himself before the committee - before the grand jury, rather, that would be impeachable, and most scholars and most Democrats think that that would not be impeachable in any event. But even if you do think so, then before you can impeach him, the proof has to be brought to bear. And so far, there is no evidence whatsoever before the committee. If the Republicans want to go ahead with impeachment, they have to bring the evidence. That means the witnesses. And they have to be cross-examined. And we have to get to the bottom of it and see what the facts are.

MARGARET WARNER: So you would agree with Congressman Hutchinson then that the answers don't close the gap between his version of events say and Kenneth Starr's assessment of events?

REP. JERROLD NADLER: Not by one iota. Kenneth Starr's assessment of events is a prosecutor's assessment. It makes every inference from testimony as harshly as possible against the President. It draws conclusions. It goes on theories. It may or may not be correct, and that's why in our system of justice ever since Magna Carta we've demanded that before you conclude that someone is guilty of anything, you call the witnesses. You allow the person accused to cross-examine the witnesses and to bring his own witnesses, none of which has been done before the Judiciary Committee to this date. At this point there is zero evidence in front of the committee.

MARGARET WARNER: Congressman Hutchinson, Chairman Hyde made a point in his letter sending these questions that he wanted the President to answer these under oath. Do you find his answers forthcoming? I mean, given that it's his version of events, but did you find them forthcoming?

REP. ASA HUTCHINSON: Well, in terms of forthcoming as being helpful and being - telling the whole truth and not relying upon legalistic answers, no. I think that he maintained a previous pattern of word games, of legalistic answers. I want to come back to what Congressman Nadler said. I mean, it is important to have a factual set of hearings, and I think we're engaged in that process. These answers are important to provide the fairness, giving the President an opportunity to make responses, to provide his version of the facts. We have - it's very important to note that we have asked the President for any witnesses that he wishes to call, any defense that he wishes to accomplish before the committee. He will have that opportunity. We've asked him specifically for any witnesses. And so this is a very important part of setting the stage for the factual determination.

REP. JERROLD NADLER: Can I -

MARGARET WARNER: Yes, please.

REP. JERROLD NADLER: I think that the - Mr. Hyde, the chairman, is being extraordinarily unfair and going about this backward. First, he brings in the prosecutor's statement, which is not evidence. Then he asks the President in these 81 questions to prove his innocence, if possible. It is not the President's obligation to prove his innocence. It's the prosecution's, if you will, duty to prove that he committed impeachable offenses. And it's not simply a question of the President calling witnesses. The witnesses have to testify that the President said this, Monica Lewinskysaid that, whatever happened, and he has to be given the opportunity to cross-examine those witnesses. None of that has happened.

MARGARET WARNER: So, Mr. Nadler, though, do you agree with Congressman Hutchinson that the President's answers helped move you all on the committee along to the point where you can resolve the --

REP. JERROLD NADLER: No, I do not.

MARGARET WARNER: -- differences?

REP. JERROLD NADLER: No, I do not. They simply reaffirm the differences that we knew. There is nothing in the President's answers, nor did I expect anything, different from what we knew after his grand jury testimony. If the special prosecutor and Mr. Hyde and the other Republicans think that the President lied under oath, they have the duty to call the witnesses to try to prove that and then let the President cross-examine those witnesses and call his own.

MARGARET WARNER: So, Mr. Hutchinson, is that the way to proceed at this point?

REP. ASA HUTCHINSON: Well, of course, the trial is accomplished in the Senate of the United States if there's going to be one. This is, in essence, a preliminary inquiry to see if there is sufficient evidence of an impeachable offense to move forward. And so we don't have to call all the witnesses. The President does not have to have the opportunity to cross-examine each witness; that's what happens in a trial. But I think it is important to put forth a factual basis. For example, there's a conflict, clearly, in the testimony in the President's version of what happened and in some of the other witnesses. That can be reviewed in terms of the transcript as to whether perjury took place, but we could also did it by calling some witnesses. We might have to call more witnesses in light of the President's denial in this case. It's important to be fair in this. We want that to happen, but we do not go back to cross-examining every witness.

