The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, an assessment of the U.S. mission against Iraq, a debate over drug policy between Senators Hatch and Biden, and a conversation with poet Virginia Adair. It all follows our summary of the news this Wednesday. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton today declared the Iraq mission a success. He said U.S. forces launched 44 Cruise missiles over the past two days, knocking out 15 Iraqi air defense sites and enforcing an expanded no-fly zone against the Iraq air force. Mr. Clinton said this produced a strategic setback for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The President gave his assessment to reporters in the Oval Office with Vice President Gore.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I am pleased to report that according to the information I've received from Sec. Perry today the air strikes, the missile strikes that were conducted over the last few days have been successful. The targets were either destroyed or sufficiently damaged, so that we can say that our mission has been achieved. That made it possible for us to implement the expanded no-fly zone today, and I want to commend the military once again for the exceptional job they have done in carrying out this mission.

MR. LEHRER: In Baghdad tonight, there were reports of explosions and anti-aircraft fire. President Clinton told those reporters U.S. forces did not provoke that fire. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu met with Palestinian Leader Arafat today. It was their first meeting since Netanyahu was elected last May. It happened at an Israeli- Palestinian liaison office on the Israeli-Gaza border. At a joint news conference afterward, Netanyahu said he would honor all agreements with the Palestinians.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, Prime Minister, Israel: I've heard in the Palestinian president--the Palestinian quarters that our intention is to fragment, to break up the agreement. This is not true. This is not our intention. I also want to make clear that our position is to not only move on the peace process but also improve the prosperity and economic conditions of the Palestinian population.

MR. LEHRER: Arafat said he believed he and Netanyahu could work together to advance what he called the peace of the brave. Back in this country today, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block new primary elections this fall in 13 Texas congressional districts. Those new elections were ordered by a lower court after the Supreme Court declared three districts unconstitutional last June. Bob Dole campaigned in the Middle West today. He was joined by former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander and Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson. In Madison, Dole urged the crowd to look carefully at the candidates' records before the election. He said President Clinton had a poor record on the economy. Dole said he would make good on his campaign promises.

SEN. BOB DOLE, Republican Presidential Nominee: Our economy needs to be lifted from the Clinton crunch of slow growth and stagnating wages, decreasing incomes and job insecurity. Today we are seeing the slowest expansion of our economy since the last century. Don't believe what he says. Believe what the--what the facts are. And the facts are it's the slowest economic recovery in a century. And we will give you an administration that trusts you and an administration that you can trust.

MR. LEHRER: Dole continues his Midwest campaign swing tomorrow with events in Dayton and Akron, Ohio. On the Whitewater story today, Susan McDougal was held in contempt for refusing to answer questions before a federal grand jury in Little Rock. One question was whether President Clinton had lied in his videotaped testimony at her trial last May. The judge today ordered her to testify by next Monday or face up to 18 months in jail. She's already scheduled to begin a two-year prison term following her conviction on fraud charges related to the Whitewater land venture. Hurricane Fran continued on a course toward the Southeastern coast of the United States today. Residents from Central Florida to North Carolina's outer banks were warned to get ready for the storm. South Carolina Governor David Beasley ordered the state's entire coast evacuated and Georgia Governor Zell Miller urged residents to pull back from his state's coastal areas. The hurricane is expected to come ashore tomorrow afternoon with winds up to 115 miles an hour. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Iraq attacks, drug politics, and the poet Virginia Adair. FOCUS - PAYING THE PRICE

MR. LEHRER: The Iraq mission is our lead story again tonight. President Clinton today declared that mission successfully accomplished. We'll get four additional assessments after this set- up report on today's events by Elizabeth Farnsworth.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: For the second night in a row, the glare of U.S. Cruise missiles lit the skies over the Persian Gulf and Southern Iraq. The computer-guided ground-hugging million dollar missiles were directed mostly at targets not totally demolished in Tuesday's attacks Pentagon officials said. The object was to get rid of Iraqi air defense sites and lower the risks for allied pilots flying in the just-expanded Southern no-fly zone in Iraq. The allies created the zones barred to Iraq aircraft in the South and North of Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. Around mid-day today, Washington Time, the Iraqis responded. Defense Secretary William Perry in a press conference alongside his British counterpart Michael Portillo explained.

WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense: We encountered two challenges on this first day of patrolling again. One of them--two MiG's--approached our planes from the North, but both of them turned back before they got to 33 Degrees North. Secondly, a radar from a SA-8, air defense system illuminated one of our planes, and we fired a HARM missile at that radar. The radar stopped illuminating after we fired the HARM. I have no further information about the results of that operation, except that the radar stopped illuminating.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Perry was asked if the U.S. objective was to get rid of Iraq leader Saddam Hussein.

SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: Our objective remains the same as it has been from the beginning--to deter Saddam Hussein from taking actions which commit atrocities to his own people which attack his neighbors and which upset the security and stability of the region. And all of our various responses to him through the years have been intended either to deter him from taking those actions, or to punish him or stop him from taking those actions.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Both Perry and Portillo were asked why the operation had only limited allied support other than from Britain.

