The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight two follow-ups to the release of the Starr report; a discussion about what is perjury; and a Terence Smith look at the media coverage; then two views of the new Russian prime minister; some Haynes Johnson thoughts about George Wallace, who died last night; and a replay of Sammy Sosa's 61st and 62nd homeruns. It all follows our summary of the news this Monday.% ? NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Kenneth Starr said today his investigation was continuing. The independent counsel told reporters outside his home other phases of the inquiry were still being explored. He declined to say more. Also today the two top congressional Democrats issued written statements calling on President Clinton to stop the legal hair-splitting over whether he committed perjury. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle said there is a basic understanding of the standard of truthfulness that the president failed to meet; continued legal jousting serves no constructive purpose. House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt said the considered judgment of the American people is not going to rise or fall on the fine distinctions of a legal argument but on straight talk and the truth. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. President Clinton made no mention of the Starr report or the Lewinsky matter today. He gave an economic address to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He called on the leading economic nations to work together to promote global economic growth. He said the current financial crisis was the largest international hurdle in 50 years.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: If you consider today's economic difficulties, disruptions, and the plain old deep personal disappointments of now tens of millions of people around the world, it is clear to me that there is now a stark challenge not only to economic freedom, but, if unaddressed, a challenge that could stem the rising tide of political liberty as well.

JIM LEHRER: The President urged Congress to pass appropriations for the International Monetary Fund. He also asked the World Bank to dip into its $15 billion emergency reserves to help the battered Latin American economies. On Wall Street today the Dow Jones Industrial Average shot up more than 200 points in early trading. It closed up 150 at 7945.35. In Miami today federal prosecutors announced the arrest of 10 people accused of spying for Cuba. The eight men and two women are suspected of being part of a Cuban intelligence network operating in South Florida. The FBI said the 10 planned to penetrate U.S. military bases into infiltrate Cuban exile groups opposed to the regime of Fidel Castro. In Russia today new Prime Minister Primakov presided over his first cabinet meeting. He said he would try to continue market reforms while protecting the poor from deflating currency, inflating prices, and shortages of consumer goods. But he said his government would not impose a Soviet Style command economy. We'll have more on Primakov later in the program. The North Korean missile fired over Japan last month was a failed attempt to launch a satellite, U.S. State Department Spokesman James Rubin said today. He said it did not reach orbit. He said the missile firing was still regarded as a threat to U.S. military forces and allied nations in Asia. The rocket was described as a multi-stage missile with a range of more than 1200 miles. George Wallace died last night. The former Alabama governor and four-time presidential candidate suffered heart failure at a Montgomery hospital. He was an ardent segregationist and opponent of civil rights. But he later in life disavowed those views. He was 79 years old. We'll have more on George Wallace later in the program tonight. Also coming, what is perjury, the Starr report as news, the new Russian prime minister, and Sammy hits 61 and 62.% ? FOCUS - DEFINING PERJURY

JIM LEHRER: Defining perjury and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: Of the 11 possible grounds for impeachment outlined in independent counsel Kenneth Starr's referral to the House of Representatives, five involve allegations of perjury. Four stem from the President's January 17th deposition in the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit. The fifth stems from his August 17th testimony to Starr's grand jury. In his Jones' deposition, Starr noted, the President flatly denied that he'd had a sexual relationship, a sexual affair, or sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. As Starr sees it, the President was relying primarily on a semantic defense. The President, Starr said, argues that the terms used in the Jones deposition to cover sexual activity did not cover the sexual activity in which he engaged with Ms. Lewinsky. For his other false statement, Starr said, the President's response is factual. Namely, he disputes Ms. Lewinsky's account that he ever touched her in an intimate way. Starr concludes the President's denials - semantic and factual -- do not withstand scrutiny. The President's private attorney, David Kendall, took issue with Starr on the perjury question in a rebuttal issued Saturday. "Literally true statements cannot be the basis for a perjury prosecution, even if the witness intends to mislead the questioner," Kendall wrote. "Likewise, answers to inherently ambiguous questions cannot constitute perjury, and what's more," he said, "Normally, a perjury prosecution may not rest on the testimony of a single witness." Starr charges that the President compounded his perjury before the grand jury. While the President admitted an inappropriate intimate relationship with Lewinsky, Starr said, he also maintained that he believed his various statements in the Jones case to be legally accurate on the same semantic and factual grounds. "President Clinton's definition of sexual activity is not credible," Starr wrote. "Under any rational view of the evidence, the President lied to the grand jury." The other three perjury allegations involve deposition testimony in which the President gave vague answers but not outright denials, like this exchange on whether he recalled being alone with Monica Lewinsky. "Question: So I understand your testimony is that it was possible then that you were alone with her, but you have no specific recollection of that ever happening?" "Answer: Yes, that is correct. It's possible that she, I, while she was working there, brought something to me and at the time she brought it to me, she was the only person there. That's possible." Starr noted that the President admitted to the grand jury that he had been alone with Ms. Lewinsky, adding, "It is not credible that he actually had no memory of this fact six months earlier, particularly given that they were obviously alone when engaged in sexual activity." Yesterday on ABC's This Week, Kendall once again vigorously disputed the allegations of perjury in all these instances.

DAVID KENDALL: The Jones' deposition testimony is a mess. The President did not perjure himself there. He had complicated definitions. The questions were vague and ambiguous. There were objections. There was no follow-up. He was giving responses to a very narrow and technical definition of sexual relation. When he testified before the grand jury, on August 17th, he acknowledged that he had had an improper relationship with Ms. Lewinsky. That's where we are now. And there's no reason --

QUESTIONER: But he still did not say he had a sexual relationship with Ms. Lewinsky.

