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[12/19/1999 – 12/23/1999]
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[12/19/1999 – 12/23/1999]
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Presidential Electronic Mail from the Automated Records Management System (ARMS)
Automated Records Management System (ARMS) Email from the Office of Policy Development (OPD) Bucket
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RECORD TYPE: PRESIDENTIAL (NOTES MAIL)
CREATOR: Lisa Ferdinando ( CN=Lisa Ferdinando/OU=WHO/O=EOP [ WHO ])
CREATION DATE/TIME:19-DEC-1999 20:44:00.00
SUBJECT: FOX News Sunday, December 19, 1999
TO: Dorinda A. Salcido ( CN=Dorinda A. Salcido/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Brian A. Reich (CN=Brian A. Reich/O=OVP@OVP [ UNKNOWN])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Emily Karcher ( CN=Emily Karcher/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Gilbert S. Gonzalez ( CN=Gilbert S. Gonzalez/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
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TO: Maura M. Pally (CN=Maura M. Pally/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO )
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Jennifer H. Smith (CN=Jennifer H. Smith/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO D
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Rebecca J. Salay ( CN=Rebecca J. Salay/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Kristina Wolfe (CN=Kristina Wolfe/O=OVP@OVP UNKNOWN )
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Nicole L. Davison (CN=Nicole L. Davison/OU=OPD/O=EOP@EOP [ OPD
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Jenni R. Engebretsen ( CN=Jenni R. Engebretsen/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
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TO: Natalie S. Wozniak ( CN=Natalie S. Wozniak/OU=NSC/O=EOP@EOP [NSC )
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TO: Dawn M. Chirwa (CN=Dawn M. Chirwa/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP WHO
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TO: David Vandivier (CN=David Vandivier/OU=OMB/O=EOP@EOP [ OMB )
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TO: Lindsey E. Huff ( CN=Lindsey E. Huff/OU=NSC/O=EOP@EOP [NSC])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Steven Reich ( CN=Steven Reich/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP I WHO )
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Thomas D. Janenda ( CN=Thomas D. Janenda/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
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TO: Toby C. Graff (CN=Toby C. Graff/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO )
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TO: Michael A. Hammer ( CN=Michael A. Hammer/OU=NSC/O=EOP@EOP TNSC
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Victoria L. Valentine ( CN=Victoria L. Valentine/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Rebecca L. Walldorff ( CN=Rebecca L. Walldorff/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Heather M. Riley ( CN=Heather M. Riley/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP WHO )
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Jonathan M. Prince ( CN=Jonathan M. Prince/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Steve Ricchetti ( CN=Steve Ricchetti/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Rachael E. Sullivan ( CN=Rachael E. Sullivan/O=OVP@OVP UNKNOWN
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Jeffrey A. Shesol (CN=Jeffrey A. Shesol/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Mark A. Kitchens (CN=Mark A. Kitchens/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO D
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Gordon Li ( CN=Gordon Li/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Steven J. Naplan ( CN=Steven J. Naplan/OU=NSC/O=EOP@EOP [ NSC 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Paul K. Engskov ( CN=Paul K. Engskov/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Anne M. Edwards (CN=Anne M. Edwards/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO )
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Melissa M. Murray ( CN=Melissa M. Murray/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Eli G. Attie (CN=Eli G.Attie/O=OVP@OVP [UNKNOWN].
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Nanda Chitre ( CN=Nanda Chitre/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Thurgood Marshall Jr ( CN=Thurgood Marshall Jr/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Jeffrey M. Smith (CN=Jeffrey M. Smith/OU=OSTP/O=EOP@EOP [ OSTP
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Elizabeth R. Newman ( CN=Elizabeth R. Newman/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Megan C. Moloney ( CN=Megan C. Moloney/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Dag Vega (CN=Dag Vega/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Leslie Bernstein (CN=Leslie Bernstein/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Anthony R. Bernal ( CN=Anthony R. Bernal/O=OVP@OVP [ UNKNOWN
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Joseph P. Lockhart ( CN=Joseph P. Lockhart/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Justin L. Coleman ( CN=Justin L. Coleman/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Joshua Gotbaum (CN=Joshua Gotbaum/OU=OMB/O=EOP@EOP [ OMB 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Christine L. Anderson ( CN=Christine L. Anderson/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Stephen N. Boyd ( CN=Stephen N. Boyd/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Matthew T. Schneider ( CN=Matthew T. Schneider/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Scott Hynes (CN=Scott Hynes/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Irma L. Martinez (CN=Irma L. Martinez/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Beth Nolan (CN=Beth Nolan/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Lisa Ferdinando (CN=Lisa Ferdinando/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP. [ WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Anne W. Bovaird (CN=Anne W. Bovaird/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Michael K. Gehrke ( CN=Michael K. Gehrke/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Michele Ballantyne ( CN=Michele Ballantyne/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Ruby Shamir (CN=Ruby Shamir/OU=OPD/O=EOP@EOP [ OPD )
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Aprill N. Springfield ( CN=Aprill N. Springfield/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Ann C. Hertelendy ( CN=Ann C. Hertelendy/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP. [ WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Kimberly S. Anderson ( CN=Kimberly S. Anderson/OU=OA/O=EOP@EOP [ OA 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Sean P. O'Shea ( CN=Sean P. O'Shea/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP WHO
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Laura J. Lewis (CN=Laura J. Lewis/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: James E. Kennedy ( CN=James E. Kennedy/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Katharine Button ( CN=Katharine Button/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Alejandro G. Cabrera ( CN=Alejandro G. Cabrera/O=OVP@OVP UNKNOWN ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Joshua S. Gottheimer (CN=Joshua S. Gottheimer/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Melissa J. Prober ( CN=Melissa J. Prober/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO )
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Sarah E. Gegenheimer (CN=Sarah E. Gegenheimer/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOF [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Rochester M. Johnson ( CN=Rochester M. Johnson/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO )
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: June Shih ( CN=June Shih/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Jason H. Schechter (CN=Jason H. Schechter/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Alison Muscatine (CN=Alison Muscatine/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Laura D. Schwartz ( CN=Laura D. Schwartz/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Gene B. Sperling ( CN=Gene B. Sperling/OU=OPD/O=EOP@EOP [ OPD
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Barry J. Toiv (CN=Barry J. Toiv/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ UNKNOWN ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Sara M. Latham (CN=Sara M. Latham/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: William A. Halter ( CN=William A. Halter/OU=OMB/O=EOP@EOP UNKNOWN 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Jennifer Ferguson ( CN=Jennifer Ferguson/OU=OMB/O=EOP@EOP [OMB])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Lowell A. Weiss (CN=Lowell A. Weiss/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP[ WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Julia M. Payne ( CN=Julia M. Payne/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP[ WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Richard L. Siewert ( CN=Richard L. Siewert/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO )
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: [email protected] ([email protected] @ inet [ UNKNOWN 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Robin M. Roland (CN=Robin M. Roland/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Melissa G. Green ( CN=Melissa G. Green/OU=OPD/O=EOP@EOP [ OPD ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Jennifer M. Palmieri ( CN=Jennifer M. Palmieri/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Douglas B. Sosnik ( CN=Douglas B. Sosnik/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO
READ:UNKNOWN
TEXT:
FOX NEWS SUNDAY
DECEMBER 19, 1999
SPEAKERS: TONY SNOW, HOST, FOX NEWS SUNDAY
JUAN WILLIAMS, FOX NEWS
MARA LIASSON, FOX NEWS
BILL SAMMON, FOX NEWS
STEVE FORBES, GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, EDITOR-AT-LARGE,
NATIONAL REVIEW
U.S. SENATOR JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D-CT)
U.S. SENATOR CHUCK HAGEL (R-NE)
SNOW: Who's the one Republican George W. Bush fears more than
John McCain? Steve Forbes. And he'll tell us why.
Massacres in Kosovo, bloodshed in Chechnya, silence in
Washington. What's wrong with this picture? We'll consult globalist
Senators Joe Lieberman and Chuck Hagel.
Bill Buckley calls it a wrap after 33 years on Firing Line.
Today we'll get his reflections on politics, journalism, religion, and
anything else he wants to discuss.
Plus, should you and I pay the president's legal bills? A hot
topic for Juan Williams, Mara Liasson and Bill Sammon on the December 19th
edition of FOX NEWS SUNDAY.
Good morning, and welcome to FOX NEWS SUNDAY. Our guests will
join us in a moment, but first let's get the headlines from Kathy Wolff at
FOX NEWS channel in New York.
Good morning, Kathy.
(NEWSBREAK)
SNOW: Thanks, Kathy.
In less than a month, the lowans will caucus and the
presidential nomination season will begin. What does Steve Forbes have up
his sleeve and how does he plan to win? He's here to tell us from
Florence, South Carolina.
Also here, my FOX NEWS colleague Mara Liasson.
Mr. Forbes, first, do you think you can beat John McCain in
South Carolina?
FORBES: I think I'm going to do very well here. We've had a
very good response in the last few days. We're doing a bus tour through
the state. So I'm very optimistic.
SNOW: Last weekend we had John McCain on. I started off with a
series of social issues. I want to do the same with you.
Are you going to meet with a Log Cabin Republicans? In the past
you seemed to indicate that you would.
FORBES: I've made it very clear that those who agree with my
agenda, I'm willing to meet with any time. People can meet with me, and if
they wish to meet with me, they can do so as long as they understand that
we're on the opposite side on a lot of issues such as same-sex marriages,
such as gays in the military. I have very strong views on that, and if
they understand, that then that's fine.
SNOW: Do you think homosexuality is immoral?
FORBES: I think that homosexuality is a lifestyle that I
personally do not approve of, and I don't think the government should be
in the business of making laws about it. But I do think, in terms of the
military, the military should not have to take open gays.
And also, too, I oppose same-sex marriages. I believe in equal
rights for all, Tony, especially rights for none.
LIASSON: Steve Forbes, the ``don't ask, don't tell" policy for
the military precisely was designed to exclude open gays. In other words
if, gays were not open about it..
FORBES: That's right.
LIASSON: they could serve. So you agree with the "don't
ask, don't tell" policy?
FORBES: If you're not openly gay, yes, you can go into the
military. But if you are openly gay, then you have to understand, you're
not going to be in the military.
LIASSON: And do you think that policy has been working?
Correctly?
FORBES: It's the right policy, and if the commanders in the
military have problems with it on the local level, that is their problem
to make it work. Violence in the military is wrong under any circumstances
against soldiers, enlisted soldiers, against anyone in the military. And
that, I think, was a command--local command problem, not a problem with
the basic policy.
The military is not an institution for social engineering. It
has a very real role of protecting us. It has very--operates in very
special circumstances and therefore a president must take heed of leaders
such as General Powell and General Schwarzkopf who say that you cannot
have open gays in the military.
LIASSON: Have you ever hired an openly gay person?
FORBES: We have people with various lifestyles in my own
company. But you have to understand the difference. With the military, you
are living very close to people 24 hours a day. In the workplace at the
end of the day you go home and you live your own lifestyle.
SNOW: Mr. Forbes, earlier in the week George W. Bush when
asked--actually a follow-up question to something posed to you--to name
the most influential philosopher. He mentioned Jesus Christ, after which
he was and was criticized.
FORBES: Was he wrong to get criticized?
FORBES: Well, I believe that Jesus Christ is my lord and
savior. And Jesus did say, "Render under Caesar what is Caesar's, render
under God what is God." And my difference with George Bush is on what we
render under Caesar. We have a very real difference on the tax issue. And
I think that's going to be a critical issue coming up to the Iowa caucuses
and the New Hampshire primary.
He wants to leave the tax code as it is. I believe that
leadership requires getting rid of this horrific tax code. His people say
that's not realistic. They said Ronald Reagan wasn't realistic when he
wanted to win the Cold War. It's going to take leadership to get rid of
this horrific tax code.
I'm going to do it and provide that conservative leadership to
give people a real tax cut.
LIASSON: Do you think there's any difference between you and
George W. Bush on the issue of abortion? This year you're running as a
strong pro-life candidate, and George W. hasn't had too much to say about
that issue.
FORBES: Well, on the issue of that, I've made it very clear
that I'll only appoint justices and judges who believe in the sanctity of
life. I've made it clear, too, for months that I'll have a running mate
who believes in the principles of pro-life, who believes in the sanctity
of life. He's not willing to make that pledge.
So I've also put on the table a step-by-step approach to move
the issue forward. I want to take a positive approach, not a passive
approach. So I've made the pledge on those critical issues, he hasn't. He
hasn't and that's a real difference.
SNOW: Mr. Forbes, if you become president, you'd have to choose
the majority--three members of the Supreme Court, the majority of the
federal bench. Who's your favorite Supreme Court justice?
FORBES: Well, there are two right now: Justices Scalia and
Thomas. I believe they believe in the sanctity of the Constitution, the
sanctity of life. And while I don't agree with them on every decision, I
think they do approach it with integrity.
They don't engage in lawmaking from the bench. They are not
judicial activists. We've had too much of that in the last 30 or 40 years.
So they would be my models for justices and judges.
SNOW: What do you make of John McCain and Bill Bradley getting
together on campaign finance reform?
FORBES: Well, I thought that was a staged event. I wish the
other candidates had been invited so we could have had a real debate
instead of a commercial for a version of campaign, so-called campaign
finance reform. I thought they stepped over the bounds on that one and
made it very clear why I thought so.
And on that, I've made it very clear myself that I'm not taking
PAC money. The special interests don't like me, and I'm also not taking
taxpayer money. And so I think we could have had a very real event there,
a very real debate on what constitutes real campaign finance reform. I
believe in allowing individuals to give what they want to a campaign or a
candidate, as long as there's full and prompt disclosure.
LIASSON: You know, if you're going to beat George W. Bush for
the nomination, you are going to first have to get beyond John McCain,
who's surging in the polls in New Hampshire right now.
Where are the other weaknesses...?
FORBES: Well, I'm doing very well in Iowa. So, then that's the
first contest.
LIASSON: All right. Well what do you think are other weaknesses
in McCain's position? What about his feelings about pork barrel spending?
He says he's going to cut that out if he becomes president. Do you agree
with him?
FORBES: Oh, everyone wants to cut pork barrel spending out. And
I proposed getting rid of whole departments, like the Department of
Commerce and Department of Energy. But where we do have some differences
is in the area of campaign finance reform. I want real reform, not giving
more restrictions and regulations to Washington to determine who's allowed
to speak and who isn't. I think that's going in the opposite direction of
the First Amendment and true freedom of speech.
On health care, I want to return power to the patient, not give
it in the hands of the federal government.
FORBES: And that's where I think people are going to see the
real difference between John McCain and George Bush and Steve Forbes. I
believe in a real conservative platform: in returning power to the people,
whether it's getting rid of this tax code instead of tinkering with it,
putting patients in charge of health care instead of tinkering with it and
having the government have a huge role of telling us what doctors to go
to.
SNOW: Mr. Forbes, you've also suggested, if you were to become
president, you wouldn't reappoint Alan Greenspan if he continued, in your
words, to argue that economic growth is inflationary. So you get rid of
Alan Greenspan. Who would you put in?
FORBES: Well, I think there are a number of people who
understand that prosperity does not cause inflation. And what Mr.
Greenspan has done has had a devastating impact on agriculture, just as a
similar thrust did in the mid 1980s. There were people such as Jack Kemp,
McTier (PH), the head of the Dallas Federal Reserve would be someone I'd
look closely at. There are a number of people who understand true monetary
policy. And understand that the Federal Reserve cannot fine tune the
American economy.
SNOW: You've also been arguing that you would protect people's
privacy rights. Are you afraid that the government is snooping on citizens
right now?
FORBES: Oh, they're just getting warmed up. The Clinton-Gore
administration has proposals in to have all of your health care records
centralized in Washington, D.C. All your intimate details will be in the
hands of bureaucrats and political appointees. And they piously promise
that they'll have safeguards that those records won't be abused. This from
an administration that couldn't even protect our nuclear secrets. This
from a crowd that had 900 FBI files on their opponents miraculously appear
in the White House basement. They want to you believe it was immaculate
conception. I don't trust Gore and Clinton with my medical records and
neither should the American people.
SNOW: If this is so hot, how come none of your competitors are
picking up on it as an issue?
FORBES: I think it's called leadership. I'm making this an
issue and I think they're going to be following in my wake just as they
are in other issues such as taxes, health care, education, Social
Security.
SNOW: All right. Steve Forbes, thanks again for joining us this
morning from South Carolina.
FORBES: Nice to be with you. Thank you.
SNOW: When we return, war in Chechnya, atrocities in Kosovo and
now terrorists on American soil. What should the U.S. do? Find out after
this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SNOW: The Cold War may be over, but the world remains a
forbidding place: war in Chechnya, fresh atrocities in Kosovo, and now
fears that terrorists will celebrate Y2K with a big bang in the United
States.
Here to discuss these topics and to ruminate on the first
anniversary of Bill Clinton's impeachment are Senators Joseph Lieberman of
Connecticut and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
Also here Juan Williams of the Washington Post and FOX NEWS.
Senator Hagel, first let's talk about this terrorist threat.
How real is it?
HAGEL: Well, it's very real. And we, I think, have to
understand that as we move into this new, hopeful millennium that we lives
in a borderless world. Weapons of mass destruction have changed
that--terrorism, technology, the Internet.
And one of the policies that this new administration and
working with Congress is going to have to come up with as we move into the
next century is dealing with this in a policy way, in a national security
way, and an intelligence way. And this has moved so rapidly, the rate of
change is occurring at a phenomenal rate that our policies can't keep up
with it.
So it's real, it's dangerous, and we're going to have to
address it.
SNOW: Our policies can't keep up. Joe Lieberman, what can we do
pro-actively? What if--supposed Osama bin Laden is behind this or
involved? What do we do?
LIEBERMAN: Well, the best investment we can make is in real
good intelligence and old-fashioned espionage work. There's no substitute
for infiltrating a terrorist group to find out what they're about to do.
Beyond that, it is tough.
SNOW: Have we been too cheap on that front? Have we just
LIEBERMAN: Yes, I think we're beginning to turn that around
now. We've been too cheap, and for a period of years I think our
intelligence service, in some ways understandably, but I think as we look
back mistakenly, focused in on all the excitement of the high-technology,
electronic surveillance.
But--and that still helps in cases like Osama bin Laden and
other terrorist groups, but it's dangerous work. But, both in terms of
domestic terrorism and international terrorism, there's no substitute for
having somebody working for us inside one of those groups to tip us off.
Other than that, it is tough. We have large borders, they're
porous. And in a way that we haven't experienced much in our previous
history, this brings the conflict right home here to our home.
WILLIAMS: It sure does, but this week we saw a man arrested
trying to get into Seattle who had explosives in the back of his car. Do
you know anything, or government officials, senators of the United States,
being told anything about that threat? And are there other threats in the
United States that we should be aware of?
LIEBERMAN: Well, look, our government is constantly watching a
whole host of domestic and international terrorists groups. We're using
electronic means and I think now human intelligence to try to infiltrate,
penetrate them.
But--and thank God this individual was discovered coming over
the border.
This is very tough work because it doesn't take much to put the
people at risk. It doesn't threaten us the way the Soviet nuclear
forces
WILLIAMS: But they're no specific threats that either of know
of that we should be cautious about at the moment?
LIEBERMAN: No, I think we should have our guard up. I'm not--I
think we should allow the government to make announcements, but.
WILLIAMS: Well, for instance, Senator Hagel, are going to be in
the mall or in Seattle or Nebraska for that matter New Year's Eve, or are
you just going to stay away from any crowd because you're afraid of a
terrorist threat?
HAGEL: Well, I think Joe has it exactly right. Obviously, the
kind of world we live in and porous borders and the openness of our
society makes us so very vulnerable.
But I would add one thing to what you said and the question
that was asked, Tony: What can we do? I think this points up once again
how important it is for us to work very closely on a bilateral basis with
all the organizations that we belong to--United Nations, NATO, all the
different organizations--because it is through those relationships that we
trade intelligence and we develop things.
I would also say that the Russians, for example, have some of
the same challenges: Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism that we're going
into right now, probably in the next segment of your show. These are a
common denominator, mutual self-interest issues. All of civilized mankind
is going to have to deal with this together.
SNOW: Actually we're going to do Russia in this segment right
now.
Joe Lieberman, there is talk now about the Export-Import Bank
withholding $500 million in loans to a Russian oil concern largely because
we don't like the policy in Chechnya. The Russians are invading Chechnya.
Do you support withholding that loan?
LIEBERMAN: Yes, I do. Look, there are a lot of questions that
we don't have to go into here about the loan itself on economic grounds
and on grounds of how this company got the right to explore in these oil
fields.
LIEBERMAN: But something wrong is happening in Chechnya. The
Russians say that there they're responding to terrorism. In fact, there
were some terrorist acts, apparently, carried out by the Chetchians. But
to respond to it by indiscriminately bombing a civilian population is
wrong. And, you know, we're not going to go to war over it. Our national
interest is not as much on the line there to justify us to go to war. But
it's wrong, and we want to find a way to send a signal to the Russians. So
do the European's, interestingly, and I think this is one way to do it.
SNOW: Chuck Hagel, there are also reports the Russians have
signed joint, sort of defense development pacts with the Chinese and with
the Indians. Are we running a risk of having Russia once again become a
nuclear competitor?
HAGEL: Well, Russia is a nuclear competitor and I think we were
reminded of that, again, about a week ago when President Yeltsin reminded
all of us that maybe President Clinton has forgotten that we, too, possess
a rather significant nuclear arsenal. Again, I think what we have to do is
craft a policy that's direct, that's based on strength, it's based on
common self-interests.
SNOW: Which means what? OK, you given us the principles, what
does it mean? What are you going to do?
HAGEL: Well, I would start out with as the Russians were here,
Joe and I met with them a couple months ago with our ambassador,
Ambassador Collins (ph), in talking with many of the generals, let's work
from the mutual self-interests that we both have here in dealing with
Islamic fundamentalism, radicalism, terrorism. And from that, I think we
can find some common ground. Obviously, we're moving right toward the ABM
Treaty of 1972, how do we deal with that?
My goodness, the Russians understand this very well, and I
think if you start with those common denominators of special
self-interests, then you can craft a policy that deals with China and
deals with Russia.
We've got to understand something as well, that we are going to
have differences, and they're going to be wide and deep differences. But
I've always believed that the more you engage, the more you trade, that
must be precipitated, though, on a strong national defense and a strong
forward defense posture, and forward forces and good intelligence.
WILLIAMS: Let me shift again now to another world hot spot,
Kosovo. We've seen this week in Kosovo an American soldier killed by a
land mine. Two U.S.--two Americans who were involved with the NATO
peacekeeping forces were injured trying to break up a fight between
Serbians and ethnic Albanians. Has our policy in Kosovo failed despite
claims of victory after the 78-day campaign?
HAGEL: Well, Joe and I were very involved in this all year
long, like many of our colleagues. I think a couple of things on Kosovo.
One, it was always my feeling that we had to do something and deal with
this issue. I had differences with the administration, and I think that it
was a terrible mistake to take the land option off the table early on. I
think
WILLIAMS: You mean ground troops?
HAGEL: Ground troops, that precipitated essentially the
cleansing, and I think it was a mistake, and I think we're now seeing how
big a mistake that was. But to your point, what can we do, what should be
our policy? That's complicated because of all the ethnic and racial and
historical differences, but I think we the United States are going to
continue to work with our NATO-European allies here and there are a couple
of bright spots on this for me. One, is the European Union's stepping up
and talking more about their own foreign policy, national security
interests, 60,000 person rapid deployment force; understanding that they
must address some of these issues. And one other thing, they're tougher on
the Russians than we are.
SNOW: OK, we told viewers we're going to talk about the first
anniversary of the impeachment. So let's hit that.
Joe Lieberman, USA Today/Gallup poll released Friday indicates
that 50 percent of the American public now in retrospect favors
impeachment, not conviction, not removal, but impeachment as opposed to a
year ago when 63 percent opposed it. And 42 percent of the people in that
poll, say they favored removal of the president. What do you think is
going on?
LIEBERMAN: Well, it's fascinating, and of course, all I could
is speculate. I mean, there were a third of the people throughout all of
the impeachment process who wanted the president removed, so it is up
somewhat, maybe nine or ten percent. I'll take a guess based on what I've
heard as I've gone around Connecticut and when I travel outside and around
the country, which is that clearly during the whole process two-thirds of
the people didn't want Congress to remove President Clinton.
But the other attitude, the other conclusion they had, is that
what he did was wrong. You know, the relationship with Lewinsky, the way
he handled it. And maybe part of what's going on here, now that it's over
and we didn't remove the president. I think we were absolutely right
according to the Constitution in not doing that. That is, the public is in
some ways saying to us, don't think that we didn't think what the
president did was wrong.
LIEBERMAN: We think he's done a good job as president and of
course I agree that he made a bad mistake.
SNOW: In retrospect, do you regret that Democrats didn't call a
single witness at the trial?
LIEBERMAN: Well, of course I was a juror. I mean that's up to
them. I think the facts were known. The case was made and I think we did
ultimately make the right decision.
WILLIAMS: Senator Hagel, what about this notion that the
Clintons should pay for the legal fees that they accrued during the course
of that episode?
HAGEL: Well, if they pursue that objective, I think there will
be a significant amount of attention focused on that.
LIEBERMAN: We'll see.
HAGEL: Until we get a few more of the facts. As you know
there's precedent on both sides of this. Depending on, first of all, was
it an independent prosecutor that went after them? Or was it just the
regular run of the mill Justice Department effort? But I think until we
really find out what the facts are, if in fact they go forward. But I
would say that it's going to be pretty tough to get any reimbursement.
WILLIAMS: Senator Lieberman.
LIEBERMAN: Well, you know, I agree with what Chuck has said. Of
course my legal background tells me I shouldn't be issuing opinions
without knowing the law. There is a record here that Presidents Reagan and
Bush were reimbursed for legal expenses in Iran-contra and other officials
in previous administrations have been, too. It's not up to us. It's up
to--it's according to the law. So I leave the judgment to the President
and Mrs. Clinton as to whether they want to take this one on.
SNOW: One thing that you're competent is political
calculations, especially Senate races. Would this kind of petition hurt
Hillary Rodham Clinton running in New York?
LIEBERMAN: It depends on the case they'd make for it. First
reaction is that it would certainly raise questions and bring us back to
the controversy and the impeachment unless they had a real strong case for
it. And of course, it would reintroduce this into the campaign. So on that
basis, it probably would not help Mrs. Clinton's candidacy, which
otherwise I think is moving along quite well.
SNOW: Kick-save Lieberman.
(LAUGHTER)
Joe Lieberman and Chuck Hagel, thanks so much for joining us.
Up next, a curtain call for the godfather of American conservatism.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SNOW: William F. Buckley, Jr. called it a wrap this week after
33 years of hosting "Firing Line." He built the show on the premise that
guests could be interesting for a whole hour if properly grilled, and he
was right.
Buckley peppered guests
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUCKLEY: Are you are saying that communists invented patriotism
in Panama?
(UNKNOWN): No. No.
BUCKLEY: You really tried to say that.
(UNKNOWN): No.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SNOW: He popularized ``take-no-prisoners conservatism".
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(UNKNOWN): (inaudible) to burn a building, to cause one bit of
damage that might injure a human being. And you have no example of that.
BUCKLEY: "You condone arson?" Answer: "Yes."
(UNKNOWN): On necessary circumstances.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SNOW: Taking on all commerce, he displayed disarming curiosity
and charm
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT (?): What I'm saying is that in
the absence of an agreement both sides will continue the pattern they
followed for years.