MICHAEL PORTILLO, Minister of Defense, Britain: Every country has to make its public statements in the way that it regards as best, but I think there is the most widespread joint understanding of the sort of man that we're dealing with in Saddam Hussein. I think it is well understood that he has this long record of violation of human rights, that he is a destabilizing force, he has the potential to invade other countries, and I don't believe any of our partners or any of our friends through the Middle East would dissent from that analysis of the sort of person that we're dealing with.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Perry said that the French were flying alongside American and British pilots in a southern no-fly zone, but French officials said their planes would refuse to go above the 32nd Parallel into the expanded no-fly zone. Russia's foreign minister, Yevgeny Primakov, issued his second denunciation of what he called unilateral American action. In much of the Arab world, official criticism continued, and in Iraq, there were rallies and demonstrations around the country, including one cheering Saddam Hussein. This afternoon, President Clinton said that twin strikes by U.S. Cruise missile were successful because the targets were either destroyed or sufficiently damaged. He also said the situation in Northern Iraq, where the crisis with the Kurds began, seems to have changed.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: There has been a withdrawal of the forces, a dispersal of the forces, but it's too soon to say that this is permanent or that further action will not be taken. What we have done is to show that we are prepared to change the strategic realities that Saddam Hussein faces if he violates the United Nations prohibitions on either threatening his neighbors or repressing his own people. And I believe that we did the right thing. I think we had the right response, and I think it will have a good results. If it doesn't we'll take the facts as they come.

MR. LEHRER: We get four additional views now. Jim Hoagland is a "Washington Post" columnist who won the Pulitzer Prize for his commentary on the Gulf War, Richard Haass was the National Security Council staff assistant for the Middle East during the Gulf War. He's now director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. Judith Miller is a "New York Times" correspondent, author of two books on the Middle East, and Daniel Yergin won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1992 book on oil; he's president of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm. Jim Hoagland, do you dispute the President's claim--mission accomplished?

JIM HOAGLAND, Washington Post: Well, I think the limited mission that he set out was accomplished, but I think we have to question whether it was enough. The price that has been extracted from Saddam Hussein is not commensurate with the gains that he's made on this. That's a strategic plus for him. Saddam has been able to wipe out the Iraqi opposition that was beginning to take form in the North, he split the Kurds. His troops have gone in, rounded up any Arabs that they could find, any people who would have defected from the Iraqi army. He's made a major gain here. And if we stop now, if we stop with these rather limited military strikes, I think Saddam is a winner out of this. At the same time, you have to sympathize with the problems that President Clinton faced with suddenly uncertain allies. Turkey, unwilling to really let us use their bases to strike against the Iraqi army in the North, and the Saudis reluctant, but I think a major error has been made here in the sense of separating the Kurdish fate from that of the rest of Iraq.

MR. LEHRER: In the North and then from the South, where our attacks were.

MR. HOAGLAND: Our attacks were designed to reassure the Saudis, to reassure the Kuwaitis, to make it harder for Saddam to move his forces to the South, and to let him have pretty much a free hand in the North, and I think in the long run that's a serious mistake.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Haass, how do you see this?

RICHARD HAASS, Brookings Institution: I tend to agree with that. On the other hand, I don't think Jim has that much to worry about because Saddam Hussein being Saddam Hussein, he's unlikely to stop here. The idea that he would be given a strategic opening, as he was by the Kurds inviting him in, and he's going to somehow--

MR. LEHRER: Explain that. One of the Kurd factions invited him in to help them against the other Kurd faction. That was in the North. And Saddam Hussein accepted the invitation. We did our little thing in the South to send him a message, okay.

MR. HAASS: Exactly right. However, like a guest that won't leave the dinner party even long after the dessert, it's very unlikely that Saddam Hussein will leave it at that. My hunch is that he will press ahead, and the administration which so far has been extraordinarily realist for them. They've suddenly become practical practices of real politic. Don't go in and get involved in this messy humanitarian situation, a very narrow, punitive strike against these sites in the South. They are going to have to decide what to do if and when Saddam Hussein begins to ratchet up the pressure even more in the North of Iraq.

MR. LEHRER: The basic point that the President made today and Sec. Perry, everybody has made, is that this was designed--in other words, the U.S. missile shots were designed to send Saddam Hussein the message that we're watching and if you keep--I guess--if you keep this up, we're going to keep ratcheting up. Is that--do you think that message was delivered?

MR. HAASS: I don't think so. I think from Saddam Hussein's point of view, he has essentially been allowed to realize a gain in the North. He has been forced to pay a price for it. But it is not an overwhelming price. If you will, it was a proportionate response. I would have thought that one of the things we've learned from history with Saddam is proportionate responses don't tend to get received by him. His message receiver doesn't take that. It takes something disproportionate. My guess is he'll press on, and the administration will then have to question or answer the question how do we escalate? Do we now start attacking more important targets in Baghdad, or much more difficult, do we start to go after the North, itself?

MR. LEHRER: We'll get to that in a minute. You clearly don't think this is over. Judith Miller, uh, what about--what's your reading of why the--our Arab friends, the friends of the United States, Egypt, Jordan, everybody, did not come to the support of the U.S. in this attack, in this action?

JUDITH MILLER, New York Times: [New York] Well, I think one has to distinguish here between a public posture and a private posture. You have to look at each of the countries separately. Jordan has a long border with Iraq and substantial trade relations, and geography doesn't change. So even though King Hussein was more up front, he was more aggressive in criticizing Saddam Hussein recently, this was a risk he couldn't take of openly backing the United States in a military attack. Saudi Arabia, I think, is privately very pleased that the United States did what it did, particularly because the focus was on the South, which is closest to its own border. But, once again, Saudi Arabia, since the Gulf War, has faced mounting internal pressure, internal opposition. It doesn't want to be seen as a pawn of the Americans or a staging base for attacks on fellow Arab leaders. So each of the countries has a really different reason for taking the posture that it did.