DAVID KENDALL: He said he had an inappropriate intimate relation. There was no doubt that he testified to a sexual relationship.

MARGARET WARNER: Though the President's testimony is not being judged in a courtroom context right now, some members of Congress have said if the President committed perjury in a legal sense, they would vote for impeachment. Here to discuss what constitutes perjury are former Assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce Yannett, who served on independent counsel Lawrence Walsh's team in the Iran-Contra probe, and former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova, who served as an independent counsel investigating the alleged search of then candidate Bill Clinton's passport files. Joe diGenova, what is perjury?

JOSEPH DiGENOVA: Perjury, Margaret, is taking an oath in an official proceeding and then proceeding to willfully and intentionally lie, that is, tell a falsehood about a material matter in that proceeding. And "material" means germane or very important, and not something frivolous or irrelevant to the proceeding.

MARGARET WARNER: And Bruce Yannett, is there any difference in a legal sense between perjury committed in a civil versus a criminal proceeding?

BRUCE YANNETT: No, there's no legal difference, provided an oath was taken and the testimony was given under oath, either could be the basis for a perjury prosecution. There is a difference typically in how prosecutors and even courts will view that perjury, it's criminal perjury, perjury in a grand jury, for example, that is far more often prosecuted than false testimony in a civil deposition.

MARGARET WARNER: And that brings up the point Joe diGenova - does the court look at differently say if you committed perjury in a deposition, which is a pretrial procedure, versus in a courtroom, whether it's before a grand jury, or in actual open court?

JOSEPH DiGENOVA: No. As a matter of law, the court will not make that distinction. Now, a prosecutor, in deciding whether or not to bring a case, might decide that if it happens in a deposition it's not as worthy. But the truth is, is that over the last 15 years there have been a lot of prosecutions, not as many for perjury in criminal cases. There have been prosecutions in civil cases in the United States in U.S. district courts in a number of circumstances, including cases where people lied in civil cases about having sex with someone.

BRUCE YANNETT: But, Margaret, I think it's important to point out that prosecutions, where someone testified in a civil deposition, not about the central issue of the case, but about a collateral issue, putting aside the materiality question, President Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky was not central to the Jones litigation, and I think you would find very few prosecutions, if any, where in a civil deposition someone testified falsely about a secondary or collateral issue and was criminally prosecuted.

MARGARET WARNER: So, Joe diGenova, let's look now at the two or three main contentions that the President's lawyers are making. The central one is, as David Kendall put it, if the answer given by the witness is technically accurate, that witness is in the clear even if the witness intends to mislead the questioner and, in fact, leaves a misleading impression, isthat true?

JOSEPH DiGENOVA: It is true, although there is case law in the D.C. area that you can also commit perjury under those circumstances. But that aside, Mr. Kendall's argument is correct. The problem he has is, is that it's an argument that has to sort of interpret the facts a certain way. Whether or not perjury has been committed is a question of fact for the jury or the trier of fact. And that is a question which is left to a jury to decide. Mr. Kendall is making a jury argument at this point, not a legal argument. He would never have this - if a prosecutor were to bring this case in a court of law, it would not be dismissed. Today, even the question of materiality, whether or not something is important enough for a jury, is left to the jury to decide. That can't even be dismissed anymore like it used to be. So Mr. Kendall's argument is the only argument he can make at this point, because he's stuck with the President's various statements, and he is stuck with the cumulative evidence, which Mr. Starr has put together, which tends to show that the President was not telling the truth when he answered the deposition, and when he testified in the grand jury.

MARGARET WARNER: But Bruce Yannett, staying on the question - and this really went to the President's denial of the sexual relationship or sexual relations - do you agree that if the President contends that under the definition he felt their activity didn't fit the definition and he was technically accurate in that sense, which there is a dispute about that -- but that he would be in the clear, even if they came away, anybody listening to the deposition would come away with the opposite impression than the facts?

BRUCE YANNETT: The short answer is yes. The prosecution would have to prove that the President at the time he gave his answers was deliberately knowing and intentionally lying, as opposed to adopting a very narrow construction of the definition of sexual relations, and that actually would be a difficult hurdle to overcome, I think. His definition certainly is extremely narrow and formalistic, but it is not wholly without foundation or ridiculous. And so I think part of Mr. Kendall's argument is not only would a jury not convict, but on these facts a prosecutor normally in a normal case wouldn't even bring the charges.

MARGARET WARNER: Bruce Yannett, Mr. Kendall is also arguing that a witness is in the clear if either the questions are ambiguous, or he seems to be saying if the answers are sort of ambiguous. For instance, the example we've put up on the board, he never actually denied that he remembered being alone, but he never admitted it either. He would sort of say I can't recall. He did the same thing about gifts and a number of other areas. Is Mr. Kendall right, that if there's a lot of ambiguity, again, it's pretty hard to prosecute for perjury?

BRUCE YANNETT: I think he's right about that. Certainly if the questions are ambiguous, a perjury prosecution can't stand. And, indeed, if the answers are ambiguous, provided they're truthful, it's the obligation of the person asking the questions to follow up and clear up any ambiguity, and there again I think what he's trying to say is not just make a jury argument that it wouldn't - the President wouldn't be convicted, but that a prosecutor in a normal case looking at that exchange or those kinds of exchanges would never even initiate a criminal prosecution.

MARGARET WARNER: What's your view about these answers that he gave in many cases?

