Trial by Television

...Why does the Clinton Administration stand for this when it could make Bosnia a purely nato issue and get the UN and Russia totally out of the act...

...The FBI was convinced Koresh would never come out voluntarily...

...In 1961, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Lyman L. Lemnitzer presented to President John F. Kennedy a plan for a massive unprovoked attack on the Soviet Union in 1963, the last time the military figured the Russians could not retaliate...

...The junior Republican Senator from Wisconsin rode high, but television can be a fickle friend to a powerful chairman...

...Designed to head off the Republican drive for a constitutional school prayer amendment, it was an imperfect document...

...In the same period he spoke to the issues of civility in partisan debate and violence in the media...

...On the International Front ON BOSNIA, the Clinton Administration worked hard to get an international statement muscular enough to head off the resolution by Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R.-Kan...

...Home in Washington a week later and aware of the firestorm he had ignited, Clinton retreated...

...The committee suspects some of them may have had Whitewater on their minds, but they have not been able to establish that...

...That took him back to the Supreme Court dictum of 1962...

...President Harry S.Truman refused...

...The Administration would thereby stave off the effect of the resolution, but not the impression that its faltering course in the face of a war threatening to spread had been repudiated...

...Russian diplomats have warned of a proxy war between Russia and the United States in the former Yugoslavia...

...Sometimes Russia has worked in tandem with Britain and France, but lately it has been concentrating mainly on fending off military action against the Serbs...

...For two weeks, we at CBS were deluged with complaints from soap opera aficionados...

...lifting the arms embargo...

...Moreover, the warmed-over Whitewater and Waco hearings, with their arbitrary five-minute mini-interrogations, lacked central heroes and villains...

...Is it to defend David Koresh's Second Amendment rights...

...q. What does that have to do with Whitewater...

...Planning papers suggested that in an emergency, commanders could order an attack without word from the President, and General LeMay sent reconnaissance planes on provocative flights over Soviet territory as though hoping to create such an emergency...

...Perhaps he will slip and provide a clue that will help to find him...

...School prayer is one of the neuralgic issues on which the President was seeking to define himself in terms more thoughtful than sound bites...

...Earlier there had been the inquisitions of the House Un-American Activities Committee, but not live on TV Television entered the arena in the late 1950s...

...He came close to succeeding, rededicating himself to the principle of affirmative action while embracing the strict standards mandated by the Supreme Court and introducing a new element of urban economic need as a criterion for preferences...

...The Ben Bradlee Dilemma THE POSTAL TERRORIST known as the Unabomber has lately revealed himself to be something of a publicity hound...

...Harris, like many others, was thus hounded out of his job...

...In 1977, New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin, after consulting the police, agreed to publish letters from the serial killer who called himself Son of Sam...

...It did not resolve the central matter of coercion that was raised by Clinton himself last November, and that was the concern of the 1962 Supreme Court decision...

...The three networks had not planned continuous live coverage of the Senate hearings until White House Counsel John Dean's defection made clear that Richard M. Nixon's Presidency was at stake...

...In 1953, President DwightD...

...Part of the public became addicted to them...

...Senate Whitewater Committee Chairman Alfonse M. D'Amato (R.-N.Y...

...Carmel compound...

...He also came down from the mountain with new tablets on affirmative action intended to perform the political miracle of satisfying both supporters and critics of racial and gender preferences...

...But voluntary prayer may seem coercive to students feeling group pressure to conform...

...A. Yes, two days after the suicide the First Lady's chief of staff, Margaret Williams, moved some Clinton personal papers to their living quarters, then to their lawyer...

...A. That David Koresh was getting ready to surrender or just stalling, depending on whether you believe his lawyers or the ATF...

...The FBI and ATF were partially rehabilitated...

...On television, against a country judge, Senate Select Committee Chairman Sam J. Ervin Jr...

...In retrospect, that may well have signaled the beginning of the end of the heyday of Congressional trial by television...

...Russia has been fairly consistent, though, in trying to put the brakes on American moves for more vigorous action in Bosnia...

...Their continued willingness to risk a nuclear confrontation appalled me," McNamara wrote of the Joint Chiefs...