MR. LEHRER: Explain to lay Americans why the United States risks the lives of its young people to go in, it says, to protect the interests of people who don't even support the attack. That's the question that I'm trying to get at. You're saying that, well, privately they say that but publicly they say another. How does that--how do you explain--how should we explain that to the American people?

MS. MILLER: Well, this is the world of the Middle East. There are things that one can say publicly, and there are private realities. You know, part of what's happened in the region is that the anti-American rhetoric, the Arab nationalists, and the militant Islamist rhetoric of the past 10 years has really come home to roost for these regimes. And they now face people, the masses, as they call them, who are very skeptical of American involvement in the region. This has been a result, in part, of their own propaganda, and I think that the moment of courage that all of these countries had after the Gulf War has kind of faded. It was a line in the sand, and the winds have blown, and those lines are now blurred, to say the least.

MR. LEHRER: Daniel Yergin, one of the justifications for this, not justifications--one of the reasons given for this attack was the oil problem, that it was to protect Saudi Arabia's oil supply and the rest of the Middle East oil supply for the world. Is that- -does that make sense to you?

DANIEL YERGIN, Historian: Sure. It's true. I mean, the Middle East is the bread basket of world oil production. It's where 2/3 of the reserves are, and so it's a very critical element--

MR. LEHRER: 2/3--repeat--2/3 of the oil--

MR. YERGIN: 2/3 of all the world's oil is in the Middle East.

MR. LEHRER: Okay.

MR. YERGIN: So what--

MR. LEHRER: Nobody's making that up when they say oil is an issue?

MR. YERGIN: Yeah. Oil is an issue and a critical issue in the global balance of power.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. All right. So why did--what's your explanation? You know these countries very well. If it's their oil that's being protected theoretically by, by U.S. air strikes, why do they remain silent?

MR. YERGIN: It's partly what Judy says and counting on the U.S.- -clearly, all those countries would be terrified is Saddam was in a position to come charging across the border again, and you can't look at what he's done as colleagues here pointed out without saying that he's now reasserted his influence in the North. He's gained something he wanted. He's paid a price in the way they describe but also he's lost $2 billion every six months in oil revenues, but for him, his calculation is to get his hands on the Kurdish areas is worth it.

MR. LEHRER: We ought to explain that on the oil revenues. The United Nations had just agreed with the Security Council, just agreed to let Saddam Hussein or let Iraq sell some oil for humanitarian reasons. Now that thing has been put back on the back burner.

MR. YERGIN: It's quite remarkable because this happened just on the eve after, what is it now, six years of not selling oil. Saddam has--in economic terms--has made a colossal economic blunder. He has lost $85 billion of revenue because he has not been selling oil these last six years. He was about to start selling it, as you say, under this new deal with the U.N., and it's suspended indefinitely.

MR. LEHRER: How do you explain that, Jim Hoagland?

MR. HOAGLAND: You have to begin to wonder if Saddam doesn't have an angle in trying to keep sanctions on. I'm not sure--as nefarious as I think he is, I'm not quite sure I subscribe to--

MR. LEHRER: What could that angle be?

MR. HOAGLAND: Well he's not really hurt by the sanctions. The clique around him, the military officers around him are not really hurt; they have access to all the food and whiskey they need. They can make money as long as sanctions are on. There's a lot of reports of the black market being run by Saddam, his family, and his cronies.

MR. YERGIN: Jim, of course, he has money still outside the country.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. HOAGLAND: And his money is still outside the country, but there's also--the point that Dan made about 70 to 80 billion dollars Saddam has given up in sanctions over the past five to six years makes you wonder what it is that he's hiding there that opening up his system to complete UN inspection, complete UN control of distribution would discover, and I think it's arms. I think he's hidden away enough missiles and chemical warheads to still have a military threat, and I think the Clinton administration should focus on trying to damage or remove that threat in their responses to this crisis.

MR. LEHRER: Judith Miller, does that make sense to you?

MS. MILLER: It certainly does. I mean, I think that on one hand, we constantly underestimate the extent to which Saddam is going to push the envelope and test the limits. I mean, I'm sure he thought this was a great moment to strike because the alliance was weak. On the other hand, he didn't calculate an American election, a time in which no American President or someone running against him could afford to look weak. So military action was just inevitable once he did what he did, but the man has not traveled outside of Baghdad, outside of his own country recently. He doesn't know the world. He doesn't listen to anyone. He thinks he's a lot smarter than he is, but he has survived. We have to give him that.

MR. LEHRER: Well, Richard Haass, picking up on your point earlier that this thing is a long way from being over, play out some scenarios for us here. What happens next? The President said--the President said, well, we're going to watch this thing for a while and see what happens. What do you think is going to happen?

MR. HAASS: To begin with, you're exactly right. I think the administration is prepared to live, if you will, with the new status quo, the idea that Saddam has picked up a bit in the North. We've done what we did in the center. I think if nothing happened more, the administration would turn to other things. I think it's unlikely, though, because Saddam is likely to press his gains in the North. I think he will want to further consolidate his position and--

MR. LEHRER: In what ways, specifically?

MR. HAASS: I think he will want to move more troops. I think he will want to eliminate any--

MR. LEHRER: He has 40,000 in there, more than 40,000, right?

MR. HAASS: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: And as far as we know, they're still there or close, right?

MR. HAASS: They're still there. He's moved them a few miles out of the center of Arbil, which has been the political capital of the Kurds. On the other hand, I think he's also going to want to continue to favor one of the Kurdish factions, the one that invited him in against the other, which has recently become associated with arch enemy Iran, and I think he's just going to simply try to reassert central government authority, get rid of the deserters, and essentially clean out any opposition in the North. But that is then going to present to us--all of this by the way is a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 688, which prohibits Saddam from doing anything which violates the welfare and well-being of his own people.

