The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Good evening. Jim Lehrer is away. On the NewsHour tonight, a Newsmaker interview with the Communist Party candidate for President of Russia, then analysis from Russia watcher David Remnick; the mysterious Gulf War Syndrome, Lee Hochberg reports; our weekly political wrap-up with Shields & Gigot, Margaret Warner has that; and we close with a David Gergen dialogue with author Daniel Goldhagen about his book on Germans and the Holocaust. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday. NEWS SUMMARY

MS. FARNSWORTH: Majority Leader Bob Dole predicted today the Senate will go along with the plan to raise the minimum wage. The House of Representatives yesterday voted to increase the wage by 90 cents over the next two years. If passed by both Houses, it will be the first raise in seven years. Republican Dole and Democratic Leader Tom Daschle spoke today on Capitol Hill.

SEN. BOB DOLE, Majority Leader: It seems to me if we're going to get serious about it, we ought to bring it up and do it very quickly. We've all had enough debate on the issue. We'd be prepared to take action on that also the week of June, the June the 3rd.

SEN. THOMAS DASCHLE, Minority Leader: We're very hopeful that we can, can at long last tell the American people and a lot of working families all over this country that they are going to get a raise. They deserve a raise, and at long last it appears they're going to get one sometime this summer.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Sen. Dole made it clear the two sides have not agreed on what else a Senate minimum wage bill might contain. In Kansas today, the Republican governor chose a temporary replacement for Sen. Dole in the Senate. Dole will resign June 11th to campaign full-time for the Presidency. Gov. Bill Graves appointed his lieutenant governor, Sheila Frahm. In November, Kansans will elect a candidate to finish the last two years of Dole's term. In economic news, the Commerce Department reported orders for durable goods dropped 1.9 percent last month. It is the third drop in four months. Durable goods are items expected to last more than three years, such as automobiles and heavy machinery. Demand for aircraft was down sharply, although orders for cars and trucks rose. In China today, a spokesman for a government-run arms manufacturer denied it was involved in the gun smuggling ring. He said such allegations by the American government were sheer fabrication. Two Chinese companies were named by federal officials yesterday in connection with the smuggling operation in San Francisco. Agents arrested seven people and seized 2,000 Chinese assault weapons. The Chinese government announced today it was expanding its crackdown on copyright piracy. Operation Strike Hard is intended to combat the counterfeiting and sale of American videos, music discs, and other products. The Clinton administration announced possible trade sanctions against China last week for failing to live up to a 1995 anti-piracy agreement. The Chinese government retaliated by threatening similar tariffs on U.S. goods. In Russia, the defense ministry reported government troops killed some 120 rebel fighters in the breakaway republic of Chechnya this week. Russia President Yeltsin agreed yesterday to hold peace talks with rebels in Moscow. The war is a major issue in his bid for reelection in next month's presidential election. We have more in this report from Lawrence McDonnell of independent Television News.

MR. McDONNELL: In one of the most intense battles in recent weeks, the Russian army launched an all-out offensive on the village of Vamut, a rebel base in the West of the republic where Chechen fighters have held out for months against overwhelming odds. This afternoon, the Russian defense ministry announced the operation to take Vamut had been completed. On the ground, Russian troops moved in to establish control. The rebels had been using an old Soviet nuclear launch site as their base. Installed in underground silos and passages, it had proved incredibly difficult to dislodge them. The head of the Russian armed forces said 22 soldiers had been killed and some 50 wounded in the battle. Chechen sources claimed Russian casualties were far higher, and this evening, as the army moved in to occupy key buildings, Chechen commanders cast down on the possibility of peace talks.

DOKU MAKAYEV, Chechen Commander: [speaking through interpreter] We will not allow any talks to go ahead while the Russian army still occupies parts of Chechnya.

MR. McDONNELL: But busy on the campaign trail, Boris Yeltsin has welcomed the chance of negotiations in Moscow ahead of next month's presidential elections, and has suggested that now the door was open he could move swiftly to a peaceful end to the conflict. His main political opponent doubted the talks would achieve much.

GENNADY ZYUGANOV, Communist Presidential Candidate: [speaking through interpreter] It is a rule of war he who unleashes war is in no position to end it.

MS. FARNSWORTH: We'll have more on Yeltsin's Communist Party rival right after the News Summary. In France today, the foreign ministry again warned its citizens to leave Algeria. The statement came after Islamic militants in the former French colony murdered seven Catholic monks. They had been kidnapped two months ago in the North African nation. More than 40,000 people have been killed since Algeria's civil war began in 1992. Back in Washington, President Clinton underwent his annual physical today at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Doctors removed a precancerous lesion from his nose. He weighed 216 pounds, the same as last year. And his cholesterol had dropped from 203 to 191. His blood pressure was in the normal range. Overall, the President was given a clean bill of health. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Communist Party's candidate for President of Russia, Gulf War Syndrome, Shields & Gigot, and a David Gergen dialogue. FOCUS - BACK TO THE FUTURE?

MS. FARNSWORTH: We start tonight with Russia's presidential elections now three weeks away. Emerging as the principal threat to President Boris Yeltsin's reelection bid is the Communist Party and its leader, Gennady Zyuganov. Standing before the party flat, Zyuganov makes unabashed appeals to Russian nationalism and nostalgic references to the days when the Soviet Union was a major power and most people had regular jobs. But in meetings with Westerners, Zyuganov's message comes out differently. Yesterday he did a series of interviews with foreign reporters, including the NewsHour's special correspondent, Simon Marks.

SIMON MARKS: Gennady Andreivich, thank you very much, indeed, for talking to us today. Let me ask you first of all about what type of Communist you are. You've been described in the West as being engaged in the Zyuganov two step; you say one thing to one audience, another thing to another audience. Define your Communism for us.

