The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight Phil Ponce examines the legal fallout from the case of Chile's former president, Augusto Pinochet; Fred De Sam Lazaro reports on AIDS in South Africa; Susan Dentzer updates the breast implant story; Spencer Michels notes the return of swing dancing; and Robert Pinsky reads the poetry of the late Margaret Alexander. It all follows our summary of the news this Wednesday.% ? NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: House impeachment investigators today reviewed secret memoranda on '96 Clinton fund-raising. A federal judge in Washington ruled they could do so. The memos were prepared for Attorney General Reno by FBI Director Freeh and a Justice Department prosecutor Charles LaBella. US District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson allowed two committee lawyers, a Republican and a Democrat, to review the documents. They could not make copies or take notes and must report only to Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde and the ranking Democrat John Conyers. Democrats attacked Republican plans to broaden the impeachment inquiry. House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt said the Republican leadership was failing to oversee the investigation. The result, he said, was chaos. Gephardt spoke to reporters after a meeting with the President and other Democratic leaders of Congress.

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT: What's happening is the members of the committee are driving the process and, as I've said many, many times, probably a majority of Republican members in the House want this to go into Travelgate, Filegate, campaign finance reform, and Chinese rocket sales, and probably the Vince Foster matter as well. And they'd be happy to see it go far into next year, and that's what they intend to do. So unless leadership on the part of the speaker or the speaker to be comes into this issue in the next few days, I think there's a serious possibility this will go into next year.

JIM LEHRER: Former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy was acquitted today. A jury in Washington found him not guilty on all 30 counts of corruption. He had been accused of illegally accepting $33,000 worth of gifts and entertainment from companies doing business with his department. Espy maintained his innocence throughout. He was President Clinton's first agriculture secretary serving from 1993 to '94, when he resigned. He was prosecuted by independent counsel Donald Smaltz, who spent four years and $17 million on his investigation.

DONALD SMALTZ, Independent Counsel: I believe that the costs we have incurred are worth the price. It is a fundamental obligation of public trust that public service is a public trust and that officials must neither solicit nor accept gifts from any entities that they regulate. The appearance of impropriety can be as damning as bribery is to public competence.

MIKE ESPY, Former Agriculture Secretary: To be the target of an independent counsel, someone with all the money, all the power, very little supervision, no timetable, to unleash powerful hordes of prosecutors upon you and your family, he's not unlike any other schoolyard bully. You have to stand up to him; you have to let him know you're not going to back down; and sooner or later it's going to be okay.

JIM LEHRER: President Clinton received the prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, at the White House today. Ahead of that meeting Mr. Clinton waived US economic sanctions against Pakistan for a year. He was required by law to impose them last May when Pakistan tested nuclear bombs. The waiver allows American firms to resume lending and investing in Pakistan. The Boeing Company will lay off 20,000 workers over the next two years in addition to 28,000 announced last summer. In their announcement late yesterday Boeing blamed the decreased demand for aerospace products in Asia. President Clinton said this about the Boeing decision.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think it is clearly a result of the global financial crisis, in particular the economic problems in Asia, and that's why I have given such a high priority for the better part of a year now to trying to -- actually slightly more than a year now - to trying to stabilize the situation, or limit the spread of the financial contagion, and then reverse conditions in Asia and restore economic growth there.

JIM LEHRER: On Wall Street today the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 69 points at 9064. Overseas in the Middle East today Israel suspended troop pullouts in the West Bank. Officials said it was because of a vicious beating of an Israeli soldier and civilian in the West Bank. The two men were in a car passing through a Palestinian protest when demonstrators assaulted them. The two men fled. The mob then doused the car in kerosene and burned it. Israeli troops dispersed the crowd with rubber-coated metal bullets, live ammunition and teargas. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to no immunity for dictators, AIDS in Africa, a breast implant development, the return of swing dancing, and some Margaret Alexander poetry.% ? FOCUS - THE PINOCHET PRECEDENT

JIM LEHRER: Phil Ponce has the dictator story.

PHIL PONCE: British police took Gen. Augusto Pinochet into custody more than six weeks ago. Great Britain was one of the few countries that would grant the former Chilean dictator a visa. He's now a senator for life in the Chilean legislature and traveled to London on a diplomatic passport. He was recovering from back surgery when he was arrested. The arrest was prompted by an extradition request from a Spanish magistrate, Baltasar Garzon, who wants Pinochet in Spain. The magistrate is investigating atrocities committed during the "Dirty Wars" in Latin America during the 1970's and 80's. Spain is one of four European countries that want to bring charges of genocide, torture and terrorism against General Pinochet, for his alleged role in the deaths and disappearances of more than 3,000 people, both Chileans and foreigners. In October, a court in London ruled that Pinochet was immune from arrest and prosecution because he's a former head of state. He remained under police guard while the decision was appealed.And last Wednesday, the earlier court ruling was taken up by Britain's highest court, the Law Lords of the House of Lords. In a traditional setting and using the language of their chamber, they issued their opinions. The first two upheld the lower court.

LAW LORD: My Lord, for the reasons set out in speech, which I have prepared and which is available in print, I would held that the respondent is a former head of state is immune from arrest in respect to the matters alleged in the warrant of the 22nd of October 1998, and I would dismiss the appeal.

PHIL PONCE: But then the tide turned.