MR. LEHRER: But also, Jim Hoagland, it's also within the boundaries of Iraq. The U.N. Security Council--this--unlike the Gulf war, as people point out, Saddam Hussein was sending people into his own country, maybe in a violation of U.N.--that does change the equation, does it not?

MR. HOAGLAND: Well, it certainly does in the eyes of the Arab countries that we depend on for military support, and that's the real answer to your earlier question why have the Saudis taken this position. These are not Arabs that Saddam has sent his army against this time, and the other Arab countries are making a great mistake, I think, a great distinction in allowing him to--

MR. LEHRER: In other words, the Kurds don't matter. The Kurds don't matter.

MR. HOAGLAND: Kurds don't matter--practice whatever evil he wants to.

MR. LEHRER: Right.

MR. HOAGLAND: I think it's wrong also to, to see him as upholding Iraqi territorial integrity by this action. That's not what Saddam is about. He is--

MR. LEHRER: It was just a technical point I was trying to make.

MR. HOAGLAND: He's a special case already outside of international law, and I think it's very important not only for Iraq but the future of the international system that we show that we will respond to the kind of criminality that he's practiced against the Kurds.

MR. LEHRER: Dan Yergin, when you look ahead, what do you see?

MR. YERGIN: I see, first of all in terms of oil, you see prices higher, not only because of the Iraqi oil not coming to the market, but because--

MR. LEHRER: But that was already--that was already not happening, was it not?

MR. YERGIN: Right. But it was about to start in September--we would have seen prices going down, but I think there's now a kind of psychological anxiety in the oil market that reflects this uncertainty not only involving Iraq, Iran, the new big question about Turkey, of course the recent bombings in Saudi Arabia, so there's this unease, I think as has been suggested, that Saddam is the one who's calling the shots in the game, and he's now in a position to at least re-extend his influence.

MR. LEHRER: And the folks in the business of oil, one way or another, and there are millions of them not--from the very top to the very bottom--are worried to death about this. Is that--

MR. YERGIN: I think that there's a higher degree of anxiety. The Middle East does not look as stable as it did a few years ago. A lot of forces are at work, a lot of forces that don't like the western world and don't like involvement with the western world.

MR. LEHRER: Judy Miller, do you have a prediction? Is this over, or is this going to run on a while?

MS. MILLER: I never make predictions in the Middle East but I do worry about the message that has been implicitly sent with the American administration focusing so heavily on Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich sheikhdom, I do worry about the fact that Saddam, even if he does not move further, if Richard Haass's scenario does not come to pass, may already have effective control of the Kurdish area, and it's a message that basically says we care about Saudi Arabia and Saudi oil, and the Kurds, well, they're quarrelsome and they're trouble, and until they stop fighting, we're not going to do anything. As long as the Kurds do not stop fighting, I think Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and who knows else will have a pretext for meddling in that enclave.

MR. LEHRER: But hasn't--

MS. MILLER: To which we're now committed.

MR. LEHRER: Hasn't the U.S. said--well, Sec. Perry said specifically on this program last night in an interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth that the U.S. does not want to get involved in that, in other words, the problem among the Kurds in the North, and we're not going to, he said.

MS. MILLER: Well, that is a message but as long as he takes that position, it does seem that it would give Saddam a kind of open invitation to continue through covert or subterranean means to control the situation.

MR. LEHRER: Jim Hoagland, every--I'm sure--I don't speak for you- -I'll let you speak for yourself--but I don't know personally of very many Americans who don't remain absolutely stunned at Saddam Hussein--what, him again--

MR. HOAGLAND: Still there.

MR. LEHRER: Still there.

MR. HOAGLAND: The stake has not been driven through the heart--

MR. LEHRER: Doing this.

MR. HOAGLAND: --yet.

MR. LEHRER: And the people in Iraq not only, not only is the rest of the world tolerating him, but so are his own people. What is there about this man?

MR. HOAGLAND: Well, this is a major factor, of course, in the fact that he has been able to make some gains here. Intimidation is a central part of Arab politics at least in many Arab countries, and the fact that he can use his military force, that he is still there to use his military force, is an intimidating factor for the other Arab rulers and for his own population. He--he survives through a system of terror, through a system of bribing the population particularly around Baghdad. When we talk about territorial integrity and holding Iraq together, we have to remember it's a country that's held together purely by terror. He's a very effective user of terror and a very effective survivor.

MR. LEHRER: To put it mildly.

MR. HOAGLAND: One more thing, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

MR. HOAGLAND: This is pure Clinton in terms of the options that he's chosen because what he's done with this is to not foreclose any future options. He could still act, he could still do something to change this situation.

MR. LEHRER: Very dramatic you mean?

MR. HOAGLAND: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. Thank you, Judith, gentlemen. FOCUS -USING & ABUSING

MR. LEHRER: Now to the politics of drug policy and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: A new issue has suddenly emerged in the presidential campaign, the recent rise in teenage drug use. The presidential candidates are talking about it, and so are the candidates' commercials. All this attention was prompted by a Health & Human Services study released two weeks ago showing that drug use among teenagers had doubled between 1992 and 1995, after 10 years of steady decline. 11 percent of adolescents now admitted they'd used drugs in the past month. We'll debate the substance and politics of the issue with two members of the Senate, but first this background.