REP. JERROLD NADLER: But you cannot be fair without giving the President or his attorneys the opportunity to cross-examine any witnesses that they want to cross-examine. And the fact of the matter is that in Watergate, in every previous instance, for example, every witness was called before the committee in the House, not the Senate, and the President's attorney was given the opportunity to cross-examine them for as long as he wanted. Mr. Sinclair cross-examined John Dean, for example, for two and a half hours. And this is not simply a preliminary inquiry. It's not the same as a grand jury. It's a heck of a thing to subject the American people to the trauma of a four or five or six month trial of the President in front of the Senate with the chief justice presiding. And before we do that, we should resolve the factual question, so the only fair way to do that is in the traditional way that we've always done since Magna Carta 800 years ago, and that is that it's the duty of the prosecution to bring in its witnesses and the defense to cross-examine and then bring in its witnesses.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, Congressman Hutchinson, where do you go from here? You have suggested calling in some of the witnesses like Betty Currie and I think even Monica Lewinsky. But I mean, is your chairman, Mr. Hyde, interested in doing that? Either way, where do you go from here?

REP. ASA HUTCHINSON: Well, there's a number of days that are still open in this inquiry for any witnesses to be called. Clearly, if the President wants to question any witness, if his lawyers want to question any witness or cross-examine any witness, he has a right to say, "I want to question Betty Currie, I want to questionthis witness." He'd give us a list of those witnesses that he wants to bring in, and he will have the opportunity to question them before the entire American public. As far as the witnesses that we call, I think that the record is there, we're looking for his denials, any exonerating evidence that he has. We can look at the transcripts, and so I think there's a balance here. We want to get this over with. But we want to be fair. I don't think the President wants us to call 20 witnesses and drag this out into next January or February, so in accommodating that, we're trying to streamline that.

REP. JERROLD NADLER: It's not up to what the President wants to - and the committee - after wasting two months and doing nothing, except dump salacious material on the American people, is ill-heard to question the timing at this point. It's not up to what the President wants. It's the obligation of Mr. Hyde and company if they seek to prosecute the President and to declare him guilty of something to call the witnesses to illustrate that, to prove that. And Mr. Starr is not a witness. He witnessed nothing. He knows nothing by personal knowledge. He's simply someone who heard witnesses and who summarized it. That's not enough. It's of no relevance, frankly, to the committee.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, gentlemen. Thank you very much. We have to leave it there. Thanks.% ? FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

JIM LEHRER: And now to Shields and Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot.Mark, how important are these answers today?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, they're important, Jim, probably more important legally than they are politically, because the President had to answer both - on both grounds. He had to be careful of his legal exposure to face eventually, if not immediately, a charge of perjury and politically the minefield to kind of tip his hand in a way that would open up - give his foes - his political foes or the advocates of impeachment more material. As of now, it doesn't look like that happened.

JIM LEHRER: Nothing new in there? Did you see anything new in there, Paul?

PAUL GIGOT: No, Jim, I didn't. I think the - the most interesting thing in there was the fact that there was nothing new and the fact that, remember, when Joe Lieberman, Senator Lieberman had - around the time was criticizing the President, and it looked like he was in more political trouble from this. There's a lot of talk that if the President would only stipulate to perhaps having lied under oath, that would be the basis of a plea bargain or a censure agreement. And it looks like after the election, there's going to be no such stipulations at all. If there's anything that is going to be found by the committee as the grounds for articles of impeachment, they're going to have declare it, themselves. They're not going to be able to get the President to go along with them.

JIM LEHRER: Paul, what did you make of the exchange we just heard between the two Congressman, Congressman Nadler, the Democrat, saying, well, you have to have some witnesses here, Congressman Hutchinson said, well, maybe we don't need witnesses, all we need to do is to get the thing into the Senate, where they will call the witnesses. How do you read that?

PAUL GIGOT: A very interesting reversal, Jim. I mean, for months the Democrats were saying, Republicans are taking too long, let's get it over with, and now, at least as I was listening to Congressman Nadler, he's saying, we need to have more witnesses; we have to have Monica Lewinsky up here and Betty Currie up here, and we need to give David Kendall the chance to cross-examine. And you have the Republicans saying, please, let's get this over with before the end of the year. Monica and the rest have already testified under oath; we need to make our judgments about credibility, and then vote and get it on. So, you know, I mean, the Republicans want this to go away by the end of the year, it looks like some of the Democrats wouldn't mind if it went on for several more months, or at least for several more weeks.