LAW LORD: My Lords, for the reasons contained in my speech, copies of which are available to the parties, I would annul the appeal. The effect of my speech is that in a correct interpretation of the law General Pinochet has no immunity whatever.

PHIL PONCE: The three to two vote overturned the lower court decision that Pinochet was immune. The majority opinion, written by Lord Nichols, said, "International law has made it plain that certain types of conduct, including torture and hostage taking, are not acceptable conduct on the part of anyone." This applies as much to heads of state or even more so, as it does to everyone else. The contrary conclusion would make a mockery of international law. News of the verdict created a fury, first on the streets of London among relatives of those killed and disappeared - and then in Chile, itself, as both pro and anti-Pinochet crowds watched the Lords' proceedings on live television hookups. After the ruling, Chile's foreign minister intensified diplomatic efforts to obtain Pinochet's release and to prevent his extradition from Britain to Spain or any other European nation that wants to try him. Minister Jose Miguel Insula argued that Pinochet should be tried in Chile, if anywhere. The United States, meanwhile, took a cautious view voiced by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright Monday at a news conference with Yasser Arafat.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, Secretary of State: I'm not in the business of giving advice on this. And we have read the Law Lords' decision with a great deal of interest, and I think that we are not prepared to make a statement about the merits of the case. The United States is committed to principles of accountability and justice.

PHIL PONCE: Yesterday, Pinochet left the London hospital where he was recuperating from back surgery.Another court hearing - this one on Spain's extradition request - is scheduled for next week. But ultimately the British government - not the British courts - will decide whether to send him home or to face charges in Europe.

PHIL PONCE: For more on what the Pinochet case means we're joined by Diane Orentlicher, Professor of Law at American University's Washington College of Law and director of its war crimes research office; Anne-Marie Slaughter, Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School and co-director of the Center for Civil, Criminal, and Administrative Justice; Jeremy Rabkin, Professor of Government at Cornell University and author of the forthcoming book, "Why Sovereignty Matters;" and Alfred Rubin, distinguished Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a former attorney with the Defense Department. Welcome all. Professor Orentlicher, your reaction to the ruling that General Pinochet has no immunity.

DIANE F. ORENTLICHER, American University: Well, I think it was the right ruling, and if I could explain why, the court was really presented with a very narrow question, which is whether General Pinochet's acts, as charged by Spanish courts, should be considered acts protected under the doctrine that we don't - courts of one country don'texamine the acts of another sovereign in the exercise of sovereign power. So the courts have to decide was this an exercise of public authority entitled to respect by another country's courts. Now, once you're presented with that question, you have two alternatives. You can either say torture, disappearances, alleged genocide aren't legitimate exercises of public authority entitled to the respect of other countries, or they're not. I think once you understand that that was the issue presented, there's really no way they should have come out, other than the way they did.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Rabkin, is that what it comes down to, a question of the kinds of acts that a former dictator is accused of being responsible for or charged with?

JEREMY RABKIN, Cornell University: No. I think that's not right. First of all, I want to take issue with the title of the statement - Justice for Dictators. There's no way this can be confined to dictators. None of the relevant international standards make that distinction between dictators and democracies. Chile, itself, is a democracy now. Chile doesn't want to proceed, and Britain is saying or at least is saying it's all right for Spain to pursue a case, but Chile doesn't want to pursue. Once you let that principle loose in the world it will quickly be applied to Israel; it will probably be applied to the United States. The definitions of torture, the definitions of war crimes are so loose and elastic they can be applied to any country that finds itself in civil strife. I am not defending things that General Pinochet did. Some of the things he did were terrible. But there are people in Russia, there are people in China, there are people in South Africa, who have done many worse things on a much larger scale. People aren't saying let's reach into those countries, grab some of them, and put them on trial. I think this is the equivalent of assassinating of a foreign leader.

PHIL PONCE: Professor.

JEREMY RABKIN: Yes. We've had a lot of nastiness in the world, and people have really refrained from that because they say it's a dangerous thing to let loose.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Slaughter, is this the equivalent of assassinating a former leader?

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER, Harvard University: No. Jeremy Rabkin's notion that there's no distinction in international law between states that violate human rights and states that don't, and democracies, and non-democracies just flies in the face of the evolution of human rights law since 1945 and certainly since 1945 and certainly since 1989. This - the law has evolved in such a way precisely as to tell states that they have obligations to their own citizens, that they have responsibilities, as well as rights, and that means that states that obey human rights, that have a rule of law and, indeed, that maintain democratic elections, are increasingly treated differently than states that don't.

PHIL PONCE: So are you saying that in the examples that Professor Rabkin gave - Israel and the United States - because of their "democratic traditions," they would be, what, exempt from this kind of a possibility?

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER: Well, I don't think we can say that they would be exempt. But I do think there are lots of safeguards that mean that to equate an Israeli leader or a US leader with Gen. Pinochet is really a bogeyman that is often trotted out but there's very little support. It's - if anything - we have problems getting prosecution, so the United States went around the world last year trying to find a country that was willing to try Pol Pot and there were no takers. This has been an incredible case but a rare one in which a country was willing to exercise jurisdiction over General Pinochet, and there are far more obstacles against prosecution and safeguards one court looking at another court's jurisdiction, all of the back and forth between not only Britain and Spain, but the British political and judicial authorities that would almost certainly protect most of the leaders in the world, other than recognize war criminals.