JOSEPH DiGENOVA: I think if you look at the totality of the evidence that Mr. Starr has put together - and that's all we have right now -- we don't have the other side - we don't have other testimony -- it is quite obvious that a reasonable prosecutor could look at that and conclude that perjury had been committed. It is also true that the president can try to take comfort in the question of the ambiguous question. But when he says, "I cannot remember," in light of all of the other evidence, we must all remember that H.R. Haldeman was convicted of saying I can't recall, I can't remember 50 times in the Watergate grand jury because he was a co-conspirator and the judge instructed the jury that if you're in something up to your scuppers, saying you can't recall and you don't remember, you may choose to not believe that, if you think there's no way that answer is reasonable. In this case Mr. Starr has said that these answers of "I can't recall" are simply unbelievable.

MARGARET WARNER: What about that point, Mr. Yannett? That is what Mr. Starr said, that it just strains credulity that he couldn't remember.

BRUCE YANNETT: Well, the Haldeman case that diGenova cites was an extreme example where Mr. Haldeman, if I recall, simply answered, I can't recall, I can't recall 50 times without offering any elaboration or explanation. And here the President isn't simply saying, I don't remember anything about this, but he is, in fact, testifying that he did meet alone with her and perhaps on more than one occasion. So you're really in a gray area, I think. And you don't fall clearly into the Haldeman type situation or -- nor into a clear, straightforward admission.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. And staying with you, Mr. Yannett, for the other contention by the President's lawyers, which is, if you get down to a basic factual dispute, as there is between the president and Ms. Lewinsky on one point, which is in what way did he touch her, that you could never prosecute someone for perjury based on simply the testimony of one other witness, true?

BRUCE YANNETT: It's unlikely that a prosecution would be brought on that basis. The law permits you to bring a perjury prosecution on the testimony of one witness, provided there is other corroborative evidence that exists. So I think here, though, what you have is a very private act is alleged to have taken place where only two people in the world know what, in fact, took place. And, therefore, the perjury prosecution hinging on those specific acts and her version of it would typically not be brought. And, as Mr. diGenova pointed out earlier, I think it's very important to remember that all we have right now are Mr. Starr's conclusions and those portions of the evidence that she's chosen to put in his report. We don't have the totality of Ms. Lewinsky's grand jury testimony. And we don't have the totality of all the evidence, which apparently is in the other 20 boxes that Congress is reviewing.

MARGARET WARNER: Okay. Joe diGenova., today, Tom Daschle, the Minority Leader of the Senate, Dick Gephardt, the Minority Leader of the House, over this weekend Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, all of them called on the president to stop what they called the legal hair splitting over whether he committed perjury, essentially acknowledged he did have sexual relations. In an impeachment context, is that good advice?

JOSEPH DiGENOVA: Well, I think -

MARGARET WARNER: Now, leaving a potential courtroom and going to the arena where it relates --

JOSEPH DiGENOVA: I think it's the only advice the Democrats are capable of giving the President at this point, because if it gets into the arena of a trial in the Senate, which is not a judicial proceeding as we know it, they will not have to be bound by these strict notions of whether or not X, Y, and Z constitutes perjury. They have already laid out a marker. Right now Mr. Daschle - in what I think is a startling decision - has said don't count on pure perjury in a legal sense to protect you; that's not the way we're going to look at this. We're saying a common sense American thinks you lied. That's the standard we're going to use. At that point, I think the White House has been sent a relatively significant signal.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Yannett, do you agree? Was it the right signal?

BRUCE YANNETT: Well, who am I to question the political judgment of the two leading Democrats in Congress, first of all? But I will. And that is, if the president takes their advice, he will, in effect, be saying, yes, I committed perjury in a civil deposition and, more importantly, I think, I committed perjury in the grand jury. And there at that point I think any Democrat who is going to give him the benefit of the doubt and rely on the ambiguity and the questioning won't have any political cover, in effect, and may leave them with very little choice but to impose the ultimate sanction. So if I were the President, I'm not sure I would take that advice.

MARGARET WARNER: And very briefly, Mr. diGenova, would that open him up to possible criminal indictment?

JOSEPH DiGENOVA: Theoretically, yes. But I think the likelihood of that if the impeachment proceedings went forward, would be very, very small.

MARGARET WARNER: Okay. Thank you both very much.

BRUCE YANNETT: Thank you.% ? FOCUS - DELIVERING THE NEWS

JIM LEHRER: Now media correspondent Terence Smith on how the Starr report was covered and reported.

SPOKESMAN: What I need to look at right this minute is the executive -

SPOKESPERSON: Have at it --

TERENCE SMITH: It was just after 2 o'clock last Friday when managing editor Jim Sheppard at washingtonpost.com, the newspaper's on-line web site, finally got his hands on the document all the media had been waiting for -- The Starr Report.

SPOKESPERSON: Does anybody besides CNN got it? The New York Times doesn't have it.

SPOKESMAN: And USA today does not have it. If you reload that -

TERENCE SMITH: For the on-line web sites, the broadcast networks and wire services, the Starr Report was ground was ground zero, perhaps the biggest test yet in instant electronic communication. Some fared well, while others did not.

JIM SHEPPARD: It's been absolutely record traffic. We've been at or near capacity since about mid morning.

TERENCE SMITH: That demand caused the Washington Post's on-line system to slow down for a few crucial minutes on Friday. But for the most part, they and others recovered quickly.

SPOKESMAN: I'm firing out again.

TERENCE SMITH: Once they had the report, the washingtonpost.com editors began pushing out certain sections, while waiting for final word from the newspaper's senior editors whether they should transmit in entirety.

JIM SHEPPARD: The issue of whether to publish or not - I mean, it's certainly one that every media site has had to wrestle with. There's never been a case like this where details that we would normally consider to be salacious and designed merely to titillate are actually at the core of the legal issue.