BUCKLEY: Why? Why?
BUSH (?): Because of the madness that exists
BUCKLEY: Who's mad? I'm not mad.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SNOW: And from time to time, he showed his kinder, gentler
side
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUCKLEY: Say your prayers, stay healthy and thanks for sticking
with "Firing Line" all this time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SNOW: During 1429 shows and conversations with just about
everybody who was anybody in the public square, Buckley demonstrated that
one can be civil without being laodician (ph) or latitudinarian.
Right, Bill?
BUCKLEY: Nicely said.
SNOW: You were someone who's debated people for years. You look
at the Republican field right now, let's pick out George W. Bush. What
advice would you give him as a debater?
BUCKLEY: I think that what he has to trust is his own strategic
reactions. One has the feeling with him a little bit, that he, he feels
when asked a question I must give an answer that is preconditioned by sort
of authorized responses.
I have a feeling that there is a spontaneity there that we
don't experience. And I think that that's a pity. I don't think Americans
mind spontaneous expressions. You know, unless you reveal you're anti-PC.
SNOW: Well, speaking of which, what do you make of the Jesus
Christ answer that has occasioned so much discussion?
BUCKLEY: I thought it was interesting, and immediately
communicates a certain reverence, which I think is to be welcomed. But
Christ was not a philosopher. He is the source of philosophy: the source
of goodness and the source of contemplation. So as such, there is a formal
objection to his being named as such.
SNOW: So, in other words, you think that George W. Bush
thought, ``I can't think of any philosophers, so..." Is that your
speculation?
BUCKLEY: Probably what he thought of the question asked, "What
source do you mostly trust?" And the source is correctly Christ, if
you're a Christian. And--but a philosopher is really somebody who proceeds
to interpret as the theologians might what the primal source says.
And there--but you know Tony, in an exchange of that kind,
there simply isn't time to go on in pursuit of these distinctions. Having
them simply saying that people should be more extemporaneous, I reiterate
that. But you have to acknowledge that there is a, there's a time limit
that moves in on somebody who wants to do, you know, explication, rather
than simply blurting out answers.
SNOW: Let's go back and talk a little bit about "Firing
Line."
In 1965, you ran for mayor. You got thrashed. So you started a
television show. Why did you start "Firing Line"?
BUCKLEY: In 1966 the conservative movement was suffering a
great deal, from what seemed to be the definitive disaster of Senator
Goldwater's campaign. And a need was felt to say, `Well, conservatism is
still alive." And RKO thought that was a good idea. And Tom O'Neill (ph)
asked me to do 13 weeks, take on 13 liberals and exchange views.
BUCKLEY: At the end of 13 weeks there was renewal and so on.
There is never a moment at which liberal opinions and
conservative opinions are simply outmoded on the grounds that they are
through and disposed of. As you know, the world doesn't work that way. If
you didn't know that, why are you on the air so long? In fact, there is
infinite explication and adjustments and accommodations to current
challenges.
SNOW: Well, there were two hallmarks. Number one was the level
of debate, often provocative, but at the same time, as I mentioned in the
opening, civility. You're good friends with a number of people who
disagree with you. Why do you think that's so rare these days?
BUCKLEY: I think the mood of public exchange has gotten better
in the last 20 or 30 years. During the '60s people were extremely anxious
to demonstrate their wrath. Some people acted as though a test of their
integrity required them to be rude.
You may remember for a while the Black Panther movement, it was
strictly forbidden to smile, under no circumstances smile. That suggested
the differences you felt were trivial. We've moved a long way from that.
In the last 20 years or so I never had any guest that wanted to
snarl, and that's kind of a relief because I'm not going to snarl him
back.
SNOW: Well, let me show you a clip in a case where you had one
of the most famous people on the face of the earth who was caught off
guard. Let's just take a look at a clip.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MUHAMMAD ALI, FORMER HEAVYWEIGHT BOXING CHAMPION: Let me say
one thing to you. I forgot what I was going to say.
(LAUGHTER)
What were we talking about?
BUCKLEY: You were saying about why they went after you because
of the
ALI: Oh, right, right. Yes, thank you. I'm thinking ahead of
myself. See, you're a wise man. You make a man (inaudible)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SNOW: That's the highest praise you can get as a host, isn't
it?
BUCKLEY: You know, about a week later at a press conference he
said, "You know, I KO'd Buckley," and he was absolutely right.
SNOW: He was absolutely right in what sense?
BUCKLEY: Well, in a sense that Muhammad Ali was also a very
theatrical figure. Sometimes he had to knock a person out to prove the
point. But other times he was--he proved himself so advert, the notion he
was not intelligent enough to serve was so preposterous that it made it
very easy for him to say that the people down there in Kentucky who said
he was not bright enough to serve were really somebody protecting a
private property. He made that point undeniably during that hour.
SNOW: Who's the most surprising guest you ever had?
BUCKLEY: I think probably Groucho Marks. He was pretty
intimidating in that--he used a device of pretending to misunderstand. So
sometimes you would ask him a question, clearly intending a metaphor, and
he would reply as though he took it literally.
I introduced the moderator, I said, you know, he served as
chief aide to Justice Taft. So a few moments later he was talking--he was
wondering how it had been to act as attorney general for President Teddy
Roosevelt. He of course did that without a trace of a smile. Well, that
was one of his techniques.
It's probably wrong to mention Groucho Marks since I don't
specialize in comedians, but I did have him on because he was a
fascinating figure.
SNOW: Well, one of the other things you used often was humor. I
want to show another clip about how you tried to communicate with younger
generations. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUCKLEY: I did an interview with ``Playboy" because I decided
it was the only way to communicate my views to my son.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SNOW: Now my question is, does he now communicate to you
through the same medium?
BUCKLEY: He communicates with me through the Wall Street
Journal.
BUCKLEY: No, Christopher, who I suppose you know, is a
wonderfully literate and expressive young man. Not middle aged man. He
writes for the New Yorker and he edits his own magazine and writes books,
writes for The Wall Street Journal. So, he's kind of an omnipresence, a
welcome omnipresence.
SNOW: I want to switch to domestic politics. What do you make
of Hillary Rodham Clinton's run in New York? Do you think she can win?
BUCKLEY: That's like asking me, is New York healthy? And the
answer is I like to think. But then you began by saying that New York
thrashed me when I offered myself as mayor of New York.
(LAUGHTER)
I think, you know, when Moynihan said, look, we don't want--we
don't want her to run because she can't win, it was--he said that about
Gore. He was acknowledging the existence of the "Clinton effect." And
the Clinton effect irradiates--it's got a sort of toxicity. What you said
a few moments ago suggested that the people are catching on. They want
retrospectively to say we do think it was rather a grave thing that the
President did, you know, screwing a girl in the oval office with people
pattering about.
So there's a sense in which a lot of people in New York are
going to want to say I wish to dissociate myself from that entire mess.
And there's no way to do that so clinically as to distinguish between
Hillary and her husband. For that reason, I think she probably will go
down. It may be unfair to blame her for her husband's activities. On the
other hand, she served not only as a legal advocate for her husband but as
a partner.
SNOW: OK. Final question, do you think Bill Clinton will be as
effective in reinvigorating the conservative movement as Ronald Reagan
was?
BUCKLEY: Bill Clinton?
SNOW: Yes.
BUCKLEY: You mean causing the reinvigoration?
SNOW: Yes.
BUCKLEY: No, I don't. Because I think that the Carter
administration, unlike the Clinton administration, was more provocative
ideologically. I.e., Carter took steps that mobilized a sense of
resentment and a sense of fear. We don't at this point have the Soviet
menace which we had in 1980. And that menace ignited the special
importance of saying something to it that, in a way that Reagan did so
formidably and so eloquently. That I think is a difference between then
and now.
SNOW: OK, Bill Buckley, thanks so much for joining us and
congratulations on a splendid 33-year run.
BUCKLEY: Thanks. Nice to see you.
SNOW: Nice to see you.
We're going to take a break. When we return, our panel on the
latest in the Tripp-Lewinsky saga.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SNOW: And it's panel time for Juan Williams, Mara Liasson, and
Bill Sammon of The Washington Times and FOX NEWS. Brit Hume has the day
off.
Topic number one, we teased it right before the break. Linda
Tripp. It's interesting, Bill Sammon, it's the first anniversary of
impeachment, but the person who stands to lose the most in the court of
law, Linda Tripp.
SAMMON: Yes, you know, an argument could be made that she's the
least likable or least liked woman in America. And yet you also get the
sense that Americans have a feeling of fairness and fair play. And I don't
think they would sit still for her being the only person to go to prison.
Because I think the new polls are showing, as you mentioned earlier, that
people have a sense that, increasingly, that Clinton got away with
something. And so, I don't think they want to see Tripp punished either.
LIASSON: Well, let's talk about the polls, because that, I
think is one of the most interesting thing that happened. Of course, when
impeachment happened, the polls would say Clinton shouldn't be removed
from office, impeachment was the wrong thing. Now it's reverse. In
hindsight people think, oh, he should have been impeached. But, I think
what happened, what that says is that Congress did the right thing. They
impeached him, but they didn't remove him. So, I think the American people
feel in some way justice was done.
SNOW: Well, that would also indicate then that Republicans won
or are going to be relatively Scott free when it comes to the political
ramifications of impeachment. Correct?
WILLIAMS: Well, I don't think so. I think that, in fact
SNOW: Do you think they're going to be hurt or helped?
WILLIAMS: It depends on who you're talking about, what
constituency, but I think overwhelmingly, the American people think that
they were overboard, that there was an obsessiveness about it and lots of
people still interpret the whole Lewinsky scandal in terms of sex; that
the president's sex life was somehow made public and this was tawdry and
shouldn't be done and Ken Starr's a bad guy for probing as hard as he did.
I don't think that's the truth, but I think that's the spin
that still dominates in terms of public perception. And when we're talking
about Linda Tripp a moment ago and the notion that the American people
think, well maybe she shouldn't be punished, and all that. You know what,
I think the prosecutors in Maryland say it's illegal to tape someone's
conversation without their consent in that state, and it's going to come
before a jury. It's going to have to make a decision.
I think Linda Tripp's best hope is that the jury will say, you
know what, this is old news. It's someone else's dirty laundry, let's
throw this thing out.
SNOW: What do you make of the claim made by Tripp's defenders
that this is the first time anybody ever has been prosecuted for this and
it's a political railroad?
WILLIAMS: Could be political, but we don't know that. As we sit
here, we have no evidence that the prosecutor is operating on a political
basis. Of course that argument could be made, and there are lots of
prominent Democratic supporters of President Clinton in Maryland.
SAMMON: I think it's going to come down to a legal argument on
the immunity grant. I mean, she was granted immunity. The question is, did
it cover this or not, and I think
LIASSON: Well the judge has said no.
SAMMON: It's going to go through a lot of appeals. I think
ultimately she's going to have to go through this personal hell that she's
in for quite some time, many more months. She may not win until appeal.
But I think it will be similar to Oliver North eventually winning his
case.
SNOW: Yes, let's just explain for people who haven't been
watching what exactly is involved here. A judge decided that Linda Tripp's
immunity took place not when Ken Starr offered it on whatever it was,
January 15 or 16th of 1998. But instead, it took effect five or six weeks
later when the judge said, OK, it's a deal. So you've got that five or six
week gap, that's what they're going to argue about.
OK, let's move on to the next topic. I want to follow up a
little more on what Mara was talking about, Bill. This fascinating poll,
the Gallup poll in USA Today, that said that 50 percent of the American
people now support impeachment as opposed to--63 percent opposing it a
year ago.
SAMMON: Right.
SNOW: I've heard it described as buyer's remorse. Again, what
do you ?
SAMMON: Well, I agree with Juan. I think that with the passage
of time and the super charged environment cooling down, people are saying,
you know what, this really--there was something wrong here. Maybe they--I
don't disagree with you. Maybe they do feel that he should have been
impeached and not removed, but there is a tendency to rally around
institutions like the presidency when they're under assault, regardless of
who's in there.
And I think now in the calm--and you know what the other thing
is, the spin machines have gone quiet. You know, you don't have Carville
and his legions out there every day hammering on Starr. Now you have Starr
out there doing his publicity tour. He feels free to rehabilitate his
image, so I think it's shifting the other way.
SNOW: OK, let me twist it a little bit, because there's an
interesting legal controversy now. The White House may or may not ask for
reimbursement. And to be fair, officials in other administrations have
received reimbursement when they have been prosecuted by independent
counsels for acts that would not have otherwise been prosecuted.
LIASSON: Right, or they weren't indicted.
SNOW: does Monica still fall into that category?
LIASSON: Well I don't know about the Monica stuff. I think
there are so many aspects of the independent counsel's investigation:
there's Whitewater, there's Monica, there's a bunch, there's the travel
office. I mean there's so many other things that I think that if the White
House was careful about how--what they asked for reimbursement for, they
might have a strong case.
I think it would be--it will be very dangerous for them if they
make a very ambitious, bold claim to get all of their legal expenses back
for anything that Ken Starr investigated. I think that can cause a
backlash.
SNOW: Juan, what about the independent counsel arguing back,
``Look, we wouldn't have spent this money if (a) the president had told us
the truth up front, or (b) if they hadn't withheld documents?
WILLIAMS: I think that's a very strong argument.
LIASSON: Yes.
WILLIAMS: And I got to say that there's a big difference in my
mind between acts that you take as a sitting president regarding matters
of state, even if they are, you know, funding Iran-Contra, etc., and the
fact that you are involved in a personal dispute in which you
intentionally obstruct justice. And I think that--and even according to
the judge in Arkansas, lie.
So I think it's, you know, I think it would just kind of stir
the pot for Clinton. I think it's better for him to go to a personal fund.
LIASSON: If he asks for Monica. The Whitewater thing I think he
may be, he might have a case.
SAMMON: Yes, I think it's fair if you're not indicted on
Whitewater.
LIASSON: I think Monica is very dangerous. Yes, yes.
SAMMON: I think he can make the argument, "Can I get my money
back?" But with the Lewinsky stuff, for seven months he lied to the
American people by his own admission, and dragged out his own legal bills.
Now the taxpayers are supposed to foot the bill?
SNOW: Well Juan, let me as the question I asked of Joe
Lieberman. How will this affect Hillary's Senate campaign? Could this hurt
her if they go and say, give us some money back?
WILLIAMS: Well, I don't think it will have too much direct
impact, because I think Hillary will separate herself out. And Hillary, I
think part of the reason of her running in New York and the success so far
it's been having--I don't think she's going to win, but the success it's
been having to a limited degree, is that in fact, she's portrayed as the
victim of this whole drama.
So if you start the drama again, maybe people will say, "Poor
Hillary, she's having to tolerate the aftermath of all this nonsense."
SNOW: You think so?
LIASSON: Well, I don't know. It seems like everything the
president does causes trouble for Hillary in New York. I mean, if I think
Whitewater is something she was involved with. The billing records was
something she was involved with, that could hurt her. On the other hand,
the president is less involved with that directly.
I think on Monica, yes, she's a victim. I think it's going to
be difficult to parse all these things out.
SNOW: Okay, you've talked about distancing campaigns, Juan.
There was a fascinating colloquy this week in one of the debates. A woman
approached Al Gore in New Hampshire and asked a question about Juanita
Broaddrick, whom you may recall, has alleged that Bill Clinton raped her
many years ago. Here's Al Gore responding to the question.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GORE: I really don't.
REPORTER: Did you see the interview?
GORE: No, I didn't see the interview. No.
REPORTER: I'm very surprised that you didn't watch the
interview.
GORE: Well, what show was it on?
REPORTER: ABC, I believe.
GORE: Yes, I didn't see it. There have been so many personal
allegations and such a non-stop series of attacks. I guess I'm like a lot
of people in that I think that enough is enough. I do
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SAMMON: Painful to watch. I mean the guy--how can you say--how
can you sit there with a straight face and say, ``I didn't see that
particular--what show was that on?" as if it were just one of the routine
bimbo eruptions. This is a case of alleged rape.
SNOW: OK. But what's he supposed to say about it?
WILLIAMS: Yes.
SAMMON: Well, he could come up with a more coherent answer than
that. I mean--and you know, when George W. Bush flunks the pop quiz on
foreign leaders, the press goes ballistic for two weeks. When Gore flunks
the pop quiz on Juanita Broaddrick, it really doesn't get much play.
LIASSON: Well, what is the correct answer? I still am not quite
sure. I mean, President Clinton in all of his personal transgressions is
Al Gore's cross to bear. I mean he isn't responsible for his behavior. And
he said over and over again that he felt what President Clinton did, with
Monica Lewinsky at least, was wrong and inexcusable. And I think he's
going to be haunted by this for the rest of the campaign.
WILLIAMS: In fact, Al Gore went to extremes to say, `Look, his
behavior disappointed me at times. But I'm going to run on my record. And
I want to you judge me on my behavior if you're going to look at character
issues."
I do think it was an impossible question to answer for Al Gore
and he didn't execute well because I don't know what you can do. It's
just
LIASSON: He either shouldn't have answered it at all or he
should have had a better answer.
WILLIAMS: Well, but the right--you know, with--the criticism
coming from the Republicans this week was, gee, rape isn't a mistake. You
know, it's not just something you just pass off and that Al Gore was kind
of making little of it. If that's the case, they have a point. But I don't
know that anyone's not going to vote for Al Gore because of it.
LIASSON: It's still just an allegation. I mean, it's the worst
of all of them, but it's still just an allegation.
SAMMON: It's another reminder of the taint by association, you
know, Clinton fatigue and the
WILLIAMS: I think that's right.
SAMMON: and the Clinton exhaustion and the Clinton
revulsion that Gore has to deal with every day.
SNOW: OK, Bill Sammon, Mara Liasson, Juan Williams, thanks.
That's all the time we have for the panel. Now it is time to
preview the NFL on FOX with our buddy James Brown.
Good morning, J.B.
BROWN: And good morning, Tony, as well to Bill, Mara and Juan.
Coming up later on FOX NFL SUNDAY, we'll profile the two
hottest quarterbacks in the NFL: Payton Manning and Curt Warner (ph).
Jimmy Kimmel (ph) has picks Christmas style.
And finally, John Madden and Matt Millin (ph) join us here in
the studio. Actually they'll be out in the field, but we'll conduct a
lively playoff discussion: who's good, who's not so good and who will
surprise.
We'll give you all the scoop. All of that and more coming up
later on FOX NFL SUNDAY.
Tony Snow, back to you, buddy.
SNOW: And you get to play Santa--right, J.B.?
BROWN: As always.
SNOW: Thanks, buddy.
When we return we'll have my parting thoughts on the holidays.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SNOW: Less than a week away from Christmas Day, FOX MOVIETONE
NEWS shows us how President-elect Dwight Eisenhower spent Christmas with
his family.
(VIDEO CLIP OF FOX MOVIETONE NEWS)
SNOW: A lot of things changed since that FOX MOVIETONE NEWS
clip was first shot. Opinion elites in this country used to revere
religion; now they seem to fear it. The working press went bonkers after
George W. Bush dare mentioned the J-word, Jesus, in a presidential debate.
Journalists reacted as if the Texas governor were auditioning for
Ayatollah. Well, before hyperventilating further reporters might want to
look around. We're in the heart of the holy season for western religions:
a week past Hanukkah, a week before Christmas and a week into Ramadan.
Great religions adore not through force but inspirational power. They
satisfy our hunger for divinity in a world filled with hardship and sin.
To appropriate an American political slogan, they speak truth to power.
Despite predictions of the contrary, God has outlived
communism, quantum physics and Jimmy Swaggart. More than half the people
in this country attend religious services regularly and at this time of
year, most of us give special thanks for the blessings of life, the
mysteries of love and the uplifting power of selfless good deeds.
And in that spirit, I'd like to wish everyone a happy and
blessed holiday season. That's it for today. Thanks for joining us. Have a
great week. Remember to start your Sundays right here on FOX NEWS SUNDAY.
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I of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 2000 Responsive Database Services, Inc.
Contemporary Women's Issues
Copyright 2000 The Lesbian Review of Books
Lesbian Review of Books
Winter 2000
SECTION: Vol. 6, No. 2; Pg. 10; ISSN: 1077-5684
CWI-ACC-NO: 02220468
LENGTH: 1492 words
HEADLINE: Before We Are Truly Equal
BYLINE: Crocamo, Romilda
BOOK-TITLE: Freedom to Differ: The Shaping of the Gay and Lesbian Struggle
for
Civil Rights
BOOK-AUTHOR: Miller, Diane Helene
HIGHLIGHT:
Book review presents the political and military opposition faced by
Roberta
Achtenberg and Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer because of their sexual
preference
BODY:
by Romilda Crocamo
Freedom to Differ: The Shaping of the Gay and Lesbian Struggle for Civil
Rights by Diane Helene Miller. New York: New York University Press, 1998,
195
pp., $55.00 cloth, ISBN 0-8147-5595-X. $18.50 paper, ISBN 0-8147-5596-8.
"Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much.
That
would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right
to
differ as to things that touch the heart of existing order." United States
Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, dissenting in Bowers V. Hardwick.
And so begins Diane Miller's insightful book Freedom to Differ: The
Shaping
of the Gay and Lesbian Struggle for Civil Rights. Miller chronicles and
analyzes
the events that transpired in the lives of two extraordinary women:
Roberta
Achtenberg and Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer--both heroic figures prior
to
their very public battles. Miller addresses the continued discrimination
faced
by lesbians and gay men by extrapolating from the experiences of these
two women
in the political and military arenas. Seemingly about language and
images, the
major contribution of Freedom to Differ is in its examination of the
silences
and anonymity that shadow the lives of those of us who are gay in
twentieth-century America.
For those who are not familiar with Roberta Achtenberg's struggle with
the
United States Senate during her confirmation as Assistant Director of
Housing
and Urban Development (HUD) or Margarethe Cammermeyer's challenge to her
removal
from the National Guard after her disclosure of her sexual preferences,
Freedom
to Differ is extremely informative. For those who want a better
understanding of
what gay men and lesbians face in every aspect of their public lives,
Freedom to
Differ is a must read.
Miller, Director of the Writing and Communication Center at East
Tennessee
State University, uses rhetorical analysis that allows for a more
expansive
examination of "how particular language and images function in a given
context
and for, a designated audience" (6). Unlike a traditional legal analysis,
the
methodology adopted by Miller encompasses various interdisciplinary
viewpoints
of civil rights in the political and military arenas.
Other than organized religion, the political and military systems are
the two
subcultures that overtly and unabashedly are dominated by heterosexual
white
men. One can question the choice of these two systems as representing the
primary arenas of the gay civil rights movement. An argument can be made
that
the primary arenas where gay men and lesbians are making the most
significant
strides are rooted in the courts and the private corporate sectors.
However,
Miller reminds us of Ruthann Robson's critique that "the law is a limited
remedy
for our marginalization" (Robson, 1990). Whatever the arena, the struggle
of
lesbians and gay men for equal rights and protections occupies center
stage.
Miller's book is both timely and instructive.
photo omitted
The case study of Roberta Achtenberg involves the opposition she faced
when
President Bill Clinton nominated her for the position of Assistant
Director of
HUD. As the first openly gay nominee for such a high-level government
post, Ms.
Achtenberg incurred the wrath of political and social conservatives. Led
by
Senator Jesse Helms, these right-wing conservatives focused their
opposition to
her appointment not on her qualifications but rather on her identity as a
lesbian. Prior to her position as Assistant Director at HUD, Achtenberg
had been
elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (city council) and
worked as a
civil rights attorney, held a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School, and
was
Dean of the New College of California School of Law--clearly and
objectively
impressive credentials brought to the Beltway chambers. Not so for
Senator Helms
and his crusaders. They were fervent in their opposition to her
confirmation.
Their argument was that her open lesbian lifiestyle not only made her
uniquely
unqualified for the position but was also a threat to American values.
What is most frightful is the language used by her opponents and the
general
acceptance that it received. "That damned lesbian," Senator Helms was
quoted as
saying. (To Senator Helms, we all should be so damned.) Senator Helms
characterized the homosexual lifestyle, and Roberta Achtenberg as a
representative of that lifestyle, as perverse, immoral, and insidious.
Ultimately, the "Achtenberg debate encompasses a broad array of issues
surrounding gay and lesbian rights, offering a sometimes startling
insight into
the continuing acceptability of homophobic expression in the political
realm"
(87). The same can be said for the acceptability of homophobic expression
in the
general society.
Margarethe Cammermeyer's combat with the U.S. military is the second
case
study. Readers may be more familiar with part of her story from the 1998
made-for-television movie produced by Barbara Streisand and Glenn Close,
who
also portrayed the colonel in the film. Cammermeyer served in the
National Guard
for twenty-seven years. Like the challenge faced by Achtenberg in the U.
S.
Senate, Cammermeyer, after a hearing before the military board, was
removed from
the military because she truthfully revealed that she was a lesbian,
ironically
during the course of a security clearance statement made as a requirement
to her
enrollment in the War College. Cammermeyer was attempting to achieve the
rank of
chief nurse of the National Guard. Interestingly, "the ban on gays in the
military has not always existed, nor has such a ban been universal among
nations
past or present" (Korb, 1994).
Truth, it seems, is not important to the U.S. military, nor are valor
and
loyalty. Rather it seems that her acknowledgment of her sexual
preferences would
interfere with her ability to perform her job. Of course, her sexual
preferences
didn't seem to interfere with her job performance during her tour of duty
in
Vietnam or when she was awarded the Bronze Star.
Miller encapsulates the meaning of the Cammermeyer case when she
writes, "The
issue that Cammermeyer's case brings to the fore is one that has for
centuries
engaged scholars of communication, law, philosophy, psychology, and
linguistics:
What does speech do? What is it that silence contains and speech
releases?"
(108).
Neither woman would have met with such controversies if they had
remained
silent. The consequences of these types of messages are what make Freedom
to
Differ a most compelling text. The powers opposing the advancement of
these two
women and the means by which they vocalized their opposition are a
reflection of
our society. Those critical or hateful of gay men and lesbians speak
loudly and
clearly. On the other hand, gays and lesbians tend to live out their
lives under
the veil of silence. Our collective silence is deafening.
By looking at language and images, Diane Miller shows how silence is an
equal
force in continuing the discrimination faced by gays and lesbians
regardless of
race, economic, social, or educational status. How many of us know
elementary
and secondary schoolteachers who hide their sexual preferences for fear of
losing their jobs? Or the gay attorney who refuses to entertain the idea
of
running for a judicial position for fear that her lifestyle will be
exposed? As
a group gay men and women have mastered the art of silence: responding to
specific questions with vague generalities avoiding using the proper name
of
their lovers and attending social functions without their companions.
Change is
happening, but, as Diane Miller reveals, it is far from complete. The road
before us is long and arduous. We must choose both as individuals and as a
collective whether we are willing to break the silences and raise our
voices.
Miller puts it more eloquently as she concludes Freedom to Differ:
We must identify bigotry and hatred, not lesbian and gay
self-expression or
activism, as villains, models of unacceptable conduct that requires
regulation
and expulsion. We must expose prejudice and discrimination as the true
examples
of offensive and reprehensible acts. Finally, we must 'identify the
instilling
of hatred and fear of difference as the real dangers that threaten to
corrupt
our children's hearts and minds. (157)
Freedom to Differ is a thoughtful and thorough analysis of language and
images that gay men and lesbians must overcome before we are truly equal.
The
ultimate value of this book will be understood more clearly when the
analysis is
applied to individual situations that are less public. To that end we must
listen and pay close attention to what we see and what we do not see and
what we
hear and what we do not hear. Through it all, Roberta Achtenberg and
Margarethe
Cammermeyer dared to be different and touched the heart of the existing
order.