PHIL PONCE: Thank you. Professor Rubin, does the - does this action against General Pinochet open the door to other world leaders?

ALFRED P. RUBIN, Tufts University: Well, I think it's a pretty horrible action. One forgets that the British court split three to two on this, was a narrow decision based upon British law. It was not a major international law holding, despite the sayings of some of the judges there. They exaggerated their position. And forgets that Judge Garzon in Spain is not an international law judge; he's a Spanish judge put in position by the Spanish constitutional system, applying only the Spanish version of international law to the acts of Pinochet. Now, there's nothing to prevent the Iranians from applying the Iranian version of international law to General Schwarzkopf. I guess Iraq would do that or to a Salman Rushdie, and we long ago decided that international law really does not justify criminal charges against individuals. It may involve diplomatic correspondence about states that don't forbid torture within their territory, but to say that it applies directly to individuals and that there's an international criminal law, somehow, they can be applied by states is such a tremendous far reach, and I was very pleased that the British courts, except for one or two judges that mistook international law, really did not resolve that issue, didn't presume to step on it.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Orentlicher, how about this question? Would General Schwarzkopf under the way this ruling seems to suggest, would he have anything to be concerned about?

DIANE F. ORENTLICHER: Well, can I first say I just have to disagree with the statement that international law doesn't criminalize conduct; it rarely criminalizes conduct; but it has certainly been the case since Nuremberg that international law makes some conduct in international crime, and that means, among other things, that any state which has jurisdiction over the criminal can prosecute him. Now, as Anne-Marie Slaughter indicated, it is very rare, indeed, that countries have been willing to exercise that kind of jurisdiction. Israel was willing to do in the case of Adolf Eifman, but it's certainly the case that certain conduct is criminal. Having said that, very few atrocities are considered international crimes for all the reasons various guests have suggested. We don't want havoc in international relations; we don't want countries judging political action of other countries. And so international law makes it possible to exercise this type of jurisdiction -- only over a handful of the most serious crimes. So, should we worry about how far this goes? Of course we should worry about it. But I think that the arguments that have been made are like saying if it's possible to get custody over a serial killer, we shouldn't prosecute him because somewhere there might be a renegade prosecutor who might prosecute the wrong person on trumped up charges of serial killing, and that obviously doesn't make sense.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Rabkin, following up on the point of the clarity of what acts do or do not fall in - isit that clear - what acts are bad enough to warrant this kind of action?

JEREMY RABKIN: No. It absolutely is not clear. First of all, there is disagreement even in the Pinochet case, what is he being charged with. The Spanish have said genocide. The British courts didn't seem to think that was right. Then there was a subsequent argument, well, it was torture, and there's some dispute over that. Really, maybe it was terrorism. If you go look at the international conventions that define these things, they're defined in extremely broad general terms - torture, which seemed to be the one that British judges in the House of Lords focused on - it's actions which caused severe mental or physical pain. I think when General Schwarzkopf orders a bombing, that causes a lot of severe pain. And I want to go back to the previous point, which, with all respect, I think Professor Orentlicher is not giving really an honest answer or a reliable answer. She says the international community knows the difference between democracies and dictatorships. He absolutely does not. All these human rights conventions that you're talking about were negotiated with the Soviet Union; they've been signed by other dictatorships. They very carefully avoid making distinctions between dictatorships and democracies. So I think absolutely this is available to be used against the United States or Israel; there are not a lot of safeguards, because we are now - what we're precisely talking about is a country on its own says this is my - this is our unique national interpretation. If Algeria manages to get hold of Henry Kissinger or Schwarzkopf or Ariel Sharon, what is to stop Algeria from going forward to the prosecution? The answer until last week was this is never done, it's never done. It has never been done. The answer now is maybe the United States would be upset and then we have to ask what would we do about it and maybe the answer is we would bomb them, but I sort of doubt that, so we've let loose on a thing which is I think quite threatening.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Slaughter, quite threatening, or is it possible that a new area of international law is developing where a country can go after a former enemy in a foreign court?

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER: Well, there's no question that in many ways this was a landmark decision but I agree with Jeremy Rabkin that these issues are actually quite complicated and indeed, although the Law Lords decided that Pinochet was not immune, that was simply the first step. Now the question is going to be to decide can he be extradited and that is indeed a question of back and forth between British and Spanish courts, but that's precisely the kinds of safeguards that would prevent any traveling leader from being roped into some third country and then being extradited. If this process is allowed to go forward by the British home secretary, it will take months of very careful legal argumentation. And I have to disagree with Al Rubin, that this is an international law. Those five opinions of the Law Lords carefully canvas international treaties, international conventions, the writings of international legal scholars, the statutes of the Bosnia tribunal, the Rwanda tribunal, the Nuremberg principles. What they then did was very carefully decide the ways in which that law limited - actually was integrated into national law. But national courts will decide that differently and very carefully aware of the political implications. In this case, in the end, Pinochet's counsel had to admit that the logic of immunity would have immunized Adolf Hitler. And at that point three of those Law Lords said that's going too far.

PHIL PONCE: Professor Rubin, would this logic have immunized Adolf Hitler?