TERENCE SMITH: But the lurid passages posed no problem for the Cable News Network. Correspondent Candy Crowley was already live, in front of a computer, reading the report unedited as she scrolled through it.

CANDY CROWLEY: Her overall recollection was hazy ...

TERENCE SMITH: While the report made for one of the Internet's finest hours in disseminating detailed information directly to the public, for broadcasters it was more awkward.

SPOKESMAN: Because you've been looking at this part of the report -

SPOKESMAN: Pretty much so.

TERENCE SMITH: Viewers saw a lot of people looking down and reading and struggling to get it straight.

SPOKESMAN: In truth, according to Ms. Lewinsky, reading now, her job never required her to deliver papers to the president. On a few occasions, during her White House employment, Ms. Lewinsky and the president arranged to bump into each other in the hallway.

ANNOUNCER: The White House crisis --

TERENCE SMITH: The network evening news shows went light on detail and heavy on reaction. The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer devoted six minutes to excerpts in a summary of the report, followed by a discussion of the legal case made by Starr. For the nation's newspapers, the Starr Report met extra pulp. The New York Times, Washington Post, and several others published the entire document, some in special stand-alone sections, at a cost of over $100,000 each. A few, like the Washington Post, felt the need to explain their rationale. In their special section an editor's note read, "We have decided not to edit the text of the report because of the unique circumstances of its release by the U.S. Congress on government Internet sites and by other means," while others, like the Richmond Times Dispatch, printed only selected excerpts. The nation's largest circulation paper, USA Today, printed the report in this morning's edition and joined 30 other newspapers in calling for the president's resignation. The inevitable instant books will be out this week. Public Affairs, part of the Perseus Books Group, printed over the weekend a volume that will reach the bookstores tomorrow. Jack McKeown is the head of Perseus Books.

JACK McKEOWN: It's the quickest turnaround I've ever been involved with in almost 22 years of book publishing.

TERENCE SMITH: And this morning the drumbeat of television coverage continued.

CORRESPONDENT: Another constant in the polls is that most Americans do not want the President removed from office.

TERENCE SMITH: Now to analyze the way this story was covered over the weekend and what lies ahead, we're joined by Geneva Overholser, editor and former ombudsman - she now writes a syndicated column for the Washington Post writers' group -- and by Bill Powers, media critic for the Weekly National Journal. Welcome to you both. Geneva Overholser, let me ask you first. This was a big story this weekend for the press, a huge avalanche of coverage. Did the press do its job?

GENEVA OVERHOLSER, Former Ombudsman, Washington Post: Well, of course, you're quite right, Terry. It was an enormous story, and it felt, no doubt, like a flood to people who were watching it, or to anyone who's reading it, but my feeling is that this was the moment for the flood. We've been covering this story as if it were a flood for months, and I do have my criticisms of that. But if ever there was a time for us to go no holds barred this was the time. Of course, the nature of the detail was offensive to many people.

TERENCE SMITH: Well, on that point, did you personally agree with the Post's decision and that of other papers to run the entire text, unedited?

GENEVA OVERHOLSER: I did. I think it was a service. I also think it's worth note that the coverage in the Post and in the Times and other papers that ran the full text was a different matterfrom the actual running of it. And it is a different thing to treat a news story versus to publish something in its entirety, which we all know not that many people are going to read in its entirety.

TERENCE SMITH: Right. Bill Powers, what was your reaction to the coverage?

WILLIAM POWERS, National Journal: Similar to Geneva's. I found that the decision was a clear one for the press, the big papers had no problem with going with the report in its entirety. And even some of the smaller papers - I called a few today - and they said we knew we had to go with it; it was something our people wanted to see. There was a bit of a slapstick quality to the TV coverage, with the folks reading the pages on the air and sort of fumbling and there was one point where someone else dropped the whole report, and that was a bit unfortunate, but I think, as a viewer, you knew that it was inescapable; they had just gotten this thing.

TERENCE SMITH: In fact, wasn't CNN skating on rather thin ice there, with a reporter, Candy Crowley, literally reading unedited material as she scrolled it up?

WILLIAM POWERS: It was dangerous to do it that way. I think that the networks that chose to take a minute and read a page before using it were probably wiser.

GENEVA OVERHOLSER: I think that must have been the moment when plenty of people in the House of Representatives thought, oh, my God, what have we done by releasing this.

TERENCE SMITH: Well, Geneva, in fact, you told me that you were watching it at home just as somebody walked in the door. What was that --

GENEVA OVERHOLSER: Yes. My 14 year old walked in the door and here I am listening to Candy Crowley reading this remarkable, remarkable report. It's clearly an unprecedented thing, and, as you say, it may have had a circus quality. But it certainly had the air of immediacy that this was breaking news, and that finally it was real; it wasn't what everyone speculated. It wasn't unsourced stuff. It wasn't allegations. It was the report.

TERENCE SMITH: And, Bill Powers, you said you read it on a plane.

WILLIAM POWERS: I did. I read it on a plane from San Jose. And it was interesting, there were a number of other people on the plane reading what I had, which was the New York Times version. The New York Times seemed to have sold out in San Jose, which is perhaps unusual. And there was a feeling on the plane of kind of a reading room at a library almost atmosphere, people flipping the pages, leaning over, and sharing things with their neighbor, a kind of a hush, and you knew that finally the facts or something close to them, have arrived.

TERENCE SMITH: You know, it's interesting - I'd like to ask you both - whether it creates a different reaction in you as a reader or in the public, as far as you can tell, when you actually read the words, the power of narrative, the power of words, as opposed to fragmentary reports before that? Any thought on that, Geneva?