GENNADY ZYUGANOV, Communist Presidential Candidate: [speaking through interpreter] About 30 correspondents from different countries, including your own, have been traveling with me. They record everything I say, whether it's in Paris, Davos, Vienna, or in the far reaches of Russia, and they know very well that I always express the same general themes. I want Russia to be a democratic country. I want Russia to live in peace and friendship with the West and the East. I want it to be an open country that strictly observes international standards on human rights. I want there to be freedom of the press, freedom of movement, but at the same time, I want our workers, our peasants, our engineers, our entrepreneurs, teachers, and doctors to have a decent life, to be able to work in an atmosphere of calm.

MR. MARKS: It all sounds very reasonable, but people say when you go campaigning, when you go on the road and leave Moscow and go to cities outside the capital you put a very different message across to your poor constituency of older voters who have stuck with the Communist Party through thick and through thin over the last five years.

GENNADY ZYUGANOV: [speaking through interpreter] Well, I hope I don't look like an unreasonable man. Any politician, any politician in his appearances must consider the audiences he's addressing and where he is speaking. If I'm speaking to people who have escaped from war in Southern Russia, people who have no work, no homes, no possibility of caring for their children, actually I sympathize with their pain, tell them plainly that we will stop the war, and they will have work and normal food supplies. If I'm speaking to engineers and workers from a factory that's been idle for a year and who haven't had a kopeck in wages for the last six months, naturally I tell them that we will do everything we can to make sure they get at least a minimum wage which will allow them to survive. Every politician must speak in a language which is understandable to his audience, so there's no contradiction here because every person has their own interest and needs, and it's the task of the politician to answer those needs.

MR. MARKS: Let me ask you about economic policy. You have said that there will be no wholesale re-nationalization in this country if you come back to power, but how committed is the rest of the Communist Party to maintaining a mix between state and private involvement in the economy?

GENNADY ZYUGANOV: [speaking through interpreter] Democracy means allowing different viewpoints. I know that in your parties people have disagreements on many issues. In our party there are people in favor of a mixed economy and different kinds of property ownership. At our party congress more than 95 percent of the participants voted for that. So whatever individual voices there may be, we shall adopt a policy of a mixed system of economic management.

MR. MARKS: You say that there's room for lots of different viewpoints within the Communist Party, but over the course of the last few weeks a lot of attention has been drawn to members of your own inner circle, members of the presidium of the Communist Party, some of whom have openly blamed the West for everything that's gone wrong in Russia, others of whom have been openly anti-semitic in their writings. How much are you going to listen to them, and how much are you going to take advice from them if and when you are elected president of Russia?

GENNADY ZYUGANOV: [speaking through interpreter] Everybody knows that while we were allies during World War II, after it ended, the Cold War began. There was an unprecedented arms race. There were confrontations around the globe, and there was a psychological propaganda war and economic weapons were used against us as well. We know the consequences of all this perfectly well. Nobody hid the facts at the time, and no one is hiding them now. So now when Russians say that the West is still applying economic pressure on Russia, that shouldn't come as a surprise. I know that in the West people are not of one opinion. Some people want to see a stable democratic Russia, but others want to see Russia torn to pieces. That would be a global tragedy.

MR. MARKS: You in your writings have been quite critical of the West in the course of the past few years. President Clinton and the other Western leaders have at least kept you at arm's length during the course of this campaign. What sort of relations will you hope to forge with Western leaders if you are elected president?

GENNADY ZYUGANOV: [speaking through interpreter] I have a fairly good working relationship with many politicians in the world. I've met President Clinton three times and Vice President Gore twice. I'm in constant contact with the ambassadors of the world's leading nations. I had talks recently with the British prime minister, John Major, and the Polish president. I met the prime ministers of Israel and Norway. That's normal practice. We are ready for close relationships with everybody, the West and the East, and that is the policy which we'll carry out.

MR. MARKS: This election is attracting a vast amount of international interest. Many people in the West see it as a test of the extent to which democracy has taken root in Russian society. How confident are you that this is going to be a free and fair election?

GENNADY ZYUGANOV: [speaking through interpreter] Well, they clearly won't be free because our president has all three state television networks in his pocket. In America, it's inconceivable that could happen. Our president is using all government employees as members of his campaign team, the military ministries and intelligence services, as well. In any other country, that would be grounds for disqualifying his candidacy. His team bugs my telephones at home and at work all the time. In your country he'd be punished for that. As far as the vote count is concerned, I'm convinced it will be dishonest, but we're taking legal and organizational steps to ensure that one third of the observers at each polling station are from our party in a bid to ensure that the vote is honest. I still have doubts about whether the election will actually take place. When I met President Clinton, journalists asked him what would happen if the election did take place and my party won, how would that go down in America? He said he would respect the choice of Russia. John Major told me the same, and so have other leaders. I hope that democracy and the rights of the people will triumph.

MR. MARKS: Gennady Zyuganov, thank you very much, indeed, for talking to us today.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Now some perspective on Zyuganov. It comes from David Remnick, a staff writer for the "New Yorker" Magazine. He was the Moscow correspondent for the "Washington Post" from 1988 to '91. He is the author of the book Lenin's Tomb. He has written about Zyuganov for the "New Yorker" and most recently and extensively in the "New York Review of Books." Welcome, David Remnick.

DAVID REMNICK, The New Yorker: Good afternoon.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Before we analyze Zyuganov's message, give us a bit of background. Where did he come from?

MR. REMNICK: Well, Zyuganov comes from provincial Russia outside a small city named Oriole, and he, his background is that he rose up through the Communist Party ranks. He was not a particularly distinguished figure in the style of Gorbachev, but he did go up through the ranks and came to Moscow in the early 80's in the ideological department and was considered quite a conservative figure when he did come to Moscow, and remained that way to the very end of the Soviet Union.

MS. FARNSWORTH: His Communist Party is not the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, right? This is the Communist Party of Russia. How different is it?