Romilda Crocamo practices law in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Copyright 2000 The Lesbian Review of Books
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
TYPE: Journal; Book Review; Fulltext
JOURNAL-CODE: LESBREVB
LOAD-DATE: December 17, 1999
2 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
December 19, 1999, Sunday, Home Edition
SECTION: Local News; Pg. 10D
LENGTH: 225 words
HEADLINE: Customs critics rally at airport;
Demonstrators allege racial bias in searches
BYLINE: Jingle Davis, Staff
SOURCE: AJC
BODY:
About 20 protesters who claim U.S. Customs inspectors unfairly target
minorities
marched, waved handmade signs and sang civil rights songs Saturday outside
Hartsfield International Airport.
"African-Americans across the country are being subjected to it," said
Atlanta minister Markel Hutchins, president of the National Youth
Connection.
He called for the immediate resignation of customs Commissioner Raymond
Kelly
and demanded the agency pay workers' compensation to Cathy Harris, an
Atlanta
customs inspector for 21 years who said she was fired for being a
whistle-blower.
Harris, who is appealing her termination, said blacks and Hispanics are
searched by customs inspectors in disproportionate numbers. She said she
has
suffered stress-related problems since being fired. Customs officials
could not
be reached for comment.
Protest leaders included John Evans, president of the DeKalb NAACP; Joe
Beasley, regional director of the Rainbow/Push Coalition; and Dr. Curtis
Thrasher Jr., who chairs the National Coalition for Affirmative Action.
"This
(protest) will be a protracted effort," Beasley said.
Hutchins said protesters in the future may revive tactics used during
the
1960s if the agency does not meet their demands. "We'll close down the
airport.
We'll lie down in the street and let them take us to jail," he said.
LOAD-DATE: December 19, 1999
3 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 Times Mirror Company
Los Angeles Times
December 19, 1999, Sunday, Home Edition
SECTION: Travel; Part L; Page 1; Travel Desk
LENGTH: 2353 words
HEADLINE: ROMANCING THE STORM;
IN BRITISH COLUMBIA, AWASH IN CREATURE COMFORTS AT AN ELEGANT INN ON THE
LIP OF
THE WINTER-WILD PACIFIC.
BYLINE: CARL DUNCAN, Carl Duncan is a freelance writer based in Salt Spring
Island,, Canada
DATELINE: TOFINO, Canada
BODY:
It really was a dark and stormy night.
But earlier in the day we had only the promise of a storm as we
approached
the west coast of British Columbia's Vancouver Island. The marine
forecast on
our car radio was encouraging: southeast gales, 45 knots to storm force
55, with
occasional gusts to hurricane force. Waves 15 to 18 feet and rising.
Wicked
weather, you might think.
Not at all. It is perfect weather for the seriously relaxing spectator
sport
of storm-watching. And we would experience it at a premier venue, a
luxurious
inn built expressly to exploit the natural wonder of Pacific storms'
landfall on
the North American continent.
After the four-hour drive from our home off the island's southeast
coast, we
emerged from the last tunnel of evergreens onto the access road for Long
Beach.
In front of us was a dramatic, 10-mile-long expanse of sand, as level as
a stage
and rippled like corduroy from the last tide. Now the tide had turned, and
thundering waves were moving toward shore. Ahead of them came sheets of
water
skimming across a hundred yards of flat beach before seeping into the
sand,
leaving only a line of sea foam.
For all the drama out on the water, the beach was surprisingly serene
and
comfortable. The windy tempest offshore was blocked by headlands and held
aloft
by a shield of ridge-top trees.
Under the moody, overcast November sky and drifts of sea mist, my
partner,
Maria, and I entered a storm-watcher's dream.
The wild, sparsely populated Pacific Rim region of Vancouver Island is
staggeringly beautiful, a clean and green stretch of coast known for its
big
beaches, big trees and big winter storms. In recent years, growing
numbers of
city folk have discovered what the year-round residents have long known:
A good,
thrashing storm is invigorating, and life's little cares seem to melt
away in
the face of nature's towering rage.
It helps to experience the storm in a place like the rustically elegant
and
romantic Wickaninnish Inn, which perches on a shelf of rocks on Chesterman
Beach, a few miles south of the town of Tofino.
Opened in 1996, the inn was designed from the bottom up to deliver
tranquillity amid tempest. All of the 46 rooms have floor-to-ceiling
windows and private balconies facing the ocean. The decor runs to natural fiber and
recycled
wood. There are gas-log fireplaces and luxuriously appointed
bathrooms--some
with panoramic windows for storm-watching from the comfort of a king-size
tub.
And if all this plus long walks and lazy lounging isn't relaxing enough,
there is a full-service spa.
The overall effect of bringing the outside in is most dramatic in the
inn's
window-walled Pointe Restaurant, which juts over the rocks, prow-like,
into the
teeth of the storm.
Despite being at the edge of the wilderness, we found the Pointe's
service
and cuisine to be as good as what you'd expect in a major city. And not a
bit
stuffy--definitely West Coast casual.
Dinner was a bit pricey for our budget--about $ 120 with a good British
Columbia wine--so we dined there just once during our three-night stay.
The inn boasts that all the ingredients are fresh and in season, and
from
small, organic suppliers on the island, some of them local.
To sample as much as we could, we began with a "taster tray" of
appetizers:
ostrich loin carpaccio with sour cherry relish and pumpkin seed oil;
scallops
wrapped in wild boar prosciutto; fried goat cheese (the local
veterinarian's
avocation is cheese-making); and strips of honey-smoked Tofino salmon.
For the
main course, Maria had the catch of the day (a buttery sea bass). I chose
the
more challenging wild mushroom-crusted halibut with blackberry reduction
sauce.
We barely had room for sorbet for dessert.
Only the tide disappointed, not putting on much of a show for our 7:30
seating. I was hoping to hear the waves breaking beneath the dining room
floor.
Sometimes, when the winter tides--at 10 feet, the highest of the
year--are up,
the sound is piped in from a microphone positioned near the wine cellar.
The storm that was approaching all day arrived during the night, and we
were
lulled to sleep by the rhythm of the pounding surf, which every once in a
while
was punctuated by the whoop-whoop and crash of a particularly powerful
wave.
Next morning was windy, wet and relatively warm, in the low 50s (the
average
is a mild 43 degrees throughout the winter). We dressed in sweaters and
rainproof jackets and met Bill McIntyre, of Long Beach Nature Tour Co.,
for an
interpretive walk though the rain forest. McIntyre was for 23 years the
chief
naturalist for the Pacific Rim National Park (of which Long Beach is a
part),
and he has a passion for the local environment and for winter storms.
As we entered the dense growth, the stormy weather was left behind.
Inside it
was dry and still enough to hold a lighted candle.
As we walked, McIntyre explained the structure of the local weather: In
the
winter, low-pressure systems out on the Pacific spin off one storm after
another. "Sometimes they arrive only hours apart," he said. "You can be
in the
teeth of the storm at noon and have blue skies at 4, in time for a
beautiful
sunset."
In the first section of the trail, mossy cedar slabs formed a corrugated
surface across a wooded bog. This was part of the old supply trail between
Tofino, at the north end of Long Beach, and its nearest neighbor,
Ucluelet, 21
miles south. The beach road now joins the two, but north of Tofino the
shore is
a craggy wilderness, reachable only by boat or floatplane.
It was an easy half-hour walk through cedars and hemlocks to where
wooden
stairs followed a forest stream descending to the sheltered sands of
Florencia
Bay. As we got closer to the open beach, gusts of warm wind puffed up the
trail.
"That's the southeast winds," McIntyre said, which come from the
counterclockwise pattern of winter storms off the British Columbia coast.
"They
bring the storms, but they also bring the warmth, as well as the rains.
We've
got the warmest winter temperatures of anywhere in Canada. But we also
get 10
feet of rain per year," perfect for the rain forest.
Down on the beach, we could see the surf crashing out on the headland,
tossing mist into the tops of the trees, but the beach, like the forest,
was
oddly calm. "The southeast winds don't blow against the shoreline,"
McIntyre
explained. "They blow almost parallel to it." The forest and the headlands
shelter the sands even further.
"It's a far different story out on the water," McIntyre went on. The
southerly set of the Japan Current encountering the opposing winds sets
up huge,
steep waves. Since 1803 at least 240 ships have foundered along this
coast,
known the world over as the "Graveyard of the Pacific." To see the
primary storm
waves up close, we took a fork in the trail over to Half Moon Bay and Wya
Point.
We descended a boardwalk that zigzagged down through Sitka spruce. These
trees thrive in the salt- and magnesium-rich environment next to the sea,
and
their ranks protect the cedars and hemlocks behind. Since the tall Sitka
take
the brunt of the storm, many list crazily on the ridge that slopes to the
beach.
"A drunken forest," McIntyre called it.
Out on Wya Point we found a safe spot from which to watch the waves.
"Wow,
awesome!" McIntyre cried as a powerful Pacific swell crested and broke on
the
rocks. It's hard to judge wave size in such an open setting, but McIntyre
has
been doing it for years. "That's 40, 50 feet in height out there," he
said. Even
with the sky overcast, the peaks of the waves were an arresting electric
blue.
When Maria mentioned it, McIntyre explained that the color was from
diatoms, a
form of algae.
The wind whistled over our heads like vortices from a landing 747, not
quite
reaching us. In little rocky nooks below us, pillows of cappuccino-like
sea foam
piled up 3 and 4 feet thick. It might look like pollution to some, but
it's a
perfectly natural phenomenon.
Sitting on sheltered rocks, we relaxed and enjoyed the picnic lunch we'd
brought from the inn.
After a short but stunning walk to the Amphitrite Point lighthouse, we
said
goodbye to McIntyre and returned to the inn and an afternoon of indolence.
That evening, we were reading before the fireplace in our room when the
lights flickered and went out (not just here, we discovered later, but
all over
Tofino). In the glow of the fire, it was only a pleasant shift in
ambience, not
an inconvenience. When the lights came back 10 minutes later, we switched
them
off. Once again the sounds of the surf worked their somnolent magic.
An odd silence woke me around 3 a.m. I walked out onto the balcony and
was
startled to see a sky full of stars above the protective eye of the
Lennard
Island lighthouse. The storm had passed.
Midmorning, in case any traces of stress might yet reside in our bodies,
Maria and I treated ourselves to a session in the inn's Ancient Cedars
Spa.
Maria chose to get covered in seaweed, thoroughly massaged and
acupressured, and
soaked in a hydrotherapy tub.
I was persuaded to try something called a hot stone massage, which
turned out
to be a much less searing ordeal than it sounds. Smooth basalt stones,
heated to
140 degrees and lubricated with oils, were massaged into my body. At an
early
point in the process my initial reluctance disappeared and deep
relaxation set
in.
Thus professionally noodled out, we drove into Tofino, about five
minutes up
the road. The picturesque, pocket-sized fishing village sits at the end
of a
peninsula that juts into the calm, clean waters of Clayoquot Sound. With
forested islands everywhere, every inch of the town looks out on a
majestic
expanse of nature.
For a place with a year-round population of just 1,100, Tofino has an
impressive selection of fishing and charter boats, whale-watching
Zodiacs, art
galleries, gift shops, bookstores, cute churches, working docks, coffee
shops,
cafes, restaurants, B&Bs and pubs (two, anyway). They are here to serve
the high
season (between Easter and Canadian Thanksgiving, which comes in early
October),
running full tilt catering to the 800,000 people who visit the area each
year.
Last month, it was just us and the locals: fishermen, crabbers, surfers,
artists, unemployed loggers, environmentalists. It was Tofino at its
best, a
character-full little place that sits at the end of the road, not on the
way to
anywhere.
Originally Tofino was just a logging and fishing center, but it started
to
change in the 1960s. That's when the hippies arrived, drawn to the
back-to-nature possibilities of the island wilderness. And then came the
American draft dodgers. These folks didn't stay in town but moved out to
the
islands and points farther north, coming in only for supplies. In time,
however,
married with children, they moved back to Tofino to be closer to schools
and
medical services. As they became part of the community, the town changed,
becoming more globally conscious.
Also, the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve was set aside in 1970 "to
protect
a nationally significant coastal environment." The park generated more
interest
in the area, and tourism took off. Today aquaculture (salmon, oysters,
scallops,
mussels) and eco-tourism have replaced logging as Tofino's prime source of
income.
Visitors come for the beaches and fishing (halibut and salmon), and to
see
the trees. Clayoquot Sound, around Tofino, contains the largest stand of
old-growth temperate rain forest left in North America. Some of these
trees are
1,000 years old.
Walking around Tofino, we got hungry for plain old cheeseburgers and
fries.
The Dockside Marine Pub looked like a good bet, built over the calm water
of the
sound near the fishing docks. Our view through the big porthole-shaped
windows
was of a cluster of tiny, tree-topped islands; on the nearest one, a
lovely old
wooden ship had been hauled ashore and turned into a quaint shelter.
On our last morning, when it was time for us to leave, we made a final
leisurely circuit of Chesterman Beach, just outside the inn. The tide was
nearly
out, and half a dozen surfers and an intrepid kayaking duo were testing
the
water. Farther along, we found the tide starting to uncover a bridge of
sand
reaching a quarter of a mile out to small but inviting Frank Island.
Our timing couldn't have been better. We walked out and explored the
island's
rocky coves and tidal pools, keeping a careful eye on the sand link
behind us.
The tide rises quickly here, and we didn't want to be stranded. If we had
to be
left high and dry somewhere, let it be within the civilized comforts of
the
Wickaninnish Inn.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
GUIDEBOOK
Storm-Watching on Vancouver Island
Getting there: Alaska and Canadian airlines fly from Los Angeles to
Victoria,
B.C., with a change of planes in Vancouver. Round-trip fares start at $
254.
Tofino is a five-hour drive from Victoria.
When to go: Storm season is November through February. Peak tourist
season
runs from June I through October. Most hotels, inns, B&Bs and campgrounds
operate near capacity then, so reservations are advised.
Where to stay: The storm-watching package at the Wickaninnish Inn,
through
Feb. 28 (holidays excluded), is about $ 380 to $ 500 per couple; extra
nights
from $ 150. The price includes two nights' accommodations and a guided
nature
tour. Similar nature packages will run in spring. Telephone (800) 333-
4604,
(250) 725-3100.
The Web site for the inn, a Relais & Cha^teaux member, has a wealth of
information, including real-time satellite views of the weather:
http://www.
wickinn .com.
The Tofino area has dozens of beachside and village B&Bs, hotels and
inns, as
well as cabins on islands in Clayoquot Sound. For a list and more
information
about the area, see the Tofino Chamber of Commerce Web site,
http://www.island.net/tofino/index.htm.
For more information: Tofino Travel InfoCentre, tel. (250) 725-3414.
Canadian Tourism Commission, 550 S. Hope St., 9th Floor, Los Angeles, CA
90071; tel. (213) 346-2700, Internet http://www.canadatourism.com.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: (2 photos) Spectacular winter waves, top, draw weather
lovers to
western Vancouver Island, where the Wickaninnish Inn, above, offers storm-
watching as a sumptuous indoor sport. PHOTOGRAPHER: CARL DUNCAN PHOTO: An
old-growth forest of Sitka spruce, cedar and hemlock fringes the shore of
Pacific Rim National Park, where storms make for lively beachcombing.
PHOTOGRAPHER: CARL DUNCAN PHOTO: Naturalist Bill McIntyre takes guests
deep
inside protected rain forest. PHOTOGRAPHER: CARL DUNCAN PHOTO: Tofino, a
tidy
town at the end of the beach road, has shifted from logging to
nature-friendly
pursuits. PHOTO: Incoming weather is the backdrop at Wickaninnish Inn's
restaurant. PHOTOGRAPHER: CARL DUNCAN PHOTO: Big waves, little wind
bring out
winter surfers on sheltered Long Beach. PHOTOGRAPHER: CARL DUNCAN PHOTO:
"The
Wick" stands on rocks just beyond reach of winter's high tide.
PHOTOGRAPHER:
CARL DUNCAN GRAPHIC-MAP: (no caption), Los Angeles Times
LANGUAGE: English
LOAD-DATE: December 19, 1999
4 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 Times Mirror Company
Los Angeles Times
December 19, 1999, Sunday, Valley Edition
SECTION: Metro; Part B; Page 18; Zones Desk
LENGTH: 497 words
HEADLINE: SETTLEMENT FOR A COMMUNITY
BODY:
In the San Fernando Valley, 1999 is likely to be remembered best for its
worst day.
The Valley--the world--was stunned by the Aug. 10 shooting rampage that
wounded a receptionist, a teenage counselor and three young boys at the
North
Valley Jewish Community Center and killed a Filipino American mail
carrier.
Buford O. Furrow Jr., a self-proclaimed white supremacist, has been
charged
with murder and with violating all six victims' civil rights. He
reportedly told
FBI agents after surrendering that he wanted to send a "wake-up call to
America
to kill Jews."
There was some bittersweet symmetry, then, in a ceremony at another
Valley
Jewish Center last Sunday, four months after the August shootings.
The dedication of the Gerry and George Gregory and Family Gymnasium at
the
West Valley Jewish Community Center closes the year out with a remarkable
story
of justice and reconciliation.
The 12,000-square-foot gymnasium is the centerpiece of the new,
state-of-the-art Ferne Milken Youth & Sports Complex in West Hills,
funded by
the Jewish Federation and by donors such as the Milken Family Foundation.
At Sunday's dedication, speakers emphasized how the complex reinforces
the
importance of community and the need for a children's haven--concerns
that are
more on the forefront than ever since the August shootings.
The new gym was financed by George and Gerry Gregory's $ 268,000
donation to
the Jewish Federation.
At 82, George Gregory, a retired Encino corporate executive, holds a
special
appreciation for the role sports play in a community. As a teenager in
Nazi
Germany, he was prohibited from playing sports with other teenagers
because he
is Jewish.
But there's even more to his story.
The sum he donated came from a settlement with a conglomerate that now
owns
the company that seized control of his father's metal business when the
Nazis
came to power.
In an extraordinary quest, documented in an article in The Times of
Dec. 11,
Gregory set about persuading the company to voluntarily reimburse him for
the
business his family lost 63 years ago. He did this without a lawsuit and
without
the help of Jewish groups leading the fight for reparation. He did it,
initially, with a phone call.
More extraordinarily still, he succeeded.
After talking with Gregory, the president of the multinational
corporation
undertook his own research. Later, in a face-to-face meeting, he offered,
as a
moral obligation and a gesture of reconciliation, to donate to a charity
of
Gregory's choice.
At Sunday's dedication celebration, Gregory said the new gymnasium
represents
closure for his father, who died in 1978 after unsuccessfully trying to
win
restitution, and a legacy for his grandchildren to understand the
tribulations
their family endured under Hitler.
For a Valley community traumatized by that dark day in August, it
offers a
needed reminder that a sense of right and wrong, of fairness and honor,
remain
in the world after all.
LANGUAGE: English
LOAD-DATE: December 19, 1999
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Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
December 19, 1999, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 14WC; Page 1; Column 1; Westchester Weekly Desk
LENGTH: 1607 words
HEADLINE: Desegregation Effort in Mt. Vernon Is Advocate's Legacy
BYLINE: By ELSA BRENNER
DATELINE: MOUNT VERNON
BODY:
THREE and a half decades after Lloyd King Jr., a leader of the
N.A.A.C.P. in
Westchester, initiated the school desegregation effort here, his son still
recalls the turmoil of the period -- the phone ringing throughout the
night in
the family's south-side home and his father dashing in and out for dinner
between nightly meetings.
Those were the heady days of the civil rights movement, the early- and
mid-1960's when Jeffrey Lloyd King, now 41, often grabbed hold of his
father's
hand and accompanied him to tumultuous rallies and meetings. The boy
eventually
became a plaintiff in the desegregation lawsuit brought by the local
chapter of
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People against
Mount
Vernon's schools.
On a recent afternoon, discussing the legacy of their father, who died
last
month at 72, Mr. King and his brother Todd Jonathan, 37, also recalled
how their
parents organized boycotts of white-owned stores -- and how black
families and
sympathetic whites conspicuously lined up their cars, driving out of the
city
and taking their dollars elsewhere.
"It was a time of contagious idealism, of Kennedy and Johnson and the
whole
movement," said Richard Magat, 72, a white civil rights activist who
worked with
the elder Mr. King.
In the ensuing years, civil rights successes were made in both the city
and
its educational system, with some inequities eliminated between the
predominantly black schools on the south side of the railroad tracks and
the
predominantly white schools on the north.
But that period was also roiled by disputes -- especially over busing --
which whites opposed. Jeffrey Lloyd King remembered first attending a
mostly
black elementary school on the south side and then moving to the north
side of
town. Except for the period when he was bused to integrated schools, he
became a
black child without companions, "walking to and from the mostly white
neighborhood school alone," he said.
In the late 1960's and 70's, white families began leaving the city,
eventually silencing any question of integration. Of those whites who
stayed in
Mount Vernon, many sent their children to parochial schools.
In the city's 15 public schools today, there are 10,400 students, 81
percent
of them black. By comparison, when the school year opened here in 1971,
the
district had 13 schools and 12,000 students, 60 percent of whom were
black.
"Maybe the exodus wasn't a flood," Mr. Magat recalled, "but it
certainly was
a heavy trickle, and it left the community polarized."
Like Jeffrey Lloyd King, Mr. Magat's two children, Claudia, now 41, and
Gordon, now 42, also became plaintiffs in the desegregation lawsuit.
"I thought it was an issue for my children as well," Mr. Magat said.
"They
would be disadvantaged if they lived and went to school in segregated
areas."
On Dec. 1, 1975, Ewald B. Nyquist, then state education commissioner,
ordered
the school board to adopt a plan for correcting the imbalance in student
placement, although it would be nine years before the Mount Vernon Board
of
Education's efforts were officially approved.
Mr. Magat said that by the mid-1970's, the school board became
increasingly
conservative with opposition growing among white residents who resented
the
integration and "railed against the liberals."
It was not until 1984 that Gordon M. Ambach, who was state education
commissioner at the time, issued an order to the board saying that it no
longer
needed to file reports every three months on the progress of integration.
Although Mr. Magat later moved to Bronxville, he stayed until his two
children graduated from the local high school in the 1970's. The Kings,
however,
left before that.
After living for 17 years in Mount Vernon, where he became president of
the
local branch of the N.A.A.C.P., Lloyd King and his wife, Barbara, a high
school
teacher and dean of students at a public school in the Bronx, settled in
Larchmont to give their children a better education away from the racial
problems of Mount Vernon.
Lloyd King went on to become the first black elected to the Mamaroneck
Board
of Education, and he served as Westchester's first black elections
commissioner
in the 1990's. Mr. King had been a deputy elections commissioner for
seven years
when he succeeded Marion Oldi as the Democratic Commissioner on the Board.
He died on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving of a heart attack at his
family's
vacation home in Orleans, Mass., on Cape Cod, two years after he retired.
Mr.
King, born and raised in Manhattan, attended schools there, served in the
Army,
graduated from New York University with a bachelor's degree and from
Brooklyn
Law School in 1956.
Although he worked as a legal apprentice for a Manhattan law firm, he
did not
pursue a career in law, switching to the Internal Revenue Service, where
he
became a supervisor of audit-enforcement procedures and the officer in
charge of
civil tax enforcement.
In 1967, after 11 years with the I.R.S., Mr. King joined the Office of
Economic Opportunity as a fiscal manager. He also served briefly as
director of
urban affairs for the International Council of Shopping Centers in
Manhattan and
then spent nine years with the Interracial Council for Business
Opportunity,
also in Manhattan, becoming executive vice president and vice president of
Westchester and Putnam affirmative action programs.
In the decades since Lloyd King's drive to integrate Mount Vernon's
schools,
serious educational problems -- deteriorating school buildings and poor
student
performance scores, among them -- have continued. This year for the first
time
in Mount Vernon history all nine school board members and the
superintendent of
schools are black. Nevertheless, school administrators, board members and
others
agree that the system remains troubled.
In the early 1990's, a minority coalition struggled to oppose the
formerly
entrenched Italian Civic Association, which long dominated school board
elections here, even though the schools were overwhelmingly black. In
1992 when
the Coalition for the Empowerment of People of African Ancestry was
founded,
critics of the Italian Civic Association said that jobs and power, not
education, motivated the group, a charge the association denied.
Many association members have been employees of the school district,
among
them the schools superintendent, William C. Prattella, who retired more
than a
year ago after a quarter of a century, the longest of any superintendent
in
Westchester.
Why this southern Westchester city continues to flounder educationally
despite the legacy of civil rights leaders like Lloyd King and groups
like the
Coalition for the Empowerment of People of African Ancestry is a question
to
which there is no single answer. As is the case in other struggling city
school
systems across the United States, there is little agreement on how to
cure the
problem.
The Mount Vernon schools superintendent, Ronald O. Ross, said last week
that
racism must no longer be considered a factor in understanding low student
performance. On the eighth-grade state standardized math test last year,
for
example, only 14 percent of the Mount Vernon students who took the test
performed at or above grade level.
"Now we're dealing with questions of poverty, health, violence, crime
-- all
of the ills that kids growing up in an urban environment experience," he
said.
"It's no longer the north side versus the south side, or African-Americans
versus Italian-Americans."
Lynn McBride, president of the school board, agreed that it may no
longer be
helpful to point a finger at any group for problems afflicting the
schools.
"The goal now is to play catch up and to meet the new state standards,
and
not to worry about the past or who's responsible," she said.
But Percy Somerville, president of the Mount Vernon chapter of the
N.A.A.C.P.
from 1970-1994, disagreed, saying that racism indeed continues to
undermine the
schools, "although it's much more subtle these days -- and it's not
something
you can necessarily see or touch, like having to sit in the back of the
bus."
He observed that this year, on the 70th anniversary of the Mount Vernon
chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., not enough gains had been logged -- but not
because
the efforts of the 1960's were a failure.
"People want to say integration didn't work because there are still
problems," he said. "But Edmund Burke observed that the only thing
necessary for
the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," referring to the
18th-century
British statesman.
"Well, in some instances, parents have abdicated their responsibility
to see
that their children receive equal education," Mr. Somerville continued,
"and
what they don't acknowledge is that you have to constantly work at this
thing."
Perhaps, as the Rev. Dr. W. Franklyn Richardson, a Baptist minister in
Mount
Vernon, observed, "You don't end the problem just because you do a
corrective,
which is the same reason we're still struggling over race long after the
Emancipation Proclamation."
Since Lloyd King's death, those who knew of his battle to improve the
quality
of education in Mount Vernon -- and of his deep frustrations -- have
described
him as a pioneer.
"Badges of honor go to those who did not necessarily come away with a
victory, but who served the best they could in their time and
circumstances,"
Dr. Richardson said.
"Racism and its impact on education is transgenerational," he added,
"and we
will likely be fighting this fight for another 100 years. Lloyd King
participated effectively in the long struggle of fixing something that is
fundamentally broken in American society."
http://www.nytimes.com
GRAPHIC: Photos: Barbara King, left, widow of the civil rights leader
Lloyd King
Jr., inset. Mr. King, who died last month at 72, took part in the effort
to
desegregate the schools in Mount Vernon. On Mrs. King's desk in Larchmont
is
memorabilia from the 1970's. Handbills, above, are from a school board
campaign
in Mount Vernon. (Photograph by Chris Maynard for The New York Times and
inset,
top right, by Alan Zale)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: December 19, 1999
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Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
December 19, 1999, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 1; Page 1; Column 3; National Desk
LENGTH: 1171 words
HEADLINE: Maryland Is Latest Of States to Rethink Youth 'Boot Camps'
BYLINE: By FRANCIS X. CLINES
DATELINE: BALTIMORE, Dec. 17
BODY:
In the face of a looming scandal, Maryland shut down its once ballyhooed
boot-camp regimen for juvenile offenders this week, providing further
evidence
of grave second thoughts across the nation about the "get tough" camps
avidly
favored by politicians during the last decade.