JEREMY RABKIN: I think it would, and I think it's right to do so. If Hitler had been given a visa to visit Great Britain to charge him criminally with things over which British law has nothing to do, it would have been rather extreme. I don't want to defend Pinochet. He might well be a villain, but one has to bear in mind that he has not yet been tried. The issue is not at this moment whether he's a villain or not; it's who should try him for his alleged villainies. He might well be a horrible person, but can he defend himself here? Can he call on the cabinet minutes to show that, for example, if it's possible, that he was threatened himself with assassination if he didn't simply Performa sign certain documents or let his name be used in public statements with which he deeply disagreed, does he have the criminal intent that he's accused of having? He might. I don't know. But he can't defend himself, and he can't defend himself in Spain. What it comes down to really is an argument as to whether in international law there is such a thing as international criminal law that applies to individuals. Nuremberg, despite Diane Orentlicher's statement, is hardly a good example. After all, at Nuremberg, itself, Admiral Nimitz, the American admiral, confessed in writing that he had done exactly what Admiral Denitz had been convicted, or was about to be convicted for doing an unrestricted submarine warfare. Nimitz was not only not tried; he is considered a hero. The Molotov-Ribinchov pact, in the background of Ribinchov's conviction - and it was agreed never to mention the Molotov Ribinchov pact because Molotov couldn't possibly be tried; he was a hero. I think the notion that international criminal law grows out of the writings of publicists and the tendentious proceedings of Victor's tribunals is a gross exaggeration and is not permitted actually by the statute of the international court of justice which defines international law and says these are subsidiary sources, but you've got to look to the practice of states and the real words of the treaties - not what you -

PHIL PONCE: Let me get Professor Orentlicher's response to that, Professor.

DIANE F. ORENTLICHER: Again, I think that's really writing off the last 50 years of international legal development. The arguments that have just been made simply don't make sense in light of what the international community has done the last two years to respond to the serious atrocities that were committed in Bosnia and Rwanda.

PHIL PONCE: So you're saying there is a body of international criminal law that is recognized and people know what the rules are?

DIANE F. ORENTLICHER: -- being enforced and, in fact, the single greatest criticism that has been lodged against the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal is that it hasn't gone far enough. There was a resolution passed in Congress - could I just finish - there was a resolution passed in Congress condemning the tribunal because it hadn't yet indicted President Milosevic, the single greatest accomplishment by all accounts of the Rwanda tribunal, is that it accepted a guilty plea of a former prime minister of Rwanda. Those were considered the greatest - that was considered the greatest accomplishment of this area of international law. To suggest that we simply cannot ever hold former heads of state accountable for the most serious atrocities simply flies in the face of where international law has been going. The problem, as you suggest, I agree with you, is that this area of law has not been adequately enforced. And I think that's a serious problem that we need to focus on. I would like to get back to one issue that was raised -

PHIL PONCE: Let me get a very quick response from Professor Rabkin on this area.

JEREMY RABKIN: If I could.

PHIL PONCE: Yes, go ahead, Professor.

JEREMY RABKIN: I think you're missing the point by citing these international tribunals. It's one thing if countries want to agree - come together and agree that we will have an international tribunal for these purposes. As a matter of fact, most of the world did agree last summer on an international criminal court. That would be one thing. That court didn't have jurisdiction over Pinochet. It has a number of safeguards, such as there's no retroactivity so you can't reach back 20 years. It has - it has a territorial principle, so that at least - one of the - either the victim or the perpetrator has to be from a country that signed it -

PHIL PONCE: Professor Rabin, I'm really sorry - we're --

JEREMY RABKIN: That's what the world would agree to and what you're instead -

PHIL PONCE: Sir, I've got to interrupt you. We're out of time. I wish we had more time, Professors all, thank you very much.

JEREMY RABKIN: Sorry.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, AIDS in Africa; the breast implant development; the swing dance revival; and some Margaret Alexander poetry. % ? FOCUS - AIDS EPIDEMIC

JIM LEHRER: Yesterday was World AIDS Day with much attention focused on AIDS in Africa. Fred De Sam Lazaro of KTCA-St. Paul-Minneapolis reports on the situation in South Africa.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. Glenda Gray began working with patients in this Soweto clinic near Johannesburg five years ago. South Africa was on the verge of becoming a democratic nation. It was also on the verge of perhaps the most explosive outbreak of HIV in history.

DR. GLENDA GRAY: In 1993, when I first started working in HIV, the sero-prevalence amongst pregnant women was 3 percent. Now, a couple, five years later, we're looking at 20 percent HIV sero-prevalence amongst pregnant women in Soweto. So, half of the people who get admitted each day in the medical wards are HIV positive. One third of all our children in this hospital who get admitted are HIV, so we're seeing it, you know.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: More than three million South Africans are positive for HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS. That's about one of every seven citizens, and the number is headed up perhaps to one in four. It's not the highest rate on the continent but rising at a rate not seen elsewhere.

RUEBEN SHER: We're facing a biological Holocaust. There's no two ways about it.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Virologist Rueben Sher says even though South Africa has the continent's most modern health care system, its HIV problem went largely ignored in a nation pre-occupied with political and socioeconomic concerns as it moved from white minority rule to democracy

REUBEN SHER: It was not a priority. Jobs, housing, political freedom, those were the priorities. Maybe the only benefit of apartheid was that we didn't allow people to the North of us to come in to the country, and we didn't allow most of the local indigenous population to travel North. And when the doors were opened, you started getting people with HIV infection coming into the country

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Apartheid may have kept HIV at bay, but it also left a legacy of mistrust. That's a huge handicap for a public health system in which most health care providers are white and most patients black. Mark Ottenweller is an American physician with the charity Hope Worldwide.