MR. REMNICK: Well, I think there are two factors here that are especially important. One has to do with personnel. The best and the brightest of the Communist Party, i.e., the people that Mikhail Gorbachev represented and to some extent many of the reformers of the late 80's are all gone. None of them are in the Communist Party anymore. And what remains behind are quite frankly in most cases the dregs of the Communist Party, which is quite a dismal scene. The other aspect is ideological. The Communist Party today is not the Communist Party of the late 80's which was reformist but, rather, it is subsumed, it has taken on the trappings of nationalism. Russian nationalism is something quite different from ordinary patriotism. It has the trappings of anti-semitism. It believes Russia has a special mission in history quite apart from the rest of the world. It's innately xenophobic and quite dangerous. And Zyuganov quite smartly realized that Communism in the old sense no longer was a winning ticket. He could certainly not win--he couldn't win an election just on Marxism, Leninism of the old variety, and realized that he had to play on the anxieties of the Russian people, their feelings of humiliation, their sense that a great power had been brought to its knees. He had to lasso these resentments and make it part of his politics, and he's done this very, very successfully.

MS. FARNSWORTH: You saw Simon Marks' interview, and you heard what Zyuganov said, and you've also read and studied and reviewed his three books. Are the messages quite different?

MR. REMNICK: Well, Simon Marks tried valiantly to get Gennady Zyuganov to talk in a way that he hasn't in the West, but I'm afraid Mr. Zyuganov is quite clever. As he has in Switzerland or the United States, Mr. Zyuganov has tried to reassure the West, show a human face, if you will, make sure nobody gets the wrong idea that he's--has anything to do with the history of the Communist Party as it played out in the Soviet Union. But if you read the books of Zyuganov, if you go to hear his speeches in Russia, if you go to the provinces, or to Moscow, or St. Petersburg, the speeches he gives and the interviews he gives are extremely different. They're much more hard-lined. They're much more anti-Western. They're much more filled with hatred and spite. And so while I in no way overlook the faults and even the brutalities of the Yeltsin regime in recent years, one has to look at Mr. Zyuganov as Russians look at him in order to get a true picture of who is being voted for on June 16th and possibly the second round in July.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Describe his views about the past, the way he describes what happened to the Communist Party before, and how he looks at the past.

MR. REMNICK: Well, if you were to go to Russia and ask Mr. Zyuganov about Stalin and Stalinism, he would skirt the issue entirely. He would say that only 600,000 people were ever killed under Stalin, and many of these people had betrayed the motherland when, in fact, millions and even tens of millions of people were killed in collectivization in the purges, and all of this history that we know very well and that is now printed quite widely in Russia, as well as in the West. He does this for a very good political reason. He knows that he has a core constituency, especially of older people, who are nostalgic about Stalin and Stalinism, and he can't afford to alienate these people. So, in fact, the man who seemed very sincere on camera just a few moments ago is deeply cynical about the Soviet past.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Tell me about his, what, what gap he's filling, his nationalism, his writing about the past is filling some kind of a gap that's been left by the people around Yeltsin, is it not?

MR. REMNICK: Well, I think you could roughly divide the Russian electorate into three ideological camps. The first and the smallest camp is people who are pro-Western and democratic in our sense of the word, people who are very up to date, and they're thinking about modern democracies, democracies and so on. This is a small constituency. It's mainly in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and some other big cities. Then you have people who are nostalgic Communists, so people who believe that some form of Marxism is the way for Russia even now. That's a second camp, and I would say maybe it's the second biggest or equally smallest as the democrats. And then there is this broad swath of people who are attracted to some kind of nationalist candidate, some kind of nationalism, whether it's a kind of humanitarian nationalism represented by say Alexander Solzhenitsyn or some sort of far out xenophobic nationalism represented by a range of politicians in Russia. That's the third camp. I don't think any candidate can afford to not go after this nationalist vote, and Boris Yeltsin certainly has also tried to go after the nationalists. The war in Chechnya is the result of that. Much of his rhetoric, his replacement of various people in his cabinet is another.

MS. FARNSWORTH: You wrote in the "New York Review of Books," David, that "by looking closely at the ideology that Zyuganov has shaped, one can see the potential for untold peril." What did you mean?

MR. REMNICK: Well, I think when we think about Zyuganov, we have to--we can only guess about what he would do if he wins, and his chances of winning are quite good, maybe 50/50 or better. It's quite possible that the rise of new politics and the rise of new economic interests in Russia will hamstring him greatly, that, indeed, maybe he won't be able to begin to re- nationalize previous Soviet industries. It's quite possible that the price of empire is too high and that he won't make a play for the former Soviet republics or dalliances abroad. On the other hand, anything is possible in Russia. Anything is possible, I think, with Gennady Zyuganov. And I think the West could well find itself in a position of a situation where we are no longer partners with or even remotely friendly with Russia should Mr. Zyuganov be elected. Again, I think there's great element of uncertainty to this. There's nothing definite. The predictions about Zyuganov range from that he could become sort of some Hitlerian figure--I don't believe that's really so--but there are also some very naive analyses that believe that well, Zyuganov will be a social democrat, he'll be the kind of man he's portraying himself as in the West and in the interview we just saw. I also don't think that's the case.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Well, David Remnick, thanks for being with us.

MR. REMNICK: Thank you. UPDATE - GULF WAR MYSTERY

MS. FARNSWORTH: Coming up on the NewsHour, Shields & Gigot and a Gergen dialogue. But first on this Memorial Day Weekend, a controversy from America's most recent war. It's been five years since the War in the Persian Gulf and researchers are still trying to determine the cause of illnesses afflicting those veterans, the so-called Gulf War Syndrome. Lee Hochberg of Oregon Public Broadcasting has this update.

MR. HOCHBERG: Transportation planner Bill Hobbs of suburban Portland says plotting out traffic patterns on his computer used to be a snap. That was before he was called away with his Marine reserve unit to the Gulf War.

BILL HOBBS, Gulf War Veteran: I don't have the concentration that I did before because a lot of this, you know, I sit here and I stare at something, and I get lost after a while. My mind wanders, where before I could come in and sit down for eight hours and just pound it out.