After an emergency investigation concluded there was a pattern of
guards'
punishing teenage inmates with roughhouse abuses, Gov. Parris N.
Glendening
suspended the paramilitary methods and trappings at the state's three
camps and
removed his top five justice executives. At the same time, 14 of the
quasi-drill-sergeant camp guards were suspended as criminal and civil
rights
investigations began. One guard has already been charged with child abuse.
"The trust of the people of Maryland has been violated," the governor
declared as the scandal, spurred by a series of articles in The Sun,
reached
crisis proportions with a Baltimore judge intervening to remove 26 of his
city's
juveniles from the camps and expressing "grave concern" at the teenage
offenders' many complaints of abusive guards.
The boot camp approach to juvenile criminals, based on enforcing rugged
military obedience techniques of verbal and physical regimentation, has
been
adopted in recent years in many states frustrated by youth crime. But
lately
some of the 52 boot camps housing 4,500 juveniles across the country are
being
scrutinized because of instances of excessive force and, even more,
because of
mounting research findings that the camps, for all their attempts at
esprit de
corps and rigid discipline, offer no improvement on traditional detention
methods.
In Georgia, where a former marine received national attention in
pioneering
the boot camp approach, the state decided this month to begin phasing out
its
five boot camps after a stinging conclusion by the United States Justice
Department that "the paramilitary boot camp model is not only
ineffective, but
harmful" to juvenile offenders. Colorado, North Dakota and Arizona have
also
dropped their programs, while Florida and California are scaling theirs
back.
Official doubts have been growing in the face of some notorious
examples of
abuses. In South Dakota, Gina Score, a 14-year-old convicted of
shoplifting,
died from heat exhaustion after her drill instructors concluded she was
faking
illness during a forced march. Last year, Nicholaus Contreraz, a
16-year-old
convicted of robbery, died in an Arizona boot camp after being punished
for
discipline violations.
"The boot camps are just the crisis of the day," said Jann Jackson,
executive
director of Advocates for Children and Youth, a private justice agency,
who
served here on the governor's emergency investigation of the camps. "It
reflects
far deeper systemic problems in a justice system that has been failing
kids for
years from the moment of intake to after-care."
Various juvenile justice and welfare advocates said in interviews that
Maryland officials had received repeated earlier warnings of widespread
problems
in youth detention centers but ignored them until The Sun reported a
pattern of
abuses by boot camp guards and pressed political leaders for reaction.
Governor Glendening and Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who is
charged
with overseeing the criminal justice system, announced the firings on
Thursday
after a week of front-page accusations that teenagers were struck and
gratuitously humiliated by overzealous guards in the three years of the
program.
"The boot camp is a model that lends itself to abuses," said Jim McComb,
chairman of the Maryland Juvenile Justice Coalition, a group of
professional
specialists that was warning of problems long before the current scandal.
There
is no evidence that the camps do any good, Mr. McComb said.
"Why take the risk of abusing children to defend the camps?" he asked
after
Governor Glendening asserted that, despite current problems, a way might
yet be
found to make the boot camp an effective tool.
Various members of the coalition opposed to boot camps expressed
concern that
the Glendening administration would retain a "get tough" philosophy to
protect
itself politically, while leaving unsolved large and expensive problems
like
crowding throughout the juvenile system.
"The answers go far beyond firing five people," said Vincent Schiraldi,
executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. For
all the
news media attention to the boot camps, Mr. Schiraldi said, state
officials have
long been warned about less dramatic problems at the Cheltenham detention
center, where, he said, 100 detainees were sleeping crowded into a day
room
designed for recreation by 26 people.
In a national study of recidivism this year by the Koch Crime
Institute, a
research organization in Topeka, Kan., the rates for juveniles from boot
camps
ranged from 64 percent to 75 percent, while the rate for those from
traditional
detention centers was 63 percent to 71 percent.
"We were aware of the boot camp problem and terminated seven of the
guards
even before this brouhaha," said Jack Nadol, Maryland's deputy secretary
of
juvenile justice, who refused to resign and was fired by the governor. "I
think
the articles sensationalized the problem and didn't show the kids who
have gone
on to college or the military."
Even so, Mr. Nadol conceded in an interview that the camps failed to
have
on-site monitors of the guards' behavior and that a boot-camp supervisor,
empowered to use force against abrasive detainees under limited
circumstances,
"can get carried away with his sense of influence and power."
"I think there was some abuse," Mr. Nadol acknowledged, while
emphasizing
that when the camps were first unveiled in an optimistic burst of
publicity, the
assigned detainees were "the best that was out there, and we rejected the
rest."
But soon drug abusers and ever-tougher cases were assigned to the
camps, he
said, increasing pressure on supervisors to maintain order.
"I'm not excusing abuses," he said, "but the real systemic problem in
the
agencies is that we do not have enough mental health treatment, substance
abuse
treatment, and a whole range of after-care that is lacking."
Mr. Nadol insisted that his was a token firing and he said he intended
to
pursue the cause from the private sector.
"My concern is people will get their 20-second sound bites and the whole
thing will disappear," he said, echoing the concern of system watchdogs
like Mr.
McComb, the head of the state juvenile justice coalition, who is also
director
of the Maryland Association of Resources for Families and Youth.
"The fact is, the department of juvenile justice for 15 or 20 years has
done
nothing to respond to all the symptoms of trouble," Mr. McComb said.
"So here's the real test: to see if they do something more than fire a
secretary who never had a true background in juvenile justice," he said
of the
ousted state justice secretary, Gilberto de Jesus. "The systemic problems
have
lasted through the best and worst of secretaries."
http://www.nytimes.com
GRAPHIC: Photo: Gilberto de Jesus, who was ousted as juvenile justice
secretary
in Maryland amid a scandal over boot camps, at a meeting on Monday.
(Associated
Press)(pg. 44)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: December 19, 1999
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Copyright 1999 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
December 19, 1999, Sunday, FIVE STAR LIFT EDITION
SECTION: NEWS, Pg. A8
LENGTH: 1231 words
HEADLINE: ONE OF LITTLE ROCK NINE RECALLS HOW NAIVELY SHE SET OUT FOR HIGH
SCHOOL AND;
BECAME "A FOOT SOLDIER FOR FREEDOM."
BYLINE: Jon Sawyer; Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief
BODY:
* Thelma Mothershed Wair helped desegregate U.S. schools. Today she
teaches
survival skills to single mothers in East St. Louis.
Thelma Mothershed Wair did not know that a mob of angry whites would
block
the way. She never dreamed that the governor of her state would call out
the
National Guard to close off the high school, that it would take Army
paratroopers to make him desist -- and that "victory" meant a year of
being
shunned by white classmates and a home-room teacher who "acted as if she
thought
that if she touched my hand her arm would turn black."
All that Wair had wanted, as a 15-year-old girl in Little Rock, Ark.,
in the
summer of 1957, was the chance to attend what some had called the most
beautiful
high school in America. She found herself instead on the front lines in
one of
the century's great battles for freedom -- the struggle to implement the
Supreme
Court's 1954 decision banning segregation in the nation's public schools.
Meet her today, in the basement classroom where she teaches survival
skills
to single mothers at the Second Chance Shelter for the homeless in East
St.
Louis, and Thelma Wair looks a most improbable warrior. Now 57, she walks
slowly
with the aid of a cane and pauses frequently to rest her 5-foot-1
1/2-inch frame
("Be sure to include that 'half," she says. "It's important to me").
In 1957, Wair was even more frail than now. She was a "blue baby" from
birth,
the victim of a heart so severely crippled that her parents were forced
to keep
her at home for three years during elementary school and to search out a
junior
high where all of her classes could be on the first floor. One reason she
jumped
at the chance to attend Central High was that it was closer to home than
the
all-black Horace Mann.
She also wanted access to the better-equipped classrooms that Central
had,
the modern laboratories and well-stocked library. She had learned
firsthand that
"nothing separate is equal, because the people in charge keep the best for
themselves."
Was she frightened at the prospect of being one of just nine black
students
in a school of 1,800 whites?
"No, I guess I was naive," Wair recalls. "We still had separate
restrooms and
water fountains for coloreds, and we had to ride on the back of the bus,
but
white people would speak politely to you on the streets. The courts had
mandated
desegregation. I thought 'Fine. What else could they do but go along?"
President Dwight Eisenhower shared her optimism. He was a reluctant
warrior
on civil rights, an enthusiastic supporter of the "deliberate" in the
ambiguous
"all deliberate speed" the Supreme Court had used as its timetable for
school
desegregation. He was confident that once the lower courts ruled in
specific
cases, however, city and state officials would go along.
"I can't imagine any set of circumstances that would ever induce me to
send
federal troops
to enforce the orders of a federal court, because I
believe
that the common sense of America will never require it," he told
reporters in
July 1957.
Further grounds for confidence was the fact that Congress that summer
was in
the process of enacting the first civil rights bill since 1875 -- watered
down,
to be sure, but with important provisions like the creation of a federal
civil
rights commission, a civil rights division at the Department of Justice
and new
federal authority to enforce voting rights.
This was a time when voting tests in most southern states were
notoriously
skewed, with blacks subjected to such questions as the number of bubbles
in a
bar of soap. Mississippi had a population of 900,000 blacks in 1957. Just
7,000
of them were registered to vote. By those standards, Arkansas was
relatively
progressive. Its largest newspapers were generally supportive of
desegregation,
and several cities had already made the leap.
What Eisenhower hadn't reckoned on was Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus, a
politician who seized on race-baiting as his ticket to re-election. Faubus
called out the Arkansas National Guard, reporters swarmed in, and Little
Rock --
helped along by the new medium of television news -- was suddenly the
worldwide
symbol of America's racial divide.
Eisenhower dithered, pressing Faubus privately for a voluntary solution.
After three weeks the president finally moved, dispatching 1,000
paratroopers
from the 101st Airborne Division to clear a path to school for Thelma
Wair and
the rest of the Little Rock Nine. Eisenhower broke off a vacation in Rhode
Island to speak to the nation from his office at the White House.
"I felt that, in speaking from the house of Lincoln, of Jackson and of
Wilson, my words would better convey both the sadness I feel in the
action I was
compelled today to take and the firmness with which I intend to pursue
this
"
course
Eisenhower's show of resolve broke the crisis, at least for the school
year,
although for Wair and the others it was a lonely time, and contact with
white
students was scant. The next year Faubus simply shut the public high
schools
down, a desperate final move that bought one more year of segregation.
In the meantime Wair moved to finish her high school work in St. Louis,
where
she lived in the home of civil rights attorney Frankie Freeman. She got
her
Central High degree by mail, by which time she had enrolled at Southern
Illinois
University at Carbondale. She majored in home economics and education,
met her
future husband, Fred, and began a lifelong attachment to the sorority
Alpha
Kappa Alpha.
The Wairs now live in Belleville, just over the line from East St.
Louis.
They spent most of their careers at East St. Louis School District 189.
Thelma
Wair taught home economics at first and later specialized in life skills
as a
guidance counselor.
Last month the Wairs were at the White House as the members of the
Little
Rock Nine received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor
Congress can
bestow on a civilian. President Bill Clinton presided at the ceremony on
Nov. 9,
noting that it was the 10th anniversary of another in the century's
landmarks of
freedom -- the fall of the Berlin Wall.
"It is fitting that we, on this same day, recognize what these people
did to
make the walls of bigotry and prejudice fall in America," Clinton said.
"When
they marched up the steps to school, a simple act, they became foot
soldiers for
freedom, carrying America to higher ground."
Thelma Wair is the first to acknowledge that there is higher ground yet
to
claim. She spent most of her career in an increasingly segregated school
system,
after all, and she has seen a breakdown in black family life that would
have
been unimaginable to her as a child.
"People are a lot freer than they used to be," she says. "They can say
and do
whatever they want, which can be good and bad."
She wishes that desegregation had commenced in a different way, focusing
first on elementary grades. "In elementary school you fight in the
morning and
in the afternoon you're best friends again," she says, "but in high
school you
fight and you remember it all your lives."
But she doesn't regret for a moment the battle she helped to fight,
back at
Central High in 1957.
"It didn't do what we had hoped, but it worked, for a long time. People
were
able to go to better schools, to get a better education. And that's the
main
thing -- a better education."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO (1) Photo by CHRIS LEE / POST-DISPATCH - Thelma Mothershed
Wair
(right) gets a kiss from fellow choir member Rose Griffin during the Peace
Fellowship Ritual, a time when St. Paul Baptist Church members greet
those who
they haven't seen in a while. Wair was a member of the Little Rock Nine,
who
fought for desegregation of the school system in Arkansas.
(2) Photo by Pete Harris - Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock
Nine, is
flanked by an angry mob as she makes her way to the entrance of Little
Rock
Central High School in Arkansas in 1957.
LANGUAGE: English
LOAD-DATE: December 19, 1999
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St. Louis Post-Dispatch
December 19, 1999, Sunday, FIVE STAR LIFT EDITION
SECTION: NEWS, Pg. Al
LENGTH: 368 words
HEADLINE: THREE OF OUR NEIGHBORS HAVE FOUGHT ON THE FRONT LINES FOR
FREEDOM.
BODY:
* As the century draws to a close, St. Louisans from around the world
consider the freedoms they won, and those for which we continue to
struggle.
Ten years ago, Xiong Yan was on the barricades in Tiananmen Square,
leading a
student rebellion that rattled the foundations of China's Communist
government.
Today he's a divinity school student in St. Louis County, reflecting on
his
journey to freedom and the lessons he has learned along the way.
To the single mothers who meet her at the Second Chance Shelter for the
homeless in East St. Louis, Thelma Mothershed Wair is the maternal figure
who
leads their classes in survival skills. Wair's had plenty of experience
in honing survival skills herself: As a 15-year-old in Little Rock, Ark., in
1957,
she was one of the African-American students who challenged segregation at
Central High School and in the process helped changed America for good.
Whitney Harris of Ladue has been a fixture on the St. Louis social and
philanthropic circuit for decades. His genial personality belies his
firsthand
exposure to this century's most heinous assault on human freedom, Adolf
Hitler's
Third Reich in Nazi Germany. Harris helped prosecute Nazi leaders at the
Nuremberg war crimes trials and has devoted much of his life to building
the
foundations of international law that he views as the essential
prerequisites
for an age of freedom and peace.
Over the past six months, Post-Dispatch reporters and photographers have
examined facets of freedom at home and abroad. We have reported on the
struggle
for women's rights in Yemen, the uneasy transition to democracy in South
Africa
and the continuing search of an African-American family in St. Louis for
a share
of the American dream. We have explored the sour aftertaste of freedom in
some
parts of Eastern Europe, the fight for land in Guatemala, the halfway
freedom of
refugees torn from home and roots.
The final chapter of Freedom's March returns to St. Louis and the
voices of
freedom at home -- three of our neighbors, people much like us, who stood
on the
front lines in a struggle that never ends.
Washington Bureau Chief Jon Sawyer reports, with photographs by Chris
Lee,
A8-9.
GRAPHIC: GRAPHIC, PHOTO (1) Color PHOTO by JEFF WIDENER / THE ASSOCIATED
PRESS -
A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square
on June
5, 1989. The man, calling for an end to the violence against
pro-democracy demonstrators, was pulled away by bystanders, and the tanks continued on
their
way. The Chinese government crushed a student-led protest, killing
hundreds, or
perhaps thousands in the strongest anti-government movement since the 1949
revolution.
(2) Color Graphic/Illustration - FREEDOM'S MARCH
(Illustration of Earth)
LANGUAGE: English
LOAD-DATE: December 19, 1999
9 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
December 19, 1999, Sunday, FIVE STAR LIFT EDITION
SECTION: NEWS, Pg. A8
LENGTH: 529 words
HEADLINE: (FREEDOM'S MARCH TIMELINE)
SOURCE: Freedom's March;
Part eight of a series
BODY:
June 13: South Africa
South Africa was for decades the international poster child for racial
tyranny. Under Nelson Mandela's heroic leadership it was recast as a
triumph for
freedom with implications far beyond its borders. But even as democracy
takes
root, South Africans face up to challenges -- AIDS, crime and an uncertain
economy -- that go beyond apartheid.
Terence Samuel, reporter
Odell Mitchell, photographer
July 11: Refugees and Recovery
The Albanian Kosovars who fled the fighting in Kosovo soon encountered
the
more private trauma common to refugees everywhere as they adjust to a new
life.
As St. Louis becomes a leading refugee center, innovative outre ach
efforts help
the newcomers realize the potential of their new freedom.
Philip Dine, reporter
J.B. Forbes, photographer
Aug. 1: Guatemala
In Guatemala, a Central American country with a long history of
economic,
military and religious ties to the United States, freedom for most people
still
means a struggle for the basics of shelter and food. The story of one
family's
quest for land, through civil war and displacement, and the heavy price
it has
paid for the plot of land that means freedom itself.
Jon Sawyer, reporter
Teak Phillips, photographer
Sept. 5: St. Louis
Ann Marie and Josepheus Reynolds grew up in The Ville, one of the few
St.
Louis neighborhoods open to blacks during the Depression. They've seen
dramatic
changes in opportunities, as legal discrimination crumbled in the '50s:
and '60s.
But they've also faced the persistent barriers of racism that keep the
American
dream out of reach for many African Americans.
Deirdre Shesgreen, reporter
Laurie Skrivan, photographer
Oct. 24/31: Germany/Eastern Europe
Ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall east and west Germans are
still
struggling with unexpected ambiguities of freedom. Two sisters on
opposite sides
of the divide reflect on the economic hardships and psycho logical
adjustments
they have faced in the wake of Germany's reunification. Experts from
across the
region warn that democracy cannot flourish until more attention is given
to the
human legacy of totalitarianism.
Robert L. Koenig, Philip Dine, reporters
Nov. 28: Yemen
Yemen, a long-isolated land on the Arabian Peninsula, is the unlikely
venue
for a freedom quest by women. Women in Middle East still endure abuse,
imprisonment and even death in a culture obsessed with protecting their
sexuality. But in Yemen, six years after democracy emerged, women have
begun
taking their place alongside men in government and the workplace.
Bill Lambrecht, reporter
Jamie Rector, photographer
Dec. 19: St. Louis
The voices of freedom, close to home: A Chinese student leader jailed
after
the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, now studying to be a minister in
St.
Louis County. A retired teacher in East St. Louis, one of the Little Rock
Nine
who made history by desegregating Central High School in 1957. A St. Louis
corporate lawyer who helped prosecute German Nazis at Nuremberg.
Jon Sawyer, reporter
Chris Lee, photographer
GRAPHIC: PHOTO (1) Photo by Odell Mitchell - (Woman washing items in a
bucket.)
(2) Photo by J.B. Forbes - (Two Albanian Kosovar refugees)
Photo by Teak Phillips - (Young boy sitting in hall.)
Photo by Jamie Rector - (Two eyes looking through a mask.)
LANGUAGE: English
LOAD-DATE: December 19, 1999
10 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
December 19, 1999, Sunday, FIVE STAR LIFT EDITION
SECTION: NEWS, Pg. A8
LENGTH: 1348 words
HEADLINE: A YOUNG MAN'S QUEST STRETCHES FROM TIANANMEN TO A ST. LOUIS
SEMINARY.
BYLINE: Jon Sawyer; Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief
BODY:
* A leader of China's 1989 student uprising, Xiong Yan was jailed and
beaten
before being allowed to come to the United States, where the former
enthusiastic
communist is studying to become a minister.
Ten years ago, he led thousands of students in Tiananmen Square. It was
a
defiant act in pursuit of freedom that cost him 19 months in a Chinese
jail.
Today, he's a divinity student in St. Louis County. He's still struggling
to
learn what freedom really means.
You don't realize until you turn into the driveway on Woods Mill Road
that
the back of the nondescript ranch house has been expanded to include a
meeting
room big enough for 200 people -- or that in the yard beyond, an addition
twice
that size is rapidly taking shape.
This is the St. Louis Chinese Christian Church, a place that is full of
men
and women whose stories ring out with the restless search for freedom.
The guest sermon on a Sunday last month was by an immigrant from
Taiwan, a
man who had risen to a senior research position at Monsanto but was
giving it up
to be a full-time minister. A white couple told about an organization
that is
using American businessmen to secretly deliver cash to members of the
banned
"house church" movement of Christians in China.
For Samuel Pan, the senior minister who has led the congregation since
1990,
the road to freedom began in the ancient Chinese capital of Xian. As a
young
boy, he escaped with his parents and two of his siblings to Taiwan. The
other
three stayed behind. He came to the United States for graduate study and
spent
four years as a design engineer.
"Then I got the call from the Lord," he said, "and quit my job."
And then there's Xiong Yan.
Now 35, married with two young children, he is a second-year student at
the
Covenant Theological Seminary. He spends one weekend a month with the Army
Reserves, having completed 18 months on active duty. This slightly built
man
with the ready smile was among those, back in 1989 in Beijing, who almost
made a
revolution.
Xiong Yan's journey
Xiong, a law student at Beijing University, was chairman of the
executive
committee of a federation of Chinese students. He organized the hunger
strikes
that spring. He was in Tiananmen Square on the night of June 4, when the
Chinese
army opened fire. He saw "the bodies, piled high" as he carried a wounded
friend
to the hospital. He was among the 21 student leaders that the government
placed
on a most-wanted list, and he was the first arrested.
As the crisis built that spring, Xiong was among the student leaders who
negotiated with Chinese Premier Li Peng.
"Regardless of whether the government recognizes the student movement,
Chinese history will," Xiong told the hard-line premier.
How did an ambitious and loyal young communist end up in such a
confrontation
with his country's government? What was the path that brought that young
rebel
to a Presbyterian seminary in St. Louis County?
Xiong grew up in Hunan province. His mother was a doctor, his father an
auto
mechanic. A good student, he excelled in political science at Hunan Normal
University and was elected president of the student body. He also joined
the
Communist Party.
"It was considered an honor, an opportunity," said Xiong, reflecting in
his
University City apartment on what it was like to come of age in China in
the
early 1980s.
On one hand, the system remained largely closed to outside influences,
he
said.
"The Communist Party controlled everything, the educational system, the
media," he said. "The only book we knew was communism."
But it also was a time of change. Deng Xiaoping, China's top leader, had
introduced startling economic reforms, and activists pressed for similar
openings in politics. By the time Xiong began law school in Beijing in
fall
1986, "the situation was really relaxed. We had relatively free speech and
access to Western books."
Xiong said that as he studied Western theories of law and capitalism,
comparing them with Marxism, "I began to have a different view, to see
that some
things were false and some things true."
He still believed in the Communist Party, that it was open to reform
from
within, and he helped organize the student demonstrations that grew in
scope
from 1986 to the showdown of 1989. It was only June 5, the day aft er
Chinese
troops opened fire on the demonstrators at Tiananmen, that Xiong
renounced his
membership in the Communist Party.
"Before the massacre, we knew that the Communist Party was not perfect,
but
we had no hatred for them," he said. "After the massacre, we hated that
society,
the whole totalitarian system, both mentally and psychologically."
After his arrest, Xiong spent 19 months in a 1950s-era prison the
Russians
had built for China. He was housed in a cell with other Tiananmen
protesters and
subjected to a heavy dose of re-education. He was beaten twice.
"The first time they got me, a soldier hit me on the back," Xiong said.
"I
said 'Don't do that -- I'm a law student.' That made him mad. 'A law
student!
Who cares!"
Xiong was released from prison in early 1991, but the government barred
him
from the university and employment. He was permitted to come to the United
States as a political refugee in 1992. His wife, Qian Liyun, a specialist
in
Chinese literature who had also been jailed after Tiananmen, joined him a
year
later.
Both landed, improbably, in the Army and completed basic training at
Fort
Jackson, S.C., in 1994 and 1995. They still revel at a video made during
training that shows Qian in full combat gear, practicing bayonet thrusts
and
scaling sheer walls with male recruits a foot taller and easily twice her
size.
Why the Army? The chance to practice English, they say, plus steady pay
and
access to health care.
While Qian was still on active duty at Fort Bragg, N.C., Xiong earned a
bachelor's degree in English literature at Fayetteville State University.
That's
where he made the turn toward St. Louis and God.
Xiong said that shift was sparked by meeting Samuel Ling, a professor at
Covenant Seminary, and by his discovery of the English poet John Milton,
whom he
calls the magisterial voice of God, man's fall and redemption through
Christ.
"I used to talk of freedom in terms of human rights and the rule of
law,"
Xiong said. "After studying theology, I have a new world view that
explains the
cause of injustice in every society, including the U.S., as a falling
away from
God."
Lessons after Tiananmen
What the students of Tiananmen Square lacked, Xiong now believes, was a
vision of how to achieve the free society they sought.
"Even after 10 years, we still admire the students' courage, but there
was
something those demonstrations lacked," he said. "We knew that the
socialists
could not save China, that the communists could not save China. But we
did not
know who, or what, could. That was a problem, even then."
It remains the challenge now, Xiong said, as the Chinese grasp for some
new
faith in place of communism. One manifestation is the rapid rise of Falun
Gong,
an exercise and meditation practice that draws on elements of Buddhism,
Christianity and Taoism. Xiong, who considers Falun Gong a false religion,
prefers to cite a parallel surge in Christian believers.
Their numbers include his mother, the doctor in Hunan province. Several
years
ago, she began listening to foreign broadcasts on shortwave radio, hoping
for
news of her son after his exile. She discovered gospel radio along the
way, he
said, and is today an active participant in one of the illegal house
churches
that have mushroomed throughout China.
Is it possible that, a decade from now, Xiong will be back at home, in
a free
China?
"Not even 10 years -- five!" he exclaims, holding his son Abraham, 2,
on his
lap.
Xiong said that China today reminds him of someone driving a car and
taking
his hands from the wheel.
"The car still moves forward and everything seems normal, at first.
China is
like that today," he said. "There's been no accident, yet. But there's no
one at
wheel."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO PHOTO by CHRIS LEE / POST-DISPATCH - Xiong Yan practices
preaching with a Chinese Bible in the basement of his house in St. Louis.
Xiong
spent 19 months in prison in China for his role as a student demonstrator
in the
Tianamen Square massacre. He is studying at the Covenant Theological
Seminary to
become a pastor and hopes to return to China to preach or possibly become
a
politician.
LANGUAGE: English
LOAD-DATE: December 19, 1999
11 of 34 DOCUMENTS
The Associated Press State & Local Wire
The materials in the AP file were compiled by The Associated Press. These
materials may not be republished without the express written consent of
The
Associated Press.
December 18, 1999, Saturday, AM cycle
SECTION: State and Regional
LENGTH: 148 words
HEADLINE: Demonstrators allege racial bias in Customs' searches
DATELINE: ATLANTA
BODY:
About 20 protesters marched, waved handmade signs and sang civil rights
songs
Saturday outside Hartsfield International Airport, protesting alleged
racial
bias in U.S. Customs searches of passengers.
"African-Americans across the country are being subjected to it," said
Atlanta minister Markel Hutchins, who is president of the National Youth
Connection and was one of the demonstrators.
He called for the resignation of customs Commissioner Raymond Kelly and
demanded the agency pay workers' compensation to Cathy Harris, an Atlanta
customs inspector for 21 years who said she was fired for being a
whistle-blower.