JIM LEHRER: What's going on, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I think the Democrats are pressing the advantage they have politically, which is that people want it over, Republicans want it over. I think the irony, Jim -

JIM LEHRER: They're pushing for more witnesses.

MARK SHIELDS: But, no -

JIM LEHRER: They're really not?

MARK SHIELDS: They're really not. They're really pressing the advantage they have over the Republicans. The irony is that, Jim, nine out of ten Americans right now believe that Bill Clinton either definitely or probably lied under oath. That's pretty serious stuff. And yet, those same folks, up to 70 percent, want the thing over with. So that's the dilemma that the Republicans or anybody else on the Hill is dealing with, that people say, yes, it's a pretty good bet this guy lied under oath, and at the same time, I don't want impeachment. And that's what Republicans are confronted with and it's a terrible, terrible choice for them.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Let's talk about this. In the last week or so, Paul, there's been this new talk about censure, something short of impeachment, even before it goes to the floor of the House. Congressman Delahunt, Democrat from Massachusetts has got a censure motion, Congressman McHale from Pennsylvania, another Democrat, has a similar one. What's that all about?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think this is something that the Democrats want more than the Republicans want. For all of Mark's talk about the Republican dilemma, the Democrats have one too, and that dilemma is that while they do not want to vote to impeachment the President and certainly the public said they don't want to remove him - I think that the elections were clear about that. They want him to serve out his term. Nonetheless, the Democrats don't want to associate themselves with Bill Clinton's behavior. They don't want - they want to have something to say that what he did was wrong, and some kind of sanction or be able to say they did. But there's no censure in the Constitution. The Constitution says the Congress doesn't give Congress the right to censure the President at every opportunity. It says that its check on the executive or one of those checks is impeachment. And that's what Henry Hyde is moving the machinery forward with. So - and he said - flatly - he is not going to be the sponsor of a censure resolution. There's a debate within the Republican Conference over whether or not that's a useful episode, but I don't think any Republican right now wants to have a censure compromise, if you will, come out before there's an impeachment vote. They want the members to vote on impeachment before any deal comes -

JIM LEHRER: You mean, in the committee or on the floor?

PAUL GIGOT: In the committee and then most Republicans would also - not all but most Republicans would like there to be a vote on impeachment - one, two or three articles, however many come out on the floor. The Democrats would like to solve it before it gets to that point.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think is going to happen then, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think Speaker Livingston, Speaker-Designate Livingston gave sort of a - not a green light - a flashing yellow light this week when he said that there would be an alternative measure - would be entertained. I don't think there's any question, Jim. There's a lot of things that aren't in the Constitution. National Doughnut Week is in the Constitution. I mean, we managed to - that's capital punishment - impeachment - removal from office, and Paul's right. Democrats want to - most Democrats want to go on record as formally announcing that the President's behavior was totally reprehensible and unacceptable to them. But it's more than just the punishment. I think that it will be required, and I think it's got to be more than a censure. I think it'll have to be a condemnation. I think the President will have to be involved himself. It may even approach something like when Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott and John Rhodes went down to the White House to tell Richard Nixon his time was up, that the leaders of the Congress would have to go down to the White House, the President - in almost a formal ceremony - would have to accept that reprimand and that censure and that condemnation. So I think it's pretty serious, and I think that it is - it is an alternative. But Paul's right. The natural rhythm is they want to push impeachment first.

JIM LEHRER: And yet, Paul, the reports that I've read this week show that they - maybe you have a different reading of them, that there are 20 to 50 Republicans, House Republicans, who will not vote for impeachment, that even if it comes out on the floor, it will not go to the Senate?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think that very much depends on how the articles are constructed, Jim. If my reading of it is that an article of impeachment based on perjury - has a very good chance of passing - it would be quite close. I think the obstruction count and the abuse of power count - there are - it's much more difficult. But I think perjury - we've got a lot of lawyers in the Congress and a lot of them are going to have a very high time, particularly Republicans, not voting for it. That's why some of them want this censure alternative. It's less about Bill Clinton than it is about their own political protection. So that's why - I think you have to watch very carefully in the next two weeks. How are the articles of impeachment constructed by Henry Hyde -- because a lot of members on both sides don't want a strict perjury count - a perjury article - they want it all lumped in, because then it's more easy for them to vote no. If it's just perjury, where the evidence, I think, is the strongest, it's going to be very hard for some of them to vote no.