MARK OTTENWEILER: They don't trust authority figures. White South African doctors are not trusted by black South African migrant workers. So there's a lot of distrust, perhaps some misinformation in the past.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: That misinformation has allowed HIV to flourish. For example, AIDS is still widely viewed as a disease of gay white males. In fact, the vast majority of cases are heterosexual black South Africans, more than half of them female, many seemingly na ve about their risk.

LORRAINE NYABANE: You know, I thought in my heart that those virus is only get by those people who are sleeping around. I didn't think that I would get the virus. So it's painful.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Like most young HIV-infected women, Lorraine Nyabane only learned she was HIV positive after becoming pregnant and seeking prenatal care. For most, this discovery is only the start of their pain, according to Nurse Practitioner Jacob Moetlo.

JACOB MOETLO: So, now they've got to maybe disclose this to either their husbands or their sexual partners, and so they always have a problem, because, you know, unfortunately, we still have a problem where we men around in this country, we still, you know[ oppress women. That's another problem.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The women in Moetlo's clinic are part of a study in which they are given the druc AZT during pregnancy ajd also infant formula to substitute for breastfeeding. That lowers the risk of HIV transmission to the babies, but it increases the risk of social sanction for their mothers.

JACOB MOETLO: If you are a black woman and you are not breast feeding, you know, you are faced with a lot of questions from the in-laws, you know, from your husband and even from the health workers, you know, why aren't you breast feeding, or they just don't find that situation.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Moetlo says women risk being thrown out in the street if they reveal their HIV status. Most are still able to conceal it, since they haven't progressed to full-blown AIDS. However, on a broader scale, public health workers say this appearance of normalcy has worked against them.

SPOKESPERSON: People knew just about AIDS, they just knew about people who lnse weight, people who are very sick, people who cannot do anything. But now if you bring someone who is very healthy but who is HIV positive, they still don't believe, and this is something we really need to work out on.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: For the growing number of HIV cases beginning to show signs of disease, there are few places of refuge. The Ark Ministries is one -- located in a converted railroad hostel in the coastal city of Durban.

WALLY: This guy here we actually found on the beachfront, in worse condition than he is now. As you can, see he's still very frail.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The Ark has served those down on their luck for some years. Now, AIDS is the primary reason they come, especially younger tenants, many of them casualties of years of civil strife. Winnie Sibiya says she became HIV infected as a result of being raped. She'd wandered into an area of her village that a rival group had declared off-limits.

WINNIE SIBIYA: It was really hard, because I failed to introduce a condom culture to my partners. I decided again to abstain myself from sex, but due to the fact that I was under stress, coping with HIV and the rape case, it was hard for me to be alone. So I tried to get a friend, although I didn't open anything about my status. So they used to ask why I said we have to use a condom. I just beat about the bush. I didn't say the truth, that I was one of the carriers. So no one agrees to use a condom, so I did continue having thatlove affair, or doing that love-making, but my conscience was there.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Sibiya has spent a year at the Ark. Her health has now stabilized, although she's been unable to find work. Still, she is among the more fortunate, according to Pastor Shirley Pretorius, the Ark's director.

REV. SHIRLEY PRETORIUS, Director, The Ark: There must be hundreds of thousands of people who die in the rural areas probably from AIDS-related conditions but they're never diagnosed, because they just die in the family home, and they're buried and that's it. So as I say, we're not even touching the tip of the iceberg.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: No one's yet tallied the economic toll HIV AIDS will take on South Africa, but the mining industry, long the mainstay of the economy, offers a sobering barometer. One of every three miners already is HIV positive. And the mining companies say for every job that opens up in the next few years, they'll need to train four workers. The rippling effect is a serious setback to government plans toimprove the standard of living for this nation's impoverished black majority. As for the government's approach to HIV, critics say its been mired in scandal, inefficiency, and missed a rare opportunity in Africa to prevent the epidemic.

DR. GLENDA GRAY: We should have been able to curtail it. You know, we have a sophisticated media infrastructure, we have a good public health system from the apartheid, and we've got grass-roots organizations that - with political organizations, and we should have used the same strategy to combat HIV, but the country's in denial, and no one seems to care, you know, at levels where decisions are made about this.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: But Rose Smart, who heads the government's HIV/AIDS program, says the epidemic is the result of a complex set of factors.

ROSE SMART, Ministry of Health: We are a country in transition. We have a past which certainly laid the foundation for a fully-fledged epidemic. We have factors such as migrancy; we had low grade wars in various inner parts of the country, particularly Kwazulu Natal, which were the perfect conditions to get an epidemic such as this well-established. It's an epidemic that is fueled by social factors like poverty, like family disruption, like illiteracy, lack of jobs, those sorts of elements are common in South Africa, despite the fact that many people see us as being a first world - third world country. For most of the population we are definitely a third world country.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Smart says South Africa should be able to provide basic health care toits AIDS patients, although the country cannot afford the expensive anti-viral therapies available in the West. However, Gail Schultz, who runs a Salvation Army hospice for young HIV positive children, doubts the public health system will be able to cope with the load.