MR. HOCHBERG: Hobbs complains of memory loss, fatigue, blurred vision, and numbness in his arm, symptoms that appeared after only one month of Gulf War duty near the Saudi Kuwait border.

BILL HOBBS: My body isn't what it was before I went, and it's been that way since I got there. I feel like I'm in the prime of my life, and when I'm in the prime, why should I be having problems of remembering how to do things. There's people here that I've worked with for seven years, and I walk up to 'em in the hallway and I can't remember their names.

MR. HOCHBERG: At least 30,000 Gulf War vets like Hobbs have been plagued by mysterious symptoms which also include joint pain, rashes, sleep, and stomach disorders. Together, they've been dubbed the Gulf War Syndrome, but the Pentagon says there's no such thing. Its one-year study of more than 10,000 vets found no single malady that's causing the vets' complaints.

ROBERT ROSWELL, Gulf Veterans Board: I don't think there is a single Gulf War illness, rather just the opposite, that while there were, in fact, and are large numbers of Persian Gulf veterans who are ill today, that their illnesses are due to a wide variety of medical problems.

MR. HOCHBERG: The head of the three agency government panel studying Gulf War ailments, Robert Roswell, says 37 percent of the vets' ailments are psychiatric, such as depression or post- traumatic stress disorder, 41 percent have been given an ill- defined diagnosis like fatigue. Another 17 percent are musculoskeletal ailments. These numbers are typical, Roswell says, in a military population this size and age group.

ROBERT ROSWELL: The majority, in fact, the overwhelming majority of problems they suffer, are the types of problems one would expect to see in the military population for which diagnosis and treatment is now available.

SEN. JAY ROCKEFELLER, [D] West Virginia: [May 16] No such thing as a Persian Gulf War illness, no single cause of any illness, no problem. The Department of Defense was comfortable in saying no problem. Take an aspirin, go home, and get some rest.

MR. HOCHBERG: Veterans groups and some political leaders are enraged by the Pentagon's conclusion. At a briefing this month, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee chided Pentagon officials for being callous and evasive about possible causes of Gulf War ailments.

SEN. JAY ROCKEFELLER: One of the incredibly frustrating things about the Persian Gulf War health problems has been the attitude of some DOD officials, Department of Defense officials, who have been defensive, have been rejecting, and I would say frankly mostly unsympathetic. That is my experience.

MR. HOCHBERG: Rockefeller says the real story on Gulf War illness comes from a survey conducted last summer by the Centers for Disease Control on almost 4,000 members of Air National Guard units. It found the prevalence of 13 chronic symptoms was significantly greater among persons deployed to the Persian Gulf War than among those not deployed, five times as many deployed groups suffered skin rashes and diarrhea, four times as many suffered memory loss, and more than twice as many suffered joint pain.

DR. DENNIS BOURDETTE, VA Neurologist: I think it is premature to make--to close the case and, and make the case that this is all just, uh, some variant on post-traumatic stress disorder and end of discussion, let's stop looking for anything else. In my opinion, it's premature to do that.

MR. HOCHBERG: Veterans Administration researchers may be turning up some other causes of Gulf War ailments. The agency is spending $5 million a year on 35 studies. Portland neurologist, Dr. Dennis Bourdette, is seeking possible chemical exposures.

VETERAN: A lot of times when the fatigue sets on, especially during the summer, when it's warm, up like eighty-five, ninety degrees, I mean, I'm just wiped out.

DOCTOR: Okay. Do your teeth chatter with chills nor not?

VETERAN: No.

MR. HOCHBERG: Bourdette believes fatigued vets may be suffering the effects of ingesting parito stigmine bromide pills. Troops took the pills as an antidote to possible nerve gas attacks. Under the microscope, the chemical appears to impede communication between nerves and muscles, possibly a cause of lethargy.

DR. DENNIS BOURDETTE: Well, it's very clear that the--in low doses, the parito stigmine bromide in culture will stop muscles from twitching normally in response to nerve impulses, and these are in rather low doses. They might experience that as weakness or fatiguability.

MR. HOCHBERG: The pill was tested before being used on troops but Bourdette says its side effect may have been exaggerated in troops dehydrated under the hot desert sun. Another study out of Duke University's Medical Center suggests even if the parito stigmine bromide was harmless on its own, it became toxic when mixed with pesticides the troops used to fend off desert insects. Laboratory chickens who ingested a mixture of parito stigmine bromide and the two pesticides showed the same neurological problems some veterans report. Study director Dr. Mohamed Abou-Donia.

DR. MOHAMED ABOU-DONIA, Pharmacologist: When we exposed the animals to mixtures of these chemicals in a combination produced a more severe effect. They kind of overwhelm the body, and we have more of the chemical that goes through the brain and causes damage to the central nervous system.

SEN. ALAN SIMPSON, Chairman, Veterans Affairs Committee: [May 16] And are the anatomies of humans and chickens so similar that you can apply your findings to, to Gulf War veterans? How can you extrapolate your findings in such a way--

MR. HOCHBERG: At the recent Senate briefing, congressional critics were skeptical. Though scientists say chickens' susceptibility to neuro toxic chemicals closely resembles that of humans, the government's Roswell calls the Duke study theoretical and hypothetical.

ROBERT ROSWELL: It's not a human study, and so further work is necessary to really evaluate its application in a military population.

MR. HOCHBERG: The government says it wouldn't do things much differently if it had it to do again.

ROBERT ROSWELL: There was good scientific data that suggested that parito stigmine bromide was safe, was safe at the doses employed, and, in fact, did provide a protective action against exposure to a class of chemical agents known as nerve agents, which are extremely lethal. And so I believe the decision was a wise one.

MR. HOCHBERG: Investigators also are considering possible impacts of exposure to Iraqi chemicals. The army's top doctors said this month there clearly is some evidence of low-level exposure and at a symposium in Portland, the director of a Senate investigation into U.S. policy in Iraq said there is tremendous evidence that allied troops were exposed to chemical fallout from bombed Iraqi factories.