JIM LEHRER: Let's change the subject here, and that was Attorney General Reno's decision, Mark, to not recommend that an - or not as for an independent counsel to investigate Vice President Gore's activities during the 1996 campaign. What do you make of that?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, first of all, Attorney General Reno has appointed at last count I think five independent counsels on cabinet officers, so she certainly has crossed that threshold. But somehow there's a blind spot - and I do not think she should have in the case of Al Gore, the Vice President.

JIM LEHRER: We ought to say - explain what it was.

MARK SHIELDS: Okay. The question of phone calls. The phone calls he made he knew were going for money, soft money or hard money, soft money being the unlimited six-figure contributions from wealthy individuals, labor unions, corporations, that cannot be used directly in a campaign, or whether he was making the calls for hard money and whether he, in fact, had been candid in his answers about that.

JIM LEHRER: To FBI agents.

MARK SHIELDS: To FBI agents.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

MARK SHIELDS: Whether he knew that he was making actually hard money calls. And - to me - this is a back-door approach - to get an independent counsel. The attorney general should have - I think she failed - I think her judgment has been flawed - she should have appointed an independent counsel in the 1996 campaign. The use of soft money was - in my judgment - beyond anything anticipated or expected or encouraged by the law, condoned by the law. And she didn't do that. But I think it probably gave Al Gore an enormous advantage heading into 2000. If he had had an independent counsel appointed, it would have taken a lot of steam out of his candidacy.

JIM LEHRER: Even if it was for some phone calls, it would have been there.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right. And it would have tied him closely to the Clinton problems and at the same time would have encouraged some challengers maybe who are thinking about the race to make the race.

JIM LEHRER: Now, Paul, Attorney General Reno has two other decisions to make in the next two weeks about an independent counsel on related matters. One has to do with President Clinton. Another has to do with Harold Ickes, former aide to the President, also involving campaign fund-raising. What does all this add up to, to you?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, it - I mean, at every opportunity in this particular issue - the campaign finance issue - the attorney general has always said she's never seen the need for it. So I think the surprise would be if she does name one in this, frankly. I mean, it's one thing to name one in the case of say a Henry Cisneros, a cabinet officer who can resign, but it's a lot more politically difficult to do it if you name a special counsel against the man that most of the people in your party think is going to be the nominee, or is the favorite for the nominee in 2000. I think she's taken the measure of the Republicans in the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House and she's saying, you know, I don't really need to name a special counsel; there's going to be no great political price to pay for it; and there will be some stomping of feet; there will be some shouting; but in the end, whatever I do is going to stand, and I think - I'd be frankly very surprised if she names one in either of those other two cases.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with Mark that this was a terrific thing for Al Gore's year 2000 campaign, no matter what?

PAUL GIGOT: The history of independent counsels is no one knows what comes out. It's a great thing for Gore, and there's no question about it. He's breathing a sigh of relief, and there are a lot of Republicans who are going to be angry about that, but unless they decide to use their own powers, the Senate powers of oversight, the attorney general is going to be able to do this and get away without anything.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Paul, Mark, thank you both very much.% ? FOCUS - SCHOOL VOUCHERS

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a two-part look at school vouchers and poetry from Robert Pinsky. Betty Ann Bowser begins the school voucher story.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: At 7 o'clock each weekday morning Lydia Chandler takes her three boys to school. What's different this year, though, is that Chandler is taking her kids to a private school that costs $1500 per child, and she's not having to pay a penny for tuition.

LYDIA CHANDLER: I've always wanted my children to go to private school but my funds were limited, so I had no choice but to put them in public.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Chandler can put the kids in private school because of a voucher program offered to every child in the low-performing Edgewood Public School District where she lives in San Antonio, Texas.

TEACHER: Latitude lines, which ones are they? Yvette.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: It's the first time a private organization has offered millions of dollars in vouchers to an entire school district. Money for the project is coming from the Children's Educational Opportunity Foundation, also called CEO. Forty-five million of the fifty million dollar program is being bankrolled by a conservative San Antonio philanthropist named Dr. James Leininger, who's part of a growing national movement supporting school choice through vouchers.