GENEVA OVERHOLSER: I think it is different. I mean, people said beforehand if it's just the sex, we know it, we don't want to know more about it. But the fact is it's one thing to say it's just the sex, we knew this happened, and to read this kind of detail which was jarring in its specificity, obviously. But I do think it's true that knowing what happened is a different thing from everybody sort of saying they knew in the abstract.

TERENCE SMITH: If it's true, Bill, would it in your view make people more likely, more prone to judgment, one way or the other?

WILLIAM POWERS: Not necessarily. We don't know yet. But I do think that the narrative - a narrative of this length - has a power and a drive that nothing that appears in a newspaper that you see on these television - brief television reports and talk fests possibly have. And I think, as a number of people have observed, it's just sinking in. It's such a long document. It says so many things. It says them over and over --that we may not know for a few weeks what we - all of us - really think of it.

TERENCE SMITH: This was, Geneva, another coming of age of the Internet. And this was a record setter. America OnLine had 10 million hours from its subscribers on Friday alone.

GENEVA OVERHOLSER: I believe it. I was one of them.

TERENCE SMITH: Yes. Exactly. And so my question is: What does this -- What's the significance of this for mainstream media like newspapers and television, when the Internet becomes for some people anyway a primary, unfiltered source of news?

GENEVA OVERHOLSER: That is surely one of the historic elements of this. And I think what many of us in the media have said is that when these items can go directly to the Net and everyone can access them immediately and fully, then it presents all kinds of dilemmas for us. And certainly we have seen the way many editors have rushed something into print or rushed something onto their own web site because of the existence of the Net. I have to say that it's my hope that we would see it differently, as an opportunity for a form of presentation to come directly to citizens that then doesn't compel us but rather frees us to treat it differently. Different media are going to treat these things differently. And a responsible newspaper editor does not need to say, oh, well, it's out there, and therefore I'll put it and all of its most salacious detail in my paper. That is different from printing the whole document, this official document. As I said, I think it's a good idea to have done so.

TERENCE SMITH: You know, it's interesting, Bill Powers, there were stories that proved not to be true that were rumored, like the so-called second intern.

WILLIAM POWERS: Right.

TERENCE SMITH: And yet there were a number of other stories that had come out to prove to be true. Was there a sense of vindication in that, did you think?

WILLIAM POWERS: There is a muted feeling of vindication in the press, not breast beating so much as satisfaction that, yes, these things we've been out on a limb on for all this time have largely been proven true. Those mistakes were very few, compared to the number of stories that run from the beginning. I think also behind the release of the report there's a sense of relief in the press that a story they've known about Clinton - people in the press have known about Clinton since the beginning, since '91, when he was running --

TERENCE SMITH: Or at least believed they knew.

WILLIAM POWERS: Believed they knew about his unusual relationship with the truth and with language and the way he used those things was finally sort of laid out in this report in a way that the media never were able to bring themselves to lay out because they didn't either quite have it, or couldn't bring themselves to address the character issue. And there it was - with the government stamp on it. And I think in a way they were delighted to finally say here it is.

TERENCE SMITH: I wonder if that's a dangerous emotion in the press.

GENEVA OVERHOLSER: Indeed.

TERENCE SMITH: Delight or vindication. It can get awfully close to gloating.

GENEVA OVERHOLSER: Yes, indeed, and I don't think we're good at keeping restrained about this sort of emotion. I do think the press generally is vindicated in the strictest terms of whether this or that item was true. I think one of the great concerns that the public had was the manner of coverage, and that has not - we have not been vindicated in that way. We did put on the air and in newspapers stories that at the moment were clearly not fully developed. We didn't talk nearly enough about who was giving us these stories. You could really argue that Starr has sort of done himself in, in some ways by having leaked so much of this that one of the reactions is, beside the remarkable detail, what else is new, and we allowed ourselves to be servants in that. And I think that's a mistake, and I think the public doesn't like it.

WILLIAM POWERS: I would take issue with that, Geneva. I think that the press clearly had some very good sources on this, not necessarily Starr. There were many people who knew what was on the tapes, what the allegations were about, and really, I think the proof of these stories is that they are true. I mean, they got it right. We thought they were out on a limb; they may not have thought they were out on a limb, based on how good their sources were.

GENEVA OVERHOLSER: Do you really think most of the sources were not from Starr's office? I think they were overwhelmingly clearly from the prosecutorial approach.

WILLIAM POWERS: I don't know. I think I don't know.

TERENCE SMITH: None of us does yet, and we may find out.

GENEVA OVERHOLSER: -- It's a good question.

TERENCE SMITH: Thank you both.

WILLIAM POWERS: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a Russia update, remembering George Wallace, and celebrating Sammy Sosa.% ? FOCUS - CRISIS MANAGER

JIM LEHRER: The new Russian prime minister and to Elizabeth Farnsworth in San Francisco.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: After weeks of financial crisis and political chaos, the Russian Duma orlower house of parliament on Friday voted to confirm Yevgeny Primakov as prime minister of the RussianFederation. He had been nominated by President Boris Yeltsin only after his first choice -- Victor Chernomyrdin -- was rejected twice by the Communist-led Duma. The new prime minister must now deal with a collapsing currency, a failing banking system, and an industrial slump. Primakov says he stands for national unity.

YEVGENY PRIMAKOV: [speaking through interpreter] I stand for accord across the political spectrum, the mobilization of all our potential to break out of the political crisis and to preserve Russia as a united and strong state.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Primakov was one of Mikhail Gorbachev's closest aides during the reform period of the 1980's and, before that, a foreign policy advisor to President Leonid Brezhnev. The new prime minister is also a former deputy director of the KGB, the Soviet spy agency, and was a director of its successor, the foreign intelligence service. In 1991, Primakov gained world attention in the run-up to the Gulf War by making a last-ditch attempt to persuade Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait. Five years later, he again played go-between in a dispute with the Iraqis over access for UN weapons inspectors. So far, Primakov has named two Communist-backed figures to key positions in his new government. But he has also promised not to return to Soviet-style economics.