JAMES TUITE, Former Senate Investigator: We also know that when we were bombing the chemical weapons factories, that the weather patterns were moving down continuously over on our troops. In fact, we've taken satellite images and laid them over the terrain to show that the way the weather was moving and the way the high altitude fallout was going coincided with the factories being bombed and the alarms sounding.

BILL HOBBS: The American alarms in my sector went off three, four, five times a day for a month, staring with the air war. I mean, every time you turned around, the alarms went off.

MR. HOCHBERG: Investigator Tuite says his research shows some U.S. commanders failed to adequately protect their troops from the fallout.

JAMES TUITE: We not only didn't put ourselves in chemical gear but we told them that if the alarms were bothering them to take the batteries out. We told them to disregard the alarms. We did all of this repeatedly.

ROBERT ROSWELL: Those of us who have been evaluating the health consequences of service in the Persian Gulf have always had an open door to the possibility that chemical agent exposure could have been a contributing factor to at least some of the illness we've seen.

MR. HOCHBERG: The government acknowledges its liability for Gulf War ailments could grow. The VA has approved compensation claims for more than 22,000 veterans and 400 veterans like Hobbs with unexplained illnesses. Hobbs has joined 78 others in a billion dollar lawsuit against the international suppliers of Iraqi chemical and biological warfare materials, but he says what he really wants is to make sure the cause of his ailments isn't swept under the rug.

BILL HOBBS: You've got the atomic veterans, and they were only recognized a few years ago, and this is from 40 years ago. Agent Orange, it took 'em 20 years. Well, it's only been five years since the Gulf. They're trying to end it, cut the purse strings off and let's quit while we're ahead.

MR. HOCHBERG: As the research continues, he says, he'll keep going, a little slower than before, waiting to see if his mysterious symptoms disappear. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

MS. FARNSWORTH: Now end-of-the week political analysis with Shields & Gigot. Margaret Warner has that.

MS. WARNER: With me now are syndicated columnist Mark Shields and "Wall Street Journal" columnist Paul Gigot. Hi, guys. Mark, the Presidential campaign I thought this week seemed to enter a very intense phase with Clinton and Dole, President Clinton and Senator Dole, really going at each other on welfare and on abortion. Why is it so fierce so early, and what is each side trying to accomplish, do you think?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Well, I think first of all it worked to the Republican strategy to involve President Clinton. The President had been very Presidential, and he had been following what I call a follow the follower strategy, which was he's ahead of Bob Dole every poll, and so to avoid Bob Dole from getting traction closing that gap what Bill Clinton, the White House has done is endorsed everything Dole has endorsed--Most Favored Nation status, I'm for it; gas tax repeal, I'm for it, uh, Wisconsin welfare, I like that too. And so what it does, it prevents Dole from getting any traction at all. It drives him bats. It can lead to two things: desperation, to the point where you got to try a Hail Mary pass, to do something to change this thing, tax cut across-the-board, whatever, something, you know--that's out of character--

PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: Something sensible like that.

MR. SHIELDS: No, something that's out of character for Bob Dole who's been a balanced budget guy his entire career. Second thing it could cause a certain sense of cynicism, skepticism toward the White House. I mean, if they just endorse everything that Dole endorses, what do they really stand for? But this week, I think with the partial birth abortion issue, uh, which Sen. Dole delivered in a speech yesterday in Philadelphia and before the Catholic Press Association, that really, I think, evoked in Bill Clinton, the President, a legitimate anger, thin-skinned, call it what you want. He responded angrily and passionately, and I don't think that was on script.

MS. WARNER: How do you see the sort of--the campaign unfolding strategically this week? Do you agree?

MR. GIGOT: Well, I think there's a lot to what Mark says. The President has been following a strategy, it seems, that is a shadow strategy. It's shadowing whatever Bob Dole does, and for Republicans, one leading Republican described Bill Clinton on a lot of these issues, he's like dropping mercury on a table. You drop it and immediately it goes off into pools in different areas. You can't pin him down. And I think Republicans feel rightly that he wants to take credit for endorsing a lot of these things but without actually having to make a choice and to have the details bear out that big principle he endorses. Welfare was a classic. He knows Bob Dole's going on Tuesday to give a speech--

MR. SHIELDS: To Wisconsin.

MR. GIGOT: To Wisconsin, where you have a fairly radical welfare reform, very aggressive. Uh, the President says in his speech on Saturday, his radio address, I think that's wonderful. Well, pretty quickly, the White House was backing off of that. Harold Ickes, the deputy chief of staff, said, uh, not so sure he agrees with all that, and in fact, he didn't promise to sign the forty or so waivers, federal waivers that would be needed, uh, to have that welfare reform actually work. So what you see the Republicans trying to do is smoke 'em out, is pin 'em down, make 'em actually make a choice to see if he really believes what he claims to believe. That's what you've seen across-the-board. Welfare was really the first salvo.

MS. WARNER: But I mean on partial birth abortion, of course, the President had already vetoed something so, therefore--

MR. GIGOT: Yes.

MS. WARNER: --he's been pinned down. But how can the Republicans keep him really from preempting on welfare?

MR. GIGOT: Well, on welfare, I think, what they can do is they can point out that, in fact, he claims to support this, this state proposal, and why won't he actually sign a bill that eliminates the federal entitlement on welfare, that would allow Tommy Thompson to do what he wants to do?

MS. WARNER: Do you think that'll work?