DR. JAMES LEININGER, Children's Educational Opportunity: My desire, and the only reason that I'm involved with this is that every student in America would have the same educational opportunity as my children. I can afford to send my children to a private school, if I think that's what's best - any place they need to go. And I think that every child in America ought to have that same opportunity, not just be trapped into one school because they're poor.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Nationwide, 29 cities, other than San Antonio, have privately funded voucher programs representing another $45 million investment. In 13 of those cities, CEO has matching fund programs. In Edgewood, 756 students from the district got CEO vouchers this fall. All they had to do to qualify was to be poor enough to also qualify for the federal school lunch program. That means if there was enough money to go around, 93 percent of the children in the mostly Hispanic Edgewood District would be eligible. But for every student who took a CEO scholarship the Edgewood School District lost about $5700 in state and federal money it gets to educate each child. So this year alone Edgewood lost more than $4 million, which is one of the reasons Secretary of Education Richard Riley opposes vouchers. He spoke recently to the National Press Club.

RICHARD RILEY, Secretary of Education: I think that it's a very bad policy that automatically pulls funds away from the support and the resources away from public schools, where 90 percent of our children are in school. It's bad for parochial and private schools, because it makes them less parochial and less private.

SPOKESPERSON: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But parochial school officials in San Antonio aren't complaining. St. John Berchman's Elementary School, a Catholic parochial school, got 129 of the 656 CEO scholarship children, more than any parochial or private school in San Antonio. Since CEO pays $3600 for each student who goes here, which is more than the cost of tuition, the school has a windfall. The day we visited Principal Deborah Goering got her first CEO check for $47,000. $27,000 of it is gravy. And over the next school year she will get over $200,000 more. So already, she is on a mental spending spree.

DEBORAH GOERING, Principal, St. John Berchman Elementary: Some of it will be used for capital improvements. Some of it will be used to - you know - increase teachers' salaries. We want to put in - like the library needs more books - we want to try and put 1,000 new titles in. We're going to get computers in the classrooms.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Edgewood School officials are upset about the students they're losing to schools like St. John Berchman's. And they complain the best and brightest arethe ones who are leaving. Dolores Munoz is superintendent of Edgewood.

DOLORES MUNOZ, Edgewood School Superintendent: Right now, I don't have the profile of every child, but I guarantee you that at least 80 percent will be the high-achieving students. They will be. The private schools are having the choice of the best students around, because they have a criteria, and not every child is taken into consideration, and their doors are open for every child; no, they're not open for every child.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: CEO's Robert Aguirre disagrees.

ROBERT AGUIRRE, Director, Children's Educational Opportunity: From all the grades we have seen of the kids so far, if these children that we have seen so far represent the best that Edgewood has to offer, we're in a lot worse shape than we think we are, because these are not high-achieving students in an academic sense.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Edgewood officials also argue they are at an unfair disadvantage because Texas does not regulate private schools. Meanwhile, like all public schools, Edgewood is required by law to offer expensive programs like bilingual and special education. Nearly 40 percent of Edgewood's students are enrolled in special language and learning programs. And special education teacher Stella Higginbotham says no private school in Edgewood can offer the kind of program her school does.

STELLA HIGGINBOTHAM, Special Education Teacher: The voucher program does not provide for children with learning disabilities, with special needs. Edgewood does a very good job of providing for kids with special needs. I don't think that in a public - in a private school that you could find a class this size to help children with special needs.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The loss of students in Edgewood came at a time when the district was finally getting state money it thought it deserved. In 1991, Edgewood won a lawsuit that forced the state to equalize public school funding, giving about the same amount of money to both poor and wealthy districts. Since then, Edgewood has been playing catch-up and, in fact, has increased student performance across the board. State Board of Education member Joe Bernal says that's why targeting Edgewood was unfair.