MS. WARNER: The report on teen drug use stung the President just a week before the Democratic convention. White House Spokesman Mike McCurry said it should not be an issue in the campaign.

MICHAEL McCURRY, White House Spokesman: The less that we try to make partisan politics out of this, the more we will send a signal to kids that everyone is working together to address the problem. It's not a question of Republicans or Democrats being tougher on drugs. It's a question of everyone coming together and to try to encourage young people not to use drugs. And that's where the focus should be, and that's where the focus has been as we've administered what we think is a very comprehensive anti-drug strategy.

MS. WARNER: But fresh from the Republican convention, Bob Dole immediately seized on the drug report as an issue for his campaign.

SEN. BOB DOLE, President Presidential Nominee: This is nothing short of a national tragedy. So I've said to myself, starting next January, I'm going to make the drug war priority number one once again.

MS. WARNER: Two days later, Dole was at it again.

SEN. BOB DOLE: Two days ago, the yearly national household survey on drugs--drug abuse came out, and it showed that drug abuse among young Americans has more than doubled in the last four years under President Clinton, a 105 percent increase in marijuana use. That is a national tragedy. And it's enough to cause every single American--ask the people in the White House, where have you been the last four years, Mr. President? Where have you been the last four years, Mr. President?

MS. WARNER: Last week in Chicago, the President responded by weaving an anti-drug message into his nomination acceptance speech.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: And I can tell you something has happened to some of our young people. They simply don't think these drugs are dangerous anymore, or they think the risk is acceptable. So beginning with our parents and without regard to our party, we have to renew our energy to teach this generation of young people the hard, cold truth. Drugs are deadly. Drugs are wrong. Drugs can cost you your life. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the four-star general who led our fight against drugs in Latin America, now leads our crusade against drugs at home, stopping more drugs at our borders, tracking down all those who sell them, and most important of all, pursuing a national anti-drug strategy whose primary aim is to turn our children away from drugs. I call on Congress to give him every cent of funding we have requested for this strategy and to do it now.

SPOKESMAN: Please welcome the Republican candidate--

MS. WARNER: Bob Dole continues to hammer away at the President. Last week, he called for using the National Guard and the U.S. military to stop the flow of drugs into the country. He returned to his anti-drug message in a speech yesterday to the American Legion Convention in Salt Lake City.

SEN. BOB DOLE: Let me tell you this. On day one of the Dole administration, we will begin a real war on drugs, and we will fight to win. You've got to fight to win the war on drugs, or you're going to lose. We must start with a plan to use our military power, particularly our technological capabilities to fight this battle, to involve our intelligence agencies, including the CIA, in this effort, and, if necessary, to use the National Guard to stamp out drugs on our border before they enter this country. And we're going to get it done.

MS. WARNER: Today the Republicans in Congress weighed in as well. The Senate Judiciary Committee called White House Drug Czar General Barry McCaffrey and HHS Secretary Donna Shalalah to Capitol Hill to explain the dramatic surge in teenage drug use.

DONNA SHALALA, Secretary, HHS: And they mixed messages. They get mixed messages from police departments that don't enforce marijuana laws. They get mixed messages from parents who are relieved because they think marijuana is a little safer than maybe some of the other drugs, and they're relieved when they find out their kid's using marijuana, instead of perhaps cocaine, or heroine. They get a mixed message from those who believe in the legalization of marijuana or from those that are now fighting in a place like California about whether marijuana should be used for medical purposes. That's a signal that maybe it's safe if it could be used for medical purposes. So the message has to be clear and consistent from each one of us that drugs are illegal, that they're dangerous, and they're wrong, whether it's marijuana or heroine or cocaine or any of these new drugs that we've been talking about.

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY, [R] Alabama: Mr. Chairman, I remain highly skeptical of this administration's new found commitment to the war against drugs, and although I respect General McCaffrey tremendously, and I have the utmost confidence in his abilities, as I've said, his work is a critical link between crime and drugs because crime--the link there is strong and growing, particularly among our youth, as we've heard today.

MS. WARNER: Joining us now are two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that held today's hearing: the Republican Chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, and the ranking Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware. Welcome, gentlemen.

SEN. ORRIN HATCH, [R] Utah: Happy to be with you.

MS. WARNER: Sen. Hatch, why do you think this issue has suddenly become one in the presidential campaign?

SEN. HATCH: Well, actually I've accused the President of being AWOL or absent without leadership on drugs because since 1992, marijuana usage has jumped 141 percent, cocaine usage has jumped 166 percent. Methamphetamine has jumped 310 percent--320 percent actually. LSD is at the highest level ever in the history of our country. It's jumped a dramatic percentage of 183 percent. And it- -it--the use of drugs among our teenagers 17 through--or 12 through 17 has skyrocketed, while at the same time, the President has cut back the drug czar's office. He's now starting to beef it up. He cut it back from 147 positions to 25, making it almost ineffectual. The interdiction effort was cut back by 53 percent. So we're flooded with drugs now. The price of cocaine and heroine has plummeted--has gone up, excuse me--while the purity has gone--the purity has gone up while the price has come down, and the price of heroine from about $1650 per gram down to about $966, in the case of cocaine down dramatically as well. And frankly, this administration has not been using the bully pulpit, nor have they had a quantifiable drug control strategy that really will work, and up until now and up until the President's speech at the convention not much was being done. A couple of things I should say is that Barry McCaffrey is a good choice. I think Louie Freeh at the FBI is a good choice. I think that Tom Consantine is a great choice at, at the Drug Enforcement Administration. But they haven't been given the backing by this administration that they need.