MR. SHIELDS: No. I think what the policy is one of general agreement with specific exception. Boy, I really like your ideas, Margaret, but there's a couple of things I'd like to change about 'em. That's basically the White House approach. I don't think there will be any welfare proposal signed into law this year. I think Sen. Moynihan probably said it right when we're going to avoid disaster by, uh, by trying to enact a law in the middle, in the heat of a Presidential campaign, but the issue will be debated, and I think we will come to some emerging consensus in the nation about what to do. The problem is in the final analysis in a substantive sense is that,you know, we're talking about 12.8 million people, Americans on welfare and AFDC, but 2/3 of them are children, and nobody--everybody wants the adults to go to work, everybody wants them to get off welfare, but what do you do about the kids? And that's--that, in the final analysis, I think is the sticking point.

MR. GIGOT: I disagree with Mark in this sense. I think that Bill Clinton is the one who put this on the agenda in 1992. He is the one who said we're--welfare--end welfare as we know it.

MR. SHIELDS: I agree.

MR. GIGOT: And if the President is faced with a choice of signing a bill and not--or vetoing it and not fulfilling a promise, it's going to be an excruciating choice for him.

MS. WARNER: Now, meanwhile, the Dole campaign also seems to be trying to zero in on this character issue, and it's related to this. It's sort of the counterpoint, is it not, to Clinton's preemption strategy or follow the follower? The Dole people are trying to say this guy can't be trusted, he's not for real.

MR. SHIELDS: The, the problem with the Dole strategy is twofold. First of all, Bill Clinton won in 1992, and most Americans knew in 1992 that his had not been an Ozzie and Harriet marriage, that he had probably been among the first rank of volunteers to serve in the military and all the rest of it. They knew that. So that, that is, a lot of that's old news, unless you come up with something new, and the second thing is that the "Washington Post" survey today revealed much to my surprise, I have to confess, that 77 percent of Americans would prefer someone who understands my problems to someone who has strong character in the White House, and that is, I mean, it's empathy versus Mt. Rushmore, but apparently that's part of the job description in 1996, Americans, voters are looking for a leader who understands what they're going through. And Bill Clinton has communicated that probably better than anybody in recent Presidential history.

MR. GIGOT: If it's only character, by that I define personal mores or good marriage, bad marriage, war records, that sort of thing, it won't work. What the Republicans are trying to do is link the character issue--in other words, can you trust Bill Clinton, to his assertions that he is this moderate, this centrist, this center right figure who agrees with everything Republicans want to do, who's running on a, on a Contract With America, except for, you know, 10 percent of the details. If they can link his trustworthiness to those issues and to put doubt in the minds of people that you really--he's, he's selling a bill of goods, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, then, then they might get somewhere. And that's where I think you get the link between the character issue and a lot of these, these public policy issues.

MS. WARNER: Do you think that could work?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, at the risk of incurring my colleague's enmity, especially on this, his birthday, I do, I do want to make this point, that what Bill Clinton has going for him, and he understands it better than anybody, is that there is no resistance to him within the Democratic Party, no organized resistance. There was no challenge to him, and that is because Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took over the Congress. And Newt Gingrich has been the greatest unifying force the Democrats have had, and Bill Clinton understands that, and I mean, he's got enormous latitude and license on the part of the Democrats. I am frankly surprised when he endorsed the Wisconsin plan that there weren't organized Democratic protests saying, my goodness, Mr. President, how could you do this, but it was pretty mute, wasn't it?

MR. GIGOT: Well, there's no question that when Bill Clinton endorsed the, the bill to--that would essentially make it possible for other--for 49 states to ignore Hawaii if it endorses same-sex marriage, Barney Frank was nowhere to be heard from. He was very- -

MS. WARNER: Actually, we had him on the show last night here, and he, he was to be heard from. He basically said he understood it was politics.

MR. GIGOT: He certainly wasn't as loud as some of the people from the human rights campaign and somewhere else.

MS. WARNER: No.

MR. GIGOT: And, and--when he--there's no question that a lot of the Democrats fear Newt Gingrich more than they mistrust Bill Clinton, and that is a defining element of this race. It gives him enormous latitude, but there's a--but liberals have to wonder, I think, have to ask if Bill Clinton is running to the right so much, how is he going to be able to govern the way we'd like him to govern if he actually wins? And I don't know if that will set in, for example, if the President signs a welfare bill. What would be the reaction of a Pat Moynihan or a Marian Wright Edelman? That's something the President has to think about.

MS. WARNER: Let's turn to the Republicans on the Hill before we go, and that is that they had sort of a rough week, didn't they, Mark, that 77 of them, of the Republicans defected to the Democratic side on the minimum wage bill?

MR. SHIELDS: Ninety-three on final passage, ninety-three House Republicans. Yes. I think it was a big think. I mean, not only collectively, Margaret, when you look at specific instances, I mean, the Northeastern part of the country was a wipe-out for the Republicans. Everybody in the New Jersey delegation and the New York delegation, save one Republican, voted against the leadership and for the increase in minimum wage. Ten of the fourteen Florida Republicans, I mean, hardly moderate to liberals, two things emerged from this: one was that the fight in the House was essentially between Republicans, I mean, that was the debate on the floor yesterday, it was fascinating, it was how moderate Republicans like Gipsy--against sort of the true believers; and secondly, I thought there was a coalition that emerged yesterday that if the Democrats are to win back control of the House in 1996, which is not out of the realm of possibility, it will be very, very close. If they have any chance of governing, they can't govern the first--the way they did in the first two years of Clinton by just whipping everybody in a fashion and getting 218 votes. They're going to have to build coalitions across the aisle. And I think yesterday in the minimum wage fight you saw the beginning of that sort of coalition, not certainly its final fruition, but finally it was a vote which Republicans needed and felt they needed to establish their independence from a party leadership that has been a political liability.

MS. WARNER: Do you think this is a one-time thing, or are we going to see this through this election year?