JOE BERNAL, Texas State Board of Education: It's not about helping children; it's about using the Edgewood School District as an experiment. And I personally resent it. The goal is to do a showplace in Edgewood and see, look what we did in Edgewood. We took all these kids out of this poor, poor school district and gave them this fantastic education in private schools, and look at the way they're advancing academically. That's a lot of baloney.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Philanthropist Leininger says CEO picked Edgewood because it was the poorest district in San Antonio and because he hoped if the program was successful, it would strengthen his argument that public money should be used for vouchers.

DR. JAMES LEININGER: The private sector couldn't possibly finance, you know, a scholarship for every low-income child in America. And there's, what, over $120 billion a year of public money -- of our tax dollars being spent on schools. So it only makes sense that at some point the government has got to do the right thing for those poor children and allow them to go to any school they want to go to.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association oppose public money being spent on vouchers. Bob Chase is president of the NEA.

BOB CHASE, President, National Education Association: We could eventually end up with schools that cater to all different segments of society. We could have a school that caters to the Hispanic segment of society or African-American segment of society, "gifted and talented," a white school, go down the list. To get that kind of fragmentation in a diverse society such as ours is from my perspective in the long-term suicidal.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Al Kaufman, of the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, agrees and says the pro-voucher movement has other priorities.

AL KAUFMAN, Mexican American Legal Defense Fund: I don't think it's a matter to destroy public schools as much as to push their own agendas, their political agendas, religious agendas, and other agendas, partisan at times agendas by schools that are paid for by the public. And this is an overall, fairly well organized effort around the country to do just that, and that's I think what it's all about. And I can understand it. They're pushing their agenda. They could like to show that hundreds of kids would leave a public school if given an opportunity and that hundreds of them would go and be able to get a good religious education at state expense.

TEACHER: What are some ways that Jesus was influenced by His Jewish heritage?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: In fact, most of the Edgewood voucher students went to parochial schools because in San Antonio there are few private schools. And Alan Parker, who heads the Texas Justice Foundation, which is funded in part by Dr. Leininger, says parents have a right to send their kids wherever they want.

ALAN PARKER, Texas Justice Foundation: Perhaps there are some people who have a gut reaction, I don't want my tax money going to religious schools. I can sympathize with that, but they need to think of it as going to education like the GI Bill, and the American right is to choose what's best for yourself, and the government is neutral. If they still have a feeling that no matter what, they don't want their money going there, I think there's a bit of religious bigotry there.

SPOKESPERSON: I pledge allegiance to the flag -

BETTY ANN BOWSER: One of the big unanswered questions is whether the voucher students will perform better in private school than they did in public school. Studies that have been done on voucher programs in other parts of the country have produced conflicting results. That's why researchers say they're excited about Edgewood, because for the first time it will give them a chance to study the impact on an entire school district.

JIM LEHRER: Phil Ponce takes it from there.

PHIL PONCE: Private scholarship programs like the one we just saw in San Antonio are now available in 31 states. Only two experimental voucher programs, in Cleveland and Milwaukee, use state funds to pay a student's way at a private school. Earlier this month, supporters of vouchers were encouraged when the United States Supreme Court decided not to take up a challenge to the Milwaukee program; it allows taxpayer-funded vouchers to be used at religious schools. We get two perspectives on the success and prospects of voucher programs. Bruce Fuller is a professor of public policy and education at the University of California at Berkeley; Paul Peterson is a professor of government at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and director of the program on educational policy and governance.Gentlemen, welcome. Professor Peterson, are publicly-funded vouchers for private schools a good thing?

PAUL PETERSON, Harvard University: Well, in New York City, we just did a study which shows that kids who get the vouchers are learning more both in reading and math. If they keep up at the same pace they are in fourth and fifth grade, by the time they finish high school, these minority children will be performing at the same levels that whites are today. So I'd say this shows some promise that we can get educational opportunity more equal than it's been.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Fuller, is that evidence persuasive to you for the use of - for the use of vouchers?

BRUCE FULLER: Well, Phil, I think the gains in New York are fairly miniscule, especially in the context of more serious school reforms. And I think the voucher movement to a large extent is distracting us from more serious reforms, as found in Texas, Chicago, Tennessee. So I do think Mr. Peterson is doing a service to the country in terms of trying to study these experiments, but I think it's distracting us from more serious efforts at statewide reforms, as well as public school choice options like charter schools.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Fuller, staying with you for a minute, let's take up some of the arguments that were raised in the piece that we just saw out of San Antonio, and that is number one, that vouchers are something like the GI bill, that it gives poor kids the chance to have options that rich kids have.