Harris, who is appealing her termination, said blacks and Hispanics are
searched by customs inspectors in disproportionate numbers. She said she
has
suffered stress-related problems since being fired. Customs officials
could not
be reached for comment.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: December 19, 1999
12 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
December 18, 1999, Saturday, Home Edition
SECTION: Religion Faith & Values; Pg. IF
LENGTH: 495 words
HEADLINE: Amen Corner: News and notes of interest to the religious,
spiritual
and volunteer communities of metro Atlanta
BYLINE: Staff
SOURCE: AJC
BODY:
Graham, King 'great' preachers
Preaching, a bimonthly magazine, has named the greatest preachers of
the 20th
century, with the Rev. Billy Graham and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
among
its Top 10.
The No. I ranking was given to the late James S. Stewart, a Scottish
preacher
and New Testament professor who served a two-year term in the 1960s as
moderator
of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
The rest of the Top 5 are, in order: evangelist Graham; the late George
Buttrick, an English-born Congregational preacher who served almost 30
years as
pastor of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York; the late civil
rights
leader King; and the late Harry Emerson Fosdick, a pastor of New York's
Riverside Church.
The rest of the Top 10 are, in order: the late G. Campbell Morgan, an
English-born minster who served in the United States and England and
influenced
evangelical preaching; the late William Edwin Sangster, an evangelical
Methodist
preacher who had the largest Sunday-evening congregation in London during
World
War II; John R.W. Stott, a popular evangelical preacher who is rector
emeritus
of All Souls Church in London and director of the London Institute for
Contemporary Christianity; the late D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a Welsh
preacher who
served as pastor of Westminster Chapel in London from 1943 to 1968; and
the late
Clarence Macartney, who served as pastor of First Presbyterian Church of
Pittsburgh.
Michael Duduit, editor of Preaching, said the preachers were labeled as
"great" based on their influence on church and society and on their
fellow
preachers.
HOLY SEPULCHER: No emergency exit
Israel won't forcibly open an emergency exit in the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher, Minister of Tourism Amnon Lipkin Shahak said this week.
Instead,
Shahak said, Israeli police will seek to regulate the flow of Christian
pilgrims
in the structure in order to avoid fire hazards. The absence of any
emergency
exit in the sprawling medieval structure has long been a bone of
contention
among Israeli police and the Greek Orthodox, Latin (Catholic) and Armenian
church officials who control the site. Only about 750,000 pilgrims can
safely
tour the church in a year, officials have said, while at least 2.5 million
Christians are expected to visit during 2000.
HOLY YEAR PILGRIMAGE: Pope to visit Holy Land
Two papal aides are in Amman, Jordan, to plan Pope John Paul II's Holy
Year
pilgrimage to the Holy Land in March, a church official, Monsignor Charles
Balbo, reported this week. The Vatican has said the pope plans to visit
in the
last 10 days of March. Balbo said the Vatican is expected to announce the
exact
dates about a month in advance. Jordanian government officials said John
Paul
would start his pilgrimage by flying to Amman to visit Mount Nebo, 20
miles from
the Jordanian capital. It was from the top of Mount Nebo that the Bible
says
Moses saw the Promised Land before his death at age 120.
GRAPHIC: Photo
Dr. Martin Luther King
Photo
Rev. Billy Graham
Photo
Pope John Paul II
LOAD-DATE: December 18, 1999
13 of 34 DOCUMENTS
The Associated Press State & Local Wire
The materials in the AP file were compiled by The Associated Press. These
materials may not be republished without the express written consent of
The
Associated Press.
December 17, 1999, Friday, PM cycle
SECTION: State and Regional
LENGTH: 428 words
HEADLINE: Ranks of nuclear scientist's defenders swell
BYLINE: By MICHELLE LOCKE, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
BODY:
Wen Ho Lee, the scientist under indictment for mishandling U.S. weapons
secrets, has won additional support as Asian Americans promoted his legal
defense fund and accused the government of using him as a scapegoat.
"This is racial profiling at its worst. It is un-American and it is
unconstitutional," author and civil rights activist Helen Zia said
Thursday.
Zia joined San Francisco Supervisor Mabel Teng at a news conference for
the
Wen Ho Lee Legal Defense Fund. The San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus
and
Chinese for Affirmative Action groups were also there.
"The Chinese-American community feels that one of our members has
been
put on trial, put on a media trial in particular, without due process,"
said
Teng, who is asking fellow supervisors to approve a resolution asking the
government and the media to be fair to Lee.
Government officials deny Lee was singled out because of his race, and
Energy
Secretary Bill Richardson sent a memo recently saying that "at this
juncture it
is appropriate that I reiterate emphatically my policy of zero tolerance
of any
form of racial profiling within the DOE workplace." The memo did not
mention
Lee.
The Taiwan-born Lee, 59, is charged with illegally downloading secret
data
from computers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He pleaded
innocent in federal court in Albuquerque and is being held without bail
in the
Santa Fe County jail.
Lee acknowledged transferring "legacy codes" that provide a history of
nuclear weapons development from a highly secure Los Alamos' computer
system to
his less-secure personal office computer. Lee said he was creating a
backup in
case of a computer crash.
He was the focus of a lengthy probe into whether nuclear secrets were
leaked
to China, but the U.S. government has not charged him with spying.
Also Thursday, prosecutors said evidence will go through a
court-appointed
security officer before it can be used in the case against Lee.
U.S. Attorney John Kelly, whose office in Albuquerque, N.M., requested
the
protective order, said U.S. Magistrate Don Svet has invoked the Classified
Information Procedures Act of 1980 to ensure that U.S. nuclear weapons
secrets
aren't accidentally released in open court or in public documents.
A defense against the complex charges Lee faces will take money that
Lee, who
was fired in March, doesn't have, said longtime friend Cecilia Chang, one
of the
lead organizers of the defense fund,
Supporters have raised about $20,000. A fund-raiser is planned for
Tuesday,
Lee's birthday.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: December 18, 1999
14 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 Associated Press
AP Online
December 17, 1999; Friday 05:13 Eastern Time
SECTION: Domestic, non-Washington, general news item
LENGTH: 766 words
HEADLINE: Asian-Americans Defend Wen Ho Lee
BYLINE: MICHELLE LOCKE
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
BODY:
Wen Ho Lee, the scientist under indictment for mishandling U.S. weapons
secrets, has won additional support as Asian Americans promoted his legal
defense fund and accused the government of using him as a scapegoat.
"This is racial profiling at its worst. It is un-American and it is
unconstitutional," author and civil rights activist Helen Zia said
Thursday.
Zia joined San Francisco Supervisor Mabel Teng at a news conference for
the
Wen Ho Lee Legal Defense Fund. The San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus
and
Chinese for Affirmative Action groups were also there.
"The Chinese-American community feels that one of our members has
been
put on trial, put on a media trial in particular, without due process,"
said
Teng, who is asking fellow supervisors to approve a resolution asking the
government and the media to be fair to Lee.
Government officials deny Lee was singled out because of his race, and
Energy
Secretary Bill Richardson sent a memo recently saying that "at this
juncture it
is appropriate that I reiterate emphatically my policy of zero tolerance
of any
form of racial profiling within the DOE workplace." The memo did not
mention
Lee.
The Taiwan-born Lee, 59, is charged with illegally downloading secret
data
from computers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He
pleaded
innocent and is being held without bail.
Lee acknowledged transferring "legacy codes" that provide a history of
nuclear weapons development from a highly secure Los Alamos' computer
system to
his less-secure personal office computer. Lee said he was creating a
backup in
case of a computer crash.
He was the focus of a lengthy probe into whether nuclear secrets were
leaked
to China, but the U.S. government has not charged him with spying.
A defense against the complex charges he faces will take money that
Lee, who
was fired in March, doesn't have, said longtime friend Cecilia Chang, one
of the
lead organizers of the defense fund,
Supporters have raised about $20,000. A fund-raiser is planned for
Tuesday,
Lee's birthday.
Wen Ho Lee, the scientist under indictment for mishandling U.S. weapons
secrets, has won additional support as Asian Americans promoted his legal
defense fund and accused the government of using him as a scapegoat.
"This is racial profiling at its worst. It is un-American and it is
unconstitutional," author and civil rights activist Helen Zia said
Thursday.
Zia joined San Francisco Supervisor Mabel Teng at a news conference for
the
Wen Ho Lee Legal Defense Fund. The San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus
and
Chinese for Affirmative Action groups were also there.
"The Chinese-American community feels that one of our members has
been
put on trial, put on a media trial in particular, without due process,"
said
Teng, who is asking fellow supervisors to approve a resolution asking the
government and the media to be fair to Lee.
Government officials deny Lee was singled out because of his race, and
Energy
Secretary Bill Richardson sent a memo recently saying that "at this
juncture it
is appropriate that I reiterate emphatically my policy of zero tolerance
of any
form of racial profiling within the DOE workplace." The memo did not
mention
Lee.
The Taiwan-born Lee, 59, is charged with illegally downloading secret
data
from computers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He
pleaded
innocent and is being held without bail.
Lee acknowledged transferring "legacy codes" that provide a history of
nuclear weapons development from a highly secure Los Alamos' computer
system to
his less-secure personal office computer. Lee said he was creating a
backup in
case of a computer crash.
He was the focus of a lengthy probe into whether nuclear secrets were
leaked
to China, but the U.S. government has not charged him with spying.
Also Thursday, prosecutors said evidence will go through a
court-appointed
security officer before it can be used in the case against Lee.
U.S. Attorney John Kelly, whose office in Albuquerque, N.M., requested
the
protective order, said U.S. Magistrate Don Svet has invoked the Classified
Information Procedures Act of 1980 to ensure that U.S. nuclear weapons
secrets
aren't accidentally released in open court or in public documents.
A defense against the complex charges Lee faces will take money that
Lee, who
was fired in March, doesn't have, said longtime friend Cecilia Chang, one
of the
lead organizers of the defense fund,
Supporters have raised about $20,000. A fund-raiser is planned for
Tuesday,
Lee's birthday.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: December 17, 1999
15 of 34 DOCUMENTS
The Associated Press
The materials in the AP file were compiled by The Associated Press. These
materials may not be republished without the express written consent of
The
Associated Press.
December 17, 1999, Friday, PM cycle
SECTION: Domestic News
LENGTH: 418 words
HEADLINE: Ranks of nuclear scientist's defenders swell
BYLINE: By MICHELLE LOCKE, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
BODY:
Wen Ho Lee, the scientist under indictment for mishandling U.S. weapons
secrets, has won additional support as Asian Americans promoted his legal
defense fund and accused the government of using him as a scapegoat.
"This is racial profiling at its worst. It is un-American and it is
unconstitutional," author and civil rights activist Helen Zia said
Thursday.
Zia joined San Francisco Supervisor Mabel Teng at a news conference for
the
Wen Ho Lee Legal Defense Fund. The San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus
and
Chinese for Affirmative Action groups were also there.
"The Chinese-American community feels that one of our members has
been
put on trial, put on a media trial in particular, without due process,"
said
Teng, who is asking fellow supervisors to approve a resolution asking the
government and the media to be fair to Lee.
Government officials deny Lee was singled out because of his race, and
Energy
Secretary Bill Richardson sent a memo recently saying that "at this
juncture it
is appropriate that I reiterate emphatically my policy of zero tolerance
of any
form of racial profiling within the DOE workplace." The memo did not
mention
Lee.
The Taiwan-born Lee, 59, is charged with illegally downloading secret
data
from computers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New-Mexico. He
pleaded
innocent and is being held without bail.
Lee acknowledged transferring "legacy codes" that provide a history of
nuclear weapons development from a highly secure Los Alamos' computer
system to
his less-secure personal office computer. Lee said he was creating a
backup in
case of a computer crash.
He was the focus of a lengthy probe into whether nuclear secrets were
leaked
to China, but the U.S. government has not charged him with spying.
Also Thursday, prosecutors said evidence will go through a
court-appointed
security officer before it can be used in the case against Lee.
U.S. Attorney John Kelly, whose office in Albuquerque, N.M., requested
the
protective order, said U.S. Magistrate Don Svet has invoked the Classified
Information Procedures Act of 1980 to ensure that U.S. nuclear weapons
secrets
aren't accidentally released in open court or in public documents.
A defense against the complex charges Lee faces will take money that
Lee, who
was fired in March, doesn't have, said longtime friend Cecilia Chang, one
of the
lead organizers of the defense fund,
Supporters have raised about $20,000. A fund-raiser is planned for
Tuesday,
Lee's birthday.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: December 18, 1999
16 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 Copley News Service
Copley News Service
December 17, 1999, Friday 11:00 Eastern Time
SECTION: Commentary
LENGTH: 481 words
HEADLINE: Unbelievable discrimination
BODY:
Attorney General Janet Reno said it all. "It's hard to believe," Reno
said,
"that 35 years after the Civil Rights Act this type of discrimination
still
exists."
The discrimination she was talking about is the blatant racial
discrimination
that the Justice Department and the state of Florida say they have found
at the
Adam's Mark hotels owned by St. Louisan Fred Kummer and his family.
The Justice Department announced recently that it was suing the St.
Louis-based hotel firm for violating the Civil Rights Act by charging
African-Americans more while providing them with less. Florida is also
suing.
Bill Lann Lee, the head of the Civil Rights Division, said that he found
discriminatory policies and procedures throughout the hotel chain. But
the heart
of the suit involves practices pursued by the chain's Daytona Beach,
Fla., hotel
last spring during Black Reunion Weekend. The complaints allege that the
Dayton
Beach hotel:
Insisted that 1,200 African-American guests pay the entire cost of
their
rooms in advance and refused to accept their credit cards.
Charged African-Americans more for their rooms than whites had paid at
similar special events and gave them worse rooms.
Blocked the main entrance to the resort with bike racks and did not
provide
valet service to assist black guests with their luggage.
Required black guests, but not white guests, to wear orange wrist
bands.
Refused to allow African-Americans to use the telephone, mini-bar and
in-room movies unless they first put down a large cash deposit.
Moved furniture out of the lobby and stripped rooms of amenities.
The complaint by Florida Attorney General Robert A. Butterworth puts the
blame for racially discriminatory policies firmly in Kummer's lap. It
says that
Kummer's racial motivation is evident in his policies at other hotels and
in his
instructions "designed to discourage or eliminate events which attract a
large
number of African-Americans."
As unbelievable as the allegations are, they are not surprising or new.
Kummer has been on the paying end of discrimination suits from
Indianapolis to
Memphis to St. Louis. Testimony on the St. Louis case established that
Kummer
wanted to fire a black employment manager because Chesnut's, a cafe near
the
front of the hotel, was getting "too dark."
Hotel employees testified Kummer wanted to hire only older black men as
doormen at the hotel's nightclub to cultivate an "Old South" image.
Kummer says it isn't so. He says more than half of his employees and a
fifth
of his supervisors are minorities. He has hired a director of diversity
and
contributed to the United Negro College Fund.
It's time for Fred Kummer to stop hiding behind public relations and
take
personal responsibility for ending the discrimination that flourishes at
his
hotels.
Reprinted from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: December 18, 1999
17 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 The Denver Post Corporation
The Denver Post
December 17, 1999 Friday 2D EDITION
SECTION: DENVER & THE WEST; Pg. B-01
LENGTH: 729 words
HEADLINE: China captive claims torture Local Falun Gong practitioner
describes 2
weeks of detention
BYLINE: By Bruce Finley, Denver Post International Affairs Writer,
BODY:
A suburban Denver woman detained in China for protesting China's ban
on the
Falun Gong spiritual movement spoke out Thursday against captors who she
said
tortured her by pumping her stomach full of saltwater.
The trouble began when Jian Tang and other prisoners launched a hunger
strike, said Tang, who is now home in Highlands Ranch after returning to
Colorado on Wednesday night.
After two days of refusing all food and water, Tang said, she was
moved away
from other Falun Gong detainees to another cell in a Guangzhou detention
facility.
There, a guard approached and asked her to eat.
'I said: 'No.' I told him I wanted him to give me a reason why I was
arrested and that I wanted to see an arrest notice,' Tang said. 'I told
him:
'We did not commit any crime.' He got angry. He shouted: 'Who do you
think you
are?' After that he kicked me. He walked close to me and lifted his foot
and
kicked me. My body just moved a little. I was still sitting. Then he
said if I
refused to eat they would feed me saltwater.'
A few minutes later, Tang said, 'four or five big men put me on the
floor'
and chained her legs together. She felt a hand over her nose, she said,
forcing
her to open her mouth to breathe. One of the men jammed what she
described as a
semi-transparent plastic tube into her mouth. 'I could see a big thing
on my
mouth.'
She felt fluid - 'salt with just a little water added' - pouring down
her
throat. She said it continued for three or four minutes.
'I thought I was dying. I couldn't breathe. After that, my stomach
hurt. I
keep drinking water I could not think. I threw up all over my body.
I
kept throwing out the whole night.'
Tang said this kind of treatment - evidence she says that Chinese
officialsdisregard human rights and 'justdo what they want' - ought to be
forbidden.
Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Washington could not be reached for
comment.
Tang's husband's parents still live in China; her parents and brother
are in
the United States. Tang said she weighed risks of speaking out very
carefully.
'I think I should tell the truth,' she said, 'for the sake of other
(Falun
Gong) practitioners still in jail.' She said she heard other detainees
received
harsh treatment, but did not witness any.
Tang said she was freed after 15 days in police custody. U.S. Sen.
Wayne
Allard had intervened, asking U.S. consular officials to inquire about
her in
Guangzhou. Police detained Tang and other practitioners on Nov. 25 in
Guangzhou, where they'd gathered to defy China's ban.
Chinese authorities are adamantly opposed to the popular Falun Gong
spiritual movement, which blends slow-motion meditative exercise with
eastern
religious ideas.
They banned the movement in April - after thousands of practitioners
surrounded government headquarters in Beijing near Tiananmen Square.
Chinese
officials in Washington say Falun Gong is not only illegal but dangerous
and a
threat to government power.
Tang was among thousands caught in a massive crackdown that Chinese
officials say has involved more than 35,000 police run-ins with
protesters.
After lengthy interrogations about Falun Gong activities, she said,
Guangzhou detention center officials said they were sending her back to
Chengdu, her hometown in China.
She moved to the United States in 1991 to earn a physics doctorate at
the
Colorado School of Mines - and stayed in Colorado with her husband and
daughter.
On the way to Chengdu, when she didn't have money for her airplane
ticket,
she said, police escorts guided her to a bank and told her to withdraw
money
with her Visa card. Tang said she withdrew the equivalent of about $ 120
and
made the flight.
In Chengdu, local police questioned her further and, after two days,
released her to her husband's parents.
From there, she returned home via Beijing, arriving in Denver Wednesday
night.
While her husband and 10-year-old daughter waited, Falun Gong
supporters
here hailed her as a hero. They're preparing more protests in China.
They say
at least two practitioners from Denver are in China today. U.S. officials
including President Clinton have lashed out at China for detaining Falun
Gong
practitioners.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Tang
LOAD-DATE: December 17, 1999
18 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 The Florida Times-Union
The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, FL)
December 17, 1999 Friday, City Edition
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL; Pg. A-1
LENGTH: 797 words
HEADLINE: U.S. charges Adam's Mark with bias
BYLINE: From staff and news services
BODY:
Federal officials filed suit yesterday against a national hotel chain,
accusing Adam's Mark Hotels and Resorts of discriminating against
African-American hotel guests by placing them in less desirable rooms and
charging them higher rates than those offered white guests.
"This kind of behavior is simply unacceptable,' Attorney General Janet
Reno
said at a news conference announcing the action. 'It is hard to believe
that 35
years after the Civil Rights Act was passed by Congress, this type of
discrimination still exists.'
An 18-floor, 966-room Adam's Mark Hotel is under construction on
Jacksonville's Northbank riverfront and is expected to be finished by
February
2001, making it Northeast Florida's largest hotel complex.
As part of its contract with the city, the hotel chain promised not to
discriminate against anyone during the hiring process or while leasing
rooms.
'We were very shocked by these allegations,' said Isaiah Rumlin,
president of
the Jacksonville branch of the NAACP. Rumlin, who has led the branch for
a year,
said he will work hard to ensure African Americans aren't mistreated by
the
hotel once it opens.
'Locally, we will not tolerate that,' he said. 'Certainly, we will be
meeting
with other groups and with top Adam's Mark top management here to be sure
this
doesn't happen here.'
A federal investigation found that in upscale Adam's Mark hotels
nationwide,
African-American patrons were forced to pay more than white patrons for
comparable accommodations, and were kept out of hotel restaurants and
lounges
because the chain had an overall corporate strategy that too high a
percentage
of African Americans in those settings was bad for business.
"This is the first time we've filed suit against a nationwide hotel
chain,'
Assistant Attorney General Bill Lann Lee said. 'But this is a very
significant
case of egregious behavior.' He added that federal officials were
reluctant to
file the suit but had exhausted attempts to reach a settlement with the
hotel
chain's owner.
'More than 30 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
the
sad fact is that some Americans are still treated differently because of
their
race,' Reno said in an afternoon news conference. 'This isn't right. This
isn't
fair. And it's against the law.'
A statement released by HBE Corp., the parent company of Adam's Mark,
read:
'We are, of course, disappointed to have been named as a subject today of
an
investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. We believe that, when the
department's investigations are finally concluded, Adam's Mark and its
parent
HBE Corp. will be completely exonerated.'
The department filed suit in Orlando under Title Il of the Civil Rights
Act,
which was passed to ensure African Americans in the Deep South no longer
would
be subjected to segregated lunch counters and 'No Negroes' signs at
overnight
accommodations.
The Justice Department investigation was triggered by a class-action
suit
filed in May by five African-American patrons of the Daytona Beach Adam's
Mark
hotel, who alleged racial discrimination during their stay at the
437-room hotel
for the Black College Reunion in April.
The suit alleged that the hotel required African-American guests to wear
orange wristbands, denied access to African-American visitors and charged
higher
room rates for African-American guests.
Further, it charged that the rooms rented to African-American guests
lacked
basic amenities such as telephones and maid service, and that pictures
had been
removed from the walls and locks placed on the minibars.
Reno said the department began investigating in July. 'And we didn't
like
what we found,' she said. 'We found that Adam's Mark hotels around the
country,
not just in Daytona Beach, were charging African-American patrons higher
rates
than whites. We found that African Americans were offered rooms in less
desirable locations and segregated from white patrons.'
A source familiar with the investigation, which is ongoing, said
violations
of the Civil Rights Act had been found in at least four hotels in
Philadelphia,
Winston-Salem, Denver and Indianapolis.
Yesterday, the state of Florida joined the class-action suit as an
intervener, enabling the state to enforce its Deceptive and Unfair Trade
Practices Act against the 21-hotel chain, and seek up to $ 10,000 per
discrimination violation.
Susan Wiles, Jacksonville Mayor John Delaney's chief of staff, said city
officials will watch how the Justice Department's case develops.
Times-Union staff writer Jim Schoettler contributed to this report.
Information Box:
HITTING HOME
The $ 126 million price tag for the Adam's Mark hotel in Jacksonville,
which
is still under construction, includes $ 23 million in tax incentives.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: December 17, 1999
19 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Content and Programming Copyright 1999 Fox News Network, Inc. ALL
RIGHTS
RESERVED. Transcription Copyright 1999 Federal Document Clearing House,
Inc.,
which takes sole responsibility for the accuracy of the transcription.
ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED. No license is granted to the user of this material
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interests in
the material. This is not a legal transcript for purposes of
litigation.
FOX NEWS NETWORK
SHOW: FOX THE EDGE WITH PAULA ZAHN (22:40:00 ET)
December 17, 1999, Friday
Transcript # 121703cb.260
SECTION: News; Domestic
LENGTH: 2680 words
HEADLINE: Interview with Author David Horowitz
GUESTS: David Horowitz
BYLINE: Paula Zahn
BODY:
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND
MAY BE
UPDATED.
ZAHN: And welcome back to THE EDGE.
If racism isn't a controversial enough topic for you, why not try
reverse
racism on for size? Author David Horowitz says he wrote his new book
"Hating
Whitey" to initiate a more honest discussion on race.
In the book, he says that the black civil rights movement is full of
anti-white racism and that black Americans have lost sight of the
colorblind
society envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King. David Horowitz joins me
now from
Los Angeles.
Thanks for being with us.
DAVID HOROWITZ, AUTHOR, "HATING WHITEY": Thanks for having me.
ZAHN: One of the reviews on your books says you employ heat- seeking
rhetoric
that aims to be as inflammatory as possible. Are you trying to get
whites to
hate blacks?
HOROWITZ: Not at all. I use heat-seeking and inflammatory rhetoric
because
the other side is so loud and so accusatory that they have intimidated
people
from talking about the real issues. My book
ZAHN: Well, there are people out there, as you know, who say there's no
such
thing as reverse discrimination. What is your definition of reverse
racism?
HOROWITZ: Well, racism is about hating another group. My book is
addressed
to the central hypocrisy in our culture, which is we correctly say it's
wrong to
hate other groups, wrong to scapegoat them for our problems, yet it's OK
to hate
white people and to blame white people for everything that goes wrong,
particularly in the black community.
Are too many blacks killing each other or committing crimes? Must be
the
racist criminal justice system that's to blame. Are too many black
kids
ZAHN: Well, in the book, you also make a point of reference to the NAACP
suing gun law manufacturers.
HOROWITZ: Right. Blame -- right, blame the gun manufacturers, who
are of
course white, because too many young blacks are shooting each other. The
real
problem here is a problem that affects black people as well as white
people.
And that is you can't address the real problems if you have these
imaginary
phantom racists that you're always attacking.
On the affirmative action issue in our schools, nobody seriously claims
that
there are white racists keeping blacks out of schools. We all know what
the
problem is, and that is
ZAHN: Well, there are people who say that, as you know, David.
HOROWITZ: Well, I don't know of anybody who has accused Harvard and
Yale
and other liberal elite universities of singling out blacks and excluding
them,
which would be ridiculous because there are these huge programs designed
to
recruit blacks to these colleges.
The real problem is that black students do not score well on the
tests. And
the NAACP
ZAHN: Well, I don't know that you can make that blanket kind of
statement. I
mean, we know that
HOROWITZ: Every.
ZAHN: schools all over the country are changing their requirements
for
kids that don't have the ability to go to high-priced private schools now
in
California and Texas that are trying the new system
HOROWITZ: Now wait a second, Paula
ZAHN: with the top 20 percent scorers on their SAT tests in some
cases.
HOROWITZ: Look, if you're black and you score decently on a test,
you'll
get a scholarship to these schools. There are huge scholarship funds
that are
earmarked only for designated minority students.
That's not the problem. The problem is that black students nationwide
score
200 points down on the SATs, or 300 from Asians and whites. And the
answer of
the NAACP is to sue the testing companies as though the tests are the
problem
and not a student failure. How can you deal with this as a very serious
problem
ZAHN: There also is an underlying question too about the quality of
education
that these kids are getting
HOROWITZ: I agree.
ZAHN: and whether they're discriminated against because of the
you
HOROWITZ: But the schools are run by blacks -- wait a minute
ZAHN: No, wait, wait, wait. I want to talk about you and this
enormous
transition
HOROWITZ: Right.
ZAHN: you've made in your life because you once considered yourself
a
leftist. You once flirted with the Black Panther organization. What
happened
to you?
HOROWITZ: I raised money for a school for the Black Panthers. And they
murdered the woman that I recruited to do the bookkeeping for the caused
me to
sit down and think hard about what I was doing.