GAIL SCHULTZ, Salvation Army: We're already getting to the stage where the hospitals say there is nothing we can do for this baby, take her home, she is dying.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Part of the strategy at this facility is to enlist teenagers from local schools to care for the infants.

GAIL SCHULTZ: [A], our aim is to teach them about HIV/AIDS. [B], our aim is to show them how they can work with these children but [C], our main aim is to make them comfortable with HIV and AIDS, that when they get into their personal lives, they're going to be able to deal with it, instead of rejecting the infected person.

MARK OTTENWELLER: It's going to take a generation to mobilize people for education, for health, for jobs for lots of the redistribution things in South Africa. And, unfortunately, with the AIDS epidemic, we don't have that generation to wait

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Ottenweller calls his patients "the lost generation." He says their predicament is a metaphor for a nation that hasn't yet fully come to grips with a grave health crisis.% ? UPDATE - BREAST IMPLANTS

JIM LEHRER: Now, another health story, a development in the long-running one about breast implants. Here to tell us about it is Susan Dentzer of our health unit, a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

JIM LEHRER: Susan, the development was the report of four neutral scientists to a federal judge in Birmingham. What did that panel say?

SUSAN DENTZER: Jim, the panel was asked to look into a highly contentious area involved in litigation concerning silicone breast implants and the effect on the human body. In effect, this area had to do with whether silicone breast implants seemed to cause - whether there was any causal connection between implants and so-called "connective tissue" diseases, systemic illnesses that have to do with the immune system, specifically illnesses like Lupus, like Scleroderma, which is a hardening of the skin and of the organs, like Rheumatoid Arthritis. There had been a lot of contentiousness around whether the research indicated there was a link or not, and the judge asked the panel to look into this.

JIM LEHRER: Go ahead.

SUSAN DENTZER: What the panel said, in effect, was that looking at all the studies that had been done over the years on this, there was no consistent, clear scientific evidence that showed a link. They did not look at other issues. They did not say that, for example, silicone implants are free of harm. They did not say they don't rupture and sometimes cause problems from that. They looked solely at this area of connective tissue disease, in particular, and said there's no consistent clear link.

JIM LEHRER: Now, the reason this is important and the reason the judge asked them to do this was because -

SUSAN DENTZER: Because of this huge controversy and because -

JIM LEHRER: And the lawsuits out.

SUSAN DENTZER: And because of so many lawsuits that have been brought. In fact, there are now actively an estimated ten to twenty thousand lawsuits involving silicone breast implants. Many, many more have already been disposed of, settled, and whatnot. And in one particular case involving one of the manufacturers, Dow Corning, there is now a proposed settlement on the order of magnitude of $3.2 billion that would deal with an estimated 170,000 claims that have been brought involving alleged instances of Dow Corning implants.

JIM LEHRER: And that proposed settlement would give claimants anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000, depending on how the thing was adjudicated?

SUSAN DENTZER: Well, actually up to a little bit more than $300,000.

JIM LEHRER: $300,000.

SUSAN DENTZER: Yes, assuming they could show some legitimate evidence of disease.

JIM LEHRER: Now, how does this report yesterday affect that kind of thing?

SUSAN DENTZER: Well, the manufacturers, of course, instantly issued press releases claiming victory. They had always pointed to the ambiguity around the medical evidence here and were willing to proceed with settlements in spite of that. They now hope, for example, in the case of Dow Corning that the 170,000 claimants will now vote to approve the settlement once it goes through a couple of other procedures in court and that basically people will determine that because of this ambiguity around the scientific evidence it's in their interest to proceed with a settlement and be done with it. On the other hand, I spoke today with one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs who said that in his opinion the majority of cases that his firm is handling will, in fact, continue to go forward because they don't necessarily involve this area of allegation of connective disease. They, rather, involve things like rupturing, pain, chronic inflammation, and many other things that are claimed to stem from implants.

JIM LEHRER: But the connective tissue issue would be - the way this report would be handled in any case, whether it's Dow Corning or any of the other lawsuits, it would just be part of the evidence, would it not? There's nothing official about that.

SUSAN DENTZER: Yes, indeed. And, in fact, the judge specifically said when this panel was appointed that this panel should be viewed as four additional witnesses in the case. This is not an attempt to wipe out litigation or solve things for all time, and, indeed, it won't do that.

JIM LEHRER: Why won't it do that? What still remains to be resolved here?

SUSAN DENTZER: The panel pointed to a number of areas that are problematic. One question is how good were the original studies that they looked at in the first place? Keep in mind they didn't do any new studies. They looked at all the studies that have been done to date, some of which are quite small and have been known to be flawed for various reasons. They looked at - put together many of these studies in a statistical technique called meta analysis, which has some potential problem with it and will be closely scrutinized by lawyers, who are going to be interviewing these panelists over the next couple of months. There are other studies that will be coming down the pike. For example, the National Institutes of Health has a very broad study underway under congressional mandate.

JIM LEHRER: This is an original study. This is not a complication study, an overview study, right?

SUSAN DENTZER: That's exactly right. This is basically a new set of studies, as well as a look at former studies. In attempting to determine whether a whole range of disease conditions are linked in any way to silicone breast implants, that will be coming out presumably sometime next year, so there's much more yet to be said on the subject, and I think that it's very clear that as much as each side wants to claim some victory here, that's really - it's really not accurate to say that that's possible at this point.