BRUCE FULLER: Well, we certainly have a warm and fuzzy feeling, Phil, about the GI bill, but, remember, that the United States has one of the most stratified unequal higher education systems in the world. We have a few, very lucky, mainly wealthy kids going to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and then a large range of middle class kids who go to lower quality institutions. I think we also have to look at other sectors that have been injected with market principles. The whole HMO debacle I think shows us that if we instill health care with market competition, we may lower prices, but we also may disastrously lower quality. The other example is preschool and in child care. Most federal funding now funds child care through vouchers. I think every parent of a young child knows that the system is a total mess, and it's beset with great inequalities and very uneven quality. So I think we have to look at these other, more contemporary sectors to really understand the high risks in putting vouchers into the public schools.

PHIL PONCE: How about that, Professor Peterson, do vouchers inject a free-market aspect that could be bad for public education?

PAUL PETERSON: Well, I think if you took choice out of higher education, you'd have a rebellion of epical proportions in the United States today. College kids want their choice of college. And we have Pell Grants today, and we had the GI bill in place for many years, which gave people a chance to go to the college they wanted to, whether it was Catholic or Jewish or whatever, and this same principle is every bit as constitutional at a lower level as at a higher level. We now have the Supreme Court saying, yes, you can go forward with vouchers to go to private schools, Catholic schools, Lutheran schools, whatever, if that's what you want. The state is going to be neutral between going to public schools and private schools. And I think that's really healthy. In the medical sector we've had tremendous advances in the last 25 years, tremendous advances. In education we've made no advances. In fact, we've been going backwards. That's the problem. In elementary and secondary education today we are falling behind in terms of the number of people graduating from high school. We have to do something to bring public schools up to the standard that we have in the rest of society, and choice may be the mechanism for doing so.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Peterson, how do you respond to the concern that vouchers wind up skimming the best - "the best public school students" away, out of the public school system?

PAUL PETERSON: We were very concerned about that in New York City, and we tested all the students who came into the voucher program, and they were scoring at the 25th percentile. The average in the United States is 50th percentile. So these students are really way below average. If your kid is doing well in school, why would you take them out? It's the parents whose kids are having a problem in school who want to place them elsewhere.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Fuller, concern about the best and brightest public school students leaving the public school system?

BRUCE FULLER: Certainly, Phil. I mean, we know very little about the kids left behind in mediocre, urban schools. I agree with Mr. Peterson that a lot of public schools are downright broken, and we need serious reform. But I think these images that all parents in America have their kids locked and chained to neighborhood schools is an old sort of image. One in five American parents now do not send their kids to neighborhood schools. They participate in public school, choice programs like magnet schools, career academies, charter schools. There are options, I think, that better balance the need for public accountability with the right of parents to exit their neighborhood school. Out her in California we have schools of scientology that are anxious to get vouchers. In Arizona, you have Mormon schools that are anxious to get vouchers. This sort of balkanization of society, which is already separating the rich from the poor in this country would only be furthered by vouchers, but by holding schools accountable and expanding choice in the public sector, we can advance choice while ensuring that these schools help build an integrated and unified society and not further separate us from one another.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Peterson, balkanization?

PAUL PETERSON: Well, Phil, Bruce is just exactly right. There is a lot of choice today in American education for kids from middle class, upper middle class families. If you're a wealthy person, you send your child to a private school, or you go to a rich suburb and have a fancy school. If you're a poor person and live in the central city you have no choice. It seems like it would be a good idea to give the same opportunities to poor children, minority children in our central cities that rich kids have. As for balkanization, our private schools are more racially integrated than the public schools. Kids going to private schools are more tolerant of others, more willing to volunteer, more willing to help others. There's a lot of evidence out here that it's good for society as a whole to have kids in private schools.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Peterson, how do you respond to the point that was made in the piece that for every kid that leaves a public school, that's fewer resources for that school because that school doesn't get the $5,000 or $7,500 that the state would have paid that public school for that person's education?