And I think there's a lot of guilty white liberals who can't distinguish
between law-abiding blacks and criminal blacks and therefore deprive the
law-abiding black community of proper protection. There's a lot of
hostility to
law enforcement. But if you've been down in any inner city community,
you know
they need more law enforcement and not less, as just one example.
ZAHN: Do you consider yourself a racist?
HOROWITZ: I have spent 50 years in the civil rights movement. I have
black
family. I have fought my whole life for equal respect and rights for
black
Americans.
I am concerned that the civil rights movement has gone off the track
and has
become nothing more than a "blame Whitey" movement. And that's bad.
ZAHN: All right, and that's the name, of course, of your book. David
Horowitz, thanks so much for dropping by.
HOROWITZ: Thank you.
the stuff in your everyday life that we all take for granted stay on
track?
Keep it on THE EDGE. We'll be right back.
<22:43>
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ZAHN: And we're back.
And now the grand finale of our week-long Y2K series.
From ATMs to traffic lights, all sorts of things operate on FOX's Gary
Matsumoto has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why don't you lead us out to that light?
GARY MATSUMOTO, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): San Francisco,
December
8, 1998. By accident, someone pulled the plug on an estimated one million
people and inadvertently gave the nation a sneak preview of what could
happen in
some communities if technicians don't find Y2K-infected microchips.
DR. ARNOLD BERGER, SUN MICROSYSTEMS: The imbedded chip is often called
-- has
been referred to as the hidden chips as they are sort of buried within
devices.
Really what they are, are small computers that are dedicated, or do just
one
job.
Industries such as the electric power industry who have really gotten
serious
in their testing have found that it's much more like searching for a
needle in a
haystack. The worst thing that I could imagine is sort of the
infrastructure
grinding to a halt.
MATSUMOTO: The power outage in San Francisco, which was caused by human
error, not a computer one, crippled the city. Trolley cars wouldn't
budge.
Elevators stood still. Workers conducted business curbside. ATMs froze.
Window washers needed parachutes. Planes diverted to other airports.
Trading stopped on the Pacific Stock Exchange. And a 73- year-old woman
died
when a truck hit her at a downtown intersection with a dead traffic light.
(on camera): By one estimate, there are some 40 billion semiconductors
in use
around the world, many of them soldered right into circuit boards that
are used
everywhere, including power companies. Between two and five percent of
these
embedded chips may have a Y2K problem.
As we saw in San Francisco -- lights, please -- a power failure could
have a
profound impact. Without gas-powered generators, this network would be
off the
air. I'd have to write scripts by candlelight.
DICK LEFKON, DIRECTOR ADJUNCT, IT INSTITUTE, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY: and
effort
looking to see what you want.
We put out seven billion micro-controller chips a year. And probably a
billion of these -- certainly half a billion -- go into
LOU MARCOCCIO, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, GARTNER GROUP: Almost all of these
embedded systems, if they're going to fail, this small percentage, they
will
fail within eight seconds of the time the clock strikes 12 on January 1.
MATSUMOTO (voice-over): Lou Marcoccio of the Gartner Group consulting
firm in
Boston has done a lot of Y2K research for the federal government. He
found a
mixed picture with embedded chips.
MARCOCCIO: If you look at microprocessors that are used in computer
systems
and other types of more intelligent devices, we're looking at one in 400
are
likely to fail due to year 2000. However, most of those have been fixed.
And we have things like large PC-based process controllers that are also
included under embedded systems. These are the things that are used in
manufacturing companies, food processing, oil industry, many different
process-oriented and manufacturing-oriented type companies. These types of
devices, one in 40 are likely to fail due to year 2000 if not fixed.
MATSUMOTO: Computer chips are everywhere: in your phone, your TV set,
in your
laptop on the dining room table, in the thermostat and the cable box.
Follow the fiber optic trail, and you'll find it branching out far
beyond
your home. Problems in Cincinnati could affect someone in Denver.
This is the downside to the global village. A Y2K meltdown in London
could
disrupt companies in Los Angeles.
Part of this problem is getting less than forthright responses from
companies
that haven't fixed their computers.
BERGER: One would be there's no problem. Another would be immediately
refer
them to the legal department, and they would be stonewalled. The company
wouldn't say anything for fear of liability.
WYNNE CARVILLE, ATTORNEY, THELEN, REID, & PRIEST: If the competitor says
everything is hunky-dory and I am being candid at problems I'm
encountering, the
customer base may view my situation as more risky when in fact I'm doing a
better job than my competitor.
MATSUMOTO: Embedded chips are in cardiac monitors and airbags.
BERGER: A new Mercedes Benz has 65 processors in it, an amazing number
of
these little -- of these things all over the place.
MATSUMOTO: Even short-term disruptions could be costly.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: YPF (ph) could hit 31 and three
MATSUMOTO: If just one of the two main banks that serve government bond
dealers couldn't operate for just one day, that one bank would have to
borrow as
much as $100 billion from the Federal Reserve to balance its books.
But the Gartner Group, which expressed serious concerns about embedded
systems earlier in the year, is not guardedly optimistic.
MARCOCCIO: Yes, there will be some problems. Yes, there will be some
failures related to embedded systems. But it's going to be a very small
number.
MATSUMOTO: As we approach the final countdown on the second millennium,
there's still a wide discrepancy in predictions of what might happen.
(on camera): A lot of the problem has been taken care of. What's left
might
be compared to an iceberg. What one can't yet see could cause the most
damage.
In New York, Gary Matsumoto, FOX NEWS.
ZAHN: And coming up next, our EDGE "Image of the Day" and some of your
feedback. Keep it on THE EDGE.
<22:54>
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ZAHN: And welcome back. It's time for our EDGE "Image of the Day."
One little boy is getting an early Christmas present. He's recovering
from
an operation that could change his life.
FOX's Amani Channel (ph) talked to the boy's parents about this very
unusual
procedure.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RANDY LEWIS, FATHER OF JOSH LEWIS: Hang in there, buddy.
AMANI CHANNEL (PH), FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Randy Lewis
offers
some encouraging words to his 10-year-old son Josh, who is a little tired
after
a three-and-a-half-hour surgery. But Josh is now closer to having a
functioning
left arm.
SUNG HUI LEWIS, MOTHER: When he was born, his arm was literally sewn to
his
body. When he was first born, the doctors wanted us to amputate it
immediately
because
CHANNEL (PH): But Josh's parents didn't like that option. So they
found a
Norfolk, Virginia, doctor who has been rebuilding the nerves and blood
vessels
in his arm.
S. LEWIS: He's got an awesome bicep, awesome tricep. He's got blood
flowing.
He's got new fingernails growing, hair
CHANNEL (PH): Josh's left arm is about an inch shorter than his right.
So
he's come to Tampa General Hospital where doctors can help.
DR. DANIEL GREENWALD, PLASTIC SURGEON, TAMPA GENERAL HOSPITAL: All three
bones of the arm need to be lengthened. And the way we do that is we
place this
metal frame around the bones and then break the bones between the metal
frames
and then over time stretch the bones out with little devices that are like
screws and rods.
CHANNEL (PH): Dr. Daniel Greenwald explains to Josh's mother how the
device
works. In about a month, his left arm should be as long as his right.
S. LEWIS: Today we were really excited because this will actually let
him see
a difference being both the same length.
CHANNEL (PH): As Josh's father holds his hand, his mother offers a
little
advice.
S. LEWIS: If you really believe something in your heart, don't give up.
CHANNEL (PH): Amani Channel (ph), FOX NEWS.
ZAHN: You might want to know that Josh has never been able to use his
left
hand. But after he gets better from this operation, doctors will try to
change
that. I'm sure he'll have something to do with it too.
And now it's time for some of your feedback.
On our story last night about Linda Tripp's wiretapping case, Reuben
Abellana
of Honolulu, Hawaii, writes: "Linda Tripp's case in Maryland? Besides
the huge
legal bills, I don't think she has anything to worry about. Even if she
does
get convicted, the case will be overturned in the appellate court."
And our heated debate on professional athletes and violent behavior got
some
heated responses.
Wiley Butner From North Carolina says: "Thanks, Paula, for allowing your
guests to speak on athletes out of control. Drew Rosenhaus had the gall
to say
it was nauseating? He was very nauseating to me."
Emery Van Zandt disagrees. "Like all celebrities, including talk show
hosts,
athletes do receive unwarranted preferential treatment across the social
strata.
That's the way it is. However, the criminal behavior of athletes as a
group is
no greater than the general population."
On our story of the release of tapes of the Columbine shooters to "Time"
magazine, Ron Watkins of Anchorage, Alaska, says: "Jack Thompson is not
living
in the real world. Violent video or computer games are not the cause of
anything. Parents, or the lack of parental supervision, are the
culprit. Duh."
And R. Gaddy in Newberry, South Carolina, said: "Why not release the
tapes?
It may be a wake-up call for parents and other teens. It also might help
those
who continue to try to understand how and why these things happen. For
that
matter, maybe they should release the video from the security cameras
inside the
school during the shooting. On second thought, never mind. Most people
would think it was a movie or a video game."
And as always, we love your feedback. You can e-mail us at
[email protected] or leave us a voice mail message at 1-877-361-EDGE
and let
us know what you think.
TONY SNOW, FOX NEWS SUNDAY: Thanks, Paula.
This week on FOX NEWS SUNDAY, we're going to have the one Republican
George
W. Bush fears more than John McCain, Steve Forbes. He's going to tell us
how he
plans to become the next Republican nominee.
Then, there's a strange silence in Washington about massacres in
Chechnya and
Kosovo. Why? We'll ask Senators Joe Lieberman and Chuck Hagel.
And finally, Bill Buckley (ph) calls it a wrap on "Firing Line" after 33
years. We'll get him to talk about religion, politics, journalism, and
anything
else on his fertile mind.
Plus, our panel Juan Williams, Mara Liasson, and Bill Sammon this week
on FOX
NEWS SUNDAY.
Paula.
ZAHN: And that just about wraps it up for us tonight. Thanks for being
with
us.
And remember, if you want the edge, watch THE EDGE. Have a great
Thanks again for joining us tonight. I'm Paula Zahn.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: December 19, 1999
20 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
The Houston Chronicle
December 17, 1999, Friday 3 STAR EDITION
SECTION: A; Pg. 46
LENGTH: 831 words
HEADLINE: No contest for greatest: It's FDR's century
BYLINE: MARIANNE MEANS; Means is a Washington, D.C.-based columnist for the
Hearst Newspapers. ([email protected]).
BODY:
TIME magazine has compiled the profiles of 100 men and women it
considers the
most influential individuals in shaping the course of history the past 100
years,
From that list the magazine has assigned itself the dubious task of
singling
out the greatest mover and shaker of the century, who will be featured in
its
Dec. 27 issue and in a CBS one-hour special.
It's a clever century-end public relations stunt, and rival Newsweek
has its
own version with a different twist. The magazine honors instead ordinary
people
- those who fought in World War I or II or joined the civil rights
marches or
the crusade for women's equality or worked the assembly lines to produce
airplanes, TV sets, refrigerators, cars and telephones for millions of
their
fellow citizens.
Newsweek asks five questions rather than one: What was the biggest
invention,
the biggest medical breakthrough and the biggest turning point and who
was the
biggest villain and the biggest entertainer? It seeks a public consensus
through
its Web site, the results of which will be aired on NBC's Today show.
Such games can be fun and even useful. Looking back and taking stock of
a
remarkable century can help us to prepare mentally and emotionally for
the next
one.
After all, we did some things wrong and some things right. It is
important to
remember both categories.
We avoided the disaster we all feared most, a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union that would have reduced
Moscow, Washington and much of the
globe to
rubble. By the end of the century, the Cold War was history, and
democracy was
on the march in most parts of the world. The Internet and the
communications
revolution are transforming and speeding up the way we all do business.
Medical
breakthroughs in antibiotics and genetics are extending life and health.
We are
exploring the wonders of space.
But it was a bloody century too. Adolf Hitler nearly destroyed all of
Europe,
killing millions in the process. Josef Stalin ruthlessly murdered his own
people
to retain power. Countries shaking off the colonial yoke or divided by
civil war
were steeped in violence and death.
President Kennedy's assassination shook America. Governments rose and
fell.
Leaders triumphed and failed.
So much happened. So which individual or small group of individuals
made the
biggest impact?
President Clinton has already weighed in on behalf of Franklin D.
Roosevelt,
who led America out of the Great Depression and World War II.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke picked Hitler
on the
theory that the person who had "the most profound impact on the events of
the
20th century" need not be a hero but could also be evil.
One online poll showed Elvis Presley in the lead. Honest! Is anybody in
that
survey taking the question seriously?
Other possibilities listed in a Time-CBS book titled "People of the
Century,"
from which the person of the century will be chosen, include such serious
figures as civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., physicist Albert
Einstein, French leader Charles de Gaulle, Britain's Winston Churchill,
India's
Mohandas Gandhi and birth-control educator Margaret Sanger. There are also
relatively unknown giants, such as Leo Baekeland, who produced the first
modern
plastic; A.P. Giannini, founder of the Bank of America; William Carrier,
who
invented air conditioning; Alexander Fleming, co-discoverer of
penicillin; and
Robert Goddard, the first true American rocket scientist.
Frivolous candidates are given a shot at person of the century, either
to
jolly up the book's contents or out of desperation to find enough folks
to fill
it. (That's the beauty of Newsweek's contrary approach. There's no end of
ordinary people to designate.)
In the Time-CBS book, Coco Chanel is there, for fashion; the Kennedys
in a
lump, for celebrityhood; T.S. Eliot, for poetry; Leo Burnett, who made
fabled
advertisements; Martha Graham, for dance; Bill W., founder of Alcoholics
Anonymous; Lucky Luciano, Mafia don; Walt Disney, for Mickey Mouse; Ray
Kroc,
for McDonald's hamburgers; Lucille Ball, for making us laugh; and Marlon
Brando,
for once being a good actor. Even Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana are
there.
Not everybody being considered is dead. Oprah Winfrey and Ronald Reagan
are
still here. But Bill Clinton and Al Gore get no mention in the top 100 -
surely
just an accidental oversight?
To pick one person who had the most influence in the most ways means we
must
go for greatness. To my mind, it's no contest. FDR wins it hands down.
I'd also
throw in Eleanor Roosevelt, his political eyes and ears, for good
measure. What
a dynamic couple.
Together they saved democracy from a dying, unresponsive economic
system at
home and a dangerous fascist abroad.
Arthur Schlesinger, FDR's fan and biographer, writes that "the world we
live
in today is Franklin Roosevelt's world." It's true. FDR's vision of a
government
with a social conscience and a world at peace is our reality. Lucky us.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
TYPE: Editorial Opinion
LOAD-DATE: December 18, 1999
21 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
PR Newswire
December 17, 1999, Friday
SECTION: WASHINGTON DATELINE
DISTRIBUTION: TO NATIONAL AND CITY EDITORS
LENGTH: 663 words
HEADLINE: USCCR Releases Report on Immigration, Race, and Economic
Opportunity
In New York City
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Dec. 17
BODY:
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights today released a cautionary report
on
racial and ethnic tensions in New York City, focusing on three separate
and
distinct issues: immigrants and low-skill labor markets; minorities and
women in
the finance industry; and the Community Reinvestment Act. The report,
which is
based on hearings held in New York City in 1994 and 1995 and significantly
updated by subsequent research and media accounts, finds that race,
ethnicity,
and inequality intersect in complex ways, creating sites of tension and
conflict
amid a diversity unmatched anywhere in the United States.
"New York is a vibrant and diverse city," said Commission Chairperson
Mary
Frances Berry. "But it behooves us to make sure that all Americans are
included
in the prosperity and hope that are this nation's promise."
Despite the often positive portrayal of New York's recent social and
economic transformations, part of the report paints a picture of a city
still
wrestling with profound racial and ethnic cleavages, and warns that many
of New
York's inhabitants remain poor, disenfranchised, and angry. It notes a
"darker
side to the immigration story, characterized by the exploitation of a
vulnerable
workforce," particularly unauthorized immigrants, and notes rising
tension and
competition between immigrants and native minorities. It finds that
efforts to
turn social services into immigration enforcement agencies are not only
counterproductive, but dangerously ill-advised.
While the report adopts a cautionary tone about the myriad problems in
low-skill labor markets, its analysis of the large, prominent, and
well-paying
financial industry reveals a somewhat different situation. "These
industries,
which are among the most renumerative in New York City, remain less
diverse than
they could be," said Dr. Berry. "Progress has been made recently, in part
because of greater public scrutiny-including the hearings held by the
Commission
-- but genuine diversity is still a distant goal."
The report's analysis of the banking and securities industry is based
on a
substantial amount of primary research into the hiring and promotion
practices
of these industries. The report did not document specific evidence of
individual
discrimination; in addition, because the information was obtained under
confidentiality agreements, the firms are not named in the report.
However, the
Commission found the differences in rates of hiring, promotions, and job
type
(clerical versus managerial and professional) deeply disturbing.
The report analyzes various procedures that might produce disparate
outcomes, such as the formal testing required by regulatory bodies and
those
arbitration procedures that might give the impression of being
insensitive even
to the critical importance of appearing objective.
Finally, the report considers the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) in
the
context of the role of capital and lending to the redevelopment of poor
urban
neighborhoods. The report finds that low-income neighborhoods remain
underserved
by lending institutions, and lauds the CRA for helping to revitalize
portions of
such distressed communities as the South Bronx, Harlem, and East New York.
Individual copies of the report can be obtained free from the
Publications
Office, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 624 Ninth Street, NW, Room 600,
Washington, DC 20425. Tel: (202) 376-8128.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is an independent, bipartisan fact-
finding agency. Its members are Chairperson Mary Frances Berry, Vice
Chairperson
Cruz Reynoso, and Commissioners Carl A. Anderson, Christopher Edley, Jr.,
Yvonne
Y. Lee, Elsie M. Meeks, and Russell G. Redenbaugh. Ruby G. Moy is Staff
Director.
SOURCE U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
CONTACT: David Aronson of The United States Commission on Civil Rights,
Public
Affairs, 202-376-8312
URL: http://www.prnewswire.com
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: December 18, 1999
22 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 The Providence Journal Company
The Providence Journal-Bulletin
December 17, 1999, Friday, All EDITIONS
SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg. 7B
LENGTH: 1368 words
HEADLINE: COMMENTARY - The gay 'Nineties - Road from 'outing' to honesty
BYLINE: BOB FULGHUM
BODY:
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all
concessions
yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle.
If there
is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom,
and
yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without thunder and
lightening.
Frederick Douglass
* *
DURING THESE DECADES of struggle for the recognition of our rights to
freedom, perhaps no living gay-civil-rights activist has penned more
thunder or
tossed more pointed lightning bolts than journalist/activist Michelangelo
Signorile, of New York. Speaking recently before a roomful of openly gay
and
lesbian elected officials attending an international confab in
Providence, his
demure delivery belied a history of fiery activism.
In what seems like a lifetime ago now, Signorile in 1992 awoke a whole
generation of us with the publication of his treatise Queer in America.
With
laser-sharp vision, he dissected the hypocrisy and prejudice that pervaded
mainstream American institutions: from corporate boardrooms to
congressional
chambers, from Pentagon corridors to the unstated collusion of newsroom
and
movie media moguls.
The Washington Post said that Queer in America will open minds as well
as
closets. It has! Famed AIDS activist and writer Larry Kramer called the
book
one of the most important books of the 20th Century. At least for some
of us,
it was.
It is not surprising, therefore - to underscore just how far we have
come
this decade that the confab of gay officials concurred that they had an
obligation, a duty, to educate and be honest with the constituents who
put them
there and pay their salaries.
A decade ago, factions within the gay community crucified Signorile for
advocating and engaging in the practice of outing public figures.
Signorile
writes elsewhere: Remember me? Only yesterday I was the
Nazi-fascist-monster-terrorist who was hell-bent on destroying the gay
movement.
But quite suddenly it seems many of my former detractors are in bed with
me,
cooing my ideologies into my ear. You'd better believe I'm gloating.
Signorile understood that it was gays themselves, as much as homophobic
institutions, who were holding gays back. He charted a course of action
necessary to move forward a diverse array of mostly invisible sexual
minorities
who had been unjustly shamed into living their entire adult lives within
the
confines of homophobic church- and government-imposed closets. Untold
thousands
of people have passed away of old age, disease or acts of violence
without ever
knowing the limited, precarious liberties we enjoy today.
In the Information Age, as mainstream media have moved away from
superficially shielding the private lives of even our highest elected
officials
to wit, from Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy to Gary Hart and Bill
Clinton so
have standards of outing within the gay community. In fact, Signorile
points out
that outing today is simply reporting of gay officials under the same
standards
as heterosexual celebrities.
Time and again, voters have indicated at the ballot box that they care
not
who someone loves as long as candidates demonstrate integrity and
discretion.
With this enlightenment, it is perplexing to discover that three decades
into a
serious gay-civil-rights movement and two decades into a deadly AIDS
epidemic,
segments of mainstream and gay media the very people upon whom we depend
to
inform and educate still treat suspected or known homosexual public
figures with
kid gloves.
During Signorile's Providence speech, for instance, state Rep. David
Cicilline shared that editors of The Providence Journal were reluctant to
print
M. Charles Bakst's April 1 column publicly reporting Cicilline's gay
orientation
for the first time, unless Cicilline granted explicit permission.
Bothersome,
also, was the willingness of the affable reporter, with his finely tuned
sense
of social justice, to collude with the closet by granting Mr. Cicilline
the
prerogative of not answering a personal question. One would hope that, in
this
day and age, an investigative reporter would so note if a public figure
deliberately declined to answer a question.
In the Age of Clinton, lying or refusing to answer such a rudimentary
question conjures up all kinds of intriguing images: Of what is a public
official ashamed or afraid? A grown man or woman in whom we put our
public trust
has never mustered the courage to be honest with his mom and dad? Is one
ashamed
of the significant other in one's life? Afraid of facing the priest, who,
chances are, may have a hidden life of his own? Or perhaps hiding a
darker side:
cheating on a partner, hanging out at public bathrooms or dark theaters la
George Michael or Pee Wee Herman, or perhaps addicted to the proverbial
deadly
game of chase and conquest?
For most Americans, character does still matter, and honesty, integrity
and
trust are at the heart of character. The gay pioneers of decades past, who
placed themselves at great risk and vulnerability to advance society's
understanding of the human condition, and today's young people, who
struggle
with their own orientation in a world full of hatred and violence, deserve
nothing less than complete openness and honesty in our public discourse.
Let historians note that in the last quarter of the 20th Century, men
and
women of good conscience rose up to slay the oppressive, shameful beast of
silence. With this spirit propelling us into the brave new world of the
next
millennium, we ask the media to end the charade, to vanquish lingering
pockets
of invisibility, to treat us like anyone else in the public domain.
It's past time for the remaining six or more Rhode Island Assembly
lawmakers
to stop hiding behind a facade of presumed heterosexuality. End the
misrepresentation by saying I am or resign to private life and make way
for
those unashamed of who they are!
It is time for mayors to say that whom they love does not impair their
ability to manage the business of their hometowns. Little wonder it took
12
years to enact something as simple and benign as workplace-discrimination
protection.
It is time for the Rhode Island congressional delegation, and the press
who
cover them, to inform us what occupies the hearts and minds of those we
elect to represent us. Surely our congressional delegation has other loves and
interests
in life than raising money and hanging onto other pols' coattails. (Don't
make
the mistake of many of us and marry for appearance's sake!)
Will this generation demonstrate the same profiles in courage as Jack
and
Bobby Kennedy? And what of the widely respected single celebrity
purportedly
contemplating a run for Congress? If privacy is of paramount imperative
to them,
then return to private life!
It's time for the President who proclaimed to feel our pain and be our
friend
to clean out his own Cabinet closets unless all he cared about was his
own neck
and running off with our votes and money. Are they going to their graves
carrying their secret lives like deceased Texas Rep. Barbara Jordan?
Freedom of speech, that grandest of gifts defended for us by the
greatest
generation, is not to be taken lightly. Those who fail to fully use it to
educate might just as well seek office in Beijing, Baghdad or Tehran.
Suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton labored their
whole
adult lives to guarantee women the right to vote, only to pass away before
seeing their dream come to fruition in 1920. Our destiny is just around
the
bend, and we need an objective media to give us a gentle shove, to
jump-start
this sputtering jalopy we call a movement.
Please end the Jimmy Olsen/Lois Lane act, pretending you haven't a clue
who
Superman is! No more special treatment; no more pretending to be other
than who
we are! The fields have been plowed for decades. We've seen the lightning
and
heard the thunder. We've weathered the storm.
It's time to finish harvesting the crops, lest they rot in the fields.
Bob Fulghum is a volunteer for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network
and
lives in Middletown. The views expressed here are his own.
LOAD-DATE: December 18, 1999
23 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 The Salt Lake Tribune
The Salt Lake Tribune
December 17, 1999, Friday
SECTION: Final; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 717 words
HEADLINE: Promise of Freedom Moves 850 to Become U.S. Citizens; New
Citizens
Take Oath in Huge Ceremony
BYLINE: SHAWN FOSTER, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
BODY:
Yan Kucherov realized on his first visit to the United States that he
wanted
to call it home.
"This is what I wanted from the very beginning," Kucherov said as he
carefully tucked his citizenship certificate into a large white envelope.
"I had
been in the United States many times, and I immediately liked what I saw."
On Thursday, Kucherov and his wife and daughter joined 847 other
immigrants
at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City for one of the largest
naturalization
ceremonies in the state's history.
The home to the Utah Jazz and venue for concerts and rodeos was
transformed
into an enormous courtroom, but one with a seasonally festive air. Those
taking
the oath sat in folding chairs, holding small American flags and white
envelopes
for their citizenship certificates. Hundreds of family members and
friends sat
in the stands, many with video cameras in hand.
The allure of America felt by Kucherov was just as strong for his wife,
Oskana.
After coming to the United States six years ago, she visited a public
library
and could not believe how much material was on the shelves, available to
anyone.
Since then, Oskana Kucherov has learned more about Russia and the former
Soviet
Union than she ever did in her native country.
While working in Moscow with foreign diplomats, she often had heard them
speak of human rights.
"I had no idea what they were talking about," she said. "But after one
taste
of freedom in the United States, I understood, and I was intoxicated with
the
liberty."
But that freedom, warned U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball, who presided
over
the ceremony, is not free.
Kimball lauded America as a land "where differences are tolerated and
diversity celebrated."
"But we still have to work to make this one nation, indivisible, with
justice
for all."
That was part of the reason Benny Zippel, a native of Italy and a rabbi
at
Salt Lake City's Bais Menachem Synagogue, decided to become a citizen.
"I'm planning to stay in the United States, and if I'm going to be here
I
want to be able to vote," said Zippel, a spiritual leader from the Jewish
Orthodox Chabad Lubavich tradition. "I want to make sure there is
tolerance,
that there is mutual respect, even though people speak differently, look
different and believe in different things."
Rocky Anderson, Salt Lake City's mayor-elect, told the immigrants: "As
new
citizens, you renew us as a nation. We welcome you with open arms."
The newcomers also were welcomed by Utah's Immigration and
Naturalization
Service (INS) officials -- if for no other reason than the new citizens
at the
mega-naturalization ceremony represented a reduction in the agency's
backlog.
"With this ceremony, we are caught up with pending approved
naturalization
applications," said Steve Branch, the officer in charge of Utah's INS
office.
And although several thousand immigrants are awaiting interviews with
INS
officials, said the agency's Allan Speirs, the wait -- from filing the
application to swearing in -- has decreased from 10 months to eight
months.
Nationally, the INS has a large backlog: There aremore than 1 million
naturalization applications, and several other cities have worse track
records
than Salt Lake. In Tampa, for example, immigrants often wait three years
before
they are allowed to take the citizenship oath.