MR. GIGOT: Well, I think you're going to see it on one or two more issues. You saw a little bit emerge last year on the environment, but I don't think you're going to see a lot of issues. What Newt Gingrich did on this--I mean, this was lost a month ago- -what they tried to do was if you're going to lose, make sure it's an organized surrender, not a route, and what they did was they gave two or three amendments which allowed people who didn't want to vote for this the chance to vote for it with some things to protect their constituencies and small business, the restauranteurs, people who are big supporters of Republicans. They could show that they tried to do something for them, even if it couldn't pass. And in the end, Mark is right, the Republicans, a lot of these Republicans were doing this, wanted a vote that they can go back in November and they can say, I'm no clone of Gingrich, I'm independent, look at this vote, and that's particularly in the Northeast, it's particularly in union districts. It's particularly in a lot of districts where there are swing voters who are of, belong to unions or work for low wages.

MS. WARNER: We have to leave it there. Thanks, guys. Have a great weekend.

MR. SHIELDS: Thank you, Margaret. DIALOGUE

MS. FARNSWORTH: Now, a Gergen dialogue. David Gergen, editor at large of "U.S. News & World Report" engages Daniel Goldhagen, professor of government at Harvard University and author of Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.

DAVID GERGEN, U.S. News & World Report: Dr. Goldhagen, the publication of your book has caused a passionate storm on both sides of the Atlantic, some rising to praise you, others to protest and condemn. Tell us, for starters, what you think is new about the book.

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Well, there are many things that people believe about the Holocaust which need to be revised. First of all, there are many more people involved in the extermination of Jews, many more Germans involved than people commonly believe and understand. The minimum estimate that I've come up with--and this is a minimum--is 100,000 people. In fact, the number was probably far higher.

MR. GERGEN: They were perpetrators.

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: Perpetrators, people who killed Jews, who deported them to their deaths, who manned the concentration camps and the ghettos. The second thing is that many of these people were ordinary Germans, ordinary in every sense of the term. They came in all walks of German life, all social backgrounds, all professionals, all educational levels, different religions, and many of them were not in the SS. They were not the most frenzied followers of the Nazi regime. And a third thing that should be at the center of any analysis of the Holocaust is that many of the killers knew that they did not have to kill. In the history of the Holocaust, never was a German perpetrator ever killed, sent to a concentration camp, jailed, or punished in any serious way for refusing to kill Jews. It actually never happened. It's a historical fact. And many of the men, themselves, knew they didn't have to kill because their commanders told them they didn't have to.

MR. GERGEN: Right. This breaks away from the conventional explanation which is essentially that Hitler and the Nazis, the zealots in the Nazi Party both inspired and directed the Holocaust and that to the extent that other Germans participated, the ordinary Germans participated, they did so under duress.

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: Well, of course, Hitler and the Nazi Party were instrumental for the initiation and commission of the Holocaust. Without the Nazis, there would have never been a Holocaust in Germany; however, they came to power in a country which was already virulently anti-semitic, and so, therefore, they were easily able to mobilize ordinary Germans first in the persecutions of the 30's, the radical persecution of the Jews in the 30's, and then in the extermination of the 40's.

MR. GERGEN: Right.

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: And it's the voluntary--the volunteerism of the killing operations which actually show that it wasn't that difficult to induce ordinary Germans to kill Jews, to slaughter Jewish men, women, and children.

MR. GERGEN: But that's what's knew about it. You're arguing it was not under duress. It was voluntary, and it much more massive. There were far more ordinary Germans involved in this than people have acknowledged in the past.

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: Most of the existing theories about them are social psychological theories of one kind or another that assume that the people did not believe that the killing was right and they try to explain how people who were opposed to it could be brought to kill. It seems to me, and what I argue in the book, that the evidence--and there was an enormous amount of evidence to support this--is that they actually--the perpetrators shared a Hitlerian image of Jews. They were virulent anti-semites who didn't need to be induced to kill through some kind of pressure but who killed willingly.

MR. GERGEN: One of the examples that you had that I found compelling was the group of entertainers who came to entertain the troops, German troops.

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: There was an SRO group of musicians and poets of the spoken word who were with a particular police battalion in Poland. They were just there to entertain them. They found out one day that there would be a killing operation the next day and upon learning about this, they begged--this is the testimony of one of the killers--they begged to be allowed to take part in the executions and, indeed, they were allowed to man the execution squad the next day. These were people who had no formal responsibilities for the killings, who--ordinary Germans who, themselves, hated Jews so much that they wanted to kill them. And they shot Jews at point blank range.

MR. GERGEN: Yeah. I also found the photographs quite striking because there was--the volume of photographs showing the various kinds of torture and in some cases showing German soldiers or German police battalion, ordinary Germans, as you call them, smiling, but also there's this one photograph of a German holding a rifle with a lone woman embracing her child, and he's about to shoot both of them clearly. And that picture was taken, he sent it back to his family.

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: Mm-hmm. Well, one of the reasons we have so many photographs of the Holocaust or the reason that we have so many photographs is because the Germans took them. This enormous photographic record was produced by them, and they didn't take the photographs to indict themselves or to indict their countrymen. They took them in order to memorialize their deeds, quite obviously. In one police battalion, the photographs were hung in the headquarters, and anyone could order copies of them as if they were--as if people--as people would order copies of their favorite snapshots on a vacation or on a safari. And the photographs are really revealing. As you mentioned, they sometimes show the Germans standing in a lordly manner, smiling, with the Jews in a degraded position, Jews whom they are about to kill. These were--the photographs are a telling tale of approval.

MR. GERGEN: Tell me this. Were there not Germans who disagreed, who, in fact, tried to protest during the 30's and were essentially shut down, they were treated brutally, in some cases deported or sent to the camps, themselves, if they protested these kind of activities?

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: There were, of course, many German opponents of the regime, and even some Germans who--who dissented from the prevailing anti-semitic image of Jews and Germany, and who opposed the killing, of course; however, they were clearly a small minority. In Nazi Germany, there is a vast record of dissent against a whole range of policies, economic policies, religious policies, the treatment of slave labor, for example. And despite this vast record of dissent against many of the regime's policies, we have almost no principal dissent against the treatment of the Jews in the 30's and the dominant anti-semitic image that was put forward, let alone the killing. And so that shows that Germans actually had independent views, and they could protest--

MR. GERGEN: Right.