YEVGENY PRIMAKOV: [speaking through interpreter] The state could and should regulate the economic process but this isn't a return to the state-administered system as in Soviet times. Every state has a right to do it. Remember that Roosevelt introduced regulatory measures in the America economy during the Great Depression.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Primakov held his first cabinet meeting this morning.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And for more now we're joined by Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian Studies at New York University, and author of "Rethinking the Soviet Experience," and Robert Legvold, professor of political science at Columbia University and co-author of "After the Soviet Union, From Empire to Nations." Professor Legvold, you know the new prime minister. What should Americans know about him beyond the details we just heard?

ROBERT LEGVOLD: Well, many of us in the Russian Soviet field know him from those days when he headed senior key academic institutes in Moscow. I continued to see him when he was in Gorbachev's entourage and then when he headed their equivalent of the CIA. In all of these incarnations this is a very able, a very shrewd and intelligent man. He was committed to the Soviet system but not unthinkingly. He was a critic of the Soviet - of the Soviet Union - desired reform and supported what I think at the time would have been regarded as an enlightened foreign policy. He's a very pragmatic individual.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Stephen Cohen, how did you manage? Is it the pragmatism that allowed him to be supported by both ends of the political spectrum in this time of crisis in Russia?

STEPHEN COHEN: It's very remarkable in Russia. It happened last Friday. How long it's going to last I'm not sure. But what happened is that there came a moment when Primakov threatened no one - at 68 and not in great health. He's not going to trample the presidential ambitions of other people. And at the same time he gave very important assurances to other people. The Communists think he will implement some program akin to theirs. The people in the parliament who want to be sure that there will be further elections, believe that Primakov will allow them to happen or enable them to happen, and equally important I think Yeltsin trusts Primakov to prevent any prosecution on criminal charges of Mr. Yeltsin and his family if and when Mr. Yeltsin leaves power. So he was all things to all people for a brief moment. It won't last long.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Professor Legvold, do you think that the Communists are right that Primakov will implement an economic policy something like their own?

ROBERT LEGVOLD: I think it'll come much closer than they would have gotten from Chernomyrdin. But I believe no one in that position is able to do everything, or even, in large part, what the Communist Party would want these days, that is, very heavy state intervention in order essentially to bail out an industrial establishment that cannot be salvaged in order to save all of those who were suffering in the current environment by using the state and its resources, it simply can't be done. So the Communists are going to be disappointed.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And do you think that the people, for example, one of the leading reformers - Boris Nimsov recently said that this confirmation that Primakov has brought the Communists back to power - you think that's wrong?

ROBERT LEGVOLD: No. I think what Nimsov was saying is that by appointing people like Muslukov, and Russia - and Garushinka - the new head of the central bank - that a lot of what had been done - in reform before is going to be undone, that is, it's going to be tampered with. And I think one of the dangers now is as Primakov attempts to be - in Steve's phrase - all things to all people - not so much a retreat to Communism as much as splitting the difference among policies that will lead to a kind of incoherence of policy at a time of deep crisis, economic crisis, that requires clearly articulated and coherent policy.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Steve Cohen, what do you think about that splitting of policy, is that the danger?

STEPHEN COHEN: I think we might miss something here. Bob pointed to it, but let me underline it. I don't want to misrepresent what I think Bob believes. The country is in profound crisis. It's coming apart at the seams politically, economically, socially, psychologically. The economy has collapsed. Winter is coming. People have no money. They have no food. There's no medicine. I speak now with the provinces, but that enormous deficit is descending on Moscow. The country is in radical circumstances, traumatic circumstances. I believe that's what's happening in Moscow is we watch the struggle of Mr. Primakov to form a government, coalition government, therefore a compromise government. Maybe the last stand of centrist or moderate political figures in Moscow - by that I mean moderates from the different political parties. If you were to say to me are the Communists coming back into influence, I would say to you which Communists - this party is a mess. There are people in this party who are essentially social democrats; there are people in this Communist Party who aren't far from being fascist. So the question in my mind is: Can Primakov put together a centrist, moderate government and use the state, because they are abandoning the former so-called free market - the state doesn't play a role policies - can he do it; can he stabilize the situation, or will the moderates collapse and open the door to ferocious forces? That's the issue in my mind.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Robert Legvold, how would you answer that question?

ROBERT LEGVOLD: Well, I think Steve is right. I mean, the country is in a profound economic crisis and has accelerated enormously since last May. What we've avoided is a political donnybrook that would have made things a lot worse had it gone to a disillusion of parliament and then elections at the same time that the Duma was trying to block them with impeachment. But the underlying problem remains. There has - up to this point - been no effective problem for addressing the economic emergency - and until we see what Primakov is going to do - what kind of a team he's going to put together - we have no idea whether they're going to get any kind of a handle on this. If they don't, then what has been a financial crisis affecting the markets, affecting the value of the ruble and now beginning to generate inflation within the economy, is going to spread until it becomes a broad socioeconomic crisis, and that does open the way for radical, militant leadership that would promise solutions with a heavy and iron hand, that is, autocracy again.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Stephen Cohen, do you want to comment on that, and then I also want to hear from you what the U.S. should be doing.