MS. WARNER: Sen. Biden.

SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN, [D] Delaware: Well, it's kind of interesting how everyone has found the Lord. I'm not referring to my colleague here, but back over a year and a half ago, I wrote a report--and I'll quote from the report--saying that our nation has already seen the first signs of a trend that chills every parent, the rise in drug abuse among children laid out in the report, the detail of what was happening. The truth of the matter is the last two years of the Bush administration and the first two years of the Clinton administration, there was a preoccupation with other things. And Sen. Hatch and I, because I guess it's our responsibilities, have been banging the drum about this problem, but the fact of the matter is we have trouble walking and chewing gum as a nation, it seems to me, in terms of policy. All of a sudden, the focus became in the last two years of the Bush administration, necessarily, foreign policy. Then the first two years of the Clinton administration, balanced budget amendments. I mean, Bob Dole is making these speeches now. God bless him, he's a great man. He was a great Senator, and he would be a decent President if he got elected President. He voted against the establishment of the drug czar which I took eight years to get passed. He voted to cut the interdiction budget. He voted to cut the, the very budgets that he's now criticizing Clinton for not having pushed. And now he's going to make it priority number one. Well, I'm delighted he's making it priority number one. I'm delighted the President is now talking about it. We should get on with the business, though, of dealing with the problem. And the problem is that unless we focus more on the use of drugs among children through the moral disapprobation of society at all levels from the President of the United States to the candidates, to the people who were in the entertainment industry, we're not going to make much headway. And let me say one last thing: I think it's good. I disagree with Mr. McCurry, the President's press secretary, and I agree with Barry McCaffrey. I think it's great this is a political issue. We've been trying to get this up on the screen in this nation for the last four years. Republicans haven't paid attention. Democrats haven't paid attention. Republicans in the Congress have cut the President's budget when he found this new effort, and so I think we should be done with it, start talking about what specifically we're going to do to deal with the problem.

MS. WARNER: All right. Sen. Hatch, does he have a point that really both the President and you Republicans in Congress and Sen. Dole all bear equal responsibility here?

SEN. BIDEN: I would say he's an exception. I'm not being solicitous.

MS. WARNER: Yes.

SEN. BIDEN: I mean, he really has been. We've been talking about this.

SEN. HATCH: Well, Joe and I fought together for this. Now I do have to take some issue with Joe. Frankly, the Justice Department budget has doubled. Actually it's gone up 400 percent since Reagan became President, but it's doubled since 1990. All of the other issues--areas have gone up except one area, the SAMSA area, which has admittedly gone up, but let me just make this last point. The fact of the matter is that--is that the only cuts in the budget occurred in the fiscal 1995 budget when the Democrats were in control of Congress. We've tried to get the money there. We need to do a better job. Joe Biden and I are committed to doing so. We'd like to get this where it's politically in the minds of everybody so everybody in this country becomes concerned, and I think we're- -I think we're getting there with regard to the President, at least I hope so.

MS. WARNER: Okay. But let me ask you both if you were an average American sitting home and watching this and you hear all of this partisan back and forth about who's to blame, what are you really to think? I mean, Sen. Hatch, are you saying that if Bob Dole had been President the last four years, he wouldn't have seen this increase in drug use among teens?

SEN. HATCH: I don't think there's any question about it. Drug increase for twelve to seventeen year olds had gone down dramatically under both the Reagan and Bush administrations. Now, it started to leap up in 1992 at the end of the--

SEN. BIDEN: 90.

SEN. HATCH: --1992, at the end of the Bush administration, but then once Clinton took over, it's leapt up dramatically.

MS. WARNER: All right.

SEN. HATCH: And I think part of the reason is because there hasn't been the example. They put in a surgeon general who was talking about legalization, they cut these offices, they cut these positions at DEA, FBI, Customs, INS, and so forth, and they didn't give the proper attention to this that should have been given. Now they are, and I hope that we can do better.

MS. WARNER: All right. Sen. Biden, do you concede that this administration hasn't given it the kind of attention it should have?

SEN. BIDEN: I concede it did not initially give the intention-- attention it should have. I do not concede that it has not asked for the proper amount of money and the right strategy. I agree with you, or at least your implication of your question. If I were home listening to this, I'd say, what the hell are those guys talking about? I don't care whether it's Bush or Dole or Reagan. I don't care who is the person responsible. I know we have a problem. And so I think we should continue to debate not who's to blame, because this started in 1990. We can go through this blame game thing. All I know is my 15 year old daughter is more in jeopardy today than my 15 year old son was, and he's now 26 years old. I know that now, and so we should say what are we going to do about it.

MS. WARNER: All right. Let me ask you both to address one proposal that Bob Dole has made, and Sen. Hatch, I'll start with you. He has suggested expanding the military, the role of the military and the National Guard in drug interdiction. Explain, if you could, first of all, briefly, to what degree is the military involved, and do you support expanding it in some way?

SEN. HATCH: Well, the military and the National Guard had been involved in all the administrations, Reagan, Bush, and the Clinton administration. But Dole is talking about a dramatic expansion, of using the National Guard at the border, of doing a better job in interdiction.Under this administration, they cut back in interdiction 53 percent, they cut back in shipping days.

MS. WARNER: All right.

SEN. HATCH: They cut back in, in flights. They've cut back in the use of--

MS. WARNER: All right. But if you could focus on the proposal. Do you think it's a good idea?