JIM LEHRER: But how important then is this development? How would you rank it, because you've been covering this story? How would you rank this?

SUSAN DENTZER: It's important in the sense that this was a group of four sophisticated people: an immunologist, a toxicologist, who studies ingestion of diseases and harmful effects - ingestion of substances rather - an epidemiologist, serious, substantive people. These were not people who were allied with breast implants issues before. They did not have an ax to grind on -

JIM LEHRER: On either side.

SUSAN DENTZER: On either side.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

SUSAN DENTZER: So it was a very important effort to take independent, sophisticated people, and have them exercise some scientific judgment, so there's a lot of validity in what they said just on that basis. On the other hand, as I say, they pointed to some witnesses in the study. They pointed to areas that have yet to be studied adequately. And they said, in fact, quite clearly that they were not attempting to ram home one point of view or another on this. They were basically looking at the studies today and saying that there was no consistent scientific evidence showing a causal link.

JIM LEHRER: I know there are billions of dollars involved in this. Is there a ballpark figure about how many women are actually involved in this, who have made claims or have some kind - who are in some way attached to one of these claims or lawsuits?

SUSAN DENTZER: It's very hard to get one's hands around - as I say - in terms of active lawsuits, the number appears to be anywhere between ten and twenty thousand. Again -

JIM LEHRER: Now, some of those involve more than one patient, right?

SUSAN DENTZER: Well, ten or twenty thousand lawsuits, which may - as I think - as much as we can say - on the basis of what we know. What we also know, though, is that it - just in the case of Dow Corning it's 170,000 individual claims have come in. And so your guess is as good as mine. I think it's basically about a couple of hundred thousand women, and, of course, many of these cases have already been decided and disposed of.

JIM LEHRER: All right. We have not heard the last of this.

SUSAN DENTZER: Not at all.

JIM LEHRER: Susan, thank you.% ? FOCUS - SWINGIN'

JIM LEHRER: Now, the return of swing dancing. Spencer Michels reports.

SPENCER MICHELS: In clubs across the country where punk or disco or just plain rock'n roll once ruled, the tempo has shifted to swing. The sounds and steps of the 30s and 40s - updated, to be sure - are rocking dance halls like Broadway Studios in San Francisco. Swing has sprung, and it isn't just the seniors who are swinging. V. Vale has written and published a book about swing and has been following the fad since it started up slowly about four years ago and then really took off.

V. VALE, Writer/Publisher: This has become "the" way to meet people socially. You couldn't do it at rock clubs anymore because they're too loud. You have to wear ear plugs at rock clubs. People also got tired of just standing there, watching a band on stage playing. They want to do something.

SPENCER MICHELS: Today's swing music is nearly the black magic that got people swinging back before World War II, when Count Bassie and Duke Ellington and later Bennie Goodman and Glenn Miller used a new sound to energize the crowds. Eighty-four-year-old Frankie Mann, who still teaches dancing, was there at the beginning, at the swing dance contest in New York's Harlem.

FRANKIE MANNING: The very first I ever walked into the Savoy ballroom and I heard that music swinging and the floor was just crowded with people dancing, and it just seemed like the music was just pounding, and everybody was just - was just moving with that rhythm, and I just stood there with my mouth open.

SPENCER MICHELS: Manning became a top swing dancer specializing in the Lindy Hop, inventing what came to be known as aerials, which were featured in this 1941 film, "Hell's A Poppin'."

FRANKIE MANNING: I remember the first time I did aerials. That was one momentous moment, I'll tell you. When we actually did a step, it was like - you know - it was like quiet - like nothing - like to say - what happened, what did he do? You know, and then all of a sudden the Savoy just erupted, and everybody started screaming and hollering and stepping and carrying on. And I said, oh, wow, man, because, you know - I mean - from the excitement that they generated I said, oh, man, maybe I did something, you know.

SPENCER MICHELS: Manning danced to swing music that he says had its roots in African-American jazz of the 20s and 30s. Big bands like Bennie Goodman modified the jazz they were playing and moved into swing, making the music more easily danceable. John Coppola played trumpet with some of the original swing bands and still plays today on the West Coast, where the revival began.

JOHN COPPOLA, Trumpet Player: Swing is a word that means the music is being propelled. So-called "swing" bands were jazz bands. Bennie Goodman was a jazz band, Fletcher Henderson, Count Bassie, they're all jazz bands that swung, which means that the rhythm is being propelled forward, you could dance to it.

SPENCER MICHELS: Coppola's wife, France Lynne, was part of the swing scene too, singing in USO clubs during World War II, and with Gene Krupa and other swing musicians afterwards.

FRANCES LYNNE COPPOLA, Singer: We didn't even know how marvelous it was when it was going on and we were in it. We didn't know that this was so great.

SPENCER MICHELS: Coppola credits Louis Armstrong with transforming New Orleans jazz to swing, as on this early 40s recording of "Jubilee."

JOHN COPPOLA: What Louis does, he began to take it another place rhythmically speaking. So we have now is floating over the whole rhythm section, which, of course, influenced the great Leslie Yago, influenced Charlie Parker, who influenced John Coltrane. It was another concept of not being strictly on the beat, which he's doing here.