STEPHEN COHEN: Well, I think - I'm not sure whether there's a difference between me and Bob here or not, but I don't see that the government has much choice. It must pay wages. Do Americans understand that millions and millions of Russians have not been paid their wages in months and months and months, or their pensions? They can't get to their bank account, their savings. First of all, the accounts have been frozen, and secondly, they've basically evaporated. So what are these people going to do? The government is going to print money. There's no question about that. That's the significance of the appointments that Primakov has been. They are going to print money on the assumption that better say as a friend of mine said 30 percent inflation than 30 percent excess deaths or a complete crumbling of the situation. These things are going to happen. They're going to go in for protectionism. The state's going to try to regulate the ranks through price control and wage control. As we talk, in many of the 89 territorial administrative districts of Russia local bosses, governors and mayors, are already imposing price and age controls. They're forbidding products produced in their province from going to another province. The so-called free market reforms in Russia have collapsed; they're over; Russia is changing course; and now, so to speak, the ball is in our corner.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And very quickly, Stephen Cohen, what should the U.S. do, very quickly?

STEPHEN COHEN: I think we should abandon our dogmas, be humane, and help Russia save itself by whatever means we can.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Prof. Legvold, what should the U.S. do?

ROBERT LEGVOLD: Well, I think the message that Clinton delivered in Moscow was right. The Russians are part of an international environment now and they're not able to do all - to go in a radical direction, as Steve suggests, to the degree in which I think they're inclined to. They're going to have to exercise restraint.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. Thank you both very much.% ? FOCUS - IN MEMORIAM

JIM LEHRER: Remembering George Wallace. Kwame Holman begins.

GEORGE WALLACE: Lastly, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever!

KWAME HOLMAN: George Wallace first earned a national reputation in 1963 with these words during his first inaugural address as the Democratic governor of Alabama. A few months later, the nation watched as Governor Wallace made good on his promise to stand in the schoolhouse door to oppose the federally ordered desegregation of Alabama's public schools, including the University of Alabama. His fiery opposition to racial integration and voting rights for blacks, mixed with his support for state's rights in the face of federal intervention, made him a popular figure across the South. Wallace saw his populist message achieve wide resonance during a second run for the presidency in 1968. Heading his own American Independent Party, Wallace took 13 percent of the vote and carried five southern states. Four year later, running this time as a Democrat, Wallace was considered a strong contender to win the party's nomination. But a day before the Maryland primary, a routine campaign rally changed his life forever. Arthur Bremer, a 21-year-old drifter with no apparent political motives, shot Wallace five times. Wallace survived but was paralyzed permanently from the waist down. In 1976, a sickly Wallace repudiated racial intolerance and apologized for his past, as he began a third run for President. But he polled poorly and ultimately dropped out. When Wallace was elected to an historic fourth term as Alabama's governor in 1982, it was with significant black support. He would go on to appoint blacks to his administration.

GEORGE WALLACE: I bid you a fond and affectionate farewell.

KWAME HOLMAN: Wallace retired in 1987, saying the pain and constant hospitalizations that were the legacy of the assassination attempt were too much. Two years ago on CNN, Wallace reflected on his life.

GEORGE WALLACE: I tried to do the best I could for the state of Alabama, and I did do a pretty good job, frankly. In fact, the people that write about it said I was one of the best governors the state ever had.

KWAME HOLMAN: George Corley Wallace died last night at age 79.

JIM LEHRER: And to NewsHour regular Haynes Johnson. He won the 1996 Pulitzer journalism prize for his civil rights coverage in Selma, Alabama, for the then Washington Evening Star. He knew and covered George Wallace off and on for years. Haynes, first tell us how you got to know him, what your relationship with him was.

HAYNES JOHNSON, Journalist/Author: What you saw on that screen just a minute ago brought it back so vividly. There was this little combative figure leading, taunting. He was a boxer. He was a middleweight. He was a scrapper. He almost had - his head cocked like this - like his fists were about to come at you - and he was there, standing in the courthouse door. He was stopping the forces that were to change the segregated society of the South. He was, as all public officials are, Jim, -- he was a prisoner of his time and place. And he could never quite escape that. And I was there as a reporter, one of the many in the crowds, who covered him there, from there into Selma, and marching back to Montgomery, and you saw, then covered him, traveled on the plane with him, when he was running for president and carrying his campaign North. But he remained sort of a figure very much trapped by that place from which he came, and the tragedy we just saw here - here was a man trying with this terrible pain, the paralyzed, small governor of Alabama, and trying to change and admit he was wrong and reach out. And I find that greatly pathetic and sad and almost ennobling in its own way.

JIM LEHRER: By the way, I said you won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 - it was 1966.

HAYNES JOHNSON: '66.

JIM LEHRER: Only missed it by 30 years.

HAYNES JOHNSON: That's okay. I'll take it three years ago.

JIM LEHRER: What was he like personally, up close?

HAYNES JOHNSON: He was - George Wallace was not a guy you talked in books about; you wouldn't talk about the latest novel you read. He was sports-oriented. He loved to tell stories. He was very gracious.

JIM LEHRER: Even to the Northern press?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Well, he would single out - in the crowds he would single out, well, there's Mr. Johnson, he's down here from the North to report about us and tell us what's wrong with our society, and the crowds would cheer and rant and roar, and you felt isolated. It was worth - for the southern reporters it was even worse. He'd sing aloud - Jack Nelson or Gene Roberts - whoever was there - they were southerners. I came, even though he didn't know I had southern parents, but I grew up in New York, and I was covering the South. Okay. But when you were with him, though, Wallace, there was a touching quality about him. He wanted to be liked. You'd sit and have these conversations with him, and he wanted to know why people didn't like him and so forth. And I remember once on a plane - it was a very - I don't know why I remember this so much - we were flying in the Middle West on his campaign, and there was a terrible storm over Indiana - electric storm. The plane was bouncing back and forth. Wallace was terrified! This guy who was the fighter and the brawler - he had a big cigar in his mouth - and his knuckles were tense. He couldn't stand that sort of thing. I don't know what that was, why that was. He was a decent guy to talk to in private, and his own going from demagogy on the South and segregation into changing there - carrying it North - but he was also a very contemporary figure for us.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Did you believe his conversion -

HAYNES JOHNSON: Yes, I did.