SEN. HATCH: Yeah. I think it's a great idea. We've got to do something. Our kids are awash in drugs. Our society--you know, one of the pathetic things is, is that one out of three high school seniors today is using marijuana. In a Michigan study, 48 percent of them--high school seniors use marijuana.

MS. WARNER: All right. Let me get Sen. Biden on this proposal.

SEN. HATCH: We've got to do something about this.

MS. WARNER: All right. Sen. Biden, the military has historically been reluctant to get too deeply involved in--

SEN. BIDEN: I'm not overly proud of what--

MS. WARNER: --drug enforcement.

SEN. BIDEN: --I'm about to say to you but I'm the guy that suggested in the first national drug strategy that we get the military involved. The military is involved with the point of $814 million they spend on drug-related activities. One of the reasons why we have such a problem with Mexico now is when Barry McCaffrey was running this operation as a four-star general for the military, they basically shut down trafficking in the Caribbean, and it all re-routed itself through Mexico. That's one of our problems. So it's a porous operation. And that is where you succeed here, it's going to go somewhere else. The use of the military is very important. But under the crime bill that we passed that the President signed into law, we are increasing from 3,700 to 10,000 in number of border guards that we're going to have on the border. The use of--I don't know whether--I'm not being facetious. I assume that Sen. Dole remembers that the National Guard's already involved in drug interdiction now, and so what I want to know from him is [a] why has he supported cutting some of the drug strategy monies that are being asked for by the President, and where--how much more money is he asking for in the military. The military, in fact, can do a very important job by using their radars, by using their technology, by using their ability to identify for purposes of interdiction drug trafficking patterns. And the National Guard can be of aid like they are now. We're right now spending $180 million in the National Guard related drug activities. They're building roads for the INS. They're--I mean, for their border guards and so forth. So, I mean, it sounds to me a little bit like calling for something that's already being done and the assumption that the public doesn't know it's already being done, without specifying what more they're going to do. I think there's more the military can do. I think there's more the National Guard can do. I don't know what Bob Dole is talking about, though maybe my colleague does.

MS. WARNER: I'm sorry. We're going to have to leave it there. We'll ask Bob Dole next time we have a chance. Thank you both for being with us. CONVERSATION - PERFECT PITCH

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, a poet who published her first book at age 83. Elizabeth Farnsworth reports.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Virginia Hamilton Adair had written thousands of poems over the years and published them in magazines, but "Ants on the Melon" is her first book. Available since April, it has attracted attention in newspapers and magazines from coast to coast and has won lavish praise. The "New York's" Alice Quinn lauded Adair's ingenious rhyme and saucy, unsparing humor. And in the "New York Review of Books," poet A. Alvarez said, "It takes years of hard work and practice to write with such ease and simplicity and deftness. It also takes the poetic equivalent of what musicians call perfect pitch." Virginia Adair accepts her new-found celebrity status with equanimity. She has been through a lot in her 83 years, including glaucoma, which has left her blind. About the loss of her sight she has written, "Here in my halls of dark with silent floors, a touch is terror till I know it's yours." She lives in one comfortable room of a retirement home in Claremont, California, a state she adopted as her own after growing up in the East. She won poetry prizes as a student at Mount Holyoke and published in the "Atlantic" and other magazines as a young woman. But she shied away from publishing after marrying historian and author Douglas Adair and having three children. Nevertheless, she continued to turn out poem after poem, rhymed and free verse, about a wide variety of subjects, and especially about her life in this home with her children and her professor husband with whom, as is evident in her writing, she shared a remarkably loving relationship. Then in 1968, with little warning, he shot himself. She wrote, "In the attic dust wears your coat, a window of sky where your face ought to be. On the lawn below, two crows jab at a fallen orange, and I cry, Don't. Don't.'" This and the other poems in the book were culled from the thousands Adair has written. "Ants on the Melon" is already in its fourth printing. I spoke to Virginia Adair in the garden of her Claremont apartment.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Thank you for being with us, Virginia Adair. You've been writing poetry since you weresix years old. Why? What do you love about poetry?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: I think I just the sound and the rhythm and the playing with words, and the poetry I heard very young was mostly story poems and Mother Goose, that sort of thing.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What is the first poem you remember hearing?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: Well, I have a distinct recollection of looking through the bars of my crib and Daddy reading me a translation of the "Iliad," and my saying, "Fifty sons and daughters?". I was an only child, and this was an impressive number for a four-year-old.

MS. FARNSWORTH: So he read you the "Iliad" when you were that young?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: Well, he read parts of it, and he particularly like to read rhymed verse, and he got so he would stop before he got to the second rhyme and wait for me to say it. And I made some strange guesses, but it was good training.

MS. FARNSWORTH: I read somewhere that you wrote you first poem when you were six. Can you remember what it was about?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: Well, it was in defense of Woodrow Wilson. My father was a Republican who always voted Democratic, and we had a visiting cousin who despised Wilson. And this is my defense of Wilson because I was sure my father must be right.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Your first poem was in defense of Woodrow Wilson?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: It was the first one that anybody bothered to type. And, in fact, it was sent to the White House, and duly acknowledged by some bored secretary.

MS. FARNSWORTH: But you won two awards at Mount Holyoke. I believe they were Ivy League awards, the best poet in the Ivy League, is that right?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: It was an annual poetry meeting that usually involved three young men and three young women coming to Mount Holyoke and reading before very distinguished judges. We had some wonderful judges. Robert Frost frequently judged for us, and the Benets, and people of that caliber.

MS. FARNSWORTH: So they judged you the best poet in those readings, right?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: That's right.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And then you published some poetry in your twenties in the "Atlantic" and the "New Republic" and elsewhere.