PAUL PETERSON: Actually, the public schools have more money per pupil than before, because what is happening in Wisconsin is about $5,000 is leaving with every child, but $3,000 is staying. There's fewer children, so actually the public schools have more money per child. There's no loss at all. All it is, is the money that's following the child. I've never understood this particular argument.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Fuller, who is pushing for vouchers right now?

BRUCE FULLER: Well, I think if you look across the political spectrum, we see two ends are more heavily backing vouchers. Affluent parents have long supported vouchers and tuition tax credits. This was the Reagan strategy in the 80s to really provide tax relief to affluent parents through tuition tax credits. And at the other end of the spectrum, Phil, low-income Latinos and blacks - most importantly - are increasingly supporting radical remedies like vouchers. I think that's simply because they - every day they see their kids walk out the door, going into schools that are unsafe and mediocre. There's no question we've got to sake up the urban system. But it's this broad band in the middle of middle class voters who still have deep faith in the best ideals of public schooling, the notion that public schools expose all kids to a common curriculum, the sense that public schools advance more equal opportunities.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Peterson, how much of an impulse do you sense for change from the middle class say?

BRUCE FULLER: Well, I think that we do need to try lots of different educational reforms to find out what works, and we need to take a much more experimental approach than we have in the past. And certainly one of the things that we want to do with vouchers is to try them out in more places and on a larger scale. We've only done it in Milwaukee and Cleveland insofar as government programs are involved. And we need to do more of them and on a larger scale in order to see whether one group or another is right here. It isn't that all the answers are on one side. It's that there are a lot of questions and very little experimentation in trying to find out. Pilot programs is the way to go for the time being, it seems to me.

PHIL PONCE: So, Professor Peterson, you want to see these - you want to see these private experiments basically expand into the public sector, you want to see more experiments as are taking place in Milwaukee and in Cleveland?

PAUL PETERSON: Yes, indeed, and Washington, DC would be an excellent place to do so if Congress would make Washington -- and the public schools in Washington desperately need to be improved - if we could give choice to the children of Washington, DC, on a large scale, that would be a fantastic laboratory to find out what works and what really happens when you introduce vouchers into urban central cities.

PHIL PONCE: And, Professor Fuller, your reaction to the prospect of the expansion of vouchers?

BRUCE FULLER: Well, I do agree with Mr. Peterson that we need to push the education establishment to experiment in more aggressive and inventive ways. But I think the experiment around charter schools, the experiment around career academies and magnet schools is simply more promising, because those schools have to come back to publicly-elected school boards and prove results and prove that they're having positive effects. Once we pass a voucher on to a parent, if that parent wants to go into a black nationalist school in Milwaukee or a Mormon school in rural Arizona, there are really no questions asked and taxpayers have no way to really assess whether those voucher schools are performing up to their claims, whereas in public school choice there's a constant line, a constant life-line to public school authorities, and if those charter schools are not performing, then we'll pull the plug.

PHIL PONCE: Gentlemen, I'm afraid that's all the time we have. And I thank you very much.

BRUCE FULLER: Thank you.

PAUL PETERSON: Thank you.% ? FINALLY - GIVING THANKS

JIM LEHRER: Finally, this holiday weekend some thankful words from NewsHour contributor Robert Pinsky, the Poet Laureate of the United States.

ROBERT PINSKY, Poet Laureate: What does it mean to be thankful on the grand scale, in the face of the sometimes cold or soiled or frightening modern world? Gerard Manley Hopkins - writing near the previous turn of the century - found the force of spirituality and the sublime in images of the industrial revolution - sheet metal and factories, oil crushed between metal parts, even the brown cloud of smog over the smokestacks of an industrial landscape. It all makes him thankful. The smog, itself, makes him think of the Holy Ghost. Here's Hopkins's poem:God's Grandeur The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-- Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

ROBERT PINSKY: Can we find corresponding images of freshness to be thankful for, freshness, deep down things like the computer monitor, or the super highway full of mini-vans? If so, nearing the turn of another century, that is something to be thankful for.% ? RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Friday, President Clinton again denied that he lied to or misled the federal grand jury investigating the Monica Lewinsky matter. He did so in answers submitted to the House Judiciary Committee conducting the impeachment inquiry. And oil companies Exxon and Mobil confirmed they were in merger talks. We'll see you online and again here Monday evening. Have a nice Holiday weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.