...As the documents of the Cold War period are declassified, however, it emerges that on several occasions, when America was in a tight spot, military leaders seriously proposed initiating the use of nuclear weapons...

...The plan to use air strikes "did not receive consensus," Kozyrev boasted at a Belgrade news conference that undoubtedly went down well with nationalists back home, where pre-election maneuvering is in full swing too...

...A. More to discredit law enforcement agencies the NRA calls "jackbooted thugs...

...Possibly he was trying to recover the spotlight from the April 19 Oklahoma City bombing, an act he called "indiscriminate slaughter...

...Nor do most Americans have any apology for Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

...General LeMay later said, "The Soviet Union could have been obliterated without more than normal, expectable sac losses on our side...

...In addition, he captured national attention with an uncharacteristic threat to place a bomb on an airliner, which he later said was an attention-getting prank...

...A. Whitewater...

...He said that his remark had been "over-read," and that legalized teacher- or student-led prayer could be inherently coercive...

...Then, gradually, callers began accepting the hearings as their new soap opera...

...Let me bring those of you who may have been away on the space station, or on vacation, up to date with answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about both hearings: q. What was Senator D'Amato's committee investigating...

...q. And the second attack, the FBI assault April 19...

...A. Yes, but D'Amato thought they could uncover more this year, and it's closer to the Presidential election...

...In the 1987 Iran-contra hearings, the substance of Reagan Administration misdeeds was lost as Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North, decorated Marine hero, defied a pompous array of legislators and proudly told how he had lied for his country...

...Watergate in 1973 may well have been the high-water mark of the era of Congressional trial by television...

...Now, the sensational murder trials on Court TV provide stiff competition...

...The publishers have been making efforts, now that the Unabomber has become so chatty, to draw him into further dialogue...

...They did learn a lot, though, about what went on in the White House the night of July 20, 1993, after the suicide of Deputy Counsel Vincent W. Foster Jr...

...But this killer only escalated his murders...

...The answer is that the Administration fears the consequences—inside and outside Russia?of a breakdown in post-Cold War cooperation...

...And the United States government still refuses to pledge no first use of nuclear weapons...

...Yet, for all its faults, the statement had the merit of being a considered position, seriously presented...

...It knew it had failed when a 16-nation conference held in London ended July 21 with nothing more than a chairman's statement that limited specific protective measures to the safe haven of Gorazde and left the United Nations (although not its civilian authorities) with a veto over air strikes...

...Clinton Defining Himself IN THE BACKWASH of last November's election, President Bill Clinton, courting the new majority, said off the top of his head in Jakarta, Indonesia, of all places, that he had long favored voluntary school prayer and might support a constitutional amendment permitting it...

...As extensively reported by Richard Rose in the New Yorker, Air Force commander General Curtis E. LeMay and other military leaders proposed a first strike in 1949 after the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb...

...During the height of the crisis, according to a retired Strategic Air Command officer, nuclear bombers deliberately flew toward the Soviet Union past the usual turnaround points as though inviting a response...

...q. What is the interest of the National Rifle Association (NRA) in all this...

...In one case it was suggested that this might be done even without Presidential authorization...

...There were a lot of people running in and out of Foster's office in a state of semi-shock, looking for a suicide note...

...Nevertheless, the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 was the closest we came to seeing nuclear weapons actually used...

...ABC, unable to compete with CBS and NBC's lineup of soap operas, decided to "throw away" the daytime hours by airing the McCarthy hearings...

...And in May Kozyrev prolonged for two hours a meeting of the five-nation Contact Group in The Hague, resisting American language about possible future air strikes...

...There were other instances of the military, with a "use 'em or lose 'em" mentality, proposing a first strike...

...The assiduous Republican attempt to focus the Waco probe on the law enforcement agencies ran into trouble the first day when a 14-year-old girl, Kiri Jewell, rushing through her text as if she were reading a school composition, told of being raped at age 10 by David Koresh...

...Strangelove rarely occurs to people since Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

...All four news-papers complied...

...Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR Trial by Television MY FIRST DAY on the job as a CBS Washington correspondent, in 1953, I covered a hearing of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's Red-hunting Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations...

...were not recognizable characters like McCarthy or Ervin...

...q. What has the House committee learned about the initial attack on the Branch Davidian compound by Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agents on February 28,1993...