VIRGINIA ADAIR: Well, I was so naive that I just assumed the "Atlantic" would be happy to receive a visit from me with my poems, so I went into Cambridge and went into the "Atlantic" office and, umm, Edward Weeks, I guess, was--wasn't he the editor then--was amused but tolerant and actually took a couple.

MS. FARNSWORTH: You had all this success as a young student. Then you wrote poems that magazines accepted. And then, as I understand it, you stopped publishing. Why?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: I was quite competitive. And I either wanted to be very good at it, or just to let it alone. And I was doing a lot of other things. I was enjoying teaching tremendously. I taught for about 25 years in, I think, five different colleges or universities. And that was a full-time job, and I had a full-time husband and three full-time children, and there just wasn't--wasn't time to think.

MS. FARNSWORTH: But you never could write it. You--although you weren't publishing, you were turning out poetry all the time, weren't you?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: Well, it becomes a way of life.

MS. FARNSWORTH: You mean turning your experiences into poetry?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: Something like that. It's--I think my poetry is a journal that I never kept. I never had enough perseverance to keep a journal.

MS. FARNSWORTH: I'm going to read a poem right now--"Slow Scythe- -on page 145--and have you talk to me a little about it, if that's okay. "Slow scythe curving over the flowers in yesterday's field where you mow. My cool feet flick the dew from the daisies, hours, hours ago, ages and ages ago they flicked the dew from the yellow and snow-colored flowers you leisurely mow."

VIRGINIA ADAIR: What can I say about it? It's one of those poems that writes itself. And I don't think often I know what a poem means, and so I've lived with for quite a while.

MS. FARNSWORTH: When did you write it?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: I was a teen-ager.

MS. FARNSWORTH: That goes back to your teen-age years? How many poems would you say you've written if you put them all in a pile somewhere, how many would there be?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: I really have no idea. All I know is that since I've been blind, I've written, oh, I would say between two and three thousand. I've written more since I became blind. It's given me more time to write.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Has it changed the way you write?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: It's changed it very much. For one thing, I find rhyme is a handle on which to hang an incomplete memory. If can remember the rhyme, sometimes I can reconstruct the line. Otherwise, I tend to have forget what I have written as soon as I write it.

MS. FARNSWORTH: I assume when you wrote your poetry before, you wrote it out, you revised, you marked it up, you revised a lot. How do you write now?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: It's difficult because for me the feeling of a black felt pen in my hand was a very provocative or evocative experience. I just wanted something to flow from the pen as well as my mind, but now it has to be--it has to be on an old portable typewriter. I usually get up about 5 in the morning and have a cup of coffee and meditate for a while and then usually I'm impelled to write. It's a wonderful feeling to sit down and wack off something, whether it's just an epigram, a couple of lines, or a page or two. After that, the process is rather complicated because I have--people have to come in and try to read what I've written, and often they will say, well, this line says--jibijigy yibibigich- -and one time I just said, well, leave that in, we'll just have that part of the poem.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What brings a line to you? Do you get the first line like some poets say? What do you get as the inspiration for a poem?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: I think generally it's a situation or an emotion concerning a person or a place, and it's just something that has to come out. I remember a time I wrote probably when I was, oh, maybe 10 years old that did have a line that seemed magical to me. Nobody else found it interesting, but it was, umm, an idol speaks. I was stolen from a temple in an oriental city and the hundred thousand pilgrims--before my shrine. You see it was a kind of tom- tom beat that appealed to me, and I can't remember any more of it. I'm sure it was a real dud, but I got so much pleasure from that line at the time that I wrote a poem about it.

MS. FARNSWORTH: A section of your book is called "Exit Amour," which is about your love for your husband and family and the loss of your husband to suicide. I'd like to read something from that. "One ordinary evening, lying entwined with you on the long sofa, the hi-fi helping Isolde to her climax. I was clipping the coarse hairs from your ears and ruby nostrils when you said, Music for cutting nose wires,' and we shook so the nail scissors nicked your gentle neck, blood your blood. I cleansed the place with your tongue, and we clung tight, tilted with Teutonic cries as the player lifted its little prick from the groove, all arias over, leaving us in post-Wagnerian sadness. Later that year, you were dead, by your own hand, blood your blood. I have never understood. I will never understand."

VIRGINIA ADAIR: We had so much I couldn't understand how he could leave us.

MS. FARNSWORTH: In time, you somehow made peace and worked in your garden and found a way to live through it. It's all in this poetry. Did the poetry help you?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: Yes, it helped me, and also my father at that time was living with us, and he was a great help. He had unfailing wit and humor.

MS. FARNSWORTH: You now have a book that's in its fourth printing, which is something of a phenomenon in poetry publication, I'm told, and I hear from your publisher that you're being called for many interviews. It suddenly hit the pages of the major reviews and newspapers. How do you like it? After avoiding this for 83 years, how do you like it now?

VIRGINIA ADAIR: Oh, I really love talking with people about poetry, and such interesting, nice people call or write, and I--I just appreciate very much that they like what I've written.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Well, Virginia Adair, thank you very much for being with us.

VIRGINIA ADAIR: Well, thank you for asking me. It was an honor, and it's always a pleasure to talk with you. I feel as I've known you a long time.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Thank you. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, President Clinton declared the U.S. mission in Iraq a success. In their first meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu told Palestinian leader Arafat he would honor all agreements with the Palestinians. And the South Carolina Coast was evacuated as Hurricane Fran approached. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.