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: --but they didn't against the persecution of the Jews.

MR. GERGEN: Why do you think other historians--many, many historians have looked at the Holocaust. Many have come to different conclusions. Why do you think they have come to very different conclusions looking similar evidence?

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: Well, in fact, there's been very little written about the perpetrators. Until recently, you could read the vast literature on the Holocaust and you would learn almost nothing about the foot soldiers in the war against the Jews, the people who actually killed them and deported them and manned the camps. And so I think that the conclusions drawn have been drawn without a sufficient evidentiary basis about the people who were the killers. Until you understand these people, their backgrounds, their lives as killers and why they killed, you can't possibly explain the Holocaust.

MR. GERGEN: What I find, Dr. Goldhagen, in looking at the various reviews that have been written on both sides of the Atlantic is that you have won many people over to your point of view about who did the killing, the ordinary Germans, and the fact it was volunteeristic, that many of your critics say that you cast a powerful new light on something that needs to be better understood. So the who seems to be widely accepted. What I find has caused a great deal of controversy is why, what led people to do this. Now tell me first of all what your explanation is.

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: When you look at the details of their actions, including the immense cruelty they perpetrated upon the victims, including the photographs they took, including the celebrations they had after killing operations, including that many of them had their wives and girlfriends with them and many other things, it seems that there's no way to explain why they did what they did except for that they believed it was right that they were anti- semites. And also, there's testimony from them on this point. As one of the killers said, a man from a police battalion, speaking for himself and all of his comrades, and this is a direct quotation, "The Jew was not considered by us to be a human being." There's testimony on this point. Now, these people were bred in a society which was virulently anti-semitic, where anti-semitism, a view of Jews which held them to be different from Germans, different because of the biology conceptualized in terms of race, evil, and powerful, this was a common sense of German society even before Hitler came to power.

MR. GERGEN: Well, there's a review coming, for example, in "T'Kum," the Jewish publication, that says, in fact, that in the 19th century Germany that Jews were getting ambiguous signals that they were excluded from much of the economic activity of the country, but they were more culturally integrated, and that Jews in Eastern Europe looked upon Germany as a magnet, a place they wanted to go live, so that that reviewer at least felt that you overstated the case of how much anti-semitism existed in Germany and then connected with that another Clive James of the "New Yorker" writes, you know, you make Hitler look too small in this. Hitler and the Nazis, as he says, in some ways look like walk-ons in the final act of "Gotterdammerung," you know, the sort of spear carriers in Valhalla.

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: Well, I haven't read the "T'Kum" piece yet. It hasn't come out. The German Jewish community was in many ways a prosperous community, but it exists, but its prosperity existed side by side with virulent anti-semitism, which was, which was part and parcel of the common culture. There was an enormous outpouring, for example of anti-semitic literature, pamphleteering, and so on in the 19th century, and even parties in Germany which developed, which were devoted exclusively to anti-semitism, communities have prospered side by side with great hatred towards them. And this hatred simmered beneath the surface under political conditions which would not allow it to emerge. But when the Nazis came to power, it was easy for them to activate it. Hitler is not just a walk-on. Clive James, if he's attributing this to me, it's not entirely--it's not true at all. I'd simply--this is not a book about Hitler. It's not a book about the Nazi leadership. It's a book about ordinary Germans, and that's why I focused on them.

MR. GERGEN: You look at other genocides. After all, Stalin killed more people in the Soviet Union than Hitler killed Jews, and Mao Tse Tung killed more than Stalin and Hitler put together. You look at Cambodia, you look at Bosnia. There is something in the human psyche that goes beyond the Germans.

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: Oh--

MR. GERGEN: That, that too many of us made--you know--

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: This is not about the human psyche. This is about the belief that exists in a society or that people believe that, that animate people and which lead them to act. In all these other situations there was also great hatred of the victims of a different kind. They didn't hate Jews, but in Rwanda, the Hutus who slaughtered Tutsis hated tutsis.

MR. GERGEN: Yeah.

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: And so in this sense the perpetrators of the Holocaust is--exemplifies certain general processes that are at work and other genocides as well.

MR. GERGEN: But doesn't it excuse the rest of us as human beings from what we ought to be thinking about with regard to this? And I found very compelling, for example, your quote from Moby Dick, the line about Ahab that you had--several sentences--the line about Ahab, that "he piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down, and then as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it." Don't you worry about whether there's an Ahab in a lot of us?

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: But, you see, I don't think we're letting people off the hook in the sense that--in this sense. In fact, I'm saying that there are hatreds that exist in every society. I mean, one can generalize. They simmer beneath the surface. They can be very quickly activated. Not all hatreds are the same as anti- semitism was in Germany, and that we should be very vigilant against, for example, against public figures articulating what are otherwise private hatreds, because when they're articulated publicly, the politicians reinforce these hatreds, they sustain them, they legitimize them and form the basis for an ideology. So, in fact, I think we should be very vigilant, and that we should be on guard against this in our society and in other societies. I just have a different analysis of what the problem is. It's not some diffuse murderousness that exists within us towards any arbitrarily selected group but what we have to be on guard against are particular hatreds that exist in society against particular groups. That's where I differ.

MR. GERGEN: I understand. You're clearly causing a continuing storm. We thank you for being with us.

DANIEL GOLDHAGEN: Thank you for having me. RECAP

MS. FARNSWORTH: Again, the major stories of this Friday, Majority Leader Bob Dole predicted the Senate will join the House and approve a 90 cent raise in the minimum wage. A spokesman for a Chinese arms maker denied it was involved in a gun smuggling ring exposed yesterday by U.S. law enforcement agencies, and President Clinton had a pre-cancerous lesion removed from his nose but otherwise passed his annual physical exam at Bethesda Naval Hospital. We'll be back Monday night. Have a safe Memorial Day Weekend. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Thank you and good night.