...Kennedy left that meeting saying, "And we call ourselves the human race...

...A hapless United States Information Agency official named Reed Harris was being grilled by McCarthy, in tones dripping with sarcasm, about some youthful Left-wing writings...

...It is no secret that terrorists generally thrive on attention, but most often they get it without offering direct deals to the media...

...That may be a little overdramatic, but the Clinton Administration is not ready to give up on international cooperation, leaving it little choice except to veto the Congressional resolution lifting the arms embargo...

...If not, in September the publishers will face the day of inescapable decision—the day of the Ben Bradlee dilemma...

...It blocked the passage of any resolution on the Balkan conflict by the 52-nation European Security Conference...

...What you really missed while you were away is how the one-time hippies who used to call the cops "pigs" were now defending them, and how conservative defenders of law and order were now attacking the agencies designated to enforce law and order...

...Television made a mockery of the best-laid political plans...

...The argument for acceding to the demand of the Unabomber, who has given a new meaning to "publish or perish," would be stronger if one could rely on the word of an obviously disturbed personality...

...I didn't realize that I was witnessing the inauguration of Congressional trial by television...

...President Boris N. Yeltsin has several times warned President Clinton against lifting the arms embargo...

...q. Have they...

...Former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara reveals in his memoirs that three different times Admiral Arthur W. Radford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urged using nuclear weapons against the North Vietnamese, especially if the Chinese entered the War...

...The President said no student should be forced to participate in a religious activity...

...The significance of that remains unclear...

...q. Were any papers actually removed...

...First Strike Schemes "NUKE 'EM," usually saidin jest, is one of those phrases that has entered the English language as a synonym for swatting some irritating pest...

...His country vetoed a UN Security Council resolution to prevent Serbian delivery of fuel to the Bosnian Serbs...

...A. That's what they would like to know...

...He flew to Belgrade for a victory meeting with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic...

...Eisenhower vetoed an Air Force plan to give the Soviet Union a two-year ultimatum to come to terms, or else—the "else" being a nuclear attack...

...Having learned the danger of yielding to political reflex on a subject so complex and sensitive, the President stayed away from school prayer until mid-July, when he appeared with a carefully worked out statement seeking to make clear the latitude for religious activity allowed under current law...

...Few have perceived to what extent that muddy result, comforting to the Bosnian Serbs, was the work of Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev...

...In 1976, Croatian nationalists hijacked a Chicago-boundplane and threatened to kill its 92 passengers unless their manifesto was published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tri-bune and Washington Post...

...Eventually, in his arrogance, he stumbled, and was wounded on the tube by the devastating plea of the venerable Boston lawyer Joseph N. Welch: "At long last, Sir, have you no shame...

...His lawyers say he was ready to move out as soon as he finished his paper on the Seven Seals...

...q. Was anything really bad going on in the Mt...

...Benjamin Bradlee, executive editor of the Post, subsequently said he preferred going along to seeing a story that began, "Umpteen American hostages were killed today because Bradlee refused to publish...

...When Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in 1953 warned of possible "massive retaliation" with "means and weapons" of our own choosing in case of a Soviet conventional attack, his words were largely regarded as hyperbole...

...It was shortly after the devastation of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that he raised the demand for publication of his anarchist manifesto, a 35,000-word document delivered in late June with a three-month deadline...

...D.-N.C), the Nixon smoothies never had a chance...

...One of them asked me to dismiss a boring witness and bring back "that nice John Dean with his lovely wife...

...Also, that the ATF shot first or the Branch Davidians shot first, depending on whom you believe...

...But the Air Force continued working on plans for a massive blow against the Soviet Union with 133 bombs that would wipe out 70 Soviet cities in 30 days...

...A. Again, Koresh was or was not getting ready to give up...

...That did not work...

...Finally, the murder of four ATF officials...

...A. No, not yet...

...and House Subcommittee on Crime Chairman William Mc-Collum (R.-Fla...

...A.Yes, certainly sexual abuse of children and stockpiling of weapons...

...See what you missed...

...It occurred to me then that government by investigation had also become government by theater, choosing its own heroes and villains...

...That nuclear weapons might actually be used other than in movies like Dr...

...q. Didn't they do that last year...