Next month, the regular naturalization schedule -- 180 new citizens at
twice-monthly ceremonies at Salt Lake's U.S. District Court -- will
resume.
"There has been a huge influx of people applying for naturalization,"
said
Deputy Court Clerk Ronald Black. "And since it's Christmas time, we
figured this
would be a great present for a lot of people and their families."
Jean-Louis Gottfried, a native of Haiti, said he is grateful for the
chance
the United States has given him to fulfill his dreams.
After Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier closed the
university
where Gottfried was enrolled in medical school, he came to the United
States. He
received another undergraduate degree in Miami and later graduated from
medical
school.
"I want to give back to the community," said Gottfried, a medical
resident at
the University of Utah.
"Now, instead of being a Haitian helping people, I will be a
Haitian-American
helping people."
GRAPHIC: Bethi Huych, 65, of Salt Lake City holds her right hand high as
she
takes the oath of citizenship at a naturalization ceremony Thursday in
the Delta
Center.
LOAD-DATE: December 17, 1999
24 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 San Antonio Express-News
San Antonio Express-News
December 17, 1999, Friday , METRO
SECTION: METRO / SOUTH TEXAS; Pg. 1B
LENGTH: 602 words
HEADLINE: Fight over census brewing
BYLINE: Sherry Sylvester
BODY:
Civil rights leaders have fired the first shots in the battle they
say is sure to follow the next year's census, when the government
officially counts all U.S. residents.
Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on
Civil Rights, or LCCR, said Wednesday: "no single function of
government is more important" for minorities than is the upcoming
census.
"In 1990, 8.4 million people were missed (by census counters),
including large numbers of children, the poor, people of color and
people living in rural homes," Henderson said.
Marisa Demeo, counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Education Fund, said Texas, California, Florida, Georgia and New
York were the states with the biggest undercount in 1990.
Figures from the LCCR indicate 279,954 Anglos weren't counted in
Texas in the last census and 247,420 Hispanics were missed.
In addition, 83,334 African-Americans, 8,575 Asian-Pacific
Islanders and 1,877 American Indians were left out of the last
state count, according to figures.
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., head of the Congressional Census
Caucus, said she was concerned the 2000 census won't be accurate
because the courts have ruled against using statistical sampling to
determine population numbers.
"There is growing concern that the next president could block the
release of the accurate numbers," Maloney said.
Francis Tern, coordinator for the Hispanic Coalition for a
Complete Count in San Antonio, said local nonprofit groups have
"serious concerns" about plans for an upcoming census.
"The letter going out to people regarding the census is only in
English," Tern said.
Census officials in San Antonio admit that the initial letter,
scheduled to go out in March, is only in English but they say there
is a box in Spanish at the end of the letter that will allow
residents to request a census form in Spanish or another language.
Scott McClellan, spokesman for Gov. George W. Bush's presidential
campaign, said Tuesday that Bush supports enumeration rather than
statistical sampling.
"He believes we should count and do it until we do it right,"
McClellan said.
But U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-San Antonio, charged that
Republicans are refusing to accept statistical sampling for
"political reasons."
"It is unreasonable to think that we can get an accurate number by
counting heads," Rodriguez said.
The coalition of civil rights groups that stepped forward this week
were involved in a Supreme Court challenge earlier this year
attempting to require the government to accept statistical sampling
to estimate the size of the population and where people live.
The Supreme Court ruled statistical sampling didn't meet the
constitutional criteria to determine how many congressional
representatives each state should have. However, the court ruled
that statistical estimates could be used in determining the amount
of federal aid states and cities should receive.
But Demeo said Wednesday that some states were opposed to using any
statistical sampling.
"Five states have passed anti-sampling legislation and several
other states are considering them," Demeo said.
In a letter Tuesday to Bush, U.S. Rep. Charles Gonzalez, D-San
Antonio, said sampling "will help ensure that the inevitable
differential racial and ethnic undercount is at least
ameliorated."
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: December 17, 1999
25 of 34 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 1999 Star Tribune
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
December 17, 1999, Friday, Metro Edition
SECTION: NEWS; Arguments through the ages; Pg. 31A
LENGTH: 834 words
HEADLINE: Arguments through the ages;
Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Mob murder in a Christian nation
BODY:
Editor's note: Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) was a teacher,
journalist and
activist who was known for her courageous anti-lynching editorials and
speeches.
Though her life was often threatened, and her Memphis newspaper office was
destroyed by a white mob, she continued writing and speaking out against
injustice throughout her adult life. She took her protests around the
nation, to
Europe and eventually to the White House. During an 1898 rally in
Chicago, she
presented President William McKinley with a series of resolutions against
lynching and other murders of blacks. Later, she organized one of the
first
black women's suffrage groups and became a founding member of the NAACP.
Reprinted in community newspapers across the country, Wells-Barnett's
columns
prompted thousands of blacks to move North and helped inspire legal action
within the modern civil rights movement.
The lynching record for a quarter of a century merits the
thoughtful
study of the American people. It presents three salient facts:
First, lynching is color line murder. Second, crimes against (white
women)
is the excuse, not the cause. Third, it is a national crime and requires a
national remedy.
Proof that lynching follows the color line is to be found in
statistics
for the past 25 years. While frontier lynch law existed, the executions
showed a
majority of white victims. Later, however, as authorized judiciary
extended into
the far West, lynch law rapidly abated and its white victims became few
and far
between.
Just as the lynch law regime came to a close in the West, a new mob
movement started in the South. This was wholly political, its purpose
being to
suppress the colored vote by intimidation and murder. Thousands of
assassins,
banded together under the name of Ku Klux Klans, "Midnight Raiders," etc.,
spread a reign of terror by beating, shooting and killing colored people
by the
thousands. In a few years, the purpose was accomplished and the black
vote was
suppressed. But mob murder continued.
From 1882, when 52 were lynched, down to the present, lynching has
been
along the color line. Statistics show that 3,284 men, women and children
have
been put to death in this quarter of a century
Twenty-eight human
beings
also burned at the stake, one of them a woman and two of them children,
is the
awful indictment against American civilization - the gruesome tribute
which the
nation pays to the color line.
Why is mob murder permitted by a Christian nation? What is the
cause of
this awful slaughter? This question is answered almost daily always the
same
shameless, falsehood that "Negroes are lynched to protect womanhood."
This is
the never varying answer of lynchers and their apologists. All know that
it is
untrue. The cowardly lyncher revels in murder, then seeks to shield
himself from
public execration by claiming devotion to woman. But truth is mighty and
the
lynching record discloses the hypocrisy of the lyncher as well as his
crime.
Is there a remedy, or will the nation confess that it cannot
protect its
protectors (own) at home as well as abroad? Various remedies have been
suggested, but year after year, the butchery of men, women and children
continues
Education is suggested as a preventive, but it is as
grave a
crime to murder an ignorant man as it is a scholar.
Agitation, though helpful, will not alone stop the crime.
Statistics are
published, meetings are held, resolutions are adopted and yet lynchings
go on. Public sentiment does measurably decrease the sway of mob law, but
irresponsible
bloodthirsty criminals
were not deterred from their heinous crimes
by
either education or agitation.
The only certain remedy is an appeal to law. Lawbreakers must be
made to
know that human life is sacred and that everyone is first a citizen of the
United States and secondly a citizen of the state in which he belongs
The strong arm of the government must reach across state lines whenever
unbridled lawlessness defies the law. Federal protection of American
citizenship
is the remedy for lynching
It would be a beginning in the right direction if this conference
can
establish a bureau for the investigation and publication of the details
of every
lynching; make it a duty to give the widest publicity to the facts in
each case.
Secure expressions of opinion all over the country against lynching.
Lastly, try
to influence the daily papers of the country to refuse to become
accessory to
mobs.
Time was when lynching was sectional (regional), but now it is
national
a blight upon our nation, mocking our laws and disgracing our
-
Christianity.
"With malice toward none but with charity for all" let us undertake the
work of
making the law effective and supreme upon every foot of American soil a
-
shield
to the innocent and to the guilty punishment swift and sure.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 1909. Speech, National Negro Conference.
I
GRAPHIC: PHOTO
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: December 17, 1999
Email Completed
Time of Delivery: December 20, 1999 07:25 am EST
Email Number: 40:0:5155616
RECORD TYPE: PRESIDENTIAL (NOTES MAIL)
CREATOR: Sharon H. Yuan (CN=Sharon H. Yuan/OU=OPD/O=EOP [ OPD ])
CREATION DATE/TIME:20-DEC-1999 16:49:56.00
SUBJECT: Re: Memo to the President -- Don't Ask/Don't Tell
TO: Edward W. Correia ( CN=Edward W. Correia/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TEXT:
Karen is fine with the memo. Let me know if you need anything else.
Thanks.
Sharon
RECORD TYPE: PRESIDENTIAL (NOTES MAIL)
CREATOR: Elizabeth J. Potter ( CN=Elizabeth J. Potter/OU=WHO/O=EOP [ WHO ])
CREATION DATE/TIME:20-DEC-1999 20:31:08.00
SUBJECT: dadt memo...a more thoughtful response
TO: Paul J. Weinstein Jr. ( CN=Paul J. Weinstein Jr./OU=OPD/O=EOP@EOP [ OPD ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TEXT:
Can you send this to Leon's deputy. I can't seem to pull him up on the
screen. Although we can't pull back what has been said, I do think that
more temperate language is helpful.
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MEMORANDUM
TO:
Tony Coelho
Donna Brazile
Janet Murgia
Clark Ray
FR:
Julian Potter
RE:
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue" Policy
DT:
December 13, 1999
Background
Seven years ago the Clinton/Gore Administration was elected into office and
attempted to fulfill a campaign pledge to issue an Executive Order (E.O.) prohibiting
the mandatory discharge of gay military personnel.
Congress, the military and the public vehemently opposed the E.O. and instead, 10
USC Section 654-known as the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue" Policy
(DA/DT/DP) was codified into law.
Under this new policy, servicemembers can be discharged if they (1) state they are
gay, (2) engage in hand holding, kissing or other physical contact with a person of
the same gender, or (3) attempt to marry someone of the same gender.
These reasons for discharge are identical to those in place since 1981. But, under
the old regulations being homosexual was, by definition, incompatible with military
service; under the new law gay people can, in theory, serve as long as they keep
their orientation private and refrain from "homosexual acts."
President Clinton, Congress and military leaders agreed to their part of the
"DA/DT/DP" policy to implement new limits to gay investigations:
End affirmative efforts to pursue suspected gay members:
Stop asking service members about their sexual orientation;
End witch hunts and prevent anti-gay harassment;
Implement the law with regard to the privacy of servicemembers.
[Automated Records Management System Hex-Dump Conversion]
STATUS ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE POLICY
The policy has been in effect since February 1994. Over that time period we have
seen soaring gay discharges. In 1998, the Pentagon fired 1,149 people under the
"DA/DT/DP" policy, in 1997 it was 997. That amounts to 3-4 persons per day, costing
the military $31 million in training and replacement costs.
The frustration with these discharges is that it is not clear that the firings are
because of a gay servicemembers violation of the "telling" part of the policy,
but rather it appears that military personnel have gone beyond the limits of
investigation and violated the "asking and pursuing" part of the policy.
It is well documented that servicemembers across the country continue to be
interrogated, investigated, harassed and threatened about their sexual orientation.
Psychotherapists have turned in gay members. Partners are being interrogated
about their kids. Servivemembers are threatened with prison unless they confess to
being gay or accuse others as gay.
The Servicemembers legal Defense network, a non-profit legal aid and watchdog
group set up to help people hurt by this policy has directly assisted over 2000 men
and women facing harassment, witch hunts and death threats since this policy was
enacted.
In addition to difficulties with the policy, the base climate surrounding gay
servicemembers has gotten completely out of hand. On July 6, 1999, Private First
Class Barry Winchell died at Fort Campbell, KY, after he was attacked and brutally
beaten with a baseball bat in his barracks, by a fellow soldier.
The military leadership at Fort Campbell allowed an anti-gay climate to thrive.
Fellow soldiers have testified that the beating death of Winchell came after months
of vile anti-gay name-calling and harassment, rumor mongering and inquiries into
Winchell's private life.
Defense Secretary William Cohen today ordered a full review by the Pentagon's
inspector general into how the military's `don't ask, don't tell" policy is being carried
out, with a report due back in 90 days. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon, who
announced the new investigation, said that spot checks would be made on bases
and installations of all the services.
He said that Cohen shared President Clinton's recently expressed concerns that
the policy was not working as intended. ``Clearly there are issues that need to be
addressed," Bacon said. He said that `any steps that are warranted" as a result of
the inquiry would be taken by the Pentagon to make sure that instances of
harassment are not condoned.
[Automated Records Management System Hex-Dump Conversion]
POLITICAL SITUATION
Because of the Presidential election and the tragic death of Barry Winchell,
politicians have been talking about this issue and "breaking the code of silence"
about the policy.
Candidate Bill Bradley spoke out against the policy in the Advocate interview (Sept
99) and during the debate in New Hampshire (Oct 99). He said the policy does not
work, it is a failure. Gays and lesbians should serve openly in the military as with
dozens of other professions.
Mrs. Clinton spoke out in New York (Dec 9, 99) said the policy had been a failure, if
elected she would work to overturn the policy. She doesn't believe "don't ask, don't
tell" has worked, and called for a policy under which gays and lesbians could serve
without discrimination or harassment. "Fitness to serve in the military should be
based on one's conduct, not one's sexual orientation," she said.
The President said his policy was to have gays serve openly, yet in 1993 he lost in
a vote with the Senate 68-32. "Let me remind you that the original intent was that
people would not be rooted out, that they would not be questioned out, that this
would be focused on people's conduct, and if they didn't violate the code of conduct,
and they didn't tell, that their comings and goings, the mail they got, the associates
they had, that those things would not be sufficient to kick them out of the military, or
certainly subject them to harassment"
The President continued, "what I would like to do is to focus on trying to make the
policy that we announced back in '93 work the way it was intended to, because it's
way -- it's out of whack now, and I don't think any serious person can say it's not."
On December 13 Reuters article by Charles Aldinger states that "The front-running
candidates for the White House, Democrat AI Gore and Republican George W.
Bush, support the Pentagon policy under which gays and lesbians are allowed to
serve in the military if they do not openly discuss their sexual orientation.
On a Saturday Radio talk show, Barney Frank (D-MA) has called upon Vice
President AI Gore to change his position on gays in the military, to one
supporting the policy's termination. "I think he should go beyond [criticism]," Frank
said, "and I think as a Presidential candidate, he's fully entitled to give his position
which I hope will be that it's a mistaken policy." "I know there's this sense that 'Oh
well, the Vice President is not supposed to disagree with the President.' I think that's
wrong," said Frank.
Frank continued "I think as a Presidential candidate, he's fully entitled to give his
position" in suggesting that Gore separate himself further from his administration's
record on the issue, Frank went as far as to compare Gore's situation to that of
former Vice President Hubert Humphrey. "I know there's this sense that 'Oh well,
[Automated Records Management System Hex-Dump Conversion]
the Vice President is not supposed to disagree with the President.' I think that's
wrong," said Frank. "I think that Hubert Humphrey paid a price in 1968 because he
delayed making clear his differences with Lyndon Johnson over Vietnam."
The Vice President's public position on this policy is currently in line with Governor
Bush and Senator McCain. Now, that is out of whack.
It is painfully clear Tim Russert and the debates must ask both Gore and Bradley
about his position on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
RECCOMENDATION
The Vice President should align himself with the other democrats. He needs to be
honest and admit the policy has not been implemented as was intended.
If asked whether "President Gore" or the next administration would lift the ban on
gays in the military, as Mrs. Clinton, Bill Bradley and the President, all seem to
advocate, he can say:
"We learned three critical lessons about gays and military service in the past
seven years.
First, gays and lesbians always have served honorably and well in our armed
forces, and they will in the future. They have fought, bled and died to protect and
defend us. Let's never forget that and the debt we owe them and all veterans.
Second, we learned that changing the military policy takes a powerful consensus,
and cannot be achieved without education and willingness of our military leaders
and the American people.
Third, experience shows that the compromise we have in place does not work
fairly, either for the military or for service members.
As President, / will have the best minds together to work with our military to
reform the implementation of this policy, or abandon it altogether. What / know is
that the President cannot achieve it alone, and we will need a smart, bipartisan
strategy to put it right.
President Truman courageously acted to ban racial segregation among our
troops over a half-century ago, however, it has taken decades to live up
to that promise in the hearts and minds of the American people, too. /
believe we are up to the challenge today."
[Automated Records Management System Hex-Dump Conversion]
Today as Vice President, / vow to work very closely with the Department of
Defense to ensure that this policy is implemented in the manner it was fashioned.
The Administration and the leadership at the Pentagon must make it crystal clear
that anti-gay harassment has no place in the U.S. military. We will work to
implement this policy in a fair and just manner.
/ applaud Secretary Cohen's move to issue a full investigation by the Inspector
General, but that should not delay any training, guidelines and outreach to make
sure that the current policy is implemented fairly.
[Automated Records Management System Hex-Dump Conversion]
THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I'm quite sympathetic with what she said. I think -- that
was the position that both of us brought to the White House. But I think -- there's one
thing that may be not clearly understood. The reason that I went for don't ask, don't tell
is that it's all I could do because I had a clear signal from the Congress that if I
implemented my policy, they would reverse it by overwhelming majorities.
I didn't implement don't ask, don't tell until the Senate voted 68-32 against the policy
that I wanted. So I think it's very important -- for me, what's important is that the policy,
as implemented, does not work as I announced it and as the leaders of our military at
that time in '93 pledged to implement it.
I can only hope this last brutal beating death of a gay soldier will give some sobering
impetus to a reexamination about how this policy is implemented and whether we can
do a better job of fulfilling its original intent.
Let me remind you that the original intent was that people would not be rooted out, that
they would not be questioned out, that this would be focused on people's conduct, and if
they didn't violate the code of conduct, and they didn't tell, that their comings and
goings, the mail they got, the associates they had, that those things would not be
sufficient to kick them out of the military, or certainly subject them to harassment.
So what I would like to do is to focus on trying to make the policy that we announced
back in '93 work the way it was intended to, because it's way -- it's out of whack now,
and I don't think any serious person can say it's not.
Q
How are you going to do that, sir?
[Automated Records Management System Hex-Dump Conversion]
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we're working with the Pentagon now to do it. I mean, I think
there's a greater awareness now that it's just not -- it's not being implemented as it was
announced and as it was intended.
Now, as for -- but I don't have any problem with what she says, because that's -- after
all, that's what I said back in '93, and if anybody -- you know, if there's a sense in the
Congress or in the next White House that that ought to be done, then maybe together
they'll have enough votes to do it.
Clinton proposed "don't ask, don't tell" during his first year in
office. It took effect in February 1994. The Pentagon reported that 1, 145
people were discharged from the armed forces last year for homosexuality, up
from 997 in 1997. The lowest number of such discharges was 617 in 1994.
Last August, the Pentagon updated "don't ask, don't tell" guidelines to
require all troops to undergo periodic training on tolerance and to assign
the task of investigating alleged homosexual activity to senior officials.
It continues to bar inquiries into sexual orientation while allowing
discharges for service members who engage in homosexual conduct or show a
"propensity" for it, such as stating that he or she is gay.
Last week, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton flatly said she doesn't
believe "don't ask, don't tell" has worked, and called for a policy under
which gays and lesbians could serve without discrimination or harassment.
"Fitness to serve in the military should be based on one's conduct, not one's
sexual orientation," she said.
"I don't have any problem with what she says," Clinton said Saturday.
He said his wife's statements reflected the position "that both of us brought
to the White House," but he decided on the current policy as a compromise
after it became clear to him that there were sufficient votes in Congress to
overrule him.
"So what I'd like to do is to focus on trying to make the policy we
announced back in '93 work the way it was intended to," Clinton said. "It's
out of whack now, and I don't think any serious person can say it's not."
Clinton said officials at the Pentagon and the White House were working
on smoothing out the problems with the policy. "I think there's a greater
awareness now it's not being implemented as it was announced and as it was
intended."
Earlier Saturday, Clinton said he was profoundly saddened by the case of
Army private Barry L. Winchell, 21, who was beaten to death by his barracks
roommate, 18-year-old private Calvin N. Glover, at Fort Campbell, Ky. He
said he looked at photographs of the killer and victim side-by-side in a
newspaper and thought, "They could be my children."
"I was aching for the young man who had died, and for the young man whose
life is now destroyed, who wasn't born hating that way. Somebody had to
teach him to do that," Clinton said
[another topic]
[Automated Records Management System Hex-Dump Conversion]
Gays in military could become U.S. election issue
By Charles Aldinger
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? While the U.S. military claims that its "don't
ask, don't tell" policy toward homosexuals in uniform is working, the 1994
rule has come under heavy fire and could emerge as an issue in next year's
presidential election.
The front-running candidates for the White House, Democrat AI Gore and
Republican George W. Bush, support the Pentagon policy under which gays and
lesbians are allowed to serve in the military if they do not openly discuss
their sexual orientation.
But civil rights groups are pushing hard for a change that would treat
homosexuals without any bias, charging that more gays are being dismissed
from the military now under the policy than before and that open harassment
of suspected gays is increasing.
Even President Bill Clinton, under whom the policy was introduced, said
the rule has not worked the way it was intended. His comments on Saturday
came two days after first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, running for the U.S.
Senate in New York, said she does not believe the rule is "ultimately the
policy that we should have in our military."
"I think one thing that's maybe not clearly understood is the reason that
I went for 'don't ask, don't tell' is that it was all I could do, because I
had a clear signal from Congress that if I implemented my policy, they would
reverse it by an overwhelming majority," the president told CBS radio.
"Let me remind you that the original intent was that people would not be
rooted out, that they would not be questioned out, that this would be focused
on people's conduct, and if they didn't violate the code of conduct
that
those things would not be suspicion to keep them out of the military or
certainly subject to harassment," Clinton added.
The issue was put in the spotlight in the past week after a military jury
at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, convicted and sentenced an Army private to life
in prison for beating a gay infantryman to death with a baseball bat as the
victim slept.
Testimony in the trial of Army Pvt. Calvin Glover, 18, of Sulphur,
Oklahoma, suggested his victim, Pfc. Barry Winchell, 21, of Kansas City,
Missouri, was harassed by troops for months before his death and base
commanders did nothing to stifle intolerance. Jurors rejected Glover's
contention that he committed the crime on impulse while drunk.
POLICY CALLED A FAILURE
"The policy is a failure. Period," said C. Dixon Osburn of the
Washington-based gay rights activist group Servicemembers Legal Defence
Network. He said the rules were not benign and protective of gays as the
Pentagon claimed, but actually fostered "a policy of violence."
"No command should ever allow harassment to thrive against any service
member for any reason," Osburn said.
Pentagon figures show that 1,145 people were forced to leave the armed
services in 1998 under provisions of the Military Homosexual Conduct Policy,
[Automated Records Management System Hex-Dump Conversion]
as it formally is known, compared to 617 in 1994, when the policy started.
The policy allows gays to serve, but continues a ban on homosexual acts
and requires gays to keep their sexual orientation private. It also requires
the military not to ask servicemen about their sexual orientation.
The compromise was reached after Congress in 1993 officially relaxed the
military's 50-year ban on gays.
Former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, mounting a tough challenge to Gore for the
Democratic presidential nomination, said gays should be allowed to serve
openly in uniform.
In Washington, Defence Department spokesman Ken Bacon stressed that
Defence Secretary William Cohen has spoken out repeatedly against intolerance
of any kind in the military.
"I don't think you can declare the policy a failure based on one gruesome
murder at one Army post," he said on Thursday.
Bacon noted that Fort Campbell's commanders have agreed to investigate
thoroughly other reports of harassment of gays as well as unsupervised and
unpunished drinking on the post.
INCREASING NUMBER OF GAY TROOPS OUSTED
Bacon conceded that increasing numbers of homosexuals were being removed
from the military, but said it was because they were violating the
department's rule by speaking out openly about their homosexuality and
leaving senior offers no alternative but to move legally against them.
While federal district judges in the past have ruled against the policy,
calling it discriminatory, higher courts have upheld the rule. They say the
military is a special case in which order and discipline are paramount.
Clinton promised to eliminate all restrictions on gays in the military
when he ran for office, but later faced opposition from senior military
officers who said gays openly serving in close quarters with other troops
would damage "good order and discipline" in the ranks.
The Pentagon since has performed a delicate balancing act to implement
the policy, upholding the right to remove gays for violating the rule while
pressing commanders not to search out homosexuals without strong evidence.
"In August, Secretary Cohen made it clear ? as he had shortly after he
took office ? that there is no room for a climate of harassment or
discrimination within the military based on sexual orientation. That's the
policy," Bacon said.
[Automated Records Management System Hex-Dump Conversion]
Q's and A's: Don't Ask/Don't Tell
Q: How do you feel about the First Lady's views on elimination of the Don't
Ask/Don't Tell policy?
A: First of all, I'm quite sympathetic with what she said. That was the position that both
of us brought to the White House. I agree with her that the policy has not worked well. We
ought to look toward a day when gays and lesbians can serve openly in the military alongside
everyone else. The truth is that they have served in the military for a long time and they have
made a great contribution to our national security.
Q: How do you feel about the Vice President's views? Was he opposed to the policy
from the beginning?
A: Yes, the Vice President argued from the beginning to drop the ban entirely. I didn't
implement don't ask, don't tell until the Senate voted 68-32 against the policy that I wanted. I
thought a compromise with Congress was better for the military services as well as the gay men
and women in uniform.
Q: Should the policy be changed to what you campaigned on? If so why don't you
try to change it in the coming year?
For me, what's important is that the policy, as implemented, does not work as I
announced it and as the leaders of our military at that time in '93 pledged to implement it. I think
it makes more sense to improve the implementation of it rather to spend enormous effort
working on changing the statute. We've already taken a number of steps to improve it and I
believe it can be implemented even more effectively and fairly. The Pentagon will take the lead
in doing that and they will work closely with all the military services and they will consult with
Congress as well.
Q: Should the next congress address it?
I think that if there's a sense in the Congress or in the next White House that this policy
can be changed for the better, then it will be addressed. We've made great progress in seeing
people as individuals in this country and in looking beyond race and religion and gender. We're
doing that with sexual orientation, too. We just have to keep working at it.
Q: Who is responsible for implementing the policy?
A: The Pentagon is responsible for implementing the policy and steps are being taken to
improve implementation. For example, the Department of Defense directed the services to issue
guidelines against harassment and has required training for service members. It strengthened the
confidentiality of communications between service members and health care professionals. At
1
[Automated Records Management System Hex-Dump Conversion]
the recommendation of the Department of Defense, I issued an executive order authorizing
higher penalties for hate crimes, based on sexual orientation, race and other factors. But there is
more to be done, and I know Secretary Cohen is committed to doing it.
Q What is the purpose of the review ordered by Secretary Cohen?
He directed the DOD Inspector General to assess the environment with respect to application of
the "don't ask, don't tell" policy at representative installations within each of the military
departments. That report is due in 90 days. It should provide us with a better picture on how the
policy is being implemented.
[Automated Records Management System Hex-Dump Conversion]
2
RECORD TYPE: PRESIDENTIAL (NOTES MAIL)
CREATOR: Edward W. Correia ( CN=Edward W. Correia/OU=WHO/O=EOP [ WHO 1)
CREATION DATE/TIME:20-DEC-1999 15:18:08.00
SUBJECT: Memo to the President -- Don't Ask/Don't Tell
TO: Karen Tramontano ( CN=Karen Tramontano/OU=WHO/O=EOP@EOP [ WHO D
READ:UNKNOWN
CC: Sharon H. Yuan ( CN=Sharon H. Yuan/OU=OPD/O=EOP@EOP [ OPD ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TEXT:
Thanks for taking a look at this. Any comments before it's sent.