SPENCER MICHELS: This kind of music that we're listening to there, is that almost the same as the swing we're hearing today, or is there a big difference?

JOHN COPPOLA: I think there's a big difference, really. I have to be honest with you.

SPENCER MICHELS: What's the difference?

JOHN COPPOLA: Well, we don't have any geniuses like that today, I'm afraid.

SPENCER MICHELS: What there is today is an explosion of interest in swing music and dancing. TV outlets like MTV are playing videos by a swing band called "Big Bad Voodoo Daddy," whose first album has sold nearly 1/2 million copies.

[MUSIC IN BACKGROUND]

SPENCER MICHELS: The trendy national clothing store, The Gap, has capitalized on the craze and pushed it along with a swing TV commercial set to Louie Prima's, "Jump, Jive An' Wail."

[MUSIC IN BACKGROUND]

SPENCER MICHELS: In clubs, from San Francisco to New York, bands like Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers perform old classics and new tunes, while hundreds of dancers revive the steps of 50 years ago. The piano player and band leader for the Skillet Lickers is Chris Siebert, who has his own theory about the popularity of swing.

CHRIS SIEBERT, Band Leader: Maybe it's even a ration against technology and our lives are raw, which can have a dehumanizing effect. I happen to think that the artistic standards of that period were incredibly high. You know, the musicianship was high. Now we have mass-produced music, and maybe this is a little bit of, you know, searching for something that's not so mass-produced but maybe more hand crafted or that sort of thing.

LAVAY SMITH, Singer: You look at the singers today and they're very blatant. There's nothing funny about Madonna or in her lyrics, her sexual lyrics. She's very blatant, and, you know, like Bessie Smith, I need a little sugar in my bowl. Those lyrics are funny and they're much more intelligent.

SPENCER MICHELS: Band leader Siebert says swing musicians, unlike some of their rock'n roll counterparts, really have to know music.

CHRIS SIEBERT: People couldn't just like, you know, pick up a guitar and in two months be on MTV. I mean, you really had to work at an instrument. You cannot pick up a saxophone and sound good in two months.

SPENCER MICHELS: Swing breaks out regularly at spots like The Great American Music Hall, where 550 San Franciscans show up every month for a week-night swing session. Beer takes a back seat to martinis and cosmopolitans, stylish drinks of yesteryear. Across the room proprietors of the Shoeshine Stand try to evoke nostalgia at 5 bucks a shot. And on stage before the band comes on two twenty-somethings teach the crowd the moves of their grandparents. One dance hall in Pasadena reports 600 dancers show up for lessons like this every night. What's new for many of these dancers if the concept of actually holding their partners. Johnny Swing and Cari Elizabeth have been teaching swing for two and a half years.

JOHNNY SWING, Dance Teacher: Partner dancing is definitely a different thing for everybody now. And it's more like communicating to somebody while you're dancing, whereas, before, you know, you were just maybe dancing for yourself.

CARI ELIZABETH, Dance Teacher: They can ask anybody to dance without it seeming to be like I'm picking you up or I want to go out with you. It's just I want to dance with you right now, I want to have a good time right now.

SPENCER MICHELS: Today's swing scene involves more than just learning the steps, it includes a return to the hairstyles of the 40's, a landscape Betty Grable or Veronica Lake, and it features clothes from that same era. Kids who were born three decades after swing went into eclipse are trying to revive that old look. Vintage clothing stores have become part of the movement, along with the music. Enthusiasts say the swing craze is just now hitting its stride. Those in the scene claim that new bands, new clubs, new songs, and a glorious history should keep this retro fad from fading too fast.% ? FINALLY - FOR MY PEOPLE

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, remembering poet and novelist Margaret Walker Alexander, who published under the name Margaret Walker. She died earlier this week. Here's NewsHour contributor Robert Pinsky, the Poet Laureate of the United States.

ROBERT PINSKY, Poet Laureate: Margaret Walker's first volume of poetry, "For My People," was chosen for the Yale Younger Poet Series in 1942. In that year, for a 27-year-old black woman, such publication with a laudatory preface by Stephen Vincent Binet, was all but unique. Like her novel, "Jubilee," this book of poetry defied racial cliches and expectations by existing as a landmark, as well as by its eloquence and its materials. Walker, the daughter of a preacher, a student of Langston Hughes, a reader of Walt Whitman, understood the force of directness, of cadences, of oratorical series. The title poem, "For My People" begins: "For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly, their dirges and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown God, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power." The final peroration of her poem is a challenge in its frank rhetoric: "For my people standing, staring, trying to fashion a better way from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to fashion a world that will hold all the peoples, all the faces, all the Adams and Eves and their countless generations." In the poem's very last phrase, Walker envisions liberation for humanity, itself, "a race of men," she says, suggesting that in the words of her great contemporary, Ralph Ellison, she may be speaking on the lower frequencies for you. "Let a new earth rise, let another world be born, let a bloody piece be written in the sky. Let a generation full of courage issue force, let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and the strength of final clenchings be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the marshal songs be written. Let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control."% ? RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, White House lawyers late today accepted an invitation to defend President Clinton before the House Judiciary Committee next week. He said they may want to call witnesses on the President's behalf in the committee's impeachment inquiry. And a federal judge permitted committee investigators to review secret memoranda concerning '96 Clinton campaign fund-raising. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.