JIM LEHRER: -- from a segregationist to -

HAYNES JOHNSON: I did.

JIM LEHRER: -- what he became as real?

HAYNES JOHNSON: I did. Because the tragedy, Jim, of George Wallace, he grew up in a segregated society. He started out as a moderate. He would have been a Franklin Roosevelt progressive, but he was trapped by the politics of race. And when he lost the first time, he said he would never be out - use the "n" word again - and then he became sort of a little populist demagogue. I think, though, he understood the black people and they understood him. And later on - what we saw - that picture just a minute ago - was absolutely real.

JIM LEHRER: Well, I also covered some of George Wallace, and I must tell you later, I was astonished that blacks would later support him in a political way. You were not?

HAYNES JOHNSON: No. Because there is a sort of crazy bond that goes on between people who have been living together, grew up, and kind of understand each other. You can say, I don't like what you stood for, but you may be - there may be some redemption, and we all come out of the same territory. He was - he spoke for the little guy, the grievances of the worker, the silent majority that Nixon later claimed, the Reagan Democrats that Reagan later put into place, the Democratic Party, but it was the little guy, the working class. He was the first in our political life, Jim, to talk about us, the liberals in the press. We were the problem, or the pointy bureaucrats in Washington, or the two political parties -

JIM LEHRER: Limousine liberals.

HAYNES JOHNSON: Limousine liberals, or the pointy heads, all those bureaucrats. And he would talk about the two political parties. There's not a dime's worth -

JIM LEHRER: I remember that one.

HAYNES JOHNSON: -- of difference between them.

JIM LEHRER: I remember that one.

HAYNES JOHNSON: There was a lot of the country that said, yes, you know what, he's right, so there was that part of George Wallace.

JIM LEHRER: But he was also considered very evil.

HAYNES JOHNSON: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: When he was running for president and particularly when he was governor, because his views about race were truly evil, were they not?

HAYNES JOHNSON: They were inflammatory, and they were dangerous, and I remember writing pieces that he was employing the politics of revolution, the politics of revenge, the politics of vengeance. It was - it was politics of polarization. It was playing the race card in the worst way, appealing to people's prejudices, and getting the roar of approval for people who felt that they were left out, and this was the white side. So there was race at the core of it, yes.

JIM LEHRER: Now, the conversion, was that based on conviction, or based on politics?

HAYNES JOHNSON: I don't know how to read someone's soul, Jim. I mean, I would like to think that it was absolutely real. The pain he suffered, where he came from, the fact that he understood poverty, and he understood - he'd like to have a place in history - I would like to believe tonight that George Wallace really meant it, absolutely. I do remember one scene that I'll never forget. It was the '76 Democratic Convention. He was brought there in a wheelchair. And I was standing in the platform right next to where the speakers come up, and they were bringing him up, and they had the wheelchair, they had to lift him up, and I saw those legs going like this - flopping back and forth - and the pain on his face, and I thought, oh, my God, you poor S.O.B. - I don't want to say it on the word - there was that line of Fitzgerald, you know, that when he died, some - Dorothy Parker went to the funeral, said, you poor S.O.B., because he had suffered a great deal, and here he was, everything he had wanted to be had been taken from him. I'm not defending George Wallace's racism. I don't want to make a mistake here. But in human terms he suffered enormous pain, and I think there was something.

JIM LEHRER: How should we remember him, Haynes?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Contemporary figure, tragic because he couldn't escape the prism of race. The South went on and went - a different society today. Had he been in a different time, different place, he would have had a different legacy.

JIM LEHRER: He could have led the South.

HAYNES JOHNSON: He could have led it in a moderate, progressive way, and he got caught up in the politics of race.

JIM LEHRER: He had the ability to do it.

HAYNES JOHNSON: I think so. Well, you watched him on -

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

HAYNES JOHNSON: -- that famous segregation now - that was a demagogue at work. I mean, this was purely a demagogic appeal, nakedly to race, but if he could have channeled those sort of energies into doing good for people, I think he might have been a more effective public figure.

JIM LEHRER: Haynes Johnson, thank you very much.% ? FINALLY - CHASING THE RECORD

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, the great homerun race. It evened up Sunday when the Chicago Cubs' Sammy Sosa hit number 61 and 62 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. He's now tied with Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals, who broke the Babe Ruth/Roger Maris records last week. This is what it was like in Chicago yesterday.

SPORTSCASTER: -- There it goes. Number 61. Move over Maris! [crowd cheering and applauding]

SPORTSCASTER: Mark McGwire with 62 homes. Sammy Sosa with 61, and we have two weeks to go in the season.

SPORTSCASTER: Look at those folks, waiting for number 62. The net's almost unfair. The two - one - there she goes. Number 62. Move over Big Mac! You've got company! [crowd cheering wildly]

JIM LEHRER: Both Sosa and McGwire will be going for number 63 tonight.% ? RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the other major stories of this Monday, independent counsel Kenneth Starr said his investigation would be continuing into other phases, but he declined to identify them. And the two top congressional Democrats issued written statements calling on President Clinton to stop the legal hair-splitting over whether he committed perjury. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.