Forwarded by Edward W. Correia/WHO/EOP on 12/20/99
03:17 PM
Edward W. Correia
12/17/99 03:25:47 PM
Record Type: Record
To: Karen Tramontano/WHO/EOP@EOP
cc:
Subject: Memo to the President -- Don't Ask/Don't Tell
The President sent a memo to Beth asking if he could change the
policy by executive order. He correctly assumes he can't. Would you take a
quick look at this memo before it goes up? Thanks.
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END ATTACHMENT
I
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
FROM:
BETH NOLAN, COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT
BILL MARSHALL, DEPUTY COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT
EDDIE CORREIA, SPECIAL COUNSEL FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
SUBJECT:
DON'T ASK/DON'T TELL
You asked if you can change the Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy by executive order since
Congress has enacted it into law. The 1993 statute prohibits gays and lesbians from serving in
the military if: 1) they engage in homosexual conduct; 2) they state that they are gay and they
cannot rebut the presumption that they will engage in such conduct; or 3) they marry a person of
the same sex. As you suggest, you cannot override these basic prohibitions by executive order.
However, there are a number of steps that the Administration can take that will improve
the implementation of the policy. For example, the military services have been directed by the
Secretary of Defense to develop guidance regarding the prohibition on harassing gay service
members. The services can also more effectively enforce the ban on commanding officers
asking about sexual orientation. Defense is also exploring the possibility of clarifying the policy
to ensure that certain kinds of confidential communications about sexual orientation, e.g., to
chaplains and psychotherapists, do not result in the discharge of a gay service member. These
kinds of steps will improve the climate for gays and lesbians in the service but do not require a
statutory change.
A working group within the White House, including the Counsel's Office, NSC, and the
Office of Public Liaison, is developing approaches to improving implementation of the policy.
This group will be working with the Department of Defense, which will have ultimate
responsibility for carrying out any changes in the current enforcement of the policy. Before
putting any significant reforms into effect, Defense will consult with the military services.
RECORD TYPE: PRESIDENTIAL (NOTES MAIL)
CREATOR: Paul J. Weinstein Jr. ( CN=Paul J. Weinstein Jr./OU=OPD/O=EOP [ OPD ])
CREATION DATE/TIME:21-DEC-1999 19:36:18.00
SUBJECT: dadt memo...a more thoughtful response
TO: Laura M. Quinn ( CN=Laura M. Quinn/O=OVP@OVP [ UNKNOWN ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TEXT:
Forwarded by Paul J. Weinstein Jr./OPD/EOP on
12/21/99 06:22 PM
Elizabeth J. Potter
12/20/99 08:31:02 PM
Record Type: Record
To: Paul J. Weinstein Jr./OPD/EOP@EOP
cc:
Subject: dadt memo...a more thoughtful response
Can you send this to Leon's deputy. I can't seem to pull him up on the
screen. Although we can't pull back what has been said, I do think that
more temperate language is helpful.
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END ATTACHMENT 2
Q's and A's: Don't Ask/Don't Tell
Q: How do you feel about the First Lady's views on elimination of the Don't
Ask/Don't Tell policy?
A: First of all, I'm quite sympathetic with what she said. That was the position that both
of us brought to the White House. I agree with her that the policy has not worked well. We
ought to look toward a day when gays and lesbians can serve openly in the military alongside
everyone else. The truth is that they have served in the military for a long time and they have
made a great contribution to our national security.
Q: How do you feel about the Vice President's views? Was he opposed to the policy
from the beginning?
A: Yes, the Vice President argued from the beginning to drop the ban entirely. I didn't
implement don't ask, don't tell until the Senate voted 68-32 against the policy that I wanted. I
thought a compromise with Congress was better for the military services as well as the gay men
and women in uniform.
Q: Should the policy be changed to what you campaigned on? If so why don't you
try to change it in the coming year?
For me, what's important is that the policy, as implemented, does not work as I
announced it and as the leaders of our military at that time in '93 pledged to implement it. I think
it makes more sense to improve the implementation of it rather to spend enormous effort
working on changing the statute. We've already taken a number of steps to improve it and I
believe it can be implemented even more effectively and fairly. The Pentagon will take the lead
in doing that and they will work closely with all the military services and they will consult with
Congress as well.
Q: Should the next congress address it?
I think that if there's a sense in the Congress or in the next White House that this policy
can be changed for the better, then it will be addressed. We've made great progress in seeing
people as individuals in this country and in looking beyond race and religion and gender. We're
doing that with sexual orientation, too. We just have to keep working at it.
Q: Who is responsible for implementing the policy?
A: The Pentagon is responsible for implementing the policy and steps are being taken to
improve implementation. For example, the Department of Defense directed the services to issue
guidelines against harassment and has required training for service members. It strengthened the
confidentiality of communications between service members and health care professionals. At
1
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the recommendation of the Department of Defense, I issued an executive order authorizing
higher penalties for hate crimes, based on sexual orientation, race and other factors. But there is
more to be done, and I know Secretary Cohen is committed to doing it.
Q What is the purpose of the review ordered by Secretary Cohen?
He directed the DOD Inspector General to assess the environment with respect to application of
the "don't ask, don't tell" policy at representative installations within each of the military
departments. That report is due in 90 days. It should provide us with a better picture on how the
policy is being implemented.
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2
MEMORANDUM
TO:
Tony Coelho
Donna Brazile
Janet Murgia
Clark Ray
FR:
Julian Potter
RE: "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue" Policy
DT:
December 13, 1999
Background
Seven years ago the Clinton/Gore Administration was elected into office and
attempted to fulfill a campaign pledge to issue an Executive Order (E.O.) prohibiting
the mandatory discharge of gay military personnel.
Congress, the military and the public vehemently opposed the E.O. and instead, 10
USC Section 654-known as the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue" Policy
(DA/DT/DP) was codified into law.
Under this new policy, servicemembers can be discharged if they (1) state they are
gay, (2) engage in hand holding, kissing or other physical contact with a person of
the same gender, or (3) attempt to marry someone of the same gender.
These reasons for discharge are identical to those in place since 1981. But, under
the old regulations being homosexual was, by definition, incompatible with military
service; under the new law gay people can, in theory, serve as long as they keep
their orientation private and refrain from "homosexual acts."
President Clinton, Congress and military leaders agreed to their part of the
"DA/DT/DP" policy to implement new limits to gay investigations:
End affirmative efforts to pursue suspected gay members:
Stop asking service members about their sexual orientation;
End witch hunts and prevent anti-gay harassment;
Implement the law with regard to the privacy of servicemembers.
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STATUS ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE POLICY
The policy has been in effect since February 1994. Over that time period we have
seen soaring gay discharges. In 1998, the Pentagon fired 1,149 people under the
"DA/DT/DP" policy, in 1997 it was 997. That amounts to 3-4 persons per day, costing
the military $31 million in training and replacement costs.
The frustration with these discharges is that it is not clear that the firings are
because of a gay servicemembers violation of the "telling" part of the policy,
but rather it appears that military personnel have gone beyond the limits of
investigation and violated the "asking and pursuing" part of the policy.
It is well documented that servicemembers across the country continue to be
interrogated, investigated, harassed and threatened about their sexual orientation.
Psychotherapists have turned in gay members. Partners are being interrogated
about their kids. Servivemembers are threatened with prison unless they confess to
being gay or accuse others as gay.
The Servicemembers legal Defense network, a non-profit legal aid and watchdog
group set up to help people hurt by this policy has directly assisted over 2000 men
and women facing harassment, witch hunts and death threats since this policy was
enacted.
In addition to difficulties with the policy, the base climate surrounding gay
servicemembers has gotten completely out of hand. On July 6, 1999, Private First
Class Barry Winchell died at Fort Campbell, KY, after he was attacked and brutally
beaten with a baseball bat in his barracks, by a fellow soldier.
The military leadership at Fort Campbell allowed an anti-gay climate to thrive.
Fellow soldiers have testified that the beating death of Winchell came after months
of vile anti-gay name-calling and harassment, rumor mongering and inquiries into
Winchell's private life.
Defense Secretary William Cohen today ordered a full review by the Pentagon's
inspector general into how the military's ``don't ask, don't tell" policy is being carried
out, with a report due back in 90 days. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon, who
announced the new investigation, said that spot checks would be made on bases
and installations of all the services.
He said that Cohen shared President Clinton's recently expressed concerns that
the policy was not working as intended. ``Clearly there are issues that need to be
addressed," Bacon said. He said that any steps that are warranted" as a result of
the inquiry would be taken by the Pentagon to make sure that instances of
harassment are not condoned.
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POLITICAL SITUATION
Because of the Presidential election and the tragic death of Barry Winchell,
politicians have been talking about this issue and "breaking the code of silence"
about the policy.
Candidate Bill Bradley spoke out against the policy in the Advocate interview (Sept
99) and during the debate in New Hampshire (Oct 99). He said the policy does not
work, it is a failure. Gays and lesbians should serve openly in the military as with
dozens of other professions.
Mrs. Clinton spoke out in New York (Dec 9, 99) said the policy had been a failure, if
elected she would work to overturn the policy. She doesn't believe "don't ask, don't
tell" has worked, and called for a policy under which gays and lesbians could serve
without discrimination or harassment. "Fitness to serve in the military should be
based on one's conduct, not one's sexual orientation," she said.
The President said his policy was to have gays serve openly, yet in 1993 he lost in
a vote with the Senate 68-32. "Let me remind you that the original intent was that
people would not be rooted out, that they would not be questioned out, that this
would be focused on people's conduct, and if they didn't violate the code of conduct,
and they didn't tell, that their comings and goings, the mail they got, the associates
they had, that those things would not be sufficient to kick them out of the military, or
certainly subject them to harassment"
The President continued, "what I would like to do is to focus on trying to make the
policy that we announced back in '93 work the way it was intended to, because it's
way -- it's out of whack now, and I don't think any serious person can say it's not."
On December 13 Reuters article by Charles Aldinger states that "The front-running
candidates for the White House, Democrat AI Gore and Republican George W.
Bush, support the Pentagon policy under which gays and lesbians are allowed to
serve in the military if they do not openly discuss their sexual orientation.
On a Saturday Radio talk show, Barney Frank (D-MA) has called upon Vice
President AI Gore to change his position on gays in the military, to one
supporting the policy's termination. "I think he should go beyond [criticism]," Frank
said, "and I think as a Presidential candidate, he's fully entitled to give his position
which I hope will be that it's a mistaken policy." "I know there's this sense that 'Oh
well, the Vice President is not supposed to disagree with the President.' I think that's
wrong," said Frank.
Frank continued "I think as a Presidential candidate, he's fully entitled to give his
position" in suggesting that Gore separate himself further from his administration's
record on the issue, Frank went as far as to compare Gore's situation to that of
former Vice President Hubert Humphrey. "I know there's this sense that 'Oh well,
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the Vice President is not supposed to disagree with the President.' I think that's
wrong," said Frank. "I think that Hubert Humphrey paid a price in 1968 because he
delayed making clear his differences with Lyndon Johnson over Vietnam."
The Vice President's public position on this policy is currently in line with Governor
Bush and Senator McCain. Now, that is out of whack.
It is painfully clear Tim Russert and the debates must ask both Gore and Bradley
about his position on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
RECCOMENDATION
The Vice President should align himself with the other democrats. He needs to be
honest and admit the policy has not been implemented as was intended.
If asked whether "President Gore" or the next administration would lift the ban on
gays in the military, as Mrs. Clinton, Bill Bradley and the President, all seem to
advocate, he can say:
"We learned three critical lessons about gays and military service in the past
seven years.
First, gays and lesbians always have served honorably and well in our armed
forces, and they will in the future. They have fought, bled and died to protect and
defend us. Let's never forget that and the debt we owe them and all veterans.
Second, we learned that changing the military policy takes a powerful consensus,
and cannot be achieved without education and willingness of our military leaders
and the American people.
Third, experience shows that the compromise we have in place does not work
fairly, either for the military or for service members.
As President, / will have the best minds together to work with our military to
reform the implementation of this policy, or abandon it altogether. What / know is
that the President cannot achieve it alone, and we will need a smart, bipartisan
strategy to put it right.
President Truman courageously acted to ban racial segregation among our
troops over a half-century ago, however, it has taken decades to live up
to that promise in the hearts and minds of the American people, too. /
believe we are up to the challenge today."
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Today as Vice President, / vow to work very closely with the Department of
Defense to ensure that this policy is implemented in the manner it was fashioned.
The Administration and the leadership at the Pentagon must make it crystal clear
that anti-gay harassment has no place in the U.S. military. We will work to
implement this policy in a fair and just manner.
/ applaud Secretary Cohen's move to issue a full investigation by the Inspector
General, but that should not delay any training, guidelines and outreach to make
sure that the current policy is implemented fairly.
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THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I'm quite sympathetic with what she said. I think -- that
was the position that both of us brought to the White House. But I think -- there's one
thing that may be not clearly understood. The reason that I went for don't ask, don't tell
is that it's all I could do because I had a clear signal from the Congress that if I
implemented my policy, they would reverse it by overwhelming majorities.
I didn't implement don't ask, don't tell until the Senate voted 68-32 against the policy
that I wanted. So I think it's very important -- for me, what's important is that the policy,
as implemented, does not work as I announced it and as the leaders of our military at
that time in '93 pledged to implement it.
I can only hope this last brutal beating death of a gay soldier will give some sobering
impetus to a reexamination about how this policy is implemented and whether we can
do a better job of fulfilling its original intent.
Let me remind you that the original intent was that people would not be rooted out, that
they would not be questioned out, that this would be focused on people's conduct, and if
they didn't violate the code of conduct, and they didn't tell, that their comings and
goings, the mail they got, the associates they had, that those things would not be
sufficient to kick them out of the military, or certainly subject them to harassment.
So what I would like to do is to focus on trying to make the policy that we announced
back in '93 work the way it was intended to, because it's way -- it's out of whack now,
and I don't think any serious person can say it's not.
Q
How are you going to do that, sir?
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THE PRESIDENT: Well, we're working with the Pentagon now to do it. I mean, I think
there's a greater awareness now that it's just not -- it's not being implemented as it was
announced and as it was intended.
Now, as for -- but I don't have any problem with what she says, because that's -- after
all, that's what I said back in '93, and if anybody -- you know, if there's a sense in the
Congress or in the next White House that that ought to be done, then maybe together
they'll have enough votes to do it.
Clinton proposed "don't ask, don't tell" during his first year in
office. It took effect in February 1994. The Pentagon reported that 1, 145
people were discharged from the armed forces last year for homosexuality, up
from 997 in 1997. The lowest number of such discharges was 617 in 1994.
Last August, the Pentagon updated "don't ask, don't tell" guidelines to
require all troops to undergo periodic training on tolerance and to assign
the task of investigating alleged homosexual activity to senior officials.
It continues to bar inquiries into sexual orientation while allowing
discharges for service members who engage in homosexual conduct or show a
"propensity" for it, such as stating that he or she is gay.
Last week, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton flatly said she doesn't
believe "don't ask, don't tell" has worked, and called for a policy under
which gays and lesbians could serve without discrimination or harassment.
"Fitness to serve in the military should be based on one's conduct, not one's
sexual orientation," she said.
"I don't have any problem with what she says," Clinton said Saturday.
He said his wife's statements reflected the position "that both of us brought
to the White House," but he decided on the current policy as a compromise
after it became clear to him that there were sufficient votes in Congress to
overrule him.
"So what I'd like to do is to focus on trying to make the policy we
announced back in '93 work the way it was intended to," Clinton said. "It's
out of whack now, and I don't think any serious person can say it's not."
Clinton said officials at the Pentagon and the White House were working
on smoothing out the problems with the policy. "I think there's a greater
awareness now it's not being implemented as it was announced and as it was
intended."
Earlier Saturday, Clinton said he was profoundly saddened by the case of
Army private Barry L. Winchell, 21, who was beaten to death by his barracks
roommate, 18-year-old private Calvin N. Glover, at Fort Campbell, Ky. He
said he looked at photographs of the killer and victim side-by-side in a
newspaper and thought, "They could be my children."
"I was aching for the young man who had died, and for the young man whose
life is now destroyed, who wasn't born hating that way. Somebody had to
teach him to do that," Clinton said
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Gays in military could become U.S. election issue
By Charles Aldinger
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? While the U.S. military claims that its "don't
ask, don't tell" policy toward homosexuals in uniform is working, the 1994
rule has come under heavy fire and could emerge as an issue in next year's
presidential election.
The front-running candidates for the White House, Democrat AI Gore and
Republican George W. Bush, support the Pentagon policy under which gays and
lesbians are allowed to serve in the military if they do not openly discuss
their sexual orientation.
But civil rights groups are pushing hard for a change that would treat
homosexuals without any bias, charging that more gays are being dismissed
from the military now under the policy than before and that open harassment
of suspected gays is increasing.
Even President Bill Clinton, under whom the policy was introduced, said
the rule has not worked the way it was intended. His comments on Saturday
came two days after first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, running for the U.S.
Senate in New York, said she does not believe the rule is "ultimately the
policy that we should have in our military."
"I think one thing that's maybe not clearly understood is the reason that
I went for 'don't ask, don't tell' is that it was all I could do, because I
had a clear signal from Congress that if I implemented my policy, they would
reverse it by an overwhelming majority," the president told CBS radio.
"Let me remind you that the original intent was that people would not be
rooted out, that they would not be questioned out, that this would be focused
on people's conduct, and if they didn't violate the code of conduct that
those things would not be suspicion to keep them out of the military or
certainly subject to harassment," Clinton added.
The issue was put in the spotlight in the past week after a military jury
at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, convicted and sentenced an Army private to life
in prison for beating a gay infantryman to death with a baseball bat as the
victim slept.
Testimony in the trial of Army Pvt. Calvin Glover, 18, of Sulphur,
Oklahoma, suggested his victim, Pfc. Barry Winchell, 21, of Kansas City,
Missouri, was harassed by troops for months before his death and base
commanders did nothing to stifle intolerance. Jurors rejected Glover's
contention that he committed the crime on impulse while drunk.
POLICY CALLED A FAILURE
"The policy is a failure. Period," said C. Dixon Osburn of the
Washington-based gay rights activist group Servicemembers Legal Defence
Network. He said the rules were not benign and protective of gays as the
Pentagon claimed, but actually fostered "a policy of violence."
"No command should ever allow harassment to thrive against any service
member for any reason," Osburn said.
Pentagon figures show that 1,145 people were forced to leave the armed
services in 1998 under provisions of the Military Homosexual Conduct Policy,
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as it formally is known, compared to 617 in 1994, when the policy started.
The policy allows gays to serve, but continues a ban on homosexual acts
and requires gays to keep their sexual orientation private. It also requires
the military not to ask servicemen about their sexual orientation.
The compromise was reached after Congress in 1993 officially relaxed the
military's 50-year ban on gays.
Former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, mounting a tough challenge to Gore for the
Democratic presidential nomination, said gays should be allowed to serve
openly in uniform.
In Washington, Defence Department spokesman Ken Bacon stressed that
Defence Secretary William Cohen has spoken out repeatedly against intolerance
of any kind in the military.
"I don't think you can declare the policy a failure based on one gruesome
murder at one Army post," he said on Thursday.
Bacon noted that Fort Campbell's commanders have agreed to investigate
thoroughly other reports of harassment of gays as well as unsupervised and
unpunished drinking on the post.
INCREASING NUMBER OF GAY TROOPS OUSTED
Bacon conceded that increasing numbers of homosexuals were being removed
from the military, but said it was because they were violating the
department's rule by speaking out openly about their homosexuality and
leaving senior offers no alternative but to move legally against them.
While federal district judges in the past have ruled against the policy,
calling it discriminatory, higher courts have upheld the rule. They say the
military is a special case in which order and discipline are paramount.
Clinton promised to eliminate all restrictions on gays in the military
when he ran for office, but later faced opposition from senior military
officers who said gays openly serving in close quarters with other troops
would damage "good order and discipline" in the ranks.
The Pentagon since has performed a delicate balancing act to implement
the policy, upholding the right to remove gays for violating the rule while
pressing commanders not to search out homosexuals without strong evidence.
"In August, Secretary Cohen made it clear ? as he had shortly after he
took office ? that there is no room for a climate of harassment or
discrimination within the military based on sexual orientation. That's the
policy," Bacon said.
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RECORD TYPE: PRESIDENTIAL (NOTES MAIL)
CREATOR: Mark A. Kitchens ( CN=Mark A. Kitchens/OU=WHO/O=EOP [ WHO ])
CREATION DATE/TIME:23-DEC-1999 08:17:22.00
SUBJECT: 12/24 Ask the White House responses
TO: [email protected] ( [email protected] @ inet [ UNKNOWN ])
READ:UNKNOWN
CC: [email protected] ( [email protected] @ inet [ UNKNOWN
READ:UNKNOWN
TEXT:
"ASK THE WHITE HOUSE"
December 24, 1999
SUBJECT: GAYS IN THE MILITARY
QUESTION:
What, if anything, will the President do if the investigation into "Don't
Ask, Don't Tell" proves the policy is indeed a failure? What options are
left on the Executive level?
ANSWER:
First, it is important to understand that the President believes that gays
and lesbians have always served honorably in our armed forces, and
believes we must respect their contribution and allow them to serve with
dignity. Experience has shown that the compromise that was reached with
Congress in 1993 has not been implemented in a way that is good for the
military or for service members.
Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen announced on December 13, 1999,
that he has directed the Department of Defense (DoD) Inspector General to
initiate an assessment of the environment at representative installations
within each military Department with respect to the application of the
homosexual conduct policy. The President will look carefully at what this
assessment reveals in order to determine whether the current policy can be
better implemented. In the meantime, the Administration and the
leadership at the Pentagon have made it clear that Hate Crimes and
harassment of any type, have no place in the military.
SUBJECT: HEALTH CARE
QUESTION:
It is so difficult for seniors to keep up with perscription (sic) charges
and now (as in our case) the HMO is refusing certain medicines even though
the doctor orders them. What can be done to hurry a national health plan
that
deals with this and what can be done now to make HMO's more responsible?
Thank You, Merry Christmas We appreciate you! Eric & Bobbie Gearns
ANSWER:
The President will not be satisfied until every American has access to
affordable, high quality health care services. We are disappointed that
our initial proposal to provide health care to every American was rejected
by Congress, but we will continue to propose initiatives to extend health
care to the uninsured. Our efforts in this area include the successful
Children ,S Health Insurance Program, passed in 1997, which provides health
insurance to over one million low income children nationwide. I hope that
Congress can now move in this area, and look forward to working with
them. In addition, I want to note that Vice President Gore has offered an
extremely ambitious proposal designed to make major steps forward in this
area, and I think that is encouraging.
President Clinton and the Vice President have been extremely aggressive in
their attempt to do everything possible to promote patients , rights. A
good example is the President ,S February 1998 direction to all Federal
health plans, which covers 85 million Americans, instructing them to
implement the patients , bill of rights. Extending these requirements to
Medicare, Medicaid, the military health care system, and the Federal
Employees Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP) creates a new industry standard and
makes it more likely that private sector plans will extend these
protections to their patients.
However, we still need laws that provide critical protections such as:
guaranteed access to needed health care specialists; access to emergency
room services when and where the need arises; continuity of care
protections so that patients will not have an abrupt transition in care if
their providers are dropped; access to a fair, unbiased and timely
internal and independent external appeals process; to address health plan
grievances; assurance that doctors and patients can openly discuss
treatment options; and an enforcement mechanism that ensures recourse for
patients who have been harmed as a result of a health plan ,S actions.
SUBJECT: MILITARY READINESS
QUESTION:
Would DOD consider a waiver of VSI/SSB payback for former military members
if they join the Reserves? It would increase military readiness.
ANSWER:
After the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military began a draw-down that
has reduced the active duty force from 2.1 million to 1.4 million
soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Many service members with a number
of years of service who had intended to make the military a career left
the military before the 20 year point when they would have qualified for a
military retirement. To compensate these members for their service, they
were offered monetary compensation, either a Voluntary Service Incentive
(VSI) or a Special Separation Benefit (SSB). Additionally, qualifying
service members received transition benefits for a fixed residual period
(e.g. medical care, commissary and exchange privileges, free furniture
storage, job placement services, etc.)
With regards to the specific question, the Department of Defense (DoD)
would consider such a request and respond as appropriate to the individual
situation and, of course, within the constraints imposed by law.
SUBJECT: NATIONAL EDUCATION GOALS NOT MET
QUESTION:
How can our educational system be improved if there is no
accountability? The Federal and State government have no real authority
over
the schools. The taxpayers have no real authority either. Would a voucher
system for all people regardless of race, income and religious preference
place the power with the consumer?
ANSWER:
The President believes that accountability is an essential component of a
successful school system. That's why he has made it a centerpiece of his
education agenda. The President's Education Accountability Act includes
several strategies for making schools more responsive. It would: set
aside resources to help states and localities fix failing schools; require
that teachers are certified to teach in their subject areas; end social
promotion the right way by ensuring that all students can meet challenging
standards; require states and school districts to implement sound and fair
discipline policies; and require states and school districts to issue
report cards to help parents assess school performance and choose among
public schools.
Of course, at the local level, taxpayers are able to hold schools and
school districts accountable through their school boards and elected
officials. Parents are able to hold public schools accountable through
local activity and by exercising choice among public schools. But the
President believes that the federal government should do its part, by
investing more in our schools -- and by demanding more of them too.
With regard to vouchers, the President believes that such schemes would
drain public funds without providing public accountability. Vouchers
siphon critical dollars from public schools in order to send a small
number of students to private schools that have little or no
accountability to the public for results, teacher quality, or even sound
fiscal practices. The President believes that rather than abandon public
schools -- which serve nearly 90 percent of our students -- we need to
strengthen and improve them.
SUBJECT: TAXES
QUESTION:
What is your position on the Federal estate and gift taxes? Should
they be eliminated or should the exemptions be raised, so that only the
super
rich are subject to the taxes? Or maybe, you think that they are fine as
is?
ANSWER:
The Clinton/Gore Administration has supported proposals to significantly
reduce the burden of the estate and gift tax, especially on small
businesses and farms. For example, the Administration supported the
increase from $600,000 to $1,000,000 (by 2006) in the estate tax exemption
for individuals, as well as the immediate increase to $1.3 million in the
exemption for small businesses and farms.
However, the Administration opposes repealing the estate tax entirely.
The estate and gift taxes play a fundamental role in ensuring the
progressiveness, fairness and integrity of the tax system.
The estate tax is highly progressive. In 1997, only about 43,000 estates
paid any tax at all. The percentage of estates subject to tax is
projected to decline from about 2 percent in 1997 to about 1.5 percent in
2006. Nearly two-thirds of the estate tax is borne by the 1 percent of
families with the highest incomes. Repeal of the tax would undermine the
overall progressiveness of the tax system.
The estate and gift taxes generated about $24 billion of revenue in fiscal
year 1998, and would raise nearly $45 billion by fiscal year 2009. If the
taxes were repealed, this revenue would need to be replaced. Any tax that
replaced this revenue would almost certainly be more regressive than the
estate and gift taxes.
The Administration would, of course, consider any fiscally responsible
proposals to reform the estate and gift tax as long as they promote
fairness, simplicity, and economic growth.